Neria sat on the stone bridge, turning over the control rod in her hand as she caught her breath. Each breath she took, no matter how deep, only felt like half a gulp.

They'd donned their furs again, the slopes of the mountains still covered with snow as they approached Honnleath. It lay in the only open pass that would hopefully lead them up to Haven.

"The air is thinner," Wynne explained, leaning beside the young mage and accepting the water skein she offered. "So we need to breath more of it."

"Unpleasant," Neria murmured and pushed off the solid masonry when she saw Zevran cringe. "You should have said you were injured."

Travelling on the main road through the pass, a group of mercenaries had been waiting for them and a bloody battle had ensued. It enraged Neria to imagine how their position was being given away to Loghain. She had decided then that the attaches would return to where Bodhan was camped until they were out of the mountains. It was unknown how long they would be out of communication with the gathering army, but she deemed it necessary.

"It is nothing," Zevran chuckled, though when he sucked a breath, Neria caught him. Her hand touched over his, where he clutched his side, and slipped in the warmth of blood.

"Zev," she sighed and lowered him down, waving Wynne on as she pulled the buckles on his armour. The blood had soaked into the linen shirt, the edges furrowed and tried where it wicked.

"You need to speak up when Wynne is healing – and accept it."

Leaning his head against the stone bridge, Zevran regarded her through slit-eyes as he grinned, "Perhaps I prefer another mage's –" he gasped in again as she exposed the wound, "- healing touch."

A light flush on her cheeks, Neria murmured, "You can just ask."

"Oh? Then touch me, I beg of you."

Apples darkening as she laughed, Neria steadied a knee to cast the spell over his wound, a glowing mint mist sucking in where the skin had broke.

Zevran kept a steady gaze on her face, sighing out at the familiarity of the magic, feeling himself knit together and losing the sharp edge to the pain. "Almost gratifying."

"Uh huh." Neria unravelled some clean cloth from her things, and wetting it hastily cleaned up the blood. "You'll have to see me tonight at camp so I can do a better job. It's too exposed here."

"I do not mind so much being on display, my dear, ah-" Zevran closed his eyes as she applied the poultice, sighing out, "But if you wish me in camp, how could I resist?"

"You can put your own armour back on," Neria softly laughed, wiping her hands and putting her gloves back on.

"Alas, that is usually my fate."

A call rang from up the road, prompting Zevran and Neria to catch up. The itching tension pulled at the mage's insides as they came in sight of the village. Her eyes were drawn to the bodies hanging over the archway, and the prickle festered in her soul.

"Darkspawn," she said, sword in hand as they saw the fray.

Summoned into shimmering auras, Neria faded, ephemeral form letting a hurlock's blow pass through her. To each, they were moths to a flame, drawn with hatred to the darkspawn, just as the creatures could sense and strike at them.

It took the better part of the afternoon to search the town and eradicate the darkspawn. While Alistair led the way to root the rest out, Neria lingered at the locked tower with Wynne.

"There is undoubtedly magic here – see these markings?" Wynne passed a hand over the doorframe, and familiar Tevinter symbols glowed in response.

"They wouldn't respond to just anyone," Neria sighed, looking up the squat tower. Seeing blood on her hand, she stooped and wiped it in the snow.

Wynne chuckled, a hand on her fellow mage's shoulder, "I am always pleased with your memory, child."

Neria put her hands on the door and closed her eyes. Oh wretched whispers, you make my skin crawl, unclean and needy, "There are ... more things inside."

Watching her once student with a cautious eye, Wynne was about to speak when Zevran strolled up, spattered in blood. He produced an iron ring of keys.
"Perhaps these may be of some use?"

"Burn the bodies, villagers and darkspawn separate. I'm sure Leiliana would say a prayer."

"And you are just going to..."

"There's a lot of knowledge in there, and Matthias patience will only hold so long to allow me there. Wilheim... was a mage of legend. If it is the same one. That there is a golem here seems too much a coincidence." Neria gathered up all her spare books as Alistair sighed. "Please, I will be fine."

"Always giving us the fun jobs."

"The privilege of leading? Shale – would you help them?"

"It expects me to handle those squishy things?"

Neria hugged her books close, "I ask if you would... Corpses attract all sorts of things. Like birds."

"Ech. Very well." The golem stomped off into the village, even its lightest footsteps thundering on the ground.

