beta-read by brightspot149. Thank you!
"You're sure your help will be there in time?" Varric asked again as they rode toward the Lake Luthias camp. "The three of us and Bianca aren't exactly what I'd call 'good odds' against whatever darkspawn might be down in the Deep Roads."
"I'm sure," Ciri said.
Early spring in the Hinterlands was beautiful. The air held a chill that the cloudless sky couldn't quite warm through, and the bushes that lined the dirt roads were covered in the dark green leaves and small buds of new growth. The region seemed much more settled since last they'd been here; no bandits troubled them, no mages or Templars clashed along the West Road.
As they entered the camp, Ciri tossed Varric and Dorian a smile and pointed to the picket line. "See?"
Two horses stood placidly in place already, their leads tied and their saddles removed. Ciri slid from Zephyr's back and handed her reins to a waiting scout.
"Scout Cyra," she greeted her. "Where are the Wardens?"
Scout Cyra grinned. "Out by the entrance already, Your Worship. Sure is strange seeing Scout Malika in Warden blue. Warden Malika now, I guess."
"I take it Blackwall and Malika finished their task at Soldier's Peak?" Dorian asked Ciri as he dismounted.
"My raven to Warden-Constable Howe asked for any available Wardens to assist us," she told him. "If Malika's one of them, then I suppose they must have."
Varric slid to the ground and handed off the reins to Scout Tavin. "Why keep this under your hat, Songbird? You know Bianca would be happy to have the extra hands, especially Warden ones."
"Would she?" Ciri asked him quietly. "She did want us to keep this secret, after all."
Varric looked away. "That's – she and I have to be discreet. I know it looked suspicious. But we almost started a clan war once, and we're contractually obligated by the Merchants' Guild to stay a country apart because of it. Long story," he said with a wave of his hand. "The fewer people who know about her involvement, the better."
Ciri bit back the questions that rose to her lips. His short explanation cleared up some of her suspicions about Bianca, but not all of them. The careful way she'd spoken of the thaig, and redirected Ciri and Varric from speculating on the source of the leak, still itched at her.
"If you say so," she said instead and turned away to look over her sword and armor.
They set off up the shaded path toward Lake Luthias together, Ciri in the lead. She paused at a rustle in the undergrowth up ahead and relaxed as a small, large-eared fox darted out. It chittered playfully and dashed away, its bushy tail bouncing behind it.
The lake was as beautiful as Ciri remembered, with tall, proud trees along the shore and a clear blue color to its water. The sun reflected off the rippling surface like a scattered handful of diamonds, sparkling brightly. Not for the first time, she wondered what odes Dandelion would compose to a land like this.
They walked down to where the waterfall thundered down and crossed the teetering pier to the other side of the narrowest end of the lake. There, a manmade embankment shored up with stone sloped around, and they followed it up.
Rainier and Malika awaited them behind the waterfall, both clad in new Grey Warden uniforms. Rainier's scuffed breastplate and worn green gambeson were nowhere to be seen. He looked every inch the part of a Constable of the Grey in blue leather and white steel scale armor beneath a new helm, breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, and tassets. Malika's looked more maneuverable, with a hood in place of a helm, and only a breastplate and tassets covering the leather and scale armor.
Malika waved to them. "Thought we'd have to head in without you!" she said cheerfully.
Ciri's answering greeting caught in her throat. Malika's left eye was a starburst of broken blood vessels. The green of her iris seemed to glow in contrast to the red surrounding it. "What happened?"
"Oh, this? Pfft." Malika flipped a dismissive hand at her. "I came through in the end. That's all that matters, Your Handiness."
"Velanna says it will heal, given time," Rainier interjected.
"And I'm a full-fledged Grey Warden now!" Malika said. "Got the uniform and everything." She grinned. "'Conscripted by Love' was pretty accurate about the stamina thing, you know."
Dorian broke into delighted laughter. "And here I thought Wardens were required by law to be dour and stoic about their honor. You'll certainly liven up your new order, won't you?"
"Ass," Rainier said with gruff affection.
Ciri slipped past them to face the door, digging into her belt pouch. Her hand closed on a cold, thin metal rod, and she pulled out the iron key Malika had given her months ago. As she'd expected they would, the geometric engravings down the shank matched the carvings on the door. She slotted the key into the lock and turned it, and she heard a faint sound of tumblers falling into place.
