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Stuff from the fic that doesn't fit, too far ahead of myself, or I'm not sure what to do with, but still kinda like. or am starting to dislike, or something.
Areli spotted Emma passing quietly behind the crowd, and nudged through to meet her. Emma acknowledged her with a look, which moved across the students then Templars: unimpressed by the sudden gravity in the air.
Areli loved that about her.
“Let's go,” she murmured. They climbed up the narrow, curling flight of stairs into the higher floors.
The Chantry's guard recognized them and waved them through at the wrong hour. Their work was so dull and specialized no one had bothered memorizing their schedule. The restricted top level level had become used to them.
“You knew,” Emma said. Proud.
“King Maric's dead,” Areli confirmed. “Lost men don't survive at sea for long.”
“Did they find anything? Wreckage?”
“Nobody knows,” said the Templar in the doorway. “But Cailan's the new king. Long may he reign.” His gaze lingered on Areli in a way that had nothing to do with what he was saying.
The room still smelled faintly of incense from a recent Harrowing, the Veil wobbling thin in the air, cut by the silhouette of the telescope. They set to work on the star charts, shoulders brushing more than necessary, until the Templar's footsteps faded down the corridor.
When his patrol stretched long enough, Areli produced a tiny satchel of herbs from her sleeve. They passed it between them, the mild haze softening nervous edges in the chamber.
“Did they think the legendary king Maric was riding back to them, out of a storm?” Areli rolled her eyes, summoning a soft breeze to scatter the scent.
“To the late King Maric,” Emma responded dryly. “And his son.”
“Yes,” Areli agreed, with sardonic gratitude. “Bless their very large problems, far from us.”
Downstairs, the portrait had devolved into theater. Even First Enchanter Irving hovered at the edges, observing the chatter spiral and settle. A cluster of enchanters clucked about the new king. “So young,” one said. “So tragic.” The older apprentices exchanged glances. Someone giggled.
Wynne swept in like a winter gust. “This is not amusing,” she snapped, launching into a lecture about Maric's campaigns against Orlesian occupation, reciting dates and battles.
She scowled at their irreverence and assigned extra reading. The tower had stripped these children of any country outside stone walls. In time, she promised, they would mature and understand the importance of national freedom. The Good King Maric had ended Orlesian tariffs, saved the Circle's budget. That meant something.
When Areli and Emma finally descended for evening assembly, the hallway had emptied. Only Jowan remained, hunched over like a wet sock.
“My parents must be upset. They loved him.” He laughed bitterly. “So—whatever. Fuck them. Fuck the King, this one and the last.”
His words came out small, shaky. He braced for reproach. Behind him, Emma made a crude gesture toward the portrait—a sharp, repetitive flick of her wrist that implied Maric was a monumental wanker.
Areli laughed, bright and unbothered. Jowan flushed pink but smiled, convinced he'd said something clever. Emma looked smug. The tension eased.
Night settled. Assembly passed. And sometime later, a new portrait appeared in a different hall: Cailan, all gold and hope and hero's posture. Almost nobody noticed it at all.
The weeks under Uldred's occupation had left grime and gore smudged across stone. Barely visible on the wall was a pale rectangle. A ghost of a ghost. The place where Maric's portrait had hung.
Now Maric's face rose unbidden in her mind, more vivid than she had any right to remember. The strong lines, the bright eyes. She'd thought the portrait a little idealized back then. Now she wasn't sure.
Alistair looked like him.
It must have been a good likeness, if she could see the resemblance so clearly in hindsight. Why hadn't she seen it before?
Cailan's portrait… she couldn't even place it in the building. She remembered the man more than the image: On the day he died, gleaming in golden plate at Ostagar, that impossible armor, cheerfully greeting her. Later, in the command tent lit by torches, he'd stood beside Duncan, Loghain, and Uldred—yes, Uldred, smiling like a man who hadn't already decided to damn the tower.
Only weeks after Jowan betrayed her. And in turn, mere weeks before Uldred slaughtered nearly everyone here. In the space of a season she'd gone from nameless apprentice to nameless Grey Warden, standing before a king, being told to follow Alistair to Ishal.
He was just some rookie Warden, as far as she'd known. And he still was. But he'd known more about being a Warden than she did, and she'd leaned on that knowledge. He hadn't known much—but he'd been open with her. Or she'd believed he had.
But not about this.
Even while they became criminals, fugitives, hunted by Loghain as traitors to Ferelden.
There had only been time to act. Leliana had spoken to everyone, returned to Emma with sweet, pointed assurances she'd ensure the truth stay quiet. Redcliffe was begging for help. Connor needed freeing. Bandits and monsters tore apart everything along the roads. And so easily she resumed trusting him—to draw fire with clumsy, dependable courage, or outmaneuver enemies in alleys too narrow for his shield.
Emma sank down against the cold stone beneath the vanished portrait and lit the herbs she and Areli had once used to celebrate Maric's death. Now just a dry cope. She inhaled slowly, chest tight.
Areli, the Circle, the King with all the Grey Wardens, were gone.
She and Alistair were younger than even Cailan had been.
And it was so, so tragic.
Emma sat cross-legged under its lens, her codex with its false hymn-book cover spread open across her knees. A scatter of textbooks and loose papers sprawled around her, some destined to be stitched into the codex later. Her quill scratched steadily as she copied constellations, weaving together her own observations, the actually accurate bits of existing charts, into something her own.
Areli also laid amongst the sprawl of papers, books and scrolls, freckles lit by a narrow strip of light from the mostly-covered windows.
“Tell me something, Em,” she said lazily. “Why is it that we could—” her eyes flicked toward Emma with a wicked grin, “—sneak off for a quick tumble up here, and it’d get us a scolding at worst. But if they caught us asleep or late to morning chant, we’d be scrubbing the dorm floors for a month?”
Emma did not look up from her page. “One’s more predictable than the other,” she murmured, adjusting the careful angle of a tiny star-line.
“Predictable,” Areli scoffed, rolling to her side to watch Emma’s fingers. “One is more sinful, supposedly. Or are we more dangerous asleep than scandalous?”
“Possibly.” Emma raised her brows in mock solemnity.
Areli laughed softly, reached across to doodle in Emma’s margins.
“Still… I’d rather like to nap.”
Emma’s quill paused. She’d been working out the puzzle of how to gift Areli that: a morning with their attendance covered, the smallest rebellion. So innocent, so nearly impossible.
They lapsed into a companionable hush. Eyes half-lidded, Areli slowed her doodling: faceless figures resembling them, entwined beneath a starburst.
“See? Perfect,” she murmured, head sinking onto Emma’s shoulder. The ink on the page wobbled. “Wake me in a century.”
Before Emma could answer, a soft hiss broke from the stairwell. Lily rounded the entrance to the observatory, hurried and flushed.
“They’re on rounds.”
Areli shot upright with a groan. “Lily, you’re a saint and a curse.”
Emma already had the hymn book tucked away, her chart half-finished. She held Areli’s hand to tug her gently toward the exit. Their footsteps echoed down the stairwell, hearts pounding, quietly laughing as they rushed to slip back into the bunk. Above them, their telescope kept its patient gaze toward the sky.
His armor was dented and blood-streaked, eyes wide and glassy. He was muttering something—prayers, denials, negotiations with invisible demons. His hands were raw from clawing at the barrier.
Emma stopped. Her stone armor settled with a soft grinding sound.
Cullen.
He was nearly unrecognizable, but for his voice. She had been braced for hysteria, for the Templar’s frothing terror, but not this. Not specificity.
“This trick again? I know what you are. It won't work. I will stay strong.”
Wynne moved forward, hands raised in a gesture meant to be pacifying. “The boy is exhausted. Rest easy—help is here.”
“Enough visions.” Cullen lurched upright, swaying. “If anything in you is human, kill me now and end this game.”
Emma's manna spiked so aggressively that Alistair suppressed a flinch. She'd have obliged him, gladly. Her restraint was immense.
Leliana stepped closer, waterskin already in hand. “He's delirious. Here—”
“Don't touch me!” Cullen recoiled so violently he hit the curve of his containment. “Stay away! Sifting through my thoughts, tempting me with the one thing I always wanted but could never have... Using my shame against me, my ill-advised infatuation with her—a mage, of all things.”
