The manifestation of Duncan's tent was consumed entirely by fire: the flames were olive green, and black at the centre. Only the frame of the tent was left intact, the poles warped like the bones of some ancient beast. It was no ordinary fire, but demon-breath: it gave off no smoke, but smelt like the cremation of something rotten. The construction of Ostagar around the tent was lazy and incomplete, the pillars were fixed at impossible angles and nothing was where it ought to be. A set of steps ended in an unimagined void, and the other Grey Warden tents were smudges against the stone.
Without waiting for Morrigan and the Circle instructor to emerge from the tower, Alistair hurled himself across the courtyard. He had neither weapon nor shield; he was clad only in the thin linen customarily worn beneath chainmail. Each step seemed to take him further away from his destination.
"Flora!"
The word was snatched from his mouth by the relentless Southron wind; the name of his sister-warden flung back and forth between the broken knuckles of the pillars.
Flora!
Flora!
Flora?
Then Alistair saw her: sitting on the flagstones with her back against a fragmenting wall. She was imprisoned by choice within a dome of barely-visible light. Her shoulders were hunched to her ears and her face was angled down: staring at the muddy tile between her knees. A figure was attacking her shield with feral viciousness; claw hammer in one hand and dagger in the other. The assault was continuous and the foe apparently tireless: a thunderous cascade of blows rained down on the diaphanous barrier. Despite Flora's inattention, the shield yielded not a hair's breadth to the brutal attack.
"Flora!" Alistair bellowed, a rogue wave of relief crashing over him.
Flora startled and looked towards him, as did her assailant; the head snapping around with an audible crack.
Alistair felt the blood drain from his face. A clammy sense of dread settled over him like a shroud. At first glance, the creature resembled a Darkspawn: the skin was a mottled grey and spidered with dark veins, the eyes hollow pits and the mouth a maw. Then he saw the fleshy wounds that covered the limbs and abdomen, each one shaped in a ragged half-moon. Exposed bone glinted white at the creature's joints; and half of the neck was missing. Entrails hung loose like a bloody banner. No weapon could have caused such ragged wounds: the mutilation had been inflicted by teeth. Most horrifying of all was the gold loop that ran through the creature's remaining ear.
Alistair found that he could do nothing but stand and stare; his legs no longer felt like his own. The half-eaten Warden-Commander took a limping step in his direction, struggling on the mangled stumps of feet. What remained of the face was contorted in malevolence.
As the demonic apparition turned its attention to her brother-warden, Flora forced herself to her feet. She was not injured, but there was a maelstrom of shame and nausea churning in her belly. The world tilted as she rose and for a moment she thought that she was going to be sick. Once she had realised that Duncan, his tent and their victory over the Darkspawn was nothing but demonic trickery; the fog obscuring her memory had blown clear, recent events growing sharper like sails through the mist.
The Circle fallen to maleficar.
The senior instructor who joined us on the apprentice floor.
The Templar seduced by visions.
The Templar losing his mind in the cage.
The sloth demon, sat like a great toad on the landing.
The half-eaten mockery of Duncan continued to lurch towards Alistair, a trail of bloodied footprints left in its wake.
Alistair, white with shock, made a valiant stand regardless. He reached reflexively for his sword and withdrew the broom he had used to sweep the hay from the stable floor. Despite this, he bellowed a taunt to the lurching creature; bashing a fist against the centre of his chest in physical challenge.
"Get over here!"
The second, unsaid part: 'away from her.'
In the background, Flora anchored her fingers in the gravel . The illusion of Ostagar was peeling like flaking paint: grey stone chipped away to reveal the lurid green of the raw Fade. Her shield dissolved and reformed itself around Alistair in a seamless curve of gold, hammered to translucent thinness. The Duncan creature lashed out with both rusted blades; the assault made naught but a terrible sound.
"Shit," Alistair said, staring aghast at the ravaged face, shreds of skin clinging to fractured bone. "Maker's Breath."
He heard the crackle of the arcane behind him - one of the mages was about to return the assault - and then there came a strange and eerie whistle. The Duncan monstrosity went absolutely still and then blinked out of existence; an empty silhouette of green flashing momentarily in its wake. It had been simply cut from existence: swift and exact as though performed with surgical scalpel.
Alistair glanced over his shoulder. Morrigan looked confused - in any other circumstance he would have relished her bewilderment - and Wynne gave a simple shake of the head: it was not me.
