As soon as the Architect pulled the switch the other direction, Fenris knew they were betrayed. It had been inevitable. Fenris had not known what the particulars of it would be, but the betrayal itself was as inevitable as nightfall. Bad enough to beg help of a darkspawn, but a mage at that?
The violet energies pulsed around them, muting sound, but through it he still heard shouts and the ring of clashing steel. Fenris knew that Dal and his companions were faced with the Architect and Utha, and who knew what the Messenger might have been doing while all were occupied? He could not sense darkspawn as the wardens could; for all he knew there might be a hundred spilling in the library door right that moment.
Fury welled inside him at his circumstance. Had anyone asked him two weeks ago if he would pay any price to be free of Anders, he would have said yes without hesitation. Now he knew he had been a fool.
He could not move, but he did not have to move to activate the lyrium that traced its way across his body. The metal pulsed sluggishly in reaction to his will, the markings lit along his skin, and he could feel the influence of the spires' energy pushing against the lyrium's power. He strained against the Architect's construct, making the lyrium flare briefly before subsiding to a faint blue.
He had will, but not enough strength to free his body.
His mind raced for an alternative before settling on one desperate act.
Instead of trying to free his entire body, he focused all of his considerable will on his right arm. The markings flared to life along his arm, pushing back the violet energies with brilliant blue incandescence. His hand clenched and unclenched when he felt control return.
Before the power could be pushed back by the spires' influence again, he drew his arm back and shoved Anders fast and hard, with all his considerable strength behind the open-handed push. The shove propelled him off the bier in the opposite direction from Anders to land with a bone-jarring thump on the stone floor. The lyrium glow extinguished when he lost his focus in the fall, leaving him lying motionless on his side unable to move even his eyes to see if his desperate gambit had worked.
Bare feet stumbled past his line of sight moments before the violet light winked out. Its absence plunged the room into virtual darkness while Fenris' eyes adjusted to the insufficient glow from the amulet the Architect had left sitting on one of his workbenches and what light leaked in through the open doorway. He pushed himself to his feet and searched the darkness for Anders.
The room lit with the glow from Anders' staff. The mage was leaning heavily on it, panting as though he had just run several miles.
"Andraste's ass," he muttered, throwing Fenris' leggings at him before kicking his smalls aside with a disgusted, "I don't know why I even bothered. Ended up naked anyway and not a tentacle in sight and the elf glows and what happens even with the chain gone? Just like my first go with Livia at the Circle. Maker's balls life isn't fair."
He carried on a running, angry monologue that did nothing to slow him down while he shoved his feet into his boots, jerked his robe over his head, and buckled on his belts.
Fenris heard his commentary with half an ear while he pulled on his leggings and snatched up the rest of his armor. He wanted to throw himself out into the fighting he could hear going on in the library, but he would be a liability running out into battle naked carrying nothing but Aveline's longsword.
Dressed, albeit sloppily, with hanging laces and half-closed buckles, Fenris slung his pack onto his back and ran for the door.
Any thoughts he might have had of surprising the Architect were blown away by an explosion that erupted at his back. Anders' hand at his back propelled him forward when he would have turned to investigate.
"Go. That was just to be sure he doesn't get to keep my blood."
Fenris took him at his word and ran through the door into the library.
The room was chaotic with activity, a quick glance showing him the Architect with its long, skinny arms upraised in the midst of some spell, Utha sending Oghren reeling backward with a pommel strike that broke open the skin of his forehead, Nathaniel with his bow on his back and twin swords in his hands in the face of a wraith's open-mawed lunge, Walter had his teeth sunk into the wraith's arm, Brutal was harrying Utha, while Dal chanted the words to a spell familiar from Anders' fondness for it.
Zevran was nowhere to be seen.
Fenris hefted his sword, pleased to hold it without a mage hindering his swing, and sprang at the Architect, sword poised to pin the creature to the ground.
It completed its spell and swung a hand around to hit Fenris full in the chest with a beam of that sick anti-light that it had used to cow the darkspawn. The light clung to his chest, crawling out to cover more of his armor, creeping toward his exposed skin. His flesh crawled, the lyrium embedded in it lighting with his instinctive need to preserve himself against the spell's touch.
Everywhere the blackness touched the radiance from the lyrium it hissed audibly, burning away from the light until it was gone.
Zevran appeared behind the Architect as though the shadows had unfolded to bring him into existence. He slipped the blade of his dagger into the Architect's back where its kidney would be if its internal anatomy bore any resemblance to the humanoid standard. He brought his sword around to score the Architect's ribs, ducking when the darkspawn flung out another bolt of that frightening black light.
Anders' and Nathaniel's voices rang out almost in unison. "Darkspawn coming!"
Nathaniel kicked the wraith back and buried a blade to the hilt in the wraith's chest. "Too many!"
Fenris caught a flash of Anders running past him toward the far door into the library, saw him freeze Utha in place almost as an afterthought and dart out the door.
