Submission for the Dragon Age big bang competition!
Andruil's celebrations were a bloody, gruesome mixture of dance and sacrifices. It did nothing for Fen'Harel.
Her rage and lust for violence was an indifference to him, but he was invited, so he attended and he observed, bored and uninterested, as she indulged her followers. Lounging against a wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his pale blue eyes trawled around the room for something to entertain himself with. He found it in the sight of one of Andruil's hunters, pretty and lithe and just as vicious as the goddess herself judging by the sneer on her features.
Eyes met for the briefest of moments and his lips curled into a smirk. She studied him for a second and when he arched a single fine curved eyebrow, her features flashed to interest. As he slipped through the crowd and out of the hall, she followed. In his arrogance he did not even acknowledge the huntress' presence until he was pushing her against a cold stone pillar in the empty gardens that surrounded Andruil's temple.
It was a primal lustful act and there was no emotion or feeling in it rather than his pride and desires. All the nobles knew of his reputation. He made the huntress scream his name, and then brought a lazy, contented smile painting across her features. He did not stay once the act was done and he left her panting against the pillar as he stalked back to the festivities with a satisfied grin tearing at his lips.
Even as Fen'Harel entered the hall he purposefully adjusted his robes with no guilt or shame for how people stared at his poor attempts to hide the indecency of his actions. He did not care because there was nothing they could gossip about which had not floated around a hundred times before amongst the nobles.
With an arrogant smile tugging at his lips he made towards the chairs set as the seats of honour for him and the rest of the pantheon. When Elgar'nan scoffed at his dishevelled robes that splayed open and revealed his chest, and his tousled hair, Fen'Harel merely smirked in return as he slipped into the seat offered to him. One leg cast across his other knee, he rested his chin in his hand lazily and disinterested as Andruil continued with her final sacrifice of honour. Her hunters brought forth two bound slaves and she prowled towards them, appraised them for a moment and then grabbed the male of the pair by his arm and dragged him before the rest of the pantheon.
The female slave struggled and protested as the other was forced to his knees before the gods and her disobedience earned her a hard yank on the rope that shackled her hands. Fen'Harel's cool blue eyes moved to her with a mild curiosity for a moment, but then Andruil announced her sacrifice to them and his gaze tore back to the male slave hunched before him. The goddess drawled on with her proceedings and rituals to her fellow kin and then she stepped back, raised her hands with a sadistic grin painting her features, and drew on her magic.
Her spell engulfed the slave man and he cried in pain as his body was lashed and gouged by her magic. His eyes bled and his mouth spat and spluttered with blood before, eventually, he collapsed to the ground, dead. Fen'Harel sighed and wiped a smear the blood that had landed on his cheek away. He had never been particularly fond of Andruil's gruesome habits purely because they were barbaric and messy; it was hardly because he cared for the wasted lives of her possessions.
The female of the slave pair cried out in distress. Magic seared from her fingertips and she burnt through her bonds, leapt to her bare feet and ran towards Andruil with a spell gathering in her fist. Fen'Harel watched, second by second, as the goddess reacted too slowly and he rolled his eyes lazily. With a flick of his wrist he twisted the Fade around the slave and summoned tendrils of magic that broke through the veil and wrapped around her arms. They rooted her in place and yet she still struggled against them, a vicious, furious look splashing over her features as she glowered at Andruil.
"You're welcome," Fen'Harel drawled even as the slave struggled and fought against her bonds to little success. He pushed himself from his seat and approached the woman with eyes narrowed in curiosity as Andruil turned and glowered furiously at the slave's disobedience.
"Idiot woman, you will die far worse than him for your insubordination," the goddess hissed as he stopped before the slave.
Curious, Fen'Harel tilted his head at her. She was pretty with fine angled features and big, round eyes in such a deep shade of amber that you could lose yourself in them. She would have fetched a high price if she was sold for her body. He reached out to her, gripped her chin in his hands and angled her head towards him as he raked his eyes over every curve and swell of her body approvingly. Then, with a rough shove, he pushed her away and turned back to Andruil.
"You should have branded her," he muttered. "I would have."
"I did not think her magic was strong enough to warrant it," Andruil spat. "Although evidently her personality alone could benefit from being dampened."
The goddess reached for her bow and arrows, poised them at the slaves heart but Fen'Harel stepped forward and stayed her hand. With eyes narrowed in interest and lips curled into a grin at the thought of acquiring something he could use, he said, "Wait, let me have her."
Andruil scoffed but lowered her weapon. "If you want her then take her." She paused and grinned, cold and filled with bloodlust, at the slave. "But when she becomes too much for you bring her back to me so I can fill her with my arrows."
"Of course," Fen'Harel whispered and he stepped forward. With a gentle twist of his hand he dispelled the magic binding the slave and grabbed her wrist.
He stared down at her even as she glowered back at him. It would take some work to break her disobedient personality, but he would manage. He would not suppress her magic and emotions as he did with some of his other slaves. She was meant for better things than to mindlessly clean his home and he loathed the thought of letting his hands wonder and feel the curves of her body if she was mute and indifferent to him.
For this reason, for his lust and selfish desires, he spared her the indignity of being branded and made dead to the world.
He took the slave home with him and she was silent for the entirety of the journey. She struggled and resisted and he was forced to drag her along, to his distaste. Then, when Fen'Harel stepped through his eluvian and into his entrance hall, he let go of her bindings and she fell to the ground, her knees catching and rubbing raw on the stone floor of his home. Irritated, he crouched down beside her and grabbed her jaw roughly in his hand.
