Vesryn woke feeling like he'd been asleep for a year.
The blue light from Zeth's wall fires assaulted his eyes, and he squinted until they adjusted somewhat. Instinctively he felt for Saraya, and she was there. She was there almost before he was, implying the spell hadn't so much as touched her, or that she'd simply come to faster than the body she was trapped in. Either way, everything felt normal. But that was only in his head. Physically this was far from normal.
He found himself standing, his back pressed tightly to a support pillar in the ruin, the same room he'd been knocked out in. There was a heat of some sort around his wrists. The heat wasn't uncomfortable, but at the same time he could feel a dangerous energy pulsing against him even through his gloves. He tried to move his arms from where they were locked, hugging the pillar behind him, and was immediately met with a shocking pain, magic surging through him and forcing him back into a helpless position before he could even begin. He glanced over the edge of his shoulder, and saw a crackling blue glow surrounding his wrist, binding him to the pillar. Some sort of arcane bonds. His feet were bound together and lashed to the pillar in much the same way.
"He wakes," Zeth said, standing in an area of relative darkness between the lights cast by the fires. He'd been sitting on a low bench, staff in hand, but now stood and approached. He looked tired still, but at the same time alight with energy, eyes still wild with adrenaline. "Is Saraya awake as well, Ves?"
"Awake and furious, Zeth," he spat. "What madness is this? What are you doing? I thought..." He thought they'd been making progress before the sickness. He thought Zeth had been coming close to letting go, to finally making things less of a strain in Skyhold. Vesryn glanced left, and saw Khari bound to another pillar in the same manner. To his right, Astraia, still fast asleep. He looked back left. "Khari! Khari, wake up!"
"You really want that?" Zeth asked, looking perplexed. "She's just going to add so much pointless noise to this."
It took Khari a while to come to, but to her credit, she was alert almost as soon as she did, apparently shaking off the lingering fatigue of the spell by physically shaking her head. “What the fu—agh." Her own efforts to pull on her restraints ended exactly the same way as Vesryn's had. Her jaw visibly tightened, a muscle in it jumping with the force of her teeth gritting. She loosened them again at least long enough to talk when her eyes landed on Zeth. “You smug little fucker. I should've guessed." She pulled a second time at the bonds, harder if anything, breathing heavily through her nose. She lasted a long couple of seconds that time, before collapsing back against the stone.
"Astraia, wake up!" Zeth's sister, however, was not so quick in coming to, and remained unconscious against the bonds that held her in place. Vesryn shot a venomous glare at Zethlasan. "Your own sister, Zeth? Whatever this is, she doesn't need to be a part of it."
"I'd have preferred it that way," Zeth agreed. "But very few plans survive being put into action. I've had to improvise more than a few times."
Vesryn immediately began to look around, in the other shadowy corners, behind him, anywhere there might be another pillar. He tried to strain against the bonds again to better see, but it was entirely futile. The harder they were fought against, the more pain they applied, and the tighter they constricted. He practically snarled at Zeth. "What have you done with Estella? Where is she?"
"To think, you might've used that tone when asking after me once." The thought made Vesryn feel physically ill, but he ignored it. "She's fine, Ves. Shae's taking care of her. I'd rather not risk having an Inquisitor caught up in this, in case anything goes wrong. I've tried to be as reasonable as I can, Ves, but you've made it difficult at every turn." Vesryn wasn't inclined to believe anything he said, nor was he willing to guess that "taking care of" meant anything pleasant for Stel, but... despite that, it was a reaction of Saraya's that he was most distracted by. Rather than simple fury, her outlook towards him had shifted. Something approaching the respect of an enemy that actually posed a threat. A real danger.
And there was something to his tone, bits of which Vesryn could relate back to Crestwood when they'd first reunited, or even the early days of his visit to Skyhold. It was hard to qualify, but it was different. Too self-assured, too confident, even for Zethlasan. There was something behind it that he'd lost for a while. And now it was back. "Zeth... talk to me, tell me what happened. I thought I'd gotten through to you."
"I suppose you did for a time. Not the best time, for me." He cracked his knuckles against his staff, one hand and then the other. "But you should know that I don't give up. I won't give up on you, I won't give up on this necessary step for the People."
