The next chamber was similar to the first two, but the mummified remains were piled on top of each other, dumped there rather than carefully laid to rest. A colourfully-dressed Orlesian man lay dead before them, his grey mask abandoned nearby, and a single piece of paper scrunched in his fist. Dorian pried it out of the fist's grasp. "He mentions Dirthamen's secret again, but he sounds exceedingly paranoid about this whole thing. I think the poor man went a bit mad in the end."
"He hid here. He died afraid. He took off his mask and couldn't feel his face, so he tried to take that off too," Cole explained.
"That's alright, Cole, I wasn't planning on sleeping tonight anyway," the Iron Bull grumbled.
In the central hall, green tiled mosaics of Dirthamen glittered on each of the outer walls, his facial features hidden behind his hands. The recessed central floor was also flooded, this time by waterfalls streaming over the outer walls. There were statues there as well, but it was hard to make out the details this far away in the dark. Further side chambers surrounded the hall, so the party decided to work their way around clockwise. The first corridor they tried led to further chambers, but the bowls held by the statues were empty. There were also several more fallen treasure hunters, each one separated from the others.
The second corridor brought them to another chamber, another statue, and more pieces of the High Priest; his hands. The glyph nearby gave them a few more clues. 'The Highest One promises safety. I shall protect our ancient secrets, he claims. All that Dirthamen once granted us will be safe. But it is our blood he seeks, a sacrifice dark and unholy, a prison of evil to keep us in and all else out.'
"Blood magic," Bull stated bluntly. "Can't blame them for being angry. If someone tried to use blood magic on me, I'd wanna dismember them too."
'We will not have it, will not have it!' The glyph read. 'The secrets are madness in our ears, but they are ours. The Highest One cannot take them from us. Only Dirthamen, our Keeper, only he, and if he does not take the secrets, they are ours forever.'
"They called Dirthamen their Keeper," Ellethir mused. "I wonder if that's how we've remembered to call our clan leaders Keeper."
"A residual memory of authority?" Solas nodded, thinking. "It's a good theory."
"Without the gods, clan leaders became Keepers, and without Keepers, the leaders of city elves became hahren," Fae reasoned. "It kind of makes sense."
Cole pointed to a gate nearby. "The whispers are louder in there." He had mostly remained calm since his run-in with the ex-templar in Redcliffe, but now his brow was furrowed and he pulled nervously at the brim of his hat. "I can see them."
The gate was sealed with a rusted lever, but the mechanism was no match for the Iron Bull's strength. It yielded downwards and the gates open, and then there was a loud screech as the lever's bar bent further still. "Guess that's as far as it goes."
There was only one chamber behind the gate, and one statue holding a bowl. Skeletons were strewn everywhere, which gave the group pause.
"I believe that might be his heart in there," Cillian took a tentative step forward. "But if we touch any bones here, they could fall apart."
Without a word, Cole disappeared, and reappeared next to the bowl, picking up the heart carefully with both hands.
Cillian gasped. "How—?"
Cole reappeared next to him, and handed him a blackened heart. "I walked through the Fade instead."
"Cole here is a hedge mage," Fae explained quickly, clapping him on the shoulder. "He knows a few tricks the Circle doesn't teach."
"And I'm Compassion," Cole added.
"And he's very compassionate. Look, he gave you a whole heart."
"Right." Cillian said, clearly disturbed but not wanting to press the issue under the circumstances.
"Did you see any glyphs near the statue, Cole?" Ellethir asked.
"No. But I read the words. His mind which cannot think, his tongue which cannot speak, his hands which cannot touch, his ears which cannot hear, his eyes which cannot see, and thus shall our Highest one be bound," Cole recited. "He shall join us in our silence. For his heart, for his heart, our Highest One is bound. The secret that he keeps, he keeps with us, the vigil that he keeps, he keeps with us, his fear will not weaken us, no-one shall come, dear mentor. In our eternity, only darkness reigns…That's all."
"They sealed themselves inside with their High Priest for eternity," Solas said gravely. "In a time when the People did not grow old and die. And yet, they did. They buried each other in these urns, and were forgotten."
"They're not forgotten anymore." Ellethir kneeled before the skeletons. Fae followed suit, as did a few others. Ellethir was silent for a minute, and then simply said, "Falon'Din enasal enaste," and rose to her feet. "Let's return to the main hall, I noticed some of the statues in there already had…pieces, in them."
