Sound of Silence, Breathe, Hurts Like Hell

A couple people have asked for a Kieran-chapter and I just couldn't think of what purpose that would serve. And then I hit the wall with how to jump-start the war chapter, and I finally started wondering what's up with that kiddo. So now we have our Kieran-chapter! And it was very useful!

Moral of the story is: Kieran stop trying to escape oh my goodness.

Disgrace of Redcliffe

The Little Prince of Amaranth

The first time Kieran tried to escape was when the Crow was killed.

He was cold and shivering, soaking wet, his gut bruised and aching because he was tied up and slung the wrong way over a saddle. His face was caught up in a thick black hood, body wrapped under wet wool blankets soaked through with rain and reeking of horses. His wrists were raw from the ropes lashed around them, and he couldn't breathe between the heaving shoulders of the horse, the weight of the blankets, or the heat of his own breaths.

He'd been hit and twisted and tied up and he just had to lay there and be carried off. He wouldn't cry. He refused to cry. Crying was important but not when something awful was happening to you- crying was for after. Crying was for later. Screaming and kicking and sobbing and begging were for safety. That was what father'd told him and he'd hold to it, cling to it, he had to.

Because he did cry under those thick, horrible blankets, and he was angry with himself for it. He was so angry in fact that he made his face twist so it was even harder to breathe and scrubbed his face on his arms until he wasn't crying. His face was just watering from the hot and cold and wet.

It was dumping rain, the sky open and water drenching the road in sheets. The horse reigned in hard and Kieran shouted in pain when the pommel of the saddle bit hard into his chest. He was torn down and the blankets were ripped off him, his knees already roped together so he couldn't kick or stand or flail or do anything except get hauled along by his shoulders. It was pitch black and wet out when a thick arm was slung over his chest and under his bound arms, dragging him as he shouted and twisted and tried to-

"Enough!" he hit the ground and landed in a frozen puddle of mud and rainwater, spitting with his hair slopping in his eyes. Someone else grabbed him by his bound wrists and Kieran shouted, tried to get his feet to help him but someone took him by both ankles and he could only wail and twist before he was tossed against something hard. Splinters bit into his fingers and the backs of his hands, the sides of a large wooden crate protecting him from some of the wind and none of the rain. They pushed the whole crate over like he was a mouse in a box and left it like that, the wide open spaces between each plank of wood plenty for him to see through.

And he was crying and he was angry because mother would not want him to cry- he was too old for this! He could only separate the tears from the rain because one was warm around his eyes, but that was enough for him. Cry after the wolf was dead, after the bear had left their camp, after the handmaiden snuck back out the way she'd come, after father's ring stopped burning so hot it hurt to wear.

He was shivering, shaking all the way through. He was soaked to the bone, wearing only his boots, trousers and shirt because he hadn't yet left his room when Tagar had begun to growl and bark so fiercely. Kieran had slept in mother and father's room because they were both gone from home and he was allowed to do whatever he liked with himself in the apartments so long as he didn't break anything, remove anything, or try to get past father's wards into mother's laboratory. His clothes had been in his room where he'd changed and been ready to meet Thomas by the library, Tagar had still been in mother and father's room and the rain had been absolutely pouring outside.

And then Kieran's window had burst open, and he'd run to find the Mabari just in time to see Tagar take a great and terrible bite out of a formless black shadow that screamed in pain. There had been knives and blood and hard hands that grabbed Kieran and muzzled him. He'd kicked and he'd tried to shout but he'd been picked up and more men with hard voices had bound him up, dragging him out into the storm.

And now he was here, crouched on his knees under half a wooden crate, soaked to the bone and miles and miles from Vigil's Keep, rain pelting the crate and dripping down through his clothes.

One of the men threw a blanket over the top of the crate and that stopped some of the water from duping on him. He had to crawl down on his belly on the spiny winter grass to see out to where a fire was spitting in the downpour.

They were somewhere on the road, a stable by the stink of it. So many shadows with black hoods and hushed voices. Someone with only the stump of one hand was speaking, panicking, wandering past a fire that was little more than a few sad candles fluttering in the cold air.

His fingers were white and cold but Kieran struggled with the ropes around his wrists. He remembered what tio Zevran had told him, how he'd let Kieran watch him practice, once or twice even used the finely braided cord on Kieran's own hands. With his shoulder twisted, and- and with his elbow just so- and his thumb had to- if he…

Kieran got one thumb up and out, his whole hand slipped free after that and he sobbed with relief. But no! No crying, not yet, not safe yet. He fought with the wet, soaking rope around his knees, gasping in relief again when so much of the pain went away just by letting his legs separate. He laid down flat under the crate and pressed his hands to his eyes, telling himself not to cry. He was going to get away, he was going to run away.

He felt his hand, his right hand, ring finger, and kicked his feet on the ground with a sharp wail. It still hurt, it still ached from those hard, calloused hands ripping at his fingers, tearing off his ring. He wasn't supposed to take it off, it was supposed to always be with him, that was the whole reason why father had made it for him!

