My Warden

Fire crackled across the creature's skin while smoke and the smell of blackened fat buffeted around it. The deepstalker yipped and screeched as it dashed for cover straight through the rest of its brood. Every one caught alight. Lana carelessly blew her fingers off while watching them scurry back into their holes, flames trailing their departure. The deepstalkers only attacked them a few times, but with every fresh assault their ranks grew bolder and greater in number. Cullen rolled his arm around to glare at the blood slicking up his sword. The darkspawn gore was the worst, Lana insisting she wipe it off and then burning her rag when finished, but the deeptstalker ichor clotted in blobs across the metal. It appeared as if his own blade scabbed up.

  "How much further until we find this thaig?" he asked.

  "How many times are you going to ask that?"

  "Until we're there." He struggled to scrape off the deepstalker's blood, his fingernails straining below the scabs trying to pop them off. Pain lanced up his finger as the nail bent inward, the blood not about to give in. Lana laid a hand across his shoulder drawing his attention up to her eyes. She smiled and wiped her fiery magic down his sword, the metal heating to a flaming red without reaching below the hilt. Cullen stared a question at her but kept his hand above his own blade as she poured enough power to ignite three deepstalker nests into it. She cut off her mana and her cooled hand gripped onto his. Together, they swung his sword in an arc splattering the walls in deepstalker blood and leaving his blade nearly pristine.

  Cullen stared in awe at the simple move, he'd never even thought to try such a thing. There were perks to traveling with a mage. Lana seemed to sense his thoughts and she curled her fingers behind his jaw to pull him into a kiss. Definite perks to traveling with a mag. A grey warden mage.

  After breaking away, she smiled, "Were you always this surly or did you stumble into it in old age?"

  "I'm not surly," he cut back, unable to bite back a grumble. Stumbling to find his mental balance after the kiss, Cullen swiped his sword through the air to cool it.

  "Right, not surly at all." Her fingers trailed across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose, "You got these glower lines from smiling too much."

  Cullen grabbed her fingers in his. Her light hearted smiled faded until he brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. A brazen heat still burned off her skin leaving behind a flush trailing from his mouth up to his cheeks. "I'm new to smiling," he said intending it to be jovial, but the truth warped his tone. He'd never had much reason before.

  Dragging her fingers through his scruff, Lana twisted her head to the side. Her voice drifted away as she spoke, "We do what we must so others won't."

  "Hm...?"

  "Just something I heard once. Anyway, the thaig is close. Which is lucky seeing as how this road ends in an inescapable pile of rubble," she gestured to the end of the road they'd been following for what felt like days now. How Cullen managed even a few hours of sleep he was uncertain with every horror the deep roads could throw at them only a thin rock collapse away. Lana kept guard over him and he woke to find her crouching over the first of a growing pile of deepstalker corpses. She'd licked the magic flame off the end of her fingers and inquired if he was hungry. There was none like her in all of thedas, he was certain.

  He voiced many pointed concerns about the deepstalkers at first, but the worm-like creatures seemed easy enough to kill if they kept focused. While he kept an eye on the chittering holes lining the walls, Lana led them through the roads of the dwarves. Lava gurgled down grooves running the lengths of the road, the fiery light highlighting runes carved across the sunken walls. Cullen never put thought into the dwarven kingdom, their people having no fear of mages, but as he stood in awe of their ancient wonders he felt remiss. Pitched pillars collapsed into the vast space, the rubble causing them to have to scrabble around, but just as many remained upright after thousands of years and darkspawn calling it home.

  As he first walked down the stone floors, he felt an awe replaced by alertness from the deepstalkers renewing their attack. The awe shifted to exhaustion as they continued to pass the same architecture; broken stone pillar, faceless statue, runic warding carved into the wall now silent. The relentless repetition made him yearn for the lyrium caverns - at least the blue light didn't sear his retinas the way a lava burp would.

  Lana gestured at the wall long ago smashed into a thousand pieces and fully blocking off any hope of an exit. It would have required a battering ram to take something that structurally sound down. She couldn't have had anything to do with its collapse. Cullen paused, remembering the grenades she chucked at the darkspawn tunnels. The power at the disposal of the unchecked grey wardens rattled him. How many others knew the strengths the wardens could reach if the need arose?

  "I hope you know of a way through." He picked up a broken brick scattered away from the rest; a symbol was etched into the cracked end. It was hard to make out, but the edge of the triangle looked a bit like a blade's tip.

  Lana shook her head, "Don't need a way through it, I've got something better." She hopped over the lava streams and flattened against the wall. Not expecting her to leap, Cullen subconsciously reached forward as if he could keep her from teetering back into the scalding lava. But Lana was more than capable as she crept along the wall and reached her arm into a crevice carved in the rock. Her free arm flailed for balance while she dipped down and yanked back upon something buried in the rock. Gears roared to life from deep within the walls and along the ceiling. No one had cracked into whatever this was in awhile as dust rained down like a snowstorm. Or perhaps it was debris remaining from when the back wall collapsed.

  The section beside Lana cracked in half, and both sides of what'd seemed impenetrable rock folded in on itself. Despite being created by dwarves, the doors were large enough to let an ogre through. Lana extracted her hand and smiled, "Ta da. This is thaig...well, I doubt you care what it's called."

  Carefully extending his leg over the lava pit, Cullen stepped to stand beside her and tried to pierce into the darkness of this once closed off world. "I should light the torch," he said and tried to fumble with his own mediocre pack.

  "That won't be necessary," Lana said. She flared up her fingers to a brilliant green and placed them against the door. The light caught as if placed in pools of oil. Green sparks raced across the walls, blooming like her fractal snowflake until every arc of magic circling and amplifying through the thaig met at the ceiling. An orb hung above the thaig, a chill circling along its surface. The metal seemed iron in appearance but from the way her magic lit up inside of it Cullen knew it had to be something else. The green light folded around it, arcing off the ceiling like hands cupping around the ball until they lanced together to bring it alive.

  He'd heard of the underground cities of the dwarves but pictured them more like, well, the domain of gophers. Dirt, hole, and dwarf, perhaps with some rock thrown in. But this was grander than any splendor he'd ever seen on the surface. The ceiling reached so distant, Cullen had to crane his neck up to make out the retreating specks of green light dotting through the crags like stars. Ten spires of white brick stood at attention throughout the thaig, each top skimming across the stone ceiling. The pillars, easily a hundred feet in diameter, were carved with small doorways. Paths twisted up and down through the cavern connecting all the doors like an undulating maze. Woven through the bottom of all the pillars rested a lake still as a mirror. Cullen feared he'd fall into the eternity of the reflection if he stared at it too long.

  "Rather impressive, eh?" Lana said, lightly nudging him in the ribs.

  "Impressive? The White Spire is impressive. This is...I have no words," he choked.

  Lana snorted, "You've been to the White Spire? Even I haven't seen it."

  "There's still time," Cullen said, his eye drawn to a glimmer of jewels still embedded at the top of a spire. Time or scavengers hadn't reached them yet.

  "Perhaps," Lana said before shaking her head, "We need to head this way." She took off, even
more sure footed than before, crossing a narrow bridge over the lake. A bone brittle frost crested above the black water, the chill chewing up Cullen's still exposed shins. Lana didn't say he should not touch the water, but every instinct in his body warned him against it. More than likely a finger breaking the surface would draw forth legions of undead from below the briny depths. That was just his luck.

  Lana twisted off the bridge to stand before a wall branching off one of the spires. Her fingers skimmed across the runes carved along it, lighting each tile up in a pattern. They barely deserved her attention, her hand guiding them into place by memory while she watched the metal orb above them. A soft chime echoed through the rock and the floor just before them lifted upward forming a ramp into the sky.

  "I'm beginning to suspect you've been here before," Cullen said.

  She chuckled and strode confidently up the incline. Cracked gold was poured into the edges of the ramp still lifting below her feet. The rock itself hummed from the glow of the magic in the air. "Yes, though the last time it was under a pile of darkspawn."

  "Rather glad I missed that one," he mumbled following behind her.

  "It took an unending amount of time to clean them out. They'd dug in deep for centuries." Now a good fifteen feet above the ground, Lana pointed towards an area beyond the crystal lake where a dark spire was shadowed amongst the white ones. None of her magic light touched the blackness, though not for want of trying as it circled around the edges snapping in anger. "That was their main nest. Unsalvageable, of course. Everything they touch rots into nothing."

  They dipped through the first of the doorways, Cullen having to bend to keep from smacking his head. He was surprised to find the room wasn't empty save for a few statues or other shattered decor. A stone bed big enough for a family rested in the corner. Beside it was an end table baring a mug still tipped over from the last owner. Perhaps he, in running to raise the alarm from the encroaching darkspawn, knocked the cup over in haste then never returned to right it centuries upon centuries ago. He shuddered at the enormity of history encapsulated in a spilt glass. "Why did you clear this place? Is that what grey wardens do, empty thaigs of darkspawn?"

  Lana shrugged, her fingers plowing through another magical lock, this one up to four colors. "Sometimes. I seem to often, though it's more a detour of my mission than the main objective. I..." She paused in her machinations and frowned. Snapping her teeth in thought she turned to Cullen and sighed, "I came here with White. There were other wardens with, it's not wise to go through the deep roads alone."

  "She says now."

  That broke the regretful frown for a moment, but it slotted back into place as she continued to talk. "We weren't trying to clear the thaig. We didn't even know it was here. It began as a research mission."

  "Research? Into what?" All Cullen could see were the marks of the darkspawn and the rotted bones of a long abandoned dwarven empire. Anything of value was long picked clean.

  Lana twisted to him, and a spark burned in her eyes, "I have a theory that at some point before the darkspawn and the blights began, the elves lived with the dwarves. I'd found mentions in an old thaig of elven refugees but refugees from what? My best guess is that they were fleeing the destruction of Arlathan itself. Of course, any translation of ancient elvhen or dwarven is suspect due to the languages having been forged and reforged over the years from scraps of memories. For all I know, the scrolls referred to a word for an elven pie that could also represent refugee, slave, and/or frilly hat. Though my theory would explain the dwarven use of enchantments despite their lack of access to mages. Was it the elves of old who taught them? Or perhaps they were once on more equal footing. Of course neither the dwarven Shaperate nor the dalish would ever admit such a thing was possible. The implications alone...what?" Her musings slipped away as she caught sight of him. Folding her arms across her chest Lana glared back.

  "I..." Cullen shook his head, trying to wipe away the idiotic grin that made it appear he was laughing at her, "you're so, it's nice to see you excited about something that isn't killing darkspawn."

  "Oh," she unfolded her arms and a blush crawled up her cheeks, "well, there was plenty of killing darkspawn here too. Grey warden priorities and all."

