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.)

10. The Arl of Redcliffe — I

9:30 Nubulis 16

Redcliffe, Chasingard, Kingdom of Ferelden

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Redcliffe was the oldest settlement in western Ferelden, and second in importance only to Highever. The village sat at an important crossroads between the Imperial Highway, west toward Jader and east toward Denerim, and the water route north, reaching the Waking Sea and all the trade lanes there by way of Lake Calenhad and the River Dane. The southwestern hills of Ferelden were rich with ore and fur, lucrative trades both, almost all of which passed through Redcliffe on the way into the rest of the country or out to sea.

Originally a Chasind settlement, the Tevinters had put an outpost here, protecting the trade coming through the harbor on the lake. That outpost was later destroyed when the Avvar invaded these lands during the First Blight, fleeing darkspawn rising in the west, and Redcliffe became an Avvar town — the modern name is even an Alamarri translation of the one the Avvar gave the place. Redcliffe remained a powerful Avvar arling until it was conquered during the War of the Crowns by an alliance of what were now West Hills (Avvar) and South Reach (Chasind) — in the aftermath, Redcliffe became a Chasind kingdom, initially under South Reach but soon breaking away. And it remained Chasind country until these lands were conquered by Calenhad the Great in the Exalted Age four hundred years ago, absorbing the Arling into what would become the Kingdom of Ferelden.

Though, really, the vast majority of the population of the Arling was of Chasind (or Avvar) descent, and it was even said Chasind was still spoken in some of the more remote villages in the Hinterlands. But the settlement of Redcliffe itself was indisputably Alamarri.

The village sat in a little inlet off the lake at the mouth of a narrow river — the Red River, because people were very creative like that — shielded on both sides by cliffs, carved out of the stone over eons by the flowing water. There were a few dozen little houses and such, mostly made of wood and straw, very little in the way of stone to be seen. Despite how well-shielded of a harbor the cliffs made this, the shore dropped off too slowly, would require irritatingly long docks to reach a depth boats could safely launch from...so the villagers had built out onto the lake, storehouses and whatever propped above the water by thick posts, stretching a couple buildings deep past the shoreline — only from there did the docks stretch out into the water. Essentially, Redcliffe's entire dockyard was just...out on the lake. Not very far, true, but still, what the hell.

The road leading here from the Highway, a mile or two south of the village, didn't actually go down into the harbor, instead just abuttted the edge of the village, passing a larger building that was probably a tavern or something, before curving to the right and leading up the cliff on the east side of the harbor, vanishing into the trees and bushes covering the hillside. That had been the site of the original Tevinter fort long ago, later converted into an Avvar shrine, and then a Chasind one, and then finally a Chantry in Calenhad's time — though that one had since been abandoned, there was a modern Chantry opening into the little square at the town's heart instead. There was a second road in the village, turning somewhat south before curving west, and then north, a few houses and the mill perched precariously on the cliffside, before finally reaching Redcliffe Castle atop the western cliffs.

Redcliffe Castle was perhaps the largest fortress in Ferelden built by the locals, the only real contender the Couslands' seat in Highever. It was a sprawling edifice of hard-angled walls and crenellated towers, cast in the same dusky reddish stone as the cliffs looming over the village, seeming to grow out of the hillside. Perched right on the edge of the cliffs, preventing any approach from the east or south, the walls thick and tall and unclimbable, Redcliffe Castle was popularly considered to be unassailable. This wasn't strictly true, of course — the castle has been taken at least three times, once by Calenhad (though it had been smaller then), once by some Orlesian commander (Alim couldn't remember their name offhand), and then again by Loghain not thirty years ago (famously relying on elven archers to pull it off) — but ideas like these can sometimes persist despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

The place was rather pretty, Alim thought, the village nestled between the reddish cliffs, threaded with trees here and there, a few crumbling Tevinter columns poking through the brush to the east, the sun sparkling off of the gently-undulating water of the lake stretching out into the distance. Not pretty enough to justify running a day and a half to get here, but still, pretty, sure, fine.

They were following the road downhill toward the village — the very last leg of their journey, the village spread out invitingly before them, only a couple minutes away — when Alistair inexplicably came to a stop, calling on Lýna to hang back a moment. Alim wanted to scream. He'd so been looking forward to their brutal pace being over, at least for a little bit, to get some proper food, maybe a nice stew or some bread, when was the last time he'd had bread (real bread, hardtack didn't count), to sit down, in a chair. Reluctantly, he stood not far from Alistair, the overworked muscles of his legs uncomfortably twitching, his back aching, biting his lip to keep himself from glaring at the (much) larger man.

Lýna and Leliana had to backtrack to get into a comfortable conversational distance, the Sister flushed and sweating a bit, a little out of breath from trying to keep up with the Dalish girl hopping around like a hyperactive rabbit. Lýna herself didn't look the least bit winded by the exertion, just faintly annoyed. "What is?"

"There's, ah, something I have to tell you all." He was addressing Lýna, but a quick glance around suggested he was really speaking to all of them. Before going on, he lingered on Morrigan with a suspicious, hesitant sort of look — whatever this was about, he clearly didn't trust her with it, but also didn't think he had much choice.

Alim was slightly surprised Leliana didn't get the same look, given that she was insane. But she was also a Sister of the Chantry, and Alistair was trained as a Templar — he would have been told since childhood to respect the Chantry, it's hard to break that kind of training.

"Right, ah, before we get to Redcliffe... How to tell you this? Did I explain how I know the Arl, exactly?"

He had. Nobody else was jumping out to answer right away, so Alim took it. "You said you grew up here, that Arl Eamon practically raised you."

Nodding, Keran said, "I think your exact words were the closest thing I have to a father."

"Yes, that. Well, see..." Alistair sucked in a breath, then blurted out, distinctly uncomfortable, "I'm a bastard!"

Alim failed to hold in a snort — honestly, like that was such a great shame, a quarter of the people in the country were probably bastards. The big dunce had clearly grown up around the nobility, they were the only people who cared about that sort of thing.

His eyes tipping up to the sky, doing everything but openly shuffling in place out of awkwardness, Alistair continued. "My mother was a seving girl at Redcliffe Castle, she died when I was born. Eamon took me in and raised me until I was sent to the Chantry."

Leliana gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth — very Orlesian, that. "Oh my, is the Arl actually your father?" she asked, her voice nearly a chirp, delighted.

"What? No! No, no. It's, ah, it's worse than that." Alistair sucked in another long breath, then set his shoulders, tensing head to toe. As though expecting a blow. "Eamon told me he took me in because...because my father was...King Maric."

Dead silence.

The wind blew, trees creaking. Dogs barked somewhere in the distance. Birds tweeted.

Nobody said a fucking word.

Probably, like Alim, taking a good look at Alistair's face, and trying to spot any hint of familiarity with— Alim gasped. "Andraste's saggy ti— Eep!" He clapped his hand over his mouth, painfully jabbing his lip on his teeth. Eyes flicking guiltily to Leliana, he muttered out a muffled, "Sorry."

Leliana raised a bemused eyebrow at him, smiling a little, her face clearly saying, You sweet silly boy, I've heard much worse blasphemy than that. Which, to be fair, yes, he was being silly, but he'd also been taught since childhood to respect the Chantry — it's hard to break that kind of training.

Alim cleared his throat, tried not to look as embarrassed as he felt by his stupid little outburst. (Morrigan smirking at him didn't help.) "Ah, I just noticed, you and the King are practically identical. Cailan, I mean." Well, saying they were identical was over-selling it, but. Alistair's brow was wider, his eyes more brown than hazel, his nose slimmer, his hair sort of a pale reddish-brown, auburn-like, while King Cailan (and Maric before him) had been very blond. But, ignore the hair and the resemblance was very obvious, once Alim saw it he couldn't un-see it. It was uncanny.

All of them were now staring at Alistair, wide-eyed — except Morrigan, who clearly didn't care, and Lýna, who was squinting at Alistair with an obvious sense of confusion. Probably didn't see the resemblance herself. To be fair, the small differences were enough it would be unlikely they were closely related...if they were elves, Lýna probably hadn't gotten used to that yet. In fact, how many human families had Lýna ever even seen? Probably not very many.

"Well," Keran said after a moment, her voice flat from shock. "I was going to ask how that could be known for certain, but now that Alim's pointed it out, I believe it."

Perry was giving Alistair a narrow-eyed, suspicious sort of look, his arms crossed rigidly over his chest. "You been the King's brother all along, and you ain't say nothing?"

"Oh, and what was I supposed to say?" His voice softening and rising a few notes in pitch, Alistair breathed, "Hey, by the way, I exist because His Majesty Maric the Savior knocked up one of the servants while visiting his brother-in-law, because apparently he was secretly a huge ass. What, do I have any proof? Nope! Just what Arl Eamon told me — you know, the Queen's brother, I'm sure he has no personal investment in the story at all." Alistair rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that conversation never goes well, believe me."

...When Alistair put it like that, he actually made a very good point. About maybe King Maric being a huge ass, he meant. Alistair had said he was nineteen, so the Queen Mother should have already passed away by the time he was conceived...but barely, probably less than a year. If Maric really had been screwing around with the servants in Arl Eamon's house so soon after his sister's death, yeah, Alim could imagine he might not have appreciated that much. He wouldn't put it past a devious person to claim some random bastard was the King's just to use Alistair to fuck with him later — in fact, Alim wouldn't be surprised if that was exactly why Eamon had taken Alistair in in the first place.

He didn't doubt Alistair really was Maric's son, though. The resemblance between him and the King was just too obvious to be a coincidence.

There was a little bit more bickering, mostly between Keran and Perry, and Alistair and Morrigan — Perry apparently didn't like the idea of Alistair being Maric's bastard son, for some reason, and Morrigan just thought it was funny — before they were cut off by a sharp clap of Lýna's hands, drawing attention to herself. "I don't understand. What difference for this?"

"Oh, nothing," Alistair said, almost cheerfully. "It doesn't matter. I just thought I'd tell you because, well, if we stay in Redcliffe long enough, it's going to come up. Get the surprise out of the way when we don't have an audience, you know."

Keran was gaping at him. "What do you mean it doesn't matter? Alistair, you're the heir to the throne!"

Well, sort of, but also not really. It was true that, ordinarily, the brother of the king would be the natural person to take over if the king died childless, but that would still have to be signed off on by the Landsmeet. It was possible Alistair could show up at the Landsmeet and end up being picked...if he had any proof of his parentage — he'd just admitted a minute ago he didn't, it was only Eamon's word, which many of the rest of the nobles might not accept. If Alistair had spent a lot of time in their circles, they might be willing to overlook that, but he said he'd been sent to a monastery when he was ten, and had been a Grey Warden for a year or two now. The chances of the Landsmeet selecting to be their new king some stranger who was totally King Maric's bastard son, trust me were practically zero.

Before Alim could say anything about all that, Alistair blurted out, "What? No! Get that out of your head right now, Keran," jabbing a finger at her, "that is a terrible idea. I don't know the first thing about being king or whatever, it would be a complete disaster."

"But, you—"

"No, Keran. I don't know what you're imagining my upbringing was like, but whatever it is is wrong. I was not raised the King's son, I didn't learn most of all what the nobility gets growing up. For fuck's sake, half the time I slept out with the dogs in the kennels! I don't belong—"

Leliana drew in a sharp gasp, eyes gone wide, her hand coming up to cover her mouth again. "Truly? That's horrible! Who would do such a thing to a child?" Perry seemed much less surprised than Leliana was about the idea, but the irritation on his face had cleared up a bit — oh, he'd probably been worried Alistair was suddenly going to turn into some self-important royal bas—

Ha! Royal bastard! That was funny, Alim was going to have to remember to use that later.

