Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Holy shit, I’ve got tits!” Coyote looked down at himself with no small amount of surprise and glee. “Ha! Wait ‘till Raven sees this!”

It wasn’t the first time Coyote had ever had breasts, mind you, it was just the most exciting aspect of his current situation. Less exciting aspects included: Shackles, darkness, weird clothing, a really, really cold floor, and a fucking painful something-or-other going on with his (er… her?) left hand.

Eh, Coyote’s flexible. Let’s go with “her”, for now.

That’s what Cassandra did, anyway.

Leliana withheld judgement, as always. Gathering information was always more important than making judgements. The Dalish elf in front of them wore Vallaslin nobody had ever seen before and their clothing was no clue about anything other than where nearby they had acquired snow gear. Their movement was even less feminine than Cassandra’s, so Leliana wasn’t going to judge.

Well, not about that , anyway.

About the big hole in the sky and demons jumping out of green Fade rifts, and one of her oldest, dearest friends being murdered along with dozens, if not hundreds of mages, templars, and clerics in the largest explosion in known Thedosian history, Leliana was very prepared to judge.

Not that she’d let it show. Somebody had to play good guard, and Cassandra was too angry to pull it off right now.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now,” the Seeker demanded, her movements stiff with barely-contained fury. “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.”

The elf shrugged, frowning, and spoke in an unfamiliar language. “ I got nuthin’. I don’t remember any conclave, or… ”

Cassandra frowned and grabbed the Dalish woman’s face. “Speak clearly! Do you not speak Trade?”

“ I speak a whole pile of languages, most of which are dead, ” the elf replied, dryly.

Leliana pulled Cassandra away, “We need her, Cassandra. If we can not understand her, we will have to make her understand us.”

“It will be easier to show her,” Cassandra agreed.

-----

Cassandra. The tall warrior woman with the short, dark hair and angry eyes was named Cassandra. She stayed when the veiled redhead had left, hauling Coyote up to her feet, still obviously furious and frustrated, but apparently willing to hold off on the personal assault for a bit. Coyote made a mental note to thank the other woman.

Cassandra pulled a ring of keys from somewhere at her back, and unlocked the shackles.

“Come,” she gestured to be followed. “I don’t know how much you can understand me, but there is much at stake, so I hope you understand more than you speak.”

She led Coyote up the mountain, striding past a number of humans and… oh, interesting , there were elves and dwarfs here! But they all looked like they hated her, so this was probably going to suck.

A few yards up the mountain, a crackling sound gave a moment's warning before the sky boomed, boulders came flying out of nowhere, and her left hand started shredding itself from the inside out, bringing her to her knees.

“Ow, FUCK!”

The warrior woman backtracked to help her rise, her movements no longer stiff. She steadied the smaller woman with a sympathetic look, and then released her. “We call it the Breach. Every time it expands, the mark on your hand reacts, and you scream in pain. It’s killing you. We’re hoping the mark will let you control the rifts, somehow, but if you can’t understand a word we’re saying, I have no idea how we’re going to communicate that to you.”

“ I understand you just fine, it’s you don’t understand me ,” Coyote shook her head with a half smile. She understood every tongue she’d ever encountered, and this one was no different. Coyote liked tongues. Why hers wasn’t working right just now, she wasn’t sure. But there’s more than one way to talk to the neighbors.

She held up both hands, gesturing for the other woman to stop, and then pointed at the other woman, at her own mouth, and then at the big-ass hole in the sky. She expanded her hands, as if holding an invisible balloon being inflated, and then pointed to the mark on her hand, and winced in pain. Finally, she made a stabbing motion at her chest, and let her traitorous tongue loll out.

Cassandra’s eyes widened. “You DO understand!”

Coyote stood up straight again and nodded, grinning.

“Do you speak Trade?”

Coyote tilted her head for a moment, listening, and raised her eyebrows. She gestured that Cassandra should keep talking.

“I do not know what to say. Do you speak the Dwarven Trade language common across Thedas, used by the Chantry? I had understood the Dalish to speak a mixture of Trade and Elven, but I did not recognise anything you said before.” She paused, contemplating her options. “My name is Cassandra.” she said, finally, pointing to herself.

Coyote nodded, having already gleaned that much. She paused, considering her many name options. “Yoti,” she offered, finally, pointing to herself.

“Yoti? You have an interesting name, Yoti,” Cassandra smiled in relief.

-----

When a large chunk of castle fell out of the sky, destroying the bridge they were trying to cross, Yoti fell flat on her ass (what else is new?) right next to a convenient box full of fruit and weapons.

“Oh, good, I’m still lucky,” she chuckled to herself. The only weapon with any kind of reach on it was a staff with a wicked-looking mace head at one end, so she grabbed that to defend herself against the incoming ghosts.

The ghosts were very rude . They threw plasm balls at her head, and screeched a lot. Yoti tried banishing them with a wave of her hand, but nothing happened. She tried telling them she was Coyote, hero of the People, and they were being annoying little shits, and should cut that shit out, but they ignored her. She tried lighting them on fire with her mind.

That… actually kinda worked!

And it made the staff in her hands buzz with energy, so she experimented a bit with using the staff to direct the fire, and soon enough managed to make both of the annoying ghosts that were lobbing light balloons at her head disappear.

Cassandra came rushing at her, sword out, pointy-end first. “Drop your weapon, now!”

Yoti dropped the staff and put her hands up. “ I didn’t do it! ”

“No, wait,” Cassandra sighed, lowering her sword, “you don’t need a staff, but you should have one. I cannot protect you. I should remember that you did not fight us.”

-----

The green magic that had attached itself to her hand did indeed control the rifts the monsters were pouring out of. Handy, that. A bald elf guy who looked very startled to see her showed her how to use it to close the rift they were all fighting around, and then introduced himself as “Solas”.

“It seems you hold the key to our salvation,” he concluded.

Then a dwarf with a really cool crossbow turned and said, “Good to know! Here I thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever,” instantly endearing himself to her. “Varric Tethras: Rogue, storyteller, and occasionally, unwelcome tagalong.”

“ Storyteller? Excellent! Can I borrow your tongue, Varric Tethras? ” Yoti asked, grinning wickedly. The bald elf squinted slightly, while the human and dwarf just looked confused.

Yoti walked up to Varric Tethras, put her hands on his shoulders, and snogged him.

Well, more accurately, she went hunting for his tongue. Oh, calm down, she didn’t remove it. She didn’t even bite - well, not much - she just collected his language. Handy things, tongues. Coyote liked tongues.

Varric did seem a little startled, though.

“Sorry about that, Varric Tethras. I would have asked more clearly if I’d had the words for it. Thanks for the language lessons, though! This should be a lot easier now. Nice crossbow!” she patted him firmly on the shoulders and walked back to Cassandra and Solas, the latter of whom was eyeing her speculatively.

The dwarf stood there for a moment, unsure which of several responses to run with, before he finally shook his head and laughed. “And here I thought there could only be one of Rivaini. This is gonna be interesting, isn’t it, Lips?”

Coyote liked lips too.

Chapter Text

Closing the big rift knocked Yoti entirely off her ass, for days, even. And it didn’t even close the hole in the sky! Ugh.

She woke up in a wooden cabin somewhere snowy, but this time it was in a bed, so that was okay. When she left the cabin, there were all kinds of people lined up on either side of the path, bowing and kneeling and otherwise being bizarrely reverent. Yoti was used to a bit of reverence. Most of the People thought she was a troublemaker, which, to be fair, was pretty accurate, and some of them tossed her bones outside the fire circle to keep her out of their way. But some of them also knew she was an Ancestor and Teacher to many of the People, that they’d never have survived all those years without her, or him, or, well, Them, really.

The problem was, they weren’t revering her, they were revering some goddess named Andraste, who she was apparently heralding? The hell?

This was going to be a problem, wasn't it?

-----

Damn, the women in charge of this Inquisition business were hot! Aside from the statuesque warrior woman, Cassandra, and the mysterious redhead with the clever eyes, Leliana, both of whom she’d met before, there was a golden-skinned beauty with luxurious ebony curls named Josephine. Josephine was their ambassador. Leliana, or Sister Nightingale, was their spymaster.

Yoti was going to like it here.

The one guy was no slouch either. Their military leader, Commander Cullen, was a bit taller than Cassandra, and thus towered over Yoti’s petite elf body. He had warm eyes and wavy blond hair, and a really fluffy fur mantle over his armor. She wasn’t sure if it was to stay warm in the snow, or to make him look bigger in case of bears, but it looked pretty comfortable.

He looked her over appreciatively before catching himself and clearing his throat. Oh ho? It’d been a while since she’d tried seducing a guy in a feminine body, and she’d never done it with an elf body before. This could be interesting.

She might rather have the ambassador, though. Maybe she could have both if she played her cards right?

“Yes, of course, I’ll do whatever I can to help. Just say the word, Ambassador!”

-----

Okay, that was just getting annoying. Which was, of course, funny. The bald elf, Solas, kept staring at her.

Yoti stopped, tilting her head coyly, and putting a hand on one hip. “See something interesting?”

The other elf raised an eyebrow, his lips narrowed, probably in disapproval of her attitude or something. “Possibly. The way you acquired language from Master Tethras was intriguing. Such a spell has not been seen in the waking world in centuries. I had thought the art lost to the ancient Elvhen. Where did you learn it?”

“Grandmother taught me,” she replied.

“Your grandmother knew this spell?”

“ My gramma? Naw. My gramma makes wolves look dainty. Grandmother, though, she’s seen it all.”

He looked indignant for some reason. Maybe the wolf jaw hanging from his neck? She leaned in towards him for a moment, inhaling deeply, nose twitching.

Then she leaned back, grinning. “No offense, Old Wolf,” she winked, and walked away.

But not before she caught his brief, alarmed expression.

-----

Coyote sat on a stump in the Fade, whittling a stick, singing to himself about fat-bottomed girls, off-color and off-key. His long brown hair was braided down his back, the dusty leather hat kept the sun out of his eyes, his jeans were faded, and his t-shirt read “Sage Against the Machine”. His thermos was full of really good coffee, and his feet were bare. It was a damned fine day in his dreams, and he wasn’t going to waste it on boots.

He didn’t bother looking up when the Old Wolf finally showed.

Solas was baffled. He had gone looking for Yoti, the young Dalish woman with the unique Vallaslin. He’d followed her energy, only to find this strange older man.

“Took you long enough, Old Wolf,” the man drawled, without looking up.

Solas tilted his head, quizzically. “Yoti?”

“Coyote,” he nodded, “I take it there aren’t any coyotes in this world? Think smaller wolves that act more like foxes. More clever, less cooperative.”

“You are truly not an elf, then?”

He shrugged, and looked up. “It’s not the weirdest body I’ve ever had. You?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” the elf hedged.

“Oh, please,” he rolled his eyes, “you think I don’t know a cousin when I smell one? For a wolf, you’re not very social. Where’s your pack?”

Solas winced minutely before schooling his features.

Coyote’s eyes grew wide, and he stood up. “Oh, shit, man, I’m sorry! I know what it’s like to lose your People.” He looked down apologetically, sincerely dismayed. He was no stranger to sticking his foot in it, but he didn’t like kicking people where they were bruised if he could help it.

Solas took the opportunity to appeal to his sympathy. “I would appreciate it if you did not tell the others.”

Coyote looked up, cocking his head to one side. “Not tell ‘em what?”

“What you have… discerned… of my nature.”

“Ha! Like they’d understand it if I did,” Coyote laughed.

“Nevertheless--” Solas frowned.

Coyote waved a hand, dismissively. “Tell you what, you don’t tell ‘em I’m secretly also an old Native guy, I won’t tell ‘em you’re secretly also,” he waved his hand again, “whatever else you are. We’ll show ‘em a pair of old dogs can learn some new tricks worth knowing. Deal?” He brushed off his right hand and held it out to the other man.

Solas’ lips twitched as he accepted the gesture, shaking the strange man’s hand. “You have a deal, Master Coyote,” he agreed, trying not to smile.

“I’m nobody’s master, Solas.”

“Indeed? Then we will get along very well, Coyote.”

“Great!” the darker man shifted into his feminine, elven form, punched the taller elf in the arm, and shouted “You’re it!” before shimmering into her true form and loping away, yipping with laughter.

Solas found himself laughing helplessly, face in hand. After a moment, he shrugged, looked up at the Fade sky, shook his head and chased after his new companion in the form of a large, white wolf.

It was only fair to give his smaller cousin a head start.

-----

If she were looking for a pack, Yoti could do worse than the Chargers. Packs weren’t really her thing, but Yoti liked Krem. The young soldier from Tevinter understood her better than most, and anybody who could live with the huge, one-eyed spy with horns who called himself the Iron Bull full time could probably handle her just fine.

Plus, Krem had a contagious smile. Always a bonus.

“I thought you were a mage, why do you have a bow? They’re not interchangeable no matter what Dalish says,” Krem smirked.

“I like my meat rare,” Yoti grinned toothily at him. “No use cooking it in the field! You want to come?”

“I doubt I’d be much use,” he replied, looking equal parts amused and apologetic. “I can wear quieter armor, but I’m not much with a bow.”

“Well, maybe I just like the company?” she teased, bumping their shoulders.

“More than you like fresh meat?” Krem asked, raising his eyebrows.

“You are the fresh meat, Krem!” The Iron Bull laughed from several feet away, where he was training with Skinner. True to his form, the Iron Bull came across as perpetually horny.

“Not helping, Chief!” Krem shouted over his shoulder, rolling his eyes.

“He’s not wrong,” Yoti laughed as she walked away, hips deliberately swaying. She looked back over her shoulder a few steps later to see Krem watching her go, blushing all the way down his collar, with a pensive smile on his lips.

Chapter Text

2018-12-15 - Edited to add: A request was made to see Yoti's Vallaslin.

So I drew a portrait of Yoti!

-----

Oh good, they still had rabbits in this world. Tasty, tasty rabbits.

And pigs.

And pig-rabbits, apparently.

Nugs, they were called. The Iron Bull noted that their paws were actually tiny hands, and creepy as hell. Yoti had to agree that she’d never seen anything quite like nugs feet. But the Nightingale apparently loved nugs for pets, and wouldn’t hear anything against their creepy little hand-feet.

So of course, Yoti, Bull, and Varric spent as much time as they possibly could complaining about them cheekily when they knew she was in earshot. She held up for about a week, before she finally gave up, laughing, and vowed retaliation with sparkling eyes.

“Redheads!” Bull laughed with relish. He and the spymistress had quite the game ahead of them, if Yoti was any judge.

“This’ll be fun to watch,” she observed to the dwarf.

“My money’s on the Nightingale,” Varric replied. “You in, Lips?”

“What, you think I like losing just because I’m good at it?” she laughed.

-----

Yoti finally got to see herself in a decent mirror while they were in the Hinterlands. Her skin was a bit paler than she’d have liked, but she already knew that. Her eyes were almost black, and her long, straight hair was silvery-white. Matching white tattoos traced across her skin. The designs mostly curved along her muscles, echoing the way ticked fur accentuated the flow of a canine body. The markings on her face gave the faintest impression of a Coyote, which she quickly discovered confused other tattooed elves.

Apparently the tattoos were to honor their gods. They did have myths about a Trickster named Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, but nobody got tattoos for him, because he hunted them in their nightmares, and banished all their other gods somehow, and spent a millenium laughing maniacally about it afterwards.

Mostly they didn’t pray to this Harellan of theirs, apparently, so it came as a startling surprise when, one night chasing wisps through the Fade, Coyote suddenly heard a frightened, insistent voice calling out “ Dread Wolf take you! ”

The voice pulled on him, like a compulsion, a plea he couldn’t ignore, but couldn’t answer either. Why was he even hearing this? “Fen’Harel” wasn’t one of his names.

He followed the voice until he found its source: An elven woman at the edge of a small Ferelden town, her clothing torn, tears streaming down her face, as two human men walked away from her with their hands full, laughing about “knife ears”. “ May the Trickster catch your scent, you shemlen bastards ,” she muttered with suppressed fury and pain, as she slowly picked herself up off the ground, clutching the shreds of her dress to her body as she limped away to where her people were camped, empty-handed.

Coyote watched, knowing the woman could neither see nor hear him from the waking world.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

-----

Yoti caught up with Cassandra the next morning. She had already finished her breakfast and was warming up by running through a series of striking and blocking stances with her sword.

“Seeker, where are the nearest Dalish?”

The human woman’s brow furrowed in concentration, her reply sounding almost absent-minded. “You would know better than I, Herald.”

Aaaawkward! “Not really, no. I’m… not from around here,” Yoti replied, glancing around nervously.

Cassandra pulled up out of her stance and sheathed her sword, to look at Yoti more carefully. “Do you need something? We should have most anything you require, but if there is some special Dalish resource we are lacking, we would be glad to seek it out for you, of course.”

“Oh, no, no, it’s not that, it’s just…” Yoti looked down, trying to find words more carefully. This wasn’t the kind of thing where running at the mouth was going to help anybody. “I… had a dream…”

“What sort of dream,” Cassandra prompted. Some distance behind her, still eating breakfast, Yoti noticed Solas looking up with interest, warily.

“There was a woman,” Yoti began, and Solas relaxed slightly, still obviously listening, but no longer wary. “She was crying out for help.” Solas’ eyes narrowed with interest. “A pair of men - human men - had attacked her in some way. I think they stole whatever she’d been carrying. I don’t think it was far from here. If we can help her, I’d like to try.”

“You saw this in a dream?” the Seeker repeated.

“Yes.”

“And you believe this took place in the waking world?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah.”

“Do you know where?”

“At the edge of a small town for humans, somewhere nearby, where some elves are camped in a forest.” Yoti explained, helplessly. “I know it’s not much, I’m sorry.”

“On the contrary, that should be sufficient for Leliana’s agents to gather more information, if what you saw was a true vision. Have you always had visions like this?”

“Er, not… exactly? I’ve always... known when people near me need my help, I guess?  But in this case, I’m not sure it’s actually my help she needs.”

——-

Honnleath hadn’t fully recovered from being razed to the ground during the 5th blight. The once prosperous farming village was now home to only a few families, most of whom had taken to hiding in their basements when strangers came to town, since the radical mages and mutinous Templars had turned the Hinterlands into their personal battlefields. Having a Dalish elf knocking on their doors didn’t inspire trust. Having an irate Seeker pounding on their doors only worked slightly better.

“How’m I supposed to find the clan if nobody will even talk to me?” Yoti grumbled.

“If necessary, we will make them talk,” Cassandra assured her.

“You might want to hold off on the interrogations, Seeker,” Varric suggested. “These folks are terrified as it is. Intimidation isn’t going to improve things.”

The Seeker and the storyteller were often at odds, Yoti had noticed. Apparently she’d been a bit rough with him when they’d first met, and he was still holding it against her. Not that Yoti blamed anyone for wanting to hold Cassandra against them…

“Go back to the forest, knife ears!” A muffled voice shouted from behind a wooden door. Laughter followed the slur. Yoti raised an eyebrow. Varric and Solas crossed their arms, expectantly. Cassandra bristled, and started to move towards the house the sounds were coming from.

Yoti held out a hand to stop her. She raised her own voice, cheerfully, “Point the way, Shems!”

“What, you lost, little rabbit?” A deeper, vaguely familiar voice called from behind them.

Yoti whirled around, to see the older of the two men from her vision, standing with a pitchfork in one hand, and a dead rabbit in the other.

Yoti licked her lips and smiled coyly. “Oh, I know exactly where I am. It’s the camp I can’t seem to find. My brother ,” Yoti tugged Solas to her side, “and I were just finding our way to our cousin’s clan, when we got turned around, and found ourselves in an Inquisition camp. The Lady Seeker and her dwarf friend here were kind enough to bring us here, to the nearest Shem - I’m sorry, human - settlement to where the clan is camped. You look like a man who knows his way around. Care to guide me and my brother to our final destination?”

The older man grinned, his eyes sweeping up and down Yoti’s body, and then at Solas, who had the sense to take a weak posture. “Why sure, little girl. My son and I’d be right happy to show you a thing or two. Just let me give this coney to my wife for our dinner, and fetch my boy, and we’ll get right to it.” The man turned to walk across the clearing into the largest of the plain, wooden cottages.

“What are you doing?” Cassandra hissed, as soon as the man had closed the door behind him.

“Improvising! That’s one of two men I saw in my dream. I’m sure he knows the way, and I’m almost as sure he’ll give me an excuse to teach him a lesson if we go with him.”

“You are putting yourself in danger!” Cassandra objected.

“What, her and Solas against two farmers?” Varric laughed, “I wouldn’t worry much, Seeker.”

“If you can be discreet, you may follow us at a reasonable distance,” Solas suggested.

The creaking hinges of the salvaged farmhouse door sang to them, and Yoti quickly adjusted, “I can’t thank you enough, Seeker, but we’ll be fine from here. These good folks are obviously friendly enough.”

Cassandra frowned, “I am not certain…” she started, before Varric elbowed her.

“You two kids take care, now. You’re welcome in our camp any time,” he nodded, and pulled Cassandra away with him down the path they’d arrived by, leaving Solas and Yoti to deal with the dubious farmer and his son.

“You two ready to go?” The younger man asked.

“Lead the way,” Yoti smiled, putting on her best innocent face.

Good thing she was in an elf body. Nobody believed her innocent face anymore back home.

——-

Chapter Text

Solas watched the two human men, his expression carefully neutral. Yoti hadn’t had much opportunity to discuss her intentions with him. He’d hesitate to call her sudden change of direction a plan, but he could appreciate a certain flexibility under the circumstances. Were it up to him, he’d simply kill them. They were no better than the bandits they’d hunted outside Redcliffe, and had already brought harm to the People. But Yoti had long since had the opportunity to dispatch them far from prying eyes if that were her plan, and Solas was more curious to see what she would do than he was vengeful on behalf of a random Dalish woman he had only seen in a dream, even if her plea was a fair one.

He wasn’t seriously in the habit of responding to such calls, rare as they were in this Age, anyway. None of the Dalish seemed to expect the Dread Wolf to actually take anyone anymore, no matter how sincerely they intended the curse. Since they were generally ignorant and inhospitable to outsiders at the best of times, he was inclined to leave them alone.

It was more than a little bit disturbing that Yoti had heard the woman’s call. She hadn’t brought it up to him yet, so either she hadn’t made the connection he feared she might, or she considered it irrelevant for the moment, and Solas honestly had no idea which. Still, Coyote had promised in his human form that he wouldn’t reveal what he knew, and for now Solas had to trust that their agreement was an honorable one.

Yoti elbowed Solas, tilting her head sharply towards their so-called guides meaningfully. The two had been thick as thieves, making rude comments to each other, and glancing over their shoulders every so often, chuckling.

She winked before picking up her pace to catch up to them. “You look like gentlemen who could appreciate a good brew. Here,” she held out a wine skin.

The younger man greedily reached for the skin immediately, but the older man stopped him, eyeing Yoti warily, “Where’s your manners, boy? Let the, uh, young lady drink first!” His son scowled and crossed his arms, and then stared at her expectantly.

Yoti, of course, took a swig and handed it to the father, who offered it to Solas first. Solas shook his head, wordlessly, gesturing for the two humans to have their fill.

The father tipped the skin back, and then coughed, blinking. “The hell is this?” he demanded, passing it to his son.

“It’s called ‘Maraas-Lok’. They make it somewhere up North. I got it from a mercenary I camped with the other night. Tell you what, you keep it, as a thank you for being right where we needed you.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” the younger man announced, taking a second long drink, until his dad swatted him and grabbed the skin out of his hand. The younger man scowled again.

Yoti grinned cheekily, and then resumed her innocent look and gestured for the two men to continue leading the way.

Solas raised an eyebrow at her. Getting the two men drunk off their arses might be entertaining, but it wasn’t exactly vengeance if they enjoyed it. Her returned grin was positively wicked. She winked and began moving her lips, barely whispering. Solas could only make out every few words.

… keep up, old…

The older man glared at his son, and reached out to smack him upside the head. “You’d best respect your elders, boy!” he declared. The younger man yelped and jumped back, indignantly.

… much for… idiot…

The son squared his shoulders and took two purposeful - if unsteady - steps towards his father, grabbing the Maraas-Lok out of his hand, and drinking deeply with a defiant expression on his face.

… worthless little…

The young man’s eyes widened, and he suddenly sprayed the caustic drink all over his father’s face. The old farmer blinked painfully, and flushed with fury, growling. His son yelped with alarm, and took off running, his steps erratic, followed by his only marginally less drunk elder. The two went thrashing through the underbrush, alternately tripping over logs and tangling in thorny vines, seemingly oblivious to their impairment or environment.

Yoti watched their drunken descent for a moment, and then burst into maniacal giggles.

Solas raised an eyebrow at her, silently, his lips twitching.

“Well,” a new voice called from somewhere above, “Now that those idiot shems are gone, you want to tell us what you’re doing here?”

-----

Yoti looked up into the trees to find several arrows pointed at her and Solas. She grinned approvingly and waved.

“Oh, good, we found you!”

The lead hunter in the tree put her bow back across her shoulders and crossed her arms. “Aneth ara. If you truly needed those farmers to lead you to us, your clan must starve every winter.”

Solas snorted.

Yoti shrugged, still grinning. “The only meat I’m responsible for is my own!” she called back.

The hunter laughed and jumped down from the tree. “I’m Mithra. Come, I’m sure Keeper Lanaya will want to speak with you. They’re just preparing supper now.”

Yoti’s ears twitched at that.

“Did you say food?”

-----

“So I leave ‘em to you, Keeper,” Yoti concluded, “and to the woman they hurt, of course. I figure you know better than we do whether you can afford to give ‘em what they really deserve. If you’d rather keep the humans off your back, I’ll go make sure they survive the night with nothing worse than cuts and bruises, and a terrible headache for their troubles. They’ll wake up tomorrow, naked in a druffalo pasture, none the wiser. If you want to teach ‘em there are consequences messing with your people, well, they’re easy pickings now.”

Keeper Lanaya was clearly amused. She was relatively young for a Dalish Keeper, her hair still brown with no trace of grey, and her Vallaslin to June barely blurred. Unusual for having not been born to the Dalish, she had led her clan safely through the battle of Denerim, and they had looked to her over the decade since, without hesitation.

She turned to Mithra and nodded, silently sending the veteran hunter after the offered prey. Zathrian had taught her well not to tolerate any attacks on her people.

