The Daughter of Tethras
Disclaimer: Don't own Dragon Age
A/N:
Chapter 9 (Tale of a Hero)
Early morning brought the sun high in the sky and brought fresh light through the cabin window. Bianca rolled over in her bed, hoping to avoid the bright light, and hardly had time to wake up before someone pulled her out of the bed. "Come on, get up!" Shouted a familiar voice.
"Sera, let me sleep some more." She grumbled and sat up on the ground, growling at the blonde elf. Sera placed her hands to her hips and squinted at her.
"I'm bored, the only people up are the old people-you know, Solas and Blackwall. Varric too, but he's too busy writing whatever old people write about." Bianca rubbed the back of her head and sighed. "Besides, it's been what, a few days since you've done anything? Surely you're healed up now, so I was thinking maybe we could head out and have some fun."
"Define 'fun'."
"Hunting. I haven't gone hunting in a while." Bianca pulled herself to her feet and ran a finger across her eyelids, hoping to rub some of the sleep from them. "I know you're not an archer or anything, but surely there's something you can hunt out there."
"I don't know." The Hinterlands wasn't very far from Haven, but in truth, none of the locations were all that far. The Storm Coast was about half a day's journey, then there was the town of Crestwood; a few hours off. The Hinterlands, however, was about an hour out and had some prime animals to hunt.
The only issue was that disappearing without warning might upset some people. Everyone was on edge after the attack at Storm Coast. "Well, the armor Harritt made is good," Bianca replied softly, "But it's too heavy for me to chase after rams and stuff."
"But I'm so bored."
"Right." She raised an eyebrow and walked over to the window, gazing out at the snow covered hills. "So is anyone else awake besides the…'old people'?"
Sera's nose wrinkled and she started to tap her chin. "Um. No. Bull's sleeping in his tent, Cassandra's asleep in her cabin." Yet the girl decided to wake her up; she wanted to be shocked by this. "I think Vivienne is awake, but she's weird, and she doesn't seem interested in doing anything."
"What are Solas and Blackwall doing, then?"
"Blackwall's carving wood, and Solas is talking to Adan about healing mixtures." Sera hopped onto the bed and crossed her legs. "Sir grumpy-pants is too busy going over every little detail on all his war reports."
"Who?"
"Cully or whatever. The guy seriously needs someone to loosen him up." Sera bent her arms over her knees and swayed from side to side. "It's so early that even Josephine is sleeping. I think Leliana's awake, or at least she sleeps with one eye open and everything. Feels like she's watching me all the time."
"If you're that bored, I'll go hunting with you." It did sound like fun, despite the fact that she couldn't hunt worth a damn. "It might be nice to spend some time just relaxing and not stressing out over everything."
"Yeah, I heard about what happened at that coast." Sera leaned forward, pushing her hands back along the bed sheets. Her nose scrunched and her lips fell to a frown. Bianca tensed and dropped her gaze to the floor. "Bad shit, that mess. I hope you're doing okay now, you haven't really talked about it much."
Sera hopped off the bed and walked over. "We don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna. Let's just have some fun, forget all that crap." She raised her eyes up to Sera and a faint smile spread over her face.
"Yeah, that sounds good actually." She didn't mind having a day without worrying about anything in particular. "The Hinterlands are cleared of rebel mages and rogue Templars, so it should be alright to go there."
"Yes!" Sera cheered, then instantly stopped to clear her throat. "I mean, that's great, yep, let's go."
"We probably should inform someone we're headed out."
"Aw, why? They won't miss us."
"Still, I've learned it's better to be safe than sorry." Even before the whole ordeal with Lantos and the crap her clan put her through in the past, she always learned it was better to let people know where she was in case something went wrong.
When she was a child, she would always run off on her own, mostly to get away from the Cadash family, and there were a few times that she got stuck somewhere and would have liked to have someone to have gone looking for her.
"You ever get lost somewhere and wish someone would have gone looking for you?" She walked outside with Sera, trying to think back to some of the times she would run off by herself.
"Not really. I mean, maybe sure."
"Okay, I've got a great story for you then. Let's tell Varric or Solas where we're headed and I'll tell you on the way." Sera groaned and then shrugged when she realized there wasn't any way she was talking her way out of this.
Varric was okay with them heading out so long as they got back before it was too late. Solas was nearby and as they were leaving, she heard him tell Varric that he would follow them just in case anything happened.
She was a little perturbed by Solas's decision, but as she thought on it, she was fine with it as long as he didn't make himself noticeable.
When they reached the Hinterlands, Sera was urging her to tell the story she promised. "Okay. I was ten at the time, right?" The memory that came to mind was one she didn't like to think about too much, but she enjoyed the outcome.
"Well my family was traveling to Orzammar and Amelia-that's my adoptive mother-was in a really bad mood, so I didn't want to be around them." Sera's brow furrowed and she tilted her head to the right.
"Uh huh?"
"Okay, so I heard about the deep roads before. I didn't know much about them, and the entrance was guarded, but I wanted to go inside…so I snuck past the guards when they weren't looking." Sera's eyes grew and her hands moved up over her mouth.
