Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, etc, or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T+
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Origins DL content, Dragon Age II, and Dragon Age: Inquisition as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.
A/N: This story takes place during of the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition, from the background of a Loghain who is not…at all…human. He is…in fact…not any race found in the Thedas we know. I made one up. Because I'm goofy that way, and I wanted him to be as young as possible and I liked that you could be qunari in the new game but that wasn't…horny…enough for me. He was sentenced to the Joining, but it was proved once and for all that his people are completely immune to the Blight (or rather, that's what they thought, but actually they're just highly resistant and it grows within them very slowly, like it does in dragons). Because the Warden (Elilia Cousland - see my other fics, "The Return" and "In a Nearly Perfect World") wasn't out to get him and because Anora remains Queen (yes, Anora is not human either, or at least, only half), he was absolved of charges after helping Elilia resolve the Blight and remains Teyrn of Gwaren, but because an "altered" Alistair is King, he's not in great favor in the kingdom and has barely exchanged a word with either monarch in the ten years that have passed. You can figure out the remainder of the basic backstory for yourself if you've read The Return, though this takes place in the same time period of course. This story, like In a Nearly Perfect World, is from the premise of altering one fact and finding out how that changes everything - in this case, race. I set it during Inquisition instead of anywhere else because it was the only way my internet-less self could make Loghain alive in the new game. Mragh. I wasn't initially going to change anything, but I couldn't come up with an exciting-enough idea. I hope this one works, but I'm not entirely sure just yet. This first chapter follows the game kind of closely, but I don't plan on doing that the whole way through, just enough to keep it grounded. If you know anything about me, you already know what kind of creature this new and improved Loghain is going to be.
Chapter One
"What is it?" one of the guardsmen asked in a low voice. He had a distinct Orlesian accent.
"He's the Teyrn of Gwaren," another guardsman said, in a distinctly Fereldan voice.
"But what is it? It's not a qunari. It's…bigger. And it has wings and a tail. I had heard there was a Fereldan nobleman they called 'the Dragon,' but I did not know he actually was one."
Both guardsmen silenced as two women strode into the dungeon. One, tall and dark-haired and wearing armor, had her hand on the hilt of her sword. She stopped right in front of the prisoner and stared into his eyes, which were on her level despite the fact that he knelt on the floor. They were the color of a cold winter sky, and the pupils were slit vertically. Furious as she was, they made her shiver.
"I take it to understand that you somehow remain a Fereldan lord, despite having been tried and convicted of treason against your nation and your King," she said, spitting the words into his face. She had a strong Nevarran accent. "Due, I suppose, to the fact that your daughter remains Queen, though I would think in her position she would be more cautious with the approval of her nobility. Most of them, I understand, would like to see your head roll to a headsman's axe, including His Majesty the King. Just how does one keep a King from taking his head when he wants it so badly?"
"The nobles have wanted that since Maric raised me to Teyrn," he said, with a thin smile. "As to Alistair, I keep my head well away from him, so for the time being at least he is content to allow it to remain on my shoulders. Might I ask why I am chained? No one seems eager to disclose that information."
The other woman stepped forward so that she was shoulder to shoulder with the dark-haired woman. She had red hair and was somewhat shorter. "You were unconscious when our soldiers brought you in. Do you remember what happened, how this began?"
"Hello, Leliana," he said.
"You remember me?" she said.
"Obviously. I never forget a face. To answer your initial question, I remember…precious little, in truth. Creatures…I don't know what they were. Giant spiders, almost, but…somehow…even more disgusting. Didn't know that was possible. I seemed to be without a weapon so I had little choice but to run for it when they came at me. Then, for some unaccountable reason, I found myself climbing a steep hill. Great tactic, that - when something's chasing you, it's always best to make for the steepest incline you can find. And then a woman reached out a hand to me, and I remember nothing after that. I know it all sounds like a bad dream, but that is all I remember, at all, from the time I arrived at Haven early what I hope was this morning."
The dark-haired woman reached down and grabbed his left arm by the wrist. "Explain this," she said, and brought his hand up in front of their eyes. The eerie green light cast by the mark on his palm cast his pale, hatchet-carved face into weird shadows.
"Fucked if I know," he said. "I was hoping one of you knew what in the Void that was."
The dark-haired woman flew into a frenzy and began to shake him by the shoulders. He didn't exactly move. "You expect us to believe that?" she screamed. "The Conclave is destroyed, everyone who attended is dead…except for you…and you claim you don't remember what happened? You claim you don't know what this mark on your hand is or where it came from? Do you also claim that Holy Andraste dragged you from the Fade and the heavens rained down chocolate in celebration?"
Leliana pulled her away from him by the shoulder. "Cassandra, we need him. Teyrn Loghain, please - we don't really know what's going on outside, but we think you can help us put things right."
He seemed utterly unaffected by Cassandra's frenzy. "All right, you've piqued my curiosity. Just what is going on outside and just how do you think I can do anything about it?" he said, with one eyebrow quirked high beneath the heavy forelock of his black hair, which was really more like a mane.
Cassandra's enraged expression leavened somewhat, though she remained subtly sulky. "It is…difficult to explain. It would be easier just to show you."
He held up his wrists, chained together because shackles would not fit around them, big as they were. "Then I'm presuming we can dispense with these?" he said, and without waiting for word, flexed his muscles and pulled his arms apart, breaking his chains almost as easily as if they were made of papier-mâché. Both women started and he grinned, showing sharp white teeth, pointed like a dragon's. The grin was clearly meant to capitalize on any fear he'd created with his actions, though his words were mitigating.
"Sorry if I frightened you. Wouldn't normally do that. Just wanted to let you know that everything you do, you do with my full complicity. Chain me again as you wish, I'll not break away."
He stood still, almost doubled-over under what was, for him, a low ceiling, while Cassandra nervously stepped forward and wrapped another chain around his wrists. "This may be useless," she said, "but as I long as I have your full complicity…"
She fumbled several times in securing the chain, apparently put out of countenance by what he had done, and just possibly the overwhelming size of him now that he was standing. While she worked, Leliana spoke. "Elilia was right, wasn't she?" she said. "She told me that you let her beat you, in your duel. I didn't believe her at first, but now…now I see."