“That’s an interesting ‘gift’ you’ve brought us, Yoti,” she said, returning her attention to their strange guests, “but I still don’t understand how you even knew those men attacked one of my people and stole her wares.”

“Oh, I, um…” Yoti looked around, and shrugged, tearing a bite off the nug leg they’d given her to eat, before mumbling, “ I dreamt it. ”

“You dreamt it?” Lanaya repeated, uncomfortably loudly, her eyes wide. “That’s fascinating! Tell me more!”

Solas cleared his throat.

Yoti rolled her eyes, still chewing. She tilted her head to acknowledge the incoming scholarly lecture.

“Yoti is most likely a Dreamer,” Solas explained, settling in to the calm cadence of a Hahren, “They were called ‘Thenera’len’, in the old language, but most today are more familiar with the Tevene ‘Somniari’. One who walks consciously in the Fade, and can see beyond their own dreams.”

“Somniari are incredibly rare,” Lanaya replied, “I’ve only heard of one ever among our people in the last generation, a young elf-blooded man named Feynriel who stayed with Clan Sabrae for a time before the last Arlathvhen. He was such a danger to himself and others, they had to send him to Tevinter for training!”

Yoti looked at Solas, alarmed. “Oh! Yes, well, that’s… why my clan sent me out into the world! To hear when I’m needed by whoever is near, and otherwise stay out of the way.”

“I have heard that other clans send away their ‘extra’ mages, yes. But what of your Vallaslin? I’ve never seen the like. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they represented He Who Hunts Alone. But no one is marked for the Dread Wolf, surely.”

“Oh, well, they, um, they wanted the People to know that I’m, uh...” Yoti looked to Solas, eyebrows raised hopefully.

“They wanted it known that Yoti stands at the edge of the camp, just as Fen’Harel’s statues, and should only be brought to help when it’s truly needed.”

“I see. But I would hardly think a typical clash between a couple of ordinary farmers and one of our craftswomen warrants extraordinary assistance.”

A redheaded woman marked for Sylaise stepped into the firelight, looking abashed. Yoti immediately recognised her from the dream. “I did invoke the Dread Wolf, Keeper. I wished him on them, that he would catch their scent and hunt them.”

“He’s not known for actually answering our invections, Gheyna.”

“Well, maybe he’s not,” Yoti said, “but for as long as I’ve had these markings, I’ve apparently heard when people seriously invoke him nearby.” Well, it was true as far as it went, anyway. Solas raised an eyebrow, eyeing Yoti speculatively once again. She contemplated warning him that his face might stick that way if he kept it up. Then she suppressed a giggle at the image of Solas trying to smile with his face stuck.

“How strange,” Lanaya replied, still confused, and clearly curious. “Other Vallaslin have not had this effect.”

“The others are trapped away,” Gheyna reminded her.

Yoti zoned back in, abruptly. “To be honest, Keeper Lanaya, I have no idea how it works, or why. I just heard Gheyna’s invocation in my dream, came to see what was wrong, and then came to find you in the waking world. Which reminds me,” she turned to the younger woman, “Gheyna, I don’t know what exactly was stolen from you, but if you need help recuperating the loss, I will gladly do what I can to help.”

“Oh, it’s not worth your trouble. It was just a bunch of rabbit furs.”

Yoti grinned, toothily.

Chapter Text

“I’m curious, Yoti. Most people would just have killed them if they’d bother at all. Why didn’t you?” Cassandra asked Yoti as they hiked back to the Inquisitor camp together. The human and dwarf caught up with them as they were preparing to leave the Dalish camp. They were surrounded by a relatively relaxed trio of Keeper Lanaya’s hunters, who were only too glad to turn them over to the visitors on their way out of the forest.

Yoti nodded, more serious than Cassandra had ever seen her thus far. “I thought about it. We could have killed ‘em easy.” She shook her head slowly, staring ahead, and frowning. Her eyebrows furrowed, as if she was remembering something painful. “But I’m an outsider, what do I know? What if it just uprooted their clan when the rest of the village found out? That ain’t help.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Cassandra replied, apologetically. “It must be very hard for your people to be so constantly on the move as you are.”

Yoti shrugged and smiled wryly. “You get used to it, or you don’t. For most, I expect it’s all they’ve ever known.”

“True, I suppose,” Cassandra considered, “I’ve spent most of my adult life frequently traveling for the Seekers. But I always had a home to return to.”

Yoti turned finally to meet the Seeker’s eyes. “Home means different things to different people. For me, home is where my People are.”

“That makes sense. But then, you must be very far from home staying here with us in the Inquisition aren’t you?” Cassandra frowned.

“You have no idea !” Yoti winked, finally smiling her familiar, toothy grin.

Relieved, Cassandra smiled back. “Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me, Yoti.”

The Dalish woman shrugged again with a half smile, and then shook her head. “Anyway, it would have robbed Gheyna of her justice if I’d just killed ‘em outright. And murder is boring. Nobody learns anything from another dead farmer in the middle of a war. So I made sure they’d suffer for their trouble, haunted by their fears, battered and bruised like she was. Her people can handle it from there.”

“You don’t think she would want them killed?”

“She might. She might not. But if I take the choice away from her, it’s not her justice anymore, is it?”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Cassandra admitted.

“You’ve never had to.”

-----

Raven had noticed that Coyote wasn't around, but at first assumed there was a trick involved. Of course, it was Coyote, there was usually some kind of trick involved. Coyote hiding, that usually meant he was up to something Particularly Clever (™), and didn't want Raven interfering .

Which was all well and good, even when Raven decided they'd interfere anyway. You couldn't let Coyote get too full of himself, after all.

Except that this time, Coyote was truly nowhere to be found. Coyote wasn't in any of the usual hiding places, or the unusual ones (once, Raven had found Coyote hiding inside of Whale's stomach, for no other reason than, "Nobody would ever think of looking for me here!"), or even the places that made Coyote cringe.

Raven searched all across the world. Asked about Coyote; sometimes it was a story about revenge, sometimes about a prank they were both playing on others, and sometimes (very rarely, and only for a few) was it the honest plea of one searching for a beloved other. And nobody, in any of the lands Raven knew, had seen or heard from Coyote for many, many moons.

Finally, Raven perched on one of their favorite trees, and stared out across an ocean. Coyote really was missing, it seemed. And to Raven's utter lack of surprise, nobody seemed terribly worried or concerned about Coyote's absence. Coyote had played too many tricks on too many people for them to look on Coyote with anything aside from mistrust. Even when Coyote was helping. Especially when Coyote was helping.

Raven rawked, agitated. If nobody else in this world was concerned, they were. If Coyote wasn't in their world, the Raven would have to search the Otherworlds.

-----

Yoti talked to the requisitions officer when they reached the camp. If she was going out hunting anyway, she might as well sort out what else was needed. Solas once again offered to keep her company, which she accepted. Cassandra and Varric also offered, which she refused, on the grounds that neither were really hunters.

“Solas isn’t exactly a hunter either, is he?” Varric replied.

“I have spent enough time wandering alone, Master Tethras, I can hold my own,” the bald mage assured him, with some amusement.

Yoti held up a hand, appeasingly. “I mean, if we find dragons or something, we’ll give a shout, I promise. But we’re just after some meat and furs and maybe a few herbs on the way. We’ll be fine, dude.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you, Lips,” Varric conceded. “I’m perfectly happy to stay here where there’s at least the illusion of civilization.”

-----

Exhausted, Raven landed not on a tree, but on the ground. They'd searched throughout the worlds they knew, and still nothing. Coyote, it seemed, was known and had a reputation in the worlds outside of Turtle Island, and even there none of the other beings they spoke to had seen Coyote.

There were the battle ravens of a queen, but they wanted to spend time talking about how tasty eyes were, and not what they had used their eyes for . (Finally Raven had joined them in a banquet, which was apparently all they needed to start talking about other subjects.)

Then there were the paired ravens, the thought and memory of a one-eyed god, but one just smirked, and the other laughed. "Are you sure Coyote is really missing? Maybe you lost him behind the sofa?"

After the thought and the memory, a raptor (of all birds!) took pity on Raven, and went in search of Coyote among the dead. And came back, preening and pleased, because he'd seen no sign of Coyote in the Underworlds. He shed his feathers then, a cloak of falcon's quills. Red-haired and serious, he told Raven to try the south, and that he, at least, missed Coyote.

There was the stately ibis, moon-white and thoughtful, and it was finally he who suggested that Raven ask the one they'd been too respectful (too terrified) to ask: Grandmother.

It's not that Grandmother is hard to find. She's very stable, Grandmother. It's just one doesn't bother Grandmother without a most excellent reason. Raven certainly thought a missing Coyote was a most excellent reason, but so did so very few others. Would Grandmother?

-----

“We’ve been here in the hinterlands for quite some time now,” Solas murmured as they tracked a wild ram. He gestured, and the ram’s hooves were frozen to the ground.

Yoti rolled her eyes at the unnecessary assistance, and let an arrow fly straight into its eye socket. “Yeah, and?”

“Surely we have gained the attention of Val Royeaux by now?” he asked, as the two moved to field dress the carcass.

“Ohhhh right. I’m supposed to do a thing, aren’t I? Ugh, this responsibility shit is so annoying! ‘Go to the Hinterlands, Herald.’ ‘Meet the priest, Herald.’ ‘Go to Val Royeaux, Herald.’ My name is not ‘Harold!’ And shouldn’t I have a bunch of little birds and mice to help me with all these chores or something? I think a really big mouse told me that, somewhere...”

Solas raised an eyebrow at her. “I hope you did not expect me to understand that.”

“You don’t have to understand my jokes, you just have to laugh at them,” Yoti replied, testily.

“I see. You’ll have to give me some sort of cue so that I may know when you are joking, then.”

She laughed. “If I’m talking, and nobody is bleeding, I’m joking.”

“And if someone is bleeding?”

“Then be glad the joke’s not on you,” she deadpanned.

That made him smile. “Ah, but what if I’m the one who is bleeding?”

Yoti raised both eyebrows in a futile attempt to look innocent. “Then I promise not to laugh unless you did something really, really stupid?” She laughed again. “No, that’s a lie. I’ll probably laugh regardless.”

“So noted,” Solas replied, dryly.

-----

Raven found Grandmother easily enough, wrapped in a woven blanket, sitting by a fire under the stars.

"Black feathers, dipped in rainbow starlight. What brings you to my fire, young Raven?"

Raven hopped closer, nodding their head respectfully. "Ah, hello Grandmother," they croaked, waggling their head sideways, "I'm worried about Coyote. Nobody's seen him for far too long. I went searching, our lands, other worlds, but...." they trailed off, eyes shining with worry.

The old woman gazed impassively, her head tilting ever so slightly to the side. She waited.

Raven took a deep breath and began again. "Coyote's not in the realm of the dead, but he's not anywhere else I've looked." They clacked their beak nervously. "I'm afraid something's happened to him."

Grandmother regarded the black bird steadily. "What do you ask of me?"

Ah! A question, of course. There are no right answers without right questions. But what, exactly, to ask? "I've searched everywhere I can think of, and there was an ibis who said I should ask you where else I could look for him. He was very wise." Raven concluded, hopping on one foot, then back on two, before finally asking, "Do you know anything about where Coyote is?"

"Djehuti is indeed both wise and learned," the Old Woman agreed. She closed her eyes, humming to herself, an ageless blessing. The fire flickered light across her face, making the shadows of her life lines jump and play. One moment, she was a young maiden, the next, a wild woman, the next, a white buffalo, the next, an ancient crone.

The next moment, she nodded. "Yoti has tricked herself too well this time. She chased the wrong bauble, and the ball caught her. The sky is torn. Dreams awaken. A nightmare stalks the day. A monster stalks the world. They breed fear in their wake. Yoti must learn to walk in another's footsteps."

She tilted her head, as if seeking from another angle. "She is not alone. She must not fall. But she may not return until the nightmare is ended and the monster vanquished."

Finally, the Old Woman opened her eyes. "She is not safe. Not in her current form. You should go to her. Fly the Fading dreams. Find your kin. Borrow their eyes. You will know Yoti again when you see her."

Raven pondered the revered one's message. "Thank you, Grandmother.  But... how do I know which direction to fly?"

She smiled, calm as always. "Dreams are a direction, young one."

The feathered trickster startled, flapping up a bit, then landing. "Oh. OH! I see." Raven nodded, head bobbing up and down rhythmically, as if dancing.

The Old Woman revealed a hand from under the blanket, holding out what appeared to be a simple stick for Raven to take in a claw or beak. "It is dangerous to go alone. Take this. It will pick any lock. You can not be kept from your kin. And Raven?"

Raven took the stick in a claw, pausing in the act when Grandmother spoke again. "Yes?"

"When you return, bring Coyote to me. I would hear of these adventures."

"Of course, Grandmother! I wouldn't dream of keeping them from you."

She smiled, her eyes twinkling with... mischief? Raven blinked for a moment in confusion.

"The acorn does not grow out a manzanita," she laughed, knowingly. "Now, fly little Raven."

Raven hopped experimentally, learning how to fly with the stick, finally flapping a couple of times to take flight. "I hear your words, Grandmother! I will find Coyote, and I will help her!"

So it was time to start searching the dreams for places they'd never been, outside of the worlds they knew. It would be a long search, and possibly a futile one. But Coyote was missing, and there was something very wrong in that.

Chapter Text

Val Royeaux was certainly interesting. Yoti had never seen so many people so intent on putting on a show as their everyday lives. Their masks were incredibly boring, though. Most of them were just a couple of colors, and not even in intricate patterns, and there was not a single animal mask in sight. They weren't the least bit intimidating! Cassandra had to elbow Yoti repeatedly to stop her from giggling audibly.

"Yoti!" the Seeker barked, frowning, "Josephine explained how important decorum would be here. You must take this seriously!"

"Oh come ON Cass, you're telling me these people are taking this ridiculous play seriously?"

"Oh, you have no idea, Lips," Varric chuckled, "Orlesians can turn kittens and cupcakes into an exchange of deadly political threats."

"Hush!" Cassandra interrupted, "The Mothers are about to speak, and we need to listen."

"Oh, it's always important to listen when the Mothers speak!" Yoti agreed, only to roll her eyes when she saw the Chantry clergy lining up to begin ranting against the Inquisition and their so-called Herald of Andraste. "Oh, you meant clerics. What bullshit are they spewing now?"

"Just what you'd expect, of course. Elves are inferior, Dalish are savages, Mages are corrupt, so of course a Dalish Elf Mage posing as the Herald of Andraste is evil, and the Inquisition must be leading us all astray," Solas offered in a sardonic monotone.

Yoti smirked, "What, no baby-eating? Have they seen my teeth? Come on, ladies, pick up the slack!" She raised her eyebrows, ears twitching with excitement, "Ooh, wait! These chicas take vows of chastity, right?"

"Mothers and avowed Sisters do, yes," Cassandra confirmed. "Lay Sisters have the option, but it is not required of them unless they are raised in the Chantry."

"So, clearly the solution is for me to show them up as hypocrites by seducing as many of them as possible!" Yoti exclaimed cheerfully.

Varric suppressed a laugh, his shoulders shaking. "Even if you had time for that plan, Lips, this is Orlais. Sex scandals are swapped around at brunch like badges of honor."

Yoti pouted.

"Nevermind that," Cassandra hissed again, "The Templars are coming, look!"

Several men in plate armor stalked across the clearing and stomped up onto the platform. Just as the Mother who had been shouting inane propaganda for the last several minutes declared their glorious return to the Chantry, one of the younger men punched her in the side of the head! The Mother collapsed in a heap at his feet.

"Oh shit!" Yoti giggled nervously, "Guess they're not here out of loyalty!"

"Lord Seeker Lucius!" Cassandra called out, moving to follow them. "It's imperative that we speak with-"

"You will not address me," the eldest of the armored men replied flatly.

"Lord Seeker?" She was clearly taken aback by his tone.

He didn't even bother looking at her. "Creating a heretical movement, raising up a puppet as Andraste's prophet? You should be ashamed." He turned to address the crowd at large. "You should all be ashamed! If you came to appeal to the Chantry, you are too late. The only destiny here that demands respect is mine!"

Something didn't smell right. Yoti stood up straighter and sniffed the air. She crossed her arms pointedly, studying the Lord Seeker’s eyes, deliberately challenging him. "So, you aren't here to back up the people or Chantry you supposedly serve. What, then? You came for the ambiance?"

"I came to see what frightens old women so, and to laugh," the strange, pale man replied darkly, before stalking away, his minions in tow.

"Well, that explains all the clowning around," Yoti muttered. Something definitely smelled wrong here.

-----

The little elf with ragged blonde hair grinned back at Yoti. “I stole their breeches!”

“Maker save us, now there’s two of them,” the Seeker muttered.

Yoti laughed so hard, she almost fell over, much to Solas’ and Cassandra’s stern disapproval.

The pantsless mercenaries came rushing in, swords drawn. One of the men, face bright red, came rushing straight for Yoti, growling a challenge. Yoti couldn’t stop laughing long enough to focus on her barriers and almost caught a sword to the face, when his eye suddenly sprouted fletching.

“Oy! Glowy! It ain’t funny if you’re dead!” the elf shouted at her.

Right.

Several of the remaining mercenaries promptly caught fire.

-----

The masked man who had just been insulting Yoti and the Inquisition suddenly froze - literally. Yoti raised an eyebrow at the regal woman descending the stairs. She was absolutely gorgeous, with smooth mahogany skin contrasted with icy white and blue leather with silverite accents.

Yoti grinned.  

The woman frowned, sternly.

Yoti sighed. This one was waaaaaaay out of her league.

Not that that’s ever stopped her before, of course. But the majestic Madame de Fer turned her down flat the moment she made so much as a suggestion.

Le Sigh.

-----

Warden Blackwall was a large man with a large beard. He knew nothing of value about the missing Grey Wardens.

Yoti shrugged, and walked away.

“Herald! Wait! Times like these, thinking we’re absent is almost as bad as thinking we’re involved. Maybe you need a Warden.”

She turned back around, eyed the human up and down, and raised an eyebrow, smirking. “‘Need’ is a strong word.”

Cassandra made a disgusted snort. Yoti winked at the Seeker, who almost growled in return.

Yoti turned back to the Warden. “By all means, the more the merrier! When you get to Haven, tell them Yoti sent you!”

-----

Well THAT was entertaining!

Redcliffe was closed to new visitors because of the great mucking Fade rift right outside their gates, spewing the usual demons and decidedly un usual pockets of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.

Yoti side-stepped into one of the faster pockets and set off a volley of fireballs at a pair of Despair demons.

Solas nodded approvingly in what seemed to Yoti like slow-motion before freezing the remaining Rage demon, for Cassandra to shatter with a backswing.

With the last of the demons put to rest, Yoti stepped back out of the speed bubble and wrenched the rift closed, wincing with pain as the mark on her left hand flared more than usual.

“Ow, shit. That one was nasty.”

Solas moved immediately to her side, offering his hands, already glowing with healing magic. She held out her left hand willingly, adopting a vapid, adoring expression. Sure enough, Solas regarded her with suspicion even as he began healing her hand. Yoti burst into giggles as Solas shook his head, eyebrows furrowed with consternation.

Varric snickered. “She’s found the way under your skin already, eh Chuckles?”

“So it would seem, Master Tethras,” the bald elf replied, wryly. Still, the corner of his mouth twitched up even as Yoti watched him.

“Don’t worry, Varric. I’ll get yours eventually,” she assured the storyteller.

-----

“Wait, what do you mean you don’t remember inviting us to Redcliffe?" Yoti frowned at former Grand Enchanter Fiona, "I just saw you three days ago in Val Royeaux myself!” Yoti was more irritated than confused. She was used to tricks, but retconning reality was a whole other thing.

She turned her frown on the Tevinter Magister. “You cheated!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Herald. Now, if you would like to negotiate for the service of my mages, we have much to discuss. Perhaps you could come up to the castle, where- Felix! Are you alright?”

“It’s… nothing, Father. I’m just…” the younger man collapsed suddenly, handing Yoti a note in the process.

Apparently these Tevinter types were fond of tricks.

-----

The human mage strode towards them, and bowed slightly with mock arrogance. “Dorian Pavus, at your service!”

“And Sera called me shiny!” Yoti whistled at the handsome Altus after closing the rift in the Redcliffe Chantry hall.

“Technically, Lips, she called you ‘Glowy’,” Varric replied. “Welcome to the team, Sparkler!” he added, grinning.

Now what were they going to do about the Magister who had taken over Redcliffe?

Chapter Text

"Well!" Raven thought, "That's something you don't see every day."

The forest was far from anywhere they'd ever flown before, but following Grandmother's directions lead them here. "Here" happened to be a tree with a door in it. Locked, even, practically radiating "go away" to anyone who might find it. But through the keyhole they saw a very odd green light, as though someone had gone out of their way to make a light be as spooky as possible.

Which meant that of course Raven was going to figure out a way in, and Grandmother did give them a tool. Cackling, Raven changed just enough to use a hand (thumbs, the one thing Raven truly envied), and in moments the odd door popped open, revealing a room just big enough for a cauldron. And in the cauldron was the source of the green light, bubbling like a pot but without any liquid.

As shiny things go, mysterious lights in dire looking cauldrons was right up there with the sun.

Raven thought briefly, then quorked. They knew many many stories, including some about cauldrons and green light. And in those stories, well, cauldrons with spooky green light usually meant something interesting and dangerous. Those stories had nothing to do with Coyote, but hadn't Grandmother pointed them this way?

Raven  hopped around the room, looking at the cauldron from all the angles they could. Nothing immediately made itself apparent, but in those stories, well, the cauldron was more like a door than a pot.

Grandmother didn't mention the cauldron, but then again, she probably figured Raven could puzzle this part out on their own.

Raven quorked a bit more, then shrank down to the size of a pebble. Maybe there was something under the cauldron? They hadn't seen a fire, so nearly anything could be under there. But there wasn't even dust!

They hopped out from under the cauldron, and grew until they could peer into it. And all they saw was the rolling green light - though after a while, they noticed patterns and shapes. Things that didn't look too familiar, until they saw a shadow pass quickly across the light, four footed, a shape they knew well. Coyote! Or at least, something Coyote-shaped.

They were far more careful about things than their friend. Coyote would have seen a Raven shape in the light, and jumped right into the cauldron with no thought to the consequences. Raven, however, observed for a long time, seeing what kinds of things revealed themselves in the light.

After a few more instances of the Coyote-shape, both on four feet and on two, Raven bobbed their head. This could well be a prank. It was elaborate, convoluted, and - to be fair - far more their kind of prank than Coyote's.  But it didn't taste like a trick, or a trap. It tasted like a convoluted way to get somewhere different.

So Raven made sure they had Grandmother's stick firmly in claw, and jumped in the cauldron, hoping they weren't going to end up in a stew.

-----

“I want to go after the mages,” Yoti declared firmly. There, she said it. And it was clearly the right thing to do, so that was that.

Ambassador Josephine scoffed, "The letter from Alexius asked for the Herald by name. It's an obvious trap."

Yoti's ears perked up at that. "He talks about me? What does he say?"

Leliana smirked, "He's so complimentary that we are certain he wants to kill you."

Cullen sighed, shaking his head as he looked at the maps again, one hand on the table, and the other firmly gripping the hilt of his sword. "Redcliffe Castle is one of the most defensible fortresses in Ferelden. It has repelled thousands of assaults." He looked up to address Yoti directly, his eyebrows furrowed with worry. "If you go in there, you'll die, and we'll lose the only means of closing these rifts." His voice dropped to a sweet, low register. "I won't allow it," he concluded quietly.

Yoti was watching his lips carefully, thoroughly distracted by the handsome former-Templar, nodding automatically while barely following his words. She shook herself abruptly, realizing she'd missed whatever the Spymaster had just said.

Cassandra shook her head emphatically, joining the argument. "The Magister-"

" Has outplayed us ," The Commander interrupted firmly.

Yoti tried so hard to keep up, but politics were so boring, and Yoti was so hungry, and everybody was so attractive, how was a girl to think!? She squinted at the map. "Couldn't we offer to help them get Redcliffe back? Like, directly? That Alexius guy doesn't actually own the place now, does he? Please tell me that’s not how that works!"

Josephine shook her head, her dark curls bouncing enticingly in the light from the candle on her clipboard. "After he was displaced, Arl Teagan rode straight for Denerim to petition the crown for help. I doubt he'll want our assistance once the Ferelden army lays siege to his castle."

Cassandra frowned, her armor glinting righteously in the torchlight. "We must get word to them. At the very least, they'll need to be warned about the time magic Alexius used to trick the mages."

"I can send word directly to King Alistair,” Leliana agreed, her veil casting mysterious shadows across her clever eyes. “He knows me, he'll trust my information."

Yoti was getting dizzy, listening to all the beautiful voices coming from all the beautiful people. Her blood was rushing around every which way, heating her face, her chest, her thighs. She blinked, trying once more to focus. "So what are we doing, then?"

"Well, it's not too late to go after the Templars," Cullen offered yet again. Leliana sighed in irritation.

Yoti sighed happily, listening to the Commander's voice, only to bring herself up short, when she realized what he’d said. "Wait, aren't they led by that creepy guy we saw in Val Royeaux?" Yoti wrinkled her nose, scowling at the thought of working with the disturbing man. "I don't think he wants to help us."

"If not him," Cassandra replied, "there are surely others in the Order who don't feel as he does. If we can convince the Templars to question the Lord Seeker's orders, he may rethink his stance."

The dreamy Commander snorted. "With respect, after his appearance in Val Royeaux, hang what the Lord Seeker thinks!" he declared firmly. Yoti sighed happily again, nodding at his strong, oh-so-smooth tenor.

"Yes, I agree with Cullen. What he said. We should do that," Yoti nodded absently.

-----

"The Friend of the Dead and his lover have not flown here in even the dimmest of memories. Who are you, then?"

Raven blinked. They'd popped out of a cauldron in front of a wooden building, green and damp all around, and before they had a chance to properly look around, this woman was addressing them. She was tall, her white hair bound into long spikes that resembled some kind of... weird skull shape. She wore a crown, and strange armor, and ... black... feathers... oh dear...

"I am called Raven, most of the time," the great black bird replied, cautiously, "May I have the honor of a name to call you?"

"Well, aren't you a polite one?" She sounded amused. "I have many names, but you may call me Flemeth. And what is the purpose of a raven called 'Raven'? You might as well just call me 'An Old Hag Who Talks Too Much'."

