Duncan's stature is one of solemnity. Behind the altar, he stares straight out at the four recruits, and Talvinder notices suddenly—perhaps it is the torch light, casting deep and jagged shadows—but she notices the wrinkles on his face, the way he looks so old in the face of the Joining. She wonders how many of these he has attended, how many he has led. He hands the vials of blood to Alistair, who unstoppers them, and then Duncan places the chalice down on the altar. It glints dully in the light, the decorative scrollwork on its sides all but worn away by time and countless hands. As Alistair pours the vials into the chalice, Duncan speaks again. The blood pours slowly, almost gelatinous, black and slick like rancid oil.
"The Grey Wardens were founded, as you know, during the First Blight, when Tevinter magisters breached the city of the Maker and, in their folly and arrogance, set loose the consuming taint that was their punishment for daring to face such a god." He says the words as though recalling them from rote memory, his face stern. "In that hour, humanity stood on the verge of annihilation. So it was that the first Grey Wardens drank of Darkspawn blood and mastered the taint within them." As Alistair prepares the blood in the chalice, adding a few more ingredients to it, Duncan's words ring in the air, shock settling over the recruits as they understand.
Jory is the first to speak, horror and disgust oozing from his voice.
"We're—we're going to drink the blood of those…of those creatures?" Again, Duncan nods. He pays no mind to Jory's disgust, instead focusing on all four of the recruits in front of him. Tali tries to make her face impassive. She doesn't want Duncan to see that the thought of the curdled blood passing her lips makes her want to vomit.
"As the first Grey Wardens did before us, and as we did before you." Duncan gestures to the chalice, with which Alistair has finished. It sits now, inert and deceptively nonthreatening, at the center of the altar. "This is the source of our power, and of our victory, as much as it is our sacrifice." Behind him, Alistair speaks now, a little unsure, his eyes locked on Duncan. His voice is halting, sounding as though he is remembering the lines of a play rather than speaking on his own full volition.
"Those who survive the Joining become immune to the taint. We can sense it in the Darkspawn, and use it to slay the Archdemon."
"Those who survive?" Again, Jory speaks, his voice half wail, half word. And again, Duncan nods. Behind him, Alistair fidgets, rolling himself up onto the balls of his feet and back down, eyes darting across each of the four recruits in front of him. To Tali, it seems like he's chewing the inside of his cheek; she can see the skin there sucked inward, highlighted by the torchlight reflecting off a faint sheen of anxious sweat.
"Not all who drink the blood will survive, and those who do are forever changed. To carry the Blight within you, to accept the taint as part of yourself, to become tainted thus and to withstand and contain it—it is no easy feat. This is why the Joining is a secret. It is the price we pay." As he speaks, Duncan lifts an amulet from his neck. Tali looks a little more closely, and she can see it is an elaborately decorated silver vial attached to a chain, tarnish caught in the wrought spirals across its surface. It is old, very old. Duncan begins to unscrew its top, fingers nimble. While he does so, he motions slightly to Alistair, offering a cue. "We speak only a few words prior to the Joining, but these words have been said since the first. Alistair, if you would?"
A deep breath, whistling and heavy, enters and leaves Alistair's mouth. He prepares himself, closes his eyes, and speaks the words carefully, remembering them easily despite his apparent anxiety.
"Join us, brothers and sisters." Duncan has finished unscrewing the vial, and as Alistair speaks, he tips a single drop of its contents into the chalice of blood. "Join us in the shadows where we stand, vigilant." Duncan screws the lid back on and places the vial and its chain once more around his neck, where it shines bright against the quilted blue of his gambeson. "Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn." Duncan takes the chalice with two hands, cradling it carefully, and swirls it; within, Tali can see the vile mixture splashing, blood black as tar and half as thick. "And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten, and that one day—one day we shall join you." Duncan steps around the altar, carrying the chalice, and comes to stand in front of Daveth, the one closest to him.
