Cyrus had a tendency to land always on his feet. Fortunately, it was a statement that was true literally as well as figuratively, and so when he found himself falling, he twisted himself around somewhat so as to make the approach legs-first, landing with a splash in a waist-deep pool of water. It didnāt do much to soften the fall, so his knees took the majority of the impact, though it was easy enough, as heād probably only fallen from ten feet up or so. Frowning his distaste for the stagnant stench of the water, he lifted his eyes and scanned the room.
The massive spear of red lyrium against the wall on the right was an interesting decorative choice, but otherwise, he placed himself underground, in what looked like a storage room. He wouldnāt be surprised if there was a cellar nearby, or a dungeon or something. A more interesting question than where he was would, of course, be when, as there was no mistaking the fact that Cassius had opened a time distortion field right above them in the heat of the fight. Given how obviously unstable the field had been, it was unlikely heād planned on anyone surviving the trip, though who knew? Perhaps since one of the travelers was Chryseis, heād actually done his best to send them through safely. Perhaps not.
It didnāt really matter to Cyrus, in any case. The result was the same.
And he had a lot of searching to do. Perhaps he would begin by seeing if the other two had landed nearby. It would be at the very least convenient to have their assistance, though he didnāt strictly need it. He supposed Estella would prefer to have all three of them back rather than just him, and as usual, he let her serve as his moral compass, because she was a great deal better at it than he was. Likely, the right thing to do was to find Romulus and Chryseis, and get all of them to where he thought they needed to go.
There was a loud splashing from the front of the room, and Cyrus returned his thoughts to whenever the present was to see a pair of Venatori guards approaching the chamber. He sighed softly to himself. He supposed such inconvenience was to be expected. āBlood of the Elder One, whatās he doing here?ā
āBe honest; youāre going to try and kill me no matter what I say.ā His voice took on the tone of light amusement that he used by default, and sure enough, both drew their swords. Cyrus flexed his fingers; though he probably could have halted both with spells before they crossed the twenty feet through water to him, he rather felt like something a bit more personal just at this moment, so he let them approach, his hands loosely at his sides, empty for now.
One of them seemed to be smart enough to realize that his utter lack of concern might have been an important detail, and Cyrus smiled when that one hesitated, letting his partner go first. The less-observant went in for a diagonal slash to his unarmored chest, a solid, controlled opening move that Cyrus avoided entirely, placing his feet unerringly even underwater and twisting his body out of the way. The follow-up was a quick horizontal stroke, which he stopped cold with a barrier, concentrated over one hand, knocking the sword away in an efficient parry which threw the guardās armspan wide, leaving his front completely exposed for just a moment.
That, as it happened, was all Cyrus required, and the knife appeared in his hand easily, whereupon he drove it down into the base of the Venatoriās throat. The blade disappeared as the guard dropped, and smoothly, he bent backwards to avoid the attempt by the second to capitalize on his distraction. On his way back up, he grabbed the other manās arm and pulled him forward and down, cracking his knee up into the guardās nose with a satisfying crunch. Mindful of his need for celerity, Cyrus summoned back the Fade-knife and plunged it into the second cultistās spine. He dropped next to his partner, both slowly sinking into the water. If they werenāt already dead, theyād drown.
Heading for the entrance, he gave the red lyrium a wide berth. He could hear it, in his headāsinging, some described it as. Cyrus thought it was perhaps the ugliest song heād ever heard, and it seemed also to burn with something. He knew to touch it was to risk something he did not want to risk, and so he avoided it studiously, his lip curling a bit as he waded past.
Upon reaching the entrance of the storage room, he found himself in a hallway that split off to the left and right. Reminding himself that he ought to seek out his allies, he spent a moment listening as well as he could, before frowning and striking off to the left. He could see the end of that half the hallway, anyhow, so worst-case scenario, he spent a while searching where there was nothing to be found.
As he carried on, sounds of battle eventually rang out from one of the rooms. There were shouts of both men and women, and the unmistakable crunching on rapidly freezing water, and shattering ice. A few heavy thuds of bodies followed, and then silence. Sloshing footsteps signaled that at least one had survived the fight, and shortly afterwards Chryseis stumbled out of the room, tired and disheveled. An arrow protruded from her upper back, near her right shoulder, and she leaned on both her staff and subsequently the wall when she entered the hallway.
