The cadence of the group's morning had been set by Elissa's frustrated grunts and glares. Breakfast wasn't being eaten quickly enough. The berth the Dalish had given her in the dining area hadn't been wide enough. Their inventory hadn't been secured tightly enough.
Zathrian had looked on from the edges of camp, relief at their departure easy to read on his face even at such a distance. They'd need to return, of course, to deliver Witherfang's heart, but all that remained after that was the swift handoff of treaties.
Finally past the cursed barrier, the tree branch that had allowed them passage was unceremoniously dumped into a pile of leaves. Judging from Elissa's scowl as she stomped through the mystical fog, Kalya got the impression the warrior would have hacked the Grand Oak into firewood if she'd been out here alone.
Fighting the sylvans had been easy enough. There were just so many of them, and their habit of springing to life right next to Kalya was beginning to wear on her nerves. Perhaps it was just coincidence, but they never seemed to spring to life when the others were within branch distance. Kalya had begun wheeling around, jabbing the air at the smallest snapped twig - murder tree or not.
"'Tis a rage demon within each of them," Morrigan smirked. "Like attracts like, it would seem."
Kalya sneered at the witch, who just cackled. Morrigan's mood was way too light for the angry cold. Besides, it wasn't just Kalya's own nerves she was worried about.
With every passing day, Zevran was becoming more ferocious. His energy was unmatched, but he had to be reaching his limit. When he did and endangered them all, would Elissa simply dismiss him from the party, or attempt something more permanent? And what would Alistair say when Kalya then had to fucking murder Elissa? No, it didn't do to dwell on any inevitabilities.
For anyone who knew what to look for, it was easy to see the cracks in Zev's intense facade. More vicious, raw attacks meant more chances to make a mistake, a miscalculation. Void, in his carelessness, he could tread wrong on a stone and turn his ankle and the tide of a fight.
Luckily, Elissa paid the elves so little mind, It was easy to hide his ailment from her. Was it any wonder that Kalya had been able to disappear into her own demons for so long?
To be fair, it wasn't just the elves Elissa was ignoring. Their leader had been tight-lipped to the entire party for weeks, and it was becoming noticeable even to the others the growing coldness between her and Alistair.
As the mists cleared, they rounded a verdant hill, and the ruins of a temple stretched into view a hundred meters or so in the distance. Elissa held her hand up in a fist, signing for the group to stop and rest a moment. Eyeing the surrounding trees suspiciously, Kalya stayed close.
"What's the plan here?" Alistair tipped his leather skin to his mouth, spilling a bit of water on his mail. He pawed at it unsuccessfully with his steel gauntlet.
Elissa's lip curled, addressing the entire group. "The plan is for you to follow my lead. The time for strategizing ended days ago while you lot were relaxing at camp."
Alistair breathed slowly, the same way Kalya had witnessed the evening prior. No emotion betrayed his features, which meant he was seething.
With a dip of her stomach, it occurred to Kalya that Elissa had invited Alistair to her tent for formulating a plan the night before - a conversation which would have been waylaid by whatever cover story he'd spun to delay their departure while she and Zevran found Morrigan. Elissa's sour mood towards Alistair was partly Kalya's fault. Well, Zevran's, but hadn't he juiced himself with lyrium to numb the pain of Kalya... dying?
Leliana cleared her throat softly. "We have learned much about Zathrian in the past few days. If you shared what you know, we could offer -"
"Here's what I know." Elissa smiled sweetly. "Eamon has been waiting for us - for Alistair - to return for weeks. So the plan now is to rip out Witherfang's heart and leave these dripping woods as quickly as humanly possible." She enunciated those last words with a pointed look to the elves.
Kalya opened her mouth to speak, but Zevran beat her to it.
"Are you insinuating that we," he gestured between himself and Kalya, "are somehow impeding your forward momentum?"
"I'm insinuating that your little goodwill errands made you pawns in the Dalish game of Knight-for-hire, and the sooner we remove that wolf, the sooner we're back to the mission."
Kalya jerked her chin towards Elissa. "Is that your mission or Alistair's mission?"
"The Grey Wardens' mission." The warrior was unwavered. "While I don't expect you to understand, I don't have time to speak more slowly."
A sudden rustling down the path set each of their hands to their weapons. Emerging from between the branches on the embankment above was a pack of hulking werewolves lurching forward on reedy hind legs. The half-dozen of them leapt down the hill with astonishing speed, blocking the Wardens' path forward. But something stalled their advance.
Before Elissa could call the strike, the grey werewolf at the forefront swept its arm and beckoned towards the group with a low growl.
