Leon nodded once, indicating that Corvin and Donnelly could leave. The guard and patrol schedules were updated, the final losses tallied, the relevant next of kin informed. The Inquisition was more or less back to ordinary function after the events at Kirkwall.
He wished he could say the same for himself. Aside from Khari and a few of those who'd sustained nearly-fatal injuries from among the regulars, Leon knew he was taking the longest to recover physically from the aftermath. Even a month gone, he still ached, and he knew without having to consult any experts that this would be a permanent condition. The result of pushing himself as hard as he'd had to to survive the fight with Carver Hawke. Leon flexed his right hand, feeling pain shoot up his forearm from his fingers, and hissed softly. Even when he relaxed, the fingers shook. He couldn't hold a quill steady for more than a half-hour at a time anymore.
All the signs pointed the same way. The constant fatigue, the loss of fine motor control. He was losing muscle mass at an alarming rate now, unable to muster the strength necessary to maintain it. His entire body felt like it was being eaten from the inside. At this point, he couldn't be sure recovery would be possible, even if some way to halt the progression of his symptoms was found. He wondered, not for the first time, if he'd be able to see this through to the end. If perhaps he'd have to keep his promise to Khari before the next year was out.
If Firstday a week from now would be his very last one.
But such thoughts were burdensome and unhelpful and so he did his best to discard them. He was due at Cyrus's for tea—a regular occurrence now. At first, it had been optimistically intended that the weekly appointments would be for progress reports on the other man's research, but when progress had proved slow, they hadn't ceased the visits, just... started talking about other things instead. Leon enjoyed them. More or less against his better instincts, Cyrus was his friend. As unwise as it was to have them anymore, he couldn't bring himself not to.
He rose slowly from his chair, pausing to make sure his legs would actually hold his weight before slowly crossing to the hook where his cloak hung, shuffling it around his shoulders with the speed and grace of a man much more ancient—which was to say almost none. He hoped that his recovery was merely slow, and that this was not his new baseline.
The winter wind hit him like a wall as he stepped out, chilling him to his core, but that wasn't anything too unusual. Less normal was the fact that he'd made it only halfway across the battlements before he had to halt, reaching out and placing a hand on one of the raised crenelations, a soft grunt escaping him as he eased some of the weight on his legs. Carver had slashed him along the outside of his thigh; that muscle was always the first one to tire, now. Leon's breath puffed out in large, uneven clouds, he swallowed back the taste of bile. His body didn't even feel like it belonged to him anymore. How long he'd taken his strength for granted. Not having it now... it was a blow to his pride as much as anything.
Funny, since he'd never really thought he had much by way of pride.
A couple soft steps could be heard padding their way up the stairs onto the wall behind him. The figure that appeared was hooded and wrapped in a heavy, thick cloak. Leon didn't need to see the man's face to know it was Romulus; he went almost nowhere without that cloak in the middle of winter, and he had rather uniquely steady movement besides. An eye appeared underneath the hood when he turned it up enough to get a look at Leon, but he was obviously shielding himself against the wind.
"I thought I'd check on you," he said, coming to a stop next to Leon. "Saw you leaving your office. Is this a bad time?" It wasn't the first time he'd come to see Leon since they returned from Kirkwall. He didn't seem to have any ulterior motive for the visits beyond simply talking. As though it was something he enjoyed practicing, even if he often struggled.
Leon tried to smile, though it looked more like a grimace than anything. With a couple deep breaths, he was able to push himself back off the crenelation and stand under his own power. "It's not the best of times," he admitted, "but you're welcome to come with me if you like. I was just heading to Cyrus's—I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you were there as well." They didn't do much but converse, and Leon was relatively sure that Cyrus and Romulus had some sort of rapport. There was respect there, at least.
Romulus nodded his agreement. For a moment it looked as though he planned to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it to himself.
