Leon watched Estella's crystal flicker out, Khari's likeness disappearing from its green-tinged surface. The Lady Inquisitor tucked it away with a grimace, one the Commander could not help but echo on his own face. "Qunari explosives... moved into Halamshiral with our supplies." Her brow furrowed. "There's no way that happened without at least a few spies in our ranks."
With a nod, Leon glanced down at one of the Qunari bodies now still on their side of the bridge. "No doubt meant to help us take the blame in the event the explosion they were intended for took place. We might take some anyway." The risk alone would be more fuel for Arl Teagan's fire, no doubt. It meant that they now needed to make a much more thorough exploration of the terrain ahead—as Khari had said, access to even a part of the eluvian network meant that the Qunari could have moved their gaatlok to more than one place, planned more than one attack.
It's what Leon would have done, in their position. Ideally, one massive blow to every seat of government in Thedas: Val Royeaux, Denerim, Minrathous, Antiva City, Dairsmuid, Hossberg, Nevarra City—probably Ostwick, Kirkwall, and Starkhaven as well. It was hard to imagine them having access to all of those places, but even one or two would be a devastating blow. No doubt exactly what they intended. The Qunari were not known for indecisiveness or tentative strikes.
Estella sighed, glancing down at her mark and frowning. "Well, whatever the reason, we still have to go forward. Let's see what had the Qunari so interested earlier."
It was still there, the formless collection of blue mist. As they drew closer, Leon could tell that it was smaller than he was, but larger than most of the others, and it moved, stirring intermittently as if shifted about by an unfelt breeze.
As soon as Estella had stepped off the bridge, however, it reacted, shuddering and beginning to thicken, coalesce until it took on a humanoid shape. A very familiar one, too—by the time they drew within striking distance, it looked very much like Cyrus, only leached of most of his color and semitransparent, faded and bluish at the edges. The apparition appraised them in silence for a moment; though it bore his face, its manner of dress was decidedly different. Gone was the Tevinter-styled armor, replaced with something that fit closer, almost like a second, metallic skin. The similarities to Vesryn's plate were apparent, but Cyrus's was lighter, obscured in places by blue and green fabric.
He regarded them expectantly, but did not speak.
"Cyrus?" Estella froze for a moment, returning the apparition's regard with wide-eyed confusion. "Is that—are you—what's happening?" She took a step forward, reaching out as if to touch him, but her fingers sank into the mist with what looked like only a little resistance, and she snapped her hand back as if burned.
His expression shifted, brows knitting. Reaching up, he touched his lips with his fingertips and shook his head.
"If there was any doubt before, this confirms that Cyrus is involved somehow." Romulus studied the misty projection. "What is this, though? Is it really him? Or some magic left behind?"
"I've never seen anything like it." Astraia stepped forward slowly until she was next to Estella, turning one hand over and touching it lightly against the projection's chest, letting it sink through a few inches before she withdrew it again.
For all that it could not speak, the apparition seemed to have some resemblance to Cyrus's personality; it glanced down at Astraia's hand and arched an eyebrow, a wry smile touching the corner of its mouth. After a moment, it moved its attention to Asala, pointing to her with one hand and gaining a look of intent concentration. It shimmered, its primary hues shifting momentarily from blue to pink, then back. It let one hand hover near elbow height, then pushed it down, indicating small size, perhaps?
Asala pointed to herself moments after Cyrus's shade did, and appeared surprised and maybe even a bit confused that he'd do that. She watched the next few moments with arched brows, trying to glean whatever he was trying to tell them. She tilted her head and then held up her hand, turning it over before coating it in her particular pink hued magic, the same color that Cyrus had been moments ago. She stared at it for a moment before letting it fade, and glancing up to Cyrus. "Ethne?" Asala asked. Leon knew the name, as it was that of the spirit they had met in their dreams in order to aid Asala in becoming a spirit healer.
"You are saying you're like Ethne? But... Smaller?" She asked, her head tilted quizzically.
It grimaced, something about the answer not quite satisfactory, but then shrugged.
"Like a spirit, you mean?" Astraia had worked with Asala more than enough to learn of that source of her healing power. She pulled her staff to her chest and tilted her head sideways against it. "Or something similar."
