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gayhawkelatehomicide · 8 days

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Impulse Control Asleep, Post Drafts

I'm trying to post more/more regularly so here's a draft of a thing that I feel confident enough about to put it here. I'm putting a more extensive summary directly under the cut, but tl;dr it's a Meet the Protagonists piece.

Word Count: 7059

Current title is Not Alone, from Apotheosis 1:8

So Andraste said to her followers: "You who stand before the gates, \ You who have followed me into the heart of evil, \ The fear of death is in your eyes; its hand is upon your throat. \ Raise your voices to the heavens! Remember: \ Not alone do we stand on the field of battle.

Excerpt that will probably go in the summary when I post it:

Even though he knows Harea cannot have survived the explosion of the temple, Rogelan stays where he is. He would rather let the approaching humans capture him than risk any more harm coming to his cousin. She and Isene have been his to protect since before any of them had their vallaslin. His heart grieves, even as his mind shrinks from understanding the destruction that surrounds him.

Then Harea breathes.

The more extensive summary is as follows: I want to establish the immediate canon divergence that happens with my three inkys playthrough, and how the three of them play off each other at least a little bit. It is, I will admit, a little Rogelan focused. And Harea is by herself when she's conscious, but really her role in the first 1/3 of the storyline is "soft thing to be protected" rather than an actor in her own story, so I think I can be forgiven for it.

The things I'm most wobbly on (and would therefore deeply appreciate critique/suggestions regarding) are the battle in Ise's section and (minor spoiler) Andraste's characterization in Harea's. I will love you forever, please tell me your opinion on how well those two things play.

Anyway

__________

Rogelan comes to consciousness with his arms wrapped around his cousin's shoulders, and for a moment he thinks it's all been a dream. The shem conclave, the shouts for help, the explosion. The running, seemingly endless running through a nightmare landscape, hounded all the way by humans with pitchforks or sword-emblazoned armor. He feels the sun on his back and the heat of a fire near at hand, and Harea curled up under his arm for warmth or protection from her bad dreams, and he imagines himself safe at home with the clan.

Then he opens his eyes.

The many small fires nearby produce oily black smoke, and the sky is a sickening fade green. All around him lies what is left of the shattered Temple of Sacred Ashes. A troop of nervous shems with their swords out are approaching, looking battered and shaken. Dangerous. Like they're hunting an excuse, or perhaps a scapegoat. He looks about for his sister, but he sees only blasted corpses. None of this, however, is as awful as what he holds in his arms.

Harea's body is blackened and charred by fire. Rogelan's first instinct is to leap away, horrified, and perhaps retch up the contents of his stomach. He stops himself just in time, terrified that she will collapse into dust and embers if he takes the support of his arms from her. The delicate features of her face are nearly unrecognizable. It is only lifelong companionship that tells him the thing he's holding was once his cousin. Nothing moves for an eternity of seconds.

A crackle of green energy pops and shudders between their bodies, somewhere in the vicinity of where Harea's left hand ought to be. Rogelan stares, completely at a loss for what else to do. He doesn't know how he's managed to come through whatever has just happened alive and largely unhurt, but it seems that he is the only one. The squad of shems is getting closer. If he doesn't move soon, they'll be on him before he has a chance to defend himself. If he does move, he risks Harea disintegrating. Even though he knows she cannot be alive, Rogelan would rather let himself be taken by the humans than let her fall apart. She and Isene have been his to protect since before any of them had their vallaslin. His heart grieves, even as his mind shrinks from understanding the destruction that surrounds him.

Then Harea breathes. It is an abrupt, shuddering gasp—the inhale of a person surfacing after a long dive beneath the surface of a lake. Flakes of charred skin shake loose and flutter to the black ground with every tiny movement. Rogelan barely has time to process this development before the unique green-and-gold shimmer of Harea's magic swirls out from that odd crackling vent in her hand, curling its healing tendrils up and around the two of them. He finds what minor scrapes and bruises he has managed to acquire disappearing beneath the gentle, probing light.

Rogelan watches the magic, which is blended oddly with the black-green light of the fade and with another radiant sun-bright energy that he doesn't recognize. It surges in great pulses now, enveloping Harea and forcing Rogelan to take a few steps away despite his resolution to support her. He raises his hand to shield his eyes from the suddenly blinding light, which leaves the silhouette of a woman wreathed in flame seared onto his corneas in the heartbeat between realizing he needs to look away and doing so. An armored hand comes down on his shoulder, steadying him when he stumbles over a lump of something he doesn't want to identify.

