A tale of three elves

And I look for you between fire and blood
Between the edge of hope and despair
Like a shooting star in a barren sky
I surrender my past, future and present to you

“This time I will kill Ryan”, I snort, kicking a stone on my way. Tahl says nothing, but even if she seems as serious as usual, I’d swear I saw her smirk. “Not only he manages again to make Kyle go into some stupid quest without me, that he didn’t warn me you were going to go with me to find him!”

She shrugs. “If he had told you, you wouldn’t have come”

I glare at her. “I would have gone to the end of the world, with anybody, to rescue Kyle”, I reply, harsh.

“Yeah. But we’re not going to rescue Kyle. Mainly because he doesn’t need to be rescued. Don’t worry, they will meet us later today if everything goes as expected.”

I stop talking for a while to stare at her. “What? But you said Ryan had sent you because they needed our help in a matter of life or death!!”. I would jump to her throat but I need her to tell me what’s happening. Besides, I bet all this was Ryan’s idea, and he fooled Kyle too. I prefer to blame him alone than to think them three were in cahoots.

“That’s just a detail” she says, looking at her nails as if they were more interesting than me. Kyle says she can’t feel but I’m sure she has quite a deal of pleasure by getting on my nerves so I take a deep breath trying not to give her what she wants. “But that gate to the Fade your crazy captor opened again has to be locked as soon as possible, and it would be stupid to take twice the time just because my dad and you have to go together by the hand everywhere like schoolchildren”.

She turns to look at me and catches me mimicking her speech with my hand as if she was a puppet, so I’m afraid that my “We’re not schoolchildren!” protest should sound pretty stupid if I said it aloud. Instead, I hide my hands at my back and spit “Have I to be sorry that I share with Kyle something you will never share anymore?”.

I know she calls Kyle “dad” just because it pisses me off. And damn it, she gets it. But I also know that, if she feels something for a single person in the whole world, it is for him. And I probably hit the right string, because for once, she stays silent. I sometimes believe that, if I had not stepped in the middle, sooner or later she would have ended being to him more than an adoptive daughter... and I think she knows it too.

I would like to ask her a bit more about our quest, but I don’t feel talkative either, so we walk like two grumpy hags for a while, deep into the forests around Highever. Only one thing I see clear, and it is that we’re not heading to the marsh were the gate to the Fade, according to Tahl’s last comment, is still open. Whatever is the thing she thinks will help us to close it, is not there.

“So you want to learn my secrets?”, Flemeth said calmly, after busting her sneaking around the wishing well. Berrygold already knew that fake calm. The witch was boiling inside, and the punishment would be according to it. Berrygold almost closed her eyes as if she had been hit. “Then dive deep inside them. Why not? Look inside my wishing well… and rot in it for eternity!”

And with those words, and only with a movement of her hand, the powerful witch sent the poor elf flying down to the well. Berrygold’s own magic could do nothing to prevent it, her power not a match to her mentor’s.

The water softened the fall, and though painful, it didn’t kill her. She got up, rubbing her back and limping, and looked around.

Now her only chance, after all, was to find that orb, and see if she could use its power to get out of that tomb in life.

After a long walk, I realize we’re getting closer to the place where that Dalish clan which helped us with Emma was camping some months ago. They’re already gone, but the Dalish have claimed this place ages ago, and the carved places of their gods are there to show it. I look at Tahl. She was a Dalish once, and I wonder how she feels about that… or how she felt when she could, at least.

Even if it is clear this is the area, we still walk past the camping clearing and get again deep in the forest, to a place dark and calm. I can see more religious signs and some stones sunk on the ground, making kind of a circular pattern. Somehow this place is colder, and I brace myself when I realize it.

“This is… a burial place, isn’t it?”

Tahl nods. I see her leaning over the stones and I guess she’s reading the signs on them, looking for something. I can’t help much; I can’t understand Dalish writing, so I just look around, uncomfortable.

“And what are we looking for?”

“A grave. What else?” she says, sarcastic. I frown.

“I could go that far without your help, thanks”, I reply, harsh. “I mean, whose grave?”

“An ancestor” she replies. “The one who helped Sarim Cousland to defeat Flemeth, after she killed her husband, back in the Tower Age. A powerful mage, a disciple of the witch, who betrayed Flemeth, and got cursed for that… her, and her whole clan”

“Your clan”, I add, and she nods. “Is it related to your curse too?”

