Prologue, Part Ten

The Joining II

With its axe still raised high, The Hurlock Alpha's head flew in the air, severed by a swing of Vigilance.

Aedan instantly dropped to one knee, shouting.

"Alistair—!" He placed his hands on his companion's shoulders. "Alistair, are you awake? Can you hear me?!"

He didn't respond.

From a distance, it seemed like he was muttering something, but that could have been an illusion of Aedan's own making.

Biting his teeth, Cousland undid the gauntlet on his left hand and threw it aside. He pressed two fingers into the skin along Alistair's windpipe.

There was still a pulse.

"Adaar!" Cousland shouted. He had passed by him during his search, having skipped by him entirely and instead opting to engage and destroy all of the darkspawn in the vicinity first.

Kaaras Adaar moved slowly, but without much pain. Compared to earlier, the ability to walk on two feet felt like more than he thought he deserved.

"Seal up his chest." Cousland pointed at the laceration where the Archdemon's claw had ripped through armor and skin alike. It stretched the length of Alistair's whole torso. "Do just enough so that we can move him out of the rain without causing further bleeding." Aedan stood back up and covered his eyes with his arm as he did, as if there were something he was afraid to see.

Adaar looking down the whole time, weakly tried to speak. But his throat was closed up, so he just nodded his head instead. He lowered himself and hovered his hands over the unconscious warden's torso, mana flickering from his fingertips to a simple healing spell.

He stayed quiet for a while, trying to work up the courage to accept reality.

When enough time had passed that he was sure his lungs would not stop at the mention of it, he looked over at The Warden-Commander, wanting an answer.

Aedan was facing away, looking downhill, at the long path filled with ashes and stains. He felt just as the subject matter did.

"Did you see…?" Adaar asked while looking up at The Warden, trying for any sort of confirmation.

"I did." Cousland answered, already knowing the subject. "Archdemons. Three of them. They left with their main army soon after I surfaced."

"And in the valley, they…" Adaar trailed off.

All those people.

Cousland didn't seem bothered by it.

"…How did you survive? I was sure you—"

"The King seems healed enough for now." Cousland cut him off, picking Alistair up and taking him into his arms. "Follow me. The wind is blowing northward, so it should be dry around the walls."

Adaar went silent. Not expecting an answer.

But he got one anyway. Cousland proceeded to speak while walking slowly, cautious to not reopen the wound. His back facing towards from Kaaras as he did, and his face—his face was looking up at the black clouds that stretched in every direction, never once looking down at Alistair.

"I was inside the tunnels beneath the Tower of Ishal when the Archdemons appeared. Someone in the tower likely triggered the explosion early."

"'Triggered'?" Adaar looked intently as he repeated, inquisitive. "The tower coming down…that was planned?"

"Not the whole tower, no. But it was part of a trap thought up by Loghain, yes." Cousland explained. "It was magnified. By The Archdemons' fire or by means yet unknown."

"…?" Adaar was too dazed to understand what Cousland was getting at, so he repeated his question with more words. "…How did you survive, after the explosion? Who saved you?"

"No one saved me. I dug myself out." The Warden-Commander stated, matter-of-factly.

"…Just like that?"

"It is true." Cousland didn't bother expounding. To him, this was as normal as the struggle to get out of bed in the morning.

"And the headaches, or—" Adaar's words died when he tried to explain what had happened to him. They were the worst pain he had ever felt, beyond pain—base, chemical manipulation of the brain, beyond the feasible limits of the nerves.

Cousland closed his eyes. "I did not feel anything at all."

They reached a dry spot in the grass next to an unbroken section of the outer wall, some lengths away from where the Tower had crashed down and opened an additional breach.

Aedan laid Alistair down and then looked away, at the wall. Kaaras silently got back to stopping any internal bleeding beyond the surface wound.

Adaar stayed quiet as he did, staring blankly into his work. Perhaps he should not be surprised at this point, but…

Aedan Cousland truly was inhuman. There was no way anything mortal should survive something like that.

"And what of you? How did you survive?" Cousland asked, flipping the question, as if he could tell exactly what the Qunari warden was thinking of in that very moment.

