Early chapter so I don't have to worry about updating while in finals/traveling. Enjoy!
Chapter Thirty-Five: Heir Apparent
It seemed that the Legion of the Dead would not see Fergus, Annika Aeducan, and their companions through to the end.
"Don't be idiots," Kardol said to them gruffly, but it seemed that was really just directed at Fergus as the human noble looked forward into the darkness beyond the farthest border of Bownammar. To Annika, he said, "Don't throw your life away looking for this sodding thing."
"Branka's not a 'thing'!" Oghren objected, but it was clear –as it had been from the start –that the disgraced princess had never truly meant to look for the paragon herself, merely what the paragon had been searching for.
Ignoring him, Kardol continued, "It can't be done."
"Like reclaiming Bownammar couldn't be done?" Annika shot back. "And what would you have me do with that life, Kardol? Live hiding in the Deep Roads with Ruck forever? Join the Legion? I want a life; not an ambiguous purpose I can throw myself at until I'm dead, for real this time."
"Isn't that exactly what you'd be doing with the crown on your head?" Kardol asked with a snort of derision. "And Bownammar's not ours; not yet. We'll have to scorch the place with fire before anything can really be done with it."
"A task that monumental cannot be conducted without a royal ruling," she replied. "Like it or not, you need a ruler that is partial to you as much as I need to be that ruler. Help me be that ruler, the ruler you need, Kardol."
He looked back at her, hard and unyielding, and replied, "Save your smooth talking for the Assembly. Legion, move out. We're setting fire to the broodmother; somehow I don't think Her Worshipfulness over there is going to stop us from doing that."
As the legionnaires marched onward, Brosca and Sigrun amongst them, Fergus took a step up toward Annika. "He's right," he said quietly. "The Anvil; whatever it really is, it's not worth dying for."
"We're not going to die for it," she replied briskly without turning around to face him.
That being said, it seemed that there were stronger forces in Thedas than the will of Annika Aeducan and they seemed to have other ideas.
Near the rear of the group, Leliana cried out a gasp of shock as the ground shook beneath their feet. As a barricade slammed down behind them, triggering the first of the rock face to crumble, the former bard dive rolled forward to safety as a massive chunk of the cavern ceiling smashed into the ground where she used to be. She came up from her roll coughing and sputtering, a thin sheen of dust clinging to her skin and hair, and Fergus caught her by the shoulders, steadying her as an excuse to steady himself in the fact that she had not, in fact, been crushed in the cave-in.
"Did the darkspawn do that?" she coughed.
"Do they even do that?" Alistair asked and Fergus resisted the urge to punch a wall at the risk of starting another cave-in.
"No," said a smug voice from somewhere above them. "I did."
A dwarven woman with a steely composure to rival Annika's emerged from a ledge high above, looking down on their small party, clearly unimpressed. "Let me be blunt with you," she said shortly, leaving them no time to reply. "My tolerance for social graces is limited."
"Branka!" Oghren exclaimed, face lighting up above the heavy curtain of his copper beard. "Shave my back and call me an elf; I hardly recognized you."
"How could you recognize her," Annika muttered, "with all of these things that she's done."
"All of these terrible things," Leliana agreed, no doubt remembering the sorry corpse that had once been a broodmother, that had once been a dwarf named Laryn.
"Soft and squeamish, I see," Branka observed loftily. "Whatever lordling hired you to come after me could have done better. Much better." Oghren, she all but ignored. "But I suppose you'll have to do."
"Speak with some damned respect in your voice, woman," Oghren roared back at her. "These are Grey Wardens and nobles; nobles that've been noble for a lot longer than you, I'd wager. And your husband; your husband, damn it, woman. Does that mean anything to you?"
Fergus felt a pang of pity for the loud-mouthed dwarven warrior, especially as Branka finally turned her gaze on him with nothing short of disdain. "So it was out of some misguided sense of affection you followed me down here?" she deduced with a turned-up nose. "I never thought you would be the sentimental type. Couldn't you have found a couple of whores by now? I am more than your wife; I am your Paragon."
"And even Paragons must answer to someone," said Annika, taking a declarative step forward. "Enough of this. Lead us to the Anvil, Branka, and then return with us to Orzammar."
"Look at that," Branka returned. "It's the pint-sized princess. If your delicate stomach turns at what I've done here, it hardly belongs on the throne. But we shall see." She turned dismissively and started to walk away out of sight along the ledge. "Caridin left a legacy of traps along this path. The only way out, as you can see, is forward. If you want the Anvil, princess, Wardens, nobles, drunks; come and claim it."
"What happened to you?" Oghren shouted after her, railing. "I remember a girl who you could talk to for one minute and—"
"Shhh, Oghren," Leliana cut him off, her voice soothing. "There's nothing to be done."
"Nothing to be done indeed," Annika repeated and spat out onto the ground, suddenly very un-princess-like in manner. "We move forward."
"That woman is insane," Alistair protested, "and who knows what traps are ahead?"
"I agree she's insane," was the curt reply. "Whether it's overexposure to the lyrium veins in these walls or… something that happened before," she added, mindful of Oghren's presence, "she's gone mad as that merchant in the Commons. But while there may be traps ahead…"
"…there's nothing but an impenetrable metal barrier behind us," Fergus finished grimly. Annika looked at him and gave a quick little nod of agreement. He finished with repeating her earlier opinion: "We move forward. There's nowhere else to go."
The way forward was littered with corpses: both darkspawn and dwarves. "I needed people to scout and test Caridin's traps," Branka's voice echoed down to them, answered unasked questions. "At first, they refused me. Refused me, their Paragon!"
"I'd have refused you," Alistair muttered and Leliana nodded fervent agreement. Oghren said nothing.
Annika knelt beside a fallen dwarf, brushed the dry blood from his armor. "Kardol won't like that," she murmured to the Legion of the Dead insignia. "I wonder how long ago they made it here. Kardol must have assumed that they were lost in Bownammar."
