We made our way past the bodies of the men I had killed on the road, and Grayson let out a low whistle.
"Eight against one? You did well against those odds." He commended me, and I could feel Alistair stiffen beside me. He looked like he might want to punch our fellow warden, but Grayson didn't seem to notice. Somehow, I didn't think "you got poisoned" fitted Alistair's definition of "doing well".
We crossed the deserted square to the Chantry and a feeling of dread rose up inside of me when the sound of chanting came floating towards us. I had fought darkspawn, demons and the walking dead, but this was different. It was eerie. These people were unhinged, and that made them dangerous and, so far, unpredictable. As much as I hated carrying the burden of knowing too much, I hated not knowing what they might do next even more.
Grayson gave us all a brief once-over, checking that each of us was prepared, before wrenching the door open and we advanced as one, with weapons drawn. The scene before us was not entirely unexpected - at least not to me, because it was almost identical to the scene in the game - but it was bizarre, especially given the chaos that had preceded it.
Revered Father Eirik was clearly leading a sermon and, despite obviously noticing our entrance, he did not acknowledge us at first, nor did any of his congregation. Storming the building with weapons drawn wasn't exactly subtle, but for a few moments it was as if we didn't exist. I glanced at Grayson and saw his face morph into a doubtful frown, and I nudged him, narrowing my eyes and shaking my head.
"...we are blessed beyond measure; we are chosen by the Holy and Beloved to be Her guardians…" Eirik said, to the silent, listening crowd, who bowed their heads as one in response.
Grayson shifted, uneasily, and started to lower his sword. I sensed his hesitance and yanked the gag from my mouth, deciding that it was worth the risk.
"It's an act. Don't buy it." I whispered.
"I don't like this." He muttered, and I saw Morrigan roll her eyes at his indecision.
"Well, then, perhaps we should simply join the service." She said, in a dangerously sweet voice. "I do enjoy spending my time in Chantries."
Grayson didn't have a chance to respond, however. To everyone's surprise, Alistair strode forward, closing the distance between us and the worshippers with alarming speed. Grayson and I exchanged incredulous looks, jogging to catch up with him as he parted the crowd with careless force, marching to meet Father Eirik. I could only see the back of Alistair's head, but somehow even that looked intimidating.
"He's so angry." I whispered, biting my lip in an attempt to stay silent. "My fault."
"Ah, welcome." Eirik greeted, when Alistair was practically nose-to-nose with him, and he could no longer ignore our presence. "You must be the visitors that I have heard so much about. I trust you have enjoyed your time in Haven so far?"
"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Alistair demanded, somehow sounding far calmer than I knew he was. "No, really. I'm really asking, because you can't be serious."
"Revered Father Eirik." Grayson spoke up, gruffly, still looking thoroughly uncomfortable. "We would speak with you in private."
"You presume to interrupt our sacred time of worship with your demands?" The old man replied, and I genuinely couldn't tell if his outrage was fake, or if he really was just demented. "You? You who have brought violence to Haven?"
"Oh, we brought violence to Haven?" I laughed, incredulously, momentarily forgetting my plan to stay quiet. "You slaughter your own people in cold blood! You calling us violent is like Morrigan saying that other people rely too heavily on feathers as a style choice."
Morrigan sighed next to me, and I slowly replaced the gag, with a sheepish grin.
"You see what happens when we allow outsiders into the village?" Eirik looked past us, to his congregation. "They have no respect for our privacy or our traditions. They will tell others of us if we let them. Word will spread, and then what? You, strangers, do not understand our ways. You would bring war to Haven, in your ignorance."
"We have no desire to interfere with your traditions." Grayson replied, and I was grateful for the gag as it muffled my disagreements. "We came here seeking the scholar, Genitivi. What have you done with him?"
"We don't owe you any explanations, stranger. We have a sacred duty; failure to protect Her would be a greater sin. All will be forgiven."
My yelp of surprise was muted by my gag when strong hands grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms to my side as all at once, as if on cue, the gathered congregation surged forward and the Chantry hall echoed with the song of blades being drawn. Alistair reacted first, elbowing the Revered Father in the face before the old man could act, and the force of the blow sent him to his knees.
He was almost immediately overwhelmed by shrieking cultists, outraged at seeing their beloved leader being struck but, despite being outnumbered, he was not outmatched, and had soon regained the upper hand with Grayson's assistance, as Morrigan bounded forward as a large white wolf, working as a team with Khan.
I flailed and struggled as my captor hauled me off the ground and turned me to face another of the cultists, who ran towards me with his sword aimed at my chest. I kicked the weapon aside at the last moment and followed up with a swift boot to the temple which knocked my would-be attacker unconscious.
