A/N: Welcome, Dear Readers! Thank you for taking the time to click on this story.
I'm extremely new to this fandom - I got "Inquisition" for my birthday at the end of September and I have not been able to stop playing it! I have not played the earlier games in the series. My Inquisitor is a rogue elven archer who accidentally got (me) irrevocably caught up in a Solasmance.
This first one-shot is my honest wish that the Token of the Packmaster accessory actually called a wolf companion for the Inquisitor that would follow him/her everywhere, help out in battle, and live in Skyhold.
Disclaimer: I am not a student of the elven language. Resources are few. I've chosen the Tel'Quessir dialect from the Forgotten Realms campaign of Dungeons & Dragons to flesh out my stories. Still, I will probably mess up. I beg your forgiveness and tolerance.
Also disclaimer: I have never tried to write in iambic pentameter before. My effort there probably fell a little short, too. (I'm so sorry, Solas!)
"Little Brother" is dedicated to Blackpantherlilies. Panther, this is all your fault. If you hadn't raved so much about this game, I would never have considered playing it. But you were right. I fell in love with it. Thanks for inviting me into your fandom. Love you, girl!
Dragon Age: Inquisition
© BioWare
Solas: You train to flick a dagger or an arrow to its target. The grace with which you move is a pleasing side benefit. You have chosen a path whose steps you do not dislike because it leads to a destination you enjoy. As have I.
Lavellan: So you're suggesting I'm graceful?
Solas: No, I am declaring it. It was not a subject for debate.
~ Dragon Age: Inquisition, 2014
Little Brother
The black wolves of the Dales. Proud. Cunning. Bear-like. Perpetually hungry. They roamed in tight packs all over the Frostback Mountains, driven to unnatural aggression due to the disruptions in the Veil. Their ravenous howls announced the frosty dawn, echoing from peak to peak and causing a ripple of fear to pass through the ranks of Haven's survivors.
"Scout to the north," Solas had said. "Be their guide."
He hadn't offered advice on getting safely through the wolf-infested forest. The howling swirled around Iralen like flurries of snow. She stopped to rest, her feet ice-cold, her bruised ribs sending fire through her throat with each labored breath. She tried not to let it show, though she wasn't fooling Cassandra. The Seeker's eyes tracked her with suspicion, but there was respect there, too. Cassandra let her be, so long as she stayed where everyone could see her. Iralen held her sprained wrist close, fighting to keep her countenance as impassive as the rocks.
Glancing back the way she had come, she could see her fellow Chantry heretics straggling behind her like a trail of dead leaves in the snow. They carried their meager supplies on their backs, prodding complaining, laden gurns uphill, pulling the wounded and dying on makeshift travois. Weak human moans filled the early silence in between fresh wolf howls. The people marched doggedly along in her footprints, the exposed skin of their faces and hands red and chapped. It did not occur to any of them to question her assumed leadership. To them, she was a light in the darkness.
Iralen shuddered, reminded of the night Mother Giselle had begun singing. Mysterious Leliana had been first to harmonize with the Revered Mother, and then staid Cullen had joined in, his faith lighting up his tired face. Every Haven survivor knew the words to the hymn, though, of course, Iralen did not. They had knelt before her with clasped hands, their Lady Lavellan, so-called Herald of Andraste, singing a prayer to their Maker at her as if she was a living idol. As if she could answer their prayers.
If she hadn't been injured, would she have broken and run from them? The humans' devotion, poured out at her feet in glorious song, had physically hurt her, just as getting her legs kicked out from under her by an avalanche and falling in that damn hole had hurt. Her survival wasn't a miracle; she simply had, as Varric put it, the worst bad luck in the world. She didn't know their Andraste; Mythal, the great elvhen protector, was her patron god. "Lady" was a human term, hastily applied to a Dalish elf marked by a spell gone wrong.
Solas must have spotted the appalled tears in her eyes, threatening to spill over and betray her in front of everyone. "The humans have not raised one of our people so high for ages beyond counting," he had remarked.
Our people. Her kinsman's wry courtesy had calmed her raging spirit, as it so often did. She did as he instructed, and the Inquisition blindly followed.
Solas was never far, choosing not to speak but present if she needed a nudge in the right direction. That comforted her a little. She was used to spending her days on her own in the forest, her clan's guardian, hunting for food and scouting safe places for them to set up the aravels – but he was the one who knew where they were going. Her scouting was a façade. The humans would not take kindly to following an apostate, never mind a "knife-eared" one. They would probably accuse him of leading them to their deaths. They might try to kill him.
Being the Herald of Andraste made all the difference.
The howls sounded again, eerie and dark in the soft blush of morning. Iralen knew their music well. She'd fought off black wolves from her snares before, and had the scars to prove it. She resumed her climb, briefly touching the amulet she wore under her hunter's coat, pressing it close. The metal disc stuck to the sweaty skin between her breasts, warm with its enchantment. As long as she wore the token, the wolves would not dare accost any member of her "pack," even if they were delirious enough to approach a pack as large as hers in the first place.