The statues in the main hall were placed surrounding a central altar. A small pile of papers held in a leather sleeve sat on the altar, their author nowhere to be seen. Ellethir approached, and noticed that it was stained with dried blood.
"What does it say?" Varric asked.
"Lord Gretian ran off," Ellethir replied, still reading. "They voted to keep looking for Dirthamen's secret. It sounds like they were all having nightmares, hearing things."
"Does it say what to do with the bits of High Priest?"
"They were trying to translate something…Ah. I think they were doing it backwards. Fae, could you light one of the bowls with the veilfire torch?"
Fae hovered the torch over the bowl, and the veilfire fed into it, but rather than disappearing, the bowl remained burning as if it was just another torch. "Okay. Now what?"
"Does it have an inscription on the base?"
"Yes, but it's in elven, I can't read it."
Ellethir stepped back down from the altar and joined Fae, handing the bundle of notes to Dorian. "Hands."
Blackwall took the hands from the pack he was using to store the pieces, and gently tossed them into the flames. The hands remained unaffected, but the veilfire flared up.
They repeated the process with each of the parts, until they reached 'Heart.' Blackwall hesitated. "Are we sure we want to do this?"
"We've come this far," Dorian said, sounding uncertain himself. "That's not to say I'm sure, but we'd be leaving everything for the next unfortunate expeditition to find."
Ellethir nodded. "Do it, Blackwall."
The heart was tossed into the flames, and they roared, but this time, the roar was everywhere, and didn't stop. The entire temple shook, and there was a screeching noise like metal being grinded against metal.
Fae covered both ears with her hands and gritted her teeth, feeling the reverberations run across her skin. Behind her, there was a loud, ominous popping sound that most of the party had become all too familiar with; a Fade rift. Only one creature emerged, climbing out intentionally rather than falling. It was tall, and thin with grey skin, wearing ragged robes. Its face was stretched into a perpetual scream, and its jaw hung lower than it should have been able to. The creature screeched again, and raised both its palms, summoning streams of magic to them.
"Despair!" Cole cried, daggers at the ready.
"Despair?! Isn't that the High Priest?!" Ellethir shouted, whirling her staff.
The creature sent forth a blast of fire towards Cole, who disappeared immediately and reappeared a few feet away several seconds later.
"It is both!" Solas yelled. "Though I imagine after this long, it is far more demon than man!"
Fae felt the lightning in the water before she could see it. "Get out of the water! Stay on the floor where it's dry! Shit—!" She followed her own advice, but the stone beneath her rocked as if she was still on the ship that brought them here, and her ears rang. The creature turned towards Fae. Tendrils of static magic wrapped around her and pulled. She let out a yelp as she made contact with the creature's exposed ribcage, and struggled instinctively to force herself out of its grasp. A sharp shard of ice pierced the creature's side, and it shrieked, dropping Fae into the water. She began to scramble away while it was distracted, keeping it within her line of sight. It turned back towards her and stared her down with black, empty sockets, and then she was out of the water, careening across the stone floor, while a cacophony of voices grew louder and louder in her ears, surrounding her from all sides. She stumbled to her knees, hands clamped over her ears. "HalanirevasbanasolimENASALshivanasemahlaharelabelasnehnMARASAN—"
"Make it stop!"
"Delthashethghilasmelanada—"
Someone was lightly tapping her cheek. It was quiet again. Her arms stung. And her legs. Fae winced. "Heyyy, Shortie," Varric was leaning over her, and behind him was the night sky. The main hall's roof had still been intact. Where were they? She tried to sit up, but Varric nudged her shoulder back down. "Easy, kid. You were clocked out, got yourself pretty scraped up. Dorian's put something on for that. You did your ankle, too, there's ice on it."
Fae's forearms felt tight. She lifted one arm, and her sleeve slipped down to reveal wrapped bandages. "What happened?"
"Well, it got you, Cillian and Blackwall before we figured out all it took was making eye-contact, or eye-socket-contact, to make you hear shit, so we had to fight it only looking at its feet, which were in bad shape, let me tell you. Solas did some kind of Rift magic to cut off the voices you were all hearing. Put them back in the Fade, or something. And thank the Maker for Dorian's aim with giant balls of fire. I gotta be honest, it was nothing short of spectacular."
"Sorry to have missed it."
"Eh, don't be. Dorian likes to show off, I'm sure you'll have another chance."
"Was that—the voices, I mean, were they Dirthamen's secrets? The thing that the expedition was looking for?"
