Time slowed around Hawke as he advanced, dilating and stretching in a soft halo of white that he'd come to recognize as Amell's time enhancement. It made the surreal situation of watching his body's progress through a mirror even that much more nightmarish, emulating the oppressive weight of the Fade in the waking world.
When he saw Dorian call on his magic to block the path for Hawke's body to follow them through the broken gate to the Temple, an uncomfortable thought suddenly struck him. "What if Dorian tries to stop me? I can't stop myself from killing him when I'm not in my body!"
"You won't," Vengeance said in a curt tone. "She won't let that happen."
"She?" Hawke asked again.
"Enough. I must concentrate." Closing his eyes, Vengeance moved behind Hawke and laid his hands on either side of Hawke's head, forcing Hawke to turn his gaze to the mirror. "Focus on your body. Try to see what it sees, feel what it feels. Remember all those times you linked to it by accident, and now do it with purpose. Now is the time."
Something about the cadence of the words and the heat of Vengeance's hands snapped Hawke's focus into razor sharpness, and he stared at the mirror as if possessed. He saw his body climbing some ancient vines up and over the outer wall of the Temple, eventually dropping down onto a raised platform which led deeper into the ruins. Though his body seemed not to care for what lay within the Temple, Hawke did, and the view was a revelation.
He whistled through his teeth as he took in the sweeping vista of deep, lush jungle overtaking the once majestic ruins. "That's beautiful. And dangerous," he added as his eyes took in the details of the myriad of figures crawling throughout the ruins below. "Ye gods. Venatori, Red Templars, those Guardian elves. And I have to cut my way through all of them? I mean…my body does."
"And hopefully you," Vengeance said, his voice oddly strained. "Amell is getting farther away, and more distracted by the moment. I think I can—"
Abruptly Hawke no longer watches a mirror in the nonexistent Amell estate, but races through the trees, branches stinging him with their whippets as he dashes through them. A Red Templar Shadow suddenly appears in front of him, and Hawke instinctively chops him down with two swift blows before running forward again.
And, just like that, he was back to watching the mirror, though his Fade-body staggered in reaction to the swiftness of the change. "What was that?" he demanded.
"A crack in the spell," Anders said, tone exuberant. He put one hand on Hawke's shoulder and one hand on Vengeance's arm, then suddenly gasped and disappeared in a flare of purple light.
Before Hawke had time to panic, the hands on either side of his head tightened. "Don't worry, I'm still here," Anders said from directly behind him, his voice echoed by the twisting resonance of Vengeance. Half-turning his head, Hawke could see Anders now stood behind him instead of Vengeance, but it was an Anders whose body thrummed with the deep purple lightning of Vengeance, and whose eyes glowed an eldritch violet color. "We are much more powerful this way," Anders said, voice cracking and reverberating with the stomach-churning inflections of Vengeance. "Keep your eyes on the mirror. The more you sync with your body as we add more cracks, the wider the cracks will be and the fewer we will need to inflict to break the spell."
Hawke licked his lips nervously, then fixed his gaze on the mirror once more, forcing his mind to replicate what his body saw and what his body felt. His ethereal fingertips tingled with the memory of holding the heavy metal weight of his daggers, and the tenuous concept of weight slowly pressed down on his shoulders and torso again as he summoned the thought of what his armor actually meant to his body—to him.
Gradually the chaos in the mirror became more natural, changed from something observed through a window to something he was himself witnessing. When his body burst into a clearing which happened to hold a small pocket of Red Templars, he roared with glee as—
—Hawke launches himself into their midst, blades a whirl of destruction as he takes them down one by one. Given how much pent up rage he has, the effort required to take them all down seems paltry in comparison to the sheer joy of controlling his body again. He pauses after felling the behemoth, panting heavily as he revels in everything he's been missing: the sound of the wind rustling the branches of the trees, the feel of the breeze toying with his hair, the scent of the trees and flowers around him. Even the horrific stench of blood and the trickle of sweat on his brow touches him with a stunning impact, and he lets his head fall back as he closes his eyes and moans in a bliss that is practically orgasmic.
When he opened his eyes, he was back in his ephemeral body, but he still felt the physical one: the strain, the pain, and all the marvelous details which made living so exquisitely maddening. "It's working," he snapped to the duo behind him. "Whatever you're doing, keep at it."
"We will wrest you from him," they said flatly, both voices emerging from the same mouth. Before, Hawke would have found it creepy. Now? Well, now creepy had an entirely new meaning.
