Those first weeks after Corypheus' defeat were a blur of activity. Celebration, proclamation, negotiations, and scattered moments of rest without renewal. But that didn't matter: true respite would come when it was all done, so they worked happily toward that goal. Grinding fingers to the bone waiting for the day they could tie it all up in a bright, darling, bow, and say 'the end'.
Pride was abundant, and they indulged. The halls rang with laughter and stank of wine. Banners hung from every wall. She was held aloft as an example to history: a home-grown hero out of the savage Dales. For a time she could even share in that... but how quickly the shine dulled. The cult had left a trail of desolation in its wake. Razed villages, displaced people, and blighted earth. Other powers passed the wreckage hand to hand looking to relieve themselves of its burden. While they dithered, refugees flocked to borders and begged for aid. For shelter from what was left behind. Please do not forget about us. Without loyalty to any one nation, and the Anchor still in hand to mend the rifts that remained, the Inquisition was uniquely qualified to shoulder the weight.
Days became weeks became months lost in the heavy, thankless, work of picking up the pieces of a war-torn country. The promise of a new beginning moving a little further out of reach with every rising dawn. In time, Ellana stopped believing in an, 'after'.
With their leader slain, the surviving Venatori scattered, disgraced, leaving their abominations behind. The battles that followed were endless, empty victories; the culling of a sickened herd. They found them travelling in groups, packed together like animals, lost and aimless with their fists dragging on the ground. Abandoned by their shepherds and left to succumb to the ravages of corruption. As shades of men they staggered through their ruined strongholds and empty villages searching for a blade to end their miserable existence.
There was no glory in putting them down.
And there were so many.
Three hundred. Five hundred. Eight hundred. A thousand. She lost count. New reports arrived every day. Just when they thought an area was clear another missive would arrive and they'd have to pack back up and go on the march all over again. Once the last had fallen in an area they stacked the bodies like firewood. A mountain of exposed bones and pitted flesh that would not rot. Jagged crystals jutting from the hollows where eyes used to be. The infection left them bloated, grotesque, monstrous — more dead than alive. There were no burials for them, just mass graves piled with kindling so they'd burn quicker. She lit each pyre herself, and stayed through the end to watch the flesh melt away and reveal glowing, crystal, bones beneath.
Every night she scrubbed her skin raw trying to rid herself of the smell of it. It lingered on her hair and clothes. Stuck to the inside of her nose. She could feel it on her skin even weeks later.
The worst, though, was the song. Not even death could wrest their souls from lyrium's grasp. The graves hummed as they burned. A tuneless lullabye that hooked and pulled if you strayed too close, itching at the back of your mind. Dark and dangerous and achingly beautiful.
It haunted her.
She'd hear it in the silence when she tried to sleep. Living in that gentle, floating, limbo just before succumbing to exhaustion. As she fell, the darkness sang a dirge on instruments she could almost name, in a tune she couldn't quite grasp, all warped and faded on the distant wind. It tempted her to know it. To open. To welcome it as an old friend and fall into the embrace of a painful end. If she managed to find rest that night, it followed. On a stage draped in crimson her nightmares hosted a chorus of screaming, shadowed faces: men and women seduced by Corypheus' power and tricked into dying for it. Eaten by Blight in the guise of Godhood.
They were children once. Every broken, shattered, body in every smouldering pit. Each had a beating heart, a smile, laughter, and a mother that cradled them. Someone that endured the trial of their birth. In death, she wondered, did they remember who had loved them? Did they regret? Did anyone still remain who knew their names?
Was this mercy?
Of the ones that still resembled people in the end, some were young. Too young. With stubbled chin and budded breasts and the long, skinny, limbs of someone still the throes of adolescence. She'd see their faces later: pallid, bloodless, and frozen in rigour. Little babies ravaged by song. She'd scream. And then her own children — beloved, named, cradled — would look up at her through the veil of illusion, confused and betrayed, wondering why she'd denied them the comfort of her breast.
She had to stop thinking of monsters as people.
Or how the sight reminded her of the future she'd seen at Redcliffe. A broken sky, bodies encased in crystal, and the terrible sound of Solas' body hitting the floor when the Terrors broke through the door.
She couldn't let herself dwell on it, lest the weight of a heavy heart drag her down so far she'd never get back up again.
This didn't feel like victory anymore.
"Does it get easier?" she asked him one night, lying awake like so many others. It was late – or early - and they both should have been sleeping hours already.
He was silent for a time. Then, "Yes," he said to the darkness. "Exposure builds resistance. You become accustomed to war, and its end, and learn not to linger on what your enemies once were. You will have to. But the forming of that callus will harden your heart to more than loss."
She had taken lives before this. Bandits on the road, or men who tried to hurt her people. She remembered every arrow loosed to kill instead of maim. Every line of blood her daggers drew. Every breath held before she made the choice to rush in.
But of the Venatori? Only devastation.
It was startling to realize then that she could not recall when the dead stopped counting as dead, and instead as casualties of violence.
"I don't want to become that person. Someone unmoved by the suffering they can cause."
A silhouette took form in the shadow as he turned to face her. Cheek and shoulder brushed in silver moonlight. "You will, nonetheless. Or you will not endure it. You cannot be the leader they need while nurturing a gentle spirit. Your love for people is sincere, but you offer it too easily. To too many. You cannot care for the needs of every one. As your influence – the Inquisition - continues to grow, more will be asked of you. You will find yourself pulled in many different directions. Trying to heal all the sick and soothe all the weary... It is a losing game. It will stretch you thinner and thinner, until there is nothing left of you to give. Not everyone can be helped, not all will be spared. One call will be ignored to favour the meet that grants the power to answer two more. Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain. The legacy you leave will be decided by wit called ruthlessness, or heart called weakness."
She thought of Celene, burning alienages, and how cold her hatred felt.
"Is that the leader you were?" she asked. "Ruthless?"
He fell silent. Took her hand in his own, then brought it to his lips for a kiss. "It is the leader I should have been sooner."
