In the wake of Amalia and Lia's passage, Cyrus was forced to drop the stairs again and help out with the encroaching Venatori. That there were still so many spoke badly for the sentinels; he wasn't sure how many of them were still alive, but he knew he'd done the right thing in helping those two pull away from the main fight and run after Marcus. He wasn't sure what the history was there, but he did know the Venatori's leader would be reaching the Well over two dead bodies or not at all, and that was more of a chance than they'd have had otherwise.
He tried not to think about the 'two dead bodies' part overmuch.
Fortunately, the force of sentinels here combined with what the Inquisition had sent was more than enough to dispatch the soldiers, especially after the stones had ceased flying around. Once the last one had fallen, Cyrus turned to his comrades; he'd seen Vesryn take a nasty hit earlier, and he wasn't sure how the rest had fared in the meantime.
Stellulam appeared to have come out of things mostly intact. There was a new gash across her forehead, and a heavy smear where she'd clearly had to wipe blood out of her eyes, but other than that and obvious fatigue, she didn't seem to be sporting any particular injuries. She met his eyes briefly, but it took little time for her attention to revert to her beloved.
Zahra kept vigil near the mouth of the hallway and seemed to be absently wiping at her brow. A pool of red stained the front of her tunic and had spread down her collarbone, though no wound was readily evident until she turned to look over her shoulder. Someone had managed to get close enough to slash a nasty cut below her cheekbone, deep enough to weep down her chin and drip off. A weary smile pulled on her lips as she saw Cyrus lower the stairs, but faltered as soon as her gaze dropped onto Vesryn and the others, milling at his side.
"He's not waking up." The words came from Astraia, laced with panic. She still knelt at Vesryn's side, her staff laid to the ground there, tears already streaking down her face. "He should be awake, I healed him and he's not dead. He's not waking—" She gasped as Vesryn did quite suddenly wake up, clearly in a great deal of distress. Once he was able to ascertain that none of the others were dead, it became clear that it was just a tremendous amount of physical pain he was dealing with. Even without the agony Saraya was causing him, he'd just been smashed by a large chunk of flying stone, after all.
"We need... to move," he managed, trying to force himself to his feet. Astraia wiped at her eyes, picking up her staff and helping him. "The army didn't hold them outside, so more must be coming. Corypheus must be..." He winced, unable to finish the sentence, but he didn't need to.
"The Well of Sorrows is not far," Abelas assured them, regarding Vesryn with an expression that was plainly conflicted. "We must proceed. Even if your allies survived against their foe, we do not have long."
Cyrus grimaced; Abelas was right, and so was Vesryn. Jogging back over to the stones, he reached once more into the fade—easy here, so easy—and lofted them to form a pathway up. “Hurry, then." He waited for the others to precede him up the stairs, Harellan and Abelas in the lead, then took up the rear behind them.
The staircase crumbled behind him as he released the magic, spitting them out onto what looked to be a paved trail forward. Not too far ahead, he could see a stone wall, covered in climbing ivy and flowering plants, a gap in it corresponding exactly with the path. More disturbingly, perhaps, he could hear... whispers. They tickled his ears, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. In the archaic elven tongue to a one, but for him that was no obstacle. Rather it was the softness of them, and the multitudes, that prevented him from picking out what many of them were saying.
He could almost feel something brushing against him, stirring his sleeves just faintly, another ghosting over the skin of his cheek where his helm had come away earlier in the fight. He swallowed, a weight he could not quite describe settling over his shoulders. The whispers mourned, but they also beckoned, and that was the far more dangerous thing.
Cyrus snapped out of it only when they came upon Lia and Amalia, alive but only barely so from the looks of it, particularly in the latter case. The corpse next to her could only have been Marcus, though, his mask ripped away and charcoaled face exposed to the sun. The handle of a white dagger protruded still from his flesh, more scorch marks around the entry wound, but whatever enchantment had made them now cool.
"She needs healing," Lia said quietly, her voice little more than a whisper. She was holding Amalia around the shoulders, seemingly unsure what to do with her, as the other woman had passed out from her injuries. Lia herself looked to be in a significant amount of pain, but nothing at least that appeared immediately life-threatening.