The air in the temple is cold. Tali doesn't know why she's only thought of it now, but it seeps into her bones. Duncan's gambeson is not fully fastened, and its sleeves are folded up slightly, revealing the bones and tendons of his wrists, the scars that litter his hands. There is a night bird singing, perched somewhere above them in the ruins, but not too far. Without his armor, Alistair is still unbelievably broad and strong, and yet he's slouching as though he wants to vanish; with the first few ties undone at the front of his gambeson, Tali can see his shirt-neck gaping slightly with his posture, revealing fine russet hair on his chest. The moons and the torches cast strange shadows over everything. Daveth's nose, long, broken and healed, crooked at the middle, twitches. Next to Tali, a few strands of hair escape Savreen's braid and bun, curling tight at the nape of her neck and down her forehead, brushing against her jaw. Jory's fingernails are bitten to the quick as he clenches and unclenches his fists. A breeze rustles across the back of her neck. It feels like fingers, a skeletal caress.
"Daveth." Duncan's voice is grave. "Step forward. You are called upon to submit yourself to the taint for the greater good." Daveth lets out a deep breath and does as Duncan asks. Rather than let go of the chalice, Duncan raises it to Daveth's lips himself, tilting it forward until it touches the man's lips. Daveth grimaces as the liquid goes down. When Duncan moves back, a small dribble of the black, viscous stuff runs down from the corner of Daveth's mouth. As Tali watches, he wipes it away, his breathing fast and nervous. They all wait, listening to him pant, and then his breath stutters. He gags, retches, doubles forward, hands against his knees. Duncan steps back, neither calm nor anxious, simply moving out of the way. His face is guarded; Tali cannot see yet whether he thinks Daveth will live or die.
That changes when Daveth lets out a gurgling, strangled cry and falls to his hands and knees. Veins bulge in his forehead. There are tears on his cheeks, eyes watering and flowing over. Blood leaks from his nose. His fingers scrape and scrabble at his throat, his chest, clawing for air. Tali watches, horrified and unable to look away, as the taint, visible in black, spider-webbed lines beneath his skin, spreads rapidly through Daveth's body. She can smell something, suddenly, like fetid meat, or the brackish water of a sewage ditch after the rainy season. Daveth shudders, and then shrieks, lets out a howl that is so pained, so shattering, it forces Tali to clap her hands over her ears. The cry is silenced only by a rush of black vomit, bubbling up from his lips and onto the stone, all over his hands. It is full of tissue, as though Daveth is rotting from the inside, emptying himself up through his own mouth, and it stinks, of shit and flesh and decay. Tali thinks she sees the wall of his stomach, covered in blood and black, and she has to look away as she feels her own stomach churning. Standing there, Duncan sighs and closes his eyes. Daveth shudders again, soft gurgling sounds coming from his nose and mouth, and then he goes rigid and collapses, into the puddle of black vomit and rotted organs and the remnants of his insides. His eyes are open, blank, and blood mingles now with the tear-tracks on his cheeks, the black liquid around his mouth.
He does not breathe.
"Maker's breath," Jory whispers, breaking the silence. Alistair crouches in front of Daveth, fingers pressed to his neck, but Tali knows he already knows. How could he live through that? How could anyone? It's as if she's watched the taint spread through Daveth all in the span of a minute, weeks of a painful, slow death condensed down into the horrific span of sixty brutal seconds. Unable to find a pulse, Alistair looks up at Duncan after a moment and shakes his head. He looks so much older as he does so. Duncan closes his eyes, a frown at the corners of his lips, and speaks softly.
"I am sorry, Daveth. We remember and honor your sacrifice." Beside Tali, Jory seems to realize now that he is standing closest to Daveth, next in line, and his head whips about, frantically seeking an escape, an excuse, anything. The vomit pools around his feet, black and seeping, liquid separating from the ground and rotted debris of Daveth's guts, running into the cracks in the stone. Jory fidgets, stepping back, trying desperately to avoid the stuff. Breath comes sharp and jagged from his mouth as Duncan moves to stand in front of him. "Step forward, Jory. You are called upo—" But Duncan cannot finish his words, cannot get them all out before Jory begins stammering, insistent.