She momentarily lowered her staff in Cyrus's direction, but then raised it again and loosened up when she noticed him. "Blasted spell dropped me facing away from an archer," she grumbled. "But we're alive. That's something."
āVastly preferable to the alternative, at the very least.ā Cyrus smiled, then waded smoothly over to her side, tilting his head at the arrow. āIf youāll permit me?ā He actually wasnāt sure how confident she was in her healing magicāit was usually considered less-than-important in Tevinter, and specialists were rare, considering how long it took to learn to do well. He wasnāt one of those by ay means, but heād dabbled long enough to master the basics, and a wound like that was small enough that he wouldnāt have a problem with it.
Chryseis sighed. "Yes, let's get this over with." She turned to face the wall, bracing herself against it with her hands.
āAs the lady wishes.ā Cyrus didnāt hesitate, gripping the arrow near the base of the shaft, as close to her wound as possible, and pulled it out with a single, sharp motion. A fair amount of blood followed, but he applied the healing spell in his left hand thereafter, mending it with a few seconds of effort. He was actually rather impressed with his own handiworkāhe doubted sheād even scar. Stepping back, he twirled the arrow between his fingers, almost absently, leaning sideways to peer into the room sheād emerged from.
āLooks like it dropped all three of us in different places, then. Which makes the next order of business rather obvious, I should think.ā
Chryseis groaned, rolling the recently healed shoulder a few times to test it out and, apparently pleased enough with it, she took up her staff again, stepping away from the wall. "I suppose I should be more surprised this happened. Sadly, I'm not." She began leading the way forward, back the way Cyrus had come. The hallway further in the other direction merely led to a visible dead end.
Chryseis wore a look near disgust as she trudged through the still knee-deep water of the flooded hallway. Her eyes scanned over their surroundings. "We're still in the castle, I remember this area. The Venatori are still present here, so this can't be in the past. Father's tossed us into the future, clearly. Question is, how far?"
āI suspect weāre at the nearest arcane confluence of the right type.ā It would have been easiest for the distortion to send them sometime that had a similar balance of Fade-energy to itself. That was how the magic worked: just as distance was traversed by selecting an terminal point and altering it with oneās magic in the same way the beginning locus was altered, so it was with time, though of course a distortion in chronology was much more complex than a mere teleportation spell. But in both cases, it worked best when the beginning and end points were as similar as possible, to draw the traveler from one to the other.
Since he doubted Cassius had enough time to even begin preparing an end-point for this magic, theyād likely been snapped to whatever time coincidentally had the most similar arcane signature. In all likelihood, there was another tear here, or at least a place where creating one would be easy, which meant they could get back. āSo it wonāt be decades, but it might be years. Perhaps we should ask the next guards what the calendar date is before we kill them, hm?ā The suggestion was only half-serious, but then again, it was half-serious. The information would be helpful, at any rate.
"Or we'll ask my father, right before he sends us back..." They continued on to a convergence point in the halls, a large, mostly empty room dimly lit by the torches ensconced on the walls, and the dull red glow of the lyrium that protruded periodically from the stone. The few stairs they ascended up into the room allowed them to finally rise out of the water They'd barely entered when sounds of another struggle could be heard, and shortly afterwards the full conflict came into view.
Or the end of it, rather. Romulus had taken a guard to the ground on his back, the assassin pinning his sword arm down with his blade, which had stabbed right through his wrist. He screamed in pain, but the sound was choked off when Romulus bashed the rim of his shield into his mouth, shattering several teeth and spraying blood left and right. He repeated the act a few more times, until the man's skull was clearly demolished.
Romulus was breathing quickly, his eyes wild, filled with confusion. He looked up, noticed Chryseis and Cyrus standing there, and raised his weapons briefly. Chryseis did not raise her own hands, instead looking down upon him with authority. "Easy, now. It's just us. We just went through the same thing you did."
He clambered off of the dead guard and a few steps to the side, but fell back to a knee for the moment. "What happened? Where are we? Where are the others?"
