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A/N: Word of warning, I'm getting sick. I'm hoping it won't interrupt my writing.


The creature twisted and writhed as it felt its bonds begin to loosen. There was something here, something he knew. It was helping the creature, whether it realized it or not. Opening its blood flecked mouth a scream of anger was ripped from its throat. It echoed in the aerie to be drowned out by the snowstorm raging just outside.


Aedan was the second to realize something was wrong.

He sat next to Frey and listened with half an ear as the First Warden and Anders bantered while they ate.

Ambition drove him, and the noble that had been raised to lead was brought to the fore. When he looked at others, he no longer saw them as his friends, but tools that could be used to further the warden cause.

The gnawing guilt that had been his constant companion since the night he had left the bedside of the only woman he had ever slept with was gone. In its place was pragmatism, a knowledge that he had done the right thing, and he and Alistair had survived for a reason.

They were both meant for greater things.

As Frey laughed at something Anders said, Aedan felt his eyes narrow in disdain. Frey didn't realize what he had, not completely. Anders would become King of the Anderfels, Aedan would see it happen. Fenris had access to the Black City, and all of the answers to the questions the wardens needed to fight the blights, maybe even end them completely. Frey was shortsighted. Once he had Anders before him, there was no more talk of Fenris and what he could do. The First Warden could play all the games he wanted in Weisshaupt, but the new king's loyalty would be to Aedan, not to Frey.

If there was anything that Ansburg had taught Aedan, it was that the wardens needed to come together. To do that they needed a strong leader-and Frey wasn't it. They already had a warden king in Ferelden, and soon they would have one in the Anderfels.

A flash sparked in Aedan's periphery.

It felt like a veil had been torn from his eyes. The tankard of ale he had been bringing to his lips almost fell from nerveless fingers. Memories of the things he had done and said over the past few weeks tumbled through his mind, and he began to shake from the force of it.

Encouraging Anders to listen to Frey and backing the First Warden up as he tried to convince the mage to take his throne.

The plans he had to unite the wardens under his rule, and then to storm the Black City.

How he'd noticed that Anders and Fenris were growing apart, but he had done nothing to stop it.

Maker, he had even encouraged it. He had thrown his own lover at Fenris, and tried to seduce Anders once himself. He had needed Fenris by his side, not Anders'. He and Zevran had tried to bind the two of them to the wardens in other ways, while they tore them apart from each other.

It had made a horrifying sense just moments ago. But now… now Aedan felt sick. He scanned the dining hall, but did not see Zevran. How could he have done it? How could he have sent the one person that meant everything to him out to whore himself? Aedan had many regrets in his life, but he did not regret undergoing Morrigan's ritual. It had given him many years with Zevran, and Maker willing, he would have a few more.

This wasn't like him.

This wasn't like any of them.

His eyes halted on Fenris who stood at one end of the room, his brands glowing with their special inner light. The elf's face looked just as horrified as Aedan's must have. Fenris gave a slow shake of his head and nodded towards the massive doors that led out in the hall.


"Fuck. Shit. Mother fucking… What in the Void is happening?" Aedan and Fenris were in a secluded alcove, away from prying eyes and ears.

"I do not know, but I would wager that Frey did not get rid of his blood mage problem," Fenris said dryly.

"You make it sound like an infestation." Aedan's jaw was set in an anger that was all his own. He hated blighted blood mages. They didn't come at you the way a proper opponent should. Instead they lied and deceived. That was Zevran's territory, not Aedan's.

"Zev…" Aedan buried his face in his hands. "Maker, the things I did to him. How is he ever going to forgive me?"

Fenris—wisely—had chosen not to inform Aedan where Zevran was. "He will forgive you the way I forgive Anders and you. This was not of our making."

"Bullshit." The explicative exploded from Aedan's mouth. "This was our doing. If we weren't who we were, would we have done the same things? Maker, I was going to use you to storm the blighted Black City. Am I insane? Why would I ever think that's a good idea?"

Fenris shrugged with a nonchalance he did not feel. "And I was going to kill Anders to save the world from the magisters. We were not ourselves. Something is preying on our most secret selves and bringing them to the fore. I don't know why I was able to break free, or why you were either, but we need to take this time and stop it from happening again."

"Fuck." Aedan slapped a palm against the wall. "We need Anders. I don't know shit about what kind of magic it would take to do something like this, or even what to look for."

"We can't take the chance." It pained Fenris to say it, but he knew it was true. Until they figured out why he and Aedan were free, there was nothing they could do for Anders and Zevran. "We don't know how many in the fortress are affected, or for how long."

