"Rhyanon, look."
She turns back toward Anders, who is crouched down next to the barn, humming softly and reaching out a hand. She sinks onto her knees in the grass, next to him. "What are you doing?"
He shakes her head, urging her to be quiet, and then grins as an orange-striped kitten cautiously approaches his outstretched hand. He runs a finger over the animal's soft fur, and the kitten meows contentedly. "He likes me," Anders sighs.
"Anders, be careful," Rhyanon pleads. "We don't know where its mother is."
But the kitten is already nuzzling its head against Anders's palm. "I can take care of him, Rhyanon." He gives her a pleading look. As if he needs her permission.
Rhyanon remembers when they were young, when Anders cuddled the Tower's mouser, sitting on the floor of the kitchen with a huge grin on his face. It was one of the few times that Rhyanon can remember seeing him truly happy. "Fine," she sighs. "Keep the cat."
Anders picks the kitten up gently and looks into its bright eyes. The kitten meows loudly, and Anders cradles it in his hand for a few moments before dropping it into the deep pocket of his coat. From inside the coat, the cat meows again. Rhyanon rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. Anders grins back, genuinely content now that he can feel the warmth of the animal cuddled inside his pocket.
"Thank you, Rhyanon," he says, reaching out to take her hand.
She slips her fingers into his and gives him a shy smile. "You're welcome."
"He needs a name," Anders determines. He is entertaining the cat with a bit of string while Nathaniel and Oghren look on. The kitten swipes at the string gleefully, chasing it around the top of the table. "I know. I'll call him Ser Pounce-a-lot."
"You can't be serious," Rhyanon comments from the other end of the table.
Anders glances at her. "Well, what would you call him?"
"I don't know, he's not my cat."
Anders runs a thumb down the kitten's back inside his pocket. "Don't listen to her, Pounce," he says sweetly. Rhyanon shakes her head, then swipes a hunk of bread from Anders plate and chews on it as she makes her way toward Varel's office.
The seneschal looks overwhelmed, but then he always does. He, after all, is in charge of running the arling while Rhyanon is off traipsing all over the countryside looking for darkspawn.
"There are too many refugees," he muses. "Coming from all over Ferelden. Until now, Amaranthine had been spared the worst of the darkspawn invasion."
"I won't turn them away," Rhyanon insists, and she can sense Varel's disappointment. Or worry. He is more practical than her bleeding heart ever could be.
"We won't have enough food for everyone, come winter," he says, and he makes it sound final. Rhyanon grinds her teeth.
"I'll figure something out," she promises, and it's yet another promise she isn't sure she'll be able to keep. But she's a mage, isn't she? What is the point of magic if it can't do something as simple as feeding people?
She shoves her way past Varel and sits down at the desk, trying to ignore his pointed glare. "I said I'll figure it out!" she snaps. "What else is going on?"
He sighs and sits down in the chair across the desk from her. "The fortifications to the Keep are nearly finished," he tells her. "Though we may have to divert the remaining funds..."
Rhyanon nods, taking a deep breath and letting Varel talk.
Thunder rolls like drumbeats through a slate-grey sky. Rhyanon turns away from the window to look at the messenger standing in the doorway of the small library. His face is flushed, and he is panting, out of breath. How far did he run, to meet her here?
"Commander," the boy cries, bent over with his hands on his knees. "They're coming. A whole army!"
"Who's coming?" Rhyanon asks. She crosses the room in a few paces and takes the boy's hand, pulling him up to stand so that she can look him in the eye.
"The darkspawn. It looks like the whole of the Deep Roads have been emptied. Like it's another Blight."
Rhyanon doesn't even think. She just follows the boy down to the courtyard of the Keep, strapping on her sword and armor along the way. She can hear the trumpeting bugles calling out the warning to the whole of Vigil's Keep, and Rhyanon's heart swells with pride when she sees her Wardens gathering in front of the main gate, ready to fight. Anders meets her eyes as soon as she approaches the group, and she gives him a nod of reassurance, or approval. He smiles grimly, then crosses his arms over his chest to wait for orders.
