Chapter Sixteen: Ghost Dragon
Song is Qntal: Don't Fear the Reaper
"I have wrestled with Thanatos knee to knee and I know how death is vanquished. Man's immortality is not to live forever; for that wish is born of fear. Each moment free from fear makes a man immortal"
(Alexander the Great)
AN: Trigger warnings. Canonically, Fenris was sexually abused since childhood by Danarius (in the comics he looks no older than a teenager when he wins the 'honour' of the lyrium brands and Danarius tells him, "I'm so glad it was you, my pet"). Danarius' comments in Alone, "the lad is rather skilled, isn't he?" and Fenris' description of Hadriana, "invading my sleep because I was powerless to prevent her and she knew it" are consistent with this. I will never describe this graphically but the chapter is still dark AF.
Major character death.
"Anders! Can you hear me?" It was Lambert and he looked worried.
Anders moved towards his former lover's voice through a terrible darkness, a spiraling tunnel with glazed walls, and after half an eternity he opened his eyes.
Lambert leaned over him, hands impersonal and gentle as the healer had trained him to be.
Anders felt anger working on his face, the effort of trying to speak when his body had almost forgotten how. He felt betrayed and enraged, wondering how Lambert could bear to work with the Order that had done that to him - why Lambert was considering war on Tevinter (and so ensuring the Free Mages would have no one to stand between them and the Qunari) - why the Chantry had let solitary confinement devour him and everything he held precious.
And there was Rylock! He decided no matter what happened he would at least kill one Templar before he died.
Rylock said, "I know it was you who killed Elthina and I will not breathe a word to anyone. What you did in Kirkwall was a war crime – as was what Elthina and Meredith did to Lambert and others. Meredith does not need me to clear her name – the Maker will see she was innocent of that...and guilty of crimes for which earthly authorities will never judge her - I will let the dead bury their dead. I loved Meredith. I love her still. But my concern is for the living. I will use my status as Knight Vigilant in Ferelden to free those rotting in Aeonar and close the place down. We are in the Fade, so you know I cannot lie here."
As if he were emerging from a vivid nightmare, Anders had to pick his way through the mist, deciding what was real and what was not.
"You would not lie in any case."
Rylock turned away and readied The Keening Blade to face Nightmare. There was nothing else that needed saying.
Anders knew it would be for the Maker to judge him for the innocent deaths in Kirkwall Chantry. The Maker would not believe the ends justified the means – if He did He would also be excusing Templars for imprisoning mages due to the danger they *might* hold. He would judge each action as good or evil based on its own merits, since 'now' was all mortals had. So be it. Anders had chosen to pay the price – as Justice had – and he would own the consequences.
Anders followed the others deeper into the Raw Fade. This was like waking from a long, distorted, unrelenting nightmare and not knowing for sure which parts were only dream. The sweat pooled between his fingers - his precious fingers he'd thought were gone – and in the coldness of his feet that wouldn't warm up. He heard his own breathing...ragged, but still a joy to hear again. Only...was any of that real, considering they were still in the Fade? He remembered the spirits he had loved...he would never forget how here, for the first and last time, they touched. That touch was real.
"Just don't make any fast moves for an hour or so," Lambert advised him.
Fenris disagreed with his husband. "I'm afraid all we have left are fast moves."
Anders looked at Fenris as he never had before: man to man, trying to read him. Fenris' expression was taut with recognition, as if understanding what Anders had experienced yet deciding never to ask. How long had Fenris been imprisoned below Castellum Tenebris every time he displeased his master? Which must have been often: Anders recalled with shame how he had once – thinking slavery a matter for banter in The Hanged Man – told Fenris, "You really don't have the temperament to be a slave." No matter how many times Danarius wiped his memories, Fenris' personality – his soul – would have flowered anew. He would have refused any order to harm a child – he would have refused any order to commit rape – and he would have paid the price. Danarius would not have wanted to damage his uniquely skilled experiment – rape and Blood Control and the Ignis spell that set the lyrium brands on fire were things Danarius did to him daily – so what would he have left for 'special punishments' but that? You were in the cells a long time, weren't you? Anders saw that now as he looked into the hard green eyes.
Anger began to burn low in Anders' mind. The Seekers...the Magisters...the Nightmare.
There will be no diminishment of the self on my watch.
He turned to his companions. "I'm glad we are together. Rylock, Alistair, Ser Otto, Fenris: your anti-magic powers will defend us against Nightmare. Lambert: you are a better mage than you give yourself credit for. Rillian - part of you is the Dragon of Beauty – you have powers none of us have seen yet."
He didn't mention his own powers. How being a Spirit Healer made him able to engage certain allies that could carry certain messages to a dozen parts of this area of the Fade and do the kind of thing mages thought of only in moments of supreme desperation.
Fenris stared at him, and then at the blue crystal atop Anders' staff; that lucent poker chip. Anders stared at him, without offering either reassurance or a request for his silence. Fenris would be silent, he knew. They understood one another now.
Alistair looked puzzled – not exactly a surprise.
"We're going to chase it down?"
"We're going to kill it, Warden Alistair."
Alistair paused, his lips compressing, then said, "That's not like you, Anders."
"Isn't it? It is more like me to allow that thing to wander the Fade freely, enslaving the minds of Warden mages and convincing them to cut the throats of their non-mage brothers and sisters? That thing is a tyrant and demands our grappling with it. There will be no tyranny: here or in any part of Thedas."
Fenris grinned at the last. He alone understood the secret message – the offer of support for the slave resistance. Anders saw his reaction and understood it so clearly he might as well have been the Lyrium Warrior.
Alistair looked from one to the other. "That's great and all...but the Nightmare is the thing currently scaring the shit outta me."
Anders saw Alistair as a twenty-year-old Warden at Ostagar...
…"What if an Archdemon appears?"
"Then we soil our drawers, that's what"...
Anders realized Alistair's words were not a reflection of the true man. He had the memories of a childhood in the stables that let him think himself worthless, but the real truth was the wild young power that blazed like a killer storm when the helpless were threatened...that determination to withstand everything an opponent could do to him then strike one final blow of his own to stop it.
Nightmare sensed it too.
"Ah - we have a visitor. Some foolish little boy come to steal the fear I kindly lifted from his shoulders."
Oddly, Anders sensed the sincerity in the monster's voice. He fought it in the only way he could: with anger.
"You made all the Wardens think they were going through The Calling...then, when Erimond convinced the Warden mages the only way they could protect Thedas was to sacrifice their comrades to raise a demon army...you took their free will. You made them Blood Puppets."
The demon looked at him pityingly.
"They were going through The Calling...every moment is now. It is only your earthbound delusions that convince you otherwise. I saw each Warden going mad – slowly, slowly – saw the taint mottle skin and flesh and the red-black veil close over their eyes. I saw the second eyelids form – I saw them overwhelmed by new and terrible desires. I didn't mind-control their mage comrades to end their suffering – they chose to do it because they are kind. You have chosen the same...you killed unborn children in the Kirkwall Clinic because you needed to save their twelve-year-old mothers. Lambert...you gave mercy to Ser Wesley...and to every soldier in the moribund tent at the Drakon River. Do you judge me because I appear hideous, after the fear and agony I have absorbed? What did your own face look like, when you took the pain of the dying?"
Lambert had gone white. Anders saw the naked grief and knew his friend was compromised.
He realized Nightmare really was a Spirit of Compassion. This was what Compassion became when it was filled to the brim with the horror it had lifted from its patients. Anders had seen Lambert's face when he ate pain and had tried to convince him it would warp him eventually, because mortals were not the Maker, but Lambert had only said, "Since I have the power then if I didn't use it...what would that make me? One does what one can – what the Maker has put into us."
"Yes, after the Warden mages killed brothers, sisters, lovers...I took their free will. That was kindness...they could not have lived with the memories. Erimond may think the demon army will taint Razikale and Lucazan but the mage is a fool...I am going to end their suffering before it begins. As you ended The Children, Rillian."
"You see: the truth is painful. That really was your year in Kinloch Hold, Anders...that really was Boann's fate...that really is what happens in Aeonar. That is what you would have done to Corypheus, Rillian. It was fate that intervened, not your conscience. Your future as First Warden...that exists here too. Alistair loves you too much to stop you... "My wife right or wrong."
