Genesis of a Dragon

by InkInThePen

A dwarf denied the throne, a noble bent on vengeance, a tainted Dalish hunter, a mute carta enforcer, a one-eyed elven criminal, and an arson-prone mage from a different reality all walk into a bar. The bar is Thedas and Blight is on tap and it's happy hour. The script is broken, ignored, or occasionally set on fire as the Wardens forge a new path to the future of Thedas.

28. Nightmares and Daydreams (Part 2)

The Fade-scape around him shifted like scattering sand in the wind. Just as he was gathering his awareness about him, it crystallized into a shadowed structure he recognized: a twisted reflection of the chamber atop the Tower of Ishal. The windows shattered, a headless corpse in the center, scorched remains of darkspawn bodies all around… like before, this was the moment he'd utilized Pride's power, frozen in time.

It was the last place he'd seen the demon. The place where they'd made their deal. And now it was time for Pride to come through on it's end.

He could feel a subtle change of energy, a gathering of power applying pressure to the dream. A ripple of tension gathered and broke. The scene around him flickered before his vision went white, blinded by a flash of lightning. Thunder rolled, so surrounding and consuming it nearly deafened him.

He coiled his magic within himself and gathered flames at his hands, ready to defend himself. But when his vision returned to him he found the dream changed once more.

It wasn't a dramatic change. Still a circular room lined with enormous windows, still stairs that led down but none leading up implying this was the top level of some tower. He spied a pedestal in the very center of the chamber. The contents of the basin it held pulsed softly with blue light.

He blinked, recognition hitting him belatedly but with the force of a freight train.

"This is where we first met," he said, his voice quiet but carrying an echo across the Harrowing Chamber.

"Yes," responded Pride in a low growl. It stalked in a pacing fashion across from him, the pedestal between them an unspoken boundary line neither was prepared to cross yet. "The trial where the Circle tests it's mages."

Pride looked much the same as it did last time: bestial, hunched over and moving about on all fours instead of upright. The missing elements of it's forms replaced by outlines of lightning that flickered and flashed dangerously with every motion. The fact that it didn't immediately act on it's radiating hostility was enough to give him a small spark of confidence. It was here to uphold their deal—if it intended to kill him, it was at least willing to wait until later.

For better or worse, the tension of their threadbare alliance held steady.

He'd take dealing with Pride over the alternative anyday. Something icy and cold washed over him as he pushed thoughts of the other demon away: speak of the devil and he'll appear, after all.

"I'm sure we're both eager for this to be over with, so let's begin," he said, continuing to circle in tandem with Pride but daring his path a little more toward the center. The demon matched and mirrored his approach. "I need to help my team free from their dreams, and we need to kill Sloth. You're here to help make that happen without navigating all the confusing bullshit."

"Sloth wove a net to catch your minds. Though I spared yours from the snare, the rest are wrapped tight. If their bonds are cut Sloth will know of you, and it will hunt you," it answered. Pride's voice changed as it spoke, less like a monster and more like a human. Slowly it's form began to shrink. "If we leave them entangled we will catch it by surprise. Slay it, slip from the dream, and complete our deal."

The idea held some appeal. Cut right to the heart of the issue and be on their way. But there was omission in Pride's words, a twisting of the deal they made for it's own benefit.

"And what happens to my companions, if we leave them trapped in dreams and just kill Sloth and leave? Will they wake up?"

"The net will remain. But Sloth will not. Without it to sustain the weave, in time it may deteriorate."

"That's an awful lot of 'maybe' for me to bet their lives on." He shook his head. That, and he didn't know if he would be able to handle Sloth on his own. Not when Pride was probably waiting for a chance to sink a metaphorical dagger in his back and that would be a perfect chance. "And that wasn't the deal. Leaving them behind is a violation of terms."

Pride laughed. The sound was deep and rolling like distant thunder. "How I relish the arrogance of a hero. The delicious self-assurance that you can save them all."

"It's not heroism, it's stubbornness, and don't go trying to pick at my character flaws when we have shit to get done." He held up his hand, pulling at the little bead of power he carried to manifest a ball of sparkling lightning in his grip. "Or did you not actually want this back? Because I'm more than happy to keep it."

Pride's eyes focused intently on the manifestation of magic and it stopped it's slow pacing, the cadence of it's laughter shifting sharply to a low growl. He dismissed the magic and closed away that bead of power once more, a small piece of him inwardly gratified that even though this demon was dangerous and powerful he still had the upper hand.

"So, if I'm outside the net, as you said, we need to get in. I'm assuming that's something you can do?" he asked as Pride once more resumed pacing across from him.

"Entering is simple. A true trap is easy to fall into and a challenge to escape." Pride's voice changed as it spoke, less like a monster and more like a human. Slowly it's form continued to shrink. "Sloth knew of your approach. It knew it could not subdue all of you, not under it's own power. But Sloth is patient. And Sloth is clever. Sloth enlisted help."

"Yeah, I know. There are sub-realms where you need to kill Yavena, Slavren, Uthkiel, Rhagos, and Vereveel to unlock the path forward," He said impatiently. "That's kind of why I stuck up my bargain with you—I'm hoping we can just bypass those demons and their confusing hellscapes altogether."

"I do not speak of those five guardians. They are lesser, and another has already slain most of them," it shook it's head. In the blink of an eye, light had covered Pride's body and it changed shape, resembling the mage apprentice it'd appeared as in that first encounter. Only not quite. The form was more androgynous and features just to the other side of the uncanny valley. "These others I speak of are nearly as strong as Sloth itself. They were enlisted not to stitch together realms, but to subdue the minds in the weave it finds most threatening, allowed to consume the scraps left behind in the wake of Sloth's feast."

Well. That was different than expected. He did not like things that were different than expected. And most of the five original ones were dead already? Who killed them? Had one of the others already escaped from their nightmare?

"How many of these other greater demons are there?" he asked.

"Five," it said, then something about it shifted hesitantly before a wicked and almost inhuman grin bloomed across it's face. "Six, technically, if I am included."

"You? Why would you be included…?" He paused, Pride's pleasure making him distinctly uncomfortable. He shook his head as the answer came to him. "You made contact with Sloth ahead of time. You warned it we were coming so you could place yourself as the interceptor of my dream."

"And be grateful I did," it said, cruel laughter rolling form it. "I know what dream would have awaited you, otherwise. You would not have woken from it."

A chill held his spine, and he sharply recalled the no-longer little demon from his nightmare the night before, how it'd stared at him with his own true eyes while he drowned in darkness.

"Fine. I'll admit, that was clever of you," he said, shaking his head to banish the thought. Pride practically beamed at the commendation—because of course it liked to be praised. They both drew closer to the center of the room. Only the raised basin of lyrium stood between them, still that barrier line neither was yet willing to cross. "So these new, stronger demons… what should I be expecting?"

"They are the reason I propose we cut to the center and leave the rest. If you walk these dreams you will face greater hosts of Despair, Desire, Fear, Rage, and Hunger, before finally confronting Sloth itself."

"Of course. Because nothing can ever be easy, can it?" He sighed, running a tired hand over his face and shaking his head. And a new concern blossomed in his mind. "Will they be able to tell? You know, that I'm… the way that I am."

"Their focus will be on subduing the minds in their charge—concerns as to your nature will be ornamental to most, if you are fortunate. I would not have the delicious nature of your being advertised only to be stolen from me by their inferior designs. I am Pride, and I will not share." The demon cocked it's head to the side, a grin so self-confident it was sickening saturing it's features.

He reached out his hand over the pedestal of lyrium, the expectation clear. "Ready when you are, Mouse."

The demon met his reach, clasping his hand in it's. "Try not to lose your footing, mageling."

He didn't really know what to expect next, but he was completely unprepared for the sensation that followed. He was detached from the ground, or maybe just realizing the ground he stood on wasn't even real in the first place. Pounding vertigo rushed his senses as up and down violently swapped places in his perception, the crash of power pulling across and through him exhilarating and sickening to his core. For one moment he was intricately aware that there was no form of this Fade—only perception and expectation, that the energy was amorphous and flexible. Pride's power was the only guide towards something tangible.

The rush stopped violently when his feet collided with solid earth with such force his stomach lurched into his chest.

"You enjoyed that," he said, catching his breath and glaring at the demon.

"Your mind does not navigate the realm as it should. It pulls at you, and you push back. Some drag and resistance is the most fortunate consequence possible. As I promised, we have entered the weave, and we are no longer alone," Pride's voice was different once again but no less identifiable, more a whisper than a roar. The demon no longer had the form of even the mage apprentice, but rather of the small mouse as he'd been at the very beginning of his Harrowing test.

He shook away the lingering vertigo and reached down to Pride—or really more accurately now, Mouse. The now small creature clambered up his arm and rested atop his shoulder. He looked at it curiously, unable to halt the chuckle that rose in his throat.

"A rat with lightning powers… you're just a really fucked up Pikachu, aren't you?"

"I am Pride," it answered, a low growl in it's voice that did not at all suit it's now mousy appearance. "Form and perception are mine to bend, however my needs suit."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's just hope no one hits your ass with a super effective earthquake."

It's claws dug harshly into his shoulder, and a buzzing like static pulsed dangerously across his skin. Not to harm, but a warning. A reminder that despite current appearances this demon was and would always be incredibly dangerous.

"Bring me to a nexus, and I will guide you to a dream you seek."

"A nexus… that'll be those pedestals at the center of glyphs, right?" He started down the shifting path of the dream before him. It reminded him a lot of the first realm in the game after the main character escaped their vision with Duncan, actually.

"That is how you will perceive them."

"A yes or no will do, you know," he rolled his eyes.

"But it would not be accurate," Mouse protested.

They found a place he truly did recognize—the place where Niall should have been, only there was no Niall. Aside from that it looked eerily how he recalled with the odd portal in the back and the pedestal he sought off to the side. "Smartass. Yes, let's bother with the minutia, because that's a good way to—holy shit!"

The only thing that saved his skull from being crushed flat was the timely reflex of casting a barrier that all his combat encounters had ingrained in him. A rock of considerable size hurled at him and slammed violently against his defensive magic. He glanced frantically for cover but found none, but did notice Mouse was conveniently absent from his previous spot on his shoulder.

So much for help from it, apparently. He was on his own.

Another rock sailed his way. He crouched low so it sailed clean over his head and reinforced his barrier. When he popped back up to standing he raised his arms sharply, summoning a wall of flame and pushing it forward towards his attacker. The fire passed over it, burning but failing to do lethal damage. Probably because, as he could now see, his opponent was mostly made of rocks.

It wasn't any old assailant. It was a golem. For a split second he thought it might be Shale, but that was a stupid thought because they hadn't even recruited her yet. This… this was like the form in the quest for smashing down doors. This wasn't a demon. It was another of Sloth's victims, someone who'd broken free of their nightmare and into the winding paths.

And whoever was wearing this form thought it was a good idea to attack him on sight. Rude.

"Stop!" He yelled. He banished the flames and turned his magic to a different spell, attempting to bind the golem in a paralysis spell. "I'm not a demon! I'm a person, like you!"

The golem said nothing. For a moment it was frozen in place by his magic, and then it's body was consumed by a flash of light as it transformed. Dropping the golems form had broken the paralysis and revealed the identity of his assailant. A woman, an elven mage with silver-blonde hair—

"Nira—?" The name barely escaped his lips before he suddenly gasped in pain.

His barriers had held off the boulders. But the burst of raw arcane power broke through like thin glass. The bolt of magic caught him clean in the chest, causing him to stumble back. He looked down at the wound—blood dripped down his front and the skin around where the magic impacted was purple like a bad bruise.

Ow.

"I thought this place was smart enough not to use the same trick twice," she said with a bitter look his way. "Guess I was wrong."

"Nira, it's me! I'm real. I swear." Edmund held up his hands, but not necessarily in surrender. He held his power at the ready, prepared to catch another bolt of magic and project it right back to her now that he knew what to expect. He wouldn't let the same spell hit him twice.

And from the guarded look in her eye, she knew it.

"Prove it," she challenged without hesitation. "Tell me something only the real Edmund would know."

Ah. Shit.

"We really don't have time for this," he said instead, taking a careful step towards the pedestal.

But Nira shifted, continuing to position herself between him and his goal. "I'll make this easy for you. Either you answer me and convince me, or you fail to convince me and you die." She held her staff outstretched again with arcane energy pulsing down it's length.

He hesitated. He'd been getting a handle on his magic recently, sure, and the piece of power he'd stolen from Pride went a long way… but Nira was an actual mage. A powerful mage who knew what she was doing. A potential Hero of Ferelden, even. His magic was powerful here in the Fade, but so was hers. If push came to shove he wasn't entirely sure he could beat her… and honestly, he didn't want to.

But he also barely knew anything about the real Edmund. And even less about Nira. But they'd been friends once, the two of them and Jowan. They probably grew up together. That type of connection ran deep, even if he didn't know how far. And that was something he could play to his advantage.

"Let's say my answer doesn't satisfy you and you kill me. Are you really willing to get it wrong?" he asked slowly. "Are you willing to kill me here and wake up to find me Tranquil beside you, and know you were the one to do that to me?"

Admittedly, given his status as 'really fucking weird' in this world he couldn't know for sure if a death in the Fade would really make him Tranquil or if it would affect him differently. But it also wasn't a hypothetical for which he really wanted an answer.

"I couldn't wish that on anyone," Nira didn't lower her staff, but a glimmer of something like doubt did flash across her face. But it was gone again and she set herself with determination. Her magic glowed brighter. "But you have yet to convince me."

"That's because I don't need to," he answered, taking a confident step forward. "Because you know me. Of anyone, you know. So decide."

Turn it back on her, make her question, get her to doubt. She'd already seen him once before in the Fade, probably in whatever her own personal nightmare was. This had to work. Because if she still demanded an actual answer from him he was royally fucked.

They stood there for what felt like an eternity, neither willing to budge and barely even breathing through the tension. And then Nira sighed, the glow of her magic diminishing as something truly tired and hollow fell over her like a shadow.

"If you weren't him you would be trying harder to pretend you were. And… this place, these demons, it's all smart. They wouldn't repeat a ploy that already failed once," Nira said sadly, looking away and lowering her weapon. "If… you really are real… how are you here? You left the Circle. I didn't think… well, I thought we'd never see you again."

Huh. Not exactly the reaction he was expecting… but she wasn't actively hostile anymore so he could count that as a win.

"Can't get rid of me that easily," He said. "I'm here with a team of Grey Wardens and other allies. They're here too, trapped in dreams. It's a bit of a long story, but the condensed version is that we're here to help."

"Oh. That's right. They're who you left us for," Nira said with more bitterness than he expected. Then she groaned, rubbing tiredly at her brow. "Maker's breath… that's what I felt."

"You… felt when Sloth pulled my group under?"

"I think so. I've been navigating this maze of portals and mouse holes for what feels like a lifetime…" she gestured over her shoulder to where purple energy shifted slowly in the archway of contorted trees. "And right when it was making sense and I thought I had a pathway out everything shifted. New threads of this network appeared and all my progress went to nothing. I think every mind it ensnares makes it stronger."

"Ah. Our bad, sorry," he said sheepishly. "I'm going to try and access their dreams directly. If I free them, that'll probably start shaking the realm loose again."

"And then we can go after Sloth. It's worth a try," Nira said, but she didn't sound entirely convinced. "I suppose that means I'll need to start working through that maze again. All the puzzles and challenges are actually rather intellectually stimulating, it would almost be fun if it weren't for the imminent threat of death or possession."

"Hey, where's Niall?" Edmund asked. This place looked like where he should have stood, but his place by the arch was strangely empty. "I saw his body by the sloth demon before it pulled us under."

Nira shook her head, still unwilling or unable to look at him. "He said he was fading, that he didn't have long… I guess Sloth finally leeched the last of his life force from him."

"Nira… how long have you been in the Fade?"

She didn't answer right away and instead turned from him and towards the purple swirl of the portal. "I don't know. Tracking time's not exactly reliable in this place. But at a guess, only a few hours shorter than Niall."

She'd been fighting through the Fade alone for almost two days, battling demons and trying to navigate the maze of nightmares. And though she tried to conceal it through a front of strength, she sounded so tired. Her will must have been something incredible to have withstood so long. But there was no guarantee she would last.

"I'm going to get us all out of here," Edmund said. "That demon's not going to get you, and we're going to get out."

Nira laughed at his reassurances, and the look she gave him as she glanced back over her shoulder was nothing short of wounded.

"Don't do that."

Edmund blinked in confusion. "Do what?"

"Pretend you care."

Magic swirled around her, and she was gone.

Not for the first time, he felt painfully out of the loop with a conversation he'd actively participated in. They hadn't parted on the best of terms, sure, but he hadn't gotten the impression it was bad enough to elicit that kind of reaction.

Whatever her issue was, he could deal with it later. He had enough to deal with now, like the fact that a certain sneaky little rat was only just now emerging from the shadows.

"Fat lot of help you were," he deadpanned, casting healing magic into the still throbbing wound given to him by Nira. The bleeding stopped, but the discoloration and pain lingered.

Mouse climbed up him and retook it's place at his shoulder. "A mage of her talent would have recognized me for what I am immediately. Others we might fool, but not her."

"Uh huh. Why do you care about that? I didn't take you for the type to run from a fight—unless, you don't think you could beat her either."

Pride wasn't at full strength. It was still powerful, there was no doubt about that… but given it's fractured state it made sense even something as terrified as it wouldn't take any unnecessary chances.

"She is of use to us," Mouse said, which curiously wasn't really an answer to the accusation. "So long as she faces the trials in the paths, Sloths attentions will be focused elsewhere. We may yet slip into dreams undetected."

