A/N: Thank you to everyone who reads and keeps up with this story. It's going to continue with two updates a month for a little while. Also, body horror warning for an animal.
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Finley shuddered as she paused, hands poised to pull herself up and over a freshly fallen log. This type of tree was supposed to be a prime candidate for iron bark, with its wood thick and heavy, and yet this tree's bark felt almost paper thin. She wasn't even sure if it would support her weight, if she pulled herself up onto it.
They were getting close to the Blighted lands.
Even the areas near the Blight were afflicted, trees growing smaller, plants weaker, animals prone to deformities at birth. Assuming they weren't stillborn.
That was why it'd gotten so quiet in their travels the last few days. All the inhabitants of the Wilds knew better than to live too close to the lost lands. Her companions had been irate when she'd insisted they fill a 'ridiculous' amount of water skins before heading further two days ago, but she wouldn't drink the water here.
Supposedly the Blight only affected living things and could only be caught from another loving thing, but it poisoned everything else.
It was an infection, a sickness, a curse, all rolled into one.
Sometimes when the wind blew, she felt like a sickness was washing over her, like the ailment caused by the Blight could infect the air itself. She'd often wondered if it did, somehow.
It was a good thing Cole didn't need to eat. And that he was stronger than he looked. He'd taken to carrying more than a few supplies he would never need, to make sure the rest of them would not go hungry.
She'd been reluctant to bring him, as she didn't know if he would be alright around the Blight—she'd never heard of a demon or spirit getting hurt by the Blight, but they generally weren't present to interact with it, were they?
He'd assured her he would be alright, and that if he felt he might not be, he would wait with things that could be left behind.
Finley didn't like the idea of leaving anyone behind, though. Even if the outlying sections of the lost lands didn't have darkspawn themselves, there were creatures that had been twisted by the Blight, deer with fangs, bears with wedges of bone protruding from them—the bereskarn—and much worse.
Those sorts of beasts roamed, and it could be hard to predict when they were coming near, especially with the Blight so close.
"We could rest here for the night."
Alistair's voice interrupted her thoughts, and she hesitated, looking back over her shoulder. Of their group, he looked the worst, though she couldn't tell if that was because of the Blight in him or something else.
Cole looked as though he could walk forever—he probably could—and Solas and Blackwall both seemed well enough. They were a little worn, but she'd been driving them to go at as quick a pace as they could. It wouldn't do to take too long out here. There was too much at risk.
"There should be a cliff up ahead another mile or so," Finley finally said. "I thought we could stop there."
Alistair took in a slow breath, though some of the color returned to his cheeks as she cast a quiet heal on him. With a half bow, he moved closer to her, a quirky smile in place. "You know, you're awfully nice for a witch."
"Then perhaps that should be an indication that I'm not one," Finley muttered, though she couldn't stay very annoyed with him. Blackwall and the others knew she wasn't a witch—Alistair knew too—and now that she was in her home, she didn't mind teasing so much. After all, there were no templars around to skewer her if someone took the joke too seriously.
Part of her wanted to ask them to stay with her, to go rogue from the Inquisition and use magic to track down rifts and close them on their own terms. With such a small party, it would be hard to keep them out of Orlais because of idiotic politics.
The only thing that made her pause in those fantasies was the fact that she wouldn't see Cullen again if she did that.
When she tried to pull herself onto the log, it crumbled beneath her weight, as she'd worried it might. It was as though it had started to grow already rotting.
Cole offered her a few cryptic words of consolation as they kept going.
It was so eerie to be here. Since things had gone awry, she'd avoided this part of the Wilds as best she could, though even without being there for years, she still knew it. She could remember what this place had been like before, when there had been noises besides branches falling from their own weight and the lonely rustle of underdeveloped leaves.
"I've been meaning to ask…" Alistair was beside her again, his voice oddly loud even hushed as it was. The world made sure that all sound carried here, while somehow feeling smothering all the same. When he spoke again, his voice was even lower. "You know a bit about the grey wardens, don't you?"
