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.

29. Nightmares and Daydreams (Part 3)

PARALLEL CONTENT: TALES OF A DRAGON CH 2

He was so tired.

He slipped along that grey thread of consciousness that had been the strand connecting him to the realms of other dreamers as abstract nothingness swirled around him. The grey lingered longer than ever before—normally Mouse had been quick to usher them from one nightmare to the next, but there was no urgency here. In fact, the demon was noticeably absent. And in more than just the way it'd masked it's presence from the other dreamers when the need suited.

Maybe he should have been more worried about where the demon was and what it might be currently planning for him. He'd have to be an idiot to think it wasn't planning something for him.

But he was tired, so he chose for just a little while not to worry about that.

What he chose to worry about instead—because even if he wasn't worrying about the present threat of a demon he was still going to worry about something—was how many awkward conversations were waiting for him once they woke up. He cringed inwardly at the idea of it. What was he even supposed to say?

The Wardens he now fought alongside were battle-hardened badasses of every stripe. And he could now thoroughly sympathize with any poor fools who found themselves at the target end of their blades as just the memory of his spell-healed wounds stung. He'd seen them in low moments before, but that'd been during their Origins and along pre-established story beats like Ostagar where outside of a few surprises here and there he'd known what was going to happen.

But he never could've seen any of this coming. Something twisted uncomfortably inside him as he thought about it more—it wasn't fair. In his eagerness to save them from their nightmares he felt he'd overstepped some invisible boundary. He'd seen something vulnerable and exposed in each of them. Something that under normal circumstances they'd have never let anyone see.

And through all the nightmares and daydreams a little of that heroic glimmer surrounding them peeled away to reveal the desperate, broken people underneath. It made them…

Real.

You treat life like it's some sort of game.

He unceremoniously quashed the thought down. Just the memory of the accusation in Cousland's voice left him feeling like he needed to kick down a wall. Or break the warriors teeth. Either would be good with him at this point. Besides, there was already plenty for him to overthink, he didn't need to add that to the current list of things stressing him out.

Like the demons. Those came to mind again with little prompting.

Sloth was next. But it wasn't all that was left. When all was said and done, Pride would still demand it's due. And he knew for certain that even if he fulfilled his end of the deal and returned that stolen piece, Pride would demand blood for the insult of having been robbed at all.

So in every fight, he held something back. His connection to magic felt stronger than ever before, but if he indulged too deep in the well of power available to him he risked it running dry before it was over. He needed to be ready in case the creature he'd carried on his shoulder through it all turned it's fangs toward him.

As his resolve solidified, so did the Fade around him.

Sloth's domain was… plain. The other demons had crafted spaces meant to enthrall and ensnare through elaborate scenes to deceive the minds of those who entered. But not this demon. The realm was filled with a scattering of flat grey island drifting through black fog. Shadows formed halfway but sputtered out before committing fully to their shape. The place wanted to be something but lacked any drive or intent to make it so. So it sat barren and unsculpted.

Fitting that a thing of Sloth couldn't be bothered to mold it's domain. Too much work, probably.

But Sloth itself was absent. And Pride had yet to reveal itself in any meaningful way, though he felt pins and needles on the back of his neck like he was being watched. Like a cat with raised hackles he passed warily through the fog. His magic coiled tightly, ready to spring into action at the first sign of a threat, but all he found through the mist was the edge of the island. He looked down over it. The drop led to dark void that was likely infinite. Unless there was something else down there that was just too dark to see.

He pondered for a moment if the physics of fall damage worked the same way in the Fade as it did in the physical world, then decided that was a question he didn't really want to learn the answer to. He backed away from the edge.

The Fade rippled with a bend and snap of energy. One by one his companions manifested in the space, appearing through the thick dark of the fog. They each stumbled forward, confused and without their bearings as they found themselves pulled into the space.

Isefel was the first to realize she was there with the others. She raced forward as soon as she caught sight of Rosaya and checked her over for injuries.

"Are you alright? What happened to your arm?" Isefel fretted.

"I'm fine, it doesn't hurt anymore," Rosaya said, but her face was downcast.

Alistair approached the two of them through the fog as well, the clink of his heavy armor signaling his arrival before they could see him. "Here I am, and here you are! Oh, looks like everyone's here." Alistair said in open relief. "You just disappeared. That was weird."

"All of this is weird. It's a world of dreams," said Rosaya tiredly.

Sten joined them from almost out of nowhere, and despite wearing just as much heavy armor as Alistair managed to move nearly silent through the dreamscape. He didn't engage in conversation with the rest—he just eyed the shifting shadows for an emerging threat.

Isefel was moving again once she was satisfied with Rosayas condition, and her dog Barkspawn appeared at her side instead to take the older elf's place in fussing over the Dalish. Isefel met Cousland and Leliana halfway as they moved closer towards their group along with Wynne.

"Is everyone alright?" Isefel asked, looking them over in turn and balked at Cousland's condition. "Makers breath, what happened to you?"

"I'll live," Cousland said, but the claim was in contradiction to his appearance—the warrior was beaten up and burned badly, more so than he remembered leaving him.

Lady licked at his hand hanging at his side and Wynne tapped the end of her staff to the ground, a healing spell weaving across the worst of his wounds. Cousland scanned the figures appearing through the fog and became the first to notice him standing in the distance. When their eyes met neither of them moved but both of them tightened their grips on their weapons out of reflex. It probably wasn't more than a few seconds, but for a moment they burned searing holes through each other's brains with their eyes alone.

He broke eye contact first. There was something boiling inside him and if he looked at the warrior too long he might just set him on fire with his mind. The thought alone was tempting enough.

"My, my. Here we are, and everyone is accounted for." Morrigan stood at his side where a second ago had been empty space. She had her arms crossed in front of her and an amused eye turned to a distant roll of mist. "Though, not all arrive with the same measure of grace."

He followed her gaze to where two short figures were trying to make their way through the fog. Liri kept trying to blow the mist away anytime it curled too close to her face, and Aothor was waving his hands in an inefficient attempt to fan it away from himself.

"Should we help them?" he leaned to the side and asked just to Morrigan.

"Shush. Let them stumble—I'm sure they'll figure it out."

And figure it out they did, though they did so with a great deal of grumbling and cursing upon the Ancestors.

"Hey Edmund? The Fade fucking sucks. Make it stop," Liri said when they finally made their way over to the rest of the group.

"Not really up to me. Sorry," Edmund said with a shrug. The lady dwarf groaned loudly in complaint.

"Is it over?" Aothor asked. "Or are there more demons waiting in the mist? Because I'm almost certain that shit is evil."

"Sloth's still out there. We're not done yet." said Edmund. The others were gathered in a loose cluster around him now, tense and anxious but ready.

Energy swirled and snapped once more. The Wardens and their companions drew their weapons and in the blink of an eye were braced for a fight. This was it—Sloth appeared, drifting towards them from the mist with a gathering of amethyst arcane energy around it. The towering form of an arcane horror loomed above them. A rotted enchanter's corpse saturated with magic and power drifted in an eerie hover across towards them… and then it stumbled.

It wobbled, arms jerking in a panicked motion as it fought for it's balance. It would've been funny if something about it wasn't also so damned pitiful.

That wasn't Sloth.

"Hold on, false alarm!" Edmund shouted.

He reached out in time to catch Rosaya's arm and jerk it sideways, causing the arrow she had braced on the string to fire off it's mark and sail away into nothing. He wasn't quick enough to catch Isefel though, and the elven woman had already hurled a dagger with precision at the arcane horror's head. The newcomer gestured across itself with its arm, drawing a curtain of magic over it's form that deflected the blade.

It—no, she—began to gather a spell of her own. Edmund dashed forward, placing himself between her and the group of his companions.

"They're with me, they're real!" he shouted, hands raised with his palms facing her. Again, not in surrender, but ready to catch magic and deflect it away if reason didn't work.

She stilled, drifting uneasily in place as she seemed to look hesitantly between him and the rather large group of heavily armed and armored group of people he had with him… it was hard to be sure because her current form lacked anything recognizable as eyes. But sure enough the form flickered and flashed a moment before it dropped entirely.

When he'd found Nira in the raw Fade before she'd looked more or less how he remembered when he left the tower at the end of the mage Origin. But he'd already seen through Isefel and Liri how the realm of dreams could change the perception and function of someone's appearance and only revealed the truth once the ambient magic and deception was sufficiently unraveled. And the truth of Nira's condition was revealed as her borrowed form faded away.

Even though her build was slight like most elves he'd seen she looked unhealthily thin now, her robes hanging off her frame a looser fit than they should be. Her already pale complexion was gaunt and sickly. Deep bags hung under her eyes and the tips of her ears seemed stuck in a perpetual droop.

He suspected her corpse-like visage was partly a result of Sloth slowly but surely draining the life from her as she'd fought already two days in the Fade before they even arrived to help. But that couldn't be all. What'd happened to her while he was gone?

Despite looking like she might keel over or fade away at any given moment, the elven mage stood with her back straight and glared with sharp eyes at the company she found before her.

"These are the Wardens?" she asked, her expression aloof as she looked them over.

"Yeah. And some friends we've picked up along the way," he said with a nod. He half turned back to the group, gesturing broadly as he made introductions. "This is a friend of mine from the Circle. Not a demon."

"This place has been bent on fooling us," Cousland looked doubtful. "Edmund, are you sure she's—?"

"Don't even start," He snapped, harsher than was maybe necessary but he didn't care. He shot a glare over his shoulder at the man before forcefully shaking his head and refocusing on the mage in front of him. "She's real."

The word echoed back inside his mind. Real.

"It's good to see you're alright," Wynne said with a relieved smile. "When you weren't among the survivors who made it to the lower levels, I feared the worst."

"We're not out yet; there's still plenty of time for 'the worst,'" Nira said stiffly.

She turned away from them, walking towards the center of the island platform. The mist shifted as she walked, pooling in the very center of the island until it formed a dark ominous cloud. Nira approached the shifting mass, the tip of her staff glowing as she inspected it.

All at once Edmund became acutely aware of a gathering pressure, an ambient force that tightened his throat and made his hairs stand on end. A warning was on his tongue but it was stifled by horror as he watched the gathering mist solidified, tendrils spiraling out and latching onto Nira even though she backpedaled abruptly to avoid it.

With Nira as the last dreamer to break through the net, Sloth finally manifested. And it was much worse than the game depicted.

Much like how it's domain didn't put much effort into what it wanted to be, the incarnation of Sloth was equally lazy. A stack of dark fog only partly physical and always shifting as it couldn't quite commit to what it ought to look like loomed at the center of the island, pulsing with an energy that sapped the strength from his very bones. One moment the mist would solidify to look like an arcane horror, only to dissolve as it instead took the guise of despair and then desire, like it was shuffling through borrowed forms but couldn't be bothered to make any of them real enough to present.A few tendrils finally solidified enough to resemble something comparable to limbs only much more wicked.

Sloth stretched out it's skeletally thin arm, tracing a long crooked finger over the top of Nira's head then up under her chin. She flinched away from it's reach, but the movement was pinned by the threat of it's still-lingering claw piercing up through the bottom of her chin. It tilted her face up towards it, like it was inspecting a well-made doll.

"What do we have here? An escaped slave?" It mused, low and unhurried. It turned it's eyeless face upward and scanned the rest of the assembled crowd. "Rebellious minions? My, my… but you do have some gall."

"You will not hold us, demon! We found each other in this place and you cannot stand against us." Wynne said, her staff raised and alight with power.

Her spell manifested as a stone fist that hurled forward. Rather than strike the demon, however, it closed around Nira and pulled her back and out of Sloth's reach to safety. The demon made no effort to stop this from happening. Too much effort, probably.

"You've had your fun," Sloth drawled, straightening to it's full height and rolling it's shoulders like it was stretching a muscle out despite it's form being made mostly of shadow and rot. "But playtime is over. You all have to go back now."

"I am here to finish this," Sten said, drawing his blade and taking several determined steps toward their captor. "I have had enough of cages."

"How ungrateful. If you go back quietly, I'll do better this time. I'll make you much happier." It shook it's head, tutting like it was disappointed in them. Then it drifted forward, staring each of them down in turn, arms raised in a grandiose gesture to itself. "A city safe from the threat of the darkspawn… evading fate and reuniting with a lost love… the strength to protect innocents from the cruel world… a chance to deliver justice as rightly deserved… an answer to fill the insatiable hunger inside… the security that waits atop the ladder of power. The world can't give you the happiness you crave. Only I can."

A moment of deafening silence hung in the aftermath of Sloth's posturing as each of the Wardens were once again presented with what would tempt them most into compliance. None of them dared say anything, dared to even move. With all their inner wounds so fresh on display and such a compelling salve offered he couldn't exactly blame them for hesitating.

But the silence was all at once broken by laughter. It startled him because it wasn't a sound he'd ever heard before, and it took a moment before he registered that the one that was laughing was Nira. She'd almost doubled over, her hands wrapped tight around her gut as she laughed high-pitched and borderline hysterical.

When she regained control of herself and straightened, the coiled intensity about her was powerful enough that even the remainder of the drifting fog retreated.

"This is rich. I've never seen a demon beg before," she said, a sneer on her face that all but dripped with contempt. "Was that your grand plan? Ask us to pretty please go back to prison? Face it: the fact that anyone made it this far means your trap wasn't good enough. But to have all of us escape? I'd feel bad for you and your failure if you weren't so vile."

"You tried to keep us apart," Leliana said, a finger raised towards the demon in accusation. "You tried to keep us from each other because you fear us, don't you?"

"I made you happy and safe. I gave you peace. I did my best for you and you say you want to leave?" said Sloth. "Can't you think about someone other than yourselves? I'm hurt, so very, very hurt."

"You're about to be," Cousland said, weapon held ready as he positioned himself between Pride and their ranged fighters. Lady, as attentive at his side as ever, growled loudly.

"You wish to battle me? So be it…" The shadows solidified as Sloth finally put in some effort into manifesting. The silhouette shifted and shattered, splintering and reforming until it towered over them all in the shape of an ogre. It roared, pounding it's chest. "You will learn to bow to your betters, mortals!"

It bent, horns pointed forward, and charged headlong into their ranks.

Nira ran forward to meet it, and moments before being trampled her body flashed with light and a golem caught the ogre by it's horns, wrestling it to a stop and driving it's head down towards the ground.

Edmund laughed in surprise as the ogre flailed while Nira struggled to keep it from regaining it's feet, marking that down as one of the most badass things he'd ever seen and making a mental note to see if they could get Shale to replicate the feat later.

But there was no time wasted by the rest. With the ogre restrained their melee fighters jumped the demon, striking the vulnerable points they'd discovered during that awful fight atop the tower of Ishal. Aothor in particular seemed relieved that he was no longer in danger of being pitched fast-ball style across the void, though the other dwarf was in comparison a bit disappointed there was no longer a cause to repeat the strategy of setting her on fire and throwing her at the enemy.

Turns out fighting ogres was a hell of a lot easier if you had a golem wrestling it into submission.

But their golem was also a mage—a mage who'd spent her life learning to fight with her mind, not her body. Her hold on the monster was flawed and the ogre broke her grip, roaring as it regained it's feet and retaliated with a crushing strike that dropped the shapeshifted golem to it's knees. The stone body flickered and flashed and finally fell. Nira gathered magic around herself, but she wasn't fast enough, she was too close to Sloth, and it pulled back it's leg and kicked her.

Her cry of pain was cut short by a gasping loss of breath as she skidded away across the ground. She pressed her hands to the ground beneath her, trying to prop herself up, but her arms quaked as a cough wracked her body and she spat up blood. Her arms failed her, and she collapsed.