āThe first question is quite worthwhile, but the others are a tad misaimed, Iām afraid.ā Cyrus could perhaps understand Romulusās confusion; he understood the magic at work better than most anyone, but had he not, he might well have been rather perplexed himself. āWe are in Redcliffe castle, just as we were. The othersā¦ well, I havenāt the slightest idea, but I think youāll find thatās ultimately irrelevant. Because at just this moment, weāre some amount of time intoā¦ā He paused, debating whether to give the long, more accurate version, or the less-accurate, but easier one. He elected to go with the latter.
āThe future, I suppose you could call it. Relative to when we were, anyway. The distortion moved us forward in time.ā
Clearly, Romulus wasn't going to understand that easily. "What? But... we were..." Chryseis was prompted to shake her head, and take a few steps forward, to come within arm's reach of her slave.
"Don't try to understand it. I barely know the basics of my father's work myself." She grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him up to his feet. "The important thing is that the three of us made it here in one piece. We need to keep moving, see if we can find some way to get back."
"What happened to the others?" he asked again, clearly not letting the question go. "Do you think they're here with us, too?" Chryseis shook her head again.
"Unlikely. The spell was only big enough to pull us through, I think. Otherwise this hall would probably be quite a bit more hectic right now. They were probably left behind." She glanced back at Cyrus. "And I very much doubt anything pleasant happened after we left. Judging by the state of things."
āThat seems a fair guess.ā Cyrusās reply was noncommittal, mostly because heād already reached the same conclusion himself and was currently for once in his life trying not to think too much about anything outside of the here-and-now, which, if he could find the distortion he suspected existed in this time, would soon become the there-and-then. If he couldnāt find one, heād have to make one, the consequences be damned.
āIn any case, we should get out of this dungeon. Perhaps we shall learn more along the way.ā Turning, he led the way farther down the hall. At the end of it, as heād suspected, there was a staircase, and he moved up them with care, placing his feet solidly before shifting his weight. While he didnāt waste time doubting his ability to deal with Venatori, this would go considerably faster if they could manage it without drawing the attention of every guard in the castle, something he suspected Romulus knew quite well himself.
The floor that the staircase emptied them out on looked to be merely another underground level, this one occupied by barred cells, most of them empty. There was no other staircase immediately visible, which meant it was probably on the other side of the cell block. Hanging a right, Cyrus grimaced at the amount of red-lyrium-song filling his head, shaking it slightly as though the tuneless hum would just scatter out his ears. A futile endeavor, of course, but incidentally directing his vision to the cells themselves did provide him with a most unexpected piece of information.
āPerhaps some of them are here, after all.ā They would be the versions of themselves from whatever future this was, of course, but that was almost better. Theyād have information, and more importantly, any damage done to them would be fixable with a proper reversal. The one heād spotted appeared to be Vesryn, who sat against the back wall of one of the cells, another mound of red lyrium not too far off. Gesturing for the other two to follow, Cyrus approached with some caution. There was little telling what prolonged exposure to that stuff would have done, and he still wasnāt going to get near it himself.
Vesryn looked terrible. Clearly some was a result of the red lyrium, some of which was actually beginning to protrude into his cell. Some of his veins were slightly glowing, appearing orange under his skin, and his eyes too had a red tint to them. His skin had not been tanned much before, but now he was ghostly white, and thinner than he had been by quite a bit. His hair had almost all been shorn off, revealing a number of wicked-looking scars traversing the sides and back of his head. More typical scars were all over his body, or at least his arms, which were revealed by the fact that his threadbare shirt possessed no sleeves. His posture was lazy against the wall, and he hardly readjusted upon seeing the three newcomers.
In fact, he laughed. The laughter bubbling up from within him was the only thing that moved him, as a wide grin spread across his face. The act appeared to be somewhat painful for him, judging by the half-grimace there as well. "Well, now I'm actually insane. You three... you Tevinter fucks. You're all supposed to be dead."
āIāve always been exceptionally bad at doing what Iām supposed to.ā Cyrus cocked his head to the side, choosing for the moment not to react overmuch to being referred to in the crude manner the elf had chosen. It was probably quite excusable, considering the situation. Apparently, one or more of Vesrynās captors had attempted something with his head, for him to have scars like those. He recalled the lobotomy experiments of one of the Magisters, and the attendant demonstration, with some distaste. He suspected something similar had happened here.