He twists round and finds a human only a few inches shorter than himself, with curly hair and a concerned expression. Of the shems within easy reach, he's the only one whose sword is sheathed. The hand he doesn't have on Rogelan’s shoulder is similarly raised to protect his vision, but his attention is on the severe-looking woman whose armor announces her as a Seeker of Truth—to Rogelan’s understanding, a sort of super-templar tasked with apprehending dangerous rogue mages and lyrium-mad runaways from the ranks of the Order. He's met two or three of them over the years, hunting the same quarry. They don't make him feel easy, but knowing one is around removes some of the defensive terror from his immediate sense of panic. At least there will be someone in authority to reason with.

The light subsides after no more than ten rabbit-fast heartbeats. Rogelan drops his hand immediately, unsure what he's expecting to see. Whatever he’s expecting, it isn't what he finds. Harea, looking completely uninjured but for the strange crackling thing in the palm of her left hand, stands shakily where her charred corpse had been just moments ago. The light which had engulfed her now shines, like dawn on a snowy morning, from her eyes. She looks at the Seeker, who has her shield up but is making no threatening movements just yet. In a voice so unlike her own that Rogelan has trouble believing it's coming from her throat, Harea speaks.

“Be not afraid, truth seeker most valiant / what has been forgotten has not yet been lost. / The Maker’s song-weaver, from silence unending / stands now before you, mantled in light. / Greet this, my champion, guide her and keep her / for darkness is coming to cloak all with night.”

Whatever this is, it isn't Rogelan’s cousin. He can sense the power rippling off of it like heat from an open forge, and he can see its words striking the Seeker like a smith’s hammer. Most of the other shems are blasted back by the sheer force of this thing's presence. Then the creature turns its flaming gaze on Rogelan, and he feels the weight of its attention. He can't look away. It monopolizes his focus in a way he has never experienced before; the nervous shem soldiers with their swords out stop mattering. So do the smoldering ruins of the temple, the warbling rent in the sky overhead, and the gnawing terror of not knowing where Isene is. Nothing matters, suddenly, except hearing what this entity has to say to him.

“Protection incarnate, hear truth and heed it: / souls beyond number cry out for your aid. / The weightiest matters, for leadership lacking, / fall on the foolish and ruin is wrought. / Gifts of the elf-gods, your sword arm and shield / in righteous defense of your duty upheld / now called by their Makers, to battle unbroken: / Stand for your People and save all the world.”

The light abruptly leaves Harea’s eyes as soon as she finishes speaking, and she crumples to the ground. Rogelan breaks out of the shem soldier’s grip and rushes to her side. He pulls her into a half-sitting position against his chest and frantically checks for a pulse. When he finds it, he finally lets himself breathe. She's alive. Whatever else is going on, whatever that thing was that used her body to deliver its… prophecy? None of it is important. As long as she's alive, he hasn’t failed completely.

“What… was that?” The Seeker demands, as if Rogelan is supposed to know.

Before he can respond, a wall of fire goes up between the Seeker and the two elves on the ground, effectively ringing Rogelan and Harea with roaring flames. The fire flickers blue-green at the edges, and another ten-halla weight lifts off Rogelan’s chest. He holds a hand up, though he doubts it can be seen above the magical fire, and shouts in Elvhen. “Isene! It's alright, stand down.”

The flames give a surprised flutter, then burn low and go out. The assembled soldiers have parted to give their Seeker a clear line of sight to the unfamiliar mage, inadvertently making a gap for Rogelan to see his sister half-crouched atop a chunk of tumbled masonry with her staff raised. He slips an arm under Harea’s knees and stands up, carrying her with the ease of long practice. The Seeker has her shield up again and is glowing faintly with holy light, presumably prepared to throw down a Spell Purge to clear the fire and then charge. She seems nonplussed by the sudden deescalation.

“You're alive!” Ise leaps down from her perch, slings her staff into its clasps at her back, and crosses the distance between them in almost the same motion. All the shems take an instinctive step further away, with the exception of the Seeker and the man who’d arrested Rogelan’s earlier stumble. “Is Harea okay?” Isene sounds almost as panicked as Rogelan felt just moments ago.

“She's fine,” he assures her in the common tongue. “I don't know how, but we both are. She just needs to rest.” More quietly, and in the language he hopes no one else present speaks, he adds, “We’ll talk about it in private.”

