Though the landscape around her still seemed confused, Nike's mind was as clear as it had ever been. It seemed the Dreamer had some way to help her keep her focus and memory, or else their very presence was causing it.

Nike was walking quickly, almost running, but her companion never seemed to fall behind her. Had she not been so intent on finding Alistair, Wynne, and Morrigan and getting them out of this place, she probably would have been an endless wellspring of questions, but as it was it didn't even occur to her to ask any of them.

She only slowed when the Dreamer put their hand on her arm. "Caution now. The realm of your desire demon begins just here. You must remember what I told Niall."

"What?" Nike asked.

"When all that is physical is gone, what is left is thought," they said.

She nodded, then started forward again, only to halt as she realized the Dreamer had made no move to follow. "You are not coming? Won't the demon enthrall me again without you there?"

"When all that is physical is gone," they said again, sounding somewhat amused. Then the form seemed to fold in on itself and in a single wink of light, was gone.

"Well that's bloody terrific!" Nike huffed, fingers gingerly touching her temple again. Blood was dripping rhythmically off her chin, and the pain was still there. After a moment, her expression cleared.

The Dreamer had left her, but she could focus and remember still. Why was that? Had they done something to change her? Was it something she was doing herself? Would it wear off?

That last one scared her. If her newfound lucidity abandoned her before she could get the others out, she'd be trapped again. This time she had no doubt she would remain trapped, until their bodies slowly withered away and died in that Tower room.

Or until the Templars purge the Tower and run us through where we lay.

On that note, she had no idea how long they'd been trapped here. It felt like she'd spent at least a couple of hours in the fake Highever before breaking free, and the walk to find the Dreamer had felt to last days. The trip back, as well…a day, easily? Several hours, at least.

They could be letting men in to purge the Tower right now, she thought, and that spurred her forward.

She knew she'd crossed into the demon's realm a few steps later, when the shifting landscape around her suddenly solidified and maintained itself no matter where she looked. Her thoughts and memories remained clear, and once she was certain she wasn't going to fall back into her dreamy oblivion, she picked up speed.

The path led down into a small clearing and the sight jolted her. A little hut lay below, a few scraggly chickens pecking dully at the dirt, an almost anemic little trail of smoke filtering up from the flue.

It was Flemeth's hut, in the Korcari Wilds.

Nike ran down to the door, and took the handle, ready to fling it open- but raised voices inside suddenly halted her.

"I will not!" Morrigan.

"You always were an ungrateful child!" Flemeth. "Of all I have given you-"

"You gave me nothing," Morrigan said, with a laugh that sounded somehow amused and furious at the same time. "Neither you nor that woman whose face you are wearing. You will let us leave right this minute! You have no hope to fool or enthrall me, demon."

Nike blinked. Morrigan knew that it was a desire demon, and not her mother?

Well, it made sense. Morrigan had said that her mother had trained her regarding demons well, that she knew how to protect herself from becoming an abomination. Apparently, that extended to becoming enthralled as well- but she was here. She was here, in the Fade, and not awake back in the Tower. Nike had seen her unconscious at the demon's feet.

If she could protect herself from being enthralled, how was it that she was here, and why did she stay?

And why, for that matter, was the demon using Flemeth to try and enthrall her? Morrigan couldn't stand her mother, and though Nike hardly knew everything about them and their relationship, she knew enough to fully agree with her regarding that animosity.

The desire demon had put Nike in the setting she most fervently desired to be in- back at home in Highever- and it had put on the faces that Nike had most desperately desired to be in her life. Fergus, her parents, little Oren, and-

She felt her cheeks and neck go hot, and shook her head slightly.

Putting Morrigan in a place she couldn't stand, with a person she couldn't stand, hardly seemed very seductive, did it? Why by the Maker had the desire demon put Nike into her own personal paradise but created this for Morrigan- her own personal hell?

Then something that had been said sunk in, and Nike's frown deepened.

