By Gods Forsaken

by inwardtransience

One day, the shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. (How do you do a summary for something this big? Total retelling, Mahariel!Warden, mage!Hawke, Dreamer!Trevelyan!Inquisitor, worldbuilding, too many OCs, serious plot edits, primarily F/F.)

3. Ostagar — II

9:30 Nubulis 3

Ostagar, Chasingard, Kingdom of Ferelden

---

Alistair struggled to keep his temper, but the words still came ground out from between his teeth. "Should I have asked her to write a note?"

And the irritating mage just puffed himself up more, chest filling out and face going all red and constipated. Great. In that whiny, posh little voice of his, the man said, "Tell her I will not be harassed in this manner!"

"Yes, I was harassing you by delivering a message." It wasn't even his fault! (This time.) He wasn't the one who'd thought it was a great idea to have him convey Her Reverence's request. Of a Libertarian enchanter. He being a former Templar. He'd thought it was a terrible idea, but what was he supposed to do, tell off a Revered Mother? He swore, he still had the bruises on his knuckles from when he was a kid.

The mage — a gruff, pasty-faced man, very unattractive — narrowed his face in a glare. Oh, wow, not doing himself any favors, the way the wrinkles bunched up, he looked like one of Eamon's hounds. "Your glibness does you no credit."

"Personally, I think it's one of his few redeeming qualities."

"Marian! Thank the Maker!" He turned and there she was, her attempt at bored face ruined by the smirk twitching at her lips. She didn't look quite as uncomfortable in her borrowed leather-and-scale armor as she had at first, but there was still a bit of extra tension in each step. Not surprising, really, not often you saw mages wearing armor. "Are you here to rescue me?"

"If you mean to ask if it's time for the hunt, then yes."

"You're my hero, Marian Hawke. I think I might swoon."

Marian rolled her eyes with a huff, but Alistair wasn't fooled — she still hadn't managed to hide that smirk properly. "Excuse me, ser, but I'm afraid I have to steal away Alistair here. Grey Warden business, you see."

"Oh, you don't need to make excuses just to get me on—"

"Hush, you."

The humorless mage glanced between the two of him, this glare putting his previous one to shame for sheer dog-faced-ness. Without a word to either of them, he turned to stomp away, shaking his head and muttering to himself. At least it looked like he was heading toward the Chantry pavilion, that was something.

Once he was out of earshot, Alistair let out a sigh, high and breathy. "You know, that's what I love about the Blight. How it brings people together."

Marian shook her head at him. (But she was still smiling.) She turned off for the camp, angling toward the gates west. "Yes, I can see how much fun you're having."

"It's like a party." Alistair circled around a clump of men along the edge of the Chantry camp, by the sound of it a few kingsmen and Templars one foul name away from a fist fight. "We should all stand in a circle and hold hands. That would give the darkspawn something to think about."

"I think they'd just kill us faster that way."

"Well, maybe, but they'd be very confused doing it. That's worth something, I think." That bonfire Duncan always had going for some reason was ahead, the flames setting the few crumbling pillars around it glowing a flickering orange, though he didn't see Duncan himself. There was a whole pack of Warden initiates gathered around, though. A couple of them must have seen them coming, nudging and shushing their neighbors.

Marian shot a look over her shoulder. "Can't see how it'd be worth very much."

"No, of course not. It's not what I'd prefer people to feel when I die. Maybe awe at whatever selfless, heroic thing I'd just done. Or, I wouldn't say no to beautiful women wailing with grief. Tears and screaming and rending of garments, yes, that sounds nice. But if all I can get is confusion, I'll take it. Weeks later, it'll still be thinking about it. What the hell was that guy doing? it'll think, I just don't get it. I'll haunt that poor Blighter for the rest of its days."

She shook her head at him again, her face the very picture of exasperation. Except that smile, she wasn't as good at hiding her amusement as she thought she was.

He'd get her to laugh eventually. He just had to...well, stumble on something actually funny and not just kind of stupid, that'd help.

Duncan's voice suddenly cut over the constant noise of the camp, suddenly enough Alistair jumped. "Found Alistair, did you? We can get started, then." Duncan aimed a frown at Alistair around Ser Jory — the knight was big and burly enough and Duncan compact enough he hadn't seen him. "Assuming you're quite finished riling up mages."

A couple of the recruits shot each other looks, a mix of fearful and impressed. The only actual mage in the group — Alim Surana, an elf in Circle robes with hair such an intense red Alistair had to blink the spots from his eyes when the sun hit it just right — just smirked, eyes dark and dancing. (The only mage excluding Marian, anyway, whose back was to Alistair at the moment.) Most normal people would be too scared to "rile up" mages. Alistair shrugged, pasted the brightest, most innocent smile on his face he could manage. "What can I say? The Revered Mother ambushed me. The way she wields guilt they should stick her in the army."

He got a few smiles for that, but nobody actually laughed. Either they all had some impressive sticks up their asses or Alistair really needed to work on his snark. Or both...

Duncan didn't seem at all impressed either, a shade of exhaustion slipping into his disapproving look. "She forced you to sass the mage, did she?"

"I wasn't forced. I just like to."

His eyes tipping up toward the grayed-out sky, Duncan let out a long, tired sigh. When he turned down again, all signs of exhaustion or disapproval were gone, replaced with his stern Warden-Commander face. "The day of the battle nears, and the time has come for your initiation into the Grey Wardens. But first, there is a task you all must complete. You will go out into the Wilds to the south, and each of you will return with a vial of darkspawn blood."

And that was no small number of vials. There was Ser Jory and Ser Keran, knights Duncan had picked up from here or there. A handful of thieves and vagabonds he'd recruited in Denerim, Alistair hadn't caught all their names. And Surana, of course. Even a random elven peasant, a former assistant to some quartermaster in the camp somewhere, he'd just shown up one day last week and asked to join. That was two, three...eight? Not counting Marian, who wouldn't be Joining yet, so yes, eight.

He should get Marian to carry the vials. With his luck, he'd probably break them all.

"Going into the Wilds? Isn't that dangerous?" Alistair hadn't caught who'd said it, one of the baby Wardens from Denerim.

Surana scoffed. "It's just a swamp. It's not going to hurt you."

And now someone other than Alistair was getting Duncan's disapproving glare. "Alim."

The tiny little elven man jerked and shrunk in on himself a little, as though struck. "My apologies, Commander." Surana was a straight-forward, tactless sort, as Circle mages often were, and at times almost adorably excited to be out of the Tower for the first time in his life. But, Alistair noticed, he folded suspiciously quickly whenever chastised. Alistair couldn't help but wince whenever it happened — he had a less-than-pleasant feeling Surana had gotten more than his fair share of rough treatment from Templars.

Duncan must have noticed it too, with how quickly his glare withered. "No matter." He took a breath, turning to whoever it was who'd complained about going for a walk. "You all have your talents. You won't be helpless. And you won't be alone: Alistair and Lýna both are skilled Wardens, and you'll have Alim and Marian as well. I can't imagine you'll run into anything in the Wilds that would pose any serious threat to a party such as yours.

"Lýna was given her own task to complete in the Wilds. You will accompany her wherever she leads, and then come back. You will kill more than enough darkspawn along the way. Any questions?"

"Yeah, I have one," Alistair said. The recruits turned to stare at him, probably confused he wasn't in the loop, being their big bad Warden escort and all. "Where is Lyna?"

Duncan's lips tilted into a smile. "Oh, I'm sure she'll drop in on you before too long."

There were a few more questions from the recruits — what exactly they needed darkspawn blood for came up more than once, not that Duncan actually answered — but before long he was sending them on their way. Alistair led them off, keeping close to the south wall, the thin line of trees stretching into the ruins stitching across the sky overhead. He had everyone trade around names, since he was sure he wasn't the only one who'd forgotten a couple of them. Marian and Jory and Keran and Surana he'd remembered, of course. The group from Denerim were Elen, Daveth, Bron, and Timet — he didn't expect himself to keep Daveth and Timet straight, they were both sketchy, slimy-looking sons of bitches. The elf boy called himself Perry, but he sounded a bit shifty saying it, so Alistair wouldn't be surprised if he was making that up.

The Grey Wardens just attracted the best sort of people, didn't they?

Alistair ignored the chattering behind him, which mostly seemed to involve Jory and Keran trading stories and Daveth shamelessly flirting with Elen. Instead he was looking around, trying to figure out where Lýna was supposed to be. The gate was only a couple minute's walk away from Duncan's fire, they were almost there already. Close enough Alistair could make out the scratches in the watchman's armor. "Okay," he said, coming to a sudden halt, "did Duncan say where we were supposed to be meet Lyna and I just missed it? Because I have no idea where the hell she—" Something fell to the ground behind him with a light thump and a clangoring of steel. His hand dropping to his sword, he spun on his heel—

—and came up short, putting him off-balance. At least he managed to not fall over. "Maker's breath, Lyna! Do you have to keep dropping out of trees onto my head?"

Because there she was, standing not three feet away from him. Perhaps the tiniest grown woman he had ever seen, hardly topping his elbow and thin as a wisp, she looked somehow even smaller in the patchwork of Dalish hunting leathers and scale and plate she wore, half-shrouded in a fur-lined cloak. Like a child playing soldier. The hood mostly hid her bright, snowy hair — apparently Dalish elves could have naturally white hair, he'd never seen that before — though the asymmetrical tattoos of flowering vines meandering all across her face were still visible. Lýna was unnervingly quiet, at least in part because she didn't speak the language very well. (Not that badly, really, but he'd gotten the impression she was self-conscious about it.) Though, he didn't think he'd ever seen her smile, not once, so maybe there was more to it.