"The spawn have their uses," Branka continued, unhearing. "They never ask why, they never say no. They just move forward and I happened to guide them in the direction I needed."
Fergus saw movement in the darkness of the narrower tunnel ahead and, guessing at its source, muttered, "I could have done without them coming in this direction." Nonetheless, he drew his blade, said, "Moving forward," and led the charge into the darkspawn-infested tunnels that constituted the first trap.
Albeit, it did not seem to be a trap of the fabled Caridin's making. Branka's words had echoed her actions and Fergus was willing to bet that the darkspawn he killed now were the offspring of the woman Branka had offered to the monsters, sent forward to spring Caridin's true traps. But, seeing as a good deal of them yet lived, it appeared that even darkspawn wised up eventually, or at least enough to stop walking into traps after observing the deaths of their brethren. And indeed, just beyond the end of the tunnel, he saw the illumination of lyrium engraving through an open doorway.
The darkspawn being dead, he reached for the handle to push it open, eager to leave the darkness of the tunnel, but Annika stopped him. "Smell that?" she asked, her own nose twitching. "Gas. Faint, but there."
"And what do you propose we do about it?" he asked, mildly irritated that he had not picked up on it himself.
"Nothing," she replied, "save understand that it's there. We know we're walking into a series of traps and, unfortunately, I don't think these are the kind of traps that can work both ways."
Fergus sighed. "Moving forward," he said again, exasperated, and so they did.
As Leliana, the waxed cloth that Kardol had given to Fergus tight around her nose and mouth, danced her way across the first clearly dwarven-constructed chamber they had encountered since Bownammar and deactivated the gas filtered into the room without waking the golems standing in steadfast vigil along the wall, Annika looked to Fergus and said quietly, "Have you thought any more on the matter?"
"Is now really the time?" he replied testily, blue-grey eyes still focused on Leliana, his hand poised on his sword's hilt, at the ready to lend assistance should she misstep.
"As good a time as any," was the reply. "When I take the throne, I can announce that you have our support in the same breath. That may count for more on the surface than you think."
"Can't you just announce that the Grey Wardens have your support?" he asked, quick to dodge the issue. "And deal with all that remains later?"
"The deshyrs are not fools. They'll take one look at Alistair and while they may say one thing to our faces, it will be another once you all are gone. Their sons who would be commanders will fall ill; their promised funds will vanish from their treasuries. Some may outright refuse. But if it is you that they promise their aid to, the king of Ferelden to be, the world changes."
"The treaties do not demand help to Ferelden's king," Fergus said stubbornly.
"You and I both know that those treaties are sorry little scraps of paper," Annika returned sharply. "And who will be king if it is not you?" Fergus didn't answer; Annika didn't relent. Idly, she commented, "I met Maric when I was quite young, but I'm not one to forget a face. And Alistair favors him, in face and also perhaps wit, but you and I both know it will not be enough."
"Eamon Guerrin might be enough."
"The Arl of Redcliffe can't hold the north," she said and Fergus was surprised at her knowledge of Fereldan politics. "I know enough to know that," she continued, as though she had heard him say so aloud. "Does Eamon Guerrin have a daughter?"
"No, only a young son and a mage at that."
"Then it will be your sister," Annika deduced calmly. "Arl Eamon is not a young man; Alistair himself told me how the Regent's poison nearly destroyed him. Eventually, soon, he will die, and will Alistair and your sister be the king and queen Ferelden needs?"
Fergus remembered the sight he had seen at Redcliffe, of Eliante storming down the stairs into the main courtyard, head high, and Eamon scurrying after her. "She told him no."
"And when he asks again?"
Leliana had made it to the opposite side of the chamber and then gas had cleared, but the golems were creaking to life. Never more grateful for a fight, Fergus charged them, eager to leave Annika and her planning and plotting that made too much damned sense. In fact, they were a sight too close to the reality he was trying to ignore in an effort to move forward on a day to day basis.
Caridin's traps were ruthless and effective. Fergus knew he would never fully comprehend the strange dwarven stonework and how a spinning apparatus with four faces that conjured spirits of the dwarven dead could not be magic, despite the Circle insisting that dwarves were blind to the Fade and its influence, but he knew enough to trust the stone sense of Annika and Oghren and hack at whatever they told him to and slam his palm down on a glowing anvil whenever they told him to. But, finally, the ghastly thing fell defunct and yet another metal barrier gave way to allow passage to whatever rested beyond.
They followed the lines of lyrium veins carved into the sides of the tunneled passageway until they all entered a vast chamber, tall and illuminated both by the lyrium dripping down like luminescent vines from the ceiling, curling out of the walls and ground, but also the river of lava that sliced a path down the far side of the chamber. And on a craggy peak above the lava flow, just barely visible glowing with a lyrium weave of its own, was—
"The Anvil of the Void," Annika said; her voice no louder than a whisper as she walked up toward its pedestal, the path lined by golems standing at attention like those in the other chambers that had to be dispatched. Fergus, Alistair, Leliana, Sten, and Oghren followed the disgraced princess, somewhat more concerned about the massive stone faces that stared blankly down at them but made no motion to attack. One, however, a creature of iron and steel rather than stone, spoke:
"Greetings, travelers," a hollow voice echoed from somewhere within the massive metal creature. Fergus was not a short man, but even he felt dwarfed by the sheer bulk of the metal golem. "My name is Caridin. Once, long ago, I was Paragon to the dwarves of Orzammar."
Annika's eyes were wide and even Oghren appeared shaken out of his semi-drunken stupor. Even Sten seemed mildly impressed as Alistair's mouth fell agape. Fergus could practically hear the cogs of Leliana's mind whirring as she already composed new retellings of a legend that was still being created. He shook his head in mostly derision but some amusement.
"If you seek the Anvil," boomed Caridin and his next words suggested that he was of a similar mind to the former bard, "you must hear my story or be doomed to repeat it."
