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Once the ritual is complete, Alistair slips from the bed quickly as her womb is quickened. Alone in the dark, Morrigan hugs her knees to her chest.
She is accustomed to the darkness, the sounds of night (though the sounds of the castle far differ from those of camp). Mice scurry across the stone floor; their toes clicking and scratching as they go. Servants whisper rumors while they extinguish candles.
She does not listen for the sound of Alistair rapping on Fianait’s latched door, but she hears it, louder than bells. Desperately pleading, his mumbling is met by another muffled voice, Morrigan wishes she were not the cause of.
Morrigan’s heart shatters when instead of retreating footsteps, there is only the soft of thud of Alistair sinking to the ground outside Fianait’s sanctuary.
How foolish for them all to be roomed so closely together that she must experience their misery as well as her own.
She will not sleep tonight. None of them will.
The bed is softer than anything Morrigan’s slept on in her life and, weary from traveling the dusty Ferelden roads, she aches; sleep should welcome her with a warm embrace.
If Fianait does not allow him entrance, Alistair will remain on the floor all night. No bed, only an unwanted bedding (as close as he will ever come to being welcome in this place).
Morrigan’s stomach twists in selfish pettiness. They should be grateful. They should be falling on their knees before her for saving them from their fate.
She completed mother’s plan; the hag is dead and Morrigan still carried out her plan to secure the soul of an Old God. That a Grey Warden’s life would be spared was always secondary, a means to convince them to complete the ritual.
But she did not complete the ritual to fulfill mother’s plan. She completed it for Fianait. To protect her, to save her from the monstrous sacrifice of a Grey Warden’s duty. That she also spares Alistair’s life, lifts the responsibility from Fianait of having to choose who will live and who will die (herself or her love).
And Morrigan only had to thrust a knife into each of their chests to do it. The churning in her stomach crawls its way up her throat.
Please. Do not let him in, she pleads silently with Fianait. Do not forgive him.
Though Morrigan deserves forgiveness no more than Alistair (even less).
If it is a poor person who wishes the unhappiness of their friends, a miserable person who lays with the man their friend loves, and a wretched person whose love loves another. Then Morrigan is very wretched, indeed.
Her last plea is met with the sounds of Fianait and Alistair’s reconciliation. The scraping metal as the latch is undone. The choked words through raw throats. The footsteps leading to the ramparts, taking them as far from this place as they can manage.
With the last step faded away, Morrigan swallows down the sickness.
There is one thing on which Morrigan and Alistair can agree: Faun deserves better. Better than this world, better than this Blight. Better than them.
But they are both and neither one to blame. After all, their bodies are only flesh; their hearts are still hers.
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Anders cringes in the morning light.
The air tastes of ash and sela petrae. Smoke rises from the ruined and vile city. The Wounded Coast floods with Kirkwall’s evacuees; he doubts it will be the last time. It is hardly the first.
Though in history’s recent memory, it cannot be coincidence Hawke has been at the center of each. Justice would demand recompense, if only the spirit were certain that is where the blame should lie. Anders’ vision is not clear enough to see.
When hundreds fled the city to escape the qunari wrath, Isabela was guilty. But Hawke stood beside her, fought for her, saved her – saved them all. Justice did not demand the pirate’s head (no theft warrants what the Arishock would have done with her).
But when mages suffer daily at the hands of their templar captives, the Chantry is guilty. Yet somehow, it is the act of justice that is to blame for this tragedy. Anders cannot see the logic (the justice) in that.
And yet, Justice warrants nothing. Justice remains strangely silent.
The spirit has never been keen on Hawke, but now when she turns her back on mages, on him, on her sister, and on her father, Justice has no word against her. The one person Anders trusted to stand beside him, as she did Isabela, dismissed him.
Hawke is no less innocent than him. She stood and watched as Kirkwall fell into Meredith’s outstretched hands, when she could have said or done anything. A word from the Champion would have spared lives. But she waited. Standing by the mages won’t help now. It is too late to save the city.
Condemn her, Anders pleads with the spirit.
As much as I wish to, I cannot.
“Why not?!” he lashes out.
Justice is empty of excuses.
Then like an axe to the skull, his mind is cleaved in twain. Anders tears at his long and greasy hair as he sinks to his knees on the muddy beach. Ensnared in Anders’ conflicted conscience, Justice screams out in agony.
Justice knows not itself, only what it should be and the perversion it has become – what Anders has made it.
The spirit trusted Anders, accepted when they joined that he knew the meaning of the word. (A mage, mistreated all his life, must know the injustices of the world, surely.)
They were partners – friends. Anders’ pain was Justice’s – one in the same. They should have been great together, but Ander buried a seed of anger deeper than Justice could have known. He lied.
Anders allowed that seed to be sowed in his mind and poison the soil in which Justice was meant to take root (doomed from the beginning).
Anders’ own root withered in that soil as well. What love he bore Karl is gnarled and black; his fate was Justice’s first taste of Vengeance.
Anders’ body recoils against Justice’s swirling thoughts. He claws and fights his way back into control.
“Karl saved me! And I loved him! Do not sully his memory!”
He is not strong enough to push back against the spirit for long. He keels over, his heart aching and as heavy as his head.
Guilt wrings in Justice that he could not protect the innocent mages any more Hawke could have saved Anders’ wretched existence.
No matter how Justice resented Hawke’s methods, she was the mountain that kept Anders from bending and breaking in the wind when his root snapped. No immoveable mountain could have predicted which way the storm would blow.
In the end, each of them is responsible for their own actions.
They’ve begun a chain reaction too great for Justice to resolve. And the spirit’s one ally has betrayed all that they believe.
Anders shudders against the howling winds.
Hawke has shown you more mercy than you deserve, Justice decrees.
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Tall and proud, as Arlathan once stood, she wears the countenance of a human. This is not the Mythal Fen’Harel sacrificed everything to avenge. Oh, this woman may bear her name and wear her armor, but she is an imposter.
The elvhen lifted their voices to the moon as he slumbered and their cries only been met with silence. Mythal’s great and virtuous spirit would not have allowed this.
The Dread Wolf’s stomach growls in disgust. (Or is it hunger?)
Solas stalks along edge of the shrine’s clearing to get a better look.
Flemeth, she calls herself. Witch of the Wilds. Though she has not revealed herself to them, the elves have given her a new name: Asha’bellanar. ‘Mother of Vengeance,’ the Chasind call her; it suits this woman better than her true name.
Once, Evanuris as she was, Mythal’s divine glory would have blinded Solas.
What would he not have given up to be worthy of walking the woods in her wake? What did he give up that the other Evanuris would feel his wrath? What was gained?
The Dread Wolf snarls at the old hag before the mirror.
Nothing. Nothing was gained so long as Mythal’s soul is ensnared in a body that is not her own.
They say the act of sealing the Creators away was the ‘Great Betrayal’ of Fen’Harel. True enough, it was a betrayal, but not of the Evanuris.
Solas betrayed elvhen when he drew the curtain of the Veil across the Fade in his fury; too short-sighted to see it was only a matter of time before Mythal turned her back on them as well.
But there is still a chance that elvhen might be saved.
Leaves rustle as Solas pushes past the low branches. Mythal turns at his approach.
If there is a shred of compassion for her people left in her soul, Mythal will understand why it is she who must make the ultimate sacrifice.