Work Text:
Varric Tethras had spent about as much time in the Frostbacks in and around the village of Haven as he had at the Foundry District back home in Kirkwall. That is to say, he’d spent far more time there than he would have liked; enough to become familiar, if not fond. He saw nothing familiar now. Beneath the scarred and puckered sky that the Herald of Andraste had sealed off from the Fade only yesterday, nothing remained but snow, rock, and splintered trees. Even the smoke from the fires that consumed Haven was gone, smothered by the avalanche The Herald had brought down upon herself and the forces of the Elder One to give the Inquisition a chance to escape along The Pilgrim’s Path.
He couldn’t have found Haven with a map. There wasn’t a town left to find. Cassandra Pentaghast was determined to try. Despite her track record for finding missing heroes, the Seeker left their struggling band of survivors in the General’s care and doubled back “to look for more,” she’d claimed. There was only one name she called until the short, sharp bark of her voice softened and grew hoarse.
The Herald wasn’t dead until there was a body. The Inquisition wasn’t dead until the last flicker of hope was snuffed by grim reality.
“I don’t believe it.” Varric announced. “I’d have bet my last copper that you could go on shouting for days. I’ve seen it happen. It’s only been a few hours, Seeker. There must be something in the mountain air.”
Hoarse or not, the angry little grunt she made as she glowered at him didn’t sound any different.
“You did not have to tag along.” She rasped.
“No, but I didn’t have anywhere else to be. Besides, I’m worried about her, too.”
No one had really expected the Herald to survive, merely hold their enemy’s attention long enough to save a few lives. But Cassandra had prayed for her. So had he, after a fashion. He didn’t like to think about what would happen without her. Before the Herald woke up from the Temple disaster, they’d been drowning in demons spilling from the rifts opening everywhere. Without her, there was no way to close them. Without her, there was no way the Iron Lady, Buttercup, Chuckles, and the rest would continue working together. Without her, they didn’t have a means of getting to the Empress of Orlais before the Elder One had her killed. Without her, a demon army would rise and plunge the world into darkness, if her report of the events at Redcliffe Castle was to be believed.
Somebody should probably have considered all this before they sent her to die.
The closer they got to Haven’s snowy grave, the deeper Varric sank in the snow with every step until he couldn’t move forward without The Seeker’s help. All the while, she kept yelling with a voice like a rusty gate. It had to hurt. It hurt to hear, and it didn’t carry very far.
“Matoska!”
“Stop that,” he sighed. “Here. Take some of this. Maybe it’ll help.”
He reached into his duster for a metal flask kept warm against his chest. It wouldn’t stay that way for long in the bitter wind. The Seeker gave the flask a cautious sniff. Varric frowned.
“It’s only brandy, Seeker. It’s probably the only thing Ruffles had a chance to save before we abandoned Haven. She gave it to me as we left the refugees, just in case we found her. Best drink it while it’s warm. Ish.”
While she took a sip, he took a turn yelling.
“Matoska! Come out and tell me a story!”
Like the one about how you could possibly have survived this.
It was hard to tell for certain without familiar landmarks, but easily 30 feet of snow and lumber had piled up over his best guess at where the remains of the village lie. What chance did a lone dwarf out in the open have of surviving an avalanche and an archdemon?
The Seeker cleared her throat and took a second sip before returning the flask to him.
“This snow is too deep. Perhaps we should find a less direct route down into the valley.”
She had a broken whisper now, rather than a rusty gate. She never once looked directly at him. How long had she been avoiding his gaze? He couldn’t be certain, because he had been avoiding hers.
“Agreed.” He tucked the flask away again, shuddering at the touch of the now cold metal as it bit through his shirt. “We can’t keep wading. I’m going to need to build a fire and dry out soon if I want to keep anything below the belt.”
“I think I can see the pier on the far side of the frozen lake. The avalanche didn’t reach that far. We’ll make for it and set up camp nearby for the night.”
It was hard to pick her words out of the gale, but her gestures were loud enough. He followed those as the pair backtracked to weave around trees that had stood safely beyond the reach of the tide of devastation, gathering fallen branches as they went. After walking nearly a half mile out of their way, they turned back down towards the valley. He called for the Herald occasionally but heard nothing apart from the howl of the wind in response. He was grateful that the Seeker didn’t try to talk, more grateful than usual.
