They seem to have been underground forever when they eventually – finally – spot a section of the damp-smelling roads that look similar to the place where they descended.

Having downed a potion for the wounds, Elissa keeps up with the others by leaning heavily on Loghain and telling herself that pain is merely an emotion like any other, like she had heard a crusty old soldier serving her father say once. It doesn't work particularly well when something inside your body has clearly changed shape entirely, but she keeps at it anyway.

"Who tried to capture you?" Loghain's question is a whisper-breath only a thumb's length away from her ear. "The emissaries?"

Elissa nods. "One of them spoke."

Then suddenly Wynne turns, looking back at them and for a moment Elissa panics, thinking she has overheard them and they will have to explain everything which she definitely doesn't want to right now. She just gives them a strange look, however, before the reason for her turning around becomes quite clear – in front of them stands the largest ogre Elissa has ever seen, accompanied by four emissaries walking in a circle around it, chanting.

"Shit." It slips out of Elissa, stupidly, before she can catch herself.

"Can you fight?" Loghain releases her, reaching for his sword. When his body no longer serves as a moving support she stumbles a bit, has to take a few sudden steps to regain her balance. Nobody notices, not even Loghain, who is too busy taking in the scene ahead.

"Naturally," Elissa says, a little too sharply for it to sound perfectly natural.

The ogre is wrapped in light, a grainy sort of magical light that she has learned is a form of protective shield. It thunders towards them, the ogre and its shield, and Elissa barely has time to throw herself to the side, but Dog is quicker than the large creature at any rate, and leaps in front of his mistress, making himself as imposing as possible as he goes into the battle.

It's a lengthy fight, drawn-out and scattered, the kind of battle that will translate badly into the Grey Warden records, Elissa concludes as she darts between the curses and Wynne's conjured spirits. Alistair slays one of the last two emissaries with an enormous effort, judging by the look on his face, just as the ogre who has not yet fallen by Loghain's blade makes a new turn, facing Alistair instead.

"Elissa!" Wynne warns from her spot a bit further away, spirit energy flowing off her fingertips and circling around them all, like ribbons wrapped tightly around those it touches.

Elissa turns, quickly, managing to duck the last emissary's staff and its curse before she sees from the corner of her eyes how Alistair is beaten to the ground and how the ogre picks up the king's sword, raising it in the air and in that moment she knows how it will end, she knows it and she is too far away -

As she tries to run, she realises she is trapped in a curse, Wynne's protection wearing thin as the mage struggles to even stand upright. She's too exhausted for this, Elissa can see in her face, much too drained and shaking, the wall supporting her. Maker knows how much lyrium it took to get them out of the cave. She must be out of it, otherwise she would have taken more – the realisation hits with a burning clarity, and Elissa pushes inside the magical prison, her elbows and shoulders angry blades until finally she is feeling a little breach but it's still too late.

Behind her Wynne has closed her eyes and Alistair is going to -

Then everything seems to flash and the next thing she sees is Dog on the ogre's back and Loghain on all fours on the ground right beside Alistair, the massive sword buried deep somewhere in Loghain's shoulder. Something comes to an abrupt halt, as though a layer of time shifts. Coldness jolts through her despite the heavy beat of her heart and the sweat on her face.

They forged a new sword for the new king, she remembers distantly inside the fog of her head, a merciless, heavily enchanted sword that cuts through the hardest of metals.

Elissa is there with them as soon as the curse's power over her vanishes and without daring to look at the ground, see the faces of either of the wounded, she has leapt up on the ogre, the anger making her momentarily able to forget the previous injuries for as long as it takes to bury both her blades in the broad, deformed back. She has it in her muscles, fighting these things, and she is grateful for it now. There's a twitch of life beneath her own body yet so she pulls the blades out and cuts into the creature's throat, furiously, using every last breath of strength.

The ogre gives a hoarse cry as it goes down and Dog sets off after the emissary while Elissa shambles into a graceless lump beside Loghain and Alistair.

They are both quiet. Dishearteningly, painfully quiet, she thinks, catching hold of herself and her own body. She needs voices, words, reassuring lies – anything but this cold silence.

"Loghain?"

He gives a nod in response, and when she crawls closer to him she notices the sword is penetrating his right shoulder and a bit of his chest and Elissa draws a sharp breath, instinctively putting her hands around the bleeding wounds, as though she would be able to mend them like a mage. She can't, of course, and he shoots her a strange glance. Elissa withdraws her hands, feeling stupid.

