All was warm and soft, and Nike was both bathed in, and cradled by, golden light.
It was lifting her up, supporting her as gently as a cloud. Then, she was upon her feet.
The valley spread away silent and still in front of her. The boulders and rock scattered all over reminded her of the humped backs of grazing druffalo. The rainbow haze over the rumbling waterfall at the far end of the valley was vivid and bright.
Everything seemed, at first, as it had been; but two things were notably out of place.
The dead trees that had been littered around the boulders and rocks were all gone.
Past the mountaintops in the distance beyond the valley, she could see the soaring peaks of some great city, built out of obsidian marble.
A black city.
The Black City.
Though she was not Andrastian and no great follower of the Chant, enough myths and tales included the Black City that she had long known a singular fact about it; that the City itself was in the precise center of the Fade and equidistant from all locations.
As a result, no matter where one was in the Fade, one could see the Black City.
That she was seeing it now…
All of this happened in an instant, and the moment she realized this, horror thrilling through her, she seemed to be falling back into the golden mist. Only where that mist had previously seemed warm and light, now it was thick, shadowy, and agonizing.
Darkness chewed at her with sharp teeth. Pain pulsed and stabbed in her chest, her thoughts sluggish and confused. Vision came in thick flashes that wobbled, distorted, and sound was much the same.
She saw the churning hooves of horses, the flashing forms of fighting figures. Voices were shouting.
Then the dark.
She saw Holly's ragged face, saw it turn and behind it, the cutting swing of a blade. The mabari was snarling.
Then the dark.
She saw a flash of blue flame, heard a crack of lighting, smelled ozone. A singular raven feather fluttered lightly to the grass in front of her eyes.
Then the dark.
Pain tore the dark apart. Someone was pulling her. Each motion was a litany of agony. She tried to scream, but there was no air. There was only the thick taste of metal, filling her mouth and her throat and her lungs. Spilling hot, drowning her.
Then the dark.
"Nike? Nike?!"
Golden yellow eyes, reddened and wet. A turned head, the clatter of swords as soft as distant thunder. Then the eyes returned to hers.
The dark.
A pale arm, slathered with crimson. A hand holding a blade, tracing strange forms in the air; forms that ran red, the color spilling upward from the arm in leaks and drips. A choked sob.
Always, the dark again.
Then more pain. The dark flew back with the sound of tearing cloth. A hot sun, one with teeth, sat upon Nike's chest. As the dark darted off, its now ragged skirts billowing behind it, Nike could feel a hand pressing her shoulder down to the ground. Another was wrapped around that soft gray and white fletching, and as the arrow tore away out of her chest Nike tried to scream.
The sound did not come. Her throat was clogged with a hot river of lava, one that seemed to be flowing down into her lungs. As this river spilled back into the streams and tributaries in her body, air finally came rushing in. The pain was dying away, and with the air came a settling of the world, and a damp, ragged, aching gasp.
"Nike!"
It was Morrigan. Both of her hands were bloody, the right one soaked nearly to the elbow. She didn't look like herself. Her face was wet, her eyes large beneath wrinkled brows. Her voice choked in a way that made her sound very young and small, and when she put those hands on Nike's face, the motion was almost a grab.
The pain had gone. Clarity had returned, although some confusion lingered. Nike was lying on the ground, shielded on one side by a fallen tree. A large boulder rose up behind Morrigan, and as Morrigan reached for Nike's face, a form was rising up on top of this boulder.
It was a man, but not Alistair. He wore soft leathers and a cloak almost the same shade of gray as the rock he had just summitted. He lingered at the crest only a moment before he suddenly was air-born, dropping down toward Morrigan's back.
The shine of a blade was in his hand.
Nike did not think. Her mind was still mired in confusion, but her body felt hale and healthy again, and surged up without needing thought to drive it. Morrigan's dagger, also damp with blood, lay on the grass beside her and beside the arrow with the soft fletching. Her hand found the dagger and gripped it as her arm shoved Morrigan to the side and out of the way. Nike had barely made it into a crouch, her arms reaching upward as she caught the man and he bore her down again. The dagger in her hand flashed and bit into his neck. She did not feel his blade as it tore her sleeve and skidded lightly against her upper arm.
Heaving, she was now atop the man with him pinned beneath her. She tore Morrigan's dagger back out of his neck and a jetting glut of blood chased it and flashed over the grass. Gurgling, his hands groped to the wound even as Nike got to her feet and took a step back.