"Wynne—!" Edmund shouted, but the older enchanter was already moving, rushing to the elven mage's side with healing power ready and gathered around her. Nira was already so weak from fighting alone through the Fade for so long, if she had to sit this out so it meant she would be able to wake up at all that was for the best.

Besides—the Wardens were on the job. They could handle this asshole themselves.

Edmund cast a spell to grant flaming weapons to all of their melee combatants so the fire would scorch the ogre's wounds and prevent it's regenerative abilities. He's only ever cast it on one person at a time before and maintaining the magic on six people simultaneously was considerably more taxing, but any of his other spells risked catching his companions in the AoE. He had an absent thought that he really ought to figure out more single-target spells or dogpile boss-fights like this could get really messy really fast.

Leliana and Rosaya kept their distance and peppered the ogre with arrows, petling it and keeping it angry and distracted so the melee fighters could put in their work more safely. Morrigan focused her magic to entropic hexes, weakening it's senses and blurring it's vision.

Sten and Aothor took out it's legs, dropping it low. Liri jumped up and buried her burning blades in it's chest, ripping through it's heart and then up into it's throat. It wasn't in a slow-mo cinematic like it was in the games, but it was no less epic as Liri jumped backwards off it's falling body and pulled her weapons free with a dramatic spray of ichorous blood.

Liri, 2. Ogres, 0.

A few of the companions cheered and the Wardens shared smiles of triumph, but Edmund altered the elemental spell from fire to lightning and readied himself for round two.

"We're not done that easy," he warned, gesturing with his staff to where the ogre corpse was beginning to dissolve into dark mist and reform once more. "This boss fight's got phases."

The shadows erupted with an orange glow as Sloth borrowed the guise of Rage, blasting painful heat to anyone who so much as stood too close. "Hatred! Burning! It feeds me."

Cousland groaned loudly. "Not this again."

The close-up fighters were forced to pull away, the air too hot to even breathe. Rage turned in place towards their archers, who hadn't stopped their rain of projectiles. It cast it's claws out in front of it as it gathered a build of power Edmund was intimately familiar with and unleashed a flood of scorching flames towards them.

Edmund dropped a barrier over Rosaya and Leliana to give them cover from the burning flames, but the onslaught of fire never reached them. Alistair interposed himself between the demon and the archers and caught the brunt of his blast against his shield. The ex-templar braced himself against the heat and pressure and didn't budge an inch as the demon bared down on him as he bought Rosaya and Leliana to retreat to a safe distance.

With everyone clear of the demon, he had a clean shot. Edmund gathered energy from the borrowed piece inside and stretched out his staff, casting out a lightning bolt that struck with a roll of thunder. Rage roared in pain, but when the resulting flash of light relented his vision cleared to find the demon standing right over him.

The demon reared back, readying an attack… and then it hesitated. Edmund's defensive magic dissolved as his confusion grew. He stared up at the demon, and it stared back at him.

No. It saw him.

A rage demon didn't have what anyone could consider a very expressive face, yet still he was sure it was smiling in a sadistic way that reminded him too much of Pride.

And then all at once it writhed and shuddered as the potent chill of a Winter's Grasp spell seized it's molten form.

"You made a dangerous enemy, demon, by toying with my mind," said Morrigan, drawing her power back around her as she readied her magic for more. The icy grip of her magic surrounded it, smothering the active flames of its body and biting back the insufferable heat.

"I am your greatest nightmare—!" It roared, but it's grandstanding was cut short as Leliana landed a shot in its eye and it screeched in agony.

Cousland struck from behind and carved the howling stack of magma clean in half.

As the remains dimmed to embers the body dissolved into smoke and began to reassemble itself into something new.

"How many times are we going to have to kill this thing?" Isefel asked, already stabbing at the smoke but finding no purchase for her weapons to tear or slice through the mist.

"Just once more," he said. His jaw clenched from a low but building stress as he backed away from the mounting mass of dark fog.

Sloth recognized what he was. Whatever that even meant. He couldn't be sure what the demon would do with that information, but experience told him it couldn't be anything good.

The plume of smoke built until the shape of an arcane horror was nearly realized, but right before mist became form it dissolved and billowed outward, covering the entire island once more in a fog so dense and dark none of them had any hope of seeing anything further than their own hands in front of their faces.

He raised his palm upwards, holding a golden flame in his grasp. Though the light should've been brighter than any torch, he couldn't even see Morrigan, who had been standing just to his side a moment ago. With his arm stretched in front of him and the fire as a useless source of light he started to feel his way through the fog towards the others. He thought he could hear them somewhere over there… but even the noise of his own breathing had become muted.

He cursed inwardly as he wandered a few steps more. Why did the Fade insist on surprising him at every turn? Was it because Sloth was more prepared since Pride had warned it they were coming? None of this mist shit was from the game—

"You think more loudly than you ought, little mageling."

He froze in place. Sloths deep, unhurried voice crawled around the corners of his mind, speaking directly to his thoughts. A silhouette slipped across the edge of his visual range—the demon, taunting him by drifting just out of reach.

"Won't you just roll over and die already?" he snarled, gathering the fire he carried into a bead as prepared to launch it in a bursting blast towards their tormentor.

"Ah-ah," it chided in his mind, low and condescending. "Careful where you throw those flames. Who knows who you might hit in these shifting shadows of mine…"

For a moment the fog parted and he could barely make out the silhouette of Liri standing right where he'd meant to mark his spell. Her eyes passed over him but failed to register him at all. His spell fizzled as he took a few hasty steps towards her, but in the blink of the eye the mists coalesced again and she vanished.

This was bullshit. He needed to force the demon into revealing itself, but he didn't know how to do that without possibly endangering his companions.

"So you are the invader sliding between dreams… I put so much work into them. All that effort for nothing," it sighed.

He rolled his eyes. "Please, the other demons were doing all the work. You just sat in the background getting fat off their labor."

"You didn't have a dream of your own, so how could you know? Everyone had one… except for you. That's not fair, is it? If I were you, I'd feel terribly left out."

"Wow, Nira was right. You really are desperate." He huffed a laugh. "Your dreams are sick, and you can't keep us trapped here anymore. You're stalling because you know you can't defeat us. So give up—wouldn't that be less work?"

"You are correct about one thing only, little mageling. I detest toil in all it's forms," it said, but the admission only made it sound more sinister. A dark shape drifted into view, clearer than before. Sloth stretched it's shadowy arms lazily. "I could make a dream for you, but… too much effort. I'll let your mind do it for me—plenty to pull from in there..."

He gritted his teeth and fired a bolt of burning power at the demon. It made contact, but rather than cry in pain the demon laughed and vanished once more. And as it disappeared the fog began to lift. It wasn't pulling away or actually clear out, but it became less dark, an easier mist to see through than the oppressive cloud it'd been before. And he was once again able to hear the sounds around him—the sounds of his companions engaged in combat.

He pushed through towards the noise and found himself once again on the edge of the island. Shades spawned from the ground and bore down against the dreamers trapped in the Fade. He turned in place, trying to make sure everyone was accounted for, and then all at once he froze.

He saw Nira, cradled limp in Wynne's attentive arms. There was a bar above her head with just a tiny sliver of red fill.

A health bar. With her name floating in white text above it.

Beneath the bar flashed words in red warning light. Condition: exhaustion. Condition: coughing blood. Condition: head trauma. Condition: broken bone.

What…?

No. No, no, no. This was just sick.

You treat life like it's some sort of game.

A pained cry broke the white noise quickly gathering on the inside of his mind. He looked back to the others and saw Cousland shift in front of Leliana to catch a blow meant for her and the shade raked it's claws across his abdomen and knocked him back into the archer he'd been protecting. The shade attempted to strike him while he was down, but Lady bit down it's arm and the demon roared and struck her in retaliation—

Cousland. Condition: burned. Condition: open wound.

Leliana. Condition: stunned.

Lady. Condition: torn jugular.

Rosaya ran around the perimeter of the ring, firing an arrow or even two with every step, but a pair of long clawmarks across her arm showed she hadn't been entirely unscathed. Her dog ran with her, though the mabari was limping and struggling to keep pace with her from a terrible tear across it's leg. Isefel dodged deftly between the vicious blows as she goaded a pair of shades into chasing her instead of Rosaya, and though her health bar had yet to take substantial damage there was still a warning beneath her name.

Tabris. Condition: damaged eye.

Mahariel. Condition: bleeding.

Barkspawn. Condition: laceration.

Sten struck one of the demons pursuing her with a blow that would've normally crushed it flat, but all it did was irritate the shade and draw it's attention. Aothor caught a blow meant for the giant against the steel of his shield, but upon it's attack being denied the shade gripped the rim of the round shield and slammed it back against the dwarf's face.

Sten. Condition: weakened.

Aeducan. Condition: concussed.

Liri was on her feet and fighting as fierce as ever, but there was a stain of red across her brow as a trickle of blood streamed down her face. Alistair guarded his flank, but he held only his shield and now his sword as a long cut across the tendon made his blade arm largely worthless. More shades closed in around them, only to be bowled aside by a fast moving creature covered in dark fur. Morrigan in bear form swatted them aside and roared. But even in bear form she looked pained with every movement.

Brosca. Condition: cracked skull.

Alistair. Condition: severed tendon.

Morrigan. Condition: crushed arm.

This wasn't real. It wasn't real. It was Sloth in his head, making him see things, fucking with him. He tried to gather his power, but with every tick and drop of someone's health bar his focus spiraled and the magic failed him. A sudden burst of heat caught him by surprise as a series of immolation spells swept over the shades. But he hadn't been the one to cast them, so who…?

He spotted across the battlefield a mage he didn't recognize. With every swing of his staff a barrage of unpredictable elemental magic washed forth, coating the battlefield in a variety of effects. He stared at him in confusion for a moment, trying to puzzle out why there was suddenly a newcomer here, and then he spotted the name and health bar above his head.

Amell. Condition: ? [E—erROr] ?

The dark hair, the sharp blue eyes. The face he saw in the mirror every time he looked in one but each time regarded as a stranger. Someone who looked more like the product of hours of careful adjusting in the character creation screen than anything he would ever identify as him. Out-of-body experiences were becoming unfortunately familiar, but here and now the disjointed dysmorphia was nothing short of raw.

He moved across the field, standing in the very center of the chaotic battle, but no one batted an eye. No one seemed to realize he was there. He was an invisible observer bound to stand separated.

It wasn't real. But it was real. And he wished it wasn't.

He'd stopped trying to rationalize it for some time now—it hurt too much to think about for too long. Especially when all he had were questions with no hope of meaningful answers. But however it'd happened… whether he was having the worlds worst trip, or God was real and was playing the lamest prank of all time on him, Thedas was real. It's troubles and threats were real. The people who lived in it were real. The first time that realization had hit him quite this strongly had been right before the Highever attack. When he accepted that the NPCs he encountered were not, in fact, computer generated characters following pre-written scripts, but fully realized people.

Liri took a blow to the chest—her health bar flashed and dropped dangerously low. Aothor fought against a strange dark miasma covering him with little success as three more conditions suddenly appeared under his name. Isefel rushed to tend to the wounds of Rosaya and Cousland while their companions bought them time by keeping the demons busy.

The potential Heroes of Ferelden. For the most part they were unknowns, but they also seemed constrained to the pre-paved paths of the conflicts in which they found themselves. He watched them every day trade lines and dialogue choices in scenes determined by the course of the narrative.

They can save Thedas. But they cannot change it.

Flemeth's cryptic voice whispered across his mind, a reminder of all he didn't know even for his foreknowledge. Though he would be reticent to ever admit it to the Witch of the Wilds, her words were proving true. The other Wardens deviated from the script from time to time… but real change only seemed to happen because he was the one who suggested it.

Eccentricities of their personalities aside, each of the Wardens poised perfectly as a "Player Character" of sorts… but none of them were "Player Characters." They were just people. The fact that they through unrehearsed sincerity repeated words from a (now supposed) work of fiction was inconsequential. And he was ashamed to have forgotten that for even a moment.

You treat life like it's some sort of game.

He wished it was a game. Because you could win a game. But in life there were no winners. Just survivors, and never enough of them.

He passed through the fight untouched by the chaos until he stood before Amell. The mist, though transparent, lingered still. Whatever point Sloth was trying to prove, whatever prison it thought this might be to trap his mind, he didn't care. He'd had enough.

Amell. Condition: ? [E—erROr] ?

The words flashed, taunting him. The demon could see him for what he really was—whatever that was—and found this as a point of pain to press against. And damn, did it ache. But Sloth had been sloppy. In it's rush to construct this space it'd missed something important.

He wasn't really a mage. And normal rules didn't apply to him.

He reached for Amell, not with his hands, but with his power, piercing through to what he suspected was lurking beneath the facade. The name above his head flickered, then changed as the letters rearranged themselves.

Sloth. Condition: exposed.

"Your struggle is worthless," it said as the mask of Amell's face warped and corroded away. "I command the shadows of your darkest dreams!"

"I see you," he said, building a ring of fire around him that blazed blue. "And you can't stop me."

The ring of flame spun fast and bright and then broke, washing across the entire island and burning away the dark fog until there was nothing left. The shades disappeared, and so did the Wardens and companions. They'd never been real any way, not the versions of them fighting the also false lesser demons.

The real dreamers stood in a perfect ring around Sloth, their eyes half shut and their bodies swaying slightly in place as a fugue-like state hung over them. Their minds were once again trapped somewhere else as Sloth tried one last time to enslave them. Dark tendrils surrounded their bodies and fed lines of energy to the demon as it attempted to siphon life from them before they could fight back and finish it off.

"No more games," It snarled, but the grotesque smile on it's face was maddened. "Face me and DIE!"

He struck his staff to the earth, building and bursting a mind blast spell to knock his fellow dreamers as far away as he could. They flew as far as the force could carry them and the dark threads tying them to Sloth severed as they fell. Sloth roared, striking at him with a long clawed talon but he dodged the blow and poured as much magic as he could into a single spell.

Arcane symbols blazed and spun around him. He raised his staff upwards as he channeled the energy, depleting the last of his power reserves to end this.

With the force of detonating dynamite he dropped a firestorm directly on top of Sloth.

Golden flames swirled around him as he stood in the heart of the blaze with the demon, but he didn't feel a thing aside from warmth akin to a sunbeam through a window while Sloth howled and burned. The fire should hurt, he knew that, he'd been bracing for it even as he cast the spell, but instead—

—he was powerful. He felt like he could do anything. He felt like he was floating, high off the surplus of energy that surrounded him. This wasn't just magic, this was a purge, cleansing the corrosive touch of Sloth's inception from his mind—

—he looked at the demon as his flames burned it to ash and he saw Sloth for what it was… no what it used to be? What it could be? Time felt slippery in that moment as the possibilities rushed by. But he understood what he was looking at even though he'd never seen such a thing before.

It was Peace. Buried deep and corrupted by surrender and apathy.

Sloth burned away until there was nothing left, and with it any glimmer of the spirit it could have been.

He cut off the power fueling the spell and the backlash of energy left him reeling like the crash after a high. He felt… hollow, strangely. Like something had just been lost and he was meant to be mourning it even though he wasn't quite sure what it was.

But it didn't matter, at least that's what he told himself. What mattered was that Sloth was gone.

But still, he was tired.

"Is… it over?" the weak voice shunted him from his own inner musings.

