“Nails!” said Voth, suddenly animated, brushing Shayd to the side. He produced a small dagger and poked at the ends of the caretaker’s fingers. They were as pale as his face, but the tips were oddly discolored. Voth dug slightly under the nail of the index finger and produced the result for his comrades to see.
“What is that?” said Shayd, eyeing a multicolored glob.
“Pigment and plaster,” said Voth.
Sutherland looked back sharply. “The caretaker had spent a week in the rotunda,” he said, quoting the Chantry report. “With some intent to ‘restore’ the fresco, which was not at all in his mandate.”
“I have made mistakes,” finished Shayd.
Demons were never trivial. It was crucial to know what kind it was to know how to counter it. To know who could counter it. The proud would fall to the strength of Pride. Desire could stealthily take the wanting. Rage would consume those who carelessly fueled it. There were many kinds of mistakes, and only so many the small company could anticipate.
Sutherland carefully pulled the spike from the caretaker’s forearm and laid him down in the stables, covering the body with a horse blanket. Voth placed a ward to prevent manipulation by blood magic.
“Is that necessary?” asked Shayd, wanting the answer to be no.
“Can’t hurt,” said Voth, meaning he felt it was very necessary.
The three of them walked back past the gatehouse, up to the raised west courtyard. They surveyed the rest of the outer buildings as they went. Everything was as monkishly clean as the stables. Merchant stalls waited for wares that weren’t coming. The ramp to the main hall looked like it had never seen a boot, let alone the thousands that had appealed at the Inquisitor’s door. The wooden-framed tavern and smithy weren’t quite as Sutherland remembered—they were too empty. Many of the disbanding Inquisition had taken keepsakes when they left, unwilling to simply abandon the place that had so completely changed their lives. The furniture that remained was arranged for display. Chairs were neither tucked under tables, nor fully sideways as though someone had just stood. They were between, as though invisible commanders were still sitting there, turning to greet a runner. A tableau created by those charged with preservation, not those who had lived it.
“No other bodies,” said Sutherland. “How many are missing?”
“Permanent staff was seven,” said Shayd, flipping through a logbook. “Another ten in the supply caravan.”
“Seasoned blades among them,” said Sutherland, frowning. “Voth? Anything?”
“The demon couldn’t get the caretaker, and then for some reason, it could. It has claws or fangs.”
“That’s … not enough.” Shayd bit the inside of her lip. Bards preferred knowing too much about their enemies.
Sutherland warily scanned the balconies of the main keep, and the windows of the rotunda. “How long until…?”
“Until it comes for us? Depends.”
“Voth,” said Shayd, exasperated, “give me something.”
“Like we guessed from the report, it probably emerged in the rotunda. If it’s hungry, and we express the emotion it needs, it’ll come when it wants.”
There was a sound beyond the gates, from the barbican past the neck. The counterweights of the cable lift shifted. The platform was rising.
“We can’t wait,” Sutherland said. “It has to feel us.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t come,” said Shayd.
The words had barely left her lips when a sudden gust of wind threw the doors of the main keep open. They slammed into the stone framework, causing a ringing in their ears that seemed to change to a distant howl as it faded. The three of them exchanged shocked looks and ran forward, ready to face whatever was waiting.
Nothing was there. They stood nervously by the ramp to the doors, weapons drawn, waiting.
“Do you hear that?” Sutherland whispered harshly.
“What?” said Shayd, eyes wide.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Sutherland walked up the ramp and carefully peered into the great hall. Behind him, no leaves moved, no insects busied themselves in the few flowers that grew at this height. The banners on the ramparts showed no sign of the strange wind. Or any wind at all. Everything was perfectly still. A growing chill hung in the air.
“Fenedhis!” said Voth, breaking the silence with an elven swear. He waved his hand in a practiced but tense motion, small filaments of energy weaving between his fingers and his gnarled heartwood staff. He whirled, eyes closed, trying to focus on ripples in the Veil. “A demon for certain,” he said, straining. “Something got its attention.”