  "Of course," Cullen nodded. Lana returned to the panel and, with her full focus, unlocked the next platform. This one extended horizontally above the lake towards a pillar on the far edge of the thaig. Blackness charred up the side of the structure, reaching just below where their newly formed bridge ended. "How come no one's living here now?"

  "Darkspawn make for impolite neighbors," Lana chuckled while stepping out onto the bridge. There were no railings to keep a person from falling the hundred or so feet into the bottomless lake below, but she didn't flinch.

  "Wouldn't dwarves want to take back their own thaigs?" Cullen continued following after her.

  "Before they can attempt it someone will have to cough up the coin to warrant sending an expedition, everything is about coin for the dwarves. And on top of funding they'd also require dispensation from a descher. People can't simply gather a bunch of friends together to take back the deep roads. Dwarven politics, I will never understand it." Lana's rant faded away as Cullen paused at the middle of their bridge.

  In the long stretch of terrors that clawed across his brain, for whatever reason heights wasn't one of them. Still, he couldn't help himself from staring off the bridge into the depths of the lake. The reflection was so perfect he could see the wisps of a blonde man dressed like the fearsome slayers of darkspawn staring up at him from far below. For a foolish moment he wanted to wave at the drowning man.

  He heard an "a hem" and glanced up to find Lana on the other side. She didn't tap her foot in impatience, but she might as well have. They had a job to do and it didn't involve sightseeing. Apologizing, Cullen picked up his feet to join her.

  Lana continued her thread about the dwarves as he joined her, "And while they bicker over who finances such a trip, the darkspawn return. It leaves me to wonder if they have any real interest in gaining back their empire."

  This second pillar was sharper than the others with metal spikes wedged into every corner. Where curves formed the doorways before, this one had the rock chiseled away so it appeared as if the frame was a set of jagged teeth about to bite down. The pillar wasn't meant to be a friendly bedroom or even a neutral foyer. Like the gallows, this place was designed to set a person on edge. Cullen's fingers notched around his sword hilt as he eyed up the doorway. A pair of statues guarded the entrance. Far less stylized than the typical dwarven ones these were primitive as if the sculpture saw no reason to finish beyond cracking away rock in a vaguely human shape. But there was a disturbing fluidity to the movement. One had its arms extended high as if about to pound a fist into an invisible foe while the second held something crushed in its arms.

  "Those statues look as if they're about to come to life," he commented as an aside, but Lana's eyes flared and she spun around. Ice crackled around her fist while she watched both statues remain perfectly still. Eventually, when the statues continued to not move, she shook the ice off pushing the fade energy away.

  "What is it?"

  "I take it you've never seen a golem before," she took a breath to steady her voice. "We had to fight through them to reach the top spire."

  "Fight? But they're made out of rock." Cullen knocked his fist against the stomach of one and only the thud of solid stone echoed back.

  Lana pointed to a pathway winding below them, "See that stain on the ground?" It was hard to view at the distance, but something dark blotted across the stone just below a statue crashed to its knees. "That was my blood before I blew its head off. Golems. Not fun."

  "Maker," Cullen hissed. He flipped back to the two guardians and eyed them up anew. How long would it take his sword to hack even an inch off their hide? Would even that stop them? A memory tugged on his mind and he voiced it, "Funny enough, I remember a statue that looked a bit like these. It was
in Honnleath, in the square."

  Lana whistled softly under her breath, "Oh, you don't say?" She stepped into the doorway, her fingers raising the light runes as she passed.

  Running one hand down the golem's still frozen form, Cullen mused, "It was smaller though." Trusting that the statue wasn't about to come to life and snap his neck, Cullen slipped through the doorway after Lana. His mage was nowhere to be seen. A few stone tables nestled along the wall covered by dust and scraps of broken metal, but no other furniture filled the area. Neither did the grey warden who was his only hope out of the deep roads and away from murderous masonry.

  "Um, Lana? Hello?" he asked the thin air.

  "What?" her voice exasperated what sounded inches from his ear. Cullen jumped, twisting his heel across the slick stone while searching for the source.

  "Where are you?"

  "Where am...oh for the, did the illusion snap back into place? Hang on."

  He didn't have much to add to the bodiless voice, so Cullen gripped tighter to his sword and stared at the air. She cursed a few times under her breath and then, as if she'd always been standing there, Lana appeared inside what had been solid rock.

  "Old magic, elven I suspect, not that the college would ever listen to me," she muttered and pulled her hand away from a device. As she broke contact, the wall reformed around her.

  Cullen cried, reaching out to save her from a stone suffocation, but Lana touched the panel again and she snapped back into sight. "It should be maintaining but the spell's breaking down. Here, take my hand." She grabbed onto his fingers and pulled him close to her. Perhaps she expected him to put up more of a fight, or the mage didn't know her own strength, but Cullen slid across the floor. His body plowed into hers. By the Maker's grace, the true wall kept her upright and not sprawled out below him. Cullen threw his hands flat against the wall beside her head to try and keep himself balanced as he glared down at his traitorous feet.

  "Sorry about that, I, uh..." all semblance of thought vanished as he fell adrift into those bemused eyes.

  "You're not one for subtlety, I see." Lana broke her hands from the panel and wrapped them around Cullen's back. The stone wall shimmered into place, but he was too lost in the heat of her body to notice they were trapped in a false tomb.

  "I did not intend to, that is...you know."

  "Not really, no," she smiled, peering into him. He tried to form a response but the lithe body clinging to him pulverized all his words into a gooey mush of ums and uhs.

  In almost crushing her beneath him, her hair had slipped across her right eye. Cullen pushed the strands back behind her ear, her warm skin beckoning him to explore further but he flattened his hand to the wall beside her instead. Why do you unnerve me so?

  "People grow twitchy when they learn I killed an arch demon," Lana said.

  The color drained from Cullen's cheeks and he whipped his eyes at the mage pinned beneath him. "Did I speak that aloud?" Her eyes narrowed and she nodded her head.

  "Oh," a combination of relief that she hadn't skimmed his thoughts and mortification that he spoke without realizing stampeded across his face. "I, it's not your combat skills that..." he swallowed a sigh and stared down at her shoulder. It was the only part of her body he suspected wouldn't cause him to blush. "Even before you became a warden, I found myself, um, that is to say- Maker, I'm making a fool out of myself."

  Her fingers dusted along his jaw and chin, pulling his face to her. "It's a very handsome fool, if that helps." She had to feel the burn bright under her fingers as he tried to shrug away her compliment. It didn't matter what mages thought of his appearance. It shouldn't matter for his duty, but he secreted her words deep into his heart to listen to again later.

  "I've been bumbling around you ever since the first time we met," Cullen admitted, daring to let his memory drift back to Ferelden.

  Lana screwed her eyes up, "I don't remember that."

  "The blueberry bushes outside the tower during the storm when I almost called you by your preferred name, not that I should have used any name." The confession burned on his tongue. He feared he needed to recite a few canticles afterwards to appease Andraste for his sin.

  Lana shook her head, "We met long before that. I remember it. The mousey templar with the Orlesian name was giving a new knight the tour around the tower. He always took a perverse joy in stomping unannounced into the bathing area."

  "Oh Maker," Cullen squeaked, his own memory jogging in line with hers. How did he forget that?

  "Ah," Lana smiled, "I take it you also remember a rather impertinent apprentice who covered the entire room in watery suds."

  "You had good reason," he said. He'd never told the then nameless woman how grateful he was to have her blanket the area in opaque foam. It was obviously some sort of hazing ritual, Charnell chuckling at the new knight about to melt into the floor from their bursting upon where they should not have been. The mages hustled for towels and robes while Cullen wished he could spin his helmet around and walk out of the room. And then, a smile plastered across her face, one of them obliterated a block of soap. Water and suds erupted through the room shielding every naked surface and soaking into both of the templar uniforms. Charnell grumbled for days about the mess while Cullen was ecstatic to have escaped. The Knight-Commander had a few half-hearted words with the templars about minding their manners, not that it amounted to much officially. But the templars who didn't wish to stand around for a day with their smallclothes sopping wet gave the apprentices their rightful space.

  "How did you know it was me?" Cullen asked. "I was wearing the helmet at the time."

  Lana chuckled, "You really think we didn't know who was who under all that metal? We lived with you, same as you knew us. I could spot your amber eyes from a hundred feet away. Plus," her hands slipped around the back of his neck and she lifted on her toes to meet him eye to eye, "you kept stuttering when I asked a question. That made it easier to find you."

  "I'd assumed that you, you wouldn't have even, that is..."

  "See, that stutter." She curled into him and gently kissed his lips. Her tongue dipped into his mouth leaving behind a cooling sensation from her frost spell that melted inside him. Cullen froze for a beat, his own mind trapped back in the circle. Every touch from her still drew forth the same question 'Could this really be happening?' Did he deserve this? Lana broke away and pecked once more against his lips. She brought her forehead against his, and her fingers twisted around one of his short curls trying to draw it forth from the mass. This shouldn't be happening, he had no right to impose himself into her life like this. Whatever this was. What could truly come of it after, anyway? He may be on unsteady ground in matters of the heart but he wasn't naive. That finger twirling in his hair could burn deepstalkers alive. Those hands that caressed his skin could freeze darkspawn solid. She was a mage, she could become corrupted, she could fall. And the only way to rid herself of the curse of magic would be to give up everything that made him love her, everything that made her Lana.

  "Charnell was the reason I was at your harrowing," Cullen spoke trying to douse his enflamed body. "He drew up the list, selected me specially. At the time, I did not realize why he chose me. I'd thought it an unlucky draw of the Maker, not that he'd try to punish us both."

  Lana's fingers slipped out of his hair and down his sides. She didn't push him away, but that barrier flared up between them, that reminder that they were forever opposed like water to oil. "Funny how the harrowing was the least worst thing to happen to me that day. Not all mages are so lucky."

  "I'm sorry," he said, uncertain what to say.

  "Never mind." Her cheeks sunk down and her smile lines folded away, leaving her face as stark as frozen snow. For the first time Cullen saw the Amell resemblance. "We should stop White before he hurts anyone else. I never imagined he'd be capable of so much..."

  Cullen nodded his head. "Blood mages are vicious and unpredictable. Once a mage dabbles in the forbidden, it's only a matter of time
before they kill."

  She twisted her head towards him, her eyes narrowing. "I know that blood mages can come from anywhere. It took a friend, ex-friend to teach me that." Lana slipped out from under him and pointed to a staircase hidden on their side of the illusion. After adjusting her robes, she started up the stairs.

