"Wait! Don't kill hi—"
His voice cut off as an axe swung down with heavy finality into the man's neck who was trying to crawl away, his white and black robes already badly charred. Even as the swarthy young man who'd cried out slid down a small embankment to where his former attacker lay, wearing a considerably more worn, yet still stylish cloak, the owner of the axe jerked it out of the ground where she'd embedded it.
"Vishante kaffas!" he hissed as he stumbled to a stop beside his dead countryman, hands in his dark, well-groomed hair. "Did you not hear me calling for you to wait?" When a grunt was the only reply to his demand, he raised his eyes, his brow still dipped down, staff gripped firmly in hand, glare in place.
It had little effect on the woman he was trying to intimidate.
She was an older dwarf, middle-aged almost. Her hair was cropped short around her head and stuck out in small brown tufts streaked with a bit of white, like down feathers. It was the only soft part of her, the rest of her stout, well-tanned frame nothing but muscles and hard lines.
The mage's lips curled down at the corners, before he could stop himself. Maker's balls, they probably looked like an inverse version of his meticulously curled moustache at this point.
That would be a sight.
"My dear dwarf, perhaps it was not so very obvious with the yelling and running, but I needed him. With his head attached."
"That may be, but the thing is, I just need one of you." The dwarf hauled her weapon into her hands and was lunging toward the mage before he knew what was happening. With more curses, he darted back, flames flickering at his fingertips. He tossed a few fireballs about to make it so that the dwarf had no clear path to him and then angled himself so that she couldn't see when he shifted his magic. As he curled his fingers toward his palm, dark purple runes lit up and flickered in the air before seeming to disperse.
Just as the dwarf figured out a way through his fire maze, arms wrapped around her, hauling her backwards with a bit too much force and nearly tossing her into the flames.
Corpses could be so indelicate.
A dead, headless man gripping her and holding her off her feet was enough to startle her into dropping her axe. The mage calmed the flames a bit so that he could walk over to her. "Now then, let us start this again, as I fear our first impressions may have been somewhat wanting. I am Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous. I have been trying to find out what these fools are up to, and you, dear lady, just killed my lead."
"Really?" the dwarf replied, eyes narrowed as her fingers dug into the lifeless flesh holding her.
"Oh, come now. I realize my accent may be unfamiliar, but surely you can make out what I am saying with those elegantly large ears of yours?"
"All the vints coming through here, messing everything up, and when I finally catch one, you just happen to not be with the rest of them?"
Dorian considered pointing out that she hadn't quite caught him, but chose not to provoke her. After all, she might be useful. "A lot of my countrymen have been coming through here, you say?"
With a rather pronounced eye roll, the dwarf abruptly swung her weight, toppling herself and the corpse forward, and using the momentum to all but fling the dead man Dorian's way. He narrowly dodged the body, instead stumbling to the side a few paces.
When he'd managed to regain sure footing, the dwarf had her axe in hand again. However, after appraising him, she relaxed her stance, dug a rag out of a small pouch on her hip, and began to wipe off her weapon. When she saw he was still watching her, she offered him the bloody rag. "You wanna save it for your spells?"
Straightening up a little despite himself, Dorian gave her a sarcastic smile. "Trying to win me over with gifts of poor taste will gain you no favor." He paused, his grin becoming a bit more genuine. "Now, a good bottle of wine is another matter entirely."
"If you say so." The dwarf rolled her eyes again, finally shouldering her axe. "I'm Bree Cadash, here on behalf of the Cadash cartel. Your countrymen have been giving us problems."
"Well, ruining things for the south is one of my people's favorite pastimes." Dorian shrugged. "You said there were a bunch of them through here. Recently?"
"They've been coming and going," Bree offered. "Small groups. That's why I came out here alone. Thought I'd lop off a few heads, get a few answers. Wasn't expecting…that."
"That," Dorian echoed, glancing around their surroundings as though some sign might pop up to further explain what 'that' was.
Bree arched her eyebrows, and he quirked one of his. "You really aren't with them, are you?"