“Will it attack?” asked Shayd. She ducked his staff while also trying to watch every vantage that bordered the courtyard.
“I don’t think so, it isn’t—” Voth stopped turning and frowned. He opened his eyes as he abandoned the spell, energy crackling away, shoulders sagging. “I tried to get its name, but it moved too fast.”
“It’s not the only one,” said Sutherland, returning down the ramp. In his left hand was the horse blanket he’d draped over the caretaker.
“This,” said Sutherland, “was in the hall.”
“Fenedhis,” muttered Shayd.
Sutherland dropped the blanket and looked past his friends, past the neck. The cable lift had almost reached the top of the watchtower.
“Right,” he said, steeling himself. As he talked, he tightened the vambrace on his sword arm. “We did something to get this thing’s attention, and now we need to keep it, so—” He stopped.
Shayd was staring, arms crossed. Annoyed but smiling.
“We can’t wait.” Sutherland looked at her hopefully. “It has to feel us.”
Skyhold had stood for millennia. It was all but unassailable, and in the right hands it could field troops across all southern Thedas. It had everything that a fortress could be expected to have. And one thing more—the fresco in the rotunda.
“When did you last see it?” asked Shayd.
They’d left the courtyard and entered the great hall, heading for the narrow corridors that weaved to the inner chambers. Every door was open, but caution made them slower than if they’d picked every lock.
“After the Inquisitor returned from the Temple of Mythal,” said Sutherland, with some reverence. “The panel with the ancient elves.”
“I heard there was one more,” said Shayd. “It was supposed to show the victory against Corypheus.”
“Didn’t get the chance.” Sutherland looked at her, smiling. “You know we had to leave. ‘Avoid the rush,’ you said.”
“Keeps don’t grow on trees,” she offered, eying him kindly. Leaving had been a difficult decision for all of them.
“I know. I just wanted—” Sutherland stopped, raising his hand to alert the others. There was a sound, like a whisper, but not quite words. The opening to the rotunda was ahead, and the light inside was wrong. It had a greenish tinge, like he’d seen around Fade rifts. If the Veil was that thin here, that damaged, no wonder a demon got through. But what demon was it? What kind of mistake had lured it here?
Sutherland turned to his party. Voth was spinning a protective ward from the air, his staff glowing. Shayd had traded her bow for tight-quarters weapons—a pair of serrated daggers, wet with a liquid he knew not to ask her about. He gripped his long sword, nodded to them both, and stepped through the opening.
The rotunda was a stone silo more than three stories tall. It was connected to the main keep both at the base and through an upper, ringlike floor that housed the library. It was capped by the rookery, which offered a vertigo-inducing view to the ground level. It was an odd use of space for a fortress. Shayd had said it was perfect for important meetings because there were no corners to hide secrets. Whatever it was originally for, this hollow tower had become known for the fresco. Eight panels circling the room, nearly twenty feet tall each. Every act of the Inquisitor recorded in masterful plaster and paint. From the explosion that had marked the H
erald, to the triumph against a blighted false god. All painted by Solas, the Inquisition’s expert on the Veil and the Fade beyond. It was his gift of record. At least, that’s what was claimed at the time.
The rotunda they entered now was not fastidiously clean like the rest of Skyhold. The floor was splotched with the muddy brown of old blood. Far above, cages that once held messenger birds strained with unfamiliar weight. Each was stuffed with body parts. Droplets fell infrequently from dismemberments that were not fresh. There was a desk in the center of the room, the same that had been graced by the Inquisitor, Solas, and countless dignitaries. Now, though, there was only one occupant. A single, unmoving body.
“The caretaker,” whispered Voth, nodding toward the corpse.
As quiet as he tried to be, Voth’s words seemed to carry and change. They merged with a sound in the room, the same whisper they’d heard outside, now moving around the inner wall.
“It’s the plaster,” said Shayd, unable to look away.