"We've been preparing for this for a long time," Rhyanon says. "We always knew this was coming." She'd known, anyway. The darkspawn had never stopped assaulting her dreams.
"We're ready, Commander," Nathaniel assures her. She nods, and begins giving orders, spreading her Wardens out among the Keep's mundane soldiers and guards, most of them volunteers from the arling, only some of whom had fought in the king's army. People will die today. There's no escaping it, but it makes Rhyanon's stomach constrict with guilt all the same.
She takes a deep breath, and prepares for the coming fight. She positions herself atop the walls near the main gate, where most of the soldiers will be able to see her, and from where she will hopefully be able to maintain an awareness of the whole battle. Her heart begins to pound wildly in her chest as she sees the darkspawn army headed their way. They move like a writhing shadow that swallows the land, a mass of unwashed bodies and clanking weapons. The darkspawn, Rhyanon knows, don't fight like humans fight. They are primitive, primal. They are predators bred in the depths of the earth, and they will not stop until they are killed. They don't show fear the way that humans do, they don't think or strategize in a traditional sense either. They are vicious, mindless things. Or at least they used to be.
But killing them is the sole purpose of the Grey Wardens, and Rhyanon can feel that purpose pulsing through her blood with each beat of her heart. Her mana buzzes on the surface of her skin, like a static charge just waiting to be directed. She glances to her left, where Anders stands on the battlements on the opposite side of the gate, preparing, just like she is, to launch spells into the oncoming horde.
She can hear them coming, now. Their roaring competes with the rumbling thunder, and then overpowers it. Rhyanon concentrates on their front ranks, targeting them when they are still out of range of the Keep's archers and long-range weapons. Rhyanon imagines she can see first a spark, then a flame. She sends her mana out toward that vision of a spark, and watches it kindle a blaze that blossoms into an inferno, a wall of fire directly in front of the darkspawn horde. She grins and imagines she can hear the darkspawn howling and gnashing their teeth as the fire consumes them.
But still the darkspawn army surges forward, as inevitably as the tide of the ocean. Those that cannot find a way around the fire simply charge through it. Rhyanon maintains concentration for as long as she is able, slowing them down and giving her men time to prepare. When enough of the darkspawn have come into their range, the archers, led by Nathaniel Howe, loose their arrows, and Rhyanon drops the spell.
The deluge of arrows raining down on the darkspawn takes down at least a dozen of the beasts, and their companions simply trample over them in their haste to get to the Keep and the Wardens within. Rhyanon half-closes her eyes, reaching out through the Fade to get a sense of the darkspawn, looking for... yes, there is one of the emissaries, their mages. She throws a fireball at the monster, which may as well be a signal flare for the archers all around her. Once she has given them the target, they take down the emmisary without difficulty. But that is only one of many.
Mages are rare, among the darkspawn as well as among the humans and elves of Thedas. Perhaps one in every hundred of the darkspawn has the power to cast spells. But that still leaves too many very dangerous casters among the horde. Rhyanon tries to take them out of play. They draw attention to themselves by casting, fire and lightning surging forth from their outstretched hands. Rhyanon knows that she is in just as much danger, which she tries to mitigate by pacing the battlements, moving as much as she can while still maintaining concentration on the spells she casts.
"Commander!" someone calls, and she just barely manages to avoid the blast of a fireball that was aimed directly at her. The flame dies quickly against the stone walls surrounding her, and she professes her thanks to the young man who had warned her. The young soldier beams, as though her simple words were a precious gift.
The clash of battle could only stay at a distance for so long. Rhyanon looks down, where Oghren leads a group of soldiers defending the gate. The defenders on the walls pour down boiling oil and flaming tar onto the darkspawn who mass in front of the Keep's entrance. The 'spawn attempt to batter down the wall, but though Rhyanon swears she can feel the foundations of the castle shaking underneath her, the gate holds. She knows it can't hold forever, though.
