**********A Note: The whole 'psychics can't read people close to them' thing is apparently a real thing. I have heard of at least two supposed psychics (one was Sylvia Browne, one was, I think, Edgar Cayce?) claiming this fact when asked about whether or not they can tip off all their loved ones about things that are going to happen to them, or things like lottery numbers and such. So I didn't make that part up completely. :)
P.s., sorry for the delay - I was out of town for a week and gave myself a little break, plus I am trying to finish an update of one of the other fics. Thanks from the bottom of my heart to those of you still sticking with me! ********
All Selise could think about as her body trudged along without her consent was the myriad ways she was going to make her traveling companions suffer. When the opportunity came to strike back at their captors, she was going to do more than just jump on it. She was going to enjoy it. It may have sickened her before to listen to the dying heartbeats of her victims, but with each cocky smile that Julian flashed in her direction, she found herself anticipating more and more counting every last breath he took until his very last.
And Anders. Her beautiful, unexpected Anders. She would unleash him and watch him rain pain down upon their heads like the Master of destruction that he had shown himself to be. Together, Julian's plans to… whatever he planned to do, would die along with him. Preferably a messy, painful, satisfying death.
Qaris was still a mystery, as was his eventual fate at Selise's hands. He was a possible exception, but even that remained to be seen. But Millie, Etienne and Kinley would all beg her for their death before she finally snuffed them out. She promised herself that.
For now she was powerless. Drained and walked step by step like some kind of fucking wind up doll, caused the birth of a million hateful, evil thoughts directed at the bodies only feet away. Each step forward, each step away from Anders, just after she had made promises that she would never leave him, never abandon him, was a betrayal to her love and to her self. A betrayal she had no hand in, yet there she was. Walking away and leaving him further and further behind.
Her resentment boiled and streamed like acid within her veins. They would pay. She didn't know how, but she knew it with a certainty matched only by her love for the man left back at the cave. These blighters would pay with every last cell.
Sleep. She needed to sleep. If her explorations thus far had yielded nothing, perhaps the sheer energy of her blistering rage could thrust her into a new discovery. Nothing seemed to work better than a torrent of emotion for making things happen. If Justice was seeking anger, he would love to get his hands on her now.
She felt the slight prickle of energy before anyone else seemed to. The Fade was open somewhere close by, another rift for certain. It had been inevitable, stumbling about out here. And what would they do with her if they all felt the need to fight?
Julian paused after a dozen more steps, finally sensing the rift himself, the decision to fight or flee warring visibly in his mind. After a quick survey of their surroundings, he ordered everyone to run. Selise was sure it was probably because he couldn't hold her in place with his mind, and fight at the same time. Nor could he use her body to fight alongside himself, or leave her incapacitated as easy prey for any of the creatures that spilled from the rift. The hesitance was enough to reveal Julian's lack of achievement — or perhaps sheer mediocrity — with the blood magic he wielded. She had heard tales of many a powerful mage, able to control and possess not only the bodies of others, but also their minds. And as of yet, her mind remained untouched. She laughed inwardly. It seemed incredibly possible that this man was merely a one trick pony.
On they went in their attempts to run, and the extra energy they put into trying to hasten their speed didn't seem to make them move any faster in the shin-deep snow. Selise didn't have to work her body but she felt the strain of it all the same. Her feet and knees ached and she was sure the straps holding the pack onto her had long been grinding away at her flesh even through her leathers. What had probably started out as blisters now felt raw and stripped. Only her rage cut through the pain, keeping her from feeling like a stranger within herself.
How could she sleep in the middle of such circumstances? And what should she seek once she achieved unconsciousness? Solas wouldn't be asleep in the middle of the day, but maybe she could try again to reach out, to someone, anyone. She was supposed to be able to enter the Fade, at least that is what Solas had said. And what would that accomplish? Would it give her back her magic? Mana itself came directly from the Fade after all. She would find out soon, of that she was sure.
But Julian had been a tenacious traveler, stopping little even to eat, and rarely ever addressing his crew. Qaris soldiered along as he had since the first day, and Millie might as well have been blood magicked herself. On a few occasions she cast wounded eyes back toward Selise but then looked away just as quickly. Selise glared back with all her might, but the daggers she threw with her eyes did not seem to land. Between Millie's melancholy and Qaris's strange looks, she began to suspect that something important had happened back at the other cave. But no one was speaking about it.