Annika stepped forward and inclined her head deeply to the Paragon within his shell of steel: a princess's acknowledgement. "Your contributions to dwarven society have been both legion and legend," she said with profound respect. "The Anvil of the Void saved the dwarves of old from the terrors of the First Blight. Please, let me use it once more to save our people once again as well as the people of the surface, whatever the cost."
"You speak these words out of ignorance," Caridin replied sadly. "I had hoped that the memories of my time would have been better preserved. The Anvil of the Void allowed me to forge a man of steel and stone and for that I was made a Paragon. It gave me the power to create invincible warriors, but it could not create life. Life can be transformed by mortals, but it cannot be created from nothing."
"So you took it from… somewhere else," Leliana deduced, voice hardly more than a whisper. Fergus too felt the grim implications of Caridin's testament.
"It was a dark time," the Paragon replied softly. "A very dark time. At first, we only used willing volunteers but it was not enough. It was never enough."
"Oh," Leliana said softly, the incarnation of Caridin's regret-filled memory complete.
"The king at the time had enemies. Many enemies," Caridin continued and his echo-like voice grew softer in its pain. "And the casteless that lived on the outskirts of the empire fled inward. There were so many of them… too many. And when I protested the enslavement of living souls by the process I myself had created, had taught to other smiths, the art of trapping a man or a woman into a hollow shell, of pouring liquid lyrium over their heads, I…" He sighed. "It was my own turn."
Fergus turned away, a heavy weight in his own throat like a ghost curling around his neckline, reclining against his collarbones. Leliana's blue eyes were wide and bright, like polished armor glazed with rainwater, as Alistair hung his head and stared at his toes.
Sten, however, shrugged. "Perhaps a necessary evil," the qunari remarked, "and if these dwarves were not contributing anything useful to society, this alteration gave them new purpose."
"Oh, and how would you like that to happen to you?" Alistair snapped.
"I did not say I would enjoy it. Enjoyment in it is not the purpose. It was one option to combat a dire situation, little more."
"It was an option that should never have existed in the first place," Caridin interjected. "Please," he looked to Annika. "I cannot destroy it myself, but I beg you, stranger, to help me."
"Don't be ridiculous."
Branka's snapped reply preceded her entrance as she stepped out of the shadows of the passageway behind Fergus, Leliana, and Annika. Presumably, the Paragon had had to loop back around and climb down the slope before hurrying through the cleared traps to catch up, thus granting her latest test subjects a few moments alone with Caridin.
"Little Aeducan, surely you can't take the words of this lump of metal seriously," Branka scoffed, striding forward to face down the princess and the other Paragon, neck jutted out and chin raised abrasively. "He's been down here far too long with his fellow golems, staring at his own creation like shadows on a cave wall and thinking it's something else, something more hazardous than it actually is. He looks at rocks and sees ogres, no doubt. But you and I, you and I see differently, don't we?"
"Haven't you heard a single word of what the nice Paragon's been saying, woman?" Oghren growled. "How'd you like to be one of those golems?"
"If that is the price, than perhaps!" Branka snapped back. She raised her arms, gesturing all around them as she asked, "Is this what our empire should look like? A crumbling tunnel, filled with darkspawn spume? The Anvil is a gift that will let us take back our glory!"
"It's hardly a gift when it comes with such a price," Fergus contested, fully believing the ancient Paragon. Leliana folded her arms and nodded her agreement. Sten grunted, clearly not going to contest the point further than he already had. He looked to Annika, but the dwarven princess said nothing, neither to him nor to Branka.
The mad Paragon rounded on the disgraced princess, clearly finding her to be the weakest link in the chain. "I can hear it," she said quietly to Annika. "It wants to be used again. It whispers in a hundred different voices. Surely you can hear them all."
"Oh, I hear them," Fergus interjected willfully, deliberate to draw Branka's attention from Annika's apparent indecision on the matter. "And I think they're telling me to take a hammer to the damned thing and smash it into a hundred million pieces."
"Don't be a fool," Branka fumed just as Caridin said, "Please." And there was something in that please that made Fergus turn his back on princess and present paragon and begin the climb up to the Anvil's place of honor.
There was the sound of a scuffle and Oghren grunted in effort as Branka's armor clanged against his own. "What're you doing, Branka?" he groaned with the effort of holding her back. "I remember a girl who you could talk to for one minute and see her brilliance? What the hell happened? Who the hell are you?"
"I am your Paragon!" Branka screeched: an awful sound in which all madness was manifest. From her belt, she pulled a slender carved rod and wrestled one arm free from Oghren's grip on her shoulders. Lifting the strange, foreign tool high, she shrieked a word Fergus didn't understand and waved the wand at the golems lining the path up to the Anvil's place.
"A golem control rod!" Caridin rumbled in apparent fear and Fergus looked over his shoulder and thought, So that's what it is. With painful screeches of long-unmoving stone joints scraping into action, the golems were recalled to life, previously inanimate eyes flickering with limited sentience. With movements that groaned like rusty hinges, the creatures of stone and lyrium advanced on Leliana, Alistair, and Sten as Branka knocked Oghren down to the cavern floor and waved the control rod once again, pointing its tip at Caridin with maniacal resolve, freezing the other Paragon in his place.
Abandoning the goal of destroying the Anvil once and for all, Fergus rushed back down the slope, taking the steps two at a time. With sword in one hand, control rod in the other and shield on her arm, Branka charged the companions even as her golems flanked them.
"Sten, Alistair, Oghren, the golems!" Leliana cried, loud and clear in Fergus's absence, and they obeyed her. "Annika, she's ours!"
Even as Fergus threw himself at the nearest golem, it seemed that Leliana had a plan of her own when it came to dealing with the mad Paragon. Discarding her bow and quiver, the onetime bard took up twin daggers and darted around Branka, looking for a weakness, while Annika claimed the majority of the enemy's attention. Behind them, Fergus, Alistair, Oghren, and Sten did their best to cleave a path through the enemy golems but it was as Caridin himself had said: he had created matchless, mostly invulnerable warriors.
"Can't… keep this up… much longer," Alistair panted between hacks, cleaving little but gravel from his stone opponent. "Could use… a chisel."
