Dragon Age: Wars of the Wolf
An ounce of blood
Yup... This is still being updated, albeit at a snail's pace. I do intend to finish this tale and wrap up my little Warden's tale - if only just because. Thanks as always for for reading & all!
It felt strange, riding at the head of a small army moving, slow but inexorable, through the increasingly arid landscape of northern Nevarra.
Zevran had told Leliana that it reminded him of the desperate ride between Redcliffe and Denerim, when Nyx had led the Fereldan armies against the great archdemon. Leliana had asked Nyx about it, once, and the sorceress had bitten her lips and shaken her head, as though unwilling to remember the pain and despair of these dark times. It didn't matter, Nyx said; they'd been apart then, and things had been different. From Zevran's indiscretions, Leliana had learned that Nyx had been driven nearly mad by the guilt and fear of leaving her in Denerim, and Leliana had refrained from asking any more.
The plan she and Toast had laid out for the General-Comte d'Arcon was bold and elegant: instead of following the original Orlesian plan of waiting for reinforcements on the shores of the Minanter, then assaulting the Nevarran capital, the General-Comte would keep the enemy busy at the bridges while sending out a small, fast force North, towards the Silent Plains and the supposed hideout of the False Divine. If the Orlesians succeeded in capturing the usurper, Leliana had explained, Arnaud would find himself in a position to single-handedly stop the Holy March against Orlais, and would be celebrated as a hero without peer. If they failed, Toast and Celene's secret police would take the blame.
Really, Leliana thought with a little satisfied pout, the poor Comte-General never had a chance to back off from such a deal.
"What are you thinking, my love?"
A most refreshing choice of words, Leliana reflected as she turned her gaze to the Warden, whose grey mare tottered on absently by her bay geldling. The sorceress expressing her feelings in such outspoken manner was yet another sign of the changes both of them were undergoing; changes that seemed to accelerate with every vision of Leliana's, to the extent that all but good old Zevran gave the pair a very wide berth.
"I was thinking about our chances of capturing Diane alive."
"Ugh. Do we have to?"
"It would make things easier for everyone," Leliana said.
A long, long time ago, she would not even have imagined going against the Reigning Divine's will, let alone capturing or killing her. But those were times long gone, memories she now saw through the prism of experience and cynicism. Leliana still believed that the Chantry was inherently good, that it was rooted in values worth living for. But now she saw the rotten wood clinging to the Chantry's still vibrant tree; there were too many black sheep, self-serving manipulators ready to betray Andraste's message. And Leliana felt that Diane was the worst of them: a master in the arts of intrigue whose talent was on a par with Marjolaine's, a hypocrite, a pustule in the Maker's sight…
Leliana felt a wave of power rush through her body as her anger rose; the horses felt it, too, even though Nyx had placed them under a minor control spell so they wouldn't run from her own, dark aura. The beasts chafed and snorted, and Nyx reached for Leliana's arm with a half-smile that was also a warning: whether it came from Fen'Harel or Andruil, the gods' anger was a dangerous thing, and it was best kept for times of need.
"I don't know how you managed to control it for so long, baby," Leliana said softly, "I never imagined…"
"Well, mostly, you do it for me. How are you feeling?"
"Strange. I… don't really know how to describe it. Out of place, perhaps?"
Nyx nodded. Ever since the fall of Fen'Harel had been burned into her mind, Leliana had hardly slept at all, although she exhibited no symptoms of physical exhaustion. In the eyes of the marching soldiers, she was still a slim, redheaded woman, pretty in an unassuming fashion, clad in light mail and well-maintained leather.
Nyx, however, saw more. She saw the aura of power that surged from the lithe body like a beacon into the Beyond. She saw the changes in Leliana's nudity when they were alone in their tent; she felt the almost inhuman strength of the muscles and sinew under white, taut skin, the contained violence of her embrace. She had seen –more than once- the silver-like sheen in the bard's blood, and for good or worse, she thought she understood the meaning of it.
Days passed on as the chevaliers rode through Nevarra, meeting almost no resistance on their way, for Diane had never planned for the Wolf-Born to lead an Orlesian assault and had focused her perverse intellect on the spinning of a web that may now be trampled under armored hooves.