Raven cackled. "Ah, but I am not simply a raven, am I? ‘Raven’ is what the People called me, and I was pleased with the name enough to keep it." Raven decided it might be better to not have feathers this Flemeth could claim, and unfolded into a lean man with a sharp nose and long black hair. "My smaller cousins can't really do this."

The woman laughed, "No, they can't." and she promptly transformed into a large raven with red markings on its shoulders and near its beak.

Raven laughed in delight, then grew a bit serious. "With respect, Flemeth, I'm looking for someone who went missing from where I come from. While I'd love to stay and chat for however long, I don't suppose you've seen anything truly unusual? A human who shifts into a coyote, or a coyote who shifts into a human?"

She shifted back to her human form, shrugging, "My daughter is quite fond of your form. I prefer larger wings, myself. And what is a 'coyote'?"

Raven blinked. "Ah! Like a wolf, but smaller, or like a fox, but bigger."

She brought one hand up to her mouth, tapping her lips with her fingers as she pondered Raven's question. "The werewolves do still dream of wandering these woods, but I have not been here to see them myself, I fear, and they have not walked the waking world in some years now. The rifts have maddened wolves and dogs alike across the south, but they do not dream." She dropped her hand and regarded Raven seriously. "What would your friend be drawn to, if they came this way?"

Raven answered promptly, "Trouble. Coyote can't seem to help it, you see. Either they-” Raven paused, remembering what Grandmother had said about Coyote’s current predicament, “Either she finds trouble, or trouble finds her." Then Raven paused. "You've mentioned dreaming and waking. Are we in a dream?"

"This is the Fade, the realm of spirits and dreamers. I am indeed dreaming, and you are, I presume, a spirit," she explained. "As for trouble, there's no question where your friend is likely to be, if she can get there - the Breach. But you would likely be torn apart, or maddened, or worse if you seek the Breach through the Fade in your current form."

Raven nodded, thinking furiously. Well, Grandmother had said Faded dreams, didn't she? "I would rather not experiment with this Breach, even if I am who I am. And since I am here, and not dreaming, that means I'll need to find other ways to find my friend." Raven smiled a bit. "There are ravens here, in the waking world, yes?"

"There are, but none like you. Hmm, there is another trouble your friend might be drawn to, that you might find. He might even help you if you succeeded. If you are 'Raven' and your friend is 'Coyote', then you should have little trouble with a 'Dread Wolf'," she laughed, cryptically.

Then she nodded suddenly, having apparently decided something. "Here," she offered Raven a small silver pendant on woven leather cord. "If you find that old Wolf, show him this, and he will know who sent you. In the meantime, it should keep you from the clutches of less polite spirits. And perhaps, if you find your friend, and not too much trouble, I might seek a boon of you in return later."

Raven nodded, took the pendant, and put it around their neck. "Thank you, Flemeth, for your aid and your knowledge. And a boon for a boon is fair exchange, isn't it? I'll start with my smaller cousins here. They may well have seen things I'll want to know." Raven bowed to Flemeth, took again their raven shape, and flew upward.

Behind them, as they flew away, they heard a roar, and the flapping of very large wings. Well below, a great dragon with purple markings and several long horns flew closer to the swamp waters than Raven would have thought wise.

Well, it was a dream, after all.

Raven quorked, flying higher and higher, until the strange house and stranger woman were lost to view.

Chapter Text

Yoti threw herself into a chair in the tavern and dropped her head on her arms on the table.

Flissa, the barkeep, approached with a wooden tankard and a pitcher of ale.

"Long day, Your Worship?" she asked, voice light with sincerity and caution.

"Long everything ," Yoti replied, groaning. "Boys are oblivious, girls are impossible, there aren't anywhere near enough enbies, and I’m pretty sure you people don’t have the Two-Spirits." She finished grumbling and turned to look closer at Flissa's face. Yoti had seen her flirting with the young requisitions runner when she first came in. "How's your luck with whatshisname?"

"Ooh?” Flissa blushed, “I don't know. He's very sweet, but I don't think he likes me very much."

"Meh, he's just oblivious. Young guys often are."

"You think so? I don't want him to think poorly of me."

"Huh?" Yoti looked the barmaid up and down, admiring how she filled out her bodice, "Why would he think poorly of you?"

Flissa looked down, blushing. “I wouldn’t want to be too… forward?”

“Oh!” Yoti waved one hand carelessly, “I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Well, I mean, are you trying to get him into bed, or into a Chantry? I guess it might matter.” Flissa was rapidly turning bright pink. Yoti frowned. “If you need to worry about reputation so you can get married, that’s a whole other thing. I’m just trying to get laid, y’know?”

“Oh! Well, yes, people do… ask me that… often.” Flissa shrugged slightly.

“Well, you work in a tavern, so yeah,” Yoti shrugged, “But if you don’t want the attention, I’m sure we can get the Seeker to tell them to shove off.”

Flissa looked alarmed. “No! I mean, I’m not interested, but as long as they keep their hands to themselves, it’s okay, really, I don’t mind.”

Yoti grinned, “And you get better tips if you play along, I’m sure.”

Flissa smiled, slightly embarrassed, and shrugged agreeably.

“Well, I could use a few good tips, apparently. I’m getting tired of sleeping in an empty bedroll!”

“Have you tried asking ?” an amused voice rumbled from behind her. Flissa looked up above Yoti’s head and blushed even brighter somehow, before excusing herself and all but running away.

“Weird,” the Iron Bull said, watching her depart as he came around the table to where she’d been standing, “I don’t usually have that effect on barmaids.”

Yoti chuckled, looking him over. “I bet you don’t!”

“So,” Bull sat down with surprising grace, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Have I tried asking?”

“Yup.”

“What, like ‘Oh, Iron Bull, Great Fairy Godfather of Sexytimes, please fuck me’?” Yoti leaned back in her chair, arms crossed.

“And somehow you even managed to make that complicated,” he laughed.

“It’s a gift,” Yoti deadpanned.

“So, to answer your question, ‘Any time’.”

Yoti blinked, dropping her arms, “What, seriously?”

He smirked. “You didn’t strike me as the serious-in-bed type, but sure.”

Yoti shook her head, flustered. “No, I mean you’re seriously… wait, now you’re just fucking with my head . Wrong end, Bull! I’m looking for tail!” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

Bull laughed, “So! Your place or mine, Boss?”

“You have your own room?”

He shrugged. “Krem knows what a scarf on the door means.”

Yoti’s eyes widened at that, and she suddenly stood up straight. “Krem!”

Bull leaned back, wrapping his hands behind his head, grinning smugly.

Yoti eyed him suspiciously. “Why do you look so smug?”

“I called it! So, the real question is… why don’t you ask him .”

Yoti looked around nervously, fidgeting in her seat before sighing and dropping her head back down onto her arms on the table and groaning again.

Bull leaned forward. “No, seriously, Boss. Krem is clearly into you, but he’s not going to make a move unless you’re pretty damned blunt with him.”

“I don’t want to hurt him!” Her muffled reply was almost a whine. “I’m sure he’s been through some shit, and I’m kind of a little shit myself, you know?”

“The fact that you can tell by looking at him that he’s been through some shit is exactly why I think you’re gonna be good for him.”

She raised her head again, resting her chin on her arms, and sighing. “Is he even up for it? I’m not looking for anything serious here, no matter how much I like him.”

“Relax, Boss, we’re mercenaries. Nothing lasts forever.”

“Huh,” she tilted her head. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She sat up straight again, brushing herself off, tucking a strand of hair that had escaped her braids behind one ear. “Sooooo…. uh… where would I find Krem, then?”

The Iron Bull chuckled, “ That’s the spirit.”

-----

Raven watched the waking scene curiously. How very odd! It seemed that the people of this world had trained their smaller cousins to carry messages. Raven quorked with delight; that would make it easier for them to find Coyote. Or so they hoped.

The first messenger raven they found flew toward a city at the edge of an ocean, a river running through the middle of it. Raven watched as their cousin didn't fly to this absurdly tall tower, but what was clearly supposed to be a palace. Interesting! Their cousin landed near the top of the palace, and Raven settled nearby.

"May I borrow your eyes, cousin?"

The raven, young and cheerful, agreed without hesitation.

And so it was that Raven, with raven's eyes, looked out on a brand new world to see a man with short, reddish-brown hair walking toward them both. He had an air about him, authority clearly, but not held with a heavy hand. And the cousin seemed to like him quite a bit, which was pleasing to Raven.

"Alright Ser Feathers, what have you got for us today? Please tell me she fed you before she sent you? I'm all out of chicken eyes..."

The man was maybe 30 years old, and well-built. He approached with a thick leather glove on one hand, which he held out to the black bird expectantly.

Raven tilted their head at the man and quorked softly. Then, because the younger cousin said it was how things were done, they hopped onto the glove. Despite their urge to tease the man, Raven decided it would be better to behave mostly normal. Mostly.

The man carried the raven across the battlements and down into the castle, singing amiably as he walked. Several other humans and elves (!) bowed respectfully as he passed them, most with a smile. He descended several flights of stairs into a warm room that smelled like all kinds of good things.

A plump elven woman in an apron put her hands on her hips as she addressed the man invading her domain. "Oi! Your Majesty, how many times have I told you not to bring those birds into my kitchen?!"

"Calm down, Miralin, you know they always cooperate more if I feed them. Where's the bowl?"

Raven quorked agreeably, bobbing their head to the woman, who eyed them back suspiciously.

The disgruntled cook gestured towards a wide bowl set on one end of a chopping block that seemed to be filled with random bits of meat, entrails, organs, and all.

Raven looked up at the man, then at the bowl, then at the man. If he was smart....

The man scrunched up his nose, and reached into the bowl to select a tasty morsel. At first he reached for a bit of chicken lung. Raven flapped a bit; lung was good and all, but livers, well, those were definitely more tasty.

"Alright, alright, not that, I get it," the man laughed, "What then, heart? No? What's this dark bit... ugh, not entrails. Ah! Liver, then?"

Raven quorked happily. It seemed the man was intelligent enough to pick up on subtle cues. Perhaps he was smart enough to know things Raven needed to know?

"Alright, you get your snack... and I get... my message..." the man muttered to himself, first offering the bit of liver to the raven's perilous beak, and then carefully reaching to unfasten the small tube tied to its leg.

Raven was very polite, and gently took the bit of liver from the man's fingers, while allowing the man to unfasten the tube without interference.

"Maker's breath, you must be joking!" the man exclaimed with worry moments later.

Raven tilted their cousin's head, just a bit, both to see the message and to hopefully get some further attention from the man.

"Magister. Time magic. Rebels tricked. RC comp'd. Send Crown? Inq needs Temps."

Raven blinked more than a bit. At least someone was being careful with the message, but a few things stood out. Magic! Raven wondered what kinds of magic they had here, aside from this "time magic." And rebels! That might not be a big enough trouble for Coyote, but it was at least a kind of trouble. And "Crown" - well, this was a palace, and the man holding them had been called "Your Majesty."

The man tucked the slip of paper into his fur-lined doublet and wrapped his free arm loosely around the bird, as if to guard it, as he started moving towards the inside door. His strides were long, fast, and purposeful, and his expression was rapidly clouding. Whatever this message represented, it clearly did not make his majesty happy at all .

-----

Yoti approached the Chargers’ campfire with her hands behind her back, chin tilted coyly to one side. Dalish and Skinner looked up at her. Dalish smirked, Skinner scowled, and both looked meaningfully to Krem, whose back was still to Yoti. Dalish rolled her eyes, grinning. Yoti scrunched her nose and dropped the girlish pose, in favor of striding purposefully across the remaining distance to stand directly behind Krem.

Dalish announced, “Greetings, Your Worship,” in a pointedly loud voice. Krem suddenly sat up, and turned to look over his shoulder to find his face in Yoti’s breasts.

“Herald! How can I… uh…” he leaned back carefully, “help you?”

“You want to help me? Oh good! I was just coming here to get your help with… um… something. Over there?” Yoti winced, listening to herself stumble. She could swear she was usually smoother than this, but then, Yoti was usually dealing with people who had some idea who she really was.

Krem’s face was priceless, though. First he raised both eyebrows, then one went down, and the other stayed up. His jaw dropped slightly, then he smirked, then frowned, then schooled his expression. It was a whole play in split second increments!

Rocky and Dalish both snickered, and Grim grunted.

“Oh, just go! Put us out of our misery, Krem!” Rocky quipped.

“I didn’t know you were all so miserable ,” Krem replied, voice low with sarcasm, “Maybe I should send the Chief over to cheer you all up?”

“We’re fine, Krem. I’ll keep an eye on the kids. You go help the Herald,” Stitches assured him. “Best not keep Her Worship waiting, eh?”

Krem stood up, shaking his head, and giving the others a warning look, which just had them all smirking back, as usual. He sighed.

“What can I do for you, Your Worship?” he asked Yoti pointedly leading her away.

“Oh, I… well, um… I was wondering if you wanted to... “ Yoti closed her eyes, scrunched up her nose and blurted out, “I would like to have sex with you, please!” She clamped both hands over her mouth and opened her eyes wide.

For his part, Krem managed to keep a straight face. He tilted his head. “Did the Chief put you up to this?”

Yoti dropped her hands, confused. “What? No! Maybe? No. I mean… he said I should just… ask.”

Krem snorted, “That’s Chief all right.”

“So, do you? I mean… “

Krem blushed. I guess he finally believed her. “Do I want to bed you? I mean, you’re very attractive, but are you sure you really want me ? You could probably have any guy here, and half the women.”

Yoti smirked, “Well, maybe I will, someday. But right now, yeah, I want you .”

Krem sighed deeply and leaned against a near rock wall. “Yoti, I’m not what you probably think I am.”

“Really? Because I think you’re a really hot human guy who knows exactly how keep your dangerous curves under wraps. Speaking of which, where does a pair of breasts have to go around here to find a proper binding? This armor is doing my nipples no favors!”

“I’m… wait, what? Did Bull tell you?” Krem halted Yoti’s manic babble with a confused look.

Now Yoti was confused. “Did Bull tell me what?”

“What I am?” Krem looked slightly alarmed .

Yoti smiled, slowing down a notch. “Relax, Krem, nobody had to tell me. I don’t know what it’s called in your culture, but where I come from we’ve got a whole pile of options, and they’re all fine by me.”

Krem sighed, shaking his head. “There isn’t a word for it in Tevene. As far as my culture is concerned, I’m a crazy woman who doesn’t know my place. But Bull says the Qunari would call me ‘Aqun-Athlok’, ‘born as one kind, living as another’.”

“That sounds a lot like my People.”

“I didn’t know the Dalish had a place for it. Dalish never said anything.”

“Oh!” Yoti winced. “Well, it’s... not the same everywhere?”

“Right, of course,” Krem nodded absently, still a bit disoriented by Yoti’s sudden revelations and shifts of mood. “So, um…”

“Yeah,” Yoti sighed awkwardly. She couldn’t decide if this had gone well or not. I mean, he wasn’t running away, but he wasn’t kissing her yet, either.

“You really want to know how I bind for armor?” Krem smirked.

Yoti laughed, grabbed Krem’s head with both hands, and kissed him soundly.

“Show me watcha got, Krem de la Krem ,” she murmured into his mouth, grinning.

-----

Chapter Text

“Therinfal Redoubt. Therin fal Re doubt . The rin fal Re doubt. Theeeeeeeriiiiiiinfaaaaaaalll Reeeeeedooooooouuuuubt.” Yoti stretched her lips wide and stuck them out like a duck face as she repeated the strange name of their destination. “It doesn’t sound like real words, does it? It sounds like somebody was being really pretentious, hoping nobody would notice they just made it all up.”

“Therinfal Redoubt was the training grounds for the Seekers of Truth until the late Blessed Age,” Cassandra explained, “‘Redoubt’ is an archaic Alamarri word for ‘Fortress’.”

Yoti sniffed, thoughtfully. “And ‘Therinfal’?”

“I… do not know, precisely. But the royal line of Ferelden is named ‘Theirin’ so perhaps it is related to their lineage in some manner,” the Seeker mused.

“It sounds like it should have something to do with the defeat of King Vanedrin,” Varric chimed in.

Cassandra shook her head, “The name far predates that era.”

“Damn. That would have been a good story,” the dwarf sighed, “ The thwarted ghost of Vanedrin haunts the keep even still. You can hear him howling his rage and despair when the moon is full in winter. ”

“That bears no resemblance to history, Dwarf,” Cassandra admonished.

“Yeah, but who doesn’t love a good ghost story, right?” Yoti laughed, defending her favorite storyteller.

“If the Seekers kept their secrets in the keep for centuries, there may very well be any number of spirits there, enacting their more sordid memories,” Solas interjected, amused.

Cassandra snorted.

Yoti and Varric proceeded to exchange increasingly outlandish suggestions for scandalous ghost stories about the Seekers of Therinfal Redoubt, much to the quiet amusement of Solas, and the increasing irritation of their guide.

They did pique her interest when Yoti suggested a torrid affair between a young human recruit and the ghost of an outcast elven apostate.

-----

Yoti sighed, and shifted uncomfortably in her saddle as they approached the poorly-maintained keep. Her armor was very impressive to look at, she had to admit, but it was really, really uncomfortable. And it smelled funny from the dye used to make the bright orange sash. Whose idea was bright orange, anyway? Were they worried they would lose her in the fog?

She sat up straighter when Cassandra cleared her throat pointedly as the representatives of the dozen or so Orlesian noble houses came into view. Gotta look shiny for the money, she supposed.

Sigh

“Greetings, Herald. I am Lord Esmeral Abernache. Care to mark the occasion? Ten Orlesian houses walk with you,” one of the lords announced in a pompous, nasal voice from behind his etched metal mask.

“No thanks, Lord Tinselface, I’m housebroken,” Yoti muttered.

Solas coughed and gave Yoti a dirty look with laughing eyes.

“I’m sorry, Herald, I didn’t quite catch that,” the Lord replied.

“I said, ‘No doubt with the Lords in place, they’ll heed the words we’ve spoken?” Yoti winced, “That, uh, that sounded better in my head,” she smiled endearingly at him, batting her eyelashes.

“Fear not, Your Worship,” he assured her, patronizingly, “Today you walk with the best of Orlais. The Templars can not possibly refuse our demands today. They will see reason,” he concluded, and walked ahead to join the other Lords.

“Right. The Templars. Reason. Because… reasons,” Yoti sighed again, deliberately falling behind, and looked at Cassandra. “Remind me why we’re here again, and not sneaking into Redcliffe Castle?”

“You agreed with Commander Cullen’s conclusion that we would require the assistance of the Templars to counter Magister Alexius’ time magic,” Cassandra explained, quietly, frustration evident in her tone, but wisely hidden from her posture.

“I believe the Lords are waiting for us to take the lead, Herald,” Solas prompted, his lips twitching with suppressed sadistic glee at her predicament. Yoti was pretty sure that’s why his lips were twitching, anyway. Possibly it was just too much pollen.

-----

Ser Barris looked at the flags hanging high on the courtyard wall. In the center, at the top, hung a banner with a golden lion. To the left, slightly below it, the Chantry sun with its layered, wavy rays. To the right, halfway down the wall, the sword and flames of the Templar order.

“Traditionally, a participant in the Rite explains their choices to those assembled,” he prompted, politely.

Yoti regarded the the handsome, dark-skinned Knight, and tilted her head coyly. “Oh, well, I’m just a Dalish Elf, you know, so I don’t know much about your Chantry. But from what I understand, the Templars serve the Chantry, and the Chantry serves the People, yes?”

“That is one way of looking at it, yes,” Ser Barris agreed, approvingly.

Yoti's smile was devastatingly charming. At least, she hoped it was. Barris certainly seemed startled by it. Too many teeth?

“Foolishness! Where is the Lord Seeker? He has kept us waiting long enough!” Lord Abernache - whom she had mentally dubbed ‘Lord Abercrombie’ - complained.

Barris shook his head, sighing. “The Lord Seeker awaits you.”

-----

“Okay, this isn’t an alliance, this is a clusterfuck,” Yoti complained as she and her companions jogged through the keep, searching for Templars untainted by Red Lyrium. The Templar leadership had initiated a purge shortly after the Inquisition had arrived. Now Yoti and her team were being hunted by armored knights with sickly complexions. It was unnerving to say the least.

“At least most of the lords were left outside. We can only hope they escaped with their lives!” Cassandra agreed.

“I’m a little more worried about escaping with my own life, Seeker!” Varric replied, guiding his trusty crossbow to pierce a red knight through the eye with a single, well-aimed bolt. “Four against dozens isn’t my kind of odds!”

“You faced far more, and often, if your book is to be believed, Dwarf!” Cassandra called back, taunting two more warriors to focus on her.

“That was Hawke! I’m not Hawke!” he objected, firing again.

Yoti’s heart skipped a beat as another pair of glowing red eyes met hers. “Eat fire, you ugly bastards!” she shouted at the black-veined archers standing at the end of the hallway, gesturing rudely as the glyph under their feet ignited with a satisfying whooooosh .

Solas just shook his head and cast another barrier on the team, keeping an eye on the door behind them to ensure they weren’t trapped in the narrow space.

-----

The Lord Seeker stood at the top of the stone staircase, apparently staring at the closed doors to the upper keep. Yoti watched him for several seconds, warily. He did not move a muscle.

If she hadn’t already known from the behavior of the tainted officers and his dubious attitude in Val Royeaux, this alone would have told her: Something was very, very wrong with Lord Seeker Lucius.

She climbed the stairs hesitantly, one cautious step at a time, staff out, spell ready, her companions a step behind her, equally wary.

“Lord Seeker?” she all but whispered, as she approached him.

He didn’t turn. He didn’t even twitch. He was barely breathing .

Suddenly, when she reached the landing, the Lord Seeker spun around and grabbed her by the neck with both hands, pulling her inexorably towards him as he backed up towards the wooden doors.

Yoti was too startled to resist. She dropped her staff and grabbed his wrists with both of her hands, willing fire to her palms, but he didn’t flinch so much as snarl at her. The sky grew dark, and Yoti grew woozy.

At first, she thought it was lack of air from him choking her, but she realized a moment later that he was doing something magical. Was he pulling her through the veil ?

Everything went dark.

Yoti felt herself falling.

-----

Chapter Text

A request was made to see Yoti's Vallaslin.

So I drew a portrait of Yoti!

-----

Coyote looked around, startled. How had he gotten back to his favorite little creek in the high desert? Must be dreaming again, he concluded. Oh, well, why waste it?

With a wry grin and a satisfied sigh he started building a small campfire out of dry juniper twigs and stray chunks of cedar bark.

He was sitting by the fire, picking salmon bones out of his teeth with the tip of his utility knife, when an irate, distorted voice spoke up behind him.

"This shouldn't be here! Who are you? Where is the Herald of Andraste?"

Coyote tilted his head, quietly dipped the utility knife in the white ashes left behind by the fire, and stood up to address the creature. "I keep telling people my name's not 'Harold', but nobody wants to listen. But since you asked so nicely, you can call me 'Coyote'."

The creature growled in two octaves, one low, like the Lord Seeker, the other high, and almost familiar. Coyote turned to find the form of a petite elf woman with long hair pulled into a high braid, rendered in glistening black, with glowing green eyes.

"Do I even want to know what the hell you are?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Do not disdain me! I am Envy, and I WILL know you! When I'm done, the Elder One will kill you and ascend. Then I will BE you!"

"You know, I knew you smelled funny," Coyote replied casually. He gestured with one hand, sending his knife flying towards Envy's throat. It lodged with a satisfying thud in the creature's neck. The creature gurgled, only to disappear and reappear further away, this time shaped like Leliana.

Coyote raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. Well, so much for that theory. He didn't have three days to spare right now anyway.

"It doesn't matter! Everything tells me about you," Leliana's image announced. "Tell me, Herald, in your mind. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you feel. Tell me what you see."

Coyote walked towards the demon, his thumbs hooked in the belt-loops of his bluejeans. "So we're in my mind, eh?" Coyote grinned, reached out, and poked Not!Leliana in the nose. "You're cute when you're stupid. Try to keep up, kid, the party's just starting." Coyote shifted into his scruffiest animal form and loped off into the desert night, yipping at the moon, leaving Envy to stare, bewildered, at yet another unexpected form.

As he ran, Coyote shifted the setting from a high desert to winding canyons. Suddenly, another, smoother voice interrupted his focus.

"Wait!"

Coyote pulled up short, shifting abruptly back to his older human form to find a scrawny young man with a giant hat standing sideways on the canyon wall. "Envy is hurting you. A face it can feel but not fake. I want to help - you, not Envy."

Coyote approached the strange young man with caution, and sniffed the air. The boy smelled like death, and hope, sorrow and mercy. Not bad for a helpful sort. "How'd you get in here, kid?"

"I've been watching. Envy is hurting you. I tried to help. Then I was here, in the hearing. It's not usually like this."

"No," Coyote agreed. "I usually have to do more work to get other people in here with me."

"I was watching. I watch. Every Templar knew when you arrived. They were impressed, but not like the Lord Seeker."

"You mean the Envy demon who wants to take my place."

"Yes. It twisted the commanders, forced their fury, their fight. They're red inside." The young man disappeared and reappeared crouching on a rock directly in front of Coyote. "Anyway, you're frozen. Envy is trying to take your face. I heard it and reached out, and then in, and then I was here."

Coyote squatted down."Fair enough. So what do I call you, then?"

"I'm Cole."

"Alright, 'Cole', if you really want to help, any suggestions how I should get out of this?"

The boy looked down, hat obscuring most of his upper body. "It's your head. I hoped you'd know how to stop it."

Coyote grinned. "Ever heard of a two-man con?"

-----

Envy caught up with Cole moments later.

"You can't help the Herald! I WILL see more!"

"You must not follow Coyote, Envy," Cole replied solemnly. "He will destroy you."

Envy looked down to see pawprints in the desert sand. "You can not stop me!" it crowed, and continued along the path.

Cole's smile was small and awkward.

-----

Coyote stood in his form as a young native man, calmly waiting at the top of a foggy stone path, listening.

After a time, footsteps tapped on the stone. Someone was breathing heavily as they trudged up the hill.

"You can not stop me, whatever you are, Herald," Envy-as-Varric declared.

"Who says I'm trying to stop you?" he laughed. "You make such interesting assumptions, Envy. You want to be me? You got a lot to learn."

