"’Tis considered rude to stare,” Morrigan observed dryly, “even here in the wild south.”

Neither of them had spoken in the course of the ride out of the village, during which Morrigan had acquiesced to his wordless little tests without complaint: bringing the pace up to a canter around the bend in the road, only to slow abruptly as they approached the collapsed bridge and then to lead them in a tight and somewhat awkward path along the slope to a point where the horses could safely jump the river to reach the road on the other side. (The frozen river itself could be traversed on foot, of course, but he dared not test the ice’s strength against the weight of a horse, even if the water beneath wasn’t very deep.)

Throughout, Morrigan had acquitted herself quite well, easily maintaining control of her mount and following his lead without a hint of hesitation or anxiety. Ilya had been watching her closely from the corner of his eye in an attempt to avoid staring outright, but —

He smiled sheepishly. “My apologies, I meant no insult. I only wished to be sure your skill was sufficient for the difficulty of the terrain ahead. I don’t want to put down any horses on account of broken legs today.”

“If you must, Messere Snow,” Morrigan replied evenly, “‘twill not be on my account, I assure you.”

Ilya squeezed his knees together and brought his mount to a quick walk up the road. Over his shoulder he cast another smile her way. “You may call me Ilya, if you like.”

Morrigan arched an eyebrow at him, but a smile curled at the corners of her own mouth. “How familiar.”

“You don’t strike me as a woman to stand on formalities.”

“There is a time and place for formalities,” she replied, with a touch of amusement, “but I concede ’tis not the inner reaches of the Frostbacks.”

And that was a blessing, considering the disastrous state of him. By contrast, the brisk ride out of the village had done naught to diminish Morrigan’s air of elegance and self-possession; on the contrary, the blush the wind had brought to her cheeks favored her complexion, and the wisps of dark hair torn loose from her bun brought out the sharp ochre of her eyes. Ilya did not permit his eyes or thoughts to linger there any longer, however, and instead looked once more to the road before them.

They had not traveled far before the damage to the road — indeed, to the whole landscape — became apparent. Many of the demons cast from the Breach during its initial tumult had collided with the mountainside, showering the valley below with rock, snow, and fragments of shattered pines. In some places the road had been entirely drowned with debris, with no sign of what hazards might lie beneath.

“Anywhere the snow has piled up, follow my path precisely,” Ilya warned her, “as slow as you can take her. We’ll go around the worst of it, but she should be able to recover her footing if she stumbles.”

"But you know the way, I take it?” replied Morrigan.

“Yes. We cleared some of the rubble along the road to bring out carts to retrieve the dead deeper in the valley not long after the Conclave. The weather turned before we made much progress, but I remember which parts of the road are clear.”

“Many dead must remain uncollected, then.”

“At least five or six score, not counting those who were…” He paused; any word he might have chosen felt rather grotesque. “The Conclave itself left few bodies.”

“Your own was included among those few, it seems,” Morrigan replied wryly. “Was the purpose of those endeavors mere sentimentality?”

Something about her tone made Ilya turn his head, but her expression was reserved. “The dead deserve at least the dignity of a pyre,” he replied after a moment, “but no. I’m told there is a great risk of corpse possession, as the extent of the old cult’s sacrifices had left the Veil weakened even before the damage wrought by the explosion.” That much must be obvious to her of all people, as one of the few with any familiarity with the prior condition of the Veil here. A little test of her own, then.

She arched an eyebrow at him, and while her tone remained collected, he could sense that she was once again teasing him. “Does the prospect of undead soldiers roaming the valley perturb you?”

Ilya laughed softly. “No, the dead don’t trouble me, ambulatory or otherwise — although it will be a great deal more difficult to retrieve them come springtime if they’ve all wandered off.”

“Well, if it is any comfort, the cold renders the undead less mobile, just as a corpse frozen solid cannot be easily disturbed in its repose. If any spirits are to clothe themselves in the bodies of your dead, they will in all likelihood be patiently awaiting retrieval until the spring thaw, if you insist upon the effort.”

“‘Insist’?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Do you think we ought to leave the dead wherever chance left them?”

“Can you name any tangible benefit of reclaiming them?” Morrigan countered.

Ilya paused. “They deserve to be remembered.”

“I rather doubt they have any opinion on what they deserve now.”

“But the living do,” he observed. “What are our soldiers to think if indifference is the reward for their sacrifices? A man’s life is the most he can offer. Would he offer it gladly to a cause that thinks it worthless?”

Morrigan gave a short huff. “They would do better to concern themselves with how your Inquisition values those lives while they yet possess them.”

Ilya answered her with a patient smile. “We are, most of us, creatures of emotion, Morrigan. What a man ought to think only occasionally dictates what he will feel.”

“Is that what you feel, Ilya?” replied Morrigan. That word was laced with particular derision, although her tone remained light and conversational. “If your own body were abandoned to the wilds, would it trouble you?”

Ilya laughed. “No, of course not. But my opinion hardly changes the fact of the matter.”

“Do you not ‘deserve to be remembered’, as you put it?”

He shot her a curious glance over his shoulder. Although Morrigan had already proven herself capable of a delicate touch in Ghislain, she had a keen instinct for finding the heart of the matter. He had no answer to that — none he would speak aloud, anyway. He looked forward once more. “I’m just not very sentimental when it comes to my own skin, I suppose,” he replied eventually. Regardless, it made little difference whether he was left as bones beneath the snow or ashes in a pyre, when those few to whom his life mattered would never know one grave from the other.

