Shadow and Rose

by Lady Norbert

A/N: He just doesn't want to shut up this week, it seems. A few things of note: one, I have no idea how the darkspawn would really react to winter. But I couldn't figure out a better way to work Soldier's Peak into this story. Soldier's Peak only appears in the game if you have the Warden's Keep DLC, as most of you probably know, and I love it probably more than any other location in the game. So I had to use it, and the winter scenario that gets introduced in this chapter was the best idea I had.

Chapter Nine: Litany of Adralla

The Litany has the power to stun demons and stop mind-controlling blood magic if it is used at the moment the spell is cast.

Had to take a bit of a break there, rest my cramped wrist and have a drink of water. Our fight through the Circle Tower was long. Also, I haven't mentioned it because I kind of don't want to remember it, but the higher we climbed in the tower, the more and more... goop was on the walls and the floor. I don't even know how to describe it. It was sort of fleshy-looking, to be honest, and it just made everything that much creepier. As if this part of our quest needed any help in the creepy department.

Anyway, after I'd recovered from the nicest head injury ever, I got off the floor and we went back out into the hallway. The desire demon had pretty much destroyed the helmet I'd been wearing - Elissa said she hit me with her tail - but the fallen Templar had one so I took that. The room across the corridor was a huge one, and a very, very large demon claimed our attention.

"Oh, look, visitors," it said. "I'd entertain you, but... too much effort involved."

"Who is that man?" Elissa demanded, pointing at the body of the mage which lay on the floor before the demon.

"He's just resting. Poor lad, he was so very very weary. You want to join us, don't you?" The demon had a strange way of talking, like every word was costing it all sorts of energy. That's how we knew it was a sloth demon, which I remember learning are among the strongest. It kept talking about how we deserved a rest, how we should just lie down and forget all of our troubles. I could hear Wynne begging us to resist, and Leliana saying that the demon would not have power over her, but... well...

The next thing I knew, I was in Denerim.

My sister Goldanna was looking at me, and chuckling. "Dear Alistair," she said, "I'm so glad you came back."

"Wait, you're happy to see me?"

"Of course I am! I'm so sorry I was mean to you before. We are family, and we should stay together. I'm so happy you're here."

Family. Stay together. Right. It made sense at the time, even though I know now that it shouldn't have made any sense at all. I sat down on a chair, and a little girl of maybe six years old ran over and hopped into my lap. "Hello, Uncle Alistair! You will stay and play with us, won't you? Mummy said you would!"

"Oh - of course I will."

"That's wonderful! You entertain the children, and I'll make supper," Goldanna said. "Tell me what your favorite dish is, and that's what we'll have."

"I'll eat most anything," I admitted, laughing. "But I really like roast pheasant, could we have that?"

"Roast pheasant it is!"

She was so pleasant, so kind. Everything I could have wanted my big sister to be. And the children were adorable. The five of them ran in and out, and we played tag and hide-and-seek. Then we had dinner, which was delicious, and I read them stories until they fell asleep, and I was so... so happy. I had a family.

Something was missing, though. It felt like... like something just wasn't quite right. Almost like part of myself was missing. I tried to ignore it, since I couldn't put a name to it.

I don't know how long I was there. It felt like days, maybe even a week. It was all perfect. Goldanna cooked all my favorite foods, and told me stories about our mother that I can't even remember now (probably none of them were true anyway), and I played with her children and helped her with the household tasks. It just felt right. Well, almost right.

And then, very suddenly, Elissa was there.

That's what was missing. I didn't realize it until she was in front of me, but she was the only thing the whole scenario lacked. With her there, it was exactly what I wanted it to be.

"Hey, it's great to see you again! I was just thinking about you!" I told her, smiling. "Isn't that a marvelous coincidence? You remember Goldanna, of course? These are her children, and there's more about somewhere."

Elissa seemed troubled, like she was deeply afraid and trying not to show it. "Alistair..."

"I'm overjoyed to have my baby brother back," Goldanna gushed. "I'll never let him out of my sight again!"

"May I borrow him for a minute? We have business elsewhere."

But I didn't want to go. I'm ashamed of it now. "I don't think I'll be coming. I don't want to spend my life fighting, only to end up dead in a pit with rotting darkspawn corpses."

"Will your friend be staying for dinner, Alistair?" Goldanna asked.

"You will, won't you? Oh, please say you'll stay! Goldanna's a great cook! Maybe she'll make her mince pie!" Elissa looked so unhappy that I was afraid she would go, and I couldn't bear the idea.

"Alistair, listen to me," she pleaded. "Think about this place and how you came to be here. Think carefully."