"She beat me fair and square," he said, with a bit of an air. "It may have escaped your attention that I stopped panting rather quickly after we stopped fighting each other, but that doesn't mean I was able to go any farther at the particular moment I called a halt to it."
"You surrendered," Leliana said. "Even at the time, I thought it odd that a man such as you were would ever surrender. I fully expected you to fight to the death."
"I would have done, had I not wanted to show every man jack in the Landsmeet that Elilia was strong enough to put me on my knees. I wanted them to follow her without question. Because she'd proved to me she was strong enough to take over. I knew I made mistakes, but I wasn't going to leave Ferelden in weak hands."
"They let Elilia decide who would succeed King Cailan," Leliana said, quietly. "If she had given the crown to Alistair solely instead of splitting it between him and Anora, he would have called for your execution. As it is, I'm surprised he let you retain Gwaren when it proved impossible for you to join the Wardens."
"Anora can be very persuasive, although I'm as surprised as anyone that I technically retain a title. No one much listens to me any longer, however, and I haven't collected a tax beyond the confines of Gwaren village and its surrounding lands itself nor been to a Landsmeet in ten years. I've sent agent after agent to the capital, asking them to appoint a Bann of Gwaren, now that the village is rather large - someone who'll have a vote in the Landsmeet and can take care of the place the way I can't any longer, but thus far no luck. They won't listen to anyone even suspected of having come from me. I have, in fact, heard that I have grandchildren, but I've never met them. I'm not exactly welcome in Denerim, and the Royal Family doesn't visit Gwaren. Nor do they write." He sounded quite sullen as he said this last.
"Then what were you doing here at the Conclave?" Cassandra asked, chains secured at last.
"His Majesty - or at least I choose to blame him particularly - decided in His Infinite Wisdom to allow the rebel mages sanctuary within Fereldan borders. I might well do the same in his place, but I'm not especially happy about the templars attacking innocent Fereldan citizens in their zest to do away with any and all sympathizers to the mages. The mages are holed up in Redcliffe, which is technically in my half of the nation, even if it is only by a technicality that I even have a half of the nation nowadays. I felt it behooved me to come see whether the Divine would be able to sort things out or not."
"Were you planning on getting involved?" Cassandra asked.
"Me? Maker, no. I'm no diplomat, as anyone in Ferelden could tell you. Ninety percent of what they called 'treason' was me not being able to kiss noble ass well enough to get them to listen to what I was trying to tell them we needed to do to save our country. My goals weren't so dissimilar to the Warden's, if I thought we needed to look to our borders as well as the threat to the south. And I thought the Wardens had laid a trap for us at Ostagar. That was possibly the only reason Elilia stood against me at all, with as understanding as she seemed to be about everything else I did. I thought she was a traitor and was trying to kill her. Maker, if she had thought she could come to me and talk…" He shook his head violently, and his horns knocked against the ceiling. "No sense wishing things were different. What happened is what happened and it can't be changed now."
"You will…come with me…peacefully?" Cassandra said. "We have some little distance to travel. Not far, but it will be…dangerous. Dangerous enough without you adding to the danger."
"Afraid I'll attack? I swear you my oath, dear ladies, I will follow you to wherever you need me to go, peacefully and without complaint. You can always take me at swordpoint if you don't trust me. Dracon like myself are tough as all get out, but we cut just as easily as any other race."
"I don't think that will be necessary, at least not for the moment," Cassandra said. "Not as long as I have your full complicity."
"Does it bother you that I used that particular word?" he said.
"You make it sound as if we are involved in something illegal," she said, in some obvious affront.
"I have no idea what organization you are with, and thus no idea what authority you have to take prisoners. I'm also fairly certain, despite my lack of clear memory, that I haven't done anything to warrant arrest. I certainly don't know how or why I would've destroyed the Conclave and killed everyone in attendance. For all I know, you are engaged in something quite illegal, but for the time being I am complicit, in the hopes that you have Thedas' best interests at heart."
"We represent the Inquisition," Cassandra said.
"Ah ha. And the Inquisition is what?" he said.
"It doesn't officially exist, Teyrn Loghain," Leliana said, rather apologetically. "Cassandra and I are with the Chantry. We were the Left and Right Hands of Divine Justinia V."
"Ah, I see. I was the Left and Right Hands of King Maric."
"Both at once?" Cassandra said.
"I've always been a bit of a workaholic," he said. "Well, if you're with the Divine you probably do have cause to arrest me. I was declared anathema a couple of Divines ago. Whether that was for standing up to Emperor Florian or just for being a dracon that was rather more visible than most I don't know."
Cassandra bridled. "I'm sure you did something terrible to deserve it," she said.
"Well then, I'd certainly like to know what it was," he said. "All I was doing at the time was fighting to free my country from eighty years of oppression."
"She didn't declare Maric anathema," Cassandra said, indignantly.
"No. That's why I wonder whether it was because I was dracon. Or just because I wasn't a King. There's that possibility, too."
"I heard you were known then as Maric's Butcher," Cassandra said.
"It was a war. And who called me the Butcher? The people who lost to me. They also called me the Fereldan Dragon, the Blue Barbarian, Maric's Pet, and other names I'm less likely to repeat in mixed company. And I'm not generally much worried about what I might say in mixed company."
"In Orlais, they tell tales of how the High Dragon that attacked the Orlesian troops prior to the Battle of River Dane was actually you," Leliana said. "And many other tales, equally ridiculous. King Maric is seen as a romantic figure, the dashing rebel prince who led farmers and dairymen to victory against the greatest empire in Thedas, but you…there are no such tales of you. You are the Fereldan boogeyman, a tale used to frighten children into behaving themselves. They even say you ate your enemies."
He shuddered. "Never. I hate Orlesian food."
The offhand remark made both women start, though Leliana offered a brave smile. Cassandra moved forward and grabbed the chain. "We are wasting time," she said. "Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take him to the rift."
Leliana nodded and turned to leave. Loghain obediently moved forward as Cassandra tugged on the chain at his wrists, her sword out and leveled at his ankles for the moment. She dropped the chain and he followed her with all apparent complacency out of the undercroft of the Chantry to the nave above, where he was finally able to stand upright. The great coiled horns on his head still came rather near the vaulted ceiling as he stood somewhat over twelve feet in height, on the tall side of average for a male dracon, rare though his race had become. Cassandra stood with her head somewhere down around the level of his hip, looked up at him with her mouth hanging open slightly, and breathed out, "Maker have mercy."
