Though the hour is late as they return to the King's encampment, the bustle of the armies has not ceased. Noise—the clanking of armor, idle chatter, crackling fires, whetstones grinding—is everywhere as the group makes their way from the gate back to the Warden tents. As Talvinder and Savreen approach, the two mabari lying on the ground outside perk up, tongues lolling happily as they sniff the breeze, and begin barking. Abarie and Sher bound to their feet and sprint to circle around their owners, licking at hands and wagging their tails. The commotion, loud as it is, brings Duncan out of his tent.
"So, you have returned from the Wilds at last," he says as they draw near, a faint smile on his lips, the low firelight glinting off the single gold hoop he wears in his ear. Pleasure and relief cross his face in equal measures as he looks at each of his uninjured recruits. Now, so long after dark, his hair is down, loosed from its ponytail and tucked behind his ears. It rests in a black curtain across his shoulders, fanning out slightly across his back. His armor, too, is gone, and he's dressed as though he's been resting—hardly an outlandish assumption. The blue fabric of his unfastened Warden gambeson is stark against his pale linen shirt, which is tucked loosely into his pants. He looks younger like this, younger and more tired. A far cry from the Warden commander Talvinder knows him as.
"At last? We're early." When Alistair interjects, Duncan tries to ignore him, but his mouth quirks up in one corner before he can catch it. He does not, however, acknowledge Alistair's protests in any more concrete manner.
"I trust you were successful?" There's a brief exchange of looks between Savreen and Alistair that ends with Sav answering Duncan's question.
"We were." As Sav speaks, Alistair fumbles with his pack, moving into a half-squat, half-crouch with it between his legs. "But only thanks to a…rather unexpected encounter." At this, Duncan raises an eyebrow. He looks to Alistair for an explanation, and it is only then that Alistair speaks, his hands still rummaging around in his pack.
"There was a woman at the ruins when we arrived. The seals on the chest had decayed, and she and her mother had the scrolls. They were both…very odd." When Alistair hands the treaties up to Duncan, the Commander retains his stern and thoughtful expression, but does little else. He remains silent, eyes locked with Alistair's as he considers this new information, and then finally asks a question.
"Were they wilder folk? Chasind?" Alistair shakes his head in reply, squatting there in front of his pack, hands resting on his splayed, bent legs, elbows out. He appears to be folded, all at angles, but somehow, he isn't uncomfortable. His face is thoughtful as he mulls over the question, chewing the insides of his cheeks.
"No, no I don't think so. I don't think they were wilder, or Chasind, or even Avvar. They were part elven, though. They might be apostates, hiding from the Chantry, but that's my best guess, and even then I don't know that it's right, as per usual." At the mention of apostates and the Chantry, Duncan's posture relaxes and he nods as though dismissing Morrigan and her mother from his mind.
"Well then. Chantry business is not ours, and we will pay it no mind until after the battle. Then perhaps I can send some of you back out, or investigate the ruins myself, if I can be spared. There is always much to do and little time in which to do it." That part of the conversation clearly concluded, Duncan turns to place the scrolls inside his tent. As he turns back to them all, he rubs his hands together and sets his face into a grim expression. "Now. We have the scrolls, let us focus on the Joining. Alistair, did you collect the blood?" Alistair nods, digs back into his pack, and pulls out the vials. One by one, he unwraps them from the cloth protecting them and hands them to Duncan. The black, congealed liquid within the glass almost appears to swallow whatever dim light washes over it, devouring and hungry. It is unsettling.
Tension descends over the group; none of them can look away from the vials. Every sound around them begins to separate and crystallize. Talvinder can hear the sound of snoring, coming from inside one of the Wardens' tents. She can hear the grass, trampled by so many feet, rustling. She can hear the blood rushing in her own ears. She can hear the crackle of her own fear within her skull. Is this it? What is to come next? Once Alistair has handed over all four vials, each stoppered tightly with a small cork, Duncan looks sharply up at the others, making eye contact with Savreen, Daveth, Tali, and Jory in turn as he speaks.