Everyone felt terribly uncomfortable with this. When he stopped talking, one could hear a pin drop. Even the bubble's hum seemed to quiet.
“I am so tired,” Cullen whispered. “All these cruel jokes. These tricks. These—”
“Which mage, Cullen?” Emma asked. It would seem that the demons of the Fade had a lot of practice tempting its captives with the image of this particular mage.
“Enough,” he snapped. “I won’t listen. Begone.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, breath stuttering when she was still there. “Maker help me.”
Cullen's eyes focused for the first time. He recognized her. “You,” he breathed. “You're real.”
“I'm real.” Emma took one step closer. “Answer the question. Which mage?”
He stared at her like she'd materialized from his nightmares. Which, in a way, she had. “I... She...”
“Say her name.”
“No—I can't. They made me watch. Over and over. She kept telling me to... to surrender. To trust her. I knew it wasn't real. I knew.” His hands were shaking. “But sometimes I forgot. Sometimes I—”
“Do you even remember her?” Emma said.
That did it. His head snapped up. “I remember exactly.”
Emma nodded once. Her attention was a blade, held steady. “Then say her name.”
He didn’t.
“Areli—may that Maker-of-yours damn you!— she was Areli Surana. What happened during her Harrowing?”
“I was... I was doing my duty. Following orders. She was—the demon was—”
“She passed every test before that night,” Emma said quietly. “Every single one. Everyone said so. She was the best student in Wynne's cohort.”
“Then why did she fail?” Cullen's question was a demand. “Why did the demon—”
“You tell me.” Emma's voice was ice. “You were there.”
Alistair stepped up to flank her. A warning, or a comfort. Emma couldn't tell which.
Cullen's face twisted. “I had no choice. The demon was already—she was already—I couldn't—” His breath came in hitches. “There was nothing I could do.”
“So you killed her.”
“I saved everyone else! I protected her from herself!” The load-bearing lie, spoken like a prayer.
“If I hadn't acted, if I'd hesitated even a second longer, it would have torn through the entire tower. You don't understand what I saw. What it made her—”
“I understand,” Emma said, “that you want me to believe you had no choice. But it didn't get there by itself, did it?”
Wynne touched her arm. “Emma. He's been through—”
“Poor Cullen.” Emma didn't look away from the prisoner. “Kneeling now. But he was upright when Uldred took this Tower. He was armed when Areli was trapped.”
She paused. “The demons and blood mages kept him alive. On purpose. Why?”
Cullen made a sound like he'd been punched.
“Stop—”
“Did she beg you to stop? Does some part of you believe you loved her?”
“Stop!!” He pounded on the barrier. Alistair shifted closer to Emma, by inches. She had provoked Cullen to frenzy. For a moment, they all thought he might try to attack her through it.
“Did you even wait to see if she could fight it off?” Emma continued.
“You weren't there! You don't know what it's like to watch someone you—to see them become—” He was gasping now, hands pressed to his temples. “I see her every time I close my eyes. I see what she became.”
“What they made her become. What it, and you made her...”
She trusted you; I trusted you. Emma couldn't say it.
Cullen collapsed back to his knees. “Why did you come back?” His voice was hollow now, all the fight gone. “How did you survive?”
“This is my home,” Emma said. The words felt dry. “Or it was.”
“As it was mine. Look what they've done to it. They deserve to die. Uldred most of all.”
“Where are Irving and the other mages?” Wynne interjected.
“The Harrowing chamber. But you can't save them. You don't know what they've become.”
“And you do?” Emma asked.
“They've been surrounded by blood mages—” Cullen's eyes were feverish now. “Their wicked fingers snake into your mind, corrupt your thoughts. You can't tell who's been turned. Who's still human.” He looked directly at Emma. “You have to end it. Now. Before it's too late.”
“End what, exactly?”
“All of it.” He said it simply. “To ensure this horror ends, to guarantee that no abominations or blood mages survive—you must kill everyone up there.”
Emma felt something cold slide down her spine. Behind her, Leliana inhaled sharply.
“Everyone,” Emma repeated. “Even the ones who fought Uldred. Even the ones who resisted.”
“You can't tell maleficarum by sight.” Cullen's voice gained strength, gained certainty. “Just one could influence the mind of a king, a grand cleric. The risk is too great. If you care about Ferelden—if you care about anyone outside these walls—you'll do what's necessary.”
Alistair stood next to her, close enough that his mail almost brushed her shoulder. It had picked up the cold in the air. She could feel it.
Emma felt a painful irony, poison in her second pulse. A bastard prince stood at her side, listening. A future king, maybe, hopefully not. Influenced, right now, not by blood magic but by herself, her choices.
“If he wants us to kill survivors,” that bastard said, quietly. Not to Cullen. To Emma. “We're not doing that.”
Cullen's head snapped toward him. “You don't understand. You weren't here. You didn't see—You're one of them—”
“I know exactly what you saw.” He paused. “The memory of your friends' deaths is still fresh in your mind. You're not thinking straight.”
Cullen stared at him, something like betrayal dawning in his eyes. “You... you would trust her?” He gestured at Emma. “She let Jowan walk.”
“We know. And she's about to save whatever mages are still alive up there.”
Cullen opened his mouth, slack, shocked. “You're making a mistake.”
“It's worth a shot,” Alistair said.
“We've come out better for our mistakes, so far,” Leliana added.
Emma wasn't paying attention to them. She was still looking at Cullen. Her hand drifted toward her staff. Everyone in the room saw it.
She turned to Wynne. “Can you drop the barrier?”
Wynne didn't answer. But she was ready to intervene. Ready to heal. Emma's fingers closed around the staff, tight with potential violence. The bubble hummed.
Cullen didn't move. He just watched her, eyes wide and almost hopeful. Like he wanted her to do it.
Like it would prove him right.
“We need him alive,” Wynne said carefully. “If we kill his last man, Greagoir won't hear us.”
“I know.” Emma's voice was steady. Too steady. “When this is over, your boss will want to know why the malificar kept you. You'll tell him we saved lives, and the Chantry men who wanted to slaughter everyone were wrong.”
“And if I don't?”
Then I'll come back. And we'll finish this conversation.
“You will. Because you'll need them to believe you had no choice—again.”
Emma abruptly walked past the bubble without looking back. Alistair followed immediately.
“May the Maker watch over you.” Leliana cast one more troubled glance at Cullen before trailing after them.
Behind them, muffled by stone and distance, they could hear Cullen start to pray.
Wynne lingered, following last.
“It's just cruel,” she sighed.
As they climbed the stairs toward the Harrowing chamber, Alistair opened the visor of his helm, trying to get a better read on his fellow Warden. Failing that, looking for something to resolve the unease he felt.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” Emma said. She didn't slow down. Didn't look at him. Just kept climbing.
Alistair nodded. Asked nothing else. Stayed close.
Morrigan materialized from raven-form on the landing above them, golden eyes sharp. “The chamber above reeks of blood magic and desperation,” she said. Then, studying Emma's face: “And I heard you have encountered someone from your past. How interesting.”
“You have no idea,” Alistair muttered.
“Oh, I have some idea.” Morrigan's smile was knowing, indeed. “So much guilt and rage and misdirected devotion.”
Emma said nothing. Alistair's polished armor caught the light from above—the sickly green glow of illegal, horrible magic filtering down the stairs.
“Well,” Morrigan continued, “are we now pretending that restraining yourself from ending him is a noble act? We have spared the jailer of Circle mages we also meant to aid. 'Tis a tangled contradiction you are weaving.”
“She didn't kill him because it wouldn't have helped,” Alistair said.
“How pragmatic. And here I thought it was mercy.”
“Mercy is conditional,” Emma said quietly. “I haven't decided if he's used his up.”
“Right,” Alistair said, eyeing the flames. “So we just… walk through it. Naked. In front of everyone.”
Emma was already disrobing, quoting, “Those who carry nothing but truth may pass unharmed.”
“An absurd religious hazing ritual. Appropriate, I guess.”
