A/N: Sorry this chapter took longer than the last two to get posted. I got so focused on a writers block for the next chapter that I forgot to spend time editing this chapter. I hope to get the next chapter out quicker, assuming I can figure out this damn block.
A faint purple glow emanated from the newly activated eluvian.
The color washed over Morrigan and the toddler in her arms, those innocent brown eyes staring into hers. Far behind the mother and child, the ancient elven monstrosity-which Morrigan had "tamed" using magic, dating back to when the elves ruled the lands, that she had learned from her mother's grimoire- shrieked its challenge at a new intruder.
There was not a single soul that Morrigan could think of that could find this place, nor would come even if they knew it existed; This was a place that housed nothing for anyone who was not well versed in lore long forgotten to the ages.
'Well,' Morrigan smiled to herself, 'there is one.' She looked at her son, who was looking past her shoulder, towards the cavern mouth
"Dada?"
"I believe you are right little man." she smiled at the child. "I would bet my last sovereign that your foolish, meddling father just activated our guardian." Just to make sure, Morrigan stretched out with her mind, following the trail of magic that connected her to her love through the ring she gave him so very long ago.
It only took a mere moment for her to reach the end of the trail, and sure enough, he was just outside the cavern. Morrigan shook her head with disbelief, 'The lengths that man goes to to find me even though I told him not to try.' She scoffed at his unwanted persistence. All around her, the rumbles of the cave told her that the battle was still raging on, quite fiercely.
"Try to find me now warden." She laughed at his failure, after coming so close, and stepped through the eluvian.
The place in which she found herself was most curious. All around her were eluvians, almost all of them broken or pitch black-only a few remained looking like they were in perfect condition. Flemeth's grimoire had spoken of how to activate the eluvians and that they were portals, but made no mention of this land beyond the portal.
Only a moment later Morrigan winced as a loud wail began right in her ear; The child in Morrigan's arm suddenly began to slam his little fists against her shoulder, shrieking his tantrum into his mother's ears.
"Why do you cry child?" she asked in exasperation, bouncing him in her arms, desperately trying to calm the fussy child down.
Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to find any kind of safe place to set down her child. Just a few hundred meters away from where she stood was a small clearing where a small cottage sat. Morrigan made haste, eager to fix whatever the small child's issue was.
Every step she took further from the mirror caused the child's tantrum to grow ever louder in her ear, making Morrigan all the more eager to set the child down. Once inside the cottage, which was being overrun with over hundreds of years of wild growth, Morrigan checked the structural integrity of the humble abode.
After a thorough check, Morrigan moved her focus to solving whatever issue was plaguing her child. First, she lifted the child up to smell for a mess, which came up negative.
"Okay, are you hungry little man?" She asked him, presenting her breast to him. The child took no interest in this source of food, instead just increasing his scream to a level that Morrigan had not thought possible.
"What do you want child?" She asked exasperated, her extremely short list of solutions now exhausted.
"DADA!" the child screamed at the top of his lungs.
"Oh." Morrigan was surprised at her son's demand for his father. "You have never met the man, how do you know you want to meet him so badly?" She asked her crying child, whose fit was losing energy; His eyes were drooping and his cries turned into hiccups.
"da..." the little man's mouth opened wide in a yawn, "da." Just like that the fit had subsided and the child had cried himself to sleep.
Morrigan scrapped together a makeshift bed from fresh greenery, straw that was scattered around the floor, and her traveling cloak.
She laid her now sleeping son onto the little bed- now that he was taken care of, and they were safe in this nameless world, she had a moment to think. Kieran clearly had some connection to his father and, if that tantrum was anything to go by, wanted the man in his life.
Morrigan wasn't sure how good of an idea that was, seeing as was constantly on the run from templars, and more importantly, her mother.
Morrigan gazed upon the faint glow of the eluvian from the doorway of the cottage. She was at a crossroads. She could really only see two options. The first option was to allow the eluvian to close and hope once Kieran woke up he would forget why he started fussing in the first place.
The other option was to return to the cavern and see what that stubborn warden wanted, why he had broken his promise. She returned to the room where Kieran slept, watching the sleeping child once more. Morrigan sighed heavily, knowing which option she would choose- it wasn't even really a choice.
A protective ward was placed around the cottage before Morrigan crossed the couple hundred meters back to the eluvian. 'I'll call this place the Crossroads' she told herself as she stepped through the portal and back into the cavern.
