An: oh god, apologies on not updating in half a year. My excuses involve school starting back up again and just like, very little desire to edit this fic when I'm graduating uni this year. Rest assured, I've not abandoned this story and I do come back to it time to time to write it! I started dreaming about the characters in this story actually, which is why I'm updating now lol (even my subconscious is tired of sitting on all these chapters)
This chapter is a bit short and exposition-heavy but i plan on updating tomorrow too to make up for dissapearing. Hope you enjoy !
Chapter 25 - The Gang makes a plan.
Redcliffe was a small fishing and trading city by the side of Lake Calenhad, where the imperial highway looped around and connected to other parts of itself as it stretched all over Ferelden. As it was, Redcliffe was also in very close proximity to the route taken to Orzammar, far closer than Denerim, so its economy was booming in the recent years more than the little city actually expected. The town was ever expanding, growing in size with the coming years, and it was just sheer bad luck that it was also sitting right in the path of the oncoming horde.
Not that the people knew anything about that. Loghain's men had taken up occupancy the moment they had rolled on in, and it took quite a bit of coin and food to tend to such a great army, especially since they had hauled ass the moment they abandoned Ostagar.
The locals were none too happy. With such a drain on their resources, taking what they needed from farmers, fishers and the bakers, the town was essentially ransacked, with the justification that it was the town's duty to supply the army with whatever they had. In truth, they had offered some means of protection against thugs and bandits but had turned around and done the exact same thing to the people they had allegedly protected. Arl Eamon was in the middle of very terse negotiations with Loghain and his advisors, and by the time the group rolled into town it was night. The streets were crowded with his soldiers and supporters, filling up the marketplace with their idle talk and drinking.
Cinna was a ball of anxiety as they hid in darkened corners and alleyways, but she'd been too exhausted to stay vigilant the moment they found a tavern and bought themselves board. The second her head had hit a pillow, a real honest to god, fluffy pillow, she'd been out cold. The next morning, Cinna woke up to the sound of Morrigan rifling through her bag and pulling out her journal.
"AHA!" the witch had exclaimed, dragging it out from underneath her.
Cinna wiped the drool off the side of her face and blearily looked up at her as Morrigan flipped through the pages. "What are you... doing?"
"I thought all of her means of tracking us were dealt with, but this!" Morrigan roughly tore out several large pages and summoned a flame into her hands. As they caught and the paper browned, invisible, runelike letters appeared and blackened, until the paper turned to ash and they fell through morrigan's fingers. She brushed them onto the floor and crushed them with her shoe. "Never trust anything my mother gives away freely."
"What... the hell?" Cinna pulled herself back up in her seat and rubbed her eyes. The room they had rented was as cheap as it had come, and even though it was better than sleeping on the ground or on a wagon, cinna was still awkward and unfairly stiff in places.
Unfortunately, there were also multiple people in their group so Cinna was left having to share a bed with Duran and Cailan. And no, it wasn't comfortable, and it wasn't even cuddly, it was just a gross sweaty mess of limbs and invaded personal space. On the next cot over, Carver got an entire freaking bed to himself. Despite all her good work, he was still emptying the contents of his stomach every hour, and nobody wanted to deal with that, honestly, extra space or no.
The young Hawke in question cracked his bloodshot eyes open, angry, as if he'd only just fallen asleep a moment ago and they'd gone and ruined it all. He looked like absolute garbage, with his hair sticking in every direction, and his skin a sickly pale color. "W-what.. are you... going on about now?"
"Nothing that concerns you," Morrigan snapped, banishing the ashes away and under the bed. She chucked the journal (now significantly thinner) back onto cina's bed, where it landed on her legs with a hard thump. "What possessed my mother to give you that book of all the ones she has is beyond me, but you'd be a fool to trust innocent gifts so easily. You have no idea what might be charmed with malicious intent."
"You really think she charmed it to hurt us?" Cinna asked, drawing her legs up under her nightgown, and resting her arms on her knees. The journal lay ominously on the bed. Duran and Cailan wore similar, plundered nightclothes and covered their ears and turned away from the commotion, trying to sleep.
"You have no idea the lengths she would go or what she's capable of," Morrigan said, an air of finality. "You may continue using it as long as you do not write anything too secretive in it. There are still enchantments attached, but none as invasive as before."