Locking his eyes once more on the mirror, he watched his body begin the dance anew through the ruins. His hungry gaze locked on his body as he waited for the next opportunity to make the connection once more. The next one was short and sweet, a burst of simply climbing up a seemingly unsurpassable wall to get around some locked doors. He seized full control of his body long enough to pause on the edge of the battered rooftop and admire the view, wondering how he could ever have taken something like a jungle or a ruin or a city for granted. All too soon, however, the respite ended, and the spell separated him from his body again.
An agonizingly long time passed before he could claim his body again, a delay validated by the string of curses behind him directed at Amell and his fiendish design. "Hopefully you'll get into a fight soon," Anders-Judgment growled. "That seems to trigger it more reliably than anything else."
"It's not really my choice, but it shouldn't be too long," Hawke muttered. "The Venatori are like lice in this place."
As if by magic, over the very next wall he found a sizable group of Venatori intent on breaking down a large door. Hawke frowned when he saw a blonde woman barking orders at them. "I wonder who that is. I feel like I should know her, or at least know who she is."
In the next instant, however, the woman turned and spotted Hawke's body. Without hesitation she drew the staff from her back and lobbied a volley of magic towards him, forcing Hawke's body into a retreat from the top of the wall upon which he perched into the courtyard below. "Kill him!" she ordered, unleashing a wave of Venatori against him.
Even as the uneven battle commenced, Hawke felt laughter bubbling up, a laughter that—
—burns in Hawke's gut with all the anger and fury of his time as a captive of Amell. It uncoils from the ball into which he'd compressed it and bursts into a roar of fury as he vaults forward and into the ranks of the Venatori. Dimly he is aware of the arrival of someone new as he dodges and weaves between attacks of both magic and steel, but it isn't until the dust settles that he finds himself standing amidst a pile of bodies staring at a very familiar figure.
He struggles to say the name, to express in one word all the yearning and desperation he's buried deep after burying his dagger deep in the man's side, but nothing emerges from his lips. His body's hands tighten around the grip of his daggers, absent any direction from him, and for a panicked moment he wonders if Amell's spell will, indeed, make his worst repeating nightmare come true, that he would again kill someone he loved with his own steel and muscle.
He hears, as if in a dim background, the muttering of Vengeance and Anders in their duology, a complaint about a second spell and quick, tamp it down, but he doesn't understand it. All he knows in the moment is that he is mere feet away from the man he loves, and the urges to kiss and kill are fighting within him, twining about each other like snakes until it is hard to separate one from the other.
Abruptly his body launches into motion, daggers ready, and Hawke mentally roars in frustration as he tries to wrench back control of his body long enough to prevent the daggers from making another irrevocable decision to haunt his dreams.
He feels something crack, and his entire being, body and soul, shudders as a sharp pain suddenly resonates through him. Then, in the next moment, his body runs past Dorian, shoving the daggers into their sheaths before it heaves itself up the ivy running over the wall, leaving Dorian and the others behind as the primary goal seizes him once more: find the Well of Sorrows.
Hawke snapped back into the Fade with an almost audible sound, only to find that he'd fallen to his knees as his soul made the leap across the mirror. "What the fuck was that about?" he groaned, reaching up to rub at his temples.
"Something we didn't anticipate," Anders-Vengeance said. "There was a secondary spell on you that activated as soon as you saw the Inquisitor. Apparently Amell didn't want to leave anything to chance after your little rebellion at the Winter Palace."
"What do you mean?" Hawke asked, a chill settling into his chest.
"The spell was supposed to make you kill the Inquisitor immediately upon sight," Anders-Vengeance explained in their eerie, gut-wrenching echo. "He hid it well, buried deep in the control spell.
"So how did you break it so quickly?" Hawke asked with a grunt. "Not that I mind, since I don't think I could deal with the guilt if I had killed him."
They hesitated before answering, then said, "We didn't. You did."
Hawke blinked. "How?"
"It's not unheard of for a signal act of will or a particularly strong emotion to break a spell, particularly a blood magic spell," Anders-Vengeance said. "Apparently you had both."
Hawke gave them a strained grin as he pushed himself to his feet once more. He felt stretched, and oddly tender, but more alive than he'd felt since Amell had exiled his soul to the Void. "They don't call me the Champion because I give up when the sun sets. Are we close?"