Nightmare faced Anders. "You think that pain will make you stronger? What fool filled your mind with such drivel? What doesn't kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn't kill you can leave you blind or burned or maimed. What doesn't kill you can make you scared to leave your bedroom, or have you trembling and mumbling incoherently, wishing you could return to the time before the thing that didn't kill you. You think you have seen the worst but the fall in Kinloch Hold only landed you halfway. The actual underworld is much further down and you are on the way there. By the time you leave here you will be dribbling and howling and lost, unable even to kill yourself."
Anders felt the familiar dark wisps touch the outer boundaries of his mind...that ominous 'life is fear' feeling. He fought it by reminding himself of those he must protect.
"You have seen the soldiers with taint you gave the Sword of Mercy to, Lambert, you have taken their pain. How would you like to feel that pain for the rest of your life? You think the Anchor is bad now. Wait another year...or three. Solas left you just enough life to suffer long before dying. Wait...you didn't tell your husband? It seems you have the arrogance of a mage after all...no doubt you thought magical secrets not fit for the pointed ears of a Soporati."
Fenris turned to the love of his life. He looked at Lambert, stricken. "And just when were you planning to tell me?"
Lambert shrugged, unrepentant. "Fen...we're all going to die in a few years, after Solas raises the Veil. Why worry about something so dreary, so far in the future? A day can be forever – even a moment."
"But will your husband love you when he sees you as I do: the coward who let his sister die? Fenris was thirteen when he took on men twice his age and size to free his sister from slavery. He went through the agony of the brands to save Varania. You were eighteen when you failed to protect your younger sister from the ogre. It was Bethany who fought for the Hawke family...she is the reason you still have your worthless skin"...
...Lambert and Carver faced the ogre, standing in front of Bethany and Leandra. It was down to the two veterans of Ostagar to protect the family. Bethany carried their father's staff...she was the only one worthy...Lambert could barely light a candle with magic. He and Carver wielded the yew longbows produced in Ferelden...they would have loosed arrows at Ostagar but Loghain had ordered his army to save themselves when he realized they were overmatched. He and Carver still had full quivers. Carver also wielded a greatsword, and Lambert had scavenged a Red Steel dagger from Ostagar as they were fleeing. The inscription told the story of King Maric and his Elven lover, Katriel, in the Deep Roads...he loved the idea of wielding a weapon from history and...well...King Cailan didn't need it now.
They loosed again and again and some of the arrows hit...black blood like ichor oozed from the wounds. But, inured to the agony of its bodily corruption, the rotting creature felt no pain. It came on, steadily. It roared...carrying feculent breath...
"Run!" Lambert shouted at his mother and sister.
"If they run the ogre will follow," Carver snapped, "It's up to us to take that thing. If you're going to wet yourself I'll show you how it's done."
Stung, Lambert threw Bard's Honour right at the ogre...it hit the darkspawn's right eye and blinded it. It roared in rage. Carver raced forwards and hacked with his sword. Almost lazily, the ogre swatted him until he lay sprawled on his side.
"Carv!"
Lambert fired until he was out of arrows, desperate to keep the thing off his brother.
But the ogre did not finish Carver off. It was not interested in the males. It swerved and headed for Leandra and Bethany.
Lambert stared, feeling oddly empty and light. The lightness and emptiness spread right through him, to his fingertips. His head was blank as a stone wall.
How can I stop it? I'm out of arrows, my dagger is in its eye, I can heal minor wounds and I can cast Light...
"Hey...hey...over here!" he shouted, waving his arms and jumping up and down, trying to distract it. If he could distract it long enough for his mother and sister to escape...make it capture him instead...he'd heard darkspawn liked to play with their food...
But no matter how he taunted it, shouted, tried to draw its attention, it wouldn't pursue him. It pursued his mother and sister.
Bethany stepped protectively in front of their mother, raising the staff that the Wardens had given their father when he aided them in the Vinmarks. She was his true heir, and she proved it now.
"Maker give me strength."
She called to the Maker - not to the demons who were howling at the back of her mind, promising salvation – and took on that thing on her own. Fire blossomed from the staff and engulfed the ogre. It roared, spinning in a hideous dance of agony. One monstrous hand closed around her slender waist...blinded, it lifted her up...then smashed her body on the stone. Bethany's lips were still moving...the Fireball like a prayer. It howled...lifted her...brought her down. Again and again and again. She didn't lose consciousness until the flames had engulfed it...until it was no more than a mass of black blood and sloughed off skin. Only the bones remained, like a derelict statue.
"Bethany...wake up! The battle's over – we're fine..." Leandra was cradling the ruined body as though love could repair broken bones, crushed ribs, a shattered skull.
Lambert ran to her. He held his hands against her face and poured everything he had into her. He felt the healing take him over...a rush like no other, unless birds felt this way, swooping and gliding... The blue light caressed Bethany but she wasn't breathing. Her skin was pallid.
"Wake up, Bethany!" Lambert shouted, "You're an awesome mage - far better than me! But you can't tell me so if you don't wake up..."
Tears of anguish and self-loathing filled his eyes.
Bethany is gone but I am not, whispered Sloth. I can repair her wounds and access almost all her memories...her cognitive responses...I'll teach you Necromancy so you can protect her body from decay...your mother will never know the difference. She will think you a hero who saved her precious girl.
"This thing will not take Bethany!"
For a moment, Lambert could not tell whether that was the demon's voice or Leandra's. The Sloth demon was imitating the wail of a grief-stricken mother.
"Bethany died to save us and she is with father in the Golden City. She is a hero and when we see her again I'll tell her so."
"I don't want a hero. I want my daughter back. You! How could you just stand there and do nothing? My poor little girl. My sweetheart..."
Aware his presence was toxic to his mother, Lambert turned to his brother, who was wounded but still breathing.
"Come on," he whispered, "Come on."
Carver jerked violently. His mouth and eyes opened wide, and then he shook with violent, choking coughs. Lambert held him as he vomited on the ground...how many times had he had to do this after Carv had gone drinking?...and gave him the water in his pack.
"We got that thing?" Carver asked, his voice wobbling.
"Bethany got it. She...she died a hero..."
"No! Why did you save me and not her?"
The look in Carver's eyes made Lambert feel sick.
"What do you need me to do, Carv?"
"Just help me up and get me my sword," said Carver, in a tone of weary disgust, "If we stand here weeping the darkspawn will take the rest of us too..."
"Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? You couldn't save your sister...you couldn't save the soldiers stricken by taint...you sold your body in Kirkwall because you had nothing else to offer. You couldn't save your father or your mother. You're a failure and they died knowing it. How could you expect to free the Wardens? Your brother will be the next sacrifice, his throat slit by a Warden mage very much like you. Nothing he has done...nothing Carver is...will matter. Non-mage Wardens are no more than fodder for the real army. Us."
The place Lambert dared not look was staring back at him. He was the older brother and he had let his little sister do his fighting for him. She had paid with her life. He could never face any of them again…it was worse than what Anders had done…worse than Fenris' moment of weakness with Wryme. He stared at the ground...it's shifting unreality echoing his fractured sense of self. He had become the one thing he couldn't bear to be…the one thing Fenris couldn't love. He was a coward.
Fenris said, "Bethany was a hero in every way but you were not a coward. You were unarmed and you tried to save her. To do the only thing you could...distract it and let it take you to the Deep Roads instead. You are just like me. The only difference between us is Danarius wanted me and the ogre didn't want you. But you didn't know that. Nobody knew until Rillian revealed the darkspawn lifecycle. That the only people darkspawn will take are those that can become Broodmothers. Do you think I could have fallen in love with a coward?"
"I think you are just trying to make me feel better."
"I am…and it is also true. In the Fade, I cannot lie."
"Neither can I. Like me, Danarius lifted a lot of bad memories from your shoulders. You will know them all."
..."I want to free you," a voice from his locked-up memories called. Fenris had believed it was Lambert but...even though Lambert loved him very much and would have echoed the sentiment...the voice had been his own. He had told Varania and their mother this, when he was thirteen. He had said it to three-year-old Tractus, the halfblooded bastard of Danarius and Fenris' mother. He was wearing rags not armour and had only his hands for weapons...but he was ready to defeat all comers to become Danarius' Lyrium Warrior.