Anyway, Keran, Perry, Leliana, and even Alim were all staring at Alistair waiting for an answer, horrified or curious or a mix, with the exceptions of Lýna and Morrigan, both looking rather bemused — if Alim had to guess, they probably thought children sleeping with the animals was perfectly reasonable, if only to be on hand if something happened in the night or whatever. Under the weight of their gazes, Alistair's eyes tipped up to the sky again, cursed under his breath for a second. Reluctantly, he admitted, "Isolde, the Arlessa, despises me. There have always been rumors going around that I'm Eamon's bastard, and, I don't know, she just didn't like it. I swear, she was out to make me miserable from the day she walked into Redcliffe. Half the reason I left to join the Templars was just to get away from her."

"And he didn't do anything about it?" It was obvious from her tone that Leliana disapproved — which was fair, it really should be on Eamon to resolve those kinds of conflicts in his own household, sitting back and doing nothing about it was extremely irresponsible and unbecoming of a lord of any kind anywhere.

"He didn't want to pick a fight with Isolde, and I don't blame him. He loves that woman, and what am I to him, really? I never expected him to take my side, not even when I was little, and I wouldn't have asked him to. I mostly regret that me being around was making life difficult for him."

Leliana frowned, clearly not pleased with any of that either, but she didn't say anything. Alim thought she might actually be biting the inside of her lip to stop herself from going on a tirade. Which, fair, even from that little bit just now Alim had gotten the very clear impression the Arlessa had done a number on Alistair when he'd been a kid — Maker, to not even think his mistreatment was worth bringing to the attention of the man even he claimed was the closest thing he'd ever had to a father...

He'd still been better off than Alim and the other mages growing up — Alim doubted whatever Isolde had been doing to make him miserable went as far as beating him, and there had been someone he could go to about it if he decided he wanted to, and at the very least he'd had the option of running away. Could have been worse, but still, harsh.

"This is nothing," Lýna said, her voice flat and careless in that way she got when speaking about silly Fereldan things she didn't think were important. "From the Joining, the life before has died, and you are Grey Warden. Alistair is Grey Warden. What was before, is nothing."

With a relieved sort of smile, Alistair nodded. "Yeah, what Lýna said. I'm not telling you all because I think it's a big deal or anything, or I think it should change anything. I just thought it was best we not make a scene in front of other people if it comes up."

"Yes, this is good. Now, come." Lýna turned on her heel and started off for the village again, abandoning the conversation about Alistair's parentage as though it were just as unimportant as both senior Wardens claimed.

Which, when Alim thought about it, it probably was. The chances of Alistair becoming king were practically nonexistent anyway. And, well, it was kind of a Warden thing, that the relationships and obligations of their previous life were void upon joining the order. The major exception were certain familial ties — unlike with, say, Templars, the marriages of Wardens weren't considered annulled the instant they joined, and they could still inherit and pass down property like anyone else — but their loyalties to outside lords and kings, debts they might owe, even sentences for crimes they might have committed, all of these could no longer touch them, by the terms of the treaties all the major governments had signed with the Wardens ages ago. Wardens could accumulate new debt or commit new crimes for which they could be held liable, yes, but such things could not follow out of their old life into their new one.

(And, generally, the Wardens would cover most debts and claimed jurisdiction over punishing their own members...or not, as the case might be — nobody wanted to pick a fight with the Wardens, so sometimes their less honorable members got away with quite a lot, if the order were unwilling to do anything about it themselves.)

As far as the Wardens were concerned, the Alistair who had been might well have had a claim to the throne — a flimsy one, but a claim nonetheless. Alistair the Grey Warden did not, and had little reason to pursue that claim in any case.

Regardless, Alim lingered for a moment, trading glances with Keran and Leliana. It just...felt like there should be more to this. It was like something out of one of those ridiculous old stories, you know, the lost son of a king returning from exile to enact vengeance on evildoers and redeem his fallen kingdom, blah blah blah. It was like, one of those stories had started, in real life right before his eyes, before abruptly just ending, with the noble-hearted true heir claiming he was perfectly happy remaining a humble farmhand for the rest of his life, thank you very much. It was...awkward, just awkward. The topic felt disorientingly unfinished, as though Alim were left waiting for a conclusion that would never come.

Shaking the feeling off, Alim forced himself into motion, following Lýna and Alistair down the road, the two senior Wardens huddled in a whispered conversation as they walked.

Their group were met by armed men where the road met the village, near the building Alim suspected was a tavern. Peculiarly, they weren't professional men-at-arms, but a motley band of men and women, mostly humans but Alim spotted a pair of elves too, mostly carrying rough hunting bows and axes that had probably been intended for chopping wood. Only two had weapons built for the purpose, a pair of polearms, and none of them were wearing much in the way of armor, undyed threadbare peasant clothing. Militia, then.

Which then raised the question of what militia were doing watching the road coming in to the town. The Arl had sent men to Ostagar — led by one of his knights, no one from the Guerrin family had made the trip themselves — but surely he hadn't sent everyone, he should still have a few around to keep the peace.

Unlike in many other countries, Orlais and Nevarra in particular, Fereldan lords generally preferred to not press peasants into service — the people of this country could be very...willful, it often ended badly. Walking up to as important of a town as Redcliffe to find it was being guarded by unequipped and untrained peasant militia was very peculiar.

Alistair asked the welcoming committee what was going on here, and they were quickly treated to an outburst of overlapping claims of the town basically being under siege, attacked every night by...walking corpses? Base demons inhabiting the bodies of the dead and walking around in them, it wasn't an unusual phenomenon — it was, presumably, why virtually every culture in the world had a means of disposing of their dead in a way such that the bodies were made unusable for the purpose. (Cremation was the most common, it had been common practice throughout the Imperium even before early Andrastians had given it a theological meaning.) The rambling bunch of people weren't making much sense though, seemingly halfway hysterical, so Alistair requested they be shown to whoever was in charge of this mess.

Bann Teagan, apparently. Alim was about ninety percent sure that was the name of the Queen Mother's youngest brother. Whoever he was, one of the militiamen peeled off to lead them into the town.

Alim had noticed from a distance that there seemed to be something going on in the Chantry square, though he hadn't been able to make out what. Walking into the square, it was damn obvious what was going on: Bann Teagan was raising a militia. Dotted here and there across the wide open space were men in mail and plate, probably knights of some stripe — Alim caught glimpses of arms here and there, some Redcliffe colors but others were unfamiliar, probably wealthier freeholder families in the area — leading masses of common people in training exercises. Mostly polearms, which made sense — they tended to be cheap to make and required relatively little training. There were a few people practicing with one-handed weapons and shields, but not very many, since a higher degree of skill was needed to be competent at that sort of thing. (Also, the weaponry itself was more expensive and harder to improvise on short notice.) There was a shooting range at one end, a few rough-looking people with rough-looking bows taking shots at improvised targets of wood and straw, but rather fewer archers seemed to be around than Alim would expect for a force this size...which also made sense, since shooting with a bow was skill-intensive, and he doubted they had many crossbows sitting around.

It seemed the people who'd met them at the road hadn't been messing with them, this certainly looked like a town preparing to defend itself from attack. It was just...odd. A couple corpses being possessed by demons now and again, sure, but they never attacked in the kind of numbers the scale of preparations here suggested. Demons simply didn't cross the Veil that frequently. Also, where were the bodies coming from? No, none of this made any sense.

They were following their guide through the crowd, Lýna's hood covering her face to avoid attracting attention from all the jumpy people with weapons, when Alistair abruptly stopped, again. "Are those Highever colors?"

Following his pointed finger, Alim stepped closer to him so he could see around a formation of practicing pikemen. Oh, hey, he was right — a pair of spears crossed over a raindrop, those must be knights sworn to the Teyrn of Highever. There weren't many of them, less than a dozen, their armor looking a little worse for wear, though not obviously injured. "You're right, those are Highever men. What are they doing here?" Highever was at least a week away from here — or, three or four days at the brutal pace Lýna had set here from Lothering, but any reasonable person would probably take closer to a week and a half. Going by boat was quicker — north across the lake and down the River Dane to the Waking Sea, then looping around West Hill up to the city, depending on the winds and how high the river was at the time it could be as short as three days easy — but still, this wasn't exactly in the neighborhood. Maybe they were returning home from Ostagar, the water route was quicker than walking the whole—

Alim blinked. One of the men, tall and broad-shouldered with long braided hair a flaming Alamarri orange, had just turned around, showing his back to them. Particularly, the shield on his back: paired sprigs of laurel, green on blue.

Cousland? What was a Coulsand doing in Redcliffe? That wouldn't be so strange, ordinarily, but now?

Before anyone could say anything, Alistair was already flouncing off, ploughing through the crowd with the sort of ease available to only the very large or very bull-headed, Lýna slipping neatly into his wake. The rest of them were a few steps behind, by the time Alim — following Keran much like Lýna was Alistair, because he was annoyingly tiny and easily trampled — caught up Alistair was stomping up to the Highever men, calling out, "Fergus, you son of a bitch! What are you doing here?"

...Fergus? He meant, Teyrn Bryce Cousland's eldest son? Had Alistair really just called Fergus Cousland a son of a bitch? People have literally been killed for lesser offenses...

The Cousland in question obviously wasn't the type to flip out and murder a mouthy peasant, though. The large man, even bigger than Alistair which was just unfair, twitched at the sudden shout, then turned to look over his shoulder. As soon as he caught sight of Alistair, the hard edges to his face loosened somewhat. "Alistair, you son of a whore!" he called, grasping Alistair's hand as he came into arm's reach, and they yanked each other into a sort of manly half-hug, slapping each other's shoulders.

For a couple seconds, Alim could only stare, blinking dumbly to himself. Apparently, Alistair and the famous Teyrn's son knew each other. Huh.

Wait, hadn't he said something about that a couple days ago, outside Lothering? About knowing both the younger Couslands, actually, he'd even been a bit broken up at the sudden realization that Fergus might have died at Ostagar. It was just...kind of odd. Alistair had claimed he hadn't much to do with the nobility of the country, but he clearly knew the Guerrins and the Couslands at least...

"I'm glad to see you made it out of Ostagar. Though I should have expected as much, you sly little bastard."

"And you! We were up in the Tower for the battle, but wouldn't you have been down with the King?"

"Ah, well, no." Some of the good cheer at Alistair's appearance was already dripping off Fergus's face. He was still smiling, but it seemed false, strained and empty. He did have quite a bit of stubble going on, and there were dark circles around his eyes, clearly hadn't been sleeping well. "I was out scouting the cliffs to the west with some of my men, we ended up getting cut off from the trail back to the fortress. We all might be dead now if a passing clan of Dalish hadn't stumbled across us while we were fighting off a pack of darkspawn."

"Maker. Are you alright?"

"Oh, I'll live. Lost a few friends, though. In any case, it didn't look like we'd be able to fight our way back to Ostagar, so we went north instead. I had planned to loop back around, perhaps help form a second line near Lothering, but the news was already coming in by then."

Alistair winced. "So, you've heard the rumors."

"That the Grey Wardens are responsible for Cailan's death?" Fergus scoffed, all but rolling his eyes, some of his men, clearly eavesdropping, let out dark, humorless chuckles. "Absolute nonsense. My brother tells me Cailan used to trail after the Warden-Commander like a curious pup, a dead-obvious case of hero-worship — which I do understand, Duncan is an impressive man. My point being, Duncan has doted on Cailan in turn, ever since he was a boy. The suggestion that Duncan plotted to murder him is simply preposterous. I can't imagine what Loghain thinks he's playing at, spinning such falsehoods."

"I don't know. I don't think Loghain liked that most of the Wardens were foreigners — he seemed particularly concerned over the idea that some of us are Orlesian spies, or some such nonsense."