“Sort of” she says, even if I know the mage who cursed her, and Kyle, have not much to do with Flemeth. Though maybe Flemeth’s curse was only about bad luck. But Tahl says not much more, and examines the stones twice, with a snort. It seems that, whatever she looks for, is not there. As much as I love seeing her disappointed, an idea comes to my mind.

“If she caused the fall of the clan, maybe she wasn’t buried with the rest of the Dalish” I point out. “Isn’t there a special place for the outcast ones?”

Tahl looks at me as if she had heard a donkey speaking, but she has to admit I may be right, and stops kneeling in front of the old stones. Then, without a “You’re right”, she leaves the circle of stones and walks away, looking for lost tracks. Even if she says nothing, I guess it is a small victory, and I smile.

“You think we will be able to find that tomb? I mean… the Tower Age? That’s… seven hundred years ago… maybe the tomb is lost”

“We have to find it. The orb’s piece is inside that tomb, and we need it to close the gate to the Fade”.

The orb piece. So we’re seeking for an object of power. Well, that is something.

“Maybe Ryan should have come instead of us. I don’t see why we are so important. A mage probably could have tracked it better than us” I say, feeling useless. I’m following Tahl, but somehow I know she’s not going the right way, and I feel like walking in an opposite direction.

Suddenly the ground disappears under my feet, and I slide down a narrow tunnel I had not seen, hidden behind some bushes. A stone block stops my sliding, and I find myself rubbing both my butt and my knees before standing up and look around a bit more.

I examine the stone block in the middle and my hands find some engravings in it. If they’re a name or a curse, I don’t know, but they look a lot like the ones in the burial stones above, so I think it is time to call my companion.

“Tahl? I think I found it!”

“I got the damned orb for you!” Berrygold yelled at Dany. “I helped you and Regina against Flemeth, even if that meant my clan would be cursed and outcasted… and now you tell me you're going to marry someone else?”

Dany sighed, and looked sad at Regine before replying. "It is an arranged marriage. I didn't choose it"

Regina got between her friend and the jealous elf. “My brother thought an alliance with Dragon’s Peak would be useful, now that he has been proclaimed as the new bann. He convinced Dany's family into it”

“But that will bring you away from me!!! Why? I… thought we would always be together!!! Why did you accept?” Berrygold walked towards Dany, her eyes full with tears. Dany didn’t reply, silent as usual. The elf finally turned back and ran away. Regina stopped Dany’s attempt to go after her.

“Let her go… sooner or later she’ll understand… There are relationships that just cannot be”

While I hear Tahl cleaning the way after me, I step back to look at the chamber, lit by the sunrays which enter by several holes on the stone ceiling. Since nobody seems to have been inside this place for ages, I suppose all of them have been as concealed as the one I slipped in. In the middle stands the pedestal that stopped my sliding, a big square stone block, probably hollow in the inside, because a closer inspection shows some creeks on the top which suggest there’s a stone cover. I walk around it, trying to figure out what the inscriptions mean, but my heart knows we have found it.

I’m sliding my fingers around the top of the sarcophagus when I hear Tahl behind me and even if I say to my self I don’t care, I feel good for having impressed her.

“The orb is inside the tomb?” I ask her. She nods. “Then we need a lever or something. I think the lid is loose, but it is too heavy to move it alone”.

She smiles with that smirk of her I hate and takes a crowbar out of her backpack. “I expected so”, and makes me a gesture to go away. Of course, I think. And I could have been prepared too if I had know we were going to be playing the tomb raider instead of thinking I was going to rescue Kyle. But I step away, just in case. I don’t want that heavy gravestone falling on my foot by... mistake.

And one never knows what can get out of a seven hundred years old burial hole, either.

With an unpleasant shriek, Tahl manages to slide the gravestone some inches away, enough to peek inside the tomb, but not so much as the stone falls to the ground and breaks. She covers her nose and mouth to avoid all the dust her movement has caused, and only when the dust has disappeared and it is clear there’s no danger, I move closer too.

