A/N: *Bites nails* I kinda hope this chapter is well received, because I really liked writing it and while I don't usually go for 'OC's' in fanfic, per say, I also kinda really like the character of the Archon in this story. Thanks for reading. (More orgy and more Hawke next chapter, I think, because that s*** is just too much fun to write...)
Chapter 50: Fate
Fenris watched Marian leave. He knew without having to see her that she took up a position just outside the door as he had asked her to. It comforted him to know she was still close by and would remain so for the duration of whatever this interaction was going to be.
He looked over at Antonius, seated, legs casually crossed, hands folded in his lap. "Sit."
Fenris sat. He perched on the edge of the chair opposite Antonius, hands gripping his knees.
The two men sat in silence. Fenris's eyes kept wanting to deviate down to the floor. Years of trained deference was difficult to untrain. He did the best he could to force himself to look the Archon straight on, into his grey eyes. An old habit that he did allow himself was to wait to speak until spoken to. For anyone in this situation, slave or no, that was the safest option. He still had no idea why the Archon had freed him, why he was given Danarius's things, and why he was the one sitting here while Marian was in the hall. Fenris called upon every last shred of patience he had inside him, waiting for the human to speak.
"You love her?" It sounded like a question, but Antonius's face wasn't inquisitive.
Fenris didn't know what to say. To admit was to give the enemy a weapon against him. But to deny would be so obviously a lie. And presuming to lie to an Archon was not wise.
"Yes."
"Mm." The Archon nodded his head and looked past Fenris to the hearth at the other end of the large room that smoldered with a low flame. "There were only two possible outcomes to me bringing you here. I am pleased we were able to find our way to this one."
Fenris was no stranger to the idiosyncrasies of magisters, ranging from mad whims to truly dangerous urges. The strangeness of this man was new even for him. Fenris shifted his weight in the chair, searching his face for explanations. He reached out with new senses he was unfamiliar using, trying to feel the man's magic, as if it would help him defend against the unknown.
"The other outcome was less ideal. Your Marian would have attacked me to protect you. I would have had to kill her. You would have killed me. And then you would have tried to kill every mage downstairs and you would have died fighting them off."
Fenris held his breath. He moved his hands from his knees and dug his fingers into the armrests of his chair. He understood nothing this man was saying. It terrified him. He couldn't control his lyrium. It started burning. He frantically tried to settle it down. If Marian felt it she would burst in. She would do something stupid. The Archon's words would come true.
"Fortunately, we've moved away from that particular fate. So you should relax yourself before your woman feels something is amiss." Antonius was using a voice full of eerie calm that totally prevented Fenris from relaxing.
Antonius rose and moved to a small table by the hearth. He poured two glasses of an amber colored spirit. He walked over to Fenris and held out one of the glasses.
"It isn't poisoned." He said when Fenris didn't immediately take it and then he took a sip from his own glass to prove it. Fenris took the glass but didn't drink. Antonius moved back over to the hearth.
"I've seen my death countless times. And countless times I've avoided it. I learned a lesson very long ago, Fenris. Knowledge is the most powerful magic. That is not a lesson that is taught by the enchanters in the spires or the magisters to their apprentices. It is why I am Archon and they are not."
Fenris struggled to keep his breathing even. He quieted his lyrium. He controlled his magic. He listened closely.
"I want you to know that I could kill her as quickly as I draw my next breath."
Fenris couldn't stop his fist from shattering the glass in his hand. Antonius didn't acknowledge the sound of it breaking. The alcohol stung the lacerations in his palm and the amber liquid dripped with his blood onto the carpet. He remained seated, glad for the pain to focus on.
"It's just something you need to know. If I had needed to kill her I would have done so already. What I need is something else entirely. You should also know there exists a possible future where I can't get what I need from the two of you and I will be forced to kill her. Unfortunately, if that future comes to pass, I cannot see yet if I would survive it."
"You wouldn't." Fenris's voice came rough out of his throat. It was folly, he knew, but he couldn't stop the words from coming.
"That is a distinct possibility, yes, so I'd like to avoid that future if I can."
Fenris's patience was at an end and he now knew at least one of the rules to this game. "Speak plainly and just tell me how you would use me. You already know I will do anything to protect her. It is why I am here and she is not."
