Chapter FOURTEEN
Aria sat on the cliffs that overlooked the Waking Sea, her armour clean, her daggers sharp and in their sheaths on her back, her hair in its usual ornate array, pulled up high on her head. She breathed deeply the salty, fresh breeze and sighed.
The sun was just rising, turning the water to blood where it touched the horizon to the East. Aria did not like the looks of the day. But she was not one to take stock in wives tales about blood in the water. The sky above was a riot of dusty and vibrant hues of orange, pink, blue, and purple. It contrasted starkly with the dull red of the water. Some would say that fate would claim the life of a love today.
In her mind, Aria told fate to kindly fuck off.
She did not turn as the wind suddenly kicked up behind her, the feral, spicy scent she associated with the elf briefly wafting toward her. He sat next to her, silent as death, and looked out over the sea. They waited a few moments before he shattered the silence with his deep, raspy voice.
"Blood in the water, your people are fond of saying."
Aria snorted, regarding Fenris with a disgruntled scowl. "That happens every sunny morning. It's rubbish."
Fenris chuckled. "Wisdom of the obvious, but often discarded sort."
"People believe fairytales over truth every day."
"You're talking about the Maker?"
"And every other religion."
"I never took you to be the anarchist sort," Fenris sniggered . His sarcasm was not lost on her.
"Yes well, no one's perfect."
It was then that the clinking of chain mail and the swish of mage robes could be heard just beyond the nearest bluff. Aria returned her gaze to the sea, the sun's ascent turning a dark orange and the water no longer looking as though it consisted of blood.
"I hate mornings," Varric's sleep-roughened voice came to her ears as he clumsily plopped next to her. "Why do we have to get up so early?"
"It could be worse, Varric. You could just never sleep," Aria softly said, eyes darting to the flock of gulls that suddenly departed one of the cliffs, their mournful voices creating a cacophony that reverberated across the otherwise silent harbour.
He grunted in response.
"We aren't getting much done sitting here on our asses," Anders cheerily stated. "We've got to check out the mines. Shall we?"
Aria ignored the various sounds of distaste that rumbled from both Varric and Fenris, standing nimbly and bounding towards the trail that led up to the Bone Pit. "Gentlemen, we have coin to earn."
As they cleared the bluffs, coming to the summit of the cliff into which the mines had been built, a wind reeking of death assailed their nostrils; the scent of rot and moldering, decay and carnage. Varric gagged. Fenris commented on it and swore in his strange Tevinter tongue. Anders snarled.
They walked up to the mouth of the nearest cavern and proceeded down into the dark passage. It stank of sulfur, various ores, and the unmistakable scents of old and new death, mingling with mildew and earth. It turned Aria's stomach anew as they entered and she bit back the bile while covering her face with the hem of her tunic. They'd barely reached the bottom of the entrance ramp before a few giant spiders assaulted them.
Aria was taken by surprise as a venomous giant spider lunged from its camouflage in the shadows and pinned her against the cave wall. She instinctively held it off by its two foremost legs, its pincers snapping for her neck and dripping with a neon green ooze. She nearly retched at the stench of its sour breath, struggling for a foothold to keep herself upright.
"Hawke!" she heard Varric shout in alarm, sending a triplet of bolts thunking deep into the spider's thick exoskeleton over its abdomen.
The arachnid seemed unfazed, continuing its assault on her as she fought to hold the venomous fangs at bay. She'd dropped both daggers to catch the assailing creature's legs and now one was under her foot, hindering her desperate quest for steady footing.
Suddenly, the creature's abdomen was split clean up the middle before her eyes, its thorax cleaved neatly in two by Fenris's long sword. Hawke scurried out from under the spider's corpse, stopping to kick its head in before rejoining Anders and Varric from their ranged-attack points.
"Well I guess that rules out bandits," Aria said, slapping dust and spider slobber from her leggings.
"Or the bandits also became fodder," Varric replied, toeing a rusted helm near the wall of the cavern where the skeletal remains of a human laid.
The party continued on through the labyrinth of mining tunnels and caverns, destroying many more spiders, and even some dragonlings. The appearance of the infant dragons left Aria uneasy and her battle-tuned senses were on high alert. This was likely a nest. And mama dragons weren't something with which she wanted to idly trifle. She generally liked dragons—so long as they kept their distance or were really the Witch of the Wilds in disguise.
