Chapter 86 – What Dreams May Come
A/N: Apologies for the slow pace of updates, I have been busy working on another novel to be published this fall. I will finish this, though, and thank you to everyone reading, supporting the story all this time, and being so wonderful.
The war map was an ever present part of their lives now, Serena and Alistair's. Even now, when most of their camp was spooning broth into bowls for dinner around one of the camp's fires, or settling the horses, or setting up wards, or a hundred other different minute things that needed doing every night they set down, Alistair was at the map.
He pushed a marker, what looked like a small wooden wand, from Circle Tower closer to the capital, his eyes never left the table, his face scrunched in concentration. He hummed, picked up a small knight, and placed it near the wand, just outside Dragon's Peak. A third marker, a crudely carved mabari hound, hovered just across the wide expanse of Ferelden countryside known as the Bannorn.
Serena eyed the map from her perch nearby where she fetched arrows silently. The mabari was them, she knew, their camp, their group. However they thought of themselves, that war dog represented their presence nearing Denerim. Alistair rolled it in his hand, back and forth, back and forth, until finally setting it down just north of South Reach.
"Two days, I'd guess," he said quietly, finally turning away from the map to look at Serena. "Two days if we don't run up against any pockets of the horde, or towns that need saving."
"Is that enough time to...?" she asked, trailing off. Setting aside the last arrow, she stood, coming to stand beside him at the table. She cleared her throat, moving two more markers into the capital itself. "Faren's group is already in the city, as is Fergus and his men." She pointed at the wand. "That's Solona and the other mages from the tower?"
"Yes, and the knight is their templar accompaniment. It's about ten or, I believe, as many as Gregoir said he could spare. To protect 30 mage charges." Alistair made air quotes around the word protect and Serena smirked, knowing what most templars considered protection. "And before you ask, no, I do not believe Ser Cullen is among them."
"I wasn't going to-"
"You were, I know you have a soft spot for his and your doppelgangers little love story," Alistair replied, rolling his eyes. "He was too injured, from what Gregoir's missive said." He nodded to a small pile of rolled parchment at the corner of the war table.
"You asked?"
"Of course," Alistair said. "He's a fine templar, and an asset to the Order. But many of the men stayed back at the tower, too injured to physically make the journey, or..." He sighed. "Too mentally scarred to continue to serve at the moment."
"We've seen so much since then, since Ostagar... since... since before that even." Serena grasped Alistair's hand, threading her fingers through his, leaning her body into his. He felt safe. He felt like home. "I suppose we've become used to it a fair bit."
"Not something I like to think about, what with all the dragons and demons and darkspawn running about the country. Imagine how mad they must think us, wanting to be king and queen of Crazy Land." Alistair wrapped his arms around Serena and kissed her forehead. "I couldn't do this without you."
"I kn- oh. Oh... Oh, Maker-" Serena gasped, clutching her stomach. "I, the baby- Alistair, I-"
Alistair caught her as she fell.
The archdemon was large. That was the first thing her brain could process as Serena stared out over the abyss. Larger than a house, it dwarfed the darkspawn marching below it as it circled slowly above them, like a nightmare made flesh. The horde was moving, faster than she could have imagined. It trailed on and on, further than she could see, thousands of darkspawn, spurred on by the call of the archdemon.
Underground. Below them. Beneath their feet. Always beneath them until now.
Death. Death was coming. The darkspawn would devour them all.
The darkspawn would devour the world.
"You're hovering," Wynne said sharply. "I can't work when you're hovering."
"It's my wife!" Alistair said, panic still in his voice. "Hovering! Pfft! You can do magics when demons are breathing down your neck but-"
"It's the shouting, really," Alim said in his politely detached tones. "It's rather distracting. Besides, she is not your wife, technically. Not yet."
Alistair turned honey colored eyes on the pair of mages, the orbs practically shooting lightning at them. "Alim-" He frowned, sighed. "Just... fix her, please. The baby. I- please?"
"Of course," Wynne said flippantly. "She's coming around just now, if you'd exercise some patience, Your Grace."
With a noise somewhere between a cough and a gasp, Serena opened her eyes, clearly disoriented. Her eyes flicked from Wynne to Alim to Alistair. "Wha-" She shifted, groaned and leaned back, frowning in pain. "Ugh... ow."
"You passed out," Alim said simply. He handed her a small cup of tea, infused with elfroot. "From the pain, I would guess."
"Is the baby okay?" Serena asked huskily. "Sweet Maker, I... I feel strange."
"Yes, the baby is fine from what we can tell," Wynne replied, her hand still pulsing with a faint blue light. Healing light, Serena knew.
