Chapter Forty-Five: Visible Monsters

The carved coral beads of Emilia's focus stamped intricate patterns into the flesh of her palm as she pushed Alistair's helping hand aside and rose to her full height, arms sweeping forward to command fallen snow into revived flurries. The mental signature of the darkspawn ambush scattered across her mind's landscape like so many sharp pinpricks, the currents of their thought and intent sinister and jeering, like the laughter of the bear baiting Emilia was not able to escape attendance of at the Imperial Court. But now there was confusion intermingled with their thrill and glee: the result of her conjured snowstorm, no doubt, she thought with satisfaction.

Just ahead, both Fergus and Sten had unsheathed steel in hand –trusts me enough to heed my warning, when it comes to darkspawn at least –and were backing up slowly into the eye of the storm Emilia had summoned up. Their caution was merited: before they could regroup with Emilia and Alistair, a hurlock lurched forward out of the contained tempest, rotted teeth bared in a snarl. The Cousland heir brought his blade up in a clean and contained swoop to meet the strike of the monster's own crooked blade and pushed back. Metal locked against metal –some groove or chink in the lesser-crafted edge, Emilia guessed –but Sten was waiting and ready. Without second thought, the qunari soldier swung his own sword and neatly severed the hurlock's head from its shoulders.

The vast majority of the darkspawn stumbled through the storm, tripping over ruins and each other, sparing the Wardens and their allies their company for the most part. But Emilia knew she could not keep it up for long. From the look backwards she saw him cast at her, she knew Fergus knew it too. "Let it go," he said to her, less commanding in tone than she expected. "We'll have to face them sooner or later. Better to get it done while they're dazed and confused."

With a nod, she agreed with his assessment. She knew darkspawn, but he knew a battlefield. Releasing the tension in her hands, she felt a few of her focus's beads slip through her fingers to dangle like a Chantry amulet as she released the storm too. The wind settled some and the snow drifted to brush calmly against the ruined flagstones and crumbling pillars once more… but that was all that could be called 'calm' in what followed.

Fergus and Sten pressed forward against the shallow tide of monsters, one warrior braced behind and driving forward with a sturdy shield, the other making his enemies choose between scattering and decapitation with heavy swoops of his greatsword. Alistair held back those seeking to flank them with less impressive but all the same effective hacking and slashing. Black blood soon stained the snow, splattering the ruins, and Emilia tried to be jaded and unimpressed about the number of dismembered darkspawn limbs flying out in Sten's wake.

Emilia had long since learned a mage's place in battle, even with darkspawn. Silk and linen made poor armor and she had made the decision long ago to exchange the defense of a sturdy staff for the flexibility of an experimental new kind of focus from the Circle at Montsimmard. Such choices had costs, and she knew very well that her survival in the surrounding chaotic battle surrounding depended on her ability to get to high ground, stay there, and contribute support. Whether they trusted in her contributions or not.

They were effective; she had to admit that to herself as she clambered atop a toppled column as Alistair covered her ascent, looking suitably large and stupid as a distraction. They were very effective, she admitted, dusting off her palms and surveying the battlefield, especially given that, save Alistair, none of them had taken the Joining. It was, however, clear that they had had much practice in the better part of the last year.

The Cousland heir, she observed between murmuring incantations alternately of rejuvenation for her allies and lethargy for her foes, knew well enough of the Taint, its contraction, and its consequences to have pulled a waxed cloth up over his mouth and nose. Sten, meanwhile, she reflected, stood tall enough to avoid the worst of it; black blood splattered across his chest plate and bracers rather than helm and the glittering violet eyes beneath as he put himself through the paces of one sundering swing and then the next with savage grace. Despite whatever else Emilia thought about the Ferelden Wardens' mismatched companions, the qunari fought with savage grace and both Fergus and Alistair could not be discredited for inefficiency, barbaric as their school of hacking and slashing might be. Again: practice, practice, practice. Isn't that what the Iron Lady said during all of her lectures and exhibitions at the Court?

When the Grey Wardens of Montsimmard had come to call on the la Reine Blanche, Emilia had been young, too young, some said, most said, to comprehend what she was getting herself into the moment she promised to accept the Wardens' silver chalice and swallow whatever its contents might be, whatever effect they might have on her. She knew the risk well enough; abroad, it was often said that secrets filled the gilded halls of the Empress's pretty palace. This was true, Emilia had come to the conclusion long ago, but it was less understood that such secrets often seemed to have purposes of their own, that they paced the corridors as if they had legs of their own, slithered through the dead space as though they had mouths and tongues. They curled around throats like ghostly parasites and bade their hosts to speak and speak until there was the same secret behind every pair of eyes like a cuckoo bird hidden within a clock: the scandal behind the latest border appointment, Prosper de Montfort's new friends across the northern waters, Marguerite of Jader's newest alleged perversion.

