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A noise outside the window startled her out of her sleep. She reached for her axe even as she shook off the disorientation of not recognizing her surroundings. The arrow in her face as she looked out for the source of the sound was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Same thing for the gasp. “Rook?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say. She certainly felt drawn to this woman, and the way the dwarf was looking at her, arrow dropped and forgotten, it seemed likely that she knew her.
A human stepped up beside her. “Harding, come… oh.” The man’s eyes widened and he stared at her. “Rook?” The accent was very different, more like the accents she’d heard in the marketplace she’d fled after getting overwhelmed. “This must be her, right?”
“I sure hope so, because if it’s not, we’re about to waste a lot of time we should be using to find her,” Harding said. She bent to pick up her bow. “Come on, Rook, we need to get you to Emmrich.”
“We might be better off taking her to Tevinter,” the man argued. “Something like this, it almost has to be blood magic, doesn’t it? Even as bad off as they are, Tevinter is still the expert.”
Harding gave a lopsided smile, her eyes dancing with mischief. “And it gives you a chance to go visit Neve in person, right?” At the man’s embarrassed smile, she burst into laughter. “I know. I get it. Being separated sucks even when you know where each other are and that they’re safe.”
The man swallowed and reached out to her. “We’ve made a good first step in getting her back properly, Harding.”
“I know, Lucanis.” Harding glanced over at Rook. “I still think we should go to Emmrich first, just to make sure that physically she’s okay. He won’t be able to do anything with the blood magic, but if it is blood magic, he can identify it for us, and if it’s not, he can give us a good guess what it is.”
Lucanis nodded. “You’re right. Let me just tell Viago where we’re going and why.”
The portal they led her to was, again, surprisingly familiar. Going through it made her ill, but once the vomiting was over and she was able to look around, something about the new landscape triggered… not memories, exactly, but what felt like dreams. As she watched, she and Lucanis, along with another woman, fought darkspawn on a mountain side. “What was that?”
“Yeah, this place does that,” Harding said, giving Rook a sympathetic pat on the arm. “I suppose the good news here is that if you can watch your memories in the Fade, they’re not gone forever! They’re just blocked and we need to unblock them.”
“Or they’re pulling them from Lucanis. He’s there, too.” As if in response, the vision shifted, and this time she was watching herself talk to a very bald elf. For some reason, she couldn’t stop herself – her real self – from walking over and punching him… or at least, punching the air where she was seeing him. “Why did I do that?”
Harding’s giggles were adorable. “Because you found Solas to be an insufferable prick and were thrilled when you got to make him sacrifice himself to fix his bullshit.”
“We’d all thought about it at one point or another,” Lucanis added. “Maybe not Harding, because she knew him before he revealed who he really was, but the rest of us…”
“No, I wanted to punch him at various points, too,” Harding admitted. “I just kept it in better because, well, I was repressing a lot of things. And we were friends, before.”
“We should get moving, though,” Lucanis said. “It’s been better, with Solas bound and the others dead, but there are still dangerous things in the Fade.”
Lucanis and Harding led the way to another portal, and on the other side of this one, they were in a dark, foreboding, gloomy place. The skeleton that came up to greet them didn’t help put Rook at ease in the slightest. Harding and Lucanis weren’t phased at all, asking it to take them to Emmrich, and the skeleton hissed and walked off.
The surroundings didn’t get any less creepy, until they were ushered into an office lit with a fire and where books lined every possible inch of space on the walls. “Harding! Lucanis! I see your search has borne fruit. Hello, Rook.”
“Uh… hi?” The older human seemed vaguely familiar, but there was something offputting about him. If this was Emmrich, she wasn’t sure she wanted him examining her.
“Have no fear, Rook,” Emmrich said. “Harding and Lucanis brought you to me because I am both a close friend and a skilled mage, capable of assessing any magical interference on you as well as examining you for physical injuries. If you will allow it, I am confident I can find answers for you about your condition.”
“If it helps, she was projecting memories in the Fade,” Lucanis said. “You’re looking for a block.”
“That does.” Emmrich held up a hand. “Rook? May I?”
At Rook’s hesitation, Harding put a hand on her arm. “Emmrich really is a close friend. If you’re unsettled, it’s because he’s technically undead – he went through a rite that made him a lich, an undead guardian of both the living and the dead of Nevarra. In order to be allowed to take the test in the first place, let alone pass it to become a true lich, he had to prove that he had the wisdom and moral compass to use his powers for good.”
Rook swallowed hard. She hoped that once her memories were back, she’d laugh at herself for being worried. “Go ahead. See what’s wrong.”
Emmrich waved his hands over her, and green light blossomed around her. “Ah… I see. There is a block, powerful blood magic, but it can be unraveled. Harding, would you mind providing a bit of blood?”
“You’re going to do blood magic?” Lucanis said, horrified.
“Only in a sense.” Emmrich nodded to Harding. “The block is formed by the blood of an enemy, one of the few Venatori who escaped our battles and Elgar’nan’s purge. The easiest way to undo it is with the blood of someone who loves Rook more than this Venatori hates her. If this doesn’t work, you’ll have to take her to Tevinter.”
“It’s all right, Lucanis, I’m willing to try if Rook is,” Harding said, removing a bracer and rolling up her sleeve. “How much blood do you need, Emmrich?”
“More than a few drops, not enough to seriously hurt you,” Emmrich said. “Rook?”
“I already said do what you have to do, didn’t I?” Rook said, although she understood why Emmrich would want to check again with blood magic involved. “Go on.”
Lucanis handed Harding a well-sharpened blade to use, and Harding cut across her forearm. As the blood welled to the surface, Emmrich guided it to form a sort of ribbon, which he directed into Rook’s ear. Rook reached for her head as it started to pound, throb, and try to split apart.
Thankfully, it was short, and when it was done, she could stand on her feet. “Thank you. All of you.” She bent over to kiss Harding. “Especially you, Lace, I know you hate blood magic.”
“You’re back.” Harding put her arms around Rook and snuggled up. “Welcome back, love.”
Rook let herself hold Harding for a bit longer, then looked over to Lucanis. “You know, if you still want to go to Tevinter, Viago and the others don’t have to know that we didn’t actually need to go to cure my memories. Harding and I can stay in the Lighthouse and catch up on some lost time, and you can meet us there to get back to Treviso.”