"Oh god, isn't that where all the darkspawn things are?"
"Yep." She didn't know how she managed to get as far as she did without tipping off any of the darkspawn or spiders that roamed the cave, but she lasted for some time. "I did run across this kind of crazy oddball guy, can't remember his name."
Sera pulled her bow from her back and grabbed an arrow. They crouched behind a rock and watched two rams grazing nearby. Sera looked at Bianca, still eager to listen. "What happened with the crazy?"
"Nothing really. I was lost when I ran into him, so he took me to his cave so that I wouldn't be hurt, saying that I was just a little girl and shouldn't be wandering the deep roads by myself."
"He might have had a point."
"Yes, well, this group of soldiers came by and I wanted to know what they were up to, so I followed them." The group of soldiers belonged to the Legion of the Dead. She managed to stay far enough that they didn't realize her presence, but close enough to not lose them.
They went almost all the way to Caradin's Cross, but she lost them at the bridge and started into a series of tunnels.
"There was this one group of darkspawn I passed after I got lost and separated from the soldiers. They didn't see me." She cringed with disgust upon recalling what the darkspawn had been doing at the time. She knew all about Paragon Branka's lost crew, and many of the women had been defiled by the creatures.
She ran across possibly the last one woman left. It was a sight that no child her age should have seen, she knew that now, but back then she had no idea what to make of it.
"How on earth did you manage to get so far into the deep roads without getting noticed? How did you even get out?"
"I'm getting to that." The darkspawn would have killed her. It was only a miracle she wasn't noticed, but then, most of her journeying into the deep roads was while she'd been following soldiers that were plowing through the darkspawn.
"Now, most of the way into this, I was just following various groups that were killing darkspawn. That's how I wasn't noticed. The deeper I got, the less people there were…once I lost the Legion soldiers, that was it. I was on my own, no one was looking for me."
"You must have been down there for days."
"I was." To get as far as she had gone was hellish. She'd taken small bits of food from the soldiers she followed-but never more than a small amount. By the end of her journey she was tired, hungry, and fearful of her life.
"I ran into this weird ghoulish lady at one point, she kept reciting this god awful poem or whatever it was." She didn't remember much of the words now, only that she hated it to the point she would start crying her eyes out. "Finally, the darkspawn saw me wandering about."
Sera gasped aloud and dropped her bow to the ground. "How did you escape?"
"For the first time in my life, I got lucky."
As she told the story, the scene played out in her mind.
The darkspawn were approaching, there were about four or five. Bianca was small for her age, and already weary from hunger and exhaustion. Her cheeks were swollen and red from the tears she cried over being lost for so long.
As she backed up, she was sure no one would ever know what happened to her. No one would care, certainly Amelia and Marcus Cadash were long gone from Orzammar by now.
"Leave me alone," she screamed at the drooling, ghastly creatures. Her legs trembled and all she could do was think about what she saw the darkspawn doing to the woman in one of the other caverns.
One of the creatures raised her blade and she turned to run, screaming at the top of her lungs as though someone would hear her. Her scream echoed off the walls, speaking to an empty chamber.
The creatures chased after her, laughing and snarling every few seconds. She looked over her shoulder, whimpering as the darkspawn grew closer. Then something stuck her foot, causing her to trip and fall onto her back.
The darkspawn were upon her, so as a last act she pulled her arms in front of her face, bracing herself for a strike.
The strike never came. Instead, she heard a shuffling sound and a grunt, followed by a groggy voice. "Over here! Hurry up!" Her trembling lips separated and her eyes grew large as she pulled her arms away.
Standing before her was a dwarf clad in heavy, red armor. He had a red buzz-cut hairdo and a long braided moustache. His hands grasped a long axe that he used to slash at the creatures.
"Guys come on," the man growled, "There's a small kid over here. We need to get her out."
"A child?" She turned her head in time to see a petite woman with chin-length red hair and milky skin running towards the dwarf. The woman had bright blue eyes, milky white skin and two long daggers in her hands. "Oh my god, how did a child manage to get in here? David, hurry up."
The woman sheathed her daggers and scooped Bianca up in her arms as the burly dwarf slashed through a second darkspawn.
Two other creatures were coming up from behind the woman, but they exploded into sudden flames. When she looked over, she saw the source of the fire was a raven-haired woman clad in a scanty outfit.
"It's okay little one," the red haired woman whispered. "We're going to get you out of here sweetie. Don't you worry."
Then she saw him, a powerful man with a strong noble presence. He had heavy, golden armor, long brown hair and a short beard. In his right hand he wielded a long, stunning sword that captivated her.
"When you said child," the man huffed, "I thought you were kidding." The man, likely the one called 'David' lunged forward and slashed his blade through the neck of the last remaining darkspawn. "Then again, after seeing your crazed wife, a giant immortal golem, a nearly dead woman reciting a poem about darkspawn defiling innocent women, and a large multiple breasted creature with god knows how many tentacles...nothing about this place surprises me."
