This took me waaaaaay too long to finish! Ahh! Sorry about that.

Thank you for your support! Much love to you all.


Dirge of the Drowned Village

The towering strength of Caer Bronach might have been a sight for sore eyes, had it not been crawling with highwaymen like some sort of armed termite infestation.

Finn's eyes traced over the rough grey stones of the fort, his gaze sweeping over the battlements before settling on the heavily fortified wooden gate. Obviously no simple knock, knock would persuade the men inside to grant them entry…Finn suspected they'd need much more drastic means.

"They've got archers," Nani said softly, gesturing, her sharp seaglass eyes raking over the fort's ramparts. "And they'll spray us with arrows if we make too much noise or take too long breaking down the door. We need something fast and violent."

"Isn't that why I'm here?" Finn said, jerking his head back towards the staff strapped to his back. Nothing was more violent than a mage, in most circumstances.

"I thought you were here to be reckless enemy-fodder," Varric quipped. "We all know you excel at that profession."

"I'd prefer if he stayed comic relief, really," Dorian said.

"I'd prefer if we just broke down the damnable door," Blackwall cut in. "I'd bash it with my shield, but I don't think one blow would do it in."

Straight to business. Finn could respect that about the guy; he occasionally cracked a smile and let out an amused chuckle when things got particularly humorous, but if you needed someone to solveall your problems, Blackwall was your man.

Not to mention his beard was absolutely mesmerizing. Finn would have to explain to Dorian about how many elves were unreasonably fascinated with facial hair.

"Finn," Nani said, "Dorian…see what you can do."

"This should be fun," Dorian said, flashing a wolfish smile that nearly made Finn weak in the knees. The both of them closed the distance between them and the fortified gate, Finn keeping a watchful eye on the ramparts as they went.

Finn stopped a couple yards from the gate itself, and Dorian did the same; they were only a foot or so apart from each other, the rawness of their combined mana humming in the storm-moistened air between them. Irksome as it occasionally—no, seldom—was, Vivienne telling him to call on other forces than ice and winter had really done quite the wonder for his mana reserves.

He pulled his staff from the bindings at his back and cupped his hands almost affectionately around the sopping wet rosewood shaft before transferring it to his right hand and holding it at the ready.

"Are we going for some giant synergistic shit here, or just letting all hell break loose?" Finn asked Dorian, briefly wondering if both of them using the same spell would be stronger than two separate but powerful spells.

"Surprise me," Dorian said. "You're good at that."

Finn grinned.

Dorian hurled a roaring fireball at the gate just as Finn sent a stonefist spell its way. Fortified as it was, it didn't stand a chance; the fireball burst the wood into hissing flames, and the stonefist sent the chunks of burning, splintered wood spraying into the interior of the fort like shards of shattered glass. There was an animalistic screech from a highwaymen who was in an unfortunate place at the time, and Finn watched him crumple to the wet dirt below.

River streaked past him and Dorian like a shadow, followed by Blackwall, who raised his shield high and charged in over the scattered wood chunks.

An arrow whistled past Finn's ear as he, Nani, Varric, and Dorian joined the mayhem inside the fort's interior. He briefly caught sight of two archers firing from a wooden ledge directly in front of him, but Nani's arrow caught one in the throat and sent him tumbling down.

The other archer was a bit quicker to react; he raised a war horn to his lips, signaling his bandit brethren as he strafed out of the way of Varric's shot. He wasn't quick enough to avoid Dorian's answering inferno, however, and when the flames simmered away, Finn spotted his charred husk slipping off the sloped ledge.

"More coming our way!" Blackwall yelled, signaling to a long set of stairs.

Indeed, there were more—the archer's war horn had called several down, and they flooded the small grounds, attacking without any sort of question. Finn found one at the tail end of the charge and blasted him with a lightning orb; amazingly enough, after a moment of writhing in agony, the bandit warrior resumed his maddened path into the fray.

Simple highwaymen they might've been, but they'd pilfered damn good armor from someone along the way.

Amidst a volley of magic, a whistling of arrows and bolts, and a sharp clanging of steel, the highwaymen kept fighting, trying to force them out of Caer Bronach—or, more likely, trying to beat them into a juicy pulp. Finn didn't relish being turned into pulp, so he used the onslaught as practice for the barrier spell Solas had taught him. The watery blue film of it flickered around him like a second skin after he cast the spell, and not a second later an arrow glanced off the barrier over his chest, sinking uselessly in the mud.

