Note:
Because apparently I have a flagrant disregard for canon - what if Lavellan met Cullen before the events of Inquisition?
Clan Lavellan is camping in the mountains near Kirkwall when Eleri Lavellan encounters Cullen. Shenanigans ensue, a friendship is forged, and maybe something more.
This will be a multi-chapter story featuring some pretty graphic violence at times and, eventually, smut. Also brief appearances from some familiar faces.
The Vinmark Mountains were cloaked in fog, a thick blanket that smothered the peaks, making the landscape appear flat and featureless. The early evening sun, determined to be noticed, pushed its light through the haze, casting the mountain range in a sickly, sallow glow. Gullies and crags were hidden under the impenetrable shroud, making the mountain paths impassable save for the exceptionally brave (or immensely foolish).
Careful feet picked their way across a narrow ridge as a lone elf made her way through the mountains. The rocky ground had been left treacherously slick by weeks of persistent rain and Eleri took small, tentative steps as she followed the crest of the ridge, wary that any misstep would send her ricocheting off sharp stone to the valley below. On either side of her, the ground dipped into nothingness, the pitted earth swallowed by thick fog. Idly, she wondered how far she would fall should she stumble, how far until she became acquainted with the jagged rocks she knew to be lurking in the impenetrable greyness. A dark part of her mind, the part born from a childhood delighting in ghost stories and haunting melodies, wondered whether she could fall all the way to the Deep Roads, where darkspawn and other, fouler, unknowable things lurked.
It had perhaps been foolish of her to venture from the Dalish encampment in such terrible weather just to collect some herbs. But Eleri was a confident pathfinder and she'd wanted to gather as many specimens as possible while the temperature held. The heavy rain and rolling fog was a clear indication that Autumn had arrived in earnest and it wouldn't be long before the temperature dropped too low and she was unable to harvest the herbs she wanted for another year. As the healer of her clan, it was her responsibility to ensure that she had enough medicine on hand and she was concerned that her stocks had fallen perilously low. It had been a tough summer for Clan Lavellan; crimson fever had struck in early Bloomingtide, spreading rapidly through their numbers until nearly the whole clan was affected. They had been lucky to lose only two of their number but the outbreak had exhausted almost all of Eleri's supplies and had kept the clan camped in the mountains near Kirkwall far longer than they'd planned.
The delay to their departure was causing significant unrest. The clan had never intended on coming so close to Kirkwall in the first place, had hoped instead to cross the Vinmark Mountain range from the Planasene Forest into Wildervale in the spring. But bandits, taking advantage of the widespread unrest brought about by the fighting between the mages and Templars, had made a stronghold in the mountains and were now terrorising the neighbouring regions, capturing elves to take north to the slave markets of Minrathous. And so the clan had been forced to stick to the coastal paths, following the sea until they'd reached Kirkwall.
Beset by dragons, Qunari attack and a bloody mage uprising, Kirkwall was seen by many among Clan Lavellan to be a cursed place. They'd planned to travel north quickly, crossing the mountains on the eastern side of the city and then onward to Starkhaven. But then the fever had struck and the elves had been forced to remain until all were fit to travel.
When she reached the end of the ridge, Eleri found herself on a wide plateau, covered in tawny tufts of grass and tangled clumps of brambles. The fog was mercifully less dense here and she could see a little wooded area up ahead, thick dark branches clawing through the fog like the outstretched arms of drowning men. She knew the camp was just on the other side of the small forest and she hurried her pace, an expectant smile tugging at the corner of her mouth; she would soon be back in her tent with her furs and a steaming cup of tea.
As she neared the copse of trees, she was unexpectedly struck by a foul smell, the rancid, fetid, clawing smell of burning flesh. She stilled, suddenly wary, and peered into the haze in search of an approaching threat, hand poised to reach for her bow should she need to defend herself. But the fog still veiled the mountainside in secrecy and, unable to determine the source of the smell, Eleri was forced to continue on.
As she entered the forest, the smell only intensified, clawing at the inside of her nose until the skin felt raw. Weaving through the trees, stepping over roots and ducking under sagging, black boughs, Eleri felt a growing uneasiness, an unshakeable sense of wrongness. The air was unnaturally still here, soundless and dense, like the whole forest was holding its breath.
