Of all the times I had vividly imagined my death, this was not remotely the scenario I had pictured. Paralyzed, helpless, I watched as their dark figures moved closer. It was as if the forest had swallowed up the sky - light shrouded by a shapeless dark that turned everything into shadows. I felt terrified, I felt like a lost child so suddenly and so violently I had no time to compensate my own emotions. Fear sickened my body like poison. This faceless monster in the shadows invoked more fear into my bones than any horrific nightmare I'd experienced in the past.
As my line of sight blurred I could see them approaching, with their wicked hands and black eyes hungry to devour us both. I could not scream out for help, I could not even will myself to move. Maker save me, this is where I would die. Pitiful, weak, and helpless. Lying here like a frightened child.
He's here…
Her voice was breathless, full of a fearful wonder I had never heard. I tried to will her to tell me, tried to speak - but it seemed even my mind was frozen in a state of shock. My skin burned. My body shook. My heart thrashed so wildly I feared it would break my ribs and tear through my chest.
Please, not like this… please.
In the dark of the forest I saw a figure emerge. Flashing, dark eyes and a smile beckoned me. A fringe of light caught his bare arm - dark, sun-beaten skin marred by tribal patterns that snaked up his arm. My body shifted in a sudden, revolting familiarity that sickened me to the point of physical nausea. My vision tremored and blurred out of focus. He was lifting me to my feet. I could feel the air being squeezed from my lungs, the life sucked from my body. I grew cold, empty. Frightened.
I felt no hate towards him, no unabashed revenge that I knew he deserved. Instead, foreign pain entered my chest as his face began to shape from the darkness. Ashen markings covered his jaw, and I could see where ash-and-mud covered fingers had so carefully touched his face. Four fingers across his mouth, a hand across his eyes, and two fingers to each side of his temple. His gaze gave the illusion of an empty pit, barely distinguished by the whites of his eyes. He smiled at me, and I felt my heart thunder in my throat even though he was trying to kill me.
I know you…
In a flash of movement, our connection broke when the sound of foreign voices entered. Light bloomed around me, and somehow the forest that had seemed so far away before came crashing back in a rush of sound and movement. My floating body hit the dirt with a solid thunk. A horse shrieked and thundered just past my head. Disoriented, I crawled to my feet and witnessed a flurry of bodies, both friend and foe, twisting around the new battlefield in a crescendo of sharp metal tangs and shouts.
A hand grabbed me before I was ready, and I nearly took his head off before I connected my gaze to Zevran's. He looked startled, and only took a moment to make sure I was awake before turning to stab one of the aggressors in the eye socket. I could not discern who was attacking, only a flurry of various bodies thrown against one another, punctuated by the sound of screaming horses. Sten must have returned. How did the others get here so fast?
My muddied thoughts instantly snapped back to the mage in the forest. I could hear his whisper above the roar of the fighting, no more than a murmur against the shell of my ear. Like a dream, he beckoned me forward. I felt powerless to disobey him, and took off into the forest against my better judgment, and against the alarmed shout from Zevran. I had to find him.
Like before, the forest closed in around me as if it were alive. Darkness turned my path into a fatal trap with every new step I made into unfamiliar underbrush. I did not stop running, and forced myself further despite the painful snags from the branches. I could hear a muddied voice calling behind me, but ignored their pleas. My spirit companion had fallen silent in wake of our similar urgency to find this mysterious man.
I could see his cloak tauntingly within my grasp. Never his face. Only a fringe smile or hand. I turned a corner and he was gone, leaving an opening in the forest where a weak glow of light pierced the canopy. He materialized like smoke in the center of the expanse, facing me. I stopped in my tracks and waited, my heart pounding and hands shaking. I was swelling with unfamiliar emotion, my entire body desperately pulling towards the hooded figure.
Behind me I could not discern the direction I had come from. No light other than the thin thread basking my cloaked assailant filled the forest. I had no idea what direction I'd entered from, or how to get back. I could not hear the roar of battle, not even a faint echo. The forest was silent as well.
When I looked back he was gone again, and the frantic need to keep him within my sights lit my chest in panic. A barely-there whisper escaped my lips, begging him to wait. I stumbled forward and ran blindly, desperate to find him. I ran until I couldn't breathe, and until my legs ached with exhaustion. I collapsed with a frustrated cry on a narrow game trail cutting through the trees, my arms shaking and sweat coating my body. I lifted my hands and looked at them, horrified to see blood pouring from my old scars - now as fresh as the day I cut them.