"I don't know…I spent all my energy trying to kill the Archdemon, lost, and then everything went black. I don't remember anything after that."

"Another question begged, then. Why would the Darkspawn not kill you after the Archdemons won?" Cousland asked with a center on an obvious fact: Darkspawn never spare the survivors too weak to crawl away.

"…" Adaar did not have a real answer, nothing logical or of great certainty. Adaar had seen with his own eyes that the horde took its time to kill everything left alive around the Tower of Ishal.

If anything, he was absolutely certain—that he had felt his own death. And that Alistair had died right along with him.

Neither of them should have been alive right now.

Adaar pulled his hands away from Alistair. He had clotted all the bleeding he could, roughly grafted together the skin so it would stick together.

It seems that The Archdemon had just missed piercing a lung or heart. Which would not have been hard for it to do, given its size.

The claw may have just grazed him. The Archdemon seemed to have missed its mark, made a cut too shallow.

…A thought came to Adaar's mind. He had failed to stop the Archdemon, but maybe—in the slightest effect from the cause of all of his strength—it may have…

He shook his head. There was no way of knowing, and even if there were, there was no reason to bring it up.

"Is he fine, then?" Cousland asked. He was still looking straight at the wall, not for a moment turning his gaze towards them.

"He might have pneumonia or some other sickness from being in the rain so long, potentially an infection of flesh." Adaar stated.

"…Will he be alright after, though?"

Adaar's brow wrinkled. Cousland should already know all of this, and more. He wasn't sure why he was making him say it.

"I can't guarantee he'll fully heal if he survives." Adaar said. "Depending on what internal flesh the Archdemon struck, Alistair could have lost his ability to speak, or have permanent restricted movement or breathing. He might live in constant pain for the rest of his life."

"…"

"Warden-Commander?" Kaaras looked over at him.

Aedan looked down, for a moment his face becoming as timid as a child's, afraid to look anyone in the eye.

"Maker…god…"

Aedan looked up, terrible.

Aedan Cousland's ultramarine blue eyes—which were always narrowed, always contemptful, always arrogant—were wide open, his face in petrification.

Looking at him from across the rain, Adaar saw fear.

Eyes that showed their color, regardless of any light or darkness. Eyes childish—the constant of the body, veteran or no, the one part that never changes. Innocent eyes stolen by a man with no heart.

Seeing them wide open, juxtaposed against where they didn't belong—it was the most terrifying look at Cousland that Adaar had ever seen.

And then they erupted. As dormant forces of nature always do.

"…GODDAMMIT!" Cousland punched the stone wall as hard as he could, breaking his fingers. The masonry crumbled into a crater centered at where he struck, the rubble running down at his feet.

Aedan looked back down as he had before, quiet, his arm limply falling back to his side. Blood seeped from his hand, the skin of his knuckles ripped off from the blunt force.

"…I'm sorry…" Aedan spoke, looking at Alistair.

There wasn't any doubt of it in his mind. Cousland had failed to foresee the possibility of multiple Archdemons or an intelligent attack on the Wardens themselves. He had failed to follow the oath of fealty he had sworn—to uphold the contract that he had sworn his worth upon.

"…I'm so…" Aedan spoke again, his words drying up.

Kaaras looked at Aedan Cousland. Normally he was so indomitable, so insufferable to everyone around him and full of orders, but right now he looked small enough to fit in someone's palm.

He took a step forward, and tried to heal Aedan's hand.

But The Warden-Commander jerked his arm away on reflex.

"I'm fine." He said to Adaar.

Cousland closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and with it—he was inflated back to his full stature.

He slipped the undone gauntlet back onto his bleeding hand, covered up the proof that he was still human.

"Adaar—can you still fight?"

He didn't feel like it, but he wasn't going to say no. "I can."

"I have personal items buried underneath our old fire in the main camp, six inches southwest of the brazier. Go there and retrieve them for me, retreat if there are too many darkspawn for you to handle. When you are done, come find me by the fire where the Ishal's beacon had collapsed. We will wait there and set out East at dawn, the darkspawn will be less likely to ambush us on the road in the morning."

