...A forest again. Not the alien jungle of Fenris's dream, but a nice normal forest, with ash trees above and brown leaf litter underfoot. A stream trickled merrily nearby, and the late afternoon sun was golden and thick.
A loud cry ahead startled him into motion. He had, so far, interrupted the others' dreams before Xebenkeck's minions brought in the crisis that was meant to tempt them to turn to her for aid. Had his lucky streak run out? He readied a repulsion glyph and forced more length into his strides, bursting onto the scene to find...
That, ah. That wasn't a cry of pain.
He made out the tangle of limbs, light and dark, and the two familiar faces, and reflexively looked away. Just because there was no privacy in the Circle didn't mean that it wasn't rude to stare. Almost as quickly, he looked back - not from lascivious interest (no, really!) but because the thing that looked like Ariane was a demon, and it wasn't terribly bright not to keep his eyes on it, reflexes or no.
A water-rounded stone whizzed past his ear. "Leave," Vashti seethed, crouched on the ground with one hand splayed protectively (or possessively?) on 'Ariane's' prone, bare shoulder.
"I, um." He coughed into his fist. "I didn't realize. I'm... very sorry, Vashti." Sorry on more levels than he could readily count. How long had this torch been burning? Did Ariane even know? He certainly hadn't guessed, but he never had been able to keep track of who was chasing after whom in the Tower.
"Just go," the Warden gritted, turning away from him.
"I can't," Finn said miserably.
"GO!" Vashti was on her feet, three quick paces putting her right into his personal space, teeth bared, fists clenched, corded muscles bunched and ready to strike. For some reason, what he noticed was that her hair was loose, falling softly to her chin instead of pulled tightly back. It just wasn't right...
"You really should go," 'Ariane' said from where she reclined on the ground. "You won't win this one."
Finn's eyes widened in horror, then narrowed with verb conjugations. "I won't, will not, as in, it hasn't happened yet. She hasn't agreed to -"
Vashti hit him. In the waking world, the punch would have floored him. Here, he staggered back two steps, rubbing his jaw. "We're in the Fade!" he said, raising his voice in anger. This wasn't the first time the Warden had struck him, and the habit was not endearing. "Hasn't this happened to you before? It's a trap."
Vashti looked around, looked behind her at the demon, who shrugged. The scene rippled with disbelief...
"No." Vashti shook her head back and forth, stepping back. Eyes squeezed shut, she gripped her head in her hands and chanted, "No, no, no, no..." Finn wet his lips, unsure if this was progress or failure. The demon looked altogether too serene for his liking. Then Vashti balled her hands into fists, threw her head back and screamed at the sky: "NO!" Her eyes flew open and she leapt for him, fingers curved into claws; Finn got the repulsion glyph up just in the nick of time. The Warden bounced inelegantly back.
"It's not real!" he shouted at her.
"I do not care!" she screamed back, and to his surprise he saw tears in her eyes. "Leave us and go!"
"Vashti, you'll -"
"What, die? Better now, here, happy, than under the earth torn apart by darkspawn," she hissed. The air shimmered and twisted, and her good Dalish longbow was in her hands, an arrow on the string. Finn risked a glance at the demon, who was smirking. "I should have been dead long ago."
Missile shield spells were wonderful for avoiding fire in large combat situations; not so wonderful for avoiding a marksman who could put an arrow in his eye at a hundred yards. "Vashti. Vashti, don't shoot," he said, holding up his hands.
"Then go."
"I don't think I can!" Finn protested, a little frantically. He had no idea how he moved from one dream to another. He couldn't will it if he wanted to.
"Just shoot him," the demon advised. "He'll wake up in his mortal body."
But I might wake up Tranquil! Finn opened his mouth to protest - too slow. He had only sputtered, "But!" when Vashti gave a curt nod and loosed the arrow. Finn flinched -
- the arrow splintered, shattering against a marble statue that simply hadn't been there a second before. No, not a statue - it was burning with magical power. A spirit in the form of a statue. Standing behind it - her? - Finn still identified ancient Tevinter drapery, a lamp held aloft in the left hand, and an oval-shaped hoop on a short handle in the other.
A mirror, he realized abruptly, as the statue stepped forward toward the Warden and the demon scrambled to its feet. The Light of Knowledge, that lamp, that was the giveaway. A mirror with no glass that shows what is rather than what we wish to see. Those were the attributes of Truth as the old poets had personified her.
Or, in the tongue of the magisters: Vera.
The light of the lamp fell on 'Ariane' and burned away the assumed form, revealing the shape of a desire demon. "This is what you want so badly?" Vera asked. "This is what she is."
"Trespasser!" the demon hissed. Finn leaned out from behind the cover Vera provided and launched a flying chunk of rock at it. Hit, the thing screeched; Vashti sobbed, bow dropping from her fingers. Vera knelt as the elf sank to the ground, murmuring quietly to her. If Vera could talk sense into her, Finn could handle the demon. A neutralization glyph and a flurry of arcane bolts banished it nicely.
Taking a deep breath, he looked down to see Vashti staring dead-eyed into Vera's mirror. "...in the waking world," the spirit said.
"If I remain here," the Warden said dully, "and she wakes, my body will be used against her."
"That is the most likely outcome," the spirit agreed.
Vashti closed her eyes again, tears spilling down her cheeks. Finn turned away from the sight, feeling very much the intruder. "I love her."
"And she loves you, although not exactly in the way you wish. The demon wishes only to use you."
"I hate you."
"No, you don't." There was a sound like the grinding of a pestle in a mortar, footfalls, and then a hard, cool hand on his shoulder. "I cannot stay," Vera told him. "The Forbidden One will destroy me if I linger too long in her domain."
Finn nodded, torn between turning to see her face and not. "Thank you," he managed. "For your help."
