Twenty-five
Vell didn't know what the fuck she was supposed to do.
The Circle didn't teach apprentices how to tear the Veil open. Even if they did, she was pretty sure she missed that day. She missed most of the days.
She watched as the arrows struck the opaque barrier like rain hitting glass. The Dalish were drawing blades, ready to charge. Taesas's desperate spell might be able to hold the arrows, but they wouldn't stop a charging, pissed-off elf intent on gutting her with that curvy sword.
Nethra groaned as she brought a hand over her gut where Vell had popped her, scraping the gnarled staff along the ground as she struggled to her knees and tried to stand.
Taesas would be no help. The burns on his hands looked so deep and black, charred and raw, that she didn't know how he could even focus to summon a spell. The oozing red wounds across his palms were enough to make her stomach turn. And that was saying something, since she had smiled with pride at the way the melted metal of the Templar helmet had run and fused into the side of the side of the man's burned cheek on her way out of White Spire.
She sidestepped the first slash of the first sword, checked the sword aside with a flash of magic and turned, bringing her leg around in a swooping kick that landed in his stomach. She wrapped the Veil around her leg, adding the force as she threw him across the clearing with a bone-breaking crack.
Vell sidestepped to her right, towering above Taesas and sprayed a blast of fire at another Dalish charging his flank, sending him careening away to avoid the bright red tongues of flame.
Nethra rose to her feet, a grimace as she straightened, leaning heavily on her staff. Another arrow struck the barrier and the hazy shield falling at the strain, Taesas' arms falling as he collapsed into the dirt.
Another Dalish charged with sword brandished and she stepped into the strike, throwing up her arm with a burst of rift magic to block the slash like a shield, following with a fist to the chest. She could feel his ribs crack as the puff of green fire burst around her fingers in the strike and he crumpled into the ground.
"Stop!" Nethra's voice cut as she held one hand over her stomach, waving her staff in the air to halt the Dalish around him. "Stop this madness!"
The Dalish froze in place, bows drawn taut, swords held at the ready at their shoulders, feet scratched into the dirt and ready to charge. Vell slid back, stepping in front of Taesas' fallen body, placing herself between the Enchanter and the Keeper. Vell clenched her fingers in and out, eyes darting around at all the Dalish ready to kill her at a single command.
If things weren't bad before, they had gotten much worse now.
"Why?" Nethra asked her, her face twisted in the chill of betrayal. "Why are you doing this?"
They were the same kind of questions Vell had begged in the darkness, long ago, with cold, thick chains were wrapped around her wrists and ankles deep below the towering White Spire. No one ever gave a satisfactory answer to her. Everyone ignored her.
"What did you do to Taesas?"
There was a sudden chill in the air, a small wisp of icy air that seemed to tangle through the shrine clearing. None of the Dalish seemed to notice, but Nethra stood taller, her arm pulling away from her stomach as she straightened.
The grove seemed to grow even darker, if that was possible on the moonless, starless night. Even as the light dimmed, Vell could swear that she could see even more sharply. The air seemed to move, shadows dancing in places that shadows shouldn't be able to exist.
She reached out to touch the Veil.
It barely felt there at all. Weak. Stretched so thin that it could barely hold back the Fade behind it, like a thin textile pulled so taut that she could see the small spaces between the finely woven fibers.
Vell didn't wait for Nethra to answer her.
She lifted her hands, reaching out, pulling handfuls of the Veil into her palms in big bunches, as if she were grabbing the curtains around a window from either side. The green glow around her hands grew brighter, shining until she was too blinded to see Nethra in front of her.
She heard some sort of shout from the Keeper, but she couldn't make sense of what it was over the sound of ripping, like cloth being violently torn in two.
There was a vacuum blast of air as the tear materialized, a shimmering rip in the air, breaking the barrier between the physical and the beyond. There was a howling of wind going in, a rush of cool magical energy pouring out.
And then it burst, a flood of magic pouring out of the Fade that was so strong she lost her grip on her magic and stumbled backward as if hit by a wave.
She stepped backward, her heels bumping into Taesas as she nearly fell backward over his unconscious body.
