PART ONE: AFTER THE BLIGHT
Chapter One: The Dragon's Eye
The sons of dreams outlive the sons of seed (Mary Renault)
So this is what it is to fall from grace.
The Old God had once understood The Source. It had held it within itself, and even when debased and poisoned by taint had possessed a pale imitation of that state of grace. The Archdemon, after all, had been a being of one mind and many eyes, seeing all at once, processing it all, experiencing the many voices of the darkspawn. The shared consciousness had been a concert, an ebb and flow like water, a lull and thunder rising and falling as the droplets of taint concatenated the world.
Until now. The Old God who had once directed symphonies was blind. And deaf. For a brief, transient moment, RillianUrthemielTheArchitect had existed as a trinity. Now, only Rillian remained.
There was a bright place and many voices then I fell into darkness it was an anti-birth I came out to find I was dead.
I think Oghren was there. He was with me he was with me he was
I remember.
Grey stone. The flare of torches. Dwarven shouts. Orlesian voices. Pounding feet. Marching. My hands hurt the most. Burned like Rylock's. Sarela didn't say much. Sigrun said a lot. No trees. No sunlight. Just old stone. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
For a long time there was very little organized consciousness. Occasionally perception crystallized in a face she knew or words she understood, but for an immeasurable time there was only the loss of the Song, the ache of yearning and the listening for something that was like the sea's echo in a deep shell. But gradually - without any sense of how long she'd been gone - Rillian arrived at the sense of who and what she was. It was as if she had been coerced into identifying a corpse.
I had to ask what the month was, and the day. Ask the Senior Mage Warden who only came up to my chin. The woman was afraid of me. Her dark eyes were watching, watching, watching.
All you need to become terrifying to everyone is not to have died when you should have.
The blue emptiness of sky was vast, terrifying. The part of her that had been born into a taint-stinking, filth-drowning brood cringed away from it. The other parts: the dragon that had once soared across stars and darkness - the Alienage Elf who had dreamed of doing so - were liberated. But all the same Rillian sought solitude and darkness as soon as they arrived at Redcliffe. She asked Sandal to create a worktable and tools to her specifications and set up her laboratory in what had been the Arlessa's dungeon. A single cell. No windows. Claustrophobia hardly mattered, since now she contained infinite space. She could assimilate anything. The prison and its echoes of capture was only a little more fear. Fear wasn't much, now.
Rillian posted guards to keep intruders away, but they came anyway. Sigrun sank down upon the cold stone, knees drawn up to her chest and muscular arms wrapped around them.
"It's not as bad down here as everyone says," the little Duster remarked, "It only smells a little worse than Dust Town. But you haven't slept for days. And Alistair keeps trying to see you. Have a drop of Oghren's finest - have a wash - and put him out of his misery."
Rillian stood - an abrupt, jerky movement - and cocked her head. Images of Alistair were ephemeral flickers above a vast emptiness. Her memory of him was compressed now. It inhabited a much smaller version of herself: a child version. Around the child version of herself were the other memories, the other voices. She was afraid that speaking to Alistair would send the child out into these unknown spaces - afraid the mote known as Rillian would not find her way back. But she had to see him. There were things he should know.
She refused to leave her vials of blood and the creation she had designed from memory - the Architect's memory. She met Alistair in the stone corridor outside the cell.
"Rillian," he breathed softly.
She stood still, out of time. Six months ago they had sat together upon the highest peak of Temple Mountain and he had given her a rose. They had faced demons and Broodmothers and irate nobles together and stood shoulder to shoulder. They had shared laughter and tears and loss. She had sat with her head resting on his shoulder and known him to be her future: her husband, no matter what his family - or hers - had to say about it.
For a long time, they stood opposite each other without speaking.
"You look different," she said at last. It was true. He had been a boy when she had betrayed him at the Landsmeet. Now he was a man. A Warden. But he was exhausted. His broad, blunt hands, half-reaching towards her, shook. His gold-flecked hazel eyes were wide and shocked. They never left hers.
"You know everything," he said.