  The pillar was not a friend to people of the long legged variety, the stairs being just close enough together to make climbing one at a time difficult, but far enough apart to render two a test of flexibility. Lana handled it well for awhile, twisting higher away from Cullen, but even she seemed to slow. Her labored breath echoed through the stairs above him. He knew he was making even more death rattling noises, but something in her struggle pulled at him.

  "Are you all right?" he called out. Rounding up the stairs he found her leaning against the tight wall, her head tipped down in thought.

  Lana nodded and pursed her lips. She rose from her lean and forced a smile, "Waiting for you to catch up."

  "I've felt woefully out of practice for this trip," Cullen admitted. He wasn't prideful enough to feel an ego sting from following her commands -- she knew the deep roads and the darkspawn, but he wished he could add more beyond slicing up a few monsters and waving his blade at the blood mage from across a ravine.

  Her fingers skimmed across his gauntlet, "You will be of great use soon enough, we've almost reached the top."

  "I suppose now's a good time to ask what makes this spire so special."

  Lana continued to trudge higher up the stairs and Cullen noticed she was using her staff as a walking stick again. The blade bulged from where she strapped it to her back, ready to be knotted back on the end in the event of a fight. "As you probably determined already, this spire was once part of the defenses for this thaig. We think there were four in total just like it, along with a fifth one that housed the golems and other ancient dwarven traps that'd spring at the most unexpected of times. Two of the pillars collapsed, most of their treasures submerged into the lake."

  "The third one?" Cullen asked. He paused in his steps as an unexplained dread settled in his gut. His skin hummed the way his armor would when mages practiced their lightning spells. The smell of the air during a summer storm hung thick through the staircase. He licked his lips and a spark shot off his tongue.

  Lana sighed, "Darkspawn," then turned around to watch more sparks erupting from his mouth. "Ah, that's a good sign, sort off." She drew her hand so close across his face her palm glanced upon his lips, but no energy chased out to sting her skin. The humming across his body fell silent. "It's the reason we were drawn here. One of the reasons. Come on, it's easier to show than explain. Probably because I'm still not certain how it works."

  Finally, they emerged at the top of the spire. Another iron ball sat in the middle of the room, turbulent green light circling its surface. It sunk to chest height into the floor, only the top half visible while the rest was submerged into the tower. Someone took the time to try and set up a short ring of boxes around it as if to keep anyone from accidentally knocking or falling into it. "What is it?"

  "We have no idea, even any mention in the memories is more hearsay than record." Lana placed her staff on the floor and turned to gaze out through the windows. The spire overlooked the rest of the thaig and was so close to the ceiling they could reach out and touch it. They were also now eye level with the ball that first erupted with the green magic across the entire thaig. So close, in fact, Cullen realized that while the one at their feet could crush a battalion, the one overlooking the cavern could kill an army.

  "White called it the node because it was better than big green metal ball thingie. Each smaller one located in the security spires is, or was, connected to the main node located above us," Lana pointed to the massive thing screwed into the ceiling above their heads.

  Cullen watched closer and realized that the light didn't burn off the metal as he'd thought but drifted across it like a verdant fog. Hazy shapes formed upon the surface of the giant node, leaving behind glimpses of things that burned his eyes. "What does it do?"

  "This should impress the templar. It negates nearly all magic in the area. Watch." Lana spun on her heels and raised both hands. Her eyes glittered as she moved through the familiar motions of casting a fireball, now aimed directly at Cullen. He threw his shield up, instincts twisting his body into place, when she shoved her hands forward. Fire should have pounded into him and scattered off the edges of his shield, but only a whiff of smoke trailed off her fingers. "See."

  He stared at the unmarred metal of his shield and then back to her, "I've never heard of anything like this. And the dwarves have it? Had it? But why?"

  "That was my thought too, why would they need to protect themselves from magic if they cannot cast it? Were they in conflict with someone who could, or did dwarves once have a connection to the fade that was then lost? Imagine the possibilities if that were true?" Her eyes lit up even more than when she cast her fire smoke. Cullen felt an overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her after each ecstatic sentence as she explained every theory in her mind. Instead, he massaged his neck, the hiss of whatever was blanketing magic coating his body anew.

  "What were you and White actually looking for here?" he asked.

  Lana's smile faded as reality snapped back, "It wasn't this, we stumbled upon it purely by accident. I wish we could send a real team down here to study it, but it's not safe for circles to attempt through the horde and wardens don't have time for such frivolities." Her wistful gaze turned away from the node and she faced Cullen. Lana squared her shoulders as if to present herself before an assembly, "We'd been trying to unravel the secrets of the blight. Our hope is, was to one day find the exact location where the darkspawn began and believed that knowledge would lead us to the how."

  "We know how. Tevinter magisters breached the golden city turning it black. The Maker turned his gaze away from us and blighted the world."

  "So says the chantry," Lana said diplomatically.

  Cullen rounded upon her, "Are you saying you don't believe in the chantry?"

  "I'm a mage, the chantry doesn't particularly believe in me."

  That wasn't true. Magic should serve man not rule over him, yes, but the chantry didn't call for a purge of mages. Just to watch over them, keep them safe from themselves. Any mage could be a danger so they had to be watched, but... "What of Andraste or the Maker?"

  "Oh, for the love of...I found the ashes of Andraste." Lana threw her arms wide and glared at him, "This isn't about my beliefs! I...grey wardens have a reason, a personal reason to want to find the truth, to bring light to the darkness about the blight. Whatever the chantry does and does not claim to have happened is no concern of mine. I want answers, not comforting songs."

  "I, I shouldn't have pushed it. I'm sorry. I'd just, given all you seem to suffer through traveling in this desolate abyss had hoped you..."

  "Had someone to confess my sins to after?" Lana snarled.

  "Had someone to find comfort in," Cullen shrunk down, uncertain why he kept picking at this. All mages in the circle were raised Andrastian by chantry law, but he knew plenty who turned from it. Some of the elves picked up the creator gods of the dalish, but just as many turned from any gods. The latter took a perverse joy in taunting the ones who stayed within the embrace of Andraste. It made for loud discussions and louder explosions when matters of religion arose in the eating hall. Cullen kept himself away from all the old arguments, the question of free will versus sin, the Maker's plan, but he trusted in Andraste. In his darkest days, when he feared each breath would only bring a fresh pain through his body and soul, when everyone turned from him, all he had to cling to was his faith. It kept him buoyant before he could find a purpose to guide him.

  "Cullen..." Lana gripped onto his forearm, drawing him out of his sulk, "I'm not alone." She tried to smile in reassurance but he knew that lie well, told it to himself often enough. He was never more alone than when he was surrounded by his own
knights. They needed orders, not a friend. His own hand covered hers and he wrapped his fingers tight as if to shield her. For a world's heartbeat they stared into each other, waiting to see who would break away first. It stung Cullen to realize how often he kept finding pieces of himself reflected back in her as if they were two sides of the same coin, bundled together in a never ending flip of fate.

  "We should prepare for White," Lana spoke. She slipped her fingers out of his grasp and wound them around her staff.

  Cullen nodded, "Of course, but don't we have to find him first?"

  Lana sneered, "He will come to us."

  "Why?"

  "Because when I lit up the node the defenses awoke. A barrier's locked off the entire thaig. The only way out is by destroying the node. And the only way to destroy the node is by getting through us."

  Confrontation

  Her plan was -- he wished he could call it sound but he barely understood the intricacies of it beyond stopping White. The green node continued to cast its magical interfering qualities through the air. Lana stood beside the window, gazing down at the lake below. She'd only break away from her vigil to inspect the node, clucking her tongue at some impenetrable change in the magic, or anti-magic, or however it worked. The device unnerved him. With each passing minute, Cullen found it increasingly difficult to stare at the node. He tried to keep his back turned and guard the staircase that White would have to take, but movement kept drawing him back to the shifting light across the mottled iron. At first it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, the buzzing upon his skin increasing. But as he continued to stare at it, he found himself able to peer inside the solid ball. The inner working pulsed with an unexplainable heartbeat, slower than a living person's but far more powerful - as if pulsing with the world. He wanted to reach out and touch it, merge his fingers into the inner-workings.

  Lana grabbed onto his extended fingers, pulling Cullen back to the real world. Pain stung his watery eyes from the lack of blinking while he fell into whatever compulsion the node produced. She tried to catch his sight while Cullen scrunched his eyes up, "Are you all right?"

  "It's difficult to look at," he said.

  Her forehead wrinkled, and she whipped back to the node, "What do you see?"

  "Ah," he wiped at his eyes with the back of his glove and stared back at the clearly solid ball. Whatever vision it produced was just that, an illusion probably brought on from exhaustion and ancient magic hissing in the air. "It was like seeing a mana clash instead of feeling it"

  "Hm..."

  "Or, I could be mistaken. It...Ah!" Cullen jumped as another spark shot across his nose and arced into the gauntlet. "At this rate we shall electrocute ourselves before the blood mage has the opportunity."

  Lana smiled in sympathy and cupped her hands upon his face. Once again the twitching across his skin died down. Cullen caught her hands in his and held them at the side of his neck. He wanted to ask what she kept doing to alleviate it, but his words knotted together at the concern in her face. It'd been a long time since anyone looked at him as if they wished to take his pain away. Still clinging to her fingers, Cullen dipped his head towards her. A spark zapped from his lips into hers causing Lana to yelp.

  "Andraste's flames, I'm so sorry!" Cullen cried as her hands slipped from his grasp. Lana massaged her lips with her fingers. He opened his mouth to apologize again, when Lana threw her arms around his neck and plunged into a kiss. As her lips sucked upon his, a metallic bite rolled off her tongue into his. His body stretched thin; he felt as if he could wrap his arms twice around her if he wanted. His legs slipped away from him, the toes elongating past his boots.

  She pulled away and smiled. The thinness snapped away leaving Cullen rapidly aware of where his fingers, toes, and the rest of his limbs were. Right where they'd always been. Lana said, "I overloaded you with enough mana you should be glowing. It ought to at least keep the sparks away for a few hours."

  "That was...I've never felt anything like that," he admitted. Cullen tapped the ends of his fingers together to make certain they were still entombed in the gloves.

  Lana smirked, "You should make out with more mages. Wait until you see what we can do when we're really creative."

  Whether it was from the mana coursing through his system or the proximity of the node, Cullen caught the blush blundering up his neck and willed it back. "I will take that under advisement," he managed to cough out, blanketing his imagination before he had to make adjustments in an already tight spot.

  Horns blared through the entire thaig rattling stones and shaking the ground below them. Cullen shielded his ears from the assault, but Lana dashed off to the window.

  "It's as I suspected," she said, yanking up her staff, "he's here."