Ise looks like she has about a million questions, but she just nods. On closer inspection, Rogelan can see that her clothes are torn and signed, her face is bruised, and there are angry scrapes on both her arms. She's also favoring her right leg, though she's doing a decent job of hiding it. Wherever she was when the explosion happened, she wasn't entirely spared its effects.

The Seeker breaks in before Rogelan can ask after Ise’s injuries. “You are all under arrest,” she announces, “on suspicion of involvement in this.”

“You think we had-” Ise flares, but Rogelan kicks her surreptitiously in the ankle.

“We understand your suspicion,” he says over her immediate protest. “We’ll come quietly; we don't want any trouble.”

The Seeker eyes Ise’s staff and the leaf-shaped elven long blade still at Rogelan’s hip. “Drop your weapons and follow me.”

“Of course,” Rogelan agrees peaceably. “My hands are a bit full at the moment, but I won't stop one of your soldiers from taking my sword.”

“You can't be serious,” Isene hisses in his ear. “These shems will string us up as scapegoats the moment we let them disarm us!”

“If we don't do as they say,” he murmurs back, keeping his eyes on the Seeker, “they'll kill us right here. I recognize this one's armor. We may have a chance to negotiate, but not if you start lighting people on fire. I can't fight and protect Harea at the same time.”

She grinds her teeth, amber eyes shifting nervously from soldier to soldier, clearly calculating whether she thinks she could take them all on alone. After a tense moment, Isene arrives at the same conclusion Rogelan came to. It's too risky. She makes a frustrated sound and unslings her staff. When the Seeker holds out a hand, Ise puts her weapon in it. The man who caught Rogelan earlier approaches and unhooks the scabbard from his belt. He brings it to the Seeker, who tucks it under her arm.

“Thank you, Cullen. Go meet Leliana at the forward camp and tell her what we found here. I will take them back to Haven.”

“Alright. Send us as many men as you can spare.” The soldier, Cullen apparently, snaps off a salute and jogs back towards the rim of the crater. At a hand signal from the Seeker, the remaining troops form up around Rogelan and his family, and they all follow at a slower pace, accommodating Ise’s limp and Rogelan's unconscious burden. Harea doesn't weigh enough to slow him down, but he's content to let the shemlen take as long as possible to get wherever they're going. His mind races.

He has a duty to protect the two mages he brought to this place, and Fen’Harel himself couldn't stop Rogelan from fulfilling that duty. He’ll think of something. He just needs time.

***

Isene hates letting other people touch her staff. She crafted it herself, and there are secrets woven into the wood. The fact that decoding those secrets would take a magical genius more versed in the history of the People even than herself—a difficult achievement, as Ise is the most educated member of her clan barring Harea and Keeper Istimaethoriel—does not stop her from being nervous any time she has to hand it over. She doesn't even really like Rogelan holding it, and she trusts her brother more than anyone.

The woman in the eyeball armor leads them out of the crater and onto the snowy mountainside, carrying Ise’s staff and Rogelan’s sword. It's obvious that no one here knows enough about what her brother is to be prepared for his unique fighting style, because they didn't take his shield or the symbol of Elgar’nan he wears around his wrist. It's only a little comforting. At least he’ll be able to use some of his abilities, though he's probably going to do everything he can to stop it from coming to that. The Vir Atish’an has too strong a hold on him, in Ise’s opinion.

Between the two of them, they could've fought their way free of these shemlen in the crater. Once they get dragged back to town, though, there will be no chance of getting away again. Even by herself, the common troops would be easy pickings. It's the eyeball-armor soldier that she's worried about. Rogelan says he recognizes the armor, but he hasn't told her what that means, and the stranger is still holding Ise’s staff. She's getting more frustrated the longer they walk. The snow beneath her bare feet starts to hiss with every step as she turns her nervous energy into heat and vents it out of her palms and soles.

Rogelan shoots her a warning look, but his obvious wariness only winds her up even more. A high, distant whine begins from somewhere overhead. It doesn't sound like the wind. Ise turns around to look, so she's the only one who sees the meteor of green-black fade stone come hurtling down from the enormous hole in the sky. She shouts an alarm and tackles the nearest soldier out of the impact zone. Rogelan dives to the side as soon as Isene yells, as do two more soldiers and the eyeball woman. The remaining five are crushed beneath the hurtling stone.