And she had a way of just...staring at him. Like she was doing right now. Flat, and cold, and just... It made him uncomfortable.

Lýna's head tilted to the side, the sharpness in the way she moved almost bird-like. "No, don't need. I just like to."

At the unfamiliar sound of Marian's laughter, Alistair's face sank into a pout. That just wasn't fair.

---

Korcari Wilderlands

---

After a slow descent along the cliff face, and a plodding trek across a mile or two of rocky borderlands, they'd finally reached the northern boundary of the wetlands Lýna had called home for most of her life.

The land was familiar, intimately so, relaxing away tension she hadn't noticed was there. Everything about it. The air thick with green and rain and fruit and rot. The way the soft earth sank ever-so-slightly under her heel. The unbroken chorus of cricket and frog, the wind setting the trees to dancing, the occasional splash as animals slipped in and out of the water, the distant shuffling of bogfishers and howling of wolves. She couldn't help herself. It was good to be back.

But still she fought to not show her impatience. She'd have been here hours ago if she didn't have to drag along a pack of bumbling idiots. One had nearly dashed his head open on the rocks on their way down, but as annoying as their stuttering descent had been, it hadn't gotten any better.

She didn't know how people could be so...slow, and clumsy, and noisy. Honestly, she was certain her clan would have heard these idiots coming from miles away, could have picked them off at their leisure — with how little attention most of them were giving their surroundings it wouldn't even be difficult. She felt faintly embarrassed just being near them. It was hard to imagine how the Republic could ever have been defeated by Orlais, if human warriors in the north were all like this.

To be fair, the Republic had managed to conquer most of Orlais before the humans rallied and beat them back. The way she'd heard it, if her ancestors hadn't overextended themselves trying to occupy far more territory than they had the numbers to hold they never would have lost. Still.

She paused at the edge of the wetlands proper, on the last high ground they were like to find, trying to trace a path they could take. Not far away, probably three miles or so, a great ruin of an ancient keep stretched out into the air, columns and walls crumbling and green with moss, a small hill putting it easily above the trees. But, save for an occasional gap here or there revealing glints of greenish-brown water, those same trees were too thick for her to chart a way forward from here. She'd just have to find one.

While she'd told Duncan she knew where the ruin his scouts were referring to was, she hadn't ever actually been there. She'd seen it before, on their way north, but her clan had always given the area a wide berth. She-of-Many-Faces made her home near here, only a few more miles to the south and west. The immortal witch had never been particularly hostile to her people — in fact, she might be inclined to favor them, though Lýna had never been sure if she should believe the rumors about her — but it was thought best to avoid her if at all possible. She could be...capricious.

Not that she was particularly concerned. She doubted she'd get lost. It just might be a little bit of a pain, trying to find a way to the old keep with these clumsy idiots on her heels. This would be far easier if she were by herself.

But, then again, maybe not. It'd been building for some minutes now. Her skin crawling, a song half-heard echoing in her ears. She turned to glance over her shoulder up at Alistair, standing at the head of their group a few steps behind her. "Feel them?"

"Oh, I feel them, alright. I feel a great big bunch of them. Should be fun." He spoke with a sort of forced ease, as though hiding a tinge of anxiety. Lýna was pretty sure it had nothing to do with the darkspawn in the area — she'd noticed she made him uncomfortable.

And he wasn't the only one: of their little party, the only one who didn't keep shooting her dark glances was Marian. Not that Marian didn't keep giving her weird looks, they were just a different kind of weird. Lýna was well aware of the sort of stories humans told each other about her people. Some degree of distrust, even fear was just expected, she was mostly used to the way they all looked at her by now. Though, she was a little surprised the elves were just as wary of her. At least, Perry was, so damn terrified he couldn't even meet her eyes. The way Alim looked at her was even more annoying, tinged more with...well, curiosity, that was there, but also a faint sense of...pity? superiority? disgust? Something of the like, anyway. It was irritating.

And then there was the way Marian kept staring at her. She still wasn't sure what that was about. But Marian was the only one who would look at her as though she weren't a savage who might turn around and slit their throat at any moment, so she just ignored it.

Honestly, these people were so ridiculous. They outnumbered her ten to one, and two of them were mages. Even if she'd wanted to hurt them...

"Is that where we're going? For whatever this mysterious task of yours is."

Lýna nodded. Apparently, Duncan had gotten word some treaties obliging various parties provide the Wardens assistance during a time of Blight had remained in magical stasis way out here all this time. He didn't think they would be necessary — people were usually smart enough to do it on their own — but with the Order's complicated history in Ferelden, he'd decided they should grab them just in case. Duncan had said the Order had a complicated history in Ferelden, anyway, Lýna had no idea what that could be.

What kind of idiot picked a fight with the Grey Wardens? And now they had a Blight rising in their country. Funny how that works.

Anyway, they had a job to do. Lýna took a quick glance around their little hill — most of the recruits had taken the few minutes allowed by her gathering the lay of the land to rest, chatting and munching at tack and jerky. Lýna shook her head to herself. It hadn't been that long or hard of a walk, ridiculous. "If see woman, human woman, attack not."

A few of them gave her weird looks at that. One, a dagger-eyed man with a bow slung across his back, let out a harsh scoff. "Who are we going to find out here? Unless you're trying to claim there are witches about."

"You don't believe the stories?"

"I'll start believing fairy tales about the Witch of the Wilds when she walks up to me and turns me into a toad."

"They're not just stories! My grandpa said he saw Flemeth herself once during the war."

She'd overheard humans tell stories of this Flemeth, whispered over campfires in words thick with fear. Apparently, being so near her supposed home made them anxious. From the first, Lýna had wondered if this was what humans called She-of-Many-Faces. It seemed likely — just how many immortal mages could there be in the wetlands?

"Is this the same grandpa who said a mermaid carried him back to shore in a storm?"

"Well, yeah..."

With a hint of warning, Alistair said, voice raised to carry over the chatter, "They're not all stories, you know. There are mages living around here. Apostates tend to hide themselves away in the wilderness, where Templars are less likely to stumble across them."

Lýna shook her head to herself again. There were mages in the south, of course, but only very few of them were runaways from the north. Almost all of them were born down here, elves and Chasind and Avvar — mostly Chasind, many of them claiming to be descendents of She-of-Many-Faces, but Lýna didn't know how much truth there was to that. But they certainly weren't apostates hiding from the Alamarri's silly magic-hating religion. It didn't exist down here, how could they be?

"Flemeth isn't just myth, either." This was Surana, said with with more than a little eagerness. But then, he seemed to be eager a lot. Lýna would catch him sometimes just staring up at the clouds with a grin on his face, hopping from rock to protruding rock, poking and prodding at bushes and trees. She didn't know what to think about that. "It is a matter of historical record that a famously wise but temperamental Chasind mage, the matriarch of a small band, was an occasional ally of Calenhad the Great. She even called herself Flemeth, in fact. The Circle knows of a tradition of apostate mages calling themselves the daughters of Flemeth, spread all throughout Thedas, and there are a number of incidents on the record of Templars encountering an impossibly powerful mage here and there in the south of Ferelden and the Chasind wilds. Some scholars believe they're the same figure, who inspired the Flemeth in stories developing over generations."

"That's ridiculous! If it was the same person, she'd have to be hundreds of years old!"

Surana shrugged. "The common theory is she's an abomination. Tevinter records suggest some of them can live for centuries."

Nobody seemed happy with that idea. There was much muttering and squawking, and if Lýna thought they seemed scared of her, now some of them looked downright petrified. Perry was standing there shaking like a leaf, she doubted he could take a step, and the rest were little better. Marian and Alistair, at least, hadn't lost their minds completely, but even they looked uneasy, Alistair shifting foot to foot, Marian fidgeting, magic thin but sharp on the air. Surana was the only exception, still grinning to himself like a crazy person.

It was completely ridiculous.

Lýna sprung back to her full (if unimpressive) height, turned on them a hard scowl. "Stop shaking like children. No hurt her, she no hurt you. If see woman, attack not, all is fine."

One of the more frightened-looking ones, a hulking man in full plate, his voice shaking with every word, squeaked, "Do you mean she, she lives around here?"

That didn't seem a wise question to answer. But everyone knew she'd grown up in the area — some weeks travel south of here, actually, but it was all the same to them — and they were all expectantly staring at her. She sighed. "Yes. Few hours walk, there," pointing over her shoulder.

And everyone started shouting all at once.

---

Marian had never been in a swamp before, but she was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be this quiet.

It was a pretty place, in a dreary sort of way. Branches spread over their heads, the trees rather short but reaching wide, the canopy thick and green despite the season. She'd read the wetlands to the south were filled with trees that stayed green through winter, like pine with leaves, but she'd never seen them herself. They seemed heavier than normal trees somehow, the leaves thick and dark, the branches drooping down to brush against their heads and shoulders. Some touched the ground, like a fountain frozen, stretching up to turn and fall again.