Oh how she wished she could control her sight. Whatever had occurred had not shown up at all on her radar beyond an increase of the sickened feeling that she had already been carrying since the morning Julian appeared. How was it that she could lose all sight connected to the most important person in her life? It felt like the biggest possible betrayal of her supposed gift.
She closed her eyes and tried to leave her body, let it march on without her, but they were moving with such exertion trying to outrun the reaches of the rift, that she couldn't be anywhere other than present. Her heart and lungs responded to the forced march of her limbs, straining to provide blood and oxygen to her furthest reaches, and making her gasp against an unresponsive ribcage for breath. A distant shriek sounded over a large hill and her body jerked into a new trajectory, trying to elude whatever creature made the noise.
Come and get us, she called silently, opening her mind as wide as she was able to the energies around them. The whispers of demons on the other side of the veil were like a hot, putrid breath in her ears.
And come they did. Several stinking bodies lumbered over a hill toward them, moving their unnaturally long limbs more quickly than they had any right to. While Selise couldn't smile with her whole face, the satisfaction still rang loud within her.
Come and get us you Fucks! She screeched within the confines of her mind. She looked expectantly to Julian, daring him to release her of her magical bonds. But instead of attempting to make her fight, a nod to Qaris had blood magic replaced by a cocoon of entropic paralysis.
The demon's attacks came fast and heavy and she stood in place, an easy target, kept off to the side and adjacent to a large towering rock. Qaris did his best to defend her, dancing around her while flinging fiery streaks of power that melted snow and blackened tree trunks, while Julian and Millie tried to lead the demons away. The scent of magic and the whir of motion filled the air in a spine tingling display, but still she was pursued, her silent voice seemingly heard and located. She continued to call to them, feeling the thin rippling of the Fade around her. What was it Solas had said the first time they met? Her very presence disturbs the Fade somehow?
The first impact to her body came quickly, a burst of fade drenched plasma that hit like a boulder to the chest, knocking the breath out of her and making her ribs clench painfully down. But she blinked away the tears, her throat trying to squeak out a groan as she waited for the pain to pass. That was a good attempt, but it wasn't what she was after. If she couldn't sleep willingly, she could court unconsciousness in other ways.
One of the demons, another of the long legged ones, seemed to be jumping from place to place within his own little Fade rips, coming up just under Julian and Millie, throwing them violently back. Selise focused on it, yelling silently for attention, sending an entreaty through her tenuous grasp of the Fade. Somniari were supposed to be particularly attractive to demons, and with all the energy she could gather in her mind she sent it what felt like a promise. A promise of success and easy prey, of bargains made, if only it would come and level one perfect blow. On several occasions she was sure it locked its eyes upon her, or what she assumed must have been its eyes, and she hoped that it had heard.
When it disappeared again, sucked into a greenish imprint left sparkling over the snow, she fought the urge to brace herself, even if it could have done any good with her useless muscles. The rock behind her would provide a perfect place to crack her head, sending her mind reeling from reality and plunged mercifully into a place of dreams. Could Julian still control her while she was unconscious? She was pretty sure that he could. It wouldn't matter much to him where her mind went, as long as her body and heart remained full of flowing blood.
The ground below her feet buzzed for a mere second before her body went weightless, catapulted backward just as she had sought. Whether it heard her calls or not didn't matter, all that mattered was the thud of impact and the blackness which enveloped her mind.
At first she felt the same as she had as a child, when she and her friends would spin themselves around as fast and as long as they could, only to try to stay on their feet once their bodies stopped but the world didn't. Her body had ceased falling once it had hit the ground, but her mind continued to fly through space, all surrounding existence spinning wildly out of her control. She would have to land somewhere, would have to gain a foothold of control if she was going to make any progress. She felt the urge to take a deep breath, and quickly reminded herself that she was not there physically. She tried it anyway, only out of a desire for something comforting, and even felt what seemed to be air entering her lungs. But it was not air. It was merely wisps of a dream.
Solas. Her mind had already touched his, and she trained her powers on the memory of him, trying to realign herself with the strange, indecipherable energy he transmitted. She grasped out into the void blindly, seeking the call of his familiar voice. But nothing came. She stretched and stretched, sending her mind in the direction she knew Skyhold to be. But she felt only a persistent expanse of silence.
