Author's Note:
In which there are battles, magic, clues, the rekindled flames of...something. And a Haunted Forest. Because every game worth its salt has a Haunted Forest. Next time: Cleverness, Grey Wardens, and Isabela has the key to everything.
The closer we get to the end, the more my feet drag. But the journey goes on...one word at a time.
Thank you, Paula, for ensuring that I make sense!
Disclaimer: These gorgeous men and woman belong to Bioware.
Playlist Recommendations:
Two Steps From Hell – Caradhras
Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name
Michael Jackson - Thriller
Walk Softly and Carry a Big Axe
Chapter Thirty-six
Halfway to Vol Dorma, with the thick forests of the western Imperium close around them and the heat of late summer a stifling blanket, they discovered that the Imperial soldiers in the nameless village inn hadn't forgotten the two elves and their powerful mage companion.
Fenris had barely slept that night, with Zevran twined around him. In his fatigue, he barely noticed the warning crackle of bush and dry forest floor.
In a calm, clear moment, Zevran shouted, "Behind!"
The whistle of arrows cut through the air.
Anders screamed.
Fenris whirled around, light flaring from his tattoos, power and anger surging through his body. He saw Anders, arrows tufting from his back and falling slowly from his horse. A riot of voices roared out of the trees, the slamming of feet, the clang of blade on shield. More arrows shrieked. He phased and they passed through him.
Thirty or more men in the uniforms of the Imperium poured onto the road, led by two robed mages, their tainted magic reeking of copper blood and fear. One sent a bolt of spirit energy crackling toward him.
Fenris got his feet under him, clinging precariously to his bucking horse, and dived forward, roaring, into the sea of glittering silver chain mail and deep burgundy that swelled between him and Anders.
He scythed through the brigade. The first handful fell before him like so much dead wood, their faces twisting in horror as they realized how helpless they were against him. He swung and Bloom carved a path of devastation through their flesh, followed by a fine mist of blood and streamers of viscera. War cries turned to pained screams. Some brave few tried to strike him, but they could not hit a warrior who walked the inbetween places; one with a foot in the Fade.
The rearmost blood mage shouted orders that became more frantic as Fenris closed the gap between them. She flung spears of fire and ice, and a cloud of miasma to weaken him; he scarcely noticed, beyond his building rage. He ghosted forward, bare feet gripping the blood-stained stones, and stunned the last half dozen soldiers clumped around her horse with a violent spirit pulse.
"I surrender!" she abruptly cried, throwing down her twisted staff.
He paused mid-step, startled.
Then she laughed. "Or perhaps not!" She pulled a heavily ornamented knife from her robe and slashed the air over her soldiers' heads. As one, their throats ruptured as though cut. They collapsed with a wretched gurgle. The mage called out and their blood rose in a cloud. The red mist tightened around her in a thick shield, protecting her as she began to cast.
His hair lifted, his skin crawled, he felt her rising power.
Fenris swore, glanced about, and spotted Anders, crumpled and motionless nearby. He sprinted to the mage's side, readying a Mithras Favour.
"Anders!" he called as the potion shimmered down onto the broken figure. "I need you!"
A pair of soldiers, their expressions grim, closed on him. Fenris spun to meet them, grunting as he discovered that they were no green recruits. Standing over Anders, he pushed them back with heavy swing after heavy swing.
"Anders!" he called again when he heard the mage's soft moan.
"There's an arrow in my kidney," Anders muttered. "A Blighted arrow."
The blood mage's shield dropped and she shouted.
Fenris tried to turn and attack, but the two soldiers delayed him. His skin began to burn. His lyrium brightened. A cry wrenched out of his throat as every vein seemed to swell. Blood hemorrhaged out of his nose, his skull tightened, his heart writhed against his ribs.
Then it stopped.
He gasped, pulling thorny air into his tortured lungs, and stared through eyes fogged with red. He watched lightning surround the blood mage, watched the earth tremble beneath her. Her horse went down and she screamed. Even her mouth filled with flickering indigo light. For a moment, she existed as a negative image, dark skin limned in light. Then she burst into flame.
Fenris dropped to his knees, wrapped around the pain of her spell. Blood mages...they take the force of life from within you. Twist it. Turn it into a weapon. By the Old Ones, I hate them.
Above him, the two soldiers hesitated.
Isabela unstealthed between them and buried her daggers in their bellies. They stumbled away from her, groaning.
"I love a man covered in blood," she remarked to Fenris, looking him over, "but usually not his own." Something exploded behind her. Laughing, she whirled and sprinted away.
Fenris coughed up a mouthful of mucus and blood.
"Blighted maleficarum." Anders leaned close to him, voice a weary sigh. "Nearly as bad as arrows. I'll heal you if you promise to pull them out." Without waiting for a response, he closed his eyes, knuckles pressed to his brow, and sent magic to wash over Fenris' ravaged flesh.
Tentatively, then with greater assurance, Fenris drew in a long breath. "Thank you," he muttered. He sat back on his heels and sagged against Anders' solid presence, allowing himself a moment to recover and rest.
