I awoke to the blinding light overhead, searing through my being, casting my sight red when I tried to close my eyes against it. My body dully ached, joints protesting against movement as I rubbed my face free of the hurt. I realized that I must have either fallen asleep sometime in the night or finally passed out from the pain. Both of those had finally brought the sweet embrace of painless escape.
I rolled onto my side, the cold ground I had come to rest on having bore frigid spots into my back that burned with hot blood as the pressure had been relieved. My iron post was still only slightly eaten through, though I had hoped with childish want that it would have resumed my task of wearing its strength away when I was… preoccupied. The metal dish had not been cleaned, but had more water and bread sloshed into its contents. I wondered how much more progress I could gain before Meredith stowed away from the Templar's Courtyard and found herself in the mood to mar me further.
My eyes focused a bit beyond the partially weakened bar into my companion's cage, where I'd expected him to be pursuing his everlasting quest to wear the stone floors deep enough to burrow beneath the cage's perimeter. This was not the case.
Heart dropping through its usual resting place, I found my feet quicker than I had thought was possible in my physical state. Gone. Gone?
I called his name, not managing sound on the first attempt, but succeeding in the second. A distant echo – perhaps in my head? – sounded through the dense stone walls. A cold sweat had beaded along my forehead as I rushed to my locked gate, as though the one foot I had traveled was enough to clarify the illusive noise. I tried again, louder this time, only to receive a bash on the iron door out and a command at silence.
The usually steady beat in my heart had quickened to a frantic thrum almost as fast as the questions that sped through my head. Where had Meredith taken him? What were they doing? Why hadn't they taken me? How long had I been asleep? Was my week up and Fenris in Danarius' capture? No, that couldn't be. The residual amount of blood on the floor that I had lost from my internal drowning was still a deep red in the middle of the deeper pools, not yet having dried completely. Where was he?
It was my turn to pace, frantically padding up and down the length of my cage before finally deciding to put my panic into the iron bar beside me, working with a fervor that could build – or destroy – cities.
Up. Fenris was in danger. If I hurried, put all of my force into this one remedial task, I could perhaps free him. But with what magic? Whatever they had put into me had successfully turned my own gift into a corrosive poison that had tried to eat its way out from the inside. It didn't matter. I would kill them with my own bare hands.
Down. This was all my fault. If I had gone to Darktown first, to warn Anders, he and I would have been able to overwhelm the Templars with all of the refugees there that I knew where trained in combat. They would at least fight for their healer, if not for the Champion of Kirkwall.
Push deeper. They were going to kill him if he wasn't already dead. They were going to torture me in every way they could, even if that meant killing Danarius' prize. Meredith didn't care. As long as my last few moments of being connected to the Fade were spent begging her for mercy, she'd take any wrath the magister could inflict. Tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision but the lack of sight did nothing to stop me from tearing away the crumbling metal.
A crunch vibrated through the floor. I scrubbed my eyes with my bloodied sleeve, wiping the blur from the severed restraint. I glanced over at the iron door, as if I was able to see if anyone was coming through the opaque obstruction before I gripped the bar with all of my might and heaved backwards. The iron came free with a satisfying groan about three feet up from the floor and I took the pseudo freedom before I could even formulate a plan.
On the wooden table that Meredith had procured most of her torturous instruments laid not more than a small dagger – which I wielded clumsily, but took anyways – and a few instruments which were only effective when their target was restrained. I hefted the newly-freed iron bar and sized it up as my best option for keeping enemies far enough away from a mage who was not trained well in close combat.
A small pop of fear settled in my sternum as I eyed the iron door I knew was guarded. Clenching my teeth against the thought that my own fear was going to kill Fenris, I gripped the bludgeoning weapon and crept up the door, which lacked a handle to open from the inside.
I tapped the end of the make-shift staff on the door, the sound of metal on metal clanging through the air before a sound of human confusion. Apprehension turned to rage as I heard the metal lock begin to slide out of its place in the stone wall and the entrance opened. A bald head poked through, an eyebrow raised as he scanned the room questioningly. I did not wait until he saw my cell lacking a prisoner before I brought the end of the rod down on the back of his skull. A muffled crunch came through the air as metal met bone.
