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peopleofthedas2011-06-06 09:40 am
aithne) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-06-06 09:40 am
Fanfic: In Another Lifetime
An AU of an AU? What madness is this?
This was originally posted on the LJ community circle_tower last year, and I just remembered that it exists. So I decided to post here, just in case anyone felt like a shot of depression to make their Monday morning complete.
This is a what-if that starts in Chapter Three of Waking Hours. What would have happened, if Kathil had been just a little later getting back from the Fade, and Greagoir had taken a little more care with his sword?
Warning: depressing. Very, very depressing. Also, if you haven’t read the Old Roads series, it won’t make much sense.
Title: In Another Lifetime
Wordcount: 5500
Rating: T
Warnings: Major character death, and serious depression potential.
Summary: A Grey Warden returns to the Tower, and everything goes very, very wrong.
In Another Lifetime
Kathil:
You must come back to us. I need you. You cannot tarry.
Kathil stood at the walls of the Black City, looking up. The song spiraled into a shrieking howl, and she winced—how could she have ever thought it beautiful? She was closer than any living mortal had been to the Black City for a very long time, and even though the place twisted her heart with its darkness, she felt a certain kinship.
A certain peace.
Was the grim known better than the grisly unknown?
She glanced over her shoulder at the twisted things that paced along the edge of the old road that had led her here. The thing that had taken Wynne’s shape was gone, but there was something touching her hair. Kathil. My Warden. You must return.
You must—
Then the voice was gone.
Everything was slipping away from her. That voice had been familiar, once. Reluctantly, she took a step away from the walls of the Black City. Duty calls. She wrapped a cloak of lightning around herself, and ran.
The way out opened itself before her and she was rising through the dark water of sleep. She opened her eyes, her whole body going tense—there were so many people and shouting and there was something heavy over her midsection and—
The smell of blood. And death.
Lorn was howling.
She levered herself to a sitting position and without thinking uttered a single syllable, spreading her hands, the power rolling away from her in a wave. The shouting stopped, though Lorn’s howling did not, and Kathil looked down at what was keeping her legs pinned—
Who—
Elf. Blond. Familiar even with his face down in the blanket.
A Templar sword through his chest, blood spreading across his armor and, belatedly, she felt the wet warmth across her thighs. Over her, a shadow loomed, a hard hand reaching for the hilt of the sword. Greagoir.
“Don’t touch it,” she snapped, and Greagoir hesitated slightly. “I have to see if you can pull it safely.”
The Knight-Commander looked confused. It was an odd look on him, and then something large and brindled barreled into him from the side. Lorn gave a howl of triumph as Greagoir fell to the ground in a clatter of armor.
In that moment, many things became clear.
That wasn’t just any sword through Zevran’s chest. That had been Greagoir’s sword. She laid a hand on Zevran and muttered a word.
Nothing.
He was dead, beyond recall.
She shook his shoulder, and his head rolled to the side. There was an expression of surprise frozen on his face, the handsome, tattooed features vacant.
The memory of the howling of the Black City rose in her, and she heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing but acknowledgement: you have left me once again, Zevran Arainai.
As everyone left, but Lorn.
Lorn. Oh, Maker!
She snapped out a command and, thank Andraste, the Mabari listened. He did whine as he backed off from Greagoir and came to her side. She dropped a hand to his head, and he looked up at her with his liquid brown eyes, and whined again.
“I don’t know,” she told him. The tumult of voices was rising again, and she was so cold. She looked down at the body of the assassin she’d once counted as a friend, still lying across her lap. Then she glanced up.
Cullen stood by the foot of the bed, sword naked in his hand, cheeks flaring red and looking rather as if he wished there was a nearby rock he could curl up and quietly die beneath. Then there was more shouting and people were moving and someone was picking up Zevran’s body—no, she wanted to say, wait, someone tell me what’s happened—and her voice wasn’t working. Nothing was working. Someone held a cup to her lips and she drank, the brew burning its way down her parched throat. Hands were on her shoulders. Look this way, look that, I think she’s fine, just in shock.
Then she was alone, and Lorn shoved himself into the bed beside her. She curled up, confused. Lorn licked drops of dried blood away from the backs of her hands, and she threw one arm over the Mabari’s back.
She did not sleep. She wasn’t sure she would ever sleep again.
*****
Cullen:
We will see what the Wardens can make of you.
He sat in his cell in the basement of the Tower, trying not to feel the cold that seeped through the stone from Lake Calenhad. They are sending me away from the Tower, he told himself, willing the words to make some sort of sense.
It had been three days since Cullen drawn steel on the Knight-Commander, three days since the elf had managed to waken Kathil from her Fade-struck sleep and had been promptly spitted for his trouble. There had been some sort of disturbance upstairs a while ago. No one had come to get him.
No one had come at all, for what seemed like a very long time. The lantern they had given him was guttering for lack of oil, and there had been enough for days in it.
Except now he heard footsteps, and straightened. But those weren’t Templar boots, the sound of them was wrong. Softer. Like the shoes the mages wore.
His eyes strained in the darkness, and a figure appeared out of the dim. Startled, he recognized the woman on the other side of the bars.
Kathil.
Her shirt and trousers looked like they had been made for someone a head taller and several stone heavier than her, and they were covered in dark stains. Her hair was ratted, and there were shadows under her eyes. The ugly scar down one side of her face was dark. He would never get used to that scar. She had been so pretty, once. And now…
“You,” he said, and didn’t bother to disguise the disdain in his voice. (Never mind that he had defended her. He had moments of madness, still. That was all it was, a brief leavetaking of his senses.)
She didn’t reply, except to reach through the bars and drop a jangling ring of keys inside his cell. “You should go,” she said. “It’s night now, but you can raise the flag for Kester in the morning. Goodbye, Cullen. I’m sorry about—everything.”
She turned away, her head bowing. Belatedly, he realized that she was alone. No Templar escort. Not even her dog, who Cullen had gotten to know a little during the days they’d both stood vigil over her still form. “Wait,” he said, and his own voice surprised him with its urgency. “What happened?”
Kathil stopped, but did not turn towards him. “Assassins,” she said quietly. “They followed Zevran here, but they didn’t know he’d—died. They killed everyone. Templar, mage, apprentice, down to the last. Greagoir and Irving were taken by some sort of—thing—in the Harrowing Chamber. Lorn…he took too many wounds fighting it off. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save any of them.” There was nothing in her voice but exhausted sorrow. “Get out of here, Cullen. This has never been a good place, but I think it’s about to become a very, very bad place.”