With a quick burst of magic he wiped Andruil's slave markings from her face and replaced them with his own. They curled around her features in patterns that reflected him and honoured his wolf form. For every second of the act she glowered at him, albeit silently, her teeth grinding from the pain of the markings burning into her flesh, and when he was done he stepped back and observed her with arms crossed over his chest.
"Do you have a name?" he started and when she refused to reply he added, irritated, "Would you prefer that I address you as slave, then? Because you will for certain be confused with the others if that is what you wish."
"As if anything that I wish matters to you," she hissed as she started, gingerly, to look at the raw bleeding skin on her knees.
"You would do well to swallow your attitude," he replied with a sigh, "Or you may easily find yourself in the fate Andruil intended for you this evening. So, I will repeat myself, what is your name?"
She was silent for a long moment before finally muttering, "Lauriel."
"And the other slave with you, he was...?"
"My brother." Her lips pressed into a thin line.
"Then you have my condolences," he replied and she stared at him, surprised for a moment before he added offhandedly, "It was a pointless waste of life when he could have spent it better serving someone."
Her lips pulled into a snarl and she spat at him but he deflected it with a lazy, arrogant barrier. He shook his head at her and called for one of his other slaves, and when the man arrived he gestured dismissively at Lauriel.
"Take her away and clean her up," Fen'Harel instructed. "And when you are done bring her to my quarters."
The male slave nodded and bowed to him before scurrying to help her from the ground. Even as he slipped an arm around her and helped her to her feet, Fen'Harel caught the look of disdain that flashed over the male slave's features at what he presumed the god had brought Lauriel to his home for.
It was no secret amongst anyone that he bedded his slaves and he hardly felt guilty about it when almost every other noble did the same, if not worse.
Lounging on plush cushions with legs parted and pale eyes narrowed he calculated and devoured the scene before him.
He gorged off the intrigue and whispered secrets and drew it all in until he was drunk off the scandals and heady stench of sex that was so omnipresent in the nobles court. It did not happen in front of prying eyes, but every couple that slipped away, every misaligned robes or flushed features or hand slipped between the breeches of another reeked off lust. And Fen'Harel was infatuated with every minute of it.
With a bundle of grapes held above his head, he slowly curled his tongue around one of them and pulled it from its stalk. Then, he crushed it between his teeth, the sweet juice flooding his mouth as he moved for another. When his gaze trailed over Elgar'nan sitting so close nearby, Fen'Harel's eyes flashed deviously. He pursed one of the grapes between his lips, angled it just so, and burst the fruit so that the juice spat forward and landed on the back of the other god's neck.
Before Elgar'nan could frown and pinpoint the action on him, Fen'Harel glanced away and passed the grapes off onto a platter held by a nearby slave.
"I saw that."
Lazily and with a scowl tugging at his features, he glanced up at Andruil and drawled, "I do nothing that he does not deserve."
She rolled her eyes at his petty childishness and then pulled her lips into what should have been a sultry smirk, but on her only looked hungry and bloodthirsty. With a swish of the fabric of her dress, she turned and bared her neck to him, asking, low and throaty, "Do up the ribbons on my back, would you, wolf?"
Lips curled into a snarl of derision at the pet name she used but he waved over a slave effortlessly and muttered, "Help her, would you?"
Leaning back and twisting his body to face the nobles that sat behind him, Fen'Harel missed the angry, rejected look that painted Andruil's features so much like the other time's he'd blatantly ignored her attempts to make her affections clear. Instead, he angled towards two of the noble women sitting on cushions near him. They glanced at him for a brief moment, offered him coy smiles that were all the invitation he needed to brush the hair from one of the women's necks and whisper a lewd, forward proposition in her ear.
Her smile and trail of a hand through the part in his robes and up his tanned chest was plenty enough indication of her mutual agreement to his suggestion. To the other woman, he caught her gaze and ran his tongue slow and purposefully over his lips in a mockery of the reputation he'd earned for what he could do with his mouth. A wink in her direction for good measure was all he needed to have both women follow him as he left the hall and found a quiet, empty room.
The moment the door shut behind them he found one of the women's lips on his own, tongue begging for entrance. The other noble suckled at his neck from behind and tugged down his robes until they pooled at the floor. With his torso and shoulders bared before them, they splayed their hands over the muscles of his chest and worshipped him.
And he took dutiful care to ensure his reputation did not falter, that they would ache with wanting, for months to come every time they thought of what his fingers, tongue and magic could do.
His orb was everything to him. His power, his strength, his pride.
It was what he used to travel into the deepest parts of the Fade, to explore and twist dreams in ways that not even the other gods would consider. He had always been far more attuned to the world of spirits than the others were. To him, the reality was an annoyance that separated his mind from flowing freely in the Fade where he was so easily at home.
Even that afternoon he played with his orb when he should have been paying attention to his kin.
With his legs draped lazily over his throne Fen'Harel held his orb in the air with a small trickle of green magic. He played with it while his kin waited for Elgar'nan to arrive, and he was so absorbed with himself that he did not notice Andruil's presence until her hand snaked out and took his orb.
Irritated at her actions and bound by the reliance he had on his foci, he stood and followed her with bare feet moving against marble stone as she strolled casually around the room. She twisted his orb in her hands, her lips pulled into a smirk as her blood red hair fell in curls around her shoulders. Some said she'd once had the purest white of hair, but her murder and lust for violence had tainted her locks for every splash of blood she'd splattered over her features in her rage.
