PART I

While I may be alone, in truth my plans keep me company,
A great adventure's gonna come my way.

Without a Face - "Flux Capacitor"

I would like to reach out my hand,
I may see you, I may tell you to run,
You know what they say about the young.
Send me on my way.

Rusted Roots - "Send Me On My Way"

CHAPTER 1

Bianca Has An Itch

9:41 Dragon
20th Firstfall

The Free Marches
Kirkwall

41 Days Earlier

"Xebenkeck. Monstrous… eternal… lusting, hungering evermore for the blood of the innocent. Once a man, you say? Perhaps, but for certain a man no longer. A beast without parallel, hiding beneath a veneer of alluring beauty, a thing of mottled grey flesh and plated armor, seemingly fused together at the bone. An evil undying that stalked these very streets in the dead of night, plucking the young from their beds and stripping skin from bone like so much wet parchment from the underside of a boot, all to get at their tender mortal hearts-"

"Oy! Dwarf!" The burly guard in the center of the bar, two tables over, turned in his chair, a disgruntled look on his face. "I'm trying to have a drink here, do you mind?"

Varric sighed and leaned back in his chair. Across from him, the light in the blue eyes of the petite blonde girl died just as fast as it had come, the narrative spell he'd been casting broken. It was so much easier to tell a good horror story at night, by the firelight in his quarters. Unfortunately, he no longer had quarters here, not since he'd returned from Starkhaven. Now he had to make do with the common tables by the bar. When you tell a scary story with daylight streaming through the cracks in the wood paneling and the holes in the roof above, it becomes infinitely harder to maintain control. Especially when noisy, obnoxious guardsmen were about.

"Well, thanks anyway," the girl said, giving a shy smile and standing up off the bench, leaving three bits in her wake.

Varric chuckled, waving his hand. "Wait, wait, wait, you don't have to leave just yet. I've got a million different tales, any kind you like. Just sit down, have another drink."

The girl shook her head, wincing, "Mmm, no thanks. I've got… you know, stuff."

A moment of thick, nearly tangible awkwardness passed between them. There was no 'stuff' to which she needed to attend and they both knew it. She simply wished to be elsewhere but didn't want to leave without his approval. So Varric gave her a big grin. He nodded, taking a gulp of ale from his mug. "Sure, of course. Of course. Off with you now; life, as they say, is…"

She'd already gone; apparently having fled as soon as he'd nodded and lifted the ale.

Varric glanced between the slim shaft of daylight spilling in from The Hanged Man's door as it closed behind her and the near-empty mug he held. "…fleeting."

The guard who'd interrupted his story chuckled. Varric glared at him.

"Something funny, friend?"

The guard nodded vigorously. "Yeah, something's funny, alright. You, old man." He laughed even louder, taking a long drink from his mug.

Varric stood from the bench, gracefully taking Bianca from her seated position next to him and fitting her snugly into the leather-strapped holster along the back of his coat in one smooth, fluid motion.

The burly guard stopped drinking and his smile disappeared as he caught sight of the crossbow, some of his ale spilling out the corners of his mouth and into the thick black tangle of his beard.

Varric walked to the guard's table and sat down across from him. "So why don't you tell me what's so funny about me." It wasn't a question, and the guard noted this. He set his mug down, eyeing Varric.

After a moment of sizing the dwarf up, half of a nervous, twitching grin returned. "What's my name, dwarf?"

Varric frowned. "Beg pardon?"

"My name… fuck it- you recognize me at all? You seen me around before?"

His frown deepened, first with confusion, then in actually trying to place the man's face.

"Yeah," the guard said, " 'at's what I thought. You don't recognize me. It's alright. I know you. Used to be, that didn't mean nothin', right? Who didn't know you? You was Varric Tethras, the right-hand man of the Champion of Kirkwall. You was a writer, too. 'Victory Lane,' 'Qunari Vengeance', 'Hard in Hightown'." The guard took another drink, wiping his mouth, nodding. "Yeah, had me those serials. Read 'em most nights. I was a boy, mind you, thirteen, fourteen, piss and vinegar. Came in here even, more nights then one, snuck in to catch a glimpse of that Champion of yours. Never caught you but once. Took ole' Norah fifteen minutes that night to realize I was too young and toss me out the door, but that's the night I saw ya'. All of ya'.