"So basically we're using her as a decoy." He didn't particularly like the thought. Especially since she was already so drained, and this was going to put her under even more pressure without her even knowing it. It was their best option… but still.

"The boons of the Fade linger about her—that she has lasted so long means she has found founts of power to bolster her," Mouse said. It was almost like it was trying to comfort him… almost. He reminded himself that this demon was a manipulator as much as it was a straight up monster. "With her strength she can endure a while longer—it is yourself and your own survival you should concern yourself with."

Right. Aside from the companions from the games, he really didn't know exactly what he'd be up against. He didn't like not knowing what was coming, not knowing how to prepare for or control an encounter.

"Alright. Which dream are we tackling first?"

"A dip in the shallows before diving into the deep."

Edmund reached his hand towards the pedestal at the center of the glyph on the ground. It pulsed with energy, and so did Mouse.

The scene around him swirled together like smoke. That strange vertigo returned—up tumbling over down and on and on, but now there was a direction to it. A destination he could feel, almost predict. And like slipping through elevator doors a heartbeat before they closed, they were through.

In the game the companions' dreams had all taken place in more or less the same type of location: barren hills surrounded by beige mist with little more than the occasional broken statue or twisted tree to mark the landscape alongside them and their tormentors.

In reality, if the Fade could be referred to as such, the scenes were elaborate and stark. Rekindled from memory with the mastercraft of a true deceiver.

Edmund recognized where they were immediately. Dark woods surrounded him on all sides, a dense fog lay thick over the earth, even the soft sounds of birds rustling in the treetops and frogs croaking lazily in their ponds. A little home built on the remains of a larger structure, nestled into the ruins and trees with the whole of the marsh spread out before it.

Flemeth's hut.

Mouse was gone from his sight again. Likely because this was the dream of another mage, and if it was worried about Nira exposing it then someone as clever as Morrigan was definitely a concern for it. But he had no doubt it was nearby, lingering in the shadows and waiting for a convenient moment to reemerge. Slimy bastard.

He made all of two purposeful strides towards the door before it swung open on it's own, a familiar dark-haired witch storming out from within.

"Away! Away with you!" Morrigan shouted, shooing away the figure that pursued her outdoors. "I shall have no more of your pestering!"

"I am your mother…" entreated Not-Flemeth, reaching after her daughter and pulling her to a stop. "Do you not love me?"

Morrigan scoffed, swatting the hand away and turning back to confront her. "You are as much my mother as my little finger, right here, is queen of Ferelden! I know you, Fade spirit, you cannot fool me."

"Are you more clever than your own mother? Surely such pride must be punished." Not-Flemeth's simpering quickly turned sinister. Her hand pulled back and struck Morrigan across her face. "There! That is for not showing respect!"

"That is far more like it." Despite the redness blooming across the side of her face, Morrigan chuckled something self-satisfied as she straightened her spine and spat at her mothers feet. "But it is too little too late, spirit."

He closed the distance to stand beside Morrigan, half positioning himself between her and the imposter.

"Sorry to interrupt," he said, not sorry at all, "but I'll have to ask you to keep your filthy talons to yourself."

"'Tis you, at last!" Morrigan said, and to his surprise she actually sounded greatly relieved. She looked him over and raised a brow curiously. "You are injured," she observed.

"Yeah. Ran into an old friend," he deadpanned. He pressed his palm against the wound once again—he wasn't super sure how wounds to his not-real body operated in the Fade, but the fact that the injury lingered even though they'd jumped into a new dream was not comforting. Wasn't the HP bar supposed to reset or something? That would be nice.

"Is it often that your old friends do you bodily harm?" She seemed amused, which in a weird way did make him feel a tiny bit better. At least someone around here was getting a kick out of it.

"No, but I have a sinking feeling that this is going to be the start of a trend."

"Look at this handsome lad," cooed Flemeth. The way her eyes hungrily swept over him sent a chill down his spine. "Will you be keeping this one, dear girl? Or shall I instead claim him for myself?"

Morrigan scowled and made a sound that was just this side of a growl. He tried and failed to convince himself that he did not like that sound. "Come, and rid me of this vexatious spirit. I weary of being prodded."

"Gladly." Edmund turned a curious look to the golden-eyed witch beside him. "If you knew she was a fake, why haven't you killed her yourself by now? Surely this half-assed copy's no match for you."

"The thing is largely harmless," she said, waving a dismissive hand towards her mothers imposter and continuing to speak despite her sharp noise of protest. "But I was uncertain if there would be ill consequences to destroying it until I saw you have arrived. Until I knew for certain there was a way out and something beyond, 'twas simply prudent to leave the thing be."

"Uh huh," he said, not entirely convinced of her words.

If he was anyone else he might have bought it. But even though this Flemeth wasn't real, the way Morrigan flinched at her movements was. Imagined or not, she wasn't ready to confront her mother. Not even here.

"She doesn't even acknowledge her own mother. My heart, it breaks!" cried False Flemeth.

"Oh, slay it, and quickly!" Morrigan rolled her eyes in disgust. "Even the true Flemeth was never as annoying as this."

Edmund shrugged and inclined his head slightly to her. "As you wish."

Fake Flemeth started to gather magic, but he was quicker. An elemental barrage burst forth from an array of conjured magical symbols, bolts of flames tearing into the imposter witch as Morrigan afflicted her with dark hexes of her own.

It was pitiful, really. Fake Flemeth wasn't even good practice for fighting the real thing, which was something he was sure he'd end up getting roped into helping with sooner or later.

"'Tis about time!" Morrigan prodded the scorched remains of the pretender and nodded in satisfaction once she was certain it was slain. "Now come, we must—what?! What is this?!"

Magic began to swirl around her, her form becoming translucent. In a panicked motion Morrigan reached for him, but her hand passed through his arm like a ghost. Much like her, the house, the trees, everything around them began to fade.

"I'll see you at the end of it," Edmund said with as much reassurance as he could muster. "We're going to give that Sloth demon hell."

He didn't know if she heard him or not, because as soon as he spoke she was gone. Like she'd never been real in the first place. And he was left lingering in that still moment alone in the dissolving dream for a moment long before his own demon joined him.

"One down," he said, lifting the demonic rodent back to his shoulder. "Any chance the rest will be as easy as this one?"

"Unlikely," Mouse replied. "When you free further dreamers from the greater demons, I will send them to the dreams of those held by lesser shades. This one was merely a test."

"A test?" he asked, already apprehensive of the answer. "Just what were you testing?"

He didn't think a rat could smile. But in the most unsettling way possible, Mouse did. "If you would continue to amuse, mageling. And I look forward to what further entertainment you will provide."

"You're a fucking asshole," he rolled his eyes and yanked on the demon's tale. "Now get us out of here."

. . . . .

The stone doors slid together and sealed with the boom and finality of funeral drums. The last line of defense. But even this barricade wouldn't hold. Their soldiers left on the other side would fight valiantly to the last man to hold the darkspawn off, but they would all die.

The darkspawn would reach the final gates of Orzammar. They would breach the walls. The city would fall.

It all happened so fast. A surge of darkspawn erupted from the depths, so massive and rapid even their strongest efforts could barely slow them down. Thaigs his ancestors had spent decades reclaiming crumbled in a matter of hours. Roads their people had worked so hard to restore swarmed with the darkened masses of the enemy.

Aothor pressed a hand to the sealed stone doors, whispering a prayer to the Ancestors, the Stone, to anything that might be listening for a miracle. Because if there was any way out of this, that's what it would take.

His brothers stood beside him, as aware as he was that whatever came next would mark the final hours of the last bastion of dwarven civilization.

"We need to evacuate the people," Bhelen said grimly. "Have our remaining men gather as many of the citizens as possible and escort them to the surface. Out there they might have a chance to survive."

Trian laughed, but the sound was heavy with scorn. "And what sort of life might await them? The darkspawn will follow them out into the sun and slaughter them in the hills. Any survivors will be nothing more than starving refugees, cut off from the Ancestors, sky-touched and casteless."

"So you're suggesting we do nothing?" Bhelen challenged.

"I'm suggesting we do not go quietly with our tails between our legs. Better to put blades in the hands of even babes and allow them to die with honor than suffer such indignity," his older brother said. There was no grace to his words, the thought alone appalling, but the conviction was genuine. "If we stand and fight, our people die. If we turn and run, our culture and history die. Orzammar dies. At least this way we honor the traditions of our Ancestors."

"Our traditions mean nothing if there is no one breathing to uphold them!" his younger brother shouted back, driving a finger into their eldest sibling's chest.

Trian shoved him away. Both brothers drew their steel, and Aothor stepped between them.

"Our warriors are laying down their lives to buy us time, and this is how you repay them?" Aothor said, glaring them both down. "By squandering their sacrifice in petty arguments while every moment the darkspawn draw nearer? You bring shame on the name Aeducan."

"Then what do we do?" Trian asked, more helpless than Aothor had ever heard him. "You know the importance of our culture, brother, and our way of life. The things that make us dwarven. What ties us to the Stone cannot be forsaken."

"Orzammar is just a place. It can be lost, and it can be retaken. But our people are not so permanent, and their lives are worth protecting," Bhelen implored instead. "If we flee now we live to fight another day and give our descendants a chance of reclaiming the city in the future."

"And how many generations will that take before we even have the numbers again to attempt it? Five? Ten? How much of our history will be forgotten by then, fallen away like sand through cracks in the floor? Nevermind how the darkspawn will continue to multiply in our ancestral home at a rate we could never hope to match." Trian challenged. "Once lost to us, Orzammar will be lost forever. Better we go down with her."

Bhelen's fist clenched on his blade again, but he shook his head and once again turned to Aothor. "We cannot agree, brother, and we never will. Aothor, we will follow your decision if you break this stalemate. Whichever path you choose will determine the fate of Orzammar and our people."

They both looked at him, expectant of an answer. Of a solution, or an order, even the faintest shred of hope.

But had nothing to give them. It was an impossible situation. There was no loophole, no trick, no clever solution for a winning end. No matter which path they chose it all led to death and destruction. Either way the result would be the same—his people dead, and his home destroyed. When it all meant nothing, did it even matter what he chose?

That was the hollow truth of it all, the center of despair that ate away at him. It didn't matter. In the face of an unstoppable force like the darkspawn, nothing did. Orzammar's days had always been numbered. Whether it was one hundred years or ten, there was no way to forever hold back the tide of darkness bent on consuming their civilization. Their generation was finally the one to face the timer's count hit zero.

Without an answer from him his two brothers continued to argue endlessly with one another. Flee or fight. Death versus dishonor. And around and around they went. And Aothor stood right beside them, paralyzed to make any sort of meaningful command.

And that was failure all on its own. That he was stuck in the middle. That there was so much he found wrong with both choices he couldn't bear to make either. He stared up at the great sealed stone doors, unable to hear the sounds of whatever combat raged beyond but certain it must be growing nearer. And he was helpless in the face of the despair of this end.

"Well, this is grim."

He looked back and up at the source of the interrupting voice—of all things, a human man now stood beside him before the doors. It was so unexpected it nearly shocked him right out of his mourning for the city.

"It's a bad day to be in Orzammar, topsider." Aothor said, frowning up at the stranger. Why did this human seem so familiar?

"You could say that any day. No offense, but I wouldn't put too much investment in the tourism industry. But that could just be down to my personal tastes," he said with a tone far too bright for the dire circumstances.

Either oblivious to the panicked state affairs or just ambivalent towards it, the human hummed casually and angled his gaze away and towards his brothers, who were still loudly debating Orzammar's fate with one another.

"They're… Despair, aren't they?" the man asked, though the question seemed strangely aimed to the large rodent perched on his shoulder. Though Aothor heard nothing the human nodded like he'd received an answer. "Right. Hate those fuckers."

"You should leave this city while you still can. Otherwise, I advise you pray to whatever gods you cling to and prepare yourself for the end," Aothor shook his head and turned from the man back to the doors. He had no time to deal with sight-seeing cloud-gazers, not when the fate of his people rested on his shoulders.

"This isn't the end, Aothor. Orzammar isn't falling—it's still holding strong, and they still need you to fight," the human said with such conviction that Aothor almost believed him.

"Get out of here, topsider," Trian barked, briefly looking up from his dispute with Bhelen. "There's no place for you among the matters of our people."

"For once, I agree with Trian," Bhelen said, glaring at the human. "This is a problem for our people, and we must be the ones to handle our destiny. Come, Aothor, discuss with us. We must come to an agreement."

Aothor moved past the clearly insane human and stepped towards his brothers. But the man caught him by his shoulder and physically turned him back around. An objection raised halfway to his tongue when the man's next words stunned him to silence.

"Did you kill Trian?"

"What?" Aothor sputtered, taken aback by the absurdness of the question. But there was no jest in the man's face, only an intensity that seemed to stare straight through him.

"Trian. He's dead. Did you kill him?" He repeated evenly.

"You're mad," Aothor scoffed, shoving the man away and gesturing past him to where Trian stood very much alive arguing with their youngest sibling. "Trian's alive, he's right there arguing with… Bhelen…"

A ring of dead dwarves. A corpse—Trian's corpse—staring up at him with vacant eyes. The realization of the trap he'd just stepped into with no way out… a trap set by Bhelen. It was the sort of ruthlessness he had to respect, even for all the pain and hatred burning in him for it.

Why hadn't he seen it coming? He should have seen it coming. His whole life he'd been so careful, so aware, so on guard, and still a knife buried in his back from the only shadowed corner he'd never thought to check. His own family.

How long had Bhelen been planning his rise to power? No, that wasn't even the most important thing. Because pushing all the focus on Bhelen felt cheap. It felt like an excuse, a get-out. Aothor had let himself get distracted. He wasn't careful, his guard was down and he got thoroughly manipulated. He made mistakes he could never take back—and the worst part was that at the end of it all none of it even seemed like it mattered.

Like he mattered.

He played pretend at being a Warden, but most days he felt he barely knew what he was doing, and deep down he was certain he was going to fuck it up like how his negligence had gotten Trian killed. He wasn't sure he deserved to be called a Warden, let alone Warden Commander as some of the others had taken to referring to him. And struck from the Memories or not, after a failure like his he knew he wasn't worthy of the title of prince of Orzammar—

You're freer now than you've ever been in your entire life.

His progression of thought was jarringly interrupted by the memory of red hair soaked by rainwater, of a woman shouting back at thunder.

Even if the rest of the world forgets… even if you forget… I'll always remember you're Prince Aothor Aeducan.

His despair steadied, something certain and leveled-out resting across his heart. The cold tragedy slipped off him like a cold sheet and all at once he became aware that the gloom had been leeching off him and towards his brothers…

"No," Aothor answered at last, fist clenching around his weapon as he drew the steel. "I didn't kill Trian. But I'm about to, aren't I?"

"They're demons," the man answered. No, not just some human, Edmund Amell. "This is all a dream."

"Sod it all."

"You would turn your back on us?" Trian said, a sneer that didn't quite fit his face crawling across his expression. Which was unsettling because sneering was usually his go-to look. "Look at you. Not a commander, not a prince, not worth the dirt the casteless piss on."

"Don't abandon us. We need you," Bhelen entreated, reaching out and beckoning him closer. "Stay with us—we're family. We're brothers."

"Brothers don't do to each other what you've done to me." Aothor said, and swung his sword.

The nightmare turned cold and violent. The air grew all the bite of deep winter, painful frost burning with every breath and freezing his lungs. The chill was so great it seized at his muscles, slowing him and making it almost impossible to move—

Flames burst across the stonework. Edmund worked his spells, symbols of magic inlaid along the ground and detonated with force that shattered the rock and sprayed shrapnel into the air. Trian made a very not-Trian-like shrieking sound as flames erupted in his face and shards of stone cut his body.

The resulting blast of heat battled with the oppressive cold. It was enough that he could breathe again, move again, fight again.

Edmund continued to work offensive magic against Trian, or the monster pretending to be him. Bolts of fire rained down but bounced away against the defensive shield he now had raised against the magic.

A wreath of ice hung around Bhelen as Aothor closed in on him. Shards blurred by and cut against his skin but he closed the distance anyways. He swung his blade—but it was rebuffed by a blast of frigid wind.

He cut in again, determined to face down this imposter—something flashed, and this time Bhelen wailed as the steel made contact.

Aothor pulled his weapon back and saw what had changed this time—Edmund had cast a spell to coat his sword in elemental magic. His blade was alight not with fire, but dancing bolts of lightning that surged with every tilt and swing.

The lightning-infused blade cut through the barrier of cold wind like a storm. Aothor turned his blade back faster than the demon could react with its own blade or more magic of it's own.

He cut Bhelen's head from his shoulders. He watched it fall. There was no satisfaction when it hit the ground. Just something hollow inside that had nothing to do with the despair the demon had crafted for the dream.

He took a deep breath and surveyed the aftermath, the dream already ripped apart by magic beginning to fade around them.

"Is this what you meant? When you said you get nightmares?" Aothor asked slowly.

Edmund shrugged, adjusting the large rat still sitting on his shoulder. "More or less."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I prefer the darkspawn dreams." At least those weren't trying to trick him.

"I'll get the others. The Sloth demon's holding us under but once everyone's free we can—" Edmund didn't get to finish his thought. Magic swirled around him, he disappeared, and the dream dissolved.

Something pulled him. Or pushed him? Either way, the sensation was similar to passing through thick tar as he dropped from his dream and… into someone else's.

He recognized this place. The roadside by Lake Calenhad, not far from the Circle dock.

Where Sten's fellow qunari were killed.

Only there were no dead qunari here now. Indeed, around a lively campfire sat three of the enormous men. One of which he recognized as the soldier they'd liberated from the cage in Lothering.

