Power Struggle

"Do you see it?"

"No." Iralen frowned. The shard had glowed so brightly through the ocularum, like a blue-white beacon rising against the emerald wall of trees. Since her eyes were larger than a human's, which meant the pupil dilated further, she could usually pinpoint the exact location of a shard. Usually. She scanned the rocky shore at her feet, listening for the shard's telltale chiming. Her party members spread out, combing through the grass with the toes of their boots, but none of them seemed to hear anything, either. Of course, the roar of the nearby waterfall could be to blame for that.

Not for the first time, Iralen cursed the fact that they could not remove the oculara from their creepy pedestals. At first, she'd simply wanted to give the murdered Tranquil's soul some peace by laying it to rest, but later, realized that having an ocularum with her would allow her to find the shards much quicker. The Iron Bull had already tried that, however. He said his hands had gone numb for two full hours after a protective spell knocked him on his ass.

"Should we go back and ask her to show us the way again?" Cole innocently asked.

Her. Iralen closed her eyes and hoped Dorian would keep his mouth shut. The last thing she needed right then was to know the final thoughts of the Tranquil woman who had died simply so that the Venatori could scoop out her brain, stuff a crystal in her empty eye socket, and affix her skull to a post. Iralen thought putting her face to the back of these skulls as if she was putting on a mask in order to use their enchantment was bad enough; no one else could do it, not without the Anchor or blood magic of their own, so she didn't need that burden, as well. Don't ask, don't ask, please don't ask . . .

He didn't. Instead, it was Solas who spoke.

"No," the apostate said, gentle as always with Cole, whom he saw purely as a spirit of compassion in spite of his appearance as a young, unkempt human man. "We do not have time, I am afraid. We must not linger or risk leading danger here. There are Freemen patrols nearby."

"And a giant," Cole agreed. "No. Two giants. They're very hungry."

"Perhaps they'll join us for tea. How wonderful!" Dorian cried.

"Is it?" Cole asked.

"No," Dorian said.

"Oh."

"Maybe it's higher," Iralen said, partly thinking out loud. The shards were always high. Somewhere hard to reach without a lot of jumping, perched on a ledge or across a gap, tucked behind a broken bridge or right there in plain sight, in the middle of a ring of Venatori agents.

She looked around and spied a tree likely to hold her weight. She slung her bow over her shoulder and then swung herself into its lowest branches, hardly disturbing the leaves as she passed. Back home, she spent much of her time off the ground. Safer that way. Easier to sneak up on her prey.

"Do you see anything?" Solas called up to her, his hand pressed to the trunk of the tree.

"Not yet." She climbed higher, feeling the mist stirring her hair as the branches thinned around her. Up there, the waterfall nearly deafened her. The pool was perfectly circular, its sapphire blue depths whipped into frothing white foam at the fall's feet. No shard.

She was sure she had the right place . . .

"Ever wonder why the Venatori went to all that trouble to set up their little horror peepshows and then not bother to claim the prize on the other side?" Dorian asked loudly enough for Iralen to hear. He strutted to the water's edge and crouched down to cup a handful of clear water, his staff cradled in the crook of his arm.

"I mean, why? It's like they're trying to help the Inquisition," he went on after taking a drink, wiping his mouth and mustache with his fingertips. He adopted a singsong falsetto. "She's an elf, and these are elfstones that unlock an elf temple, so let's let her have them!"

"Are you complaining?" Solas asked him.

Dorian raised his dark brows. "I'm worried. Doesn't this feel like a trap to you?"

"Master is angry," Cole said, his breathy voice climbing an octave. Iralen could barely hear him. He laced his dirty fingers, twisting them as he spoke. "We are taking too much time, spreading ourselves too thin. The ritual is draining, damning, their faces blank like cattle. But she comes. She hunts us, hounds us, harries us, and we're . . . dead."

"Oh, well, when you put it that way."

Talking wasn't helping them find the shard. Frustrated, Iralen settled along the highest branch that could support her. She knew this was the right place. There was the waterfall, pouring like an Orlesian bridal veil between two outcrops of rock that pointed up like a qunari's horns. There was the edge of the cliff, bent over the pool like the lid of a chest, partially blocking the sun, which hit the opposite wall and picked out the roundels of rock – one, two, three. The shore, gray gravel sloping into the pool, caressed by lapping wavelets. The water, churning at one end like a pot boiling over, calming into ripples over . . .

Iralen groaned.

"What is it?" Solas immediately asked, worry pinching his brows together.

She pointed. "I found it."

As one, the three men turned to look at the pool. The bottom dropped sharply on this side. There, fifteen, maybe sixteen feet down, the shard glimmered in shadowy blue sunlight.

