Of all the monsters that go bump in the night, I am one of them.

Clever girl she whispered. I could hear the fading calls from the Templar down the hall. I continued to seep into the shadows, merging with them until I became an invisible monster sliding against the stone walls. I could hear my own breathing, and as I crept deeper into the mouth of darkness, her voice became clearer, more distinct. Less of a faded, slight insanity and more of an elaborate annoyance.

Clever, Brilliant Isthalla.

I continued down the hallway, trying to bury the voice back away into my subconscious where it wouldn't distract me. It was giving me a headache. I didn't care where or who it was coming from; maybe some incantation I'd been rigged with as a joke by some of my former bunkmates. Perhaps a result of the lyrium, I didn't know. I just wanted it to leave.

"Go away," I mumbled when the whispering coos and chuckles became too much. I swatted my hand in front of my face, as if I expected my newfound imaginary cling-on to go away like a mosquito. At least they were less annoying.

"Is that all you ever have to say to me?" a male voice hissed back from an open doorway. I jumped a good foot away and immediately held out my lit wand to find a rather startled Jowan trying to blink away the heavy glow. My surprise instantly turned into irritation as I sent him a nasty glare.

"Jowan!" I snapped under my breath, "Stop doing that!" I dragged him by the arm back into the library where he'd so easily conjured himself from. He chuckled and wriggled out of my grasp, turning around.

"What? Did I scare you?" he mused while raising an eyebrow.

Isthalla… Isthallaaa…

I took a sharp breath in and turned around in a circle while holding out the glowing end of the wand. Where the hell was she? This was beginning to make my skin crawl.

"Isthalla?" I jerked back around and stared at Jowan wide-eyed. My name, spoken so many times. This had to be a joke, it had to be. That or I was losing my mind.

Isthallllaaa…

She was singing now, and despite how that would have otherwise been a simple irritation to me any other day (and during the day, not night), it crept under my skin and crawled there until I felt a chill run through me. Something so.. Utterly unnerving about her voice that drove a stake of fear into my heart. I was turning around in circles when I felt a cold hand clamp on my arm, and gasped before jumping around.

"Isthalla," Jowan repeated, this time firmer. I fell short when I saw his worried face staring back at me and brow creased together. "Isthalla, what's wrong?" I felt dizzy.

"I-I dunno," I breathed out. It felt as if the wind had been knocked out of my lungs. I took a deep, heavy inhale and placed a hand to my chest. My air felt restricted. Why couldn't I breathe? "I-"

Isthallllllaaaaaa…

She laughed this time, again it was like a distant echo from a chamber somewhere in the confines of my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut and shifted my shaking hand over my forehead. A cold sweat dampened my skin. I heard laughter. Two voices.

Make them dance, Isthalla…

"Isthalla!" was the last shout I heard before a weakness took over me like a wave and I crashed, deep into the darkness and the sound of her voice, humming a soft tune in my head.

"Dear Isthalla, how are we today?" Creviced hands shaping around mine, around small, innocent hands as we shaped it. A glow formed, red and sparkling and beautiful, then grew into an elaborate shape threaded between our fingers. Her chin rested on the nook of my small shoulder. I could feel her laugh lines as she stretched a wide smile across her lips.

"Isthalla, it is lovely," she murmured into my hair. Soft, sweet, melodic voice. Like satin. Like poison. My head tilted back as I offered a child's smile back at her with awkward, big teeth and bright eyes. She was everything lovely, with hair dark as coal and eyes like fire. Another perfected grin slipped across her red lips, and she tilted my head back to our hands and cooed to me in her melodic Antivan accent.

"Now focus, focus. To control you must overcome and let go," she whispered. "Confide in your ability to control what is around you. This will hurt a little."

A small, harmless silver knife. It fit so perfectly into my palm. The silver glinted off from the shafted light coming in through the thatched wooden roof, then it turned crimson. A sharp pain. Her hands moved to hold out to the small pair of birds shuffling about on the floor with broken wings.

Why are your wings broken. Why did you break them?

"Now," she said. Fear. Heat. Terror. Anger. "Make them dance, Isthalla. Make them dance."

I reached down to find my hands soaked in red.

"Is she going to be all right?"

"I have done what I can for her, all that remains is her own strength. You knew the consequences to this, Irving." Clarity. Voices.

I kept my eyes closed to listen in to the conversation, wondering if I was still asleep or in the waking world. My body felt too weak to move anyway. I heard a chair creak under the weight of a body sitting down to rest, followed by swift, quiet footsteps against a rug. A pause followed.

"I had lived under the illusion that perhaps what I'd done was enough. Sadly I wish the templar had not reported what she'd told him about her nightmare. It seems I will be the last one to deny the truth," Irving muttered. His voice sounded dry and weary. Aged beyond what I had heard before. Another pause, and I imagined Wynne placing a hand on his shoulder.

"It was the right thing to do. Perhaps not the happiest truth, but the truth nonetheless," Wynne offered. I heard a deep sigh from the First Enchanter, and another creak of the chair as he shifted in his seat.

"What would they have me do, Wynne?" Irving said, the strain and weakness leaking through his voice. Even to my blind eyes, I could see the worry. The frustration. The tension was beginning to build up in my chest like a spring, clawing at me to spring out of my bed and demand to know what they were talking about, and what was going on. I could feel my pulse beginning to pound against my ribs, and feared they could hear it as loudly as I did. I forced myself to remain motionless and listen. To listen and suffer through the torment was better than knowing nothing at all.

Wynne said nothing, giving me more reason to feel a tightening panic in my chest. I felt the beginnings of a nagging sensation something was terribly wrong. I was no longer safe in the walls of the tower. Irving spoke up and answered his own question after Wynne's silent response.

