A/N
I am so sorry that this is 10+ days later that I promised. It's not even my fault! The chapter's been uploaded for days, but the site wasn't having it. I even tried making a new story, then a new account. No go. Then I learnt that there was a workaround. If you can't add chapters to your story, replace "properties" with "content" on the page where you get the message. Hurrah!
Thanks for your patience and for reading.
This is Better: A Longer Reprieve
Loren shot upright off the narrow bed with a gasp. Awareness surged from diaphragm to throat and her hand was halfway to her maul before she caught Morrigan's bemused expression, her weight on the bed, and the open palm hovering over the spot where her head had been resting.
"I hope your templar remembers to nudge your weapon well out of reach before he inflicts his affection on you." She returned her hand to her lap. "'Tis only I, curing your headache. No need for alarm." She rose roughly from the bed.
Still half-erect, Loren laid the back of her hand to her forehead, feeling the fading glimmer of Morrigan's healing spell. Morrigan's were spicier than Wynne's warm-bread glows. Loren felt the retreat of what was probably a pounding ache between her eyes. Her alarm faded.
"I'm sorry, Morrigan. You startled me."
"Obviously." Loren had the vague memory of several toasts, of being helped to Morrigan and Leliana's room by the surprisingly sober Zevran and of Alistair stumbling protectively behind them. Loren must have been staring at the other woman, because Morrigan crossed her arms in front of her scantily clad breasts. They pressed together. Her mouth turned to a slight smirk, "Better?"
"Much." The pain was gone now, and Loren was left with nothing worse than a cottony thickness in her mouth.
Morrigan raised an eyebrow and, without changing her tone, asked, "Why have you not asked me about my interest in Avernus?"
Loren shrugged. "I can trust you that far."
"But no further?"
"I trust you to not betray me. You'll tell me in time, I'm sure." Yellow eyes searched Loren's. The suggestion of a crease threatened between them, but Loren still thought they looked like they eyes of an animal. Had they always, or did a little of each beast stay in Morrigan each time she shifted? "Is it time?"
Her eyes dropped, and Morrigan looked completely human again. "I wish to show you something." She turned to her pack, leaning neatly against the wall. From it, Morrigan pulled a thickly bound book. She kept her body between it and Loren while she found the spot she wanted. When she turned, Loren recognized the brownish ink that Morrigan had brought from the Wilds, and Morrigan's close clean hand. "I copied this from the Shaperate when you had us look into Harrowmount and Bhelan." Morrigan handed Loren the book, but stayed near enough to snatch it back if Loren turned a page.
Shalata Negat
5:12 Exalted
The surface declares the fourth Blight, a number that means nothing to the Stone. In the depths, the events are inverted, our Blight spanning the interim years. Seven generations of shifting lines and darkness. Our Ancestors are the reason the surface kingdoms don't know a darkspawn by sight, why even their eldest have never heard an accounting first-hand. They believe the Blights are defeated by a gathering of allies with singular focus. Eventually, they will be lost by attrition in the depths. The spawn surges and releases. We fortify and follow, although doubts are raised.
7:0 Storm
The wars continue in the depths and the border thaigs are lost. Orzammar fortifies and holds, but the lost ground is not regained and remains dead space, where darkspawn multiply. It was a surge, but the surface was not breached, there was no great archdemon behind them. No Blight was declared, no rallying cry was given. The Wardens slumbered.
After centuries of constant skirmishes, a trend becomes clear. The first line of defense, unacknowledged for centuries, weakens.
Loren closed the book, handed it back, and waited for the mage to elaborate. Morrigan traced a finger over its leather casing and spoke without looking at the Warden, "The dwarves cannot hold indefinitely. I predict that they will fall within two centuries." She glanced upwards, "Before the next Blight." That this was true should have been obvious to Loren from the state of the city, and of the roads she had walked with Alistair, Oghren, and the golem. Its truth, she thought, did not explain Morrigan's mention or Avenus's name in the same conversation, but Loren did not beg for information from anyone. Morrigan wordlessly opened her palm over the book. It glowed purple and Loren realized that she had sealed it. Morrigan shot at sharp look at Loren's continued silence. Standing, she spoke, "Thank you for your attention. I know your time is in short supply," and left the room.
Loren closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. It was too early for Morrigan. She rolled her head gently from side to side, then pressed her chin to her collarbone. Her spine stretched from neck to midway down her shoulder blades. She felt stiff, as if she had slept too long or too deeply. She wanted water. And a spar.
She was not the only one. Arl Eamon's men seemed to be taking the day off, but Oghren was already up and seemed to be trying to explain how to grip weapons to Sten, who looked ready to sink Asala into the dwarf's left eye-socket.
"There ya go! Feel that anger now!"
Sten's expression of rage changed to one of utter bewilderment.