The water — for there was a lot of it, lakes and ponds and streams linking them, their feet squelched with each step, would sink to the ankle if they stepped too close to the shore — was thick with reeds and algae, turned a brownish-green to the eye, but even so it glimmered where the light struck it, as though the surface were caught alight. (Not too much of a stretch, with all that shit in it she could probably set it on fire if she wanted to.) Despite how cold it still was, the first touches of spring were starting to show themselves, little white and pink buds dotted across the water, preparing to bloom. The undergrowth was thickening among the trees too, leaves and flowers just starting to sprout.

It wasn't bad. A little monochromatic and gloomy but, well, she'd spent all her life around Lothering. She was used to monochromatic and gloomy.

But still, Marian felt the hairs at the back of her neck rise, magic tingle at her fingertips. It'd taken her what had to be a good half mile or so to figure out what was bothering her: the silence. Silence. An occasional breath of wind would have the leaves fluttering, and her party brought a low racket of rattling and chattering and cursing. But under that, perfect silence. No birds twittering, no splashes of frogs or whatever in the water, not even the buzzing of insects. Nothing.

It wasn't right.

They followed Lýna through the maze of trees, streaming two-by-two down the narrow paths she found tucked away here and there. Marian had spelled her own steps light, walking atop moss and mud as though it were solid stone, but the rest of their group were having far more trouble than she was. It was a slog, boots sliding or sinking, their pace slowed to a sloppy crawl, filth splashed up above their knees. Lýna moved ahead of them in little bursts, ghosting across the unstable ground as soft and light as a whisper, pausing at the next curve in the path to wait for them to catch up, an impatient glare half-hidden under her hood. Marian and Alim were the only ones who could hope to keep up.

She'd tried to spell all their boots the way she had her own, but casting it so far out from herself and to so many people at once was a huge power drain, she'd burn out in minutes. It wasn't even that effective. She could freeze the ground in their path, she guessed, but that raised other problems. Lýna would just have to deal with they slow pathetic humans.

Well, they slow pathetic humans plus Perry, he wasn't doing any better.

After some long, dreary minutes of walking, stone peaked through the branches, smoothed by ages and covered in mulch and vines. The outline was hard to make out, but it looked like a bridge, maybe an aqueduct. Tevinter, obviously. She'd thought Ostagar was the furthest south the old Empire had reached, but apparently not. They were only a few miles away still, maybe this was simply counted as part of the same outpost.

Lýna was waiting at the edge of the path, in the shade cast by the towering arches, crouched atop the dried and hardened remains of a fallen tree. As they caught up, her eyes flicked up to Alistair's, her voice low and flat. "Feel them?"

The trying ex-Templar nodded. "Yep, a little bit ahead. Not a lot, probably less than a dozen."

"Go." Lýna pointed ahead, along the narrow, curving trail they'd been following. "I be there." She straightened, pulling the green and blue elven-made bow from her back. A quick test of the string, and she disappeared, silently slipping away into the trees.

"Am I the only one who finds it really creepy how she does that?"

Alistair turned back to the clump of Wardens-to-be, a crooked smile on his face. "I would say you get used to it, but you really, really don't. Blades out, with me."

While the air was split with the grinding of metal drawn through leather, Marian sidled up to Alim. The silly man's enthusiasm hadn't been dampened by the dreary slog through the swamp at all, still grinning like an excitable child. "I'll stick with them. You help Lyna with the archers."

Alim's grin split even wider, somehow, fist thumping against his chest in a sarcastic salute. "Yes, ma'am." And then he skipped off, his steps so light it had to be magic of some kind.

Marian shook her head. There was something off about that elf.

They crept along the path, winding through the trees narrow enough they were stuck going practically two by two. If the silence had been eerie before it was even worse now, her skin crawling with unease, setting her to twitch at the slightest sound of rustling leaves or creaking branches. Marian was at the front of their column with Alistair, squinting ahead, trying to peer through gaps in the greenery, but the branches were too thick here, she couldn't see a damn thing.

Until, suddenly, she could. They stepped out into a clearing, a segment of what had once been a road of some kind, judging by the age-stained tiles visible under dirt and grime, carving between two slight rises. On one of those rises, a stone's throw away, were a group of darkspawn, sitting in a circle and grunting at each other.

Darkspawn were, somehow, even more ugly up close. This group was a mixture of smaller genlocks and larger hurlocks, ashen grey skin and red eyes, their misshapen armor splattered with blood red and black. Their hands were bundles of claws, their heads skeletal and lopsided, maws uneven and filled to the brim with crooked, jagged teeth, so jumbled they tore at their own lips, black lines running down their chins.

And they felt wrong. She'd never noticed before, never been close enough, but she could feel it on the air. Like vomit, like rot, something thick and hot and sick, turning her stomach and pinching at her skin. It was visceral, she couldn't even explain what exactly it was, she'd never felt something like this before. It was the magic of the Blight in them, she knew — instinctively, horrified — and it was wrong, in a way no living thing could possibly be, so overwhelming she felt she might puke.

The Darkspawn noticed them a second later, leaping to their feet, harsh screams echoing from cursed throats. Much of the pack tumbled down the slope — even their limbs seemed deformed, giving them an awkward, loping gait that nevertheless had them approaching far too fast. Some had stayed, drawing bows, but Marian already felt a flicker of magic from that direction, she ignored them.

Before the men behind her could get in the way, she opened herself, let power flow into her. Remembering the crackle of thunder, the taste of a summer storm, she turned a wrist, spreading the nascent spell across the length of her borrowed dagger. With a sharp flick, she released it, the spell snapping ahead in the blink of an eye, quicker than any arrow could ever travel.

The lightning struck the lead hurlock in the chest, knocking it off its feet, blue-white electricity arcing to the next, splitting to touch a couple more, then the rest. It weakened as it went, only the first ended up with a hole blown all the way through it, but the others were stopped in their tracks, writhing in pain, screams splitting her ears. A couple more fell to the ground after a moment, narrow columns of steam lifting from their bodies, still twitching with the last sparks of magic.

Turned out, magic could be focused with silverite pretty damn well. Who'd have thought?

Before she could get another spell off, maybe something that could finish the rest in an instant, the Warden recruits were charging past her, arms raised and yelling at the top of their lungs, putting themselves squarely in the firing range of anything she could do to take out a group. Marian sighed. She'd had this herself, but if they wanted to do it the hard way, fine.

Casting power out of herself and forward, she jolted into the air. Time seemed to slow and her body seemed to stretch, swimming over the Wardens' heads, her peripheral vision turning into a blurry, monochromatic mess. She arced back toward the ground, the world abruptly snapping back into normality as she landed, hard, behind the pack of darkspawn. She darted forward, aiming for the neck of a genlock at the rear, her dagger slicing through the air with impossible speed.

So long ago she could hardly remember, Father had taught her how to push magic into her body, make herself stronger. She could carry far more weight than one would guess looking at her — especially since she could also make things lighter — and she could run farther and work longer than most any normal person. She'd been doing it so long she hardly even thought about it anymore, just a basic everyday thing. Honestly, sometimes she forgot to not do it when there were people not named Hawke around.

But, somehow, it had never occurred to her she was only scratching the surface. In their little training sessions, Lýna had told her of a kind of magic her people used. They didn't just make themselves more physically powerful, didn't just extend their endurance, no, they also made themselves faster, more precise, narrowed their reaction times. Dalish mages could often outfight their best warriors without using external magic at all, simply by making themselves too quick to keep up with.

Lýna hadn't been able to explain exactly how to do it, of course — even if her Alamarri were good enough to get across such complex concepts, she wasn't a mage herself, was only aware the technique existed — but just hearing it was possible had been enough for Marian to figure it out. It wasn't complicated. It worked much the same as the variant she'd already known, drawing power into herself but instead of casting it out letting it flow through her body. Not using it as a fulcrum, an anchor, but willing it to carry her, to push her, to force her to move in a way her body couldn't possibly manage on its own.

She'd only been working on it for a few days, there was still plenty of room for improvement. But she'd gotten to a point she was starting to get hits on Lýna now. Not very often, and Lýna was skilled enough the same trick never worked twice, but just a couple wins was pretty damn impressive, she thought. Considering how seriously scary Lýna was in a fight.

And it was certainly more than enough to get the drop on a darkspawn — the genlock hadn't even noticed her coming by the time she was slicing into its neck.

The silverite blade cut into its flesh like...well, a silverite blade cutting into flesh. She barely felt any resistance at all before there was a dull thunk, the dagger lodging itself into the thing's spine. There was a sudden spray of thick, black blood, Marian jerked away, a hard thrum of terror shooting through her body so hard it hurt. A wave of power was cast out of her without any real active thought on her part, the cursed droplets repelled before they could touch her. Even as the darkspawn collapsed, limp, nearly taking her dagger out of her hand as it went, had to wrench the thing out of its neck, she twisted the magic around her, forming it into a spell she'd invented ages ago, to keep herself dry when out working in the rain.

(Father had particularly liked that one. He'd been taught in a Circle, had spent all his time indoors, they'd never had reason to be taught more practical applications of magic. A lot of times, it'd simply never occurred to him to consider magical solutions for everyday problems. When she'd come up with it, tending to the animals during a cold autumn rain when she'd been seven, was the first time she'd taught him something. It had been far from the last.)