Cullen forced himself to his feet, picked up the keys in one numb hand. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be possible. “Wait. Why are you still alive?” he asked, then cursed how the question sounded.
There was a vicious edge to her tone. “I occasionally have wondered the same thing myself, Cullen. I am a Grey Warden. We are notoriously difficult bastards to kill. Unfortunately.”
His tongue was thick in his mouth. Kathil didn’t move. “What are you going to do?” He fumbled with the keys—there were so many of them, and only one would fit this door. He rattled one after another in the lock. “Maker’s Balls.”
“Tch. Aren’t Templars not supposed to say such things?” She turned back towards him, gently took the keys from his shaking hands. She selected one of the keys and fit it into the lock. Metal clicked, and the door swung open. “I’m going to do what needs to be done, once you’re away. Go to Denerim. Tell the Grand Cleric what’s happened. Tell her the Tower was burned, and everyone is dead.”
“And you?”
She took a long breath, and handed him the key ring once more. “By the time you’re on shore, what you’ll tell the Grand Cleric will be true.”
He stared at her. “You’re just going to give up?”
Kathil took a step back. “Call it insurance.” Pain briefly twisted her face. “I have overstayed my welcome in this world. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been stupid enough to come back to the Tower. If I hadn’t made Zevran promise to find me again, some day. I can’t fix it. I can just make very sure it doesn’t happen again.”
There was an uneasy silence between them. He tried to see any trace of the girl he’d once known, when they used to meet on the back stairs of the Tower. Tried, and failed. She looked back at him as if daring him to do—something.
“Kester can’t see the flag in the dark,” he said. “I don’t even think he watches for it after sundown.”
“And?” Her black eyes were intent on his.
A heartbeat passed, then another.
We are alive in a Tower full of ghosts, and I don’t want to spend the dark hours alone.
It was all he could do to reach out his hand.
She took a step backward, and then another. “I ruin everything I touch, Cullen,” she said in a low voice. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what the look on her face meant, what the tremble in her shoulders portended. “Just—go. Live your life. Try to forget me. This.”
Cullen stood very still, as if this mage were a bird he was trying not to startle. His hand was still outstretched in front of him. “And if I can’t?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her expression slammed shut, a hard glint coming into her eyes. “Then you’ll be one more thing among the many I’ve broken. I’m going upstairs. I’ve cleared the bodies out of the entrance hall. If you stick to the main halls, you won’t see anything—memorable.” Kathil turned and begin to stride away down the hall, into the darkness.
No.
He didn’t know why it was important that he catch up with her, only that it was, only that he had longer legs than she did and she was slow from lack of sleep or lack of food, only that when he caught her shoulders in his hands they were cold and trembling. She stiffened, but stood still, neither resisting nor acquiescing. “Stop it, Cullen,” she said, her voice pitched low. “Just…don’t. You’ll be far happier if you just let me go.”
“The Antivan,” he said. “Zevran, was that his name? Was he your…leman?”
She shook her head. “A friend. One of the few I had left. He would have been better off staying in Antiva, or wherever he was.”
“He loved you.” The words slipped out of Cullen before he could stop himself.
She shook her head. “He loved no one.” But the words sounded like she knew that they were a lie, and Cullen remembered the look on the elf’s face when he’d first seen Kathil lying still as death on that bed. Like he’d just been punched in the gut.
Cullen knew the feeling.
“Do you think he’d want you to do this? Shut yourself up in the Tower and set it on fire?”
“He’d probably say it was a fitting end for someone who spent her career setting various situations on fire.” Her shoulders slumped under his hands. “I honestly don’t see that I have much choice. Someone has to stay here to make sure that nothing escapes the Fade when the Tower burns. And I need to…stop. The world needed someone to stop the Blight. It doesn’t need what stopping the Blight turned me into.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders, fingers digging into what little flesh she had on her. “Come with me,” he said, his voice urgent. “We can go to Denerim and explain. Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it. We could find your other friends…” He paused. She’d had other friends, hadn’t she? She’d brought some of them to the Tower with her, back when Uldred had taken it. He didn’t remember those weeks clearly, but there had definitely been other people with her.
She made a sound that was half sigh, half chuckle. “I’m amazed the Chantry never managed to beat that sweetness out of you, Cullen. It’s a generous offer, but I can’t take it. In another lifetime, perhaps.” She turned to face him, and he let go of her shoulders. Her dark gaze bored into his. (Maybe he might have gotten used to that scar, eventually. Maybe some day she might have told him where she’d gotten it.)
He looked back without flinching. “I’m sorry about Zevran,” he said, not knowing why. “And Lorn. He was a good dog.”
“The only creature to ever love me just as I am.” She closed her eyes briefly, and swallowed. “I came back because I was tired. I just wanted to rest. Be a Circle mage again, not…whatever it is I am now. I forgot that I can’t stop being what I am just because I’m tired of death.”
And because she was shaking, because they were alone in the Tower, because he was trying not to think of all the bodies upstairs (friends among the Templars, mages who would look sidelong at him and whisper to each other, a little apprentice who was always tripping and falling down and skinning his knees), because they’d been friends before he’d taken vows—
He pulled her into his arms.
Kathil was small and cold against him. She didn’t speak, just tucked her face into his shoulder. She didn’t cry. Neither of them cried.
But after a little while she put her arms around him. She had stopped shaking, and her body was beginning to warm a little against his. “You’re skin and bones,” Cullen said.
“So I’m told.” She blew out a breath into his shoulder, and he could feel the warmth of her breath seeping through his shirt. “I forget to eat, and the last few days…why bother, really?”
In another lifetime, he might have simply bodily picked her up, taken her upstairs, wrapped her in a blanket and made her eat. In this one, he simply nodded and pressed his lips to the snarled nest of her hair. His heart was banging against his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and raised her head. “You’ll never know how sorry, Cullen.” Then she kissed him, her chapped lips rough against his. After a single moment of frozen surprise, he realized what was happening and endeavored to kiss her back.
It was nothing like he’d imagined, in his secret ponderings in the Templar bunkroom. Her mouth tasted strange, her thin body digging into his, but—had she changed her mind? Would he be able to talk her into coming out of the Tower? If he could just get her out—
Then her lips formed a word against his. It might have been goodbye.
When he woke, lying on the stone floor of the Tower basement with an uncomfortable crick in his neck, she was gone. When he climbed the stairs, Cullen discovered that the sun was rising. Though he looked for Kathil, she was nowhere to be found.
Kester rowed across the lake midmorning, finding Cullen on the steps leading down to the docks. “Something’s happened,” Cullen told the boatman, and nothing more.