He didn't realize they held an embrace until Anders shifted and Fenris felt the movement where the mage's hand rested on his own hip. It made him suddenly aware that he sat in the curve of Anders' arm. He started to move away, but Anders groaned quietly and jerked his chin behind him.
"The arrows?"
"Yes," Fenris murmured. Little wonder that Anders clung to him; the man had been perforated. He eased Anders away so he rested with palms on the road, his head hanging. "Brace yourself."
Anders glared back at him through loose strands of golden hair. "I hate when people say that."
Fenris nearly smirked. He phased his hand and slid it into Anders' back. The mage sighed, and the tone shocked Fenris. He just about pulled his hand out. "Are you enjoying this?" he asked incredulously.
"Which answer will encourage you to continue?"
Fenris carefully extricated the first arrow. He dribbled a potion over the wound and watched it shimmer and close. He dipped his hand back in for the next, listening for Anders' reaction. "I never considered it to be a pleasant sensation," he commented when Anders hummed his approval. "You didn't seem to like it when I had my hand around your heart."
"It frightened me," Anders admitted. He glanced back again, his eyes dark. "But I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy it."
In silence, Fenris let the third and final arrow fall to the road. He closed the wound with the last of the potion and watched the new scar develop, pale against the golden skin of Anders' shoulder.
Zevran's war cry cut through the quiet. Fenris started, surprised that the battle continued when he and Anders seemed to have found this fragment of peace. Across a stretch of road littered with bodies, Zevran and Isabela squared off against the second blood mage. They, at least, had had the presence of mind to take down the mage's allies, leaving him vulnerable without any handy sacrifices.
"Do you think they need help?" Anders asked hoarsely.
Fenris pushed reddened strands of hair away from his face and forced himself back to his feet. "Need? No. However, I want to question him. There may be more patrols following us."
He stalked across the battlefield, shaking off the residual ache from the blood spell. Anders followed slowly behind, pausing only to cast a protective aura on Zevran and Isabela as they toyed with the remaining Tevinter. This blood mage, barely out of childhood from the looks of him, clung to his staff and whirled from side to side, trying to keep the two rogues in sight. His spirit bolts and miasma clouds did little more than make his opponents laugh.
"He is a child mage," Zevran purred, prodding the Tevinter's thigh with his long sword. "How adorable."
"Back off, knife ear!" the mage spat, his thin face flushing under a patchy growth of stubble. "I'll summon demons to flay you alive!"
"Please do." Zevran nodded toward Isabela and Fenris. "We are hungry for a decent battle, and your friends were no challenge."
The mage noticed Fenris and Anders approaching. His frightened eyes lifted to the field of deceased Tevinters, locking onto the smouldering remains of the other mage. "By all the gods," he uttered.
Zevran feinted toward him. The youth stepped back, tripped on his robe, and tumbled to the ground. In a smooth motion, Isabela kicked his staff away. Fenris strode silently to the mage's slippered feet. He folded his arms and sneered at the prone Tevinter, his dark amusement deepening when the youth tried to scramble backward and stopped when he felt the tip of Zevran's blade against his nape.
"I am going to kill you quickly," Fenris told him.
The mage opened his mouth to protest, but the word became a squawk when Zevran's sword jabbed a little deeper.
"Unless you do not answer my questions," Fenris continued, letting his voice drop into a dangerous murmur. He held up a clawed hand and phased it. The glow shone red through the blood coating his skin and armour. "If you do not answer, I will kill you slowly."
The maleficarum paled under his sheen of sweat. "I'm not afraid of you," he gasped.
Fenris smiled. "Good. This will be enjoyable." He dropped to one knee before the blood mage and slid his glowing hand into the youth's chest. Ignoring the little cries of terror and discomfort, he began with something simple. "How many more of you are searching for us?"
"Thousands," the youth hissed. He panted quick and shallow as Fenris' fingers wriggled in his lungs. "You'll never make it."
The boast gave Fenris pause. "Make it where?" he demanded.
"To Vol Dorma." The mage laughed shakily. "Not on your feet, anyway. The Viscount sent a bounty, a good enough bounty that my own father sent me to find you."
Anders cursed under his breath, echoing Fenris' sentiments.
"How?" Fenris snarled. "He is trapped in a desert storm!"
"Fool. He said you were a dangerous warrior, but he didn't say you were an idiot."
Fenris prepared to tear the mage's spleen out.
"The Viscount is an enemy to Tevinter," Anders interjected before Fenris killed the blood mage. "Why would your father help him?"
"My father senses the shifting winds. The blood and the Fade folk all whisper the same...Viscount Hawke wields more power than the Archon himself. When the Viscount arrives, everything will change. My family will rise to a seat of honour and glory, leaving this backwards countryside behind for some other half-wit mage to scrounge a living in the dirt and elf shit."
"Well," Anders commented. "Hawke is trying to start a civil war."