Progress across the wall was slow, due entirely to Leon's weakness, but Romulus was as steady now as he'd been on his way up the stairs, and didn't seem to mind slowing down for him, something he was grateful for. Even more helpful was the fact that nothing explicitly got asked about it. He wasn't sure he could handle giving the answers just now. No doubt Cyrus would want some kind of progress report when they arrived there anyway. Leon wouldn't begrudge him the update; it was important that he know.
He knocked only to inform his friend that he'd be entering, then did so without waiting for a response. Better, when the room's only occupant could be halfway inside his own head with whatever he was working on at the time. "Cyrus? I've brought a guest."
Cyrus did indeed look like he was partly somewhere else, but he blinked, snapping out of it more or less when Leon spoke. “Hm? Ah, Romulus. Nice to see you." He gestured at the group of chairs by the fire, then at the wall next to the door. “Cloak hooks are right there. I'll be with you in just a moment."
Snapping shut the book in his hands, he stacked it atop several others, humming thoughtfully to himself before flipping through a few of his loose parchments. One of them got a note in the corner—a series of numbers, by the look of it, but then he tucked the work and the thought both away and dropped into the chair directly across from Leon's.
Clasping his hands in front of his mouth, Cyrus tilted his head. Taking in the ways his appearance had deteriorated since the last time they spoke, no doubt. “I take it your symptoms are progressing apace."
"You guess correctly. Some of this is still the battle, but... recovering that slowly is a symptom itself, I'm sure of it." Leon had been injured enough times in the absence of healing magic—a relative luxury from his point of view—to know that this wasn't normal. Even with the magic, he was pulling himself together too slowly.
"Anything new on your end?" He knew Cyrus was working on a way to restore his own magic as well as a way to help Leon, and if only the former worked, well... that would still be enough. To have made the trip and retrieving the book worth it.
Cyrus nodded, a small smile curling his mouth. “Actually, yes. On both things. Though we'll talk about yours right now, because that's the big one."
He leaned forward in the chair, putting his elbows on his knees, and glanced between them. “I think I've discovered the crux of your problem. Remember when we discussed the spirit intervention part of the Vigil? I was collecting accounts of spirit-contact in preparation for—well, why's not important. The point is, I think you met the wrong spirit."
Leon sat back in his chair and considered it. He didn't really remember anything that had happened at the end of his Vigil, something that Cyrus knew and was apparently quite typical of the experience. "What do you mean the 'wrong spirit'? I thought all that was required was for some spirit or other to come in contact with the initiate."
Cyrus nodded. “That is all that's required, technically speaking. But different kinds of spirit have fundamentally different natures. It only makes sense that they would affect the process in different ways." He lifted his shoulders. “Bear with me, since this is only a hypothesis and I can't prove it, but I think you drew a different kind of spirit than most Seeker initiates do. All the sensible accounts I have of previous Vigils indicate that spirits of Faith were involved. Makes sense, right?"
Leon expelled a breath. "Sure, I suppose that tracks." Seekers were only ever drawn from the ranks of those who'd committed their lives to the service of the Maker. And most of the time, it took quite a lot of certainty in one's belief to make it through the training and reach the Vigil in the first place. "But you think that's not what happened in my case?"
“Precisely." Cyrus pointed over at his desk. “For accounts of what direct contact with other spirits was like, I had to go to much more dubious sources. Avvar records, cloaked in mystical language, about what their shamans do. A few historical accounts of people who allowed themselves to be temporarily possessed in battle. The personal journals of spirit healers, especially the ones who came to it outside a Circle—that sort of thing." He withdrew his hand, crossing it with his other over his chest.
“I think that when you were exposed to the Fade, it wasn't a spirit of Faith that answered. It was a spirit of Compassion. And the lingering effects of its interference are part of what made it physically impossible for you to kill someone without a dose of Reaver tonic."
