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The walls were too close here, not unlike the tall, narrow hallways of the Gallows. They were both thousand year old Tevinter architecture where the ceiling went up and up into the dark, light not escaping or reflecting, sopping up what little warmth there was.
Ser Karras shivered; it was summer and the steel plates of his armour usually felt too heavy and too hot, but down in Old Kirkwall - a city built on top of yet more city, with chambers and halls and floors covered in the rust of ancient dried blood - the deeper into the earth one traveled the colder it became. He gripped his sword tighter; it did not help.
The templars behind him followed, single file, steel boots far too loud echoing in the stillness of the ruin. It was supposed to be a routine cleanse of the undercity, though their target this time was the healer of darktown, an apostate that operated openly, flaunting his magic in the eyes of the chantry. But somehow they had ended up down here instead, lost in the twisting tunnels. When they tried to turn back the hallways shifted, openings sealed over with stone where archways once stood. Ancient magic was at work here, changing the pathways of the maze to usher them towards its center like rats.
He barked a command, his voice authoritative while his mind doubted their chances of survival, the order splitting his little unit in three at the next crossroads. His men said not a word as blindly they followed his orders, and Karras marched on, the decision to divide in the hopes of finding a way out seemed the wisest choice until he heard the first scream.
It began on the inside, ice crystals in the pit of his stomach, cold and sharp like hoarfrost, splintering to puncture his veins. It was a scream not so much heard as felt, and for a moment he thought he imagined it, until he realized the sound was coming from his own mouth, and the sudden moisture, the heat that ran down his neck was blood and the blood came from his ears.
Strange that he felt no pain, and the walls faded, the edges of his vision a dreamy dark vignette.
"Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and and the wicked and do not falter," he wheezed through the words, something in his lungs - water, blood, he could not tell only that it was hard to breathe - pushing out the air, and the next was a gurgle of syllables that sounded only between his ears. "Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow ... in their blood ... in their blood ..."
Your Maker does not exist, human. He cannot help you.
"Blasphemy," but his voice existed only his head now, and there the demon answered.
You are seeking the mage, yes? A mage would be worth more than all your men combined, to me. But you do not know how strong he is - strong enough to kill all of you the moment you tread upon his sancturary, and he will feast on your blood.
"Abomination," Karras did not know if he was cursing the demon or stating a fact, or repeating information fed into his mind. It did not seem to matter.
Such impure thoughts lingering in your mind, templar. You want this mage, thorn in your side? I can give you power enough to fight him. Power enough to fight abominatons and demons. It seemed to laugh, though in mirth or at the irony of his words Ser Karras did not know.
There were books on pride demons in the Circle, and every templar was required to study them in their long years as recruits. None advised fighting one unless absolutely necessary; whole contingents of templars had gone up against single pride demons and ended up crushed in their armour as though it was made of tin.
Still he resisted, for the souls of people who gave in to demons were cast into the Void, cursed to wander its twisting pathways, lost to the end of eternity.
And then there was no demon, only a sword handed to him by the Knight Commander, her sword, red with lyirum and every inch enchanted. Power enough to take down a pride demon on her own; enough for a legion of pride demons, each one as old as the Fade itself.
"Ser Karras," Meredith's voice echoed, though in the Gallows the walls were hard stone and footsteps always too loud. The foreign invasion meshed with familiar scents and images and he felt, all at once, at ease. "For your outstanding service to the templar oder, I bestow a sword of the same make as my own..."
The well of pride blooming within obliterated the quiet doubt in the back of his mind. How was he back here? Where were the templars that went with him? But no, the demon had been vanquished, Hybris, so ancient it knew its name, one of the forbidden that the Tevinters sealed in the depths of Kirkwall. Karras was the one to find it, and the one to slay it. Now all that was left was the healer of darktown; so inconsequential in the light of all this, but it was his right to bring the mage back to the Gallows and his right to lay the brand of tranquility over his brow.
And he would bring the mage to heel in the darkness of his chambers, for Karras did the Maker's work and he knew whatever was dealt by his hand was right.
*
It was easy to hide in darktown if one knew how.
