Chapter Twenty One

Pieces

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Me and my friends understand the future

I see the strings that control the system

I can do anything with no resistance

~ Flobots

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Elissa was avoiding him.

While he was grateful that she wasn't being nearly as obvious about it as she could have been, he was still struck by the irony that he hadn't really understood just how comfortable their relationship had become until it was suddenly uncomfortable, unspoken words and new boundaries hanging between them like too much weight. At Wynne's excited discovery of the Litany of Adralla, a powerful incantation that defended against the mind-controlling capabilities of blood mages, Elissa had merely plucked the ancient scroll off of the recognizable corpse beside the body of the sloth demon and continued on her way as if nothing had happened.

But she still wouldn't look at him.

He felt an embarrassed twist in his stomach whenever he thought of the things she had seen and heard in the Fade, the worst possible audience to a stubbornly buried fantasy he hadn't even permitted himself to indulge in with any kind of frequency. And yet, he couldn't talk to her about it, wasn't even sure he'd know what to say even if they weren't surrounded by death and danger and the ruins of the Circle Tower.

It was even less fun in a trip that had already turned out to be a great, steaming pile of not fun.

Alistair could feel exhaustion seeping into his joints and muscles as they trudged up the final flight of stairs to the topmost floor of the Tower—he made a mental note never to let a mage kick him in the shins, as they all must have had legs like tree trunks—and tried very hard to convince himself that they weren't all dangerously exhausted and walking into trouble. They still hadn't slept decently since the battle to save Redcliffe, a battle that seemed like years ago, rather than a handful of days. Just ahead of him, Elissa was dragging her feet, looking grey and worn as she glared at the steps as if to say this was as much their fault as it was anyone's. The lower half of her braids were matted with some of the inexplicable slime that coated the walls and ceilings of the upper floors—a fleshy, foul-smelling substance that none of them had wanted to examine too closely.

He was aware that while the rest of them had remained blissfully ignorant during their time in the Fade, Elissa had spent that time seeking them out, fighting through the demon's prison and whatever monsters it had produced until she had reached the inner layers of the dream. Cautiously, hoping she was too distracted to feel the intrusion, he reached out with his senses, using the Taint in his blood to try to get a feel for her. It was a skill he hadn't exactly mastered, trying to feel out a fellow Warden's emotion rather than blocking them out for the sake of both privacy and sanity, but Elissa wouldn't tell him even if she was in trouble. She was tired, far more tired than he was, but her exhaustion soaked deeper than the scrapes and bruises and lack of sleep. That demon had taken something from her, stolen a bit of the life that had just recently begun to return to her eyes. He wasn't so dense that he hadn't figured out Elissa's vision probably had something to do with her family, but the insight didn't tell him what to do.

He saw the firm set to her jaw, the carefully blank expression, and recognized the girl he had met at Ostagar.

Part of Alistair hated that self-control, the expertly wielded shield that kept them all at a distance, including him. He had managed to find a few cracks here and there, bare glimpses that allowed him to see a girl whose eyes could sparkle with laughter and whose droll sense of humor matched his own wit, but she remained more enigma than woman in his mind. Curiosity—the kind that slaughtered cats in droves—kept her at the edge of his thoughts far more than she should have been, a puzzle to be solved, and that amount of consideration only led to more thoughts, which produced idle fantasies that turned into dreams that she never should have seen, dammit.

It was possible he was arguing himself in circles, here.

He was so busy cursing the circumstances that had put him in this awkward situation that he didn't realize they had finally reached the top of the stairs until the soft pink light washed over the faces of his companions, glinting off of the blade at Elissa's side as she peered around the small space. The room contained only a spiral stairway—more stairs? Really?—and a glowing, circular source of energy that hummed with a magic of a kind he had never felt before. In the center of the circle, he could make out a hazy figure that appeared to be on his knees.

Elissa started forward without hesitation, wearing the familiar expression of concern that most commonly managed to slip through her indifference, but he stopped her, distrustful after so many tricks and traps that his head was still spinning with the confusion of it all. "Wait a minute, you don't even know what that is."

She looked at him like he had lost his mind. He had to admit it was a possibility. "It's a templar."

"It looks like a templar."

