In Orlais, sneering at Ferelden was practically a national pastime.
Ferelden was a 'dirty backwater', Orlesians said, and the whole country smelled like wet dog. Fereldans were barbarians who ate turnips. What was wrong with turnips, Nyssa had no idea, but, (Orlesian food tastes aside), zie suspected the disdain Orlais held for Ferelden had more to do with the smaller country's relatively recent victory over the Empire. Thirty years was not recent by hir standards, but Orlesians held grudges and had long memories, and at least half the nobles in the Imperial Court would jump at the chance to reconquer the southern nation, wet dog smell and all.
So far, Nyssa found, Ferelden wasn't dirtier than any other nation zie had been to. It was, however, miserably wet, and coupled with the chill, it seemed like hir very bones were frozen. As Nyssa crouched in the mud with hir sodden cloak pulled up over hir head, zie had to wonder just why zie had volunteered for this trip.
Three days ago, zie had been in Crestwood with the Inquisitor and a handful of his men, driving bandits out of the local villages and exploring demon-infested caves. It had been wet and cold and irritating then—between the rain, Cassandra's suspicious glares, and Solas's passive-aggression, hir temper had frayed considerably within the first few hours, and it had only been going downhill since then. When a message had arrived at Caer Bronach, requesting a healer for a mission, Nyssa had been all too eager to accept. Inquisition agents were investigating a Templar stronghold in Ferelden, and their healer had been wounded in a skirmish in the Southron Hills. Nyssa had left that night, riding as far as the Imperial Highway would take hir. Another half-dozen miles leading hir horse through the hills, and zie had reached the Inquisition checkpoint, like Scout Harding had said zie would. Nyssa had left hir horse and continued east. Zie hadn't gone far before zie stumbled upon a camp.
A low fire, built underneath a makeshift lean-to. A half-dozen people, maybe more. It was hard to see much through the near-constant drizzle, and only one moon lit up the sky. Dancing flames reflected off worn leather and plate armour. Good quality stuff too, not the cheap, painted splintmail of common bandits. They couldn't be Venatori; not this farther south. Likely they were Inquisition agents, like the people at the checkpoint had said, but zie didn't recognise any of them.
A familiar sound reached hir ears—a bowstring pulling taut, and Nyssa stilled.
"That's right," said a voice from behind hir, with a soft Marcher brogue. "Up you get. Nice and slow."
Nyssa sighed, but obeyed. Nearly a day without sleep clearly made hir tired and careless.
A few light footsteps, and an elven man circled around to face hir, bow at the ready. Zie squinted at him in the dark, trying to see his face, but his hood shadowed all but a pair of eyes glinting in the dark. Zie glanced down—then relaxed at the familiar symbol on his cloak pin.
"Good, you're Inquisition," zie said. "I thought I may have stumbled upon the wrong camp."
"Aye," said the man, lowering his bow, though his arrow remained nocked. "And who are you?"
"Nyssa. I'm here to help." Slowly, zie reached for hir bag and retrieved the folded letter Lavellan had written hir.
"What's going on?" called a voice to their left, and another man—human this time, dressed in heavy armour—appeared from the forest. He looked Nyssa up and down. "Who are you?"
"As I'm trying to explain, I—"
"Hey, Farrow!" someone shouted from their right, a higher voice this time, and a dwarven woman appeared from behind a tree. "Was it a rabbit or a nug? Oh—" she stopped, taking in the sight of Nyssa flanked by the others, and frowned. "Who's this?"
"Will you just let me read the letter?" Nyssa said impatiently, and opened it. "It's addressed to Cremisius Aclassi."
"Oh, that's me," the human said, and took the letter. He skimmed it, shaking off a few drops of rain, and nodded. "Stitches heading back to Skyhold… sending you Nyssa instead—oh, you're the healer."
"And you're Cremisius." Zie remembered the name from Iron Bull's stories on the way to Crestwood.
"Krem is fine." Krem offered a gloved hand. "This is Farrow, and she's Luka." He handed Nyssa the letter, then gestured to the fire. "Come on, it's too cold to be standing out here in the rain. Reminds me too much of the Storm Coast."
Zie followed Krem to the shelter and sank to hir knees in front of the fire, sighing gratefully as its warmth washed over hir, and stripped off hir wet cloak. Several pairs of eyes watched hir with curiosity and suspicion as zie wrung the water out of hir cloak and hair.