Nethra's head turned in shock as she looked at the ragged, broken edges of the Veil as she retreated a step too.
"What have you done?"
And those were the last words Nethra could as her eyes shone with a cold blue light, her body shook and convulsed. Her head rolled back. Her mouth fell open wide. That blue light began to shine out of her open jaw too as her arms and legs went rigid and lifted off the ground. A high-pitched whine ripped out of her throat, followed by a swirling smoke of black and blue spiraling in the air above her.
The other Dalish had seized as well, their bodies rigid as the same smoke wafted out of their bodies, floating into the cloud above the Keeper. It roiled in a ball, twisting, warping, like an animal trying to fight its way out a bag.
And then it spun. A crack. A jolt of cold through the air. The bodies of the Dalish fighters all slumped and fell, lifeless.
Tattered black robes. Long, skeletal arms. A hunched posture. The black, empty hole of the hood filled with a head made of nothing but teeth and frost and ice.
Vell's hands fell to her sides. She tried to move her feet but they wouldn't budge. Her breath caught in her throat. The paralysis that gripped her was not demonic magic, but from within her as the demon turned, hovering above the ground, and saw her.
Despairrrrrrrr
"Kill it!" Tae groaned from the ground, cradling his oozing palms.
She wanted to respond, wanted to move, wanted to run away screaming. But Vell could do none of those things as the demon considered her, slowing floating in her direction, its white dead hands glowing as it fed off the power bleeding from the Fade.
Around her, the grove seemed to transform, from the dead, dark ritual grove to that of a bright, green sunlit forest and a small, silver-blonde girl crying. The images seemed to whip by all at once, too quick to view, yet she could feel them all.
A failed mage. Despised by the clan. Cursed one. Weakling. Desperate to prove herself. The blackened ruins. An admonishment. A warning. A forbidding keeper. Depression. Desperation. She goes. A deep staircase. Old, weakened seals. The weakness in the Veil. Plunging deeper. Dread. Fear. Desperation. The chamber. The staff. Fen'Harel. Long forgotten. A warning, forged in blood, eons ago. A faltering will. Desperation. A final resolution. A slashed hand. A bloody palm breaks the seal.
She claims the staff.
The demon claims her.
She convinces the others to follow her. They starve, wither and die. The demon claims them, too.
It requires more to feed on. More to empower it. More to fall and be claimed.
Despairrrrrrrr
The scream caught in Vell's throat as the demon stopped before her, a single, skeletal finger reaching for her. Her eyes followed it as it moved closer, unable to run, as the death-cold touch pressed the space between her eyes.
"Sit down."
The red-robed Enchanter behind the desk motioned to the small, empty chair. The Templars let go of her arms with a gentle shove forward. They didn't leave, standing just behind the high wooden back of the seat as she set herself upon it.
To his side was another mage, an older woman with long grey hair tied back in a ponytail. She frowned as she looked at Vell. She didn't know if it was disapproval or pity or both.
A third Templar stood at the side door, his arms dutifully crossed behind his back and his cold, steel helmet covering his face.
"I'm Senior Enchanter Timeo," the middle-aged man with a thick, black moustache and parted black hair said as he folded his hands. "And I understand there was some… discord, in the dining hall this morning with the Templars."
"The Templars-" Vell tried to start explaining.
"Silence," he commanded with a sharp crack of his voice that made Vell's lip curl back. She wanted to cry again. She had cried all morning in her bunk as the two Templars stood on either side of her bed to make sure she didn't run. After hours, they dragged her here. "I don't care what you think they did. To attack a Templar. To kill a Templar. It's inexcusable!"
"But they-"
"Not another word!" The Senior Enchanter slammed his fists down on the table in a rage.
Vell did begin to cry again then, sniffling tears that rolled down her cheeks. If she could just explain, if she could show someone what had been done to her finally, they would have to do something about it, she had thought.
But she knew that wasn't true.
No one would do anything about it. No one would help her. No one cared.
"We live in a society built on rules, laws and common decency," the Senior Enchanter droned. "What happened this morning is beyond barbaric. It's beyond savage. Mages living in the Circle cannot act this way. There are consequences for your actions."
