[A/N: A companion fic/spiritual sequel to And Rise. The two fics aren't connected in any way beyond concept and pairings, but I feel they go together (hence the titles). And Fall will update once a day.]

And Fall: Chapter 1

Early autumn. The ground was hard-packed and dusted with frost, the trees thin enough to move through, the moon high enough to see by. There was scent on the air, tracing a path ever closer to the mountains.

She followed it. Nearly half a mile out, the smell of cooking meat and camp fires came on the wind. Closer still and the softest sounds followed, the hiss of urine into pine needle beds, the crunch of boots on soil as wood was gathered.

When she broke the treeline, people's voices rose in cries, shouts and ululations that had no meaning to the ears. Closer. Closer still, and then there was blood and meat, bones to crack and windpipes to crush. It was exhilarating, a part of living, and it seemed nearly endless, the parade of humans on two legs, and then on three, and finally on none. The camp was spread wide through the trees, and finding the last of them was the greatest part of the hunt; catching them in claws and teeth was the culmination of a grand pursuit.

And then all was quiet.

Prowling between the tents to gather the meal took the rest of the night, and it was a soothing sort of job, a soothing sort of focus. Her blood no longer seemed to burn as hot, as needy, and slowly the smells on the air began to lessen in their brightness, the moonlight to dim, the pounding hunger to subside. She settled, licking at the few wounds along her flank, cleaning the matted, bloody fur with careful precision.

Near dawn, there was a howl, followed by another, and then they approached, scavengers seeking her kill. She growled, rising to her full height, and they cowered. One whined as it retreated. Another looked to leap, and she snapped at it.

They left.

The sun rose, and she settled down for a well-earned rest.

It was early evening, the sun sinking below the trees. There was no rustle of wind or creak of branches, no shifting of bodies, no crying of birds. Cauthrien, former knight of Ferelden and exile in her own land, did her best not to mark it; there could be no hesitating, not here, not now.

Her people were under siege, and if the Crown would not send aid, then she would do what she could in its stead.

She pressed forward, away from the small village, north in tandem with the spine of the towering Frostbacks. The wind was chill in the early autumn, the temperature dropping with the sun, and she pulled her fur-lined cloak up higher and tighter. It was ratty and the fur was missing in patches, but it was all she had, and it would do. It would do as she would do - out of necessity, out of the inevitability of what it had been made to.

The attacks had started four months ago. They had been small, then - a lamb stolen, chickens, a storehouse ransacked for food. Her neighbors, when they had deigned talk to the disgraced and disarmed woman who had settled amongst them when there was nowhere else to go, had treated it with all the resignation of a people used to theft and abuse. They had sounded, she thought, like her father when she was still a girl, always expecting the next crop failure, the next too-heavy tax.

But with each passing month the attackers - bandits, she knew now, bandits seated out in the foothills where the trees grew thicker still and the snows began at the end of August - grew bolder, took more, gloried in each push. Buildings were burned. The mill's water wheel had been shattered. And now, on the eve of the harvest, the village waited with what few weapons they could scrounge from farm tools and personal armaments for what they all expected to be the worst yet.

And the Crown sent no help.

They had gone first to the local Bann, but he had been unable to spare men, not so soon after the Blight. A rider had gone to Redcliffe, then, to seek Arl Eamon's aid while Cauthrien grit her teeth and held her tongue. Arl Eamon was in Denerim. Arl Eamon had left no aid to be sent so far afield.

And Denerim's response had been the same: no, we cannot. In another life, Cauthrien would have fought it, would have been able to push for at least a small team to be sent to the little village. As it was, she could no longer so much as carry a sword or wear more than boiled leather. She and her legacy were the other Blight upon the town, and the men and women she wanted nothing more than to help had turned her away when she had offered to train their militia.

She followed a dream, now. She had been reduced to visions and auguries, things which she had never put faith in but had watched lead others astray. But what else could she do? Wait in the little hovel of a home the town had allowed her with a broom for when they returned? So when the dream came that whispered of help in the forest, she had donned her warmest clothing, packed a satchel of food, and left.

Instinct drove her forward, instinct she had never thought she had. The path in the forest was not one made by men, but she followed it unerringly, never losing the trail and never feeling for a moment lost or turned around. She tried to shake the feeling of being watched, the ghostly sound of laughter in the soundless trees. She walked until the sun set and the land grew dark.

The air grew colder. The light of the moon, where it filtered silver through the branches, began to turn blue and milky. She blinked her eyes to clear what must have been exhaustion from them and her breath hissed steaming from her lips. There was a thrum in the air, shivering into her even through her many layers.

There was a quiet laugh, and this time she could not ignore it.

She spun on her heel, hand on the dagger at her hip. It was the only weapon she was allowed to carry in her disgrace, and she slid it from its sheathe as her eyes scanned the was no movement, no catch of the light on a shadow.

But there was a voice, sliding from the shadows and settling around her throat.

"Looking for something, little knight?"

Cauthrien's heart tightened and steeled, and she turned again, looking for the source, for the woman that voice surely had to come from. "I-" she said, the only sound she could make before her breath caught. From the shadows came a figure strolling, naked but for chains and the drape of furs and silks around her waist. Her lips were in the smallest smile, her eyes lidded, and her head was wreathed in flames.