"I must be very clear on one point. None of you are volunteers anymore. Whatever you may have said, however much coming with me might have been a choice of yours originally. Whether conscripted, recruited, saved—it does not matter anymore." The blood in Tali's ears roars louder, nearly drowning out Duncan's voice. It takes her a moment to realize, but she is angry. So angry, angrier than she has been since she can remember, and it is sudden and unexpected, feeling as though it comes from nowhere. It is consuming her, whispering to her, embracing her, urging her to give in to that for which she has had no voice until now.
Tali is no longer in the king's encampment. Blood is dripping, spreading out on the larder floor, a shade of red so deep and dark it is almost as black as that in the vials Duncan holds. Poison is rotting flesh, putrefying it, turning it green, gray, rubbery, and then at last to dust. "You were chosen because you are needed. There is no turning back now. Do you understand?" She cannot help it. Something snaps inside her, a numbness giving way, breaking, and suddenly, Tali's voice bursts from her chest, her mouth, into the night air. It pours out of her, the stopper gone as she is reminded of it all, of everything, of the feelings she's been shoving down since she awoke in her room in Highever Keep that night.
"You want me to 'be clear'?" Tali asks, and she is dimly aware that this anger makes no sense. Duncan is the only reason she lives, but perhaps it is that knowledge that makes her so angry. "You stole me from my home." The accusation is not entirely fair—Howe is to blame, she knows it, but it was Duncan who grabbed her, threw her over his shoulder and carried her hence. "You took me away from my father as he lay dying on a pantry floor, and you want me to 'understand' that I'm not a volunteer?" She is yelling, suddenly, as though one possessed, feeling like the fire of a rage demon is coursing through her limbs. And yet—there are cold, achingly cold, bitingly cold tears in the corners of her eyes. It would have been better, she thinks, spelling out the words for the very first time in her mind, if I had died there with them.
"You ripped me away without so much as a chance to say goodbye, made me leave them, listen to them die in that fucking tunnel as we ran, like cowards—no, no Sav, let go of me. I said let go of me!" As Tali surges forward, toward Duncan, white-hot fury in the pit of her stomach, Savreen grabs her arm. Her cousin tries to speak to her softly, calmly, placatingly. She tries to tell Tali to let it go, to see reason. But the demon in Tali's veins will have none of it. She snarls back at Sav, teeth bared, lips curled back, feeling the tears begin to slip and slide down her face. Strangely, she notices how cold the air is on her gums. "You don't get to tell me to be calm when you fucking took me, with him. When you got to say goodbye. Let me the fuck go." At that, Sav recoils as if burned by Tali's skin. Her eyes are dark, glistening, horrified, sad, and then there is anger there, such a small touch of anger. While Tali knows she will feel guilt later—she feels some of it now, deep underneath the rage, in the same place she has buried her reason and logic—now the anger inside her yells, seethes, louder than anything else. More. It needs more. It deserves more. She deserves more. She will have more.
Tali turns back to Duncan, and she yells again, feels spittle fly from her lips, tastes tears on her tongue.
"Fucking hilarious. You think I was ever a volunteer? You think this was a choice? You swooped down on me, on my cousin, after we lost everything. Fucking everything!" Through it all, Duncan stands there, taking her tirade calmly. His arms are crossed, his face placid, and it incenses her. Her hand is balled into a fist, and she slams it, hard, on Duncan's chest. They are eye level, and he doesn't even flinch. She wants him to cower. "My father was dying. I had to listen to my mother's screams of pain as they killed her. I heard all of it." In Tali's chest, the rage is still hot, but now it grips at her lungs, searing her throat and stealing her breath. She can barely speak, but still she continues. "The taunts, th-the blows, the way their blood spattered, their limbs smacking onto the floor as they were cut and hacked and desecrated—a-and you just took me. You stole my goodbye, and you want to act like you're some noble, principled—" She pulls her fist back, ready to hit again, as Duncan's face swims in her eyes, drowned in tears forming too fast to fall. But hands catch her arm, circle around her waist, drag her back, pull her off balance.
