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“More wine?”
Tabain leaned back in his chair and watched the deep crimson liquid pour into his cup. When the sweet, rich fragrance reached his nose the realization finally hit him. He was home. It still felt surreal to be back here, after everything that had happened.
“Anything else, sweety?”, his mum asked as she set the pitcher down. She looked at him expectantly with a warm smile on her face that got him weirdly emotional. He shook his head.
“Thanks, mum”
She stroked his hair and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then left to join his father at the hearth.
Tabain sampled the wine and gave a happy sigh at the fruity flavour filling his mouth. A warm spring breeze entered the room through an open window and caressed his skin. He allowed himself to ease into the feeling of contentment, to let it peel away the first layers of terror and discomfort that had been his constant companions for the past few months.
“Care to share?”
The cup was snatched from his hands as Shianni fell into the seat beside him and took a swig.
“What’s in it for me?”, he responded playfully.
She gestured at herself.
“The pleasure of my company, of course.”
He pretended to think about that.
“Tempting…”
He darted forward and reclaimed his cup with a flourish.
“...but this is exceptional wine. You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
She shot him a mischievous grin.
“I’ll help you annoy Soris.”
“Deal.”
He filled another cup and handed it to her. Their fingers touched for a brief moment, making his entire body tingle. Shianni looked at him with her big curious eyes, a sly smile playing around her lips. Maker, he had missed her so much. He realized he was staring and scrambled for something to say.
“Where is Soris, anyway? I haven’t seen him since I got back.”
“He’ll join us in a bit. He’s still at Alarith’s, grabbing a few more things to make tonight perfect.”
Tabain felt a small stab of guilt.
“More perfect than this? You’ve outdone yourselves already.”
It was true. The house was in pristine condition, better than it had ever been. The whole place had been scrubbed to perfection, not a mote of dust to be seen. The floorboards were practically shining, the broken shutters on the south window had been fixed and the crack in the adjacent wall patched up. Even the old table had been replaced with a considerably more sturdy one of smooth dark wood. On top of the table sat a large vase full of fresh flowers of every colour that gave the entire room a lovely scent.
Shianni waved modestly.
“Your dad deserves most of the credit, he really has a hand for these things. I picked the flowers this morning, though. Do you like them?”
“They’re beautiful.”
She beamed and his heart skipped a beat. A hand touched his shoulder and he turned to see his dad standing over him.
“We’re just so happy and relieved to have you back safe and sound. We wanted you to feel welcome.”
“Thanks, dad. But you really shouldn’t have. Look at this place, it must’ve cost a small fortune to get it all fixed up.”
His dad waved dismissively.
“Don’t worry about all that. Besides, we have a lot to celebrate, don’t we?”
Tabain raised an eyebrow.
“We do?”
Adaia stepped up beside him with a stack of plates.
“It appears our son is humble, honey. He doesn’t get that from me.”
Cyrion grabbed the plates and started setting the table.
“Staying modest is never a bad thing, but you can take pride in the things you have accomplished. And at such a young age at that.”
Adaia joined him.
“Head of King Cailan’s personal guard.”, she proclaimed, emphasizing each word individually.
“A position most people in the alienage could only ever dream of.”
Tabain felt himself blush.
“King Cailan has been very generous.”
His mum was having none of it.
“King Cailan made the only reasonable choice, given the way you distinguished yourself at Ostagar.”
Shianni watched him squirm and merrily doubled down.
“It’s the talk of the town. How you bravely stepped up and rallied the reserves at Ostagar after general Loghain fled the battle. How you charged into the Darkspawn line and rescued the king from certain death. How you fought relentlessly for hours, drove the monsters back and saved all of Ferelden in the process. It’s all very heroic.”
“Most of that is exaggerated”, he mumbled half-heartedly.
Shianni tilted her head.
“I don’t know about that, it sounds exactly like something you would do.”
