Chapter Eighteen: Night Terrors
Moving his head with minute care to avoid notice, Fenris studied the room over the untouched rim of his wine cup. Though his features never moved, he grimaced inside. He wished Varric had never talked him into this evening at The Hanged Man. Varric was a compulsive collector of people - anyone he found strange or interesting or down-on-their-luck – and most of them had the beginnings, middles and endings of their stories here in Kirkwall. Fenris' lyrium brands had been unbearable all week, and he would rather have brooded alone in his stolen mansion than in front of an audience. It was easier to be alone with the pain.
To make matters worse, the Abomination entered the establishment, cutting his way towards Varric with louche grace.
"Blondie!"
Yes, Fenris thought, The Hanged Man was definitely going downhill. The only way it could sink any lower would be if a Tevinter took to drinking here.
Anders accepted a glass of flabby red wine but did not touch it any more than Fenris – apparently the demon inside him still didn't allow him to get drunk. Which was probably a blessing. A drunken abomination might have enlivened the evening but would not necessarily have improved it.
"Where's Sparky?" Varric wanted to know.
Anders shrugged. "We're not joined at the hip. I left him in Hightown, to look over letters in his posh new residence." There was a note of disdain in the mage's voice – the disdain of the middle-class revolutionary who thought such social-climbing was beneath him. It had been only weeks since the Red Iron mercenaries had cleared out the cellars of the Amell mansion and returned the deed to Leandra. Who had, apparently, been left the home in her parents' will, rather than Gambling Gamlen. Lambert, his mother and uncle had unofficially moved in, and were spending money like water on refurbishment, even though he was as yet unable to get an audience with Seneschal Bran. He was following the same reasoning as Fenris: that possession was nine-tenths of the law.
"Speak of the peacock," the dwarf said fondly, as the young man lurched in. Normally graceful as a dancer, he was now clumsy as a young goat, scattering chairs and patrons alike in his rush to reach them.
"What's happened?" Anders' former disdain melted in what – if it had been anyone else - Fenris would have read as genuine love.
"I'm glad I found you all! You guys have got to come with me to the Alienage!"
Fenris knew Lambert had kept up a friendship with Arianni, whom he saw as a surrogate mother, but was at a loss to understand his panic. The summer riots were a yearly occurrence – the humid sky and festering resentments growing denser, like tightening muscle, until they snapped and were put down by brutal human guards. Sensible people like Arianni stayed indoors and bolted their homes and remained safe. Usually.
"Alright, clear off, you rubber-neckers!" Varric shouted at the other drinkers. "The Hanged Man is closed for the night. Now, what's this about, Sparky?"
"It's Feynriel - the boy we saved from slavers and brought to the Dalish last year." He was replying to Varric but fixed Fenris with his violet stare. "He wrote to me a while back, told me the younger Elves wouldn't accept him and the Elders were afraid of him. The nightmares were coming more frequently. Well, Keeper Marethari sent him and Arianni back to the Alienage..."
Typical, Fenris thought. The Dalish would always look after their own. Once they realized it was only a matter of time before Feynriel became an abomination, they sent him here so he would take out half the Alienage rather than half their tribe. They didn't care for the Elves in the cities, treating the Alienages as sewage ducts for the waste they threw out.
"...and now he's trapped in a nightmare. He can't wake, can't fight the demons. Arianni sent for Keeper Marethari, but it's not helping. She says I'm the only person he can trust. I've got to help him. Please, will the three of you come with me?"
"Yes," Anders said at once. The fair-haired abomination moved to stand beside his lover and Lambert smiled in gratitude. And that, Fenris thought, is the last thing they need – the only place Anders is going to help them is into the Abyss...
"Aright, kid," said Varric, bringing Bianca out from behind the bar. Both Lambert and Anders glared, as if the sight of the crossbow had personally offended them, but Fenris thought it the most sensible thing he had seen all day. He himself did not bother with words of support, merely rose in a lithe, fluid movement and joined them.