The nobleman's face pulled into a smoldering frustration, eyes turning to the sky as he let out a heavy sigh. "I always wondered when Loghain's obsession with Orlais would get the better of him. You know, he once suggested that in marrying an Orlesian I was leaving myself open to subversion by our enemies."

"Yes, he said something similar to Eamon once, he just about kicked him out of—" Alistair cut himself off with a very inarticulate guh. "Wait, isn't Oriana Antivan?" An important distinction, given that Antiva was literally on the other side of the continent from Orlais — only Rivain and Par Vollen itself were further away.

The scowl only deepend, looking at once furious and somehow brittle. "She was, yes."

"Did... Did something happen?" Alistair asked, his voice going delicate and awkward. Alim hadn't even noticed the use of the past tense at first.

"You haven't heard?" At Alistair's denial, Fergus bit out another harsh sigh. His jaw worked in silence for a moment, glaring up at the sky, his eyes burning with repressed...fury? Maybe fury, maybe something else, hard to tell. "The Castle was taken, a couple weeks ago now. Everyone inside was killed. I may well be the only Cousland left."

"Maker, Fergus..."

The conversation went down a predictable path from there, everybody in their group expressing condolences for the murder of his entire family — with the exception of Lýna, who was watching the crowd instead of participating, and Morrigan, who clearly didn't give a shit. Fergus claimed, entirely reasonably, that he didn't want to talk about it, or even think about it, to stay focused on other things until he was in a place he could deal with it all and not descend into a depression-fuelled alcohol binge, which in the present circumstances would probably end in his death and that of who knew how many others. (Alim added those last details, but it was pretty obvious reading between the lines.)

There was a short diversion as Keran asked after Aedan, Fergus's younger brother, who she apparently had some familiarity with. Being noble children of a similar age (Keran's father was the Bann of Portsmouth, she provided when asked), they'd seen a bit of each other in Denerim, and then Keran had seen rather more of him after joining the city guard, said in a way that suggested some salacious things about Aedan's character that had Perry snickering to himself. Fergus said the story was that the Couslands — Bryce and Eleanor, Aedan, along with Fergus's wife and their young son — were all dead. Fergus himself was even presumed dead at Ostagar. But he insisted Aedan was a slippery little shit, it was definitely possible he'd managed to get out with none the wiser. He couldn't say for certain whether his brother was still alive, but Fergus was going to assume he was until he had explicit confirmation one way or the other.

Really, if Alim were to assume any of them would get out alive, it would be Eleanor Cousland. The woman had a...certain reputation, built up during the Rebellion. But, because of that reputation, the people hitting the Couslands — the official story said bandits, but Fergus suspected Rendon Howe, the Arl of Amaranthine — would want to make especially certain to take out the Teyrna.

After a bit, they finally got back around to Fergus, who should technically now be Teyrn of Highever, explaining just what he was doing here. He'd arrived only the day before to find Redcliffe in a mess, desperately trying to pull themselves together to fight off the dead pouring out from the Castle every night. Given that going home with Howe's men in control of Highever would probably be suicide, he'd decided to stay here and help out. His long-term plan was to accompany Arl Eamon — or Teagan, if everyone up at the Castle was already dead, which did seem likely — to the Landsmeet, where he would press his claim against Howe in front of the gathered lords of Ferelden. And possibly, he admitted, depending on exactly how things with Anora and his feud with Howe go, Fergus might end up making a play for the Crown himself.

It was an odd thought Alim was having because, given that the King had no obvious heir and that Fergus was a Cousland, it was actually pretty likely the Landsmeet would choose him. There was the bastard son of the previous King right there, and it was the other guy who might take the throne. Weird.

Anyway, after a few more condolences and back-slaps back and forth, Alistair turned back to the militiaman (whose name Alim had forgotten), and they continued on into the Chantry, where Bann Teagan was apparently waiting. The Redcliffe Chantry was significantly larger than the one in Lothering, and also a complete fucking mess. There were people scattered all over across the floor of the main hall, filling all but a few narrow corridors through the crowd, clustered into little groups here and there — those unfit to fight, for the most part, disproportionately children and women — the occasional armed person pausing to chat with them, Sisters flitting about through the crowd seemingly at random, tending to this person or that, passing food around or tending to the injured or grieving or intervening in arguments just sparking to life. Supplies had been moved into the Chantry, mostly basics like grain and beer, the recessional on the right practically filled with sacks and casks and crates. And it was noisy, the accumulated weight of a hundred voices speaking all at once, and it stank, incense and body odor and the occasional more offensive whiff of waste mixing together into a sickening haze, impossible to ignore, Alim felt his eyes watering after only a few breaths.

They were getting a lot of glances from people near the door, only intensifying when Lýna, probably remembering the lecture she'd gotten back at the Lothering Chantry, pulled back her hood, revealing the obviously Dalish tattoos all over her face. Alim caught more than one person yanking children further away from them as they passed, protectively shielding them from the tiny elf girl. (The addition of the very obviously Chasind Morrigan also probably wasn't helping.) He couldn't help rolling his eyes a little. Sure, Lýna was Dalish, and very deadly in a fight, but come on...

Their guide was leading them to a man standing near the altar, in a heated-looking conversation with an older woman in Chantry robes, probably the Revered Mother. The man who was presumably Bann Teagan was wearing expensive-looking armor, mostly in black and red, that had definitely seen better days — there were a couple dents here and there, an obvious rent in the mail near his left elbow. As they got closer, it became clear his dark hair was a tangled mess, ash smeared across one of his cheeks, face taut and exhausted and anxious. Hardly the picture of a Bann most people would imagine.

"Ah, Tomas, was it?" the Bann said as they approached — abandoning his conversation with the Revered Mother with rude abruptness. He had one of those deep rumbling voices, the kind elves simply couldn't have, the upper-class accent more obvious as he continued. "And who are these people with you? They're not locals."

"No, milord," their guide said, bowing his head a little. "They came down the road just now, I thought you would want to meet them."

Shooting them all a narrow-eyed sort of look, probably taking in their finally-made arms and armor — though without any obvious Grey Warden heraldry, Alistair had picked up a cloak to cover the griffon on his breastplate — the Bann slowly nodded. "Yes, thank you, Tomas. You may return to your post." As the militiaman quickly bowed and scurried away, the lord grumbled, "My name is Teagan Guerrin, Bann of Rainesfere, and brother to the Arl of Redcliffe. Might I know who you are, and what you are doing here?"

The note of suspicion was obvious, maybe thought they were particularly well-funded bandits, or mercenaries or something. (Having Lýna and Morrigan standing there looking very foreign and intimidating probably didn't help.) Alistair gave the Bann a dopey smile, spoke softly, as though trying to lighten the mood with his very presence. "I remember you, Teagan, but you might not recognize me. Last time we met, I was much smaller...and covered in mud."

"Covered in— Oh!" Some of the anxiety lifted from the Bann's face, breaking into a pleasantly surprised grin. "Alistair? Is that truly you?"

"In all my questionable glory, yes."

The Bann barked out a laugh, stepped forward to roughly clasp arms with Alistair, their armor jangling at the impact. "You're right, I didn't recognize you at first. Maker, you're all grown up!" He clapped Alistair on the shoulder with a hard thud before letting go of his hand. "Aedan wasn't joking when he said you'd turned out handsome, was he."

"I like to think so. Unfortunately, so few seem to respond to my charms as they rightly should. Women, I tell you."

Keran coughed, the sound somehow mocking all by itself, and Leliana covered her lips with a hand again, her eyes dancing, clearly smothering giggles. (She really was very Orlesian sometimes.)

"I heard you were a Grey Warden these days. Were you not at Ostagar?"

"No, we were, but we weren't posted on the front with the rest. Duncan assigned us to defend the siege engines instead. We had orders to retreat if the battle went badly, to assist Ferelden as the horde moves into the country." His tone was casual enough it almost wasn't clear that he'd absolutely despised those orders when they were given, and still sort of did — no matter that he understood their necessity.

The Bann nodded, a sympathetic dip to his brow at Alistair's unspoken displeasure. "Yes, I'm not surprised. The Warden-Commander always did seem a practical sort to me, I would be astounded if he hadn't planned for defeat at Ostagar. So, your companions are also Wardens, then?" he asked, glancing over the rest of the group with a raised eyebrow.

"Ah, most of us, yes. Um, I should probably—" Alistair let out a huff, his eyes tipping to the ceiling for a second. "Lyna, could you tell him your name? I always say it wrong." Alim didn't blame him, that ý vowel was a bitch — it was a characteristically elvish sound, also appearing only in certain elvish-influenced dialects of Tevene and Rivaini. Not something most Fereldans had probably ever even heard before.

She shot him a blank look, but turned to greet the Bann with a nod. "Lýna Maharjeᶅ."

"Right, that. Duncan made Lyna—" Alistair still mispronounced it, of course, coming out more like Alamarri Linna. "—Warden-Lieutenant just before the battle, so she's actually the boss of us." The Bann's eyebrows ticked up a little in surprise, he'd probably assumed Alistair was in charge, but didn't interrupt, let Alistair go along naming them all.

Once he was done, Teagan drawled, "It's a pleasure to meet you all, of course, but you must forgive me the lack of proper hospitality. We are in desperate straits at the moment. Any assistance you could provide us in protecting the town would be greatly appreciated."

"Ah..." Somewhat warily, Alistair glanced at Lýna — probably uncertain whether the cold, callous Dalish girl would agree to risk their lives fighting undead to protect a bunch of humans. Alim had spotted a couple elves here and there, but not many, outnumbered by even dwarves. (There were a lot of dwarves in the western arlings, but still, mostly humans.) "We came to meet with the Arl, actually."

Teagan huffed. "Well, I'm afraid you're not likely to have much luck with that. The gates are barred, and they only open to release another wave of walking corpses upon the town. We haven't had word from inside the Castle for going on a week now."

...Well, that didn't sound good. Alistair seemed shocked into silence, so Alim asked, "Is the Arl even still alive?" If he wasn't, they would have to drastically rethink their plans. Fergus Cousland was out in the village — he would be just as good a person to ally with going into the Landsmeet, though he could provide much less support in the months leading up to it, with Highever occupied...

"I honestly can't tell you. There was a rumor coming down the hill that something was wrong in the Castle, that perhaps Eamon or Connor or both of them were ill, but the gates shut before we could confirm anything. That was the last anyone heard."

That led to a conversation of what exactly they'd been facing over the last week, mostly between the Bann, Alistair, Keran, and the Mother. The little Alim caught sounded absolutely horrifying. By the sound of it, the dead had been small in number at first (probably the Castle's servants), but they had quickly multiplied — they started with freeholder homesteads up in the hills, a couple smaller villages here and there, killing the residents and dragging their bodies back to the Castle to be possessed themselves. They'd only started hitting Redcliffe once they'd had the numbers to attack in force. Even with the residents fighting back, the undead still grew every night, dragging away more and more corpses to add to their numbers.

Teagan had realized what was happening relatively early, sent out runners to beg others in the area to flee to Redcliffe to join the defenders here, or to just leave the area entirely, but by then possibly hundreds had already died and joined the army of possessed. He had evacuated as many of the people as he could, sending them out across the lake on fishing boats and barges — they were waiting not far away, one checked back every morning to make sure the town still stood — but as many as a fifth of the entire population of the area was dead, another quarter still at risk here, between the people packed into the Chantry and their defenders outside.

Alim did not like the idea of watching undead kill someone and drag them off, only to see that same person again the next day, shuffling down the road with the rest. Again and again and again, every night for a week. That was just, yeesh, not good, he could understand why the people here seemed so frightened.