"Shanedan," Sten said, nodding in his direction as he approached.

"Who are you talking to?"

Asked one of the others, immediately on alert. He half-rose with a hand on his blade. But he was subdued by the other, who prodded him on the side with a ladle.

"Don't bother the Sten," he said with barely a more than a dismissive look Aothor's way. "Isn't it your turn to cook?"

"Cook what? There's no food in this miserable, frozen country," the first scoffed.

"Parshaara!" Sten snapped, "We have a guest, make room at the fire."

Despite whatever misgivings they might have had the two qunari shuffled aside to make room. Imagined or not, the heat from the campfire was strong and very much welcome. Aothor sat beside Sten, allowing just a moment for the warmth to wash away the memory of the icy dread from his own nightmare.

"What's going on here?" Aothor asked after a moment, though the question was only half aimed at Sten. Demons, dreams, magic… none of this made any sense. Telling real from not real like pulling salt from sand. Darkspawn, he could handle. But this Fade stuff… cut off from the Ancestors or not, he was still entirely too dwarven to be dealing with this shit.

"Dinner, obviously. Though I don't suggest you eat anything the Karashok cooks." Sten said, and though his tone was as characteristically flat as ever there was the hint of a teasing smile on his face as he looked at his fellow qunari.

"Unless you enjoy spending time in the latrine," snickered the first.

The Karashok rolled his eyes. "Then why don't you cook, kadan?"

"Not my turn," he shrugged.

"Perhaps my memory is failing, I would swear that I've already told you both to shut up." Sten said again, shaking his head at their clearly familiar bickering.

Aothor was struck with a funny feeling of deja vu—it was something like watching himself or Isefel deal with Edmund and Cousland, only with less bad blood. No wonder Sten had the patience of the Stone itself when the rest of them were all being their typical selves; he was already used to it.

"Who're these men?" Aothor asked.

"They are Beresaad, of course. My brothers." Sten said, with true fondness in his eyes this time. And also sorrow.

It was an interesting thing, to feel such sudden kinship with a man almost double his height. But in that moment Aothor really did. Much of what Sten had told him of his home and culture felt strange and foreign, but most surface cultures struck him that way to some extent. But here in the Fade, they'd both been hounded by demons bearing the faces of brothers. People they missed, family by blood or choice, for better or worse.

"Who is that little thing you are speaking to? Has it seen darkspawn?" Asked the Karashok as he made half-hearted efforts to stir the contents of the pot over the fire.

"Don't interrupt the Sten, Karashok," said the other. "We've been days in this place. There's no sign of any threat. The Arishok's report was wrong. Can we not go home?"

"No," Sten said flatly.

The two qunari groaned loudly and continued bickering with one another across the flames.

"We need to go, Sten." Aothor stood and readied a hand on the hilt of his weapon, prepared to draw the steel. These two qunari weren't real, probably spirits of some form meant to keep Sten occupied like Bhelen and Trian had been for him. And that meant they would probably turn hostile. "There's a demon waiting for us."

If Sten was at all alarmed by the revelation, he did not show it. "Let it wait."

"Feed it the Karashok's cooking. That should end it," added one of the qunari.

"Better yet, feed it the Ashaad. That should take care of it and do us a favor," snarked back the Karashok.

"I'm serious. We have to go, none of this is real," Aothor said. He hadn't believed Edmund at first either, when he came claiming what he was seeing wasn't real. He wasn't able to snap out of it until… until the mage had asked if he'd killed Trian. One would think that by now he'd be used to Edmund knowing things he really had no business knowing. One would be wrong.

But the trouble was how to get Sten to snap out of it. Surely once he saw—

"This is a dream," Sten said, cutting Aothor's train of thought off before it could even get going. "I am not a fool, Warden, I remember seeing the Karashok there have his head torn off."

"Well at least it's not a great loss," the Ashaad chuckled.

"You are so entertaining, kadan, you should perform in the square with the other trained monkeys. We could throw you peanuts." the Karashok took the ladle from the pot and prodded his companion with the soup-soaked utensil.

Sten knew it wasn't real. And the demons knew he knew it wasn't real. So why weren't they hostile? And why…

"If you know it's not real, why are you still here?" Aothor asked. "We have to get out of here."

"It is a dream. But it is a good dream." Sten smiled. He actually smiled. Aothor wasn't even sure if the enormous man was capable of such an expression. And then he understood.

This was a different type of dream. The one holding Aothor had meant to freeze his resolve, take away his will to even try and fight. This dream… it was a place of comfort. Something Sten wanted to be real so badly he wouldn't walk away even if he knew better.

And somehow that felt even more cruel than the raw despair.

"This isn't like you. You're supposed to be practical, a level mind." Aothor insisted.

"Yes. And what has that accomplished?" Sten stood sharply, pacing an angered stride in front of the fire. "Death. Dishonor. Exile. There is no purpose to the struggle. There is nothing left to fight for."

Death. Dishonor. Exile. That was all that awaited him when he was cast into the Deep Roads. It was only out of spite and sheer dwarven stubbornness that he hadn't died in those tunnels. But the Wardens who had found him and embraced him as one of their own were the reason he continued to live, and his blade at Orzammar's service despite being cast out his reason to fight.

His duty, and his heart, whether they would have him or not. True dedication didn't require reciprocation.

"There is always something to fight for. Purpose is something you give yourself," Aothor said, inserting himself in the path of Sten's pacing and halting the giant in his tracks as he stared him down. "And if you stay here, your brothers died for nothing."

Sten only stared at him, impassive as ever. But the stoic giant turned towards the shades parading as his comrades with his steel drawn, stony determination set in his stance.

"For once you are right, Warden," Sten said, raising his weapon. "I owe them a victory."

"You can't abandon your post!" the Ashaad cried, leaping to his feet.

"Stand aside. I would hate to see you all die again," said Sten.

"No! We won't let you leave us again,"said the Karashok

Whatever sort of demons these were holding Sten's mind, they were a different sort than had been in his own dream. Aothor didn't know much about spirits and the Fade, but the fact that they more or less fought as men without the strange sort of powers Not-Bhelen and Not-Trian had gave him something of a clue.

Not that he was complaining. He much preferred a straight battle of blades and shields—it was where he excelled, and Sten as always proved himself a peerless warrior against these pretenders. Even though these spirits had the faces of people he cherished, he did not once hesitate.

The campfire in the pit dispersed into smoke. The demons unmoving bodies began to slowly dissipate.

"And yet, this gives me no peace. I wish to leave this place." Sten said.

Though there was no particular affect to his voice or expression on his brow, the lingering look he gave the slowly dissolving remains told enough of a story. But the corpses weren't the only thing vanishing. Sten was almost entirely see-through now, just like Edmund had been at the end of his own nightmare.

"No, more trickery? What is this?" Sten snarled, bracing himself like he was anticipating an assailant to leap from the dark.

A swirl of smoke and memory encased them, and the dream vanished.

. . . . .

The light of the sunset filtered through the treetops, scattering golden rays into the forest below. Rosaya settled her back against the tree, letting her legs dangle. A few branches below Tamlen did similarly as he finished climbing up.

"I guess now that the trap's set, all that's left is to wait," he said.

Rosaya crushed up a handful of dead leaves in her hand, then released the pieces into the air and watched as the wind carried them just a short distance away. "The wind isn't strong—if we're lucky, the wolves won't have detected our scent in the area yet."

"Good. We need to deal with them today—if they keep harassing our halla, it's only a matter of time before we lose one," Tamlen said, swinging his legs idly. "Say, weren't you supposed to be assisting Master Ilen today? How did you end up coming with me to take care of the wolves?"

Rosaya shrugged. "I wanted to spend the day with you, obviously." She nudged his head with her foot lightly, drawing a smile to his face.

"I… thought that might be the case. I'm glad."

"Besides, everyone knows you couldn't set a trap to catch a fawn if your life depended on it. That's why I'm here. To make sure it gets done right."

"I'm surprised you didn't choose Andruil's vallaslin. For the way you hunt so efficiently you may very well be the incarnation of her spirit," he mused with a slight shake to his head. "I've been meaning to ask… what made you choose Falon'din's?"

"Don't let Harhen Paivel hear you spout such heresy." Rosaya rolled her eyes, twirling an arrow in her fingers. "And honestly, I thought about it, but… Dirthamen and Falon'din are twin souls. In all the stories told of them, no matter how or when they are separated they always find their way back to one another."

She looked down and met his eyes and was pleased to see the marks of Dirthamen on his face did very little to hide the blush rising to his cheeks.

"I think it suits you," he said, "Falon'din is said to be a gentle guide, unafraid of even the darkest roads. I know that I, for one, would follow you down any path."

"Of course you would," Rosaya said, but it was spoken fondly. "We twin souls can't be parted so easily—" She froze mid-sentence as a rustling sound began to pick up in the distance.

They shared a look and stilled, focused on the direction of the sound with arrows primed on their bowstrings. A moment passed, then another. And then three grey wolves darted from the underbrush. The one at the lead triggered the trap and the net snapped up from underneath them.

The wolves howled and snapped, their fangs finding purchase at nothing as they dangled.

Rosaya looked at them squirm helplessly in the air, her mind distracted by a distant thought. Why were there wolves in the net? She thought… there should be shems…

No, that was silly. They were hours away from any shem villages. And they'd come out here specifically to catch these wolves. It was the strangest thought, and she wasn't sure why she even had it.

Tamlen had already shot one of the wolves through the eye in the moment she'd spent quietly pondering. Rosaya readied two arrows on her bow and finished of the ones that remained.

"Show off," Tamlen said, shaking his head. He slung his bow back over his shoulder and started to descend down the tree. "I'm glad that was quick—if we're away from the camp too late at night the others might get worried."

Rosaya hopped from one branch to another and joined him on the ground. "Hm, I don't know. With some of the comments Ashalle has been making, I don't think anyone is going to wonder much about why we're out late in the woods together alone. I doubt anyone will come looking. They'll probably assume we found some nice secluded glen somewhere," she said, turning back and winking at him.

Tamlen turned bright pink and stammered. Rosaya giggled. He always was so easily flustered. "Ha, erm, right. Ah, what exactly has Ashalle said?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she teased.

"Yes, actually, I'd very much like to know."

Rosaya hummed and busied her hands with the ropes and mechanisms holding the net aloft to lower it. Perhaps it was a bit unkind to get him wound up so, but his panic was just a little bit adorable.

"Oh, come on Rosaya, don't leave me in suspense," Tamlen said, steadying the net as it lowered.

"Well, recently she's been full of sage advice about bonded life. 'Hunt together at least twice a week,' or 'never argue inside the aravel, take it where only the trees will hear you,' and all that sort of wisdom. I've no idea what's gotten into her, truly," she said, looking at him innocently from across the dead bodies between them. "Would you have any clues?"

Tamlen's rush of panic faded, and he smiled with a sneaking sort of confidence, stepped over the wolves, and leaned in. "I might have a thought or two, if you're really curious." He reached a hand up and traced the lines of her vallaslin across her cheeks.

Rosaya's breath caught in her throat and her heart flooded with warmth. He wasn't pulling away from it this time, finally his bashful nature was falling aside and allowing for something more assured. It was something the two of them had been dancing around for years, this mutual attraction neither was brave enough to acknowledge beyond occasional playful flirtation.

But now he was a little bit brave. So was she.

"We could do what we're supposed to. Take the wolf carcasses back to camp so they can be skinned, help Master Ilen with those aravel repairs like you were supposed to," he said, dropping his hand and pacing a few steps away from her. He grinned, something sly and playful, as he turned back and gestured to the forest behind him. "Or we could check out this waterfall I found the other day."

The wolves weren't going anywhere, they could wait. But moments of courage like this were fleeting, and she would not let it pass her by.

"Lead the way, ma'fenor sa," she cooed.

The endearment made his cheeks flush once more, but his eyes glinted with mischief. "Try and keep up."

He took off like an arrow. Rosaya laughed in surprise and darted after, chasing through the trees and across the hills. It was exhilarating, the blur of the world around them as they indulged in this familiar race.

Rosaya caught up with him—she always did. Tamlen smiled as she passed him—he always did. She'd have overtaken him and led the way but she was relying on him to show her the way. So rather than fully passing him by she kept pace, leaping over fallen logs as he deftly maneuvered around a tangle of roots and together they wove their way through the forest.

It was such a thrill. Not just the race, but the look on his face. The way her heart skipped a beat as they locked eyes and then pushed each other to move harder, faster.

The rush of desire, and being desired in return.

Tamlen came to a sudden halt as the trees thinned out around them. He laughed again, breathless and amazed, her she found herself laughing along with him.

"And here I thought this time I might be able to outrun you," he said, adjusting the slipping strap of his quiver.

"Keep dreaming." Rosaya tossed some stray hair from her face and grinned smugly. "Can't outshoot me, can't outrun me, certainly can't out-trap me. How's that supposed to win a girl's heart?"

"Oh? Does your heart still need winning?"

He reached out and took her hand in his. He intertwined their fingers, raising them up and planting a kiss on her knuckles while keeping his eyes locked with hers. Though not outrun, Rosaya found herself suddenly and completely breathless.

No. No, it did not still need winning.

Tamlen kept her hand in his but looked away, directing her gaze towards what they stood before.

The forest gave way to a small clearing lush with wildflowers. The golden sunset had given way to the cool blue of dusk, but what little light remained glinted off a gentle pour of water bubbling into a crystal pond. It was, in a word—

"Beautiful," Tamlen said before she could. But he wasn't even looking at the waterfall anymore, but at her, and with more tenderness than she'd ever seen from him in her life. Now it was her turn to blush.

And she decided to be brave. She reached up her other hand onto his shoulder, pulled him close, and kissed him. He responded immediately, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her flush against him. Rosaya could have lingered in that moment for the rest of her life and been content. But then Tamlen's hands seemed to decide they were wearing entirely too much clothing.

Rosaya laughed into the kiss, breaking them apart and forcing them both to come up for air.

She blushed again, suddenly shy in the face of his attention. Her courage faltered… or maybe something like sense spoke up in her mind. She wanted this—wanted him—but she didn't really think she was ready. This was so fast, so sudden, and though she longed to dive in head first she was also perfectly happy to slow down. No, maybe she would even prefer that.

She rested her arms against his forearms, gently but firmly slowing the wandering of his palms.

"You are so cruel, ma'lath." Tamlen traced a finger along her jaw and tilted her chin back up to him.

Ma lath. My love. Her heart fluttered at the endearment. Her concerns were almost entirely forgotten. Almost.

"We deserve a slow romance, ma'fenor sa." She stood on her toes and kissed him once more, eager to reassure him that this was not a rejection of his affections. "There's no need to rush. We have each other and all the time in the world."

"We've been slow. Our whole lives we've danced around one another, spiraling in together to the same destination. Now that we're here I think we both deserve to embrace what we knew was coming all along," he whispered tenderly in her ear. "Please, ma'lath. Don't make me wait any longer."

Maybe he was right. Maybe she wasn't being fair. After all, he was ready. She should be too, shouldn't she? The deep seed of hesitation lingered… but more than that, she didn't want to push him away. She didn't want to lose him.

"I've brought you to this gorgeous pool," He rested a cheek against hers and together turned their faces to the magical scene before them. "The least we could do is… indulge."

Creators, I cannot lose him.

He took her by the hands, walking backwards and leading her towards the water. Rosaya followed, keeping her eyes focused on him. Trusting him. They dropped their gear by the shore and left their leathers behind, wading in with just the thinness of their clothing.

Waist-deep in the pool now he pulled her in for another kiss, this one less tender and more insistent than before. Hungry, even; desperate to taste her. Something unsure whispered in the back of her mind that this didn't feel right—that Tamlen would never push her for more unless she was one thousand percent certain. But she killed the thought. He was here, the night was perfect, they were braver than they'd ever been before, and she would not lose him.

Rosaya leaned in, swallowing back her hesitation and giving in to desire.

"Wow, uh, shit. This is not what I was expecting."

Rosaya broke the kiss at the intruding voice, jolting in place as Tamlen's arms constricted around her. She looked around wildly and saw a shem man entered the clearing and was now standing uncomfortably before them.

"If you value your life you will leave, shemlen," Tamlen said lowly, shifting so his body partially blocked her own from the intruder. "I'll not warn you again."

"No can do." The man stepped forward, a threat in his eye as he stared down Tamlen. He then glanced past him and reached out a hand towards her. "Rosaya, this isn't real. None of this is."

Rosaya tore from Tamlen's arm and rushed to the edge of the water where her bow and quiver sat in the grass. Tamlen did similarly, though opted for his blade instead.

"Never thought I'd be cockblocking a demon, but here we are." The shem held a staff in his hands, and her hairs stood on end as it hummed with power. This was no ordinary human—this was a mage. "You know me, Rosaya. And I think you know that isn't Tamlen."

"All you shemlen are the same—liars as well as thieves and killers." Tamlen laughed slowly, stepping out of the water and turning his blade over in his hand. The shem took a wary step back, but he did not retreat.

"Tamlen, hold on I… I do recognize this man." Rosaya lowered her bow and that same uncertainty from before crept back in. She didn't know how she knew him. But she knew that she did. And that in and of itself was unsettling enough.

"What does it matter? If we let him live, he'll tell others he's seen us. And our clan will have to move again," Tamlen said. "We're Dalish hunters, and we always protect our people. And I will always protect you."

"Tamlen's gone," the shem said somberly, stepping forward again despite the threat of Tamlen's weapon. "Rosaya… I'm so sorry. I know you must miss him, but… he's gone. You got sick. There was nothing anyone could do."