"So you're saying this is a legitimately charmed wacky voodoo magic book and I had no idea?" Cinna paled. What had she written in the book besides medical jargon? could Flemeth even understand her chicken scribblings, even if they were in English? Cinna grimaced and turned to the lump of blankets that resembled the king of Ferelden. "Cailan I'm so sorry, Flemeth knows about your third nipple."
"WHAT?!" the blond said, ripping himself out from under the covers and onto the floor. He landed on the floor in a heap of blankets and struggled to right himself. "E-Excuse me?!"
Carver coughed harshly into his hard and watched them as Cinna profusely started to apologize and help him back into bed. "Y-you people are beyond strange."
"Yeah, well-" Cinna winced as she hefted the full weight of Cailan and basically tossed him onto Duran, who grumbled at her. "You're gonna have to get used to this at some point, farm boy."
He made a sour face and shook his head as Morrigan turned and left the room. It wasn't long before the door was opening again, and Leliana returned with Duncan, Sten, and Alistair in tow. He motioned for Cinna to wake up Duran, but at this point and with all the shouting and movement, the dwarf was already awake.
"We need to discuss our plan of action," Duncan began, but Duran was way ahead of him.
"We need a legitimate force if we want to stand against Loghain and the blight at once," he nodded, sitting up in the bed. Duran got the nice comfy middle part of the mattress while Cinna was left taking up the space where his feet would have been if he had been taller. "I didn't really want to talk about this without pants on, but if Logain's forces are too thick to cross, we should meet with another one of the treaty holders and see what sort of help they're willing to give us."
"You... you're not wearing pants..?" Alistair asked, squinting down at him with an incredulous expression. Instantly, Cinna and Cailan stiffened.
Duran waved them off. "Don't think too much about it."
"It's kinda hard not to, now!" Cinna squawked.
Duncan took a spot nearby in one of their only chairs as the rest got settled, and Cinna leapt out of bed and made an excuse to check carver's vitals. The commander considered their options heavily, running a hand over his mouth in a contemplative manner. "The Dalish would definitely be an asset to our forces if we manage to sway them to our side, but I fear traveling again so soon may be too much for his highness and our new recruit."
"Yeah, I'm not leaving Redcliff," Cailan muttered, wrapping his blankets tightly around himself like a depressed, royal burrito. "I won't even accept being carried the whole way there, I'm here to see the good side of my family for however long I still have them, and that's that."
Carver made an uncomfortable sound as well, watching them intently. "I don't... know... what good I can be to you all if I'm like this..."
"The fact that you're alive is still a major win in my books," Cinna assured.
Carver grimaced, clutching his puke-bucket with pale, black-veined hands. "M-my family... I doubt they'd end up in Redcliffe , but... I don't know… you could leave me here if you have to go. I'll be fine, really."
"That's a lie," Cailain snorted under his blankets. "We've been listening to you retch all night, you wouldn't last a day."
Cinna huffed, and glared back at the blanket burrito. "And you did the same thing when I dragged your golden butt back from the dead. We're stronger together. Play nice, would you?"
Cailan made some noncomittal mutterings from under his blankets, while Carver moped about. "If you'd rather all stay together, why don't you people just go to the circle for help? They're closer than the Brecilian forest at least, and they have templars, mages..."
"The Dalish have mages too," Cinna pointed out, sitting down next to him on the bed. She gestured for him to give her his wrist and he made a sour expression, which she ignored. "Besides, if we conscript the circle first, people will know what we're doing and word will travel faster than we will. The Dalish are more low-key."
"We could make it back here to drive out Loghain's forces and blindside them before they know what hit them," Duran nodded.
"We should be focusing on the blight, not your petty human squabbles," Sten said by the door, leaning up against the wall. The fact that they hadn't been spotted as outsiders while they scoped out the city was beyond Cinna, but maybe Leliana had made good on her spy training and helped them out with a bit of stealth. "Does that not take precedence?"
"It does," Cailan muttered out from under his pillow. "But imagine your Arishok was betrayed and left for dead by a trusted member of his inner circle. What do you do?"
"That depends. Did the Arishok lead his people to their deaths in a foolish military strategy doomed for failure?"
"Forget I said anything..."Cailan muttered, burrowing deeper into his blankets.
