Someone Rhyanon doesn't recognize catches her eye, when she's not-exactly-hiding in the third floor alcove instead of going to class. The man, with dark skin and darker beard, is wearing leather armor. He's neither a templar nor a mage, yet he walks through these halls with complete confidence. He flashes her a smile, though his gaze is unblinking and serious.

"Who are you?" Rhyanon asks cautiously.

"My name is Duncan. And you are Rhyanon Amell, if I'm not mistaken."

Rhyanon frowns. "Irving told you about me?"

"He sent me looking for you."

"Why?"

Duncan leans back against the wall, letting his gaze flicker out the open arrow-slit window which is the reason Rhyanon comes up here. There isn't anything to see, just the courtyard she avoids looking at, but somehow Duncan seems to recognize the importance of the stolen snatch of sky all the same. It makes it easy for her to relax around him.

"I'm here recruiting for the Grey Wardens. The First Enchanter seemed to think I should meet you."

Rhyanon frowns. "I'm not even Harrowed," she points out. Questions crowd her mind as something like hope bubbles under the surface.

Duncan shrugs. "That isn't strictly required."

"What is required?"

"Strength. Courage. Loyalty. A certain level of innate talent. There's a war coming, Rhyanon. I need fighters."

"What if I don't want to?" Rhyanon asks immediately.

"Then perhaps Irving was wrong."

"He wasn't."

Duncan smiles. "I suppose we'll find out."

Rhyanon watches the Grey Warden walk away. She's tempted to chase after him, but she wouldn't know what to say. She decides to go to the library instead. Studying suddenly seems a lot more important.

The library is nearly empty, with all the little kids in class. The quiet makes it impossible to focus. After reading the same sentence about six times without processing any of it, she slams the book shut and curls up in the chair. Her mind wanders, even more when she tries to force it not to.

She tenses up, alert to the awareness of someone watching her. Rhyanon feels it like a tingling at the back of her neck, a sense of pressure that she's never learned how to ignore.

She glances over her shoulder, catching the red-haired young templar staring at her. She stands up, gathering her books, and walks directly to him. "What do you want?" she demands.

She catches the way his eyes widen, offended by the harsh challenge in her tone. But he doesn't call her out on it. Instead, he shakes his head. "N-nothing," he stammers nervously. "I-I don't want... anything."

He's a templar. He could help her. The two facts scream at her at the same time, and they should cancel each other out, but they don't.

Rhyanon relaxes a little, like letting out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. She still watches the templar guardedly, but she's willing to trust that he is not actively working to harm her.

"Are you following me?" she asks softly.

"What? No!"

"You watch me, all the time!"

She makes it an accusation, even though of course he does. She's gotten used to looking for him. She feels... protected, when he's around. It's not like she doesn't know he's there. More like she does know, but it doesn't matter. When this one is watching, she feels safe. And that confusion makes her feel frustrated, angry at herself. They are not on the same side. She forces herself to remember that.

The templar shakes his head slightly, a denial of the hostility she throws at him to protect herself. He walks away without even a mumbled excuse this time.

Rhyanon sits down at the nearest unoccupied table, and tries to figure out what it means that she doesn't hate him. She can't lie to herself well enough to pretend that things are as simply black-and-white as she sometimes wishes they could be. Black-and-white would make her life easier.

She could ask him for something. But he won't give her what she asks for. How could he? He's a templar. He's not her friend.

"You alright?"

Rhyanon nods reflexively, though her stomach clenches, because the voice asking – the body sitting across from her – belongs to the templar she's trying to ignore. He is following her.

There's a squirming sensation under her skin. She doesn't want to get away from him. She knows she couldn't even if she wanted to.

The templar stares at her, unblinkingly. He is so pointedly not-touching her that it feels more embarrasingly intimate than if he were.

She pulls herself away from him, spinning around to sit parallel to the table. She crouches on the edge of the chair, her muscles tight and tense, her hands clenched into fists. She scowls, not trusting herself to talk to him.

"I'm not supposed to tell you this," he says, more smoothly than she's ever heard him speak before – not that she's heard him a lot or anything. The illicit secret he promises makes her look up. His eyes are blue. Still and clear, like the spring time sky she barely remembers anymore. "Your Harrowing. It's gonna be tonight."