He turned and saw Nira standing weakly with the assistance of Wynne with the most trepidation sort of hope on her face. The others were gathered too, and he could see from the heavy scorch marks on the ground that they'd all been waiting beyond the border of the firestorm spell. And now that the spell was lifted and the demon was dead, there was a sense of amazement about them that left him feeling a little uneasy.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and twisted his staff in his grip. "It's dead. We're free to go."

Nira covered her mouth with her hand and for a moment looked ready to openly weep. But instead she took a deep breath, slipped her arm away from Wynne's shoulder, and stood on her own for a brief second before her body became translucent and she disappeared.

And after her one by one the Wardens and their companions faded away. He could only imagine the relief of waking into the physical world… because he himself was unable to follow.

The other dreamers woke… and he was alone with Pride.

One big bad evil demon down. One to go.

. . . . .

His first thought was that his neck hurt terribly. His next was that he was absolutely parched from thirst.

And then all at once everything rushed back to him in an enormous blur. The Circle, the demons, the nightmare, confronting Sloth.

Cousland's hand seized around the hilt of his weapon as an instinctual reaction. But as he worked the stiffness from his muscles and raised his head from the ground, there was no threat. He braced his hands against the floor and pushed himself up. The grotesque abomination that had been Sloth's physical manifestation was slumped lamely across the ground, no more dangerous than the decorative statuary in the halls of the tower.

"Does anyone know how long it's been?" he asked, his voice rough from slumber.

A chorus of groans was the only response he got from the others as one by one they began to rouse themselves. He heard Alistair's muffled request for five more minutes only for him to be harshly prodded in the side by Rosaya as she rolled over and lodged her foot in his ribs by mistake.

The only one really moving was the elven mage they encountered in the battle with Sloth. Not even taking the time to stand, the woman had dragged herself across the ground to the side of one of the dead mages on the ground. Her hands flashed with silver light, but the glow vanished after only a moment and she pushed herself into a sitting position beside the body.

"We did it, Niall. And I… I'm sorry," she said softly.

The words weren't meant for anyone but the dead and he felt intrusive just for hearing them. So instead he turned and offered Aothor a hand to help him stand.

The tower around them was much as it'd been when they'd been pulled under, but the grotesque growths on the walls and the scattered human remains were beginning to smell. They'd been down most of the day then, but he couldn't tell by the decay alone. He wasn't sure how long the templars would allow them before declaring their efforts a lost cause and assume them killed in action but they had to be running out of time.

"I've got the Litany," the elven mage said. She stood beside the corpse now, leaning heavily on her staff for support with her back resting against the grand statue at the center of the room. But in her free hand she clutched an ancient scroll with a delicate seal, and she was nothing but determined. "The bloodmages are holed up in the Harrowing chamber. They have nowhere to run."

"Easy, Nira. You've done enough," Wynne said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder and attempting to guide her to sit on the rubble of a nearby fallen pillar. "You need to rest. We'll take it from here. "

The elven mage—Nira—shook her head and pulled away sharply from the older enchanter. She scanned the group of them, openly distrusting them as strangers but equally desperate for their support.

"I haven't done enough. Not until I've split Uldred's head open," she said, betraying an aggression her scholarly appearance wouldn't have otherwise suggested.

Nira had been a remarkable force during their fight in the Fade, but even then she'd been struck down and out almost immediately. And her physical body didn't seem in any better condition. He could see from the expressions on his fellow Wardens faces that they all had similar doubts—and Isefel in particular stared at the elven mage like she was looking at a ghost.

"If I'm not there to see him die, all of this will live in my head forever. No matter how this ends, I need to be there," she insisted, standing just a bit straighter. "I don't know you, Wardens. And you don't know this Circle. But I do, better than anyone. And you can't stop me from protecting it."

"We should let her come," Isefel said. "Besides, more magic on our side will only be a benefit. It's no skin off our backs to let her fight to save her home."

"Fine," Aothor said with an almost dismissive wave of his hand. "She can come, so long as she doesn't slow us down. I suspect we don't have long before Gregoir will assume we've failed."

"I wasn't really asking for your permission. But I suppose it's a nice thing to have, regardless." Nira cocked her head to the side, considering the both of them shrewdly. "What would Gregoir assume you've failed? Where are the templars, anyways? I haven't seen any since all this began."

As Wynne and Isefel began explaining to the elven mage the gravity of the situation, something uneasy stirred at the back of Cousland's mind. Something was wrong, and none of them had realized it yet, not until just now as it clicked in his head what was missing from this whole exchange.

Cousland turned in place until he faced the archway where they'd entered the chamber. Slumped on the ground with his back propped partially upright against the open doorway was Amell, his eyes still sealed shut.

Edmund was still asleep. He wasn't waking up.

Shit.

Cursing under his breath he sheathed his blade across his back and knelt by the mage's side. He pressed two fingers against his neck and managed to find a pulse, but it wasn't strong enough to really reassure him at all. His chest rose and fell, but slower than it probably should no matter how deeply he was sleeping.

"Something's wrong," he said, standing as he alerted the others to the situation. He was honestly more annoyed than he was concerned. Of course Edmund Amell, of all people, would find a way to be a problem while stone cold unconscious.

Whatever conversation was occurring with the others stilled as they gathered around, the mages pushing to the front and each casting a spell over him as they assessed his condition.

Nira shook her head, a hand pressed to the side of her face as she considered him. "I… I don't understand. Sloth is dead. Why isn't he waking?"

"His condition is remarkably like that of apprentices in their Harrowings… something is blocking his mind from surfacing," Wynne said gravely. "His consciousness is greatly taxed."

After a moment of considering the unconscious mage, Liri reached forward, grabbed him by his shoulders, and throttled him.

Edmund flailed like a limp doll, which would have been really funny if the situation was slightly less stressful, and Liri only relented when Morrgan grabbed her and pulled her off him. His head flopped forward onto his chest, a position that would probably cause no shortage of stiffness in his neck later. Assuming he lasted until later.

"Are you mad? If he is pulled from the dream prematurely the thread connecting his mind to his body could snap," the witch chided. "You cannot rouse a sleeper locked in the Fade through conventional means."

Liri rolled her eyes in exasperation. "How was I supposed to know that? None of this shit makes any sense to me!"

"What're we supposed to do with him?" Cousland asked. "We can't wake him, but we can't exactly haul his ass with us up the rest of the way with the tower, not while we still have to worry about abominations and bloodmages."

"We'll have to leave him here," Aothor said, rubbing his brow tiredly. "We killed everything behind us, and as long as we're thorough through the rest of the way up he should be relatively safe."

Cousland frowned, unsatisfied. He and Amell had unfinished business to get to, and he'd be damned if he let the mage get out of it by dying. One way or another they were going to solve their shit. Even if they just ended up beating each other senseless again. Which, honestly, is how he expected it would go. And with that in mind, he didn't feel like "relatively safe" was good enough.

Cousland knelt beside Lady and rubbed her ear. "Look after him, sweet girl. Keep him safe until he gets his shit together and wakes up, alright?" Of anyone else in the group, he could trust she'd follow through no matter what.

Lady whined loudly and nuzzled into his hand. She didn't want to leave him, her attachment more anxious in the aftermath of her nightmare than ever before.

"I'll come back quickly, I promise. And I'll fight better knowing you're safe back here. So be a good girl and stay, alright?"

Lady huffed and sat back on her hind legs beside the mage obediently, but kept her ears pinned in annoyance as if to portray her disapproval of this plan.

"You stay too, Barkspawn," Rosaya instructed her hound. "And if any demons appear, you rip them to pieces, okay?"

Barkspawn boofed low in protest, but after a bit more coaxing from his girl he took a position by the door, staring attentively into the dark.

"I will remain as well," Morrigan volunteered. He glanced at the witch in surprise—he hardly expected her, of anyone, to volunteer for mage-sitting duty. "If his soul is trapped in the Fade, having a mage present is the most prudent course of action."

They'd be down both of their mages that way… but with Wynne and now Nira coming in to make up the difference, perhaps it would be alright. The only trouble was that they'd gotten used to fighting alongside Edmund and Morrigan's complimentary magic styles, and Wynne and Nira were still largely unknowns aside from the elder of the twos proficiency with healing spells.

But Morrigan had a point, and none of them were about to waste time arguing with the witch and her infamously barbed temperament. Cousland was privately relieved that they wouldn't have to deal with either her or Edmund, actually, though the circumstances could be better.

Nira knelt beside him once more and worked another spell over his body, the magic moving like it was trying to coax him into waking, but there was no effect. When it failed she hung her head and rubbed a hand over her eyes like she was pushing away premature tears.

"Damn you, Ed. You better wake up. I have so many things I need to yell at you for," she said softly before finally turning away from him.

He wasn't sure why, but with that alone he felt a sudden sense of kinship with the elven mage, and any concern about entering battle with her dissolved. Being pissed at Edmund Amell was an excellent starting point for mutual cooperation.

"Come. It's not far to the top." Wynne said. With her and Nira as their guides through the Circle, they left Edmund and his designated watchers behind with little else in their power to offer aside from prayers and well wishing that he'd find his way back to them.

The halls were uncomfortably silent as they followed their mage guides forward. The fleshy growths along the walls pulsed. He noted with a deep and abject sort of horror that if he looked close enough he could make out what looked like faces trapped in the rot. He decided not to look anymore—his stomach was not easily turned but there was no denying the way it started to flip the more he thought about how those growths might've formed to begin with.

The closer they got to the top the more even the air around them began to writhe with dark energy. It was one thing, to sense the corruption of the darkspawn and the evil they permeated. But something about the ambient power of blood magic and demons felt deeply perverse in an entirely different way. At least the darkspawn were honest in their ruthless intent of destruction. No mind games, no illusions, no traps. Demons pretended to be something they weren't—

He ground to an abrupt halt in the hall, sudden enough that the Dalish elf walking behind him stepped on his heel. Cousland sighed and ran a tired hand over his face and battled back the urge to turn around and go back. There wasn't anything he could do about it if he did return, a fact that did not at all reassure him.

"You stopped for a reason?" Aothor asked, glancing back over his shoulder as he noticed a delay in their procession.

"I just realized… the rat. It was a demon." Cousland said.

He realized after saying the words that divorced from the context of building concerns in his mind it was a strange thing to announce all at once. But Edmund had clearly been visiting more dreams than just his own—surely someone else had to have noticed.

"Edmund showed up in my dream. Before we all met up in Sloth's domain. He had this strange rodent with him. I didn't think much of it at the time, I was…" Cousland paused, choosing his next words carefully. "... distracted. But now I think something was definitely wrong about it all. And Edmund said it was 'helping.'"

"Yeah, I know what you're talking about. He said it was a real dick and it'd eat your soul if it got a chance," She said, then paused with a growing look of concern on her face as the implication of her words settled on her. "Sodding hells. It got him."

"We don't know that for sure. Even the other mages weren't completely certain what was wrong with him," Aothor said evenly. The dwarven man's level assurance was almost enough to calm his own concerns. Almost. "He's powerful and he sure as Stone seemed to know what he was doing in there. And given how that fight with Sloth went down I'd bet on him over anything the Fade could throw at him."

"I'm sure he will find his way back to us," said Leliana. "Have faith."

"Forgive me if I hold onto my skepticism," Cousland said dryly. "I think Edmund did something stupid and is now facing the consequences, and we'll be lucky if we don't too."

And only time would tell if the mage's mess would once again become theirs. If the rat was really a demon, and if Amell made a deal with it… this could get bad fast. A notable worst-case manifested in his mind that it was a non-zero percent chance that he could become an abomination, and they would be put in the horrible position of having to slay him.

He was still turning these thoughts over his head when a startled cry erupted from the front of the group. Nira, who had opened up the scroll of the Litany of Adrala and had been reading it intently as they walked, had somehow walked right up onto a drake that'd been sleeping just around the next corner without either her or the creature noticing until they were literally upon one another. Cousland suspected she might've even stepped on it's tail by mistake.

All questions about how any of them had failed to spot the creature and it's half-dozen smaller siblings that were now swarming them or what the overgrown lizards were even doing here in the first place fled from his mind as the drake rounded on them and blasted an angry gout of heat from it's maw.

Nira turned in place to protect the delicate parchments she carried with her own body before her whole form cloaked in white mist and she stepped faster than the eye could follow to the opposite end of the hall, leaving an icy spray in her wake that cracked the drake's scales. It roared and snapped as she fled, but when it's bite found no purchase it rounded on them with another wave of flame. Cousland braced behind Alistair who directed the heat away with his shield—he'd had quite enough of being set on fire in the Fade and was not eager to repeat the experience in reality.

Most of the younger dragonlings were dead already—they were barely any bigger than the mabari and their scales not yet hard enough to sufficiently defend them. One of them had attempted to pursue the elven mage only to find the bladed end of her staff promptly shoved into it's gut.

As the drake's bellow of flame died down Cousland came around it's side and carved into it's side with a heavy blow, burning the blade between the joint of it's wing and it's neck. He pulled back to hack into it again, but there was no need. It's enraged hiss turned to harmless sputtering as Rosaya's arrow stuck cleanly through it's eye socket and out the other end of it's skull.

With the drake dead and the last of the dragonlings dispatched, the confusion of what the creatures were even doing up here settled in again. Dragons in a mage circle just seemed like a combination asking for trouble, even with the current bloodmage related issues aside.

"Huh. That's not something you see every day," Rosaya said after pulling her arrow free from the drake's eye socket. She wasn't looking at the scaled creatures, however—her gaze was turned upward towards the ceiling.

Cousland followed her gaze and wasn't sure if he should be sick from the horror of the situation or laugh at the mental image of how it'd come to pass. A mage—or what was left of one, was plastered to the stonework above, a look of genuine shock across his dead features and most of his lower body burned and gone.

"Wha… how did he even get up there?" Cousland said, blinking to check that his eyes were registering it correctly.

"Magic, probably," Aothor added dryly, whipping some dragonling blood from his beard.

"I think… that's Ivan. He was heading up a research team testing different alchemical reactions with dragons blood," Nira said. She turned away from the corpse stuck to the ceiling and shook her head sadly as she tucked the delicate scroll she carried into a more protected place in a bag. "Looks like his project got away from him."

"A drake just tried to fry my eyebrows off. I think that's a little more than a project 'getting away from him.'" Alistair said. He ran a hand through his hair as if to check that it hadn't been burned away.

Another mage taken in by hubris, though not in a way that meant demonic possession or blood magic. Just angry dragonlings half-starved and willing to kill anything that moved.

The issue of magic and mages had always been an "out of sight, out of mind" type of deal. You never heard anything about a mage until they'd gone bad, or helped a figurehead keep power over an oppressed nation. Those lessons from history were still particularly fresh for those in the sphere of Ferelden's leadership. And his first interactions with mages had been… less than stellar, for a long list of reasons. Mostly because Edmund was an asshole and purposefully insane, and Morrigan was, on her best days, perpetually self-centered and also an open apostate.

The Circle had always been this distant idea. It still was, even though he was standing inside of it. But the fact that it'd even been allowed to get nearly this bad meant the powers that be probably ought to take a look at the system with a bit more scrutiny.

Then again, the nation was on the brink of civil war, the king had been left to die on the battlefield and the man who abandoned him had seized the throne for himself, no doubt with the aid of a murderous betraying psychopath, both of which apparently had an active hand in causing the chaos here to begin with, so maybe the state of things was fucked regardless and those "powers that be" were more useless than not. And all that was beside the enormous, ancient, evil dragon bent on destroying the world as they knew it.

Cheerful thoughts all around. Andraste's flames, why had they been so eager to return to reality, again?