It was Varric that first spotted the tracks in the snow. He was closer to them. Wordlessly, he caught the Seeker’s arm and pointed them out. There were two sets originating off to their left to meander across their path a few yards ahead. The wind had begun to fill in the deep and distant furrows left by someone wading away from Haven with drifts of snow. One set of prints was too far apart to be the stride of their missing dwarf. The other set had a stride too long to even be human.
You said you wanted to find more survivors, Seeker. You should have been more specific.
He dropped the firewood he had gathered and took Bianca into his arms instead. They never took quiet walks together and he seldom took her anywhere nice. She never complained.
Silent but for the snow beneath their feet, they crept forward to investigate. There was enough loose powder in the closest tracks to show that some time had passed since they were made. The Seeker opted to follow where the tracks lead. Varric preferred a less direct approach.
For a creature of the city, it was hard to vanish in snowy woodland in broad daylight. There were no convenient doorways to duck into or crowds of anonymous strangers in which a sneak could safely bury himself. The bare trees hid little, casting skinny grey shadows across blinding white snow which betrayed every footfall with a crunch and a deep footprint. He’d had it too easy in Kirkwall. Fortunately, one thing held as true in the wild places as in the city. People seldom looked up. He left the Seeker’s side when he spied a towering pine with long, soft needles near the trail. Finally able to vanish properly, he climbed as high as he dared up into the dense green branches.
He was loath to touch Bianca with his hands sticky with sap. But the firing position was perfect and he hadn’t climbed up simply to admire the view. From this vantage point he could see where the tracks lead and watch the tall figure of the Seeker stalk along the trail, her shield ready but her sword still sheathed. He watched as she knelt to examine something by the trail only to recoil before picking it up. He had a pretty good idea what it was from looking ahead.
A pair of enemy soldiers had sheltered from the wind next to a large rock. Smoke curled skyward from their fire, causing jealousy to rise instantly from Varric’s frozen toes to his empty stomach. One soldier stoked the flame. He looked like a Templar, but there was no device on his shield and his livery was black and wine red. That made him look far too sinister to be one of the Chantry’s men even before Varric saw the glowing eyes burning like torches. The other soldier looked like a hunk of blood-stained raw quartz with legs and a helmet. The points of red lyrium that jutted from his giant, grotesque body were chipped or broken. He lay dying by the fire, jagged metal rising from a belly wound that weirdly refused to bleed. Varric had never seen anything exactly like the monstrous soldier until last night, when an army of them and other, more human, thugs attacked Haven. Knight Commander Meredith had come close as she died.
The first soldier’s head jerked up from gazing at the fire. He reached for his sword and got a crossbow bolt through his hand instead. The surprised and anguished cry of the Mock Templar made it impossible to hear whatever the Seeker was croaking as she stormed into the camp drawing her own weapon. Varric didn’t have time to make anything up. The soldier tore Bianca’s thoughtful present out of his hand, an act which probably hurt worse than getting shot in the first place. Again, he reached for the blade laying sheathed on the ground where he’d tried to rest, with a hand that should have been mangled and useless, yet somehow wasn’t. Again, Bianca protested. This time the bolt threw hot ash and burning sticks from the fire around.
“Take the hint, Pal.” Varric muttered to himself.
Cassandra rushed forward and kicked the weapon away. The soldier took a step back. Then two. When he turned to run, Bianca nailed his foot to a fallen tree the instant he stepped on it.
They needed answers, not more corpses. The Inquisition (if there still was an Inquisition) knew almost nothing about this “Elder One” apart from the fact that he now owed them a base of operations and one reformed Carta enforcer turned Herald of Andraste.
It all should have been over without a fight. The unarmed Mock Templar struggled to free himself while his big gutted buddy waited for the Maker to come for him. Varric carefully stowed Bianca so he could climb down. Then, the tree shook. The snow fell from its branches. Varric would have followed if his duster hadn’t snagged, leaving him hanging like a marionette. Birds erupted squawking from not only his tree, but all the trees nearby.