Templars were not well liked in the undercity, as welcomed as a guardsman if not less; the gangs harboured apostates, and Anders was not the only one hiding. If there was power on your side, your gang of thieves survived.
When a group of people were forced to live separate from the rest of society, they bond together like any tribe. The useful ones were valued and protected.
Anders made sure that he had a reputation, even if it endangered him, that he was useful.
His doors were barred long before the templars' arrival, debris thrown in front of his clinic and the lanterns taken down. He had hoped that the templars would return to the Gallows to report the abandonment of the darktown clinic, but luck was not on his side today. From what he gathered - the templars left a track in the mud a blind nug could follow - they had went into the Amell estate cellars and not returned.
There was a slight possibility that they found the barred cellar door and knocked and Hawke had simply let them through, but he doubted that very much.
Besides, if that was the case, Hawke would have came down here by now wondering if something happened to his favorite healer.
It was more likely that they met an untimely end stumbling down a set of crumbling stone steps in the bowels of the city, the whole of it riddled with ruins and filled with human bones, and the templars had joined the legion of the undead.
Anders smiled at a shared memory from Justice of the dwarf they had both called friend. He would have to remember that line, in case he ever found himself in Amaranthine again.
Staff in hand he walked the ruin as though it was a swamp, setting his feet only where his staff had been. The comparision was apt, with some parts of the floor crumbling away as he tapped at it with the blunt end, revealing deep holes behind where the debris fell so far it made no sound where he stood.
The templars were likely lying dead in this ruin somewhere, but dead templars simply meant more templars. When this patrol did not return, Meredith would send more. His only way of delaying the inevitable cleanse of darktown would be to find their bodies and have Varric dump them in the docks, disguising it as an attack by slavers, plentiful enough in Kirkwall.
And the thought of the Knight Commander ordering a massacre of slavers at the docks was a good one. It would make the order useful, if nothing else.
When the trail split into three, he marked the floor with a quick, small fireball, scorching the dust and dirt to black ash to mark his passing. Anders rubbed the bottoms of his boots in the ashes, making his steps easier to follow. At the time, he thought - just in case - it was easier to find his way back if he marked the floor.
He saw no more passages, only one single hallway, and there were impressions of doors to the sides but each of them was closed off neatly with stone. There was a memory of something like this in the distant past, a long dark hallway and darkspawn spume lining the walls, the unmistakeable smell of corruption rising up from the floor. Here it smelled of old things and rust, as though each breath drew powdered blood into his lungs, dry and ancient and dead long ago.
Then his staff hit wetness and came back with the slight resistance of something tacky, as though he had walked from hightown right into the sewers. He was at a level with the sewers, after all, so maybe it was not surprising if there was a body of still water down here.
But he lived practically next to the sewers, and there was something distinctly out of place here. If he did not know for certain that he was in an old ruin, Anders would have thought himself back in the Circle tower. It was a complex, layered aroma of old books, dust, and stone that channeled blood and had drank life deep into its cracks.
Anders knelt, bracing himself on the staff. POWERFUL MAGIC IS AT WORK HERE, BE CAREFUL. But even Justice did not know what this was, the slimy substance that clung to the staff as he lifted it away.
"Weird," he muttered aloud. Then it hit him, "it smells like lyrium."
More precisely, it smelled of templar blood. Anders shivered. Nightmares still haunted him, with the taste of lyrium blood on his lips, running over his chin, sweet as honeyed wine.
Still, the floor did not sink in front of him, so he moved forward, stepping into the slime. Anders smuggled mages through the sewers on a regular basis; he wasn't about to let a pool of filth stop him.
He slowly made his way through the long hallway. Two-thirds of the way through, Anders had to yank his staff back out of the muck. Sweat was dripping into his eyes; he raised a sleeve to wipe at his hairline. The Tevinters built some of their slave holding caves the way the dwarves built the deep roads, using streams of lava for light. By the heat radiating through his soles, this hallways was probably built on top of a lava stream.
As the muck seemed to hold on to the end of his staff and it was far too much effort to test each step, Anders turned his weapon over and stabbed down with the bladed end.