"No, actually, that was a real piece of treasure after all, hold on. Inquisitor! Mind if I borrow the secret stick?"
Ellethir's mild discontent at the choice of description from the tent next door was noted, but ignored. Varric returned with a dark wooden branch as long as Fae's arm. It had a greyish tinge to it, but what really made it stand out was a single vein of bright blue lyrium trailing through the centre. Carved below, the inscription read 'mir dirthamen sahlin.' Varric weighed the branch in his hands. "It's a good secret. I would also like to know why and how he got a vein of lyrium into ironwood, that shit's unworkable."
"Ironbark," Ellethir corrected him from next door. "We Dalish use it. It's workable, but it takes a long time to learn. Humans don't usually bother with ironbark trees at all because they're too difficult to cut down."
"That means the ancient elves and the ancient dwarves must have known each other, if the ancient elves were putting lyrium in things," Fae winced as she shifted her weight to face Varric. "Did we already know that?"
"It's assumed, because we have a name for dwarves, but we don't have much evidence of it," Ellethir confirmed. "With that artifact, we have a little more now."
"Inquisition!" A shout from the top of the stairs echoed down the passage.
Everyone save for Dorian and his patients grabbed their weapons and took off, meeting whoever had cried out at the temple's entrance. They returned a few minutes later, sweating and talking amongst themselves.
"Who were they?" Ellethir called out.
"Red Templars!" the Iron Bull replied. "Looks like we found this place just before they did."
Cassandra sat down at the bottom of the stairs with a huff. "We tried to find out if they were here for the temple or for us, but none of them lived long enough for us to get an answer."
"That, or the Red Templars have spread out even further than we thought," Ellethir sighed. "Have our people scout from here to Churneau, see if they find any more."
"I will see it done, Inquisitor. Will we return to Skyhold, once you have recovered?"
"No, let's head back to the Emerald Graves. I'm hoping by the time we arrive that Leliana will have organised the rendezvous with Carroll. And that Fae and I will have had enough time to recover. Cillian?"
There was a choking noise, like Cillian had tried to drink and speak at the same time. "Yes, Inquisitor?"
"When we meet Leliana's agents at Halamshiral, I'll have them escort you back to Skyhold. Thank you for what you've done for us."
"It was my pleasure, really, Inquisitor. If you need anything else from me, you've only to ask."
The return journey from Val Chevin to the Emerald Graves was less comfortable than the first, but things improved when they found Leliana's agents waiting with Sera at the docks with a cart of supplies to take with them to Argon's Lodge, meaning Fae could sit among the supplies and stabilise her leg with the sacks, rather than grit her teeth every time her ankle moved in Hiss' stirrups. Fairbanks welcomed them back with open arms, and conveyed the latest news on the Freemen; the remnants of the group were panicking. Red Templars had ordered every man out onto the roads to resist the Inquisition's presence, but more and more were beginning to doubt that they were serving their own cause, not that of the strangely-outfitted Red Templars.
Another Inquisition agent had also arrived at Argon's Lodge and was waiting for an audience with the Inquisitor. The Dalish party at Sun's Bastion had made progress in their efforts to explore the ancient tomb there, and had accepted the Inquisition's offer to provide extra protection outside the tomb, so long as Ellethir of Clan Lavellan would be there to oversee the Inquisition's presence. The Inquisitor's party began preparations for the journey, but a sizeable detachment of Inquisition soldiers arrived to inform the Inquisitor that Knight-Captain Carroll had agreed to meet with the 'surviving Freemen' at Lions' Pavillion; the ambush was set. It was uncertain how many Red Templars, or Freemen, would be with him, but they had to strike now while they could.
Ellethir wanted to leave immediately, but her wrenched shoulder was still stiff, and Dorian urged caution, for both her shoulder and Fae's ankle, so Cassandra was nominated to lead the attack on Knight-Captain Carroll and his supporters. The ambush was a success, though not without cost. For every Freeman and Red Templar that fell, so did one Inquisition soldier. Two were brought back from the brink of death, but others did not survive their injuries.
With this clash, the Freemen were too few in number to regroup, and those who survived were arrested, sent to Skyhold's cells to wait for the empress to decide their fates or allow the Inquisition to pass judgement. It was hard to say how many Red Templars were left for the Venatori to take advantage of, but losing the Dales would be no insignificant blow to Corypheus' cause. The Inquisitor's party remained in Argon's Lodge for a few days to recover, sending word to Taven that they would meet them soon.