He fought the other gladiators with hands, feet, teeth. Something...an inner presence...came to his aid. The ghost wolf he had seen sometimes in dreams – always after the nights he was summoned to Danarius' bedchamber – promising revenge. The wolf that existed like a nascent second self, waiting to be born.
He grabbed the final man by the neck and drew him close as a lover. Then let it come down. The flesh opened with a spray of warm blood, like garnets. Fenris cut off the air in his throat and looked into his eyes. He swallowed the man's life – stole it – an obscene enrichment. The man couldn't scream. Fenris had gone through vocal cords in the first bite. Five seconds. Ten. Twenty. Instinct told Fenris when the man was going. (As a kindred instinct told him when his husband was coming?) Fenris was past language - emancipation, protection for his family, victory – the words were valueless currency to a predator. The prey saw through him too – Leto was no longer important. He was just the thing that had unlocked the door to the annihilating darkness.
"I'm so glad it was you, my pet," the Magister said.
Time cartwheeled...forward...backward again.
Since regaining his memories he had carefully avoided these ones and they lay bright and sharp as shards of glass. Fenris had forgotten how painful it was to be that frightened, how terror prickled the inside of the mind like a mass of icy wasps, how disgust tensed every internal sinew.
He was five, summoned to Danarius' bedchamber, the other servants whispering...
…"There goes Danarius' whore"...
Larger than life – the way an adult looks to a child – Danarius stood with his manicured hands clutching a staff in a grip that said: mine mine mine...
The eyes – pale as a bleached insect – seemed to burn right through him. Why did they make him feel so small, so helpless, so...obedient... It was as if Danarius had moved out of his own body, into Fenris' - his flesh and bone and blood, poisoning him. Why did the presence seem to fill the whole room, the whole castle? And why did he stand so submissive, waiting for Danarius to – give him orders... To obey his every whim, even as he saw, without hope, the gelid sadism that seeped from every pore; that coated the room with its thick, sour-milk stink?
Fenris scoffed.
You obeyed him because you were a child – why should you feel shame for that? Lambert wanted to save me but I have to save myself. You can't always save others. Sometimes the best you can hope for is the love you've given has made that person strong. Lambert has poured out love because love is what he has and he has made me very strong.
Strong enough to remember the rest. The things Danarius had done that had made it impossible to stand, or sit, or even breathe too deeply. Fenris felt Danarius – who had seemed larger than life, a cruel god who could never be placated but only worshipped – shrivel to ordinariness. The adult Fenris now found Danarius faintly ridiculous – the effort he had put into his dignity, his prestige! Something that had run through his blood – something that was his blood - reduced to a small piece of dried shit: imperfect, petrified, ended, so much smaller than he'd dreamed.
The day he received the Brands...
...There was silver seed rain in his flesh that germinated and put down roots. He could feel them in the channels of his arteries and veins, working their way towards his heart. The lyrium tree sent shoots that sang through his fingertips, twisted around his spine, sliced his abdomen like an open wound. He was being devoured. He thrashed against the terror of extinction, the loss of his identity, and the Magister spoke a name he did not know. He had known before. The void eyes pierced him, empty and cold as space.
A thunderous luminescence ripped through his body; his veins were rivers of coruscating pain. Breath was beyond him; snatched by the glittering maelstrom.
He belonged to another world where darkness and light changed places. He only existed inside himself, a nameless creature sinking deeper and deeper into a body whose wounds festered and suppurated, or else healed into agonizing lines, as though barbed wire had been threaded through him. He dreamed and screamed and was unable to escape the lyrium sharing his skin.
It was a kind of battle and he was losing the fight, growing weaker as the lyrium grew stronger. His breathing turned shallow, his heartbeat faltered, his flesh turned to dust as the metallic rain crept over him. The lyrium was feeding on his life, squeezing him out – his memories alive somewhere but in locked rooms. The space of his body was not enough for both.
He could not move. There was no direction that was not pain. He knew he was dying and the thought died in the shining darkness.
He woke, numb and empty, and found himself alive. It was a strange experience. He was outside himself, floating near the ceiling and looking down on a body that had once been his. A shining silvery thread still connected him to it. It was dead, he thought. Yet he was alive: his vision, his hearing, his perception more acute than it had been before, as if reality were enhanced. There was a lurch of his heartbeat restarting – a slow, arhythmic earthquake - the feel of his own skin tight as a glove, and a thousand unimportant agonies...
The Brands were mortal wounds Danarius had dealt the thirteen-year-old boy...sealing them with molten lyrium so they did not kill and did not heal.
...The good news is it's not terminal. The bad news is it's not terminal...
The agony had become Fenris' new normal – the only times he found it beyond bearing were the times Danarius used Ignis to punish him. The regular wiping of his memories and the months spent locked in the cells – for offences which might have been serious or trivial – ensured his mind was never more than two or three years old. The only coherence was the training that allowed him to defeat any enemy with any weapon or bare-handed. Magister Nenealeus, known for training the finest slave fighters in Minrathous, had made him a perrepatae: a mage-killer. His targets had been those who spoke against Danarius in the Senate. Somehow, Danarius had been able to wipe the rest of the memories but keep those.
There were still memories that shone like darkly sparking jewels. The rueful grin of the perrepatae, Marius, he had just bested, "Now I know why they call you The Golem, Fenris."
Being talked to as a man - a fellow fighter – rather than a piece of meat had been the reason Fenris had not killed the human slave, as Danarius had ordered. Danarius had punished him for that, of course. He did not want anything to teach his bodyguard mercy.
Fenris became aware of Lambert standing beside him, feeling it with him – as close and tender love will.
...I knew it was bad. By the Maker I didn't know it was this bad...
But his husband would not insult him by speaking the thought aloud. Instead, Lambert said,
"After all that...you stayed sane. You stayed good. You are helping others...not only freeing the other slaves but you even defended the mages at Andoral's Reach. You had no way of knowing Anders wouldn't sell you to Tractus in exchange for his support...you did know Fiona was an agent of Erimond. You knew Samson was lobbing Red Lyrium jars...that he could have tainted the Brands. You fought for them anyway...to defend mage children from Annulment. Prince Sebastian called you a good man. He missed the mark. There never was a finer one. I'm honoured to be your husband."
Fenris' grin of purely masculine satisfaction almost - but not quite – disguised his shy pleasure.
"You're pretty impressive yourself, Inquisitor Hawke-Lethandralis."
Anders joined them, arms folded. "You're both right...but let's not get mushy, guys."
Fenris knew his husband well enough to know Lambert was feeling abashed, unworthy of the compliment. He had, after all, cheated on Anders with Fenris. He wasn't sorry for choosing Fenris; he was ashamed he had slunk into Isabella's cabin instead of manning up and telling Anders. He had simply never been able to apologize to the man who had tried to sell Fenris back to Danarius; it would have felt disloyal to his husband. He covered the moment – as he always did – by making a flippant joke:
"After you've popped the question to Dorian then you can talk about mushy, mister."
Nightmare did not like to be ignored – by people who laughed among themselves as though their sufferings did not matter. The Spirit of Compassion took the memories and then it dwelled on them – in a way that was half-kindness and half-fascination. It did not understand gallows humour – the way soldiers talked to each other between battles – and it resented this.
"You went through that to free the mother who hated you as a product of rape - the mage sister who despised you - and the human-passing half-elf, but it was all for nothing. Your mother refused to take Tractus with her and he is now as bad as his father. She ended her days as a whore in Minrathous...because where else can a freed slave go? And Varania...after your mother died she met Valen and opened a tailoring business in Qarinus. She gave birth to a boy she called Leto, after the brother who had freed her. But Valen angered the wrong customer and no-one ever defends Elves. She carried on, until Danarius came looking for her. She knew Danarius would take either you or her son so she betrayed you. After you killed Danarius she ran from his sons – taking Leto – and began working at the Seven Veils. Madame Valence was kinder than some – she allowed Leto to stay untouched – but Varania knew it was only a matter of time. She took Leto and the human girls she had just given birth to because she had heard you'd just killed Danarius' five legitimate heirs. She was hoping her little brother would be kinder. Tractus Danarius offered her training as a Red Mage. I see her in her dreams. So will you"...
...Fenris stood in a reeking poisonous night-filled room. The place looked like a butcher's shop but the slabs of meat were still moving.