Kieran remembered it, remembered it so clearly. Before the nightmares had gone away, before Mythal had come to claim what was hers and what was beyond what they all could comprehend. He remembered the cold winter snow and father's hand grabbing his to make Kieran run, pulling and pulling until he'd stopped and his arm had coiled protective and strong around Kieran and lifted him off the ground. And father had run with his staff in one hand and the coarse wool of the robe over his armour scratching Kieran's face as he was carried and looked back at the men chasing them. Father had not been scared but mother had vanished and the men had shot at them. Templars, Templars chasing the Hero of Ferelden through a forest in a place called the Vimmark mountains because he was a mage and they'd wanted to kill him for nothing else.

Mother's magic had protected them but Kieran had been too young to run through the snow, so father had had to carry him and run instead of standing there to fight. He had run to a river and forded it, teeth chattering near Kieran's ear because in winter the water was colder than anything else, and he'd waded far enough down stream for his tracks to be impossible for the Templars to find and follow.

Kieran had thought he'd never see mother again, he'd cried and cried and cried in the cave where father set him down, alert and watching with his staff and magic ready. And then father had stopped and come back to him, hushed him and been warm and told him it was good for him to cry when they were safe. Kisses for his brow and hard fingers combing through his hair. He had told Kieran that mother was safe, and when Kieran hadn't believed him his father had taken the braided black iron ring off his finger and let him hold it. And he had. Kieran had held that ring that made such a heavy circle in his palm, and he'd known mother was alright because of it.

Father hadn't let him keep the ring so Kieran had given it back, and he remembered leaning under his father's arm with their fire burning cheerfully when mother found them again. His memory wasn't clear enough anymore to tell him how long it had been between the forded river and his father proudly slipping a new ring onto Kieran's hand, but he still remembered both moments. He remembered them from under a rained on wooden crate and he did not cry for having lost it. For having his ring taken away.

There was shouting, there was blood and stabbing and something that was very, very wrong. But there was enough light from that fire and from Kieran's adjusted eyes, and enough noise from the rain pelting the blanket over the crate, and just enough reason to try that Kieran tried as hard as he could to lift the crate. And he did lift the crate, just enough to get one foot under, the one shoulder, then-

Then- words he didn't know. Words that sounded like his uncle's language but not spoken in a way Kieran knew. A hand that grabbed him by the scruff and laughed when it dragged him so suddenly from the crate that the planks dropped on his back and scraped down him painfully. He was lifted and shaken and taunted and then-

And then the crate was flipped back over, and Kieran was thrown back down into it, and then the top came down and there was the rattle of a hammer and nails. He kicked and he shouted and he wailed and he argued and it didn't matter. The crate was rolled, end over end, bruising him all over as he shouted and was coated in mud and ripped up grass. The crate stopped at the edge of the fire, by the dead body of a one-handed man stabbed to death and whose belongings were being picked over and scavenged. There was so much laughter and good cheer that Kieran couldn't help it: he cried.

If he'd had his ring Kieran knew the Grey Wardens would have come thundering over the road the next morning. The Silver Order of Amaranthine would have crushed the Crows against their shields and under the hooves of their charging steeds. If he hadn't let the men take his ring and do away with it then all of this would have been over by dawn on the second day.

They fed him, pried the crate open to gag and bind him up again, then loaded his crate onto a wagon and covered it in layers and layers of heavy tarp and wool. It stank inside after only a few hours. It was warmer but he could barely breathe but for a sliver of air at the far corner where he laid his face down.

The second time Kieran tried to escape was almost a week later, and he knew not where he was or where he was trying to run off to.

After four days they'd stopped binding his elbows behind him, it hurt too much and the woman who'd stuffed the food in his mouth that morning had complained loudly in Antivan about it. She'd also doused him with water to get rid of the reeking stench of the crate however, so he wasn't going to like her. His knees were freed too, meaning he could sit up, but the gag and the wrist binds had to stay.

The nails in the crate- after several days opening and hammering the crate shut to remove him, one of them had missed the post they were supposed to be nailing closed. The iron pick was just sticking out in the dark and Kieran almost cut himself on it before figuring out what it was. It took him a day to pry the nail out, and he was sure to tuck it between the blankets and the outer edge of the crate when they removed him again that night.

It took time to find the nail again the next morning but he managed it. The nail helped him pluck the strands of the rope holding his wrists back, and when he was free then just like the first night he laid there in relief, stretching his shoulders. He got to remove the gag for a few hours and just let his tongue move over his teeth, spitting out the stale feeling caking his mouth.

Then he coiled the rope back around his hands and held the ends in one hand, the nail in the other.

They took him out to feed him and Kieran dropped the rope, jammed the nail through the Crow's wrist, ducked and sprinted as fast as his ten-days-weak legs could carry him. It was night and it was a stone road and there was a low wall and-

And- it-

There was nothing but blackness and an impossible drop away into oblivion. The quiet gurgle of cold winter water bubbling far, far away in the darkness. The wind was sharp and Kieran's filthy clothes were still damp, his skin itchy and raw in so many places. He stood with the stone ledge so cold under the soles of his boots, ready to lose his balance any moment and plummet to certain death in a wintery river. This was the Imperial Highway. There was no treeline to dash for or ditches to hide in. This was the Imperial Highway.