  With one hand Cullen unsheathed his sword, and with the other he pulled the lyrium bottle from his pocket. He'd only set out with the one in his kit, assuming this trip wouldn't take more than a day or two at most. It also seemed unlikely the chantry would willingly let him leave their grasp with more than a ration or two at best. They kept a tighter lock on their lyrium than they did the tranquil's enchantments.

  Popping off the lid with his thumb, Cullen tipped back the vial and downed it. Far too much time had passed since his last draught as a sharp stinging rattled through his veins. He kept pushing it lately, against even Meredith's watchful eye. As the stinging melted away, a calm chill swept through his bones. Certainty followed in its wake, reinforcing his duty to the symbol upon his shield. His grip tightened upon his sword, his muscles snapping to attention from the strength flooding him. He felt whole again.

  Something drew his attention, and he turned to see a queer look across the mage's face. Lana sighed in contention while watching him take the lyrium but did not speak a word. Instead, she swung her head back to gaze across the thaig. What could she say? She needed a templar and she got one. The lyrium was necessary for him to fight mages. It was how the world worked, whether they liked it or not.

  "White is coming," she said, her voice toneless, "prepare yourself."

  With the node activated both she and the blood mage would be on an even playing field but it would not affect the templar waiting to finish him off. It was relying on this ancient dwarven artifact to do something that as far as he knew was impossible that pushed his limits of believability. How could it cut off the connection to the fade with a wave of a hand? Another horn blasted through the air, but Cullen didn't flinch from the sound. His own blood rushed through his ears pounding with the beat of lyrium.

  Lana yanked up her staff and Cullen realized she never tied the blade back on. Was that part of the plan? He tried to reach out to ask her when a voice echoed through the stones.

  "Lady mage, I knew it would end here. We almost solved the node. Could you imagine? To control, limit magic before it even left the fade. But no, it wouldn't work that way. We were so close to figuring out the what we forgot to add in the why."

  "White!" Lana shouted out the window, her hand steadying her as she leaned forward. She ignored his ramblings and jumped straight to the point. "What you've done is reprehensible. You know this. You know I cannot let you live for what you did to those wardens."

  The chuckle trembled up Cullen's legs through the stones of the spire. He spun around expecting to see the mage rising up the stairs but only blackness remained behind him. "Oh Lady mage, I wished I had a choice. I tried to explain to them, but they wouldn't see. Refused to admit it. Couldn't. It killed them."

  Lana's hand gripped tighter around her staff, frost circling down it even with the node active. "No, you killed them."

  "Yes..." his voice drifted away from all around them and landed upon the tower directly across the lake. The one coated in darkspawn blight. Fire burst from White's hand but it was only a torch. He extended it outward from the blackened tower as if he intended to wave to them. White appeared alone and unarmed without even a staff for protection. "Yes, I did kill them. All of them. I shouldn't have, but..
.if you only knew."

  "Come and explain it to me, White. Please. I need to understand," Lana shouted to the man.

  He looked about to argue and speak in more cryptic sentences, when he sighed, his entire body slouching, "Yes, one way or another it needs to end." White took a step out of the window into the vastness of air. Instinctively, Cullen dashed forward as if he could reach out to catch the falling man, but White didn't plummet into the lake below. He didn't raise a stone to meet his feet either. Somehow the elf stood upon nothing extended hundreds of feet in the air.

  "How is he...?" Cullen asked waving his sword at the mage.

  Lana remained unsurprised, her eyes hunting across the scrawny elf walking through thin air towards them. "Dwarven illusion, like the wall. If you look carefully you can see the gaps in the air where cracks have formed over the years." She pointed at one of these invisible cracks but all Cullen saw was an endless fall the blood mage should be taking. "This is nothing, you should have seen the trials at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Bloody puzzles."

  "Where are his demons?" Cullen asked. He tried to peer past Lana to the darkness behind White but nothing moved through the shadows. It was impossible to think the blood mage would come truly alone. He had everything to lose from not unleashing a horde upon them.

  Lana ignored him as White ground to a halt a few dozen feet away from her. "I shall come no closer," he said waving the torch before his eyes. The smoke had to sting, the blood mage not used to using non-magical fire. "I have not forgotten the templar you brought."

  Lana gritted her teeth and sighed, "White, you know why I was able to find you. You gave it to me for that very reason." She must have meant the phylactery pulsing in Cullen's pocket. "I could have sent a battalion of wardens to track you down, but I came alone. Nearly alone. We will not attack you until we hear you out."

  "This is typically where some trap is sprung and the obliging villain falls to his doom," White said.

  Parting her hands, Lana shifted with exaggerated movements as if she were facing down a feral animal. With White's eyes on her, she snapped her arms forward. Only a light breeze waffled the elf back. "The node is active, I cannot harm you. You cannot harm me."

  White tipped his head, "You can harm people without the use of magic, I have seen it often." That caused Lana to grumble, a shadow drifting across her face. "For what little it is worth, Lady mage, I am sorry."

  "For murdering your friends?" Lana shouted to the man too far away for either of them to reach. Cullen itched to chase after him, but his brain screamed that it was a certain death. Could he even be supported by this invisible bridge?

  White slipped his eyes closed and a gentleness smoothed his face. The elf looked as capable of malfeasance as a young child.

  "White?" Lana prompted.

  Fire tumbled from his hand, racing to splash into the lake below. No longer carrying the torch, his hand unearthed the hidden dagger. Yanking back his sleeve, the mage slit across his scarred arms thrice. "Forgive me," he whispered.

  The node shrieked an ear piercing howl as the green light flared to a horrifying red. Lana flipped away from the blood mage drawing power from his own veins to face down the device behind Cullen. Her eyes focused and he could taste the fade pouring from her into the node, green light wrapping across its surface. For a brief second the device skipped, the fade energy overpowering whatever White was doing. But it wasn't enough. She'd wasted so much mana for no good reason, just to keep him from zapping himself? How could she be so reckless when there was a blood mage about?

  Cullen shouldered past her and aimed what powers he had at the mage, trying to boil all the mana White suckered from his own blood inside his veins. It was foolish, and it rarely worked properly, but it was their best hope before the mage unleashed demons upon them. Dipping deep into his own psyche, Cullen tugged upon the emptiness inside of him. It was the void itself that chewed through magic gobbling it up and rendering it impotent. He touched the emptiness flowing in his veins and drew it towards White, putting every drop of lyrium in his body into it. The power snapped out at the blood mage. It was enough to drag any man to his knees, but the elf waved his hand up and smiled.

  Cullen's own spell twisted back at him, the blow burning through his veins. Somehow the mage reflected it back, his own lyrium set aflame inside of him. Pain chewed and clawed up every inch of his skin, the torment snapping against his brain. Cullen screamed, blood scattering from his tongue and out his nose. Blood the mage could scoop up for his own use. The mage the templar couldn't stop. Darkness slipped across Cullen's vision, his own heartbeat staggering as the mage's poison knocked about his veins. He stumbled backwards and a hand landed upon him.

  Lana gripped tighter to him and she began to drain every ounce of mana from his body. The pain dissipated along with the power, all of it flowing into her. She'd used him as a storage device, the last place White would think to look. Strength snapped back into his body as the internal flames doused off his skin, but Cullen remained limp in Lana's arms. Her fingers squeezed him once more, then she snapped her hand at White.

  Ice that could shatter mountains whipped off her and directly into the blood mage. Somehow he threw up a barrier before she could hit sending the force of winter ricocheting into the walls. Frost blanketed the area, covering even the invisible bridge in the curse of winter. Hissing and popping, the stone caves creaked from the dramatic temperature change. After centuries of standing, this could take them down around them. Lana didn't back down, her insurmountable attack continuing even as she reached the bottom of Cullen's stores. Now all she had left was whatever she could pull from herself.

  Still White didn't budge, his own protection spell holding as the ice froze his own pools of blood dripping off the invisible bridge. Lana screamed as she released her hold on Cullen and thrust the last of what she had at White. Her legs gave out, but Cullen rose up to catch her around the waist. Her final attack shattered against the barrier, but one lone icicle pierced through the bubble and embedded into White's shoulder.

  He didn't cry out in pain, only stared down at the ice spear melting from his own warm blood dribbling down it. "That was a surprise," the elf said. Then he brought his hands together in a clap. The force threw both Lana and Cullen backwards against the wall. Cullen bore the brunt of it with Lana still in his arms, her body crushing that cursed warden armor into his chest. He slid to his knees, trying to shake off the blow to the back of his head. Nausea knotted through the blurry vision, but he didn't have time to worry about that.

  Lana hopped up first, her fingers scrabbling for her staff, while White calmly walked through the window. The elf watched her, a smile upon his lips, then he whipped back at Cullen struggling to get up to a knee through his throbbing hands. "I know your tricks templar, I can counter them all. Do not try again. But you," now he turned to Lana, "what we could have accomplished if you'd simply-"

  "No," Lana cut him off while brandishing her staff to try and bash him in the head. It was all they had left now.

  "They're wrong, you know, the chantry. Wrong about this, this power," White waved his fingers down his arm and the wound scabbed up instantly, the blood drying in its wake.

  "I shouldn't have sent you in alone, I should have been there," Lana shouted. She twisted carefully around the back of the node while keeping an eye on White. Cullen could only see the top of her head as he slipped behind the ball still hissing from whatever blood magic threw it off balance.

  "It would not have changed anything, I'm afraid. You weren't of the right blood to see it for what it was, what it will be, what it should be," the crazy mage kept his focus on Lana, his head twisting away from the templar struggling to rise.

  "Why do you intend to kill the First Warden?"

  White snapped his head back and glared at Cullen and the templar's fingers itching to yank up his fallen blade. Turning back to Lana he answered her, "Because, it is the only way to stop the cycle before it begins. Can't you see it? Can't you hear
it? We will bring the end because our hubris blinds us all."

  "Tell me what you know, White. Tell me what you saw in the library. Please," her voice shattered as she paused in her walk.

  The elf looked about to argue when he placed a hand near the node, power tumbling below his fingers as he readied to destroy it and free himself. But then a tenderness weaved through his face and he eyed up Lana, "I am sometimes sorry you were not my apprentice, the depth of your curiosity is only matched by your tenacity. But even you would not accept the fact. Solona, what we wish, what we hope to accomplish is all for naught."

  "What are you talking about?" she continued while rounding the curve of the node and drawing closer to him. White was so enraptured in her he didn't hear Cullen scoop up his sword.

  "The Grey Wardens. We're so certain we are the only ones who can stop the blights, who can end the archdemons."

  "We are."