"Lovely," Dorian said.

"Is it?"

"No, Cole."

Iralen dropped out of the tree, letting her bent knees and the mossy ground absorb the impact. "Well?" she asked. "Any volunteers?"

Cole visibly brightened. "I've never been swimming before," he said eagerly.

Solas laid a restraining hand on his arm. Iralen wondered if Cole would have jumped in headlong if he hadn't.

"It might be best if you do not overexert yourself at this time," the elf said.

The spirit wilted, scuffing the rocks with his foot. "Do you get to go swimming?" he asked.

Solas opened his mouth, looked at the pool, and then shut it. After a moment, he said, "Perhaps not. The water is deep and fast, and it has been a long time since last I swam."

There was a heartbeat of silence, and then –

"Don't look at me," Dorian said in an outraged tone when the three of them did just that.

"Why not?" Iralen demanded.

The Tevinter mage put his hands on his hips, every inch the pampered noble son, from the proud flare of his nostril to the pointing of his toe. "And get wet? Dear woman, I have no intention of wandering around these backwoods with a hair out of place. Do you realize the effort required to look the way I do?"

Iralen frowned again. She wanted to be angry with him, but she couldn't help laughing instead. He always did have that effect on her. "All right, fine. It's up to me. Do me a favor and go make sure we aren't interrupted by any hungry giants."

"My Lady." Dorian swept her an elegant bow and then strode into the trees. The emerald shadows welcomed him with open arms. Within seconds, he was lost from sight.

"I'll go too," Cole offered. He was gone even faster, there one moment and then, with a breeze, not.

Solas didn't budge. "My heart."

"Yes?" Iralen looked up into his serious face, but he didn't answer. Wondering what he was thinking, she put her palm against his smooth, flat cheek, tracing the curve of his full lower lip with her thumb.

He leaned into her touch for the barest moment before he covered her hand with his own and pulled it away. His expression reminded her they were not alone and that he would not risk exposing her to censure. He never allowed public displays of affection, and although it hurt, she tried to respect that.

Sometimes, she wondered if the attraction she felt from him was her imagination.

As if to soften the rebuke, he entwined his fingers with hers and spoke to their joined hands. "I do not like this. I would prefer not to send you alone."

She pulled back. "Do you think I can't handle it?"

"Vhenan," he said impatiently, and his eyes – they smoldered at her. She wasn't prepared at all when he bent and crushed her lips with his. "I cannot handle being apart from you. Go, but please be wary and take care of my heart."

With that, he turned for the trees, and she, flushed and dizzy, could not immediately pull herself together. Damn him!

Heaving a sigh, she left the clearing to find a way to the top of the cliff, about twenty feet up. As she hiked, all sign of their passing faded from view.

If she didn't know any better, it would be easy to believe her friends had left her entirely, it was so still and quiet. It felt strange to be alone. The overgrown forest was crawling with red templars, giants, wolves, great bears, and Freemen of the Dales. She needed to focus and collect the shard so she and her companions could move on before one of them, or the high dragon she could hear flapping overhead, decided they looked like easy pickings.

Iralen stripped to her smallclothes behind the swaying green curtain of a weeping willow, leaving her armor, weapons, and clothing in a neat pile at its base. She then stepped to the lip of the cliff, staring into the shining blue jewel that was the pool. Sixteen feet was a long way down, so she was counting on the height of her jump to send her most of the way through the water. She took a few quick, deep breaths, backed up, and ran at the edge. She launched herself into space.

Hitting the water felt like landing on stone with her bare feet. She kept her arms tight to her body and let her momentum propel her downward. The water pressed in, dulling sound, robbing her of scent and taste. Once she felt herself slowing, she turned over and kicked hard for the bottom.

The shard was glowing again, apparently glad that someone was coming to claim it. A large chunk had broken off, suggesting that it had fallen into the pool at some point in the past, but the important part was still intact. Iralen picked it up and pushed off the bottom. She rose faster than a thought and burst into the decidedly cooler air of the Graves.

Four Venatori mages pointed their staves at her head.

Iralen said nothing. She treaded water, noting that a sellsword had Dorian at sword point, and, with a fury that made her heart pound, that a gladiator stood menacingly over Solas, who was flat on the ground.

"You will hand over the shard to us, elf," one of the mages snarled through his mask.

"Why would she?" Dorian snapped over his shoulder.

"Because we'll kill you if she doesn't, traitor." A second mage nodded to the sellsword, who pressed the tip of his blade harder into Dorian's kidneys, and Dorian winced.

Panting slightly, Solas pushed himself onto his elbow and licked blood from his lips. He grimaced at the shield looming over him. His staff was lying ten feet away, under the boots of a spellbinder. It looked as though he'd been bowled right over the small ridge behind him.