Astraia was quite obviously exhausted emotionally, and likely pushing the limits of her magical reserves, but she blinked a few times and stepped to it, pausing a moment to examine the extent of the damage. She glanced up at the entrance ahead, at how Abelas was not pausing for the wounded. "We have to get her inside, we can't stay here long. Help me move her."
Lia nodded, turning first to the corpse of the Venatori leader on the ground. She regarded him for a moment, nothing but disgust on her face. She spat down on him, and pulled the knife free from his chest, wiping it off and sheathing it before she helped Astraia lift.
Despite Amalia's relatively modest weight, the two of them had difficulty carrying her in, between Lia's injuries and Astraia's diminutive size and exhaustion. As soon as they were in, however, they carefully lowered Amalia down, and Astraia focused on keeping her stable.
Though Cyrus felt a flare of concern, strange as that still was, it was quickly... overwhelmed. The whispers were louder here, so loud he almost couldn't hear himself think. He wondered how it was that no one else seemed to be hearing them, but the answer was obvious enough once he gave it a moment of thought. It would certainly not be the first time he'd felt too keenly the spirits of the dead.
The Well itself was less a well and more a pool, by Cyrus's reckoning, and most definitely the source of the whispers. Harellan stopped a respectful distance from the edge, eyes fixed for a moment on the depths before they lifted to the eluvian on the other side of the pool from where they now stood. "Ah. I see now. The vir'abelasan is the key to that eluvian as well." The inference he intended for them to draw was obvious: the mirror would be an effective way back to Skyhold, if and when they wished to take it.
But that assumed a particular answer to a very important question. “And what, exactly, do we do with it?"
Harellan hummed, shifting to face Abelas. "What think you, sentinel? There is no stopping the tide. Corypheus's soldiers will make it here, at the cost of many more lives. There is no keeping it safe and intact."
He regarded the Well from its edge for a long moment, drawing back his hood once more. There was clearly conflict in him; despite how steadfast he'd been in his desire to keep the Well out of any hands earlier, he now wavered. Something he'd seen in them, perhaps, or in the cruelty of the battle itself.
Finally, he looked back to Harellan. "Our people yet linger, then? Somewhere beyond these walls?"
"In Arlathan." Harellan's voice softened, until it was weighed down by a hint of sorrow. "Much is lost, but more is remembered than you might think. We keep the old ways, relearn the old knowledge. If there is anyone who can use what is here, bring it back into the world where it belongs, it is we." He tilted his head. "And you deserve to be relieved of your burdens, sentinel. After all this time, all this faithful service—the People will know, now, and never again forget."
A heavy breath left him, and with it a sort of weight, something he'd been carrying around with him for a very long time indeed. "Then it is finished. And perhaps hope yet remains after all." He regarded the group as a whole, eyes passing over all those present, before they returned to Harellan. "You would claim the Well for yourself, then? It can only pass to one. After that, it will be gone, rendered unusable by this Corypheus and any who might come after."
Harellan shook his head slowly. "No, not I, I think." He half-turned, to regard the others steadily. "We are here at the intersection of two causes. It should go to someone with a stake in both, a stake greater than mine in the Inquisition." His eyes flickered back and forth between Cyrus and Estella. "Both of my brother's children are mages, both trained in the ancestral arts. And both, I daresay, are bound far more tightly in the fabric of the fight against Corypheus than I could ever be. It ought fall to one of them."
Stellulam's eyes immediately went wide; it was clear enough to Cyrus that the prospect of shouldering this responsibility did not sit easily with her. "I don't think—" she paused, clearly more than a little discombobulated. "If it's the magic that matters, the knowledge... I don't think I'm the most qualified to understand it. Maybe it—it shouldn't be me."
Frankly, Cyrus didn't think it should be him, either. It seemed like the sort of thing that—well, the sort of thing he would have sought without a moment's hesitation or care in the past. Power. Knowledge. The answers to so many questions, some that he probably didn't even know enough to ask. And there was no mistaking that on some level, he would be well-suited to the task. His background knowledge was extensive, his magic more than a mere echo of what elves had once had at their fingertips. All of this, Harellan had made abundantly clear, when he wasn't driving him to improve it further still.