Cauthrien took a step back, lifting her dagger.

"Stay back, beast," she said, and the demon laughed, a low and silken sound that threatened to wind around Cauthrien and smother her to silence.

"Beast?" She took another step, though her feet made no sound and she slid as if drifting. "How cruel. Here I've come to offer you that which you crave."

"I will not bargain with you," Cauthrien bit out. She was no devout Andrastian, but nothing good could come of dealing with a demon, of bargaining with herself with something more and less than a man. She was certain. She was tempered metal that would not give.

The demon only laughed.

"Won't you? You came when I called." The demon canted her head, quirking a brow. Her hands slid down along her body in idle patterns, fingers twisting into the fur draped over her legs. Cauthrien tried not to watch and tried not to think of the dream that had driven her forward. The bandits, chased from the town- the people, rejoicing in their safety, welcoming her at last-

"I- that-"

The demon reached out and clasped the blade of Cauthrien's dagger between her palms. She turned it aside and down, and then released it to stroke her knuckles over Cauthrien's cheek. "You came," the demon murmured. "You came so that you could protect your home. Isn't that right, little knight?"

It's not my home, she wanted to say, but all she could do was nod, mute and leaning towards the demon's touch, chill and warm together.

"You want to protect your home," the demon purred again, coming close enough that Cauthrien could feel the weight of her body brushing against hers. "But you've made promises to others, haven't you, that stop you cold? You say you won't bargain, but you're so very good at taking orders and kneeling to direction. Isn't this better still? I can give you what you want."

"And you?" Cauthrien breathed, muscles tensed but hand trembling on the hilt of her knife. It would be so easy to kill the demon, to fit the blade up beneath her ribs, but her body refused to obey.

"No need to worry about that," the demon laughed, hand settling onto Cauthrien's hip. "You'll hardly notice the cost, I assure you."

"Tell me." Cauthrien's voice was strained and quiet, and she swallowed. A step back. Just a step back-

The demon rolled her shoulders, a languid shrug. "I can't leave this place," the demon said, and she looked behind Cauthrien to the flashes of mountain through the branches. "But if you let me help you, I will see through your eyes on occasion."

That made Cauthrien jerk back, shake her head and lift her blade. "I will not give you my body, demon."

"I do not ask you for your body." The demon did not follow, merely watched and beckoned with a crooked hand. "I can't have your body. But your eyes- oh, your eyes, just on occasion, just when you let me in. Those I would have. And in return, you will save your new home without raising a blade. Such a small cost. Such a large gain. Isn't this better than taking orders? Isn't this better than surrendering everything that you are?"

Cauthrien swallowed as if around a stone. It was so easy to approach her again, and so easy to nod.

"I will save them? I will protect them?"

"Yes."

"And I'll still be- me?"

The demon inclined her head, reached up a hand to trace a thumb over Cauthrien's lips. "You will still be you, as you are meant to be."

She took a deep, stammering breath. It was almost the harvest, and the bandits would return. The Crown would do nothing. She would keep her vows- and she would protect them all.

Perhaps they would even call her neighbor by the end of it.

"I accept your deal."

Her last thought was only please protect them.

Cauthrien woke curled on her side, the noon-day sun streaming down through the leaves above and her limbs tight and aching from the cold. She frowned, shifting and rolling onto her back. The shot of dull pain at her hip and the chill of the soil against her bare skin made her gasp, and she struggled to her feet.

Her bare feet. She wore not a scrap of clothing, her skin only hidden by streaks of soil and blood. Her thigh throbbed, and a halting touch revealed thick bruises and the slash of a sword, shallow and scabbed over. She lifted her eyes slowly.

In front of her was a tent, ground before it furrowed and the fabric of it torn and stained. She turned. More tents- more hints of struggle, of attack. She fought to remember the night before, the trip into the woods, the moonlight, the trek north.

The demon, her lips cold on Cauthrien's own, and then-

Nothing.

She swallowed, then coughed, gagging at the sudden flare of copper on her tongue. She dropped to her knees, retching dry and heaving for breath. Blood. Blood on her skin and in her mouth, and a ruined camp.

She stayed shaking and hunched for what seemed like an eternity, an eternity where she refused to move as if moving would make it more real. But the cold finally seeped too deep and, shivering, she stumbled to her feet and made for the closest tent, searching for clothing. The trousers were too small, but the shirt fit her frame, and the blanket made a good cloak. There was bread there, too, and a wineskin, and she ate and drank her fill to wash the taste of blood from her mouth.

She found boots in the next tent, a fur hat, a dagger. But in the next and the next, she found nothing but blood and scraps of flesh. Her stomach churned. She pressed on.

In the sixth tent, she found her neighbor's sword, stolen in the most recent raid.

In the eighth, she found a child, dead with its throat ripped out.

She gave up after the tenth. She picked her way through the rest of the camp, a camp dotted with the dead and half-eaten bandits. There was only silence beneath the overwhelming pounding of her blood.

A beast had destroyed these people, had torn them apart like so much meat with teeth and claws.

And that beast had been her.