Whether it was true was of no concern to Fen'Harel, but her breath reeked of the metallic tang of blood and gore whenever she spoke. It was unpleasant at best and she always had a feral look in her eye, as if she couldn't decide if she wanted to skin the pelt from his back when he was the beast, or bed him as he was the man.
"Give it back," he warned and she turned to press her back against the wall, the orb held high above her head in one of her hands. Her lips were curled into a taunting smile, her eyes flashing with teasing the same way that the gold piercings on her features glinted in the light. And he fell for her bait because his foci meant so much to him.
One hand rose to curl around her fingers clenched around his orb, prying and urging to free it from her grasp. He towered over her to try and intimidate her, but she killed for fun and glory and it was impossible to frighten someone who hunted her slaves for sport. Her habits were unpleasant to him, not because he cared for the way she trapped and tortured her possessions, but that it was a pointless waste of life that could have been better served bowing before him. He did not often kill his slaves but for in rare moments of rage because they were useful to him and irritating to replace.
"How greatly you are bound by your foci, wolf," she purred, but the reek of blood in her breath made him wrinkle his nose and lean back had she not caught his chin with her free hand. "Some might say that you are enslaved by it."
"No more so than you are bound to your bloodlust," he taunted and her lips pulled back into a grin, her sharp teeth bared before him like the fangs of a rabid beast. And they called him the wolf.
Her nails, cut into sharp points to reflect her malice, dug into his jaw and he stared her down, his blue eyes catching in the light as he repeated in a low warning, "Return it to me before I rip your throat from your neck."
His words brought a sneer to her lips, and she held his gaze for a long moment before scoffing and dropping his orb. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the ground, but he bent to catch it inches before it hit the marble floor. And it was crouched on the ground with his fingers curled around his foci that she tripped him.
With her knee pushed into his chest she felled him to the floor and he growled, deep and furious, when she stood over him and pressed her bare foot against the hollow of his throat. She made him choke for air just enough that it was uncomfortable but not enough that he would easily pass out. Her leg, lean and muscular from the days she spent hunting, was bared before his eyes from the way the fabric of her robes slipped off her thigh while she held him down.
Yet there was nothing about her that was attractive.
The sick glinting in her eyes of pleasure at the strangled gasps for breath that he drew inspired nothing in him but loathing, and the words she parted with were so laced with grotesque satisfaction at his suffering that he'd balk at them if he wasn't choking for air.
"You would be fun to dominate, wolf."
Blue eyes narrowed into a glower and he pulled for his magic to turn her away. For him, it was not difficult to overpower her and push her away with a burst of force. Andruil had never been affluent with magic as he was. Her strength rested in her dexterity and lithe body, not in her ability to twist and weave spells or alter the very fabric of the Fade as he did. His spell sent her back with enough force that she staggered, but her grace of movement stopped her falling under the influence of his magic.
Even as he pulled himself from the ground, she still glowered at him and he stalked back to his seat with his orb held tight in his hands. It was moments later, when he was settled once more in his throne with his fingers running idle circles over the patterns of his foci, that Elgar'nan finally arrived.
The all-father rambled and droned about matters far beyond Fen'Harel's scope of caring, and he continued to play and distract himself with his orb like the rebellious god that he was. His indifference irritated Elgar'nan and as he reclined sideways in his chair, his head lolling over the armrest and his fingers dancing with glowing green magic, the all-father snapped.
"Enough, Fen'Harel." With a flicker of magic from the other god's fingers he disrupted Fen'Harel's spell. The orb, which had been floating in the air, fell neatly into the younger man's hands and he scowled at Elgar'nan for the interruption. "You will at least honour me with your presence while I speak to you."
"Of course, Elgar'nan," he purred in response but his words were laced with venom and spite. How he had never gotten along with the other man. Even if their opinions did not clash, their personalities jarred and conflicted at every twist and turn. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"You are still bedding your slaves." It was a statement from Elgar'nan's lips, and for a moment Fen'Harel flickered his gaze to Mythal beside the all-father.
To say she was disappointed barely begun to scratch the surface of her expression, and he scowled and tore his gaze away as he muttered, angrily, "You act as if I am the only one that does it. Have you asked the nobles and priests? They treat theirs far worse than I do towards mine."
"That does not make it acceptable," Mythal interrupted and even if her voice was soft, the bitter anger in her words was all too obvious. "It does not absolve you of guilt because there are others worse than you, it does not excuse you if you convince yourself it's not unwanted if you make sure they are pleasured out of it the same as you are."
With a scowl he tore his gaze from her judging eyes and glowered at Elgar'nan. When he spoke, Fen'Harel's voice betrayed the way Mythal's words cut him from the anger that seeped into his words. Her rebukes made him furious by far because it made it harder to justify his actions to himself when she lashed him with her disapproval.
"Why do you care?" he challenged towards the all-father. "You keep slaves yourself – and far more than I do. Your followers abuse and kill them with far greater frequency than mine do."
"Because you are not a noble or a priest, you are a god." Elgar'nan paused for a moment, his gaze steady and unwavering as he held Fen'Harel's own blue eyes. "And I will not allow half blooded offspring to dilute our very essence. It will happen eventually, even with the precautions you take."
And if it does, I will kill the slave and your child.
He didn't need to say it, the threat was all too clear. But still Fen'Harel's hot blooded arrogance got the better of him, and he grinned as he saw the flash of disapproval over Mythal's features.
"Is that the only reason you care?" Fen'Harel laughed, low and dark in his throat. "But look how your wife seethes. Are your slaves still a sore point for you? Do you still argue into the dark of night about your differences?"
"Enough."
