Disclaimer: The Dragon age world doesn't belong to me
Chapter 17 - Asunder
"She is aware. 'Tis all I could gather."
Splashed against the tall grass, Morrigan was breathless. She was sipping slowly from the master lyrium potion that Kallian had handed over to her, wary of not overcharging herself.
"Anything else?" Kalian was probing, threading carefully. She could well see that something was nagging Morrigan, but she didn't want to push things. The witch had already done enough.
"There is something else, indeed. She can bend the Fade around her, like a mage."
"And – that's a good thing, no?"
"Yes and no. It might be that the creature there is bound to her more deeply than I expected."
Kalian threw the witch a weary look.
"So, how long until you can go back?"
"Can't. It won't let me find them again."
"There's no need to deny yourself your vision."
oo
The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and it sounded strangely familiar. Still, Leliana couldn't say exactly why that was. It certainly didn't resemble to the voice of any other person known to her in the real world.
"It's your mind that sees here, not your eye. It's useless to torment yourself so."
Fine. What the creature said made sense. Even as she knew that it was wiser to dismiss all things that demons in general had to say, in this particular instance not listening defied common sense.
"Show yourself, then."
The sticky darkness started to recede, slowly getting replaced by a lavender, enchanted light, which grew and grew until it became unbearably intense. Through half-closed eyelids, Leliana could see a fuzzy silhouette approaching, one that she couldn't make the features of until very close – a couple of paces in front of her. When she did, she recognized -
Her face.
"I am Leliana," the being said, cheerful in tone and friendly in manner.
"You can't be. I am."
"Perhaps you are, but I am too."
"No, you're not. You're a being of the Fade."
"Still – I am Leliana."
"Right. That makes two of us. Or are you saying that I'm not?"
"I didn't say such. On the other hand, I don't remember being anyone else but Leliana; do you?"
The tone was conversational and unengaged, as if the question had been sprung out of pure curiosity. Leliana felt a sudden urge to laugh hysterically.
"Do I - what?"
"Do you remember being anyone else?"
"No? But…but…I'm real. I'm not dwelling in the Fade, for one."
"Well, you keep telling yourself that. But that's, oh, very relative, ma chere. For example, where are you now? Are you here, in the Fade, with me, or are you outside, hungering, thirsting, your body withering due to lack of use? If you are there, could you move, let's say, your left foot?"
Of course she couldn't. The creature had her trapped in this fake world. But she was aware, and that meant she could make her way back, provided she could destroy this – demon, spirit. What in the void was it, anyway?
They'd always said that madness came from the demos, those creatures that one encountered while unguardedly trotting the Fade. But this encounter gave Leliana chills on the spine. She'd never heard of anything much like it. What if the Chantry was wrong – what if the source of one's madness was only oneself, and no other? It then made all the sense in the world that she'd only meet herself here, in this Maker-forsaken distorted realm of dreams. She crushed the eerie thought, as she forced herself to remember Morrigan's words on the day after she'd left the Cousland camp – she had to believe. This was nothing else than a demon, foreign of her being. It had to go away.
"Killing me will kill everything that you've become" - came the swift answer to her unspoken thoughts. She'd thought them private – it seemed that they were not.
What was the nature of the creature? She dismissed Rage and Hunger demons – the creature was too calm – Sloth too, it didn't fit. Desire demon, then? Perhaps.
"No desire. But I feel a longing in you – I am you, remember? – a longing to forget."
"So you're reading my mind, then? You must be knowing what I'm thinking – that you must be a spirit of – of oblivion" (was there even such a thing?) " – since you don't remember anything else but me. Me, yearning to forget."
"Hmm. I'm not remembering this or that. I only know that I am no one but Leliana."
Oh. Bows and daggers were of no use here. Nor were pleas and negotiations. Leliana decided to go with the flow of things. The least she could accomplish was to get a better gist of her opponent.
"Very well, then," She said, in a light, conversational tone. "So, what are you doing around here, usually?"
"Lingering, I think."
"And when you're not?"
"Peaking. Deciding if I want to forget or not. You have a beautiful way of feeling things."
She did? The creature put honey in its words; it seemed it had no small amount of cunning. But so did Leliana.
"You think so? With me being blind and all, there must be limits to what I can and cannot offer in terms of –peaking–, no ?"