From there, the fight finished very quickly. The darkspawn were few and the Warden recruits many enough that there'd been more than one Warden to every darkspawn — there were after her opening spell, anyway — so they were all cut down easily enough. When the fight was over, she noticed at a quick glance that they hadn't lost any of theirs. Perry, the jumpy little elf, had gotten a nasty-looking cut along his arm, but other than that everyone was fine.

They lingered for a little bit, most of the Wardens taking a little moment to roll the kinks out of their shoulders. Alim had jumped to heal Perry — Marian had never developed much talent with healing magic, she left him to it. Instead, she levitated the darkspawn corpses into a pile she could more easily incinerate, stalling once to let Lýna retrieve one of her arrows from a mangled throat. Lýna must be used to dealing with darkspawn by now: she had Marian burn the blood off of all the tips while she was at it.

The Grey Wardens had been through four Blights by now, so they'd learned a bit about how it worked. Darkspawn blood carried the taint, and anyone touched by it risked catching the curse, slowly sickening and horribly dying. But it wasn't just people who could catch it — animals, plants, even the land itself could become cursed, blackened and ruined for all eternity. It was said that the entire region that had once been the southern provinces of Orlais had been ruined by a series of battles during the Second Blight, reducing what had once been the breadbasket of the early Empire into a wasteland of shifting white and purple sands ruled by deformed monstrosities. The area was still uninhabitable eight hundred years later.

The worst effects of the Blight, they'd learned, could be prevented through cleansing by fire. Scorch darkspawn blood with a little flame, and the curse was destroyed. It couldn't cure people already sickened, of course — rather hard to burn a curse out of someone without burning the person — but it could prevent people from sickening in the first place, and it could prevent the land itself from being cursed. This small a number of corpses were unlikely to pose a serious problem by themselves, but every little bit counted.

And besides, it wasn't like she had anything better to do while Alim was busy healing.

The pyre erupting into life with a powerful spell that had her skin tingling and her blood singing, a few more sweeps of her hand lighting up the patches of weeds and mud they'd fallen in in the first place, and their group set off again, thick smoke stretching up towards the sky in their wake.

Supposedly, Wardens were immune to the Blight, but Marian quick taught her little spell to Alim anyway. Between the two of them, they could easily cover the whole group. Just in case.

They passed through another long stretch of forest, though it was considerably easier travel this time. Lýna had them following the road which, while it was weathered and mouldering and missing far too many tiles, had prevented larger plants from taking root, leaving a mostly cleared path. The subtle, dreary tension the others had been carrying lifted away. They held themselves straighter, walked faster, some of them nearly with a bounce in their step. There was chatter, laughter, even flirting from a few.

Apparently, they didn't see what Marian did: Lýna and Alistair weren't relaxing. In fact, if anything, they were only growing all the more quiet and hard with every step they took. There was another fight ahead. A bad one, she'd wager.

"Look alive, people," Alistair finally said, hefting his shield back into place. "More ahead. Lots of them."

"Oh, good. I was starting to get bored."

"Shut up, you damn..."

The trees parted again, revealing the largest clearing Marian had seen since they'd entered the swamp proper. A few rolling rocky hills rose above the water, inhospitable to all but the hardiest of grasses and bushes. Not far along stood the skeleton of what had probably been an aqueduct, only the pillars remaining, rounded stone stretching up twenty feet, thirty feet, turned pitted and craggy with age, hidden under twisting carpets of lichen and moss. Just beyond the pillars was a thin band of water, connecting a murky pond to the right and a wider, clearer lake to the left, an ancient stone bridge crossing the water that looked questionable enough Marian was glad the water was probably shallow. (She could fly, of course, but she couldn't bring the rest with her.) The road continued on ahead, through a shallow valley between two low hills.

Standing in the middle of the bridge was a single darkspawn. Even as Marian spotted it, it moved, its clawed hands tracing through the air in surprisingly graceful curves.

Lightning crackled between its fingers.

Alim had a barrier up almost instantly, a wall of faint blue-green light snapping into existence a few meters ahead of them. (Marian was a little jealous — she'd never gotten much opportunity to practice barrier spells, she doubted she could cast one that big.) Quick as he was, he'd barely gotten it out quickly enough. A bolt of lightning, white and purple, so bright it stung her eyes, stabbed into the center of it, the shield flaring orange, bowing in from the force. And it spread, splitting into dozens of tiny filaments, a hissing mass crawling across the surface.

Crawling around the surface. Her heart jumping abruptly into her throat, she reached for her own magic, formed it into a spell she'd cast so many times she couldn't even count, one of the earlier ones her father had taught her. (After all, it wouldn't do them much good if lightning struck the barn and burned the thing down.) Marian spread Father's peculiar lightning-repelling charm all along Alim's shield, and the little fingers of energy were thrown off it, fizzling away into nothing on the air.

A lightning spell that could propagate along a barrier? Damn. She had a really bad feeling about this.

Also, since when could darkspawn cast magic? Seriously, what the fuck...

The barrier dropped away, and she jumped at an odd thrumming noise, a streak of cold blue light. Alim appeared ahead of them, wreathed in wisps of fog, dug in his heels and zipped along again, popping back into existence some meters further ahead. The darkspawn mage turned on its heel, and then kept spinning, twisting into a contorting cloud of black and green, bouncing away across the bridge. Alim chased after it, skipping across the ground in fits and starts, leaving patches of hoarfrost in his wake.

While the Wardens got over their initial shock at the magic, started their charge toward the bridge, Marian cast herself into the air. The world blurring around her, she arced up, up, dragged her fingers into the air for a second before landing, reality coming back into focus around her with a hard thud. On top of one of the pillars. She teetered a moment, nearly falling forward, but a little push against the empty air and she was settled. From up here, it was quite obvious the clearing across this little stream was packed with darkspawn — a couple dozen at least, it was hard to tell. Already Alim was fleeing back across the bridge, using that odd little ice-skipping spell she'd never seen before, yelling "shit shit shit shit shit" loud enough she could hear it from up here.

She shook her head — the only living things she'd fought with magic were wolves and bears, but even she knew you didn't run off without backup like that. This elf, honestly.

Marian lobbed off a few balls of fire, the sudden heat uncomfortably intense on her chilled face, the wet air hissing in protest, spreading the things out across the clearing, aiming to set as much of it alight as she could. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be working very well. The flames sputtered out too quickly, some fizzling out before even reaching the ground. Which meant, she realized, a cold stone sinking slowly down her chest, that the mage was countering her spells. How fast was that thing, that shouldn't—

Apparently, the fire was also giving it ideas. With a long, ear-piercing screech, a comet of red-orange flame, the edges flickering an unnerving black, burned its way through the air over the bridge, making straight for the pack of Warden recruits. They yelled, started to scatter, but she knew immediately they weren't going to make it. Alim should be able to get a barrier off in time, but that thing looked nasty — who'd ever heard of black fire, what the fuck — she wasn't sure it would be good enough. She might be able to pull a couple out of the way, but—

Oh. Oh, wow. That was a terrible idea.

Unfortunately, she didn't have any better ones.

Marian jumped off the pillar, the world stretching around her again, snapping back into place a moment later, dropping her in the middle of the bridge. She reached deep, deeper, drawing as much power up as she could in the little time she had, hastily formed it into a thick barrier, intensely focused along the blade of a dagger. The darkspawn's spell was seconds away, hissing and screaming and terrifying, but she waited another couple beats, heart in her throat so hard it almost hurt, now, she swiped across—

She'd timed it exactly right, the flat of the blade slapping against the front of the deadly spell. And, miracle of miracles, her absolutely insane idea actually worked. The impact shook her badly enough she was nearly flung back onto her ass, but it worked, the thing jolted up and to the side, putting the Wardens behind her well out of danger. It bloody hurt, though, she was pretty sure she'd just burned all the fingers of her right hand rather badly.

Okay, that was her suicidal idea for the day. Let's not do that again.

Alim zipped past her, a cold wind slapping at her from behind in his wake, appearing at the far side of the bridge, one hand wreathed in flickering orange light. Throwing herself through the air again, she jolted to a stop next to him as his spell crashed into the rousing crowd of darkspawn. It exploded on contact, throwing the nearest off their feet, flames splashing out, a few of the cursed creatures caught, their agonized roars pierced her ears, she grit her teeth against the ache. Again concentrating the magic across one of her borrowed daggers, Marian cast her branching lightning spell, forcing as much power into it as she could.

The first tore into the stymied crowd — there were dozens of them, they were fucked — burning though a handful before dissipating too much to do any good. The second didn't do any good at all: the mage appeared again in a swirling cloud of black and green, turned the bolt aside with a shivering crack.

The darkspawn were massing again, pulling themselves back together from the chaos wrought by her and Alim's spells, the Wardens behind them just starting to step off the bridge. (A third familiar arrow was zipping by even now, because Lýna had apparently been running and shooting at the same time.) She and Alim would probably be able to survive, just sitting here and trading spells with the darkspawn mage at close range — assuming some Blighter didn't come around and shiv them in the back, that is — but the near misses would likely kill all the others. Which meant they either had to kill the mage immediately, or draw him away.

Marian grimaced. This was going to suck.