"Alistair, he may be hurt," she said in that tone that somehow settled all of their arguments for them, mainly because she was going to act, rather than any agreement reached. He was quickly learning that the most he could do in those situations was follow along and do his best to make sure she didn't get herself killed in the process.

"Fine," he said, a bit more harshly than he had meant to, but he was tired and her stubbornness did get a little annoying sometimes. "But I'm not falling asleep again."

Determined though she may have been, Elissa wasn't without common sense, and as she approached the magical prison, her steps were cautious, her hand resting on the hilt of her dagger. The templar in the cage was young, barely more than a boy, really. As Alistair followed closely behind his companion, he could hear the broken, quivering voice coming from within the chamber, reciting the familiar words of the Chant of Light.

Elissa knelt down in front of him, sympathy written all over her face. "Who are you?"

The templar's reaction was swift and violent. In a flash, he was on his feet, backing away with his sword drawn, his eyes wide and hysterical. "This trick again? I know what you are. It won't work. I will… stay strong."

"There's no trick," Elissa said, her voice perfectly calm, though Alistair noted the hand resting on her dagger twitch as she got to her feet, doing her best not to seem threatening. "We can help."

"Cullen?" Wynne sounded unsure as she emerged from the shadows, looking horrified. "Cullen, what have they done to you? Where are the others?"

"Wynne?" For a moment, the point of the sword lowered, but almost instantly, it flew back up, visibly trembling in the gleaming light. "No, no more visions! You're dead—they're all dead! If anything in you is human, kill me now and stop this game. You broke the others, but I will stay strong… for their sake…" Despite the words, he fell to his knees, his gaze cast upwards and his lips moving silently. Alistair didn't have to hear the words to recognize them, a desperate prayer to a god who had long since stopped listening.

Elissa tried again. "Please, they're not all dead. We can still save them."

"Silence! I'll not listen to anything you say. Now be gone!"

She turned to Wynne, silently pleading for her help, but the mage looked just as unnerved and had no advice to give her. "He's exhausted. This cage—I've never seen anything like it before."

"You're still here." The templar looked terrified at the sound of Wynne's voice, scrambling back and blinking rapidly. A filthy hand came up to rub his red-rimmed eyes. "But, that's always worked before! I close my eyes, but you're still here when I open them!"

"Cullen," Wynne said, purposefully firm as if she could scold him into believing her. She might have been able to, at that. At the sharpened tone, Cullen looked up at her, confused, and for a moment looking like a young boy being reprimanded. "Irving and the other mages who fought Uldred—where are they?"

"U-Uldred has them in the Harrowing chamber. The noises coming from there—oh, Maker." His shoulders began to shake, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Alistair turned away, the sight of the broken templar making him feel as if he were seeing something he shouldn't have, striking just a little too closely to an old fear buried inside of him.

Wynne turned back to Elissa, her jaw set. "We'll have to hurry."

At that, Cullen's ravaged face twisted in fury. "You can't save them! You don't know what they've become. They've been surrounded by blood mages, whose wicked fingers snake into your mind and corrupt your thoughts." He clutched his head, rocking from side to side. "Digging, digging, spades of fire…"

Elissa reached out without thinking before drawing her hand back, her eyes filled with sorrow. Alistair didn't know which one he felt sorrier for, knowing Elissa's compassion was lost against such raving. She bit her lip and tried to make the templar hear her. "Please, calm down. You're going to hurt yourself."

"Hurt?" He was sobbing now, seemingly unaware of any of them. "She hurt. She was all I ever wanted. All I ever dreamed of. I heard her screams, but there was nothing I could do to save her. She laughed as she tore them apart, piece by piece. Blood and death and slime. It still had her eyes…"

Alistair could feel his blood freeze in his veins before it surged through him in icy waves. He had known, rationally, that the abominations had once been mages, but he hadn't let the knowledge in, hadn't allowed himself to see the full, eventful lives that had been shattered. He wondered about the girl the templar remembered, wondered if she had a quick smile or eyes that reminded of him the endless depths of the lake on a clear spring day…

"He's mad," Morrigan said from behind him, her words as curt and unfeeling as always. "You'll hear nothing more from him but this rambling."

"Leave him alone," Alistair said, his voice deep with warning. Morrigan only raised an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed, but Alistair saw that the witch appeared slightly less callous than usual, shifting uncomfortably in the presence of the caged templar.