"Let's go," she told the others, "but be wary. Bianca warned us about Carta dwarves using this entrance, and we ought to expect darkspawn deeper in."
Rainier and Malika nodded.
"Aye, that's why we're here," Rainier said.
Ciri shoved open the door and led the way inside. The thundering sound of the waterfall immediately cut off as the door slammed shut behind them, and she blinked as the bright sunlight gave way to a dim, cavernous interior. Rough lichens clung to the stone walls enclosing them while pale ferns grew below. Up ahead, a tall torch burned, illuminating a carved stone staircase.
"Finally," a voice called out softly from the shadows. "I was starting to get worried."
Bianca stepped forward into the faint light. Her bright lipstick was nowhere to be seen, and her clothes looked rumpled, as if she'd been sleeping in them.
"No one said you had to wait inside for us," Varric said.
"Well, I did," Bianca said shortly. "So, let's get started, shall we? The Carta are already preparing to move another shipment. The idiots are carrying it out in unprotected containers. We don't want to be here long enough for it to start 'talking' to us."
"You seem to know more about red lyrium than most people we've run into," Ciri said.
"Varric told me about what it did to him…and to Bartrand," Bianca added.
Ciri nodded. "How did you even figure out what was going on here in the first place?" she asked. "There must be dozens, no, hundreds of Deep Roads entrances. The odds of you stumbling across something like this are incredibly low."
"I've used this entrance in the past," Bianca said with an easy shrug. "Varric's not the only surface dwarf to explore the Deep Roads."
Ciri's prickle of suspicion itched at her again.
"Do you know which Carta clan this is?" Malika asked Bianca.
Bianca looked at her, then past her at Rainier. "You brought Grey Wardens?" she asked Varric, an unreadable tone to her voice.
"The Inquisitor thought it would be useful to have experts along in the Deep Roads," he told her. "We know them, Bianca. They've both been with the Inquisition from nearly the beginning."
"Warden Malika Cadash," Malika said. She held out her hand for Bianca to shake.
A flicker of recognition went through Bianca's eyes at Malika's name. "Bianca Davri."
"A Davri and a Tethras," Malika said with a bright smile, rubbing her hands together. "I'm in exalted company."
"Warden Blackwall," Rainier interrupted. He shot Ciri a covert look as he shook Bianca's hand, and she gave him a subtle nod of understanding.
He'd come clean when he was ready. Rainier had been living a lie for years; it would take time for him to adjust to the idea of living under his own name again. Ciri did understand, in a way. She, too, had faked her own death to escape pursuit, though it wasn't a hangman's noose that awaited her should she be discovered.
"Good to meet you both," Bianca said after a beat. "And no, I'm not sure what clan this is. They called their Dasher Boyan, and I heard a few other names. Lada, Jirka, and Vuk."
"Clan Guron," Malika said with a nod. "They're more unscrupulous than most. I don't think their Dasher has any lines he won't cross in search of a profit. The Cadash clan didn't usually do business with them – they're Ferelden based, and Cadash is more of a Marcher operation."
"Whoever they are, they've done enough damage," Bianca said impatiently. "Let's stop them and get out of here."
"We're right behind you," Ciri said.
They headed up the stone stairs cautiously, weapons drawn, and began to cross the wide stone walkway suspended over a gaping chasm. Flickering torchlight ahead revealed a stone structure, with more stairs leading up to a large building with doors and small windows. Short, sturdy shapes moved in the distance.
Rainier took the lead and raised his shield, and Dorian silently cast a barrier over their stealthily approaching group. Malika and Bianca nocked arrows to their bowstrings as Varric slotted a bolt into his crossbow.
A low cry of alarm rang out ahead, and a handful of arrows flew toward them out of the dark. Rainier battered one away with his shield, and Ciri dodged. Their trio of archers loosed their arrows and bolt in response to the volley.
"Keep moving!" Ciri urged them.
They crossed quickly, ducking the oncoming arrows as Dorian's barrier deflected the brunt of their energy. A half-dozen Carta dwarves awaited them on the other side, each one of them armed to the teeth. They all hung back near the stairs, leery of charging their party with the sheer drop into the chasm so close by.