Around him the experimental subjects tried to hide, hunching their shoulders, scuttling away from the light, flinging up arms covered in bloody rags to cover their faces. Taint had eaten away jawbones, noses, leaving twin streaming pits in some faces. Burns and blistered dead eyeballs twisted features into mutations. A woman with no legs dragged herself under the table.
Now Fenris knew what the stench was. Gangrene.
He was in a place he knew well – the castle of his memory. His eyes focused on the flash of lightning beyond the narrow slitted window and the heavy splatters of rain upon the stones. Sometimes the storms were so bad night and day were one, morning dark as midnight.
At the sight of the room, time cartwheeled...backward, forward again...this was the room where his thoughts skipped, and traces of memory were drowned in the shadows. The chill inside Fenris brought out a cold sweat; these ink splotches in his memory occurred after only one thing...
Lambert, he reminded himself. I am a man now. I am going to save these people.
At the top of stone steps was a square wall, one side open to the forever rains. The sky bulged with livid clouds like bruises.
Varania joined him, favouring one leg, and sat opposite him upon a rickety chair. A quietness grew around them, comprised of little sounds.
Up here the rot of gangrene was fainter but there was a sweet metallic smell that might have been alcohol or drugs or urine. The spartan light was solid with echoing sounds.
In the hard silent shadows, Fenris could make out vials and vials of Red Lyrium. He felt them scrape and crawl along the Brands. A faint tremor surged towards him; the bottles chimed against the symphony of shifting dust.
"I thought you might come," Varania told him in a dry dusty whisper, "But you are too late. Your brother is a monster and I am dead."
A ruin of laughter sand-papered through her throat.
Fenris stared into the dead eyes of his sister. They were dry and blistered, except for one weeping spot over her right pupil. She held a vial of Red Lyrium and the bitter stink choked him.
"Taint and lyrium, little brother. What can hurt me now?" She downed it in one.
For nothing ever could.
She wore a crown of wires like the Architect's that nested thicker than the hair left on her skull. Matter from her ulcerated eyeballs had pooled on her lower lid. The room was so quiet Fenris heard the slow scraping of her eyelashes, saw the matter drip down the decaying face.
Red Lyrium traced strange geography over her skin. Pustules glowed like ruby pearls in the room that had killed her.
The fingers of her right hand – Varania still had very elegant hands – rose to fumble through the wormy crown of thorns and her voice said, "I want Tevinter to die, Fenris. Every last Magister and those useless cringing Templars that let it happen. I want them to die in pieces like I am doing. To feel their nervous systems dying. To know what fear is, and desperation. To eat slavery, to breathe slavery, every breath filled with the strangling dust of slavery. All these Magisters and their fat Altus sons. Vampires. You know what vampires are, Fenris who bears the silver blood of Titans like armour? Your husband doesn't know it – he who bears the Mark of the Evanuris that is killing him – but I'll tell you."
Fenris watched Varania's mouth writhe in an attempt at laughter that had them both crying.
"By the time I meet you in the flesh I won't know this. The Red Lyrium blocks off my memories one by one, like shutters going down. My whole life, all the things I cared about – the son I sold my own brother to protect – one by one they're swallowed up by this great big cloud of darkness. I went to Tractus Danarius because I knew his men would find me and I begged to be made a Red Mage so my daughters wouldn't have to."
Varania slammed the vial down in anger and it vibrated with the sound of a high C.
"But it didn't work, did it! Oh, I can see the colours in the blood network. Like singing rubies. I hear the Song of the Old Gods in D minor and see it like a rainbow lattice, diamonds of fire. But I can't do anything with it. Nor can any of the Elven Soporati Tractus has tried to make into Red Lyrium Warriors. Even with Magister Nenealeus' help, Tractus can't replicate his father's research. That's why he'll never stop trying to find you. If he can taint a Lyrium Warrior he can make a Red Lyrium Warrior...and show you to the Senate to persuade them to accept a halfblood!"
"And that's why you think I'll kill my own little brother...to defend myself?" Fenris asked dryly.
"It isn't Tractus' fault mother abandoned him and Danarius treated him as he treated you. But he's just like them now. And... I want revenge. The Magisters stole my life from me and I try to remember it but it's not my life anymore. It belongs to someone who once betrayed her own brother and I wish I could go back and choose differently but it's not my life and I forget it anyway five minutes later."
Softly, speaking to the floor, she said, "It used to matter when I could still feel pain."
"I have been where you are. Having to recreate yourself every day. When I got away from Danarius – when I met Lambert – it became possible to become a real person. Rillian Tabris is working on a cure for taint...the power of the Inquisition will cure Red Lyrium...I will find you."
"You're too late for Tractus and too late for me. But save my children. Leto will turn thirteen in sixty days and that's when Tractus is going to do it. Leto dreams of becoming a perraepatae but he's going to die screaming. Keziah and Teiani...they'll be four next month. Don't hate them because they are mages."
"Never. I will save all three and my husband can teach them magic. I'll die before I let a Circle take them."
"And get the bastards who did this. Spit in the eye of death."
Varania was fading...as a mage, she was about to wake up.
"One other favour?" the ghost asked him. "When you meet me? A lovely steel-bright knife. I'm not going to feel it. At least I won't have my own endless stink in my nose."
Fenris came out of the dream to see Lambert beside him, as he had always been – and, to his surprise, Anders. Anders was stone-faced and thin-lipped, his amber eyes flashing in fury. The mana rolled off him like the bitter static of a lightning storm and Fenris wondered just what had happened to bring that level of indignation to Anders' face. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw like a rock set upon another rock, his patrician profile aimed squarely at the Nightmare Aspect.
"From a distance," he said quietly, "Tevinter looks like Utopia to Circle mages. But when you're staring right at it, it's something else. It's tyranny for everyone but the six hundred Senators – all Magisters descended from Magisters – who own mages and non-mages body, blood and mind. Scum like Alrik made children Tranquil so he could rape them...but at least he had to present Tranquility as being 'for the mages' own good' to the Divine. The Qunari have to present it as a 'sacrifice for the greater whole'. Only in Tevinter could a Magister talk about raping slave children and get a dirty laugh. When the Inquisition and the Wraiths of Tevinter go after them you'll have my full support."
Fenris studied Anders and became aware of the ways people changed, and the ways they did not. Anders clearly had the same steely will and idealism as his younger self. There had been time, though, for him to mellow, think and reflect.
Fenris could see Anders as he had been in Dragon Age 9:33 – knowing Alrik was making children like Ella Tranquil so he could rape them, knowing Elthina and Divine Beatrix III would do nothing – knowing Marlowe Dumar would appease Meredith – that the Tranquil Solution was about to become law.
He couldn't have known Beatrix would die the following year (coincidence, or another task for Justinia's Left Hand?) he couldn't have known Nathaniel Howe would become Viscount or that Fiona and Rhys and Thomas Amell would win the vote for mage independence in 9:37.
In another life he might have tried asking Hawke for help...but at the time Lambert had cared only about getting Seneschal Bran to sign the papers recognizing his mother as nobility – in the hope Leandra would forgive him for failing Bethany and for being a man who loved other men.
The only person who had offered the support for Anders to break into the Gallows and free the prisoners had been Danarius. His price? Fenris. He saw Anders trying to justify it to himself - one adult man in exchange for countless children being raped and having their minds destroyed – and failing: you could not justify selling a man into slavery by mathematics.
He had refused Danarius' offer.
Until Lambert had been taken prisoner.
Still, Anders could have warned Fenris on Isabella's ship, and hadn't. How much of that had been jealousy over Lambert choosing Fenris and how much had been the fact Meredith's vengeance on the remaining Gallows mages had been demonic?
Perhaps back then Anders hadn't quite seen Elven non-mages as being of equal value – somewhere far below his conscious mind would have been parents describing Elves as "not quite like us" and since his teenage years the only non-mages Anders had met had been either patients or prostitutes.
Seeing everyone so clearly in the Fade had changed that forever but still...Anders had been the protector of mages not the protector of everyone. Mortal beings had to choose – their family over strangers – their country over its neighbour – as General Loghain had once said, "he who tries to defend everything defends nothing." Still, there was a difference between putting one cause ahead of others and putting one cause first and committing atrocities in its name.
Fenris would spend his life freeing Tevinter slaves but there were things he could never do. In Anders the mages had had someone who would do literally anything for them. Could Anders have gone back and chosen differently? Would deciding some things mattered more than mage rights have broken who he was? Anders was only Anders now, not Anders-Justice…but he was still a revolutionary. He had been the one to make Justice into Justice-for-mages, not the other way round.