His intention wasn't to attack anything. Anders was using his staff for navigational purposes, and the sharp end was simply easier to remove from the tacky slime than the blunt end, that was all. But the effect was immediate and severe; a cord of something thick and organic climbed up the shaft and prodded at his hand, and he let go as if burned; one did not expect strange slime to attack one's hand in old ruins.
Anders quickly called himself names, idiot being the first on the list. This was Kirkwall, and he had been here long enough to know to expect the unexpected because when it did then he'd have been prepared for it.
His staff fell sideways to the floor, the clattering of it swallowed up with a sickening plop.
He had only a split second to wonder what got a hold of his staff before something took hold of his ankle as well; then the staff became an afterthought, as the world turned sideways and Anders stared up at the endless ceiling, the walls beside him became the sides of a well, or so it seemed. He was falling, feet heading towards a wide opening and for a moment he feared he would fall to his death.
Then the walls expanded, or he passed through an archway at the bottom of the well, and it was a chamber so wide he could not see the end of it. Anders sqeezed his eyes tightly shut, expecting the inevitable crunch when he would hit the bottom. Injuries he could heal. At least he wasn't falling head first.
But the crunch never came, and the world turned again. Only when he finally stopped moving - when whatever was moving him decided to stop - did he see that he was not falling at all; the floor below him pulsated, glowing the blue of lyrium, slick and organic, as though blue blood passed through its veins.
Anders dared not move; under other circumstances he would have raged and called upon Justice to set him free, but if he kicked himself free he would fall thirty feet and head first to his death.
Healing magic be damned, there was still no cure for a broken neck.
His ankle was held fast. There was no immediate threat of death for now. But what was this thing? The mass of flesh and ichor seemed to suggest broodmother, but Anders would have recognized the smell, if not the crazed voices that scritch-scratched in his brain if this was spawn.
He needed to see more of it. Anders gathered fire in his hands, drawing forth low heat and bright light, a flare of orange yellow flames, directing it towards the far wall so as not to provoke the thing that had his ankle.
He saw a glimpse of walls covered in pulsing fleshy globules, glistening with the slime that covered the floor in the hall, here and there a glint of metal embedded between sections of flesh - before the fire was forced out of his hands, the feeling of his magic and the Fade being sapped away familiar and sickening. Memories of another time came along with anger and his eyes glowed for a second before that too, was taken away.
The thing that held his ankle crawled slowly towards his knee, over the threadbare fabric of his trousers, coiled over the trunk of a thigh like a snake. Abomination, Anders suddenly recalled a conversation he had with the warden commander, where the closer he came to the pride abomination that Uldred had become, the more ichor and flesh coated the walls.
His mind felt hollow where Justice had been, the second voice that accompanied him silenced along with his magic. But he did not need to see it again to know what it was now - this thing was the templars he was looking for.
Anders could fight demons. Justice could fight templars. He wrecked his brain trying to come up with a name that described whatever he was seeing - a harvester? Multiple living bodies inhabited by a single demon, inbued with lyrium, driving both equally insane. A flesh golem.
Putting a name to it did not make him feel better.
I was hoping to see you first, mage. Its voice was deep and resonant and it spoke in the space where Justice had been.
"What do you want?" Justice would not agree to deal with a demon, but traveling with Hawke and the commander taught him that demons took promises seriously, even when the mage did not.
I want to see through your eyes, to taste the world with your senses, to rule with power only I can bestow, below him worm-like appendages reached up, dozens of them thick as snakes, softly glowing the blue of lyrium veins. Do you accept?
"That's not a viable plan," Anders answered flippantly. "No one is going to allow a known mage to rule. Maybe if you let me go I can find you somebody else more suitable?"
"Allow" me to rule? I did not say I would give them a choice. It is power that rules in your world, and you will have such power as the world had never seen. I am Hybris, the first of pride. Together we will be unstoppable.
"Then I'm afraid the answer is no," when a glowing thick strap of flesh tried to wrap itself around his wrist, Anders grabbed it and pulled, hoping to do some harm to the creature. It only grew thicker and stronger, overpowering his strength to crawl up his arm. "And you will not take no for an answer?"