As the boat splashed through the waters of Lake Calenhad, a spot between Cullen’s shoulderblades began to itch. He glanced over his shoulder, half-fearing what he might see. There, in one of the high windows. Was that movement? A pale-haired form, staring down at him?
A Warden-mage, watching him follow the orders she’d given?
By the time they reached the shore, orange and yellow light was dancing in the windows of the Tower, and smoke was beginning to billow out of cracks and open windows.
Cullen stood on the shore, and watched the Tower burn.
*****
Alistair:
He read the message over again. There was no way that this could be the truth. Could it? Surely this was some sort of trick. Or a very bad joke.
He put the paper down. Kathil, dead. After all this time. He’d thought she might be dead before—she’d disappeared for two years without so much as a farewell—Maker, he had almost hoped she was dead, on some very dark nights, because everything was so much more complicated when she was around.
And if she was dead…Zevran had been on his way to find her. He’d claimed he’d had a murder of Crows after him. If he’d been there, the elf was likely dead. No great loss, to be honest. Alistair had never gotten along with him, and his presence in Ferelden would likely have ended up being politically inconvenient.
And the Circle of Magi in Ferelden was…gone. That was a problem. He chewed on his lower lip. He was not about to invite more Orelesians into Ferelden. Nor was he about to invite the Imperial Circle in to set up shop.
He blew out a breath. It could wait. And there was some small, secret part of him that was relieved, because Kathil had represented a temptation that he’d now never have to test his resistance against. He’d been weak once.
Never again.
There was a soft rap at the door, and then it opened. Rima’s golden hair shone in the lamplight as she entered, her loose gown not hiding the curve of her belly under her breasts. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I thought you were coming to bed.”
“Unexpected news.” He glanced down at the note, lying so innocently on the desk, then picked it up and stowed it in a drawer. “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow to deal with.”
He smiled at his wife and rose to take her hand. He would not think about Kathil, nor a Tower full of bodies. Not tonight.
Tomorrow. Everything unpleasant could wait until then.
*****
Leliana:
The scroll bore the seal of the Crown of Ferelden, and that alone would have given Leliana pause. What Alistair could possibly want with her—
Moreover, how had he managed to find out where she was? She’d left Ferelden in something of a rush. Curious, she broke the seal.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Ah, no. One more chance, lost. She’d been dreaming, recently, dreams of flame and smoke, of a knight crumbling into dust and a mouse caught in the jaws of a cat. The meaning seemed all too clear, now.
There was a movement beside her on the bed, and a soft, warm body pressed into hers. Tavi’s chin rested on Leliana’s shoulder. “Kathil? Isn’t that the Grey Warden you told me that story about?”
“Mmm. Yes.” Leliana rolled the note back up, picked idly at the broken seal. The wax flaked away under her fingernail. “I think I have to go back to Ferelden. Funalis is only two months away, it’ll take that long to get to Denerim.” She turned her head to kiss the end of Tavi’s nose. “I know you have the shop here—but—"
Tavi laughed, clear as the pealing of a bell. They had met just after Leliana had met Marjolaine for the last time, and what had begin as a way for Leliana to drown her feelings had evolved into something decidedly more. “Of course I will come with you. This is why I have nephews, and my brother can keep them honest. I have never been to Ferelden.” Her warm brown eyes glinted, the corners crinkling. “Besides, then you can introduce me to all of these people I have heard so much about! The King of Ferelden, the Antivan Crow, the strange dwarf—ooh, do you think the Qunari will be there? That would be something to see!”
Leliana put the note aside and slid and arm around her lover. She was a comfortable armful, her skin scented with the spices she sold in her little shop. “I do not think so, but I can introduce you to the rest.” She felt a bit of a twinge, thinking of Zevran. Kathil had driven him away after the Archdemon, as she had driven the rest of them away. She wondered if the elf would forgive the Warden, now that she was dead. “Do you want to go overland? We can book passage on a ship, but it’s expensive.”
In the distance, the bells of Val Royeaux took up their evening song, a melody carried over the city by thousands of bells. “I have the money, dearest,” Tavi said. “I have worked all my life, and I deserve a little adventure, yes?”
The song of the bells tumbled over them, the Chantry across the street picking up the song. “Why didn’t you ever travel?” Leliana asked. “You surely could have.”
“But what fun is it to go alone?” Tavi smiled. “It is a sad occasion for travel, but I think I will enjoy seeing Denerim, and I think you will enjoy showing me.” She wriggled around and trailed her lips along Leliana’s collarbone, sending pleasant shivers down her spine. “We can go, and be back in Val Royeaux before the snow flies in Ferelden.”
“I think you underestimate just how determined winter can be in Ferelden.” She traced a finger around the outer edge of Tavi’s ear. “I can go to the docks tonight and negotiate passage.”
Tavi sniffed. “You will not. I will go in the morning and speak with one of the captains I’m acquainted with. Tonight, my dear, you are mine. I have barely seen you for days!”
“And you have been entertaining the Rivaini merchants,” Leliana reminded her. She leaned back on the bed, pulling Tavi down beside her. The dark woman made an appreciative noise and put her nose in the hollow of Leliana’s neck, breathing in deeply. “Speaking of, did you mention there was wine?”
Tavi shifted, and her lips brushed the skin of Leliana’s neck. “Later. For now…” One of her hands slid down to somewhere most delightful, and then Leliana was thoroughly distracted, for quite some time.
It was only later, half-submerged in sleep with Tavi curled around her, that she remembered Kathil’s dark eyes, the way she would sit at Leliana’s feet and ask for a story. The hollows of her cheeks and the emptiness of her gaze, after the Archdemon.
Grief and relief entangled within Leliana. She held tightly to the living woman in bed with her, and tried to let the dead woman drift off into dreams.
*****
Jowan:
“At least they acknowledge that she was a mage here, if nowhere else,” he muttered, reaching out to touch the words carved into the base of the statue. Above him loomed a figure that was about twice the size that his old friend had been in life, sword lifted to the heavens.
It looked nothing like her.
He’d started looking for her half a year ago, and at last he’d found her. Found other things, too; a burned and blasted Circle Tower, the little village on the shore of the lake deserted. A hut in the Korcari Wilds, being dismantled by choking vines as the forest reclaimed its own. Ostagar, taken over by stone-faced Templars who herded a group of terrified children.
This was as close to a tomb as any Grey Warden got. There were rumors about what had happened to Kathil, but no hard truth to be found. He looked up at her visage. There was neither help nor redemption to be found there.
I suppose it’s off to Tevinter, after all.