Coyote started walking, very deliberately, into the fog. Sure enough, Envy followed.

After a time, Coyote turned around, to face the demon. "First rule of being Coyote? Don't look down. "

Suddenly the fog cleared, to reveal Coyote standing on the edge of a cliff, in front of Envy.

Envy looked down to see its own feet suspended in the air. It looked up, raising its borrowed eyebrows, opening its mouth in confusion before suddenly falling several miles down to the canyon floor.

Coyote grinned, as a billow of dust rose from where Envy landed with a resounding thud.

“I’d send an anvil down, but I suspect the joke would be lost on you,” he laughed.

-----

Envy raised its bald elven head, spitting out a mouthful of red silt. Everything tasted like dust, and smelled like... smoke?

It turned its head to see Cole crouched beside a campfire. "Did you find Coyote?" the Compassion spirit asked.

" All of this is Coyote," Envy snarled.

" I am not Coyote," Cole replied, calmly, poking something tucked into the fire with a stick.

Coyote sauntered up to the fire, a bottle in his hand, and looked at Cole. “What’s cooking?”

“It’s for Envy,” Cole replied, poking again.

“Huh. What does Envy eat?”

“Shame.”

“That’s a shame?”

“This is a crow.”

Coyote laughed. “Well played, kid. Macabre , but well played.”

“Envy needs joy, but I only found one.”

“As long as it’s still ticking, it counts.”

Envy stared at the two of them, completely bewildered and increasingly frustrated. “What are you talking about?!”

“Your dinner, of course. Second rule of being Coyote: Are you gonna eat that? ”

“I’m not eating anything prepared by Compassion ,” Envy spat out.

“Well if you don’t, you’ll starve. I’m pretty shameless.”

-----

Coyote looked around at the bits of ichor coating the ground. “You’re absolutely sure that wasn’t a Raven, yeah?”

"Friends don’t serve friends for dinner,” Cole replied, nodding solemnly.

“Somehow I thought there’d be more to Envy than black goo.”

“There’s also green goo, and red good.”

“Ah, of course. Silly me.

-----

“How is this possible?!” Envy demanded.

“You didn’t check the fine print,” Coyote replied, calmly.

“ Make sense! ” Envy snarled.

“I make perfect sense,” Coyote assured the demon, “You just aren’t looking at me the right way.”

“You will show me the way!” Envy insisted.

“Be careful what you wish for, Envy,” Coyote warned, quietly.

“SHOW ME!” Envy shouted.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Coyote sighed.

Chapter Text

The old crow was smaller than the young raven had been, but wiser by far. She refused to relinquish her eyes, but was willing to share them. Raven, seeing the sense in this, agreed to the terms.

They'd been learning quite a bit about this world by watching from the Fade. But some things you just couldn't learn from a dream.

The old crow had been following the blond elf for some time, tracking him through light and shadows, through dawn and dusk. He was on a mission, this she knew. The ravens had sent him, this she also knew. Her own kin didn't know what to make of him anymore, but she knew he was still important, so she followed him.

Raven talked with the old crow as they followed the blond elf together. And Raven, ever the courteous one, found good things for her to eat, safe places to rest when she needed, and frightened off things that would otherwise have made life difficult for her. It was a strange arrangement. Not one she'd ever encountered before, but she had no real objections to it, as long as she could continue to track the man.

He visited other elves, humans. He ranged from the warm seaside down across the rivers and into the city of stone and bronze. The place smelled of death and decay, of blood and magic. There were statues of humans larger than buildings, cringing away from the tall stone walls, and the people who wore the shiniest clothing held themselves quite literally higher than those who wore rags. The old crow knew she would not want for food here, and surely the elven rogue would not want for targets.

Maybe it was the seductive manner of his speech, or the way the elf moved, like a dancer with deadly knives, but Raven found him strangely appealing. They got more than one pair of eyes out of the deal, and Raven quickly realized that the man was an assassin. The old crow confirmed to him that her bipedal kin are all assassins, that this is what "Crow" means in this world.

Raven laughed at this, delighted at the pun, and knowing the elf was an assassin, they began paying attention to the targets, to the people targeted for death. Perhaps there were patterns to be found? Raven also knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if this elf were to be sent after Coyote, that there'd be an unkindness in his future.

After several days of tracking the elf, Raven had learned that he was from a place called "Antiva", that he was no longer acknowledged by other "Crows", and yet by some was feared as the most dangerous "crow" of all, and by yet others was hailed as a hero. He loved to laugh. He also loved shiny things, and beautiful people. And beautiful things, and shiny people, for that matter. Why he continued on in the city of stone and bronze and blood, neither of them knew. The old crow guessed that he was waiting for something, or someone, as he had rarely spent so long in one place since she began following him.

Sure enough, on the seventh day, another elf met with him, this one dressed in dark clothing and a shawl pinned into a cowl with a symbol that resembled an eye in the center of a sunburst, run through with a sword. Raven realized, seeing the pin, that it was the same symbol that had adorned the red wax seal on the message sent to the young king by the cold, sparkling sea.

Clearly, the elf in dark clothing was one Raven should follow. Mysterious messages and meaningful symbols! This practically smelled of the kind of trouble Coyote would have been drawn to. Granted, this might take a while, but it's not like Raven had anything else to do.

Raven cackled a bit. Coyote, for as fun as he was, often lacked patience. A hunt like this, lasting a week? Coyote would have wandered off by now. Well, there was that one time, the first time he'd become a she.

-----

Raven remembered Young Coyote running in little circles, chasing his tail around the dead wood his best friend was perched on. Raven had given up trying to track his hyperactive spinning several rotations ago, and rawked with annoyance.

Coyote yipped and whined, "Raveeeeeen I'm boooooooored!"

Raven laughed. "Of course you are! All you're doing is chasing your own tail! You should really try chasing something more difficult to find, or catch."

(Raven had, moments, later, realized their mistake, but it was already far too late.)

Coyote stopped abruptly and faced Raven, tilting his head to regard the large, black bird, one ear tilting out sideways. "Like what?"

Raven thought very carefully. "Well, you've tried chasing Alligator, and that didn't end up so well for either of you. And Orca as well. What is it with you and pointy teeth?" Raven quorked. "But most of the other animals are too easy, yes?"

Coyote nodded mournfully, "I even caught Hummingbird the other day!"

Raven continued, "Well, what's bigger than Orca, and higher than Hummingbird?"

Coyote looked confused. "Even the Albatross is not bigger than Orca ..."

Raven looked up, Very Meaningfully.

Coyote followed suit, squinting. "I can not see what birds are in the sky today, Raven, the Sun is too big and bright."

Raven sighed. " The Sun. You could chase the Sun, Coyote."

(Subtlety was often lost on Young Coyote. Apparently, this was one of those times.)

Coyote yipped, alarmed. "Grandmother and Grandfather would almost certainly punish us for that. We would have to be very sneaky indeed to catch the Sun. Ooh! I know, we could sneak up on the Sun while it sleeps! Grandmother and Grandfather would never notice the Sun's absence at night!"

Raven nodded. "And then we put it back before morning, so Grandmother and Grandfather will never notice."

Coyote nodded, thoughtfully. "What about the Moon, though? Won't it tell on us? We'll have to catch it first, I think, so it can't tell the others."

It took them some time to come up with a plan. Sneaking up on the Moon wouldn't be too hard, for this was before torches, and people could only find each other at night by the light of their glowing eyes. Raven, being a daytime creature, did not have glowing eyes like Coyote, so they promised to lead Coyote, blindfolded, to catch the Moon, so that Coyote's glowing night eyes would not give them away.

Raven knew the best paths to follow to catch the Moon, and quick as you please, they'd put it in a sack Raven kept for just these kinds of tricks. Raven fluffed their feathers once this was accomplished. "Now, how was that?"

"Okay, okay, so we've got the Moon in the bag,” Young Coyote yipped excitedly, “and the Sun is too bright to see my eyes anyway, especially when it's sleeping! But Raven, where does the Sun sleep?"

"Well, the last time I went looking, there was a lodge and a box, but we won't find the Sun there. Maybe we should try looking for a cave?"

"I've heard the sun likes hot springs!" Coyote replied, please to Know A Thing . "Or was it cold springs... that it makes them hot?"

Raven thought about this, and agreed that it made sense to look for the Sun in hot springs. They were rather relaxing, and the Sun clearly did a lot of work while in the sky. "But we do need to hunt quickly!"

Coyote laughed at that, for the Sun clearly moved far slower than either he or his friend could race. They had chased each other countless times, while the Sun slowly sauntered its way across the summer sky. Surely they were in no danger of failing to catch the Sun if it were purely a question of speed?

"Well, we need to catch the Sun and put it back before Grandmother or Grandfather notices, yes?"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Yesssssss." Young Coyote nodded emphatically. "Getting caught by Grandmother would be very bad."

"Exactly. And it's not like we're doing this to be mean, right?"

"Ooh, well, I mean.... no?" Coyote sat on his haunches and huffed quizzically. "Do you think the Sun will mind very much? Hummingbird only minded because my mouth is very dark and wet, and Hummingbird does not like the dark."

Raven tilted their head. "The Sun shouldn't mind, as long as you make sure this is just a game. Remember my rules?"

"’Is it shiny, can I eat it?’"

"No, the other rule."

"’It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye’?"

Raven laughed. "Yes, that one. So now, we chase the Sun, and put it back before Grandmother notices."

"And we avoid losing any eyes. But if we find extras, you get dibs." Young Coyote recited dutifully.

Raven grinned. "Exactly."

-----

Raven had been keeping watch on the building where the blond elf assassin had gone in, but still nothing. The story was only half done, and -- being a storyteller -- Raven didn't want to leave the old crow hanging. But they also didn't want to run the risk of losing their best current lead on Coyote.

The old crow blinked and tilted her head. The blond elf had never stayed so long in one place before. He was fond of fleeing through windows and back doors as necessary, but this city had few windows. Was he still inside, or had he found a path she could not follow?

Raven spoke up in her mind, "Sometimes, it's better to see from higher up, just in case the blond elf has found a hidden way out. If you will let me share your eyes, we should be able to see him even better than a hawk, and I can continue the story."

The old crow shrugged, tilting her head one way, and then the other. Certainly it was possible the one she followed had found a way around her. It was possible he deliberately evaded her, even. She knew he'd seen her following him more than once, but she wasn't sure if he could tell her from her brethren. She suspected he not only knew she followed, but enjoyed the attention, as there had been times he would look straight to her, and wink.

She cawed twice, and launched herself from the roof of the warehouse, seeking higher ground. If her strange cousin could see what she could not, by all means, let them see. She settled on a broken spire next to a crater of rubble set between beautiful houses and manicured gardens.

Pleased that the old crow hadn't needed much persuasion, Raven glanced around a bit at the surrounding ruin. "Curious place, but from here we should be able to see him wherever he goes. Shall I continue the story?"

-----

Young Coyote sniffed the air. It was warm and humid, just what he'd expected from hot springs.

Raven glanced around, being very careful. It wouldn't do to spot the sun and then not be able to see anything else. "What do you smell?"

"Juniper and cedar," Coyote sniffed again, "The water is too warm for Salmon. Too salty for Trout."

Raven bobbed their head. "Good, good, all signs that the sun is nearby."

Young Coyote snuck along the stones on his belly, waiting for Raven's cue.

"Let me distract the Sun, and then you sneak up and catch it!" Raven had said. Raven was very smart about such things. Raven knew the Sun personally, even. So the Sun would probably be very distracted by Raven's arrival, Coyote reasoned.

Raven watched Coyote sneaking with a grin, then flew around to the Sun's other side, and found a lovely hot spring - all the better to both have a delightful bath and distract the Sun.

The Sun groaned and turned over in its pool. It was hard work being the Sun every day. The Sun didn't, per se, have a back, but somehow that didn't stop it from hurting.

Raven smiled at the Sun. "Greetings, Sun! I am sorry to disturb you, but the springs here are most excellent, and I find myself in need of a bath."

The Sun eyed Raven warily. This wasn't the first time they'd met, and last time had gone... poorly. "Hello, Raven. These are certainly the best hot springs in the land. I thought you preferred to sleep when I was absent the sky?"

"I prefer it, yes, but there's so much to do when you're in the sky that there isn't time enough to truly relax. So sometimes, I stay awake after you've left the sky." Raven smiled again. "And to prove I am here to relax, I shall keep my distance from you, in this lovely hot spring."

The Sun sighed, and shrugged. "To be honest, the hot springs here are not hot when I am not here, so it is probably best for you to be here while I am, yes." The Sun watched Raven for several long moments, to be certain Raven would keep their word, and then, satisfied that Raven was indeed there to relax, the Sun closed its eyes and settled more deeply into the bubbling waters.

Once the Sun closed its eyes, Raven settled a bit more into the waters -- but waved a wing up, then sharply down, the signal that they and Coyote had agreed upon.

-----

Coyote grinned and inched silently towards the pools where the Sun and his friend were bathing. As Raven's wing rose and fell, Coyote leaped into action, grabbing the Sun in his teeth and running as fast as he could across the sky to his den.

Startled, the Sun lit up, droplets of sun-soaked water scattering every which way across the sky.

When Coyote looked back and saw the starry path the Sun was leaving, he panicked, and swallowed the Sun whole!

Suddenly everything was cast into darkness, with only the stars in the sky and the sun-soaked droplets to light the way. But Coyote's eyes were glowing more brightly than ever. Light was pouring out of Coyote! Sunlight pouring out poor Young Coyote's ears, and nose, and when he opened his mouth to yip in alarm, sunlight streamed out of his mouth!

Coyote curled up into a ball on the ground, hiding his nose with his fluffy, fluffy tail, and closing his eyes, for fear that Grandmother and Grandfather could see him glowing from all the way in their lodge.

Raven, who had taken flight after Coyote, quorked in surprise when Coyote swallowed the Sun. They followed as fast as their wings could carry them. Raven knew where Coyote's den was, not just from playing with him before, but because the trail of droplets were far too easy to follow. When they reached the den, they called in, "Coyote! What in the world were you thinking?"

"Raven! Raven, what do I do? The Sun has left a trail for Grandmother and Grandfather, and even my mouth glows now! Surely I will be punished!"

"Keep calm! We'll try to explain, but -- you didn't actually swallow the Sun, did you?”

Coyote’s glowing eyes grew wide. "Nooooooo, of course not! I... would never do such a thing! It was... the Sun! It lept down my throat, into my gullet where it is so warm and wet, like the pools I pulled it from. Clearly it was confused by our clever trick." But then Young Coyote groaned, and the light pouring from his mouth and ears and nose dimmed just a bit. "Ooooooohhhh, Raven, I do not feel very good at all right now. It is not good to eat the Sun, I think."

Raven hopped up and down. "Of course not! 'Is it shiny?' and "Can I eat it?" are two separate questions!"

As the poor, foolish Young Coyote writhed back and forth across the ground in his den, and Raven quorked with worry over their friend's unique condition, a humming song rose outside the little cave.

"How strange this night turns out to be, that I have walked across the sky along a path of stars and droplets of sunlight, to find myself at Young Coyote's den. What else will this strange night show me, do you suppose?" the warm, feminine voice asked no one in particular.

Raven froze. "Oh no," they whispered, "Grandmother is here." Raven hopped forward, knowing that the trick had gone too far, and it was better to come clean to Grandmother. "It was my fault, Grandmother. I encouraged Young Coyote to catch the Sun, and did not expect him to swallow it."

"I see. So Coyote has swallowed the Sun, has he?"

Coyote groaned from the back of his den.

Raven bobbed their head. "He has. And I do not know how to get the Sun out of him!"

Raven quorked their distress.

Grandmother smiled serenely. Coyote groaned and yipped in discomfort.

"The solution is very simple, but I would not expect it to have crossed your mind, dear Raven, for you do not bear your young live."

"Grandmother!" Coyote croaked from where he was curled on the ground, "Have you come to punish me?"

"No, dearest Coyote, it is not necessary for me to punish you. You will learn from this experience more than I could ever teach you.” Grandmother smiled, her eyes sparkling in the light shining from Coyote’s whimpering mouth. “Rather, I have come to show you something you need to know, if you wish for the Sun to leave your body in due time."

Raven hopped into Coyote's den. "Yes, yes, Grandmother is wise, and she can help you!"

Coyote knew that Grandmother was very wise indeed, but he was so uncomfortable just then that he would have taken even very foolish advice, if it meant he would be rid of the Sun burning in his heart.

Grandmother turned to Raven. "First, you must release the Moon from your sack. We will need its measure of time.” Then she turned back to the squirming young canid. "Now, Young Coyote, you are ill-equipped for your task. It is past time you learned a new form. Come with me."

Raven nodded, and hopped outside, making sure to release the Moon gently back into the sky. Also, it was better to stay out of Grandmother's way for this part.

-----

The Moon dutifully waxed and waned, and waxed, and waned again.

After a time, Grandmother returned with Coyote to her den. It was time for Mother Coyote to birth her first child!

"Raven, come, your friend will need you soon," Grandmother called to the frazzled bird.

Raven nodded, and hopped into Coyote's birthing den. "I am here, Grandmother, and ready to assist."

Although Coyote had never born cubs before, the Sun was so very eager to emerge that birthing took very little time at all.

When the reborn Sun emerged, Coyote and Raven saw the great light, and Grandmother was satisfied that they had both learned what was necessary. She departed from Mother Coyote's den across the starry path that had remained in the sky ever since that fateful night, trusting that Coyote would now see the need to protect her child the Sun.

Certainly, from that day forward, the Sun became very difficult to catch, indeed!

-----

Raven finished the story, and just in time -- there! Along the coast and walking out of a cave with two other people was the blond elf assassin. Raven drew the old crow's attention to the three, and suggested they could follow now.

The old crow dropped from the broken spire to glide down to the coast after her quarry. "Caw!" she called, so that he would recognize her again. Were the two he traveled with his friends or foes?

Raven, wily and wise, eyed the two for clues as to who they were and what they were doing with the elf. Sure enough, they both wore pins like the one the previous messenger bore: An eye in a sunburst, run through with a sword. Whatever this organization represented, Raven suspected Coyote was tangled up with them somehow.

Raven resolved to stay with this old crow for as long as she would allow it, in order to follow the assassin and his companions as far as they went.

Chapter Text

Coyote sat on the edge of a precipice overlooking an endless, inky ocean. A path of stars stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon. Only one Moon hung low in the sky, a sliver glowing like a manic grin.

Envy sat beside him, holding boney knees up to meager elven breasts, chopped blonde hair just brushing its eyebrows.

Coyote stood up and brushed off his jeans with one hand, holding the bottle he still carried down to Sera’s doppelganger.

“Third rule of being Coyote: Hold my beer. ”

Envy sighed, resigned to confusion, but unwilling - or unable - to give up. A small hand in an archer’s half-glove reached up to accept the bottle, still staring sullenly out into the void.

Coyote stepped off the stone onto the path of stars.

Envy sat up very straight, suddenly, watching with keen interest.

“Well, come on then,” Coyote gestured.

Envy scrambled to its feet.

-----

Coyote wasn’t usually much for lecturing. He preferred teaching over time by example, riddle, action, letting people figure their shit out via the consequences of their direct experiences - directed by Coyote, of course. But Envy would need a more immediate sort of persuasion, and in this case, Coyote couldn’t afford for the student not to learn.

“I doubt there’s a culture in my world - probably not in yours either - that has never realized at some point that the center of their life, the light of their world, is the Sun. Worship is a natural response, of course. Light becomes a metaphor for everything that matters, all awareness, all knowledge, all wisdom, all inspiration. They call it ‘seeing the light’, ‘the dawn of understanding’, ‘fire in the head’, or even just ‘becoming enlightened’. Me? I took a short-cut. I’m impatient that way. Sure, I could have spent a lifetime chasing my own tail. Or I could just go straight to the source, and swallow it whole. Easy, right?”

They had reached the end of the starry path. Coyote gestured to the glowing reflection of the sun in the silver waters beneath them. “In the end, we have to figure out whether we want to just reflect the light bestowed upon us by others, or find the source of our own light within.”

Coyote turned, having reached their destination, and gestured to the sky. “Envy, meet my daughter, the Sun.”

“You think the Sun is your daughter?”

“Do you have a better word for ‘she whom I birthed’? I could have said ‘child’ I suppose, but these days she prefers ‘she’. Not that this is really her , of course. She’s back home, being the light of the world. This is merely my reflection of her, my memory, my love. But if you really want to understand me? You have to understand what it means to encompass her .”

“Encompass her?” Envy looked at Coyote dubiously.

Coyote’s mouth twitched into a wry half-smile, “Quick quiz: What’s the Second Rule of Coyote?”

Envy blanched, eyes wide. “‘ Are you gonna eat that? ’”

“Ayup.”

“But… how ?”

“Good question! I’ll leave that as an exercise for the student. Wouldn’t want to give too much away, right?”

-----

Yoti came to, kneeling on the stone landing outside the main hall of Therinfal Redoubt. Her eyes were still finding their focus as the body of the so-called Lord Seeker distorted into a twisted monstrosity. No sooner had it bent back on itself to snarl at her than it spontaneously combusted with incandescent light from the inside out, and then dissolved into a strange, sparkling dust, which floated away on a sudden breeze that touched nothing else in the courtyard.

“And here I thought I’d seen it all. You alright, Lips?” Varric asked, returning his attention to Yoti after watching the sparkles dissipate.

“What was that? What happened!?” Cassandra demanded, closing the distance to Yoti as Solas offered her a hand up.

“It seems the Lord Seeker was actually an imposter - an Envy demon,” Yoti explained in a strained voice. She reached up to touch her throat gingerly and then gaze at Solas with puppy-dog eyes for a bit of healing.

“Envy!? They are very rare and powerful demons! How were you able to defend yourself, much less defeat it, and so quickly? He- it only had a hold of you for a few moments. You seemed to pass out almost as soon as he lifted you off your feet, and before we could even close the distance, you fell to your knees and it… it exploded !” the true Seeker exclaimed, her tone a mixture of awe and disbelief.

Yoti shrugged. “Envy asked how to be like me. Let’s just say, it found my advice a little hard to swallow,” she replied dryly.

All three of Yoti’s companions gave her quizzical looks for that, but she just shook her head and held up a hand. “I’ll explain later if you really want the details, but right now we need to save as many uncorrupted Templars as we can. The Lord Seeker ordered them all to be force-fed red lyrium, and murdered outright if they resisted. We’re out of time!”

-----

In the end, they saved maybe two dozen Templars, only a few of whom were experienced veterans or lesser officers. All of the top ranking officers had already been corrupted or killed. Ser Barris seemed to be the de-facto leader of the remaining traditional Templars, so Yoti negotiated with him for their service.

She didn’t much care for the idea of punishing those who had stayed loyal for the actions of those who had betrayed and tried to kill them, but Cassandra pointed out that they lacked sufficient structure with all their officers gone, and suggested that they be absorbed into the Inquisition’s forces as conscripts rather than holding them separate as independent allies expected to supply and direct themselves. Barris said they would help the Inquisition in any way they could, regardless of their status individually or as a group. Commander Cullen would need to integrate them as soon as possible, to bring them up to speed.

It turned out only about a third of the Orlesian entourage had survived the sudden betrayal, unfortunately including “Lord Tinselface Abercrombie” and seven of his nine peers. Ambassador Montilyet was going to have her hands full appeasing their houses. Hopefully closing the hole in the sky and naming them martyrs for the cause would help mollify them.

Yoti gave a heavy sigh as she mounted her horse to guide the new Templar recruits back to Haven. At this rate, she was never going to seduce Josephine and Cullen into that threesome, was she?

Hopefully the Spymistress was having better luck helping the Fereldens reclaim Redcliffe.

-----

“You owe us a story, Lips!” Varric demanded that night as they settled for camp halfway back to the southern Imperial Highway. They had commandeered several bottles of wine and a cask of ale along with a mostly-empty provisions wagon from the keep, once it was cleared of Red Templars. Everyone was at least two cups in, trying to simultaneously debrief and forget what they had just experienced.

“Soooo,” Varric prodded, “Tell us, oh great Herald of Andraste! What really happened with that Envy demon?”

Yoti held up a hand, mouth full of ram meat, nodding, and gesturing for everyone to settle down while she finished chewing and sorted out where to start. “Okay, okay, so! No shit, there I was , being strangled by Lord Seeker Lucius, struggling to breathe, my nose going numb, and my eyes starting to cross, when suddenly I’m back in my favorite forest. So of course, I went fishing, and started a nice incense fire, like you do.” Varric and a couple of Templars laughed.

“As I’m sitting there in my mind, eating my fish, basking in fragrant smoke, and dipping my weapons in the ashes, not one but two different spirits start harassing me!” Yoti opened her eyes wide, and drew her hand to her chest, to emphasize her total and complete innocence in all that transpired thereafter.

It was obvious that the Seeker and Templars weren’t sure whether to actually believe her story, and equally obvious that Varric didn’t care if it was true as long as it was entertaining. Only Solas seemed to be listening to her attentively without neither doubt nor enthusiasm. The egg-headed elf just rose an eyebrow from time to time and otherwise offered no reaction at all. Yoti figured he’d catch up with her in the Fade that night or something.

“I don’t understand,” Cassandra said, her eyebrows furrowed with confusion. “You told Envy to swallow the sun, and it not only believed you, but somehow did so? What does that even mean?”

“We were in my mind,” Yoti reminded her. “All it really had to do was believe it was big enough, or the Sun was small enough to eat.”

“But why did that destroy it? What actually happened ?”

“Well, I don’t know what exactly happened to Envy, but when I did it, I got the world’s worst case of heartburn, and then my sense of self got kind of subsumed into an expanded sense of reality for a couple months, before I gave birth to the most beautiful child I had ever seen before or since. Apparently Envy wasn’t up for all that.”

“That makes more sense than you may realize, Seeker,” Solas offered, “Spirits of Envy are compelled to constantly seek a greater sense of self. If Yoti here found a way to force-feed it an uncontainable sense of self, more than it could handle, it could well destroy it outright.”

“Wait, wait,” Varric was laughing, “When you said Envy found your advice ‘a little hard to swallow’, you meant it literally !?”

Yoti gave the storyteller a shit-eating grin, “Let’s just say it bit off more than it could chew!”

“Well, I hope the bastard choked on it,” Barris replied, with feeling.

-----

Chapter Text

Hello! I didn't have chapter 13 ready immediately, as I've been tidying up some other stuff I've been futzing with, that you will hopefully also like!