That was... certainly something. He supposed it even made a certain amount of sense. Leon wasn't an expert on spirits, exactly, but of all the varieties he'd ever heard of, Compassion made the most sense as a reason he found it difficult to use lethal force. Doing so was contrary to the nature of that kind of being. Mercy was in that general family, if he recalled correctly. "But if this is a result of the Vigil after all... then it doesn't seem like there's any way to fix it. There's no going back from that process; my teachers did make that much clear, at least."
With a soft hum, Cyrus shook his head. “I don't think that's necessarily true. The issue isn't with the treatment, but the side-effects. Your Seeker talents are hardly dependent on maintaining your pacifism, as we all well know by this point." He smiled, a little wryly. “And you've been managing the side-effects rather well. The problem is that you've just been trading one inconvenience for another."
Romulus seemed to be following everything well enough, or at least as well as he could. He was also no expert on spirits or the Fade. He'd also finally managed to suppress the bit of shivering he'd been doing finally. Perhaps he should've kept his cloak on longer. "So do you have a theory then?" he asked. "Is there a way to remove the side effects?"
“Well..." Here Cyrus had the humility to look rather uncertain. “The Reaver tonic has proven effective. It's also demonstrably true that blood magic like that is more potent depending on the blood used. In theory at least, a sufficiently-potent version of it should be able to permanently suppress the Compassion problem. No repetition required." He glanced between them, clearing his throat. “Of course, when I say the 'Compassion problem,' I'm not sure exactly what degree of change would be wrought, so..."
Leon grimaced, reaching up to rub at his jaw with his left hand. He was halfway to a beard at this point; he'd have to take a razor to his face, soon, if he could get his hands to stay steady long enough. "You mean there's a chance it could do more than that?" He didn't want to waste away until his death, but he thought even less that he wanted to lose himself permanently to the same kind of brutality that overtook him when he dosed himself with the tonic. But that might all be beside the point anyway.
"And this more potent version of the tonic... what would be required to make it? I doubt even Rilien just has what we'd need sitting around in his workshop."
“High dragon blood, as it turns out. One of the strongest alchemical reagents in existence, and obviously not a simple matter to acquire. That said, if we could manage to track one down and kill it, there would be enough that Rilien and I could experiment with the formula before you had to take any actual risks." Cyrus's lips thinned. “Of course... it would be a risk. Only you're in a position to decide if it's worth pursuing. But if you want to try it, I'll do everything I can to get it right. I can't promise success, but—" He exhaled sharply. “But I'll do my best."
Leon could tell he wasn't saying that lightly. He supposed that if there was even the remotest possibility of success, Cyrus and Rilien would be able to find it. But the issue was that there were many, many ways for it to go wrong. Still, what other choice was there? He was dying, faster every day, and even if they solved the problem tomorrow, Leon had no way of knowing if his recovery would ever be complete. Holding off for too long could cripple him permanently; holding off a little longer than that would just kill him. It was a rather bleak picture.
"A high dragon..." That was no easy task, either. What would he even be risking to attempt to slay such a creature? More lives than just his, to be sure. Shaking his head, he turned to Romulus. "I'd welcome your thoughts on this, if you'd share them."
Romulus took in the information evenly, as he usually did, weighing things quietly to himself. He didn't seem to need to think on it very long, however. "I'll kill what needs to be killed if it'll help you," he said, as though the high dragon in question was a far more simple target. He wasn't really equipped for such a fight, but no doubt his mark could do some damage, even to a dragon. "I worry that it won't help you, and what we might have to lose for the chance, but... we all still need you. As the Commander, and otherwise. You're worth the risk, and I know the others will agree."
Leon considered that for a long moment. He could see the sense in it—he nearly always did, when it was Romulus's words he was examining. Still, though...
"I suppose the first thing is telling the scouts to be on the lookout for dragons, then," he said on a heavy exhale. "Absurd as it sounds to say that." With some effort, he pushed himself upright from the chair, reaching for his cloak.
"Thank you both. I'll... I'll start thinking about how we ought to approach this. In the meantime, I suppose I'll see you next week, Cyrus."