He wasn't the only one distracted by a race of inner ponderings. Nira still stared upwards at the unfortunate mage seared to the ceiling, a tremble starting at her fingertips. Isefel swooped in to her side like a moth to a flame of pain.

"I assume the answer to this is probably a 'no' of some form, but… are you okay, Nira?" Isefel asked. She pulled the mages staff free from the dragonling's gut and passed it back to her. "There's no shame in staying behind if going forward is too painful."

The elven mage accepted the returned weapon but started down the hall again as soon as it was in her grasp. She made it clear without stating it aloud that she was not willing to stop, not even for her own benefit.

"I'm frightened. I'm exhausted. I've surpassed anger and entered fury. I have never been more vulnerable to demonic possession in my entire life than I am in this moment… and I cannot even hear them whispering to me." She admitted, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "I suppose that either means even the demons know how dangerous I am right now, or they've already found more malleable hosts."

"I don't know shit about demons but I'm betting it's the former. I mean, you turned into a stone giant! Think you could do that again and squish the evil bloodmages?" Liri asked, practically bouncing in place at the possibility.

"No, I can't actually do that." Nira glanced back and looked thoroughly unamused, and slightly confused as well as Leliana translated the dwarven woman's signs. "It was simply a form granted by the challenges I faced in the Fade—real shapeshifting is rare magic, not to mention incredibly forbidden. And even if I knew how to do such a thing as change my form, a golem seems a bit… far fetched."

"Damn, that's disappointing." Liri sighed dejectedly and pulled her dagger from the drake's skull along with a chunk of what was probably it's brain. "Hey Rosaya, you're good at skinning animals and shit, right? Think we could salvage the hide on this thing? Drakeskin goes for a pretty sovereign."

"Or makes for high quality armor," the Dalish said, pausing by the corpse as she inspected it. "There's not enough usable hide on this one to make a full set, but given our luck we're bound to run into another drake at some point. I'll skin it on the way back down—probably better taken care of after we've settled the issue with the abominations."

"Sweet. I've got dibs." Liri said brightly.

"Hey, I'll be the one doing all the work skinning them. I should get the armor," Rosaya said, crossing her arms in an almost childish pout.

"Yeah, but I'm the one that actually gets in close with the enemies. You're always at the back; you don't need it as much." Liri countered.

"But you're so much more durable than me. And you're stronger, too. Weak little thing like me? I'll need all the protection I can get if anything gets in too close." Rosaya said. She batted her eyes in a way that would have been adorable if it weren't so openly, and ineffectively, manipulative.

Cousland raised a brow. "Weak? With the draw weight you have on that bow and how fast you're firing it? Bend the truth if you must, Mahariel, but don't outright lie to us."

"I didn't know you knew your way around a bow," Leliana said, pleasantly surprised.

"I trained for versatility," he explained, resting his blade over his shoulder casually. "Close-up fighting with heavy weapons is my strength, but put any weapon in my hands and I can use it with moderate success. Archery is no exception."

"Ah, I know!" the minstrel said, suddenly alight with excitement. "We should have an archery contest! It would be fun, no? The others can join too, if they're interested. And it would be once we're safe, of course, not when we're fighting demons or darkspawn or anything nasty like that."

Cousland grinned at her infectious enthusiasm. "I'm in. But be warned, I was taught by the Seawolf herself."

"Oh no, I'm quaking in my boots," said the Dalish with a perfectly deadpan expression, turning an arrow fluidly between her fingers.

"We get it, ya'll shoot good. Whatever. I've still got dibs on the drakeskin."

Rosaya braced her hands on her hips and smiled smugly down at the dwarf. "Beat me in the archery contest and maybe I'll let you have it."

Liri gaped up at her but her indignant look quickly morphed into a trouble-filled grin as she considered the challenge, and her following signs required no translation to be clearly understood.

"You. Are. ON."

"Nuva mar'av aria ma, durgen'len," Rosaya smirked.

Realistically Cousland understood he didn't hold a candle to Leliana's ability with a bow, let alone the Dalish who'd likely been wielding one since she could walk. But it was more fun to arrange an upcoming archery tournament than stew in the general despair that followed them as they made their way through the broken Circle.

. . . . .

He tried to force himself awake, but there was an intangible wall blocking his consciousness from surfacing. He would've tried to break through it if he had anything left to fuel his power, but after what it took from him to destroy Sloth it took all his remaining focus to stay present in the realm of dreams.

And that, he feared, was by design. For Pride to wait until he was as weak as possible before finally seeking the conclusion to their arrangement.

The demon stood only a pace in front of him, close enough to reach out and grasp if he wished. Only, not as Mouse. Not in it's true form, either. But the form of the Apprentice. At a casual glance Pride looked human, but the mask was ill-fitting. The uncanny valley of something trying to be a person but not quite hitting the mark remained.

He spared the Apprentice only a passing glance before turning away from it entirely. It made an indignant sound at the snub, but in his mind if it'd already waited this long it wouldn't kill it to wait a bit longer.

Instead he focused on the spot at the center of the island where Sloth used to be. He reached out and let the fragile ashes of it's torched remains drift slowly through his fingertips. He was struck again by the strange and misplaced grief plaguing him as his body remembered those last moments in the rush of power when he dealt the finishing blow to the creature that had trapped them in this realm of dreams.

"What happens to demons? When they die." He asked with just the smallest glance back to the demon lurking behind him. "I've fought demons before in the physical world. It was never… like that."

"Such a typical question, for a mortal. Always grappling with the end of things. Don't you all have several religions dedicated to discussing the topic?" The Apprentice asked snidely.

"I'm not interested in debating religion. Especially when I have it on good authority that most of the ones the people in this world follow are complete and utter bullshit. Same goes for back home, actually." He rolled his eyes. "You may not be mortal, but that doesn't mean there isn't an end waiting for members of your kind as well."

"Are you sure?" The Apprentice challenged. "How exactly do you kill an idea? A concept, once rooted, is not easily dislodged. Even by death."

"I've heard that powerful spirits, like Wisdom or Faith, can reform after being destroyed," he said. The Apprentice scoffed at his mention of the spirits, no doubt scornful of the idea of these "weaker" forms of itself. "They're not the same… person, as before, but still the same entity. Or, still represent a similar ideal. Something like that. Is the process the same for demons?"

"We are formed from the most powerful urges of mortal hearts. Tell me, will Desire ever be eradicated from mankind? Will Rage ever fail to find fuel for it's fires? Once we are strong enough to articulate our nature, we become as permanent in this realm as what we represent is in your own."

"That's an unnecessarily long way of saying 'yeah, it's the same.'" he said, unamused.

Only, apparently, it wasn't the same. Not this time. He'd fought enough demons by now to have a near expert opinion on the activity, both in the physical world and in the Fade. Whenever they died their bodies dissolved, the energy they carried warping back into the ambient energy of the Fade, likely to be reborn as something similar but different once some unspecified conditions were met. The only time that didn't happen was with abominations, or… with whatever had just happened with Sloth.

He snatched a drifting clump ash from the air and held it carefully in his hand. Seared into dust by his flames but… not dissolving like every other demon had when destroyed.

It ached in him again, a mourning that was borrowed from the realm around him rather than anything he felt innately. The Fade needed someone to feel… what it was feeling? And he was the only one present who could. Or so he could only assume—it would be great if anything around him ever made sense, but that wasn't how his life went anymore.

But what he realized for certain was that the Fade couldn't accept Sloth back into itself. Or… Peace. Or whatever it'd been in that last moment. Because he'd changed it somehow to where the world of dreams couldn't recognize it as anything but foreign. It didn't fit here. An icy voice crawled across the corner of his memory and seized a shiver down his spine. You could have taken more, could have slipped in and taken it whole, merged or mutilated or morphed.

It felt like a piece of a puzzle, only a different puzzle than any of the ones he was focused on solving. But now he felt strangely like he had the answer to something he didn't even have a question for yet. He released the ash he held and let it drift away from him and focused his attention on the demon waiting for him.

The Apprentice's hands were clasped behind it's back. The posture was perfectly poised and almost patient… save for the deep and seething hatred roiling in it's too-dark eyes. Of the different forms he'd seen the demon take, this was the one that concerned him most. In it's true appearance Pride looked down on him, an obvious threat. As Mouse it was something small he could carry with him or contain. But the Apprentice stood eye-level with him, the implication of the form that they were equals.

Each form was dangerous for different reasons—this because one's threat carried through the idea it was closest to being a person.

"Your attempt to delay what is due begins to bore, mageling." The Apprentice said, still lurking just behind him.

"Yeah, yeah. You know, I liked you better as a fucked up Pikachu," he said dryly. The demons obvious impatience bordered on annoying, really. Especially since it wasn't like it needed to be worried about him going anywhere.

He pressed his focus once more to that boundary between dreaming and waking and found once more that it would not budge. It wasn't even the Apprentice that was holding him under, not really. It was the deal they struck and the pressure emitted by this realm of intentions that enforced the binding nature of their arrangement. Not a permanent or all-powerful thing, but certainly not something he was capable of overcoming in his current state.

There would be no running from Pride. Not this time.

"I have fulfilled my end of our bargain," the Apprentice continued, no longer shadowing him but walking at his side as he continued a slow amble across the barren arena. "I have navigated you through the weave, according to your whims. My terms, however, are yet to be satisfied."

"I have to give you credit: you held up your part to the end," he admitted with a begrudging nod of acknowledgement. In truth, Pride's level of cooperation was surprising. It hadn't gone above and beyond or anything like that, upholding it's word to the letter and not a step further, but it also hadn't betrayed and killed him. Yet. So that was something. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're growing fond of me."

"You carry part of me," it said simply. "We are now more alike than we ever have been or ever will be again."

Of course Pride could only ever hold itself in high regard. But by his understanding it made them uniquely dangerous to one another. The expectation of the impending transaction was clear, and he knew for certain once he fulfilled his end of the deal and returned that stolen piece, the demon would demand blood for the insult of having been robbed at all.

They reached the edge of the arena, where the pedestal stood at the center of a no-longer glowing glyph beside a bottomless plummet into the void. He'd already had the morbid curiosity of what would happen if he fell, but what would happen to the Apprentice? Maybe he could just chuck the demon over the edge and be done with it. Somehow it didn't seem like that would be enough, though the mental image was oddly amusing.

"Are you going to attack me? Once I give the piece back." he asked point-blank. He was tired of dancing around it. He wanted their intentions laid out in front of them before they continued any further.

"I am going to destroy you," the Apprentice said, so assured and calm that it was more unsettling than any bellowing roar. "But to slay you here would not bring me satisfaction. The transgression of you mishandling my perfection demands something… more."

"You have an awful lot of confidence for someone who's already lost to me once before," he said. Granted, he didn't actually know how to do… whatever it was that he'd done… to Pride again. It'd just sort of happened as he tried to fight off the possession.

"Do not make the error of mistaking one fumbling, accidental success for a true victory," said the Apprentice, the sharp tone that broke through it's calm veneer indicated he'd successfully struck a nerve. A shameful memory for this creature of arrogance, no doubt. "The undecided nature of your existence is a mere annoyance, and one that is more easily overcome than you know."

"And that has something to do with this 'more' idea you have?" he asked. "Please, illuminate me."

"Ah, ah. You of all people should know the danger of… what was that charming term you had for it…? Spoilers. No, better you be unaware. You fancy yourself a meddler, but you cannot interfere with what you do not know." it said, entirely too self-satisfied as it wagged a finger at him. "Revel in your victory, mageling. Everything went exactly according to your desires. Your sleepers are awake, your way forward is cleared. Now all that remains is the restoration of my being."

He had to acknowledge the cosmic irony of him being dealt a taste of his own medicine by the literal incarnation of arrogance. So he found that spark of stolen power inside him and brought it close to the surface of his focus. He didn't really know how to give it back… but maybe it wasn't meant to be some complicated ritual. It'd been by instinct that he'd stolen it, so maybe those same impulses could guide it back.

And yet, he hesitated as he stared back at the demon's expectant face.

Whatever it was going to do to him, it was something that needed this piece, something that couldn't be accomplished without it. That, he was at least sure of. And at the base of all demons desires was the need to establish dominion in the physical world as well as the Fade, to control the hearts and minds it came in contact with…

He shook his head, pulling away, reeling the energy back deep inside himself like recalling a cast line.

"You're going to take a body," he said with a slow step back from the demon. "Find a host and chase me down in the physical world."

If he was right, then it intended to enter the physical realm while he was still fresh from the Fade and kill him there… and with the weakness of the Veil here in the tower and the sudden over-abundance of bloodmages to make into perfect puppets… oh.

"If that is what you think, then surely it must be so," it said, though the dismissive shrug of his shoulders left room in his mind for doubt. "I will admit, I'd long meant to make a mage of this tower my own and mold this Circle to my means—I'd made magnificent progress with Uldred before you went and ruined me. Now I'll not have enough time in his mind to cement my presence over his own," it spat the words with heavy scorn.

"You… you're meant to be the demon that possesses him." The revelation sounded so strange aloud. He'd wondered it before, though in nothing deeper than a passing curiosity, if the Pride demon encountered at the end of the mage Wardens Harrowing was the same they faced as the boss at the end of the Circle quest. To have confirmation from the subject of the theory felt bizarre. "But you're here. You're not in control of him." For some reason he was unsure if that was better or worse.

"I could have made him magnificent. I could have made you magnificent. Imagine it, what your powers could do at my command, what could be accomplished with the full breadth of your secrets at my disposal—" It cut it off suddenly, fists clenched as it scowled at him. "I will have what is mine. Return it to me. Before I reconsider my generosity in allowing you to leave this land of dreams intact."

"Your plan is just… filled with holes," he said. Maybe he shouldn't be telling the demon that, but surely it had to already know this. So what was the angle…? "The biggest one being that in very short order all the bloodmages in the tower, including Uldred, will be dead. You saw how the Wardens operate: there won't be a mind left for you to inhabit, unless you want to take on a corpse. But somehow I feel like that's beneath you—"

His body froze along with his tongue as a terrible thought tore through his mind. Maybe… it wasn't looking to possess a Circle mage. Non-mages could be possessed, though the conditions were always more specific, and just because it didn't happen often didn't mean it couldn't—

—and he'd just given the demon a tour through the minds of the Wardens. Fuck.

No. Whatever reckless, half-thought out ideas he jumped into danger with, he wouldn't drag the others down with him. He was selfish with his fallout. If there was any chance Pride was angling for his companions, his friends, he had to end this now.

"I will have what is mine. Return it to me," hissed the Apprentice. The crisp crackle underpinning it's voice was now distinctly demonic. "You tread so close to the point, yet you miss it entirely. But fear not; you need not grasp it now. You'll understand when the time is right."

"Bullshit. I think I understand more than enough right now, namely that if you're not an ally, you're a hazard. I won't even do you the dignity of classing you as an enemy because you don't deserve it. I have bigger problems to deal with than you," he said. This was the last olive branch he was willing to offer—he just hoped the Apprentice would be smart enough to take it. "Don't give me another reason to erase you or I might just take it."

Pressure like the air before a storm condensed between them, but in that moment of intensity he couldn't discern if it was coming from the Apprentice, or from him.

"You hold a fragment of Pride, but in you is not the strength of command. You don't have the spine for it, and that you would try is an insult." The hum of energy intensified and suddenly there were not two eyes on the Apprentice's face, but many, and all of them solid black. When it continued, it's voice was fully warped, deep and rumbling with the thunderous tone of a true demon. "The insult of the attempt demands retribution. The wound of the theft demands blood. You could die a thousand deaths, mageling, and still I would not be satisfied. And only once you are destroyed in every way a person can be will I finally grant you the peace of death."