"You are stronger than we could have anticipated, but you do not belong here, outsiders. For the last time, leave this place!"
Elissa rounded on the beast, fists hefted around her great hulking weapon. "If you know our strength, then you know this is not a negotiation."
The wolf bared its teeth, grey fur prickling along its hunched back. "You are as treacherous as the Dalish. We will not allow harm to come to Witherfang!"
"I am nothing like the Dalish," Elissa spat. "If you'll not bring us to Witherfang peacefully, we'll take the temple by force."
Kalya tried to push from her mind that these creatures had been human once - some maybe even elves. Regardless of whether they could undo the damage, the group had no choice when the fight was brought to them. No different from fighting bandits. Wasn't it?
Next to Kalya, Zevran swayed, rolling his neck. A taut-wound ball of deadly energy.
"If they attack?" he asked quietly. He wasn't taking orders from Elissa anymore, a choice which would surely make their lives more difficult. Kalya sniffed. "They attack, we attack."
The wolf howled a snarling battle cry that echoed through the surrounding trees. "You are an intruder in our home! You come to kill, as all your kind do! We will defend Witherfang and this place with our lives!"
Kalya and Zev locked eyes. With fingers in the air, she drew two halves of a wide circle, and Zev nodded once.
"For the Wardens!" Elissa bellowed. "Fall to the center!" The warriors at the front charged the wolves.
When the groups clashed, the two elves were already skirting around the periphery. Broken clear from the werewolves' frontal attack, Kalya and Zev were primed to pick them off from the sides, with little notice.
Kalya saw the miscalculation in her plan the instant before it happened.
Moving off the path put Zevran directly underneath a giant tree that towered over him like a hulking… Fuck! When the sylvan roared to life, the wolves' ears perked up. And when the humans' gaze followed, the beasts collectively took advantage of the distraction.
Giant claws swiped forward. Alistair and Oghren lurched to the front of the group, bellowing to pull focus and absorb the brunt of the attacks. Leliana and Morrigan backed up to the highest ground they could reach and began their ranged attacks.
The others had a graceful harmony brought on by fighting alongside one another so long. The warriors knew the timbre of Morrigan's voice that meant they needed to duck and fast. Leliana knew Elissa favored fighting on her left side and kept enemies at her right peppered with arrows.
Zevran's erratic behavior was never clearer to his companions than when they were on the battlefield. He was quickly overwhelmed by the giant sylvans, when usually his dexterity had him dancing between enemies. What he lacked in his usual grace he made up by slicing through his enemies with the brutality of a berserker.
But each sylvan that shuddered to life woke another, then another.
Kalya doubled back to support him and earned an angry slice to her face from the snap of a branch. Bloodied and bruised, they both abandoned the werewolf threat completely to take down their new enemies.
When the last sylvan finally fell, the elves turned towards the others to find their leader's face red with rage.
"Zevran!" Elissa screamed, stepping on a limp werewolf corpse to jerk out her broadsword. "What the fuck was that?"
"A failed pincer attack." He brushed a few dry leaves off his leathers. "Why, do you wish to learn it?"
Kalya suddenly picked up something on the wind. A crunch the others couldn't hear, coming from the bottom of the embankment.
Elissa squared her hips to face him up on the ledge. "I wish to learn why you broke rank when I ordered you to -"
A flash of mottled grey loped out from the foliage right behind Elissa. Zevran dove off the embankment without thinking, tackling the creature around the torso. Elissa twisted on her heel, hinging back to miss the two forms by half a meter.
When the two bodies ceased rolling, Zev reared up and drove his shortsword through the soft spot above the creature's clavicle. He was thrown to one side as it spasmed and kicked, but not far enough away. Its thrashing back paws slammed brutally into Zevran's shins.
Kalya watched in horror as his eyes widened, then rolled back. He hit the ground, dark skin shimmering with a dim azure aura as lyrium plunged further into his bloodstream.
Without thinking, Kalya whipped around to Morrigan whose heaving breaths from the fight and wordless glare made her stance obvious. She wouldn't heal this strange loss-of-consciousness with no questions asked in front of Elissa.
"What the Void is wrong with him?" Elissa shook the wolves' blood from her broadsword, then affixed it to her back.
"His head bounced off a rock," Kalya gulped. She was a shit liar, especially when distracted by the thought of raw lyrium swirling around, poisoning his insides.
Elissa's eyes narrowed, but she didn't press further. With a subtle shake to her head, she turned on her boot and walked towards the ruins.