They are shorter, hopefully-stand-alone stories from my as-yet-unposted sprawling MGIT fic that I hope to someday finish and edit into something coherent that y'all will enjoy.

Here they are, for your enjoyment.

-E-

The Emberquizzy Chronicles

CHEESE!

Raise a Glass

=====

It wouldn't have been a great burden for the Old Crow to simply fly across the Waking Sea. She'd done it before, certainly, it wasn't so long a flight. But tracking one of the tall ships that carried those who could neither fly nor swim, that was harder.

The men who pulled the ropes didn't care to have shorebirds perched on the masts, much less corbies. Scavengers, they claimed, were a bad omen. But the woman in charge just laughed, the prominent golden jewelry hanging from her ears jingling like bells, as she pointed the Old Crow out to the blond elven assassin.

"I think you have an admirer, Zev. She's been following us since you boarded."

"She followed me from before I arrived in Kirkwall, at least," he agreed. "Does she make you jealous, dear Bela?"

"Oh desperately!" the woman laughed, rolling her hips as she sidled up to him. "Only a fool competes with a crow!"

The elven man leaned in to the golden-skinned human woman. The Old Crow strained to hear their murmurs.

"They are safely away?" he asked, quietly.

She smiled seductively and nodded. "An island off the coast of Southern Antiva. Convincing them to pause in their slaver hunting took a while."

The Old Crow flustered, looking for a better perch as the two moved away from the mainmast.

Raven was amused at the banter between the elf and human, and marked how the elf ("Zev", a name, finally!) had noted the Old Crow following him. Raven was pleased, because clearly this Zev was clever enough to notice that he'd been followed since before the city he called “Kirkwall”.

Raven laughed, and wondered how Zev might react to the knowledge that he wasn't being followed by just the Old Crow. Probably not well, since from what they'd observed, the people of this world had issues with spirits from the Fade. And it wasn't like Raven was able to reassure Zev (or that King person) that they truly were harmless, and all they were really focused on was finding Coyote. Well, mostly harmless.

-----

The journey from Therinfal Redoubt to Haven was slower than Yoti would have liked, but the Templars were surprisingly good company. Hardship breeds dark humor, and Yoti had always been fond of the form.

-----

The elven assassin called “Zev” stood at the entrance to a cave on the coast of the Southern shore, quietly investigating tracks left by many pairs of shod feet.

“If these are Darkspawn, they’ve found a strangely regular supply of boots ,” he murmured.

The Old Crow cawed in response. Since his acknowledgement on the ship, she had risked approaching him, and he had encouraged her. She hadn’t yet worked up the trust to actually perch on his body, or take food directly from his hand, but Raven expected that this was inevitable.

Indeed, they encouraged it, as an alliance between the two would no doubt prove useful in time.

-----

It took the council surprisingly little time to come up with a plan for closing the breach now that they had more Templars to work with. Commander Cullen had clearly been working on plans while Yoti and her team were at Therinfal Redoubt. Ser Barris and his comrades were eager to be of assistance, and everyone was eager to close the hole in the freaking sky, so they only asked for a half-day of rest, to ensure they were at full capacity, before the climb to the Temple was underway.

“We’ll camp here for the night and work on closing the breach first thing tomorrow, after everyone is well-rested,” Cassandra announced. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to camp, all of a quarter mile from the boundary of the blast, but at least they weren’t in amongst the crumbling bodies and red Lyrium.

“Normally camping in a place like this would make me want to get drunk,” Yoti admitted somberly, “But I doubt a hangover will help tomorrow’s process.”

“Heh, no, probably not,” Cullen agreed, “Though you might be surprised how useful a hangover cure a dose of Lyrium can be.” he added, lips twisting in a self-mocking smile.

“I’ve never actually had a Lyrium potion. What’s it like?” Yoti asked. Peyote? Datura? Tobacco? No problem. And Coyote got drunk with the best of them, though he didn’t actually think it was a good idea. But he tended to avoid the more modern, hard stuff in favor of good old-fashioned bad judgement when he wanted to get into trouble.

Cullen squinted at the fire for a moment, before taking a deep breath. “It’s a rush. It makes you feel powerful, invincible even, like every inch of your body is buzzing with potential, and the sky awaits your command. My first dose was a revelation. I felt like the secrets of the cosmos had been revealed to me, like I’d been hidden from myself until the day I found myself in a bottle of blue, singing liquid.”

The other Templars nodded in recognition.

“They warn you, of course,” Barris added, “that the rush is because you’re not used to it. We practice meditation towards self-discipline for months before we’re even considered for initiation. We’re not allowed to leave the room during our first dose. Neophytes have been known to do some pretty stupid things in response to that first rush.”

Cullen frowned. “But then it turns on you. The withdrawal is not significant at first. You just notice after a while that you feel normal again. But after a time, you get headaches, your memory fogs, it gets harder to think, and you feel more and more like you really can’t be yourself at all without that little blue bottle.” He looked up at Yoti, his expression very serious. “There’s an entire industry, a shadow market, built around the illicit Lyrium trade. The Chantry likes to pretend they control the supply with the help of Orzammar’s merchant caste, but everyone knows the Carta’s the real power. Countless people have died, and killed, over Lyrium supply.”

Yoti whistled low, “There’s a familiar story.”

“That is not the only reason Lyrium is so tightly controlled, of course,” Enchanter Vivienne spoke up. “Lyrium does not cause anywhere near as many problems for mages. The withdrawal symptoms are mild, and passing. But the rush of power is every bit as strong, and the obsession with power compels many mages. With sufficient Lyrium, a single mage can tear down cities, start wars. Only blood magic is more dangerous.”

“All magic is in the blood,” Solas disagreed, “what makes blood magic so dangerous is the ease with which a fool can seize power without knowledge or wisdom to accompany it. A sufficiently skillful mage can tear down cities without spilling blood or consuming Lyrium. But the learned see little use for such indiscriminate violence.”

“Thus all mages are feared,” Vivienne, replied, eyeing Solas with suspicion.

-----

Several days inland, between a great lake and foothills, Zev was inspecting yet another cave entrance lined with suspicious quantities of matched footprints.

“Tsk. What sort of trouble have you gotten into this time, mi ruiseñora?”

Raven contemplated this comment. The elf was himself considered a formidable Crow, and had allied with a canny old crow, and now he was seeking a nightingale he considered his own? And concerned for her? Interesting.

Zev inhaled sharply, no doubt at some observation he had made, and then looked up at the mountains before them, the lines of his face betraying intense worry. It was the first time Raven had seen him openly express an emotion of any depth. “Come, my fine feathered friend. We must get to Haven as quickly as possible, to warn them.”

-----

Closing the breach was downright anticlimactic. Solas helped Yoti through the appropriate magical maneuvers while the Templars suppressed the breach, and the handful of other mages they’d picked up in the Hinterlands helped direct extra power into Yoti’s efforts.

The whole thing took all of an hour to set up, execute, and clean up, for goodness sakes.

“Well alrighty then! NOW it’s time to go get drunk!” Yoti declared, laughing with surprised glee at their unexpectedly easy success.

Solas, too, looked satisfied. Cassandra practically glowed with victory. Even Vivienne looked genuinely pleased.

Cullen put a warm, heavy hand on Yoti’s shoulder, “Let’s get back to Haven first. I’m sure everyone will want to celebrate.” She’d never seen him smile like that. It was beautiful! She leaned into his touch slightly, unable to contain her own toothy grin.

-----

Flemeth had warned Raven not to approach the gaping hole in the sky from the Fade. It was uncomfortable, to say the least, but the Old Crow afforded them some buffer. The closer they got to the strange vortex, the more certain Raven felt that it was the key to locating Coyote. It seemed impossible that such a dramatic problem could present itself without drawing their dear friend’s inevitable curiosity.

Trouble, Raven knew, was Coyote’s great temptation.

Suddenly, Raven felt a strange vertigo, as though the air around them were warping somehow, like the precursor to a lightning bolt. The Old Crow cawed, flapping her wings in discomfort and warning.

Zev looked up to where his companion was perched ahead, waiting for him to catch up, and watched, eyes wide, as the great rift in the sky beyond her suddenly contracted, twisted, and all but disappeared, leaving a scintillating green scar in its wake.

“Well, that’s bound to draw attention,” the elf cursed to himself, increasing his pace. “They will know exactly where to find her, now. Braska! We are out of time!”

The Old Crow launched herself towards the scar in the sky, flying as far ahead as she could while still keeping the blond elf in sight. With the breach closed, Raven had no such restrictions.

It was time to leave the crows behind.

-----

Chapter Text

They arrived in Haven to find the place in a joyous uproar. There were several bonfires lit, with people dancing around them, laughing and clapping. Impromptu drums were constructed out of anything with resonance.

Yoti laughed and rushed ahead to grab Varric’s arm and swing him around.

“Lips!” the dwarf exclaimed, laughing, “You did it!” He hugged her tight around the waist and then pointedly shoved her towards the Chargers with a knowing grin. “Someone is waiting to congratulate you.”

Four beers and a conga line later, Yoti plonked down on a bench next to Krem, bumping their shoulders together, and handing him a shot of something the Iron Bull had promised was more interesting than ale.

No sooner had they raised their glasses than a raucous flurry of black feathers descended upon them. A dozen or more of Leliana’s messenger ravens flew in swooping circles around Yoti, quorking urgently, and then departed, each in a different direction, towards a scout post.

“What was that all about?” Krem asked, still laughing, only to sit up straighter and toss their shot into the fire when he saw Yoti’s suddenly-sober expression.

“That was a warning,” Yoti replied, brows furrowed. “Get your weapons, Krem. Get the Chargers ready. I have to go.”

-----

“Cullen! Cullen, get up! Get ready! Something is coming!” Yoti ran full tilt towards the Chantry hall.

“Yoti, what is wrong?” Cassandra intervened.

“The ravens, they warned me. Something is coming - something big. We have to get ready! Get the soldiers armed, get the people into the Chantry, now!”

“You are certain of this? We’ve seen no reason for concern,” Cullen replied, pulling his coat on as he emerged from his office.

“Ravens are tricky bastards when they want to be, but they don’t flock for false alarms, Commander!” Yoti insisted. They had never seen her so upset before. Even after the Envy demon, she had been more tired than urgent.

Cullen nodded sharply, and began issuing orders. Cassandra moved to gather the inner circle.

Whatever was coming, they would be as ready as possible.

-----

When the bells started ringing, they were unsurprised to hear an army was approaching.

That it carried no banner, however, was a surprise.

“But who would attack us this way?” Josephine asked, bewildered and distressed.

“I don’t know about who, but I smell magic, and red Lyrium. I’m guessing we got the attention of that Elder One the Envy demon talked about,” Yoti said, staring intently out into the night, where the flicker of countless torches made the mountainside match the starry sky.

“ Wonderful ,” Leliana replied. “At least the ravens alerted my scouts in time. I don’t know how they knew to do that, but I’m grateful you understood them, Yoti.”

Yoti just nodded absently, still focused on the incoming army when a banging on the barricaded gate interrupted her thoughts.

“If someone could open this, I’d appreciate it!” a familiar voice called through the wood.

“Dorian?!” Yoti scrambled to open the door, gesturing for the others to help her lift off the bar.

The handsome Tevinter mage was collapsed on the ground, surrounded by burnt corpses. He struggled to rise, groaning. “I‘m here to warn you. Fashionably late, I’m afraid. Might exhausted, don’t mind me,” he panted. “I came to tell you what happened with the mages at Redcliffe. You’re not going to like it.”

“You know who is attacking us, then?” Cullen demanded.

Dorian nodded, “They are under the command of a woman named Calpurnia. She commands the Venatori, mages in service to the Elder One.” He leaned heavily on his staff, and pointed, “There.”

Across the valley, an outcropping gave a clear view of the battlefield. Two figures stood on the snow-covered stone. One was clearly a human woman, likely a mage, from the staff she carried. The other could not have been human, or even Qunari. It towered over her, its form crooked with spindly arms and a strangely asymmetrical head.

Yoti nodded, sniffing the air again, and beckoning Cullen to bring Dorian inside.

“Are we ready?” she asked Cullen, as they hefted the beam across the gates again.

He nodded. “The trebuchets are aimed, awaiting our cue.”

“What are we waiting for?” she asked.

“Only for the last of the vulnerable to get into the Chantry hall,” he assured her.

“Good. Let’s do this.”

-----

They weren’t expecting a dragon.

A fucking fire-breaching high fucking dragon.

“Can we evacuate the people somehow?” Yoti asked.

“How? That dragon stole back all the time you earned us,” Cullen replied.

“From what I gather, the Elder One marched that army all this way just to get at your Herald,” Dorian offered.

“ Me ? What did I do?” Yoti exclaimed, frowning. “No, seriously, for once I really don’t know what I did,” she muttered helplessly.

The Commander shook his head. “It doesn’t matter why, right now, Herald. Haven is overrun. This is not survivable. If we turn the trebuchets, we can bury Haven, take them out with us.”

“Not until we get the people out!” Yoti insisted.

Cullen opened his mouth to object, but was interrupted.

“There is a path,” a wretched voice offered from the corner. Chancellor ‘Burn The Witch’ Roderick, staggered towards them, bleeding and burnt. The spirit boy, Cole, was holding him up. “You wouldn’t know it unless you’d made the summer pilgrimage, as I have.”

Yoti looked at Cullen. “Get them out,” she ordered. “If the Elder One wants my attention, then I’ll have his.”

-----

Solas met Yoti outside the chantry door with Cassandra and the Iron Bull.

She raised an eyebrow at them. “I thought I was the only one with a death wish today.”

“You didn’t think we’d let you have all the fun by yourself, did you?” the Qunari rumbled, grinning.

Cassandra was more serious, but still positive. “If we can find a way to help you survive this, to escape with us, it is worth the risk.”

“There are too many Venatori. If we send you out alone, you will die before the Elder One ever sees you, and all this will have been for naught,” Solas insisted.

A raven called nearby, and Yoti nodded thoughtfully. Solas raised an eyebrow, studying the bird more closely. Why had the birds begun talking to her?

“Fair enough. Just stay alive, okay? I can live with dying, but I hate losing friends,” Yoti replied, still looking at the raven.

She turned abruptly towards them, then, giving them a familiar, toothy grin. “I’ve always wanted to get a bad guy to soliloquy!”

-----

Raven found the nearest corvid eyes to Yoti, watching warily as the towering creature who called himself “Corypheus” tossed her like a rag doll to the icy ground against the trebuchet. Ordinarily they would take the time for individual consent, but this battle had presented an emergency, and Raven had taken the time only to confirm that the whole Unkindness felt kindly towards them before diving into the fray.

“The Anchor is permanent. You have spoilt it with your stumbling,” the creature rumbled.

Yoti had succeeded in getting the Elder One to explain his plans and purpose to her, in his arrogance. It didn’t take much of a trick, Raven noted. Hardly worth Yoti’s full efforts. As the dragon had landed with the creature in tow, Yoti had shooed her companions away. Now she struggled to rise, clearly injured.

Raven noticed the signal fires on the mountain, and quorked urgently to her. She nodded, panting, and leaned on the trebuchet handle, as if merely to pull herself up by it.

“Glad we had this talk, Cory,” she grunted, “but I really should get going.”

“No, pretender. You must die ,” the creature insisted.

“But I’m really bad at dying. Like, terrible . If you want something done right, you should really do it yourself,” she replied, giving the trebuchet winch a shove as she stood up.

Raven quorked again, flapping their shared wings, and rising to circle over the entrance to an old mine. Yoti took off running after the black bird as the corrupted high dragon carried the monster away, and the last avalanche buried Haven.

-----

Chapter Text

Raven bounced back and forth among the Unkindness, distress growing even as they found the others who'd been with Coyote and led them to each other. It was a typical accident of timing that they'd arrived just in time to lose Coyote again, but it didn't make Raven feel any better about things.

At least some of the people had that eye and sword badge, while others wore different livery. Some were clearly lost in the terrain, but Raven didn't blame them for not having the benefit of the aerial view. Even that one poor man who kept getting turned around, slogging through snow in his very impractical armor (well, impractical for surviving the environment, but probably good for surviving attacks).

Others were decidedly the kind of stubborn that Raven understood all too well; going back for things that were apparently important, even in the face of certain danger. Though honestly, Raven wondered why that one woman went back for daggers, of all things. This seemed to be a world where you could (and often did) buy daggers in nearly every city. Maybe the daggers were more special somehow?

And to make matters worse, a storm blew in shortly after the second avalanche. Snow, sleet, hail -- all things that their smaller cousins were ill-equipped to handle. Raven had led Coyote to a tunnel entrance, and therefore knew better than to search above ground immediately. And once the storm hit, Raven wasn't willing to sacrifice any of their cousins in what was almost certainly a futile effort (for ravens) to find Coyote.

In the midst of the finding and the leading, Raven heard wolf howls more than once.

-----

Solas opened his eyes with concern. It was unusual for a storm to disrupt the local Fade all that much, but battles absolutely did, as did Red Lyrium, apparently, and the resulting confusion in the Fade around Haven made the Herald that much more difficult to locate. If Yoti had entered the Fade, sleeping or knocked unconscious, he had been unable to find her in any of the forms known to him. That implied that she was either conscious, or, unthinkably, dead. Of course, if she was conscious, that made it likely that she was a moving target, complicating the search even further.

Frustrated, he stood up from his place beside the first fire they had built after escaping Haven, and excused himself to the others.

"No luck, Chuckles?" Varric asked, worry creasing his forehead.

"It is early yet," Solas replied, "If she is awake now, it is likely she will rest at some point soon. I will search again. Right now I need-" he paused, trying to decide how best to excuse himself.

"I bet meditating in this weather makes your muscles cramp up," Varric offered.

"I... yes, something like that. I will return later. I need to stretch my legs."

Solas walked some distance away from the cluster of fires, until he found a small grove of young fir trees sufficient to hide him from prying eyes. Regardless of how agile he was in his true form, fur and four paws would suit a search through the snow far better.

Back at the fire, Varric shook his head, smiling sadly.

"She really got under your skin, didn't she, Chuckles?" he murmured, pulling the elven mage's forgotten staff closer to his side for safekeeping.

-----

Raven quickly realized that searching through the storm in the physical realm would take too great a toll on their mortal cousins.

When they shifted focus to the Fade, they were very surprised. They'd heard many wolf howls while riding the Unkindness, but now wholly in the Fade, there was a lone voice, a wolf calling again and again in the Fade. A wolf -- or perhaps a Wolf -- in the Fade definitely sounded like something they should investigate, and with that in mind, they began their search.

Remembering Flemeth's words about a "Dread Wolf", they decided that if at all possible, they'd hunt this Wolf down in the Fade. It was entirely possible that this Wolf wasn't associated with Coyote at all, but Raven was willing to take any lead in a storm.

-----

Solas deliberately split his attention, half to the Fade, letting his howls be heard in both realms. It wasn't something he could do while maintaining appearances yet, but he doubted there were many others who could do it at all.

His howls were meant not only to draw Yoti to him, as a beacon, but to attract the attention of both natural wolves, and curious spirits, either of which might aid in his search. Unfortunately, between the storm and the turmoil, none had yet approached him, though the wolves did at least return his howls, along with the wind.

Contrary to helping him, the local wisps fled his sight as he approached. Odd, usually wisps found him particularly interesting. Perhaps his current mood was coloring their reactions.

His mood, he had to admit, was even more grim than it so often was. If Yoti was dead and the anchor gone, Solas had lost all recourse to recovering his orb from Corypheus, and the Inquisition had lost their only method of closing the countless smaller rifts still scattered across Southern Thedas. The situation was dire indeed. That was more than enough reason for Solas to worry, certainly.

That Yoti herself might be of personal interest was irrelevant.

-----

As the hours passed, Raven became more certain that the howls in the fade were from someone searching. Whether that was a wolf or a Wolf, and whether that person was looking for Coyote, well, Raven would find that out when they found the source of the howls.

From grove to grove, around peaks and through valleys, Raven tracked the howl with determination. It wasn't easy, but they'd had so very much practice hunting, and frequently with (and for) wolves. As the howls shifted in tone, from concern to actual worry, Raven wondered who exactly was howling to the Fade.

And when Raven finally found the wolf responsible for the howling, they pondered how best to get that wolf's attention and not be at a disadvantage. They ruffled their feathers, and grew in size until they rivaled the ancient wolves back home. That should at least gain some respect from this particular wolf.

-----

After a time, Solas gave up on his four-legged search and returned to the fire to rest and search the Fade again directly. In the Fade, he resumed his howling call, hoping Yoti would recognize that it was him. He had seen neither hide nor hair of her yet in either realm, and his concern for his plans was slowly giving way to a deeper fear that he had no wish to name.

When a spirit finally came to him, it was a spirit unlike any he'd seen before: A huge, solid-black raven. He was tempted to transform to his dire form to accommodate it, but something told him it was unnecessary. Instead, he returned to his Elven shape.

"Greetings. What manner of spirit are you?" he asked, politely, keeping his distance.

The large bird bowed, and said, "I am Raven, which is both my name and what I am. May I have the honor of a name to call you?"

"'Wolf' will do for the moment, I suppose," he replied calmly. "'Raven' is an unusual ideal to personify, spirit. What is your purpose?"

Raven paused for a moment, blinking repeatedly, as though piecing together many thoughts at once. "Hm. I am a trickster and a changer, but my purpose here is to find a friend who was lost here. She was at the same place you were, with the others, but she stayed behind to give the rest a chance to flee."

Solas raised both eyebrows at that. If this was a trickster spirit, it might not be trustworthy. Trickster spirits covered a very wide range of intentions, after all, from harmless pranks to unusual lessons to devious malice. Their one common trait was simply the indirect way they had of solving problems set before them - a trait he was well acquainted with himself, of course, earning him a similar title. But none of this was enough to tell him if the spirit before him was truly a friend to the one they both sought.

"Can you describe this friend?" he asked cautiously, hoping the manner of the spirit's answer might give him more clues.

The spirit seemed to appreciate his caution. "I presume you don't mean what she looks like," they chuckled. "She's very excitable, prone to getting into - and out of - trouble, but also very protective of those she considers her own. She's got a very odd sense of humor. The kind that's about somebody else learning a lesson, whatever that looks like."

Solas tilted his head, trying not to smile at the description of Yoti. Of course, the spirit had also described Sera, but the odds she would befriend a spirit of any kind - even a like-minded prankster - were very low. "I may know someone like that," he offered, still cautious, "What name do you know her by?"

Raven tilted their head, "She's had many, many names in many other languages. But 'Coyote' is the one used most often, now."

Clearly this spirit could help him search for Yoti, Solas concluded. "I have met one named Coyote, an older human man with long hair and dark skin," he confessed, "and I have met a young elven woman, who fits your description, but does not use that name. And I have seen a small wolf-like form, all in the Fade. In the waking world I have seen only the young woman."

The spirit chuckled. "The small wolf-like form you speak of is a coyote. Have I satisfied your caution yet? Can we look for her together now, or shall I continue seeking her separately? I can really only search in the waking world through the eyes of my smaller cousins."

"Naturally," Solas agreed. "Ah! Then it was you who warned Yoti with Leliana's messenger ravens? That explains a great deal."

Raven smiled slightly. “I was warned to avoid the breach. Once it was gone, I flew as fast as I could."

“In that case, thank you very much, and your continued help would indeed be much appreciated,” Solas concluded.

-----

The two traveled the Fade together for some time, searching as Raven and Wolf, with little luck.

After a time, Raven paused, as if struck by a sudden thought. "I have a separate question for you, Wolf. When I first arrived, I found a woman who was full of useful information and a dry sense of humor. She told me I could call her ‘Flemeth’. She suggested I look for a ‘Dread Wolf’, especially as he was very likely to be someone Coyote might be drawn to. Would you happen to know this Dread Wolf?" The great bird’s eyes were opened wide, as if to feign innocence.

Solas tilted his head. "What would Asha'Bellanar want with the Dread Wolf?"

Raven titled their head. "She suggested that the Dread Wolf might help me find Coyote, if I was successful in finding him first. Oh!"

They shifted to a human form, similar to Coyote’s, but more androgynous: tan skin, long black hair, wearing a simple tunic and long pants. Then they reached into the tunic to pull out a small silver pendant. "She gave me this to show to him, to prove she sent me. And she told me it would keep me from 'the clutches of less polite spirits'."

Solas inhaled sharply, seeing the pendant, and shifted to his own Elven form to match, taking the pendant in one hand. "She gave you this? In the Fade?"

Raven nodded. Solas' eyes darted back and forth for a moment, his thoughts rushing. The pendant was an ancient sigil of Mythal, a stylized dragon skull and wings. It was given only to spirits in service to her direct household, to protect them from outside influences. Most of the Evanuris had developed variations on such charms, but he had not seen one since raising the Veil.

Where had the Witch of the Wilds found such a thing, why would she give it to a spirit she had only just met? More to the point, why would a human respected by Dalish elves as "eternal" expect Fen'harel to care for Mythal?

The most obvious answer was so unlikely it was almost unthinkable. It was nevertheless far from impossible .

Regardless, Yoti did not know of his old title, and until Solas could be more sure of her loyalties, he preferred to keep it that way.

"I have encountered Fen'harel in the past, yes,” he hedged. “The Dalish call him a trickster as well, but they also call him 'betrayer'. Flemeth is herself feared by most humans. You would do well to exercise caution in whom you confide this particular experience on both counts," he advised.

Raven nodded again. "I appreciate the warning, thank you.”

Chapter Text

Yoti groaned and rolled over onto her left side only to yelp weakly as stabbing pain shot up her shoulder to the base of her skull.

"A-ha-haooowww!" she whimpered.

She wasn't so much conscious as simply not dreaming , but that was enough to keep her all too aware of every throbbing ache and stinging pain in her body. In a more lucid moment, she took a mental inventory: aside from various cuts, scrapes, and bruises from fighting, falling, and dive-rolling into a forgotten mine shaft, it seemed likely her wrist and shoulder were dislocated from when the creature dangled her from her left hand, one or more ribs were possibly broken, and a splitting headache indicated a likely concussion from her final tumble.

Lovely.

She couldn't decide if the freezing cold was helping or making everything worse. Then the mark - 'anchor' that creepy bastard called it - started sparking and flaring, and Yoti decided that the cold was, by comparison, absolutely wonderful.

"For fuck's sake, being dismembered, cooked, eaten, and reassembled hurt less than this shit!" she complained to the empty cave.