Tali kicks, screams, sobs. Whoever it is holding her falls back, Tali trapped and tangled in their lap, and there on the ground, she turns her face into their Warden plate, grips their shoulders, and cries. She cries until she feels that there is nothing left of her, that she is brittle, dry, hollow. At some point, the flaps to the Warden tents open, some of their inhabitants apparently woken by the commotion, but they leave again before she sees them, maybe waved off by Duncan, maybe used to this type of resistance to conscription, to the Wardens, the Joining. Eventually, when Tali has ceased to cry, and sits there hiccupping, she looks up, into Alistair's face, and she sees a swirl of emotions. Anger, maybe, that must be the hardness, the steel in his eyes. Pity, certainly, with the way his brow furrows upward. Real sadness, she's sure, she can see a faint film of tears in his own eyes for some reason. And, if it was not a feeling she knew so well herself, she might never be able to place it, but she is sure she sees jealousy. Reluctant, knowingly misplaced, but jealousy nonetheless, jealousy that cannot be gotten rid of so easily, jealousy for a chance, jealousy for something she does not yet know. Her eyes search his; empty, hopeless grief met by this unexplained mix of anger and pity, but she is the first to look away. The demon is gone, the rage put out, and she is ashamed. Deeply, horribly ashamed.
Slowly, Tali disentangles herself from Alistair. Long limbs are extricated from the grip of equally long limbs, armor catches on armor, and she stumbles to her feet. Alistair rises next to her, but Tali can't bring herself to look at him again, to see the expression on his face.
"Are you quite finished?" Duncan asks. His voice is short and clipped, but he is not unkind. Not angry, as Tali certainly deserves. She does not want to look up at him, either; she keeps her eyes trained on the ground as she nods in response. "Good. I have had worse from many before you, and I suspect I will have worse after. Be grateful that you did not pull a weapon, or I would have had to respond in kind. Are we clear?" Tali nods again, and Duncan reaches out, tilts her chin up, forces her to look at him, and in the dark, dim light he looks enough like her father that she can imagine, just for a moment. There is kindness—perhaps not understanding, but empathy—in his eyes, and were Tali not drained, she would cry again as she sees it. Instead, she simply hiccups once more, chest heaving with dry sobs. "I said," Duncan speaks again, more quietly, earnestly, in a voice that says he, too, has lost much, "are we clear?" Tali swallows, licks her lips, and rasps out an answer.
"Yes." He takes his hand away, releases her from his gaze, and Talvinder steps back, into the shadows, away from all the others, only Abarie next to her. She still cannot look at them. A moment passes, silent, then another, each member of the group waiting for another to speak. Whoever was snoring before Tali's outburst has fallen back asleep, their volume redoubled. Or perhaps they somehow slept through the whole thing. Snores fill the empty space carved out by Tali's shouts, ringing loudly in her ears. Finally, Daveth speaks, unsure.
"So…what happens next?"
"Next, you must have courage for what will come." Daveth squints, raising an eyebrow at Duncan's answer, and his voice gets a little higher for a moment, thinning out and catching in his nose.
"Courage? How much danger are we in, exactly? Why would we need courage?" This turns Jory to fretting again, and he speaks up.
"You're saying—are you saying that this ritual—it can kill us?" Duncan nods solemnly, confirming the answer to Jory's question before he even opens his mouth.
"As could any Darkspawn you might face in battle. You would not have been chosen, however, if I did not think you stood a good chance of surviving."
"Well, I can't see why you keep this bloody Joining thing a secret!" Though Daveth sounds anxious, there's sarcasm in his voice. Tali might crack a smile, in other circumstances, but still, she stares at Duncan's forehead, feeling Sav's presence, feeling the ever-widening distance growing between them—the distance I created. Duncan continues, and she barely hears him.
