Runners were sent for Seeker Pentaghast, but she needed none - she had heard the voice as well as the rest. As had the Inquisitor. Turning from her conversation with The Iron Bull, she stared across the yard to the tavern, her blood cold. Crows flew from its rafters en masse, making the sky a picture of the dread she felt. There was no mistaking his voice.
“Stay here,” she ordered Bull, already moving.
“You’re the boss.”
The Qunari watched her go, rumbling and grunting to himself as he assessed what the elf was running towards.
“Boss!” His voice called out across the square. There were few people she would pause for right now, but he was one. She stopped. “That sounds like Asala-taar. Go carefully.”
Aredhel nodded, turned, and ran.
The stand-off was happening on the top floor. The Commander had armed himself with a broken bottle and was levelling it at the Inquisition’s latest, oddest addition: Cole.
“Get out of my head, ‘Spirit’!” he growled, his face twisted in malice and defiance. The edges of his mind felt foggy, his reasoning being tugged from his hands as soon as he grasped it, a pressure building behind his eyes that signalled a desperate need for what his blood remembered relying on. Or, it could all be the further works of this demon. He had protested its presence when it had been brought here, but he had not done enough - he had allowed himself to be overruled, too afraid of falling into his ‘old ways’, but not all knowledge from his past was misguided. He still had some worth. This was a demon, found within a dream inflicted by another demon - it had no business being here, and even less business inviting itself into his thoughts.
“But I’m not in your head,” the approximation of a boy protested, voice nasal and deceptively innocent, though the lie was failing. “I am here. But it sings. It is loud, and the song is sad; you do not know if you believe the words.”
“Enough!” Cullen lunged forwards, near-frothing as he dove to drive something sharp into this abomination. They could watch whether it would pretend to bleed. He would not stay silent - would not be kept on another leash and coaxed into negligence. He would not have his mind invaded, his thoughts turned into toys, again dragged out into the world through an already gaping wound -
The bottle’s journey was purposeful and direct, heading straight for the throat. A blade, he would have sent through the ribs, but a bottle to the neck would do just as well.
The boy didn’t move.
“COLE!”
Cullen faltered; both men turned. The Inquisitor had taken the steps several at a time, elven feet flying up them, though in her fear and haste, each step had still felt clumsy and terrifyingly slow. Below, Cassandra waited at the tavern door: in militant yet fretful whispers, they had agreed to let Aredhel go up alone, but there was a solidarity in the concern that clutched at them as they gripped each other’s shoulders. In less rushed circumstances, it would have been a hug, and it was felt just the same. Cassandra was fast becoming a sister: Cullen appeared to be the hearth around which Aredhel was gathering a new family.
Right now, though, that fire was a danger. Slower but with no less urgency, she crossed the final steps to approach the pair, eyeing the Commander as she might a wolf that was yet to decide if it was her clan’s friend or foe. Her staff was not with her, but as a mage, she was never unarmed.
“Cole. Behind me.” Her voice was low, direct, quashing the desire to panic and turning it into authority, as her Keeper had taught her. “Commander. Lower your weapon.”
Cole did not move. “He wants me to not exist, but I can’t do that. But what he really wants is for HER to be gone. But she isn’t there; not really.”
“STOP!!” Cullen’s voice came out desperate, somewhere between an order and a ragged plea.
“I can leave, but he’ll keep her there -”
This time, Aredhel cut in: “Cole. Stop.” Pained, she looked to the man suffering in front of her: her greatest priority, tattered like a neglected Aravel sail. Had she let this happen?
“Do you see what it is, now?”, he demanded. Again, his voice was not angry so much as desperate: a man living a nightmare and wondering why no one but he could see sense. In his world, it was true. “It is a demon. Walking around!” A sound close to a laugh of madness rattled within the strain of his words. She had never heard him like this. “Inviting itself into our heads!”
Belatedly remembering her command, Cullen put down the bottle, his eyes boring into the ‘demon’ the whole time, then stepped towards his leader. He hoped that the gesture of obedience would prove his clarity; prayed that she, of all people, would see reason. “It will not end,” he pleaded, a hand taking her shoulder, his voice forcing itself under control. “It will not stop until it has affected everyone.” Even within his fear, there was something else surfacing in Cullen as spoke to her: protectiveness. She realised, with mixed insult and love, that he was seeing a mage open to being misled. “It will tear this whole place down.”
“Cullen…” Sympathy ached like growing pains within her bones. There was no risk of her being convinced - she knew he was not thinking clearly on this, and understood why. Cole had been a struggle for him at the best of times, but it was more than that, right now. It was the withdrawal. Looking up at him, she picked her next words carefully, preparing an attempt at soothing him, at talking him down. He interrupted.
“It is my job to protect Skyhold, Inquisitor. Please. Let me do it.”
All of a sudden, the man flinched violently away from her. He had felt it - invisible fingers in his hair. The sensation landed on him like a spider and clawed unwelcome down his spine. No. Please, please, please…Not here. Twitching, the man rolled a shoulder to knock the echoed intruder away: he knew what it was, that it was not real, but that mattered little. ‘She’ was here, returning whilst his mind was distressed. She moved in his peripherals, proof of what a demon could do to the mind even long after one dragged it out - even if one had never let it in in the first place. Their claws left deep grooves.