He sounds more nervous than she feels, and that makes Rhyanon curious. She clings to that – curiousity gives her something to focus on. She glances up before she can fully process the fact that she's responding to him. She frowns slightly, trying to take in this new information, to come to terms with what it means. The Harrowing. She takes a deep and careful breath. The templar's eyes are still locked onto hers. She'd known it was coming, but still... she feels like she desperately needs more time. She's not ready.

"Is it because of the Grey Warden?" she finally asks.

"W-what? Why would it be?"

"I don't know. Never mind." Rhyanon ducks away again, letting her hair fall down in front of her face. Like a curtain. Or a shield.

"I'll be there, you know."

She nods, still not looking at him. He doesn't tell her why he'll be there, obviously. He doesn't have to. She knows it's his job to kill her if she fails. She isn't even angry at him about it, that's just the way things are.

The templar walks away, and Rhyanon's glad he does. She scowls, gathering up her books. It's too late to matter anyway. The Harrowing won't be a book test. She doesn't know anything about it, but she knows that much. She wishes he hadn't given her the illicit warning – now, she has nothing to do but panic, for the next Maker-knows-how-many-hours. Her stomach twists itself into painful knots as she watches the quality of the light gradually change as the long afternoon drags through the tower. The little kids in the dorms seem to melt away as she approaches. Rhyanon wonders vaguely if that's a new thing; she can't tell. She can't remember. She ignores it, either way.
She climbs up to the bunk above hers, one no one has ever used for more than a few days, not in all the time she's been here, years and decades. There is so much emptiness in this place – empty bunks, empty rooms, echoing halls. According to Wynne, there used to be a lot more mages here, a long time ago. A lot more mages and a lot less fear.

Rhyanon surveys the room from her higher-up perch. It seems different, but not different enough. The walls seem to squeeze too close, and she can't help but grasp for the fading memories of the others who aren't here anymore. She could ask for Tranquility. It's not too late. But just thinking about it makes her feel sick. She won't. She'll fight – she'll die – before that ever happens.

She wonders if she should've talked to more people. It's too late now, isn't it? Why does this feel like the end of everything?

She doesn't sleep that night, obviously. No one seems all that surprised about it when they come to collect her. Rhyanon rolls over onto her stomach, still dazed and tired, more disoriented than if they actually had woken her up from dreaming. Her eyes are gritty with fatigue. There is a heightened sense of anticipation, a sharp pinprick of alertness, almost painful, at the edges of her perception. Like something she needs to grab onto, but she can't. It always slips away. It's there in the way the shadows fall, whisper-quiet.

"It's time," the templar whispers – that same familiar voice. He reaches out a hand to help her down from her bunk, but Rhyanon ignores it. She jumps down. A few feet away – too close and too far – one of the little kids whimpers and reaches out for something Rhyanon can't see. A feeling of bitter nostalgia washes through her. She's not ready. She thinks it might be easier if she knew for sure that she was going to die – she's not afraid of dying, which in itself is a little unsettling. It's the not knowing that bothers her.

The comfortable gradations of afternoon light are gone now. This late, the halls of the tower are consistently black, haunted by shadows, lit only by flickering torchlight spread too far apart. Gone is the familiarity, it's not like Rhyanon makes a habit of wandering around in the middle of night. Now, this place only seems empty and echoing. It feels like the prison it is. The silence swallows her.

They take her to the very top of the tower, to a room she's never been in before. Somehow, that surprises her. She knows there's no reason for her to have assumed that the Harrowing would happen underground, but somehow, without consciously realizing it, some part of her had figured that it must. Because that's where people go to disappear.

Up here, there are more proper windows than anywhere else in the tower. Even in the middle of the night, there is a sense of openness. Pinpricks of starlight scatter all around her. Rhyanon stares at them; they pull at a long-deadened sense of wonder somewhere deep inside her.
She snaps back to reality as soon as Greagoir starts lecturing her about paying attention. He stares at her sternly and makes it obvious – as if it wasn't already - that she might die.
Rhyanon lets her eyes flicker to Irving, who watches her while failing to hide the fact that he's nervous. She licks dry lips, unable to stop the voices in her head that wonder how many innocent children the First Enchanter has sent to their deaths in this room. How many favorites has he had before her?