It was midsummer, and the luminous darkness would give way in a few hours to a rose-gold dawn. The choked and humid sky was dense as a warm flannel on their faces. They made their way across the vast chessboard of grey and dark roofs that was Lowtown. Anders chose this moment to lament Feynriel seeking sanctuary with the Dalish, when clearly Gereon Alexius and his wife Livia would have been more nurturing.
"You should have lived in Tevinter yourself. You'd be happier there."
Anders thought about it for less than a second. "You're probably right."
"There, your magic would be a mark of honour. Apprenticed to Magister Gereon Alexius – or perhaps Magister Danarius – you would do well."
"Is there a downside?"
"Only if you're bothered by owning a few slaves and performing the occasional blood sacrifice."
"So, they all do these things?"
"Just the ones who don't complain about how powerless and persecuted they are."
"Ladies, ladies," Varric murmured, and Lambert rolled his eyes, but neither Fenris nor Anders paid attention.
"There must be mages in Tevinter that don't use Blood Magic," Anders tried.
"Of course. There are slaves. The magisters do not hesitate to collar their own kind." Fenris could not help but glance at Lambert as he said it. Not only was Lambert an uncommonly kind person - Fenris had noticed that whenever someone around him was suffering Lambert seemed to feel the ache of it in his own body - he was also barely a mage. In Tevinter Lambert's fate would have been the same as his – barring he would have been used for pleasure rather than assassination – but there was no need to say so.
"But no magisters?"
"No magister would turn down an advantage over his rivals. If he did, he'd be dead."
"You know," Anders said flippantly, "To use Blood Magic you have to look a demon in the eye and accept its offer. I just figured some of them would say no. For aesthetic reasons, if nothing else."
The Vhenadahl – its branches reaching to the heavens and glowing orange in the dawn light – was all that remained of the legendary glory of Arlathan. Arianni – a fragile figure in a plain dress and shawl – was waiting for them outside her hovel. When she saw Lambert she hugged him. Pleased, he returned the embrace.
"I was hoping you would come. You have done so much for my Feynriel already, but... I visited him among the People, but he turned me away. I knew the demons still plagued him. A month ago, Keeper Marethari sent him back to me. She did not want to risk her Clan. And now they've taken him! Two days ago Feynriel went into a nightmare and hasn't returned."
"He can't be woken up?"
"He is near death. His lips still fog a mirror, but that is all."
"I heard there are mages who can pursue him into the Fade. My cousin – Thomas Amell – writes to me, and he told me a man named Senior Enchanter Sweeney once journeyed into the Fade to save a young boy from possession."
"I have contacted Keeper Marethari. The Dalish have an ancient ritual that might help. But it requires someone Feynriel trusts to enter the Fade and free him."
The minute the words left her mouth Fenris could see where this was going. Lambert had more compassion than sense – or magical ability. He was going to say yes - and end up being served to the demons on a silver platter. Sure enough, Arianni went on:
"You have been so kind to us. Feynriel thinks of you as a true friend. Keeper Marethari is coming to perform the ritual that will bring Feynriel back. His childhood things here will help anchor him. We need to begin the ritual as quickly as possible."
Surprising no-one, Lambert nodded. "This is too urgent to delay."
"You have been far kinder than I had any right to expect."
True enough, thought Fenris, wondering if he could prevent what appeared to be happening. He darted a glance at Varric for support. The dwarf, however, seemed in that moment more storyteller than friend to Lambert – he was listening and seemingly recording everything in his mind, as if for posterity. Fenris composed his own epitaph for Lambert: I wanted to help people, but I was an idiot let down by his friends... Naturally, Fenris didn't even bother looking toward Anders for support.
As the morning unwound, numerous Alienage cats leaked out of various fissures in the ghetto, and sauntered over to them. Lambert and Anders were delighted, petting and cooing in a distinctly nauseating manner. In the end they were quite surrounded by the sleek brutes, not a few of which fixed him with baleful calm. Sardonic comments seemed to flow from their gaze.