"Parshaara," Sten grunted between giant swings of his own greatsword. But it was not enough. Even Annika had been drawn away from the bout with Branka to assist Oghren with his golem.
"I can help!" Leliana called back and took advantage of her height, kicking up with her right leg and knocking Branka's shield from her arm. The wooden shield went clattering across the cavern floor and the onetime bard danced forward again, discarding one dagger and grabbing at the control rod, wrestling it from Branka's grip before dropping into a dive roll to get away.
The mad Paragon lunged after Leliana's retreat, slicing a deep round against the younger woman's shoulder blade. At her sudden cry of pain, Fergus turned from his own battle in alarm as Branka advanced on the bard who had taken the control rod from her. Leliana rolled over flat onto her wound, dagger in one hand, control rod in the other and kicked out and forward at her attacker. Branka tripped, which had surely been Leliana's intent.
Branka tripped and fell onto her own sword, which had surely not been Leliana's intent.
Raising her head as Branka uttered her death rattle, Leliana weakly waved the control rod at the golems her companions faced, rendering them defunct and freeing Caridin from his unseen bonds. That being done, she sighed her relief at it all being over and let her head fall back down against the ground.
"C'est rien," she was saying when Fergus reached her. "It's nothing."
Refusing to leave it at that, Fergus helped her sit up before he examined the gash in the back of her leather armor that had yielded to Branka's blade. "Someone get her a bandage," Annika was saying. "An open wound in the Deep Roads is a recipe for disaster."
"You have my thanks, strangers," Caridin said, stepping into Annika's path as Fergus resisted the impulsive desire to press his lips against the crease where Leliana's collarbone met her neck. "You came here in search of something; I am sorry it is not what you were expecting and that another soul was lost to my own hubris," he added sadly, looking down at Branka's body. Oghren, by contrast, was looking anywhere but. "Whatever else you would ask of me, I will grant."
"Orzammar needs a ruler," Annika replied stiffly, "but I doubt your good word would be enough to paint over my reputation. The Anvil would be."
"Still," Caridin replied, "I will craft for you a crown for your chosen ruler, be it yourself or another."
And so he did. As Oghren sat in silence, Sten and Alistair cleaned their weaponry and set up camp, and Fergus mopped up the dried blood covering Leliana's bare shoulder blade and sealed the wound over with a bandage, Caridin slaved over his famous anvil one last time and presented Annika with a gaudy crown of gold and precious gems.
"It's…" Leliana began, her description dissolving into speechlessness as she regarded the creation.
"Hideous," Fergus finished with a grin.
Still, Annika bowed formally as though it were the most precious gift he could have presented her with and said, "I will destroy the Anvil, as promised," loud enough for Fergus to hear.
The ancient Paragon raised his metal arm in a benediction of sorts. "Atrast nal tunsha," he rumbled. "May you always find your way in the dark."
That being said, he turned and disappeared over the cliff's edge. Just as Hespith had, Fergus remembered grimly. Annika looked down into the lava flow below and then bowed her head, turned away, and returned to Fergus with the crown tucked under one arm as Leliana made her way over to the assembled camp site some distance away, joining Sten and Alistair there.
"They're gone," Annika said softly, her blade still dripping with the blood of the Paragon Branka. "Both of them. They're gone."
"Yes," Fergus agreed briskly. "And we need to go back. We've wasted enough time on this task; I thought I was done with madcap quests after the Frostbacks…"
"Not a waste," the princess replied, tone becoming firmer. "We have the Anvil. We must bring it back with us."
He stared down at her, disbelief rising in his throat. "But after what you said to Caridin—"
"I know what I said!" she snapped, face blank and unreadable. "But I know what Branka said too and as mad as she was, she wasn't wrong. Our empire has become little pieces, crumbling mausoleums and dripping tunnels. A hall built –a city built –to honor the Legion of the Dead had become a breeding ground for the monsters that they themselves are sworn to fight. And the darkspawn take more from us, bit by bit, and some of the damage is obvious but the rest…"
Forehead cradled between the fingers of one hand, she paced back and forth on a circuit between Branka's corpse and a fallen stone golem. "The casteless… would Dust Town be so terrible if they had somewhere else to go? If they had more space for schools and shops, their own society where perhaps they cannot join the nobles or the smiths or the warriors –too soon, too soon for that –but they perhaps could make something of themselves… But we don't have space because the darkspawn have taken that from us too. Fergus."
He looked at her but said nothing. Annika stared back at him. "You have to see it," she said in earnest. "You have to see that with these golems, we could change all of that. We could take back our empire inch by inch, set up new fortifications. But before that, with the Anvil, I can give you the army you need. And you need it. Don't you pretend otherwise; you do.
"And I would be a good ruler," she insisted and for a moment he thought he saw something of Eliante in her –the better part of Eliante: the good intentions, the determination. "I would not be a Bhelen who would force his political prisoners and his enemies and the casteless to become these creatures; I would do as Caridin did, only take volunteers, make do with that and only that. It is too unfathomable a gift not to save; I will save it."
Fergus looked at her again, for a very long moment. Finally, he said, "I believe that you would not be a Bhelen," and whether he truly believed that or not was irrelevant, "but the world we live in, on the surface or underground, fosters and breeds Bhelens uncountable. In your lifetime, perhaps the Anvil would not be turned to the evil that was during Caridin's, but what of beyond that? You tell me that Eamon will die and leave Alistair Ferelden and let it fall to ruin; well, you will die too, eventually. And so will I. And none of us will really have much say in what happens once we're dead. My father learned that the hard way. Annika, it has to go. You can't change an entire culture alone; it will take generations and it might even be impossible. And if the Anvil comes back to Orzammar and its power abused after your lifetime, it will be impossible."
He bent down beside Branka's body and picked up the control rod Leliana had discarded. Tossing it to Annika, he commented, "There were a lot of golems we didn't break into little pieces along the way here. Might be worth a shot to try reactivating them."
