Chapter Text
They stood around the Well, eyeing the murky waters uncomfortably. The knowledge of the Dragon Mother lied in wait in its depths, along with its binding curse.
“Well,” said Sera, “we just gonna stand here or what?”
Diren looked to Merrill, standing there with hands shaking and eyes wet with wonder. Diren’s gaze skimmed over a ruffled Morrigan completely. “Merrill, I think you should -”
The world went black. The blackness unfurling itself, and will open into a massive unblinking eye. Long-reaching tentacles trail around it in deliberate caricature of the heraldry of the Inquisition. Diren stood before its judgment for only a moment before she was pushed, and orientation shifts, and she falls straight down from the black abyss of its pupil. She will fall and fell and falls, until she reached another betentacled baleful eye above and below and was again swallowed whole in its gaze and she fell and she falls and she’ll fall, faster and lower and higher until her speed is such that she began to reek of smoke, and she couldn't breathe can't see, and her armor, the masterpiece she forged from the bones of her foes and her kin, the visage of her pride, grew hot hottest hotter, and her clothes melted like summer-soft butter, dripping like wax to her skin, and the armor burned her beyond through, and for an infinity she will fall had fallen until she is only a tortured conscience, conscious, trapped screaming without use of an ashen tongue, and it will be, was, only a continuation of pain pain hurt rattling inside dead burning bones inside dead burning bones. Then after and before forever, there was a change, and the eye before her was replaced with an angry, hungry, smile, licking its lips with a cacophony of black slippery tongues and it spoke unto her
drINk fRoM tHe WeLl aNd I wIlL SaTe YOur THirSt, MY MOST CHERISHED CHAMPION. aLlOw ANOTHER aNd ThEy SHaLl kNoW oF yoUr SorRowS, In A lONg ForEVEr PAsT AnD FuTurE.
She heard, “KADAN!”
And somehow Diren lifted her gaze from empty bone-rimmed sockets and saw both the first and the last eye of Hermaeous Mora, and saw Morrigan and Merrill and Solas and Sera and The Iron Bull , standing around the pupil. And they saw the remains of her. And Bull charged towards the pit, prepared to leap. No muscles no tendons no ligaments no life giving breathe of oxygen in her blood but still she raised a skeletal hand, bones tangling and jumbling inside her glove, and screams “ BULL!”
“ Merrill, I think you should-” The boss went silent and froze.
The wide-eyed blood Mage said, “Yes?”
The boss’ normally red eyes clouded like an oil spill to a blackish green, and she fell to her knees in a clamor of armor.
“Boss!”
Her face rolled up, and she vomited waves of thick smoke that coalesced into a cloud. A rank black rope stretched high above her lips, and the cloud loomed and wafted overhead. Then seven eyes blinked among it into being, and leered down at them all.
Well, that sure as shit wasn’t gonna lead up to anything positive.
The eyes shifted their gaze as a poisoned arrow passed harmlessly through them. A pot shattered in the distance. A bundle of arrows followed shortly. Judging by the Iron Bull’s expert ears, a lot of expensive ancient shit got broken in the distance. The upper curve of the cloud lifted, not unlike a raised eyebrow.
Solas hissed, “Those are relics you’re destroying, Sera.”
“Not the only thing I'm gonna wreck!” Sera used her teeth to rip off the cork to an alchemical bomb, and swung her arm back to hurl it before Morrigan snatched her wrist.
Are you done? A voice, oiled unctuous smooth, asked curiously.
Solas placed a barrier around her before she could release the grenade of bees.
Morrigan said, “She is.”
What a pity. I had so looked forward to seeing her FASCINATING grenades. Tell me, child, what poison had you used on your arrows? It felt delicious.
The Iron Bull stepped past them all. He approached the eyes. “Cut the creepy demon shit. What have you done with the boss?”
The eyes blinked. She's perfectly safe.
Bull didn't bother to look at the frozen, prostrate woman, a plume of oil still connected between her and the cloud like a rotten umbilical cord. “Then where is she?”
In her head, of course. With me. Do you want to see her? She wants to see you . All of you.
Bull grit his teeth. He looked at the rest of the group.
Sera said, “No thanks. I was already in the frigging fade with frigging . . . I’ll stand guard, shoot any baddies that come our way.”
Solas announced, “Of course I will go.”
Morrigan said, “We should drink from the Well before this kind of undertaking; we could use the knowledge-”
Everyone, including the eyes, said No at the same time. Morrigan harrumphed. “Well, if you're all so keen on waltzing into a trap unarmed and unprepared, I suppose you could do with my aid.”
“Thank you,” said Solas sarcastically.
Lovely, said the demon sincerely, at the same time. The two stared at each other for a long moment.
The blood Mage spoke up, her small hands twisting anxiously around her staff. “I'm going. I'd like to make sure Diren is okay.”