And yet.
He knew so well the feeling of temptation by power that now he feared seeking it at all. “I... don't know if I ought." The murmur was soft. “I have not been the most judicious in the past, and it seems... even if it's possible to be worthy of such a thing, I do not think I of all people am."
"You are." Stellulam said it quick on the heels of his expression of doubt, like she'd known it was coming and barely managed to hold her tongue. "That fact that you aren't sure makes me even more certain, Cy. If I know anyone who can handle whatever's in this Well, it's you." She offered a smile, a bit thin considering the strain of the circumstances, but wholly genuine all the same.
Doubt still wound around his chest like a vine, threatening to strangle something new and tender in him. His comfort with who he was, perhaps—that was certainly fresh enough to qualify. Cyrus exhaled a shaky breath. His brows furrowed; he looked momentarily to Abelas. “...I'll do it. Provided you've no objections." He wasn't sure if he wanted there to be one or not. Wasn't sure if he desired, in this moment, to be looked upon as he had been among the elves remaining in Arlathan. Lesser, for the human cast of him. The human upbringing. The obvious way in which he did not, could not, fit among an entire half of his ancestry.
It might have been convenient, though he'd little idea where it would leave them. He certainly did not desire to burden any of the other elves in the company with this. There was no telling what it would do to Vesryn in his weakened state, Lia lacked magic, and talented as Astraia was... if the myriad whispers were anything to go by, this was going to constitute an unpleasantness he would not wish upon her.
He deliberated on it for a moment. It was possible he wasn't entirely fond of the idea given that Cyrus wasn't exactly elvhen like he and Harellan were, but his blood relation still had to count for something. He didn't seem settled either way, though.
Surprisingly, his eyes went to Vesryn next. "Does Marellanas vouch for him?"
That shocked Vesryn, to say the least. He'd been hovering close to Stellulam, and at the mention of the name it looked like he had trouble standing for a moment. No doubt another foreign reaction from inside his own head. "You... want her opinion on this?"
Abelas's look was a difficult one to read. "She knows him well, does she not? If she has been with you for a long period of time?" Vesryn nodded to that, prompting Abelas to continue. "Then... her opinion is the one I need. Foolish as it may sound... she is the one I will trust."
There were tears springing to Vesryn's eyes, enough that he actually broke half a smile, and struggled to form the words he wanted. "She... she vouches for him, yes. I can't relay exact words, but... few people in all of her years have surprised her more. She trusts him. And I trust him."
"Then it is decided." Abelas nodded, appearing to be holding back several emotions. "As this is the last time we will see one another, and I did not get a chance to say this before... before everything. I am sorry for what became of Marellanas. We were a people in great pain, but no one could ever deserve what she has endured. She has paid for her crimes, as you said."
Vesryn's face was stained with tears now, as was Astraia's in the back of the group, where she still worked to heal Amalia. "Thank you," Vesryn said, swallowing. "She... she missed you. I know that if she could speak, she would let you hear the sound of your true name again."
At that, Abelas smiled, if only slightly. "Perhaps that day will still come." He paused, struggling with something. "I hope... that with whatever time you have left, you are able to find peace." Drawing himself up again, he nodded to Harellan and Cyrus.
"I must take my leave, and ensure my sentinels are able to withdraw. I leave the vir'abelasan to you. I would advise haste. This Corypheus cannot be far now."
"Ma serannas, Abelas. Malas amelin ne halam." Harellan inclined his head.
Cyrus might have shared the sentiment, but he was too busy being rather surprised—and surprisingly moved—by Vesryn's words. And Saraya's through him. He swallowed thickly, managing only a jerky nod by way of thanks. Far less than he wanted, but about all he could handle, at just this moment.
And it was an urgent one. His eyes fell once more to the Well; the whispers accelerated, and over them he could hear the distant sound of more fighting. Corypheus would not be along now. Cyrus could almost feel the way he warped the Veil around him, or the way the focus did. It hardly mattered which. Closing his eyes, he pulled in a deep breath, letting the sensation of being near to it guide his steps instead of relying on his eyes. He sensed it when the toes of his boots hit the water, but he was still being bid forward, and so he went: ankle deep, then knee deep, and then to the very center, where the water lapped against his waist. How strange it was—he could detect it both in the physical world and the fade, as though he stood now in both at once.
