"Morrigan will escort you to Ostagar." Flemeth declared once I was back inside the hut. "It is not a long walk, but it is a perilous one."
"I will escort her?" Morrigan asked, clearly annoyed with the whole situation. I could hardly blame her: she was probably just having a quiet day, doing…whatever the Hell Morrigan did, and I showed up out of nowhere, slept in her bed and now she had been roped into being a Wilds tour guide. I smirked, picking up my handbag from the side of the bed I had slept in and slinging it over my shoulder.
"Don't argue, girl." Flemeth snapped, and the steel in Morrigan's eyes softened.
"Very well, I will take you." Morrigan sighed. "Your attire is not exactly appropriate should we encounter any Darkspawn on our journey. Do you even possess a weapon?" She asked, trailing her eyes over me appraisingly. I smoothed down the skirt of my black, bodycon dress, thoughtfully. It had been Emily's favourite dress of mine, and I wore it to the funeral because I thought she would approve or something. She had borrowed it countless times – one of the perks of being an identical twin was that you automatically doubled your wardrobe. She had worn it more than I had. It still smelled of her.
"It was my sister's favourite…" I said, mostly to myself. "It'll have to do for now, anyway. Hopefully someone at Ostagar can hook me up with some armour, but this is all I have with me. And I don't have a weapon because there's no sword-compartment in the Mulberry shoulder bag. It's a major design flaw, obviously, and they'll be receiving a strongly-worded letter from me when I get back home. Guess you'll just have to pick up my slack." I said, locking eyes with her, challengingly. She might have been a powerful apostate, but I had gone to an all-girls school for six years: if she wanted to have a bitch-off, she was going to lose.
Flemeth strode to the back of the hut, tossing aside a red, velvet throw to reveal a large wooden chest. She bent over it and pulled out a long sword, which she held out to me. The sheath was adorned with intricate carvings which flowed seamlessly onto the wrought iron hilt. It was quite beautiful, but looked incredibly old.
"Take this with you, Lauren Duval. I have no need of it." She said simply, as I took the sword in my hands. It wasn't as heavy as I had anticipated it to be and I unsheathed it, slowly, balancing it in my hand. I swung it through the air a few times, to test the balance of it and nodded, sheathing it and swinging it over my shoulder, tightening the leather strap to hold it in place. I reached behind me and felt for the pommel, to check that the positioning of it allowed for quick access. Satisfied, I nodded in gratitude.
"Thank you, Flemeth. I still don't know why you're doing all of this for me." I admitted, frowning. She threw her head back and cackled.
"Before this day is over, you will be on your way to repaying me. Do not doubt that." And I didn't. If I knew anything about Flemeth, it was that she always got her way. Even when Morrigan had sent the Warden to kill her, she had still found a way to live on: she had a plan, I was sure, and I was just another chess piece on her board. I knew this, but there was little I could do about it. I was here now, and I had no choice but to go to Ostagar – just as she had wanted.
"Very well…come on, then." Morrigan sighed, impatiently, striding out of the hut into the clearing. With a final nod to Flemeth, I turned and followed her with a knot of apprehension forming in the pit of my stomach. I wasn't sure what unnerved me more: the threat of Darkspawn and Wilder creatures or the prospect of one-on-one conversation with Morrigan.
As soon as she saw me emerge from the hut, she wheeled around and started striding towards the tree-line, and I jogged to catch up with her, cursing that the decision to wear a dress and heels to Em's funeral had won out over my initial desire to slum it in jeans and converse.
I caught up with her just in time for her to surge ahead of me again, weaving through trees, following some unmarked path that only she knew. I trotted along behind her, tripping and stumbling over gnarled roots and loose rocks, certain that I wouldn't make it to Ostagar without breaking an ankle. Wet grass and marsh slapped at my bare legs as I walked, making my skin crawl and itch and I forced myself to resist the urge to stop and wipe the awful moisture off, aware that Morrigan probably wouldn't stop to wait for me.
A horrible thought crept into my mind as I looked around at the labyrinth of trees surrounding me. We had been walking for almost ten minutes in silence, ducking and weaving and frequently changing direction. If Morrigan disappeared on me, I would be completely, hopelessly lost. I wondered how long a person could wander in this place before finding a clear path to civilisation. The forest was so thick and dense that it blocked out all sunlight, though it couldn't have been later than two in the afternoon. If Morrigan decided that she didn't want to help me after all, I could spend the rest of my life lost in this place.
This thought spurred me on, and a wave of adrenaline carried me faster along the invisible path so that I was right on her heel.
"Hey, Morrigan? Do you think you could slow down a little?" I asked, panting slightly. She stopped walking so suddenly that I almost slammed into her back, and the movement threw me off-balance. She wheeled around to face me, her eyes glinting fiercely in the darkness, and I wobbled on one leg, trying to regain my footing.
"You wish to slow down? Does this pace tire you?" She asked, in a dangerously sweet voice.
"No, it doesn't tire me, but I have no idea where we're going. And these shoes weren't exactly designed for hiking through forests." I pointed out, trying not to sound as pissed-off as I felt.