"They would order her Rite upon word… or death, I presume, as the alternative," he muttered. "I imagine she would find the second option more tolerable," he added. His voice was flat and heartless, musing upon the cold demeanor of the faceless "they" I knew to be templars.

"She's strong, Irving. Perhaps…" Wynne trailed off, but just as she was about to finish her sentence, I heard a loud door slam at the end of the hall that nearly ruptured me from my bed. My eyes instantly flew open to find Greagoir storming into the infirmary wing with two templars storming at his heels, all dressed up in their metal garb. Wynne and Irving must have been startled enough to not notice that I jumped, so I forced my eyes back shut to hang onto the secret conversations as long as I could.

"Do mind that you are in a hospital wing for the injured!" Wynne scolded.

"I mind that you still keep that abomination inside the walls of this tower!" Greagoir's voice boomed over them all, echoing off the hushed stone walls and probably out into the open hallway for all to hear. I heard uncomfortable shifts of suit armor behind him as a heavy silence followed his accusation.

"How could you-" I heard Wynne's snappy voice pipe up, then fall short as a soft pair of footsteps moved in front of her.

"Commander, I would prefer we speak about this in my office where our shouting is a bit more subtly made," Irving chose. Effectively neutral, as always. However, if I'd ever known the captain, I knew him as a very hot-headed, up-arse templar more than all of the tower templar boys combined.

"There is nothing to discuss! Either the Rite of Tranquility or put her to death; preferably the second! I will not have her endangering any more innocent lives at this tower!" he snarled.

"Perhaps you mean your templars then?" I heard a snide voice remark back. Wynne. More shuffling of footsteps. Tension.

"Yes, my templars!" he continued on in a shout. "My templars, as in one she nearly killed, the five it took to restrain her during her Harrowing, and another she could have easily killed in her sleep!" I felt a sharp pricking in my brain, itching at my fingertips to put the nastiest hex I could conjure on Greagoir's face right at that moment. I hated him. I felt an unexplainable anger rising that whispered to hurt him. Hate him. I hated him as much as he hated me, if not more. Right now, probably more.

"CAPTAIN!" Irving boomed. I jumped again, unaccustomed to the sound of Irving's anger. I'd never heard him shout. Never. Assuming it had been longer since Greagoir had too, the room fell silent for a moment to soak in the new grounds on which Irving stood.

"I remarkably ask, again, that you follow me to a private chamber so that we may discuss this elsewhere." The words were an order, no longer a command. I could not see their expressions nor gestures, but rather lay silently while awaiting for Greagoir to ignore Irving and continue on shouting until his head popped off. Silence followed, then the sound of shifting metal and footsteps as the room emptied and the air felt suddenly lighter. They left.

And I felt more confused and frightened than ever as I sat up alone in my bed and stared after the blank space where they had stood.

Before I even had the chance to let the shock absorb into my mind, the door crept back open and I saw a robed figure dart into the room. I sat up, rigid, in my bed and opened my eyes completely. My heart skipped a beat.

"Who's there?" I bellowed as loudly as I could. Fear betrayed my voice, shadowed over by the knowledge that I knew I was in no state to defend myself, should some ghoul or demon come to devour me in my weak state. I had nothing but my words, and what a lack of words I had come to on this day.

"Shhh!" a male voice hissed. "Do you want them to know I'm here?" My face lit up in an instant as I jumped to my feet to greet the man creeping around the bookcase to my bedside.

"Jowan!" I cried while burying myself into his arms. He shushed me again and quickly guided me back to my bedside, casting fearful eyes over his shoulder before kneeling next to me. His face looked breathless and panicked. His eyes were weary-he didn't look like he'd slept much. My smile quickly disappeared.

"Jowa-are you okay?" I asked. Suddenly it mattered that he looked at me that way; the same look everyone had given me, but made his important. His expression drove alarm into my heart and awakened me. I rested my hand on his face. I saw him visibly soften a bit at my touch-the romantic-then frown harder as he grabbed me by the arms.

"No, not really," he complained. "They've been keeping you locked up like some damned animal in here; won't let anyone see you! I had to sneak in, you know." He made a point to let me know he actually had to struggle to do something for once. I smiled and rested my forehead against his. I felt safe and warm; comforted, even, by the embrace. He ran a fond hand through my hair before gently moving me away again.

"Listen, I don't have much time before your new best friends come back," he started. I raised an unimpressed brow at his "clever" comment before letting him continue.

"I need to talk to you about something," he said. I frowned.

"What is it?" Answers, maybe? Something Jowan knew about that absolutely everyone else seemed to refuse to tell me-even Cullen? I leaned forward with keen interest and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Tell me now, Jowan-" He shook his head.

"No time," he rushed while looking over his shoulder. I followed his gaze, and heard the muffled sound of voices. Damn it all.

"Meet me tomorrow evening in the Chantry; after curfew," he said. My face instantly screwed up in confusion and ill memories of my last visit.

"I'd rather not-" I began, but he cut me off.

"Don't argue, just please trust me. Be there," were his last pleas before he placed a quick kiss on my hand and slipped around the bookcase just in time. I could hear the doors of the hospital wing groan open, followed by the sound of two templar boys' voices-neither which I recognized-as they trotted down the hallway amidst a very important conversation regarding the size of Sister Leah's bosom. I listened until their voices faded and they exited out the side door to the south of the Hospital Wing. Silence followed.

As my attention span came back down from a pitch of heightened awareness, I felt my body loosen again. No templars to distract me, no Irving or Greagoir, no Cullen, and especially no voices. At least not a terrible amount. I sunk back into my bed with grateful need, and shut the dead weight of my lids to slip into a much-needed comatose of sleep.