Finley perked up instantly, though she quickly tried to rein in her excitement. Cassandra had scolded her once early on for pestering Blackwall so, and while she was fairly certain he didn't mind, she didn't want to make a fool of herself in front of the Hero of Ferelden. Looking forward so that she could at least pretend to play calm, she shrugged. "I know stories."
"You know we can sense darkspawn?"
"That is in the stories," Finley chirped, a bit too quickly. When she dared a glance at Alistair, he was biting back a grin that made his lips into a U.
He waited a moment to swallow his laughter and then motioned toward himself. "What you sense in me. I use it to sense others like myself, so other grey wardens, and also darkspawn, because they also carry the Blight." He hesitated before adding, "Even the archdemon, when there is one."
When she realized he wasn't going to say anything else, Finley nodded toward him, though her brow pinched together, and she found herself staring at the forest floor rather than him. "You said you did this to yourself."
"I can't talk about that," Alistair started, though he stopped himself. "Well, I'm not supposed to. But…" Finley's gaze was on him in an instant. "Well, you seem like the sort who can keep a secret."
Finley nearly tripped over a tree root.
Was this what she thought it was? A grey warden entrusting her with grey warden secrets?
Alistair looked at her a moment like he might be reconsidering what he'd started to say, and she struggled not to look excited. "We do something called a Joining. It's…it involves exposure to darkspawn blood, and I was wondering if somehow something like that happened to you."
Finley stared at him blankly. "What?"
"You can sense the Blight."
Without thinking, she stopped in her tracks, tilting her head. "I'm not a grey warden."
"No, I know that," Alistair scratched at his hair and then rolled his eyes. "I'm not that big of an idiot."
"You're not an idiot at all."
She hadn't meant to sound as distressed as she did when she said that, and rather wanted to crawl up one of the nearest trees and hide from the look he was giving her.
"How are you able to sense the Blight?"
Finley shrugged a little, starting to walk again and glancing from him to the way ahead and back. "It's not…I have wards."
Alistair quirked a brow. "Wards?"
"For dangerous things," Finley pulled her braid over her shoulder and undid it to tidy it up a bit. "Well, I say ward, but it doesn't really ward? I…it lets me know when something's nearby, normally. I have one for templars, too."
As soon as she said it, she wondered why. He didn't need to know that.
However, he simply tilted his head, watching her. "You can sense when templars are nearby."
"When they see me." She wound her hair tie around one wrist and couldn't help but pick at her hair. "You don't have magic, so you probably would be bored with the finer details, but the templar one isn't as good as the one for the Blight. And I have one for demons, too, but it's still highly theoretical because I'd have to find demons to test it and well, I kind of made a point of avoiding them." She grimaced as she realized she was rambling. "The templar spell came first." She motioned to herself eyes. "They don't tend to give me chances to prove I'm not a blood mage, so it's better to know when they've spotted me before they're close enough to do…anything."
Shuddering, Finley frowned when one of her fingers got caught in a tangle in her hair. As she worked to get it out, she kept talking. "When the Blight hit, some friends thought we could tweak the spell, so that we'd be able to feel them before they came. Darkspawn, that is. It…" She frowned, finally freeing her finger and resuming her braid. "It is a very unrefined spell, but it works well enough."
"So, if we were in a cave, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me or a darkspawn?"
"Or a blighted shrub," Finley admitted. Despite being serious, Alistair laughed at that. The smile that lit up his face was quite becoming.
"Well, I've never been mistaken for a bush before." He paused, still smiling. "So your spell just lets you know that there's danger nearby?"
"It has its limitations." Finley tied her hair back and flung it over her shoulder, only to pull it forward again to play with when she saw she still had his undivided attention. "Like I said, I can't tell the difference between what's Blighted, and when we get to the Blighted lands, I'm going to have to dispel it because it'll sort of overload."
"Because everything's Blighted?"
