Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.

A/N: Is this a LotR rip-off? Of course it is, almost all fantasy stories eventually get around to a LotR rip-off so why should I be any different? But it didn't start off with the intention of being a LotR rip-off, it started out intended as the Statue of Liberty built in Denerim harbor and when I realized that I needed two statues to turn them into a defensive structure it became the great statues of Isildur and his father. There's also a bit of The Neverending Story in the way the eyes work. C'est la vie.

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Paragons

All things considered, Anora was pleased. There had been no assassination attempts, harbor fortifications were progressing well in Amaranthine, Highever, West Hill, and Gwaren, and Captain Isabella had sped off in her ship immediately upon receiving commission with the appointed ambassador to Nevarra and had returned in a record-shattering month and four days, bearing a hold full of lavish gifts from the King of that distant land that were offloaded at the docks with the King and Queen in attendance to see and receive word.

"Don't read too much into it, Your Majesties," the Captain…a rather oily character, but evidently an accomplished seafarer…had said upon that occasion. "Nevarrans love to give gifts, the more extravagant the better. Their generosity goes to prove just how much more than you they have, and how much they can afford to toss away to the lowly. It doesn't mean they'll actually send aid. But they might, because they hate the Orlesians almost as much as you do."

She chuckled then, and brought out a great ironwood chest from her own cabin. "Your father, Queen Anora, is a great hero to the Nevarrans, did you know? Now more than ever, apparently, since he evidently left quite a trail of dead chevaliers behind when he left Orlais. His Majesty informed me that this is for him, and for him alone, and bade me take exceedingly good care of it."

Champion Hawke was with them to greet the return of the ship and her Captain, as the Crown's liaison with the mercenaries, and she asked, "What is it?"

"Well how should I know?" Captain Isabella said, rather petulantly. "It's in a locked box, isn't it?"

"Isabella…"

The Captain sighed in annoyance. "It's nothing to get all in a tizzy over, it's just a moldy old fur."

"You've had it open, then?" Anora asked the woman, with her sternest glare fixed in place.

"I have, Your Majesty. Well I had to, didn't I? It could have been something dangerous, like a load of Qunari saar-qumeck that would kill all of you when the lid was off. I was only performing a vital service to the Crown."

"Sure you were," Champion Hawke said, with an expressive roll of the eyes.

"Have it open again, I want to see," Anora said.

Alistair touched her on the arm then. "My dear, perhaps it would be better to…"

"To wait for father?" Anora said. "What the devil for? I know exactly what he'll say, 'What the deuce am I supposed to do with that bloody thing?' I'll have a look for myself; if it is serviceable, I may be able to put it to use."

"My kind of lady," Isabella said, and knelt down with her handful of picklocks. In a trice she had the lock jimmied and the lid open.

"The King of Nevarra didn't give you a key along with this locked chest?" Hawke asked incredulously.

"Well, no - didn't seem to trust me with it. I suppose he figured the Royal Locksmith or who the hell ever would have it open, but I figured why put such an august personage to such mean usage? I can force a lock just as easy as he could."

Anora, meanwhile, lifted the folded pelt out of the box and allowed it to fall open naturally. It was not at all moldy - the tawny fur was as clean and soft and perfect as if just cleaned and brushed. The creature outlined by the stretched hide was enormous, with razor sharp meat hook claws and gargantuan fangs still intact.

"I know what that is," Alistair said wonderingly. "That's a lion. They live in Nevarra and parts of the Anderfels. They're fierce predators."

"I know exactly what to do with this," Anora said. She let the pelt fall back into the box and gestured to one of the laborers. "Take this chest to Pramin el Sulabar's shop in the high market square and tell him I'll be there shortly to inform him of my wishes for it."

So in all, Anora considered things were well in hand - and the best news of all was contained in the back rooms of Pramin el Sulabar's, Madame Mellaris's, and Master Wade's. All she needed now was for father and the Hero of Ferelden to return to Denerim, and by the joyous news filtering in from the bannorn that would happen soon. Bann Ceorlic III, who had inherited non-existant holdings upon the death of his father four years ago, had already left the city to see for himself the truth of what the criers were touting, and Anora had little doubt but that the man would begin rebuilding Lothering in the spring. And it appeared that the dwarves were at last done with their mysterious building project in the harbor, for no more great wagons came streaming in from Orzammar, the scaffolding beneath the monumental expanses of plain canvas had been torn down, and King Bhelen had arrived yesterday, looking a bit shaken by the vast sky overhead but rallying valiantly to appear perfectly regal and composed. It was a bit of a wonder to her that the dwarves could be so put off by all the nothing up above and have no apparent difficulty whatsoever in laboring so very high above the earth under their canvas ceiling. The statues, silent and enigmatic beneath their shrouds, towered over the shipyards as high as the tower of Fort Drakon well up on the mountainside. Nothing of that scale had ever been seen in Ferelden - even the Circle Tower did not stand so tall. She quite looked forward to seeing them at last.