They hadn't grabbed him because he'd gotten away just that fast, and there was a voice that called out in Trade telling him not to do anything he wouldn't live to regret. Dying was not the right thing to do, dying wasn't what he was meant for. He had no faith in surviving the fall before him and he wouldn't jump. Drowning in water that had frozen his father to the bone and made him stumble hard across the Vimmark mountains wasn't how Kieran was supposed to end his life.

He jumped back down to the Imperial Highway, was seized but not dragged or thrown about as badly as before. He didn't cry. He did not cry. They fed him and he ate, and they didn't shove him back in the crate until they'd grabbed his arm and walked him tightly around their little camp a few times. One of the Crows was holding up the frayed rope from one end and laughing, saying 'look at it, just look at it!' in Antivan. He liked the way his uncle spoke the language more.

They put him back in the crate, but after nailing it shut another Crow laughed and asked "Should I? Marco, what do you think?" Marco swore at her, but the others were laughing.

The Crow dropped Kieran's nail back into the crate, then covered him with the blanket.

After getting the gag out he made the mistake of crying out on the road the next day, hoping someone would hear him.

They climbed into the back of the wagon, gagged him, chained his hands in iron this time, and then Kieran suffered the first beating of his life.

Oh, there had been threats before. Mistress Felsi was full of threats but she only made good on some of them. She'd used a willow branch on Kieran's hands and the soles of his feet plenty of times, or twisted his ears until he'd thought they would fall off. Thomas' uncle had cuffed him for swearing and Garevel was reluctant but brutal with his belt if Kieran or the other children did something especially awful. All father ever had to do was click his tongue in a particular way and then just… not… talk to him, and that would be enough. Mother's dismissal hurt far, far worse than any smarting mark on his palms.

But he'd never been beaten. Sore places, stings, small scratches, yes. But never beaten. Bruises and broken skin and blood in his mouth around the gag wedging his jaw open. He was locked in the crate again. They'd hit him so hard and in so many places he wanted to throw up, every inch of him burning from the pain. He laid in the crate and couldn't even shuffle to his air hole, just laid there in the rank damp and shivered.

He wanted mother and father and Zevran and Dinah and Tagar. He wanted to see Thomas and Natalie and their uncle would take them fishing in the sunshine and Sorran and Tibben would help him pinch autumn cherry pies from the larder. They'd eat them above the stables and Warden Guerrin would catch them at some point and scold them to come down and they'd just run circles around him. He always left his workshop door unlocked when he was hungry and looking for lunch, so as long as he was gone then the Tranquil would tell them where the honey was no matter how many times they went in there just to pinch a few fingers of it for a treat.

Tio Zevran would show him how to balance and flip a dagger over his hand so the blade shone in the morning light. Warden Sigrun would watch Kieran shoot targets with his bow and always correct his posture, or tell him to imagine he was shooting at crazy things like a druffalo balanced on an apple with its tail in the air and the tail had a bell on it he had to hit. After lunch mother would turn all the crystals in her workshop so many gorgeous glittering colours and lay them out for him to play with like a massive chess board. And father would palm a few of the small ones and slip them into Kieran's pocket just to get him in trouble with mother. No matter how many times he tried it Kieran could never manage to get a hand around his father's belt into or any of his pouches or pockets to play the trick back on him.

They would eat dinner together and it would be buttery potatoes and rich cuts of mutton with sharp mint sauce. Father would peel and core an apple and Kieran would munch on the skin that fell off in a long coil. Mother would only have one piece while Kieran would have to answer a question from father about history or geometry or maths or laws for every slice he wanted from the plate. The last slice father would cut in half and they would share it.

Kieran would brush Dinah and Tagar on the thick rug by the fire and mother would recline comfortably against father on their couch. And either father would read or he'd have Kieran bring the chess board closer so they could play together. If his uncle was home then Zevran would tell jokes and offer to play the loser in the next round, which was always Kieran, and then Zevran and father would play against each other and uncle would always invoke 'Tio's rules' and make any pawn on the board jump to a place that could check the hated it when he did that.

Then Kieran would go to his warm bed in his room and either Tagar or Dinah or both would curl up with him, and he would fall asleep, and when he woke up all of this would all have just been an awful dream.

The third time Kieran tried to escape escalated very quickly, until he wished he hadn't tried at all.

He had the nail. He'd had the nail for so long he'd twisted and bent it against the wood of the crate and the wagon carrying it. Kieran fitted the bent end into the lock of his chains because he was too sore to move any other way, and he fiddled and he fiddled and he remembered Zevran telling him to hook and twist, and Warden Sigrun reminding him to push and turn, and then the lock clicked.

He slipped the bent nail under the planks between the crate and the wagon and laid on his face, hands finally free and body still hurting too much to try kicking or doing anything to get out of the box. He didn't cry, because he wasn't safe, and crying didn't fix anything it just made it harder to do anything so you had to cry only after you were safe.