"You got here just in time," Krem said, and passed hir a wrapped bundle. "Here. Eat. We're hitting the fortress in a few hours, now Farrow and Thornton are back from scouting the place."
He introduced the others, pointing to each of them in turn, while Nyssa ate the cheese and dried meat inside the wrapped cloth. Their names escaped hir nearly as soon as he'd said them, but there wasn't much zie could do about that. There were hundreds of people in the Inquisition, and zie was unlikely to see this motley assortment again after this mission.
"What is this place called again?" Nyssa asked, after zie had washed down the dry food with water.
"Therinfal Redoubt. According to Sister Leliana, it used to be Seeker training grounds before the templars moved in."
Nyssa choked on hir last sip of water and coughed into hir hand, ignoring the snort of amusement from one of the dwarves.
"Templars?" zie repeated, when zie could talk again.
"They moved in after leaving Orlais, I'm told." The apprehension must have shown on hir face, but Krem didn't comment. "The letter says you're a mage."
"Is that a problem?"
"No. We have another mage from the Ostwick Circle." Krem pointed to a hooded man seated across the fire. "We're not expecting templars. Sister Leliana's reports say they cleared out after the Inquisition recruited the mages. Farrow and Thornton confirmed it a few hours ago."
Nyssa nodded. The first thing zie had done at Skyhold—besides taking a bath—had been to read every report zie could get hir hands on. Zie knew the Inquisition had some conflict with Venatori at Redcliffe, and they'd been driven out of Haven shortly after. The reports had been disjointed, hastily written, talking about monstrous creatures infused with red lyrium. It sounded almost too unbelievable, but Nyssa knew better than to discount them. There were many dark secrets and mysteries in the world, and zie would be a fool to believe zie knew them all.
Their group left for the fortress before dawn—a half-hour march in semi-darkness, punctuated by murmured conversations. Nyssa walked apart in silence, and spoke only when spoken to. Lack of proper sleep had splintered hir focus, and zie wanted to keep an eye on their surroundings. If zie appeared rude, so be it.
The bridge leading to Therinfal's outer wall was utterly deserted save for a few discarded barrels and a wagon with a broken wheel. The portcullis had been raised, inviting them in.
Krem sent Luka and Thornton ahead to check for an ambush. The rest of them spent ten minutes in tense silence, waiting off the road, before they got the all-clear to enter.
The path to the inner wall was less exposed than the bridge, but that didn't make Nyssa feel any better. A Dalish elf was always safest in the forest—zie knew how to disappear into the trees, how to find food, how to avoid enemies. A few scrubby saplings and a handful of rocks did not make enough cover to satisfy hir. Not to mention that anyone posted on the inner walls would see them coming from a mile away.
Hir neck itched when they passed by the inner watchtowers, over the second bridge and through the gatehouse, but no attack came.
The first thing that drew Nyssa's eye in the courtyard were the red banners hung on the opposite wall. One showed a sunburst embroidered in gold; the symbol of the Chantry. The other, a lion rampant, which zie recognised from the Fereldan flag. The third, a flaming sword on black cloth—the flag of the Templar Order.
"It's a templar ritual," said a voice beside hir, and Nyssa jumped. The other mage, Rion, stared up at the banners beside her. His scarred, pale face set in a sour expression as he pointed to three wooden posts driven into the ground by the sheer stone battlements.
"They make the recruits choose where their loyalties lie," he continued. "To Andraste, the templars, or the people. They're expected to put the templars first, of course."
"Lovely," Nyssa said dryly. "Not at all like a cult."
A hint of a smile played around Rion's mouth. He stepped back, letting Nyssa draw away from the entrance. The rest of the courtyard was unremarkable, from what zie could see—barrels, tents, training dummies and a large, central well with a wooden cover. A smaller building on the westside, probably a storage room of some sort. Beside it, a staircase flanked by two carved dog statues. Two gates on the far side, leading to somewhere else in the fortress.
Fereldans and their dogs, Nyssa thought, as zie walked over to inspect the statues. Zie wondered if the Templars kept mabari, like the rest of Ferelden seemed to. The thought made hir palms sweat.
"Nyssa," Krem called, and zie turned. The rest of the group waited by the well as he gestured to hir. Water plastered his short brown hair to his head, and droplets ran down his face, pooling in the crevices of his armour. Like the rest of their group, he was soaked to the bone.
"You're not falling asleep on me, are you?"
Nyssa laughed. "Not in this weather."
Zie left the dog statues and jogged back over to the group, who had gathered under a shabby lean-to near the training dummies.