It came as a flash of magic, and he'd presumed it was from Elgar'nan at first because it usually was – so many times did their meetings end with the all-father lashing out at Fen'Harel for his cocky pride. But as he blocked the spell with a quick barrier, he realised it was not the other man who'd attacked him that afternoon, far more that it was Mythal who had risen to her feet, her features twisted into disapproval and her fingertips bristling with magic. If Fen'Harel looked shocked, then it was not without good reason. She was usually so passive and calm, and rarely lost her temper.
It took a soft hand closing around hers from Elgar'nan to calm her anger, and even then she still glowered daggers at Fen'Harel. The rebel god scowled, pushed himself to his feet and made to leave.
As he did so, he muttered bitterly, "You call me a monster but I do not torture and murder my slaves for sport."
In truth, all his words that afternoon were justifications he told himself to stave his guilt. Even if he did not physically abuse or kill his slaves for fun the way Andruil did, he still treated them as less than people, possessions for him to use and bend to his will. He chose wilful ignorance, because admitting that what he did was wrong would have unleashed the torrent of shame for his actions over thousands of years.
And he was a selfish coward that could not bear to handle the guilt.
Where his orb was his power and strength, the wolf inside him was his beauty and splendour. As the beast he could run through nations and forests as if it were nothing, cross leagues of land in the space of minutes. It was his gift to be able to twist himself into a wolf of fur the colour of purest white and crystal blue eyes. As much a part of him as his magic, it could not be separated or isolated.
It simply was.
He slipped into the wolf to escape the tedium and annoyance of his followers and kin, to run with the wind blowing in his fur and legs kicking up storms of dust in his passing.
That afternoon Fen'Harel fled through forests and trees he until he came to a stop on a rocky ledge that overlooked the kingdom of a noble he didn't care enough to learn the name of. It was there that he slipped into his elven form and lay against the grass and bright flowers, and he slept.
Through old dreams and reaches into the Fade he travelled with ease, his mind lucid and free when his wakefulness did not exist to jar and jolt his connection to his magic. To whatever fancy that took him he wandered for hours until the dark inky tendrils started to creep around his ankles and twist the meadow he'd conjured in his dreams.
For every flower the black haze travelled over, it choked the life from them and distorted the scene around him. With eyes narrowed in curiosity, Fen'Harel turned, his bare feet cold against the icy tendrils that were dancing around his ankles and legs.
It took a small burst of magic to send the haze scattering away, and it drew out the predator that was stalking his dream with an angry hiss. Surrounded by a small barrier Fen'Harel pushed the black smoke from his body and turned, finally, to land his gaze on the one that tried to haunt him.
It was a person that stood before him, although he used the term lightly. There was nothing natural about the figure shrouded in black tattered robes or dark haze of magic clinging to them. He didn't even know precisely what they were, but he knew from the tainted power that coursed through them that they were not a simple spirit or demon.
"Who are you?" Fen'Harel started and he moved in a slow circle around his new companion, his eyes raking over features that did not exist and fumbling for a gaze to settle on but only finding a set of glowing red eyes set amongst darkness. "Are you friend or foe?"
"Both." Their voice was icy cold and otherworldly, raspy and dry as if they had not drunk for years upon end. "And neither."
"Then what do I call you?"
For a moment he stopped his circle around the other person and the silence that stretched between them was broken only by the hiss and splutter of the smoke pouring from their frame. When no answer came, Fen'Harel tilted his head with narrowed eyes and offered one himself.
"Anaris?"
"It will do."
"But it is not your name."
A chuckle, deep and thick that ran shivers down Fen'Harel's spine was his only answer for several moments. "You know I am of his kin, that is sufficient."
Arms crossed over his chest, muscles bristling with tension and ready to flee at the sight of hostility but the rebel god would hold his ground for the time being. "To what do I owe the pleasure, then?"
"You owe me no pleasures, Fen'Harel; I bring you only offers of my own."
With eyes narrowed he humoured them for a moment with, "I'm listening."
"You do not fit in with the others of your kind, they stifle and dampen what could be so much more in you." A flash of magic pulsed from where their hand would have been under their sleeve and the scene changed.
Fen'Harel was surrounded by faceless worshippers that bowed at his feet. Hundreds of them stretched throughout the dream, honouring him and the ones closest draped arms and hands over his chest. And he felt powerful, far more so than he'd ever been before, as if he could lay waste to empires with the flick of his wrist. It drew him in at first, fed off his arrogance and pride and he raised a hand, conjuring raw magic around his fingers so strong it made him heady and weak to be witness to it.
"You like it." It was not a question – a statement and observation of his reaction to the power coursing through him in that moment.
But as quick as it had been granted to him, the figure took the boon away and they were alone, once more, in the Fade with the thick haze flooding their feet.
"It would not cost you much," they continued and Fen'Harel hesitated for a moment as they stepped closer and curled a hand around his chin. The moment their fingers, cold and icy, touched his skin his thoughts were drowned in apprehension as they added, "Only your soul."
Their hand came up before his face like a claw, magic flowing from fingers as if he were latching onto Fen'Harel's spirit itself and trying to tear it from him. Agony rippled through him and he hissed, low and throaty as he pooled his magic at his fingertips to fight the attack being flayed against his mind.
"I'm rather attached to my soul," he spat and it took all the power he had but he tore the dream apart and wrenched himself out of sleep and into the waking world.
It was a fitful violent awakening and he lashed and jerked as his mind was yanked from the Fade. The haze that had been so pervasive around his feet within his dream was hanging around him in the clearing where he slept, and the first thing to grace Fen'Harel's eyes when he opened them was the same figure hovering before him in the air, still trying to dominate his mind.
