Chapter Forty-Two: Boom
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age 2.
"Hey, Emma, fancy running into you here," Varric said casually as Emma and Carver came upon him outside of one of the Hightown houses.
"I'm here, too," Carver pointed out.
"So you are," Varric agreed.
"I'm not sure how strange it is that we're here since you asked us to meet you outside of this particular house at midnight," Emma replied.
Varric shrugged. "Well, I consider it fancy anyway."
"What's going on?" Carver asked.
"Since Bartrand is still, despite the best efforts of the best healers money can buy, quite crazy, I decided to sell his house. Meredith recently changed the tax code again and so dealing with filing on all of my properties is just turning into a nightmare. She claims that Saemus did it but I think we all know how likely that is. The qunari apparently don't believe in taxes or something," Varric said, shaking his head. "And I chose to get rid of this property because of all the bad memories of the craziness and horror that went on here, to say nothing of the fact that I didn't actually get to shoot a bolt through ten guards and stop right before nailing Bartrand with it."
"Varric, if you called us down here to help you file your taxes at midnight then I'm going to hit you," Carver threatened.
"We have to pay taxes?" Emma asked blankly.
"Mother takes care of it, don't worry," Carver assured her.
Varric laughed. "Oh, nothing like that. I don't trust anybody but me to do my taxes anyway. I'm very creative, you see, and that is invaluable in matters such as these. But the point is that due to all of this I'm selling some of my properties and this house that Bartrand used as the backdrop from his break with reality is as good a place as any to get rid of."
"Varric, you know that there's nothing I wouldn't do for you," Emma said slowly. "But I don't quite understand what you're asking. Are we supposed to help you sell your brother's house in the middle of the night? Because somehow I think we'd have better luck when people are awake and it's safe for non-thugs with random and stupid names to walk the street."
"Oh, no, I already did that ages ago," Varric assured them.
"Then why are we here?" Carver demanded. "Because I swear, if you didn't have a reason to drag us out of our beds or you've forgotten what that reason is then we are going to have problems."
"Fret night, Junior," Varric told him, smirking. "It's just that the man I sold it to thinks that the house is haunted and he's threatening to press charges because I was acting in 'bad faith' or something and didn't tell him about Bartrand's little meltdown and massacre unless I deal with the haunting."
"There's no such thing as ghosts," Carver pointed out.
"True," Varric agreed. "But there are demons and blood mages and weird Deep Roads artifacts like the one that drove my brother crazy and is currently driving someone named Meredith crazy. Hopefully, it's just an artifact that needs to be smashed."
"And if it's not or that doesn't work?" Emma inquired.
"Then we'll probably need to kill something and that's what you two and Loghain are for," Varric explained. "Now let's go."
"What about you?" Carver asked, not budging.
Varric sighed. "If I absolutely must help then I suppose it cannot be avoided."
They went into the house and almost immediately heard a faint voice.
"Let's see if we can find it," Varric suggested. "I want to make out the words."
"That sounds like a spectacularly bad idea," Carver argued. "What if they want to possess us or kill us or something?"
"It doesn't matter," Emma said. "It's our job to go deal with it. Oh look, a floating chair!"
"Well, fine," Carver said, sulking. "But even if we have to go seek out this mysterious evil voice or whatever, let's not listen to it, okay? Because that's a terrible idea even when we're engaging in stupid activities like hunting these things down."
"We're getting closer," Varric decided. "I can feel it!"
"I can't," Emma said, frowning. "And as a mage I think that I should have dibs on feeling things."
"Now's not really the time to be jealous, Emma. His feeling it might be a problem," Carver cautioned.
"Huh," Varric said as they came into another room. "It looks like the people who bought this house were really lazy if they just left all of Bartrand's stuff lying around. Most of it is from Orzammar, you know."
"Isn't it nice when people who exile you and your entire house let you take everything that you own?" Carver asked sardonically.
Varric laughed. "From what I understand, that is not the experience most exiles have. They're pretty much always just cast out into the Deep Roads to fight darkspawn until they die. If they're lucky, they run across the Grey Wardens or the Legion of the Dead and join up so as to put off their death by a few weeks or months. Years if they're so obscenely lucky you wonder how in Thedas they ever managed to get themselves exiled in the first place. In the end, though, they all fall to the darkspawn."
"I don't like Kirkwall much," Emma said slowly. "But I've got to admit it it's a good sight better than the Deep Roads eternally. You guys seriously should have tried to get yourselves exiled to Ferelden, though."
Varric laughed. "We weren't actually exiled to Kirkwall, you know; just to the surface. And I wasn't even born yet. But I'm sure that Ferelden would be much saner than Kirkwall."
"Infinitely," Carver agreed.
Continuing to explore the house, Emma kept wary eyes on the floating vases and other knickknacks.