Behind her the portal flickered, it was running out of energy; Morrigan ran her hand across its surface, pouring everything she had left in, keeping it stable for just a little while longer.
A loud bark reverberated off the walls of the cavern, 'Of course he brought the dog with him.'
She turned to see the large war hound barreling towards her, tongue flapping wildly as he ran. "Well hello to you too, you mongrel." She warmly greeted the mabari, crouching down to pet his belly, now exposed from him rolling on his back.
"Morrigan."
The whisper sent a chill down her spine; Oh how she missed hearing him say her name.
"Hello, my love."
Rif couldn't believe his eyes; He had followed so many leads for so long in order to get here.
So many dead ends that led him to every corner of Ferelden and after so many false leads he had begun to lose hope. His pure determination was the only thing that had allowed him to persevere, and at long last he was now face to face with his missing lover.
He took a few hesitant steps before she stood up and stepped back defensively. "No further please" she said, her hand inches away from the glowing purple mirror behind her.
"One more step and I leave. For good this time"
Rif halted immediately, he had looked for far too long for her to just slip away the second she was in his reach- he would listen to her demands, for the time being.
"Hello to you too, Morrigan." He was watching Morrigan closely, looking for any sign that she was going to slip through the portal, so far she had not yet shown any signs of running.
"I assume you know what this is." A simple jerk of her head told Rif she was talking about the eluvian behind her. "I have gone through great lengths to find and activate this portal. Give me reason and I use it, and you will not be able to follow."
"Then why haven't you left yet, if that's true?"
"I remained because I sensed your approach." Her eyes focused on the ring on his right hand, which sure enough was the ring she had given him so long ago.
"You kept the ring." It was a statement and a reminder, to both of them; For her it was a reminder that he was still a foolish weakling, shackled by the love she tried so hard to keep out of their relationship. 'But so are you' came a quiet voice in the back of her head 'you wouldn't have even entertained the notion of coming back to see what he wanted otherwise'
Rif followed her gaze, looking down to the ring for just a moment before looking back to Morrigan.
"Tell me, why did you come?" Now she was asking the question that was the main reason she chose to come back from the Crossroads.
Rif blinked back his disbelief, he was sure Morrigan understood why he had chased after her.
"I couldn't let it end like that" he remembered the last moments of the battle, the last time he had seen her okay. "You just left, I didn't even know if you survived the battle."
Morrigan just shook her head, he was still the same love sick fool. "And you once argued that love is not weakness" she gently chided him.
"Love isn't weakness!" He argued back.
This wasn't the first time they had performed this dance, choosing agreeing to disagree. That conversation had also been when Morrigan stopped being intimate with him. After that conversation she had always kept him at arms length, until they performed the ritual together.
"My love for you is what gave me the boost I needed to strike the final blow against the archdemon."
Morrigan only laughed cynically at his revelation.
"It's true, I was done for in that battle. When I thought he had killed you, I received a burst of strength and, with the help and Alistair and yourself, I made the killing blow."
"I will never understand you," she sighed, exasperated. "And you will never understand me."
Her statement was a dagger in his back; They had gone through so much together and yet she was just going to dismiss him, after all he had done to find her again.
She had turned back to the eluvian, apparently she was done with the conversation.
"I won't understand unless you help me to." He pleaded with her, desperate for her to take interest in the conversation again.
If she walked through that Eluvian and left him behind, he was sure this would be the last time he would see her. She turned back to him, her eyebrows knitted together in thought.
"I would not even know where to begin explaining"
"Tell me what your plan is," Rif asked the first thing that came to his mind "I want to know."
"My plan is to take the child and prepare for what is to come." She was being rather vague. "Such preparations require both time and power, I am to have both if I am to be successful."
"But what is your plan?" He insisted further.
She frowned at the repetition of the question, Rif could read her face- her doleful eyes- she wanted to tell him more, but she wasn't going to.
"More than that I dare not say, not even to you."
Rif knew better than to beat a dead horse, he would have to relent.
"Okay, fine then. Tell me where is our child?" He asked the next question that came to mind.
"He is safe. Beyond your reach." Her eyes flicked to the side revealing to Rif that his son was beyond that portal.
Rif wasn't sure if Morrigan was revealing all of this extra information through nonverbal means on purpose, or if he just had finally learned to read her that well.
"All you need to know is that he is an innocent baby, he knows nothing of the destiny that lies before him."