I threw my head back, meaning to break my captor's nose, but as he was about a foot taller than me, I only succeeded in bouncing my head ineffectually off of his pecs. He laughed at my failed attempt and I stomped hard on his foot, twisting out of his grip and reaching for the knife in my boot. His laughter died in his throat as he looked down at the handle of the knife protruding from his heart, and he fell to the ground with a satisfying thud.
I spun around and took in the fight scene before me: Alistair and Grayson were back-to-back, and several of the cultists had fallen under their blades already.
A section of the congregation had broken off from the rest, apparently realising that we were no easy prey, and Khan and Wolf-Morrigan chased them out of the Chantry and into the snow.
Alistair's bellows punctuated the song of battle as he demanded to know what poison they used, offering each man his life in exchange for the information, before cutting them down when they refused or confessed they didn't know.
Amidst the chaos, I saw Father Eirik crawl towards the back of the room, trying his best to remain unnoticed, and I marched towards him. He sensed my approach and tried to scramble to his feet, but I grabbed him by the back of his robes and slammed him into the wall. He crumpled to my feet, unconscious, and I turned back to join my friends in cutting down the last of our attackers.
I was halted in my advance by the cold sting of a blade across my neck. I froze, instinctively, and Eirik's voice sounded from right behind me, his bony hand grasping my forearm. I guessed he wasn't quite as unconscious as I had thought.
"Wardens!" He cried. "Drop your weapons or the girl dies."
Alistair spun around, and the blood drained from his face when he saw Eirik holding me. His defiant frown was replaced by a look of pure fear, but not for himself. He looked into my eyes, hopelessly, and I tried to yell out to him, to tell him to stand his ground, but all that came out was muffled, meaningless noise. His sword tumbled from his grasp and clattered to the floor, and he threw down his shield, raising his hands in surrender. I looked at Grayson, urgently, but his eyes were fixed on the man holding me.
"Mmph mmph, mmph mmph mm...mmm..." My unsuccessful attempt to communicate with him morphed into a feeble whine as the Revered Father pressed the blade deeper into my neck, drawing blood. Grayson threw down his sword, furiously.
Eirik laughed, cruelly, as four of his men rushed forward to restrain my friends, forcing them both to their knees.
"You see how She brings us victory, my brothers!" Eirik cried out. I breathed in, sharply, as he pressed the blade harder against the sensitive skin of my throat, and he chuckled, sinisterly, in my ear.
"Just please…don't hurt her." Alistair pleaded, and I felt the blood rise in my face as rage coursed through me at hearing the pain in his voice, at watching him being forced to kneel before this lowlife.
A scream of fury erupted from within me and I ducked and twisted away from him, ignoring the pain as the blade tore at my skin,and in one fluid movement, I swiped his legs from under him with a swift kick, knocking him onto his back. I pinned him to the ground with the tip of his own blade, resting a foot on his soft belly. I looked up, slowly, narrowing my eyes at the men holding Alistair, and I once again wrenched the gag from my mouth.
"Release them." I commanded, and the cultists instantly backed away from the Wardens, looking at each other uneasily. "Leave."
"No…" Eirik started to protest, and I raised the blade above his heart in a silent threat.
"I don't like having to repeat myself." I said, quietly. With a few, uncertain looks at one another, the remaining men all seemed to reach the same conclusion, and practically sprinted from the Chantry. I stepped over the Revered Father and stormed towards my friends, launching the sword through the air in anger, even as Alistair tried to hug me.
"If you ever, ever do anything like that again, I swear I will…" I trailed off, suddenly feeling queasy. I fought through the feeling, with some difficulty, and glared at each of them in turn. "You don't risk your lives for me. If I get caught and killed, that's on me. You never, never put down your blade. We do not negotiate with terrorists."
"I won't have this discussion with you here." Alistair replied, tersely, and I saw some of my own rage reflected back at me in his eyes. "And your neck is bleeding...again."
"Oh, is it, Alistair? Is my neck bleeding? Do I have a boo boo?" I asked, mockingly. "So the sensible thing would have been for all three of us to lose our heads?"
"Or you could have stayed behind." He muttered, exchanging a significant look with Grayson, whose stoic expression told me that he was not on my side in this. "You should put your gag back in."
I glared at him in open-mouthed outrage, and he softened slightly.
"You should." He said, pointedly, and I glowered at him. He was right, of course, but I was too angry to care. I turned on my heel and rounded on the Revered Father once more, drawing a dagger from my holster.
He had righted himself into a sitting position, and I lowered my blade to his throat and jerked my head up, signalling for him to stand. He reluctantly complied and I took a deep breath.