Dorian swept his staff out and lightning arced down from the far-off stone ceiling to strike three of the waiting Carta dwarves. Ciri and Rainier dashed to the stairs with swords drawn, and Ciri braced against a blow from a burly dwarf wielding an axe. She spun away at the last second, sending him stumbling down the stairs below her, and lashed out at his back with Gynvael as he passed. He cursed and cried out, jerking around to face her.
Pain made his next attack sloppy and weak. She dodged it easily and thrust her blade home.
The others finished their fights quickly and gathered on the stairs. Ciri looked around at the sprawled corpses and raised her eyes to Dorian's. "A fire will alert anyone here that we're coming, Carta or darkspawn. Will you see to their remains on the way out?"
"I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise," he assured her.
They left the stairs, heading up to the balcony running along the outside of the building. There was a remarkable amount of greenery down here considering the lack of sunlight. Not just mosses and lichens, but thick, bushy ferns as well. The lighting coming from up above was pale and almost blue in tone. Ciri squinted up at the ceiling. She could just barely make out massive crystal and metal lamps suspended far above them, still glowing after all these many centuries.
Malika pushed open one of the doors along the balcony and immediately jumped away as a Carta dwarf leaped out brandishing daggers. Rainier smashed the would-be ambusher back with his shield, sending her flying into the wall.
"Rude," Malika muttered as she nocked another arrow to her bowstring.
"Careful, love," Rainier cautioned her.
Dorian thrust his staff through the doorway and summoned another bright, arcing surge of lightning. Strangled, pained yells, as if through clenched jaws, could be heard from within. Malika stuck her head back around the doorway and loosed three arrows in quick succession. "That's that."
Ciri took a look over her head. Other than the three corpses, the room held nothing but a stone table covered in food. "Let's keep moving."
They moved on, heading deeper into the abandoned thaig. Heavy carts filled with chunks of red lyrium sat abandoned on the balcony, and they gave off a faint, ominous whine as they passed by. Bianca shook her head at them in disapproval and turned to Varric.
"So, this is what you do now?"
"Beg pardon?" he asked.
"Skulking around in caves, killing people," she elaborated. The flirtatious tone she'd had in Skyhold was back. "Is this your day to day?"
"I do my best to avoid the caves," he said. He didn't seem to either notice or respond to the flirtation.
"There was that time in Crestwood," Dorian reminded him. "You remember, with the blighted undead and all the demons, and that giant rift in the middle of the dwarven outpost."
"Like I said," Varric said with a grimace. "I do my best."
The balcony curved around to another staircase that led down into darkness. Across the way, Ciri could see another walkway and a small, carved door. She nodded to Dorian, who cast another barrier over their group. Rainier took the lead again.
An arrow collided with his shield as they reached the bottom of the stairs, and two Carta dwarves materialized from the shadows. Malika and Bianca drew and loosed, and the dwarves staggered, swearing loudly. Lightning cut through the darkness once more, and the dwarves fell.
Something moved in the darkness beyond the landing, and Rainier and Malika stiffened.
"Darkspawn?" Ciri asked quietly.
"Aye," Rainier said, his eyes hard. "Just the one nearby, but there are several more not too far from here. That way…and that way." He nodded across to the other walkway, and at the doorway at the foot of the landing.
"There weren't darkspawn the last time I came here," Bianca said. "Maybe the Carta dug a tunnel too deep."
"That would be just like Clan Guron," Malika scoffed. She held an arrow slack to her bowstring and looked to Ciri. "Which way, Your Handiness? There's a cluster of darkspawn behind that door – not right behind it, but a ways back. But there's one that feels like a real monster up ahead."
"Bianca?" Ciri prompted her.
"Our destination is farther in, down below," she said. "We can see what's behind that door on the way back. My guess? More Carta, and they're in over their heads."
Malika shook her head. "Better to deal with the Carta problem before we have to tangle with the darkspawn. They might have answers about how they even got involved in this, too."
Ciri could see the merits to both approaches. Ultimately, however, the door was just a few feet away, and she did want answers.
"Let's see if it's locked."
She stood carefully to the side and nudged the door open, and an arrow shot through the opening. Dorian cast a barrier over everyone as Rainier took the lead again, his shield held in front of him.
"I want someone taken alive to answer questions!" Ciri called after him as she followed him in.
