Alistair sat with shock and worry at hearing of her life as a Grey Warden and how she was tortured by another darkspawn magister. He slowly understood her connection and relationship with his father.

  "If I knew that leaving you in Maric's care would see you one day join the Order, I would never have done it." She fretted at the end of her retelling.

  Alistair sighed, feeling he could finally let it all go. Fiona had suffered long enough, just as he did. He chuckled at the irony that they were both tragic reflections of each other. He rose and went to kneel before her and held her hands.

  "It's okay. It's all in the past. What matters now is how we decide to live in the present." Hearing his voice say those words made him cringe: he felt like some Chantry chancellor spewing out a sermon about life. "Okay, sorry, that was really cheesy. Let's just rewind and go back to the melodramatics and crying."

  Fiona looked confused for the moment, then burst with laughter. "I'm glad to see you didn't change deep down."

  "I have Anri, Hawke and Fenris to thank for that. They saved my soul."

  "Really?" She gasped. "Then I owe them. Especially Anri who has done so much for me, and I've done very little to repay him."

  Alistair smiled warmly that made Fiona relaxed. "Oh, come here you." He pulled her into a hug. "It's okay if you're a pouncy Orlesian mage. I mean I know mages that are alright except for Morrigan. Let's leave her as the bad egg example."

  Fiona sunk into his hug, feeling the weight of her burdens lifted from her for the first time in her life.

  "You are so much like your father," she chuckled as she reluctantly pulled out.

  "What was he like?"

  Fiona began to tell happier stories of her time with Maric as she made them both tea.

  A short while later they felt someone else in the room. Alistair squealed with fright when he saw Leliana standing near the door. She was dressed in dark leather rogue armor with her hood up and a long bow with a full quiver on her back.

  "I see your sneaky entrances haven't changed." Alistair patted the area of his heart. "I forget how creepy you can be."

  Leliana chuckled. "It's good to see you both. I take it you were finally able to reconcil."

  Fiona nodded. "Yes, thank you."

  "What do you mean finally?" Alistair frowned.

  "Oh, Anri was hoping that by not telling you who Fiona was, you'd be more inclined to show up."

  "Did he now... Wait, why do I get the feeling you already knew way earlier?"

  "Come on, mother's boy, I'm a spymaster."

  Alistair nodded. "Fair enough. So... you didn't just come here because I failed to map the static rifts earlier?"

  "I did it when I arrived. I saw the static charges and noted them down." Her eyes became animated when she pulled out a pouch that reeked like the Maker's arse, which hadn't been wiped for days.

  "Oh, Andraste's knickers, what did I do to deserve this stench?!" Alistair gagged. "Just so you know, I paid all my debts back to the Chantry years ago."

  Leliana sniffed the pouch and screwed up her face. She had become so accustomed to nug manure as to have grown used to the stench. "Ah sorry, I'll just clean these up." She left the room, a short while later returned with two dried pendants in her hand.

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  Alistair reluctantly grabbed the one she offered to him and sniffed it to make sure it smelled safe. His expression sobered, holding the small circular obsidian charm before him.

  It was polished and felt slick, making his fingertips tingle. On one surface was an image of a raven drawn with vague gray lines so they almost disappeared into the stone.

  "Marvelous. I've never held anything in my life." Fiona gasped with awe as she carefully felt the stone's surface. "I sense fadetouched energies."

  "Is it magic?" Alistair gulped.

  Fiona shook her head. "It won't harm you. The magic set in the stone is no different from the runes set in blades like yours."

  He nodded and prompted Leliana for information.

  "Dagna calls it a Ravensky. I think it's best if I show you how to use it."

  She had them both press their thumb on the blank side and focus on an image most specific to them, one they could easily recall without loss of clarity or thought interruption. It had to be an image meaningful to them. Like a loved one's face or favorite thing.

  For Fiona it was easy. Alistair as a baby was her image. When she saw the image so vividly with a connected memory resonating within her being, she felt her thumb tingle and the stone momentarily glow.

  Alistair did the same.

  They both then followed Leliana's instructions of making the pendant active via the image they had just set to the stone followed by the stone's raven image and the face of the person they wanted to communicate with.

  "Alistair." Leliana's voice felt like she was speaking directly into his ear.

  "Wait. Are we speaking via our thoughts?" Alistair gasped as he felt around his unopened mouth. He couldn't describe it, but it certainly didn't feel like her voice was in his head, and he could hear his surroundings clearly and not confuse the two.

  "It feels like our spiritual voice is being delivered via fade channels." Fiona interjected. "Absolutely fascinating. Wait, I'm feeling a tingle in my forehead with a faint image of Anri's face."

  She thought of bringing his image clearer with a raven image. The imagined raven swooped across his face-image to make it stable before disappearing.

  "Fiona." Anri's spirit voice was gentle to her ears.

  "Anri, thank you."

  Alistair began tapping his forehead. Leliana explained what he needed to do.

  "I see Leliana's shown you how to use the Ravensky. Dagna's invention of absolute dwarven genius. It's not magical itself, Alistair, but it does rely on the fade to pass our, I guess, communication."

  Alistair closed his eyes, shaking his head and banging an ear. This spirit voice talking, whatever, was too mind-blowing for him to try to fathom. "I don't get how any of this works and I feel I'm just going to wake up on the floor and realize this was all a dream."

  "You want to hear my voice in your dreams? I'm flattered but I'm sure you don't want to be on the bad side of our flamboyant architect." Anri joked.

  "Ha, there's no chance of that. And anyway, where are you?" Alistair scratched his head.

  "I'm headed for Wycome. Hopefully I'll be there in a day."

  "Wycome!"

  Fiona nodded with understanding. "I see, this is like an eluvian, but rather than pass through mirrors we're just allowing our spirit voices to flow on dedicated fade channels. Now I understand the image setting, which acts like a transmission foci so we can turn the channel on and off."

  "Well, I'm glad you understand it because it goes over my head, or, I guess, through it like air between... No nevermind." Anri returned to the matter of business.

  He advised that he had Leliana and the other Shadow Web of Truth distribute Dagna's invention so they could all communicate in real-time no matter where they were.

  The pendants were easy to use without magic once the foci image was applied to the stone. But they needed to keep it on their necks and hidden from view at all times. The most ingenious aspect of it all was zero papertrail to be discovered or intercepted. Anri explained to Fiona that Dagna used her stone sense to secure the channels. This would avoid alerting unwanted attention.

  "This thing isn't going to attract a demon here?!" Alistair gasped.

  "We're using it now. Do you see any demons knocking on your door?"

  "Fair point. Okay, I guess I can trust it's safe for use."

  Alistair laughed when he realized he could feed jokes into Leliana's ear to annoy her. She wasn't particularly impressed with his angry nugs being slingshot to knock of magister heads joke.

  "Kid," she said out loud.

  "Fiona, I was hoping you could be part of our network in stoping Solas from destroying our world." Anri's spirit voice drew them back to the business talk.

  "You saved my son and kept our promise. How can I not refuse?"

  Anri provide instructions for Alistair and Fiona to join him at Wycome within the month. Their spirit talk conversations ended.