"Alistair?" she asks, tilting her head to get a better look of his face. It is pale and sweaty but his eyes are open, watching her and Loghain.

"Yes."

"Are you...?"

"Well, I don't think my neck snapped, at any rate. Sounded like it for a moment," he says, and for once Elissa is grateful for his annoying sense of humour. It makes the air down here a bit easier to breathe.

A long moment passes. One of those moments that expands time itself, until it's a swollen, shivering presence above their head and brimful with words that need to be said and gestures wanting to be made, but they are frozen and Elissa half-sits like a statue, caught in between it all.

Alistair and Loghain, she notices, exchange a look that is a curious blend of surprise and anger and something else, something she can't identify. The weight of it slams heavy against the stone walls.

Neither of them speak and Elissa has not found any more words when Dog returns, gently leading Wynne.

"I'm afraid I will... need to rest for a bit... before I can heal." Wynne slumps down with them, completing the pitiful little heap of battered fighters. Only Dog remains standing, moving forward, cleaning up the mess somewhat and guarding the entrances. "Just a second."

Alistair has managed to conjure up enough strength to sit; beside him Loghain remains in the same position, but his breathing comes more regularly now, slower. He says nothing. When she studies his face she sees how he presses back his pain and it makes her want to hold it for him, share it as though such a thing was possible and she was a sodding martyr of goodness.

It's a strange sound in Elissa, a noise that has nothing to do with darkspawn. This is a sound of something else, much more private and difficult to parse through, her thoughts trembling around it. She lifts her hands from her lap; they are soaked in Loghain's blood. But he will be fine, because Wynne is there and her face is lit again as she crawls to stand upright. Elissa bites back a stray sentence that would have sounded misplaced.

Then she looks at Alistair, smiling at him through the last remains of fear and worry.

He smiles back, oddly, inclining his head as though offering her a gesture of respect.

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.

In the slowly setting sun they have their wounds tended to and their bellies filled with tender venison, against a backdrop of a forest that is burning in the reddening sky, treetops stretching towards it like flames. The bustling life of the scene reminds Elissa of paintings she has seen, depicting soldiers returning from battle into the arms of their loved ones.

Wrapping a poultice around her ankle she observes Wynne, resting in the shadow of the wagon full of supplies. The knights are doing their part in the closing of the passage, shovelling rock and earth, a scent of sweat rising from their crowd in front of the entrance. They will let Wynne seal it with magic later.

But for the moment the mage sits cross-legged on the ground, bent over today's collection of records and scrolls and Elissa walks up to her, a strange and unsettled noise running through her head. In addition to nearly being captured and having both Loghain and Alistair all but dying under her command, she fears the hints of magic they have unearthed today, the suggestion of things being connected, the world beneath them vaster than she wants to even imagine.

"Shouldn't you rest?" Elissa asks, realising she sounds almost accusing and adds a softer: "Have you eaten?"

Wynne's face is troubled and very pale as she looks up.

"This is old Tevinter magic," she says, spreading the scrolls on the ground, as though the gesture would make Elissa able to interpret the writing.

"Magic?"

"It looks like ancient runes," Wynne clarifies. "And these, here, are old Arcanum characters used specifically for magical writing."

"Can you decipher it at all?" Elissa asks, not even wanting to hear the answer. There's a hand around her heart, its grip leaving her breathless.

"Barely. And only a few fragments." Wynne puts her finger to a cluster of runes in the middle of a half-scorched scroll. "That means The Golden City."

"That sounds-" Elissa swallows. "I heard rumours that there might still be cults devoted to the old gods. Is that true?"

Wynne nods, briefly, still looking at the records before her with great intensity as if hoping the signs will suddenly translate themselves if she commands them to.

"It is said those cults exists, yes. In the Anderfels. And in Tevinter, of course." She looks at Elissa. "Some claim there are even temple ruins still existing although most of those must have been destroyed by now."

"Could... could anyone learn to use this kind of magic?"

"Emissaries, you mean?" Wynne raises an eyebrow, pondering for a while. "We have not seen the darkspawn use any advanced form of magic thus far, but I am not saying it would never be possible. Anything is, as I'm sure you know."

Elissa lets out a sigh. "Right."

"I cannot say how old these documents are or for which purpose they are being used; I would need more time to study them-"

"Wynne, I-" Elissa watches the shattered sentence break apart in front of them, leaving her mouth like breaths of ice in the late afternoon heat. "This is Warden business. You will have copies of these of course, but I... we will take today's records and investigate them ourselves."

