Note: sorry for the delay, readers! Life got in the way for a bit. Hope you enjoy!

Warnings: stroke symptoms, violence

Chapter 4: The White Spire

[9 years later]

"En - enchanter Sunara? Su - Surana?"the young man slurred, blinking owlishly in his small cot. Catching Eve's eye as she lugged over an empty bucket, a wide smile blossomed on his scarred face. "Can - can you kish it? Kiss it and make it better?"

Eve didn't hide her amusement at how the templar's feet, poking out from the sheets since he was just so tall, wiggled with glee. "Bit hard to get inside your brain and kiss the bruising away," she pointed out. "Now, Farrian, I need you to hold still so I can get in there and heal it, alright?"

"Oh, I can he - heel for you any-which-way you want," Farrian leered, waggling his scrubby eyebrows.

The templar seated next to him, Martin, groaned and hid his face while another templar sniggered. "Oh Maker, please make him stop," Martin muttered, the candlelight highlighting the white scar at the base of a knuckle where he'd lost a finger during training. "At least, make him stop before the sister returns."

"You weren't much more discreet when you were here last year," another templar pointed out. Titian, the templar with the missing tooth who'd made her promise not to tell anyone that he'd lost it by falling out of bed instead of against a rogue demon. "Didn't you ask her to hold you and called her mum-"

"I said nothing!" Martin said with a flushed glance at Eve.

"If it helps, it's nothing I haven't heard before," Eve offered as Martin sputtered. Farrian followed her movements dreamily with a speck of drool leaking from the side of his mouth as she plunked down beside him. He looked much thinner than his colleagues, but templars always looked shrimpier when pried out of their metal shells. Three templars surrounded her and her patient, leaning against the wall or standing around imitating statues. After seeing enough of them naked, Eve knew that templars had the ability to bend their stiff spines and she wished that they would at least admit to being human in the clinic, if only to stop towering over her. Despite the audience, Eve was glad that Farrian's condition had improved vastly since yesterday and he was no longer trying to climb out of bed with only one working arm and leg.

Knight-Captain Brassard leaned in with a pinch between her fair brows. While she had never been a patient in Eve's clinic, she frequently bustled in after injured templars like a mother hen and poked her head over Eve's shoulder. Like she was doing now, and the little impulsive voice in Eve's head pointed out that she was close enough for her to turn and lick the Knight-Captain's cheek if she chose. Which she wouldn't. Probably. "Enchanter Surana, is this behavior normal?"

Eve refocused on grappling Farrian's wandering hands. "He's loopy from the pain-killing potion I gave him earlier," she explained. "When patients have severe internal injuries, I usually induce sleep or paralyze the body part in question so they don't resist or try to fight me. Most healing procedures are painless, but they can feel odd, depending on the organ and region. Normal people are reluctant enough, but templars don't appreciate it when a mage rummages around in their organs like a puppet…"

The Knight-Captain looked distinctly uncomfortable at the thought and a light of understanding brightened her eyes. "I see. I wouldn't want to sleep through magic being worked on me either."

"Especially nowadays, what with the Kirkwall mass-murder," a large-nosed templar interjected. Eve squinted at him - his name escaped her, but she'd healed his twisted knee a few months ago. "No offense, enchanter Surana. It's just… people are uneasy, see. Supposedly it was done by an apostate spirit healer."

"It was done by a possessed abomination," a nasal voice corrected. Eve swivelled in her seat to glare at the speaker, who was probably the blonde apprentice that had strolled in with blisters stretching half their face from a spell gone wrong. But that apprentice was fast asleep in the cot two spaces over - the speaker was an unfamiliar human man seated on an empty cot across from them. He had a broad, fresh-off-the-farm face scattered with freckles, a mop of red hair, and a contemptuous sneer aimed at Ser Bum Knee which displayed his lack of front teeth. "It shouldn't mean that all spirit healers or mages want to destroy the Chantries."

Brassard looked decidedly unimpressed. "That is not what he is implying, young man."

Ser Bum Knee nodded to Brassard. "Indeed. Enchanter Surana has been an exemplary healer ever since she transferred here from Kinloch Hold six years ago. Perhaps not as reassuring in her political stance… but I am explaining that recent events have caused tensions to run high, and not everyone appreciates magic being cast upon their person."