They came across a few towns and villages, which, on Leliana's insistence, they left mostly un-pillaged on condition that the locals provide food for the moving army. Some of the officers balked at this blatant breach of the war etiquette, but the ill-content were referred to Nyx, who told them in rather graphic terms what she would do to dissenters: it didn't involve hugs. The grumbling subsided, although Leliana suspected that problems might arise in the near future.
As the army reached the outskirts of the Silent Plains, human settlements became scarce, then completely disappeared as the forests gave way to a yellowish steppe, and then to a barren expanse where the cold winds stirred reddish sand, reducing visibility to a few feet on either side. It was a land spoiled forever by the first Blight, a land of thirst and desperation, and even Zevran seemed a little downtrodden as the army scrambled on, wreathed in a perpetual red mist that wormed its way into clothing, eyes and mouths. The sand had a bitter, rancid taste, and it was unnaturally abrasive, causing painful rashes that took forever to heal, as though each grain still carried a spark of Archdemon Dumat's malice.
On the fourth day of their trek into the desert, they came across the woman.
She was dressed as a warrior, all steel and leather, although the steel was painted a dull black and the brown leather was rough and frayed. She lay a short distance from the road, delirious and half-dead from the cold and thirst, and the army would have passed her by if not for Leliana's preternaturally acute senses. The woman had worn perfume, a surprising vanity for a warrior, and the smell of roses stood out from all the death in her surroundings.
It took a few hours for the army healers to get the woman into talking shape. The patient was still very pale when Nyx and Leliana entered the infirmary tent; but there was a fire in the dark brown eyes, and the voice that greeted them was calm and not a little arrogant.
"Ah, and here are my rescuers. Or should I say my captors? The Orlesians are not exactly friends of my people," the woman said in Orlesian with heavy Nevarran inflexions. Nyx raised an eyebrow, but Leliana smiled engagingly.
"Maybe you could start by telling us your name, and then we could answer your question, miss..?"
"My comrades-at-arms called me Cassandra," the woman said after a minute hesitation, "that should be enough for now."
"Your friends left you to play alone in the desert?" Nyx interrupted drily.
"They're dead." Cassandra's tone was matter-of-factly, but there was a haunted light in her eyes.
"You have my condolences, then," Leliana said softly. The sympathy seemed to soften Cassandra up a little, and she bowed her head for a while, as if in prayer.
"They were good people," she said at last, and Leliana could tell that a page had been turned with this short eulogy.
"What happened?" Leliana asked.
"First, let me ask you a question: are you enemies of the Reigning Divine?"
"Yes."
"And what would you do once you catch up with Diane?"
Leliana paused for a second. She had little doubt as to what Nyx may do; as for herself…
"I would like to see her brought to justice, for my part. I cannot speak for my companion," she finally said.
Cassandra nodded once, and seemed to reach a conclusion. "Very well. Perhaps our goals are not so different after all, although you keep strange company," she said with a hard look at Nyx.
"Bite me," Nyx replied with an amiable smile.
"Now, now," Leliana intervened with an unconscious burst of soothing magic, "perhaps we should stick to the matter at hand. What happened to your companions?"
"We were watching over the Reigning Divine's encampment from the hills. Then something happened. Those… things… started pouring out of holes in the ground, both inside the Templar's camp and outside. Within minutes, the whole plain was swarming with them…" Cassandra stopped talking for a minute, and Leliana saw the effort it took her to continue. "They attacked everyone: the Templars, their servants, my men… even the horses were torn to shreds. We were overrun in minutes and we…we ran. I ran until I fell from exhaustion."
"Things? Do you mean darkspawn?" Leliana asked. The dark-haired warrior shook her head.
"No. I have fought darkspawn, and the undead, but those were different. They were more metal than flesh, and they had no weapon other than fangs and claws."
Nyx nodded. "She tells the truth, Lel. I can feel them ahead of us. They're… excited. Shit, I was hoping they would let us through…"
"You know these creatures? How?" Cassandra asked, her eyes trained on Nyx with a mixture of wonderment and obvious distrust, as though she only just took notice of the elf's strangeness, of the metallic stare that answered her own.
"It's complicated," Leliana said gently, "but I can tell you this: those creatures are the vanguard of an ancient evil. My friend here is a Grey Warden, and we are trying to stop that evil before it is too late."