"Release my friends," Iralen said in a voice so dark that it didn't sound like hers.

"Or what?" the first mage asked, while the others laughed. "We can slit open their throats faster than you can get out of there, Inquisitor."

"Yes, but all I have to do is let go," she said. She held the shard over her head, and though the mage jerked in response, he didn't come nearer. By the way they all stood well back from the shore, Iralen realized that none of them could swim. "This is what you want, isn't it? I'm guessing you were waiting for someone else to retrieve it. It was clumsy of me not to notice you. The shard isn't in very good shape. It won't survive impact with the bottom a second time."

She could practically see her words sink in. Doubt worked its way through the Venatori, causing weapons to sag and glances to stray.

Then two things happened very fast.

From one direction, a steel-eyed Cole leaped out of the shadows, daggers flashing, and a mage fell. From the other direction, Tor exploded out of the underbrush and propelled himself, snarling viciously, into the face of the gladiator that had hurt his Solas. The woman never had the chance to scream and crumpled under the white wolf's snapping jaws.

Iralen ducked underwater and watched as a brace of winter chill spells froze the surface. It broke up under the pounding of the waterfall, so she swam unharmed beneath the bobbing blue ice. Then violet lightning lit up the sky, and she knew that Dorian was free.

The next time she surfaced, the Venatori lay dead. Dorian and Cole converged on Solas, who was petting Tor's muzzle reassuringly. The young wolf splayed big, muddy paws on Solas's chest so that he was pressing the elf into the ground, and whined into his face.

"Emma tereva, toror'ai," Solas said faintly.

Tor relaxed, comforted by the elvhen words, and allowed Dorian to help Solas stand. Meanwhile, Iralen climbed soggily out of the pool.

"Thought we'd lost you there, old boy," Dorian said sympathetically.

"Yes. It shames me to have been taken by surprise."

"I could hear them, but I went too far to help. They kept their thoughts quiet. I'm sorry," Cole said. He offered Solas his staff.

"Thank you. I –"

Solas broke off as if he'd abruptly lost his tongue, and Iralen had the satisfaction of seeing him struck utterly dumb at the sight of her, wearing almost nothing and dripping onto the grass. He was not, for once, looking at her face, and that fact warmed her all the way down to her toes. It reminded her of the few kisses he had stolen with a passion that had taken her breath away, a passion she believed she'd dreamed when it was over. There was some feeling beneath that cool façade, after all. Good to know.

Dorian turned around, his puzzlement melting when he saw her. His gray eyes twinkled as he fought back a laugh. "Now, really. I thought you had more sense than this, Lady Inquisitor. Has Madame de Fer taught you nothing? Your appearance is everything."

Without hesitation, he removed his outer robe and said, "Come here, you'll catch your death of cold."

Dorian draped the robe over her shoulders, the perfect gentleman. It flapped wetly around her ankles when she approached Solas, who was not looking at her now.

"The water sticks!" Cole cried in delighted wonder.

"Yes, it's rather funny that way," Dorian said, slinging a brown, muscled arm across Cole's skinny shoulders and steering him away.

Iralen paid them no mind. "Solas," she said.

She kept her hands lax at her sides, shoulders thrown back under the borrowed robe, and waited for him to give her his attention. He did, head cocked to the side as he assessed her mood, the space between them.

She raised her chin. "How can you expect me to keep your heart safe when you do not have the same regard for mine?"

He caught her meaning immediately, and his eyes widened. "Of course. Yes, you are right. I had not thought of it in that way. Forgive me."

"Try to remember it," she said, her heart constricting in her chest at his reddened cheek and the swelling of his lip, but she kept her distance, striving for the aloofness that he had mastered. He wasn't the only one with something to offer, after all.

"I shall," he said; she didn't miss the way a corner of his mouth pulled up into a smirk as if he knew exactly what was going through her mind.

"Thank you." Iralen turned on her heel and headed for the trail that would take her back to the top of the cliff and her dry clothes, grinning, the shard clutched to her chest and Tor trotting at her side.

A/N: Dragon Age: Inquisition Omake Gekijō Presents: "Power Struggle."

Seriously, why did the Venatori go to all that trouble to set up the oculara and then leave the shards for me to gather? It's the one quest that seems too contrived to me.

Since the shards are always placed up, I decided to place one down and see what happened.

Please review, my darlings! It drives me nuts when I can't see my stats, lol. I give the best of my love to The Night Whisperer, Grand Admiral Pellaeon, and Blackpantherlilies for their kind reviews on "Word Games."

Ever Yours,

Anne