"Magister, this is pointless!" a snobbish voice that deliberately prolonged vowels and came with a pair of narrowed cat eyes glancing around the midnight cemetery said. The eyes were so blue and bright that the unusual color was apparent even in the starless night.

"Patience, my dear," a mellifluous voice replied; smooth as silk. "Patience. He'll come." This time the voice didn't sound so sure, though.

The shadows crept solitarily through the narrow corridors of cemetery, moving in topsy-turvy circles; unknowingly, they had been drawn closer and closer to one another until they crowded under a full-grown willow tree in stifling silence. The uncertainty of what would happen in next second was tangible and it warped their minds with unreal visions of skeletons rising from the graves and returning the cemetery back to those who were dead. The Magister was a seasoned man indeed, though even his mind didn't go untouched by that dismal place of mossy decrepit tombstones, lazily slithering fluffs of iridescent mist which gagged him and tall twisted trees with their leaves being viciously ripped off by coming winter. It was as if the whole place was dead; not just men and women it was built for.

"Magister, I think we should go," the woman's voice didn't sound so snobbish this time. She kept jerking at any negligible sound and she would have drawn her staff if only it wouldn't openly show her fear.

"Now, now, Hadriana," he jovially massaged her tensed shoulders when a loud sound cracked not far from them, as if a shriveled thick stick broke beneath a boot. In such deafening silence, it resounded around as if someone banged a bell in cathedral. At a subtle sign of assent from the Magister, his apprentice and nine men he had brought with him drew their bows and staves and fanned out with slow cautious steps.

"If they shoot my horse, I'm gonna be really pissed off."

Danarius whirled around at the thin mocking voice in his ear and just for a fleeting second Samael was able to glance behind that mask of a venerable mighty mage who had powers at his command Hawke couldn't ever understand. There was an old frightened man beneath it, who was but a shadow of his former glorious self and who sweated like any other when Death came for him. But not tonight apparently, for tonight Hawke found himself in need of the Magister.

"Hold!" the Magister picked himself up remarkably fast as his smooth voice reached his minions who were not far from shooting at anything that moved; including the Champion of Kirkwall. "Spread into a loose circle around us and wait," Danarius issued a brusque order to freakishly tall minions' leader which was followed by much quieter one. "And don't you dare touch that…. animal." The beanpole of a man casually nodded and granted the Champion a wry look before he spat out and shuffled away. "I believe my apprentice and right hand can stay…?" This half-statement, half-question was settled once Hawke strolled in front of her, scrutinizing her up and down, giving her a strange expressionless long look which was reciprocated with those bright blue eyes which were gaining their edge by seconds. "I reckon you two have not yet been acquainted, so allow me to—"

"The pleasure is all mine, Hadriana," Hawke decided to ignore the Magister as his lips briefly brushed the defiant hand he brought up and held it in his, still eyeing the woman as a long-known person. Or enemy. "And no. She cannot stay," Samael uttered in a demeanor which would not suffer any disobedience and finally he let go of the hand he had been clutching in an entirely not-gentleman way. Hadriana's thin lips hardened into a crooked line as she barely held her exasperation behind teeth and her eyes flashed when Danarius waved her away, impatient to get to the point and blind to his pet's wrath of being left out of an important deliberations.

"Let us proceed to our agreement then, if it pleases you, Magister," Samael granted him a graceful bow when he made sure Hadriana was out of earshot.

"Nothing would please me more indeed, young man," Danarius didn't reciprocate the pleasantries this time as he clearly intended to clarify for Hawke that he was not a man to be toyed with. "State your demands, Champion, and let us be over with this."

"First, I require the assistance of all your men tonight including yourself. There is some… cleaning to be done," Hawke cautiously chose the words to voice his demand, stealing a glance at the Magister's apprentice who watched them from distance with a morose expression on her finely chiseled face.

"Cleaning you say…" Danarius repeated after the Champion the crucial word, rubbing his chin as if the word had fifty possible meanings.