He blushed furiously, but a part of him relished in the recognition and respect they were showing him. After all, he had earned it. He had done those things, hadn’t he? His actions had even earned him an honourable discharge from the Wardens, a rare exception in the order’s history.
“I’d say this settles one thing…”, Adaia leaned towards her husband.
“...I was right to teach the boy how to fight.”
Cyrion winced almost imperceptibly.
“That is hard to deny at this point.”
She laughed triumphantly and he leaned in and gave her a kiss. Tabain smiled. It felt like years since he had seen his parents this happy, though realistically it had only been a few months.
Cyrion clapped his hands excitedly.
“Who’s hungry? I think dinner is ready.”
His announcement was met with a round of cheers.
Soon, every corner of the table was laden with a veritable feast. Juicy meat and golden potatoes, steamed vegetables of every variety all covered in a thick gravy. It was wondrous to behold.
“This is amazing, dad! How did you even make all of this in our tiny kitchen?”
Cyrion looked very pleased with himself.
“Fighting is not the only gift that runs in this family, son. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, too.”
He began serving the food.
“Just wait until dessert. I’ve come up with a new recipe. If those aren’t the best cookies you’ve ever had, I’ll hang up my apron for good.”
Tabain could smell them baking now and the scent made his mouth water even more than before.
He speared a piece of meat with his fork and chewed on it blissfully.
“You know…”, he said between bites.
“I recently found out that my friend Sten loves cookies. He’s this huge Qunari warrior, all stoic and ascetic. You’d never suspect that he’d have a hidden sweet-tooth.”
His dad was listening attentively.
“A man after my own heart. You should have invited him.”
Tabain shook his head.
“I don’t think he enjoys gatherings like this. He’s the reclusive sort. I can barely get a word out of him at the best of times. We met after the battle in a small town where he was kept in a cage and…”
He hesitated. Tabain had enlisted Sten’s help to fight the Blight, but the Darkspawn had been defeated decisively at Ostagar. So they must have met before the battle, but he could have sworn…
“More wine?”
Tabain was ripped from his train of thought. He nodded politely and watched the red liquid sloshing into his cup. The smell had a bit of a sour note to it, though not entirely unpleasant. He took a sip. Too earthy for his taste, but still enjoyable enough.
From the corner of his eye, he saw his parents having a silent conversation as his mum poked his dad and gestured towards him with her head. Cyrion seemed reluctant at first, but eventually gave in to her prodding. Turning to Tabain, he cleared his throat.
“There’s something your mother and I wanted to talk about…”
Tabain froze with a piece of potato halfway to his mouth. This seemed far removed from the jovial tone of their earlier conversation.
His dad seemed to wait for permission to continue, but pressed on regardless when he didn’t get it.
“Now that you are back, we should discuss the prospects of marriage again.”
Tabain looked down at his food unhappily, his appetite vanished in an instance. He set his fork down.
“Can we not do this tonight? I just got done fighting one battle, I don’t need another.”
His dad seemed to hesitate, then nodded reluctantly.
“Of course, of course. We don’t have to talk about it right now. Whenever you feel ready, son. We just shouldn’t wait too long. Life is short and we don’t want you to miss out. We believe that we have found someone that you will be quite happy with…”
“DAD!”
Cyrion stopped talking and raised his hands in a gesture of appeasement, to the obvious dismay of his wife.
Tabain looked around the room, refusing to meet his parents’ eyes. He grabbed one of the drooping flowers off the table and started playing with it absent-mindedly, trying to figure out how to escape this awkward situation. The flower came apart at his touch, the petals raining unceremoniously to the floor. He sighed. This subject was one that he had been hoping to avoid for as long as possible, but now that the cat was out of the bag, not knowing would only make him more anxious.
“I take it you’ve reached out to Nessiara’s family again?”
He looked up in time to catch his parents exchanging a quick glance.
“Listen, we… wanted to apologize. Nessiara is a good woman from a good family, but we realized that she wasn’t a good match for you.”
His mother pitched in.
“I guess we got so caught up in what we thought was best for you, that we never considered what you wanted.”
