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“There is no light save my glory! No refuge save my shadow!” – Elgar’nan.
The sun follows your back. It’s gaze burning into you. No escape. It touches everything, sees everything. You have no choice but to bask in its touch.
They always stare more in the daylight, don’t they? In the harsh light of day everything is on display. Fear comes to life in the light.
In the dark, though, scars and twisted skin and clouded eyes are hidden. Shrouded in shadow. A cloak to hide the features that mark you as different, when you need to shy away from prying eyes. When it is not safe to be who and what you are.
You do not cower from them, no. You could fight and win if you must, but not every battle must be fought, should be fought. You learned that long ago and bear the marks to prove it.
So, you do your best to blend in with the crowd. Stick to the shadows. Avoid the glare of the sun.
The others are like you, the companions you travel with. They all have something to hide. Together you seek secrets. Grey Warden secrets. Secrets of the Blight.
It is the sickness that runs through your veins, thrums under your skin. The pain behind your eyes, humming, gnawing, clawing, pulling, a great maw open and ready to swallow you whole. A cloud of insects swarming. Just there, below the surface of your flesh, below the surface of your mind. A constant buzzing in the midday sun.
At night you seek relief and instead find a slow, rumbling knowing, lined with teeth. Always there, waiting for you to fall. Calling you. Whispering in the dark.
Come. Closer.
Time moves differently when you are Blighted. Mortal lives move quickly, but this sickness moves even faster inside, eating up time. Swallowing future. Always gnawing, gnawing, clawing, spreading. Always knowing. Always watching, like the sun.
When the sun begins to set, the land bleeds. Ghila sighs. Muscles weighed down like bags of sand. Each step a conscious effort. There is still some way to go before they can rest.
A flash of teeth and rotting flesh. A crescendo of insects buzzing. It grows louder. Closer. Closer.
Ghila looks to Alistair. He nods. Can sense it too, though not quite as keenly as her. Darkspawn in the tunnels deep beneath the ground. Writhing, clawing. So many layers of dirt between them, it will be hours, maybe even days, before they are close enough to be of concern.
Ghila chews on her tongue and massages her temples. Each day the daylight stings a little more. Each night the hum of the Blight beneath the ground grows louder. It itches behind her eyes. Pulling at her mind, like a string wrapped tight around a child’s wobbling tooth.
They reach the ruins. Marked on the map with an unknown rune. Morrigan predicted it would be a temple built by elves. Due to its location close to the Imperial Highway, Alistair expected a forgotten Grey Warden outpost. It looks to have been both at some point. What once belonged to the people, repurposed for another’s war. A tale almost as old as time.
Twisted vines uproot ancient stone. Two Grey Warden shields, one still mounted, the other fallen. It certainly hasn’t been in use during the fifth Blight. So far, the ruin appears to be blessedly free of bandits or bears, to Zevran’s disappointment, Leliana’s particular relief, and Sten’s abject indifference.
Sturdy sniffs and wags his tail, excitedly searching, running from room to room. If they can still be called rooms. The roof of the ruin has long caved in. What’s left lets in the red of the setting sun. At least its crumbling walls will give some protection from the elements. Some cover from prying eyes.
And an opportunity for those who are curious, to study its history and explore its depths.
“This will do,” Ghila tells them. “We make camp here for the night.”
Morrigan’s yellow eyes shine bright with intrigue, as they often do. Ghila cannot help but follow her. Around a collapsed corner. Down a few crumbling steps.
An open maw, rows of teeth ready to swallow you whole. Bright eyes watching, always watching. Waiting for you to fall.
Ghila stumbles into darkness. Into the utter lack of setting sun or starlight. Night so dark Ghila cannot tell up from down, nor whether it is cloud smothering the stars or the canopy of the ruins that blots out and blackens the night. Even the sliver of the early rising moon is swallowed by it.