"I think in your bloodlust you've missed the flaw in that threat," he said. An energy thick like ozone clung around him and his hairs stood on end—he still had that stolen energy source burning inside him, the literal heart of this conflict. It hummed bright and ready. "I suddenly have a lot less motivation to honor my end of the deal."

If the distorted drop of the Apprentice's voice didn't betray the madness lurking beneath the calm visage, the thunderous snarl that followed certainly did. The Apprentice shifted into a pacing motion before him, and suddenly they'd resumed their pattern from before, circling one another like predators hunting for weakness.

"Not so tough now, are we? You have all these grand plans, these terrible intentions, but none of it means anything unless you're powerful enough to pull it off. And you're not, are you? Not while your energy is divided." he said. "None of your threats hold water unless I return what I stole. And you lack the leverage to make me surrender it."

"Leverage is immaterial. You will comply," it said lowly. "You cannot leave until the deal is done. Your mind will remain here and your body will rot."

"Funny how you think that gives me pause," he said with a small laugh, the sound mostly a result at his surprise with himself and how true those words were. "I think you're underestimating just how much I'm willing to wager if enough is on the line."

"And you underestimate how deep the well of my hatred reaches," the visage of the Apprentice melted even further, giving way to horns and purple scales. "I would rather see the hostage of my perfection destroyed than watch it be befouled by your mishandling any further."

Teeth turned to fangs and fingers into claws. He brought the brightness of his magic close to the surface. If there was no Pride, then there was no deal, and no wall keeping him from leaving, and each of them had just discovered the limit for their tolerance of the other. If there was no cooperation, then his way out was through the demon.

"Really? You're Pride—you hold only yourself in the highest esteem. Are you even capable of destroying something that was once part of you? Or does your arrogant nature limit what you can do against yourself?" he challenged

This demon had once been his teacher—him surviving his own power thus far was a direct result of the knowledge it'd shared with him in those early days. In truth, a part of him may have gone and gotten attached to it. They weren't anything close to friends… but it was the only being with which he'd been able to show any measure of honesty. But everything had to end sooner or later, and he'd always known this arrangement would end badly.

The Apprentice was gone. Pride loomed over him, deranged and broken and terrible, but he didn't back down. Instead he cocked his head to the side and smirked up at the monster with his staff braced in his hand.

"I suggest you humble yourself before I do it for you," he said, no louder than a whisper, but in the echo of his voice Pride roared.

If anyone were ever to ask him who struck first, he wouldn't have an answer, because he didn't know. But all at once the tension between them erupted in a flash of lightning and a violent clash of power. A deafening peal of thunder rolled across the shifting shadows of the raw Fade, the very structure of the dreamscape around them quaking as the force of Pride warred against itself.

The stolen piece of power he carried wasn't his, but it was starting to feel like it was. There should have been no difference in the energy he felt between the power attacking him and the magic he wielded in retaliation… but there was a difference. It wasn't his but it was part of him anyways.

He broke the surging cage of electricity enclosing around him with a bolt of his own that disrupted the energy. He felt it deep within him, that the demon was trying to wrestle control over it even though it was apart from the energy. When before it had burned and roiled inside him like a cankerous ache in response to it's true master's coaxing, it now hummed calmly within him beside the dormant well that was his own innate magical energy.

He'd changed that small spark somehow, just by holding it, using it in tandem with his own power. A thought drifted across his mind as he let the rush of power carry him through the battle, that maybe the power he stole was a little bit like the "story" of the world—more than malleable if one knew which strings to pull.

But that thought—and most others—were chased from his mind as his body suffered what was probably a similar consequence to licking a fork and sticking it in a live socket, only way worse. Pride's claw broke through his shields and struck him, but it wasn't strong enough to put him down. Neither did any of his own attacks seem to do sufficient damage to the demon in return. The battle between him and the demon was a constant give-and-take that was painfully even. That was the problem with fighting fire with fire… or lightning, in this case.

When he'd battled Sloth he'd been able to overwhelm it through the pure difference in the levels of their energy, but battling Pride with nothing but it's own stolen energy was going nowhere fast. The fragment was powerful… but not enough to destroy it's original source. Or maybe it just couldn't… not while he held it.

You could have taken more, could have slipped in and taken it whole, merged or mutilated or morphed.

He had an idea. It was risky and likely to get him killed if it went wrong. But if Pride wanted this piece back so badly, maybe he should let the demon have it.

"I yield!" he cried, dropping his staff and raising his hands in the air.

Pride coiled back a chain of lighting around itself and dropped into a low prowl, self-satisfied but cautious of his intentions. In his head he begged over and over to higher powers that probably didn't exist for his deception to hold water.

"I cannot beat you. I'll give you what you want," he said, breathing heavily like he'd just run a marathon.

"You are a loose thread pulled from the weave, but still you are mortal. You could never match me," it said in almost maddened glee. Under the guise of the Apprentice it'd held onto the mask of a calm schemer, but in it's pure form the truth of the unhinged nature due to the damage was made obvious. "If I'd known what a tiresome thorn you would become, I would have simply slain you in your Harrowing. We'd all be better off if I had, I think."

Pride crept closer until it was looming over him. If it unhinged it's jaw and lunged forward it could bite his head off in one go. He wrestled back his anxiety at the thought and kept his hands raised and still. Pride was taking the bait, that was the important thing. It was built from arrogance, and thus operated off Smaug rules: appeal to the ego to buy time for a very hasty get-away.

"Will you still let me leave when the exchange is done?" The question was pathetic, borderline begging, but it added fuel to the flame of Pride's ego.

"I will allow you to flee, to run back to your physical world with your tail between your legs to lick the wounds you rightly deserve. You shall bear the sting of this defeat, and I the richness of my success," it said with a horribly toothy and crooked smile. "One must wonder how you plan to defeat an Archdemon if this was the best you could do against me."

"More side quests and leveling up, probably," he deadpanned, but the quip rang hollow in his mind, especially in the aftermath of Sloth's targeted taunting.

"So quick with the snark, but that's all you really have, isn't it? Everything about you is a facade—a lie. Even apart from the spark you snatched from my perfection, the magic you wield isn't yours," it spoke the barb in a rumbling cadence almost like a purr. It reached a claw forward so the point was pressed against the center of his chest, pressure just shy of piercing through to his heart. "That magic, like even the face you wear, is borrowed. So tell me, drifting soul, is there anything you have that is actually your own?"

"Yeah. My bad ideas."

He focused on that point where Pride's talon pressed against his chest and used it as an anchor. The energy was distinct from him, so he allowed it to be separate. Manifesting as a glittering ball of multicolored flashing lights. Looking at it's gentle glow, he never would have guessed it once belonged to the demon before him that thundered of malicious power.

And then it was done. The spark of power drifted forward until it collided with Pride, reabsorbing back into it's original place. And the demon recoiled like he'd struck it.

It roared, tearing into it's body with it's own claws like it was trying to fight off a terrible itch, but the visibly different energy roiled uncontrollably over it's form despite Pride's efforts. That shard of power was like him, now. A piece from one puzzle lodged poorly into a different one where it clearly didn't belong. And unlike him, Pride wasn't able to shear down the edges of what it encountered to align with it's own energy.

It didn't belong anywhere. And by joining it back to Pride, the demon was changing too.

"What—WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" It retched, like it was trying to vomit the energy back out of itself. It bucked forward once more, and wailed a sound that carried agony thick through the ether of the Fade. "IT BURNS!"

The purple lighting that pulsed at it's damaged portions sparked and flashed violently, erupting like fireworks all along it's body. But he didn't stick around to find out what kind of consequence this would have on the demon. The deal was done. The seal keeping him under unraveled.

As Pride roared in agony and swung it's claws for his throat he stilled his mind and reached for the surface.

Edmund woke up.

The middling awareness of pre-wakefulness broke through the grey of the Fade. Thought became sluggish and difficult, but he fought for coherency and clung to it like a lifeboat. He couldn't afford to forget a single moment of what he'd experienced in the Fade—not that it was much of a risk as most of it could be considered mildly traumatizing.

Maybe, if he was very lucky, Pride was dead. But knowing his odds he wouldn't count on it. The demon was like a weed… if weeds had more teeth than a shark and the ability to hold one hell of a grudge. He could only hope he was still the only target for it's ire, and that when he next encountered it in the Fade he would be in a position to put it down for good and end this horrible cat-and-mouse relationship.

As he breached the final layer between dreams and reality, he was abruptly overcome with distinct mourning for the fact that no one in Thedas had, to his knowledge, invented tylenol.

He groaned and rubbed the palms of his hands against his eyes, blinking rapidly as they adjusted to the light, and then all at once found himself wondering if he was actually still dreaming as the first thing he saw were golden eyes framed by curtains of dark hair. For better or worse any concerns about having somehow entered another dream were banished by the unique type of back pain that only ever resulted from sleeping propped half-upright against a wall.

The Witch of the Wilds stood over him, her carved staff held tightly in both hands as she stared down at him with a carefully neutral expression. He became acutely aware of the aura of power surrounding her, subtle but distinct to the structure of energy he'd been learning to identify as uniquely hers.

"I swear I'm still me," he said, but his voice came out cracked and rough from what felt strangely like ages without use. "Though if you ask me to prove it I might just break out in demons anyways, because frankly I've had enough of people demanding that of me."

"You will have to forgive my caution," she said slowly, the magic she'd been building slowly disbanding. "After witnessing the sheer number of abominations in this tower, t'would be imprudent to put any measure of faith in the Circles training in warding off possession."

"Touchè," Edmund spared a glance to the corpses still littered about the chamber. Bodies aside, the only ones present aside from himself and Morrigan were the two mabari, each pacing dutifully in front of a different doorway. It was almost alarming to see the dogs divorced from their partners. "Where's everyone else?"

Morrigan started to answer, but whatever she might've said was drowned out by a bone-rattling boom from the floor above. They were already at the top of the tower facing the final fight.

As the echo of the boom reverberated through the stonework Edmund braced his hands on the ground and pushed himself to his feet, determined to find them and join the fight. But he'd no more than halfway risen than the aching pain in his mind nearly split his skull and he saw white, completely losing his balance. He'd have eaten the stone floor for sure if Morrigan hadn't caught him by his shoulders and guided him back to where he was sitting against the wall.

"I'm good. I'm good. I'm—I'm fine." he repeated, almost like he was begging it to be true. But really he'd never more felt the need to scoop out his eyeballs with a spoon, as he imagined it would be preferable to the agonizing drumming against his cranium. There were migraines, and then there was this. "I'm good, I just need a minute."

"You may need more and a mere minute, if I am any judge," she scoffed. Her tone was harsh, but she picked up her staff once more and began casting magic.

Unlike before it wasn't a spell built to slay, or even to heal, but a raw gathering of energy that then passed to him. He recognized it only moments after he began to feel the effects—the directing of mana to empower another, like what he and Merril had done with Marethari. Only now he was on the receiving end. The horrible pounding in his head receded—it was still present, but it was no longer anywhere near as debilitating.

"See, this is why the dwarves are my favorites," Edmund said bitterly, pressing a hand to where his body ached with phantom wounds echoing the damage he sustained in the Fade. "Unlike the rest of those psychos, they didn't attack me when I showed up to help."

"I shall mention that I did not attempt to harm you, either."

"Yeah, but you've already always been my favorite," he said entirely without thinking.

"Hm, indeed? T'is good to know," she mused with a catlike smile. "'Tis also a wonder you are not dead, or worse—you are either the most foolish mage alive, or the most fortunate," Morrigan mused.

"Just those two options? Why couldn't I be the cleverest, or most powerful?" he quirked a brow, unable to help himself.

"Because powerful and clever mages would not put themselves in the positions of peril you cannot seem to keep yourself away from," she said, cutting off the flow of power and prodding his forehead with the butt of her staff.

"You say that, but I always come out on top, don't I?" Edmund said, just the slightest bit smug as he shoved the end of her staff away.

"Yes, because being subdued in the Fade against your will and drained so thoroughly of magic and vitality that your heart nearly stops is true victory indeed," she said dryly.

Any self assuredness melted at that. He felt like death itself when he woke up, sure, but surely it hadn't actually been that bad—

Another deafening crack sounded from above followed by a soul piercing shriek that chilled his bones. He and Morrigan both froze completely still, as did the mabari, who looked taught and ready to launch themselves into the hall and up the nearest flight of stairs to find their partners. He reached for his staff, but Morrigan caught his eye halfway through the motion and gave a single shake of her head.

"You will only be in their way," she said. Though the coldness in her tone could've been taken as hurtful, she was more analytical than anything else. She was the more experienced mage, afterall, and if his inkling was right she was even beginning to suspect as much.

This was becoming an unfortunate theme between them. After the Tower of Ishal, that morning in the Korcari wilds after first striking the deal with Pride, and then now—in the aftermath of some victory that still somehow left him feeling hollow and low, he found himself beside Morrigan in the quiet. It was a strangely humbling experience, especially since the coincidence of circumstances always left him so fried his filter failed.

Morrigan was at least right about one thing: despite having spent an extended period of time in the Fade, his magic was anything but restored. His power was depleted, probably was beyond the dangerous levels of empty before Morrigan offered him that lifeline through her own sliver of energy. And as for that place inside himself where he'd held the stolen energy… that was empty too.

But it wasn't gone.

The cavity of where he'd held Pride's power still existed within him. It was barren now, a vessel hollow and dark, but that it was a new place that power could fill gave him hope that surrendering the stolen piece wouldn't be a total loss overall. Maybe his own magic would naturally fill it, like a second mana bar to pull from. Or maybe it was the real-life equivalent of a new skill tree unlocking. He'd figure it out later, preferably when it didn't still feel like someone was driving a pickaxe through the top of his skull.

Still it felt wrong to just… sit here, doing nothing, while everyone else was fighting. Hell, this was the mage origin location, and he was the mage Warden. Or at least he was supposed to be. If anyone was meant to be dealing with this it should be him—

Amell. Condition: ? [E—erROr] ?

No, not him. Amell. And he wasn't Amell. Maybe it was for the best that he wasn't up there. In fact, the less he interacted with the tower locals, the better, should anyone catch on to anything amiss in him. Here of all places his facade was most vulnerable. One wrong word and his house of cards could crash down on him. They wouldn't ask questions, or hear him out as he explained the impossible nature of his situation. In this tower full of mages and templars fresh from the horrors of blood magic and possession, he'd be dead the moment anyone suspected anything.

"What were you doing, that your mind was locked in the Fade so long?" Morrigan asked. She set her staff down and settled on the ground across from him, casually rifling through the contents of her pack. When he didn't answer right away she looked up at him pointedly through the bangs hanging in front of her face. "If you must fabricate a cover story to conceal the true nature of your true activities, it may benefit you to use this as an opportunity to practice."

"Maybe I was just extra sleepy," he deadpanned. "It's tiring work, you know, rescuing everyone from the clutches of evil demons. I'm sure no one will blame me if I hit an extra snooze or two on my alarm."

"Hm. Or 'tis possible you overestimate the reach of their thankfulness. Gratitude is fickle in the face of fear. And between your display in the Fade and the fact that you did now awaken after, you have provided ample cause for concern," she said cooly.

Morrigan finished searching through her pack and produced a waterskin, which she tossed to him. Edmund barely managed to catch the waterskin through the sluggishness he was still trying to rid from his body. He did privately admit that she had a point—particularly with Cousland no doubt just waiting for the opportunity to jump down his throat, a notion that immediately had him scowling.

