AN: FINALLY! I'm so happy to post this last chapter to the story, and I want to thank everyone for their patience.
My beta reader, analect (who is amazing) and I had long discussions about the ending. She felt that it may be divisive considering that when we last left Sammie and Beenie. After consideration for her concerns, I decided to add a bit more content to chapters 41 and 43 - Parts II and III of the ending, respectively. If there's time, please re-read those chapters again, and then see my final thoughts about the ending in the next "chapter". Thanks again for all the positive feedback - I hope the ending of my story satisfies. This has been a wonderful experience for me.
Epilogue
For so long as men have dreamed, we have walked its twisting paths, always as close as our own thoughts, but impossibly separated from our world.
Our world.
Beenie once told me that no one ever truly dies as long they remain in a memory of the living. He recited that quote to me just as he recited the one about the Fade; they were both on some plaques attached to the Circle Tower in Starkhaven, his home. I have never forgotten it.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The magic didn't feel good that day. I mean, it never felt good. I had never liked using magic. It never felt like it was in my hands. Even when I had to heal Beenie and myself, even when I had to start a campfire, even at university in Tevinter when we would change the color of our hair, all of those little things still came from the same place. The edge of my thoughts, somewhere just out of focus, someplace that could overwhelm me.
I was with my master that day. We were doing what we usually did: trying to teach me to control my magic. It was hard for me. When I got scared or mad or started to feel like things were out of control, that was when bad things happened. The vibrations started small, little rumblings that turned into big disasters, destroying everything around me—like the beat of a drum that sounds soft as first, but soon echoes loud enough to the shake the leaves of trees a mile away. I could see it. I could feel it. It tore down walls, turned stone into dust, peeled back skin and tore through muscles and bones. It erased things from existence. It murdered. It's murdered everyone that I have ever loved.
Well, almost everyone.
My master said he could help me control it, but to do that we had to understand it. To understand it, we had to use it, to experiment with it. We had to know what it was capable of, he said. Where it came from. For him, it was like exploring the bowels of a dissected frog. For me, it was like staring into the Void.
He said that he would help me. And because he was a powerful mage who had shielded himself from my power, I believed everything he said. I thought that I could never hurt him. You can't understand what kind of relief it was to meet someone that I didn't fear I'd eventually kill.
Don't let them control you, Beenie said once. I didn't know what he meant then. It's too late now.
So, there we were. I was standing in the circle – that's what we called the practice space, funnily enough. It was just a big round basement room with a chalk outline on the floor. My master was standing just outside of the chalk outline. Candles and incense lined the walls around the room. He had also placed some little things on the floor at his feet. One was a doll, another was a cup... there were other things, but I can't remember what.
He had been meditating all day. That should have been some kind of sign that he was planning something. I should have known. But I was just a kid. I didn't think too much about that stuff.
I started out by doing some deep breathing and concentration exercises. I stretched and relaxed and he began casting some minor spell. I focused on his magic and tried to match it.
It was supposed to be about control. It was the same routine we had for almost two years.
But that last time was different. That last time I felt something... for one second, it felt almost peaceful, the calm before the torrent that ripped through me. It ripped through the room, it shattered the lamps and the mirrors, rattled the doors, and blew out the candles. And it kept going; outside the room, down the hall, up the stairs, out through the windows, shredding everything and everyone in its path until it stretched out so far away and erupted like a starburst in the sky. That eruption broke something that I didn't know could be broken. I was the drum. It came from me.
But I wasn't controlling it. My master was. He ripped it out of me so hard that I felt like I was split in two. When I opened my eyes, I saw that he was holding a knife and his hand was dripping blood over the cup and the doll.
I had no idea that there were people nearby, more than a dozen kept captive, alone, chained to walls in the surrounding rooms. I also didn't know that when they died, frightened and in terrible pain, that my magic would kill me, too. I felt their helplessness. My skin burned with their pain. My head throbbed with their fear. I was with them. We all drowned in it together.
I don't think I realized at the time that I was dead. One second, I was screaming on the floor, and the next, I was here. We all were. Wherever here is. At first, I thought it was the Fade, but it's not. It's different. We can see the Fade, though. It's like we skipped over it.
There's a sadness here. It's in everything. The ground is hard. The air is stale. There is no sun or wind or rainbows. It infects us all.
We all look like we used to, but different. Usually when I destroyed things, I, and everyone around me, would end up burned and bruised. My magic singed away hair until it felt coarse like straw. But not this time. This time, our skin has turned grey instead of pink, our hair has withered to limp oily strands, and our eyes have sunken. This place has changed us, warped us to its twisted shape until we look just like everything else here.
At first, we talked to each other, tried to figure a way out. But eventually, people started to talk less and less. Over time, it became more difficult to hear them when they spoke or see them when they walked past. They were fading away. They look like paper dolls now, like I could sweep them aside and they would flutter off like butterflies caught in the wind. Others have just disappeared. Some say that they went to the city. Others don't seem to care.
With each passing day, I start to think that maybe I'll go to that city. But I don't, because of one thing. It's the same thing that keeps us all here. The only thing that makes this place bearable: we can see through time. We can see everything that's happening and everything that's ever happened. We can see through the ages of the world.
I've seen great big wars around giant castles. I've watched massive storms swallow entire fleets of ships. I've watched winters ice over the mountains and summers melt them away.
