A/N: This is my first foray outside of my usual fandom in, oh boy, a very long time. I feel like I should have a bone-deep familiarity with the full DA cast and lore, but I'm afraid I very much do not. There will surely be mistakes here. And I fear this prologue is setting me up for some novel-length story I won't be able to deliver. But, I wanna write a self-indulgent story about Cullen and Cassandra falling in luuuurve, so darn it I'm gonna try.
Title obviously comes from Grand Cleric Elthina's line, "There is no greater devotion than to lay one's life at the Maker's feet. There is no better death than to take the blow for another," which I thought fit both Cassandra and Cullen well (though *spoilers* I hasten to add I have no plans for anyone to die!). My headcanon is that it's a quote from the Chant of Light, so it may appear in the story in that context, but I don't think(?) actual canon backs that up anywhere.
Chapter title courtesy of PJ Harvey's 'The Ministry of Defence,' which I listened to a lot for a few months while writing. I've a feeling a few more random song lyrics might make their way into future chapters (which is weird, because I'm not normally a song fic kind of person, but hey).
No Greater Devotion
by Bryony
Prologue:
This is How the World Ends
Kirkwall was burning.
Cullen wrenched his gaze away from the grotesque, rigid features of his Knight-Commander, a woman he'd once respected - admired, even. To all appearances Meredith was dead, but Kirkwall still burned. He could see the flames across the water and felt his very soul clench in response. The responsibility fell to him, now.
How many were left? Civilians? Templars? Mages?
Belatedly, he became aware of Hawke and her party warily staring at him.
The Templars, too; more of his brethren were swarming into the courtyard, swords drawn and cautiously circling the Champion. Without warning, he felt the person beside him move; the slight figure he recognized as Emeric's young protege Ser Moira darted forward and knelt in front of Meredith's deformed corpse. Her fingers tentatively reached out, then stopped short as if she suddenly thought better of touching the thing her former commanding officer had become. Moira's face was invisible behind her helm, but Cullen could easily imagine it when she turned beseechingly towards him. It must look exactly like his own.
Action. He needed to act.
Casting a meaningful look Hawke's way, he took an exaggerated backwards step. Catching his meaning, the men around him began to do the same. Glancing once at the Templars surrounding her, Hawke didn't waste time. A signal to her companions, and they were gone. Cullen tried to tamp down the disappointment he felt at watching her flee, the one person he might have hoped to defer to. Instead he had let her go. He'd had to let her go. Whatever else the night held, that much was certain.
There were more pressing things to worry about than the Champion. He sucked in his breath and drew himself to his full stature.
"Ser Moira!" he shouted.
She started and leapt to her feet at his summons, raising a fist in salute. "Ser!"
"We must organize bucket brigades immediately. Group the men here into teams and dispatch them to Lowtown. Liaise with the city guard if you can, to find out where it's worst and coordinate your efforts. Our first priority now is to protect Kirkwall and do what we can to save the city. Do you understand?"
He could not outright order her to withhold from engaging with any mages they might meet without undermining his own authority, but she gave a sharp nod in response and he relaxed slightly.
"Evacuate whoever you can where the fires are in danger of spreading. The able-bodied can help assist. Have the infirm-" Have them what? The Chantry was gone - destroyed. The entire city was in danger of falling. Just like - no. No. Now was not the time to think of Kinloch. He would not fall into that trap. "Have them report here."
The Gallows. Where an abomination (for what else could he call it? Meredith might not have been a mage, but like any abomination she had not been entirely human at the end) stood that made mockery of the entire Templar Order.
Still, here, at least, there were stone walls, blankets, provisions - protection, for those who would take it.
He would take care of Meredith. What remained of her.
"Felton!" he shouted next, directing this to one of the greener knights. "With me!"
