Author's note:

Disclaimer: Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2 and Dragon Age: Inquisition and all related characters and trademarks are property of EA/Bioware. Rated M for language, violence, suggestive, and explicit themes.

I want to thank Guest, Serithus, lupusadaquilonem, and Theodur for reviewing the last chapter, as well as all you others out there reading and, hopefully, enjoying my story.

Sorry. Just sorry. I'm not dead. Neither is this story.

Enjoy.

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In An Age Full Of Heroes

Chapter XX

The Incremental Moving Of Pieces

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'What do you mean?'

Rain thrummed against the flapping canvas of the comely tavern tent, creating a sound close to a score of bats zigzagging through the night on quick wing-beats. Rows of benches stood arrayed around tables or surrogates thereof. Lanterns cast the interior into isles of warm light, the gloom in between like dark oceans separating vast continental swaths of different peoples.

A few patrons milled about, quietly sipping on tankards of stale ale or nibbling on blocks of clammy cheese and hard bread. Others traded stories, tales, and rumours, all which came to mind which they had heard, if only to take them away from the present for a night. Faked laughter ebbed up and down the row of wooden benches, like the coming and going of an undecided breeze, drifting here and there. The display of bravado, which none of the men and women here truly felt sent jolts of discomfort through Anethayín's slim frame.

The heavy-lidded woman opposite her, mulled over how to answer her question, biting her full lips. Anethayín never quite managed to tear her gaze off those lips, especially when the self-proclaimed merchantwoman from Denerim began to speak in her melodious voice. She'd make a great troubadour with that voice, Anethayín was sure of that much.

Lim, for by that unusual name the woman had introduced herself, said, 'Is it not obvious?'

'You spoke about a sure defeat.' Dangerous words right now. 'How is this obvious?' Anethayín cast a glance around at the huddled figures. 'I see a people worn and battered. But already defeated, broken? This I don't see.'

Lim shrugged, a remnant merchant nonchalance in the dismissiveness of the gesture, even though all her wares and equipment had been taken by the civil war. 'They cling on in desperation, to hope. But all of them know, deep down. Everybody always says that war needs coin, coin, and even more coin. That might be true on the surface. But look deeper and you see that most of the coin is spent on food for the people, on oxen, horses, and mules to carry all that food on a prolonged march. And then all those oxen, horses, and mules need food as well.'

Lim gestured, as if everything explained itself. 'This army has no coin to speak of. Even if it had, there are no suppliers to be found which would trade with them in fear of the crown's punishment, much less a single supplier who could even supply an army of this size. The provisions this army has are dwindling by the day, soon into nonexistence. And that's when the realisation will finally hit home.'

'When doubt turns into fear.' She mimicked a frightened voice, another one of her talent's. 'We're all going to starve to death! Those who don't, will fall under the King's Blade's steel, begging for sweet relief soon enough.'

'If you say so.' Anethayín buried her face in the tankard, gulped down the puddle of stale ale still inside. She'd spoke with many of the followers of this ill-fated human congregation during the last few days, aimlessly wandering and exploring the camp, always trying to stay far away from the quarantined pockets of sickness currently beleaguering the host. The butcher's son, red-rimmed nose and freckled skin, still a boy, playing in the mud with his friends. The stories his father and mother had told him during bedtime of the noble Cousland family and their shining example of a son, Araris.

'ave you 'eard of 'im? he asked, then immediately blabbed on, I sees 'im at the great fire. I bes like 'im one day.

The handsome youth, strength still growing in his lean-muscled limbs, a Waking Sea soldier, a glow in his eyes when he talked about Bann Alfstanna, his liege, or Fergus Cousland who led the gathered armed forces of the north to Ostagar. That his good nature hadn't been eradicated by the events at Ostagar spoke to an oily spot deep inside Anethayín, nearly lit it by throwing a burning match of passion into it. They'd smoked the night away with a number of Anethayín's spindleweed twigs, splayed on their sleeping mats, heads together as they stared up at the passage of stars and time. At the approach of dawn and steel.

Anethayín did not believe in Lim's view of how things stood, and how they'd turn out, as she claimed. Should've become a soothsayer or better yet a doomsayer. With her enthralling voice she'd surely make a living out of it somehow.

