A/N: I don't own Dragon age.
5.
Aedan Cousland's POV:
Darkness enveloped me. It felt heavy as if I was being smothered by weighty folds of a pitch black sky. I found I could not breathe but this neither disturbed nor surprised me. What did was the darkness. I was loathe to admit but I'd been terrified of the dark up to the age of ten and now, here in the pitch black, that paralyzing terror returned once again.
There was a sound deep in the belly of the dark like the great pounding of a skin drum. It beat beneath my feet and thudded in my ears as if I were standing on a giant's vein. I followed the noise though it was difficult when it was impossible to judge what was up or down, left or right.
But wait, by the noise there was a light. Soft at first, just a pale plume of purple, until I grew nearer and the light began to sting my eyes. I raised a hand but it pierced through causing my head to throb in its baleful glare. A shadow cast over the light, the sound of a strong set of wings and drums, no not drums a heart growing stronger and frantic like a rabbit's when it's caught in the jaws of a wolf.
The ground rolled and shuddered as the dragon plucked itself from the air and dropped before me.
Suddenly I could sympathize with the rabbit.
"Duncan I think he's waking up."
Alistair's face blurred into view but it didn't shake the vision of scales and dead, empty eyes. Or the headache.
"Urghh," I groaned, placing my head which suddenly felt heavier than was healthy in-between my knees.
"Is someone feeling a little poorly," Alistair teased but he was smiling sympathetically at least.
"There was a dragon!" I grabbed at his arm frantically.
"It's okay. It's the Arch demon; you have terrible nightmares after the joining."
I looked across at the chapel. Underneath the empty steeples and surrounded the ruined fires, the camp seemed at last at some strange form of rest. It was akin to the infamous morning afters where the mood slept from exhaustion rather than any real peace. The now newly 'joined' Wardens also were deflated and depleted bar Daylen of course who remained as stable and stoic as the Frostback Mountains.
"Wait, the Arch demon?" I asked lazily.
Alistair nodded, "y'know the big honcho, the boss. Scaly and bad tempered, the Arch demon."
"Sounds like Elissa and Daylen when you put it like that," I mumbled, Alistair laughed, "except minus the scales of course."
"I'm glad you made it through the joining," Alistair smiled, it looked slightly goofy in its earnestness, "I don't mean to speak badly of my shield brother and sister but the thought of being left alone with your siblings was..."
"Ball-shrivelling?"
"...Enough to send me running and screaming like a girl into the Darkspawn horde."
"How are you?" Duncan asked.
"Honestly? I've felt better," I mumbled.
"Everyone is conscious?" Duncan checked the others, "The King is holding a strategic counsel in which we are to attend. This should give you all a few minutes to recover if you wish before meeting Alistair and I."
Elissa and I nodded our consent, seeming pale, weak and sickly after the joining. It was then that I noticed Kallian who detached herself from the pocket of rumble in the wall in one slick movement. Her face wasn't exhausted at all instead it was bright with fury. The cruel smiled that was pinned delicately on her beautiful face and the undisguised loathing in her eyes I had to admit terrified me. I felt my blood run cold.
"I think not," she purred.
Duncan for once seemed surprised.
"The King has requested your presence," he stated.
"Your shemlen king has little sway over me I'm afraid," she continued, crossing her lithe arms over her chest, "Darrian is dead I no longer have any reason to be here."
"But, but your a Grey Warden now," Duncan's jaw tightened.
"That also holds little meaning to me, as I've said my ties to you died with my brother," she shrugged.
Duncan's entire stance tightened. I could tell by the way Alistair shuffled away that the senior Warden was fighting his temper.
"You are tied. Tied by the tainted blood you took during the joining and the oaths..."
Kallian laughed lightly.
"Oaths? I don't believe you gave me much of a choice; it was accept your offer, which was a piss poor offer anyway, or death. For that I'm giving you the same choice Shem, accept my offer or I'll have to kill you," she stepped away.
Hips swaying in those same seductive lithe movements that all her gestures possessed she slipped away and into the camp.
"Well that was awkward," I breathed.
Duncan seemed furious but he didn't move to follow her. No one did.
Kallian Tabris' POV:
I made my way through the heat and noise of the camp. Darrian was dead. My life at the Alienage was dead. And if I stayed here there was a chance I'd be dead. I wasn't prepared to run that risk especially for some cause or life that held the same importance to me as those fluffy globs of dust you find on windowsills. I'd been confined in the Alienage I wasn't prepared to be confined to this Grey Warden thing either.
What I did want was the inebriated noise and distraction of Denerim.
What I did want was that distraction from the sight of my little brother's body crumpled on its side eyes open wide and unseeing like the glass eyes of a doll. He'd been so sweet and soft and naive and cowardly and there. Just Darrian. The others could all sink into the Earth for all I cared but Darrian was my little brother, my soft, stupid little brother. To die like that...
He didn't deserve it.
But I suppose he never deserved anything that had happened to him.