Ise’s shem cries out in pain or fear, she doesn't particularly care which, and she doesn't have time to figure it out either because a black tarry substance begins to bubble from the earth not two arm spans away from where they landed. Ise rolls back to her feet, calling fire into her hands. Magic is usually harder to create and control without her staff, and she knows that if she's not careful she’ll burn herself, but when a demon erupts from the bubbles, she decides it's worth the risk. Opening her mind, she reaches out to touch the source of all magic. Every time she's done this staffless in the past, she had to coax the energy into the real world like she was trying to light a campfire with wet wood. That's not the case this time.

Today, it feels a little like trying to drink from a mountain waterfall during the spring thaw. She reaches, and instead of a trickle she receives a torrent. A gout of flame bursts from her hands, exploding into a helix of red-orange-yellow-white-blue so hot it turns all the snow in a fifteen foot radius of where Ise’s standing directly into mist, then boils even that away. She incinerates the demon and only narrowly misses the soldier she just tackled out of danger. Fortunately for everyone, Isene’s magic has always been too powerful for her own good, and Keeper Istimaethoriel has spent years teaching her how to clamp her mind closed around a spell gone wild.

That training is the only thing that saves her.

On instinct born from hundreds of hours of practice, Ise turns the blast of flame skyward, away from anyone who might get caught in it. She balls her hands into fists and throws all her energy into shutting the door that she’s opened. The column of fire narrows, growing brighter and hotter almost as though it’s aware that it has only moments left to vent its full fury. Like the beam of light coming through a closing door on a sunny day, the magical fire shrinks, shrinks, shrinks. And goes out.

A tidal wave of fatigue sweeps over Isene. She stumbles sideways, away from the fade-rock meteor, and manages to stagger as far as the nearest intact snowbank before she collapses. The welcoming embrace of the snow cools her superheated body, hissing as it melts around her. She can hear the sound of continued fighting, but there's nothing she can do about it just yet. She has to lie down.

Ise drifts in and out of consciousness for a while, unsure exactly how much time is passing. It must not be too long, though, because the fight is still raging when she surfaces. She levers herself up into a sitting position and thinks, Alright. No staffless magic when there's a hole in the sky. Good to know.

Isene isn't primarily a martial fighter, but she can hold her own against most opponents at least long enough for Rogelan to come save her. There's more than a few downed branches, casualties of the meteor, not to mention the dead soldiers' weapons to choose from. She doesn't need magic. She stands, prepared to discover that she's been left behind by the tide of battle. Not so. The shem soldier she tackled out of the way has taken up a position in front of Ise’s snow bank and is holding off another of those shade demons. The thing is clearly on its last legs, so Isene grabs a sturdy looking stick off the ground and joins her unlikely protector.

A heavy wallop upside the head-equivalent stuns the shade demon long enough for the soldier to run it through. It melts back into the ground, and Ise spares her shem a bright (if probably rather manic) grin before charging off towards the rest of the party. She hears a string of inventive cursing, then the sound of her shem following her. Good. Rounding the meteor, Isene has a few heartbeats to assess the situation.

Eyeball woman and one of the other soldiers who was quick enough not to get crushed are fighting back to back, cloaked in the bright blue glow of templar magic. A hunched shape that looks like a lava flow with arms and a shade demon are closing in, though they flinch away from eyeball woman’s sword. The second soldier who survived the meteor has her back to a tree and is currently unmolested, but her shield arm hangs limp at her side and there's blood oozing from several holes in her armor.

Rogelan is doing his thing. His right hand is wrapped around his symbol of Elgar'nan, and from it a blade of light gleams like the morning sun through a thick fog. His shield, a deceptively simple looking piece of ironbark, is glowing with the subtle runes worked into its face. A silvery surface covers it now, both a reinforcement and a mirror at the same time. The lava-thing facing him breathes a gout of fire, and Rogelan’s mirror shield catches that energy and hurls it back at the creature. He stands, an immovable bulwark between Harea’s crumpled body and the onslaught of two shades plus the lava-thing.

As Ise watches, her brother begins to recite an old prayer in Elvhen, and blue-white plate armor spins itself out of the air and onto his limbs. She hears her shem skid to a stop behind her, presumably to stare at this working of what must, to him, look like more magic. They don't have time for gawking. She turns around and grabs the front of her shem's breastplate so she can haul him towards the battle.

