50. Transformation

Kazar twirled the long, sinewy oak branch in his hands. He could feel the natural energy pulsing through it. It was like holding a piece of the planet's soul: ancient and powerful. "I have to say, I'm really starting to see the benefit of dealing with demonic beings. I don't get why the Chantry freaks out so much."

Meila glanced over her shoulder at him from ahead on the trail. "Do all demonic beings speak in rhyme and impart magical gifts?"

"How should I know? I've only met three that didn't try to kill me." Kazar paused, then chuckled. "Or that I didn't try to kill first, actually." He waved the staff, letting his mana channel down it. The magic burst out of the twisted end in a green puff that hit the ground and immediately blasted up into a mire of vines and weeds. Kazar giggled—not his usual destructive style, but satisfying in its own way. "But really, trading a bone necklace for an oversized acorn? And then the acorn for one of the receiver's limbs? I'm starting to think this forest has an adverse effect on the sanity of all creatures that dwell in it. But if I get a staff out of the deal, I say it's a fair enough trade!" He barked a laugh.

"By all rights," Finian grumbled, "a fair trade would mean that the staff goes to me. Since it was my necklace that was traded."

"Ha! And you're going to tell me that the necklace was legitimately yours to begin with? You, with the stickiest fingers on this side of the Frostback Mountains?"

"Good point. I could just steal the staff."

"And what would you do with a magic staff?"

"Use it as a walking stick, obviously." Fin cast a flat glance over at Kazar, and the mage sighed through his nose. Finian's banter had been lackluster today; the other elf seemed to be in a bad mood or something. It had been hours since he'd even tried to crack a smile.

It was a pity. Ever since that night at the Dalish camp, an ease had settled between the three of them. Kazar felt… like he belonged to something. It was a strange sensation, but not an unwelcome one. "Okay, I give. What's wrong?"

"Why would you think that anything's wrong?" Fin asked sharply.

"Was it that hermit's nosy questions? Because I am all for going back and giving him a little shock to the nuts, if you want. 'Have you ever been in love?' Sheesh."

"It's not an unreasonable question," Fin said defensively. "Or at least it wouldn't be, if you'd ever made any sort of real connection with another person in your life."

"Whoa, hey!" Kazar was getting pissed off, because that one had actually hurt. "Okay, what crawled up your ass and died this morning?"

Finian blinked, then looked away. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I guess I'm not feeling well."

"You guess?"

Meila studied Finian over her shoulder. "I had noticed that you did not eat much of your breakfast. This is rarely the case, for Grey Wardens. Perhaps you're hungry? Would you like to stop for lunch?"

Finian went a little green. "No, no. I don't think hunger is the problem."

"So you get a little tummyache and start sniping at people?" Kazar scoffed. "Wow, Garott's right. Deep down, you're kind of an asshole."

"Are you seriously accusing me of that right now?" Finian snapped. "You?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?!"

"Dar'atisha, both of you. Calm down." Meila had stopped trying to lead them through the forest, and instead turned to give them her full attention. She frowned thoughtfully at Finian. "I admit that Kazar has a point. You are uncharacteristically sharp-edged today."

Fin sighed and looked away. "What, so I have to be all smiles and empathy all the time? I'm not allowed to have bad days too?"

"We only wish to help, lethallin. Tell us what's wrong. Perhaps we can ease it."

Finian's right hand started rubbing the back of his left. "I… don't know. I'm just not up to all that joking around today. Everything's so… grating."

"Welcome to my world," Kazar said with a snort.

"Maybe I am sick. I dunno." He cast a look at Kazar. "Is being a hot-headed ass contagious? If so, I think I know where I got it."

"Oh, ha ha. And you said you weren't up to joking today."

Meila frowned. "Why are you rubbing your hand?"

Finian froze, like an apprentice who had just been caught sneaking into the storeroom. "W-what?"

"You're rubbing your hand, lethallin. Is it paining you?"

Finian blinked, staring down at it. "I… I guess. Swiftrunner got his claws into it during our fight with him."

"Why did you not tell anyone? We could have healed it at camp."

Fin shrugged. "It wasn't anything too bad… not like what you had. I didn't want to bother anyone over something so small."

