Her entire right arm was in agony.
It took just about all the focus and discipline Estella had ever learned to keep the sheer extent of it from showing on her face. Wincing anyway, she rolled up her sleeve, lips parting in soundless surprise. Lines of eerie green webbed over everything from her fingertips to her elbowâit looked as bad as it felt. Like the entire limb was about to crack apart and fade into dust. It was hard not to panic at the thought, but urgent as it was, there was one that overrode it.
Through that mirror, she would find her family. There was no especially good reason to think so, aside from the fact that it seemed like they'd reached the end of the fortress and it was the only way to go. But more than that she just felt it. She'd always feltâwould always feelâa connection to her brother that granted her vague insights like that. She couldn't help but put stock in it now, when there was so little else to go on.
But the eluvian stood open, and time drew short in more ways than one. Glancing behind her to be sure the others were all ready to enter as well, she used her good hand to push her bedraggled, wet hair from her face and exhaled, pulling in one final, bracing breath before she stepped into the mirror.
The mirror led them back into the Crossroads, if the sudden vivid colors blooming in front of her eyes were any indication. She could feel it, too, a gentle brush against her magic, a warmth that called to something ancient and quiet in her blood. Not an experience everyone had, apparently. The castle they'd passed through earlier lay on the other side of a massive gully, slightly above them, its broken and jagged spires shining in the dark, yearning towards the deep blue of the sky. A remnant, in the same way she was a remnant, of something great and powerful that had come before.
The path was somehow clear before them, though it was in truth little more than a vague depression in some of the grass at their feet, signs of passage from many that carried them around a rock face.
On the other side lay a scene of utter devastation. Qunari bodies were strewn across the ground, many of them slashed and torn by familiar weapons and spells. The smell of ozone was heavy in the air, despite the cloudless luster of the stars above them, bright against the velvet blanket of night. Blood, drying and sticky, glinted dully on the grass, on their armor, but little had found the steel of their blades. Still others were rendered to stone, an unmoving graveyard in corpses and monuments to them. The stone giants were frozen in the poses of warriors, fighting a battle centered around one specific point near the center, and there lingered nothing at all. Nothing but the sense that they ought to advance farther still.
"Gods," Astraia said softly. An old habit Estella knew she'd been trying to break. "They didn't stand a chance." She walked with a slight limp still, having only hastily healed the slash to her thigh.
"Keep moving," Romulus urged, holding his hand to his chest. "I don't know if I'll make it if this thing goes off again."
Asala hovered close by Romulus, watching him and his arm carefully. She probably wouldn't be able to do much if it did go off, but knowing Asala, it wouldn't stop her from trying. She did spare a look of horror at the scene at hand, but didn't dwell long, instead tossing a concerned look toward Estella.
Estella couldn't help but share the thought, uncertain as she was what to make of what lay before them. Biting the inside of her cheek, she nodded jerkily and followed the path that instinct made, seeking what she could not yet see.
Ahead, she could make out the vague sounds of an armed clash, Viddasala's harsh contralto shouting something indistinct in Qunlat. Through some trees, and then up what must have been a riseâthe noises were coming from above. Estella shifted from a swift walk into an outright run. That had to beâ
Emerging from the treeline brought them right to what they were looking for. Viddasala, spear in-hand, took a swipe at Cyrus, who bent backwards and away from it, parrying with a luminous blade. His strength was enough to knock her guard open, and as he came back up he took a hard step in, thrusting forward with the second and finding her throat. She gasped, the sound cut off with the severing of her windpipe, and collapsed to the ground.
The noise of their passage clearly registered; he turned to face them. At her distance, Estella could see he hadn't emerged unscathed from the earlier fightâblood was drying on a cut in his lip, another slicing across his right brow. The largest one stained his cloak red at the shoulder, though he gave little indication of pain.
He didn't look surprised to see them, exactly. Instead, his face pulled into a grimace, and he took a step back and to the side, eyes seeking and finding Harellan, who stood with his hands folded behind his back, which was to yet another eluvian. It had the effect of making his features difficult to discern, casting them in deeper shadow and darkening his silhouette.
"It seems you've found us." The words were soft, almost tentative. "I hadn't meant for that."
None of it seemed right at all. Their body language, the way they were dressed, the things Harellan was sayingâit just didn't add up to anything Estella could understand. "Why?" she found herself asking, attention bouncing from one to the other. Her first instinct was to go immediately to Cyrus, but something about the cast of his expression... she'd only seen him look like that for her once in her life. The night he told her goodbye the first time. It was a similarity that she didn't want to contemplate, and so she reached automatically for the queries instead, stepping half a pace forward.
"What'sâwhat's going on here? Why did you leave? What's all this with the Qunari and theâthe rest of it?"
"A problem I had intended for us to solve ourselves." He had to be talking about the Qunari. The dark shape of Harellan shifted; he'd tilted his head a bit. "At least the immediate problem. But then someone pushed a dying soldier through an eluvian and onto your doorstep, and here you are."
âHarellan." Cyrus interrupted almost tonelessly. âThe Anchors."