“Come on, I'm no use against that lava-thing without my magic, so it has to be you.” She shoves her shem in front of her. “Just like the shade demon, right? Ready, go!”

Whoever trained these soldiers, they knew what they were doing. Her shem only freezes for about half a heartbeat before realizing he's been given an order and going to carry it out. He's clearly running on pure battle-instinct at this point, something which Ise has no compunctions about using to her own advantage. Sure, he wouldn't take orders from her in any other situation, but if she barks instructions in an authoritative tone at a man whose entire focus is on staying alive, she's discovered that most trained fighters will obey reflexively.

Isene's shem rushes to help Rogelan, darting in between the shade demon and the lava-thing to deliver a textbook shortsword thrust to the thing’s back. Ise wades in after him, using her improvised club to disorient the shade demons. The influx of reinforcements and the invocation of Rogelan’s Shalathe armor are enough to turn the tide. They send the shade demons slithering back into the dirt and sandwich the lava-things between the blue gleam of a templar anti-magic field and Rogelan’s reality-enforcing aura. There are ten full seconds of ringing silence while everyone catches their breath. Then Rogelan dismisses his powers and goes to check on Harea, Isene sits down and plants her stick in the muddy dirt, and the three shem soldiers group up with their eyeball-armored leader.

The injured soldier doesn't look so good; she has a hard time leaving her tree to join her fellows, and her protestations that she's alright are cut short by a bout of painful sounding coughing. Looks like a lot of broken ribs, from where Isene is sitting. The eyeball woman gives her a potion, but it's obvious that the general healing-factor boost isn't going to be enough. Ise lets the fretting go on for a few minutes before her conscience won't let her ignore it anymore. She groans quietly and hauls herself back up to her feet, then crosses the clearing to the group of soldiers.

“Hey, eyeball armor,” she taps the woman's shoulder. Rogelan snorts a very undignified little laugh from somewhere to their right.

Eyeball woman turns her head to glare at Isene. “You may call me Seeker Pentaghast. What do you want?”

“If you give me my staff back I might be able to help,” Isene doesn't have the energy to be snarky.

“Are you a healer?” Seeker Pentaghast’s tone abruptly grows more polite. There is a sudden hopefulness in her eyes, too. If she hadn't seen the change happen, Ise might not have been able to identify the near-despair that had characterized the woman's face before.

Isene holds out her hand for the staff. “An indifferent one, but anything's better than nothing, right?”

Seeker Pentaghast hesitates. The wounded soldier makes a pained noise as one of her compatriots helps her shift position, and her raspy breathing grows shallower. Ise gets her staff back.

“Do what you can.”

“Alright, clear a space.” Isene uses the blunt end of the staff to scoot the shems out of the way. “I don't know how much control of this I'm going to have, and I don't want to catch any of you if I have to get rid of some excess energy.”

Rogelan joins the larger group, carrying Harea again. “Farther back than that, please, gentlemen.” He moves them another few paces away. “‘Getting rid of excess energy’ means bolts of fire. You really don't want to be in the way.”

“I will stay here,” Seeker Pentaghast informs Ise from her position at her wounded soldier's side, “in case of emergencies.”

“It's your funeral,” Isene shrugs. She kneels beside the injured soldier and cracks her knuckles. Ise’s been told that her healing feels like getting slapped in the face, but she's fairly sure even these shem soldiers would prefer to feel slapped than dead. With both hands on her staff, she closes her eyes and focuses. Magic flows smoothly from the fade, through Isene’s staff, and out into the soldier. She thanks all the listening gods for the gate attenuators and magical channels she’s built into this staff over the years. It stabilizes the flood of energy enough that she can be precise without the fear that she'll do more harm than good.

A glowing map of the woman’s body flashes into being in Ise’s mind, with areas of disruption picked out in red light. It's a process that requires intense concentration, but little by little Isene coaxes those areas back into the right shapes. Broken bones are the worst; she has to grasp each little fragment of bone and each disconnected blood vessel, carefully rearrange them, and then knit them back together. She can feel sweat breaking out across her forehead. Creators, she wishes Harea were awake. Her cousin can do this stuff in her sleep.

An exhausting five minutes pass in tense silence. At the end of it, Ise has to stagger a few feet away to be sick into a convenient bush, overwhelmed and overheated by the effort. Someone helpfully arrives to hold her hair back. She wipes her mouth with the back of one hand and looks up to find her shem soldier, the one she tackled, giving her a sympathetic smile.