Morrigan’s tone held a hint of a smile. “For now, that will suffice as proof of your common sense.”

Ilya was pleased to let the discussion end there. With a small sigh, he glanced up towards the Breach. “I just can’t help but wonder whether the result would have been as catastrophic if the Conclave had been held elsewhere.”

“’Tis likely that it would have made little difference in the face of the force required to achieve such ruin, but the possibility does merit consideration,” replied Morrigan. “One wonders to what end the location of the Conclave was chosen. ’Tis a peculiar place for a peace talk, after all.”

Ilya could not fault her suspicion when he himself harbored many of the same reservations. He was quite sure he had not fully allayed her doubts about him in Ghislain, but ultimately it made little difference whether he was a conspirator or mere bystander. The stakes of the game were far too grand for a minor piece like him to be of any great significance.

“It struck me as passing strange at the time,” Ilya agreed, “like hosting a funeral in an abattoir. But I concluded there must be context I was missing as a foreigner.”

“What do you recall of the day itself?” she asked, audible interest now breaking through her carefully composed tone. Here, where only a few inches of snow blanketed the road, she drew her horse up to walk beside his own in order to converse more easily. Ilya could feel her keen eyes on his face, although he could not look away from the path ahead to meet them nearly so often as he might have liked.

“Almost nothing, I’m afraid,” he replied. “I must have been conscious while I was in the Fade, as I vaguely recall being chased by something, but little else. There was, however, an… apparition when we approached the rift at the heart of the temple ruins — a reflection from the Fade of whatever transpired.”

“And what did transpire?”

“There was some sort of ritual, and I interrupted it.” Ilya shot her an apologetic look. “If you want a more detailed account, you would do better asking Leliana or Cassandra. I was half delirious by the time we reached the temple and slept for three days after.”

To Morrigan’s credit, she well restrained her disappointment, or perhaps frustration. “That is little surprise,” she conceded. “You must surely have been told already that physical traversal of the Fade is a feat usually restricted to myth and legend.”

“I can imagine why,” Ilya replied mildly. “It felt like being run over by a wagon or ten. But I must apologize.” He flashed her a playful grin. “It must be terribly irksome of me to complain of my share of myth and legend.”

With that, he finally won a true smile from her, and relished the accomplishment nearly as much as he did the shape her mouth wore. Morrigan possessed, so far as he could tell, not a drop of shyness or diffidence, but there was something nonetheless reserved about her expressions, as if neither her face nor her nature would permit any extravagance. She smiled at him as if she had not quite meant to; against the backdrop of her cunning and cool self-control, there was a charming genuinity to it that fascinated him. He doubted he would have found such a smile half so captivating on a woman who was not, he was by now certain, quite capable of killing with a steady hand.

“Quite,” replied Morrigan, not without warmth, “but under the circumstances, I shall not begrudge your lack of wonder.”

He laughed. “In fairness, I’m sure I’d feel a bit more wonder if I could remember it. I would suffer a headache happily in exchange for such a tale.”

“You said you recall being chased by something in the Fade. Do you remember what?”

Ilya paused. When he tried to think of what his eyes had seen, there was almost nothing, as if the thread of memory had been cut clean through, with only its loose end left in his grip. But when he thought of what he had felt — his heart pounding from exertion, dread and disgust knotted in his throat, an irrational sense of aggrievement —

“Darkspawn, now that I think of it,” Ilya replied.

That answer seemed to surprise his companion, if only a little. “You have encountered darkspawn before?”

“Yes.” He did not care to elaborate on that memory just now, and she did not press him on it. “But those chasing me must have only been demons, I suppose.” He must have known at the time, as well, although he couldn’t remember what had gone through his mind — a fair amount of cursing, in all likelihood. He had never feared the Fade, but he could quite easily imagine how disconcerting it would be to find his physical body there, all but defenseless. It was a feeling intimately familiar to him, but one he usually encountered only in deeper dreams.

“Indeed,” replied Morrigan. “Spirits of fear drawing upon your memories, perhaps.”

That brought a thoughtful frown to his face. “People talk about the Fade as if it’s… a shark-infested cove, waiting for an unsuspecting mortal to pass through its waters and unleash a feeding frenzy. But that isn’t true, is it?”

He met Morrigan’s eyes this time as they studied his face curiously. “’Tis the idle superstition of fearful minds,” she agreed after a pause. “Many inhabitants of the Fade are dangerous, just as many of the creatures that walk the mortal world are dangerous, be they man or beast. But most spirits have their own purposes, and are not like to feast upon the first soul they encounter. A mortal visitor might walk far without encountering a truly hostile spirit, unless she sought it out herself.”

“It’s strange that I should stumble in and find a pack of demons upon my heels, then, isn’t it?”

“’Twould be, under normal circumstances,” replied Morrigan, “but these are far from such. The violence of the Breach may have drawn the attention of many spirits, or driven those closest by to madness.”

“Well,” said Ilya lightly, “if I ever find myself a wakeful tourist there again, perhaps for my troubles I shall be allowed to enjoy a quiet walk.”

Morrigan’s smile was bemused. “An uncommonly sensible perspective.”

As they crested a hill, Ilya drew back on the reins and halted. Ahead of them, the road to the temple disappeared into a bank of rock and snow, as if its pavers had concluded that this spot in the wilderness would be a satisfactory terminus.