She shook her head, grabbed the chain at his wrists again, and gave it another tug. They had to keep moving. Maker help her if he ceased to be cooperative. False modesty was another form of self-delusion and she did not suffer from it, but she doubted her martial skills were enough to take this creature in a one-on-one battle, even when he was unarmed.
Outside, they stopped again. He had to see the Breach to understand it, and it would likely take a moment for him to get over the experience, if he was like anyone else in that regard. If, that is, he truly was innocent as he claimed. The mark on his hand, so obviously connected to the rip in the sky, was damning evidence, but he had impressed her nevertheless with his seeming sincerity as well as his apparent willingness to cooperate.
It wouldn't do to let her guard down, however. The events of the Blight, as well as stories reaching back decades earlier, suggested this was a man capable of virtually anything. She had studied his tactics intently during her martial training, in point of fact, and she had learned one all-important thing: Loghain Mac Tir relied heavily on the element of surprise.
Apparently he could still be taken by surprise, at least if his reaction was genuine. It seemed real enough. He saw the roiling green tear in the sky over the mountain ahead of them, recoiled in seeming shock, eyes wide, and the bluish-white of his skin shifted instantly to a brilliant red with a shiver that encompassed his whole being. His eyes turned yellow. All this happened only for a moment before he settled back into his normal coloration, and he said, in a voice a degree or so louder than his normal strident speaking voice, "Holy Shit of Sweet Andraste. What in the Maker's name is that?"
"We call it the Breach," Cassandra said, carefully overlooking the blasphemy. "It is a massive rift into the world of demons caused by the explosion that destroyed the Conclave. It is not the only such rift, but it is the largest. It grows larger by the hour, and if it is not stopped, it will swallow the world. Your mark is connected in some way - every time the Breach expands, your mark grows, and as big as you are, and as powerful as you may be, it will kill you before much time has passed. It may be the key to stopping this, but we haven't much time."
He nodded, eyes still on the distant rift. "I see. Well then, we'd better get moving, eh?"
"So…you are…truly willing to help?" she asked, looking up and up into his face and eyeing him with a certain caution and a degree of hopefulness.
"I said I was, didn't I?" he said, lightly enough. "Come. Every second we stand around here jawing is another second that thing has to wreak chaos on Ferelden."
She led him onward, and he kept his stride short to match her steps. He was really rather shuffling, for him, though she was walking with a purposeful stride. As they passed the people gathered together in Haven, most of them brought along as attendants by the Chantry, the templars, or even the rebel mages, he saw them look at him with fear and a species of true loathing, and heard them talk to each other in low, frightened voices. Most of the voices he heard had Fereldan accents.
"I, ah…may be highly disfavored by Fereldan nobility, but last I was aware, my cachet with the common folk of the nation was still rather high, all told. Now, Haven is a backwater unparalleled among a kingdom of backwater villages, but Elilia Cousland cleared the place out of most of its native inhabitants ten years ago, so I expect most of these folks were brought here to assist at the Conclave. They all seem…ill-disposed towards me. I take it they truly believe I am the cause of this Breach in the sky?"
"More than that," Cassandra said. "They need someone to be responsible for the death of Most Holy, Divine Justinia. They need that. If I were to stand before them now and declare you innocent they would likely fall upon us both and kill us, or…" she said, with another look up at him, "…try to, at least."
"Not that you think I'm innocent, of course," he said.
"What I think does not much matter, for the time being," she said, stiffly.
They approached the gate leading out of the village. "So…the Divine did perish, then? I assumed as much, when you said everyone died, but I had hoped, perhaps…" he said, rather more quietly than anything he'd said previously.
"Yes." Spoken repressively, with great finality.
"So then you're…especially…eager…to put someone to death for this atrocity. Which I'm assuming could not in any way have been accidental or otherwise natural?"
"No."
He nodded. "Just checking. An old woman that lived in the village near which I was born and who was rumored to be a hedge witch told me when I was but a lad that I was born to hang. There have been multiple opportunities prior to this for me to be executed in one way or another - if it's finally my time then it's finally my time. One thing I will warn you about: If you wish to behead me, either use a weapon specifically designed to cut deeply into dragon flesh and dragon bone, or just slice my throat and bleed me out. Externally dracon are not nearly so hard-bitten as proper dragons, but on the inside, insofar as muscle and bone is concerned, we're quite comparable. Most blades won't cut deeply into muscle or through bone at all. It's a big part of the reason I'm still alive despite the better part of the Orlesian army having a specific vendetta against me in particular."
"You are awfully calm about this," Cassandra said. "I would have expected you to fight, 'til your last breath."
"To be perfectly honest with you? I'm not entirely certain why I am not," he said. "But I do not recall what happened. I don't see how I could have done…this, whatever this was precisely…but there's not much you can put past me. I might well be guilty after all. I just don't see how, nor do I understand why. If I did do this, then I deserve to die. As far as I could see, this was our last best hope for peace."
They were almost at the second gate at the end of the bridge, the last vestige of the village. Cassandra thought about it. She thought long and hard. While she was thinking, she continued the conversation.
"If you can't see why you would have done it, why then do you think it possible that you might have?" she said.
He sighed deeply, a gusty sound indeed. "Because I've done things…terrible things…that I couldn't begin to tell you…why…I did them. All I know is, you can't put much of anything…past me."
She thought some more. Leliana thinks he is innocent. She said nothing, but I could tell.
"I heard you tried to kill your own daughter," she said aloud.
"No," he said, quite loud, and quite fiercely. "I never did. She…claimed to believe that I would try it, but I never would have hurt her, not for any reason. My hope is…she said that…to get the Warden to dance to her tune. I pray to the Maker she didn't truly believe it."
"Then what terrible things did you do?" she asked.
"I…I sold Fereldan citizens into slavery," he said. He shook his head. "I needed gold…and they were sick…and the Tevinters who wanted them had magic to heal them…but I still don't know why I signed that contract. I never thought myself capable of that. And I've known all along I was capable of much."