The world blurred around her, and she appeared at the mage's back, slashed at its side under the armor. It didn't get anywhere, the blade skating off a barrier, but that was fine — with the other hand she lobbed a ball of fire at a nearby clump of darkspawn, the genlocks catching alight with a riot of pops and an unholy howling. She saw a blur of blue-white and felt another gust of frigid wind, but she didn't wait for Alim to finish whatever he was doing, shoved herself through the air again. When she did land, she felt a shudder of magic, a peculiar stuttering thump, fully half of the disorganised horde bodily thrown to the ground. Marian reached deep, gritting her teeth, and flames stretched up before her, a hissing wave five feet wide and twenty long, she pushed—

And the mage was back, the fire parted and, with a peculiar, stomach-twisting spell she couldn't make heads or tails of, dissipated, swirling away to nothing in a blink. An odd snap of white light, not lightning but definitely dangerous-looking, arced directly for her heart, but she flew off back and to the side, immediately reaching for her magic again, starting another branching lightning spell, but the mage was already right there — this thing was so damn fast — the spell fell apart in her hand, another odd snap of light leaping across the air, and Alim flickered into existence next to her, a barrier springing up around them, the mage's spell was turned up harmlessly into the air.

She and Alim kept skipping back, trading spells with the unnervingly quick darkspawn mage again and again, pulling it away from the rest yard by yard, retreating slowly enough to taunt it into following but fast enough it couldn't pin them down, couldn't get off anything truly dangerous. Until, coming to the top of a rocky hill, they caught each other's eyes, and finally stopped, digging in their heels.

The mage barrelled onto the hill in that odd swirl of green light and shifting shadow, landing between them, releasing a wave of power that loomed over Marian like a falling boulder. She cut into the crashing weight, split most of it around her, what little she hadn't managed to turn aside still enough to push her back a couple steps. She shot back with a quick bolt of lightning, hoping to catch it off guard, but it simply stepped out of the way, throwing another missle of black-tinged fire at her feet, she skipped around to the side, checking with a glance Alim wasn't directly behind the thing, threw some fire of her own, but the mage cast a shield which bent it, putting it right in the path of whatever Alim had thrown — some icy spear-looking things, no idea what that was — both spells dissolving into a wave of steam, then a cloud of green something was shooting at Marian, she didn't bother trying to block whatever the fuck that was, ducked out of the way—

It quickly became clear this damn thing was far too fast for just throwing magic at it to do much good, it was somehow managing to keep up with both of them at once. They couldn't just overwhelm it either — it just shrugged off some of Alim's curses, the few of its spells Marian was forced to block still managing to bring her to her knees, impossible power summoned in a blink, with no hesitation.

And Marian was suddenly all too aware of the fact that she was a (mostly) uneducated apostate. She was powerful, yes, and talented, but Dad had focused on the things that presented any actual use to their daily lives. Combat was not one of those things. A lot of the magics the other two were whipping out Marian didn't recognize at all — sharp white light that stabbed and sliced, invisible hands shoving and pushing and dragging against every move, curses meant to sabotage her body and her mind, subtle enough she sometimes didn't notice until it was almost too late.

One of those was particularly terrifying. Marian hadn't seen it coming into effect, simply felt the nauseating descent of alien magic, an overwhelming weakness coming over her in a blink. She'd dropped to her knees, the grass around her wilting and blackening, her vision blurring, she'd been on the edge of passing out when there'd been a burst of white light, warmth and life pouring back into her, and she fought off the lingering horror — seriously, what the fuck was that?! — she had to keep moving, if she stopped she would be dead...

It didn't take long for her to conclude they would never win at this rate. She didn't know about Alim, but she was starting to get tired, sweaty and shaky, her breath hard and painful in her throat. Clearly, magic wasn't going to get them out of this, it was better than the two of them put together.

So Marian slipped over to Alim, handed him one of her borrowed silverite daggers.

Ten seconds later and the thing was lying dead between them, its throat cut so deeply with Marian's magically-augmented strength she'd nearly taken its head clean off. She was numbly surprised with how well that had worked — it was less versatile than her own method, but Alim's ice-skipping spell at least made for an excellent distraction.

It was dead. It was definitely, definitely dead. Marian smiled with relief.

Then she fell to her knees, her cheek slamming into the dirt, and everything went black.

---

Lýna planted her boot on the thing's mangled face and pulled back on the shaft, hard. The head was torn out of the hurlock's thick, muscular neck, black blood spraying across the grass, more than a little bit splattering up her leg.

Trying to shake the cursed gore off of her arrow, she felt her face pinch with a grimace — she hated the smell of darkspawn blood.

And the air certainly was filled with it at the moment, her eyes nearly swimming from the sour, nauseating stench. She didn't think she'd ever seen this many dead darkspawn all at once. The corpses were everywhere, scattered here and there in little clumps, some scorched from magics and others simply cut to pieces, the dirt of the clearing squelching under her boots. She hadn't been counting, but there had to be at least thirty, probably closer to fifty. If they hadn't had mages on hand, she doubted they would have gotten out of this one alive.

Not that all of them had gotten out alive. They'd lost two of the humans — Elen, and...Lýna had forgotten the other's name, one of the dirty, unpleasant-looking ones. There were a few injuries, though most of them weren't too bad, the worst the scrape Perry had gotten across his shoulder. (He was whining about it something awful, but he'd be fine.)

Also, the mages hadn't gotten back yet. Luckily, they'd been smart enough to drive the darkspawn mage away, but the booming and crackling of magical battle had ceased, a minute after they'd been wrapping up here. Lýna could only assume they were still alive — if the darkspawn had won, it probably would have attacked by now — they just had to wait.

There were things to do in the meantime — patching up wounds and preparing the pyres, mostly. Lýna left the bandaging to the others, she never had gotten great with that, but it wasn't too much trouble to pile up the corpses while tracking down her missing arrows. She ignored the others, wandering around the big, blood-stained clearing, slowly accumulating a heap of dead darkspawn at the middle. It was strangely easy hefting the things around, had Grey Warden blood magic to thank for that, she guessed.

Though she was really starting to get hungry...

Lýna heard a shuffling coming from the west, had an arrow trained on the source in a blink, the fletching tickling her cheek. She relaxed immediately. "You live."

Their mages had both survived, though neither looked so well — both were spotted with grime, Marian's hair was scorched on one side, dried blood streaked across Surana's face. Marian apparently couldn't walk on her own, one arm stretched across Surana's shoulders so he could help bear her weight, but she didn't seem injured, just magically exhausted. (Lýna had seen the look — shivering, pale and sweaty, seemingly only half-awake — on Mẽrhiᶅ more times than she could count, she'd be fine.) Surana had lost his usual cheerful energy, shooting her a moody glare. "Yes, we're alive. Sorry to disappoint."

She frowned — her Alamarri still wasn't great, but she was pretty sure she knew what he meant. "Why say this? Is good you live."

As human as he might behave much of the time, Surana did have an elven face, so his expressions weren't difficult to read at all: this one was surprise, quickly followed by guilt. Before Lýna could ask what that was supposed to be about — had Surana thought she wanted them dead? why? — Alistair was shouting them over, asking for help with the injured.

Oh well, that would have been an awkward conversation anyway. Her awful Alamarri would have just made it more difficult.

All told they were held up at the clearing far longer than Lýna should ever think necessary, trying to hold in her impatience as daylight swiftly burned. They might have stayed even longer, Alistair wanted to rest here for a bit, get a fire and some dinner going, give the men a chance to recover. It took some arguing, and repeated insistence from Lýna that their destination was very near, for Alistair to change his mind, prod the recruits into moving again. (It likely helped that neither of them could feel more darkspawn around, they were all dead.) The only advantage in the delay was that they'd taken long enough for Marian to be rather more awake — she still seemed slightly dazed, but she could walk on her own, at least.

But eventually they were moving again, the bloody clearing burning in their shadow.

Luckily, the old Tevinters had built their little outpost on high ground — her clumsy, noisy companions were hardly any lighter on their feet than before, only stumbling all the more, but the firmer soil had them making much better time. It was still late afternoon when the trees again parted, revealing the crumbling tower before them.

Alistair took pity on the recruits, arguing that they really didn't need all of them coming with just to poke through an old ruin. In the peculiarly blocky clearing at the base of the tower — stones poked out of the grass here and there, Lýna assumed it'd been part of the structure at some point — the rest of their party divested themselves of weapons and armor, set about building a fire. At the suggestion that they really should bring a mage along, just in case, Surana bounced up, some small portion of his usual energy already returned. Lýna would have preferred Marian, the human woman was rather less irritating, but she'd already collapsed to the ground again, looked to be struggling to remain conscious. So the three of them left the rest behind, stepping into the shadowed old tower.

For this particular part of the mission, Lýna was completely useless. She had absolutely no idea where they could expect to find the documents they were searching for, nor would she be able to recognize them by sight. Why should she? She hardly knew anything at all about how humans would go organizing this sort of thing, and she couldn't read, honestly. Alistair, at least, seemed to know what he was doing. He led them through the musty, dusty rooms of the tower — stone flaking, wood rotted, metal tarnished — into the lower levels, before long finding a library.

Lýna had heard of libraries, of course — the Ancients had invented the concept, they featured in the legends — but she'd never actually been in one before. She had to say, she was less than impressed, though she would probably feel differently if she could read, or if the place weren't such an awful mess. The air was thick with mold and shit and decay, rodents having long ago made the walls their homes, some of the shelves having broken, or simply rotted away, scrolls and books in various states of disrepair scattered all over the place. Alistair and Surana picked over the room, turning over one pile of rubbish after another, lifting up scrolls to squint at the text before dropping them again, while Lýna simply stood leaning against the door frame, watching and waiting.