“This wasn’t here last time,” he explained.

“Then we shall have to go around,” replied Morrigan, undeterred. “Is there another way?”

“There was, but that was before the Conclave.” The company to which he’d attached himself had arrived to Haven quite early, allowing him time to indulge his habit of studying the layout of his surroundings. A knowledge of the means of ingress and egress to an area was often quite salient to the question of who would survive a conflict and who would not, assuming that the conflict did not involve the building one was occupying becoming a crater. “It might still be traversable, if too much of the mountain didn’t fall on it.”

“Then let us begin there,” decided Morrigan, with such authority he was tempted to laugh.

“Very well, my lady,” Ilya teased as he rounded his horse back toward the way they came, “follow me.”

It took several minutes to pick their way to another narrow stretch of river to cross back to the other side; from there, they made their way along the bank until they reached a gap in the pine trees that marked the trail head. It had the look of a deer trail that had been only recently half-tamed for human convenience, with trees still scabbed with sap where branches had been cleaved away to widen the path. It was too narrow to allow carts and too rugged to serve as a private entrance for guests of any great esteem; it had probably served only to keep mages and templars from jostling shoulders on the way to the Conclave, if he had to guess.

Ilya kept his horse to a walk as he led them onward, his eyes flicking between the snow and the trees for potential hazards. “What do you intend to do if this way, too, is impassable?”

“Then other measures must needs be brought to bear.”

He shot her a quizzical look. “Meaning…?”

“’Twould depend on the nature of the obstruction. Snow and ice may be melted, trees burned, crevasses bridged. If no other alternative will serve, then I,” sighed Morrigan, “might carry us across myself.”

This time his head turned more sharply. It was impossible to tell from her face whether she was serious, but the weary resignation in her tone sounded genuine enough. Ilya winced and laughed. “I fear propriety would require me to throw myself off the mountain before allowing such an imposition upon her Radiance’s ambassador,” he demurred, with a carefully measured balance of levity and embarrassment at the prospect. He had spent twenty years learning meticulous control of every fold of his voice and muscle of his face, and all of it he now brought to bear to ensure that neither would betray the reckless thrill that had run through him at the thought of such a physical demonstration of her magic.

Morrigan let out a single note of airy laughter. “You may throw yourself off the mountain after our business at the Temple is concluded, if you must. ‘Til then, I require your presence, not your propriety.”

That was enough to divert his attention from a dizzying reckoning of what creatures capable of carrying a full grown man might be within her repertoire. For what, exactly, did she require his presence, rather than only his expertise in charting a path across the ruined valley? Come to think of it, by wing she might have reached their destination an hour ago, without any of the discomfort or logistical challenge of going by horseback. What did she want with him?

Innocent explanations came quickly to mind, of course — as did other sorts.

“Well,” Ilya said lightly, “let us hope it doesn’t come to that. I had not thought to put my opinions about my own corpse to the test quite so soon.”

“Indeed,” replied Morrigan dryly.

Beneath the trees, the light was dim enough to leave unease prickling at the back of his attention, warning of the setting sun. It was, for now, an illusion: the sun’s angle had grown oblique as it approached the part of the sky obscured by cloud and mountaintop, and that enfeebled light was now dimmer still as it filtered through the branches. The trip back to Haven should go more quickly, now that they had plotted a course and the horses had familiarized themselves with the ground conditions, but they could not afford to tarry over-long at the temple. He might tolerate a frigid evening for the sake of indulging her impatience, but he would not suffer the horses to spend the night out of the stable.

In the shade of the pines, mist hung thick and still in the air, and the snow was packed more densely, crunching loudly beneath the horses’ hooves. This part of the forest was almost pristine, seemingly left unscathed by the disaster through mere chance. In the misty solitude, it was easy to forget what lay beyond the needled boughs.

“So,” Ilya began, shrugging off the sense of irreverence he felt breaking the forest’s hush, “you can’t take the shape of any animal, I suppose.”

“I cannot,” replied Morrigan, “for I have not studied every animal in detail sufficient to apprehend its nature. Were I to make such an effort, then any creature would yield its shape to me with time.”

“How do you choose which to study, then?”

“At first, by convenience. As a girl, I was of course limited to those with whom I shared the Wilds. Then, as my horizons widened, some creatures I sought out for function, and others for leisure.”

Ilya considered this. “A raven’s virtues are self-evident — mobility, speed, convenience. Bulk and strength enough to resist most weather, as well. A moth…” In his preoccupation after the salon, the implications had not crossed his mind. As realization dawned on him now, Ilya felt a vicious kind of delight, of the sort he might feel as a detached observer of a complex and perfectly orchestrated assassination. He let out a dark laugh, grinning brightly. “How convenient it must be to eavesdrop wherever you please without the slightest fear of discovery.”

Morrigan’s smile held a hint of mischief. “’Tis a favorite of mine, I do confess.”

So pleased was he with this bit of cleverness that Ilya almost did not mind how troublesome it meant her company might prove, if it was impossible to be certain of a secret’s confidence so long as she might be nearby. Perhaps Leliana had considered as much already.

“But you have others, as well?” he asked, his grin lingering as he glanced back at her.