Isthalla…
My head whipped in the direction of the sound, and within ten feet stood the same hooded man, materialized from shadow. My hands shook, my vision blurred. He stood over me now, his hand raised above my head and a smile on his face. I did not feel threatened, yet I knew he intended to kill me. I sat, frozen in my wonder, as he reached out to touch my forehead.
An arrow interrupted our connection, narrowly missing his arm. He retracted his hand and hissed in the direction of the intruders, obscuring his features once more from me. He thrust his cloak around his shoulders and melted into the dark as a shadow. I reached out for him, but he turned to smoke before I could grasp his hand.
Furious for their interruption, I turned my wild eyes on the assailants - faceless bandits that had wandered into the forest after me. Rage consumed me like I'd never known. Hate boiled in my veins that they would destroy our moment, that precious connection my entire body ached for, so badly that I wanted to rip them to pieces. I knew him, somehow, I knew the cloaked man. I had to.
They stole him from us…
She reminded me of what the bastards had done. How dare they.
I didn't grant them the courtesy of my presence. The last and only thing the two bandits would remember were my blood-throttled eyes that burned with the inferno of their destruction. Raising my still-bleeding hands, I lifted them both into the air and tore their bodies limb from limb. They screamed like mad lambs, bled like stuck pigs.
They had stumbled so close one nearly tripped over me in pursuit, and in their unexpected death they had essentially burst upon contact as if I'd squeezed a ripe fruit. Blood sprayed across my face and body. It heated my bones like ember. I smiled, lifted their corpses, and twisted them in mid-air again until a pool of blood had formed at my feet and they hardly resembled anything human. I dropped their bodies as a carcass of flesh and bone on the ground, grotesquely mashed together in a faceless pile of what was once two unfortunate souls.
A third, perhaps a straggler, only just arrived on the scene after I'd dropped their corpses at my feet, invisible under tangles of underbrush. To his eyes I was nothing more than a injured, feeble elf lost in the forest, trapped helplessly on an empty trail. Perhaps fleeing.
"You there!" he shouted, starting towards me in a valiant pursuit. I did not turn. I did not run. Fury still boiled in my veins, and power thrilled my movement. He had barely come within grasping distance before I twisted my hand around and sliced his body into pieces with only a few, swift gestures. Hot blood soaked my feet, my face, my arms. It burned my skin like fire. I shuddered and felt the darkness recede. The forest was no longer quiet, no longer void of light as I had thought. Though my cloaked assailant was long gone, his presence remained. Sound filtered back in as I heard the faint hum of water in the distance, and ever closer the concerned calls of my companions.
I did not have time to compensate or cover up my actions. I stood there, dripping with blood, reeking of death, when Alistair and Sten appeared from behind the trees. Alistair, assuming the worst, bolted forward only to catch a snag in the underbrush and toppled face-first into the bushes. Sten was more aware of his surroundings, and picked his way carefully but quickly to the game trail and reached me first.
"Isthalla are y-" he paused, for the first time at a loss for words out of sheer confusion and alarm, as he took in my appearance. He looked at the mangled bodies at my feet, and crumpled his face. "Isthalla," he repeated, unperturbed. "Are you all right?" he asked me. He did not mean to imply if I was physically okay - he knew I was unscathed. My assailants were not so lucky. I had only just returned from whatever dark realm I'd lost myself in, and found it hard to discern the words spoken from so many mouths. Too much talking. Too many people.
Isthalla
Answer Me
Isthalla, my love..
My vision blurred again as I turned and found myself staring at Wynne. She was touching my face, and said something indiscernible to the others. Above the noise of muffled conversation I sensed something once more. Blood. Not mine, not the attackers. Someone else. Something else.
I pushed past the others after only realizing Morrigan was not amongst them. I knew that smell. I broke into a run before Sten could stop me, further into the forest to the other side. I weaved my way through the trees, jumping over obstacles, climbing my way through the bramble until I broke into a small clearing where Morrigan crouched over the body of her beloved wolf Luther. She was crying.
"Morrigan.." I whispered. She did not look up, intent on not letting me see her cry. She was still angry with me. For the moment, however, her grief of losing Luther was enough to keep her from abandoning his side in favor of chasing me away.