The half dead red lyrium monster was still half alive and very, very, pissed off. It took him a couple of tries to get to his feet and stay there without slamming to the ground with the force of a plummeting boulder. On his feet he was nearly twice as tall as Cassandra. Varric watched, helpless, as the thing raised the heavy red crystal lump that it had instead of a fist. Fortunately, the Seeker was a lot quicker on her feet. The blow slammed into the snow where she had stood as she rushed forward, taking a swing with her sword. It was a solid hit. Even hanging in a tree several yards away, he could hear the metal ring as it struck hard crystal. He also heard the liner of his duster ripping.
“Shit.”
He reached for the nearest branch, but it was beyond his grasp. This never happened to when he was sniping at Redwater Teeth from the steps by the Docks in Kirkwall. Nope. He’d just find a cozy spot and shoot until the bad guys stopped moving or Hawke got bored. If he ever had found himself dangling like bait on a hook over a monster fight back in Kirkwall, then Hawke would have made it fun.
“Sidelined in a fight and pining for the good old days. Andraste’s ass! Am I getting old?”
There was a loud snap. Varric swung forward and fell into the branch he was reaching for as the one that held him gave way. He clung to the new branch like a cat afraid of a bath.
Passing between the sprays of pine needles that blocked his line of sight from his new, less than ideal perch, he could occasionally spot the Seeker buffeting the red lyrium creature with heavy blows that clanged like a hammer on an anvil to no effect. The slow lumbering lummox wasn’t having any luck hurting her, either. She ducked under his swing to deliver a brutal slash to his back that would have ended a fight with a flesh and blood foe. But this poor bastard wasn’t really flesh and blood. Not any more.
Once more Varric’s mind wandered back to Kirkwall. The red lyrium had made Knight Commander Meredith crazy, but she stayed a person right up until she was mortally wounded. Only then did her flesh completely transmute into lyrium. This sap had been dying slowly since the battle at Haven with that huge hunk of shrapnel buried in his guts. Maybe he didn’t have much soft tissue left to murder. It would explain why he wasn’t bleeding out any more. He was more golem than man now.
It had been a long, nearly hopeless march down the mountain to get here and now it was beginning to show on Cassandra. Each futile strike took a little more of her strength. Each dodged attack came a little closer to the mark. If she couldn’t put a dent in the crystal creep with her sword, Varric doubted very much that Bianca had anything to contribute. He couldn’t wait around watching the Seeker tire until she got pummeled, either.
“Seeker!” He called. “I have a terrible idea!”
Distracted, she dodged an anticipated backswing, but not fast enough. She took the blow on the shield. The force of it took her off her feet and out of his field of vision. There was too much tree in the way to see what happened next.
“Seeker!”
Varric scrambled all the way down from his perch to find the lumbering lyrium behemoth was practically on top of him, advancing on the winded but seemingly unbroken Seeker. Her helm was gone and there was a Seeker-shaped dent in the crisp snow behind her. The warped soldier swayed on spindly legs, then staggered forward as his top-heavy red lyrium-encrusted body threatened to fall. It should have been easy to evade him, but Varric wasn’t built for snowy mountaintops and uneven ground. He was made for barstools and bullshit. He felt each heavy step behind him as he rabbitted towards Cassandra. When he tripped in the snow, the steps got too close and he looked back to stare down the bruiser. He looked him right in the eye with a sneer. Then, he looked past him. Varric’s eyes grew wide and his jaw slackened as a gasp stole his breath. While his pursuer paused to look back to gage the threat of whatever had frightened him, Varric smirked and caught up with Cassandra. They put the rock between them and their enemy.
“He’s dying. We could wait him out.”
“THAT’S your big idea?” she rasped.
“No, but I’m sure it would work. You’re never going to cut into him with a sword. He’s almost pure lyrium now. I don’t even know how he’s still moving.”
“I…”
She said more, but he couldn’t make it out.
“What?”
“I NEED A BETTER PLAN.” she squeaked painfully.
“Use what’s already cut into him to finish him off. Even if he has mostly changed to lyrium, that’s probably his weak point. I would bet he was a little more man than lawn ornament before that--whatever it is-- got driven into his innards. Otherwise, how’d it get there?”