He had thought that being an apostate mage was difficult before; after the entire Ferelden Circle had perished, it had gotten an order of magnitude harder. The Templars patrolled the roads in numbers Jowan hadn’t suspected the Chantry owned, and the smallest breath of rumor that one was an apostate would bring suspicion down on one, followed swiftly by a sword.
He’d had too many close calls, and with everyone he’d once known dead he had no more reason to stay in Ferelden. He’d scraped together enough coin for the passage across the Waking Sea, and he’d just stopped in Denerim to see Kathil’s memorial, and say goodbye.
It was a memorial, not a tomb. As far as he knew, they had never found her body. Or they had not been able to distinguish which body was hers. Whatever had happened in the Tower, it had been bad. Still, this statue gave people something to visit. Other statues had bowls of food and cups of wine and flowers at the base. Kathil’s had small coins, rag dolls, tufts of dog fur wrapped in ribbon, bundles of elfroot and magebane.
Even in death, the people of Ferelden had mixed feelings about the Warden-mage.
The sun was going down, casting a bloody light over the city. There was a step behind Jowan, and he half-turned, tensing, then relaxed. It was a tall man, his reddish hair cropped short, in shabby and stained clothing. He’d once been a big man, but now he was wasted and thin.
He looked oddly familiar. Had Jowan met him during the Blight, in the south? He frowned, trying to remember.
The other man paid him no mind. He fetched up at the base of the statue, staring up at the stone face that bore no resemblance to the living mage. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Kathil. I’m trying to tell them, but nobody’s listening to me.” He paused, his mouth firming. “I hate that you gave up, you know. You should have fought. You should have come out of the Tower. The Wardens would have helped you. Wouldn’t they?”
That voice.
Fear wrapped hard fingers around Jowan’s heart. This was Cullen, one of the few living men who knew what Jowan had once been. He edged away from the Templar. What he was saying—he must be lyrium-addled. He couldn’t possibly know what had happened to Kathil. Cullen kept mumbling, spreading his hands in supplication.
A pair of robed Sisters bustled up to them. The older one looked like she’d had alum sprinkled on her tongue, so pinched was the expression on her face. “I knew we would find him here.” The Sister sighed and glanced up at the statue. “This obsession. Honestly. It’s not fitting.”
“This is better than when he’s running around calling everyone apostates,” her younger companion said. She laid a gentle hand on the Templar’s arm. “Cullen, come away. Please.”
“Should have sent him to Val Royeaux,” the older one groused as she took Cullen’s other arm. Together, they began to tug him away from the statue.
Cullen didn’t react except to pull away from them slightly, like a balky child. “I keep dreaming about dragons,” he said, almost beneath his breath. “I keep dreaming you’re still alive. Stop it. You’re dead. I saw you in the window. You’re dead…”
“I’m sorry,” the younger Sister said to Jowan. “His mind has turned, and he has bad days sometimes. I hope he didn’t disturb you.”
"Not at all," Jowan lied. He watched the Sisters lead the Templar that the girl who'd once been his only family had loved, in another lifetime. He glanced up at the statue that looked so little like her. The stone woman who loomed above him was beautiful, and she wore a small smile on her lips.
I keep dreaming about dragons.
The Templar was mad. That was all. If Jowan hurried, he could make it to the docks to find a boat before the light faded. Tevinter wouldn't be an easy country to live in, but it would be less of a trap than Ferelden had become.
He turned away from the memorial, leaving the past behind once more.
*****
Wynne:
The dragon scratched fitfully at the crumbling stone that marked the edge of the old road, and roared.
Wynne watched from a safe distance as the newest Unwilling patrolled its territory, the old road that ran between the Fade and the Circle Tower. She didn't know where it had come from, only that it had taken over the old road, quelled the Harrowed who lay bound within it, and had begun to drive off any citizen of the Fade who dared venture too close. It was holding the old road, without taking it as a strong spirit might.
It was a puzzle, and Wynne had always enjoyed puzzles.
Moros, currently known by mortals as Despair, was staying away, at least for the moment. Wynne suspected that this Unwilling had not been precisely within her plan, whatever that plan was. The dragon below her spread its wings, the leathery membrane between its wingbones crackling like a sail.
There had been a fire in the Circle Tower, and the Veil had torn with the pressure of the flame and the deaths of so many mortals. Wynne had seen citizens of the Fade gathered around the tear, hungry for the mortal world, and knew grief as she had not known it since she had died.
Then the thing that was both mortal and spirit and neither of them had burst through the tear, burning cold. It carried a breath of song with it, an echo of the Black City and the Old Gods. And now it was here, acting on some direction of its own.
The Unwilling raked at the stone once more, and folded its wings back. Its form shimmered briefly.
Each of the Unwilling carried within them the husk of what they had once been. If one knew how to look, those husks were sometimes visible.
Within the form of the dragon was curled a body. It was naked, painfully thin, female. Colorless hair was elf-locked around a face that was—
Familiar.
Wynne knew who this Unwilling was, and why it had chosen to guard the Veil at the Circle Tower.
“You never did leave it entirely, did you?” she murmured, tears pricking her eyes. “And now you never will. Oh, child.”
She settled down then, as the dragon’s form stabilized once more around the Grey Warden who had somehow found herself permanently on the wrong side of the Veil. She was immortal, it was true; but it was not an immortality Wynne would wish on her worst enemy.
Kathil Amell still served, because she knew of nothing else to do.
Wynne watched as the dragon closed its eyes. It snorted out a breath and appeared to fall asleep. It was merely an illusion; in the Fade, not even Sloth slept. She remembered a day when the sky had been black as midnight at high noon, the stench of darkspawn blood, a blast of light as the Archdemon died. The woman that the Grey Warden had been had died that day, had been dying since she had been taken from the Tower, despite all of Wynne’s best efforts.
I tried. But I failed you, child.
Then again, perhaps there were some people who were never meant to be saved.
Wynne watched what the Grey Warden had become, and wondered if this mage had been one of them.
In another lifetime, perhaps.
But there was only this lifetime, and the spirit of Faith who had spent so much time in mortal guises watched and waited, for what she could not say.
This was originally posted on the LJ community circle_tower last year, and I just remembered that it exists. So I decided to post here, just in case anyone felt like a shot of depression to make their Monday morning complete.
This is a what-if that starts in Chapter Three of Waking Hours. What would have happened, if Kathil had been just a little later getting back from the Fade, and Greagoir had taken a little more care with his sword?
Warning: depressing. Very, very depressing. Also, if you haven’t read the Old Roads series, it won’t make much sense.
Title: In Another Lifetime
Wordcount: 5500
Rating: T
Warnings: Major character death, and serious depression potential.