He glanced back at their companions, who had tactfully turned away—except Zevran, who was laughing, delighted by the spectacle.
“You can wait here,” Emma offered, unbuckling her belt. Glass vials and metal clasps clinked as she dropped it onto the stone.
“And let you have all the fun? Absolutely not.”
She helped him undo a series of buckles. The intimacy of it—the ritual stripping-down, the preparation for trial—more vulnerable than the nakedness itself. He dropped the last of his gear beside hers, catching her eye. The holy fire cast strange halos around them.
Finally, he pulled the loose edges of her robe aside, lowering it over her shoulders, revealing her. He’d seen her unclothed before—privately, closely—but not like this. Not illuminated by something holy and terrible while their companions half-giggled behind them.
Only now, in the clarity of that bright fire, did he appreciate how she’d changed: leaner, firmer, a little less mage and a little more soldier. He shivered without his tunic.
She smirked. He returned a shy smile. The tension softened into something conspiratorial.
“Well,” he said as she took his hand, “if we die, at least we’ll die beautiful.”
Emma laughed, tugging him forward, stepping into the fire.
There was no heat. No pain. Only the sensation of being lifted—unmade, then remade.
They were nowhere.
Then the fire spat them into elsewhere.
A vast, unfamiliar void. Naked. Weightless. Colors churned like storm-glass caught in a whirlpool—violets, deep blues, greens—spiraling around a central ring of shining chrome. The spiral elongated, collapsed, reformed around an unseen axis. A strange beat pulsed from within it, perfectly regular, felt inside their ribs.
The beat flattened into a steady hum. The ring hovered in impossibly smooth rotation.
Emma’s breath caught. She was certain she was not meant to witness this. Its symmetry was perfect—unnervingly so. Forbidden. A truth stripped of myth. She knew as they were here, looking at it, they were also within it. Spinning. Perhaps as they'd always been.
“This isn’t the Gauntlet,” she whispered.
“It’d be nice if it were.” Alistair tightened his grip on her hand, following as she stepped forward, compelled.
Colors thinned, stretched like paint dragged over glass, then drained away entirely, leaving only a white needle of light and brushed metal.
The bare metal.
It was clicking.
“Listen.”
The clicking sharpened into rhythmic friction, precise and mechanical.
“I am,” Alistair murmured. His voice sounded small. Something pressed at the boundaries of the space, making the air itself shiver. His skin prickled.
And then Valor stepped out from the spaces between the clicks.
“Greetings.”
The spirit had no fixed form—light given a silhouette, its edges bleeding into the void. Broad-shouldered. Steady. Familiar. His voice carried the cool edge of conviction.
“We have come far,” he said. “But not far enough.”
Valor did not look at Alistair at all. He stepped between them anyway, hands gripping her shoulders. “Emma, How do we leave?”
She stared past him, transfixed.
“I know what you seek,” said the spirit. “Strength to change the fate of nations.”
His voice pressed against her chest like a hand.
“And—rarer still—the knowledge of why things are as they are.”
The spinning disk dilated. Details sharpened into impossibly fine metal tracks and pits, each groove vibrating with something sublime.
Writing.
“I can give you both,” Valor said.
“Emma,” Alistair warned, voice tight. “Don’t.”
“Let me show you.”
“Please—”
But she was already reaching—toward the light, toward understanding—
Alistair struck.
His heel slammed into the disk’s edge. It wobbled, skipped. The clicking broke, grinding into a shriek of metal on metal. Emma cried out. Alistair yanked her back, holding her tight.
Light shattered. Static filled the void. Color peeled away. Valor’s form fractured into jagged, glitching shards.
The space buckled, ruptured, collapsed—
Everything tore open in a single violent instant, revealing an impossible window:
A cramped room. A humming tower of black metal. A glowing CRT monitor. A person slapping the side of the tower as the disk inside shrieked.
“Shit! I didn’t save—”
Another voice: “Dude! I told you to get an SSD!”
The metal whine crescendoed and ground to a stop. Then it was all gone. They slammed onto cold stone, naked, fire roaring behind them. The Gauntlet stretched ahead—ordinary. Too ordinary.
Emma gasped like she’d been struck. Something inside her felt torn out—she didn’t even know what it was.
Alistair’s eyes darted to her. For a moment, he feared someone else might look back.
She noticed.
“What is it?” she asked quietly, not looking up.
He startled. “Am I staring? I’m— well. Maybe I am. Sorry.”
She shrugged, but lifted her gaze, questioning.
“Emma… do you remember what happened? In the fire?”
She paused. “We walked through. It was bright. It felt… strange. Then we were on the other side.”
A crease formed between her brows. “Why? What do you remember?”
“I—” He rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I know something else happened, but when I reach for it it’s like trying to remember a dream the moment you wake. I know it mattered. I just… can’t get to it.”
“That’s the Fade,” Emma said, though something inside her tightened. She set aside her staff entirely. “Especially here.”
“Right. Yes. That’s what I keep telling myself.”
Then, quietly:
“After that... I had this dream,” he said. “And you were there. Something was… reaching for you. From inside. Hands coming through your ribs like they were growing out of you.”
Alistair’s voice roughened. “I wanted to stop it. I tried. And I couldn’t. When I woke up, I felt—Maker, Emma, I don’t have words for it. Just that something’s waiting. Patient.”
She watched him; His fingers kept flexing. The fire popped a flash of light, highlighting his intensity.
“We've fought many demons. If something had tried to possess me, one of us would know,” she said.
“I know. That’s what scares me. This didn’t feel anything like that.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. She moved closer until their knees nearly touched.
“Back at the Circle, fighting Uldred… For one horrible second, I thought—you know... but I understood everything. I could see it. I still remember. I remember everything.”
Emma looped her arm around his, grounding him. He shut his eyes at the contact.
“But this... whatever I saw, those hands...I don't even know,” he repeated. She pressed into the flexion of his arm, gently releasing his fingers. He grumbled, ducking his head to rest heavily on her shoulder.
“You need rest,” she whispered, stroking his hair as a silent reminder: I’m here. I’m fine.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Try.”
“Emma—”
“I know you won't sleep through anything dramatic,” she promised, lightly.
He hesitated. She kissed his temple. Once, twice, steady. Convincing. He settled onto her lap. She watched as his breathing slowly evened, shallow. Tightly wound. Barely, but asleep.
Emma stared into the fire, frowning. She remembered nothing.
“We need a plan.” Emma spread the map across the damp ground, weighing down the corners with stones. Her fingers traced the route through the swamp, pausing at each water crossing marked by the Chasind scouts. “Flemeth's hut is here, deep in the wetlands.”
“Lovely.” Alistair crouched beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his armor. “Nothing says 'friendly visit' like trudging through a swamp to meet an ancient witch of legend.”
“The water paths will be our main challenge. We should establish signals for crossing formations.”
Zevran lounged against a tree, cleaning his nails with a dagger. Alistair shot Zevran a warning look. She ignored them and continued,
“Sten and Alistair take point, I'll coordinate from center with support, Zevran and Leliana on flanks, Wynne on barriers. If we encounter deep water—” she paused, “Zevran's on reconnaissance.”
“How delightfully practical,” Zevran purred. “Our fearless leader seems less than enthusiastic about getting her feet wet.”
Alistair had already deliberately placed himself between her and Zevran's knowing smirk. “It's called tactical positioning. Emma coordinates better with full field visibility.”
“Of course.” Zevran's smile widened.
“We leave in an hour,” Emma interrupted, “Check your supplies.”
As the others dispersed, Alistair lingered.
“Remember what we practiced at Redcliffe. If—”
“I remember.” The swimming lesson felt like a lifetime ago—his patient hands supporting her back, her death grip on his forearms, the mortifying panic when water touched her face. She'd managed to float for exactly three seconds before scrambling for shore.
“But the swamp won't be like the lake,” she added. Emma had also been anxious of Lake Calenhad’s cold, semitransparent depth; But now found herself nostalgic for it. His hand found hers on the map.
“Don't,” Emma responded, pointlessly, while squeezing back. She had noted the way he angled himself, as if he could shield her from this as simply as he could a physical assault. This was plain for Zevran to read, at least, and probably the others as well.