The enchanter snapped his fingers. "Bring him in."
The third Templar opened the door, stepped out. A moment later he returned, leading another man.
The sunburst burned into Angelo's forehead was red and raw and bloody.
Vell's hands covered her mouth and she screamed, an explosion of tears as she shrieked in horror to see him standing there, arms dangling at his side, face dull and blank and eyes infinitely empty and Tranquil.
"It is only by Andraste's infinite mercy that they let this miscreant live at all," Timeo shouted over her wailing. "This killer, this… murderer, will be a reminder of the price paid for disobedience and discord in the Circle."
Vell couldn't take her eyes off the sunburst in the middle of his forehead, of the cuts and bruises on his face that he didn't seem to notice or mind at all as he stared lifelessly at the back wall of the room. He didn't take any notice of her, didn't blink or shift his eyes or move at all. And Vell couldn't stop screaming as the infinitely deep pit opened within her.
The Senior Enchanter continued as if she were intently listening to him. "For reasons beyond my understanding, the Knight Commander has demanded that you be sent to the Harrowing Chamber immediately. Why they don't give you to the Rite or execute you is beyond me."
He leaned back into his chair, penting his fingers. "Enchanter Elodie will oversee your Harrowing for the mages," he said, motioning to the older woman. "If you somehow live through the ritual, heed this advice. Change your ways. Because the next time, there will be no mercy."
He motioned to the Templars. "Take her away."
The Enchanter led her down the twisting hallways of White Spire, a few steps ahead of the two Templars who trailed them on the route up the tower to the Harrowing chamber. She didn't remember any of it, only the way her chest burned as she gasped for air and the pain in the corners of her eyes.
"It's not right," Enchanter Elodie whispered to her, bending down and speaking quietly enough that the Templars could not hear her. "What happened to you. What happened to your friend. What they're doing now."
Vell didn't care. The Enchanter didn't care. No one cared.
"They shouldn't be sending someone your age for a Harrowing," Elodie said. "It's not right. You're not ready."
She glanced over her shoulder again at the Templars then leaned back to Vell once more.
"I'm not supposed to say anything, but I can't just hold my tongue," she said. "They are sending you into the Fade to face a demon. Maybe many demons. Don't trust anything you see, hear or feel. It's all just an illusion."
Vell sniffled again, wiping her nose as the large, looming, ornately runed double-doors of the Harrowing chamber appeared at the end of the hall. They arrived before the doors and Elodie crouched down, placing her wrinkled palms on Vell's shoulders. She tried to smile.
"Live," she said. "They'll try to take everything from you. Don't let them."
"That's enough, mage," the Templar said.
Before he could pry her away, Elodie bent down and gave Vell a hug and wiped the last two tears off her cheeks with her thumb. The Templars ripped her away, shoved Vell into the dim chamber with a single, golden font glowing blue in the middle of it. Several other Templars were already waiting in their shiny armor with swords strapped at their hips.
They dragged her before the glowing font, the Templar wrapping his hand around her right wrist and lifting it. Vell didn't attempt to resist.
"'Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him,'" The Templar quoted. Without another word, he forced her hand into the glowing pool of liquid. She could feel a tingle rushing up her arm, a sickness stirring in her stomach, a spinning of her head and a drowsiness in her eyes.
When she awoke, she was lying on the stony shore of a small pond in the middle of the woods. The setting sun was casting long orange beams through the boughs, birds were singing and the wind caused the water to lap and ripple quietly on the smooth, rounded rocks.
There were no buildings she could see. There were no roads. There was nothing but quiet solitude.
Only Angelo sat at the edge of the water, the ripples of the water washing over his bare feet.
"Come on," he said as he waved her over. "Come sit with me."
There was something, some twinge in her head like a memory she couldn't quite recall as she looked at him. But the sunbeams were warm and the gentle lapping sound of the water were just too peaceful to resist. She sat on the edge of the water, dipping her feet in the cool, clear water, too.
Angelo leaned backward on his palms, reclining as the orange light consumed him. He let out a sigh, turned his head and smiled at her. "It's beautiful here, isn't it?"
