"Wait, you're Hawke's Fenris?" Evelyn clapped her hand over her mouth when he snarled at her. She knew better than to push a fighter's buttons, especially one as on edge as this one, but she couldn't keep a smirk from her lips. She fought to school her expression into something more appropriate and hoped he hadn't noticed.
Dorian had no such compunctions. "How many did you think there were, Your Grace?" he said. "I can assure you that in the Imperium there is only one Fenris they discuss. Do you have others in the south? If so, I hardly know how you survive it."
"Well, no, but the way she talked about him…" A sensitive warrior with a way of touching a girl's heart, she thought. "I guess she must have left some things out," she finished lamely.
"She would. And when I'm done in Tevinter, mage, neither you nor the rest of the magisters will be able to discuss anything ever again," Fenris snapped. "Now shut up."
Varric coughed. "Look, Fenris, I told you, I don't know where she is. She said she was going to Weisshaupt. She left. I got a couple of letters, sent a couple back, and then nothing. It's not like she hasn't done it before. When I'm hearing from her, that's when I'm worried. She always lets me know when she's fallen into something she can't twist her way out of."
"Bullshit, dwarf. It made no sense for her to go there in the first place, and you know it. Now she's gone. She hasn't been to any of our meeting points. And I don't care how she is with you, she never stops writing to me. Question: why aren't you more concerned?" He stepped forward and flexed his fingers. "Answer: you know where she is. And you're going to tell me. Now."
"Hey, can we talk about this somewhere else? Maybe over in those trees?" Varric shifted from foot to foot. "Not that I don't love an audience, but I usually get to prepare a little first."
Cassandra suddenly spoke. "He makes a good point about knowing where people are. In the entirety of Thedas, how was your friend able to find us so easily?" Varric winced, and Evelyn focused her attention on him.
Frenris snorted. "Once he wrote us where you were going, it wasn't hard to pick up your trail." He waved his hand to encompass their camp. "You're not exactly hiding."
"Never were good at subtlety, were you Chuckles? Brooding, yes. A champion brooder. Subtle, not so much," Varric said.
"Hawke prefers me blunt. And you're stalling. Don't test my patience further." Fenris stalked towards the trees.
Varric hesitated, looking at her. "We'll talk later, Varric."
He sighed. "Yeah. Figured we might." He shuffled off after the elf.
The group was quiet for a moment. "He never was much of an informant," Iron Bull said. "First rule of the business, never let boyfriends get involved. They're so high-strung."
"Not hard to believe he was the inspiration for the haunted, lithe mercenary in Varric's series, though," Cassandra said. Everyone stared. "What? Hawke told me once. In passing."
Dorian stood. "Wonderful. A high-strung, lithe elf who hates Tevinter mages and knows exactly how to kill them, in our camp. And I can't even bed him. I'd ask for someone to share my tent for protection tonight, but then two of us wouldn't get any sleep, and that would be a tragedy."
They rode the next day with a slightly less dour addition to their party. Varric wouldn't say what had calmed the warrior down, which chafed, but he swore that when Hawke's whereabouts became relevant, she would know. When Cassandra of all people vouched for the dwarf's loyalty, she gave in. After all, Hawke was not an enemy, exactly. But the new member cast a pall over the group, as if he'd infected them all with his melancholy. Over the next days they left space between their mounts more often, all lost in their own thoughts. All except Sera, who was mostly lost in quoting love scenes from Passions in Kirkwall to herself and laughing.
On one particularly boring stretch of forest, Iron Bull interrupted her musings. "Hey boss. Great wilderness they've got here, right?"
"Yes, I've never been so entranced by a thousand ever-so-slightly different trees before," she said. "At least nothing is trying to kill us at the moment."
"Yeah, I knew there was something I didn't like about this place." He shifted his seat. "Look, you're the woman with the plan, but I have to say I'm worried about this new guy. He really hates Vints. A lot."
She laughed. "That's your concern? I'd have thought you two would be swapping stories like schoolgirls by now."
"No. I mean, sure, I hate them, but that's only because the ones I meet are always trying to kill me. Anyone who tries to stab me or hit me or put a demon up my ass, yeah, they go on the Bad List. For me, that's mostly been Vints. It's a reflex. But it's like the Qun. Everyone is in it, but that doesn't make them all followers. Dorian's never tried to kill me, so I don't hate him. But this Fenris doesn't seem to wait to get provoked."
"Are you worried about Dorian? That's so sweet of you, Bull."
"Don't make it weird, boss," he said. "He looks good in and out of mail, and he's a hell of a fighter for all of his fancy crap. But he's also a man who doesn't need his heart ripped out of his chest by a homicidal elf. That's all I'm saying." She blanched. They'd all been a little unnerved by Varric's graphic description of Fenris's fighting style.
