One Step Ahead Chapter 11
Cassandra couldn't move.
It felt like her mind had been split into two conflicting halves. Part of her was certain that something here wasn't right, but she was too happy and too... was she feeling drunk? How did that happen? She couldn't remember drinking anything.
The logical part of her knew something was wrong here, but she was too warm, happy, and contented to actually care. Yet that feeling itself set off a discordant note of alarm, some instinctual dread...
Cassandra's mind whirled around and around in this fashion as she stood in a stupor, twitching and swaying slightly. The pungent smell of smoke and roasted meat overpowered her nose and coated her tongue, and her eyelids were getting heavy as the room seemed to spin dizzily.
The demon—Gluttony, as it introduced itself—was speaking again. Cassandra tried to focus on making the nonsensical sounds which evaded her understanding resolve into actual words.
"How serendipitous… that I should welcome… not just a mage, but a perfect vessel… just as the pickings here had become… decidedly slim, of late." Gluttony said with a smooth, ponderous cadence.
Recognition dawned in Cassandra's foggy, disoriented mind, as it latched onto the word vessel. Gluttony wanted to possess Aaron. But if Gluttony did that...
The sudden panic finally spurred her into movement. Driven more by ingrained training than any conscious choice, Cassandra drew her sword.
Gluttony reacted with incongruous speed. It spread its inhumanly long, many-jointed arms wide, and Cassandra felt a sharp spike of hunger so intense it made her double over like she had been stabbed. She had never been so ravenous, never even imagined such hunger. Her prior inebriated stupor evaporated completely as she was overcome by the throes of starvation.
Pain. Panic. Terror.
Through the agony, the only thought going through her mind was the overwhelming certainty that she was about to die. Her burning need to eat something, anything, was so primal, so intense, it was like the need to gasp for air when drowning.
Cassandra's vision seemed to black out at the edges, narrowing to a razor-sharp focus. Eat. Survive. Whatever it took. She couldn't afford to let anyone else take anything. She had to have it all to herself, or she would die.
Suddenly, she became keenly aware of Varric, Aaron, and the married couple. Before, they might as well have been furniture. But now, they were a threat. They would try to take her food. Her food! They would eat it all themselves unless she got it first!
Just as she was about to lunge for the roasted mabari on the table, determined to eat as much as she possibly could, Gluttony's mouth parted wide, exposing mismatched rows of teeth embedded along its jaws, running all the way down its cavernous throat. Three thin, dark red tongues came lashing out of its mouth like whips, reaching out to the mabari carcass and pulling it into Gluttony's mouth. It bit down with a great crunch, devouring the pony-sized hound in one bite like it was nothing more than an Orlesian bunting. Red runnels of juice and blood escaped from between Gluttony's jaws and ran down its rolls of fat as it swallowed the mabari, only for the jaws and pale flesh to be scoured clean by the tongues a moment later.
Cassandra's frantic hunger began to ebb as the spell over her was somehow diminished, and her mind and body were overcome by a leaden fatigue instead. She and Varric both slumped to the ground, overcome by their own weight. It was a feeling unlike Cassandra had ever felt before, an almost nauseated torpor, as if she had eaten so much so quickly that she couldn't even move. Aaron still stood, seemingly unaffected.
"Ah, ah, ah... Manners..." Gluttony tutted at them. "As I am the one hosting this feast... So none of my new guests may eat... Until I have served myself..." the demon said, a gleeful note entering its breathy voice. The lobes of the creature's jaws shuddered unevenly as it let out a choking sound, sending its jowls rippling, and Cassandra belatedly realized it was laughing.
"Once again... It seems our dear cook... neglected to prepare enough! Ah, well... there's always the next course…" Gluttony bellowed its laughter, pausing only to belch thunderously.
Gluttony folded its arms over its stomach, sighing contentedly. "I'm so pleased... More guests have arrived... I was worried… that after a few more days... We'd run out of courses to eat... Or that our dear hunter and cook would starve… But now… there's fresh meat."