Arrows and bolts flew from behind her into the warmly lit room. The crackle of lightning accompanied them. Ciri darted forward to engage a rough-looking Carta tough, dancing to the side as he struck out at her with his daggers.
Dorian shouted something Ciri couldn't quite make out as she dodged the flashing daggers again. Then the world – shifted. She could feel it in her veins, like adrenaline almost. It wasn't like Hawke's slowing spell, yet suddenly the Carta dwarves seemed to be moving at a snail's pace. She lashed out hard against the dwarf's head with Gynvael's pommel, and her opponent dropped like a stone.
Most of the others had fallen, but the big one with the maul was still putting up a fight. Ciri went to Rainier's aid, striking at the big one's side as he battered him from the other. An arrow struck him in the chest, then another in the thigh. He toppled over, bleeding heavily, and Ciri staggered as the spell abruptly ended.
"Was that what you meant by 'interesting properties'?" she asked Dorian with a gesture toward his staff.
Dorian smiled in satisfaction. "Did you like it? I've been playing around with that for the last two months trying to work out the kinks."
"It was certainly helpful." Ciri turned to the unconscious dwarf she'd struck with Gynvael's pommel and bent to strip him of his weapons. "Does anyone have any rope?"
Once the dwarf was secured, Varric took his flask of water from his belt and upended it over his head. The dwarf twitched, then sputtered. He groaned in pain and looked around.
"…Getchu, you bastards… Maferath's hairy nuts, that's Boyan!" He flinched away from Varric and Ciri, his eyes fixed on the large corpse in the center of the room. "You killed the Dasher, you did! You killed everyone! Lada – shit, Lada!"
"Focus," Ciri said. She pushed back the wave of regret that rose in her at the real grief in his words. "Who hired you to mine lyrium for the red Templars?"
"I'm not tellin' you nothin'!"
Malika stepped forward and squatted down in front of him. "What's behind that door, salroka?" she asked with a nod to the heavy, ornate door at the back of the room. Both its handles had been removed – deliberately, Ciri thought.
The dwarf shuddered. "Nothin' good."
"Tell the Inquisitor what she wants to know, and I won't track down the mechanisms to open it and stick you in there. Alone. Without a weapon."
The dwarf squinted at her and scoffed. "Cadash. Got the looks. Edric's…sister? Cousin?"
Malika gave him a toothy smile. "Eddie's dead."
"Shit." The dwarf scooted away a few inches only to run into Varric's hand, clamping down on his shoulder like iron. "Arright, arright! The…the Templars. Boyan met with a human around a year back. Little taller than average. Pasty. Stringy black hair. I wasn't in the meeting, but he came out of it all excited. Said we'd be richer than the sods in the Merchants' Guild if we kept up our end of the deal."
"And the deal was?" Ciri asked.
"Come down here," the dwarf said grudgingly. "Mine the red lyrium and cart it out for the human mercenaries to pass on to the Templars. Easy enough. The man gave him keys and clear directions. But this stuff – we've been losing dusters to it. Boyan had to kill Liska and Brennor for trying to keep some for themselves. He thought they just wanted to sell some on the side, but Jirka said Brennor thought it was singing to him."
He narrowed his eyes at Ciri. "You messed with the operation, having your ox-men brutes kill the human mercs. We had to find new idiots to train up to run the lyrium out to the Templars."
"If you want to live, you'll tell our spymaster everything she wants to know," Ciri told him. "Names, dates, locations, shipments."
For a second, it looked like the dwarf was going to agree. Then he turned his face to the side and stared at another fallen dwarf, and his eyes hardened. "Think I've talked enough."
"The room with the darkspawn is still an option," Malika suggested.
The dwarf spat. "Doesn't matter how long you wear that fancy blue uniform, duster. You'll still be Carta."
Malika just smiled, unperturbed. "I know what I'm worth, salroka."
"I'm not talkin'," the dwarf sneered. "You might as well kill me."
Ciri hesitated, and the dwarf's sneer deepened. He struggled against Varric's iron grip, straining toward Ciri.
"Can't finish the job?" he taunted her. "You were happy enough killin' my cousins and my sister."
She stifled the impulse to apologize. "What can we offer you for your cooperation?"
The dwarf burst into harsh laughter. "Ooh-ho! First it's 'if you wanna live.' Now you're beggin' not to kill me. Fuck off and grow some stones, girly. I'm. Not. Talkin'."