I've watched the other people's time. I've seen their children and their parents. I've seen their families back hundreds of years. They've shown me their favorite places and their favorite things. Sunsets and crystal-clear lakes. I've gone to the far corners of the world to watch the smallest insects build the tiniest nests. I've gone to the center of the greatest cities to watch the craziest parties.
I also saw when I was born. I finally saw my family. I had a little sister. I had forgotten about her. My aunt and uncle took her after my parents died.
When I saw how I killed them, I stopped watching my time.
I watched my master for a while, but it wasn't fun to watch him. He's a bad person. I didn't know him at all when I was alive. My brother, Beenie was right about him. Well, Beenie's not really my brother, but he called me his brother once. I met him in a cage when we were both prisoners. He always helped me, watched out for me, made sure I wasn't getting into trouble with the guards. He is big and strong and so he knew how to survive that place. Once, when I dropped my food bowl, he gave me his. No one had ever been so nice to me.
I think about that night that I chose to stay in Tevinter. I think about how he begged me to go with him. But I chose to stay with my master. I was so stupid. I wish I could go back. I would give anything to go back.
I've watched a lot of Beenie's time. I've seen him as a young boy like me and also as a grown man. I watched what happened to him after he left me in Tevinter. In the Silent Plains when he felt so alone. In Nevarra City where he ate a lot of food with his strange aunt. I watched him return to his home in Starkhaven – the most beautiful city I have ever seen! – where he was thrown into another dungeon cell. But that time, he wasn't sad. He was happy. I watched his trial to stay in Starkhaven. I watched him argue passionately and win the hearts of the most stubborn of men. Men who were like the magisters of Tevinter but had no magic. Men whose hearts were made of ice, and yearned for nothing but authority.
At the end of the trial, he was allowed to stay. There was a big parade, and lots of people were so happy that they cried. He was given a big title and a position as captain of the city's army, and then he married a very pretty girl with long brown hair.
His cousin that he always called brother, the tall man in white armor, was offered a place in the palace, but he wanted more. He wasn't like a magister, but sometimes, he reminded me of those teachers at university in Tevinter. They spoke with conviction, and thought that what they were doing was right. Eventually he left with some woman and an elf to look for some mage. It was confusing; I didn't really understand why they were so mad. A small church got destroyed and a few people died. It was nothing compared to what has happened since. Beenie understood that the moment he saw the rip in the sky. That was the moment when he decided to never leave Starkhaven, his home. He took an oath, he said, to protect the people of the city, and that the tear across the sky was an unknown threat. Later, he told his pretty wife that he wanted to be a good example to not only the citizens, but also to their children.
His oldest son he named after me. I actually spend most of my time watching them, because when he calls to him, I can close my eyes and pretend he's calling to me. I pretend I am sitting next to him on the sofa after dinner, or walking with him and my siblings during an afternoon hunt. I make believe that he can hear me and see me, and that when he's teaching them how to make a fire without magic, that he's also teaching me.
Liam! he calls. Come to dinner! Get your sword! Where are your shoes? I love you, Liam.
He never said that to me, but one night, when he was in bed with his wife and all the candles were out, he told her that he loved me. Me. Like a real brother. I feel less alone when I watch him.
It was years before he discovered what happened to me. I watched him cry. I watched his wife comfort him. I watched his real brother, the one who looks confused most of the time, offer to send people to Tevinter to find my body. But Beenie said no. He said that I should rest. I don't know what I'm doing, but it's not resting.
I think I'm waiting. For what? I am not sure. I think I'm supposed to go into that city, the one in the center of this island, but it's a forsaken place filled with darkness. The others are drawn there, too, but they don't seem to notice when it hums. It vibrates. It shakes the world around it just like I used to shake the world around me. Like a drum.
I've thought a lot about it, and I think that when I used magic, I was touching this place. They say that magic is drawn from the Fade, but I now know that there are places different from the Fade.
For so long as men have dreamed, we have walked its twisting paths, always as close as our own thoughts, but impossibly separated from our world.
Their world. And I'm separate.
I'm doomed to this place. This place that holds the magic that I used to kill people. I think that all those dead people came here, pulled here from the power of the magic. The power that my master can now touch. The power that ripped open the sky.
My brother and his family talk about that hole in the sky a lot. In fact, a lot of people in Thedas talk about it. There's a lot of bad things happening in the world because of that. Because of me.
I've been thinking about going to that city. I look at those blackened gates and wonder if any of the people that have gone in could ever come out. I've started to think that maybe the despair that I feel from that blackened city isn't all that different than the sadness inside me. Maybe I will find something in there. Maybe I will be allowed to leave this place. Maybe I could go back. I would see my brother. I would stay in his Circle if they would let me.
My brother once told me that the Maker watches His people on Thedas from the center of Heaven. But if He sees what I see, then He must be the saddest person in the Heavens. I've been watching the world tear itself apart for a long time. It seems like it's been a long time, anyway. Maybe too long. Maybe it's time go inside the city. To get away from all those horrible things. Maybe the Maker is in there.
But something tells me that if I go in there, I won't get to come back out. Going in there is permanent. If I can't come back out, then I can't watch my brother. I won't ever again hear him say that he loves me. I won't be able to close my eyes, and listen to him read me a bedtime story, or teach me to string a bow, or help me tie my bow-tie. I won't ever get to hear him say how proud he is of me. I won't get to hear him tell his son about who he's named after.
If I go away, I leave the only family I've ever had.
Maybe I can wait one more day. Maybe I'll go tomorrow. It's only one day.