The large man fell to the floor in a clang of shifting armor, falling between the open door and the jam, blood trickling out of the unnatural dent in the back of his—
I looked away before I made myself sick scrutinizing the death I'd inflicted, a fury pooling in my stomach that I had never felt before. I skirted the walls of the stone fortress as I mulled that over. This is how Fenris must feel. I thought, a black grin spreading on my face. Right before he rips someone's heart out of their chest.
Peeking through cracked door after cracked door of the seemingly abandoned stone hall, I found no trace of Fenris, my anger melting into a cruel mixture of fear and panic. My eyes traced up the hall to the stone steps I would have wagered would have lead out to freedom – to a land other than Kirkwall, perhaps. No, I couldn't have done it, even if it was my only way out.
I took a step down the carpeted corridor, away from the steps to freedom, my foot not finding the rough red rug that lined the stone floor, but a black flight feather. I cocked my head, bending – to the best of my ability, now that shock and adrenaline had finally taken their numbing effects with them – and taking the soft thing between my fingers, twirling it gently.
It was in this small object – a simple feather, perhaps nothing more than another piece of paraphernalia that none would have cherished, having been shed so carelessly – I found hope. Having fallen from the strange armor that I'd only seen protect the lyrium-engraved elf, it pointed me to the large metal obstruction, shut tightly and looming blackly over the corridor. Few inches of metallic obstruction kept me from the one that I had spent three years wondering if I'd ever be able to call my own.
The latch moved with more noise than I had anticipated, grinding against itself out of years of neglect. I shoved my weight against it – my shoulder screaming in protest – for the last bit of it to clear its hold before I pushed the dark thing into the room.
I had to wonder what I would find behind the door. Part of me hoped that he would merely be housed in the small room and none the worse for wear. Perhaps all I would find was an empty room, taunting and black, a void for my hopes. A small stab of fear knew that there was the possibility that I was too late, that Fenris was already dead and all that was left was for me to discover his body, carelessly housed for his master to retrieve.
A solitary lantern was lit in the right corner, scarcely enough light to tell the wounded man from the rest of the wall. Blood leaked black and shone around the large metal thing protruding beneath where his heavy chest plate should have resided, barely moving with each breath he pulled between his teeth.
"Fenris," I heard myself breathe, the metal rod I held dropping loudly to the stone floor, reverberating in the small room. I made the conscious effort to move my feet that had melted themselves to the ground out of shock. Half-open eyes found their way up to my face as I worked at the straps on his wrist. "We're getting out of here. Can you walk? Fenris – can you hear me?"
Even in the dim light of the single flame, I could see his usually tanned skin was deathly pale, its color having leaked into the large black puddle on the floor. His head bobbed faintly in acknowledgement to my words, trying twice before he was able to form any words. "Yes… I am fine."
He had gripped the metal protrusion beneath his ribs, mere moments after he had found the floor, new life pouring quickly from the wound as the gleaming object had been torn free and clattered noisily to the stone ground. Fenris clamped a hand over the bloody puncture, bared his teeth and sucked in a large amount of air.
"We need to go," I whispered glancing suspiciously out the door for any Templar activity, bending to gather my newly found staff from the ground. "Do you need help?"
"No." His voice was harsh against the offer for assistance whether from the pain or from the ridiculous notion that he would require any aid, I didn't know, but even in its bluntness, it was alarmingly airy.
Metal brushed against metal from outside the door, armored footsteps falling rapidly and swords raking out of their sheaths. Templars. I braced futilely for the flood of soldiers that would rush through the door and likely kill the both of us in a matter of seconds. We were no match – a wounded warrior and a mage with no magic – against the torrent of Meredith's puppets that would slaughter us. Please let it end quickly….
