Flemeth's Hut, Korcari Wilds–9:30 Dragon Age
Morrigan waited outside the small dwelling she shared with her mother as the witch had commanded before she left, though the young woman knew not why Flemeth saw fit to engage in such a foolish errand as rescuing two Grey Wardens, one who had given his freedom to the gilded cage of the Circle and another who had wished to become the ones who held the keys. Still, she knew it was not her place to question her mother's decisions–not yet, anyways.
The dragon's call came at last, signaling that Flemeth had been successful and that she was close by. It did not irk her one whit; she had already prepared what her mother had asked–nay, ordered, for her mother never asked for anything –she retrieve. Running once more through the list (boiled water, a clean cloth, a basin, et cetera) she made to conjure up a signal flare so that the huge dragon-form in which her mother was approaching could find her way through the driving rain.
The massive reptilian form slammed into the clearing with a concussive crash that made the ground beneath them quake. In one scaled, clawed hand she held the Templar–Alistair, Morrigan recalled–limp as a rag doll, but protected on her back laid the elf from before, the Circle mage, very securely placed on her mother's back. She watched with great interest as the dragon dropped Alistair's body before carefully laying the mage out on the ground next to him–closer to her, she noted. This done, she quickly shifted back into her humanoid form, clad in her usual combative attire, striding over to her daughter with a hint of panic in each step.
"Morrigan," she called. "Come and help me put the elven Warden onto your cot, and get the other one inside out of the rain."
"Yes, Mother," Morrigan replied, walking forth and swiftly taking the unconscious elf's shoulders whilst her mother lifted his legs. Together they carried him into the hut, laying him out on the cot that rested just inside the door. The woman saw why her mother asked for help; the mage's heavy black robes and hooded cloak made him substantially heavier than his thin form otherwise would have been. Her mother stood there pensively, staring at the mage's prone form as Morrigan, noting this, went out and retrieved the armored oaf who was his companion, laying him on the ground before the fire that she had been tasked with starting manually–a curious departure from the norm, and one about which she resolved to question Flemeth later.
"Morrigan," her mother addressed more softly. "The elf is our priority. The Templar can come later, if we have the time to do so. But I need you to do this; it is not a task that may be completed by any one person."
"What would you have me do?" she asked in return, spreading her arms out plaintively, waiting for her mother's directions. Flemeth nodded in approval before answering her daughter's question.
"First strip the robes and cloak off of him," the old woman commanded, voice and tone both turned businesslike and objective. "I need to see the extent of his injuries, and it would not do for him to develop hypothermia."
Morrigan did as she was told, taking a dagger and slicing open the robes the elf wore and stripping the soaked sable cloth from his ashen skin, discarding it into a soaking pile of rags in the corner of the single room that comprised the majority of the hut's interior. For once, she saw in full the form of the newest Grey Warden, took in his frail, thin, skeletal form and wondered how a bird in a cage could be so starved and gaunt and sickly and not fat with the seeds given unto it by the masters that held in their grasp the key to his ultimate freedom.
"Morrigan!" her mother called sharply, bringing her attention immediately back to the situation at hand. "Those arrow wounds need healing, but more importantly, you see those black tattoos?" she asked, indicating the intricate weaving of what appeared to be thick sable lines of ink etched into the skin. Morrigan noted these and nodded in response. "Those are made with lyrium…the clever boy thought to rein in his powers with tattoos to block them off and seal them away, but the process…it was not completed. Damnable Templars."
"So I presume that we must remove the lyrium, heal the wounds, and then apply them in their entirety?" Morrigan deduced, indicating the plethora of medicinal and not-so-medicinal supplies her mother had ordered her to procure in preparation.
"As always, your estimation is correct," the old witch said, nodding with approval. "It appears that I have taught you well. Yes, we must exorcise the lyrium already in his skin before we can heal his wounds; else, the tattoos shall interfere with any healing magic I attempt."