"This must've been, what, five- no, six years back. I'd covered me'self in a cloak, right, cause I was the right height, now, fourteen years of age and all of about five-eleven, but I didn't have the beard to pull it off, 'at's how Norah kept spottin' me. So I had this cloak, wasn't even a man's cloak, was my mum's," he waved his hands around his head, grinning ear-to-ear, and Varric found himself smiling back, "coverin' the face, and I snuck in with a mess of guards comin' off duty, like me now, only they was comin' off the day shift, and it was right dark outside. And I snuck in, kept to the shadows, walked around the bar and sat in the dingiest corner next to a couple of Lowtown's finest, two drunken idgits covered in filth, they was.

"But I didn't care. Not one bit, cause there you was. There she was, dark hair cut short, lookin' all of ten feet tall standing with the pirate lady. Maker, those were some tits, eh? No disrespect, old man, she was built like a brick shithouse, breasts out to here and ass comin' out the back of that tunic-bottom or whatever. The two of them were laughing and drinking, the hilts of their blades coming out over each shoulder. I thought, the way they looked, you know, the easy way 'tween 'em they had, I thought they was together. Then the elf got up from the table next to ya', she had her hair sort of like the Champion's, you know, real short. Only she didn't have no tits, or not as apparent, anyhow, an' I thought she was a boy at first, 'til I saw her face.

"Now that there was a pixie, like she'd come boundin' right outta the forest and into the tavern. You know what I thought, second she turned and I saw her face and them ears? You had a serial, round thirty-three, thirty-four, what was it? It was the one 'bout the magical forest and the little elven girl going up against that ancient evil, the thing with the body of a man and the head of a boar-"

"Night of the Griffon," Varric said cheerfully, passing a few copper bits to Miri the waitress as she refilled his tankard.

The guard snapped his fingers. "That was it! 'Night of the Griffon', yeah. Daisy, the elf, she had to save the griffon from that boar-thing and cleanse the forest of evil or some such. Liked that one well enough. Anyhow, that's what I thought of when I saw her. Well, the pirate lady, she looks at the Champion, and she looks at the pixie, says something and runs her hand along the pixie's cheek, all nice and adoring-like, and the elf-girl blushes crimson and folds into the Champion's side like the two of 'em was suddenly melded from the same metal and found their way home. The Champion puts her arm around her and she and the pirate lady burst out laughin' at the girl, who hides her face in the Champ's shoulder.

"So I'm in awe at this point, right? Star-struck, I guess. Some people, they just got that vibe about 'em. Heroes. Like, larger than life. The stuff of legends. And here they was, not twelve paces from where I was sittin'. The Champion, the pirate, even the pixie had a way about her, a confidence, I suppose. Like she could stare into the eye of the blight and not blink. And there, next to 'em, sittin' at the table, there was more. There was Guard-Captain Aveline, lookin' kinda out of place, you know, I'm probably biased on this, her being my boss and all, and another elf, with tanned skin and white tattoos all over his body and white hair, looking for all the world like one big muscle of pain. There's a mabari- a mabari hound right from Ferelden at the foot of the table, chewing on a steak the size of which I'd never even had.

"And then, and this is how I know for sure the year was thirty-six, there was the mage with the blond hair, Anderson-"

Varric grimaced. "Anders."

