Chantal Amell looked at her pale, long fingers. Calloused from her staff, nails broken and dirty, covered in scabs and scrapes from crawling through the deep roads. These, she thought helplessly, were the hands of a dead woman. Her face, caught in shimmering reflections of King Bhelen's palace, was the face of a ghost. Gaunt, hair lank and matted.
They found the anvil, they destroyed it, they crowned a king, but still she was dying. And when the taint finally turned her blood black and drove her mad, she'd be sent to die in the darkness. Or worse, become a mother to monsters that she fed from her own distorted, nightmarish flesh.
Alistair stared back at her just as grimly as she stared at him before he finally reached out and took her hands gently in his much larger ones. "Talk to me." He pleaded earnestly.
She didn't want to talk, she just wanted to see the sky above her again. She wanted to live, Maker she wanted to live. She never wanted to descend into the darkness again, she didn't want to fall into the hellish abyss.
"Don't let them send me in there again." Her voice warbled, bordered on the edge of a crazed sob. "I don't want to be a monster, please Ali…"
"We won't go." He said quietly, pulling her to his chest. "We won't go, Chantal, I promise."
"I don't want to die." She cracked, the tears spilling salty down Alistair's broad chest.
"Everyone is dying, Chantal. We're just… winning the race." He finished lamely, squeezing her tight. "It'll be alright. I'm with you."
Wynne said dying felt like slipping into a hot bath. But then, she'd been rescued. Shale wasn't sure if what she'd done was actually dying, and if it was, she couldn't remember either way. Leliana claimed they'd walk with the Maker when they died.
If that was true, Chantal had some choice words for the Maker when she met him. She had a whole list of things in this world that needed his attention, and what kind of God was he to ignore the world he had created?
"Why worry about death, my sweet Warden?" Zevran purred in his rich velvet voice. "You are still so very much alive, yes?"
She didn't feel alive. She thought she'd already died in the Deep Roads with Oghren's wife, with the anvil, with all her hopes and dreams. She had no past, it was fitting she have no future as well. She felt like an empty vase, moonlight shining through her translucent skin.
A corpse from a grave.
She didn't feel alive again until…
"Did you hear that?" Alistair whispered. Chantal rubbed her splitting head. She could hear the Archdemon's roar reverberating down her spine still, as if calling her deep to the center of Thedas, beckoning her to die gruesomely among the horde.
"Hear what?" She asked stupidly, grunting with the effort to even force the words out of her mouth.
She never saw the Darkspawn coming. If not for Leliana, she would have died right where she sat on her bedroll. As it was, the arrow piercing the creature caused it to topple nearly on top of her and she barely rolled to avoid it.
Then sparks flew from her fingertips in cold fury, and she joined the fray with staff in hand, raining lightning down on the creatures.
The Archdemon thought her too weak to withstand the storm, but for a fleeting moment Chantal fought the urge to giggle madly. The darkspawn didn't know, as the wind lashed her hair from her face, that she was no mere girl. She was a storm with lightning in her blood and thunder in her bones. And when she shouted and brought her staff down into the earth, the flare from her electricity lit the whole camp as if it were noon. And it was nearly enough to make her forget that she was a dead woman walking as the lightning arched wildly from target to target.
Alistair looked at her in awe as the last of the darkspawn dropped. "That, that is why you're in charge. Maker's breath." He whistled low in his throat, admiring the carnage surrounding her.
"I've either pissed myself or made another kind of mess in my pants." Oghren grunted, sweeping his eyes across her. Wynne tutted in abject disapproval, shooting him a fierce scolding glare.
"Is everyone alright?" Chantal asked, stepping away from the last smoking corpse.
A ripple of affirmations soared across the camp, from Bodhan to Sten, but one distinct voice was missing, and it made her heart clench with icy fear as she spun around.
He was uncharacteristically silent, his face darkly handsome and ravenous as he stared at her. She'd never seen such naked hunger on a man's face before, never bore the weight of it all alone. Nobody else seemed to have noticed, they were all taking stock of damages and repairs, but Zevran didn't move. One of his daggers dripped darkspawn blood in a steady stream and his eyes burned.
Her body remembered it was alive with a mad rush. Blood flushed to every inch of her pale skin, pooled in places she didn't have words for. "Z...Zev?" She asked cautiously, his name a breathy whisper that seemed to inflame the desire there more than extinguish it.
"You are a breathtaking." He said softly. "Perhaps the most exquisite creature that has ever walked this world, my dear warden. My Chantal."
Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to hear him say her name again. She wanted him to whisper it in her ear, moan it with wild abandon, pant it over and over again as he trailed his deft hands over her skin.
"Oh! Am I interrupting?" Leliana asked sweetly at Chantal's elbow. "Wynne wants to give you a much less pleasant once over to make sure you didn't hurt yourself."
The moment should have broken, but even as she turned, Zevran stared after her with longing written on every inch of his body.
In the morning, she hooked her arm with Leliana and tipped her head closer to the redhead's. Leliana leaned in, a conspiratorial smirk on her clever lips. "If I wanted to seduce someone…" She began.
Leliana giggled. "You have already seduced him, trust me. A man does not look like that at a woman he has not pictured in several naughty situations."
Chantal blushed to the very roots of her hair but didn't look over her shoulder. "I don't know what to do." She admitted furiously. "Help me."
Leliana's smile turned sweet, sisterly. "There is no rush. If you are not ready..."
"I want him." Chantal gritted between her teeth. She didn't know what she wanted, exactly, but her body was fairly certain that if she took his clothes off she'd figure it out. She knew the mechanics, anyway, and…
"Very well." Leliana sighed theatrically and cozied up closer to her side. "Now, all you must do is give him an opportunity. He is very skilled, he will know what to do."
"How do you know?" Chantal tried to keep the jealous edge out of her voice. Leliana giggled even louder.
"You are darling!" Leliana cooed, kissing her cheekbone. "No, I have no personal experience. But I can tell these things. He will be the best first you could possibly hope to have."
Perhaps, Chantal thought glumly, he would be her last. Still, she blushed as she thought of that feral hunger underneath his skin. She might not mind that much if he was her only. She bit her lip and looked up at Leliana through her eyelashes. "You'll help me?"
"Of course I will!" Leliana declared. "I shall take it as my sacred duty."
Chantal giggled as well, then giggled even louder as Alistair began to complain from behind them. "What are they going on about? It's making me nervous."
"I hope it is something naughty, yes?" Zevran claimed brightly. "And I hope they ask me to join in."
Chantal Amell was dying, but she wasn't dead yet.
AN: SMUT is incoming! Next chapter will most likely be very NSFW.