Chapter Text
He had barely been awake when rough hands had dragged him away from wherever he had been laying to dump him on a cold stone floor.
A downgrade, for sure.
His wrists had been bound with heavy manacles. The sharp sound of swords being unsheathed had resounded in the room. Is this it? He had wondered.
No slashing pain had come. Yet Anders still suffered.
His whole body was sore. Whatever clothes he was wearing were both damp and freezing, the frosty air reaching through their layers to seize the sweaty skin underneath. He had likely run a fever, his healer side supplied, not without difficulty. The headache hassling him was piercing, his mind foggy as though someone had drilled a hole in his skull.
The worst of it, however, was his arm. It was like nothing Anders had ever felt before. The pain—It was both burning and sizzling, an electric current running through his limb.
Anders' eyes blinked open again, and saw something green.
There was something on his hand. Or rather... Inside, somewhat. Anders squinted against the greenish glow in an attempt to make sense of what was afflicting him.
It was an enigma of a wound, though undoubtedly magical in origin. If it had to be described... He would say that something had cut him across the palm to impossibly alter it, by replacing the blood and flesh inside with pure luminescent energy.
Lighting-like markings were spreading from the gash to his fingers and wrist, reminding him of the way Justice's power would split his skin each time the spirit took over.
Justice. Comprehending what the spirit was thinking or feeling had become so difficult. It was like untangling a ball of yarn formed by nebulous threads. But Anders tried, concentrating on all the points where they were not so intrinsically joined.
A presence in the back of his mind, silent judge and defender alike, but too quiet now. A will, not so foreign anymore but still other, guiding his actions, unusually slumberous. Sensations in his chest, differing feelings in the shadow of each emotion, and... A short heartburn with pinpricks, like a hedgehog curling between his ribs.
Now, if the read he had gotten was correct, the spirit was... Groggy.
Gritting his teeth, Anders slowly shuffled to stand on his knees. Four soldiers were keeping watch from each corner of the room with their swords pointed at him, ready to strike at a moment's notice. With the way fear was shining through their vengeful glares and how tense their stances were, Anders was surprised they had not taken a swing at him yet.
Which meant they were all waiting for something, or someone else.
Whatever happened next, his fate was tenuous. The short chains restraining his movements had been bolted into the floor, leaving him only too aware of his position. It was the posture of those readied for execution, neck exposed to the verdict of the blade. His body could withstand many things that would prove fatal to anybody else, but even Justice's powers would not be able to counter an injury this decisive.
All this, and that was not even accounting for the strange magical mark tearing his hand apart. It was killing him, and not only figuratively, the Spirit Healer could tell.
His eyes drifted to his wrists again, to find a familiar symbol etched beneath him on the cobblestones. He had been dropped inside a circle, the outline bursting into flames around him in the form of a sun.
The Chantry. How fitting that he would end here at last.
He had been caught then, but where and when had that happened? What had he been doing? Anders couldn't recall, and then with a certain amounting dread realised that he could not actually remember much of anything after having fled from Kirkwall. There had been the explosion and the carnage and the Gallows, events he should never be allowed to forget, and then... Something about the Circles... A war. There was... Something he had to do, once again.
All he had were flashes. Someone, a woman running at his side. A land torn asunder, a place resembling... the Fade? A light, a hand reaching for him, danger on his heels. Anders examined his palm again, flexing his fingers.
In response the magical energy compressed inside the cut surged, crackling ominously. Anders grimaced, jaw clenched.
The door of the dungeon swung open a moment later. Two figures marched towards him as though summoned by the sudden discharge of power. The soldiers surrounding Anders drew back their swords to hold them straight in front of them.
The first woman – a seeker judged by her armour, and wasn't Anders lucky that his jailers now outranked even the most esteemed templars – circled around her prisoner like a wolf looking for the perfect angle to strike. The other watched the scene unfold.
"Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now," the seeker leaned forward, as if her threat would thus hit more closely. Anders didn't pull back or move an inch. She was far from being the first Chantry's dog who got in his face. Perhaps his younger self would have made a quip about the pleasure of having a beautiful person mouthing such nasty things in his ear. Perhaps that was what he would have spitefully responded anyways if she had not continued. "The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you."