With broken fingernails, Lim scratched something into the wooden table. Or maybe she tried to excavate something hidden. Lost hope, maybe? Could be she just hid her fear behind a front of cutting pessimism, or unpleasant truth as she'd undoubtedly call it. Still scratching, the woman looked up, her tone matter-of-fact, and spoke, 'You don't believe me, do you?'

'What gave it away?'

A sneer broke through the haughty merchant façade, bringing uncalled for delight to Anethayín, which she quenched with an inner smile.

'And I thought you more capable of understanding our predicament than all these other simpletons. Seems you are just another knife-ear, knowing nothing of the world.'

Anethayín rode the insult out, like hundreds of times before. Spied the insurrectional twine knotted into the insult. And everything else Lim said. Thankfully, one couldn't stumble on familiar territory. 'Seems so.'

Lim huffed, got up, eased the wrinkles out of her clothes. 'Fine, then. Rot with the rest of them as corpses. You'll see.' She practically marched off.

'Good night to you too, then,' murmured Anethayín, checking once again the contents of her tankard. With a girlish pout she accredited the absence of liquid courage.

Letting loose a world-weary sigh unbefitting of her age, the elven minstrel pushed off the table and made to follow the Denerim merchantwoman turned refugee. Drawing up her hood, lighting a spindleweed twig at one of the lanterns, Anethayín set off and out into the downpour.

Then it hit her.

Ah, fuck.

Rain.

Not a nice time to play spy.

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Names have power.

Grant power.

If you can name things then you possess an inherent power over them. They could not hide in anonymity. They must face your penetrating gaze and answer the call.

And this particular name bounced back off the palatial caverns of his mind in an endless reiterative loop. Haunted him like a ghost through long corridors, trailed by a gown of spectral whispers. Darted after him as screams, cutting through the idle quiet holding court above the terracotta roofs, screams which shook the foundations to the very core. Rattling at beams, rattling at normality, rattling at sanity.

With every screeching loop came possibilities, outcomes, opportunities, ramifications, costs to be paid, and a multi-faceted myriad of more variables, growing a huge tree of paths, would-ifs, could-ifs, should-ifs that would take a lifetime to map out for the average minded. Thousands of coiled thoughts folded upon themselves, metamorphosed into pathways.

Leaning his head back against the rim of the bathtub, inhaling the rose-perfumed scent of the water with a sudden fit of laughable hysteria, Araris embraced the limitless iterations and permutations of that name.

Elissa. A frightened girl in need of her brother.

Elissa. An emotionless girl plotting to burn her own country.

Elissa. A dead girl, a corpse in a ditch somewhere, forgotten.

Araris let them take root; grow branches and leaves, likely and unlikely futures and pasts which could someday become the present of his little sister.

Orlais. The famed University where the grandest minds teach all sorts of theoretical and practical disciplines to the few who are accepted as worthy, most by blood, few by intellect. It spoke tomes that the Orlesians had not only offered a place but extended an invitation to an outlander girl of about a decade old, more or less, Araris did not know exactly. He too had been offered a spot in the University of Orlais, though apparently a few years later than his little sister. His father had once told him of the opportunity as he read aloud one of the missives exchanged with Empress Celene. Maybe it was just that letter which Howe found and used as so-called irrefutable evidence of his family's treachery. But then again, in the end, it mattered not. Neither the invitation to join the University, for soon after his abilities first started to manifest. Nor what Howe used in the end to convince a man as rigid as Loghain to sign off on the cold-blooded slaughter of his family. In the end, all of them would pay for their crimes, when he carved out their hearts and the hearts of their sons and daughters and served them to the pigs. No grand gesture needed.

He'd already had the current permutations, actions, and possibilities clamped down on, the shortest path set, the pieces on the board moved in position. Only to find out that there existed another, previously unseen layer to the board and the rules changed irrefutably.