"We saw a spirit mimic a person in the Fade," Romulus pointed out. "One appeared to us as Divine Justinia. She looked... significantly more real than this. I'm not sure it's a spirit."
"Regardless, the Qunari didn't seem too fond of it." Vesryn seemed to be tired of the guesswork. "And it doesn't seem dangerous to us. So we might want to ask some questions. I've some experience with these kinds of conversations; they can take a while to get anywhere."
"Probably best to stick to yes or no questions," Leon added. While the apparition was expressive enough to remind him quite keenly of his friend, there was no doubt that trying to decipher the answers to complex queries was not going to work out very well.
When no one else immediately supplied anything, he took the first himself. "Were you... left here for us in particular?" He wasn't sure what to call it. Left, put—maybe just waiting would have been better. But it would certainly hope to know if Cyrus had meant for them to make it this far.
The apparition nodded, then pointed back across the bridge to the dead Qunari and drew its thumb over its throat in a very clear gesture.
"You... knew the Qunari were planning to use the gaatlok?" Estella's question was more of a reach, but she seemed relatively confident in it. "You injured that other one, didn't you? The one that came through the eluvian into Halamshiral—to warn us? Or well, the real you did those things, I mean."
More nods, then the apparition gestured over its shoulder at the half-ruined castle, turning halfway towards it and beckoning for them to follow it. As they approached the castle, the sheer scale of it became more apparent: it was gigantic, to the point where it wasn't completely clear if such architecture could exist fully in the ordinary world. It soared over their heads, and yet the stone it was made of seemed light, almost delicate, and vaguely crystalline, much too brittle to hold all that weight with ordinary concerns about gravity and weather.
The massive front doors stood slightly open, just enough for the party to slip through, and if it had seemed vaguely unreal before, the inside was utterly fantastical: in places the walls had disappeared, staicases ended halfway up only to reappear dozens of feet higher and upside down, laws of logic and physics alike defied. It looked like nothing so much as the more artistic drawings in Cyrus's workshop, the ones where watercolors bled all over parchment rather than those with precise charcoal lines and squared corners. The general blurriness of the Crossroads wasn't helping Leon make any better sense of it, though most of the others apparently didn't have quite the same problems.
The area into which they first entered looked to be an atrium or something, its ceiling once a vaulted dome, the center of it tiled in colored glass, some sort of mosaic pattern throwing dyed light onto the white marble floors. Crystal columns were in places intact, others shattered; part of the dome had come away, and the walls exposed further rooms beyond. The far wall, what had once been a grand double staircase, was now in fragments, open air beckoning the brave to tread them and see where they might lead.
Each wall bore frescoes, desaturated to Leon's eyes, but all bearing scenes of battle or rest, dragons and the sun and four-eyed wolves stalking in the dark.
"It's like the library," Estella murmured. She'd only really shared the basics of this with Leon, but he understood it to be some ancient elven place, drawn into the Crossroads after the creation of the Veil. That part was admittedly still a bit much to wrap his head around—that the separation between fade and reality was an artificially-created thing, and not the default state of nature.
Still, seeing something like this was one of those things that made him think twice about what he thought was really possible. The castle shouldn't be able to stand, let along bear any of its other extraordinary features—it wasn't so hard to imagine that magic was what had made it possible, once.
But it was important to keep their current goals in view. "The Qunari have access to this place," he said, glancing at the silent apparition. "Are there other eluvians here? Ones they could use?"
Cyrus—or the entity wearing his face—frowned. Raising a finger to his lips, he pointed towards the top of the ruined staircase, then used his fingers to mime ascending. He took a step back towards the spot, light from the stained glass falling over his form and casting it heavily green. A glance upward revealed why: the shards were arranged in the shape of a crouching dragon with jade-colored scales, similar to some of the art in and around the Temple of Mythal. Beckoning for the others to follow, he turned and climbed the stairs.
Given the apparent need for silence, Leon elected to stay behind for the moment. While he was relatively confident in his ability to be quiet, he was wearing full plate, as was Vesryn, who also stayed behind while the others climbed to the top of the ruined staircase after the projection. They remained there for several long moments before descending again, seemingly looking at something below, blocked from Leon's sight by a partial wall.