"And how does all of this have anything to do with the Reigning Divine?"
Leliana placed a soothing hand on the ailing warrior's wrist, willing her curiosity to abate. She felt no compunction about using her newfound gifts; it all felt as natural as breathing. Cassandra's heartbeat slowed down. Her frown abated, but the questioning look didn't quite leave the dark eyes.
"As I said, it's complicated," Leliana said. "But enough about us, if you please; you still haven't told us why you were watching the Reigning Divine."
"We are… I am an observer. My role is to watch and report Diane's movements to a higher authority. I cannot say more."
"You won't need to," Leliana replied with a gentle smile; the warrior's intonations were genuine, and she had no doubt that Cassandra had been telling the truth. "You are free to leave whenever you feel strong enough; the soldiers will provide you with enough food and drink to reach the next town."
Leliana rose and prepared to leave.
"Wait," Cassandra barked suddenly, "I… have to ask a favor from you, Ser..?"
"Leliana."
"You are going after the Reigning Divine, yes?"
Leliana shrugged. "We are going to the place she seems to be, yes. Whatever may happen if she stands in our way would be… incidental."
"I wouldn't mind having a chat with Diane, though," Nyx added somberly, "she and I have unfinished business."
Cassandra seemed to ponder over the information for a minute, then slowly rose from the stretcher. "I would like to join your expedition," she said, "so that I may report on Diane's whereabouts… or final moments," she added with a pointed look at Nyx.
"I think I understand," Leliana said pensively. "But you should know this: our business is critical. We cannot accept any interference, not even from the Chantry."
"A Chantry spy?" Nyx spat the word "Chantry" as though it carried with it a taste of rotten fish. "Haven't we had enough of this?"
"Well, being on friendly terms with the sane part of the Chantry might help in the future," Leliana replied calmly. "We do not want to spend the rest of our lives dodging Templars, do we?"
Nyx pondered the question for a while and then nodded, conceding the point.
"Fine. Have it your way. As for you," Nyx added for Cassandra's benefit, "you so much as sneeze the wrong way, you'll be a martyr before you can say Andrastian kebab."
"Very tasteful," Cassandra replied with a defiant frown, "Let me thank you for this vote of confidence. Now was there anything else you needed? I need to rest, or so the healer says."
"Yeah, yeah… Just remember," the sorceress quipped as she left the healers' tent with Leliana, earning a mildly exasperated sigh from the bard, "one sneeze."
Nyx and Leliana made a stop at the commanders' tent, where they met Zevran and Toast and gave them a quick summary of Cassandra's story.
"You think we can take on those creatures?" the dwarf asked with a concerned frown– or perhaps she was amused: it was hard to say with her.
Nyx waved a hand evasively. "Last time we met one of those, it left us pretty well alone," she said, "but things may have changed. I suspect I have been a big disappointment to my… patron."
"At any rate, they are fierce, fast and dangerous," Leliana confirmed, "and I was thinking… maybe it would be best if you and Zevran stayed away from that fight."
"And miss the big finale? I don't think so," the Antivan said lightly. "Besides, I already killed one of them, remember?"
Leliana winced at the memory of what had happened on top of Fort Drakon. "I hadn't forgotten," she said blankly.
"We'll see when we are there," Nyx said drily.
"Huh. How long before we reach Merry Camp?"
Nyx turned to Toast. The dwarf seemed to envisage the coming confrontation with the same frown she displayed for bedbugs, darkspawn and everything.
"If that Cassandra didn't lie, we should be there tomorrow afternoon."
"Wonderful. Maybe I'll go get drunk."
"I second this motion," Zevran quipped, "also, perhaps an orgy is in order?"
In lieu of orgy, the companions shared a few bottles of wine – Leliana and Zevran declared the beverage excellent, Toast pronounced it to be surfacer piss, and Nyx barely touched the stuff. Despite the drink and Zevran's jokes, it was an oddly cheerless evening: the wind howled through the openings of the pavilion, the reddish sand spiked the wine with bitterness, and everyone's thoughts were as bleak as the scorched land around the camp. After a while, Nyx and Leliana left the pavilion to emerge into raging, howling gloom and an unpleasant surprise: thin, sharp snowflakes that combined with the desert sand to sting eyes and skin. Hurrying through the mostly deserted camp, they rushed into the haven of their pavilion with utter relief.