The ethereal general set out across the courtyard with a purposeful gait, passing through the empty air where the demon had disappeared without hesitation. It made no effort to explain how it had ended the creature with such completeness that not even a shadow of its existence was left. Only the briefest traces of Ostagar remained standing around them now: - a lone pillar rising from the rubble, a short flight of steps that led nowhere. Overhead, the ever-distant Black City hung within an olive green void; a smudge of darkness against the sky.
Flora felt her stomach sink as her general approached. She predicted that she was about to be on the receiving end of a long and disapproving lecture. In an attempt to delay, she swung guilty eyes towards a much more welcome sight: her brother-warden. Alistair had overcome his shock at seeing Duncan's reanimated carcass and was also headed towards her, his face brittle with dread.
Flora clambered to her feet, relief stealing her balance. A hand reached towards him, the fingers extending to grasp his.
"Alist- " she began, and then vanished with the rapidity of a candle extinguished.
Alistair came to an abrupt halt before the empty space where his sister-warden had been. Nothing remained except the rough-hewn olive rocks of the raw Fade: reminiscent of the more desolate parts of the mountainous Anderfels.
The young man let out a fluid string of curses: anger and despair fuelling the tirade. Flora had been close enough to touch and then, once again, she had been cruelly snatched away.
"Did they teach you that sort of language at the monastery?" enquired Morrigan; though the words were scored with a nervous undercurrent. This was not the Fade that the witch had known nightly since childhood; this was a strange and alien landscape that paid no heed to her demands.
"Where is she?!" Alistair demanded of Flora's general, abandoning all deference to the elder spirit. "Where's she gone now?"
The spirit turned its age-changing face towards him; wrinkles flattening to youthful smoothness.
"I woke her," it replied: eyes a maelstrom of indescribable colour.
Alistair hesitated; unsure what this meant in such an unfamiliar context.
"You sent her back to the Circle?"
The clarification came from Wynne, the grey-haired instructor who had joined them on the apprentice floor.
The general inclined its head a fraction.
"The mage Irving wavers on the precipice between life and death. She must keep him tethered to mortality until your return."
Beneath them, barely noticeable at first, the ground had begun to shake. The air shimmered and twisted like an iridescent ribbon: a breeze turned in an impossible circle.
"What do you need us to do?"
The question, once again, came from Wynne. The senior mage had guessed that the spirit required their presence in some additional way: that they had been kept in the Fade for another purpose.
"Disperse Sloth," replied the general, hair now visibly greying at the temples. "'Kill', in your tongue. It has some measure of strength, but we shall protect you."
No further explanation was provided. Alistair remembered what his sister-warden had once said: my shield comes from my spirits.
Morrigan let out a growl: her cat-eyes turned the lurid green of grass by the verdant skies. The witch was bristling like a cat in an unknown territory, fingers skittering on her staff.
"And why can you not destroy this demon like you did the illusion?" she demanded, a fearful edge to the indignancy. "I know you have power. I… I can feel it. You could end such an enemy in a moment.."
The general turned its strange, opaque eyes on her.
"The minds of humans are as cobwebs in the Fade: fragile and easily torn. If you value your sanity, you would reconsider your suggestion."
Morrigan, belligerent: "Cobwebs are strong."
The spirit's lip curled in a sneer; it's stare unblinking.
"To a spider."
The senior enchanter, seeing Alistair lost for words and Morrigan bridling, stepped in.
"We are honoured to be of assistance," she said, speaking with a wary deference. "If we slay the Sloth demon, will you allow us to awaken?"
Wynne's caution was borne from decades of treading carefully around spirits: aware of their capriciousness and capacity for destruction. In her view, the fact that this spirit bore the guise of Valour did not mean that it's intentions were necessarily honourable.
The laurel on the general's breastplate budded and blossomed in the underwater light of the Fade. It gave a terse nod of confirmation, sightless eyes turning towards Wynne.
"Yes. You must continue."
Alistair's patience was unravelling like the fraying hem of his sister-warden's tunic. The more time he spent in the Fade, the less he understood it. He could not believe that this landscape of bleak and barbed rock was responsible for producing all that he had ever dreamed.
The inhabitants of the Fade were equally unfathomable. Flora's general was a figure that seemed to exist apart from time. It shifted in and out of being; youthful and then aged; ignoring half of their questions and producing only vague part-answers to the rest. What was certain was that it seemed to have an agenda of its own.