A breath later, and the man was consumed in roaring flames so intense Nike could literally see him dissolving into ash within it.
Then the flames were gone, almost as fast as they had come, and Nike turned. She and Morrigan stared at one another but before either could speak, Holly's distant cry of pain cut through the air, and Nike whirled.
Battle. She was still hearing battle. It sounded like it came from every direction. Gripping the dagger so tightly her fingers ached, Nike rushed out from behind the boulder.
Morrigan's staff lay on the grass not too far away, near a trampled and bloody patch. A scatter of Nike's arrows littered the ground, the quiver at her hip empty. There was no sign of Angry Horse or any of the other mounts, and no sign of Far Song.
Alistair, Wynne, Leliana, Shale; none of them were in sight, but Nike had heard the direction that Holly's cry had come from and it was that way that she ran. Morrigan was hard on her heels, drawing the staff into her hand as she passed with a quick flick of her fingers and not a single iota of speed lost.
Past half a dozen boulders, they ran. Nike leapt over two bodies without sparing a glance at them- their soft gray cloaks told her they were not her friends. Reaching the stream she charged through, sending sheets of water into the air. The bitterly cold water soaking into her trousers and filling her boots went unfelt.
Holly yelped again, then erupted into a snarling frenzy just beyond another large boulder. Here, the scrubby pines that clung to the cliffs had crept down onto level ground, forming a small copse. Between their trunks, she saw a flash of Holly's brown-red flanks.
The dog was alone as Nike ran in through the trees, but something was wrong. She was yanking and struggling, rearing and pawing at something, bloody teeth bared to the gums. As she hauled she yelped again.
"Holly!"
The mabari's struggles turned her, and Nike saw she was caught fast. Someone had gotten a rope around her neck in a slipknot, and had tied the other end to one of the trees. Holly, in her frenzy, was pulling it tighter as she fought with it, trying to chew through the thick cord to free herself.
Nike was still ten feet away and coming fast, when the rope parted with a flash of light and a thin whisp of smoke. Holly, having just thrown her weight back again, tumbled down over the ground.
At the same instant, Nike saw another form, almost invisible beside one of the trees.
It was an elf, a man. His blond hair was pulled back from his face, tied in place by braided lengths, and a cocky grin lifted one edge of his mouth at the same time he lifted a bow, arrow to string.
It was a trap, of course. This elf had lured the mabari into these trees- probably got her to chase him- and had snared her in the trap. He knew her cries and struggles would bring one of them running and he would then take them down clean. It was a good plan, but there was one large flaw in it that- given his grin- the elf had not yet realized.
Nike's flat out run slowed into an angry stride as Morrigan parted the rope and Holly went tumbling. Her eyes never left the elf's, and so she saw it the expression on his face change quite clearly when he tried to draw the arrow back to his ear to loose it at her- and couldn't.
A moment later, she was on him.
She had to give him credit, he recovered from his surprise quickly. Nike swung the dagger toward his face and the elf released the bow and got his hand up just in time to catch her wrist. He twisted his hand, the knife falling from her fingers just as Nike swung up her knee, aiming for his crotch.
She caught just the inside of his hip as he shifted his weight and reached for her throat. As his fingers landed, vines whipped out of nothing just behind him, binding his chest and legs and yanking him backward. Nike stumbled forward slightly as his hand was yanked back away from her throat. As he crashed into the tree behind him and became bound to its trunk in the vines, Nike snatched up the bow and arrow he had dropped, set the latter to the former's string, and drew it easily.
Only a pair of heartbeats had passed since she'd spotted Holly, and the elf man was helpless against the tree with her arrow drawn to full stretch only inches from the hollow of his throat.
Everything froze for a moment, the elf staring at her, before a slow grin appeared on his face.
"Ah, I see. It was a lovely bow. I thought it a crime to leave it just laying upon the ground. I should have checked it for runes. Foolish. I suppose I am at your mercy."
"Tell me who you are before you die," Nike said, her eyes almost as sharp as the tip of the arrow, a tip that was all but dripping venom. Poison was one that Nike hadn't thought to try with her arrows, before, but clearly it was an option. Holly was beside Nike's hip now, growing low at the elf, every muscle in her body tense.
"Of course," he said, his accent thickly Antivan, his eyes momentarily tracking the oozing venom as it gathered and slowly dripped. "My name is Zevran Arainai. Zev to my friends."
"Why did you attack us?"