He couldn’t have made sense of her response even if he’d had an oil can to silence the rusty hinge. The Seeker’s hulking dance partner was the jealous type. The brute put his remaining stiff, red hand on the rock to steady himself as he walked around it. His fingers wouldn’t uncurl until his weight forced them to spread out over the stone. One snapped off from the stress and disappeared into the snow, a seed Varric hoped wouldn’t bloom in the spring. He never made a sound--not a word, nor a cry, nor a moan. From his eyes, the only bits of human left in the brute, Varric could tell he would have if he could.
Varric and the Seeker scattered in opposite directions as the brute’s club hand crashed down between them, leaving pink powder where it ground against the rock. The Seeker couldn’t yell a challenge to keep him focused on her. Instead, she offered a simple salute with her sword and a nod. It was the sort of gesture he’d seen fighters in the singles bouts at tournaments do before a match-- a respectful acknowledgement that two trained fighters were about to engage in a contest of skill, not malice. It wasn’t something one did when fighting a monster. The brute couldn’t move his head and had no weapon to return the salute, but he stood as straight as he could and faced her. It was as if Varric ceased to exist.
Immediately, he felt a pang of regret for the lawn ornament comment. He watched the fight commence anew, no longer thinking of how they could finish quickly and go warm up by the fire, but how the Seeker’s opponent had been someone’s hero once, someone’s son. Before he was twisted by addiction and turned from his purpose, he had been a man. Something inside, even if it was just his eyes and a flash of memory still was.
The dance began much as their first bout had with the Seeker dodging and ducking slow, telegraphed attacks. Then, the Seeker dropped her sword, drew up her shield and charged with all her might. Her shield slammed into the metal protruding from his midsection, driving it deeper. There was a loud crack and it was all over. Varric examined the pieces littering the snow to make certain. What used to be eyes now looked like uncut rubies. Whoever the former Templar had been, he was gone. Only a broken crystal statue remained.
The Seeker stood bent with her hands on her knees, catching her breath for what seemed like a very long time. He felt it wise to leave her to it and instead investigate what exactly it was that had killed Cassandra’s opponent. Treading carefully through the snow and large chunks of lyrium, he found the only thing littering the ground that wasn’t red crystal and turned it over with the toe of his boot. It was no random bit of shrapnel from the ruined village, nor was it even metal, at least not completely. It was a broken shield of the style carried by the two Templar recruits that the Inquisition had rescued from the Temple of Sacred Ashes. After the Herald rescued Lysette, Varric recalled seeing her helping Buttercup drag a wounded Ansburg along the path away from Haven. He had no idea what had become of the other recruit, Matrin. Perhaps he won a fight against a former brother in arms, with an assist from the Seeker.
When Cassandra joined him by the fire she didn’t say a word. She stared into the fire while he watched the other soldier try to wiggle the heavy bolt that pinned him in place a few yards away.
“There might be others.” he observed. “It was a pretty big army.”
The fire hissed and popped louder than the Seeker’s hoarse reply. He made something up rather than ask her to repeat herself.
It was a pretty big mountain she brought down on it.
His imagination wasn’t good enough. He could tell when she turned from the fire to look at him expectantly. It wasn’t a glare, for once. He didn’t know what to make of it. He was used to her anger. Anything else was unsettling. He knew how to relate to a Seeker that was mad as a sackful of badgers and keeping those badgers riled had become something of a hobby. Now wasn’t the time to pursue hobbies. But what else did they have?
She leaned closer and spoke again, slowly and pointedly. The steam of her hot breath was in his face and he could still barely hear her.
“...are we wasting our time?”
He sighed. She always asked him the hard questions.
“No. We’re not healers. Unless you have a fortress stashed nearby for the survivors to hole up in, we’re doing the only thing we can do right now. I can’t just wander through the refugees counting the faces I don’t see. Besides, I have to know the end of her story, one way or another. Don’t you?”
He offered her the brandy again. When she shook her head, he took a pull himself. She pointed at the remaining soldier with her chin and whispered again.
“...you should question him.”
“Me? I don’t think so. It must be some kind of breach of etiquette or protocol to force your prisoners to interrogate each other. What will the other terrifying zealots think?”
