Wintersend 13

Hawke had jumped up and stood with flaming eyes glowering at Anders who got visibly nervous under her glare. Her aggressive stance indicated she'd gladly smite him on the spot. Briefly the thought this could be a demon shot through her mind but she dismissed the idea at the same moment. A demon she would have recognized and besides that no demon would be so stupid as to disguise himself as the Butcher of Kirkwall anyway. Not around her.

Anders moved his hands and heaved them to ward off Hawke's fury. 'I understand you're angry with me...'

'Angry?!' Hawke spat, 'anger doesn't even come close to what I feel! You blew up a Chantry full of innocent people, committing mass murder, you killed the Grand Cleric and you didn't even feel guilty about it! And afterwards you simply sneaked away like a thief in the night, leaving others to cope with the mess you left behind! But you got your wish, didn't you, you started the mage rebellion and brought the whole world in an upheaval. You must be so proud of yourself!' Anders tried to interrupt her but she didn't let him. 'I trusted you godsdamned! I trusted you and you took advantage of that trust. You abused my friendship and made me accessory to your disgusting deeds!' Even after four years the pain hadn't lessened and at this moment, at this unforeseen confrontation it flared up together with the desolation and anger and guilt that still simmered inside her.

Anders hung his head. 'I know,' he said softly, 'and that still grieves me.'

'You'd better grieve for all those lives you sacrificed that day,' Marian snarled in a dangerously low voice, 'but I doubt you give a bloody shit about any of your victims. I wager you're still strutting around like an arrogant peacock, utterly satisfied with your fucking accomplishments.'

Anders let out a deep sigh. His hands fell down, dangling along his thighs. 'Ironically, as a matter of fact my actions didn't lead to the mage rebellion.'

'I don't believe this!' Hawke cried out indignantly, 'even now you're denying every responsibility!'

But the other mage shook his head. 'No,' he said, sounding tired, 'I don't.' He didn't dare to look at her and instead closed his eyes. 'Please believe me when I say it was the hardest decision I made in my entire life and everything I did is on my own head.' He smiled bleakly, opening his eyes again. 'I told you this before.' He swallowed. 'In hindsight, though, my actions were for naught; it's disturbing and troublesome to find out that so many died in vain.'

Hawke clenched her fists. 'Of course they died in vain,' she growled, 'your idiotic zealous ideas don't rectify even one death, let alone the amount of deaths you caused. And I don't only mean the exploded Chantry and the carnage in Kirkwall but also what followed in almost every part of Thedas where mages and Templars fought out a bloody war.'

Jadedly Anders rubbed his face; he looked pleadingly at her. 'I didn't start the fire. I know it sounds ridiculous but I happen to know the Seekers are to blame for it.'

Incredulously Hawke stared at him. 'And I am supposed to buy that load of crap? Pull the other one!'

Slowly and with the weary care of an old man Anders sat down. He grimaced painfully. 'I don't assume they did it on purpose, at least there's no proof for that.' He looked intently up at her and through her thundering rage Hawke got the feeling something was off. 'Did you know the Seekers were the ones who invented the Rite of Tranquillity?'

Hawke shrugged, trying to disregard the nagging feeling, 'I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out they did,' she said curtly.

'They developed the Rite for themselves at first,' Anders went on, 'but although that's remarkable enough, it's only half the story.'

Hawke frowned, despite herself getting interested.

'Apparently it's part of their education,' Anders clarified, 'or more specific of the Vigil they take before they become a real Seeker.'

'They don't strike me as very tranquil,' Marian said suspiciously, 'rather the opposite.'

'Indeed,' Anders reacted grimly, 'and that's exactly the point. The Rite of Tranquillity is reversible.'

When the enormity of the words got through to her, Hawke plopped abruptly down, her eyes wide. 'What?'

'Yes. They managed to keep it a secret for ages, and they continued keeping it a secret even after the Chantry began to abuse the Rite for their own means. It has probably been the biggest secret in Thedas, together with the Initiation of the Grey Wardens.'

'Then how did you obtain this wisdom?'

Anders blew out some air. 'I've been wandering around -'

Hawke snorted. 'Fleeing for your life more like,' she couldn't help remarking mordantly.

'That too. But during those travels I met many people and one of them told me the true story. Till then I was under the impression the rebellion had started in Kirkwall but now I know it started months earlier, when the truth about the Rite came to light.' He added wryly, 'not with such a big bang obviously, but still. And no wonder too. To use the Rite as some kind of punishment to silence mages who ask tricky questions is bad enough; to cover up the fact the sentence can be undone is no less than a crime.'

Hawke missed the heated undertone with which those words should have been uttered. Or at least would have been uttered in the past. It brought her off balance. She rubbed her brow to get rid of the disturbing emotion and to hold on to her anger. 'Well,' she said through clenched teeth, 'on that at least we agree.'

In a flash she thought of Cassandra and wondered if she knew about this. 'Who found this out?'

'Exposed it, you mean. It was a Seeker who blew the lid off the dirty situation.'