Embarrassing, but maybe better they all knew, or suspected.
“Don't what? Don't stand here? Don't breathe? Don't fail to notice that you're gripping that map like it's trying to escape?”
“Someone needs to keep you from making terrible jokes at inappropriate moments.”
“My jokes are perfectly timed, thank you very much.”
The swamp had reclaimed itself—water risen, thick black and sucking. The Korcari Wilds pressed in on all sides, thick with rot and fog that turned the midday sun to a sickly yellow smear. Their boots squelched through mud that grabbed at every step, and Emma forced herself to focus on the rhythm of movement rather than the sticky air and soggy ground saturating her entirely.
“Cheerful place,” Alistair muttered, slapping at something with too many legs. “Really captures that 'slow descent into madness' aesthetic.”
“Shh.” Leliana held up a hand, arrow already half-nocked. “Something moves ahead.”
They fell into formation without thought, weeks of travel having honed their movements to near-telepathy.
“Just a giant leech,” Zevran reported, reappearing from the mist. “Already dead, thankfully. Though the size suggests we should watch the water.”
“There.” Alistair pointed through the trees. The hut squatted in the swamp like something grown rather than built, all angles wrong. The Wardens exchanged glances. It had not, until this moment, felt much like the same swamp where they'd been rescued, almost a year ago. It had been here the two of them had learned they were the only Grey Wardens in Ferelden. His visor was open, exposing a knot of grief in his brow, once so familiar. She realized she couldn't recall the last time she'd seen it.
“Well, well.” Flemeth stood silhouetted in the doorframe, and Emma's blood chilled. Power radiated from her like heat from a forge, ancient and amused and probably inhuman. “The young Warden and her merry band. Come about my daughter's little request, have you?”
Emma wasn't interested in talking. She looked at her companions—Leliana already reaching for her bow, Sten simply waiting for orders, Wynne's face grave but unsurprised. Zevran twirled his daggers with anticipation. And Alistair...
Alistair stepped closer to her, voice low. “We can walk away.”
“And let Morrigan be possessed? By her own mother?”
“No— I— You're right. Of course.”
Everything was their problem now—the Blight made sure of that. Morrigan was one of theirs.
Then the bog itself seemed to inhale. The wind dropped. The reeds bent outward. And Flemeth rose from the muck. Not the woman, not the hag of the Wilds—something else. Her dragon form tore through the canopy, swamp water sliding off her scales in sheets.
“Great. A disapproving parent who is also a dragon,” Alistair raised his shield, bracing in the muck.
“Form up,” Emma commanded. “Spread out, don't group where her breath can catch us all. Wynne, barriers on the melees. Leliana, Zevran—”
Leliana crossed herself and knocked an arrow, cold eyes calculating angles, “Aim for the wings when she lifts. Bring her down,” she called to Zevran, her bardic voice lilting through rain.
“Already on it,” he vanished into stealth.
Emma saw the telling glow building in Flemeth's throat. “MOVE!”
Fire turned the swamp to steam. Emma threw herself behind a twisted tree, bark exploding above her head as flames licked around either side. She heard Alistair's war cry, the clash of sword on scales. The surface of the swamp was slick and black as oil.
Emma called out from the left flank, sending a bolt of energy that sparked harmlessly off dragon hide. The enchanted arrows flew true, a dozen striking in rapid succession. Flemeth roared, whipping around with her tail catching Sten full in the chest. Their off-tank flew backward, hitting a tree with a crack that made Emma wince.
“Sten!” She started toward him, but Wynne was already there, blue light flowing from her hands.
“Focus!” Wynne commanded, ever the teacher, even now.
Emma turned back to see Alistair dancing between Flemeth's claws, his shield taking gouges that would have eviscerated him in leathers. Zevran appeared and disappeared, leaving bleeding wounds that re-sealed behind dragon scales. The dank smells of iron and peat hit her in waves.
“We're not hurting her enough!” Alistair yelled, diving under another swipe.
Attempting to make advantage of the wet, Emma hit Flemeth with a storm of frost and shadow, but it dissolved uselessly in a spark of violet. She resists cold.
Her staff pulsed with white fire, enchanting their weapons to flame with an unspoken command: Burn her.
Flemeth reared to fight fire with fire, breathing a blast that rolled off Alistair’s shield like molten sunlight, briefly lighting the field beyond seeing anything. She heard Leliana’s arrows sing over their shoulders, each one striking softer flesh—between scales, under the jaw, along the wing joint.
Emma's mind raced. They had done this before, with the dragon at Haven. But Flemeth was older, smarter, and she knew their tactics. Every time they seemed to gain advantage, she adapted. Then she saw it, when the dragon reared back for another breath attack, there was a pause, a gathering of energy that left her exposed.
“Alistair!” Emma shouted. “When she breathes—”
“Come on, then!” understanding, he provoked the dragon who obliged him, diving with a crash. Emma channeled a forcefield around him, preventing him from being split with the blighted water. The spell held, barely. And that was now a new problem.
Emma looked at the positioning—Flemeth was too mobile, too reactive. Unless...“Leliana, Zevran—drive her toward the water!”
Zevran laughed, breathless. But they moved anyway, harrying Flemeth toward the deep pool at the clearing's edge. Emma felt her chest tighten as they got closer, the dark water reflecting nothing, promising everything she feared. Flemeth, focused on the immediate threats, didn't notice her back claws sink into mud, until it was too late. She reared up, wings spreading for balance—
“NOW!” Emma screamed. Arrows soared. Her spell, a concentrated lance of arcane entropy, struck the exposed point. Flemeth’s roar reverberated through the air. Furious at the resistance, her slit-pupiled gaze swept to the next threat — Zevran, shooting too close, loosing arrows with reckless rhythm. Her tail lashed, spraying mud, and she pivoted toward him like a serpent scenting prey. The amateur archer lowered his bow, eyes flicking to Emma with a quiet plea for help.
She looked back— just in time, the force-field dissipated, their tank charged toward them. Flemeth rounded swiftly in a mighty surge of motion, rocking the peaty surface. He was determined to draw Flemeth’s wrath away from their archers, covering their retreat. He slammed his sword into Flemeth’s hind leg with a resounding crack. Her retaliating claw caught him mid-turn.
It wasn’t a clean hit; worse, it was a crushing one. The strike flung him back into a deeper part of the bog, where he vanished beneath the surface. The splash was deep and sickening. Then, nothing. No shout. Just the ripple closing in on itself.
Emma went after the depth where Alistair had vanished, waded toward the rippling spot where the bubbles still broke. Her next spell fizzled in her hand. Every instinct screamed at her to stop, to let someone else—anyone else—She could just wait, and hope.
Zevran was already there, looking to their leader; Oddly slow, struggling not to freeze in fear. He estimated their odds of surviving this fight, her typically stoic command broken, the other Warden underwater. Not good.
In an instant, she reflected rapidly on a series of past and present: “Water erodes even the strongest mountain, and remembers everything it swallows.” Areli sleeping soundly in a bunk, before she was lost to the Circle. Alistair in the lake of his boyhood home, where he moved through the water with an ease that made her envious, promising not to let her drown. If he could surface on his own, he would have already. She did not want to go on wondering if she could have done something, anything different, not with another.
Zevran barked at her, “Warden! Go, or he’s gone. I’ll cover your back.”
Emma stumbled after, trembling, the swamp closing around her waist. She searched for Alistair’s pulse, distant under the water — but it slipped away, sinking. He was drowning because she insisted they come here.
“His armor,” she gasped. “It’s too heavy—”
Flemeth was already rearing again, wings spreading to take flight. Leliana’s arrows whistled in arcs of red flame, and one struck deep. The dragon roared, staggered—its wing faltered. Zevran seized the opening, a rare shot into the same wound. Leliana’s last arrow loosed — divine fire trailing like a comet — and slammed through Flemeth’s eye.