"Right." Her voice drifted fainter before she shuddered again. "When I fell into the Fade, it messed up a bunch of my wards. I didn't even realize that my Blight one was gone until the darkspawn magister walked up on me." She took in a shaky breath, hating that memory. "So of course as soon as I could, I set that back in place. Not that I really need it for him—he's got quite the presence—but…maybe I'll get a little more warning next time."
"But you were feeling the red lyrium in him, weren't you?"
"Because of the templar spell, I think," Finley explained. "I'm…well, when I heal I can feel different wrongnesses, if that makes sense. A broken bone has a sort of itchy feel, a bruise an ache. When you brush against the Blight, it feels a little like you're being strangled."
"You feel that when you heal me?"
"It's fleeting, really," Finley frowned, turning more toward him and nearly tripping again. "If it was a problem, I wouldn't heal you." Even as Alistair looked skeptical, Finley tried to look more reassuring, "And it's not…I'm trying to simplify it for you since you don't have magic. It's more of a sharp twinge in magic, but you wouldn't know that sort of thing, I suspect."
"I've never had my magic twinge," Alistair nodded, mock serious.
Standing a little taller, Finley motioned toward him. "Hence I tried to make it something you'd understand."
"I apologize if I seem unappreciative," Alistair offered, one hand over his heart. "This is fascinating."
"Now you're making fun of me."
"I'm not," Alistair insisted, picking up his pace as she did hers so that she couldn't leave him behind. "Really. I think it's interesting." When she didn't respond right away, he asked, "Does this ward help prevent the Blight?"
"Just in the sense that you can run before you come in contact with it."
"Then should you be going out here?" At that, Alistair stopped, and without thinking, Finley did too. "You're the only one who can close the rifts. I don't know that you should be putting yourself at risk, when you don't have any immunity to the Blight."
"You don't know where to find the notes," Finley retorted.
"How are you so sure that the red lyrium and the Blight are connected? If you didn't have your spell up when you dealt with red lyrium…"
"It was the same twinge." Finley resumed walking at a slightly slow pace, inviting him to keep up. He did. "Well, almost…I've never had ailments have such a similar feel like that. Healing a broken arm and a broken leg have the same similar sort of tug to each other that the Blight and Red Lyrium infection seem to have. They have to be related."
"But you could still sense red lyrium without the spell."
"Because I was trying to heal someone," Finley gave him a stern look. "And red lyrium amplifies the regular templar spell, too. It's a bit of both, I think."
"So would you feel red lyrium if it infected someone other than a templar…without the Blight ward, I mean."
Finley blinked, surprised that he was so willing to discuss the possibilities of her spells. Most non-mages tended to shy away from such topics and the ones who didn't…
He didn't seem like the typical ones who didn't.
Though, she didn't have particularly good skills when it came to reading people.
When she realized she hadn't answered him yet, she finally shrugged. "I don't know." Then, she shrugged again. "All the more reason to do more research and to get this research."
Alistair nodded, thoughtful, allowing their conversation to fade as they kept going.
That silence prevailed until they reached the cliff. Finley had known what they would see, but it still hurt as much as the first day.
The trees were withered and lifeless husks, the ground black and any shrubs bare skeletons of what they should be.
It was a wasteland, and even the stars overhead seemed to glimmer a little dimmer.
This area had once boasted a beautiful canopy, stretching off to the horizon, and now…it was a pustule, a blemish on her precious Wilds.
The way down from their overlook was a narrow, but easy path—there was nothing that could grow to clutter it—and Finley reminded them that they'd head down in the morning, after doing a survey to make certain that nothing dangerous was lurking too near.
None of them slept particularly well, but they waited until dawn to pack up and move again. After dispelling her ward, Alistair told her he couldn't sense any monsters nearby, and they headed down into that miserable nightmare.
The first two days went without event. They made good time, partially because there was so little underbrush to wind through, and partially because they were all afraid, even if none of them spoke about it.
Well, none save Cole, who was constantly talking about birds and cheese and gentle smiles from long ago to try to remind them all that things were not so dire. Sometimes it was hard to tell who he was trying to comfort, but the rest of them joined in when they took breaks, sharing fond memories that seemed to help themselves and the poor spirit with staving off ill thoughts.
