The last time she'd been in the Fade, close to death, she wasn't sure what of the things she saw was her mind and what was… something else. This time, she reasoned, the several hours she'd spent in what likely would have been a normal morning at home, had nothing all gone so terribly sideways, was some combination. She wondered if it was, in fact, only a few hours. Or a few seconds, or a few days…
"You're the girl from Ostagar!" the voice behind her sounded muted and flat.
She turned and rose. The people in her earlier… dream? Hallucination? Had seemed real, but the man who had been standing behind her looked distorted, like she was looking at him through a flawed lens. Ten nodded. "Are you real?"
"I think so."
"Your name's Niall, right?" she said.
"Yes," he said.
"So how do we get you out of here? Actually, how do we get me out of here too?"
"Something… shifted," he said, "I think I can move on."
"Move on? You mean wake up, right?"
He turned his head to look left and right, and his movements seemed out of sync and blurred together, like she was seeing two entirely different images of him out of each eye, "I don't think so. I think it's been too long for me. The… thing you just killed. It was feeding on me… I don't know how long. There isn't enough of me left."
"Don't be ridiculous, I patched you up before, I can patch you up again," she said.
"You patched me up before so I could be here, now," he said, "You gave me an extra month or so, to face this foe. I lived this long for that purpose."
"Niall," she said, "No, none of us know how to face this foe. We're not done yet, there's still… they're still out there."
"Yes," he said, "But I found in the archives how to end it. Look on my body. Give the scroll in my left pocket to Wynne. She will know what to do with it."
"What do you mean?"
"The… resistance. I spent days in the archives. Drove myself near blindness trying to find it. But I did, there is an ancient magic, so archaic I don't even understand how it works. It should dispel whatever… nasty things Uldred has raised. Wynne will know, though. I've tarried here so long, I think I'd like to… be somewhere else."
"You can't leave me with this," protested Ten, "I don't even know what an Uldred is."
"Wynne will know."
"And how do you know she's not stuck here too?" asked Ten.
"Because I saw her. She woke up," Niall said, "You're the last one to be trapped here with me. It seems your desire was stronger than the others, easier for the demons to prey on."
"That's the first time I've been accused of being weak-minded," Ten observed, "But if a demon thinks it, I suppose it's true."
"In here, we can… sense. I think. Or I can. The guilt you carry must have smelled delicious."
"I've done more to be guilty about than most," Ten sighed.
"Well I hope you have many years to come to terms with that. But for now, I've played my part, however small," Niall said, "I barely remember my mother. But she told me that I would do something great. Perhaps this is it. I think I'd like to go see my mother now."
"I hope you do."
"You know, I never did get your name," he said.
"It's -"
"It doesn't matter. You have shown up for me when it mattered, and for that I will call you friend. So farewell, I hope the road ahead of you is less difficult."
"Goodbye," said Ten, "And I wish the same for you."
He smiled faintly, and turned his back, "It's time for you to wake up."
And so she did, sitting straight up and gasping for air. She managed to startle both Wynne and Alistair, who had been standing over her enough to make them jump back, but not the dog, who promptly went from whining to panting. She, of course, took Ten's rising as an invitation to start slobbering all over her face, which of course caused Ten to gag and stumble to her feet.
"Did she eat another corpse while I was out?" asked Ten.
"I think that's just how she smells now," said Alistair.
"I blame you people, whoever had her before me clearly didn't teach her not to lick people in the face," Ten sighed, "That's a thing only humans allow." She looked around. The dimly lit atrium looked much as it had before, high ceilings, pillars of ancient stone, an absolute mess of books and scrolls littered about the floor. She half remembered something. "Niall's gone isn't he?" she asked, her eyes falling on the mage who, until very recently, had been sleeping.
"I'm afraid so," Wynne said, "Poor lad."
"He said there was something in his left pocket," Ten said, "And that you would know what it is."
