Dragon Age: Semper ad Meliora

The Fade in Every Breath

Favored like a wolf it was,
In size like a Woodsman's Death.
Within its eyes burned eldritch fire,
The Fade in every breath.
- From The Hunt of the Fell Wolf

The Crossroads, Bloomingtide 9:44 Dragon

This wasn't working.

His grip was alternately too weak to grip his staff at all, and too white-knuckled and stiff to wield it well. His movements were clumsy, his spells lacking in their usual finesse. And he had more than once needed to be rescued when a sudden flare of the Anchor left him curled up on the ground.

He would be embarrassed if he weren't so terrified. And furious.

"Perhaps we should take a short break." Dorian could no longer keep the worry from his face every time he looked at Idhren. None of them could. "Let you catch your breath."

Idhren felt like he might never catch his breath again, even if he laid down right here in the middle of... wherever they were. They had been through so many eluvians he was no longer certain they were even in Thedas anymore and just hoped someone had been coherent enough to remember the path home. He certainly wasn't.

He was hot and cold and breathless and shaking and he could feel the Anchor burning up his arm, a little higher each time it flared, and each flare coming sooner than the last.

"No," Idhren said as firmly as he could manage, which wasn't very. There wasn't time. He had to stop the Qunari. He had to find answers. He had to find Solas and strangle him with his bare hands. "We keep going."

"Come now, you can barely keep upright," Dorian protested. "What good does it do anyone to run yourself ragged like this?"

"It's better than lying down and waiting for this thing to kill me," Idhren snapped.

Dorian took a step back, expression stricken. Idhren knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he should feel guilty, should apologize, but he didn't have the energy. And he didn't have the time. Somehow he felt like they were close, right on the Viddasala's heels, and she perhaps on the heels of their mutual antagonist. He was not going to give up now. Not while there was still some fight left in him.

Without giving anyone else a chance to argue, Idhren pressed onward. Leaning on his staff as a cane, he staggered the last few steps toward the next eluvian in their path.

----------

As soon as the monstrous saarebas lay dead on the ground Idhren lunged for the eluvian. His staff fell forgotten from numb fingers, more a hindrance than a tool now to his failing hands. He could feel nothing now save the places where the Anchor burned into him, tendrils of pain crawling up his arm like pulses of lightning. He dared not look to see what remained of his flesh, but the green fire had become an ever-present glow in his peripheral.

The eluvian's magic washed cool over him, a momentary balm to his feverish skin that was gone before he had even a moment to savor it.

Looking up as he emerged from the mirror, Idhren nearly staggered right back through it in alarm before his mind realized that the massive Qunari warrior snarling down at him was not real, but stone. A statue. Strange choice for a statue, but certainly effective, and so realistic it looked as though it might come to life.

Idhren edged around the statue and turned his gaze forward. More of those statues littered the pathway before him. Qunari warriors frozen mid-strike. Too realistic, too pristine.

Something was wrong.

His fears were confirmed not a moment later. He caught sight of the Viddasala at the end of this morbid statue garden, her wrath for once not aimed at him, and realized what would happen a split second before she joined the rest of her soldiers. The careless display of such prodigious magical power sent a shiver down his spine despite the fever taken hold in his flesh.