Unthinking, Ghila reaches for Morrigan to balance herself. Her skin is cool, it burns like lightning in the place where they touch. Ghila gasps and withdraws.
Morrigan’s breath is heavy, panting. In-out, in-out. The sounds are stronger for the lack of light. The air is different here too. Fresher, wetter.
“Ghila?! Where are you?!” Alistair calls from above.
Ghila’s eyes adjust to the dark.
“Down here!” She calls up. The sound echoes, then is swallowed by the stone.
Morrigan has become the wolf, so she too can see in the dark. They look around. Carved pillars. An open sarcophagus. Discarded shemlen armour and weapons scattered amongst ancient elven altars long-since picked free of treasure. This was a temple once. Now desecrated. Sacred no more.
“Ah found you.” Alistair carries a torch. Sensible.
“Do you…er, want to set up camp down here? It’s a bit creepy.”
Ghila bites a flap of skin on her lip. “No, not here. I want to be able to see the stars.”
They work together to set up their tents and bedrolls. Arrange who will take first watch. Sten sits to tend to his blade. Zevran and Alistair are debating the questionable recruitment tactics of Grey Wardens and Antivan Crows. Leliana is preparing the rabbit she caught earlier. Morrigan is making her way from room to room, no doubt looking for curiosities to write about in her journal.
Ghila meanwhile sways and looks up at the stars. The first moon’s sister is rising now. Ghila’s stomach rumbles. Beneath her the Blighted land whispers. Her Blighted blood whispers back.
Zevran lights a fire. It sparks to life with a splutter and a hiss.
“Dear Warden, why don’t you come and sit?” Zevran’s words wake Ghila from her stupor.
The flame brings to life vines that twist around the ancient stone. Woven boughs sway in fire flicker, become writhing snakes. Ghila’s vision sways and swims.
Something in the shadow glistens.
Ghila walks toward it. The chatter of the camp fades into the background. The insect hum inside her chest rises.
There’s something leant up against it. To cover it. Ghila grunts and shifts the wooden panel, rusty nails fall free with a clatter.
The pale light of the sister moons sparkles in the mirror.
Behind Ghila, Morrigan gasps. “An eluvian.”
Shards of glass. Rust and bone. The taste of places far from home.
The eluvian twinkles, vines wrap around the sharp shards of the mirror-glass, worn soft by the weather. It is a door to nowhere. Dead.
That pulling feeling. Ghila reaches out, fingertip pricking on a point of glass. Even broken it hums. Not quite like the Blight. Not like the hoard, not like insects. Like old magic that has faded into the background. An aftertaste, dream that disappears upon waking.
She leaves the broken mirror to sit by the fire to eat. The food softens the agitated humming of the Blight. Just a little. Just enough to realise the exhaustion, bone deep. Pitch running down her throat instead of air.
When it is time to try to sleep, Ghila foregoes her tent. She lays on her back and counts the stars. A wet nose nuzzles her hand. Expecting Sturdy, instead it is the wolf. Intrigue in yellow eyes. Curiosity, and a strange kind of knowing that strikes a bolt of lightning in Ghila’s chest.
Morrigan lays at her side. Ghila reaches out, clutches a handful of fur. Wonders at the warmth of it compared to the coolness of Morrigan’s skin. The wolf body rises and falls. As gentle and fierce as the tide.
Then she is gone.
In dreams, oft she is a raven.
A fine handsome beak. Little beads for eyes. Long talons and a thick plume of midnight black and blue. Sharp and elegant. Aloof and in control. A raven is knowing, cunning. A raven is a bird that sings no sweet song.
The Fade has other plans tonight.
A bustling tavern, filled to the brim with the clatter of drunkards and louts. Above them swings a golden birdcage. Contained within a tiny songbird, a bluebird. On display for men to visit and gawk at.
She’s been caged so long she cannot remember the sky, can’t recall any other purpose. She sings her fear. She sings because she was born to. She was always meant for this. Raised beautiful and sleek. Trained to preen and pout and sing sweetly not because it is what she wants, but because it is what others will of her.