"Yes. Morrigan told me everything." Words sprang from her mouth independent of her volition. They had momentarily incandescent meaning, then were gone. She wondered if she would meet them out there in the new spaces around the old life. "Why did you do it, Alistair?"
"I don't know. She…she…"
"Oh not that, for the Maker's sake! You did that because you're stupid. Because you were angry with me and let the witch fry your brains. I'm not interested in why you…"
But it wasn't that easy. She had trusted him. Loved him. He had betrayed her. It astonished her - jumped out at her suddenly, even though she had thought she had done with it very soon after Morrigan had told her.
"I mean: how could you turn your back on everything we fought for? You must have known any child that carried Urthemiel's spirit could be tainted again. Another Blight in less than twenty years. Why did you do it?"
Nothing. Just the horror of his stillness. His mouth working futilely, hands clenched. "I was afraid," he said, "Afraid of losing you." A whisper. Rillian watched him cry, as she had watched her father cry. Different. Cyrion had been a man crying, every tear grudged. Alistair's tears were a physical mechanism to which he remained oblivious. It was surprising to her, the way his eyes kept releasing tears, yet him unaware and completely still. "I told the Wardens of Montsimmard - Riordan and Guillaume Caron - everything. There's a representative from Weisshaupt here too - the Senior Mage Warden. They wanted to know how you survived and I told them you'd done everything you should have done - that the guilt was mine."
Rillian laughed dryly. She heard the sounds come out of her mouth and felt exhausted. Alien noises. The worn currency she was forced to use instead of the brilliant, incandescent Song.
"You told them the wrong story. Morrigan never came with me to the Deep Roads. I sent her away as soon as she told me the truth. You're going to be the father of Empress Celene's heir."
The words hit him like knives. Rillian saw him flinch. He seemed to shrink, visibly, as they spoke. His arms hung dead at his sides; his palms turned towards her. She saw the dull incomprehension of a trapped animal staring through the eyes of a man.
"I…I don't understand. How…"
"I meant to die - I leapt down upon the dragon's back to take the final blow - and he stopped me."
"Who stopped you?"
"The Architect. A descendant of Wardens. He was everything he could and should have been. He made the Ultimate Sacrifice, not me. And I was given a choice - between dying and remembering things the way they were. Or living and having everything different. I'm different."
Staring down at the silver snail-trails that gilded the stone, she realized she was in pain. A great empty pain she had never prepared for over all the preceding weeks.
He was seeing her for the first time. The new face - the new mind behind it. Very slowly, he lifted his left hand - the hand scarred by her blow at the Landsmeet. He reached for her stiff, dead fingers. Whispered: "Rillian. Rillian."
"The Rillian you knew was a Warden. Physically, I'm not."
"It doesn't matter. It's still you."
"Yes. I'm going to do what four hundred years of Wardens have failed to do. I'm going to cure the taint. You're the Warden-Commander of Ferelden, now."
It solidified the silence between them. It solidified and expanded it until Rillian realized she had walked away from him, backwards, towards her cell.
The Old God saw it all. The dragon within me floated free, looked down upon the man and woman. Then, while the echo of Urthemiel hovered, unseen by mortals, something disturbing happened.
The god who had become a woman looked into the eyes of the woman who had become a god. The god reeled at the raw emotion in the woman, the desolation and abandonment. The god felt exposed, violated.
With dire determination, the god resumed his rightful primacy. The last mote of the weak, feeling woman's thinking must cease.
I meant what I said to Alistair. I knew I was close to a cure when I used my blood to delay infection in Loghain and Rylock. Now that the Architect's brooch has accelerated my Calling until the Archdemon's death burned it away, who knows what my blood can do?
It's time to go to work.
Jowan's face was white, pinched, when Rillian brought him to her laboratory. His hands shook like pale flying creatures, distorted by erratic tremors. His dark eyes were haunted.
Ser Otto took Rillian aside.
"Rillian, you can't ask him to do this," the Templar Warden said quietly, "Work within the same cell where the Arlessa had him tortured - and with blood. That's like asking a lyrium addict to work with lyrium but touch none of it."
I suppose you should know. Rillian bit down on the waspish words, eating them. For no-one else would she have bothered.