Finn frowned and answered that with a particularly vindictive fireball.

The last of the initial wave of highwaymen went down with a flash of River's daggers. Nani let her bowstring go slack, gazing down at the dead attackers around their feet with a heavy breath.

"Whoever they are, they're well-armed," she said. "This could be a challenge."

"More so than the thousands of other well-armed goons who have already tried to kill you?" Dorian pointed out with a bit of a grin. "Chin up. This can't be too hard."

"Sparkler, you're starting to sound like Frosty," Varric said. "I think he's rubbing off on you."

"Creators forbid," Nani said, chuckling. She straightened her spine. "Let's go—I'd rather take out all of these highwaymen before we try looking for a way to un-dam the lake."


A scattered number of highwaymen tried to block their progress as they made their way through Caer Bronach. But they died with relative ease, and that lulled Finn into a deceptive sense of security about the whole thing. Surely they'd just about cleared everyone out of the keep—and therefore could be free to search for the mechanism that would drain that great black lake.

It was when they climbed the stairs to the ramparts and reached the last corner of them that Finn realized his mistake.

The couple of archers nocking arrows and aiming in their direction didn't bother Finn that much. The spirited cries from the warriors as they raised their swords high didn't really make him quake in his greaves either. No—that lovely honor was reserved for the absolutely massive highwayman chief emerging from the back of the group, a horned helm obscuring his face, a gargantuan warhammer in his meaty hands.

None of the bandits attacked at first sight, but they did have all weapons at the ready as Nani, Finn, Blackwall, Varric, and River strode forward, stopping just outside the arc of highwaymen. The chief lifted his warhammer and slammed the head of it into the stone ground, making cracks spread in thin fissures beneath him.

"Inquisitor!" he roared, his voice deep, rough as gravel. "So you finally come to face me? I'm going to enjoy mounting your knife-eared head on a pike!"

Like hell he would. Crystalline tendrils of frost crackled around Finn's hands.

"Don't even think about it,"Dorian hissed down at Finn as Nani stepped forward.

Finn briefly glanced up, feigning innocence. "Think about what?"

"I know you, Finn."

Nani's voice interrupted their hasty exchange. "That's an awful lot of cockiness from a scavenger who snatched a fort from a bunch of people who are already being overrun by the undead." Her hand twitched; Finn knew it could reach her quiver of arrows at a moment's notice. "I'll bet no one put up a fight for Caer Bronach when you weaseled on in."

"You think you can best me, elf?" the chief challenged, raising his warhammer with both hands and shaking it for effect. "Duel me, then! I'll make you a bloody smear on my weapon!"

Finn watched Nani for her reaction—he knew she could be provoked to violence fairly easily, under the right circumstances. Then something caught his eye; or, rather, the lack of something. River was no longer standing with them. Finn couldn't even locate her, no matter where his eyes went.

He didn't voice her absence, or turn his head around too dramatically. Whatever she'd snuck into the shadows to accomplish, he didn't want to blow her cover.

"How much of an idiot do you think I am?" Nani told the chief.

The chief sneered loudly, lowering his warhammer to a fighting stance…

Finn's keen elven eyes caught the barely perceptible flash of movement behind the chief, just seconds before River appeared as if from nowhere, one of her daggers making a swift slice at the chief's throat where his armor didn't protect him. The large human made a gagging noise and staggered a step towards Nani, and she reacted, shooting an arrow straight into his windpipe. Finn tensed, watching the man's towering body sway once, twice, then fall to the stone beneath them with a thud that vibrated under Finn's feet.

There was a pause, a shocked moment. Then the rest of the highwaymen attacked.

Just in time, Finn caught a glimpse of one warrior charging at Varric, who was in the middle of aiming Bianca's crosshairs at an archer; Finn threw himself in front of Varric and raised his staff sideways to block the warrior's swinging sword. He'd seeped a barrier into the rosewood shaft just at the last moment; the warrior's blade sprang off the staff like it was bouncing off rubber, and the warrior grunted in surprise before recovering and swinging at Finn. In turn, Finn whipped his staff around and walloped the man with a burst of ice. He staggered backwards, stumbling over the side of the ramparts and plummeting to his doom.

Finn smirked, flinging a lightning ball at the bandit attacking Blackwall.

"I can't shoot through your ass, Frosty!" Varric said, strafing to the side; a bolt whizzed past Finn's ribs.