On the evening of the third that they finally came to their destination, an old, half-standing hut.
Memories flooded back to her as she stopped at the edge of what had once been a pretty clearing. She could see herself and another mage or two discussing theory in the sunlight, relaxing as they knew the templars weren't like to come so far south.
She shivered as a sickly wind washed over them and then straightened up. "If the research is still here, it'll be in there."
Solas frowned as they started into the clearing, dead grass crunching underfoot. "Odd." When Finley tilted her head, he motioned around them. "Would it not have been wiser to do your research outside of the Blighted areas?"
Even as Finley shifted a little, Cole patted her shoulder, giving her a simple smile when she looked at him. "It's not your fault. You couldn't have known."
Before he could say more, Finley nodded quickly, picking up her pace.
"Be careful." Alistair came up on her side opposite Cole, glancing around. His sword was in hand. "Something's nearby."
"Darkspawn?" Finley whispered. She'd known it would be impractical, but she'd dearly hoped that blighted trees would be all they'd see for their time in the lost lands.
"Some sort of ghoul, I think," Alistair corrected, scanning their surroundings. "It's off to our left, but it's close."
"Can we avoid it?" Solas asked.
"It will probably be drawn to me," Alistair murmured, adjusting his grip on his sword and then rolling the shoulder of his shield arm. The rest of them drew their weapons as they hurried.
Once they reached the hovel, Finley darted straight to the back of the room, brushing dust and debris away from the floor until she revealed a trap door. The wood practically fell apart as she hoisted it out of place, one of the hinges breaking apart completely. She told herself it didn't matter as she let it rest awkwardly against the wall.
They slipped into the earth one at a time after she used a spell to reinforce the ladder leading down, and she half wondered if darkspawn would be waiting for them below. Luckily, there was nothing. The room beneath the earth was considerably larger than the one overhead, though parts of it had caved in after so many years of disuse.
Surprisingly, the part that bothered her the most was that there were not spider webs or insects anywhere to be seen.
Even as she considered seeing if the lighting spell they'd used still worked, the orb on Solas' staff gleamed to life, casting odd shadows across the room.
There were dozens upon dozens of books and journals, stacks of rotted reagents and tainted potions.
One wall even sported gross black and red veins across it. Those awful veins had just begun to crawl their way across the adjacent walls, and she cringed as she started toward it.
That would be where the notes were, of course.
The ground was damp and rotten beneath her feet, a horrid stench puffing up with each step.
She tried to hold her breath.
After digging through damp, half rotted pages, she finally came to the notes she was after, and quickly flipped through them to see that they were all there before turning and stilling.
Alistair had put up his weapons, and he was studying the wall behind her, arms cross and brow furrowed. As she whispered that she'd found what she was after, he stepped past her, putting a hand against the wall and pressing lightly.
"This…this doesn't make any sense."
"How's that?" Blackwall asked, though he seemed to pale at the attention from his fellow warden, who looked mostly annoyed.
"I've only ever seen the Blight affect the earth like this in areas where there are high concentrations of darkspawn."
She'd been prepared to evade any questions he might have, but when he said he wondered if they might camp there for the night to try to gather samples and the like for study, she couldn't.
"I don't think it would be wise to mess with that."
Instantly all eyes were on her, and she shuddered from the sudden attention.
She clutched the research a little closer as Alistair walked back to her. "This was your research, wasn't it? Do you know what—"
Something creaked overhead.
"Quiet."
Even as Alistair gave her an exasperated, wary glare, she put a finger to his lips, shushing the others.
For a moment, it felt like the world was almost completely silent save for the sounds of their breathing and the winds overhead.
Then she heard noise overhead again.
An odd wheeze.
A sniff.
The sounds of hooves on rotted wood.
A hissed breath.
This was not good.
Solas slipped closer to Finley, helping her tuck the notes away into her bag. "Is there another way out of here?"