"Yes, cleaning. You see, there is but one last faction brewing in the heart of Undercity and I am sure they are going to attempt for my life before the coronation itself, which is in two days from now. I task you and your men to raid their lair and—" Hawke suddenly fell silent as his feelings briefly took over which he tried to mask as he started pacing around the Magister within a semi-circle. "Leave none alive." Those quiet hoarse words sealed the fate of the mages Anders and Maurella had gathered for their cause as Samael halted within an arm reach in front of the old mage and his eyes, stubbornly cast down until now, slowly looked straight into the grey depths of Danarius' eyes.

"How many?" the Magister demanded a number.

"Not sure, but at least three dozens of scared, malnourished and bedraggled apostates who should have known better than trying to screw me over," Hawke crushed the words between his set jaws, but the truth was he was sick at the moment. Sick of himself, sick of the position he was maneuvered into, sick of everything.

"Anything else?" was Danarius' nonchalant way of accepting the task.

"Actually…" Samael's eyes sought the Magister's apprentice one more time and a vicious little sneer slowly dominated his expression. "I like your apprentice," Hawke's fiery eyes of a daredevil awaited in suspense whether the old mage caught a drift of what was the Champion saying.

"You… like my apprentice?" Danarius blurted out, needlessly repeating the obvious. "You like her… as if… like her?"

"I want you to release her into my services. I shall become her Master and her life shall be mine to spend. In return, I'll give you the one you had come here for. He will go quietly and without a fight and you can do whatever you wish to do with him once you hold the leash again. I… don't… care. Tomorrow night, I shall give you Fenris."

And that was it. Just like that Hawke moved a finger; his voice uttered a word, and the balance of scales quivered and diverted the way he commanded it to. Lives of many people would be sacrificed, so he could prevail. A life of a friend would be forfeited to feed his own pride. His conscience would gain yet another scar and Hawke could nothing but hope it would be able to sustain it while the grim reaper laughed and inscribed with blood of innocent yet another sin to Hawke's already long list.

"I agree to your terms." Danarius took his time before he replied, fastidiously contemplating Hawke's demands and whether they were adequate to what would the Magister gain in return.

"Splendid." Hawke's response somehow stuck in his throat and what should have been a content smile about the beneficial deal, was more like a grimace of misery. "I then leave the first task in your capable hands, Magister. The entrance to the lair I've talked about is hidden somewhere around the white sepulcher you'll find at a center of this cemetery. I suggest you keep the second agreement to yourself until the time comes," he cautiously remarked as to point out Hadriana wouldn't be thrilled to be bartered for an elf she despised and whose life was apparently more precious to the Magister than her loyal self.

Wordlessly, the Magister extended a firm hand toward the younger man, seizing it once Hawke obliged, however hesitant. "This will hold us to our promises. I believe we both know what would happen should one tried to go back on his word." At those slow malevolent words, Samael shook to his very bone marrow. He knew what would happen if he attempted to wiggle Fenris out of the deal. He knew he would have Magister and his dogs breathing down his neck at every turn. This was not the most unsettling fact though. Samael, having difficulties to admit it, was about to betray a friend and he would do it gladly. He would do it for Merrill whom the Tevinter elf held in scorn and whom he attempted to murder several times by now.

"It's settled then. I shall take my leave now, for I have some of cleaning activities on my own." Hawke's hand slipped not without difficulties out of the Magister's grasp and he glanced around, his eyes narrowed in focus as they tried to pierce the thickening mist. If Danarius wondered what it was the Champion was waiting for in silence, the answer presented itself once the shadow of a strapping, yet lean stallion slowly walked out of the mist; the muscles bulging in restlessness, the head jolting up and down in anticipation, the long silver mane wildly waving in long curves, calling the rider to reach for it and swing up into a saddle and gallop, run, trot through the night until a pale dawn broke.

The Magister was, for once, at a loss of words as he appeared to have but one expression for the beast. "Magnificent," he breathed out, eyeing the proud animal with a scorching desire for something we cannot have.