Blinking his eyes back open, he stared down into the water in front of him, temporarily entranced by the strange double-color of it: here it was clear, showing through to the deep grey-blue of the slate tiles beneath it. But there it was deep, emerald green, shifting with lights in peridot, sage, and gold, and he felt it almost hum where it touched him, the low notes of some song too quiet to properly hear reverberating through his skin. Though intellectually he understood that he was in a hurry, he just couldn't make himself rush the process.
Bringing his hands in front of him, he cupped them together and dipped them into the water, bringing it up to his face and drinking deeply. It didn't taste like water at all, not really. Instead it burst over his tongue like honey-flavored liquor, with an aftertaste like the memory of pipe-smoke.
No sooner had he swallowed than pain lanced through his head, as though someone had struck him with lightning square in the brow. His vision whited out entirely, the voices speeding up until it was incomprehensible garbling, the song growing louder until his hearing went, too, his body numb and deprived of all sense for some amount of time he could not measure.
But then it was as though something snapped into place, with the same sense of rightness as a puzzle slotted together or an old glove fitted over the hand that had molded it or the final move in the first chess match he'd ever won against Khari. An epiphany, a sudden realization that everything was exactly as it was meant to be, and everything would be in its time. Cyrus snapped back into his own body, anchored once more in the physical sensations of the temple, and swallowed hard.
“He's coming. Everyone, through the Eluvian—quickly." He would have to be last.
The sounds of fighting did indeed draw nearer—and then a rumble that could have only been the staircase reassembling again. If that was Corypheus, they had seconds. Stellulam stepped back into Vesryn's side, spell-lit hands a sure sign that she was pouring just about all the magic she had left into helping him move. They stumbled into the eluvian first, turning sideways so they could fit through still attached to each other.
Harellan helped the other two with Amalia, still unconscious, and Zahra filed in after them. No sooner had Cyrus moved than the water moved of its own accord, gathering at the center of the Well where he'd been standing. He had time only to spare one glance over his shoulder—it seemed to have formed into a lithe, feminine figure even as Corypheus entered the sanctum. He glimpsed only the figure shooting forward, heard only the darkspawn's cry of rage, before the Between swallowed him, and they were gone from his senses.
He tried not to think about the 'two dead bodies' part overmuch.
Fortunately, the force of sentinels here combined with what the Inquisition had sent was more than enough to dispatch the soldiers, especially after the stones had ceased flying around. Once the last one had fallen, Cyrus turned to his comrades; he'd seen Vesryn take a nasty hit earlier, and he wasn't sure how the rest had fared in the meantime.
Stellulam appeared to have come out of things mostly intact. There was a new gash across her forehead, and a heavy smear where she'd clearly had to wipe blood out of her eyes, but other than that and obvious fatigue, she didn't seem to be sporting any particular injuries. She met his eyes briefly, but it took little time for her attention to revert to her beloved.
Zahra kept vigil near the mouth of the hallway and seemed to be absently wiping at her brow. A pool of red stained the front of her tunic and had spread down her collarbone, though no wound was readily evident until she turned to look over her shoulder. Someone had managed to get close enough to slash a nasty cut below her cheekbone, deep enough to weep down her chin and drip off. A weary smile pulled on her lips as she saw Cyrus lower the stairs, but faltered as soon as her gaze dropped onto Vesryn and the others, milling at his side.
"He's not waking up." The words came from Astraia, laced with panic. She still knelt at Vesryn's side, her staff laid to the ground there, tears already streaking down her face. "He should be awake, I healed him and he's not dead. He's not waking—" She gasped as Vesryn did quite suddenly wake up, clearly in a great deal of distress. Once he was able to ascertain that none of the others were dead, it became clear that it was just a tremendous amount of physical pain he was dealing with. Even without the agony Saraya was causing him, he'd just been smashed by a large chunk of flying stone, after all.
"We need... to move," he managed, trying to force himself to his feet. Astraia wiped at her eyes, picking up her staff and helping him. "The army didn't hold them outside, so more must be coming. Corypheus must be..." He winced, unable to finish the sentence, but he didn't need to.