"Then let me come down with you, that place... didn't feel right." Alistair furrowed his brow.

Glancing to see the other members of their party preparing camp for night on the edge of the village, Neria took Alistair's hand and kissed it, softening the worry on his features. "I need you here as a Grey Warden. There may be more darkspawn. "

"Fine, right," he sighed, hesitating before kissing her brow. "It's been a long day. Promise you'll try and get some rest?"

"I'll try," Neria offered a tight-lipped smile.

In the basement of the tower, Neria lit the candles and assembled all the books in Wynne's company. The elder mage napped in one of the aged chairs as the elf read and copied notes into her tomes. Absorbed in the work, she hadn't noticed their assassin's presence until he spoke more earnestly to Wynne.

"Please, I only ask for a pillow to rest my head."

Slumped in the chair, Wynne sighed in exasperation, "If you do not behave, young man, you will have no one to talk to. For I will ignore you."

"Certainly I could rely on you to properly discipline me, madam?"

Wynne groaned a put a hand over her eyes, resting her head back to try and ignore the Antivan. She was more tired than she let on and feared she might sleep while Neria worked. Perhaps it was best she did.

"Neria – Neria." Wynne batted Zevran's hand away as she got up, and he grinned as the elder mage walked to the raised desk where Neria worked. "Child, I must go rest."

"Of course, rest all you need. Just make sure someone is on watch." Neria didn't lift her head as she spoke, the raven's quill twitching with her hasty writing.

"I would prefer you weren't down here alone."

"I shall see no harm comes to her," Zevran offered.

Before she could protest, Neria said, "Sleep well, Wynne."

Many of the books on the shelf had succumbed to the moist rots prevalent in Ferelden, for the stone basement had a musty air. Two rows, one of which Neria had emptied, seemed impervious to the elements.

Zevran reached for a gilded scroll, only to be shocked and unable to touch it. The curse that followed as he jerked his hand away brought soft laughter from the mage behind him, and when he turned she had paused in her writing.

"They are protected. A pity the wards on the other shelves expired."

"Charming," Zevran murmured, inspecting his hand. It throbbed with an ache that seeped up into his arm, but there was no outward damage. "So who was this mage?"

"He fought alongside King Maric," Neria murmured, looking down the spine of a book before tossing it aside and smoothing open another with a knowing word and touch. "During the occupation."

"Hmm. Rather fanciful that we came this way, then."

"Indeed," Neria's eyes were back on her writing, a methodical dip and scratch of her quill as it jaunted from pot to page. They were quiet some time before she looked up to see him leaning and watching her. A flush on her cheeks she asked, "What is it?"

"You certainly know how to handle a quill."

A blot of ink dropped on the page, and Neria snagged her knife, quickly scraping it away as she said, "Right... Shouldn't you be helping in the village?"

"Are I not protecting you from what lurks below?"

Neria twirled her quill absently, circles under her eyes as she glanced to where the wizard's champers extended deeper into the earth.

Zevran spun away, meandering to one of the nearby cages to inspect the ghastly device. "I have heard that you are quite close with your fellow Warden."

Enflamed, Neria looked back to her writing, quickly dabbing the inkwell before writing again. The blush didn't abate as she finally said, "We... we've been through a lot... and been travelling for months, of course we're close."

"The things I hear suggest something more," Zevran replied, casual as ever.

"Well what do you hear, Zevran? Is someone saying something?" Neria bridged her fingers over her brow, concealing her face as she dropped her quill in the spine of the book.

Chuckling as he sunk into the chair previously occupied by Wynne, Zevran said, "No one speaks, it is just what I hear at night."

Muted and mortified, Neria closed her eyes and covered her face as she softly uttered, "Maker's balls."

"You are far too easy to tease, my dear." Zevran dangled his legs over the arm of the chair, watching the mage with a grin. "I apologize. I am making you uncomfortable again, aren't I?"

"Yes," she whispered, hand through her hair before whimpering, "Ohh but I ... ohh Maker, everyone in camp."

"No just my elven ears, sweet Warden," the Antivan chuckled and rounded back to her.

"I'm so sorry, th-this is terrible."

Zevran knelt down and pried her hands from her face, her skin glowing red. "Trust me, it is quite beautiful. One of the better things I could hear at the night. You are enjoying yourself, yes?"

Neria closed her eyes, shaking her head as she tried not to grin, "Wh-what am I supposed to say to that!"