"Then quit aiming at it!" Finn said, raising his staff high in the air and raining lightning bolts down on the attackers. They flashed brilliant whitish-yellow through the downpour, illuminating streaky drops of rain. He saw one of Dorian's fireballs hurtle into an archer and send the man flying. The continuous whistle of Nani's arrows was a familiar noise, a comforting one—Finn always listened for it to make sure his little sister was still up and fighting.

A shield bash from Blackwall brought down the last of the highwaymen; Finn saw Nani wipe a bit of sweat off her brow as they regrouped.

"Do we have anyone who'd want this guy's warhammer?" River asked, nudging the weapon with the toe of her boot.

"Why not sell it?" Varric said. "I've got buyers who would kill for that thing."

"Literally?" Finn said, returning his staff to his back.

Varric laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't doubt it."

Nani glanced between them all. "I might be able to have Scout Harding send someone to pick it up and bring it back to Skyhold," she said. She turned on her heel and did a little look-around from where she stood, studying the fort. "Better yet—why not take the whole fort? If we don't, more bandits might. And the Inquisition could use an outpost here. I'll bet Leliana would appreciate it."

"Why did I never think of that in Kirkwall?" River wondered aloud as she unabashedly knelt and began sifting through the chief's pockets.

"Because most of us civilized folk don't often come across the dilemma of whether or not to pilfer a fort from previous pilferers?" Dorian said, lifting an eyebrow.

"I'm kicking myself for the same thing, Hawke," Varric said. "Maybe if we had, we wouldn't have had to keep clearing assholes out of that one cave on the Wounded Coast."

"And don't forget that one back alleyway in Lowtown," River said.

"How could I?" Varric laughed again.

Nani stepped up to the highest corner of the ramparts, shielding her eyes with her forehead as she looked out over Crestwood. "We need to find the mechanism to drain the lake, obviously," she said. "But I think we should put a claim on this fort." She tilted her head back to look at them. "We need a fast runner to reach Harding and tell her to move the camp here until Leliana sends agents. Who's up for a run in the rain?"

Finn knew he probably would've been the obvious choice—he was their quickest sprinter, after all—but River volunteered first. "I'll run back to camp," she offered. "Not to mention the village is going to need more help to fight off those undead—I'll head there after talking to Harding and help them out a bit. And I'll catch up to you once the village is clear."

"If you're going to Crestwood Village," Nani said, "then you should take someone with you."

"I'll come with you, Hawke," Varric said instantly, stepping over to her.

"Another adventure with my trusty dwarf!" River said cheerfully, patting Varric. "I couldn't ask for better."

"You could ask for Fenris," Varric quipped. "Who you're going to tell me all about on the way to camp. No 'but's."

River sighed, and the two of them set off down the ramparts, heading out of the fort ahead of the rest of them.


Seeing the lake—the distinctly smaller lake—when they walked out of the old abandoned tavern connected to Caer Bronach by a thin bridge over the dam had been unsettling, to say the least. Now its waters lapped gently on the surface, disturbed only by the pattering of rain. When Dorian craned his head to look, he saw a smattering of old, rotted wooden frames below on the new coastline; buildings, he realized. There used to be homes beneath the lake's black surface.

The lake had risen ten years ago during the Fifth Blight, Nanyehi had relayed to them from the town mayor. Even more curious was this mayor's claim that darkspawn had broken the lever that had dammed up the lake in the first place, making it impossible to drain the lake, and yet they'd found it perfectly intact upon arrival.

Something was definitely fishy. And Dorian hadn't just thought that for the sake of an appropriately aquatic pun.

He found himself staring down at the lake below as they walked back across the bridge, taking care to step carefully with how rain-slicked the stones had become. Really, if Dorian never felt another raindrop in his whole life, it would be too soon—this weather in Crestwood was beyond horrid, and he had to keep stopping himself from making comments about it. He certainly didn't feel like having Blackwall send another withering look his way.

Thankfully, Finn didn't seem to be having trouble with the weather, nor the footing; the elf's smooth walk never faltered, no matter how slippery the stones were. It spoke of years learning how to adapt to everything the outdoors threw at him, and Dorian couldn't kept but marvel at that, amongst everything else he already marveled about.

Ahead of him, Nanyehi and Finn were discussing the suspiciousness of the large crank not being broken by darkspawn, and in fact having no evidence of darkspawn tampering in the slightest. Finn, of course, made some comment about the tavern's name—The Rusted Horn—being awfully appropriate for the area, to which Dorian had chuckled a little. Then both of them stopped halfway across the bridge, tilting their heads in perfect unison up and to the right.

