We strapped Alistair back into his armor and looked for Wynne, finding her giving new instructions to the Tranquil. When she finished we retraced our steps up to the arcane horror's lab, and I dismantled his trap before we began our next floor's search.
The slow, thorough search had become routine, the hack-and-slash blurring together by the end of the sixth floor, and I found I had to fight to pay attention after a while. Wynne was searching a classroom that had belonged to some important Mage High Poo-bah and I'd wandered off to look at some student graffiti on a desk when an unexpected tap on my shoulder almost sent me through the roof.
"What?" I snapped.
"Wynne's done, we can go now," Alistair said, flushing. "Sorry, but I did call you twice."
"You did? Oh." I rubbed at my eyes. They felt hot and tired. "Sorry."
"Are you all right? You look spacey." He waited while I took a long drag from my water flask.
"I'm okay. Just hungry, I think." I gave him a wan smile, which he didn't return.
"I can't do much about that," he said. "Except kill demons so we can get this all over with."
"I'll take that. Get killing, soldier."
Wynne stopped us for a conference, though, to tell us what she'd found. "You know not everyone who lives here believes in the Circle's mission," she began, fingering the embroidered hem of her sleeve in some agitation.
"You mean not everyone likes living under the Chantry's thumb in practical imprisonment," I said, some of Morrigan's feelings having left an impression on me, and she stiffened angrily.
"Some see it that way, yes. I do not. I believe the Circle and, yes, the Templars serve an important function – surely what you've seen here has proven that magic is dangerous and young mages require training and supervision."
I thought about Connor and nodded. "I see your point. What of it?"
Her face twisted in anguish. "I – I think all this was done deliberately. I think someone tried to overthrow the Circle."
Alistair gasped and I put a hand to my mouth. "Who?"
"I don't know yet," she said, wringing her hands. "But I found evidence of some sort of collusion between factions in the Tower. There's always been dissidence but – but we had no idea it was of this magnitude."
Alistair and I exchanged a long look. "Whoever did it might still be here," he said, voicing my own fears.
"He'd be a powerful mage," I said.
"A maleficar of the lowest order." He set his jaw and took a deep breath. "But not for long."
"That's the spirit." I slapped his back. "Let's kill us a maleficar."
The seventh floor belonged to the Templars, and I looked forward to seeing it, curious about how they lived. But when we entered it, through the stairway door that opened into the common room, all I could see was the slaughter.
"Oh, that's just unnecessary," Alistair groaned. His sword drooped until its tip hit the floor as he looked over the mounds of defiled corpses, all naked but for their hated Templar helmets and grotesquely mutilated.
I swallowed hard against the tide of nausea and suppressed rage. "Enough, let's go," I said, and strode forward briskly, knowing Alistair would leave off his horrified staring and chase after me.
But all we found on that floor was row upon row of training courts and barracks, devoid of any form of life and covered in enthusiastic graffiti written in blood and glowing lyrium.
"It looks like some angry kids got in here," I said after reading some particularly lurid descriptions of degrading sex acts, with illustrations.
"Is someone there?"
At the sound of that hoarse voice, trembling with exhaustion, we all four broke into a run and burst into the senior Templar common room (it had nicer couches) where we found a purplish-blue ring of shimmering force, very similar to the one Wynne had sealed off the apprentice quarters with but more transparent. Inside, a single Templar sat huddled on the floor, hugging his knees to keep from touching the walls of his prison.
"Cullen!" Wynne cried, running towards him, but stopped with a wince when she reached the edge of his cage, her hands outstretched to feel out the limits of the spell.
"Wynne?" He came slowly to his feet, clumsy in his weariness but obviously terrified of bumping into the force field – it must hurt terribly, I thought. "How are you still alive? I saw you die!"
"I am not so easy to kill," she said lightly, circling the cage, testing it.
"No, I saw you die," he repeated. "I saw you die, over and over. I saw you torn to pieces."
I exchanged a worried look with Alistair. Something was wrong here.
Wynne frowned. "Torn to pieces? Certainly not."
"I saw them all die," he moaned, rocking back and forth and hugging himself. "Over and over. Uldred killed them, and the others laughed."
Wynne froze. "Uldred?"
Cullen's glazed eyes turned suddenly lucid. "Uldred did all of this! Uldred tore open the veil! He had dozens of people with him – he told them the demons had promised him power. Had promised them freedom. When he called them, they bowed down to him. They accepted the demons and lost their souls. The ones who refused, he took into the Harrowing Chambers. I can hear the screams even here. When he calls, no one can resist. When he calls... Oh Maker."
