"So why are we all going to Darktown when Aveline and Varric are looking into their people by themselves?" Nero asked. He was of course referring to the fact that he Fenris, Anders, Hawke and Isabela were going through Darktown, looking for the apostate's family.
"Because Darktown is dangerous?" Isabela offered with a shrug of her shoulders.
"So is any one of us on our own."
"You didn't have to come," Hawke told him, "but I do like traveling with a posse. It helps keep the women off of me."
"Ah yes, I'm ever so glad to assist you with that." Nero said with a roll of his eyes.
"Also she appears to have killed several of her pursuers, so she's sort of dangerous. Hold on, this is where she was supposed to be living, right? I'm gonna ask these kids if they know anything about Evelina." Hawke said, motioning for them to stop before he slowly approached two young boys.
As he approached the younger, red-headed boy hid behind the older one, who said "we got nothing here you'd want. Get back to Hightown and leave us alone!"
"You're a little young for a blood mage, and I thought Evelina was a girls name." Hawke joked.
"I'm not Evelina. I'm Walter. Evelina was our...friend. She was our mother. Evelina found us when the darkspawn came, when our parents died. She made sure we got to Kirkwall safely."
"I miss her" the redheaded boy said from behind Walter.
"But when she went to join the Circle here, they called her apostate for leaving the tower in Ferelden. They locked her up." Walter told them sadly.
"Didn't she want to be free, with you?" Hawke asked.
"She didn't want us to be stuck in Darktown. She wanted to give us a real life... she thought the circle would help her, but they just locked her away."
"Do the templars know your here?"
"They don't care, they only want Evelina."
Growing concerned, Hawke asked "don't you have any other family?"
"Everyone died in the blight. Evelina kept picking us up, new children every day, every one she could save."
"She sounds like a good woman," Anders said, "what did the circle do to make her turn to blood magic?"
Walter shook his head, "I don't know."
"If you tell me where Evelina is, I'll try my best to help her. You can trust me." Hawke said gently
"No one can help her," Walter replied sadly
"The templars made Evelina angry." the younger boy suddenly said, coming out of hiding, "they made her change... It wasn't her fault! When it was over she was ashamed. She ran into the tunnels and hid."
"Shut up cricket, don't tell them that." Walter chided, smacking the boy upside the head
"Evelina's in the sewer tunnels?" Hawke asked.
"You can't go there, she'll know we told you and she'll be angry at us!" Walter begged.
"Angry? I didn't like when she got angry. We have to hide!" Cricket said before running off. Walter chased after him.
"Well...shit." Isabela said after a few moments.
"I hate the blighted sewers." Hawke grumbled.
"If we're going to go after her we should probably go now." Anders suggested, "She might be heading deeper into them, and they can get...confusing."
"Great. I wore my good clothes today, you know." Fenris muttered.
Hawke sighed, "well, clothes were meant to be washed, right? Let's go get dirty."
...
"Isabela, the shit offsets your boots quite nicely. So sexy." Hawke chuckled.
"Ugh, what is wrong with you?" Isabela asked.
"What? I'm just trying to keep the mood chipper." Hawke smiled.
"I'm starting to think that there is a hole in my boot," Nero grimaced, "I can feel things squishing around in there that I would rather not think about."
"At least you're wearing boots." Fenris grumbled.
Hawke laughed, "I always said there was something wrong with elves."
Fenris directed his scowl at Hawke, "most elves don't go lollygagging around sewers after apostate blood mages."
"Touche."
"I would hardly call this lollygagging."Anders said
"Well you should be quite comfortable with this, shouldn't you?" Fenris snapped, "you do live in the gutters of this despicable city."
"If you hate it so much, then why are you still here?" Anders demanded to know.
"I have my reasons."
"I"m sure Nero would leave with you if you asked nicely." Anders told him.
"Would you two stop?" Isabela asked, "I'm surrounded by enough shit, I don't need to hear it spewing from your mouths."
