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Deep in the Wilds

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Fenris was not allowed to sleep while his master struggled with the insomnia his demons brought. Danarius let him sometimes, for he was a benevolent master. For an hour or minutes or seconds, Fenris could not tell. Danarius would brush his fingers across the back of Fenris's neck, and Fenris would be immediately awaken, wide eyed from dead sleep.

Sometimes Danarius would have orders for Fenris. More often he would simply say it was not Fenris's right to be resting before going back to his correspondence, and Fenris was left sitting in silent suffocation, alert and delirious and his head and brands aching. He bore it without complaint. He was causing trouble for Danarius, and it was not his purview to be irritable.

This was how Fenris awoke now. He reached for the back of his neck, to rub away the gooseflesh left by Danarius's grazing fingers. The edges of some nightmare receded. If he was sleeping fitfully, tossing and turning from his dreams, it was all the worse. There would be a punishment game. Danarius had banished him from the bed, and Fenris would need to cry and beg to be taken back. It was only a game, and Fenris had never found it humiliating until he had.

Fenris pulled at the silk sheets, but found only a woollen bedroll, insulated with straw. This was not the cold marble floor next to Danarius's bed. This was not the nightmare, where he'd stood in a cavern or battlefield or basement amongst an army of demons. His brands were hurting again. Alistair was snoring. Fenris found he knew where the man was, twenty paces southwest, even though he could not yet see in this darkness.

He did not know where the witch was. If anyone had brushed their fingers across his neck, to rob him of his night's sleep, it would have been her. Fenris preferred this, to the belief that his own mind had simply called a simulacrum of Danarius to torment him.

Fenris knew he would not be sleeping again anytime soon. He pulled himself out of the bedroll, checked his pack, still heavy with the pile of valuables they had to trade in Lothering. It was dark. He and Alistair had given up lighting a campfire in the dank marsh, and the only light was from the stars.

The dog approached him with a plaintive whine, but Fenris shushed him. "If I am not returned in the next few minutes, you may come for me."

The dog was clearly an intelligent sort, because he curled atop Fenris's bedroll to wait, around the remains of a hare he had chased down earlier. Fenris felt pleased, and walked through the trees looking for a private place to piss.

He did not find it, not before he'd found a beacon lit through the night. He hesitated, before following it up the slope of the land to a small clearing.

If Fenris and Alistair's makeshift camp was paltry for lack of supplies, Morrigan shared no such difficulties. She appeared to have built a den of her own – warmed with mage fire, canopied by ivy, and lined with hides and pelts. She sat as if in a throne over her domain, poring over a collection of scrolls and jars of lyrium and elixir and balm.

The comparative luxury of it made Fenris sour.

"Trouble sleeping?" Morrigan asked. She waved Fenris over. "Or perhaps a desire for wittier companionship?"

Fenris did not know what to say to this. Morrigan had goaded Alistair until he'd snapped.

Is my being upset and not wanting to talk really that hard to understand? Have you never lost someone important to you? Just what would you do if your mother died?

Morrigan had cackled. Before or after I stopped laughing?

"Though I have forgotten none of you are much for wit," Morrigan enunciated sharply at Fenris's silence.

Fenris bristled. He was not a fool. "Your mother," he grasped sharply at conversation. "She did something to my brands. They did not hurt, for a time."

"Oh, did she?" Morrigan said curiously. "I was not aware they caused you pain."

For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Morrigan seemed to make an assessment.

"You wish me to do something for them?" she guessed. "My, but what would you give me in return for such a thing? 'Tis a wonder…" She eyed him with a predatory smile.

Fenris said nothing. She already knew he had nothing to offer, save for pride. She wanted him to beg like Danarius had. Fenris would not have found it humiliating once. But he was no longer so stupid as that.

"What is your mother?" Fenris asked. "She is more than she appears."

"Is that so?" Morrigan considered. "For many years I knew no other. I find her less mysterious than much of your 'civilisation'? Tell me: how does she seem to you?"

"I have seen powerful mages, spirits, and abominations," Fenris said. "And among them she is unique."

"I see," Morrigan laughed. "Then you are considering she is truly the Flemeth of legend? Why not ask your fellow Warden if your interest is in tall tales?"

Daveth and Alistair had let details of such legends slip, through their conversations. Fenris had done his best to act less ignorant than he was. He had heard little of these 'Witches of the Wild'. Whatever folk stories had been fit to share with a Tevinter slave, few dealt in areas as remote as the south of Ferelden.

"I have a greater interest in the truth," Fenris said.

"Hmm, and what truth is this?" Morrigan asked. "Very few of the truths I know are fit for pleasant dreams." But she relented a bit, and told him a little about a man named Conobar. "The demon within Flemeth transformed her into something else. I know not what. There are more things in this world and the next than you or I could ever hope to understand. What she became is unknown… I suspect even to Flemeth, herself."

"If what you say is true…" Fenris considered. "I have known many mages that have extended their lifespan with the blood of others. Though few who have been so successful at it." Being part of the Imperial Circle was a death sentence in its own way. If the demons didn't kill you, your fellow Magisters would.

It was fortunate in its own way that Flemeth had found Fenris more valuable alive. Though Fenris struggled still to understand why. There was Flemeth who had healed him, who had stood over him and tapped the lyrium in him, and whispered too many years and fragments in Elvhish he did not understand. And then she had let him go. As she had let Morrigan go.

"Dare I ask of your own mother?" Morrigan was asking. Her face was suddenly raw with curiosity. Fenris could not be sure his own age, but in that moment he felt convinced Morrigan was nothing more than a child.

"I've nothing to share," Fenris said testily. He must have had a mother – babes did not spring from nowhere – but- "Mages have stolen the memory of her from me," he spat.

"I see," Morrigan said, reacting to the sharpness in his tone. "And I suppose I am to be blamed for your weakness in allowing her to be taken?"

Yes, Fenris had been weak. Who could not be weak, in the face of magic's taint?

"You asked me how Flemeth seemed to me," Fenris snarled. "She seemed a mother. You curse her house and wish her dead, and then whither and crumble when she confirms your fears. At least you've had a mother to love."

"There is nothing like love between us," Morrigan bubbled with affront.

"More's the pity to you," Fenris snarled sarcastically.

"Love is a weakness. Even if you had pity for me, I'd have no need of it," Morrigan insisted. But she looked young and small again. It made Fenris want to rip her to pieces.

The dog barked, and ran to Fenris's feet, sniffing the perimeter of Morrigan's camp.

"It will be daybreak before long," Fenris said, although this was not quite true. It would be several hours at least.

But, in this moment, Morrigan seemed in complete agreement with him. "Indeed. Go wake your fellow fool Warden. Let us be gone. Before the darkspawn are upon us."

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