The young woman nodded her understanding. Lyrium in the best of times was a necessary evil; in the worst of times, it was a damnable annoyance and a significant source of magical interference. She prepared what she knew to be necessary for such a task–the smallish dagger her mother called a scalpel, several vials and an enchanted syphoning needle that she found in her mother's closet. Quickly she set to work, slicing open the skin along the tattoos–one small incision for every tattoo–before attaching the vial to the syphoning needle and plunging the needle into the incision and extracting the lyrium from the skin, the bluish metal filling the vials relatively quickly. That done, she turned his body over and repeated the process to the tattoos on his back, ignoring the small, weak groans of pain the Warden gave.
She stopped when she was done, just as Flemeth came up behind her to inspect her daughter's handiwork. "Good," she said, murmuring her approval. "Now, I want you to observe the lyrium you just extracted from the tattoos," her mother instructed. "The Templars have done an abominable thing, and this"–she indicated the vials, within which a black and murky, slime-like liquid was contained–"is both the proof of that and the result thereof."
Morrigan, noting her cue, asked the question her mother expected of her. "What, exactly, was done that was so abominable?" she asked, an eyebrow cocked.
"Magebane," Flemeth replied with uncharacteristic severity. "The reason why he is so frail and that his tattoos interfere with any attempt to heal him is because of this!" she exclaimed as she levitated from the pile of sopping rags an enchanted leather belt, upon which was held dozens of vials of a sickly-looking green poison. "These doses of magebane would be lethal under normal circumstances. The fools know not how much damage they might have done," she explained, trailing off into a mutter at the end.
"Then how is he alive?" Morrigan asked. Internally, she felt somewhere within herself that she was horrified, but the rest of her quickly snapped that the blighted Chantry was capable of that and more. "Surely he is without hope."
"He should be, normally," her wizened mother conceded sagely. "But the Joining ritual combined with his blood is keeping him alive in a comatose state. It is not, however, a state that his body can sustain indefinitely, nor should it. Now," she said, "bring me the needle, the lyrium I told you to pull and the book of rituals I set aside earlier. We will need it if he is to survive."
Morrigan nodded her assent, walking urgently toward the next room and her mother's armchair. Upon the small chestnut table next to the chair was a cup of tea long-since grown cold and a great, obviously ancient and until recently quite dusty book; remembering the instructions she had been given, she retrieved the book and walked back to their impromptu surgery, placing it upon the nightstand with the rest of the medical supplies. She then took a needle from the silver plate upon which the instruments rested, threading it with raw lyrium wire and dousing it quite liberally in liquefied, refined lyrium, handing it to her mother as she flipped through the pages of the tome. Planting her finger upon the correct pattern resolutely, Flemeth at last noticed her daughter holding out the readied lyrium wire; in reaction, she eyed Morrigan incredulously before breaking out into manic laughter.
"You think I am to climb onto his back and thread lyrium through his skin? No, Morrigan, my daughter," she said, sobering. "It is you who must complete this task, this ritual–you who must save his life. After all," she laughed, "you are my daughter, and I am both too old and too busy to go off adventuring."
"Fine, then," Morrigan acquiesced with a huff. "Give me the needle then, dearest mother, if you please. I can hardly work without tools."
"You can hardly work with clothes, either," Flemeth commented. Morrigan turned her head sharply, and she could swear she saw a glib smirk flash upon her mother's face for an instant before it vanished. "This is an old practice–ancient, even–and propriety in these sorts of endeavors was hardly a primary concern. And besides," she added, "he'll need your blood in addition to the new tattoos to purify his blood, and you being of quite substantial potential–which, as my daughter, is yours by default–the lyrium in your blood will help to expedite the process of cleansing his bloodstream."