"Uldred was going to be possessed by a powerful Pride demon. I made sure he wouldn't be," he finally said. Technically it wasn't entirely untrue, even if it had only been a consequence of his encounter with the demon rather than the purpose of it. "Figured it might make facing him easier."

The enchanted lights on the walls flickered violently and died and all at once they found themselves sitting in near total darkness. The mabari barked in alarm, running agitatedly in front of their respective doorways.

"Though maybe the idea backfired. I hope I didn't just make things worse." He chuckled nervously as his imagination painted a concerning picture of what could possibly be occurring above.

"Possessed or not, I find it hard to imagine any of these cattle-kept enchanters capable of withstanding for long," said Morrigan with a derisive snort.

"I wouldn't underestimate them. Those mages have their backs to the wall and nowhere to run," he said. An absent fear drifted through the back of his mind—before the Wardens entered the final fight, they would've had to talk to Cullen. And the tormented templar would offer up his own idea for how the situation ought to be handled. They could've—

No, none of them would've gone for that plan. He'd learned from Redcliffe which of them found the death of innocents a regrettable but occasionally necessary consequence to success and which of them would push back against that sort of idea. He trusted the moral majority would weigh out any inclinations towards Cullen's request. Particularly because any dissenters would have to go through a particularly exacting Isefel who was singularly focused on protecting her family, a feat he now knew from experience was not one anyone should rush into blindly.

It'd been quiet on the floor above for the longest stretch yet, and yet the ambient pressure of power at work remained, and they could not mistake the quiet in the Harrowing Chamber for a sign of victory. Edmund felt in that persistent quiet that perhaps he should say something to Morrigan… but the only things that jumped readily to his mind were questions from the dialogue tree to which he already knew all of her answers, and that didn't seem… fair.

He could give her the grimoire, but it would be better to wait for her to mention it first than to provide it unprompted. Or maybe he could pass it off to someone else to give to her, to help build a connection between her and one of the others. Maybe Aothor. The witch seemed to be building a foundation of mutual respect with the dwarf who'd taken up the mantle as their leader. If he were to speculate on the inevitable future pairings, he'd guess at Aothor with Morrigan. By process of elimination he was really the only option, given that Cousland held almost as much contempt for her as Alistair did.

A feeling like something selfish and upset reared it's annoying head inside himself but he ruthlessly squashed it back down.

"Were you ever tested against demons?" Edmund asked instead of indulging that train of thought any longer.

"How do you mean?"

"In the tower, they Harrow us. Trap us in the Fade with a demon until we prove we can resist possession. I know you're an apostate so the same rules and rituals don't apply, but most magic cultures have their own versions of the ceremony. They do in Tevinter and Revain. Pretty sure the Avaar do too," he explained. "I just wondered if Flemeth ever made you undergo a similar trial."

Morrigan chuckled ruefully at the question. "Ah, with Flemeth, there are nothing but trials. Whether demons were involved was only a secondary element to whatever the true test might be."

"That bad, huh?" he said, offering a sympathetic smile. He perhaps didn't have Morrigan's years of experience in dealing with the formidable woman, but he was beginning to understand what it was to contend with the Witch of the Wilds.

"The world is a cruel place for a mage, even before one considers the possibility of possession. And an even crueler place for a woman who is unaware of it's inherent dangers. The trials ensured I would know how to survive it all, and how to survive it on my own," she said with even, assured confidence. "But to your original question, yes. There were occasions where Flemeth orchestrated encounters between myself and a demon, both in dreams and the waking world to see if my mind had matured to withstand their influence. To ascertain that my magical prowess was sufficient to thwart them if they aimed with claws instead of words."

"Well, for better or worse, she was right about at least one thing. It did make you a powerful mage," he said, a statement Morrigan did not at all attempt to protest. "Did you always know you had magic?"

"My gifts appeared when I was quite young—earlier than most mage-children's powers awaken, or so I am told. But… no. I did not always know." She shifted slightly in place in the face of that question, a bit of that self-satisfied confidence from the acknowledgement of her ability sliding away to something more uncertain. "Flemeth never doubted that I would be a mage. I was her daughter, after all—for me to be anything less than proficient in the arcane arts was unthinkable. But I was not always so sure. I remember lying awake late into the night sometimes, so uncertain. What would become of me if I never came into my potential? What if I wasn't a mage? So many questions, none of which Mother would grant any more assurance to than a passing 'we shall wait and see.'"

But in the beat of quiet that followed, he quietly answered those hypotheticals in his own mind. Flemeth wouldn't suffer a mundane child. Had Morrigan not been a mage, she likely wouldn't be alive.

Morrigan held her staff horizontal across her lap and drummed her fingers against the wood as she thought, trekking back the inner trails of memory. "She did not often let me out of her sight. She was watching me closely, I think, for any subtle signs of power. I could not stand her hovering. And one night, after I pitched what must have been a terrible fit indeed, I ran deep into the Wilds with every intention of never returning."

Edmund raised his brows in surprise at that. "You just took off into the swamp? Little kid, with no magic, and you're still alive?" He was aware his visit to the Wilds had been unusually hostile by it's standards, what with all the darkspawn, but even without a Blight on that was about as volatile as terrain could get.

"Do not forget, that swamp is my home. And Flemeth's lessons of survival did not wait to begin until I had power," she added quickly. "But yes. T'was a reckless decision. And though I knew to be wary of the dangers of the wilds, I was too young to have true hope of surviving on my own for long."

"So what did you do? Obviously you didn't fall off a cliff or get eaten by wolves."

"I found my power," said Morrigan, and to punctuate her point she raised her hand up and manifested a cluster of faintly glowing purple lights that illuminated the darkened chamber.

He sat a moment mesmerized by the little floating lights. Just when he thought he was getting used to the existence of magic, the simplest thing went and reminded him of the wonder of it all. The lights spun briefly before scattering about the room, a few drawing the attention of the mabari who sniffed at them curiously.

"I stumbled into a pit of mud that refused to let me free. It was too thick, too deep, and pulling me under quickly… and I too small and weak to extract myself. And t'is no wonder, as those bogs are known to swallow Chasind warriors whole without remorse," She continued matter-of-factly.

"Holy shit. You almost got the Artax treatment." Edmund said, in his minds eye substituting the unfortunate horse for a child-version of Morrigan and the scene only became more horrifying. The witch, obviously, did not get the reference, and only blinked at him in bland confusion. "Sorry. Keep going."

"I'd thought all hope was lost when I spotted a tree just beyond the edge of the mud pit. It had long, strong branches, and I thought that if only one would fall where I could reach it and pull myself out…" she trailed off in though, half-reaching with her hand out and up like she was reliving that moment. "And the tree sickened. It died as a force of entropy afflicted it, branches snapping and dropping all around. One extended over the pit enough that I was able to use it to crawl my way free."

The natural bend of Morrigan's magic inclined towards entropy. Shapeshifting might be her specialization, but it was in her hexes that she truly shined. Magic that touched the darker side of power. And if it was ancient and more than a touch forbidden, all the better.

"I was not saved yet. I was freezing, covered in mud, half-starved, far from home, and completely alone. Or so I thought," Morrigan continued with a wave of her finger, beckoning the lights back close to herself. "As it turns out, I had never been alone, not even for a moment. That tree withered into a shriveled husk and died from the grip of my magic, a black bird descended from the sky, and I found myself cradled in the arms of my Mother."

"She was watching you the whole time," he said. He did a poor job of concealing the horrified disbelief. He knew Flemeth wasn't a good mother, but that felt like a new low. "She was going to let you die unless your power awakened."

"You do not know that," Morrigan said sharply, far more defensive than he would have anticipated. "That is only what happened, we cannot know what she might have done if my abilities had not manifested in that moment. What that does show is that she was nearby the whole time, ready to intervene if the situation called for it."

"It was a test. You said so yourself: she set up trials for you all the time. And if you failed that one, I struggle to picture her swooping in to save the day," he insisted, sitting up and leaning forward as he pressed his point.

"Flemeth favors you, clearly. But do not mistake your familiarity with my lifetime at her side," She laughed, but it was dismissive and disbelieving. "If anyone is capable of knowing her at all, t'is I. She can be cruel, but never without purpose."

He clenched his jaw to bite back the retort burning inside him, because no, at this moment he was the only one with anything near an accurate assessment of Flemeth. But it would do him no favors to point that out, and to Morrigan of all people. He pictured that little book sitting at the bottom of his bag, filled with secrets that would crumble any defense she had for her mother. But it wasn't the right time, and he didn't think he was the right one to give it to her. So he swallowed back his true thoughts.

"I wasn't there, and you were a child, so the only one who'll ever really know the truth is Flemeth," he said instead, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms. "But I do know cruelty has no purpose. That's what makes it cruelty."

"Cruelty is a teacher. A wise pupil listens the first time. And I have made myself very wise, indeed. These lessons did not come between the pages of books, as they are delivered to you Circle mages. Ha, indeed, the sheer size of that library here is almost unfathomable—do you domesticated mages do anything else but read all day?" Morrigan scoffed through her musing tangent.

"Such disdain for the library? Hm, then I wonder who that beautiful witch was that I spied swiping some of those very books from the shelves as we passed through earlier, because surely she couldn't have been you if you view it with such distaste." Edmund quirked a brow and gave her a pointed look, then glanced down to the bag at her side still with it's contents askew from her searching through it earlier. "Oh, no, looks like I was right. Sneaky witch-thief, indeed."

Her cheeks flushed a dramatic shade of pink and she quickly reached to pull the flap down over the contents of her pack, but not before he'd slyly picked up his staff and used the hooked shepherd's cane end to pull it closer to him instead. Morrigan sputtered in protest as he plucked a few of the tomes from the top and turned them over in his hands.

"Ancient Tome of Arcane Techniques… Waking Nightmares and True Torment, sounds like light reading. Ooh, Lurking Horrors of the Deep, that one looks good. Secrets of the Frostbacks…? Oh, it's mostly a picture book, cool—"

He was cut off as the witch frantically clambered over and snatched the book from his hands. He tried very hard not to notice how close she was to him as she huffed indignantly and shoved the books back into her pack before shuffling back to her one place on the floor.

"'Tis no business of yours," Morrigan said, crossing her arms in front of herself.

"Don't worry, I won't tell the Knight Commander. Besides, you're not the only one. I've been helping myself to every other bookshelf I come across." he said, chuckling as he reached over for his own bag. Careful to leave the grimoir at the bottom of the bag, he laid out the books he'd pilfered for his own collection.

Morrigan leaned in close once more as she scanned over the titles. "Dreamwalking: Rituals for Understanding the Fade… 'Controlled Destruction.' Hah. I believe you best pay extra attention to the 'Controlled' part, yes? Quieting the Mind… and… Beginners Guide to Translating the Elvhen Language?"

"They had a few copies of that one. Figured I might pass one to Isefel, help her figure out whatever Rosaya says when she switches languages."

"Hm. I am rather more concerned about these two," Morrigan said, selecting two books from the stack and holding them up. "Ellie's Exploding Elixirs… and Raising Nugs: A How-To Guide? Truly, that last one perplexes me."

"Well, the first one's obvious, isn't it? Present for Liri. I don't think she's one for following recipes written by someone else, but maybe it'll give her some inspiration for new mixes. And as for that last one, well," he said, then pitched his voice low and leaned closer like he was conveying some conspiratorial secret from the ears of eavesdroppers. "Don't tell anyone, since it's technically a spoiler for the future, but we're going to be adding a nug to the group."

Morrigan looked borderline scandalized. "Surely you jest."

"I would never jest about something as important as this," Edmund said in full seriousness.

Morrigan tossed the book back towards the stack with a noise of disgust. "We already have Alistair. Does he not already fulfill the role of pathetic and completely useless mammal?"

He broke the facade of seriousness as laughter bubbled up inside him. "All the more reason to be prepared for once the inevitable occurs." he picked up the book in question and tossed it over in his hand once before setting himself to returning his books to his pack.

"You asked of my first experience with my magic… I should like to hear of your own," Morrigan asked once they'd both finished stowing their respective hordes of stolen literature.

"Really? You would?" he asked with open surprise.

"In truth, you are the first mage I have spent any considerable time near besides my own mother. I wonder at how much similarity there would be between the manifestation of our powers," she said simply.

"Ah. Well, I didn't have a Swamps of Sadness moment, if that's what you're wondering," he joked to buy time while he frantically tried to decide what to say. And then for the first time in what felt like a very long time, he decided to tell the truth. "I never thought I'd be a mage. No magic in the family, never encountered any magic. Actually, if you told me magic wasn't real and I'd have readily agreed."

"But you told that woman and her daughter in Lothering that there had always been magic in your family, did you not?" Morrigan frowned and looked him over critically, like she'd just perceived some flaw in his being. "Why contradict yourself?"

"Contradiction doesn't mean both aren't true. The Amells always have had a strong connection to magic," he nodded weakly and with just a little bit of guilt in his heart that no doubt betrayed across his face. "Just… not me."

"Purposefully misdirectful, indeed," Morrigan muttered through tightly pursed lips and mostly to herself.

She already knew he was a liar of some measure, a fact that she respected even if it did warrant a level of apprehension on her part, but maybe she could recognize his effort towards transparency. He hoped so, anyways. It was to both of their benefit to build some basic foundation of trust. And even a few sentences of unimpeded honesty felt like such a relief.

Rather than chase him down the rabbit hole that was his self-contradicting truth, she indulged his claim just a bit further. "Was your life truly so mundane? How did you bear it?"

"The same way you bore through endless trials and tests. I didn't know there was any other way," he said pointedly. "Then, one day, out of nowhere and for seemingly no reason, there's fire shooting out of my hands and I don't know what to do. There's no help, no answers, just panic. Suddenly I'm on my own and more dangerous than I've ever been in my entire life. There's no time to marvel at the fact that I have literal fucking magic because suddenly every thought is devoted to not setting myself or someone else ablaze with a misplaced wave of energy."

"And then the templars came and took you to this place." Morrigan glanced to the surrounding walls of the chamber like they personally offended her, because they probably did.

"Yeah. And then I was here," he said, painfully aware in his own heart that by agreeing with her he was treading back into being 'purposefully misdirectful,' as she'd so aptly put it. But it wasn't so bad. He was still telling the bare bones of the truth… and letting her own assumptions fill in the gaps. "But I didn't really begin to thrive in my magic until I left the tower."

"T'is little wonder. How one could truly grow in the full breadth of one's arcane gifts in such a stifled place is unimaginable to me," she said in ready agreement.

"It works for some people. Just not for me. I was never a very successful classroom learner; smart enough to get by, but never able to actually focus on the lessons because of all the distractions inside my own brain," he said.

The enchanted lights on the walls flickered abruptly. Once then, twice, and again then resumed their normal glow. Maybe whatever was happening above was settling down?

"Do you think this is a test too?" He asked, speaking the words quietly like he was afraid of someone hearing even though they were completely alone. He knew the answer, at least part of it. But he wondered what she made of all of it. "Flemeth sending you with us, I mean."

"It's not a question if it is a test, because it most assuredly is," Morrigan answered cooly, a sudden shift in her demeanor setting back that barrier of unfamiliarity between them. "What is unclear is who her trial is for: me, the Wardens, or you."

To hear her so clearly acknowledge the distinction between him and the others set his hairs standing on end. He reminded himself again that Morrigan saw through more of him than most.

"Let's not underestimate her," he said, reaching for the wall as he at last pulled himself up to stand. Distant footsteps echoed down the hall—the others were back. "I'm sure she's perfectly capable of testing all three at once."

. . . . .