"Ugh. This is dreadful," Leliana sighed as she unclasped her cape. "And to think some bards sing about the warm, romantic Nevarran nights."
Nyx winked, and a globe of liquid fire whooshed into existence in her outstretched palm, bathing the pavilion's interior in rich orange light. "There you go. Warm and reasonably romantic," she said as two more globes materialized and started orbiting her and Leliana. The bard laughed softly.
"Isn't this a little dangerous, seen how we are standing in a room made of flammable material?"
"You want to be warm, or you want to be safe?"
"I can't have both?" Leliana asked playfully as she undid the practical, if somewhat plain ribbon that held her hair back. Rich, coppery strands cascaded onto the bard's green linen shirt, reflecting the fiery orbs with a blaze of their own. Leliana kept her eyes trained on the sorceress as she undressed, moving with slow, purposeful gestures. Nyx's nose twitched once as the elf took in her scent, eyes half-closed like a cat's.
"Lel, I…" Nyx started, her voice wavering oddly.
"Hush. Don't say it. Whatever it is, don't say it."
The terror bird scans the underbrush with small, reptilian eyes and snaps its huge beak in irritation. It's a cold day, and the wind carries the smell of snow, an unthinkable event in the great primeval forest. The forest is quiet, for many of its denizens have already migrated towards the coast.
The bird belongs to an ancient species, one that was here even before the arrival of the first shape-shifting monsters who cut through the hills and covered the world with oversized termite mounds. The bird's ancestors have outlived them through speed and cunning, and now that the world is changing again, the bird's offspring will survive the imminent extinction.
The terror bird finds a wild boar's trail; its long, serpentine tongue flickers out of a beak that can effortlessly punch through a bull's head. The tracks are fresh, an hour at most. The bird hisses slightly and picks up pace, moving with a surprising grace for a creature so massive. High in the forest's canopy, cold, calculating eyes follow silently.
Suddenly, a series of supersonic bangs breaks the silence of the primeval forest, and as something crashes to the ground, the terror bird jumps with an almost comical squawk and scampers at high speed, disappearing into the underbrush.
Seventy feet above the ground, Andruil sighs and becomes visible.
"June," she says flatly as the newcomer emerges from the little crater her fall has formed in the damp ground. June, the one the elves name the Goddess of the Craft because of her love of Dwarven machines and automatons, quickly levitates to her level, using the complex enchantments of her armor rather than her own, divine magic.
"June... I thought I had made myself clear. No one is to bother me until my child is born."
Thick lenses focus on Andruil with an infrasonic whirr. Even though June is regarded as the fairest of Elgarn'Nan's brood, no flesh is visible under her current choice of armor-cum-gadgetry, a strategy that has greatly helped keep her brothers at bay. She smells of clean, cool bronze and frozen magic.
"I come bearing news, Queen-sister." June's voice comes out warped and amplified by her helmet; it sounds oddly flat, lacking her distinctive, mischievous tone. "Our King is coming, and He demands His Queen."
For a few seconds, Andruil is speechless, her immortal flesh knotted in more places than she would have thought possible. The little being in her belly reacts to her bewilderment with a terrified mental mewling, and she hurriedly directs soothing thoughts at the unborn child.
"The Lord Fen'Harel has come back from the Beyond? When? How?" And why send my sister as messenger?
June hesitates, rocking slightly. There is something oddly graceless about the Goddess of the Craft, as though the joints of her suit constricted her motions.
"Our King is coming," she finally repeats in the same, droning tone. "He demands his Queen, and His Heir."
Andruil snarls, and June bows dutifully, if a little stiffly. Mixed emotions fight for control in the Huntress's heart: hope and elation at her mate's return; deep-seated irritation at being summoned like an elf. It is her duty to answer her king's call, but tradition and instinct require she bears her child alone, hidden in the forest. The godling will be vulnerable until she bestows the divine Essence upon it; the ritual itself is sacred, and a rather intimate gesture... Shaking her head, Andruil decides to compromise.