She caught it and turned the rod over in her hand. "Consolation prize?" she asked wryly and Fergus shrugged. "In Provings for honor, there are no consolation prizes," she remarked idly. "You win or you die. I learned that the hard way, when I challenged a noble at my father's banquet for trying to manipulate me and his son took up arms in the arena in his place. Harrowmont encouraged me to do it. The next thing I knew, he was dead and I was still alive." She looked up at Fergus again and seemed decades older than she had seemed a moment before. "The next day, Bhelen betrayed me in the Deep Roads." She looked back down at the rod. "Someone has to end the cycle."
Hunched like an old woman, she turned away and started up the steep path to the Anvil's place of honor. Fergus let her go, and sat down beside Oghren. Looking out over the lava flow, the auburn-headed dwarf asked impassively, "She gonna smash it?"
"She's going to smash it," Fergus agreed and took the flask Oghren offered him. He didn't take a swig though; he knew too much about the quality of dwarven brewing now.
"Good," Oghren said bitterly. "Save some other poor sod the heartache and the wondering when his wife thinks she's gonna go chase it down in a couple o' decades."
Fergus sighed and they sat in silence for a little while, the two of them, like the old men they could only hope to live long enough to become. After a little time, Annika returned, shards of lyrium scattered in her pale brown braids. "It's done," she said shortly. "And now I have nothing to bring back with me save maybe a couple or two golems we pick up along the way and a crown that's so distasteful no one will believe Caridin made it."
"Kardol would still have you in the Legion," Fergus offered even though he already knew her answer. "And, if not that, we could claim the Rite of Conscription, take you to the surface as a Grey Warden recruit. We've done it before, for a mage they wouldn't have let out of the tower otherwise."
"No," Annika said shortly, all-inclusively.
"It's better than what you'll have in Orzammar if the Assembly doesn't believe your story."
"Maybe."
"Bhelen will kill you, idiot," Oghren snapped, "and Harrowmont won't save you; you know that already. If you didn't notice, girl, Bhelen's bit of play not only removed Trian and you but also left the Assembly deadlocked because half of 'em think your sweet brother's guilty of both of your deaths. Maybe somebody thought all of 'em would think that way."
Fergus blinked at Oghren in surprise; it was a strangely keen bit of thinking to come out of a perpetually drunk warrior's mouth. But Annika remained unmoved. "It's not worth life itself," he told her, half-serious, half-trying to make light of it all.
"It is," she said simply. "At the very least, if I do this, if I oppose them both now and put Caridin's crown on my head, even if it kills me, neither Bhelen nor Harrowmont's rule will ever be as strong as it will be if I just walk away."
The way back to Orzammar was long but much less eventful than the expedition out. Within the cleared depths of Bownammar, they encountered Kardol the Legion once again, setting fire to a previously darkspawn-inhabited crypt. Brosca's dark eyebrows disappeared into his shaggy, uneven bangs as he saw the crown they had taken turns hauling out of the Anvil's hiding place. "That's better than anything we found out here."
"A Paragon-crafted crown fit for Orzammar's next monarch," Annika replied, raising her chin as though daring anyone –Kardol –to dispute that that person would not be her.
The Legion's commander regarded her and it impassively. "It's certainly ugly enough," he remarked and then looked to Fergus. "I'll leave a contingency of my people here; me and the rest will follow you back to the city. If the stalemate's about to be broken, we'll need to be there to receive new orders."
"Glad to have you along," Fergus replied and Leliana nodded agreement in earnest. She had gotten along very well with one of the younger legionnaires, Sigrun, on the trip out of Caridin's Cross.
"I don't see an Anvil with you, unless one of you swallowed it," he observed.
"What about it, commander?" Annika shot back.
He shrugged. "Nothing." His expression was cool and distant. "It's not my business if you want to throw your life away."
To be honest, Fergus thought he might rather be dead than in the Deep Roads for the rest of his living days. But whatever private disputes Kardol and Annika had, they were theirs to deal with. He would just be satisfied with seeing the sky again and soon; a reminder that the outside world was still out there, waiting for them to come back to it.
But before they could get there, they had to get back through Orzammar. And the moment their company, followed by four golems following Annika's lead, passed through the strangely empty guards' checkpoint and entered the city proper, it appeared that the world of Orzammar had changed drastically in their absence.
"I'm sorry," Leliana was saying quietly to Oghren near the back of the group as they entered the Commons. "For… well, you know."
"Yeah, I know," the dwarven warrior, sober and sick with it, answered. "S'not your fault, well, not completely. Idiot woman was a damned smith, not a warrior. She just kept forgetting that."
"Quiet," Fergus said tersely, eyes surveying the marketplace as it were. "Something's wrong."
"Clearly," Annika said, looking over the upturned carts, the root vegetables scattered across the pavement, the shattered glass jewelry cases, the bodies that none of them looked too long at, "unless the stalemate in the Assembly has turned to outright riot." At Fergus's suggestion, the disgraced princess had donned a helmet that did quite a bit to conceal her true identity.
"Topsiders –I mean, Warden –and Kardol –I mean, commander!" A male dwarf emerged from where he had been cowering behind his overturned stall, eyes too bright and hands moving too rapidly to be sound of mind. Fergus recognized the lyrium-addled merchant whose silver jewelry Leliana had admired. "You've got to help me –I mean, them, I mean, Orzammar!"
"Speak plain, man," Kardol barked briskly.
"It's the Carta," was the quick answer between bouts of anxiety-induced wheezing. "It's the Carta; they stormed out of Dust Town, Beraht and Jarvia leading the back, and started marching through the Commons, slaughtering anyone in their path that'd lift a finger to stop them. And, well, and some just to show that they could, I guess. And it wasn't just the casteless; all along the way, more and more joined in: smiths, merchants, warriors, even some guards. I can't imagine how long they've been plotting this, buying off people, promising places in their 'New Order'…"
Kardol turned, to Fergus's surprise, to Brosca. "Brosca, you knew about this?" he demanded of his legionnaire.
