22 Harvestmere, 9:30 Dragon, The Temple of Sacred Ashes

"And you, Morrigan, Flemeth's daughter. What . . ."

The witch cut off the question with a decisive gesture. "Begone, spirit. I will not play your games."

The Guardian seemed to hesitate for only an instant, and then nodded. "Then I will respect your wishes. The way is open to all of you. Good luck, and may you find what you seek."

Morrigan snorted in derision and turned her back on the creature, falling in with the others. As before, Leliana fell into the second rank, beside the witch, her bow at the ready.

"Morrigan, how could you disrespect the Guardian that way?" Leliana murmured. "An emissary of the Maker?"

"I assure you, Leliana, that creature was nothing of the kind." She glanced at the Chantry sister, and shook her head at what she saw in the other woman's face. "You think we are embarked on some sort of sacred quest? Nonsense. These images are spirits, nothing more. Called out of the Fade by the early Andrastian cult, no doubt, and bound to forms that fit the expectations of naïve pilgrims."

"How can you be sure?"

"It seems clear enough. A true emissary of your god would not have backed down before me with such alacrity! 'Twas nothing but a spirit, reading our doubts and regrets, and dressing them up in high-flown religious language. Before one who has no such doubts, and cares nothing for the Chantry's mummery, it was helpless."

"Perhaps so," said Leliana, still alert as the party ventured deeper into the temple.

"Besides," Morrigan continued, "the mountain this temple is built upon is absolutely riddled with lyrium. More than I have ever sensed before. The air stinks with power. Ironic, is it not, that the followers of Andraste were willing to use such magic to protect her mortal remains?"

"Perhaps they didn't know what they were doing." Leliana gave the witch a sharp glare. "Even so, Andraste and the Maker are not a fraud!"

Morrigan frowned at the Chantry sister, tempted for a moment to make some cutting remark, but then thought better of it. "I do not insist that the Maker is a fraud," she said at last. "I suspect 'tis entirely possible that some being exists that you think of as the Maker. I simply deny that this being is worthy of worship."

"How can the Maker not be worthy of worship?"

"Very easily. You claim that the Maker is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-benevolent. I agree that any being with such qualities would certainly be worthy of worship. I would be the first to render him his due. Yet 'tis immediately obvious that there can be no such being in this world."

Leliana's left eyebrow quirked upward. "I believe I see where you are headed, Morrigan."

"No doubt. I am sure the Chantry has addressed this argument before." Morrigan began to tick points off on her fingers. "Given the existence of pain and suffering, the Maker cannot claim all three of those qualities at once. Either he does not understand the nature of these evils, or he is not capable of doing away with them, or he refuses to do away with them. We are left with a god who must be fallible, impotent, or malevolent. If not all three at once."

"The Chantry teaches that the Maker has turned away from us because of our sins," said Leliana, but there was uncertainty in her voice, as if she did not agree.

"Malevolent, then." Morrigan shrugged. "It matters not. There is no way in which the Maker could possibly demonstrate to me that he has any of those qualities. I am a finite creature. I have no way to distinguish between a being who has infinite wisdom, power, and benevolence . . . and a being who is simply much wiser, more powerful, and more benevolent than I."

They watched, as Alaric confronted a series of wraiths and answered their riddles. One by one, each of them delivered a benediction and then vanished.

"Do you even consider it possible for a being to be wiser, more powerful, or benevolent than you?" Leliana asked, her voice for a moment glacially sweet.

"Very easily," said Morrigan. "I may be wiser than you, but that is not a difficult bar to clear. I know of creatures in this world far more powerful than I. And I certainly do not pretend to benevolence toward anyone."

"I see." Leliana lapsed into silent thought for a long moment, while they watched Alaric converse with an image of his dead sister.

Morrigan also felt tempted to drop the conversation, observing the Warden. The sudden arrival of what appeared to be Solona Amell had clearly disturbed Alaric, driving him close to a breakdown. She felt torn between a reflexive contempt for his weakness, and an inexplicable desire to comfort him.

After the image gave Alaric some small trinket and vanished, he seemed unable to move on at first. Alistair moved up to speak to Alaric in low tones for a few moments. Then the mage braced his shoulders and led the party forward once more.

Leliana apparently felt ready to return to their argument. "I wonder, Morrigan, if infinite wisdom, power, and benevolence are necessary to make a being worthy of worship."

"Perhaps they are not," the witch admitted. "Many seem satisfied to hold lesser creatures in reverence. The Dalish elves worship their own deities, the dwarves their Paragon ancestors. The Tevinter Imperium once venerated the Old Gods. Even the ridiculous cult clinging to this mountain-top seems to have forgotten the absent Maker in favor of a very present dragon."

"So we mortals have a choice of gods," Leliana stated, apparently feeling on much firmer ground. "Perhaps what we choose to revere is more important than the answers to ultimate questions. Answers which we may never discover."

Morrigan simply nodded. "I concur."

Crystal-blue eyes stared into golden ones for a startled moment. "We should mark this down on the calendar," Leliana said at last. "I did not think it possible for the two of us to agree on anything."

"Well." The witch's voice took on its usual slightly acid tone once more. "Let us not take it too far. You seem satisfied to remain ignorant and take the ultimate on faith. I am not."