There wasn't reason to be anymore, though. They had two mages and a Templar — they could theoretically dispose of any number of possessed corpses. It was whoever was summoning them that Alim was really worried about. Spirits didn't cross the Veil in these numbers naturally, after all.

But Alim didn't hear much of the conversation the others were having, because before too long Lýna sidled up next to him. Appearing out of fucking nowhere, of course, girl was so tiny and quiet he sometimes lost track of her entirely. "The gate, what shield Castle. You know it?"

Alim blinked. "I...know what a gate is, yes? Are you asking if I know where it is?" Was Lýna thinking of running off and attacking what was causing this at the source? That wasn't a bad idea, really. Except, Lýna could probably climb right up the outer wall at the gate, like a fucking squirrel, but the rest of them would be hard-pressed to follow.

"No, what it is. Like..." Lýna tapped one of the silverite scales over her her hip, then the steel and leather grip of her sword, plucked at the softer leather of her gloves.

What it was... "Oh! What's it made out of. Um, it should be mostly dried hardwood — oak, probably."

"This is the tree, oak?"

"Yeah, the tree. It'll be heavy and thick, but it's mostly just wood. There will be iron bars through the door too, but probably just a little bit, to hold the wood in place. Why?"

"You can break it?" She flicked her wrist and drew a couple lines on the air with her finger — imitating the casting of a glyph, maybe. "If we go, you can open?"

Alim opened his mouth to ask if she was serious, but then closed it again. As far as he could tell, Lýna was pretty much always serious. And she wasn't a mage herself, the absolute insanity of what she was asking might not be obvious, magic was just magic to normal people, she wouldn't know that...

Wait a second.

Could he destroy a castle gate? If the entire door were sheathed in iron, probably not, but that was really quite rare, there would only be a few supports here and there. Iron was meltable, and rods of it were deformable. The wood would be dense, and hard, and old — organic materials that had been dead for a long time were often more difficult to manipulate. (No one was really certain why, magic was strange like that sometimes.) But he wouldn't need to manipulate it to set it on fire. It'd have to be white fire — an intensely hot, almost gaseous magical fire that could be forced into materials to burn them from the inside out — but it was theoretically doable. And that kind of heat would definitely soften the iron, even if he failed to bring down the gates himself they should be far easier to smash open.

Huh. That sounded oddly feasible. He would definitely burn out, even with the assistance of lyrium — chances were he'd be taken out of the rest of the fight. But, planning out the glyphs he would use, doing some rough math in his head, it...should be possible. Without immolating himself, he meant. It would be playing it closer to the edge than he was comfortable with, but it was possible.

...Was he actually thinking about bringing down the gates of Redcliffe Castle all by himself? The fuck did he think he was, a Tevinter magister? A Maker-cursed battering ram?

Incinerating a door with white fire and smashing the remains inward would be one hell of a knock.

He tried to speak, but his throat was weirdly dry, he had to swallow before his voice would cooperate. "Ah, maybe? It would take most of my lyrium, and I'll probably be knocked out of the fight, but I think I could do it."

Lýna nodded. "Good. This is your job. Be ready, tonight."

Oh, so she did plan on sticking around to help the locals a bit, then. Alright. "Okay, I can be ready by then." No matter how fucking insane it sounded, he'd figure it out.

If Jowan heard he was about to crack Redcliffe Castle single-handedly he would flip the fuck out...

By the time Alim checked back in, the Bann was asking — begging, really — Alistair to help them any way they could. They had few enough trained fighters, and even the presence of the Grey Wardens fighting alongside the townspeople could do quite a lot to lighten their flagging morale. (Teagan and Fergus had already both assured the locals that the rumors about the Wardens betraying the king were bullshit.) And, of course, any idea they had to make the fight easier, perhaps the Templars knew something about undead he didn't. Once the battle tonight was over, Teagan swore he would assist the Wardens in breaching the Castle, but they needed to—

"Yes," Lýna said, cutting the man off in mid-sentence. "We will help. Tonight, fight the dead, and go to Castle."

The mix of surprise and gratitude from the Bann was almost funny, the relief on his voice painful. He clearly hadn't expected Lýna to agree. (To be fair, Dalish had a history of not giving a shit what happened to humans — they'd completely ignored the Orlesians' pleas for aid during the Second Blight, for an infamous example.) There were also noticeable signs of relief among the other Wardens, tension lifting from Alistair and Keran in particular; Leliana whispered something Alim didn't quite catch, but he suspected it was something from Trials.

The only person who didn't seem pleased was Morrigan. Her lip curling with disdain, she let out a harsh scoff. "This is ridiculous. This is not our fight — why mire us in this pathetic mess?"

"What, you don't approve?" Alistair snapped his fingers — or tried to, at least, that didn't really work so well while wearing gauntlets. "Damn, and I thought we were just starting to get along. Oh well, there's the door, do let it hit you on the ass on the way out."

Morrigan cocked up one eyebrow. "Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't hear mention of any darkspawn in this man's plea. You are Grey Wardens, are you not?"

"We can't just leave all these people to die," Keran insisted, with all due offense.

"Do you intend to pause to sort out the affairs of every poor soul you meet on the way? 'Tis a marvelous strategy to stop the Blight, that. The fate of this town, 'tis unfortunate, to be sure, but—"

Lýna snapped out, "Morrigan," flat and cold, cutting the Chasind witch off practically in mid-syllable. Then she spoke...in Chasind, because of course she did. It sounded like a question, which Morrigan responded to with only one or two words. Lýna then followed that up with a short ramble, ending with another question.

Clicking her tongue, Morrigan's eyes turned up to the ceiling for a second. "I confess you've a point, so much as I may dislike it." Forcing a strained, venomous smile onto her face, she drawled, "It appears I shall be playing the hero today."

Alistair guffawed. "Try not to strain yourself too much."

Passing over Morrigan's (reluctant) consent to assist the town with nothing but an affirming nod, Lýna turned back to the Bann. "The dead attack on sundown? What do now?"

---

The announcement that the Grey Wardens would be joining Redcliffe in their hard battle against the dead was made on the steps of the Chantry, Bann Teagan flanked by the Revered Mother and Alistair — his cloak removed to reveal the griffon rampant etched into the silverite over his chest, faintly glistening in the wan sunlight. The reaction among the crowd of defenders was subtle, but significant, and entirely as expected.

Throughout most of the world, the reputation of the Grey Wardens was...complicated. It was certainly true that Wardens were a somewhat isolated order, with their own culture, their own rituals and traditions. They were, in most cases, a law unto themselves. In every country in the world — with the exception of the Anderfels, where they had a large degree of political power — the Wardens made a point of placing themselves outside the jurisdiction of their home country's laws, and generally had little contact with the people around them. They set themselves apart, intentionally, and so many common people saw them as strange and alien, at times even dangerous, a potential threat.

It didn't help that, while the Wardens were almost universally Andrastian, they tended to prefer the Black Chantry. The northern Chantry, led by the Divine in the Tevinter city of Minrathous — also dominant in the Anderfels, Hasmal, the far north of Nevarra, as well as parts of Rivain and Antiva — had far looser prohibitions against mages and the use of magic, which was more in line with Warden sensibilities. The southern Chantry, which took a far more restrictive stance on mages and magic, frequently disparaged the Wardens for their leniency, but this was just pointless prattle, there wasn't really anything they could do about it.

For Fereldans in particular, the Grey Wardens had featured prominently in a civil war two centuries ago. It had started with a king dying childless, the two most obvious successors the cousins Arland Theirin and Sophia Dryden. After a long, fierce debate in the Landsmeet, Arland was selected; shortly after his coronation, Sophia was arrested, and slated to be executed. This wasn't actually unusual, it's common for the winner of such a contest to dispose of the loser — in fact, many in Orlais consider doing so to be necessary for the long-term stability of one's rule. But Sophia was still very popular among a certain segment of the nobility, who appealed to allow her to join the Wardens instead. Sophia proved very successful as a Warden, before long being raised to Warden-Commander. Around that time, Arland was proving himself to be a tyrant, and many of the nobles wished to have him removed and replaced with a less vicious king.

Now, it's uncertain exactly what happened next — first-hand accounts of the events in question have all been lost, Arland's accusations against Sophia the only narrative that remains. Arland claimed Sophia was plotting a coup, that she intended to usurp him and take the throne herself, with the help of certain traitorous nobles. Reading between the lines, it seems plausible that the nobility wished to convene a Landsmeet and choose from among themselves a replacement king, something the nobility of Ferelden have the right to do. However, they didn't feel safe doing so in Denerim, since Arland would likely have had them all imprisoned or executed, so they needed somewhere else to meet. The Bannir of Griffon's Rest, which contained the headquarters of the Wardens in Ferelden, seemed a safe place to do it.

How much Sophia Dryden had had to do with anything was still debated to this day, but Arland accused the Wardens of orchestrating a rebellion anyway. Griffon's Rest was conquered by the King's army, the Warden fortress of Soldier's Peak sacked, and the Wardens were expelled from Ferelden. But the civil war didn't stop there — the vicious conflict dragged on for decades, entirely wiping out dozens of noble families and killing thousands upon thousands of common people by the end. When Orlais invaded a hundred years after the attack on Soldier's Peak, Ferelden still hadn't recovered, and the Wardens hadn't been welcome in the country until King Maric invited them to return barely twenty years ago.

For all that Maric and Cailan had attempted to rehabilitate their reputation, the Grey Wardens were still viewed with some suspicion in Ferelden. Few places in the world would such an outrageous claim like the one Teyrn Loghain had made be entertained for even a second, much less accepted at face value by so many. The deep distrust Fereldans had for the order was almost unique in all the world.

But even then, a good story was a powerful thing.

Everybody had grown up hearing about the Blights, and the essential role the Grey Wardens had played in ending them, every single one. Everybody knew the names of their greatest heroes, the ones who had personally slayed the Archdemons — the Tevinter tragic lovers Corin and Neriah, the exiled Orlesian son of a blacksmith Sommarde, the brilliant and charming Garahel of Ansburg, his name still on the lips of young elf boys everywhere. But it wasn't only these singular heroes, no, for all that they were revered they were relatively unimportant.

There was a sort of romance about the Wardens as a whole. People who had chosen to sacrifice their lives, to give up wealth and family, the prospect of having any kind of future for themselves, in order to put themselves between the people and the worst evil this world had ever known. It was hard not to admire such people, who had chosen to give up everything in order to shield the rest of the world with their very lives. It was a desperately noble sort of thing, no doubt about that.

Also, one of the things that most irritated the rulers of the world was something that greatly appealed to the common people. The Wardens recruited people from every walk of life — nobility and knights, yes, merchants and craftsmen, yes, but also farmers and peasants and slaves, thieves and criminals of all sorts. The Grey Wardens were one of the few places in the world where it truly didn't matter where a person was from, who their parents were, whether they were wealthy and well-born, or not. These things were as nothing. Once a person became a Grey Warden, they were a Grey Warden, and everything they had been before, whatever their status, was irrelevant. It was undeniable, that was attractive to ordinary people all over the world. It was no accident that most Grey Warden recruits came from among the most desperate, the most destitute.

Sommarde might have come from a relatively comfortable background, but Garahel had been a dirt-poor nameless orphan, and Corin had literally been born into slavery — and they were revered all the same.

People might have their suspicions of what Wardens get up to during peacetime, yes, but in times of crisis? Then they might as well be storybook heroes, swooping down to perform an unlikely rescue, just in the nick of time.

And it was no different now. The sorry men and women defending the town, ill-equipped and frightened, they didn't cheer at the news or anything that obvious. Leliana didn't even spot very many smiles on their faces. No, their reaction was more subtle than that. It was an easing of despair, weight lifting off of shoulders and darkness behind eyes softening. It was in the way they whispered to each other, how as they got back to their work preparing, their steps seemed somehow lighter, the chatter just a little bit brighter.