Meila was already digging through her herbal pouch. She had learned a couple basic herbal remedies from Lanaya, Zathrian's apprentice. In a forest inhabited by bears, sylvans, and the occasional darkspawn, it had come in handy in the two days since. Meila pulled out a sprig and started toward Fin.

"It's fine," Finian said, testy again. He held the injured arm protectively to his body. "It's not a big deal. You don't need to waste our resources on it."

"Herbal resources are hardly a problem in the Brecilian Forest," Meila said flatly. She held out her palm pointedly, and Finian placed his wrist in her hand with a sigh. Deftly, Meila uncinched his left arm's dagger sheath and handed it off to Kazar.

Kazar took the leather wrist sheath carefully, trying not to trigger the mechanism that would make the dagger pop out. That sounded like a good way to cut his hand open.

Meila, meanwhile, was rolling up the other elf's sleeve. As she did, she froze, and Kazar knew the Dalish elf well enough to know that was as close to jaw-dropping shock as Meila ever got.

"What's wrong?" He prompted. Finian looked up at her anxiously.

"You said Swiftrunner gave you these?"

"Yes."

"With his claws?"

"Of course. Or do you think I wouldn't remember him goring my arm?"

Kazar peered over Meila's shoulder, and immediately saw why Meila was worried. The scratches on Finian's forearm weren't healing properly… or at all. They were red and raised, like the arm had just been injured earlier that day, and they were threatening to burst open at the slightest movement.

Meila went pale and leaned in close to inspect the back of Fin's hand. "Is this... a tooth mark?"

Finian and Kazar paled as well, and Kazar involuntarily took a hasty step back.

"He… he did have my hand in his jaws for a second… but he just held it! He didn't break skin!"

"He wouldn't have to," Kazar realized shakily, studying Finian for any outward sign of contamination. "If he'd already clawed you open, and then a little saliva seeped into the claw wounds…"

Meila nodded, her expression stony as she raised her eyes to Fin's. "That would explain-"

"Explain what?" Finian snapped, snatching his hand away. "I'm not at my best, and that means I'm a werewolf? I'm allowed to be in a bad mood!"

"Defensive, aren't we?" Kazar snorted, though he found very little funny about this situation.

Meila's voice remained even and calm. "I would like to take you back to camp, lethallin. Just in case."

"We won't get that far," Kazar pointed out. "The Swiftrunner attack was days ago. There's no way we'll get back in time."

"I'm not a werewolf!" Fin skittered back, holding his hand against his chest and glaring at both of them. Kazar may not have been an accomplished liar like Fin, but he knew enough about bluster to know that the other elf was terrified.

"Calm down, lethallin." Meila was gritting her teeth. "You are being irrational-"

"I'd hardly trust you to be the judge of rationality," Fin spat. "You'd mistrust your own mother if she spent a year or two among the shemlen. I'm surprise you suffer Kazar and me, much less the rest of the Wardens. You must scrub yourself raw every night, trying to get rid of our quickling corruption."

Meila's face went red, though Kazar couldn't read her well enough to know whether she was angry or embarrassed. "That's enough!"

"Right, get righteously angry. It's the only emotion you know, except maybe pride and pig-headedness. I can't figure out how you managed to stay with the Wardens at Ostagar for a full month, and yet none of them tried to slap some sense into you."

"How dare-!"

"Oh, not because of any racial inferiority. The opposite, actually. You think you're better than everyone else, and it gets really obnoxious. It's no wonder everyone thinks you're such a stone cold bitch. You're never going to belong with the rest of us. Ever. And you no longer fit in with the Dalish. So where do you belong, Meila Mahariel?"

Meila opened and closed her mouth a couple times, squeaking once. Kazar barely stifled a snort of laughter, but even that turned Finian's attention to him.

Fin practically hissed. "Why hide your laughter, Kazar? You love seeing innocent woodland creatures get torn apart—why not your companions as well?"

"Going to go into how much of an arrogant prick I am, are you?"

"No." Fin's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "You know that. You count on it. Because otherwise people would see that, underneath that fire and noise, you're just a scared little boy who's never had anyone love him."

Kazar bit down a twinge of fear, quickly replacing it with anger. "Would a scared little boy melt your face off?" he growled.

