CHOICE OF THE CHAMPION
Part III: SEA AND LIGHTNING
Chapter 5: Reclaiming
Chapter 5: Reclaiming
The jungle was as familiar as he could remember it, and following the Fog Warriors' silent, winding traverse across the wilds, Fenris could feel his heart swell with uncertainty and guilt in equal measures. He hadn't forgotten his first free memories. They were his, much more so than the old, disjointed story of Leto. And they were marred by the slave's obedience to an order.
I killed them all.
But they were around him again, faces and arms painted white.
They stopped at a seemingly random grove, and the woman walking behind him issued a quiet order. A Warrior combed the foliage, revealing a gaping chasm on the other side – a shocking hole in the fabric of the forest, as if the earth itself had been scarred there by a claw of an unimaginably gigantic creature. When he dared look inside it, he could almost see the distant glimmering metal rubble of the Deep Roads… And the chasm was new, the soil at the sides of it still visible and not yet covered by endlessly ravenous jungle of Seheron.
Someone clasped their arms around him and he froze – but before he had any chance to react they were falling, falling, falling, the wind wheezing past his ears and pushing the scream back into his throat, they flew into the roaring abyss –
And then he landed.
He rolled to his knees, coughing, squeezing Hawke's staff until it hurt. His stomach was clenching and spasming violently, but there was nothing he could vomit with. Someone helped him up without a word – not gently, but not brutally either.
Propping himself up against the staff, Fenris stood up and looked around.
The camp of the Fog Warriors was never a permanent thing, similar to the Dalish aravels – always ready to fight and flee, disappearing in the white smoke. But this one, positioned at the belly of an old black cave under the forest, was as settled as Fenris had ever seen it: there were open campfires, white tents that looked like they hadn't moved for a long time, and even carved and woven children's toys scattered around each set of tents. The basalt walls had been decorated with clear white paint; he could not read the complex symbols that ran around the bottom of the cave, but the visual story was easy enough.
Seheron against Tevinter. Seheron against the Qunari. Nahar cursing the island with the anathema of eternal fog, and the Marchers of Four Winds changing the curse into a blessing: a veil in the air to hide, to protect, to give power. The fog dancers driving away the magisters, drowning the Arishoks in smoke.
From the entrance he could see the other Warriors slide down on lianas, jumping down easily as if it was just as simple as opening and closing a gate.
"White Wolf." The woman that had addressed him before stood behind him, and he turned sharply. She spoke in heavily accented Tevene, in the native dialect of Seheron. "Why did you come back? You will tell me before I speak with the dancers."
There was no anger in her voice, but rather a very defined will without even considering disobedience. Fenris felt hot in his chest. And so he was back, and suddenly he was ten years younger and still freshly a slave –
Hadriana. Little Wolf. What did you do this time? It's like you enjoy being punished…
He slipped to his knees without even realising. A part of himself filled with white-hot rage at it, but the world was back to what it had been and there was one thing for him to do, only one. "Domina. I beg your forgiveness."
A sharp intake of breath. "Get up. Immediately."
Fenris shuddered as if a jolt went through him. That's what Hawke would say. That's what she did say.
I'm not a slave. I'm not a slave, and Hadriana's dead, and this is not Tevinter.
He stood up and – although it was immeasurably difficult – looked her in the eye. She was not older than twenty, tall and scrawny, and under her white paint her skin looked ashen-grey like his own. And now there was anger curling her features, but it somehow wasn't directed at him. "I will not have you kneel before me like you kneeled before my father, White Wolf. We taught you freedom once. Have you forgotten?"
And through the paint and the half-dimmed light of the cave and ten years' worth of change, he saw her.
"Asha."
"Fenris."
Hyruna's daughter. Once, she'd cut his hair, and tug at his shoulder long enough to make him slip away from the tent – he'd been terrified because he had not asked Hyruna's permission, and when he'd finally articulated it, she'd laughed like he was the silliest man in the jungle – and pick sweet berries with her. She'd been no older than ten, and he'd been a slave.