But the little songbird did not want to sing any longer. She wanted to fly and think and be, she wanted to be free.
Being caged was crueller after she knew what it was she wanted.
Laying side by side. Fingers entwined. Sharp and rough and soft. A deep knowing that starts low in her belly. She does not want to sing. She knows. She wants. She wants her.
The songbird caged high above the tavern grows bigger, brighter, bolder. Her beak and talons become sharp, and her eyes keen. The cage falls in pieces and above the angered shouts of the men below, the raven soars up and up into the night sky. She laughs and laughs and laughs all the way to the eldest moon.
When she gets there, she finds it is not a moon but a mirror. The raven dives into its surface.
Morrigan steps through the eluvian into a grey wasteland. A sort of crossroads perhaps, a meeting point between worlds. She has heard tales of such a place.
Ahead of her, another mirror lies. Inactive. It rests at an angle. The surface is dull but clear enough. Beneath its surface is a figure. Matted wet strands of hair fall from its emaciated form. Clawed hands scramble at the glass surface, seek purchase from within. As though the wretched creature is stuck inside and trying to get out.
Another step forward, she takes another look. The creature moves suddenly, and Morrigan jolts back, fear prickling at her fingertips.
No. It cannot be.
The night air grows chill, and it takes all Ghila’s strength to drag her tired body into the tent. Sleep escapes her still. Its absence leaves behind bone deep fatigue.
Incessant gnawing, gnawing, gnawing, dragging. Until all Ghila can feel, all she is, is that feeling. The world is clouded, hazy. But its bright behind her eyes. Like the sun had somehow followed her into the darkness.
And in her chest, that insect hum.
Ghila reaches outside and feels the earth. Stubborn strands of brittle dried grass. Runs it through her fingers, imagines for a moment the wolf had not left her side.
Rest does not come easily to a Grey Warden. Alistair is no different, and his dreams are often plagued by terrifying darkspawn hoards and archdemons. Occasionally, they are plagued by ill-timed public nudity.
Tonight, Alistair dreams of two moons. Two milky white eyes looking down from the night sky. They blink and he tucks his head under his blanket. Like he used to as a scared little boy.
'They can’t see me. They can’t see me,' he tells himself.
'Alistair!' Someone calls his name. So quiet he’s unsure if he heard it. Familiar voice he can’t quite place.
He peeks out from under the cover. Past the entrance of his tent, the other side of the courtyard, is a mirror. The broken mirror.
A shadow rushes past its surface.
Are you a man or a boy!? A voice from his past, rough like grit in his eyes. Trying not to cry.
Alistair finds his sword and barefoot crosses the courtyard. All his companions are gone. Strange, someone should be keeping watch.
“Watch me.” A quiet voice whispers.
“Ghila?” Alistair calls out. The moons above him blink. He reaches the mirror.
Her claws come first, through the surface of the mirror. Liquid surface, broken shards of glass floating. Long fingers that are almost bone. Twisted, broken like gnarled twigs.
Then those eyes like twin moons, milky in a storm-dark sky. Pale and reflective in the low light. They blink. Set deep within a ghoulish face. Long teeth, bruised flesh and sticky strands of hair. Mottled skin marked with Blight-dark veins, obscuring vallaslin. Torn cloth hangs off limbs like rotting flesh off bone.
Instinct tells Alistair to bring his sword down on the darkspawn emerging from the mirror. But this is no darkspawn. This is Ghila, totally corrupted by Blight, and he can sense both in her at once. He stands there frozen.
“Ir abelas,” Ghila says as she takes a fistful of his tunic in her clawed hand and drags him in to the mirror with her.
He falls and falls and falls.
When they land, they are tangled up in each other. Alistair squirms and rolls away from Ghila’s ghoulish form. He feels for his sword, but it must have been left on the other side. All around them is grey nothingness. Only a single mirror stands.