That set Aedan off again. "Shit. Mabari fucking damn it. Frey said they killed the blood mage a year ago. But Bron said he's been sending missives to Weisshaupt for years. That fucking asshole Frey lied to me and I didn't see it. He told me he didn't send Bron an answer because he didn't know which of his men were still corrupted. But it's been going on longer than that. No one had heard much from Weisshaupt in years. Even before I became Warden-Commander of Ferelden, Weisshaupt was known for being ineffectual."

"Then we start with Frey," Fenris pointed out, his voice taken on a deadly tone. "What was it you told me before we left Starkhaven? The best way to kill a dragon is to go after its heart and not its tail?"

Aedan gave Fenris a wicked grin. "I've always liked you, Fen. You're good people."

As Fenris gave him a small smile back, he left himself lighten for the first time in weeks. There was still hope. He lightly ran his fingers over the beaded hair tie wrapped around his wrist.

In the end, hope was all they had.


Fenris and Aedan were fighters. They didn't do subtlety. The two guards that stood in front of Frey's study were sprawled unconscious on the floor, knocked out with a few solid punches from Aedan. The commander cracked his knuckles when they found that the door was locked. He lifted a booted foot and kicked at the wood, splintering the door frame and tearing it off its hinges.

"Old place," Aedan explained as he walked in. "I don't think Frey ever expected anyone to just barge in."

The walls in the room were lined with tall bookshelves that reached the ceiling. Fenris trailed a finger over the dust heavily coating the books. "I don't think he reads much."

"Not much need to." Aedan was riffling through the drawers of the massive desk that sat in the middle of the room. "Although I'm thinking that might be a mistake. We only know so much about the darkspawn." He gave a triumphant cry as a lock he had been trying to pry open broke free. "Zev's right, he is rubbing off on me." He pulled out a pile of papers and split them in half.

Fenris picked up a missive and scanned the contents before moving on to another. He still read slowly, but thanks to the efforts of Anders and Hawke, he was competent at it now. Some of the letters he couldn't make out, the lines were too scrawled or cramped for what literacy he had. These he set on the pile Aedan was going through.

"This is interesting," Aedan said. "It says here that Ansburg hasn't been the only one to request for help from Weisshaupt. The two outposts in Orlais asked several years ago for reinforcements. A blood mage made it into the ranks and tried to take them down from the inside." He reached for another. "And now this one says they no longer need help, but that Tevinter is up to something and to keep a sharp eye out."

"I'm surprised they warned him since he ignored their initial letter." The letters Fenris was looking at were nothing more than memos that had been sent to Frey from various wardens in the fortress.

"I'm not. Orlesians might be pompous assholes, but they at least remember their manners from time to time."

Something caught Fenris' eye and he went back to an earlier missive he had discarded. "I was led to believe that the wardens no longer had griffons."

"All died out." Aedan looked up sharply. "Why?"

"Because, someone told Frey that, 'the griffon has been fed, per your instructions.' And in this one," Fenris picked up the other letter. "The writer asks if they should be concern that the griffon seems to move of its own will."

Both Aedan and Fenris rolled their eyes towards the ceiling. "Shit," Aedan muttered. "What's up there?"


Anders was the third person to realize that something was wrong.

He was in the middle of talking to Frey when he suddenly faltered. His fork clattered onto his plate and he sucked in a shocked breath.

What was he doing?

Guilt and anguish swamped him and he bit back a cry of pain. The things he had done to Fenris… He had ignored his lover at best, or treated him like a dog at worse. Fenris was suffering, and for what? For Anders' ambition? Was being king worth losing Fenris? Because that's exactly what was happening.

And him… king? Why would he ever agree to it? No one would accept him. It would cause war. He had seen what had happened to Aedan when he had first become arl. Aedan had been raised a noble, and he still had made so many mistakes. Those mistakes had cost lives.

Anders didn't kid himself. He knew how he was. He might have grown up enough to work with Wynne on circle reform, but he was no king. Blood did not make one a ruler, despite what people thought. It took more than that, and Anders didn't have the disposition for it.

He used to run a free clinic in Darktown for Maker's sake. Organizing a group of mages in Kirkwall to start a rebellion was one thing, listening to nobles gripe about taxes was quite another.

They would make him marry, Fenris was right. They would make him marry some woman he had never met, or worse yet, someone he had—like Hawke.

Panic clawed at Anders and he felt like he was choking on it. Dimly he was aware that Frey was asking him if he was all right. Andraste's knickerweasels, what had he gotten himself into? What had he done?

This wasn't like him.

But as soon as the realization had set in, it was gone again. Anders blinked and a tankard was pressed into his hand. He took a deep, fortifying drink at Frey's urging. "There you go. Boar didn't agree with you?"