Summary: A Grey Warden returns to the Tower, and everything goes very, very wrong.
In Another Lifetime
Kathil:
You must come back to us. I need you. You cannot tarry.
Kathil stood at the walls of the Black City, looking up. The song spiraled into a shrieking howl, and she winced—how could she have ever thought it beautiful? She was closer than any living mortal had been to the Black City for a very long time, and even though the place twisted her heart with its darkness, she felt a certain kinship.
A certain peace.
Was the grim known better than the grisly unknown?
She glanced over her shoulder at the twisted things that paced along the edge of the old road that had led her here. The thing that had taken Wynne’s shape was gone, but there was something touching her hair. Kathil. My Warden. You must return.
You must—
Then the voice was gone.
Everything was slipping away from her. That voice had been familiar, once. Reluctantly, she took a step away from the walls of the Black City. Duty calls. She wrapped a cloak of lightning around herself, and ran.
The way out opened itself before her and she was rising through the dark water of sleep. She opened her eyes, her whole body going tense—there were so many people and shouting and there was something heavy over her midsection and—
The smell of blood. And death.
Lorn was howling.
She levered herself to a sitting position and without thinking uttered a single syllable, spreading her hands, the power rolling away from her in a wave. The shouting stopped, though Lorn’s howling did not, and Kathil looked down at what was keeping her legs pinned—
Who—
Elf. Blond. Familiar even with his face down in the blanket.
A Templar sword through his chest, blood spreading across his armor and, belatedly, she felt the wet warmth across her thighs. Over her, a shadow loomed, a hard hand reaching for the hilt of the sword. Greagoir.
“Don’t touch it,” she snapped, and Greagoir hesitated slightly. “I have to see if you can pull it safely.”
The Knight-Commander looked confused. It was an odd look on him, and then something large and brindled barreled into him from the side. Lorn gave a howl of triumph as Greagoir fell to the ground in a clatter of armor.
In that moment, many things became clear.
That wasn’t just any sword through Zevran’s chest. That had been Greagoir’s sword. She laid a hand on Zevran and muttered a word.
Nothing.
He was dead, beyond recall.
She shook his shoulder, and his head rolled to the side. There was an expression of surprise frozen on his face, the handsome, tattooed features vacant.
The memory of the howling of the Black City rose in her, and she heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing but acknowledgement: you have left me once again, Zevran Arainai.
As everyone left, but Lorn.
Lorn. Oh, Maker!
She snapped out a command and, thank Andraste, the Mabari listened. He did whine as he backed off from Greagoir and came to her side. She dropped a hand to his head, and he looked up at her with his liquid brown eyes, and whined again.
“I don’t know,” she told him. The tumult of voices was rising again, and she was so cold. She looked down at the body of the assassin she’d once counted as a friend, still lying across her lap. Then she glanced up.
Cullen stood by the foot of the bed, sword naked in his hand, cheeks flaring red and looking rather as if he wished there was a nearby rock he could curl up and quietly die beneath. Then there was more shouting and people were moving and someone was picking up Zevran’s body—no, she wanted to say, wait, someone tell me what’s happened—and her voice wasn’t working. Nothing was working. Someone held a cup to her lips and she drank, the brew burning its way down her parched throat. Hands were on her shoulders. Look this way, look that, I think she’s fine, just in shock.
Then she was alone, and Lorn shoved himself into the bed beside her. She curled up, confused. Lorn licked drops of dried blood away from the backs of her hands, and she threw one arm over the Mabari’s back.
She did not sleep. She wasn’t sure she would ever sleep again.
*****
Cullen:
We will see what the Wardens can make of you.
He sat in his cell in the basement of the Tower, trying not to feel the cold that seeped through the stone from Lake Calenhad. They are sending me away from the Tower, he told himself, willing the words to make some sort of sense.
It had been three days since Cullen drawn steel on the Knight-Commander, three days since the elf had managed to waken Kathil from her Fade-struck sleep and had been promptly spitted for his trouble. There had been some sort of disturbance upstairs a while ago. No one had come to get him.
No one had come at all, for what seemed like a very long time. The lantern they had given him was guttering for lack of oil, and there had been enough for days in it.
Except now he heard footsteps, and straightened. But those weren’t Templar boots, the sound of them was wrong. Softer. Like the shoes the mages wore.
His eyes strained in the darkness, and a figure appeared out of the dim. Startled, he recognized the woman on the other side of the bars.
Kathil.
Her shirt and trousers looked like they had been made for someone a head taller and several stone heavier than her, and they were covered in dark stains. Her hair was ratted, and there were shadows under her eyes. The ugly scar down one side of her face was dark. He would never get used to that scar. She had been so pretty, once. And now…
“You,” he said, and didn’t bother to disguise the disdain in his voice. (Never mind that he had defended her. He had moments of madness, still. That was all it was, a brief leavetaking of his senses.)
She didn’t reply, except to reach through the bars and drop a jangling ring of keys inside his cell. “You should go,” she said. “It’s night now, but you can raise the flag for Kester in the morning. Goodbye, Cullen. I’m sorry about—everything.”
She turned away, her head bowing. Belatedly, he realized that she was alone. No Templar escort. Not even her dog, who Cullen had gotten to know a little during the days they’d both stood vigil over her still form. “Wait,” he said, and his own voice surprised him with its urgency. “What happened?”
Kathil stopped, but did not turn towards him. “Assassins,” she said quietly. “They followed Zevran here, but they didn’t know he’d—died. They killed everyone. Templar, mage, apprentice, down to the last. Greagoir and Irving were taken by some sort of—thing—in the Harrowing Chamber. Lorn…he took too many wounds fighting it off. I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save any of them.” There was nothing in her voice but exhausted sorrow. “Get out of here, Cullen. This has never been a good place, but I think it’s about to become a very, very bad place.”
Cullen forced himself to his feet, picked up the keys in one numb hand. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be possible. “Wait. Why are you still alive?” he asked, then cursed how the question sounded.
There was a vicious edge to her tone. “I occasionally have wondered the same thing myself, Cullen. I am a Grey Warden. We are notoriously difficult bastards to kill. Unfortunately.”
His tongue was thick in his mouth. Kathil didn’t move. “What are you going to do?” He fumbled with the keys—there were so many of them, and only one would fit this door. He rattled one after another in the lock. “Maker’s Balls.”
“Tch. Aren’t Templars not supposed to say such things?” She turned back towards him, gently took the keys from his shaking hands. She selected one of the keys and fit it into the lock. Metal clicked, and the door swung open. “I’m going to do what needs to be done, once you’re away. Go to Denerim. Tell the Grand Cleric what’s happened. Tell her the Tower was burned, and everyone is dead.”