"Of course." The tone is neutral, though the slight touch of austerity to the words implies a hint of something else behind it. Disappointment.

Elissa feels the other woman's gaze burn her own secrets to ashes. She looks away, as though it would help.

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Maric's son sits with his back against a tree, unusually unguarded and equally unobserved, as Loghain makes his way across the field of the temporary camp.

From a distance he is so much like his father that time shivers around them, shifting painfully back to another life. They were young once. Young and unrefined and clumsy, using each other as mirrors and cautionary tales, pretending life the way it could be, making the best of what they were handed. There had been good days, a lot of them spent in Arl Rendorn's camp. Days of plenty, of simple summer nights and bonds slowly forming and reforming them all as they decided who they were to both each other and themselves. Life was still a choice and the stark reality behind those choices had not yet begun to fully surface. It is possible, Loghain admits now, that they were even happy, as strange as it seems given the circumstances.

The new king looks like Maric did back then, looks unarmed and lethal, with that softness that would fell Loghain every time, all those years ago.

When Loghain draws nearer, standing in the way and shading the sun to get his attention, Maric is gone and the boy looks like himself again, a frown on his face as he glances up.

"Oh," he says, as though expecting someone else.

"I take it you are healed?"

"Yes," the king says and there's an edge to the small word, leaving it curiously open to both anger and suspicion. Loghain hardly blames him for either.

He nods, beginning to regret the decision to speak to the other man at all. It had seemed a reasonable idea, acknowledging what happened underground and agreeing to never make mention of it again.

"Many good men and women died so you could have the throne," he says instead, sharper then he intended. "It seems a waste for you to die so soon."

Alistair's eyes widen slightly at that, but he says nothing in response and Loghain remains quiet, as well, standing motionless like a statue before the boy who is not Maric.

It was said Loghain was going to betray Maric.

Only once, and by a sodding witch of the wilds at that, but it was said and it kept being said, over and over in Loghain's memory. Sometimes he still hears it, the prediction, that awful judgement of his character. No matter how many oaths he swore or how many times he had nearly given his life for Maric's, Loghain would always be the man destined for betrayal.

And it seems the witch was right, too. He gives her that.

He should have been on that bloody ship instead of the king and everyone knows it. He was the expendable one in the rebel prince's keep. Even as a teyrn and a commander of Ferelden's forces Loghain was expendable – the only difference was that people no longer dared to say it was true for fear of hanging. Loghain should have gone to Orlais, should have convinced the king to stay behind and Loghain should have been the one hurriedly burned in Highever, his body no more than a whisper of the man he had been.

The loss of Maric is still a dull ache, but the knowledge that it could have – should have - been Loghain in his place is almost unbearable even seven years later.

"I'm not going to forgive you, just so you know," the new king of Ferelden says, seemingly inside Loghain's very thoughts.

Loghain holds back a grimace as he meets the other man's gaze. "There is no reason you should."

"It can't be forgiven, what you did at Ostagar. Or afterwards, to Ferelden and to the elves and-" the boy cuts himself off. He sounds like a pupil reciting something he was told to learn by heart, the words falling awkwardly from his lips. Then he clears his throat, kingly again. "You were shown mercy once. It won't happen again."

Loghain wonders why it is commonly assumed that he is somehow foolish enough to demand forgiveness. As though he is looking at everyone the way he would look at the sodding Maker himself, asking them to judge him whole and tell him he has sung to their approval. He may be many unflattering things but at least he holds no self-delusional hopes about the consequences of his actions.

"I am aware of that," he replies, simply. It seems to unsettle the boy to hear him agree, and Loghain can't deny there is a certain satisfaction in that.

Around them, everyone is gathering in formations, great and small. They will be leaving shortly, Loghain assumes, and the sealing should require their presence as soon as the knights are done digging. Cauthrien seeks his gaze across the field and he is about to walk up to her as he notices both Elissa and the mage making their way there.

"They see something in you, I suppose," the boy states, suddenly. His gaze is fastened somewhere behind Loghain, on the people walking around back there, packing and working on the entrance that soon will be sealed. "I don't, but there you go."

Loghain frowns. "Who are they?"

"Anora and Elissa." The boy shrugs, which seems painful because his face stiffens and he leans back again, with a soft sigh. "Well, I suppose Anora would. And Elissa has spared enough people for me not to be surprised that she decided to spare you, too. Not really."