It hadn't exactly given him anything else to do at the moment, but he knew the discussion would weigh heavily in his thoughts for some time to come.
He wished he could say the same for himself. Aside from Khari and a few of those who'd sustained nearly-fatal injuries from among the regulars, Leon knew he was taking the longest to recover physically from the aftermath. Even a month gone, he still ached, and he knew without having to consult any experts that this would be a permanent condition. The result of pushing himself as hard as he'd had to to survive the fight with Carver Hawke. Leon flexed his right hand, feeling pain shoot up his forearm from his fingers, and hissed softly. Even when he relaxed, the fingers shook. He couldn't hold a quill steady for more than a half-hour at a time anymore.
All the signs pointed the same way. The constant fatigue, the loss of fine motor control. He was losing muscle mass at an alarming rate now, unable to muster the strength necessary to maintain it. His entire body felt like it was being eaten from the inside. At this point, he couldn't be sure recovery would be possible, even if some way to halt the progression of his symptoms was found. He wondered, not for the first time, if he'd be able to see this through to the end. If perhaps he'd have to keep his promise to Khari before the next year was out.
If Firstday a week from now would be his very last one.
But such thoughts were burdensome and unhelpful and so he did his best to discard them. He was due at Cyrus's for tea—a regular occurrence now. At first, it had been optimistically intended that the weekly appointments would be for progress reports on the other man's research, but when progress had proved slow, they hadn't ceased the visits, just... started talking about other things instead. Leon enjoyed them. More or less against his better instincts, Cyrus was his friend. As unwise as it was to have them anymore, he couldn't bring himself not to.
He rose slowly from his chair, pausing to make sure his legs would actually hold his weight before slowly crossing to the hook where his cloak hung, shuffling it around his shoulders with the speed and grace of a man much more ancient—which was to say almost none. He hoped that his recovery was merely slow, and that this was not his new baseline.
The winter wind hit him like a wall as he stepped out, chilling him to his core, but that wasn't anything too unusual. Less normal was the fact that he'd made it only halfway across the battlements before he had to halt, reaching out and placing a hand on one of the raised crenelations, a soft grunt escaping him as he eased some of the weight on his legs. Carver had slashed him along the outside of his thigh; that muscle was always the first one to tire, now. Leon's breath puffed out in large, uneven clouds, he swallowed back the taste of bile. His body didn't even feel like it belonged to him anymore. How long he'd taken his strength for granted. Not having it now... it was a blow to his pride as much as anything.
Funny, since he'd never really thought he had much by way of pride.
A couple soft steps could be heard padding their way up the stairs onto the wall behind him. The figure that appeared was hooded and wrapped in a heavy, thick cloak. Leon didn't need to see the man's face to know it was Romulus; he went almost nowhere without that cloak in the middle of winter, and he had rather uniquely steady movement besides. An eye appeared underneath the hood when he turned it up enough to get a look at Leon, but he was obviously shielding himself against the wind.
"I thought I'd check on you," he said, coming to a stop next to Leon. "Saw you leaving your office. Is this a bad time?" It wasn't the first time he'd come to see Leon since they returned from Kirkwall. He didn't seem to have any ulterior motive for the visits beyond simply talking. As though it was something he enjoyed practicing, even if he often struggled.
Leon tried to smile, though it looked more like a grimace than anything. With a couple deep breaths, he was able to push himself back off the crenelation and stand under his own power. "It's not the best of times," he admitted, "but you're welcome to come with me if you like. I was just heading to Cyrus's—I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you were there as well." They didn't do much but converse, and Leon was relatively sure that Cyrus and Romulus had some sort of rapport. There was respect there, at least.
Romulus nodded his agreement. For a moment it looked as though he planned to say something else, but whatever it was, he kept it to himself.