"Right, like I said, Anderson. Him, I'll never forget. It was less than a year from that point that he'd blow up the Chantry and kill all them people, and here he is, looking like a string on a harp strung way too tight, and all you folks oblivious to it." He held up a hand at Varric's reaction. "Not so as I'd blame ya', mind you, from what I hear, the man was a healer for years. Why not trust him, eh? That ain't what this is about. This is about the man next to him, right? What you asked about in the first place. Varric Tethras. Sittin' at the side of the Champion herself, buyin' rounds for the bar and laughin' louder and livelier than any other man in the room. If there was a beatin' heart to the group, it was you, dwarf. People say sometimes that it was the Champion kept all them livin' legends in the same spot, the same group. I say, bullshit to that, friend, it wasn't no Champion could corral so much power to one spot and keep it strong for nearly eight years. She had too much ambition and energy, the whole thing would've imploded after too long. Heard you even had the fuckin' prince of Starkhaven runnin' with that crowd. No way the Champion kept 'em all together all those years.

"I tell 'em," the guard struck the table with each following word, "it was Varric, fucking, Tethras."

There was a moment of silence between them. Varric watched the guard and shifted in his seat. He took a drink from his mug. The guard followed suit.

He cleared his throat. "So that's about the time the room got quiet. I don't remember how it happened, I don't know if there's ever really a reason for it; maybe somebody shouted, 'Oy, dwarf, tell us a story, why don't ya'?!' But I don't think so. I think sometimes, when the mood is right and everybody's ready, it's like a bit of serendipity or something creeps into a place and settles on it, and everybody just knows something's about to happen. So the room gets quiet and all of 'em, all the patrons, the Champion and her pixie, the pirate and Captain Aveline, even the fuckin' mabari, all eyes are on you. The flames from the lanterns are lickin' the air behind you and you look out at the crowd and begin like this…"

The guard was leaning in over the table, his hands out before him as though he were literally about to weave a tale from thin air. Varric realized that he too was leaning forward, hanging on the next word.

The guard took on a brackish, rasping voice, a passable impression of Varric as he began, "Xebenkeck. Monstrous… eternal… lusting, hungering evermore for the blood of the innocent. Once a man, you say? Perhaps." The guard stopped then, burst out laughing and leaning back, clapping his hands.

Varric chuffed and rolled his eyes. "That's it? That's why I'm funny? Every storyteller tells a tale more than once, that's the-"

"No-no," the guard said, waving his hand, still laughing, "you don't get it?! I don't believe it!"

"What are you getting at?"

The guard stared at him, his young eyes wide in disbelief. "It's been six years! I was a boy of fourteen; I'm twenty now, a man grown, looking at the shadow of a giant I never knew! The Battle of Kirkwall ended and you all took off for parts unknown while the rest of us rebuilt. Guard-Captain Aveline came back within the year and took up her old post, but everybody saw that coming. She couldn't live without this place. But you, you who kept all that power in one place for nearly a decade with a mighty dwarven fist, you returned to… to what? I don't know how long a dwarf lives, maybe you got another hundred years or some such in ya', but to what inglorious end? There's nothing here for you, and all you do is sit in a half-empty bar, at the best of times, mind you, offering the same old stories to anyone who'll listen. That is why it's funny, old man."

Varric, stunned, sat in silence. The guard got up, reached into a pocket and pulled out three silvers, tossing them to Miri as she passed. "Another round for the dwarf, Miri." He grabbed his shield as he moved to leave and glanced down at Varric, who was still staring straight ahead. "There's a line from 'Hard in Hightown,' volume three, always comes to mind when I see you now, y'know? Donnen's with a lieutenant at the climax in the market and he starts to chuckle, and Vic, the lieutenant, says, 'Donnen, all these men are gonna die in this siege, why you laughin'?' And Donnen looks at him and says-"

"It's a tragedy, Vic," Varric finished for him, "if you don't laugh, you're gonna have to cry."

The guard stared down at him. "Just so," he said.

A few seconds later Varric heard the door to the Hanged Man swing shut behind him.

It was at this point that Varric realized he was the only patron left in the Hanged Man.

"Varric, no!" Aveline growled between gritted teeth, placing a plate down in front of him.