With great effort considering her earlier display of agility, Wynne stooped and rummaged in Niall's robes. She pulled out a scroll, smaller than the standard sizes that Ten had seen scattered about the tower, and squinted at it in the half light. Her brows knitted together and she tried to decipher some meaning from what was written thereon. To Ten's astonishment, looking over Wynne's shoulder, she recognized the script as Ancient Elvish. She could not read every word herself, but a few popped out at her.
"So…. what is it?" asked Alistair, clearly mystified by the whole thing.
"I'm not… I'm not entirely sure. From what I can gather it's some sort of ritual that robs blood magic of its particular… edge," said Wynne.
"How old is that scroll?" asked Ten, casting back to the last time that Elvish was the language of magic.
"The scroll itself is not that old. Maybe forty years," said Wynne, "But it's been copied, look, you can see that whoever wrote this was just copying the shapes of the letters, they didn't know the script or the language. Probably copies were made by generations upon generations of poor Tranquil scribes."
Ten shuddered, remembering hearing tales of mages who'd gotten too powerful, or just pissed off the wrong templar, and were robbed of their magic - and most of what made them people at the same time. "But do you know the language?" asked Ten.
"No," said Wynne. " It's not exactly a language that sees much use these days."
"Niall said, in there, that you'd know how to use it. So how do you use it?"
"Well you're supposed to read it," said Wynne, "Obviously."
Ten sighed, "Give me that. I don't know most of the words, but I know what sounds the letters make." She sounded it out slowly, remembering the two years worth of lessons an ex-Dalish neighbor had offered to the Alienage kids - before he got fed up with how things were in the city and took off again, along with the tailor's wife. It was not a long bit of writing, maybe the equivalent of two to three sentences. On about her third go round, substituting one vowel for another when she wasn't sure which of the hash marks indicating vowels marks meant which sound, felt a shift in the energy of the room after she had pronounced the last syllable.
"I think that was it," said Wynne, sensing the same effect.
"Wait, did I just do magic?" Ten said, a bit delighted with it.
"In its most basic form," said Wynne.
"So if a mage said what I just said, would it actually… do something?"
"Probably," said Wynne.
"All right. All right," said Ten, her mind racing. The floor was strewn with scrolls, both empty and used. She picked up a blank one, "You don't suppose there's a quill and ink anywhere around here?"
"I should hope so, this is the floor with all the libraries," said Wynne. She got up and disappeared around a corner. She returned promptly with the requested items. Ten sprawled out on the flagstones and started transliterating the runes into the Tevinter script that the rest of the regional languages were written in, where you could sound out a word even if you didn't know what it meant.
"Wait, is that an a or an e?" asked Wynne, "Your handwriting is terrible."
"Yeah, well it's not like we got the finest formal education where I'm from," Ten muttered, "That's an e." She got through it, putting punctuation and accent marks where she thought they ought to be and trying to be very clear about what letter was what to the point that the end of the whole thing wound up in large, childish block print that made her cringe to look at. She blew on the ink to dry it, and handed it to the elder mage, "Try it."
Wynne squinted at the scroll, and read out the sounds as best she could. This time the shift in the energy was more perceptible, and there was almost an audible sigh from the air around them.
"Ha!" Ten exclaimed, clapping her hands, "Everyone thank my dad for forcing me to go to Elvish lessons! Wynne, I thought the magi studied all about this sort of stuff!"
"There were mages within these walls who speak and read it fluently," said Wynne, "Alas I am not among them."
"What do you suppose that was?" Alistair asked, clearly nervous that something, anything had happened that he did not fully understand.
"Ma, what the hell happened?" called a female voice from the other end of the room.
Wynne looked up sharply, "Athmina!" she exclaimed. Ten followed her gaze to see a middle aged human woman in the Circle's blue robe wandering in from one of the four entrances to the atrium where they sat, "Where were you?"
"Lindrel's here too," said Athmina, putting her hand behind her and pulling a similarly disoriented elfin man into the room, "And Giulia. We were in the Tevinter library over there!"