Four years later, Anders had decided the innocents in the Chantry – including children – were acceptable collateral damage for the innocents at the Gallows – including children. That not acting would be as murderous as acting. It was not the same as what Lambert and Fenris had done at Adamant. They had killed adult Wardens with white phosphorous – a war crime to some – but never non-combatants and never children. Doing so would have broken who they were just as Anders would have been broken by failing to do everything he could for his mages.
Is that it? Is there is no right and wrong but just a series of wrongs, with the one you have to pick being the one that won't break who you are?
Would Anders really do differently now – or was his change of heart only because he had seen that the fate of the mages 'rescued' by Danarius would have been worse still?
Fenris couldn't know and neither could Anders…only the Maker could go all the way back. Mortals could only go forward, and Anders would not betray him now.
Thoughtfully, Fenris said, "The Free Mages will need you to put them first."
"Why do you care about the Free Mages?" The question wasn't an insult – Anders was genuinely curious.
"I don't trust King Cousland and Divine Victoria...I suspect the old system will reassert itself and the Free Mages will be the only guarantee of safety for people like my husband. But...since neither he nor I are going to live very long... I agree that is a fair question."
Fenris shrugged. "I am the protector of Keziah and Teiani now. Even if I were not, having fought for the children at Andoral's Reach, I would like to see them grow up."
Anders smiled. "I'm going to offer First Warden Rillian the aid of the Free Mages in retaking Weisshaupt...and in return we'll ask for land of our own. There will be no tyranny on my watch: not the Chantry, not the Qunari, not Tevinter. I will appoint Rhys leader of the Free Mages. He has similar beliefs and abilities and is a far less divisive figure. He's even been to Tevinter and learned to play politics. The Free Mages are going to be alright. I'll let Petrice and Nathaniel Howe take on the Qunari. I'll make sure Iona is replaced by a mage - preferably one with 'holy' powers - and I'll join you as you take on the Venatori, House Danarius, and the whole damn Senate. So will Dorian and the Lucerni."
"A good Altus and a good former abomination. Life is full of surprises."
Anders grinned. "I'd hate to be predictable."
Wryme had been the act of a frightened child…as a man, Fenris had been inoculated. When Fen'Harel offered him the devil's bargain - his support in exchange for saving Lambert and freeing Elven slaves - Fenris would tell him to go to hell. Fen'Harel's Brave New World wouldn't be one a half-human could live in and the Elven Soporati - those who survived the cataclysm - wouldn't thank him for replacing Magisters with Evanuris. Racism was racism and tyranny was tyranny. No deals with devils on my watch. Fenris had learned from Wryme and from Anders … Anders had learned too.
He heard the thoughts as clearly as if Anders had spoken aloud: A Libertarian has to believe in liberty for all else it is just mage supremacy. Some Resolutionists are just that: they believe their Maker-given gifts give them authority – that might and right are the same. But not me. Magic is a Maker-given gift but even if it were not I'd still believe in mage freedom. That it is wrong to buy the safety of the majority with the rights of a minority. By selling Fenris I was kicking that argument from under me. It would have broken who I am as the Chantry explosion broke Justice...I just wouldn't have known it.
"And these are the two you'll trust to fight Tractus Danarius with you? The man who cheated on his previous partner and the man who tried to sell you back to Danarius?"
"You're not worthy to speak my husband's name. As for Anders...mortals can change. Perhaps you could do...if you followed where Grace is leading spirits. But I cannot take the chance. It's not personal."
"Knight Commander Rylock: how must it feel, to devote your whole life to the Templars only to realize they were committing mental torture in Kinloch Hold and physical torture in the Gallows? How many children did you send to these places? How many mages did you send to Aeonar? We both know you never checked on their welfare. After Erimond you asked never to be posted to a Circle because you were afraid you might lash out after an apprentice's miscast spell. You weren't fit to return to active duty and you should have told your superiors that, instead of making Aneirin pay the price for your pride. Only...Aneirin did not die. He was reborn a possessed mage...like Wynne, the woman you slept with. Only...was it sex or rape? It is so hard to tell with mage-Templar unions. At least you couldn't get Wynne pregnant, as Knight Commander Greagoir did. Taking your leader's leavings, were you? Alrik passed Lambert to Karras too."
"How does it feel to know that, if only the Seekers had taught Templars the Litany of Adralla, Guy would have been able to free you from Blood Control? He would never have died like a skinned animal...the two of you could have defeated Erimond together. If the Chantry had allowed mages to undergo Seeker training, they'd have been immune to possession. There'd have been no need to put them through Harrowings - which you did to your own daughter. You placed a demon inside Keili and stood ready to kill her should she fail. How many possessed children have you and your Templars killed, because the Chantry taught you it was irreversible? If they had trusted mages like Sweeney...or taken seriously accounts of the Dalish ritual...these children would still be alive. At what point does willful blindness become complicity? 'I was only following orders' is not a defense."
Rylock ignored the Aspect completely – turned only to her friends. "I can consider all these questions myself – I don't need a misbegotten spider to do it for me. Time to shut that thing up."
Fenris grinned. Rylock was speaking a language he understood. He drew Lethandralis…the mental echo of the sword he had been trained with as a perraepatae an extension of his mind, his will…his desire to strike one final blow to protect others. It was not personal…he could see the Nightmare was a victim too, in its way…unlike mortals, a demon could never choose to be hideous and damned. But he must end it nonetheless. His determination…forged in veins of lightning…spread like a killer storm inside the Fade.
The Aspect looked like The Architect...or it would have, if The Architect had had nothing mortal in him. A humanoid spider, its eyes chitinous soulless holes in the hollowed gauntness of its face. Its mana was boiling over, burning away the emerald waters of the Fade like a firestorm consumes rain. A fountain of ululating colours and stars boiled to nothingness.
Fenris chuckled darkly. "I've always prided myself on paying my debts. I swore I'd go to my end without owing anyone…but it seems I still owe Varric a small fortune."
But they were not alone. They had the Spirit of Faith which still bore the likeness of Justina…and Wisdom and Valour and Freedom and…yes…a nascent, immature Justice, born when the old spirit fell…all come to help Anders. He fought like an angel of light, directing. Conducting, really – in the Fade, light and music were the same thing.
Lambert could fly…his wings would not have carried him in Thedas' weighted gravity but here they could. Being in the Fade was like being in Zero G…the only reason the others walked was because they thought they must, and Lambert was free of that limitation of mind. He sang the Litany in his soaring countertenor and Fenris' own baritone complemented it – reaching low where Lambert could reach high – touching the depths as well as the heights. Fenris sang like a man who has been to the depths...and was now scaling the mountain in search of the Maker.
Rillian was singing too…a second later she had transformed into the dragon she had always been. Alistair looked shocked…for just an instant…and then he saw she had the same eyes. Amber eyes, flecked with gold. One flesh… Gracefully, Urzara, daughter of Urthemiel, bent down so he could climb up. He did so, with the grace of the young knight who had once taught her to ride.
But the Aspect had its followers too…a million enslaved Wardens. They were here: a vast shadowy army.
Each corner of this part of the Fade was a mosaic of mirrors, a shocking galaxy of reflections, spreading black stars across the silvery firmament. This darkly crystalline substance was the place Morrigan had called the Crossroads, the Eluvian network Briala had shared with Fenris and Fenris with Lambert. He thought of the Black Emporium and how Lambert had offered the support of the Inquisition in exchange for the mirror that now hung in their bedroom. It could do a lot more than ensure Lambert's face was kept free from wrinkles! Lambert had reasoned the mirror was an Eluvian and was using it to keep in touch with the Eluvians found by Merrill and Briala and the Eluvian brought by Morrigan to Skyhold.
The mirror here could multiply these visions into infinity, creating oceans of the silver blood that was lyrium and enabling them to see with countless eyes. Entranced by such aspirations, Lambert was gazing at it in in speechless wonder.
Lambert found a small music box like an obscene parody of the one he had known and loved as a child. It was as hard as a diamond – a glass jewel that created even colder music. The crisp notes were like stars of sound. The music glimmered like infinitesimal flakes of light.