From somewhere deeper in the tunnels, Yoti heard a distant howl. Either there was a pack of wolves who were going to have a hell of a time hunting from this dead-end cave until Spring, or there was another exit somewhere. Then a groan of wind brought a rush of fir-scented air stirring through the cave, and Yoti resolved to stand.

Somehow.

-----

The anchor flared suddenly, sharper than any since they’d stabilized the Breach weeks - was it months? - ago. Now they’d closed the Breach, dammit, why was the damned thing expanding again?

She flapped her hand, reflexively trying to shake the anchor off, only to scream in pain as her dislocated wrist shifted.

Presumably it was the screams that attracted the demons. Or possibly the crying, since they appeared to be despair demons.

Yoti whimpered at the prospect of fighting the damned things when she could barely focus through the pain, only to discover that the next flare of the Anchor that had her holding her arm out in front of her like it was on fire resulted in some kind of sucking void opening between them.

Moments later they were gone, and Yoti was left to continue staggering along the tunnels, trying to follow the scent of conifers and the howl of wolves.

-----

Yoti was moving slowly, to be sure, but she was moving. That had to count for something, right?

She had no sense of time, and thus no idea how long it had taken her to find the exit from the tunnels, out onto the open mountain.

Aaaaand straight into the howling storm. Of course.

Between the whistling of the wind and the incessant howling of wolves calling “Here I am!” “I hear you!”, Yoti felt she might go mad from the sound alone. But one particular, longing howl seemed different than the others, more compelling, more... personal? She instinctively followed it for lack of a better plan.

Her stomach had long passed rumbling and even cramping, settling into a sullen rock in her gut. She'd already emptied her belly twice from the intensity of the pain from her head and shoulder. With so much snow to melt, she knew she wasn't in much danger of dehydrating, but without fur, food, or shelter, there was a very real danger that she could die before finding the rest of the group in this storm.

It had been a very, very long time since Coyote had bothered with dying. It was kind of fun the first time, and really interesting several times thereafter, when there wasn't much else to do. Making Raven hunt him out of the lower world was always particularly good for a rousing round of hide-and-seek.

But Yoti wasn't sure Thedas even had a proper lower world. There didn't seem to be any ancestral spirits wandering their spirit realm, so far. And without help from friends like Raven, there might be no one to pull her back out if she got stuck.

Granted, she probably still had better odds than the others, so it was a good job she was the one who took the hit this time. But this wasn't being the fun kind of dying. It was being the worrying kind.

Really, seriously worrying.

Yoti didn't like worrying.

-----

In her delirium, she wasn’t sure if it was really Solas who found her. Was she dreaming? Would it make any difference to him if she was?

She suspected it was just a dream, though, because he kept talking to Raven, but Raven wasn’t there, and Solas didn’t even know Raven, so that was probably just her mind trying to make her feel better about slowly dying of exposure in a blizzard on a mountain top in a strange world disconnected from any she’d ever visited before.

Boy, she’d really tricked herself good this time, hadn’t she? There was no way Raven was going to find her this time. Definitely better than lower world or whale belly hiding spots! Ha!

She whimpered in pain as her shoulder throbbed.

“No, stop, ow!” she muttered. Whoever was poking her shoulder was being very rude .

“Stay with me, Yoti,” she heard a warm voice chanting. She remembered that voice. That was a lovely voice. A sexy voice. A voice that could distract her into going after Envy-demon-haunted Templars instead of supporting the oppressed mages like she’d meant to.

That was Commander Cullen’s voice!

Yoti tried to open her eyes. She managed to crack one just enough to confirm that it was indeed Cullen who was carrying her, with Solas at his side offering a steady stream of suggestions about how to avoid injuring her further, while Cassandra strode ahead, shouting for people to clear a path and prepare a cot.

Cullen smelled really nice. Kind of musty, though, and so warm.

Solas smelled nice too, like a wolf who’d been running around in a forest.

The smoke coming from the fire needed more cedar, she thought absently.

Yoti closed her eyes, and let the Fade take her.

-----

She woke up sometime later, quite warm under a pile of furs. She shifted carefully and discovered to her relief that her injuries had been tended, likely with magic. Her cuts and bruises were merely treated with Elfroot and honey under bandages, which accounted for the sweet, grassy smell.

The woman humming quietly next to her cot turned out to be Mother Giselle, who immediately admonished her to hush and lie back down.

“That would be easier if they weren’t right outside yelling at each other over who to blame for anything and everything. They should just blame me and get it over with. That’s what everybody else does.”

“You are the one person they can not blame. You warned them. You fell for them. You found them again. They argue because what they have seen is beyond their understanding. Petty concerns take their place, to distract and console, that the world is a simpler place, that they are not so overcome.”

Yoti twisted her mouth into a wry smile. “Terrible jokes work just as well for that. Do they have to use yelling?”

The Mother shook her head. “They are weary and wary. Jokes take humor they can’t yet find.”

“Clearly I’ve been gone too long,” Yoti sighed.

“And now you have returned, there is hope they can barely bring themselves to feel.”

Yoti pulled her hands down her face in fatigue and exasperation. When she looked up again, she found Mother Giselle had left the tent, humming again. Then she opened her mouth to sing out.

The song was beautiful, hopeful, and apparently very familiar to the large crowd of Andrastians around the fire. By the end of the second verse, almost everyone was singing.

Aaaaaaand kneeling and bowing.

To Yoti.

She winced, and looked up over their heads to find Solas staring impassively. He tilted his head in acknowledgement, smiling slightly.

Well shit.

Chapter Text

“A word?” Solas had sidled up to Yoti while the crowd of unnervingly worshipful soldiers and agents were dispersing.

“ Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ?” Yoti chirped back, cheekily.

“Excuse me?” The Old Wolf’s expression was somewhere between confused and indignant.

Yoti shook her head, waving a hand. “Nevermind. What’s up?”

He sighed, shaking his head slightly, “I’d like to show you something, if you please.”

“Lead the way.”

They walked up the hill away from the camp for a while, presumably until Solas was sure they were out of earshot.

“There are three things we must discuss, Yoti.”

Yoti smirked. “Do any of them involve worshiping me because I'm not dead?”

“Not on my part, at least,” Solas replied with a wry smile. “Although Mother Giselle is wiser than you may realize.”

Yoti wrinkled her nose, distorting the broken lines of Vallaslin into a set of continuous wavy lines. “I mean, I get what she did there, but they really have no idea what they’re getting themselves into directing their worship at me, y’know?”

“I have an idea,” Solas nodded, lips twitching. “Still, for the moment we are in, it was necessary, and it may be again. Especially when it is discovered that the orb the monster wielded is of Elvhen design.”

Yoti tilted her head, looking at Solas, and then ran through the implications in her mind, and whistled low. “Shit, that’s the last thing they need.”

“It is the last thing any of us need, especially including you. You may not consider the elves your own people, but everyone who looks at you even briefly will immediately do so. If the humans turn on the elves, you may be the first in line.”

“True. So what do we do?”

“Distract and inspire them long enough that by the time they find out, they are too invested in you to question any possible connections they would perceive.”

“That’s a hell of a long con.”

“It is simple politics, my friend. There isn’t a leader among them who wouldn’t do the same in your place.”

“Well, maybe not Cassandra, she’s pretty straight laced.”

Solas chuckled, “Granted, perhaps not the Seeker.”

“So, how do we distract them?”

“Lead them home. Scout to the North. There is a place that waits for a force to hold it. The Inquisition can rebuild there.”

“You know where this place is?”

“I do, but you must be seen as the guide.”

“So, what? You’ll walk right behind me whispering 'hotter' and 'colder' until I find it?”

Solas shook his head, pleased to offer at least one piece of news Yoti would enjoy. “You will follow your friend Raven.”

Yoti’s eyes grew wide. “It wasn’t a dream! Or, I mean, it was, but it was real, that was you, talking to Raven!”

Solas’ smile was slow and deeply satisfied. “You remember! We feared you were too delirious.”

She laughed. “Oh, trust me, I was. Thought I was hallucinating. Worse, I thought I was hallucinating you hallucinating my tricky friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you talking to them, but they weren’t there!”

“You could not see your friend?”

“Nope.”

“Then we should return to the Fade sooner, rather than later. They will no doubt be very eager to see you, and we can make further plans there.”

-----

The forest around them was filled with familiar trees - red cedar, hemlock, and fir - just the sort of environment they might meet in back home. Yoti remarked on it when she arrived, surprised that Solas could conjure such a place.

“It is Raven’s doing, not mine,” he replied, gesturing to Raven.

But Yoti only smiled and shrugged. “Great! Where is the old featherbutt, anyway?”

Solas looked between her and an empty space to his left several times, baffled. “Your friend is right here, Yoti,” he gestured again. The younger elf shook her head, silvery hair falling into her face, and she frowned. Solas returned her frown. “I can see and hear them with no more effort than it takes to see and hear you. Can you truly not perceive them at all?”

“I got nothing, Old Wolf,” she replied, shrugging.

Raven was torn between dismay and bewilderment. What could cause such a disruption in the spirit realm that their oldest, dearest friend could neither see nor hear, nor even feel their presence? They quorked uncomfortably, flipping their feathers, and then shrunk to the size of a local red-shouldered messenger raven.

“Let me see if she feels this,” they announced, and flew to perch on Yoti’s shoulder. Or rather, to try . As they approached, the green mark on Yoti’s hand flared. She grabbed her wrist, yipping with alarm, as Raven spun around to fly back to their perch on a nearby tree.

Solas took Yoti’s hand in his own, quelling the mark. “Thank you,” she replied, her breath labored with pain. “It’s been acting up since that Corypheus thing tried to take it back. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

“I will investigate further when we awaken,” he assured her, while Raven watched helplessly from above.

“So, if you’ve really got Raven here, I should test you or something, right? Ask you questions only Raven could answer, like ‘What’s the Second Rule of Coyote, and why does it clash with Raven’s Fourth Rule?’”

Solas looked up to Raven, an eyebrow raised.

Raven called down, “Dibs!”

“That’s not much of an answer,” Solas replied.

“What’d they say?” Yoti demanded.

“‘Dibs’.”

Yoti cackled with glee. “Raven! You char-quilled hatchling of a rainbow firebird, how the fuck did you land your feathered ass here?”

“By following you, naturally,” Raven replied. Solas obligingly relayed the message.

“Right, right, fair. That just leaves the question, how did I land my sorry tail here?” she sighed, shaking her head.

“You don’t remember?” Raven quorked with concern.

“Ah, did I not mention?” Solas replied apologetically. “When we found her, she was unconscious and missing all memories of her passage through the Fade.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Yoti waved a hand in the general direction of where Solas kept looking. “As if you’d know how to stop,” she added, quietly, a strange smile on her face.

Solas watched the indirect byplay between the two, finding himself intensely curious as to exactly what the nature of their relationship was.

Not that he was foolish enough to ask.

“So, now what?” Yoti asked, finally serious.

Solas nodded. “Now, Raven will borrow Leliana’s messenger birds to lead you to the fortress I mentioned. I will show Raven where to go each night here in the Fade, and then Raven will show you where to go each day. They already believe your interpretation of Raven’s intervention at Haven was miraculous. This will only reinforce their faith in you.”

Yoti winced and nodded. “It’s a great plan, except for that part.” When Solas opened his mouth to explain why again, she held up a hand to stop him. “I know, I know, I get it. Ugh. Fine, let’s do this thing.”

-----

Several days later, Raven-borrowing-red-shoulders flew over the open chasm to land on the gate tower, quorking smugly.

“So, Solas, what is this place called, anyway?” Yoti asked, as they came to the top of the ridge to admire their first view of the isolated castle.

“I believe its original name translates roughly to ‘ Where the Sky Was Held Back ’.”

“Sounds like the kind of name my People would give it,” she replied, nodding approvingly. “You know they’ll never go for that. They’ll just call it-”

“‘Skyhold’.” Solas interrupted, nodding. “And so they do. Welcome to your new home, my friend.”

-----

Chapter Text

Solas sat on the roof of the ruined battlement tower. He watched the others as they scattered around the upper and lower courtyard, setting up tents and finding places to safely stow what gear they had been able to save from Haven. It seemed the requisitions officer had seen fit to set up in the storage building below him, a steady flow of soldiers carrying boxes, bags and scraps of paper coming and going as everyone worked together to take inventory.

It was a wise start, and an optimistic one. Guiding Yoti to Tarasyl'an Te'las had had exactly the desired effect. The weary survivors had rallied behind their beloved Herald to rebuild. In time, they would no doubt become strong enough to defeat Corypheus, allowing Solas to reclaim the orb.

As the weeks passed, Solas took up a place in the main floor of the rotunda, beneath the old rookery Leliana had immediately claimed for her flock of canny messengers. He began sketching out plans for murals on the walls, committing the Inquisition's actions to memory in both worlds. Yoti's strange heroism deserved to be remembered.

As he could, he helped set up the library in mezzanine between the rookery and his hall. But he found most of the time, he could offer little assistance without tipping his hand, and thus took to the towers and roofs, well up out of the way.

Whether out of boredom, or affinity, Yoti's old spirit friend, Raven, had taken to hanging around Solas, either in the Fade, or looking through the eyes of one of the rookery birds. On this particular occasion, there were several birds perched around the edges of the roof, where Solas was once again settled, to watch the majority of soldiers, scouts, and refugees gather in the lower courtyard.

Josephine and Cullen had collected everyone they could find for this. Solas heard the news and made a point of leaving the area. He wanted to watch not only Yoti, but the entire scene, splitting his attention between the physical world and the Fade.

"If nothing else,” he muttered to the black-feathered figure by his side, “I'm quite certain it will be interesting ."

Raven chuckled. "Interesting, you say. There's a saying where I'm from: ‘ May you live in interesting times. ’ It's not a blessing."

"By any measure, we are already cursed thus," Solas replied, wryly.

Raven, watching through the eyes of the birds, sighed. "And Yoti in the middle of all of it. To be fair, being in the middle of things isn't new for her. But this... this is something else entirely."

"She has told me very little about her life before coming here. I gather it was very different."

"You could say that," Raven murmured. "I'm not sure you're really up for the details, but let's just say she's not used to this level of adoration."

"Indeed." Solas tilted his head for a moment, considering his words, before adding, "I gather she is used to having raw power, but not per se social influence."

Raven, sharing space with one of their smaller cousins, nodded. "Power from herself, yes, but power over others? This is new for her. I'm very curious to see what she does with it."

Solas nodded, focusing more sharply on the happenings below, as the Seeker led Yoti up the first half of the stairs towards the main hall, to the landing, where Leliana waited, holding a very large, very ornate two-handed sword.

As they watched, halfway up the stairs, before she was high enough to see the crowd watching from below, Yoti stopped, putting one hand on Cassandra's arm, and the other over her face, her shoulders visibly shaking. Was she upset?

Raven said, in a tone that Solas hadn't heard up to that point, " Oh no ."

Solas turned, sharply, to look at the nearest messenger bird. "What?"

Looking below again, Solas found that Yoti had stopped entirely to sit down on the stairs, her whole body shaking as her head turned back and forth.

She was laughing.

Cassandra's posture betrayed her frustration and disapproval, but Leliana simply waited patiently on the landing for the ceremony to continue.

"I am guessing they did not actually speak to her in advance of this plan," Solas observed. "I'm trying to decide if that was the best thing they could have done, or the worst."

Raven replied, "Probably both." After a moment's pause, "You do realize that she's never been put in charge of a bunch of people before, much less a bunch of people who are likely to go running off a cliff if they think she told them to."

"She has emphasized repeatedly to us a lack of responsibility for anyone other than herself, yes," Solas frowned. "And yet, for all her careless attitude, when others are truly in need, she seems quite concerned. If nothing else, she has a... distaste... for suffering."

"She very much does. Her people, back home? Are in much the same position as the elves here, what with being the target of people with more power." Raven chuckled darkly. "My people too, but I tend to handle things differently." After another moment, "Yoti's good at doing what she can for people who need it. But she's also used to people not liking her when she helps them."

"The Dalish she tried to help certainly received her assistance with apprehension. But they were more welcoming than I have come to expect, especially given that her vallaslin appear to honor their least trusted god."

"Let me guess. She pulled some kind of trick on whoever it was, benefiting the Dalish by doing so?"

Solas nodded, "Two human men had attacked one of the Dalish women on her way to market, stealing her goods and possibly assaulting her personally. When Yoti heard of her plight, she had us track the men down, and tricked them into stumbling through the woods, drunk and delusional. Then she let the Dalish have them, to exact justice on their own terms. It was curious. I would simply have killed them, but she seemed to feel that it was more important that the woman who was hurt have a choice how they were treated."

Raven nodded in the Fade, not wanting to control their smaller cousins any more than necessary. "She's very much about teaching lessons, usually as painfully as possible. Depending on the situation, sometimes the lessons are rather final. And making sure that whoever had the most power ends up with less after the fact. You'd have killed the humans, but then the Dalish wouldn't have learned a lesson either."

Solas raised an eyebrow at that. "The lesson for the humans is clear enough. What lesson do you suppose the Dalish learned?"

Raven immediately responded, "That they aren't as powerless as everyone else wants them to think they are, of course. You said it yourself -- to exact justice on their own terms. Tell me true, would any human have given them the opportunity to do that?"

"Few enough, I'm certain. Though their hunters and Keeper seemed quite capable," Solas mused. "Perhaps the lesson was more complex than that. Most Dalish insist on an insular self-sufficiency. There are few clans willing to accept help from outsiders of any kind. Granted, Yoti appears Dalish, but with markings that imply she is dedicated to Fen'harel, there is perhaps still a lesson there. But…” he frowned, “will they absorb such a subtle message, and did Yoti truly consider so many layers in her actions? It is quite frankly unclear how much thought she puts into what she does."

"Yoti's very, very cunning, Wolf. Not always wise. Not always considerate of the consequences of her actions. But the more she cares for a people, the more the cunning comes out in ways that actually help in the long run." Raven sighed. "She acts first, thinks later. I tend to think first, then act. There's good and bad in both ways."

Solas chuckled. "I'm perhaps overly familiar with the drawbacks of both methods," he agreed.

Down below, Yoti had finally been enticed to climb the stairs, and was now raising the decorative sword above her head, at the behest of the two Hands of the former Divine. The crowd cheered.

"She's going to keep being impulsive, Wolf. But she does seem like she's got all of your best interests at heart." Raven suddenly cackled. "And here you all are, having given her a very phallic sword. Please tell me she's getting some kind of regular sex?"

Solas blinked, "I believe she has taken up with the young man who runs the Chargers in the Iron Bull's stead."

Yoti's shoulders began to sag under the weight of the great sword. Then she dropped her hands, leaving the sword hovering in the air for a moment. The collective gasp of the crowd below, followed by laughter as she rolled her shoulder several times and resumed holding the sword was almost as loud as the cheers had been. Solas winced.

Raven continued laughing. "See, Wolf? This is who you all have decided will be your leader. She cares, yes. But she's also going to keep doing things like that, because it won't occur to her not to. Then again, everyone down there seems to appreciate her sense of humor."

"I see it is going to take some time to instill a sense of decorum," Solas sighed.

Raven's laughter echoed in the Fade for a long while. "I wish you luck on that, Wolf. I've tried for longer than you can imagine, and have made exactly zero progress on that front."

Solas turned his head slightly, to look at Raven sideways, in both worlds. "I can imagine quite a bit more than you would expect."

"Oh really? That does bring up some very interesting questions, which I'm not actually going to ask you. Because I'm a polite Raven, you know." Raven looked back at Solas. "I can't make any promises with regard to her behavior. If you changed her, she wouldn't be Yoti anymore. But maybe you can show her that faking the decorum is just another kind of trick she can play on people." Raven looked back down to the crowd. "But she probably won't play that kind of trick on her people. She's going to be honest with them."

"Then we will have to discuss who, exactly, she considers her people," Solas concluded.

Raven asked softly, "Who do you think her people should be?"

Solas shook his head, "Who they should actually be, and who the Inquisition needs her to feel they are may well not be the same thing at all. She seems to have accepted the role they have given her. The Inquisition itself must be her people now. But that is not the problem."

"Then what is the problem?" Raven tilted their head curiously.

"Allies. It is clear she will gladly mislead her enemies, and gladly help her friends. What is unclear is whether she has the savvy to treat her allies as both adversaries in the game of intrigue, and friends in the game of war."

Raven chuckled. "Allies, as in those outside of the Inquisition? You can try explaining that to her, and she's generally cunning enough to understand it. But I can guarantee you that no matter how you frame it, she won't like it."

On the landing below, the two human women were gesturing for Yoti to climb the remaining stairs to the main hall. But Yoti simply shook her head, and climbed back down the stairs to the new tavern, shouting audibly for the crowd to follow.

"Perhaps if I put it to her in terms of tricking them into helping us?" Solas mused.

Raven pondered this for a moment. "As long as you're honest about all of it. She'll probably enjoy the challenge, once she gets around to accepting she needs to do it that way." Then Raven chuckled. "It's a shame I'm not the one doing this. It's a game that suits me far better."

"It is my hope that we can resolve whatever is keeping you apart, so that you can advise her more directly," Solas agreed.

"Are you really sure you want the both of us working together? Honestly, Wolf, how do you think the rest of the Inquisition would react to me? To you, I'm just a spirit. An odd one, to be sure. But I've seen how spirits are treated by most of the rest of the people here. Even the uncorrupted ones." Raven ruffled their feathers. "I'd rather keep this going without revealing that one of Yoti's oldest friends happens to be a being who exists only in the Fade."

Solas shook his head, "I was not suggesting we try to acquire a body for you. Merely that it would help if she could see and hear you in the Fade."

Raven ruffled their feathers again. "I agree; I just don't want my presence to break this Inquisition. The nestling's barely out of the shell here."

Solas smiled to himself, looking down to where Yoti was waving up to him, having finally noticed his position. "I very much doubt your presence in Yoti's dreams will be enough to break what has been created here, ma falon."

"Yoti's cunning enough not to mention me where anyone else can hear. And you seem to be the only other one who's noticed me. Hopefully you two are the only ones who will ever need to see or hear me." Raven paused. "Pardon me if I'm a little paranoid. Corypheus was a surprise, along with that dragon, and... I'd prefer to not be that surprised again."

"There is another who is likely to notice you, but you should not be concerned. A spirit of compassion who appears as a pale young man. His name is Cole."

Raven nodded. "Compassion? Most interesting. I wonder what he'll make of me?"

"He will no doubt see you as you are, no more, no less."

"Well, that should be very interesting." Raven chuckled.

"SOLAS! GET DOWN HERE YOU EGG-HEAD!" Yoti's voice carried from the battlements below. She had apparently taken the time to climb to the top of the tavern and out the side door. "DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!"

Solas chuckled. "If you will excuse me, friend," he murmured, "I believe my presence is required below."

Raven chuckled as well. "Go, and enjoy yourself. I'll keep watch."

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

"You didn't tell me she was Dalish, Varric!" Marian Hawke exclaimed with surprising glee.

Yoti was a little confused, honestly. Most humans said that with disappointment in their tone, not enthusiasm. But then, Varric had warned Yoti that whatever she expected, Hawke would be something else.

Yoti had expected that Hawke would be Varric's best human friend from Kirkwall, about whom Cassandra had waxed heroine-worship regarding her title as Champion of Kirkwall, so really, so far, her expectations had been met.

Compared to both Varric and Yoti, Hawke was pretty tall, with short black hair, olive skin, and bright blue eyes. Her figure was a bit lankey, but that just made the staff over her shoulder suit her all the better.

The staff itself was downright intriguing, with a brass figure of a very curvy naked woman at one end, and a wicked looking serrated blade at the other.

Yoti, of course, smirked. "He probably didn't tell you the nobles are saying the new Inquisitor is a 'notorious salacious wench', either, huh?"

"Well, he told me your nickname was 'Lips', so I had some warning," Hawke grinned back.

"Oh?" Yoti perked up. "Is that a request?"

"You're right, Varric, 'Bela's going to love her."

-----

The trip to Crestwood was annoying as hell. Not because of the rain, mind you, but because Varric wouldn't shut up about it. Yoti shook her head laughing. It was a good thing Solas wasn't along on this particular trip, she supposed. He'd have strangled Varric by now for sure.

No, Varric, Blackwall, and Dorian had escorted Yoti to the land of rain and demons.

They met up with Hawke at the mouth of a cave that managed to come across as even more damp than the soggy landscape outside. Hawke gave Varric a big hug and then, at Yoti's eyebrow waggle, gave her a noisy closed-lipped kiss.

"Come inside, you're all drenched!" she admonished them.

"It could be worse," Yoti retorted, "I could smell like a wet dog."

"Well, we are in Ferelden," Hawke laughed, draping one arm amiably across Varric's shoulders as they walked. His smile was the first Yoti had seen since they left Skyhold.

No, since Hawke had left Skyhold, Yoti realized.

"Inquisitor, this is my brother, Warden Carver Hawke. Carver, Inquisitor Yoti," Hawke offered as they entered the larger cavern.

"So the rumors are true, then," the younger man replied, looking directly at Yoti. "The Inquisitor is a Dalish elf with Fen'Harel Vallaslin. And here my wife was so certain that was impossible."

Yoti blinked. "Your wife has opinions on Vallaslin?"

Carver smiled. "Merril has opinions on almost everything, but especially anything Dalish. Her clan banished her years ago, but she still does her best to keep track of the People when she can."

"They banished her for marrying a human Grey Warden?" Yoti guessed.

He shook his head, "No, they banished her for engaging the assistance of a spirit who turned out to be untrustworthy and got their Keeper killed. But you're right, they probably wouldn't have been pleased with their First marrying a human, either."

Yoti whistled low. "Yeah, that doesn't sound so good."

"I'm surprised you haven't heard of her. Most Dalish she's met since the last Arlathvhen seem to be up on the news, especially all the mages."

"I don't get invited to the family reunions," Yoti smirked.

"Because of your Vallaslin?"

"Chicken, egg," Yoti shrugged, holding up each hand as if juggling.

Dorian cleared his throat, and Yoti blushed.

"I'm sorry! This is Dorian Pavus, the mage from Tevinter who warned us about the Venatori’s plans. And this is Warden Blackwall. Perhaps you've met?"

The older man shook his head. Carver nodded, respectfully. "Blackwall! Your reputation precedes you. We were worried you might have been killed when you weren't accounted for among the Wardens under Clarel's command."