Yet to ruminate further over the spirit's motives was pointless. Alistair now wanted only one thing: to return to the waking world, where even a maleficar-infested Circle was preferable to the unchartable labyrinth of the Fade. His initial disorientation had boiled down to a single, sharp point of anger.
"Then take us to Sloth," he said softly, and with purpose. "We end this now."
Sight was the last sense to return. Flora felt the coarseness of well-trodden fabric against her cheek; and heard the writhe of flame within a nearby brazier. The acrid odour of the arcane hung in the air like the lingering scent of rain. She drew in a grounding breath, filling her lungs as though preparing to submerge herself. She then opened one tentative eye.
The circular landing appeared to be empty. It had an anticipatory stillness, as though waiting with baited breath for something to happen. A lone chair lay toppled and a tapestry had been torn from the wall. The tiles were marred by a dark stain that seemed more shadow than liquid; like the silhouette of something that could not be seen. On the far side of the landing, a short flight of steps led up to an unadorned set of double doors, a deceptively innocuous entrance to the Harrowing chamber.
There was no physical sign of the Sloth demon that had presided over the landing like a squat and bloated toad. The only tangible remnants of its presence was the foulness seeping into the stone.
Flora exhaled slowly, opening her second eye. The scope of her sight widened, revealing a mountain range of flesh and steel an arm's reach away. She recognised the impressive topography immediately; having only ever met one man with such length of limb and breadth of shoulder. The handsome face was at ease, a hand flung loose to the side: Alistair could have been deep in peaceful sleep. Several yards away, Morrigan and the senior instructor lay in similar condition.
Flora used her elbows to squirm herself across the tiles towards her brother-warden. To her breathless relief, Alistair seemed undamaged. Ironically, the richness of his complexion implied good health far more than her own blanched cheeks. Despite his intact state, he did not respond to her tentative - and then more vigorous - shaking of the shoulder.
He's in the Fade?
Yes.
He's with you?
A flicker of annoyance: We have not lost him.
Can't I come back? I want to help.
You spent your time here beguiled by an illusion. You contributed nothing.
Flora flinched. In hindsight, she could see the flaws in the conjured scene: the stripes on the Grey Warden's tunic had run to the side instead of lengthways, the bedding had been a different shade and fabric. Duncan's earring had hung from the wrong ear. The demon's trick now seemed obvious: she felt a hot, liquid embarrassment churn in her belly.
Ruminate over your foolishness later, came the irate instruction. The old man needs assistance.
Swallowing a lump of shame, Flora returned her attention to the motionless length of her brother-warden. Alistair was laid out near the base of a pillar, sprawled between the dark stain and where she had come to her senses. Flora realised that he had put himself between her and Sloth in a vain attempt to use his brawn as a shield.
Her heart felt as though fingers had reached around it and squeezed. She slid her hand gently over the crown of his head, flattening the tousled gold against her palm. Alistair made no sign that he felt her touch; his eyes were shut and mouth half-open. Flora leaned forward and put her ear beside his face, listening to the rhythm of his breath. Reassured by its steadiness she let her cheek rest against his for a long moment. Beneath the fresh growth of stubble, she could feel the hard bone of his jaw: angled so precisely that it could have been chiselled. She hoped that he might somehow feel the press of her cheek through the Veil.
He can't, retorted her general, snidely. Mawkish sentiment.
Flora returned upright, miserable. It did not seem right that Alistair was in the Fade and she in the waking world. Yet again, she berated herself for being so easily deceived by Sloth's illusion: but she had always been a little foolish in Duncan's presence. Her gaze wandered from Alistair, to the two prone mages nearby, and then back to her brother-warden.
I need to protect them. In case something comes.
Flora wished that she had not forgotten to bring her staff. The hairs on the backs of her arms were lifting: there was magic nearby.
You didn't "forget", retorted her general, acerbic as ever. You wilfully neglected to bring it.
Well, I didn't think I'd need it. I didn't know that a demon had taken this place over.
They'd never let a demon take over in Herring.
Nobody would want to take over Herring.
If there was ever a place to find a stray staff lying around, it would be the Circle. Unfortunately, the antechamber was void of everything except bare columns, sparse furniture and stern-eyed paintings. This was possibly a deliberate choice: not all mages went to their Harrowing peacefully.
Flora felt her general sigh; the lines framing his colourless eyes creasing.