"No, really. I mean it. There's so many ways of slipping past and not noticing the beautiful things in life… I should know, trust me…" The creature seemed to wish to add something in the means of an example, but all that came out in the end was a disheartened sigh – "…oh, I can't remember."
Leliana saw the opening and pounced.
"I am flattered – that you feel this way – about it." She let all the honey of a bee-hive pour in her words, with the due hesitation on the 'flatter', with the appropriate whisper on 'feel' and the pause of a heartbeat just before 'about' that was designed to send tickles up the ears of any listener. "But you've also made me very curious. I know you can't remember. But, maybe, you can show me, what you mean? Perhaps it could do you some good, as well."
The creature threw Leliana a sad, spiteful look.
"You don't give a darn whether it would do me good or not."
"Indeed. I thought that maybe we could help each other, instead of… of…"
"…Instead of what? I'm not fighting you, as you well can see."
"And, I don't want to forget anything. Hence, I'm not killing you. I'm sure there are things that – that don't belong to me – in this place. Things that I can't possibly have knowledge of. Show me!"
Intimidation was definitely not Leliana's forte. Although she'd put all the menace she could muster in her words and the creature cowered in front of her, it did nothing in the means of shifting the omnipresent, nauseating lavender light.
She tried again at sweetness.
"Surely you must want to know how you look like… How your own nature feels like… Don't you?"
"You don't understand. I am no-one but you."
"Fine." Leliana was losing her patience. "I believe that any attempt to talk you out of – er – being me would prove futile."
She conjured a lute out of thin air, quite like she'd done before, and started to pour incessant, haunting rhythms in it, while her voice modulated wordless wailing notes. She too had her own blend of magic, and if this creature had any clue about what was good for it, it'd better braced itself.
The dazing tune lingered, contained for a while, as if muffled by unseen, woolen walls, but then it caught wind and started to reverberate from here to there, back and forth, amplified a tenfold by the very essence of the place.
Distraction was a dangerous weapon – all bards knew – as dangerous to the wielder as it was to the foe. But all bards knew that there were times when risks needed to be taken, and confounding a situation that was going from bad to worse was always naught but an improvement. Hopefully, it would help her see what she knew was there and the creature denied her from, whether it remembered or not.
The landscape morphed again.
She felt sick at first, and dizzy, lying in the tall grass, incapable to move. In the near vicinity, the rumor of a fight drew closer, and the uncanny sensation that someone was sucking the very life from her soul brought an ashen taste to her mouth. She felt a tug, as if jerked out from her own body, and then a moony pale light hit her eyes. The sense of fear was gut-wrenching, as well as the yearning of hiding from any and all things around.
Leliana found herself very close to a bloodied cheek, whispering "I'll protect you" with a mouth that wasn't hers. She then gained distance, only to see that the cheek had been her own, wrapped in rags and bloodied, the way it must have looked the night when Kallian had found her in Clarice's camp. She saw Clarice herself, wrought in the middle of the blazing storm that Morrigan had conjured, but not for long, as she was sucked backwards and up, until she reached under the bark of a nearby tree. There, she slept a while.
When she woke up, she was in a sort-of prison cell. A sort-of cell, because it was well-lit all over and quite warm, and she was sort-of in it, or, rather, in one of its walls – as if the wall had eyes, and those eyes were her own. She wished herself out and found that she was capable of moving freely this time, as she stepped inside the room.
A man lay in a corner with one arm bent over his brow, hiding his features. Still, she could make out his pointy ears and unkempt beard, as well as parts of his haggard body revealed by the threadbare rags that covered him.
"I know you," the man in the corner snapped, as he jumped to his feet. "I am happy to make your acquaintance."
"Oh?" There was no end to the wonders of the Fade, apparently.
"Yes, yes…" the small man seemed very excited about something, as he paced round his cell up and down. "I remember you. I dreamt about you."
"Oh, really? I thought this was a dream..."
"Yes, yes, yes." He paced even more furiously than before. "Dream you, dream me… Then dream both for you and me…"
What in the Void…
"Excuse me, are you mad… er, ser?"
"Oh, I was. Mad at heart, mad as a hat – or as a bat – you know, just mad like that…"
"Are you alright?" Great. Now she started to sound like him. It even rhymed.
"No-no-no-no. Not alright. Alim. Alim Surana, blood mage, at your service. Mad as a rabid rat."