"Can no-one see how important this work is! Doesn't anyone understand? If we can find a cure for taint we can end the Blights. I'd say that's worth the price of one man's soul."
"Nothing is worth that price…" Ser Otto began - in the same moment that Jowan said, wearily:
"I guess you're right." The dark, darting eyes were wistful. "Still, it's my soul - and I'd grown almost fond of it."
"I know I'm right." Rillian held out a clean syringe and vial. "I want you to take a sample of my blood."
Rylock comes often, blatantly official. Her hawk eyes sweep over everything - watching for the slightest trace of Blood Magic. I know if she finds it she'll run me through without hesitation. I wonder why I do not mind.
Perhaps because Rylock and Loghain are the only other people I know who have sacrificed soul, sanctity and sanity to protect what needs protecting. Perhaps because Rillian and Rylock have been friends ever since Rylock came from Kirkwall on the trail of a cabal of Tevinter slavers. That's how we met. Rillian was fifteen then - a Docker who had poked her nose where she shouldn't have and followed a shipment of phylacteries to an abandoned warehouse. She told Ser Otto - he told Rylock - and Rylock led him and Ser Tavish in the assault on the coven. Rylock's burns and Ser Otto's blindness bought the Alienage a peace we had for five years…until Loghain let the slavers back in - through the front door this time.
Even Ser Otto has removed his Templar regalia in favour of plain tunic and trousers - but not Rylock. Never mind that full plate is not the kindest thing on bones knit together by Wynne's magic and her own willpower. The Hurlock General's Stonefist has left her with a limp, a useless right hand, and pain that chastens her day and night. I know it: the marks are stamped on her, though she never says a word. On bad days she sits, chalk-faced, lips pressed tightly together as if to bite back a cry. On good days I detect nothing beyond her hand pressed to her ribs when she thinks I'm not looking.
Next time I send to Sandal for supplies I'm going to do something about that.
Rylock doesn't like small, dark cells any more than Jowan does. Rillian once asked Wynne what she thought Aeonar had been like for her and she answered it was said to be - unpleasant. The small pause told more than the word. And Rylock and Jowan fear each other the way a fox fears a net - the way a man fears plague. Rylock fears the Blood Magic that once raped her of body and mind. Jowan fears the Rite of Tranquility that promises the same. They watch each other like cats for any sign of weakness. Both would rather die than show any. Rylock's courage doesn't surprise me. Jowan's does. Since Ser Otto adopted him as a younger brother he's changed. He's finally stopped running. It's a dark, grim, galling test of endurance. And they endure. Because of me. Because of what I must do.
Jowan's hands are steady as he guides the needle into my arm - draws the blood into a syringe - deposits it into a vial and seals it. His face holds a withdrawn expression, showing neither yearning nor fear.
"Now," I say to the three of them. "I have something to show you. Rylock: I need Jowan to cast a spell. No Blood Magic - just a light spell."
I carefully deposit a small amount of my blood onto a glass slide.
"Jowan - I need you to illuminate the sample."
Jowan's long, elegant fingers move in a graceful dance. Light blooms from them like a flower. Then it dances in the air behind him as if enjoying the game.
"I think it's afraid of the dark," Jowan says apologetically.
Ser Otto laughs - earning him identical disapproving looks from me and Rylock. Jowan shrugs whimsically and directs the light where I want it to go. With the sample lit, I talk them through the strange contraption on my desk.
"I call this…I mean - The Architect called this - a microscope. He learned the principle from First Enchanter Remille."
Rylock scowls. "Not the best recommendation. Are you sure this isn't Blood Magic, Rillian?"
"The study of blood is no more Blood Magic than the study of bones. Or plants. It's medicine, nothing more." I run my hand caressingly over the glittering, tubular stem, the arcs and curves, the space where the slide fits like a glove and the glass eye of the lens. Staring into it is like looking through the eye of an insect - or a dragon. My blood is magnified into droplets that resemble the flesh-bags who once worshipped me. I remember the rites…the chant…the blood taken and the power given in return…
IamRillianIamRillianIamRillian
… "Here, look," I tell Rylock. Rylock pales and I smother a smile. Raw courage is her life's blood - yet when confronted by this alien device she reacts exactly like the gawky child whom Mother Leanna used to exercise her whip hand. She rises slowly, tight-lipped. Stepping forward, she extends a slow, determined hand. The flesh around her mouth whitens. Sweat beads on her lip. But she stares downward, through the lens. Then straightens like a soldier.