The fresco seemed to gain depth on the wall, the layers of plaster shifting with a dry rasping sound. The whisper without words. It was subtle at first. In the first panel, a coal-black shadow moved behind the Breach above the Enclave, the explosion that had marked the Herald. The second panel was the Inquisition symbol, marking its foundation: a vertical greatsword, sheathed by the eye of Andraste wreathed in fire. Red pigment scraped itself from the stylized pupil and slid down the gray blade. More blackness crawled from two carefully detailed wolves that guarded the symbol, leaving them pale and dusty.
There was rush of air, as violent as the gust that had slammed open the door outside. This time, however, it pulled doors and furniture inward, smashing debris against the rotunda entrances.
“Oh, you piece of—!” Shayd threw herself against the off-kilter mess that now blocked the passage out. Her weight barely moved the pile. Voth joined in, using his staff as leverage, but added little to the result.
Shayd looked to Sutherland. “Get your shoulder in it!” she demanded.
Sutherland shook his head. “We won’t get through there until we go through that.” He gestured at the shape moving across the fresco.
Voth nodded, resigned.
Shayd uttered a frustrated growl, kicked the rubble one last time, and readied her daggers again.
The mass of plaster and shadow was still growing, stealing pigment from the third panel, the short triumph before the destruction of Haven. It continued to the image of the false god Corypheus—formerly such a figure of dread—and drained him like the wolves. Each event that had shaped the Inquisition was being stripped of color. The sound grew harsher, like a crate of porcelain pots in the back of a wagon, sliding against each other.
And as the trio turned, watching and predicting the movement, its purpose became clear.
“The eighth panel,” said Voth.
The eighth and final panel of the fresco, meant to commemorate the battle against the blighted magister Corypheus, was unfinished. It showed only rough shapes, outlines that the mass of color crawling around the room now rushed to fill. And as detail and depth emerged, something was wrong.
“That’s … not what I pictured,” said Sutherland, confused.
The story was well known—the Elder One, the false god Corypheus, had torn a hole in the sky to steal power from the heavens. He couldn’t be killed until his blighted dragon was dead, and the Herald, the Inquisitor, had somehow countered with a dragon of their own. And there was a dragon on the panel, with an Inquisition blade in its neck. But according to the story, both creatures had fallen first, leaving the final victory to the Inquisitor.
But here, unfinished, was the outline of a beast that stood over both dragon and sword. This was not the battle, or the victory. This was after. And the beast was not a dragon. The outline alone might have allowed that assumption, but now, filling with black and red, it was something other. The creature was reptilian, but also canine. The snout was blunted and toothy, but edges came to a point in houndlike ears. As the mass of plaster filled the shape, it began to rise, revealing scales and tail, and paws with talons. It looked like two figures painted on either side of a pane of glass, then viewed together, their forms confused. A wolf that had absorbed a dragon, and now stood crooked over all.
With a sickening crack it separated from the wall, from the victory. It was suddenly a full and imposing physical creature. It turned to look at Sutherland and his company.
“That’s too many eyes,” said Shayd, ready to throw a dagger and pluck one out.
And then she stopped.
“Shayd?” said Sutherland. He needed to know she was safe, but he couldn’t risk taking his eyes off the creature that now stood independent from the fresco.
Shayd didn’t answer.
Voth was on Sutherland’s left, and had begun a spell that hurt just to feel it cast.
And then Voth was also still and silent.
Sutherland tried to put himself between the demon and his frozen friends. He eyed the room, looking for anything that would help. Except for the desk and the body of the caretaker, it was a bare circle. There were three entrances: the one they’d used; one that led outside; and one with stairs that circled upward within the walls. All were blocked. Sutherland looked up the unscalable walls to the rookery above. He couldn’t see through to the outside, but the cages reflected tiny slivers of light from unseen windows.
There was a hint of movement, something just past the lip of the rotunda.
Not yet, Sutherland mouthed to himself. He had to keep the demon’s attention. Make it feel him.