She casts a quake that shakes the ground beneath the darkspawn just in front of the Keep's gate. The ground opens up and swallows several of the darkspawn. Rhyanon can feel sweat dripping into her eyes. Mana is not an inexhaustible resource, and who knows how long this battle will last?
She glances over at Anders. He casts a few bolts of lightning at carefully targeted darkspawn – leaders and spellcasters – hoping to break the chain of command, but she knows that he is saving most of his mana for the healing that will certainly be needed later.
She hears the crack and squealing of metal that signifies the darkspawn's breach of the main gate. Rhyanon flinches, but she trusts her people. The gate is narrow, and the darkspawn will be able to come into the Keep only a few at a time. Perhaps they can still stem the tide.
Oghren's team does what it was meant to do. The dwarven Warden stands between the darkspawn and the innocent people of Amaranthine, and he cuts down darkspawn as though they were standing still, holding his axe in a powerful two-handed grip. Rhyanon can hear his bellowed war cry, and she smiles grimly, before reaching out once again with her mana and calling down lightning from the sky to play over the darkspawn attempting to charge the gate. The electricity fells a score of the beasts, and Rhyanon lets the spell die. She stumbles, and one of the soldiers grabs her arm before she can fall. He gently sits her down behind the wall, and she leans her head back against the stone and tries to catch her breath.
"I'll be fine," she insists. "I just need..." She reaches into her pocket and her hand closes around a smooth glass vial. She pulls it out and stares at the liquid reflecting blue inside. She swallows the lyrium, a split-second decision she won't allow herself to second-guess. But Alistair had always had a darkness in his eyes when he watched her drink the stuff. She knows why, and she can't help the guilt that bubbles up as she tucks the now-empty vial back into her pocket.
The surge of mana floods her body in a predictable wave. She turns back to the darkspawn, the inexhaustible tide, and she sends out fire and lightning in a fast-paced assault that mows down countless numbers of the creatures. She looks down into the courtyard, but she doesn't see Oghren there. There is no flash of his telltale red hair in her field of vision.
The archers are still firing thousands of arrows down into the horde. Darkspawn corpses litter the field in front of the Keep. Rhyanon knows that the Vigil can hold against this assault. The darkspawn outnumber the Keep's defenders, but Rhyanon's people hold the advantage. Oghren's team on the ground works in concert with Nathaniel's archers and Rhyanon's spells to repel the invaders. Velanna takes a small group of scouts and saboteurs out into the darkspawn horde, to sneak up behind the emissaries directing the army, assasinating those leaders with brutal efficiency.
A normal human army would break and run. The darkspawn won't do that. Rhyanon drinks down vial after vial of lyrium simply to ensure that none of the 'spawn will be able to terrorize her arling after the battle is over. She has to make sure that every single one of the darkspawn is dead. Thankfully, she has her own army, fighting for their own survival just as much as they are fighting for her. It takes hours – it feels like days – but an eerie hush eventually falls over the battlefield.
And one lone darkspawn walks toward the gate of Vigil's Keep, gliding forward smoothly despite the countless corpses of its brethren at its feet. Rhyanon quests out with her magical senses, expecting to sense another magic-user approaching, but she does not feel the familiar spark of power inside this darkspawn.
"Who are you?" Rhyanon calls out into the quiet. "What do you want?"
The darkspawn tilts its head, and Rhyanon swears even from this distance that its inhuman eyes lock with hers. Still, it does not answer. Rhyanon isn't sure she expected it to. And against the combined forces of the army of Amaranthine, one darkspawn stands no chance. Rhyanon isn't sure who is responsible for mowing it down, but she'd like to think it's Nathaniel. The arrows pierce cleanly through the darkspawn's armor, and it falls into a pool of its own blood.