"And now - for my next trick…" I reach for another vial upon the makeshift shelves and wave it about with a flourish. I remember Rillian used to do the same when performing. Once, she put on a play in the Alienage based on the story of Andraste and Shartan's rebellion. There was a bit where she stood upon a wooden contraption meant to be a horse, daring the Tevinter magisters to cross to the other side of the river Minanter: "If you want him…come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"
Concentrate asshole.
The new vial holds taint, black and poisonous. I place one drop beside my own red blood and wait to see what happens.
"See: no-one's yet made a microscope powerful enough to show the individual disease creatures. What we watch for is their effect - on healthy tissue. Or…the effect of healthy tissue on taint. Look here: this is the holiest thing you'll ever see."
Rylock obeys - and gasps as she watches my own blood not only resist the taint - but assimilate it.
"You've found the cure!"
I stare at her - and realize for the first time that Rylock is far more intelligent than I've given her credit for. Wynne likes to irritate Rylock by telling her that mages know everything and are allowed to do nothing, while Templars do everything and are allowed to know nothing. But in Rylock's case the spirit crushed beneath the doctrine still manages to find expression: as courage, as dead-pan sarcasm, as the clear, cold arguments that come from conviction not by rote.
"It's not that simple," I tell them. "Yes, my blood can resist taint - but I don't know what would happen if I gave it to someone untainted. For all I know, I could be equally infectious. It may be that this isn't a cure - but a means to destroy darkspawn. And if it does - what would its effects be on a Warden? One thing I do know…"
Pain rises to engulf me, but I was able to see it coming. It's as if I stood on a shore with my back to the sea but felt it rising up behind me, blotting out the pale flicker of magical light. Rylock's presence is a help, if only because the threat and promise of that sword of mercy forces me to be at least partly aware of her, like an ungainly grandfather clock that will not be ignored.
"…is that if The Architect and First Enchanter Remille had had their way and spread this "cure" to the masses it would have been the end of us. I'm sterile. If the chances of a woman Warden - a woman whose body is constantly fighting darkspawn infection - bearing a child are small, the chances of bearing one after the infection has been accelerated and run its course are zero."
I won't look at Ser Otto. I can't bear his sympathy. It's hard to look at Rylock, too: this woman who never wanted what I yearn for and can't have.
"The question is: what happens to the people I cure using my blood?"
"Rillian," Ser Otto says quietly, "If you need to test this on a Warden, I am glad to volunteer."
"No! Dammit, who do you think I am: Avernus? Though if he were still alive…I wouldn't have minded experimenting on him…" I see Rylock's expression and quickly add, "Kidding!"
Rylock is oddly silent - thoughtful. And I'm amazed when Ser Otto chooses that moment to say: "Jowan - let's see if Cyrion has any more of that Elven tea." Amazed that a blind man can see so much.
When they've gone Rylock says: "Loghain and I are, of course, the only two who've been infected by Blight sickness - and had its onset delayed by Warden blood. And I do not trust Loghain with this kind of research."
Her eyes are large, dark and steady: the eyes of a night hunter, circled by blue shadows of exhaustion. I meet the glittering darkness - the light behind them - and nod. I trusted Loghain with my life and my campaign - but I would not trust him here. Not after he let those filthy Tevinter slavers create a magical Elf-only plague.
"But, if I let you do this, you must destroy the sample in front of me, before the Blood Mage gets back."
"Done."
Rylock fumbles at removing her right gauntlet, the air around her trembling with her impatience. I know better than to offer my help. Her sinewy, hard-muscled forearm is scarred, like mine, and her broken fingers look brittle as sticks. She glares at them as though they have personally offended her. I take a fresh syringe from the pack I found in Flemeth's hut and attach it to a needle. Rylock raises an eyebrow as I slap at the inside of her elbow to make the vein stand up.