He banged his sword against his cuirass, then held it before him. He stared the creature in its too-many eyes and let his worry for his friends make him as threatening as possible.
“Creature!” he spat. “Name yourself and what you’ve done!” He would have seemed formidable in any other situation.
The beast regarded him in silence, looming, and then its plaster lips spread into a smile far too quickly.
“I am the heart of what was here.” As it spoke, it raised an arm—one of three—and pointed at the fresco panels in order. “An echo that has breached the Fade.” The creature’s arm finished its path at Sutherland’s friends. “And I can still the bravest blade or magic.”
The limb folded into the creature’s layers, each movement adding to the rasping sound. It rose to its full height, as high as the panels would’ve allowed, and bellowed its name so loud that dust fell from the walls.
“I am Regret!”
Shayd wasn’t in the rotunda anymore. She’d raised her dagger a feared and respected bard, but when her hand lowered, she was fourteen and running through an alley in Dales End. There was a voice ringing in her ears. She knew it well. She knew every word it would say, and how cruel they would be. Because it was hers.
“You’ll never be anything!” Shayd screamed, not turning back, because this was the moment that meant she never could. “You’ll never be anything!” said her worst fear, and every hate she kept for a life that couldn’t do more than scrounge and hope.
And far behind her, a mother cried her true name.
Voth was lost in the woods, which wasn’t new. He wasn’t good at this. He’d chosen books, neglected his tracking, and his knots never held. Ahead was the open road. He had his satchel and his maps, and he’d find his way to Val-whatever. And he would rarely speak, because then he’d have to tell.
And far behind him, a bear in tangled ropes crushed a brother into blood and dirt.
The rotunda was thick with plaster dust as the demon moved. The creature seemed to reshape itself with every step. It lorded over Sutherland and his immobile friends, its voice a dry, hurtful rasp.
“There is so much of me that’s here,” it said, clearly not regarding the trio as a threat. “So much Regret behind these deeds.” It paused, looking at the hole it left in the eighth panel. “I wonder if you know the dread that’s coming?” Regret seemed wistful in that moment, like a child
the night before Feastday, anticipating promised candy. It closed on Sutherland, smiling.
The young warrior let his sword dip as the thing approached, and it got so close that he could feel the dusty breath of its possessed form. He held perfectly still.
“The actions here have scarred the world,” said Regret, distending arms to point at both Shayd and Voth. “You saw the rise and felt the fall.” A third arm cradled Sutherland’s head, removing his helmet, examining him like a cherished thing. “Why would you risk all your lives and return now?”
Sutherland smiled, remembering how every day in Skyhold had been the best day. Remembering his vow, why he’d returned, and always would.
“No regrets,” he said.
Sutherland’s blade was in the creature’s chest before it could react, and with every ounce of strength he had he drove it to the hilt. The impact pushed the demon backward, and it stumbled on legs it had yet to master. Sutherland pulled his sword back, the blade stained with paint. Regret crashed into the desk and fell with the caretaker’s body, flailing like it couldn’t tell where its own form ended and the corpse began.
“Shayd! Voth!” Sutherland yelled, but his friends didn’t move. If he’d disrupted the demon’s influence, it wasn’t showing yet. He shouldered them closer together so they’d be easier to defend, and readied his blade once more. He’d been lucky, landing a strike that would kill any mortal creature. But demons aren’t mortal, and he was already banking too much on luck.
Regret raised itself unnaturally, its body simply re-forming into a standing position, like a shadow rising without a wall. It looked at Sutherland, but there was no smile this time. It snarled a toothy growl, a sound that—like its shape—was somehow between wolf and dragon. Regret touched the wall, and more plaster from the fresco joined its mass. The wound in its chest remained, but it filled and discolored with new material.
Sutherland glanced upward. More movement. And then, from over the lip, a gloved hand, its thumb raised. He smiled inwardly.
“What have you done to my friends!” Sutherland demanded again.
Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights Page 12