And then he'd killed her father.
She closed the distance between them. "Why did you come back?" There was no accusation in her voice, no anger now, only a simple command, and he did not understand.
"I don't know. I'm looking for the Champion of Kirkwall." The next words ran out of his mouth almost against his will, he was helpless to stop them. "I thought I'd killed you, Asha. I thought I killed all of the tribe. I beg your-"
She interrupted him, unfazed. "Later, White Wolf. I must speak to the fog dancers first. What would the Champion of Kirkwall do in Seheron?"
He suddenly felt completely exhausted. The torched staff felt heavy and hot with power in his hands.
"We were in Amaranthine. I don't know how I found myself here. I lost trail of her." After all this time, he thought bitterly, you could really get used to holes in memory.
"We know of Kirkwall," said Asha. "And we did hear stories about the lyrium warrior at the Champion's side. I hoped…" Something glistened on her face, and she shrugged it off immediately. "Is he dead? Your master?"
"I killed him."
And her expression suddenly opened, relaxed into something akin to relief and – something wrenched in his gut, he killed her father and she still smiled at him.
"That's good."
He gave a sharp nod, not trusting his expression. Asha looked at him for a short moment, eyes lit up.
"So you've come to stay?"
The barely hidden hope in her voice gave him pause. "Would you have me?"
"Let me speak to the dancers." But her glance was bright and open, the mask of the leader discarded and forgotten. She raised her hand and for a split second he thought she was going to touch his face – but instead she just tugged at the white strand of hair at his ear. "You always let it grow out too long."
He stared at her back as she walked away from him, disappearing in the belly of the cave.
It didn't make sense.
He was a murderer. A backstabber. A traitor. He killed the first people that'd shown him kindness.
Would they have him? Would they?
-/-
She'd left him free to wander the camp. He took the opportunity to walk amongst the tents, brushing off the dust from the old, shameful memories. The white linings on the black cave walls told the stories that he remembered hearing around a bonfire: the fog dancer Erina and the Orchid spirit; the griffins that had lifted Seheron from the bottom of the stormy sea; the warrior that saddled the Tempest Cloud to battle and wielded the Lightning as a sword. Something coiled around his heart, a warmth and impossible hope that he just knew was going to be wrenched out from between his fingers if he dared take it – would they let him come back? He heard laughter bellowing from the tents, and his lip twitched on its own. Fierce. Proud. Loving, and open, and so very free.
"White Wolf," called Asha from behind him. "They will see you."
He followed her inside the cave, blinking to readjust his eyes to the dimmed lights. The markings on the walls changed here; they were more abstract, more mystic, weaving along the stone like mist. The March of the Four Winds… and the promise that once day, on a day where there is nothing more to hide and run away from, the fogs of Seheron will be lifted.
Whereas the outermost part of the cave looked eroded and natural, the inside looked more and more like a Deep Roads exit corridor.
Four fog dancers sat around the tall white bonfire.
"Have you come here out of your own volition, White Wolf?"
"My master is dead. I am unbound." He stood straight in front of them, looking at their silver hair and ashen skin, so similar to his own, and a wave of strange pride washed through him. He'd killed as a slave, but he would bear the responsibility as a free man.
As it should be.
"Did you come to help?"
That was the last thing he'd expected. Help? Help with what? He lowered his head.
"I came into Seheron unwittingly, wise dancers. But I would help with anything the Fog Warriors ask."
"So we heard." The elders started murmuring quietly amongst each other. Finally, the tallest one sat up straight.
"Since the chasm opened, the Warriors have been enjoying peace in our hiding place. But alas, we've learnt that this is not the only structure that have been unearthed on Seheron. In exploration of the caves, our men wandered out into the territories of the Qunari and have been captured." There was an impassivity in the face of the old man, a face that saw too much death to be fazed by it anymore. "We need to retrace their steps and make sure that the Qunari, or the Tevinter, do not find us from beneath as we sleep."