  "Oh," White twisted his head, "then how do you yet live?" Lana sneered at that, whatever the mage meant passing over Cullen's head. Her eyes darted over White's shoulder and she spotted Cullen rising, his sword at the ready to end this madness. Ever so softly she shook her head no.

  "You found something in the blight itself, please, tell me what it is. Tell me so we can help future wardens, save people from this sickness," Lana pleaded, her eyes focused upon White.

  "What I found would hurt you."

  "It's already hurting me," she said.

  "True enough," White said, "Perhaps you should share in the burden." The elf reached his bloody hands towards Lana whether to attack or not, there was no way to know. Cullen sprung forward, his shoulder slamming into the elf while the sword slipped unimpeded through White's ribs and pierced out his chest.

  "No!" Lana screamed and she threw a force powerful enough at Cullen his body skittered back against the wall. She wrapped her arms around White's body pulling him into her hands as both sank to their knees. The elf's blood gushed out of the wound splattering down her own chest as she tried to lower him to the ground. "White, please, tell me why. Tell me why you did it."

  Color drained from White's face as his own veins spilled across the floor. The blade sliced through his chest but still he didn't scream in pain, as if nothing could hurt him anymore. His hand paddled in the air and landed upon Lana's shoulder. With a rasping voice, he whispered, "In the end, none of it matters."

  Her fingers flared as she placed them against White's chest, but the magic sputtered away, yanked from her body by her own trap. Not that even she could cure a blade through the lungs. Lana held White's empty body awkwardly in her arms, trying to keep the end of Cullen's sword from piercing into her own skin. She struggled under the growing weight of it as the soul fled into the fade, but wouldn't put him down.

  "It's my fault, I told him to look into it. We found a text, not even that, a piece of writing that was barely legible, but I had such hopes. And I urged him to figure out what it was. It had to be him, only he could..." Lana stared at White's still open eyes, unable to close them with her hands full with his body. "I'm so fucking tired of getting it wrong."

  Cullen didn't move from where she threw him. Though the force was far gentler than what White concocted, and he remained on his feet, he was wary of the mage with a seemingly endless power that openly attacked him. He was also unarmed. Holding one palm flat he tried to reason with her, "Lana." She didn't turn away from the dead elf, but her shoulders shuddered from the reminder she wasn't alone. "He was a blood mage."

  "I know," her voice whimpered, only a shadow of the powerful woman who hacked through a darkspawn army. "It was why I chose him."

  "What?"

  Finally, she released her hold on White. The body slipped out of her fingers and crumpled to the ground. Her entire chest was mired in scarlet blood, the same blood dribbling its last onto the floor unable to harm anyone anymore. Lana rose off her knees and gazed down at the body. White curled up on his side, appearing as if in sleep save for the sword still run through him. She leaned over and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of Cullen's sword. His legs tightened, fearing that she would try to destroy his only weapon.

  It took a bit of tugging to yank the sword out of White. A groan hissed through the hole left behind, gore slopping down to fill it. She twisted the blade up to her eyes and inspected it. Cullen froze as the now armed mage approached him. Could he stop her? What if he hurt her?

  Maker, what if he had to kill her?

  Lana stopped only a hair's breadth from him, her eyes as inscrutable as the moment before he first kissed her. She seemed to stare through time itself while weighing his sword in her hands. Summoning a breath, she extended the sword to him hilt first. Cullen blinked, trying to shake off every horrible thought that stirred in his mind. Of course she wasn't going to hurt him. She wouldn't do that. She was...

  He gripped onto his blade, glad to have the heft back in his hand. Lana stepped back, her shoes sliding in the gore upon the floor. Her eyes shifted to his and she nodded her head once. "Do it."

  "Do what?" Cullen was unmoored, terrified to twist his sword away while Lana stood unshielded just before the tip of it.

  Her stone face shattered, tears pooling at the edge of her eyes. The wobbling in her lip warped her words, "I struck a templar. I know what that means."

  "No, no, I can't, no. You were..." Cullen stammered stepping back into the wall.

  Lana pressed closer, the tip of his sword nipping across her crimson chest, "I lived in the circle for fifteen years. I know what happens to mages who step out of line. I could have injured you, or worse, killed you. In the end, I impeded your duty."

  "Lana, no, you were distraught and...he was important to you," his hand shook as his normally solid muscles melted away. He didn't want to be here, didn't want to stare into those eyes facing down death by his hand.

  "Important? I did not think templars took much stock in the excuses of mages. You kill for less. You certainly invoke the rite of tranquility for less."

  "Against blood mages and abominations," Cullen said.

  "Against anything your Knight-Commander deems unacceptable," Lana threw herself forward bypassing the blade to jump into Cullen's face. "You think I don't know the rumors about Kirkwall's circle? That it's breaking chantry law? Or how mages are fleeing for fear that they could be branded because of some imagined misstep? How many live in terror every day that it could be their last regardless if they passed their harrowing?"

  "You know nothing of what the mages in Kirkwall are capable of. They're more devious, more dangerous than the ones in Ferelden," Cullen shouted back. "More blood mages move amongst them than you can imagine."

  "Any one of us is dangerous, you know that. You've said as much repeatedly. And you saw what I am capable of!" Her venom subsided and she turned away from him. With her eyes boring into his hand gripping to the extended sword she sighed, "I could kill you. I've had six years to whet myself into a force of nature." Her voice overflowed with regret, the smart little mage honed to a sharp edge. She cupped his cheek with her hand and pressed into his skin with her thumb.

  "But you won't," Cullen cried out, biting through a pain crawling out of his heart. He'd been so certain that every mage was dangerous, any mage could turn, but not her. Never her. He needed that fact.

  Lana sighed, "How do you know that?"

  "You're not like them, not like what they do to people; the horrors, the pain they... You, you could have turned to demons at any time to stop the blight, but you didn't. You haven't," he grabbed onto her wrist, pinning her fingers tighter to his cheek, "You won't!"

  "White was a blood mage when he joined the grey wardens," she said, derailing him.

  "What?" Cullen glared into her eyes, but they danced away. "That's madness. How can anyone trust a blood mage?"

  "We take any who are willing to make the sacrifice, any who can fight darkspawn. Pickpockets, murderers," she paused and snorted, "long lost princes, malifecarum. Anyone." Her shoulders sagged in exhau
stion and she pulled her hand away from his cheek. Cullen was glad to let her go as she stepped away from his blade and abandoned her certainty that he would strike her down. Pins and needles erupted down his forearm while he lowered the blade, the muscle unhappy from such abuse.

  Lana dipped down to White her knees sloshing up the blood. With a shaking hand she slipped his eyes closed. Silence descended between them as she kept watch over his corpse, Cullen watching her. Only the hiss of the once again green node broke through them.

  "Do you know why he turned to blood magic?"

  "The same reason as any mage would; power," Cullen shook off her plea. He'd heard all the sob stories before, but at the end of them all the same thread - the mage needed to be stronger than someone else, needed to overpower someone else, and blood was the key.

  "He did it to save a friend. He was years past his own harrowing when his friend took ill, a disease no healer could find an answer to. So he did it, he did what every circle mage should never do and turned to a demon for help." Lana glanced over her shoulder at Cullen, "All to save a templar's life. Of course they found out what he did, one can't cure the un-curable without raising questions. So White ran. The circle nearly caught up to him before he stumbled into a warden scouting party."

  "The templar?" Cullen asked, his voice cracking beneath him.

  "She recovered, then they told her what happened, loaded her with lyrium and...and she was the one sent to track down White. They," Lana paused and tipped her head back, "they assumed he wouldn't harm the person he fought so hard to save. As demented as it is, they were right. The wardens had to conscript him against his own will. He would have let himself die by her still living hand if it weren't for them."

  "I...I'm sorry," Cullen threw out, unable to think of anything profound.

  Lana wiped at her eyes and rose to her feet. "That's what they do," she cursed not at Cullen but the world itself, "pit us against each other. Us versus them. Bound against our will, terrified to step out of line. What choice do we have but to slaughter each other when the time comes, when the breaking point is reached? We never even had a chance."

  "What do you propose we do then? Give mages free run of the cities? Turn our backs to abominations? The poor chained mage is a heart wrenching image but what is the solution to freeing them without risking others?" Cullen spat at her, dragging back the same dozen arguments probably being shouted through the streets of Kirkwall at that very moment.

  But Lana didn't snap with her own retorts. Her eyes softened and her lips parted with a gasp. "I wasn't speaking only of mages." Pointedly, she turned to look at the empty bottle of lyrium broken across the ground.

  "That...I," Cullen dashed away from her pitying look. The lyrium was necessary, everyone knew it, and it helped to squelch the aspects of templar life that haunted his thoughts. He willingly yoked himself to the chantry; to blanch now because the waters turned foul was unfair to those taken in the line of duty. Even if Meredith wielded the brand with an alacrity that by light of day unnerved him. She kept people safe, that was what mattered. A means to justify an end.

  "You want answers, everyone does, but I have none," Lana folded in on herself, her head slumping to her stomach. "I've never had any. Kill one person to save a hundred, sacrifice a city to preserve a keep. Send a man to his death for the good of the order. I've been making those choices since I was nineteen. Never even seen the world and they pinned it all on me to stop a civil war and save it. Do you know how pathetic it is for me to order around a fifty year old veteran? I'm not some great hero, a warrior ordained by the Maker to save us all. I'm stumbling through every day hoping that I can live with myself to the next moment..." she stared down at White, "and I keep getting it wrong."

  Sacrifice one to save a possible hundred. That was his life, but without the epic songs to accompany his battles. Instead he had to scrutinize every mage that passed him, listen for every whisper of disobedience, hone his blade to strike the most innocent face. And if he failed, if he let one of them slip by unnoticed, countless people suffered. It was a war of attrition, he only had to miss once, sympathize one time, to fail. It gnawed upon him in a way that he thought no one else understood. Cullen wiped his blade clean of White's blood against his rag and carefully sheathed it. He felt Lana watching him as he kept his movements slow and methodical, taking the time to secure his weapons properly.

  Now unarmed, he extended a hand to her. Her eyebrows knotted in confusion as she stared at it. He wanted to explain it to her, assure her that she wasn't alone, but his voice sunk into his chest unwilling to lift. Admitting his own defeats aloud gave them a power, a voice he feared he could never face down. All he could do was offer her his hand. Lana slipped her fingers into his, as cautious as a wild animal accepting food. Cullen shuddered at the contact, his heart trying to pour itself out through his hand. It was doubtful Lana understood an inch of it, but she didn't try and pull away. She wrapped her fingers tighter into his, and he shielded her hand with his own. He wished he could do more, but she revived from his unspoken promise, the flush of anger and sorrow upon her cheeks fading.