I pouted at her, which normally would have made her laugh, but she still looked very serious. "Oh, all right, if it'll make you happy." The thing was, I couldn't remember much of anything from before I'd met up with Goldanna and her children. I hadn't even been able to remember Elissa until she was right in front of me, after all, and she... well, to be blunt, she means more to me than anyone in the world. So if whatever was happening could make me forget her, then something really wasn't quite right.

I don't know how to describe the process of remembering. It was like my brain was splintering, cracking through the happy shell in which it had been wrapped. I started remembering the tower, and our quest, and Connor back in Redcliffe. I remembered Duncan, and Ostagar. And Goldanna, who had rejected me.

"Alistair, come and have some tea," said Goldanna, who I was beginning to understand was not Goldanna at all.

"No..." The remembering hurt, but it was there. "I think I have to go."

Elissa looked relieved, and gave me a smile. "Come with me, then."

"No!" Goldanna's voice wasn't at all like Goldanna anymore; it was deep and not human. "He is ours! I would rather see him dead than free!"

"No!" Elissa shouted back, drawing her sword. "He is mine. You will not have him!"

Goldanna dissolved into her true form, which of course was a desire demon. The children were nothing more than shambling corpses. For the first time I realized that I had my own sword with me still, and I rushed to join the battle.

"I feel so stupid," I confessed when it was over, and the demon and her ilk lay dead around us. "How did I not see this earlier?"

"We're in the Fade. It's not like the real world."

"Yes, well... try not to tell everyone how easily fooled I was?" She started to answer, but I couldn't hear her. She seemed to be getting fuzzy around the edges - she was disappearing, or I was, I'm not sure. "Wait, where are you going? What's happening to me? Hey!"

I found myself next in another part of the Fade. Wynne and Leliana were there, too. "I'm relieved to see you both," I said. "What happened to you?"

"Elissa found me trapped in a nightmare," said Wynne. "I was surrounded by former students, all of whom died in the attack. She had a hard time convincing me that it wasn't real."

"Mine wasn't so bad," said Leliana. "I was back in the Chantry, praying with one of the Revered Mothers, trying to find peace. Elissa had to make me see that the 'Mother' was really a demon."

"I had a similar experience." I felt better knowing I wasn't the only one fooled. "Where is Elissa? She broke my dream only to disappear."

"I'm here," she said, coming up behind us. She looked exhausted; well, if I'd been running around the Fade plucking people out of their nightmares, I probably would too. "Let's finish this." She nodded at the sloth demon, which was approaching us. Sort of funny the way it reproached her - it called her ungrateful for the happy dreams in which it had landed her, and promised to 'do better' the next time. Of course, we weren't going to let it have a next time.

There's no way to know how long we'd been in the Fade. Like I said, I thought I'd been with Goldanna's family for around a week, but I'm pretty sure it was still the same day when we all woke up. The mage who was there when we entered the room, though, he didn't wake. Elissa said she'd met him in the Fade; his name was Niall, and he'd instructed her to take something called the Litany of Adralla from his dead body. Wynne agreed, since this Litany was the only thing that would protect us all from having our bodies seized by powerful blood mages.

And that, of course, was what awaited us on the very top floor of the tower. Wynne said this place is called the Harrowing chamber; the mages go there to undergo a visit to the Fade, where they confront a demon. If they survive the confrontation, they are made full mages. If they don't succeed in their fight, they either die at the demon's hands or they're made Tranquil to prevent them from accidentally bringing the demon across the Veil.

Before we could enter, we had to contend with Cullen. He's a Templar, and he was the last one left alive on that floor. He'd gone half-mad from watching his brethren be tortured and killed, and it took every drop of Elissa's persuasion to get him to believe that we weren't just figments of his imagination. He begged her to kill every last person she found in the Harrowing chamber, convinced that none of them could possibly be saved. She refused, saying she needed to see the situation for herself first.

We entered, and were greeted by a mage Wynne identified as Uldred. I think he was at Ostagar too, actually; he looked very familiar. First Enchanter Irving was there too, along with several other high-ranking mages. Uldred was attempting to infuse them with powerful demons. He had plenty of admiration to offer Elissa, saying that her raw skill backed by the power of a demon would be an unstoppable force. She politely declined, and he told her he wasn't really giving her an option.

The fighting commenced, of course. Wynne was kind of amazing, to be honest; not only was she holding her own in battle, but she would cry out to Elissa to "Use the Litany!" whenever Uldred attempted to force his will on any of us or any of the mages he was holding prisoner. He was very, very hard to kill, but we finally did it.