He bowed. "I would be honoured to aid the tribe."
"In exchange, we will help you find the Champion."
He looked up to them, surprised. His debt would only begin to be repaid with the cave exploration – and here they added more to it.
He nodded mutely and bowed again, more deeply. "I thank you for your generosity, wise dancers."
"He speaks to us as if we're his masters," Asha said from behind his back, and he felt the humiliation like a slap. "He's not a slave anymore. My father's murder has been avenged. Why do you let him cower in front of you? Fog Warriors don't bow to anyone!"
Murmurs. He didn't hear it over the pounding in his ears.
"Your father's-"
"My father's murderer is dead, Fenris. And you walk free."
No, no, no, no. She was wrestling the responsibility from him. But it was his. It was his to claim, the first act of a free man.
"I killed your entire tribe, Asha!"
"Not the entire tribe." She stood before him, tall and proud and unyielding, and he was at a loss. "You were a tool of murder. A way of Tevinter to destroy us. But who would blame a sword if the man is dead?"
"I'm not a-" Something boiled inside of him, a guilt cradled so long that it had become a part of him, the first act of a free man, and now it was being taken away. Somehow in the act of shifting the blame she was denying his very humanity. "I wasn't a tool, or a sword, Asha, not after here! I was learning how to be free! You taught me how, and I-" He was shaking, the anger flaring up his lyrium so bright it made the fire look dim. "I was a man who had a choice, and I made a wrong one! Do not deny me my responsibility!"
"I'm denying you your guilt, nothing else."
"Let me have it," and he did not know whether he was demanding or pleading. "I was a free man. Don't take away the consequences of my choice."
The tall fog dancer cleared his throat in the tense silence that followed.
"Let the dancers solve it, Asha. This is not a tribe's inner matter."
The woman's face twisted in anger.
"Isn't it, dancer? Is he not a warrior? He is from here, you need only look at him to see it. He wore our war paint and fought in our fog, and he shared my father's tent. This man was one of us once, and he was taken away and marred by Tevinter, but now he is returned! Do not disrespect the memory of Hyruna Long Shadow of the Coruscati by treating his tribesman like an esternus!"
The word stung, loaded with anger and disgust at something Fenris couldn't quite understand. One of us. Taken away and marred by Tevinter, but one of us-
Something shifted inside his scarred soul.
"Asha," he said, more slowly than he intended. "You can't claim me a free man and deny my crime with the same breath."
"Can't I? Just you watch me." The snap was so much Hawke, complete with the scowl and angry eyes, that he could laugh out loud over his own frustration. "You had a master then. You do not anymore. And you're a Coruscati, you're of my tribe."
Fenris did not miss the way the fog dancers looked at each other. Something wordless passed between them, and the tallest one – the leader? – relented; he straightened up and spoke with the tone that brokered no discussion.
"You'll be sent into the deep tunnels for your penance, White Wolf of the Coruscati. You won't do it to please the fog dancers or the tribe. You won't do it as an outsider trading the help. You will do it as one of us, as someone who has wronged his tribe and who will lay his life in offering for the ones he took. You will do it as a free man, and by your penance you shall reclaim your right to be called a Fog Warrior."
Fenris stared at him wordlessly. His head spun at the sudden gravity of the decision put on his shoulders. Of all the years with no identity and no allegiance but to Hawke herself, the titles seemed like something that he could not, dared not bear: a Seheron. A Fog Warrior. A Coruscati.
"And when we look for the Champion, we won't do it in exchange, but as a task shared between the tribe for one of our own."
One of our own. "Thank you," he said in a hollow voice. He closed his eyes and propped his weight against Hawke's staff. He will be absolved. He will be forgiven. He will bear the responsibility and he will be cleared from it.
He'll be cleared. And he will reclaim what he could have been.
Now I understand, Hawke.
