Anders gripped his staff hard enough that he expected to hear his knuckles creak and followed the Architect into his laboratory with Fenris at his side.
Years ago in the Wending Wood's silverite mine he had seen another laboratory the Architect had claimed as his own. Back then the floor had been littered with the bodies of men the Architect had been using in his experiments. More had hung in cages from the ceiling. They had mostly been Gray Wardens, and the Architect had wanted to use their blood to free the darkspawn from the call of the Old Gods.
Now he had followed the monster into a new laboratory and offered his blood up to it voluntarily. If he didn't hear a thank you from Fenris when they were back under open sky, he was going to clout the ungrateful wretch about the head and shoulders.
This laboratory lacked discarded bodies or puddles of blood, for which Anders gave thanks. He could ignore the suspicious stains in simple gratitude for a lack of grisly debris. It was a vast room, perhaps it had been some kind of dining or gathering hall for the dwarves who had initially constructed these tunnels and dwarves. If so, that use was lost in the mists of time.
Low, dwarf-height tables lined two walls closest to the door. Jars, boxes, and even more books that had migrated in from the library littered their surfaces and even spilled over onto the floor.
All good so far, until Anders picked out the source of the purple glow that had spilled out into the library when the door was opened.
At the far end of the room, four stone pedestals each held a tall golden spire topped by a similarly golden ball. Magical energies danced from ball to ball, caging an empty stone bier. Both as a mage and as a host to Justice, Anders found its glow unnatural and fundamentally wrong.
He jumped a little when the Architect closed the door behind them, startling him from his examination of the room.
Fenris had put on his Ser Silent McStoicelf mask, which dropped the talking into Anders' lap. As usual.
"Right," he said, proud of himself that his voice did not either crack or go inhuman from Justice making an appearance. He thought it rather best for them all not to dangle something fascinating in front of the Architect. Not another something fascinating at least, given the lyrium-laden elf at his side. "What do we have to do?"
The Architect made its way past them to a floor switch to pull its handle, causing the magical energy to flicker out of existence, plunging the room into darkness.
Anders gasped and pushed magic into his staff to light its tip. He could feel Fenris draw his sword and settle into a fighting crouch.
"That was my oversight," the Architect said calmly, opening a cabinet to retrieve a small amulet that shed a smaller version of the sickly yellow radiance cast by the globe in the library. "My kind do not need light for most activities. It was not my intent to alarm you."
"You did a fine job of doing it anyway," Anders snapped. "For future reference, anyone who isn't a darkspawn probably doesn't want to play a nightmare version of blind man's buff with you."
"I am unfamiliar with the term," the Architect replied, a note of confusion in its tone. "I can but offer an apology for my lack of finesse with your kind."
Anders could not bring himself to accept the apology of this creature. "Just tell us what we have to do to get these manacles off."
"You must remove all your equipment and clothing." The Architect turned its back on them to open a chest. If did not see the look Anders and Fenris shared – their anger for once directed elsewhere than at each other.
"No," Fenris said, his tone steely. He still held his sword and glared at the Architect in a way that should have made the darkspawn fear for its life.
"You must," the Architect said, ignoring the implicit threat. It turned with a tool in his hand before it moved to one of the pedestals and fit the tool into a socket at its base, flipping open the book it had brought along to consult its notes. "Your belongings will disrupt the energies I must use to weaken the protective wards on the manacles enough to break them."
"If this is some trick," Fenris began.
"It is no trick," the Architect replied. It was still calm, and still focused on making some adjustment to the pedestal that made the spire begin to turn. "These are delicate workings. I would not be surprised to find that your individual unique aspects have affected the enchantment and the restraints as it is. In what way may not be evident until I begin."
It rose to move to another pedestal, repeating its adjustments. "Now please, I ask you again, remove your equipment and clothing."
Fenris and Anders exchanged another look before angling away from each other as much as possible. Anders set his staff aside, letting its glow extinguish when he released it and dropped his pack to the floor before stripping down to his smalls. That last covering could go when they moved on to whatever the Architect had planned next. Lastly he removed his Tevinter Chantry amulet and tucked it into his pack for safekeeping.
Fenris' leggings did not leave much room for smallclothes. He stripped bare and clasped his hands over his groin to maintain some semblance of modesty. Anders let him have enough of the chain to do it, since he'd made his own futile attempt at modesty with his smalls.