"They were Tevinters…? And mages…? Are you certain they did not use blood magic on you to get you to agree?" Cassandra said.
He started, eyes wide, and his colors changed again, with another full-body shiver. This time his skin turned yellow, and his eyes turned green. Only for a moment, and then he was normal again. "I…no…that…couldn't be."
"Why not? Are dracon immune to blood magic? I know you proved to be immune to the Blight, but that's slightly different, isn't it?"
"Well, they would've needed my blood, wouldn't they? Where would they have gotten hold of it?" he said, clearly unnerved.
"You were fighting against Ferelden's nobles. It was civil war, was it not? And from what I understand from my studies of your martial style during my training, you have always led your armies from the front of the line."
"Ah…yes. Your…point?"
"You probably bled quite often. All they had to have done is pay an unscrupulous healer to collect a bit of it for them."
His colors shifted through a subtle rainbow for a moment or two before settling back to normal. He shook his head again. "No. No, even if…even if there was…coercion…ultimately I'm responsible. If nothing else, I should have been strong enough to resist."
"What do you think you could have done? As far as I'm aware, only Seekers like myself are able to fight off the effects of blood magic."
"And how much do you know about dracon?" he asked.
She paused. "Not…much."
"We come from dragons. Dragon blood flows in our veins. We should withstand damned near anything. If I didn't, then perhaps I'm not as strong as I'm supposed to be."
Cassandra took a deep breath. "I take it you don't know whether dracon can or cannot naturally withstand blood magic, dragon blood or not?"
She stopped walking, to look up into his face, and so did he. He looked uncomfortable. "I…no, I don't know. I don't really know all that much about my people. I am, as far as anyone knows, the only full-blooded dracon remaining in Ferelden, and the only reason there's a half-blood dracon in Ferelden is because I got married to a human woman and, against all rational expectation, had a child. I never knew my extended family, never saw a dracon I wasn't immediately related to, my mother was killed when I was quite young, and my father…well, apart from teaching me to fight…he mostly just taught me…how to get along with humans more or less peacefully. And then he died, when I was still fairly young. But he was bigger than me, and I don't doubt he was stronger than me, and if it is possible for a dracon to withstand blood magic, I don't doubt he could have done it."
"He was bigger…than you?" Cassandra said.
"Oh, much. I don't know how tall he was exactly, but I'd put him somewhere around sixteen or seventeen feet, and built like a Chantry - big even by dracon standards, as far as I'm aware. I look a lot like him, but I did not inherit his size. I must take more after my mother in that regard. She was, as I recall, rather small."
The Breach gave another pulse, this one strong enough to cause him to wince at the pain in his hand, though Cassandra didn't seem to notice. She came at last to the decision she'd been circling in her mind for some time, and pulled the key to his chains from her belt pouch and unlocked them. "As long as you are cooperative, there is no particular need for these…not for the time being."
They started walking again, or at least he was walking - Cassandra was moving at a pace rather faster than a mere walk. Still, she was able to speak, and she did so. "I'm sorry, but I have to say it. I've never actually seen a dracon before, though there is said to be a fairly sizable population of your people in Nevarra, so I don't know if you're big, small, or standard…but how in the Maker's name did you manage to conceive a child with a human woman?"
He chuckled, but the sound contained little in the way of humor. "Cautiously."
"Did you know you'd be able to?"
"No."
"But you married anyway?"
"My King insisted. He said I needed someone, and of course the nobles of Ferelden were apparently terrified I would marry into their families and secure for myself noble status, and so he found for me a native Gwaren girl who was obviously starstruck with the 'story' of Loghain Mac Tir, a man who never existed. And so I married, if briefly, and the nobility calmed down because I was married to a peasant like myself, and the joke was on them because Maric raised me above all of them before too much time had passed."
"Why…did he do that?" Cassandra asked. "I mean, it must have angered his nobles considerably."
"Oh, you have no idea," he said, and there was now at least a trace of humor in his light chuckle. "But Maric frankly had delusions of grandeur, not least about me. He believed me both invincible and undefeatable as well as the equal to any task set before me, no matter how far beyond anything I'd ever thought to do in my life it might have been. I tried to talk him out of it, but if I am known for my stubbornness, I had nothing on Maric when he had a wild idea in his head."
They came to another bridge and started across. "How did you ever manage to run an entire Teyrnir for…what was it, three decades?…when you had no background -" Cassandra said, but was cut off when one of those bright green bolts the Breach kept shooting out struck the bridge just ahead of where they were and crumbled it beneath their feet, pitching them down to the frozen river below.
Cassandra sat up and rubbed her shoulder. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"It wasn't really that much of a fall for me," Loghain said, already standing, but cautiously, as if unsure of his footing. "A better question would be, are you all right?"
"I will be," she said. "I'm lucky none of this rubble landed on top of me."
"I'm lucky this river seems frozen clear to the bottom," he said.
"What do you mean?" she said, standing up and gathering her sword and shield.
"Well, I'm…rather heavy. Heavier than you might expect, even, since I'm…dense. And since that weight is aligned pretty much vertically, weak flooring over nothing in particular is rather a hefty concern. Not that I'm probably not taller than this river is deep, but still I'd rather not have ice forming on my ankles."
He looked around. "Damn. I fear those soldiers that were ahead of us on the bridge weren't so lucky as we. I don't even see their bodies, just…discarded weapons."
"Blast," Cassandra said. "Come, we must keep going. There's a path up the embankment just downriver here."
"All right. I suppose it's no good telling you I could just set you on top of the embankment right here and take a long step or two up to the top myself?" he said, but she ignored him as another green bolt from the sky landed nearby and resolved itself into the form of a demonic shade. Cassandra raised her sword and shield.
"Get behind me," she shouted, and rushed forward.
Loghain crossed his arms over his chest, perfectly content to allow her to take care of the shade, but another shade rose up behind her in a moment's time, and she had no attention to spare it. The creature looked to be coming for him, anyway, so he quickly found the nearest blade - a longsword, little more than a dagger in his hand - and attacked. It was over quickly. He stepped up to the Seeker to see whether she required his assistance but before he could find an entrance she finished with her foe.
"Well fought," he said, casually enough.
