I remember waking to the sounds of my own, horrified screams of agony. Were they pain? I couldn't be sure. Only that, upon fully regaining consciousness into the world, I felt a great pressure on me, a straining I could not comprehend. I was writhing and twisting on my back as the pressure continued to shove me further into the cold stone floor. It constricted me.
I next remembered the screams fading once I became aware of their source. I quieted myself in an instant, still too dizzy and confused by the realization the noise had been coming from my lips and not another's. I was not in pain. Why was I screaming? The haze cleared as I recalled the chamber, and the sound of muttered voices and two men shouting at each other.
"We must stop her now! I can allow this no more, Irving!" Greagoir's familiar voice rung through my mind, muddled and far-off. I still had not the sense or strength to open my eyes, simply breath. Breath. I was still struggling, yet not sure why. Odd mutters and growls slipped from my lips. Then I heard Irving's voice, and I felt a great wave of calmness wash over me.
"Your impatience would have every apprentice dead before they had a ch-" Irving shot back, but fell suddenly short. The chamber silenced, as had I. Did they realize I had awoken? Why had I fallen asleep in the first place? My head rung with far-off, confusing voices that had seemed so clear moments ago. They were fading. I didn't want them to.
Please, please… please….
I finally forced my eyes open. It felt as if lead weights had been pressed to my lids, sealing them shut for an eternity. The movement felt painful-everything sore. Why did I feel so utterly exhausted? I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the top of a sword raised above my breast. My breath fell short.
"I-Isthall-la?" he choked out in a barely-audible whisper. I blinked, staring up into a pair of wide, terrified brown eyes hovering over me, encompassing a familiar face I remembered somewhere in the back of my mind. Familiar, yes. Cullen.. my mind whispered to me. I blinked again, still trying to understand why he would be holding a sword over me as if he actually expected to stab me with it. Seemed like such a silly thought.
What are you doing, Templar? I wanted to ask, but it came out as nothing more than a weak mutter. My voice had been torn from my throat, unable to properly voice my slight amusement and befuddlement why I was on the floor with Cullen hovering over me like a demented child. My eyes rolled about, too tired to continue looking, too weary to make the effort to strain to see everyone, but I wanted to.
"Maker's mercy…" I heard another voice sigh. My vision continued to blur, keeping me from pinpointing who had spoken. I wanted to stand up, wanted to pull the pressure from my body and ask why in the world everyone was looking so positively grave. Honestly, they acted as if they'd just witnessed a funeral by the heavy weight filling the air. It was all too uncomfortable for me.
"Let me up," I finally managed to hiss from a sore jaw. It felt as if my tongue had been swallowed, thick and clumsy thing it was. My lips, dried and stretched too many times across my face. Everything felt absolutely stiff and sore, torn and forced back into the socket. Had I gotten into a fight while I was asleep? No, that seemed just as silly and impossible.
Then why are you on the floor?
The Templars seemed reluctant to release me, but after a muttered, regretful order from Greagoir, I felt the pressure released from my extremities. I could move and breathe again, though I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to yet. Maker, it felt like an entire brick wall had fallen on me. For all my knowledge, there was a strong possibility one could have. I scrunched up my brow, then decided it was too much work to even try to scowl. I let out a weak sigh.
"Let me up.." I repeated even quieter than the first time. I didn't understand why I was so utterly exhausted; even my voice, my greatest weapon in times of battle where all else was gone, was too weak to even intimidate a small beetle. I wanted to frown in irritation, but found it too difficult to work up the energy. My world was spinning, falling, and slipping. I tottered to the side and fell against something cold and metal. "Let me up," I growled again, getting irritated by their incessant need to continue and ignore me. A voice murmured right beside my ear.
"You are standing, Isthalla," a worried voice told me. A familiar voice I couldn't place, and had forgotten again. It kept slipping away like sand from my fingers. What was it again? Something about red. Red. Red hair. Little child.
You are so childish, Templar.
"Cullen," I muttered. I liked the familiarity of the words, the security of being back in a place I remembered and knew. Anything but-wait, what was before? I could not remember. I only woke up, that's right. There was nothing before. Nothing before this, before the tower. I was here, and nothing else mattered. Nothing from before..
You don't remember me, do you?
The same, seething, female voice taunted my head, distant and unfamiliar. Yet I remembered it, I'd heard it… somewhere between when I last remembered being awake, standing at the pedestal, then waking up on the floor. I remembered it being somewhere between there, somewhere. Somewhere…. But where? I was too tired to try and think about it, I just wanted to rest for a while.