With a vicious sneer he sent the intruder scurrying away with a burst of green magic from his fingertips and once he was safe, Fen'Harel groaned, deep and exhausted. His mind felt raw and chafed, as if his soul had been bruised from the assault against him and he pinched the bridge of his nose as the dull ache started to settle in.
He would need healing to mend the abrasion to his connection to the Fade lest his mind throb for weeks. And he did not particularly enjoy the thought of asking Sylaise's help.
It was not difficult for him to break into Sylaise' temple that evening while she was having one of her festivals elsewhere.
Fen'Harel stalked briskly through the goddess' halls, his robes flowing around his feet from his fast pace and his features contorted to reflect his sore mind. His chafed spirit dampened his mood and it was fortunate that no one bumped into him while he slipped through her temple because he doubted his ability not to lash out at anyone that might try and stop him.
Eventually he reached the room where she stored and hoarded her knowledge about healing in old and thick tomes. Sylaise was a selfish goddess who refused to share what she and her priest's knew about healing magic and herbs when instead they could charge others ludicrous money for the benefit of their spells. It didn't particularly bother Fen'Harel for the most part, but it frustrated him from time to time when he had to bargain with Sylaise to heal himself or his slaves.
And that day he had enough.
So he poured over her tomes and books, drank deep in the knowledge she tried so hard to hide and taught himself how to twist his magic to heal and mend wounds. It was not difficult now that he read it, it was just a different application of his power to what he was used to and he tried using it to mend his sore mind.
With a small burst of a spell he poured magic into his body. It latched onto the raw edges of his spirit and quickly repaired the damage that would otherwise have taken weeks to heal. In less than a few seconds, the spell was complete and Fen'Harel stepped back a little, pleased at his success.
It was then that he noticed he wasn't as alone as he thought he was when his blue eyes trailed over the woman pressed flush against a wall in the room. Her features were adorned with Sylaise's symbols, her status as a slave plainly obvious.
His brow pulled into a frown as he raked his eyes over her and she cowered a little, pressed herself further against the stone and he stepped towards her in a mixture of curiosity and irritation that she might spill what he had done to her master.
"You tell no one what you saw today," he told her but she only slunk further away from him, her features twisting into pure fear at the very sight of him. When he received no answer he repeated with, "Do you hear me?"
And he was granted nothing in return.
Frustrated, he reached his hand towards her and she flinched, held her arms up before her as a shield and caused the fabric of her sleeves to fall from her skin. The torn rough material pooled at her elbows, baring the flesh of her lower arms to him and his features fell to surprise at the sight he was granted privilege to.
What might once have been soft tanned skin was mangled and ruined by scars that could only have come from burns. They covered her arms like wretched ugly things, her flesh twisted and uneven from the extent of the damage that had been wrought against her. And it shocked him to see it because there was only one word for it and that word was torture.
He was aware that Andruil treated her slaves poorly, how much he knew that intimately but he'd become so dulled to her hunts and killing sprees that it barely fazed him anymore. But from Sylaise he'd never thought and the revelation staggered his perception of the goddess for the slightest moment.
Curious he linked his fingers with the slave's hand where she still held it like a barrier before her features and forced himself into her thoughts. It was an intrusion of her privacy but he hardly had the care or consideration to be bothered by it, and he poured through her memories to see what had been done to her to satiate his interest.
What he found were recollections of how Sylaise and her followers had burnt the slave to within an inch of her life for their own amusement and occasionally as punishment. They had spent days setting her flesh alight repeatedly, only to heal her at intervals to ensure that she didn't die. And it shocked him for the extent of their torture, not in the least bit because he felt every anguish and pain as if it were his own while he was so deep within the slave's mind.
He was forced to withdraw for his own sanity before her pain drove him mad. It was with a soft gasp that he brought himself back into reality and he stared, for a long minute, at her while his fingers were still linked with hers.
Yet she said nothing, her scarred lips pressed into a thin line that refused to budge any words for him. Then, the noisy stumbling of feet and shouts came from outside the room and he stepped from her. In one fluid movement he slipped away, dodging Sylaise's followers that had returned from her festivities with ease for he had spent years tricking and finding his way into places that he shouldn't.
Fen'Harel's demeanour was different after Sylaise's temple. Rather than to say that he was entirely disturbed, a great deal of it was curiosity. Where before he'd viewed the abuses slaves suffered through blinded eyes, now he began to notice it.
His gaze trained on the scars and fear dotted over the skin and expressions of those in servitude to others, and his mind did not know what to do with the information. Combined with how his connection to the Fade had been frayed temporarily, even if healed in its entirety now, it put him in a strange mood when he walked through his eluvian and into his home.
So caught up in his own thoughts he had become, that he didn't even notice the person he walked into until it was too late. One of his slaves, a woman who'd been given to him by own of his followers decades ago, startled and threw herself to her knees before him, her body quivering as she bowed before him. And yet he only frowned.
Head tilting to the side, he stared at her for a long moment, lips pulled into a thin line and his pale blue eyes dancing over her body. Where before he would have shoved her away in frustration that she got in his way, now he hesitated. His gaze, before so impassive and self consumed, now travelled over her body, found the scars etched into her flesh from where her clothing did not adequately cover her.
He had not inflicted them upon her himself, his follower who had owned her before was likely the one who'd given her the tight angry marks on her flesh. And yet he felt something for the first time then that he hadn't before.
He wondered at what it would have felt like to receive the wounds, the whip against her back or the torture of magic.