"Yes, if that scared little boy happens to be a mage who over-compensates for his weaknesses with magical overkill. But I suppose it makes sense that you would, since you only feel in control of your own life when you're chucking fireballs."

"Shut-!"

"It's no wonder you didn't want to go back to the Tower, when all they want to do there is control your magic—the only thing that makes you feel like your life is worth living. What are you without it, Kazar? No family. No friends. No one who cares whether you live or die or become a soulless, lifeless Tranquil… even those you thought you could trust were willing to do that to you, weren't they?"

"SHUT UP!" Kazar was horrified to find tears in his eyes. He channeled that horror into anger, then changed that anger into a blast of fire aimed at Finian.

The thief anticipated it, leaping easily upward and grabbing a tree branch. He flipped up into the tree, glaring down at the both of them. "There you go again: trying to hide behind your magic. I know something about hiding emotions, so realize that it comes from a knowledgeable source when I say you're awful at it." He ducked behind the trunk to dodge another blast, hopping deftly into a different tree as that one caught fire. "And now you'd destroy one of the few people who actually could give a damn, just because of a couple hurtful truths?"

"You're not Finian!" Kazar growled, blasting again a little wildly. "You're some Rage-Demon-twisted abomination! Get out of my friend this instant, or I'll do to you what I did to the last Rage Demon I fought!" Finian had disappeared into the trees, so Kazar stopped to catch his breath. His pool of magic was getting dangerously low. The forest around him burned quietly.

Then, light laughter echoed throughout the trees, bouncing off the trunks so that its source was impossible to pinpoint. Kazar and Meila both looked around warily, unnerved.

"I'm not Finian?" Fin's voice sounded like its usual cheery self, and Kazar shrieked as the thief dropped out of a tree right in front of him. Finian smiled brightly and assumed a relaxed position with his hands in his pockets—had Kazar not been in the middle of a very disturbing conversation with the thief, he'd have sworn Fin looked completely normal. "Or could it be that you never really knew me at all?" Finian's smile turned wistful, and he gazed down at his injured hand. "Could it be that Garott's right, and I'm just a puppeteer so used to pulling strings that I don't even notice my own fingers anymore?"

The smile dropped altogether, replaced with an eerily blank expression that he now turned on Kazar. The mage shuddered, because those brown eyes seemed to gaze into parts of him that he kept thoroughly locked up, even from himself.

This close, Kazar could also see how pale Finian was.

"So werewolves are abominations…" Fin said thoughtfully, as if discussing the weather. "But so are sylvans, right? What makes the Grand Oak so special, I wonder?"

"Special how?" Meila hazarded from somewhere behind Kazar.

Fin's eyes flicked over Kazar's shoulder, presumably to meet hers. "He listens to reason, and just wants to live in peace. And, of course, he can speak."

"So could Swiftrunner."

And Fin grinned, bright and… relieved? Now Kazar was just confused. And still unnerved. "I suppose he could, couldn't he?" He turned to Kazar, and chuckled. What? "Do you think he'll give you any gifts, if you give him an acorn?"

"What is wrong with you?"

Fin ignored the question, again looking past him, at Meila. "A spirit protects this forest, right? So why do you think it's protecting the werewolves, too?"

"It wasn't protecting them," Meila's voice said uncertainly.

Finian shrugged, his eyes now lifting to watch the clouds. "It turned us around when we were looking for them, then didn't interfere when we abandoned the search and headed straight back to the Dalish. If I were a forest spirit who was up to mischief, I would have probably done the exact opposite."

Kazar was still reeling from the biting words from before. "Hello? Can we get back to the topic of you being a werewolf?"

Finian's eyes dropped down to meet Kazar's, and his head cocked to one side thoughtfully. "I lied, you know. To the hermit."

"Wh-what? By the Fade, you've completely lost your mind, haven't you?"

"When he asked if we'd ever been in love. All three of us said 'no.'"

"And I meant it," Kazar said, confused.

"Yes, you did." Finian's gaze flicked back to Meila. "Both of you. But I was lying."

Despite himself, Kazar felt a twinge of curiosity. For all the talking Fin tended to do, it was rarely about anything personal. "You've… been in love?"