“Naturally,” replied Morrigan, still smiling herself. From the spectacular performances she had granted him at the salon, Ilya suspected she enjoyed the attention, or at least the novelty of an enthusiastic audience. Most people would not find any display of magic quite so marvelous, he supposed, particularly not varieties not even sanctioned by the Circles. As far as many were concerned, any spell that couldn’t be found within Circle curriculum might as well be blood magic. On this point, he was quite happy to flatter her.

Ilya had found shape-magic fascinating since he was a boy. His sister had wished to learn it once, that he might be able to see the zoo animals outside of the pages of her sketchbook after he was no longer permitted to join the rest of the household on such excursions. It was a bit embarrassing to think back on the childish sorrow this restriction had inspired in him — it was a great deal too foolish for a boy of eleven, and he had quickly learned as much — but the nostalgia he felt for the concept persisted long after his sister had forgotten that childhood fancy. He liked to think he would have nonetheless appreciated the wonder of the magic all the same.

“Oh, please,” Ilya laughed, as it became clear Morrigan did not intend to elaborate. “You must give me something, or I’ll go mad wondering.”

“Must I?” she replied archly, but her smile had widened, and Ilya knew he had her. “Very well. ‘Tis hardly the most practical form, but I have always been partial towards the mountain lion.”

“The—” So brightly did his face light up that it drew a bemused laugh from her, and he was quick to look away.

“Is that so surprising…?” Even without turning back to look, her raised eyebrow was perfectly audible in her voice.

It was seldom that Ilya’s willpower was properly tested, much less over something so frivolous. He opened his mouth and shut it once more before finally replying. “Did you encounter those in the Wilds, as well?”

“Yes,” she replied, her curiosity still lingering in her tone, “many a lion stalked the marshes, although they were most often shy creatures reluctant to reveal themselves to humans, unless the opportunity presented itself to carry off an unwary child, or perhaps an over-curious young girl who fancied them kindred spirits.”

“Well, I could hardly blame her,” said Ilya, recalling the pages filled with sketches of tigers and leopards in place of where his mathematics proofs should have been. There was something terribly charming about the thought of a young Morrigan seeing herself in such an animal.

“You have never encountered one yourself?” she asked.

“No, we don’t have them north of the Waking Sea,” he replied ruefully, “nor have I heard of any being kept in a zoo. I imagine few sailors would be keen on making the crossing with a seasick lion in the hold for any price. We do have plains lions and cheetahs north of the Minanter, and leopards and tigers in the northern jungles, but they’re all quite different in both habit and conformation, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Morrigan, amused.

Ilya glanced back, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry. Big cats have always been a fascination of mine. I’ve seen a few,” depending on one’s definition of the word ‘few’, “but never a mountain lion.”

“Well,” Morrigan said lightly, “perhaps I shall have occasion to demonstrate.”

That thought set his heart racing. Ilya measured out a long, careful breath. “I would hate to impose.”

“A noble sentiment,” she replied archly. “You have naught to fear, however, for I seldom suffer imposition. Whatever I do, ‘twill be of my own choosing.”

Yes, thought Ilya, he was getting that impression. "Well, if there ever comes such an occasion, I shan’t—”

He cut himself off as he drew back on the reins, bringing his horse to an abrupt halt. Beneath his glove, his mark hissed and spat. “…complain.”

“A rift,” Morrigan observed. Although it remained out of sight, she must have been able to sense the magic emanating from it; it should be no surprise that her senses were more attuned to the Fade than his own.

Ilya frowned. Their soldiers had swept the valley for rifts after the initial disaster, and he had sealed each one they flagged, but the terrain was too vast and their men too few to search the whole of the wilderness. Perhaps he should not be surprised that a few rifts still lay unnoticed in corners such as these.

“I’ll have to close it if we’re to pass.” He dismounted, and gestured for her to do the same. He whistled for Kallos. “We’ll leave the horses here. They’ll spook if we bring them too close. There will be demons,” he warned, knotting his chestnut’s reins around a thick branch. “If we cannot deal with them by ourselves, then we shall have to return tomorrow, unless you’ve chanced to learn a griffon’s shape somewhere.”

He doubted Morrigan would permit them to leave without a practical demonstration of his mark, however numerous or unpleasant the demons might prove. (A griffon was, of course, not the only possibility; a horse might serve just as well, if panic were no concern, but — well. It did not bear contemplation.)

Kallos’ bark alerted him to the dog’s presence, still some distance downwind. Ilya turned to call to him, just loudly enough to be heard. “Stay here with the horses until I return. Do not leave them,” he repeated firmly. “Understand?”

From this distance, he felt more than heard the dog’s soft little whine of begrudging acquiescence as it settled down on its haunches to wait. Ilya turned back to Morrigan, who he was pleased to find had already tied her own mare nearby, and they set off at once.

The rift was a relatively small tear, flickering quietly in the pale blue gloom. The sight of them still turned his stomach even before he was close enough to feel their effects begin to infiltrate his senses, but there was an awful beauty to the way the rift’s spectral light shimmered across the icy mist and snow-laden boughs.

At their approach, it awoke with a snarl, spitting out a half-dozen frantic demons to writhe steaming in the snow. Ilya was never certain whether the spirits forced their way or were with violence drawn through the rifts, but whether accident or intention, he pitied them all the same. He had yet to encounter a rift-bound spirit that did not have the look of a frenzied animal about it.