“Here,” he reaches into a pouch and offers her a packet of trail rations. “It's not much, but it looks like all that took a lot out of you. You should eat something, if you think you ca-”

“I could kiss you!” Ise snatches the food and begins to wolf it down gratefully. Salt pork and hard cheese replace the taste of bile in her mouth, and she washes it down with half of her water skin. The whole process is made more difficult by the staff still in her hand, but she's not letting the thing out of her grasp again until she's sure there won't be anymore demons falling out of the sky or crawling up from the ground.

The feeling of Rogelan’s solid presence at her shoulder draws Isene from her desperate focus on her snack. She glances up at him, gauges the exact shade of stern worry on his face, and then raids his belt pouches for more food. He always has food. Indeed, after only a bit of rummaging she comes up with two bruised apples, a bag of mostly crushed nuts, and half of a rather squished sandwich still wrapped in wax paper. Some conversation or other is happening, but she can't make herself care about it until she's about halfway through her findings. Besides, the look on her brother’s face says they're in danger, but it's nothing urgent. The sandwich and nuts are gone by the time Isene looks up.

“-ngerous, with or without our weapons,” Rogelan is saying. “The only thing keeping us disarmed does is put everyone at a disadvantage. There are only six of us now, we all need to be on guard.”

Seeker Pentaghast makes a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. Then, she nods. “You are right. I have a great many questions for you, but they must wait until we are back in Haven. It seems the road will be dangerous. You should be able to defend yourselves.”

“Thank you.” Rogelan shifts Harea’s weight to one arm so he can take his sword and return it to its sheath. “Is your soldier going to be able to keep up with us? We’ll need to move quickly.”

“Corporal? How are you feeling?” Seeker Pentaghast asks the injured shem soldier.

“I'm alright, Seeker.” The soldier is back on her feet, though she hasn't picked up her shield again. “That healing hurt like a right bastard, but I can keep pace now. S’not far back to town. Get some proper rest when we're safe.”

“Good.” The Seeker turns back to Rogelan. “Can your sister keep up as well?”

“I'm right here, you know,” Ise says waspishly.

“Eat your apple,” Rogelan retorts. To the Seeker, he says, “She’ll be fine. Healing isn't her forte, but food will help with the exhaustion, and as your corporal said, we can all rest when we're safe. Let's get moving; we don't want to be here when the next round of demons arrives.”

The group marches, double-time, up the path towards the town of Haven. Isene sends up a silent prayer to whoever happens to be listening. She prays for safe passage as far as the gates, but more than that, she prays that her cousin will wake up soon. She feels magically lopsided without Harea. Ise isn't cut out for Keeper duties.

***

Harea stands on a wide, smooth road paved with broad stone slabs of an unfamiliar pale stone. The road stretches out ahead of her nearly as far as the horizon. It buckles up over some low hills in the distance, then it splits to run in two different directions along the edge of her vision. Closer at hand, it passes through a vast military encampment. Men, dogs, and horses gather, rank upon rank of soldiery forming up into a mighty host.

There aren't many details to be picked out at this distance—closer than the hills still isn't very close—but Harea can see a block of elven archers in rough-hewn armor that looks like it was cobbled together from scavenged pieces of enemy equipment. She sees men so tall they look like giants, towering over the diminutive elves and carrying enormous axes or hammers. There is one at the head of the host wearing rich furs and scale armor, and at his side another of those huge men wielding a tower shield. She blinks, and the shield-bearer suddenly has two spears in his chest. She blinks again, and he's gone. The commander of the host stands alone.

Overhead, thin pale clouds scud against an overcast sky. The sun is veiled behind a pile of wispy clouds that do little to dim the light but instead diffuse it so that everything is cast in an eerie, almost-shadowless grey glare. Harea turns at the sound of a breath behind her. She finds herself standing before towering gates made from black iron, decorated with the scowling faces of metal dragons. The gates are closed, but then a sound like someone is gliding a city-sized blade over a rough whetstone begins, and the gates begin to swing open. To either side of the huge doors stand a pair of statues so large it's shocking that they don't collapse under their own unfathomable weight.

Beside Harea, looking up at the gates, is a human woman not much older than she is herself. The woman has tan skin and hair on the blonder side of sandy, freckles, and grey-green eyes the precise shade of the clouds before a bad storm on the plains of the Dirthavaren. There is a wicked looking short blade at her side and a buckler clipped to her right gauntlet. She wears leather armor that looks finely crafted, though Harea isn't an expert on such things. The armor is scarred with the marks of battle, and her boots are muddy. This is a soldier—an experienced one, if the signs are to be believed. She glances over at Harea and smiles a sad little smile.

