Chapter 32: The Arl's Awakening
The scent in the Arl’s chamber was a desperate mix now: the underlying sickness, the sharp bite of elfroot poultices Wynne had applied, and the strange, clean ozone smell of the Sacred Ashes, like air after a lightning strike.
Daylen stood at the bedside, the small linen pouch feeling absurdly light in his palm. Teagan hovered, knuckles white on the bedpost. Isolde watched from a corner, her face a mask of fragile hope worn thin by terror. Alistair stood guard by the door, arms crossed, trying to look stoic and failing. Morrigan leaned against the mantle, detached, her golden eyes reflecting the firelight with clinical interest.
With a nod from Wynne, Daylen tilted the pouch. A fine stream of pale grey ash drifted onto Arl Eamon’s cracked, blueish lips. It pooled there for a heart-stopping second.
Then it shimmered, dissolving into a soft, golden light that seeped into his skin. A gasp, wet and ragged, tore from Eamon’s throat. His back arched off the mattress, tendons standing out in his neck. The deathly pallor flushed, chased away by a surge of healthy pink. The black veins receding like ink in water. His eyes flew open—clear, alert, and profoundly confused.
He blinked, coughed, and pushed himself up on his elbows. “Teagan?” he rasped, voice rough but unmistakably his own. “Isolde? What…?”
The room erupted into motion and sound. Isolde sobbed, rushing forward. Teagan gripped his brother’s shoulder, laughing with relief. For a moment, it was just a family reunited, a miracle in a sunlit room.
Then Eamon’s sharp, statesman’s gaze found the others. The mage, the witch, the Grey Warden, the Qunari, the Circle elder. He took in their worn gear, their grim faces, the unspoken weight they carried.
“The Blight,” he said, the word cutting through the joy like a knife. It wasn’t a question.
They filled him in, the story tumbling out in pieces: Ostagar, Loghain’s treachery, the march of the horde, the need for allies. Eamon listened, propped against his pillows, strength visibly returning to him with each passing minute. He was quiet for a long time after they finished, staring at the tapestry on the far wall, a scene of Highever fields in summer.
“A Landsmeet,” he stated finally, his voice firm. “We must call a Landsmeet. It is the only way to legally strip Loghain of the regency and declare a proper sovereign to lead the nation to war.”
“A Landsmeet is just a fancy argument,” Alistair grumbled. “While we’re politicking in Denerim, the darkspawn will be chewing on the countryside.”
“Precisely,” Eamon said, his eyes locking on Alistair and Daylen. “Which is why you cannot walk into that chamber with only the support of a disgraced Arl and a single, newly-awakened Warden. You need an army at your back. Not just to win the vote, but to survive what comes after.” He leaned forward, the blankets pooling at his waist. “The dwarves of Orzammar hold the Deep Roads. If they fall, the darkspawn flood the surface unopposed. And the Dalish elves… their knowledge of the wilds is unmatched, and we will need every blade, every scout. You must secure them. Make them see the Blight is not a human problem, but a mortal one.”
“That could take months,” Daylen said, feeling the pressure of time like a physical weight.
“It will take as long as it takes,” Eamon countered, but his expression was grim. “I will begin the preparations for the Landsmeet. It is a slow beast, petitions, summoning the Bannorn… it buys you time. But understand this: winning the crown means nothing if Ferelden is a barren graveyard when you take the throne. Our legitimacy rests on our ability to defend the realm. So go. Find the Paragon’s heir in Orzammar. Find the Dalish clans in the Brecilian Forest. Bring them to our side.”
It was a plan. A daunting, near-impossible one, but a line drawn on a map. A direction.
A servant was dispatched. The door opened, and two guards half-dragged, half-led Jowan into the room.
The blood mage was a shadow of the anxious apprentice Daylen had known. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes wide with a trapped-animal fear. He couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze, his head hanging so low his lank hair curtained his face. He smelled of dungeon stone and sweat.
“This one’s fate is tied to Redcliffe’s suffering,” Eamon said, his voice cooling. “His crimes are against my house, my family, my lands. But it was you, Warden, who ended the threat he helped create.” The Arl’s gaze settled on Daylen. “The right of judgment is yours. Do with him as you see fit.”