āI expect that by your reckoning, weāve been gone for a considerable amount of time. By ours, we just left the throne room in Redcliffe in 9:41 Dragon. It would seem things did not fare well in ourā¦ absence.ā
He stared back at Cyrus blankly, before rubbing his face with his hands, and then peeking through his fingers. Upon seeing the group of three still standing there, he let out a heavy sigh. "Of all the bloody dead people to come haunt me in my cell..."
"We're not dead, elf," Chryseis corrected, somewhat sternly. "You were there, were you not? In the fight against my father? When he opened that portal that absorbed the three of us? You were the elven warrior, with the shield and spear?"
"That elf is dead. Now begone. I'll not talk to the madman's bitch daughter, ghost or no." Chryseis rolled her eyes, and turned away, shaking her head. Romulus watched her momentarily, before crouching down in front of the bars that imprisoned Vesryn.
"How long has it been since that day, Vesryn?" he asked, making an obvious attempt to be gentle. "What has happened to the others?" Vesryn's mouth twisted into a grimace and quivered for a moment, before it exploded.
"They're dead! And if they're not, they'll soon wish to be. We were captured... tortured... experimented on." He leaned forward, grabbing hold of the bars, and Romulus instinctively backed a pace away. Vesryn's eyes were filled with grief and anger. "They cut open my head." He prodded the side of his skull with a finger. "They tried to take... to take... fuck! Get the fuck away from me!"
Cyrus remained where he was, which was just out of armsā reach from the imprisoned Vesryn, his mouth compressed into a thin line. There were questions to be answered there, but now seemed hardly the time. If the āothersā were deadā¦ no. He couldnāt think about that right now. He had to focus on rectifying the situation.
When he spoke, there was no lightness or humor in his voice at all. All the playfulness had been sucked right out of him along with the levity, and he drew himself taller. āWhat if I told you that none of this had to be? That I could fix it, make it so that the world never looks like this? That you could help make it so?ā He didnāt doubt his own capacity to do the magic required, but if things were as bad as they seemed, it may be no simple matter to get there. To the tear itself.
He watched Cyrus a moment longer, before falling back away from the bars, onto his rear. He gestured to the gate of his cell. "Get rid of these bars, and maybe I'll believe you're real."
Cyrus shrugged, summoning an axe made of the Fade to his hand, swinging with both arms sideways into the lock on the bars. The first blow got him halfway through, and the second broke the lock off entirely. āCould it be any worse than languishing in there, waiting for the lyrium to eat you?ā A motion banished the axe, and he slid the door to the cell open, stepping back to allow Vesryn the room to move through, should he so choose.
The elf jumped back in obvious fear, watching Cyrus break down the lock of the door, suddenly seeming to see them for the first time again. "You..." With one hand he pushed himself up along the wall, while the other rubbed his head, as though the revelation was too much for him. "You can undo this... you can send us back, fix everything?"
He stepped out of the cell, his legs a bit wobbly at first, but he soon got his balance, even if it was tentative. "I need a weapon. Sword, shield, anything."
"We killed some Venatori on our way here," Romulus said, gesturing back out into the hall. "You can use theirs."
"It'll do, even if I'm not half the warrior I used to be." He paused, grimacing, looking between Cyrus and Chryseis. "There are others. Asala's still alive, last I saw her. In a cell somewhere. Khari's alive, too. They... I think they like to torture us elves more. Her and Lia got the most of it. I can hear the screams from down here sometimes. I... haven't heard Lia scream in a while." If it was possible, his face had actually gotten more pale. "I suppose that's a good thing."
Romulus appeared disturbed, and of a murderous disposition. He seemed to be struggling to remember proper forms of address towards the two Tevinter mages with him. "We need to free them, domina. They can help us."
āIf they can still stand, that is.ā Chryseis had taken to watching the hallway from the cell blockās entrance. She glanced back at the other three. āIs my father still alive, Vesryn?ā
"Of course he is. Good things never happen to us.ā Despite the grim situation Chryseis actually cracked a smile, albeit a humorless one.