"Tell my Lord husband that I shall visit Him when His son is born," she finally says.
June stays immobile for a minute, as though pondering the sense of her sister's words.
"Our King is coming…" she starts, but Andruil pays her no more attention than if she were an insect and jumps to the ground below, altering her mass at the last second to land as lightly as a feather. She has already chosen a den, and she has been hunting for weeks, gorging on meat and life-force in preparation for childbirth. That terror bird cannot be very far...
A cocoon of crackling, blue energy materializes around Andruil, immobilizing her in her tracks. For a second, the Goddess of the Hunt is too shocked to even be angry. That, however, is about to change.
"… Demands His Queen…"
"You DARE?"
Andruil's outraged roar shakes the trees from root to top; she obliterates the force field with a pulse of power and dashes towards June at several times the speed of sound. The Goddess of the Craft raises her arms in a pitifully slow movement, summoning shields of magic, but it is too late. Andruil's claws rip through magic and metal like scythes, mauling the lesser goddess and sending her crashing through eighty feet of thick underbrush and solid tree trunks: a solid blow, but as far as the Goddess of the Hunt is concerned, this is little more than a warning pat.
Andruil leaps and lands a short distance from her reeling sister, waiting for the loser to touch her forehead to the ground, signifying her fealty to the pack. Then she freezes, unable to make sense of what her senses tell her.
June's face and abdomen bear deep gashes; the armor's bronze shines brighter where Andruil's razor claws have sliced through her helmet and chestpiece, but there is no blood in the wounds, only a slick, metallic sheen that crawls lazily over exposed muscles and bones. Andruil thinks of the Trespassers and takes one step back as June struggles to her feet.
"Our King is back…" June croaks as she peels off the ruined metal of her helmet, revealing features that are as beautiful and lifeless as Arlathan's statues; but the grin on her lips is sheer madness. A great gust of wind rises, shredding the leaves on the high trees. With it comes a cold that has not been felt in these parts in a hundred thousand years. Raising her eyes, Andruil sees thick, grey clouds swallow the sky.
"No," Andruil growls softly. The gods are eternal and immortal; they can only die if the Essence is ripped from them, and even then, they cannot become… What? Empty shells, animated by the essence of their enemies?
"No," Andruil repeats as June takes a step forward, hands open in obscene invitation. She cannot accept the truth, yet the truth is painfully obvious. For if the greatest of the gods has succumbed to the Trespassers, then there is no hope left. For a second the goddess of the Hunt contemplates obeying her Lord's summon; at least she can be with him, to share whatever ironical fate the Ancestors have prepared for them.
As though reading her mind, the godling in her womb kicks and unleashes a barrage of mental screams, awakening a rage that is older than the gods. Andruil's hand shoots back of its own volition, distorting the Veil as she rips out great threads of magic. She hurls the spear of light, and June's grinning shell literally disintegrates under the violence of the blast.
Andruil stands alone before the smoldering crater for a moment. There is still movement among the ashes and billowing smoke; tiny droplets of living metal sing softly as the wind carries them away. Andruil slowly turns away. Whatever happened to her king and husband, she cannot do anything for him now. There will be a time to mourn, maybe a time to die; now the Goddess of the Hunt has other priorities.
She is halfway to her den when the grey snow starts falling.
Something awoke Leliana.
She lay immobile in the dark for a few seconds, listening intently, but she heard nothing more than Nyx's soft breathing and the sinister song of the wind running among the camp's tents. Yet, something had broken her sleep. Leliana had been on the run for enough years to know to trust her gut feeling.
Gently disentangling herself from the sleeping elf, Leliana got up from their camp mattress and silently passed a cotton tunic over her shoulders, fastening it at the hips with a thin velvet sash. She paused for an instant, then slipped a thin dagger into her tunic, making sure to conceal it in the cloth's folds. Then she stepped outside – the cold instantly made her regret her choice – and examined her surroundings. The snow had abated, and the wind was now reduced to a biting breeze, so that visibility was a little better, and she could make out the outlines of dunes and great boulders past the little forest of the tents and masts of the camping Orlesian battalion.