"I see them. I'd thoughtâI suppose splitting the power didn't do more than delay the effects. Since you're here, we can remove them."
"Remove...?" Estella immediately held her hand to her chest, cradling it with the other. It hurt, to be sure, and she'd much rather lose the Anchor than die, but... still she couldn't help but feel some terror at the prospect of actually losing it. It was the reasons she'd become Inquisitor in the first place, and now she knew it was in some way a piece of the heritage she barely understood. It was hard to imagine life without it, now, after almost five years. That feeling warred with the pressing need to push Harellan to answer her actual question, but she supposed this ought to come first. Mere questions were hardly justified when she and Romulus had lives hanging in the balance.
Romulus seemed more immediately willing, as he quickly peeled off the glove covering his, revealing the way his own mark has alarmingly begun to spread and crack up his arm. "Do it."
"Cyrus, if you please." Harellan nodded towards them. Cyrus banished his weapons and approached Romulus first, stopping short of him and motioning for the other Inquisitor to extend his arm. From there it looked to be mostly a matter of passing his hands in the air above and beyond Rom's arms. The green light came away with them, leaving whole, unbroken skin behind, and with a slight grimace, Cyrus stepped back, approaching Estella to do the same.
Only when the noise of the magic was in her ears did he speak, almost too low for her to hear. Certainly too low for anyone else to hear, which was probably the point. âI'm sorry, Stellulam." He met her eyes, his wide and almost childlike in their earnestness, if only for a split second.
But then he stepped back again, retreating to Harellan's side without so much as touching her.
"I don't understand." Astraia's voice was rife with emotion. Her eyes lingered on Estella's arm a moment, fascinated by the magic that removed the mark entirely, but clearly she had other things eating at her. "Why did you have to leave when you did? Without... without even saying goodbye? I thoughtâ" She reached a bloodstained hand almost up to her face, where her vallaslin had once been. Whatever her thought was there, she didn't finish it, instead starting a new one directed at Cyrus. "We fought a dragon together. And when I woke up you were just gone."
"He is blameless in this." Harellan sighed softly, taking a step down from the eluvian's dais to stand closer to level ground with the rest of them. He'd re-shorn the sides and back of his head and gathered the rest, leaving a thick black tail to fall from his crown to the middle of his back. His armor was of a kind with Cyrus's new set, if slightly more elaborate, and with the addition of what looked like a thick fur cloak. Wolf pelts, perhaps, though the garment would have needed several. "If you would lay fault, lay it at my feet instead. Cyrus had no choice but to follow where I led."
Cyrus shot him an indecipherable glance, but did not contradict the statement. Harellan apparently took that as reason enough to continue. "We left when we did because no one was watching. A quiet exit was better, I thought, considering the reason for it. What we do now should not be associated with the likes of the Inquisition."
"And what is it that you do now?" Ves sounded guarded, to say the least. His gaze was questioning, searching for answers, and laid solely on Harellan. Astraia didn't seem satisfied with the answer she'd been given, but she fell silent for the moment.
Naturally, Harellan was expecting the question, or at least completely unsurprised by it. "Rectifying a mistake. An ancient one." He shook his head, tipping it back to look at the sky. "Corypheus was supposed to unlock the power in the focus, but I did not anticipate the extent to which he would succeed. The hole he tore in the Veil was... not what it should have been. Mine will be cleaner. More complete."
A simple statement. Staggering in its implications. Estella immediately looked to Cyrus, as if for confirmation. What she saw was not encouraging, and she reverted her attention to her uncle. "Butâputting up the Veil destroyed an entire civilization, Harellan. Tearing it back down again will destroy... at least ten of them. Why would... why would you let that happen?" Not just let it happenâactively make it so. And the things he said about Corypheus made it sound like he was the cause of everything. She almost couldn't process it.
His expression, almost eerily neutral up to that point, finally softened slightly. "I did not think that so great a sacrifice, for a very long time." He sighed, letting his eyes fall to the ground in front of his feet before lifting them back to hers. "You showed me the error of that thinking. Made me believe again that there are things in this world worth saving, worth cherishing." He swallowed thickly, beset by some emotion that never quite became clear. "I'd lost that belief, when I lost your mother and my brother. It makes this more difficult, but... all the same, I cannot lose my resolve now. The world that was before the Veil was a better world than this one, and if catastrophe is what it takes to see Thedas returned to what it was always supposed to be, then I must unleash it. I alone have the strength and the knowledge."
"That's insanity." Ves said it with certainty at Estella's side. He held his weapon in one hand, showing no signs of wanting to use it, but at the same time his posture was anything but friendly. "I know what I felt, what was in my head. Saraya lived in that world, and she lived in this one. If she could speak again, she'd tell you there are just as many things worth protecting in this Thedas. And there were just as many things wrong with the world before. You can't do this."