If he saw the coward again, he was going to rip his lungs out, then his heart. And his tongue, he would not forget his endlessly yammering tongue.
He ignored the flash of magic from the corner of his eye that he could only hope came from Dal, swinging his sword to draw a wicked slash across the Architect's midsection. If only he had a proper sword instead of Aveline's toothpick, he might have cut the creature in half. The Architect loosed a wordless cry of pain as black ichor flooded down its body.
Dal's shout cut through the noise with such clarity it could only have been magically augmented. "Fall back!"
Zevran responded instantly, grabbing Fenris' arm despite the flare of anger and lyrium energy from the other elf.
"Go!" he exhorted Fenris, pulling with surprising strength. "Go!"
Fenris jerked back against the pull, already raising his empty hand to plunge it into the Architect when Zevran did something that made every nerve in his arm sing with pain before going completely dead.
"Go, my friend," Zevran hissed, pushing him again, "Or stay here to die alone, which would be a tragedy to elfkind. The world cannot afford to lose such devastatingly handsome men as ourselves."
Fenris stumbled with the push and swore that he would get Zevran back for this, then he joined the others in running for the door.
Anders stood outside the door, his skin fissured and lambent with Fade light. He faced down the tunnel the Messenger had disappeared down, his whole body swaying with the effort of his spellcasting. The last words rang out, making Fenris cast his eyes upward as he felt the magic descending.
For all his distrust of mages, watching Anders call flaming boulders to rain down in a tunnel far under the earth as though he had just opened a window into a volcano was worthy of a moment's frisson of horror-tinged wonder.
The light from Anders' spell illuminated the approaching horde of darkspawn.
Behind him Oghren slammed the library door closed and pushed his shoulder against it while Dal directed a fan of blue-white flames at the stone above the door.
Oghren darted back to avoid the flow of molten rock before Dal chanted another spell, shifting the fire to a blast of ice.
Nathaniel and Zevran had traded swords and dagger for bows once more to pick off darkspawn illuminated through the raining fire.
The molten rock solidified in a solid sheet over the door.
"Fall back!" Dal called again, moving to join Anders. "Wait for us at the next intersection."
Zevran snatched at Fenris' arm again, which was starting to come back to tingling life. "Come. Trust them to slow our pursuers, and remember what I said about staying close to the walls."
Walter and Brutal stayed with the mages while Fenris and the others ran back up the tunnels the way they had come. The only light they had in their flight came from the crackling energies that danced along a long dagger that Nathaniel held high. Behind them he could hear voices raised in new incantations and more than one explosion.
"I'll show you why mages are feared!" followed him up the tunnel, but for the life of him, Fenris was unsure whether it had been Anders' voice or Widald Amell's.
"What are they doing?" Fenris asked, hard on Zevran's heels.
"I don't know about your Anders," Zevran called back, pounding down the tunnel like a competitive sprinter. "But Dal is killing many, many darkspawn."
They reached the t-intersection and stopped, turning to face back the way they had come. Fenris strained to hear something other than the Oghren's harsh panting. Apparently his exercise regimen did not include much running. Sloppy.
As Oghren's panting slowed, Fenris could hear a distant rumble of explosions, and could not help a small smile. Anders did love those big showy explosions, and he had been forced to hold back on them when they had been chained together. Hearing them was a reassurance that at least one of the mages was still alive.
Then they stopped.
Zevran held his bow by his side, an arrow already nocked. Nathaniel paced, watching their backs most of the time. He had the dagger thrust through his belt to still cast a faint light but leave his hands free for his bow. Oghren shifted his axe to one hand and pulled out a water skin, taking a long pull from it without offering any to the others.
After he belched, the wafting odor forced Fenris to revise his thought that there had been water in the skin.
The wait stretched out until Fenris was ready to backtrack to find the mages. Even Zevran was growing restive, his façade of calm amusement stretching until it was thin. Fenris found himself rubbing the cuff on his wrist, turning it, stretching his arm out and back, reassuring himself that he was indeed unfettered once again.
"We should go back," Oghren growled. "It's too quiet."
"Never say something like that," Fenris retorted, thinking of Varric.
Nathaniel gave a humorless chuckle. "It always gets loud when you say that."
"We stick to the plan," Zevran said, but it had the ring of a man trying to convince himself as much as the others. "He has never let us down."
Such loyalty, Fenris thought to himself. It must run in the Amell bloodline to inspire ordinarily sane people to mad acts.
They all came alert at the sound of running footsteps, Zevran and Nathaniel raising their bows while Fenris and Oghren readied themselves.
The mabari raced up the tunnel ahead of the two men, keeping to the walls as though they had understood the warning about Zevran's "surprises."
Dal and Anders followed behind them more slowly, moving like men who were pushing themselves with the last of their reserves. In the light from their staves, Fenris could see they were splattered with darkspawn ichor and splashes of blood.
Strangely, both men were grinning crazily.