"As you say, mother," Morrigan replied, all the rebellion and resignation gone from her tone as she grasped the severity in her mother's and in the words she spoke. Quickly, she undid the few clasps that held her robes together and shed them from her body, leaving herself entirely nude. That done, she followed her mother's unspoken instructions as she climbed onto the elf's back, straddling him at the waist, and as her mother began to chant in a tongue long since forgotten by the mortal races of the world, she took the needle in her left hand and jabbed it through her right. Pulling the needle and the lyrium-laced thread through her hand, she watched in intent concentration as the Fade metal was stained red with her blood and began to resonate, to vibrate–and as it vibrated, it sang. There was no other word for it; the song created the perfect counterpoint to the ancient and forbidden tongue with which her mother spoke, and suddenly Morrigan knew–she needed no further instruction from her mother. The song bringing forth and then reinforcing the mental image of the design that had been stored in her memory, she set immediately and with no doubt as to the veracity of the method to work at her task. She took the sanguine needle, delicately, from the exiting side of her right hand and proceeded to jab it into the skin of the mage's back, directly below her. Focused, and noting with some satisfaction the new part the elf's blood added to the lyrium's song as the metal in his blood was purified and then began to resonate, Morrigan threaded a broad circle into his back, the thread leaving the Fade-metal behind as it was stripped from it by the mage's body. Once that was complete, she re-saturated the thread and repeated the bloodying process with her other hand as she sought to complete the inner circle, beginning this time from the top of his back between his shoulder blades and working her way down. Then, the framework complete, she used a dagger to slash her palms further, and then, after dipping her fingertips in lyrium, the Witch began to draw patterns within the inner circle, each line and circle and swirl she made becoming permanent through the use of the already established synchronization between her blood and lyrium and his, the finer script appearing between the inner and outer outlines as Morrigan muttered the names of each new symbol and the description of the purpose thereof in the context of the greater seal as each part became known to her through the Fade-song that, as a symphony, emerged from every different resonance in the hut.
Finally, all that was left was the center of the design. The seal, a pentagram, was all but complete by this point, missing the core symbol as an arch misses its cornerstone, and Morrigan knew in her heart of hearts–and from the knowledge the Fade-song had imparted–that the ultimate sigul would be…painful. Steeling herself, she took up the dagger again and quickly carved a symbol into the flesh in the center of the unfinished lyrium tattoo, then carving the symbol that complemented it into her abdomen. The blood flowed as a river from her core and onto the elf's back, into the open wound on his back that she had just carved. The body stiffened and an unconscious hand reached up awkwardly and touched her chest wound, the skin searing and cauterizing with tendrils of a wispy auric energy reaching into the would and healing it as that same energy burned angry from within the slashed wound, glowing brightly and searing shut the symbol. Morrigan's wound healed–though she felt still quite weak, given the amount of her blood she had sacrificed in the course of this strange ritual–she followed the whispered next instructions of the Fade-metal and swiftly dismounted him, not a moment too soon. The second she had completely broken contact with the elf, his body began to glow.
And glow.
And glow.
The auric aura built and built until it reached a blinding, almost solar zenith, the vibrations of lyrium changing and morphing and warping into an entirely different song. The mage's unconscious body began to rise into the air, imperceptibly at first, but rising higher and higher until the elf was hovering in flight, arms spread, legs together at the ankles, head lolling back, the aura exuding from seemingly every part of his body. Then, if it was possible, the golden aura glowed brighter and more intensely. Morrigan found it exceedingly strange that she had no compulsion to shade her eyes from the glow, and instead found herself basking in the warmth, the heat, the rage, the sheer vengeance and righteous bloodlust that came off him in waves, unlike her mother who took a few reflexive and fearful steps back, the slightest shadow of shame shading her gaze. And yet the lack of the basic instinct to hide oneself from the blinding light was so innate, so basic, so seemingly natural that she paid it very little mind despite herself.