"Zeth..." the mumbled name came from Astraia, who was just now coming to. "...what are you—ah!" Astraia had accidentally tugged against the restraints on her, shocking herself painfully, and Zeth immediately hopped over the several steps to her, lighting a spell in his hand.
"Easy, easy now sister." He touched his hand to her head, and some form of entropic magic washed over her. She didn't fall back asleep, but her head lolled back against the pillar, her body relaxing despite remaining standing. She continued to mumble something, but it was completely incoherent at this point.
Khari had clearly elected to continue fighting her restraints rather than use the energy talking too much. She wasn't having a very good time of it, obviously, but her jaw was clenched against any verbalization of pain. Her arms strained, shaking with the effort she was putting forward in her attempt to break free. The blue lights in the walls illuminated the sheen of sweat that had broken out on her brow, but she wasn't giving up, however futile it seemed.
Zeth frowned at her, then looked to Vesryn. "She'll wear herself out eventually, right?"
"I'd bet on your spell dying first, actually."
"I suppose I should get on with it, then." He stepped away from Astraia, rolling up his right sleeve to the elbow. "Do you know what Saraya is, Ves?"
"Someone you will never understand," he spat back. "I believe that now." It was difficult to accept, but after all this, all this time even since they'd reunited, he still refused to let her be, to let someone he called his friend be... Vesryn found it hard to accept that Zeth could ever change his mind about her.
"She's a gift. A gift to the People that you were never willing to share. I don't know how else to describe it to you." His staff lingered uncomfortably close to Vesryn's face. He followed the end of it with his eyes, he and Saraya both wary of any spell that Zeth might try.
"Why are you still talking? Is it cowardice? Seth'lin? Feel the need to toy with us? You're a city elf, a flat-ear, just like me, just like you'd think of Khari, and so you push yourself to insanity just to try to earn your place." Vesryn was fuming, the thoughts escaping him ones he'd had many times over the past months but never found the heart or the reason to say. Was he so different when they were young? Vesryn had always found his drive admirable before, in the Tirashan. He wanted to help, always, he never lied about that, but once he had been a reasonable man. Willing to think of others, rather than the vague and blurry goal of "the People." As though he even knew what that meant anymore. As though anyone did.
Zeth laughed softly, just once, looking down for a moment. "No, I suppose you're right. We're the same, you and I. You see..." His hand drifted to a knife sheathed at his belt. He pulled it free, slowing tilting the point of it towards Vesryn's throat. "I was given a gift as well. One that I accepted into my heart, one that kept me going in my pursuit, a gift of knowledge, one that I'm willing to use to do what I have to, no matter the cost down the road. Everything I do is for the People." His hand holding the knife came to rest on Vesryn's chest, the blade still perilously close to his throat.
"If you were willing to cooperate, this would've gone easier. But it can still be done by force."
Still working against her bonds, Khari snarled like the bear people called her. “You get away from him! Who gave you the right to decide what's best for anyone, much less the People?!" She eased back, then lunged as far as her restraints would permit, snapping back hard when they failed to give. Her armor scraped audibly against the stone, a discordant, grinding screech.
He ignored her quite entirely, still intimately close to Vesryn. She probably couldn't even hear his next words. "I'm confident that you'll thank me for this someday, Ves. It might even be tomorrow."
With that, Zeth stepped back, exposed his own arm, and drew the knife sharply across it. Instantly Vesryn could feel the power practically explode out of him, bathing the entire room, and the blood didn't flow naturally from Zeth's arm, instead rising into the air and coiling around his wrist. The fires along the wall shifted to a deep red, casting the entire ruin in a much darker glow. The force of his magic shook the entire ruin, small bits of the ceiling above them cracking and falling around them. Dust rained on all of their heads. In Zeth's eyes was a bright, unnatural red glow, and it brightened when he lowered his staff towards Vesryn.
A low, resounding vibration pulsed out from the staff, the blood magic pulsating with energy that washed over Vesryn. Immediately he felt its grip on his mind, tugging, pulling, twisting, driving wedges where they did not belong. Saraya had no choice but to immediately recede in an attempt to spare Vesryn the pain he'd experienced in the Fade. The look on Zeth's face was approaching euphoric, and he smiled immediately after Saraya withdrew.