Between the company of Solas and Morning, he had begun to grow used to the occasionally hair-raising experience of fighting alongside mages and the exercise of maintaining his focus despite the magic flying through the air around him. Still, nearly half the demons were dead before he noticed that, firstly, Morrigan was casting hardly any spells, and secondly, every demon slain had been felled by his sword alone.

As the last demon sank into the mud left behind by the snow-melt, Ilya at last had the opportunity to look over to confirm his suspicions. Morrigan stood apart from their little battlefield — attentive, staff drawn, and standing quite idly by as she watched the fighting conclude. He turned once more to the rift, and with a now familiar surge of power knit the Veil shut.

With the air still and silent once more, Ilya turned back to Morrigan. “Well?” he asked, a touch breathless from the exertion.

She raised a brow. “‘Well’ what?”

“Did I pass?”

She snorted. “You yet live, do you not?”

Ilya smiled and lowered his eyes to wipe the sulfur from his blade with the edge of his coat, lest the steel corrode. He might argue that, if Morrigan meant to test him by letting him fend for himself, she ought to have warned him before putting his skin on the line — but he did indeed yet live, and with scarcely a scratch to complain of. He could hardly blame her for her little game when he had so thoroughly enjoyed her skill at making a fool of him twice already.

What did vex him, if anything, was his damned right hand and how stubbornly awkward it had proven, despite the weeks of practice. It was some comfort that Morrigan was no swordswoman herself and would not — he hoped — notice those deficiencies as readily as any duelist might, but that was rather hollow solace.

“Had your skill proven insufficient for the task, I would have intervened,” Morrigan went on after a pause, as if bracing for argument.

Ilya glanced back up at her, still smiling. “I have no doubt,” he said pleasantly. “Better that you have an opportunity to survey the rift and my mark without distraction, anyway.”

Something shifted in Morrigan’s expression — bemusement, he thought, or surprise. “How accommodating.”

“I could pretend to take offense to your presumption, if you prefer,” he replied with a playful smile. “Although my pride would suffer for such a pretense over only a few demons.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Most would be unsettled by the prospect of even ‘a few demons’.”

Ilya shrugged, and turned back to retrace their footprints in the snow. “I used to hunt wyverns. Thus far, the demons have proven less troublesome.” Killing the wyverns was, in fact, not the tricky part of hunting them; the challenge lay in keeping both the wyverns and the nobles whose hunt he ‘assisted’ alive long enough for the latter to land the killing blow on the former, and — the truly troublesome bit — maintaining the illusion for the sake of the nobles’ pride. “But do I fear them just for being of the Fade? For their magic? No.”

“You are not a mage,” observed Morrigan, but something about it had the air of a question.

He shot her a puzzled glance, and did not allow his growing wariness to bleed through his tone. “No…?”

She seemed to accept this assertion, at least outwardly. “What does it feel like to use the mark?”

Ilya contemplated the question for several paces, staring down at his glove. It was unlike any magic he had ever felt: forceful, yet not an expression of will — or, to be more precise, not an expression of his will. “There’s a sense of purpose. It’s… almost mechanical, like a key in a lock. It turns — you could hardly do otherwise. But perhaps I simply lack the… dexterity, if you will, to understand how else it might be used.”

Fascination, sharp and intent, had begun to creep into Morrigan’s voice once more, as if she were tempted to pull him apart to find her answers amidst his sinew. It quite suited her. “What if you attempt to ‘turn’ it now, without the rift?”

Ilya frowned as he lifted his left palm in the now-familiar gesture. Without a rift to seize upon, it took a moment of fumbling before he felt something catch, and the air around his hand ignited in green light. The Veil stirred around them, like a curtain billowing in a sudden gust of wind — then the magic sputtered out, and both light and wind died all at once.

“Feels a bit slippery,” he concluded. “Like a pick sliding over smooth rock.”

“You have a talent for metaphor.”

Ilya did not quite beam in reply, but it was a near thing. “I’m pleased to be of use.”

Morrigan gave a little hum of amusement. “I shall bear that in mind.”

Ilya had not returned to the temple itself since his failed attempt at sealing the Breach for good. A mantle of snow had cloaked much of the devastation, concealing ash and charred bone beneath a sea of white, but it did naught to diminish the looming crown of jagged black stone cradling the temple’s ruins. There remained a terrible gravity to the sight, and neither he nor Morrigan spoke as they approached.

At last, when they were close enough to step into the long shadows cast by the rock shards, Ilya looked back to Morrigan. “It was worse before,” he said softly. “The feeling.”

Morrigan’s eyes had risen to gaze up at the scarred sky above them, much as his own were wont to do of their own accord. They flicked back down to him after a moment, her face thoughtful. She had no need to ask what feeling he meant. “How did it feel then?”

“Wrong.” Whenever Ilya attempted to commit the memory of that sensation to words, he returned to this one again and again. His eyes fell away from hers, fixed somewhere in the snow ahead. “Horribly wrong. As it was near that rift, but far stronger. One moment, the ground beneath your feet would be firm, and the next it felt as if you were falling into the sky. Your eyes would focus on movement where there was only thin air. Patterns in the texture of the world you couldn’t quite make out. You could feel it even from Haven.” His voice was hushed. This seemed to him the quietest spot in all the world; even the wind seemed reluctant to draw close. “It felt like the world was coming apart at the seams. Rotted wood, ready to crumble away at a touch.”