She happened to glance up. There, on a rocky outcrop bare of snow, a massive wolf warily watched her pass. It stood still as stone, the wind ruffling its thick black coat, its eyes slits in its fine-boned face. To her, it embodied the savagery of the vast, wintry mountains, a king of the hunt. After a tense moment it seemed to acknowledge her prior claim. Silent as a shadow, it turned tail and whisked out of sight. The howls died down.
In pain as she was, chilled to the bone, with the lives she dragged along behind her weighing her down, Iralen didn't think anything more of the wolves. She threw herself boldly into the Frostback wilderness, searching for signs of the abandoned fortress that Solas had found in the Fade.
On the long, hard trek north, pretending she knew exactly what she was doing, she surreptitiously checked for the other elf every now and again, afraid he might disappear like one of his spirits. Though she cursed herself for a smitten da'len, she couldn't help it, not after the way he'd frankly charmed her. Could he see her attraction to him written across her face as plainly as her vallaslin? Sometimes she thought so, when her eyes unconsciously sought him out and captured the fleeting, knowing upturn of his lips. Her only consolation was that his deep-set eyes were always turned aside as if hastily redirected, like she'd surprised him staring at her when he thought he could get away with it.
Then they reached Skyhold. The magnificent Ferelden fortress stood upon the cusp of the world, waiting, it seemed, for her. Solas, smiling but out of breath, leaned on his staff and let her walk through its welcoming gates first. An unexplainable swell of emotion kept her from speaking to him. It felt, strangely, as if he was giving Skyhold to her. But how could that be? The castle was ancient, and he was a wandering forty-something apostate who spent much of his time asleep. Perhaps, since he seemed to be the only person alive who remembered Skyhold's existence, he viewed at it as his secret to share or keep as he saw fit.
Unaware of her confusion, the exhausted refugees swarmed in, dazzled by the grandeur of the old fortress and its promise of new haven.
Reeling from Skyhold's austere beauty – beautiful even in ruin – and the beating she'd taken not too long before, Iralen dizzily accepted her new role as Inquisitor, then set about making Skyhold her own. Warmth seemed to bleed from the stones, so she shucked her armor in favor of the lighter casual clothes she wore under it. Peace infused the very air. Each new door invited gleeful exploration; she'd always been naturally inquisitive. Absorbed as she was in her discoveries, a couple of hours passed before she found out what a handful of her soldiers had done.
She was examining what might once have been a garden, fertile enough to hold a patch of autumn amid the snowcapped peaks, when she heard an argument heating up. Her loosened braid bounced over her shoulder while she jogged toward the source.
It turned out to be a pile of lupine bodies, black fur matted with blood and dirt, dumped in the leaf-littered courtyard. Someone would undoubtedly render them into useable material later. In the remote borderlands between Ferelden and Orlais, they couldn't afford to waste anything. Several smaller bodies lay off to the side, each young throat slit in a way that ensured a quick death. It was a sad but necessary duty. Iralen couldn't argue that, even though it felt as though the violence had somehow defiled her new home.
One of her soldiers stood next to the grisly pile, his face conflicted, his hands full of a tiny bundle that whimpered, as pathetic as a suffocating flame.
"Have done with it already, Gerand," his partner snapped, her sunburned nose peeling under beetled brows. She put her hands on her hips. "Put the whelp out of its misery."
"I . . . can't," he admitted shamefacedly. "You do it, Missa."
He thrust the pup at her, but Missa leaped back as if she'd been scorched. "Maker's breath, what do you take me for? I've never killed one that small and I'm not about to start now."
"You're the one who wants it dead!"
"We can't have blighting wolves nesting in headquarters!"
"What's going on here?" Iralen asked quietly, and they jumped.
"Cleaning out the vermin, My La – Inquisitor," Missa reported promptly, though she tripped over Iralen's new title. She gestured to her left, where a pair of bleeding scouts were being tended by an ill-tempered alchemist. "They ambushed us, ser. Vicious beasts, they were. Might have had the water-sickness, but Master Adan says no."
"You'd want a Chantry sister to tend you if it was, and not me," Adan said darkly, tying off a bandage.
Missa cleared her throat. "Thought it best to make it clean as possible, given the circumstances."
"You did well," Iralen told her, and watched Missa's hairy brows relax. Then she looked at the whelp in Gerand's hands. "What's the story with that one, soldier?"
If Gerand had looked uncomfortable before, he looked downright miserable now, with Iralen's unwavering gaze fixed on him. She saw his eyes flick from her long ears, glittering with numerous piercings, to the delicate branching of her vallaslin, darker green than her irises, tattooed across her forehead, nose, cheekbones, and chin, and utterly alien to him. He swallowed noisily. "Well, Inquisitor, this one, you see . . . it's, well, it's white, ser."
"And?" she prompted, unable to hide her amusement with his completely inadequate explanation.
"Wolves are black, aren't they? Ain't never seen a white one before," he mumbled wretchedly. "Thought it might be god-touched, Your Worship."
Missa scoffed loudly, but didn't, Iralen noticed, come any closer.
