Stuck in a stone coffin with an abomination, Fenris had many things on his mind, but foremost, and pressing into his backside, was a reminder that the mage obviously did not think like a sane individual.
"Perhaps," Fenris snarled, wielding words when he would rather have a blade, "you should dwell on other things, such as why we are alive."
He felt Anders draw a breath below him and thankfully, the words seemed to serve as a dash of cold water to the man's "Gray Warden stamina."
"I'd been trying to think of other things, actually," Anders said, sounding petulant to Fenris' ears.
"Clearly."
The mage sighed. "They probably want to torture us and turn us into abominations. Tarohne managed it with non-mages, so thank you, Fenris, you've taken care of that problem I was having."
"That little problem," Fenris could not help but snipe.
"Frederick is not little!" Anders protested.
"It doesn't— Frederick?"
Anders was quiet for several long breaths before saying, "I saw four revenants and an arcane horror. Were there more?"
"Wait," Fenris persisted. Did the mage actually call his penis "Frederick?" Honestly?
"No," Anders said firmly. "You're right. We have more important things to consider, like what we're going to do if they open this thing before we're dead. Other than scream a lot, because screaming is quite high on my list."
"That will be quite useful," Fenris observed. "Perhaps you can show them your stamina."
"Ha. Ha."
Fenris reminded himself that baiting the mage would not help him survive this to actually beat the mage at some future date. He pushed against the stone in front of his face, not really hopeful that it would open this time, but still feeling compelled to try. All it yielded was a grunt of protest from Anders when his efforts to push against the stone also pushed him back against the mage.
"Still wounded here," Anders hissed in his ear. "And I shall remind you that some of the wounds are your doing."
"Learn to live with the pain," Fenris told him. "Pain means you are still alive."
He traced the stone with the flat of his palm where his gauntlets left the skin bare. He had done this over and over since he had wakened in their tiny prison. At first he had only suspected that it was Anders he was on top of, but feeling around and putting his hands on the feathers at the man's shoulders had confirmed his identity.
He had not known that he could like the mage even less than he already did, but seeing him in traditional Tevinter robes had notched his dislike up to loathing. That, and the amulet, but the mage had said it was a gift from Hawke,which Fenris simply could not reconcile with what he knew of the man. Garrett Hawke might be many things, but he had never seemed to be a Tevinter sympathizer.
Which was also a line of thought that did nothing to get him out of this situation.
Anders was not the only one whose mind wandered away from the situation at hand as though afraid to think too long and see no hope. Fenris found himself shying away from dwelling too deeply on the fact that he was imprisoned with no way to get himself out. It made a ghost of the slave he had once been want to scream with rage and terror that he had done so much, fought so hard, and he was going to die a slave despite his best efforts.
He was a rat in a cage.
He was in a cage.
Cages had doors.
"If this is a cage for demons, should you not have access to your magic when it is opened? And I to the power from my tattoos?"
"You probably will," Anders said. "And even if I have no magical reserves to draw on, I can use some of my life force to power my magic, but that will probably kill…" He trailed off as thinking of something.
"Fenris…."
Fenris did not like the man's tone.
"Your tattoos are lyrium, right?"
"Yes, but—"
The lid suddenly opened, leaving both men blinking against the unexpected light. A heavily armored hand jerked Fenris out of the sarcophagus and slammed the lid shut, trapping Anders inside once again.
At first glance, Fenris saw that it was a revenant that had his arm in an iron grip. He thrashed, striking out with a gauntleted fist that glanced off the creature's helmet before his arm was seized by a second revenant. Still he fought, pulling with all his strength, drawing on the flare of power from the lyrium that came at his call now that he was no longer imprisoned.
He bucked and strained, even kicking off the ground with his efforts to free himself, but the revenants' strength was implacable and malevolence rolled off them in waves, sapping his strength until even the lyrium glow dimmed, leaving him still struggling, but so weakly that they could lift him onto a stone bier in the center of the room.
The other two revenants that had helped subdue him and Anders came to hold his legs down. The pure evil that the four creatures radiated left Fenris feeling as though his very heart would be too weak to beat soon, they would simply touch him to death.
The thought provoked another bout of struggling, weaker this time before he finally subsided and looked around for something, anything that he might turn to his advantage given half a chance.