Though Gluttony had no eyes, nor even a true face, Cassandra somehow knew that it was looking at her and Varric in turn. In some lonely corner of Cassandra's mind, the horrific realization was dawning that Gluttony was going to eat them.
Gluttony's head turned and it seemingly examined Aaron more closely. "And what strange meat it is... You are the one that… interrupted my feast… by attacking the rift… Poor Elaine broke from my control... And saw what she did to sweet little Deirdre there... But how fortunate that her scream... Led you here."
Cassandra's tired mind was jolted by the realization of what Gluttony was referring to. She had never wanted to avoid looking at anything so much in her entire life when she finally registered what exactly was cooking over the fire behind her. The knowledge of what she would see if she looked over there prickled at the back of her neck, as if it were a centipede crawling over her skin. Her heart started hammering, slowly and painfully, like she was stuck in a nightmare and had forgotten to breathe.
"But do not worry… All is forgiven… For I see you understand… quite well… the struggle to survive." Gluttony said, its tone taking on an odd, triumphant intensity.
"I never had a choice," Aaron said, his voice strained, like his breath was being forced from his lungs by a great weight. "I… Don't…"
"Come now," Gluttony goaded. "Don't deny it, beast... You yearn to surrender to primal pleasures… Like before... You can have that once again… Give yourself over to me… We can hunt, feast, and grow strong together… Swallowed in ecstasy."
Aaron seemed to be at war with himself, trembling and twitching. His clawed silverite gauntlets gripped at his helmeted head, like he was afraid it was going to split apart.
"No," Aaron rasped. "What I lost—it's gone. Forever. You can't bring it back. We tried everything. Everything. You cannot give what you do not have. Your offer is meaningless."
Gluttony shifted, its many limbs contorting in agitation. "Nothing has more meaning than this: you will eat, or you will be eaten... All creatures do what they must to survive... The strong take what they want from the weak... That is the supreme law shared by your world, and mine."
There was a long pause, and Aaron's convulsions grew worse.
"No," Aaron said shakily.
Just like that, the spell was broken. Reality crashed back down on Cassandra's blurry mind, returning everything around her to sheer, horrifying clarity. Her body broke free of the demon's torpor, and she rushed to get to her feet.
Cassandra could hardly believe she'd been in the thing's thrall for that long. The problem was, she hadn't expected the demon. She'd let her guard down. Just for an instant, a moment of confusion when a human had answered the door, but that had been enough to let it worm its way into her. She would have ordinarily sensed the wrongness around her, but with the Breach in the sky, everything seemed like that.
But that was no excuse. The most powerful hunger demon she had ever encountered—or even heard of—was right before her eyes, and it was angry.
Gluttony roared in outrage, and its many-jointed arms darted out. One caught Cassandra in the stomach, knocking her to the floor, and the other hit Aaron, sending him tumbling over the chair behind him.
Blinking the stars out of her eyes, Cassandra forced herself to focus on her own power, drawing forth her energy to call down the wrath of heaven.
A pillar of light seemed to materialize out of nowhere, striking Gluttony in the center of its mass. The demon flailed about and squealed horribly, its grayish-pink skin charred from the attack. Its limbs smashed the table to splinters, and knocked stones loose from the mantle, one of which caught Varric across the head before he could so much as unsling Bianca. He fell with a spurt of blood.
Cassandra took advantage of Gluttony's distraction to stand back up, despite the flashes of pain radiating from her abdomen. With a defiant cry, she raised her sword and brought it down on Gluttony's arm.
To her shock, the blade barely broke the demon's flabby skin, and in reflex, Gluttony threw her off with almost casual ease.
Cassandra stumbled back, only to be met with a sharp pain in her ribs just beneath her armpit.
Cassandra whirled around to see the slack face of Elaine, the hunter's wife, her eyes blank and lifeless. She had taken a kitchen knife and tried to stab through into Cassandra's chest, but had been stopped by her shirt of mail.