Towards midday, Keeper Marethari found them. She walked down the stone steps with the same neat fluidity of movement as the cats. Around the Vhenadahl the city elves had left offerings. A green flame rose with flickering luminosity. Marethari regarded the flame with an unreadable expression. Then she appraised the strangers – only one of them fully Elven – for a long moment without speaking. Fenris could feel her magic like ice on the brands and it made his skin crawl. Arianni approached her with frightened deference and Marethari accepted this as her due.
"I came quickly, Arianni. I did not wish to tell you by letter how grave your son's situation is."
Choking back sobs, Arianni led them into her tiny home. Fenris knew City Elves prided themselves on their hospitality – when so much had been taken from them, they clung to what they had left – so it said a lot that Arianni did not even offer them drinks. Marethari continued as if this did not concern her.
"The magic he possesses make him what the Tevinters called "Somniari," a dreamer. Dreamers have the power to control the Beyond, what humans call the Fade. Feynriel is the first in two ages to survive. In the Fade, they can shape dreams and even affect the world beyond the Veil. Tevinter Somniari used to enter the minds of sleepers and slay them in their dreams. Dreamers have great power in the Fade. They attract demons. Luckily, most prove too frail of mind to survive a demon's possession. A dreamer abomination would be near unstoppable."
"What do you need me to do?" asked Lambert.
"The Elves of the Dales were experts in the Somniari arts. They could even help those with no power enter the Fade. I will do my best to recreate the ritual. We will use Feynriel's childhood home as a focus to draw him back through the Veil."
"I am ready."
"I told you he was amazing!" Fenris saw Lambert bask in Arianni's admiration like his own cat.
"Now, Arianni, please excuse us." Marethari's tone brooked no argument, and held no mercy.
"Oh! Of...of course." It said a lot about her desperation that she allowed another woman to order her out of her own home, away from her own son.
When Arianni was gone – a stooped figure who appeared to have aged years in seconds – Marethari turned to regard Lambert.
"There is more I must tell you that is not for her ears. Feynriel cannot become an abomination. The destruction he would cause is unimaginable. If you cannot save him from the demons, you must kill him yourself. A death in the Fade will make him what your Circle calls "Tranquil." He will be no threat after."
Lambert took a step back with instinctive revulsion. "That is Feynriel's greatest fear. I won't be the one to make it come true."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions... Fenris thought.
"I have no choice but to leave it in your hands. Now, gather a team and we will begin. Choose carefully, for all will face temptation."
"I worry about what a journey to the Fade might bring out in me." Anders' bleak honesty surprised both Fenris and Lambert. Fenris had expected the abomination to jump at the chance to add both Lambert and Feynriel as reserve hosts. Surely the demon inside him would be only too happy to trade up – a rangy human healer for a Somniari. Lambert appeared to be childishly disappointed at what he perceived as his lover's lack of support.
"The Fade, huh?" Varric appeared uncharacteristically subdued. "Don't know how much help I'd be to you there."
Fenris' next words were entirely unplanned. "I have no desire to explore the Fade, but if you need me I will go."
His motives were complex. First was concern for Lambert. He was not sure he could call Lambert his friend – not sure what it meant to have a friend. After he had saved the young man from Danarius Lambert had offered sex as recompense. Fenris had almost said yes. Not because he wanted the services of a highly paid courtesan but because Lambert was a nascent mage. In Tevinter no slave would have dared fuck a mage. He had wanted to take Lambert roughly, to avenge himself on Danarius and prove he was truly a free man. A moment later he had refused, his tone raw with self-contempt. Lambert - the vain idiot – had looked deflated a moment, before rallying and saying cheerfully, "Not your type, then? How about I teach you to read...I mean, to read the language of the south?" Even then, Lambert had been oddly careful of his feelings. Fenris, who could not read in any language, had thought the lessons might prove useful in evading his past, and accepted. Lambert was a good teacher and entertaining storyteller. Then, Varric had hired Fenris on the Deep Roads expedition, and the three had become brothers-in-arms. So, yes, he did feel it his duty to save Lambert from his own stupidity.