"If only such secrecy were unnecessary, and all understood the necessity of such a gamble, of such a sacrifice. Sadly, that has never been so, not since the First Blight, nor will it ever be." Daveth sighs and, for the moment, his objections run dry.
"Fine," Daveth says, and Tali hears his hands smack against the leather of his armor, as though he's tossed them up and let them fall. "Let's go, then. I'm anxious to see this 'Joining' now." The next voice that speaks is hard, cold, tired, and Tali doesn't recognize it immediately as Sav's, but when she does, her head snaps up to find her cousin looking back at her, expression blank and stony as she speaks.
"I agree. Let's have it done. If we are to die, better to get it over with." Tali stares at her, and Sav stares back, and Tali knows, as much as she wishes to take back what she said, she cannot. Whatever is to happen tonight, there will never be any going back. There was never any chance of that, not since the moment she awoke in her room at Highever Keep to the sound of pounding on her door. Miles away, worlds away, Duncan nods and gestures to Alistar.
"Alistair, show them to the old temple. Let us begin."
After they've all shed the bulk of their armor, leaving it piled just outside the Warden tents alongside Sher and Abarie, Alistair walks them across the short side of the causeway, up to the front of the 'temple'—or more accurately, what remains of it. There he leaves them, heading through the main archway while they wait outside. They are left with little to do but stare at the temple's bones as they wait. Truthfully, even if Talvinder were pressed, she never would be able to guess the purpose of the structure in front of her. It sits on a raised dais, three cracked steps up from the ground. Though it is within the walls of Ostagar, it is tucked to the side, in a smaller section of the sprawling fortress, and away from the bulk of the tents that litter the place now. Slightly on the smaller side, it is, like much else in the old Tevinter fortress, half-crumbled, though the walls still mostly stand, rectangular and thick with the suggestion of ornately carved pillars, lintels, spandrels and friezes. It was, from what Tali can see of the remains, a tall building, with arches for windows and entryways, the ghost of vaulted ceilings and meticulously designed mosaics inside. But none of this tells her what this was a temple for, and her Tevene history is not as polished as Savreen's is.
Savreen. Tali cannot meet her cousin's gaze, even as she stands there next to her, arms a hairsbreadth from touching. She should speak to her, say something, she knows it—has known it, in so many other moments as well. But with Jory and Daveth here, this moment is not right, not fully theirs. There is not enough space to say what must be said, to make the apologies that must be made. But, Tali wonders, ice-cold anxiety stabbing through her stomach, will there ever be a 'right' time now? With all I have said? There is no answer to her thoughts. No one speaks. They are all silent, even Daveth and Jory, their bickering at a standstill for now, but only because neither of them can figure out what to say in the face of this new danger. Tali can feel the pressure of the moment, feel it building, and she shudders, then looks up, to the cloudless night sky, to the stars beyond it all.
If she is about to die, if there is even a chance, she would like to say something to make the moment less awkward.
"I—" She fumbles the start, unsure of how, exactly, to continue. "I am—what I mean to say is—" Shame is a hot feeling, its center burning with such heat as to make it frigid and painful between her shoulder blades. She can feel sweat on her skin, and though she has stopped crying, a hiccup catches in her chest again, snagging her muscles uncomfortably. "None of you, none of us have had an easy time of it. I…I lost control. I'm sorry, for making such a scene. I can only imagine what you have both been through, Daveth and Jory, as well as myself a-and—" My cousin. Say it, Talvinder. Look at her. Tell her. "It was—it was selfish." She speaks to all of them, but her words are for Sav. "I am—I'm sorry—" Daveth stops her there, holding up a hand and shaking his head.
"You've nothing to apologize to us for. Didn't know you'd lost your whole family, you two. If anything, I'm surprised you didn't pop like that sooner." Tali nods, but it doesn't assuage the shame. And she still can't look at Savreen.
