And the Path is Dark
III. Cullen
But my faith sustains me; I shall not fear the legion,
Should they set themselves against me.
"The prisoner has woken up."
It's astounding, the damage that three little words can do to someone's day. It hadn't been a good day, by any means, but it had been normal. Well, whatever had stood for normal this past week. Now the world is upside down once again as Leliana tells him Cassandra is interrogating the prisoner. She summarizes Solas's suspicions about the prisoner and the mark she bears. Cullen forces himself to pay attention, although he wants to do nothing more than ignore it and go about his day crafting defense plans. I'm not a templar anymore, he wants to tell her. The mage is your responsibility. He almost does, too, but Leliana interrupts him by delivering her last bit of news.
"Cassandra is bringing the prisoner here, to the forward camp."
Silence reigns supreme in his mind for a single shocked moment before being overthrown by a multitude of objections. The loudest of them clamor to be spoken. That's absolutely ridiculous. Cassandra has gone mad. Bringing a prisoner to the front lines is just asking for trouble. Sod off. However the only thing he manages to voice is "Wait… what?"
"The prisoner is being brought here. I know it's slightly unorthodox, but Solas believes her mark is the key to closing the Breach. Considering the Breach's pulses have been coming more and more frequently… we must settle it before something terrible happens again."
Of course the apostate would be the root of this idea. Bloody mages. A bit of resentment bubbles into being somewhere within his chest. "This is foolish. We have no way to be certain of the prisoner's loyalty. We can't trust her."
Leliana sighs and rubs her forehead, as if she's dealing with a particularly irksome child. The bubble of resentment continues to grow. "It's past the point where the loyalty of the prisoner matters. The situation cannot get much worse than it already is. While it may be a long-shot, we must try something. It's not as if the prisoner can do more damage at this point."
Cullen wants to yell at her, tell her this is beyond stupid, because no matter how bad something is, magic can always find a way to make it worse. He bites his tongue instead. He knows Leliana will not appreciate his protests, and indeed, even he wouldn't agree with his own arguments if today was just another day. He'll feel differently about the prisoner when the sun shines brighter and the sky isn't broken and he hasn't spent the previous night suffering from a barrage of unending nightmares. He already knows they don't have a way to stop the Breach; any change the prisoner can offer them at survival, however slim, is greater than what they have now.
"You're right, of course," he admits with a sigh. He massages his temples with his fingertips, trying to beat back his growing headache. "What would you have me do?"
"Hold the valley. Try to drive the demons back. We intend to try for the Temple of Sacred Ashes once the prisoner arrives."
"Fight and fortify. How long do we have to hold?"
"Until we no longer have a reason to, one way or another."
"Hold, men! Hold!" Cullen calls out as he swings his blade, the steel biting deep into the twisted flesh of a demon. "Don't let them break our line!" The demons have been harrying the front camp since midday in waves, each coming hotter on the heels of the last. Cullen spares a thought for his men defending the Temple proper. He prays they haven't been overrun. He prays that he hasn't ordered them to their deaths, like he has done to so many others. Their bodies lay in neat rows in the camp, wrapped in what linens they can spare. As the days have dragged on, linen has become more and more scarce. The living need bandages more than the dead need shrouds, so many of the corpses lay bare, sightless eyes staring emptily into the broken sky. Each blank face is a reminder, an accusation. He is not fit to lead them. If he was, then the bodies of hundreds wouldn't be stacked up, like so much firewood, waiting to be burnt. If he was fit to lead them, then it would be songs of victory instead of funerary chants that drift through the valley.
But, as ever, now is not the time for such thoughts.
To Cullen's right, a young man, barely old enough to be a recruit, falters. A shade lunges forward, swiping at the boy, trying to bring him down. With a yell and a lunge Cullen pushes the boy aside, taking his place. The demon's claws meet the steel of his blade, screeching with rage. Cullen winces at the creature's scream and pushes back, twisting his sword to bite into the demon's palms. The demon flinches backwards, fleeing the bite of his steel. Cullen takes the opportunity to bring the blade up and to the side, beheading the demon in a single smooth motion.
Cullen turns back to the recruit. He offers a hand to haul the boy to his feet. "Are you alright?" Cullen asks. The lad gapes instead of speaking, his gawking stare locked firmly on something over Cullen's right shoulder. The Commander whips around to face down whatever has stolen the boy's wits and attention so fully.