At the sound of Alistair's voice, Cullen looked up, his eyes searching as he considered him. Alistair tried very hard not to squirm, realizing that he would recognize another templar's presence. Something like hope flashed in the boy's eyes. "You have to end it, now! To ensure this horror is ended, to guarantee that no abominations or blood mages live, you must kill everyone up there! It's the only way!"

He felt sick to his stomach at the words that echoed his own sentiments downstairs, falling from the lips of someone who had actually known them, who mourned one of them. For a moment, Alistair couldn't see Cullen at all, but himself, broken down to mindless ranting at the feet of strangers. He backed away, shaking his head. "We're not going to do that."

Elissa was looking at him. "We can't just leave him here."

"Elissa, you can't help him," he said with what gentleness he had left. "His hatred is too strong. He just had to watch all of his friends die."

She pressed her lips together and cast one last anxious look at the templar before she started for the stairway. "Let's go. We have to hurry if we have any chance of saving them."

Cullen's voice followed them up the stairs, resentful and accusing. "You don't know! I am thinking only of the future of the Circle, of Ferelden! I am just willing to see the painful truth, which you are content to ignore!"

No, Alistair thought as he drew his sword, following closely behind Elissa in preparation for the fight ahead. He didn't think he'd ever ignore the truth he'd just discovered, ever again.

…

Elissa could hear the agonized wails resonating through the Harrowing chamber even before they reached the top of the stairs and shoved the doors open, revealing the grisly scene taking place. The few surviving mages huddled in a corner while one of their fellows was dragged forward by abominations and thrown at the feet of a man that looked, for all appearances, to be human. They began to torture him, engulfing him in crackling, hissing magic as they taunted him, trying to force him to become another monster. Elissa drew her sword and swung it around, slamming the flat of the blade against the front of Alistair's shield with a resounding clang that made him jump.

"Little warning, please."

"Sorry."

The creatures dropped the mage, who collapsed to the stone floor, quivering and sobbing. All eyes turned their way. The human stepped forward, his arms crossed, smirking in the face of her daring. Elissa's eyes narrowed as she recognized the mage from Ostagar that she had first seen arguing with Alistair. "You're Uldred?"

He paused, sneering. "The new Grey Warden recruit. How very quaint. I'm quite impressed you're still alive. Uldred didn't think much of you then, and I certainly don't see your purpose now. "

She shrugged. "I'm not that concerned with impressing you. Or Uldred. Is there a reason you refer to him separately, I wonder?"

He smiled, and there was something sinuous and snake-like about the gesture. "Indeed. Allow me to explain: A mage is but a larval form of something greater. The Chantry vilifies us, calls us abominations, when all we have truly done is reached our full potential." He turned his glare on the cringing mages, a look of disgust curling his lip. "Look at them! The Chantry has them convinced. They deny themselves the pleasure of becoming something glorious."

"You're mad!" Wynne was trembling in her anger, her lips hard and her nostrils white. "There's nothing glorious in what you've become, Uldred!"

He laughed, his voice deepening into an overlapping chorus of guttural voices. "Uldred? He is gone. I am more than he was."

And then suddenly, Uldred wasn't Uldred. His flesh split down the center, tearing like an old sack to reveal the slimy, grey skin of the demon within him. It unfurled from the destroyed host in a vile imitation of being birthed into the earthly plane, rising higher and higher until it towered over them.

"Here we go," Alistair said before they rushed forward, ducking a magnitude of spells suddenly flying in their direction. Elissa's path was blocked by a leering abomination, but Alistair shoved his way through, intent on Uldred.

"Elissa! The Litany!" Wynne screamed over the chaos of ringing spells and clashing steel as the entire chamber suddenly erupted into a deafening roar of light and sound. Elissa reached for the scroll at her belt, but the abomination swiped at her with its sword-like claws, and it was all she could to do defend herself against it. Her blades flashed in the rain of light falling all around her, whirling as she took the abomination apart as quickly as she could, its spells sizzling against her skin and burning her eyes.

When it was felled, another took its place, and she turned, throwing the Litany towards Wynne. "Read it! There are too many!"