"Yes," Hawke seconded with a simple statement of awareness as he dexterously vaulted into a leather saddle dyed into all shades of silver which looked rather humble in comparison with the horse. "Magister, consider yourself invited to an official after-wedding party for the Guards Captain I'm hosting tomorrow night at my estate in Hightown. I expect your arrival at midnight and don't bring more than two along with you. We do not want to cause uproar, do we?" he laughed a terrible laugh, though his eyes withheld any sign of gaiety. Like a brutish cat-and-mouse game with no winners in the end, it occurred to the Magister as his eyes clashed one last time with the Champion's.

"I accept the invitation," Danarius obviously decided to savor his disconcerted thoughts for himself. "I believe we have both affairs to attend to right now," he concluded the encounter with a chilling sneer on his lips which seemed as if they had forgotten how to smile a very long time ago.

"Until we meet again then," Hawke reflected and mildly heeled Occela who was restlessly shuffling around, giving a soft neigh now and then as if reminding Hawke to abandon words and resort to deeds.

"One thing at a time, my friend. Don't be hasty," Samael fondly whispered into his friend's ear flopping in excitement. "One thing at a time."

oOo

I would never wield the twin blades again. Those two beautifully crafted, svelte, long, perfectly balanced twin blades. Weak without one another. Invincible together. Singing the song of torn flesh, skin on my face sprayed with fine droplets of blood, one breathless second right before my enemy realizes he is about to sustain the inconvenience of dying.

Absent-minded, Hawke stood above the dismembered bodies of men he had never seen before, who died because they happened to be at a wrong place, in a wrong time, serving to a wrong cause. His figure shrouded in a black cape loomed over the destruction, ominous in its torpor and only the blackening blood lazily gliding down the katana and dribbling off its tip showed, who was responsible for the slaughter as the blade was protruding from the merciful black cloth of a cape.

Left hand involuntarily clenched into a contorted spasm, a hissing sound of pain escaped the lips, an expression of dolorous acceptance settled on a face. What his father would have said, he wondered, as he strode over the corpse in his way, crinkling the nose because of the sharp stench filling his nostrils. Oh, he knew what he would have said: Never underestimate the power of friendly intimidation. And intimidate he did.

"Maurellaaaaaa!" he let out an eerie cry from the top of his lungs, speeding throughout the labyrinthine corridors, cramped rooms and wonky staircase. The shout resounded within the bowels of a house the witch was hiding in long after Hawke had let it out.

Breathless, the Champion burst into a chamber alike to the other rooms; small, empty, but not that empty as Samael soon realized. Whom he spotted was most definitely not a scared, malnourished and bedraggled apostate. He was a big guy in the middle of his forties; seasoned, prudent and built to swing a heavy sword to hew down anyone who would dare give him a single hostile look.

Circling around one another, estimating each other, guessing if there was if only tiny possibility not to fight a giant silent man for Samael could tell there was a warrior indeed in front of him and he was quite sure he could live without knowing who of the two of them would walk out of this skirmish while the other one would kneel in a puddle of blood. "My quarrel with the woman hiding in that room behind you does not concern you," Hawke heard himself in disbelief as he started convincing the giant to drop the thought of a fight to death. "Leave now."

The big guy sized the Champion of Kirkwall up with cold hard stare and an unsheathed sword appeared to be his only response to Hawke's pleading words. A second later, he was a big bleeding guy since the first strike Hawke performed had cut the skin above his left eye before he even knew the fight had already begun. Samael was all over the opponent, lashing out, dancing back, exploiting here and there until he gained what he sought. The giant roared in frustration as he seemed simply unable to strike the nimble rival, so he let down his guard as he was on it with a great leap and the heavy sword swung on Hawke with a deadly force. With a war cry Kirkwall hadn't heard in a hundred of years, the giant attacked the Champion with ferocity of a dragon and certainty of a monk. The younger man barely dodged the attack, not admitting for a fleeting second that one single bad choice or move could have cost him his head, and then Hawke realized that this was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for. In one second he fluently managed to switch from his defensive stance into astounding counterattack. The katana vibrated, glistened and listened to the hand that wielded it as if they were one. Samael attacked the big guy with a savagery and abandon that was almost beautiful in its way.