They were silent for several seconds, during which Dorian started to hear a faint beating noise above, like the flapping of great wings.

"Is that—" Finn started.

"Dragon," Nanyehi hissed. "Down!"

Blackwall and Nanyehi both dropped to a kneel, but Finn and Dorian both watched it; Finn had a fascinated look to his eyes. Dorian could clearly see the beast's dark, massive wings, the blackish flashes of leathery scales, the jagged twining of lightning-yellow marks along its length. Not to mention he could feel the stirring of air and rain as it beat its wings and let loose a shrieking roar. More cautious than fascinated now, Dorian grabbed one of Finn's shoulders and pushed, forcing them both down to kneel with Nanyehi and Blackwall.

"She's beautiful," Finn said, watching the dragon swoop overhead and continue down the coast. "Wow."

"Getting her attention would be just what we need to make this glorious day even better," Dorian said sarcastically, giving Finn's shoulder a squeeze.

Nanyehi glanced over at Finn as well. "Let's not provoke her, all right?"

Finn huffed, his wintery blue eyes narrowing a touch. "Is there a reason everyone's looking at me? I'm not crazy enough to fling myself off the bridge and run after the dragon."

Dorian certainly hoped not.

After all rising to their feet and checking the skies for any more signs of the dragon, the walk off the narrow bridge and down the muddied slope wasn't a long one. Dorian, though, wrinkled his nose in disgust at the thick squelching noise his boots made every time he lifted a foot. The fact that Finn and Nanyehi could walk in such squalor barefoot amazed him to no end.

By the time they reached the bottom of the slope, Dorian was already consumed by the longing to be back in some warm stone building with dry boots and dry armor and no chilling water pouring all over his body, and he found himself sighing heavily. That was all it took for Finn to turn his head to look back at him; then the elf's expression broke into one of those teeth-showing, infectious smiles, and Dorian felt his weather-induced misery shriveling away.

That was all it took, really—Finn had one of the best smiles Dorian had ever seen.

And it kept Dorian in a decently better mood for the duration of the walk to what used to be Crestwood Village.

It became evident upon reaching it that this village had not succumbed to the lake by choice; not that any drowned village ever did, really. Old Crestwood had the air of tragedy encircling it like a funereal shroud, and if Dorian really looked, he could see scattered piles of old, rotted bones strewn all over the sopping wet ground. Wandering about like little flickers of red light were aimless spirits, their filmy forms barely brushing the ground as they bobbed about between the ruined buildings, paying barely any attention to the people who had come their way.

"It's a wonder the rift didn't warp these spirits into demons," Dorian mentioned, gesturing to one.

Nanyehi looked jumpy, to say the least, but her walk didn't lose any of its determination. "Look at all of them," she said. "And all of these bones. This lake flooded fast. Obviously something dammed it up, but…darkspawn tampering? Really?"

"No way." Finn shook his head. "I've seen darkspawn firsthand, and so has Blackwall. You don't hide en masse like this—you either pick up your weapon or you haul arse away from them. And there's too many dead here for it to be a couple of stragglers that couldn't escape in time."

"He's right about that," Blackwall concurred.

As fascinating as all of these spirits were, Dorian couldn't help but wonder what sort of foul play had flooded the lake ten years ago. The rest of them were right; claiming for this to be the work of darkspawn randomly tampering with the damming mechanism made all of zero sense, especially with the mechanism being perfectly intact when they'd found it.

"Up there." Nanyehi pointed, then set her course north. "See that? It looks like a cave entrance. This might be what takes us underground to reach that rift." She abruptly stopped when they neared a low rise and came upon what was indeed a cave entrance in the rock face, its yawning opening boarded up by rotting planks. Her small, lanky form visibly shivered. "Ugh."

"Seconded," Finn said.

"Don't like caves?" Blackwall said.

"I hate not being able to see the sky," Nani said, setting her shoulders and soldiering forward.

"Not to mention there's always some breed of arsehole cave spider that follows you around on the ceiling and waits for the opportune moment to fall down your collar," Finn mentioned when they reached the entrance, stepping ahead of his sister to pull the old door open; Dorian watched the lean muscles flex on his tattooed arm as he did so. "And I swear they're always big ones, too. It's never the little, barely visible ones."

"I'd rather have those than the horse-sized ones," Dorian said as Nanyehi and Blackwall led the way into the cave's dark interior.