The head snapped forth, rigid and focused, as the crescendo of brilliance visibly crested the event horizon of its finale. The eyes opened, nothing but the glow within them, followed by the mouth in the same state, and then once again the head was thrown back and from every limb a blast of golden energy came streaming out violently, like a river whose pressure had superseded the strength of the dam to hold it at bay. The magnificence was paralyzing, and within the sound of the release that was akin to rushing torrents of water, Morrigan was sure she could hear the voice of wind-chimes.
The blast was over quickly; like a jolt of lightning it receded into silence and then into memory. Slowly–ever so slowly–the mage-Warden's body drifted down to the wooden ground of the small cabin, the muscles in his body once again gone slack and limp. Swiftly recovering from the spellbinding effect of the phenomenon that had just occurred, Morrigan rushed forward and caught the unconscious body under the shoulders, dragging him gingerly back into the bed–with the help of her magic, of course–and moving to cover him with blankets to stave off hypothermia, only to have her mother warn her against it with a single gesture. Submitting to Flemeth's superior knowledge of lore, she backed away slowly.
"Thank you, Morrigan," the old Witch of the Wilds all but mumbled with exhaustion. "You have done well and completed the task asked of you quite admirably. Now go, get to sleep. With the amount of blood you lost, you'll definitely need it. I'll tend to his comrade's wounds–such as they are."
"But Mother, what of the elf's wounds? Surely…" the young woman began.
"Think no more of them, child," Flemeth said firmly. "His wounds are healed, his blood, purified. All that is needed now for him to do is to rest, and let the regenerative process you just enabled him to initiate run its course. Now do as I say, for believe me, he won't take kindly to the thought that he caused you so much trouble. Rest," she insisted. Morrigan, in response, nodded her head slowly and mutely, her fatigue beginning to creep in and surreptitiously overtake her, now that the lyrium and adrenaline had worn off. Weakly, she left the room and plopped onto the sofa of the library, stretching herself like a cat before allowing the restive embrace of sleep to at last overtake her…
The Fade–9:30 Dragon Age
He was in a murky, blurred landscape, barren and boundless; like diving deep into tepid lake-water, eyes open, or looking upon a metallic mirror in the depths of a stream. Vertigo and a sort of existential sickness came upon him–a virulent force of wrongness assaulting his consciousness with a far greater degree of aggression and potency than any other time before. Not even the Harrowing made him feel this sick, this…violated. It was horror that colored Eldred's perception of the realm as he observed it anew.
The elf stood from where he fell, finding his footing rather quickly despite the disorientation that made him sway where he stood. He observed his surroundings with senses both mundane and magical, trying to ascertain precisely where in the vast expanse of the Fade he was, stripped of his heavy sable robes and his staff. Noticing his nudity as he returned to himself, he wrapped his body in a black, voluminous cloak that he pulled from the…air…of the realm. Noticing the elevation he currently stood at, he walked to the edge of the cliff, holding it around him like a blanket.
"Enjoying the view?" came a familiar voice from behind him. Sighing, the elf turned his head to the side to view an older woman in outlandish armor reminiscent of the diagrams of draconic anatomy available in Kinloch Hold. It dawned on him almost immediately that he had seen drawings–Chasind and otherwise–of the woman before, buried within some of the most obscure texts Irving had at his disposal.
"Flemeth, the Witch of the Wilds, I presume?" he asked somewhat sarcastically. Her cocked brow indicated that his subtext had not been lost on her. "Come to see me off to the next great adventure?" he asked, turning back to the barren, murky landscape of dreams beneath him.
"Why?" she asked, cocking her head now. "You're not done on Thedas yet."
"Pardon?" he asked, wheeling around to face her fully. "What do you mean?"
"I mean as I say," she said, her expression entirely serious, "and I say what I mean. Your task is not yet finished, Galedreon–and I daresay it shan't be for some time yet." Finished, her lips twitched into a small smirk at her last comment. "Nay, not for some time."
"Please explain yourself," the elf requested.