From the profound silence Hawke realized the fight was over and his opponent met his destiny in this room. The Champion himself got away from the fight with nothing less than crimson welts grazing his right cheek and heavily bleeding deep cut on his left arm; the bequest of his both insane and magnificent way of how to end a duel.

oOo

"Daisy…?" A quiet question was accompanied with a soft triple knock on the door leading to Hawke's private quarters in the Hanged Man. Merrill indeed proceeded as ordered by Hawke, making mess in the room and faking loud sounds as if something was actually going on in the room where she was supposed to be with the Champion right now. However, last ten minutes she sat on a bed; frozen as a statue, listening to her racing heart and her mind generated scenarios with the same dreadful end played over and over in her head. That triple knock sent her back to reality and she effortlessly knocked over a chair as she reminded herself of her role here.

"Daisy? Hawke? Are you two all right in there?" Varric's alarmed voice reached the elf through the solid door and she managed to squeal back a proper reply of how great things were at the moment. A long silence behind the door gave Merrill hope that the dwarf would be mollified by her answer.

"Open up. I'm coming in," Varric uttered as he decided he was not mollified indeed. What really got him worried was the fact that there was no Hawke shouting at him through the door in the most colorful ways to shove his concern where the sun doesn't shine.

"Varric, there's really no need to… We are great… I think…" Merrill opened a crack the door, attempting to sound casual, when the dwarf leaned into the door and pushed it wide open, so he could see for himself how great things were inside. His brown eyes slowly flew around the room, stopping for a moment at several objects which in no way could had been accidentally smashed or moved, until they reached Merrill one more time with a single question Varric had at the moment.

"Daisy," he whispered as he inaudibly pushed the door shut behind his back, "where is Hawke?"

oOo

"Come out, come out, little piggy, wherever you are…!" Samael's husky voice echoed under the dome. This was it. The last chamber, unlike the other rooms, was vast and dim. The last place the witch retorted to hide in for she had nowhere else to go when an unexpected and least welcomed guest knocked on her door tonight. Well, more like razed the door open.

Maurella's chest heaved; her eyes flitted around her to find something, anything, to help her. She was pressed against the column thick as a one hundred year old beech, thinking so hard that she thought Hawke must have heard the wheels in her head screeching. No way had that rascal killed out the entire house full of apostates and members of their revolution! Yes, that was it. Maurella needed to but stall this murderer, until her men came running or Anders… Maurella gulped as her lover's name burnt her inside.

"Knock, knock," a soft voice right around the column whispered and a katana chipped off a piece of it as it landed right at a place Maurella's neck was a second ago.

"You…!" Maurella hatefully spat out as they started orbiting around the column.

"And you. Again." Hawke sneered at her through the black hair veil obscuring his face. Maurella was able to see that however Hawke attempted to look as the master of this situation, he was also as vigilant and cautious as ever, no doubt realizing this was not a petty apostate he was dealing with. And why was he here anyway, Maurella wondered. Wasn't there a fragile peace between the Champion and Anders? Wasn't he supposed to keep distance from them and, well, give them a chance to quietly plan out his assassination?

"Are you going to dance around that piece of stone all night?" a question hissed in annoyance reached Maurella's ears as she kept hypnotizing the Champion and moving around the column just to keep him away from her.

"Oh, not all night, I assure you," she purred a reply, but Hawke could see how her eyes kept flickering toward the only way out; the door Hawke had come in through. As if she was anticipating someone to come through that door.

"Your eyes betray you, Maurella," he whispered a rebuke and abandoned his slow stalking the prey around the column which was ridiculous anyway. "You're waiting for somebody. Let me clarify something for you then," he lowered the blade and threw the hair streams over his shoulder. "I'm afraid your lackeys have met with an untimely demise. No one is coming. It's just you and me, Maurella. Just you and me," he slowly stepped out of the column's shadow, carefully weighing his each step toward the witch. She indeed looked for a moment as if she accepted this subtle invitation to talk since she had no other choice anyway, but the bright flames which flashed in darkness and sent the Champion staggering backwards, screaming, as the flames burnt right through his apparel told Hawke that the witch was not prone to reasonable discussion. When he finished wallowing in the dust heaping on the crazed cobblestone floor, groaning in pain of his scorched flesh, a chilling sound of steel being dragged against the stone filled the chamber.