"Not trying," Fenris countered. "Succeeding." He tightened his grip. "What is the bounty?"
"A position at his side for any who capture the elven lyrium warrior and the human mage with Fade leaking through his skin. Dead or alive." He smiled past a grimace of pain. "You see? The Viscount has triumphed over death itself."
Fenris' skin crawled. "Enough," he muttered.
The young mage laughed, the sound hoarse and weak. "He will not stop," he said roughly. His voice deepened suddenly, as Fenris began to feel the shifting and squirming of the mage's innards.
The lyrium in his arm burned, first mildly, then with a searing pain as magic twisted the maleficarum's body. Fenris wrenched away and jumped to his feet, readying Bloom to drink deeply once again.
"The Master comes for you," the abomination growled. It rose, ropes of flesh and bony spikes bursting through the mage's robes as its hump grew and its arms lengthened. The youth's plump face withered until only a skull-like grin remained. Its glowing yellow eyes glared upon Fenris and Anders and it laughed as it declared, "And I, I will be his favourite, and I will fat myself upon the wretched cattle of this land!"
Fenris' mind reeled, scrambling to catch up to the words this creature spoke. Hawke had spent the first weeks of his reign clearing away covens of maleficarum. Why would he, if these demons spoke of him as 'Master'?
"The Master didn't tell you much about us, did he?" Anders asked. He met the abomination's hungry stare and smiled. His skin cracked, releasing streaks of the Fade's blue glow. "If he had," he continued in Justice's penetrating voice, "you would have left that boy to his fate."
"Such words from the Master's most devoted servant," the abomination chortled. "His strongest tool. His favoured pet. Fear not, my cousin, he will have you again!"
Anders howled in rage and attacked, startling Fenris with his intensity. Energy crackled up and down his staff and erupted in a fury of wind and fire. The roar swallowed any further words the abomination tried to speak.
The abomination staggered back, but didn't immediately fall. Its grin widened as it looked at Anders' frenzy. "The perfect slave."
Fenris flushed with rage of his own. He dashed forward, leapt past Anders and brought Bloom around to silence the creature forever.
/.\./.\
Zevran wiped his mouth with the back of a gloved hand and spat. "Ugh. The fluids of an abomination are always the worst. I need a drink." He leered at Anders. "Remember that if you ever have a lover. You taste disgusting."
Anders sighed and rolled his eyes. The more of these jibes he received, the less inclined he felt to just take them peaceably. Especially now, with the abomination's declarations swimming in his mind. "There's a creek a little ways back. I'll get some water." He relished the chance to quietly take stock of himself, to deal with his own terrible role in Hawke's rise to power.
The abomination called him Master, though... He rolled this idea around, finding it strangely inspiring. Does this mean he is not Hawke at all, but some kind of demon? I tried to reveal any possession when I first took him from Danarius and the spell failed. But maybe...maybe I was wrong. Or maybe the demon was strong enough to hide. He jolted with the thought that this could by why Hawke destroyed so many abominations, maleficarum and demons, to hide his true self.
Lost in thought, Anders violently flinched as Fenris loomed up at his side. "Not alone," Fenris rumbled. He had caught the worst of the abomination's black ichor when it explosively died. His eyes and lyrium glimmered only faintly under the oily layer. "We will all go."
"Oh, a group bath. I like the sounds of that." Isabela, somehow, had managed to avoid any blood spatter at all, human and otherwise. She glanced up from looting the female blood mage's scorched corpse and smirked. "Who wants to play 'Drop the Soap'?"
"I do," Zevran immediately chimed.
"I would rather avoid another ambush," Fenris replied firmly. "With the region's Magister hunting for us, there will be many patrols combing the roads."
"More Tevinters for us to slaughter." Zevran's smile bore a sharper edge than his blades.
"I doubt they will be so unprepared in the future. Especially not when they find this." Fenris nodded at the road and the many twisted, dismembered cadavers beginning to rot in the afternoon sun.
Anders shifted and stepped forward. "They won't find it," he assured his companions. "Are you done looting, Isabela?"
"I am. Nothing better than a few rings and a staff to pawn."
Anders waited for the others to move away from the battlefield. He lifted his arms and called fire down to cleanse the road.
Later, when they had reclaimed their mounts, washed away the worst of the blood and continued on their way, Anders urged his mare up alongside Fenris' gelding. Zevran had joined in conversation with Isabela, so Anders could take the rare opportunity to speak with Fenris in relative privacy.
"I was thinking of what the abomination said," Anders began. "If Hawke is possessed by an extremely powerful demon, then we might be able to find him. To save him."
Fenris sighed, his shoulders and head drooping, surprising Anders with the sudden weary lines of his body. "I am so tired, Anders," he murmured to his own hands, folded on his saddle horn. "The moment I let myself feel hope again, it is dashed more violently than the last time. I bleed worse with every injury and it takes longer to get my feet back."
Anders swallowed heavily, his heart squeezing with guilt and sympathy. "I...I'm sorry, Fenris. I just thought...I don't know. I want to hope that he's still there. Somewhere."