"Understood." Adaar replied, tersely. Hearing Cousland return to his old self, he was starting to regain a semblance normalcy himself, too.

The Vashoth warden turned and stepped forward, but something occurred to him a few moments after he agreed.

"…Will we be taking the Imperial Road east and then north, to the capital?" Adaar asked.

"We will head directly to Gwaren, if possible requisitioning horses along the way." Cousland clarified. "After that, north—to the Free Marches."

Adaar looked up at the sky. There wasn't a speck of blue there.

He had an idea of what Cousland was planning, but he didn't have a better alternative.

In a way, The Butcher of Amaranthine was fortunate that Alistair was not awake. If he were, there would be no way of getting him to agree to what Cousland's decision.

The young Qunari simply left without a word, and followed his orders.

And when he reached the bridge, where he could look anywhere but down, knowledge of an old memory of his came alive—that the stench of the dead truly was the worst smell in the world.

…

… …

Cousland snapped a canteen off a dead man's body.

The oils lining the ridges of the valley had been knocked aside and spilt as a consequence of Ishal's collapse.

At the very end of the tower where the beacon had fell, it had lit everything flammable and created a large oilfire that persisted and spread through the rain.

Some of it ran down the rocky walls of Ostagar's valley, looking akin to something volcanic from a distance.

Aedan had finished bandaging Alistair. It did not do much to help his chances of survivability, but it could help keep the main wound clean and keep pressure on it to prevent a reopening.

He had then propped him up against an upright chunk of stone masonry broken off from the tower and angled Alistair's front to face towards the fire so he would heat up. That should help with any symptoms of sickness, if perhaps only slightly.

There really wasn't anything Cousland could do beyond that. As all-powerful as he seemed to be to people under him, his healing ability in a situation like this was precisely at zero. Any of the magi in the world outclassed him in that regard.

He could pray, possibly. If he could somehow force himself to drop to his knees and plead. It would be a first.

He heard Adaar treading against the mudded ground. The Vashoth was carrying a small chest dug up from the ground, not heavy in the slightest, even for a thinly-built Qunari.

"Encounter any resistance at the main camp?" Aedan asked.

Adaar shook his head and looked away. Most of it was burnt down from Archdemon fire, other darkspawn included. There weren't any human survivors, either.

The Warden-Commander extended an open hand for Adaar to hand over his belongings.

Adaar complied, with some words. "I do not have the key to open it, however."

"Neither do I." Cousland took the lockbox from Adaar and bashed it against the tower's remains. The lock broke. Crude, but effective.

Kaaras had hardly noticed this before, but for all of his overcomplicated talk, Cousland never had a moment of intermittence or delay between utilizing simple concepts and complex ones. He might not have even realized there was a difference.

Cousland flipped the chest over and emptied its contents on the ground.

—A compact coinpouch, containing no more than twenty sovereigns.

—The Grey Warden Treatises that had been gifted back to the wardens by the Witch of the Wilds.

"Toss these in the fire." Cousland handed the ancient documents to Adaar, and he complied.

—The official seal of the Cousland Family, emblazoned with the double laurel heraldry.

—A talisman, ring-shaped with a sandglass in the middle, but with no sand, both glass ends filled with someone's blood.

"That's—" Adaar cut himself off. He had heard of them before, but this was his first time seeing one.

—And an amulet, metal with a glass center containing a bit of blackened blood.

Adaar recognized the last item instantly. He had the one of the same around his neck at the very moment—A Warden's Oath, filled with the same blood from one's own Joining.

The Butcher of Amaranthine had never worn his own before. But it was the first of the five items he picked up.

"This seems to be everything." Cousland closed his eyes. "Leave me. Go stand guard at the front gates and wait for us there. Retreat back here and inform me if any darkspawn approach."

Adaar looked at him, silent. There shouldn't be any reason to stay.

And his extra sense for the taint was still rather new, but, there shouldn't be any darkspawn nearby to watch for—

—Although now that he focused on it, he could sense something. A singular dot mapped in his mind.