  "We...we can leave, once I shut down the node. I should close up the thaig too so darkspawn don't stumble back in," Lana mumbled while wiping away the tear stains on her cheeks. She still clung to his hand with her other.

  Cullen nodded, back to the unequal footing they began on. Then he glanced down and stared at the man he ran through. In death, White looked even more fragile than before, his thin hand stretched upon the ground as if waiting for someone to grab it. "I could carry his body up to the surface for a proper funeral."

  Lana smiled from his offer, "No, that won't be necessary."

  "Why?"

  She slipped her fingers out of his hand. "Dying alone and forgotten in the deep roads is a proper grey warden funeral." Cullen started at her stark response while she dropped to her knees and whispered against White's ear, "Hahren na melana sahlin emma ir abelas. In death, sacrifice."

  Back Where We Began

  It would have been more poetic if a sunrise greeted them as they emerged from the depths of the deep roads. Instead, the afternoon sun blazed down through the red cliffs crowded around them. If he'd stepped out an hour earlier or later, the light would have been blocked by the rocky precipices instead of into his eyes. They'd only been in the darkspawn lair for a day and a half but it felt a week passed. Cullen glared at the sun when he should have felt ecstatic at seeing it again.

  A hand gently tapped his arm and he turned away from the sky. Lana had remained silent through their climb out of the deep, only gesturing to some danger or drop off and trusting he'd remain close enough without losing her. He had only the drum of his shoes upon the ground to keep him company through a mile of climbing back to the surface. By the summer day light her cheeks appeared wan, her eyes blotted and strained. She thinned her lips in a restrained thought, probably one he didn't want to hear. He'd tried to think of something to say to her as they walked away from the mage's body, but every idea warped in his mind into only renewing their buried argument. After a time, Cullen decided that if she wanted to talk she'd say something and it was best to let sleeping mabari lie.

  "We can continue along this dried riverbed," Lana said, her voice rough as the rocky edge. "There's no need to climb the cliffs."

  "No?" Cullen rolled his shoulders, trying to waken his strained muscles. At this point, the best his arms could offer was a meager shrug, scaling anything was out of the question.

  "No death defying leaps off crumbling stairs this time," she sighed and tapped her fingers against his arm.

  "Oh, that's almost. I mean, it wasn't so..." She wanted something, she needed something from him. For the Maker's sake, say it! "Where are we?" Not that.

  Lana didn't catch on to the internal war ravaging behind Cullen's eyes. She slipped ahead of him and waved a finger that he should follow. Silently, she led him down the dead riverbed while limping over the red clay cracked like broken eggshell
s. It wasn't until they'd stepped out of the tower that Cullen realized she'd been injured in their fight against White. Lana silently tied up her ankle and relied upon her staff to support her. She didn't turn to him once for help.

  Pausing at the edge of the riverbed where the land fell away as if a giant snatched it up, Lana pointed a finger below them. Cullen sidled up beside her and a southern wind blasted sea salt into his eyes. Gulls shrieked above the clouds while dipping in and out of masts of ships decorated with the flags of Nevarra, Kirkwall, and Ferelden. Despite over five years in Kirkwall, his knowledge of ships reached somewhere in the 'that's a big one, and that's a little one' range. There were a lot of big ones bobbing along the sea, most glinting in the glare of the sun off the calm waters. A handful of the smaller ones took up near the coast itself, the wooden docks extended like a complicated maze into the sea.

  "Cumberland, or near enough to count," Lana said. She peered over the edge down at a dozen dock workers scrabbling against cargo. Two elves held a box between them, the crates marked with the symbols of every port they'd ever landed in, while a qunari of all things stood stone still watching over them. Lana pinched her nose and sighed, "I wonder sometimes if they have any idea how easily all of this could fall. Without the grey wardens maintaining the seals on the deep roads..." Her thoughts trailed off as she watched a box slide off the ramp and bowl through the elves. The qunari tipped her foot up and stopped the box without shifting.

  "I..." Cullen understood her message and why she brought him here without her having to say it. He threw his shoulders back to stand in attention in the hope that would blot away the regret blooming in the back of his mind. "I can...shall take a ship back to Kirkwall."

  Lana turned from her vigil and that ornery spark of hers twinkled in her eye, "You know I'm going to need that armor back. The wardens get very particular and grumpy when people 'not of the order' wear it."

  "Oh, I..." He patted down the steel griffin that'd been horribly abused in the short time he wore it. "I hadn't thought..."

  "So, unless you plan on traveling back to Kirkwall naked, I think it's best I stick with you." Her tone was flat, but for a brief second her eyes flickered down his body.

  "That would be preferable to...the, uh, sunburn I'd have to explain," Cullen stammered. "And other things too."

  Lana didn't laugh at him, her energy seeming to be already spent. Instead, she gestured to a path dug into the cliffside that led right into the heart of the port. "I know where we can rent some horses. Shouldn't be more than a days travel back. And no brontos this time, I promise."

  Cullen smiled from her jibe, but the edges stung. Her lighthearted nature was buried under the mask of command, the glint in her eye matted and her sharp smile dulled. She shielded herself and her pain behind the grey warden banner. He wished he could find some way to speak to her, to get her to speak of whatever weighed upon her heart, but he knew he was too incompetent to manage such a feat. And, a dark part of him taunted, he did the same damn thing with the templars as she did the wardens.

  Lana was true to her word, seeming to know everyone on the docks of not-quite Cumberland. They procured two of the better horses and rode away from the setting sun towards Kirkwall. She kept far enough ahead perched upon her bay that Cullen was left alone with only his thoughts and the sturdy horse below him. He found himself missing the bronto.

  By the time they broke into the outskirts of Kirkwall, the sun was rising. It was mostly farmland, save the occasional stand and ring of houses. She did not offer for them to stop, and he did not challenge the idea of riding through the night. Lana dismounted from her horse and let it slip off to a creek for water.

  The city woke below them. Smoke poured out of the foundry in Low Town mutilating the pinks of the sunrise into a foggy grey. He knew the sounds of Kirkwall - peddlers belting their lungs out until it rang in your ears for days - the smells of Kirkwall - there was a delicacy to detecting the scent of various fish rotting on the docks - and the pain of Kirkwall. But here with only untamed grass wafting in the breeze and a few herds of sheep chomping away upon it the city looked deceptively peaceful. Dare he think it, even inviting. To his right was the Waking Sea, more of the biggest ships sliding through the opened locks to drop off that rancid fish. And in between them lay the gallows. He could just make out a few of golden statues, their heads clutched in their chained hands.

  "Well," Lana stood alone, her own inscrutable eyes canvasing every inch of Kirkwall. "Back where we began, and the city isn't aflame."

  "It's a wonder," Cullen commented. "I'd have assumed at least a dragon attack." Lana scrunched her face up and touched her shoulder as if in a memory. He caught the familiar pain and remarked, "You've fought dragons as well?"

  She shrugged her perhaps once dragon mutilated shoulder and continued to gaze across the city. "A couple...dozen."

  "Andraste's tears," he exclaimed. Why didn't she rant and rave? Thunder from on high to every man or woman who dared to rise against her the terrors she'd clipped away from Thedas? That her opposition might as well turn around and head home before she turned her wrath on them? If anyone deserved to retire to the quiet life away from the pain and blood it was the hero of Ferelden.

  "Well," she said, turning to face him, "you might as well strip."

  "Beg pardon?" He tried to not whip his eyes to the gallows and what felt like hundreds of eyes judging him from across the water.

  "The armor," Lana said, her hand breaking away from her staff to point at it.

  "Oh, right, uh..." He should be able to take it off in his sleep, but his fingers slipped against the buckles yanking the chest piece tighter than it already was. Lana'd been the one to pull it off him in the...Cullen swallowed back that memory trying to stuff it deep into his mind. So deep he could almost trick himself into thinking it never even happened. It was only his imagination playing him the fool.

  "You can put it in my bag," she said, only glancing over him as he struggled through undressing himself. She kept a vigil across Kirkwall, her eyes piercing the movement of a waking city the way a distant hawk would.

  Cullen stuffed each bit into her pack as it came off until he stood in only the blue under layer, the starched collar tight upon his neck while the deep cut exposed his nearly translucent chest hair. A cool breeze wafted through the thin linen freezing his skin before the summer sun rose. He grabbed onto the hem of the tunic when Lana's fingers wrapped around his.

  "No, that's, as much as I'd enjoy watching...you can keep it and the pants," her voice bobbed around and she shook her head. "I'm not so cruel as to send you bare assed back to the templars." A flush rose up her cheeks and she bit down on her tongue. Tell her now! It's the perfect time!

  "Thank you," Cullen said while flattening the edge of the shirt back against his hips.

  "You look good in blue," she mused. Her fingers drifted above the tunic as if she regretted letting him keep it.

  "That's, I, uh...will you be able to carry all that?" He pointed to the bag now overflowing with armor and all the necessities of surviving the deep roads she began with.

  Lana bowed her head, a smirk twisting up her lips, "I learned a few tricks over the years. I think I can handle it." She didn't grab up her bag, but traced the edge of her fingernails down her staff. "I...I feel as if I should pay you for, uh..."

  Cullen paled. He knew what she meant, but the implications rattled him, "No, that's, that's not necessary. I was acting as a...templars do not accept coin."

  "Right, forgot about that." She turned away from him until she stood in profile, her haunted eyes gazing across a world that didn't care one whit for what she did. How many other drunks in how many other taverns spoke of the hero of Ferelden as if she were only a conspiracy? How many people dismissed her as nothing more than that little mage who got lucky?

  "Lana, I..."

  Her eyes blinked against dawn's light and she turned to him. A soft smile turned up her lips. "Yes?"

  "I..." love you. I
love you. I've loved you for years. The thought of you feeling hurt, or lonely, or broken rends me apart. I want you to be happy, to love in return. "I was wondering why White called you Lady Mage?"

  She sighed, "A joke on his part. Everyone knows who I am by reputation, so I tend to come with no introduction. Since none was offered he referred to me as 'that lady mage.' It stuck and I found it refreshing in a way. He...he was a good man once."

  "He was a blood mage."

  "He was that too," she admitted. Her fingers ran down the length of her staff, and Cullen noticed that she wasn't haphazardly flicking at the wood. Each movement traced one of the names carved in it. Lana cocked an eye at him, "You noticed them? It began with those lost in...when I wasn't there at Kinnloch. I keep adding more. I'm uncertain what I'll do when I run out of staff. Every person I failed to save."

  Cullen grabbed onto her hand wrapping his fingers around the top of hers and holding it above the names of the dead. "It's not your fault."