Tathas didn't look much like Lastara. She took after her father—whoever he was, they'd never met the man. But Nira did. She was fairer, but all of her features were just as sharp and cunning as both of their mothers. Even the way she spoke had the same cadence she remembered, a trait the elven mage couldn't even realize she'd inherited as Lastara had never had a chance to know either of her children.

The uncanny resemblance left Isefel watching the young mage on occasion like she was looking at a ghost. Nira was a missing piece in their family, something stolen away before they'd ever had the chance to know her.

"They took her. I don't even know if she lives… Maker, she was so small, she barely even cried. They didn't even let me hold her, Adaia, they just took her away—"

The quiet words whispered through broken sobs echoed across her memory. They weren't meant for her to hear. Just a heartbroken confession from one sister to another in the dark hours of the night. Isefel would've never known of Lastara's first daughter if it weren't for her lurking up past her bedtime that night, hiding in the shadows while she listened to her aunt confess the details of her most recent escape from the Circle. Neither her mother nor her sister ever spoke of the babe stolen by the Circle again, but Isefel never forgot what she overheard.

And now she'd found that babe. Alive and grown and completely unaware of any connection between the two of them.

The wound in her heart so freshly cut by the demons imitating her family in dreams ached once again. She'd been able to be there for Shianni and Soris and Tathas. But not Nira. There'd been no hope of finding the child again, assuming she survived the cradle. She'd never even told Tathas of her half-sister—there'd never really been a point, and it seemed a needless burden to inflict upon an already troubled child.

The knife in her soul twisted even deeper. Was her family at home even alright? Denerim was half the country's length away, and still it felt like she'd only been there yesterday. Removing herself from the city with Duncan had likely stopped an oncoming purge, but after the fiasco of her wedding her family was far from safe. She hoped Tathas was listening to her parting advice and not getting into any unnecessary trouble. She hoped Shianni's outspoken nature wasn't attracting the wrong kinds of attention. She hoped Soris was settling into a happy marriage with Valora.

Most of all, she hoped Father was alright. That he wasn't retreating back into himself from despair or worry, that he was still present for the ones who still needed his support.

There was so much she wanted to ask of this new cousin she'd found. But where could she even start? Did she know what had become of her mother? Was she well treated in the tower? Did she want to leave? Would she leave with them? If she was anything like Lastara, then Nira likely already had a history of escapes under her belt. The thought almost made her smile.

Isefel held these questions close to her heart and then stowed them carefully away. These were matters that could be settled after the Circle was no longer in peril. This woman was, in every respect, a stranger, and their singular focus had to be on purging the abominations and saving the First Enchanter—indeed, none among them seemed to match the elven mage's focus for the objective. It was not the time for distractions.

At last they found what she could only assume was the final flight of stairs before the final confrontation, and her stomach twisted in on itself at what she saw. There was more of that twisted, corrupted flesh creeping across the walls like sinister vines, and at times sections of it twitched horribly as if somehow alive. Worse was the flashing wall of light sequesting the far corner of the chamber, not for the magical barrier it formed but scattering of dead templars lying across the floor inside it.

Though their company halted in place at the gruesome sight, Nira was not still. She made a gasping sound that was part outcry and part broken sob, and she tore ahead and raced to the barrier. Isefel kept close on her heel, and through the flashing light of the magical obstruction she saw one man still alive. The templar was knelt on the ground, rocking back and forth in the most fervent and desperate prayer she'd ever been witness to.

Nira raced to the barrier. She raised her hands with magic at her fingers and pressed them against the obstacle, but the wall of light was unyielding in the face of her spell. It flashed blinding bright and retaliated, afflicting her with an arcane shock strong enough to drop her straight to her knees. Isefel caught her as she fell and helped her settle on the ground.

The templars reddened eyes flickered up at the commotion, filled with recognition, fear, and shame. "This trick again?" he whispered, his voice hoarse and barely audible over the ambient hum of magic. "I know what you are. It won't work. I will… stay strong…"

"Cullen! It's me, I'm here. Maker, what've they done to you…" Nira said, nearly breathless. She pushed away from Isefel's grasp and scrambled closer to the barrier one more. The templar dropped his gaze from hers, turning his face down to his hands clasped over his knee and shutting his eyes tight. "It's me. Nira. Don't you recognize me?"

Cullen grimmaced, eyes still sealed closed. "Only too well. How far they must have delved into my thoughts…"

"The boy is exhausted. And this cage… I have never seen anything like it." Wynne was at there side then, waving a hand in the air as she traced a pattern of arcane runes and inspected the barrier. The barrier did not respond to whatever spell she attempted to cast and she frowned before turning a kind and sympathetic eye to the man in the cage. "Rest easy, child. Help is here."

"Enough visions!" he cried through gritted teeth. "If anything in you is human, kill me now and stop this game."

"He's delirious. He's been tortured, and has probably been denied food and water. I can tell," said Leliana, moving up with them along with their rest of the group to stand near the barrier.

The minstrel was right. Bruises blossomed visibly along his face an neck, and she suspected there were plenty more along the rest of his body despite the protection of his armor. His lips were dry and cracked, and the sunken hollows around his eyes implied that while they had spent much of the last day or so sleeping, this man had been denied any form of rest for far too long.

And that was only the beginning of it. Isefel cast a sweeping eye over the bodies in the prison with him. She checked the faces the could see out of habit, but most were too disfigured for any hope of recognition. At a rough count, thirty dead men, but the dismembered pieces with no matching remains to connect to implied an even greater number than that. Her mind suddenly questioned the source of the horrid flesh growths creeping along the walls around them.

"Here, I have a skin of water—" Leliana's kind offer, though fruitless since they'd be able to pass him anything through the barrier, was refused before she even managed to retrieve her waterskin from her satchel.

"Don't touch me! Stay away!" he barked, like some terrified and beaten dog. "Sifting through my thoughts… tempting me with the one think I always wanted but could never truly have. Using my shame against me… my ill-advised infatuation with her… ha, a mage, of all things." Nira's already fair complexion paled even greater at the words tumbling from the templars lips. Isefel glanced between the two of them, a clearer picture beginning to form in her mind as pieces of context fell into place. "I'm so tired of these cruel jokes… these tricks… these…"

"It's no trick. We're here to help." Isefel said with as much reassurance as she could muster.

"Silence! I'll not listen to anything you say. Now begone!" Cullen stood suddenly, waving his hands as if to physically banish them from the room with his gesture. Finally his eyes opened, and when they did he stumbled back a step as he truly took in the crowd of spectators he'd now gathered. When his eyes met those of their elven mage, they stopped, and he stared though her as if he truly could not believe she was there. "You're… still here? But that's always worked before. I close my eyes, but you are still here when I open them."

"We're no illusion. We are real. All of us," Aothor said.

"Don't blame me for being cautious." Cullen reached a hand to his head like he was checking it was indeed still attached to his body. His hands raked though his severely unkept curls, an action that only added to his maddened appearance. "The voices… the images… so real."

"It… it's alright," Nira said, reaching once more for the barrier with a shaking hand but halting a hairs breadth from touching it. "I know you didn't mean it. You didn't know what you were saying."

"Do not tell me what you think you know. I am beyond caring what you think," he scoffed, shaking his head and then turning his face heavenward. "The Maker knows my sin, and I only pray he forgives me."

Nira dropped her hand back to her side, her eyes fixed to the floor as she stood once more. "Cullen, I'm sorry, I… I never meant to cause you such torment."

"You are a mage and I, a templar. It is my duty to oppose you and all you are," Cullen spat. When he looked at her again, it was in fear and suspicion, and he pointed a condemning finger towards her. "How have you remained free of the blood mages? Or have you perhaps been one of them all along, scheming in the shadows?"

"What? No, don't be absurd. You know me, you know I could never be one of them. How could you even think such a thing?" Nira recoiled, flinching as if the accusation had physically wounded her. "The Circle is my home."

"As it was mine. And look what you mages have done to it," he spead his arms wide and turned in place, gesuting in despair to the remains of his comrades all around him. "The mages deserve to die. All of them. And Uldred most of all. They caged us like animals… looked for ways to break us. I'm the only one left."

"Be proud. You have mastered yourself." Sten nodded, nodding at the broken man with something like approval.

"Be proud? What is there to be proud of? That I lived and they died?" Cullen sneered, discarding the giants praise entirely. "They turned some into… monsters. And… there was nothing I could do."

As if to punctuate his point an agonized howl echoed down from the chamber above, sending a chill ghosting over Isefel's skin.

"Please, stay strong. I'm going to set this right." Nira insisted.

"And to think I once thought we were too hard on you." Cullen said darkly, star. "But perhaps a more proactive hand against the evil of mages and magic could have prevented this disaster.

Nira shook her head, blinking furiously as she fought back building tears. "We're not all evil, Cullen. I'm not. I… I lo—ah!"

Her hands were stifled by her own gasp of pain as she'd unthinkingly reached forward again and pressed her hands against the barrier and was once more shocked by magically afflicted pain. Isefel moved to catch her should she stumble again, but this time she kept her feet.

"Only mages have this much power at their fingertips. Only mages are so susceptible to the infernal whisperings of the demons." Cullen scowled at her through the divide, such contempt in his eyes that it bordered on hatred and Nira physically retreated a step away. "And you… you are just the same as all of them. Fire alive and a demon asleep. I was a fool to ever believed you were different."

"That's enough. I won't hear you speak to her like that, not one word more," Isefel raised a hand sharply as she cut in, shifting to stand in front of Nira and making herself a physical wall between the mage and the templar. "You have my sympathy for what you have endured… and my pity for how you have allowed it to warp your heart. But she does not deserve your cruelty."

"Come on," Rosaya said quietly, nodding towards the steps. "The sooner we put down the ones responsible for this, the sooner it will be over. For everyone."

"The sounds coming out from there… oh, Maker…" With the line of sight to Nira cut off Cullen slid from one source of pain to the next. He rushed towards the edge of the barrier then, the swiftness of his movements almost alarming, and spoke in a terrified plea. "You can't save them. You don't know what they've become. They've been surrounded by blood mages, whose wicked fingers snake into your mind and corrupt your thoughts. You may look at them and see sheep in need of shepherding, but now they are all wolves in disguise."

"He has suffered pain and anguish like few have had to endure," Wynne said quickly, eager to dismiss his request. "That, and his lust for revenge has confused the issue—"

"Do not presume to judge me, mage!" he snarled, beginning to pace the length of the wall between them like a true caged animal. "I am thinking clearly—for perhaps the first time in my life."

Cousland sighed, shaking his head. "We're not slaying innocents because of a 'maybe.'"

"Are you really saving anyone by taking this risk?" Cullen pressed. "To ensure this horror is ended, that it never repeats itself… to guarantee no abominations or blood mages live, you must kill everyone up there."

"We will need to see the situation above before deciding what to do," Aothor said evenly, adjusting the strap securing his shield. "If all the mages are hostile, we'll deal with them accordingly. If not, we'll save who can be saved."

"That is your choice to make, but I beg you to consider what I have to say," Cullen clenched his hands into fists, but relented. There wasn't much he could do from inside a cage, after all. "You cannot tell maleficarum by sight. Just one could influence the mind of a king, of a Grand Cleric! And if that happens the damage could be too widespread to contain. Every mage in this tower is suspect, and must be eliminated before it is too late."

There was a targetedness to his words that she didn't miss, and neither did Nira. Isefel glanced back and saw the redness of her eyes and the tell-tale tear tracks down her cheeks.

"I'd rather ten bloodmages escape than put one of their victims to the sword for no reason other than your delirious fear," Isefel said as she placed a gentle hand on the elven mage's shoulder and started to steer her away towards the stairs.

"Maker turn his gaze on you all. I hope your compassion hasn't doomed us all." His words rang hollow after them as they left him behind and moved towards their goal.

After only a few steps Nira jerked her shoulder sharply away, and Isefel quickly retracted her grip that this woman was still a stranger, and they had all just intruded on what was surely an immensely personal and painful moment. The elven mage paused at the bottom of the stairs, her back still to the rest of them. She wiped away the tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand and fixed the other tightly around the grip of her staff.

"We need you focused. If you're head's not in the fight then you'd better go back," said Aothor, inclining his head back towards the halls they'd come through to reach this point.

"I intend afflict Uldred with such severe bodily harm that there will not be a soul left here or in the afterlife capable of recognizing what remains." The mage was placid and still as she spoke, the threatening vitriol that dripped from her words left no question in Isefel's mind that this was undoubtably Tathas's elder sister. "I would not recommend becoming an obstacle to this goal, Warden."

"Steel yourself, child," Wynne counselled. "Do not let your emotions master you, no matter what you feel."

"Thank you for your concern, Senior Enchanter," Nira said, at last turning around and facing them. She'd calmed herself so quickly it was almost alarming. Indeed, the only remaining evidence of her distress was the redness that remained around her eyes. She reached out and passed a scroll to the elder mage—the Litany of Adrala. "You need not worry. I am always in control."

"We're going in. Be ready for anything," Aothor instructed, motioning for them to form up and follow him to the final chamber.

What awaited them once they entered was nothing short of a storm. Isefel was no mage—indeed, she was as mundane as any other ordinary person, but even she could feel the hair-raising arcane pressure that swirled around the chamber in a chaotic cacophony and the power left her breathless. The energy was visible as a torrential blurr through the air, distorting almost the very foundations of reality itself.

The source was a cluster of mages gathered together around a the center of the Harrowing chamber. Aside from them, there were a half-dozen other mages spread out at the corners of the chamber, staffs raised aloft as they passed power to wards the ritual taking place in the middle. Their crew of Wardens and companions crowded in from the entrance, but if the bloodmages were at all bothered by the intrusion they did now show it, instead remaining intent on their casting.

A bald mage at the very heart of the center cluster stood with his hands clasped lazily behind his back. Isefel recognized him: he was the mage in attendance at the king's strategy meeting. This was Uldred.

Before him knelt a red-headed elven woman—but not of her own will. Her shoulder shook and strained, as if she was being held still by some unseen force. He spoke slowly and quietly as he circled and appraised her. He paused his quiet monologue and leaned in close to her face. Mustering what must have been all of her strength, the woman broke the arcane hold and spat in disgust, her bile spraying across his gaunt cheek.

Uldred tutted and shook his head in disappointment, cleaning his face with the back of one hand and raising the other towards a shadowed corner of the chamber. There Isefel spied a huddle of Tranquil mages, still and impassive to the terrible events transpiring around them. One, an old man who sported the brand, lifted into the air suddenly like a puppet manuevererd by strings and slowly drifted towards the middle of the chamber. He twitched in pain as the magic that held him aloft also caused torment. Uldred caught him by the front of his vestments once he was near enough. With a flourish of his arms and a flash of a silver blade the Tranquil man's throat sputtered with blood, and he died as the bloodmage dropped him on the ground.

And from the blood of that man came power. A dark an sinister force crept over the elven woman at his command, stealing control of her away from her own mind. Her eyes drifted and went glassy, her shoulders slumped as she no longer struggled against him. Uldred nodded, and she stood, and with a gesture from his hand shuffled to join the other enslaved mages at the perimeter of the chamber with her staff raised to offer him more power.

Isefel did not agree with Cullen or his cruel request. But she did better understand his fear.

"You monster," Nira growled, breaking the formation Aothor had instructed and marching further into the room. "How could you?!"

"Ah… look what we have here. Irving's star pupil. So you have made your way to me, at last," Uldred said with all the calm familiarity of passing an acquaintance on the street. "I confess, I thought you were ripped apart by the demons, or perhaps taken by them yourself. It is good to see you are not dead."