Next was the reluctance to leave Feynriel's fate up to him. Lambert had made it clear he would not make Feynriel Tranquil – even if it meant unleashing a dreamer abomination on the world. Someone would need to be there to make the hard choices.
Last and perhaps strongest was a murky reasoning he had not held up to the light. He had never known of a ritual that could send a non-mage into the Fade. If he – a non-mage – could go there and even kill a Somniari, then perhaps he would finally be able to face Danarius on equal terms. Because it was only a matter of time before the Magister caught up with him – and made of him again an assassin and a whore. He was not fighting for revenge he was fighting for his very self – the free man he had been for only four years of his life. His selfhood was fragile as glass in a world where magisters ruled in Tevinter, mages ruled the Dalish, and humans and Qunari ruled the rest of Thedas. Gaining this power – even if it was through a Dalish magical ritual – might be the difference between selfhood and annihilation.
Lambert faced him in a passion of amazed gratitude.
"Thank you, my friend."
The sight made Anders change his mind about helping Lambert. Finally – as if coming back to the irrepressible storyteller – Varric rallied and said jauntily, "I admit...I'm a little fascinated."
"Let us begin."
Feynriel was lying motionless on the bed, his body a waxen doll; the living flesh already half-drowned in its mortal paralysis. Fenris could sense the magic roiling around him; it ignited the brands, and he swallowed his own gasp of pain. Lambert looked at him in concern – he always saw too much – but Fenris' iron mask never wavered. Then Marethari brought out an ancient, ornamental dish covered with an elven pattern of winged vines. Within was raw lyrium, and it sang around them. This time Fenris did shudder – he couldn't help it. The pain was sickening, impossible; he retched, trying not to scream.
"Fenris - are you..."
The Veil fluttered aside. Air that was music surrounded them. Panels in the arched ceiling overhead lighted the room ochre. Fenris had no idea of the ultimate source of the clear, rich light. The music made the walls vibrate with its intensity. There was erotic love in the higher notes and from the lower notes came fear deep and dark as rain beneath his skin. Lust and mindless hatred lilted, rippling and bubbling through the Fade. But the pain was gone as if it had never been. Fenris could not remember a time when he had not felt the pain of the lyrium brands, but now it was if he were a child again, in the past he could not remember.
"I'm fine," he said curtly. He blinked in startlement at the sight of Lambert. Lambert looked much as he did in life – a beautiful young man with a penchant for fine clothes and amethyst jewellery – but here he blazed. Not with light, but with an intense compassion that could be felt on the skin, like sun in the springtime. Fenris felt all the death inside him screaming and cowering away; it knew its enemy.
Varric was looking much as he did in real life – a finely-dressed dwarven merchant in a well-cut jerkin – but the weapon he carried with him had changed. Bianca had always been a flamboyantly advanced crossbow, crafted with unique flair – but now she was a metallic, mechanized beauty. Varric took aim and fired into the distance – and gasped. She was firing gaatlok! Both Anders and Lambert flinched but Fenris could see the possibilities. A weapon that could give non-mages a chance against mages? The orange cloud blazed like an artificial sun.
"I have only seen this in my mind – I made the calculations again and again and I thought I'd finally gotten it right!"
"I had not thought to return in such a way. It is good to feel the breath of the Fade again, not the empty air of your world." The voice was a deep bass rumble. The three men turned – to the sight of the demon wearing Anders' flesh like a tunic. Blinding blue light shone through the cracks, and the eyes were electric storms. Yes, Fenris thought, this is what you are. What you have always been. Hopefully, now, Lambert would see sense. Lambert paled, but rallied and said carefully,
"Justice, I presume?"