"I'd rather all spiders go extinct," Finn said, waiting for Dorian to follow and then shutting the door behind all of them, sealing out the last of the light.

"Touché," Dorian said, straining to see in the dark.

He felt—and heard—Finn step away from him, his steps soft on the cave's wet, sandy floor; Finn's elven eyes were vastly superior to Dorian's when it came to things like this. Then there was a brief whoosh, and flames guttered up from a large torch drilled into the cave's stone wall.

"There's a path here," Blackwall said, pointing. "And it looks manmade."

"Not to mention these torches," Dorian pointed out.

"You think people lived down here?" Nani asked. Probably wanting to close the rift as fast as possible, she led the way down the path, keeping her fingers brushing the slick rock walls. "I can't even imagine. You think they might've hid from the darkspawn here?"

Finn shook his head; he was easy to locate even in the dim light, Dorian noticed, with the bright white of his hair. Thank the Maker for that—he wouldn't admit it, but Dorian liked to keep track of where he was, lest the elf sneak off into some hazardous situation and violently lose his life over it. Not likely, but Dorian wouldn't put it past Finn.

"Hide in a one-way cave with no way out?" Finn was saying. "The darkspawn would've cleared this thing out faster than me at a free buffet."

Finn and Dorian took turns lighting torches on the way through the cave passage, occasionally stepping around crumbling crates and ducking under jagged stalactites. There were a couple of the vermilion-tinged spirits wandering through the passages ahead of them, stopping whenever one of them stopped to light a torch and looking back as if waiting for them to follow. Dorian got the distinct sense that the spirits were almost leading them through, although he couldn't guess the motivation to do so.

The cave passage opened up into a large chamber, a steady stream of water pouring from the ceiling and through the cavern; Dorian noticed he couldn't hear it splashing near their feet, and a second glance brought something else to his attention: a spiraling set of planks leading downwards, obviously manmade, like Blackwall had said. Nani wordlessly led the way to those—after one of the spirits, of course, which drifted purposefully ahead of them.

She stopped when Finn broke away from them and jogged away. "Finn?" she called.

"Corpses," he called back, vanishing beyond a bend. "I don't know about you…but I don't think the water currents tied this noose in the board above me." A pause. "Or hung the—shite!"

There was a raucous explosion of frost, and Dorian left Nanyehi and Blackwall, jogging over to where Finn had disappeared to. When he rounded the bend, he saw Finn standing in a circular offshoot from the main chamber, three frozen corpses lying in the wet sand, staring up at a fourth corpse hanging from a noose by the shriveling sinew of its neck.

"Poor sod," Blackwall said, appearing with Nanyehi. One of the reddish spirits followed after, stopping a few meters away.

"Curious," Dorian said, studying the hanging corpse. "And rather gruesome."

"Let's say these people just happened to be in here when the lake flooded," Nani said, brushing her hand against her chin. "How would this man have had time to hang himself before the water reached him?"

"He must've done it before the flooding," Finn said, the gears visibly turning in his brain. "But…why? I've never seen someone hang themselves just to escape darkspawn. Like I said, you usually run. Whole towns don't go underground just to commit suicide like this."

"And look." Nani reached a steady ivory hand towards the suspended bones. "This person wasn't in bad shape when he died. Nothing's broken. It doesn't look like a hahren's bones. That would be the only reason I could see someone killing themselves rather than trying to escape."

The four of them stood around the hanging corpse, all deep in thought. Then something caught Nanyehi's attention, and she jogged over to a waterlogged chest nestled near the wet stone wall, deftly picking the chest's lock and letting the lid thud back. She reached inside, pulling out a journal with faint water stains on its brown leather surface.

Apparently the chest had been decently watertight.

"Papa looks worse today," she read, staring intently down at the journal page. "His skin is white, so white…it looks like ash. And I can see his veins all over. I keep trying to make him feel more comfortable, but he says nothing helps, and it's killing me. Sometimes when I look at him, I see this cloudiness in his eyes, and his pupils almost look white, but then he turns his face away. Mayor Dedrick said it's best for us to be down here, to keep us all safe, but Papa is miserable. Sometimes it almost feels like I'm getting sick, too…but I can't tell Papa." Her voice softened, trailing off. "There's nothing else written here."

"Blight sickness," Blackwall said. "I'd bet my life on that."

Finn furrowed his brows. "So…what? There was someone down here who had the Blight sickness?"

There was silence for a moment.

"We're going to get to the bottom of this," Nanyehi insisted. "Once I close that rift."