Moira had responded well to his command, jumping to with alacrity. Ser Felton appeared to be having a harder time returning to his senses - although he had clearly heard Cullen's order, there was an unsatisfying slowness to his movements, and an expression of dumb shock persisted on his face. "Hop to, man!" Cullen chivvied him, unable to offer any sympathy. They did not have time, not while Kirkwall burned.
"The… the mages are gone, ser," Felton despaired.
"All in good time, lad," said a voice to Cullen's right, not unsympathetically. He glanced over and saw Samson, looking shaken and weathered, but seemingly standing firm despite the events of the evening. Samson caught his look and nodded deferentially, with just a hint of something underneath. "Your order, Knight-Captain."
The courtyard was emptying around them, the other Templars following as Moira directed them to their tasks, allowing him to speak somewhat more freely.
He gestured to where Meredith's body rested on its knees, frozen in a rictus of agony. An eerie red light still emanated from her in flickering waves, like flames, but without heat. "Have you ever seen anything like this?" he asked the older man in hushed tones.
"Not in all my life," Samson replied, and spat. "Thank Andraste."
Sword in hand, Cullen carefully approached Meredith's remains. As he got closer, he better understood both the draw Ser Moira had appeared to feel towards the unusual corpse, and her unease. There was a resonance he could feel between Meredith's body and the lyrium in his blood, but it rang dissonant and sour, setting his teeth on edge. The last thing he wanted to do was touch…her; it; whatever Meredith had become. He used his swordpoint to probe the body. There was no give to it; it did not have the feel of flesh, even flesh that has been seared by mage fire. It appeared to be fused to the ground; they would not be able to move it, not without tearing up the stone.
"Watch it there, boy!" Samson barked from behind him. Cullen turned to see Felton frozen in a bent over posture, his hand reaching for something on the ground. Samson continued: "You don't just go about picking up strange things you don't understand without first determining if they're safe - have the Templars taught you nothing?"
"Sorry, ser," Felton muttered, withdrawing his hand and straightening. He took a large step backwards for good measure and stiffened to attention, holding himself absurdly still.
Samson took a step nearer to Cullen, rolling his eyes. In a low voice he added, "Boy's got the right of it in one respect, though; there's more to clean up out here than just her highness." He discreetly displayed what he held in his own hand, wrapped in a plain white handkerchief: a broken shard of Meredith's sword. Cullen felt sick at the sight of it.
He nodded once in acknowledgment, then moved past Samson back towards the junior Templar. "We require oil. Fetch some from the store rooms and bring it back here as quick as you can. As much as you can carry. Canvas, too." Felton's eyes slipped past him to land on Meredith. His chin trembled, but he nodded and ran to do Cullen's bidding.
"Think she'll burn?" Samson asked him.
"I don't know," Cullen replied honestly. His voice came out with a hoarse edge and he cleared his throat. "With enough oil, perhaps. But we must try."
They handled the body of Knight-Commander Meredith as if it held the plague. For all they knew, it did. While the fires of Kirkwall raged uncontrolled outside the Gallows, inside their gates they built a smaller fire; a funeral pyre. Cullen did not pretend to understand the madness that had infected Meredith's mind, or how it might relate to the monstrous sword she'd carried. But he knew, whatever the cause, they had to stop it spreading. So they dismantled the nearby merchant stalls and smashed every crate they could find to pile the wood high. They wrapped cloths around their hands and faces when they draped Meredith in her canvas shroud, and then they added those to the pyre, too, dousing everything with the oil Felton supplied before setting it alight. There was a prayer for his Knight-Commander in Cullen's mind, but not on his lips; all three of them were silent.
The broken pieces of Meredith's sword would not burn, however. They scoured the courtyard for them until Cullen was satisfied they'd found them all. Fainter than the gong-like resonance which had come from Meredith's body, the pieces still seemed to hum somehow when they were close enough, an unsettling feeling, but useful for locating them. These they wrapped in another piece of canvas.
"What do you mean to do with them?" Samson asked him.