He clutched at his head and resumed his terrified rocking. "But I won't. I won't give in. He got all the others – gave them waking nightmares, tortured them until they gave in. But I won't. I won't." He turned his back on us and covered his ears, reciting the Chant of Light in urgent monotone.
Wynne left him and took us into the next room. "He's badly dehydrated and sleep-deprived," she said solemnly. "I believe I can break his prison, for it is I who taught Uldred the spell – I was a fool, it seems, but I can make some small recompense for my failure now."
"He fooled everyone, Wynne, nobody had any clue," I said quickly, not so much because I believed it but because I wanted to comfort her. I reached out to squeeze her hand, but she turned away and wiped at her eyes, her movements brisk and clipped as she crossed back to Cullen and began a familiar incantation.
When she concluded her spell with that same chopping motion, the prison wavered and vanished, but Cullen still stood wrapped in his own private hell, chanting rapidly under his breath and rocking in time to his words.
"Come on, dear, let's get you to bed," Wynne said gently, touching his arm, and he flinched violently.
"Desire demon! Do not taunt me with visions of freedom! I don't believe you," he spat, his feet rooted to the floor. "Wynne is dead. Everyone is dead."
"Cullen," I said then, coming over. "Look, I'm a dwarf. I can't be a demon or a maleficar or part of the Fade. See?" I stood next to Wynne so he could see the difference in our stature, and he blinked several times, trying to focus.
"Odd," he said. "That's new."
"I have water, real water you can drink. I bet no desire demon's given you real water." I uncorked my water flask and held it out, pouring a few drops on his hand for him to feel. Hesitantly, he took the flask and sipped at the water. When nothing bad happened, he reached out and poked my forehead as if to make sure I was real.
"Odd," he said again.
"Let's go, dear," Wynne cajoled, taking his arm; he tensed, then very carefully took a single, experimental step. Nothing happened, and he suddenly sagged in relief, leaning heavily on Wynne and almost knocking her over.
Together we led him downstairs to the thorough, if distant, care of the Tranquil; he greeted them with pitiful gratitude, and I saw something of what Wynne had meant when she said the Tranquil were a treasure – they were the only people here that Cullen knew he could trust completely, and in their hands he finally let himself sleep.
"Well," Wynne said as we climbed the stairs again. "That was certainly edifying."
"We know our foe now," I said. "And we know he's persuasive, and sadistic, and in league with demons."
"He must use mind control magic," Wynne said thoughtfully. "It's forbidden, of course, but that would explain quite a bit."
"Wynne, a message." A Tranquil jogged up the stairs after us, panting. "Cullen told me to say this to you: 'Another mage went through some time ago, another survivor. He had found the Litany of Adralla and it had protected him from Uldred. You should look for it.' That is what Cullen said."
"Thank you," Wynne said. "You may go back now." The man turned and trotted away.
"What's that?" I asked.
"A holy relic believed lost," she replied. "Legend stated it could be found in a secret compartment somewhere in the Tower, where she herself had hidden it before she was killed. It contains the sum of her research on defense against blood magic and mind control."
"Well then, sounds like just the thing," I said, starting back up the stairs. "Let's hope he's alive, or at least not all burned up."
We did our usual door-opening routine and found an elegantly-decorated floor devoted to the studies of the senior mages. Wynne led us quickly to Irving's study but slumped in defeat when it was empty.
"At least we haven't found his body yet," I told her, though it was scant comfort. "He might still be around, up there in the Harrowing Chambers."
"With Uldred?" she asked sharply, and I didn't have anything to say to that.
Most of these doors were locked, and I didn't bother to open them, not when nobody responded to my knock. We were in a hurry now, desperate to find that man and his Litany, and perhaps that was a mistake because we all went into the luxurious teacher's lounge in a group instead of scouting first and maybe if I'd snuck in alone I could have warned everyone.
Instead, when the heap of rags that lay in a comfortable armchair stirred and sat up, we all just stood around looking surprised, and its mind blast took out both humans and the dog in a single instant. I watched them fall and waited for them to get up, but after a few seconds, I looked down at Rocky and saw his chest rise and fall peacefully as he slept.