"You can't hide from me anymore..." Another pulse pumped out of the staff, the low thrum in Vesryn's ears intensifying. There was no pain like when Nightmare had torn at him, but there was an intense pressure, foreign and horrifying and violating, and there was nothing he could do to withstand it. He tugged on the restraints at his arms, but they'd only strengthened with the blood magic Zeth was calling on.
Astraia began to come back to on Vesryn's right, more quickly this time. She blinked in fear at the red light surrounding them, the magic emanating from her brother, and gazed for a moment in horror at the scene. "Zeth, what are you doing?! Stop!" He didn't seem to hear her.
Vesryn tried to fight it, but he didn't have the first clue how. Saraya could not help him, and he had no connection with magic to resist. The more Zeth tore into his mind with whatever spell he was using, the more it began to hurt, and it was only a few more seconds before Vesryn was roaring, a steady and uninterrupted shout, trying to force him out.
And Zeth relented, though Vesryn suspected it was by choice. The spell faded temporarily, though the energy of it still seemed to reverberate around the ruins. He was breathing heavily, his eyes still slightly glowing, blood now running in a thin line normally down his exposed arm. He took a step closer to Vesryn. "Do you know what I saw, Ves? An army of our kind, glorious elvhen. And her, looking down on them. She was a great leader, Vesryn, a general maybe, honored and revered for her deeds, her legacy preserved in this form."
It wasn't his choice to learn this. It wasn't up to him. It wasn't his right to invade their minds like this, pry from her everything he wanted to know and then spit it back out with the blood. And Saraya seemed to agree with him. She returned in his mind, with full knowledge that the pain from the blood magic would render Vesryn nearly senseless. It did so almost immediately, splitting agony approaching what he'd felt in the Fade just before the scream. There was no scream this time.
He blurrily saw Zeth say a few more words, face contorted in frustration, before he lowered the staff again, called upon the blood, and assaulted Vesryn's mind once more.
The blue light from Zeth's wall fires assaulted his eyes, and he squinted until they adjusted somewhat. Instinctively he felt for Saraya, and she was there. She was there almost before he was, implying the spell hadn't so much as touched her, or that she'd simply come to faster than the body she was trapped in. Either way, everything felt normal. But that was only in his head. Physically this was far from normal.
He found himself standing, his back pressed tightly to a support pillar in the ruin, the same room he'd been knocked out in. There was a heat of some sort around his wrists. The heat wasn't uncomfortable, but at the same time he could feel a dangerous energy pulsing against him even through his gloves. He tried to move his arms from where they were locked, hugging the pillar behind him, and was immediately met with a shocking pain, magic surging through him and forcing him back into a helpless position before he could even begin. He glanced over the edge of his shoulder, and saw a crackling blue glow surrounding his wrist, binding him to the pillar. Some sort of arcane bonds. His feet were bound together and lashed to the pillar in much the same way.
"He wakes," Zeth said, standing in an area of relative darkness between the lights cast by the fires. He'd been sitting on a low bench, staff in hand, but now stood and approached. He looked tired still, but at the same time alight with energy, eyes still wild with adrenaline. "Is Saraya awake as well, Ves?"
"Awake and furious, Zeth," he spat. "What madness is this? What are you doing? I thought..." He thought they'd been making progress before the sickness. He thought Zeth had been coming close to letting go, to finally making things less of a strain in Skyhold. Vesryn glanced left, and saw Khari bound to another pillar in the same manner. To his right, Astraia, still fast asleep. He looked back left. "Khari! Khari, wake up!"
"You really want that?" Zeth asked, looking perplexed. "She's just going to add so much pointless noise to this."
It took Khari a while to come to, but to her credit, she was alert almost as soon as she did, apparently shaking off the lingering fatigue of the spell by physically shaking her head. “What the fu—agh." Her own efforts to pull on her restraints ended exactly the same way as Vesryn's had. Her jaw visibly tightened, a muscle in it jumping with the force of her teeth gritting. She loosened them again at least long enough to talk when her eyes landed on Zeth. “You smug little fucker. I should've guessed." She pulled a second time at the bonds, harder if anything, breathing heavily through her nose. She lasted a long couple of seconds that time, before collapsing back against the stone.