Finian nodded, starting to undo the buckles of his remaining wrist sheath. "Well, puppy love, I guess. I wasn't much older than you, and hadn't ever really thought about such things before." His leather bracer popped off, and he handed it to Kazar. The mage took it, bemused.

"In Denerim, there was this tavern down on the waterfront. The seediest dive you've ever seen, but they didn't mind elves coming in and speaking their minds. That was actually part of the appeal for the human patrons, because drunken elves are an excellent source of information on what goes on behind closed doors in the noble estates. No one ever notices the servants, after all."

Fin pulled off his pack and started digging around in it. "Anyway, the point is, after my mother died, my cousins and me would go down to this tavern and get completely sloshed, at least until the guards came in after dark to drag all wayward elves back to the Alienage." He pulled a coil of rope out of his pack and held it out to Meila. "Tie me up."

Silently, Meila stepped forward and took the rope. Finian held his arms out with his wrists pressed together.

Kazar warily shifted his grip on the dagger sheaths in his hands. "Does this story have a point?"

"Other than distracting me?" Finian said grimly. "Not really. But unless you want me to start either hyperventilating or trying to chew off my own arm in a minute, I'd really like to continue. If it's not too much trouble."

Despite himself, Kazar smirked. "Go ahead. I won't stop you."

"Much obliged. Anyway, so Soris, Shianni, and me—my two cousins, remember?—would head down to this dive of a place almost every night, because my mother had just died, and Shianni's answer to unhappy emotions has always been 'drown them in booze until they're happy again'…" He suddenly paled, frowning. "Maker, I hope Soris has been keeping her stash out of her reach." He shook his head to clear it.

"So one evening, I'm playing cards with a couple other elves from out of the city—and making a bit of a killing, since I knew a thing or two about sleight-of-hand by that point—all while doing my damnedest not to fall sideways out of my chair. Then, one of my current opponents leaves, and this human with bright red hair and a devious grin sits down in the free chair, plays a round, and then calls me out on my cheating."

Kazar couldn't suppress a laugh. "Your 'puppy love' busted you?"

"Well, nothing so dramatic. More of a comment on how nimble my fingers were… followed by a whisper of how useful that might be for 'other things.'" He swallowed, nervously eyeing the knots that Meila was tying around his arms. "I was quite drunk, and my cousins were distracted with a bawdy ballad by the bar, so it didn't take much for him to lure me, giggling, out of the tavern and into a back alley."

"Wait wait wait… Him?"

At that, Fin aimed a little smirk up at Kazar, though there was something challenging in his eyes. "Does that make you uncomfortable?"

Kazar didn't bother hiding his disgust, because that was far better than the spike of old fear that churned low in his stomach. "I don't need to hear about two men doing that!"

"Then I'll spare you the graphic details." Finian was full-on grinning, now. "Anyway, I snuck out to that seedy tavern every evening after that, whether my cousins were going or not. We would meet in the alley behind the tavern, and soon we were doing more than just messing around. It turned out he wasn't half bad with a dagger."

"Oh by the Fade!"

Finian laughed. "That's wasn't a euphemism, honest! Aiden always wore this finely jeweled dagger at his hip, though I suppose that should have been a giveaway, but I'll get to that. The two of us would duel, which was something I'd been sorely missing since my mother's death. Aiden was also the one who taught me how to pick locks and pockets." He sighed, turning wistful. "Everyone always assumed my mother taught me that, but she'd probably have been ashamed. She knew how to, I think, but she never would have wanted me to turn into a criminal." He glanced at Meila, softly saying, "My legs, too." Meila nodded grimly and bent to start tying Fin's ankles together.

"So what happened?" Kazar asked, because Finian looked distracted by the rope wrapping around his ankles.

"One night, we were cornered on the streets by a contingent of household guards, looking for their wayward lordling. As it turned out, Aiden was a slumming noble… the son of some bann who had an estate in the palace district. I never did pay much attention to the names and crests, to be honest. He was apparently studying in Denerim for a couple months, and had been off his father's leash for the time we'd known one another. But now his father was in the city, and wouldn't allow his son to spend his time in seedy taverns and suffer the company of knife-ears."

This time, it was Meila who asked, "So you ceased relations?"