He tried not to look at Fenris, but he could not help but notice the break in the flowing lines of lyrium that painted Fenris' body. The graceless gouge on his left hip drew Anders' attention despite his resolve. The scar was fresh enough to be livid red on Fenris' otherwise tan skin, even in the dim light. He had helped dig that piece of lyrium out of Fenris' flesh in another act of desperation during the previous summer. It had worked, and neither of them had ended up host to a demon that day. Together they had saved themselves and prevented the loss of countless more lives in Kirkwall.
There they were again, taking desperate measures. He tried to tell himself that if he was going to die horribly in a few minutes, at least the view was good, but neither Justice nor the cannonball weight of silent terror in his stomach let that thought carry any consolation or humor.
While they undressed, the Architect moved on with his adjustments to the pedestals. They waited for it to finish its work with the final pedestal, Anders shifting from foot to foot while the cold crept up his legs, bringing an ache that sank right into the bone. He thought it would probably would be less uncomfortable if he went barefoot all the time like Fenris.
"Aren't you glad I had Wade fix your armor so you can take it off?" he asked Fenris, mostly to fill the silence.
The look that he received in response was eloquent in its disgust.
The Architect rose from its final adjustment and turned its blind face toward the pair. "I must request that you remove all of your clothes," it said in a tone of mild reproof.
Anders sighed and pushed his smalls off his hips and down his thighs before he stepped out of them. Maker's balls it was cold. "I was just waiting for you to finish up. I don't know what you keep under your robe, but what I keep under mine likes to be warm."
Fenris shot him a look of pure disbelief.
Yes, he had just said that to the terrifying talking darkspawn.
He sidled closer to Fenris to get enough slack in the chain to cover his groin with his hands. Weren't they just a strangely matched set now?
"Now what?"
"Now you will sit here." The Architect laid a hand on the stone bier that was caged by the spires. "I will examine your manacles for any divergence from the notes, and then I will take the second part of my payment."
Anders felt his hands and feet go clammy with sweat.
"My blood you mean," he said to clarify.
"Your blood," the Architect agreed. "After which I will scribe the appropriate runes on the manacles and your arms. With the magic I can channel to target the bier, it will be sufficient to neutralize the wards."
He could just stay there, freeze in place, maybe hide his head in his hands and pray that it would all go away. Which would leave his favorite bits out on display to freeze, make him feel a right fool, and oh yes, not solve a bloody thing.
He sucked in a deep breath and nodded to Fenris. "Soonest started, soonest done."
Together they walked to the bier. It rose to waist height, making it necessary for him to hop up in order to sit, incidentally resulting in his aforementioned favorite bits making contact with cold stone before he could get himself situated.
"Just for the record," he said, shifting from one buttock to the other while he rectified the problem, "it's cold in here."
Fenris hopped up more carefully and sat with his hands folded primly in his lap. "If you assure me that Frederick is usually not so small, I will bleed you myself."
Anders felt his jaw drop. Flaming Void, Fenris had remembered Frederick. The embarrassment was almost enough to make him forget their circumstances, if only for a moment. But only almost.
The Architect waited for them to settle before approaching. "If I may?" it asked politely, indicating Anders' manacle with a clawed fingertip.
No.
Void no.
He stuck out his right hand and clenched his jaw. Justice writhed angrily inside his mind, and it was almost a blessing – the internal argument and struggle to keep the spirit under control kept him from jerking his hand away when the Architect actually touched him with its cold fingers and rasping claws.
He flinched at the touch; he could not help it. The scratching, scraping, clawing sense of the Architect in his mind magnified tenfold at the touch.
I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't fucking—The Architect released his hand and turned its attention to Fenris.
Anders slumped, taking deep breaths through his nose, releasing them slowly through his mouth while the Architect examined the markings on Fenris' cuff.
Fenris held himself rigid for the examination, his expression betraying little of the tension Anders had learned to read in his posture. He imagined that Fenris had learned the skill of hiding his emotions as a slave. He had always thought Fenris was a haughty bastard, but spending a protracted time with him every minute of every day had taught him that some of Fenris' demeanor was more training than temperament.
Some of it was still that he was a bit of a haughty bastard, but there was a chance – just a thread of a chance – that he had come by it honestly.
The Architect released Fenris' wrist and stepped back. "There is no deviation from the notes, thus I will not have to alter my plans. I ask only that you be patient and we will conclude our business." The Architect addressed Anders. "Am I correct in assuming that you have some knowledge of healing? I will be unable to heal you after I take your blood."
Anders suppressed a shudder and nodded. "Just get it over with before I freeze off some of my favorite parts."
The Architect appeared unmoved by the personal aspect of Anders' exhortation when it turned away to retrieve a wide-mouthed bowl and a knife that gleamed like black glass from one of the worktables.