"Didn't expect me to quietly drop dead as you wish, did you?" she grasped the man's head by the long hair and pulled it up, so she could rather clumsily bring the blade across his throat.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Hawke coughed up the dust he had swallowed and he wished he could brush the hair off his mouth, "it just went from the sublime to the ridiculous," he briefly chuckled, but having the katana against his Adam's apple was not a hollow threat.

"How dare you…!" Maurella kneeled on her prisoner's back, breathing heavily and her nostrils flared. "How dare you march in here, killing as you please, ruining my beautiful plan!" she howled and shook Hawke's head as if trying to shake some sense out of him. "With your flippant tone, vulgar attempts of self-promotion, thinking you're something more than the rest of us the filth! Perennially drunk, shamelessly shagging one of my sisters and with that Devil-may-care insouciance of yours!"

"Yes, that's me," Hawke growled through the set jaw. "A sad persona with no self-esteem and a high-functioning drunk above all that," he lashed out at his interim vanquisher and tentatively he tried to throw her away from him. Nope. The bitch held on like a tick, not mentioning the katana had nicked him twice or thrice already. "I've got a proposition for you," he unexpectedly suggested after realizing Maurella had the upper hand at the moment. "Put that big blade away before you cut yourself, help me stand up and we can negotiate this situation. Either this or—"

"Or what?!" she lowered her head down to his ear, gloating about his powerlessness. "Or you rip me cornucopia of orifices and slash my guts open? Did I describe it vividly enough? Or perhaps you want to show me?" she kept poking him and the boundaries of how far would he let her go. Her cruelty Hawke did expect. Her inability to resist killing him he did not. Thus it was a sheer surprise for him when Maurella cackled one more time to his vulnerability, then she stood up and kicked him so he would lie on his back while the burns were close to his pain threshold between the worlds of consciousness and oblivion.

Killed by my own steel. And they say I'm the only one with distorted sense of humor.

Samael attempted to evade the mighty blows of the katana and he succeeded for a time, but then he simply did not. Maurella, enraged and drunk on the unexpected power she gained over the Champion of Kirkwall, kept amateurishly thrusting the blade into the moving target, until she hit it. The steel cut through the skin and muscle of an arm all too easily and Hawke screamed. He screamed a terrible gut-wrenching noise resounding around and filling the dome.

"Step aside from him." A new voice; too hard to tell whether it trembled in wrath or in fear, thundered and dominated the scene. "I said step aside from him, you spawn of a misbegotten whore!" Merrill retorted to good old yelling and the head of her sparkling staff aimed straight at Maurella convinced her to do as she was told to. Slowly, hesitant, made Merrill her way toward the man lying on the floor; only his arms spread sideways, quivering, told her there was still life in him. She observed in silence the clothing burned through to the singed skin, the ruffled hair spread around his head and grey with dust, the slashes stretching along his face, the deep cut on his one arm from the duel and the other arm pierced through with the katana which lay two feet away; innocent, yet imposing even when lying in dust and dirt and now soaked in its Master's blood.

One sphere of pure electricity was all Merrill had to say about her lover's downfall and that sphere neatly hit Maurella straight in her chest, threw her away into a wall with tremendous power, where she seemingly hang for a fragment of a second and only then she collapsed down along the wall.

"Pfff!" Merrill spat out on her fallen rival's body when she cautiously approached it to make sure she was knocked good for a while. Then, as if a sudden thought was born in her head, Merrill grasped Maurella's motionless body by her ankle and dragged it toward Hawke who struggled to stay awake and somehow managed to succeed so far. "Calm down, ma vhenan," she fondly whispered into his ear when he attempted to speak, but nothing but a moan came out of his mouth. "Calm down. This shall be over soon," she murmured merely to herself when she ripped the sleeve of Maurella's robes apart and just as quickly did she slash the fine skin on her forearm.