He followed it into the darkness between the Fade shapes, to the unbordered spaces where silvery notes ascended and quivered like a mass of glittering dragonflies. Somehow the notes created splodges of light upon the murky indistinctness of the ground. Fenris feared he would lose Lambert in the vastness – a tenebrous expanse rich with unknown meanings. They reminded him of the designs on the music box – intricate yet indistinct.
"They look almost like flowers, don't they? So bright they shine in the Abyss. There is immensity without end around us – dark horizon meeting dark horizon – but to touch these is like touching light and colour and music. And there are things within the darkness, so that I reach out and touch them across a universe of darkness, and also touch something inside myself. To touch them is like touching a thousand kinds of bristling and growing shapes. In all that darkness which lets me see with itself, these things swim – a wormy mass that is trying to make itself part of me. I think they like being where they are. You can see how they twist about – almost happily."
"Hawke - come away!" Fenris warned.
Used to listening to his husband - hearing the sincere concern in his voice – Lambert obeyed.
There was silence – a purer silence than Fenris had ever known; the silence of a dark, lifeless world. Sound became music – slow music in the soft darkness – a single note wavering in a universe of darkness, compelling those who heard it to an understanding of its subtle voice.
Then a second note answered - and a third - each commingling to create a proliferation of dissonant harmonies.
Soon there was no space remaining for silence, the music and silence indistinguishable; in the way at Castellum Tenebris it hadn't been rain anymore because rain stops.
There was something about the congregation that listened to the Aspect that filled Fenris with strange fear. As his eyes became sharper in the greenish twilight of the Fade, he noticed the robes of the Warden mages looked more like netting. No, like...webs. Thick layers of webs that covered their entire bodies.
They were listening to Nightmare's lullaby like hypnotics in ecstasy – helpless, and content to be so.
Lambert tried to wake the mummified audience – tried to shout a warning – and finally began to sing. First the Captivating Song Leliana had taught him as her bard apprentice, and finally the Litany. But they did not wake.
The rows upon rows of serene faces were gazing at a spectacle that only existed in their minds – some beauty and terror evoked by the demon. Gazing with mad, bleeding sockets with looks of serenity, like clerics before the Maker.
Lambert saw Clarel and started towards her. He began tearing at the webs that imprisoned her, trying to free her from the horrible mesh.
"You're the only one," he whispered, tearing at the terrible bonds.
"Shhh," said Clarel, "I'm waiting."
Lambert stopped in confusion, his fingers trailing stuff that seemed sticky and abrasive, intolerably strange.
"You need to wake up," he told her – more forcefully this time, "Erimond has lied to you. The Magisters Sidereal control Weisshaupt and they were raising the demon army to take the Black City...not for the Old Gods but for themselves."
"Why should I believe you? The man who melted the flesh of my soldiers while they still wore it?"
"I'd rather die hard than live hollow. So would you. You can try me for war crimes later - we should all have that discussion - but as ourselves, not slaves of The Blight."
Clarel stared...stared...and chose to wake up.
Lambert looked for more Wardens to save while the eyes of strange creatures followed him from hollow sockets.
At the centre of the gathering lay a grotesque creature that appeared to have the power to manipulate its own body like clay, stretching its muscles and tendons into shapes that were oddly familiar.
Blood-soaked tendrils stretched to the consistency of strings for a large pink harp, while hard muscle condensed to form a lute. A long, thin appendage shot from the layers of flesh that had been its jaw, with holes suddenly appearing to mark it as a flute.
The Aspect was not driven by hunger, for it had already feasted. It was not frenzied with bloodlust, but calm and methodical. It looked at Lambert in contempt, for he was only a halfblood...someone the Tevinters called a Mischling of the first degree, because he had two Elven grandparents.
The taint had been brought by Andruil, to drain the lyrium in the veins of Titans dry, and the Nightmare was the Fear of Blight. In a sense Andruil was its mother...or its master. Evanuris despised Lambert for not being fully Elvhen rather than for not being fully human, but racism was racism. Lambert was neither a bloodwarm human nor an immortal Elf, and Evanuris were the purebreds of the family.
Lambert stopped and shouted: a high, twangy wail like the notes of his own invention – the long, slim lute with the runes of electricity – a note that contained a storybook of meaning. A note of rage, defiance, freedom. Its pitch was a cold energy that froze the monstrosity.
Fenris watched his husband shuffle off the human suit he was wearing. He could taste him: gentle and strong and violet…hard as titanium and delicate as the first fronds of spring…his feathery wings both down and steel. Lambert's eyes were wide-open windows into his soul: a starlit ocean, where amethyst waters flowered in an intricate dance of life. Through his veins ran streams of lyrium.
He began to sing: his crystalline voice chiming the melodic lines of the Litany of Adralla. Fenris joined him, and Rillian, and Ser Otto. Rylock, Anders and Alistair were not talented singers, but all knew the Chant of Light and could add the chorus...even though Anders had always prided himself on adding inappropriate lyrics. But somehow those, too, were appropriate – a Litany of defiance. The voices of the Wardens they freed added to the chorus until nothing could be heard but the great unity of sound, weaving in and out of itself in an ecstasy of terror and wonder and anticipation.
The light grew brighter, not only in intensity but in size, overwhelming them. Multitudes added to multitudes, weaving themselves around the single countertenor that led them upwards in endless upward-mounting ascents of song.
Lambert was singing for his brother's life, for the freedom of all the ensorcelled Warden mages. Up and up the sound scaled, in pitch and power, and drove into the Aspect's side like a burning spear.
The single note would have broken the hardest heart, shattered the Veil: one terrible, ecstatic union against which nothing could stand.
"Let there be dark."
The Aspect heard the Word and obeyed it...and shattered itself into fragments.
Freedom sprang with glad, mad speed from its destruction, and the Wardens got their minds back.
"Hmm," said Alistair in satisfaction. "Guess that Nightmare wasn't such hot shit after all."
"That was only an Aspect," Anders warned him. "The Nightmare can always create another."
"Just...let me enjoy the moment."
The Spirit of Faith found them and to Fenris' surprise it addressed him first.
"Allow me to touch your hand…which will be your mind in this place. Like your husband you will be a Seeker."
"I don't need it - the Brands give me the same powers."
"Not once Lambert has cured you."
Fenris was angry. "Do you think I will want a cure after he is gone!"
"You'll need one. Otherwise you'll become what Danarius always wanted: a lyrium ghost. Unable to live and unable to die. Changeless, ageless, deathless. Lambert's cure will allow you both to go to the Golden City."
"I will cure him, then?" Lambert asked joyfully.
"Yes. But you will not cure yourself. There is nothing you can do to change your three-year lifespan."
Fenris recognized the hollow inside him. It was a longing that had been with him for always. Shyly, he crept under Lambert's invitation that was silver sunlight and amaranthine. He could taste him: soft and strong and citrus. Lambert was delicate as an ice crystal yet encompassed him in a reach broad as a Vhenadahl's branches.
Mana escaped Lambert like sighs of hauntingly beautiful music, glistened on his skin like a swathe of diamonds; reflected from his wings in a thousand shards of sparkling light. His shimmer stroked Fenris, wove through him until he saw them both – how their marriage had made them more themselves, not less.
Even if I never saw Lambert again, he'll always be here, because he's part of my fabric now. A part I chose, because he's given me the greatest gift of all: my free will, to be loved as I am.
"Alright," Fenris told the spirit. "Touch me. I'll make sure I teach the slaves Seeker powers and the Litany and how to use Rillian's Northover projector - you don't need lyrium brands to use that. With their Blood Magic useless the Magisters will lose. Freedom won't die with me. Then I'll make sure I get to the Golden City at the same time as my husband. I hate to be late for dinner."
Lambert giggled and squeezed his hand. "I hope the Maker has a place like The Hanged Man that serves Purple Rain. I'd hate to be stuck in a Chantry for eternity."
"This conversation is unseemly," Rylock snapped. "It is we who must make ourselves fit for the Golden City and not the other way round."
"You wouldn't like to be stuck in a Chantry singing hymns either," Lambert said shrewdly, "Since the Maker created us this way you'd think He could find us something to do."
Rylock said nothing…wanting to reprove him but unable to quite disagree.
Everyone else joked and laughed and argued as soldiers will after moments of high stress. In this place, Fenris saw them all as they were: noble desires liberally dusted with vices…but somehow these did not tarnish the virtues. They exalted them. The only person who didn't join the debate was Ser Otto.