If you will not allow the melding of our minds, then you will feed the pets I keep. I have already made promises to this one.
A templar emerged from the mess of limbs as though he was swimming in the fleshy pool and only just now come up for air. But a templar he was no longer, his face grey and the eyes held the phlegmy pupils of a ghoul, and below his skirts his legs was a trunk of blood and veins and organs attached to the flesh floor. When he reached up to Anders with his gauntlets the leather and plate split to reveal fingers that were long, boneless tentacles, pointed at the ends like thick hairs.
The face he recognized; Ser Karras, the templar lieutenant Hawke fooled years ago outside a cave by the coast. But Karras opened his mouth and out came only more feelers, glowing with magic and dripping with ichor. His need had become him, and even if the demon was exorcised, there was nothing mortal left of him now.
Something escaped that mouth, a hiss, a wheeze, lungs that no longer worked and tongue that no longer existed trying to form words and failing. The thing that was Karras slid across the flesh floor breaking and reforming its limbs as it moved until it was directly under Anders, reaching up with its long formless arms and stretching that neck that was not, feelers wrapping over Anders' neck and creeping over his lips in a grotesque mimicry of a kiss.
Anders forgot how to scream; when he remembered the sound his mouth was stretched too wide for him to bite down. A feeler slipping in easily, slick with slime, soft point tickling his throat, until breathing was difficult and his breath came in shallow pants. Lightheaded and faint he closed his eyes -
- and opened them in the Gallows.
The red and yellow sun of the chantry was everywhere. Anders knelt and his eyes were at a level with their skirts, his arms held down by gauntlets and someone was pushing a cock into his mouth. It was comforting somehow, more real than the fading memories of that flesh thing, and he let the sensation of normality wash over him. Fingers wrapped in metal pulled at the clasps holding his coat shut, pulling off his boots and his trousers, stripping him bare.
There is no point in fighting this, said the booming voice of Justice. We gave our body away to save the lives of innocents. This will be soon over and they will let us go.
But Anders was a Circle mage, and under every strange circumstance - where something did not seem right - a Circle mage was taught to repeat a set of questions and tried to answer them. How did I get here? Why am I here? What was I doing before this happened?
And when he opened his eyes again he wish he hadn't, because for once the fade was simpler and reality was no more escapable than the nigtmare fantasies that Karras managed to dream up with the remaining shreds of his mind.
One thick appendage held him aloft, wrapped around his waist, while others held his arms and his legs. As in the nightmare, he was held down by many. But at least then they were human.
His coat had been ripped into pieces, scattered over the meat floor below him. The clothing left clinging on his moist skin were in tatters, bits of cooling fabric saturated with demon slime hanging in strips. It was too warm, and he finally figured out the source of the heat in the hallway; the demon's limbs were hot as though the men it possessed were feverish, and the room was covered with them. One by one the pointed tentacles crept over the bits of cloth as though sensing that they were not flesh and therefore did not belong, pushing the fabric off his body and they too fell into the writhing mass below to join the remains of his coat.
A fleshy feeler, as though curious, touched Anders behind his ear, its heated, rounded end sucking at the skin on his neck feeling far too much like a mouth, an inexperienced lover nibbling along his nape. Another slipped over his chest, flicking a pointed soft tip over a nipple, and when he bucked in reaction it repeated the motion, moving to the other pebbled peak as though it could be encouraged.
Across his body they slid and moved to redistribute his weight over itself, so slick that if they stopped he could fall out of them. To his horror he was growing hard between his legs, regardless of the terror he felt at the sight of his captor.
The soft limbs angled him so he could look down, into the reclining, stretched out mutated thing that used to be Karras.
From below his skirts crept another long feeler, looking not at all like a cock, thick as his forearm. Anders instintively moved to put his thighs together, but sensing his desire to hide, the appendages holding his legs stretched him wider open, exposing the - too small for whatever you have planned, demon, he pleaded silently - puckered entrance between his cheeks. It was dry, since nothing had touched him there yet, but one look behind him showed Anders a long whip-like tentacle that stretcheed down from the ceiling, dripping with slick and moving slowly over his lower back, as though prolonging the inevitable for the sake of watching his sanity unwind.