"Yes?" he laughed.

The mage tugged her hands back, making a frustrated sound as she blushed more. Searching for her quill she cleared her throat and tried to say, "I need to work."

Zevran snagged the dark feather and handed it to her as he stood, holding onto it a moment as her fingers passed over the barbs, "It seems quite serious between you both."

Eyes up flecking up for a moment before she took the quill, Neria quietly said, "Y-yes. I... I think it is."

"Perhaps you are right, I should return to help in the village." Zevran said with a chuckle, strolling toward the steps. Hesitating, he added, "He is a good man. The right one."

Neria watched the stairwell he disappeared into, her fatigue growing as she turned back to her tomes, filling the pages with needed notes on spells, historical oddities and links she saw between Wilheim's demonology research and her own experiences in the fade. She wrote deep through the night, blocking out the rest of the world, only pausing to shake the stiff ache from her hand.

"He's got a thing for you, you know."

Lifting her eyes from the page, Neria furrowed her brow and glanced through the room. She knew that voice. But he was in a dungeon in Redcliffe. She put her quill down and stood, when the door leading upstairs was battered in.

The vice on her heart cinched, and Neria gasped in, feeling the sudden rush of their presence, and the chant of an emissary filled her ears.

"Jowan!" she cried out, though in that moment her limbs became wound in another entrapment, a crushing tension that squeezed her ribs too. Neria tried to open her eyes, ears flooded with the clash of metal on stone, the darkspawn laughter, shouts and gargled words disorienting her.

Cold flesh had her limbs, even as another pulse rent through the cage and spasmed her muscles, the pain eating away at her mind, immolating and immobilizing. She didn't need her eyes, she could feel them all around her, living without life and blackened by sin.

Their hands were careful, pawing and wanting, and it was too dark to see as they dragged her – those screams, they were hers. Why did they sound so foreign? Ragged, her throat was going raw from it, and deeper they moved into darkness that even elven eyes could notb pierce.

She could taste it, the taint that connected her blood to theirs – was it on her tongue or in the air? Cold and slippery on her tongue, the pulse distorted the wanting song whose melody alluded her. This wasn't her hand, this wasn't her hair that was falling out, she wasn't darkened and tainted.

But there were other hands too, in places none would ever wish.

Light filtered through the canvas, and Alistair rolled, an arm over his face. He'd stayed up half the night ensuring all the corpses were burnt. When he had retired to his tent – their tent now, he thought with a grin - Neria had still been in the basement when he'd collapsed onto his bedroll.

Opening his eyes in the low morning light, he looked beside him and saw he was alone. Furrowing his brow, Alistair tossed off the woollen blanket and hastily pulled on his clothes. Emerging into the pre-dawn light, the dew on the ground clung to his boots as he identified the tents.

Sten was standing watch beside Shale, his arms crossed, and the two towering individuals spoke in quiet tones.

Rifling a hand through his hair, Alistair cleared his throat and walked up, "Um, hello. I don't suppose you two have seen Neria?"

"Is she not with you?" Sten almost sounded amused.

"No," Alistair crossed his arms in the chilly air.

"It was last seen when it requested I help with the ech, corpses. It was also present," Shale intimated.

Alistair nodded and turned towards the village, head clearing as he woke more.

"Not very pleasant," Shale said.

"Indeed." Sten agreed.

Climbing the hill into the village, Alistair saw the fires they'd set had smouldered into ash, the bodies burnt and gone. He wrinkled his nose. Approaching the mage's house, he saw the side doorway to the basement study was wide open.

Taking the stone stairs two at a time, he went into the basement, and books were scattered everywhere. One of the shelves was empty. It was silent.

"Neria?" Alistair said, holding by the stairs before moving through the room, his pulse climbing in his throat. "Neria! Oh, Maker." An apothecary's station and wide desk were raised from the rest of the room, and he finally saw her.

Touching her shoulder, Alistair saw she was shuddering, face down into an open book, and more firmly he said, "Neria."

Neria lifted her head groggily, a calligraphic carbon imprint on her cheek and a smeared page left beneath her.

"Maker, don't do that!"

"Sleep?" she asked, rubbing over her eyes teary as he embraced her.

"Not alone in creepy magical towers."

"Sorry," she said, voice caked with sleep, "They feel like home."

Alistair grumbled into her hair.