"The Well of Sorrows is not far," Abelas assured them, regarding Vesryn with an expression that was plainly conflicted. "We must proceed. Even if your allies survived against their foe, we do not have long."
Cyrus grimaced; Abelas was right, and so was Vesryn. Jogging back over to the stones, he reached once more into the fade—easy here, so easy—and lofted them to form a pathway up. “Hurry, then." He waited for the others to precede him up the stairs, Harellan and Abelas in the lead, then took up the rear behind them.
The staircase crumbled behind him as he released the magic, spitting them out onto what looked to be a paved trail forward. Not too far ahead, he could see a stone wall, covered in climbing ivy and flowering plants, a gap in it corresponding exactly with the path. More disturbingly, perhaps, he could hear... whispers. They tickled his ears, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. In the archaic elven tongue to a one, but for him that was no obstacle. Rather it was the softness of them, and the multitudes, that prevented him from picking out what many of them were saying.
He could almost feel something brushing against him, stirring his sleeves just faintly, another ghosting over the skin of his cheek where his helm had come away earlier in the fight. He swallowed, a weight he could not quite describe settling over his shoulders. The whispers mourned, but they also beckoned, and that was the far more dangerous thing.
Cyrus snapped out of it only when they came upon Lia and Amalia, alive but only barely so from the looks of it, particularly in the latter case. The corpse next to her could only have been Marcus, though, his mask ripped away and charcoaled face exposed to the sun. The handle of a white dagger protruded still from his flesh, more scorch marks around the entry wound, but whatever enchantment had made them now cool.
"She needs healing," Lia said quietly, her voice little more than a whisper. She was holding Amalia around the shoulders, seemingly unsure what to do with her, as the other woman had passed out from her injuries. Lia herself looked to be in a significant amount of pain, but nothing at least that appeared immediately life-threatening.
Astraia was quite obviously exhausted emotionally, and likely pushing the limits of her magical reserves, but she blinked a few times and stepped to it, pausing a moment to examine the extent of the damage. She glanced up at the entrance ahead, at how Abelas was not pausing for the wounded. "We have to get her inside, we can't stay here long. Help me move her."
Lia nodded, turning first to the corpse of the Venatori leader on the ground. She regarded him for a moment, nothing but disgust on her face. She spat down on him, and pulled the knife free from his chest, wiping it off and sheathing it before she helped Astraia lift.
Despite Amalia's relatively modest weight, the two of them had difficulty carrying her in, between Lia's injuries and Astraia's diminutive size and exhaustion. As soon as they were in, however, they carefully lowered Amalia down, and Astraia focused on keeping her stable.
Though Cyrus felt a flare of concern, strange as that still was, it was quickly... overwhelmed. The whispers were louder here, so loud he almost couldn't hear himself think. He wondered how it was that no one else seemed to be hearing them, but the answer was obvious enough once he gave it a moment of thought. It would certainly not be the first time he'd felt too keenly the spirits of the dead.
The Well itself was less a well and more a pool, by Cyrus's reckoning, and most definitely the source of the whispers. Harellan stopped a respectful distance from the edge, eyes fixed for a moment on the depths before they lifted to the eluvian on the other side of the pool from where they now stood. "Ah. I see now. The vir'abelasan is the key to that eluvian as well." The inference he intended for them to draw was obvious: the mirror would be an effective way back to Skyhold, if and when they wished to take it.
But that assumed a particular answer to a very important question. “And what, exactly, do we do with it?"
Harellan hummed, shifting to face Abelas. "What think you, sentinel? There is no stopping the tide. Corypheus's soldiers will make it here, at the cost of many more lives. There is no keeping it safe and intact."
He regarded the Well from its edge for a long moment, drawing back his hood once more. There was clearly conflict in him; despite how steadfast he'd been in his desire to keep the Well out of any hands earlier, he now wavered. Something he'd seen in them, perhaps, or in the cruelty of the battle itself.
Finally, he looked back to Harellan. "Our people yet linger, then? Somewhere beyond these walls?"