Somewhere between Cullen reminding me I was standing and waking up, back in my bed, I realized I must have fallen asleep again. I never remembered being so tired in my entire life. Though, when I finally did wake up under the sheets and comfort of my own bed, I felt as if I'd awoken from death itself. The soreness and weakness had left, to some degree, but I felt the mechanics to move my mouth and, well, to move again. Suddenly I had the desire to move as quickly as possible again, and get up. I was not a creature of patience, that was for certain. Something rigid and cold braced my shoulder and prevented me from getting up.
"Please, don't," the voice asked. I wanted to be irritable with it, but found it impossible. I remembered the voice now as belonging to a face I'd seen after waking up the first time. A terrified, absolutely rigid face that looked at me as if he expected the Fade itself to leap out and swallow him whole upon opening my eyes. I blinked and let the world blur back in, slowly drawing my gaze up the silver armor and to his face, no longer afraid. Simply exhausted. Worried.
"Why are you here?" I demanded once I'd remembered how to work my mouth. I needed to talk again, to speak and feel familiar in my own skin once more. The familiarity of snapping at Cullen seemed a good enough start. For one, he shouldn't be in my room. And another thing-
"Don't touch me," I added as an off-hand remark while pushing his hand of my shoulder. He did not protest, and let the hand drop limply back into his lap before sitting back in his chair. He was sitting at my bedside. I frowned.
"Are you all r-" he began to ask me, but I had no concern for his questions. I cut him off, feeling misplaced anger rise in my chest. Why did I feel so irritable? More than usual, anyway.
"I'm fine-you didn't answer my question, Templar," I snapped. He looked at me, a long, surprised moment like it wasn't an every-day occurrence to have me act so short with Templars, and finally blinked.
"I-" he stopped, screwing up his face in that faintly familiar, sickened look from the chamber. He tilted his head. "Isthalla, do you not remember?" he asked disbelievingly. I still did not understand why everyone was acting so bloody upset and frightened, carefully tiptoeing around conversations with me like I would explode at any moment. I would prefer them chastising me for disrespect than acting this pitiful. It irritated me to no end.
"Remember what?" I snapped, finding that fine line between patience and anger beginning to strain. I shrugged my shoulders in bafflement. "As far as I am concerned I woke up here, and I was supposed to go through with my Harrowing," I said irritably. Cullen's expression twisted even more, into an even more pitiful, ridiculous show of pain. He frowned.
"You.. did," he forced out after another too-long pause. I looked at him.
"What..?" I broke in, my voice edging on doubt for the first time. The irritability was now replaced by unsure curiosity. Sharp, white flashes suddenly obstructed my vision, causing a split second of pain. I stifled a groan and brought a hand to my head, trying to shut away whatever had hurt me. Cullen had his hand on my shoulder again.
"Please, you need rest, Isthalla," he urged, but once I'd regained myself I slapped his hand away and shifted more on the edge of the bed, further away from his urgent, invading hands.
"I need nothing except an explanation as to why I am here," I snapped while drawing my face up from my cradling palm and casting a fierce scowl in his direction. Cullen paused to consider my words, then finally sighed and shook his head. I did not know it was possible he could wrinkle his forehead any more than it already had, but he did.
"Isthalla, you were… screaming. The entire time," he stuttered out, "the moment you touched the lyrium you screamed and fell to the floor. It took all of us to hold you down." I felt a small jump in my chest as I briefly recalled some far-off, dream-like memory of the sound as I woke up. I remember hearing it as I awoke, just not the connection to it coming from my own lips. I frowned and stared, waiting for him to explain more as he put two fingers to the bridge of his nose and sighed.
"You nearly killed Ser Weston," he continued on, straining. I blinked. I could not comprehend what he meant. I had fallen asleep, or blacked out or something, but I knew that wasn't possible. He was lying, I didn't try to attack anyone. If I couldn't even remember something like that, it had to be impossible-it had to. I began to shake my head, disbelieving, but Cullen's grave expression did not falter.
"I thought I was going to have to kill you…" he whispered. I saw a remembered fear on his face as he privately recalled whatever memory he had of that moment, of the brief seconds where I foggily remembered him hovering above me with his sword poised in the air and terror streaking across his eyes. I tried to blink away odd voices whispering in the distant confines of my mind. Perhaps there were others in the dorm? I looked around, expecting to see someone, anyone, standing off to one side and muttering to themselves. The entire dorm had been cleared of anyone else. I frowned and turned back to Cullen.