"You seem…worryingly familiar with this procedure."
"Of course I am," I say scornfully, "I've tested hundreds in my experiments. I worked on all the Wardens I took from Ostagar…in the darkness beneath Ishal. I remember the chamber where I worked on Duncan. Shall I tell you how many tubes were attached to his body? Shall I recount the way his mouth moved - a gaping, shapeless hole - or the way he screamed when I turned his flesh to something not even an abomination could imagine? Shall I describe everything I did to him…"
Without meaning to, I rise. My hands make fierce scraping movements, tearing at the air in front of her like hungry claws. "I told him what I was doing was necessary…necessary…ah, Maker!" My voice scales upward in pitch, like the Litany with which I held Urthemiel, like the trio of voices that marked his ascension. It rises to a scream. "Oh Maker, Maker, help me, I remember everything I did to him!"
Somehow, I'm on the stone floor, my hands covering my face, with Rylock kneeling beside me. She pulls my hands away and forces me to look at her. There's a look on her face I can't begin to describe - but it isn't fear. Or blame.
"Sharing The Architect's memories does not make you guilty of his crimes. They are only memories. They cannot touch your choices, which are your own, or your soul, which belongs to the Maker. You are Rillian, not The Architect…and not - despite what your vanity may tell you - the Old God."
From my throat come sounds like a little girl locked in the dark. "How do you know that? How do you know - when I don't?"
Rylock looks back into an immeasurable distance. The picked-over quality of her words suggest memories too harsh to be shared easily. "Because it was the same for me when Remille's Blood Mage made me his vessel. I was the both of us. I felt my own pain - and at the same time I experienced his pleasure. They told me a year in Aeonar was enough to guarantee I was free from his influence. But I was still afraid when I returned to active duty that he could continue to act on me. Or worse - to act on the world through me. I soon realized my choices were my own. My mistakes also. What we remember of these other minds are just shadows - echoes. We are not clay in their hands - they are steel in our own. By our own choice, we can use them for good, not evil."
"And you did," I say, wiping away tears and snot with the back of my dirty hand. "Without you, I'd be a slave to a demon wearing Nelaros' face - and half my family would be slaves to Tevinter."
Rylock smiles - but there's a strange, abstracted look in her eyes. "Thank you, Rillian. I shall remember that. I like to think I have saved more lives than I have ended. We are taught, in the Order, to think in terms of numbers. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I wonder, though, whether the Maker would count a murdered fourteen-year-old boy as weighing less than the lives I saved."
I've heard this story from Wynne. I can see it very clearly. Rylock after the Blood Mage - after Aeonar - after Remille's uprising, ordered to return Aneirin to the Circle. Catching up with him in the Brecilian Forest. Hitting him with a Smite, to drain his mana. Aneirin had cut his hand on a branch, and in his panic he had used the blood to cast Mind Blast.
Rylock glances down at her right hand in distaste, as if it has betrayed her. Her words are distant, remote. "It was a strange thing. Watching myself run him through was like watching my blade turned on Ser Guy. Except that what controlled it was not the will of another, but my own fear. Knight Commander Greagoir was, rightly, furious. He had ordered me to bring the boy back with minimum force. He asked me what would happen the next time a mage child tossed a spell at me as a prank. He told me that what had happened had made me unfit for the Tower. I saw that he was right. That is why I volunteered for Kirkwall. There's something strange about that place. We call it "The Hot Zone" because the sheer number of demons and abominations suggest it's being magically poisoned somehow. I asked Knight Commander Guylian for all the most dangerous assignments - and never to be posted to the Gallows. Both he and Knight Captain Meredith were happy with that arrangement."
I wish I could tell Rylock what Wynne told me in the Brecilian Forest. That Aneirin lives: serene, at peace, a healer. The knowledge had helped Wynne forgive herself. But Rylock would only see an abomination, a possible threat to the Dalish, because no fourteen-year-old boy survives a sword through the chest. Not without intervention.
"You wouldn't have hurt the mage children. Just the fact that you were worried about it proves you would have been careful."