"Lambert," Fenris said urgently, "Think it through. Did Anders not say to you that he was giving Justice shelter because the spirit could not return to the Fade? Yet here it is. Anders claimed they could not be separated but you told me about Sweeney freeing Connor from possession. Do you see the lies?"
"I am Justice. Anders has told you of me."
Lambert looked from Fenris to the stolen body of Anders in an agony of indecision. Then he made up his mind.
"We need to help Feynriel."
The corridors of the boy's mind were labyrinthine. Because the illumination was not localized, Fenris noticed the Dalish carvings only as writhing shadows along the walls. The carvings formed a series of panels running in bands across the polished stone. He peered up the curving walls and saw the pattern continued to the vaults. The stone was mottled and seemingly much harder than marble.
"What is justice?" Fenris asked the demon with deceptive mildness.
"Anders has shown me an injustice greater than any I have ever faced."
"Considering you had spent your existence in the Fade that would not have been hard. Of what do you speak?"
"I speak of the treatment of mages. To answer your question, justice would mean mages and non-mages having the same rights."
"Which non-mages? The Soporati in Tevinter? The Alienage Elves? Those who follow the Qun or the servants of Orlais? Or perhaps you only mean humans who are wealthy merchants, like Anders' parents? Anders had a privileged childhood and spent his adult life in the comparatively moderate Circle of Ferelden. I suspect neither of you knows much about life in Thedas."
"That comparatively moderate Circle made a Harrowed mage Tranquil, in clear violation of the law!"
"Will you two stop butting antlers!" Lambert hissed in exasperation.
"I do not possess antlers."
Time was of indeterminate importance. An archway in the far wall suggested a door, so they walked towards it. Fenris wondered why he was following the path Justice set, then smiled in a way that meshed with the pattern of the music; after all, he was likely through with his problems with the demon very soon, one way or the other.
"Come. I sense Feynriel's mind straining. We do not have much time."
They pushed the door open.
The demon that waited for them possessed a unique kind of dread, where awareness cringes from the first exploring touch, the first palpation of alien desire, alien hunger.
"Well...it's rare to see two forgotten magics in one day. It's usually a slow place, the Fade, not many surprises. I wasn't sure I'd like this one...but it has potential."
"A demon of sloth." That was the demon wearing Anders' body. Fenris supposed it intended to keep its prey – was warning the other predator away from its meal. "It exists to make men forget their purpose and their pride – do not relax around it!"
"Call me Torpor. I have a proposition that might interest you." Incredibly, it was addressing its words to Lambert – the least powerful mage among them. Lambert, however, merely carried on walking as if the demon held no reality for him.
The demon did not like being ignored. It attacked with magic, and was countered by Justice. Fenris thought it best to let the two demons destroy each other. In the Fade, reality bled into chaos. The battle was a shifting ambiguity. Horizonal and vertical alternated to the rhythm of the lights that slashed the darkness. In the end, only Justice remained.
Lambert led them onward. The Fade was like pointillism, in that, close-to it was a poor reflection of reality, but, seen from the right distance, it conveyed new realities of light, the true quality of the waking world. Feynriel's memories had created a shining city – drawn crudely as if from a child's imagination. Any living things – trees and lakes - were nebulous. The sky was an amorphous mass. Silver spires became rivers in the sky. The tortuosity was inchoate and filled with possibility.
Feynriel was there, talking with Marethari – had the Keeper followed them into the Fade?
Suddenly, without warning, Lambert became thinner, his hair greyer, his clothes the robes of a First Enchanter. Then he vanished from sight.
"What..."
Lambert reappeared – Fenris had never thought he would be relieved to see the foolish youth in his frippery. A Pride Demon pursued him.
"You! Why did you interfere! With my power joined to his, Feynriel would have changed the world!"
Lambert turned his back on the demon, addressed his friends,
"Feynriel is waking up – it won't be long now."