"Astraia, wake up!" Zeth's sister, however, was not so quick in coming to, and remained unconscious against the bonds that held her in place. Vesryn shot a venomous glare at Zethlasan. "Your own sister, Zeth? Whatever this is, she doesn't need to be a part of it."
"I'd have preferred it that way," Zeth agreed. "But very few plans survive being put into action. I've had to improvise more than a few times."
Vesryn immediately began to look around, in the other shadowy corners, behind him, anywhere there might be another pillar. He tried to strain against the bonds again to better see, but it was entirely futile. The harder they were fought against, the more pain they applied, and the tighter they constricted. He practically snarled at Zeth. "What have you done with Estella? Where is she?"
"To think, you might've used that tone when asking after me once." The thought made Vesryn feel physically ill, but he ignored it. "She's fine, Ves. Shae's taking care of her. I'd rather not risk having an Inquisitor caught up in this, in case anything goes wrong. I've tried to be as reasonable as I can, Ves, but you've made it difficult at every turn." Vesryn wasn't inclined to believe anything he said, nor was he willing to guess that "taking care of" meant anything pleasant for Stel, but... despite that, it was a reaction of Saraya's that he was most distracted by. Rather than simple fury, her outlook towards him had shifted. Something approaching the respect of an enemy that actually posed a threat. A real danger.
And there was something to his tone, bits of which Vesryn could relate back to Crestwood when they'd first reunited, or even the early days of his visit to Skyhold. It was hard to qualify, but it was different. Too self-assured, too confident, even for Zethlasan. There was something behind it that he'd lost for a while. And now it was back. "Zeth... talk to me, tell me what happened. I thought I'd gotten through to you."
"I suppose you did for a time. Not the best time, for me." He cracked his knuckles against his staff, one hand and then the other. "But you should know that I don't give up. I won't give up on you, I won't give up on this necessary step for the People."
"Zeth..." the mumbled name came from Astraia, who was just now coming to. "...what are you—ah!" Astraia had accidentally tugged against the restraints on her, shocking herself painfully, and Zeth immediately hopped over the several steps to her, lighting a spell in his hand.
"Easy, easy now sister." He touched his hand to her head, and some form of entropic magic washed over her. She didn't fall back asleep, but her head lolled back against the pillar, her body relaxing despite remaining standing. She continued to mumble something, but it was completely incoherent at this point.
Khari had clearly elected to continue fighting her restraints rather than use the energy talking too much. She wasn't having a very good time of it, obviously, but her jaw was clenched against any verbalization of pain. Her arms strained, shaking with the effort she was putting forward in her attempt to break free. The blue lights in the walls illuminated the sheen of sweat that had broken out on her brow, but she wasn't giving up, however futile it seemed.
Zeth frowned at her, then looked to Vesryn. "She'll wear herself out eventually, right?"
"I'd bet on your spell dying first, actually."
"I suppose I should get on with it, then." He stepped away from Astraia, rolling up his right sleeve to the elbow. "Do you know what Saraya is, Ves?"
"Someone you will never understand," he spat back. "I believe that now." It was difficult to accept, but after all this, all this time even since they'd reunited, he still refused to let her be, to let someone he called his friend be... Vesryn found it hard to accept that Zeth could ever change his mind about her.
"She's a gift. A gift to the People that you were never willing to share. I don't know how else to describe it to you." His staff lingered uncomfortably close to Vesryn's face. He followed the end of it with his eyes, he and Saraya both wary of any spell that Zeth might try.
"Why are you still talking? Is it cowardice? Seth'lin? Feel the need to toy with us? You're a city elf, a flat-ear, just like me, just like you'd think of Khari, and so you push yourself to insanity just to try to earn your place." Vesryn was fuming, the thoughts escaping him ones he'd had many times over the past months but never found the heart or the reason to say. Was he so different when they were young? Vesryn had always found his drive admirable before, in the Tirashan. He wanted to help, always, he never lied about that, but once he had been a reasonable man. Willing to think of others, rather than the vague and blurry goal of "the People." As though he even knew what that meant anymore. As though anyone did.