He laughed, though it was thin. Finian was starting to look pale and shakey. "Oh, no. Actually, it got more interesting after that. See, now, instead of sneaking out to the docks, I was sneaking into his estate in the palace district every night. It certainly honed my stealth and lockpicking skills, I'll tell you that, and most of my climbing was learned from trying to climb up the stone wall into a second story window near his chambers.

"And some of the treasures that they kept just lying around! I swear, Aiden would put the most random trinkets out along my path, just so he could chuckle when he found them in my pockets later." He sighed wistfully. "He never did begrudge me anything I stole… always said it was the least he could do."

"You really cared for this shemlen, then?" Meila said, and Kazar definitely detected a note of suspicion or bitterness or something in her voice.

"I said it was puppy love, didn't I?" He forced a shrug, though he now looked pained. Kazar wasn't sure whether the pain was his current condition or something to do with the story. "I was young and ignorant of human culture; I didn't really know what I was getting into. He never made an issue about my race… at least, not that I knew about." He winced, and this time Kazar figured it was the story.

"So he turned out to be a shemlen pig?" Kazar guessed, the old elven word feeling strange—but not wrong—on his tongue.

"Pretty much." Finian tugged at the ropes around his wrist, swallowing. "Like I said, elven servants notice a lot, and they'll talk about it freely once you give them a little drink or gold. One way or another, our little affair became known to the noble father, who… wasn't pleased that his son was dabbling with an elven man. A knife-ears and a male… one would have been a scandal, but both was a downright crime, apparently." He snorted a laugh, but it was forced.

"He burst into Aiden's room with a full squad of household guards and turned us both right out of the bed. I was dragged, plumb naked, down to the household dungeons. And as they carried me away, I heard them arguing—him denying that there was anything between us, claiming I was just a male street-walker he'd picked up, because that was apparently preferable to him actually caring for an elf. I'm told he was shipped out to Orlais the very next day… for his studies. I never saw him again."

His eyes grew haunted, and he kept tugging at the ropes around his wrists.

"So…" Kazar hazarded, guessing that the hardest part wasn't even told yet. "…how long were you in that dungeon?"

"Four days." Fin's voice shook. "I was locked up in pitch darkness for four days, in a cell so small that I couldn't even lay out flat on the floor. I didn't see anyone else the entire time—they didn't feed me or check on me. I think they might have put me on trial for theft—they did go through my pockets after all—if they'd thought I was worth the trouble. But I was an elf… I would have starved and rotted in that little cell, and they figured no one would have noticed or cared. Because who cares if another knife-ears dies in another fetid hole?" Fin's voice seethed with bitterness.

"That is awful," Meila said. "That is exactly why we Dalish fight the shemlen, because we can not stand to see our kin treated like that."

Fin nodded distractedly, his eyes staring desolately at something the other two couldn't see.

"How did you escape?" Kazar whispered, feeling a twinge of sympathy that was very unlike him. Still, he couldn't imagine being so trapped and powerless.

"I didn't," Fin said hoarsely. "Valendrian, the Alienage elder, interceded on my behalf. Again, it was the elven servants knowing things… he found out where I was being kept and paid for my freedom right out of his own coffers. My first sight after four days of captivity and darkness was of him standing sternly in the doorway, giving me that 'oh, Finian' look of his.

"I swore, after that day, that I'd give back to the Alienage in what ways I could… sneaking expensive trinkets and useful items into the Alienage when they were called for. Because of what Valendrian did for me. And for myself, I swore that I wouldn't ever lose control of a situation like that again. No one could ever talk for me, and I certainly wouldn't let myself fall into a position where I would be at someone else's mercy." He pressed his lips together, looking down at his bound wrists. "I think I'm about to break that vow."

And that's when Kazar realized just what was going on. "How long until you… uh…"

"I dunno." Finian tugged at the ropes again, visibly shaking now. "But I can feel it. And I… Maker, don't these seem a little tight?" Finian struggled with the ropes, white as a sheet, and Meila had to grab his arms to still him.

He needed a distraction, Kazar decided. "You know, I was almost put in prison, once."

Finian's eyes darted up toward him. "You… you were?"

"Yep. Knight-Commander Greagoir of the Templars wanted to send me to Aeonar, the mage prison. Would have done it, too, if Duncan hadn't been there."