There was discord in her symphony of progress, however. An alarming rumor had come to town a few days past from Amaranthine with a group of terrified traders, who claimed that the Fighting Ferelden had been sunk by an armada of Orlesian ships. No official messenger had yet come to refute or confirm this rumor, however, and that in and of itself was alarming. Could the arling already be overtaken by chevaliers? It was a chilling thought.

Less frightening, perhaps, but no less unfortunate, was the fate of the Denerim Alienage. Bloody Lung had struck the elves, its source unknown. Many elves had immigrated to Ferelden from the Free Marches, taking advantage of free passage and the promise of work and opportunity, and the disease was not unknown there, but rumor had it that the Orlesians from the ship the Fighting Ferelden had sunk off Denerim harbor had brought an infected elf to the city. The last surviving crewman of that ship was still stubbornly silent in the dungeons of Fort Drakon. Fortunately it seemed that the Alienage had been quarantined in time and the fast-spreading disease was not running rampant through the streets of Denerim, but there were more than a thousand elves locked away in that tiny space behind the walls to suffer and die for lack of treatment. It was a great pity, and a terrible loss of manpower as well. And the elves of Denerim had frankly suffered enough in recent years. It seemed as if the Maker really ought to reach down and help the poor bastards for once.

So no, not all was sunshine and buttercups. But when was it ever?

"My lady, can I not entreat you to wear something more becoming?" Erlina asked for the fifth or sixth time. "Your Majesty looks like a pretty boy in those clothes."

"I may not be putting out to sea, Erlina," Anora said, amused despite the tickle of annoyance she felt, "but I am going out on a ship where deck space is limited and I will not want to be tripping over skirts while rigging and yardarms or whatever they're called are flying everywhere about." She adjusted the high collar of her sleeveless leather doublet and gave a final twitch to the cuffs of her blouse. It was not a Queenly ensemble, perhaps, but it was practical, and she fancied she looked well enough in it. Judging from the cheeky way Alistair pinched her behind when he saw her in it, he thought so, too.

He was looking very tired these days, she thought, and no wonder since he allowed himself so little sleep. She was rather proud of the way he'd knuckled down to the challenge, inane quips at least temporarily set aside, but she worried that he was using himself up. He'd aged a score of years in the past few months, it seemed. He wore it well, but it did make his resemblance to King Maric - at least as she remembered the old monarch - almost eerie. She would have to exert her wiles to make him rest a bit now and then - much the way her own mother had often cajoled her father into laying aside his burdens for a few hours when they began to tell too heavily upon him. Men were so damnably stubborn about doing their duty instead of doing what was good for them that enabled them to perform their duty more efficiently. Fortunately women were more sensible. She had high hopes that Elilia Cousland would be able to manage her father nicely. He, of all people, needed a keeper. He would beat himself to death against a stone wall if he took it into his head that it would in some way benefit Ferelden to do so.

Their party - composed of herself, King Alistair, King Bhelen, Arls Vaughan and Eamon and Bann Franderel, the latter two with wives in tow, Champion Hawke and her pretty sister Bethany and her Dalish lover Merrill (Anora had nothing personally against either elves or same-sex love affairs, but did they have to be so open about theirs?), the Champion's fine hound Spirit, Guardsman Aveline and Donnic and a dozen dozen attendants and guards, including that unnerving white-haired elf the Champion had in her company, the Tevinter with the odd tattoos who was now part of King Alistair's personal guard -climbed on board The Siren's Call II and Captain Isabella gave the call to make sail.

"Haul ass, you louts!" she shouted at her men, who stepped lively enough. The woman ran her ship the way father ran his armies, Anora thought, and he would probably like her - provided he didn't like her too much, as she had noticed the way the good captain gave the eye to seemingly every man she encountered, and every woman as well. And she was unseemly familiar with His Majesty, who she evidently knew from years past. Just how well she knew Alistair remained an open question, but for his part the King just seemed uncomfortable with her innuendo-laden attempts at conversation, so Anora allowed the matter to rest.

For now.

The ship made anchor just far enough from shore that the full height of the covered statues in the harbor could be seen. Two teams of brontos waited on the wharves, tethered to great hooks in the back of the canvas, their drovers waiting orders to pull sheets. "I wonder what they're going to do with all that canvas?" Alistair whispered to her. "We could do a lot with that amount of canvas."