She thought she caught a glimpse of motion at the far end of the camp, and she headed that way, passing several sleeping sentries to finally kneel at the edge of the desert. There were no footprints in the thin layer of snow that covered the bitter sand, but as she stood up, Leliana caught movement from the corner of her eye, as of a tall, barely glimpsed silhouette disappearing behind nearby boulders.
Leliana hesitated; she didn't like straying too far from Nyx, for fear that the Dread God may attempt to possess her. But the Bond between them had grown powerful; she would feel any changes in the sorceress's mental state, and she knew, deep down, that she was now strong enough to keep the god's influence at bay. Biting her lips, Leliana quickly strode forward, passing like a ghost between heaps of boulders that shone under the cold sky like the discarded skulls of some extinct, giant race.
She found Morrigan sat, cross-legged, in a hollow between the giant stones; the witch was picking pebbles off the sandy ground and sorting them into two clean, little piles. She did not look up when Leliana approached, and she did not interrupt her seemingly childish task when the bard called her name.
"Morrigan?"
Click, click, went the pebbles, and as she drew nearer, Leliana saw that they were small, bleached bones, not unlike those little lamb bones that Tevinter sailors loved to toss in tavern games. Leliana watched in fascination as the witch's hands worked, as fast and precise as a spider spinning its web.
The witch sighed and yellow, inhuman eyes met the bard's gaze. "Morrigan is… unavailable, child. What can old Flemeth do for you?"
Leliana crouched at dagger's reach from the witch.
"What are you doing?"
"Sorting, child," Flemeth said in a tone that Leliana couldn't quite decide was ironic, sad, or both, "Sorting the vanquished from the victors. Too many fell in this poisoned land, and now their hands are joined forever: the fell and the fair, the pure and the hopelessly tainted."
Flemeth gestured to the small piles of bones, seemingly identical under the night's sickly phosphorescence. "Although who can tell them apart, I wonder. I certainly can't," the witch concluded with a chuckle.
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Why, to prove a point, I guess. As for yourself, why did you seek Morrigan, I wonder? Have you come to retrieve your dress –does the Warden's company satisfy you no longer?" The witch said in a dry whisper, fingers trailing on the stained and torn garment she had been wearing since the Deep Roads. For a split second, Leliana had a vision of herself and Nyx embraced while something old, powerful, and lonely watched in dismay. The bard ground her teeth, feeling sick to her stomach, but determined to get the truth out of the crazy hag.
"Why have you been spying on us?"
"As the saying goes: one must keep their friends close... Besides, you are both too important to be left to your own devices. Tell me, child, what will Nyx do when she gets to the nexus – the pivot, the place where this cosmic farce begins and ends?"
"I… She… She will find a way to defeat Fen'Harel," Leliana said, her voice ringing pitifully unsure to her own ears.
"I see," Flemeth said with almost palpable scorn, and Leliana had to resist the impulse to draw her dagger and plunge into Morrigan's white throat. "And if she does not?"
Leliana shook her head. She must have faith in Nyx, not because Nyx was infallible, but because the alternative was too terrible to even contemplate.
"If she does not, then at least we will have tried," Leliana said sullenly.
Flemeth looked at her for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. "Destiny has a weak spot for the insane, it seems. But perhaps you wouldn't spurn an old woman's assistance, if it could improve your odds in the coming confrontation?"
"That depends. What would you gain from helping us?"
"Very little, as it were," Flemeth whispered, leaning forward so that Leliana could feel the coolness of Morrigan's breath on her face. "An ounce of blood, no more."
"And in return?"
"In return, I can help you unlock the memories contained in Nyx's blood; what you call your visions. You will go to battle fully prepared, knowing what you will face, and you will stand a chance to defeat the Dread Wolf. I warn you, though: this is no merry knowledge."
"What do you need my blood for?"
Flemeth smiled, but did not answer.
Leliana closed her eyes for a minute. Flemeth was mysterious at best; common sense dictated that she could not be trusted. But Leliana had given up on common sense on a sunny Denerim evening, when she had drawn her dagger on Wynne and allowed a possessed mage to become her lover.
Leliana opened her eyes and nodded.
Smiling, Flemeth produced a small glass vial from the folds of Leliana's old dress. Leliana held her hand out, grimacing slightly as the witch made a deep cut across her palm. Seconds later, the cut had healed. Leliana watched the witch pour a single drop of blood onto one of the piles of bones, muttering through her teeth. A pale, grey smoke rose from the bleached bones, and Flemeth motioned for Leliana to lean closer.