I’m not sure what did I expect. Probably nothing, since seven hundred years are a lot of years. Or maybe some scattered bones. But the body inside the grave, skin dry over the clearly elven bones, is whole enough to be considered a mummy. I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like corpses, old or new, but at least this one doesn’t stink.

"This is not a dalish tomb", Tahl mutters. "Looks more like Nevarran work. Same as the mummy... I wonder why?"

Maybe it was a way to state she wasn't part of the clan anymore, I think. Or maybe it is a way to... pass the curse to her?. I shake my head. I don't like where my thoughts are going. I have no idea, but even if I had, I know the question is not addressed to me, so I look inside the grave again.

The body has her hands resting over her tummy, and I frown a bit. It is as if, under the grey leather, something was shinning. I look at Tahl, questioning her.

“The orb is inside her, yeah”, Tahl nods. “All the sources Ryan consulted agreed that the orb had a parasitic behaviour, and if it wasn’t used properly, it would become part of the body”.

The only idea makes me sick. And we have to handle that thing? Not even with a ten feet pole!

“What now?” I ask to Tahl. “You take it, trusting that it will recognize your clan’s blood or something?”

She looks at me with an amused expression.

“WE both do it. None of us are mages, but our bloods combined should be strong enough, at least to put it into a contention bag”

I’m about to chuckle, but I don’t do because this place freaks me out enough not to feel like laughing. “Why both? It’s your ancestor, not mine”.

Tahl doesn’t have my concerns and laughs, a cold, feel-less laugh.

“I never said she was MY ancestor”, she says, and I know she’s enjoying it. “Both our lineages come from the same clan. In a twisted way, she is OUR ancestor. Mine… and yours.”

The orb had been fractured. It was the only way, Regina had said, and she knew too. Her attempts to dominate the complete orb had been a failure. Yes, it had helped her out of the well but at what price?. It was a thing from the Fade, and nothing from the Fade was to be trusted, it was the first thing she had learnt at the clan, and Flemeth’s actions had only confirmed that to her.

But even so, she thought, looking at the fragment in her hands… Now this piece was six times smaller, six times less powerful. Maybe she could do it. Maybe this time it would bend to her desires.

She held it close to her heart, and made a wish. Just one wish.

To get her true love back…

Tahl tries to take away the bony hands delicately, but it is like trying to bend a dry stick, and she only manages it after a disgusting cracking noise. Then she points at the shinning tummy, which seems brighter each time. I raise my lip in a disgusting grimace. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Take your dagger and get that orb out”

Of course, that is what I’m expected to do, but I feel as if I was helping to retrieve an unborn baby. How accurate. I finally win over my sickness and do it.

“I’m sorry, grandma”, I mutter. Tahl snorts.

“She never had children, so she’s not technically our grandma, you know. She’s more like a great-auntie”

I glance at Tahl. Wow, she’s trying to be nice. “In that case... maybe Evelyn should have been here too” I mumble, but she’s gone again, and I know for sure she has had enough of magical things with our latest adventure. Tahl looks at me as if she knew something I don't know, which is probably true, but I have my mind focused on my sister, trying to forget the blonde elf in front of me who calls me “mama” and has ended up being a far-cousin, and when I see the bright thing appear between the wrinkled folds of grey skin, suddenly forgetting my fears, I sink my hand inside to retrieve it. After all, it is a shinny, valuable thing, which makes my looting sense tingle.

And at the same time my hand sinks into the mummy’s entrails, I see that thing opening her empty eyelids, and her hands grabbing my wrist. I retrieve my hand so fast I forget of the orb and the shine and everything, trying not to pee over myself at the idea of those corpse fingers dragging me down to hell. But the thing doesn’t want my hand, it wants the orb.

Suddenly I see a glowing shape getting from the corpse, and I realize the mummy didn’t move. It is the spirit that rises from it which gives the impression… and it is quite an unpleasant one. I’m still walking backwards, wielding my dagger with one hand while rubbing the wrist of the other to my clothes, still itchy at the spirit’s touch… and I see Tahl is walking backwards too. Good. The elven stick can feel fear, at least.

“My orb!!! My wish!!” the spirit is saying. “Are you bringing my love back?”