"Drop your weapon," she said, not casually at all, leveling her sword at him. At her particular level, his legs were in the greatest peril, but a threat was a threat. He raised an eyebrow, but dropped his sword.
"Wait," she said, and lowered her sword slightly. "You…should have a sword. More than likely, you don't need one, but you should have one. I cannot protect you. And…you are here willingly."
She sheathed her sword. "That…couldn't be much of a weapon for you, could it?" she asked, looking down at the longsword still laying on the ice. What kind of blade do you usually use?"
He cleared his throat. "Well, I, ah…I typically use a greatsword. It works out to roughly longsword-size for me."
She went back to the fallen bridge and dug through the debris for the greatsword partly sticking out of it. She came back and handed it to him. "Here. I daresay I didn't stand much better chance against you before you were armed, so hopefully you will continue to cooperate. I have healing potions in my pouch, should they prove necessary for either one of us, just so you know."
"Why do people always say that kind of thing?" he said, almost as if to himself.
"What kind of thing?" she said.
"That they don't stand a chance against me, armed or otherwise? You seem to be a good fighter, and from what little I know of the Seekers, you're probably better than I've seen thus far. More than that, you've most likely trained, fiercely, for years. Aside from a little informal training with my father, no one ever taught me anything about the martial arts. Granted, I've trained others, and in the process, trained myself up a bit, but still, I'm hardly an expert on any martial style. Yes, I'm bigger and stronger, but I'm not invincible and probably not as good a swordsman. If you want to take me down, I'm fairly certain you can do it. It might take a little more effort than you're used to, is all."
Cassandra was clearly flustered. "I…erm…" Then she struck a rather aggressive stance and glared up at him. "Not an expert? I trained for years, as you say, and a great part of my training was studying you. Are you telling me you were not the General who led the Fereldan army to all those great victories against the Orlesian Empire?"
He scratched the back of his neck. "Well, no. I…guess I was. But…no one was more surprised than I that those tactics worked."
She gaped at him. "You…you…you claim you didn't know what you were doing?"
"Of course I didn't," he said. "I was a peasant. My father was a soldier, once upon a time, but all he taught me was just enough to be able to defend myself when necessary. I got dragged into the rebellion by my ankles and somehow found myself at the head of it without a single clue as to how I got there."
"But you…you…you're a military genius!"
"Well, thank you. If my tactics really look that good in retrospect then maybe I had some kind of natural aptitude for warfare. A hell of a thing to have a talent for, but everyone ought to be good at something, right? For the record, I doubt I'm really that good. If I am, it's rather hard to explain Ostagar, isn't it? To call that one a 'tactical error' is to put it mildly."
Cassandra seemed more than a little dumbstruck, so he reached down and gently closed her still-gaping mouth with one finger. "We really should be getting on, shouldn't we?" he said. "Hole in the sky. Demons pouring through. Death and destruction all over the place."
"Oh. Yes. Come, this way." She turned and headed downriver. They walked on the ice. It was not as slick as it might have been, perhaps, but though Cassandra seemed to have no particular difficulty walking on it Loghain walked with his wings unfurled and his long, whip-like tail at full extension behind him for balance. He also seemed to shuffle his feet more than he really needed to keep his steps in stride with Cassandra's shorter legs. Clearly he wasn't at all confident about walking on ice. It struck her as odd. He was, after all, Fereldan.
But then again, he must be somewhere in his seventies - eighty, perhaps, though he didn't look it - and he'd already fallen from a crumbling stone bridge. Maybe it was less a lack of confidence in the footing and more a lack of confidence in those dragon bones he seemed so fond of bragging about.
"Teyrn Loghain," she said, not stopping or slowing, "how old are you?"
"Eh? Fifty-six. What does that matter?"
"Just curious. You're a bit younger than I thought you'd be, frankly."
He stopped. "I'm…notoriously bad about discerning this sort of thing, but that…was suspiciously insulting."
"I'm not saying you look old, it's just…you were a very young General, apparently. I thought you would have been rather older during the Rebellion."
"I told you, I was dragged into it, without warning, without experience, and without anything resembling a choice or will. And I think the only reason I ended up a General is because all our actual Generals were killed at the Battle of West Hill. There was no one left. Why they put someone who was, admittedly, more or less a child in that position is beyond my understanding, but I did mention that Maric had delusions of grandeur about me. They started early. And though he was somewhat older than I, he wasn't really any more than a child, either."
"But the…Rebellion lasted a good many years, and from what I learned, you were right there with Maric the whole way, General or otherwise," Cassandra said. "How old were you when you started fighting that war?"
"Eleven."
She fairly choked on it. "E-lev-en?" she gagged out.
"My first proposed tactic and my first subsequent action in the war was to don some of Maric's castoff clothes and pretend to be him at the head of a cavalry unit, to draw some Orlesian forces off our main force. My wings were still undeveloped enough to hide inside a blouse and beneath a cloak and my horns were stumpy enough to hide beneath a hood. I was rather taller than Maric, but we're talking a matter of inches. If I were any older, I would never have been able to pass, even at a distance."
"Eleven," Cassandra said again.
"You begin to understand why I have no real martial training," Loghain said. "Even if my father intended to give it to me, he really didn't have enough time."
She put a hand out and pressed it against him as high as she could reach, somewhere around the bottom of his ribcage. "Did Maric know how young you were?" she asked.
He grinned again, showing those sharp white teeth. "I don't think so. He probably realized I was underdeveloped, because he did meet my father, so he knew how big dracon get. But I doubt he knew I was as young as that. Don't know that it would have mattered. He needed people to save his ass from the Orlesians, and pretty much from the start he had this mad notion I was just about the best man for the job."
"Many warriors start training at an early age, but to be thrust unprepared into an actual war," Cassandra said. "You could have been killed."
"Almost was, right there in my first battle," he said, with another toothy grin. He pulled down the collar of his blouse, which was high but could be pulled low thanks to how low it was in the back, to provide egress for his wings. A gnarled scar bisected his pectoral muscle right over his heart. "Pike. I got seriously lucky. At the age I was then, my muscles were hardly as developed as they are now, but apparently they were strong enough already to stop the damn thing going all the way through to my heart - either that or the man who stabbed me with it wasn't very strong at all. As it was, good fortune for me that dracon have a natural-occurring body magic that allows us to heal rather swiftly. I was still in a lot of pain for a couple of days."