"If you take my toys, I will take yours." The demon turned to Fenris, and he felt the heavy light in its eyes, like failing candles in a bitter wind. Even the air did not feel clean around the creature – it crawled.
The landscape was no longer borrowing from Feynriel's memories. The vista was a large globular cluster of what might have been stars - or infection under a magister's microscope. The lights glittered feverishly, as if seen from the bottom of a dirty, turbulent atmosphere. Some of them contracted sluggishly to thin, diseased-looking globes. This was protracted suffering, lingering death.
Like a virtuoso, the demon fingered Fenris' memories – the places he dared not look – that web of stunning, reverberant horrors. He felt the past begin to grow in him; sudden, helpless panic like the carnivorous burgeoning of a parasitic larva in the hollow of his stomach. At the same moment, he felt the quickening of his own will to survive – impersonal and lethal as plague – the flame of his life-long hatred of mages. The mages who had raped him of body and mind and left him in continual pain.
"Do you think I will lie, then, when I offer your friends what Feynriel turned down? Do you think this slave would choose you over his freedom?"
"Cast your eyes elsewhere, demon. I won my freedom from the magister. I don't need you to give it to me."
"But you fear him still. He has left his marks on your body and your mind. You know it is only a matter of time before he catches you. Three years ago, Kirkwall seemed a bastion of freedom – a place where Templars stand between ordinary people and mage predation. But now you have creatures like this abomination trying to destroy the Templars – trying to make the whole world into Tevinter. And they will, in just a few more years."
"You can't know that." Fenris tried to cling to the certainty that the demon was lying – wasn't that what they did? But he knew, with despairing certainty, that though the creature might lie when it chose, it was not lying now.
"Yes, I can. Time as you know it does not exist in the Fade. I have already seen what to you is the future. In the year Dragon Age 9:37 – five years from now – the news that Knight Commander Rylock successfully reversed Thomas Amell's Rite of Tranquillity will lead Grand Enchanter Fiona to call a Conclave. She will ask the Circle mages to secede from the Chantry. Senior Enchanter Wynne will argue against it but will be voted down. The Seeker Order will not stand for that and there will be war. What do you think will be the outcome of a war between mages and non-mages? With my aid, you could fight for your freedom and the freedom of others. You could have power enough to challenge any who would change you."
"Don't listen, Fenris! Even if what it says is true, I'll fight anyone who tries to make you a slave! They will do that over my body."
"Considering Lambert's lack of magical ability that would not take long," the demon said mildly. "But I doubt it will come to that. Do you really think this human-passing half-breed would choose you over his abomination lover, or his Somniari friend?"
Fenris hated himself for wavering, hated his own weakness, but he could not deny the truth. Lambert had chosen to feast with panthers – to throw in his lot with Anders and the mage rebellion, who would apprentice Feynriel to a Tevinter magister and make him a living weapon. The demon sniffed, as if scenting his doubts, his fears, and revelling in the bouquet.
With impeccable timing, Anders chose this moment to override the control of Justice and say in his own voice – heavy with petulant sarcasm, "And he is so free to condemn others for the same sin!"
"I won't betray you, Lambert," Fenris said quietly, with desperate hope, "I want to fight with you. Together, we can destroy Justice – free Anders from possession. Then we can make Feynriel safe: ensure he does not – cannot – hurt others. You are a good person – I know you don't want to see people hurt. But if you let the abomination and the Somniari go, innocents will suffer."
Lambert looked at him – his entire soul burning in those brilliant purple eyes. "I can't do that. Anders went with me into the Fade - even though he was terrified he would not wake up as himself. I see that now, and I was selfish to let him. Even if I could separate them without killing Anders or making him Tranquil – which isn't certain – I can't do it by trickery, without his consent. Anders told me the bond between possessed mage and spirit makes a mother and child seem like casual affection. I'd be like-like a healer performing an abortion against the woman's will, because he judges it would save her future. And Justice hasn't turned yet. He has never hurt an innocent. I can't judge him – or Feynriel – for what they haven't done yet."