The delay had cost them. The mages crowded the chamber, but it was impossible to tell friend from foe, to discern which Uldred had managed to lure under his control while she fought the abomination. She could see no sign of her companions in the chaos, except the pride demon swiping and casting at something beneath her line of sight that she could only assume was Alistair.

She lost all track of time, cutting and stabbing her way through the confusion, until, without knowing how, she faced Uldred himself. Alistair was in hard melee with the enormous demon, bleeding freely from a gash on his forehead. Elissa ran and slid across the smooth stone behind the monstrous abomination, bringing the edge of her sword across the back of the knee, feeling as the sharp blades cut cleanly through skin and tendon. Uldred reared back, howling, his massive fist crashing down towards Alistair. He managed to get his shield in front of him, but the impact revealed the crack the revenant had left. The shield exploded.

Elissa ducked, sprinting between the demon's hobbled legs, her mind a blur of unconscious thought as she skidded to a halt and turned, stabbing her sword upward beneath the ribcage, the deadly edge seeking the heart. Uldred twisted at the last moment, tearing the sword from her hands as he stomped and raged in agony. Razor claws raked across her stomach, tearing through her armor and finding flesh with a gush of blood.

Elissa staggered back, the ground sliding out from beneath her. She was aware only of slamming into the cold stone of the floor, a salty, metallic taste filling her mouth before she managed to roll to her side, coughing up her own blood. Through dimming eyes, she saw Alistair grab her sword, still embedded in the monster's chest, and drive it home.

Uldred fell with a mundane thud, leaving only ringing silence in the cavernous chamber.

Alistair slid to his knees beside her, shouting for Wynne over his shoulder, his hands working feverishly at her sword belt to shove her chainmail and the shirt she wore beneath it out of the way. Elissa could see his hands, stained red and dripping, and she didn't dare look down. Her vision began to blur, growing dark and cloudy around the edges.

"Elissa, stay awake." One hand pressed against the wound on her belly while the other reached up to smooth back her hair, bringing her eyes back to him. "Please, don't die on me."

She couldn't speak, was sinking into unconsciousness when she felt the warmth of healing magic filling her, tingling along the rending pain like a thousand pinpricks of light. Alistair came back into focus, Wynne kneeling at his side, still whispering words of magic that continued to soothe the flaring pain in her middle. Alistair sat back, dragging the back of his hand across his forehead, his eyes closed as he drew in a deep breath.

Elissa's tongue felt thick and slow, making her speech slurred. "Irving?"

"He's alive," Wynne said, her voice unusually gentle. "Don't speak just now. You'll be right in a moment."

Alistair opened his eyes and leaned over her, the hand in her hair gentle now. "Don't ever do that to me again."

She gave him a feeble smile. "I'll try."

…

Elissa was still weak as they made their way down to the barred doors. Alistair was supporting Irving, but kept casting nervous glances back at her, wary of leaving her in Morrigan's care. The witch had offered Elissa her support, draping one of her arms around her shoulders without a word said and a look that dared anyone to say anything about it.

Greagoir didn't waste any time—she had to give him credit for that. The moment he saw Irving, the doors were flung open, a whirlwind of activity surrounding the surviving mages. Those well enough healed helped those too weak to stand. The templars supplied part of their own stock of lyrium to bolster the healers' mana and tended to the less serious wounds with ointment and bandages. Elissa saw a pair of the knights supporting Cullen, unconscious in his brothers' arms.

In all the commotion, Elissa lost sight of Alistair.

The whole ordeal had been harder on him than any of them except Wynne, between killing the templars who were possessed and the experience in the Fade. Elissa knew that Alistair might have a bit of a crush on her, but she wasn't so vain as to think that she served any purpose in his vision except to provide a face for an old longing, to finally have someone he could call his own. Still, her involvement made his entrapment more embarrassing than the others', and she slipped away from the crowd to search for him.

She found him in the chapel, kneeling amidst the wreckage and ruin with no one else for company but a low, sputtering candle, murmuring words of comfort in the dark. "Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Beyond…"

He stopped when she sat in the pew behind him, but refused to look at her.

"Please," she said softly. "Don't stop on my account."

"I doubt the Maker is listening. Not here."

He fell silent, and she looked around at the destruction, unsure of how willing he was to talk about this. "Did you know any of them?"

"No. But… I still knew them, if that makes any sense."