That got his attention. Especially because Anders had no idea what she was talking about. "The Conclave?"
"Do not dare to play innocent now," the seeker warned.
Anders frowned, more unsettled by her words than he would have liked. This was not about Kirkwall, not only. Whatever catastrophe had occurred, it seemed Anders had the impudence to be its only survivor. Marking him both as the last witness alive and the primary suspect. Not that his record would allow him to dispute otherwise. "You think I'm responsible."
"Who else but the apostate who destroyed the Chantry of Kirkwall?" She gripped the wrist infected by the magical injury and demonstratively lifted the heavy manacles surrounding it as far as those permitted. "Explain this. Now!"
The seeker dropped the chains, forcing him to bow to their sudden weight. Anders straightened to glare at his jailer. "I can’t."
"What do you mean you can’t?" Her voice rose in pitch, offense and disbelief mixed in equal measure.
Anders shook his head, trying to keep his tone factual despite his propensity for opting for defiance in the least opportune moments. Maker knew he had never been one to watch his tongue. But right now he needed more information, just as critically as those two seemed to. "I don’t know what that is, or how it got there."
"You’re lying!" The seeker accused and grasped him by the collar, likely giving in to the impulse to strangle him.
The other woman stepped in to prevent her colleague from seizing his throat next. "We need him, Cassandra," she reminded her. Simple, yet effective. The seeker backed away throwing her arms up, likely frustrated with the limbs for failing to wrangle answers out of him.
Anders coughed, grimacing slightly when it brought the attention of his jailers back on him. "So what happens now?" He asked, attempting for stony, but still sounding somewhat challenging. Which was not ideal.
They needed answers, and thought him useful. Anders needed answers as well, but most importantly, he needed out.
The redhead approached him. Wait, hadn't he seen her somewhere before?
"Do you remember what happened? How this began?" She questioned almost cordially, hands kept behind her back.
So that was how they played. Bad Templar, Good Templar. A classic of the genre. Whoever these two were within the Chantry, they knew how to fulfil their roles.
Anders sighed. He had gone through the motions of similar scenes more times that he had cared to count. Considering his position, Anders figured he might as well keep playing along. For now. "I remember running. Things were chasing me, and then… a woman?"
"A woman?" The redhead appeared actually intrigued by that tidbit. Anders might have been too, if he had been allowed some further time to process the situation. Being a fugitive did not exactly pair well with running beside anyone. There was a reason why Hawke's band of misfits had broken up. Mostly, it had been him.
"She reached out to me, but then…" Anders shook his head, frustrated.
The two Chantry members exchanged a look and apparently agreed on a decision.
"Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take him to the rift."
Anders blinked and tried to catch a glimpse of the woman before her departure. Leliana. The Left Hand of the Divine? Companion of Warden-Commander Surana? The first and last time they had met, she had been investigating a plot against Grand Cleric Elthina by mages, unaware of what the one behind the Champion of Kirkwall had been planning.
If this Leliana really was the Left Hand of the Divine, then the seeker unfastening his chains to bind his wrists with a thick rope was probably the Right. His limbs instinctively tested the strength of their newest restraint before stilling under her scrutiny.
"What did happen?" Anders tried, concerned despite it all by what had transpired, beyond his own precarious situation.
Her frown met his. Kneeling in the dank hall, mage and seeker measured each other for a few tense seconds until the warrior unexpectedly blinked, disarmed by what she had seemingly read in his gaze. Perhaps truly understanding how clueless Anders was about the state of things outside of the prison's door, her fierce expression fell to reveal something akin to grief. Anders had only glimpsed it when she turned away to help him up, hiding her vulnerability from him, if not her sigh.
"It will be easier to show you," she declared, attempting for terseness. It missed spectacularly, her rough protective edges sanded away by sorrow.
This, Anders decided, was the most unsettling thing that had happened since he had woken here. If Bad Templar had gotten shaken enough to veer off script this way, how much had the world outside been tilted off its axis?