“I could make him forget…?” Cole offered, helpfully.
“DO NOT -! ”
“Cole, no!” Covering her face in her hand, Aredhel attempted to hold on to her patience. “Just leave. Please. You’re not helping.”
“Alright.” Sullen, he obeyed, disappearing on the spot. Aredhel breathed a little easier, yet Cullen felt no relief.
He watched the Inquisitor, half-hearing, half-deaf, as she began on the spirit’s defence. ‘I’m sorry about him’; ‘He helped me’; ‘Are you alright?’. He realised, to his grief, that she only saw lyrium-pangs here, not logic. What did he need to say to be heard?
The sensation had not left his spine, his skin still attempting to shrivel away from his remembered, imagined captor. He never thought Aredhel would defend an obvious demon: he trusted her implicitly.
‘Do you know it’s her… ?’ The distorted mannequin of Surana seemed to stand at his side, a hand daring to rest on his shoulder, mouth near his ear as she whispered to him - a recycled memory of her artificial breath hitting his skin as the flashback sewed itself new life. ‘I wasn’t me…’
His stomach dropped from him, his skin ice.
The envy demon - the one that this ‘spirit’ had ‘saved’ Aredhel from… - it had attempted to mimic her, hadn’t it? Just as it mimicked the Lord Seeker. Walking, physical. Convincing enough to go unfound for years. Just like Cole.
Kinloch’s echoed phantom bit, nipped and tugged, ignored, at Cullen’s ear. But even an enemy could be correct.
His gaze levelled on the Inquisitor like a blade, his tone curling with lofty suspicion as it once had often, falling into the familiar register like reclaiming one’s armour. “How do I know what you are…?”
Aredhel faltered. “...What?”
The imposter’s voice drifted over to Cullen from a great distance, known and convincing, but neither had ever been a guarantee before. Her eyes, so lovely and yet so pained, could not be trusted. That love was what he would want to see; that worry, the best tool to levy against him. “Cullen….It’s me. You know me.” He shook his head, feeling like a child reduced to wordless protests.
The detestedly familiar mirage of a woman drifted around the pair, always on the edge of his vision, yet still he could sense the apprentice robe falling indecently from her. He forced himself to focus, instead, on this new creature taking on the form of the woman he now loved. Very likely, it was a demon in elven guise - he knew it to be possible on every level. At best, Aredhel was now a mage who had endured much at two demon’s hands…Grief closed up his throat, his mind clinging to the former suspicion. He had to believe it - he could not face the implications of the latter.
Out of the corner of her own eye, Aredhel also saw movement - Cassandra, inching towards the stairs. The elf held out a hand, as minimally as she could, and shook her head. Bringing more people up here would only confuse the Commander further. He needed navigating out of this. Meanwhile, she searched for an answer, brows furrowed. She understood the connections being made here, through the panic misfiring in his mind. It was a valid fear. He may be unwell, but even when this fog cleared, he deserved an answer. “I….will ask Solas to check. He can make sure I’m no demon.” The Commander’s face remained guarded, and even as she spoke, Aredhel knew Solas’ word was not offering enough.
Suddenly, resolve hardened in her. With perfect clarity that both came from within and yet felt as though it arrived, fully formed, from elsewhere, she saw what must be done. And not only for him. “...No. The templars.”
“The templars?!” Even Cassandra, the Order’s greatest advocate, exclaimed from the room below.
Thankfully, Cullen didn’t seem to notice her voice, but he heard Aredhel’s. The man’s face fell in shock, pulled back to himself by the shock but finding a new nightmare waiting in reality. “What…?”
“The templars,” Aredhel repeated, raising her chin and attempting, through declaration, to smother her fear. “We have the benefit of their service now. We might as well use them where they work best. I will submit to their assessment - ask them to check that I am no demon. They will know better than anyone how to test it.”
Softening, as though the past threats had not occurred, she offered the man she knew an encouraging smile. “Alright…?” Inside, fear was attempting to pull her apart like fretted wool, but she kept her composure. She could not, as a mage, pledge to lead an army of templars in the name of Andraste and the late Divine without subjecting to the Chantry’s way of doing things. Not after what had happened to the Lord Seeker. Her people had to trust her. And she had to see she could trust them.
Cullen crumpled. Boots crunching over broken glass, he closed the last of the distance between them: her hands found his breastplate as, lovingly, all malice gone, he took her arms, drawing her close in a waft of oakmoss and furs. She breathed it in and he breathed in her, her hand finding his face as it collapsed in concern.
“Do not do this…” Once again, he pleaded, but this time, his voice was all gentleness. His eyes were lucid - the fog was gone. “They could kill you…”
“If I am no demon, they will not.” His lack of faith in the templars was starting to shake her own, but she refused to let it show. It must happen. She knew the reasons: it could not be changed now.
“I do not trust them.” His whisper broke her heart, even as his return to himself healed it. He held her as tenderly as he could whilst, all the while, gripping on for fear of losing her - for fear that his follies were about to destroy the last good thing he had left.
“Right now, you don’t trust me either, remember?” she smiled, pained. “But you deserve to trust both of us…” The elf reached up and touched Cullen’s hair, looking at him with unchanged love. He would never ask this of her, but that was why she must offer it: for him, and every templar she had saved for him. “And you will.”