"Okay. Listen, you. I know about the dragon. If you cooperate with me right now, I won't kill Her. If you don't, She will die. And in case you have any doubts that I'm telling the truth, one of your archers got me in the neck with your poison." I said, gesturing at the bandage around my neck. "Or you can just look in my eyes and tell me if you think I'm lying."
He looked from my eyes, to the rag on my neck, and an amused grin spread across his face. He threw his head back and laughed, ominously, and I took a half-step back, warily, before pressing my blade to his throat again with renewed ferocity.
"What's so funny?" I demanded.
"You fool." He spat. "We do not tip our arrows in the toxin. It is inhaled by true believers when they wish to confess their sins to me before their deaths, so that they may meet Andraste with a cleansed soul. Henrietta requested some from my stores this morning. She suspected that one of you had a hand in the attack last night, and she planned to use it on you, to ascertain the truth. I watched her douse that very rag with it."
He laughed again and I raised my hand to the rag at my neck, still held in place by the makeshift bandage, feeling like I'd been slapped. I roared in frustration, ripping it away and tossing it to the floor.
"Where is the antidote?" I demanded.
"You poisoned yourself!" He cried, gleefully, and I pressed the blade into his neck.
"Where is the antidote?!" I repeated, more urgently.
"There is no antidote." He replied, and I roared again, grabbing the rag from the floor and holding it over his mouth and nose, forcing him to breathe it in.
"Where is it?" I yelled, as he bent double, coughing.
"There is no antidote."
"There is." Alistair said, firmly. "There must be."
"I will kill your Andraste." I said, smothering him again. "If you don't tell me the truth."
"Lauren." Grayson said, gently, placing a hand on my shoulder, and I shoved him away from me, grabbing the old man by the front of his robes and shaking him.
"Where is it?!"
"You...are going to die. It is useless to fight. And now...I am going to die along with you. If there was an antidote, I would tell you, if only to save myself."
I knew he was telling the truth now, and I released his robes, backing away from him.
"No. No, he's lying." Alistair insisted, stepping past me and shoving the old man against the wall. "You're lying!"
"He isn't." I said, stumbling away from them and collapsing against a wall, sliding down it to sit on the floor. I felt numb and defeated, but mostly I just felt tired. I sheathed my dagger and pressed a hand to my neck. The poisoned wound was throbbing, but the new gash that had joined it was deeper than I had first realised, and it was bleeding profusely. I hissed as I applied pressure to it, wondering absently which of the injuries would kill me first.
"He is! He must be." Alistair said, desperately, and I closed my eyes, willing myself well, for his sake.
"He said that they usually use the poison on people who are already close to death." I said, weakly. "I'm not close to death. I'm strong. I might fight it off on my own."
It wasn't a great way to discover I could lie again.
"This is the second stage of the poison." Father Eirik said, and I could tell from his pained expression that he was entering the first stage of it now. He wasn't offering this information by choice. "The first stage compels the sufferer to speak only the truth. When that wears off, the body enters the second stage. It happens quickly. You will experience breathlessness, dizziness, and intense pain in your abdomen."
I winced as a pang shot through my stomach, and raised my eyes to meet Alistair's, grimacing when I saw the despair in his face.
"What comes after that?" I asked, wincing.
"You will fall asleep soon. It won't be long now."
"And then?"
"You won't wake up."
I tore my eyes away from Alistair's horror-stricken face, and looked at Grayson. He was pale, and his features were twisted in premature grief.
"Grayson. The Revered Father has outlived his usefulness." I said. Grayson drew his blade and the old man was dead before he knew what was happening. I nodded, gratefully. I was dying. I didn't want that old psychopath to be one of the last voices I heard.
"Grayson." I said again, and he turned to me, with a gentle question in his eyes. I pointed at the bookcase behind him. "Brother Genitivi is in a room behind those shelves. You'll need him to get to the temple. Take the amulet from Eirik's body. Genitivi knows how it works."
"Hey!" Alistair dropped to his knees beside me, taking my face in his hands. "You're coming with us. You're going to be okay."
I grinned at him, but everything hurt now. It took all of my will-power not to cry out with the pain.
"I know." I lied. "I just need to rest here for a while. You were right. I was reckless. I should...stay behind. When the others get here, you should go on to the temple without me."
"Lauren." He whispered. "I did this to you. It was me, I pressed that rag to your wound, I…"
"Sshh. That doesn't matter." I smiled warmly at him. "None of that matters. I'm going to be just fine."
I reached out and grasped his hand, swallowing roughly. Tears ran silently down his face and I hushed him, shaking my head.
"You always take care of me." I assured him. "I would never have made it this far without you. You make me feel brave."