"I don't know yet," Cullen growled in response. The night was wearing on him. The gravity of the Templars' failure sat heavy in his chest - a glittering sharp edge he could not afford to let his mind catch on, lest it bleed him dry.
"Lyrium, she said it was, didn't she? Not like any lyrium I've ever seen. Might be one of the Tranquil could make something of it." At Cullen's glare he added in a mutter, "Just a thought."
There hadn't been a moment to spare to think about the Tranquil. But of course, they wouldn't have rebelled with the others. There was a chance, just a chance, some few of them might still be in the Gallows, if they hadn't been caught up in the fighting or fallen victim to Orsino's blood magic.
Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose. "What did it look like inside, Felton?"
"It was quiet, ser," he answered tentatively. "I saw no one except the fallen."
Maker's breath. He'd told Moira to send people here to escape the fires, but his mind had been so consumed by Meredith he hadn't stopped to consider the aftermath of the other battles fought here tonight. How many more bodies were there inside?
He picked up the bundle containing the sword fragments and handed the remainder of the canvas sheeting to Samson. "Kindly begin to see to those inside. Treat them with what dignity you can. Try to keep a record of the names. I am going to put this under lock and key and then I will rejoin you."
Samson's mouth twisted with distaste, which Cullen couldn't blame him for, but he didn't protest the order, nodding stiffly. What Cullen didn't ask, although he wanted to, was for Samson to shield Felton from their task as best he could. In the moment, he had thought keeping the boy from the ravaged city would be a kindness, but at least there the dead would have been largely strangers, not former comrades, former charges. Too late now. He would have to do better going forward.
Cullen left them and hurriedly made his way across the courtyard for the entrance to the Templar Hall. There were two safes in Meredith's office. He had the combination to one of them. He would store the fragments of the sword there and return as quickly as he could.
The halls in this wing of the Gallows, at least, were relatively unscathed. If somewhere was needed to house civilians ferried across from Lowtown in the coming days, it would do. Maker knew, some of the quarters would be standing empty after tonight. He wondered again, how many from their garrison of two hundred men had they lost today? How many of the seven hundred mages under their care? He shook his head - he would know the answers to those questions soon enough, but now was not the time to be dwelling on them.
He was still in Meredith's office when he heard the first sign of life that he'd encountered since entering the wing: running footsteps. Armored ones. He ran out into the hall and almost collided with Ser Gillian.
"Knight-Captain!" she exclaimed. "Thank the Maker. Please, ser, you must come right away. They'll listen to you."
"What is it?" he asked as they turned immediately back the way Gillian had come.
"Confrontation in the kitchens, ser. It's best you see for yourself." The tremble in her voice was not just due to her being out of breath, and foreboding bloomed in Cullen's chest.
"It's not more blood magic is it?" he demanded as they hurried downstairs. He had to know at least that much.
"I - don't think so, ser," was all Gillian replied, but the hesitation in her voice gave him some indication of what to expect.
Through the dining hall. Cullen habitually swept it with his eyes. It was eerie; he had never seen the place so empty, so silent. The tables remained upright, but many of the benches were haphazardly pushed out as if the occupants had left in a hurry. The remains of meals sat abandoned and long cold.
As they descended the final flight of steps into the kitchens he could hear voices echoing off the stone, too mixed up together to make out clearly beyond the raised and angry tones. And he could feel the air change, growing thick with magic-dampening effects.
The scene, when he finally cleared the last step and ducked under the low-hanging lintel to the kitchen, was not quite the dire picture he'd been imagining. After so much horror, it was almost comedic, the sight of Myron, the garrison's cook, red-faced and brandishing a frying pan, squaring off against the equally puffed-up Knight-Lieutenant Karras.
The sight of Karras's drawn blade, wet and shining with fresh blood, however, put paid to that.