"It must have disrupted all of it!" Wynne exclaimed, as several more mages made their way into the room, all looking a bit dazed.
"What's the last thing you remember?" asked Ten.
"Who're you?" the elf ostensibly called Lindrel asked.
"Don't even worry about that," said Ten.
"We were looking through the tomes, seeing if we could find anything to disrupt blood magic," the one named Athmina said, "Niall and Rowena were in the Elvish library on the other side. We were discussing what was to be done about Uldred and them lot. I think Giulia was talking about storming the chamber above and just hoping for the best, and all of a sudden… Lindrel here collapsed, then Giulia, and then I guess I fell asleep as well."
"Uldred again," said Ten, "What's an Uldred?"
"Of course it was him," Wynne sighed in irritation, "Pompous little shite-for-brains."
"I've never heard you curse before!" exclaimed one of the other mages, a young human woman whose jet-black hair was coming loose from the braids she'd had it in.
"Ah yes, I suppose sweet old grannies don't swear," said Wynne, "Sorry Giulia."
"Nah, mine did all the time," Athmina said.
"Well… fuck," Wynne said again, "All right. Lindrel, can you read this?" She gestured for Ten to give him the original scroll. Ten handed it over.
"Ma, I'm from Crestwood," said Lindrel, looking at the scroll, completely mystified, "I don't even know what this is."
"Well she knew how to read it, and she's not even a mage!" Wynne said, gesturing at Ten.
Lindrel looked at Ten suspiciously, "What, are you Dalish or something? Thought you folks were supposed to have sweet face tattoos."
Ten resisted the impulse to roll her eyes. Provincials. Ugh.
"Oh no," she said, mimicking the singsong intonation and clipped consonants that every Dalishman she'd met spoke with, "First, you must hunt a whole pack of wolves stark naked armed with nothing but a yew-wood spear. And then you must climb the highest mountain and offer their livers as a sacrifice to Brother Sky and Sister North Wind and if the omens are right, only then may you have sweet face tattoos."
Lindrel narrowed his eyes at her, unsure if she was joking. The other mages looked at each other, genuinely curious.
"I'm fucking with you," she said.
"Here," said Wynne, "She wrote it out in the common script for me. All of you, fetch a blank scroll and something to write with. We're all going up there, and we're all going to have it. And then we're going to keep it, and nothing like this will ever happen again."
"Ah shit, what happened to Niall?" one of the mages, a woman who might have been halfbred, but probably more human than elf, asked. She walked up hesitantly and knelt beside Niall's body, "Last I saw him he had grabbed a scroll and started taking off to the staircase… he was staggering but, I had no idea he'd…"
"He made it most of the way before it caught him," said Wynne, "I'm sorry Rowena, I know you were friends."
"Well shit," Rowena sighed, "I guess I knew we weren't all going to come out of this one, but… damn."
"Who's upstairs?" asked Wynne, "I've been trying to count the corpses but…"
"Sylda," said Athmina, "And Uldred, obviously. Milia. Anders. Irving probably."
"Ma, are the babies safe?" asked Rowena, having turned from Niall's body.
"Yes," said Wynne, "They're at the base of the tower. But I'm afraid…"
"Oh I don't like that," Lindrel said.
"They've sent for authorization from the capital," said Wynne, "The Rite of Annulment."
"They're going to gas us?!" Giulia shrieked. The mages began to panic, involuntary spells of all colors forming in the air.
"Not if we put a stop to this!" Ten shouted shrilly before all hell could break loose, "Gregoir assured me that if we return with First Enchanter Irving, he will unseal the tower."
"Who are you, anyway? Besides definitely not Dalish?" asked Lindrel, a cloud of snow dissipating before him as he got control of himself.
"Grey Warden," said Ten.
"Oh sure you are," groused Rowena, "And I'm the Empress of Orlais." A bolt of lightning shot harmlessly into the ceiling as she relaxed.
