Varric sipped the Fereldan whiskey and grimaced. "Andraste's dimpled buttcheeks, do they put fermented dog piss in this?" he muttered. He had always made fun of Hawke for drinking that shit like water. She had always laughed and claimed she was just doing her part to support the Fereldan economy. Right.
Varric sighed, and raised his glass to the empty room. "Here's to you, Hawke. The world loses a little madness without you in it." He downed the rest of the glass. Hard to believe it had been a year.
He stood up. That was enough being maudlin for one day. He ambled out of his room, thinking he'd go to the Herald's Rest. Her Inquisitorialness had taken Tiny and Buttercup off to go mop up stray rifts in the Hinterlands, but Krem and Dalish and a few other Chargers would still be there. He could probably talk them into trading stories over drinks.
Varric was almost at the bottom of the stairs when he saw Sparkler and a passel of Inquisition mages tearing down the hallway. He blinked. Well. That couldn't be good.
Varric managed to grab a straggling mage by the elbow. It was a nervous looking kid named Garrick or Kerrick or something like that. "Hey there, where's the explosion?" Varric asked, aware that with mages, that might not be a rhetorical question.
"That strange elfy mirror's been acting up. The Lady Seeker asked us to investigate. You should probably avoid that wing of the castle."
Varric nodded and let Kerrick (unless it was Garrick?) go, before ambling down the hallway after him. The universe had long ago designated Varric as the official Witnesser of Weird Shit. He had no desire to fight fate on this one.
"Acting funny" turned out to be a bit of an understatement. When Varric got there, the eluvian was throwing off intangible sparks and pulsing wildly with light and a throbbing vwumvwumvwum that sounded like six different kinds of Not Good. "Huh. Is it supposed to do that?"
"Search me," said Dorian, frantically waving his hands over the mirror. "Our resident elven magic experts disappeared months ago. No doubt if Lady Morrigan were here she'd tell us that this is an effulgent resonance between the Veil and the third phase of Satina, and that the solution is to frolic nude in an icy spring under the light of the dual moons or some such thing."
Varric laughed. Cassandra glared. "If you have nothing useful to contribute Varric, then leave. Now."
Before Varric could come up with a sufficiently witty retort, the mirror stopped flashing and the vwum sound escalated into a high pitched eeeee noise that got higher and higher. "Get back!" Dorian shouted. "I think something's coming through!" Cassandra growled and drew her sword, while Dorian and the other mages readied their barriers. Varric lamented leaving Bianca in his room. If hordes of demons and other unspeakable horrors came pouring out of that mirror, his clever quips and rugged good looks would be worth approximately jack and shit against them.
They waited, tensed and ready. The eeee sound got higher and higher until it passed beyond normal hearing into something that made Varric's bones ache. Then even that stopped. The mirror crackled. A face popped out. It had blue eyes and an extremely goofy grin plastered on it. It was oddly familiar
"'Allo!" it said. Then it vanished.
Varric blinked. "The fuck...?"
"You all saw that, right?" Dorian said. "Please tell me you all saw that."
Before anyone could answer, the mirror crackled again, and a dwarf emerged, walking backwards and dragging something big and heavy behind him. Seeing the way he moved, Varric realized with a start who it was.
" Sandal?! "
Cassandra gave him an incredulous look. "You know this per- SWEET BRIDE OF THE MAKER! " That last bit Varric would have called a shriek if it hadn't come from a woman who could probably rip his head off with her bare hands.
Out of the mirror, Sandal had dragged something… enormous. And toothy. Very toothy. And with far more eyes than any creature that size had a right to have. Dorian was the first to recognize it for what it was. "Is that the Nightmare demon? "
With a start, Varric realized that it was. The head, at least. Very definitely the head, and most definitely not attached to the rest of it. "Holy shit."
Something next to head groaned and stirred. It was a relatively small bundle, at least compared to the gargantuan ghastly bulk of the Nightmare's head. Enough that they hadn't paid it much attention until now. The bundle sat up and blinked drowsily at him.
"Varric?" said Hawke. "Zat you?"
Varric sank to his knees and started to laugh. If there was a slight touch of hysteria to it, well, he could edit that part out of the story later.
Cassandra gave Sandal an amazed look. "You did this? In the Maker's name, how?"
Varric could have told her the answer to that question.
"Enchantment!"