The Qunari Warden tilted his head and peered over past Cousland's shoulder.

There was something there, on the other side of the wall where Cousland had propped up Alistair. Next to the fire.

It wasn't a darkspawn but…

…He understood.

Adaar nodded, and left.

Cousland was still as he watched him leave. He waited until he was out of sight, and then turned the corner.

A great fire was fed by a combination of scattered bits of the beacon's kindling and knocked-over oils from the scouting division. The darkspawn must have thought—if they could really think—that everything here would die on its own.

Aedan clung close to the wall as he circumvented it and walked towards a spot that was setting off his mind—

Someone was underneath the trappings of the tower.

Partially trapped, anyway. Their neck and shoulders were still visible, along with a loose arm.

He crouched down and inspected the parts of them that were visible. They were still breathing, had an unnatural slump in one of their shoulders. A broken collarbone, most likely.

"…Hm?" Cousland made a curious sound. It was always a feat to surprise him.

There was something covering up part of their forehead. It was a scrap of paper, torn off the corner of some weathered page.

He peeled it off. There was a scratch on their head behind it, and a bit of blood that had seeped through it, helping it stick to the skin.

628

It didn't seem to be handwritten…rather something from a printing press…a book's page number, most likely.

"Mmmph…mm…euhhhh" The survivor stirred at the feeling of his armored touch. It wasn't very pleasant, having cold gauntlets touch their face.

"Still alive?" Cousland said as he put away the piece of parchment.

"Heh…" She spat out, as weak as a mouse. "Don't get the wrong idea…just need someone to get me out of here so I can walk out on my own…I've always hated being tied down, you know?"

Hawke opened her eyes, but didn't need to look up to tell who it was. There wasn't anyone in the world who could be mistaken for that man.

Cousland's eyes traveled to the nearby bonfire and the trail of flames where it had followed the oil.

"You are fortunate that it did not spread over here."

"It did spread…I was just uphill so all it did was spread around over all my old men…had the chance to listen to everyone else die crying for help." Hawke closed her eyes and curved her mouth into a weak smile. "Lucky me." Sarcasm took energy.

Cousland's eyes switched over to where the Tower was standing earlier. She was all the way over here, so that meant she had to be close to the top when it fell.

"Normally, great magic would be required to survive a fall from that height…what exactly are you made out of, woman?"

"Funny…I always wanted to ask you the same thing." Hawke replied, bluffing.

"Defiant as always, even when you cannot lift a finger." Cousland folded his arms. "I suppose I should be unsurprised."

"What, because I don't have an answer to what I don't know…? You know everything, you tell me why I'm still alive…I fell off a lot of trees trying to climb them when I was younger…maybe my body's just used to it." Hawke replied. Even in the state she was in, the man above her was still uncaring and cruel.

Some people simply cannot change.

"Also—" Hawke went on. "You're wrong. I can lift exactly five fingers. Earlier I even—" Hawke cut herself off. She wanted to say something, but it was hard to remember. Her mind was too foggy. "—Can't lift my arm though. Doesn't seem to want to move, don't know if it's still completely attached to everything else."

At her verbal prompting, Cousland inspected her sole visible limb. Most of Hawke's drakeskin-and-dragonhide armor had been destroyed, presumably from the collapse. Thanks to that, it was relatively easy to remove the remaining armor plating and diagnose the flesh.

"It is fractured, but attached. At the collarbone and at the forearm. Likely the points of impact when whatever you were leaning against struck the ground." Cousland stated. She didn't have any active bleeding. "You will be able to regain full function, given two weeks of healing and rest."

"Oh…that's nice…I'll have ten fingers to jab your eyes out with instead of just five…Ha. Ha." Hawke laughed with exactly two syllables.

"…" Cousland didn't react to her joke. He never did have much of a sense of humor.

"…Speaking of which, can you get me out of here already?" Hawke mentioned, not able to bear dancing around the subject any longer. "It kinda hurts to be down here. Just a little."

