Sisters of Tevinter

Upper Hand

       Something heavy, brittle and strong snatched Jor up from the ground, turning her world upside down in fits and starts and twists. She would have lost her lunch in the snow if her heart hadn't jumped into her mouth first. Blood drained from her face, nausea coursing over her in waves. This was the voice from long ago. The voice from her nightmares, from that first night beside the Breach. The memory. Divine Justinia's murderer. 

        Clawlike, bony fingers gripped her wrist as her legs dangled uselessly in the air. She was hanging face to face with a rotting monstrosity of lyrium crystals and murderous dark eyes. He was tall. Unnaturally so, taller than Bull, thin and made of dark feathers, fur and bone. In fact, compared to Jor, this creature was a giant. 

          Jor quailed, wincing as her arm supported all of her weight, the pain in her shoulder and the mark on her hand was excruciating. The creature leaned close, foul breath brushing over her face as he studied her. "You... you are the one I've sought." 

          Jor thrashed in a sudden surge of fury, twisting like a serpent in the monster's grasp, her tongue pressed to her teeth. The mark flashed. 

          Unflinching, the creature held her aloft with disturbing ease, his gaze drawn to the emerald glow of her palm. "A mistake. A spell forming awry, they call you a hero. Destiny did not give you this power. I did." 

          Jor spat in his face. 

          The creature closed his shadowed eyelids slowly, a ragged scowl forming in the torn flesh of his mouth. "You have defied me for the last time." He tossed her to the snow, her spine striking the wooden foot of the trebuchet with a sickening crack. The breath left her lungs with an uneven whoosh as stars flashed in her vision, blood flew from her lips. 

            There was a great flapping of leathery wings as something enormous settled in the cold before her, flames raging all around it, eyes hollow and hungry as the tattered red and silver patterned dragon lay hissing in the snow, its jaws alone larger than the length of Jor's heaving body. Weakly, she pushed her arms beneath her, looking up in a haze of pain. 

             "I am the Elder One," the tall, lyrium torn monster of a man thundered. "I am Corypheus. You will submit." 

           Jor spat blood in the snow. "I do not fear you," she rasped. Pain overrode every emotion, her ribs felt like shards of glass against her organs. The mark on her hand roiled and fluctuated. 

         The creature reared its head and chuckled darkly, the sound loud and echoing. Full of poison. "Words long hurled at the darkness humans did not understand. A bold faced lie." He drew something glimmering and metallic from the folds of bloody, shadowed fabric along his torso. A bronze orb, resplendent with carved runes. Jor had never seen the like. 

          "The Anchor is mine. Return it to me." Corypheus lifted the orb over his head. Jor's palm was yanked forward by some invisible force, agony burning up her arm, her mark igniting in swirling, sickening green flame. The scholar cried out in agony, pulled to her knees, her hand braced to her burning wrist. The dragon gave a purring growl behind her, hot wind curling her hair over her shoulders in amber wisps. 

           Jor hauled back with all her strength. She had no wish to be drawn forward, and somehow she knew. The sense of impending disaster ate and tore at her heart as she thought of giving in to the magic that threatened to reduce her arm to ash. Her fingers were numb with agony, a thousand blades sliced her palm. Tears flowed freely down her face, turning to streaks of ice and blood on her cheeks. Hold. Hold...

          Corypheus gave a guttural snarl. "Impossible. It has become permanent-- bonded to the host." 

         The light faded. The pain became a dull ache. Jor remembered where she was. Who she was. What she was doing all this for. A rueful grin pulled at her lips as suddenly, behind her, in the distant mountains far behind the Chantry and the smoldering embers that once was Haven, an arrow of flame and shimmering blue magic flew into the sky with a high whistle. 

           They're safe. Jor's grin widened. Her side was pressed to the wood of the trebuchet, she hauled herself up, gripping the splintering timbers. Corypheus watched her, gaze alight with unholy ire. "You are useless to me now." 

           "Good," Jor coughed. "Because I'm sick of hearing you talk." She kicked the wheel free. It spun, the boulders were slung with a rising slash of air towards the mountains littered with armies.

          "No!" Corypheus roared, enraged, his dragon snarling and taking to the air as thousands of tons of snow tumbled from the mountains, bringing frostbitten death down the peaks in pearlescent swathes. 

            The arch demon snatched Corypheus up in its scything claws, the resulting wind and force sending Jor careening into the side of the mountain, deep into a chasm of ice and rubble. Her head struck the stone. Darkness fell as winter sealed its icy lips over the entrance.