"But-" Alim exchanged a glance with the older mage, who nodded. "Well, the strangeness you feel is probably because your stomach has expanded a great deal in a very short span of time."
"My what?" Serena blinked, her eyes focusing on Alim's face then traveling down to her stomach, which bulged huge before her. How had she missed that? "Oh Maker I'm enormous! How-?"
"We guess that has to do with the baby." Alim frowned, long slender fingers slipping the gauntlets Serena wore off her arms. "Your magic, Alistair's templar magic, enhanced by these," he said, indicating the pieces of armor he now held, "Have magically altered the timeline around your child's arrival."
"What? What does that mean?" Alistair asked. He exchanged a worried glance with Serena, who looked equally confused.
"You were... what, approximately three and a half, four moons into your pregnancy? I suspect you are closer to 7 now, probably more." Alim set the gauntlets on the nearby trunk that held Serena and Alistair's clothing. "It's difficult to tell, but you will probably have your baby relatively soon. A few weeks at most."
Serena groaned. She was already terrified of the birthing process, and now it was coming even sooner than she expected. "But the baby is... our baby is okay?"
This time it was Wynne who answered. "Yes, dear, it's just... highly magical in nature."
"And Serena is fine?" Alistair was pacing the tent, just behind the two mages. "The magic isn't affecting her, is it?"
"No, not any more than it has already," Alim replied. "Serena herself is highly magical, I would say. As close as one can be without being a mage, or a spirit, I suppose... it's quite fascinating. Your baby should be... very interesting, to say the least."
"Oh well, thank the Maker, right Serena? At least we'll have an interesting child!" Alistair huffed.
"Will he... she... will it be a mage then?" Serena asked. She didn't want to say what that meant, what any magical child born in southern Thedas would be considered. Their child was already being born into the burden of ruling Ferelden. To add the uncertainty of magic was too much.
"Well, neither of you are mages, not technically. But you perform a type of magic, do you not?" Alim shrugged. "It has political and personal ramifications I would imagine, but the good news is neither Serena nor the baby is harmed in any way." Another shrug. "You should not wear the gauntlets any more, however. And avoid combat at all costs."
"What? Why?"
"It could cause a premature birth," Wynne replied. "Not to be too graphic, of course, but your insides could rupture and-"
"Oh yeah, Wynne, that's not graphic at all. Maker's breath." Alistair plopped onto the cot beside Serena, his face ashen. "This is a bit much to absorb all at once, if you don't mind-"
"Of course," the white haired mage replied, tugging gently on Alim's robe. "Good evening, Your Grace, my Lady." Nodding, they left the tent.
"Well that was exciting," Alistair muttered. "As if we needed more excitement in our lives."
"It seems to love us, certainly," Serena said tiredly. She rubbed her now bulging belly. "I feel fat."
"You look fat. Magically fat. And beautiful. I imagine that isn't magic." He pressed his lips to her temple. "It's just you."
"What if our baby is a mage, Alistair?" Serena said quietly, asking the question that was slowly filling the room with it's presence.
"Then our baby is a mage." Alistair placed his hand over Serena's, squeezing it hard. "I'm king. Soon, you'll be queen. Our son or daughter or two-headed monster baby will be a Therin, too. If laws need to change to accommodate our family, I'm not above that."
"Is that... wrong, though?" Serena sighed. "I don't know... not wrong, but... well, wrong? We just change the laws for our family, and sure, it benefits many families in Ferelden but... oh, Maker, the Chantry won't go for any of this, I don't know why I'm even entertaining the thought."
"We'll deal with it when our two-headed monster baby makes its appearance then, and not a moment sooner." Alistair settled back onto the pillow and sighed. "Alim said you passed out, but you didn't, not really, did you?"
He felt Serena stiffen beside him before relaxing again into his side. "I saw the archdemon. The horde. All of them, marching underground. It was... It was worse then when we saw them in the Deep Roads. There were so many more." She ran a hand over her belly, still unsettled by how large she had become in the last hour. "They were underground, under our feet. I felt them. Heard them. It was overwhelming. The feeling of death. Decay."
"Sometimes the dreams..." Alistair began. "Sometimes they're just that, dreams. I think." He was frowning, his normally honey colored eyes dark with emotion.
There was a long silence as the two just laid there, the oldest Grey Wardens in Ferelden save Riordan.
"We'll win, love," Alistair said finally, his voice low. "It's what Grey Wardens do. In War, Victory, remember?"
She forced a smile, the gesture feeling tight on her face. He was purposely leaving out the end of the Grey Warden motto, of course, even though the end was their legacy. It was all Grey Wardens did, in the end. Give up their lives for the greater good. She gripped his hand and settled against him, the words rolling around in her head as she closed her eyes.
In Death, Sacrifice.