I realize I’m sitting on the ground and still crawling back, even if I don’t think I am THAT scared. Actually now that I can’t see the mummy, the spirit is more majestic than scary. I mean, she’s a young, beautiful elven woman, with the ritual Dalish tattoos on her face, making her big green eyes more expressive. If she’s an ancestor of my bloodline, I guess I only got the red shade of hair and the lack of breasts, because what I see in front of me is stunning… Or maybe, like with Lindy, it is the spirit quality which makes them much prettier?

She strokes her tummy as if she was holding a baby. “My wish. My wish will be granted, won’t it?”. Then she looks at us, almost without seeing us. “After all this time! I swore not to rest until my love was back!"

Tahl curses beneath her teeth. I guess she didn’t expect a spirit watching over the orb either, but if the orb was so powerful, it seemed a logical outcome, didn't it? I'm starting to understand the burial chamber, the stone grave and the mummy... they wanted to keep this spirit locked somehow. And we released it again. Damn it, we so need a mage!

“What now?” I whisper to her, trying not to draw the attention of the spirit towards us. She is sniffing the air, as if she didn’t notice us… at least not completely.

“I feel the blood of my kin” she’s saying. “You want my orb? No!! You won’t get it, at least until it grants me my desire!!”

She starts spinning around the room like a cold wind, but I think she’s trying more to scare us than to harm us. Specially because she seems unable to see us properly. Maybe because we share her blood? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I want to know either. I continue looking at Tahl, who is walking carefully to reach my side. In this situation, even her company is better than nothing.

“What can we do? We can’t retrieve the orb this way… and if we go, maybe she’ll disappear with it!” I say concerned.

“I sent a message to Kyle and Ryan with Teri before entering here” she whispers. “They should be on their way here. Maybe they will be able to calm her”

“We should have come together” I glare at her. She nods, not a single feeling of guilt. She looks into her backpack and gets a piece of bread and cheese to offer to me.

“Yeah. Want a snack, while we wait?”

I take the food blinking. Somehow it seems the only sensible thing to do… have lunch, with a raging spirit spinning around us, while we wait for someone powerful enough to calm it. That’s my life, I sigh.

“You don’t plan to stay the night here, do you?” I ask Tahl. But before she can reply, we hear noises outside, and I get up as if I had fire in my undies. “Kyle!!! We’re here!!!”

I run to the tunnel, while Tahl continues watching the spirit, and I help Kyle and Ryan to get inside the tomb. Ryan shakes the dust on his pants before looking around.

“Wow! That’s a mausoleum! She may have been outcasted, but seems her power was respected enough to deserve something like this!”

“Or maybe they needed to make sure she wouldn’t get out” Tahl replies, confirming my suspects. “I bet this place is full of contention spells, so her spirit doesn’t haunt anyone else…”

As if she had felt we were talking about her, the spirit, which had calmed a bit while we ate our cheese, agitates again.

“Cousland? A Cousland here?”. The wind blows again and Ryan falls to the ground, taken by surprise. “Give me back my Dany, Cousland!!!”

The rage makes her visible again, and she’s standing almost over Ryan, fire out of her eyes. And for once Ryan seems a bit worried. He had not seen it coming.

“Dany? Dany is gone, Berrygold!” he tries to say, but suddenly the spirit turns again, sniffing the air.

“My wish!” she whispers again, and rushes towards Kyle, and spins around him, and I can hear her sniffing again like a dog of prey. “Dany! I can feel your blood!!”

Of course that makes my own blood boil. How does that harpy dare to claim my Kyle? First Lindy and now her?

“Get away from him you bitch!!” I shout, running to grab him away from her. Then she glides to face me, her face a mask of rage. But she won’t scare me, ah no!!

“YOU!!! YOU DARE TO TRY TO TAKE MY WISH FROM ME???”

I stand, trying not to close my eyes, to resist her energy which is draining my life from my veins. “He’s not your wish!!! He’s my husband!!” I argue. How the Fade does one fight a spirit? I try to hit her and make her go away from me but I only grab thin air.

“Berrygold! Leave her alone!! It is me you want!!”, shouts Kyle, challenging her, and I realize he has taken off that amulet which protected him from ghosts. I feel like slapping him because of that.

“No!” I protest. “She doesn’t want you!! She wants her dead lover!!!”. But I suddenly feel my body free from the spirits draining, and I realize the call has worked and she has turned to him.