"I still can't believe you people survived," Carver said, watching them all with wide eyes. He winced ever so slightly when Cinna took a quick sample of his blood when he wasn't looking, but nevertheless hardly reacted at all compared to the Therins (more proof that the family was made up of big babies). "From what I saw at Ostagar, it was a nightmare. It was so chaotic I didn't even realize my unit had to retreat until someone dragged me out."
"What part of the forces were you in?" Alistair asked curiously, sitting down nearby as Cailan tried to suffocate himself underneath a pillow made of hay.
"Civilian infantry..." Carver said grudgingly. He looked down at his hands, at the spidery black and purple veins crawling over his knuckles. "I wanted to help... But before then, I had seen a darkspawn maybe.. once or twice before. Nothing on a scale like that." He shuddered and looked back up at Alistair. "I grew up in Lothering, but it's gone now, I know that... I know it's useless wondering if something else could have happened, but if there's any way to contact my family, could I...?"
"Oh, yeah of course!" Alistair nodded, as if they wouldn't let him in the first place. "You may be stuck with us for a while, but we're not going to keep you prisoner. Do you know where they might be headed?"
He nodded, a crease forming between his eyebrows as he frowned. "My mother has family in Kirkwall. The plan was to head there, before... before, uh..."
The darkspawn closed in on them and Carver was smashed into the ground by an ogre, again and again, and again and-
Carver's eyes were unfocused and cloudy when Cinna reached out and gently patted his hand. "Hey... are you okay?"
He blinked and looked back up at her before shrugged it off. "Fine. Don't worry about me. I told them it was a stupid plan to head north, but um... did Flemith... say anything about what she was going to do with them… after dumping me with you?"
Well, that was one way of saying it. Cinna gave him a terse smile. Poor guy still didn't know what fresh hell he'd been thrown into yet.
"They'll make it to Kirkwall alright," Cinna reassured, even though Flemeth had barely said much other than 'hey here's your order of semi-fresh man meat' before bailing. Carver needed to hear that his family wasn't dead, though, so she left out the part where hawke made his own shady deal with the witch. "Besides like, all the emotional damage of seeing you get hurt, they're going to be okay."
He let out a breath, tension melting off his shoulders. "Good. That's... good."
"So it's settled?" Duncan said, looking around the room. "We split the party in half and Aeducan takes one part of the group to conscript the Dalish."
"Lemme guess what part of the group I'm going to be with," Cinna said, finger on her chin. "Babysitting blood magic blight-watch?"
"You made your bed when you decided to do the insane and cure the blight," Alistair chastised. Alistair sighed and turned his gaze to the heavens. "Kids these days don't know when to quit and pick a more boring, acceptable job. Like pottery or ditch digging."
He wasn't wrong. Cinna wanted to go and help the elves deal with their furry little problems, really, even if she had no idea about werewolf curses and fade-magic-ey transformations. But Cinna had unfortunately tied herself down to the health of her patients. She could either choose to abandon the people depending on her to go mess around with people she didn't know, with a disease she didn't know how to deal with, or she could stay put in Redcliffe. The choice was simple. Cinna only felt a bit bad about it, in the end.
With a deadpan stare, Cinna turned to Alistair. "Take one look at me and tell me I look like the kind of person who can physically dig a ditch. Practical doesn't suit these chicken limbs. "
Carver gave her the side-eye, and she looked right back at him, daring him to argue otherwise. With muscley arms like his, maybe it'd be possible. But Cinna just wasn't about that life. "I suppose that leaves you with pottery."
"I prefer living in sin and spreading blasphemy, thank you," she sighed, leaning backwards. Cinna glanced over at Duran and Duncan talking strategy for their next foray and nodded at them. "I'll try to keep it on the down low while you're on the road though, as long as you promise to wear pants next time you talk strategy."
"Don't trouble yourself," Duncan said, rising from his chair and giving the dwarf one last nod. "I'll be staying too."
"Oh." Cinna shared a look with Carver and Cailan, who finally dug himself out from under his pillow. "Guess we can't party like it's 4:20 whatever-age if we've got a chaperone, huh?"
Cailan let out a pitiful sigh from under his blankets, and ran a hand through his messy, blond hair. "I honestly would have really loved to have taken part in that..."