"You see," the demon said in syrupy sympathy, "It is always the same. Even if you think a mage honest, and loyal, and trustworthy, you'll learn that they never go against their own kind."
If I kill Lambert in the Fade, he will wake up Tranquil. Fenris saw no point in kidding himself. Lambert - who laughed all the time and sang like an angel. He would live – but he would never be himself again.
"Nor will you ever be yourself again, once Lambert unwittingly helps Anders and Feynriel. Once the whole world becomes Tevinter. It is the law of the jungle – something you flesh-and-blood-creatures cannot escape. Nature red in tooth and claw. Mages and non-mages are different species and only one will survive. It is not immoral to do what you must to preserve your own kind."
Fenris knew he had already lost. All that remained were the precise terms of contract. "What...would you want from me?"
"A moment of your time, nothing more."
"It's lying! You saw what became of Olivia! You want to be yourself, but that demon will wear you like a costume – every thought, every feeling, every memory – and you will be forced to watch it use your own limbs to torture innocents."
"As I am not a mage I cannot become an abomination."
"You didn't see what happened to Keran," Lambert said softly, despairingly, "You don't know that it will make no difference." Then he rallied, as if realizing the time for words was over. His own personal time against the Pride Demon and Fenris had come. All that lay in his power would be called for, and it would suffice to save him or it would not.
"I will not let you harm Anders, or Feynriel. I will not let you become an abomination – you don't deserve that."
Lambert had come unarmed to the Fade but his words became a sword in his hand, bladed with ravening light, shielded with fire. There was nothing left of the frivolous young man – the dandy and dilettante, the plaything of others' leisure. He was a winged defender, knight and angel, with blade raised to defend those in his shadow. The light around him increased, as if the Fade fed on his beauty. He began to sing the Litany of Adralla - that worked on demons and their minions – and Fenris felt the music enmesh him.
Before the paralysis hit, he raised his own heavy blade. The double edge flashed black dawn. Lambert's body was half-transmorphed into a knight's supple, silver mail, and his face was not so much angry as rapt in stern concentration. Fenris' blade was a hand's breadth from his face when it exploded in a thunderclap that shook the Fade. The concussion hurled Fenris backward, bleeding from the nose and ears. A webbing of tiny cracks was spreading from the sky, as if Feynriel were questioning the reality of his dream. Fenris staggered to his feet. His life had made him more a sword than a person, and a sword knew nothing about surrender. He phased, ready to move within Lambert and rip his heart out.
An instant later, Lambert phased too. Fenris gasped. He knew some powerful mages could use this spell, known as Fade Step. It had been the basis for Danarius' research: could he graft the ability onto a non-mage, using lyrium? But Lambert was nowhere near powerful enough to manage it in the waking world. In the Fade, the rules were different. Lambert was his mind and will and singular purpose.
Fenris began to feel something like a pre-storm vacuum in the air. The ceiling of the Fade seemed to overarch him with an ever-more terrific emptiness.
In his state of hallucinatory oneness with the demon's web Fenris - who knew the demon's name was Wryme, though it had never spoken - was so sure what its moves would be that he felt a kind of immunity to the horror.
Justice moved with a kind of priestly certainty, whose alien coolness Fenris felt against his brands, as he felt the equally timeless and unearthly power of the thing Justice opposed. Something created far across the starry gulfs – the Maker's first children, or so the Chantry claimed – was rising against him, and something from that same freezing vastness was on his side, and he himself was no more than the battleground on which they met. Inchingly, Wryme neared. Its dreadful shadow came creeping closer and the psychic webbing that contained them both tautened and shifted. Wryme was a coruscation whose pattern became less vague. It was a huge-bodied, furfuraceous shape. The devouring jewel eyes, the huge, couched fangs, the spiky, horripilating abdomen, rose towards them and its unholy colour shone brighter. Now Wryme controlled Fenris through the neurons of the web that connected them both. In that moment the demon touched the border of his own personal being and fired an impulse of reaction as quickly as one of his own mental commands might have done. He was a puppet and this his master.