A shadow moved over the hole in the ceiling next to the ladder.
Finley was grateful that the entryway was as small as it was. If what she thought was overhead was actually up there, then…
Looking back at Solas, she nodded, and then glanced around the room.
There had been two passages that wound their way underground from the hut, one going on for almost a mile, and the other opening near the edge of the clearing. From the looks of things, however, both had caved in years ago, and she hesitantly crept toward one.
Just as she considered how much noise and time it might take to try to dig through and see if the tunnel opened up further along, there was a loud snuffling overhead and then…
Silence.
The five of them held their breath, none of them daring to move as they waited for the sounds overhead to indicate whatever was up there had moved on or lay in wait.
Finally, Cole shivered. "They've gone for now, but not very far."
"You know what it was?" Blackwall asked, his sword drawn.
The spirit shivered, nodding miserably to the rest of them. "In pain." He shuddered, clutching himself and rocking slowly. "Dark. Dark, black and red. Black pain, red anger, twisting, turning, tossing, tumbling. Once there was light. She remembers. Warm and bright. It hurts her now, and she hates it. Hates the memories more. If she could just forget the warmth the cold might not bite so. She hates the things that dare tread here, the ones that can still feel that light. The monsters never came here; she should have been safe."
Finley flinched at his words, and the spirit focused on her, a pleading look in his eyes. "You didn't know."
Alistair was watching Finley considerably more closely than before, though they all jumped when Solas broke the silence, striding to the ladder. "You said she's gone?"
"Yes."
"Then we should take this time to leave ourselves. It will be dusk soon enough, and I should like to be far away from here by the time the darkness falls." Without another word, he hoisted himself up the ladder. Cole followed on his heels, though the wardens waited until Finley was up before following.
Despite being weary, their group backtracked straight through the night, none of them wanting to stay in this blighted nightmare longer than they would need to, and while they continued on, Finley hoped dearly that Alistair and the others might forget what she'd started to explain back before that creature had found them.
After the Blight, she and quite a few other apostates had decided to cure the Blight and restore their beloved home. They had spent four years working together, sharing reagents and spell theory, working tirelessly to try to find a way to change things back to how they had been.
Finley was, more often than not, the courier between groups, bringing notes of new spells or findings to others and checking in on them to see how work was going, namely because of how well she could slip past animals and the like.
She'd occasionally been teased about being a witch then, too, by a few of the other apostates who gladly gave themselves similar titles. She hadn't minded it so much then, as it meant she was one of them, though she never claimed the title for herself.
It had been a time of hope and relative peace.
She'd originally been heading to share research with a few colleagues to the east when she'd caught wind of a templar sweep and had circled back to where she'd just left to wait out her hunters.
The research she'd been helping with at the time had been promising. They'd figured out how to…move the Blight for lack of a better word. It wasn't a cure, but they could pull it back from parts of what was infected, focus it. For example, they could force all of the blight into a single branch on a sapling, though they couldn't cure the branch itself, and it was still contagious and with even a second's lapse in attention, it would spread back into the rest of the sapling, causing damage at an accelerated rate.
The idea behind it was that a lost limb—or even finger or toe if they could concentrate it enough—wouldn't be nearly as bad as succumbing to the Blight.
The templars being on the hunt had given her an excuse to go back and help more with said research, and she had been glad of it at first.
When she'd returned, however, having been gone no more than four days, she'd found that the mage she'd left, a man called Rori, had gone and caught himself a blighted wyvern.
There'd been quite the argument as he insisted he could keep the beast docile and test upon it, and Finley had likewise insisted that their spells were still too experimental to try on so large a creature.
And on one that was so much further gone than most of the test subjects people used.
Mostly, they used plants that had been exposed to the Blight, and in some rare cases, mice or crickets, though it was hard to get a good look at changes to the latter.
For him to want to try to expel the Blight from a full-grown wyvern who looked to have been infected quite some time ago was…
It was downright foolish.
Finley had talked him out of it, or at least she thought she had. He'd promised to wait for her to come back with news on other fronts before he would do anything, and after a few days' time, she'd headed off again.
