Chapter Text
The carriage stops.
That’s the first clue. The second is the silence from the driver. “What’s happened?” Dorian calls sharply.
No reply.
Vishante kaffas.
He never takes an entourage to the villa; it’s best to keep the secret of his and Bull’s relationship limited to as few people as possible, lest one of his many enemies decides to use Bull against him. So that’s one precaution. Otherwise he has been rather incautious. His movements will not have been difficult to track—choosing assignments in the south of Tevinter, more specifically the southwest, close to the border…could they have found him out?
Yes, they could have. Dorian rises as best he can in the small carriage and allows the Veil to rise in his senses. It’s marred a little, past the front wall of the carriage. Someone’s just cast a spell there. The driver’s probably dead. He curses again in his head. That man died because of him. Not now, not now, there isn’t any time for guilt. He is under attack.
And alone. That complicates things. There are two options. The first is to fight back, of course, and pray they sent too few to stand against him. Right. As if they would have gone through the trouble to attack him in the middle of an enormous bloody forest without sending enough men. So if he can’t fight them alone, the second option is to call for reinforcements. Bull and the Chargers are his nearest allies, without a doubt, but the villa is still a few hours away.
Leave a trail, then. Or at the very least a sign. One these bastards can’t cover up.
The carriage doors fly open. Dorian sends a gush of flame through the gap.
Screams of pain. A pleasant surprise, but not what he’s looking for. The fire rushes forward, and he sweeps an arm, guiding it off the road and into the trees. He goads it, spurs it—hotter, higher, more—commands it to rage and consume. The inferno catches, swirling joyously through the thin birches, turning their paper bark to ash.
There. He welcomes his foes to try and use their blood magic to cover up a forest fire. Not that he’s seen them use blood magic, they might be perfectly normal—
His muscles seize, twisting. Pain, pain—his legs buckle and bend, and he crashes to his knees, a band of tightness wrapping around his throat. He scrabbles at his neck to find nothing there, yet still he fights for air. Two mages before him, their hands out, blood dripping from their fingers. So very predictable. Dorian lashes out one more time with a vicious burst of flame, and they scramble back, their clothes alight, before they are relieved by yet more robed figures whose magic drags him down, pinning him to the floor of the carriage. He lies there, vaguely afraid his chest is about to collapse in on itself, although that won’t be the case. They don’t want to kill him.
“Put him out!” comes the barked order.
They want to capture him. If they kill him, a hundred possibilities all fly out the window. He’s going to be taken, and, much as it wounds his pride to do so, he stays where he is, not bothering to fight further. It isn’t worth whatever else they might do to him.
There’s an intense pressure behind his eyes, and spikes of pain drive out through his temples. He gasps with crushed lungs, his fingers curling, nails scratching the wooden floor of the carriage.
Then the world goes black.
——
When Dorian wakes he has a half-second of hazy confusion before the agony in his head splinters to life.
He hisses, curling up. Maker, that hurts. Perhaps they’ll give him a tincture for the pain, if he asks nicely enough.
A grunt. “The magister’s awake.”
Dorian squints up.
He’s lying on the floor, with his hands chained tight in front of him—much harder to cast like that, if he can’t pull on the Veil, gather it before him, twist and weave it to his liking. They’ve brought him to what appears to be a hunting cabin. “They” being the four mages gathered before him, in addition to the handful he assumes are out keeping watch. Dorian heaves himself upright and sits back against the wall. “Congratulations. You are now in possession of the most hated magister in the entire Imperium.”
They watch him, silent. He suspects probing for information may not be so easy. “I hope you’re not planning to ransom me, because if so, let me tell you, you will be sorely disappointed.”
“You’re not going to be ransomed.” The nearest mage, a bald man in robes of muted purple and red, sighs. “Not sure what’s in store for you, to be honest, but it’s certainly not a safe return. Still, if you behave, you’ll have a couple of days of peace, at least. So do us all a favor and don’t try anything stupid.”