An arrow flew from behind Ciri and Malika and lodged deep in the dwarf's chest. He slumped in Varric's grip with a pained gurgle, his eyelids fluttering, and died. Ciri whirled around to face Bianca in a fury.
"He was tied up! Helpless!"
"It's what he wanted," Bianca shot back. "He wasn't going to be any use to you. He was trying to goad you into it. I spared you having to do it yourself."
"Bravado," Malika argued. "And grief. We were interrogating him in a room full of his family's corpses. He might have come around."
Bianca shook her head. "Even if he did, you'd have to leave him here to possibly free himself, then come back for him, get him back to your camp, keep him under guard there where he might escape again to go alert the rest of his clan or the red Templars, and find a way to get him back to Skyhold where he might feed your spymaster a pack of lies. Was he really worth the effort?"
"She has a point," Varric said reluctantly. "But Bianca…"
"Yes, fine. Sorry. Next time, I won't kill your prisoners. Even if it's the smart decision."
Ciri glared at her but let it go. She turned back to the dead dwarf at her feet and sighed. "I didn't even get his name."
"Not your fault, Your Handiness," Malika said, giving her a quick pat on the arm. "Come on. Let's burn their bodies and get moving again."
They piled the bodies in the center of the room and stood well back as Dorian conjured searing hot flames to consume them. The fire licked at the ceiling, leaving black scorch marks on the stone as the corpses rapidly charred and turned to bone and ash. Dorian smothered the embers with an ice spell and looked around at the wrecked room.
"Is that one of the handles to the door?" he asked with a gesture to a heavy-looking wheel lying in the corner.
"I think it must be," Ciri said. "Should we find the other?"
Bianca shrugged. "Orzammar-made doors will hold for millennia. Unless the Wardens need to get behind it, those darkspawn aren't getting out in this age or the next."
"We should deal with it on the way back, just to be thorough," Malika said. "Handsome?"
"Aye," Rainier agreed. "And we'll need to be careful. Whatever's in there will be covered in Blight sickness thanks to those monsters being locked in with it."
"Then we'll leave it alone for now, and come back to it later," Ciri decided. "Let's go take care of Bianca's business. Blackwall, you lead the way."
They left the room and headed out across the bridge together, Rainier and Malika in the lead. A crude black arrow sailed toward them to skitter off Rainier's shield, and Malika loosed one back, her eyes narrowed. Rainier nodded at her and went ahead with his sword drawn.
He returned shortly, black blood dripping from his blade and spattered across his breastplate. "There are two more on the far walkway," he reported, "and I sense a large one not far below us. The stairs down to the left are clear."
"That's not nearly as bad as the prison in the Western Approach," Ciri said. "Let's continue, but be careful."
The stairs to the left led down away from the walkway, where Ciri could just make out another tall, angular figure in the shadows.
"We'll want to take care of them before we leave," Rainier said as if reading her thoughts. "The Hinterlands have seen enough trouble. We don't want to risk darkspawn running loose on the surface."
Ciri nodded her understanding. She wouldn't say so, not in mixed company, but actually becoming a Grey Warden had done wonders for him. Gone were the somewhat blustery proclamations of bravery and justice. In their place was a steely-eyed warrior who seemed determined to live up to the words he'd been speaking since they met.
They stopped before a cleverly carved stone door with no apparent hinge or handle set into the solid rock face. Bianca slid in front of Rainier and Malika and looked the door up and down with faint pride.
"I built this door," she said. "They probably shut it from the other side when they heard all the commotion upstairs."
Ciri eyed her, suspicion rearing its head again. If she built them, then how did the Carta know how to use them?
"I suppose you have a way to get in," was all she said.
"Stand back and watch a master at work, Inquisitor."
Bianca pressed firmly on well-hidden recessed plates in the door, and with a quiet grinding noise, it slid down and out of their way.
"Ta-da!" Bianca said, waving her hand at the doorway.
Ciri held back the accusatory questions she had about the doors and the Carta and just listened quietly for a few seconds. Shuffling feet and the rasp of metal against leather came from beyond the doorway, and she nodded to Dorian and pulled out her sword.