He had to shout to make himself heard over the din; rather wished he had a pan of his own he could bang on to get the quarreling men's attention. When he finally had it, silence fell like a stone. "What's going on here, then?" he asked with a deceptive calm. Ser Gillian shifted subtly beside him, a hand brushing her pommel. Myron had his mouth open to answer, but Cullen cut across him with a look. "Knight-Lieutenant?" he prompted, enunciating each syllable so it could cut glass.
Karras's lip curled under his heavy blond muttonchops. "This fool's trying to harbor mages down here," he spat, barely sparing Cullen a glance.
The other man's face purpled. "Harboring?" he sputtered, "This is the sodding Circle! Bloody imbecile coming down here to my kitchen going on about harboring mages-"
"Enough," Cullen snapped. He shoved past them both. Slumped on the floor behind one of the countertops was one of the enchanters. No doubt the source of the argument. The woman's eyes were open, but rolling wildly; plainly she was still reeling from the effects of a recent smite. A bruise bloomed on her jaw, but she appeared otherwise uninjured. The blood on Karras's sword was not hers. For the moment.
How much simpler would it be for him to simply turn around and leave her there? One more mage casualty, what difference would it make amongst the rest of the night's bloodshed? It would make his life easier, that was a certainty. Alienating a man like Karras, that was inviting trouble. Better to keep him on side, surely; the chaos in Kirkwall would not end overnight, and he would need a stable command to restore order.
And yet.
Taking his time, Cullen drew himself up, bringing all of his beleaguered authority to bear. In a mild tone he said, "Ser Karras, we are currently preparing the Gallows to receive an influx of refugees from the city. Your help would be gratefully received in the old prison courtyard."
Karras stared at him, aghast. "Refugees? Here? Are you mad? We're in the middle of a mage uprising!"
Cullen squared up to him. His skin crawled at leaving his back exposed to the mage on the floor, but of more immediate concern was Karras's unsheathed sword. He deliberately rested his own hand on his pommel as he stood close, staring the man down. Men of Karras's age were not always fond of taking their orders from someone younger; but Cullen's youth was not inexperience. He was taller; broader; stronger. He knew how to establish dominance. It was instinctive.
"The fighting is over," he said with deliberate slowness.
Karras's lips twitched into a sneer. "All due respect, Knight-Captain, but the Knight-Commander ordered the Rite of Annulment. The fighting will not be over until those orders are complete."
"We have received no writ from any Grand Cleric instructing the Rite," Cullen countered. "Those orders were invalid. Indeed, any order issued by Knight-Commander Meredith is now void. The Knight-Commander is dead. You answer to me, or not at all. Is that understood?"
"You would just let these maleficar be?" Karras gasped. He gestured behind Cullen with the sword in his hand, heedless of the way it made the other people in the room shift. "After what they've done? Grand Cleric Elthina is dead! The Chantry-"
"I am aware!" Cullen barked. The knot of tension inside him threatened to unravel - not yet, he willed himself. Drew in a deep breath. Made himself say it. "The Chantry is destroyed. However the entire city will be next if we do not act to save it. Go outside, look across the water. Would you just watch it burn for the sake of revenge?"
Why not? He would have, once. Proudly. It was still tempting now: a soft target behind him, someone to punish for everything they'd suffered tonight. It was mages to blame, after all. But, "Our first duty is to protect the people of Kirkwall. The most immediate danger now is the fire. The mages who have fled tonight do not understand the first thing about survival outside the Circle. They will surely make their way to the Wounded Coast - if they even get that far. They will be dealt with. Later."
Ser Karras was silent for a moment, his blond muttonchops bristling as he mulled over Cullen's words. "And what about this robe, then?" he asked at last, pointing again at the mage on the floor.
"Ser Gillian and I will see to her. Now move out, Ser Karras; I will not ask again."
The Knight-Lieutenant did not nod, nor salute, nor make any other gesture of good will or respect. But he did turn on his heel and leave the room. Cullen breathed a silent sigh of relief as he watched Karras sheathe his sword. Until a rasping voice said from below, "You're letting him go? After what he did?"