Zeth laughed softly, just once, looking down for a moment. "No, I suppose you're right. We're the same, you and I. You see..." His hand drifted to a knife sheathed at his belt. He pulled it free, slowing tilting the point of it towards Vesryn's throat. "I was given a gift as well. One that I accepted into my heart, one that kept me going in my pursuit, a gift of knowledge, one that I'm willing to use to do what I have to, no matter the cost down the road. Everything I do is for the People." His hand holding the knife came to rest on Vesryn's chest, the blade still perilously close to his throat.
"If you were willing to cooperate, this would've gone easier. But it can still be done by force."
Still working against her bonds, Khari snarled like the bear people called her. “You get away from him! Who gave you the right to decide what's best for anyone, much less the People?!" She eased back, then lunged as far as her restraints would permit, snapping back hard when they failed to give. Her armor scraped audibly against the stone, a discordant, grinding screech.
He ignored her quite entirely, still intimately close to Vesryn. She probably couldn't even hear his next words. "I'm confident that you'll thank me for this someday, Ves. It might even be tomorrow."
With that, Zeth stepped back, exposed his own arm, and drew the knife sharply across it. Instantly Vesryn could feel the power practically explode out of him, bathing the entire room, and the blood didn't flow naturally from Zeth's arm, instead rising into the air and coiling around his wrist. The fires along the wall shifted to a deep red, casting the entire ruin in a much darker glow. The force of his magic shook the entire ruin, small bits of the ceiling above them cracking and falling around them. Dust rained on all of their heads. In Zeth's eyes was a bright, unnatural red glow, and it brightened when he lowered his staff towards Vesryn.
A low, resounding vibration pulsed out from the staff, the blood magic pulsating with energy that washed over Vesryn. Immediately he felt its grip on his mind, tugging, pulling, twisting, driving wedges where they did not belong. Saraya had no choice but to immediately recede in an attempt to spare Vesryn the pain he'd experienced in the Fade. The look on Zeth's face was approaching euphoric, and he smiled immediately after Saraya withdrew.
"You can't hide from me anymore..." Another pulse pumped out of the staff, the low thrum in Vesryn's ears intensifying. There was no pain like when Nightmare had torn at him, but there was an intense pressure, foreign and horrifying and violating, and there was nothing he could do to withstand it. He tugged on the restraints at his arms, but they'd only strengthened with the blood magic Zeth was calling on.
Astraia began to come back to on Vesryn's right, more quickly this time. She blinked in fear at the red light surrounding them, the magic emanating from her brother, and gazed for a moment in horror at the scene. "Zeth, what are you doing?! Stop!" He didn't seem to hear her.
Vesryn tried to fight it, but he didn't have the first clue how. Saraya could not help him, and he had no connection with magic to resist. The more Zeth tore into his mind with whatever spell he was using, the more it began to hurt, and it was only a few more seconds before Vesryn was roaring, a steady and uninterrupted shout, trying to force him out.
And Zeth relented, though Vesryn suspected it was by choice. The spell faded temporarily, though the energy of it still seemed to reverberate around the ruins. He was breathing heavily, his eyes still slightly glowing, blood now running in a thin line normally down his exposed arm. He took a step closer to Vesryn. "Do you know what I saw, Ves? An army of our kind, glorious elvhen. And her, looking down on them. She was a great leader, Vesryn, a general maybe, honored and revered for her deeds, her legacy preserved in this form."
It wasn't his choice to learn this. It wasn't up to him. It wasn't his right to invade their minds like this, pry from her everything he wanted to know and then spit it back out with the blood. And Saraya seemed to agree with him. She returned in his mind, with full knowledge that the pain from the blood magic would render Vesryn nearly senseless. It did so almost immediately, splitting agony approaching what he'd felt in the Fade just before the scream. There was no scream this time.
He blurrily saw Zeth say a few more words, face contorted in frustration, before he lowered the staff again, called upon the blood, and assaulted Vesryn's mind once more.