"Yes, the Kirkwall disaster was a tragedy for mages, templars, and citizens alike," Eve said quickly, shooting a look at the mage to warn him not to open his gob again if he knew what was good for him. "And the poppy seed potion allows the patient to stay awake but not feel much pain while I work inside them," Eve continued. "A side effect is that they can become liberal with their thoughts and start to… over-share."

"You smell nice," Farrian supplied helpfully. She swatted the hand he'd been trying to sneak around to her backside.

Martin's expression sobered as he hitched up his belt from the slight paunch around his waist. "Looks like Farrian needed more than most I've seen pass through this clinic before," he said, "that abomination got him good."

"Yes, well, getting sliced by a demon in a Harrowing gone sideways then a getting a stroke thanks to a blood clot from the wound is, as we surgeons and healers like to say, 'really fucking unlucky'," Eve murmured, flinching back as Farrian made a grab at her chest. "I broke the clot yesterday, but the bruising needed time to settle. Actually, could you-?"

Brassard and Martin leaned in to hold their squirming colleague down and Eve quickly got to work. She could see that while the clot was gone, the bruised brain tissue in the areas past the clot had to be coaxed back to their normal size which would hopefully improve the weakness in the left side of Farrian's body. Eve settled her hands on Farrian's temples, closed her eyes and counted to ten in her head, falling into herself until she had every bit of her focus under tight control. With her practiced discipline, she pulled a thread from the wellspring of magic inside her then delicately guided it through the intricate spiderweb of arteries and veins in his brain until she could reach the stiff contusions and will them to shrink into normal, spongy cerebral tissue.

A light sheen of sweat had popped up on her skin by the time she was finished, and Farrian had started dozing with his mouth open. She withdrew her magic with a sigh and slumped, feeling a headache drumming in her temples. Her wellspring was running low, and that meant she needed a gulp of lyrium to halt this headache in its tracks.

Brasard was watching her closely. "How is Ser Farrian, Enchanter Surana?"

Reflexively, Eve's back straightened and she smiled. "I've been able to bring the swelling down and we'll be able to see if his left side improves in strength. Progress may be slow and he will have to exercise that side, but he is young and I am hopeful."

Before Brassard could do much more than smile and thank her, the other templars started gossiping.

"It could've been much worse. We found evidence that the apprentice was practicing blood magic under his bunk. I swear, they're getting bold as brass and just as smart these days," Titian muttered to Bum Knee, glaring at the scars that the demon had raked across Farrian's face.

Ser Bum Knee shook his head. "We're fortunate to have Lord Seeker Lambert here," he replied, "we need more oversight. We're inching closer to the madness that reigned in the Gallows with each passing month and it needs to be nipped in the bud."

"You can't be serious," Redhead interrupted, his ham-sized hands curling in his lap. Eve couldn't believe that he was still loitering inside the clinic when most apprentices with an inkling of sense would have scampered away after pissing off a templar. "The rise of blood magic started because of the noose the templars tightened around the mages' necks there! Stricter control is not the solution!"

Ser Bum Knee turned to look down his nose at the mage while Eve scrambled off of her stool as all the templars within earshot stiffened and honed in on the apprentice like hawks. "And you propose that we ignore all signs of blood magic? We already have a maleficar running around on a rampage!"

Redheaded Halfwit unfolded off the cot he'd been sitting on and smugly loomed over the irate templar. "If you mean the Ghost of the Spire, that makes no sense," he said. "Why would a supposed blood mage go 'round killing other mages? Who's to say that it's not you lot taking it out on us and blaming mages again? Wouldn't be the first or last time that's happened."

"That is a serious accusation, mage," Brassard said, eyes flashing.

"Someone is taking the bedtime Tales of the Champion a little too seriously," Titian said snidely.

Eve knew that she shouldn't get involved, but she couldn't resist pointing out the facts. "Except that the new reports issued by the acting Knight-Commander of Kirkwall support Tethras' claims," she interjected. "And the Spire Ghost is real, I have seen him before-"

The Redheaded Halfwit looked even more gormless and even the templars looked incredulous at her declaration. "But everyone knows that ghosts aren't real," Redheaded Halfwit said, nonplussed. "It's probably another Kirkwall-inspired templar. And I hear that the same is happening here, in the White Spire now that Lambert is around-"

He didn't even flinch when Ser Bum Knee waved a gauntleted finger under his broad nose. "You are dangerously close to insubordination, mage," Ser Bum Knee said quietly with a glance at Brassard as Titian whispered urgently in her ear. "It looks like you are new here, but you will find that we do not bear disrespect as willingly as they do in the Ansberg Circle and there is a reason why we have cells in the Pit."