"Yes, that is the Morrigan we have all come to know."

"I am so pleased to have disappointed you once again."

Leliana frowned, watching up ahead as Alaric and Alistair cautiously made their way down a long corridor. "Still. I revere a being whom I believe created the world and all of its beauties, who wishes the best for all of us, who only remains aloof out of sorrow for our many sins. What do you revere? Anything at all?"

Morrigan shook her head, tempted for once toward honesty. "Alas, the most powerful and mysterious being with whom I have enjoyed close acquaintance is my mother, and she is not a creature to inspire reverence. Perhaps 'tis just as well that I do not feel the lack."

The party came into a great vaulted chamber, carved out of the living rock of the mountain. There they were confronted . . . by themselves. Yet not themselves.

The Alistair that strode forward had a beard and a touch of silver at the temples. He bore the gold-washed armor and brilliant sword of a warrior-prince, the crimson hounds of Ferelden on his shield, and a king's coronet atop his helm. He evaluated his younger image with cold detachment, his eyes hard and cynical, and then raised his blade to attack.

The Leliana-image was younger, her hair close-cropped, her leathers cut so as to show off the curves of her shape. She carried twin blades rather than a bow, the main-gauche dagger gleaming with poison along the edge of its blade. Her eyes were cold as a winter sky, and a contemptuous sneer rested on her lips. She eased forward with familiar grace, but with a trace of feline sensuality as well.

Alaric's image was perhaps the worst of all. Tall, strong, shimmering with power, but somehow twisted, as if something other than the man looked out through his eyes. An abomination of pride, grinning as it lifted its stolen hands in the patterns of a spell.

Very well, thought Morrigan, 'tis plain enough what trickery is afoot here. We face that which frightens or disturbs us most about ourselves. I am ready. This nonsense will not bite upon my soul.

Then she saw another woman stepping out of the shadows: young and beautiful, with pale skin, raven-dark hair, and cat-golden eyes. She wore leather and furs, a Tevinter magister's battle dress, and carried a battered iron staff with a white crystal at the top. Her face . . .

Her face was Morrigan's. No more and no less.

No vision of a hated past or a dreaded future. Nothing but the same coldly perfect features, the same disinterested stare, the same determination to crush any opposition that dared to raise its hand.

The image did not speak – none of the images seemed willing to speak – but Morrigan could hear it in her mind as clearly as if it had shouted aloud.

You fool. You have no need to change in order to serve as your own worst enemy.

Then the image lashed out, and Morrigan was in the worst fight of her life.

A torrent of fire swept down upon her. Then a swarm of razor-edged shards of ice. A howling wind that threatened to hurl her off her feet. A bolt of blue-hot lightning. Each spell she parried, barely, her staff moving almost without thought as she muttered counterspells.

She heard the clash of steel against steel elsewhere in the room. Leliana hissed in pain as her image opened a shallow cut across her thigh. Alaric soared across the open space, his sword shining with power, to descend upon his image like a thunderbolt.

Morrigan stepped back, once, twice, and then her back was against the stone wall. She blocked desperately with her staff, and found herself corps à corps with her image, their staves crossed, their faces mere inches apart.

The image smiled, and it was exactly Morrigan's smile. One hand came off its staff, and clamped around Morrigan's throat with terrible strength.

How will you work your magic, foolish little witch, if you cannot even draw breath?

Now you die, too weak even to serve as your mother's vessel.

She felt the blood pounding in her temples, howling in her ears. Darkness began to close in on all sides.

"Morrigan!" came a distant shout. Alaric, noticing her plight but unable to turn away from his own twisted reflection.

She dropped her staff, letting it clatter on the floor. She clawed at the hand choking the life out of her.

Then she took a moment and forced herself to think, coldly and clearly. One hand reached down to her belt, drawing her knife. A little blade it was, normally of use only to cut her meat at the evening meal. Yet it was razor-sharp.

The small weapon sliced through the thin layer of padded leather over the image's stomach, and sunk perhaps a finger's breadth into ghostly flesh. Then, with every ounce of strength left to her, Morrigan pulled.

The knife flew out of Morrigan's fingers. It sailed through the air in a wide arc, trailing crimson.

The image recoiled, clapping one hand to the bloody slash wound that had opened up in its belly.

It was just enough for Morrigan to wrench her head to the side, the image's sharp nails leaving three parallel gouges in the side of her throat. It hurt like blazes.

At least she could breathe. A gasp filled her lungs with air, and then she choked out a complex phrase in Tevene, thrusting both hands out in a repelling gesture.

The image flew backward, losing its footing, falling to sprawl on its back on the stone floor.

Morrigan was tempted to spend a moment indulging in weakness, the raw desperate need for air, the pain of a bruised and lacerated throat. She pushed the temptation down, and caught up her staff once more.

The image struggled to rise. It looked up, in the last instant before Morrigan's staff-blade impaled it just under the ribs. Nailed to the floor, it writhed in pain and horror for a long moment, before the magic collapsed and it vanished entirely.

She was still standing there a minute later, staring at the floor, when Alaric arrived. Fortunately, he knew better than to say anything. He applied healing magic to ease the pain of her hurts, and then took her in his arms for a moment, while she shuddered in violent reaction.