“And you?”
She took a long breath, and handed him the key ring once more. “By the time you’re on shore, what you’ll tell the Grand Cleric will be true.”
He stared at her. “You’re just going to give up?”
Kathil took a step back. “Call it insurance.” Pain briefly twisted her face. “I have overstayed my welcome in this world. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been stupid enough to come back to the Tower. If I hadn’t made Zevran promise to find me again, some day. I can’t fix it. I can just make very sure it doesn’t happen again.”
There was an uneasy silence between them. He tried to see any trace of the girl he’d once known, when they used to meet on the back stairs of the Tower. Tried, and failed. She looked back at him as if daring him to do—something.
“Kester can’t see the flag in the dark,” he said. “I don’t even think he watches for it after sundown.”
“And?” Her black eyes were intent on his.
A heartbeat passed, then another.
We are alive in a Tower full of ghosts, and I don’t want to spend the dark hours alone.
It was all he could do to reach out his hand.
She took a step backward, and then another. “I ruin everything I touch, Cullen,” she said in a low voice. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what the look on her face meant, what the tremble in her shoulders portended. “Just—go. Live your life. Try to forget me. This.”
Cullen stood very still, as if this mage were a bird he was trying not to startle. His hand was still outstretched in front of him. “And if I can’t?”
It was the wrong thing to say. Her expression slammed shut, a hard glint coming into her eyes. “Then you’ll be one more thing among the many I’ve broken. I’m going upstairs. I’ve cleared the bodies out of the entrance hall. If you stick to the main halls, you won’t see anything—memorable.” Kathil turned and begin to stride away down the hall, into the darkness.
No.
He didn’t know why it was important that he catch up with her, only that it was, only that he had longer legs than she did and she was slow from lack of sleep or lack of food, only that when he caught her shoulders in his hands they were cold and trembling. She stiffened, but stood still, neither resisting nor acquiescing. “Stop it, Cullen,” she said, her voice pitched low. “Just…don’t. You’ll be far happier if you just let me go.”
“The Antivan,” he said. “Zevran, was that his name? Was he your…leman?”
She shook her head. “A friend. One of the few I had left. He would have been better off staying in Antiva, or wherever he was.”
“He loved you.” The words slipped out of Cullen before he could stop himself.
She shook her head. “He loved no one.” But the words sounded like she knew that they were a lie, and Cullen remembered the look on the elf’s face when he’d first seen Kathil lying still as death on that bed. Like he’d just been punched in the gut.
Cullen knew the feeling.
“Do you think he’d want you to do this? Shut yourself up in the Tower and set it on fire?”
“He’d probably say it was a fitting end for someone who spent her career setting various situations on fire.” Her shoulders slumped under his hands. “I honestly don’t see that I have much choice. Someone has to stay here to make sure that nothing escapes the Fade when the Tower burns. And I need to…stop. The world needed someone to stop the Blight. It doesn’t need what stopping the Blight turned me into.”
His hands tightened on her shoulders, fingers digging into what little flesh she had on her. “Come with me,” he said, his voice urgent. “We can go to Denerim and explain. Whatever’s wrong, we can fix it. We could find your other friends…” He paused. She’d had other friends, hadn’t she? She’d brought some of them to the Tower with her, back when Uldred had taken it. He didn’t remember those weeks clearly, but there had definitely been other people with her.
She made a sound that was half sigh, half chuckle. “I’m amazed the Chantry never managed to beat that sweetness out of you, Cullen. It’s a generous offer, but I can’t take it. In another lifetime, perhaps.” She turned to face him, and he let go of her shoulders. Her dark gaze bored into his. (Maybe he might have gotten used to that scar, eventually. Maybe some day she might have told him where she’d gotten it.)
He looked back without flinching. “I’m sorry about Zevran,” he said, not knowing why. “And Lorn. He was a good dog.”
“The only creature to ever love me just as I am.” She closed her eyes briefly, and swallowed. “I came back because I was tired. I just wanted to rest. Be a Circle mage again, not…whatever it is I am now. I forgot that I can’t stop being what I am just because I’m tired of death.”
And because she was shaking, because they were alone in the Tower, because he was trying not to think of all the bodies upstairs (friends among the Templars, mages who would look sidelong at him and whisper to each other, a little apprentice who was always tripping and falling down and skinning his knees), because they’d been friends before he’d taken vows—
He pulled her into his arms.
Kathil was small and cold against him. She didn’t speak, just tucked her face into his shoulder. She didn’t cry. Neither of them cried.
But after a little while she put her arms around him. She had stopped shaking, and her body was beginning to warm a little against his. “You’re skin and bones,” Cullen said.
“So I’m told.” She blew out a breath into his shoulder, and he could feel the warmth of her breath seeping through his shirt. “I forget to eat, and the last few days…why bother, really?”
In another lifetime, he might have simply bodily picked her up, taken her upstairs, wrapped her in a blanket and made her eat. In this one, he simply nodded and pressed his lips to the snarled nest of her hair. His heart was banging against his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and raised her head. “You’ll never know how sorry, Cullen.” Then she kissed him, her chapped lips rough against his. After a single moment of frozen surprise, he realized what was happening and endeavored to kiss her back.
It was nothing like he’d imagined, in his secret ponderings in the Templar bunkroom. Her mouth tasted strange, her thin body digging into his, but—had she changed her mind? Would he be able to talk her into coming out of the Tower? If he could just get her out—
Then her lips formed a word against his. It might have been goodbye.
When he woke, lying on the stone floor of the Tower basement with an uncomfortable crick in his neck, she was gone. When he climbed the stairs, Cullen discovered that the sun was rising. Though he looked for Kathil, she was nowhere to be found.
Kester rowed across the lake midmorning, finding Cullen on the steps leading down to the docks. “Something’s happened,” Cullen told the boatman, and nothing more.
As the boat splashed through the waters of Lake Calenhad, a spot between Cullen’s shoulderblades began to itch. He glanced over his shoulder, half-fearing what he might see. There, in one of the high windows. Was that movement? A pale-haired form, staring down at him?
A Warden-mage, watching him follow the orders she’d given?
By the time they reached the shore, orange and yellow light was dancing in the windows of the Tower, and smoke was beginning to billow out of cracks and open windows.
Cullen stood on the shore, and watched the Tower burn.
*****
Alistair:
He read the message over again. There was no way that this could be the truth. Could it? Surely this was some sort of trick. Or a very bad joke.