Progress across the wall was slow, due entirely to Leon's weakness, but Romulus was as steady now as he'd been on his way up the stairs, and didn't seem to mind slowing down for him, something he was grateful for. Even more helpful was the fact that nothing explicitly got asked about it. He wasn't sure he could handle giving the answers just now. No doubt Cyrus would want some kind of progress report when they arrived there anyway. Leon wouldn't begrudge him the update; it was important that he know.
He knocked only to inform his friend that he'd be entering, then did so without waiting for a response. Better, when the room's only occupant could be halfway inside his own head with whatever he was working on at the time. "Cyrus? I've brought a guest."
Cyrus did indeed look like he was partly somewhere else, but he blinked, snapping out of it more or less when Leon spoke. “Hm? Ah, Romulus. Nice to see you." He gestured at the group of chairs by the fire, then at the wall next to the door. “Cloak hooks are right there. I'll be with you in just a moment."
Snapping shut the book in his hands, he stacked it atop several others, humming thoughtfully to himself before flipping through a few of his loose parchments. One of them got a note in the corner—a series of numbers, by the look of it, but then he tucked the work and the thought both away and dropped into the chair directly across from Leon's.
Clasping his hands in front of his mouth, Cyrus tilted his head. Taking in the ways his appearance had deteriorated since the last time they spoke, no doubt. “I take it your symptoms are progressing apace."
"You guess correctly. Some of this is still the battle, but... recovering that slowly is a symptom itself, I'm sure of it." Leon had been injured enough times in the absence of healing magic—a relative luxury from his point of view—to know that this wasn't normal. Even with the magic, he was pulling himself together too slowly.
"Anything new on your end?" He knew Cyrus was working on a way to restore his own magic as well as a way to help Leon, and if only the former worked, well... that would still be enough. To have made the trip and retrieving the book worth it.
Cyrus nodded, a small smile curling his mouth. “Actually, yes. On both things. Though we'll talk about yours right now, because that's the big one."
He leaned forward in the chair, putting his elbows on his knees, and glanced between them. “I think I've discovered the crux of your problem. Remember when we discussed the spirit intervention part of the Vigil? I was collecting accounts of spirit-contact in preparation for—well, why's not important. The point is, I think you met the wrong spirit."
Leon sat back in his chair and considered it. He didn't really remember anything that had happened at the end of his Vigil, something that Cyrus knew and was apparently quite typical of the experience. "What do you mean the 'wrong spirit'? I thought all that was required was for some spirit or other to come in contact with the initiate."
Cyrus nodded. “That is all that's required, technically speaking. But different kinds of spirit have fundamentally different natures. It only makes sense that they would affect the process in different ways." He lifted his shoulders. “Bear with me, since this is only a hypothesis and I can't prove it, but I think you drew a different kind of spirit than most Seeker initiates do. All the sensible accounts I have of previous Vigils indicate that spirits of Faith were involved. Makes sense, right?"
Leon expelled a breath. "Sure, I suppose that tracks." Seekers were only ever drawn from the ranks of those who'd committed their lives to the service of the Maker. And most of the time, it took quite a lot of certainty in one's belief to make it through the training and reach the Vigil in the first place. "But you think that's not what happened in my case?"
“Precisely." Cyrus pointed over at his desk. “For accounts of what direct contact with other spirits was like, I had to go to much more dubious sources. Avvar records, cloaked in mystical language, about what their shamans do. A few historical accounts of people who allowed themselves to be temporarily possessed in battle. The personal journals of spirit healers, especially the ones who came to it outside a Circle—that sort of thing." He withdrew his hand, crossing it with his other over his chest.
“I think that when you were exposed to the Fade, it wasn't a spirit of Faith that answered. It was a spirit of Compassion. And the lingering effects of its interference are part of what made it physically impossible for you to kill someone without a dose of Reaver tonic."
That was... certainly something. He supposed it even made a certain amount of sense. Leon wasn't an expert on spirits, exactly, but of all the varieties he'd ever heard of, Compassion made the most sense as a reason he found it difficult to use lethal force. Doing so was contrary to the nature of that kind of being. Mercy was in that general family, if he recalled correctly. "But if this is a result of the Vigil after all... then it doesn't seem like there's any way to fix it. There's no going back from that process; my teachers did make that much clear, at least."
