Chapter Text
Adamant.
“Read it again,” Cullen said, stone-faced, praying he had heard wrong
Josephine sat behind her desk, eyes wide with that same alarmed disbelief he felt, but she nodded just the same, cleared her throat, and began to read.
The Wardens are compromised. A Magister of the Venatori, Livius Erimond has infiltrated their ranks and convinced them their only chance of ensuring an end to the Blights before the Calling consumes them is to raise a demon army and march upon the Deep Roads and kill the Old Gods before they can be corrupted. What we stumbled upon appears to have been the first attempt at the binding ritual. Erimond instructed a small group of Warden mages to each kill one of their fellows, some sort of blood magic ritual to draw and bind a demon. More concerning: while the ritual places the demon in the thrall of the mage that bound it, it also binds the mage to Corypheus. The familiarity of this is not lost on me, I remember Redcliffe too well. We have dispatched the ‘test group’, but Erimond has escaped. Hawke and Stroud have scouted south on Stroud’s hunch and have found the Wardens occupying an ancient stronghold called Adamant. I do not know the name, but I imagine at least one of you does, and Stroud’s face when he spoke of it tells me more than I wish to know. We return for Skyhold at once. We must plan, and we must plan quickly.
Josephine laid the missive down gingerly. “This is...dire.”
“Adamant has been unbreachable for centuries,” Leliana said, her voice cold and hushed like a dagger in the dark.
“Centuries ago they did not have trebuchets,” Cullen said, striving for a confidence he did not in any way feel. “We need sappers.”
“I believe one of Bull’s Chargers is a sapper,” Leliana suggested. “And we have Dagna. That is at least a start. I will do some digging, see who else we have that may be of use.”
Josephine began rifling through papers on her desk. “I believe I may be able to call in a favor for siege equipment. Not all nobles deal purely in coin and gossip.”
“That just leaves us with enthralled Wardens and demons,” Leliana muttered darkly. “They could house over a thousand men there.”
The pain in Cullen’s head flared, a sharp pulse at his temples. “Our Templars should be prepared. Our people should be prepared.”
“The Inquisitor returns with haste,” Josephine said. “Two weeks by horse relay, perhaps less. That gives us some time to prepare.”
Cullen scowled. “Another five to make the march back out there with enforcements, and that’s on top of preparations. Andraste preserve us, Erimond could fill Adamant in that time if he has enough mages among the Wardens.”
“How many of your remaining Templars are at Skyhold, Commander?” Leliana asked.
“Nowhere near enough. I will send word, recall as many as possible to Skyhold.” He turned on his heel, gripping the hilt of his sword, and made for his office.
Unbreachable. Maker, if only the walls were their only worry.
* * *
Preparations had to be made, even before the Inquisitor’s return. Cullen sent dozens of letters, ordering an immediate return to base for every Templar they had in the field. The numbers were considerably less than he cared for, barely over fifty all told, with perhaps a half dozen veterans among them. A rueful little voice nattered in his ear, reminding him if they had only gone to the Templars, if he had the full force of the Order at his disposal…. But of course, he didn’t. The choice had been made. And given the actions of the demon Krem said had been impersonating the Lord Seeker, sending the Herald into Therinfal Redoubt would have been like driving a lamb into a slaughtering pen. It was not the alliance he regretted, it was the loss.
And so the week went, a flurry of activity and too-little sleep. The headache persisted and brought with it a faint, charred smell that followed him as he went about his duties, craning his neck to search for signs of smoke. The itch came soon after, bone-deep and low, something that made him want to twist and squirm in his own skin. Cullen was too disciplined for that, too stubborn.
But he moved, and he kept moving. He paced constantly. Inspections doubled. A sand pit was hastily constructed near the practice yard to give the men some idea of what they might face if the fight took them outside of the fortress walls. The time he spent in the sparring ring jumped dramatically. And even there he was restless, moving and rolling and driving aside the less practiced with an alarming ferocity. None were injured, but more than a few soldiers left the ring with their practice weapons cracked and their heads hung in exhausted defeat.
His soldiers bore his agitation. The staff on the other hand were less equipped to handle it. He was short with them, an irritation that grew steadily worse as the week wore on, until it was a fight to keep his fool mouth shut before he berated some poor maid for doing their job too close to him, or a runner for slamming doors they swore they had not touched. Overworked was the polite whisper. Arsehole was the less polite version, and he couldn’t claim it was unearned. His behavior was regrettably noted. None seemed to mark the reason behind it, save for Cassandra who kept a wary, albeit distant, eye on him, but said nothing.