"I would rather think him dead. Long dead." Fenris finally turned his head, regarding Anders with a gaze of deep sorrow. "Then I could mourn and lay him to rest. But his ghost haunts me, dancing before me, nipping my heels. I do not want to hope that he is alive. If he were alive, if he could see what this monster has done with his face, I think that would hurt him worse than death." He returned his gaze to the road ahead, falling silent.
Badly shaken, Anders had to breathe deeply to steady himself. He hadn't thought of it that way, but of course Fenris would fear any possible hope. Fenris had suffered worst of all, his entire life a tale of betrayal, torture, humiliation and war.
Then I will carry this hope for us both, Anders decided. He smiled faintly, sadly. I would carry every burden I could for him.
They continued in silence for a while. Anders set aside his previous thoughts and more questions rose up to take their place. As Zevran still seemed to be involved in a discussion with Isabela, a conversation that apparently involved broad gestures and pointy objects, Anders cleared his throat to start another line of conversation.
"Would you really have tortured that blood mage?" he asked delicately, searching Fenris' profile. The topic of torture had never come up in their journeys before.
Fenris stared straight ahead and gave no indication that he heard the question. Anders could only assume that he had, knowing the elf's keen ear and even keener mind, and rode his horse silently while Fenris hopefully thought the question over. He didn't want to press too hard, not after Fenris' surprisingly honest revelations.
When Fenris finally answered, his soft rumble drew Anders out of a rumination on the alchemical properties of an abomination's blood. "No," he said. "At one time, I would have. A mage is not human. A mage's existence itself is torture, for himself and the people around him. What else could I do to him? Remove his organs, one by one? Let him feel his life slip away from the inside out? How can I ruin something that is already broken and tainted?
"Now, though..." He regarded Anders. "Now, I know that a mage is no different from another man. He clings to life like a weed, desperate to hold on. So desperate that he would use his last breath to gasp a pact with a demon, if only to gasp once more. So, no, I would not have tortured that child. I would have killed him cleanly."
"If he hadn't panicked and become an abomination," Anders muttered.
"A pity, but the demon revealed as much as the child." Fenris shrugged. "I may have been a little too convincing in my bluff. When this is over, maybe I will join a theatre company."
Anders guffawed and quickly coughed to cover his laughter. Fenris smirked at him, glimmers of humour escaping his dark contemplation. Anders memorized the expression and tucked it safely away in his heart. He held it close when Zevran noticed his amusement and pulled back to chase him away from Fenris' coveted side.
/.\./.\
Despite the ill-fated blood mage's phlegmy bravado that the local Magister would find them, the party arrived at a crossroads two days later, completely unmolested by anything larger than a mosquito.
They stopped, sweating quietly in the late morning sun. Isabela retrieved and unfolded her map, releasing a breath of whiskey into the still air. "That one likely goes to Weisshaupt," she commented, nodding to the narrow road turning sharply to the southwest. "There isn't much else around here. And that one probably hits the Highway. In about a half day's travel, I'd reckon." The other, wider road curved more gently to the east.
"Once we hit the highway, Vol Dorma might be another day. Two at the most." Anders peered over Isabela's arm, tracking the white snake of the highway. "I can't wait to get out of these forests." He cursed and slapped the back of his neck. When he held up his hand, a smear of blood gleamed on his palm. "Just my luck that the mosquitoes like the taste of abomination."
"Vol Dorma must be straight ahead," Fenris murmured. He leaned close to Isabela, then cast a speculative glance to the north. Ahead of them, past the crossroads, the forests thickened as they climbed a range of foothills. Beyond the hills, a lone peak jutted out of the dark green carpet and wore a shawl of mist around its crooked head and shoulders. "I remember seeing that old man from the other side. Danarius' apprentices enjoyed tossing me from it as I dreamt."
The confession seemed somehow more terrible in Fenris' flat, emotionless tone. Anders clenched his saddle horn to keep his guilt in check, though he wanted so badly to throw himself at Fenris' feet and beg for forgiveness.
Isabela smoothly changed the topic. "I suppose, with the highway so close to the east, it wasn't worth it to put a road through here."
"I'm sure the haunted forest and the evil looking mountain had nothing to do with it," Anders added. He tried to keep his voice light, especially after Fenris' revelation, but knew his tone came out sour. "We should have taken the Blighted highway to begin with."
"Wiser to take the back roads," Zevran pulled up and commented. "If we had it your way, abomination, my amore would have been dragged back to the Viscount by now. Or perhaps that was your intent."
The very idea filled Anders' mouth with bitter gall, but he could not think of an objection that would not make Zevran's accusation that much more believable. Screaming his hatred at the assassin probably wouldn't win Fenris' favour.
"It's hardly a mountain," Fenris rumbled, staring hard at Zevran before turning his attention to the trees. "I fell from its height often enough to know. Besides, the forest may be haunted, but I have yet to see tree spirits that can stand up to a torch." He dismounted and began tugging on his gelding's tack. "We go through. It should take a day off our travel."