Across the yard, Alistair and Bann Teagan were deep in conversation. She'd had enough of human nobility; Alistair could deal with the Bann himself. She turned to the rack of sparring weapons. Her Chasind Maul was too massive for use – even if she padded it with wool, it was too heavy to risk her companions with. Wynne wasn't cheerful about healing sparring wounds. Across the top of the rack were the two-handed weapons: a maul at the very top and a battered two-handed sword below it. She touched the edge of the sword and felt that it was sparring-dull, but straight. It looked as if it should have a fuller, but didn't. A training sword then: deliberately heavier than the real thing. Loren sighed. She much preferred swords – they were lighter and let her move more in combat, but she just hadn't found a sword better than the maul she'd bought off the dwarf in Denerim. It was a spectacular weapon, so she had no reason to complain. Still, she let her fingers linger on the blade a moment longer before she took the maul.
It was hefty, despite the thick cushioning around the head. "Arl Eamon, for all his hand-wringing, has excellent taste in training weapons," Zevran had appeared beside her, as he so often did, without her notice. Loren had long since stopped letting it bother her. It would be easier by far for him to slip her a blade in combat someday. "These are Antivan. The maul has a head of unworked osmium wrapped in wool, then in leather. Osmium is very dense. It allows the maul to retain its weight, despite the small head."
Loren placed her hands on the grip and tested its balance. It hung heavy, as all mauls did, but not so heavy that it felt unfriendly in her hands.
"These daggers, Antivan in design if not in origin, are also ideal sparring daggers: slightly shorter, as you don't wish to stick these nearly as far into your sparring partner as you do into your enemies. Usually, I prefer a dagger and a sword, but two daggers are easier to conceal, and fighting usefully with them is a good skill." He tossed one dagger into the air. It spun in the cold grey of the late autumn morning, rotating end over end and landed back in his hand. He raised an eyebrow at Loren, "May I have this dance, ser?"
His smile was half-bemused, half smirk and she bowed him into the dusty chalk circle on the ground, "After you."
The trick to being an interesting warrior with a heavy two-handed weapon was stillness. Sten saw his weapon as an extension of himself, and was as precise about striking with it as he would be at smashing his naked hand into an armoured ogre. He maneuvered Asala into the armour's weakest point, twisted the blade's tip and left cracked breastplates and tossed helmets behind him. Oghren embraced the handicap of the weapon's weight, throwing his whole body behind each blow, driving at his opponents like a wave that never receded and exhausting himself. Loren admired his dedication and his heedlessness, but she fought differently. She was slighter than both the men, and while she was as strong, she just didn't have the mass they did to maneuver her weapon.
Loren stayed as still as she could, trying to make her own body the trunk from which her maul swung. From here, she was indomitable. She stood with her legs apart, and her belly's weight tipping her hips back just slightly and bending her knees. From here, she was rooted. From this still spot, she could strike with force at whatever threw itself at her. She tested, again, the balance of the new weapon in her hands. Zevran watched her, and winked. She swung her maul at his hip. Unhindered by the same weight as she was, he turned on the spot to evade her.
Her maul finished its swing at nothing and her body compensated for the rapidly descending weight, refusing to be pulled down by it. Rather than reverse the weapon's swing, she redirected it to jab the handle's butt at the elf dancing away from her. It caught him in the right shoulder and he staggered backward, but didn't fall. She pulled it back again, over her head, in preparation to help it smash the figure before her, but suddenly her face was full of his back. He'd turned into the arc of her swing, absurdly safe inside her weapon's reach. Her arms were caught uselessly above her, and she was suddenly very aware of her stretched-out torso, her ribs, of the spaces between her ribs. Loren knew how dangerous it was to stand this close to an armed assassin, and sure enough, he spun into her. She tried to spin with him, to keep her body against his less-dangerous backside, but couldn't get her maul to spin with her. It dragged her arms behind her head and Zevran's blunt dagger pressed itself into the thin leather of her armour's armpit.
"Point," he claimed, his mouth inches from her face. She pushed him away angrily.
"Fine. But the fight would hardly have been over. It takes more than a dagger to down me."
"Don't be a sore loser, my dear. I know who won the only real fight between us."
Loren narrowed her eyes at his flattery, "Don't patronize me."
To his credit, he met her eyes square, "I would never. You will beat me in combat every time. But in dueling, you are too slow and too reliant on your one big hit."
"It works against darkspawn."
"Well, you're much smarter than darkspawn. And so, I flatter myself, am I. Not that I'd wish for it, but they'd be less monotonous if they showed some imagination. It will be quite embarrassing to fall to the most mindless enemy I've ever faced."
Loren found, with practice, that she did get better at predicting where Zevran would move to next. He still scored many more points on her than she did on him, but she kept a secret total in her head and knew she would have dropped him before he dropped her, even if he'd been using longswords. This gave her some measure of consolation. Having finished their own duel, Sten and Oghren were standing nearby and ignoring Bann Teagan completely. Alistair had simply sunk onto the nearest bench, looking pale.