Anders blinked again and shook his head. "Yes, that must have been it. I feel… strange." He glanced on the other side of Frey to see that Aedan was gone. That was just as well. Aedan thought that Anders didn't know what he was doing, but the man underestimated him. He wanted to use Anders for the same reason as Frey did—to further the wardens. It wasn't going to happen. Anders had his own agenda. He would create an Anderfels as a haven for mages. Where Tevinter went wrong, he would do it right. Let the Chantry come if they must, the Anders were fearsome warriors and have withstood onslaughts from Tevinter and the darkspawn for centuries.

The only thing stopping him was Fenris. His lover had made his feelings clear in the past. Mages should not have the freedom that Tevinter granted them. Once he realized what Anders was up to, he would try to prevent it from happening.

Anders wasn't about to let him do that.

He would show them why mages were feared.


"And you never noticed anything amiss when you were here before?" Fenris asked. He and Aedan had stopped by their rooms to gather their armor and weapons, and were now making their way to the abandoned griffon aeries.

"What was I to see? That the First Warden was a fool with too much power? I saw that easily enough. But I never felt anything like what we've been experiencing." No one stopped them as they strode through the fortress and up spiraling stairs. It was as if Weisshaupt did not see them as a threat, and it rankled.

That was until Aedan abruptly stopped and Fenris almost ran into his back. "Maker…"

Aedan had led them to a less used portion of Weisshaupt. He had seen the aeries once before, many years ago, and still recalled the way. The stones here were older than other parts of the fortress. Some of them had been worn smooth from centuries of wear, while others were chipped and cracked. Snow blew in from arrow slits that no one had ever bothered to cover, piling drifts on some of the steps.

In the middle of the spiraling stairs they were climbing was a tear in the Veil.

It was a tangible thing. Where the stairs moved upwards, a second set was superimposed. It was disorienting to stare at it for too long, and Fenris jerked his eyes away. "I think we have our answer."

"Or a part of it, at least," Aedan agreed. "Shit, I hate the Fade. It takes everything inside you and brings it out, the good and the bad. It twists what…" He trailed of and Fenris finished for him.

"…what you are. It's your every dream and every nightmare." They both looked at each other in silence.

"We haven't been in the Fade this whole time, have we?" Aedan asked carefully.

Fenris shook his head. That was one thing he was sure of. "No. If I was in the Fade outside of dreaming, Justice would have come for me by now. But," he added. "That doesn't mean that something didn't come here."

"The Baroness," Aedan suddenly snarled. "Many years ago I fought a pride demon that came through a tear in the Veil. I killed it, but it managed to manifest itself without possessing a body."

"I didn't think that was possible." Fenris took a step back from the tear.

Aedan's face was grim. "It is. We have to find whatever came through." He pressed his back to the wall and slid along it to move around the tear. Fenris followed suit. He could feel it now, the slight pull the tear had on his brands. At one point they lit up when his foot slipped in a patch of snow and he came close to falling in. Aedan's quick hand on the back of his armor saved him.

Once around it they ran up the stairs, their weapons drawn. At the top, two wardens stood by a door. They looked startled when Aedan approached and drew their own weapons. It was hard going for Fenris in such close quarters,-his massive sword could be a determent at times- but they dispatched the two of them quickly.

Aedan flicked the blood off his sword, and he reached for the latch. It was unlocked, as if no one had ever expected someone would come. Aedan flung open the door and rushed inside with a cry, his shield held out in front of him.

The aerie had a large opening in the roof to allow the massive griffons to easily fly through. Like the stairs, snow had piled up in the center of the room. Large alcoves that had once housed the griffons ran along the wall of the circular room.

"Maker, preserve us," Aedan cried. His shield and sword clanged when he dropped them to race across the room.

Chained upright with a filthy blanket draped across his nude body, was Zevran. The assassin's eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. Fenris could see that his right leg was broken. His face was swollen and bruised, and oozing cuts marred his chest.

"Aedan…" Fenris called.

But Aedan ignored him. He was pulling at the pins that held Zevran's manacles closed. "Wake up, Zev. Wake up."

"Aedan!" Fenris shouted this time. Zevran dropped into Aedan's arms and the commander took them both to the ground.

Aedan's hands moved over Zevran's body. "Come on, wake up, Zev. Shit. Shit. Wake up."

Even if Aedan wasn't listening to him, Fenris had to be the one to state the obvious. "If that's Zevran, then who's in the dining hall?" Everything was falling into place for him, and he couldn't stop the torrent of words. "Why didn't we see it?"

Why hadn't Fenris seen it? From the beginning, Zevran had been whispering in Fenris' ear. He's the one that had led Fenris to the painting of the last king. He's the one that had told Fenris that Anders would no longer need him.

All his doubts had stemmed from the things Zevran had said to him.

The doubts had already been there, but Zevran had been the catalyst that had caused those seeds to bloom into thorny branches.