Emma got a glimpse of the dragon reeling backward as she plunged into the liquid darkness, thick with sediment and plant matter that turned everything to shadow. She propelled herself forward, despite wanting to surface, to breathe, to escape. The signs of life she had been following dissipated against the fade. Somewhere ahead, something metallic glimmered faintly—a shoulder plate, bubbles leaking through a helm, anchored motionless at a wretched angle into the mud. He’d hit hard and cratered into the bottom. Emma’s lungs burned already.
She kicked through the muck toward him, every stroke fighting suction. Zevran, somehow not far behind, his eyes were narrow slits behind the dim gleam of a dagger he’d drawn—his “knife for close conversations.”
Emma reached the fallen Warden, desperately clawed at his plates, fingers sliding off the mud-slick steel. Zevran appeared at her flank and mimed cutting. But there was no leverage, no air. Every tug sent clouds of silt blooming around her like smoke. To her horror, she discovered the swamp’s pressure had sealed him into the suit, like a coffin's lid pinned down by the earth. They couldn't access the straps or cut them.
Her spell fizzled, her staff-less hands burned—the fade’s current muddled by the water’s density. Her magic didn’t travel well here; it hit resistance like sound underwater. She tried again. Her hands found his breastplate seam and she pressed her palm flat. Her glyph flickered and she reversed the spin, forcing the pressure out.
The spell detonated in silence, a concussive bloom of blue and white. The mud Alistair was embedded in loosened, clouds of silt boiling up like smoke. And the damned breastplate buckled, separating by a finger’s width—enough for her to jam her hand in and wrench the straps. The leather, swollen and tight, refused to give. She summoned a thread of flame to the dagger in Zevran’s hand, mana draining rapidly to keep the the blade burning faint gold underwater, but the rogue managed to saw through.
Emma jammed her own knife under another strap. The effort was blind, desperate. Her knife and hands were meant for chopping herbs. Zevran followed her fast, sawing through the leather buckles of the breastplate, swollen and gritty, practically glued together. She moved on, looking for anything else to get through, so desperately grasped and stretched the doublet underneath, cutting him out of careful stitches and strong wool. Her lungs convulsed to remind her she was also running out of time. Her entire will compartmentalized her fear of submersion, suppressing the urge to surface, refusing to leave without him.
She tried and failed to pry the armour open as Zevran he cut through the last strap. He was still too heavy, the water too thick, and she could feel her head getting light, her limbs getting denser.
I'm going to drown. We're both going to drown.
With her last bit of mana, Emma forced the next repulsion glyph, veins now burning with her lungs. She heard the unmistakable sound of bone cracking, but it worked. The cloud of debris they had created sucked inward, toward the vacuum of the breastplate pried open at last. The force ripped through the mud and kicked both of them upward. Armor peeled away in chunks—breastplate, spaulders, gauntlet.
She thought of nothing but up, of firmly dragging the other warden behind her, thought of nothing but them breaking the surface, thought of nothing but—
Air.
She gasped, choked, gasped again, treading poorly while struggling to keep hold of him, his helmet heavy against her shoulder. The rain hammered down harder now, drumming against her face, turning the swamp’s surface into a boiling skin. Leliana was bounding toward them.
“Help!” The word came out as barely a croak.
Her vision was cloudy, but she felt hands on them—Zevran, pushing, Leliana hauling them to shore. As they emerged from the swampy pool, its water released them with a slurp, and they collapsed onto solid ground.
Leliana rolled Alistair onto his side. His visor was still locked down; Emma slammed the heel of her hand against the hinge, but it didn’t budge. She used her knife as a lever, wedging it beneath the visor seam and prying. The visor gave way with a splintering crack; The knife snapped. Air hit his face. He didn’t breathe.
“You’re not done yet,” she insisted, tearing open the satchel of vials at her belt to chug a mana potion. The spell bridged the gap between them; she felt his heart’s heavy stillness inside herself. Emma pushed harder—pulled harder, mimicking the rythmn of her own heartbeat—until, finally, with Leliana shoving at his back, viscous bog water gushed from his mouth. He sputtered, coughed, groaned, an ugly sound of drowning undone. The glow around her hands dimmed as she saw his eyes open.
Zevran sat back, running a hand through his hair, exhaling slow. “Maker’s mercy. Remind me to never fish for Wardens again.”
“You owe me a new bowstring,” Leliana said softly; She secured it poorly in her haste to pull her companions out of the water.
The swamp was still again, except for the hiss of cooling scales. Zevran looked away, under the pretense of watching the corpse steam in the distance. Leliana carefully removed her ruined bowstring, stealing glances at the Wardens, her eyes shining.
Alistair took in Emma, crouched over him, soaked to the bone, hair plastered to her face, her palm pressed to his sternum and radiating an unnatural warmth into his lungs. Feeling returned to him in stabbing pins and needles. He became aware of her other arm curling around him, pulling him up against her as he ejected goo on every other exhale.“You... can't swim.”
“Neither can you, apparently.”
“Meant to...”
“Shut up. Just breathe.”
Alistair’s eyes fluttered, unfocused, a hand pawing at his torn doublet. He wheezed something and promptly choked on it.
“Get us potions... and a tent,” she said to Leliana.
“Em, where...?” he managed.
“Don't worry. Sit, please...” He tried to straighten, but pain constricted him. He was limp and heavy. Emma struggled with the angle for his lungs to drain.
“Keep him upright,” Wynne said sharply as she reached them. “He’s aspirated half the swamp.”
Leliana arrived with the potions, then sprinted off again to start assembling camp. As Emma eased him up with a poultice, she spotted among the vials: Her phylactery with the amulet of Andraste chained around it.
Somewhere behind them, Bodahn and Sandal must have already retrieved some things. Leliana’s romantic streak had saved their asses more than once, and apparently today was no exception.
“It's safe. We found it.” She assured him; He didn't respond.
“Alistair.” She could feel everything. Still breathing. Still going to be fine, eventually. But she bid him anyway. Slowly, the arm she held him by latched onto her.
He felt her gasp, heard her cry, felt tears hot on him as she pressed her face into the dampness of his hair and neck.
Leliana looked back at them before she shook out a bedroll onto the driest patch of land available: a massive tangle of roots forming a platform above the mire. Together, they dragged Alistair onto it. Leliana and Zevran built a tent around them.
Wynne swept in with an armful of supplies. “Out of the way, dear. Let me see him.”
Emma shifted back, allowing her the elbow room, watching as Wynne's practiced hands moved over Alistair's torso. The older mage's expression darkened.
“Broken collarbone. Possibly cracked ribs.”
Emma withdrew a pungent bottle of brandy, wincing as Wynne narrated her own observations. She recognized exactly which injury she’d caused cracking the breastplate open. Flemeth had done the rest.
“And his lungs,” Wynne added grimly, already warming water into steam. “Fluid. We need to keep it from settling. I’ll handle that. Warden, tend the fractures.”
Alistair blinked at the bottle. “—getting me drunk?”
“Very.” She tipped it to him, slowly, patiently holding it back as he coughed.
“Your bedside manner has improved considerably,” Wynne remarked without looking up. Then, lowered, a precisely calculated volume: “At this particular bedside.”
Emma ignored her.
“Em...” Alistair squinted at her, breaths deepening as the alcohol took effect. “Did you—?”
“Drink.” Emma held it steady while he coughed and tried again. His eyes were glassy as he slumped. She held him up, fumbling with the nearly empty bottle in her other hand.
“Alistair.” She squeezed his better arm; discarded the bottle and found the nape of his neck. “Focus. Sit up. Please.”
“I wanna lie down...”
“Don't.” He obeyed, slowly, straining.
“Leliana,” Wynne said, “hold his shoulder. When Emma manipulates the bone, he’ll try to pull away.”
“Manipulate wha—?”
“We’re putting your bones where they belong,” Emma said, palms sliding into position as he squirmed. She felt the misaligned ends through swollen skin.
“Try to be still. It’ll hurt,” she warned him.
He groaned with contempt. “—already hurts!”
“Wynne, the ribs—”
“Wrapped already.”
Wynne began a slow, practiced healing pulse over his ribs while Emma prepared herself.
“Leliana,” Emma said. “Brace him.” Leliana planted a knee beside his arm.
Emma met Alistair's eyes. “Ready?”