Because in a time of crisis, where the Grey Wardens walked they brought hope with them.

Once the announcement was over, everyone returning to their work, they were led to Murdock, the mayor of the town and the man tasked with coordinating much of their defense. Dark-haired and bearded and gruff, he was a rather large man, fit and muscular, clearly having been a farmer or soldier or the like. It could be Leliana's imagination, but by how sharply he greeted the Wardens, she got the impression he wasn't particularly optimistic.

After some discussion, plenty of military things that went right over Leliana's head, they decided on a strategy. Essentially they would use their more well-armored men — Alistair and Keran, Fergus Cousland and his people, the handful of local knights they had on hand — to form a barricade of sorts, a shield wall the rest of the defenders would stay behind, casting arrows over their heads or jabbing with spears past their shoulders. In the few hours they had left before dark, they would set a trap on the road down from the Castle which would hopefully take out most of the first wave. Their wall would then press up to the gates, and then through them, taking the courtyard before breeching the Castle itself.

By this point, Murdock was looking rather less pessimistic, nodding along as Alistair wrapped up with the claim that, being Templar-trained and all, it shouldn't be particularly difficult to deal with whoever was causing this mess so long as they could actually reach him. "It's a good plan," he admitted, "or at the least the best we're like to come up with. These traps, what are you thinking of? We haven't much time to set anything up, and I'm not sure what would do any good against undead."

Smirking a little, Alistair drawled, "Fire is always good. The magics that sustain walking corpses often dissolve in the presence of flame, it's the best way to deal with them."

"Oh, I didn't know that. How are we supposed to get that much fire going, though? If we set a bunch of fires on the road, the undead will just go around them."

"A town this size, you've got to have plenty of lamp oil around. Gather as much as you can, set up a killing field just outside of town. I would say hit them earlier, but we don't want the survivors to just go around us."

Murdock nodded, a little reluctantly. "I'm not sure how much oil we got sitting around, but—" He cut off in mid-sentence, turned to bark an order at a few nearby people to track down as much lamp oil as they could find.

"Also, we'll have two mages to toss fire around, I wouldn't worry about it too much."

The mayor turned back to them, a little wide-eyed — Alistair hadn't yet mentioned they had mages among them — and Alim nodded, giving the man a friendly smile. "I'll need to take it easy to make sure I'm still fresh for the gate, but I'll be able to help a bit."

From what Keran had told Leliana of their fight at Ostagar, by "help a bit" Alim probably meant he'd incinerate half the undead on his own — he was apparently a very competent mage.

Murdock looked somewhat flabbergasted, staring wide-eyed at the elf man. "You're going to bring down the gates. By yourself."

"Yep!" he chirped, his friendly smile stretching into a slightly manic grin. "I've never blown up something that big before, and there's only a small risk of me accidentally immolating myself. Should be fun."

By the doubtful look Murdock was giving him, he thought Alim was exaggerating about the risk to himself, but Leliana didn't think he was. The power it would take to destroy the gates of a fortress like Redcliffe Castle... That couldn't be the sort of thing most mages were capable of — if it were, wars would be fought rather differently, wouldn't they. She was a little concerned the boy would overestimate his abilities and get himself killed, but she didn't know that much about magic, she simply had to trust he knew what he was doing.

And also pray for him, but she was going to do that anyway.

"Fire 'tis not a strength of mine, I'm afraid." Morrigan's voice was oddly delicate, wary, as though she would rather not admit such a thing. "I shall be at the front with your shield bearers instead."

"Uh, no offense," Alistair said with every hint of offense, "but if you can't defend yourself up there, you'd really just be in the way."

Flatly, simply, as though it were a perfectly ordinary thing to say, "I can turn into a bear. I assume that shall suffice?" she drawled, with a venomous sort of smile.

"Ah... Yes. Yes, bears are...good. Yes." Alistair turned away, muttering to himself — something about begging Andraste to save him from crazy apostates.

Murdock was equally unnerved by the thought of a Chasind witch turning into a bear, really now, but he went on smoothly enough, requesting that Morrigan demonstrate it for their men at some point before the battle so they wouldn't be startled later. With a clear note of distaste with the idea, Morrigan nonetheless agreed — probably recognized the logic, even if she didn't like it. There was a bit more discussion, things they could do to prepare, before Murdock mentioned that the town's blacksmith, an older man named Owen, was barricaded in his forge, if they could do something about him it'd be a great help.

When Keran pointed out that there wasn't time for him to do any real work before night fell again, Murdock explained they didn't want him to do anything — they just wanted the already finished equipment in his forge. Last time he'd checked, there'd been several shields on the walls, various pieces of armor, plenty of mail just sitting around ready to be used, maybe a dozen polearms. Owen's forge operated as a sort of backup storage for the Castle guards, there should be plenty of useful equipment in there, Murdock just wanted them to convince Owen to let them have it.

By the hard look on Lýna's face, Leliana suspected there was going to be very little convincing involved.

After finishing up with Murdock, they decided to deal with Owen immediately. The forge was nearby, just off the square, and was one of the sturdier buildings in all the town — much of the structure was stone, roofed with clay shingles, the only wood to be seen in one section tucked off to the side, probably living space. To prevent fires, presumably, smithies were a consistent hazard in many towns all over the world. (One town in the Dales Leliana was familiar with was locally infamous for having major fires almost every year.) As they approached the heavy front door, Alistair skipped ahead of Lýna to arrive first, his gauntleted hand pounding against the surface with reverberating thuds.

"Go away, curse you!" a low, gravely voice called through the door. "Leave me in peace!"

Muffled though it might be by the thick door between them, his voice still came through clear enough Leliana could tell the blacksmith was slurring his words — he was drunk. She scowled, glaring at the door a little. The people out here were suffering, dying, and he'd locked himself away with equipment they desperately needed, just sitting in there drinking by himself? Ugh, Leliana just didn't understand some people...

The conversation between Alistair and Keran and the inebriated blacksmith was swiftly going nowhere. They gave up after a couple minutes, shooting each other an exasperated glance. Alistair turned back to Lýna, tilted his head suggestively at the door — asking permission to break it down, it looked like. Lýna nodded without a second of hesitation. (Not a surprise, the cold, hard look on her face had only intensified during the brief argument, probably no more pleased with Owen than Leliana was.) Alistair retreated a little, waving for the rest of them to step back, and—

"Wait!" Alim skipped past Alistair, coming up to the door. "Let me try something first." He pressed a long-fingered hand against the door, just over the lock. He paused a moment, staring unfocused into the near distance above Alistair's head, his fingers and his left eye twitching now and again. After a short moment, he lightly hit the door with his palm, one two three four — on the fourth hit, it swung open, sunlight cutting into the dark and dusty interior.

Alistair, Keran, and Lýna slipped inside immediately, before Owen could even think of closing the door again. Lingering just outside, Alim stood smirking, self-satisfied. At a curious look from Morrigan, he said, "It's a finicky little trick, but the magic isn't difficult. I can teach you later."

"I will take you up on that." Morrigan sounded uncharacteristically grateful, which was odd, it didn't seem that— Oh! She was probably thinking if she learned how to magically open locks, it eliminated any threat of being held by the Fereldan authorities ever. That wasn't entirely true, since most Circles had cells that neutralized the casting of any magic inside them, but Morrigan didn't necessarily know that.

Leliana followed the others on in, though Alim and Morrigan didn't, waiting just outside, chatting about magic. The inside of the smithy was a mess. The room they stepped into was a shop space, a counter at one end, racks along the walls, armor stands here and there. It was hard to make out a lot of it, the lamps had gone out, but in the light thrown from the door it was still clear Owen had had some kind of fit — the stands and racks were overturned, equipment and arms scattered all over the place, books and papers forming a nest in a corner near the counter.

It smelled strongly of liquor and piss. The breeze coming in through the door helped, but, ugh...

The man himself was standing not far away, brandishing a hand-axe and in the middle of a shouting match with Alistair. He was a bit disheveled, his clothes ruffled and crooked, his hair in disarray, face patched with uneven stubble. He raved on, words slurred and half-incomprehensible, eyes bloodshot and mad.

"We're going up to the Castle," Alistair said, his reassuring tone somewhat lost in his own irritation. "Your daughter will be safe once it's over, just like everyone else."

Oh, was this man's daughter up in the Castle? Leliana guessed that sort of explained his descent into drunken depression...but not really, that was just making excuses for him. If he wanted to do something about his daughter being in danger, surely he should have been contributing to the town's efforts to end whatever was happening here, not lock himself away and drown his despair in liquor. If anything, what he'd done made it more likely his daughter would die.

"That's not good enough!" he barked, practically frothing at the mouth. "Murdock said the same thing, and I didn't believe him either. I want a promise. Promise me you'll look for her!"

Before anyone else could react, Lýna was already moving, darting in toward the raving blacksmith. He swung wildly down at her with his axe, but she slipped under the blow easily. Her hand coming up to grip the collar of his shirt, she forced him back and, showing strength Leliana wouldn't ordinarily think an elf should be capable of, slammed him against the counter, his back bending awkwardly over the edge. "You are foolish child," she hissed, her voice sharp and cold, enough it nearly put a shiver in Leliana's spine.

"Shut up, elf, you don't—" Owen was cut off with a pained gasp, Lýna bending him back further over the counter.

"Your child is threatened, and you hide alone? What parent are you, to do this?" Leaning in further, almost nose to nose — that couldn't be pleasant, Leliana was certain he smelled awful — Lýna snarled, "If you want her back for true, help, or go out. The children are in the Chantry."

Owen stared up at her, face twisted a bit in pain, his mouth working in silence. "You're fighting up to the Castle. You got Murdock and everyone coming with you."

"Yes. We go this night."

"Fine, if that miser Murdock is finally doing something, I'll help. Let go of me."

Lýna released him, took a step back to let him straighten again — she even handed him back his axe, she'd taken it from him at some point in the short scuffle. He didn't keep it though, carelessly tossed it aside to clatter against an overturned rack. Pointing at Leliana, Lýna said, "This one needs things. Armor, for one." Lýna then turned to her, ticking up a questioning eyebrow.

"Ah, I'm best with a bow, I think, but I'm also decent with a saber."

Over the next couple minutes, the room became a storm of activity, a couple knights followed by several people in peasant garb sweeping in and scooping up polearms and mail and shields and axes and whatever seemed useful. A few, Owen's assistants perhaps, materialized at some point, some set about slapping together a few more polearms, a couple others helping him with Leliana.

It only took a little poking around before a sheathed sword was yanked out of the mess made of a knocked-over stand, handed over to her — by the curve and how light it was even with the scabbard, probably a fauchon. Leliana gripped the hilt and drew it, running her eyes along the blade (and trying to ignore the uncomfortable tingles crawling down her spine). It was very plain, no decoration anywhere to speak of, but how the light played off the metal, it appeared Owen was a competent smith, at least. She whipped it around in a couple tight flourishes — the tingling only getting worse as half-forgotten muscle memory surfaced, Leliana hadn't realized she remembered how to hold a sword — testing the weight and the balance. Pretty light, definitely couldn't go hacking at things with this, but she preferred it that way, anyway. (The tingles got worse at the thought of actually killing people with this, she tried to ignore it.) The edge could be finer, but sunset was still hours away, she had more than enough time to get to it.

It would do.

One of the assistants also produced a bow from somewhere, tossing it in her direction from halfway across the room. It didn't quite reach her, Leliana wouldn't have caught it before it fell, but Lýna snatched it out of the air and handed it to her. This was finer work than the sword, a grip of fine steel wires wound around the wood, tinted blue and twisted into curling, almost floral shapes. Probably commissioned by someone of means, one of the local lords or knights, but if they were handing it to her whoever it was must not be coming for it. She managed to string it with some difficulty, tested the draw.