As soon as they were back within range, Estella updated them. "There are a lot of Qunari down there, but I think the woman's leading them—she has this book tied to her shoulder armor," she said, gesturing at her own left shoulder. "A lot of barrels around—probably more gaatlok. Several eluvians, too. They're definitely staging something from there, but I'm not sure how to get over. There has to be another mirror somewhere that will do it."
"Sounds like we need to hit them, then. Hard and fast. Assuming we can reach them." Vesryn looked none too pleased about the idea, but if this indeed was being used as a staging point for attacks on all nations, they had little choice.
"Wait, before we go." The fingers on one of Astraia's hands disappeared under her mass of loosely-bound hair, rubbing at the back of her neck as she looked at the entity imitating Cyrus. "If you can answer this... are you all right? Are you somewhere close?" Close was an inexact term to be using, especially in a place like this, but it was obvious that Astraia's questions were borne out of concern, and that the first was more important than the second.
It appeared to consider this for a moment—perhaps a bit too long for the question, honestly. Eventually, it nodded, but not without some apparent hesitation, its expression torn between wariness and something else. Frustration, maybe. No doubt the answer would have been better conveyed with words it did not have.
"Okay." She didn't seem entirely satisfied by that, but she let it go, lowering her hand again and glancing at Estella briefly. "If... if we can find you, or Harellan, can you do something about the marks? I think... I think they might be killing them." She looked back to Estella. "Show him?"
Estella didn't look pleased by the answer either, but she extended her hand out towards the apparition. The mark hissed and crackled at obvious volume; Estella winced after a particularly loud one, though whether from pain or just surprise was unclear.
It reached forward in response, brushing ghostly fingers over the line of the mark and frowning. After a moment, it lifted its eyes to theirs and nodded, mouthing a single word, slowly so they could get a sense of what it was.
Hurry.
The Lady Inquisitor pursed her lips. It was clear that she had plenty more questions, but perhaps the urgency of the situation had cooled her inclination to ask them. "We need to get down there, to where the Qunari are," she said, drawing her hand back to her side. "Can you show us how?"
With a firm nod, the apparition took several steps back, then veered to the side, glancing back over its shoulder to be sure they were following. It seemed to know the castle's layout well enough, and it hadn't seemed deceptive so far, whatever it really was.
Perhaps they'd be able to solve both of their current problems after all.
With a nod, Leon glanced down at one of the Qunari bodies now still on their side of the bridge. "No doubt meant to help us take the blame in the event the explosion they were intended for took place. We might take some anyway." The risk alone would be more fuel for Arl Teagan's fire, no doubt. It meant that they now needed to make a much more thorough exploration of the terrain ahead—as Khari had said, access to even a part of the eluvian network meant that the Qunari could have moved their gaatlok to more than one place, planned more than one attack.
It's what Leon would have done, in their position. Ideally, one massive blow to every seat of government in Thedas: Val Royeaux, Denerim, Minrathous, Antiva City, Dairsmuid, Hossberg, Nevarra City—probably Ostwick, Kirkwall, and Starkhaven as well. It was hard to imagine them having access to all of those places, but even one or two would be a devastating blow. No doubt exactly what they intended. The Qunari were not known for indecisiveness or tentative strikes.
Estella sighed, glancing down at her mark and frowning. "Well, whatever the reason, we still have to go forward. Let's see what had the Qunari so interested earlier."
It was still there, the formless collection of blue mist. As they drew closer, Leon could tell that it was smaller than he was, but larger than most of the others, and it moved, stirring intermittently as if shifted about by an unfelt breeze.
As soon as Estella had stepped off the bridge, however, it reacted, shuddering and beginning to thicken, coalesce until it took on a humanoid shape. A very familiar one, too—by the time they drew within striking distance, it looked very much like Cyrus, only leached of most of his color and semitransparent, faded and bluish at the edges. The apparition appraised them in silence for a moment; though it bore his face, its manner of dress was decidedly different. Gone was the Tevinter-styled armor, replaced with something that fit closer, almost like a second, metallic skin. The similarities to Vesryn's plate were apparent, but Cyrus's was lighter, obscured in places by blue and green fabric.
He regarded them expectantly, but did not speak.