Cyrion took her hand.
“We don’t want to make the same mistake, so this time, we were thinking of looking closer to home for a suitable spouse.”
Tabain perked up. What did that mean? Taking his sudden interest as encouragement, his dad continued, barely able to contain himself.
“You and Shianni have been really close since childhood and in recent years, we got the impression…”
“I got the impression”, Adaia inserted.
“Your mother noticed that there might be more between the two of you. We dismissed it as a bout of youthful infatuation…”
“You dismissed it”
“...but your connection seems to be stronger than I…”, he gave his wife a pointed look.
“...gave it credit.”
He turned to Shianni.
“Your mother was my best friend and you have been with us ever since she died. You already are like a daughter to me and I would be honoured to have you officially join our family. What do you say?”
Tabain didn’t catch Shianni’s response and only barely registered the excitement in her voice.
His whole body had gone into shock. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. The significance of what his parents suggested was sinking in ever so slowly. Him? Marry Shianni? He had always wanted this, of course. From the time they jokingly played with the idea as kids to the moment he actually caught feelings for her. It was a childish fancy, attainable in his imagination but always out of reach in reality. But for it to actually happen?
It felt like he was about to burst from all the feelings that were crowding his chest. Happiness and relief, disbelief and confusion. He felt powerful and afraid, like everything was finally coming together and nothing made sense.
He became vaguely aware that the room had fallen silent and everyone was looking at him.
“Did we make the wrong assumption after all?”, his dad asked, his voice concerned. “We thought this was what you wanted?”
Shianni grabbed his arm, clearly anxious for his reply.
“Say something, Tabain”
“Yes…”, he croaked.
He cleared his throat a couple of times and made another attempt.
“Yes, I would love that...”
He trailed off. Pitiful.
Shianni forced a smile, evidently unconvinced by the way he had fumbled that. Adaia had watched the scene unfold with bemusement and jumped to his aid.
“Don’t take it personally, sweety, the men in this family can’t express happiness very well. It took Cyrion almost 10 years to even crack a smile.”
Her husband slouched at that.
“I told you I was happy after 3…”
“Once!”
Tabain left his parents to bicker. He took Shianni’s hand into his own and looked deep into her eyes.
“I want this”, he whispered to her.
Relief flooded her face and she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.
“I do too”, she whispered back.
His parents, having settled their own marital affairs, returned their attention to the matter at hand.
“Then it’s settled!” Cyrion proclaimed triumphantly. “We can start planning the ceremony. It will take time to make preparations. We can get the entire alienage together, I’m sure everyone is aching for a chance to celebrate and forget the woes of the past few months.”
Tabain held up his hand, trying to stop his dad before he got carried away.
“Maybe we go with a smaller ceremony this time. Just close friends and family? This is about us, right? That way we could avoid unwanted attention and make sure that things go… smoothly, this time.”
He left the implication hanging in the air. Adaia considered for a moment.
“I understand your concerns, but I don’t think we need to worry about that. Things have really changed in the alienage. The new Arl seems to be a benevolent ruler and has treated us amicably. I see no reason why he would interfere.”
That was new.
“We have a new Arl?”
“You didn’t hear? King Cailan was furious after you told him what happened at the wedding last time. Made him take a closer look at how the Uriens had managed the alienage and apparently he wasn’t too happy with what he found. Stripped the old Arl of his title and even imprisoned his horrible son.”
“Good riddance”, Cyrion pitched in, shaking his head in disgust. “Imprisoning the groom at his wedding as some sort of joke. Nasty business, even for a noble.”
Huh. That was a pleasant surprise. It was rare for the people of the alienage to be afforded this kind of justice. The idea of Vaughn getting his comeuppance filled Tabain with a grim satisfaction.
Hot blood covering his hands. A look of pain, mixed with surprise. The stench of alcohol on a final breath.
Tabain groaned. It felt like he had been stabbed right in the brain. Someone said his name and he felt a hand on his shoulder, but he waved them away. He steadied himself against the table and took a few deep breaths. In. Out.