She wiggled her toes, running them across the smooth pebbles underfoot. Blue birds zipped over the water, singing and bobbing up and down as they crossed from tree to tree. The air smelled like flowers.
"How did we get here?" As she tried to remember, there was nothing there. It felt like a big, black empty hole in her head.
"You don't remember?" he asked, with a chuckle. "You were pretty tired, I guess. We broke out. Right out the front door. Just ran past the Templars, ran through all of Val Royeaux. We ran out the gate and we just kept running."
He reached over and pulled her left hand into his right. "You put your hand in mine, just like this, and swore you wouldn't let go."
His touch sent a shiver through her spine as she nearly hiccupped on her own breath caught in her throat. He smiled again. His eyes sparkled. She breathed in the scent of his musk.
"Where is here?"
Angelo squeezed her hand and chuckled again as he looked over the water. "I honestly have no idea," he said. "But it's nice, right?"
"Nicer than the Circle," she agreed.
The Circle. The word seemed to bang loudly inside the empty place in her head. When she fidgeted, she could almost feel the puckered flesh on her back crinkle on itself.
"Maybe we should stay here."
"Hmmm?"
"Stay here. Live here. Maybe I can… I could build a house, where we could live."
"Angelo…" Vell cocked her head to the side and gave him a teasing smile. "You don't know the first thing about how to build a house."
He scratched the back of his head with his free hand and laughed. His other hand squeezed hers again, sending that same, thrilled shock of cold up her back.
"Well, maybe I could learn," he said optimistically.
"You don't have to do that," Vell said as she leaned over, resting the side of her head on his shoulder. "I don't care where we go, as long as we're together."
Angelo nodded. "I'd miss you if you weren't here."
"Where have you been? I missed you."
Vell remembered the mess hall in White Spire. She had just sat down for breakfast. Angelo's prying. The Templar's blood on the wall. The screaming. Strong hands around her arms. The dim office. The Enchanter's bitter words. The door opening. The sunburst on Angelo's forehead. The sunburst. The sunburst. Tranquility.
Vell sat up and tried to pull her hand away, but Angelo squeezed to hold it tightly in his.
"What's wrong?" he asked, seeing the confused, frightened look on her face.
The long hallway. Metal Templar boots echoing in the empty corridor. The old lady enchanter. A hug. Live. Live. Live.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said.
She tried to pull her hand back, but he was still holding on tight.
"You're… you're Tranquil."
Angelo laughed out loud, touching his forehead with his other hand. "What are you talking about? I'm fine."
"Can you let go of my hand?" she said as she tugged again.
"What's gotten into you?"
"Let go of my hand."
"Vell, calm down. Everything is –"
"Just, please. Let go of my hand," she pleaded as she began to sniffle. She could feel the tears building up just on top of her lower eyelids. "I don't want to stay here. I want to go."
"Vell, I'm fine. Don't go. I don't want you to go."
She grabbed his wrist and tried to pry her hand out of his, but he was too strong and she was panicking. The tears were now rolling down her cheeks. She wanted to scream, but no one would hear her.
"This isn't real," she said as she tugged again. He squeezed harder. "Stop. Stop it. You're hurting me."
"Stay here. Stay with me. I'll protect you. I'll save you from your despairrrrrr."
The last word seemed to crackle and hiss out of his lips as he seemed to grow larger around her. The sun quickly dropped below the horizon. Darkness crept in. He seemed to expand with the shadows of trees that stretched across the ground. The air grew suddenly colder.
"Let go! Let go!" She was screaming now, frantically trying to pull her arms away, her feet trying to kick him. But her feet didn't seem to hit anything, just a pile of cloth as the shadows melted into a thicket of black rags.
His face twisted, his copper skin fading lighter and lighter until it was pale and dead. As she looked down at his hand, she could only see taut flesh stretched across gnarled bones.
Despairrrrrrr
The air seemed to freeze in her throat as the billowing pile of cloth and smoke expanded. The grove grew darker and darker. The bony fingers locked around hand even tighter as the demon showed its true form, reaching toward the pit inside her where she was drowning in tears.