So Emilia Caron left to fight darkspawn; what of it? She was fairly good at it, much better than she had ever been at the Grand Game, she decided wryly as she sent a miasma of weakness and paranoia careening toward a swarm of approaching genlocks. And Emilia liked being good at something; she liked it almost as much as she liked being able to fight monsters she could identify as such from miles into the distance.

"Not as bad as Bownammar," Alistair panted when the vast majority of the darkspawn had been finally cut down and pushed back. "Still not as bad as Bownammar. Although I think you'd be hard pressed to find something worse than Bownammar."

"The dwarven city was satisfying," Sten muttered as he wiped sticky black blood clean of his blade, "as was this. For the first time, I feel as though we are marching in the correct direction. Now that we are where it all began, perhaps we can understand it."

Exchanging a glance, Emilia and Alistair seemed to mutually decide not to remark on the irony of that statement, now that the Archdemon and the majority of the horde had passed over and gone north and underground. The junior Grey Warden had already told her of the corrupted Old God's presence at the Dead Trenches and Emilia had been the first to admit that it made no sense to go chasing the dragon through the Deep Roads and swim upriver against an endless tide of genlocks, hurlocks, and Maker knew what else. They had seen ogres too, Alistair had said, and shrieks. For ogres to be plentiful on the surface… the horde must have begun further north than they could imagine. Either that or too many qunari had come south in their endless quarrel with Tevinter only to be snatched up and spirited away underground.

"I hope Annika is doing alright," Alistair remarked. "It was awfully strange when she started wearing dresses when we got back to Orzammar."

"She'll know when to put the armor back on," Fergus predicted wryly as he pulled the waxed cloth down from his face and tucked it back into the front of his armor, "and she'll know well before any of her toadying advisors do."

"Do you think she's well-suited for the throne?" Emilia asked casually.

Fergus exchanged a glance with Sten. "She was the most 'well-suited' out of the lot," he answered with infuriating ambiguity and just like that Emilia was shut out once again. It was getting rather tiresome, she thought, irked, this game like those played by little noble children in the chantry of who got to be friends with whom. Exceedingly tiresome. And yet so many adults never seemed to exhaust it.

A raven swooped down from above in a fell arc, plunging down toward the earth. Alistair turned away, shielding his eyes from the tangle of limbs and feathers that Morrigan eventually materialized from. Alistair's tan face turned a faint green with the fleshy, wet sound of f altering and adapting to a new form, bones snapping into their proper places. "Always makes me want to vomit," Emilia heard the former templar mutter as he looked down at his boots as though wondering how long it would take to clean bile off of their shining surface.

You've never seen me change, have you? Emilia thought grimly. We'll see how your glowing opinion of me changes if you do –when you do. Hearing about something, being told about it, is not seeing it, is not knowing it, is not believing it, and the Templar Order does its duty, sinks its claws deep into its initiates. I can hardly imagine it is anything different with royal bastards, particularly those that may have futures beyond Chantry and Circle walls. I love the Maker well, but there is a difference between personal faith and institutionalized conviction.

"The beasts have scattered," Morrigan informed the small company coolly, but Emilia thought there was something there in the witch's voice, in her face, in the way she walked, in the way she tossed her shoulder back in a shrug so obviously designed to be nonchalant: some underlying fear, some worry the wild mage could not bear to whisper even to herself in the dead of the night. Emilia was not inattentive; she had seen how earlier that day Fergus Cousland had turned to the witch with tense terseness even as he had casually shrugged off Emilia's inquiries not a moment before. There was something she had not been told, something crucial, something critical, and she was certain that the self-styled warden-commander, the absent Mordred Amell, was up to his unusually pale ears and preternaturally silver-shot hair in it.

"Pockets linger," the witch continued with bored indifference, "but little left that will give us pause. Across the bridge, perhaps there will be more, but I was under the impression that what we've come here for rests elsewhere."

"If it's here at all," said Fergus, sheathing his blade. "But you're right: there's no present reason to go to the tower."