"Oh, Maker," Cassandra said.
He released his collar. "Not such a big deal. I've been almost killed dozens of times since then. Come on, let's get a move on."
He continued to talk as they started once more down the river, and kept on even as they fought the demons that assaulted them along the way. He was speaking rather quickly, in point of fact, and Cassandra just had time to think, This seems out of character for a man like him, when he made mention of it himself.
"I don't know why I'm talking so much, and about my past, of all things. I never have liked talking about my past. I certainly never have shown anyone one of my scars before. I expect I must be nervous, and I expect I know why." He raised his left hand, to show the mark. "This…thing. Whatever else it is, it's obviously magic - the Fade-connected, demon-attracting magic I've never personally had to deal with - and as useful as the damn stuff might be when it's on my side, I've always been unsettled by it. Now that I've accepted that fact, it's time to calm the fuck down, isn't it?"
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and proceeded to keep silent so assiduously that he didn't even respond when Cassandra spoke to him. They neared the fighting and she pointed out the sounds of it, to which he merely grunted, and when they reached it he leapt into battle against the demons without a word. He might have said he was no expert at any martial art, but his skill with a blade was impressive nevertheless. Particularly since he was honestly at somewhat of a disadvantage, fighting creatures that most often did not come up to his waist. She thought about it. Fighting anything - demons, humans, elves - must be to him like fighting dwarves was to humans. Maker only knew how he could manage a fight against actual dwarves, or those short dwarf-like darkspawn, what were they called? Genlocks, right.
The last demon fell, and one of the other fighters, the elf Solas, grabbed Loghain by the left wrist and attempted to raise his hand. He couldn't get it very high, however, and so he said, urgently, "Raise your hand - point it at the rift. Hurry!"
Loghain shrugged, and raised his hand. A bolt of green light shot from his upraised palm at the rift in the sky before them, and in a matter of moments it was gone, as if it had never been.
He looked at his hand, eyebrow raised. "Well, that's…interesting. Not to mention encouraging. I take that's what you all hoped would happen, though I'm wondering how you thought it might."
"It was a long shot," Solas said, smiling a little, "but worth the chance, I thought. The connection between your mark and the Breach seemed to indicate that whatever magic opened the rifts was what placed it on your hand, and so I theorized that your mark contained the magic necessary to close them again, and it seems I was correct."
"Meaning it could also close the Breach itself," Cassandra said.
"Hopefully," Solas said.
"Fan-flipping-tastic," a new voice said, and Loghain looked down and down at the dwarf who was just folding up his rather clever-looking crossbow. "Here I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever."
He stepped forward, looked Loghain up and down, and whistled. "Damn, I'd heard you were a big sonofabitch, but that doesn't quite come close enough, does it? Varric Tethras, at your service. I'd offer to shake hands, but I don't think I can reach."
"Don't blame my mother for the way I turned out," Loghain said, and knelt down to offer his hand. It swallowed Varric's hand and arm up to his elbow. "I like the crossbow."
Varric, for his part, look thunderstruck. "Er, um, I, uh…wait - if you're who they said you are, then you're a…fucking Lord, right? I was just being an ass with that 'shaking hands' thing."
"I'm only a fucking Lord on a fucking technicality, and honestly that goes back a lot further than the Blight. Besides, at the moment I'm suspected of murdering the Divine and causing untold death and chaos, and even if I didn't do that I was found guilty of treason. Kind of mitigates any sort of honor there might have been in shaking hands with me, right?"
He stood up again, and Solas approached. "My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see that you live."
"He means, 'I kept that mark from killing you while you were out cold,'" Varric said, giving himself a shake.
"It hasn't seemed to bother him now that he's awake," Cassandra said.
"Oh, it hurts," Loghain said. "I'm not overly surprised to know it's killing me, honestly, but I'm…what am I? I'm accustomed to pain, I suppose you'd say. And I…have invested a lot, over the years, in learning not to show it."
Varric seemed to be back on a firm footing. "Have to be the Fereldan Superman, eh?" he said.
"No, but there have always been a lot of people - Orlesian, Fereldan, whatever - that have looked for any least sign of weakness in me. I wouldn't give the bastards the ammunition."
"But, erm…prior to the Blight…you were the biggest hero in Ferelden, right?" Varric said.
"The common folk liked me, mostly I think because I was one of them, if, again, only on a technicality, being a dracon in a nation that doesn't have dracon. To the nobility, on the other hand, I was 'that uppity peasant' who certainly didn't belong at the head of them, one step below their King. Just because I happened to agree with them doesn't mean I was going to give them the satisfaction of showing it. Interestingly, the fact I was born on a freehold always seemed to bother them more than the fact I was born with wings and horns. To the Orlesians, on the other hand, I was definitely 'the Dragon.'"
He was still talking rather quickly, but he did seem calmer than before. He turned to Solas and offered his hand to shake. "You seem to be the expert on this mark and this Breach, if there is an expert to be found. What are we dealing with, exactly?"
"Magic like nothing I have ever seen," Solas said. "Cassandra, you must know this - the power necessary to create this Breach is utterly extraordinary. Though he possesses a degree of racial magic inherent within his physiology, your prisoner is no mage. Honestly, I can't imagine any mage this powerful."
She nodded. "Understood."
She vaulted over a low wood fence at the edge of the bank. "This way," she said. "The explosion caused the path ahead to be blocked. We'll have to cut across the river again."
"Oh good. I do love walking on ice," Loghain said, with a grimace.
Cassandra just had to ask. She grinned as she did. "Are you afraid of falling, Your Lordship?"
"Rather…afraid I'll step on a section of ice that's too weak to hold me, but, to some extent, yes, a little. It's a hell of a fall, at my height. I'm unlikely in the extreme to break, but still, I'd really rather not make the drop."
"The fall from that bridge didn't seem to bother you," she said.
"The fall from that bridge was only about six feet, and somehow, despite all the debris falling around me, I landed on mine. Falling on my tail is unpleasant. Landing on my head is worse, hard as my head might be."
Cassandra chuckled. "Well, sorry, but we don't have much choice. This way."