"Hey, listen, it's not like I'm asking to take jobs away from your people, you know!" Varric explained as he picked up the sandwich she'd set in front of him. "Just let me tag along on a few patrols, show the boys how it's done."

Aveline grabbed a bottle of brandy from a shelf and settled into the chair behind her desk, taking two glasses out from a drawer. "Do you think me such a lousy guard-captain that I'd need to send the likes of you out with my men for training, of all things?"

"Oh, so Udina was good training material, a damnable mabari, but I'm not?" Varric replied in indignation, amidst the first bite of the sandwich, then quickly added, "mm, what is this, hare?"

"It's venison," she said, pouring the brandy.

"It's so tender… marvelous."

"Isn't it? When Donnic said he wanted that hunting lodge in Wildervale twice a year I called him a fool… now twice a year I get to enjoy eating my words."

"And venison."

"That too," she said, passing him a glass. "And Udina never passed out drunk on a job, for what it's worth."

Varric nearly made a show of spit-taking the brandy in his mouth, but from the look on the auburn-haired guard-captain's face he reconsidered, swallowing and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Madam Vallen, I am beyond shocked, the word 'appalled' fails to define the state you've put me in, I have never-"

"Save it for someone who hasn't spent ten years in your company, dwarf," Aveline said, waving her hand dismissively, sipping her brandy, "your bullshit flies in far fairer skies when you're the one telling the story. I distinctly recall you and Hawke going round for round one night in the Hanged Man, determined to see the other fall first, and when neither of you did and that idiot nobleman flung himself into the bar screaming about bandits-"

"Whoa, whoa, Aveline, you've got this all wrong; I mean, apart from all of that being true, Hawke and I did not pass out during that fight with the Ostwick bandits-"

"I never said Hawke passed out. When we got to the site of the attack, Hawke immediately announced our presence, drew out the bandit leader and his girlfriend with insults so vile I'd put a guard in the stocks for repeating them, put a dagger between the leader's legs and broke his girlfriend's nose and then knocked herself unconscious attempting to combat roll underneath an ox. You, on the other hand, used the resulting chaos to crawl into the nearest overturned caravan and pass out."

"You, my good woman, need to learn the difference between a drunken dwarf passing out, which is a virtual impossibility, and a drunken dwarf simply knowing when the battle is already won and taking a victory nap."

"Ah," Aveline said, taking another sip of brandy, "and do all drunken dwarven victory naps take place mere inches from the spot where they've recently vomited?"

"Only if the victory was truly a glorious one."

"Well, if you'd asked those of us who were still conscious, I'm sure Fenris and Isabela would've told you that it was. That being said, the mabari never victory-vomited or napped."

"Which made him perfect training material, I take it."

Aveline smiled, lifting her glass to him. "As you say."

Varric nodded, his lunch no more than a smattering of crumbs on the silver plate and the brandy in the glass down to a third of what it had been. He stared into the glass, his eyes losing focus.

Aveline frowned. "Varric? What is it? There's more to this than you wanting to join my men on patrols."

The dwarf was quiet a moment longer, tracing the carvings in the glass with one thumb. Eventually, in a hushed, tired voice, he said, "Bianca has an itch."

Aveline laughed. "What?"

Varric came back to himself then, his gaze finding focus, his eyes opening wider; he looked at Aveline. He took a deep breath and gave her a weak smile. "I'm getting old, and Bianca has an itch."

Aveline growled. She took an inkwell from the desktop and chucked it at him.

Varric caught it before it struck him in the face. "Hey, what?!"

"We're the same age, you cretin! And I'll be damned if thirty-six is the year I start referring to myself as 'getting old'."

"Well, we were always the eldest-"

"Next to whom, Varric? Anders, Hawke? I met Marian when she was barely past twenty, the twins all of seventeen or eighteen, and Anders was only a sight older than her. Isabela was just a few years shy of us and Merrill, well… Merrill was a child to the end of it."