He felt a stab of longing for her – the woman that drew the slavers away, fought his battles, taught him the ways of a scholar, and shared with him the open, fierce, unyielding nature of someone who could never be bound, not even by guilt. She had grown out of Ferelden like a stubborn thorny thistle, and she carried her country in her thorns just as sure as she carried the magic; she knew the value of roots. He wished she could see him now.
Would you be proud of me, Hawke?
The staff crackled in his hand and he felt the fiery aura shift under his touch. Yes, said the fire that ignited his lyrium. Yes, she would.
Where was she?
-/-
The Fog Warriors had heard the stories of the White Wolf and the demise of the Coruscati tribe. No-one seemed to loathe him. They knew Tevinter and its magisters; and as much as Fenris was resentful of the way it shifted the blame, he found strange comfort in the fact that they understood slavery. But when he explained his mission to the belly of the Deep Roads, as well as the purpose behind it, they nodded thoughtfully – beyond slavery, they understood responsibility. He was relieved.
When they sat together over the fire, the fog dancers joined them – and with a shudder of surprise and familiarity at the same time, he saw that there was no hierarchy between them and the warriors, no boundaries aside from hard-earned respect. The white war paint had been washed off for supper, and it revealed dark hair and ashen skin, their eyes green like his, dark like the earth, or red like the dangerous flowers of Seheron – humans and elves alike, sitting together and no more aware of race than they would be of their different eye colour. They regarded the white lines on his skin as tattoos chosen in pride, and although he had a lifetime of evidence to prove it wrong, there was enough of the hazy Leto in him to remember that they had once been a prize.
Hawke had told him she thought they were beautiful. Not in that sense, she had been quick to add as he turned to her with a half-formed snarl, they are terrible and a memory of pain and I hate it. But you make them beautiful, Fenris, because they're you now, not Danarius, not nobody, they're your strength and your passion and your own thing, and that's what so damn gorgeous about them.
He hadn't known what to say then, so he'd kissed her.
Asha sat close to him, and without the war paint her face looked so young and so much like that little girl he remembered that his heart clenched painfully, strange warmth coupled with even stranger sense of... familiarity. "So you were in Kirkwall that entire time. You fought with the Champion."
"Yes."
"Did you really kill a dragon?"
His lips curled. That was the only thing people ever wanted to know.
"No, we just caught it and tamed it, and then we rode it to the sky against the Arishok."
Asha snorted, but without confidence. "Really?"
"Of course not. The Champion fought the Arishok in a duel. The story must have been clear on that much at least."
"But did you actually tame a dragon?"
He shook his head with a smirk. Asha smacked him – and he supressed a wince. The girl was stronger than he'd realised. A Fog Warrior now. Of course.
"Liar. And did she actually duel an Arishok? These beasts are massive. And they wear this blasted vitaar all over."
"Doesn't matter if you fight from a distance."
"Did she? Hah!" She laughed. "Some duel that was."
"She's a mage, Asha."
"Oh, kaffas." She saw her face darken and for a second, he regretted mentioning it. The only magic the people of Seheron knew was the twisted, bloody power of the magisters. "So you just…"
"No!" he snapped at her, and she recoiled. "She's not a Tevinter. She doesn't own slaves, doesn't do blood magic, she's kind despite all that power, Asha, because she used to be a farmer and a fugitive. She arrived to this city a year before I did, just another Fereldan savage with no copper to her name. And then she changed it. And she changed the city around her." And me.
Silence stretched between them, a ten years' weight of untold stories.
"I'm happy to see you like that," said Asha finally. "I always knew there was more to you than just that shell of fear. But never ever kneel before me again."
He held his head high, the humiliation still hot on his cheeks. "I don't kneel before anyone anymore."
"Good." She watched him intently. "You're my kin, Fenris. My father… he knew that they were searching for you. He'd seen those elven slaves spurred onto us before. And even without your lyrium, he thought you a warrior unlike any other. So of course we expected them to come and take you from us."