"Why? Why do you treat me this way?" Flemeth said, her voice weak and puling. "I am your mother, I love you-"

Morrigan laughed again. "Now that is the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me! But it will not save you from my impatience. You will let us go right this instant, or I shall tear this silly little fantasy down around your ears."

"You're just upset," Flemeth said, cajoling. "If you'd only let me in your room I can help her, I can save her-"

Nike abandoned the door, hurrying around the side of the hut. Morrigan had said 'us', in the beginning.

You will let us leave.

Finding Morrigan's tiny window, Nike stared at it in frustration a moment. There was no way to open it, and the ragged little curtain had been pulled over it inside, blocking her view.

When all that is physical is gone…

"Only thought remains," she said softly. "That curtain's not drawn at all. There is no curtain."

Just that quickly, the curtain blocking her view vanished as if it had never been. Looking in the window, Nike could now see clearly into Morrigan's bedroom.

A form lay on Morrigan's bed, pale and bleeding from her head. She was sunken, white. She looked on the verge of death, the blood soaking the pillow.

It was Nike.

Her brows steeling, Nike now understood what was happening. The shock of mixed emotions struggled to sort itself out for a moment before she finally just snatched hold of one of them. She could examine the others later, but first they had to get out of here.

Gripping onto her anger, she started back toward the front door.

"When all that is physical is gone," she said, almost like a mantra, and her hand snatched out to catch Far Song as it appeared from nowhere, set with a nasty arrow positively bristling with barbs.

Reaching the front door again she lifted a foot and kicked it.

The real front door of Flemeth's hut was made of thick oak. Had Nike tried that in real life, she'd have broken her foot before so much as cracking the wood.

But this was not real life. This was the Fade, and there was nothing physical in the Fade.

The door exploded apart at the strike of her boot, the centuries' old thick oak shattering as if it were made of the most delicate porcelain. Both Morrigan and Flemeth gaped over at her in shock, and Nike let the barbed arrow fly.

It didn't so much strike Flemeth in the throat as skewer her, tearing through her flesh as easily as smoke. For a beat, it was the demon standing there, exposed and bare, clawed hands clutching at the arrow. Then, as the door had, the demon shattered and vanished into whisps of smoke.

"Morrigan, are you all right?"

Morrigan was staring at her as if she'd never seen another human face before, before she quickly started to reassemble her usual detached cool. "I-I…y-yes, yes of course. I am quite well. That silly little demon apparently thought I would be taken in by some sort of maternal affection. I-…Nike, you are bleeding."

"Yeah," Nike said, idly backhanding some of the blood on her cheek away. "I hit my head."

As she looked around the room, she did not miss the way that Morrigan's eyes darted over to her own bedroom door the moment she thought Nike was not actually looking.

"We need to find Wynne and Alistair, get them-" Nike said, but Morrigan shook her head, walking over.

"No need. If we get back to our bodies and kill the demon in the Waking Realms, it will release them and any of the others the demon has enthralled that still live."

"Then let's get back to our bodies," Nike said. "Do you know how to do that?"

Morrigan only reached her hand out in response, and Nike took it. Then-…

…-her head felt like it had been shattered and then poorly taped back together. The pulse of agony felt as if it would force her eyes out of her skull. In a weak haze of confusion, she moved a hand that weighed as much as an ogre, grimacing a little.

She was only vaguely aware of screaming voices, the rush of hot wind. Then Alistair's groggy and confused voice.

"Wh-wh…what happened?"

"It's all right. Just sit still a moment."

That voice was familiar too, but it took her a moment to place it. Wynne. It was Wynne.

Nike's fingers, which she hadn't managed to get all the way up to her head yet, weakly slipped into a puddle of warm and wet.

"Nike?"

Gentle hands on her arms, and she was shifted a little. A cool and soothing hand slid under her neck. She grimaced as the throb in her head broke with glass and began to ricochet wildly in her skull. The world swam and danced and refused to focus.

Remember. There was something she had to remember, but the pain!