The voice came with absolutely no warning. Low and smooth, a slight bounce to the words, as though on the edge of song, "Well, well, what have we here?"

Her hand springing to her dagger, Lýna spun on her heel to face the intruder...then froze, frowning to herself. It was a woman, a human woman, obviously Chasind, pale and black-haired, bright hawkish eyes, her face long and narrow (though still blockier than an elf's), clothed in dark leathers decorated with feathers and beads in red and green. Lýna relaxed a little, on reflex — as a rule, the Chasind and the People coexisted more or less in peace, having lived on the same lands for generations. (Chasind hunters were, in fact, the only humans Lýna had ever spoken to before going north.) Of course, she also knew immediately that this woman could kill Lýna easily if she wished to. Her dress — plain leather leggings and a loose band of deep red cloth over her chest, far too brief for the spring chill — the lack of any obvious weapons on her person whatsoever, that she'd managed to get so close without Lýna hearing her coming, this woman was obviously a mage. Unnecessarily antagonizing her would be a bad, bad idea.

Especially since, Lýna reminded herself, they were oh so close to the home of She-of-Many-Faces...

The other two reacted far more dramatically than she had, Alistair drawing his sword, Surana's hands threateningly raised, but the woman just smirked back at them. She kept talking, slow and easy, without a hint of fear on her voice — she sounded more amused than anything. "You'll find nothing of value here, I promise you. Vultures more timely than you have already picked this corpse clean."

"Lyna, get away from her." Alistair's face had gone hard, looking far more stern and serious than she thought she'd ever seen him. "She's an apostate." Surana cursed, magic already crackling between his fingers, white and sharp.

The woman smiled. "One cannot break an oath if one never makes it in the first place." She glanced back to Lýna, brows quirking in mocking question. "And you run with these fools?" she teased, in Deluvẽ — which wasn't that strange, most Chasind hunters Lýna knew spoke at least a little. This woman did have hardly a trace of an accent, though.

With a helpless shrug of her shoulders, Lýna answered in the same language. "Unfortunately, the Wardens accept everyone they can get."

With a low, musical chuckle, switching back to Alamarri, "Oh, I see, Wardens, are you? So I'm not to take you as intruders, then."

"This outpost belongs to the Grey Wardens."

The woman shot Alistair a disdainful look. "I see no outpost, only dust and ghosts long forgotten. This may well have been your land once, Warden, but the Wilds have overtaken it. And we do not easily give up what is ours."

"Put that away, Alistair. Is well."

Alistair and Alim both gave her blank, wide-eyed looks. "How is running into a witch of the wilds in a half-rotted library any sort of well?"

"Witch of the wilds," the woman repeated, scoffing. "Are you children, to quake at stories so?"

Lýna almost had to smile at that, she'd thought much the same thing back telling them about She-of-Many-Faces. At least...assuming she'd understood that correctly, this woman sort of talked funny. "Chasind. Hurt you if you make her only." She turned back to the stranger, switched again to Deluvẽ. "I am Lýna Maharjeᶅ. How do you go?"

"Oh ho," the woman said, smirking at the men, "now there's a proper greeting. This one hasn't forgotten her manners, at least."

"Manners?" Alim glanced around the library, a sort of reluctant amusement about him. "Have you seen where we are?"

"Our ways may not be yours, Outlander, but we are still a civilized people, we Chasind." The woman turned back to Lýna, with something approximating a smile. "I am Morrigan. I go freely, Lýna Maharjeᶅ—" She said the familiar Deluvẽ form in Alamarri, which was slightly weird, but at least she'd pronounced Lýna's name correctly. Though, she noticed Morrigan didn't use a clan name, which was also weird... "—no thanks to your friends here."

"You expect us to not get a little jumpy when a witch sneaks up behind us?"

"I walked over and announced myself — that's hardly very sneaky, is it?"

Of course, Morrigan had used some sort of magic to get close without giving anything away, Lýna would have heard her coming if she hadn't. But pointing that out wouldn't contribute anything useful to the conversation. Besides, she was too slow with Alamarri, they were already moving on before she could have gotten it out.

"For all we know, her friends could be out there attacking the camp right now!"

"I have come alone. But I could have burned them all alive before following you in here, who can say for certain?"

"We do have another mage out there."

"Yes, I saw. Wore herself out a bit, didn't she, poor dear."

"You bitch, if you did anything to—"

"Stop!" Alistair cut off mid-word, all three turning to look at her — surprised, concerned, amused. "They are not hurt. She plays, they are well."

Morrigan grinned, bright and sharp. "How can I help myself when they make it so easy?"

Yeah, there was really no point in responding to that either.

"You say this place has already been picked clean." Alistair still sounded somewhat suspicious, still looking at the Chasind mage like she'd personally offended him somehow, but he'd clearly decided to let it be for now (reluctantly). "We're looking for some old documents, they would have been magically preserved."

The woman hummed, her head tilting in an almost elven expression of thoughtfulness. "These documents you speak of, would they be copies of treaties made between the Wardens and the peoples of Ferelden?"

Alistair perked up. "You've seen them?"

"How do you know what they say?" asked Alim, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "They would be in Old Orlesian, I think."

Morrigan smirked. "Chantry Tevene, in fact. It just so happens I read Chantry Tevene." The men both gave her doubtful looks — at least, Lýna was mostly certain that's what Alistair's was, she was getting better with human expressions but still had to guess sometimes — and the woman burst into bright chuckles. "Oh, what surprise! Do you think me such a savage, to so expect I cannot read?"

"I cannot read," Lýna admitted, shrugging. She wasn't even certain what Chantry Tevene was — a Tevinter language, obviously, but...

His lips curling, probably annoyed with being laughed at, Alistair said, "I'm a formally-trained Templar, and I can't read Chantry Tevene. But that's not important — you've seen the treaties, you know where they are?"

"I do. My mother took them from here long ago, before I was born." The woman smiled. "I can take you to her, if you wish. We leave near here, a fifteen minute walk, perhaps."

"Yes." The men turned to look at her, she shrugged. "Duncan wants them. If She has them now, we go to Her. At least we must ask."

The men seemed to accept her argument, Alim finally relaxing, Alistair returning his sword to its sheath. Lýna tried not to let on that she was truly far less confident than she pretended. She hadn't considered where Morrigan had come from, why she hadn't provided the name of her clan introducing herself...but she claimed to live nearby, with her mother. But, nobody lived here, not for miles around.

Nobody wanted to stay too close to She-of-Many-Faces, not for very long. But, if she had Duncan's papers, Lýna truly had no choice in the matter.

She could only hope the immortal mage was in a cooperative mood.

"But first, I am hungry. We eat, then we go."

While the men agreed, with rather more exuberance than Lýna thought the situation called for, Morrigan smiled at them, crooked and toothy, her eyes dancing with half-seen light.

---

Marian was starting to wonder if she hadn't made a mistake.

They'd decided to camp at the base of the ancient tower overnight, make their way back to Ostagar starting in the morning. It was rather late, the western sky just starting to tint with approaching sunset, they wouldn't make it back before dark, and the tower was on solid enough ground it wasn't all soppy and gross. It just seemed the thing to do. While Marian had been taking a nap, they'd gotten a cookfire going, armor and weapons cast about seemingly at random, settling in for the night.

(She hadn't realized until after her nap, sitting down to dinner, that they were short two people. They must have died in the big fight back there, Marian had been so delirious from burn-out that she hadn't even noticed.)

Apparently, at some point over the years one of the local tribesmen had broken into the tower and removed the treaties Duncan had asked Lýna to track down, so she and Alistair were going on a brief diversion with the (slightly creepy) Chasind mage to retrieve them. They'd clearly expected Alim to go with them — she assumed so they'd have magical backup, just in case — but it had been just as plainly obvious to Marian that Alim really did not want to go. Uncomfortable with the people of the wilds, she assumed, and also just tired. So, before he could refuse or be guilted into joining them, Marian volunteered.

And maybe that hadn't been such a good idea. After taking a nap and getting a little bit of food, she was feeling much better than she had after the terrifying fight with that cursed darkspawn mage — burn-out was unpleasant, sure, but it never took her all that long to come out of it. (Assuming she didn't push so hard she seriously hurt herself, at least.) But she hadn't realized until they'd already been walking a couple minutes that she was tired. She'd been up since early morning, and doing things practically the entire time, walking hours and hours and hours. Exhaustion clawed at her, making her feel slow and clumsy, and there was a low, stiff ache all through her legs, her stomach and her back. Sort of like after her spars with Lýna, sometimes, but worse.

And, it might be her imagination, but Lýna looked...wary? Maybe? Marian had never met an elf in her life before leaving home for Ostagar, but she'd quickly noticed that their faces could be kind of difficult to read. It wasn't that the expressions they used were especially different, or anything, but their faces were shaped different — their chins too narrow, their faces seeming to come down to a point, which made their thin-lipped mouths look almost too broad for the space available, despite humans' actually being larger, their eyes obviously too large for the size of their heads, their brows wide and too smooth and hairless, none of the elves she'd met so far had eyebrows — so it could be kind of hard to tell what was going on, at first glance. In Lýna's case, the tattoos didn't help either, obscuring what few lines her face had, just confusing.