"I have a really bad feeling about this," Anders protested weakly, trying to get his mare to back up so he could glare past Isabela at the stubborn elf. "Didn't I tell you about the Blackmarsh? There was a dragon. A ghost dragon!"
Fenris glanced over his shoulder, an eyebrow lifted. "Then we send it to wherever ghost dragons belong. We are close to Vol Dorma and running out of time. If we take the roads, we may be waylaid by more patrols, more magisters eager for Hawke's favour. We go through."
Anders peered into the black depths of the forest, felt the cold touch of its moist breath, and shivered. Something nameless awaited them, he could feel an evil intelligence peering back at him. "And if we find a river?" he tried, appealing to Fenris' stern pragmatism. "A ravine? A bottomless crevasse?!"
"Then we arrange a convenient accident," Zevran murmured slyly, his grin showing far too many teeth.
Fenris ignored the assassin, his stern glare fixed on Anders. "We deal with it."
Anders sagged and grasped at feeble excuses. "But the horses won't be able to get through."
"They will find their way to a meadow. We walk. It should take two days at most, if you do not slow us down."
"I won't." Anders sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, steeling himself for a last attempt at making Fenris see reason. "I want the same thing you do. I know how important it is for us to get to the Eluvian first, but I don't think this is the way. Something is in there. We have time to go around!" He flung out an arm, pointing to the south east. "We know where Hawke is. Even with Alexander, he's going to be crawling through the desert for weeks. His army will be digging its way out of the sand for even longer. He's distant!"
Fenris paused in unbuckling his horse's packs. "We can't know that," he said to a half-empty sack of rations. "I will not underestimate him again."
"I'm telling you, Fenris, I know!" To Anders, Hawke felt like a distant moon. The moment he thought about the man, demon or not, he could sense a faint pull on his inner tides. "I've always been able to. It's how I found you in the first place." After Kirkwall and the terrible war between Templars and mages, when all Thedas either hated or worshipped him for the evil he had committed, Hawke's steady presence had tugged him along. It called him and he had answered, only to stumbled onto Fenris, drugged and injured, in a gully on the Fereldan coast.
Fenris turned and folded his arms, lyrium rippling over his biceps. His green eyes narrowed dangerously. "And that turned out so well," he said softly.
Anders' objections died. He clamped his lips shut, nodded once, and dismounted on the other side of his mare, carefully out of sight. For a moment, he clung to the saddle, weak and shaky, resting his brow against the warm leather. Arguing with Fenris left him drained and mildly horrified, mostly at his own audacity. What right did he have to question Fenris' decisions?
He is making a mistake. The conviction would not leave him, despite the guilt and self-recrimination it caused. Then a thought occurred that made him laugh under his breath and sadly shake his head. This must have been how Hawke felt when Anders struck his final blow against Kirkwall's status quo. The sense that someone he cared about had done, or was about to do, something immensely foolish, but the powerful desire to stand by him regardless. All right, he told himself firmly, whether you agree or not, you do not back down from your promises.
His resolution bolstered, Anders began to assemble a bag of necessities to carry on his own back.
"I like forests, haunted and otherwise," Zevran began conversationally as the party, on foot, entered the shadows under the heavy boughs. "They are all so beautiful, more so when they have their own voices. Did I ever tell you about when the Warden took me to meet his clan? Well, I admit that we were on a quest, but it was still nice. Except that Morrigan and Leliana were with us."
Anders bit his cheek to keep from screaming, as every fibre of his being vibrated with the knowledge that they were making a terrible mistake.
"I have run through a few myself," Fenris replied, apparently oblivious to Anders' distress. "Usually with hounds on my tail. As it turns out, climbing the trees is not effective."
Zevran chuckled. "I have a few stories like that myself. Please, allow me to tell you..."
/.\./.\
Anders' thighs burned and his knees ached badly enough that, for a moment, he would have preferred death over the piercing pain stabbing into the joints. He started to shift position.
Fenris grabbed his arm and squeezed so forcefully that Anders briefly forgot about the pain in his knees. He crouched a little lower under the thick cover of the forest undergrowth. Fenris leaned forward, glowering out at the moonlit clearing. Zevran and Isabela lurked nearby, completely invisible and silent to Anders.
Beyond the cover of the bushes, the clearing shivered in the moonlight, as though a breeze touched the tall grasses. However, the air hung in perfect stillness. Something else shook the thin stems and broad leaves. Something stalked out there. Waiting. Hungry.
Clouds scudded across the sky. The moonlight wavered. In the patches of shadow, Anders saw the long, sinuous bodies of their hunters: a wolf-like creature of magic and rage. Their narrow heads turned this way and that as they stalked, searching for their hidden quarry. The moon revealed herself again, liquid silver pooling past the forest canopy, and the spirits vanished.