She laid a gentle hand on his shoulder, and he tried his best to suppress a wince. "He would never blame you, Fenris. I… I think I understand that you want the right to blame yourself, but I want you to know that neither he nor I would ever blame you. As far as the Fog Warriors are concerned, the murderer of my father and my tribe has been killed by your hand. And you are our flesh and blood, you're of Seheron, and even your tattoos mark you as one of us."
He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. You're of Seheron. Flesh and blood.
So you've come to stay?
Asha's fingers clenched on his shoulders. He saw the other warriors around the bonfire turn away, giving them at least an illusion of privacy. "You're the last of my tribe, White Wolf. Everything I've got left from my childhood."
"I killed the rest of your tribe."
"Are you deaf, fatuus? You killed the man who did it."
"Asha…" He breathed out. She was frustrating. Not as frustrating as Hawke at times, but still pretty damn frustrating. "I am honoured. But I don't deserve it."
"Yes, you do." Her eyes were unyielding, and for once he could not find the strength to argue.
He would atone for it. He would make things right, and make himself worthy of the titles they so openly gave.
When the night came and the bonfires dimmed, she tugged at his shoulder – just as the little girl would do, years, years ago – and led him to her tent. He sank into the furs without a second thought, the exhaustion of the day finally catching up. She sat at the side and watched him, something soft and relieved smoothening her forehead.
He fell asleep, dreaming the pride in Hawke's eyes.
-/-
Nathaniel decided he rather liked Stroud. He was direct and rough like a blunt weapon, allowed no nonsense, and carried himself with an aura of nobility that was familiar and comforting, if slightly too Orlesian for Nathaniel's liking.
And he was the first one to come and investigate the red lyrium.
Maker only knew what an Orlesian Warden with his patrol had been doing on the Storm Coast, but they had come into contact with their own Amaranthine divisions searching for Hawke, and offered help. And then they'd stumbled onto this: lyrium that sang like the Blight.
"We've never seen something like this. Is the Champion of Kirkwall connected to this thing somehow?" Stroud was observing the shining mineral warily, and Nathaniel was glad; it seemed that he was not the only one hearing the soft whispers at the edge of consciousness that it seemed to emanate.
"It's difficult to say. The reports we've gotten from Kirkwall are unclear, but they indicate that Knight-Commander Meredith carried a weapon fashioned out of similar substance. And then…" He rubbed his temples. He'd spent the rest of the night rereading the Kirkwall reports, but they were just as coherent as the first time: an account of a madman's blubbering. And in the morning he'd just mounted the fastest horse and come here, forehead still stamped with the papers he'd dozed off on... "Let's just say that there is a red statue in the Kirkwall Circle headquarters that has not been there before. The urban legend would have it be the Knight-Commander herself."
Stroud cast him a measured glance. "I wouldn't dismiss the urban legend just yet. There is something mighty strange about this lyrium. If it is lyrium, of course."
"What else could it be? It has the right shape and structure, only that the location and colour are strange. I'll send word to the Circle-" Nathaniel trailed off. The probability of the Circle Templars letting any mage out to the Wardens in this political situation was close to zero. "I'll send the mages from Vigil's Keep here to assess the exact power of that thing. I want the cave manned at all times. Hawke might come back here to have a look."
Stroud nodded sharply and called on his men. Nathaniel listened only half-focused as the command was translated into Orlesian and followed by a brief discussion on watch turns. He focused on the lyrium; it looked almost hostile, as much as a mineral can be so. For a second the whispers intensified in his head… he recoiled, moving away, and the whispering subsided.
"And don't come too close to the lyrium. At all costs."
-/-
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In Kirkwall, Fenris says he comes from Seheron. But even despite this bloodright, after his entire life churning his grief and blame for killing the entire tribe that took him in, I think it's 100% unlikely that he would just ease into the community without needing to repent somehow – even if the community itself refused to blame him.
In case you missed it, I am FASCINATED by Seheron and its natives.