He nodded, steeling himself, a steady gaze on her.
Emma pulled and pushed in one sharp motion. Bone ground, clicked, and he cried through clenched teeth, arching against Leliana’s hold. She pushed back, until it settled into place.
“Done,” she murmured.
Alistair slid down again, panting, drenched hair sticking to his temple.
“Sit up,” Emma insisted, stuffing her cloak behind him as Leliana lifted him forward.
“Mmhmm,” his hand was searching again for the pocket inside his absent tunic. While Wynne pushed him away from her bandages, Emma quickly slipped the phylactery with the amulet into a dry pouch.
The Senior Enchanter gathered her supplies: “You did well.”
“Thank you.” Emma's tone was flat. “Please leave.”
Leliana followed her out, casting one last concerned glance back.
“Leliana,” Emma added, “thanks for the potions.”
“Thanksss...” Alistair echoed as they left.
Emma silently splinted and bandaged him, her hands deft as she secured his shoulder around his good side. Finally, she slipped the pouch under the bandages, where he had been searching. His hand met hers there.
“Hi,” he whispered, smiling faintly. “You saved me.”
“Don't mention it.”
“I will. Endlessly.” His breaths were rough but steadying. Better. “Stay?”
She nodded, settling on his better side.
“Good.” His breathing deepened, he stopped squirming. Then, barely audible, he mumbled: “Love you.”
Probably not conscious. Probably the brandy. Probably true.
Emma still didn't want to put her own pack back on, as they moved the camp up bit by bit, away from the heart of the swamp. She herself hadn't looked directly at the water since she escaped it. The thought made her stomach turn.
They had to go slowly, and couldn't go far. She still had Bodhan on the recovery of Alistair's broken armor, which she knew he'd be eager to get back and repair, if possible... Unfortunately, some parts were still missing.
Zevran crouched near the fire, leathers half-off, his hair plastered to his face in humid gold tangles. He glanced at Emma's fingertips, cleansed but still stained of poultices.
“Not the best element for you, no?” he says softly, voice light. “And yet, you pulled off a rescue. That’s a fine irony.”
Emma nodded and stared into the fire. “You could’ve run. Thank you.”
Zevran gave her his most quicksilver smile. “Sure, I could’ve. But then who would ruin your reputation for calm under pressure?” He patted her shoulder, resigning himself to internalize his performance of comradery. “Besides, the bastard owes me a drink now.”
“I'll make sure you get it.”
Emma and Muffin circled the camp, distantly supervising Wynne fussing over everyone. Then she found herself sitting outside Alistair's tent. Couldn't bring herself to go back in, but couldn't leave either.
“Em,” he called, detecting her presence there. She pushed herself through the tent flap.
“You're worried about me,” it was dark, but his tone was pleased, lightly teasing. She knew his expression exactly.
“You drowned.” The tent had them close. He felt her shiver.
“Just briefly,” was his best attempt at reassuring her. “Besides, I’ve seen you die twice. Fair’s fair.”
Emma settled back to her spot next to him, still warm, listening to his steady heart and ragged breathing. For a while, neither spoke. The tent canvas hissed under the rain.
“You saved me,” he reminded her. Again.
“You'd do the same.”
“Yes, but I didn't—” He stopped. “Sorry.”
“No, don't...” she refused the apology.
”—and then you stayed here with me. All night.” He squinted, struggling to remember what he'd been through. Mostly, he remembered how closely Emma held him as he struggled to breathe.
“I just... keep seeing you go under,” she admitted.
“Leliana told me you didn't even hesitate...”
“Oh... I hesitated.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “I really didn't think I could.”
“But you did... That's... no one's ever...”
“Alistair—”
“I know we don't talk about it,” he interrupted. “This thing between us. We joke and we flirt and we dance around it because there's a Blight and you're, well, you're you. And I'm... well, I'm an idiot. I really don't know how to do this. But when I was underwater, when everything was going dark, all I could think about is that I hadn't told you—”
He trailed off. It was cruel, what he had wished he had said had seemed so clear, and now—
Emma thought: he had told her. Probably. Now he was struggling. She decided to save him the trouble.
“I think,” she said slowly, “I'm falling in love with you.”
It wasn't easy for her, either.
“Emma— You think?” he countered, stunned.
“Why not?” She looked at him, feeling as though she should ask permission somehow, after guessing at where he meant to go.
He chuckled nervously, “Well... I've lost everyone who ever mattered to me. Duncan, the other Wardens... But you're still here. We're still here. For now.”
“For now is all anyone has,” she gently pressed her forehead into his arm.
The sensation dimly recalled a new detail: How he'd wanted to comfort her. He'd held his arm held to hers, but she cried. Her face as she stifled the sound on him.
“Emma, I—”
“I know, I know...”
He pulled her close, his elbow locking around her, as she had done then.
“I love you,” he insisted. “I love you.”
Emma woke to find herself still in Alistair's tent, still in all of yesterday's clothes, his unsplinted arm curled around her shoulder. Outside, she could hear the camp stirring. Leliana's soft humming, Sten's heavy footfalls, Zevran making some inappropriate comment that had Wynne scolding him.
“We should get up,” she murmured.
“Mm, no.” Alistair tightened his hold. “The Blight can wait.”
“I failed to consider this. When did you get so wise?”
“When I took a nap in soup. Who knew?”
He hugged her, pressing her into bruised ribs. Painful, worth it, although this didn't go unnoticed. She slipped away all too quickly.
“Thanks for not dying,” she said.
“Anytime. Well, no. Let's never do that again.”
The camp was subdued when Emma emerged. Morrigan had caught up with them. She sat apart from the others, the grimoire open in her lap but her eyes unfocused. Leliana was trying to maintain normalcy, preparing breakfast while humming nervously. Even Zevran was quiet, sharpening his blades with unusual focus.
Emma approached Morrigan slowly. “May I?”
Morrigan gestured to the log beside her without looking up. “Come to ensure I'm not planning to transform into a dragon and eat you all?”
“Are you?”
“Alas, I think not,” Morrigan closed the grimoire. “This book... it's not what I expected. It's... history. Memories. Some things she never told me.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it's all lies, stories crafted to manipulate me even now.” Morrigan finally looked at Emma, who had no answers.
So Morrigan changed the subject. “You entered the deep swamp, I was told. For that fool templar.”
“He's not a templar,” she insisted.
“So I've heard. You did this, although you could barely swim. More the fools both of you.”
“True.”
Morrigan stood abruptly, crossing her arms.
“I will need time. To study this, to understand what mother—what Flemeth intended.”
“Naturally.”
“I want you to know that while I may not always prove... worthy... of your friendship. I will always value it.”
Emma found herself strangely moved, but she knew Morrigan would not appreciate any added sentimentality.
“I don't expect anything more.”
As Morrigan walked away, Alistair slowly approached with two cups of tea.
“That went better than expected. She didn't threaten to turn anyone into a toad.”
“There's still time,” Emma accepted the tea gratefully, warmth seeping into her still-cold hands. She thought maybe she wouldn't mind being a toad, temporarily.
“So what now? We've killed the terrible witch, you've conquered your fear of water—”
“I doubt that.”
But Emma was thinking of Morrigan with the grimoire, of Flemeth's knowing smile before she was, apparently, slain. She unhunched herself, sat upright, squaring her shoulders.
As they broke camp, she caught Morrigan watching her with an unreadable expression.
“What?” Emma asked.
“I am... concerned, perhaps. For I believe you have changed. If you make decisions based on feeling rather than logic, you may yet get yourself killed.”
“Not this time,” she watched Alistair helping Leliana restring her bow, making her laugh. No regrets.
“Oh, this time, sure. And what of next time?” Morrigan adjusted her pack. “I wonder, who shall you choose, when you must choose between saving one and many?”
“Many, obviously,” Emma said. “In this aim, we cannot lose a Grey Warden.”
This was a real and logical answer. It hadn't satisfied Wynne, either. But this was an upside of leadership: Emma didn't need them to accept her reasons. For now.
Emma drifted between stalls, half-listening to Oghren haggle loudly over a greataxe while Alistair stood nearby, arms crossed, looking very tall and uncomfortable.