A woman stands on the edge of a crumbling wall, the sun burning a golden halo around her slim form. Leliana's words from his visit to the prisoner echo in his mind; The scouts are claiming they saw a figure behind the prisoner as she tumbled out of the rift. A woman, glowing with golden light. Andraste. The moment freezes in time, as if held in stasis by it's importance. Dully, as if from afar, Cullen wonders if the world is truly shaking beneath his feet, if time has truly stopped.
A heartbeat later she steps forward, and blocks the sun's glare. Cullen can see her face, now that he's no longer blinded by the light. The figure's shadowed face resolves into tattoos and pointed ears. Not Andraste, the prisoner. For the first time, he can see her face in truth, but he doesn't notice much about her features beyond her pale hair lit aflame by the sun; he's too busy staring at her eyes. Eyes which glow the same unsettling green as the Breach that storms overhead and burn with the same fury.
A snarl twists her lips, eyes flood with disgust. She raises her right hand, her fingers splayed, pointed directly at Cullen. Her lips dance over something, some curse or cry he cannot hear over the rushing in his ears. Wisps of magic whirl down her fingers, roiling and swirling at the tips, coalescing into frost. Cullen can feel the power behind the cloud of ice hanging in the air, the magic straining to erupt from within the woman. And then it isn't straining anymore, it is released. A spear of ice, called into existence by the mage, hurtles through the air towards him.
He struggles to move, to bring up his blade and smack the spear down or to twist to the side and away. Instead of the swift practiced movements he knows, his limbs drag at the rest of him, slowing his movements. He braces himself, expecting the cold sting of ice to bite into his chest. But the bite never comes. Instead, the spear sails safely over his right shoulder, only to bury itself in the maw of a demon which had been lunging forward to swipe at his open back.
The moment shatters around him, and time snaps back to its proper pace, sound flooding his ears. He stumbles as his limbs catch up with the rest of him. He manages to bring up his sword to block as the demon, injured but still alive, howls and jumps at him. He parries a single swipe before lightning strikes the demon and it falls to the ground, it's carcass reeking of seared flesh.
The prisoner leaps from the wall and lands on her feet beside Cullen as he takes a moment to catch his breath. Her eyes, so bright they seem to glow, meet his for a single breath, a single heartbeat. She offers him a single nod, a gesture of respect, before she turns away, her staff spinning end-over-end in her deft hands. The battle-cadence returns then, drumming away within his chest, and he returns to the dirty work of killing.
With the addition of the prisoner and her team, it's scant minutes before the demons die. The rift overhead shrieks and dissolves into amorphous ribbons as Cullen collects his troops. They have a moment to rest, to regroup, and to have the dead collected by Chantry sisters. His turns to a lieutenant, about to issue orders, when a shift in the magic of the rift overwhelms his templar-trained senses, feeling like nothing else but a punch in the gut. He doubles over as a headache explodes within his skull and his senses scream. A few deep breaths later, he manages to look up.
The prisoner stands before the rift, her left hand outstretched. Threads of viridian light pulse and dance between her palm and the rift. Beneath her thin sleeve the same light burns alongs her veins, before vanishing beneath the thick leather of her vest. Her lips fall open, slack, echoing the empty expression in her eyes. The light pulses and whirs, the rift screams and sings, until life returns to her form in a rush. Her eyes narrow and her lips snarl, just as they had before she launched that ice spear, as if she's still in battle. Her left hand clenches in a fist and she wrenches it to the side. The leash of light that had tied her palm to the rift snaps, and with an ear-shattering blast the rift slams shut, vanishing, as if it were never there at all.
Cullen distantly takes note of the way Cassandra, Solas and Varric all rush to her side, as if expecting her to tip over and the way the prisoner smiles wanly at them and steps away from their supporting hands, but notices little else. Most of his thought power is occupied with preventing hyperventilation. Slow, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Maker's breath, she damn well did it! 1...2...3...4… She's either Maker-sent or she made the rifts herself. Not sure I like either possibility. In...2...3...4...Out...2...3...4. Cassandra catches his eye and starts to approach. Maker, Cullen. Pull it together. There will be time to have an crisis later.
Cassandra outlines a vague plan. They wish to rally the troops remaining at the forward camp and charge forward. She echoes Leliana from earlier: they must get the prisoner to the Temple of Sacred Ashes; nothing else matters now. Their survival rests on a couple of unstable theories and fickle hopes. Excellent. Just wonderful. I always wanted to die young. A piece of him more reasonable and mature than the remainder metaphorically smacks the rest of him upside the metaphorical head. Being bitter won't solve anything. Buck up and get that mage to the Breach. A faint hope is better than none at all. You know this.