"That is enough, Ser, uh, Ser Knight," Eve interrupted, making sure to trod on Redheaded Halfwit's foot as she pushed herself between them. "I will ensure that this apprentice's primary mentor provides him with lessons in etiquette," she said firmly, "And I insist that you leave the Chantry clinic - there are patients who need rest, not least of all your injured colleague here."

Knight-Captain Brassard shook Titian off with a tight disapproving frown, but nodded to Eve after a quick glance around the clinic. "Enchanter Surana is right. If you are not on duty soon, then back to your quarters, all of you," Knight-Captain Brassard commanded.

Bum Knee regarded her with a look of contempt before it vanished behind the impassive mask that every templar mastered in their career. "As you say, Knight-Captain," he said in a carefully neutral tone.

Eve nodded to Martin and Brassard as they departed from the clinic, then quickly glanced around to make sure none of the patients were in the throes of death. Redheaded Halfwit yelped when she clamped an uncompromising hand on his upper arm and steered him through the nondescript door at the back. Cheerful golden light spilling from candles embedded in wall brackets greeted her as well as a faint hint of vinegar that meant the laboratory floors had just been cleaned. Her spirits lifted a little, until Redheaded Halfwit started ranting again.

"Can you believe those gaolers?" he scowled, stamping his staff on the flagstones as he followed Eve further into the spacious work room. "They have no regard for the truth of the matter when mages or magic is involved-"

"Speaking of magic," Eve said as she drew up to her desk. It was cluttered with notes, sheaves of dried herbs, books and a lone chess rook but the skulls she had borrowed from her mentor's collection were easy to find. Sweeping the fine-boned skull of an elf off of the latest instalment of Swords and Shields, she poked two fingers up through the base of the skull and turned its empty sockets to face Redheaded Halfwit apprentice. "What is the first lesson that an apprentice learns when a mage is working magic? Especially when they are working magic in someone else's brain?"

Redheaded Halfwit deflated as he glanced between her and the skull. "Shut up and stay out of the way?" he asked sheepishly, keeping a nervous eye on the skull. "I mean, they phrased it more politely at the 'Berg…"

"Right," Eve agreed with false cheer. "You don't start debates with templars over the patient's breathing body like it's a podium in a rhetoric class. You especially do not start debates when a spirit healer is metaphorically wrist-deep in their brains," she said, making the skull clack its jaws, "because while some people enjoy being numbskulls, we aren't supposed to create them - not intentionally, anyway. Farrian's been through enough, he doesn't need to wake up paralyzed on top of all that."

"But you heard Ser Asshole," Redheaded Halfwit retorted, waving his staff at the door, "if anything goes wrong around here, it's always the mages' fault-"

"I am not having this argument with you, apprentice whoever-you-are," Eve interrupted, turning the skull so that they were both glaring up at the towering mage. "There is enough angst between mages and templars, and frankly I have heard enough about it in the screaming matches between the fraternities. What is the name of your mentor? I need a word with them because they will soon be an apprentice short the next time you piss off the wrong helm-head."

"Technically, I am a mage since I passed my Harrowing a month ago-"

The clinic door swung open, cutting off Redheaded Halfwit's answer and Old Turin shuffled in clutching a plate of cheese and crackers. She relaxed when she caught sight of his frizzy grey hair and fluffy beard, which gave him the appearance of a cheery raincloud. "Ah, Eve!" he greeted warmly, his eyes lighting up as he slid the plate on to her desk and patting her arm. "I see that you have met your newest student! Getting him acquainted with the laboratory, are we?"

The skull clattered onto the floor as Eve numbly stared at Turin, but he didn't seem to be winding up for a punch line. Actually, he was scooping up the elf skull and examining it with dismay. "Eve! How many times do I have to tell you to treat my grandchildren like they were your own? If you're done studying Ellana, then return her to the collection-"

"That's your grandchild?" Redheaded Not-Her-Student gasped.

"No," Eve answered. "And no," she pleaded to Turin, "he can't be my student. One, no one informed me of this, and two, he's got the wrong attitude to be a spirit healer."

Redheaded Not-Her-Student looked affronted. "I'm right here," he said.

Turin scoffed as he daintily set the elf skull back on her desk and stroked its bald crown. "As if you didn't have a chip on your shoulder when you first arrived here to study spirit healing. You weren't the first and you won't be the last to pinch magical care from templars."