She shushed him, although privately she coveted the many hundreds of square feet of cloth herself. Their soldiers would never lack for tents…but the dwarves had already gifted them extravagantly with the statues, it would be impolite and impolitic to ask for more.

"Your Majesties, Lords and Ladies, gentle people of Ferelden," King Bhelen began grandly.

"Gentle people? He hasn't met many Fereldens, has he?" Alistair said, with a chuckle. Anora elbowed him sharply in the ribs. The inane quips hadn't fallen entirely by the wayside, she was chagrined to see.

King Bhelen ignored him, which was always the best policy, Anora had found. "It is my great honor as King of Orzammar to present to you…your Paragons."

A dwarf high in the crow's nest flashed a signal to shore, and the canvases slowly, majestically rose over the backs of the twin statues. They were not identical, something that was easy to see before the cloth uncovered more than two pairs of monumental feet. A bit further and it was clear that while one great stone image depicted a man, the other was obviously female. They were carved realistically rather than with geometric precision as the statues of dwarven Paragons were, but certainly in fine heroic posture.

When the cloth covered only the last portion of each body it was revealed that the male statue, on the northwestern end of the harbor, had its arms crossed over its chest, legs spread in a strong stance, a sword and shield resting easily on the ground at its feet. The female statue, on the southeastern end of the harbor, stood with one foot slightly forward and one arm outstretched as if to clasp the hand of the weary traveler, but the other hand rested lightly on the hilt of a gigantic greatsword partly concealed behind her legs. That outstretched and completely unsupported arm was a wonder, more so than the rest of the statues put together, not just because so much negative space in statuary was difficult to achieve but because the statues were pieced together of interlocking stones, joined so perfectly that the seams were utterly invisible. Anora wondered greatly how the dwarves had managed it.

But she didn't have time to wonder long. The sheets rose a bit higher…

"Oh dear Maker," she groaned, when she realized what she saw and what it portended.

"What is it, dearest?" Alistair asked, and in response she could only point at the shoulders of the male statue. A pair of narrow braids rested on the stone figure's armored chest. "I don't see what…"

The last portion of canvas fell away in a rush, pulled by gravity, and Alistair smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand.

"Maker's breath," he said reverently, "the Landsmeet is going to have kittens, and I can't imagine Loghain will be terribly thrilled about this, either."

King Bhelen utterly missed their reaction, perhaps because he didn't know what kittens were. He beamed his benevolence upon the assembled from approximately waist height as the humans slowly assimilated the fact that standing sentinel over Denerim harbor at a height of more than a thousand feet each were Elilia Cousland and Loghain Mac Tir.

"Excuse me, King Bhelen, Ser," Alistair said, with a nervous chuckle, "but where precisely did you get the idea that these were…er…Paragons?"

"The Warden proved herself worthy of the title by what she did for us in Orzammar, of course," Bhelen said. "It would not have been proper to so honor her there, as she is not of our ancestors, but it seemed only fitting to so honor her in her own native lands. As for the Paragon Loghain, it was your father King Maric who told us of his Rise, long ago when he visited during the reign of my father King Endrin. He told of how the casteless criminal Loghain triumphed over all adversity to become champion of all Ferelden, and founded his own noble house. I confess as a child I was much impressed by King Maric's tales of his exploits."

Anora coughed significantly. "That does rather make him sound like the very definition of a Paragon," she muttered to her husband. "And I'm certain your father would have been pleased as punch to capitalize upon the dwarven king's misconception. He would have considered it…a fine lark. A joke intended more upon my father, I suspect, than upon King Endrin and Orzammar."

"I daresay my father would have approved of this, then," Alistair said, as he indicated the statue and sighed. "I confess it's a remarkably good likeness, better than any I've seen done in portrait, and honestly it seems rather fitting that he stand guard over the capital for the rest of eternity, but I really don't look forward to the Landsmeet."

"Your devoted Uncle looks as if he doesn't want to wait for that venue to give vent to his feelings on the matter."

Eamon was quite red in the face and seemed on the verge of apoplexy. Arl Vaughan and Bann Franderel, also no great supporters either of Loghain or indeed of the Crown (but who were invited only because they were the only Ferelden noblemen in Denerim at the time), also looked ready to burst with affront. But the tide of invective they threatened was forestalled by a shout from the crow's nest.

"Ship ahoy!"

Captain Isabella stepped to the rails, pulled a Qunari-made spyglass from the sash at her waist, and sighted along the line of the sailor's pointing arm.

"A warship, and fucking huge," she said. "I think it's sinking, though."

She watched for another few moments and then she laughed. "Oh. It's not sinking. It's that great wallowing tub, the Fighting Ferelden."