A couple of days. Then he’ll be in the hands of their employer, no doubt one of the dozens of magisters whom he’s been frustrating at every possible step with whatever depraved legislations they’ve been trying to pass. Over the shoulder of the mage Dorian notes that the sun still shines bright through the window. Late afternoon. It’s unusual they’ve decided not to travel with so much light left, considering the proximity of a small but hostile force at the villa further south…
Oh. They’re going to take care of that force, or someone is. And then they’ll have a remote villa all to themselves where their employer can have some fun with Dorian, far beyond the reach of any of his allies in Minrathous. But it’s not the latter part he’s concerned about. It’s Bull. He always brings his core group with him just in case, and they sleep in the guest house while Bull and Dorian take full advantage of the villa itself. His core group, of course, comprising only a half-dozen bodies, and while they are indeed talented, blood mages are very difficult to counter.
It is for that reason he decides to attempt escape as soon as possible, just in case they haven’t been attacked yet, just in case there’s still time for him to warn them of the danger.
Dorian stays quiet for now, so as not to draw their ire. He sighs inwardly. This was supposed to be a much-needed getaway, a week-long romp to celebrate the last sweaty days of summer. Instead the man he loves is in imminent danger of being killed, and he himself is likely to be tortured to death or worse.
He expected to be a bit more panicked about the whole thing, but his time in the Inquisition did wonders for his nerves. Instead, he watches, and weighs, and plans.
——
As it turns out, his captors are really quite accommodating.
They leave him alone for the most part. They do feed him in the evening. He is not given a bedroll, but three years of tramping through forest and mountains and rocky highlands and even a desert or two has greatly increased his tolerance for uncomfortable sleeping situations, and he lies down without complaint. Not that he’s planning to sleep, of course. As the sun sinks down and cedes its hold to the night, the cicadas emerge, their raucous buzzing filling the trees.
Dorian lies on his side, his face turned toward the wall, and takes a deep breath.
They’re all crowded in here, a half-dozen sleeping mages, minus the one who was left outside to keep watch. There’ll be a change of shift in a few hours. But the Chargers might not have a few hours, so Dorian will have to do this during first watch, when his captors won’t be sleeping quite as soundly.
They’ve bound his wrists. That was a good start, and might have been enough; a single mage of any decent caliber could dismiss whatever fire or ice he managed to conjure up with his hands stuck together. But it appears they have not done their research. A (hopefully) fatal mistake. Normal casting ensures that the Veil bends to one’s will, shaping under the sweep of one’s arms. He cannot shape it as he is now. So instead he must ask someone else to do it for him.
Do they even know he is a necromancer? And if so, do they really know what a necromancer does? He guesses not. Tevinter is too proud, too quick to ridicule the magical traditions of other nations. He has heard the Mortalitasi described as obsolete, as power wasted. But he has studied their rituals, their traditions. He knows the arcane chants in Ancient Nevarran, a language now found only in ruins, or dusty academic libraries. Or the books of the dead.
Dorian’s lips move, his face tucked into his shoulder. He takes deep, harsh breaths. Speaking might wake the men sleeping closest to him; instead he hopes the rasp of air through his throat lends the words enough body to carry through the Veil to the spirits beyond. Past the wooden wall the cicadas buzz, an endless drone he uses to shroud his activities.
It takes time. The spirits must hear first, and then they must listen, and then they must agree. Perhaps that’s why Tevinter laughs at Mortalitasi magic, because the gratification is not immediate—far from it. But it does not require the use of his hands, and that is the important thing here.
The night descends. The Veil thins. A curious wisp drifts closer, hovering there, just out of reach. Dorian speaks to it, assembling the ancient phrases in his head. The sleepers around him might see it too as they wander the Fade in their dreams, but they will not hear Dorian. And they will not wake.