āIt might be hard to see, but him being alive is the best thing that could possibly happen, for all of us.ā
Cyrus snorted, but he didnāt offer his opinion on that. āWe should find the others, then. If heās around, heāll have a great deal of men at his disposalāand weāll need to hew through them.ā Turning on his heel, he headed down the cell block, seeking any other familiar face.
The massive spear of red lyrium against the wall on the right was an interesting decorative choice, but otherwise, he placed himself underground, in what looked like a storage room. He wouldnāt be surprised if there was a cellar nearby, or a dungeon or something. A more interesting question than where he was would, of course, be when, as there was no mistaking the fact that Cassius had opened a time distortion field right above them in the heat of the fight. Given how obviously unstable the field had been, it was unlikely heād planned on anyone surviving the trip, though who knew? Perhaps since one of the travelers was Chryseis, heād actually done his best to send them through safely. Perhaps not.
It didnāt really matter to Cyrus, in any case. The result was the same.
And he had a lot of searching to do. Perhaps he would begin by seeing if the other two had landed nearby. It would be at the very least convenient to have their assistance, though he didnāt strictly need it. He supposed Estella would prefer to have all three of them back rather than just him, and as usual, he let her serve as his moral compass, because she was a great deal better at it than he was. Likely, the right thing to do was to find Romulus and Chryseis, and get all of them to where he thought they needed to go.
There was a loud splashing from the front of the room, and Cyrus returned his thoughts to whenever the present was to see a pair of Venatori guards approaching the chamber. He sighed softly to himself. He supposed such inconvenience was to be expected. āBlood of the Elder One, whatās he doing here?ā
āBe honest; youāre going to try and kill me no matter what I say.ā His voice took on the tone of light amusement that he used by default, and sure enough, both drew their swords. Cyrus flexed his fingers; though he probably could have halted both with spells before they crossed the twenty feet through water to him, he rather felt like something a bit more personal just at this moment, so he let them approach, his hands loosely at his sides, empty for now.
One of them seemed to be smart enough to realize that his utter lack of concern might have been an important detail, and Cyrus smiled when that one hesitated, letting his partner go first. The less-observant went in for a diagonal slash to his unarmored chest, a solid, controlled opening move that Cyrus avoided entirely, placing his feet unerringly even underwater and twisting his body out of the way. The follow-up was a quick horizontal stroke, which he stopped cold with a barrier, concentrated over one hand, knocking the sword away in an efficient parry which threw the guardās armspan wide, leaving his front completely exposed for just a moment.
That, as it happened, was all Cyrus required, and the knife appeared in his hand easily, whereupon he drove it down into the base of the Venatoriās throat. The blade disappeared as the guard dropped, and smoothly, he bent backwards to avoid the attempt by the second to capitalize on his distraction. On his way back up, he grabbed the other manās arm and pulled him forward and down, cracking his knee up into the guardās nose with a satisfying crunch. Mindful of his need for celerity, Cyrus summoned back the Fade-knife and plunged it into the second cultistās spine. He dropped next to his partner, both slowly sinking into the water. If they werenāt already dead, theyād drown.
Heading for the entrance, he gave the red lyrium a wide berth. He could hear it, in his headāsinging, some described it as. Cyrus thought it was perhaps the ugliest song heād ever heard, and it seemed also to burn with something. He knew to touch it was to risk something he did not want to risk, and so he avoided it studiously, his lip curling a bit as he waded past.
Upon reaching the entrance of the storage room, he found himself in a hallway that split off to the left and right. Reminding himself that he ought to seek out his allies, he spent a moment listening as well as he could, before frowning and striking off to the left. He could see the end of that half the hallway, anyhow, so worst-case scenario, he spent a while searching where there was nothing to be found.
As he carried on, sounds of battle eventually rang out from one of the rooms. There were shouts of both men and women, and the unmistakable crunching on rapidly freezing water, and shattering ice. A few heavy thuds of bodies followed, and then silence. Sloshing footsteps signaled that at least one had survived the fight, and shortly afterwards Chryseis stumbled out of the room, tired and disheveled. An arrow protruded from her upper back, near her right shoulder, and she leaned on both her staff and subsequently the wall when she entered the hallway.
She momentarily lowered her staff in Cyrus's direction, but then raised it again and loosened up when she noticed him. "Blasted spell dropped me facing away from an archer," she grumbled. "But we're alive. That's something."