"Unless anyone feels like reliving old memories," Alistair muttered. "I was there, right there, when Mordred lit the beacon and… nothing. I was right there, watching, when Loghain turned his troops and marched away and Duncan—"

"Ostagar happened," Fergus cut in brusquely, turning snappily toward the crumbling throughway toward the tattered remnants of battlefield tents. "It's over."

"You weren't there," Alistair snapped back, surprising everyone. Emilia thought he must have surprised himself too; she could see him blink at his own outburst. He recovered quickly though, continuing with uncharacteristic harshness, "You weren't there; you don't know how it felt. You were out in the Wilds, scouting away on some mission that Loghain of all people sent you on. Convenient, wasn't it?"

"I was out in the Wilds, scouting away, and then getting attacked by a flock of Antivan Crows," was the answering retort, "while you were off climbing the Tower of Ishal with Mordred on some mission that Duncan of all people sent you on, Convenient, wasn't it?"

Alistair reddened. Fergus went on. "Ostagar is over, Alistair," he said. "It happened."

"Highever happened."

There was the weight of silence in the ruins, joining the burden of Alistair's words hanging heavy between them all. But it seemed that the young Grey Warden had decided he had gone too far to turn back now. "Highever happened, Fergus," he continued. "It's over. Except you weren't there either."

There was the scuffle of snow and screech of steel-toed boots against stone as Fergus lunged forward toward his comrade, gauntlet-covered fingers curled into fists and right arm raised for a punch. Without thinking, Emilia pulled from her last reserves, all but drained from the recent battle, and drew the snow back up from the ground in a wave, hardening and freezing the flakes together until they became a pillar of ice, catching Fergus's arm mid-lunge with a strength her physical body did not possess. The ice crackled and webbed down the metal of his gauntlet; he stared down at its path with disbelief before looking up at her with a look of utter hostility for preventing his punch.

She met his gaze levelly despite the exhaustion welling in her gut where there had been the buzz of lyrium before. She held her spine a little straighter –I am a Caron woman; I can match a Cousland, the last of the Couslands, blow for blow –and said,"The darkspawn are not of a mindset to wait for us to finish trading blows before regaining their advantage."

"A sound point," Sten acknowledged, and Emilia could not help but appreciate the qunari soldier's apparent indifference to the different nationalities of the southern continent, although she had no illusions that he would be anything but loyal to his kadan if it truly came to blows.

The muscles in Fergus's arm tightened and released; she could see the tension in his shoulders as he tested the strength of the makeshift pillar that held his arm imprisoned. She saw him look to Morrigan as though expecting the witch to free him; the dark-haired beauty rolled one pale shoulder back and glanced to one side uninterestedly.

"I'm not some Warden recruit you can discipline," Fergus said tersely to Emilia when he saw that no one was going to stand behind him. She could imagine how that felt, and she knew that he would not forget the feeling any time soon. Everything had a price.

"I know," she replied and left it at that, releasing the charm with that acknowledgement. Water splashed down upon the cobblestones; it would be spring soon, a remote corner of her mind noted with the splattering sound. "But we can't be fighting amongst ourselves on the battlefield."

With a curt nod, he recognized the sense of what she was saying and shook his arm free of any remaining ice. Whether or not it was anything other than a temporary truce remained to be seen.

"He wasn't always like this," Alistair muttered to her as they continued to trudge through the ruins some distance behind the others.

"I'm sure," Emilia replied, grey eyes scanning their surroundings, cataloguing charred tents, broken wooden platforms… heads on spikes and hanging corpses. She tried not to think about the latter articles.

"He… understood. He got it. He was what held us all together when… well, when things got difficult," he finished lamely and Emilia was certain there was more to that. "But when Leliana…"

Looking up at the young Grey Warden, she offered, "We have a saying in Orlais. Even men who rule the world are often ruled by their women. It is not an uncommon thing, no?"

Alistair's ears turned red and he said nothing more, which is what she wanted more or less. There was something unsettling about their progress through Ostagar and it was more than the darkspawn and the mess they had left behind; she could not let go of the sensation that she needed to look over her shoulder after every other step. It's just because of what happened in the capital, she told herself. There is nothing hunting you here that you could not sense coming up behind you. Rendon Howe would not chase you down to Ostagar; he would not waste his energy, not when he has… Her throat closed up.

"There," Alistair said suddenly and pointed. Emilia saw the shredded banner of grey and blue and instantly guessed what he saw. "There. That is… that was Duncan's tent. If he didn't have the vials on him when he… well, this is where they'd be."