It felt rather heavier than she preferred...but she was also painfully aware that, after a couple years at the Chantry, she was very much out of shape. Keeping pace with Lýna running here shouldn't have been nearly so difficult — she had managed it, of course, but she'd pushed herself to the very edge of her endurance, still a bit sore and twitchy even now. (She thought she'd won a fair bit of respect from the others for it, especially Lýna and the Chasind witch, so it'd been worth it.) She should definitely practice before the battle — it'd been a very long time since she'd done any of this — but she would get used to the weight, she suspected.

In an unexpected bit of luck, Owen even managed to produce armor for her, too. Nothing particularly fine, just a simple gambeson — several layers of heavy linen a pale brown, absent any decoration at all. There were a few strips of iron riveted into the cloth here and there, probably intended to be a layer of splints over the entire surface, but if so it was unfinished. Conveniently, one of the areas that was finished was the arms, which should be solid enough to deflect an incoming blade if she was caught out. Bending the stiff cloth between her fingers, it felt like it would do some good — it wouldn't hold up to heavy weaponry, of course, but it might be able to take a couple blows from light arms, and could probably bounce most arrows just fine. Crossbow bolts would punch right through it, but sometimes those even made it through heavy plate, so.

It didn't fit quite right — the person it'd been fitted for was somewhat wider in the shoulder than her — but it was close enough to be getting on with.

It was also quite warm, which she was grateful for. Both nights on the road so far, Leliana had woken up freezing, had needed to move much closer to the fire. The trousers and chemise she was wearing now were intended to be underclothes, they would always have robes over them, not really insulated sufficiently to be sleeping outside in the spring chill.

Getting the gambeson settled around her chest, she'd pulled her poitraile out of her collar — the man helping her (thankfully not Owen himself, she wasn't certain she could handle the smell) noticed it immediately, judging by the odd look flicking over his face. He slipped off and returned a moment later with a leather belt and an empty quiver, still frowning at her. "Are you sure you want to do this, Mother?"

"Oh, no, I'm only a Sister — I haven't even taken my solemn vows yet." Depending on where exactly following Lýna took her, it was very possible she never would. Presumably, if that kind of service were what the Maker wanted from her, He wouldn't have told her to leave.

The man gave her a crooked, doubtful sort of frown. While she reached for the belt, he said, "Okay, Sister, but your hands are shaking."

Leliana glanced down — so they were. She clenched her fingers around the hard leather of the belt, took a slow, deep breath. "I'm all right, child, I just..." Numbly winding the belt over her hips, she trailed off. She didn't really know what was wrong, not for certain. How could she have, she'd hardly noticed anything. Now that someone was drawing her attention to it, she did feel...unsettled.

She'd thought she'd left all this behind. Tools of slaughter, blood and death, she had been familiar with these things, once upon a time — and she still was, instinctively, how her hand had so easily found its place upon a sword was proof enough of that. She'd been trained very well, once upon a time, in the arts of spycraft, politics and seduction, archery and swordplay. Assassination. And she'd lived by them, once upon a time. She literally couldn't count the number of people she'd killed, either by her own hand or indirectly, the consequences wrought by the squabbling between the nobility she'd gleefully contributed to.

And it had been gleeful, she... She'd loved it. Her life as a bard had been...exciting, and glamorous, and dangerous — that she could have been caught and killed at any moment had only made it all the more thrilling.

Until she'd been betrayed. The only person she'd truly trusted to have her back, and Marjolaine had stuck a knife in it. Literally.

(Looking back on it, Leliana wasn't certain how she'd survived. That had been an awful wound, and she'd been left in the filth of the dungeons below the Winter Palace for...she didn't know how long, honestly. Mother Dorothea had gotten her treatment and hid her while she recovered, but by that point it already should have been too late.)

(Honestly, she suspected the only reason she was still alive was because the Maker wished her to be.)

After fighting through Marjolaine's collaborators and undoing the disaster she'd unwittingly helped set into motion — the documents they'd planted would almost certainly have led to Orlais declaring war on Ferelden, Leliana would never have gone along with it if she'd known — Leliana had dropped her sword, and she'd walked away. Not from the cooling bodies of the traitors she'd just dispatched, no, from all of it. From her friends, from her contacts, from Halamshiral, from Orlais, from all her life. Dorothea's voice, discussing just what kind of mess Leliana had gotten wrapped up in (she still couldn't guess how the Revered Mother had known about all that), the voice she'd heard in the dungeons, waking her up, urging her to move when, really, she should have simply died (the Maker's voice, she was convinced now), both of them bouncing around in her head, and she'd just walked, not really toward anywhere so much as away, east and south...

She hadn't intended to go to the Chantry. But she'd found herself in Lothering, standing in front of the simple, rural Chantry, and she'd been hungry, and cold, and alone, and so tired... It'd just seemed the thing to do.

She'd thought she'd left it all behind. But it seemed as though she was being drawn back. Not into the same sort of life, of course — assisting Grey Wardens against a Blight was a far more noble endeavor than anything she'd done as a bard. But even so, she would be carrying a blade again, she was certain she would kill again, and she...

It was unsettling, was all. The things she'd done, the life of lies and blood she'd left behind, she could feel it hanging over her, the threat of the person she'd once been like a knife at her throat. Leliana didn't want to be that person again.

And she wouldn't. She was different, this was different. Those deadly skills she'd been given, and turned to such vile purpose, they could be put to good things. That was good.

If this was how the Maker wished her to serve, she would gladly do it. She just had to...remember that.

Leliana smiled at the man, the expression as soft and reassuring as she could manage with how very uncomfortable she felt at the moment. "I'm okay, truly. It's just been a long time since I've done this sort of thing — but the Maker bids me fight, and so I shall."

The man still looked doubtful, but he nodded. "If you say so, Sister. Is there anything else I can try to find for you?"

"Hmm. Boots and gloves would be nice."

"Ah, well," he said, wincing, "I can't help you there. Owen gets his leatherwork from Jessar, and his shop was cleared out of everything useful days ago. I'm sorry, Sister."

"That's all right." She'd just have to stay back from the bulk of the fighting and focus on her shooting — it really wasn't safe to wade through a melee in the soft cloth shoes she was wearing. "Thank you, for the help. Do I owe Owen for...?"

The man waved it off. "No, no, don't worry about that. Owen will get what he needs out of the Arl after all of this. You're fine."

"Okay. Thank you again."

"No problem, Sister. Try not to get killed out there."

---

Her fingers tapping at her hip, Lýna did her best to try not to appear visibly irritated.

There were many things she found peculiar about Alamarri, even more than she'd expected. She'd known they'd be different, of course, but she'd assumed they'd be different like the Chasind were different. And the Chasind were different from the People, even compared to the Avvar, enough they'd often been strange and confusing to her. She'd come to the conclusion that she would never fully understand the way Chasind did things sometimes — which was what it was, their ways didn't need to entirely make sense to her. They understood each other enough to get along, most of the time, and they didn't truly need any more than that. Some of the more baffling things the Chasind did, those were relatively unimportant, in the end.

And the Avvar, well, her People never really had trouble getting on with Avvar. In many ways, Avvar tribes and their clans operated very close to the same. Their cultures differed in the details, yes, but it was like speaking a different language — they used different words, and went about things in a slightly different way, but the core of their ways were very similar. The most obvious difference was that the Avvar were still in communication with their gods, like the Chasind, but the People had old stories of once having had a similar relationship with the Creators, so that wasn't so alien as it might have been.

Lýna was still trying to process what she'd learned last night, that those who spoke for the Alamarri god didn't even claim that he spoke to them. That... How did that work, even? She didn't understand, it'd probably take a much longer discussion about what role the Chantry played for the Alamarri to come even close to figuring it out.

The Avvar, in fact, were familiar enough that they sometimes considered each other to be distant cousins of a kind. Which wasn't so unusual as it might sound to Alamarri — there were Avvar tribes entirely made up of elves, and it wasn't unusual to find a few among human-dominated tribes either. Once she'd even met a pair of bonded warriors, one elf and one human. (Which had been and still was confusing — elves and humans couldn't have children together, she'd been under the impression that was the whole point — but it wasn't her business, and didn't truly matter.) The only dwarves Lýna had ever met were Avvar. To the Avvar, what a person was was far less important than who, what one did. It didn't matter to the Avvar that the People were elves, and their ways were similar enough to the Avvar that they fell in an odd middle place — not kin, but not truly outsiders either.

That itself was another way the People and the Avvar were similar. Since she'd left with Duncan, she'd met several people who spoke of the People and the Alamarri elves as though they were of a kind, seemed to assume she should have some sense of kinship with their elves that she didn't with their humans. That had, from the beginning, struck her as peculiar. She didn't know how the Alamarri thought of these things, but the elves here were not her People. They spoke the Alamarri language, worshipped the Alamarri god, dressed and walked and acted like Alamarri. Just as the Avvar elves were Avvar, so the Alamarri elves were Alamarri, and nothing else.

By the same logic, the Avvar were more like the People — to the point that they were not kin, but not truly outsiders either — than were the Chasind. In a way, she'd sort of thought as Chasind as being more human than Avvar, if that made sense. So, she'd assumed the Alamarri would be, sort of, more Chasind than the Chasind, if that made sense — they would be the ways the Chasind were different than the People, but more, with less of the familiar things.

She hadn't expected them to be so...different. She hadn't known people could be like this.

Lýna had understood that their soldiers, their not-hunters, were the ones who fought, and that not all of their people were soldiers. Obviously, no clan would function if they only had one sort of people, they couldn't all be soldiers. But, the camp at Ostagar, that had been far afield from their villages, it hadn't been surprising they'd been mostly soldiers — much as she'd expect only hunters or Avvar warriors to range so far from their homes, it was the same idea.

But, when a threat came to their villages, and their soldiers were away...

It was completely incomprehensible. Walking into the Chantry, seeing the dozens and dozens and dozens of people packed inside, sitting and waiting, unarmed and unprepared, just waiting for the end, whatever that end might be... It had taken all the focus Lýna had to actually pay attention to the conversation with Teagan, because it was just so– so confusing, that these people would just sit in here and...what, exactly?

The idea that all those people wouldn't contribute to the defense, even so much as just digging trenches or building barricades, was so completely alien she couldn't even make sense of it. Lýna had spotted a clump of them making arrows, at least, but...

If her People were being attacked, or the Avvar or Chasind, that anyone would just sit back and not contribute was... It was simply not done. Even if they hadn't enough proper weapons to go around, wielding whatever was lying around, or even reduced to knees and fists, to not even try to help, just sit back and wait, was unthinkable. And detestable, Lýna wouldn't be surprised if the elders questioned a person's loyalty to the clan should they behave so — after all, if they couldn't even stand with them when the lives of the entire clan, including their own life, was under threat, how could they possibly expect them to stand with them when they had even less incentive to do so?

The Avvar she thought might send their uncooperative fellows away until after the fighting was over — not simply to have them out from underfoot, but out of fear of a knife in the back.

Lýna didn't think these people were traitors, they seemed too frightened for that. But she just didn't understand them. She wanted to shake them by their shoulders, demand they explain why they so little valued their own lives — didn't they understand that the dead would kill them, would kill all of them? They hid in the Chantry, but this did not make them safe! Did they value the lives of their fellows so little, that they wouldn't offer any real help to the ones who were doing the fighting, did they value the risk others were taking on their behalf so little?!