"Your thoughts are on me daily, and even your staff honors my name. There are few enough so devoted to vera," she said, and he thought he could hear a smile in the voice. "But this is the limit of my aid."
"I'm very glad to have met you," he said, finally turning over his shoulder. He got the briefest glimpse of a smooth marble face of perfect symmetry before...
…movement without motion...
...Explosions and screaming and fire! Finn flinched and ducked for cover behind something that was large and solid-looking. He seemed to have entered Merrill's dream as whatever she treasured was being destroyed.
Another dream of a homeland? The city around him looked vaguely like Kirkwall, all pale stone, sharp angles and wide terraces. But the citizens dying horribly in the streets were elves, Dalish elves, perishing under withering attacks of arrows and fire.
Finn peeled himself carefully away from the stone wall to peer around it, then flattened himself back again as a gout of fire rushed past. How was he supposed to find Merrill in this mess, much less get her out of it? In the other nightmares, he'd appeared fairly near the elves. She ought to be somewhere nearby. He could put up a few protective auras and possibly not get cooked and/or pierced out there. Possibly. He should try to see what he could see from cover, first.
The billowing flame and smoke were making that difficult. Waves of enemies that seemed to include humans, qunari and various hideous abominations charged through the plaza. The remaining elvhen defenders fell, and a hideous war-whoop went up...
...and the nightmare faded, the blood and smoke and filth vanishing along with the horde of invaders. The courtyard was suddenly warm and pleasant, filled with bright sun and birdsong, and the Dalish were going about their business. Finn ducked out of hiding, resulting in some scandalized gasps from passerby.
"Finn? What are you doing here?" Merrill, draped in robes of white, sat on a high-backed seat up in a portico running along the front of the very building he'd been cowering against. The reconstructed eluvian stood behind her and to the left. "I haven't seen any of the others since I got here. I thought I was the only one stuck."
"You... know you're in the Fade? The Beyond?" He amended himself to use the Dalish terminology.
"Of course." She sounded a little strained, a little distant. "I've... I've been here before. Do come up here, would you? The killings will begin soon and you're in the line of fire."
Shaking his head in confusion, Finn hitched up the hem of his immaculately clean robe and trotted up the stairs. "Hasn't Xebenkeck tempted you to, you know, accept her help?"
"Yes, naturally," she nodded. "But I've fallen for that twice, now, although I'm not entirely certain Feynriel's dream should count..." She sighed, resting her head on a hand. "It hardly matters. I shan't do it again."
"Wonderful!" Finn beamed and looked around. "Right, so, let's go."
Merrill frowned up at him. "Let's go where?"
"Ehm... I'm not sure," he admitted. "But when the others rejected the dreams, they ended. I think."
"Oh." She looked back out into the streets of the city. "I expect that's because I thought I deserved to stay and see it all burn again and again and again." Before Finn could even begin to marshal an argument for that, she stood. "But I promised, didn't I? To help you, and then to let Vashti... Whatever lies for me Beyond will still be there, after." Merrill raised a bloody hand, and the scene vanished.
They were alone on a foggy plane - not quite alone. The eluvian was there, and then, one by one, the others joined them, stepping out of the mists on their guards. Weapons lowered, slowly, as they recognized each other.
"Are you all real?" Ariane asked. "Is this real, or another trap?"
"I'm mostly sure it's real," Finn said. "Don't agree to take any help from anything named 'Xeben-you-know,' just in case."
There were a few answering grunts of acceptance, and then silence. "Now what." Fenris finally spat the words as if they tasted foul.
Vashti minutely examined one of her arrows, face as composed and closed as usual. "During the Blight, had to kill the demon to get out of the dream."
"We'd be vaporized," Finn said flatly. "We could easily have been killed in the waking world by just the power she projected there, through Hawke. We're only alive because she thought she could use us. Here, we don't have a chance."
"What about that?" Ariane pointed to the eluvian, its shimmering, shifting surface showing little and promising less.
Merrill tilted her head, confused. "You want to call for help?"
"Of course!" Finn's eyes lit up. "She's using that to pull the demons from her realm into the corpses in ours - that's really the eluvian! We're on the other side - we can use it to get home!" He turned to Merrill, who was shaking her head. "They're not just communications devices. They're portals."
"Tamlen did go through the mirror," Merrill said softly.
"He did," Finn nodded. "And now it's our turn."
"Then let us go and leave this place." Fenris strode up to the mirror but paused.
"Do you want me to go first?" Merrill asked. He startled and glared at her, then spat out a really rude bit of Tevine slang and disappeared into the rippling violet surface. She sighed and gave the frame a brief caress. "I should have realized," she said, then stepped forward and vanished.
"Next?" Finn glanced toward Vashti and Ariane expectantly.
The Warden-Commander of the Dalish stared at the restored mirror as if it were a high dragon. Of course she had a history with the relics, but... oh, but this was it, these were pieces of the mirror, the same one they'd found shattered and used together with the Lights of Arlathan to find the Witch of the Wilds at Drake's Fall.
Ariane sheathed one of her blades and held out a hand. "We'll go together."
Vashti looked at the hand, raised her eyes to Ariane's face and gave the smallest smile of gratitude as she threaded her fingers with the other woman's. Tangled together, light and dark. Finn turned sharply toward the eluvian, feeling again as if he was intruding on something private. They passed him, and first Ariane and then Vashti were swallowed up by the artifact.
He stepped forward himself, adjusting his collar nervously. Well. Going to go through an actual eluvian. Face down the deep Fade entity that had nearly killed them once today. Pray to the Maker that all the pieces of their plan were still together, and that Xebenkeck hadn't destroyed the talisman in the meanwhile.
Even though it meant little in the Fade, he took a deep breath before passing through the portal.