"They are both pragmatic," Loghain says, as evenly as possible. "It is a valuable trait for people with power."

Alistair scoffs; it's a sound of every bit as much disdain as Maric could muster up, if given a reason. "Thanks for the advice."

"Of course, Your Majesty," Loghain nods curtly, suppressing a sneer.

"Was my father like that?"

Loghain makes another effort to leave but the boy's inquiry catches him mid-step, the words pulling him back.

"Like what?" Loghain wonders how much of the truth the boy wants to hear – how much of the truth Loghain wants to reveal. You treat the memory of him better than you ever treated the man, Anora snaps in his head, newly crowned as Cailan's queen and defending her husband as though she is no longer making a distinction between him and herself.

"Pragmatic." Alistair looks at his sword, shifts it a bit before putting it back down on the ground; then he finds a spot on his impeccably clean shield that apparently needs more polishing and scrapes his blunt nails against it.

"Yes." Loghain hesitates only a second. "Eventually."

"Because you decided so?" What appears to be genuine curiosity blends with the underlying hostility in the boy's voice, twisting angry ropes around the question. The scraping increases, leaving a horrible sound in its wake.

"Perhaps," Loghain replies, his voice sharper. "Or perhaps because he was a good man who wanted to be a good king."

Alistair looks like he is about to say something, but then he closes his mouth, averting his eyes. This finally seems to end the conversation.

They will compare him to Maric in the same cruel way they did to Cailan, Loghain knows as he is turning to walk away; he hopes this boy will at least have the strength and decency to endeavour to deserve the comparison.

"Loghain," Alistair calls out, as if on cue, raising his voice somewhat but not making it loud enough for it to be overheard through the many intertwined murmurs of the camp. "Thank you."

Loghain doesn't stop at the sound of the boy's voice but there is a beat inside him that does for a second, stops with a harsh, twisted echo of something long gone.

He truly is his father's son.

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The monarchs of Ferelden will have beautiful children, Elissa concludes, glancing up from the task of pressing down today's found property into her already full backpack. It is nearly bursting at the seams as she slams her hands into it, trying to flatten the contents.

Such beautiful little royal heirs. Blond and tall with clear lines and blue eyes, like something out of a fairytale. She sighs.

In his corner of the camp, Alistair is making certain they have everything they need before leaving, she can tell. His silhouette is constantly moving both outside and inside her head, flickering with light and shadows; he finally deems their little caravan satisfactory, and gestures for everyone to start gathering around him.

Elissa mutters as the pack remains impossible to close, deciding to leave it open rather than getting rid of anything.

Across the field, Alistair is looking at something in his pack, too – holding up a darkspawn dagger in the light – and talking to Anora at the same time. Anora leans in, a curious expression on her face as she listens to what he is telling her, smiling and somehow settling beside him, her posture mirroring his own. It looks remarkably easy, the subdued play between them, a harmonious rhythm that seems to enclose them both.

It's heartening, somehow.

Elissa tries to look at them without getting caught doing just that, her eyes travelling from the packing to the marital scene many feet away.

She hears her mother's tirade:

Love is nothing you can count on, nor is it something necessarily good or desirable or worth aiming at. It does not make things simpler. A marriage, whether between nobles or commoners, is thought to facilitate the daily grind; husbands and wives should make each other's burdens lesser, their estates grander and life better for one another. Love, my dear little girl, her mother says in her head, complicates the matter. It had been easy for her mother to say this of course, after nearly thirty years of what appeared to be a happy, loving marriage of her own. Easy to claim this while she all but shipped her daughter off to marry the Teyrn of Gwaren or one of those other suitable men of various age and status that she had suggested.

You cannot count on love to save you, my dear little girl.

And Elissa couldn't seem to fall in love anyway, so what was the fuss about? Ghost-mother tuts in her head, her smile warm and slightly fraught with irritated anxiety.

Count yourself lucky to be so sensible, Nan adds, her hands cupping Elissa'a cheeks.

Perhaps she was lucky – is lucky. Elissa who thinks too much, thinks too far, her mind jumping ahead of her heart so that every imagined scenario, every thought kiss or confession seems wrong, misplaced, premature. Elissa who doesn't value her heart very high anyway, reason pressing down on it until it falls silent with a gasp.