"I—I have a wife. A child! Had I known—" For each step Jory takes back, Duncan takes one forward, matching him, always the same distance away, chalice in hand. He leaves black footprints on the stone, tracking through the tainted wreckage of Daveth's blood, and Jory, seeing them, whimpers. As though by reflex, he moves his hands to where his sword would be—had he not left it with the rest of his armor back at the tents. He whimpers as he clutches at the air, and his hands ball into fists. Tali and Sav keep their eyes trained on Duncan as the situation unfolds, frozen. While Tali knows she is about to see something awful, something horrific, something she does not want to see, she is so deeply, unbelievably numb, and she cannot turn away. She is not in control, she has no choice but to watch, in her own head and yet somehow so far away. "I will not do this, I will not—" Duncan hands the chalice to Alistair, who follows him with distressed eyes and a panicked expression. Where Duncan had stepped through the large black pool of blood and bile, Alistair avoids it carefully, and takes the chalice as though holding a burning coal, touching it only with his fingertips.
"Jory." Duncan's voice is sharp as he draws a dagger from his hip, blade rasping softly against its sheath. "There is no turning back. There can be no turning back. The Joining is a secret." Jory shakes his head. He holds his trembling hands in front of him, balled into weak and pitiful fists, and he is crying, and Tali stands there, doing nothing, watching: part of this moment and yet wholly separate from it.
"No! No—you ask too much. There is no glory in this!" At those words, Duncan darts forward, moving more quickly than his age should allow. Jory tries to counter him, but hands against steel are a poor match. Duncan lands a blow to the inside of Jory's elbow, slicing through his shirt and gambeson, and Jory lets out a gasping croak of a yell as blood splatters the floor. Though Duncan's next strike misses, catching and tearing the fabric near Jory's hip, he has Jory moving where he wants, as he wants: off balance and back toward the altar, back toward Daveth. The next moments happen quickly. Duncan is behind Jory and his dagger is running across the man's throat and blood is everywhere. Alistair looks as though he might be sick, or faint. Tali feels the same, fingernails painful against her palms now as Jory hits the stone floor with a heavy thud, his skull against stone making a sickening crack. At least she can feel the pain in her palms as her own.
As she watches, the blood pools on the stone, runs along the cracks and between the large tiles, and suddenly she is back in the larder, looking at another pool of blood on a stone floor, spreading, growing wider, slick and shiny and nearly black in the low torchlight. She clenches her hands even more tightly, and though her nails are blunt, she feels blood, dripping slow and hot through her fingers. Her arms shake from how tightly she holds her fists, jittering at her sides, her kara suddenly ice cold on her wrist. She sees Oriana, wearing the same red smock as Jory does now, the same small bubbles at the side of her mouth, air bubbles popping at a severed trachea, lifeless eyes, and for a moment, Jory's eyes turn that same deep, dark, beautiful brown as her sister-in-law.
Tali steps backwards and stumbles over an uneven stone. Blood and death and bile and viscera are all she sees, the flesh caught between a Darkspawn's teeth, the welts of strangulation around her nephew's neck. She nearly falls. Duncan sighs, mutters a small prayer, and closes his eyes.
"I am sorry, Jory." He wipes the flat of his blade against his pants then sheathes the dagger once more. When he turns to Alistair to take the chalice back, Alistair's hands are shaking. Alistair moves back, away from Duncan, mouth set in a grim line, chewing on his lower lip to the point of redness. He might draw blood soon, if he keeps it up. Chalice in hand again, Duncan turns, back towards Tali and Sav, and Tali realizes, remembers, that they are next. She is not sure whose name she wants Duncan to call first, and she reaches a hand out to grab Sav's wrist, because she is suddenly so small and alone, and she cannot see Sav go first, cannot watch her die, cannot see her blood or her insides or her body or her eyes, open, looking up at Tali sightlessly from the floor. She hears her own breathing, shallow and loud, in her ears, and Sav grips her hand back, and then Duncan speaks again.