Widened crimson eyes and words of long-forgotten tongue echoing under the dome with rising intensity; that was what Maurella woke up into. The body beside her squirmed, then a shape within the shadows around her sat up, stood up with difficulties while vague whispers mumbled from great distance. And Maurella felt so languorously, so sleepy, when her eyelids fluttered as they fought the drowsiness.

"Merrill…" Hawke bowed his head in penance.

"Shhh. Don't say anything." Merrill's finger brushed against the warm lips which were gaining their color again, now, when Merrill used up a fair share of her Dalish sister's blood to repay the ordeal by fire she had put Hawke through tonight. "What do we do with her?" she poked the wheezing witch with a foot. "Maybe we can take her with us and drop her on the streets?" she suggested. "Someone would surely notice her and take her to a healer."

Long Hawke watched her lovely face, musing about just how much he could afford to tell Merrill. Yes, she just had saved his life. Yes, again. But that made things even worse. Was he supposed to tell her there was a conspiracy brewing against him? That he used the Magister to purge their nest while he thought he could by himself cut the head of this conspiracy off?

"No." His quiet response didn't quite reveal to Merrill his true intentions at first. "She must die," he explained when the elf appeared confused. To avoid her inquisitive stare, he rather strolled toward his katana, watched it for a while in suspicion before he bended down for it and thrust in back into its plain sheathe where it belonged. "Go ahead. There's no need for you to see this," he gently pushed her toward the open door. "Go, I'll catch up with you," he repeated his half-order, half-plea when Merrill seemed reluctant.

Once alone with Maurella, Samael slowly sauntered to her lost deep in thought. His freshly mended wounds throbbed, the sounds of his steps echoed within the silence which had gravity of stone. There was no decent way of how to do what must have been done at that very moment. The fact that Maurella was still aware of what'd been happening around her made the situation even more detestable.

"Do it." A soft rattle came out of Maurella's mouth as she watched in helplessness as her executioner approached.

"I'm sorry it came to this," he replied with a voice not much louder than hers. The katana slipped inaudibly out of its sheathe once more and the air was vibrating around it.

"No, you're not." Even in this very last minute of her life, Maurella managed to outfox the Champion of Kirkwall and she made sure he knew it. "Do it," she hissed and her widened eyes were transfixed by the blade.

And Samael did it.

oOo

"Not that I'm not grateful that you showed up when you did…" Hawke leaned down to whisper into a familiar pointy ear. "But is it so hard for you to simply obey once in a while? Me, being clearly at the Hanged Man throughout all this night, was an essential element of this adventure."

"Varric knows," she quietly replied with a colorless voice. "He tried to get in and—"

"So what?! He was being nosy, so you let him in then?" Samael flared up in one second.

"Varric is covering for you. For us! Is it so hard for you to simply be grateful once in a while?" she repaid him his harsh words with a tiny change. Hawke seemed to have no reasonable answer to that, so they just marched through the house in silence for a while, until Samael's hand found Merrill's cold one in the dark.

"I'm sorry," he whispered after a placid moment of simply standing together at that strange place, surrounded by a couple of headless carcasses. "I think we both know how this would end if you hadn't disobeyed." Then a silence fell again; a silence that made them even more conscious of how unhappyn and lost they were without one another. "I believe Varric has figured out how exactly to make the tavern believe that all three of us are kind of present in my humble quarters…?" he raised an eyebrow at her.

"Hm," she contemplated the answer for a while, "when I was leaving, he was saying something like 'who would not want to go to a threesome with a lovable dwarf'…" she perfectly mimicked Varric's theatrical demeanor. To those words Hawke only heartily laughed and shook his head. Then he stole a glance at Merrill who was suddenly suspiciously quiet and gripping Samael's hand with both hers.

"Vermillion," he remarked at the color of her flushed cheeks. "The color of carnal shame," he added and blocked a lethal punch aimed to his shoulder.