After a moment's hesitation, Alistair and the others followed Elissa towards the vine-covered temple ahead. Leliana offered a worried glance, then jogged to keep up with the group. Only Morrigan hung back.
The moment Elissa was out of sight, Kalya dug in her pack for the contraband potions she'd been storing. She palmed one, ripped off the cork, and spilled it all over Zevran's mouth in her haste to heal him. His eyelids gave no flutter of consciousness.
"'Tis the fool's own fault," the witch hissed. "If he doesn't wake…"
"I know, I know… Can you heal? I'll keep a better watch on him. I swear."
A ball of energy circled around Morrigan's hand, then expanded above Zevran. When it descended over him, sinking into his form, he awoke with a gasp, then scrunched his face in pain.
Kalya pawed frantically through her pack once again, snatching out another potion for him and some lyrium for Morrigan. Zevran took his second dose hungrily. The green vial tipped into his mouth, consumed in a single gulp. With heavy-lidded eyes, he rubbed the excess liquid from his lips with the back of his glove.
"I told you," Morrigan spat. "You had no idea what you were getting into, doing this to yourself."
"Shh shh shh." He shook his head heavily, lolling it to one side as if he had overindulged. The hand holding the potion vial pointed at her. "Morrigan, you have been holding out on us."
He rubbed his aching legs absently. "You never partook in our alcohol-fueled rituals. To discover that lyrium emboldens the spirit like this, while you downed five vials a day?" He winked at her, sniffling a bit. "Your secret is safe with me."
Her lip quivering in barely concealed rage, Morrigan blew out a growl of exasperation that drew some of the party's glances from up ahead.
She turned to Kalya and crooked a finger in her face. "Next time, he stays on the ground."
"Elissa!" Echoing enough to wake the dead in the cold temple, Leliana jogged up to her leader before they could enter the next room.
Elissa rolled her head around her shoulders to ease her mounting tension. Easy kills though they were, room after room of spiders, skeletons, and spirits had taken a toll on their stamina. The group was rooting through the chests strewn about the room, eager to replenish their supplies.
Zevran was doing that damnable bouncing-from-foot-to-foot thing that looked awfully cocksure for an elf who was laid on his back by a single blow from a beast. A beast. Decidedly not a rock, like the Drunk proclaimed.
That wasn't all that was odd about him. Though the rest of them were shivering in the biting air, Zevran had beads of sweat forming on his temple. Every few rooms or so, he'd wick them away with a scarf tucked into his leathers that he thought no one noticed.
"I wasn't sure when to bring this up," Leliana interrupted Elissa's glare. "We've never had the proper agents until now."
Elissa raised an eyebrow, and the bard held up a vial of shimmering liquid. "I spoke to Varathorn back at camp. Now that we have the toxin extract, we can craft our own -"
"No!" Elissa said, and Leliana stuttered back a step as if she'd been slapped. Elissa shut her eyes. Her companions could be so sensitive. She forced calmness into her voice with a steadying breath. "No," she softened. "No poisons."
Leliana nodded after a beat. "Understood, Commander." Then she tuckied the vial into her soft leathers.
The bard's cool composure was an act. Watching her walk away, Elissa knew she was calculating the deeper meaning of this little game of chess they were constantly playing, as if it would reveal something deeper about Elissa none of the others were privy to.
Leliana was wrong.
13-year-old Elissa was still wearing her cloak over her riding clothes as she sat awaiting the pointless attempt at reconciliation.
Her face was fixed in composure, but it had taken everything in her not to jump in fright when the door opened after too long a wait. The act of confidence was all for Howe. Were it just Elissa and Father, he would have needed only her earnest compassion - an emotion that seemed to serve their family less and less in recent years.
Still, cool as she appeared, when her father poked his head out and beckoned her inside, she had to remind herself to breathe.
Rendon was leaning against her father's oak desk, sneering composure on his damnedable face, as it always was. It sickened her to play his game because she was nothing like him.
Father was always so wooed by the man's ease and decisiveness. Tonight, though, his warm smile was beset by downturned eyebrows.
Both men swirled snifters of amber brandy. The tightened shoulders underneath her father's doublet suggested he wasn't partaking much in their patriarchal ritual.
He led Elissa to a leather chair and bade her to sit, the lowered position of weakness unintended, but one Howe surely reveled in. Still, it was impolite to argue.
"Pup," her father began, "I need my only daughter and her uncle on speaking terms. Is there any way we can put an end to this unpleasantness?"
"Yes, father." Polite, but without elaboration.
If Howe knew she'd already hamstrung his plans, his face didn't betray any anger. Extra anger.
Bryce looked between the two of them.