"You lie," Rosaya hissed, training her arrow on the man once more. But as his words sunk in she felt pressure drumming in her skull, a rhythm beating against her brain. Through the intensity of it she could hear faintly… music like a song…

… dim moonlight streamed through a crack in the vaulted ceiling, perfectly illuminating the circular dias in the center of the room. A mirror of silver glass stood in the center, towering nearly as high as the ceiling itself… silver glass surrounded by runes, the surface reflecting everything and nothing at once. The glow flashed blinding white and consumed her senses. Just when she thought the light and force of the mirror would consume her, it vanished…

The phantom sensation of an itch in her skin seized her, the recollection so sharp it almost felt real. Her arms trembled, and her breathing caught short and shallow.

"Stop it, whatever you're doing!" Tamlen cried, charging at the mage. "You're upsetting her, you're hurting her!"

Tamlen raised his blade towards the mage's throat. A burst of magic erupted out from the shem, throwing Tamlen back in a wave of fire and force. A scream tore through the air—Rosaya's scream—as she saw her beloved clanmate impact the ground—

—Her vision swam. She reached out; hazily she could see just barely the silhouette of Tamlen flashed in her mind, the shape of his body a stark shadow against blinding light. She reached for him, but she couldn't grasp him, the memory slipping like water through her fingers. Bitter acid swelled in her throat—

No. He wasn't gone. He was here. He was here and he loved her, and she loved him, just like she always wanted. And she would not lose him.

Not again.

Something dark whispered across her mind, a command so intense it could not be ignored.

Kill it, crush it, destroy it.

Rosaya fired her arrow. Magic coiled around the shem—but her shot was faster than the lattice of his spell and the arrow found it's mark in his lower abdomen. The mage swore loudly and stumbled back as it pierced him, but before she could fire another he had her encased in magic. A spell that bound her body and prevented her from moving.

Tamlen stood, and her heart flooded with relief. He was injured but okay, and he charged at the shem. Magic battled with blades, and Tamlen moved faster and stronger than Rosaya had ever seen in her entire life to avoid the spells. It even seemed at times as if he had some sort of magical barrier of his own deflecting spells.

How would something like that even be possible…? Her vision flickered again, and for a heartbeat she didn't see Tamlen battling with the mage, but a beautiful and terrible creature with plumes of pink flames for hair and a curling crown of horns at it's brow. She blinked and forced the thought away. No, that was Tamlen. Her Tamlen. Her vhenan.

Thunder bloomed across the clearing as a bolt of lightning struck from the clouds at the mage's command, lighting Tamlen up and ripping a scream of pain from his lips. Rosaya sobbed, but through the magic even her tears couldn't fall as she watched Tamlen collapse on the ground.

No. No, no, no. Creators, not again.

She emboldened her will inside herself, like what she'd done when she fought off the darkspawn corruption in her body, and through nothing but her own determination she broke through the paralysis spell. There was no grace to her actions, no thought or plan, but she flung herself forward and covered Tamlen's body with her own.

His form heaved under hers, trembling in pain, and Rosaya held back tears in her eyes as she looked up at the mage and begged for his life.

"Don't take him from me," she pleaded, the shaking uncontrolled in her voice. "Please. Please, Edmund, I can't lose him. Don't take him from me."

The mage couldn't bear to meet her gaze. He pressed one hand at the arrow wound she'd given him and levelled the end of his staff at Tamlen's head.

"I'm sorry," he said, voice barely a whisper, and from the pain in his eyes he meant it.

But any apology or remorse meant nothing. Lighting charged through his staff and blasted into Tamlen's head, and he was dead on the ground. Rosaya screamed, clutching at his chest and begging him to breathe, to look at her, to show any sign he was still in there.

And in the worst sort of way his face melted and morphed in her hands. Revealed from the guise was that beautiful and terrible horned demon, dark eyes and ethereal complexion now marred by signs of magical wounds from the fight with Edmund.

It wasn't him. It never had been. And suddenly she felt like such a fool.

"Oh, Creators," Rosaya wiped away the trail of tears from her cheek and rested back on her knees, overwhelmed and ashamed. And a little like she might be sick. She choked back the bitter bile rising in her throat. "... my first kiss was a Desire demon." And almost so much more.

Edmund cleared his throat awkwardly. "It doesn't have to count if you don't want it to. Technically, none of this is real."

But in her mind it didn't matter if it was real. Because she'd believed it was. She'd wanted it to be real. And deep down, a terrible secret part of her still did.

Creators, I cannot lose him. But I did.

"Don't beat yourself up. Fooling people is literally what these demons are designed to do; you don't have anything to be ashamed of," Edmund said. The gentleness and sincerity of his words would have helped if she wasn't suddenly so numb inside. He offered a hand to help her stand and she took it.

"What now?" Rosaya asked, unable to shake the thundering ache in her heart. She didn't even hear his reply over the distant buzzing clouding her brain. Something about a demon, dreams, escaping, but couldn't make herself care.

How was she supposed to survive losing Tamlen twice?

Ever ignoring the dangers, always blindly wandering into situations beyond your grasp and ability, head no doubt filled with foolish notions.

Led astray by her desires. By Desire literally, this time. But it proved that Harhen Paivel had been right, and that even after everything she still hadn't changed at all. Still the naive doe-eyed da'len whose carelessness had gotten Tamlen killed.

The dream dissolved into smoke, and she did too.

She drifted a while in that grey distance. Maybe this was all there was. Her numbness echoed out and across the nothing, parroting back her greatest wish.

I wish it hadn't happened. Nuva mar'av aria ma, indeed.

There was no denying that night in the ruin, no amount of make-believe or fantasy would ever make it untrue. It was childlike of her to have even expected anything else. To have clung to any hope that it could have been different.

Tamlen wouldn't want this for her. She knew that. He would want her to be strong, carry on and not give up hope. And she would try—she would always try. But not every battle against her grief would be a victory.

The gray gave way to something new. It was a home. Small but cozy and filled with laughter and life, the type of place people wanted to belong to. And with the lingering of her broken heart inside she felt terribly out of place.

"Hey! It's great to see you again!" The bright and familiar voice caught her by surprise. Alistair entered the room alongside another human woman, and he beamed when he saw her and gladly waved her over. "You know, I was just thinking about you… isn't that a marvelous coincidence?"

"I… I suppose so," she said, trying and failing to shake the lingering numbness. This wasn't real—it was a dream made by demons. If he'd been thinking about her, then maybe it was no surprise she'd been drawn into this place.

Alistair grinned wide as he gestured to the woman beside him. "This is my sister, Goldana. These are her children. There are more about somewhere. We're one big, happy family, at long last!"

"You seem very… content," Rosaya said. No, that was an understatement. He was downright joyful. And her heart ached on his behalf to know he was being manipulated, his desires brought out and arranged in a sickening display.

"I am. I'm happier than I've been my entire life. Isn't that strange?" Alistair mused. "I thought being a Grey Warden would make me happy, but it didn't. This does."

"I'm overjoyed to have my little brother back," Goldana cooed fondly. "I'll never let him out of my sight again!"

Was this deep discomfort what Edmund felt of her when he'd found her with Tamlen? Had she too been so blissfully unaware? She must have been. She wouldn't have wanted to believe it was real so badly, otherwise.

"We need to go, Alistair. We have a job to do, remember?" Rosaya reached out and grabbed onto Alistair's arm, pulling him along as she backed towards the door. Maybe if they just left they wouldn't have to fight these spirits pretending to be his family. That would be kinder—

Alistair stopped short, pulling his arm free from her grip and shaking his head. There was hesitation about him that she recognized from her own dream. The feeling of knowing better but holding back anyways.

"I… don't think I'll be coming," Alistair said, turning away and stepping back towards his sister. "I don't want to spend my life fighting, only to end up dead in a pit along with rotting darkspawn corpses."

Her heart sank. Was that truly the end that awaited them? Or simply what he feared?

"Well, Alistair, is your friend staying for supper?" Goldana asked. The warmth of her smile would have been comforting if it weren't so sickly and fake.

"Say you'll stay!" Alistair lit up once more, beckoning her towards them. The dream and spirits weren't rejecting her because he wanted her to be apart of it. In this perfect world he envisioned, somehow Alistair seemed to believe she belonged in it with him. "Goldana's a great cook. Maybe she'll make her mince pie. You can, can't you?"

"Of course, dear brother. Anything for you." Goldana reached up and pinched his cheek. He laughed and swatted her hand away.

He was so happy here, and it seemed cruel to wake him up. But it would be even more unkind to leave him for the demon's clutches.

"Please, Alistiar, listen to me. None of this is real."

Alistair cocked his head at her and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "What's going on with you? You're acting very strangely."

"No, Alistair, you're the one acting strange," she said. "You told me yourself how much the Grey Wardens mean to you. That you knew it was your chance to make a real difference in the world. I know you believe it—true passion is impossible to fake."

"I…maybe I meant it then. But that was before I had this—my family. Some things matter more than the cause, than the Wardens. I belong here. With them." He was pulling away. From reality, from her. Just like she had when confronted with the truth.

"Then forget the Wardens. What about Duncan?" She asked lowly. Though she kept her focus on Alistair, she was peripherally aware of how Goldana lingered at his shoulder, how her children crept slowly closer to encircle them. "He believed in us. Believed in you. Was he wrong to do so?"

"No," he replied immediately, voice more certain than it had been in this entire dream. "Duncan… he wasn't wrong."

"Then come with me," She insisted, reaching out and taking his hand once more. "Duncan left us a job to do. We're not going to leave it half-finished, are we?"

She moved back towards the door and he took a slow but determined step after her.

"No, we're not. He deserves better than that," he said.

Goldana snarled. The sound was definitely not one normally possible for human women to make. "No! He is ours, and I'd rather see him dead than free!" she bellowed, voice warped and face contorted to something terrifying.

Rosaya was ready for the turn before Alistair was, and her bow was up with an arrow on the string as the children closed in around them with horribly clawed hands and terrible fangs. No, they weren't children. They were monsters. And she could not hesitate.

She shot an arrow through the eye of one and dropped it as Alistair raised his shield to rebuff Goldana and a flurry of strikes she aimed at his throat. Two more arrows on her bowstring, two more demons down, but she wasn't fast enough and the fourth closed on her and sank it's razor teeth into her forearm.

Rosaya cried out and dropped her bow, pulling instead the ebony dagger and burying the blade in it's back. It twitched and released her, falling to the ground. The wound was deep and painful, but she maintained mobility of the limb and that was enough for her. Not like any of this was real, anyways.

Not-Goldana let out a final shriek as Alistair's blade cut into her ribcage, drawing a mix of blood and ichor. With one final but futile swipe against his armor she fell to the ground.

"G-Goldana?" Alistair stared at the unmoving corpse, pale in the face as it began dissolving into smoke. "I can't believe it. How did I not see it earlier?"

"Fooling people is what these demons are designed to do," Rosaya said, parroting back what Edmund at told her in the aftermath of her own nightmare. She still had yet to find any solace in it herself even as she said the words.

Alistair rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, and turned away from the bodies, unwilling or unable to look at them any longer. "Yes, well, uh, try not to tell everyone how easily fooled I was."

"I won't. I promise." She offered him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Thank you. So, are we going now?" Alistair reached for her with bandages in his hand meant for the wound on her arm. But his hand passed clean through hers, the both of them suddenly and startling transparent. "Wait! Where are you going? Hey!"

The home around them melted away, and Rosaya drifted alone in the grey once more until a new dream crystalized around her.

. . . . .

They waited in the shadows. Together tense, taught as drawn bowstrings, patient with ears perked to the softest sounds around them and nose trained to the scent of the quarry.

In days gone by they would hunt beasts of the wood or men who came to raid in the night. But not these current days. Now they hunted monsters. Dark and hateful things that smelled of acidic death. His hackles raised at the thought, a low growl building in his throat.

His partner shushed him quietly, hooking a finger into his collar and giving a firm but reassuring tug.

"Easy, Scout," said his partner. "We won't let these beasties get the best of us."

His voice was confident and assured. But still, he quietly drew his sword and held the blade at the ready.

He settled but did not lower his guard. So it was his job to be on alert. For all his partner was strong and fast, a force on the battlefield, he could never hear or smell as far as he could.

And like always, he heard it before his partner did. He stood from where they crouched, face pointed forward to the sound of the disturbance to alert his partner of what had been sensed.

His partner grinned, reaching his free hand down to pat his head and whispered a soft, "Good boy, Scout," and started to move them into position to intercept the target.

But he stopped suddenly, though his partner continued creeping forward along the cover of shadow. He smelled her before he saw her, the kaddis they shared a herald of her arrival. The smells of the earth, of pine and mint.

It wasn't a monster. It was a girl. His girl.

She stepped out of the shadows and into plain sight. His tail wagged, and in a moment of joy he forgot himself and bounded out to meet her with a bark of delight. She called his name, the one she gave him, the one she chose because it made her laugh.

"Barkspawn… are you ok, soun dhar? You're not hurt?" She knelt on one knee and reached out her hand to him.

But before he could reach her his partner whistled a recall, and his training stopped him dead in his tracks and he turned away. His partner emerged from the shadows, blade raised and aimed at his girl.

That wasn't right. He didn't like that.

"We're here to hunt the darkspawn. This one's been tainted by them—she's one of them, now."

His girl wasn't one of the monsters. He would know if she was. But his partner was never wrong, never about things like this. He looked between the two people on either side of him, whining in confusion.

"This… this was your partner. From before," said his girl. She held her bow but there was no arrow on the string, and there was such sadness about her as she looked from his partner to him. When she spoke again, her voice shook like a leaf in the wind. "Barkspawn… I'm so sorry. I know you must miss him, but… he's gone. You got sick. There was nothing… nothing anyone could do."

"Move, Scout. She's a monster like the rest of the creatures in this forest, and you either fight with me or you get out of my way."

His partner stepped towards his girl, sword raised and ready to strike. Rosaya's bow was up, but she wouldn't be fast enough, his partner was too close, and he is in between them—

Monsters of dark corruption had them cornered, his partner wounded, the rest of the team already dead on the ground, but still they fought. Acid blood burned down his throat. He howled in pain but bit and clawed at the monsters anyways. He continued until they stopped moving. When it was done they were eviscerated on the ground—and so was his partner. He whined, nudged him with his muzzle, licked his face, but nothing stirred in response. And he lingered with the bodies until more soldiers found him and took him to the pen.

His body failed though he still lived inside it. Day after day, something sick slipped through his blood, and he heard things he never heard before. And he would not allow anyone to alleviate his pain, snapping and snarling at any who drew near. He did not deserve to feel better. He failed his partner. His boy. His Arlo.

And then, he heard her, and the hum inside her that echoed the pain buzzing in his blood. She reached for him with gentleness. She did not force the muzzle on his maw, but waited and listened to him and let him make the choice to get better. She brought the flower that eased the burn in his body. And when the kennel master opened the pen gates as the fortress fell, he knew he needed to find her. Their hurts were the same. His boy was gone, but this gentle elf could be his new reason to fight—

His teeth ripped through flesh. His Arlo screamed in pain. No, not his Arlo, a foul thing daring to wear his face. His jaw was a vice around it's neck as it wails, the familiar cries of a man contorting to wails and shrieks of something completely inhuman.

And once more he was left standing over the still body of his boy. But unlike last time, he was not left alone with his pain. His Rosaya knelt at his side, carding her fingers gently through his short fur.

"It's okay, Barkspawn. We… we're going to be okay."

He turned to her and she reached to wipe away the blood from his muzzle. He licked her face. Her cheeks were already wet, and tasted of salt. He whined and sniffed at the rest of her person—she was hurt, hurting, there must be a wound—but he smelled no blood on her.

Before he could find what was causing her hurt and make it stop, her body became immaterial beside him, the forest around him faded, and he was alone as the dream disappeared.

. . . . .

Dogs barked.

Her breath rattled inside her lungs and her heartbeat rang like drums in her ears. The cries and screams from the main street of the alienage felt like lightning in her blood. From their hiding spot Isefel couldn't see the rioters or the guards tasked to put them down, but every shifting shadow cast by flickering torchlight renewed the panic that they would be discovered.

Dogs barked. In the distance someone screamed as the hounds ran them down.

Isefel swallowed her terror and took a knee in front of Tathas, holding the child's face in her hands and pressing their foreheads together.

"You look at me. Not at them, not at anything else. Don't take your eyes off me," she said. Tathas's lip trembled, a choked sob escaping through a hiccup. Isefel shushed her, whipping away a stray tear that rolled down her cheek with her thumb. "They're not going to get you. I've got you, and I won't ever let anything happen to you."

Dogs barked. They were getting closer.

Tathas wouldn't be able to outrun them. She was too young, too small. So she hoisted the child into her arms and with her free arm she reached back and grasped Shianni's hand, and nodded that she should take Soris's. She was barely any older than the two of them but they looked at her for reassurance the way she remembered trying to find it in her mother.

Isefel's heart raced and her nerves shook. But she forced her fears down and put on as brave a face as she could muster.

"We're going to stay together, and we're going to be okay."

They were just kids—there was nothing more they could do. Isefel dodged from darkness to shadow, her footsteps barely a whisper across the ground as she led her family towards safety. If there even was such a thing as safety.

Dogs barked. Isefel braced her back against the alley wall and gripped stronger on Shianni's hand, holding her breath as she peeked around the corner to see the mabari and their handlers race down the street. Soris whimpered quietly and Tathas's nails cut into Isefel's skin from holding on so tight.

She had a knife on her, but she couldn't fight and carry Tathas at the same time. And one blade wouldn't be enough to stop a group of soldiers or a shem mob from getting by her to Soris and Shianni. Maker, she couldn't protect them, she wouldn't be able to save them, they were going to die—

A fog of noise rushed in her ears as she tried to remind herself to breathe. In, out. In, out. Stay focused. Stay present. Stay strong, for them.