The thirst returned soon after. A familiar addition, and one he considered to be no great concern. Cullen had long since learned to ration his water. And if his tongue worried restlessly over too-dry lips and his throat ached with the need for something colder, cleaner, bluer - well, what of that? Pain was pain, and he could take it. And he did. More and more each day. Until the headaches were inescapable and his joints felt like fire and broken glass. The remedies helped, when good sense came to him in the grounding guise of Aadhlei’s voice and overrode his pride, urging him to finally send slips to the infirmary for the potions that would dull the pain, or settle his stomach enough to keep half a hurried meal down, or to sleep for longer than an hour at night without jerking awake to the muffled sounds of phantom explosions.
And so he endured. He had little choice else. The cost of failure was far too high. It was a well-worn slog, horrible but at the very least predictable, until the ninth day.
Morning found him pulling on his armor, hair combed but face unshaven, fighting to still the tremors in his hands enough to buckle on his breastplate. A missive had arrived by raven the night before declaring the Inquisitor had just passed Halamshiral. Four days left, three if she kept up the relay. There had been no direct letters since she had left the Western Approach, and he could not claim that he did not feel their absence, or hers. It had been well over a month since she had left Skyhold with Hawke and Stroud in tow. He realized with a glum sort of wistfulness that this was almost certainly the longest they had spent apart since they had met.
Yet the relief he expected with the news of her return was nowhere to be found. Instead all he felt was a cold, creeping dread that snaked its way through his gut like a wire. She would return, and she would look to him with trust in those soft green eyes that had shaken him free of so many nightmares, and she would expect him to give council. And what did he have? A migraine and a rather impressive case of the shits. Fine council, indeed.
Idiot boy.
Cullen froze. The voice was clear and harsh, a mocking sneer. And Maker, it sounded close. Close enough that Cullen fancied if he turned he would see the Knight-Commander’s eyes, steel shot through with red, mere inches from his own.
“You’re dead,” he said, voice taut. He pulled his gorget over his head and set to fastening it down. “At least have the decency to be silent.”
You called me mad. My own Knight-Captain stood against me. And for what? To protect blood mages. And now here they stand again. Weak and foolish Wardens turning to blood magic to save their own skins. They will paint Thedas red in blood and lyrium and it will be on your head.
And then the room was gone. All around was chaos; the steel-on-steel clash of combat, the sizzling crack and pull of magic, but even that was drowned out by the sounds of pure panic and carnage .
The choice was yours, Knight-Captain. Blessed are those that stand before the wicked and do not falter. And when have you done anything but falter?
Cullen pushed his fists against his eyes. Skyhold. Not Kirkwall. Look up.
Cullen lifted his head, desperate, searching for the skylight that was - should be there. It wasn’t. Above him hung a slate-grey sky, thick with smoke and storm clouds, tinged red where the fires burned highest. Kirkwall was burning. Again? Still? Maker, did it even matter? Kirkwall burned and he had let it happen. Had, in point of fact, helped build the pyre.
The world flickered like a candle flame in a sudden draft and Kirkwall was gone. High stone walls surrounded him, a sprawl of putrid, pulsing flesh climbing up it like diseased ivy. He could smell it, the sweetness of its rancidity almost enough to mask the old-copper scent of blood. And the blood was everywhere. Bodies lay in mutilated piles around him, some mangled beyond recognition, but others were still painfully familiar. Farris’s head regarded him with bland, slack-jawed terror from the end of a spike, one eye rolled up to the ceiling. A few feet away, from the base of a pile protruded an arm, surprisingly whole, with smooth skin broken by a long pink scar that stopped near the elbow. ‘A bandit with a broken dagger,’ Annalise would tell anyone that listened, but the reality of it had been a clumsy fall into a stack of pottery.
Cullen’s stomach twisted, gorge rising. He saw all of it through a shimmering haze of violet, a barrier, a prison. They had stuck him here to watch the slaughter. How many had been cut down before his eyes? How many torn apart? How many left broken and begging for death for hours before their pleas were granted?
He felt a spasm wrack his body, making him shake and rattle in his armor like a specter in a ghost story. Lyrium withdrawal, his first true taste of it, etched into his mind with blood and screaming.
You couldn’t save them , Meredith spoke up in a voice like ice. What makes you think you can protect the men that serve you now, or that posturing maleficarum that calls herself Inquisitor? You were a failure even with the lyrium in your veins, you are a fool to think you could be more without it. You lead them into death, boy. That’s all you know how to do.
“NO!” he roared, fists lashing out to strike the barrier and finding only empty air and darkness.
Skyhold, he told himself desperately. Not Kirkwall, not Kinloch! Damn your eyes, Rutherford, look up! Find it!
Again he craned his neck up, conjuring the image of the window in his mind. Greens and browns and blues, tall trees and running dogs and the sky beyond it. On its heels came the afterthought of Aadhlei standing beneath it, the sunlight in her hair and the light touch of her fingers on the inside of his wrist, a scent of herbs clinging to her hair and faint lilac on her skin.