"We'll split in two groups," Krem continued. "One mage for each group. Farrow, Rion, Luka, Skinner, you're with Grim. Amund, Thornton, Rocky, Nyssa, with me."
Grim shot Krem a questioning look, but straightened and drew his sword.
"We're doing a sweep," Krem added, as if the other man had asked him a question. "You take the east side of the keep, we'll take the west. Check for stragglers. You find any reports, bring 'em back for Sister Nightingale. If there's lyrium, don't touch it. We'll meet in the courtyard when we're done."
The elven woman, Skinner, spoke. "And if there are more than 'stragglers'?"
"Send a signal." Krem glanced at Rion and Nyssa. "You can do that, can't you?" When both nodded, he turned back to Skinner and Grim. "If the other group's not back by nightfall, well… we'll figure it out if it happens."
No scenario that included splitting groups ever ended well, but it wasn't hir decision. Nyssa watched as the other group went through the small door into the main keep. When they disappeared, Krem beckoned them back up the stairs.
They found the first bodies in the upper barracks.
Two hours into exploring Therinfal Redoubt, and before that, Nyssa's team had found nothing of note. The place was a mess of overturned furniture, scattered straw and broken crates littering the courtyard and officers' quarters, like a great wind had swept through and displaced everything in its path. There were no supplies; the templars had stripped their stores bare before leaving. That was hardly noteworthy. What did bother Nyssa was the amount of personal items left behind—not just letters and trinkets, but delicately painted cameo portraits, a lyrium kit and a ring stamped with a family crest that looked too fancy not to be Orlesian. It bothered hir enough to comment as they climbed the stairs from the lower barracks.
"You should ask Rocky or Krem," said Thornton, who hadn't taken a hand off his bow since they'd entered the Keep.
"Well, don't you think it's strange?" Nyssa replied, then promptly tripped on the stone stairs. With a muttered curse zie fed more magic into hir crystal, and tried to ignore the stinging of grazed toes. "The templars must have been in a hurry to leave such personal things behind. Or…"
"Or they don't need those things no more," said a voice with a thick, dwarven accent, and Nyssa looked up. Rocky lingered on the top stair, staring at hir from behind his hood. "They're monsters now. We all saw it at Haven. We fought them, then we high-tailed our asses out of there."
"I wasn't at Haven," Nyssa said, "but I've read the reports."
"Aye, well, they are what they are." Rocky shrugged, and waved hir through the door he held open. They emerged into the upper barracks' training yard, squinting as the mid-morning sun washed over them. Hir feet ached, and zie bent to adjust hir footwraps. Zie caught sight of armour glinting through the grass immediately.
"Here," zie called, discomfort forgotten, and heard several pairs of boots scuff to a stop. Zie readied hir staff and shielded hir eyes for a better view before hir.
Armour glinting in the sun—a pair of boots—Nyssa moved before zie realised, compelled by the instinctive desire to help. But there was no helping the dead templar, who lay crumpled in leathers spattered with blood. A discarded bow lay by its slack hand.
"A body," Nyssa said, as Krem moved into hir peripheral vision. Zie nudged the corpse with the butt of hir staff. The man was clearly dead, and had been for some time, but there was something unusual about the mottled skin showing under his hood. Zie crouched and tugged the cloth back roughly—
Red veins covered the dead templar's face from neck to forehead, stark against his white skin, and a deep red coloured his sunken eye sockets.
Nyssa shot upright so fast zie nearly over-balanced.
"Fenhedis lasa!"
"Here's another," Amund said from a few feet away, and zie stumbled over to look. This one was a knight, its face covered by a helmet. Another corpse lay nearby, punctured by a spear of red crystal.
"A battle," the Avvar man said in his booming voice. "Some of the men turned upon their own."
Zie ripped off the dead woman's helmet and tossed it to the side. This one had veins clustered around her mouth; smaller and more subtle than the other corpse, but enough to stand out to Nyssa's sharp eye.
"Is that one dead too?" Krem said from behind hir. Nyssa nodded. Then, as he took a step back, zie rose to hir feet.
"Did you know this had happened to them?"
If Krem was surprised or offended at hir hard tone, he gave no sign. He looked over his shoulder and nodded.
"Tell me what you saw at Haven," Nyssa said, and stepped away from the body. Zie couldn't bear to look at them any longer.
Krem's brows furrowed in a grim expression.