The Wardens gather at the courtyard just inside the gate, and it's then that Rhyanon finds Oghren. He is facedown in the mud and blood, unmoving. She swallows hard, choked by fear and the stomach-clenching certainty that the dwarf is dead. But she falls to her knees anyway, reaching out to search for proof of life: a heartbeat, a breath... but there's nothing.
"Anders, I need help!" she cries.
He takes a few steps forward, toward her and Oghren, but he's shaking his head before he even crouches down beside her. "There's nothing I can do," he whispers, and to Rhyanon's ear he sounds genuinely sorry. She wonders if he and Oghren had become friends, somwhere along the way.
A well of grief and guilt surges up in Rhyanon. She hadn't quite thought of Oghren as a friend – she still believes that she doesn't have any friends, but he was hers. Under her command, one of the now countless numbers of men and women who latched themselves onto her cause when they didn't have to, and now he is dead because of it.
She closes Oghren's eyes and looks up at Anders. "Come on," she says. "We'll have to-"
Anders takes her hand and squeezes. "Come inside, Rhyanon. I promise he'll be taken care of."
She shakes her head, protesting the idea that it's possible to take care of Oghren anymore – he's dead. Even though she understands what Anders is saying. There are too many bodies to easily count, and someone – Anders is saying it doesn't have to be her – will have to be responsible for cleaning them up, for burning them on an Andrastein funeral pyre. "Come on, Rhyanon," Anders repeats, and she slowly follows him.
The cleanup will take days, or weeks, or even longer. Rhyanon sits curled up in a chair in the library, watching the rain pouring down in heavy sheets. She has always loved the rain. One of her few remaining memories of her childhood in Kirkwall is of running through the market streets, dancing through the puddles as the rain soaked her through. She was laughing the entire while.
She looks up as Anders enters the small room. Pounce's head sticks out from his pocket, tilted questioningly at her until Anders feeds him a small morsel of meat saved from an earlier meal.
"The Revered Mother wants to know if you'll speak at the ceremony."
Rhyanon nods slowly. She still doesn't believe in the Chantry's prayers, and mages aren't usually granted funeral services, but the people who died serving under her command deserve her presence as their bodies are burned and their souls given to the Maker. Anders looks happy that she's agreed. She wonders if he'll take comfort in the proceedings in a way that she won't. She hopes so, although she doesn't tell him that, not aloud. The topic of the Chantry has always started fights between the two of them, and she doesn't want to fight.
"Don't worry, Rhyanon," Anders says. "I'll be right beside you."
In the solemn twilight, the dozen or so Wardens of Vigil's Keep stand around the funeral pyre. Rhyanon takes a shaky breath. She isn't crying, but she is still overwhelmed by a sense of terrible loss. She looks back at her fellow Wardens, uncertain of what to say. After a moment, Anders takes a few steps forward and takes her hand. He squeezes it gently, and Rhyanon gives him a weak smile before she presses on. "Oghren wouldn't have wanted this," she says, waving her hand to indicate their small and somber gathering. "He'd have wanted us getting drunk and laughing, remembering the good times. I intend for us to do just that, after this is finished." The others nod, willing to accept that truth and ready to join her. "Oghren knew what he was doing," Rhyanon continues. "He knew what he was giving up. And he did it anyway. He was a true hero, and he deserves to be celebrated."
Rhyanon calls a ball of fire to her hand, then lights the pyre. The flame catches quickly, and rises up to the sky. The Wardens stand their vigil until the air becomes thick with smoke. Then Rhyanon leads them inside. She'd promised them a celebration worthy of the dwarf, and so, even though she doesn't really feel like it, she goes into the kitchens to gather food and alcohol. "Oghren would have had a better stash," she tells them all, but they drink the beer she's found all the same. They share stories, and Rhyanon is pleasantly surprised to realize just how many of these people Oghren had formed a genuine friendship with. It makes the sacrifice he'd made somehow all the more worthwhile.