"I always worry that they're going to drop right on my head," she explained.
When they finally reached the room that they had found Bartrand in, a terrified-looking servant girl ran up to them.
"Are you real?" she asked them.
"What kind of a question is that?" Carver demanded. "We'd probably say yes either way."
"You've got to get out of here before it comes back!" she urged.
"Before what comes back?" Emma asked reasonably. "And why don't you leave as well?"
"I…um…" the woman trailed off.
"I suspect that the idol is involved. Where is it? I think you're hiding something. Is your name Meredith?" Varric said, just a little bit louder than he normally did but still almost perfectly calm.
The woman cowered from this slight voice elevation making them really wonder what had been going on here.
The shelves shook and the woman ran from the room. "Maker, no, it's starting again!"
"Well, she was absolutely useless," Carver said disgustedly.
"I'll say," Varric agreed. "She didn't even tell me if she heard of the idol or not."
The woman screamed suddenly.
"That sounded like mild surprise. I think she fell down the stairs," Emma deduced.
They went to go check.
Loghain barked.
"Yeah, it probably was that translucent rock golem," Carver agreed absently. "It looks sort of like a ghost but that, of course, is impossible."
Varric drew back. "Seriously? You can understand it, too? Fereldens, I tell you…"
"I say we kill it!" Emma suggested cheerfully.
Varric nodded. "Sounds like a plan. We probably wouldn't have any choice if we wanted to leave here anyway."
Killing what might very well be a ghost of a rock golem was not an easy task but once it was done, Varric found a piece of the idol hidden within it.
"Oh, I should have known that Bartrand would lie to me!" Varric exclaimed, annoyed. "Of course he'd keep a piece of the idol for himself. I just wish I knew why he didn't think to take it with him when he left or why he felt the need to lie to me after Anders made him temporarily sane."
"Maybe he was worried about you," Emma suggested but she sounded doubtful. "The idol drove him crazy and it could do the same to you."
"Yeah, maybe," Varric said vaguely. "After all, if we were both crazy then who knows what would happen to the family business?"
"I guess this will clear up those pesky haunting," Carver decided. "Of course, whatever building that piece is in will probably have the same problems. Unless it just came with one translucent rock demon to protect itself."
"Or unless we destroy it," Emma added.
"Destroy it?" Varric couldn't believe it. "Are you kidding? Think of what we could do with this!"
"Go crazy?" Emma guessed.
"I'll be careful," Varric promised.
Emma stared at him. "How, exactly, do you propose to do that?"
"You've been acting strangely since we first got here," Carver agreed.
"It's just a sliver," Varric protested.
"How do you know that 'just a sliver' isn't enough to make you crazy?" Emma challenged. "It probably drove Bartrand crazy if he was still looking for the entire thing years after he sold it."
"It's my only chance of ever saving my brother!" Varric finally cried out.
Emma instantly crumbled. "Okay, fine! But we're all going to be keeping a very close eye on you to make sure that you're not secretly going crazy and if you are we'll have to stop you. Besides, you will have clearly brought this on yourself."
Varric nodded. "Understood. And for the record, Cassandra, totally not crazy."
"If you keep talking to people who we don't know and who aren't here then I'm going to have to argue the point on that," Carver said flatly.
As they were walking along the coastline, a man stepped out in front of them.
"Well…here you are. You've been sticking your nose in every problem in Kirkwall since you stumbled off the boat," he drawled.
"To be fair, a lot of these problems come up flitter around us incessently until we pay attention to them," Carver said defensively. "Especially back in the days before Emma was Champion and thus expected to care about Kirkwall."
"Okay, seriously, who are you?" Emma demanded.
The man looked incredibly put out. "That's exactly what you said when I ran into you at the start of the qunari invasion and you told me to kill people!"
"I…don't remember that," Emma admitted, scratching behind her ear. "That does sound like me, though."
"Emma!" Carver exclaimed.
Emma sighed. "I did make sure to stress that you should only kill people who deserve it, right?"
"This is the man who betrayed Feynriel and then sold him to people who would bring him to the templars," Varric reminded her.
Emma's eyes narrowed. "Oh, right. Why do you keep trying to make me remember who you are again?"
"I want to be a templar again," the man explained.
"I don't care. Apparently it's ridiculously easy to join up so if you can't then that just means that you fail," Emma told him before walking away.
The rest of the party stared at each other for a moment before following her lead.
"Champion, come quick!" a desperate-looking man said as Emma and the others were walking around Hightown.
"Why?" Emma asked, not moving.
"First-Enchanter Orsino and Knight-Commander Meredith were having a really big fight and then Orsino said that he was going to tell on her to the grand cleric and Meredith said that she wasn't going to let him so he ran off and she chased him and now they're fighting on the steps of the Chantry itself! It's only a matter of time until the grand cleric herself comes out but there's a good chance that one of the other will kill each other before then!" the man exclaimed.