She threw her head back, laughing. "Surely," she replied. The woman strode up to him, greaves clashing against the unnaturally solid ground. "This…" she began, casting her hand out to encompass the entirety of the landscape for illustration, "…is not as it is supposed to be. Specifically, it is ill."
"Ill?" Eldred questioned. "How so? How can the Fade, the Realm of Dreams, be ill without anyone but you noticing?"
"Because no one remembers how it was before," Flemeth replied offhandedly. "And so, fools that they are, they believe that this barren…wasteland…is how it always has been. This, of course," she continued, "is not so." She paused to allow him to process what she had just said before continuing. "The Fade is sick as Ferelden is to be sick; a great corruption walks upon it, unchecked and unchallenged. And from the Fade's sickness…came a Blight upon the land, infecting it with the same plague."
"So how then is this at all germane to the event of my demise?" he asked.
"Why, my dear boy, you haven't guessed?!" she exclaimed, throwing her head back and laughing in incredulity. "This is about you, Heir of Arlathan!"
"What did you call me?" he asked, growing steadily more annoyed by the fact that this conversation was quite literally generating more questions than the answers the interaction provided. "I am Eldred Surana, a mage of the Circle of Ferelden, an orphan in bondage to the Chantry! What are you talking about?!"
"'Orphaned Boy, Born of Winter, Companion of the Storm,'" she quoted. "'Earthquake, Lightning, Ice and Fire, as heralds they call; he comes. Astride the body of Dragon Slain, across the World, across the Planes, the Heir of Arlathan, blood of Garahel returns to us from lands afar at last. To lay them low, the Heathens, the Hubris, of Men, their transgression shall be their charge; for cometh now at once, astride the Waves and Tides, the Last One comes, his throne shall he claim, and all shall be righted once more.' A piece of an old Dalish prophecy, known only to the Keepers, recorded in a very old book that has since been lost," the old Witch explained. "Or so they thought; in truth, it was equal parts Prophesy and Oath." She regarded him so incredibly intently that a hawk might cower under such a gaze. "You are the last of the Surana clan, that is true, but your name is Eldred Galcaladon, born on the Solstice of Winter."
Unconsciously, the mage's eyes widened, stepping back like a cornered animal as his soul warred with his heart. His heart wished, with all its considerable strength, to dismiss her as a hallucination, a demon's trick, perhaps even a fever-dream; his soul stood steadfast, testifying to the veracity of that which she said.
"You, Galedreon, are not as you seem," she said, seemingly either oblivious to or unmoved by his reaction "Do you wonder why you are so much taller than other elves, even to the point of superseding the height of most humans? Why your power outstrips all others to such a degree, though you have not a whit of control over it? You are of a different breed, da'len; the last true Blood of Uthenra, the Waking Dream of the Undying Fey. Untouched by the consequences of centuries of slavery under Old Tevinter, a true genetic impossibility, and yet here you stand."
"Wha…What…" the elf stuttered, trying to make sense of what he was being told even as a quasi-alien presence assaulted his mind again and again, inducing in him a strong feeling of overwhelming nausea.
"Yes, you feel it, don't you?" Flemeth said, eagerness turning her tone into more of a goad than a conversational dialect. "The truth of who–and, more importantly, what–you are creeping up on you, awakening from its long dormancy and making itself known to you…"
Eldred dropped to his knees in agony, clasping his hands to the sides of his skull, cloak pooling about his lower body. "What the fuck are you doing to my head?!" he howled. "GET OUT OF MY MIND!"
"Oh, 'tis not I influencing you so; it is you, and your pointless struggling that is causing you such pain, such virulent, excruciating wretchedness as you are experiencing right now," she contradicted. "Don't fight it; take it into yourself, let it merge with your being once more…and know the truth!"
Combating that which he felt would erase him despite the advice Flemeth tendered, the elf bent over, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his teeth against the horrible feeling, until, as the pain reached a crescendo, he could bear it no more. He threw his head back, screaming out in unbelievable torment as he gave up his futile struggle, and his screams gradually transformed to yells of exhalation, then to a roar of triumph and finally on to laughs of bliss before once again he fell to the ground.