With a surreal whump, the spinning stopped. Her efforts to focus on Solas seemed to work to bring her mind right. And why wouldn't it? She was in complete control here. She could shape the space around her to her own desires and needs.
And what she desired most at that particular moment was death. Blood. Freedom. To be heard.
Around her were the whispers of the demons who offered her desire. Pride caressed the back of her ear, filling her mind with visions of power. For a brief moment Julian's face appeared before her, his cheeks wet with tears and eyes pleading for mercy. In the distance stood Leliana, Fiona and the Inquisitor, nodding their approval, ready to offer rewards untold for the capture of the blood mage who had plans to possess the Inquisitor.
Shimmying over every bare expanse of skin came the lover's caress of Desire. She saw Anders' warm brown eyes looking at her as though she were the only woman in the world. He looked at her like that any way, but that could be because, for him, she actually was the only woman? The only one he had really been allowed to see, to talk to. Could she have been anyone and the result had been the same? You lock two people into the same quarters and eventually, attraction happens, right? She shook the eddy of doubt from her mind, but it was too late. Pride and Desire had already sensed her weakness.
She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to take another deep, steadying breath, but the visions swimming before her eyes went unchanged. Pride and Desire slithered over her mind, working in tandem to tease out insecurities, ones she pressed consciously down and one she didn't even know she had, offering to her numerous versions of the perfect antidote.
Anders. He'd had a long life before she came along. He'd known and loved his share of women, and men. He'd had Hawke of all people, for a time at least. Selise's experience, her knowledge, paled in comparison to his. She knew nothing about life, not for real. But she was a willing body with a few useful talents, who had sworn to aid his plans and be his protector. What would become of his feelings for her if those things all disappeared? Would he still care? Would he still look at her like she was the only woman in the world when the time came that there were seas of others?
A knife twisted deep in her gut as she found herself staring at a future of abandonment. NO, she said out loud, her words falling flat, absorbed into the swirling walls of possibility. The pictures on the walls quickly changed. A life of acclaim, where she and Anders were revered for their work in reversing those who'd been made Tranquil, where Anders looked to her with an all-consuming love that brought him to the brink of tears. Didn't he do that already? Sometimes, anyway? She tried to shrug the demons off, recoiling from their touch. The images continued fast and heavy, and Selise closed her ears, blurred her eyes, bringing herself to full attention and ordering her mind, the Fade that she touched, that she be taken somewhere else.
The landscape of the Frostbacks came immediately back to her, thrusting her back into the chaos she had just left. The Fade was open there, visible, swarming with fragments of spirit energy like a hive of bees. She was supposed to be able to enter the Fade, wasn't she? But how? Even before she completed the thought, she felt the whir of the fighting around her again. She stood like a ghost among the battle, seeing how the veil hugged the bodies who drew pieces of the Fade through it, shaping it into vicious, exhausting attacks. The sickly green orb of a burst open Fade pulsed and sang, centered within a symphony of violence.
There it was. An open door through the veil, a wound in the fabric of the world, situated directly before her. Could she just… walk through it? She was practically in it already, or it was in her. She pushed the whispers of the demons further to the back of her mind, an action all mages became accustomed to, at least until the point that they found themselves feeling especially weak.
She observed Julian for a moment. Spells emerged from him that did not draw upon the Fade. He was using his own blood, the salty waters of his own life that dripped from his open wounds, to draw more power, to heal himself.
He couldn't see her, despite the fact that she was standing right in front of him. Wasn't she? Standing there? She cast her eyes around. Behind her lay a thin, crumpled figure in worn brown leathers pressed down deep into the snow. A small splash of red staining the snow by her head.
With a screech a tall green Terror demon fell, melting into the blindly white landscape. Selise felt a slight moment of panic as she watched Qaris battle another that was reaching for her body. Several blows of flailing limbs landed on the crumpled figure, bruising unresponsive flesh. Soon either the mages would get the upper hand or the demons would. It couldn't stay balanced forever.
Focus Selise! Her own demand was sharp in her head, followed by quick action of her insubstantial form. She burst forward, taking several long strides before feeling the buzzing, ripping energy of entering the Fade.
She'd been there during her Harrowing, but the place she emerged looked very different from the place she visited in the Circle. What she saw, she couldn't quite comprehend. People, many more people than should have been out here in the mountains, moving like shadows in a number of single file lines. She saw the chains stretched from body to body that made it clear what, who they were: slaves. They marched obediently, silently, their eyes downcast in a resigned hopelessness. She could see the end of the lines, and a cluster of imposing figures at the distant front. They didn't see her, had no idea she was there. They weren't really there. They were only a memory of the land.