“...you…”
The wind tearing through the trees sounded almost like a scream. The Seeker paused rather than waste her breath. The sound reminded him of the demons in rags that flew out of the rifts in the Hinterlands, freezing anyone in their path. Matoska once caught hold of a particularly nasty one and held it down in a stream. It froze the water, trapping itself long enough for the Herald to pummel it into nothingness in a torrent of inarticulate rage. Andraste hadn’t chosen Matoska Cadash for her even temper. He wasn’t absolutely certain she’d chosen her at all, but if she had, he admired the Bride of the Maker’s wicked sense of humor. Ultimately, he’d begun to admire the Herald as well.
The mournful wail of the wind subsided and so did his sad smile at the thought of his friend beating the crap out of demons.
“...you are not my prisoner any longer. You know this...”
“Really? I’ll just go home then.”
He didn’t move. They both knew he had no place to go and no way to get there. Kirkwall was still a wreck and also too far away to fathom while standing in a snowy mountain pass at the ass end of nowhere. Cassandra had dragged him from his home across the seas to a war in another country, a war that now seemed lost. It didn’t matter any longer if he was a prisoner. He was trapped and helpless anyway, waiting for the next boot in his gut. Strangely, they now had that in common.
The wind wailed again, like it had something to contribute to the conversation. More than anything, he wanted to be warm and dry at the Hanged Man, telling the story of the fabled Herald of Andraste beating up demons on a Fereldan farmstead.
“...you’re glad we’re not out here searching for Hawke...”
“No. I’m thinking of the friend we actually are searching for out here. It’s possible to have more than one friend, Seeker. Well, for most people it’s possible. You should try it. But don’t go too far too fast. Start with one and get a feel for it, first. You might want to try getting a puppy and work your way up to people.”
He could still make out the sour expression she gave him loud and clear. Grateful that she hadn’t worked out how to kill anyone with her eyes yet, he sighed. There would be a better time to needle the Seeker. That hope, Bianca, half a flask of brandy, and about 20 bolts was all he had at the moment.
“It was pretty chaotic at the end, but did you hear the last thing she said to me before we all got separated? I keep thinking about it.”
Cassandra shook her head.
“‘The Stone will wish it had kept us.’ She got so wrapped up in the role we made up for her, defending innocents and smiting the bad guys for a change instead of being the bad guy. In the end, I think she imagined she was the last warrior in Cadash Thaig, delaying the darkspawn long enough for her people to escape. That’s what I’ll tell people, anyway, when I work out how. At the time, I thought she was talking about redemption for her family for her final heroic act. Now, I’m not so sure which ‘us’ she meant.”
“…i never…pression… about the Stone…”
The wind blew away half of her hoarse whispers, but the Seeker was too stubborn to let it win.
“The Stone never held any special meaning for me, no. I didn’t think she cared much either. I don’t know why it stuck with me. Maybe I wish I could have stopped shooting these clowns long enough for a chance at a proper goodbye. I didn’t even say anything. Too many targets.”
He knelt to be closer the the small fire and held out his hands to warm them. Staring into the flames brought Haven’s last moments closer in his memory.
“I’m not a hero, Seeker. I just happen to fall into step with them from time to time, like when they wander off alone looking for trouble. I feel like I should have done so last night. Not just me, either.”
He let his words sink in for a moment and looked away from the flickering flames to watch for their impact. For once, his subtle barb didn’t win him a glare or disgust. The corner of her mouth twitched and she nodded once. It wasn’t a surprise. If she didn’t have survivor’s guilt of her own, they’d be freezing their butts off with the rest of the refugees from Haven trying to secure their future rather than freezing their butts off sifting through the recent past for answers. Either way, though, it was damn cold.
“I know, we have a mysterious villain to thwart, somehow, and at the time we had a town full of people to save. We couldn’t have handled either from underneath tons of snow. But knowing and feeling are two different things. Matoska’s story shouldn’t end in a snowbank.”
The Seeker turned her helm over in her hands. Her gloved fingers found a deep dent it lacked before she lost it in the fight. She hurled it aside with such force it likely got another dent to match when it struck the rock.
“…do you know it or feel it?” she demanded, voice still gone but fire very much present.
Again with the hard questions.
Varric finished the brandy and pretended not to hear.