"To be fair, the templar at my Harrowing tried to take my favorite and only head while I was still fade-walking," Eve muttered, rifling through one of her cluttered desk drawers. The bloodied and snarling face of that templar sometimes troubled her dreams. Worryingly, she saw echoes of it more and more often in the faces of the Spire templars. "And I got over it... eventually," she said, spying a stoppered vial among her personal stash of tea. Maker, she needed a hit of lyrium - she always felt refreshed when the ocean-blue potion washed down her throat. Hopefully it would make her headache vanish. And the Not-Her-Student.

"You only 'got over it' after working in the clinic for a while," Turin pointed out. He plucked the vial out of her hand and replaced it with the plate of cheese and crackers he had brought in. "Randolph is new here. Give him a chance, like I gave you. And look how it turned out! You've grown into one of the most competent and passionate spirit healers in all the Circles of Thedas."

Eve frowned down at her former mentor, who was beaming back all of his affection and faith from his wrinkled-raincloud face. She sighed and crammed a slice of cheese in her mouth and turned to redheaded Randolph who was watching the exchange on the edge of his seat. "Alright, if you are bent on becoming a spirit healer, then you should know that most of the patients in the Spire are injured because of magic," she mumbled around her mouthful. "And that's not me being a Loyalist, which I'm not, that's just fact. And aside from just being a good person, caring for others equally is a good idea since most benevolent spirits are attracted to that quality-"

They all jumped when the laboratory door banged open and a templar in full armor lurched inside. "Senior Enchanter Turin, Enchanter Surana, you are needed in the Pit," he gasped as he leaned against the door jamb. Bright crimson blood splattered his gauntlets and smeared on to the wood.

Hearing the muted panic in the templar's voice, Eve had leapt to her feet and twisted her vision to see that there were no torn veins or arteries in the templar's hands - the blood was not his. "Another one?" she asked, hurrying to the door with her satchel in hand. Some patients in the clinic had woken at the commotion and were craning their heads around to peer at them from their cots.

The templar nodded, the whites of his eyes visible through the slit in his helmet. "The Ghost. Struck behind locked doors again," he answered. He held the door open and hesitated, looking behind her.

"Go," Turin called, his shuffling steps slow. "I will catch up. Eve, take the new boy with you. Better start learning sooner than later."

Now? But she didn't know anything about his Ansburg education or his abilities - all she knew was that she wouldn't be able to trust Randolph to care for templars, if the victim was a templar this time. Before she could protest, the templar had nodded and started to jog across the clinic.

Randolph stared at her, paling under his freckles. "There's been another murder-?"

"If you want to start learning, then keep up," Eve said shortly as she hurried out the clinic. She tried to nod reassuringly to the worried patients half-roused in their cots as she sailed by them, though she knew she didn't look convincing. Randolph quickly drew abreast with her thanks to his long legs and they were soon jogging right behind the templar as he clanked down the spiral staircase.

"Enchanter Surana, what am I to do?" he asked between breaths. He managed to shrug with his staff in hand as they careened around the stairwell. "I studied humorism and bloodletting at the Ansberg Circle-"

"No good," Eve huffed, "Turin and I proved that bloodletting is ineffective and anyway, the Ghost likes to stab his victims dry so that technique won't be very useful."

"Err, I could massage the gall bladder?" Randolph ventured, "Get the black bile going to balance out the lack of blood-?"

"Randolph whatever-your-surname-is, while humorism is the common medicinal theory of the age, I fail to see how massaging the gall bladder of a bone-dry patient is going help keep their heart beating," Eve said drily. "Turin and I will arrange your curriculum later. For now, you must follow my instructions to the letter. Do you understand?"

"It's Randolph Farmer. Just call me Rand. And yes, Enchanter Surana," he answered as they followed the templar to the deepest landing of the Spire.

"It's just down here," the templar said as they stepped off on the landing. The air was chilly and damp this far down in the bowels of the White Spire, and their voices echoed off the mossy stone walls. Words like 'ominous' and 'foreboding' popped into Eve's head as she trotted after the templar and Randolph down the cramped and gloomy corridors, trying not to glance into the dense blackness that seemed to crouch in every off-shooting hallway. Everyone swore that the darkness stared back at if you looked at it too long. She quickened her pace.