"Blood and Damnation!" The Crow who opened the crate while it was still daylight shouted, and then in fast, fluent Antivan called out across the snow to someone. "Again! Battista, get over here!"

"Are you serious, Alexa?" A male voice questioned. "They're fucking chains!"

"Come see for yourself."

"I was bored…" Kieran complained, closing his eyes because there was white light bleeding out at him and it hurt and he wasn't going to cry he wasn't going to cry he wasn't going to cry.

"It's not like they're that complicated." Another voice complained as Kieran was grabbed and pulled out. He landed on his feet and stumbled, sinking up to his shins in snow that crunched with a layer of sharp ice over the top. "Any decent urchin could do the same."

"Yes, but he's a noble urchin, they don't usually…" they kept talking. Kieran actually looked at where he was.

There was a tower. An old, crumbled stone fort. There were trees and deep puddles of cold water, it was raining, misty and grey and horribly cold, and trees. So many trees… If he could just reach them then it would be enough. He knew these trees, he knew their bark and branches, where their roots touched stones and twisted down. He knew where to find the dry wood and clear the fire pit, a cave or just a big enough slab of rock to cut the wind. Twisted bark for a crude string, willow branches by water for a spear or bow, arrows, easily made even with only a sharp stone and not a knife. He could run, he could hunt, he could-

Neither of them were watching him: they were laughing about the chains. One had a knife attached to his thigh and he didn't even feel it when Kieran flicked it out and took it. He ducked under the wagon and that they noticed, but he was fast and he was scared and he reached the horses and cut at one's flank with the knife, making it scream and rear and startle the other three. He cut a second one with the same blade just to make the panic and distraction worse and then he ran.

Kieran ran.

He sprinted.

Moved like the wind itself and he felt the ice cut his shins and his boots slip and slough in the snow and he ran. His clothes weren't thick enough for this they were ragged and filthy and freezing and he was wet and he ran.

He hit the treeline and jumped over a rock, lost his footing and slid, scrambling with bleeding hands under a fallen tree. They were chasing him and his legs were weak and he was scared, but he ran. And everything was white and wet and black trees with hidden roots and sharp rocks and dead bushes and nowhere to hide. He ran.

He hit a stream, not deep enough for fording just a trickle of cold, cold, icy water that filled his boots and he ran downstream and slid over the cold algae and he did not stop. He slipped and fell and bruised himself and he ran. Arrows kissed the water and another bit into a tree he dodged by and he-

And he'd been in that wagon for too long and his bruises were too sore and his body was too cold and he was too hurt and-

No he had to run.

"Mythal-" It didn't work: she couldn't hear him she never had and she never would again. "Mother please-" He wouldn't cry, he wouldn't cry, he would not cry; he had to run-

He was running out of land to escape across- a cliff, a dell, he couldn't see it right in the snow but if he banked right or left he would give them the chance to catch him and no, no, no, his body was screaming and he wasn't going to get away and they were going to beat him again and- and- and-

Kieran stuck the stolen knife into a tree and kicked his feet against the rough bark. He found the knife with his foot hiked his other knee up, hands grasping at rough coils of tree-skin. He heaved himself up, pushed with his legs, found another hand grip, and another place to put his toes. He climbed.

What in the world was he going to do after climbing up the tree? He didn't know he didn't have a plan he didn't know he just climbed, and climbed, and climbed.

A rock hit him in the back, igniting the bruises. He gasped, lost his grip and scraped down the tree before raking his hands across the bark and digging in again. The pain made him scream, his nails and fingers ripping from the fall and the strain of keeping him up. The voices down below were sharp and angry.

He found a thicker branch to rest his foot on. He threw his weight as hard as he dared and put the branch directly below him, hooking his elbows around another one nearby. And he stayed there.

Kieran touched his scraped face to the back of his raw, white hand. It came away with streaks of blood that matched the stinging pain under his jaw. His hands had ugly welts on them, fingers shaking, he couldn't climb like this. This tree was close to no others. He couldn't jump to another. Its leaves were barren, and in the dead of winter there would be no bird eggs or berries or anything for him to grab and stuff in his mouth for the sake of simple hunger. This wasn't a tree whose bark he could eat.

He'd just stranded himself twenty feet up a barren tree in the dead of winter. No weapon, no food, no way to escape, injured now and no doubt in for a beating that would leave him blind and broken when they were done. He hadn't thought this through, he hadn't thought at all, and he didn't know how to think his way out.