As the rest of the Wardens fall into relaxed conversation, Rhyanon removes herself from them. As Commander, she has always felt like she needs to keep herself a little bit separate, but more than that, right now, there is something she needs to do. She slides into one of the small rooms opposite the main hall that Varel has turned into an office. The room is abandoned, like she'd known it would be, but there is parchment and ink hidden in the desk, and that is what she came here for.
She sits down with a heavy heart, and struggles to write. She isn't even entirely certain how this letter will find Oghren's family, yet she still feels compelled to write it. She tells them some of the stories that the Wardens in the other room are sharing even now, the milder ones. And she tells them that she'll provide for them, whether they want to come up to the surface like Oghren did or stay in the dwarven cities underground. Rhyanon doesn't have much money, but she can offer this. She has to. Finally, after what seems like hours have passed, she blots dry the ink on the letter, then folds and seals
it. She trusts Varel to be able to deliver it. He will find a way.
Somehow she hadn't been expecting anyone else to be awake when she returned to the main hall, but Anders is still there, playing a slow and easy game of cards with Nathaniel Howe. Rhyanon is glad to see them both smiling. Nathaniel slides a mug of ale across the table to her, and Rhyanon sips at it, knowing that it's a tribute to Oghren.
None of them retreat to bed until the sun is already beginning to rise, tinting the sky with pinks and oranges.
"How can we be sure there won't be more darkspawn coming?" Nathaniel asks. "I mean, they're basically unlimited. There might be a million of them in the Deep Roads."
"We defeated their army. Surely they won't try another frontal assault so soon."
"We could try going after them on their home ground."
Rhyanon shakes her head. "We killed the broodmother."
"One broodmother," Nathaniel stresses. "Who's to say there aren't more?"
Rhyanon grinds her teeth and lets a little of her anger and frustration seep into her expression. Nathaniel takes the hint.
"We'll have to patrol," she finally agrees. "Make sure all the passages up from the Roads are sealed. But I'm not planning on leaving the Vigil. Are you?"
Nathaniel shakes his head fiercely. The people of this arling will have Wardens to protect them, until his dying day. One look at the group of Amaranthine-born volunteers proves he is not alone in his conviction. Rhyanon hates the thought of routinely returning to the Deep Roads: those claustrophobic tunnels unsettle her more than she will ever admit out loud. But that's what she signed on for when she became a Grey Warden, and she can't and won't shirk that duty. And the people around her signed on to follow her: she plans to give them a model worthy of following.
"Alright," she sighs. "It's settled, then."
She turns to Anders, who hovers at the edge of the conversation as if not entirely certain it pertains to him. Nathaniel watches her walk over to the healer, and he excuses himself with a smile. He knows that Anders will take good care of the Commander.
Rhyanon isn't really in the mood for smiling, but Anders seems to understand that. He gathers her hand in his and pulls her closer. "I never imagined I would miss Oghren," he says quietly. "But I think that I will."
"I will," Rhyanon agrees. "He made the Deep Roads feel less overwhelmingly frightening. Just charged in like it was nothing. He did that the first time we met."
"I hate the Deep Roads," Anders mutters.
"I know," Rhyanon says softly. "I never wanted..."
She trails off, but Anders seems to know what she's going to say, and he shakes his head, refusing to let her take the blame for something he's told her over and over again is not her fault. "Rhyanon, I wanted to – I want to be a Warden."
"Why?" she asks plaintively, though she thinks she might know the answer and she thinks that his reasons might be similar to her own: the Wardens give them the power to fight. That was something they'd never had in the Circle.
Anders confirms her guess with the fire in his eyes before he even says a word.
He stands guard over her as she sleeps in the bright light of day. Rhyanon shifts as he crawls into bed with her, planting a kiss on her temple. Her eyes flutter open. The afternoon shadows slanting through the room prove it's been hours since she first crawled into the overly large bed. She rolls over onto her back and tries to let herself relax. Her ribs rise and fall with every breath.
She props herself up on her elbow as Anders slips out of the bed, fully dressed. "Going somewhere?" she asks him.
He nods. "Yeah, I um... there's something I have to do."