"I'm not exactly sure what those shoes were designed to do." She replied, studying my black high-heels with obvious distaste. I momentarily forgot my precarious situation and narrowed my eyes. You can insult me all you like, but leave the shoes out of it.
"These are Christian LouBoutins. They were designed to be fabulous. If I had thought that I would be spending my day in the Wilds of Ferelden, I would probably have worn something a little more practical. Despite your obvious belief that I'm an imbecile, I do actually have a brain in my head. This…" I gestured at our surroundings, "Was not in my schedule."
Morrigan smirked, but the gleam in her eyes was one of amusement rather than disdain, and she cocked her head to the side.
"You are strange." She observed, though it didn't sound like an insult. "Come then. I shall try to move at a more agreeable pace for you."
We started walking again, only this time we walked side-by-side, and it was more of a casual stroll than a race. After a few minutes, the trees seemed to thin out a little, and a few brave rays of sunlight pierced the canopy, basking the forest floor in a dusky light.
"Where are you from, Lauren Duval?" She asked, suddenly, surveying me with a spark of what seemed like genuine interest.
I chewed my lip. What could I say? I was from somewhere over the rainbow? Through the looking-glass? I had fallen down the rabbit-hole, taken the red pill, hopped on the Hogwart's express and stepped through a wardrobe into the Tardis? My own theories didn't make a whole lot more sense than any of that.
"I'm from a place called Scotland." I decided that the easy answer was the only one I had right now.
"That is the name of your world?" She asked, casually, as if the idea that there were different worlds out there was nothing new to her.
"My country. I'm not sure where my world is, in relation to here. I thought I knew but now…" I trailed off, unsure of how to finish.
Oh, you just turn left at Big Ben, second star to the right and straight on 'till morning, you can't miss it.
"How did you come to be here? I heard what my mother said. A tear in the veil…that is all fine and well, but a tear that large does not simply happen by accident. Powerful magics were involved…and yet you are no mage."
"Nope. I'm still waiting for my letter from Hogwarts." I agreed, and she frowned in confusion but let the comment pass. "I don't really know. I think it might have something to do with my sister." I admitted, voicing the theory that had been nagging at the back of my mind all day.
"Your sister? She is a mage?" She asked. I shook my head.
"No, Emily was…just a normal girl." I said, quietly, uncomfortable with describing my sister as normal…such an ugly word. The truth was she was great. She was special…but in supernatural terms, she was a muggle through-and-through.
"Was?" She asked, curiously, her eyes flicking over my face.
"Ah…you picked up on that." I muttered, kicking a stone out of my path. "Yeah, she…she passed away recently…a week ago, in fact." I sighed, wondering whether or not I could tell Morrigan the rest. I decided that I had nothing to lose. "I think she was killed. There was something…some force that controlled her, lead her to her death. I haven't…nobody in my world knows that. They think her death was an accident. I knew, because I saw it happen in a…in a dream." I finished, lamely.
"And you did not tell anyone?" She asked, frowning.
"Nah…things like that, they don't really happen in my world. We don't have magic, or the Fade, or Darkspawn…any of it. Even if I had told anybody, they would never have believed me." I cleared my throat, blinking back tears. "I haven't told anybody, until now."
She was silent for a while, obviously deep in thought.
"So…you say you have no magic…no Fade…" She shook her head as if she found the idea absurd, and continued, "…and yet you witnessed your sister's death in a vision? How? If there is no Fade in your world, how is that possible?"
"It's not." I admitted, shaking my head. "But it happened. I don't know…we don't have a Fade, but there are some people in my world who do believe in supernatural phenomena…visions, ghosts, near-death-experiences. Until a week ago I would have face-palmed if someone had tried to convince me that any of that stuff was actually real. But a lot of people believe that there's some deep, spiritual, psychic connection that twins share. Maybe it has something to do with that, although I have to admit that nothing like that had ever happened between Emily and I before."
"Twins." Morrigan repeated under her breath, her brow furrowing in thought.
"Yeah. We're identical twins. So maybe it's a good thing I landed in Ferelden, I know it was killing my parents to have to look at me every day. I'm a living reminder of what they've lost." I muttered, bitterly. I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn't realised that Morrigan had stopped walking. I looked round at her, questioningly. It was difficult to tell in the half-light of the forest, but I thought that her face looked, if possible, even paler than usual.
She was studying me with a look that might have been horror, and I was suddenly reminded of Seth Logan's face the day before when he'd seen me standing by that tree: like he'd seen something utterly impossible…something that had terrified him out of his wits.
"What?" I asked, frowning with unease. She opened her mouth to answer, but the sound of yelling and the unmistakable clash of steel on steel cut her reply short and we whipped around in unison, trying to locate the sound of the commotion. I reached behind me, unsheathing my sword and gripping it tightly in both hands, sinking into a defensive stance that felt more natural than breathing. I glanced at her warily, silently asking what we should do.
"There is trouble ahead." She muttered, more to herself than to me. "Keep your wits about you."