  He expected her to yank back her hand, but exhausted eyes turned to him and she twisted it in his grasp. Threading her fingers around his, she sighed, "That's not how it works. You of all people know that."

  Cullen felt struck from her words. How did she know him so well? How did she cut to his quick without even trying? Lana glanced out at the sea, then slipped her free hand around his back. Their bodies pressed together. With Cullen still holding her hand they looked like two people about to dance together on the hills at dawn. His right hand lay limply at his side, uncertain what to do, when Lana placed her head against his shoulder. Her fingers massaged the small of his back in tender circles. Even aware that one of the other templars could be wandering the outskirts, Cullen enveloped his arms around her.

  "Mage and templar," she whispered.

  "You should hate me," he said, his breath warming her forehead.

  "I would say the same," Lana countered back.

  "I could never..." Cullen began when his tongue tripped over itself. Yes, he could have. If she'd been in the tower when Uldred and his army of blood mages began the revolt he knew he'd hate her with the same fury as he did everyone else who survived. Maker, he was so tired of this anger. "You're special to...so many people."

  "Cullen, I could be any mage in any circle. I stumbled into a chance opportunity. How many more never even get one?"

  "That's specious reasoning, for all you know just as many would falter in your position, or use that power extended to them for their own ends." His arms stiffened around her, the anger rising.

  Lana didn't prod him, instead she folded her arms tighter around him, her forehead nestling deeper into his chest. She sighed, "You still see mages as problems, not people."

  The starkness tripped him up. "I...I don't see you that way."

  She lifted her head and searched through his eyes. Sweet Andraste, he wished he knew what do, what to say. Even to return to the man he was before the circle fell for a few days...Lana rose up on her toes, her eyes slipping tight as she kissed him. She didn't prolong or tease with her tongue, but she put all of herself into what he realized would be their last meeting. Cullen wrapped his arms even tighter, trying to memorize the feel of her skin, the taste of her lips, and the curves of her body before it all fell apart.

  Lana slipped down breaking contact, but his lips still buzzed from her presence. "Your heart belongs to the templars," she said patting his cheek.

  He found enough presence of mind to stare into her eyes to say, "And yours to the wardens."

  "That's..." she snickered, "that's perceptive of you."

  "There's not much hope, is there?" he voiced the words that'd followed their every touch, every kiss.

  Lana shut her eyes and he watched a few tears dribble down her cheek. "No. I'm afraid not. Doomed before it even began. Perhaps, perhaps there'd be a chance if you left the templars and I the wardens." She knew the finality of her sentence. It would never happen, neither of it. He needed the templars as much as she needed the wardens. While the chantry had him bound through lyrium, something in Lana's words told him she was just as knotted up in the wardens. The chance of their rekindling anything was a dream to survive through an empty night, nothing more.

  She broke her hands away and placed them upon his chest. Cullen lowered his own, prepared to let her slip away. Her fingers traced his chest below the thin linen following the curve of his pec. Lana paused and closed her eyes. Fade energy snapped out of the world below her fingers. A warmth spread all through Cullen's body leaving behind a renewed vigor in his bones. He felt as if he could jog the entirety = of the wounded coast now.

  "What did you do?" he asked.

  "A simple protection spell. In case, I heard there was a lot of criminal activity in Kirkwall and...I didn't want to leave you unprotected."

  "Lana, that's not--"

  "Please," she blinked away the last of her tears while sliding away from him, "let me do this. It helps." A cold wind whipped between them carrying the stinging sea air and the sound of ships rocking against waves.

  "I should return to the gallows," Cullen said aloud to remind himself of where he belonged.

  Lana nodded as she dabbed away any regret clinging to her face. What was left behind was the fearsome Commander of the Grey, cold and aloof so she could rise every day. He wondered how many wardens under her knew about her staff of the dead, knew that she carried the burden of them all even if she didn't need to. Extending her hand, she gripped Cullen's for a polite handshake, "Thank you for your services, Knight-Captain. I believe it's best to part ways here."

  "But you could take a ship from the gallows." That selfish part of him didn't want to do what was necessary, didn't want to give her up. Just a few more minutes.

  Lana smiled as she shook her head, "A mage covered in blood, I wouldn't make it two steps before someone cut me down." His eyes fell away from her, smothered by the truth of it. It was doubtful they'd even let her dock before picking her off from the walls. She hauled up her pack, his lost armor jangling together, and motioned her head towards the city proper.

  Unable to watch her leave, Cullen turned to face the sea. A gull drifted in and out of the clouds, unwilling to decide upon a spot to land on the waves. The other clustered birds squawked at it, but that gull chose to remain apart.

  "Cullen," her voice cracked above the cry of the lonesome bird. He glanced over his shoulder. Only her silhouette was visible against the rising light of the sun. "Stay safe." And before he could answer, she resumed her walk out of his life.

  Securing passage to the Gallows was easy, the dock workers more than happy to move anyone there free of charge. The fact that the only people who traveled to the gallows -- templars, mages, and chantry -- were also ones that could make the sailor's lives hell aided greatly. As his feet stepped upon the stone ground, Cullen heard the rare sound of laugher echoing amongst the statues. In his absence, someone decided a few of the apprentices should have a little run around the landing area. They varied in age and height, the youngest perhaps ten while some of the apprentices closer to their harrowing slowed to let the boy catch up. Kicking about a ball with no true end goal, the real fun seemed to be in stretching their legs away from the cell walls of the circle.

  Nodding at his boatman in thanks, Cullen stepped crisply towards the gallows while ignoring the game when the ball skittered across the front of his feet. He stopped in time, but the girl chasing after it didn't. She smacked into him, her elbow digging into his side.

  "I'm so sorry for that," she laughed while pulling her wild blonde hair from her face. Her smile froze as she looked past the blue undershirt and into his face. "Knight-Captain, I didn't realize it was you." Terror crept along her eyes and her mouth bobbed with unspoken words. The game was abandoned by the others, the court falling silent as every apprentice turned to look at them. "I...please forgive me."

  How did he not notice the way they looked at him? It wasn't respect but fear that shook the girl...the mage. He tried to summon a smi
le, but it flipped to a broken frown as he spoke, "It is all right. Accidents happen." Leaning over, Cullen snatched up the errant ball and pushed it into her hands, "You may continue."

  It wasn't until he stood at the door into the heart of the gallows that he heard a single mage breathe again. Their chatter picked up as a few of their exasperated words carried on the wind. "I thought you were done for!" "Andraste's tits, how are you not shaking to death?" "That was damn lucky, it was." Mage and Templar. Us versus Them.

  Leaving the mages behind, Cullen crossed into the gallows. The stationed templars paused for a moment before recognizing their Knight-Captain. He clipped past them, aiming to find the Knight-Commander. Meredith was an early riser and today was no different as she paced about her office from behind the closed door. He thought he heard the barest whisper of her voice speaking alone, but it faded away after he knocked.

  "Ah, Knight-Captain," Meredith stood leaning against her desk. No one else was present in the room. She shuffled some parchment scattered upon her desk and turned her full gaze upon him, "you have returned to us. I trust your mission went well."

  "The blood mage is dead, ser," Cullen said, his shoulders straightening into formation. He wrapped his hands behind his back for balance.

  "Excellent work. And your little accomplice, I assume she's skipped back across the waters to Ferelden?"

  Cullen blanched. He hadn't told anyone about Lana. "Ma'am?"

  Meredith's unyielding sight cut through him, "The chantry turns a blind eye to the dangers of the grey wardens but I trusted you'd keep a watch on her. Maker only knows the damage she could do if unleashed."

  He could only bob his head along as if that'd been his plan the entire time. "I am ready to return to my duties."

  "We've had a few interesting developments in your absence. Three suspected blood mages escaped the gallows."

  "I will change and track them down immediately," Cullen said raising his hand for a salute.

  But Meredith held a hand out to stop him while she glanced across a letter upon her desk, "That is not your orders. I've decided that it should be the Champion's duty to track down these dangerous mages and bring them in."

  "The Champion? She's not a templar," Cullen stated the obvious in case Meredith somehow forgot.

  "Ha," Meredith snorted, "that much is clear. But if she is to be the guardian of this city then she should be made well aware of all the dangers lurking within, no matter what she bleats on the steps of the chantry."

  Cullen twisted his head trying to shake logic out of Meredith's words. It was the templars job to protect the people from magic. They ignored the Qunari threat looming over the city for far too long because of politics and so many suffered because of it. To drag the Champion into their work would only muddy the waters more, as if Kirkwall wasn't enough of a heaving mess without a Viscount. What game was Meredith playing at and why? "I don't understand," he said, watching his Knight-Commander continue to pace again. She seemed unable to sit still for more than a few seconds as of late.

  "I have it under control, it will work to our advantage I'm certain," she blinked and turned as if seeing him for the first time, "Knight-Captain, you're out of uniform."

  "I..." Cullen patted down the warden tunic, "did not stop to dress."

  "You should do that, then return to your vigil outside. Let the people know we are protecting them...even as their Champion forgets," Meredith lapsed into her dark mood, the conversation over. Her Knight-Captain turned on his heel and left her to her own devices.

  When Cullen opened the door to his room, for a heartbreaking moment he thought he spotted a silhouette of a woman standing before his window - but it was merely a trick of the light and his exhausted eyes. He yanked off the last of the warden attire, taking a special glee in removing the shortened pants and bunching them up for the launders. Something bulged in the pocket and Cullen yanked out the crystal vial that began this whole quest. White's phylactery was black now, as dead as the mage it was connected to. He could return it to the tranquil; they'd clean it out, polish it up, and fill it with some other apprentice's blood. That was the smart thing to do, the proper rules of the order to follow.

  It was also the only thing he had left that connected him to Lana. Folding up the grey warden tunic, Cullen placed the linen deep in his sparse chest. Below that he secreted away White's phylactery.

  Dressing quickly in his templar armor, Cullen returned to his duties. The apprentices had already gone, leaving the gallows empty save the few shops and the other knights pacing about. Whatever may come of Lana, whatever may come of the grey wardens or the future itself, at least he knew where his place in the world lay. The templars were his home and that would never change.

  Epilogue

  An axe was still embedded deep in the Knight-Commander's desk. Three years since that apostate destroyed the chantry, cast the circle into ruin, and Meredith lost whatever grip on sanity she managed, and Cullen couldn't be bothered to remove it. He hated being in her office, hated the constant reminder of his failure wrapped around him, but it was where the Knight-Commander - even if he was only acting - held meetings. So, it was where he had to stay.