"Templars attacked with the Venatori," he said. "I cut down some at the trebuchets. Later, the Chargers went back to Haven and brought a few bodies for the researchers at Skyhold. Some looked like men still. Others were twisted. Covered in red crystals, like..." he glanced around, then gestured for hir to follow him over to another body. This one was twisted and grayish, with red crystals protruding from its back, and Nyssa felt bile rise in hir throat. Zie swallowed hastily and took a deep breath.
"Make sure no-one touches the bodies with their bare hands," zie said, and Krem nodded. "Or at all, if possible."
"Right."
"I've heard the stories of red lyrium," Nyssa added reluctantly, as zie stared down at the abomination. "What happened in Kirkwall a few years ago, with the Knight-Commander. They say she's still a statue in the middle of the Gallows."
"There was red lyrium at the Temple of Sacred Ashes," Thornton said from a few feet away. "I was there. I saw it."
Nyssa closed hir eyes and let the Veil pass over hir in gentle ripples, drowning out the noise of the others talking and the crunch of boots on grass and cobblestone.
There was something in this place; zie sensed it immediately, but it wasn't the prickling uneasiness zie felt near demons. Whatever secrets the fortress held, it was unclear, or it was hiding.
The Veil trembled all of a sudden, pushing back against hir senses, and hir head began to ache. Frowning, Nyssa opened hir eyes. Krem was staring at hir with the vague, uneasy expression mundane people usually wore when zie worked hir magic in their presence.
"What is it?" he asked.
Nyssa shook hir head. "I don't know. The Veil's thin here, probably moreso from the battle. It may be from the red lyrium."
"Maybe," Krem said, but he didn't look convinced.
The tremour in the Veil had passed, but Nyssa's headache remained, and zie did hir best to ignore it as zie followed the rest of the team from room to room. Much like the rest of the fortress, the upper barracks were empty of supplies and strewn with personal belongings.
Too much exposure to lyrium, raw or otherwise, could drive a person mad. That was mostly common knowledge, but zie had never heard of lyrium exposure twisting people into monsters. Nor had zie heard of red lyrium before the well-known story of its appearance in Kirkwall. Varric's story about the Champion of Kirkwall had been a work of fiction, but the one truth in it was the danger of red lyrium. He had assured hir of this personally, and with an uncharacteristic seriousness. Perhaps it was a different type of lyrium; one that infected beings like the darkspawn taint, and the surviving templars had brought it back to Therinfal.
"Watch your head," Thornton said as he opened the door to the last room in the upper barracks. Nyssa didn't even catch the joke, pre-occupied as zie was, and only when hir headache rose to a pitch did zie stop in the middle of the room and look around.
Red filled hir vision—a sickly glow so bright it almost blinded hir, emanating from gigantic spikes of red, glowing rock embedded in the walls of the room. Hir head throbbed; the pain was so sudden and fierce that Nyssa grimaced, one hand clamped over hir mouth, willing hir sudden nausea to go away.
A strong, knobbled hand grabbed hir by the shoulder.
"Peace, little curly elf," said Amund, and his voice was almost too loud for Nyssa to handle.
"I'm fine," Nyssa gasped, and straightened. Hir head throbbed, but zie forced hirself to ignore it. The others had moved up the stairs, past the red lyrium; evidently they couldn't hear the unbearable hum that assaulted hir ears.
Zie was used to handling refined lyrium for potions. This was something entirely different, and much, much stronger.
Nyssa brushed off Amund's hand and followed the rest of their group up the stairs, rubbing hir temples. The only other feature in the room was a rough-hewn table with an open crate set on it. Papers scattered the worn floorboards at its feet.
"Shipping manifest," Rocky said, as he bent to pick up the paper. "This is the seal of House Keltarr." He fell silent, moustache moving as he read silently. Krem leaned over his shoulder.
"Two crates, high grade, West Sink mines… three crates, regular grade. Five crates, red lyrium… rations given out on Lord Seeker's orders."
"They were taking it," Nyssa said. Cold dread gripped hir stomach. "Like they do regular lyrium. That must be why they all look like that."
Luka wrinkled her nose in disgust. "They were taking that shit? Ugh, nasty."
"Right," Krem said grimly, and straightened. He was halfway down the stairs before Nyssa could react—then a resounding crash shook the upper floor.
"Veata!" Rocky shouted, and shoved past Nyssa. "Krem! Stop!"
Nyssa followed him down the stairs with Luka hot on hir heels. Krem had paused, with his maul an inch away from a cracked spire of red lyrium. Red crystals scattered the floor around him.
"What?"