"That is true." Antonius finished his drink with one swallow and sat back down in his chair. "She's reckless that one. Powerful, but reckless. More emotion than knowledge. It's a wonder she's still alive. She's fortunate she found you."
"I'm the fortunate one." Fenris said. He was well past the point of strategy, so he opted for honesty.
"I would hardly call 'love' a fortunate circumstance. For either party."
Fenris felt the beginning of some kind of explanation in that statement, so he finally relaxed back in his chair and let the Archon continue.
"I'd like for you to understand several things that will help you to do the things I need of you. I know that the things I tell you will not find their way outside of this room, for all the reasons we've already discussed. I trust I was clear enough to not need to threaten your woman again. I will leave it to you to decide what you wish to share with her. At the end of this we'll see if you still consider yourself so fortunate to have found love."
And thus the Archon began an odd soliloquy.
"My mother was forced into marriage for protection. Her father was deposed from his position as Archon and assassinated; her brothers murdered. She managed to keep her life, but she found herself with a man she barely knew and didn't love who had no interest in loving her. He was, however, happy to love her money and she was happy when he wasn't forcing himself on her. Like most idle noblewomen, she eventually found solace in the arms of one of his slaves. An Elf. My father."
Fenris's eyes went wide behind the cover of the white hair that fell down his brow. He said nothing.
"My mother loved him, sad to say. A slave, an elf, not even a mage; my grandfather's proud and pure bloodline broken by desperation and the love that came of it. But from what I understand she was her own woman even before I was born, so perhaps it could have happened no other way. My mother's husband found out, of course. He knew he was unable to father children and in a fit of love addled spite my mother admitted everything to him. I'm sure you would think killing the slave, his wife and their unborn child would be the only option he could consider. But he saw advantage in his situation as a smart, if conniving, man would. Why squander the commodity the gods had seen fit to lie in his lap? His wife's infidelity gave him an opportunity to claim a son. A man with a son is a man with a stronger house, a secure position, and an unquestioned legacy.
And so he did claim me. And no one ever knew my true sire. My mother's husband had the elf killed. In front of her, so I've heard tell. My mother did her duty and raised me as her husband's son, but she made sure I knew the truth. Perhaps it was the only way she felt she could hold onto the strands of her dead love to be able to share the knowledge of my true parentage with me. She also made sure I learned the lesson she was never taught: Be strong and make your own path so that no one can steal it from you.
I learned the lesson well enough, but being able to execute it was quite another matter. I was a half blood human and worse, a half blood mage. I was late into my adolescence with no magic to speak of and she began to despair I would be entirely without. When I finally did manifest, she still had no cause for celebration because I was a mediocre mage at best. It seemed my fate would simply be to do whatever my step-father required of me, just like my mother.
But years of such a life, years of lamenting a lost love, drove my mother to take steps to assure her son would not suffer the same fate."
Antonius rose and wandered over to the hearth again. He poured himself another drink and again it disappeared with one motion. Fenris was enthralled. He continued listening.
"There was only one way to fulfill my mother's hopes for me. She helped me make a deal with a demon. She bled herself dry for me and I used her blood; the blood of a pure mage from an ancient family bred for powerful magic. It gave me power enough that every demon in the Fade fell at my feet begging for a taste. But which one to choose? In that position, should a mage seek strength? Ah, but there is always someone stronger. Should a mage seek a life filled with pleasure? Ah, but desires are all fleeting things. Knowledge, however, is permanent. Timeless. And more useful than any amount of strength or desire."
Antonius smiled, the expression a complex thing in the shadows of the firelight, full of memory, pride and pain.
"Fate had already been my constant companion, prisoner to it that I was. So it was only logical that I sought out the Demons of Fate."
The Archon strode over to Fenris and leaned down towards him looking into his eyes.
"The Fates gave me more knowledge than I ever could have imagined and I have used all of that knowledge to my advantage over the years. I see things in my dreams. When I sleep, the Fade I go to is alive like a tree with thousands of branches, each one a possible future. Knowing those possibilities and acting to force one outcome over another is what made me, a half-breed, half-blood mage, The Archon, and not just another pawn in the game.