"…"

"Hey. You. Aedan. I'm not talking to anyone else, you know? And I know you hate talking to me, so you didn't come here to chat. Just get me out of here so we can go our separate ways and never talk to eachother again. Or leave me alone so I can dig myself out later. Whatever works for you."

"…You really do not know, do you?"

"Huh?" Hawke didn't get at what he was talking about. She did not know what, precisely?

She couldn't get herself flipped over, so she turned her face, resting one cheek on some stone so she could look up at him with a single eye.

He looked really tall and dark from this angle. Like all the light was drowned out and he was a blank silhouette surround by a raging fire.

…It reminded her of something, somehow.

"Look—" Aedan took out the canteen he had stolen from a dead man's body. "—as critically as you look at others, look at yourself."

He turned it over, pouring water on the stone ground in front of her.

Some of it splashed on her face, irritating her a bit. Look at yourself as critically as you look at others…like he was one to talk.

A puddle gathered in front of her, the ripples clearing out and leveling so she could see her reflection.

Marian Hawke always believed she had pretty eyes.

They did not have a simple color. Viridian, Turquoise, Celadon, and so on. The blurred border between green and blue, the type of color that could not be concretely pointed at in the rainbow; and could be called many names, many ways—but always her.

When someone is called attractive in so many different dressed up words, by many different people, it can go to their head. Let them think it's just natural, that everyone gets those sorts of compliments—and over time, take it for granted.

—Why was Aedan Cousland able to find her, her alone, tucked away in some obscure corner, so far away from where he was supposed to be?

When Hawke looked at her reflection, something hideous looked right back at her.

Her eyes were clouded white at the iris, greyed at the sclera.

Spider veins of dark purple ran up her neck and across her face.

Between the webs marking her face, her skin was deathly pale—diseased. Hematoma had built up around her eyes and cheekbones, as if she had been repeatedly concussed.

The color of her face; the adventurousness, the kindness, and the troublemaking—all of it had drained away.

—He was able to find her, because he could sense her.

And if he could, the darkspawn could, too.

Cousland cracked the glass on his Warden's Oath against the rim of the canteen like an eggshell, and poured the darkspawn blood inside. It was already treated with either Archdemon blood or an enchanted substitute for his own Joining, so in theory, it should still work.

He tossed the rest of the amulet in the valley, and then knelt down, so low that he was almost eye level with Hawke.

He suspended the canteen close to her face.

And then he said it. The solution:

"Drink."

Hawke wordlessly stared into his eyes. She couldn't find words venomous enough for the poison she felt.

If she needed to-she would keep her mouth closed, black out before gasping for air if he held her nose, spit it out if he waited for her to wake back up. The other option wasn't possible.

"Drink." He repeated. His face was made of stone.

"…I'd rather die."

"What darkspawn do to the tainted women they capture is a fate far worse than death."

"That's rich, coming from a man who's always acted like he wanted me gone." Hawke made a noise in her throat, trying to laugh out of scorn. "The man who killed my brother."

"The taint killed your brother. Are you going to throw away your life simply out of hatred for me?" Cousland asked, not understanding it. Anyone worth their oxygen would have lived for revenge instead of dying out of it.

"You let him die. You could've stopped him at any time."

"And I have told you before. No one can stop the wrath of fate. Not you, not I, none but the Maker himself. When men drink darkspawn blood, sometimes they live. Sometimes they die. Your brother died."

"He was still my brother!" Hawke shouted. "Family is everything. I'd rather die on my own terms than become one of my brother's killers. Besides, the Joining might kill me anyway, won't it?"

"It might kill you, it might save you." Cousland stood up, looking down on Hawke from his full height while she lay sprawled underneath the rubble. Marian couldn't move her head very well, but by moving her eyes towards the top of her eyelids she was able to see his. And at a very narrow angle she could see their color, unmistakable even in the black of a stormy midnight. She saw kindly-colored eyes of blue in between a shadowed face. A blue so vivid and intense that they could capture the hope in a girl's heart, a blue that should belong to a sensitive poet or a fair-hearted adventurer.