She'd been on the cliff where she'd had the party stop when it had happened. An eruption of magic that had sent shockwaves through the earth and air, knocking her off her feet and out like a light.
When she came to, she'd cast a quick heal on herself, shuddering as her Blight ward frantically went off in her head, telling her that this place, a place that was miles and miles from where the actual Blight had taken place, was a danger.
Moving cautiously, she'd gone to the cliff's edge and peered out, horrified by what she saw.
The Blight had swallowed miles of forest, and it seemed to her like it was working its way out still. Like something had amplified the Blight's ability to spread, and it was going to consume the whole world this time.
She'd tried to go back to where Rori lived, to see if he was alright, but there had been so much damage, so many sickening animals and withering trees, that she'd feared she would catch the Blight herself, and had fled.
Another mage, a dreamer, had gone into the Fade, and claimed that Rori had tried to expel the Blight from the wyvern as soon as he knew Finley was far enough away that she couldn't backtrack quickly to stop him.
The Blight had left the wyvern entirely, but with nowhere specific to go, it had gone everywhere.
They'd made points to go past the area every now and then to check for signs that it was still spreading, but after almost a month, it had ceased creeping out, though the area around it still suffered from proximity.
Most of the apostates in their group had abandoned the project after that, claiming it a sign from the Maker that their aid was unwanted. One overzealous mage, wanting to wipe her slate clean and still have a chance to make it to the Maker's side, had burned most of their notes, going to everyone involved and making sure that there was nothing that could be used to cause such destruction again.
Donovan had been one of the few to keep his well enough hidden—and fire-proofed—so that work could go on.
Finley and a few others had persisted, more carefully, restricting their work almost entirely to theory, and the few test subjects they did use to carefully potted plants.
Even so, Rori's work had been the closest they'd ever gotten to success, and, as their dreamer had said, he had managed to cure the wyvern, even if it did die shortly after in the spell's backlash.
If they could have had more time to look into his work…
Everyone had been too afraid to go into those woods, though, and the mage who'd sought redemption had declared that she was going to make sure nothing could be found.
While she'd never been heard from after her departure, most of them had assumed that either she'd succeeded and found a new home far away from them, or that something had gotten to her or that she'd simply succumbed to the Blight herself.
Either way, there hadn't been enough people willing to risk catching the Blight to make the trip worth it to see if the research was still there.
Not until she'd befriended grey wardens.
That they had come with her and that the work had still been there meant the world to Finley.
It gave her renewed energy, and she kept healing the others' weary muscles to keep them moving as they made their way out of the lost lands.
She likely needn't have expended her energy so, for even without her prompting, her entire party was quick on their feet, always alert for whatever had been there. While Blackwall and Alistair both questioned Cole and then Finley about what it had been, neither of them responded.
Despite taking two and a half days to get to the hut, they were able to cut down on an entire day by pushing themselves through without sleep, and it wasn't until they were out of those cursed woods that they finally decided to set up camp.
As Solas and Blackwall debated making a fire, Cole slipped up beside Finley and tugged on her sleeve, eyes doleful as he met her gaze. "I…I don't like knowing how much she hurts."
Finley grimaced and then nodded. "I know how you feel."
"If we could help her…"
Even as Finley nodded, a hand landed on her shoulder and she turned the other way to see Alistair. "I've a few questions about that research of yours."
Though Finley looked back for Cole, the spirit had disappeared, as he so often did. She was getting a little used to him, now, and was having more and more trouble imagining him as dangerous.
However, he wasn't her primary concern at the moment. Turning slowly back to Alistair, she appraised him carefully. "I wasn't there when it fell apart, so I don't know that I can properly answer anything."
"Not even how the Blight got to an area the darkspawn never marched through?"
With great reluctance, Finley told him bits of what had happened, that a friend had been overzealous, but that she was sure if they were careful, the work could be continued. When she was done, she half expected him to curse her and her friends for having been so stupid, but instead he let out a dry laugh.