"You will wish I was in short order, this I promise you," she said lowly, her staff punctuating the vow with a loud crackle of raw energy.

"There's no need for all that, Surana," Uldred said, waving his hand dismissively in the face of her wrath. "You must introduce me to these new friends of yours. They do look particularly violent. Has Gregoir really stooped so low? Sending in mercenaries after us rather than face us himself?"

Isefel glanced to the side and caught Rosaya's eye. A moment of silent understanding passed between them, and slowly they began to melt into the shadows and split in different directions, her one way and the Dalish the other. Slow, careful movements made them a whisper across the ground let them creep ever so slowly around the circular ring of the perimeter. If Nira and the other could keep him talking long enough, they would be able to subdue the controlled mages acting as his battery.

"We're Grey Wardens, and we're going to make you pay for what you've done here." Alistair announced proudly.

"Grey Wardens? Truly?" Uldred looked over their number with renewed interest, eyes catching and lingering on Cousland, recognizing him from Ostagar no doubt. "Ah, yes. I see it now. How intriguing—truly a group I will be able to make most excellent use of, considering recent events."

"It is not too late, Uldred," Wynne said, standing at Nira's side and staring down the bloodmage without even a hint of fear. "Surrender now and there may yet be a form of mercy awaiting you."

Isefel reached of the puppet mages channelling power to Uldred. She came at him from behind and covered his mouth with one hand and with the other struck the back of his head with the pommel of her blade. He startled in place but went limp, and she carefully lowered him to the floor. She held perfectly still, not so much as daring to breath while she watched Uldred for any reaction. He failed to give one. She did not feel relieved—not yet. One down, many more to go. She couldn't see Rosaya from here and could only hope she was able to make similar progress.

"Ah, Senior Enchanter Wynne. The whistleblower. I do not need an olive branch from you. Especially not when you yourself are to blame for the dismal state of affairs in this place," he sneered, and Wynne balked at the blame. "What was meant to be a quick and quiet takeover has turned into quite the long and complicated affair all thanks to you squealing to the First Enchanter. This could have been a simple thing, nearly bloodless aside from a few key sacrifices. But now soooo many mages are dead. And they are dead because you couldn't keep your bitch mouth shut."

Isefel remembered the dream in the Fade—Wynne surrounded by dead mages, convinced their fate was her own fault. That she did not deserve to live because of their deaths. She scanned the faces of the Circle mages in the chamber with them. The ginger mage Uldred took control of as they entered the chamber had been one of those bodies in the nightmare. So had a few of the mages who stood in the ring around Uldred in the center.

The old woman stood firm in the face of his goading, however, having already overcome this guilt in dreams. At least enough that his words held no purchase in her. "The only one responsible is who you will find looking back at you in a mirror. I pray the Maker forgives you, for I certainly never shall."

Uldred only tutted and shook his head. "Then I am disappointed in you. Not surprised, but disappointed all the same. Fear not, I shant hold it against you. I am so very magnanimous. You see, Surana, our dearest Senior Enchanter is too stuck in the old ways. But I have found a better path. One that offers all the power and freedoms we've been denied by the Order," he paused in his melodramatic speech long enough to extend a hand out towards her, palm open and beckoning. "I see in you that which lives in me: a hunger for something more. There is a place for you here at my side in this new world—together we could make it perfect. I can help you find something more."

"I am nothing like you. I am a loyal mage. The Circle is my home," Nira proclaimed in full confidence. She twisted her staff in a wide arc, summoning a swirl of arcane symbols around her. "You could never give me what I want."

"Ah-ah-ah." Uldred shook his finger with all the belittling superiority of a schoolteacher. "Mind your manners. You wouldn't want anything unfortunate to befall your beloved First Enchanter, would you?"

Uldred turned and place and gestured to the furthest edge of the Harrowing Chamber. A dozen mages crowded together in a tight huddle on the floor, all of them sporting injuries from various forms of torture both magical and mundane. But that was not what caused Isefel to freeze in place as she crept along the shadows.

Five templars stood by the hostage mages kneeling with their hands over their heads. Only, not normal templars. They were grotesque and deformed, faces morphed and unrecognizable as anything human. These hunched forms were abominations in templar armor, men made host to the demons they were meant to defend the world against. These templar abominations drew their steel or bared their claws at the wave of Uldred's hand, bearing down on the hostage mages, who cowered and braced themselves for either pain or death.

Nira's magic dispelled around her. Uldred lowered his hands, and the abominations paused before their blows could land.

"Remarkable, aren't they?" he said with all the glowing pride of a parent as he looked back on them. "A most ingenious idea, on my part. Bind a demon to them to make them stronger than any soldier alive, and they retain all of a templars gifts against mages. And all under my control! I must say, I have truly outdone myself. With them as my shock troops I shall squash Gregoir and the paltry remains of his forces, and enforce my will over any mages who dissent before the understand the greatness of my plans. I hope to increase their count by one more. Only time will tell if the boy remaining below will be receptive to the process—"

The overly self-congratulatory monologue stopped as Nira finally had enough and cast an arcane bolt at the arrogant bloodmage. He dismissed it with a quickly erected barrier, not at all pleased with the interruption. He opened his mouth once more, surely to spew more agrandizing ideals, but a sudden impact struck the ground at his feet and sprayed a violent burst of ice across him and his inner circle.

Isefel cast a quick look to the mages, but neither Nira nor Wynne had cast and in fact looked rather surprised. Liri, however, rolled her should once before reaching into her pouch again. She produced another glass container, but rather than throw it at the enemy she smashed it directly at her feet. A dense fog swelled in an instant, providing brief but invaluable cover for their team.

The bloodmages howled from the pain afflicted by the chemical-smelling artificial ice, but with the gauntlet thrown… or in this case, the grenade thrown, the fight was on in earnest. They threw spells into the cloud cover but without line of sight their aim failed them.

"Secure the hostages!" Aothor cried, raising his shield and charging in alongside Alistair at the front. "Wynne, the Litany!"

Uldred laughed, a sound that betrayed the madness lurking beneath his schemers exterior. He raised his staff and gathered a great ball of light above him, and once it grew in size it shattered, raining down piercing shards of energy all around. Isefel did not stay stationary and watch to see if her friends were able the evade or defend against the downpour of energy. They would be fine—she knew they would. Instead she raced forward and grabbed hold of the next puppet mage she could reach and subdued him.

There should only be a few more, and with his auxiliary power supply cut Uldred would be much less of a threat. Isefel searched the opposide side of the chamber fervently until her eye caught upon that which she hoped to see. Utilizing a clever application of tripwire and rope Rosaya had ensared three of the thralls at once and secured them to a nearby piller, rendering them useless.

There were a few more enslaved mages left, but Isefel would leave them to the Dalish. The others were engaged with the bloodmages and unable to break away—she needed to get to the hostages. She could only hope she reached them before their abomination jailers hadn't yet harmed them.

And they hadn't, not yet anyway, and not for lack of trying. The templar creatures swung at the tormented mages with fang, blade, and claw, but every unrelenting strike was deflected by a magical barrier. Though Nira glared at Uldred with all the anger and hurt in the world, her magic wasn't fixed against him. She was protecting the mages of the tower from danger.

Isefel reached the monstrosities and came upon one from behind, cutting in with her blades wherever they could find purchase between the mishapen plate armor and grotesque growths. It howled and thrashed, but she didn't let it's bladed talons find her. She shifted with it as it turned, keeping behind it out out of reach as she continued to pierce and cut.

Her ears perked to a shifting and sudden movement on her left, the only warning she got to duck just in the nick of time as another of the abominations swung from her blindside to where her head had been just heartbeats before. In one respect it was a good thing: if they were attacking her, then they were leaving the mages alone. But she could only dodge their blows for so long, and if one were to connect there wouldn't be much her light armor could do to protect her.

But she wasn't fighting alone for long. Sten and Liri both managed to break away from the entanglement with the mages and join her in defending the hostages. Sten wound back with his massive weapon and in a heavy swing knocked one of the abominations away and against the wall of the chamber. It did not move again. Between her own bladework and the help from Liri, Isefel was able to finish off the other one.

She breathed heavy but did not slow her pace, turning to the three deformed templars still hounding the hostages with the intent of targeting them next. But she was stopped by Liri tapping her arm and the excited look in her eye as she met her gaze.

"Idea," she signed quickly, inclining her head first to the abomination on the ground and then to the cluster of bloodmages in the center of the chamber casting in unison. "Throw it."

Isefel blinked, then all at once remembered a fact she had unfortunately experienced first hand—abomination bodies explode once slain.

She and Sten moved quickly to lift and hurl the body—with the giant admittedly doing most of the work. At the same time Liri hurled one of her concoctions. It broke on impact and coated several of the bloodmages in a sticky form of oil. The body of the abomination flopped pathetically to the floor nearby, and the bloodmages had no sooner finished spitting the splattered mixture from their mouths than the body erupted and caught with the primer in a fantastic blaze that rivalled any of Edmunds destructive fire spells.

The mages wailed horribly, the sticky pitch igniting and melting the flesh from their bodies. They died horribly. Maybe there was some justice in that.

Liri laughed in exuberant triumph, but she wasn't done causing drama on the battlefield, not by any measure. One of Uldred's remaining lackeys was casting furiously towards Liri as she started towards him, but despite the swirling power of bloodmagic flowing out from her the dwarven woman advanced unimpeded.

"Obey me! Why won't you listen?! Obey, I command it!" the mage cut his palm once more and cast again, but he was too slow.

Liri reached him, swung her mace, and knocked his kneecaps in. Aothor was right behind her, also able to innately shrug off the magical effect but with a bit more difficulty.

"She doesn't listen to anyone. Magic is no exception, apparently," he chuckled with a dark sort of satisfaction. He slammed his shield downward, crushing the bloodmages neck and ending him permanently.

The two shared a look of acknowledgement before Aothor shifted suddenly, catching and deflecting a firebolt against his shield, and the two dwarves split off again, dodging between hostile spells and malicious effects, darting to different places on the battlefield where they were needed.

Isefel didn't waste any time either. She and Sten set their sights to the remaining demented templars with purpose, and were shortly joined in their endeavor with fire support from Rosaya as she finished securing the last of the puppet mages along with moving the Tranquil out of harms way.

All was going relatively well until one of Uldred's remaining lackey's—there were only four of his underlings left—summoned shards of ice and launched them towards Cousland, Leliana, and Alistair. The ex-templar's focus had thus far been dedicated towards the cancellation of hostil spells, but his focus failed him in this instance. And though the spear-sharp ice broke against the warriors heavy plate, Leliana's leathers and chain afforded no such defense and one sank into her sternum.

A frantic cry rose for healing magic and Wynne raced to attend with life-saving power. But as she cast the spell her devoted recitation of the Litany of Adrala that had spared them all the effects of blood magic waned. And the enemy was prepared to take full advantage of the chance.

Wynne completed her spell and stood to resume her chant, but before she could her eyes became distant and glassy. Uldred only had three underlings left now, because he sank his dagger into the heart of the man standing at his right hand. He pulled the subsequent power of his life force and blood and the Senior Enchanter became his puppet.

Isefel watched in wide-eyed horror as at the blood mages command she held the Litany aloft and turned it to ashes in her hands.

"No!" Nira shrieked in desperate panic.

Uldred laughed triumphantly, turning slowly in place as sinister power still swirled around him. He saw that his mutilated templars were dead and defeated and that smile contorted to a cruel sneer.

"You've deprived me of my muscle. No matter—there are suitable replacements readily available," he stretched out his arm towards her… and her world went white.

She drifted, suspended in a strange stage of awareness. She cusped consciousness without truly grasping it. She has instruction, that makes things clearer. Move. Swing. Strike. Dodge. Strike. Strike.

Strike. The last order echoed inside the chasm of her awareness, unable to dissipate because she could not fulfil it. Something stopped it. Stopped her. What was stopping her? Ah. She couldn't move. Something held her still. Someone holds her still. How frustrating.

Resist. Fight. Kill.

The commands come in a comprehensible sequence. It seems the logical course of action, perfectly reasonable indeed. When has she not resisted? When has she not had to fight? And yes, even killing, that she can do easily enough if the situation suits.

Protect. Protect. Protect.

This order arrived thrice over and in considerable hurry. And she did not question. Protecting is what she does. Lying down on fire so others can walk over across her back without being burned. It is what she is suited for. It is what she is good for.

A distant, quiet portion of her mind startled at a sharp intruding pain. She was wounded, perhaps, but it seemed unimportant. She did not need to think. There were other thoughts in her head doing the thinking for her. All she had to do was obey.

Yes. Obey.

"Enough!" A single word screamed though her awareness, silencing everything else. Nira…?

All at once reality flipped back into violent focus. Pain wracked the left side of her body but it was nothing compared to the agonizing burning coursing through her bloodstream. Up became down and her world churned so violently she collapsed on all fours, surrendering the contents of her stomach to the floor below her. Even when her gut was hollowed she continued to dry heave and wretch like a cat choking on a hairball. Like she could somehow expunge the violation of being controlled from her body.

"... up… to move… sefel. Isefel, can you hear me?" Rosaya's voice broke through the buzz in her brain. "We have to move—ah!"

Rosaya ducked as a flash of violent power burst dangerously overhead, briefly illuminating the Harrowing Chamber, which had gone completely dark. Rosaya pulled her away and close to the wall of the room where they were out of the line of fire. That line of fire being the violent exchange of magic between Nira and Uldred with his remaining underlings.

Their spellwork spun faster than her eyes could track, arcane symbols spinning and colliding and then all at once errupting in lethal displays of power. Isefel and Rosaya weren't the only ones who'd retreated from the display—the rest of their team had pulled back from the wall lest a stray string of magic collide with them.

"You lied to me, Surana," Uldred laughed, loud and maddened and gleeful. "You said you lacked the inclination for the battlefield. And ooh, what a lie. You fight as fierce as the demons themselves."

"Compare me to a demon once more and you'll find out just how fierce I can be," the elven mage shot back. A trickle of blood leaked from her nose but her focus was locked in and unflinching, as was her magic.

The well of her magic blossomed out around from her in full, colliding with the power residing in her mage opponents. For a moment there was almost a visible struggle between their natural energy. Energy recoiled and snapped violently, causing the very bricks of the tower to quake. Uldred's lackeys shuddered like they'd been lifted and throttled and dropped stone dead, and the ringleader of this uprising was left struggling to breathe and stumbling to his knees.

Nira dropped her staff and walked with slow but purposeful strides to the man on his knees before her. She reached out and placed her palm flat against the bald dome of his head, tilting it up just slightly so he was able to meet her eyes.

"You are a fool. You bear the yolk of the templars, of the Chantry, no better than a common beast of burden when you have all the power in the world at your fingertips," he said though a sputtering cough, blood dribbling down his chin.

"I do have all the power at my fingertips, don't I?" Nira mused coldly. "Would you like to see it?"

From where her fingers made contact with his skull a spiderweb of pale teal light branched out, slowly covering his body. The light was dim at first but with every second it glowed brighter.

"Maker spit on you, Nira Surana. You'll get yours one day, then you'll see I was right—aah… AAAAAH!" The light flashed and flickered under his skin, glowing so bright the light consumed his eyes and poured from his mouth.

Nira removed her hand and stepped back, a rune lingering left behind in his flesh. The elven mage turned and walked away from him, and like an arcane bomb primed for detonation the blood mage's body exploded into a shower of a thousand tiny pieces.

And for the first time since entering the tower, Isefel felt true relief.

It was over.

The Circle was saved.