Author's Note: Short, and like the ending of all things, a little bittersweet. The final fight, the final flight, that leads Fenris to Kirkwall. As always, please read and review and let me know how you're liking things. I'm always a little worried about fight scenes, so if you think the action is incomprehensible, or comprehensible, let me know!


The serene field, situated where forest began and highway ended, was, in fact, a graveyard. The Dalish were here - they were still there, but in pieces. The earth was soaked in their blood, and the tall grass obscured the bits and pieces that were not reduced to a fine red slime.

"Down! Down now!" He shouted, the sword in his hand as he looked around.

"Cover! Kaillan! Terric! Take Valendrian and the children and find cover!" Fenris heard Sylrien shout, her back to his.

Out of of nowhere, figures clothed in maroon appeared, several with crossbows, and a handful armed with a weapon that made Fenris' blood run cold: the staves of spell-casters.

"Little wolf! Little wolf, did you think that your master would let such a prize go easy? He is most anxious for your return!"

Fenris snapped his head towards the origin of the voice: a mean-looking man, his head shaved in intricate patterns. He held blade in hand, the symbol of Tevinter emblazoned on his chest in shades of crimson and gold. "Did you think we would not find you? We could have had you days ago, if your master wanted you dead, but you are too precious to him. Lay down blade, and we can do this the easy way! Otherwise, it will not be pretty!"

He felt Sylrien behind him, heard the unsheathing of her swords as she backed into him. Sylrien. Terric, Valendrian, Kaillan - the others. "What of my companions? What is to be their fate?" He shouted in reply.

"What are you doing?" She hissed softly.

He shook his head. "I would have you home. I would have them home. I am not one of you, and you do not deserve to be robbed of your goal." She was about to respond when the man called out:

"Your companions? What of them? Lay down your weapons, and come to us without fight, and we might-"

He stopped mid-sentence, his words lost to gurgling as he keeled over. There was a dagger sticking out the front of his chest, sent there by the hand of Fenris' companion. Sylrien looked over her shoulder at him, "We leave none of our kin behind, whatever the cost."

Then, it began to rain crossbow bolts.

Fenris was a blur of lyrium-blue, sprinting across the field and swinging his sword as if a whirlwind of death. Arrows pierced naught but air, where moments before an elf stood. One guard would be cut down, and another would find some interior part of him brought outside his chest. He ripped out hearts, tore brains from skulls. He was death.

Sylrien was not too bad, either. While he was a whirlwind of death, she was its hand, moving quick and silent in contrast to his roars of rage. She wove her way across of field of bolts, across flames that shot through the air and beams of cold that flashed ice blue in the air. She danced with Fenris, he brutally forcing his opponents to meet the Maker, and she the considerably quieter aid that sent them into permanent night. But just when the fighting seemed to ebb, when it seemed all their foes dead and they paused for breath, a whistling noise erupted from the north, and a fireball - no, it was more like a boulder of flame - crashed into the earth, sending them both sprawling to the ground. There was no time to regain footing, to renew their onslaught, for in the precious few moments it took to get to their feet, more had come. He felt her grab his hand and run towards the safety of cover: the pieces of imperial highway that littered the landscape.

He saw the others huddled behind a section of stone wall. Fenris saw another gigantic fireball rain down and strike near them, decimating a large piece of stonework just to their left, between the pair and the rest of them. He heard the renewed onslaught of bolts, chipping away at the stones that sheltered them.

That brief, happy dream died in a moment. He turned to Sylrien, grabbing her by the nape of his neck and pressed his lips to hers. When the kiss ended, triggered by another fireball landing close to them, he whispered, "You have to go."

"Not without you. No - I will not abandon you to them."

Fenris shook his head at her protests, silencing them with another kiss before murmuring. "Your duty is to your people, and your family. They will follow me, they want me; they're not going to pursue you."

She shook her head, muttering "No, no..." over again. He was touched, but he knew it could not be otherwise.

"Look at them. They can live without me - without an elf they did not know a month before. You are their leader. Lead them to safety. I will draw these fools away, and I will find a way to end them - and the man who would call me slave. I can't do that if you don't get the others to safety."

Her eyes, her clear gray eyes, were wide and filled with tears as she looked up to him. Even though the earth groaned beneath him, even though death was bit a fireball away, she still took the time to brush the hair out of his eyes, to hold him close, whispering in his ear.

"I think we - I think you could have been happy. I think you could have found peace. If you surv-...When you are done , when you have ended them, come to Denerim and come find me." She kissed the lobe of his ear, his cheek, and finally, for the last time, his lips.

It was a kiss that shamed those few that came before it. It was bruising, and it was deep. It was every kiss they would never have after that moment combined. To break from it was more painful than any wound, bar the lyrium tattoos, that he had experienced up until that point.

But it had to end. They had to let each other go. He squeezed her hand, before he dove out from behind the rock. Cries arose from their pursuers, and a hail of bolts followed him. The air burned around him, before igniting where he had just been moments before. He turned back to see her there, watching him, before rolling out from behind the rock in the other direction, joining the other elves.

He raised his hand to them, before turning to run into the woods. He knew Kirkwall lay along the coast, though some distance away. He would draw the fools to the city, and he would lie in wait for the one that kept his mind, if not his body, still chained in shackles.

Again he looked back, to see if Sylrien and the others had fared any better. They had - moving along the edge of the wall in the opposite direction, towards Cumberland. He watched their forms grow smaller, and smaller, until they vanished from sight. The moment's pause was soon broken by the sound of armored feet trampling the brush underfoot. Fenris grinned; if it was a chase they wanted, he would oblige them. He turned and ran.