“It's almost time,” she says. Her accent is hard to place. Ferelden, certainly, but maybe from farther south than Clan Lavellan ventures. Chasind or Avarr, perhaps.

“Time for what?” Harea asks. She doesn't remember how she came to be here, but for some reason it doesn't seem important just now.

“For my great test. And yours too, incidentally.” The woman looks back up at the slowly opening gates. In a conversational tone, she continues, “Did you know, I spent eighteen hours behind these gates? I had more than half a day to consider the forces that brought me there. I spent most of it thinking of inventive curses to wish on my husband. And my captors, and the Archon. I suppose I should've been praying, or singing, or thinking virtuous thoughts, but I was too angry. I'd been betrayed, after all.”

Harea frowns, confused. “I don't think we've been introduced. Have we?”

The woman smiles again. “Not formally, but I think you’ll be able to guess who I am in a minute or so. I certainly know you, Harea Elgadira, First of Clan Lavellan. You're a descendant of a very good friend of mine. I hope, if you do nothing else with the gift I'm going to give you, you make sure his name is restored to the Chant. The fools who removed it have heard from me too, but by that point they weren't in a place to do much about it.”

Hearing her full name from this apparent stranger isn't as discomfiting as one might expect. Something about her pleasant, matter-of-fact voice makes Harea want to trust her. By the same gap of logic that lets her avoid wondering how she got to these black iron gates, she doesn't question the feeling of trust.

“I'll do my best,” Harea says doubtfully, “but if you're talking about the Chant of Light, I'm afraid I don't have the power to change it.”

“Oh, of course not. Not yet, anyway. The test comes first, and then the power. The Maker learned that one the hard way, with me. Jealousy is one of those mortal vices he didn't really understand before all this.” She sighs and looks up at the scudding clouds. The gates have opened wide enough for Harea to see through them now. Another line of soldiers, these ones in black armor with red trim, waits behind the gates. The woman stretches her neck, then rotates her left shoulder a few times, like she's warming up her arm to swing her sword. “It won't be long now. Listen, and don't interrupt. Before I have to go, there are a few things I'd like to tell you.”

Harea nods and obediently falls silent.

“For what it's worth, I think it was a good thing that I trusted the people who betrayed me. They didn't deserve it, but I didn't know that until it was too late. I've thought about it a lot in the time since it all happened, and I’ve decided that the choice to trust them says more about me than it does about them. What kind of person would I be if I didn't trust the people closest to me? My world would be the same as the evil I was trying to destroy!” The stranger gestures towards the towering juggernauts on either side of the gate.

“Your test is going to be long and difficult. That's why it's a good test. If you survive—which I believe you will—you'll be in a place to do a lot of good. It will be easy to give into your desire for revenge at that point, and while I endorse a little revenge here and there, you need to stay focused on that first thing; on making the world better. Your faith will be an incredible asset, but don't be afraid to question from time to time. Following blindly is a good way to get led off a cliff.

“There are about a hundred more things I want to say to you. You're about to be thrown into the thick of things, and I know you're the perfect one for the job, but I wish I could spare you some of the hardship that's coming. But these gates are just about open, and I couldn't stop all this even if I wanted to. Here's the most important thing: there is nothing in the world that is always good. Courage can turn to foolishness, patience to paralysis, wisdom to pride, and love to control.

“In the same vein, there's very little that's always bad—barring needless cruelty and the Blight. Fear can become prudence, stubbornness becomes loyalty, impetuousness becomes decisiveness, and envy becomes a drive for self-improvement. No matter what you are told, I need you to remember that anger isn't evil. Anger can be righteous. Sometimes, the feeling that the oppressor tells you is a baseless and counterproductive rage is actually the Wrath of the downtrodden. Don't let them take that from you.”

The gates are more than half open now. Behind them, there lies a vast city. By some trick of the light, the flat glare overhead makes its buildings look almost black. Closer, though, the vanguard of an army is ranged around a tall wooden structure. It takes Harea a few seconds of staring to place the structure, because her people don't use them. A memory surfaces. When she was a child, she’d been looking for useful herbs when she came upon a human funeral at the edge of the forest. They laid out their dead on a wooden pyre. This one is grander by far, but it's the same basic shape. Split logs laid out horizontally, placed to allow air to rush up between them and ringed with tinder sticks.