The mage herself steps forward, leaving Solas's hovering hands and Varric's anxious smile behind her. Her eyes have yet to lose the unusual light, the impossible coloring. Cullen is left wondering if they could possibly be natural. Such a color must be a result of magic, right? The soft burrs and rounded vowels of the prisoner's accent distract him from his contemplation about the origins of such an odd coloring and draw him back into the conversation. "You are going to be leading the charge?"
"Yes, I am." Cullen snaps back into his Commander role, back straight and expression downright cold. "And you're the one capable of closing rifts. I hope they're right about you. We've lost a lot of people getting you here." His bitterness is all too obvious.
The prisoner's face immediately goes blank, the flicker of friendliness in the curve of her lips guttering out and dying. Her gaze bores into Cullen's, and he resists the urge to fidget under its weight. "I hope they're right, too." Her voice is controlled, and perfectly expressionless. A bit of regret stabs at him; if she's truly an innocent in all this then she's done nothing to deserve his cruelty. He dismisses the regret just as quickly as it came; if she proves herself, there will be plenty of time to apologize later.
She turns away, goes to leave. Cullen is struck with a sudden thought. This woman is willing to risk her life for the chance of closing the rift, and he knows nothing about her other than the fact she's been held prisoner by his people. If she dies, there will be no time for apologies. He'll be unable to thank her, to honor her sacrifice. He doesn't even know her name. "Wait," he speaks before he even knows he's going to ask. When her stare pins on him he fights down the surge of embarrassment and forges onward with his question. "What's your name?"
The elf freezes, her shoulders going tense and her mouth falling open. He's surprised her. Her mouth closes and opens again, once, twice, before managing to make her voice work. "Varenya. Varenya of clan Lavellan."
"Varenya, then." His words are soft, gentler than anything he's said to her before. "May you make it to the Breach. Maker guide your steps." Her eyes widen even further and she nods quickly, nervously? before turning away from him and pointing herself towards the Temple, and the Breach within.
Half an hour later finds Cullen amidst the corpses of demons, recovering from the charge towards the Temple. As Cullen wipes the blood from his blade he finds his mind drifting back to the prisoner. Varenya, he reminds himself. Her name is Varenya. Her appearance is… not what he is used to. She is distinct. Striking. His mother had used that word occasionally, when she was being too polite to call someone ugly. That's not what he means by the word. She's not ugly, just like she's not typically beautiful. There's just no other word he knows to describe her.
Everything about her face is just… too much. Her eyes are too intense to for him to be comfortable under her scrutiny. Her skin is too pale, it's nearly colorless, her lips a bloody contrast. . Her features are all sharp: sharp ears; sharp jawline; high, sharp cheekbones. One would almost fear to cut himself on them. Every expression, every movement, radiates precision. And her personality seems to match. She was cool, composed even in the face of extermination. Demons diving at her face did not faze her, she only snarled back at them and blasted them away. Even Cullen's casual cruelty hadn't tripped her up. The only time she had hesitated, the only time she had faltered, was when he had asked her a simple question. When he had asked her her name. When he had wished her luck.
His lieutenant clears her throat, grabbing at Cullen's attention. His troops stare at him, waiting for his orders. He gives the hasty order to move out, even as he feels his cheeks threatening to pink. He busies himself with sheathing his blade and tightening his gauntlets to hide the rising color. Maker help him, he's been caught daydreaming during the apocalypse. Now is not the time, he reminds himself sternly, even though he knows it's a lost cause. He typically can master his thoughts, but sometimes there's just no helping it. And it happens all too often because of trouble-making, pretty mages.
I'm in trouble, the wise, mature part of him acknowledges wryly, thinking of green eyes and sharp gazes. The rest of him slams an iron-clad door on that thought, locking it up tight, and marches off to battle.
Author's note:
Here's the second half of Chapter 3. Thank you to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited and followed! Your support makes writing a thousand times easier! If anyone has the time to review, I would greatly appreciate the feedback. Reviews help me figure out what I'm doing right and/or wrong, and mean a better story for everyone!
Sidenote: I imagine Varenya's accent as a mix between Welsh (like Merril's) and Scottish (like Sebastian). An odd mix, to be sure.
For Lucy, who did an anonymous review: Thank you for your kind words! The cover pic is indeed Varenya. I hope you enjoy this chapter!