No, he muttered, muffled by the flesh in his mouth. It had the patience of a glacier and though it seemed tentative, it did not retreat even as Anders keened low in his throat as it descended over the crease of his arse.
Anders held his body tight as a bowstring, clenching hard to ward off the strange intrusion. It gave him plenty of time to dread, and it slipped along the crease, the length of flesh a mindless thing that teased blindly to wrap around his balls, sliding up his half-hard shaft to squeeze gently below the head of his cock. He was too terrified to be aroused, but the organ was not wholly controlled by his mind; as as much as it tried, his cock could not be brought to full attention.
Anders was half hoping that it would just give up and let him go. At least desire demons had the advantage of turning into whatever he fancied, but this abomination had only one form and it was hideous.
Below him the feeler wrapped around his cock divided, splitting into little fingers each as thin as the quill of a feather. Gently they held his cock straight as though to encourage blood to flow into the organ, smoothing the whips of alien digits down the side of his shaft. One of these grew longer than the others, stretching itself thinner than the rest, and it curled over the top of his cock, its pointed tip seeking, searching as it prodded over velvet skin.
It quickly found what it was looking for - a way in, even as Anders yelled and bucked, trying to dislodge it - and wiggled into the slit, its passage slick and slow.
Anders' mouth opened wider as he screamed, and the appendage in his mouth expanded to fill the space. The chamber became quiet again save the slip-slide of wet things moving on skin, each time he began to keen again the flesh threatened to block off his airway until he grew quiet. The thin tentacle, the intruder in his cock kept moving ever inwards, turning with the flow of his body until it found the spot it was looking for, a rounded bit that it could not get through, so instead it moved in and out, shallow and quick.
It felt - good, unbelieveably so, like being fucked just the right way - wrong, but each motion jolted his body in such a way that Anders no longer struggled against the things holding his limbs. Tears were streaming down his cheeks but he was not so much crying as he was reacting, and as the entity sensed the fight leaving him, another fleshy appendage slipped by the first over the crease of his arse, and finding his entrance no longer clenched shut and guarded, nudged in.
It was gentle as a lover, teasing open the outer ring of muscle easily, then finding the second closed against it, waited and teased until it relaxed, then pushed slowly all the way in.
It filled him until it found absolute resistance, and he could imagine feeling the tip of it teasing low in his belly, but as he thought there was nowhere for it to go and it had to pause and start moving or stop entirely, it began to grow.
It did not move, which was a mercy. Inside his cock the tendril continued to fuck him from the inside out, and involuntarily he grew harder under the onslaught of its efforts. He could feel the burn behind him, the pain of being filled and stretched for the first time in - he had forgotten how many years.
Anders had to keep his eyes open. Closing them brought him into the mind of Ser Karras, whose fantasies were no better than this, except with more templars, and Anders wasn't sure which he preferred less. In the Fade he was held down by no less than six men and his mouth and his arse filled. In reality even the knights were broken, their forms torn and reformed in this monster, which in turn violated him.
He could not guess how wide the tentacle in his arse became, but he could feel his own pulse jumping low in his back, clamping down on the thick, long flesh inside. When he was certain it had stopped getting any bigger, Anders breathed a sigh through his nose, but the relief was short lived as it began to move.
Pain would have been preferable, easily disregarded and forgotten later as mere violence, but this blinding pleasure was unexpected, and much harder to ignore. It was weakness, but he could not help crying out as as his sweet spot was rubbed over and over again, that overwhelming sensation of being filled to the brim turning his vision to white, while the smaller, curling cord of flesh continued to fuck him through the slit in his cock.
Thin soft strands that resembled fingers wrapped over his shaft, rubbed down and over the sensitive skin of his sac, and up again, thoroughly stimulating every part it could reach. It finally became too much, pressure building in spite of the visuals; beginning with a low hum that barely escaped his throat his body shuddered, the thin finger down his cock expelled with the force of his orgasm.