But Eve was starting to get used to the warren down here. Two of the three bodies had been found in the locked prison cells that were built into the Pit, the last one found in a locked interrogation room in one of the upper floors. There was good reason for the mages to blame the templars who were supposed to be guarding the mages locked into the cells and conveniently discovering their bodies when it was too late for Eve and Turin to revive them - too late for the victims to name their murderer. Granted, there were easier and legally-sanctioned ways of getting rid of troublesome mages, but perhaps the Lord Seeker Lambert was being extra cautious, now that the whole of Thedas were scrutinizing how Circles were run in the wake of the events at Kirkwall…

They rounded a sharp corner and spotted a small group of templars milling around the open door of a cell.

"Hurry, I think he's still breathing!" one of them called.

"What happened?" Eve puffed as she skidded to a stop by the door, Randolph at her heels.

One of them pointed into the torch-lit room. A small, robed body was huddled in a large, dark puddle of blood. "Dagger through the ribs, like the others," the templar said shakily. "Me and Sheena were here all evening, didn't hear a peep and found him like this during rounds."

"What was he even in here for?" Randolph asked, hesitating at the entrance as Eve strode inside.

"That is templar business," one of the templars snapped. "Who are you? If you have no business but to gawk-"

"He's with me," Eve said, kneeling beside the mage. Unconscious male human in his early thirties, brown skin ashen and purple under his eyes and around his lips. With a jolt that clenched her guts into a knot, she recognized him as the mage who liked to pull small pranks on novice templars - there was the round scar on his jaw from a gauntleted punch he'd earned a few months ago. She quickly opened his robes and shoved his tunic aside to bare his naked, bloodstained torso to the torchlight. Occasionally, the mage choked in a gasping breath but judging from the gaping slit that exposed glistening red meat in his side, he didn't have a lot of time for that privilege left.

"Enchanter Surana," Randolph whispered as he squatted just outside the puddle of blood, his freckles stark against his pale skin as he stared. "What do I do? I don't know anything-"

Her student sounded scared, and that helped her switch into her spirit healer mindset. "You are going to act as his heart and lungs. Kneel on his other side," Eve rapidly directed, twisting her vision so she could see past the skin and into the stabbed torso. The dagger had cut a path clear through his fourth and fifth ribs, through the membranes surrounding his lungs and heart, and had managed to pierce the lowest chamber of his frazzled heart so that blood spurted out of the wound in time with his weakening and erratic pulse.

"Overlap your hands - like this - and place them here at the center of his breastbone. Kneel over him and lock your elbows. Press down so you compress his chest by at least two inches - good - just keep doing that and don't stop," she instructed, already laying her hand on the mage's chest, gathering her magic and streaming it through her fingers. Fervently, she stitched together the torn muscles in the chamber until a thick band of scar tissue mended the muscle. Eve took a deep breath as Randolph continued to pump the mage's chest in the rhythm that she'd shown him, satisfied that she'd at least plugged the hole. Now, she needed Empathy's support.

Reaching inside herself, she found the thread which connected her to her Fade spirit. Immediately, Empathy filled her with its inquisitive presence and Eve was bolstered by its aura like a second wind. They could do this, they could save this man where they'd failed the others.

Randolph gaped and threw up his arm at the light emanating from Eve in soft waves. "What - are you - is that your spirit?" he gawked.

"Don't stop now," Eve snapped, "Does your heart ever take break? No! Keep-"

"I'm here," Turin's voice wheezed as he shuffled into the cramped cell, his own spirit causing him to glow far more brightly than Eve. "You're doing a good job, keep going, you won't go blind. I'll work from here."

Turin was here. She knew that he would bind the mage's soul to his body if it still lingered. Randolph was pressing on the mage's heart hard enough and in rhythm so his remaining blood kept pumping around his body. She could see that the mage yet still tried to breathe on his own.

There was a chance.

Suppressing a surge of hot excitement, Eve returned to her task and mended the muscles stretching between the ribs, then returned to the scar tissue she'd knitted into the heart. If she had more time, she would replace the thick scar tissue with functional heart muscle to avoid complications - but as it was, she repaired just enough so the scar would not tear open on its first beat. Then she mended the slippery sacs surrounding the heart and lungs, and coaxed the blood that had leaked between them back into nearby veins.

"Eve, I think you've got it," Turin murmured.