They couldn't keep this up forever. Hiding in back alleys and dodging rioters and guards alike… they were too exposed, and sooner or later their luck would run out.

This wasn't even their first riot. It was just the first one they faced on their own. Isefel fought back the gathering fog in her mind and struggled to recall her mothers instruction for a situation like this…

"If the mobs gather and soldiers come with their swords, don't try to fight them, or the chaos will eat you alive. Come find me, and I will keep you safe." But she wasn't here anymore. And she hadn't been for a long time. It was Isefel's job now, to keep her family safe. "If you can't find me, then you run. If you can't run, then you hide. Find somewhere high up where the dogs can't climb, or somewhere that smells so strongly they won't be able to track your scent."

Isefel could climb. She'd always been good at it. But she wouldn't be able to climb and carry Tathas, and she wasn't sure Shianni and Soris would be able to manage it fast enough to avoid being spotted. So with up eliminated, down was their only option.

Dogs barked. Isefel listened to the echo and counted the seconds, tightened her grip on her cousins, and dashed across the main street and towards the next alleyway.

But halfway across her arm holding onto Shianni jerked and nearly caused her to stumble. Isefel whipped her head back in a panic, her heart leaping straight into her throat as she feared for a moment she'd mis-timed their escape and a dog or a soldier or a shem rioter had taken hold of one of her family members. But there was no such threat. Soris had merely tripped… over one of several dead elves scattered in the road.

His face turned ghost white then a terrible shade of green. "Holy Maker…" he said, voice barely more than a whisper.

Before he could be sick about it or allow the fear to freeze him, Isefel dragged them onwards and into the shadows once more. She did not look back at the bodies. She did not check their eyes, examine their faces to see which beloved members of their community now had their blood coated on the underside of their shoes.

She wasn't brave enough to look at them and breathe while they were dead on the ground.

Dogs barked. Somewhere in one of the apartment buildings a child sobbed, crying for help. Isefel kept moving. Someone else would come. Someone else would help. She couldn't afford to stop, not until her family was safe.

And if she let her focus stray even a moment the terror would consume her resolve.

After what felt like an age of dodging between dark shadows along the alleys of the alienage, they found the sewer entrance she'd been searching for. Isefel uncovered the entrance and held it while Shianni climbed down first. Soris followed, and she lowered Tathas down to them before climbing in herself and sealing the exit closed after them.

It stank of rot and filth, but that was their safety. Not even the best mabari tracker would be able to smell a few elf children through the putrid odor of the Denerim's sewers.

Dogs barked. Closer than ever before. Isefel held her breath and clutched at her cousins, shuffling further back and away from the exit as she hears the distinct sound of a hound sniffing about. Tathas whimpered, and Isefel reached back and clasped a hand over her mouth to silence her.

A moment passed. Then another. And another. Until finally the dogs barked again and darted off in some other direction as a new target caught their focus. They sat for ages in the dark, still and undisturbed while the chaos raged outside. But Isefel didn't dare feel relieved.

Because even if they were finally safe, Isefel was still terrified. Terrified of what almost happened, and what they would inevitably see once they finally emerged.

The butchered bodies in the roads were just the precursor. There would be hangings. The dead elves would be strung up for weeks as an example to any who thought to try and start the madness again, only taken down when they were so thoroughly rotted that there wasn't enough flesh left to support the weight on the ropes and they fell to the ground on their own. Maybe there would be heads on spikes this time. The old guard captain had been fond of that deterrent. Soldiers would wear the clipped tips of elf-ears like trophies around the hilts of their swords.

And even those elves who survived would be forever haunted. Buildings, homes, and livelihoods all ripped down and torn apart. Families broken apart. And for what? What reason could justify any of this?

Maybe an elf had killed a shem and his friends taken such offense that a mob gathered. Maybe a few elves were finally so fed up with their lot in life they tried to take their fate into their own hands only to find their efforts killed in a single afternoon. Maybe a handful of guards just got bored and decided it would be fun to watch their dogs chase rabbits.

Isefel didn't know, but she knew it didn't even matter who started it. The outcome was always the same: her and kids like her hiding terrified in the dark and praying to a Maker that would never hear them for protection.

Vigilance born from terror took hold of her body—they weren't alone down here. Isefel pulled her blade from her boot and shifted to stand in front of her cousins as a figure emerged from the dark stretch of the sewers before them.

"Aw, shit," said a voice. A man's voice. "I'd know this smell anywhere. We're in Denerim, aren't we? Why're we in the sewers?"

Dogs barked. Isefel flinched—they all did, even the human. She dared not take her eyes off him even as he turned to look towards where the exit let out and up to the street, confusion slowly giving way to understanding.

Isefel couldn't speak. She could barely even breathe. She battled back the trembling in her limbs to hold her knife steady in her grip. He was wounded… scratch and bite marks alongside what looked like an arrow wound. From the riot, no doubt. But… if they were that recent, they would be bleeding more, wouldn't they…?

The answer to her internal question provided itself as the man continued to listen carefully to the sound of the mob on the street and almost absent-mindedly summon a spell of golden light in his hands and work the magic into one of his injuries. This wasn't just a human man, already the most dangerous thing to an elven girl. This was a mage. There was a staff in his hand, she should have realized it right away.

"Leave. However you got down here, go and take that way out," Isefel said.

"I can't do that." He said. He looked her over, confusion mixing into something like sympathy or sadness, but she couldn't trust it. He looked past her, gaze fixed on the three children she was barely any older than and ready to protect with her life. "They're preying on your fear. They want you to be scared."

"Of course we're all scared, it's a fucking purge," Isefel spat. "I don't care if you're with the mob or just another unlucky soul looking for a place to hide. This spot's taken. Go. I won't warn you again."

"It's not real, Isefel," he said, taking a step closer to them. How did he know her name? "Those kids, they're demons. I'm the only thing here that isn't a dream."

Dogs barked. Terror surged over her once more. It was hard to think through the fear, but even through the panic there were two things she knew were true. One: she would protect her family no matter what. And two: the man, though not a member of the mob or the guards, was a danger to them.

She'd already told him she wouldn't warn him again. So she didn't.

She threw her knife. Unable to fully control the shaking in her limbs it didn't hit exactly where she intended but it still struck him, the blade sinking into the flesh of his thigh. He swore loudly as the attack caught him by surprise, but a string of lights collided into arcane symbols as he started to cast back in retaliation.

Her mothers words came to her again, a snippet from some story or anecdote she'd shared once about her and her sisters travels across Ferelden in their youth: "Mages need time and concentration to cast spells. Interrupt either, and the magic will unravel."

Isefel was faster than the man's magic. She dashed in close and shoulder-checked him. The lattice of light flickered and dissolved as she locked her leg with his and linked her arm over his shoulder, flipping him ass over head and onto the ground.

Behind her the kids gasped and let out started cries at the sudden display of violence. This was scary for them. It was scary for her too. But the thought that this mage would harm them scared her even more.

She slammed the man into the ground and pulled her knife from his leg. He was already struggling, trying to regain his bearings, but Isefel wouldn't give him the chance. She plunged the knife down towards his head—he jerked away just in time and the blade only cut the edge of his ear. She pulled it down into his shoulder as he brought the sharp point of his elbow up into her gut, both of them crying out in pain at the same time.

"You're not in Denerim anymore!" He shouted. The man braced a foot against her chest and kicked her away from him, righting himself with heavy breath and a plea in his eye. "We're in the Circle. You told me about Lastara—we're trying to find her. Don't you remember?"

Isefel backed away from him frantically, positioning herself between him and her cousins once more. She adjusted her grip on her knife but hesitated at the name. Lastara? How did he know about Lastara…?

She was trapped in her mind's eye, reliving memories as they dug like daggers into her soul.

—Mother bleeding out on the ground, a templar's sword plunged through her heart. Lastara screaming, kicking and thrashing as the templars dragged her away, begging Isefel to kill her before they could take her back. Isefel's hand shaking on her mother's knife, too scared to throw. Her feet beating the pavement as instead she turned and ran away instead—

The nightmare twisted, surging violently as the scenes rushed around her in a whirlwind. Fear and shame thundered in her heart as she staggered back. She looked down and saw Tathas clinging to her leg, the girl whose eyes were too dark to mirror her mothers but still carried all of that same fire.

—The fire, the smoke during the purge. The human mob pushing Soris's parents back into a burning building. The lord's dogs barking, howling, muzzles bloody as they dragged Tathas away by the leg. Pulling her free and holding her sobbing cousins as they hid in the dark for hours until the riot ended and her father finally found them after being separated from them in the chaos—

It crashed over her again like a wave, churning her fears inside her skull. Soris moved so he was still hiding behind her; he'd never been a fighter, and he never would be. His spirit was too gentle for a world this cruel.

—Vaughn's laugh, that cruel, indifferent, self-entitled sound. The laughter of all the men like him she'd ever heard in her entire life. Nola's body bursting with blood as she was cut down for pleading for her life. Finding Vuena bloodied and battered under the docks and knowing what happened to her. The thought of all the girls like her they never even found—

The fact that if she'd been even a little bit slower, a little less lucky, Shianni would have been one of them. Shianni… Shianni had been taken by Vaughn. During her wedding. Her wedding. That… had happened, so why…?

Dogs barked. And then they were quiet.

Isefel reached a hand up to her face and pressed her fingers at the edge of her eye. The one that should be scarred and blinded. The flesh was unmarred and she saw through it as clearly as she did the day before her wedding. She should have known. Maker, she'd been such a coward, too scared to acknowledge what was right in front of her.

Isefel wasn't the teenager she'd been during these alienage purges. Just weeks ago she'd been meant to be married… but in this nightmare she'd been barely more than a child herself. Fear made her small.

"He's going to hurt us!" Tathas sobbed, clutching tight to her clothes and shaking like a leaf. "You have to kill him, Issy, you promised you wouldn't let anything ever happen to me!"

The fear pulsing through her stilled. She looked down at the little girl at her side and was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of wrongness. Tathas was no longer a child, and she hadn't been for a long time. She was nearly a woman grown and stronger and more capable than even Isefel had been at that age.

Isefel turned away from the mage and knelt in front of Tathas, holding her face in her hands and looking her over one last time. Somehow when Isefel wasn't looking she'd gone and grown up, but to her it felt like yesterday that Tathas really was this she would smile and cry and laugh openly instead of shoving everything down in order to protect herself. Before the anger had taken hold in her and hardened her heart.

Staring at her now, a low mournful ache hummed in Isefel's chest at the thought of who that sweet little girl could have become if the world had been just a little bit kinder. But the world was not kind to brave elves, and even from her youngest years her littlest cousin had always been the bravest one of them all.

Isefel had promised once she would never let anything happen to Tathas or Shianni or Soris. But she'd failed to uphold that promise time and time again. She wanted to protect them. Maker, she wanted to more than anything in the world… but she would never be strong enough.

That helplessness scared her most of all. And now that she wasn't even able to be by their side anymore, couldn't look after them, all because of Vaughn, because of Duncan, because of the Wardens, because of her own actions and decisions—

Her hands shook and she let go of Tathas and stood up her full height now instead of where she'd been mid-growth spurt and with an eye that seemed to finally remember it didn't work. She held her knife but she could not bring herself to raise it against them.

She gritted her teeth and took another hesitant step away from the things that looked like her cousins. In a moment of horrible indecision Isefel couldn't determine which would be worse: watch them die, or put them down herself. Either way it truly was her worst nightmare.

"Edmund, I… I can't," she said. Couldn't protect the real ones. Couldn't kill the fakes. Couldn't do anything.

"The dream doesn't end unless they die," Edmund said gravely.

Of course it wouldn't. She'd heard before that the Fade in some way was a reflection of the physical world, so it only made sense that it was just that cruel.

"Isefel, please, don't leave us," Shianni begged. "We need you."

"I know you do," Isefel said, shoulders sagging from the weight of what was required of her. "So I have to wake up."

Like that was the cue he was waiting for, Edmund lit up the sewers with fire. Her cousins screamed but the sound betrayed them for what they really were—demons, howling as they shed their disguises in favor of forms that granted deadly attributes.

Soris and Shianni were no longer Soris and Shianni. They were long spindly things now, the shadows of their elongated form flickering in the magical firelight. Long arms ended in wicked talons and whiplike tails curled in as the Terror demons bared down on Edmund. Isefel moved to support him—he was holding them off well, but he was already injured and he was outnumbered—but she stilled suddenly at the realization she couldn't see Tathas anymore.

An instinct rippled up her spine and caused her to react before she could even think, ducking low as Not Tathas burst from the shadows and stuck where her heart would have been even just that split second before. Not Tathas was Fear—a terrible thing with elongated clawed spiders legs sprouting from it's back and a mouth imitating the screams of her youngest cousin so convincingly it caused her to flinch.

The thing rippled in place then scattered to darkness once more. She whipped her hear around, trying to track the shifting shadows. She heard behind her the sizzling noise of electricity and a flash of heat from fire, but she couldn't focus on him through the stinging of her nerves. A chill seized her and she dodged to the side again, but this time she wasn't fast enough to avoid Fear's claws completely and the talons raked across the side of her torso.

She hissed from the pain but didn't let it stop her—she wouldn't let it slip from her twice. There was a similarity between mages and demons she'd noticed, especially while fighting through the tower. Neither took well to physical interruptions of their fantastical effects.

Isefel grabbed hold of one of it's spiderlike limbs with her unarmed hand and pulled as hard as it could, disrupting it's ability to vanish into shadow and making it scream. She cut into the offending ligament with her knife and ripped it off. It moved to assault her with it's clawed hands, but she was faster, already darting backwards and out of range.

She wasn't scared of it, not anymore. There was nothing to fear from something she could make bleed.

She plunged into it's heart with the point of it's own severed limb, twisting and pulling until it stopped wailing and thrashing. No time wasted reveling in the kill, Isefel turned to find Edmund had already struck down one of the lesser Terrors and was finishing off the second.

A simmer of magic she recognized lit the ground directly in front of him—a fire mine spell. He reached out with the hooked end of his staff and caught the demon around the neck, yanking hard and dragging the thing forward into activating it. Resulting burst of fire consumed it, and it screamed with Soris's voice as it died.

With the demons dead and dissolving on the ground, the two of them stood a moment in silence as they fought to catch their breath. Edmund limped to the wall, hissing in pain as he looked down at the stab wound on his leg.

"Congratulations, you win the award for most annoying demons to fight. And that's saying something, because I fucking hate the Despair ones," Edmund said finally, breaking the silent tension. "Though, maybe that's just because you've had the most demons at one time. Guess they really didn't want you to wake up… and after fighting you myself, I can't say I blame them."

"Just be glad I missed what I was aiming for," Isefel said, eyeing the wounds she'd given him with a sting of regret.

"This was you missing? I didn't think that was possible." He said with a pained laugh, pulling magic to his fingers and pressing it to the injury on his leg.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry," she said with a small and apologetic smile. "And I'll do my very best not to stab you again. Are you going to be okay?"

"You can make it up to me by teaching me that flip you used to throw me earlier." Edmund shrugged. It was nice at least that he didn't plan on taking it personally or holding it against her. Though, notably, he did not answer her question.

"Deal." Isefel nodded. She took another slow pace and stepped away from the wall, looking around curiously as everything got hazy around them. "What happens now?"

"Now we fight through more dreams, rescue the others, and save the day. I've already gotten a few, all that's left should be…"

Isefel never heard who was left, for even as he spoke he started to disappear. And then all at once he was gone, and so was she. And as she drifted for a moment in that grey nothing she wrangled together the hurting pieces of herself.

Keep it together. Get it under control. You don't get to fall apart. You're stronger than that—you have to be. You're fine.

So instead she worried for the others. Were they alright? Were they being similarly tormented by demons? Edmund said he'd already freed a few of them, but if there were others who were still trapped… she had to help them.

Maybe something heard her wish—a demon or spirit or maybe even just the Fade itself—because a new dream formed around her. For a split second she thought she might have woken up back in the Circle. It was the library in the tower exactly as she remembered seeing it, scattered and run down with tell-tale signs of violence and struggle.

The only thing that clued her in to the fact that this too was a dream was there were more bodies here than she remembered from before, and Wynne was standing downcast among them.

"Maker forgive me. I failed them all," Wynne's whispered voice echoed softly across the air, the sound just this side of tears. "They died and I did not stop it."

Isefel approached slowly, carefully inspecting the scene around her. Out of the habit she'd started since arriving in the Circle she checked the faces of the dead and found she recognized several of them. Not that she knew their names or their stories, but she knew their faces. A few of them were the living mages Wynne had been protecting when they met her. Others were bodies Isefel recalled seeing in the halls as they climbed the tower.

Isefel had been checking eyes and faces for one person, but all of the corpses they'd stepped over were people Wynne had known, some of them probably for years. This was no alienage, but it was a purge just the same.

"It's not too late, Wynne. The Circle can still be saved." Isefel said softly, standing in front of her across the ring of dead mages.

"What about all this? How can you say that when you are faced with this?" Wynne said with a hopeless gesture to the corpses. "Death. Can you not see it? It's all around us."

That was true in the waking world more so than it would ever be here. At least here it wasn't real. It… wasn't real…

"You're in the Fade. This is a dream. You're a mage, can't you tell?" Isefel asked.

Edmund knew it was a dream. Maybe not right away, but clearly at some point in between Sloth putting to sleep and him appearing in her nightmare he figured it out. It seemed like the sort of thing a mage would know how to recognize… but maybe Wynne was simply too far gone in her grief.