She would have loved Alistair. Of this she is certain. Theirs would have been a marriage for history to remember, for girls and boys to write into their mythology of love and bravery. Like King Maric and Queen Rowan who fought for each other and the whole kingdom and there was always love and never anything before or beyond to shatter the perfect images that are, Elissa knows now, fragile like the finest porcelain.

"We are returning to the city!" Alistair shouts, mounting his horse and disappearing in the bustle that follows his order. A moment later his head reappears in the swarm, flanked by the Queen's.

Elissa hoists her things, decides to ignore the still-aching muscles and sets off as well.

"They seem to have found common ground." Loghain walks up behind her, wearing a loose-fitted suit of splintmail armour, likely to allow room for the bandages wrapped around his chest. It's a rare sight.

"They have." Elissa smiles back, a sloppy smile tossed over her shoulder. Her face feels bare and unmanageable, like it resists any sort of commands tonight, too exhausted from all the masks she has worn recently. Loghain looks away, observing the slowly moving group ahead of them; she wonders if he notices. "It should make things easier."

"It should."

"You probably saved his life down there," she says, driving Dog in front of her so he isn't running like a fool between them all, eager to be moving again.

Loghain's gaze is still somewhere else as he responds. "You sound surprised."

"I'm not."

She cannot help but think about how different her life would have been, had she stepped on that ship to Gwaren all those years ago, replacing the well-established and reasonably respected Teyrna Mac Tir in the teyrnir her father claimed was no bigger than their own courtyard.

To be married to Loghain. Elissa frowns thinking about it, her gaze sweeping over the edges of his face now, as though they would tell her something.

She would not have loved him, never like that. He would have been too old to respect her and she would have been young enough to let it slip, probably allowing his demeanour to frighten her. Perhaps all she would know, even after years of marriage, would be his most unlovable features. They would be what she saw because they are overlaying everything, even now, unless you find the cracks and gashes. There is something sad about that, the idea of human beings as moulded in stone, as statues, little more than set and fixed marks on a map and unable to change even for each other.

"Wynne thought the scrolls we found in the caves today could be old Tevinter magic," Elissa blurts as Loghain gives her an odd glance. She feels her entire body relax, safe inside the familiar, simpler emotions of duty and everything surrounding it. So perhaps this is not what Wynne means by comfort but it's her comfort and it's sufficient, she thinks, almost snorting at her own thought.

"Magic connected to the old gods?" Loghain asks, immediately leaping to the same conclusion as she did before.

"I don't know. She doesn't know. We'll need to examine the records; I was thinking we should bring them to the Warden I told you about, the mage?"

He nods.

Elissa nods too, as though fortifying the decision.

It's a fine evening. With the sun less intrusive and the heat ebbing away, their short march back to Denerim is rather pleasant, all things considered. Loghain doesn't seem to be in any immediate pain, so she refrains from asking him about it; her own side is aching but that, she knows, is nothing a decent potion later can't take the edge off.

"It frightens me," she admits when they have walked for a length of time without saying anything to each other. "That there is a whole world down there. And we're here, knowing nothing about it."

"We no longer know nothing about it," Loghain remarks, throwing a chunk of cheese to Dog who catches it before it has even landed on the road. "But I agree, the thought is not reassuring."

"I got the impression-" Despite being a good deal behind the rest of the group, Elissa looks around and lowers her voice. Oddly enough it feels like being a child again, having terribly important secrets with Hestia. "I got the impression it wasn't merely darkspawn down there. Or that this is just darkspawn activity. All of it, I mean, not just today. It feels too... orderly. The attacks in the north, the people disappearing, the passages. They seem to know what they are doing, but I don't know... perhaps darkspawn can learn strategy, too."

Loghain seems to ponder this for a bit, then he glances at her sideways. "I do not doubt that darkspawn could gain followers outside," he says, dryly. "The capacity for people doing stupid deeds cannot be underestimated."

"The question is - who would gain anything by working for darkspawn?" Elissa readjusts her swords that keep slamming into each other on her back. "And who would know there was anything to gain?"

"Wardens, perhaps?" Loghain doesn't sound certain and leaves the question hanging. When she can't reject it as implausible either, it forms a chilling presence in the air between them, lingering there regardless of the pace they keep.

"We'll find out," she concludes when something needs to be spoken.

Denerim, its lights and faint sounds spreading out in between the trees and the old, broken statues along the sides of the road, has never looked more welcoming.

And never more fragile.

A/N: As usual, thanks to CJK for beta, to the IRC people for inspiring and delightfully distracting conversations, and to you all for reading and for commenting!