āVastly preferable to the alternative, at the very least.ā Cyrus smiled, then waded smoothly over to her side, tilting his head at the arrow. āIf youāll permit me?ā He actually wasnāt sure how confident she was in her healing magicāit was usually considered less-than-important in Tevinter, and specialists were rare, considering how long it took to learn to do well. He wasnāt one of those by ay means, but heād dabbled long enough to master the basics, and a wound like that was small enough that he wouldnāt have a problem with it.
Chryseis sighed. "Yes, let's get this over with." She turned to face the wall, bracing herself against it with her hands.
āAs the lady wishes.ā Cyrus didnāt hesitate, gripping the arrow near the base of the shaft, as close to her wound as possible, and pulled it out with a single, sharp motion. A fair amount of blood followed, but he applied the healing spell in his left hand thereafter, mending it with a few seconds of effort. He was actually rather impressed with his own handiworkāhe doubted sheād even scar. Stepping back, he twirled the arrow between his fingers, almost absently, leaning sideways to peer into the room sheād emerged from.
āLooks like it dropped all three of us in different places, then. Which makes the next order of business rather obvious, I should think.ā
Chryseis groaned, rolling the recently healed shoulder a few times to test it out and, apparently pleased enough with it, she took up her staff again, stepping away from the wall. "I suppose I should be more surprised this happened. Sadly, I'm not." She began leading the way forward, back the way Cyrus had come. The hallway further in the other direction merely led to a visible dead end.
Chryseis wore a look near disgust as she trudged through the still knee-deep water of the flooded hallway. Her eyes scanned over their surroundings. "We're still in the castle, I remember this area. The Venatori are still present here, so this can't be in the past. Father's tossed us into the future, clearly. Question is, how far?"
āI suspect weāre at the nearest arcane confluence of the right type.ā It would have been easiest for the distortion to send them sometime that had a similar balance of Fade-energy to itself. That was how the magic worked: just as distance was traversed by selecting an terminal point and altering it with oneās magic in the same way the beginning locus was altered, so it was with time, though of course a distortion in chronology was much more complex than a mere teleportation spell. But in both cases, it worked best when the beginning and end points were as similar as possible, to draw the traveler from one to the other.
Since he doubted Cassius had enough time to even begin preparing an end-point for this magic, theyād likely been snapped to whatever time coincidentally had the most similar arcane signature. In all likelihood, there was another tear here, or at least a place where creating one would be easy, which meant they could get back. āSo it wonāt be decades, but it might be years. Perhaps we should ask the next guards what the calendar date is before we kill them, hm?ā The suggestion was only half-serious, but then again, it was half-serious. The information would be helpful, at any rate.
"Or we'll ask my father, right before he sends us back..." They continued on to a convergence point in the halls, a large, mostly empty room dimly lit by the torches ensconced on the walls, and the dull red glow of the lyrium that protruded periodically from the stone. The few stairs they ascended up into the room allowed them to finally rise out of the water They'd barely entered when sounds of another struggle could be heard, and shortly afterwards the full conflict came into view.
Or the end of it, rather. Romulus had taken a guard to the ground on his back, the assassin pinning his sword arm down with his blade, which had stabbed right through his wrist. He screamed in pain, but the sound was choked off when Romulus bashed the rim of his shield into his mouth, shattering several teeth and spraying blood left and right. He repeated the act a few more times, until the man's skull was clearly demolished.
Romulus was breathing quickly, his eyes wild, filled with confusion. He looked up, noticed Chryseis and Cyrus standing there, and raised his weapons briefly. Chryseis did not raise her own hands, instead looking down upon him with authority. "Easy, now. It's just us. We just went through the same thing you did."
He clambered off of the dead guard and a few steps to the side, but fell back to a knee for the moment. "What happened? Where are we? Where are the others?"
āThe first question is quite worthwhile, but the others are a tad misaimed, Iām afraid.ā Cyrus could perhaps understand Romulusās confusion; he understood the magic at work better than most anyone, but had he not, he might well have been rather perplexed himself. āWe are in Redcliffe castle, just as we were. The othersā¦ well, I havenāt the slightest idea, but I think youāll find thatās ultimately irrelevant. Because at just this moment, weāre some amount of time intoā¦ā He paused, debating whether to give the long, more accurate version, or the less-accurate, but easier one. He elected to go with the latter.