"Father-" Standing on the branch he hugged the tree, pressed the whole side of his face against the rough bark. He shut his eyes because he wasn't supposed to cry and Kieran didn't want to cry but the tears were the warmest things he had and… "Help me-" he couldn't do this. He couldn't. There was no way out of this. He couldn't even climb down now, he- "Father please…"

He'd never been this cold before. He'd been in forests in winter. He'd been on barren plateaus with nothing but stones and pebbles for miles. He'd been in endless snows so far south the world felt like it was ready to end, but Kieran had never been this cold. There had always been mother's warm hands and animal pelts, father's gentle magic and his constant presence. He'd never been alone with the winter sun sinking white and breathless over the horizon. He'd never been so cold and so alone and so hungry and so dark before…

The voices hounded him. They shouted to each other, they swore up at him. Rocks followed sometimes, they hit the branch, chipped off the tree trunk. They made a game of it as they struck up a fire on the ground. Night fell and the Crows laughed and Kieran froze…

If he fell asleep, he'd fall. If he relaxed too much, he'd fall. If he tried to climb up, he'd fall. If he tried to climb down, he'd fall. He could smell the wood smoke from the fire below him. It was too far away to warm him, but the smoke was something. It was familiar. Kieran closed his eyes and let his teeth chatter, and he tried to remember anything but being here.

He'd once asked his mother if she'd ever been scared. She's laughed and told him no, of course not. Kieran had known she was lying but he hadn't said anything about it, it hadn't been him who'd known but the way he'd been able to see through people before Mythal's Calling that had told him. When Kieran had asked his father the same question, he'd received a different answer.

"Of course," his father had told him, looking at him so curiously. Kieran's uncle had been in the room with them: Kieran's bedroom at the Vigil. He'd been feeling sick and awful all day and mother wasn't there so Zevran had been tending to Dinah with his soft smile and dark hands. Tagar had curled up over Kieran's feet, and father had been laying on the bed next to him with a book of stories open for them to share. He'd been wearing his blue robe, his nice one. Kieran remembered the velvet brushing against his lips, his arm threaded through the gap between his father's elbow and body, watching the pages of the book go by. There had been a dragon inked onto one of them and the dragon had made him remember that part of him that wasn't there anymore, the part that had read mother's fear despite her denial. So he'd asked the question.

"I think it's very sensible to be afraid sometimes."

"But it's not very brave." Kieran had challenged, but his father had just made a funny noise at him.

"We don't do things because we're brave, my son. We do them because we must." He'd let the book fall, he'd brushed his far hand against Kieran's hair. Let it touch his cheek. He'd felt better with just that gesture. "It helps not to show when we're afraid, but fear in itself is useful. It reminds you that you're in danger, and that you need to be alert and pay attention to what yourself and others are doing. If you just ignore those things, then…" Then you wound up stuck in the middle of a tree in winter with kidnappers throwing rocks at you. Yes, Kieran understood that lesson now, thank you, father…

He stayed up the tree all night and at dawn the next morning there came the horrible, jarring thunk of an axe against the trunk. It had to hit the tree twice more before Kieran realized what was happening, but his frozen hands were too numb and hurting to grip the bark and try to get him to climb down. When he tried to tell them as much the Crows laughed because they didn't care. The worst moment of his life was when the tree's frozen body, after almost an hour of swinging and striking, finally groaned and began to splinter and crack.

Kieran screamed. He was not afraid and he was not scared: he was terrified and he screamed to show it. He shut his eyes, held the tree tight and felt himself falling with it and crashing into the icy ground. Branches didn't just snap, they burst with shards of cold wood and bark, twigs and debris flying everywhere. They hit the ground and Kieran lost his hold on the tree, slammed into the branches he'd held on to all night, and felt his arm snap with an electric bolt of pain through his body.

"Aaah!" Between breaths, between short, sharp, hysterical breaths. "AAAH!" He screamed, he shrieked, he made whatever noise would bring him help faster because his arm- his ar-

He was grabbed, he was dragged through the snow. He was kicked and he was hit and they yelled at him. And Kieran didn't know what happened after that because the next time he could think he was sitting in a cold stone place.

He was sobbing and he didn't know how to make it stop. His arm was set and bound and splinted and it hurt, it hurt more than anything. His mouth was bloody and one of his eyes wouldn't stay open and it hurt and it hurt and- and he couldn't stop crying.

He was in a room with three stone walls and a wooden barricade with a door in it. There was a chain from his ankle to the wall, the door was locked. The blankets from the wagon were thrown in with him, along with the branches and leaves and twigs and dirt of a dozen summers' waste. The light came through the holes in the walls, old daylight and nothing else.

The wooden wall was warm because there was a fire on the other side. He huddled against it, the filthy blankets over him, because he didn't know what else to do.

The door didn't open, there was a single plank that swung side to side and that was how they gave him food. He didn't know what he ate except that it was hot and he didn't have to chew it, just spoon and swallow, lick the plate, then stuff it back outside. They threatened to break his other arm if he tried to steal the spoon and Kieran believed them, it was just a shallow wooden scoop anyways, nothing useful.

A day and a night and he felt a little calmer. He knew he was calmer because he felt boredom. There was nothing to do and he was too scared to try and talk. He arranged the brown pine needles in a patch of weak light, tried to remember glyphs from old dreams he didn't have anymore or that father used for his spells. He tried to make a griffon. A shield. The Amaranthine bear.

A day and a night and Kieran ate less frantically but was still thorough with the wooden plate. It was flavourless gruel, but he could smell meats roasting on the other side of the wall. Rich, fat ram, more than enough for him to have some. They taunted him in Antivan and in Trade: naughty children got gruel and were thankful. If he acted out again then they'd let him eat snow.