Cassandra delivered a hard bash with her shield to knock the ensorcelled woman away, only to see that her husband was standing in the corner and drawing back his longbow with an arrow nocked, aiming right for the injured and disoriented Varric.
In sheer panic, Cassandra did something she'd been trained to never do. She drew her arm back and threw her sword at the hunter, praying she would spoil his shot before he skewered Varric.
The sword tumbled through the air and clattered against the hunter's right arm. It didn't do any serious damage, but it made his shot go wild. The arrow flew past Varric and somehow missed Gluttony completely, lodging itself into the far wall with a loud thunk.
Aaron had clambered to his feet as this was happening, and drew his staff, holding it more like a spear and less like a magical implement. Gluttony's vast mouth parted like a red, hellish flower, and it screamed as it surged forwards on its many tangled limbs, trampling Varric under twisted arms and feet.
Aaron's staff surged with lightning as he braced and plunged the bladed tip into Gluttony's stomach, but Gluttony didn't seem to care even as the folds of its expansive stomach swallowed the spearhead entirely.
Gluttony grabbed Aaron with both arms and lifted him up, crashing his head against the ceiling's thick wooden rafters with a sickening crack before smashing him into the floor, where he lay in a limp heap.
"WEAK! YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN MY OFFER!" Gluttony bellowed.
Cassandra lunged forward, raising her shield to use as a weapon. She brought the edge down on one of the many joints in Gluttony's left arm, and she both felt and heard a snap, but the other arm backhanded her away. She bounced off the front doorframe and fell to the floor, knocking the breath from her completely.
Gluttony grabbed Aaron again, its right arm coiling around his torso like a segmented snake. Straining slightly, Gluttony lifted Aaron up to its mouth and spoke.
"You will make me stronger… if not as a vessel, then as my prey!" Gluttony hissed.
At that, Gluttony's three whiplike tongues flashed out of its mouth and seized Aaron, drawing him into its maw like they had the mabari.
Even as black spots danced in her vision and her chest simply refused to draw in air, Cassandra reached for her power in desperation, mustering anything she could to throw at the demon in an attempt to stop what was happening.
She could feel the frayed ends of her power, feel the attack struggle to manifest, it had been so soon after her opening strike, and she had never been able to call down a smite more than twice in a minute.
But Cassandra grasped at her power with single-minded determination, and the attack did come, another pillar of light that struck Gluttony squarely, charring its flesh still further even as Aaron was left completely unaffected.
Gluttony didn't stop, however, and instead shook Aaron in its mouth like a dog worrying a rat, even as the demon grunted in pain. Gluttony's tongues pulled Aaron further and further down its throat, and Cassandra was at a complete loss as to what to do. She could no longer move, had no more strength of body nor strength of Seeker power.
Then, a golden flash momentarily blinded her, and with a thunderous crack of sound, Gluttony exploded.
The entire interior of the cabin was violently splattered with gore and chunks of flesh, as some hellish creature tore itself out of Gluttony's destroyed body.
Cassandra belatedly realized that Aaron had shapeshifted into this form inside Gluttony.
Cassandra stared, gradually succeeding in her fight to breathe, but even as her mind returned from the brink of unconsciousness, she couldn't even begin to guess what in the world Aaron had turned into. She had never seen nor heard of such a thing before.
In shape and size, it was somewhat akin to a bear, with four strong legs and a barrel-chest, but that was where the semblance ended. Its incredibly thick, hairless pale skin overlapped in places to form plates of armor. It had a huge, nightmarish head which more closely resembled a ridged animal skull with a fringe of horns pointing in all directions, and it had uncanny, silver-colored eyes. It extricated itself fully from the demon just as the corpse began to dissolve into greenish-yellow motes of ash, vanishing completely in moments—though not without leaving a significant amount of blood and viscera behind, mainly in the form of a greenish, membranous residue on the floor underneath the creature Aaron had become.