"Need me to come along?"
He shakes his head, and Rhyanon frowns. He's being cagey, the way he once had been in the Tower when they were growing up. But she lets him go.
Anders kneels in the chapel, head bowed over folded hands, praying. He knows that Oghren, like most dwarves, hadn't placed any faith in the human Chantry, but he doesn't know where else to go to find the answers he seeks. He's seen how Rhyanon has retreated into herself. He knows how afraid she is of losing the people she loves. And she and Oghren were friends, even though they may not have shown it in obvious ways.
He leaves the chapel, stopping by the kitchens on the way, and then returns to Rhyanon's room. But she isn't there. He sets the plates full of food down on her bedside table, and starts searching the Keep for her. He isn't worried. Rhyanon is at home in every nook and cranny of this place, and he doesn't fear for her physical safety – she is a Warden surrounded by Wardens. But it disappoints him that he doesn't know where to find her. Once upon a time, back in the Circle days, he would have known the first place to look.
He checks the library, the stables, the practice yards where young men spar with borrowed weapons and armor. Finally, he thinks to make his way to Varel's office, where he finds Rhyanon buried in stacks of paperwork, surrounded by books and ledgers.
She smiles when she sees him, and he smiles back, though he doesn't disguise his concern. "I brought you breakfast," he says. "Did you eat?"
She shakes her head, but she barely looks at him as she scribbles a note onto the parchment in front of her. Anders sits down in an empty chair across from her, and leans forward, trying to get her attention. He knows what she's trying to do. He settles back into his chair and just watches her for a bit, trying to seem casual about it. But he isn't fooling anyone.
"What?" Rhyanon finally asks, sounding strained.
"I just wondered if you wanted to talk," he says quietly. She hasn't talked to anyone about Oghren's death, and he knows how much it has to be hurting her. The dwarf was one of hers, and he'd like to think he knows Rhyanon well enough to understand that she feels responsible for losing him. "It isn't your fault, you know," he says aloud, in case she needs to hear it.
She just glares at him. But he hears the hiccup in her breathing that signals that she is trying to get control of her emotions. Suddenly, the space between them created by the large desk feels like an unforgivably long distance.
"Rhyanon, please," he begs, leaning in as close to her as the furniture will allow.
Rhyanon takes another shaky breath, then finally meets Anders's eye. And she wilts, just a little. She is still recognizably the Commander that Anders has learned to recognize here at Vigil's Keep, but she's the girl he knows, too. The one who is so afraid that everyone she allows herself to get close to will be taken away. They say you can take the mage out of the Circle, but you can't take the Circle out of the mage. This absolute fear of being left alone cuts him right to the heart.
"I'm still here," he tells her.
She nods, and lets him hold her, but he can already feel her starting to pull away.
"I suppose I'd never thought about what would happen, after," Velanna says softly.
Anders nods. He rests his chin on his folded hands and stares out over the battlements. He glances over at the Dalish woman. "There are tales in the histories of Wardens who went out on their own, in the years after a Blight. Walking the wild lands."
Velanna nods. "I will consider it," she says.
Anders turns back to taking in the view. "I suppose we'll all have to figure out what we're going to do now," he admits. He can already feel the restlessness and wanderlust stirring in his blood. Rhyanon has told him over and over again that he isn't trapped here, and he believes her. But the Blight tainting his blood still feels like a leash stronger than any Chantry phylactery. And he doesn't want to leave Rhyanon. He wants to stay with her.
He sighs deeply, and runs a hand through his bedraggled hair. "Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?" he asks Velanna.
"Home," she says simply. But the Dalish are a wandering people. Anders doesn't even know how to define the term, and he wonders if Velanna can do so any better. But he keeps his thought to himself. Beside him, Velanna paces back and forth atop the walls of the Vigil.
"This could be home?" Anders says, and it is a question for himself as much as for her. Velanna stops walking and turns back to look at him.
"Perhaps," she agrees cautiously.