First Enchanter Irving looked half dead too. But he was alive, and fully in command of his own faculties. "We need to get you downstairs," Elissa told him, helping him to stand. "Knight-Commander Greagoir has sent for permission to perform the Rite of Annulment. He'll only halt the process if I bring you to him."

Irving couldn't walk very well, but with me supporting him he managed to get down the stairs. Cullen followed us too, as well as the other mages, and we were greeted warmly on the first floor by those Wynne had left behind. We were released into the entrance chamber, where Morrigan, Sten, and Toby were all very relieved to see us again. Greagoir was beyond stunned. "Maker's breath... I did not expect to see you alive," he admitted.

"It is over, Greagoir," said Irving. "Uldred is dead."

Cullen interrupted then, explaining that Uldred had tortured the mages in an attempt to turn them into abominations. While that was true, he then said that they had no way of knowing how many of them might have turned. He basically wanted Greagoir to go ahead with the Annulment! But Greagoir was smart enough to listen to Irving, and the tower was declared safe.

Irving then turned to Elissa and me, and promised to fulfill the mages' treaty with the Grey Wardens. Greagoir said that we had proven ourselves friends to both the mages and the Templars, but that his primary duty had to remain with the tower. I didn't really expect otherwise, and I doubt Elissa did either. He said he'd get his Templars to work straightaway searching for survivors. "And Irving... it's good to have you back."

Irving smiled. "I'm sure we'll be at each other's throats again in no time." He turned back to us. "I would hate to survive this only to fall to the Blight. You have my word as First Enchanter - the mages will join the Grey Wardens in this fight."

"Irving," said Wynne, "I have a request. I would like to remain with the Grey Warden."

"Wynne, we need you here. The Circle needs you."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Irving, but the Circle will do fine without me. It has you," she said. "This woman is brave, and good, and capable of great things. If she will accept my help, I will help her accomplish her goals."

"I would be honored to have you with us, Wynne," Elissa replied.

So of course Irving gave his permission, and we added a second mage to our ragtag collective. I definitely like Wynne better than Morrigan, though. Speaking of Morrigan, she and Elissa had a little private chat, after we crossed the lake and made camp not far from the Spoiled Princess. Turns out the book she asked me to carry for her was a grimoire that had been taken from Flemeth by the Templars. Morrigan had asked Elissa to keep an eye out for it, and return it to her if she possibly could, so that she might learn some of her mother's secrets. I wish Elissa wouldn't concede to Morrigan's requests so readily, but she said that Morrigan might learn something that will be of use against the darkspawn, so I guess I can't fault her reasoning.

Oh, and before we left him, Elissa also talked to Irving about Connor. He took the news seriously, but in stride. He promised to assemble some mages and gather together some lyrium, and they will meet us in Redcliffe once they're ready to proceed with whatever ritual they have to do to free the boy.

Maker, I'm tired. At least now I've got less in my head.

We've agreed to hold camp for a little longer than usual, mostly for Elissa's sake. She's pretty worn down after what happened in the tower, especially in the Fade. Over breakfast, Leliana asked her exactly what did happen. "I mean, if you want to tell us."

"I don't mind telling you," Elissa replied, "but Alistair might not want to hear the first part at least."

"What do you mean?"

"My nightmare." She looked grim. "You three were all trapped in your own personal nightmares, and so was I. But I broke out of my nightmare in order to find all of you. That was how I encountered Niall, actually, poor man."

"What was your nightmare?" I sat down on one side of her, and Leliana took the other side. The others gathered loosely around us; even Morrigan was in the camp proper rather than off in her own little corner.

"I was in Weisshaupt," she began. "But I don't know what Weisshaupt looks like, so in the nightmare it looked pretty much exactly like Ostagar. And there were other Grey Wardens there, greeting me as one of their own and telling me I earned a good rest. And..." She glanced at me, then looked away. "Duncan was there. He said that my memories of Ostagar were faulty, that I'd taken a bad blow to the head and only dreamed that they all died. He said we actually won the battle, and stopped the Blight, and now we could celebrate. And I wanted to believe - Maker preserve me, how I wanted to believe! But I knew it wasn't right. You weren't there, for one thing, Alistair. Nor was Toby." The dog came over and laid his head in her lap. "I kept pressing Duncan, questioning him, and he called me ungrateful and selfish. Finally he... he attacked me." She shook her head; her gauntlets were off and she pressed a hand to her eyes. "I had to kill him."

"Oh, Elissa... I'm so sorry."