āThe future, I suppose you could call it. Relative to when we were, anyway. The distortion moved us forward in time.ā
Clearly, Romulus wasn't going to understand that easily. "What? But... we were..." Chryseis was prompted to shake her head, and take a few steps forward, to come within arm's reach of her slave.
"Don't try to understand it. I barely know the basics of my father's work myself." She grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him up to his feet. "The important thing is that the three of us made it here in one piece. We need to keep moving, see if we can find some way to get back."
"What happened to the others?" he asked again, clearly not letting the question go. "Do you think they're here with us, too?" Chryseis shook her head again.
"Unlikely. The spell was only big enough to pull us through, I think. Otherwise this hall would probably be quite a bit more hectic right now. They were probably left behind." She glanced back at Cyrus. "And I very much doubt anything pleasant happened after we left. Judging by the state of things."
āThat seems a fair guess.ā Cyrusās reply was noncommittal, mostly because heād already reached the same conclusion himself and was currently for once in his life trying not to think too much about anything outside of the here-and-now, which, if he could find the distortion he suspected existed in this time, would soon become the there-and-then. If he couldnāt find one, heād have to make one, the consequences be damned.
āIn any case, we should get out of this dungeon. Perhaps we shall learn more along the way.ā Turning, he led the way farther down the hall. At the end of it, as heād suspected, there was a staircase, and he moved up them with care, placing his feet solidly before shifting his weight. While he didnāt waste time doubting his ability to deal with Venatori, this would go considerably faster if they could manage it without drawing the attention of every guard in the castle, something he suspected Romulus knew quite well himself.
The floor that the staircase emptied them out on looked to be merely another underground level, this one occupied by barred cells, most of them empty. There was no other staircase immediately visible, which meant it was probably on the other side of the cell block. Hanging a right, Cyrus grimaced at the amount of red-lyrium-song filling his head, shaking it slightly as though the tuneless hum would just scatter out his ears. A futile endeavor, of course, but incidentally directing his vision to the cells themselves did provide him with a most unexpected piece of information.
āPerhaps some of them are here, after all.ā They would be the versions of themselves from whatever future this was, of course, but that was almost better. Theyād have information, and more importantly, any damage done to them would be fixable with a proper reversal. The one heād spotted appeared to be Vesryn, who sat against the back wall of one of the cells, another mound of red lyrium not too far off. Gesturing for the other two to follow, Cyrus approached with some caution. There was little telling what prolonged exposure to that stuff would have done, and he still wasnāt going to get near it himself.
Vesryn looked terrible. Clearly some was a result of the red lyrium, some of which was actually beginning to protrude into his cell. Some of his veins were slightly glowing, appearing orange under his skin, and his eyes too had a red tint to them. His skin had not been tanned much before, but now he was ghostly white, and thinner than he had been by quite a bit. His hair had almost all been shorn off, revealing a number of wicked-looking scars traversing the sides and back of his head. More typical scars were all over his body, or at least his arms, which were revealed by the fact that his threadbare shirt possessed no sleeves. His posture was lazy against the wall, and he hardly readjusted upon seeing the three newcomers.
In fact, he laughed. The laughter bubbling up from within him was the only thing that moved him, as a wide grin spread across his face. The act appeared to be somewhat painful for him, judging by the half-grimace there as well. "Well, now I'm actually insane. You three... you Tevinter fucks. You're all supposed to be dead."
āIāve always been exceptionally bad at doing what Iām supposed to.ā Cyrus cocked his head to the side, choosing for the moment not to react overmuch to being referred to in the crude manner the elf had chosen. It was probably quite excusable, considering the situation. Apparently, one or more of Vesrynās captors had attempted something with his head, for him to have scars like those. He recalled the lobotomy experiments of one of the Magisters, and the attendant demonstration, with some distaste. He suspected something similar had happened here.