"Step forward, Savreen. You are called—"
"No. No, take me first." Tali does not let him finish. Instead, she yanks Sav's arm, hard, pulling her cousin against herself, away from Duncan, the chalice, the Joining. Duncan pauses, waits as Sav turns to look at Tali.
"Would you let us speak, ser Duncan?" Savreen's voice is quiet, muffled, so far away, underwater. But Duncan has heard her, somehow, and he nods, and Sav turns all the way towards Tali.
"Tali, you—"
"You have to let me go first." Sav shakes her head, nostrils flaring in frustration.
"Absolutely not."
"Why the fuck not?"
"You've sworn at me enough today, little cousin. You'd take care not to do it again."
"Why do you need to go first? Why not me? Why do you get—"
"This is not about 'getting' to do anything, Talvinder."
"I think it is."
"And why is that?"
"Because…"
Savreen, dead, on the ground, black bile, rotting organs.
"Because nothing. You cannot tell me that I have robbed you of a chance to say goodbye, that I have failed you, and then expect me to let you go off to death before me. Our parents begged me to protect you. Fucking let me." Those words act like a cold bucket of water, their harshness and the invocation of their parents gripping Tali tight in the chest and yanking at her heart. Sav looks at her, gazing into her eyes, and Tali feels tears, hard and painful, gathering at the back of her vision and in the top of her throat.
"Sav I—I can't—" But she can't finish, won't tell her that it's because she's selfish, because she doesn't want to see anyone else die. Because she just wants for herself to go, to get it over with, to not have to watch Sav—her only family member, the only tether she has right now, and the person she's treated abysmally the last few days—die. In the face of such protection, such love, that desire seems so petty, frail, weak. Sav shakes her head, reaching up to cup a palm around Tali's face. Her fingers are long, thin, graceful, the skin cool. Where Tali knows her palms are sweaty, the half-moon cuts starting to clot and the bleeding slow, Sav's hands are dry, skin smooth like silk. Tali closes her eyes, leans into the hand, but all she can think of is the larder. All she sees is the poisoned cut on her father's hand; all she hears are the screams. Even the rotten smell of Daveth's flesh vanishes, the cloying, meaty scent giving way to smoke on the night air, Highever keep burning all over again. When Tali opens her eyes and looks into Sav's, she sees her own thoughts reflected back at her. She knows that Sav is thinking of the same thing, can see it, feel it, smell it.
They are here, at Ostagar, and yet, they are still there, in the larder. Tali knows it is time. She knows they must turn and go, forward. She is not ready. The passageway is in front of her, but she turns back to look, to stay. In the temple at Ostagar, Sav smiles, soft and sad, and pulls her cousin's head down so that she can kiss her brow. Her lips are warm against Tali's skin; it is with surprise that Tali notices just how much she can feel her cousin's touch, how she feels as though she's back in her own body again, and the pressure of the kiss makes a single pimple that has begun to form in the center of her forehead ache and hurt. It is strange to treasure that feeling, to memorize every facet of that kiss on her forehead, every wrinkle of her cousin's scrunched-up lips, everything about Sav in that moment, but she will not be left without a goodbye again. Never again. She is still in the larder.
Sav pulls away, and Tali straightens up. The temple is quiet and dark, torches burning quietly in their sconces. The shame of her selfishness burns through her when she sees the tears in her cousin's eyes. But still, Sav smiles. A faint tremor runs through her cheeks, her eyes threatening to spill over, but she smiles. Then she walks past Tali, toward Duncan, just far enough from the bodies of Daveth and Jory, and nods.
"Step forward, Savreen," Duncan begins again. "You are called to submit yourself to the taint for the greater good." Tali watches as Sav nods. She wants time to slow. She wants more time to take in the exact way that Sav's hair, curly, deep black, down to her hips, is braided and bound up, tied over itself. She wants time to etch the line of Sav's profile into her memory: thick black brows, arched perfectly on her forehead; delicately angular nose, turned slightly downward; round, high cheekbones; plush lips meant for smiling; a strong chin set in a swooping, oval-shaped jaw. She wants to remember always the warm, rich, dark amber tones of her skin, haloed by torchlight, and when Sav throws her one last look, she needs to memorize the twinkling of her eyes, like a cloudless night sky. But, too quickly, the moment passes.