In.
Out.
The pain subsided, turning into a throbbing ache. What happened? He remembered the events of his wedding day clearly. Vaughn had barged in with his friends during the ceremony, clearly drunk and with the intention to cause trouble. When people told him to leave, he got angry and had his guards drag Tabain away to throw him in prison. “Good luck having a wedding without a groom”, he had mocked them. A few days later Duncan had shown up and freed him under the condition that he would join the Wardens and the rest was history.
So why did he briefly remember killing Vaughn? The man had been a bastard, but his little prank wasn’t worth killing him over. Thinking back to that day filled Tabain with a feeling of dread disproportionate to what had actually transpired. Did he misremember? Had something worse happened? It was so hard to think, like a heavy fog had settled on his mind.
“More wine?”
Tabain watched the brownish liquid splatter into his cup, half of it missing and spilling across the table. He ignored the acrid smell and took a deep gulp. The bitter taste did nothing to improve his mood, but it did help take his mind off things for a moment. He speared a piece of dry meat and chewed away at it unhappily.
“Can you give us a moment?”, he heard Shianni say, followed by the scraping of chairs being pushed back as his parents retreated to a different corner of the house.
Tabain gave up trying to chew the meat, spat it out and pushed his plate away.
“What’s wrong?”, her soft voice managed to pierce the fog.
“I’m not sure… I just had a sort of… flashback”
He looked at her, clung to her, lest he be swept away. Her dark brown eyes, filled with affection and worry, her messy red hair, her kind features. Her presence was calming and helped him forget about everything else. She placed a hand on his cheek and tenderly caressed his face with her thumb.
“It’s okay to be overwhelmed. You’ve been through a lot. The things you have seen, the things you’ve had to endure… I don’t think your parents understand. I’m not sure I understand. But I’m here for you, however you need me.”
He breathed in her scent and nodded.
“I just struggle to remember some things, even though they happened recently. A lot of it just feels… wrong and I can’t make sense of it and that scares me.”
She thought about that.
“Remember Old Beth? How scared we were of her because of the way she acted sometimes. How inexplicable it seemed? Your mum once told me that she fought in the war against Orlais and that when she came home… not all of her did. A part of her stayed on the battlefield. Maybe something similar happened to you. Maybe what you are experiencing is your mind trying to protect itself.”
It was an unsettling thought, but also a comforting one, in a way. At least it was an explanation. A gust of cold autumn wind blew through a crack in the wall and Tabain watched as it made the cobwebs under the ceiling dance ominously. He shivered, but Shianni’s hand was warm to the touch as she continued to comfort him.
“I’m sorry about the whole marriage situation. Your parents shouldn’t have sprung that on you like that. I think they were just excited, but they should have waited.”
She hesitated.
“We don’t have to go through with it, you know? We can take it slow, give you time to settle. There’s no need to rush into things, I’m not going anywhere.”
He took both of her hands into his and shook his head.
“No, I think it’ll be good for us. It feels… right, you know? The only thing that does right now. I want this.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“I love you”
“I love you, too”
Shianni smiled and leaned in for a kiss. Tabain’s heart started racing, his mouth feeling dry as parchment. She held inches from his face, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. How long had he dreamed about just this situation? How many silent prayers sent to the Maker for this to happen. How many nights lying awake on the cold, hard ground, sometimes in pouring rain, sometimes hurt, bleeding, bruised, almost always afraid and miserable, with only the thought of her keeping him going. His only consolation the thought that what he was doing out there, all the hardships he endured and the sacrifices he made, helped keep her safe. And now he was here, he was home and all he wanted was to lose himself in her embrace, to taste her lips and share her warmth. He leaned in to meet her, his nose brushing against hers and felt her soft breath on his face. Just a hair’s width between him and his dreams. And in that moment, it hit him with absolute clarity.
If he stayed here, happy and comfortable, she was not safe.