“You will come with me, my love?” she says, and she sounds so sweet it is creepy. She moves a hand forward, trying to reach Kyle’s, and I’m about to shout when I see Kyle’s hand starts moving forward to meet hers too.

“If you leave her alone” he says. “Don’t hurt her, please”

“NO!!”, I shout, my soul tearing apart. “Please, Kyle! Don’t go with her!!”

He turns to look at me. “It is the only way. She’ll kill you if I don’t, and I don’t want to… to lose you….”

I feel an “again” in his words, probably reminding Lindy, and all the times he has thought he was going to lose me, and I know that, the same I won’t be able to survive without him, the idea of losing me will kill him too. But that’s not the way! It can’t be!!!

Ryan probably feels the same because he sends a kind of magical bolt against the spirit, and since it is magic, it seems to affect her, giving us at least some seconds to think. The spirit turns to Ryan and sends him away with a blow.

“Cousland! You won’t separate us again!!”

“You stupid, stubborn elf!!” Ryan smirks, wiping a bit of blood from his lips. “You’re the one who has been keeping yourselves separated during all these years!!”

She glares at Ryan, her attention away from Kyle again, and I bless him for that while I run to help my husband, who has collapsed in the ground after almost being drained too by the ghost.

“But I have my wish!!” she continues. “Dany is back!! I feel it in that body!!”

Ryan chuckles. “You silly. Your Dany is gone forever, but you won’t see it, blinded by your rage. Open your mind, or whatever you have, and you’ll see it is the truth!”

Berrygold seems to hesitate for a moment, and her stare comes from Ryan to us. I hug Kyle and glare back at her, making clear I will fight for my man. Ryan takes advantage again.

“If you take that man’s spirit with you, you’ll only create another broken heart behind you. Is that what you want? You want your offshoot to share your fate?”

What a gift of the gab Ryan has, I have to admit. Berrygold seems to calm a bit. That argument seems to move her. Then she looks around.

“Where’s my Dany?” and her call is so pitiful I almost forget she wanted my man and feel sorry for her. Almost.

“He’s been dead for seven hundred years…” I’m about to add “You bitch”, but it wouldn’t be the best thing to say right now, so I just say softly. “Maybe you should stop clinging to this world and reunite with him”

Ryan looks at me a bit concerned and shakes his head, but the spirit seems more convinced. “So my wish will be granted… if I let go?” she asks, as if she was realizing just now, and I have the feeling we all four are nodding at the same time.

And suddenly Berrygold’s spirit doesn’t seem powerful anymore, nor majestic, nor terrible. She’s just a small, scared Dalish elven girl who has been missing her loved one for seven ages.

"I just want to join my love" she says, becoming a bit smaller each time, fading and feeling less powerful. It is as if she was disolving in the air.

"Just let yourself go. He's waiting for you wherever the dead ones go" I try to cheer her up.

Berrygold seems to curl over herself, over the orb inside her chest. "My Dany, my beloved one... My wish... I'm coming", she mutters, and suddenly disappears in a sparkle of light. I blink, blinded for a moment… and I realize I have tears on my cheeks. I hug Kyle, and I feel his hand stroking my hair.

Tahl is more pragmatic, and I see with the corner of my eye how she has rushed to grab a crystal piece, whatever is left from that magical orb, before it falls to the ground, and puts it quickly inside the special bag she has brought to keep it.

I snuggle my head against Kyle’s neck, then I can feel the others moving around. I reluctantly move a bit away so we both can get up too, and see the mess this place has become. I sigh. I can’t hate her. We’re too alike, and it is a scary thought.

“Well, at least she reunited with her man”, I mumble. “I can relate to that”

"She actually did ages ago. This was only a raging part of her spirit which got stuck to the earth". Ryan says seriously. Then he chuckles a bit. “Except that Dany wasn’t a man”

I perk a brow. “What?”

He laughs. “Dany was a woman, Mari”

I blush suddenly, for no apparent reason, then I look at Kyle who looks as red as me. Images of how attracted I felt to Adrienne when I met her the first time cross my mind in the worst moment, but he helps me to forget them elbowing me.

“Well, it seems I can be gay too!” he jokes. And for a moment we all feel better, and start laughing. Even Tahl chuckles.

So good for a fair ending.