"I'm told Rendon came up with a difficult solution to our problem, and that you disagree." He knelt by her side. "But you're old enough now to know there are some things that must be done. They don't talk about them in the history books, but even the most just rulers have to make difficult decisions."
Elissa's jaw dropped. She'd assumed Rendon hadn't shared his disgusting plan. To learn that her father knew and still wanted to proceed?
The "difficult decision" was that there were too many unhoused peasants "cluttering up the streets" of Highever. Rather than offer support, Rendon Howe's solution was to poison them all under the guise of feeding the poor.
Earlier, in the Highever Markets, Elissa's hood had been up as she shopped at the perfumer's stand. It was there she'd overheard "Uncle" requisitioning enough poison supplies to kill fifty men. And women and children.
She'd been wise enough to put two and two together, but still too naive to avoid gaping a beat too long. When the crooked herbalist jutted his chin in her direction, Rendon had turned and scowled.
For an instant, the flash of daggers in his eyes actually made her fearful of her wellbeing. Only for an instant.
"Father, you couldn't possibly support this."
Bryce's forehead knit together with concern. "I know what you must think of me, but Rendon's plan to cart the homeless away and pay for their passage to Kirkwall is sound. They might even find a better life there! But we both can appreciate your concern."
Ah. She dared not tell her sweet father the truth.
"Well, no need," she said, unable to hide her smugness. "I've just come back from speaking with one of the Guard-Captains, and I asked him to discard all the... boats."
It wasn't a perfect cover, but Highever's rainy season was approaching, so perhaps father could be convinced there would be no more voyages for months. In truth, she'd requested the herbalist's arrest and his cache of poisons raided.
Bryce turned to his old friend. Rendon's lip twitched as his gaze bore into her.
"Now that Elissa has come into her own, I must ask," Rendon formed every word with barely disguised rage, "how are we going to deal with the homeless plaguing Highever's streets? Their unfortunate habit of bathing in our city's canals is already making our constituents sick."
Elissa sat up straighter. "I assure you, there will be no more poisoning our constituents." She turned to her father. "In my lessons, we learned of a thaig in Orzammar who rehabilitated those down-on-their-luck. I've calculated the cost and it could work for us, too!"
Rendon shook his head, bored. "And where will the funds come from?"
"We could divert them from our military spending."
Bryce swirled the brandy in its glass, then drained the remainder. "Rendon?"
Howe's face tightened into a facsimile of a smile. "My lord." He bowed deep. "Your daughter is wise as she is beautiful."
The three were quiet as Bryce crossed the room to break the glare between them, stopping at the small brandy barrel atop his oak desk. When he pulled the cork, however, nothing spilled into his glass.
"And it looks like the barrel is dry." He nodded to the both of them. "If you'll excuse me. I'll be but a moment."
Elissa gulped the moment she was alone with Rendon. Never before had she felt this unsafe in his presence. She was avoiding his gaze successfully, but when the rogue clamped a hand on her shoulder, she jumped in fright.
Rendon threw his head back and began to laugh.
"You think you're so smart, don't you? And yet, you didn't tell your father the true plan. Little Elissa still lacks a spine to discuss the grown-up matters, lest it upset Dear Pa-pa."
Elissa glared ahead, gaze resolute on a bookshelf. "The poison is gone, Rendon."
"Which Guard-Captain was it, I wonder? Was it Ser Marrillet?"
Elissa's mouth went dry.
Rendon chuckled, thick and phlegmy in his throat. "Oh, Marrillet was given express instructions to deliver the poisons at any cost. Once we knew a Pup was sniffing around, we upped the timeline to tonight. I imagine the poison has been dispensed, oh, right around when you were untacking your precious horse. Did you happen to check its hooves, by the way? We all know how careless you are with breakouts of Blight Hoof."
The color drained from Elissa's face. She was going to be sick. All the research, all the planning… and the people were still going to die. Were dying right now. She'd failed.
And now that Rendon knew of her meddling, he'd plant in Bryce some reason the poor peasants had to perish suddenly the way they did. Stifling any story Elissa spouted now about having known of the plan beforehand.
Elissa stood suddenly, flush with anger. Her "uncle" stood between her and the door, but she was of a mind to storm past him, danger be damned.
Rendon tapped along his snifter with too-long nails, chuckling again. "A real leader would have put a stop to my plan right there in the market. You see? I'm teaching you ever so much more about difficult decisions than your father even realizes. So here's my advice..."
The disgusting man closed the space between them in an instant and grabbed her by the cheeks, squeezing painfully.
"Until you can find your spine, don't defy me again."