"I did this." He repeated, in horror, and I frowned, hating myself for hurting him in the precise way he had begged me not to.
"Don't do that." I said, feeling tears fill my own eyes in response to his. "I told you, I'm going to be fine. But I need you to listen."
Footsteps interrupted me and I looked up to see Morrigan return. Her footsteps slowed as she took in the scene, and Grayson approached her and whispered in her ear. She pulled away from him, staring at me, and threw him a questioning look. He shook his head, slowly, and she turned her face away from me for a long moment, before turning back to me with a strange, sad smile on her face. She knelt by my side, opposite Alistair, and wordlessly healed the newest wound on my neck.
"I know." I said, with a grin. "Can't keep my blood in my body for even a moment."
"Callback jokes are cheap." She said, with a small smile. I laughed, weakly.
"Callback jokes are cheap." I echoed, returning her smile.
"Lauren, I…" She started, uncertainly, looking from me to Alistair, and tossing a glance over her shoulder at Grayson, and the uncertainty was replaced by a look of determination. "You do not belong to this world, Lauren Duval. But I have watched you fight for it with a grace and a strength that is so rare, you might have brought it with you when you fell from the sky."
"You've...been with me from the start." I said, as I tried to blink away the spots that had started to appear in my vision.
"I am...proud…" Her careful mask slipped to reveal a look of anguish as she clasped my shoulder. "I am proud to call you my friend."
I smiled, gratefully at her.
"Morrigan." I glanced at Grayson, and turned back to her. Every movement took massive effort now. "You are endlessly more capable of love than you know. I promise you. You are not Flemeth. Don't let the lessons she taught you stop you from finding your own happiness."
A sob echoed around the room and I turned back to Alistair and tightened my grip on his hand.
"You can't fall apart." I ordered, in as commanding a tone as I could muster in my steadily weakening state. "The world needs you. Larry...um." I cleared my throat, fighting through the lump that had formed at the thought of my faithful hound returning, excited, tail-wagging, only to find that I'd abandoned him. "Larry will need you to take care of him. He won't understand."
"Stop." Alistair pleaded, screwing his eyes shut. "Stop saying goodbye. You're not going anywhere."
Grayson dropped to his knees in front of me, and I looked around at all of them, at their miserable faces, and I wanted to break down and cry with them. Even if I let myself, I didn't think I had the strength left.
"Hey, pup." I croaked, closing my eyes briefly and struggling more than a little to open them again.
"Hey, kitten." He replied, in a hollow voice.
"I'm sorry that things stopped being so easy between us, somewhere along the way." I said. "My fault. I'm sorry I'm so difficult sometimes. You know, I never had a brother. But if I did...I wish I could have had a brother like you."
"You do." He assured me, his voice thick with unshed tears. "You're my little sister. I can't do this without you."
"Of course you can. I know that the road ahead feels impossible right now." I told them, swallowing the taste of copper in my mouth and fighting the heaviness of my eyelids, but I knew that it was a losing battle. "But Ferelden couldn't be in better hands. Alistair…"
"I'm here." He choked.
"You're so much more than they made you believe." I said, struggling fiercely against my own body. "Your whole life. You're better than all of them, and they're terrified that you'll figure that out some day. People are going to want to control you. They're going to want to use you, for their own ends. You don't let them. You never let them. You never let anyone make you do anything that you don't want to."
"Sshh, you're going to be fine." He said, and I frowned. I hoped that he'd heard my words, despite his refusal to accept the reality that was in front of him. I hoped that he'd carry them with him.
"I hope that you'll be happy." I said, barely clinging onto consciousness. "I think I might...close my eyes...for a moment…"
"No, no, stay awake. Stay with me." Alistair took my face in his hands, slapping my cheek, lightly. "No, stay with me. You can't leave me, you have to stay awake. Come on. Get up, we have to go. Stay with me."
"I love you." I whispered, and a tear rolled down my face. My heart ached at the pain I was causing him. It took everything that I had, but I forced my eyes open, forced myself to look at his face, to take in every perfect detail, and I felt the corners of my mouth tug into a weak smile. There was so much I could say to him. I could have spent the rest of my life telling him what he meant to me, and even if I had lived until my hair was grey, I still wouldn't have said enough. "I love you so much. You're the best man I've ever known. I never knew real happiness until I met you."
"Lauren..."
"Do you think I'll...see Emily...?"
I closed my eyes.
AN: Thanks to Eiris, Never33, Chimera Spyke and Mihoshi 2.0 for your reviews on the last chapter. I don't want to say too much in my note at the end of this one, I just kind of want it to breathe. I hope that makes sense lol.
Let me know your thoughts and feelings, even if you just want to yell at me...