AN: Thank you, thank you, thank you, for your reviews, favs, follows, pms all of which is keeping this story boat afloat. You're all fantastic! Regular updates resume today, now that weekend craziness is over. Nearly over 2,000 words this one! *pats myself on the head and feeds me cookies.* Happy Reading!
PART ONE: The Witch
Once a Templar, Always a Templar
Civilisation provided some comforts that she would otherwise have spurned. There was, of course, the roof over her head, the assurance of walls around her, the certainty of food and fire. Those were all well and good. But what she'd missed on the road, more than she'd care to admit, was being able to drink her problems into the gutter.
The rum was as bad as the first time she'd drank; around a campfire with friends and terror. It burned and choked before it comforted but comfort it did. Friends may come and go...but rum...rum would always be waiting for her.
She took another swig, emptying the glass and filling it from the bottle before her.
All around voices were raised in song and good cheer but underneath a strained note sang. Fear had permeated these people. The sky above was torn open, the mages and templars warred among themselves, the chantry had abandoned them. And they drank, as she did, to distract themselves from terror.
"I didn't think mages were permitted to drink."
She must've been more absorbed than she'd thought for him to creep up on her like that and when she dragged her eyes upwards he blurred a little round the edges, like a painting left in the rain.
"It's a Grey Warden tradition," she countered, noting with a little distaste the slur in her words. "One more of our closely kept secrets..."
"May I sit?" Cullen rested his gloved hand on the chair before her, looking about as comfortable as a Sister in a brothel.
"Are you going to drink with me?" she grinned up at him. "Because to sit you have to drink. It's the rules."
"I...er..." he reached for the back of his neck, eyes darting around.
She kicked the chair out for him, pouring him an overlarge mug and sliding it across the table. He sat awkwardly, the pommel of his greatsword protruding too far for his legs to fit under the table. She couldn't help her snort of laughter.
"And what's so funny?" he asked, repositioning his sword belt.
"You...here of all places," she shook her head and took a long swig on the bottle.
"Why is that so strange?" he asked, slowly taking off his gloves.
"This is the first place..." she stopped, realising what she was going to say. He was staring at her intently, eyes flickering with the candle flame between them. "You haven't drunk."
He wrinkled his nose in distaste. "You know this stuff will rot your guts?"
"I know that if you're not drinking you shouldn't be sitting," she went to steal back her cup but he caught it first, raised it in the air as though to examine it and took an unhappy sip.
"By the Maker, how can you drink that?!" he coughed.
"Years of experience," she sighed.
"I didn't think they'd serve this swill in the King's court," Cullen smiled but her own grin died on her lips.
"No..." she muttered. "They don't."
She took another gulp, deep, deeper, wishing she could drown herself in the bottom of the bottle. When she slammed it back on the table her head was dancing and the rum was finished. She slumped back in her chair.
"Did I say the wrong thing?" he sighed.
Through the fuzzy blur of booze she could see his concerned look. This was the second time he'd probed her about court life. Drunk as she was Neria was no fool and Cullen was as subtle as a charging bull. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. "Once a week I would slip from the gilded cage of court and make a beeline for the Tavern...and this swill." She went to take another swig and glared at the bottle when only a few drops burnt over her tongue.
"Do you miss it?" Cullen sat back in his chair. "Being Royal Advisor, I mean."
"No," she spat. Clenching her fist around the glass bottle. "Are you going to drink that?" She gestured with the neck to his nearly full cup.
He snatched it away from her prying hands a second time. "I think you've had enough..."
She glared at him, a snarl working up her lips and an insult sharp on her tongue.
"I on the other hand..." and he drained the cup in one.
Neria could only stare as he slammed the cup back down, his face contorted in a pallid grimace. "Maker's tears...that was..."
Her anger evaporated as she watch him splutter and cough. "Such a novice," she teased. "You need more practice..."
"I'm sure you'll happily oblige with lessons," his grin was a little sloppy and Neria's alcohol soaked mind wondered if they were talking about something else now. "I mean...if you're staying that is?"
"So many questions..." she shook her head. "Not enough rum..."
"Should I...buy you a drink?"
He looked at her then. Eyes wide and glinting with fire. She swallowed. The shadows playing across his face seemed to mask his features in another man's and in that second she imagined how easy it would be to pretend. She recoiled from the thought and found herself standing and swaying over the table, hands planted firmly on the wood. Cullen rushed to his feet to grip her firmly by the shoulder.
"Let's get you back," he muttered and she realised people all around her had stopped in their merriment to stare.
She lurched backwards, legs bashing against her abandoned chair, stomach sinking into her suddenly full bladder. The silent room span as though upon a roiling sea. As she glanced around hostile eyes stared from every table and instinct told her to reach into the fade.
And so she did.