Dorian asks, wheedles, begs. He has not used this tongue for some time, but as he speaks he finds the words and phrases returning to him, and more, the cadences, the arch idioms and the conventions of courtesy. The spirit hovers, swaying gently in the Fade’s imperceptible ebb and flow. It is lulled by his voice. It enjoys the company.
Finally, it agrees.
Dorian shuts his eyes, the relief overwhelming him. Then he settles down to wait. It doesn’t take long. The Veil deforms a little, pressing inward. The friendly little wisp reaches through, grasping.
There. Dorian starts chanting again.
He finds his throat dry, his chest aching slightly from the deep breaths. But he must assist. Spirits are what one makes of them, after all, and he will make this one strong. Outside the cabin he hears a noise of surprise.
Terror.
He hisses the word, and the wisp obeys, clutching at the mage’s spirit. Dorian doesn’t usually use a proxy to strike that effect into his foes, but it works well here. The noise of surprise is followed by a choked grunt of fear. Too frightened to scream. Good. It should distract him as well, weaken his resolve against the wisp.
It’s time. Dorian rolls over and rises.
Now for more mundane tactics. He creeps around the sleeping figures, careful not to step on any toes. Outside he still feels the Veil twisted, and he raises his arms and claws clumsily, bunching it up to one side. The wisp surges forward, dragging itself through, still latched onto the unfortunate watchman’s spirit. Dorian finds his heart is pounding so hard it almost hurts. He reaches the door and grasps the handle, then stops.
It’s going to creak, isn’t it? It’s going to creak, and it’s going to wake everyone up and all this will have been for nothing. Or it might not, true. But it will. That’s just how these things go. So after he opens the door and it lets out the longest, most ear-splitting creak of any creak that has ever been made by any sort of door, gate, hatchway, or other hinged portal in all of Thedas, instantly waking every single mage in this room, he will need to be ready to run.
He turns the handle and pushes the door open.
It creaks. Not loudly. What a pleasant surprise. But it still creaks. Dorian glances over his shoulder. One of them is stirring.
He runs.
The Maker grants him about five seconds of silence before the shout goes up. By then he is in the trees. The cicadas buzz around him, masking the rustle of his boots in the leaves. Will he make it? The moon is bright, gleaming down through the birches, their shadows slipping over him as he sprints forward, like an endless parade of velvet curtains he brushes out of his way.
Shouting. Moving. They’re pursuing him. Of course they are. He can’t imagine what kind of punishment they’ll receive if they fail to recapture him. It’s all up to luck now, luck and how fast he can move his legs. He runs for his life, and for Bull’s.
Something catches his heel, a grasping hand. Dorian staggers but does not fall. They can see him. Venhedis. He pushes himself onward. Harder to bend the Veil from further away, and even harder to do so with any precision. Distance is his greatest ally here. The white birches slip by on either side, a parade of thin ghosts that attend his passage. If only he could cast, if only. He’d set this whole bloody forest on fire, and then they’d never catch him.
A missile of force clips his leg. He spins and falls to a knee, then clambers to his feet again and lurches onward. They cannot recapture him. They must not. Bull is in danger. Dorian runs. A gash appears in the trunk of a tree to his left, sliced paper bark fluttering to the ground. Run. Run.
His hip catches on a snag in the air. He staggers, hops, struggling to keep his balance. Then an invisible wave crashes over his back, and he topples forward, landing hard on one shoulder. No. He must escape. He must—
Searing pain shoots through him as his limbs seize and tighten so hard he’s afraid his joints will snap. He yells, then grits his teeth, choking back the noises of agony. Best to save those for later. He caught them off-guard and nearly escaped. He set a wisp on one of their own. And now they have him again.
This will be violent.
One of them kneels before him. The bald man in red and purple. “A wisp, eh? Nice trick. But a bad idea. I told you you’d be all right if you behaved. And then you had to go and do this.”
The intense pressure behind his eyes again, the spikes of pain through his temples. Dorian falls into the well of blackness eagerly, keen to escape any more pain.