"What? Let me see!" Alistair demanded eagerly, and grabbed the spyglass. "Maker's breath, it is! Old Ironsides herself, and none the worse for wear, as far as I can see. What a bloody relief!"

Anora agreed wholeheartedly. It was wonderful that the ship was not sunk, not just because she was their only proper seaborne defense and represented a tremendous investment (mostly of her father's own coin, she well knew) but because her father had always had such great faith in his clumsy ironclad ship and it was heartening to see that it was not unfounded - when King Maric was lost at sea and their plans for a Ferelden navy scrapped, it was hard for her to say whether it was the loss of his friend or the sudden intense disfavor of his ship that hurt Loghain more. Maker only knows what this "Orlesian Armada" the merchants spoke of had actually been, but Anora was very glad that Maric's Wallowing Loghain was still afloat.

For a "tub," the big ship hove into shouting distance with astonishing rapidity, buoyed along by magic. The sounds of merry singing could be heard aboard, and a cry went up from the decks as someone in the rigging recognized the King and Queen aboard The Siren's Call II. A tall, thin, dark-haired man stepped to the rails and shouted an halloo through cupped hands.

"Your Majesties! Grand news from Amaranthine! Your ship fought twelve Orlesian warships and sank them all!"

"Maker's breath! Twelve?" Eamon gasped, and Isolde clutched his arm to keep him from the swoon that seemed inevitable.

"Grand news indeed!" Alistair shouted back. "But you are not my ship's captain…I know you, do I not?"

"Aye, Your Majesty," the man hailed back. "I am Senior Warden Nathaniel Howe - acting Warden Commander. I have much news I bring to you from the north."

"Ah, I remember you, Warden Howe. At the palace then, in an hour?"

"Aye, Your Majesty. 'Til then."

King Bhelen chuckled. "There is more to see, Your Majesties, but we should wait until your ship clears the breach. We need a clean target."

The Fighting Ferelden zipped into port like a clipper, with a resumption of triumphant songs from the men working the decks, and at last the seas were clear. King Bhelen gave a signal, and shortly thereafter gigantic lyrium runes blended into the design of the sculptures flared alight - as did both enormous pairs of lyrium-laced eyes, with an effect eerily like a flash of sudden awareness.

"Oh, Maker…they're even the right color," Alistair groaned, with a halfhearted chuckle. "That is just…creepy, seriously. It was bad enough when it was just a gigantic statue of my father-in-law, but now it looks like he's just standing there, a thousand feet tall, staring down at me with suspicion and judgment."

"One thousand, two hundred and forty-six feet, Your Majesty, to be precise," Bhelen said. "The Paragon Elilia stands just a bit shorter, as she does in life."

"What is the purpose of the lyrium-glowing eyes?" Alistair asked. "Other than skeeving me out, that is."

"They're not just decorative, Your Majesty," Bhelen said, with a grim sort of chuckle in his voice. "Bring on the derelict," he called. A decrepit old ship, barely floating, was hauled in by a line attached to a sturdy tugboat. "Watch this."

A catapult on the derelict's deck suddenly hurled a gigantic flaming tar bomb directly at Denerim harbor. Alistair shrieked in terror, but before he could even blush at the girlishness of the sound, Statue Loghain's eyes had shot cold blue bursts of enchantment power, scoring a direct hit upon the tar bomb which simply seemed to cease to exist, and Statue Elilia's eyes did the same to the derelict vessel. It was just…not…there anymore, and the sea rushed in to fill the suddenly empty void where it had been with an authoritative thwapping sound.

"King Bhelen!" Anora said, in dismay, "Were there men aboard that ship?"

"Of course not, Your Majesty. The catapult was rigged to loose by remote trigger, from the tug. But just imagine what would happen to an Orlesian vessel that attempted to do the same to your fair city?"

It was monstrous, diabolical…and yet, once the first shock wore off, quite an attractive idea. "If I may, Your Highness, why do the dwarves not use such things against the darkspawn?" Alistair asked.

"We once did," Bhelen replied. "But it requires an immense amount of lyrium to create such enchantments, which in turn means an immense amount of stone and the space to put it - we didn't make these statues this big merely to impress you. The places where our great sentinel statues stood are no longer held by us, though one hopes that will not remain true forever. But the truth is, such things are less effective against darkspawn then they are against siege weapons - which the darkspawn generally don't use. But they seemed well-suited to answer a few of your current concerns, and Ferelden is and hopefully shall remain our greatest ally."

"When we go back to the harbor," Arl Vaughan ventured, eyeing the grand statues nervously, "they won't take us for an enemy warship, will they?"

"Not unless we used some weapon upon the city," King Bhelen said. "So don't."