He knew the fantasies, she thought, sustained by the utter loneliness of being given away to a life of religious discipline against your will. Some of the templars, the ones who had chosen this life rather than being thrown into it, they were the ones who had died on their feet, their sword in their hands and the bodies of their enemies spread out around them. But so many others had succumbed to the visions.

After seeing him in the Fade, Elissa knew which of them Alistair would have been.

The silence felt heavy, and she could see the tension in him as he continued to stare straight ahead. He knew what she was going to ask next. Better to get it over with, she thought, than let this continue to linger between them. "That vision, about your sister—"

"Dreams," he said, suddenly cold. "Stupid dreams that I should have abandoned long before this. She hates me, my half-sister Goldanna. I tried to contact her once, when I lived in Denerim. She blames me for our mother dying. She all but chased me out with her broom when I told her I didn't have any money to give her. I'm just a bastard prince to her, as well."

"You're more than that to me," she whispered.

He froze momentarily, then finally relaxed, reaching up to rub his eyes with the tips of his fingers. "I know," he said at last, so quietly she barely heard him. He turned towards her, meeting her eyes for the first time. "How do you do it? How can you stand to keep going, after something like this?"

Elissa didn't have an answer for him. Sheer terror and a lack of options pushed her forward more often than not—it wasn't bravery on her part. He mistook her silence, laughing in bitter self-deprecation. "Oh, right. Because you're not as stupid as I am."

"For a moment, I wanted to stay there with you." She wasn't sure what made her say it. Alistair's head came up sharply, his eyes flashing to hers, unsure that he'd heard correctly. She didn't elaborate, but didn't flinch away from the look, either. There in the Fade, being part of a family again, at the side of someone she knew to be warm and caring, without any of the complications that would if they tried to carry that over into the real world—it had been difficult, so very difficult, to hold onto the knowledge that they were being lied to.

Instead of trying to explain, she slid forward and dropped to her knees beside him. "Please, keep going."

He reached down and squeezed her hand, his grip warm and strong, before he continued, "For there is no darkness in the Maker's light, and nothing He has wrought shall be lost…"

Together, they sought absolution.

…

Alistair waited on the edges of the hall, feeling impatient to leave and finally be rid of this forsaken place, but Wynne had insisted on following the Wardens, and was upstairs gathering her belongings.

Nearby, Elissa was talking to Irving, who was looking much healthier after a collection of healing spells and a short rest. "First Enchanter, is there any way you can spare someone to travel to Redcliffe Castle? I know that you've been through so much, but it's an emergency. There's a possessed child in need of help."

"A child?" Irving's bushy eyebrows drew together. "If he's possessed, there's nothing to be done for him, I'm afraid. The only way to withdraw the demon is if it still exists in the Fade."

"It does," Alistair said from his corner. "It's working through his body, but he hasn't become an abomination. Not yet, at any rate."

"I see." Irving looked inexplicably pleased by the news. Alistair thought that maybe he was as desperate as they had been to save even one more mage. "A child's life is of the utmost importance. I will take what mages I can find. We can reach the castle by morning, if we take the boats."

"Also, there's a mage at the castle by the name of Jowan. If possible, I'd like him to be the one sent in."

Irving's expression darkened. "Jowan is an apostate and a known blood mage. He might take control of the demon."

Elissa refused to back down. "He's prevented the demon from possessing the boy completely and kept it under control long enough for us to come here. He deserves a chance to redeem himself."

"You trust too quickly and too easily." He sighed. "But, I owe you a great debt. I will do as you ask."

"Thank you, First Enchanter."

Irving left, muttering to himself. Alistair pushed himself away from the wall and walked over to stand behind her, draping an arm over her shoulder. She leaned against him, closing her eyes and resting her head against his shoulder. She was still weak from her injury and desperately in need of rest. "Can we leave now?"

"Wynne looks ready to go."

They started towards the doors, passing Cullen, stretched out on a cot. He glared at Elissa through bleary eyes. "Off to save more monsters?"

Elissa opened her mouth to retort, but shut it, shaking her head. She pushed herself away from Alistair, headed for the doors with her head held high, unwilling to let the fuming templar see her weakness. Alistair watched her and had a single, bizarre thought that maybe, possibly, he was beginning to fall in love.