Sisters of Tevinter

Bleeder of Souls

        "Everyone alright now?" Jor smiled softly, watching as her companions rolled their shoulders and checked their weapons. 

         "Yeah, thanks," Bull lifted his head and released a deep breath. "It feels good to move my arms all the way again." He grinned. 

          Cassandra nodded to Jor, still a little battered, her bad eye a little clouded, but otherwise well. She was standing straight again. Kaisen's scars were a less ugly red, the infection had faded from her blood splattered skin. Her eye had sealed in a thin layer of pale skin. She smiled. "I'm glad you found those." She giggled. "I think I would have died without it." 

           No one returned the laughter. It was probably true. 

          Jor nodded weakly to her sister and turned away, striding down the passage. It slowly began to widen. After a few minutes, it was massive, taking up at least twenty feet end to end. A short flight of stone stairs lead up to a huge set of double doors deep within the wall, lanterns blazing on either side of the green hued rock. 

          "This must be it," Leliana observed, looking around. 

         "Those doors are locked." Jor strode up the stairs, pressing her palm to the stone. "It's some kind of mechanism." 

           Everyone froze as a long, reverberating roar shook the hall, shaking dust from the high marble ceiling. 

         "We must hurry," Dorian said, urgency in his tone. "Step aside." 

          Jor complied. 

          The mage took a slow breath and sank into a wide stance, raising his hands. His fists ignited in violet flame as he twisted, tracing a sigil in the air with lines of light. 

           The haze of illumination was echoed in lines traced into the stone doors. They groaned, something within them clicked. 

          Dorian released a slow breath and pushed his palm outwards steadily. The doors swung slowly open, their enchantment broken. 

          "Nice," Bull commented, grinning. 

           Dorian smirked. "I have my uses." 

           A floor to ceiling hearth crackled on the far side of the long, columned chamber. A cloaked shape leaned on a battered staff topped with the visage of a snarling dragon. Someone was crouched beside him, staring at the floor. 

          Jor strode inside, Kaisen vanished. "Alexius." 

          "I knew you would come." The magister's voice was low, despairing. "I did not know when, but I knew you would return to fight me." 

          Dorian suddenly choked, his gaze snapping to the figure crouched aimlessly beside Alexius, ocean eyes vacant and blank. "Felix!" He whirled on Alexius, seeming to tower with rage. "You monster. What have you done?" 

           Alexius turned to face the intruders, his eyes pleading and desperate. "I struck a deal with the Elder One. He promised me... he promised me Felix would live. He lives, Dorian. He is cured." 

            "He'd be better off lying in a grave." Dorian unslung his staff from his shoulders, cracking it against the stone in a flash of amethyst light. "You used blood magic. On your own son?" 

            "He is alive." Alexius laid a careful hand on the crest of the boy's brow. Felix gave no indication of noticing, his eyes staring, his mouth hanging open slightly as drool dribbled down his chin. 

            Too late, Jor realized Leliana had moved. The Nightingale hauled Felix up by his yellow hood, pressing Jor's rusted dirk to the boy's neck. His blank expression did not change. "Not for long," the spy hissed. 

             Alexius flinched backwards, his expression crumbling in mournful desperation. "No!" He dropped to his knees. "Don't hurt my son." His words were wracked with pain. 

            "You ordered men to torture my Crow. You made me watch. You tore Thedas to ribbons, harnessing power you were never meant to wield," Leliana spat. Felix heard nothing. Saw nothing. Staring ahead. 

             "Give us the amulet, Alexius," Jor said coldly, rage and pity digging claws into the mass of muscle in her ribs. "It doesn't have to end like this. We can return." 

           "Return to a time where my son is doomed? Where I will have nothing?" Alexius turned to look at her, agony tracing deep lines into his face. "I cannot." 

         "Then feel the loss as we have," Leliana hissed, drawing the blade in one swift movement through Felix's unflinching, exposed throat. Foul, blackened blood spilled to the stones.

          Jor could barely process her shock. Felix-

          Alexius howled. Pure grief, fury, magic echoed around the chamber and shook the floor. Jor was driven to her knees as a blast of strained hatred struck outward with the fury of a hurricane. Her scarf was nearly torn from her neck, her hair whipped across her face. Dorian struck his staff against the stones and a wall of shimmering white light surrounded the companions to take the brunt of the force. 

           Leliana was thrown bodily backwards across the chamber, her head struck a column and she slumped to the ground. The magic faded and Bull was the first to charge. Bellowing a challenge in a language Jor didn't recognize (that probably had some very foul words laced in), the qunari drove his axe towards the mage's skull. 

           Alexius burst into black ribbons of shimmering shadow, rematerializing at the far end of the chamber. Cassandra, fleet as a stag, sprang for him, raising her sword. The mage lifted his staff into the air as an incantation reverberated along the hall.

            A great crack of thunder split the air as a rift burst into existence above them, birthing its terrible guardians. 

             Jor drew her newest dagger and shucked off her glove, lifting her mark to the emerald seam. It had the same terrible strength as the one in the courtyard. 

            A blast of nauseating green essence struck her in the back, Jor saw stars as she stumbled, her connection with the veil severed. She vomited on the stones, dizzy, her vision blurred. 

            A flash of red snapped past her, stabbing the floating shade over and over again as it wrestled the shimmering demon to the the floor. Kaisen continued to stab the creature, silent all the while, her mouth set in a thin line. 

            Dorian traded bolts of lightning with Alexius from the opposite sides of the chamber, shouting incantations, mumbling spells, light was everywhere. Heat seared past Jor's arm. 

            Cassandra was matching blades to claws as a floating horror of ghastly pale bones tore for her head. Ragged dreamers slashed their way through the air, three of them closing in on Bull. 

             Jor staggered to her feet as the screaming visage of a bird rose to unthinkable size, made purely of fire as it swooped over Alexius' head. The Magister conjured the snapping jaws of a beast from the blackness roiling around him in waves, swallowing the bird in a void of devouring magic.