They lapse into silence again, occasionally glancing toward the archway that forms the entrance to the temple. Torchlight flickers inside, and Tali can just make out some movement from where she stands, Alistair doing…something to prepare for the Joining. As the moments tick on, Jory becomes antsy again, and eventually he crosses his arms, taps his foot on the ground a little too forcefully, heaves a sigh a little too loud, and Daveth looks over at him, an eyebrow raised, ready to bicker once more.
"Well, ser knight? Something wrong? Would you like to share it? Could be your last chance to grace us with your opinions." Jory scoffs, uncrosses his arms, and throws them up in exasperation.
"You say that as if you aren't worried! The more I hear about this Joining, the less I like it. Haven't you thought about what's going to happen?" In response, Daveth shakes his head, rolling his eyes. Tali is surprised they don't roll out of his head with the force of their movement, but inside of it they remain, affixed to his skull.
"Are you blubbering again?" He directs his next words at Sav and Tali, as though sharing with them some juicy secret, some great gossip. And, to his credit, it is rather humorous. "He wailed and whinged and whined the whole way here from Redcliffe. I was with the other Wardens coming back when he was recruited. I should know. Insufferable!" Tali nods, but nothing else. Jory, however, ignores Daveth's words, continuing on his own tangent.
"Why all these damned tests? Have I not earned my place already?" His voice is beginning to grow shrill, its tone slipping up nearly an octave and rivalling the tinny notes of Daveth's fear.
"Maybe it's tradition. Maybe they're just trying to annoy you." Daveth's response, and the accompanying shrug, both earn him a glare from Jory, who is at his limit of the other recruit's teasing.
"My wife is in Redcliffe with a child on the way! If they had warned me—I mean it just doesn't seem fair—" Another shrug from Daveth. He seems to be growing weary of wondering, of hypothesizing about the Joining, about their fates.
"Would you have come if they'd warned you? Maybe that's why they don't. The Wardens do what they must. After all, why else would they conscript a thief right off the gallows?" Jory sputters, trying to reply, but Daveth continues. "My life is forfeit either way, so the sacrifice isn't so great. But you—you saw those Darkspawn in the Wilds, ser knight. Wouldn't you choose to die to protect your pretty wife from them?"
"I…" Jory is uncertain, eyes wide, afraid. Next to him, though, Sav is shaking her head, one hand crossed around her middle, the other held to her forehead.
"Will you both just stop?" she asks, her voice hard. Daveth does not stop.
"I know I'd sacrifice a lot more than myself if I knew it would end the Blight. Maybe you'll die. Maybe I'll die. Maybe we'll all die, even your pretty little wife and your bouncing little baby. But if nobody stops the Darkspawn? Then we'll die for sure. No more 'maybe's." At this, Sav has had enough.
"That's a horrible thing to say, Daveth, and you know it. For pity's sake, let him have his damn fear. There's nothing you can do to stop it, and all you're doing right now is making it worse." Her words do finally make Daveth stop, and he appears mollified, stepping back and easing up. He doesn't apologize—probably because, Tali thinks, he feels he's right. And maybe he is. Death is always certain, the question is when? She remembers the words of Morrigan's mother, out there in the Wilds: Death knocks at the door for you all, follows your every step. Do not be so foolish as to forget him. Talvinder knows she will not forget—she cannot, not when she sees death in the corner of her eye at all times, when he lives in her memory with such clarity. It is death she is thinking of when Duncan approaches them all from behind, holding the four vials of Darkspawn blood in one hand, and a pitted silver chalice in the other. It is death she is thinking of as Duncan ushers them into the temple. It is death she is thinking of when Duncan turns to them all from a cracked altar at the front of the room, lit by torches held in the remaining sconces along the wall, and speaks.
"At last we come to the Joining." Death is here, and it will not leave until it is satisfied, that much she knows.