Sure, maybe many of them in there couldn't fight themselves — which Lýna doubted, it wouldn't take much skill to stand on one of the roofs and jab at passing undead with a spear, toss torches down at them — but that didn't mean there was nothing to do! They could be reforming wood from the buildings in the village into spears, there was plenty of metal about to adapt into rough points, they could be digging trenches and setting barricades to funnel the enemy so the defenders didn't get surrounded, they could be shaping arrows, they could be making torches, setting traps all around the village — there were countless things they could be doing to help!

Instead they just sat in the Chantry on their hands and waited! It– just— Why?!

And not only did these people do nothing to defend themselves, but those who were didn't seem to care! They acted as though this arrangement was natural, that they would hardly expect anything else to happen in such a situation. It was...

She didn't understand.

Morrigan thought they were pathetic, and Lýna agreed wholeheartedly. Those not raising a finger in their own defense, and those who accepted that behavior without complaint... It was pathetic. Were the former nugs, to be raised and slaughtered without resistance? Were the latter slaves, to fight and bleed and die at the whim of the former? Both of them were pathetic, and...

...alien. She hadn't imagined even the most foreign of humans would act like this, and think it perfectly ordinary. She hadn't realised this was even a thing that could happen.

She would fight with the others come sundown, but she was no more happy about it than Morrigan was — she was just better at hiding it. She wished to form an alliance with this Eamon, which would mean, in the terms that both the Chasind and her People understood these things, that she was obligated to work to the welfare of his people. Ideally, they would also be looking out for their own welfare, but she somehow doubted Eamon would accept the pathetic morons wouldn't do a damn thing to protect themselves, so I assumed they didn't value their lives enough for me to safeguard them as a good enough reason to stand back and let them be slaughtered by possessed corpses.

They needed Eamon's help, so they needed to fight for his people, even if they wouldn't fight for themselves. Morrigan had, reluctantly, accepted that argument.

It probably didn't hurt that Lýna had called them all pathetic halfwits — healwize, she'd noticed that was Morrigan's favorite insult — who didn't really deserve their help, but she was in a position she had to give it anyway. She suspected admitting that she found this distasteful had, ironically, made Morrigan more willing to go along with it.

Possibly for the same reason Morrigan was still following her around — among this sea of alien Alamarri, each other were the only people here who made any damn sense.

After sitting through the announcement they would be assisting the village — Lýna would never understand the Alamarri impulse to give big speeches about things — and breaking into the smithy to loot the place — the smith was a stupid, selfish piece of shit, but at least his work wasn't bad — she'd returned to the square, filled with villagers practicing with weapons. They were clearly unfamiliar with them, clumsy and uncoordinated, but they were getting the basics down, at least. Besides, spears and axes didn't really take that much skill to use effectively, they'd be fine.

Right away, Lýna had found the more heavily armored people, in plate and mail carrying longswords and shields, who'd be forming the wall they'd be pushing up to the castle with. Some of them were Eamon's men — or maybe Teagan's, but Lýna wasn't certain if there was even a difference — some of them here with Fergus, who Lýna remembered from their talk about potential allies in Ferelden. (If Eamon was dead, which seemed likely, she expected they'd be working with Fergus and Teagan instead.) Getting them together, Lýna waved over Morrigan, explained in her awkward Alamarri that Morrigan would be in the front with them. And so the Chasind witch had demonstrated her transformation magic for them.

Lýna had seen a lot of magic in her life. From what she'd seen so far, the average Alamarri was much less familiar with magic than she was — whether that was because their magic-hating religion stomped it out, or if magic was more rare here so they were afraid of it and that was why their religion was silly about magic, she wasn't sure. The humans in the south, the Avvar and the Chasind, they weren't nearly so strange about magic, every tribe had a few mages around. Many were very limited in what they knew how to do, but there was still magic going on, all the time.

The People tended to have the most capable mages in the south. Some of it was remembered from the Ancients, yes, or taught to them by spirits at some point between then and now, arts passed from Keeper to Keeper to Keeper down generations. The People considered magic to be a part of their heritage, a remnant of their lost past they did everything they could to preserve. Elven mages all over the world sought out forgotten magics, spending their entire lives trying to recover even the tiniest sliver of the wisdom of the Ancients, to share what they might discover with the rest of the People. There were things their mages could do that even the humans in their Circles could not.

Lýna wasn't easily impressed, when it came to magic. Morrigan turning into a bear was very impressive.

She had seen this sort of magic before — shapechangers were common among the People and the Avvar, though not the Chasind. (They had superstitions around it she suspected were related to history with She-of-Many-Faces.) Her clan's Keeper could take the form of a few different birds, for example, sometimes used it to scout out the day's travel, guide hunters to useful resources or interesting landmarks. It wasn't something Mẽrhiļ could do, though. From what she'd said, it required an incredibly detailed knowledge of how the animal was formed, and a degree of power and focus that was difficult to maintain through the transformation. It took years to learn one new shape, and the process quite nearly needed to be redone from scratch for each additional one.

One conversation she remembered, Mẽrhiļ had said size differences weren't easy to deal with. If the animal was smaller than the mage, the extra stuff was sort of tucked away into the Beyond, almost, it wasn't too difficult — but if the animal was larger? That stuff had to come from somewhere, the power to shape it from somewhere. Shapechangers only very rarely took the form of animals larger than themselves, because the power necessary for such a feet was often too much to handle properly.

Morrigan didn't take the shape of a roughly human-sized black bear, or even the larger brown bear.

No, that was a great bear.

She was huge, Lýna's head level with her shoulder, on her hind legs would stretch easily twice Lýna's height, even higher. A rippling mass of muscle, hidden in a thick bed of shaggy fur, brown traced with honey-gold, jagged, vicious looking claws as long as Lýna's hand, a deadly, tooth-filled maw Lýna's head would probably fit inside...

It was very impressive.

The Alamarri had been obviously frightened of the display, but they didn't lose their minds, seemingly trusted that, whatever else Morrigan might be, she was at least on their side for the moment. The distrustful glances people were still giving her some time later weren't much different than the ones Lýna was getting, so.

(Every time one of the Alamarri glared at her, Lýna liked the idea of risking her life fighting for them less and less. She didn't expect she'd die tonight, of course, but it wasn't making her any happier with this stupid situation she'd been forced into.)

That was all done with now, Morrigan returned to human shape, hovering irritably behind her shoulder. The rest of the Wardens were around, helping out with one thing or another. Alistair was with Fergus and his knights, drilling people with spears and other long weapons; Keran had been with another group, but she'd wandered off at some point, talking with the Mayor now. (Lýna wasn't clear on what a mayor was, but it hadn't seemed important enough to ask.) Perry was huddled with a sizeable group of elves and smaller humans, mostly women and young men, most of them armed with axes and short blades — by the few words Lýna had caught passing by, he was giving tips on how to quickly slip in and out of range.

Which they would have to do. The polearms had the best range, but it wasn't really practical to fight undead with them. Without certain magics available, the only way to dispatch walking corpses was to behead them or set them on fire — spears and the like could cripple them, but not finish them. Their strategy was to use their heavily armored swordsmen to halt the undead advance, the spearmen aiming jabs over their shoulders at joints to weaken them, the people with small arms then slipping through to help dispatch the injured corpses before falling behind the shields when it was time to advance again. That put the people Perry was speaking to at some considerable risk — the spearmen would still be in range to help, and they'd be fighting alongside the swordsmen, but some of them would die.

If Perry could impart even a small part of his talent for dancing through a messy fight without getting himself killed, it would probably do them a fair bit of good. That was probably the best thing he could be doing right now. Passing by, Lýna had just nodded at him and moved on.

(Perry was surprising useful in a fight, really, Lýna hadn't expected that.)

The handful of people practicing with bows, shooting at straw targets with concentric circles sloppily painted on them, were just sad. Lýna had never been particularly impressed with human archers. Humans did have advantages on elves — they were larger and thicker, heavier, more physically powerful, more resistant to injury (particularly broken bones), could maintain their strength longer without sufficient food (though they required more to begin with). But on the other hand, they were slower, and clumsier, both in their balance and their coordination, stiff and inflexible, their endurance wasn't particularly great — Lýna was very surprised and honestly a little impressed Leliana had proven able to keep pace with her — and they had terrible eyesight, especially in darkness, and their hearing was bad too.

Put all together, humans simply weren't capable of archery anywhere near the standards Lýna had been trained to, and never would be. It was one area elves would always, always have an edge on humans. In a direct contest of strength, the elf will lose every time; in a blade-to-blade fight, it comes down to skill, and luck; but at range, especially in the cover of the wilds? The human dies, probably without even realizing anyone's out there.

But even by the lax standards of human archers, these were awful. The line of amateurs firing at the targets clearly hadn't gotten much training at all, their handling of their weapons uncertain and awkward. Too many flinched as they fired, shocked by the snapping, some catching their forearms far too badly. Their form wasn't great, too stiff and unmoving, like a tree dead and dried doomed to splinter in the wind. And their aim was terrible, all over the place, some missing their targets entirely, wood-tipped practice arrows sent tumbling through the alleys of the village, pinging into nearby walls. A couple weren't completely hopeless, might actually manage to stick a few corpses if they were lucky, but the rest?

It was like watching little children fumble their way around practice bows for the first time. It was pathetic — Lýna almost felt embarrassed just watching them.

And then Leliana joined them. She seemed to appear out of nowhere, separating from the crowd in the square and joining the people practicing at the range so smoothly most of them didn't even know she was there at first. The men (they were mostly men) spoke with her for a moment, many seeming surprised and confused, Leliana just sweetly smiling at them.

Lýna probably would have guessed before too long that Leliana was a shaman even if she hadn't said anything. There was something about her manner — calm and tranquil, smiling all warm and friendly even when it seemed peculiar in the moment, her tone soft and contemplative and slightly absent — that was so familiar from her experiences with shamans both Avvar and Chasind, it was obvious. It affected different shamans to greater or lesser degrees, but they all had it, a natural effect of so often hearing whispers from the other side, Lýna thought, leaving them just a little detached from the physical world.

Not too detached, of course — there would be no incentive for people to have a shaman around if they didn't still care about the people around them. Not so alien as the spirits themselves, no, just a single step away, enough that anyone who knew what to look for should see it easily enough.

The others (excluding Morrigan) couldn't see it, apparently. They all thought Leliana was insane. Which was honestly very confusing, but Lýna just expected Alamarri to be weird and confusing at this point.

...Except, wasn't Leliana also Alamarri? See, confusing.

After a moment of chatting, Leliana took a spot on the firing line. The instant she took her stance, Lýna instinctively knew Leliana had gotten training — she stood easier, looser, standing at a slight angle to the direction of her shot. Part of Lýna — the part of her that had expected to be teaching new hunters one day, and was just embarrassed witnessing this pathetic performance — wanted to run up, grab idiots by the hair to turn their eyes on Leliana, yell, Look, see! This is how you stand! Learn it!

Instead, she stayed where she was, hidden at the edge of the crowd nearly out of sight, her lips twitching a little. Plucking a practice arrow out of the bunches stuck into the dirt nearby, Leliana rested the shaft against her wrist, and drew back — and grimaced, her elbow quivering a little, tensing with strain. Assuming Lýna had picked apart the Alamarri correctly, Leliana had been a capable warrior once upon a time, but that had been years ago now. She still knew the forms but she was out of practice with them, her arms weak from disuse.

Though she had still managed to keep up, so Lýna wasn't certain how much her skills really could have degraded. Even as Lýna watched, her elbow steadied, the tension in her back easing. She took a breath, a serene stillness falling over her (very shaman-like), and released — the shot went wide, still hitting the target but high and to the left, enough she'd likely have missed a person completely. Leliana scowled, plucked up another arrow and, the movements smoother and easier this time, fired again. Her second shot buried itself right in the middle of the target, probably only a few fingers from the center of the painted circles.

Lýna smiled.