"Come on, commander," the younger dwarf said, expression hard, "I was a grunt, not their strategist. And my mother and sister are probably in that palace by now; you think if I'd known, I wouldn't have told somebody to keep them safe?"
Annika looked at Brosca very closely. "Rica," she said quietly. "Your sister is Rica," and Fergus thought that the significance of that would have to be eventually explained.
"That's neither here nor there," Kardol cut her off shortly. "Princess, you want your city? Fight for it."
"Oh, I intend to," she replied coolly and pulled the helmet from her head, elaborate braids falling down to brush against the nape of her neck. She had redone them, clearly, and washed besides, no doubt in premeditated preparation for her entrance into the city. She certainly appeared every inch the warrior queen Orzammar no doubt needed: not an old man like Harrowmont or a scheming politician like Bhelen. And she clearly knew it.
She looked to the merchant. "I take it that they're now in the Diamond Quarter." The man nodded rapidly, wordlessly, apparently struck speechless by the revelation of Orzammar's shamed princess, the fallen favored child. "Then that's where we go."
The looting was worse in the Diamond Quarter. The goods were much more highly valued, and the security lax. Save for the occasional noble hunter, as Annika remarked and Brosca glared at the comment, the guards didn't expect a casteless to make it this far away from Dust Town without detection. And also unlike the Commons, the fighting between Carta and the contingency of nobles and guards in the Diamond Quarter was very much ongoing.
"Mardy!" Brosca called out, clearly recognizing someone. He pushed past a squeaking noble matron and found a much younger woman cowering in the alley between two estates. "Mardy, what happened? Are you alright? Where's Rica?"
The young woman lifted her head, revealing the casteless brand etched onto her pretty features. "I'm alright," she gasped. "When they saw the brand, they called me names but they left me alone. There were bigger nugs to catch. Rica? She's… I heard that Bhelen fled to the Assembly chamber with whatever of his household he could bring. Surely she'd be there; she's the—"
She caught her words in her throat when she looked past Brosca and saw Annika's narrowed eyes. "Lady Aeducan," she gulped and quickly pressed her forehead against the ground once more in apparent desperate reverence. "You're… you're…"
"Back to claim what is rightfully mine," Annika finished. "Is Harrowmont with Bhelen at the Assembly?"
"Yes; I saw his people go there too, Jarvia and Beraht on their heels. They mean to start a revolution!"
"Not when the crown is inches from my head, they aren't." She looked back to Fergus, Kardol, and the others. "Fergus, you and Alistair and whoever else you can spare must come with me."
"I need to find Teagan," Fergus objected.
"And Niall," Leliana added quietly.
"They've barricaded themselves in the palace, they're in the Assembly chamber with Bhelen and Harrowmont, or they're dead. Either way, there's little you can do for them now."
"That's not your call to make," Fergus said, his tone cool even in a warzone. "Leliana, Sten, find them. I'm not bringing Eamon his brother in a box, and I don't want Niall dead either."
Annika had the grace and the sense not to object further. Instead, Kardol said, "My people will break up the fighting here and cover your entrance. I'm sending Brosca with you, since it looks like he'll piss his greaves if I don't. I'll take the drunk instead."
"Kardol," Annika said. "Come with us. Take a stand."
"Politics are not for me," the Legion of the Dead's commander returned icily, "a fact you keep forgetting ever since I did you a onetime favor. We're not taking sides here; we're just breaking it up. And sides aren't for you either," he added, glaring up at Alistair. "You'd better remember that, Warden."
They left Leliana and Sten at the broken entrance to the Royal Palace and pushed forward toward the Assembly. Some of the Legionnaires besides Brosca pushed forward with them, cutting a swathe through and up the steps. The great doors of the dwarven Assembly were broken too, but that didn't stop Annika from walking through them like she owned them and more.
"Put your bloody backs into it!" growled a dwarven man with a crushed nose and narrow eyes as he oversaw a battering ram being crashed repeatedly into the heavy ornate inner doors of the Assembly chamber. "Any moment now, we'll be painting that room blue with deshyrs' blood."
"Beraht," hissed one of his minions in fear, eyeing the entrance of Annika, Fergus, Brosca, and Alistair.
"Well, look at this," said a pretty woman with a cruel mouth and a dark brand, stepping forward from the side of the chamber. "Somebody finally realized that we're taking over the city."
Annika lifted her chin and began to answer, but Brosca spoke first. "Hey Jarvia," he said, strangely cheerful, "you still screwing Beraht?"
"Well, look at that," Beraht said, coming down from his place near the battering ram that had fallen still in the tension of the newcomers' entrance. "It's the scum who didn't have sense enough to die under some rock in the Deep Roads when he slipped through my fingers. Where's Leske?"
"You'll be seeing him soon," Brosca shot back, deep brown, almost black eyes burning beneath the grimy dark hair that fell into his face. "Where's Rica?"
"You'll be seeing her soon enough," Beraht said back to him with dangerous mockery. "Wench thinks she's going to cut me out of the deal now that she's in pup? Well, she's as worthless to me now as you were. I'll gut the little cow myself."
"Oh, it's the little princess, Beraht," Jarvia cooed, looking to Annika. "You picked the wrong time to raise your head, sister. There's only going to be one queen in Orzammar."
"I don't think there'll be any queens," Annika replied mildly, staring the other woman down. "Why content myself with being the wife of a king and not king myself? But I suppose a glorified bed-warmer like you can only look so high."
"Kill them!" Beraht roared. "But leave our mouthy friend alive."
"And the pretty one," Jarvia added, eyes glimmering. "I have plans for her."
Fergus and Alistair didn't even make the torture list, but the former didn't mind very much. As Annika and Brosca set their sights on Jarvia and Beraht, Fergus and Alistair turned, finding that there were plenty of other Carta thugs to occupy their attention.