"Make no mistake, I do not mean to merely trade the new for the old. I'm aware enough of the faults you allude to. Nothing is perfect, but a world where the magic and the life does not leach from us with every passing generationâthat is worth sacrificing for. And I will sacrifice for it." For all the tenderness he used speaking to Estella, and for all that his tone remained mild now, there was an unmistakable firmness to it. The kind belonging to someone who'd well and truly made up his mind. Quite a long time ago, from the way he spoke of it.
Estella didn't even know what to say in the face of that kind of certainty. She'd been certain of so few things in her life, and she could never even imagine being certain that the destruction of so much life was the right thing to do. It was like the person in front of her was at once the uncle she knew and someone entirely different, as foreign to her as a stranger. She'd always known he had his secrets, but to think he'd been sitting on this the entire time they'd known each other, from their first meeting in a Chantry stables to his reappearance in the eluvian network all the way through teaching her, and Cyrus, and Astraia...
"Howâhow much of any of this was real, then?" she asked, her tone tremulous. It was a demand to know, but a quavering one. "This whole time, this has been your aim... was it all just so you could do this? And Cyâwhat do you mean he had no choice but to follow you?"
âThe Vir'abelasan, Stellulam." The first to answer the question was Cyrus himself. âDrinking from it bound me to the will of Mythal. It's a compulsion to obeyâand Harellan is what remains of Mythal."
"I have been ruthless, and unkind." Harellan confessed this with evident remorse, though apparently not enough to have stopped him from doing it in the first place. "Power and knowledge I have, but what I still needed was reach. Agents with the capability and skills to assist me. I manipulated Cyrus from the day I met him. Piqued his curiosity about elven history, his heritage. Taught him the magics I thought he should know. Pushed him to restore his magic when he lost it. Suggested that he be the one to drink from the Well. I knew what the sum total of these things would be. I knew what they would make him, and I am not sorry for it."
His brows knit. "If there were some other way to achieve what I aim at, I'd have taken it. Corypheus was my attempt to do that. But we all know how that went."
"Corypheus was..." Romulus had kept his distance a little more after having his mark removed. He still rubbed the spot where it had been. "The elven orb, what he used to make the Breach. That was your doing?"
"Placed in his hands by my agents, while I was still too weak to use it. A flaw I could have overcome, if only I'd been more patient. More willing to take the slow and deliberate path that lies before me now. For what it has cost you, I am sorry. It was not my intention to embroil Thedas in war like this. The same reason we stopped the Qunari here."
As if by some unseen, unfelt cue, Harellan's body language changed. "It is time for us to take our leave." He straightened, glancing to Cyrus, who looked away with what could only be called a sullen expression. "Before we do, however... Astraia. I do apologize for departing with such haste. I regretted at the time that you were still unconscious, but I would like to rectify the error." He let his hands relax, falling softly to his sides. "Would you like to come with us? There is a place for you here, if you would occupy it."
She didn't seem all that surprised when he asked, already deep in thought about her answer. Though it was posed without much weight behind it, it was impossible to miss that there was a great deal riding on her answer, at least regarding her own future. She shared a look with both Estella and Ves before she turned her eyes back up to Harellan, straightening to as much as her height would allow.
"Yes."
"Astraia, you can't beâ"
"Let me do this, Ves." She kept her tone controlled, soft. "I'm sorry to leave you all like this, but... this is something I have to do. Something I think I've been training to do for some time, even if I didn't know it." She stepped forward and turned her back to Harellan, facing Estella. She offered a subtle nod of her head when their eyes met. "Goodbye. And thank you for everything."
Estella glanced between the three of them. "Astraia..." She didn't really know what to say to that. Too many things were shifting around at once, reorienting her entire understanding not just of the last few weeks, but the last few years. Maybe even more than that. On the one hand, she was worried about what this might mean. Harellan was not exactly who she'd thought he was, and she couldn't think that he made this offer without a purpose, one that might be just as dangerous for Astraia as it was bound to be for Cyrus.
On the other... neither of them would be alone. She knew Cyrus, knew he'd do everything he could to look out for Astraia. And she thought maybe Astraia would look out for him, too. Whether that would make any difference in the long run was less clear, butâit was something. "You're welcome. Andâ" She paused, struggling for the right thing to say. "Good luck."
"Lethallan." Harellan had moved no closer to the group, remaining at his place on its fringe with deliberateness, as though some invisible line had been drawn in the space that he would not cross. "If you would not mind..."
It was obvious enough what he was asking for. When Estella stepped away from the others to approach him, he gave her a tentative smile, glancing only once back over her shoulder before settling his eyes on her face. "I... know you'll never endorse what I'm doing. I don't expect you to thank me for thisâI half-suppose you'll try to stop me, and perhaps that's how it should be." He sounded almost wistful when he said it, reaching out as if to touch her cheek. But his hand stopped short and hovered there, uncertain.
She was torn. Trying to think about it from his perspective helped: he'd known only of the fading glory of the People for most of his life, and then the first exposure to anything outside of that had been Tevinter of all places. And the news didn't really get better from there, as far as the welfare of elves was concerned. What Fen'Harel had done must have seemed like such a catastrophic mistake, and to feel like the only one both capable of and willing to fix the problem, when the solution had such a cost.