"Perhaps - but I could hardly use them as guinea-pigs to test that theory."
"Twenty years on the front lines. Couldn't they have posted you to guard relics, or something?"
"That's not something a mage-hunter is normally asked to do."
I stare blankly for a moment - and then I get it. I always imagined mage-hunters would be accorded the most respect within the Chantry. In a way, they are - but they're like Wardens. Or army generals. Hangmen, undertakers, Death's Hatchetmen. Brought out when needed - but never in polite company.
Suddenly, I snort with amusement. Rylock eyes me with a sour expression, waiting for me to share the joke.
"Good luck leading the mages to the Temple of the Ashes."
Rylock sighs in resignation. "Believe me, I told Knight Commander Greagoir exactly what I thought of his decision. The trouble with arguing with a dying man is that he invariably has the last word."
I stare - my eyes open wide - and then I burst into laughter. I laugh and laugh - can't stop - holding my sides. After Sten's death, I thought nobody would be able to match the wonderful aridity of his humour. Rylock does - and I know this is the sense of humour I'll have to cultivate if I'm ever to hear myself laugh again. And Rylock's brand of honesty is where I must begin if I'm going to stay sane. In my current state, she's as good as it gets.
Rylock smiles, too. Then she holds out her forearm for the needle. Her plain, sombre face is remarkably peaceful. I'm not sure I could be that steady when being treated by someone who has just broken down and confessed to having committed medical atrocities. I vow to be worthy of her trust.
I test Rylock's untreated blood…and confirm what we both suspected. That the Warden blood mixed with lyrium I gave her and Loghain wasn't a cure at all - just a delay of the inevitable. Without further treatment, Rylock and Loghain will both succumb to Blight sickness within two years. I seem to remember the former Queen of Ferelden dying in similar fashion.
Then I inject Rylock with my blood. I test her blood again - but it's too soon to tell.
"Don't worry. If this doesn't cure you - and Loghain - I'll put you both through the Joining. Alistair's a Templar-Warden. I see no reason you can't be a Warden-Templar. If it does - well, I'd like to test your fertility, too. It may be my best chance to gauge…"
Rylock gives me an extremely odd look. "Rillian: I have taken lyrium for over half my life."
"Oh. I…see." This is a shame. When using my blood to cure other woman soldiers, I'll have to keep tabs on them over the next five years or so - see if any of them become pregnant. I can't spread a cure on a mass scale until I know what the long-term effects might be.
Which also begs the question: how, exactly, am I going to spread a cure based on my blood on a mass scale? I'd give every last drop - but that would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. I stare at Rylock, wondering how best to frame my thoughts.
"You were there when Remille tried to take control of Kinloch Hold. So was Loghain. So was Wynne. I know - from you three, and from the Architect's memories - that he had created magical brooches that could accelerate a Warden's calling. When the infection is accelerated, and then stopped, you get someone immune, like me. But Remille didn't intend to create brooches for every person in Thedas. He intended to make the taint airborne. I have wondered, since, how he intended to do this. If magic could do such a thing, then why haven't other maleficarum tried it?"
Rylock's face is hawk-sharp. She leans forward. This is her Calling, her arena. "Perhaps there will be others. This is something we Templars must watch for."
"There was one other time. Only one - and twenty years later. The Tevinter Elf-only plague unleashed in the Alienage. Except I know that plague wasn't created by magic. I know it because every member of my extended family who'd once had marshfever didn't catch it."
"I don't understand."
"It wasn't created by magic. It was created by science. The same science I'm attempting here. I think the Magister responsible altered what was originally marshfever and set it loose. I think Remille had planned to do something similar with taint: cross it with a perfectly ordinary sickness that spreads through miasma. Now - we know that every one of Remille's associates died when Loghain took back the Tower. Except one. The one who tortured you and got away."
Rylock's face is ashen, but her voice is very calm. "His name was Livius Erimond. He was heading north-east when we caught up to him - and has almost certainly returned to Tevinter."