Eve nodded, eyes trained on the mage's frazzled heart. Time to put the theory and research that they had been working on to the test. Licking her lips, she strained to summon a flickering ball of lightning into the palm of her left hand. "Randolph, hands off and make sure that no part of you touches him," she ordered. Hoping against hope that this would work, she slapped her left hand onto the mage's right upper chest and her right hand on his left lower ribs as soon as Randolph pushed himself away from the mage. The mage arched into the air, his torso cresting as lightning shot from her hand, through his heart and into her other hand.

"What are you doing?" someone was shouting, the echoes creating a ringing din in the tiny cell. "You were supposed to be healing him!"

"She is - I mean, he is! I think," Randolph whisper-shouted through bloody hands pressed to his mouth.

They all held their breath and listened.

The mage quietly breathed in, then out.

Randolph flung himself to wrap his arms around Eve, shouting incomprehensively while Turin shuffled side to side, waving his staff. The onlooking templars were also yelling with excitement. Eve's shouts - she had no idea what her mouth was saying, if any of it even made sense - was lost in the commotion as she watched the mage's heart fill with blood on one beat, then pump it out to the rest of his body on the next in perfect synchrony.

Wild euphoria surged through her veins. The mage was alive! He was still in rough shape and would definitely be under her watch for a couple weeks to come, but he was alive to scribble another poor joke on the back of an unsuspecting templar. Eve was ecstatic at their success - she and Turin had done it, had proved their theory in a roomful of witnesses with the help of a student and she couldn't have asked for things to have gone better. Laughing through inexplicable tears, she turned in the swaying crook of Randolph's elbow, trying to catch Turin's gaze - then looked, dead-center, into a piercing and colorless protuberant eye staring out from a forgotten shadowy corner.

"You shouldn't have done that," the spidery figure whispered from gnawed and scabbed lips. Details slipped in and out of focus so nothing held still - Eve only had fleeting impressions of chalky skin stretched over gaunt cheeks, grimy clothes hanging off a rail-thin crouching frame and a bloody dagger flashing as it passed between skeletal hands before the impressions seeped away like water dripping through a sieve. "You made it worse. Hounded, haunted, holding their breath as they watch shadows pass under their cell doors. I freed him and you locked him back up inside." The lip of a wide-brimmed hat appeared and dipped sideways as the colorless eye pierced her with a detached air of curiosity. "Why would you hurt him?"

This pale apparition could only be the Ghost of the Spire. Eve leaped over shock that it was real - as real as the translucent boy appeared, anyway - and went straight to fury. "Me? Why are you hurting them?" she hissed. "What's your point - and who are you? Why kill people? Why-"

"They are free," the Ghost said simply. His voice feathered around the cramped cell and he didn't seem concerned when the templars and mages finally seemed to notice him. He shrugged a bony shoulder, birdlike, and nodded at the unconscious mage in the center of the stunned circle of people. "No longer fettered by the fear borne from their birthright. You shove them back in their shackles for the templars to toy with even though you're one of them - why?"

Eve gaped, arguments galloping over each other and stumbling on her tongue. "You're not freeing them - you're murdering them," she finally declared, "that's not the same. You end their lives."

The Ghost seemed to become denser the harder she focused on it, her eyes pinning details in her head and suddenly he was no longer melting in and out of the shadows. He - it - looked vaguely like a scarecrow brought off of a farmer's fields. "You value a beating heart over the knots of pain it strains against," the Ghost replied, bewilderment naked in his tone. "You are wrong. I end their suffering. It's better."

"No, it isn't," Eve said. "How could you end what they could have? You take the years they could have to help others, to help themselves! They should be allowed to live and find out-"

"They were and are and will hurt in these walls with no escape," the Ghost said. "The dagger frees them."

This thing - human? Mage? Maybe the templars were right - wasn't getting it. "You don't know that, and you take away their chance to find out," she hissed. An almost-embarrassing amount of sincerity tempered her voice as Eve promised, "I be there to heal anyone who needs it. I will stop you and I will revive whoever you decide to kill."

The scarecrow tipped its head and peered at her through its straw-like hair. "You don't understand," he said, sadness and disappointment tingeing his words which infuriated her. "Closed yet clear, able to tread where templar walk because they think you are needed." The edges of his form blurred as he shook his head, fading into shadow again as the templars started returning to their duties and Turin and Randolph focused on the mage again. "But you are blind and you will see, eventually."

Note: Yes, I promised Haven and Cullen. But he's sort of alluded to, in this chapter! haha... please put down the pitchfork. He will appear in chapter 6! In the meantime, please leave a review :)