"Then go and look," said Fergus, but not without sympathy, Emilia noted. He was trying, she saw clearly, even if he was failing miserably most of the time. And if he was failing miserably, she concurred, it followed that it was only because he himself was miserable. She could pity him, even if he had made it clear that she could not collaborate with him. "Morrigan, go with them."

"And where will you be going exactly?" inquired the witch tartly, asking a question to which Emilia wished to know the answer as well. She followed it up with another: "And with whom?"

Squaring his shoulders, the disgraced nobleman answered, "With Sten. He claims that killing darkspawn is satisfying; I plan to find out how many it takes before the same is true for me."


He thought sometimes that Ostagar should have been his grave. That certainly had been Rendon Howe's intention, to have Fergus Cousland's body tossed into a ditch, into a mass grave with the rest of his men deep into the swamp. Samuel, Mikael, and the others had anyone seen to their last rites? The army he had led south had descended into the valley to combat the darkspawn under the king's banner regardless of whether or not their liegeman had returned from his scouting mission, he knew. There would be no pyres, no funeral dirges for the men of Highever who had ridden south at the call of a Blight. But he doubted that Howe had given any such courtesy to those who had unwittingly remained in the north, his own parents among them.

Eliante had wanted to ride south, the moment she realized Nathaniel was going, Fergus thought with out of place amusement. And that green knight, that Ser Gilmore, pining after war, after glory, after the ride south, after the visiting Grey Warden. His sister had teased him within Fergus's earshot and he had thought little of it then, but now he realized that it had been the same for her. And for him. They had all wanted an adventure; they had all wanted to be the victor in the minstrel's song.

Now he was just fighting not to be cast as the dupe in some Orlesian bard's tale.

The light was fading and the carrying sound of Alistair, Morrigan, and Emilia's voices and footsteps faded with it as Fergus and Sten quickly outstripped them, headed in the opposite direction. Steel-toed boots sinking deep into untouched snow –they were careful not to follow the darkspawn's trampled paths for fear of another ambush –Fergus could not be completely sure of his footing. That sentiment, he thought grimly, was too true in too many ways beyond the literal.

But here they all were, back at Ostagar, where the king had died and everything had gone so, so wrong. Or at least so the common people were likely to believe. Fergus thought –knew –otherwise. The death of one man, king or not, had not begun all the chaos, all the war, all the backstabbing and betrayal, all the evil. It had certainly provided an incendiary spark, and had certainly helped paint an effective mask over the true conflict at hand, but the foundations were dug much, much deeper than that, for what had happened at Ostagar, for what had happened at Redcliffe, for what had happened at Highever.

"You weren't there either."

"Sten?" he called back to his tall shadow of an ally. "The place where you're from: Seheron, or Par Vollen. It's still there, isn't it?"

There was the soft sound of a long exhale before Fergus heard an answer. "It has not moved elsewhere," the soldier replied, "at least, not to my knowledge."

"But you can't go back," said Fergus, seeking confirmation of something he had long suspected.

Another heavy sigh. "No, kadan," Sten agreed. "I cannot."

Fergus didn't know what to say. Pity welled up in his gut; at least he was not a stranger, more than a foreigner but instead a foreign, unknown race, in a strange, inhospitable land, despite how Ferelden had become a cold and distant place even to the Cousland heir. Finally: "I'm sorry."

"As am I," was the grave reply. "Now I will never be able to give the Arishok the answer to his question."

"What was the question?"

"The Arishok asked, 'What is the Blight?'" Sten's violet eyes scanned the perimeter as he spoke. "It is by his curiosity that my brethren and I came to this cold land."

Wondering what had become of Sten's brethren –since clearly they were not present –Fergus chose instead to ask, "And what answer have you collected for him?"

Sten cracked a rare smile, or was it a grimace? Fergus could not decide. "Can you not discern it for yourself?" he inquired cryptically and moved along through the ruins.

With such a view, how could he not? But his curiosity remained unsated... and he was suspicious of of other foreigners and their intentions. Was Orlais not enough? "What does your Arishok care about a cold corner of Thedas?"

"Why do you?"

He had thought Leliana had cared and he had thought he had known why. He had laughed at her visions, laughed at her earnestness, laughed at her faith, but beneath all of his cynicism and sarcasm, he had believed it. He had believed her.

Never again.

So Fergus shrugged off Sten's query and pushed forward. To his credit, the qunari soldier seemed to accept if not respect this. Words were very cheap, after all, and Loghain and Cailan's tents not far across the site. He had already passed by his own former campsite: demolished beyond recognition. Perhaps it was better that way. There was no point looking for the sigil of Amaranthine; Howe had never even turned his horse's head south toward Ostagar let alone pitched a tent. But Loghain had come here; if there was something, anything to be found that might give hint to what Howe had found that would convince the new Regent of the Couslands' treason, it might be here.