"I can leave it outside, ser. It's too small to survive on its own, but maybe another pack will claim it . . ." Gerand said, but he lost steam at the end. He blanched when the pup in his hands whined once more and then stilled.
Iralen studied it. It wasn't much more than a ball of snowy fluff, but it was breathing. Asleep, most like, unaware that it was the sole survivor of its family's massacre. The amulet, hidden by her tunic, gave a pulse of recognition. The pup's pointed ears twitched as if listening to a mother's howl. That settled the matter. It was a white wolf whelp, nothing more spectacular than she herself was.
"Your orders, Lady Inquisitor?" Missa asked, apparently relieved to have a higher authority take the problem off her – or rather, Gerand's – hands.
Iralen sighed. Nothing was miraculous except for the depths of human superstition. "Give it here," she commanded.
Gerand complied only too happily, dropping the animal in her outstretched hands and then stepping hastily back. He tacked on a smart salute to cover his retreat.
"As you were," Iralen said. With the wolf pup cradled against her breast, where it could feel both her heart and the pulsing amulet, she swiftly departed.
If talk burst out like a wildfire over this behavior, her soldiers thankfully waited until she was out of earshot. Vivienne wasn't going to like this one bit. Iralen took the stairs two at a time, wanting to get under cover. Once she reached the cavernous main hall, however, she hesitated, unsure of where to go. There was debris everywhere, a draft blowing in from somewhere, and not a chair to be seen. She hadn't even been assigned quarters yet.
The pup stirred, as floppy and hot as a water bottle in her marked hand. He opened sky-blue eyes and stared at her. Curious. Trusting.
Iralen's heart melted.
"It's all right, toror'ai," she crooned at him, the phrase for "little brother" slipping out without thought. It gave him a name, one that was much too big for him but that he would grow into: Tor. Mountain, in the common parlance. "I won't let them hurt you. We'll figure something out."
"Lethallan," a smooth, familiar voice greeted, and she whirled around, embarrassed to have been caught talking to herself. Whatever Solas had been about to say, however, was lost when he saw her cradling the whelp. His eyebrow rose in polite incredulity. "What is that?"
"A refugee," she said. Then, deciding she may as well tell him the whole story, she added, "A pack claimed the castle as their territory and attacked my men. The wolves were killed, all but this one. I . . . couldn't leave him to fate."
"I see."
She went immediately on the defensive. It wasn't usual for him to be so monosyllabic. He was like a minnow in shallow water, constantly slipping through her fingers, quick to take offense but generous with praise when it suited him. His necklace, fashioned from the blackened, polished jawbone of a wolf, drew her eye.
"You see what, exactly?" she asked warningly.
Solas peered at the puppy with the oddest expression. Tor sniffed cheerfully at him, wagging his stubby tail as though greeting an older pack member.
"I see a white wolf," Solas said, as if his meaning was always so obvious, "an auspicious sign."
Iralen didn't try to unravel that one. ". . . What?"
"Skyhold has been many things to many," he said. He straightened to look her in the eyes and clasped his hands behind his back, courteous to a fault. "I never dreamed it would call his kind here. It has never been a refuge for them. The wolf is a trickster. Elusive. Clever, to be sure, but also quite loyal."
"You're speaking of Fen'Harel," Iralen said, barely keeping her statement from becoming a question. What did any of this have to do with her rather unconventionally adopting a wolf pup?
"Perhaps," he said sedately, inclining his head. His smooth voice turned mocking. "However, were you not taught that Fen'Harel was loyal only to himself? This little one is already changing allegiance. You could not have chosen a better guardian for Skyhold. Treat him well, Inquisitor."
A guardian. Like her. Like the statues of Fen'Harel that dotted the Dales, facing outward from Dalish camps, ever outward, to keep harmful spirits at bay.
"I was planning on getting him something to eat, actually," she said. Pleased, she thought with relief. He was pleased. When she put her fingers close to Tor's glistening nose, he licked them eagerly, and then started chewing on the tips.
"Of course. I believe I can help with that," Solas said, his playful smile nearly taking her breath away. His enthusiasm always struck her out of nowhere, like a rogue's stealth strike. He spread his arms to show the way, almost, but not quite, touching her. "Come. The kitchens can spare some milk for him."
Iralen wasn't strictly listening. She longed to close the distance between them, to feel his lean body down the length of hers. She was pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate that, however. He was so careful, so polite, so distant . . .
Startling her out of the distressing direction her thoughts had taken, Tor took her finger in his baby teeth and shook his head vigorously. He snarled as if he'd understood every word, sounding like an angry cricket.
Solas laughed. "It is the best milk in our demesne, I assure you. You have my word on that."
Tor gave a funny coughing yelp, and then sneezed.
"It's only for now, toror'ai," Iralen whispered in his furry ear. He thanked her by licking her nose. Solas smirked sideways at her, but she ignored her hahren. She stared into Tor's bright, intelligent eyes. A feral grin spread across her face. "Soon, you will hunt with me."
A/N: Please review, and let me know what you think! :3
Humbly Yours,
Anne