"The templars will engage the apostate mages surrounding the Gallows," Knight-Captain Cullen said. "There's surely blood mages among them, and this is over before it starts if they get control of you."

Vashti nodded, staring intently at forbidding building still several hexes away. They were about to leave the safe areas and enter those controlled by the rebel mages; this was one final chance to repeat the battle plan and make any changes. "We'll go into the Gallows, find the abomination, and kill it."

"Will you reconsider taking me along?" Cullen asked.

Vashti shook her head. "Ariane is an allan'isa; she can do what you templars do."

"Having more than one templar is a good idea, under the circumstances." Cullen crossed his arms. "And he's killed many of my men."

"If this doesn't work, the templars will need leadership - to fight or to evacuate the city. They'll need you to provide it." Vashti nodded at Ariane's wisdom. Her own reasons did not sound nearly so pleasant - although he had, through personal strength, survived his last encounter with a tower full of demons, blood mages, and abominations, he had been damaged. She did not want to find out how badly in the middle of a fight.

"That... is a fair point," Cullen admitted. "Although I would prefer to ensure that this does work."

"If I have to sit this out..." Guard-Captain Aveline groused.

"You do," Vashti said, pointing toward Lowtown. "When we have the charm, we will march with your guards to this entry to the undercity."

"We'll clear the undead en route. And," Aveline sighed, "keep it clear for your return."

"We appreciate that," Ariane put in.

"Well, I'd feel awfully stupid if you actually managed to stop Hawke but got taken out by a skeleton when you limped back here."

"Aw, cheer up." Varric nudged her. "I'll be here to keep you company."

Aveline frowned down at him. "You're not going with them?"

The dwarf gave his head a small shake. "Nah."

"But Varric -"

"I'm a dwarf who knows his limitations. I can't shoot Daisy, Aveline."

The guard-captain placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "She's with Hawke, and responsible for -"

"I know," Varric cut her off, turning away and shrugging out from under her hand. "Which is why Bianca and I aren't objecting to this little outing more strenuously. But there's more to the story, I just know it. She's not bad."

Vashti snorted; Varric eyed her sideways, but said nothing more. They'd already had that conversation.

"I've known her for years, and I'm telling you: she's not a bad person."

Vashti threw her arms open wide in pure frustration. "Some of them weren't even armed! How could it have been 'self-defense'?"

"Look, I wasn't there. And I'm... I'm not sure I should totally believe Hawke's account of things anymore. But it crushed her, I'm telling you. She mourned them all; not exactly what you'd expect from a monstrous killer, right? She never hated them for exiling her; she always missed them and just wished they'd let her go home."

She crossed her arms and squinted, unwilling to let any of her anger go. "She could have. They were guarding the demon against her return. If she had just agreed to leave with them, they could have all come home!"

"It wasn't just the demon." Varric sighed and rubbed his temples. "You're not going to like this part."

"There is no part of this that I like!"

"Right. Well. Merrill thought she needed the demon's help because she was trying to repair a piece of that magic mirror you and your friend found."

For a moment, she couldn't breathe. The tainted eluvian that had stolen Tamlen, sickened her near to death, caused her to be sent out of the clan to the Grey Wardens, and even in fragments had turned another unfortunate clan into ghouls? Merrill had tried to save it?

She stared, and Varric shrugged apologetically. "She thought it was really important elven history. She said she'd cleansed the darkspawn taint from it - that's how the demon helped her the first time. It taught her... it taught her how."

Air came back in a rush. "Demons... demons teach blood magic." Memories of an old, old shemlen mage, the smell of blood and lightning, and caustic fire in her blood. "They don't understand the taint."

"She lived with the thing for years and never turned into a ghoul, so I guess it worked. Anyway, it wasn't really about the demon. It was always about knowledge, and preserving your history, and saving the mirror, and the Keeper didn't want her to. The demon was... just a tool, I think."

And then she laughed. Laughed until Varric left her, laughed until her stomach hurt, laughed until it turned into choking sobs again. Because there was a beautiful intact eluvian in the Hinterlands, taken from Drake's Fall. Morrigan had said it would not work again - but they also had the Lights of Arlathan and Finn's magic spell that would find the other eluvians connected to it.

If they had just come home...

She laughed, because someone had to be the Dread Wolf's voice in this world, and it was a very pretty trick indeed.

The two captains departed to see to their troops, Varric stumping along with Aveline. Vashti nodded, satisfied, and regarded her two friends. "One of you has to come back. If this does not work, they will need to know why we failed."

"Actually, one of us needs to come back," Finn corrected her.

"And it probably won't be me," Ariane said, rubbing the back of her neck.

Vashti scowled. "You will live," she said, more hotly than she'd meant to.

"Look." Ariane held out both her hands, palms up. "If things are going so badly that we're losing, retreating... you have the best chance of making it back."

She looked down at Ariane's hands, then up into her fair, open face. How could she suggest this? "No."