"Had enough, bella?"
Loren was sprawled in the dirt, into which Zevran had unceremoniously tripped her. She felt a surge of irritation at his amused tone, but forced herself to keep her tone light, "Only to keep your morale up."
Zevran actually laughed at her, and she had to squelch the urge to smash his face. "I admire your tenacity, Loren. Most people don't stick around for such a beating."
Sten's stoic tone saved her from having to make her own response. "She beat you quite handily, elf."
He shrugged, "To each their own measure." He caught Loren's hand and made as if to raise it to his lips, but stopped halfway. The Antivan held it in the air as if her were congratulating her and thanked her before letting it drop.
Zevran and Oghren agreed that it was high time for dinner, and left with Sten. Bann Teagan was shifting his weight from foot to foot in the way that Loren now recognized as the desire to say something private, so she made some fuss replacing the training maul on the rack. Sten caught Loren's eyes, but she nodded him off to the castle. Teagan watched the three men close the castle doors behind them before he turned to Loren. "Thank you. Alistair said that you would be willing to speak to me." He stood rigidly, legs planted firmly in the hard ground. "You're right about not doing anything." He straightened, "If you'll take me, I'd like to help."
A thrill shot through the elf. Having a Bann with them would be enormously useful. She turned to Alistair, determined that he be treated as a leader along with her, "What do you think?" Teagan tilted his head at Alistair, without taking his eyes off Loren. She broke eye contact to watch the technically more senior Warden give his opinion.
Alistair raised an eyebrow at her, and when he spoke, his voice sounded thin. "Me? I think an extra normal person would be fabulous. I guess Wynne's pretty normal, actually."
"Wynne, the mage?" Teagan was incredulous.
Loren laughed. "Oh, you are in for a world of surprise, aren't you?" She offered her hand, having learnt the human gesture from Leliana, "Bann Teagan, your help would be much appreciated."
He took it and grinned at her. "When do we leave? I have some preparations to make and messages to send home."
"Is two days too soon?"
"Perfect." He saluted her and strode off. She'd have to tell him to not do that, but watched him stride back towards the castle. Alistair was entirely correct: having a human who wasn't a mage or an apostate or a grey warden would be useful. She could send Teagan ahead with the dog, and maybe Alistair as backup. If she wore a helmet, people might assume she was human . . . . Unless she spoke. Or showed her face.
Alistair interrupted her thoughts. "I thought you'd say yes. Hoped, really, that you weren't just partial to lunatics and criminals."
"You could have just told him yes, you know." She told the redhead as she turned to him. He was still slumped on the barrel, not having made a move to rise, with his face in his hands. "You okay?" Loren asked.
He grunted in response, then, after a moment, said, "Sparring. How can you even think of doing anything but sitting still?"
Loren chuckled, "Morrigan healed me."
Suddenly alert, he looked sharply at her, "Why?"
"She wanted to show me something and I guess she wanted my undivided attention."
"What?"
"How the dwarves are doomed."
"Hmm."
Loren smiled at him, "Here. I brought you something." He looked up with interest, but his face fell when she held out a small bottle.
"Loren! These are not for trivial use!"
She laughed, "You sound like Wynne. She saw me leaving the kitchens and knew right away that Morrigan had healed me." Loren took a disapproving tone, '"Magic is not for such mundane purposes.'"
"Well, it's not."
Loren amusement dried up, and she felt the bare heat of embarrassment. "Sorry."
He buried his face in his hands again. "I feel awful."
"I know. We do have lots of these, and Wynne was on her way to brew more." She held out the vial, but he didn't take it. "Zevran was drinking them all last night, you know."
"Really?"
"I saw him."
"That makes me feel a bit better."
"It makes you feel better that you're the only one who is suffering, and it's by choice?"
"You don't think that if we aren't going to use them, we could give them to someone who will?"
"Would you have thought of giving them away if you hadn't considered taking one now?"
Alistair opened his mouth, stopped, and closed it again. He turned his head to the side, "It still feels weird."
She stepped closer to him and set the vial on the barrel beside him. "I suppose it's good to know that humans are as hard on themselves as they are on everyone else." Alistair leaned his forehead into her torso. She hesitated, then placed her hand on his head. His hair was surprisingly soft under her fingers. She wondered why she hadn't noticed that before. She moved her fingers through it. "I'm hungry. Can I at least get you some bread?"
He turned his face up and she almost laughed at the extremity of the gratitude on his face. "Would you? I don't think I could stomach the kitchens."
"It is quite the favour, but I'll manage."
"And water?"
"And water. Anything else?"
"Bring yours too. I want to show you something."
Loren hesitated again, but threw caution away. She was pretty sure that Zevran had guessed already, knew that Wynne had. "Sure. Wait a minute."