He ripped himself away, his chair clattering to the ground as he jumped to his feet. His clairvoyance was already fading, leaving him feeling alarmed without a clear source of danger. He looked around the room frantically, scanning every corner of the run-down house for potential threats. The whole place was tinged in a twilight gloom and the walls seemed a lot closer than they had before. This certainly did not feel like home anymore. He backed towards the door slowly, his eyes finding Shianni, looking startled and confused by his outburst, but evidently oblivious to the threatening aura that seemed to emanate from all around.
“I’m sorry", he stammered. "I just… I just need some air.”
He turned around and found his mother standing between him and the door.
“Where are you going, sweety? We were just about to serve dessert.”
She noticed his panicked demeanour.
“What’s wrong, honey? You look so pale! Sit down, have some wine, it’ll do you good.”
She put a hand on his arm and tried to steer him back towards the table, but he brushed her off.
“You just got home. And now you already want to leave? Did we do something wrong?”
He mumbled an apology and tried to step around her, but she matched his movements and kept him from reaching the door.
“Your dad put in a lot of work to make you feel at home and to make this evening feel special and you are being very ungrateful.”
He couldn’t deal with this right now. He knew he was acting weird, but he didn’t know how to explain what was happening. It was so hard to think.
“I just need to step outside for a minute. I’ll be right back”, he mumbled.
Adaia poked his chest with her finger.
“Tab, I don’t know what is happening, but you are not leaving. If you can’t tell me what is going on then go to your room until you calm down. We can talk about this later!”
He pushed her hand aside.
“Stop treating me like a child!”
“Then stop acting like one! Now go to your room.”
“This is absurd! You can’t tell me what to do! You haven’t been able to ever since…”
The words froze on his lips.
“...since you died.”
Something in her expression changed. She had been angry before, but now her face took on a harder look. Cold. Resolute.
She whipped out a dagger and struck him. Tabain reacted reflexively, grabbing her arm and wrist and used the momentum of her attack to turn it back at her. It was a move that they had practiced hundreds of times. Only this time, they weren’t using padded gear and blunted weapons. The dagger pierced her throat with little resistance. For a moment they stood locked in place, staring at each other. Seeing her features this close, Tabain wondered how he had ever managed to mistake her for his mother.
He didn’t have time to pursue the thought as an awful wail came from the other side of the room. His father looked upon the scene in front of him with a horrified expression. His eyes wandered from his dying wife to his son and his face twisted into a mask of rage, the likes of which Tabain had never seen on his dad.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”
Tabain let go of “Adaia” and held up his hands.
“Dad, you don’t understand, she…”
It was no use. Cyrion had already grabbed a nearby iron poker and swung it at Tabain with all his strength. Tabain dodged to the side, the iron poker hitting the wall where his head had been. The force of the impact ripped the poker from his dad’s grasp but he kept coming, clawing and scratching at Tabain’s face.
“WHAT… HAVE… YOU… DONE!!”
Tabain tried to protect his face as best he could, but the assault was relentless.
“Ow, dad, stop!”
He pushed his dad away and Cyrion stumbled back, lost his footing and crashed into the dinner table. The shoddy piece of furniture gave way under his weight and Cyrion went down in a tumble of splintering wood, rotten food and wilted flowers. Lying among the wreckage, he groaned and struggled feebly, but he didn’t get up.
“Dad!”
Tabain moved forward to help his father but then stopped himself. If his mother hadn’t really been his mother then there was a good chance that his father wasn’t his father either. That made sense, right? The fog laying on his mind was suffocating any thought he tried to hold for more than a moment. He had to get out of here. The way to the door was clear now, so he took a step towards it, when his eyes found Shianni standing in the middle of the room. She didn’t look angry, or afraid. Just deeply worried. He wanted to explain, but what could he say? That the woman who had been in the room with them just moments before had died years ago? He scrambled for words.
“Shianni, they attacked me! You saw it, right? I didn’t want…”
“It’s not your fault”, she said gently.