Fenris lifted his head to stare at the sky. Anders followed his gaze and watched a bank of clouds approach from the west. It snuffed out the stars as it came, demonstrating its thickness. If it could cover the moon for long enough, they might be able to make a break for it, to the deeper forest where the shadow creatures would be rendered harmless.
How ironic, Anders thought, not for the first time. A dark hunter that can only strike in the light, but can only be seen in the shadows. I knew this was a bad idea. And Fenris thought torches would be good enough to fight the forest. Because that worked so well. He could still feel the slice of talons in the flesh of his calf and hip, could see the skin part and blood well up from the invisible attack.
Fenris squeezed his arm again, startling Anders with the realization that the elf had been touching him for several minutes and Anders hadn't even noticed. His skin under Fenris' palm felt warm. His irritation at the decision to enter the forest faded. If anyone should be allowed to make a mistake, it is surely him.
Another squeeze. Fenris glowered out of the darkness, his huge eyes glittering like the stars above. When he caught Anders' attention, he nodded at the clouds and then toward the clearing.
Right. Anders nodded. As soon as the moon hides her face, we run. We run like our asses are on fire.
He took a deep breath, tried to shift his weight, took another breath, and then yelped as Fenris lunged forward, dragging Anders out of the bushes as he went. Anders' yelp became a genuine groan of agony when he tried to run. His knees lanced pain up and down his legs and he stumbled.
Black jaws snapped at his face. He flinched and tried to ignore them and the two burning embers that the shadow creatures used for eyes. The beasts couldn't hurt him, not until the light pinned them in the physical realm.
"Come on!" Isabela appeared on his other side, shoving in under his free arm and propelling him further into the clearing.
The shadows boiled around them as a dozen of the spirits tried to attack. Any moment now, Anders knew, the clouds would disperse and leave them vulnerable. Those curved fangs would sink in, the claws would rip and tear, and they could do nothing to stop it. The creatures had proven themselves immune to magic and physical weapons. In this forest, they were gods. Dread wolves. Things never meant to stalk the earth.
The clearing stretched wide before them. Anders' legs finally strengthened and he pelted through the long grass without aid, the other three sprinting alongside. Somewhere. In the darkness, Anders couldn't tell his friends from the black flanks of his foes. He followed the rare crash and crackle of a footstep, though the two rogues and the elven warrior made less sound altogether than the lone, human mage.
Heaving, panting, his lungs starving for air, Anders began to slow. His boots stumbled on branches and stones hidden under the grass. He rolled his ankles again and again, sending sparks of pain up his legs. He braved a glance at his destination, the line of trees and undergrowth at the far side of the clearing. His heart dropped; he had so far yet to cover, his strength drained like wine from a punctured flask. The others had left him and the clouds were, surely, about to pass...
"Anders!" Fenris barked from somewhere far ahead. "Hurry!"
Anders gasped and pushed harder.
The grass shook madly before him, nearly stopping him in his tracks. A form loomed out of the darkness and a powerful arm cinched around his waist. Fenris. The elf loped at his side, each step hauling Anders further and faster, through the gnashing teeth and burning glares.
Silver light appeared in slices around them, illuminating the grass and banishing the wolves. The creatures took on an even more eerie appearance as they passed in and out of the light, in and out of sight.
An instant before they reached the safety of darkness, the clearing flooded with light. Anders felt a vicious pain in his thigh. He cried out. Fenris grunted and leapt, shoving Anders into the bushes and rolling forward, deeper under cover.
In the impenetrable darkness, Zevran whispered urgently, "Amore, are you all right?" A patch of foliage rustled, as though a panicking assassin crawled through it, searching for his lover.
"Yes," Fenris muttered. The rustling stopped. Fenris huffed. "Gently, Zevran. I have a few scratches. Anders?"
Anders gulped for air. "I'm alive," he panted. "Bleeding, but alive."
"A shame," Zevran sneered. "Perhaps next time I will get lucky and you will not survive. Why did you go back for him, Fenris?"
"Why would I not?" Fenris replied waspishly.
Anders smiled into the fetid night, forgetting the burn of his injuries and the warm trickle of blood down his leg.
/.\./.\
The mountain loomed over them, its crooked peak like a down-turned face as the sun began to set on its far side. Although they had crossed over half of the dreadful forest, Anders felt no better than he had when they first entered it.
"I think it's watching us," he commented, squinting through a break in the canopy at the old man mountain.
"Let it," Isabela replied. "If I was a lonely mountain, I would watch me, too."
Anders stared at it until they passed back under the trees.
They ran into a swamp shortly after. Rather, Zevran ran into it, nearly losing his boot to the noxious sludge.
"I would let the swamp keep the boots," he remarked, wrinkling his nose at the stench rolling off of his foot. "But the Warden gave these to me."
"We should go around," Fenris said, peering at the swamp.
The swamp's edge blended nearly indistinguishably from the forest. A thick, leafy mulch covered the rotting bogs. Only further in, when the trees shrank to pale, withered specimens tilting out of the swamp like the moss-draped femurs of giants, did the black bog reveal itself. The thick sludge bubbled and glistened, rippling with the movements of some hidden creature. A putrid, violet fog crept over the surface of the bog, playing tricks on the eye and casting an illusion of malicious spirits.