He had to look.

Loghain's tent had been hung in vivid green and gold, the colors of his teyrnir of Gwaren. Fergus could remember his father's gnashed teeth when forced to acknowledge the honor bestowed upon all but a commoner, the son of a man knighted only within moments of his demise. Such resentment was only revealed in private, needless to say, and even in an empty solar Eleanor Cousland still rested her hand upon her husband's arm and wordlessly reminded him that the Hero of River Dane had long since ceased to be a common man, that it was the hundred year flood and nothing more. It would not come again.

The proud banner hung in tatters upon its post, the emblem of a snarling wyvern all but shredded beyond recognition. The toppled tent crumpled in on itself, but the state of it looked promising for salvage. The oiled cloth would have served its purpose in protecting what it covered long after its inhabitants had abandoned it.

"Eyes sharp," said Fergus quietly to Sten as the waxed cloth fluttered at their feet. Something did not feel quite right. For the first time, he wished he had Grey Warden sense, although Emilia had not said anything was amiss before they parted ways…

"As my blade," said Sten in return, shouldering his weapon and keeping a wary eye on their surroundings. Toppled tents and what they might hide did not seem to interest him.

But they interested Fergus Cousland very much. Cloth that had withstood rain and snow gave way to sharpened steel and soon he was standing in a puddle of damp but uncovered earth and disintegrating furs. He cut further, opening up a large wound in the shambled tent, and then sheathed his blade to simply tear the cloth open between his two hands. Screeching protest, it yielded to him and he followed the gorge to a half-demolished chest. Found you.

The wood was slightly rotted, but that only made matters easier. He was no thief, Fergus reflected as he dug his dagger's point into the chest's lid just above the locked latch; how could one steal what had been left behind? At least it could be counted upon that no one would likely return and exclaim at the gouged hole he would leave behind when the lock had been carved from the chest's body. It had been quality craftsmanship once, Loghain had always had an eye for such things, but there were no elaborate carvings, no etched mabari hounds or feuding knights. The lack of such things made Fergus feel a bit better when he yanked the latch mechanism free from the soft wood and dropped it to the floor, leaving the chest's contents defenseless.

Any suspicion that Loghain had lined his men up to flank the darkspawn that night at Ostagar with the premeditated intention of turning away and leaving Cailan to his gruesome fate ebbed away like the receding tide when Fergus saw the multitude of papers within. He sifted through documents, feeling the parchment flutter against his gauntleted fingers like wounded birds, lifting each missive and document and briefly scanning its contents. Arl Eamon's true troop numbers rather than those he offered to Cailan at face value –that could be useful later –some business between Alfstanna and Wulffe about trade embargos against the west –Orlais was meddling again, no doubt –and a brief piece from Anora Theirin to her father…

A solitary rose amongst brambles, she calls me, the Queen wrote scathingly in her own nondescript handwriting, no ornamental flourishes or inky embellishments for Loghain's daughter, when she knows full well her plot to pluck the bloom from its berth and cast it out of the garden. Why Cailan thinks any of his 'discreet' correspondence escapes me, I will never know.

Why Anora and Loghain were so sure that this letter would not fall into unsympathetic hands, Fergus would never know. But there was a remarkable amount of decoded correspondence within the chest; if Celene had had her Orlesian bards flitting about delivering missives without interception, Loghain certainly had agents of his own as well. Yet espionage never did seem to be Loghain's style, Fergus reflected just before his eyes fell upon the sigil of a bear stamped into a golden wax seal near the bottom of the coffer.

There we are, Fergus decided grimly. There's why he needs that snake Howe. Howe learned a long time ago that he wasn't going to be able to take down his rivals by facing them in open combat; even Father, his greatest friend, would say the same. He needed other ways, quieter ways. And now Loghain needs those ways too.

The seal was already popped. The tip of Fergus's gauntlet dug into the imprint of the bear, wounding the creature the way he too often wished he could wound the man it represented. The outer leaflet bound together a thicker bundle of parchment: sheets and sheets… and several of them written in his father's hand. Originals, Fergus realized, the distinctive way Bryce Cousland penned his capital letters blurring in his vision with understanding and anger, seized from Highever. If I with a full contingency of soldiers could make it to Ostagar before the battle, one trusted rider certainly could. And so Loghain knew and Loghain believed.