Off balance turned into complete bewilderment. 'A Seeker? Really?' Again her thoughts swirled to Cassandra. But although the woman had left the organisation Hawke couldn't imagine she would make such information public, if she was even informed on it. 'And who might this extraordinary person be?'

'He went by the name of Alphonse de Clarence.'

'Went?'

'He joined the mages' insurgence and fell in one of the first skirmishes. Among the mages he became some kind of legend.'

Hawke cocked her head and shot him a smile that went beyond sarcasm. 'I see someone else took your thunder,' she said with a generous splash of scorn, remembering the phrase her brother had thrown into her face when she accidently stumbled upon him in the Deep Roads while they were looking for Nathaniel Howe. 'Oh the irony! Now I understand why you said all those people died in vain.' She snorted derisively. 'That must have come as quite a blow! – forgive me the expression - Gone was the image of the Great Liberator of all Oppressed Mages! I hope by now you see how outlandish the ideas were Justice has been stuffing your head with for years - ' She stopped suddenly, finally she saw what was wrong. The last time they had ended up in the Fade together the spirit had more or less pushed the healer aside, taking the lead in a near insufferable haughty if not conceited way. Now he was conspicuous by his absence. That was not only strange, it was even disturbing. 'Where is Justice?'

'He's gone,' Anders murmured hoarsely.

'Gone? Where?' Hawke asked taken aback, 'I thought you and he were too much intertwined? That you couldn't be separated?'

Anders worried his lower lip and stared into the distance. 'He brought me here on my request. Once, many years ago, he got hurled out off the Fade and decided to stay in our world.'

'I know that,' Marian interrupted him impatiently, 'you told me the story. Black March blah blah evil woman, brood mother etcetera. Please skip the tale and come to the core.'

Anders screwed his eyes shut and his face contorted. 'Between everything that has happened over the years since I fled Vigil's Keep I almost forgot I am still a Grey Warden.' His eyes flew open in an instant and he looked intently at her. She was shocked by the sad, no, devastated expression he radiated. ´But the past always finds a means to catch up with you, no matter how hard you try to run from it or deny it.´ Marian got a nasty suspicion where this would lead to. ´I had the Calling, Hawke. I am going to die the Grey Warden death.'

Cullen came with a complement of his soldiers rushing into the courtyard, only to see the Inquisitor with her companions running up the stairway leading to the battlements, racing after Clarel. To his dismay the blasted dragon that had played such a significant part in the destroying of Haven had turned up but despite its threatening and terrifying appearance no panic broke out. The Templars reacted almost instinctively, determined to kill the beast, while the Inquisition soldiers, no less determined, as good as ignited with feelings of hot revenge. Cullen took in the situation and in a split-second decided his next move. 'Stay here and keep the mages in check!' he ordered, knowing very well not a small number of his soldiers would be frustrated by such an order but knowing at the same time they would obey him. He set off in pursuit of Evelyn. Now the battle of Adamant Fortress was won there was no power in the world able to keep him from protecting his woman. Not even the small persistent voice that kept badgering at the back of his brain, pointing out he was acting utterly selfish, leaving his soldiers alone to give in to his own anxiety. He simply ignored it, pushing on as fast as he could.

He raced up the steps of several staircases, a few times almost losing his footing in his haste to reach Evelyn, slithered through the gore of the killed demons she had left in her wake, all the while dodging the magical fire the archdemon spewed around. He came just in time to witness how Commander Clarel struck Erimond down and fell in a heroic attempt to kill the dragon. She at least succeeded in crippling the monster and in its urge to get away from the scene it caused considerable damage to the fortifications. In a fast tempo the construction began to crumble and fall to pieces. To his utmost horror Cullen saw Evelyn plummeting into nothing.

'No!' he bellowed and started running.

All Hawke's het-up anger evaporated with Anders's words. After the events in the Deep Roads where he had saved her brother by handing him over to Stroud, and Maker, that was so long ago, she had never thought of Anders as a Grey Warden, not in the least because he never acted as one. Not even when they had fought – damn! But of course she had always known he technically was a Grey Warden. With all the consequences that came with it. She laid her hand on his that rested on his knee and squeezed softly. 'I'm sorry.'

Anders smiled faintly. 'Don't be. I knew that sooner or later it would happen, no matter how hard I tried to ignore the fact.' His smile brightened a little. 'The moment I got conscripted by the Hero of Ferelden, who was at that time the Commander of Vigil's Keep, it saved my neck from a too fanatical Templar. If Elissa hadn't interfered I would have died much earlier so you can say I lived on borrowed time anyway.'

Hawke raised her brows. 'Is that your way of cheering yourself up?'

'Something like that.' He blinked to force back the sudden awkward stinging tears; her unexpected touch moved him more that he had expected or wanted.

'I thought,' Hawke began hesitantly, 'I thought Grey Wardens ventured into the Deep Roads when they heard the Calling.'

'They do,' Anders nodded, 'and frankly it was my plan to join the Legion of the Dead in their never-ending fight against the darkspawn. But I didn't want to drag Justice along. The thought of him possessing a darkspawn body after my death was rather appalling.'