"Tell me you cleaned that off since the last time you used it," Anders said nervously, his attention fixed on the knife.
"Your right arm, please," the Architect said, ignoring his words.
He suppressed the sudden child's urge he had to grab Fenris' hand for some comfort while a darkspawn cut into him, but they had done more than enough naked bonding already and he was no child. Like it or not, he was a Gray Warden and he was bloody well going to act like one. He held out his arm and forced himself to watch as the Architect drew the knife's tip down the inside of his forearm.
In Varric's stories any of them could take a sword thrust without so much as a whimper. Anders watched the blade bite deep into his flesh and draw a line down his arm that welled scarlet instantly. He hissed, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you straight to the Void, you motherless bastard!"
The Architect paid no attention to his imprecations. It held the bowl under Anders arm and let the blood flow into it. The cut was deep, and this was no slow trickle, but the kind of wound that Anders would have treated immediately under other circumstances. It would have been funny how his hand went numb almost immediately while the cut still screamed with pain, only there was nothing funny about any of this.
"I'm healing this when the bowl is full," he told the Architect. "You don't get more than that."
The Architect inclined its head. "This will suffice. As you may know, I have taken no Gray Wardens in years. A willing addition to my supply is welcome."
Fenris shifted beside him and Anders shook his head. "Later. I'll tell you the ugly story later, Gray Warden secrets or not."
When the bowl was nearly full, the Architect nodded to him. "You may close the wound now."
It held the bowl in place to catch the last of the flow while Anders smoothed his left hand down over the gash, summoning a cool shimmer of healing magic to knit the flesh closed, restoring feeling to his hand.
It carried the bowl carefully away, returning with a fine-bristled calligraphy brush and a much smaller bowl of a powdered pigment to which it added a tiny vial of oil.
"Please move as far apart as the chain will allow," it instructed.
Should monsters be so polite?
He held still despite the crawling horror of the Architect's touch as it painted runes on his manacle and arm and watched carefully while it repeated the process with Fenris. He could see a muscle jumping in Fenris' jaw, but he also remained silent and still.
When the Architect was satisfied it stepped back, leaving the area bounded by the four pedestals. It set the brush and bowl aside and moved to the floor switch.
"It has been my experience that humans and elves find this… uncomfortable," the Architect said. "But it will be brief."
Before Anders had time to wonder at its experience, the Architect threw the switch and the world exploded.
The thing about a pain that consumes the entire world is that it consumes time as well. Anders was lost, all landmarks to the world he knew seared away by agony.
And then it ended. A minute, an hour, an eternity later, he couldn't say. He lay half on the stone bier, sweat-soaked in the cold and gasping for each burning breath. Fenris had fallen to the floor while the Architect's magic had circumscribed their world.
He pushed himself over to where Fenris lay, panting as hard as he was, eyes turned up to the distant ceiling while he tried to pull himself back from where the pain had sent him.
"Fenris?" His voice rasped in his throat, hoarse after screams.
"Here," Fenris replied just as hoarsely. Before Anders could offer any help – not that he was in any condition to offer it – Fenris pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Did it work?"
For a moment, Anders could not remember what Fenris meant, but the memory returned to him when he saw the chain still dangling between them.
"No…" he said, almost a moan of disappointment.
"Wait." The voice jolted him, reminding him that they were not alone. The Architect was there, standing over them, a mallet and chisel in its hands. "It is not done."
Fenris levered himself to his feet before Anders or the Architect could make any offer of help. He swayed there before pushing himself up onto the bier to sit again.
"Do it," he told the Architect, holding himself with more strength and poise than Anders could manage. Anders noted with a distant corner of his attention that the runes the Architect had painted on their arms had disappeared, maybe burned away by the magic that had been unleashed on them.
The Architect set the chisel to the center link of the chain and struck it with the mallet.
The chain broke.
The chain broke, and then the links crumbled to dust, one after another, chasing up the line of links toward Anders and Fenris until the last link crumbled away.
Anders felt a stupid grin stretch across his face. "Yes!"
Even Fenris smiled faintly, but…
"What about the cuffs?" Anders asked. "Can you get them off?"
The Architect nodded. "Yes." It brushed the dust from the chain off the bier and stepped out of the boundaries of the pedestals, gliding back to the switch on the floor.
"Wait," Anders said, feeling Fenris tense beside him. "Don't you need to paint more runes or something?"
"I will," the Architect said before it pulled the switch in the opposite direction, lighting the world with a violet blaze that froze them in place without the agony of the earlier magic.
It left the switch, and it left them, taking its staff from its back before it moved toward the door back to the library.