"But what did he know," Fergus muttered, "and what did he believe? Father, what did you do?"

"Kadan!" said Sten suddenly and Fergus quickly got to his feet, paper packet still clutched tightly in his hand, and turned around to heed the warning. He turned around, wind and snow cold against his face… and there she was, copper hair catching fire against the grey sky.

"What are you doing here?" Fergus asked Leliana, quietly, calmly, too much of both for his true feelings. The tide welling in his throat and roaring in his ears was hardly quiet or calm.

"Careful, kadan," said Sten again before she could reply, almost growling. "She does not come alone."

He saw the qunari soldier had locked stares with the templar warrior from the Denerim marketplace, the one that had approached Leliana the day they had confronted Marjolaine, the one she had been so quick to dismiss and to deflect any of Fergus's inquiries of. The templar was not so bold outside of the capital; Fergus saw his eyes dart away from the more imposing warrior and to Leliana in minute apprehension.

With a smirk, Fergus looked back to Leliana and jerked his head in the templar's direction. "Is this the latest idiot you've gotten to believe you?" he asked with no small amount of bitterness in his tone.

"Silas is a loyal friend," Leliana replied coolly, although her pale cheeks flamed with his clear implication. "I trust him and he trusts me."

Fergus snorted in disbelief. "I've heard that before. Did you bed him too?"

Her expression remained unruffled; that was not the reaction he wanted, and it frustrated him all the more. "I have not slept with him," she replied steadily. "I said he was a loyal friend; the one person I could trust to accompany me here."

"Oh, really?" he replied, clearly skeptical. "Sten, I've never asked: what exactly do the qunari do when they find spies in their midst?"

"Repurpose them, generally," the soldier replied, earning him a glare from Fergus. That was not the answer he had wanted from his comrade. Sten shrugged. "The Qun is not fond of waste."

"Are you trying to frighten me, Fergus?" Leliana asked evenly, but he saw her bite back a small, private smile.

"No," he replied, as quiet as she. "I'm trying to make you tell the truth for once."

After a brief albeit significant look from Fergus, Sten lunged forward at Silas, greatsword in hand. By reflex, the templar brought his own blade up to parry the blow. Metal clanged against metal, steel grated against steel, until Silas found himself disarmed and consequently at a disadvantage faced with a qunari swordsman.

At the first sign of combat, Leliana had attempted to rush to the defense of her 'loyal friend,' but Fergus, while slower, was expecting such a move. He darted out into the place where he assumed that she would cross and caught her midstride, wrapping his fingers around her arm and pulling her to him, twisting so that her back was pressed against his chest and she was caught. She did not go quietly, but he was expecting that too and was prepared when she struggled and writhed against him. His advantage –and his sorrow, he supposed –was that he knew her too well.

As she knew him, he realized when she stabbed the point of her shoulder up into the narrow chink between his chestpiece and his shoulder, where steel receded to reveal a bit of his leather jerkin beneath. Hissing in pain, the grip of one of his hands gave way and she spun away from his less-than-loving embrace like a whirling dancer.

But he caught her again –the hand he had first wrapped around her arm had not let go –and he pulled her back. It was surprisingly easy, he reflected, just like his previous 'conquest' of her. He had thought he had been pursuing her all along when in truth he was only being entrapped. He was wary that the same tactic was being used here, and held her at arm's length this time.

"Let me go," she said, only quietly insistent even as her companion was being backed into a corner by Sten's advancing blade. "Let me go, Fergus."

"I let you go once," he replied, voice equally low, "and you just came back. What if someone isn't around to warn me the next time?"

"I mean to stay," she asserted and then she did twist her arm away and out of his grip. Taking several steps back, she raised both of her hands up: in defense, supplication, or a gesture of peace, Fergus didn't know. The wind blew a few of her braids across her face, but Fergus refused to be distracted as he might have been some weeks ago. "I mean to explain and I mean for you to understand what exactly might be inside that chest, what exactly Rendon Howe found. And who else is going to do that for you, Fergus?"

"Oh, I want to understand more than that," Fergus growled in return. "I'd like to know, for one, what exactly you said to my sister that she ran off to the North to raise an army that we need in the south for a cause that will be the death of good soldiers before they even see the darkspawn. I'd like to know, for another, what the Chantry is doing meddling in politics."

"What it's always done," Leliana answered, "but I never wanted any part of their schemes; I swear to you that I never wanted it."