Everyone stopped to look at her. Merrill nervously corrected, “I mean, the Inquisitor. Her Worshipful Herald. Oh, you know what I meant,” she grumbled and shifted her bare feet.
Bull nodded, then turned back to the demon-god-thing, and wasn't he just shitting those lately? He crossed his arms. He was gonna regret the fuck out of this. He knew he wouldn't. He glared at the cloud. “You ready, or what?”
Suddenly it was in front of his face, a breath away from him. His nostrils flared in disgust and he breathed in the stench of old brine, books, and bodies. And the color of the eyes shifted, until ; Solas’, Morrigan’s, Merrill’s and his own lone eye appeared dead in the center. That can't be good.
Relax, 089723.
It was only years of hard experience that kept Bull from flinching in shock but - it knew his Qun designation, it was in his head, and then a tentacle shot lightning quick from the cloud and straight for his eye. Before he could even blink, it touched him feather-light and he buckled as the world bled black. Then the world unpeeled into a giant greenish eye, with long tentacles fanning around it in the shape of the Inquisition. The world shifted, and Bull floated down to land gently on the iris. He looked around and saw Merrill, Morrigan, and Solas floating down to the farthest edges.
Bull looked around at the infinite black surrounding them. “ Where's the boss?”
In quick fire flashes of images burned into his mind, he got his answer. They all saw the Inquisitor plummet where they had floated; they saw her armor grow white-hot and meld at the joints, and her flesh char, and her own eyes melt like so much wasted jelly from the ashen ruins of her face. They saw a skeleton try to scream.
“KADAN!”
Her lifeless sockets lifted towards them, and a hand was raised in desperation. “ BULL!”
Bull charged towards the pit, only for Solas to move in his space and slam a barrier around him.
“ Think , The Iron Bull. We were all brought here, into this illusion , for a specific intention. All you would accomplish by diving below the eye is falling into a far less hospitable part of the illusion.”
“You mean where the boss is!”
Morrigan intervened, “Yes, and even though this may not be the corporeal realm, what has happened to the Inquisitor has still felt very real to her. That poor shell we saw would not survive in our world; there's no telling how deep this damage could have gone, how far the rot has spread.” She added, not unkindly, “The woman you know is most likely gone.”
Bull snarled. “You think I don't see that? It makes me the most qualified person here to bring her back.”
Solas snapped, “Readily submitting oneself to be tortured into eager obedience is not a qualification.”
“I endured what hundreds had died from, or had lost their minds as completely as to samek. I was broken down and reshaped but I rebuilt myself , and if you think you can approach her from the same mindset than be my fucking guest.”
“Perhaps that is why it lured you here then, so she might more willingly recover from its own mistreatment. Perhaps your own misguided amorous intentions are merely another tool in the torturer’s kit.”
Bull’s sole eye narrowed to a furious sliver. His voice softened into a murmurous quiet. “Do you think I don't know that?” He roared, “ Do you think that I care ?”
Solas sniped, “Yes, Hissrad, you care too much and it will bring about your ruin.”
Merrill raised her hands. “Let's all take a deep breath, please-”
The Iron Bull’s hands twitched for his ax. He’d break his way through the eye.
A black tendril rocketed from the center of the pupil. It wrapped up Bull’s leg, his waist, chest, arms, neck, and yanked him down onto a sudden pile of pillows. Bull roared. She was an idiot. He'd kill her as soon as he saved her. A small, treacherous, loyally pragmatic voice in the back of his head said that the Qun would demand her death twice over now. Bull struggled against his infuriatingly comfortable restraints.
Merrill said, “Um, I don’t think it wants you to do that, The Iron Bull.”
Morrigan hissed, “But why the pillows?”
Bull seethed, still straining against the restraints. “Because demons and their SHITTY DEALS.”
Come now, THE IRON BULL. You expected this before accepting my bargain. You knew as well as I that this was bound to happen.
Solas accused, “You let her see him. And she made a deal so he wouldn’t be harmed, which you will follow to the letter.”
The tentacles writhed. There was a moment of silence, and a chuckle rippled along their spines and pressed against their eyes. VERY GOOD. i am to make you as comfortable as possible for just a short amount of time.
Bull said, “While you make her do what?”
The eye flickered around them.
YOU WILL SEE.
They shuddered. Merrill looked around the mockery of the symbol of the Inquisition. “We’re not even Andrastian.”
Diren awoke on the cool stone tiles. She breathed deeply, keenly aware of the expansion of her ribs, of her fingertips pressed to the floor. She sat upright, and saw her companions still lying still. Sounds of a distant battle drew closer. She stood and walked to the water.
She heard the sound of an arrow notched on a bow. Diren turned and saw Sera, white knuckling a fully drawn bow.