Varric climbed somewhat laboriously over the fence. Cassandra put out a hand to stop him. "No, Varric. Your help is appreciated, but -"
"What am I supposed to do? Go back to Haven through Maker knows how many demons, alone?" he said. "Well, alone except for Bianca, of course, but still. Besides, you may have Messer Massive on your side right now, and I'm sure he's an army unto himself, but have you seen the valley? Demons swarming the place, everything destroyed, and your soldiers have their hands more than full just trying to get a handle on things. You need me."
Cassandra made a noise of disgust but didn't argue further. Solas hopped over the fence and Loghain cleared it in a step. They followed the bank down to the icy river and found demons waiting for them below. They fought, and cleared the area, and as Loghain shifted back to normal coloration Varric felt he had to point it out.
"You turn blue when you fight," he said. He sounded absolutely fascinated.
Loghain sighed. "In case you've missed this fact, I'm always blue."
"Oh, just barely. Just a tinge. When you fight, you turn bold, beautiful, summer-sky blue."
"What of it?"
"Oh, I find it quite interesting, is all. I've never seen anyone change color so…thoroughly. I can't wait to see you blush."
"Don't hold your breath."
They proceeded across the river, then up the bank and up a hill. Varric seemed to have the bit in his teeth, and an usual supply of courage, or perhaps just confidence in his associates.
"So you, uh…you're the man that killed King Cailan of Ferelden, right?" he said.
"No," Loghain said, quite matter-of-factly.
"Er…pardon?"
"I did not kill him. If you would like to know what it looks like when I kill a man, then perhaps you would volunteer to help me show the class?"
Cassandra put a hand on him. "Not that I do not understand the temptation," she said, almost in a murmur.
"All right, well, you left him to die," Varric said. "How do you justify that?"
"I am never to put a King above my country," Loghain said, under his breath. The others barely heard him. He shook his head vigorously, as if to shoo off gnats, and said aloud, "Cailan was never meant to stand at the vanguard of the main army. He should have been with the flanking charge, if he had to be on the battlefield at all. I told him time and again, but he would not hear one word beyond what he chose to hear. He would stand at the vanguard, alongside the Grey Wardens, who no more belonged there than he did, though I didn't know the real reason why 'til much later. Maker's ass, they drew the darkspawn right to Cailan, like a red flag in front of a bull. If I had called the charge I doubt I would have saved him, and of greater concern to me at that time was the half an army I had safe with me and the trap I was fairly certain I'd be charging into. I was wrong about that, but I still think it would've been suicide."
Varric now looked confused. "So you…weren't guilty of treason?" he said.
"I wouldn't tell you that. But I wouldn't have you thinking I was happy Cailan died. Although when I found out later on what he'd been up to behind our backs, a lot of the sad I was feeling went away."
"What was he up to?" Varric asked.
"Never mind. Just know if I'd found out about it earlier, I might well have killed him before I could've stopped myself. I knew he was cheating on Anora, but she…well, she told me not to get involved, so I didn't. Sometimes I wish I'd wrung his neck."
He shook his head again. "Maric was something of a philanderer, so it doesn't have to be that Cailan didn't like being married to a dragon. I wonder how this new one treats her."
"You don't keep up with them?" Varric said.
"His Majesty King Alistair wants my head, seemingly for the sole reason that a man he considered his substitute father, a man he knew for all of six months, died at the Battle of Ostagar. For a young man who wanted nothing to do with the Crown, he acts very Kingly indeed. I haven't seen my daughter since she married him. Not that I was invited to the wedding, or anything."
"So you're really innocent of treason," Varric said, musingly.
"I didn't say that. I did plenty to earn that guilty verdict. I slaughtered recalcitrant nobles, sold citizens into slavery, and tried to kill Elilia Cousland, who was doing her damnedest in spite of everything to pull the whole country together with every ally she could find against the darkspawn. Calling the retreat at Ostagar was not, in my opinion, one of the things I did to deserve it. Its all His Majesty seems particularly to care about, however."
"So what about this?" Varric asked. "Did you do this?"
"I don't remember. I certainly hope not, but I'm going to be damned lucky to prove it, I think. Oh well. I've done plenty enough over the course of my life to warrant an execution. And for most of it, they called me 'hero.'"
"You're taking this well," Solas said. "Personally I think it…highly unlikely you had anything to do with this, mark or no mark. You may be a warrior of renown, but you don't have the power to do something like this. How you survived is the best question I could ask, but I think perhaps the mark is the answer to that, even as it works to destroy you."
"Oh? I rather assumed I was the lone survivor because…well, because I was the lone dracon. I survive a lot."
"I doubt you would have survived this, dragon blood or no dragon blood," Cassandra said, grimly. "A High Dragon probably would've died."
"That bad, eh?" Loghain said.
"The entire mountain was laid waste," she said. "The Temple of Sacred Ashes was utterly leveled. Somehow or other, you apparently entered the Fade when everything blew apart, because our soldiers found you stepping out of a rift when they came to check for survivors. You fell unconscious, and with some great difficulty, they carried you to Haven."
"Yes, I'd imagine that would've been difficult. The last time I stepped on a scale I balanced it out against a cart horse. Traditionally I've been left where I landed whenever I've been knocked out, not that it happens often."
They came to more demons. Loghain put his sword through the head of a shade and said, "So I was…in the Fade? Physically? I didn't even think that was possible, but I suppose that explains the bad dream."
"There was more," Cassandra said. "The rift closed behind you, but before it did, the soldiers said they saw…a woman. They did not know who she was."
"Well don't ask me," Loghain said. "The woman I saw in what little I remember was…well, she was…glowing. If she had features, I wasn't able to see them. Given that I was in the Fade, I would expect she was probably some kind of spirit."
"Ah. Yes. That sounds…likely," Cassandra said, nodding like she meant it. Still, her demeanor was odd, and Loghain wasn't the only one who shot her a questioning glance.
They fought their way through the demons back to the road at the top of the hill. Just in front of the gate there was a rift, and guards desperately fought the demons pouring from it.
"Help us, please! They just keep coming!" one of them shouted.
Loghain and Cassandra leapt to attack, while Solas and Varric hung back and shot off their spells and quarrels. They cleared the demons and Loghain closed the rift with the mark on his hand. When it was gone, he looked down at his hand for a moment with a degree of clear uncertainty.
