"Where are your friends now?" she asked. Her mocking laughter was more than I could bear. I grasped my head in my hands, searching for a meaning.. For an answer to this. Such destruction.

"W-Why?" I growled through clenched, angered teeth. I could feel the sting of tears still blurring my vision, hazing out the world in a fog of watery gray and smoke. I looked up to find her poised there, hovering above the ground a few inches with her long tail flicked out behind her.

"Such mortal questions, my love," she purred, a smile poising on her purple lips. Her black eyes were empty and void - a treacherous hole for any creature to look into. I tensed my brow together as I saw their faces reflected - each one, a sharp stake to my memory. A blinding pang of guilt and regret.

"Hush," she whispered, her clawed finger brushing the width of my face. I eased into her hand in a temporary blindness for comfort, then drew quickly away as I stood to my feet and forced the turmoil back down.

"I will not stay here," I snapped, feeling my fists tighten at my sides in determination. I would not just sit here in the Fade like some useless puppet, waiting as the rest of the world died. Her tinged, poisonous laughter abruptly turned my head, seeking atonement for her lack of mercy as I shot her a glare.

"They are gone," she grinned, her face changing once more to the familiar, white skin I remembered. Black raven hair tumbled down her back, and piercing yet warm amber eyes looked back at me. She was a breath's reach from my face; I could feel the heat of her lips next to my skin. "They are gone," she repeated into the width of my neck, solemn and quiet. "Let them go," she murmured, and what a sweet desire it was to remain. "Stay here with me," she whispered. I felt her hands on my neck now, clawing their way ever-so-lightly around my skin in a song of death. I leaned back, inviting it, wanting it.

Take me, kill me…

A great, erupting pain from my chest, and I gasped in a swooping breath. Life like I'd never known came rushing back in - waves of ice cold heat that stung my body like knives. I gasped until I choked on my breath, back arching and fingers numb as I dug them into the bed and returned to the conscious world. A painful, bleak, and dark world. My red eyes searched the ceiling as I tried my best to grasp the fleeting memory of her laughter, her touch, and her hair. Sweet poison.

Sweet, sweet Isthalla…

I am yours…

"I see that you are awake," she spoke, turning half-wild wolf eyes on me. I remembered those eyes, piercing and open looks that they were. She reminded me of an all too familiar forgotten dream that buried itself in the realm of my dreams, yet could not grasp. I brushed away the thoughts of sing-song fires and heathen dances under the moon.

Fire dances like the ashes of a dragon…

How she sings.

I groaned the second I registered my pain - a faintly and foggy pain - and crumpled over myself in the bed. My hands brushed against the bandaging, jolting my slightly-alarmed features down to my torso. I was used to the Tower, the tower with its teams of healing magi and infirmaries for even the slightest injuries. The Tower-Where-Nobody-Practiced-Shooting-Arrows kind. Arrows that had pierced me. Poisoned me, and almost murdered me.

Goodbye, sweet poison…

I shook her laughter away, turning my lopsided vision to the woman so scarcely dressed at my bedside. Her Witch-Wild eyes hunted me down across the room in the shady darkness of the fire. Milk-white skin blazed under the glow, and suddenly I wanted to be outside in the fresh air. It felt entirely too cramped in this shack and reeked of death.

"Let me up," I hissed through a sore jaw.

"Pay me no mind," she snapped, stepping out from the shadows and under the light of a candle by my bedside - or, technically her bedside. "We were only the ones that saved your lives."

I shot her a critical, calculating look before narrowing my eyes and sitting up fully in the bed, legs swinging over the sides. My lungs were still on fire.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled, forcing myself to my feet too quickly and finding myself swaying to the side. She barely steadied me with one absent gesture of a hand, then forcefully nudged me away. I grumbled a thank you before retrieving my clothes and, quickly dressing myself, hurried out the wooden door and into the bleary, gray light of midday in the wilds.

And there he was, looking as a lost puppy with tears stinging his eyes as ever and personified by the broken heart of a lonely survivor of war.

"Y-You're alive…"

The words were profound and painful, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to escape from that familiar sound of tragedy nipping at my heels.

Don't make me do this again..

I was running, not sure where. Somewhere. Anywhere but there, where words suffocated and crippled me with memory. With pain. With the guilt of knowing I had done nothing again to stop it. I couldn't see where I was going, and was stumbling and tripping over roots and branches alike until a tree caught my ankle and sent me crashing to the ground.

I shrieked in pain as my body crumpled into a heap on a bed of dead leaves and stale dirt. I laid there momentarily, sinking into my own skin, letting the weight push my body deep down into a darkness before crawling to all fours and sinking against the tree, huddled between its giant roots.

His face haunted my memory.

Scalded me.

Destroyed me.

