My Warden (COMPLETED)

Rain

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Lana knew the spirit couldn't keep away long. She'd been granted only a day and a half reprieve which was spent either eating what spider meat and questionable but edible squash she found, and sleeping. The green mists haunted her dreams, and an unnatural chill froze her fingers and toes when she awoke. In the distance, beyond whatever barrier her dreams had her trapped inside was a statue. Grey stone, taller than a person, with something like a hand stretched out towards her. She tried to sketch the silhouette of it before the dream faded but all Lana could see in her doodling was a misshapen blob. Wynne was the one she needed to speak with, but that wasn't who warped reality to pop into place.

A miniaturized fountain burbled beside Lana's desk - the exact desk she abandoned in the Vigil. She found some of her old letters crammed in the back of the drawer including one from Alistair and another she never got around to sending. Rather than reminisce about what could have been, Lana flipped both pages over and took to sketching out her wild theories. Exhaustion dogged her every quill scratch, the ink made from boiled spider innards -- runny but useable. Despite the obstacles, she wasn't going to turn tail and roll over now. Fighting was all she had left.

"Good morning, dear," the spirit spoke in its androgynous voice. Genderless but far sweeter than Shale's, the spirit spoke with a creamy voice as light and airy as strawberries on a summer afternoon. "I see you're keeping busy attending to something. Did you locate anything of interest in the interim?"

"No," Lana huffed, putting down the last few words she'd spoken to Wynne. The curiosity spirit spoke in roundabout riddles, but there had to be an answer. For now, Lana needed to find the question. "Why? Was there something for me to find?"

"Of course not, I only thought to inquire about your day. Shall we begin again?"

Waving her hand over the paper to try and dry the spider ink quicker, Lana squared her shoulders. Her chair leaned to the side, the back leg shorter than the others. It was the same one she used for ten years in her classes in the tower. "First, I think it's time you answer a few questions for me."

The spirit's ethereal presence pulsed as a white light in the center strobed for a moment. Then its not mouth smiled slyly, "I'd never keep anything from you, dearest."

"Right. You said that in exchange for my memories you could help me create a way out of here."

"I am helping you," it interrupted, hovering closer towards her. "The best way I know how. You are safe with me."

That didn't answer her question. Without watching, Lana made a notch against the old letter - the one where he first asked her to move to Denerim and become an arcane adviser. "The only changes I've seen so far have been cosmetic, the fade itself is becoming familiar to me, taking pieces of my past to dangle in front, but there is nothing to help me escape."

"Do you not enjoy returning to what you once loved, here around you?" The spirit hovered past the tiny fountain towards a bookshelf crammed not with books but small tokens, old weapons, trinkets excavated from her adventuring life and put on display without any care for their meaning or history.

"What I'd love is a way out of the Fade," Lana cut back with as she made another mark.

"And you shall have it, of course, sweetheart. But in order to accomplish it, we need to work together. I need your help before I can, in turn, help you."

Its fingers of light inched towards her, already pawing through her guarded memories, but Lana snapped the gate closed. Even exhausted, irritated, and suffering from intestines exhausted of processing spider legs she knew how to hold back her mind. Alistair was terrible at leading, but he'd proved an agile teacher when it came to the tricks templars used against blood mages. She didn't have access to them all, but shoring up her mind from any spirit influence came almost like breathing now.