Chapter Text
It hadn’t been going well. One by one, Idalya Mahariel’s group had fallen under the attacks of the Archdemon. She rolled out of the way as a wall of flame poured across the battlefields, engulfing the last, lingering members of the dwarves and elves that marched with the Wardens for this last battle. They fought with courage; they fought with hope, and they fought knowing they were the only thing keeping Thedas clinging to survival.
She listened to their death cries, filling the surrounding air. Their screams barraged her ears as she covered her mouth with a filthy hand, trying to keep the smoke and ashes of her burning allies from overtaking her senses. The street of Denerim lined with ash from its burning alienage.
These flakes, floating on the breeze, the remaining pieces of the people who’d helped her make to the platform she fought on now. Her skin crawled at their intimate touch as she brushed the feathered bits from her face.
Morrigan launched fireballs into the dragon’s snout on the far side of the battlefield. her staff circled her head as her mana churned out repeated plumes of fire. She screamed taunts at the beast to keep its attention and advancement directed towards her, buying the others on the field precious seconds. Her jet-black hair soaked in perspiration, sticking against her cheekbones, her golden eyes glowed with anger as she screamed out a summons in ancient languages foreign to Idalya.
Alistair protected the mage from the waves of demons sprinting at them to protect their master, and like a tide breaking against the shore, so broke the legions of darkspawn as they met a grisly end at the warrior’s sword and shield. His face pulled into a grimace, streaks of tainted blood smeared across his helm, his caramel eyes locked with Idalya’s through the legs of the shifting dragon. A resigned sadness emanated from within them before he broke the glance to swing his broadsword at the next wave of darkspawn encroaching on his barrier of support.
With a frustrated grunt, Wynne forced healing magic into Zevran’s broken body. Leliana drug the incapacitated elf away from the action of battle, leaving a crimson trail along the dirty ground. The auburn-haired sister released a sob, hand grasped at her throat as she watched her lover’s blood spread across the blackened stones. No stranger to battle, Wynne grabbed the rogue, shouting at her to return to help those still up and fighting. Dropping to her knees, ash being lifted into the air, Wynne closed her eyes. She summoned all the power accessible to her then channeled it through her fingers into the rasping body of the dying Crow.
Oghren tried in vain to find survivors from the dwarves of whom he’d just watched burn to catastrophe by a wayward shot from the fearsome dragon. Between swings of his mighty ax, he checked the bodies scattered around, looking for any survivors, but found them charred beyond recognition. Tears threatened to well up in the dwarf’s eyes, but it was not the time. He would remember his battling comrades later, with an ale in his hand as he shouted and slurred about the grand adventures of a stubborn group of dwarves that took on an archdemon, but first, he needed to survive the swinging claws of the great beast.
As a fireball exploded between its eyes, the archdemon took its gaze off Idalya to focus its attacks on Morrigan. The elf knew this was the moment; the inevitability setting into her exhausted bones like a cool breeze in the center of a roaring summer storm. Sprinting as fast as her legs carried her, she focused away from the smoke burning her throat with every inhale. She struggled to refill her lungs as even her Warden stamina neared empty, her steps faltering as she forced her body onward.
Her trusted broadsword was lost early in battle after her body had been whipped across the field by a flick of the dragon’s snake-like tail. As she ran, she grabbed a great sword covered in stinking demon gore out of the hands of a bloodied corpse lying broken on the ground. She pushed her legs to keep running until she lined up with the tail of the dragon, gasping for breath she could no longer hear, her pulse pounding like a distant, angry drum.
Never hesitating, she launched herself at the demon’s scales, climbing the creature as deftly as her muscles would allow. She perched on its back, the demon still unaware of her presence. She worked her way up its spine, careful with her steps so as not to alert the beast intent on burning her companions alive.
She continued until located at the base of the great dragon’s neck. Her stomach lurched as she looked down, the ground far below her, wind rushing through her ears as the dragon jerked his head. Drawing her sword up, she stalled.
This had not been the plan.
Alistair was the warden destined to take the final blow, to destroy not only the beast but sacrifice his own life. They fought about this– hours and hours in circles offering no exit. They were stubborn, both too embroiled in the outcome, and neither could let go of the hopes and fears driving them onward. At the end when explaining it one more time made her more nauseous than her failure to make her point she had agreed. She relented, giving him what he wanted, and she took solace on the wavering look of relief it brought to his face.
She had lied. It was the only lie she ever told him, but she clung to the reasons she told it to ease her conscience. He was too important to Ferelden - and to her heart - to let him waste himself on chivalry. Alistair had an entire life and kingdom waiting for him after the Blight ended. Idalya only had him, and after the Landsmeet, she no longer had that. Alistair and Anora would take Ferelden into a new age, and she was glad she would never have to see it.
He would never forgive her for lying to him. Luckily, it wasn’t a decision she’d have to live with long.
Idalya’s eyes met Alistair’s as he fought to protect Morrigan and Wynne below the dragon. Realization and fear took over the confidence in his gaze as he understood what she was doing. Her deception and its poison filled him, and she knew he understood she never intended on letting him carry out this task.