“I have to go”, he said, pleading for her to understand.
She took a small step towards him and maintained eye contact.
“Tabain, you haven’t been the same since you’ve come back. I don’t know what happened to you, but you need help.”
She was talking to him the way one would talk to a cornered animal. Maybe that wasn’t far off.
“Shianni, you don’t understand! This isn’t right, none of this is right and I can prove it but I need… to get… out of here.”
She got closer still.
“If you leave now, there will be no coming back. Please, Tabain, don’t go. We can figure this out, I can help you, but you have to trust me.”
Tabain hesitated. What if she was right? What if the events of the past months had taken their toll on him. What if he was… damaged? He looked at his mum’s lifeless body and his dad helplessly trying to free himself from the wreckage of the dinner table. Had he done this? Had he overreacted in his confusion and hurt the people closest to him? The thought was almost too much to bear.
Shianni took another step towards him. He could barely make out her features in the twilight gloom, but he could see her eyes, shimmering with sadness and genuine concern. She held out her hand, beckoning him to take it.
Time seemed to crawl as he reached out, extending his arm, his hand reaching, grasping. His fingertips touched the rough wood of the door and with one final effort, he tore his eyes from Shianni’s and pushed the door open.
Tabain stumbled outside, got his feet all tangled up and went down into the muddy road. Lying there, he could feel the haze clouding his mind dissipate. He slowed his breathing and relaxed, relishing the ability to think clearly again. It felt like remembering how to run after struggling to even stand upright. With his sense of reality restored, his mind started racing, trying to process what had happened inside of the house.
The people inside were not his real family, that much was clear. His mother was dead. The pain of that realization almost brought tears to his eyes. She had been dead for years. Tabain had cried his tears and vented his anger. He had mourned her, he had come to terms with her death. But seeing her alive and well again, even if it was only an imitation of her, only made her loss more palpable. It hurt like a bastard but there was not much he could do about it now. He would have to let the pain fade slowly and try to distract himself in the meantime. Shouldn’t be too difficult in his current situation.
His father was alive and well, he kept reminding himself, trying to chase away the mental image of Cyrion injured and helpless on the floor. Shianni, likewise, was alive, although probably not nearly as infatuated with him as this version of her had been. That, too, stung more than it should have, but he had bigger problems right now.
The entire situation had all of the familiar trappings of a nightmare, but if it had been one, he should have woken up by now. At this point Tabain was lucid enough to recognize that this was most definitely not a dream, though unfortunately that left him no wiser as to what this actually was.
He slowly got up and started surveying his surroundings. To say that the alienage looked weird would have been a massive understatement. The whole place seemed washed out and hazy, as if all colour had been drained from it, leaving only a faint, sickly green tint. The buildings surrounding his house looked familiar, but also very alien. Doors sat where windows should be and vice versa, balconies and chimneys stood at all sorts of angles and many of the structures were warped and twisted in ways that seemed unstable to the point of collapse. Some buildings lay on their sides, while others were sunken halfway into the ground. Even the mud he had been lying in was off. It certainly looked like mud, but the texture was all wrong. It just wasn’t… muddy. The entire alienage looked like it had been reconstructed from memory by someone deep in their cups. If this was indeed his home, what had happened to it? And if it wasn’t, then where in Andraste’s name was he?
He wouldn’t learn any answers from staying here, so he began walking in a random direction. At the very least moving away from this accursed house would help lift his spirits. As he walked, he noticed that he had no recollection of how he had gotten here. He remembered arriving here, being greeted by Shianni and his parents, but before that… nothing. Despite his mind feeling sharp as ever, he couldn’t recall events that had transpired just a few hours ago in the slightest. Odd.
Tabain turned a corner into an alleyway and stopped. The strange visual effect that hung over the entire district was much worse here. Everything was washed out to the point that merely outlines remained and it only got worse as the alley stretched on. At the end of the alley there… well there was no end. It just faded into nothingness. Not this way then. He walked back the way he came. Exploring another alleyway he found the same phenomenon occurring there. It seemed that the further he moved away from the main road, the more substance the environment lost. That left him with no choice but to follow the main road.