"In Arlathan." Harellan's voice softened, until it was weighed down by a hint of sorrow. "Much is lost, but more is remembered than you might think. We keep the old ways, relearn the old knowledge. If there is anyone who can use what is here, bring it back into the world where it belongs, it is we." He tilted his head. "And you deserve to be relieved of your burdens, sentinel. After all this time, all this faithful service—the People will know, now, and never again forget."
A heavy breath left him, and with it a sort of weight, something he'd been carrying around with him for a very long time indeed. "Then it is finished. And perhaps hope yet remains after all." He regarded the group as a whole, eyes passing over all those present, before they returned to Harellan. "You would claim the Well for yourself, then? It can only pass to one. After that, it will be gone, rendered unusable by this Corypheus and any who might come after."
Harellan shook his head slowly. "No, not I, I think." He half-turned, to regard the others steadily. "We are here at the intersection of two causes. It should go to someone with a stake in both, a stake greater than mine in the Inquisition." His eyes flickered back and forth between Cyrus and Estella. "Both of my brother's children are mages, both trained in the ancestral arts. And both, I daresay, are bound far more tightly in the fabric of the fight against Corypheus than I could ever be. It ought fall to one of them."
Stellulam's eyes immediately went wide; it was clear enough to Cyrus that the prospect of shouldering this responsibility did not sit easily with her. "I don't think—" she paused, clearly more than a little discombobulated. "If it's the magic that matters, the knowledge... I don't think I'm the most qualified to understand it. Maybe it—it shouldn't be me."
Frankly, Cyrus didn't think it should be him, either. It seemed like the sort of thing that—well, the sort of thing he would have sought without a moment's hesitation or care in the past. Power. Knowledge. The answers to so many questions, some that he probably didn't even know enough to ask. And there was no mistaking that on some level, he would be well-suited to the task. His background knowledge was extensive, his magic more than a mere echo of what elves had once had at their fingertips. All of this, Harellan had made abundantly clear, when he wasn't driving him to improve it further still.
And yet.
He knew so well the feeling of temptation by power that now he feared seeking it at all. “I... don't know if I ought." The murmur was soft. “I have not been the most judicious in the past, and it seems... even if it's possible to be worthy of such a thing, I do not think I of all people am."
"You are." Stellulam said it quick on the heels of his expression of doubt, like she'd known it was coming and barely managed to hold her tongue. "That fact that you aren't sure makes me even more certain, Cy. If I know anyone who can handle whatever's in this Well, it's you." She offered a smile, a bit thin considering the strain of the circumstances, but wholly genuine all the same.
Doubt still wound around his chest like a vine, threatening to strangle something new and tender in him. His comfort with who he was, perhaps—that was certainly fresh enough to qualify. Cyrus exhaled a shaky breath. His brows furrowed; he looked momentarily to Abelas. “...I'll do it. Provided you've no objections." He wasn't sure if he wanted there to be one or not. Wasn't sure if he desired, in this moment, to be looked upon as he had been among the elves remaining in Arlathan. Lesser, for the human cast of him. The human upbringing. The obvious way in which he did not, could not, fit among an entire half of his ancestry.
It might have been convenient, though he'd little idea where it would leave them. He certainly did not desire to burden any of the other elves in the company with this. There was no telling what it would do to Vesryn in his weakened state, Lia lacked magic, and talented as Astraia was... if the myriad whispers were anything to go by, this was going to constitute an unpleasantness he would not wish upon her.
He deliberated on it for a moment. It was possible he wasn't entirely fond of the idea given that Cyrus wasn't exactly elvhen like he and Harellan were, but his blood relation still had to count for something. He didn't seem settled either way, though.
Surprisingly, his eyes went to Vesryn next. "Does Marellanas vouch for him?"
That shocked Vesryn, to say the least. He'd been hovering close to Stellulam, and at the mention of the name it looked like he had trouble standing for a moment. No doubt another foreign reaction from inside his own head. "You... want her opinion on this?"
Abelas's look was a difficult one to read. "She knows him well, does she not? If she has been with you for a long period of time?" Vesryn nodded to that, prompting Abelas to continue. "Then... her opinion is the one I need. Foolish as it may sound... she is the one I will trust."