"So, what, you're tattling to me?" Emma asked, surprised. "What, exactly, am I supposed to do about this?"
The man shrugged. "I don't know. Champion-y stuff."
"If I side with one or the other it will just empower the one and piss off the other making the fight all the worse," Emma pointed out.
"Please come! Nothing can make this any worse!" the man begged.
Emma sighed. "Please know that I'm only agreeing because I suspect that if I do not then I will be besieged by other random citizens constantly until Meredith and Orsino can sort this out and I've only got so many years left in this life."
She heard Orsino and Meredith long before she saw them and it was a wonder the grand cleric hadn't already come out to investigate. Perhaps she was as sick of those two as everyone else was and was ignoring them. Someone really should have taken their weapons away and locked them in a closet or something. It would have made everything infinitely easier.
"You can't search our rooms!" Orsino shouted. "We have things in there that we don't want you to see! Privacy!"
"I'm not letting your mages plot to overthrow me and learn blood magic with impunity because you might get embarrassed!" Meredith yelled back.
"Blood magic!" Orsino mocked. "Where do you not see blood magic? My people cannot sneeze without you accusing them of corruption!"
"Maybe if there wasn't an average of two new blood mages a day then I'd find your claims of innocence less laughable," Meredith barked.
Emma finally reached them. "Dear Maker, will you two shut up? Nobody cares about your drama anymore."
"It's not our personal drama!" Orsino cried out. "This is a classic case of those in power abusing their power and those under their control!"
"This is about saving the innocent from blood magic and abominations and apostate serial killers!" Meredith disagreed. "To trivialize and say that you don't want your 'privacy' to be ignored is just ridiculous."
"So my being concerned about rights and slippery slopes is ridiculous, is it?" Orsino asked incredulously.
"In such a time of chaos as this then yes, yes it is," Meredith said solemnly. "We can worry about such luxuries as privacy when things settle down."
"It's been three years, Meredith! Maybe things will 'settle down' when we get a real viscount!" Orsino countered.
"We have a real viscount!" Meredith insisted. "Saemus comes from a long line of-"
"Okay, Emma's right, this is getting really stupid," Anders interrupted, stepping forward.
Meredith was incensed. "What is the meaning of this, mage?"
"Oh Maker!" Emma cried out, horrified. "They just realized that Anders was a mage!"
"I think they knew that for quite awhile, Emma," Isabela told her. "Varric just bribes everyone."
"Oh," Emma said, relaxing. "For a minute there I was really worried."
"Those are famous last words," Fenris warned her.
"What's the worst that can happen?" Emma asked optimistically.
"That's another example," Fenris continued.
"Seriously, sooner or later the grand cleric will come out and send them to their rooms again and then tomorrow we'll have this same old argument," Emma said confidently. "Nothing ever changes."
"Nothing lasts forever, Emma," Aveline warned. "Not even stalemates."
Sebastian came out of the Chantry. "Her Grace would like me to tell you to keep it down. She's trying to take a nap."
Meredith angrily wheeled on Orsino again. "See what you did-"
"Things have to change!" Anders interrupted again. "They just have to."
"Well if you know of any easy way, mage, then now would be the time to say it," Meredith said in a tone that indicated that she really didn't think that Anders had anything.
"I didn't say it was easy and it will bring about many years of misery for everyone but, ultimately, I believe that this is the only answer," Anders said seriously. "I can no longer stand by and watch her treat every mage in this city like a criminal while the one who is supposed to protect us is too interested in bickering with Meredith and covering his own ass to do us any real good."
"How dare you!" Orsino cried out, offended.
"The Circle has failed us, Orsino. Surely even you can see that," Anders said almost carelessly.
"Even me?" Orsino repeated, the offense just growing.
Not only did Anders eyes turn blue but his entire face was filled with blue cracks. He tapped his staff on the ground twice and there was a black powder that filled the air.
"Since when was he an abomination?" Meredith asked, confused and appalled. "Someone is going to lose their job over this."
"The time has come to act!" Anders declared grandly. "There can be no half-measures."
Emma's eyes were wide. She knew that if he was so willfully and publicly destroying any chance of a future he had by ripping Meredith and Orsino a new one then he had either lost his mind or was planning something so big that none of that even mattered. Or maybe both. She stepped up right behind him. "Anders…what have you done?"
"I'm sorry, Emma," Anders said again, barely audible.
"I think those may be my three least favorite words," Emma said, her voice trembling a little.
"There can be no turning back," Anders said loudly. "We must all choose a side. I'm just drawing the battle lines."
And that was when the Chantry exploded with a beam of red, oddly laser-ish, light.
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