Of course. The caves had been old slaver caves. Very old, probably in use for many years in ages past. Intense bloodshed and trauma left its mark on a location, thinning the surrounding Fade with its energy. These bodies must be going to the caves. She could follow them, and they would probably lead her right back to Anders.
Selise stood frozen in place for a moment, watching the shadows undulate and flicker, playing out for her like some kind of macabre theater.
Anders.
At the thought of him, at what could be happening to him that very moment, she buckled inwardly a little. She had been trying to not to let herself settle into the feeling of fear that threatened to overtake her since they'd departed. Out in the woods, alone with Julien, Millie and Qaris, she felt helpless and small. Boiling over with rage and anger, but completely ineffectual and impotent. And what was happening to Anders? What if there wasn't anything left of him to return to?
She turned again, looking back to where Julian had stood before her a moment longer. Vaguely, she felt their bodies pulling on the Fade, filling their little vessels from the vast well of magic that now sparkled around her. And she felt her own magic well up like a tidal wave. It was limitless, uncontained. She did not need a small, spiritual vessel to dip into the Fade and fill, not when she could plunge herself into the sea and drink directly from the source. Power thrummed through her, igniting her skin with a fiery pulse all its own. And along with it the rush of magic, more whispers from Pride.
You could have power beyond your wildest dreams. Primal, Arcane, Spirit energy, all at your fingertips. Crumble mountains, move the very earth out of your way.
The vision moved beyond mere words and she felt surges of unfamiliar energy build within her.
She pushed it out yet again, cursing at the persistence of the insidious presence. This was merely a distraction she didn't need. Who knows when she would begin to wake, or when the demons would impale her. For the moment, the three mages who battled on the other side of the Veil still lived, but they were tiring.
But isn't that what she wanted? Maybe the demons would win after all, taking care of this whole problem? It was not ideal. It was not the slow, deliberate deaths she had been concocting for them as they traveled, but her options were limited. She certainly wasn't going to do something daft like rescue them, for the sole purpose of being the one to kill them herself, was she?
The demon whispers increased around her, filling her ears with a seductive whoosh of promises, seeming to hear every one of her thoughts.
She felt a sharp burst of purpose finally overtake her. What was she doing? She couldn't exactly stand there dithering while the minutes of her unconsciousness ticked away. She needed to DO something before her time ran out. Unless, Maker forbid, she hit her head too hard. But the strong pound of her heart in the peripherals of her mind assured her that despite the head injury, despite any blows her unconscious body might have taken, she lived.
She pulled her thoughts into a pinpoint, and all the sounds of battle around her silenced. Blinking her eyes, she found herself in the familiar grassy lawn of the lower courtyard of Skyhold. Bodies walked past her, unseeing, unnoticing. Figures of oblivious people walked right through her, registering nothing. Anticipation streaked up her spine as she threw herself up the stairs. At the halfway point, she realized that she didn't need to travel the distance as though she had a body. She'd covered that whole distance of the Frostbacks in the blink of an eye.
Solas's room, the rotunda below the library that was half covered in towering paintings, appeared before her before her thought even completed. Standing over his table in the middle of the room was the slender figure in the long, knitted sweater. Almost immediately she saw his back stiffen, his attention drawn from the book under his fingertips.
Looking desperately at him, she attempted words.
"Solas!" she called and he stood upright, his eyes flicking in her direction, but not landing on anything. She moved forward and reached out a hand to touch him, but felt bitter disappointment at the reminder that she had no actual hand in this place. She pulled up her power, trying to make her energy stronger, even as she knew it probably wasn't necessary. He clearly felt her there, or at least felt something there.
"Help!" was all she could say. He bounced on his heels for a moment, his mind working, his body coiling up for action, and then turned to take several long strides toward the wooden platform that he slept upon. If she'd had lungs in this place, she would have let out a great, relieved exhale. Soon he would be asleep. Soon he would join her and they would figure out what to do.
Before Solas reached the ladder to his bedroll, a messenger entered the room.
"Ser," he said, "the Inquisitor requests your presence in the War Room."