"Not a spirit, then?" Leliana remembered the mad hermit that they'd met in the Brecilian Forest, during the Blight. A mage, even a mad one, could prove to be a powerful ally in this Maker-forsaken corner of the Fade. And, for once, he didn't sound as cracked as before, although what he went on to say proved to be unnerving enough.
"Not a spirit. Real as I may be. I even have a body, kind of. It must be around here, somewhere, only I don't seem to remember where."
"Should I speak in rhymes, too?" Leliana offered, in an attempt to keep him focused and friendly. Although, Maker knew, this conversation was annoying into the beyond.
"Only if it pleases you," came the swift answer, and the mage seemed quite pleased with himself, too. Oh, and she was thinking in rhymes, so maybe conducting a poetry contest with a mage that was mad as a blighted rat with a hat and a bat and forgetting what she was at - Leliana shook her head to rid herself of the cluttering rhymes - was not such a good idea.
"Perhaps you know something about…- " Leliana turned around, quite sure that the spirit had followed closely. Without much surprise she found behind her – not herself, this time – but a glamorous replica of the mage she'd just met, sporting a beard and having all his teeth, with much longer hair drawn back in a neat ponytail, wearing fine enchanter robes and an intricate staff slung on his back. She finished her sentence with an eloquent wave of hand " – well, our friend here."
"Aa, him…" Alim giggled, seemingly slipping back in madness. "Hee-hee-hee-him I've summoned from beyond the Veil. I believe they call them Tricksters, you know, those spirits that guide the rogues when they step into the shadows? At their most powerful, they're supposed to render one invisible, hee-hee… I was trying to get out of Aeonar, with the help of this fellow here. Only he, he decided to render me invisible from myself… Not that I mind, see – I'm not in the right mind to…" he finished with a guffaw.
Then, his mirth vanished without trace.
"I would really like to feel like myself again. So, please, don't feel offended, friend."
It wasn't exactly clear who those last words had been addressed to, as Alim closed the distance between Leliana and him. A skeletal hand clawed her wrist open, and a mist of blood surrounded them both as he started to cast.
"I, Alim Surana, call upon the powers alive in the blood that is given to me. I, Alim Surana, whom you may never again call by name or remember, rend thee – Asunder."
There was a thum and a thrusk and the entire dream world started to moan, twist and flicker as if crumbling from within.
Leliana was splashed against the floor, all drained. She was aware enough, however, to hear and to understand the words that Alim seemed to mutter to himself, while pacing and rummaging around his cell.
"Sorry again, my friend. I had no choice. You'd better get out of here fast."
"I will," Leliana whispered under her breath as she watched the mage zooming out of her vision, "there's no need to worry about me overly much, honestly…"
oo
"What's going on?"
Two long, gashing wounds had appeared on Leliana's arm out of the blue. Kallian could swear that she'd been watching her all the time; certainly Leliana hadn't clawed herself like that in a fit of her dream. A red, bloody mist arched from Leliana's left wrist up and over the forest, heading west, like a gloomy rainbow.
"Morrigan. Wake up. Something's happening."
The witch was taking her turn to sleep. She started and forced herself right up, with a look on her face that bode nothing good.
"Quick." She cut Kallian's wrist open and started to weave a spell. The blooded mist swirled towards and surrounded Leliana. "She's getting sucked in."
"What are you doing, though?"
"Weaving a path for her to come out, of course."
oo
When she could finally gather her feet, Leliana rose. It was dark and dump, but the rumbling-and-moaning noise had stopped. Maybe she still had time. She started running again, and this time it felt like climbing up a hill. She had a feeling that she wouldn't be able to bend the world around her like before – but, perhaps, if only… if only she could will out a door… She pictured in her mind the door to lady Ceclie's mansion; the door to Marjorlaine's door in Val Royeaux; doors from various inns and taverns that she'd sung and danced in; the door to the vault in Redcliffe Castle; doors in dungeons and doors in homes; even a lone door in the middle of a forest. Nothing happened, and she kept running uphill.
After a while, it started to feel as if being drawn in the middle of a swirl. A warm, strange, tacky mist was sticking to her hair and hands. Something was vaguely taking shape ahead, a reddish and dark glow that became more and more clear as it swirled in front of her, out of reach, but only just.
She saw it afterwards – a single, blooming, glittering rose, dripping, woven in blood. She stopped only for a glimpse to think whether to make a grab for it or not. Then, she fell.