What he came to realise in that moment was something that had been a foreign concept to him for so many years. Consumed in his own arrogance and concern for only himself, he'd been ignorant and selfish for so long.
The feeling he felt was empathy. And it scared him.
For all the people that took slaves to their beds, he had convinced himself he was better than the rest. Mythal's disapproval towards his actions against Lauriel and his other female slaves frustrated him and he lived in a state of convenient denial that his actions were not wrong.
Yet after Sylaise's temple, his gaze lingered on the scars marking Lauriel's flesh that night, and even after when she pulled on her clothes with an angry look painting her features, he felt words well up in his throat before he could think to stop them.
"Did Andruil's people ever torture you?"
Her body became rigid and hostile, and when her gaze flickered to him, her eyes narrowed and burnt with a hatred he realised quite quickly was directed at him.
"Why would you care?" she spat and when his brow furrowed in confusion she continued with, "How could care when you spend so many evenings taking what isn't yours to have?"
When he graced her with no reply, she added, hotly, "Of course Andruil and her people tortured me. Did you expect any different?"
"I didn't think-" he started but she interrupted him, turning on the bed to face him so that he didn't have a choice but stare at the loathing etched into her features.
"No, you never thought, did you, or else you wouldn't keep slaves the same as the rest."
"It is normal," he protested and part of him knew deep down that hardly justified it, but how long had he spent doing the same as everyone else that he'd stopped wondering if the ordinary was wrong?
"That does not make it acceptable," she spat. "That does not make it right that you keep other people beneath you as if they are your possessions. You, who would loathe at anyone that might bind a spirit, but condone the same treatment for a person."
"You're not-" he started but the words died in his throat because he couldn't voice them and yet she finished the sentence for him with perfect accuracy.
"Not what? Not a person? How could I be when I am only a possession for you to use as you see fit." A pause for a moment as she held his gaze, steady and unmoving before she added, bitterly, "Do you want to know what it's like?"
With her hand held out in the air in offering she added, quietly but firmly, "I will show you if you are so curious."
For a long moment he hesitated. The choice before him was one he knew he'd take and yet it was still difficult, as if placing his palm against hers was a wilful act to shatter the world he'd come to know as normal. Yet his skin still pressed against hers, their hands touching and magic seeping from her and into him.
She did not simply shake his understanding of what he thought was normal. She tore it apart and brutalized it, jarred everything he thought was real until he was only left with mangled broken bits to piece together his world with.
Through painful detail she forced him to see her memories, every torture and pain inflicted upon her while she'd been Andruil's possession, and the disgust she'd felt every time he took her to bed while she'd been his. It shocked him, threw his perception of reality into turmoil and he wrenched himself from her thoughts with such force that his mind throbbed for minutes afterwards. He panted; a hand pressed to his forehead as he doubled over on the bed and heaved for breath.
"I should almost pity you, if you weren't such a loathsome creature." The strength to glance up at her for her words failed him, yet he still heard every utter from her lips with painful accuracy as she added, "Do you even realise how every person you keep as your possession despises you? How it is only the threat that you would kill them that stops them from spitting at you every time you pass by?"
"I am not as bad as the others," he offered weakly and it earned him a dry, bitter chuckle from her lips.
"That excuses nothing. You can justify your actions however you want to make you sleep better at night." A pause for a moment as she slipped from his bed and made towards his door, and then she continued, pointedly, with, "But you will never know what it is for someone to care for you, you will never know love. And far less would you ever deserve it."
Her words cut him far deeper, and for so many years longer, than even she would ever realise.
It was alone in his room that evening that his mind tortured him. The revelation that if not for his slaves, he had no one that he could even pretend cared. Certainly not his followers, who only lapped at the power he offered like mindless dogs, and far less any of his own kin. He could not even claim that Mythal cared while she still loathed him so for his actions against his slaves.
It was the realisation then that he had no one, that he was stuck between worlds and belonging to neither that broke him. And he stared for so long at his hands, at his fingers that had hurt so many and his mind in turmoil because he couldn't even begin to think of what to do.
Lauriel's words shook him for days and he became detached and pensive, locked in his room but for the need to eat and ignoring every slave that still served him in his home. Fen'Harel tried to convince himself it wasn't guilt that nagged at him but the longer he denied it the worse it became, until he stood and began stalking through the corridors of his home with the palm of his hand pressed to his forehead.
It was passing beside the kitchens, so disjointed and jarred by Lauriel's words, that his fragile resolve was shattered beyond repair.
It came in the sound of tearful sobs slipping out from a door left ajar.
Fen'Harel paused, his angular ears twitching at the sound. It was hardly foreign to him; dozens of his slaves had burst into tears before while cowering before him. And yet now he genuinely cared why.
He pushed the door open to find Lauriel knelt on the floor in the kitchens, weeping in the arms of another slave that he realised then must have been her lover. They did not notice the god at first so he watched, silently and with his brow pulled into a frown, as he heard the words that spilled from her lips. Beside her there was a bucket and judging by the smell he guessed someone had retched into it not too long ago.
"I can't," Lauriel started as her lover's hands ran circles over her back in a meagre attempt at comfort. "If it's his, they'll kill me on principle and if it's yours..." She paused, her eyes red and bloodshot from her tears. "How could you bring a child into this life knowing what they'd suffer?"
"You are pregnant?" Fen'Harel blurted and his interruption drew their attention to him.
Lauriel scowled at him, her lips dripping with venom when she retorted with, "Yes, master."