Find something organic.
When she hesitated, it clarified: Wooden.
There was a broomstick propped against a pillar, abandoned by a Tranquil whom she hoped had found safety elsewhere. Flora scuttled across the chamber, her footsteps deafening in the silence. Retrieving the broomstick she returned to her unconscious companions, aware of the leaden thud of her heart. Her palm left a sweaty mark on the broom's handle.
I'm scared, she realised, glumly. I don't want to go into that room by myself.
Filaments of energy began to drift from beneath her fingernails like skeins of golden hair. The ever-present effervescence of magic danced through her veins: Compassion's gentle reminder that she was never alone.
Flora took a deep breath and unclasped her fingers. The broomstick flung itself into the air and snapped into place, quivering; as though tugged by magnetic force. Within the span of an eyeblink it had sprouted a web of tender vessels, the filaments twining into a familiar woven pattern. Flora's barrier billowed outwards like a net drawn through the water, her slumbering companions encased within. A pale wash of light fell over Alistair's peaceful face: it gilded him like a Tevinter statue.
Go to the old man before the last of his vitality is drained.
Flora hesitated a moment more, eyes lingering on her brother-warden's face. She then clambered to her feet and turned her attention to the door on the far side of the antechamber. The air hung in an expectant hush, the soft rustling sounds of her movements amplified. The door led to the Harrowing chamber: she had been there only once before.
The strange stillness made the hair on the back of her forearms rise. As she remembered, Kinloch Hold had never been silent: it housed several hundred mages and an equal number of Templars, plus an uncounted amount of mice. Each curved passageway rang with the echo of at least one set of footsteps at all times, the threads of simultaneous conversation wove together in a tapestry of murmured dialogue. Each stairway was in perpetual use; and every chamber had its discreet Tranquil in the background, broom or tray in hand. The Tower thrived on perpetual motion like an Orlesian clock.
Or it had done, once.
It was not the time for reminiscing: Flora gave herself a mental prod in the ribs.
If it's chaotic behind that door, she thought to herself grimly, eyeing on the short flight of steps. You'll be wishing you had the stillness back. And blood mages. What's behind the door?
As expected, there came no reply. Flora drew in an anchoring breath, feeling the press of lung against rib. She stole another glance over her shoulder towards her brother-warden and the two women: hesitating in the hope that at least one of them would stir.
Your companions are preoccupied, came the irritated reply. Go! There is another demon to be dealt with.
This comment only worsened Flora's mood. She had been expecting nothing from the Circle except a signature and a promise of aid, perhaps breakfast too. Instead it had supplied them with demons and maleficar: the usual order splintered into bloody chaos.
She ventured to the short flight of steps, slow as though she were wading through a reversing tide. Her body, reluctant to put itself in further danger, was fighting the instruction of her mind. The sound of her boots against the tiles was amplified by the curvature of the surrounding wall.
A pair of sconces flanked the entrance to the Harrowing chamber. The last time that Flora had seen them - immediately before her own Harrowing - they had writhed with conjured, iridescent flame. Now the torches were dull and lifeless, the top of the stairway shadowed. The door itself seemed innocuous enough: Flora pressed her ear to it and heard nothing except her own fretful breath. There was no keyhole or split in the wood where she could put her eye. The stillness and the silence made her nauseous: the air had a dull, cemetery taste, like ashes in her mouth.
The Templar said: the Tower is a tomb.
For a wild moment Flora wondered if she could manufacture a delay: at least until one of her companions awoke to join her. She very much did not want to enter the Harrowing chamber alone.
No more lingering, snapped her general, losing it's patience. Now.
AN: Thank fuck we're out of the Fade and I don't have to write in horrible italics anymore. Poor Flora has got a lot of redeeming herself to do: she's not exactly performed well so far. I thought this was a more realistic depiction of how her experience in the Fade could go. I also wanted to incorporate more interaction with Flora's general as opposed to the mouse thing, I do like Niall but I couldn't miss an opportunity to build up one of my characters!
I also wanted to convey Flora's fears more in this rewrite - in the original, she's reckless and bold because she has a shield; in this version, she's much more hesitant (I don't like to use the word cowardly in any context, I think fear is a totally rational and justified response to individual circumstance), because she has such little experience with her shield, she's not confident in it.
Can't wait to reunite Alistair and Flora again though, they've been apart for toooooo long!