Estella could almost, almost imagine what it must feel like to be convinced of that, and to really understand what it meant, as Harellan surely did. The death and destruction he would cause... it would be like Romulus and Cyrus ending up in the future and resetting everything. Destroying an entire timeline gone wrong, even knowing that the people who'd lived in it were no less real than the people who would live after.
Her heart broke for him. And she knew she could never, ever let him succeed. Even if Harellan couldn't see it yet, she could. It would destroy too much, and it would destroy him, too.
Taking one step closer, she caught his hand in hers and pressed his hand to her cheek. "Lethallin," she said, pronouncing the word carefully. It was still not natural to her tongue. Never would be, in the way it was natural to his. For all that they were so closely related, she was of this world. The one he wanted to destroy. Maybe he imagined there would be a place for her in the one he made. But she didn't want it. "Don't do this. Don't take this path. Stay with us. We can still change the worldâwe already have, and you helped us do it. Don't go." She pulled in a breath through her teeth. "Please don't go."
His other hand found the untouched side of her face, and Harellan drew himself closer, putting just a toe over the invisible line dividing them. So close, she could see the way his eyes shone in the dark. He blinked, and a tear slid quickly down his cheek as he pressed his brow to hers. "I can't stay." His hands trembled against her skin, fingers dry like parchment. "If the world could be saved by good intentions..." The words were a murmur more than anything, but she could feel him steel himself with them, the tremor steadying and tension returning to his body language. "I love you, lethallan. And I pray to whatever gods there might be that you do not forget that."
With a tight, thin smile, Harellan pulled back, clearing his throat and taking several steps towards the eluvian. "If there are other farewells to be made, now is the time."
"Not much point in farewells if we're going to see each other soon, is there?" Ves clearly still wasn't happy with Astraia's choice, or anything he'd heard here. "You can walk away now, but we're good at finding trails."
"Not this time, Ves," Astraia answered him quietly. "This is goodbye for now."
"You can't listen to him," he urged. "I don't know what you think he's been teaching you, but he's using you, controlling you. Even if he does care, he's clearly willing to discard you anyway."
"Ves. Stop." Her tone was significantly more stern now. "No one is controlling me. Not Harellan... and not you. This is my choice. My chance to help my People. The Inquisition served its purpose. This is mine."
Ves shook his head, and then turned away in frustration, carrying himself several paces away to the edge of the group. Astraia watched him go with pained eyes, but she said no more.
At this point, Cyrus stepped forward, holding himself much too tentatively for her brother. âYou think I'd learn eventually." He cleared his throat softly. âThat pride cometh before a fall, so to speak. I can't help but feel if I'd have just had a little less at the Well..." With a shake of his head, he glanced over those assembled. âStill... I've, ah. I've hope in the lot of you. Seems like there might be one more world-saving in you yet. Rather betting on it, actually."
For the first time since they'd entered the mirror, Leon stirred. He'd been very still so far, no doubt taking in the information and letting it stew a while before deciding what he wanted to do about any of it. Estella couldn't blame him. But this part, he seemed to have less difficulty with, taking a step towards Cyrus and squeezing his shoulder. "And I've hope in you. Don't give up, Cyrus." With a small nod, he dropped his hand and moved back.
Rom kept his distance, but offered Cyrus a nod as well. "We'll see you when we see you. With any luck, it'll be in better circumstances. But I've got faith in that."
Cyrus returned the nod, but it was easy to see that he was already trying to mentally prepare himself to face her. When he turned just enough to do it, he lost any semblance of composure he had, expression stricken instead. âStellulam, Iâ" He faltered.
She wouldn't have let him finish anyway. "If that's an apology, I don't want it." Estella was moving even as she spoke, closing the distance at a walk too swift to be calm. She threw her arms around him, leaning her weigh into the solidity of his body. "You don't have to apologize to me for anything, Cy." She squeezed, knowing that time was short and no matter how much of it there was, she'd never be able to get all her feelings across.
He didn't reply, except to return the hug as tightly as he could, lifting her partway off the ground, armor and all, before setting her down. âI'll find a way to fix this." He spoke the words into her hair. âOr help you fix it. Whatever it takes." Loosening his arms, Cyrus expelled a breath and shifted his hands to her shoulders. âDo me a favor, would you? Tell the others..." He frowned. âTell them I never meant to leave. That I'd have stayed."
"I will, Cy. I promise. Takeâ" Her voice cracked, but she would not cry. That was not how she wanted to send him off, even if everything in her felt like it was falling apart. "Take care of yourself. And..." She tilted her head in Astraia's direction, letting the rest of the sentence be filled in by the gesture.
He nodded. âI promise, too. Until next time, Estella." Cyrus took a step back, then another, his fingers falling away from his shoulders and back to his sides. A third step, and he turned away from them altogether, catching up with the other two, where Harellan was already stepping through the eluvian, Astraia closely behind. He paused one last time on the threshold, turning back over his shoulder and feigning a confident smile.
But then he, too, was gone, and the mirror's light darkened in his wake.