As Gluttony's body vanished, Varric was freed from the tangle of limbs. He gave a shuddering gasp, then had a fit of wet coughing. His eyes were squeezed shut.
"Varric! Can you hear me? Are you all right?" Cassandra wheezed. She was only answered by more wet coughing and gagging, which grew progressively weaker.
Maker, had he punctured a lung? Cassandra pushed herself somewhat upright and made her way over to him—though it was more of a crawl than a limp—and surveyed the damage.
The gash on Varric's head had covered half his face in blood, but there was no telling how serious it was internally given how face wounds bled so profusely. Fortunately, she didn't even have to tear Varric's jacket open to get a good look at his chest, as Varric deliberately left it open to expose his so-called 'virile carpet of chest hair.' This allowed Cassandra to see right away the large, already-purplish bruise forming along the right side of his rib cage.
Cassandra fumblingly reached into her belt pouch, and managed to extricate two healing potions. She propped herself up on one knee and forced the first down Varric's throat, roughly pinching his lips around the vial's neck to prevent any spills. He gurgled and coughed more, but it went down, and a second later his eyes opened.
"Varric!" Cassandra called again.
Varric's eyes went to hers, and he blinked blearily. "…Yeah, Seeker. I'm half-dead, not deaf."
Cassandra pushed herself away, collapsing in a heap. If Varric was making jokes, he would be fine.
The creature Aaron had become loped past Cassandra and Varric, swaying somewhat drunkenly.
Varric startled and rubbed at his eyes. "I'm guessing, based on how it's not eating us, that the cretahl is Aaron? Huh. I thought..."
Varric trailed off. Aaron had stopped his halting shuffle at the fallen forms of the hunter and his wife, and nudged each of them in turn with his bony, ridged muzzle.
Neither were breathing.
Elaine, it seemed, had fallen on the knife that she—or the demon controlling her—had tried to use to stab Cassandra. Blood pooled around her. Looking at her husband, though, Cassandra thought she might have been dead even before she began bleeding out.
The hunter was… shrunken. Withered. The only injury he had sustained was the slight cut on his arm, but upon Gluttony's death, he had somehow become emaciated in a way that even his wife had not, though on second glance she, too, looked thinner. Perhaps that was why she screamed and he had not, when Aaron had temporarily disrupted Gluttony's control. He might have been too far gone already.
Cassandra turned away from the gruesome sight, and from the horror she knew she would behold if she looked but two feet to the right of the fallen hunter. She didn't want to see that. She never wanted to see that, not at any time or in any state of mind. The girl. Deirdre, Gluttony said her name had been.
Cassandra leaned away from Varric and vomited on the cabin floor. In that moment, she thanked the Maker that she could only smell her own bile and not Deirdre cooking over the fire.
Cassandra felt a hand on her back, and she looked up to see Varric standing over her. He looked much worse for wear, but there was a steely, serious air to him that she seldom got to see.
"Come on, Seeker. We need to get out of here." Varric said lowly.
Cassandra couldn't agree more, and she allowed herself to be pulled along by Varric, still clutching the other unused healing potion in her other hand.
In just four limping steps they had reached the door, yet Aaron showed no sign of noticing or following.
"Aaron," Varric said firmly. "It's time to leave. There's nothing we can do for them."
The animal—a cretahl, Varric had called it—twitched violently on hearing his name, but after a moment, he placidly shuffled out of the cabin behind them, his head bent low. He almost got stuck in the front doorframe, but with a creak and snap of splintering wood, he simply forced his way through.
They made it to the stream without a word passing between them—understandably so, in Aaron's case. But even had he been able to speak, Cassandra doubted he would have. There just seemed to be nothing to say.
With a mutual understanding, Varric and Cassandra stopped supporting each other to kneel at the stream bank and wash the worst of the blood and other substances from themselves. After drinking three handfuls of the stingingly cold water, Cassandra took the health potion, and her body immediately felt better.