He forgot about struggling, and if Hybris did not hold him as tight as it had, he might have moved into the grasp of soft tentacles wrapped over his cock. But there was no need for it, as it milked him down to the last drop, stretching his cock, now flaccid, wrapping its many digits over the soft skin even as he spasmed with oversensitivity.
I will ask you again. Will you accept my offer?
Anders no longer remembered what the offer was. Something about power? Not getting raped by a monster in the deep roads? Bit late for that, demon. The thick appendage retreated from his throat, letting him speak. He was briefly reminded that it came from the templar Karras' mouth and he blanched, gagging on the bitter fluids that slicked and soothed even as it invaded.
"Whatever you offered, the answer is still no," Anders' voice was surprisingly intact, and steady. Death first. When confronted with the offer of a demon and forced between acceptance or death, Anders knew better than to accept. He never understood how mages could accept 'worse than death' when the right answer was clearly 'death.'
Pity.
Especially when the evidence of 'worse than death' was all around him, in the templars lured into the fade trap and turned into this entity of need and want and flesh, given into the promise of more power. And Hybris kept that promise; for no templar alive was this powerful, and Karras was only half dead.
The feeler in his arse retreated, too quickly, and the sharp pain was replaced by a hollow emptiness as his body adjusted. Karras was waiting for him below, empty eyes staring at demon-conjured pictures behind the unseeing pupils, and that monstrous thing jutting out from where his legs used to be split into two, shattering any illusion of humanity it tried to pretend.
Hybris lowered Anders slowly towards the undulating limb, and even one seemed too big, the stretching from the previous invasion prepared him only so much. The flexible, slimy appendages holding his body aloft repositioned him, bringing his knees to the level of his shoulders, pulling his cheeks wide apart before forcing him down on to the upturned organ.
This time instead of holding him stationary while it probed him, his body was lifted and dropped as though he was the one riding Karras while the soft fingers stroked his cock to attention again. The twin to the one that speared him stretched up over his chest and prodded at his mouth, pushing through lips and teeth to fuck his throat. Anders wanted to look away from reality, slimy soft tentacles wrapped over his torso teasing his nipples and the unrelenting wave of the straps that held him as he was strung up like a marionette and fucked on Karras, but the flesh in his mouth held his head in place and the templar grinned up at Anders, his mouth fixed in a twisted toothy smile.
And the most horrible thing of all was not the sight and the sound of that thing gliding in and out of his arse, but that it felt amazing. Each time he was filled until it bottomed out drew a gasp and a moan, vibrations passing through the tentacle down his throat even as he tried not to gag as it slipped lower, tickling the back of his tongue with a soft pointed tip.
He wants more. Should I give him more, mage? Do you have more to give?
Hybris droned above him, sending down a new limb from the center of itself to caress Anders' back. I keep my promises. It whispered, low and ancient and wet like slabs of meat playing at speech. See how good I am to my host. But I will be even better to you.
The new limb of the monster, its end pointed like a kraken's limb, and as thick as the member already in his arse, slipped over the crease again and this time did not hesitate as it joined Karras, pushing in as he was lowered again, its thin end moving in easily enough but even a demon had to accept physical limitations. Anders screamed when they were both inside of him, stretched impossibly wide and even so hybris was only halfway in, and it slipped in and out while Karras remained immobile beneath them.
He was hard again, thin curling flesh things wove over his cock to form a coccoon, hot and tight and slick, pulsing to match his heartbeat, distracting him from the pain of having far too much filling him at once.
Hybris and Karras moved into a rhythm, moving Anders up for one and down for the other, so he was always full, never a moment to remind him what emptiness felt like. The sheath it formed over his cock settled into the same rhythm and soon he crested again, impossible to fight, too good to stop and too terrible to ignore.
He came, painful and tight clenching over both of them, shooting into the grip of those alien fingers. Cum dribbled over his sac and down over the curve of his arse and he barely felt it; he was tired and used and empty, and they had only just begun.