There were tears springing to Vesryn's eyes, enough that he actually broke half a smile, and struggled to form the words he wanted. "She... she vouches for him, yes. I can't relay exact words, but... few people in all of her years have surprised her more. She trusts him. And I trust him."
"Then it is decided." Abelas nodded, appearing to be holding back several emotions. "As this is the last time we will see one another, and I did not get a chance to say this before... before everything. I am sorry for what became of Marellanas. We were a people in great pain, but no one could ever deserve what she has endured. She has paid for her crimes, as you said."
Vesryn's face was stained with tears now, as was Astraia's in the back of the group, where she still worked to heal Amalia. "Thank you," Vesryn said, swallowing. "She... she missed you. I know that if she could speak, she would let you hear the sound of your true name again."
At that, Abelas smiled, if only slightly. "Perhaps that day will still come." He paused, struggling with something. "I hope... that with whatever time you have left, you are able to find peace." Drawing himself up again, he nodded to Harellan and Cyrus.
"I must take my leave, and ensure my sentinels are able to withdraw. I leave the vir'abelasan to you. I would advise haste. This Corypheus cannot be far now."
"Ma serannas, Abelas. Malas amelin ne halam." Harellan inclined his head.
Cyrus might have shared the sentiment, but he was too busy being rather surprised—and surprisingly moved—by Vesryn's words. And Saraya's through him. He swallowed thickly, managing only a jerky nod by way of thanks. Far less than he wanted, but about all he could handle, at just this moment.
And it was an urgent one. His eyes fell once more to the Well; the whispers accelerated, and over them he could hear the distant sound of more fighting. Corypheus would not be along now. Cyrus could almost feel the way he warped the Veil around him, or the way the focus did. It hardly mattered which. Closing his eyes, he pulled in a deep breath, letting the sensation of being near to it guide his steps instead of relying on his eyes. He sensed it when the toes of his boots hit the water, but he was still being bid forward, and so he went: ankle deep, then knee deep, and then to the very center, where the water lapped against his waist. How strange it was—he could detect it both in the physical world and the fade, as though he stood now in both at once.
Blinking his eyes back open, he stared down into the water in front of him, temporarily entranced by the strange double-color of it: here it was clear, showing through to the deep grey-blue of the slate tiles beneath it. But there it was deep, emerald green, shifting with lights in peridot, sage, and gold, and he felt it almost hum where it touched him, the low notes of some song too quiet to properly hear reverberating through his skin. Though intellectually he understood that he was in a hurry, he just couldn't make himself rush the process.
Bringing his hands in front of him, he cupped them together and dipped them into the water, bringing it up to his face and drinking deeply. It didn't taste like water at all, not really. Instead it burst over his tongue like honey-flavored liquor, with an aftertaste like the memory of pipe-smoke.
No sooner had he swallowed than pain lanced through his head, as though someone had struck him with lightning square in the brow. His vision whited out entirely, the voices speeding up until it was incomprehensible garbling, the song growing louder until his hearing went, too, his body numb and deprived of all sense for some amount of time he could not measure.
But then it was as though something snapped into place, with the same sense of rightness as a puzzle slotted together or an old glove fitted over the hand that had molded it or the final move in the first chess match he'd ever won against Khari. An epiphany, a sudden realization that everything was exactly as it was meant to be, and everything would be in its time. Cyrus snapped back into his own body, anchored once more in the physical sensations of the temple, and swallowed hard.
“He's coming. Everyone, through the Eluvian—quickly." He would have to be last.
The sounds of fighting did indeed draw nearer—and then a rumble that could have only been the staircase reassembling again. If that was Corypheus, they had seconds. Stellulam stepped back into Vesryn's side, spell-lit hands a sure sign that she was pouring just about all the magic she had left into helping him move. They stumbled into the eluvian first, turning sideways so they could fit through still attached to each other.
Harellan helped the other two with Amalia, still unconscious, and Zahra filed in after them. No sooner had Cyrus moved than the water moved of its own accord, gathering at the center of the Well where he'd been standing. He had time only to spare one glance over his shoulder—it seemed to have formed into a lithe, feminine figure even as Corypheus entered the sanctum. He glimpsed only the figure shooting forward, heard only the darkspawn's cry of rage, before the Between swallowed him, and they were gone from his senses.