Rifs hands curled into tight balls, she was evading his questions. The amount of information she was giving him might satisfy a lesser man, a fool, but despite her enjoyment of calling him one, Rif was no fool.
"That's not good enough!" His rage escaped him as his fist slammed into a large boulder standing next to him. As he pulled his hand away, blood slowly trickled down the rock, he had shredded the skin on his knuckles when he lashed out.
"That's my-"
"Because it is your child." Her interruption was a statement; Morrigan understood his frustration.
"I understand, but I will not share my plan." she reminded him. "Not even with you. If your trust is insufficient, then your anger," she nodded at his blood on the rock, "will have to do."
Rif looked to the rock with embarrassment, it was rare for him to let his anger show like that, and he was never proud when it did.
She stepped forward, her first time in the conversation that she stopped hovering just in front of the eluvian, ready to slip through at any moment.
"If you have no more questions then allow me a warning. 'Tis Flemeth you should beware of, not me. Hunt her if you hunt anyone."
"Flemeth is dead" he reminded her in frustration, trying to get it back under control.
"My mother has tricked her way past death, and more. She is no more finished than I am." Morrigan stopped just out of reach of Rif.
She had pulled out Flemeth's grimoire and was flipping through it. She found the page she was looking for and thrust it into Rif's hands.
"I thought what she craved was immortality. I was wrong, so very wrong."
Rif looked over the page but the words written there were gibberish to him, he couldn't read it. He opened his mouth to speak once more but she kept talking.
"She is no blood mage, no abomination, she is not even truly human." Morrigan now pointed to a particular part of the page, "The ritual was but a means to an end, a herald of what is to come."
Rif was getting lost now, Flemeth was already hard to understand, but Morrigan talking about Flemeth was even worse.
"Why, what is going to happen?"
"Change is coming to the world. Many fear change and will fight it with every fibre of their being. Sometimes, however, change is what they need. Change will set them free"
Rif took a small step forward, and when Morrigan did not step back from his advance, he reached out with his hand, caressing her cheek. Just feeling her warmth against his hand evaporated the frustration he was feeling.
"And is that what you want?" He asked her.
Morrigan, who had leaned her head, almost cat-like, into his touch, scrunched her face in displeasure.
"What I want is," she hesitated on what to say next. That voice in her head that spoke her buried, true thoughts spoke up 'for you, Kieran, and me to live happy, away from all of this'. "Unimportant."
Behind her the eluvian sparked with energy, her time was dwindling, she needed to leave or else she would trapped on this side.
She had given Rif the grimoire, everything he needed to help him hunt Flemeth, and was now walking back to the eluvian.
Rif seized the opportunity and was right behind her as she walked. When she started to speak again she didn't even bother to turn around. Rif knew this was going to be the end of the conversation.
"I cannot tarry longer, the time has come for me to go."
"Take me with you" the words were out of Rif's mouth before he even had time to think.
Morrigan turned around, surprised by the sudden request.
"You cannot know what you ask" she steeled herself, ready to reject anything that came out of his mouth. "'Twould be better if you stayed. For you. For us both" She stepped backwards, her back mere centimeters from the surface of the portal. She would force their separation if he tried anything.
"I want to be with you, no matter what. I want to see my son, our son, Morrigan. Let me help you prepare for what is to come." he pleaded with her.
Morrigan couldn't believe what she had just heard.
This man- who held the most lofty title in all Ferelden; This man-who came from one of the most noble houses of Ferelden; This man- who was third or fourth (Morrigan didn't care about politics enough to know which it was) in line for the throne; This man- who was the commander of all grey wardens in Ferelden, was willing to give it all up.
He was willing to follow in Morrigan's footsteps for this foolish notion of love.
'Yes he is foolish for wanting that,' that voice deep in her mind spoke up again, 'but you want it as much as he does. You want Kieran to know his father. You want to experience what Leiliana always spoke of in her stories. You're just too proud to admit it.'
The voice made sense to Morrigan, if she turned him down now, it would only be because she wanted to preserve her pride.
"...Then come my love," she finally spoke, and put her arms around his neck. She kissed him deeply and pulled him back towards the eluvian. "We will face the future together." She kissed him once more and together, with Buster, they stepped through the eluvian.
Special thank you to Greywing 101 for being the first person to review and follow. I appreciate it greatly.
Also thank you to Baby Carlos who helped me grammatically edit this chapter. (I lost the paper with all the edits halfway through though and had to wing it...oops)