Morrigan gave no reply to this, which was just as well. This close to the epicenter, she could feel for herself the snarls and loose threads in the fabric of reality. Ilya was intimately familiar with the scent of dread — damp stone, fear-sweat and burnt meat, old blood-soaked cedar — but never before the Conclave had he felt dread weigh against his skin, as palpable as the tension and humidity in the air before a gathering storm.

They passed beneath the Temple’s ruined gates in silence. Ilya had wondered if his recollection of the scene had been distorted by his fever, but it remained as strange and surreal as it had that day. The twisted pillars of fade-rock rose up around them like a skeletal ribcage, their jagged shadows cutting dark gashes through the green light rippling across the snow.

At first delirious glance as he approached the ruins for the first time, Ilya had struggled to map them onto the structure he remembered. The empty expanse that lay beneath the first rift, he now realized as he gazed across it, was the foundation of the temple itself. It should have been buried beneath a mountain of rubble; that the shattered stone was instead scattered across half the valley was a grim testament to the force of the explosion. The cellar atop that foundation had once been walled by hand-laid masonry, but that too had been obliterated, the boundaries between one stone and the next melted into a smooth, formless slope by a terrible heat. It reminded Ilya of a sandcastle succumbing to the waves.

“Would you even recognize it?” he asked.

“Hardly. ‘Twas candle-lit, and what details I did note avail me little now, as little of the edifice survives.”

He paused a moment, before conceding to his curiosity. “Is it true that you fought a dragon atop it?”

“Aye, for Mahariel would not suffer us to depart without claiming the wyrm’s head.”

“I can’t say I blame her,” Ilya replied wistfully, and could not be sure whether he had imagined the soft chuckle from behind him.

“Watch your step,” he warned without glancing back. “Who knows what’s beneath the snow.”

Morrigan remained composed, although the levity had dissipated from her tone. “Rubble and bodies, one must imagine.”

“No,” Ilya replied quietly. “This close, there were no bodies.”

Without further need for his guidance, Morrigan led them forward, pleasantly surprising him by choosing a straightforward but difficult descent that he would have avoided out of concern for her comfort. By the time she reached the foundation below, snow clung to the dark wool of her coat’s sleeves and flowing skirt, and as he followed behind her Ilya found himself grateful for the way the heavy fabric obscured the finer points of her acrobatics.

How strange it was to stand here once more, his mind clear and his heart still beating. But should it be? He doubted that day was the closest he had come to death, which had long been a companion as familiar as his own shadow. But a simple blade, however close against his neck it might be pressed, could not compare to what his every sense still insisted must be the end of the world.

“Do you believe it was by the will of Andraste that your life was spared, Ilya?” Morrigan’s voice interrupted his thoughts, and drew his eyes back from the lights flashing across the clouds above them. She had not turned to face him as withdrew her staff and began tugging up her sleeves, perhaps preparing to set about whatever work had brought her here.

“I don’t remember what happened.”

Her head turned slightly towards him, only enough to catch the gleam of the light on the ridge of her cheekbone and make out a few dark wisps of her lashes. “Believe you only what you know to be certain?”

Ilya paused. He had considered the question, as often as it had been posed to him since that day. As little as he concerned himself with Andraste, he had to admit he would have found some comfort in the thought that she might have claimed him as her tool — that he might be given use and purpose once more. But it was idle fancy, no more reasoned than the wishful thinking of a forlorn child longing for a loaf of warm bread. There were no miracles, and nothing came without a price.

“No,” he replied at last. “I don’t.”

To this, Morrigan did not respond, and turned back to the snowy expanse before her.

“What is it you mean to do?” he asked.

“If you cannot say what transpired,” she replied, “then I must seek answers elsewhere.”

Without further explanation, she raised her staff, and with her right hand began shaping a spell.

Until recently, Ilya had nearly forgotten what it was like to watch someone work magic — real spell-work, not the fumbling of a frightened back-streets apostate — and the sight fascinated him. The differences in technique from one mage to the next were striking, even if he could not fully grasp the nuances of those distinctions. [1] Morning’s movements were tight, careful, and well-rehearsed, like the perfectly stiff lines of practiced calligraphy, while Solas’s were so elegant and understated that at times Ilya could not make them out at all.

Ilya had suspected that many of those differences were due as much to magical tradition as to personal flair, and seeing Morrigan’s hands move now, he was all but certain of it. Her technique could hardly be more dissimilar: light, confident, and rapier-sharp, with an ease and fluidity that spoke to her skill. The motions, too, seemed unlike any he had seen before, although they were so quick that it was difficult to be certain, like tracing the path of a hummingbird’s wings.

So mesmerized was he by the subtlety of her hands that he might have taken the spell itself for granted, had he not felt the Veil recoil and shiver around them. By reflex, he restrained any outward reaction, but goosebumps prickled across his arms and neck. Ilya had witnessed a true séance only once, when Theo had asked Ilya to accompany him into the Grand Necropolis for an All Soul’s Day ceremony – although it was of course easy enough to find a lay healer or soothsayer on half the street corners in lower Nevarra City who would channel the spirits of the departed for you, occasionally quite convincingly.

This was something quite apart from either the grave rituals of the Mortalitasi or the cheap theatrics of the con-woman. For one, the séance in the Necropolis had been conducted by four trained necromancers in concert, not to mention whatever undergirding of enchantments kept the place from being overrun by wild undead. Those few in attendance had been commanded to silence, lest they break the concentration of the Mortalitasi ritualists.