It took just about all the focus and discipline Estella had ever learned to keep the sheer extent of it from showing on her face. Wincing anyway, she rolled up her sleeve, lips parting in soundless surprise. Lines of eerie green webbed over everything from her fingertips to her elbowâit looked as bad as it felt. Like the entire limb was about to crack apart and fade into dust. It was hard not to panic at the thought, but urgent as it was, there was one that overrode it.
Through that mirror, she would find her family. There was no especially good reason to think so, aside from the fact that it seemed like they'd reached the end of the fortress and it was the only way to go. But more than that she just felt it. She'd always feltâwould always feelâa connection to her brother that granted her vague insights like that. She couldn't help but put stock in it now, when there was so little else to go on.
But the eluvian stood open, and time drew short in more ways than one. Glancing behind her to be sure the others were all ready to enter as well, she used her good hand to push her bedraggled, wet hair from her face and exhaled, pulling in one final, bracing breath before she stepped into the mirror.
The mirror led them back into the Crossroads, if the sudden vivid colors blooming in front of her eyes were any indication. She could feel it, too, a gentle brush against her magic, a warmth that called to something ancient and quiet in her blood. Not an experience everyone had, apparently. The castle they'd passed through earlier lay on the other side of a massive gully, slightly above them, its broken and jagged spires shining in the dark, yearning towards the deep blue of the sky. A remnant, in the same way she was a remnant, of something great and powerful that had come before.
The path was somehow clear before them, though it was in truth little more than a vague depression in some of the grass at their feet, signs of passage from many that carried them around a rock face.
On the other side lay a scene of utter devastation. Qunari bodies were strewn across the ground, many of them slashed and torn by familiar weapons and spells. The smell of ozone was heavy in the air, despite the cloudless luster of the stars above them, bright against the velvet blanket of night. Blood, drying and sticky, glinted dully on the grass, on their armor, but little had found the steel of their blades. Still others were rendered to stone, an unmoving graveyard in corpses and monuments to them. The stone giants were frozen in the poses of warriors, fighting a battle centered around one specific point near the center, and there lingered nothing at all. Nothing but the sense that they ought to advance farther still.
"Gods," Astraia said softly. An old habit Estella knew she'd been trying to break. "They didn't stand a chance." She walked with a slight limp still, having only hastily healed the slash to her thigh.
"Keep moving," Romulus urged, holding his hand to his chest. "I don't know if I'll make it if this thing goes off again."
Asala hovered close by Romulus, watching him and his arm carefully. She probably wouldn't be able to do much if it did go off, but knowing Asala, it wouldn't stop her from trying. She did spare a look of horror at the scene at hand, but didn't dwell long, instead tossing a concerned look toward Estella.
Estella couldn't help but share the thought, uncertain as she was what to make of what lay before them. Biting the inside of her cheek, she nodded jerkily and followed the path that instinct made, seeking what she could not yet see.
Ahead, she could make out the vague sounds of an armed clash, Viddasala's harsh contralto shouting something indistinct in Qunlat. Through some trees, and then up what must have been a riseâthe noises were coming from above. Estella shifted from a swift walk into an outright run. That had to beâ
Emerging from the treeline brought them right to what they were looking for. Viddasala, spear in-hand, took a swipe at Cyrus, who bent backwards and away from it, parrying with a luminous blade. His strength was enough to knock her guard open, and as he came back up he took a hard step in, thrusting forward with the second and finding her throat. She gasped, the sound cut off with the severing of her windpipe, and collapsed to the ground.
The noise of their passage clearly registered; he turned to face them. At her distance, Estella could see he hadn't emerged unscathed from the earlier fightâblood was drying on a cut in his lip, another slicing across his right brow. The largest one stained his cloak red at the shoulder, though he gave little indication of pain.
He didn't look surprised to see them, exactly. Instead, his face pulled into a grimace, and he took a step back and to the side, eyes seeking and finding Harellan, who stood with his hands folded behind his back, which was to yet another eluvian. It had the effect of making his features difficult to discern, casting them in deeper shadow and darkening his silhouette.
"It seems you've found us." The words were soft, almost tentative. "I hadn't meant for that."
None of it seemed right at all. Their body language, the way they were dressed, the things Harellan was sayingâit just didn't add up to anything Estella could understand. "Why?" she found herself asking, attention bouncing from one to the other. Her first instinct was to go immediately to Cyrus, but something about the cast of his expression... she'd only seen him look like that for her once in her life. The night he told her goodbye the first time. It was a similarity that she didn't want to contemplate, and so she reached automatically for the queries instead, stepping half a pace forward.
"What'sâwhat's going on here? Why did you leave? What's all this with the Qunari and theâthe rest of it?"
"A problem I had intended for us to solve ourselves." He had to be talking about the Qunari. The dark shape of Harellan shifted; he'd tilted his head a bit. "At least the immediate problem. But then someone pushed a dying soldier through an eluvian and onto your doorstep, and here you are."
âHarellan." Cyrus interrupted almost tonelessly. âThe Anchors."