"If I'm to spread a cure, I must learn his technique. But more important than curing taint is to make sure he doesn't survive to repeat his experiments. You told me the Tevinter slave trade reaches all the way from Denerim to Kirkwall to Minrathous. Tell me everything you know. Help me to get him."
Rylock shoots to her feet, real fear in her eyes. "Not you - you'll have no defence against that filth! Give me time to find a replacement Knight Commander, and I'll go."
I strut. Preen. "You're forgetting that I am a master of the Litany. I'm bard-trained - and now that I have Urthemiel's Song to add to my repertoire, I can paralyze whole hordes of demons…stop possession in its tracks. No Magister's going to make a Blood Puppet out of me. An ability a Templar would give their right arm for..."
Rylock's face goes carefully still. Involuntarily, she glances down at the right arm that tortured and killed her best friend. Blood Control traced and mapped the web between the five senses and the ability to govern response. It interposed its will between, sharing the afferent neurons while solely commanding the efferent. The host, the Blood Puppet, was mute and limbless for any least expression of its own will, while hellishly articulate and agile in the service of the Blood Mage's. I blanch, feeling the blood drain from my face, and hang my head to hide the sudden rush of burning tears. "You were wrong about me," I wail, "I'm not myself. I must be Urthemiel, or The Architect. Rillian was never that grossly insensitive."
"I hate to interrupt your self-flagellation," Rylock says briskly, "But I'm afraid you always were. After five years, I am well used to it, so there is no new cause for concern."
I dare to look up. The dark eyes are warmed by a faint gleam of amusement. Impulsively, I squeeze her hand. "You're a wonderful Templar, Rylock. And a good friend."
Only someone who knows her as well as I do could discern in that seemingly unmoved face the slightest tinge of shy appreciation.
Together we tidy the remains of my experiment, and I destroy the samples of her blood just as Jowan and Ser Otto get back. They've brought tea, and pork scratchings, and my mind is thrown back to the very first day I met Rylock. I was visiting Ser Otto in the tiny Docks flat where he was recovering from his burns. Rylock had come to visit him too: the only Templar who read him reports and shared news as though he were still on active duty. I remember complimenting her on being so flat-chested she didn't need to alter the fit of her man's armour. I remember telling Ser Otto about my first day as a Docker and describing it as a "trial by fire". Sadly, Rylock is right about me. I can't blame my lack of tact on Urthemiel, or The Architect. I come by it honestly.
It feels almost exactly the same as we sit and eat together - except that Jowan is here, too. The mage-hunter and the Blood Mage are sipping Elven tea together. It's either the silliest beginning of a medical breakthrough in history - or the best.
AN: I subscribe to Shakespira's brilliant 'Dark Stewards' theory from 'The Lion's Den' (for those unfamiliar with her fic, it's the idea the Wardens tried to use taint to resist Tevinter Blood Magic, and unwittingly unleashed the First Blight). At the time I wrote DATM, the devs had not announced that The Architect was one of the magisters Sidereal, and so my version of the Architect was a darkspawn emissary who had achieved sapience and sentience on his own. Hence Rillian describing The Architect as "a descendant of Wardens".
The Litany Rillian refers to is the Litany of Adralla. My theory is that the Litany is a way of resisting possession through music. It's related to the lost lore of Arlathan Rillian learned from the Arcane Warrior spirit, and to the bard's Captivating Song ability. Because my fic posits a link between demons and taint, Rillian was able to use it to hold Urthemiel.
In a setting that oscillates between mid-to-late Middle Ages (Ferelden in DAO) to Renaissance (Kirkwall in DA2) to mid-to-late 18th century (Orlais in DAI) I doubt even mages would have had knowledge of blood types. So, it wouldn't occur to Rillian that injecting Rylock with her blood might be dangerous. In my head-canon, it works because Rillian is a universal donor and lyrium can make the body accept things (like darkspawn blood in the Joining) it would normally reject.
The first microscope was created in the 16th Century and discussed in a paper called "The Fly's Eye". I think centuries of study by Tevinter magisters could manage the same - particularly with magic providing sample illumination. The only thing I can't see them being able to create is an electron microscope - but the way to get around that is indeed to watch the effects of the sample rather than the sample itself.