Cries of men reverberated down the stony halls, the dull popping sound of a blade piercing flesh and a coy laugh that I knew only too well. A burst of green magic flashed down the corridor from the main room, a small snippet of a language that fell only on the elvish tongue. Isabella? Merril? No, it couldn't be… they weren't here. They would have had no idea where we would have gone. This was a trick, it had to be.
"Say 'Hello', Bianca!"
Varric. He was here, too. They had come….
The metal fell from my hands as I threw my head out around the edge of wall the thick iron door was buried in just in time to see the gentle healer of Darktown give in to the spirit that shared his flesh, the Fade breaking through his skin and casting shadows on the walls as a spell of pure energy obliterated a handful of Templars.
My heart rose in my chest, beating painfully with burning relief from my navel to my throat. Freedom danced along the lithe form of the Dalish, glimmered in the twin blades disappearing into human flesh, burst from the crossbow clutched skillfully in thick fingers and thudded through the solid shield wielded by the warrior I owed my life to time and time again.
"Hawke?!" the dwarf cried as another arrow launched itself from his beloved weapon and into the eye of a shorter soldier of the Chantry, the body falling limp as a doll thrown the ground. "Hawke! Fenris! Are you guys here?!"
I called back to him, waiting for the elf to trudge painfully out of the room before myself. My eyes fell to the usually gentle and silent step of the warrior, now falling heavily, laboriously, before they ceased to fall at all. Knees gave way to the ground, followed by the dull thud of his body falling to the unforgiving stone floor of the fortress. Lax fingers pulled away from his wound, life trickling slower than the norm to darken the crimson rug beneath him. Thin slivers of green glinted beneath lids, glassy and unoccupied.
Sweet relief vanished so quickly, one had to wonder if it was ever truly there. The bitter void that it left was quickly filled with a torrent of stabbing fear – any idea of freedom vanished, any notion of salvation evaporated. My jarred onto its knees more forcefully than the lithe Tevinter did, fingers tearing at the buckles to his jerkin – panic complicating the simple clasps to intricate locks – and pulling the leather away from the damaged skin. Now that the armor that had hidden the extent of the damage was stripped away, I could see the shredded flesh of his stomach. Delicate curls of lyrium were stained dark, a void of inflamed tissue extending deep within his body, muscle peeled apart to make way from the now absent invasion.
I sent all of my might down into my fingertips, burning fury building in the extremities as the frantic mana searched wildly for a way out of my body. Bone ached and hands throbbed, but no drain of the magic came. Fenris' flesh didn't knit itself together at my command, his shallow breaths didn't deepen themselves and the lack-luster flutter of his heart didn't strengthen. He was dying and I couldn't stop it.
Helpless tears blended the colors before me as I pressed my hands into the wound to slow the loss of life as much as I could. "No, no,no… Fenris, look at me. Stay awake… please, oh Maker." The glowing light that was the healer of Darktown was deaf to my pleas, taken by the injustice that I now understood. "Anders, please, Anders, help him…"
I blinked hard, liquid burning in one of the many cuts that ran along the skin of my face, clear vision coming to the slender form of the Dalish pariah, her staff whirling through the air, great flames jutting forth from the end as before the bladed end came around and cleaved the head from a man twice her girth. Beneath that slender form was a power that I had seen utilized a few times before – power great enough to cleanse an ancient mirror, to take down Dalish barriers constructed to protect their sacred burial… power great enough to heal someone from the brink of death.
"Merrill!" My voice broke on the call, and though it was scarcely loud enough to be heard over the battle cries, clashing metal and crushing armor, it had pricked the ear of the elf enough to draw her attention. Large hazel eyes grew even larger when they drew to the source of the cry, the small being sprinting to the other side of Fenris, frantic words coming quickly in a tongue I did not understand.
The Dalish fell beside Fenris, words finally slowing enough for me to understand. "What happened?!"
I shook my head. "Can you heal him?" I managed to get out, more as a question of ability than as a favor.
"Lethallan, I don't think – I… I've never…"
"Can you do it with blood magic?" She stalled, lips quivering with a response. "Merrill!"
"Maybe... Hawke, I don't know if –"
"Merrill, now!"