It had never occurred to Fenris to be angry at the Maker for suffering…suffering had been all there was, and the precious thing he had found - that it was possible to be good; that goodness existed - far outweighed any sense the Maker owed him anything. He had never known his sire and his mother had hated him for being a product of rape…it had never occurred to Fenris the Maker could be different.
But now he saw Ser Otto's anger - anger not for his own suffering but for Boann's - for the fact the Maker allowed the creation of Broodmothers…as clearly as if he were the Knight. Fenris did not know how to help him. There must be something very lonely about loving someone who had suffered in a way that could not be joked about with gallows humour…something that existed beyond any mortal defenses.
To some, Ser Otto's grief was embarrassing; to others, a Death's Head ("someday my wife or my daughter could be as Boann is now…we'd better avoid him, in case bad luck is contagious"). Empathy, sympathy, imagination…there were places beyond them. The Mother and The Children…what could anyone make of that? How could there be a Maker who allowed it?
Rylock tried to speak but was no better with words than Fenris…the others had not known him well enough…it was Rillian who spoke.
"Boann is in the Golden City," Rillian said softly, "Shortly after I sailed to the Vinmarks I had a very clear image of her continued life…even her enhanced life. I think it's only that, because you loved her so deeply, you can't see for looking. How can the Maker open a door if you keep trying to batter it down? How can he answer you when you keep shouting over Him? I know this because it's how I was after mother was murdered…now the grief has receded, I seem to see her everywhere. I think it may be like that."
"Thank you, Rillian. I mean: First Warden."
A river of blood fell from the heavens and the Master Spider faced them.
In the dead stillness of the windless Fade light, the huge, chitinous limbs of the master spider began to move…slowly and stiffly, with cold reptilian sloth. The pincers began to gesture and to writhe. The creature had a terrifying sentient quality, moving in shuddersome discovery of its own flexibility and power. The movement of the armoured limbs displayed, with the uncanny accuracy of a pantomime, a destructive nihilistic will.
Ser Otto drew his mace – the weapon named Fist of the Magister Rylock had taken from the corpse of the Blood Mage who had burned him. Ser Otto had found it easier to wield a mace blind than a sword, and he had sensed the latent power in the thing. Magisters had to be able to control the demons they summoned – this one was dangerous to their opponent.
Nightmare sensed some danger. The thing revealed a hideous limberness it had not betrayed 'til then; the creature bowed laterally to meet him. The Fade seethed, and the spider's massive limbs reached down like misshapen, covetous hands. As if in deliberate malice the demon paused an instant to let Ser Otto strike and then gave his sword arm a squeeze of golem-like power. Blood drizzled from the sleeve of Ser Otto's slack arm like rain.
The knight roared - a cry of defiance in the face of the Blight - and said, "Maker, I was almost cheated of our reunion, cheated by time, but now it's come."
He grabbed the weapon with his left arm.
Fenris saw the knight had come to believe Boann waited for him - herself, and more than herself - and thought of him as a watcher at the threshold. The threshold they must all pass through. He was a natural sentinel, a protector.
Given courage by this man of faith, Fenris thought of his bolter and it appeared in his hands. He aimed squarely for the mouth parts of the hideous thing and smoothly pumped slugs into it at one hundred yards. Through their teamwork Fenris began to feel something like a pre-storm vacuum building in the air. The ceiling of the Fade seemed to overarch him with an even more terrific emptiness.
Then came a moment when he knew, suddenly and viscerally, that the thing had a focus: a seething opacity in its boiling ring of murkiness that aimed for the dragon - for Rillian - because she had become cured of taint, and because she had existed long before the Fear of Blight, and before her it diminished in importance. Because she was going to cure taint. Fenris stepped in front of her and knew he must protect her. She and what she meant to do were their hope.
The colour of the spider was the one Fenris knew: he had seen it boil in Danarius' pale eyes, his robes like a bleached insect. It was liquescent, and endlessly it shuddered, melted, rippled…a bleached insect crawling from its hole to draw prey into its lair.
Fenris remembered the agony of the Brands…the prescience of unspeakable pain. His stolen memories had instructed the demon in this new dimension of horror. He saw the impossibly accelerated version of Ser Otto's burns…the blackening and fissuring of his flesh ...starkly visible against that bioluminescent glow. Somehow, Ser Otto remained standing.
Ser Otto lunged forward with his good left arm and pressed Fist of the Magister against the demon's claw. To call it a recoil was wrong…it was more an explosive liquefaction, an instantaneous dissolution of form. The demon writhed away from the weapon in an almost magnetic repulsion. Fenris saw its torn body recoalesce a distance away. It writhed in abyssal agony but it would reform…Ser Ottos sacrifice had bought them time but it was not destroyed. It dove, going to ground in a boil of movement.
He felt Ser Ottos last glance - seeing now with more than mortal eyes. The Templar armour was transforming into an angel's supple, silver mail, and his face was not so much angry as rapt in stern concentration. He felt the voiceless farewell as a fine eulogy and knew that, in the Golden City, Ser Otto had joined Boann. Fenris had no proof, but he believed. There was a reason the Spirit of Compassion had chosen Lambert and the Spirit of Faith had chosen him. The knowledge there was something more than death and taint…more than the banality of evil…made his loss bearable.
The survivors clung together.
Something – not so much a physical darkness as a mental emptiness, a heaviness – began to grow around them. The Stygian cloud pressed on them, forcing an opening. Blackness advanced from the Void towards them...a roiling mass of hatred and fear. Fenris had a glimpse of seething, formless reptilian hunger. And somehow, in the midst of the swirl of chaos, he sensed a loneliness beyond all light, beyond all comprehension.
Anders' Spirits were silent...spent…remorseful. Fenris knew enough of spirits to understand why. Nightmare had more followers than its Aspect had possessed. The millions upon millions who stretched back across time as well as distance…the Fifth Blight had taken only a year, in one country…the fourth had taken a hundred in many countries…the First had taken centuries throughout all Thedas…and no one had known how to defeat it. The cries of each child who would never grow up…or who would grow up changed… the fear and desperation only a mother could know. The belief the Maker had abandoned them, was judging them or – worse - vivisecting them.
Anders sent the spirits of Valour, Freedom, Wisdom and Justice away. Justice was no longer nascent...his meeting with Anders had matured him and his encounter with the Aspect had changed him from a naïve spirit to an activated one. He knew his enemy. "Go…please. Without shame and with our gratitude. You do not …yet?… have free will and the horror will warp you to demons, without choice. I couldn't stand that. Go with my love forever."
It had been Nightmare's compassion that had made it absorb, to take the pain from its victims…not having any other way to help them. But spirits were like sponges: what they absorbed, they became. Only mortals could take pain - remember everything - and use it to help others. Whatever evil was done to them, a mortal was always the captain of their ship. They did not have to become evil themselves.
The Spirit of Faith looked at him in sorrow. There was no resemblance to Justinia now…she was as she had always been: a pale, luminous angel.
"Tell Leliana: I am sorry. I failed you too."
Now there were only seven mortals against the Nightmare and its multitudes.
Anders' brows were lowered and drawn tight, his eyes heavy with undefined torment. He stared at Fenris, his lower lip pressed upward and his breaths coming in shots. Fenris found he did not like to see this flippant, confident, brilliant man turn before his eyes into an image of disfigurement and gracelessness. One part of him wanted to look away, just as he himself had not wanted to be seen in despair and shame, but it occurred to him Anders might need a reminder he was mortal, with the power and the glory that entailed.
He saw Anders conquer fear in the same way he had conquered disintegration during his year in solitary – with pure rage. There, he had been saved from possession by Mr Wiggums; here, he was in no danger, because no demon could possess a mage walking bodily in the Fade. Anders' fury drew rage demons towards him – howling and gibbering – but they did not attack. They were waiting to be commanded.
"You see," Anders told Rillian bleakly, "The Wardens wanted a demon army. You've got one. We'll take on Nightmare with you and what we find in the Black City together."
Rillian faced him with a woman's smile upon draconic features. "I know you would. And – thank you for the offer. But I need you here. You and Dorian are the only people who can take Qarinus – persuade Varric and Maevaris and Calix Quintara – Asariel has pledged loyalty to Lambert - when we've surrounded Castellum Tenebris we'll be able to get him. And you have other powers...once we have found the cure we will need healers to disseminate it. I will pursue that thing. I am the only one who can." The throat was inhuman but the voice had a woman's sorrow.
