"Like Carrion Men"

This seems not to know what tense it ought to be written in. I couldn't pick one and stay with it, so - lucky you - you get both.


6.

It was warm, the dark. It stank of carrion, old bones, the choking putrescent dust of tombs. And of darkspawn, a sick, acid wrongness that caught in Leliana's throat like bile.

Many are those who wander in sin, despairing that they are lost forever - She had been praying since their second night down here, singing the Chant of Light inside her head to still the beating terror of her thoughts. It helped, but not enough. Not when Aud's determined silence grew grimmer with every hour.

But the one who repents, who has faith unshaken by the darkness of the world, and boasts not -

Her quiver lay against her thigh. Her sword pressed the leather scale of her armour into her spine, its weight matched by her unstrung bow. Her left hand hurt from gripping her dagger like a talisman.

- nor gloats over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight in the Maker's law and creations -

Aud's turn on point, Oghren's at the rear - the dwarves traded off, keeping the two human women between the shield of their bodies. It put Morrigan behind Leliana's shoulder, the witch muttering to herself, tiny sparks of lightning dancing absently between her fingers.

(Morrigan had protested their marching order. Once. Aud had said, One hundred and twenty yards - give or take - ahead, the tunnel branches. One branch will swiftly grow too narrow to turn around in. One leads to an open cavern. And one will cave in on our heads if we so much as breathe wrong while we're in it. If you have stone-sense enough to tell one from the other, by all means, take a turn in front.)

- she shall know the peace of the Maker's benediction.

Aud strode two paces ahead, a dim figure in the lichen-light from the rock walls. (Light attracts attention, she'd said, when Leliana'd voiced discomfort at the permanent gloom. No light unless we're fighting, or unless you can't see at all. It had been the most words she'd spoken all that day.)

Leliana wanted - blessed Andraste, she wanted so very badly - to reach out and take the Warden's hand. On the surface, with the sun on her back or the moon making a play of shadows in the clouds, she would've done so without hesitation, and they would both have pretended it was only Leliana who craved the reassurance of touch. (Not more. Of course not. Well, maybe just a little more. The dwarf was striking indeed - not beautiful, but ah, such charisma! In her former life, Leliana would've seduced her in all joy: the buried heat in Aud's gold-dark eyes was poorly hidden, from one who knew how to look.)

The Light shall lead her safely through the paths of this world, and into the next -

But in this dark hole Aud had retreated, day by day. Walled herself up behind a mask of silences and shadows and a grimness so cold Leliana found herself afraid to probe beneath the ice, because Aud Aeducan was dwarven, and dwarves did not fear the dark.

They threw her down here to die, Leliana, she reminded herself. Her family. Her father. Even courteous Lord Harrowmont, stiff with his honour and his pride. And maybe finding the Grey Wardens here was perhaps not so simple as she made it sound, no? Maybe it was a closer thing than she will admit, here in the dark.

Morrigan had said it, in one of their rare conversations. 'Tis hardly a pleasure jaunt for any of us, but for our fearless leader? I, for one, would hardly care to revisit the site of my execution. (And then she'd sniffed, and pretended she hadn't said something that hinted at the slightest kind of softness. Of a certainty, Morrigan would never admit to that.)

For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, she should see fire and go towards Light -

They rounded a corner of the tunnel. A ruined vision opened up before them; a city like Orzammar, crumbling, cast down. Despoiled.

"Branka," Aud snarled. The bay of a warhound belled in her voice.

The Veil holds no uncertainty for her, and she will know no fear of death, for the Maker shall be her beacon and her shield -

Leliana gripped her weapons in her sweat-slick hands, and made ready to do battle at her leader's side.


Aud is quicksilver and lightning in the golem's shadow.

Caridin is not the largest living - if indeed a golem can be said to live - thing Leliana has ever seen: that honour goes to a dragon. But he is the most massive, grinding stone joints and a tread that trembles the ground underfoot. His voice is the hollow rumble of cave-ins and earthquakes, dreadful with ancient regret and duty. Leliana pities him, and Aud -

It's in her eyes. Aud mourns, even as she fights.

Branka is a ruin of a Paragon. If she were ever anything but mad, that day is long past. And Caridin -

Caridin is worse than a ruin of a Paragon. He is a Paragon betrayed, abandoned, clinging to the remnants of duty through centuries alone.

This, Leliana realises, thinking with a small, distant part of her mind even as she strings her bow in the cover of a boulder, and looses. After so many weeks the rhythm of battle is automatic to her, and she does not need to think to fight. This is what Aud fears. Branka's madness, and Caridin's lonely fate.

Not death, but surviving the destruction of one's self.

A second time.

Oh, she thinks, and does not understand why it feels as though her heart is breaking.


When it is done, Branka lies bloody and broken on the ground, and the Anvil of the Void - the Anvil is as destroyed as one determined dwarf with a warhammer can make it.

Oghren stands silent, with the haggard face of a wounded man who has had a long time to see the mortal blow coming before it fell. Morrigan is disapproving. But the list of things of which Morrigan approves is very short, and usually involves either killing things, or sarcasm.

Preferably both.

May you always find your way in the dark.

Caridin falls.

Like a stone falls, not like a star. There is no grace in it, and Leliana sees knives twist in Aud's eyes as the Warden turns her back on the crevasse and cradles the crown he forged to her chest.

"Come," Leliana says, softly, on impulse, and lays a gentle hand on Aud's shoulder. "It is time for us to go see the sun again, yes?"

They have had their fill of darkness.