Warden Kathil Amell has perished in the Circle Tower, along with all of the occupants therin. There was only one survivor, and the Chantry has taken him into seclusion. We are sending a detail of Grey Wardens to investigate the ruins of the Tower, as the survivor, a Templar, was not what any of us would call sane. He claimed that assassins slaughtered the occupants of the Tower, a claim we would find nearly plausible if not for the fact that even a flock of Crows would have difficulty with a Tower full of mages.
We will let you know what we find.
Regards,
Warden-General Montclair, of Vigil’s Keep and Val Royeaux
We will let you know what we find.
Regards,
Warden-General Montclair, of Vigil’s Keep and Val Royeaux
He put the paper down. Kathil, dead. After all this time. He’d thought she might be dead before—she’d disappeared for two years without so much as a farewell—Maker, he had almost hoped she was dead, on some very dark nights, because everything was so much more complicated when she was around.
And if she was dead…Zevran had been on his way to find her. He’d claimed he’d had a murder of Crows after him. If he’d been there, the elf was likely dead. No great loss, to be honest. Alistair had never gotten along with him, and his presence in Ferelden would likely have ended up being politically inconvenient.
And the Circle of Magi in Ferelden was…gone. That was a problem. He chewed on his lower lip. He was not about to invite more Orelesians into Ferelden. Nor was he about to invite the Imperial Circle in to set up shop.
He blew out a breath. It could wait. And there was some small, secret part of him that was relieved, because Kathil had represented a temptation that he’d now never have to test his resistance against. He’d been weak once.
Never again.
There was a soft rap at the door, and then it opened. Rima’s golden hair shone in the lamplight as she entered, her loose gown not hiding the curve of her belly under her breasts. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I thought you were coming to bed.”
“Unexpected news.” He glanced down at the note, lying so innocently on the desk, then picked it up and stowed it in a drawer. “Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow to deal with.”
He smiled at his wife and rose to take her hand. He would not think about Kathil, nor a Tower full of bodies. Not tonight.
Tomorrow. Everything unpleasant could wait until then.
*****
Leliana:
The scroll bore the seal of the Crown of Ferelden, and that alone would have given Leliana pause. What Alistair could possibly want with her—
Moreover, how had he managed to find out where she was? She’d left Ferelden in something of a rush. Curious, she broke the seal.
I hope this reaches you; the messenger seemed confident he could find you. Kathil is dead. We’re holding a memorial on Funalis. You’d be welcome, if you wanted to come. I know you two were close.
I can give you more details if you come here, but best that the tale not cross the border.
Yours,
King Alistair Theirin.
I can give you more details if you come here, but best that the tale not cross the border.
Yours,
King Alistair Theirin.
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Ah, no. One more chance, lost. She’d been dreaming, recently, dreams of flame and smoke, of a knight crumbling into dust and a mouse caught in the jaws of a cat. The meaning seemed all too clear, now.
There was a movement beside her on the bed, and a soft, warm body pressed into hers. Tavi’s chin rested on Leliana’s shoulder. “Kathil? Isn’t that the Grey Warden you told me that story about?”
“Mmm. Yes.” Leliana rolled the note back up, picked idly at the broken seal. The wax flaked away under her fingernail. “I think I have to go back to Ferelden. Funalis is only two months away, it’ll take that long to get to Denerim.” She turned her head to kiss the end of Tavi’s nose. “I know you have the shop here—but—"
Tavi laughed, clear as the pealing of a bell. They had met just after Leliana had met Marjolaine for the last time, and what had begin as a way for Leliana to drown her feelings had evolved into something decidedly more. “Of course I will come with you. This is why I have nephews, and my brother can keep them honest. I have never been to Ferelden.” Her warm brown eyes glinted, the corners crinkling. “Besides, then you can introduce me to all of these people I have heard so much about! The King of Ferelden, the Antivan Crow, the strange dwarf—ooh, do you think the Qunari will be there? That would be something to see!”
Leliana put the note aside and slid and arm around her lover. She was a comfortable armful, her skin scented with the spices she sold in her little shop. “I do not think so, but I can introduce you to the rest.” She felt a bit of a twinge, thinking of Zevran. Kathil had driven him away after the Archdemon, as she had driven the rest of them away. She wondered if the elf would forgive the Warden, now that she was dead. “Do you want to go overland? We can book passage on a ship, but it’s expensive.”
In the distance, the bells of Val Royeaux took up their evening song, a melody carried over the city by thousands of bells. “I have the money, dearest,” Tavi said. “I have worked all my life, and I deserve a little adventure, yes?”
The song of the bells tumbled over them, the Chantry across the street picking up the song. “Why didn’t you ever travel?” Leliana asked. “You surely could have.”
“But what fun is it to go alone?” Tavi smiled. “It is a sad occasion for travel, but I think I will enjoy seeing Denerim, and I think you will enjoy showing me.” She wriggled around and trailed her lips along Leliana’s collarbone, sending pleasant shivers down her spine. “We can go, and be back in Val Royeaux before the snow flies in Ferelden.”
“I think you underestimate just how determined winter can be in Ferelden.” She traced a finger around the outer edge of Tavi’s ear. “I can go to the docks tonight and negotiate passage.”
Tavi sniffed. “You will not. I will go in the morning and speak with one of the captains I’m acquainted with. Tonight, my dear, you are mine. I have barely seen you for days!”
“And you have been entertaining the Rivaini merchants,” Leliana reminded her. She leaned back on the bed, pulling Tavi down beside her. The dark woman made an appreciative noise and put her nose in the hollow of Leliana’s neck, breathing in deeply. “Speaking of, did you mention there was wine?”
Tavi shifted, and her lips brushed the skin of Leliana’s neck. “Later. For now…” One of her hands slid down to somewhere most delightful, and then Leliana was thoroughly distracted, for quite some time.
It was only later, half-submerged in sleep with Tavi curled around her, that she remembered Kathil’s dark eyes, the way she would sit at Leliana’s feet and ask for a story. The hollows of her cheeks and the emptiness of her gaze, after the Archdemon.
Grief and relief entangled within Leliana. She held tightly to the living woman in bed with her, and tried to let the dead woman drift off into dreams.
*****
Jowan:
Kathil Amell
Grey Warden
Hero of Ferelden
Circle Mage
Grey Warden
Hero of Ferelden
Circle Mage
“At least they acknowledge that she was a mage here, if nowhere else,” he muttered, reaching out to touch the words carved into the base of the statue. Above him loomed a figure that was about twice the size that his old friend had been in life, sword lifted to the heavens.
It looked nothing like her.