"I see them. I'd thoughtâI suppose splitting the power didn't do more than delay the effects. Since you're here, we can remove them."
"Remove...?" Estella immediately held her hand to her chest, cradling it with the other. It hurt, to be sure, and she'd much rather lose the Anchor than die, but... still she couldn't help but feel some terror at the prospect of actually losing it. It was the reasons she'd become Inquisitor in the first place, and now she knew it was in some way a piece of the heritage she barely understood. It was hard to imagine life without it, now, after almost five years. That feeling warred with the pressing need to push Harellan to answer her actual question, but she supposed this ought to come first. Mere questions were hardly justified when she and Romulus had lives hanging in the balance.
Romulus seemed more immediately willing, as he quickly peeled off the glove covering his, revealing the way his own mark has alarmingly begun to spread and crack up his arm. "Do it."
"Cyrus, if you please." Harellan nodded towards them. Cyrus banished his weapons and approached Romulus first, stopping short of him and motioning for the other Inquisitor to extend his arm. From there it looked to be mostly a matter of passing his hands in the air above and beyond Rom's arms. The green light came away with them, leaving whole, unbroken skin behind, and with a slight grimace, Cyrus stepped back, approaching Estella to do the same.
Only when the noise of the magic was in her ears did he speak, almost too low for her to hear. Certainly too low for anyone else to hear, which was probably the point. âI'm sorry, Stellulam." He met her eyes, his wide and almost childlike in their earnestness, if only for a split second.
But then he stepped back again, retreating to Harellan's side without so much as touching her.
"I don't understand." Astraia's voice was rife with emotion. Her eyes lingered on Estella's arm a moment, fascinated by the magic that removed the mark entirely, but clearly she had other things eating at her. "Why did you have to leave when you did? Without... without even saying goodbye? I thoughtâ" She reached a bloodstained hand almost up to her face, where her vallaslin had once been. Whatever her thought was there, she didn't finish it, instead starting a new one directed at Cyrus. "We fought a dragon together. And when I woke up you were just gone."
"He is blameless in this." Harellan sighed softly, taking a step down from the eluvian's dais to stand closer to level ground with the rest of them. He'd re-shorn the sides and back of his head and gathered the rest, leaving a thick black tail to fall from his crown to the middle of his back. His armor was of a kind with Cyrus's new set, if slightly more elaborate, and with the addition of what looked like a thick fur cloak. Wolf pelts, perhaps, though the garment would have needed several. "If you would lay fault, lay it at my feet instead. Cyrus had no choice but to follow where I led."
Cyrus shot him an indecipherable glance, but did not contradict the statement. Harellan apparently took that as reason enough to continue. "We left when we did because no one was watching. A quiet exit was better, I thought, considering the reason for it. What we do now should not be associated with the likes of the Inquisition."
"And what is it that you do now?" Ves sounded guarded, to say the least. His gaze was questioning, searching for answers, and laid solely on Harellan. Astraia didn't seem satisfied with the answer she'd been given, but she fell silent for the moment.
Naturally, Harellan was expecting the question, or at least completely unsurprised by it. "Rectifying a mistake. An ancient one." He shook his head, tipping it back to look at the sky. "Corypheus was supposed to unlock the power in the focus, but I did not anticipate the extent to which he would succeed. The hole he tore in the Veil was... not what it should have been. Mine will be cleaner. More complete."
A simple statement. Staggering in its implications. Estella immediately looked to Cyrus, as if for confirmation. What she saw was not encouraging, and she reverted her attention to her uncle. "Butâputting up the Veil destroyed an entire civilization, Harellan. Tearing it back down again will destroy... at least ten of them. Why would... why would you let that happen?" Not just let it happenâactively make it so. And the things he said about Corypheus made it sound like he was the cause of everything. She almost couldn't process it.
His expression, almost eerily neutral up to that point, finally softened slightly. "I did not think that so great a sacrifice, for a very long time." He sighed, letting his eyes fall to the ground in front of his feet before lifting them back to hers. "You showed me the error of that thinking. Made me believe again that there are things in this world worth saving, worth cherishing." He swallowed thickly, beset by some emotion that never quite became clear. "I'd lost that belief, when I lost your mother and my brother. It makes this more difficult, but... all the same, I cannot lose my resolve now. The world that was before the Veil was a better world than this one, and if catastrophe is what it takes to see Thedas returned to what it was always supposed to be, then I must unleash it. I alone have the strength and the knowledge."
"That's insanity." Ves said it with certainty at Estella's side. He held his weapon in one hand, showing no signs of wanting to use it, but at the same time his posture was anything but friendly. "I know what I felt, what was in my head. Saraya lived in that world, and she lived in this one. If she could speak again, she'd tell you there are just as many things worth protecting in this Thedas. And there were just as many things wrong with the world before. You can't do this."