It had been two hours since they first descended into the tunnels, and they had not seen any sign of Evelina yet. It was far past the time that they had grown tired of smell and the...muck.
"Thank the maker," Hawke said as he stepped onto ground that was not wet.
"I think we're in another part of the mining tunnels." Anders observed. It seemed the most realistic conclusion, as the area they found themselves in resembled Darktown more than it resembled the actual Sewers. It was dry and brown, and there were even stairs leading to higher ground to their left.
"I think we're in the right place." Fenris grumbled as several shades and a rage demon appeared in front of the group.
Nero eyed the rage demon warily, thinking of how he lost his last dagger "oh, great."
With an exaggerated sigh he jumped to action, kicking some of the dirt up in front of one of the shades so that he could fall into a roll and jump up behind it unseen. He plunged his daggers into its back and quickly pulled them free so that he could face another one.
He barely had time to jump back as the shade swiped it's claws at him, the shade began another swipe but this time Nero feigned to the side and swung one of his daggers to take off its arm. The demon made an unnatural sound that he interpreted as a scream and he swung his blade so that it sliced into it's chest. The shade disappeared in a gust of smoke moments later.
And then he found himself facing the rage demon. Just as he had dreaded. He groaned but readied his blades anyway, waiting for the inevitable fight and burns he would receive from it. He was pleasantly surprised when the demon froze in a layer of ice mid-lunge and turned his head to see Anders smiling at him from a few feet away. He smiled back and stabbed the demon in the chest with enough ferocity that he hoped the last rage demon he had fought felt it.
"This isn't going to be an easy 'Hey, what are you up to Evelina? D'you want to go back to the circle?' type of deal is it?" Hawke asked no one in particular when the battle was over.
No one responded as they continued up the stairs and through the tunnels. The ended up having to avoid traps that set streams of fire shooting from the walls and floor, and had to face more demons and shades but they made quick work of it. No one spoke again until they rounded a corner into a large open room, only to find Cricket and Walter, the children they had spoken to earlier, standing there.
"What are you doing here?" Hawke asked as he approached them
"I...I thought if we warned her about you, she wouldn't be angry. But then she..." Walter told them nervously.
"Uh, oh." Isabela said with a smirk as she twirled her daggers.
Suddenly it got eerily quiet and they heard a woman's voice call out from somewhere behind them "Walter..."
Terror seemed to grip Walter and he said, "She's coming, run!"
He turned to run in the direction they had come, but he didn't get very far before he ran right into Evelina.
"There you are." She smiled, "don't run from me, Walter. You know those are the rules."
"Funny...in my house we always felt running away from violent madwomen was a good thing." Hawke said dryly.
"These are my children." Evelina told him. "you and your kind abandoned them. You're Ferelden, like us, but you feast on sweetmeats while your people starve in the Undercity." she said as she approached them. Her voice began to change as she spoke and her body began to contort in unnatural ways, till she was speaking in a malevolent voice and her body was that of an abomination, "I spit on you traitor, and on the pathetic templars that sent you. Kirkwall should be mine! Then my children will have a whole city to play in."
Several more shades and demons appeared to help with the battle. Fenris jumped forward to attack the abomination...Evelina, not Anders, but the creature performed a rock shield spell and his sword bounced off it's shoulder with a painful clank. He hissed but readied his sword for another blow, he had to change his tactic when the abomination used its rock-covered arm to swing at him, clearly intending to bash in his skull.
He deflected the blow and kicked the abomination away. It shot a bolt of lightening at him, and he jumped to the side just in time. It shot another spell at him, one that was intended to freeze him in place with more rock, but he skirted around the creature before he was caught in it.
He swore as his blade bounced off of the rock armor, barely registering that he managed to chip a piece of the rock off. He was quickly growing irritated. Most abominations did not seem to make use of the mages arsenal of magic once the possession was complete, but this one was, and he despised it. Magic was a cheap way to win a fight, and he hated having to do battle against it.