Marian suddenly had to laugh. 'Indeed! I don't think even the rebellion is ready for a darkspawn preaching freedom for mages!'

Anders also laughed but became serious immediately after. 'I came to the Fade in the hope to persuade Justice to leave me before I will perish and to return to, how to put it, to his natural habitat. And that worked.' Pensively he added, 'I fear I let loose a totally confused and deranged spirit but he won't be worse than the demons that roam the place. The worst that can happen, I think, is that he'll become the butt of their jokes, but he won't understand any of them anyhow. In all the time he spent in the world he never developed a sense of humour.' He cocked his head. 'I must confess I feel calm, almost serene. I've lived with his permanent pressure for so long that I had forgotten how quiet it felt without that never ceasing chatterbox in my head.'

Hawke bit back tears and forced herself to stay sensible. 'Have you any idea where he is now?'

'No,' said Anders, 'he simply disappeared. It was like throwing a fish back into the ocean.'

'You never told me you knew how to physically enter the fade,' Hawke said, sounding a little hurt.

'I didn't know. Justice pointed out the many rifts that have appeared lately. I don't know where they come from or who created them but I made use of one of those. I assumed that's how you ended up here too. For whatever reason.'

'Ah yes,' Hawke said, sagging. She removed her hand from his and folded it with her other one in her lap. 'Remember Corypheus? That creepy – thing that kept bleating about the Dark City and being an acolyte of Dumat?'

'How could I forget him? That battle was one to remember, amongst other things.'

'Well. Yes. It turns out he wasn't as dead as we thought he was.'

Anders bolted upright, alarmed. 'Tell me everything.'

The moment Anders popped up, Cole had retreated and blended into the shadows between the rough pillars. He observed the mage but at first didn't know what to make of him. He seemed to have a large gap in his mind as if he had been deprived of a part of his personality. It wasn't until the man mentioned the spirit Justice he began to understand.

He knew of mages who were possessed by spirits or demons; they used them to do harm. They felt hard and cold as iron and at the same time burned with greed. Cole feared them and was afraid that some day one of them would ensnare him. But this mage felt different. There was a lot of hurt, feelings of guilt, sadness. And there was something else, something dark and sinister, something foul, devouring him. It was hard to place it but then it hit him, darkspawn taint. Cole understood the mage was dying and he felt sorry for him. Through the contamination and all the scars his soul bore, he caught glances of dedication and even happiness, now covered with a sheen of remorse and deep pain. There was something horrible the man had done and he wanted to atone; Cole saw his resolution as a lighting silver thread weaving through his essence.

He was so absorbed with surveying the strange mage, he only noticed the other entity when she was already upon him and touched his arm. Cole almost jumped but then recognised her; at least he recognised her for what she was: a spirit of Compassion, just like him. And immediately after he sensed how weak she was. The soft light that surrounded her flickered as if it was about to extinguish and would take her life-force with it.

'Will you help me?' she whispered, her voice not more than a faint wisp of sound.

Automatically his hand shot out to steady her. 'Of course I will. What do you need?'

Evelyn felt herself tumble through dimensions that got shredded apart and pressed together at the same time, though it might well be at different times since time was a dimension as well and went down in a screeching chaos with all the other dimensions. She tried to assure herself it was part of the extreme solution she had been forced to take but failed gloriously. Her head was spinning and her stomach churned; in fact all of her innards lurched as if her intestines were fervently trying to stay into place or on the other hand were fighting to change place with each other for that matter. But above all bizarre sensations, emotions of raw panic were surging through her body and mind. She had heard Cullen's scream and for a moment had glimpsed his face, contorted in desperation, standing out on the lip of the abyss. No way in the world she could tell if he had jumped towards his death or had been hauled back just in time by someone who had held their wits together. But she knew for certain that if he had jumped, he had been too late to get caught in the maelstrom she had created. She wanted to shout out at the top of her lungs, but her lungs, as the rest of her body parts, weren't under her command any longer. She only succeeded in producing a feeble sob.

With a deep sigh the old woman, known by many names – and she considered "Dragon Lady" as some kind of honorific – turned away from the scene. She nodded at Solas, standing just behind her. 'We have done all we could,' she said softly.

The elf watched her with an unreadable expression. 'You mean you've stretched your meddling as far as was possible without demolishing the world,' he stated coolly.

Over her shoulder she gave him a sly smile. 'For someone who risked so much you still have the courage to criticize me.' She winked at him. 'That's what I like about you.'

Solas rolled his eyes at her retreating back but couldn't help smiling himself.

'It's up to them now,' he heard her say, 'to the peoples inhabiting Thedas I mean. Personally I have my hopes on the two remarkable women who have it in them to shape the world as they go.'

Demolishing the world? She had difficulties not to snigger out loud. I believe there are other persons we should fear for doing just that.

That was quite a lot of information I fear. I know it took me a long time to come up with it and I also know I'm busy maiming the whole tale. To my defence I'm just trying to keep it interesting. I hope you'll forgive me.

As always, thank you so much for reading and staying with me!