Among the broad-bladed axes and sturdy dwarven shortswords, one piece stood out—a slender dagger, the steel dark as red wine, its pommel wrought into a blooming rose. Fine work, too fine for its company. She could not help but be reminded of the blooming rose from Lothering. Even now, the last living one she'd seen.
“For the elf?” asked the dwarven merchant.
Emma glanced back at Zevran, who was examining a set of throwing knives with professional interest. She picked up the dagger, examining its weight. Light, balanced. The sort of weapon meant for quick, precise work. Zevran would appreciate it. She caught his eye and gestured him over.
“What do you think?”
Zevran took the blade, turning it in the torchlight. His fingers moved with practiced ease, checking the edge, the balance point, the way it sat in his grip.
“Very nice.” A slight smile; He seemed pleased. “Though I confess, Warden, this would serve better in the hands of a fighter who knows a shield.”
“You mean Alistair?”
“He carries daggers, does he not?” Zevran spun the blade once, then offered it back to her. “This is made for someone who fights with their off-hand occupied. See here—” he indicated the grip, “—drawn quickly while holding something else. Shield, torch, struggling victim...” He shrugged. “Your templar-trained man would make better use of it.”
The merchant nodded. “Elf’s not wrong. That’s an off-hand blade. Called the Rose’s Thorn.”
Emma considered this. Alistair did keep daggers—he'd used them effectively enough in the Deep Roads when they'd been pressed too close for his sword. It wasn't his preferred weapon, but, if Zevran thought it suited him...
“Tell me about it.”
The smith snorted. “Pretty name, ugly story. Old forge-line made it generations back. Fine work—but it killed a king in a duel that wasn’t supposed to be deadly. Ended the noble line, and stained the house’s honor. The whole forge was blacklisted, erased from the Memories.”
“A curse by another name,” Zevran said.
The dwarf gave him a flat look. “If losing your clients counts as a curse, sure. We call it bad business. Steel’s good as ever. A name’s all that’s tarnished.”
Emma looked at the blade again, at the rose and thorn, at the dark steel that had ended a king's life.
“Perfect,” Emma said, reaching for her coin purse. “How much?”
“Oh, my Warden, so poetic. Sometimes curses can be weapons, no?” Zevran chuckled. Quietly. Emma nodded an agreement.
The merchant named his price—steep, but not unreasonable for a weapon of this quality. The Rose's Thorn sold for around one hundred and fifty sovereigns. The dwarf grumbled something in dwarven that likely translated to “reckless surfacers”, and accepted the coins.
“Just don’t tell anyone where you got it.”
“So,” Zevran said softly as they moved away from the stall, “you buy a cursed blade that hungers for noble blood, and intend to give it to your royal bastard.”
“Alleged curse. Alleged bastard.”
Emma glanced back to make sure Alistair was still occupied with Oghren. Zevran studied her, but she was unreadable. They rejoined the others as Oghren sealed his deal, the dwarf looking pleased with himself and his new greataxe. Alistair glanced at Emma.
“Successful shopping?” he asked.
“Very,” she said. “I'll show you later.”
Something in her tone made him pause, but before he could press, Oghren clapped him on the shoulder with enough force to make him stumble.
“Right then, Wardens! Let's get back to camp before I spend all my coin on ale instead of decent steel.”
That evening, after they'd settled into camp and the others had dispersed to their various evening routines, Emma approached Alistair with the wrapped bundle in her hands.
“I have something for you.”
He looked up from where he'd been maintaining his sword, grease cloth in hand. “Oh? Should I be worried?”
She held out the bundle.
Alistair took the cloth-wrapped package, his expression shifting to curiosity. The fabric was rough under his fingers, probably cut from someone's old cloak. He unwrapped it carefully, revealing the dagger within. The torchlight caught the rose pommel, making it gleam. He stared, then let out a low whistle.
“It's beautiful,” he said, genuine surprise in his voice. Then he looked closer at the blade, at the thorn etched along its length. “Wait, this is—Emma, this is high-quality work. This must have cost—”
She sat beside him. “It's called the Rose's Thorn.”
“Fitting, I suppose.” He turned it over in his hands, testing the balance. Like it had been waiting for his hand specifically. “Where did you—?”
Emma paused, and he recognized that look. either very good news or very complicated news. Sometimes both.
“Near the Diamond Quarter. It has a history. It killed a dwarven king, ruined a forge, that sort of story.”
Alistair smiled, then grew serious again, studying the blade, feeling the edge. Sharp enough to cut through anything. He looked back up at her, brow arched.
“So... you bought me a king-slaying dagger.”
“Apparently,” she said, unbothered.
“That’s—Maker, Emma, that’s dark even for you.”
“Depends on what you’re cutting. This blade ended a dynasty.”
He went quiet. The fire popped between them.
“Oh—I see. Well—Emma, Not that I want the throne, everyone knows that. But...”
“I know,” she said, gently. “But in Orzammar, there's always an alternative, isn't there?”
He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Em—that's either the most brilliant or insane gift anyone's ever given me. I can't decide which.”
“Both,” she shrugged.
“With you? Usually is.” He picked up the dagger again, more carefully this time, balancing on one fingertip. “I have to admit, there's a beautiful logic to it.”
“Zevran called it poetic.”
“He would.” The metal felt warm now, like it had absorbed heat from his skin, or maybe from the fire. Or maybe from whatever mad magic Emma had woven into this moment.
“He said it would suit you best.”
“Zevran suggested—really?” Zevran, who'd tried to kill them. That Zevran?
“I'm also surprised.”
“The world really is ending if Zevran's thinking about someone other than himself.”
“Admittedly... I thought of you, when I saw it,” she smiled at him, “But, you'd use it well.”
“Thank you,” he said finally. “For this very pointed irony.”
He sheathed the dagger carefully at his belt, where it settled like it had always belonged there, like a fitting armor. Another curse worth keeping.
From across camp, Zevran caught Emma's eye and raised his wineskin in salute.
And yet where the dwarves should have been, a hollow, a vast ache, a bottomless well of gravity in the center, swallowing all sound and beauty, like a socket where an eye had been torn out… forever open.
Beneath it, something older and harder locked into clutch. Shoulders braced, spines pushing stone just as worms push the dirt, rock yielding with a slow groan. This beat poured into her bones, thick and molten at first, but solidifying. She tried to resist, will herself to dissolve into the stone and be done with flesh. but she was not strong enough. The rhythm offered a deep solace, but tragically, it wasn’t hers. She felt wretched and cursed to walk the surface as meat.
Only once, in a dream or through Caridin himself, the stone did sing to her, and she remembered:
“Our Stone will never forget you, nor will we, so long as we may shape it.”
She remembered Kinloch, how its tower moaned and flexed under winter winds. She remembered Ostagar’s stones humming faintly beneath the soldiers’ chants. This was older, deeper, like Caridin’s forge: hammer, anvil, earth, the rhythm of labor itself written into the world.
The Proving ring gathered it all. It was no pit but a bowl, stone carved so perfect it seemed to drink sound and return it magnified. Standing at the center was like standing in a singer’s chest. Every step, every clash of metal, every shout from above rippled across the walls and poured back, layering until the air itself trembled.
It was less an arena than a great instrument, a singing bowl struck by anything that had ever moved. The crowd throbbed above, the forges pounded beneath, and the overtones shook her teeth while the undertones rattled her ribs. Spellweaver hummed in her palm, hers only a moment in time. It was a much older, greater being, already mourning for her.
Emma fought in time. Spells broke like percussion, lightning cracking on the downbeat. She barely thought—the dance of combat bore her up, pulled everything into sequence; But none like the Silent Sisters, with no need to speak. In their wisdom, the Sisters knew to explain would profane this, command and communion both. She realized why the dwarves called it Proof: not of strength or honor alone, but proof they still resonate with themselves.
From a distance, a knight was a moving structure, an assembled thing. Nested plates, hinges answering hinges. Weight distributed with the kind of care only given to weapons or sovereigns. If you had lived a life without violence or wealth, if iron usually meant nails or ploughshares, the first sight of one promised force that would stop you cold. Contained. Directed. Loyal to whoever had paid for its making.