Annika was locked in combat with the deadly Carta lieutenant and it seemed that blades were not enough battle for the two women. "I've half a mind to let you walk on in there," Jarvia said, laughing as her twin daggers whirled toward the princess, hitting the metal shield Annika had taken from Branka's body every time, "if only to watch Bhelen and Harrowmont argue over who gets to behead you. You were a fool to come back thinking that the Assembly would welcome you with open arms, pretty girl."
"They might like me better," Annika shot back, charging forward with her longsword, "if I walk in holding your head."
Fergus ran one Carta thug clean through, noting that despite their numbers; the enemy dwarves' arms and armor were less than quality. It seemed that their courage ran in a similar pattern. There were plenty of hired blades fleeing out onto the street to become easy pickings for Kardol and his legionnaires no doubt.
On the other side of the chamber, Brosca and Beraht were keeping each other very busy, the younger fighter dodging the huge swings of the crime lord's ax. "You were one of the good ones, Brosca," Beraht was saying between lunges and swings. "You kept your head down and said 'aye' to whatever job I decided was low enough for scum like you and Leske. We had such a good working relationship; shame you had to go and muck—"
He stopped mid-insult as though something had caught in his throat. Beraht looked down in surprise, finding a knife buried deep in the gap just above his collarbones, hilt half-disappearing into his heavy beard. The heavy ax fell from his grip as the Carta leader fell to his knees, Brosca standing over him, a snarl on his face. "That was for Leske, bastard."
Viciously, even as Beraht's face went blank with the knowledge of impending death, Brosca kicked his former boss down onto his back, boot driven hard into Beraht's chest. "That was for Rica," he said darkly.
"And this," Brosca continued, stepping forward, "this is for me." And as Beraht stared amazedly up at his former grunt, Brosca slammed the hilt of the crime boss's own ax down hard against Beraht's skull with a sickening crunch.
"Die slowly!" Jarvia screeched, driven to madness by the death of her supposed lover. As she rushed forward to charge Beraht's killer, Annika seized her opportunity and ran the woman through, blade buried deep between her shoulder blades.
And like that, it was over. Annika ripped her sword free from Jarvia's body and caught Alistair's surprised eye. "What?" she asked him with a shrug. "Was I supposed to wait for her to turn around after she gutted Brosca?"
She strode forward and rapped her armored knuckles hard against the half-smashed in door. There was a moment of quiet. Fergus supposed that it must have been a shock after the constant pounding to hear something as civilized as a knock.
Finally: "Friend or foe?" came a slightly whimpering voice from the other side.
"The Grey Warden of Ferelden and his comrades," Annika answered back confidently and stepped back, looking again to Alistair and Fergus. "I had to say something that would get them to open the door," she whisper-explained.
And indeed the doors swung ajar, scattering splinters of stone in their wake and a confident voice greeted their entrance, Annika in the lead; who among them could deny her this triumph? "Atrast vala, Grey Warden," said the greeter. "The city will talk for centuries of the Wardens putting the Carta rebellion down like… like…"
"Like what, brother?" Annika called back sweetly as a collective gasp rolled through the Assembly. She blinked prettily up at him. "Deepstalker caught your tongue?"
"Lady Aeducan," Harrowmont said disbelievingly.
"Warden!" Bhelen shouted, half-stammering. "How —how dare you bring this Tainted kinslayer into the Assembly's presence?"
"I am sound of mind and body, Bhelen," Annika replied confidently back, "and I am not the kinslayer in the room." She looked to the rest of the massive chamber, the deshyrs lining their rows with staffs in hand. "It was the will of the Ancestors that I, Annika Aeducan, daughter of Endrin Aeducan, survived tragedy and betrayal to not only reclaim Bownammar with the aid of the Legion of the Dead but also venture beyond our Shaperate's most ancient maps to find all that remained of the Paragons Branka and Caridin as well as the Anvil of the Void. I returned with a Paragon-forged crown, marked by the ancient seal of House Ortan, to find my city in turmoil.
"While they," she gestured to both Bhelen and Harrowmont, "cowered in the Assembly despite one's claim to be a warrior and the other's to be a master tactician, both skilled in all ways of contending, I fought on the streets with surfacers and legionnaires alike to preserve our way of life as we know it."
"Perhaps," Harrowmont said, hesitating, "perhaps these deeds call for redemption in the eyes of the Ancestors for Lady Aeducan."
"I think they call for a great deal more," called out a grey-haired noblewoman in a cream gown embroidered with gold pieces.
Annika inclined her hand deeply to the dame. "Thank you, Lady Helmi," she said and then lifted her gaze beguilingly to the assembled deshyrs. "I am no orator as Bhelen is," she said, "but you know me all: a woman who speaks her mind and means her words. Something has held you honored deshyrs back from electing a king these past months, but Orzammar needs a king. Orzammar needs a ruler who will not hold back their words, will stand to protect their city at whatever cost, and will never abandon her even as she may abandon them under a misconception fostered by those that are unworthy of her love and loyalty. I have come back to tell you only what you yourselves already know, that the contenders for the throne you have scrutinized these past months are unworthy. I only beseech the deshyrs of the Assembly to find another way."
"No!" Bhelen shouted, eyes on fire with anger. "I will not have you listen to her poisoned words! Why could you not stay dead?"
With that, the prince charged down the steps toward his sister, steel in hand as a collective gasp rolled through the assembled deshyrs. Fergus took a step forward but Annika minutely shook her head even as Bhelen came dangerously close. It was such a quiet, quick thing: Annika stepped to one side as Bhelen rushed to run her through, her younger brother stumbled, and she stepped sideways gutting him with a quick thrust of her own dagger as he no doubt would have done to her. There was a quiet scream from somewhere near his second and Fergus saw Brosca's gaze leap to a red-haired dwarven woman, tears rolling down her face as she clutched her pregnant stomach.
"Atrast tunsha. Totarnia amgetol tavash aeduc," Annika whispered to her brother, kneeling beside him as he bled out onto the Assembly floor. Gently, she closed his eyelids and as she stood, Fergus was surprised to see tears glittering in her own brown eyes. Not entirely show, then.
