"Wolves why do wolves always get in the way of my nice peaceful life?" Shartan asked when they made camp just outside the farms after talking with the horse-master.
"I am sure these wolves did not mean to interrupt the time you spend rutting with your seeker Black Hart." Solas remarked as he helped Varric pitch the tents while Shartan cooked the evening meal, Shartan cooked most of the time as he had the most experience cooking in the wilds.
"We do not rut!" Cassandra snapped flushing while glaring at Solas, Shartan nearly choked on the stew he was taste testing.
"My apologies Seeker is there something else you prefer me to call it?" Solas asked politely while Varric was passing Shartan a flask of water.
"She meant what she said mutt she and I have not gone that far yet." Shartan remarked, Varric raised an eyebrow at that.
"Really?" Varric drew the word out sarcastically, "then what are the moans we have been hearing every night?"
"A massage for the seeker, now drop this or I see if I remember the recipe for fried dwarf and fed you to Fenny." Shartan said glaring at the dwarf who backed off.
Cassandra sat by the fire light reading her favourite chapter of 'swords and shields' by the pale light of Shartan's lantern light wards, she was just reaching her favourite part where the guard captain and the knight captain where making love at top her desk when she felt and heard a rumbling voice whisper in her ear.
"With every kiss the Guard captain's loin burned hotter until she thought the fire would consume her." Cassandra leapt from her stool whipping around hand falling to her dagger and crouching low.
"Good reflexes not that I would expect anything less from my soulmate and disciple!" Shartan said nodding in approval while smirking as Cassandra glared.
"What are you doing? I thought you went to bed?" Cassandra asked glaring as she picked up her book.
"I have trouble sleeping alone when my soulmate is nearby, also I had planned on doing some light reading of my own." Shartan stated before pulling out a book that Cassandra would know anywhere it was the rarest book of all of Varric's works, 'The vipers Nest.'
"Where did you get that!?" Cassandra asked shocked, that book was the hardest to find as after only a short time the popular story vanished from the shelves and was never produced again.
"I found it in the wagon a some carta thugs that tried to mug me once, it is a good book but don't tell Varric that I said that. The damn dwarf would get a big head that an immortal being likes his books." Shartan drawled
Cassandra smirked and agreed before gesturing to the stood next to her, Shartan half bowed before sitting down as close to her as he could on the pair of stools. The pair sat in silence as they read, at some point Cassandra drifted off and found herself in the small shadowed clearing in the fade once more with Shartan resting next to her in his hart form.
"Why do we always come here, what is so special about this place?" She asked the hart who looked at her, Cassandra fell into the golden eyes of the Hart and when it blinked she found herself in the clearing again but this time there was another person there.
The stranger was an elf but like Shartan this elf was tall but only six feet where Shartan stood half a foot taller, behind this woman was a group of soldiers in elven armor that gleamed everyone but the woman was tense as they seemed to be waiting for something. A rustling in from behind Cassandra made her turn and her heart stopped as Shartan walked out of the trees in his full elven war armor, his armor was crafted from the same materials and the ones who guarded the woman and the warriors who followed him but his was dyed black as his hair that was bound behind him braid with gleaming silver spikes in it.
The past Shartan approached the woman, the woman's guards tensed but the woman waved them down, Shartan looked her up and down before his eyes snapped to her upper arm and at the same time his guards saw it and started muttering amongst themselves. Cassandra looked closer at the mark and felt her eyes widen and jaw drop as her mark adorned that woman's arm, it was at this point that Cassandra realized what she was seeing, this was the meeting of Shartan and his first soulmate Ghilan'nain. Shartan went to one knee at her feet and swore his fealty to her at once in elven that for some reason Cassandra was able to understand.
[but what about Mythal, is your loyalty so fickle that you swap sides so easily?] Ghilan'nain smirked down at Shartan.
[Nah but I refused to fight against my soulmate so in order to prevent that I must devote myself to you and you alone as I was taught, if you wish me to serve Mythal I will but if anything she asks of me would go against your wishes then I would disobey.] Shartan swore.
[What of your warriors who do they serve the?] She asked and one of Shartan's warriors stepped forward before dropping to one knee as well, as one the rest dropped to one knee and they all swore loyalty to her and Shartan. Cassandra woke up in the arms of Shartan who stirred shortly after her, she looked up at him and he smirked at her before asking how she slept.
"Thank you for showing me that, it was beautiful." Cassandra said, Shartan just kissed her deeply some how his breath always tasted of mint no matter the time or what he had just ate.
"You are welcome my ghi'myelan, there are many moments like that and I hope to show you many more but first we must hunt some wolves. Remind me after we deal with them to keep a few of the skins I have developed over the years a fondness to sleeping of wolf fur pelts." Shartan said climbing out of bed giving Cassandra a lovely view of his sculpted body.
"What did you call me?" Cassandra asked never having heard a term like that.
"ghi'myelan it means hunter or huntress depending on context, a more fitting term for you than seeker as I despise that title." Cassandra blushed the name, she should be mad about his defaming of her group but she had long given up trying to make Shartan see the good of her group as there was clearly something in his past that made him hate them.
Varric titled his head as he watched Prongs skin several of the larger wolves before using a spell to quickly clean and tan them, he approached as Prongs began using magic to fuse the pelts into a large bed spread. Chuckles also came over and sighed at what he saw.
"You really need to stop with wasting magic just to mock me." Chuckles said to Prongs.
"Go sniff a tree boy, I am making a bedspread for my ghi'myelan and I to sleep on." Prongs remarked with a wave of his hand before rolling up the bed spread and securing it to his pack.
After the seeker finished checking in with some scout who had wandered by they headed back to farms, Curly's men had managed to get the towers up in short-order so after Prongs spouted some chant verses at the horse-master the man agreed to travel with horses and manage the horses there. Hearing Prongs spout chantry speak to people for a few days now had gotten Varric wondering if the man really believes what he was spout, Varric knew that he had once been a priest of some kind to a false god that was his soulmate.
"Hey prongs what is your stance on the maker?" Varric asked as they sat eating around the fire at camp a night into their travels into the back to haven.
"Why?" Shartan asked suspicious, Cassandra looked up at this.
"You keep quoting the chant so I am wondering if you believe or just playing the role."
"It exists and has great power, beyond that the chant was written by idiots who twisted half remembered lines of forgotten war speeches into a holy text." Shartan said still wary
"It? not he?" Cassandra asked and Varric snorted of course that is what the seeker focuses on.
"When I spoke to it during the time when you were Andraste it never seemed to have a gender, besides that whole crap about you being the bride of the maker makes me laugh like I would have shared you with another." Shartan snarked
"Hold on Andraste had kids though?" Varric asked.
"Mine you honestly think Andraste would have touched that man if she did not need his armies, no after we found each other she never touched him again, her kids were mine and before you ask when we were captured they tried to rape her but the drugs they were using on me loosened the veil's hold on me so anytime they tried I nearly brought the castle down on our heads." Shartan said before standing and retreating into his tent quickly followed by the seeker.
Varric started writing a book that night and titled it, 'the anecdotes of the true history as told by Shartan the immortal Hart.' When this was all over and if anyone ever believed him this story would out sell everything he had ever written. Over the next few days on their journey back to haven Varric kept jotting down any thing relating to the past Solas or Prongs said to later organize and try to fit into a proper timeline.