"What the hell?" I yelled, kicking Alistair's armored shoulder. "Get up!" But he just snored, and the stinking pile of rags sighed and heaved itself to its feet.
"Aren't you tired?" Its voice sucked all the air out of the room and sounded like dusty, ancient death. "Let someone else do the work for a while. You deserve a rest."
He did have a point. I was tired, very tired. Why did it have to be me who saved everyone? I'm just a lost duster. And it was totally unfair that they got to sleep and I didn't. I swayed on my feet, struggling to focus, fighting it, but in the end, I was asleep before I even hit the ground.
"The Blight is over. Isn't it wonderful?" Duncan smiled kindly at me, reaching out to stroke my hair like a puppy. "Now we can rest."
"Huh?" I frowned up at him. "It's over?"
"Yes," he laughed. "I took care of it for you. I'm sorry you were so worried about me. I tried to get a message to you."
"But I saw you die," I said. This was too weird.
He laughed again. "It was all part of the plan. And everything went perfectly. We won, and you can come home with me and Alistair and all the other Wardens. Come, let's go. It's time to rest. You've worked so very hard. I'm very proud of you."
"Where is Alistair?" I asked, following him across the blank white ground towards nothing in particular.
"Oh, he's around. Don't worry about him, I'll take care of him."
"Where are we?" The blank whiteness stretched as far as my subterranean eyes could focus without a single tree or rock.
He frowned. "Do you not see the castle?"
"What castle?"
The whiteness jolted for an instant, a nauseating disjunction, and Duncan jolted with it. I heard a frustrated hiss.
"It's right here. Stone walls, a comfortable bed and a well-laid table," he said, his eyes hard.
I stared at him and something wasn't quite right. His face and body shifted and blurred for an instant, briefly becoming that of a bronze-haired young man, then a buxom dwarf woman, then a black-haired and stocky dwarf as the demon dug through my mind looking for something that would keep me quiet.
"Nice try," I said. "I can see what you're doing. Shoddy workmanship there, you know."
The demon, briefly visible as a hunched and flaccid humanoid, hissed again and disappeared, leaving me alone in the blank whiteness.
"Now what?" I wondered aloud. I could try to wake up, I suppose, but what had he said about Alistair? Oh, he's around. Were we in the Fade somehow? Was that possible for a dwarf?
"Suppose it is," I said, still talking to myself and starting walking again, aimlessly. "Suppose that I can be brought here, by something sufficiently powerful, even though I can't go myself. The Fade is a real place, right? Does it have geography? Is it real, or is it the product of our collective minds? Where am I going, anyway?"
I stopped walking. "If it has physical space, then Alistair should be, like, right here. Unless... Unless the space doesn't correspond to real space. If it doesn't, he could be anywhere. But we know it has dreams – illusions – like my dreams. So people's minds influence it. So do demons. This demon created something just for me. So it must not be physically real. It must not have space, not permanent space anyway."
I considered this. Did I even have a body here, really? What am I standing on? Are those my legs? At that thought, for a horrible instant, I couldn't move at all. Okay, that was not good, forget that, what if I forgot how to breathe, would I die in real life?
I closed my 'eyes' and tried to feel the temperature of the air, focusing on my newest sense. For a fleeting moment I felt cold stone at my back and strong warmth to my left – I lay almost touching him, back in the teacher's lounge, but that wouldn't do me any good and I clenched my teeth, trying to hold onto the dream. The sensation faded slowly and was replaced by a more generalized feeling of warmth and gradually I heard children's voices, laughing and playing.
"Now, boys, don't hurt your uncle, he's not a tree." I opened my eyes quickly and saw a woman bent over a table, rolling pie crust.
"They're won't hurt me, we're having fun!" I looked around quickly and saw Alistair nearly buried under three little boys of various ages, all climbing on him like a jungle gym and laughing with joy.
He saw me, too, and beamed at me. "Latitia! I was just thinking about you – kids, look, it's Latitia. Can you stay for dinner? Goldanna's making mince pie, her mince pies are so good. These are her boys – there's more around here somewhere, we're all having so much fun."
I frowned at him and the boys surrounding him wavered and vanished. He didn't seem to notice, striding over and enveloping me in a bear hug. "It's so good to see you."
"We can't stay here, what about the Blight?" I said, trying to pull away.
"I don't want to, I want to stay here," he said, not letting me go. "Oh! You haven't met Goldanna yet! Goldanna, this is Latitia."