When she felt something cold and smooth beneath her bare feet, she looked down to see her toes resting on the blood-stained blade of a great-sword, partially obscured by a hulking tree root. She furrowed her brow in confusion; odd to find a bloodied weapon without any apparent owner. Spurned by curiosity, she dropped to her haunches and reached out to pry the sword from the waterlogged earth, pushing firmly against the root to lift it from atop the blade. She was surprised at how readily the root yielded when she pushed, how it crumbled, dry and brittle, against her palm.
Suddenly she snatched her hand back and stumbled hastily to her feet. The tree root bore a face; two hollow eye sockets sitting atop a gaping mouth, contorted in pain and stretched impossibly wide. Eleri felt her stomach drop as it slowly dawned on her that it was not a root at all but the black, charred remains of a man at her feet.
Though burnt and blackened beyond recognition, Eleri could see that the man was wearing Templar armour. The steel was melted and warped, fusing with the flesh in a ghastly union of man and metal, but she could still make out the distinctive symbol of the Templar order upon his chest.
Eleri had seen a lot of dead Templars over the last year, bodies burnt or frozen or crushed into bloody, boneless heaps. While her clan tried to avoid the brutal civil war between mages and Templars as much as possible, there were few places left untouched by bloodshed and Eleri had become accustomed to seeing the forgotten dead for both sides.
As she gingerly continued her way through the wood, Eleri saw that the forest floor was peppered with corpses. Several more burnt Templars lay bent upon the ground, their limbs contorted at hideous, inhuman angles, their faces crumpled in pain. And there were a few mages too, their robes proving poor protection against piercing thrusts from the Templars' great-swords. A dead mage woman, barely out of her teens, lay propped against a sturdy tree trunk, fingers probing at a deep gash across her abdomen. She'd been crying – her tears had left clean streaks across her muddy cheeks – and her eyes were wide with shock, as if startled by the discovery that being stabbed hurt.
Eleri stopped and stared at the small, broken woman for a time, wondered what someone so young could have possibly done to invoke so much hatred, until she was pulled from her contemplation by a quiet snuffling sound. At first she thought it was the rustling of the wind through crumpled leaves and tangled branches. But the air was still strangely stagnant and the dark boughs curling above her were eerily motionless. Following her keen elven hearing, Eleri wound her way through the trees until she came across a young Templar sprawled upon the mud.
Face pale and lips spattered in blood, she would have assumed he was just as dead as his former comrades had she not noticed the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. His Templar skirts were thoroughly singed but the rest of him seemed relatively unscathed, suggesting a very close call with the same fire-wielding mage who had made quick work of his companions. Blood poured persistently from a wound on his left shoulder, seeping through the crack between pauldron and chest-plate, and dribbling in a crimson web across his torso.
For a brief moment she thought about leaving him, returning home to warm herself with a nice cup of tea while he lay alone in the cold and took his last, few, shallow breaths. After all, the untimely demise of a Templar shem was of little concern to her. But she quickly banished those cruel thoughts; she was a healer and she would do her best to save him, shem or not.
Kneeling in the mud at his side, she carefully removed his pauldron and chest-plate with slender, nimble fingers. The tunic underneath was adorned with a blossoming patch of scarlet and she hissed softly at the sight of the jagged gash darting from arm-pit to collar bone. She leant forward to get a better view, prodded the wound gently. It was relatively shallow, a dagger then rather than a sword, but it had been twisted as it was driven into soft flesh, rending apart skin and sinew. Whoever had stabbed him had wanted it to sting.
She reached into the brown leather satchel which hung from her shoulder and pulled out a handful of embrium. She worked the leaves between her fingertips then packed them into his wound to stave off infection. Then she ripped of a section of his skirt that was untouched by fire and used that as a makeshift bandage, tying it securely around his shoulder to stem the bleeding.
"You better not die," she said, voice dark but with a hint of teasing, "because I walked three hours to find embrium specimens this good and I fully expect you to repay me." She took his silence as acquiescence to her demand, smiled perversely as she gave him a brisk nod.
Satisfied that he wasn't going to imminently bleed out on her, Eleri took off at a sprint through the forest. She knew she wouldn't be able to carry a fully-grown and heavily-armoured man back to camp; she would need to rally the help of her clan to get him home. Of course some would object, tell her that the premature death of a belligerent shem was probably a good thing, but she had great faith in her clan and knew that most would be willing to offer their help to one in need. Or at least she hoped they would.