That went both ways, apparently — Lýna had implied she had just as much difficulty reading expressions on human faces. (Or at least, Marian assumed that was what she'd meant, she was still picking up the language.) The other elves had grown up around humans, but Dalish would obviously have less contact with them, so she wasn't quite used to it. Which did make sense, it was only logical that if elven faces were opaque to Marian, Lýna should have the same trouble in reverse, seemed obvious.

So, she could be reading it wrong. But as they got closer to wherever it was they were going, Lýna seemed to be going stiffer, tenser, quieter, her too-small mouth set in a narrow line, bright, too-large eyes sharp and watchful.

If it came down to another fight... Well, Marian probably could fight, still, but she might not do very well. And against at least one mage, and possibly two... At least they were also informally-trained apostates, so they'd likely be on rather more even footing. Still, she didn't particularly like her chances. She guessed she'd just have to hope the Chasind proved friendly. Hmm...

Marian twitched — she was staring at Lýna again, shit, she forced herself to look away, glancing after the Chasind leading them, not far ahead. She kept catching herself watching the Dalish girl, she didn't know why she did that. It was uncomfortable.

Her father's warning to always be honest with herself ringing in her ears — even if she couldn't be perfectly open with anyone else, she should always do so with herself, leave demons fewer delusions to exploit — Marian grit her teeth, choking back a huff of annoyance. Right, fine, she knew exactly why she kept staring at Lýna. She thought she was pretty. She thought she was pretty, and it was honestly sort of distracting sometimes — that was why.

It was very confusing, though. She meant, she'd really never thought someone was pretty before. Well, okay, she could look at someone and recognize they were objectively beautiful, but it was just a fact that she knew, not something she felt. If that made sense. She supposed the way to say it was, she'd never found someone attractive, before.

Once upon a time, she'd simply assumed that was normal. She'd known sex existed, of course, but she'd always just categorized it as a thing that married adults did. Since she wasn't married — or even grown yet, at the time — she'd put that knowledge away somewhere at the back of her head, and just forgotten about it. If she'd had occasion to wonder about it (which she mostly hadn't), she would have assumed marriage was something someone did when they wanted children and a family and everything, that sex and the like was a necessary component to all that, and outside of those particular contexts it just...wasn't a consideration. Since she had zero interest in getting married — and really hadn't been able to at the time, with her family still so heavily depending on her — she'd had zero interest in men, or sex or whatever. And she'd just assumed that was normal.

She didn't start figuring out how very wrong she was about that until Bethany and Carver had started growing up, and she'd suddenly had to confront the confusing reality of her younger siblings going through experiences and having feelings she'd literally never had, ever. Especially since she taught Bethany magic the way Dad had taught her, which involved quite a lot of discussion about how they felt about things, Marian had been slapped in the face with it very explicitly. Because Bethany and Carver did find people attractive, did have interest (or at least curiosity), entirely separate from the question of marrying or starting a family or the like.

And that had been, just, completely alien to Marian. She'd ended up talking to Mum about it, asking if she was...broken somehow, if there was something wrong with her. Mum had been surprised Marian didn't have those sort of feelings ever — she'd said, somewhat guiltily, that she'd assumed Marian had denied herself those things because the family needed her, it'd never occurred to Mum that she might just not be interested in men or marriage or any of it at all. Though, now that she actually knew what was going on with her, Mum had been very insistent that, no, there was not something wrong with her, that there were all types. Women who wanted men, women who wanted other women, and women who wanted nobody at all, that it was just how people were, and not something to get worked up over.

(Marian had been rather more relieved than she'd let on. It'd been really bothering her, at the time, more than she'd wanted to let her mother know.)

She'd never been attracted to anyone before, but she was pretty sure that's what was happening now. Though, she suspected she wouldn't recognize it for what it was if Bethany hadn't described her own feelings for her. Sometimes just...uncomfortably warm and...squirmy, she guessed, which she might have misinterpreted as embarrassment, if she didn't find herself watching her for no real reason, if she didn't...

She wanted to touch her, sometimes. She couldn't even say how she wanted to touch her, even, she just...wanted to. To be closer to her.

It was distracting. And uncomfortable.

She didn't like it.

It didn't help that... Well, it was just sort of weird, wasn't it? She meant, the first person she had ever been attracted to, and it was an elf? Did she just...have a thing for elves, or something? Was that even something that happened? She meant, it was true she'd never met an elf before...but Lýna was really the only one she'd noticed much of anything with. Of course, the only other elf she'd had much contact with so far was Alim, and she thought he was kind of...weird, and annoying, maybe that made a difference.

(From what Bethany and Carver had said, she didn't think it should make a difference, but maybe that one was just Marian being different.)

And, it was also uncomfortable because...wasn't Lýna...kind of young? She meant, it was a little hard to guess how old an elf was, but she was pretty sure Lýna was around Bethany's age, maybe a little bit older. Which was still old enough, she guessed — back home, there were a couple girls about a year younger than Bethany who'd gotten married last fall — it wasn't like she was so young it was... Hell, Lýna claimed she'd already been married and widowed once, which was absurd to think about. Just, Marian kind of felt like it was a little, well, even though she shouldn't.

She was Bethany's age, and Bethany was grown up now, but most of the time Marian still kind of thought of her baby sister like she was still a little kid. It was just...uncomfortable.

But, just because it made Marian very uncomfortable didn't mean it wasn't happening. Not that she planned on doing anything about it. Not that she would know what to do about it, even if she wanted to — which she didn't, not really. At a war camp preparing to fight the Blight really wasn't the time and place to...try to figure this shit out. So. Even if Lýna were amenable to...whatever, she wouldn't.

Lýna didn't know about it, she was pretty sure. She got the feeling Lýna thought she was being weird and confusing sometimes, but Marian was confident she didn't know why. And it was going to stay that way.

As pretty as she was, Lýna was also very scary. Yeah, Marian was just going to...not bring that up. Ever.

(Of course, how quiet and cold and scary Lýna could be didn't seem to discourage Marian from finding her attractive, not even a little bit, which was just... Marian was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with her again, but this really wasn't the time to pay too much attention to that. There was a Blight on, Marian, concentrate, dammit...)

So, with how distracted Marian was with Lýna being pretty, and thinking about Lýna being pretty (and thinking about thinking about Lýna being pretty), finally arriving at their destination came as something of a relief. Even if they might end up getting in a fight with unnerving Chasind mages — dealing with people trying to kill her was far simpler than dealing with how she felt about Lýna (or how she felt about how she felt about Lýna).

They were on relatively stable ground, a brief flat patch before the hill descended down to a lake not so far away, more of those drooping trees scattered here and there. In the shade of an especially tall and wide tree, not far from a large, free-burning pit fire, was a little house, too small to have more than one or two rooms inside, formed entirely of somewhat aged-looking planks of wood, the roof a thick mass of dried grasses, adhered together with some kind of tar. Hanging outside were a few rough animal skins — cleaned, but not yet shaped for their eventual purpose — alongside a few completed garments of cloth and fur, strewn with the beads and feathers Chasind seemed to like.

Morrigan skipped a few steps further ahead, announcing herself. "Mother! I have returned with guests — three Grey Wardens, who wish to—"

"Yes, I see them, girl." Marian jumped, eyes flicking over to the old woman standing next to the fire. Where had she come from, she could have sworn there hadn't been anybody there a second ago... "Come, come, be welcome at our fire — and let me get a better look at you."

Lýna and Alistair shot each other a loaded glance, but they obeyed, Marian following close behind. Morrigan continued past the fire, disappearing into the little house, while they approached the fire, arraying themselves around the elderly Chasind woman waiting there.

Once they were within a few feet, Lýna choked, her shoulders twitching up a few inches. Abruptly, Marian and Alistair both turning to stare at her, Lýna dropped to one knee, quick enough it took another second or two for her cloak to settle. Her head bowed, eyes fixed on the dirt, she said...something, it was in Dalish, complete nonsense to Marian's ears.

That was...odd. Marian glanced toward Alistair, to see if he had any better idea what was going on than she did, in time to catch him shooting her a very similar look. Apparently not, then. It was very odd, Lýna did not seem the sort of person to go kneeling to people — she didn't even bother bowing or anything to the King. (Lýna's failure to show the proper respect obviously annoyed his entourage, but the King himself didn't seem to mind, which was sort of funny.) It was almost surreal, honestly.

Though there was...something about the old woman. Marian couldn't put her finger on what. She looked perfectly ordinary — or at least perfectly ordinary by Chasind standards, which were somewhat odd. She was wearing a long, heavy dress covered in beadwork, a dense sash, mostly made of more beads and little bits of shining metal hung over one shoulder crossing down her chest to rest over her hip. Feathers blue and black were worked into the other shoulder, matching ones braided into her silvery hair here and there. She was clearly quite old, her face a mass of deep wrinkles, but her eyes were still bright, keen.

Marian blinked — her eyes were yellow.

She'd learned, recently, that unusual hair and eye colours were perfectly ordinary for elves. Lýna's snowy white hair simply didn't exist in humans, though according to Alim was quite common among elves (especially Dalish), her eyes blue, but a deep...dramatic blue, almost violet. Humans could have red hair, but nothing like the intense, brilliant red Alim had, like the sun peeking over the horizon, and the vibrant orange of his eyes was strikingly unusual as well.