"Physical…left is thought," she heard someone say in a weak voice, little more than a puff of air. She didn't realize she'd spoken it herself until Morrigan gently hushed her.

"You are safe," she said, then much more sharply. "Alistair. Alistair! Focus, we need-"

"Nike?" he asked. There was a rattle and a bump, and a blur in the rough shape of Alistair's face moved in next to the blur in the rough shape of Morrigan's.

"She is not going to be improved by you gawking at her!" Morrigan said tensely. "There was edevas in the-"

"No need," Wynne's voice joined theirs. "I have some lyrium."

A hand, just as cool as the one on her neck, pressed gently on Nike's forehead. Reality seemed to swim back again for a moment and she heard her own weak, broken voice whisper, "Mama?"

Then her body seemed to fill with a warm blue light, the throbbing pain darting away like a flock of startled birds. She blinked, then blinked again.

The pain was gone, as was the confusion. She found herself staring up at Morrigan, Wynne, and Alistair clustered over her. All around them, she could hear groaning voices and shifting bodies as the others that were stuck in the demon's thrall began to recover.

"What the bloody hell just happened?" It popped out of her mouth almost before she was aware of it, and the others shifted back as she sat up.

"You three were enthralled by a desire demon," Wynne told her. "You struck your head quite hard when you fell to the ground, but I have healed it."

Nike's hand went up to her temple. It was still wet with blood, her hair soaked and gnarled with it, but the pain was gone.

"Yes, I remember," she said. "The Dreamer…"

"The what?" Morrigan asked, at the same time Wynne's eyebrows lifted.

"What dreamer?" the older mage asked, but Nike's eyes had found something laying beyond them and she surged up to her feet.

Both Morrigan and Alistair tried instinctively to catch hold of her, but she pushed past with relatively little difficulty and hurried to one of the bodies littering the room that had not moved. Gently catching his shoulder she rolled him onto his side.

"Niall," she said sadly.

"You know him?" Wynne asked.

"He helped me," she said. "I couldn't have gotten away if it hadn't been for him."

"Gotten away?" Alistair asked with a dopey expression that seemed half-asleep still. "You mean away from the demon?"

"Yes," Nike said, then looked sharply at Wynne. "Wait, did you say that 'we three' were enthralled? Weren't you?"

"No," Wynne told her. "Morrigan woke up so fast that I barely had time to get in the door and cast a shield before she was incinerating that demon from the feet up."

Nike stared at her. "But…how is that possible? It was hours, at least-"

"No," Wynne said gently. "Time in the Fade does not pass the same as the Waking Realms. You were only unconscious a few seconds."

"What's…what's happening?" someone said thickly. Three or four of the others had woken, but the remainder remained as limp and still as Niall had done. Wynne glanced at them and then nodded at Nike.

"I sense you have quite a tale to tell, but first thing's first. We still have a Tower to reclaim before it is too late."

She stepped away to speak with the others who were waking, as Nike looked back down at Niall.

"Are you all right?" Alistair asked gently.

"I'm fine. I mean, I knew he was dead. He told me he was, but…I suppose seeing it just sort of drove it home. Wynne's right. We still have a lot of work to do and little time to do it in, if we want to save this Tower."

Alistair nodded, gripping her shoulder a moment before he went to help Wynne with the others. Nike straightened to her feet, then looked at Morrigan.

There were a thousand things she wanted to say, but she knew this wasn't the time or the place. Finally she just said, "Thank you. For killing the demon."

"Of course," Morrigan said with an almost surprised certainty, as if such a thing was so expected and mundane she could not fathom why someone would thank her for it.

Nike nodded, then started to step after Alistair and Wynne. She stopped as Morrigan cleared her throat a little, and looked back at her.

"Thank you, as well," the mage finally said. "For…for shooting her."

"Of course, Morrigan" Nike said, and gave her a smile she hoped wasn't as weak, weary, and confused as she felt. "Of course."