Her name left his lips, echoing across the battlefield as she pulled the sword far above her head. For a moment everything slowed, the sun breaking through the clouds of ash to paint her in a ray of light she saw as an encouragement. The cries of the fallen faded, the roaring of the dragon disappeared, a strange song of light and peace filling her, from head to toe. She knew she had won, and that it had been the right thing to do.
Then she drove the steel deep into the demon’s neck. Alistair’s cry ripped through the scarred air before being drowned out by the shrill screech of the dying archdemon. The two screams blended in her ears as her heart thundered through her body, blocking out every other sound. She pulled her sword from its neck and closed her lavender eyes. She exhaled as she drove it down again, severing the remaining muscles and tendons of the monster’s neck.
A force pushed into her abdomen like a fist, her body seizing, as she lost her grip on the dragon’s scale. She had known it was coming, had known this was the price, but she had not known it would hurt so badly. As the spirit of the demon tried to pass and possess her, scrambling through her veins alongside the bitter taint and vacant hopes, her body filled with flame.
Falling through the sky, she sensed the Old God's rage as its spirit died within her flesh-covered cell. Her limbs filled with stars escaping through every inch of her skin, piercing a million holes through her body as the two souls warred within her. The soul of a creature that deigned itself a god, older than their known history, being torn asunder by a mere mortal who lived so little but had survived so much.
Her last thoughts were that they had done it, they were safe, and then it was over. Embraced by the darkness, that thought was her last.
******
It was dark. So dark. The tiniest tingling sensation moved in her fingertips as though a wind being drawn across them. The feeling spread into her palm; the electricity moving its way through her body, each inch snapping and crackling as it discovered existence once more. She couldn’t see or move or sense anything else, but she was… alive?
Something about this was off. Energy rolled through her, wave after wave, bringing a deep shadow to the back of her mind. She had no real notions about what death was before she achieved it, but every instinct told her this was not what it was. She was alive, and the wrongness of that permeated every inch of her waking self. Her mind, or form, or whatever it may have been at this moment, itched with the need to escape. She wanted to run, to shy away like a roach hissing at the kiss of a torch’s flame, but she couldn’t yet move.
Her body jerked awake, the lightning that had been a murmur becoming a scream as it sparked and shot across her limbs, searing her with unimaginable pain as though being laid in a bed of hot coals. Heavy winds deafened her as sound returned, and her ears ached with the sound of the screaming that filled her head. Everything throbbed and writhed so she could not shut out the horrible sounds, and with mounting panic, she realized that the scream was her own
Violent waves of pain took her senses, her screaming uncontrollable as they scorched her tender limbs. Fire itself crawled out of her bones and across her abdomen, consuming her from without and within. She was losing whatever consciousness she had to the pain as she drifted in and out of awareness. As her senses became sharper, she realized that she was not alone, that there were many others talking around her, their voices harried and nervous.
“What is happening to her? Did it work?” The woman’s thick Orlesian accent caught her attention and Idalya’s screams faded as she searched for the source of the voice.
“I do not know. We are in uncharted waters, Leliana.” the other woman was frightened. Idalya heard the uncertain shaking in her voice.
“Lel… Leliana…,” her voice cracked under the simplest of words. A sigh of relief was released before she moved closer.
“Oh, Dal! Thank the Maker, it’s you.” The rogue’s voice was thick with emotion she attempted to hide. “I... I was so worried that the spell had not worked.”
What was going on? “Spell? I can’t see, Leliana,” Every word hurt as it escaped her lips, and she gasped for breath as the pain kept swirling through her body.
“It’s a… it’s a complicated story we can’t discuss, Dal. I promise you, everything will be okay. I need you to stay strong until you’re healed.” Leaning in close, the Orlesian whispered, “I have missed you so, my friend.”
Leliana’s voice betrayed her concern and fear. Both these women were afraid of her, and Idalya became afraid as pinpoints of light grew in front of her eyes. As the light beamed brighter, fire poured through her sockets and she screamed, her back arching as her muscles fought off the crushing pain burning her skull from the inside out. The pain only increased as the light grew unbearable until the universe came into focus with a sickening pop.
Her eyes could not adjust to the light as they ached each time she opened them. Over time, pictures made their way through her sight, and she knew she was inside some stone-lined room, surrounded by a ring of mages unfamiliar to her. Their heads bent in focus with their staffs raised above her body as a jade mist swirled around the room.
Her eyes flicked over to her side to realize the searing pain in her hand was that half of it was missing. The bones and remaining tendons of her fingers spasmed, her skeletal fingers curling. She screamed a blood-curdling wail and sunk into unconsciousness again. A door burst open somewhere nearby, and she heard a man yelling in the distance, demanding an explanation regarding what the mages had done, but he sounded very far away.
Mages shuffled around her on all sides, the smell of sickly sweet mana swirling around her body. Pieces of their murmurs drifted by her ears as her sensitive hearing returned. Corpse. Decayed. Rotted. Tattered. Maker. The undeniable strain of retching. Each sound raising her anxiety over what happened, as she felt the void calling for her. A hand in the darkness pulling her under the waves as she struggled to breathe.
People were frightened, and they were frightened of her.
“Let me die.” She sobbed as the abyss drew near, begging and pleading with no one in particular, to anyone that might listen. “Just let me die.”