A day and a night and Kieran wanted to throw the plate through the hole in the door but letting himself get that angry made his arm hurt too much to bear. He walked the few paces allowed to him in his cold cell and finally something snapped in him and he remembered his father and how he spoke and how people listened and how-

"My mother is the Inheritor!" He shouted, petulant and angry, "When Mythal's Heir finds you she'll make you pay for this!"

The Crows laughed. Kieran was so angry he kicked his bound leg again and again and again just trying to wrench the chain out of the block it was bound to. He ended up tripping himself, knocked his elbow on the floor and hissed in horrible pain for his efforts.

"My father is the Hero of Ferelden!" He yelled through the pain, because he was angry! This shouldn't have been happening to him! "He commands the Grey Wardens, warriors of the blood taint!"

More laughter-!?

He carried on because Kieran had nothing else to do in this awful cell and if he didn't get angry he would cry again. He would not cry. His parents had asked one simple thing of him if he was ever in danger and that was to save his tears for when there was actually a place and purpose for them. The purpose was to feel better, to feel safer, to be alright again, and right now Kieran was none of those things! No crying!

His next meal was snow and this time, yes, even if it got him a beating, Kieran threw the stupid plate back out spoon and all.

All the Crows did was sit at their fire and laugh. They talked about Redcliffe Village and Connor knew where that was and he knew from father's maps how far away it was from home. He knew his father did not like the Arl of Redcliffe but what he didn't know was why the Crows kept talking about mercenaries and soldiers filtering into the village. Why they commented over and over again to each other about how the Inquisition made them nervous- but that just made Kieran feel better!

The Inquisition was near to them! If Kieran could escape again, and not run in such a wrong way again- if he could find the Inquisition of all people, why- he knew Lady Montilyet and Commander Rutherford and Madame de Fer and Sister Nightengale and The Iron Bull and so many other people from Skyhold! All he had to do was make it to one of the Inquisition's camps and they would protect him, there was no way they'd allow armed men to attack him- he was just a kid! Of course they'd help, he just had to-

They served him snow again the next day and Kieran was so angry he spent the rest of the daylight kicking at his chain. He couldn't escape if he was chained to the wall, he wouldn't get more than five feet from the door if he had a broken arm that wouldn't let him roll over in his own sleep without waking him up.

Kieran threatened them with what his father would do to them when they found him, even if he didn't know how he would manage it. He told them what his mother would do, what Thomas' uncle would do, what Warden Guerrin and Warden Sigrun and Warden Oghren and Mistress Felsi and Seneschal Garevel and Horsemaster Gaveth and Captain Renth and Chamberlain Shianni and everyone else at Vigil's Keep would do! And how much they wouldn't live to regret any of this because they were all stupid horrible awful gutless evil people!

"Do forgive my interruption, little prince," one of the female Crows coo'd to him from the bolted door. "But do you have any idea what is going to happen tomorrow?"

"The Witch of the Wilds is going to gore you all to death," Kieran hissed back in the sharpest way he could.

"Doubtful," she laughed, and then sighed on with: "But the Arl of Denerim may just order yours."

"But that-" No. No, that wasn't how it was supposed to work, it- "But my father's an Arl! Another one can't just-"

"Who did you think paid us so handsomely to take you?" The Crow taunted in a heavy voice. "You did not think we took such care not to kill you because we felt like it, I'm sure. Truly, you have been both very amusing and excessively irritating…"

"But he can't-"

"We shall see what the dawn brings, little prince." The loose plank moved and in came a wooden plate with a heaping pile of gruel topped with a thick slab of roasted meat. His first meal in two days. "Enjoy your meal, and your sweet dreams. They will no doubt be your last." And then- and then he lost his appetite completely…

This didn't make any sense, this wasn't right. In Ferelden people didn't do things like this, mother and father had both told him so! Orlais was different, Orlais it was all about doing things quietly where no one could see what was happening and this counted as a scheme like that- but this was Ferelden! No one had known who Kieran's father was in Orlais just to stop things like this from ever coming up, but now-? And another Arl?

He was too scared to eat. Hungry, yes, and in pain, yes, hunger pains that screwed tight into his gut and wrenched at him. But the fading daylight scared him more than the fact that his food began to cool and grow chill. Kieran did eat, but he did so in the dark.

He didn't kick at the chain as the temperature began to drop and another freezing night crawled over them. He pulled at it, kept tension on it, tried not to let the chain rattle so loudly. A Crow went up the ladder propped against the wooden wall: thump, thump, thump. A familiar sound after so long in here. He pulled on the chain and he pulled, he knew the block it was connected to had started to wear. The chain was old, the stone was older. He'd had nothing else to do for hours and hours every day for days and days on end but pull on it, fight with it, kick at it.

He wasn't going to get it to come out by dawn. He didn't know what he would have done even if it popped loose with a thought. It was just something to do. Something less frightening than- than nothing?