She gave herself a shake. "After that, it was like your nightmares - I faded out of Weisshaupt, and into a different part of the Fade. That's where I met Niall. He helped me understand the situation a little better. Basically, that portion of the Fade was a little archipelago, a group of islands, and each island was ruled by a lesser demon. The sloth demon ruled the whole thing. I had to go to each island, and find and destroy the demon who ruled it. I met other lost souls along the way, who lent me special powers." She told us how she was given the ability to transform into a mouse, a rock golem, a man on fire, and a wraith. It was necessary, apparently, in order to make use of the different doors throughout the islands. "There were many, many fights," she added. "So many skeletons and golems and I don't even know what. And I was all alone. I was afraid, I can admit that now. I was afraid I would never see any of you again."

"You are a woman of tremendous courage," Leliana told her. "I don't think I could have endured that as well as you did."

"Well, if nothing else, I'm a woman of tremendous stubbornness," Elissa said with a chuckle. "But thank you, that's good to hear."

"It is strange to think you were trapped in nightmares," Sten noted. "You might all have died without ever knowing that what you saw was not real."

"That's what scared me most of all."

"We're very, very lucky," said Wynne, "that Elissa had the strength of mind to break free of her dreams. You've earned a rest, my dear, and I would say more of one than you're really able to take at this point."

"Speaking of rest," said Morrigan, "winter is coming." We all sort of looked at her; I for one was surprised that she had spoken. "I do not expect we are going to be able to run merrily about the country when the snows fall, will we?"

"I doubt it."

"I suggest, then, that we begin working on a plan for what to do in that eventuality. 'Tis a mercy, at least, that the darkspawn will be unable to trouble us in the interim."

"They won't?" asked Leliana.

"No, she's right," I said. Not that I'm keen on saying Morrigan's right, even when she is, but she was. "Snow is one of the only things that can deter the darkspawn. They can survive in it, but since the Archdemon inhabits the body of a dragon, it can't bear the cold. Dragons are heat-loving creatures. So it will go sort of dormant once snow flies, and the darkspawn will content themselves for the colder months with only occupying whatever areas they've already invaded."

"Should we not then use that time to our advantage?" asked Sten. "Perhaps hunt down the Archdemon where it resides, rather than wait for it to appear after the thaw?"

"You'd think so, but it'd be a suicide run," I replied. "We won't have nearly a big enough army to take on the Archdemon by that time. We've only called in one of the three treaties, and Arl Eamon is still sick and can't send his men to our aid. Our best bet will be to find a safe place to spend the winter, and use that time to research strategies and increase our personal weapon proficiencies."

"And avoid getting captured by Loghain," added Elissa, grimly.

"That too."

Interestingly, the discussion about sheltering for winter seems to have happened at a very timely, um, time. A little while after all this talk, while we were striking tents and preparing to start for Redcliffe, a man appeared in our camp and asked to speak to the Grey Wardens.

His name, he said, is Levi Dryden, and he was a friend of Duncan's. I recognized the name - the Drydens are the family of a former Commander of the Grey who died in disgrace up at Soldier's Peak, back during King Arland's despotic reign. He said that Duncan had promised to help him look into possibly clearing his ancestress's name, but of course that wasn't going to happen now, so he was hoping we might do it instead.

"It's quite a place, Soldier's Peak," he added. "Massive compound, a virtual palace. And since you two are all that's left of your order here, you need a place to start rebuilding, right? So we all benefit. I hopefully find what I need to prove that my great-great-grandmother wasn't a traitor, and you get Soldier's Peak back into the possession of the Wardens."

"How is it still uninhabited after two centuries?" Elissa asked.

"Well, for one thing, it's rumored to be haunted," Levi explained. "For another, most folks don't know how to get there. You have to travel through a maze of tunnels, because the old roads got blocked off back when Arland was starving out the Wardens and nobody ever bothered to clear them. But old Levi knows the way!"

She looked thoughtful, and excused us for a moment so we could discuss it. "What do you think, Alistair?" she asked me quietly. "This could be exactly what we need for the coming winter, not to mention he's right about us needing a place to rebuild the order."

"I agree. I think we should go with him and see what we find there."

"You're not afraid of ghosts, then?" she asked, with that mischievous little smile.

"Not while you're around to protect me," I teased her, and she laughed.

"All right, then. Let's tell Levi we'll do it. We'll keep the party small - let's send Wynne on ahead to Redcliffe, in case the mages get there before we do, and I think Leliana and Toby should go with her. Morrigan and Sten can come with us."

"Your desire is my command."

She turned an interesting shade of red when I said that. Maybe I'm not completely hopeless at this wooing business after all.