One moment there was only darkness above him, thick, black, and endless. The next moment he was staring up at the skylight above his bed, glinting prettily in the first pale gold of morning.
Cullen crumpled to his knees on the floor of his bedroom, hung his head, and wept.
* * *
The wind cut cold across Skyhold’s battlements, chilling the sweat that stood out stark against Cullen’s face as he caught sight of the line of horses speeding toward the front gate. He wavered, swaying on his feet, the pounding in his head increasing threefold. Aadhlei rode at the forefront, he recognized her not by her mount but by the shade of her cloak and the staff strapped to her back. He had held out some shred of hope that the sight of her might bolster the last cracking remains of his resolve, that he might find strength enough to endure for her sake, if not for his. Maker, he had hoped….
Meredith’s voice rang out in his head, cold and sharp as a surgeon’s blade. Your pride will be the death of her.
It was in his head. It was only in his head this time, and he knew it. But even that could not stop the twisting in his chest. There was no comfort here. No comfort anywhere. A small sound, weak and defeated, escaped his lips in a rush of white vapor.
I can’t.
Though his knees felt hot and loose and ready to buckle, they bore him swiftly enough down the stairs towards the place where the Seeker stood, testing a fresh blade. “A word please, Lady Cassandra. I require your...opinion on a matter.”
She regarded him coolly, casting a brief glance to the gate as shouts of the Inquisitor’s approach rang out. “I don’t suppose I need to ask what this is about.”
“In private,” he half-snarled, jerking his head toward the door of the smithy. “Please.”
Cassandra gave him an assessing look, then nodded grimly. “As you say.”
Cullen strode ahead, shoving the door open with enough force to startle one of Harritt’s apprentices into dropping the sword he was grinding.
“Out,” Cullen said, pointing at the far door.
“Begging your pardon, Commander?” Harritt said, his eyebrows hovering about halfway up his bald head in his surprise. “All due respect, ser, but this is my-”
“Out!”
The apprentices were out the door before Harritt had even the chance to toss the half-forged steel back in the embers. He followed, begrudgingly, bitching under his breath as he went.
As the door shut behind him, Cassandra spoke. “The answer is no.”
Cullen turned on his heel, wobbling. “Do I have no say in this at all?”
“If I thought it necessary, Cullen, I would have relieved you of your command already. That I have not should be the only answer you need.”
“Maker’s breath, will you just listen to me?”
She folded her arms, scowling. “Very well, Commander. I am listening.”
“I,” he faltered almost immediately, pride again taking control of his tongue. He set to pacing in front of the forge, sweat pouring down the sides of his face to pool under his armor. Maker how could he sweat, he was bloody freezing . Slowly the words ground out of him. “I cannot do this.”
He began to unpack it, or at least he tried to, giving a halting index of symptoms and incidents. Try as he might, he couldn’t quite find the words to explain the worst of it, dancing around the visions and voices and memories with all the care of a wounded animal trying to hide a lame and mangled leg. When he had finished as best he could he turned again to Cassandra, breathing a little too raggedly, hoping to see some shift in her face, some sign she understood.
“I do not believe your concerns to be unfounded, Commander,” she began.
“Thank you.”
“However, I do not believe it warrants your resignation or replacement.”
“What?” he spat, incredulous.
“We face our first true test of battle as a unified force against Corypheus soon. It is understandable that you might begin to doubt-”
“This is beyond doubt , Seeker. If I am made to lead our people into battle in this condition we will fail. Our people will die. The Inquisitor will- I cannot let that happen! I will not!”
Cassandra’s scowl deepened. “You asked for my opinion and I’ve given it. What more do you expect of me?”
“I expect you to keep your word,” Cullen sneered, rubbing at another sudden spike at his temples. “It’s relentless, I can’t-”
“You give yourself too little credit,” she said.
Another time he might’ve seen it for what it was - a compliment, a confidence in his abilities. But he was too fogged with pain and the nattering of too-close memories. The sweat was in his eyes, stinging, and the smell of fire and steel lit up his nerves.
“If I’m unable to fulfill what vows I kept, then nothing good has come of this. Would you rather save face than admit-”
The door behind him swung open quietly, the faintest squeak of a hinge, and he wheeled at the sound. “I said get OUT!” he roared.
And then his eyes cleared, and all his fire died. Standing in the doorway, wind-chapped and exhausted in her stained travelling clothes, was Aadhlei. She stared at him for a long beat, too shocked to speak. Coward that he was, he couldn’t bear the thought of what she might say when her voice returned. Cullen hung his head and stalked out the door, too ashamed to look at her, mumbling in a low and ragged voice: “Forgive me.”
Part of him was sure she wouldn’t. Another part of him, small and painfully bitter, was sure she would. He could not say which was worse.