Fear was supposed to help you do things that needed to be done, but if you had nothing to do then- then what- how- he…

The night crept by, hour by hour, at times Kieran was just counting seconds and minutes and trying not to lose his mind. They were just going to open the door and slit his throat-? Or were they going to string him up a tree? Or cut him up into pieces, or-?

Thump, thump, thump signalled the changing of the guard high atop the stone tower. Kieran watched where he heard the noise of one person coming down and their replacement climbing back up. Thump, thump, thump. He looked through the small hole in his wall, the corner chunk missing and the light beginning to- s-starting to…

He couldn't breathe. He wanted to go home, he wanted to go home, he wanted to go home and be anywhere but here. Every breath hiccupped in his chest and it didn't even feel like he was crying anymore, just tears dripping wet from his chin and jaw. He crawled as far away from the door as the chain would let him and put his back against the cold stone of the tower instead of the warmer wood. He could see the door and he could see the light.

What Kieran could not see was the form of a raven dancing through the pre-dawn glow. He didn't see it's luscious black feathers graze the cool wind and carry it forward. He had no idea how it arced and twisted through the air and honed in on the shambled remains of Fort Connor below. He didn't see the raven sweep by overhead where the hired man held out a gloved hand waiting for it to land.

What Kieran heard, though he could not see it, was when that raven pulled up again into a dive. Came down in a swoop instead of a glide, and then suddenly that raven was not a raven, but a bear?

"AAAH!?"

Crack went the bones and BAMwent the weight that smashed the top of the tower so hard the roof buckled. No black wings no blunt talons, but claws four inches in length and fur silver-threaded and thick. An arm of rolling muscle and unbearable rage that raked armour from body and slashed bones to fragile chunks. A bellowing, roaring, deafening blare. The shattered body of a dead Crow was kicked across the battlements, and the trap-door leading down was shorn from its hinges, claws and arms making short work of the small opening, rending it wide enough for shoulders and girth and hind legs to drop again. Buckle again, make the tower shake.

"A flying bear!?"

Over the screaming and the shouting and the panic Kieran did not hear the ratchet and fire of a crossbow bolt ripping through the air- but the Crow who screamed when the bolt shattered his shoulder was much closer. His partner on the fort's fallen wall was kind enough to step in the same direction as the wind, and never saw the bolt that shredded her throat. The open snowy space between the treeline and the fort's ruined defenses was easy to cross in the plain dawn light when there was a great Hinterland bear gutting the shabby remains of the reclaimed tower and covering fire from a marksman fuelled by darkspawn taint.

The first Crow to flee the main body of the tower got as far as the exterior wall before a white hollow-point spear cut the air with a deep voice and shocked into his soft gut. He was walked right past by the elf in sturdy black armour who wanted this business concluded swiftly and very painfully.

Zevran let the Dalish warden reclaim her spear by pulling one of the glass vials from the bandolier spread across his chest, and with a practiced whip of his arm he launched it away from him. The fragile glass exploded against the chest of the next person to come screaming away from the wild animal inside. The thick red concoction hissed and bubbled, burning skin and eating leather, easy prey for the violent red edge of the short sword the Black Shadow raked easily across his neck to part head from shoulders.

He let An'eth have the next one, more and more frustrated and willing to show it thanks to the size of the cell at work here. An'eth's shield slammed the retreating figure back into the building, and the Warden's sword ham-stringed the other woman before she'd finished recoiling from the blow.

Zevran swept in and to the side, blade out when he was finally attacked by someone. Someone who knew how to fight because she used his parry to twist her own hand before striking out again like a viper. This did not concern him in the slightest, because the dagger in his off-hand was slicked with something far too awful to require a proper killing blow. Normally he was quite happy to dance with a skilled fighter but this morning he was not nearly so accommodating. The room was little more than a hovel with a low table, broken crates for chairs and a suspicious wooden wall and door. Morrigan was fighting her way down to this level, and Zevran-

Ack.

He closed his eyes because he did not want more of that green reek to get into them from the Crow's own belt of surprises. He circled, swung with the point of his off-hand ready to stab through skin and felt only the unfortunate bite of old wood. He could hear her just fine and the ring of steel when he blocked her was comforting. Just not as much as-

"Agh-" As that. In went the sword, down came the dagger, and with a truly necessary rip, dead was the bitch.

"Is that all of them?" Warden An'eth asked him, and Zevran heard the tell-tale rush of wind that accompanied one of Morrigan's transformations.

"It should be."

"Ser- your eyes?"

"They hurt," Zevran admitted, trying to open them briefly before deciding that no, no that hurt far too much. "It's not permanent. The Commander will fix them for me if he has time, he's quite good at that. But really, Warden, I'm more interested in-"

"Kieran!" Yes.

"Mother-?"

In that.

Kieran saw none of it. He didn't understand it either. He heard the shouting and the screaming and the panic that overwhelmed the tower. He screamed once when the ceiling over his head suddenly buckled and spilled old sand and dust down over him, but stayed where he was and struggled to understand that there was bear on top of the- it had flown? It-?

"Mother?" It didn't come out right. It was so quiet. His voice wasn't working. "Mother!" No, that was hardly any better, he- it was like a bad dream, his voice wouldn't- "MOTHER!"