Meanwhile, Varric had taken up Bianca and began smoothly pumping slugs into Fenris' ally. They did not really hurt it, but they distracted it long enough for Lambert to finish casting the Litany. A bomb might have burst under the demon's flesh, so powerful was its response. To call it a recoil would have suggested a bodily withdrawal, but what Fenris saw was an explosive liquefaction, an almost instantaneous dissolution of form. It roared with a sound like the lowest note of an organ played by demons. Even as it reformed it writhed in abyssal agony.
Fenris' lyrium brands caught fire. His body was an open wound that someone was shovelling grit into. The darkness of the Fade became sepulchral and he felt the primal dread of the Void. The dread created an ashen lucidity and he knew he was dying. He was on the ground, and looked up to see the nightmare simplifications of trees; huge, spiky, leafless amputations. The brachiate shapes became cracks in the sky itself. The webbing of cracks spread downward from the centre of the dome of sky, and behind it was an incandescence like burning wire. The entire Fade was now ablaze with an alien luminescence. The trees, the towers of Feynriel's dream, the rivers in the sky, all burned and flickered with it, and every feature of it, though sunk in crushing darkness, was starkly visible, etched in diseased flame.
"Fenris," Lambert said with tender strength, "You have got to wake up now."
"As an abomination?"
"No. Your demon is dead. It didn't get away. I know that as surely as I know anything. You will wake up as yourself and I will call you an idiot."
Fenris closed his eyes.
He woke on the floor of Arianni's hovel, and beside him, Lambert, Varric, Anders and Feynriel were waking too. He knew from the loving murmurs of Anders and Lambert that the abomination had woken as himself – or what passed for it. Arianni was holding her son with desperate strength, and he was trying to get away,
"Ow! Get off, mum!" He was very clearly not Tranquil.
Fenris had the sudden and sickening realization that he could not stop what would unfold in the next few years. The mages would rise up and set the world on fire. People like him would burn. If there was any comfort, it would be that a Somniari apprenticed to Gereon Alexius would hopefully take out Danarius first. With any luck, the monstrosities and abominations would all kill each other.
He turned to Lambert, bitter and furious. "What you have unleashed upon the world is on you!"
Lambert's brilliant eyes were exhausted, seemingly darker and more alluring with the violet shadows under them. Varric, beside him, was busy drawing designs for the version of Bianca he had seen in the Fade.
"Well," said Lambert sharply, "whatever happens to the world, as least you won't be an abomination - I have saved you from your own stupidity!"
The dull weight of his own shame ached like a wound. It was true. He had been inexcusably weak.
"No," Lambert amended quietly, "You weren't stupid. You just haven't had a man like my father teach you to withstand demons. Sending you into the Fade was like...like sending a child into battle. You didn't know a non-mage could become an abomination, but I did – I saw what they did to Keran. I should have taught you what my father taught me. And I should have taught you the Litany of Adralla." He squared his shoulders and said determinedly, "Well, there is still time. We'll add those subjects to your other lessons."
"You would trust me?"
Lambert went silent, thinking. Softly, he said, "I believe that mages and non-mages can co-exist, each without taking the other's rights, each without loss of self. But perhaps you are right and I am just naïve. It may be that the mage-Templar war is inevitable and only one of us will survive. But if you are going to inherit the world from me – if only non-mages will reap the harvest, the mind of mages and life on Thedas – I am going to make sure you don't lose this future to a demon."
"You are strong, Hawke," Fenris said, unconsciously using the family name like a title, rather than "Lambert" or "Sparky," "but not all mages are like you. I simply hope we don't all regret the day you learn just how true that is."