"Yes, but we're not there yet. The other spell might be broken, but it also took down a few of our efforts with it." Hands fell on Hawke's shoulders and turned him to face the mirror once more. "This isn't over yet."
"Of course not," Hawke muttered as he locked his gaze on the mirror. "That would be too easy."
Still, as his body progressed through the ruins and fought all those who opposed him, the connections continued to grow more and more frequent and intense. The more he controlled his body, the more connected he felt with it afterwards, to the point that he would be short of breath when returning after a fight. Whatever ground they may have lost proved easy to recover, until he could practically feel the heavy warmth of the jungle despite the chill air of the Fade. Surely they would have a final breakthrough any moment now…
Hawke claims his body again during another battle, one that is fierce and between several parties, though the armor of the Inquisition is absent. The Venatori and the Red Templars seek to take down the Guardians, to claim the secrets for themselves, and Hawke refuses to let any minion of Corypheus find success. He snarls and ignores the elves as he attacks his true enemy, until, at the end, he stands alone against a small group of elves. It is only then that Hawke realizes that these elves are taller than he expected, and taller than any he'd met save for perhaps Fenris. When one of them steps forward with a growl, Hawke drops into a ready stance but does not attack, praying they can see that he does not intend to fight save in his own defense. His prior callous attitude towards elves has come to wear on him in recent months, after all, and as far as he is concerned, these elves are just defending their home.
Before the threat can turn into an attack, however, the leader of the elves stops his fellow elf with a short, sharp command in a language Hawke doesn't recognize. After a short argument, the elves turn away and leave, though the leader gives him an odd little salute, his green eyes glowing under his hood as an odd smile touches his lips. "Atish'all Vir Abelasan," he murmurs, then runs out of Hawke's sight.
Hawke blinks a few times, taken aback by the odd encounter. What on Thedas did he say? There is no answer forthcoming, of course, so Hawke pushes himself into motion once more
—just in time for the spell to re-assert itself and shove him out of his body once more.
"No!" the others snarled in eerie tandem. "We are so close. Reach for your body, Hawke. Reach!"
Desperate, Hawke shoved his hands towards the eluvian, yelling at his running body as if that would make a lick of difference.
And, for a wonder, perhaps it did, because he felt himself practically thrown back into his body as the sound of a thunderclap rolled and echoed in his mind. His hands convulsively tightened into fists as his teeth ground together, a strangled scream dying in his throat as a shockwave of pain and bliss crashed and reverberated through his body.
We did it! Anders' triumph resonated through his head, intimate and thrilling and terrifying in its closeness. The spell is broken! You're free!
Hawke shuddered in the aftermath, unable to figure out if he felt like he'd just been stabbed in the gut or experienced the most intense orgasm of his life. Deciding it was both at once, he groaned and opened his eyes, hoping beyond hope that the actual breaking of the spell hadn't occurred at a crucial moment in a fight.
What he found instead made him yelp and tense his entire body into what felt like one large clenched muscle. Somehow, wrapped up in the euphoria of regaining his body and the climactic cracking of Amell's spell, he had somehow finagled himself halfway up of an excessively tall cliff. Thankfully he'd jammed his feet and hands into the vines at some point during the tumultuous reclamation of his body, but that meant that his current situation was, to put it mildly, a tad precarious.
Especially since it seemed that the adrenaline which had been propelling him forward since the beginning of the fight with Corypheus seemed to have vanished along with Amell's magic, leaving him feeling more than a bit hollow and achey.
"Well," Hawke muttered as he looked up and down—and then down some more. "Shit." A little help here?
I'm not sure what we can do to help, Anders pointed out, amusement clear in his tone. You'd probably better get moving before you lose your grip, though. If it makes a difference, I think we're closer to the top than the bottom.
"Thanks," Hawke grated between clenched teeth. "Appreciate it." Taking a deep breath, he forced himself into motion, clambering up the vines with all the grace of a land-bound sea serpent. It seemed to take an agonizingly long time to get to the top, but that may have been only in comparison to the speed with which he'd traversed the rest of the ruins.
As he hung there, waiting for some strength to return for the final push, a sudden thought occurred to Hawke. "Wait. I thought you wouldn't be with me once I got my body back."
So did I, Anders admitted. But I'm here.
"And Vengeance?" Hawke asked, trying and failing to figure out what having a visitor inside him felt like.
He's here, too. He's just not talking, Anders told him.