He turned sharply, his mouth tightening as he met the mage's eye. "That sounds very like the argument he was just trying to make against you," he pointed out.
"Delia's not done nothing," Myron interjected, as he bent down to help ease her into a sitting position. "That knight of yours, on the other hand - black as they come."
"We have all done things not to be proud of this night," he replied, refusing to be drawn.
The cook let out an incredulous bark of laughter. Leaning on his arm, the mage, Delia, levered herself upright, stubbornly refusing to break eye contact as she did so. She was an older woman, with steely grey hair and her own air of authority, even helpless as Karras's smite had made her. "That is your mistake, then," she said to him. "Ser Karras takes great pride in what he's done."
Cullen did not dignify her with a response. He turned back to Ser Gillian. "Escort the enchanter to a set of private quarters. See to it that no one else tries to enter her room."
Something flashed across the mage's face while Gillian saluted him - fear? outrage? - and then was gone before he could identify it. She exchanged a look with Myron, intense and urgent. The wrath which Cullen had been suppressing rose up once more; he shoved his way between them, threateningly close, and demanded, "Who else is hiding down here? Tell me, or I promise you the person who finds them next will not be as merciful."
"You're mistaken, Knight-Captain," Delia interjected, wavering on her newly-found footing. "There is no one left."
"The cold storage," Myron added, jerking his head towards the enchanted pantry where the Gallows' perishables were kept. "See for yourself."
Cullen did so. Uncharacteristically, the heavy door to the storage was lying open. Leading with his blade, he cautiously descended two of the three steps within before he caught sight of the contents of the chamber, left on the floor surrounded by hanging shanks of venison and whole suckling pigs, and felt his stomach heave.
The apprentices. Not all of them, he knew at a glance, but several. Enough. The true targets of Karras's bloodied blade. Mages, said one part of his mind with the coldness that had been with him since Kinloch, but - Children, said another. He backed hurriedly out of the room, knowing as he did that this was another of the sights that would never leave him.
Delia had been transferred to Gillian's custody, a firm elbow supporting her to stand. Myron surveyed him with crossed arms and a baleful gaze. He ignored the man in favor of the enchanter. "Were you trying to lead them to escape, or merely shelter?"
"I hardly think it matters now. Knight-Captain."
For all the flat finality of her answer, it didn't seem to him to contain any insolence. He let it go, and nodded to Gillian in dismissal. To Myron he said, "I will send a detail down to deal with this. Later."
The man scoffed, his lip curled in such a way that Cullen thought he might be about to spit at him. But all he said was, "And what of him that did it?"
"He is a Templar - and not your concern." Myron's eyes narrowed, but before he could open his mouth Cullen continued, "There will be people coming here from Kirkwall who will need to be fed. I need to know, will you be able to do so? And is there anyone - anyone - left alive down here? Where are the other hands?"
Myron's jaw worked, chewing his words before he said them. "I'll feed whoever needs feeding. As to anyone left, I don't know. But they're not down here. Not mage, nor Templar, nor kitchen hand neither."
"All right." Cullen drew back, suppressing the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose where the worst of his tension seemed to be gathered. No further emergencies materializing to capture his attention, he gathered himself to return to Samson and young Felton. Exhaustion was prickling behind his eyes now that the adrenaline of the battle with Meredith was beginning to ebb, but he dared not think how long it would be before he or anyone would be able to find rest.
He did not sleep that night, nor the next day. But now that dusk had fallen once again, he found himself alone in his quarters, the first still moment in what felt like days. His lyrium kit sat open in his hand - he'd missed yesterday's dose and his skin was beginning to crawl with need and the knowledge that once he'd downed the potion everything would just be that little bit easier - yet he found himself strangely reluctant to drink.
Meredith's spectre still stood in the courtyard, untouched by the torches they'd set to it.