A few moments later, hey ran into a miner who had escaped certain death for the time. He'd been hiding in one of the newer cut shafts and was relieved to hear other humanoids entering the caverns. Aria sent him back through the tunnels they'd cleared, with the promise to report to that ridiculous Orlesian, Hubert.
"Hawke, I know you've faced down ogres but dragons? I don't think they leave a nest unguarded," Varric said as they pressed on to where the miner had indicated the presence of one such creature.
"Where's your sense of adventure, Varric?" Aria glibly replied, stepping onto a ledge that overlooked one of the Bone Pit's many treacherous valleys.
A feral, ear-shattering scream rent the air from overhead and they were momentarily buffeted by a blast of wing-blown wind. Aria stumbled into cover behind a boulder, crouching back to back with Fenris. He regarded her with grim determination as their latest foe descended onto the ledge. She smiled back.
Aria looked over to where Anders and Varric had taken cover behind another large boulder, making sure they'd escaped the initial assault. Varric was nocking a triplet on Bianca. Anders was peering at the new arrival with eyes wide as dinner plates. Aria motioned for them to stay in cover while they launched their ranged attacks to draw the beast's attention.
The dragon screamed and sent a torrent of white-hot flames at their cover. Aria took the chance and sneaked behind the beast, launching her own assault on it's flank. She dodged the frenzied animal's heavy foot falls, always keeping to the rear. Fenris raced out from cover and slid under the dragon's belly, slashing at the less thickly scaled hide of the monstrosity's stomach.
They continued thus for nearly an hour, taking turns drawing the formidable beast's attention whilst the others attacked. Aria saw her chance at last when Fenris had drawn the she-dragon's focus. She clambered up the magnificent animal's shoulder, then vaulted onto its neck. With all her strength, bolstered by help from Anders's mana, she drove both daggers deep into the dragon's skull. With a heavy sigh, the beast's body gave way and she crashed to the earth.
Aria slid down from the animal's great head and turned to survey their work. It made her slightly sad to have slain such a magnificent creature. She'd only been defending her young, and they killed her for it. Aria knelt beside her and rested her head against the scaly, tough cheek bone of the animal. She whispered a prayer for peace in the afterlife for the giant and stayed there a moment.
"Hawke?" Fenris's voice greeted her ears.
She turned abruptly and saw the trio of her companions looking quizzically at her. "Yes?"
"You're—crying," Anders softly stated, moving forward to offer her his hand.
She swiped angrily at the tears she hadn't realized were falling and took his help. Aria didn't say anything as they looted the corpse for what necessities and marketable goods they could carry. When they'd gotten all they could, Aria silently led them back to Kirkwall. She left her companions to their drinking at the Hanged Man, her parting silent. Anders tried to stop her, but Fenris intervened and Varric defused the situation by offering them both a tankard to leave Hawke alone.
Killing the dragon shouldn't have bothered her the way it did. Dragons were nuisances. They were demons, of a sort. The she-dragon would have killed her if she hadn't have gotten the beast first. Maybe it was the fact that the dragon had just been simply defending her family that unsettled her so. A family that Aria had just finished slaying. It hadn't even been that much of a fight, to be honest. She'd felt as though the dragon was only half-heartedly trying, as though perhaps she'd wanted them to end her. The thought brought the sting of tears back to her eyes and Aria berated herself for her sudden weakness.
No one was home when Aria returned to Gamlen's hovel in the slums. The place had been recently cleaned, no doubt Bethany's doing. Her sister was probably at Anders's clinic in Dark Town. Her mother was probably in High Town at the Chantry. Gamlen was most likely at the Blooming Rose getting serviced. Aria shuddered at that thought and continued into the tiny room she and Bethany shared. She pulled up a loose floor board and tugged a small locked chest free from the dust and rat droppings.
The amount in Aria's hidden coffer was steadily growing. 30 sovereigns saved so far, and that wasn't including the coin Aria carried around on her day-to-day. She had reached the halfway point in less than five months. Perhaps if she got more serious, she'd be able to scrape together the remaining 20 within the next two or three.
Aria was sick and fucking tired of living in this filth, with her uncle's constant disapproval and feigned hospitality. More and more lately it had been increasingly difficult to quell the urge to kill him. Bethany had started playing referee and sent Aria on errands whenever the two of them butted heads.
She laid down on her bunk and stared at the ceiling. She contemplated the wood grain in the beams for the millionth time since she'd been in Kirkwall. The plight of her mother beat at her, a subliminal pulsing that every so often rose to the surface and threatened to drown her. She had the distinct, crushing feeling that it was nowhere near over.