“Right, are you a demon then? Is Diren in there at all?”
Diren stared at her.
Sera lurched a step forward. “Why are you the only one upright? What happened to everyone else? What did you do?”
Diren turned, and started walking back to the Well.
Sera's arms began to shake from the effort of keeping the bow drawn. “Don't you dare go in that weird magic whatever, weirdie. Don't you frigging dare.”
Diren paused, while her mouth tried to remember how to shape the words. Lips, tongue, teeth. Thuum. She stared hard at the woman. She said, “Pranks.”
The arrow loosed. It ruffled her hair.
“Frig.”
Diren shed her armor, her outer layers, and left them outside the calm pool. She stepped in, the waters surrounding her, and raised her hands to drink. Voices clamoured around her in a foreign tongue, but a familiar language. She knew what was expected here.
“I consent to the price.”
The water rushed to consume her.
They all returned to the waking world at the same time, to find the Well of Sorrows with Diren laying at its empty center, cradled in Sera's arms.
Sera looked up at them, eyes red and face flushed, her bow flat at her side. “I can't get her to wake up, she just keeps lyin’ here. And now there's demons , more demons, and nothing’s working! I frigging said, didn't I, Well of Sorrows, better off not, but no one frigging listens to me.”
Merrill clutched her staff, and grief settled around her shoulders. She walked over and knelt carefully by the two, and placed a hand on Diren's cold wrist. “She lives, still. There's hope yet, Mythal'enaste.” Her mouth twisted and she looked out across the temple.
A distant thunder marched closer. A single boom, and the great ornate doors cracked open. A monster appeared, and the group stared. They would all die here.
A watery ghost of a woman, an elf, ascended from the empty well. The mirror glowed, and they ran, Diren still gripped fiercely in Sera's arms. The mirror hissed shut behind them.
Diren opened her eyes, and there was a woman who was not a woman in her tent. Large horns curled up from above her brows, and as Diren’s eyes blurred, she saw the moonlight shining like wings behind her.
Her voice cracked as she said, “Mother.”
A dry, wrinkled hand tenderly cupped her cheek. “My daughter. You have come so far. This story has not been gentle to you, nor any other, I’m afraid.”
Diren clutched the warm hand tight with both of hers, and wept. “I’m going mad, Mother. I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t want to be here anymore. But there’s no where I can go, no where I can be safe from the waking dreams of the Sallow Regent. Why did you make me, only to let him make my fate?”
The hand curved into claws and gripped her. Diren was brought up face-to-face with the golden-eyed dragon in the manskin, and her Mother said, “ I did not make you, even as I did once make you. I knew that to fashion such power in failing, mortal, flesh was a doom-driven fate. I may have dabbled and tinkered here and there, but I would never harm my own children so.” Then she sighed, and the claws retracted, and she traced gentle nails through Diren’s hair. “Though it seems the I of your world was crueler than I. Or perhaps simply more desperate.”
She continued to stroke Diren’s hair as she faded back into repose. “Nevertheless, you are here, and you are mine twice over, as this world was once mine twice over. And I’m not about to let some slur-tongued squid steal either from me.”
Diren shook her head, and anger snuck into her voice and brightened her eyes. “It does not matter. There is no choice, there is no choice, there is NO. CHOICE! He is Knowledge , and he is Fate . No matter the steps taken, he created and controls the filigree path, he can take the minds of man and mer and immortal, and no matter how I insisted or protested, still he became my teacher and I his champion of eternity.”
Mythal leaned back and crossed her legs. “And when he did this, he who is Knowledge, and is Fate, did he ask you first?”
Diren scrunched her brows together. “What?”
“He can bend minds. Did he bend yours, like a potter putting tools on naked clay, or did he ask ?”
Diren stopped and blinked. “I. I suppose he asked.”
Mythal nodded with grim satisfaction. “You cannot have a champion without will, anymore than you can yoke an ox to a throne and call it king. Which is why he had to resort to such underhanded tactics, rather than simply command you.” She leaned in close, and clutched Diren’s hand. “You still have will, my child. Stop trying to give it away.
“Now, before I will leave you to your much-deserved repose, a friend has come to call. He’s traveled quite a long way to see you, though he did rather pussy foot around the matter.” Mythal chuckled, and leaned out towards the tent entrance. “She’s awake! You can come in, my most darling boy.”
The endearment shook Diren’s haze. Who would the Dragon Mother refer to so warmly?
Then someone stepped through that she had never could have imagined. “I truly have gone mad.”
“My friend! I am overjoyed to see you well and whole.”
Diren turned to look at Mythal, and then back at the six foot tall, blue-furred, shyly grinning Khajit, standing there with his arms held wide while his tail swished nervously from side to side. “Inigo, what the FUCK ?”