The liquid light refracts from the lyrium-blue pool at the center of the room and almost swallows her. In this space, it seems like all of her senses are amplified; the silence nearly crushes her. Her footsteps are deafening, even though she walks softly, too afraid to move forward with any sense of haste. Sleep still clouds her mind.
Irving's hand on her shoulder feels like an impossibly heavy weight, but when she tries to shrug him off, he does not respond to her wordless command. "Be ready," he tells her, and despite the softness in his voice, there is no doubting that it is an order. She yanks her arm away from him.

"I am ready," she snaps.

She doesn't wait for them to tell her what to do. You'll know, Anders had told her, what seems like several lifetimes ago. So she doesn't wait for orders. Her fingers skim through the lyrium in the shallow bowl in front of her, and her breathing quickens as she closes her eyes.
The Fade catches her, as she falls. When she opens her eyes again, she's not awake, and she knows it. But she's not asleep either. The surreal humming pressure of the Fade hovers at the edges of her vision. It's brighter, sharper, clearer, and louder than it's ever been before. She takes a hesitant footstep down a path that forms itself as she walks it; her uncertainty and fear causes the world to constrict and spin.

"It's just a dream," she tells herself, repeating the words like a calming mantra. It isn't true though. When she was dreaming, she could control the Fade, she could break away when it got too scary. Now, there is nothing between her and the voices, and she feels raw and exposed.

She sees flickering images, piercing shadows that remind her of the unreality of this place, which shapes itself around her and for her. She walks the vague, everchanging landscape, where things are foggy and too bright, and the light comes from wrong angles and are tinted in shades of green and gold that are never seen in the real world. She walks, and she holds her breath, and she listens. And she waits.

She hears warped human voices, a young child's screaming tantrum. Her heart rate picks up almost instantly, and she can't calm the panic tearing inside her chest, somehow she knows that if this child doesn't shut up then... what? What'll happen? She shakes her head. The answer doesn't come in words, it comes in flashes of pain and color: bitter elfroot, and a cold shock – a Smite. Rhyanon lifts her hand to her cheek, still throbbing with the sting a hard slap from a templar's open hand. A long time ago. So far away. She can smell the mix of ocean air and sour meat and body odor, sweat and vomit. She tries to twist away from the bone-crushing grip of the templar holding her forearm, leering down at her. When she was seven, she couldn't get away. But she isn't seven now.

She lashes out, with a spell she's cast a thousand times before, bolts of lightning that radiate outward from her skin. She delights in the feeling of power that rushes over her. But she miscalculates. She is no longer pulling magic from the Fade, through limiters and barriers and walls. Magic is the Fade, and in here, all the rules she used to know no longer apply. She's spent her entire lifetime learning how to be in control, but now, suddenly, she isn't. Panic overtakes her in a blinding rush: she cries out, and falls. She pulls away from the imaginary-real templar, but the consequence of her casting lingers in the smell of ozone and ash. There is no skeleton to mark whether she killed the man – maybe she didn't. It's impossible to tell. There's nothing but the warped deck of a ship on a churning grey ocean. The water laps calmly against the hull. It feels almost real, except for the green-tinted sky.

Rhyanon stands there, dazed and shaken.

This isn't fair.

"What do you want?" she asks aloud. Her voice only shakes a little bit. It echoes through the emptiness.

"That's not your question," answers a soft, slightly familiar voice.

Rhyanon frowns. "You're not real," she accuses.

Stephen smiles, and shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not."

"You're not," she demands stubbornly. He materialized out of thin air, for the Maker's sake. Nothing in here is real.

"Still, you're seeing me. Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know," she snaps. What's the right answer? What is she supposed to say?

"You can trust me, Rhyanon."

"No I can't!"

She screams it, and Stephen's eyes widen with... fear? Is he afraid of her? Rhyanon's stomach clenches, but the buzz of adrenaline and lyrium flooding through her overpowers the barriers that might have stopped her from acting.