Closing his eyes, Hawke forced a breathy chuckle. "So it's come to this, then? Hawke the Abomination. It doesn't seem too bad so far, especially if I get some glowing eyes out of it. And I have to admit, it's nice not to be alone."
It is, Anders replied, and Hawke could almost feel the man's bittersweet joy. But I shouldn't be here.
"You don't want to be with me?" Hawke grunted as he tried to eke out some energy from his limbs. "I suppose I can't really blame you for that."
Not inside you, no. I should— Anders paused while Hawke's lips widened in a grin. Stop that. I can see what you're thinking, Hawke. I didn't mean that kind of 'inside you' and you know it.
"It's still marvelous, isn't it? Especially the time after we killed the—"
When I have a body, yes, Anders scolded him. Not when I'm inside your mind. Still, we can deal with that problem later. Where are we? Can you see or hear anything?
"Let me check." As Hawke stilled himself and long enough to look around, he suddenly realized that he could hear voices—and that some of the voices were familiar. "Dorian," he breathed, trying to spur his tired muscles into action so that he could go hug the man and feel something real after all this time. Can you hear what they're talking about?
Not really, Anders replied. Something about a temple and the Well? It's hard to make out any details.
Hawke grunted, then finally dug deep and found the strength to force himself into motion once more. He barely managed to make it up and over, expending the last of his strength to pull himself away from the edge. There he lay panting as he sought to hear more over the pounding of his heart. Eventually, after the drumming of his blood in his ears died down, he rolled over and took in his surroundings, noting that he was lying on the ground in the shadow of some large, flowering trees. Further scrutiny showed that the tree under which he lay was part of a large circle of trees around an open area.
His eyes first landed on what he instantly recognized as an eluvian, one large enough to be a twin to the one in Soldier's Peak under Amell's control. "Huh. I wonder why Amell didn't just use that to go to the Wilds. Would've saved a lot of time."
He must not have been able to access it from the Crossroads, an eerie voice said from within Hawke's mind— Vengeance, Hawke realized with a start, since it was the first time the spirit had 'spoken' since they'd emerged from the Fade together. Hearing the voice in his head proved to be far more unsettling than hearing the spirit speak from outside of it. I do not remember much from those times, but I remember that you had to know something to use them.
"Those times?" Hawke murmured as he pushed himself into a sitting position, his eyes searching farther afield as he did so. He noticed the people standing on the opposite side of the circle from him immediately, but found his attention drawn to the large round pool of water which separated them. The longer he stared at the water, the more his hackles rose, until his whole body shuddered in involuntary reaction to the chill. "What…what is that?"
The Well of Sorrows, perhaps? Anders suggested. I've never seen anything like it. It reeks of magic and spirit energy. We'd better leave it well enough alone, though. If Amell wanted us to do anything with it, it's probably a very bad thing.
"Damn right it is," Hawke muttered as he forced his eyes away. Or at least, tried to force them away. His gaze kept returning until it fixated on the Well again, and Hawke frowned. "What—"
She calls, Vengeance said, as he had before, even as a strong sense of purpose suddenly gripped Hawke's body and made him rise to his feet.
"Hey, wait a minute," Hawke grated, straining against the sudden physical impulse to catapult himself forward— towards the Well of Sorrows. "Vengeance, what are you—"
She calls. I must answer! His feet shuffled forward, but Hawke managed to keep the distance to a matter of mere inches by sheer dint of willpower alone.
He tried to yell to get Dorian's attention, but only a whisper emerged, not nearly enough to get their attention—especially since they seemed to be having a disagreement, if the vigorous gesturing was any indication. "Anders," Hawke whispered in a strained voice. "A little help, here?"
I'm trying. Whatever Anders was trying to do, however, it didn't seem to be working. Inch by inch, his body crept forward. Worse, he felt something happening to him, something reminiscent of Amell's controlling magic. I'm not sure what's gotten into him, Anders added, sounding just as weary as Hawke felt. I felt a little bit of this before we broke the spell, but it's even worse here.
"Why...here?" Hawke asked, raising his hands as if the motion would ward off what Vengeance was trying to accomplish. His eyes widened as he saw the lines of purple energy slowly snaking down his arms until they were wholly wreathed by dark purple lines of light. "Wh-what—"
She's here. She's calling me, Vengeance growled, with enough force that Hawke squeezed his eyes shut with a wince. When he opened them, the world seemed at a distance through a purple haze, and somehow the circle of water now overflowed with sweeping clouds of energy. From the midst of one cloud, a hand emerged, beckoning to him, and he heard a woman's faint voice echo in his head.