Selise screamed inwardly, and then realized she might as well go ahead and scream outwardly as well, for whatever good it might do her. The messenger stood stock still, his face gravely serious. But Solas flinched just enough for her to know that maybe if he hadn't heard, he'd definitely felt it. He looked into the air above and around him, his brows drawing into severe lines.
"Are you sure my presence is necessary? Is there no one else who can assist her?" he asked calmly, but Selise could feel the tremble of frustration beneath his serene veneer.
The messenger's head tilted slightly, as if replaying the question for himself to be sure he'd heard correctly.
"Ser? I wouldn't know. She only asked for you. It sounded quite urgent."
Solas balled his hands into fists and turned on his heel to hurry out of the room. Selise followed close behind for several steps, but knew that there was little more she could do. She had gotten his attention for sure, and if she waited long enough, he would come to her. In the meantime, she realized there was someone else she might try. What any of them could do from this far away she wasn't sure. Solas at least could give her the benefit of guidance and his experience. But it wouldn't hurt to have someone she could trust physically on the way. Instead of taking a right to follow Solas to the War Room, she took a left to exit the Great Hall.
Cole met her in the courtyard.
"Selise, you need help. Why are you…" he drifted off, unable to articulate the rest of the question. Selise began to feel confused herself. Was she still in the Fade at all? Perhaps she was not? She had no idea what was happening, or what she was doing.
"Cole, I need you to find me. I need your help."
He nodded, his wide blue eyes searching hers.
"Follow the glacial river at the bed of the valley until you reach a large collapsed wall blocking the path, then turn northeast. There are old slaver caves, you might be able to feel the memories in the Fade when you get close. Hurry!" she called.
In a blink she was gone, back in the Frostbacks, back near the cave she'd been held. Something insubstantial was pulling on her, inaudible voices climbing through the expanse that gulfed her mind and body. Was she about to wake? Could she stop it?
The cave was empty. She cursed, her voice a sneering hiss echoing through her thoughts. This cave, the one in which she'd been held wasn't where Anders was, but where was Anders? How far was the place he was being kept? She stalked out of the cave as though she were in her body again, not sure where to go from there. She opened her mind and searched, and in rushed a cacophony of voices. Voices full of pain and sorrow, orders barked and screams of torture. This place had been very busy once. The roar of memory was almost overwhelming, and she struggled to parse out individual words.
The other voices, the muffled ones on the outskirts of her awareness grew in intensity, and she recognized the disdainful laugh of Millie, followed by a sharp reprimand by Julian. Shit. She was being pulled back into consciousness.
"Selise?" came yet another voice, this one soothing and clear, ripping straight through the confusion of sounds and energy. "I heard you. I am here."
She turned to see Solas, standing mere feet away. But she was slipping, slipping… everything within her vision dimming, the words of her captors getting louder, clearer.
Shit!
"Solas! Find Anders!" she managed to call before his worried face faded to black. All sounds were drowned out by the sounds of shifting clothes, the wind whispering through the trees. The real trees, not the approximation of trees that were reflected in her dream, or the Fade or wherever it was that her mind had been. Pain spliced into her awareness, searing away her conscious thought and throbbing, pounding in against the confines of her busted skull. Warm hands on her buzzed and she felt magic streaming into her, pulling her back into the world.
But there was something else there. Her own magic. Fire bubbled under veins and the voices around her became shrill, frightened. For a moment, she was transported back to a memory of a burning house and two screaming men. She'd been knocked unconscious then, too. A solid hand from her father had connected with her face as she had attempted to use a sliver of restored magic on him. The reaction from him had been immediate. He'd silenced her magic, draining the mana that had begun to drip back in after she'd vomited up her brothers administration of magebane, and then he knocked her clear out of herself. To where? She had no memory of what was in between. Only of the before, of standing in front of him, trembling with fear as she tried to finally raise her courage enough to strike him first. And then the after, of reawakening with a blaze of power, power that defied the silencing attempts of a raging Templar. She rose and the flames came and she'd burned them both, taking her home down with them.
This fire was there again, her grasp of the Fade no longer thin and tenuous, no longer held in check by the spells of a vapid, blond haired Spirit mage. She had drank from the source, directly from the Fade and felt filled to the brim with crackling energy. She opened her eyes and felt her body move at her command, the ground below her wet and muddy from a radiating heat that had quickly melted ice and snow. She gathered the power into her hands and prepared herself to rise again, bringing with her an old, familiar inferno.