Ghila screams and before he can talk to her, find out what happened, what happened to her, ask where they are, or how any of this is possible, she lunges at him.
He pushes her, finds her weighing almost nothing. Claws scratch his arms, she tries to bite. She screeches in fury, scratches, scratches. He lifts her up and pushes her against the mirror. Through its surface, to the other side.
The surface freezes over and goes dull. She is trapped there. Ghila hisses and bangs at the glass from the inside.
When the sun rises, she will burn away.
Behind Alistair, the sun peaks over the horizon.
“I'm sorry. I could not save you," he whispers and turns and runs away.
You lie awake and think of the sickness, how it will spread. What you are. What you will become.
Nothing but dust on the wind.
You hear their idle chatter, listen to them cry out in the night. You want to go to them, but you won’t. You want to go to her, but you won’t.
The darkness grasps you from within and pulls you.
Pulls you.
Down
Down
Down.
Ghila dreams of mirrors.
Of children hiding between aravals, playing in the leaves. Telling stories by the fire as they look up at pinprick stars. Tamlen, a boy, then grown. Then lost.
That was when the gnawing began. When the Blight took hold. Now the memory of him is twisted, Blighted. Haunts her dreams. Ir abelas. I could not save you.
Ghila dreams of Merrill. Merrill singing. Her voice echoing through the mirror. Merrill praying to the creators, whispering, whispering. Lethallin. The scent of blood and Blight. When Ghila wakes she’s left with the taste of it on her tongue.
The sound ringing in her head, voices whispering. The Blight a tether through the Fade.
Sometimes Ghila whispers back.
Elgar'nan, guide me.
She’s in the Fade. All around is a vast expanse of nothingness. Above a night so black there’s not a single star. And yet she can see as clear as day.
A raven caws. The air is still.
“Ah, how curious to find you here,” the raven says.
Ghila extends her arm. The raven lands softly. Talons digging into flesh, the weight uncomfortable and a comfort all at once. She reaches out tentatively and strokes the glossy feathers. The bird closes its eyes and leans into her touch.
Then the raven is in flight and Ghila feels weightless. Watches the bird come to perch atop the frame of a mirror. A broken, Blighted mirror. Ghila follows.
Broken shards. A thousand snarling screams inside your head. Help me, don’t leave me! Lethallin!
The figure trapped within the mirror thrashes. Bangs at the glass. Ghila flinches. It's not Tamlen this time.
Morrigan shifts into her human form.
“If you could undo this, take the Blight out of you, would you?”
Ghila looks down at her other self. Apparition twisted by the Fade. Half ghoul, half elf.
Considers this question, not for the first time. But never with such clarity. “The Blight is twisted from other people’s cruelty; this sickness is caused by other people’s cruelty.”
There’s an anger behind her words. The Blight that darkens her veins, darkspawn, wanton destruction and oppression of her people, daily cruelties. All connected. That anger, that corruption, flows through her veins.
“It is woven, knitted into the fabric of everything. The world is made of this now. I am made of this now. It cannot be undone. There is no point wishing for the impossible.”
Morrigan laughs, empty as the void. “So, the world is made of cruelty, how very bleak.”
“Not everything is tainted.” Ghila sighs. Thinks of running her hand through the wolf’s wiry fur. A hand curled around her own. Lips as soft as flower petals.
“But it is a thread running through the world. Begin to pull on the end, and well, this is where it leads us.” She nods down to the ghoul in the mirror.
Morrigan whispers, voice low and almost choked, “And what of you?”
“You know the answer to that.”
It is inevitable. But she will keep searching regardless.
“What if I do not wish to know it?” Morrigan asks.
“Then that is for your benefit, not mine.” She will fight until the bitter end.