"Samples." Rocky strode forward, kicking the crystals aside with a scowl. "We'll want to take a bit. For the arcanist. She'll want more than the mess you're making of it."
Nyssa didn't stick around to see how the dwarf managed to get the samples. Zie headed outside, giving the lyrium a wide berth, and stood in the too-bright courtyard to wait for the others to finish.
Perhaps it was a result of hir headache, but zie couldn't shake the uneasiness that settled on hir shoulders, and the feeling that something had been hiding in this place. Either that, or it was still hidden—and it was more than just the red lyrium.
There was only one way to truly find out.
"A spell?"
Krem looked uneasy, even for someone supposedly usd to working with mages. Nyssa didn't blame him. Even for a mage, the depths of the Fade held dangers that even zie wouldn't readily brave. Zie hadn't grown up on a diet of hatred like a Circle mage might; zie was not afraid of demons. That didn't make hir a fool.
"There was something here," Nyssa said, "Maybe it was drawn to this place because of the deaths, or the red lyrium, or maybe the templars let it in."
The great hall stretched before them, bathed in weak afternoon sunlight. Both teams had met by chance on the outer stairs, drawn back to the central keep after a fruitless search, and as one group they had entered. Of all the places in Therinfal, the hall was the most defensible, and if any templars had been left behind, this would be the most likely place to find them.
But there were no templars. Not alive, at least. Only bodies had remained, in varying degrees of red lyrium transformation, and the windows at the far end had been broken. Cold air whistled through the shattered glass, and it didn't help their nerves any.
A few had gone to explore the shadows, to ensure there was no ambush waiting for them. Mostly they were sitting around, tired, cold and frustrated. It wasn't an ideal setting to cast a spell.
"A demon?" Rion asked. He had drawn away from the others with Krem, Skinner, Grim and Nyssa, staff in hand and eyes still darting around, as if expecting an ambush.
"Perhaps."
Skinner scoffed. "Templars who work with demons?"
"It's not unheard of," Nyssa replied, shrugging. "They may not have even known. Regardless…" zie turned back to Krem. "In places where a lot of death occurs, the Veil will create echoes of these events. I can use a spell to reveal what actually happened."
Rion frowned. "I've never heard of such a spell."
"Well, you wouldn't, would you? You were taught in a Circle."
The man shrugged, conceding the point. With a quick glance at the others, Nyssa closed hir eyes.
Keeper Elindra told hir once that the Veil was more of a magical vibration than the shroud its name implied, but to Nyssa, casting spells always felt like weaving a metaphysical tapestry. Manipulating it required a delicate touch, not brute strength, and that was something most shemlen mages failed to realise.
There—zie plucked a thread from the Veil, and ghostly figures rose about hir. There were a few exclamations and a 'what the fuck' from Luka, but zie ignored them.
The templars rushed forward, translucent swords and shields raised. No sound came from their footfalls; whether that was due to the spell or hir lack of experience in casting it, Nyssa couldn't say. One passed by hir close enough to see the red lyrium veins contorting his face.
"Fasta vass!" Krem exclaimed. Nyssa glanced in the direction he was pointing and saw a mass of spindly, bloodless limbs rise from behind the stylised throne in the centre of the hall.
It was only a memory, but Nyssa felt the hair stand up on hir arms as the creature unhinged its jaws and let out a silent shriek. Hir companions reacted with equal horror; curse words and surprised cries rang across the hall.
Farrow spat. "A Maker-damned demon."
"The armour," Grim said. The others had drawn closer to watch, mouths agape and expressions mirroring disbelief and revulsion. Nyssa didn't blame them; the sheer wrongness of the demon made hir skin crawl unpleasantly.
Krem frowned. "What armour?"
Grim fished in his pocket and passed a crumpled piece of paper to Krem. In front of them, the ghost-demon unfolded its limbs like a naked spider and attacked the templars, who retaliated with a muted battle cry.
"We found a suit of armour in the Lord Seeker's quarters," Farrow said; he seemed to have trouble tearing his eyes away from the scene of the battle. "The note was pinned to it. Read it. Tell me what that sounds like to you."
"'A Lord Seeker is never seen without ceremonial armour. I had a replica made'," Krem read. "'The life of Lucius Corin ends with you.'"
The demon tore itself free from the templars, shrieking silently, and threw itself through the shattered window.
The echo vanished, taking the scattered templars with it. Utter silence fell, until all they could hear was the wind whistling through the broken glass.
"Well, shit," Rocky said.