Up close, it was more. The hot smell of oil. Leather darkened by sweat. Metal scored and polished again and again, loved into submission. Enchantments hummed faintly, not loud enough to hear, but if you knew you could feel it. It was machinery in a world that pretended it had none. Pistons in spirit, if not in name. An iron body built around a human core, turning flesh into a system.
People talked about knights as if they were men first. She knew otherwise. They were logistics. Group decisions. Someone, somewhere, had decided this one would be given the good steel, the rare runes, the fittings that didn’t fail.
Someone else had gone without.
War was always a question of need and greed dressed up as honor. The best-equipped were sent first. Investment demanded return. Victories paid for the next layer down.
She understood this too well. The man inside, the object that made him terrible. And the way the machine loved its operator back, if he learned it properly. You could touch a breastplate with more reverence than a body, because the plate had kept him alive when bodies were cheap.
Blacksmiths spoke about their work the way priests did, hands scarred, eyes bright. They needed furnaces hot enough to liquefy stone, tools precise enough to coax obedience from metal. Even here, in a place that claimed to be simple, there were engines. Rare. Arcane. Half-forgotten. The knight who stepped out of that process was not so different from the ancient golems, moving soldiers of stone.
She had written pages about armor already and left most of them buried. This was the part she hadn’t said aloud yet. That what she loved was not the romance of chivalry, but the intimacy between a person and the machine that kept them alive. The way history, craft, violence, and care all converged around a single body and said: you will be more than human today, or you will die.
“Two souls,” she’d say, tracing a slow spiral in the dirt with her stick, “always drifting toward one another. Even when they shouldn’t. Even when the world tries to keep them apart. They find each other, lifetime after lifetime.”
Morrigan would roll her eyes. Alistair would pretend to be annoyed. And Emma would sit there, contemplating, looking blank.
Leliana insisted it was harmless fancy—“fictions for comforting the mortal heart.” She said it with the serene confidence of someone who had personally broken half the Chantry’s restrictions and still managed to sleep soundly.
The tales made Emma feel strange nostalgia, a shape of a truth, twisted.
She and Alistair would talk sometimes, hypothetically, about the life they might’ve had without the Grey Wardens. He’d imagine some goofy, domestic future: a garden, a mabari that always rolls in the mud first thing after a bath, a kitchen he keeps burning things in. The most normal fantasy in the world; Nothing wrong with it, really.
Emma couldn’t describe the same. Maybe after this war, she could join him in that life; She could imagine herself satisfied with just surviving, able to take for granted a roof and a warm bed.
But without Duncan, and the Grey Wardens? She couldn't imagine anything so pastoral: She'd think of the Tower of Magi reformed into something that wouldn't murder and maim its inhabitants. A place that didn't render Emma someone so lost that Duncan's conscription into a brutal war was salvation.
But the more she listened to Alistair—the stubborn way he held onto hope, the way he believed deeply in small goodness—the more she understood:
In any other world—any other version of Thedas, any other “lifetime” as Leliana would put it—Emma would never have met him. Never have looked at him twice. Never have loved him. He’d have been in a monastery. She’d be in the Circle.
Their lives only collided because the war made these places sloppy with their rules. Because everything went wrong at the same time.
Without the Blight, without Duncan’s eye for strays, without catastrophe… what are they? Two parallel lines. No point of intersection.
so Leliana liked to imagine lovers chasing each other across centuries. Emma understood it differently: only the blight could have brought them together. When Leliana finished her tale and everyone drifted off to their bedrolls, Emma stayed awake a little longer.
Reincarnation, destiny, cosmic choreography— or else, a single, unrepeatable accident. The later cannot be taken for granted.
The guard doesn't notice. He's leaning against the far wall, tossing a bruised apple in boredom. But Alistair feels the Fade flex like a pulled thread— that awful prickling sensation.
Please tell me that wasn't magic.
For a second he's convinced he imagined it. He doesn't know how long they've been in here (at least a day), his stomach feels like stepped-on clay, and there's a persistent ringing in his ears. Emma's gone so quiet he thinks she's passed out.
Then the shackles clink softly against stone. Not wrenched open. Not forced. Just… empty. His heart slams against his ribs.
The space she’d been displaces the air softly. The templar by the door glances over, frowning at something he can't quite place. If Emma had cast anything, even slight, this man should be on her like a hawk on a mouse. But the guard just shifts his weight.
Alistair's nerves are lighting up anyway. He's ninety percent sure Emma just did something impossible. Ten percent doubtful, maybe he's hallucinating. One hundred percent sure he should not be the one playing mage-detector right now. He wants to call for her, but he's too concerned she actually pulled something off to risk alerting the guard.
The templar starts pacing. He finally looks over properly and freezes mid-step.
“Where—Maker's breath—WHERE IS SHE?“
There it is. Panic. Steel scraping from the scabbard, boots skidding on damp stone.
Alistair shoves himself upright against the wall, chains rattling. “Maybe she, uh… evaporated? Very tragic. You should write a report.”
The templar growls, steps forward—
—and a rat scampers out from behind the waste bucket.
Right past his boot.
The templar jumps, jerking back with the kind of full-body flinch normally reserved for stepping on caltrops. For one beautiful moment, he's entirely distracted by the rodent.
That's when Emma hits him.
She's halfway back into her body, still disoriented, still naked, still shaking from bones that just finished being the wrong shape. But since she met the arcane warrior in the ruins, and found that sword, her magic made her strong— albeit, a strength of little finesse. Her fist lands with the force of someone who's accidentally discovered she can punch like a sledgehammer.
Surprised, he folds like a kicked stool, armor clattering as she shoves him toward Alistair, who finishes him with the chain.
He stares, as their enemy is struggling, asphyxiating, and going limp. “Right. So that's new.”
Emma's breathing hard through the recoil of this impact on her, arms wrapped around herself. “Don't… don't ask me to do that again.”
“Absolutely not. Once was plenty.”
She fumbles with his chains, fingers still trembling. The manacles are heavy, old, built specifically for restraining magic, but there's that strange strength still simmering in her hands, and she manages to snap the pin just enough for him to wrench the rest open.
It feels like a miracle. Please don’t let us die naked.
They fight the next pair of soldiers: dirty and desperate. By the time they're winded enough to lean on each other, they are very aware they cannot keep doing this.
“Maker's saggy left— oh.“
Two Chantry sisters sweep through the corridor. Suddenly he was embarrassed to be talking about the Maker's tits, even after all this time.
But they're Leliana and Morrigan wearing veils.
Leliana radiates serenity, hands folded. “We found your things. Well… some of your things.”
Morrigan looks like she's contemplating war crimes. “This costume itches. It chafes. And I despise it with the fire of a thousand suns.”
They hand over a small bundle: some clothing, a belt with pouches, knives, Rose's Thorn still in its sheath.
Alistair blinks at Morrigan's disguise, then laughs heartily. Emma's looking devious, trying to suppress her smirk.
“Do not speak to me.” She rips the Chantry robe clean off and hurls it at the wall.
Leliana sighs at the discarded habit with the same disappointment normally reserved for burnt pastries.
Emma's half-dressed, buzzing from unfamiliar, desperate and illegal magic. Morrigan studies her with the air of a teacher dispensing faint praise.
“So,” she says, “you finally managed a transformation. Congratulations are in order, albeit modest ones.”
Emma, still flushed: “I turned into a rat.”
“A beginning.” Morrigan's smirking, “You are, as ever, painfully slow to adopt instruction.”
You could practically feed Emma that backhanded praise as dessert. She's beaming despite everything.
Alistair, fastening his belt: “Wait, so that was?— I thought— I felt something! I also thought maybe I just had a concussion...”
Emma: “You definitely had a concussion.”
Morrigan flicks him a look. “It takes very little to fool a Templar, particularly when it comes to magic which is both ancient and esoteric.”
Emma ties her hair back with still-shaking hands, jaw set. They're not free yet. They're bruised, under-equipped, drastically outnumbered. But the party's together again. And the next goon who tries to stop them is in for a very disappointing day.