One other difference between the funeral pyre Harea saw years ago and the one she's looking at now stands out starkly: there is an upright post at the center, wrapped in rope.

The woman standing beside Harea puts a friendly hand on her shoulder. “I hate to leave you, but I've got to go now, and so do you. The world is a mess in your time, as it was in mine. All we can do is our best.”

She turns Harea further towards her so that they're standing face to face for a moment, and bends her head to press a kiss to Harea’s forehead. It feels like a benediction. The last thing she says is, “Good luck.”

Harea blinks, and she's gone. But no, there she is, tied to the post atop the pyre like she'd been there the whole time. Overhead, the clouds roil and darken as a storm rumbles ominously closer, creeping along the edge of the horizon. The host outside the gates cries out in shock and realization, and Harea gasps with them.

Unlike her cousins, who distrusted the humans and their religion—and rightly so, for it was a group of Chantry zealots who struck down Rogelan’s father in front of him—Harea has always been curious about what the Mothers were preaching. It began as simple delight in the music. The Chant of Lights is a beautiful poem, and the choirs who raised their voices in song each morning and evening from every little village Chantry drew a younger Harea like a halla to an elfroot patch. Over the years, she's gotten bold enough to creep into the back pews and listen to the sermons.

She can't say she believes everything the Chantry teaches, but Harea likes the idea of a Creator who can be called back by faith and song. The story of Andraste is a touching one, and it's nice to believe that something so powerful and inscrutable as a god could be moved by a mortal’s impassioned plea. She doesn't see why the Maker and the Creators can't both exist, except that the people who believe in the one hate the people who believe in the other. She knows the old stories of how that conflict came to be; she knows about Red Crossing, and the Exalted Marches, and the political backbiting in Halamshiral and Val Royeaux. Her cousins are angry, but it mostly makes Harea sad.

All this to say that Harea, more than most Dalish, knows the Chant. She knows the human stories about the Maker and His Prophet, and the terrible fate that befell her. She realizes where she is, and who she's been talking to.

Up there on the pyre, Andraste gazes out over the world with calm grey eyes. The archers in the host that surrounds her take aim at something out in the field and loose their arrows in a great storm that blots out the sun. A shuddering moan goes up from the army outside the walls. Many of them lay down their arms. Several Tevinter mages in ceremonial robes start pouring lamp oil on the pyre, using magic to splash it up to

Andraste calls out in a voice that shouldn't carry as far as it does, yet somehow echoes across the plain, “Maker of the World, forgive them! They have lived too long in shadow, without Your Light to guide them! Be with Your children now, O Maker!”

A man in elaborate mage armor mounts the pyre at her side. The Tevinter army begins a slow beat, stamping their feet or clashing their weapons together, increasing in pace as their leader climbs the scaffolding. He turns to face the assembled Alamarri horde once he's reached the top.

“Today, I end this war!" he shouts, but his words don't have the same weight as Andraste’s. When she spoke, it felt like every living being heard her words at the same instant. The Archon, for it can only be Archon Hessarian, lacks the overt gravity of the Prophet. He sounds like a man howling into a mountain blizzard, expecting to be heard despite the wind screaming around him.

Hessarian lifts his arm high and calls fire from the air to the palm of his hand. A shuddering gasp rises from the Alamarri. The Tevinter soldiers’ beat speeds up. The clouds overhead run before a cold, rain-scented wind from the north. Thunder rumbles.

The Archon touches the fire to the post above Andraste's head. Wood and oil ignite. The sudden fierce conflagration draws in so much air that Harea’s hair whooshes forwards around her face, and a wall of suffocating heat pushes the ranks of soldiers standing closest to the base of the pyre away. They stumble into their fellows, making the whole formation shudder. The Archon rises above the flames like a bird riding the thermals, hovering without seeming to put any effort into it.

Both armies watch in rapt silence. The sound of distant thunder falls quiet, and the wind dies down as the world seems to hold its breath. Across the wide plain and throughout the crowded city, the only noise is the crackling of fire. Overhead, the dark clouds drift across the sun. Andraste burns, but she does not scream.

Harea wakes up.

#dragon age #dai #oc: harea lavellan #oc: isne lavellan #oc: rogelan lavellan #inky trio #my writing #daytime reblog

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