"Cyrus?" Estella froze for a moment, returning the apparition's regard with wide-eyed confusion. "Is that—are you—what's happening?" She took a step forward, reaching out as if to touch him, but her fingers sank into the mist with what looked like only a little resistance, and she snapped her hand back as if burned.
His expression shifted, brows knitting. Reaching up, he touched his lips with his fingertips and shook his head.
"If there was any doubt before, this confirms that Cyrus is involved somehow." Romulus studied the misty projection. "What is this, though? Is it really him? Or some magic left behind?"
"I've never seen anything like it." Astraia stepped forward slowly until she was next to Estella, turning one hand over and touching it lightly against the projection's chest, letting it sink through a few inches before she withdrew it again.
For all that it could not speak, the apparition seemed to have some resemblance to Cyrus's personality; it glanced down at Astraia's hand and arched an eyebrow, a wry smile touching the corner of its mouth. After a moment, it moved its attention to Asala, pointing to her with one hand and gaining a look of intent concentration. It shimmered, its primary hues shifting momentarily from blue to pink, then back. It let one hand hover near elbow height, then pushed it down, indicating small size, perhaps?
Asala pointed to herself moments after Cyrus's shade did, and appeared surprised and maybe even a bit confused that he'd do that. She watched the next few moments with arched brows, trying to glean whatever he was trying to tell them. She tilted her head and then held up her hand, turning it over before coating it in her particular pink hued magic, the same color that Cyrus had been moments ago. She stared at it for a moment before letting it fade, and glancing up to Cyrus. "Ethne?" Asala asked. Leon knew the name, as it was that of the spirit they had met in their dreams in order to aid Asala in becoming a spirit healer.
"You are saying you're like Ethne? But... Smaller?" She asked, her head tilted quizzically.
It grimaced, something about the answer not quite satisfactory, but then shrugged.
"Like a spirit, you mean?" Astraia had worked with Asala more than enough to learn of that source of her healing power. She pulled her staff to her chest and tilted her head sideways against it. "Or something similar."
"We saw a spirit mimic a person in the Fade," Romulus pointed out. "One appeared to us as Divine Justinia. She looked... significantly more real than this. I'm not sure it's a spirit."
"Regardless, the Qunari didn't seem too fond of it." Vesryn seemed to be tired of the guesswork. "And it doesn't seem dangerous to us. So we might want to ask some questions. I've some experience with these kinds of conversations; they can take a while to get anywhere."
"Probably best to stick to yes or no questions," Leon added. While the apparition was expressive enough to remind him quite keenly of his friend, there was no doubt that trying to decipher the answers to complex queries was not going to work out very well.
When no one else immediately supplied anything, he took the first himself. "Were you... left here for us in particular?" He wasn't sure what to call it. Left, put—maybe just waiting would have been better. But it would certainly hope to know if Cyrus had meant for them to make it this far.
The apparition nodded, then pointed back across the bridge to the dead Qunari and drew its thumb over its throat in a very clear gesture.
"You... knew the Qunari were planning to use the gaatlok?" Estella's question was more of a reach, but she seemed relatively confident in it. "You injured that other one, didn't you? The one that came through the eluvian into Halamshiral—to warn us? Or well, the real you did those things, I mean."
More nods, then the apparition gestured over its shoulder at the half-ruined castle, turning halfway towards it and beckoning for them to follow it. As they approached the castle, the sheer scale of it became more apparent: it was gigantic, to the point where it wasn't completely clear if such architecture could exist fully in the ordinary world. It soared over their heads, and yet the stone it was made of seemed light, almost delicate, and vaguely crystalline, much too brittle to hold all that weight with ordinary concerns about gravity and weather.
The massive front doors stood slightly open, just enough for the party to slip through, and if it had seemed vaguely unreal before, the inside was utterly fantastical: in places the walls had disappeared, staicases ended halfway up only to reappear dozens of feet higher and upside down, laws of logic and physics alike defied. It looked like nothing so much as the more artistic drawings in Cyrus's workshop, the ones where watercolors bled all over parchment rather than those with precise charcoal lines and squared corners. The general blurriness of the Crossroads wasn't helping Leon make any better sense of it, though most of the others apparently didn't have quite the same problems.