"If I were, I would not be out here setting them on fire."
After considering that for a moment, Bree nodded. "Fair enough." She brushed a bit of dust off of her armor before pointing her thumb over her shoulder. "If you're really looking for the rest of the vints, they're that way."
Dorian's mouth twisted to the side. "You're just telling me this?"
"Consider it my act of kindness for the day." She paused and then added, "After all, if you aren't with them, you're useless to me. And I'd rather you go on your way and let me go on mine."
"Perhaps we could help one another."
"You gonna tell me how these guys are getting their hands on lyrium without going through Orzammar?"
"There is Kal-Sharok—"
"Their source is in Ferelden."
When Dorian didn't reply immediately, she turned away, waving one hand. "Have a good life. However short it's going to be."
"Well, if you show me to the rest of them, I'd wager I could get information for you." When she displayed her thinning patience clearly, he grinned. "After all, why would there be a vint all the way out here unless he was working with them? They'll tell me things, I'll tell you."
Though he could see the refusal on the tip of her tongue, something seemed to flit through the dwarf's mind, and she abruptly stopped, crossing her arms and tilting her head back a little, eyes slightly narrowed. "You know what? I will show you where they are. I think it might be worth my time after all."
And with that, she turned and started a rather swift pace through the woods that started not far from the clearing they'd met in.
As Dorian followed, idly wondering how someone with such short legs could move so quickly and quietly when in such heavy armor, his mind wandered back to the rebel mages. They were not going to be particularly pleased with him, especially if they assumed he'd left them to fulfill his original offer that they'd so quickly turned down.
Seeing as very few were typically pleased with his endeavors, it didn't bother him much. He'd offered to go to the Inquisition on their behalf, and Grand Enchanter Fiona had forbid him from leaving their little stronghold, as though she had any authority over him to do so.
She didn't want him to be the envoy for the rebel mages, which was fair enough. If he needed to be represented at the magisterium, he wouldn't want some unknown southern mage there on his behalf, either.
Fortunately for all parties involved, Dorian had lost interest in that idea almost as soon as he'd offered. Truly, it had been a blessing that they hadn't wanted him as their voice, rich and perfect as his was.
No, Dorian had more pressing issues, involving his countrymen and whatever fool plot was afoot. He'd been quite happily living at the bottom of a bottle in Val Royeaux when his old mentor had sent word to him that he was in Ferelden of all places and would love for Dorian to come assist him with something.
Perhaps it had been the wine, but Dorian had gone. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it hadn't been for his old friend, Gereon Alexius and his son, Felix, to be in the middle of trying to persuade the rebelling mages in the south to indenture themselves to Tevinter.
And by persuade he meant that they had the mages basically trapped in the ruins of Old Redcliffe—some little village that had been all but destroyed during the Blight, years ago—and were sort of demanding that they could either surrender to Tevinter or to the templars who had been hunting them for…
How long had the mage/templar war been going on down south?
The whole ordeal had been surreal, and he'd rather wondered if he wasn't still drunk.
Felix had gotten him to the side, though, before Dorian could greet Alexius and ask him what in Andraste's flaming ass was going on.
Madness was the answer.
Of course.
Maker forbid a Tevinter magister involve themselves with something pleasant. Have to keep that reputation tarnished without hope for redemption.
Honestly, though, it was troubling.
Especially when it became clear that something much bigger was going on. Alexius was not the leader here, but instead some Elder One, and if Dorian had learned anything during his time in Minrathous, it was to never trust a mage who gave themselves grandiose names like that.
He and Alexius had once joked about such banal things together. Now it seemed that his mentor was falling prey to the allure of power that all magisters succumbed to.
Such a pity.
While Dorian and Felix hadn't gotten the complete story, they had figured out that whatever was going on was bad, particularly for the poor rebel mages.
That's when Felix had admitted that they'd managed time magic and a few other things that had made Dorian again question his sobriety.
He would have preferred this to have been a drunken stupor he could just wake out of, yet he did not drink nearly as heavily as he would need to for his mind to come up with this.