The bear screamed and Kieran watched claws split the boards over his head, shredding and tearing the wood to pieces. A long grey muzzle edged with sharp teeth forced its way down into the room before retreating, and with a great gust of black wind the cloud surged down towards him and- and- and…

"Kieran!" And she was on top of him, arms twisted around behind him, almost laying on the ground with him and she was here and she was real and he- couldn't- stop- crying-

"Mother…!" Her black hair and her gold beads and her warm hands and her kisses because she kissed him again and again and he was shaking too hard to hug her. He just wanted to hug her and-a- "Aah- ow…"

"What-?" Kieran had never seen her cry before- he'd never seen mother cry and no, it made him cry harder, it scared him even worse than before- why was she crying? No, no…

"What's wrong with your arm?" She gasped, hands cupping his face and her golden eyes wide as her touch ghosted over his bruises and the deep cuts from the tree and- and his arm- it-

"No, mother, don't cry-" Kieran babbled and he felt her magic bloom between her hands. Mother always said she was not a healer but that didn't mean she couldn't sooth. A bad cut, a deep bruise, the sorts of things you needed carefully looked at, yes, she could handle. On principle, no, she probably wouldn't: scrapes and cuts and rashes and bumps, twisted ankles and sprained wrists, all things that could heal naturally, but this…

"What did they do to you?" She gasped, brushing her hands over his face again, cradling his jaw, holding his shoulders and spreading a palm down his chest and back: the places he'd been kicked.

"I tried to escape…" She kissed him again, and she kissed him and it helped but he couldn't stop crying… "Mother…"

"Your father will heal it, I will take you to him," Mother told him thickly, terror in her voice. And then she saw the chain…

The wooden door burst inward and Kieran screamed, he jumped and reached for her and he couldn't help himself, wailing in pain because his arm-

"My thanks, Warden." That voice-?

"Uncle!?" he shouted against his mother's shoulder, and after a few heavy steps he felt a strong, warm hand thread down through his hair, and then a heavy kiss planted itself on top of his head. He couldn't reach out because his uncle was on the same side as his arm, and he heard Zevran already asking about it.

"What happened to your eyes?" Mother asked with a thick, strangled voice.

"I'm flattered by your concern, but never fear. If Soren can't spare a moment for me then I know a balm that will handle things nicely." Uncle- his eyes were swollen shut, the skin red and weeping tears. "Why do I hear a chain?"

Mother guided his hands down to the manacle on Kieran's leg, and he watched his uncle's face twist in a frightening way before he brushed it aside with a smile and reached behind himself to his tool-belt. Several slim bands of metal came out, and even without his eyes to help him Kieran waited barely a minute before the iron manacle clicked open.

"Before we get out of here," Zevran said as mother's hands quickly brushed healing light down his leg to sooth the chafes and stings from the iron cuff. "Your father entrusted this to me, to give back to you." His blind fingers moved easily to pull a small drawstring pouch from under his armour, and he delicately withdrew… a band of woven black iron, held between his thumb and- "Ah…"

"Tio Zevran?" Kieran asked, curious by the way Zevran suddenly paused, his ring so close but now looped around the top of his uncle's thumb. And now mother had frozen too? "Mother?"

"Morrigan… what does that…?"

"I do not know." Why was her voice so hush still? What did what mean?

"Athras!" Zevran yelled, and the noise made Kieran jump a little, cradling his broken arm with mother holding him to her. "Is Hassick here?"

"Yes, Ser!" Two voices answered.

"I am compromised, Morrigan," his uncle continued smoothly. "But between the three of us Kieran will be safe."

"I… I don't-"

"You're faster than any of us," Zevran argued. "Hurry."

"Mother?" She leaned down to kiss him again, but that just worried him more? "Mother what's wrong? Tio, what's wrong with my ring?"

"Ahh," that was not an answer, uncle!

"It is his, Zevran." Kieran was given back his ring, and he fumbled to push it on to his right hand. It… took a moment… There was mother, here, anxious, relieved and yet so worried. Then there was father, who… who was… what was…?

"Mother?" he pleaded, looking for an answer now to Zevran's question. His uncle had an arm around him and Kieran looked up when his mother stood, that dark, haunted look on her face. "Mother, what's going on? Why does it feel like that?"

"Will the two of you not just stay in one piece for one day for my sake?" she berated him rather than answer, and Kieran could already feel the answer for why. She'd cried because Kieran was safe and crying had made it feel better. But now something else was wrong and something else was scary and something else was unexplained and dangerous. "I will return for you, Kieran. Zevran, keep him safe."

"From his first breath until my last, Morrigan."

"Mother- wait!"

But with a rush of magic, mother was gone.

I honestly couldn't think of how to avoid Morrigan dive-bombing the tower as a bear. That was why I wasn't going to write this. because I didn't see how, if she can't become a dragon, she wouldn't resort to being a Great Bear instead.

And then I was told to just go for it so I did and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing Morrigan literally dive-bombing a tower as a massive angry BEAR.