My mother's sacrifice was not in vain. The first future the demons allowed me to see was one where I killed my step-father. And so the next morning I did just that. I watched him die at my feet and I hoped my mother was waiting for him in the Void so she could exact her own vengeance since she didn't live to share in mine."
A hoard of dragons could not have dragged Fenris from the room, so enraptured was he by the Archon's tale. The danger of his situation, Marian's presence outside the door, the shards of glass stuck in his hand where it dangled from the chair, all of these things were pushed to the fringes of his mind as he was drawn into the telling of Valen Antonius's past.
"As time passed, I became more comfortable with the visions and more skilled in executing my plans to extract the outcomes I desired. The Demons I had partnered with were more than satisfied by the casualties I left in my wake; made a sweeter feast for them, no doubt, because my opponents never saw their fate coming. Most of the time they never even knew who had brought their fate upon them.
And so I would have happily lived out my days, feeding the Fates and using their powers as my own. What did it matter after all if the bastard son of an elven slave left any legacy? I lived by the lessons my mother taught me. I had my vengeance for the tragedy that was her life and I lived mine as she would have wanted me to. If I left nothing in this world when I died other than the mystery of my successes then, so be it.
But the Fates, it seemed, had other plans for me."
Antonius now walked over to the door and stood before it, just staring at the carvings on the wood, hands clasped behind his back.
"I passed a pretty slave girl in the Markets one day. I had been looking for a boy to serve as my runner in the Senate. The merchant tried to sell her to me along with the boy but I had no need of a weak looking girl, who would likely just as soon die as be of any use to me. I left her there to be purchased by the next fool to come along wanting a warm place to store his cock.
But that night I had a dream. It was a cruel and agonizing vision. I saw that slave girl and I saw myself and I saw the spider's web of my fate bound to hers. I saw her in my bed. I saw her in my arms. I saw a future where I fell in love. I followed each thread of the web I would be caught in. There was joy and there was pain. A future where we lived and one where we died. There was a path where we walked together and a path where she was taken from me. This elf, this girl, this slave I didn't know but was fated to love.
I awoke drenched in sweat with panic gripping my chest. Even on this side of the Veil I could hear the Fates laughing at me. I knew my reckoning was upon me. The Fates wanted more than the scraps from my table. They even wanted more than just me. I was a hollowed out shell of a man. Powerful, dangerous, yes, but with no more substance to me than a bag of dead leaves. My Demons wanted to fill me up before they feasted on me."
Antonius's face twisted into an ugly visage and he spit on the floor. With a sigh he finally sat back down.
"That morning I went back to the slave markets and bought the girl. She stands outside the door with your Marian now. I loved her before I knew her. I loved her in my dreams in the Fade and I made it real. Like so many times before, I saw the future and I made it a reality, knowing it was the harbinger of my doom. I love her so much it aches and each time I lie with her I can hear the Fates laughing. And if that wasn't enough, my Renna loves me in return. It would be easier if it wasn't so."
Fenris sat up in shock when the Archon dropped his head into his hands. His next words were muffled but Fenris heard them so clearly they might have been spoken inside his head.
"She carries my child."
There was silence for a very long time. Fenris was overcome by what he had heard and what he was witnessing. A mighty Imperial Archon brought low by love. Antonius was overcome as well, likely for the same reasons. When he finally lifted his head, he had regained his cold composure. And it seemed to Fenris that it was even colder and more composed than before this story began.
"The demons will not take her away from me. They will not take my son away from me. I must sever my ties with the Fates. Whatever the cost. And you and your lover are going to aid me in this. It has not been easy to bring you both here, to draw you both into this. There were other paths I could have followed, other threads in the web I could have pulled, but you, her, us, this was my best chance.
I was the one who sent Loranus to intercept the Andrastian Seekers when they crossed our borders with her blood. I allowed the two of you to remain together. I watched you, studied you, saw your enemies, and mine, fall before you. I made her a magister, I freed you, I drew you down these paths and put you in the positions that would bring you here to this place, this moment. And now, you're here. And you will help me. You will help me defeat my Demons and save my love, if you want to hold onto yours."
Antonius smiled. Wistful now, with a sorrowful wisdom.
"So tell me Elf, do you still feel fortune has smiled on you by giving you love?"