The demon's grabbed her other wrist, wrapping around her wrist tighter than even the Templar's manacles. It pulled itself in closer, it's icy cold breath sucking the warmth right out of her chest as the memory of countless whippings, of nights curled on her bed crying as a child, as the horror of seeing Angelo's tranquil face all raced through her head as if they were all attached to a string being quickly pulled out of her skull.
Despairrrrrrr
She screamed. Or at least she tried to scream. Whether it made any noise, she didn't know. There was no one to hear her. Her stomach felt suddenly deep and empty, the familiar pain like the hunger of her childhood starving on the streets of Val Royeaux.
She couldn't tell if her heart was racing or if it had frozen in place in her chest. The darkness settled all around her, enveloping her as the demon pulled her arms wide and began to descend toward her chest.
Despairrrrrr
Vell felt the shock of ice as the demon's head touched the bare flesh of her breastbone, the pressure and agony as its toothy jaws began to chew, piercing her flesh as it tried to burrow its way inside of her.
After months, years of learning to fight the pain inflicted upon her, she could not hold herself now as the demon gorged through flesh and blood.
Vell screamed.
A haunted howl.
A fearful shriek.
A dreadful wail.
And something within her, something deep and chained and forged by years of torment, broke.
The burst of power seemed to explode from within her stomach outward, waves of burning light and heat, of scorching wind, of immeasurable pain and suffering kept locked away and not unbound.
The despair demon's grip came off of her in an instant, it's body thrown backward, the waves of gold and green and white and yellow disintegrating it like corrosive acid. It's black robes tattered and pallid flesh were shredded and blown apart like dust, until all around her the darkness was replaced by the aurum from within.
And when it stopped, her entire body jerked and she awoke on the cold floor in the darkness of the harrowing chamber.
When she saw the armor-bound Templar looming over her, she screamed again.
Vell scratched against the floor, instinctively pushing herself away as she trembled and shook with fear, a wash of warmth running down the insides of her legs as she shoved herself into the corner and curled on herself.
"Maker's shit," the Templar said with a laugh. "She pissed herself."
When she felt hands on her, she flailed and shrieked as if the demon reached for her again before she realized between the gentle touch and the consoling coos that it was only the old enchanter.
"Calm down, calm down," the enchanter said as she wrapped her arms around the frightened girl, brushing her hair with her hand and humming a quiet, sweet melody into the side of her head.
"You're safe. You're safe now. You're alive," Elodie cooed.
Vell could do nothing but shake and bawl into the enchanter's blue cloth robes.
When Vell blinked again, she could feel the death-cold hand clamped across her mouth and see the hovering, black miasma that surrounds the demon. If it knew her mind or sensed her consciousness return, it didn't make any indication of it.
She could feel it trying to sap her power, that same cold, tugging sensation pulling from the depth of her stomach and the ice within her veins. She couldn't be sure how long it had been, only that time had passed between its touch and now.
This was not that same demon from her Harrowing. She doubted that was possible. But as she lifted her hand and wrapped it around the bony wrist of the demon, locking her fingers tightly around it, she would make sure it met the same fate.
When the demon felt the squeeze of her hand, it finally moved, but too late.
The flames were already wicking up her arms, pulsing down from her shoulders and quickly spreading up the dry, dusty robes. She lashed out with her other hand, seizing a clump of the rags in her right palm and holding it tightly, pulling the demon closer to her as the magic fire engulfed her body.
This time, it was the demon who was struggling to escape. This time, it was her grip locked around it in a death clamp. This time, it was her easing it in closer and closer, devouring the fear as it realized its approaching destruction.
Vell could feel the heat as the flames consumed the demon, it's hisses of pain inaudible over the crackling of the fire as the mass of robes turned into a twisting, amorphous bloom of flame.
"I'll never be consumed by the likes of you," she swore as bones and flesh crumbled to ash in her palms and she finally lost her grip, watching as the smoldering mass fell to the ground, squirming and writhing and falling still as the fire consumed the last of the mass.
She looked beyond the flames and the smoke. At the altar, just below the rend in the Veil that she had torn, she could swear she saw the figure of a wolf, wreathed in gold light, sitting just before the stone platform where Ghilathen's body lay in repose.