"Go around?" Anders repeated, eyebrows lifted in surprise and amusement. "I didn't think you knew how."
Fenris snorted, his lip twitching. "Do not mistake efficiency for inflexibility."
"I know how flexible you are," Zevran crooned.
Anders smothered a groan. Just what he wanted to hear, in this wretched place.
Fenris led them along the edge of the swamp as the sun descended and the shadows darkened. Foxfire glowed on fallen logs, helping Anders pick his way across the treacherous forest floor.
"We will go to higher ground," Fenris told them, pointing to the foot of the mountain ahead of them. "And rest until moonrise."
"Thank the Maker," Anders sighed. He ached everywhere and his stomach gnawed at his spine. At least his wounds had healed nicely, without any infection from those Blighted dread wolves. He could soothe his pride, as well, with the memory of Fenris allowing the mage to tend to his own scratches, much to Zevran's rather vocal dismay. At the reminder, he added, "Do you think those wolves will return? I'd like a fire."
"The wolves wouldn't come this deep into the forest," Isabela replied jovially. "Do you really want to find out why?"
The elves murmured their agreement. No fires in the forest.
The swamp retreated to the north as the ground rose and the damp earth became dry and hard. Fenris followed the edge, the others treading carefully behind him. Stars winked to life through gaps in the canopy above them and the sunlight vanished, leaving them in the pitchy darkness that Anders so abhorred. He fought the urge to call light to his hand, knowing that his companions would only chide him for giving them away.
After several minutes and too many stumbles to count, Anders panted, "I thought we were going to stop. I can't see a Blighted thing."
"We are nearly there," Fenris rumbled back. "There is a break in the trees. It looks like a ridge."
Anders pulled himself up the steepening hill, using his staff to keep himself from falling every time his toe caught on a branch or a root. Gradually, the light increased as the trees thinned, and he finally caught sight of his companions, the two rogues like spirits in the night and Fenris like the night himself. The three emerged into the starlight at the top of the rise, where the stone bones of the mountain broke through the earth and nothing more than a few weeds grew.
"Well, this is interesting," Isabela remarked, her voice echoing strangely back to Anders where he continued to struggle through the growth.
"I do not think we will be able to go around this obstacle, amore."
Anders finally emerged, thin vines snapping as he pushed his way out into the open. He limped to his three companions where they stood atop the rocky ridge, staring at something on the other side.
"Anders," Fenris warned, "if you say a word, I will throw you in."
"Throw me in?" Anders finally drew near enough to see what the others were staring at. He stopped. A hysterical laugh burbled up from his chest, managing to get past the tight bands of exhaustion around his lungs. "Is that...?"
"Do not say it."
"Is that a bottomless crevasse?"
A vast, jagged ravine opened before them, the edge of it only a few yards past the top of the rise. It extended to either side until it disappeared from sight. Anders wouldn't have been surprised if it reached from the swamp to the mountain itself. He crept carefully closer to peer into the oily darkness and frowned at the frigid chill that met him.
"Careful." A hand slammed into his back, nearly sending him in. At the last moment, Zevran grabbed Anders' robes and kept him from stumbling forward. "You do not want to fall in," the assassin purred close to Anders' ear.
Anders, his heart pounding and a flush of adrenaline making him shake, hurriedly back-pedalled. "No," he wheezed. "No I don't."
"What do you think is in there?" Isabela wondered. She leaned over the edge and shouted, "Hello!"
Her voice echoed back. "Hello! ...Ello! ...Lo!"
"Oh, finally, some intelligent conversation." The pirate chuckled.
A cold wind gusted out of the crevasse, rank with a sick, rotten scent.
"More swamp, from the smell of it," Zevran observed.
"I don't know," Anders snapped back. "All I smell is you and the bog in your boot. Though I think the bog water makes an improvement."
"Are those teeth, abomination? I wondered when you would start to show your true self."
"Enough," Fenris interrupted. He padded between them, casting a hard green stare from one to the other. "Anders, I want to see how deep it goes. We may be able to climb down and up the other side."
The mere suggestion sent a chill down Anders' spine. "You want to go down there?" he asked, unable to keep a quaver out of his voice.
"Not particularly, but I will do what I must. Either we go through it, or we try the foot of the mountain." His white head nodded at the ragged edge. "Light, Anders."
This is a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. Anders sidled back to the black maw of the crevasse. His internal alarm at entering the forest intensified, leading him to wonder if the source of his fear lurked in this deep, impenetrable darkness. He drew in a shaky breath. A sharp, copper tang coated his tongue, but he could only swallow it down with his fear. I may not agree, he reminded himself, but I will trust Fenris. I will help him and stand with him for as long as he allows it. He clenched a fist. When it opened, a slim flame danced in his palm. It shrank, as though in response to his fear, then grew with his firming resolve.