The area into which they first entered looked to be an atrium or something, its ceiling once a vaulted dome, the center of it tiled in colored glass, some sort of mosaic pattern throwing dyed light onto the white marble floors. Crystal columns were in places intact, others shattered; part of the dome had come away, and the walls exposed further rooms beyond. The far wall, what had once been a grand double staircase, was now in fragments, open air beckoning the brave to tread them and see where they might lead.
Each wall bore frescoes, desaturated to Leon's eyes, but all bearing scenes of battle or rest, dragons and the sun and four-eyed wolves stalking in the dark.
"It's like the library," Estella murmured. She'd only really shared the basics of this with Leon, but he understood it to be some ancient elven place, drawn into the Crossroads after the creation of the Veil. That part was admittedly still a bit much to wrap his head around—that the separation between fade and reality was an artificially-created thing, and not the default state of nature.
Still, seeing something like this was one of those things that made him think twice about what he thought was really possible. The castle shouldn't be able to stand, let along bear any of its other extraordinary features—it wasn't so hard to imagine that magic was what had made it possible, once.
But it was important to keep their current goals in view. "The Qunari have access to this place," he said, glancing at the silent apparition. "Are there other eluvians here? Ones they could use?"
Cyrus—or the entity wearing his face—frowned. Raising a finger to his lips, he pointed towards the top of the ruined staircase, then used his fingers to mime ascending. He took a step back towards the spot, light from the stained glass falling over his form and casting it heavily green. A glance upward revealed why: the shards were arranged in the shape of a crouching dragon with jade-colored scales, similar to some of the art in and around the Temple of Mythal. Beckoning for the others to follow, he turned and climbed the stairs.
Given the apparent need for silence, Leon elected to stay behind for the moment. While he was relatively confident in his ability to be quiet, he was wearing full plate, as was Vesryn, who also stayed behind while the others climbed to the top of the ruined staircase after the projection. They remained there for several long moments before descending again, seemingly looking at something below, blocked from Leon's sight by a partial wall.
As soon as they were back within range, Estella updated them. "There are a lot of Qunari down there, but I think the woman's leading them—she has this book tied to her shoulder armor," she said, gesturing at her own left shoulder. "A lot of barrels around—probably more gaatlok. Several eluvians, too. They're definitely staging something from there, but I'm not sure how to get over. There has to be another mirror somewhere that will do it."
"Sounds like we need to hit them, then. Hard and fast. Assuming we can reach them." Vesryn looked none too pleased about the idea, but if this indeed was being used as a staging point for attacks on all nations, they had little choice.
"Wait, before we go." The fingers on one of Astraia's hands disappeared under her mass of loosely-bound hair, rubbing at the back of her neck as she looked at the entity imitating Cyrus. "If you can answer this... are you all right? Are you somewhere close?" Close was an inexact term to be using, especially in a place like this, but it was obvious that Astraia's questions were borne out of concern, and that the first was more important than the second.
It appeared to consider this for a moment—perhaps a bit too long for the question, honestly. Eventually, it nodded, but not without some apparent hesitation, its expression torn between wariness and something else. Frustration, maybe. No doubt the answer would have been better conveyed with words it did not have.
"Okay." She didn't seem entirely satisfied by that, but she let it go, lowering her hand again and glancing at Estella briefly. "If... if we can find you, or Harellan, can you do something about the marks? I think... I think they might be killing them." She looked back to Estella. "Show him?"
Estella didn't look pleased by the answer either, but she extended her hand out towards the apparition. The mark hissed and crackled at obvious volume; Estella winced after a particularly loud one, though whether from pain or just surprise was unclear.
It reached forward in response, brushing ghostly fingers over the line of the mark and frowning. After a moment, it lifted its eyes to theirs and nodded, mouthing a single word, slowly so they could get a sense of what it was.
Hurry.
The Lady Inquisitor pursed her lips. It was clear that she had plenty more questions, but perhaps the urgency of the situation had cooled her inclination to ask them. "We need to get down there, to where the Qunari are," she said, drawing her hand back to her side. "Can you show us how?"
With a firm nod, the apparition took several steps back, then veered to the side, glancing back over its shoulder to be sure they were following. It seemed to know the castle's layout well enough, and it hadn't seemed deceptive so far, whatever it really was.
Perhaps they'd be able to solve both of their current problems after all.