"Well, at…least this thing seems to work consistently," he said at last. "So far. I have to wonder how much effect a bloody gesture will have on that big damn rip in the sky, but there's no sense in not trying."
"You're a boundless optimist, aren't you?" Cassandra said. Loghain grinned at her with his sharp white teeth, apparently intending to unsettle her.
"You have a fine line in dry sarcasm. Reminds me of someone I used to know."
"Oh? Whom?" she said.
"Myself."
"Oh, now, if you want sarcastic -" Varric began, but Loghain cut him off.
"I already noticed yours, Messer Tethras, never fear. But your snark I believe is mitigated by a milder good humor on the side that neither myself nor, I'm starting to think, the Seeker, possess."
Cassandra seemed slightly ruffled. "Come, Leliana is waiting, if she made it through the demons. I pray she made it through the demons."
"They probably didn't even know she was there," Varric said. "The woman is a ghost."
"Open the gate," Cassandra told the guards, and they did. A camp was set on the bridge beyond. Loghain saw Leliana's red head from a distance and pointed her out to Cassandra, who heaved a sigh of relief to know her comrade had made it through safely.
Leliana was talking to a man in Chanter's garb. "Chancellor Roderick, this is -" she began as they approached, but the man cut her off aggressively.
"I know what it is," he said. He spied the sword in Loghain's hand and his expression darkened considerably. "You have armed it? Are you mad?"
"There was fighting on the way," Cassandra said.
"Take that sword from it now and take it to Val Royeaux to face execution immediately," Roderick said.
"So I am who you are referring to as 'it?'" Loghain said. "If you are uncertain as to my gender, I will tell you, I am male. I have never known anyone to be confused on that point before."
"What you are is a murdering -" Roderick began, but Cassandra cut him off.
"A trial will determine that," she said, severely, and then, "What we need now is to take him to the Temple. We can stop this now, before it gets worse."
"How? You'll never make it to the Temple, with all your soldiers," Roderick said. "Call a retreat, before more lives are lost."
"No. We can stop this. We can. Our soldiers hold the path to the Temple. It is the quickest route."
"But not the safest," Leliana said. "Our soldiers can serve as a distraction while a small patrol takes the pass through the mountain."
"It's too risky. We lost an entire squad on that path," Cassandra said. She turned to Loghain. "What do you think we should do?"
"You're asking me?" he said, pointing to himself.
"Well, we disagree, and you are the one we must get to the Temple alive, and…well…you are the one who is supposed to be a tactical genius, Ostagar notwithstanding," Cassandra said, with a sniff.
He scratched his chin and thought for a moment. "Well, the idea of using a distraction and going around is a good one, up to the point where you propose sending me with the patrol that goes around," he said. "I don't like the idea of sending a troop of soldiers up against demons and, most likely, rifts without me there to shut them down."
"You are concerned about our men?" Leliana said.
"Well, they're not my men and women, but they are men and women, so, yes," he said.
"At least half of them are Orlesian," she said, almost tauntingly.
He looked at her as though she were crazy. Slowly, he spoke. "The only Orlesians I have a specific vendetta against are the Lords and the Chevaliers. I'm assuming they are neither, so I have no quarrel with them. They are just soldiers, doing what they are commanded. I had a slight problem with you, all those years ago, as you no doubt recall, because you were a bard, and that is, at best, an iffy occupation that I would prefer remain in Orlais and not come to Ferelden. But you seemed to be content to behave yourself, so I put my feelings aside, and now you're back with the Chantry, which I don't exactly trust, but again, I think you're behaving yourself. In other words, I have no quarrel if you don't."
"Just checking," she said in a sing-song voice.
"I suppose I deserve that. But if you'd been a Fereldan peasant during the Occupation, you'd feel the same way. Especially if you were forced to watch while an Orlesian lord raped and murdered your mother." He shook his head as if to clear it of the memory. "I don't know why I said that, but then, it's not the first time I blurted that out, though I was a damn sight younger the last time. This…bloody…mark on my hand has got me more worked up than I care to admit. Anyway, strategy - I say we charge with the soldiers. Safer for them that way, assuming this mark will keep closing rifts and stopping the influx of demons. Besides, I'm probably dead long before this trial of yours gets underway. Whatever happens, happens now. Best to get it over with quickly while we can still have it done."
Leliana reached up and touched him on the arm. "Did you really see your mother…?"
He nodded, his mouth pressed in a grim line. "It was hardly the only horrible thing I saw the Orlesians do before we succeeded in kicking them out of Ferelden, but it was the worst. It was the Lords and the Chevaliers we had to worry about, so those are who I hate. The common folk of Orlais are, I suspect, pretty much like the common folk of Ferelden or anywhere else, and I have no problem with them. At all. Given what you've told me about the stories that they tell about me in Orlais, I expect they feel somewhat differently about me. If so, I have it coming, even if the stories themselves are ridiculous."
"I spent enough time in your company ten years ago to begin to think they weren't being at all fair," Leliana said, "and now I begin to think that more than ever. You never ate your enemies, did you? That was just a joke, about not liking Orlesian food."
"It was. But I did…bite…my enemies. That's probably where the story comes from."
"You…bit…them?"
"When I was otherwise unarmed or wished to…shall we say…intimidate. Look at these teeth, you can't tell me the Maker didn't intend them as weapons."
Leliana shuddered, as did Cassandra. "No, I…suppose I can't," she said.
"Will you listen to this?" Roderick said. "You would trust this…this…monster to save us?"
"From the looks of things, I'm the only one who can, unless you think you have magic to seal these bloody rifts, Chancellor," Loghain said. "Little as I want it, it looks like I do. I don't know that it will be enough to seal the Breach, but would you rather it remain up there in the sky, releasing demons all over the bloody world, and not even try to close it?"
Roderick gaped at him, thunderstruck, and Loghain turned and began walking towards the far end of the bridge. "Ladies, your soldiers are this way, on the main path to the Temple, correct?"
Cassandra, Varric, and Solas moved to catch up with him, not all that easy to do since, for the moment, he was walking at a stride that was natural for him. He slowed down, however, as they approached, and his ears were keen enough to hear Chancellor Roderick call out to them, "May the consequences be on your head, Seeker."