I loved him but he was too vulnerable for a world like this. Too sensitive, too easily hurt and beaten down by it all.
He needn't worry, wherever he was now. I didn't tend to believe that there was anywhere else but for Darrian an exception had to be made.
"Hey knife ears!"
My hand instantly snaked its way to the knife at my side. Until I paused.
"Yes S, S, Ser," I mumbled, pulling my body in, hunching my shoulders I shambled from foot to foot in a nervous fashion. All characteristics of the serving dogs most of my kind had become.
"Have you delivered my message to the troops out front?"
"I, I'm sorry Ser. I lost my way."
The man growled, cursing my very existence.
"How fucking hard can it be!" he raged, "The clues in the term, 'out front'!"
"I'm sorry Ser. So sorry I didn't think..."
"Your type never does. Now get out of my sight and make sure the message damn well gets there this time," he kicked at me as I speed away.
I didn't mind. Unbeknownst to him there was a smirk on my face. These Shem were so easily played. It promised a long awaited havoc in Denerim.
I meet the guards, only a small group. Dispatched who needed dispatching and slipped from Ostagar all together through the Kocari Wilds where even the Darkspawn seemed wary to tread.
Elissa Couslands' POV:
I watched as the elf left, blood red hair recognizable among a sea of silver helmets. My family however had made it through. I decided that it was best I pray for the Maker to receive the elf, Darrian's soul as I suspected Kallian would make no such request. He had seemed the quiet, gentle sort and I wondered if he'd have found his life better had he survived.
I doubted it.
"So, what are you asking the Maker for this time?" Aedan asked, "A new puppy? A hot new piece of ass?"
I choked.
"Aedan I may trying to converse with the Maker and that is highly inappropriate," I snapped.
Aedan shrugged a boyish grin on his lips. I had the urge to smooth his hair properly and advise him to straighten his posture but bit it back. I'm sure Aedan would become sour if I embarrassed him in front of his new friend, the oaf Warden.
"It's a shame about the elf," he sighed.
Was that a hint of sobriety? I had to be dreaming.
"It is indeed. You know Aedan, during the joining...there was a moment, just a moment,...when I thought you too were..."
Aedan looked taken aback, "Dying? You thought that?"
"Honestly? Yes. It was a horrible moment. Despite you being an absolutely irksome goon..."
"Thanks!"
"I am very relieved to see you unharmed," I grew stern; "you are not to scare me like that again. No more rituals involving blood."
"Yes mom," he grumbled but I knew he meant it in humour because that smile still lingered on his face.
"Well then," I said, rising from my knees, "we may as well see what King Calian wants."
Daylen Cousland's POV:
I agreed with Logain on every account. A dreamer had no place among battle strategies and men of war. What Calian expected was for fairytale heroes to swoop down on fairytale, the reality involved blood and enough to leave the grounds surrounding the ruins stagnant for years to come. Blood and death were lost in fairytales as much as they would seem hollow with blood and death.
I had to suffocate my rising irritation with the boy prince beneath the facade of polite silence but I was finding it increasingly difficult. Even the task we were eventually saddled with was some symbolic triumph in Calian's mind. Truly Fereldan was doomed if it were committed to a man who intended to bat away evils with rolled up pages of poetry. Duncan of course, nodded along. I had been under the impression that a Grey Warden's duty was to kill Darkspawn not obey the orders of a spoilt King.
It was the only thing Alistair and I had ever agreed upon.
"Are we able to join the battle afterwards?" I asked Duncan looking the senior Warden in the eye.
"Not unless the King asks for your assistance."
"I may be mistaken but I had believed that our duties as a Grey Warden were to destroy the Darkspawn threat?" I asked coolly.
"It is."
"Then may I inquire as to why exactly we will be lighting a beacon instead of performing that duty."
A tense silence fell across the group.
"First the elf now Daylen," Aedan muttered, detracting himself from the scene entirely.
It was the younger Warden, the blonde goofy looking one, who confronted me.
"Look, even if I don't really agree with the King. He is the King, there must be a good reason for us to be up in that tower," he said folding his arms across his chest.
"I see you have no problems with blindly following orders. I should have no worries when I order you to set yourself on fire in the near future," I said drily.
Surprisingly it was Elissa of all people who came to his defence.
"I needn't be debated that the young Warden isn't the brightest among us..."
"Hey!" he pouted.
"But that doesn't prevent him from being right," she continued, squaring up to meet me despite her tiny stature, "Duncan has asked us to light the beacon. So I for one will trust in his judgement and light the beacon."
I backed down on this occasion seeing that I had nothing really to gain by achieving my goal and no foreseeable victory on the horizon but the message was clear.
It was becoming apparent that travelling with these people would soon become tiresome.
A/N:
I hoped you enjoyed the chapter. Kallian has left the group but not the story and will instead be making her own way across Thedas. You'll understand what I mean later on. All very mysterious 0.0
THANKS FOR READING! :D