But the shortest path couldn't be avoided or deterred any longer, not for a girl, not even for his sister. The long-term consequences in the aftermath of all this slowly took on a new shape, would form a clearer picture in the days to come, until they possessed a crystalline glint around every contour and edge, the gleam of an unconditional outcome that brokered no steering off course. Besides, leaving either Howe or Loghain alive posed as much a danger to him, as it posed to Elissa.

Footsteps, so silent, so perfectly calculated that only his subtly weaved sorcerous wards alarmed him to the presence. Not from the front of the tent, where the entrance's cloth flaps were rolled shut to allow for some privacy, but from some walled-off compartment at the back. Araris remained silent, eyes closed, for all outwards appearances enjoying his bath perfumed with rose and jasmine.

Drawing a sliver of his power, his senses sharpened to a predatory animalistic perception. The exited heartbeat like a drum, the nimble surety of foot, the smell of lightly rancid breath, the wheezing intake of air, deep down in the lungs. She even managed to silently ease herself onto the stool on the far-end of the tent, just a few paces removed from the tip of the wooden tub.

Eyes closed, Araris murmured, as if deeply relaxed by the warm water's effect on his tensed muscles, 'It appears to me that the Captain Bars lied blatantly to my face.'

Short gulp, a missed heartbeat, sudden sweat lingered in the air, hesitation. The woman remained silent, probably too confused.

Araris opened his eyes, regarded her steadily. Her face flushed, from exhaustion and something else, pupils dilated, lids hanging heavy, accomplishing with the kohl smeared around her large eyes a sultry look. Like that unfocused and willing look so many whores adopted to lure customers. 'He assured me of the unblemished perfection of the state of my tent's entrance. Yet, here you are, obviously preferring to enter through the back. Tell me, why is that, Anethayín?'

The elven minstrel, soaked from the downpour outside, leaned back and folded her arms, frowning at him. 'How did you hear me?'

Araris let his head fall back again, peering at the ceiling. 'I did not hear you, Anethayín. But I smelled you. You smell like a brewery inside of which a tobacco plantation has been burned down.'

She chortled a laugh, coughed there at the end, doubled over. Once recovered, Anethayín sat back up straight, lit another twig and said through the smoke, 'Fuck you.'

'That wouldn't achieve anything, I'm afraid.'

Deep intake of air, sucking the smoke to nestle in the twin caverns, then merciful relief. Curlicues of smoke drifted like clouds to the ceiling, the distinct odour of spindleweed filling the tent.

'Oh, it would achieve something, all right,' Anethayín said, speech slurred by the drug.

When Araris next looked at her between the heels of his feet, propped up on the rim of the bathtub, Anethayín had snatched his towel and rubbed her drenched hair dry. Araris rolled his eyes, smiling lightly.

Towel draped over her neck like a shawl, the she-elf stared at him, smoke rising in veils between them. Her dark eyes wandered, regardless of modicum.

'Do I have something on my face?' asked Araris, a bit more ill-tempered than intended.

She didn't seem to notice. Anethayín spoke, silent, as if alone. 'All those scars. By the Dread Wolf. I sometimes forget . . .'

'Forget what?'

His voice startled her. 'Uh, nothing.' She cocked her head, long hair splaying down with the tilt. The cheekiness returned suddenly, like a mask put on. With a smile, she slurred, deliberately this time, 'How about I join you? Tell you all about my recent adventures.'

'Just hand me the towel, Anethayín.' Her smile brightened.

'Shy? Are we, Your All-Outshining Star-Like Radiance Araris of House Cousland, first of his name, prince of broken hearts and many tears shed?'

'Just. Give me. The towel.'

Anethayín stood, extravagantly slow, and sauntered over to him, beaming with mirth. 'There you go again, squashing the hopes of another damsel. Another heart broken. I only wanted to smell nice.' Her smile grew even larger. 'But I guess it's alright if you do. At least one of us smells like a woman.'

She held out the towel, just in reach. Araris snatched it out of her hands with a growl. Climbed out of the tub and wrapped the thick piece of absorbent cloth around his hips, all the while watching Anethayín's eyes as she watched him, unashamed.

Despite himself, he couldn't stay mad. When he snorted a laugh, she grinned back up at him at the sound.

'So why are you here?'