The room went still. Wynne looked pained. Alistair’s jaw tightened. Morrigan watched, a faint, curious smile on her lips.
Jowan finally lifted his head. His eyes found Daylen’s, and there was no malice in them, only a deep, corrosive shame. “Daylen,” he whispered, his voice a broken thing. “I… I always envied you. You know that, right? It was so easy for you. The spells, the respect… you never even seemed to try.”
Daylen said nothing. He just watched, his face a calm mask, his hands loose at his sides.
Jowan took the silence as permission to spill his guts, the words coming in a desperate, trembling rush. “I was going to be made Tranquil. I saw the lyrium brand in my sleep. I was so scared. And then… I thought, if I just had more power. Real power.Not theory. Not practice. Power.” A pathetic laugh escaped him. “I turned to blood magic because I thought it would get me to your level. I thought if I was strong, like you, they’d have to let me stay, they’d have to—”
The sentence died in a wet gasp.
There was no dramatic flourish, no shouted oath. One moment Daylen was standing still, his posture relaxed. The next, there was a blur of motion, a soft metallic whisper, and the solid, meaty thunk of steel piercing flesh.
Daylen’s longsword was in his hand, its point buried to the guard in Jowan’s chest. The mage’s eyes widened, not in pain, but in pure, uncomprehending shock. He looked down at the blade protruding from his sternum, then back up at Daylen’s impassive face. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. The life in his eyes simply winked out, like a snuffed candle.
Daylen withdrew the blade in the same fluid motion. It came free with a slick sound. Jowan’s body crumpled to the polished floor, a puppet with its strings cut. A dark, swift stain spread across his robes.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the crackle of the fire.
Daylen knelt, cleaned his blade meticulously on a clean part of Jowan’s sleeve, and slid it back into its scabbard. He stood, his movements economical, precise. He finally looked at Eamon. “Justice is served.”
He turned and walked out of the room, the others scrambling to follow. No one spoke until they were in the stone-walled corridor, the heavy door to the Arl’s chambers shutting behind them with a soft, final click.
They made it to the guest quarters, a sparse, quiet room with cots and a small brazier. Daylen stood by the narrow window, looking out over the darkening lake. His hands were steady.
His hands were steady.
The door closed behind Wynne, her quiet disapproval a chill in the air even after she’d left to tend to Connor. Alistair scrubbed a hand over his face, the sound of his palm on stubble loud in the quiet room. He finally looked at Daylen’s back.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice low.
“He was dead the moment he poisoned Eamon,” Daylen said, not turning from the window. The lake below was a sheet of black glass, reflecting the pinprick lights of the village. “We just took a long time getting to the moment.”
“Right. Yeah.” Alistair shifted his weight, his armor creaking. “Still. One less thing, I guess. Uldred, Jowan… you’re cleaning out the Tower’s closet for them.”
Daylen didn’t answer. The silence stretched until Alistair gave a short, awkward nod and headed for his own cot, the matter closed. Sten was already sharpening his greatsword, the rhythmic scrape of the whetstone the only other sound. Then it, too, stopped. The big Qunari gathered his gear and left, seeking a more suitable place for his ritual.
That left Morrigan.
She had been watching him from the shadowed corner beside the cold hearth, a statuesque silhouette against the grey stone. Now she moved, her steps silent on the rush matting. She came to stand beside him at the window, close enough that he could smell the wild, herbal scent of her hair, the faint ozone of her magic clinging to her skin like cold smoke.
She didn’t look at him. Her gaze, too, was fixed on the consuming dark outside. “You killed him cleanly,” she remarked, her tone conversational, detached. “A mercy, perhaps. More than he gave the arl’s son.”
“It wasn’t mercy,” Daylen said, his voice flat. “It was tidiness. Loose ends are a liability.”
A faint, approving smirk touched her lips, then vanished. “The sentiment is… pragmatic.” She paused, her long fingers tracing a seam in the ancient stone windowsill. Her usual confidence seemed frayed at the edges, a subtle tension pulling her shoulders tight. “I have a loose end of my own. One that cannot be so simply trimmed.”
He turned his head to look at her then. In the deep blue twilight from the window, her profile was stark, beautiful, and utterly closed.