With a soft hum, Cyrus shook his head. “I don't think that's necessarily true. The issue isn't with the treatment, but the side-effects. Your Seeker talents are hardly dependent on maintaining your pacifism, as we all well know by this point." He smiled, a little wryly. “And you've been managing the side-effects rather well. The problem is that you've just been trading one inconvenience for another."
Romulus seemed to be following everything well enough, or at least as well as he could. He was also no expert on spirits or the Fade. He'd also finally managed to suppress the bit of shivering he'd been doing finally. Perhaps he should've kept his cloak on longer. "So do you have a theory then?" he asked. "Is there a way to remove the side effects?"
“Well..." Here Cyrus had the humility to look rather uncertain. “The Reaver tonic has proven effective. It's also demonstrably true that blood magic like that is more potent depending on the blood used. In theory at least, a sufficiently-potent version of it should be able to permanently suppress the Compassion problem. No repetition required." He glanced between them, clearing his throat. “Of course, when I say the 'Compassion problem,' I'm not sure exactly what degree of change would be wrought, so..."
Leon grimaced, reaching up to rub at his jaw with his left hand. He was halfway to a beard at this point; he'd have to take a razor to his face, soon, if he could get his hands to stay steady long enough. "You mean there's a chance it could do more than that?" He didn't want to waste away until his death, but he thought even less that he wanted to lose himself permanently to the same kind of brutality that overtook him when he dosed himself with the tonic. But that might all be beside the point anyway.
"And this more potent version of the tonic... what would be required to make it? I doubt even Rilien just has what we'd need sitting around in his workshop."
“High dragon blood, as it turns out. One of the strongest alchemical reagents in existence, and obviously not a simple matter to acquire. That said, if we could manage to track one down and kill it, there would be enough that Rilien and I could experiment with the formula before you had to take any actual risks." Cyrus's lips thinned. “Of course... it would be a risk. Only you're in a position to decide if it's worth pursuing. But if you want to try it, I'll do everything I can to get it right. I can't promise success, but—" He exhaled sharply. “But I'll do my best."
Leon could tell he wasn't saying that lightly. He supposed that if there was even the remotest possibility of success, Cyrus and Rilien would be able to find it. But the issue was that there were many, many ways for it to go wrong. Still, what other choice was there? He was dying, faster every day, and even if they solved the problem tomorrow, Leon had no way of knowing if his recovery would ever be complete. Holding off for too long could cripple him permanently; holding off a little longer than that would just kill him. It was a rather bleak picture.
"A high dragon..." That was no easy task, either. What would he even be risking to attempt to slay such a creature? More lives than just his, to be sure. Shaking his head, he turned to Romulus. "I'd welcome your thoughts on this, if you'd share them."
Romulus took in the information evenly, as he usually did, weighing things quietly to himself. He didn't seem to need to think on it very long, however. "I'll kill what needs to be killed if it'll help you," he said, as though the high dragon in question was a far more simple target. He wasn't really equipped for such a fight, but no doubt his mark could do some damage, even to a dragon. "I worry that it won't help you, and what we might have to lose for the chance, but... we all still need you. As the Commander, and otherwise. You're worth the risk, and I know the others will agree."
Leon considered that for a long moment. He could see the sense in it—he nearly always did, when it was Romulus's words he was examining. Still, though...
"I suppose the first thing is telling the scouts to be on the lookout for dragons, then," he said on a heavy exhale. "Absurd as it sounds to say that." With some effort, he pushed himself upright from the chair, reaching for his cloak.
"Thank you both. I'll... I'll start thinking about how we ought to approach this. In the meantime, I suppose I'll see you next week, Cyrus."
It hadn't exactly given him anything else to do at the moment, but he knew the discussion would weigh heavily in his thoughts for some time to come.