"She is," said Wynne, "I saw her at Ostagar."
"Then why didn't she die?" asked Athmina, blowing out the flames that had begun to spring from the tips of her fingers.
"Same reason I didn't," said Wynne, all business, "She's just too stubborn. Now do as I say, and copy it down. Practice it a few times. Whatever it is, it disrupts blood magic."
As the twelve or so mages set to making copies of the… whatever it was, sounding it out as they went and accidentally loosing the power of the ritual three or four times. About ten minutes later, once Lindrel finally got it right, Ten heard the clang of steel boots on stone as a lone templar stumbled into the room. Ten felt a surge of pity - he was tall, but gangly, his armor clearly meant for a man with much broader shoulders, and looked like he hadn't yet seen his twentieth birthday.
"What in Andraste's name is going on in here?" he demanded. The mages looked up disinterestedly and went back to their work. They evidently knew him, and felt comfortable completely ignoring his presence.
"Don't worry about it," called Rowena, licking the end of her quill to get the ink going again.
"No, you don't get to just ignore me!" the templar protested, "What are you doing?!"
"Not your bloody concern, Cullen," Lindrel said, the irritation in his voice more than an edge.
"You have to listen to me!" the templar, who was apparently called Cullen, announced, "I am charged with the safety of this tower!"
"You're a third-year squire who can't even grow a proper beard," Athmina declared, "Relax, we've got this under control." She blew on the ink on her scroll and recited the words thereon.
This time, the whole tower lurched as though a very brief earthquake had hit.
"You're practicing unauthorized rituals!" Cullen cried, stumbling over his feet.
"Lad, come here," Ten said, rising and beckoning him over.
Grateful to see someone who was certainly not a mage, the templar walked over, wary of the floor shifting again.
"And who exactly are you?" he asked.
"Never mind that for now," said Ten, "Do you know why none of them are listening to you?"
"Because there's only one of me, they know I'm new, and if they really wanted to, they could end me," said Cullen.
"Do you really think that the only way to get people to listen to you is by scaring them?" asked Ten.
Cullen started to speak, but shut his mouth.
"Is that how you've always been treated?" she asked, "Expected to just listen to the loudest voice in the room?"
She could see from the expression on his face that he had never really thought about it before.
"Well that's too bad," said Ten, "But I assure you there is more than one way to make your voice heard, and this one isn't working for you. And it's not making you any friends."
"They're not supposed to be my friends," said Cullen, "They're supposed to listen to me."
"Well," said Ten, "That's your first mistake. Those two things just aren't mutually exclusive. If people only listen to you because they fear you, the minute they don't fear you anymore, they stop listening. They turn their backs, they treat you like a mosquito in their ears. Like they're doing now. Now, if they trust you… even like you, that's a much better situation all around. But right now you're making yourself incredibly unpopular, and you look weak."
"I'm not weak!" protested Cullen, "I'm the only one here who didn't fall to that demon. Oh, I heard its voice, but I stayed strong!"
"That's admirable," said Ten, "I'm sure you have your qualities. But you can't just walk into every room swinging your sword around and expecting everyone to just hop to because they're supposed to."
"Who even are you? And why are you doing the talking?"
"There's no stopping her once she's on her soapbox," said Alistair.
Cullen paused, "And who are you? How did you get here? I thought the tower was sealed."
"It is," Alistair said, "Gregoir… made an exception."
"Ha! She made him lose his shit and he threw her like a ragdoll didn't he!" exclaimed Cullen, clearly more comfortable talking to another man, "He does that sometimes. Mostly to the younger lads. Old man's got a hell of an arm."
Ten chuckled, "Does he now."
"Oh yeah, if he's being a stick in the mud about leave, all you need to do is goad him until he sees red and he'll chuck you out for the night, bang! You're on leave."
"There we go!" exclaimed Ten, "You do understand the difference between authority and power."