And Stephen's face contorts into something unreal, a snarling, angry beast, reflecting her anger back at her, a thousand times as strong.

Fear and sudden recognition stir in Rhyanon – this isn't Stephen. It's not anything as benign as a memory or a whisper either. This isn't anything human.
Rhyanon is aware of nothing but her thundering heartbeat, and her panic. She steels herself against the demon's attack, but the monster does nothing; it only seems to wait. She falters, struggling to catch her breath. What is she supposed to do?

You have to fight, screams the voice in her head, every instinct in her body. She has to fight for her survival; if she doesn't, it will be the end of everything.
She takes a deep breath, and charges forward. Her fingers scrabble for a weapon, but that's only a reflex – she doesn't fight with a sword, she never has. Mana coils like lightning around her fingers. She launches the crackling energy outward.

"Leave me alone," she demands.

The demon laughs, and smiles, still wearing a warped mask of Stephen's face.

"That's your job, isn't it?"

When she looks up again, the face isn't Stephen's but - "Anders," she whispers. She can barely force the word out. Her throat is so dry. She swallows hard.
He's right, isn't he? He's not the only one who's broken promises. She's alone because he is, because if she was any kind of real friend, she'd have... what? Stopped him? Gone with him? She's tried for years to follow him, and she only ended up here.

She studies his familiar features, contorted with pain that suddenly becomes real, when pain hits her, blinding, like fire through every nerve. In her moment of indecision, the demon has made its move. Its laughter reverberates through her skull, and it sounds too much like Anders – like the carefree, joking boy she used to know. "Come on, Melly," he teases lightly, with a gentle touch on her shoulder. "Isn't this what you want?"

She shakes her head, and pushes him away. "You're not him," she demands.

Anger flashes through the demon's caramel eyes, and the smile disappears from its false face.

"And you're not what you pretend to be either," it snarls. "You hide your strength, even from yourself. But do you really believe such lies will protect you?"

She stands her ground, waiting, but the demon does not attack her again. It seems like it expects her to make a choice.

She shakes her head. She's done with lying. She's done with hiding. She's just done.

She makes her choice.

When she opens her eyes, her templar is holding her. Wild panic is visible on his face.

Rhyanon pulls herself out of his grasp, desperately seeking... something. Some anchor to latch onto.

"What are you doing, boy?" Greagoir barks out.

"She didn't fail! I would know."

Rhyanon shakes away the dizzy uncertainty and fear flooding her system. She scrambles backward – still too weak to stand. "I didn't fail," she repeats. She wouldn't be alive if she had. Right?

She wrenches herself away from the templars who have condemned her without evidence. Lyrium still pulses in her veins, along with the determined certainty she gained in the Harrowing. She passed, no matter what they say.

Dizziness competes with her need to stay standing. She's a survivor. She knows that now. She will not let them take anything else away from her. Here, locked inside stone walls, she cannot shape the world to her will. She's known that from the start; they've taken that from her, but the knowledge she pulled from their test of character tells her that what she's known is wrong. Magic is easy, it comes from inside her. She's just forgotten that.

Feel. Live. You don't want to die.

She shakes her head. No. She really doesn't.

She fights, reacting to words before they're said, to blades before they're drawn. She doesn't think. She wills, transfering intent into action, lashing out to protect herself. She can't afford to be slowed down by the fear of what might happen. When the sword, in trembling hands, comes toward her throat, she doesn't let it.

She feels the warmth of the blood in her palm, the droplets coagulating. She feels the rush of certain power. And she pushes. Someone screams, she hears the echoes in the air. It feels like something far away, like nothing to do with her.

Her breathing is frantic, her senses skewed. She doesn't feel anything. She's bleeding. That should hurt, right?

Someone grabs her, and she flails against them, fighting the pressure of their hold. Someone is talking to her, but she can't make sense of their words.
No, her inner voice screams, a nagging claw of doubt, guilt, awareness. What did she just do? No, no, no...
She needs more time, she needs to survive, she needs someone to listen. "I didn't mean it!" she cries.
Is there anyone left to listen?