He paused to eye a bird circling above them. "Besides," he added in low tones, "it's not just the Vint. He's giving the stink-eye to those elf mages, and he doesn't like me much either. I could tear him in half and drink a beer at the same time, but those elves don't really understand our politics. And Varric said he was a Fog Warrior for a while, so that means he's probably a sneaky bastard underneath. It's a good trick to be blunt, that way no one thinks to look for what might be unsaid."
"Alright, Bull. I'll keep a closer eye on him. But it's hard for me to believe that Hawke would love someone who kills people for where or how they were born. And she's a mage herself, so he can't be that uncontrolled or they'd never work."
"Yeah, but Hawke turned on her own kind, killed a friend and a lot of other mages doing it. He might see that as more important. She also put down an Arishok on her own, which, trust me, is not easy. She's probably unbelievable in bed, but I doubt she's as pure as she seems when you meet her. And hey, she isn't here to stop him, is she?"
A day north of Harding's forward camp on a narrow path through the Wilds, everything happened at once.
Cole reared his mount in the middle of the path and fought to turn back the way he'd come. Varric swore and tried to shift around him, only succeeding in bumping or blocking the rest of the horses behind them. Wind whipped through the trees as Rina instinctively unleashed her magic at an unknown threat. On point, Cassandra called out that she saw fire over the hill in front of them. Hurel shouted and clutched his head, pointing to the west. Fenris abandoned his horse thensprinted to the north, towards the fire.
The anchor flung sparks as Evelyn wheeled her mount in a circle. She was close to opening a Rift here on the road, and she was spending all of her energy fighting it. Cole yelled words she couldn't understand at her. Abelas turned his hart directly into the forest and drove it in the direction Hurel pointed without looking back. And a dozen darkspawn crashed out of the trees to the east, which overshadowed everything else.
Sera's arrows flew fast, taking down two before they could react. She and Iron Bull in rearguard were the only ones to escape the bottleneck, and they rushed in to cover their trapped comrades. Iron Bull provided a shield for the elf firing behind him and swept his sword in a wide circle to get the darkspawn's attention but keep them back. Varric threw a dagger from his horse and was rewarded with a squelch as another fell. A wall of fire from Dorian terrified the horses but allowed Rina to push it through their enemies with a gust of wind. The fire burned through them quickly, leaving Bull to mop up the few survivors.
Evelyn logged this all mechanically as she wrestled with her unruly hand. The dark voice of the Inquisitor returned and roared inside her mind, commanding her to open a gate to the Fade and leave this chaos behind. Cole pushed himself closer to her until he was near enough to touch, then spoke in a voice that cut through everything. He chanted the elven words that Solas had used in the Fade, over and over again. The voice quieted. Her hand stopped throbbing, and she looked around.
The darkspawn were dead, corpses still burning. Iron Bull and Sera picked them over. Hurel had rushed off after Abelas, Varric and Cassandra after Fenris. Rina stared at her and Cole with an open mouth, but when Evelyn turned in her direction she snapped it shut and went blank. Everyone seemed confused but unhurt, so she focused back on Cole.
"Cole," she said urgently, "how did you know what to say? Is he nearby?"
Cole twisted his fingers in his horse's mane and looked to the sky. "Rocks and fear. He needs to come through but gives chase. The threads that hold the door are weak. The vengeance of the Inquisitor rises."
"Are those his thoughts? Is Solas hurt?"
"Pride cannot hurt. The sun cannot melt itself because it is already full of melting." He grabbed her hand and said, "Listen."
A voice rose up from inside her, the same one that had warned her of a trap. Not yet, little one. It's too soon. Look for my guardian and look for the slave. They need you more.
She jerked at yelling from over the hill, where smoke curled up towards the sun. She spurred her horse forward as fast as she could, cresting it at a canter. Fenris dug into the ashes of a former house. He pulled something out from under a collapsed wall. It was a human shape, moving slightly. Evelyn came to a stop and jumped to the ground as he rubbed dirt from its face. A woman's face. Her clothes were singed and dirtier than a barman's cloth, and her skin blackened with soot, but she appeared unburned.
The woman coughed and opened her eyes. They were an unmistakable blue that looked up at Fenris with weary humor. He scowled but the hands that played over her face were gentle. "Hello, dearest. It's so good to have you saving my life again." She looked over at Evelyn, who gaped. "And Inquisitor. Nice to see you, too. Thanks for killing Corypheus for me."
Varric's cleared his throat at her elbow. "Your Grace. I believe Hawke's whereabouts are now relevant. Let me provide them. She's apparently burning down old houses in the Kocari Wilds like a lunatic."
She found her voice. "Thank you, Varric. As always, your reports are so very useful."