"Make no mistake, I do not mean to merely trade the new for the old. I'm aware enough of the faults you allude to. Nothing is perfect, but a world where the magic and the life does not leach from us with every passing generationâthat is worth sacrificing for. And I will sacrifice for it." For all the tenderness he used speaking to Estella, and for all that his tone remained mild now, there was an unmistakable firmness to it. The kind belonging to someone who'd well and truly made up his mind. Quite a long time ago, from the way he spoke of it.
Estella didn't even know what to say in the face of that kind of certainty. She'd been certain of so few things in her life, and she could never even imagine being certain that the destruction of so much life was the right thing to do. It was like the person in front of her was at once the uncle she knew and someone entirely different, as foreign to her as a stranger. She'd always known he had his secrets, but to think he'd been sitting on this the entire time they'd known each other, from their first meeting in a Chantry stables to his reappearance in the eluvian network all the way through teaching her, and Cyrus, and Astraia...
"Howâhow much of any of this was real, then?" she asked, her tone tremulous. It was a demand to know, but a quavering one. "This whole time, this has been your aim... was it all just so you could do this? And Cyâwhat do you mean he had no choice but to follow you?"
âThe Vir'abelasan, Stellulam." The first to answer the question was Cyrus himself. âDrinking from it bound me to the will of Mythal. It's a compulsion to obeyâand Harellan is what remains of Mythal."
"I have been ruthless, and unkind." Harellan confessed this with evident remorse, though apparently not enough to have stopped him from doing it in the first place. "Power and knowledge I have, but what I still needed was reach. Agents with the capability and skills to assist me. I manipulated Cyrus from the day I met him. Piqued his curiosity about elven history, his heritage. Taught him the magics I thought he should know. Pushed him to restore his magic when he lost it. Suggested that he be the one to drink from the Well. I knew what the sum total of these things would be. I knew what they would make him, and I am not sorry for it."
His brows knit. "If there were some other way to achieve what I aim at, I'd have taken it. Corypheus was my attempt to do that. But we all know how that went."
"Corypheus was..." Romulus had kept his distance a little more after having his mark removed. He still rubbed the spot where it had been. "The elven orb, what he used to make the Breach. That was your doing?"
"Placed in his hands by my agents, while I was still too weak to use it. A flaw I could have overcome, if only I'd been more patient. More willing to take the slow and deliberate path that lies before me now. For what it has cost you, I am sorry. It was not my intention to embroil Thedas in war like this. The same reason we stopped the Qunari here."
As if by some unseen, unfelt cue, Harellan's body language changed. "It is time for us to take our leave." He straightened, glancing to Cyrus, who looked away with what could only be called a sullen expression. "Before we do, however... Astraia. I do apologize for departing with such haste. I regretted at the time that you were still unconscious, but I would like to rectify the error." He let his hands relax, falling softly to his sides. "Would you like to come with us? There is a place for you here, if you would occupy it."
She didn't seem all that surprised when he asked, already deep in thought about her answer. Though it was posed without much weight behind it, it was impossible to miss that there was a great deal riding on her answer, at least regarding her own future. She shared a look with both Estella and Ves before she turned her eyes back up to Harellan, straightening to as much as her height would allow.
"Yes."
"Astraia, you can't beâ"
"Let me do this, Ves." She kept her tone controlled, soft. "I'm sorry to leave you all like this, but... this is something I have to do. Something I think I've been training to do for some time, even if I didn't know it." She stepped forward and turned her back to Harellan, facing Estella. She offered a subtle nod of her head when their eyes met. "Goodbye. And thank you for everything."
Estella glanced between the three of them. "Astraia..." She didn't really know what to say to that. Too many things were shifting around at once, reorienting her entire understanding not just of the last few weeks, but the last few years. Maybe even more than that. On the one hand, she was worried about what this might mean. Harellan was not exactly who she'd thought he was, and she couldn't think that he made this offer without a purpose, one that might be just as dangerous for Astraia as it was bound to be for Cyrus.
On the other... neither of them would be alone. She knew Cyrus, knew he'd do everything he could to look out for Astraia. And she thought maybe Astraia would look out for him, too. Whether that would make any difference in the long run was less clear, butâit was something. "You're welcome. Andâ" She paused, struggling for the right thing to say. "Good luck."
"Lethallan." Harellan had moved no closer to the group, remaining at his place on its fringe with deliberateness, as though some invisible line had been drawn in the space that he would not cross. "If you would not mind..."
It was obvious enough what he was asking for. When Estella stepped away from the others to approach him, he gave her a tentative smile, glancing only once back over her shoulder before settling his eyes on her face. "I... know you'll never endorse what I'm doing. I don't expect you to thank me for thisâI half-suppose you'll try to stop me, and perhaps that's how it should be." He sounded almost wistful when he said it, reaching out as if to touch her cheek. But his hand stopped short and hovered there, uncertain.
She was torn. Trying to think about it from his perspective helped: he'd known only of the fading glory of the People for most of his life, and then the first exposure to anything outside of that had been Tevinter of all places. And the news didn't really get better from there, as far as the welfare of elves was concerned. What Fen'Harel had done must have seemed like such a catastrophic mistake, and to feel like the only one both capable of and willing to fix the problem, when the solution had such a cost.