The haze of confusion slowly lifts, leaving an unsettled churning in the pit of her stomach in the aftermath. The templar, who must've been ordered to kill her, is now no threat – he's collapsed against a far wall, there are streaks of blood visible. Rhyanon wonders if he's dead. Did she kill him? She can't tell. She's afraid to go and check, even if she could, and she knows that no one would let her. She's doomed herself. She's failed after all.

She sets her jaw, sullen and afraid, but determined not to admit it.

She's been screaming for someone to pay attention to her for far too long. Somehow, before she could realize it, before she could stop it, she got too angry to be scared. And too angry to be careful. She crossed a line without thinking about it. She crossed the most important line ever drawn, without caring.

"I need her," the Grey Warden called Duncan demands.

Rhyanon spins around to look at him. Where the hell did he come from? She backs away from him, afraid of what he's seen. He looks at her with determined calculation. I need her. What for?

"She is a maleficar," Greagoir snaps. "Her life is forfeit!" Rhyanon can hear the wounded betrayal in his voice, the fear. Some part of her – a part she really doesn't like – laughs cruelly. He's afraid of her. Good.
The look in his eyes is pure cold steel, but Rhyanon holds his gaze. She isn't afraid of him anymore? What's the point of being afraid, now? She knows he'll kill her without hesitation, and she knows that when he does, she'll deserve it. She wants to die, and she doesn't, and the hesitation in those conflicting and equally strong desires holds her still, leaving her life in the hands of the men looming over her.

She bites her lower lip, and curls her hand into a tight fist, hiding the already-healing cut across her palm.

Maleficar. Is that what she is? She was only fighting to survive. They taught her how. She used what she had, when all else was taken away.

"The Grey Wardens cannot afford for anyone's life to be forfeit," Duncan says softly. His gravely voice washes over her, sparking a flickering flame of hope. He's talking about her, not to her, but she listens, clinging to his words like a drowning man to a thrown rope. "If you give her to me, her life can save many. I will not allow you to waste it."

"You can't -"

"I invoke the Right of Conscription!" Duncan barks, loudly and insistently, over the Knight Commander's protests.

Rhyanon shrinks backward. She tries to think, but she can't really get past the certainty that she's going to die. The last moments of her life are ticking steadily away. Aren't they?

"What does that mean?" she asks shakily.

"It means you're going to be a Grey Warden," Duncan announces, without taking his eyes off of Greagoir.

"You can't -"

"You can't stop me."

Rhyanon finds herself watching the exchange in open-mouthed fascination. Her panic has begun to ebb, even though everything she thought she knew about the world is shattering around her. Greagoir holds the Grey Warden's hard stare, as Rhyanon barely breathes. They're talking about her like she's not even there!

"Take her," Gregoir spits.

Rhyanon lets the Grey Warden herd her out of the Tower. His hand on her shoulder, as he helps her settle into the tiny ferry boat, feels heavy. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm not a maleficar," she demands.

"I have larger worries," Duncan admits. Unlike most of the authority figures she's known, he does not try to threaten her into talking, or force her to submit. Instead, he watches her. He waits. For what, Rhyanon has no idea, but she's accutely aware that this isn't the kind of watching where someone is waiting for her to show weakness. Instead, it's an acknowledgment of her strength. She's seventeen years old, she hasn't left this island in ten years, but he came here looking for a hero, and he got her. And despite the dark shadows of worry that are all too obvious, flickering in his dark eyes and in the drawn lines of his face, he doesn't seem disappointed. "I saw you fight for your own survival," he announces gravely, as their rowboat cuts through the icy churning waters. Rhyanon watches her breath coalesce in small clouds. She shivers, drawing her cloak tighter around herself. "You didn't care about the consequences," Duncan adds. His voice is softer now, thoughtful. Rhyanon almost can't hear it over the whistles of the wind. It's not a question, but she nods anyway. Since she was seven years old, they've been looking for a reason to kill her. She won't let them. Duncan nods too, and in the motion she recognizes determination. She sees a man who has made a choice. A man who has given her a choice. "Will you do the same for others?" he asks, as he rows. "Will you fight for the survival of the world?"

"Yes," she replies immediately, with fierce certainty. "You said you need a fighter. I can be that for you."