Dorian cast another barrier over them and edged close to the door. He thrust his skull-topped staff into the room, and a bright flash of light and pained cries followed as lightning answered his summons. They rushed through to find four Carta dwarves arrayed around a low stone table in varying states of injury. A spiky growth of red lyrium, almost as tall as Rainier, hummed against the far wall.
Ciri lunged for the nearest dwarf, Gynvael at the ready. Arrows flew from behind her. The dwarf caught her blow on the haft of his mace with a grunt and broke away. She skipped back a step and feinted to the side. The dwarf followed, and she struck him cleanly across the chest, her blade cutting deep. He staggered and fell, his mace hitting the stone floor with a clang.
Rainier cut down his opponent as the other two fell, bristling with arrows. Ciri paused for a breath and looked to Bianca.
"How much farther?" she asked.
Bianca jerked her thumb at the door at the end of the room. "Just beyond that. But we should prepare for a bigger fight."
Rainier went to the door and stood to the side. "Get clear," he ordered everyone and shoved it open.
Arrows flew out through the opening along with a low, oppressive whine. Dorian swept his staff over them and the strange adrenaline-like feeling flooded Ciri again. She raced through the doorway on Rainier's heels.
She cut through a Carta dwarf that moved like molasses to her eyes, then sped to a hulking brute wielding a maul. A slash, a thrust, and he fell, barely aware that she'd even struck him in the first place.
All around her, red lyrium hummed. It grew from the walls in ragged spires and filled carts and chests. Her head began to ache ever so slightly. She shook it and shot toward a third dwarf.
Dorian's hastening spell ended abruptly, and she stumbled just a bit as time caught up with her. She turned the stumble into a precise somersault, ducking beneath a dwarf's swing of their axe and coming up to strike.
"This feels almost like old times," Bianca said once all the Carta dwarves lay dead.
Varric raised an eyebrow at her. "I don't remember ever killing anyone with you."
"Remember crashing Bartrand's Guild dinner? We may as well have killed him."
"This isn't nearly as dangerous as pissing off my brother," Varric said. There was a tone to his voice that said there was a story there.
Ciri rubbed her forehead. The sound of the red lyrium seemed even worse with so much of it gathered all together. Malika and Rainier barely seemed affected, but Dorian and Varric had wrinkles between their brows that spoke of an impending headache, and there was a rigidity to Bianca's posture that hadn't been there before.
"Back this way," Bianca said.
She led them past the whining, humming lyrium to the far end of the room, where a highly polished mahogany table stood beside another of Bianca's doors, bearing books and an open ledger. It seemed incongruous in a place where everything was made of stone, even the furniture. In the center of the ledger, in plain view, a key lay.
Bianca hurried over and scooped up the key. "There you are!"
She inserted the key into a hidden keyhole, and the door locked with the sound of grinding gears and tumblers falling into place. Her rigid shoulders dropped, and she let out a sigh of relief.
"No one will be able to use this entrance again."
"Oh, for…" Varric shook his head slowly as realization dawned. "Bianca."
"Your doors," Ciri said quietly. "Your key. The thaig 'was leaked.' And you're the one responsible."
"It's not like that!" Bianca protested. "Not…entirely."
Ciri rubbed her head again. "Let's talk in the other room. This place is making it hard to think."
The faint, oppressive whine of the red lyrium faded in the other room. They stood well away from the sole growth coming from the corner between the wall and the floor and turned to Bianca for an explanation.
"Please, do explain how you're 'not entirely' the leak when red lyrium is growing all across Thedas," Ciri said with icy civility.
Bianca's eyes darted to Varric. "When I got the location from Varric, I decided to go and have a look for myself. And I found the red lyrium, and I…studied it."
"Why?" Varric demanded. "I told you what it does to people!"
"Exactly!" Bianca snapped. "I was doing you a favor. You told me what it did to your brother. I thought if I found answers, maybe we could get him out of that sanatorium someday. You've had people studying it for years now and they haven't come up with anything useful. I just…wanted to help figure it out."
Varric huffed and crossed his arms. "And did you?"
"Actually…yes." Bianca leaned forward, her eyes alight with her discovery. "Red lyrium – it has the Blight, Varric. But the Blight doesn't infect minerals, only animals. Which means that lyrium is alive! Or something like it."
"That makes sense, actually," Ciri said. "Triss was studying the composition of lyrium in blood, and she said it didn't look like a mineral to her." She left off that it had appeared bacterial as she was unsure how advanced Bianca's knowledge was.