Sav turns back to Duncan, and before he brings the chalice to her lips, she pulls her sleeve down over her hand and wipes it across the front, where Daveth's lips had touched. When she is done, she nods to him again. He raises it, brings it to her mouth. Tali watches her grimace as the stuff hits her tongue. Like Daveth before her, Savreen pants, her chest heaving in the torchlight. When she suppresses a gag, Tali watches her with anxiety, her own breath coming out in short gasps that she can hear and feel deep in her skull. The wait is agonizing as the seconds flutter by—is it longer than Daveth? Does that mean she'll live? Does it mean—
Sav gasps, breath rasping in her throat, and staggers, falling to her knees. Tali startles, then freezes. With a cough, Sav is on all fours. Her back arches, and she begins to retch, mouth open, eyes bulging. Tali tries to leap forward to her side, but for the second time that night, Alistair grabs her, holds her back as she screams. But Sav does not vomit, though the seconds go by and the taint spirals and weaves under her skin like webs, though she continues retching. There are tears on her cheeks again as Tali kicks and pulls and struggles against Alistair's grip. Her throat is painful, raw, but she can't stop. She can't hear herself screaming—it must not even be that loud, must not be loud enough for the others to know what she feels, the fear that threatens to pull her under its surface.
Sav's body snaps back as she suddenly strains upward, gasping for breath, struggling and writhing, hands clawing at her throat. Tali is sobbing, babbling, words in multiple languages and names and prayers and God please, by the grace of our Guru, and she feels lips at her ear and there is a voice, deep and soft, Alistair's voice, though she cannot make out the words, cannot put sense to the noises, even as his nose presses into the side of her head, as he holds her tightly, as she feels his breath on her neck. She is here, in the temple. She is at Highever keep, in the larder. There is blood on the floor and the smell of rot in the air, and fire burning in the distance. She is at Ostagar and she is in the servants' passage, and the sounds overlap, retching and gasping and the sick wet thud of blades falling on skin and shearing bone and the plop of organs on stone and the yells, horrible and pained and with her forever, forever, forever—
Savreen falls, like a puppet with its strings cut. Panic surges through Talvinder, and she rips herself from Alistair's grasp, throws herself at her cousin's side, kneels over her, cradles her head in her lap, smooths her braid over her shoulder. Cries.
"Savreen," she calls, voice hoarse, "Savreen, Sav," and she cannot find a word that will hold the fullness of her pain and fear but still she calls for her, a litany tumbling from her lips, crying out to her cousin. To her sister. "Bhen, meri bhen, meri bhen, meri bhen," an endless litany. As she rocks back and forth on the stone floor, Tali sees Sav's eyelids flutter. She sees Sav's chest begin to rise and fall again. Relief spreads through her limbs as she notices Sav's breath rustling a loose curl of hair, and she throws her head up, looks to the stars, and weeps.
"From this moment forth, Savreen, you are a Grey Warden."
Duncan is still there, and still there is one more recruit who must drink from the Joining chalice. Tali looks back to him, watches him step toward her, and then watches him lean down slightly, as though unsure whether to pull Tali to her feet or let her drink as she kneels there.
"Talvinder. You are called upon to submit yourself to the taint for the greater good." As he begins to hold out the chalice, offering it to Tali, tilted slightly to let the liquid within dribble into her mouth, Tali reaches out and grabs the thing. Sav's head is still in her lap. The liquid, dark, heavy, thick, sloshes. Daveth and Savreen have drunk a good deal, but there is still enough in the bottom of the chalice. Tali looks at it for a heartbeat. There is a future in this cup. The words of Morrigan's mother play in her head, crystal clear despite the tumult, unbidden and unlooked for. To gamble one future for another may leave you empty handed, in the end, with only the past to speak of.