The smoke was deadly cold, and when Leliana inhaled it, the world spun and dissolved into oblivion.
Flemeth caught the bard as she fell and gently laid her onto the sand, blue eyes wide open onto the milky night sky.
"It is done," Flemeth said pensively.
"What a pathetic fool." The voice that hissed in the witch's skull was youthful, arrogant, angry.
Flemeth raised an eyebrow in amusement. "For all your scorn, my dear, you can hardly conceal your envy."
"Envy that vapid cow? You must be more senile than I thought, mother. Why would I do such a thing?"
"Because unlike you, daughter, she doesn't regret a thing."
Morrigan clenched her teeth.
She is back to the time of the gods, this world of ancient forests and immemorial massacres. She is Andruil and Leliana; she sees time as a long, shimmering threads which she can unwind at will; centuries pass in a flash, and seconds last an eternity.
The reign of Elgar'Nan flashes before her eyes. A fierce, mischievous child-god roams the primeval forests; Seconds or millennia later, Leliana briefly spies the first encounter between Andruil and the Wolf God, and marvels at its violence and beauty.
Onward Leliana spins the threads of time, the verses of a lament inscribed in the tiny particles of the divine blood that pumps through her veins. It's an exhilarating race through millennia of struggle and pride, but as she forges on and the War rages, she starts to feel a dull anxiety. Anger and betrayal dash by as Falon'Din's inevitable betrayal unfolds. June, beautiful and cadaverous, smiles briefly, and the pain and exhilaration of childbirth follow.
And then Leliana lets hold of the reins of time, and she sees.
Andruil flies under ashen skies, high above her forests. Mere days have passed since the confrontation with June, but the landscape is hardly recognizable. The millennial trees are dying, choked under a shroud of dirty snow that blows in from Arlathan. Furtive forms move in the shadows below, for whatever has poisoned June is also infecting elves and beasts.
Here and there, Andruil flies past a column of refugees, ragged bands of elven men and women struggling against the cold and encroaching darkness as they flee from the storm that is slowly swallowing their world. To those who will listen, Andruil shouts encouragements, telling them to run to the coast, to the relative shelter of the sea, where Mythal's power holds the raging winds at bay. There, in an undersea sanctuary made of living coral, Fen'Harel's son sleeps with all the indifference of the newborn.
But Andruil will face the storm: it is her duty as a queen, a mother and a lover.
In a vision both familiar and alien, the towers of Arlathan appear on the horizon. The quake that followed Uthenera's demise has considerably altered the city's skyline, but as Andruil draws nearer she realizes that new constructions have been erected: jagged structures that evoke thorny, twisted plants as much as towers. The structures appear made of corrugated iron, dripping with rust, so that the dirty snow around their bases appears streaked with old blood. A high, keening sound emanates from the city, and soon Andruil sees the tiny, abnormal forms that fumble along its snow-encumbered streets, moaning and singing. Roaring in outrage, the goddess swoops down from the sky; her wings slice through the blasphemous throngs like twin blue scythes as she blazes between buildings, leaving in her wake an expanding cloud of vaporized flesh and singing metal.
The great Hall of the gods is no more. In its place, there is literally nothing: a dome of solid darkness covers the center of the city. The goddess lands nearby and circles the object; its uniformly black, unreflective surface gives no clue as to its nature, and prodding shots of light and electricity simply disappear through the darkness.
"MY QUEEN."
The voice is but a subsonic growl; it seems to come from far underground, and it carries an odd, inorganic quality, as though produced by some titanic, grinding mechanism rather than a living throat. Andruil does not bow. Instead, she keeps her gaze trained on the wall of darkness; energy crackles along her claws like living fire.
"So it is true: you have come back despite Falon'Din's treachery."
A deep, grinding rumble shakes the ground; Andruil hears the neighboring buildings creak and growl under the onslaught of the Dread Wolf's mirth.
"IN A MATTER OF SPEAKING."
The Dread Wolf's voice is as forceful as ever. It is the voice of one used to command even the gods, and Andruil barely represses the urge to step forward and into the dull obscurity before her. Instead, she slowly steps back, and spears of magic blaze in her hands.