"Hold a moment." Rainier stared at Bianca with a dark frown on his scarred, bearded face. "You mean to say all this cursed lyrium we keep finding all over Thedas is Blighted? Why didn't you go to the Wardens with this?"
"I did," Bianca told him swiftly. "As soon as I figured it out. I went looking for a Grey Warden mage. What better – Blight and magical expertise in one, right? And I found someone, a Warden mage named Larius. He seemed really interested in helping with my research. So, I gave him a key."
"Larius?" Varric echoed incredulously. "You're kidding. He was in the old Grey Warden prison where Hawke and I killed Corypheus. He wasn't a mage then, so – oh, shit."
"We know Corypheus can influence the Wardens' minds," Ciri said. "Maybe it's something similar. Or he can possess people." That was an awful thought.
Malika made a face and nudged Rainier with her elbow. "Sure picked a great time to join the Wardens, didn't I, handsome?"
"You found a magical expert, alright," Varric said. "A darkspawn magister from ancient times has to know all sorts of things about magic and the Blight."
Bianca paled and braced herself against the wall. "But he seemed so normal."
"Yeah, we didn't think anything was off with him when he left the prison, either," Varric consoled her.
She shook her head. "I didn't think anything of it until you wrote to tell me you'd found red lyrium in Haven and the Hinterlands. I came here as soon as I could get free of my obligations, and found, well, all of this. Then I went to you."
Ciri looked away from Bianca and stared at the corpses, the red lyrium growth, the expressions on her companions' faces. Varric seemed angry but underlying that was hurt. Dorian didn't seem nearly as angry as Varric – in fact, he seemed like he had more questions for Bianca about her discovery. Malika and Rainier, on the other hand…
She'd never seen Malika look so serious, not even when Rainier had come clean to her in the War Room. Becoming a Grey Warden hadn't just changed Rainier, it seemed. And Rainier looked as grim as Stroud could get at times.
She frowned and turned back to Bianca. "You tried to do the right thing by going to a Grey Warden. Either you have the rottenest luck in the world, or Corypheus made certain you'd run across him first. But whichever it is, keeping quiet about it for so long led to Blighted lyrium formations cropping up across half of Thedas."
"That's why I came to Varric," Bianca said. "I know I screwed up, but we cut off their supply, didn't we? This is as right as we can make it!"
Varric opened his mouth to retort, and Rainier cut him off. "Maker's balls it's not. There's a fucking lyrium-fueled Blight running loose across Thedas, and the order doesn't know anything about it. You want to make things right? Come back to Soldier's Peak with us and share your research. The Wardens need to know what we're facing if we're going to have any hope of dealing with it."
"I'm supposed to be back in the Free Marches in three weeks," Bianca protested.
Malika glared at her. "Was this about actually fixing things, or was it about soothing your conscience? Run back home if it's that. But we'll know. And we'll remember."
Bianca looked like she was going to protest further, then the wind went out of her sails, and her gaze followed the same path Ciri's had, lingering on the corpses and the jutting spike of lyrium. "I'll write to Bogdan," she said quietly. "Tell him the Ferelden Grey Wardens asked me to consult on a project. However long you need, you have my help. I do want to set things right."
"Good to hear," Rainier said with a firm nod.
Perhaps Ciri had been too hasty comparing Bianca to the sorceresses on the Continent. Far too few of them ever acknowledged or learned from their mistakes, after all.
"We should burn the bodies and see to the rest of the thaig," Ciri told Dorian.
Dorian grimaced. "That's probably unwise. There's a chance the flames might catch the red lyrium, and we don't want to breathe that in."
"Aye," Rainier agreed. "The last thing we need is for you to come down with Blight sickness – especially whatever twisted version the red lyrium carries. We've seen what it does to the Templars. The Inquisition can't afford to lose you to it."
Ciri sighed. She understood, but she didn't have to like it. "The darkspawn, then?"
"The work never ends," Malika said, clapping her on the back as she headed back to the doorway. "Come on, Your Handiness. With luck, we'll be out of here by supper."
"Kid," Varric said wryly, "when are we ever that lucky?"
Happy one year anniversary to this fic, and to my return to writing! Whether you've just found this fic today or you've been here from the start, I appreciate you as a reader so much. You're great.
