Snippet #1411843

Bruce was shivering. His mouth was moving but no words were coming out. He only nodded to Blodwyn’s chant, however he didn’t say what she asked of him, instead he said, “Do not trust the elves, one clan or the other, they are all the same. Show no mercy and expect none in return.”
Bruce’s eyes were in the distance, his entire body was shivering, not of cold, but terror, pure terror. “He said that I would be immune to their strength…He said I had to make my anger my weapon. My faith my shield…But the pain…Why?...Why did they have to torture me before they could see my true faith?”

Bruce was loosing his sense of reality. Before his eyes the environment was swirling, twisting and turning, changing into previous places that he had been to. He looked at Blodwyn and then grabbed her by her shoulders, holding her tight, “Why did you do this to me? Why Nicholas? Why?...Wasn’t it enough that the Dalish took everything from me, but now you want me to strip myself of the dignity that I have left…Why?”

Hallucination that was what Bruce was seeing now. He was reliving moments in his life when he had been under extreme pressure, hearing the voices of the ghosts of his past. His face bore the same anger and disgust that he had shown before his previous Templar teacher, however it was softening due to whatever sentences he was being told in his mind.
“I know…I know,” Bruce said with an almost pathetic voice, “I lost everything back then…Everything. Please don’t take away my belief that there is good within people…Not all humans are like the Dalish. I-” Bruce didn’t finish his sentence before the voice in his head had interrupted. “That is not true…I looked into the eyes of that woman when she told me she had done Blood Magic…She was afraid of what she was becoming, but she wanted to be freed from it. She is innocent, there’s no need to kill her, not like…this. She isn’t an animal, even you can see that, don’t deny that!...What do you mean, I’ll never become a true Templar if I don’t do this? Templars aren’t murder machines, they-”

Bruce stopped and walked around. He kept touching the burned skin on the back of his head and shook his head violently while he whispered, “There must be another way to do this…We can’t…We aren’t animals…We aren’t assassins!” Bruce almost yelled and turned to look at Blodwyn, but his facial expression didn’t last long before it turned into a face of terror. Whatever the voice was saying, or whatever he was seeing, it was enough to horrify Bruce.
“Very well…Give me the knife.” Bruce said and exerted his hand to receive the unseen knife, followed by Bruce walking for a bit, before he stopped in front of a bush, grabbed it and seemed to stab it rather violently with the invisible knife.
“There shall be no mercy for the soul-less…There shall-” Bruce’s voice cracked, and for a moment there, small tears ran down his cheek before he stopped and opened his eyes. He looked with a hardened look at the bush-“There shall be no mercy or respite for such monsters. Make show you the mercy which we didn’t see in life.”

Returning to Blodwyn (or as Bruce saw her, Nicholas) he nodded and said, “It is done.” Bruce blinked for a moment before he regained conscious, and dropped to his knees, “Where am…I? What happened?”
Bruce continued to shiver before he managed to say, “I need Lyrium…Lyrium.”