"That's impossible. I don't remember any of that nonsense," I argued. Half-true… my subconscious whispered. I turned my eyes away from Cullen, not too keen on staring at that foolish, pitying expression any longer. I couldn't stand it.
"You're saying you don't remember a single bit of it?" he questioned after a silence. I looked up. "Nothing at all?" he eased. I felt the anger flare up again as I turned on him and suddenly stood to my feet in a fit of lost patience and built-up frustration.
"No!" I snarled. "I don't remember, Templar! Now I would appreciate if you took your interrogation elsewhere!" I hadn't meant to shout it so loudly, but the damage had been done when I heard my own voice echo through the entire chamber dorms and reverberate back to where I stood. I faltered on my snarl, suddenly impulsed to apologize to him.
"I am sorry," he said before I could remember how to work up the words. His face twisted into meekness as he stood to his feet and nodded before backing toward the door. "I will leave you to rest; Irving wishes to see you when you are ready," he added mutedly before turning to exit through the open doorway. I waited until the sound of his armored footsteps fading before daring let my posture and expression loosen. I sighed and slumped back down onto the bed.
"Go away, please," I groaned to the continuous invisible hammer pounding against my skull.
"Well if that's how you feel, then I shall leave," a voice piped up. I jerked my arm away from my eyes and turned to find Jowan standing over my bed with a small grin on his face. My heart jumped into my throat.
"Jowan!" I breathed a little too excitedly while standing to my feet to hug him. "Maker's breath, finally someone I don't want to strangle with my bare hands!" Jowan laughed and pulled me into his arms with comforting, familiar hands, just slightly pulling me off the floor before setting me back down. I let my hands slip to his chest and pulled back to study his face.
"You aren't going to interrogate me too, are you?" I asked, my gaze narrowing. He laughed again and took my hands in his.
"Not unless it leads to something other than a hex on my smallclothes," he joked. I raised a brow and smirked, lightly tapping him on the chest before turning to sit back on my bed and offer him a spot beside me.
"So!" he started up cheerily after a small pause. "How did it go?" I turned to find a bright, happy smile on his face. Not a care in the world, nothing pounding in the back of his skull. No voices whispering. No worries. I considered my possible answers, weighing which one seemed the most appropriate, and if it would be wise to keep it to myself what Cullen had told me. Though, by nightfall, I would not be surprised if the entire Circle had heard about it. Bloody Templars can't keep their traps shut.
"Well, I-" I paused, thinking back on the image of five Templars hovering above me with Cullen holding a sword over my head. I creased my forehead. "I dunno," I finished finally with a lame shrug. Jowan barked a laugh.
"Don't know? How could you not know?" he mused. I, however, didn't feel so light-hearted about it. The more I muttered the empty phrase I don't know, the less truth I felt in it. The strange, whispering voices kept fading and getting louder, like the ebb and flow of the lake tides. I felt that same exhaustion creeping back under my skin, nagging me that I was pushing more than I could offer. I shut my eyes and put a hand to my head.
"I just… don't know," I mumbled as the voices burst back in, loud and clear, for a split second and faded away. I could hear a little girl laughing, then a woman's voice scolding her to put something down. My head was being cleaved in two, I was sure of it.
"Weeellll," Jowan dragged on with a sigh. "If you say so, Isthalla. Whenever you remember, I better be the first to hear the entire story, though. Or I'll have to hex you myself," he added with a fond smile before placing a hand on my back and letting it slip away as he stood to his feet. I offered an unsure, brittle smile up at him once he'd stood.
"I promise," I nodded. This seemed to satisfy his curiosity long enough to will him back out the door, leaving me alone once again. I glanced around the room, wondering where my trunk had gone. They must have brought it to the Mages' dorm. Weird, I never thought the word would sound so foreign. My hands drifted across the worn bedding of my cot, then drifted up to the wooden framework, tracing over each familiar, aged line I remembered since a small child.
"I guess I should go see Irving, then," I sighed before pulling myself to my feet. My head spun, but I regained myself enough to stumble to the floor and remember how to walk straight. Perhaps there was a drunken-type of effect whenever someone used a lyrium potency that high in one dose. The idea that the Circle had to put you into a drunken coma to become a full mage was an amusing and comforting thought to entertain myself with as I made my way down the hallway, tracing familiar lines along the stone walls and over the Knight displays in the same fashion I had as a small child.
Little Isthalla.
Little, Little Isthalla.
Little, foolish Isthalla.