How about now? And of course it hadn't hurt him; Hybris was still holding out hope to possess his body, and he had all the time in the world and it was a matter of time before Anders broke between them.
And if he would not, it could always add more.
Wearily Anders shook his head, blinking away the sleep that threatened to draw him down under its spell. He repeated the word 'no' until it lost all meaning, as they brought him to the brink again and again, until his spent flesh was so used even warden stamina could not rouse him, until his eyelids felt too heavy and he needed to rest.
But this was pride, and not sloth, and sleep would mean a reprieve, if only for a little while.
He had nearly forgotten about the crazed fantasies. Anders opened his eyes and he was back in the Gallows again, the templars still holding him down but now he was riding Karras, hands at the sides holding his knees and his arms and the helmed men lifted and dropped him on to a cock that felt far bigger than it looked when he stole a glimpse below him. There were hands on his shoulders, and another templar behind him, his cock pushing alongside Karras', face eerily silent and eyeless in his helm.
Ser Karras had his tongue in Anders' mouth, which was opened to gasp, to scream, the sound swallowed up immediately as he devoured Anders with his lips and tongue.
We can watch, and not allowed to touch. But look, my brothers agree, you are better off here where we can protect you, the voice was human enough but it came from nowhere, mouth sealed over Anders' lips, the templar that could not bear to let go long enough to speak. Doesn't that feel good, mage? Tell me you never want to leave. Don't tell anyone we've been here or we'll make you Tranquil.
He had always feared Tranquility above all else; even solitary confinement was reversable. Those words were enough to make him want to try something, anything, even if it meant asking for help from an enemy. Anders pushed Karras out of his mouth, then reared back as much as he could with his limbs held down, to snap his head forward on top of the templar's nose.
Karras looked back at him, shock and anger settling into familiar grooves, "you dare!"
"Snap the fuck out of it!" Anders yelled, as loud as he could, though the templar's face was inches from his own. "I've had enough of this bullshit! This is a demon - they're all demons - wake up!"
They kept moving him on top of that cock and the templar behind him fucked him without a pause as though they did not hear, and maybe that was odd enough that it gave Karras a reason to question the validity of their situation.
He seemd to look around him, at the helmed men that stood holding Anders in place, into the emptiness behind each of the helms. For a moment it seemed to not have registered at all, and Anders was again given to despair that this was his end, that he would starve to death before the demon gave up on turning him. But then the templar's eyes snapped wide open and he let out a bloodcurdling scream.
It was toneless and wordless, primal with the pain of sudden realization that he was a monster, that his limbs were no longer flesh and bone, as they both crashed out of the fade. Karras stared down at his body, the cloud that obscured his vision had cleared and his dark eyes shone through the cloudy, rheumic fog. His mouth was an open O, the scream silent as he was no longer in possession of lungs or a throat or anything remotely human behind the skin of his face.
Bad, bad, mage. You broke him. But I will not need his mind when I have yours.
"Death first," Anders said through gritted teeth, Karras' appendages finally withdrew as the templar abomination collasped into itself, spirit no longer present to sustain the possession. Hybris was weakened, but it was still alive, and it would torture him until he gave.
He would never give.
Hybris flipped him over; a rearrangement of curling limbs to turn his face upwards, to stare into the abyss, nothing but tentacles hanging down from darkness, ichor dripping from the tips. It pumped inside him with new vigor, making up for the loss of the templar by growing bigger and wider where it joined with him.
It hurt, but no worse than what he already had. He would never give. "No, never, death first," Anders repeated the mantra, as loud as he was able.
Then his skin tingled with the unmistakable static of an elemental shield, and the air around him exploded into flames.
"Anders!"
Hawke.
Sometimes it was still hard to believe that he had friends. Anders hadn't thought about a rescue at all; always believing that he had to either save himself or die. Hope would cause too much pain if it was baseless.
He could hear Merrill cursing in Elvhen, naming every creator she knew to keep him safe. He could hear Varric swearing as much as Isabela, and knew that his friend would kill the monster ten times over if he could. A low, dark voice muttered in Arcanum as Fenris' great sword moved so fast it sliced the air into echoes; and Hawke, promising the moon, the sky, and all the potion reagents he could ever want just as long as he held on until he got to him.