"Don't worry about me. I know what Corypheus is," Blackwall asserted, shaking Carver's hand firmly. "I will not be drawn into his plans."

"Good man," Carver nodded, releasing his hand.

"'We'?" Yoti prompted, "I thought you and Blackwall were the only ones to escape Clarel's madness?"

"I was warned by my mentor, Warden Stroud. He met with me in Kirkwall under the guise of going to find Anders. I was on leave there visiting my wife. We both got out from there. I haven't seen Stroud since. I'm worried they caught up with him. Anders and I have encountered Corypheus before, and Anders didn't fare well, so he's out to sea with Isabella. And, of course, there's always King Alistair and his wife, Warden-Commander Elissa. But he's not treated as a Warden anymore, Calling or no, and she's off somewhere on a mission of some kind. So effectively speaking, Inquisitor, yes, it's just me."

-----

Marian Hawke stood with Varric to one side of the cave entrance, both hands on his shoulders. "I have to go. You know I can't let little brother run off to the Western Approach without someone to guard his back."

"I know, Hawke, I know. It's just..." Varric sighed. "I don't like this."

Hawke laughed. "An ancient magister ripping holes in the sky? Grey Wardens making a mad grab for power in a rash response to their supposed imminent demise? Half our friends on the run or in hiding? What's not to like?" Varric grunted, and then smiled helplessly at his friend. "Perhaps the Inquisitor will allow you to join us?" she offered, then, hugging him tighter for a moment.

"Lips might, but I suspect the Seeker would just track me down anyway and drag me back to Skyhold," he grumbled.

Yoti chuckled, but didn't interrupt. It seemed equally likely Cassandra would find his absence a blessing, especially with how pissed she was that he'd kept his friend's location a secret for so long. Yoti wasn't sure if she was more mad at Varric - a self-professed compulsive liar - for lying to her, or if she was more mad at herself for believing him.

"That's probably for the best, then. You hate sand." Hawke smiled.

Varric laughed ruefully and sighed. "You'd better get going. Can't let Junior get away."

"He'd never let me live it down, I'm sure," she agreed. The two embraced, the storyteller squeezing his closest friend fiercely around the waist, while she held his head to her chest and closed her eyes.

Yoti missed having a wife. Even at the best of times, Raven wasn't much of a snuggler, really. She had to admit, Krem was pretty good at it, though.

-----

The sky was relentlessly cloudy. Mood lighting, Yoti supposed. The flashes of lightning went beautifully with the scintillating green glow out in the middle of the lake. Yoti could dog paddle with the best of them, but fighting demons in the water didn't really strike her as a good survival plan. Yoti was often hasty, and even occasionally downright stupid, but she didn't actually have a death wish.

Well, not at the moment, anyway. Another body, maybe.

The mayor explained that the lake could be drained, but they'd have to clear out the nearby keep, Caer Bronach first, in order to access the controls to the dam, as the way around was blocked by a rocky cliffside. Yoti wasn't sure which sounded more fun, fighting a bunch of bandits who had the high ground advantage, or taking up free climbing steep boulders in the rain. Her companions seemed to think it was a better idea to let random strangers to try kill her, so that's what they did.

Now her hip pouch was filled with a collection of sad splinters from the shattered door that Yoti wanted to have the new Arcanist analyze, to make sure the weird glowing bits weren't Lyrium or Blight related. The applique Inquisition flag flying over the Caer would have been more interesting as a crazy quilt, Yoti felt, but nobody asked her about graphic design.

The path to the dam wasn't nearly as steep or hard to get to as the mayor had told them, which explained why the young couple by the fireplace in the old tavern had no trouble sneaking in. The dam controls were also not at all damaged.

"I've never known Darkspawn to repair what they break," Varric observed.

"Maybe they're just really bad at breaking things?" Yoti suggested.

"More likely the mayor is bad at lying," Blackwall disagreed.

"Oh, I don't know," Dorian replied breezily, "Perhaps the town of Crestwood has a benevolent dam repair spirit haunting their shores. How convenient if one of the many dead rising out of the waters happened to be a mechanic seeking to drain the lake. They're not trying to kill everyone, oh no! They're simply trying to get up out of the water, and are terribly disappointed to find it raining on the land. Maker knows I'm ready to kill things after a week of all this nonsense!"

"Seems legit'," Yoti nodded.

"Sparkler's story is better, Hero," Varric agreed.

-----

"Four rounds was a tad excessive, don't you think?" Dorian complained.

"We wouldn't want to miss out on the terror demons," Yoti replied, wheezing.

"At least the caves aren't too hot or too cold, between the water and the Dwarven furnace system," Varric sighed as he sat between them on the carved stone steps, only to scrunch up his nose unhappily at the squelching noise his leather pants made.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm about done with this shit. I don't care if they're being attacked by a dragon, we're leaving for Skyhold tomorrow," Yoti asserted, still panting slightly.

"Be careful what you wish for, Lips," Varric admonished.

-----

The Northern Hunter dragon was a beautiful - if not per se welcome - sight as it flew across the finally-sunny Crestwood sky.

"At least it's heading away from the town," Yoti groaned.

"It has plenty of druffalo to eat for now, and the townsfolk aren't stupid. Get Curly to send the Chargers to kill it," Varric suggested.

"I'm sure Bull will be delighted," Blackwall agreed, and then paused to think. "Do everyone a favor and send Sera with him," he added.

Yoti gave the old Warden a strange look. "You're hoping the dragon will eat her?"

"What? No!" Blackwall objected. "Sera will love it! She'll be telling the story for days in the Rest."

"Giving all of us a rest from her pranks, one hopes," Dorian added.

"Ahhhhh," Yoti nodded sagely. She turned to the dwarf. "Five sovereigns says the pranks start up the minute she gets back."

Varric smirked. "What, Lips, you think I envy you losing just because you're good at it?"

-----

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The Old Crow regarded the snow-buried town with curiosity. It wasn't what she expected to find there, and clearly her fair-haired companion was very concerned. She flapped down from her perch on a damaged tree to land near where he was digging in the snow, muttering to himself.

“Where are you, querida mía , give me a sign...”

Zevran surveyed the corpse-littered ground. There were plenty of mages in Circle and Tevinter robes, a fair few red-lyrium-riddled bodies in Templar armor, but nowhere near so many common people as he would have expected beneath the snow, given the obvious avalanche that had destroyed the town. Somehow, they had gotten away, they must have. But how, and where had they gone?

The faithful crow cawed at him, curious. Somewhere in the distance, wolves howled.

He closed his eyes for a moment, to listen, and remember. The entrance to Orzammar was almost due North from the town, their tunnels running deep beneath the Lyrium-laced mountain, mostly to the East. It was beyond likely that more tunnels, accessible only to Darkspawn, ran yet deeper beneath the mountains and into Orlais. Those would not have been any use to Leliana’s people, but the attacking force had been all too willing to use them.

But there had also been tunnels, dragon warrens, between the lower temple and the upper temple to the Northwest of the town, and the cultish townspeople had seemed to appear and disappear at will despite their lack of any particular stealth. Perhaps their dragon warrens ran all the way beneath the town?

Zevran changed tactics, climbing the tallest secure structure to search the area for sinkholes.

—-

Yoti stood in front of the mirror in her ridiculously spacious suite at the top of Skyhold. She twisted her body left and right, and stuck her tongue out at her reflection. It wasn’t that being an elf, or a woman, was a problem in itself. But she missed her tail, and more still, she missed having a choice . She hadn’t been confined to a single form for so long since her daughter had been reborn. The restriction chafed in ways no particular body ever could.

It wasn’t the first time her powers had been stripped away, but at least before she knew exactly how, and why, and by whom. It was never pleasant, but she couldn’t deny that she’d deserved it every time Grandmother and Grandfather sought to teach her another lesson about the responsibility that came with being what she was.

She growled low in her throat, but even that sounded and felt wrong. “AAARRGH!” She shouted, just because she could.

“What’s eating you, Inquisibits?” another elven voice called from the rafters.

Yoti turned around and looked up to regard Sera with a raised eyebrow.

“Guess you’re not afraid of heights, then,” she smirked.

“Lords are too busy looking down on us to look up,” Sera agreed, cheerfully. “You need fun, I can tell. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Sera shook her head. “Fun. Now .”

“‘Kay,” Yoti shrugged, pulling on her new coat and following the younger woman.

—

Solas stood in the middle of the rotunda he had chosen, staring at the blank walls with his fingers on his cleft chin. There was more than enough room for the murals he had in mind, of course, and he had already begun mixing the paints it would require. But should he start the arrangement at the door to the great hall, running sunwise, or…?

A loud shriek came from the rookery above, drawing attention from a half-dozen mages in the library. Solas sighed and looked up, not really expecting to be able to see what was causing the commotion. He was somewhat startled to spot Sera dangling from Yoti’s hand off the top-level railing, both giggling riotously while Dagna tried to reach the younger elf from under the rail. A moment later, Krem came jogging into the library, and pulled Sera onto the second floor with an exasperated chuckle.

“Is this entirely necessary?” Dorian complained from his alcove across the library.

“Aren’t you supposed to be having a drink with the Chief right now, Altus?” Krem called back with a smirk.

“Not unless he can do better than the Ferelden swill we drank last time!” the mage retorted, cheerfully. Several voices hushed them from every direction.

Solas shook his head, shoulders shaking in silent amusement, and turned to his desk to look for a bit of charcoal to begin sketching out his mural.

—-

The Old Crow did not particularly enjoy flying through tunnels. Were it not so obviously important to her chosen elf, she would have stayed entirely above ground. But unlike the structures they made for themselves, natural underground passages (and, she supposed, burrows) were not so easily tracked from the outside. Plus, he had proven very early on that he could evade her if he wanted to, so she wasn’t taking the risk, even if he had been surprisingly cooperative since they crossed the water.

She smelled fresher air and felt a warmer draft above his head, and cawed to alert him, flying pointedly in the direction of the exit. He smiled and nodded.

“Indeed, hermanita, the tracks agree,” he replied with more cheer than he’d displayed in many days.

Zevran was concerned that the abandoned mine shaft he’d found only had one clear set of prints, and showed no signs yet of connecting to the dragon warrens he remembered. But the path led away from the destruction, and it was, for the moment, all he had to go on.

“Send me a raven, Nightingale. Just one raven, querida , and I will never ask another favor of you.” he muttered to himself.

---

Josephine had spent the better part of an hour unable to focus for the chirping of some hidden bird in her office. Had it flown in by the chimney somehow? Yesterday’s cinders hadn’t entirely extinguished, so it seemed unlikely, but perhaps it was attracted to the warmth?

Finally unable to contain her curiosity and frustration any longer, she began searching the room in earnest.

---

Cullen discovered the shim under the corner of his desk disappointingly quickly. After his pen rolled onto the floor for the third time in a row, he paused to investigate, swearing under his breath.

Giggling reached his ears through the hole in ceiling above his loft bedroom. He paused to listen, and then carefully, quietly climbed the ladder and onto his bed, making a too-loud sound only as he jumped up to lift his torso through the gap.

Yoti and Sera shrieked in surprise and almost fell off the roof laughing. Sera ran away, but Yoti just sat there, smirking at her Commander.

He struggled to keep his expression stern, but when she raised an eyebrow at him, clearly challenging him, he couldn’t help laughing. Her grin expanded to a delighted, toothy smile, and she got up to chase after Sera.

Cullen just stood there, arms resting on the roof, watching the Inquisitor climb away.

He was definitely only flushed from the cold mountain air, he assured himself.

---

Leliana wasn’t entirely sure how her messenger ravens had learned the word “Nevermore”, but she was almost positive they learned “Fuck you!” from the Inquisitor.

Raven, for their part, thought “Nevermore” was a bit highbrow for Coyote, but they knew a set up when they saw one.

The rawkous calls of their cousins had almost drowned out the surprisingly heartfelt invocation from somewhere down the mountain: “ Just one raven, querida... ”

The accent was familiar. It seemed the assassin had survived the storms, and was now searching again. Well, that was an easy prayer to grant. At least, if the Old Crow had survived as well.

-----

Chapter Text

Zevran looked up at the castle across the open bridge, smirking. Inquisition banners adorned the gatehouse towers, and soldiers patrolled the ramparts. Camps outside provided space for training, and wagons carried goods into the courtyard beyond the walls.

It was a beautiful sight after days of aimless tracking in circles through the fresh snow. How his feathered companion had suddenly determined which direction they should go to find the place, he didn’t know, and at the moment, he frankly didn’t care.

He pulled his hood back up to cover his tattoo and began walking confidently, if tiredly, towards the gates.

---

The runner finally caught up with Yoti as she was climbing down off the tavern roof again. “Inquisitor!” he panted, leaning over to brace his hands on his knees while he caught his breath. “The Commander… has instructed me... to ask you... not to climb... the roof. Also... there’s a message for you... in the war room.”

Yoti grinned at the poor man, and patted him on the back forcefully, making him stumble. “Well, next time you see the Commander, tell him he can come get me off himself if he doesn’t want me on the roof.”

The messenger coughed and stood back up, offering Yoti the paper Josephine had sent with him. Yoti plucked it from his fingers with affected delicacy, batting her eyelashes at him, before turning to sashay away.

“Thank you, Jim!” she called back.

He pulled his hands down his face, groaning, and trudged the rest of the way into the Herald’s Rest.

---

“Dragons.” Yoti said flatly, staring at her advisers across the war table.

“South of Lake Calenhad, near Redcliffe,” Cassandra confirmed with disturbing nonchalance. “She has already killed several refugees, and one Dalish scout.”

“Keeper Lanaya sent this?” Yoti asked, looking to Leliana while holding up the note.

“Keeper Lanaya sent a hunter with the sketch," the spymistress corrected. "Scout Harding sent the note by raven, of course.”

“Right, okay,” Yoti nodded, slightly dazed. “And they asked for me by name?”

“Not as a request,” Leliana clarified, “as a favor. They offered the information to the Dalish Herald of Andraste, along with a detailed map of the area where the dragon is nesting. She is a fire breather, a nesting mother with at least two dozen hatchlings.”

“I’m not sure I can kill a dragon,” Yoti confessed, the white markings under her eyes making her worried expression look like a sad clown face.

“I will go with you,” Cassandra assured her.

“And we are sending the Iron Bull, and whoever else you like,” Cullen added.

Leliana’s smile was positively wicked. “Bring back as much of the bones and hide as you can. I’m told a high dragon’s skull makes an imposing throne.”

Yoti’s face got noticeably paler.

---

Leliana returned to the rookery with intent to sing her afternoon prayers, only to pull up short in surprise to find a hooded figure leaning over her personal shrine to Andraste. Aside from her ravens, the rookery was strangely empty. She approached the figure cautiously, ready to use the knife up her sleeve at a moment’s notice.

“You’re slipping, ruiseñora mía . I heard the door close, and your footsteps on the stairs,” the figure spoke quietly with weary amusement, not turning from the shrine.

The corner of Leliana’s lip pulled up slightly, and she approached the figure with equal caution, but no fear. Her remaining footsteps were, of course, silent. Nevertheless, when she was about to throw her arms around the intruder, he turned suddenly to place both hands on her cheeks and kiss her thoroughly.

“You do enjoy making me worry, don’t you, querida,” Zevran sighed against her lips.

“And you should talk. How long have you been counting crows?” Leliana smiled. “I knew you would find us here eventually. I didn’t think it would take you so long. What happened?”

“I was almost to Haven, tracking the army that attacked you, when the storm broke out, forcing me to hide in a cave and covering your tracks.” He pulled his hands away and stepped back. Pain flickered through his eyes, quickly replaced with his usual charming smile. “I feared the worst, but so few of the eyes my little cousin dug out of the snow were uncorrupted by those strange red crystals, it seemed likely you had escaped somehow.”

“Well, now that you are here, I shall have to find some use for you. You look exhausted, let us find you a bed, shall we?” Her smile was impish, earning her another relieved kiss.

---

The tranquil woman stood outside the requisitions office, waiting her turn to request an allotment of healing herbs for the apothecary. The Inquisitor approached her, which she noted was an unexpected and unusual turn of events. She turned to regard the Inquisitor, and pulled the corners of her lips up slightly to present a pleasing appearance.

Yoti looked the woman up and down, giving her a sympathetic, concerned half-smile. “You’re Avexis, right?”

“I am,” the woman replied in a calm monotone.

“You used to talk to dragons?”

“Yes. I am tranquil now, and no longer talk to dragons.”

Yoti nodded, thinking. “How did you do it? What was it like?”

Avexis paused for a moment, thinking. “I remember only their voices in my mind. The eldest spoke of forgotten and forbidden magics. The younger dragons came when I called. It was not safe.”

“But how did you talk to them?” Yoti pressed in frustration.

“They were in my mind. When I thought to them, they heard me.”

Yoti turned her head, one pointed ear tilted up. “Basic telepathy? That’s it?”

“I apologize. I do not know the answer to your question. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No, thank you, Avexis,” Yoti sighed.

The woman who no longer talked to dragons returned to waiting for the quartermaster.

---

Yoti, the Iron Bull, Cassandra, Sera, Varric, and Solas approached the high dragon’s nest with caution.

Well, they approached the area the nest was in. No sooner had they passed through a stone archway than they were attacked by a handful of enthusiastic dragonlings who seemed to consider lighting things on fire the dragon equivalent of fetch-the-ball.

Solas cast barriers on the - hopefully sufficiently formidable - dragon hunting party. The warriors and archers made quick work of the babies, but there was no immediate sign of their mother. Yoti pulled to the back of the party, doing her best to think at any dragons in the area as loudly as she could.

She couldn’t be certain it worked at all. No extra voices spoke up in her head, but a roar sounded from around the bend in the valley, and booming wing beats filled the air. Either Yoti had successfully poked a sleeping dragon with her mind, or there was a very angry mama coming to avenge the death shrieks of her children.

“Shit,” Yoti swore. “We need cover, now!”

“There,” Solas pointed to where the high dragon had landed on top of a natural stone landing above a larger clearing interrupted with shallow puddles. “There is little cover to be had here, but if we damage her wings, there is room enough to fight her effectively below.”

“Dammit!” Yoti complained, “I didn’t want to have to kill them!”

Cassandra, Bull, and Sera all looked at Yoti like she was crazy before moving into a useful formation. Yoti sighed, shook her head, and readied her staff.

---

Raven hadn’t watched Coyote fight a fire-breathing creature in centuries. They expected the fight would be quite interesting, but far too dangerous to risk dragging a younger cousin bodily into it. They were content to watch and call out warnings to Solas, and if anybody noticed that Solas seemed to have a bird’s-eye view of the battle, well, nobody spoke of it.

Ice and fire, arrows and bolts flew across the clearing, as the two warriors guarded the others against the indignation of the remaining dragonlings came running into the fray. Solas, Raven noted, was quite skilled, but for some reason choosing to use only a portion of his available power, and, Raven suspected, speed. Even so, his abilities outstripped the others. This only served to reinforce for Raven that Yoti’s powers were severely diminished.

“Remind Yoti that fire breathers are usually immune to fire!” Raven called out.

“Yoti, ice!” Solas barked, throwing a new set of barriers around the Iron Bull and Sera.

Raven winced internally as the majestic creature’s wings tore through, ice shattering portions of the membranes.

“Yes!” the horned fighter shouted, heading straight for the neck of the grounded beast. “Cassandra, keep her busy!”

The taller woman with black hair immediately moved to the base of the dragon’s tail and began hacking at it. Yoti placed a glowing barrier around her.

The dwarf, Varric, glanced at the woman and frowned with worry before pulling the trigger on his unusual crossbow, sending a bolt directly at the dragon’s head. It exploded when it grazed her horns. Well, that certainly qualified as a distraction, Raven supposed, though it likely did very little damage.

“Fledglings incoming, lakeward!” Raven rawked at Solas.

“Sera, behind you!” Solas repeated, remaining focused on the task of freezing the mother’s claws to the ground.

The petite blonde archer turned immediately, breaking a flask against her shirt, and firing off several arrows. Ice crystals formed on the ragged seams of her clothing and tips of her hair. “Ha! Eat it! Ate it! ”

Meanwhile, across the field, Cassandra tore the high dragon’s tendon, earning a roaring yelp of pain from the poor monster as it limped, favoring its now-injured leg. As the human woman darted out of the way, Yoti had the perfect opening to compound the wound with a shattering ice spell.

Yoti hesitated. Why did Yoti hesitate? Raven called out. Solas echoed the call. Raven watched as Yoti sighed heavily before firing off a bolt of ice aimed at shattering the smaller bones in the dragon’s foot. With the dragon thoroughly impaired, the others had little trouble finishing her off, but Yoti just stood at the back of the clearing, eyes glazed with tears. After a time, she glanced up, over her shoulder, at the huge nest full of dragon egg shards, and shook her head sadly.

Ah. Raven nodded. For all that she delighted in a good hunt, Yoti had great compassion for the other animals; destroying not just the one adult, but an entire litter of young, was a shame she would feel most keenly. Raven would have to prompt Solas to find suitable comfort for her later, as it seemed unlikely her other friends would recognize the problem.

---

Chapter Text

Newhaven, near University of Ferelden, Skyhold. 20:19 Information Age

Yoti Lavellan sighed, smiling slightly as she turned the sign on her new shop to “open”. She had high hopes for Newhaven’s first games shop. Tevinter style strategy and narrative games were increasingly popular in the south these days, but Newhaven was a relatively small town aside from the transient influx of students and staff who preferred to commute up to UFS. Almost anything you could want was available online, except a community resource where local gamers could gather to meet, share, and play together.

Yoti sketched out a loose calendar of events on the sandwich board in colorful chalks, smiling to herself. “Monday nights: New game release trials. Wednesday nights: Cooperative gaming. Thursday nights: Deck-building games. Saturdays, all day: Tabletop RPGs.” And, of course, “Sunday afternoon: Game design teatime” courtesy of Creme de la Krem cafe and pastries, across the street.

With the sandwich board safely set up outside, Yoti focused on setting up her first marketing display in the bay windows on either side of the door. One would, of course, display the latest critically acclaimed tabletop games. The other, which she was particularly proud of, would display her personal collection of first editions and out-of-print classics.

As she lovingly arranged two decks of vintage Magic: The Gathering cards across an old vinyl war gaming grid, alongside an antique shell and slate Go set, an unusually tall, bald elf walked by outside with a big, beautiful, blue-eyed white husky at his heels. Yoti perked up immediately when she spotted the dog, and knocked enthusiastically on the window to get the taller elf’s attention.

He turned, obviously startled out of his thoughts, to look at the dark-skinned Dalish elf in the window, and then up and around at the display and shop sign. Raising an eyebrow, he pointed to the dog and the door. Yoti nodded enthusiastically at him, and stood up to meet her first potential customer and his very fluffy dog.

-----

“Well, he seemed interested in the strategy games, anyway, and the dog was totally sweet.” Yoti sighed over her coffee to her sister-in-law. “Hopefully he’ll be back tomorrow for co-op night. Then it won’t just be me and Krem.”

Cassandra snorted, “You would prefer it were just you and Krem, admit it.”

“Not while the door is unlocked!” Yoti laughed. “Besides, I don’t even know if he likes me that way. He’s probably just being neighborly."

“By offering to help run weekly events at your shop the day after meeting you?”

“Oh come on, that’s just good marketing. It’s not like we aren't charging for the food.”

“I stand by my observation,” the human woman insisted, her Nevarran accent flat with wry amusement.

“You see romance in everything, Cass,” Yoti laughed again.

-----

A small crowd turned up for cooperative games, actually.

Krem dragged along his best friend Bull, a huge Qunari who ran the Bull’s Iron gym next door to the cafe. Bull brought a handsome Tevinter mage named Dorian who spent a good fifteen minutes admiring the ornate chess sets along the back wall.

The bald elf did indeed show up again. His name turned out to be Solas. The sweet, fluffy dog was named Fen’harel, a contradiction that made Yoti’s lips twitch. She blinked at the realization that the dog was not quite white, but actually a silvery grey.

Cassandra brought her husband, Yoti’s brother Mahanon, despite his very vocal objections, which both Cass and Yoti knew were half-hearted anyway. He gave them a shit-eating grin before settling down at one of the tables to unpack his copy of the night’s game.

Krem waited for a lull in Yoti’s flurry of greetings to approach her quietly to one side.

“I brought you a recipe I’ve been working on. I’d like your opinion,” he held out a small, plain paper bag.

“Sure!” Yoti chirped a little too cheerfully. “What is it?”

“A dark chocolate croissant with smoked salt and powdered chipotle. I’m thinking it might need a drizzle of honey or caramel to counter the heat and bitter, but I don’t want to get too complicated.”

Yoti took a bite and rolled her eyes with pleasure. “No, no, it’s good like this. Pair it with, like, royal elfroot black tea latte, or something, for anyone who complains about the heat.”

“Or just send them next door to me to find out what real heat means!” Bull laughed as he approached, putting a heavy hand on Krem’s shoulder.

Krem rolled his eyes and grinned. “I’ll make an extra spicy one just for you, Bull.”

“That’s what I like to hear, Krem. Hey, I think this is pretty much everybody, Boss, you want to get the games going?”

Yoti nodded, smiling at the nickname her new neighbor had bestowed on her, and moved to the table to start explaining the game to everyone.

-----

Krem came rushing across the street as Yoti stood outside with tears streaming down her face. The front window of her shop was smashed in, shards of glass scattered all across her display of vintage games. Several books were tipped over onto old boxes, and the Go stones were spilled out off the shelf and down onto the sidewalk.

“I don’t understand,” Yoti whispered as he arrived. “The only things they took were the first edition Deities and Demigods , and most of the vintage cards. The Go set is far more valuable. And why would they leave behind the Mox Diamond ? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What happened?” Krem asked quietly.

“I don’t know!” she wailed, throwing her arms around him and sniffling. “Somebody just came, smashed it all, and stole most of my magic!”

He wrapped his arms around her waist, squeezing gently. “Did you get it on camera?”

“I don’t have any cameras set up yet. Raven was going to do that when they got back. They were going to live in the apartment above the shop, and set up the security.”

“When does Raven get back?” Krem asked.

“I don’t know. I thought they’d be here by now. I tried calling them, but it didn’t go through.”

“Maybe Bull caught it. He has cameras set up that watch his place and mine. He probably has at least one that faces the street.”