If he couldn’t retrace his steps going backwards, he would have to start at the other end. The question was where to begin. There was one event that stood out among the rest. Ostagar. The battle had been a catastrophic loss. Both King Cailan and Duncan had died in the fighting, Tabain himself had been grievously injured. He remembered waking up in Flemeth’ hut. Not a place you easily forgot, especially the inhabitants. After that, Lothering, then Redcliffe. The undead terrorizing the village, caused by the Arl’s son, Connor. In an attempt to find a cure, they had left for the Circle of Magi. After the Circle, they had gone… he couldn’t remember. Where had they gone? Probably to the Dalish or the Dwarves of Orzammar, but no matter how hard he tried to recall those events, he came up blank. Tabain growled in frustration. Another dead end.
He passed Hahren Valendrian’s house, if you could still call it that. The building hadn’t collapsed, but rather… deflated, for lack of a better word. Nevertheless, there was still candlelight shining from the “upstairs” window and smoke came out of the flaccid chimney, as if someone still lived there. He continued walking. He would have to examine the events at the Circle more closely if he wanted to figure out what had happened next. They had arrived there to find the place in disarray, the Templars scrambling to contain a demonic outbreak. Commander Greagoir had enlisted their aid, they had encountered Wynne and together confronted Uldred. Or had they? They must have, but he had trouble picturing the fight or even Uldred’s face. He sighed. Back to meeting Wynne then. At this rate it would take him weeks to figure out how he got here.
They had fought their way through the tower. They had found some survivors. Owain the Tranquil, Godwin the coward, the bewitched Templar. After that… nothing. He remembered everything else perfectly, why was it so hard to make sense of the Circle? The Templar had been under the thrall of a demon. He had died by Tabain’s blade, valiantly defending a family that did not exist.
Hold on. That sounded familiar. Was something similar happening to him? Was he… still at the Circle, doing a demon’s bidding while his mind was trapped in an illusion? It was a horrifying thought, though it made a certain kind of sense.
He would have to find a way to free himself. Not an easy task, considering that he understood nothing of magic and demons. But the apparitions in his home had tried their hardest to keep him comfortable and happy, so him figuring out that he was trapped was clearly not supposed to happen. So there had to be a way out of here. He just had to find it.
He stepped out into the main square of the alienage. Even among the general weirdness of the whole place, one thing stood out like a sore thumb. The large Vhenadahl tree at the center of the alienage was missing. In its place stood a small pedestal made of a sort of twisted black rock. At its top sat a basin ringed by curved spikes. The whole thing looked rather uninviting, but at the same time it seemed like it belonged here more than anything else. As if the whole place had been built around it.
Tabain decided to take a closer look. As he peered down into the basin he was struck by a brief spell of vertigo. It was like looking at the deepness of the night sky. Stars shimmered against the black stone, most of them dull and barely visible, forming a pattern not unlike a constellation. A pentagon with a single star at its center and more dotted around the outside. Only two stars were lit up with a thin bright line connecting them. The one at the top was the brightest, its light streaming out from the basin in wisps, seemingly feeding the environment around him. Tabain tried to carefully touch the surface where the light streamed out but found that he couldn’t. There was a resistance pushing back, as if he was trying to swim upstream. He gave up and instead traced the connection to the other star. This one wasn’t emitting light the same way the first one was, but as Tabain’s finger got closer, he could feel it pull on him. As he moved closer the pull became so strong that it felt like it could swallow him entirely. Curious. There was clearly a flow between the two stars, like a river. Could he… follow that river? If he allowed one end to swallow him, would that take him somewhere else? The idea seemed insane, but then again,so did everything else in this place. There didn’t seem to be any other ways out of this place, so what other choice did he have? Anything was better than staying here. With a deep breath, he touched the second star and was whisked away in an instance.