Come to me.
A puppet in his own body once again, Hawke sat by helplessly as it launched itself towards the Well of Sorrows. As it burst forth from the trees, the people on the other side whirled to stare at him, the shock clear in their faces even at this distance. Hawke saw Dorian's eyes widen as he reached out and shouted Hawke's name.
By then, however, it was too late. Hawke's body already hung in the air, arcing through the clouds swirling above the water with a picture perfect grace, aiming straight towards the phantom hand beckoning them below the surface. The closer he got to the water, the slower time seemed to move around him. For a brief slice of an instant, he managed to look up and meet Dorian's gaze, tried to make a connection through whatever compulsion Vengeance had placed on him. In the end, the attempt proved futile, and he felt his eyes forced down until all he saw was the hand rising from the Well and all he heard were the woman's whispered words.
Come to me.
And then he hit the water.
Within the depths of the Well, silence enshrouded him. It wasn't simply hushed. If anything, it was the opposite of that, a complete quiet which seemed to grab him and pull him deep within itself until even the sound of his heartbeat no longer echoed in his head. In that soundless scape, he landed on his feet in the midst of a fog thick enough that he couldn't see his hands in front of his face. Or, perhaps, his hands didn't exist anymore, and he was waving merely the memories of them in the air. Regardless, it felt eerily like the Void to which Amell had thrown him, and Hawke started to panic.
It was the panic that ultimately calmed him down as he recalled that in the Void, no emotion had been possible, and that if he could feel emotion, he was still him. And if he was still Hawke…
Suddenly a hand found his and squeezed tight, and he yelped. That did make a sound, oddly, and, as if it were the trigger, that sound allowed a flood of other sounds to bombard him. The drip of water falling into a larger body below, the distant sound of rumbling thunder, the creak of tree branches on a dark night: he heard those sounds in his bones, as if his ears didn't exist. But the most overwhelming sounds were the whispers: words that he couldn't quite understand, driving into and around his head with a relentlessness he had before only associated with demons in the Fade. Yet…these weren't demons, he'd stake his very existence on it.
He strained to understand the words, any of the words, and as he did so, his other hand was claimed as well. This hand hummed with energy and the dark power of hunger that he recognized all too readily: Vengeance. After the spirit took his hand, however, the fog slowly dissipated, and he found himself standing in a large, featureless Nothing between Anders and Vengeance.
"Where are we?" Hawke whispered, then raised his voice. "Who are you?" he called to the voices. "What are you saying? I can't understand a bloody word."
Anders chuckled softly, but it was Vengeance who answered. "They are hers. Her children, her servants. And they are telling us what we need to know."
Hawke frowned as he looked at Vengeance, but the spirit was staring fixedly into the thinning fog ahead of them. "What do you mean?"
"There," Anders exclaimed, pointing ahead into the mist. "Someone's coming!"
Hackles rising and mouth suddenly dry, Hawke stared at the ominous figure moving slowly towards them. His hands reflexively reached for his weapons, only to find both blades and sheaths gone. Still, he wouldn't go down without a fight, and he'd learned more than a few nasty punches and holds in his time in Kirkwall, especially from the gents in the Blooming Rose.
As the figure drew closer, however, a nagging sense of familiarity crept into his consciousness. Something about the way they moved, or, as his eyes slowly widened, something about the unique shape of their hair. His jaw dropped as the figure emerged into sight, a faint smile on her face as she stepped close and reached out to take Hawke's chin in her hand.
"Well, now," she murmured, her finger stroking along his jawline as an almost possessive smile came to her face. "What have we here?"
"Flemeth," he breathed, then stared as Vengeance stepped forward and dropped to his knees in front of her.
"You called for me, Mother," Vengeance declared. "I am here."
Her hand dropped to rest on Vengeance's head for a moment as she smiled down at him with a fond expression. In the next moment, however, her keen gaze sought out Hawke once more. "You have fought your way through the chaos to me, and the world has trembled before you. Whether it be fate or chance which brought you here does not matter, does it?" She reached up, twining her fingers into his hair. "And now, I have caught you."
Hawke stared into her golden eyes, breath catching in his throat. "And what will you do with me?"
Her lips curved into a smile. "That is what we are here to discuss."