"Yes," Finn insisted. "If we get to that stage, it'll be because I can't heal any more. Which means I'll be out of mana. No haste spell, no rejuvenation spell, no repulsion glyphs. I'll be out of breath and overwhelmed in short order."

"I would have to brute-force my way out as well," Ariane said. "Of the three of us, you're the one who can disappear, without magic. You can escape and hide, and make your way back without being seen."

She looked down at her feet, head shaking back and forth, back and forth. She didn't want to hear this. "No. No."

"One of us has to make it back," Finn repeated, slowly, mercilessly. "Unless you've already fallen, it should be you. Just from logic."

It cut like betrayal. Her head snapped up, face contorted into something ugly, made of anger and grief. "No!" Finn fell back a step. "I will not... will not leave..." her "...you, either of you, behind!" Not like Tamlen or Varel or Anders (so I thought) or Ashalle and all of them...

"Perhaps I may be of assistance." Outsider, intruder, stranger - a better target for her ire. She growled at Fenris, and Ariane lifted an arm as a barrier between them, giving her an incredulous stare.

Finn - Finn- simmered. "I'll be having my throat crushed by demon-possessed corpses today, but thanks for the offer."

"Both of you! Enough!" Ariane sounded more exasperated than irritated. She smiled an apology at Fenris (smiled, her face like the sun, and the light reflected from his eyes; he was handsome, strong and deep-voiced, and she smiled at him and Vashti growled again) and said, "They don't always play well with others."

"I would like to be included in this round." Fenris's return smile was a small thing, a slight lift of the lip, but unmistakable. "As I feel I incurred a debt after our last hand."

"Our last - what, excuse me?"

"Hand. Of cards," Finn said. Vashti almost nodded; Alistair had tried to get her to engage in shuffling the patterned pieces of paper with Leliana and Oghren during the Blight, but the game had been frustrating and complicated. "It's a human gaming term," Finn went on. "He's speaking metaphorically."

"Indeed. You did what I could not - kill Danarius." He sounded so bitter, Vashti was momentarily unsure he was glad that the man was dead.

Ariane shrugged. "Well, he was a blood mage, wasn't he? It's not your fault if he thralled you."

"He didn't," Fenris spat, glowering at the ground. "Not with magic. For years, I planned how I would kill him and end his dominion over me. But in the end," his lip curled again, this time in a sneer, "I could not even raise a hand to him. And I will never know if I ever could."

"This is really not the time or the place to work out your adequacy issues," Finn said archly.

"That is not what I meant!" Fenris glared daggers at the mage. "I can only observe that I placed my trust and well-being too quickly in the hands of yet another mage. Perhaps I... " He thought the better of whatever he was about to say and shook his head. "No matter. Hawke betrayed me. If I cannot have Danarius, I would have her. And more to the point - I will stand between you and her, should the worst happen."

"You say that," Vashti said, unconvinced.

"I say it, and I mean it," the Tevinter elf replied, raising his head to look down at her. "Hawke does not have the... the hold over me that Danarius did. I will not falter. I will have victory or death - or I fear my ghosts will never be laid to rest."

Finn mumbled something behind her that might have been, "Curtain, end Act Two," but she had no idea what that meant. She turned to eyeball the mage. "Can you work with him?"

Finn looked over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. "Yes, but I'm not certain the reverse is true."

"Vashti, can I have a word?" She nodded and Ariane drew her a few steps away to speak confidentially. "I would like to have him along. He's a strong sword; he knows all three of the mages but has no lingering affection for them, like Varric or even Aveline. And I..." She hesitated and glanced over at Fenris. "I think it's right."

If Finn and Ariane had no objections, she had every intention of taking the elf up on his offer to die in her friends' stead. She frowned for entirely different reasons, but Ariane didn't realize that and hastened to convince her. "He speaks more passionately about freedom than any flat-eared elf I've ever met," she continued. "He understands the cages that cannot be seen, the prisons of the mind, and is trying so hard to fight his way out of them..." She looked at Vashti, earnest and open. "This will help him, I think. And us - I wouldn't even suggest it if I thought I couldn't fight well alongside him, the risks are too high."

She only heard the last bit faintly, even as she nodded sharply and stalked back to Finn and Fenris, leaving Ariane somewhat bewildered behind her.

She knew Ariane had a compassionate soul. It was her way to feel the pain of the People, and it drove her need to protect them.

But she could have gone her whole life long without having seen that light in her eyes, the same light she had once seen in Flemeth's hovel, that she had so long treasured as hers alone. Empathy, admiration, and a promise of better tomorrows was in it. Brighter than the sun, fairer than the moon, and so beautiful that when the haunting liquid notes of the Old Gods' song pulled at her dreams, the memory of those eyes that diminished it to hollow echoes and empty promises.

She had thought, even if nothing else was possible, that those eyes, that light, had been hers alone.

It was not so.

"...and I don't think I'm spoiled, thank you very much!"

Vashti brushed roughly past an affronted Finn and shot the elf with whom he was arguing a dark look. "Come," she barked, because declining his offer would change nothing of what she had seen. "They wait on us."