Anders was not the only one using rage as a weapon. As a dragon Rillian had never been prey. She was immune to Nightmare because she was a predator.
"I can fly here too," Lambert reminded her.
Fenris knew Lambert would go. And instantly he knew something else.
"I betrayed you to Wryme. Allow me to make amends. We'll see how long that thing lasts against a Lyrium Warrior. I do not care if I remain in the Fade - a lyrium ghost, unable to live or to fully die - because you will remember me in the Golden City and one day this too shall pass." His voice carried a heavy timbre…he had always had a deep baritone and now it had the force of mountains in it. "The Fade was created by the Maker along with the rest of the universe, which means even spirits and lyrium ghosts will join Him one day. I can wait. So can you. We'll face Nightmare together."
"No - I am going," Alistair said, without a shadow of fear.
"It's basic Maths,' Lambert countered, "you have thirty years left and I have three."
Rylock met Lambert's eyes and smiled faintly. "By that argument it should be me. How many Templars of my age do you see on active duty?"
"Were you four always such silver-tongued charmers? I'm going with my wife. We are one flesh…I am also the child of a woman cured of taint and I, too, have the blood of dragons in my veins. This is Warden business. I failed Rillian at the Landsmeet…ran like a spoiled child because I was angry about Loghain. I'll do things right this time."
"Alistair comes with me," Rillian decided. The dragon turned her head to smile at the knight on her back. "My husband is also the Hero of Ferelden."
"I am the Inquisitor!' Lambert said …rather petulantly, Fenris thought. Command still sat uneasily on his shoulders.
If a dragon could be said to grin, Rillian did. "There comes a time when strength outmuscles command and I am the power here."
Fenris had to agree. They weren't going to get a dragon to do anything it didn't want to do.
"No! This is no more than suicide so the rest of us can escape!" Lambert shouted.
Rillian chuckled…the throat was draconic but the voice had the bravado of the docker, the poetic turn of phrase of Adaia and the matter-of-factness of Shianni. "I have been alive a thousand years since before Nightmare came into being and I will be alive a thousand years after I have destroyed him." This was the Old God. But…she was also the wife of Alistair.
She looked at him…the alien face holding the tenderness of a woman.
"Rillian," Lambert said quietly, "I know that as a dragon - as an Old God - you will defeat Nightmare. I do not doubt that. But…how are either of you going to make it back? Without me and the Anchor you will be trapped in the Fade."
Rillian laughed softly – not unkindly, but giving him the realities of war as Loghain had done for her. "Lambert…neither of us are going to make it back. We must go on. Andruil brought taint from the Void...the cure will only be found in the Black City."
Alistair looked at her with full comprehension. "This isn't how I thought it'd end but I'm with the woman I'd pick to go with."
Rillian smiled gently at Lambert's stricken expression, as if speaking to the child she would never have. "Don't worry…when we cure the taint…you'll know." Her gaze included Fenris. "Both of you."
The dragon raised its wings and Alistair's sword – Harvard's Aegis – became a glittering lance. Rillian looked back one final time.
"Rylock: the prisoners at Aeonar need you. Now you have remembered everything – and are Knight Vigilant of Ferelden – only you can free them. Anders…the Free Mages need you. Don't let Fiona sell them to Weisshaupt. Lambert and Fenris…deal with the Venatori for us. Free slaves. Don't let Fen'Harel destroy everything Briala and Fenris and I have built. We Elves don't need an immortal mage stuck in the past. I will see you all soon. But hopefully not too soon! Give Loghain my regards. He is First Warden now."
Just before they left the Fade, Fenris had a glimpse of the Black City...the place the Maker had created as a tourniquet around taint – the final prison. It was surrounded by red eyes. The Void was the vast outside, where the Forgotten Ones were ranging, silent as the dark, for there was no sound any more than sight. He did not know - did not have the right to know? - whether Danarius was there, after he had woken from the final struggle of death. Not a hint, not a shadow of anything outside their own consciousness reached them…it was like being in the cells, for all time. Fenris remembered it all now: how misery had begotten on his mind a thousand shapes of sorrow which he had not been able to talk to, or understand, or even distinguish from real presences.
He turned away…since there was nothing he could do here and plenty he had to do elsewhere.
The dragon's flight split the Fade-darkness… Lambert, Fenris, Anders and Rylock were hurled backwards through the Rift, their hearts bursting with the pain of life. Breath returned: the scream of a newborn into life on Thedas. The pain of the Brands hit Fenris like droplets of vitriol, vipered through his flesh. He ignored it. It was only pain. They were at the top of Fortress Adamant and the dawn was bright and cold. The clouds were like sand on a beach. The sun pressed down on them in intolerable blocks of edge and weight.
It was strange; as if with the restarting of his heartbeat a part of himself was falling down a long dark tunnel in a fall that lasted forever but was only seconds, to end up in a fierce hot jangle of daggered light.
And there was Lambert, wingless now, but wielding Encore like an avenging angel: a luminous lavender-magenta shadow of pure beauty. Fear for Lambert made Fenris feel an incandescent love for him. Fenris' love grew arcs of fire, javelins of lyrium that crowned his body.
A necromancer's fire sparked like a broken crown of thorns…Erimond was attacking. The Magister rode the gravity, his poisonous staff rushing outward from its moving axis, beginning to fall as a deadly stream of acid rain.
Rylock countered him…her steel silhouette an arc of death as she swung The Keening Blade.
Fenris took a flying, headfirst, face forward leap right at Erimond – having just left the Fade, he was not eager to phase, but needs must - and heard the sounds of battle long before he felt gravity close around him again. He streaked through a whirling chiaroscuro of colours and landed on his feet, Lethandralis in hand, seeking Erimond as the most dangerous.
But Rylock had already beaten him. Fenris understood she was past hatred. When it was a monster who had harmed you …and not a man or woman…you did not hate; you only killed. In a withdrawn distaste, she separated his head from his shoulders. He died with an expression of surprise permanently etched across his face.
"Kill them all," Clarel ordered her soldiers. Freed from Nightmare's hold, she still could not live with what she'd done. What they had all done. She had gone too far to turn back now. And this was the Inquisition that had killed her men in a hideous way. The victims of white phosphorous lay like flayed corpses in a charnel house.
Not everyone obeyed Clarel. The Wardens who hadn't sacrificed their comrades and become Blood Puppets were being organized by Carver to help the Inquisition.
Clarel's magical lightning licked towards him and all at once a grin burst on Fenris' face, surprising him. He felt the joy of a warrior, fierce as flame, as life distilled to one test of strength and will.
Hung between a heartbeat and infinity, Fenris felt a strange savage happiness. Not just the fearless knife-edge roll of the dice that might just win against all odds but an ancient, lupine pleasure that seemed to whisper along his neural canals.
Clarel's staff of virulence was a nemesis waiting to split him out of life.
...Save Lambert or lose him. Save Varania's children or fail them. Become to slaves what Anders was to Southern mages or watch them die of magical supremacy: doesn't everybody else? Defeat Fen'Harel or watch that old man destroy everything Rillian and Briala have built. You're a Seeker now. You have the blood of Titans under your skin. Taste the lyrium that roars like fire in your veins. Use it. Hasn't Danarius' two-edged weapon cut his heart? So put up or shut up. Spit in death's eye. Create the future; conquer the past. Winners do. Survivors...
A mental storm twisted his mind like lightning through cumulous. Power surged through him and echoes of himself danced through the remembered years; the busy days to come.
Wings of ecstasy and terror swept through him. The fire of anger laced with the electricity of fear. His blood burned. Reflexes trained by Nenealeus and honed in many a battle whipped Lethandralis through manoeuvres like silver lightning, boiling up like a killer storm over Adamant. Then he was ducking Clarel's blow, rolling backwards in a graceful somersault and landing on his feet, ready to strike. His hand went ghostly…about to rip out her heart.
...She was a victim of Erimond…she's no threat now...
...How can I show mercy?...
...Do it and find out...
He slammed Clarel into unconsciousness with the flat of his blade and went charging to help his husband.
The other Wardens were waking up. Many shaking their heads as if emerging from a long, strange, unrelenting nightmare.
Free.