Her mind, not so much.
Cassandra had been among the youngest Seekers ever inducted. She'd had a long and painful career, hunting down and confronting the worst corruptions imaginable, depraved acts of both demons and men. Yet this was among the worst she had ever seen, if not in scope, then in sheer horror. She'd often come close to death, but that encounter had been very close indeed.
She looked over at Aaron, still in the monstrous form of the cretahl that he'd transformed into to kill Gluttony. He'd sustained a brutal head injury before he'd transformed, had it affected him even in this form?
"Aaron," Cassandra said gently. "Can you hear me? Do you understand?"
The cretahl's head turned to face her, but Cassandra got the feeling he couldn't see her at all with its tiny, milky white eyes. Slowly, the creature's head dipped in what she hoped was a nod.
"Can you change back? Or will that exacerbate your injuries?" Cassandra asked.
The creature's head tilted slightly, then with a flash of golden light, Aaron stood before them once more. He held his right hand to his head, and his left hung limply, like it had been dislocated.
"You need to take a healing potion," Cassandra said urgently. "I have one more to—"
"No." Aaron interrupted her, his voice ragged and slurred. "No potion. Just wait."
An ember of anger kindled up in Cassandra's chest. "Are you refusing because you don't want to take your helmet off to drink? Aaron, if you wait it will make things worse!"
Aaron just stood there, like he hadn't even heard her.
"Aaron!" Cassandra said sharply.
"I'll be fine," Aaron said, his voice sounding much more even. He grasped his left hand with his right, and with a quick jerk, snapped it back into place.
"Holy shit!" Varric exclaimed, but Aaron was already flexing and twisting the arm in a normal range of motion. His stature straightened, and with two loud pops, he righted his neck.
"I'm all right, there's nothing to worry about," Aaron said smoothly, and there wasn't a hint of anything wrong in his voice. "Come. I must close the rift."
Without waiting for a response, Aaron began walking upstream towards the rift around the bend. Cassandra and Varric followed behind.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Varric asked skeptically.
"To a reasonable degree of certainty, yes," Aaron said. If he was bothered by any pain or the events that had just occurred, it didn't show the slightest bit in his demeanor—aside from a slight brittle edge to his voice, like he was trying to convince them he was all right by putting on a calm, verbose mask.
Cassandra's anger guttered out into confusion. Had Aaron healed himself? That seemed to be the only logical explanation, but she hadn't seen nor sensed him perform any magic at all. He just… got better, all by himself, in mere moments. It was utterly bizarre, and more than a little suspicious.
Then again, perhaps she owed Aaron the benefit of the doubt. Aaron had, after all, managed to resist possession by the most absurdly powerful Hunger demon she'd ever heard of. Normally, Hunger demons were firmly at the bottom of the hierarchy, but this one was as strong as any Desire demon she'd ever seen. Apparently the Breach made all manner of things possible now. Either that, or they had just been extraordinarily unlucky.
Cassandra felt a little guilty, then, for looking down on Aaron's extreme caution. In hindsight, it had been more than justified. Had that encounter gone just slightly worse, then the only one with the power to seal the rifts would have died, and the Inquisition would have ground to a halt before it could even get moving. It was a thought even more disturbing than what had transpired in that cabin.
Aaron sealed the pacified rift, with no more demons to stand in their way. He looked down at his mark afterwards, standing silent for several moments.
"If there is a difference in the strength of the mark, I cannot detect it," Aaron said in a leaden monotone.
Well, that was a minor relief. It was better than a noticeable weakening, at least.
Aaron turned back on his heel and started walking back towards the cabin.
"Do we really have to go back there?" Varric muttered.
"Yes," Cassandra and Aaron said in unison.
"We need to… to commend those people's bodies to the Maker." Cassandra said, her voice cracking. She had a sacred duty to perform, but part of her dreaded facing that scene again. "A pyre is the least we can do for them, and it will ensure no foul beings can inhabit their corpses."