Estella could almost, almost imagine what it must feel like to be convinced of that, and to really understand what it meant, as Harellan surely did. The death and destruction he would cause... it would be like Romulus and Cyrus ending up in the future and resetting everything. Destroying an entire timeline gone wrong, even knowing that the people who'd lived in it were no less real than the people who would live after.
Her heart broke for him. And she knew she could never, ever let him succeed. Even if Harellan couldn't see it yet, she could. It would destroy too much, and it would destroy him, too.
Taking one step closer, she caught his hand in hers and pressed his hand to her cheek. "Lethallin," she said, pronouncing the word carefully. It was still not natural to her tongue. Never would be, in the way it was natural to his. For all that they were so closely related, she was of this world. The one he wanted to destroy. Maybe he imagined there would be a place for her in the one he made. But she didn't want it. "Don't do this. Don't take this path. Stay with us. We can still change the worldâwe already have, and you helped us do it. Don't go." She pulled in a breath through her teeth. "Please don't go."
His other hand found the untouched side of her face, and Harellan drew himself closer, putting just a toe over the invisible line dividing them. So close, she could see the way his eyes shone in the dark. He blinked, and a tear slid quickly down his cheek as he pressed his brow to hers. "I can't stay." His hands trembled against her skin, fingers dry like parchment. "If the world could be saved by good intentions..." The words were a murmur more than anything, but she could feel him steel himself with them, the tremor steadying and tension returning to his body language. "I love you, lethallan. And I pray to whatever gods there might be that you do not forget that."
With a tight, thin smile, Harellan pulled back, clearing his throat and taking several steps towards the eluvian. "If there are other farewells to be made, now is the time."
"Not much point in farewells if we're going to see each other soon, is there?" Ves clearly still wasn't happy with Astraia's choice, or anything he'd heard here. "You can walk away now, but we're good at finding trails."
"Not this time, Ves," Astraia answered him quietly. "This is goodbye for now."
"You can't listen to him," he urged. "I don't know what you think he's been teaching you, but he's using you, controlling you. Even if he does care, he's clearly willing to discard you anyway."
"Ves. Stop." Her tone was significantly more stern now. "No one is controlling me. Not Harellan... and not you. This is my choice. My chance to help my People. The Inquisition served its purpose. This is mine."
Ves shook his head, and then turned away in frustration, carrying himself several paces away to the edge of the group. Astraia watched him go with pained eyes, but she said no more.
At this point, Cyrus stepped forward, holding himself much too tentatively for her brother. âYou think I'd learn eventually." He cleared his throat softly. âThat pride cometh before a fall, so to speak. I can't help but feel if I'd have just had a little less at the Well..." With a shake of his head, he glanced over those assembled. âStill... I've, ah. I've hope in the lot of you. Seems like there might be one more world-saving in you yet. Rather betting on it, actually."
For the first time since they'd entered the mirror, Leon stirred. He'd been very still so far, no doubt taking in the information and letting it stew a while before deciding what he wanted to do about any of it. Estella couldn't blame him. But this part, he seemed to have less difficulty with, taking a step towards Cyrus and squeezing his shoulder. "And I've hope in you. Don't give up, Cyrus." With a small nod, he dropped his hand and moved back.
Rom kept his distance, but offered Cyrus a nod as well. "We'll see you when we see you. With any luck, it'll be in better circumstances. But I've got faith in that."
Cyrus returned the nod, but it was easy to see that he was already trying to mentally prepare himself to face her. When he turned just enough to do it, he lost any semblance of composure he had, expression stricken instead. âStellulam, Iâ" He faltered.
She wouldn't have let him finish anyway. "If that's an apology, I don't want it." Estella was moving even as she spoke, closing the distance at a walk too swift to be calm. She threw her arms around him, leaning her weigh into the solidity of his body. "You don't have to apologize to me for anything, Cy." She squeezed, knowing that time was short and no matter how much of it there was, she'd never be able to get all her feelings across.
He didn't reply, except to return the hug as tightly as he could, lifting her partway off the ground, armor and all, before setting her down. âI'll find a way to fix this." He spoke the words into her hair. âOr help you fix it. Whatever it takes." Loosening his arms, Cyrus expelled a breath and shifted his hands to her shoulders. âDo me a favor, would you? Tell the others..." He frowned. âTell them I never meant to leave. That I'd have stayed."
"I will, Cy. I promise. Takeâ" Her voice cracked, but she would not cry. That was not how she wanted to send him off, even if everything in her felt like it was falling apart. "Take care of yourself. And..." She tilted her head in Astraia's direction, letting the rest of the sentence be filled in by the gesture.
He nodded. âI promise, too. Until next time, Estella." Cyrus took a step back, then another, his fingers falling away from his shoulders and back to his sides. A third step, and he turned away from them altogether, catching up with the other two, where Harellan was already stepping through the eluvian, Astraia closely behind. He paused one last time on the threshold, turning back over his shoulder and feigning a confident smile.
But then he, too, was gone, and the mirror's light darkened in his wake.