"And now I am become kinslayer in reality as well as whispered word," Annika said more loudly for all the room to hear. "But everything I have done, I have done for Orzammar. This city is my kin; I have no other."
Alistair was still holding the gaudy crown Caridin had fashioned. The Steward of the Assembly stepped forward and took it from him. "You corroborate her story, Grey Warden?" he asked.
He nodded. "I do. She is Caridin's chosen ruler."
"I am the Paragon's chosen," Annika repeated, "but I will be no queen. My namesake, the wife of the Paragon Aeducan, was none only for the deeds of her husband. I will be known for my own deeds; I will not be a queen, but a king."
A collective murmur rolled through the deshyrs. Silence ensued, but it did not last long. "We have argued in these chambers too long," the steward called out. "It is time for a new era and a new king."
Annika stepped forward, nothing modest about her, but Fergus reached out and caught her arm. "Yes," he said quietly, grimly. "I'll do it. When I get back to the surface, I'll do it. I don't want it, but I'll do it. But don't announce it now. You can tell them all later, but don't announce it now."
The restored princess nodded gravely and stepped forward, victorious. The steward placed the hideous monstrosity of a crown on her head and Fergus could only be grateful that Fereldan king's weren't fond of such ornamentations.
"Let the memories find you worthy," the steward's voice rang out throughout the chamber, "first amongst the lords of the houses, King of Orzammar."
Annika rose gracefully, the glittering crown blinding on her braided hair. Naturally, she had chosen a hairstyle that would complement the crown. "And I want him executed, immediately," King Annika declared, lifting a hand to point at Lord Harrowmont without looking at him.
"Princess — Your Majesty," the condemned claimant protested as though shocked and only then did she look at him.
"This was a Proving for honor, Lord Harrowmont," she said, her tone almost gracious, "both yours and mine. And you clearly lost."
He had thought he would not be happy until he saw the sky again. It turned out that Fergus's happiness could in fact make do with a bath and a proper bed.
The looting in the royal palace had been bad, but it had been as Annika had suggested: Teagan and Niall had barricaded themselves in the suite allotted to the Grey Wardens with much of the staff and so their possessions had seemed to survive. Running a hand through his damp hair, he sighed and fell back against the bed.
Despite the call for Harrowmont's immediate execution, Annika had proven that she could be gracious. Gently, she had approached the sobbing pregnant woman –Brosca's sister, it was revealed –and taken her brother's casteless concubine's hands in her own, promising that she and her child –whatever the gender might be –would be adopted into the family and provided for. It was small comfort to the woman whose lover had been killed, but it was something.
A soft knock sounded on the door and he sat up. "Open."
The door creaked ajar and Leliana slipped into the room, shutting it behind her. Her own copper hair was damp with a thorough washing and she was clearly reveling in wearing clean clothes for the first time in weeks: a loose shirt and breeches. She was barefoot and smiling at him. "So it is over," she deduced.
"For the moment," he agreed. "Next time, I'm making Mordred come with us."
She laughed softly and he smiled back at her despite himself. "Where's Teagan?"
Casually, she glided across the room and poured herself a glass of surface wine from the tray perched on a side table. "Negotiating his lyrium side dealing with the princess –I mean, king. He's quite taken with her, as he is with…"
"…everything that breathes," he finished dryly and she laughed again.
"I wish I could have been there," she said idly, perching on the edge of his bed, gazing into the space near the far wall. "It sounds like… well, you'll chide me for this, but it sounds like a fairy tale."
"No, it does," Fergus surprised himself by admitting. "The fallen princess returning to all but put the crown on her own head. If you forget that she had to kill her own brother to do it."
"And save her city," Leliana countered, "and has an honorable man in love with her from afar, a courtly love where he knows he cannot truly have her but all the same…"
He raised his eyebrows at her and she colored, as she had all those months ago on the plains near Lothering when she had not known him but pursued him to try and speak with him in his grief. "Kardol," she explained.
"I don't think so," he said, laughing outright now. She looked down at the wine glass in her hands, the glass stem caught between her fingers, and he watched her more closely. "We'll go to Denerim," he said after a moment, "when we leave here. Mordred be damned."
"If he isn't already," she murmured but there was little humor in her jest. She looked up, but did not look at him. "I don't want you to face Marjolaine."
"This again?"
"Yes," she said, half-smiling down at her glass now. "This again. It is my battle, not yours."
"And if I want to make it mine?" he asked and only then did she look up at him. He had an acute sense of what becoming king of Ferelden would mean, all of the things he would have to give up, all of the things that had already been taken from him and yet they would take more and more and more. It would never be over. He would never get to shout, "Hold, enough!"
"That would be the sin of selfishness," she replied smartly, half-smirking now.
"I can be selfish," Fergus said, leaning toward her now. "Just watch me. In this one thing, I can be selfish."
The wine glass, still only half-empty, toppled from her fingers and bounced against the heavy carpets, ruby liquid spilling out to soak into the heavy weaving. Leliana wound her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply even as he kissed her, falling flat on her back as he rolled on top of her, her legs curling around his waist, bare feet hooked together, hands tangling in his hair.
He banished any thoughts of Oriana from his mind as she rolled over, pulling him onto his back and sitting up, unlacing the front of her shirt. He could be selfish. In this one thing, he could be selfish.
This is what happens when neither Beraht nor Jarvia are killed before the Wardens disappear into the Deep Roads. At least Bhelen/Harrowmont got one thing right about Jarvia needing to die.
And, speaking of them, I'm sorry, but it is a celebrated trope that the trusted advisor is secretly the evil mastermind (see Aladdin's Jafar). If the Assembly believed that Bhelen was guilty and that Endrin died of a broken heart (and not poison; or maybe poison, that someone pinned on Bhelen), Pyral Harrowmont would be in a great position to take the throne. I take nothing at face value in the DA universe (which is maybe why all the quizzes I take say and all my professors tell me that I should have been a scientist).
As always, feedback is really appreciated. You help me with the best ideas, whether you know it or not.