A long moment of silence stretched within the room. She knew as much as Fen'Harel himself the consequences that would befall her if it was his child that she bore. Elgar'nan had never shown leniency in the past, and far less would change now. The thought of it scared the rebel god enough that any attempt to speak died in his throat, and his silence eventually brought an angry sneer to Laurel's lips.
In moments she was pushing herself to her feet and fleeing the room. Her slave lover followed without hesitation but Fen'Harel paused for a split second before doing the same. Through the corridors and passages of his home he eventually followed, past slaves that threw themselves to their knees at his passing yet he ignored them in that moment.
She ran to the balcony that overlooked the cliffside his home was built against and it was there that she paused, her toes curled over the edge of the platform as her eyes gazed out over the expanse before her. So dangerously close to falling over the edge that her lover called out, distraught and made to move towards her but hesitated when he saw how it only made her inch closer to the fall.
"Please," her lover begged but she shook her head.
"I'm sorry," she whispered in return. Fen'Harel's lips parted to beg her to stop, but his moment's hesitation was enough to push her to the action that broke the remains of his control.
She tipped over the edge, her clothes catching in the wind as she fell and Fen'Harel watched, second by second, as she was lost to the world in a pointless waste of life. It was the first time he'd cared enough to consider a slave's existence worth anything other than a meaningless possession to him. It was the first time he'd cared at all, even if it was fleeting and small, and it was such a stark change from his indifference that had persisted for centuries that he staggered backwards until he hit the wall of his home.
Pressed against the cold stone, his lips parted and brow furrowed at the twisting pain that clawed at his heart. For the first time, he recognised the feeling of guilt over her death and the emotion cascaded and snowballed with what he'd already been mulling over since Sylaise's temple. It picked up every act and injustice that he'd perpetrated over the centuries until it overwhelmed him and a pained, agonised gasp tore from his throat as it finally became completely apparent to him how wrong his actions had been.
He was so stunned by the revelation that when Lauriel's lover lunged at him, magic sparking at his fingertips, Fen'Harel only deflected it with a split second to spare. The other man snarled, made to attack him again but the god sent him crushing to the ground with a twist of magic from his fingers.
"Get out," Fen'Harel snapped, his voice wavering and cracking to anguish. "Leave, and do not ever return."
And the god pushed himself to his feet and turned on his heel, stalked through every corridor and room of his home and shouted at every slave that cowered and knelt before him. He yelled at them to leave, to where he didn't care so long as they weren't his anymore. They started in surprise for the most part, but then slowly they gathered their nerve and ran.
Later that evening, when his home was cold and bare but for him, Fen'Harel collapsed to his knees in his quarters. It was there, cradling his head in his hands and shaking as his guilt lashed and flayed at him, that he realised the weight of his actions over centuries. He changed that night for the better of every life he'd abused and wasted.
But the beast changed for the worse. It fed and nurtured itself off his guilt and anguish, and as each life he'd mistreated flashed before his eyes, he lost another fragment of himself to the wolf until he was barely clinging to his control at all. His fingers, what usually were so long and slender became twisted pointed claws, teeth sharpening into fangs and his eyes flashing as his mind slipped into insanity. He lost control over himself for the first time that day, succumbed to the wolf inside him for minutes before he reined it in again.
What was once his pride had now become his curse. And it was that day, for his bowing to the twisted beast within; that he earned the title the people would label him with for centuries.
Dread Wolf.
With legs that felt like lead, he pulled himself through Mythal's temple with thoughts scattered and his mind torturing him. He was broken by his guilt and she saw it painted so thickly over his features the moment he stepped towards her.
"Fen'Harel," she started and he pursed his lips, eyes narrowed to fight back his anguish and he was falling into her arms before he knew it, his forehead buried into the fabric of her robes and his body shaking.
"I-" he started but he didn't have any words to offer that did justice to the realisation he had been granted.
"You finally understand," she pieced together softly and her hands rubbing against his shoulders felt wrong and dirty, as if he didn't deserve it for what he'd done. And truly he did not deserve it.
When her fingers curled around his jaw and tangled in his thick hair, he found the strength to lift his gaze to hers and whisper, "What have I done?"
"No worse than any other noble or god in our empire." She paused for a moment, her thumb trailing over his cheekbone and he leant into her touch because he was selfish and he needed the comfort more than he'd earned it. "But you always had the ability to see what you did was wrong."
"Why?" he started brokenly. "How?"
"Because it is what you are. Your name always meant noble struggle, did it not?" But how he'd pretended that it didn't for so long, ignored the meaning behind it while his pride and arrogance had consumed him. "Rebellion could only conform to the norm so long before he would see the horror before his eyes."
"The slaves, I have to-" A pause as realisation dawned on him that the only ones that cared about the lives of the oppressed stood alone in that room in that moment. "The others, they would never see."
"They may not," Mythal agreed softly and he saw in her features the frustration of a woman who'd spent years alone in her opinions with no one on her side. "But to have someone who fights on their side is leagues above what the slaves had before."
For a moment he thought he could, but when he felt the feral animal inside him seething and lashing for dominance he shook his head and pulled from her embrace. "I can't, the wolf in me – it is twisted and vile." As if it were reacting to his words he felt the rage bubble up inside him, his eyes flashing as he pinched his brow and tried to push it down and control it. "It lashes against everything," he added softly, "Friend or foe."
"Did you think it would be easy? You are not absolved of your fault so readily." With a heavy sigh he reined it in and glanced up at Mythal as she spoke. "The beast fights because it feeds off your guilt. You will learn how to control it, for the sake of those you hurt."
Pale blue eyes widened at her suggestion as he said, "How can I tame it but to insult the memory of those I broke by ignoring my guilt?"