"Wha-why did he want to do that?" Finian was still pale and shaking, but seemed to be successfully distracted, from both his bindings and his imminent fate.

"Hm… well, I think I'll start from the beginning. I had this friend named Jowan. Failure of a mage, but good minion material, or so I always figured. He tended to follow me around like a loyal dog, which, I admit, was pretty damn flattering. But I never suspected that he was keeping, not one, but two secrets from me…"

And so Kazar told the trembling elf the story of how he'd tried to help a friend escape and had nearly been made Tranquil for it. Finian listened avidly, shaking like a leaf and occasionally wincing in pain. He seemed to have difficulty concentrating, but Kazar kept him occupied by illustrating the basement battles by conjuring flame-formed figures between his hands. As said figures reached the phylactery chamber and destroyed Jowan's leash, Fin laughed with shared relief, though it was an airy, pained sound.

And then, at about the point in the story when Jowan blasted everyone and fled, Finian doubled over and started screaming. Kazar leapt back, but Meila drew her bow off her back, falling into a defensive stance. Watching Fin's lithe form become bulkier and larger, Kazar couldn't bite down a burst of nervousness. Suddenly, the ropes did not look nearly strong enough. Kazar used his staff to pull vines down from the nearby trees and wrapped the transforming figure in them.

By the time Finian was back on his feet, he wasn't Fin anymore, but rather a slavering, furred creature who just happened to have their comrade's brown eyes.

"Do you suppose he's one of the talking ones?" Kazar hazarded weakly.

The werewolf lunged at them with a snarl, the wrappings around its ankle bringing it to the ground. Kazar and Meila both paled as they heard one of the bindings snap almost immediately.

"Guess that's a no." As the werewolf lurched back to its feet, Kazar drew more vines out of the trees, these wrapping around its limbs to hold it to those very trees.

Meila leveled her bow at the thrashing creature. "If he cannot be reasoned with, we must take him out," she said slowly, holding her arrow level with the monster's head. Meila didn't flinch. She never did. She didn't shoot right away either—Kazar wasn't sure he wanted her to.

"Come again?" Kazar winced as a vine snapped, and the werewolf lurched forward a step. Kazar sent another puff of magic from the Grand Oak branch, and roots burst up from the ground, wrapping around the monster's ankles.

The Finian-wolf howled its rage to the sky and thrashed, and the ropes around its wrists gave way with a creak and a final snap. It started clawing at the vines around its arms and shoulders.

"I see little other choice," Meila said grimly. "He's a werewolf now."

"We're trying to lift the curse, aren't we? Once we do, he should—probably—revert back!"

The wolf howled again, kicking at the roots around its feet. Most of the restraining vines and ropes now lay in shredded heaps around it.

"And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? This obviously won't hold him. We need some sort of cage."

Both winced at the thought of subjecting Fin to that, but Kazar wasn't going to let a sob story stop him from doing what he had to. "Then we'll make a cage."

He planted the oak staff in the ground and rolled up his sleeves, then dug deep into his mana. He raised his hands toward the thrashing wolf and infused the earth underneath it with magic. Then, he pulled up, first one handful of earth, then another, then another, until eight pillars of stone rose up around the werewolf, twice the height of the creature.

It was exhausting, Kazar realized, to exhibit that much control over his magic. Yet it was also strangely satisfying, to pull off a reasonably complex task. More satisfying than the simple destruction of a fireball. It was something to ponder, perhaps, when he wasn't in danger of being savaged by a former friend.

The werewolf broke out of the roots and howled, throwing itself against the walls of its stone cage. It tossed itself against one side, then another, snarling and thrashing like the trapped animal it was. The creature wasn't happy about it, but it would hold.

Meila lowered her bow, her brow furrowing as she watched the werewolf pace. "Do you suppose he's in there? Aware?"

"If so, we'll have to apologize to him later… or make him grovel in gratitude for sparing him." Kazar picked up the oak branch, using it to stabilize the earth around the stone pillars. "For now, we've got a white wolf to find."

Meila nodded and, now only two, the Wardens set out to head deeper into the Brecilian Forest. The desolate howl of the creature that had been Finian Tabris echoed among the trees behind them.