'Other than to ogle you and gather some material for adult stories for all the lonely women of your host? Oh, just came to tell you that your spymistress did as you asked of her and found a rather angrily acting spy. Followed her to her tent, searched her belongings, and pocketed some of the shinier ones, then left to report back to you.' She drew on her twig, added, 'Your Lordship.'

Araris bared his teeth like a wolf would his fangs. More implications, more branches upon the branch which had already matured in his mind.

'Excellent. Find out as much about her as you can. Maybe you'll even find some of the others. If so, memorise them. I want to let some of our plans be moved through them to Cauthrien.'

'Figured you already had a plan.'

Araris nodded. 'You've a few days before it comes to that, though.'

'Alright.' She shrugged her slim shoulders. 'I'll see what I can do.'

'Very well. I'll tell you what to let slip anyway. But, before that. Want to hop in now?' Araris tilted his head at the tub.

Eager smile, white teeth showing. 'Sure.' Her cloak was already thrown over the stool she had occupied before.

'I'm going to brew you an herbal infusion.' Araris made for the back of the tent, was stopped by her retort.

'Not going to join me?' She actually sounded disappointed.

'I want you to sober up, Anethayín. Not fuck you 'til the sun is up.'

More garments being shed off in a rustle of cloth. 'Your choice. Want to wash and braid my hair, maybe?'

The absurdity finally got to him, made him laugh.

The guards outside must think him insane.

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The night belonged only to some creatures. Its calm blanket of stillness, the hush of nothing human rushing about in fruitless labour. A silence broken only by those whom the night called companions. Those who called the night home. Who breathed and begat shadow, who felt its soothing touch like an unabashed display of intimacy.

Lim, despite being a spy of the crown, didn't much love night time. Her covers mostly called her to adapt to human interaction, the bustle of marketplaces filled with shouting and haggling over prices, and the occasional appearance of local guardsmen intervening in the name of order and law. Creeping around like a rat, with an insufferable tension between her shoulders that gave her constant headaches, she found herself unsuitable for. This act she played, being out after curfew with no good reason to wander the rebel encampment, drove jitters into her limbs which didn't stem from the falling temperatures outside.

Every owl observing her passage from afar with black eyes reflecting moonlight, every squirrel climbing up dark trees to have a go at their scored nuts in piece, every bat zig-zagging across the sky made her jump.

And while Lim believed in what she did, in the righteousness of her actions, of her cause, she couldn't await the day, the mere moment when all this had passed behind her. Onto the lane of the past, etched with the corpses of those who surrounded her.

As a woman walking down a street alone at night, no matter the city, town or backwater village was a terrifying experience. Her profession, in her current circumstances, doubled, tripled, quadrupled the fear.

Having no one to talk to didn't much help either. All in the interest of keeping the entirety of the crown's spy-ring installed in the rebel camp alive. Compartmentalisation at its finest. If one of them—for there were more spies besides her, of that Lim was sure—got caught, the rest of them hadn't to abandon their efforts.

Some fireplaces were still crowded, mostly by guards, cycling through their patrol routes, hoping to catch some warmth before walking the camp. Lim kept away from them as far as possible, traversing the labyrinth of fires and gloomy tents. She'd have to dispatch a raven soon. So much to inform the King's Blade of. The death of the magi, the return of a Cousland, a man who brought this entire mottled band calling themselves a host to heel in a few days. Not a good trade in her opinion. She'd have to do it tonight.

This message must reach the crown's forces without delay.

Cloth brushing, a whisper in the air. Lim froze, petrified with terror. Quickly she dashed in between a row of tents, crouching.

Up ahead, a tall figure, stepped outside, obscured by a heavy cloak, hood drawn up. Head turning left and right with hawk-like precision, then turned, and marched away, footsteps completely inaudible. A creature of the night.

Lim crouched between the tents until her muscles hurt with exhaustion. She didn't even possess the strength to get up anymore, she just slumped onto the ground, trying to stabilise her breathing after forcing it to be at for so long.

Whilst she couldn't identify the figure, Lim knew whom the tent belonged to.

Bann Ackley.

All she'd to exhibit now was patience, watching the bann and what events would surround him in the days to come.

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