Varric shot her a strange glance at that comment, and Aveline sensed that she'd struck a nerve. She rolled her eyes. "All I'm saying is that we were all young, all violent and brash and eager to prove ourselves. And we spent longer than most doing so, and were far more successful at it as well. But that bit's over now. The traveling and adventuring days are behind us, as they should be, and that doesn't make us old, we're simply moving on. What violence remains in Kirkwall as I keep my post here is more than enough to satiate my bloodlust, thank you very much, and you should feel the same."

She offered him the bottle of brandy, and he nodded, leaning forward with his glass outstretched. As she refilled it, Aveline said, "you know, as a writer, I'm surprised you're having such a difficult time finishing one chapter and beginning the next."

Varric settled back into his chair, eyeing her thoughtfully. "But Bianca…"

Aveline glared at him. "-can get her itch scratched at the hunting lodge in Wildervale. We still have it paid for through the next fortnight. I'll have Donnic give you the directions."

"I don't know if I'm the deer-hunting type, milady," Varric said, making a face.

"There's not just deer in that forest, and don't call me that. There's wild boar and wolves and bears-"

"Oh my," Varric said dryly.

"And who knows," Aveline smiled, drinking the last of the brandy from her glass, "you may run into some bandits along the way, perhaps a wild sylvan. Come back with a fresh story or two to write."

When everything for the trip to the lodge was packed, Donnic smiled and clapped Varric on the shoulder. "Now," he said, "I'll bet you're feeling better already, eh, serah?"

They stood in the foyer of Varric's Hightown manse, a home which he'd never felt quite comfortable living in (or even truly calling 'home') and yet an inevitability when Aveline had informed Eric Guillory, the new Viscount, that Varric had returned to Kirkwall and was attempting to once again retain his spot in the Hanged Man. Guillory would have none of it for a hero of the city and had instead retained this garishly outfitted miniature mansion just off the markets, insisting the dwarf keep himself safe rather than squat in some Lowtown hovel. It was an offer he couldn't refuse, as Aveline and Donnic had been so kind as to remind him from time to time. This usually occurred whenever a guardsman spotted him spending an 'unhealthy' amount of time in the southern edge of Kirkwall, where many of the buildings still remained without renters after the Chantry's destruction.

Varric's gaze roamed over the foyer and the adjoining living rooms, from the luxurious sofas he never sat in, the ornately carved desk he'd rarely used for writing (what little of that he still did, as the words had been so much harder to find these last three years), and the flowing silk tapestries bearing the Tethras family insignia. The insignia, a symbol of ill-gotten wealth and unearned pride he'd spent a lifetime attempting to distance himself from, now a black spot hanging from the walls of his residence. About the only things he could see that he'd ever gotten any real use out of were the hearth and the liquor tray.

"Not just yet," he told Aveline's husband truthfully.

Donnic chuckled. "Give it a bit more time. Get out on that open road, smell that fresh, Vimmark mountain air and watch the world change from golden brown to deep green as everything becomes wooded and leafy." He took a deep breath, grinning. "It puts a man right, it does."

"'Leafy', huh?"

"Indeed, serah. I wish I'd known you'd been in this way a week passed. I could've taken you with me on my own sojourn at the lodge. Bronoski is good company, don't get me wrong, but he's always so loud. It frightens the fawns away. And you, well… you clearly need some time away from all this."

Varric frowned. "Maybe I do."

"Of course you do!" Donnic took him by the shoulders. "Maker bless my good wife, serah, but she's a woman all the same. She doesn't understand, couldn't understand a man's need for the hunt. To catch the beast out there is to tame the beast within. Just you wait and see. Your pen will be flowing freely again in no time, and the printing presses* will be all the better for it, I can tell you."

Varric grimaced. "Ah… so Aveline told you about the writer's block."

Donnic gave him a quizzical look. "Why would she need to? I'm quite capable of reading myself, you know. Unless, of course, there's naught to read."