Fergus rolled his eyes. "Swearing doesn't do very much for me these days," he told her, "and neither does praying, so don't try that either. What do they teach you in the chantry anyway? Do you really think you can get away with anything you want as long as you say your prayers at night?"

She lowered her hands slowly and assumed a neutral, unhostile posture, but they both knew it was hardly indicative of what she could do. She didn't have to look battle ready in order to be lethal, Fergus had long since learned. She didn't need to be holding a weapon at all; she didn't even have to move. She could be all frozen blue eyes and smirking smiles and that could be all that was needed to bring him down. He had pushed aside the memory of a loving wife for this woman, and she had never been real to begin with. Even when he had thought he had been touching her, holding her, she might as well have been as transparent and intangible as Oriana Cousland's ghost.

He couldn't touch her now, even if he had just moments before; Fergus knew suddenly and sourly and with no short amount of relief that despite everything he would not be able to bring himself to hurt her, to kill her. He had struck women before, bandits and the like, and killed them; it had been decided that the fairer sex could take up weapons and strike a blow with them, it was only reasonable that it be decided that the less fair sex could strike back. And women had certainly tried to kill Fergus before. But he thought now that even if Leliana was running at him with a battle ax and a battle cry, he could not bring himself to strike the final blow. And he was at once both relieved and infuriated.

She knew, Fergus thought grimly. She knew that this would happen if she played the game out the way she did. She knew. She took advantage. And I was worse than Teagan, no better than Alistair. So here we are. And I don't have a bloody idea what to do about it.

"You want a revelation," Leliana said softly, taking a step forward. "You want for it to suddenly all make sense; you want that more than anything in this world. I can see it, Fergus, even as you try and tell yourself that it never will make sense. But you want resolution. You want closure. And killing me, having me killed, or sending me away now will not give you that. And it won't make you feel better either," she added with a faint smile and he thought of all the times he had said sentiments to that effect to her. "I'm not Howe. But perhaps I can help you get to him. And then it can all be over."

Something about that did not sit well with Fergus; the words hovered between the space between them as his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What happened to revenge is not the answer?"

"It isn't," replied Leliana smoothly, "but it's clear that you, like me, will not understand that until you hold it in your hands and realize that it isn't what you thought you paid for."

"Leliana," Silas called, voice very concerned, from over Fergus's shoulder and both turned to see that Sten had indeed backed the posturing templar into a literal corner. His brown eyes peered around the curve of Sten's armor with a decent amount of fear, Fergus was satisfied to note.

"Kadan," said Sten in warning as more footsteps approached.

Fergus looked back to Leliana and saw her shake her head. "This isn't a conversation we can have right now," she told him. "You are all in more danger than you realize."

"Are we?" asked Fergus very curtly as the footsteps grew louder and he could guess who they belonged to. "And do you plan to tell me from whom, this time around? Your bards, your chantry, your country…"

"Hey," said Alistair's carrying voice, "who's this guy?"

Fergus's shoulders relaxed slightly when Alistair, Morrigan, and Emilia joined them in the tatters of Loghain's campsite; he didn't know why, given that he counted a buffoon, an enigma, and a potential enemy among them. But Morrigan at least looked to the returned Orlesian bard with significant dislike and that made him feel better where it might have annoyed him once.

"Sten," he said, "you can…" He waved a hand in the air.

Thankfully, the qunari soldier took that as leave to back up and allow Silas to move freely rather than as indication that he should sever the man's head from his shoulders. Unfortunately, the movement allowed the space between Alistair and the others and Fergus to clear and for all of them to get a better view of…

"Leliana?" said Alistair, sounding slightly dazed with surprise.

"Did you find them?" Fergus asked sharply before the Grey Warden or, Maker forbid, the other Orlesian could ask anything more.

To his relief, it was Morrigan who answered. "No," she said crisply as though Leliana had not reappeared and changed the game again and he was grateful for that too. "They were not there. Alistair insists that Duncan –in some feat of massive stupidity –took the vials down into the valley and he also insists that he can pinpoint the exactly spot where he breathed his last."

"I saw it," Alistair, as Morrigan had so aptly described, insisted.

"And one decaying corpse is so easily distinguishable from another," input the witch smoothly.

"We need those vials!"

"So we'll go and get them!" Fergus snapped before either of them could say more in front of Leliana and her templar dupe.

"The valley is crawling with darkspawn," Silas commented as he shuffled across, trying to edge around to retrieve his blade. Sten, seeing this, took a deliberate step into his path and the man froze.