But that was normal for elves. The Chasind were human. But, this woman's eyes were obviously yellow, the longer Marian looked the more certain she was of what she was seeing. Now that she thought about it, Morrigan's eyes were rather yellow-ish too, though with a bit more green in them, that was just...

And her magic felt...odd. Static on the air, like lightning about to strike, but also... There was a peculiar echo to it, something only half-heard, something larger than the woman, reaching out into...

There was clearly something different about her, Marian could tell that much. But that didn't really explain why Lýna was kneeling to her.

A hint of exasperation crossed the old woman's face, just for an instant. She spoke to Lýna, also in elvish, gesturing for her to stand up with one hand. To the two of them, she said, "I feel the People are far too quick to debase themselves, these days. But maybe that is not their fault, at the heart of it — sometimes the blood remembers what the mind all too easily forgets. Squishy things, minds..."

"Right," Alistair said, the word drawn out long and skeptical. He clearly thought she was insane, or perhaps simply demented. "Ah, your daughter thought you might be able to help us, we're looking for these treaties, you see..."

"Yes, yes, I had expected you would come — and just in time, too."

"Are we supposed to believe you were expecting us?"

"You are required to do nothing, least of all believe." The woman's head tilted, setting beads to clinking, her eyes narrowing on Alistair. "And what do you believe in, boy? Certainly not the Chantry that raised you, no, not any longer. Come!" she barked, beckoning him closer, "Let me get a better look at you."

Alistair didn't seem to like that idea but, with an encouraging nod from Lýna (who was standing again, though still looking rather overwhelmed), he took a few steps closer. The old woman reached for him, and he twitched, but let her touch him, look into his eyes, turn his chin this way and that.

"Mm." She clicked her tongue, shaking her head a little. "Holding on by a thread, aren't you? One too many disappointments, one too many crises of faith — you are too eager to trust, boy, and not discerning enough with who and what you trust yourself to. All your father's heart, all your mother's...complicated luck. Be careful, lest you allow yourself to be broken completely."

"Wait, you know my mother? Who was she?" Weirdly, Alistair didn't seem equally curious about his father — generally speaking, if someone was uncertain of the identity of one of their parents, it didn't tend to be their mother.

(Also, he didn't seem as unnerved as he should be that this woman knew anything about him, but perhaps he didn't know enough about magic to know how unsettling that was.)

The old woman smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. "Now, boy, I can't tell you that. Names are such stiff, human things, and heavy, too. On the other side, they are one of the first things that are shed. You, girl," she said, beckoning to Marian now, "come here. Let's see what you believe."

"I believe you're a Dreamer." It was the on the other side that had tipped her off — by the look on his face, Alistair thought she meant his mother was dead, but Marian was pretty sure she'd been referring to the Fade, that spirits had told her of Alistair's mother for some reason. But despite her wariness, Marian obeyed, stepping within arm's reach. She got the feeling that this woman could crush her like a bug, so long as she wasn't asking anything too onerous there was no harm in playing along.

The woman cackled, low and harsh, loud and sudden enough Marian almost backed away. "You're further from the truth than you think, but closer than you might be."

...Okay.

Fingers on her cheek, rather softer than she'd expected, Marian tried not to twitch at the tendrils of tingly magic reaching for her. But they didn't touch her, instead reaching past her and... She couldn't tell what they were doing, actually. The old woman's head tilted, craggy lips twitching with a smile. "Well. You are an interesting one, aren't you. Your road leads north, child, and into... And perhaps... Yes, yes..." She patted Marian on the cheek. "Try not to die to the darkspawn, girl. I would be most disappointed."

Because that wasn't unnerving at all. "Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint."

The woman smiled. "No, you would not. Pity — you might be happier if you would."

...What was that supposed to mean?

"And you, child," she said to Lýna...before switching to Dalish again. She went through the same process with Lýna she had the other two, touching her face and saying a few sentences in a spacey tone, seemingly only half present and the other half floating away somewhere and somewhen else. Marian could be reading her wrong, but Lýna looked like she thought the woman was being just as frustratingly cryptic in Dalish as she had in Alamarri.

After talking back and forth with the woman a couple times, Lýna switched back to Alamarri. "You will give treaties, Venýriś?"

"Yes, child, I will. I have kept them safe all these years, waiting for you to come for them. Girl! Bring them here." Morrigan had returned at some point, Marian hadn't noticed, now carrying a small wooden chest. The thing practically glowed with magic, runes etched with blood and lyrium into the surface.

Alistair must recognize the blood magic too — he was scowling a little bit, accepting the chest from Morrigan, bit back a comment with what looked to be some considerable effort. (Any time Alistair managed to keep his mouth shut was always vaguely surprising.) He did say, "You...protected them?"

"And why not?" The old woman almost sounded offended. "The Blight does not just come for your farms and cities, young Warden. It comes for Chasind and Dalish and Avvar just the same, it sweeps through the wilds, seeps into places old and hidden and forgotten. It kills everything it touches. Not just the parts you condescend to see."

"Right..." he muttered, wincing at the icey poison on her voice.

With a dismissive flip of her wrist, "Oh, don't mind me. I'm old and forgotten myself, why need you mind me any more? Take these to your Grey Wardens, boy. They will need them. Tell them the dangers are greater than they know."

Marian blurted, "What is that supposed to mean?" She didn't realize that dangers got much worse than a fucking Blight — how was that supposed to get worse, exactly?

"Isn't that obvious? Either the dangers are greater than they know, or they know of fewer of them. Perhaps they know none!" The woman chuckled, a half-mad grin splitting her face. "But how I go on, I've gone on long enough! Go, get out of here! There is much work to do, and precious little time to do it in! Go!"

Alistair cringed away, as though struck. The old woman still waving her hands in dismissal, Morrigan openly grinning with amusement, the three of them turned (Lýna with a last respectful bow and a few words of elvish), and started off. The swamp ahead of them looked completely indistinguishable from any other patch of swamp she'd seen today, she could only assume Lýna knew how to get back to the camp from here. That was the tower there, she thought, barely visible above the trees against the ever-darkening sky, but she'd probably lose it somewhere between here and there.

They'd hardly taken ten steps before there was a call of, "Girl!" Marian twitched to a stop, looked over her shoulder. The old woman was staring at her, her head tilted and eyes narrowed in thought — looking not at her, but through her and past her, examining something Marian couldn't quite imagine.

Looking into the Fade, presumably, the spirits moving in her shadow. That hadn't stopped being creepy.

The words coming slow, heavy, the woman said, "When He rises...you will See." It almost had the feeling of quoting something, but not quite, carrying a sense of importance Marian couldn't put words to.

Whatever it was, it had the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. "Uh... What will I see?"

She smirked. "You'll see it when you see it, girl. Go."

...Okay?

Marian caught up with Lýna and Alistair quickly, the latter glancing between her and the old woman, brow stitched with a suspicious frown. His voice pitched low, so it wouldn't carry, "What was that about?"

She shrugged. She hadn't a fucking clue.

---

[once been the southern provinces of Orlais...the breadbasket of the early Empire] — This is the desert in western Orlais, appearing in Inquisition as the Western Approach and the Hissing Wastes. What the region was like before the Second Blight, and exactly where the border between Orlais and the elven nation was before their war, was never canonically established. I'm putting the border at the river between the sea and Lake Celestine, the frontier from there running roughly south-southwest of the lake.

The area ruined by the Second Blight being a major agricultural center is intended to give Orlais additional motivation to entirely conquer the Dales. Racial and religious conflicts are only very rarely reason enough for war — there is almost always political or economic rationale at the top behind it, even if leaders claim otherwise in public. The war with the elves comes shortly after the Blight, when Orlais would still have been struggling to recover; exploiting racial tensions to acquire the vast fertile lands of the Dales, and thousands upon thousands of elven bodies to force to work it (serfdom is slavery by a different name), would have seemed like a convenient solution.

And then the elves proceeded to kick the Orlesians' entire ass. Oops! Uh, hey, Divine, can we have a holy war? Pretty please?

Venýriś — This is a modern term for Evanuris, preserved in Dalish as a term of address for literal gods (mostly only used in stories, obviously). Yes, Lýna knows exactly who she's talking to. She's kind of having a moment, don't mind her.

---

Don't worry about that last cryptic message, Marian, I'm certain it's not important.

So, uh, this happened. This chapter is fucking weird in that I started writing it...holy shit, October 2018, really? Wow, okay. So, there's literally two years between starting the chapter and actually finishing it. Of course, I wasn't actually working on it that whole time. I hadn't touched this fic in like a year and a half when Dragon Age just randomly appeared in my head one day last week, I legit have no idea why. I've been writing three to six thousand words for this chapter every day since. I have other shit I was supposed to be working on, but instead I can't get Dragon Age out of my head, so all this shit happened, I have no explanation.

I'm going to be posting the next chapter, the Joining and the Battle of Ostagar, and the next, some filler stuff that I find fun, anyway, probably at some point over the next few days. If my word vomit keeps going strong, I might have two Lothering chapters not long after that, we'll have to see.

I really have no idea where this is coming from, and I doubt I'll be able to keep this kind of output going for very long, so I really can't guess how long this random Dragon Age kick is going to be. I'll get back to my other shit eventually, but, uh...let's enjoy the ride until then?

Woo, yeah, back to writing Leliana, bye.