"Why was I spared if not to help them? What use is my life now that I have failed in the task that was given me?" Wynne asked, but not to her, instead posing her rhetorical to the empty air around them. She shook her head after another long and trembling breath taken to push back tears. "Leave me to my grief. I shall bury their bones, scatter their ashes to the four winds, and mourn their passing till I too am dead."

"You have to fight this feeling," Isefel stepped into the ring of bodies, reaching a hand out to the old mage. "Real or not, you can't give up."

Wynne balked at her in open disapproval. "Your blatant disregard for the souls of the dead strikes me as being utterly inappropriate."

Isefel frowned and withdrew her hand. Reaching Wynne wouldn't be so simple as that. This was her worst fear come to life. And not just in an illusion posing a worst-case hypothetical. Even once they woke up, Wynne's nightmare would continue.

"Think about what you're doing here, and why," Isefel said slowly. "It's important."

"I do not know what you are trying to tell me. Why must you make this more painful?" Wynne asked. Pain and anger battled on her face openly and neither could be the victor. The mage pointed at her in accusation. "And where were you when this happened? I trusted you as an ally and you were nowhere to be found."

"Isn't that proof enough that something isn't right?" Isefel pressed. She stepped over more bodies and into the heart of the ring. "I swore I'd save this Circle, and I don't make oaths lightly. I am not the enemy here, Wynne. Focus on what you know. Ignore everything else."

"I do not know what this will accomplish, but I will do this, if it will satisfy you." Wynne relented, though clearly not happy to do so. Though once she gave in she grew even more troubled than before. "It is… difficult to focus. Something is… stopping me from concentrating. I have never had so much trouble… perhaps some time away from this place will help me think clearly."

"You'll feel much better once you're away from here. I know it." she nodded. Isefel felt more like herself now, now that she was helping someone else. It felt like purpose, or at least if she couldn't manage her own pains she could assist someone else with theirs.

She reached out and took Wynne's hand and started guiding her away from the ring of dead mages. She knew in her gut it wouldn't be so simple as this, and she readied a blade in her other hand. Edmund had said it himself—the only way out was through whatever demons had conjured this place. They wouldn't be able to just leave without a fight.

And her instinct was, regrettably, correct. One by one the dead mages rose to stand as they left the ring behind them.

"Don't leave us Wynne!" cried an elven mage with his chest torn open and heart missing. "We don't want to be alone."

"Holy Maker! Stay away, foul creature!" Wynne's face went white. She backpedaled a step, hand outstretched towards the dead moving to surround them once more.

"We won't be able to leave until we defeat them," said Isefel, bracing herself for the coming fight.

"Stay, Wynne. Sleep soundly in the comforting embrace of the earth." A mage girl reached out to her. This one had a large piece of her skull missing. She opened her arms wide like she was welcoming the older mage in for an embrace. "Do not fight it. You belong here, with us."

Wynne steeled her resolve, fists clenched and a hum of magic surrounding her. "N-No. Not yet. My task is not done… it is not time yet."

"Come… come away to your rest…" An elven mage reached for her with an arm so badly burned it was mostly bone.

Isefel intercepted, slicing away the ligaments keeping the limb attached. It shrieked, the sound not remotely a noise a normal living person would make. And the rest of the dead closed in on them. Maker, there were so many of them—

The mass of them crumpled as one as Wynne brought her magic to bear. It wasn't overwhelming or destructive the way Edmund's magic always was, or dark and eerie like Morrigan's. It was precise, clinical almost, with no excess energy expendand than what was being directly used.

Blown back by Wynne's conjured exploding first of stone but not completely subdued, the dead surged at them again. Isefel met them with her blades before they could reach the mage, burning steel into the wounds that had caused their "deaths" and ripping them open further. Wynne's magic was at work upon her, she could feel it immediately.

Spells that made her faster, more aware, stronger.

Isefel decapitated one as Wynne struck one with a purple bolt of raw arcane energy, and the demons were dead.

"Are you alright?" Isefel lowered her weapons but did not sheathe them. She couldn't afford to lower her guard, not yet.

"I am unharmed… is it over? Oh, thank the Maker for you, Isefel," Wynne breathed a sigh of relied and offered her a small but genuinely grateful smile. Isefel returned it as best she could, but it faltered as she abruptly realized that the old enchanter was suddenly see-through. "Wait… what's happening? Where are you going?"

The Fade swirled into a million colors and then none at all.

. . . . .

The blood was still wet on his blade. Cousland sat on the steps at the end of the chamber and watched as the red liquid dripped from the steel to the ground, counting his breaths and heartbeats. He looked up slowly from his weapon to the bodies it'd just freshly left behind.

Arl Rendon Howe's empty eyes stared back at him. His mouth was slack and unmoving, but that was the natural expression for someone whose head had been severed from his shoulders. His sons Thomas and Nathaniel were dead beside him. Even Delilah was there, cut open alongside the rest of her family.

All of them slain by Cousland's own hand.

He shook his head and with a huff began cleaning the filth of them from his weapon. He wasn't sure what the demon's angle here had been, really. To prod him, torment him, or taunt him, probably. And in a way it had. But clearly this spirit had underestimated just how swift and decisive his reaction would be.

He wouldn't let himself be toyed with. Especially when the thing came to him in the faces of those who betrayed him.

And so he sat here in the grand hall of his family's ancestral home before the bodies of those who had sought their ruin. Cleaning his blade of their blood and fuming over the fact that even if this were real, and he'd killed all the Howes, it wouldn't have changed anything.

There was no regaining what was lost. What was fair about that? His parents had always tried to be kind, loyal, and just. No one was perfect, but they always made strides to do the right thing no matter what. And what had that gotten them? Betrayal, ruin, and death. What was the point of that? Where was the justice in that?

He knew deep down that when the time came he would inevitably fail to follow his fathers example of being the bigger person, the better person. Those had even been some of his father's last words to him: see justice done. Prioritize duty over vengeance. But he didn't think something like that was within his grasp.

Justice, vengeance… at this point, it felt to him they were two faces of the same coin and it didn't matter which one was up when it flipped and landed. Not when the outcome was the same. Not when the outcome was… this. More violence. More death. It was a wheel spinning over and over, and he was just another spoke in the turning.

Perhaps that was the worst part. Real or not, if Cousland was presented with this opportunity again, the chance to get even and visit on the Howes even a fraction of what they'd done to his family, he would take it without hesitation. Damn the consequences, damn justice, damn all of it.

And what did that leave him with, but to be furious with himself? That he would know what would be fair and just and choose to satisfy his own selfish rage instead. It was easy, being angry with others. You never had to search hard to find a reason for it; just light a spark and let the fuse burn. It was a harder thing, to be angry with oneself.

But when the dust settled that was all he had. And it hurt a little to think that maybe that was all he was good for.

There was a disturbance in the room—he wasn't alone anymore. A familiar mage with dark hair stood across the pile of bodies from him, covered in wounds from head to toe.

"What're you doing here?" Cousland scowled, the familiar irritation creeping back in just at the sight of him. Of anyone who had it appear in his dream, of course it was Amell.

"Hello to you too," Edmund deadpanned. He sounded slightly out of breath, and once he had a moment to pause he began working healing magic into the more severe of his injuries. Of which there were several. "And here I was coming to save your ass."

"I don't need your help," he said. Especially since Edmund's version of help often seemed to just make things worse.

"Really?" Edmund prodded the bisected corpse of Nathaniel Howe curiously with the toe of his boot. "Then why are you still in here?"

"Oh, you mean you don't already know? That's a first," Cousland asked bitterly, rolling his eyes and resting his greatsword over his shoulder. "And here I never thought the day would come."

The mage rolled his eyes and stepped over the butchered bodies. "I mean that your dream shouldn't still be holding together. Looks like you already killed the demon, and I'm sure by now you've realized this isn't real. So it doesn't make any sense that you're still here."

There was a dull ringing in his ears. Maker, just the sound of the caster's voice set his teeth on edge.

"Well maybe you just don't know as much as you think you do," said Cousland.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Edmund frowned, crossing his arms in front of himself.

"Nothing. Nevermind." Cousland shook his head in an effort to rid himself of the deep-seeded agitation rising up in him but was largely unsuccessful. And any further thoughts or remarks he might've made were stalled as he spied a most curious rodent sitting on the mage's shoulder. "... What's with the rat?"

"Oh, this lil dude? He's, uh… a souvenir from my own dream. Anyways, this is Mouse. He's helping. Kinda." He reached up and scratched at the rodent's head only to quickly retract his hand with a wince as the creature bit it with force enough to draw blood. "Ow. Fuck you too."

"Maker, you are so weird for no reason at all."

"There's always a reason," Edmund quipped, "It's just also always really complicated."

Of course it was.

"How did you get in here, anyways?" Cousland asked. "If I need to get out, can I leave the same way?"

Edmund visibly hesitated, something uneasy about how he looked at the creature on his shoulder with a question on his face that assured Cousland there was no way that was just a simple rat. Every bad feeling he'd ever had about the mage suddenly manifested at the forefront of his mind, clear as crystal.

"I… wouldn't count on it," he said when he finally replied. He also did not answer the first question at all, Cousland noted.

"What about you? Are you even real?" Cousland asked slowly. He lifted his blade from his shoulder and rested the tip on the ground, but kept his grip ready on the hilt. "For all I know, you could be another demon."

"Ugh, please, not this again." Edmund's shoulders sagged and he ran a hand tiredly over his face. "I've already had to prove I am who I am to someone else today and I don't really want to do it again."

"Why?" Cousland asked, eyeing the many injuries scattered over his body. Some looked like the work of demons, others the result of blades. Real or not, it wasn't just spirits he'd been facing, and that alone had implications. "Because you couldn't do it?"

"Because it's annoying and a waste of time," he shook his head and half-turned back, looking once more at the butchered Howe's with something somber in his face. "I get that they were demons, that there's no helping it… but damn. This all just seems so excessive."

"Oh, and what should I have done? Offer the spirits to sit for tea? Give up and let them bleed the life from me?" Cousland couldn't help but laugh, even though ordinarily nothing about this would be amusing at all. "No. Real or not, they got what they deserved."

"Howe tried to take everything from you. But he didn't succeed. There's still Oren and Oriana." Edmund said. He smiled in a way that he probably thought was reassuring but just made his blood boil.

"And?" Cousland asked, his voice low and dangerous as he took a step closer to the mage. "You think just because it wasn't as bad as it could have been I shouldn't be upset about it? Is that your point?"

"No. No," Edmund amended quickly with the look of a man who was fighting a losing battle in choosing the right words. "I just think maybe it would help to re-frame how you're looking at it. You're only going to drive yourself up a wall if you only focus on what was taken from you."

He laughed, but it was a sound born out of anger. "Wow, that makes me feel all better. Because clearly you understand what losing your home and family is like, right? Oh wait. We just walked through the Circle in ruins, and from the looks of things you didn't even care."

"That's different, it's not the same—" Edmund stilled as his tone gained more bite, but as the man tried to continue his argument Cousland found himself without a single fuck to give.

"Exactly. It's not the same. So spare me your patronizing lecture," Cousland leaned in close to the mage, close enough he could smell the blood of his wounds and the ash of his fire spells clinging to his clothes. "You have no idea what loss is."

Pain bloomed along his jaw and Cousland's head snapped back, a sickening crack and following gush of blood from his nostrils indicated a broken nose. He sputtered at the taste of iron, and his instincts kicked in in time for him to dodge back from the follow-up blow.

Edmund was the type of angry that made him forget magic was even at his disposal, leaving him with nothing but his most base reactions. While Cousland was still blinking the spots from his vision Edmund swung at him again. He blocked the hit against his arm and without a single thought slammed his head forward, bashing Edmund's head with his own and sending them both stumbling back and swearing loudly.

Cousland recovered first. Absently he noted that the rat was nowhere to be seen—but that auxiliary detail seemed insignificant in the rush of adrenaline. He grabbed Amell by the front of his clothes and threw him against the wall. The impact stole the breath from Edmund's lungs and he stumbled, struggling to maintain his feet but swinging back anyways.

The mage stood no chance in a physical fight. Cousland's strength far outmatched his and was backed up by years of training. But this was the Fade, and in a realm of dreams that meant very little. And the spellcaster finally remembered that he had magic.

"I have lost everything." Edmund snarled. Magic flashed around him, manifesting a shimmering barrier between their persons. "So don't tell me I don't know what loss is. Don't you dare. Unlike you, I just don't have to make my pain someone else's problem."

"Ha! Is that what you think you're doing? Then what's with your insane need to control every outcome? You can't hardly have a conversation with someone without projecting whatever your issue is into control over their fate," Cousland said, cutting in with his blade hard enough to break the magical barrier. He caught Edmund by the shoulder with his free hand and drove his knee up into his gut. "You treat life like it's some sort of game. I don't know if it escaped your notice, but this isn't a game."

Though the words were intended to bite it hit the mage deeper than Cousland anticipated. Something bright and angry flashed in Edmund's eyes and flames burst across the room. Blue wisps of fire clung to the walls of the chamber and burned out hot plumes of smoke that burned his lungs as he breathed in the heat. Magic symbols swirled around the spellcaster and a wave of fire seared across Cousland's armor, and where it caught flesh it seared.

Fine. If Edmund was going to be a cheat and bring out his magic, then it seemed no overreaction to Cousland to meet it with steel.

Cousland swung and hit Edmund with the flat side of the blade but still struck him hard enough to knock him off balance. When he pulled the backswing he turned the edge slightly, pulling a cut across the mage's arm, and then swung back again.

Edmund reached out and grasped the blade with his bare palm. He hissed in pain as it drew blood, but gritted his teeth and cast lightning from his palm. Cousland's vision flashed light and dark as electricity conducted through his body, bolting through his blood and past his heart, all the metal he wore as protection a perfect conductor for the assailing element.

His muscles seized as the magic subsided, leaving him all at once feeling dead and alive as adrenaline battled against fried nerves. Edmund took a breath—clearly he expected that would be the end of it. But how wrong he was. The mage started this fight, but the noble would be damned before he let him be the one to finish it.

Cousland swung upward with his blade and grazed a cut along his arm and cut in again, the brunt of the damage deflected by a hastily cast barrier that crumbled as soon as the steel bounced away.

The spell deflected the blade but not the backswing as Cousland brough the pommel up to strike against his chest. He was in close, any spell the mage might cast risked catching risked injuring himself. He could… pull the blade back along his neck… he could end… him…

Do it. Do it. Do it!

Something insisted so deep, so hateful, that Cousland hesitated. He didn't want the mage dead. He was an ass and problem, but not an enemy. So why this urge…?

In that moment of clarity Edmund was already casting. Magic wrapped around his body like a cloak and he pulled himself along the energy of the Fade, moving quicker than should be humanly possible and dashing away to the other side of the hall faster than Cousland could blink.

"There's no fight left but the one you're forcing." Edmund coughed, spitting up blood down his front. But the pain did nothing to dull the sharpness of his glare. The rat was back on his shoulder. "If you don't want my help, fine. Solve your shit on your own."

Light flashed and a sound like thunder boomed across the chamber. When the lightning cleared, Edmund was gone, the destruction left in his wake the only evidence he'd been there at all.

The mage was gone, and though the flames of his spells were extinguished Cousland was still burning inside.

Cousland let out a strangled cry and the sound echoed off the walls and against the inside of his skull. He pivoted, foot raised back and aimed to kick Howe's dismembered head away in frustration… and he hesitated again. Slowly he stilled himself and fought for clarity in his own mind, blinking as suddenly he felt he was emerging from a fog.

He stared down at those empty, unblinking eyes of his enemy when the realization hit him with the crushing weight of a falling boulder.

He'd been fooled by what he wanted to see; the wool was pulled over his eyes to obscure what he should have known right away. The demon was never the Howes, the shadows wearing their faces… they were the distraction, the diversion meant to pull his attention from the true threat. And he'd fallen for it. Hook, line, and sinker.

Demons disguised themselves… but who said they had to take the form of people?

Rage was the sword in his hand.

Cousland swung the blade, wedging the steel into a crack in the wall. Then with a cry and all his strength he bent back until it cracked in a burst with light and heat. He watched metal melt to magma and a Rage demon rise before him. He reached for his weapon and belatedly realized he no longer had one.

Andraste's tits, this was a mess.

"You need me," Rage said, a claw wreathed in dark fire extended out towards him. "I can give you what you want. What you need. Their heads will roll, but only if you let me in. You cannot do it without me. You need me."

The demon loomed in front of him, just the presence of it's fire-coated form making it hard to breathe. Its promises sounded so sweet, so sincere. This was the type of temptation that mages spent years training themselves to resist, and for a second Cousland understood why so many fell to possession.

He didn't know what it was inside him that bucked so strongly against it—dignity, maybe, or just his own contrary nature. Rage wanted control over him, of his fate, his destiny, if such things as that even really did exist. He wouldn't allow it. If he brought vengeance down on Howe and anyone else that threatened his family, it would be because he chose it. Not some shadow whispering in his ear.

"I don't need you," he said to Rage, bracing his stance. "And you can't keep me here."

Between the fight with Edmund and this, he was suddenly very grateful that Fergus had insisted on teaching him how to fight without a blade. He doubted, however, that this is what his older sibling imagined he'd be using the skill for.

Cousland swung at the demon, clocking it across the face with his gauntleted fist. It roared on the impacted and reacted by swinging a burning claw for his throat. He caught it by it's wrist and though it seared the flesh of his hands he twisted and struck against it's join with his forearm. The appendage cracked with a sickening pop, and Rage swelled in size.