  Things had been getting better. The first year was...Maker, even now it was still a blur. So many people crushed under rubble. Fires rampaged through the streets. Starvation set in followed by disease and all anyone cared about was finding the mage that started it all and dragging him to justice. After screaming himself raw in front of a makeshift tribunal of nobles, Cullen would have stretched his own neck on the gibbet if it'd gotten him bread for the hungry and shelter for the cold. Every moment was only measured by how to survive to the next. He never thought they'd see the light again, but somehow, each day they managed to solve little fires which in turn put out larger ones. With the mages scattered across thedas, the remaining templars focused on aiding Kirkwall as best they could. He pitched in with the Guard Captain. Both avoided any mention of the Champion and her mage consort, though Cullen suspected Aveline would be more likely to pummel something than he. And it was working, templars and the city guards for once worked together, until the Grand Enchanter and the whole college voted to disband all the circles.

  One by one his templars began to vanish to chase the apostates fleeing their own towers as part of their sacred vows. Every day the ranks collapsed, leaving the rest of his remaining people forced to stretch themselves to nearly the breaking point to manage. Twelve hour days became the norm a month ago. Cullen hadn't slept in a bed for nearly a week, finding it more efficient to pass out from exhaustion in a chair near the office. It also kept the dreams at bay.

  "Knight-Commander!" Ser Addley saluted skidding to a halt outside the doorframe. A mage had burned the door itself off in the fight and he saw no reason to replace it.

  Cullen shuddered from the rank and look up at the templar knight. She still wore the armor despite many forgoing it after the chantry abandoned them, though her skirt was covered in flour prints. Was Addley even assigned to baking bread today or did they lose someone else from the makeshift kitchens? Maker, what day was it? They all ran together.

  "I'd prefer you not call me that," Cullen said even while accepting his losing battle. They needed a leader and he was the only one left to slot into place. "What's the status on the excavation of the chantry?"

  "Slow, but..."

  "And the report off of Sundermount. Unexplained lights and eerie sounds off the mountain? Could be demons or blood mages..."

  "Turned out to be a pair of chipmunks that tripped into a campfire."

  That caused Cullen to pause and focus anew on Addley, "Really?"

  Addley shrugged, "Stranger things, Ser."

  "Right." He struggled to swallow while shaking off a pounding behind his temples. It began a week ago; the pain intermittent, but the dry mouth endless no matter how much water he drank. "I still need to hear about--"

  "Ser!" Addley interrupted, snapping his full attention to her. She gestured her head
to the side of the door in a rhythmic fashion that made Cullen's neck ache. "There's something you should know about that's not reports and other...reports."

  Cullen slid next Meredith's desk for support and crossed his arms. "What is it?"

  "It's the Seekers, Ser," Addley said, still bobbing her head and dragging it out.

  "What of them?"

  "A Seeker is here," a new voice spoke as a woman strode in through the open frame. She bore a chiseled look that put Cullen in mind of a dragon surveying her horde and about to snap off anyone that dared to cross her. He couldn't quite place the accent twisting up her vowels, but it wasn't Orlesian and that surprised him. She eyed up Addley, and with a dismissive snort said, "Leave us."

  Addley glanced at Cullen and threw her head back. She was prepared to disobey an order from the Seeker for him. He tipped his head to her to tell her it was all right. The Seeker wasn't going to cut him down in the office, probably. Sliding out the door, Addley kept an eye on the two of them before she more than likely slipped to the storage closet on the other side of the wall that overheard everything.

  "I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of Truth and Right Hand of the Divine."

  Cullen blanched at the final part. No templar wanted to see a Seeker, that was a given, but the Right Hand of Divine Justinia and in Kirkwall. Andraste's tears, they weren't sending an Exalted March, were they? "Knight-Captain Cullen," he said while trying to bury the weariness in his voice and rise to attention.

  "Not Knight-Commander?" the Seeker asked, her sharp eyes cutting through him.

  "I was never officially granted that title." Not that I'd want it. "If the Divine was sending a Seeker to put the templars back in line, you're a few years too late." Cullen pointed out the door towards the west, "But you might be able to catch some before they begin their foolish endeavor to destroy thedas."

  Cassandra snorted at that and it threw him. He'd never seen a Seeker before, but every templar knew of them. The guards of the guards, when they were sent for something had gone or was about to go horribly wrong. He anticipated their arrival for months after the disaster, but no one came to drag the only remaining authority figure - namely himself - before the pyre. The Divine sent some aid for the refugees and a few of her own elite guards to assist. They were the most useless swordsmen he'd ever had to deal with. They wanted action and glory, but it wasn't monsters that needed killing in the aftermath. No one becomes a hero by moving stones to clear a path for wagons to carry supplies, but it had to be done.

  "I have not come to enact a tribunal for what occurred in Kirkwall," Cassandra said.

  Cullen snapped out of his reverie and nodded, "Good. It's doubtful we could find enough people to try the remaining templars, much less punish them."

  "Knight-Captain, you must agree that this madness has to end. Templars and mages are fighting in the streets all across southern thedas and innocent people are suffering for it."

  A flinch tore up his face from her words. Innocents. It was always the innocents caught in the middle. Innocents that drove them. Innocents that were the backbone of the order. But who was truly innocent? Could he even tell anymore? "And you need my templars to go wage your war, is that it Seeker? I'm afraid I don't technically command them what with the circles disbanding and the order dissolving into madness."

  "Yet they listen to you," Cassandra glanced down the hall in Addley's wake, "they rise up to shield you."

  Cullen shrugged, "They want guidance, as most do. I suggest what needs to be done and they do it."

  "That is what brought me to speak with you. In spite of all the chaos sewn in the wake of a tragedy of unheard of proportions you have maintained order. Not just order, you are repairing what was lost. That is impressive," the Seeker praised him, but it only strung deeper. No, he was doing what he had to, what he needed to. Not for those supposed innocents but to pay for his mistakes. Meredith wiped out the Circle, pulverized chantry law due to her own vengeful delusions, and she did it right under his nose. It was as much his fault as that rebel mage's.

  "I'm doing what I need to," he said.

  "You are out of uniform," the Seeker unexpectedly exclaimed, her eyes drifting across his faded blue tunic. One morning he woke, his back sore from shifting stones off a house crumpled by the head of Andraste, and he couldn't put on the templar armor anymore. He'd worn it day in and day out since he was eighteen years old, but now the thought of it touching him turned his stomach. He only saw his own broken promises glinting across every piece. So he slipped on the only shirt in his possession that hurt him in a different way. No one recognized it as being of warden make, but everyone came to know the once crisp blue meant the Knight-Captain was around. Wear and dust off the rubble faded the vibrant color to a softer almost grey hue.

  "I am no longer a templar," Cullen said, folding his arms across the tunic. "Last I heard there is no order to be a member of."

  "This is why I have come to Kirkwall, with a writ from Divine Justinia," Cassandra hauled out a book thicker than most mage tomes and bound in a rich leather. She waved it around as if it gave her power, but didn't pass the book to Cullen. "The Divine is hosting a conclave between the mage and templar leaders."

  "So I heard. I pray it succeeds but plan on it not," Cullen cut back but the Seeker didn't frown.

  "The Divine hopes the conclave will succeed, but if it fails she intends to bring back the Inquisition of old to put back together the tattered pieces and end this rebellion without destroying thedas in the process."

  "The Inquisition..." He'd heard the stories, all templars did. It was what birthed their order, but it was also bloody and, in the end, shattered under its own weight.

  "We've watched your progress with a close eye repairing what you can in Kirkwall and think you could offer much to assist the Divine. I came to ask you to lead our forces," the Seeker pressed. "To help bring order and security back to thedas."

  Cullen snorted and turned away from her. He'd spent the past six years blindly serving the forces of a mad woman. Her own anger led her to a madness, an anger he thought they shared for the greater good. That anger drove her to condemn Kirkwall and push them along this path of rebellion. And he never spotted it, never stopped it before it boiled over into every circle. He had that forever dangling off his neck. "And who would lead this Inquisition? Divine Justinia?"

  "No. She does not wish it to be seen as an arm of the chantry," the Seeker answered.

  "You then? Or some other Knight-Commander you've sworn to your cause?" Cullen continued. He couldn't do it, he couldn't put his blind faith in someone knowing how easily they'd twist the power to their own means.

  "We hope the Hero of Ferleden will be our Inquisitor."

  Lana? Cullen's fingers gripped tight to his chest. He'd tried to seal her away with the rest of his handful of sweet memories but she always found a way to bubble back to his attention. A few months after the chantry explosion a solitary letter appeared upon his desk addressed not to the Knight-Commander or even the Knight-Captain. It was meant only for Cullen. There was no signature indicating who sent it or from where, but he didn't need it. He knew from the two solitary words on the page, "Stay safe."

  The Seeker plowed through his silent reflection, "Sister Leliana is in Denerim right now attempting to track down Lady Amell's whereabouts. We hope that, despite her being a mage, she will see reason in putting an end to this fight."

  If anyone could move a mountain, drain an ocean, and fix the world it was Solona Amell. When he was on the brink of exhaustion and anger flooding his brain, he would remember the touch of her lips as he first kissed her. The way she parted them in surprise then kissed back even harder. His rage would cool leaving an ache in his heart that could only hurt him.

  "I'll do it," Cullen whispered closing his eyes. She knew, Lana knew what his own Knight-Commander was doing better than he did. Had tried to warn him before, but he wouldn't listen. How would she look upon him now, knowing that he'd slaughtered so many mages in
the name of justice? He would bear the brunt of her hatred, her scorn, if he could provide some aid to her and be near her once again.

  "Beg pardon?" the Seeker asked.

  Cullen turned and faced her, "I will lead your troops to the best of my ability."

  Cassandra smiled as if she already anticipated his reaction. "Good."

  "There is...something you should know." Cullen massaged the back of his neck, struggling to find the words. As Cassandra nodded her head at him, he continued, "I've decided to stop taking lyrium." He couldn't stand the idea of the order having him either in body or soul.

  "You are yet standing," the Seeker said dissecting him with her calculating eyes.

  "It's been a few weeks without, I...if I cannot perform whatever duties you require of me. If I, if I do not live up to what you need, then..."

  Cassandra laid a hand across his forearm drawing his attention. "Commander, I swear on the Maker I will do my best to judge if you are able to continue to the best of your abilities."

  Cullen nodded his head, "How do we go about planning this Inquisition? What do you need from me?"

  "I have to wait for Leliana's forces to return with news but...in the mean time there is something you can assist me with." The Seeker unearthed another book from behind her back, this one plastered in a garish cover. She passed a far too familiar tale to Cullen and pointed at the cover smeared in a garish yellow text proclaiming it 'The Tale of the Champion.'

  "I need your help in locating the author of this book," Cassandra said.

  Cullen twisted the book around and smiled, "I know exactly where to find him."