"Let's go," Dal said as soon as he saw the group waiting for him. "We slowed them down, but you know how darkspawn are."
Zevran's tension had disappeared as soon as he saw Dal. He laughed and swept out a courtly bow for Dal to indicate which way to go. "They hold grudges worse than an Antivan whore?" he suggested.
"You would know," Dal said, brushing a kiss to Zevran's cheek on his way past. "Did you get it?"
Zevran shifted his bow and pulled a vial from his belt, tossing it to Dal to catch and examine in the light from his staff. "Well done."
Anders leaned heavily on his staff, but it was just Anders for the moment, without Justice's glow. He nodded to Fenris and did not stop when he caught up to the group.
"What is that?" Fenris asked.
"The Architect's blood," Dal said when none of the others answered. "Do you honestly think I came all this way just to do a favor for a friend who ran away years ago? He'll be the first darkspawn with his very own phylactery."
Fenris nearly stumbled before he caught himself.
Mages.
"Would you have left us there if we had not gotten out on our own?"
Dal glanced back. "Probably not, but this is bigger than your humorous inconvenience. The Architect is dangerous, but he keeps the darkspawn contained. At least for now. We're better with the demon we know than the next unknown quantity to crawl out of a broodmother."
Anders shot Dal a glare, all trace of a grin lost. "Always the way. You've been a warden too long, Dal. You never used to keep so many secrets. You never used to just use people."
Dal shook his head. "Yes I did."
Whatever retort Anders might have had died on his lips before he forced himself into a jog. "They're coming."
Snarls echoed up the tunnels, pushing them on.
The light from Anders' staff faltered and went out moments before the mage stumbled and caught himself on hands and knees on the tunnel floor. Fenris dragged him to his feet and pulled him onward with an arm around his waist.
A chorus of feral shouts went up, cutting off abruptly. Zevran chuckled even as he ran. "I hope they appreciate the fine Antivan craftsmanship."
"Did you kill the Messenger?" Nathaniel asked when they had to slow to a fast walk for the sake of Oghren's shorter legs. "Tell me you killed it," he added hopefully.
"I didn't," Anders said. He had shaken off Fenris' help as soon as they stopped running.
"Neither did I," said Dal, taking a swig of water and passing the skin to Zevran. He nodded decisively. "It's not unexpected. We'll have to find another route out to keep them from knowing exactly which way we're going. When we get to the square where we waited before, we'll use that as a landmark before we branch off. There were enough tracks that it won't be easy to follow us when we turn off."
His smile didn't cover his fatigue. "It won't be the first time we've had to find our way out of the Deep Roads without a map, will it?"
Even Fenris could nod with that. He and Anders had been on Hawke's ill-fated Deep Roads expedition.
Dal was beginning to remind Fenris of a less-truculent Bartrand.
• • •
Unlike Bartrand, Dal did not abandon any of his companions to fend for themselves. The journey out of the Deep Roads was harrowing in its own way – blight-ridden spiders, clans of deep stalkers, and the occasional wild bronto – but working together, they avoided the vast majority of the darkspawn in the tunnels.
When they finally, after four days spent avoiding darkspawn patrols and backtracking from dead ends, found their way out to the surface, they emerged into the first early snow flurries of the season. Fenris had never been so happy to feel a cold wind cut him to the bone as that first moment under a white-grey sky. Even that filtered light was so bright he spent the first few minutes blinking and shading his eyes with a hand.
Anders emerged from the crevice, his face streaked with dirt, his normally golden hair dingy brown, and turned his face up to the sky with simple wonder spreading over his features. He stood there, eyes closed, basking in the weak sunlight, and Fenris watched him simply to mark the novelty of his expression.
That expression fled when he opened his eyes and squinted at Dal while the others dug in their packs for cold weather clothes.
"When we get back, then what?" Anders asked, sounding like a man ready for a prison sentence to be passed.
"Do you mean will I be locking you up or sending you to Weisshaupt for punishment?" Dal asked.
Nathaniel straightened from digging in his pack to watch the exchange. Zevran handed Dal a folded cloak from his backpack before standing up to sling one of his own over his shoulders.
"I told Fenris that you wouldn't punish him for what I did," Anders said. "And now that we're free." He shrugged. "What are you going to do?"
Dal slung his cloak over his shoulders and looked away to fasten his clasp. "Nothing," he said casually. "You've served your sentence already. One last mission for the Gray at Vigil's Keep and then I'm sending you on long-term reconnaissance to the Free Marches. All very hush hush you know. I don't think Weisshaupt needs to know a thing." He looked at Nathaniel and Oghren. "Do you?"
Oghren snorted. "What do I care about what Weisshaupt wants? I follow you, same as always."
Nathaniel didn't look away from Anders as he answered. "We all have our chances for redemption. I had mine. I suppose it's just that they have theirs."
Dal nodded and turned toward the east and Vigil's Keep. "Then let's go home."