Anders huffed a half-laugh with whatever air he could manage; it was nice to have friends.
It was not often that Anders found himself useless in a fight, but he was tired and weak, the lasting silence that templars so liked to boast about still blocking Justice from his reach. He could only watch as his friends turned the flesh floor into ashes, fighting off the shades and rage demons it summoned from the fade.
Fenris cut down his bonds finally, breaking the last stubborn strands that would not give up their hold on him, the veins keening as the blade ran through and lyrium blood gushed forth.
When Anders fell it was Hawke that caught him, wrapping him in his father's old red coat, "thanks."
Hawke raised an eyebrow, as though expecting him to say more, or cry, or scream or snap into insanity, so Anders added, "your coat's going to get dirty."
"And?" Hawke knelt holding his hand, arms open in case he needed a hug, perhaps.
Closeness was the last thing he needed right now. Pity, even less. He could not take pity, "my coat is ruined."
If Hawke was expecting trauma, he wasn't about to get it out of him. If Anders was raped by templars, perhaps he would have quaked in fear of templars for a month or so. This was a mindless thing using his body against him in the hopes of possesing him and turning him into something even worse than the monster he saw. The templars were dead, and he was not.
Anders would take that for a bargain and call himself lucky.
"I'll have a new one made for you," Hawke smiled at him and gave him a soft pat on one heavily padded shoulder, "that's how we deal with shit in my family, too."
Five feet away, Fenris kicked a dented templar helm. "That was a templar abomination."
"Pride demon templar abomination," Anders said, and Fenris turned to look him - perhaps for the first time - in the eye. His tone was bitter and rightfully so, "it offered them a deal. They all took it."
Anyone could be possessed, and yet only the mages were locked away. It was never fair, and if Justice was here there would have been a tirade of words, but under the scrutiny of those green eyes Anders was only reminded that elves were treated badly everywhere.
They stared at each other, and Anders thought maybe Fenris was doubting him, that he was about to pick up that sword again and strike him down just in case he had turned. Anders swallowed, and gagged from the stuff in his mouth, a bitter taste that slipped gelatinous and cold, no longer heated by a demon.
He coughed, and the gagging quickly forced him to his hands and knees on the floor and Anders emptied his stomach into the ashes.
His friends looked away, save for Fenris, who studied him, bare feet worrying bits of templar armour left behind in the debris of the battle.
"Anders," he said, and the mage looked up with a start as it must have been the first time the elf called him by name. "We should go. We intercepted a message to the Gallows, but there's probably another patrol coming down here. The trail is easy enough to follow."
"If you have a potion." Anders looked down at the floor, cold and hard beneath his knees. He could walk, technically, but he did not want them to see the pain etched into his face as he tried. It was bad enough that even Varric was speechless at how they found him, "the templars sapped my magic and I'm ... injured."
Fenris shook his head; they had no healer during the fight and barely enough potions to keep them all from dying. Varric had a burn down one arm that was probably going to scar, and Merrill was looking pale from blood loss.
"I can carry him," Hawke stepped forward. "The estate's not far."
"No," Fenris stepped forward and tucked his arms under Anders, hoisting him up in one smooth motion, his tone brooked no argument. "You can carry my sword. If you dull the tip you get to sharpen it."
It was a short walk, as Hawke predicted, but the hours had worn him down already. By the time they reached the cellars, Anders was drifting in and out of consciousness.
I really need a bath, he thought, but he really could wait as well. Anders felt so tired he would likely drown in the tub.
As the coat was removed and covers thrown over him to quickly hide his nudity, he thought he heard someone calling his name. Fenris? Anders blinked, and the elf was standing next to the bed, one hand braced on the back of a chair.
"Death first?" Fenris' eyebrows were raised under a fringe of white hair, and there was something new there in his eyes. Anders recognized it, in a battle they nearly lost in Vigil's Keep. It was respect.
"Always," he answered.
Then there were no more words, as weariness overcame him and he drifted off to blissfully dreamless sleep.