The chamber where he lay was roughly circular, its walls rising and curving above him as though they were inside some great egg with the apex at least thirty feet above his head. His eyes caught on the silver tangles of runes that ran all the way to the ceiling before they twisted and swam before his eyes, making his gorge rise.
He tore his gaze away, searching lower, looking past the revenants to the swaying figures of newly-risen undead, still recognizable as the people they had once been. These were men and women in the ragtag garments of Darktown dwellers, their features bloated and distended from the gas that had killed them, their eyes glazed a milky white. They lined the walls, waiting with the endless patience of the mindless undead.
The horror floated up to hover by his feet, red eyes alight with something Fenris could only read as hatred.
When a warm hand brushed the hair off his forehead with a gentle touch, he startled and jerked his head away. He twisted to see what had touched him and looked up into a human woman's face. She smiled fondly down at him, her eyes a warm brown, her dark hair falling in wisps around her face where her bun had loosened. She looked to be in her middle years, but he was not always good at judging human ages.
"Fenris," she murmured, drawing out the sibilant in his name like a caress. "This really doesn't have to be so unpleasant."
"Try your wiles elsewhere, witch," Fenris spat. She had to be a mage of some sort to walk freely among these monstrosities. "I will not succumb."
She tutted and tapped his forehead lightly with her fingertips. "Such a prideful creature. How do you know that you have not already succumbed?"
His dark brows knit in confusion. How did he know that he had not already succumbed? Because he would still kill her and all of these creatures to gain his freedom.
He looked away from her, darting his eyes around the chamber for some other hint as to his prison, his captors, his probable fate.
There were other sarcophagi. He could not tell how many – more than a half dozen, probably more. At least four stood open, their lids gone, either broken or simply discarded. They gaped at him like eyeless sockets.
"Fenris." Again the tap on his forehead as though he was an errant child. "Pay attention or I might grow cross."
"Get on with it," he snarled. "Do your worst and have done with it. I will be no one's slave."
"Tch." She pursed her lips and studied him, idly carding her fingers through his hair as she did. "I suppose you have heard the promises of power great enough to win your freedom from the magisters you fear."
His eyes widened before they narrowed.
"What are you?"
She brushed her thumb over his cheekbone and tutted when he tried to twist and snap his teeth on it. "I am powerful and I will be more powerful with you as an ally."
"It will not happen," he promised her. "As you say, I have heard the promise, and I will not be taken by such tricks again."
She smiled and shrugged. "I do like to try it the easy way first. Screaming gives this body a headache after a while. I don't know how humans tolerate it."
He saw the flash of the blade an instant before she drove it into the front of his skull.
• • •
Danarius was there, with Hadriana. He leaned in to murmur something in her ear and she smiled before stalking over to Fenris where he lay naked in chains.
He knew. He knew what that smile meant. He knew what Danarius wanted her to do.
He knew and he would do anything to make it…
No.
This is not real.
Hawke was fighting some creature Fenris had never seen before. It was enormous, insectile, spitting gobbets of some burning liquid that bogged down the normally agile rogue. Aveline shouted at the creature, trying to draw its attention away while Isabela drove her daggers into one of its legs and Merrill desperately threw spells at it.
They were losing.
Fenris struggled to get to them, to help them. He knew it was happening right then.
No!
The lyrium burned through his skin, down into his bone. He could feel it running through his marrow, setting his very existence afire.
He screamed again and again knowing that he would die, must die. No mortal flesh could contain this agony and survive.
I survived. Try again.
"Kill them."
The Fog Warriors had sheltered him, proud, unbending. They were good people.
The feel of their flesh under his blade made him weep, silently, as he killed every person who had dared to call a slave friend.
He drove his hand into the leader's chest and felt his heart pulse under his palm before he closed his hand into a fist.
Danarius patted him like a dog and he followed his master, not looking back, not looking forward, already knowing what awaited him—
I will not remember this!
But he did. He remembered all that and more, so much more. Memories, visions, dreams and endless, endless nightmares.
• • •
He was barely conscious when he was unceremoniously dumped back in the sarcophagus while the mage was dragged out to take his place on the stone bier.
But he knew that he was still his own man.