“You found something,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“In the Tower. Among the First Enchanter’s trophies.” She spoke to the darkness, her words precise and careful, as if handling broken glass. “A grimoire. Not a Tevinter primer for foolish apprentices. This was… older. A treatise on advanced transmutive principles and spiritual transference.”
She finally turned her golden eyes on him. They held no mischief, no sly cunning. Just a cold, sharp fear he had never seen in her before.
“It outlines a ritual. Of possession.” The word hung in the air between them, ugly and final. “Not by a demon.By a living witch. A soul, forcing its will into a new, younger vessel before the old body fails. It describes the creation of a… receptacle. One tailored by blood. Her blood.”
Daylen felt the pieces click into place with a dreadful, silent finality. Flemeth’s centuries of life. The daughter, plucked from obscurity, raised in isolation. The endless lessons, the harsh tests. “You.”
“A vessel is not a daughter,” Morrigan whispered, the words brittle. “It is a wineskin to be emptied and filled. The grimoire confirms it. My… mother… has done this before.Many times. She wears her immortality like a stolen cloak, discarding the worn and taking the new.” Her hand curled into a fist on the stone. “She intends to wear me next.”
The fire popped in the brazier behind them. Down the hall, a distant door shut. The world continued its mundane turn, utterly oblivious to the raw, tectonic shift happening in this quiet room.
Daylen watched the pulse flicker in the pale hollow of her throat. He saw it all now—the urgent whispers with the First Enchanter before they fled the Tower, her sudden, intense research in every library they passed, the way she’d stared into the campfire for hours, unseeing. It wasn't just ambition driving her. It was survival.The Landsmeet. The dwarves. The Blight. The thrumming pressure of the Archsong in his blood, a constant, rising drumbeat. Now this. Another life, another destiny, another monstrous thing demanding a sword.
His hands were still steady. He let out a slow, controlled breath, fogging the cold glass for a moment before it faded. “Where is she?”
Morrigan flinched. It was a tiny, almost imperceptible recoil, but he saw it. She had expected debate, logistics, a weighing of her worth against the mission. She had armed herself for an argument.
“The Wilds,” she said, her voice regaining some of its edge, but it was a defensive one. “At her hut. Where she has always been.”
“We’ll go after we resupply. Before we head to Orzammar.”
Now she turned fully, her brows knitting together in pure, unguarded bewilderment. “Have you heard nothing I’ve said? This is not some bandit chieftain or a reanimated corpse. This is Flemeth. You saw but a shadow of her power when we fought her dragon form in the Wilds. That was a game to her. This… this will be her true self. Cornered.Desperate. You could die. Will likely die.”
“I know.”
“Then why?” The question burst from her, sharp with frustration and something else—a raw, confused vulnerability she couldn’t hide. “You have a blight to stop, a nation to unite. The rational choice is to leave the witch to her own cruel designs. Why would you possibly agree?”
He looked at her then, really looked. Past the sharp angles and sharper tongue, past the magic and the mystery, to the fierce, terrified girl hiding inside a fortress of her own making. He understood that kind of armor.
“Because I care about you,” he said. The words were simple, matter-of-fact, stripped of any grand sentiment or poetic weight. He stated it like he would state the weather or a tactical flaw. “You don’t have to like it. You can pretend it isn’t true. That’s fine.”
Her mouth opened slightly, but no sound emerged.
“And,” he continued, his gaze unwavering, “I know you care about me. You don’t have to say it. You probably shouldn’t. It seems to cause you physical pain. But I know. So I’m going.”
Morrigan stared at him as if he’d begun speaking in Qunlat. The puzzle of him, this pragmatic, lethal man who had just executed a former friend without a blink and now spoke of caring without a shred of emotional manipulation, was clearly beyond her frame of reference. Her armor was built to deflect grand declarations, bribes, threats. It had no defense against calm, factual statements of loyalty.
She took a half-step back, her spine hitting the cold stone wall beside the window. Her eyes searched his face for a trick, a lie, a hidden angle. She found none. Just steady green eyes in the gloom, watching her, waiting for her next move.
The rigid defiance bled out of her shoulders, leaving something quieter, more uncertain. “You are a very strange man, Daylen Amell,” she murmured, the words almost lost in the dark space between them.