"Point taken," Cullen acknowledged, "But you still haven't answered my question. Who are you?"
"Grey Wardens," said Alistair, "We were here to call our treaty due, get a little help with one of the apparently several existential threats to the nation, and wandered into this mess."
"Sure, and I'm Divine Justinia," Cullen said skeptically, crossing his arms.
"With all due respect, Your Eminence," said Ten, "We've managed to get this thing far more under control than you and all your compatriots have in nearly a week, so how about you relax?"
"Yeah, where exactly were you this whole time?" asked Alistair.
"One of those damned blood mages imprisoned me at the base of the stairs leading to the topmost floor," Cullen insisted, "But something just… happened, this barrier came down, and then I came in here to every journeyman in the place playing scribe on the floor, chanting utter gibberish."
"Was that racist?" Ten asked Alistair.
"I don't think so," Alistair said.
"I dunno, it felt racist," she said, "He called Ancient Elvish gibberish."
"All right, I can see that," he acknowledged, "Cullen, don't insult the Elvish language. It's rude."
"To be fair it is a bit… gibberishy," said Ten, "I'll allow it. Anyway, what were you doing at the base of the stairs to the tower? All the other templars in here had the good sense to die or be captured on the lower floors."
"They stuck me up here in the libraries," Cullen said, "So I saw it all go down. And I resisted the demons, too! All the mages fell, one by one! I was ready to storm up there, slaughter all of those that were infected with this… blood magic plague, but one of them, I don't know how - threw up some kind of prison around me."
"Just one day, I ask," Ten sighed, "One day without someone saying 'slaughter.' And you don't just get to kill everyone you're afraid of."
"I'm not afraid of them!"
"Yes you are. That's why you're in here trying to bully the ones who are, at least for the moment, on your side and even managed to disrupt whatever was imprisoning you. The only thing you would have accomplished, charging to the top of the tower, is getting yourself killed, because that's what foolish young men do. Ask Alistair."
"Hey, I'm not the one who got chucked ten feet in the air copping an attitude with the knight-commander," Alistair pointed out.
"Wait, I know that name. Weren't you here before? A few years ago? Aren't you the one who lasted about three weeks because you hid everyone's knickers in the Chamber of Harrowing?" asked Cullen, lowering an eyebrow.
"Oh, come on, it was a little bit funny," said Alistair.
"Anyway, having the sense of humor of an eight year old gives you an absolutely unfair edge against darkspawn," said Ten.
"And tightly wound young templars who take themselves far too seriously," Alistair added.
"Children!" Wynne shouted, "This is the best we're going to do. It's time for that blaze of glory. No doubt with all the practice runs, something's shaken loose up there."
"Hopefully nothing key to this tower's structural integrity," said Athmina, looking about nervously.
Ten felt, made sure her hatchet and dagger were where they left them. She whistled through her teeth for the hound, who had been sniffing about in piles of old books. And she started for where she thought the stairs must be.
"So, are all of us going?" asked Cullen hesitantly, but following her.
"Are you going start indiscriminately offing mages?" asked Alistair, falling in behind him.
"No," said Cullen, "No I'm not."
"Oh thank the Maker," Alistair said, "Last time I charged the top of a tower with only this one for backup I got thrown against the wall by a giant man goat thing. Not looking to repeat the experience."
"For the record, I did kill the giant man goat thing," Ten pointed out.
"Yes, and then promptly took half a dozen arrows and had to be carried out of there. Like I said, not looking to repeat the experience."
"I'd been on the job for less than a day!"
"And it's been like two weeks at this point, you're not that quick a study."
"Fine," said Ten, "If there are any giant man goat things, I volunteer to get thrown against the wall this time."
"Well from how you took the fall at the bottom floor I rather think you're better equipped for it. You bounced."
"Now you're just rubbing it in," said Ten. It took all of her strength to lift the enormous bar that was holding shut the door at the top of the stairs. Taking a breath, she flung it open.