"It's all but another army," Leliana added softly and Fergus grudgingly believed that. He knew that they had cut through armies in the Deep Roads but he also admitted to himself that there was no Legion of the Dead here to assist them.

He looked to Emilia and Alistair. "Are a few drops in a vial worth all that?"

"Yes," they said simultaneously and then looked at one another: Alistair surprised, Emilia satisfied. He didn't like it.

"The darkspawn tunneled through the Tower of Ishal; those tunnels go downward as easily as they go up," Fergus ruled. "Come on, while there's still light."

Morrigan, guessing his intentions and perhaps wanting to make unwilling amends for her prior obstinacy regarding Mordred, herded Alistair and Emilia away from the collapsed tent. Sten lingered as Fergus and Leliana did, keeping a close watch on Silas.

"You need us," Leliana said quietly to him when the others had gone.

"I don't need you," Fergus replied coldly, turning away.

Her hand brushed against his shoulder but he shook her off with brutal efficiency. She did not try and pull him back again, only said, "You don't know what's waiting for you in that tower, in those tunnels."

"What's waiting for me?" he snapped back cruelly. "The Orlesian guards? Your 'enemy' Marjolaine? The Divine and her agents? What's the story this time?"

"There is a simpler enemy," Leliana told him. "There has always been. If you do not see it, you are no better than Loghain."

"I don't know," Fergus answered with the ghost of his old humor. "I'm feeling rather sympathetic to Loghain these days." She didn't answer. He looked at her more closely. "Three weeks, Leliana," he told her darkly. "That sounds like just enough time for you to have sent a message off to Val Royeaux and only then followed us south."

"The other Orlesian woman," Leliana said suddenly, "the Grey Warden. You don't trust her. You don't like her."

He stared at her in astonishment for a moment before replying dryly, "I wonder why."

"You don't like her because you don't understand her," she continued in that infuriatingly certain way of hers. "You refuse to see that the Blight goes beyond borders, or that a foreigner can act in a foreign land without the desire to increase their own power and influence." She paused and, when he did not say anything, went on. "Just because your father—"

That got him to turn around. "Don't you talk about my father," he told her. "You didn't know him. You didn't know what he might have been trying to do."

"And neither did you," Leliana replied softly.

If it had been Teagan, he might have hit him. If it had been Alistair, as proven earlier that day, he would have. But it was not. Instead, he stared at her and then lifted his hands in mock-surrender. "Sure," Fergus conceded, "I don't know. You don't know either, really. Maybe nobody knows what my father was playing at and nobody ever will really know: Howe, Loghain, your Empress, your Divine, me, you. But what I do know," he took a step closer, "is that you never stopped lying to me."

"I have always been trying to help you," Leliana replied. "Even when I did not tell you the complete story, I was trying to help you. But I promise you now that you will hear it, in all of its terrible glory."

Fergus raised his eyebrows. "Go on."

"Another time," she insisted. "After this. In private," she added, casting a look at Silas and Sten.

He felt himself relent rather than make a conscious decision to, and that irked him even more. Still: "Is this why you were always so keen on my being merciful when it was anyone else?" he asked wryly. "Because you thought that it might one day be you in their shoes?"

Leliana smiled slightly. "It may have been a subconscious impulse."

"I doubt that," Fergus told her flatly and then looked to Sten and Silas, then to Alistair, Emilia, and Morrigan in the distance. He had been right: the light was fading. She had been right: they needed the numbers if they were to do this and do it without catastrophe. He started walking toward his companions and, at a nod, Sten followed. Over his shoulder, he said to Leliana, "Follow if you must, but do not believe for a moment that I will ever have you watch my back again."

And as he walked away, he knew it to be true. He had better watch his own back with her around, keep his own blade sharp and watch hers as closely as he did the darkspawn's, or he might as well offer his throat to slice open to her now and be done with it.


Like Fergus, I personally am of the opinion that Loghain did not march out with the premeditated intention of abandoning Cailan to a grisly fate, regardless of what he knew about the state of Anora's marriage and Cailan's courtship of Celene. That isn't to say that knowing such things didn't make the walk away easier…

I'm not 100% happy with the Leliana conversation, so it's very likely I will return to this and rework it. But I wanted to keep things moving forward.

Chapter title is borrowed from the user Visible Monsters. I saw the name, and I just thought it was too perfect not to use. Thank you!

Not sure how many of you are still keeping up with me, especially since I've slowed down on my updates and reviews have splintered off, but I'd like to think I've still got a lot of you following up. To those, thank you so much. It means a lot.