Magic seemed to have most of its uses long ranged, but a mage wasn't completely useless in close proximity. Especially if said mage had used it's powers to summon one of these infernal magical shields. And barriers, oh those were grating on the nerves, and a stupid tactical decision. He would never understand why a mage would use up all of their power to keep a shield erected instead of trying to run away as their mercenaries or whoever died around them. He would catch them even if they ran, sure, but that wasn't the point.
He began to chip away laboriously at the rock armor and avoiding the spells that were shot at him. He knew he was doing some damage, he could sense the magic upholding the rock armor growing weak. That was another thing he hated about fighting mages. He could feel every spell they cast like a pulse through his lyrium burns, and sustained spells throbbed. It was slightly painful, a sort of irritating sting that he felt all along his body. Nero had commented once that he seemed more vicious when he fought mages, he had laughed and asked if that really surprised him. But the truth was the throbbing in his markings made him more angry, which in turn made him more ferocious during a fight.
Denarius had loved this affect on him, Fenris recalled, he said it made him more of a threat to other magisters. Which he suppose it did, but Denarius never seemed to realize that it also made him more of a threat to him. Nero was right, he should have fought the bastard...it just...when he thought about fighting Denarius all he could recall was the fear that he used to feel when he faced the magister. He remembered cowering under his critical gaze. Even after all these years of freedom the image of swinging his sword at his former master just seemed like a failure waiting to happen. He worried about growing too fearful to finish the job before he could complete it.
Fenris scowled, why the void was he thinking about these things now? Since when did he think when he was fighting a mage? He narrowed his eyes in irritation at himself, he would worry about it later, right now...
Right now there was a dagger sliding across one of the few areas on the abomination that was exposed and he couldn't get to very easily with his longsword; namely, the throat. He watched, semi-deflated as the mangled body fell to the ground to reveal Nero with a splash of blood on his cheek and a serious expression on his face.
Fenris frowned at him, "I was going to kill it."
Nero smirked, "I grew impatient," then his expression changed to one of concern, "...and you were distracted."
"How did you-"
Nero shrugged, "you were thinking hard, and not about how best to kill the abomination, I could just...tell."
Fenris' frown deepened and he looked away, not even Denarius cold read him that well...or maybe now he was just more...expressive? Fucking Denarius, "it's the stress of him returning, It's ...distracting."
Nero took a step towards him, "I know you haven't really been sleeping..."he glanced over to where Hawke was talking to the boys, Evelina's kids, and sighed "we'll talk about this later." he said, motioning towards the group.
Fenris nodded and they joined the others.
"I don't understand. Evelina loved us. She saved us. Why would she try to hurt us now?" Walter asked, shock making his voice shake.
"Evelina would never hurt you, child. That was a demon. Remember her as she was... a brave, kind, loving woman." Hawke told him.
"I...I'll try" Walter told him.
"This isn't going to stop." Anders suddenly said, "the templars force our hand. They make us take drastic measures, just to be free."
"Like Evelina did." Walter said hopefully, glad to have someone to blame for the days horrific events.
"Exactly." Anders said triumphantly.
"I just don't know what we'll do now." Walter said sadly.
Hawke dug into his purse and took out 5 gold sovereigns, "take this and use it wisely." he told the boy.
Walter gaped at the money in his hand for a long time before stammering out, "th-thank you, Messere." He turned to Cricket, "I should go buy some food for the others. They've been hungry for a long time."
They followed the boys out of the tunnel until they were back in Darktown, where Isabela sighed dramatically, "That was a waste, you know."
"What was?" Hawke asked.
"Five gold, FIVE gold! Do you realize how much ale and sex that could get you?" She demanded to know.
Hawke laughed, "I have lots more than five gold, Isabela, and I felt bad for the kid."
"I wouldn't suggest saying that too loudly around here, Hawke." Fenris told him quietly.
Hawke snorted, "as if most of these people don't recognize me as that Ferelden bastard that snaked his way into Hightown. I think they know, Fenris."
Fenris sighed, but didn't push the matter further.