Her being thrummed with the familiar tingle of power and her tainted blood sang as she stepped through the Veil. The whispers started immediately but even drunk as she was she knew better than to listen. The room shifted. The dissonance of being on two planes at once began.
"Neria!" she could see Cullen through a haze of green light. To his eyes she was no longer there and to her being the matter of this world was no longer an obstacle. Still, she stumbled underneath his arm, not wanting to alarm him with the eerie sensation of another being stepping through his own.
She was too quick for the cleansing he cast, out and away into the night with the blue magic on her heels. It disappointed her that he'd done that. Once a Templar, always a Templar.
She stalked, bitter and drunk, with the fade fluttering at her finger tips, towards the hut. The threads of her concentration were tugged by rum and anger. As she stumbled through the wooden wall the spell spluttered... and died.
She fell to her knees.
"I am impressed," a lyrical voice said from the darkness. "You manipulated wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, refracted the energy and then used it to cloak your aura."
Solas stood over her, hand held out as though to help her up. "I have seen magic like that only once before," he continued, oblivious to the way her stomach was lurching. "I was deep in the fade..."
He was quick enough to dart away from the bile that dragged itself up from her gut to splatter across his bedroom floor. She heaved again. Her throat burned. She gagged, but nothing more came. She rolled back on her haunches.
All the awe quickly vanished from Solas, replaced with revolution as she wiped her face with the back of her hand."Have you been drinking?" he said, with not a little contempt.
She was about to splurge the whole sorry truth of it. The pain she carried with her like tumour, that deep festering guilt that drove her to seek comfort in a bottle. When a loud banging cut across her and Solas narrowed his eyes towards the hallway.
"Neria?" Cullen's voice punctuated his blows, seeming close despite being muffled by the wood. "Open the door right now!"
"You have upset our resident Templar it seems," Solas muttered.
She put her fingers to her lips desperately. "Please," she whispered.
Solas rolled his eyes as the banging continued. "Remain here." He lithely stepped around the puddle of vomit she'd left on his floorboards but before he could dismiss the wards at his door a voice echoed from the hallway.
"Who dares disturb my slumber at such an hour!" Dorian roared and Neria winced as she heard him fling open the front door.
"Is she here?" Cullen sounded flustered even through the wood. She shuffled backwards, wincing. "Neria...is she here?"
"Now Commander I know our little hero entices you so but truly it's the middle of the..."
"Is she here, Dorian?" Cullen growled. "She's drunk...she could be a danger to this whole camp..."
"Oh so that's it is it?" Dorian sounded like he was squaring up to the Templar. "A mage can't even get a little tiddly without being a threat...what utter nonsense you are sprouting!"
"She used...a form of magic I have never seen..."
"Hello! Breach in the sky? Bigger things to worry about than your Templar senses tingling..."
"She disappeared into thin air..."
"Is that it?" Dorian sounded exasperated. "No demon summoning, no dead rising, no blood magic? Sounds all a bit dull, Commander."
"But I..."
"Why don't you run along and get some sleep now? I'm sure she'll turn up in the morning..." Dorian yawned.
"I err..."
"There's no need to be embarrassed, Commander. I understand the lure of warm body even if I do not share your...lusts."
"Lust?!" Cullen repeated, and she had to stifle a groan. Solas raised an eyebrow in her direction and she buried her head in her hands.
"Oh, come now. I've seen the way you look at her...like a starving man at meat..."
"I have... great respect for her," Cullen cut across him. "I don't look at her like that," a pause, a sharp intake of breath."...do I?"
"Definitely," Dorian taunted. "Now off with you Commander. I need my beauty sleep."
"But..."
"Shoo..."
The door snapped shut. Cullen's footsteps crunched over the snow and the silence in the shack. She chanced a peak at Solas. He was shaking his head at her bedraggled form.
"Solas?" Dorian shouted from the hallway. "Did you hear all that? We've a search party to plan."
With a wave of his hands the runes glowed a deeper blue and then vanished. He opened the door, wide enough for Dorian to step through.
"Unnecessary," Solas indicated her cowering form. "She stepped through my wall."
"Well, well, well," Dorian pulled the cord of his silken dressing gown a little tighter. "You are far more interesting than your simple Circle brethren. Vanishing in thin air, stepping through walls," he leaned down, his voice a theatrical whisper. "Ensorcelling the Commander."
She stumbled to her feet, the accusation stinging a little too close. "I have not ensorcelled anyone!"
"Oh...I did not mean in the blood magic sense, just the regular boring kind..." Dorian grinned and then his face fell to his foot and he wrinkled his nose. "What...what's this I've stepped in?!"
"Err..." Neria began, thinking now would be a pretty good time to bolt as Dorian pulled his bare foot from the sticky cocktail of rum and bile.
"That would be the Hero of Ferelden's vomit," Solas said, a little too helpfully.