“...know it. let us have faith in your friend. come on…”
He could feel her gauntlet on his shoulder, nudging him away from the nice warm fire and towards an unpleasant conversation. She might have meant the push to be reassuring, but that wasn’t exactly her strength. In fact, it reminded Varric of a tale of the Bone Pit, a dangerous mine in The Free Marches, where they say that long ago, underperforming slaves chained together in a line were ordered to push the slave in front of them over the edge of a cliff.
He stood up again, not quite dry, but warmer than he had been. Only one step away from the little fire brought the gnawing cold back. Too bad the Mock Templar couldn’t interrogate himself.
“You win, Seeker. This’ll have to be our secret. If anyone asks, we’ll swear you scared the truth out of him. If it comes to it, you can still do the stabbing.”
Though less transformed than his late brother, the Mock Templar could not be mistaken for human. Up close, his skin was sunburn red and pebbly and he spat a curse at them through sharp, red pointed teeth like shards of a broken Chantry window. Human blood typically didn’t harden into cloudy red crystal when spilled, either. His wounded hand was whole again, even if light could pass through the red center, A point of lyrium now protruded from the back of his hand, where the bolt had passed through his palm. Hurting him had only made him weirder, more dangerous. But the trick had it’s drawbacks.
Varric brushed away some snow and sat down on the log, carefully out of reach. He held Bianca in his lap, ready to finish what she started at a moment’s notice.
Bianca’s earlier handiwork had grown more horrific. The prisoner hadn’t been able to remove the bolt from his foot quickly, as he had with his hand. It was still driven deep into the log, holding him in place. The wound had bled profusely, blood running down out of his pinned boot over the bark and down to the ground, seeping into every crack and crevice only to harden and swell. Clusters of tiny crystals sprouted around the bolt at the hole in his boot and everywhere the blood had run. The tainted lyrium in his body had rooted him to the spot more effectively than a trick shot ever could.
This is weird. All this shit is weird. I can’t even tell what’s weirdest. Moving statues trying to kill us? Lyrium growing out of people? Bodies fused to trees by their blood? I’m not sure I could even put this in a book.
Cassandra took up a position on the other side of the prisoner, hands clasped behind her. The sun was at her back throwing her shadow over both men. Even at rest, her sword sheathed and her weighty shield set aside, she remained effortlessly intimidating. Sitting in the Seeker’s shadow was like sailing into Kirkwall’s harbor for the first time, past the chains and statues to view the Gallows. If it turned out that this Inquisition thing she put together was a bust, she could always get a job standing in a cornfield, scaring hungry crows away.
“Hello there! Thanks for waiting. You and your pals burned down a village and put our friends to the sword. We’d like a word about that, if you’ve got a moment.”
From where he was trapped, the Mock Templar couldn’t keep an eye on both of his captors at once. He turned his attention from Cassandra when Varric spoke.
“I’ve nothing to say to you. Our work is finished here, as is yours.”
There was an unnatural buzzing quality to the prisoner’s voice that would have given Varric goosebumps if he wasn’t already freezing. He might have had sympathy if the man didn’t speak with a mouth full of demonic bees. The other soldier, with his sad blue eyes, seemed somehow more human.
“I’m afraid not. In the absence of the Divine, our work isn’t over until Seeker Pentaghast says it’s over. She won’t be saying anything for a while. It’s you and me, Torches.”
He’d seen things in the Tellari Swamp with eyes that reflected firelight. Those hungry lizard eyes held more humanity than the red orbs blazing in the prisoner’s skull. He gripped Bianca a little tighter.
“You failed. Your Inquisition is finished. Let it go. Be grateful you escaped Haven with your life. Your Herald wasn’t so lucky. Most weren’t.”
Beyond the prisoner, Varric could see every muscle in Cassandra’s neck stand up as her jaw locked in a familiar scowl.
“You want to take over, Seeker? Maybe pretend he’s an innocent book in the hands of an equally innocent dwarf?”
With a huff, she shook her head and Varric returned his attention to the cloudy red eyes of the prisoner.
“Alright then. The Herald. You saw her?”
“Oh, indeed I did.”
The prisoner flashed him a toothy smile that made Varric grateful he couldn’t have nightmares.
“Have you ever seen a terrier with a rat? She wasn’t the terrier.”