"I intend to retrieve my staff," Aaron said flatly. "But you are correct, Cassandra. I will dispose of the bodies—it will be more expedient for me to burn the cabin to the ground. We have no time for a pyre."
Cassandra nor Varric both kept their silence, which Aaron took as agreement.
Aaron went into the cabin, as Varric and Cassandra waited outside in the shaded evergreen forest. A minute later, Aaron emerged, unnaturally red flames already flickering in the windows of the cabin.
As Aaron stepped out of the threshold, Cassandra could feel his magic spike in intensity. The crackle of the flames became a roar, and they licked out of the windows and began consuming the roof.
Aaron stopped a few paces away from the cabin and turned around, extending a hand towards the blazing building. The magical power redoubled again, to Cassandra's shock, and the cabin was completely engulfed in an inferno that rose into the sky in a tightly controlled spiral. The scarlet flames darkened as they intensified, until they were more black than red. Cassandra could feel the magical power Aaron was exerting like a pressure on her temples, and it seemed cold somehow, despite the blazing heat of the fire.
Cassandra stared into the magical flames, and willed the image before her to burn away the ones in her memories. She whispered a silent prayer for Andraste to find the lost souls of the little family that had met its end here—and for all those that had died already, and all those who were falling victim to the Breach all across Thedas while the Inquisition was still struggling to even organize a response.
The cabin charred to blackened ruins with uncanny speed. The roof collapsed in on itself, sending up a wild spray of sparks.
Cassandra reevaluated Aaron, watching as the eerie, dark red lights danced on his expressionless silver armor. She'd never seen nor felt him truly exerting his magic before, and from the looks of it, he was putting his full might into the flames. Maybe this coldness stemmed from anger, or frustration, or sorrow—but whatever it was, it revealed just how wrong Cassandra had been before to underestimate him simply because he hid his abilities and chose to specialize as a shapeshifter rather than a spellcaster. He was unskilled, and he certainly wasn't the strongest mage, but this display wouldn't be possible for any mage with raw power short of a senior enchanter's.
Cassandra only wondered what else Aaron was hiding. That question haunted her even after they finally resumed their travels on the Imperial Highway, and she was certain it would consume her well beyond that. In the crisis and its aftermath, Aaron had showed a new side of himself, calculating and emotionally detached.
She wasn't at all sure that was a good thing.
They'd survived the encounter with Gluttony, but Cassandra couldn't help but feel as if some part of their mission had irrevocably failed there in that cabin. Perhaps it was only the hidden hope that they would be able to save those they came across, or the notion that together they were strong enough to make a difference.
So many died at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Those first days, losses were so staggering that their priority was not to lose fewer people, but instead to simply preserve anything they possibly could. To make sure that even a single person would live through it.
But this felt different. Embarking on a mission to save the world made every single failure and misstep and inadequacy their responsibility, in a way that the Breach and its immediate aftermath simply wasn't.
They were still alive after that battle, but that wasn't enough. They needed to do more than simply survive at the expense of others, as Gluttony had. To build was infinitely more difficult than to destroy, yet that was the task they had set on themselves. The stakes could not possibly be higher, and they could brook no errors.
Cassandra had known these things before, but now she truly understood them in a way she hadn't before. She'd been wrong to prioritize satisfying her own conscience over keeping Aaron safe. She'd been considering the shame and dishonor cowardice would bring, but not the crushing consequences of failure.
By now, the sun was low over the horizon as they rode along the Imperial Highway, painting the autumn landscape in orange and red. Cassandra had been silently turning things over in her mind for hours and hours, but this conclusion seemed like something she needed to latch on to. Cassandra resolved that she would never put her own sense of honor and spiritual needs over the safety of the Inquisition and the world ever again. She made that wordless promise to herself and to the Maker above. This was the sacred duty to which she would wholly devote herself, forsaking all others.
She would not let herself fail.