That they were purposely trying to keep the mages from doing…something was all the prompting he needed to help enable them to do whatever it was, as he doubted it could be worse than anything going on at present.
After all, there was already a hole in the sky. What could be worse?
Therefore, it had been obvious that the only practical thing to do was to take Alexius' notes on time travel and hand it over to the mages he sought to drag into servitude. While the spell was highly unstable, the grand enchanter had managed to get it to work once—with Dorian's genius mind and the help of a stolen Tevene trinket, of course.
Even then the result hadn't been anything remotely close to what they'd been hoping for. Rather than move through time, they'd simply managed to stop it for a little while.
One couldn't truly say how long as time was no longer in motion, but the mages had taken advantage of their immeasurable moment to put some distance between themselves and the 'Venatori', as his countrymen were calling themselves.
From there it had been a bit of cat and mouse. The mages ran, the Venatori chased. There had been talk of going to the Inquisition, as rumor was that the Herald of Andraste was on their side—another mage with a rather larger than life title that didn't impress Dorian much—but that had fallen through when reports began coming in that the templars were already flocking there.
Grand Enchanter Fiona had decided that it would be wisest to find somewhere safe to stay first—somewhere out of the Venatori's and templars' reach—and then to figure out where to go from there.
That had led them, oddly enough, to Kinloch Hold.
After all, no one expected to find rebelling mages flocking to a Circle. And one with such a sordid history, at that. Dorian had only heard whispers of what had gone on there, but it was enough. Just coming near the damned place left one chilled to the soul. How they expected to stay there for any length of time and maintain their sanity was beyond him.
But they had holed themselves up and been intent on fending off the Venatori when said pursuers quite abruptly lost interest.
Which did not bode well at all.
Everyone had been expecting some sort of attack, something horrendous, with demons and blood and all that ritualistic nonsense that went into all the proper Tevinter horror stories.
However, Dorian and Felix had known better. This was not right. For the Venatori to be pulling back as they were, something had happened, something big.
The duo had managed that pesky time spell one last time to attempt to make it back to Redcliffe, so see about finding out the Venatori's plans.
It was probably for the best that the spell went awry. They barely made it across Lake Calenhad before Felix collapsed, thus ending the spell. He'd never been a strong mage, but he'd insisted that he could help—with his father, if not the actual casting and channeling casting, though he had put in some effort there, too—and Dorian hadn't been about to leave him behind to receive the chiding of a lifetime from the Grand Enchanter.
They'd absconded with that same old artifact that amplified magic and headed back. Of course the relic had cracked upon the interruption of the spell, the strain of having just one mage using it too much.
That's always how such things went, after all.
Seeing as it would be a fool's errand to attempt to use the trinket again, Dorian had left Felix in the care of a rather lovely tavern wench just outside of the hold, fretted that Fiona might get ahold of Felix after all, and had headed off on his own to be the valiant hero no one would ever believe him to be. After all, only villains came from Tevinter.
And now here he was, following a dwarf through the woods. A dwarf who seemed to be purposely leading him through every mud puddle in the entire damned forest.
He would remember this.
Quite abruptly, Bree came to a halt and held up a hand for Dorian to be quiet, as though he'd been belting out catchy tavern jingles before. He followed her with extra care, however, weaving through the underbrush and staying low.
As he came close enough to peek through the trees to see the camp she'd brought him to, his jaw dropped.
His shock was such that he barely even heard as Bree said, "Your face was definitely worth it."
Dorian's gaze swept one way and then the other, taking in the sight before him. This was not the little camp he'd been expecting.
Maker save them, the Venatori was an entire army.
And from the looks of it, they were on the march…toward the Breach.
And the Inquisition.
"I need you to deliver a message for me."
...-...
A/N: Special thanks to 0wallie0 on tumblr for beta reading for me, and thank you to everyone who reads! I know some are hoping to see more of Finley and Cullen, but I wanted to touch on what the mages are up to first, so that you didn't think I forgot them, haha.