Apparently realizing they had someone who actually knew what they were doing, the men swarmed Leliana. Asking for her tips, probably. After getting a couple more shots in, making sure it wasn't just a fluke — and hitting dead in the center with each, of course — she started going through them one by one, prodding at them with a foot or a hand, occasionally slapping one with the shaft of an arrow, fixing their stances. Just that much improved their aim somewhat, but she wasn't finished there — by the gestures she was making, Lýna guessed she was giving more advice on aiming, what was definitely an explanation of proper follow-through, helping them loosen up a bit so they'd be better able to root themselves on the move. Some minutes of her demonstrations and lecturing, and the amateur archers were hardly excellent, but their aim was obviously much less scattered, most all the arrows fired at least hitting the targets now.

Still smiling to herself a little, Lýna turned away, slipping out of the square toward the docks. That was going well, at least. Most of the villagers' haphazard, last-minute instruction in the various weaponry they had to hand was going well...but that didn't mean Lýna was pleased with the preparations, not at all. She still thought they should be building barricades and digging trenches, to keep the undead on the road up to the keep as much as possible.

Lýna had actually suggested fortifying the town — perhaps leave that job entirely to the villagers huddled away in the Chantry — and instead move all of their fighters up the road, wait for nightfall right outside the castle gates. They could meet the undead right there, push their way through the gates killing as many of the undead as they could on the way through.

They didn't actually need to kill them all. After further discussion with Teagan, Alistair had decided they weren't dealing with spirit possession, but direct animation through the vilest of magics — they weren't acting independently, someone was controlling them. (Which at least explained how so many spirits had crossed over all at once: they hadn't.) The upshot was, if they killed the mage or demon that was controlling them, they should all collapse immediately. Any fortifications they put around the town should hold the undead long enough for them to deal with the one responsible, and if not they could always fall back to the Chantry and buy a few more minutes. Seemed the best plan to Lýna.

Her Alamarri being as awkward as it was, Alistair, who'd put together what she was saying first, had needed to explain her idea to the men in charge for her. Fergus had seemed uncertain, but willing to try it. Teagan had refused, insisting he wouldn't abandon the village — he then stubbornly failed to understand her argument that that wasn't at all what she was suggesting. (Even Fergus had seemed a little annoyed with him.) Of course, he'd also refused to get the people pointlessly hiding in the Chantry to get out and work on the fortifications, saying instead they should have some of their fighters do it; that was just stupid, they clearly needed all the training they could squeeze in in the next few hours. So Lýna had just told them to forget about it, stalked off without another word.

(Honestly, this whole thing was annoying enough without the self-destructive idiots making it harder for no good reason.)

But Lýna had another idea, one which took much less work to set up. Teagan would probably find some way to mess it up — Fergus seemed reasonable, by Alamarri standards, but Lýna was not impressed with their preferred ally's brother — which was why she didn't plan on telling him at all.

"What are you looking for?"

Lýna was going through the buildings on the docks, searching them one by one. It never took very long, a quick sweep from one end to the other before moving on — she'd know she'd found it when she saw and smelled it. She was on her third building now, but this one was also a bust. Slipping back out the door, walking past Morrigan on the way to the next, she said, "I have an idea to make this stupid mess go much easier."

"Something with more chance of success than throwing untrained farmers at a horde of walking corpses, I trust."

She scoffed. "I'd have to try very hard to be worse at this than that soft-cheeked halfwit Teagan." Pushing another door open, Lýna swept into the little building, frowning into the dusty shadows. "Watching them in a crisis such as this, I can hardly believe the Alamarri have survived this long."

"They were not always so — the Alamarri are cousins to the Chasind, and long ago they were much as we are. They grew as all warrior peoples do, through conquest and alliance, solidified their power in these lands by holding the best farmland and lucrative trade with the north and the west. The wealth they gained from these achievements allowed them to outbreed us — they may have grown soft and lazy, but there are far too many of them for we Chasind or your People to unseat them now."

There were a few words there she hadn't caught (her Chasind was better than her Alamarri, though still not perfect), but she'd gotten the general idea, she thought. This building too coming up empty, Lýna let out a sigh as she passed Morrigan again. "That sounds near on. And they call us rabbits."

Morrigan chuckled. "Yes, quite. Might I know what you're searching for? So long as I'm to be pressed into this distasteful, insulting endeavor, I might as well do something useful with my time."

"There will be much you can help me with in a moment." Lýna pushed yet another door open, got a single whiff of the air inside. "Ah! Here it is."

It was dark inside, the walls blocking out the sun entirely, but the light spilling around her through the door was more than enough for her to see by. There was plenty of equipment about she didn't recognise — neither the People, Avvar, nor Chasind fished the way Alamarri did — but none of that was particularly important. Lined and stacked against the wall were a dozen barrels, each as high as her waist and as thick around as Alistair. Using her ironwood dagger, Lýna cracked the top of one open, dipped her finger into the fragrant, slick liquid inside.

Fish oil. And there was a lot of it, the village must have been gathering it for years and years. Perfect.

Morrigan had followed her in this time, skeptically eyeing the barrels. "You intend to make fire traps for the corpses to stumble into?"

"What better to be rid of undead with than fire?" Wiping her fingers off on a nearby bit of cloth hanging on the wall, Lýna slammed the barrel back closed with the silverite-armored back of her hand. Mm, that was still going to leak, they'd have to be careful with that one.

"This is hardly lamp-quality oil — it hasn't been refined nearly enough for such a purpose. It will burn very slow."

"Hot enough to cleanse undead." It didn't take much, really.

"That I do not doubt, but how do you intend to light your traps? Arrows dipped in this will snuff out in flight, and Alim must save his strength for the gate. I cannot cast fire without assuming again my natural form — turning back and forth will exhaust me very quickly."

Well, of course, Lýna was a little surprised Morrigan didn't seem the least bit tired after changing into that huge damn bear even once. "We wish to not be flanked by the undead, yes? It seems to me the best way to do that is make sure they have only one direction to go."

"To accomplish that you would have to..." Morrigan trailed off, inhuman golden eyes widening. "Lýna," she purred, her lips tilting into a bloody smirk, "do you intend to set the entire hillside on fire?"

She smiled, as innocently as she could. Probably doing a terrible job of it. "If these idiots won't make barricades of wood, we instead must give them barricades of fire. No?"

Throwing her head back, Morrigan let out a high cackle, her eyes practically sparking with vicious glee. "Oh, I do like you. Come, let us find some men to carry these cursed things — perhaps Fergus shall be amenable to the idea, he struck me as being not quite so foolish as the rest. His reaction to what we want it for should prove entertaining..."

"On the way you can explain to me what a 'bastard' is. I understood that conversation for the most part, but I have the feeling I was missing something."

Morrigan had time enough before they found Fergus to give an explanation about the intersection of marriage and property, the complex rules of inheritance among the Alamarri, and how, exactly, a person having children by someone who was not their bonded partner could make all of that much more complicated. By the end, Lýna was only more confused than she'd started.

She was never going to understand Alamarri, she just knew it...

---

[Alim didn't blame him, that ý vowel was a bitch] — Let's talk about the elvish vowel system for a bit. More conservative dialects (like Lýna's) tend to have an eight vowels. You have your basic five cardinal vowels, written u — the a is a back vowel /ɑ/, like in "box" or "hot", and the o isn't diphthongised like in most English dialects. The close-mid /e/ (like in "may") is contrasted with an open-mid /ɛ/ (like in "bed"), written è. (Some dialects will also contrast /o/ and /ɔ/, but Lýna's doesn't.) The other two vowels are slightly strange.

The first is written y, and is an open central vowel. Its exact realization varies a bit, anywhere from /ɐ/ to /ə/, and will sometimes absorb lip rounding from the environment, coming out more like /ɞ/. Most of the time, it kind of sounds like the English schwa, just think of it like that and you're fine. The other, written ý, is a close central vowel, the exact realization again depending on the environment somewhat, lowering a little or gaining lip rounding around certain consonants. The plain vowel is /ɨ/, which doesn't really exist as a phoneme in most European languages (except Welsh, because Welsh). It does turn up occasionally as an allophone — it appears in roses in my dialect of English, for example.

These last two vowels are one of the major differences between Lýna's elvish and Leliana's elvish. In the Dales, the y has now merged with a or è (depending on context), and ý has merged with i or u, depending on roundness. Later vowel shifts, mirroring the Orlesian spoken in the area, had u shifting to /y/ (a front rounded vowel, spelled u in French). So, the y and ý vowels in Lýna's dialect don't exist in the elvish Leliana learned — for example, she pronounces Lýna's name /, as would be spelled "Luna" in French, which is wrong, but close enough Lýna can tell what she's trying to say.

[they'd completely ignored the Orlesians' pleas for aid during the Second Blight] — This is the generally accepted story, and was even used by Orlais as one of their excuses for attacking the Dales not long afterward, but it's not really true. By the time Orlais asked for help, the Dalish were already themselves repelling darkspawn invasions from the east and the south, as well as trying to keep peace between their people and the mostly Avvar refugees fleeing ahead of the darkspawn. (Fun fact: the Dales had a sizeable human minority, mostly people descended from slaves in old Tevinter but also many Avvar, and some of the elves who fled after the Orlesian invasion ended up becoming Avvar instead of wandering Dalish — there are elvish Avvar clans in the Frostbacks to this day.) They didn't join the rest of the world dealing with the Second Blight because they had their own mess at home to deal with.

[she'd been left in the dungeons below the Winter Palace] — The events of Leliana's Song have been moved to Halamshiral. This does require alterations of major details, but it makes far more sense — if nothing else, the Revered Mother of Valence would have little reason to be in Denerim.

[elves and humans couldn't have children together] — The tendency for people in fantasy and science fiction who shouldn't be able to breed nonetheless doing it anyway is one of my pet peeves, so I'm axing that entirely. The exception are dwarves and humans, as well as male elves with female kossith (the reverse always ends in miscarriage), but these children are always sterile and often plagued with serious health issues (especially the elf/kossith ones). There are a few things that need to be changed due to this little worldbuilding detail, probably the largest being Enchanter Fiona is human now — if you don't know why, it'll come up eventually.

As long as we're talking about significant changes from the canon worldbuilding, the bit about Dalish only allowing so many mages in a clan is not a thing. Personally, the first time I stumbled on that I called bullshit immediately, for reasons Lýna just explained: [the People considered magic to be a part of their heritage, a remnant of their lost past they did everything they could to preserve]. The idea that the Dalish should have the same fear/caution around magic everyone else does is just ludicrous. I mean, we're told their leaders are mages, honestly...

Mages do get traded between clans a lot. That's not to prevent a clan from having too many, but to make sure everyone has enough — every clan requires a bare minimum of two, the Keeper and their First, and preferably a Second (an heir and a spare). Magic tends to run in families, so it's not unusual for certain clans to have more mages, who sometimes leave for clans who have fewer for whatever reason. Lýna's clan only had their Keeper, so Merril was sent to them; inversely, the Lavelã have several, one of them is even Elana's baby cousin. (Yes, Ellana Lavellan does exist in this fic, though she's only like five or six right now.) In fact, the Lavelã have enough extra they're going to send two to replace Merril when they realize their new neighbors' only mage is their Keeper.

Because, of course the Dalish don't think having more mages is a problem. Also, if there are more around they feel less alone, and are under less pressure to do all the magic for the clan...so, the stress that might lead to them becoming abominations is reduced? Seems obvious to me...

That's enough rambling, I think. Bioware is silly sometimes, moving on.

Awkward babbly chapter is awkward and babbly, I know. Don't know how this one got so long, but these things happen. Next chapter is the battle, and I have no idea when I'll have that done. Depression is a bitch, insomnia is terrible, blah blah.

—Lysandra