He gave everything to save you, and you let him die.. I gripped my head with the force of regret, and felt a slow, stuttering sob of agony began to tear at my lips. You selfish, beastly, disgusting coward. He respected you. I could feel it beginning to rise in my chest; a great agony disrupting from the center of my heart, tearing down everything in its path. I swelled into my despair, and felt it erupt in a great, massive scream from my lips as I dug my nails into my skull and wept.

I have killed you.

I wept until the pain became too great. Knots formed in my chest, sharp and pricking, as I struggled for breath, aching for it with the neediness of a terrified child. I choked on another sob as I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut, wanting the weight of it to leave, if only for a second. I couldn't bear this, not this….

Why did you leave me to this?

Another wave overcame, this one now begging the question of grief and blame, as I curled into my arms and covered them over my head, trying to hide and protect myself. I rocked back and forth, trying to subside. Trying to crawl my way out of the desperate madness when a voice shattered the private walls that I had built around myself.

"Isthalla?" he asked me. Isthalla he asked, questioning me, looking at me like a lost puppy that needed answers. I had no answers! I had nothing now! I had-

"GET AWAY!" I shrieked, tearing to my feet in a fit of rage and horror that he would dare approach me. I couldn't stand the sight of him; a reeking reminder of my failure, my blame. My mouth contorted into a raging snarl as I raised my hands, preparing to strike.

Kill him..

And in an instant, I stopped, feeling her poison reaching down into the widths of my fingers. My hand retracted hesitantly, eyes lessening as the power faded from my hands and I witnessed the horror of my actions in the white of his eyes.

Please, Isthalla!

I had no recollection of the spell conjuring, only jumping to my feet. I retracted wounded, horrified arms to my chest as I witnessed the fear slowly leaving his eyes, but remaining long enough for me to witness the story beforehand. I had nearly killed him, and I'd had no control of it.

What have you done?

A well-remembered echo in my head from another man, another fearful shout that relented helpless hands to the heavens, begging my mercy that I would have not given. My eyes widened at the memory.

"No, no please, Isthalla! They'll hear you!" he begged, his eyes darting over my shoulder to the sound of a distant, vague shout.

"THEN LET THEM HEAR!" I roared. He froze, that look of inkling terror beginning to form in his eyes. I stood over him, both hands aglow now as my eyes turned into an empty, white void and I pointed a defensive hand at him. He recoiled and held up his hands, pleading.

"You don't understand, PLEASE!" A white void took over, and no longer did I feel a connection from my anger to the spell forming in my hands. Blind, enraged fury reddened my eyes.

"STEP BACK!" a templar called, but it was distant and vague. Muddied. My final thoughts came with his shout; the last sane memory before I fell into blackness and a familiar, silken laugh echoed in my subconscious.

He will never know..

"NO!"

I fell back on my heel, pressing my eyes shut in repression as my arms curled around my torso. Something painful swallowed in my throat, and a whispering breath later I forced my eyes back open and looked at him, pressing silent lips together and unguarded eyes drawn to his face. I forcefully narrowed my eyes in a last attempt of self-preservation when he looked up. An empty threat.

"…I thought you were going to smite me for a moment there." I caught the ends of his conversation, which had been entirely blank to my mind seconds before. I cleared my throat.

"One more 'mage' and I would have," I croaked, still not fully understanding my anger, "-human." The words were dull and empty on my lips, but had enough effect on him that he took a step back and frowned in easy recognition. The moment passed before he understood.

"Right, well," he picked up without a second's pause. "Remind me never to try and help again.." There was a blissful ignorance to his tone; something that I envied. So much death and destruction and yet he still managed to flip back onto the lighter sensations that so fleetingly escaped my grasp. Misery was my constant, and how I envied that of a child's bliss.

I was far too old now, far too..

"Well if we are done talking-" a third, female voice entered the conversation. Less unwanted than his but, still..

"I was not talking," I butted in, crossing my arms and shooting a hostile glare in her direction. She grinned amusedly.

"There were words coming out of your mouth, were there not?" she harmlessly tested in my direction. I met her gaze, briefly, lingering on the predatory smile in her wild eyes that I knew all too well. I frowned.

"Yes, but I was not talking," I ground out. She looked surprised, then - absorbing.

"I see," she said while ticking a brow. Her gaze turned to Alistair instead, newfound disgust forming on her features. "Mother would like to see you," she spoke over her shoulder, though still looking at Alistair.

"Me?" he asked stupidly. The dark-haired witch scoffed.

"Not you, imbecile. The mage," she snapped. I shouldered past her without another second's worth of patience.

"Isthalla," I muttered past while forcibly pushing Alistair out of my way and stalking a path back to the hut. I didn't care to stay and listen to their catty banter, which had already carried itself out seconds after I walked away.

"I am not stupid!"

"Is that so?"

"…Am I?"

"If one must ask…"