The dark sky brightens. Blood red then streaked with purple. Then blue. The sun rises and the ghoul is screaming and crying out, hissing. Scratching at the inside of the glass. Skin bubbles and bursts where the light touches.
Morrigan falls to her knees sobbing. Clutching at Ghila. "No, please! Not yet!" Those curious eyes like suns looking up at her, hands grasping. Waiting for her to do something. Something.
The figure in the mirror burns away in the sun. Turns to dust.
Ghila feels nothing. But then there’s a tugging, pulling at her legs. The ground is sinking. She’s being pulled under. Drowning in black tar. Panic.
Drip
Drip
Tap
Tap
Tap!
“Ghila! Wake up!”
Clawing and gasping for air, Ghila tries to reach the surface. Nails grasp at throat. Morning sun heats the surface of the tent. Now unbearable, nauseating. She goes still when she takes in the kohl-smudged yellow eyes that look down at her. Concern with a hint of condescension.
Morrigan passes a water skin. Ghila sits up and sips and hacks and coughs. Give her thanks. Slinks outside, over to the shadow and sits with her back against the crumbling wall.
Alistair comes to sit beside her.
“Bad dream.” Ghila says. “You?”
He makes a choked sound. “Nope,” he lies, unconvincingly.
Morrigan is contemplating the mirror again. Ghila shivers and wraps her ragged blanket tight around her body, all angles and bones.
“Your eyes brighten when you see her,” Alistair remarks.
Ghila hides her face, under the guise of shielding her eyes from the sun. She does feel brighter when she sees Morrigan, Ghila considers. Not like the sun, no, more like the brightness of a lightning storm.
He nudges her with his shoulder. Ghila’s face cracks into a grin that’s all tooth gaps and lip scabs, as soft as split dry wood.
She thinks of skin hanging from bone. Dark veins spreading with every rattled breath. How fast time moves when Blighted. She can hear it creaking, inching its way. Eating through every fibre, every strand of hair and strip of faded brittle skin.
You have seen it now, a glimpse of what you will become.
So have they.
“I wonder what we’ll do, after all of this?” Alistair sing songs. He flicks a bit of his breakfast to a waiting crow who pecks and pecks at the ground. “Open a pastry shop, make cheeses? I hear Morrigan plans to become a goat herder.”
Morrigan scoffs. “Oh please, if any of us is to spend their days tending to livestock it will be the boy who grew up in a barn.”
The barb hits its mark and Alistair’s face falls. Ghila shakes her head.
Morrigan tuts. “I did not sleep…peacefully.”
The camp is cleared. Ghila lifts the wooden board that she’d torn from the shattered eluvian and brings it to cover the mirror. Not before she catches a glimpse of milk-white eyes staring back at her. Broken skin crossed with blackened veins, a twisted, lipless grimace.
She flinches.
From beyond the mirror, the ghoul screeches. So distant, the sound is carried only on the Blight.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Ghila covers her hands over her ears.
Thump. Thump.
It bangs at the glass. Thump.
Ghila screams. With all her might Ghila grasps the mirror and pulls it to the ground. The vision is gone. Shards of dead glass reflecting the fury of the midday sun.
It’s the hoard that pulses under her skin, that drowns out all sound. That fills her chest where her heart used to be. Thump, thump - Ghila’s heartbeat becomes one with the marching rhythm of the oncoming hoard. Thump, thump - her heartbeat is not her own. Clawed hands grasping. Rotting rows of teeth. Pulling hair from skin then flesh from bone.
Morrigan and Alistair are running over. Sturdy bounds over. The others hesitate at a distance, wary, hands ready to reach for their weapons. Leliana hops onto a broken wall to scout the landscape that surrounds them.
Alistair draws his sword and calls to the others. “It’s just a hunch, but you might want to get ready for darkspawn!”
The sun is furious now and high in the sky, the air blurs and bleeds in the heat. Insects hum, all around, inside Ghila’s head. The ground rumbles.
It opens its mouth and bites.