āI expect that by your reckoning, weāve been gone for a considerable amount of time. By ours, we just left the throne room in Redcliffe in 9:41 Dragon. It would seem things did not fare well in ourā¦ absence.ā
He stared back at Cyrus blankly, before rubbing his face with his hands, and then peeking through his fingers. Upon seeing the group of three still standing there, he let out a heavy sigh. "Of all the bloody dead people to come haunt me in my cell..."
"We're not dead, elf," Chryseis corrected, somewhat sternly. "You were there, were you not? In the fight against my father? When he opened that portal that absorbed the three of us? You were the elven warrior, with the shield and spear?"
"That elf is dead. Now begone. I'll not talk to the madman's bitch daughter, ghost or no." Chryseis rolled her eyes, and turned away, shaking her head. Romulus watched her momentarily, before crouching down in front of the bars that imprisoned Vesryn.
"How long has it been since that day, Vesryn?" he asked, making an obvious attempt to be gentle. "What has happened to the others?" Vesryn's mouth twisted into a grimace and quivered for a moment, before it exploded.
"They're dead! And if they're not, they'll soon wish to be. We were captured... tortured... experimented on." He leaned forward, grabbing hold of the bars, and Romulus instinctively backed a pace away. Vesryn's eyes were filled with grief and anger. "They cut open my head." He prodded the side of his skull with a finger. "They tried to take... to take... fuck! Get the fuck away from me!"
Cyrus remained where he was, which was just out of armsā reach from the imprisoned Vesryn, his mouth compressed into a thin line. There were questions to be answered there, but now seemed hardly the time. If the āothersā were deadā¦ no. He couldnāt think about that right now. He had to focus on rectifying the situation.
When he spoke, there was no lightness or humor in his voice at all. All the playfulness had been sucked right out of him along with the levity, and he drew himself taller. āWhat if I told you that none of this had to be? That I could fix it, make it so that the world never looks like this? That you could help make it so?ā He didnāt doubt his own capacity to do the magic required, but if things were as bad as they seemed, it may be no simple matter to get there. To the tear itself.
He watched Cyrus a moment longer, before falling back away from the bars, onto his rear. He gestured to the gate of his cell. "Get rid of these bars, and maybe I'll believe you're real."
Cyrus shrugged, summoning an axe made of the Fade to his hand, swinging with both arms sideways into the lock on the bars. The first blow got him halfway through, and the second broke the lock off entirely. āCould it be any worse than languishing in there, waiting for the lyrium to eat you?ā A motion banished the axe, and he slid the door to the cell open, stepping back to allow Vesryn the room to move through, should he so choose.
The elf jumped back in obvious fear, watching Cyrus break down the lock of the door, suddenly seeming to see them for the first time again. "You..." With one hand he pushed himself up along the wall, while the other rubbed his head, as though the revelation was too much for him. "You can undo this... you can send us back, fix everything?"
He stepped out of the cell, his legs a bit wobbly at first, but he soon got his balance, even if it was tentative. "I need a weapon. Sword, shield, anything."
"We killed some Venatori on our way here," Romulus said, gesturing back out into the hall. "You can use theirs."
"It'll do, even if I'm not half the warrior I used to be." He paused, grimacing, looking between Cyrus and Chryseis. "There are others. Asala's still alive, last I saw her. In a cell somewhere. Khari's alive, too. They... I think they like to torture us elves more. Her and Lia got the most of it. I can hear the screams from down here sometimes. I... haven't heard Lia scream in a while." If it was possible, his face had actually gotten more pale. "I suppose that's a good thing."
Romulus appeared disturbed, and of a murderous disposition. He seemed to be struggling to remember proper forms of address towards the two Tevinter mages with him. "We need to free them, domina. They can help us."
āIf they can still stand, that is.ā Chryseis had taken to watching the hallway from the cell blockās entrance. She glanced back at the other three. āIs my father still alive, Vesryn?ā
"Of course he is. Good things never happen to us.ā Despite the grim situation Chryseis actually cracked a smile, albeit a humorless one.
āIt might be hard to see, but him being alive is the best thing that could possibly happen, for all of us.ā
Cyrus snorted, but he didnāt offer his opinion on that. āWe should find the others, then. If heās around, heāll have a great deal of men at his disposalāand weāll need to hew through them.ā Turning on his heel, he headed down the cell block, seeking any other familiar face.