The red haired woman set her down and Bianca smiled weakly as the dwarf nearby walked over. He reached into his pack and removed a loaf of bread. "Hey, you hungry, kid?" Drool fell from her lips and her stomach growled when she saw the bread.
"I-I'm with the Cadash house. I ran away from Amelia and Marcus. I snuck into the deep roads and followed soldiers, then I got lost."
The red-headed woman swooped over her, gasping in shock. "Oh you poor thing." The raven haired mage approached them carefully, studying her closely.
"Cadash?" The mage's eyebrow rose and her hand ran over her chin. "Caradin was just talking about the golem of our own. Didn't he say she was a Cadash from years before?"
"Maybe." The dwarf picked her up and set her on his shoulder. "Who cares? Let's get her out of these caves. It's a damn good thing we came along when we did."
"Yes. It is fortunate we were able to be here. No doubt she would not have lasted much longer on her own."
Bianca ended her tale with the return to Orzammar. By some miracle, Amelia and Marcus had not yet left; they only stayed to witness the crowning of the next king. They hardly even noticed Bianca had gone missing-or if they did notice, they never said anything about it to her or her rescuers.
Sera's gaze was frozen onto Bianca, her face bore a mixture of emotions ranging from shock to horror. "Did you ever learn who those people were that saved you? I mean shit, you really got lucky."
"No, I never learned who they were. The one woman that held onto me while the others fought off the darkspawn? She's familiar to me, but it was so long ago and that memory is a distant one…I wish I could find them and thank them, but that's something I doubt I will ever get an opportunity to do."
"You sound like you were in awe of that one guy with the big sword."
"Oh I was. I think he was a warden, but I'm not sure really. He and the dwarf, I enjoyed meeting them. Well, all of them really." She chuckled once and ran her hand across her neck. "I just wish I knew why that one girl seems so familiar now."
"Maybe you've seen her after that. Who can say, really? I'll bet there are some people really happy you didn't die in those caves."
"Really?" She let out a dry chuckle and watched Sera aim her bow and arrow at one of the nearby rams. "I can't think of anyone that would have been happy about it."
"Well…" Sera's posture relaxed and she lowered the bow slightly while turning to glance at Bianca. "At the very least you're here to fix that hole in the sky and negotiate an end to the war that's going on. Right? So a bunch of people happy right there."
"If you say so." Had she died in the deep roads, she always wondered who would have mourned her. It seemed appropriate, feeling like she would have died alone in a place where nobody would have heard her scream.
Now thinking back on it, her survival must have been for some reason-or some would suggest it. Rescued by a hero with greatness cast on them, only to become a hero herself? She didn't feel heroic, she didn't feel important with this mark on her hand.
"The grey warden that ended the blight ten years ago, it's said he and one other survived chaos. Swarmed by darkspawn that slaughtered everyone else because of one man's treachery."
"Plucked out of the darkspawn horde by a dragon," Sera remarked while shooting the arrow off at the ram. "I know that part of the story. The Hero of Ferelden, saved from the darkspawn and carried away by a dragon."
"Right." She crossed her arms and laughed. "And I'm supposedly the 'Herald of Andraste', I'm guessing I was 'plucked' away from darkspawn by-" Just then a loud flapping sound broke her focus. They turned to see a few ravens flying overhead, their wings flapping loudly in the air.
She squinted her eyes and Sera looked around. "A raven? Ravens…is Leliana around here somewhere?"
"Wouldn't surprise me." Sera hopped onto the rock and pointed at a bear in the distance. "Look, a bear! There's something you can get with your sword."
"Come again?" A bear was nothing to take lightly. They fought for dominance and could take one hell of a beating. "Sera, I don't think attacking a bear is a good-" Just then Sera fired her arrow off. Bianca's heart stopped as the bear let out a vicious roar. "Are you kidding me?"
Sera laughed and hopped off the rock. "You survived Darkspawn, you survived Lantos, I'm sure we can survive a bear." Bianca growled as the bear began rushing towards them.
"That's different! Those are all different levels of danger. I didn't survive darkspawn, I was rescued from them."
"Oh relax, I've done this a million times." Sera took aim, closing one eye and pushing her tongue out between her lips. Bianca braced herself to strike the bear, watching and listening as Sera's bow made a twanging sound.
The arrow plunged into the bear's right eye, causing the animal to fall back and roar in pain. "Now, Bianca. Get it!"
"Darkspawn, my adoptive mother, Lantos and the Carta…" Bianca smirked and ran for the bear, raising her blade. This girl was crazy, but fun nonetheless. "Now we're killing a bear after they tell us not to do anything that would be dangerous."
"Does a bear qualify as a danger?"
"Maybe." Just as the bear turned towards her, she swung the blade in a powerful arc, shouting as it cut into and through the creature's neck. "We are so dead when we get back to Haven."
Ah Sera, so much fun. Well, what are your thoughts on everything, and on the short tale? It's probably clear who that group was, and you got to wonder if Leliana might have followed them.