The ruddy light increased as he fed his strength into it. Anders glanced up and found his companions. They shielded their eyes from the light, allowing Anders to steal a precious moment of admiring Fenris' stern face and slender figure; the hidden strength in his lyrium-traced arms; the way he stood with his bare feet braced on the stone, as though prepared to pitch a battle against the entire world.
Anders shook his head, banishing the clinging fog of guilt, regret and desire. He intensified his flame and lobbed it into the ravine.
The other three leaned forward to watch the flickering ball of fire fall. It quickly shrank, then shrank some more. It became a tiny star glimmering in the night. Then it winked out.
They stood in a moment of contemplative silence.
"Bottomless creva—"
"Shut up, Anders," Fenris snapped. "Do it again. Send two. There is no such thing as a bottomless crevasse. Everything has a bottom!"
Zevran and Isabela sniggered.
"As you wish." Anders bowed his head. He held out both hands and summoned flame to wreath them. This time, he let the fire grow to a large, dangerous size, until his companions moved away from the crackling heat and their long-limbed shadows leapt and danced on the rocky ground behind them. With a sharp motion, Anders hurled the fires into the crevasse.
One of the balls fell, shrinking, until it merely disappeared. The other, though, hit something. Perhaps a hundred feet down, it exploded in a splash of little flames, briefly illuminating what it hit. Glossy chitin. A mandible. Thick hairs. Many, many faceted eyes.
"Um," Anders wheezed.
"Was that one creature or many?" Zevran whispered.
Something began to click in the inky darkness.
Click.
"I recommend a strategic retreat," Isabela murmured.
Click-click-click. The sound echoed out of the ravine, joined by another, the scritch of claws against stone.
The party backed away from the edge as the sound drew nearer. Zevran lifted his bow. Fenris pulled Bloom from his shoulder. Isabela drew her blades. Anders cast familiar auras, settling his nerves with the protective patterns.
"I do not think retreat is an option," Fenris murmured. His axe glittered with enchantments. Light seared along his tattoos and sparked a determined glare in his eyes. "Not for us and not for it."
"How did I know you'd say that?" Anders asked. He raised his staff, tapping into the Fade trembling eagerly beneath his skin.
The moon rose over the eastern forest, illuminating the massive, twitching antennae, the smooth, glittering black head, and the pools of its eyes. The behemoth centipede oozed out of the ravine, its millions of legs rendering its movements eerily fluid, eerily quiet beyond the click-scritch-click-scritch-click of its feet on the stone.
Zevran fired an arrow, busting a faceted eye.
"Hold," Fenris ordered quietly, stepping backward down the slope. "Let it come. A giant insect to some...is a bridge to others."
"You're insane," Anders said, laughing a bit hysterically. And I love you.
Taller than a dragon, little legs wriggling, the thing drew itself up. It towered over the insignificant beings who dared to wake it from its centuries long slumber in the basement of Thedas. Its mandibles clacked together and the crack echoed across the forest and the slope of the lonely mountain.
"Do not mistake efficiency for insanity," Fenris replied, the words rolling with a chuckle.
When the giant centipede attacked, bowing forward to lunge at the party in the moonlit night, it met a battery of enchanted arrows, an ice-cursed axe, two blood-thirsty blades and a wall of fire.
/.\./.\
When they emerged from the forest, exhausted and stained, Anders nearly didn't believe his senses. Surely, the sunlit meadow was an illusion. Surely, his mind conjured the sweet scent of wildflowers and summer-dry grasses, the kiss of a breeze and the warmth of the sun on his eyelids. When he opened them, he expected that he would find himself trapped in the forest again.
Instead, the Tevinter fields unrolled before him like the Maker's quilt. To the east, he caught the sparkle of the highway. Ahead of them, to the north, the spires and walls of the city of Academia glowed in the bright afternoon under a perfect, featureless blue sky.
"Finally," he whispered, dropping where he stood. He let his hands sink into the thick grass and fragrant sod, drinking in the life thriving around them. Birds flew by overhead, their song as sweet as wine.
Isabela chuckled and settled more gracefully beside him. She stretched her long legs and leaned on her elbows, turning her tanned face to the sun and shutting her kohl-lined eyes. "I agree. Fenris, your crew demands a rest."
"Is it a mutiny?" Fenris asked, his voice rich with amusement.
"Just good advice," the pirate replied.
"Then who am I to argue?" Fenris sat next to her. Before he could lie back, Zevran slid in behind him, offering a lap to pillow the warrior's head. Using his teeth, Zevran stripped a glove off and laced his long, bare fingers into Fenris' white hair.
Anders turned away from the easy affection between the elves. No matter the aches in his body, it seemed his heart could still experience a sharper pain.
"We will be in Vol Dorma by nightfall," Fenris said solemnly. "And if that blood mage was right, most of the Magisters are preparing an attack at the Silent Plains."
"Most of them," Anders agreed. "Except the ones Hawke convinced to turn traitor. They will be hunting for us."