When she tried to look at it, to focus her eyes to fully observe it, it was gone.
The edges of the air where the Veil seemed to flap calmed, fell together and grew still, until the space in front of her where the tear was looked no different than any other patch of air in Thedas.
The air seemed to regain the normal warmth of a midsummer evening. She could hear the sounds of insects in the wood. The black night sky above was dotted with small, faint stars that hadn't been there before, or, at least, were obscured.
Scattered around her, the bodies that had once been the Dalish were now only desiccated corpses in tattered, rotten cloth and leather, each frozen in the throes of their death.
Taesas stirred and Vell bent down to help sit him up, trying to not look at the horrid burns across his hands or smell the reek of burnt flesh that clung around him. The Enchanter groaned, bending the knuckles of his fingers inward in agony as he looked at the scorches and tried to cope with the pain he must have been feeling.
"The demon?" he asked, weakly.
"I killed it."
"Good."
There was a pained cough and moan from Netha's pale, thin body splayed on the ground near the altar.
"Help."
The word was whisper quiet and weak, her body already as motionless as death.
Vell glanced down at Taesas. "Help me stand," he said.
She placed her hands under his armpits and squeezed his chest, doing her best to pull him up as he tried to lift himself on his own unsteady, shaky legs. He grimaced at the movement and lowered his hands to his sides, glancing at the piles of smoldering ashes first and then at Nethra's body second.
Taesas crossed his right forearm across his stomach, minding to keep his hand free, and began to shuffle toward her, his left hand arm dangling at his side as he dragged his feet in the dirt.
She followed just a step behind him, ready to catch him as he looked like he was going to collapse at any step.
Nethra's mouth was smeared with blood that ran down her chin and covered her neck and chest as if she had violently vomited after a night of hard drinking. It was as if the demon had forcibly ripped its way up her throat to escape her body.
Her eyes were glass as she lay flat on the ground, her arms splayed out. In her left hand, her fingers were still weakly wrapped around the haft of the staff.
"Tae," she said as she smacked her lips, globs of thick, black-red blood clinging to her lips as they moved. "Please. Help me."
Taesas moved his right foot, kicking the staff out her palm. He slowly lowered himself down, falling to his knees next to her, just under the angle of her arm stretched perpendicular from her left side.
Nethra's chest heaved and she coughed again, bubbles of blood oozing out of the corner of her mouth as she turned her head slightly toward him.
"I'm sorry," she said. Then her words seem to curl in her throat with a whine. "I don't want to die."
Taesas looked at her, observing her ashen face and the quiver in her body. The Keeper was so weak, barely clinging to life. He reached forward, the knuckles on the back of his left hand lightly brushing a single strand of flaxen hair off of her cheek.
Nethra tried to smile, as weak as she was, as her eyes lightened for one second and the corner of her mouth turned just slightly before another cough wracked her chest.
Taesas leaned forward, reaching, pulling a large, black rock from the line of stones that ringed the altar. He grunted, another grimace of pain cutting across his visage, as he pulled it between his palms, his fingers curling around the edges.
He lifted the stone from the ground, pulled it over his head, and smashed it down upon her skull.
He lifted it a second, third and fourth time, slamming it down as blood and bone sprayed up his arms, onto his lap and across his face. Vell turned her head after witnessing the first blow crush the woman's fragile, porcelain face into pieces. She jumped, feeling bile in her throat at the thump, the squishing sounds and the grunts of exertion from Taesas.
She lost count after the fourth blow, although there were many more that followed.
The enchanter whimpered after the last blow as he tossed the bloodstained stone aside.
Vell didn't dare to turn around the see the gory results. She didn't open her eyes at all until she felt Taesas' presence at her side.
He had wiped the blood from his chin and cheeks, leaving only faint red-brown shadows on his face. His left hand weakly held the Keeper's staff, point lightly touching the ground and his weight heavily balanced on it. He grimaced as he tried to balance himself.
Vell didn't know what to say, how to feel or where to look.
"Let us be rid of this evil place," Taesas said.
His words were as flat and cold as brutal murder.