It bellowed, a gout of burning hot flames flashing where his head had been seconds before. He ducked low and rolled back, shielding his face from the heat even as the fire seared him. He couldn't keep fighting like this, not when every strike inflicted damage to him as well. He needed a weapon, something—

He glanced down at his feet where he stood crouched by the butchered bodies of the Howes and the weapons they'd held in their hands when he struck them down.

For just being part of a dream, a prop in a stage meant to mislead him, it felt real enough in his hands. As did the damage the steel inflicted on the demon's body.

He noted with a certain amount of irony as he lifted the sword and struck Rage that fighting his inner demon with a weapon taken from the not-real corpse of his greatest enemy was, on some level, absolutely ridiculous. But the drama of it all only gave way to catharsis as he plunged the blade through Rage's heart. It roared horribly, bursts of fire spewing from it's back as it slumped forward from the fatal wound and finally expired.

Cousland heaved as he struggled to catch his breath, stepping away from the smoldering embers of Rage. Between the demon and Edmund he'd taken more than his share of magical damage. The burns on his body stung and ached for relief, and the only consolation he had was that they weren't real. At least, he hoped they weren't.

Either way, an ice bath sounded like absolute bliss right about then.

The dream ended but he didn't wake up, which was a new and uncomfortable situation to be in. The Fade, demons, spirits, dreams… none of it matched what he expected from the stories he'd been told before. In a place shaped by perception he couldn't trust anything around him. Or, apparently, himself and his own judgment.

He needed to talk to Edmund. And not the trading of barbed insults that normally passed for conversation between them, but to actually talk to him. It was well past overdue. For both of them.

Cousland's musings were interrupted by the abrupt realization that he was, in fact, suddenly standing in the aisle of a Chantry. He turned in place as he fought to get his bearings; something about the place was familiar.

It was Lothering. Private alcoves for secluded prayer, smaller meeting rooms off to the sides where lessons could be taught, shelves stacked with books of holy literature and histories… the only problem was that it was empty in a way that immediately set his suspicions on edge. Empty… but not completely.

He spied two women at the far end of the aisle before the altar and the statue of Andraste and her bowl of fire. One of them was identified as a Revered Mother by her robes and headdress, and the other who knelt in prayer… was Leliana.

The minstrel was dressed in the same Chantry robes she'd worn the day they'd met, and she recited prayers fervently even through the sound of his approach.

"Blessed art thou who exists in the sight of the Maker. Blessed art thou who seeks His forgiveness…" she muttered, rocking back and forth slightly in her place before the altar.

"Leliana, what are you doing?" Cousland asked.

"Blessed—what?" She startled at the sound of his voice. She stood sharply, arms half-raised defensively. "Who are you?"

"I beg you," the Revered Mother chided, "Do not disturb the girl's meditations."

"Revered Mother, I do not know this person." Leliana shifted away, everything about her posture icy.

Cousland faltered a step back at the total lack of recognition. Why didn't she know him? The sudden coldness was off putting in an eerie sort of way. From day one Leliana had been warm and bright—odd, certainly, and perhaps a bit insane, but genuine and caring to even the most random passersby they encountered. This heavily guarded demeanor was different.

"What do you mean? You know me." Cousland insisted, taking another step towards them. "The Fade's playing tricks on your mind."

She had to know this wasn't real. He'd been able to see it right away in his own dream, the feel of a place trying too hard to seem true. This Chantry, while a convincing fake, still echoed something artificial. Though considering how he'd ultimately been duped by the Rage demon… maybe he didn't have so much room to make any assertions.

Leliana shook her head and turned back towards the altar. "I'm sorry, but I… I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please do not vex her. She needs quiet and solitude to calm mer mind and heal her heart," the Revered Mother rested a hand on Leliana's shoulder and guided her back into a kneeling position before the statue of Andraste, a position she retook without even the slightest hesitation.

"Leliana, listen to me. This isn't real," he insisted.

"Isn't real? I don't understand." Leliana shook her head without even looking back at him and rededicated her focus to her prayers. "Blessed art thou who stands before the corrupt and the wicked…"

She couldn't see it wasn't real. Maybe she wanted it to be real. And why not? It was a beautiful Chantry. He'd only seen the Lothering Chantry and it's cloister in a time of distress, filled with refugees and desperate souls. But this place in the dream was peaceful. Candles glowed low and cast a warm light that kept shadows at bay and incense burned with a fragrant smell he could almost believe. Soft music played from some distant alcove, a song of worship and contemplation.

The whole of the dream would have been lovely… if not for the demon pretending to be a holy woman looming over Leliana. The creature idly stroked Leliana's fine ginger hair in a way that would have been motherly if the shadow in its gaze wasn't one of a hunter drooling over its prey.

Cousland took a knee at the altar, but rather than fixing his eyes on the visage of Andraste he looked to the woman beside him.

"You left the cloister," he said, voice pitched low so the words were only for her. "Something drove you to leave, a call so strong you couldn't ignore it even if you tried. Even if you don't remember me, I know you remember that."

"I… I remember." Leliana blinked like she was only just now really seeing him and frowned deeply. "There was a sign…"

"Leliana, we've discussed this 'sign' of yours." The Revered Mother tutted her disapproval, wagging a finger low and in Leliana's face to recapture her attention. "The Maker does not care to interfere with the affairs of mortals. This 'vision' was likely the work of demons."

"That's rich, coming from you." Cousland huffed a short laugh at the irony of the statement, rising to his feet once again. He readied one hand on the hilt of the blade he'd lifted from Howe's corpse and extended the other to Leliana. "Believe what's in your heart, Leliana, not what others tell you. You know what you know and no one will ever make that untrue."

Recognition flitted across her face as he parroted back to her the very words she'd told him just a day ago in Redcliffe. With slowly building determination Leliana reached out and accepted his hand, facing down the demon before them.

"The Maker cares for us. He misses His wayward children as much as we miss Him. My vision may not be from Him, but it guides me to do what is right." Leliana lifted a dagger from where it was concealed in her Chantry robes and pointed it to the woman in accusation. "My Revered Mother knew this. I don't know who you are, but you are not her."

"This is your home, your refuge. Do you truly wish to leave the comfort of this place behind? Stay, and know peace," the Revered Mother said, opening her arms wide like she was inviting Leliana in for an embrace.

"What you offer is complacency, not peace," Cousland bit back. "You can take your manipulation and shove it right up your—"

"There is no need," Leliana said, almost more to him than to the demon. Cousland glanced back at her and blinked in surprise when he saw that she was… smiling. Just a small thing, but there was power in it. "I carry the peace of the Chantry in my heart."

Leliana's dream was so different from his own, his nightmare drenched in blood and betrayal. And now in this moment his heart ached for even a little bit of peace so badly he would kill for it—which, he suspected, might be part of his problem.

"You are going nowhere, girl. I will not permit it." Revered Mother's voice dropped lower and more resonant, betraying her true nature as nothing even approximating a human being.

"Your permission isn't needed." Cousland shook his head at the demon's now transparent and frankly pathetic attempt to reassert control. "What Leliana does isn't up to you."

"No… she is ours, now and forever!"

Compared to the burning menace that was Rage, this demon barely put up a fight. Leliana was blinding quick with her dagger as always, and though she still didn't seem to fully understand what was happening she acted without hesitation. And the false Revered Mother betrayed herself for what she truly was through a showing of claw and fang meant to kill.

Cousland flanked the demon and stuck his blade through its back as Leliana plunged hers through its gut, and with a horrible groan it shuddered and slumped away.

"Holy Maker! She… she was a…"

"A demon, yes. Don't let your guard down; I don't think we're safe yet," Cousland said. He shifted in place, weapon still held ready as the chamber around them began to vanish into mist.

"Ugh… my head feels heavy, like I've just woken up from a terrible nightmare. I believe we had… some task to accomplish, yes?" Leliana clutched her head with one hand and shook it slightly, resting the other on his shoulder to stabilize her balance as she got her bearings. But her hand became translucent and slipped through his form as she too started to disappear. "Let us be on our way—wait, what's happening to me?"

Mist, then nothing, then a new dream formed around him.

. . . . .

She smelled the richness of the meat of her favorite treats. So delicious, so enticing, yet she did not move. Sweet words coaxed her closer, coos promising love and affection, and yet she sat still. A hand reached for her, slow and promising companionship, yet she growled low until it withdrew from her.

She was no fool. Emptiness like that could never tempt her.

She was the smallest of her litter, not even expected by her mother to survive and she was pushed away so she could focus on rearing the healthier pups. She'd have starved or died of neglect if her Peter hadn't picked her from the whelping box and decided she deserved a chance. A chance to beat the odds, to live, to grow from a runt to a proud hound.

A proper little Lady.

Her Peter was always there for her. And she would always be there for him. Because she was his mabari, he was her boy.

The fake thing wearing his face attempting to coax her with bacon strips was not her boy. It smelled wrong, foul, and not even it's sweetest coercions could convince Lady otherwise. And even if she wasn't convinced before, when she did not yield to it's demands the thing that had the gaul to look like him struck her.

Her Peter would never harm her. She flinched away as it raised his hand again, and even though she growled low and bared her fangs she knew she could not use them against it.

Because even if it wasn't her boy, it looked like him, and she would never harm her Peter either.

The blow connected again and she yelped, shrinking away and trying to make herself small before him. But there was no mercy in this thing, and it struck her again. With teeth bared but no willingness to use them Lady darted past it, running as fast as her paws could carry her. It was faster than her. Her Peter wasn't faster than her, not when she really ran as fast as she could, but this thing caught up to her anyways.

She yelped as the fist closed around her collar, yanking her to a halt. And then it started all over again, the sweet words promising love and treats and companionship. And when she resisted, it struck, and when it struck, she ran, and when she ran, it caught her. Over and over and over again.

If the thing intended to wear her down, it was succeeding. She was tired. And she wanted her Peter, not his imposter. But maybe… maybe a fake was better than nothing…

No. If it was not her Peter, then there would be no Peter.

The hand wrestled a firm grip on her collar once more. Lady stopped pulling away. It offered a hand to sniff. This time, Lady did not growl. This time, she bit.

It yelled in pain and struck her again, but Lady did not unclench her jaw from around it's hand. She was a vice not easily pried. It hit her again, and again, but she held fast. Only when a new voice spoke did she release out of pure shock.

"Where am I… Lady? What…?"

It was her boy. Her Peter, real and here, not a fake in an ill-fitting mask. She struggled against the hand holding her collar, desperate to race to him, but unable to break free. She could smell him from here—fire and smoke and blood and burns. Like the night they were forced to flee their home.

She whined and strained once more. He'd been hurt. And she hadn't been there to stop it. She hadn't protected her boy. He needed her, she needed to go to him.

"Hold still, damned bitch." It hit her again, this time in the back of her head and hard enough to make her vision swim.

She whimpered, struggling to keep her paws under her but finally collapsing on the ground. She blinked her sight back into focus and saw her Peter's face contort with a mix of horror and rage.

"How dare you put your hands on my girl," he said, and that was all the warning Not Peter got.

Steel clashed with steel as they both drew their blades and swung at one another.

They fought, exchanging blows back and forth, and Lady understood that there would be no victor. They were, due to the effective nature of the copy, the same person, neither more skilled than the other.

But her Peter had something the other didn't. A proud and fiercely loyal mabari.

Lady regained her footing and joined the fight.

Her Peter struck the imposter with the pommel of his weapon, leaving him reeling. It moved to regain his posture and retaliate but Lady surged forward, clamping her jaw around it's foot and pulled, ripping its balance and its footing from it. It swung at her with its weapon as it fell, but Lady dodged out of the way.

Her Peter cut down with a final cry and cut head from shoulders.

He breathed heavily in the aftermath, staring at what surely looked like his own beheaded corpse. A thousand thoughts and expressions crashed across his face in a matter of heartbeats, but the one that won out was disgust, and he spat at the demon as it started to dissolve.

Lady whined, taking a hesitant step towards him. And the disgust on his face melted to something closer to heartbreak.

"Oh Lady, sweet little Lady… what did it do to you?" He whispered. He knelt in front of her and extended his palm to her, running his hand over hear head and caressing her ears in the way he knew she enjoyed. "It's okay. I've got you now."

She huffed deeply, leaning into his hand a moment before drawing closer and resting her head on his shoulder. He understood what she needed immediately and embraced her in the safety of a hug. She was a wardog, but she was also just his dog.

He found her here in this terrible place. And she knew she would always find him, whenever he needed her.

Because she was his mabari, he was her boy.

She took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of him as much as she could before he vanished like smoke.

. . . . .

A wave of warm air wafted upwards, caressing her face with a heat that was just the tolerable side of scorching. The light of the lavaflow was distant from the bottom of the ravine but strong enough to illuminate a dull orange glow in the otherwise gloomy cavern. She was alone, and it was quiet except for her own breath and the low churning gurgle of the magma down below.

Liri tapped her heels idly against the rockface where she sat with her legs dangling over the ledge. She leaned her weight back on her palms and rolled a small rock under one of her thumbs, weighing the odds in front of her.

The exit she'd tried to take had instead led her here—and of course it had, to this place in particular. She could go back, but that would likely just take her to where the dream had started in the first place and that was a no-go. So maybe the way out was… down.

Liri laughed at that, her voice bouncing off the stone walls and back to herself and giving the impression for a second that she wasn't alone. There was just something so funny about it. The one low she swore she'd never stoop to might be the one she needed to take to get out.

At least all this Fade shit had a sense of humor. Even if it was severely fucked up.

The problem was that if she was wrong a plunge in the lava-flow would turn into a very different type of one-way trip. In almost any other scenario a life-or-death, all-or-nothing, one-in-a-million odds type of risk would appeal to her. The thrill of something just reckless enough that it might work, damn the consequences.

But because it was this place, this cave, this lavaflow, she couldn't take the plunge. So she sat at the edge of the ravine like she'd done countless times before and watched the molten earth below her bubble and churn. It was so… annoying.

More hot air blasted her face from below, coated heavy with the scents of mineral earth. The surface was great and all, but some days Liri really did just miss the stale, stagnant air of the city beneath the mountains. Nothing said home like coughing dust out of your lungs in the morning.

If she were to walk up the direction of this lavaflow, would she reach Orzammar's commons like she would in the real world? Or would the Fade contort the layout to loop her right back here, or to the place where her nightmare began, or some other fucked up location? She was tempted to try, but hesitant of what she would find if she di.

Demons, spirits, dreams… she didn't know how any of this worked. And she didn't like that. She liked things she could take apart and inspect and reassemble to fit her needs, and there was no way to do that with the Fade. At least, not any way she could imagine. She needed a mage.

Liri didn't much care for her people's reverence for the Ancestors, the Stone didn't want her so she didn't want it, and the surfacer's Maker sounded like a whole lot of hokey to her, but whether through divine intervention or the serendipitous nature of the Fade the dream provided her with just what she needed. A mage.

The smell of melting earth was undercut sharply by a distinct scent of ozone and electrical charge accompanied by smoke. Just as she was beginning to identify it, any mystery was quickly dissolved by the long string of profanities slurred together by a familiar voice.

Liri looked back over her shoulder to see Edmund stumbling into the chamber in about the worst shape she'd ever seen him. In almost every fight in their time as Wardens Edmund hung at the back of the pack, providing defensive magic to the frontliners and occasionally blowing up a cluster of enemies when they conveniently grouped together, and it wasn't often anything made it through to land a blow on him directly.

But now he looked like the unsuspecting dumbasses who took wrong turns around the roughest corners of Dust Town. Though, he was breathing and still had his valuables, so maybe not as bad as those sodding idiots.

And "alive with all your stuff" was Liri's favorite way to exist.

Liri looked him up and down and raised a brow. "You look like shit."

"I feel like shit." he deadpanned, already weaving magic across his wounds. He frowned then, cocking his head sideways the way the mabari did when they got curious about something. "Huh. You're talking,"

"Weird, right? It's been a decade since I've been able to articulate intelligible syllables." She said with extra emphasis on the sounds her waking body was no longer able to achieve. "Eugh. Using big words like that makes me sound almost as posh as Aothor. Fuck that shit."

Liri looked back to the lava and patted the space on the ground beside her. Edmund let out a heavy breath as he kicked his legs over the edge like her, the sound like he'd just set down something incredibly heavy.

"Don't worry, I don't think you're ever in danger of being called posh regardless of your vocabulary," he said. Liri glanced down at what looked like knife wound in his thigh—a blade only made a mark like that if it was small and it was thrown. "So, I guess the good news is you know this isn't real. Saves me having to give that speech over again. What clued you in?"

Liri clicked her tongue. "The talking thing, for starters."

"Ah. Well, I guess that'd do it. Though it took a bit for Isefel and the Fade to both realize her eye didn't work… though that's a comparatively recent change for her so I guess that makes sense," he shrugged, then winced in pain and clutched his sides. "Pro tip, if you ever get into a fistfight with Cousland, just… don't. He hits like a goddamn freight train. I think my ribs are broken."

"Your actual ribs?" she asked. "Or like, just dream-you's ribs?"

"Probably just dream-me. Just because it's not real doesn't mean it hurts any less."

"Right, because that makes sense."

"Welcome to the Fade."

"So where'd the rest of these come from?" She asked, gesturing to the length of him and the various injuries he sported. "Unless Cousland was leaving bite marks on you."

"Hah, in his dreams. Well, not that dream." Edmund laughed, but he almost sounded more angry than amused. "Most of these were from demons. Particularly Rosaya's demon. That one was a tough son of a bitch, it reeaaally didn't want to let her go. Then the arrow wound is from Rosaya… Isefel stabbed me in the leg then got my shoulder… and then her demons were just heinous little shits… ow, talking hurts."

"And yet, that doesn't seem to be stopping you," Liri observed.