It was a cruel joke for them to be attached to such a terrifying man. A scarred, heartless man that spoke the dispassionate words—

"Do you want to die for certain, or do you want a chance to cling to life?"

Hawke kept her eyes locked with his, reflecting his finality right back at him. Carver wasn't tainted, and had a choice to definitely live or potentially die. Hawke was faced with the inverse of his choice, she would die tainted, or potentially live. And live with the burden that came with it.

To honor her brother, she knew what she had to do.

She filled her lungs with air and resolve, and gave her answer—

"Let me die."

If she were going to die, she wanted to die Marian Hawke. She wanted to die as a woman who lived her life with the freedom to do whatever she thought was right, not as a Grey Warden that killed for the sake of the greater good or pitifully clung to her existence until her thirty years were up.

Aedan sighed at her answer, the sound of it rather gravelly and resonating; took the canteen away from her face and stood back up tall. He heard a deep exhale at his feet, as if all the tension and struggle Hawke had in her had left through her lungs.

She dropped her head towards the stone, and saw spots in her vision as if she had been staring at the sun. For better or worse, this was her choice.

But then she saw something land in the grass. A dragonbone jambiya, the same one she had thrown into the Joining Chalice when her brother died.

Cousland had harmlessly dropped it next to her as if he were giving it back. He must have been carrying it this entire time.

She made a small noise and snapped her head up, only to see that Aedan Cousland had moved the canteen near his own face instead.

"What…" Hawke asked in disbelief as he did something unexplainable "…what are you doing?"

"The Right of Conscription."

Cousland tipped back the canteen and put the darkspawn blood in his own mouth.

He knelt right back down, and gripped her face by the chin with his sword hand.

It was then that Hawke understood what he intended to do.

"You wouldn't—" Hawke stammered as she tried to use his own words against him. "—you wouldn't be disgusting enough to try and ki—Mmph!"

Hawke was cut short as she felt Cousland's lips touch hers. He dug his forefinger and thumb hard into her cheeks to stop her from biting down. A foreign tongue pushed its way past and rolled over hers, forcing the liquid Taint down her throat. The taste was more bitter than anything she had ever experienced, inflicting her body to involuntarily writhe and struggle with all its might against the trapping of the ruined tower.

Against the backdrop of the fire, their kiss was definitively cold.

His face pulled back the moment he heard the injured swallow. Hawke immediately inhaled and coughed as violently as she could, trying to expel it from her body. Only air escaped her mouth. She tried again. And again. All that she achieved was running out of breath.

"You…" She panted out words between shallow, rapid inhalations. "…really are…Evil…you know that?"

"I know." Cousland agreed and he watched her lose her free will against what was to come. She screamed. Her eyes bulged from her face. She experienced the visage and welcoming of an Archdemon as if it were right before her. She went through every symptom of The Joining congruently to Aedan's own. And then finally, like all the others, she collapsed lifelessly as every ounce of her strength was expended to reforge her being into something new.

When it was all over, The Warden crouched back down, took off his gauntlet again, and calmly placed two fingers towards the top of Hawke's neck. He closed his eyes, waited a few seconds, and then retracted them slowly before standing upright again.

She was alive.

Her symptoms retreated. Now, all of it was inside her. And it would be her own problem to deal with.

He placed his hand on the topmost rubble above her, ready to get her out.

But when he did, he noticed something land and glimmer on the back of one of his black gauntlets, only to disappear as soon as he saw it.

Aedan looked up. The sound of rain had stopped, but the precipitation had not.

Snow.

The northbound wind blew at the moment of realization, bringing a chill that did not need temperature to benumb.

The fire behind him was burning itself out, quieting down to nothing at all.

As always, a murderous night had led to a silent morning—of which there were four survivors. And if he did not move quickly, they would freeze to death and become zero.

After all—Today—was the first day of Harvestmere, of Frumentum; the last month before winter. Of the thirty-first year of the Chantry's Ninth Age.

The season of death and preservation. When the year ends so another must begin.

And with the onset of The Final Blight, which would become as vast as the The First—

In the middling of the Dragon Age, the Age named for violence and war—

It would snow more than any Age that came before it—