"It is simple," he said, finally meeting her gaze. "We were hired to do so. You are the Warden Nike Cousland, are you not? I would express surprise that you are still alive considering I saw Telfe's arrow in your heart, but given that the ravishing lady just behind you is clearly a mage, I believe I have answered my own question."
"This Telfe is going to find out just how 'clearly a mage' I am," Morrigan said, her voice ice.
"Then it brings me no joy to tell you that you shall be robbed. Telfe is dead," the elf told her companionably. "The hound took out her throat shortly before it chased me in here."
"That is poor news for you, as well," Morrigan told him, and Nike saw a flash of light as the mage lifted a hand and conjured a fireball.
"No, not yet," Nike told her. "We need information."
"Yes, of course," Zevran said quickly. "An interrogation. I am happy to tell you anything you want to know."
"You are a bit too happy to do that for my liking," Nike said to him, tartly. "Why so cooperative?"
"You are a contract, nothing more," he said. "I see no reason not to tell you what you want to know, and selfishly I suppose, it may keep me alive for a short while longer."
"Do not count on it!" Morrigan said hotly, but she had let the fireball die.
"That is as may be, but I am hoping," he said, then looked into Nike's eyes. "I am completely at your mercy. I have no reason to lie, so ask me whatever you desire of me."
Nike slowly lowered the bow, finally glancing over at Morrigan. The mage woman looked incensed, poised on the balls of her feet. The blood on her arms was starting to tack and dry, but she gave it no notice. From there, her eyes turned toward Holly. The hound bore no obvious wounds that Nike could see, though her jowls and chest were soaked with saliva, foam still clinging to the edges of her lips.
"Holly, I don't hear any more fighting. Go see."
The mabari huffed, then turned and trotted away. The elf smiled.
"Well, she's admirably trained!" he said.
"She might end up being too 'admirably trained' for your liking, Zevran," Nike said. "If any of our companions are lost, I'll reward her letting me know by feeding her your testicles. She won't hesitate to comply."
He gave a nervous laugh and then swallowed.
"When you say 'we were hired to do so', who exactly is 'we' and who did the hiring?"
"'We' are the Antivan Crows," he said. "And certainly, you are aware that there is quite a bounty on your head, are you not? The one who engaged us was a Lord of some sort in the capital; tall and dark of hair, rather taciturn. The same that put said bounty on your head."
"Loghain," Nike said in a low voice.
"Yes, I believe that is what it was."
"You're unsure?"
"I was not involved in the negotiations; I am an assassin of the Antivan Crows. It is for others to accept and negotiate the contracts, I merely put in my bid and fulfil the terms of the contract for the buyer. We were brought here to kill any remaining Grey Wardens in Ferelden."
"Antivan Crows?"
"I'm surprised you have not heard much of the Crows out here," he said. "We're rather infamous. We pride ourselves on always fulfilling our contracts, though I suppose that this is going to be a bit of a mark against us!"
He laughed again, and when Nike didn't so much as smile, cleared his throat. "Yes, well, I suppose you do not see the humor from your position. I quite understand. At any rate, I was merely contracted to perform a service."
"And now that you have failed?"
"Well, that is between Loghain and the Crows," he said. "And I suppose the Crows and myself. It is possible they will continue to send assassins after you. They do not like leaving jobs undone. It is bad form."
"How much did Loghain give you to do this?" Nike demanded.
"Me? Nothing," he said. "The Crows were paid, probably quite handsomely. We are very good at what we do, and as such do not come cheap."
Nike made a scoffing sound, and Zevran laughed again. "Yes, I see how the current situation could cast a shadow on that claim, but usually it is true. And to be fair, we did get you through the heart, before our…missteps."
Nike lifted a hand and almost unconsciously touched her chest, realizing there was a hole not only torn in her shirt, the leather vest she usually wore over it was hanging unlaced and open. Surely, he could not be telling the truth about that- could he?
"Laugh again and I shall remove your tongue," Morrigan said furiously. Zevran looked at her a little nervously, then turned his eyes back to Nike.
"Please, I mean no disrespect. I'm afraid I'm rather light-hearted by nature, and especially so when I'm nervously picturing a bear-sized hound lunching upon my…well, treasured jewels as it were. I am cooperating and I mean you no ongoing harm. You have bested me. I understand the ire; I cannot say I would not react the same if the situation were reversed!"
He looked back at Morrigan. "I am humbled, I swear it on those self-same jewels. How can I reassure you that I pose no continuing threat to your lady love?"