Here, Morrigan stood alone, and beneath her outstretched hand the Veil trembled.

The wind that had deserted this place began to stir once more, whipping at Ilya’s hair and sending snow swirling wildly around them. He could feel the pressure building in the air, aching in his teeth and behind his eyes, but all remained silent, save for the whistling wind and the ringing in his ears.

Animal instinct told him to reach out, to speak, to make her stop — but Ilya remained still instead, watching as Morrigan’s long coat billowed around her legs and her splayed fingers flexed with the effort of restraining the flow of magic. The greatest danger lay in breaking her concentration, never mind the arrogance of thinking he might change her mind with a few words. He only wished he could see what expression her face bore.

At last, just as it felt as if the world could not hold its breath a moment longer, the tension gave way like the surface of an icy pond, and a confused rush of images and sights washed over them. Flickering visions walked forwards and then backwards once more, conferring in huddles or gesturing in argument, lifting a crate only to dissolve while reaching for the next — impressionistic sketches of mortal life, as it had been in the days or hours before obliteration.

The noise was at first cacophonous, as if the spirits Morrigan channeled did not quite understand how to fit the sounds they echoed into rational mortal chords. She flicked her wrist and the chaos resolved into a single looming shadow: a humanoid shape, distorted like an ink drawing stained with water. In place of the barrage of noise came a voice that rumbled in the foundation beneath their feet.

Ilya had heard it before, reverberating through the ruins as the Veil bled and then through the winding dreams that came after. This time, something was different, but it took a moment to place what it was. The voice spoke in a language he did not understand —

No, that wasn’t right. He could almost understand it, in bits and pieces and with a sinking feeling in his stomach. ‘I, Corypheus… torn… reclaim… deserve… glory… finally ascend… golden throne… all kneel… command old-god… heeds… rule…’

The words grew indistinct, as if they had been plunged underwater while the voice remained somewhere above. Magic swelled around them as Morrigan pressed her spell, but the voice only began to repeat itself, then slipped back into a muffled, vague impression of speech before finally dissipating with the wind.

As silence fell over the ruins once more, Ilya gritted his teeth and slowly let a breath out through his nose. As impossible as it would have been to prepare for such a bizarre eventuality, he could not help but feel a sharp pang of frustration at his lapse all the same. As ever, he was permitted no excuses.

There was no pretext that would avail to explain why he might have some grasp of Tevene, let alone Old Tevene; nor was there any other means by which they might discover the information revealed by the vision, save by his own translation of it. He might write it down to offer to one of Leliana’s translators, but the prospect of calling her attention to his ability to transcribe it with any accuracy seemed more dangerous by far.

Of course, a wyvern was more dangerous than a lion, but that didn’t make the prospect of the lion’s claws any more comforting.

As the vision faded and both voice and wind subsided, Morrigan continued to stare thoughtfully into space. Ilya waited several seconds before, restraining a wince, he ventured: “Did you understand any of that?”

She glanced back, studying him for a long moment in the attitude of an owl considering a patch of rustling grass. “No,” she replied at last. “Did you?”

“I caught some of it.” He resisted the urge to sigh again. “I speak a bit of Tevene. That was Old Tevene, I think, but some of the words are similar enough. From what I understood, it spoke of… reclaiming rightful glory, something torn, ascending to claim the golden throne at last, an old god heeding its commands…” He paused a beat. “‘Old god’ as in the old gods – that word is only used for the dragons.” He would have liked to append an ‘I think’ here, but the point was unfortunately too important to hedge for the sake of plausible deniability.

This time, both of Morrigan’s brows rose sharply. “Our foe commands an archdemon?”

There was a grim thought. “Or supposes he does.”

She raised her eyes to contemplate the Breach above them. “If this ‘Corypheus’ aspires to sit the ‘golden throne’, perhaps the rending of the Veil was not merely the consequence of this ritual, but its object.”

Ilya followed her eyes upward, frowning. Ambition he understood well, however alien an emotion it was to him personally. When they were alone, Theo had sometimes spoken of the Nevarran throne and the growing contention over who would claim it, and Ilya had pretended ignorance as the young prince explained the vying positions of the divers Pentaghasts and Van Markhams. As close in blood to Markus as he was — and as a man young and robust enough to presumably produce heirs — Theo’s own chances had been better than modest, if only he had outlived the king.

(As for his own father’s ambitions — Ilya swiftly set that thought aside.)

To covet a mortal throne was one thing; to demand the Seat of the Maker itself, and at such a catastrophic cost…

“‘You have brought Sin to Heaven, and doom upon all the world,’” he recited quietly. “They say that it was Tevinter magisters who defiled the Golden City.”

“’Tis no mere fable,” replied Morrigan, “loath as I am to credit any of the Chantry’s self-serving accounts of history or the details with which it has illustrated the tale. Yet the Magisters Sidereal did indeed breach the bounds of the Fade, and at least one, the High Priest of Urthemiel, survived until it was by Mahariel’s hand slain some years ago.” She sounded contemplative. “Mayhap it was not unique in that respect.”

Ilya’s eyebrows shot up. “Do you really think…?”

“We cannot discount the possibility, however incredible it may seem on its face. ’Tis not out of the question that this is simply some grandiose delusion, but I would wager few madmen possess a ready faculty for a tongue a thousand years dead, and that the ritual did indeed succeed in tearing the Veil speaks for itself. ‘Twould be stranger to encounter some other magister of eld capable of such a feat.”