"I did not say ignore it," she chided with a faint glower. "There is a difference between wallowing in your shame and using it to do better."
For a long moment he was silent and she stroked his cheek, gently and reassuring but her touch felt wrong and tainted from his actions. Yet still he reached up and curled his hand around her wrist, begging that she not stop because he needed the affection even if he hadn't earned it.
"Why did you never tell me?" he whispered eventually and his brow pulled together into a pensive, self loathing frown.
"Fen'Harel," she started with a small shake of her head, "I shouted for years and only had my words fall on your deaf ears."
"I-" A pause for a moment as he found the strength to whisper the words he owed to so many people. "I am sorry."
"Good." In her features, he saw the flash of hard approval. "That is a start."
In her temple that evening, he wept. For himself the tears fell, for his hatred and self loathing that would eat away at him relentlessly for years. But more than that, they fell for the hundreds that he owed a debt he could never truly repay.
He would be better than his past.
Epilogue
Not a word passed between her lips.
Yet the longer he stared, the longer he gazed into her violet eyes, the more he wondered. Dancing in her features was the simmering fury of someone who had known true and pure hatred for another being.
At the walls she fixated her vision, unmoving and silent as he knelt beside her and dipped cloth into a bowl of water. Her skin was bloody from when they'd confronted her master, but the bright red stains against her arms was not her own.
She'd been silent and still for the most part when they'd tried to free her and the other slaves, Suledin did not need to see the brands on her skin to tell her connection to her magic had been dampened. Yet even in spite of how her emotions and feelings were dulled and suppressed, the moment she'd seen them move to apprehend her master, she'd lunged on the distraction. With a broken piece of glass she'd stabbed at her master's thigh, coating her clothes and arms in blood that had since dried onto her skin.
And it was he that now knelt before her and wiped, gently, at the scarlet staining her. She did not move in disapproval or thanks, she simply sat and stared as he cleaned her with his fine brow furrowed and lips pursed into a thin line.
For minutes he attended to her until she was cleaned of the blood, and then he offered her new clothes to replace the tattered ragged ones she wore as a slave. A long moment passed as she stared at the plain but well crafted dress and when she made no effort to take it from him, he placed the clothes on the floor and stepped back.
Until his back almost hit the wall of the room he retreated, his fingers toying idly in his long brown braid until her palm eventually ran slowly over the material. Her gaze, such a bright violet even despite her inability to effectively express her feelings, flickered up to him for a slight moment as if for consent. A gentle incline of his head was all it took to break her hesitation, and she slipped into the clean clothes quickly while he obliged her the privacy of looking away.
Then, with her body draped in fresh clothes he gestured his head towards the door.
"She wants to see you," he told her gently and her copper brow furrowed for a moment before she followed him from the room.
Through Mythal's temple he led her, past the stares and whispers of his fellow sentinels and priests – for the very idea of branding another being made them uncomfortable – until they reached the chamber where his goddess stood.
The woman, whose hair flashed copper in the light, threw herself to the floor before Mythal the way a slave would and the goddess sighed, softly, and stepped towards her.
"Do not bow to me, da'len," Mythal chided and it took a long painfully silent moment before the other woman raised her head to stare into the goddess' eyes.
Suledin's superior scowled in the corner, he was the one who had personally led the assault on the copper haired woman's master for his injustice towards his slaves while he claimed lip service to Mythal. For all his disgust of how the people he had rescued had been treated, Abelas found the woman kneeling before them unpleasant. Though through no fault of her own, Suledin was quite aware that the other sentinel abhorred the idea of dampening another's connection to the Fade, and what had been done to the woman disgusted Abelas enough that he could not look at her without clenching his fists in anger.
"I hear you attacked your master," Mythal started gently even as the other woman's eyes fell to the floor once more. "Even without the brand, few slaves would be so brave."
Her words brought little reaction yet Suledin knew the goddess saw more than either he or Abelas did, for her lips tugged into a small smirk.
"You're quite stubborn, aren't you?" Mythal continued, her voice laced with curiosity and intrigue. "I almost doubt anyone could truly ever suppress your willpower."
It happened in the blink of an eye, and he almost wondered if he'd imagined it, but the slave woman's mouth curled into a grin for the briefest of moments before falling back into a hard stare. The goddess, however, laughed, the rich noise echoing throughout the room before Abelas stepped forward, his arms crossed over his chest and features set hard in a frown.
"What do you intend to do with her? You do not plan to keep her-" the sentinel paused for a moment, his gaze moving to the slave woman almost painfully so for a moment, "here, do you?"
"I may." The goddess tilted her head at the other woman. "I am thinking that the only thing that stopped you fighting against your oppression is the brand on your magic. And even then..."
Crouching beside her, Mythal's fingers swept out and cupped the slave's features, her touch gentle but curious as she raised her chin to gaze into her purple eyes. "You're fighting it on the inside, seething at everyone who you used you even if you can't act on it," the goddess continued. "What is your name?"
"She refuses to talk-" Suledin interrupted but his goddess dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
Moments passed as Mythal stared at the other woman, their gazes locked and eyes narrowed where silent words slipped between them in little more than a stare. Eventually the goddess' touch slipped from the slave's face, and it was then that it happened.
Barely more than a furrow of her brow, a crease of determination and part of her lips and Suledin heard, for the first time, speech well up in her throat to break the way she'd been mute the entire time he'd attended to her.
The word the slave woman offered was not much, a name and little more, but to one who lived in a grey world devoid of emotion, it would have been everything to her.
"Lavellan."