Yoti nodded, numbly, and let Krem lead her to the gym. As she glanced back, she noticed Solas out walking his grey dog again. She frowned with worry as she noticed the dog's eyes seemed red today.

-----

“I’m Detective Rutherford, and this is my partner, Detective Nightingale. Is there anything more you can tell us about what happened here?”

Yoti looked up at the handsome blond, shaking her head, eyes wide. His voice was beautiful, but she was still too upset over the violation of her space to really appreciate it.

Krem squeezed her hand and volunteered. “Bull searched his video records, but all we found was a strange fog enveloping the area around midnight. After that, the shop window is broken. Before that, it was fine.”

Both detectives nodded, the woman looking around with keen eyes, and taking notes, while the man focused on Yoti and Krem.

“I will speak with Bull,” Detective Nightingale announced in a lilting Orlesian accent.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” A somber elven voice reached them. Yoti turned to see Solas standing there, frowning with concern, his dog by his side. Yoti blinked, trying to clear her eyes of the tears that made the husky - or was it a grey wolf? - seem to have four eyes instead of two. 

-----

“What do you mean, I can’t talk to Raven now?” Yoti demanded on the phone. “I’ve been calling them for weeks!”

“All I know is they were adamant that you approach the problem with caution. They said the wardens are watching them like hawks. You’ll have to carve out the time to meet them in person if you want to see them any time soon.”

“But Raven agreed to come here! Somebody smashed my window and stole my magic!”

“You weren’t playing with the full deck anyway, Yoti,” Solas interrupted. A large black wolf sat calmly by his side, six red eyes staring pointedly at Yoti.

Yoti frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“ Wake up, Yoti! ”

-----

Skyhold. 9:41 Dragon Age

Yoti sat bolt upright in Krem’s bed, panting, glancing around the room frantically to get her bearings. “The hell?” she muttered to herself, once she remembered where she was.

Krem lifted his head, eyes still closed, a questioning “Mrrr?” barely escaping his sleepy lips.

“Just a weird dream. I’m okay,” she assured him, and herself. “I’m okay.”

“Mrrrrrrm,” Krem replied, nodding, and patting Yoti on the shoulder awkwardly.

“Go back to sleep, love,” Yoti assured him, running a hand through her tangled hair. “I’ll see you later today.”

-----

Solas circled his rotunda thoughtfully. He wasn’t often awake this early, but Raven had shoved him out of dreaming and all but ordered him to get to his desk to wait for Yoti. Why Raven expected Yoti to come searching for him before dawn, Solas wasn’t certain, but the corvid spirit was insistent, and Solas saw little reason to argue with them.

Sure enough, perhaps half an hour later, when the sky outside was just barely seeping light into the windows in the floors above, Yoti came padding quietly into the library and down the stairs.

“So you are here,” she sighed. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be awake at this hour.”

“Your friend Raven insisted, in fact,” he replied with a smirk.

“Huh. Okay, so maybe that weird-ass dream I just had was something.”

“What did you dream?”

“I dreamt I couldn’t get ahold of Raven and some bastard broke into my space and stole a bunch of my favorite stuff,” she grunted, her voice low and rough. “But nothing I’d actually care about. It was all puns and shit. Shattering my front, stealing my magic, leaving me without a full deck to play with, but leaving behind the most valuable bits - an old, powerful diamond, and the parts needed to play an ancient game of land-war strategy.”

Solas listened intently, tilting his head to one side in that canine way they shared.

She shook her head. “It was all kind of heavy handed, to be honest. Obviously a metaphor for Corypheus’ shit. What I can’t figure out is what the point was. There was a message at the end, from Raven, something about how adamant they were about hawks, and I needed to carve out the time… Oh, right, okay.”

Solas raised his eyebrows.

“Carver Hawke. The dream is telling me I need to get ahold of Carver Hawke again.”

“You mentioned both ‘an old, powerful diamond’, and that Raven was ‘adamant’?” Is there perhaps a theme there?

“Maybe. I hope it’s not some ‘diamond in the rough’ lesson about my self-worth. That would be some really annoying, new age shit right there, and I have no desire to go digging around in the desert, even if it is for phenomenal cosmic powers.”

“You are swearing a great deal this morning.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to be awake. I’m amazed you’re not grumpier yourself mister dog walk… oh, huh. You were in the dream, too, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you had a dog you’d named Fen’harel, and it went from white with blue eyes to big and black with six red eyes. Creepy shit. I was hearing prayers to Fen’harel earlier. Do you think maybe he’s noticed me horning in on the action?”

Solas inhaled slowly, answering very carefully after a moment's pause. “While it is quite possible that Fen’harel has noticed your presence, I see no particular reason why he should object to it.”

“Who knows. Gods can be pretty territorial, especially canine gods,” Yoti mused.

Solas frowned. “Was the dog particularly threatening? Was I?”

“Not really, no. The dog was a sweetie, actually." She grinned. "He liked me just fine at first, and towards the end, he just seemed to be trying to tell me something. You offered to help. You were the one who snapped me out of the dream, even.”

“I’m afraid I am unsure what, if any purpose this dream may serve, and Raven has offered me no input on the subject beyond demanding that I be available to you here. It seems reaching out to Carver Hawke is the next step.”

“I guess so, yeah,” Yoti sighed. “But first, I’m going back to bed for a while.”

-----

Chapter Text

Yoti Mood Improvements

Chapter Text

The tower was a lovely place to watch comings and goings, as well as whatever outdoor activities took place around the hold. In this case, Raven watched Yoti, Sera, Bull, and Dorian ride off from Skyhold on yet another mission of, well, something or other. Even with Solas’ help, Raven was still puzzling through the politics of this land. 

To Raven’s rather great unsurprise, said elf climbed out of the trapdoor of the tower. “I presume they’ve left?”

“Just now. Riding horses, of all things. I remember the first time Yoti saw a horse. She tried to talk with it.”

Solas was, by now, used to Raven’s humor, and still tilted his head. “Did she have much success?”

“Of a sort. The horse was terrified of her, but then again, they tend to spook at most anything. Shadows. Apples. The rustle of a tree in the wind.”

Solas smiled briefly. “I admit, I have little fondness for them myself. I prefer my feet for traveling.”

“If you had wings, you’d prefer those.” Raven hopped around for comedic effect. “I could surely walk places, but then I’d be grumpy.”

Solas watched for a moment, then assumed his usual blank expression. “You aren’t saying these things just to say them, the way Yoti might.”

“Right in one, o wise elf. I’ve been meaning to ask you something, while Yoti’s frolicking about. What makes a person a person, in your eyes? For example, that horse Yoti’s riding. Does that stallion count as a person?”

Solas blinked. “I haven’t conversed with the stallion, so I’m not certain. I would rather not assume one way or the other.”

“Except you make assumptions all the time about the humans.”

After a very silent moment, Raven continued. “One of the first things that a people do, when they work out language, is determine who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. And a lot of the time, the term for ‘us’ in their language more or less translates to ‘people’.”

Solas gave Raven a cautious look. “Go on.”

“So when you have one group encountering another group, and they work out how to talk with each other -- rather than at each other -- the subject of what each group calls themselves tends to come up. And more often than not, it’s a surprise to both groups.”

“Because each group calls themselves ‘people’.”

“Pretty much. Unless your people are literally right in the middle of another group of people when they start working out language. Then it’s a question of what makes a person people, you know?”

Solas narrowed his eyes as he leaned carefully on the wall. Raven recognized the elf was doing his best to listen; but there was definitely a thread of irritation, possibly anger. “You are a spirit, but speak nothing like any spirit I’ve ever encountered. Not even Wisdom.”

“I’ve been around a very, very long time, Solas. Once the humans who lived where I did became aware of spirits, they started talking to me. And I was rather tired of talking with other spirits, even… well, that’s a story for another time. Even the spirits where I come from tend to be a bit focused on what they are in the world.”

The elf slowly nodded. “This is true of most spirits of the Fade. They know much, but always focused within their purpose. Which is why you, Raven, are so troubling.”

Raven cackled. “Excellent! I am many things, not unlike you elves and those humans.”

Solas lips curled to one side. “What is that verse you repeat?”

“ ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes.’ ” Raven hopped a bit. “For a human poet, Whitman did pretty well with that one. But back to the subject of people, because I know you argue that a spirit of the Fade is just as much a person as anyone walking around outside it.”

“They may be limited, but they are clearly thinking beings.”

“Of course! But is thinking the only measure of whether they’re people?”

Solas turned again to look at Raven, his voice dry. “If that is the case, clearly Yoti is not always a person.”

Raven quorked loudly enough that -- had they been manifest -- someone down in the main area of the keep would have heard them. The messenger ravens heard, though, and they took up the laughter for several minutes.

“And who says you don’t have a sense of humor, wise elf? But it is true, thinking isn’t enough. But language, that’s not a good indicator either. I’ve met trees who didn’t have any kind of a language, but they were clearly people.”

Solas looked bemused. “I once met an enspirited tree who spoke entirely in rhyming verse.”

“Interesting! I hadn’t encountered any while I’ve been searching for Yoti. If I had to guess, it’s because they’re rare enough that you can’t just trip over them, especially while flying around.” At Solas’ nod, Raven hopped around some more. “Language is a good way to exchange thoughts, ideas, concepts. But it’s still not a measure of person-hood.”

Solas stood, and started pacing around the tower. “You’re driving at something, and for once in my life, I confess to impatience. You are being deliberately obtuse.”

“True, but you’re letting your irritation with me cloud your thinking.”

Solas stopped, looked directly at Raven, and slowly exhaled. “I admit to some concern over Yoti.”

Raven looked back. “She’s not doing what you need her to, is she.”

“She is, as you have said, ‘frolicking’ off on a number of different errands that delay what we must accomplish.”

“Is she? What I see is someone who barely knows this world, and who is acquainting herself with it as best she can, so she can work out what needs doing.” Raven clacked their beak. “You’d like her to listen to you, to trust you, since it’s clear you have plenty of experience. But Yoti always has to learn for herself. Yes, she’ll listen to you, but in her experience, there’s a large difference between being told something, and experiencing it.” Raven quorked wryly. “Even I, with my long experience of her, can’t always get her to listen.”

The bald elf paused at that. “Then we are doomed, if she does not do what needs to be done.”

“No. She’ll get there, especially if people start helping her instead of lecturing her. Me included.”

“And you circle back to the idea of people.” He stared off into the distance, clearly thinking. “A person, I think, is someone who can differentiate themself from the world around them. One does need to be able to think to accomplish this, but language isn’t necessary to communicate this.”

“Exactly. Any being capable of holding the concept of ‘I’ and ‘you’, or rather, ‘self’ and ‘other’ -- whether thinking or speaking -- is a person by that standard.”

“That does seem a useful measure of person-hood. It includes many of the spirits of the Fade, humans, elves, dwarves, Qunari, and perhaps others.”

“So why, then, do people disagree over what makes a person a person?” Raven challenged.

Solas frowned. “At a guess? Pride. They choose to define ‘people’ in a way that favors themselves.”

“Partly, yes. Mind you, I’ve had time to ponder this myself, especially after the humans who talked with me encountered other humans who couldn’t talk with me, or wouldn’t.” Raven stretched their wings. “At one wingtip, we have those who agree, as you and I have, that if you can think and are self-aware, you’re a person -- even if that ‘other’ is nothing like you. At the other wingtip, well, the only people who count as people are those who are just like you -- the ‘other’ mirrors the ‘self’ like a still lake reflects the sky. Like stories I’ve heard from Iron Bull when he’s in his cups and thinks nobody else is listening. If you’re of the Qun, you count as a person. If you’re not, you don’t, even if you can think and reason and use language.”

“And humans fall somewhere in between.”

“Oh, it’s a range. For you elves, too. I’ve watched the interactions between those called Dalish elves and city elves, and both groups tend to assign less person-hood to the other.” Raven puffed air, then continued, “But humans are bad about elves, dwarves are bad about everyone, and you regard spirits more like people than you do anyone wandering around outside the Fade.”

Solas took a breath, about to argue, then shook his head. “You’re right, I suppose. I’ve spent so much time striving to understand spirits, perhaps I have grown to prefer them.”

“Whereas humans and elves and everyone else bouncing about in those physical bodies, well, they’re mostly okay but only if they accept that spirits are people too.”

Solas raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to irritate me?”

“Oh Solas. You misunderstand. I’m making the point about people because even with all you know, you’re edging closer to the more limited definition of ‘people’. And I worry how that’s going to affect Yoti, and the people she cares for -- including you.”

Solas spun on Raven. “What do you know, meddling spirit?”

Only to see Raven… accumulate Raven-ness, somehow. Become more, become deeper, flecks like stars appearing among their feathers, eyes reflecting a sun and a moon like nothing Solas had ever seen. 

“I know Yoti cares. She’s decided you’re one of hers, Solas. Have you decided yet? Is she enough of a person to be one of yours? You take the form of a wolf in the Fade, but you run alone. And all the wolves I’ve ever known wither somehow without their pack. You may think you are alone, and you may have good reason to think so. But ultimately, a person is only alone if they shut every other person out.”

The elf closed his eyes, suppressing a shudder.

“You have a choice, o wise elf. Accept that you’re surrounded by people, and engage with them. Or cut yourself off, and wither.”

“What do you know?” Solas whispered.

“More than you think. You carry loneliness like you’re the only one who’s ever known it. Take it from someone who spent far, far too long alone: the world is a better place with people in it. Even the petty, nasty, crude, foolish ones. You have to have those, because then you can see the better ones shine in comparison.” The intensity faded then, and Raven flapped their wings a bit. “I need to hunt. You need a moment.” And with that, Raven flew off toward the sun, and left Solas to stare up at the scarred sky.

-----

Yoti trudged across the great hall towards the rotunda, trailing road dust and dirty snow, with full intent to slouch on Solas' sofa for a while and bug him for the kind of gossip only an old wolf was likely to notice. She turned the corner to find the elf stretched out on it already, hands folded on his chest, staring at the ceiling.

He didn't turn his head. "Yoti, how long have you known Raven?"

She frowned. "Uh... kinda forever. We go waaaaaaaay back. Why?"

"Are they always like that?"

"Like what? A feathered pain in the ass who knows almost everything, talks way too much, and still somehow says nothing you can use?"

"That's..." Solas huffed. "Yes."

Yoti shrugged, dropping her pack, the clatter making Solas wince slightly. "Yeah, pretty much."

"Ah."

Yoti leaned against the desk with one hip, crossing her arms. "What did old featherbrains say this time?"

Solas sighed. "Nothing I did not already know, and yet everything I manage to forget too easily." He winced and moved to rise from the sofa, only for Yoti to wave a hand, gesturing that he should merely make room for the seemingly-younger elf to collapse next to him.

She tilted her head, chin towards him, eyes betraying more sympathy than her posture. "What's up?"

He stared blankly for a moment, elbows propped on his knees, before letting his head drop down and sighing again. "I think perhaps I owe you an apology."

Yoti blinked. "What? Why?"

"I forget too easily how new all this is to you. I should be helping you acclimate."

She shrugged, looking around as he gestured. "Pretty much everyone else is doing that, Solas."

"Perhaps. But I am in a better position than most to understand why this is so difficult for you."

"True, that. So?"

"So... I will -” he turned to meet her gaze, “- endeavor to be more useful to you."

She gave him an endearing, toothy grin. "Awesome. Sounds like Raven made more sense than usual!"

Solas’ lips twisted with amusement. "I lack sufficient basis for comparison to address that."

Yoti snorted. "Trust me."

Chapter Text

“Inquisitor Yoti, I presume.” The blond elf gave her an enticing smile.

Yoti looked him up and down with a smirk. “Good guess. And you are?”

Leliana’s voice reached her from somewhere behind. “This is my dear friend Zevran.”

Yoti raised her eyebrows, grinning to her spymistress. “Fellow hero of the Fifth Blight, right? Former Crow?” She narrowed her eyes, examining his facial tattoos. “That explains the plumage.”

Leliana blinked as Zevran took Yoti’s hand to kiss it. “Powerful, beautiful, and learned, I see. A woman after my own heart.”

Yoti snorted, letting him kiss her hand to his heart’s content. “I just like a good story. Knowing shit is Leliana’s job.”

Leliana huffed with amusement, glancing between them. “Well, this should at least be interesting. Zevran has offered us his services. He would like to stay with the Inquisition for a time. If you do not have an immediate use for a man of his talents, I’m quite certain I do.”

Yoti raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure I can find a use for his talents.” She grinned, noting the meaningful glance passing between the two. “And yours, too, for that matter.”

Leliana gave her an enticing (read: moderately terrifying ) smirk, before schooling her features and pointing out, “You already have my talents at your disposal, Inquisitor.”

Zevran laughed. “Ah, but where is your sense of adventure, querida ? No doubt with all three of our talents at play, there is so much more to be accomplished.”

“Oh, I can definitely find a use for him.” Yoti grinned.

-----

It was good to be back in the desert. Admittedly, Yoti preferred deserts with more life to them, hidden though it often was just beneath the surface. In another world, she’d consider calling down the rain just to see what came out to greet it, but here…

There was something deeply unsettling about the land lurking beneath this golden dust. The darkspawn occasionally showing up, seemingly wandering out of nowhere, probably had something to do with it.

“Three elves and a dwarf walk into a desert.” Yoti mused. Solas huffed in otherwise silent amusement.

“I think I preferred the bar,” Varric grunted.

“Relax and enjoy the sun. You will be smiling at your halcón soon enough.” Zevran patted him on the shoulder as he passed ahead of them to climb a nearby rock for a better view. 

Yoti smiled as Varric scowled, grumpy in the heat. “That had better be some kind of ale.”

Zevran laughed. “No, my friend, it is a kind of bird.” He gestured to the strange Tevinter structure in the distance where two human figures could just be made out standing in the shadow of a large statue. “Two fierce Hawkes, no jesses. You should get to her, quick, before she gets away.”

“She’s here to meet us, she’s not trying to get away.” Varric rolled his eyes.

Zevran nodded, climbing down from the rock. “Hm, you may have a point - she does not seem to be trying to escape the inevitable. Still, that’s a poor reason to leave a lady waiting. Shall we?”

When Marian Hawke spotted them, she waved them over to the shady patch she and her brother occupied. Varric, of course, got an immediate hug from each sibling, though Carver’s was, naturally, more subdued than his sister’s.

To Yoti’s delight, Marian took her by the waist and dipped her backwards, giving her a noisy, closed-mouth smooch on the lips, before setting her upright again.

Varric gave his best friend a wry smile. Solas raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Zevran applauded, before taking a hand from each Hawke, kissing both at once in greeting.

Carver just rolled his eyes at the theatrics, reclaiming his hand, before briefing the Inquisitor. “We can’t stay here for long. We’ve tracked the Wardens to an old fortress to the south. We haven’t found a way in yet, but approaching the walls at night seems doable for a small team. I can’t advise it, though. As far as we can tell, almost all the Southern Wardens are in that castle, summoning demons and getting themselves mind-controlled by a nasty piece of work called Erimond. He’s some Magister from Tevinter. Obviously working for Corypheus.”

Marian pointed to the North along the chasm. “There’s a smaller keep up there, occupied by Venatori. I think we should clear it out and claim it for the Inquisition before we make any further moves. You’re going to need an army to get into Adamant Fortress-”

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Yoti interrupted.

“You’re going to need an army.” Marian repeated. 

“No, after that.”

She exchanged a confused look with her brother. “To get into Adamant Fortress?”

Yoti raised an eyebrow at Solas, who nodded calmly back. Yoti nodded. “Right, okay, we are definitely on the right track here. Go on.”

Marian shook her head and shrugged. “I was just saying, we should take Gryphon Wing Keep and establish camps throughout the area, because you need to march an army through here, and you’re going to lose a lot of people if the whole path is hostile territory.”

“Right. Let’s go get some gryphons, then!” Yoti chirped with a toothy grin.

“Gryphons are extinct.” Solas almost sounded apologetic. But then, with the exception of when Yoti was deliberately irritating him, he pretty much always sounded that way.

Yoti pouted. “Dammit! I’ve always wanted a gryphon. Fine, then, let’s just kill some bad guys. We can worry about reinventing bird-lions later.”

-----

Gryphon Wing Keep had a water problem. The Hawke siblings returned from beneath the keep to report that they had dragged several dead bodies from the water supply.

Yoti scowled while showing them how to make filter cisterns with sand and ground charcoal, instructing them to boil the filtered water. “I’ve decided the Venatori are evil.”

Varric laughed. “What, only just?”

She shrugged. “Well, maybe they were just really, really misunderstood or something? Who am I to judge? But no. Only evil people deliberately ruin the main freshwater supply in a desert. What kind of monster dumps dead bodies in a well?”

Zevran coughed, and then frowned. “Leaving any non-mage the sadistic choice between a slow, painful death by thirst, or an even slower, more painful death by disease? I see your point.”

“And yet, you had an immediate solution that didn’t require mages at all,” Solas pointed out.

“The desert is in my blood.” Yoti growled. “You know damned well those Venatori assholes didn’t expect the Inquisition to have a solution handy. What would you all have done if I wasn’t here?” 

Her eyes went wide, and she shuddered.

Solas tilted his head, raising an eyebrow. “Is something wrong, Inquisitor?”

She huffed, shaking her head. “I just… that’s not the kind of thing I’d usually say with sincerity. I’m a lot of shit, but ‘dependable’ isn’t usually on the list, y’know?”

“Hm.” Solas turned his head slightly, his gaze abstracted, as if he was thinking carefully - or listening to something. Yoti waited, eyebrows raised expectantly, while the others gave them confused looks.

A moment later, Solas spoke again. “It seems to me, lethallan, that you often teach people lessons they need. Just not, perhaps, the ones they want, or expect.”

Yoti smirked. “True.”

-----

Solas sat on his cot, his back pressed up against the stone wall. Yoti had invited him to share the room with her, sending the other four to the slightly larger room across the hall. The halls would require cleaning out before they could be used as bunks for the soldiers Zevran sent his crow to fetch from Skyhold.

Most of the red-shouldered ravens Leliana used for communication were larger, and less intelligent than this particular crow seemed to be, but Solas didn’t have to ask what was making her so especially clever.

“So, Yoti got the message, then. That’s good.” Raven rawked from the fade.

He nodded. “Indeed. It seems excessive of you to have sent a confusing, coded dream when you could simply have passed it along through me.”

“What makes you think I sent it?” they objected with some humor.

That gave Solas pause. “Didn’t you?”

“No! I saw Yoti’s dreams, but I didn’t send them. I could have come up with a much more clever code that Yoti would have understood immediately. But then,” Raven sniffed, nibbling at the feathers on their shoulder, “if Yoti could hear me to begin with, I wouldn’t need codes.”

The door opened, and Yoti gave an exaggerated sigh, letting it swing shut behind her with a dramatic thud. “So! What does ol’ featherbutt have to say for themself, huh? Did I get the whole message, or am I still missing shit?”

“Raven didn’t send you that dream, Yoti,” Solas replied without blinking.

Raven snorted. “As if you didn’t think the same thing two seconds ago.”

Yoti frowned. “Well… fine then, I still want their input on what it means. And yours.”

“Remind me of the elements of your dream.”

Yoti began ticking dream elements off on her fingers. “Okay. Krem makes me spicy pastries.” She smirked. “That’s obvious. Bull has cam, er, eyes everywhere, because spy. I run a game shop. Again, obvious. Somebody stole my magic cards, a book about deities and demigods, and dragged my Go set out into the street. I need to ‘go play’ at land war strategy to get my magic back from some asshole who wants to ascend to godhood, check, check, check. I can’t get ahold of Raven. Wardens are causing trouble, I need to see Carver Hawke, and find them in Adamant Fortress.” Yoti sighed. “That’s all obvious. Too obvious. The only parts I haven’t figured out yet are why Cassandra is married to a brother I don’t have, and why you have a dog that starts out white with blue eyes and ends up black with six red eyes. Actually-” Yoti broke off, thinking.

Solas tilted his head, brow furrowed. In any other circumstance, the logical messenger would be him. He featured in the dream in both his forms. But he certainly hadn’t sent the message, and wouldn’t have. Who, then, was sending messages in his guise?

Yoti nibbled on her lip in contemplation. “Solas, you said that night that you didn’t think Fen’Harel minded me."

Solas nodded slowly.

Yoti frowned. "So, maybe Fen'Harel sent the dream?"

Solas took a deep breath, shaking his head. "I doubt that. The Dalish are quite firm that the gods are out of reach."

"But Fen'Harel is the exception to that, isn't he? The clan we spoke to seemed to think his involvement was plausible."

He wrinkled his nose. "I suppose we can not entirely rule it out, then, but he is not the most likely source. I believe we would do well to look for other answers."

Yoti huffed. "Well... at least I have good reason for being bewildered, I guess. Anything useful out of Mx. Coalfeathers?”

Raven rawked softly. "It's too clear a message, too obvious -- but to Yoti herself. Either you or I would have chosen different elements for the dream, Solas."

Solas tilted his head. "Mmm! Raven points out that your dream would be impenetrably cryptic to anyone other than yourself."

Yoti shrugged, nodding. "That just means I'm who dreamt it. Doesn't mean I'm who sent it."

Raven quorked, "Well, it hasn't escaped my notice that not all of you is here, Yoti. Where's the rest of you?"

Yoti blinked as Solas relayed the message, opening her mouth, and then closing it again several times, before she could speak.

"So, wait, you're saying I did send it... but the bits of me I can't get to? I'm my own Grandpa?"

"Stranger things have happened, old friend," Raven replied, preening a bit. "I'll admit, I'm not sure how those parts of you would know what's important, but it's not like I've gone looking."

"I mean... most of the dream was complaining what I'm missing. So I guess... the parts spent most of the dream telling me what they ARE..." Yoti chewed on her lip for a moment. "Maybe... and where to find them?"

Solas nodded. "It would make sense. Though how your missing 'parts' could be in a place you have never been, I am uncertain."

"'Do I contradict myself?'..." Raven quorked.

Yoti huffed. "They have a point. I don't actually remember where all of me has been here in Thedas. For all I know, part of what I'm missing is the memory of having been there."

Raven snickered. "The real treasure is the memories you've recovered along the way."

Solas huffed at Yoti chewing on her lip yet again in contemplation. "Does the desert not damage your lips enough without help?"

"Huh? Oh. Sure." Yoti looked up and around, instinctively trying to place her oldest friend. "Welp! It sounds like, whatever else is true, all roads lead to Adamant Fortress."