Quickly and mechanically, Ilya set aside the emotions of disbelief and bewilderment pressing at his attention. Neither would serve him now. Morrigan’s argument was reasonable enough to proceed, at least for the moment, without staring at her slack-jawed. “Then whatever it is, it would be blighted, would it not?”

“Almost certainly. The Sidereal encountered by Mahariel was unquestionably darkspawn, although it was possessed of both a keen intellect and some measure of sanity. If this apparent Sidereal does indeed command an archdemon,” she went on, slowing as she reached her conclusion, “it may augur another Blight.”

Ilya breathed a humorless laugh. “With Ferelden still limping from the last Blight, Orlais in civil war, the Circles in flames, and the Chantry headless and limbless? I fear a Blight would make quick work of us.”

“Quite,” replied Morrigan. “We must not allow it to come to that. We may yet take heart, however, as there has been no other hint of a coming Blight.” Ilya supposed she would know better than most, if she was still in contact with the Wardens through Mahariel. (He might have included the King and Queen of Ferelden, if they had not, from what he had heard, laid down their Warden duties upon their coronation.) “Whatever this ‘Corypheus’ intends, there remains time to prepare, so long as we do not squander it with vacillation and dithering.”

A tall order, thought Ilya, as he reflected on the current state of their war room discussions. He was all but certain Cassandra and Cullen had proposed excluding him from those talks after their row, but they must have been outvoted or otherwise persuaded; given that Ilya’s first instinct was not to simply bludgeon his way through a problem, it was to Leliana and Josephine’s advantage to ensure he had a vote.

Speaking of his strained relationship with the Inquisition’s leadership… “Morrigan –” he began, but she cut him off with a sly smile.

“You would beseech my discretion regarding the breadth of your linguistic studies,” she said, and sounded pleased enough at the inference. “Am I correct?”

Ilya paused, then returned her smile, for the first time a touch begrudgingly. However greatly he might admire her skill, he could not fully relish a liability so potentially fatal. “Yes.”

“Very well, then,” she replied lightly, “I am in your confidence.”

Somehow, Ilya doubted it would be that simple. “In the first vision, the voice spoke in an archaic form of the common tongue,” he recalled. It was in some ways quite similar to Morrigan’s own dialect, although he did not point this out. “They’ll assume whatever we heard was much the same, and I can’t imagine it would surprise anyone that you would recognize a few words of Old Tevene.”

“Rest assured, Ilya,” said Morrigan, amused, “I require no tutelage in the arts of deception.”

After a moment’s consideration, he decided not to belabor the point. She was far too careful to let something slip thoughtlessly; his secret would be safe with her up until, perhaps, she saw an opportunity to use it as leverage. “Well,” he went on after a beat, “regardless, I suppose that’s not what you brought me out here for.”

“Indeed,” agreed Morrigan, still smiling as she turned away from him. “I have another use for you.” As she strode further into the snowy plain, she lifted one hand to run through the air beside her as if she were running her fingers through the surface of a pond. A faint bloom of magic trailed behind her fingertips.

Ilya held his silence as he followed; there seemed no point in asking what she did not yet mean to tell him, and he suspected that an enigmatic half-answer would be her only reply. Still, he could not say whether it was instinct that stirred his growing sense of trepidation, or only the continued unease that emanated from the Breach, grating at his attention like a stubborn bit of grit in his eye. Here in the heart of the ruins, there was little that did not feel like an ill omen.

Morrigan did not quite lead them in a straight line, instead seeming to follow an unseen current of magic, led by the changing glow of the light beneath her fingertips. At last, when it hummed like a struck wineglass and shone bright enough to leave an after-image when he shut his eyes, she stopped, and with a sweeping gesture gathered the ambient magic towards them, sending a shiver through him and leaving the hair on the nape of his neck standing on end. With a few quick gestures, the flow of magic swirling around them stabilized, as if she were preparing a ritual of her own. What did she mean to do? Study the nature of the Breach, he supposed, but —

“Give me your marked hand,” Morrigan bade him, holding her own open palm out expectantly. Her smile was gone now, and in its place was left only cool appraisal.

Perhaps she did intend to kill him after all, thought Ilya, once she had her answers. It was unlikely but not inconceivable that the Empress might feel threatened by the Inquisition, or even by him personally, and to find that Morrigan had been toying with him all along would be, truthfully, hardly a surprise at all. After even such a brief demonstration of her power, he had no doubt that a mage of her ability could draw upon her spells more quickly than he could his sword or dagger, if it came down to a test of reflexes.

Even if he were to die or vanish under suspicious circumstances — set aflame by a contrived rage demon, perhaps — it would hardly make a difference. Without proof, it would be as good as impossible to levy a formal accusation of assassination against the Empress’ emissary, particularly when the Inquisition’s principal claim that it alone could contend with the Breach would be eviscerated by his death.

Then again, Morrigan could just as easily abscond back to Val Royeaux without a word, safe in the knowledge that she was very nearly untouchable. Funny to think that his life might be purchased for the price of one fine horse.

These thoughts occupied the space of a moment as she awaited his reply. In the sickly light of the Breach, the gold of her eyes seemed liquid as she watched him, like oil waiting to ignite — dangerous, captivating. He had never seen a lovelier color.

Ilya smiled and offered her his hand.