The rumbling laughter rises again, deafening, sapping her will, mocking her weakness. Then the dome of darkness suddenly disappears, like a bubble popping into nothingness, and Andruil has to struggle not to be knocked over by the blast of air that accompanies its disappearance.
Fen'Harel stands close-eyed on the ruins of Elgarn'Nan's throne. He is just as Andruil remembers him: all power and barely restrained anger under a colossal, dark-skinned elf-form. Yet, he is also different, on a fundamental level that Andruil can feel, but not quite comprehend. The being that stands before her is infinitely massive, yet feels strangely hollow; his presence sucks the very warmth out of her bones, but when he opens yes of liquid silver and speaks, she can feel her skin roast under the furnace of his breath. Andruil is reminded of the Ancestors' tales of dead stars hunting beyond the night sky.
"What have you done to June?"
Fen'Harel bares sharp, wolf like fangs in a joyless smile.
"June has taken her rightful place in my court. So has Sylaise. Would you like to see them?"
The air above the Dread God's hand shimmers and an image appears, small but very clear: the face and bust of Andruil's second sister, the Goddess of the Hearth, lying pale but peaceful against the gnarled bark of an old tree.
"Sylaise?"
The vision twitches and opens her mouth in silent warning, and Andruil sees that the back of Sylaise's head and neck are fused to the bark of the tree.
Then the image disappears, and Andruil finds herself staring at Fen'Harel's outstretched hand, mere inches from her. The skin is taut over bones that seem too big, too sharp, and as Andruil watches, tiny cracks appear in the fingertips, revealing the glint of burning silver. Before the goddess can overcome her shock, the Dread Wolf's claws have closed around her throat, piercing the skin and lifting her effortlessly. Andruil struggles with all her might, ripping off chunks of flesh from the Dread God's face, and he hurls her away with an impatient growl. Struggling to her feet, Andruil has the time to glimpse a mask of corrugated iron before Fen'Harel's flesh knits back together.
"Ancestors… What did Falon'Din do to you?"
"I am as I always was, my Queen," Fen'Harel says softly, and the goddess recoils from the stench of burning metal and carrion. "Your brother destroyed Uthenera to exile me. He just didn't understand what it was he unleashed into the Beyond: those millions of souls, screaming, rendered mad by fear and bereavement, searching for a way out… And I…"
The Dread Wolf's expression grows distant; his shoulders hunch forward as though under a great burden. Now is Andruil's best chance: she must strike him while he is weak, or flee from this frozen corpse of a city.
Yet, she remains still.
"When the dark storm swept over the Trespassers' city, I stood my ground. The host of the dead obliterated everything. I fought until I was reduced to nothing but rage, and the knowledge that I had failed you and my son… And so…"
Fen'Harel inhales deeply; his cold, metallic stare meets Andruil's, and she knows that it is too late to run or fight.
"… I did what I was created for. I devoured them: the dead, the Trespassers, the golden forest, everything. They became a part of me, as did their hunger. As you are, my Queen…"
Pain flashes through Andruil's neck. She reaches for the wound; the healed skin is smooth and supple under her fingertips, but Andruil feels a cold spot where Fen'Harel's fingers have pierced it instants earlier. In a panic, the goddess claws at her throat, but even as she does, she feels the cold spread along her bloodstream.
"Do not fight the blood, my love," Fen'Harel says softly. "It only makes things worse."
Andruil falls to her knees; magic crackles around her shifting, undulating body as she struggles to retain control over her form, but it is too late. The goddess's flesh bubbles and melts as great wisps of divine essence leave her, floating briefly through the air to finally be absorbed by Fen'Harel's dark mass. The broken body remains still for a few seconds before the Dread God's essence animates it. As the dead stumbles to its feet, Fen'Harel lets out a roar so loud that the ruins of Arlathan shake and crumble.
"MYTHAL!"
The Dread God seizes the possessed elf's body in a titanic paw, crumbling it like a sheet of paper, and Mythal's mirror grows dark in the depth of her undersea sanctuary.
Andruil and Mythal look at each other in silence. Whatever they do, they must do quickly.
The Dread Wolf is coming.