Talvinder does not know what the future in this cup is, but it is a future, and if it leads to death, then she will face it, and she will face it quickly and without too much thought. She pulls the chalice to her lips, gulps the liquid down, tries to swallow before she tastes it on her tongue. It does not work, and she gags, nearly spitting the stuff up. It is metallic and rotten all at once, like blood pudding that has been left in the sun, thick like honey but with a burn to it that is so much worse than that of pepper and spice. It is like rust and fire and flesh, curdled together. It burns in Tali's mouth, in her throat, in her stomach. Quickly it spreads through her limbs.
It hurts. Burns. Itches. She can feel it winding through her veins. She drops the cup, empty now save for the dregs, and it rolls to the side as she loses her balance, throwing her hand behind her, attempting to hold herself upright. Alistair stumbles in his hurry to grab the chalice as it rolls, vanishing from Tali's view for a moment. Soon she cannot even find the strength to continue kneeling, not as the pain roars through her body. She clenches her jaw, teeth grinding against teeth, and tries not to scream. She tries so hard. As she casts her gaze around, breathing heavily, eyes wide, nostrils flared, body trembling, neck muscles straining, she catches a glimpse of Alistair, the empty chalice gripped tightly in his white-knuckled hands. His face is drained of blood—pallid, sweaty, and anxious. She sees the memory of death in his eyes, and she wonders if she will join it there. She cannot look at it. She squeezes her own eyes shut, and then she can no longer hold it in her chest anymore, and the scream rips from her lips, and she thinks she tastes her own blood in her mouth as the world flickers. She is rigid, arched with pain, and the world is screaming—no, it is trapped in her screams—no, the screaming is enveloping it all, like a raging, roaring fire, like a vicious flood.
Images rush before her eyes. Faces, misshapen and horrible, rotting. Teeth and blood and milky eyes. Bone and flesh and crude, wicked knives, armor dented and rusted, pulled off the dead. Hordes and hordes of Darkspawn, and at their center, a great dragon, its scales falling off, the skin left behind covered in open sores, its skeleton visible here and there, its flesh pustulant, purulent, weeping. It opens its jaw and roars, and the flesh at the hinges of its mouth seems to tear. Everything is rotting, rotten, and yet still alive. The Archdemon—for that is what the dragon is, what it must be—lurches about, massive, enraged, something faintly living still trapped and twisted within its decaying body. It tips its head upwards, towards the ceiling of a great stone cavern, and it lets loose a breath of lightning that ripples and ricochets across the rocks.
Talvinder is slumped sideways, her head aching, throat burning. Her head is on the stone, and she can feel something wet under her hair. Is it blood? Is there blood in her hair? Unable to move, she tries desperately to focus her eyes, to see something, anything. When she does, it is Jory's dead eyes, open, staring at her. The world swims, dissolving into water around her again. She cannot keep herself afloat. It is so hard. Above her, Duncan stands. She cannot see his face, only his shape, only the vague outline of him. Another shape approaches, is it Alistair? It must be, he was there with them, in the temple. Duncan kneels in front of her, holding his now clean dagger in front of her mouth until her breath fogs its surface.
Light bounces off his teeth as he smiles, weary. The shape of his head turns back up to Alistair, and he says something, but the words are garbled. Tali concentrates, tries to hold on, though her whole body is heavy, threatening to pull her under the wakefulness she clings to. Duncan turns back to her, and she watches his lips move, blurred, and just barely makes out the sound of the what he says.
"Talvinder, from this moment forth, you are a Grey Warden." As she watches his face, eyes almost fully closed, her lids so heavy it is painful, she sees the light change. It reflects off the backs of Duncan's eyes. It catches on his teeth, and they are sharp. His face is that of a Darkspawn, and it has seen her, it is coming for her. He is decaying, his mouth an open maw, bloodied, tongue wriggling and writhing against shattered, serrated teeth that smell of meat. Talvinder's eyes roll back into her head. She lets go and sinks, down, down, down, into nothingness. It is all black. It is all quiet.