He’d started looking for her half a year ago, and at last he’d found her. Found other things, too; a burned and blasted Circle Tower, the little village on the shore of the lake deserted. A hut in the Korcari Wilds, being dismantled by choking vines as the forest reclaimed its own. Ostagar, taken over by stone-faced Templars who herded a group of terrified children.
This was as close to a tomb as any Grey Warden got. There were rumors about what had happened to Kathil, but no hard truth to be found. He looked up at her visage. There was neither help nor redemption to be found there.
I suppose it’s off to Tevinter, after all.
He had thought that being an apostate mage was difficult before; after the entire Ferelden Circle had perished, it had gotten an order of magnitude harder. The Templars patrolled the roads in numbers Jowan hadn’t suspected the Chantry owned, and the smallest breath of rumor that one was an apostate would bring suspicion down on one, followed swiftly by a sword.
He’d had too many close calls, and with everyone he’d once known dead he had no more reason to stay in Ferelden. He’d scraped together enough coin for the passage across the Waking Sea, and he’d just stopped in Denerim to see Kathil’s memorial, and say goodbye.
It was a memorial, not a tomb. As far as he knew, they had never found her body. Or they had not been able to distinguish which body was hers. Whatever had happened in the Tower, it had been bad. Still, this statue gave people something to visit. Other statues had bowls of food and cups of wine and flowers at the base. Kathil’s had small coins, rag dolls, tufts of dog fur wrapped in ribbon, bundles of elfroot and magebane.
Even in death, the people of Ferelden had mixed feelings about the Warden-mage.
The sun was going down, casting a bloody light over the city. There was a step behind Jowan, and he half-turned, tensing, then relaxed. It was a tall man, his reddish hair cropped short, in shabby and stained clothing. He’d once been a big man, but now he was wasted and thin.
He looked oddly familiar. Had Jowan met him during the Blight, in the south? He frowned, trying to remember.
The other man paid him no mind. He fetched up at the base of the statue, staring up at the stone face that bore no resemblance to the living mage. “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Kathil. I’m trying to tell them, but nobody’s listening to me.” He paused, his mouth firming. “I hate that you gave up, you know. You should have fought. You should have come out of the Tower. The Wardens would have helped you. Wouldn’t they?”
That voice.
Fear wrapped hard fingers around Jowan’s heart. This was Cullen, one of the few living men who knew what Jowan had once been. He edged away from the Templar. What he was saying—he must be lyrium-addled. He couldn’t possibly know what had happened to Kathil. Cullen kept mumbling, spreading his hands in supplication.
A pair of robed Sisters bustled up to them. The older one looked like she’d had alum sprinkled on her tongue, so pinched was the expression on her face. “I knew we would find him here.” The Sister sighed and glanced up at the statue. “This obsession. Honestly. It’s not fitting.”
“This is better than when he’s running around calling everyone apostates,” her younger companion said. She laid a gentle hand on the Templar’s arm. “Cullen, come away. Please.”
“Should have sent him to Val Royeaux,” the older one groused as she took Cullen’s other arm. Together, they began to tug him away from the statue.
Cullen didn’t react except to pull away from them slightly, like a balky child. “I keep dreaming about dragons,” he said, almost beneath his breath. “I keep dreaming you’re still alive. Stop it. You’re dead. I saw you in the window. You’re dead…”
“I’m sorry,” the younger Sister said to Jowan. “His mind has turned, and he has bad days sometimes. I hope he didn’t disturb you.”
"Not at all," Jowan lied. He watched the Sisters lead the Templar that the girl who'd once been his only family had loved, in another lifetime. He glanced up at the statue that looked so little like her. The stone woman who loomed above him was beautiful, and she wore a small smile on her lips.
I keep dreaming about dragons.
The Templar was mad. That was all. If Jowan hurried, he could make it to the docks to find a boat before the light faded. Tevinter wouldn't be an easy country to live in, but it would be less of a trap than Ferelden had become.
He turned away from the memorial, leaving the past behind once more.
*****
Wynne:
The dragon scratched fitfully at the crumbling stone that marked the edge of the old road, and roared.
Wynne watched from a safe distance as the newest Unwilling patrolled its territory, the old road that ran between the Fade and the Circle Tower. She didn't know where it had come from, only that it had taken over the old road, quelled the Harrowed who lay bound within it, and had begun to drive off any citizen of the Fade who dared venture too close. It was holding the old road, without taking it as a strong spirit might.
It was a puzzle, and Wynne had always enjoyed puzzles.
Moros, currently known by mortals as Despair, was staying away, at least for the moment. Wynne suspected that this Unwilling had not been precisely within her plan, whatever that plan was. The dragon below her spread its wings, the leathery membrane between its wingbones crackling like a sail.
There had been a fire in the Circle Tower, and the Veil had torn with the pressure of the flame and the deaths of so many mortals. Wynne had seen citizens of the Fade gathered around the tear, hungry for the mortal world, and knew grief as she had not known it since she had died.
Then the thing that was both mortal and spirit and neither of them had burst through the tear, burning cold. It carried a breath of song with it, an echo of the Black City and the Old Gods. And now it was here, acting on some direction of its own.
The Unwilling raked at the stone once more, and folded its wings back. Its form shimmered briefly.
Each of the Unwilling carried within them the husk of what they had once been. If one knew how to look, those husks were sometimes visible.
Within the form of the dragon was curled a body. It was naked, painfully thin, female. Colorless hair was elf-locked around a face that was—
Familiar.
Wynne knew who this Unwilling was, and why it had chosen to guard the Veil at the Circle Tower.
“You never did leave it entirely, did you?” she murmured, tears pricking her eyes. “And now you never will. Oh, child.”
She settled down then, as the dragon’s form stabilized once more around the Grey Warden who had somehow found herself permanently on the wrong side of the Veil. She was immortal, it was true; but it was not an immortality Wynne would wish on her worst enemy.
Kathil Amell still served, because she knew of nothing else to do.
Wynne watched as the dragon closed its eyes. It snorted out a breath and appeared to fall asleep. It was merely an illusion; in the Fade, not even Sloth slept. She remembered a day when the sky had been black as midnight at high noon, the stench of darkspawn blood, a blast of light as the Archdemon died. The woman that the Grey Warden had been had died that day, had been dying since she had been taken from the Tower, despite all of Wynne’s best efforts.
I tried. But I failed you, child.
Then again, perhaps there were some people who were never meant to be saved.
Wynne watched what the Grey Warden had become, and wondered if this mage had been one of them.
In another lifetime, perhaps.
But there was only this lifetime, and the spirit of Faith who had spent so much time in mortal guises watched and waited, for what she could not say.