The pie woman turned and dropped a curtsy, and I gasped in horror. She had no face, only a wispy, flesh-colored blankness. Of course – Alistair had never met her, he didn't know what she looked like.
"That's not Goldanna," I whispered urgently to him, hanging on his arm. "Look at her face!"
"What's wrong with her face?" He squinted at her and shook his head. "I don't see anything."
"Exactly! There's nothing there!"
He furrowed his brow in obvious distress. "What's wrong? Why are you being so mean?"
"This isn't real, Alistair, it's a dream," I told him, trying to ignore the faceless monstrosity that had drawn closer, hissing softly. "It's a demon. It showed me Duncan and you know he's dead. Think – try to remember how you got here."
He frowned, trying to obey, and shook his head again. "I don't remember. Ohh... oh, no. I – no, I could have sworn we – ohhhh." He rubbed at his eyes, confused.
"Alistair, honey, it's time for dinner," the demon said sweetly.
"Go fuck yourself," I snapped, losing it when she reached out and touched my arm, her fingers deadly cold.
"He's mine," it growled, and I saw its hunched shape again under its glamour. "He will stay and feed me. You may go, I don't want you. You're too much trouble."
"Did you hear that?" I asked him, but he was swaying dazedly, looking back and forth from me to the illusory sister.
"We were in the Tower," he said slowly.
"We're still there," I said quickly, hoping to push his memory. "We found a demon and it blasted you, on the eighth floor. Remember?"
"Enough!" it hissed, striking me backhanded across the face. Its floppy arms couldn't really hurt me, but it still knocked me off-balance and I stumbled backwards. Alistair caught my shoulder and it seemed that was the last straw for him – he glared at the demon and the illusion vanished entirely, revealing its torpid form long enough for me to see its droopy, bloodhound face and sagging belly.
"Fine! I can't be bothered!" It threw up its hands and waddled a few steps before disappearing.
"That was really weird," Alistair said, staring after it, then looked to me in shock when his hand passed right through my shoulder. "Hey, where are you going? What's happening?" He tried again to grab my arm but his hand was as insubstantial as air, and then he was gone.
"OK," I said, alone again. "Let's hope he's awake and not dead. Now what? Do I go and find Wynne, or what?"
I began walking again, for lack of anything better to do, and after what could have been a year or maybe just a minute, the empty white Fade shimmered and became a twisted dreamscape, full of fantastical rocky spires and gravity-defying geography. I had time to look around and wonder whose mind had made this before a voice behind me said, "Ah, there you are. You've been hard to find."
I spun around and saw a mage, probably about forty years old, but the expression of hopeless depression on his face made him look twice that. "Who are you?"
"Niall. Like it matters." The mage drifted into a chair that formed itself underneath him as he sat. "I wouldn't have bothered to come, but I did feel some curiosity about a dwarf in the Fade."
"Right, you can move about in the Fade, can't you? As a mage, I mean." I walked closer and took in his tired, sunken eyes and the way his robes hung on him, several sizes too big; how long had he been trapped here?
He shrugged. "I suppose. Really, it's not worth the effort. I can't contact anyone except the sloth demon's other victims, and they are all busy with their own little dreams. I tried to escape, for a while, but it's all so hopeless, and I have grown so very tired."
"The demon released one of my friends because I annoyed him so much," I told him. "Maybe he will release you."
"I'd die if I woke up." He shrugged again, a gesture of eloquent despair. "Too bad. I was doing something important, I think."
Suddenly alert, I asked, "Did you find the Litany of Adralla?"
"Yeah, I think that's it. There was some evil mage. It all seemed terribly important at the time."
"It is important! I was looking for you – we have to kill Uldred before he tears the Veil any worse. Do you still have the Litany?"
"It's probably still on my body. The sloth demon wouldn't have bothered to search me. He just wants to feed on our minds' life energy – to keep us quiet and sap our will for as long as he can. That's what the dreams are for." Niall shifted in his seat, a brief flicker of anger passing across his face, and the landscape darkened and became stormy for a moment before he lapsed back into his funk.
"I have two more friends in here. Well, one's a dog. Can you help me find them? Please, Niall, I'm begging you. I don't know how to move around in here by myself." I tried to grasp his hand but somehow couldn't close the gap between us.
"I don't know. I'm very tired." The darkness deepened and I felt a stab of fear – what if he died before I found Wynne and Rocky?