You should have acted sooner. That was the simple truth of it; perhaps then it wouldn't have come to this. Portions of Kirkwall still glowed red across the water, reflected against the clouds, although the worst of the fires appeared to have burnt out. A garrison of two hundred men and women, seven hundred mages, more than a hundred Tranquil… The largest Circle in Thedas. And now…ruins. They still had no final reckoning of the numbers lost, but he wasn't optimistic. He had set Knight-Lieutenant Caspar to oversee the roll and provide him with updates; the most recent tally accounted for seventy-six Templars confirmed alive whose whereabouts were known, eleven remaining Tranquil, and a paltry twenty-three mages including the enchanter, Delia. Then there were the dead - those they could identify. Fifty-nine Templar brothers; seventy-two mages; thirty-six slain Tranquil in the Gallows alone. Those numbers would only rise in the coming days.
He held up the philtre of lyrium, the candlelight behind it casting a blue glow, the color of calm, of comfort. The difficulty was, he didn't want comfort. Not this time.
The lyrium had been the thing that got him through, after Ferelden. But he'd been scarcely more than a boy then, and too consumed by his own hurts to see beyond them. Part of him was still that boy. But he remembered another boy, too. One who had considered compassion for his charges to be part of his duty toward them. He hadn't thought that way for a long time, but -
A foot, half come out of its shoe. Both so small.
A knock at the door made him start. "Yes? Enter."
It was Samson. "Begging your pardon, Knight-Captain." His eye fell on the lyrium in Cullen's hand and his face took on a different cast, almost…hungry, then smoothed.
Cullen suppressed a grimace of his own. He was not without pity for any Templar so far gone in their addiction, but it was distasteful to him, too. "What is it?" he asked, more sharply than he'd meant to.
Samson coughed to clear his throat. "The Tranquil, Maddox. I spoke to him about those fragments we collected, thought he could maybe take custody of them, see what he can figure out."
"I didn't authorize that."
"Well, no. That's why I'm here now, ain't it?"
Cullen shook his head. "I don't think it's wise."
"Respectfully, Knight-Captain, don't you think we ought to-"
"Your request has been noted. That's as far as I'm prepared to go at this time. There will be time for studying artifacts later."
Samson gave him an oily smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Right you are, Knight-Captain. As you say, ser."
"Was there anything else?" Cullen finally prompted when he made no move to leave.
"Oh, I doubt it's important, ser. Just some talk amongst the lads." Cullen lifted an expectant eyebrow. "Karras might be stirring them up a bit. Talking about mounting an expedition to the Wounded Coast, finishing the Rite of Annulment, that sort of thing. Seems there might be some question as to where a true Templar's duties lie."
"Of course," Cullen huffed. Just what he needed.
"I wouldn't worry. So long as you show you're capable of leadership, make the right sort of decisions, people will fall in line. Troubling times, these. All the men want to know is who's looking out for them. That's who they'll follow."
Cullen was tempted to say Karras was welcome to whoever wished to follow him, for it would make his job easier to have them out of the way. He regretted the errant thought when, less than two weeks later, it transpired that Karras and twelve of the other surviving Templars had made off in the night. He was, however, grimly unsurprised by the desertion. The only thing that did give him pause was when Caspar informed him that Samson and one of the Tranquil were among the absconders.
His jaw clenched tight, he made his way to Meredith's office. There he discovered the safe, its door blasted off its hinges. The contents remained undisturbed - apart from the missing shards of Meredith's lyrium sword.
He sank despairingly into the chair behind the desk muttering, "Maker damn you for a fool, Cullen Rutherford."
One more failure for his already long list.
His frown deepened as he caught sight of a half-hidden scratch on the surface of the desk. He shifted several stacks of the Knight-Commander's paperwork to expose it. The marks were old, the edges of the writing worn smooth - no telling how long they had been there, but the words still sent a chill through his blood. Scratched deep into the wood, the declaration, This is how the World ends.
It was beginning to feel that way.