Torches even buzzed when he chuckled. A chuckle with any less mirth would be a death rattle.
“Who was the terrier? That washed up lyrium sot you call a general? Samson?”
“Corypheus.”
Instantly, Cassandra stopped watching the prisoner and returned the full focus of her wrathful glare onto him. The respite was over.
“I don’t think so. Try again. Who did you see fighting the Herald and where did you see her last?”
“The Elder One broke your pitiful Herald by the trebuchets. I lost track of them before the mountain fell, mopping up your fleeing rabble.”
“Describe this Elder One.”
“Pray you never see him, Dwarf, for he will be your last sight.”
“You have that backwards. But humor me. What’s your Elder One look like?”
“He’s a mage from Tevinter in ancient feathered robes. He has deep set eyes and scarred flesh fused with metal and True Lyrium. His is not a countenance one would forget, should they survive the meeting. Ultimately, no one will. This world is too far gone to save. It must be ended and made anew.”
“Shit. That does sound a little like Corypheus, but for the lyrium.”
The last of Cassandra’s patience burned away and she stomped past the new prisoner to shove her old one from his seat. Bianca slipped from his grasp as he tried and failed to keep his balance. They both ended up in the snow on opposite sides of the fallen tree.
“…you told me Hawke killed Corypheus!”
It was hard enough to make out what the voiceless Seeker was croaking over the wind, but now he had to pick out the words over the buzzing laughter of a guy just begging to be shot in the neck. It was pretty obvious to guess, though.
“He did! I SAW him fall.” he protested.
He tried to scoot away from Cassandra’s ire and get to his feet. She only shoved him back down and planted a heavy sabaton on his chest to keep him there. Then she leaned down to rasp at him as loud as she could.
“Did a dead man murder our Most Holy? Did a dead man destroy Haven? Did a corpse kill the Herald of Andraste and scatter Divine Justinia’s Inquisition, our only hope of putting the world right again?”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
He couldn’t yell any more than that with a woman in full armor crushing his chest. He grabbed her ankle and rolled onto his side, taking her off balance. She tumbled onto the ground with him. Torches must have found it hilarious, because he kept laughing his horrible buzzing laugh. Cassandra didn’t find it funny at all. Varric got to his feet first and tried to stay out of reach, but avoiding her was only taking him farther from poor Bianca, who was getting cold and wet in the snow. The furious Seeker must have noticed his concerned glance towards his fallen crossbow, because she stopped trying to grab him and instead went after the weapon.
Suddenly Varric found himself viewing Bianca as he’d never seen her before. He instantly froze in more ways than one.
“Careful, now. She’s very sensitive.”
“What REALLY happened?” The Seeker croaked, staring down Bianca’s sights.
“Corypheus—magister, darkspawn, and all around asshole— died in the Vimmarks four years ago at a Grey Warden prison built to hold him. The Elder One can’t be him.”
“If you didn’t … every second breath I’d… easier to believe.”
“But you’ll believe him?”
Varric hooked a thumb towards the laughing prisoner still stuck to the fallen tree behind him before he continued.
“THAT guy along with a few hundred of his friends came to kill us last night! Does he simply look like he has an honest face?”
“Why would he pick the name Corypheus out of the air?”
The laughter behind him grew abruptly deeper before it began to gurgle rather than buzz. Varric glanced back just in time to see Torches double over. A large red crystal spike burst from the right side of the former Templar’s neck, forcing his head to loll to the left and rest on his shoulder. His pinned foot burst out of his boot, growing in size, no longer flesh. It didn’t even look like a foot. If anything, it resembled the massive, ungainly club-fist of the fallen Red Templar. The log lifted slightly from the ground before it groaned, splintered, and burst under the new weight and sudden force exerted by the changing cloudy crystal limb.
Torches was free. He took one step forward and fell dead, a tight grouping of three heavy crossbow bolts in his still fleshy chest.
This time, the look of fear that crossed Varric’s face wasn’t a con. He stared at the ex-ex-Templar until confident that the body wasn’t going to move or grotesquely distort any further.
“Nice shot, Seeker. You, uh, were aiming for the bad guy, right?”
“Seeker?”
“Seeker!?”