"Please try," I begged. "You still have a chance to do something important and valuable. It's not all hopeless yet. I swear, I will kill Uldred for you, you won't die for nothing."
He straightened a bit in his chair and tightened his hands into loose fists. "I will do my best."
And with a sickening lurch, the scene disappeared and I felt a sensation of terrifying speed and power before slamming to a halt in a bare stone room, doorless and windowless, like a prison cell.
Wynne knelt on the floor, cradling the limp body of a young apprentice, murmuring something that sounded like a list of names over and over as she rocked him like her own baby. More corpses of various ages lay scattered across the hard floor, and I swallowed hard. Okay, obviously these were not strictly wish-fulfillment dreams, but designed instead, as Niall had implied, to keep its victims from trying to escape. Well, Wynne was in no fit state to escape now, that's for sure.
"Wynne," I said softly. "Wynne. It's me."
"Leave me alone," she sobbed.
"Wynne," I said more sharply now. "Look at me."
"No. Let me mourn in peace." She buried her face in the boy's hair and wept pitifully.
I grabbed for her arm but found again that I couldn't touch anyone here except Alistair, the Stone only knows why, must be a Warden thing. "Listen to me! The man who killed them will kill more children if we don't stop him! Remember the little ones you left at the foot of the Tower! They're depending on you – don't you fail them now!"
She lifted her head, eyes blazing with anger. Good. "How dare you speak to me that way!"
"Will you sit here in self-pity while they die?" I demanded. "This is a dream, a trap! You're a mage, you know this is the Fade! Look!" And I deliberately waved my hand through her chest.
She gasped in horror, then looked about in panic. "What – Where – Niall?"
She started to stand up, but the body in her lap clung to her skirts and wailed, "Don't leave us, Wynne! We don't want to be alone."
"Give it up," I snarled at the demon, reaching through its illusion with ease this time and yanking its flabby arm, dragging it away from her. As soon as I touched it, Wynne scrambled to her feet, her hands clasped over her mouth. The stone room turned translucent, then shimmered into the same dreamscape I'd found Niall in originally.
"My word," Wynne said, smoothing her robes as she faded and became transparent. "Wasn't that interesting."
"Indeed," I agreed, raising an eyebrow. "You should write a paper on it when you wake up. Go on, now, Alistair's waiting."
"Maker be with you," her disembodied voice blessed me before she was gone.
Niall had collapsed to the floor, his head in his hands. I wished I could do something but I didn't dare wait even a moment, I had no idea how time was passing in real life and what if the demon killed him to stop me causing trouble? I was about to ask when I smelled fire and looked around quickly, fearing a demon or something.
A little ways away, though, a campfire burned merrily and a familiar figure sat beside it on a thick fur rug, stroking Rocky's belly as he basked in the warmth. That's unsurprising, I thought, striding towards him. Does my hair really stick up like that in the back? I need a haircut for real.
Rocky lifted his head and barked a warning, but then his face filled with comical confusion and he came to his feet, growling uncertainly, looking from me to his illusory mistress and back again.
"It's me, good boy," I cooed. "Do you smell me?"
He sniffed the air, but the other me grasped his collar and said, "Rocky, she's lying! She wants to kill me! Protect me!"
He whined and cringed, trying to back away from us both, and I closed on the demon at a run and tried to pry its hand from his collar. It hissed and its illusion flickered, revealing its alien nature to my dog. Rocky's eyes widened and he bared his teeth in fury that a demon would dare threaten his mistress.
"No, don't!" The demon cried out, scrambling backwards, its illusion flickering rapidly in its terror. Unappeased, Rocky snarled and pounced, tearing at the fleshy jowls around the demon's throat and ignoring the sharp claws that sank into his shoulders and belly until, at last, it lay still.
With a lurch, cold reality came rushing back and I found myself lying on my back and looking up at Wynne and Alistair's drawn and worried faces. I sat up and looked around, and Rocky scrambled over to lick my ear.
"Good morning," Alistair said, smiling and sitting back on his heels.
"Where's Niall?" I asked, looking around, but then I saw him. He lay where he had fallen days before, his body desiccated and sucked dry of all life, and I sighed, sorry I hadn't been able to save him.
Much love for you all, again especially mille libri as her assistance in tightening the Circle story arc is greatly appreciated. Also Eva Galana, Nithu, Fluid Consciousness, and you, mysterious reader. You hold a piece of my heart in your hands.