After a minute, he picked himself up off of the ground, standing far straighter than he had been previously. Now, his bearing was regal instead of frail, and when he sallied forth he walked with the natural grace of a predator. But Flemeth refrained from commenting further, standing with her arms crossed as she was, her demeanor businesslike despite the wide grin she could not suppress; she knew the transformation–nay, the restoration–was not yet complete. The finale was yet to come.
Eldred toed the edge of the cliff, eyes closed, and breathed deeply as he raised his head. He raised his arms, putting them slowly out wide as tendrils of a golden aura speckled with what looked like flecks of the metal came off of his skin in waves, weaving its way across his limbs and chest and finally his face before wavering and dissipating in the "air" around him while he began to ascend into that "air", hovering above the ground and still climbing ever upwards. As time passed the glow intensified until his head reached its zenith; his eyes and mouth snapped open as the aura reached the summit of its crescendo and blinding golden light blasted from his limbs, his eye sockets, his open mouth, his neck, his head, from every part of his body with a mighty roar.
The glow finally receded and he drifted back down to the ground, where he crumpled in a heap, still wrapped in his cloak conjured of the stuff of dreams. After several seconds, he came to, placing all fours on the ground and pushing himself up off of that ground, gaining his footing and then standing.
Eldred felt renewed, refreshed, reborn as he stood. How had he forgotten? So much of his power, thankfully, was now restored, as was that part of his mind–his memory–that had been partitioned; by whom, he knew not. Nevertheless, it was largely irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. He strode forth, each step commanding and sure, coming to stand before the strangely armored old woman who now prostrated herself before him, kneeling with her head bowed.
"My lord," she intoned. "You are at last restored."
"You are…" he said, struggling to remember, "…Asha'bellanar, correct?"
"Yes, my lord," she replied, still refusing to meet his gaze.
"You have restored me at last," he realized slowly, taking her chin softly and raising her head so that he could peer into her eyes as he posed the cardinal, paramount question. "Why? Why have you done this?"
"There was once a group of men and a woman," she began, standing as she spoke. "They thought themselves great, for they were worshipped and exalted among many. Yet they were jealous, for a few worshipped their superiors, and in their envy they resolved to make their superiors their foes. Using those who worshipped them as tools, the men entered into the sovereign realm of the true gods and imprisoned them. As a result, that realm turned sick and the men were trapped within it, slumbering until the symptoms of the sickness they caused at last devours what is left of what they were." She paused in reminiscence. "Needless to say, it was a grievous mistake, and one that for a long time I thought an irreparable one. Though four hundred years ago, I was given hope–hope of my own error. You, my lord, are the culmination of that hope."
The elf's brow furrowed in confusion. "Then who am I to be, Asha'bellanar? What am I to do? I have been brought into this world knowing nothing save the truth of my nature, and that has just now been restored to me."
The old shape-shifter cackled madly. "That is something you must find for yourself, as mortals do. Fear not," she said, adopting a more genteel and sympathetic tone. "There is time yet for you to find that knowledge, and more than enough ways in which you might go about it before your time comes at last." She shook her head. "But no matter; my task is complete for now. I have released unto you the remainder of your native power. Do with it as you will." She once again looked out at the wasteland of the Fade, seemingly lost in her memories and her plans for the future for several minutes before turning back to him. "Your wounds are healed, Galedreon; 'tis time for you to re-enter the waking world," she said, bringing one gauntleted hand up and snapping the first three fingers of that hand. The Fade blurred and shifted, only the two of them remaining constant through the swirling nebula of dreary paint-like colors until even that was no longer true, for then Flemeth began to fade from the blank canvas behind the nebulous palette of the realm. A single word she left behind, echoing: "Wake."