"I've got can't-fucking-shut-up disorder. It apparently gets worse with blood loss. Even when it's not real blood," he let his arm fall back down into the dirt beside his head. "Still not entirely clear on how the hp-bar situation works in a subreality. Not that there's much of an hp-bar in the waking world. But I digress."

"Ah, excellent, you're back to talking crazy again. I was getting worried for a second there," she said matter-of-factly. "And that's about as much confirmation as I need to be sure it's really you and not a demon wearing your face. A demon would make way more sense than you ever do."

"I'm glad my insanity could provide you with reassurance," Edmund deadpanned. After another long breath he sat up and looked around. "Speaking of demons, where are yours?"

Liri thought for a moment. She hadn't seen anything that looked particularly demonic to her… though that didn't really mean much, if demons could be things other than spooky shadow monsters, fiery magma creatures, or mostly naked purple women like they'd already fought in the tower.

"Back that way, probably." Liri jutted a thumb over her shoulder towards the tunnel that led her here. "This isn't where my dream started. I figured out it wasn't real pretty fast but I didn't really know what to do with that information, so I just… left."

Edmund looked at her in a mixture of confoundment and amazement. "You just… left? The demons didn't try stopping you?"

"Rica pulled out the waterworks when I told her I was going for a walk, but other than that, not really. I honestly didn't think much of it—she's pregnant so it made sense she'd be overly emotional, or actually now that I think about it, the demon pretending to be her is masking as a version of her that's pregnant… Stone, that's so weird."

"Given the timing of everything, I'd guess she actually is pregnant right now. How long is dwarven gestation, anyways? Is it shorter because you guys are smaller?"

In that moment Liri had incredible sympathy for Cousland and any of their other friends who had just recently caused the mage bodily harm, because she was suddenly overcome with the urge to push him forward into the lava. Her sisters current relationship status with Bhelen fucking Aeducan was still an issue she was not at all interested in addressing, and she did not appreciate him bringing it up.

Edmund must have seen the murder in her eyes because he coughed abruptly and changed the subject.

"So you left, and I'm guessing since you weren't playing along but also not fighting back, the demon probably didn't know what to do with you. So in an effort to keep you confined to the nightmare it stretched the space of the Fade to another scene and took you… here?" he looked around the open space of the cavern like he was trying to find puzzle pieces in the walls. "Why? I get the lava makes a dead end so you can't go farther, but it seems like an odd pick."

"I dunno, it makes a sort of sense." Liri shrugged, again kicking her heels against the face of the sheer drop of the ravine. "Casteless go down to magma flows like this all the time. The only thing that's unusual is one coming back."

"What…" he started, but the question trailed off as he found the answer on his own. He turned a bleak face towards the lava's glow. "Oh."

What was in reality only a few seconds passed at a glacial pace. Another blast of heat drifted upwards and brushed against the silence hanging between them as for a moment the only sound was the gurgling magma below.

"You've… come here before?" The words were heavy as Edmund spoke them.

But Liri's reply was quick and light. "I used to come here a lot."

"Ah." was all he said, and that was all he needed to say.

The quiet that followed his sound of acknowledgement wasn't uncomfortable, but contemplative. Even without him saying anything Liri could tell he was trying to pick the right words to say, the right question to ask, but in her opinion there was no "right" anything. It was what it was.

"There's no story, if that's what you're wondering," Liri said finally. She wasn't really sure of what she'd say even as she spoke; she'd never talked about this with anyone before, not even Rica, though she was certain her older sister knew anyway. "I'd just get sick of… well, everything. And I'd come here and sit on the edge."

"What stopped you?"

She didn't know what she'd expected his response to be, but it wasn't that. And so she did what she often did in the face of the unexpected: laugh.

"Lava's such a tough way to go, you know?" She chuckled and gave him a half-cocked smile. "And all the painless options were too much effort."

"Liri…" Edmund didn't return the smile like he normally would, nor did he laugh. He knew there was more to it than that—of course he could, a junkie high off lyrium fumes could see that.

"I just… I hate losing," Liri admitted. She curled her grip over the ledge where her legs hung. "It sounds like a stupid reason now that I'm saying it out loud. That I'm too competitive to just lie down and die. But if I were to do it, then they win. Even if the total score isn't in my favor, that's the one point I won't ever let them get on the board."

Who "they" were didn't matter because there were too many people it could be. Higher castes, other casteless, surfacers. Her own mother. Herself. None of them cared if she lived or died. Stone, half the mentions on the list would probably prefer her dead. So fuck them.

Maybe that was why she'd hesitated in the Joining. Because if that cup had been suicide, she wouldn't have taken it. And she didn't want to believe the Wardens could be another addition to the list, the list of ones who didn't care about her life. And maybe the Wardens as a greater organization really didn't care… but maybe the people she'd found herself around could. And she could work with that.

When her life ended it wouldn't be because she took it. If she was going to go down, she would go down kicking and screaming and dragging as many other miserable bastards down with her as she could. She didn't deserve to be alive but she was anyway, and she would make it the world's problem whether she liked it or not. Besides, there were lots of wrinkled old nugs in the Assembly she was determined to outlive.

Whether it was money, sex, food, or even life itself, Liri would take what she didn't deserve and hunger for more every time.

But she didn't say any of this. There wasn't any way to say it, not with her mouth, not with her hands, not in any language anyone but the beating heart in her chest could comprehend. But Edmund didn't ask, didn't press, he just let it rest. And that was all she could ask of him.

"It's not a stupid reason," he said after a bit. "Not if it's the reason you're still here."

Liri reached across and socked him in the arm. "If you ever tell anyone about this, or even bring it up to me ever again, I will feed you your own spleen."

"Aye-aye," he said through a wince, rubbing a hand over the strike. Liri hoped it was bruised. "Can I just say one last thing?"

"Choose your next words carefully," she said, raising her fist again in warning.

He smiled in the face of the threat. "Thank you."

Liri frowned in return, not really sure why he was thanking her or what he could possibly be thanking her for. But that was apparently all he wanted to say, because the mage braced his hands against the earth and pulled himself to his feet.

She looked up and him and gave him a curious look, somehow only just now noticing the nug-sized rat hanging out on his shoulder.

"Um… I really hate to be the one to tell you if you didn't already know, but you've got a passenger there." Liri said, pointing up at the creature, which stared back with eyes that were just a little too intelligent for her liking.

"Oh, there you are. Wondered where you went. Gotta say, that was a snappy eject earlier. You can be surprisingly helpful when you want to be." Edmund gave a begrudging glance to the rodent before gesturing like he was making introductions. "This is Mouse. He's an asshole and if you're not careful he'll eat your soul."

"Huh. Sounds about like the average rat you find running around Dust Town." Liri shrugged. That was weird, but as far as Edmund was concerned it wasn't the most insane set of words she'd ever heard him string together. Besides, they were in the Fade. Maybe he picked up a souvenir. "So, I'm assuming you know how we're supposed to get out of here?"

"Just walking away from the dream isn't enough." Edmund explained with a nod. "We have to kill the demon holding it together."

"Really? Great!" Liri said, popping to her feet. "Then this'll be easy."

"Probably, but don't let your guard down. Want a hand?" Edmund offered. "I've gotten quite good at killing everyone's friends and family."

"Under normal circumstances I'd be concerned about that," Liri stretched an arm out to test the muscle. It may not have been her physical body, but it sure felt real enough. She could work with real enough.

"Pfft, please. We haven't encountered a single 'normal circumstance' the whole time we've known each other," he said, and Liri had to admit he had a point. "So, what should I expect? What was your trap?"

"A feast," she said simply.

And together they left the lava behind.

The darkness of the tunnel was brief. For a moment Liri held the flimsy hope that maybe this wouldn't take her back to the main part of the dream, but really she knew that was stupid. Rough stone gave way to marble slab. Cracks in the walls changed to intricate trimmings. The tunnel—now a hallway—opened to an ornate room flush with the scents of every kind of delicious food.

She'd only ever seen the inside of an extremely limited number of wealthy estates during her life in Orzammar—and usually only ever when she'd been tasked with stealing something or killing someone. There was no denying the opulence of the Fade-dream replica. Barrels of expensive ales lined a whole length of one of the walls. From imported paintings to traditional dwarven sculptures and tapestries, everything spoke to a level of finery unachievable to people like her.

And at the center of it all was the table. And Ancestor's tits, what a table. It was long enough for a dozen occupants and covered with more food enough to feed fifty.

Though the two halves of her nightmare were as visually different as anything could be, they shared the same undertone that let her subconscious know they were intricately connected. Both the feast and the lava flow shared a type of desperation that could only be labeled as starvation.

There were times in her life she'd been so hungry that she would have done anything to have access to even a miniscule fraction of this amount of food. She learned early a truth that every duster knew: once the starvation kicks in there's nothing you won't do, no one you won't fuck, no number of lives you won't take if it means you'll get a meal.

Even now her every instinct screamed for her to eat. Eat as much as she could. Eat more than she could. You don't know when you'll eat again, if you ever will. Eat. Ever since Rica started her work as a noble hunter, food became more secure and she'd been able to let go of that instinct, but Liri knew deep down it would never really leave her.

This was the perfect trap for a demon hunting her, the both of them things of Hunger.

And she saw it now for what it really was, that demon. Rica sat in her place along one of the tables, a seat traditionally allocated to a lord's mistress. Her big sister sat prim as her training had taught her, her belly round with child, picking primly at a spread of luscious imported fruits, but it wasn't her. Liri's vision flickered a second and she saw a terrible thing lurking there—shadowed and twisted and with a stomach so concave from malnutrition it made her own ache in sympathy. And then she blinked, and it was Rica again. She looked up a moment and spied where Liri and Edmund lingered in the doorway.

"Little sister, you're back! I was worried you'd gotten lost," Not-Rica said, tone bright but stifled in it's propriety. "You've brought a friend. Please, join us for supper."

Liri stepped further into the room but made no move to join the table. Instead, she inspected the other members of the dining part. In this make-believe scenario Rica's patron was some nameless lord, almost faceless too from the enormous beard obscuring his features and spatter of food covering the rest as he gorged himself on the fattest roast nug Liri'd ever seen. Two young dwarven boys sat on either side of Rica, their vibrant red hair marking them as her offspring. Their existence the condition for hers and Rica's security.

And even though they weren't real, a part of her loathed them all the same.

Mother was there, sitting across from Rica. She sat slumped against the backrest of her chair, her eyes vacant of anything recognizable as she swirled a half-full bottle of moss-wine in her hand. Even in dreams, Kalah was still the same useless drunk she'd always been. Liri found a strange satisfaction in that, a justification in the fact that even demons couldn't envision her as anything different.

Beraht sat at the table too, beside her mother. Because of course he was there. Even dead, he insisted on butting his fat, ugly head in. He sat there smug as sin, picking fishbones from his teeth with his legs kicked up on the table, profiting off of Rica's sacrifice and no doubt still "enjoying his investment" on the side as the whim struck him.

Liri smiled as she thought of the way his voice gurgled when she cut his throat and he choked to death on his own blood.

Fucked up as this whole Fade thing was, she was glad for the chance to kill her old boss again. So maybe it wasn't all that bad.

The part that disturbed her most was she was this close to experiencing a scene like this in real life. If Everd hadn't been such a sodding dumbass before his Proving Liri wouldn't have had to impersonate him. She'd have fixed the rounds however she needed to so he could win without difficulty. She'd have maintained approval with Beraht, Rica would've found a patron of some kind at some point, gotten knocked up sooner or later, and if all went as hoped pop out a cute little son for some fat lord. This was, in every respect, the best possible outcome of her previous life.

And she hated it. If she'd truly had to live like this, maybe she would have finally had enough and thrown herself in the lava for real.

"There's enough here for everyone," Rica said, gesturing to the spread. "Come, eat, and let's be grateful for all the good we have. We won't fight or beg for our meals ever again."

Her steps carried her to the foot of the long table. She reached out and picked up a large, juicy tomato from one of the platters. She squeezed it lightly to test it's firmness. Fresh produce was hard enough to come by in Orzåmmar if you weren't casteless, and here this demon was loading the table full of the stuff. She had to remind herself again that it was a trap, that it wasn't real, but still her mouth watered a bit.

Liri wound back and threw it as hard as any grenade she'd ever deployed. Her aim was true and the fruit spattered crimson all over Beraht's face and she laughed as she watched him sputter. She felt Edmund behind her start to gather her power but she gave him a quick glance back and sharply shook her head.

He looked at her with a question half-formed on his tongue but it died when he saw the smile on her face that he surely knew by now only meant trouble.

"Let's make 'em pay for it," said Liri.

Rica had already started to protest but Liri ignored her. Instead she gripped the sides of the table, heaved with all her strength, and flipped it onto its side. Food spilled all across the floor, as did Beraht and her mother as they'd been in the way.

"Heh," Edmund said, an excited sort of mischief alight in his eyes. "How the tables turn, right?"

Edmund ripped the bottle of moss-wine from mother, who only swatted lamely at him in an attempt to stop him, and proceeded to dump the contents on the lord who still sat in his chair that was until a moment ago the head of the table. The gluttonous brute didn't even look up from his nug leg as the ale drenched him. He then turned and hurled the glass bottle at the wall, the shards scattering like a rain of gemstones as they shattered.

Then with long, purposeful strides, the mage went to the line of casts arranged along the long wall of the hall and used the butt of his staff to start striking off the spouts. Golden ale gushed forth, pooling across the floor and spreading under the table as the barrels emptied of their contents.

Ooh, that was smart. Destruction with a purpose. Her second favorite to destruction just for the fuck of it.

She started marching through the mess of food scattered across the floor, kicking and crushing everything her feet came in contact with and occasionally stooping to throw fruits and fine plateware at the the things that'd been seated at the table. Rica's two children were yelling, loud and nonsense, though something about their cadence and facial expressions made her uneasy in a way that confirmed that they too were demons. Maybe lesser ones serving the more powerful one that was Rica.

Liri stomped down, driving her heel through the thick shell of a roasted gourd. She pulled it out and kicked, sending a rotisserie chicken sailing across the room until it landed squarely in the face of a bust she was pretty sure was supposed to be Paragon Seuss.

Fuck this dream, fuck this room, fuck this food, fuck these demons, fuck it all.

"Liri, you stop right now!" Rica shouted, and by instinct ingrained in her after years of depending on Rica for survival Liri stilled. Rica reached out, clutching her by her shoulders and shaking her like she could somehow throttle sense into her. "This is our only option. Don't ruin this! Without this life, this support, we have nothing!"

"Yeah," Liri gritted her teeth and wrenched herself free of Rica's grip. "But I'd rather have nothing than a fullness that staves me."

Liri pulled her mace and swung, clocking Not-Rica across the side of her skull. It screamed a very non-Rica sounding scream and the form twisted, contorting in pain as the demon revealed itself for what it was. Liri backed away a few quick strides, minding her steps carefully. The ale was flooding forward, and she had an idea.

Beraht and mother were still pinned under the weight of the stone table, but they too were starting to shed their dwarven disguises to reveal their hollow, shadowed shapes. Hilariously, so had the lord at the head of the table, though it only continued to eat, now a demon of Gluttony largely unconcerned with the drama occurring around it. Liri even suspected it might not've been part of the original nightmare and just invited itself in for a snack, and of course a demon of Hunger would have no problem with that.

The lesser demons that were once children were starting to hound Edmund, but he blasted them back with a wave of raw force until they crashed back into the barrels, spilling even more alcohol on the floor. He probably had the same thought as her.

Hunger moved as she baited it forward. It sung for her head but she took out it's knees, forcing it to slide this way and that until it toppled onto it's side in the ale.

Liri darted back even further across the room, bracing herself for what she hoped would happen next.

"Light 'em up, Edmund!" she shouted.

And he did.

Flames curled down the length of his staff as a bead of golden light gathered in his palm. He stretched out his arm, hurling the bead forward. It impacted with what remained of the casks and detonated with a force that shook the Fade around them. Liri raised her arms to shield her face from the fire but she needn't have bothered—Edmund was at her side and had cast a barrier over them to protect them from the close proximity of the explosion.

The demons wailed as they burned alive from the alcohol fire. The fire continued to consume the room, indifferent to everything but the feast of it's own—fire was a hungry element. Liri grabbed Edmund and pulled him along with her towards the tunnel they'd gone through earlier until they escaped the frenzied blaze.

And once they were clear, stinking of burnt food but largely unharmed, they shared a look and doubled over laughing.

"Liri fucking Brosca," Edmund said breathlessly, wiping a smear of some sauce off his front. "A foodfight? With demons? Damn, that's the kind of awesome you can't even tell people about because they'd never believe it."

Liri wiped away a tear that'd started to form in her eye because she'd laughed so hard. "Ancestors' tits, I needed that," she said.

Or, she would have said it. Instead the sounds came out mangled and half-formed. With the demon gone, so was the part of her tongue necessary to articulate most necessary sounds for intelligible communication.

Liri groaned loudly. Then she looked up at Edmund, and they both just started laughing again for no particular reason. She leaned against the wall to stabilize herself and clutched her gut as it started to ache for the only good reason it could.

Oh well. Having a functioning tongue had been nice while it lasted.

"I fucking hate the Fade."

"That's why the 'skip the Fade mod exists," Edmund said, which didn't make much sense. He glanced at his rat with the look of someone who was enjoying an inside joke with himself. "Though I guess that's kind of what you're for. To skip the annoying part, anyways."

"Hey, I know you don't really care about people thinking you're crazy, but I gotta admit the whole talking to the rat thing is a bit weird even for me." Liri said pointedly.

"Eh, whatever. If everything else is on track… I think Sloth is all that's left, then we're out," Edmund said. His voice echoed eerily as he, and everything else, started to fade away. "It's time to end this."