"Where were you a year ago?" Even as she wondered why he was asking, he shook his head. "To think…she could have just talked to you." He scratched at the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing abruptly as his gaze softened. It was the gentlest she'd ever seen him. "Des, that is Warden Commander Des Brosca, took a few of her warden recruits with her and headed out west, looking for a cure for the Blight."
Even as he backtracked to say her title, Finley knew who he was talking about. She'd heard the stories, and she knew that he and Des had been the two wardens to square off against the archdemon. He had landed the killing blow, but she had been just as important to ending the Blight.
That he would imply she could be needed by the both of them for warden related matters…
"It's not…really a cure, yet, though."
"Still, we have a better understanding of the Blight," Alistair shrugged. "I'd wager Velanna would be able to help with some of that research." He tilted his head, considering it. "Could you send it to them? If I found out where they were? In one of those bird messages of yours?"
"Likely not," Finley fidgeted under his gaze, hating herself for having to tell him no. "The birds are good for shorter messages, so I'd have to send dozens to get all the material to someone else via message, and the likelihood that something might go amiss and a message get lost is fairly high when there's that many of them, and if they lost even one piece, it could do some real damage if they tried to cast the spell or just build off it."
"Ah," Alistair crossed his arms and nodded slowly. However, even as Finley started to apologize, worried that this might be too great a disappointment to him, he eyed her. "Could you send her word to come to Skyhold?"
Finley's finger punched a hole through her sleeve as she fiddled with it, and she paused to free her finger before looking up at him, a little embarrassed that all her spells were so wanting. "I'd need to know where she was, first. Or, if you had something of hers, like a hair…"
"What about a gift she gave me?"
"…No." It felt like that was all she could say to him. "It would need to be something of hers."
Nodding slowly, Alistair patted her shoulder, giving her a reassuring smile. "Alright. Back channels it is. I'll find a way to contact her. In the meantime…how many people are you intending on sharing those notes with…?"
"Solas." The elf's ears pricked up at his name, though he didn't turn away from the fire he was building. "There's a rather high margin for error if people are too overzealous, so the less people actively working on it, the less likely that anything…unwanted will happen."
It was one of the main reasons Solas had come with them. She'd recruited the wardens because they would be immune to the Blight, Cole because he wouldn't likely be afflicted, and Solas because he was a good healer and they could get started on evaluating the notes quickly—and he could heal if something happened to her.
Though, it seemed like that little bit would be unnecessary, as they'd made it out alright.
Alistair nodded to himself before patting Finley on the shoulder, smile in place. However, just as he said that he was glad to have been able to come along with her for this little excursion, he went rigid, attention snapping back toward the way they'd come.
She followed his gaze, sucking in her breath when she saw the creature stepping out from underneath one of the rotted trees a few yards beyond.
Its fur coat was a dingy brown, with patches and entire swaths of fur missing all together, revealing blistered, rotting skin and muscle beneath. The hair from its main and tail was almost completely gone, save for a few scraggly, limp wisps that made it look more dead than alive, and its hooves had cracks running through them, with black ooze caked upon them.
Worst of all, however, was its face. Its nose had rotted back to the bone, and its eyes were a dull red that bled black ooze which matted what was left of its coat around its eyes.
And there, protruding from the center of its forehead, was a large, curving horn, sharp and covered in red and black lines, much like the tainted wall had been. In addition to its actual horn, rows of small, bone like protrusions jutted out along the top of its head and down its back, twisted and crooked and vile.
The beast let out a low wheeze as it stopped, watching them.
"She needs our help," Cole whispered, beside Finley again.
Solas and Blackwall were frozen near the fire. Finley swallowed slowly, not daring to glance away from the twisted beast. "Cole, I thought you could sense her pain. You didn't know she was following us?"
"You said we could help her," the spirit protested, wringing his hands worriedly, "and there's but one way left to help."
Finley's heart sank at the words, easily putting together what he meant.
With a horrifying, haunting scream, the beast charged.