I could see Luther had been badly wounded. Blood poured from his side where a sword or arrows had undoubtedly pierced him. Morrigan tried to hold back her tears, but only broke further into a sob when Luther let out a pitiful whine. I knelt at her side and rested a shaking hand on his shuddering body. With the sight of our beloved wolf dying on the forest floor, my mind cleared. I sobered with realization, and shortly afterward grief. He felt cold, and his fur was matted with blood.
"He was only protecting me," Morrigan murmured. "I've never seen him so injured before - there were too many of them." I knew she spoke of the ambush. I had not been there. Guilt swelled in my chest. Morrigan glanced at me and suddenly stiffened in shock, her eyes wide.
"I-Isthalla," she whimpered, now aware of the blood coating my body. I reeked of it. It was already starting to tighten on my skin. I avoided her gaze and stared at Luther. He wouldn't survive, not with the best healing magic Wynne could offer. Morrigan knew.
"Morrigan, I'm so sorr-"
"Don't-" she spat, now recalling her reason for hostility towards me. "You've already done a fantastic job of disappearing when we need you the most, so why don't you make use of yourself and not come back next time?!" her anger, though quiet, pierced me with cold singularity. I knew she meant it. Looking at Luther, I saw him as our last thread of validity for friendship. He had been the blossom of our bond, and together we had helped nurse him back to health and care for him, though he had undoubtedly become Morrigan's in the end.
I never considered how much Morrigan cared about her wolf until I saw how she clung to him in camp the night of our return in the Brecilian Forest. Where I had become the absent abandonment, she had turned to her only source of comfort, Luther. And now I had robbed her again of something she cared about.
Ignoring her angry protests and questions of what I was doing, I reached down and touched my bare, bloodied hands to his wounds. Blood drew up around me in a swirl of glowing red. Morrigan, perplexed and frightened, fell back on the seat of her robes and stared as she watched me perform the dark ritual. In truth, I wasn't sure what I was doing. I followed my instincts, allowing the heat to exit my body and flow into Luther. If blood magic could control and take from another, then there was a way to take the pain away. There had to be.
Fire coursed through my veins, but I pushed on until I could hardly stand it. I could hear the others within shouting distance now. I had to hurry. If Wynne saw-
Old wounds began to tear open along my arms and hands. Morrigan, compelled by sudden alarm and aroused concern, tried to stop me. I used one hand to toss her back and keep her seated. Luther whined under my touch, but I did my best to soothe the beast and assure him he would be okay. As the spell reached it crescendo, the light drew away from the surrounding area Luther and I inhabited. The sky grew dark again, and the trees pressed in around me. A great pressure drew from the ground and threatened to pull me beneath. I could hear their whispers.
Blood in the wound
Taste of flesh, so sweet
Black and blue, red and crimson…
Give us your heart
GIVE IT TO US!
Then, with a gasp and white, searing pain through my body, the wounds sealed on Luther and I fell back just as Zevran burst through the trees. My head was still swimming when he stepped into the forbidden circle where Morrigan, Luther and I sat. The ground was still shaking beneath me, the voices still taunting me. My spirit companion offered no idle consolation. She was silent.
Numbed by my experience, drained of my magic, I sat in perpetual silence despite Zevran knelt in front of me, shaking me in attempts to bring me back. I only wanted to rest, just for a little while. Let them worry, I didn't care. After all, it was my fault it had happened. Perhaps I should have died.
Perhaps I still should.
Who will save you now, my lost child?
Hands unclean, blood you can never wash away
You have given them invitation
Her dire warning did not console me, and nor did it stir me from my seat. Zevran stopped shaking me once he realized I was more than aware of myself. I felt cold, distant. Empty. I could still hear their voices scratching at the back of my mind, desperate to crawl into the confines of my body. I looked up into my fearless assassin's eyes and found fear - deep, rooted fear that realized he was not looking at his leader, nor his elven lover. I stared back with the empty void of a monster's gaze, unfeeling. Untouchable.
Still coursing with a fire that seared my bones, I stood to my feet and slowly walked back towards the road, suddenly intent to put as much distance between myself and that cursed forest. He remained there, even in spirit, but enough to keep my skin crawling and heart thundering in my throat. The cloaked man that felt so terribly familiar. I could hear his voice on my throat, his whispers snaking through my mind as I repeated the singular word he'd spoken. Like poison. Like sweet wine.
Isthalla…