"Of course. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest-"

Donnic waved his hand. "Think nothing of it. Just enjoy the hunt. Tame the beast. See if you don't feel better." He took his shield and scabbard from where they rested on a nearby ottoman and stepped to the doorway. "I once read somewhere that the greatest journeys begin with a single step forward, and that the only harm one can surely come to is by not taking that step, no matter what the destination."

He opened the door to the cloudless, starry night and, with a last smile and a respectful bow, withdrew into the street, headed for home where his wife awaited, no doubt with a meal made of some furry woodland creature Donnic had carted back from Wildervale. He left the door standing open, the intent of the action clear to Varric. Muster yourself and get going, dwarf.

"I really wish people would stop quoting my work to me," Varric grumbled. "Was I always so trite?"

He took his time darkening the manse, blowing out the candles and killing the flame in the hearth, and doing this only after giving Bianca one last loving bath with oils and a scrub brush. He polished the metal, scrubbed the wood and reapplied the sealant, restringing her and checking each bolt in his quiver for defects, dents and scrapes.

After the passing of an hour, the manse was black and hollow and silent, the curtains drawn and the hearth down to half a dozen dull, red embers. As Varric sat nearby with his two canvas travel-satchels next to him, watching the last of the embers burn out, Aveline's words came back to him in the dark.

'Merrill, well… Merrill was a child to the end of it.'

He couldn't stop his mind from reaching back to the bright, sunny day in Tantervale where everything changed. That blighted last job they never should've taken. He never should've taken. He remembered the screams. The blood and the fire. The look of horror on Merrill's face as she ran towards that tiny, frail body-

Someone stepped into the room behind him, yanking him out of the desperate memory. They were the soft footsteps of someone unmistakably attempting to be stealthy and doing a subpar job of it.

"You picked the wrong place to get lost, friend," Varric growled, reaching into one of his satchels and pulling out a small flame grenade, twisting around and tossing the explosive to the marble floor behind him.

The clay jar shattered and liquid fire roared to life, blasting away the darkness in a fiery show of red and orange flames, illuminating the living room, the furniture and the hooded figure before him, casting ten foot shadows on the walls of the manse.

The man in the hood and robes reacted quickly, his pale hands reaching out to the flames licking at his legs. Ice burst from his fingertips, snuffing out the fire around him.

Varric rolled to his left, snatching Bianca as he went, locking back the first bolt and coming to rest on one knee with the repeating crossbow aimed directly at the man's heart.

"Wait!" The man shouted, every candle in the room bursting to life.

Varric blinked away the sudden brightness, his aim never faltering.

"Maker, dwarf! Just wait a second!" The man said. He reached up his hands to pull back his hood, but it wasn't necessary. Varric would know that voice to his dying day. The strength and the vulnerability immediately laid bare by it, the sympathy it evoked. The death it had wrought. Varric lowered his aim slightly.

Anders stood not three lengths from him, a wary smile on his face, russet-golden bangs falling over his deep-set eyes. He held out one hand as if to stay the coming barrage. He was breathing heavily.

"That's a fine 'hello', friend!" He said, laughing nervously.

"Hello," Varric said, and pulled the trigger.

ARTHUR'S NOTE*

I love Wikipedia. It isn't the mishmash of sixty percent pure bullshit, thirty percent slanted truth, seven percent crazy and three percent reliability it started out as. If a motherfucker needs to confirm that the printing presses existed ages ago, he can now use Wiki to do so, and feel adequately comfortable that the information he's using it to confirm is legit. This motherfucker is, time and again, overjoyed when he fact-checks the info he's using from Wiki only to find that the action was unnecessary. It even makes Jimmy Wales' annoying, goddamned, kicked puppy-dog face on the "Donate Money" banners tolerable when they pop up every four to six months. And it makes me glad that I've donated so much money over the years because of that annoying, goddamned, kicked puppy-dog face.

As always, thanks to my Beta Reader Skeasel for the thankless job of editing, polishing, finger-wagging and "STFU, end the damn sentence already!"-ing.