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His elation naturally lasted no more than a moment. A second, or maybe two. It entirely accorded with the rest of the day, which had been essentially one shit thing after another.
He was used to shit things in general. There had been less of them under the Grey Wardens than there had been in the abbey, but not so few that he had stopped expecting them at every turn. Frankly, he considered himself lucky that at least one of the new recruits had made it through the Joining and extra especially lucky that that one just had happened to be the best, funniest and prettiest.
But then, of course, everything after that had turned phenomenally shitty.
First, Duncan had informed him that he wouldn’t actually be in the battle. Their first real battle against the darkspawn. He’d been so ready for it too. Ready to stand side by side with his brothers – and the father figure he never thought he’d find – and do his duty.
He’d fought before, of course, both as a templar in training and as a warden in skirmishes with the darkspawn. But he’d never been in an actual battle before. With lines and strategies and armies.
All day, he’d been full of nervous energy. The horror of witnessing a Joining subsiding into that anticipatory excitement mixed with utter terror that came before a fight. He’d been ready – eager – to work off some of that energy in a full pitched battle against the darkspawn.
Duncan and Elissa – Elissa the new warden – had been called to a meeting with the King and Teyrn. He hadn’t been sure why, and hadn’t particularly cared. Frankly, he was mostly trying to stay out of the King’s way as much as possible. It brought up… uncomfortable things that were best left alone.
As long as he remained just a warden in the crowd he’d be fine, and Duncan seemed to agree. They’d defeat the darkspawn in glorious battle, and he’d go on being a warden. It was a good life. Or, at least, a better one than any other he’d yet lived.
Except that the result of that meeting had apparently been the decision to exclude both him and the new warden from the battle. Foolish, in his opinion. Removing the two of them from the front lines, just so wardens could be holding the torch for the signal fire.
But then, from what he’d seen of the King, such romanticism probably appealed over common sense.
Except, as it turned out, maybe it hadn’t been so foolish, because the second shitty thing that had happened today – beyond the lurching, swooping feeling in his stomach as he and Elissa had watched the wardens charge the darkspawn lines – was the surprise darkspawn in the Tower of Ishal.
Maker only knew how they had come to be there. They shouldn’t have been, and it had turned what should have been an easy task into a frantic, time-sensitive one. Thankfully, he and Elissa worked well together and – with the help of a mage from the King’s army – they had made reasonably quick progress through the tower. Their urgency laced with the knowledge that the longer they took, the more of their fellows died.
He couldn’t lose them. Especially Duncan. Not now that he had finally found a home, and certainly not because he hadn’t fought hard enough to save them.
But then, of course, the third shitty thing had happened.
They had reached the top of the tower – had been inches away from lighting the all-important signal fire – only to find their path blocked by an ogre.
He’d seen one before. Just one. But had never actually fought one before, and definitely not with only one fellow warden at his side.
Judging by the way that Elissa had frozen – for just a fraction of a second, no more – she hadn’t even known that such a creature existed.
Poor girl. It was, he had to admit, one awful introduction to the wonders of the wardens.
They hadn’t had too much time to think about it though. The thing had come barrelling towards them, its footsteps heavy enough to shake the floor beneath their feet, and they had been forced to hastily dive out of the way.
The battle had been long, and hard.
The ogre was big, muscled and surprisingly fast. The only way they had been able to make a dent was by slow degrees. Killing it with bug bites, as it were, and each second that the thing had remained upright, he was actually aware of the number of people dying unnecessarily on the battlefield below. Waiting for the General’s charge to save them.
Twice during the fight, he had seen Elissa try to light the fire, but each time the ogre – whether by design or just plain bad luck – had seen her and she’d been forced to either abandon the attempt or die trying.
But eventually, the beast had given a great roar and keeled over, hitting the ground with a thud that had nearly knocked him to his feet.
By the time he had regained his footing, Elissa was already lighting the fire.
For one glorious moment – as the flame caught – he had breathed a sigh of relief. Shared a delighted grin with Elissa, and believed for just a moment, that maybe – maybe – they hadn’t been too late.
And then the door had flown off its hinges.
Before he could do more than turn his head to figure out why, two arrows had embedded themselves into Elissa’s chest and shoulder. She went down immediately, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch, just as he managed to dodge the arrows meant for him.
He turned, facing the darkspawn that had clearly followed them to the height of the tower, suddenly sickeningly aware of the fact that they were both probably going to die here.
There were too many of them, and with Elissa and the mage incapacitated… There were too many. He redoubled his grip on his sword, suddenly sweaty palms making the endeavour all the harder.
If he was going to die here, then it was his duty to take as many darkspawn with him as he could. And he would.
She might already be dead.
He was on the verge of losing his strength, a never-ending stream of darkspawn still pouring into the tower as he fought to keep them at bay, when a terrifying roar rent the air. One of the glass windows at the top of the tower seemed to explode inwards; conveniently sweeping away a not insignificant number of the darkspawn, but also causing him to lose his footing.
When he looked up from the floor it was to see a giant, magnificent dragon perched where the window had been.
His first thought was that the archdemon had found them, and that, if he could just find some hitherto untapped reserve of strength, then maybe he could kill it single-handed and end the blight right then and there.
But it seemed that even getting up off the floor was too much of a challenge, let alone killing a dragon.
The dragon snarled, sweeping one of its massive claws at the horde of darkspawn and tearing open the guts of at least three of them.
He still couldn’t stand, so he did the only thing he could do, or could even think to do. He crawled across the floor. Agonisingly, painstakingly slowly. Probably leaving a fair few pints of his own blood behind him.
But he kept going.
Until he reached her side.
She was breathing, just barely, but she was pale. So pale. Too pale.
With the last of his strength, he slipped his fingers into hers and, that accomplished, promptly passed out…
When he awoke, it was to see wooden beams and a thatched roof he didn’t recognise above him. Sitting up – something that his torso vehemently protested – he discovered that he was apparently lying on a straw pallet on the floor, and in the bed next to him…
“Elissa?” he cried, scrambling to his feet. A task made all the harder by the presence of his armour and what felt like far too many bruises.
“Out of my way, boy,” a woman snapped, as he tried to make his way to her side. He recognised her at once. The woman who had given them their warden treaties not a day ago.
“B-But,“ he stammered.
“Do as Mother says.” The witch… Morrigan glared at him.
He shouldn’t leave her. He felt that viscerally, along with the yawing, gaping chasm that had previously been filled by the sense of all his brothers. He’d like to think that the chasm was a result of being far from them. The way he couldn’t sense the darkspawn until they were close. But something told him that that was not the reason.
“Unless you do not want us to save her life?” Morrigan’s mother drawled.
“Is she…” he began, but he couldn’t finish the question. He was too busy trying not to notice how very pale she was, or the number of blood-soaked rags piled by the side of the bed.
“Not if you leave us to our work,” Morrigan told him.
He hovered. Still unwilling to let her out of sight. Certain that something terrible would happen if he did. But then Morrigan snapped at him to move and he found himself fleeing before he’d even consciously moved his feet.
Outside, the lake was quiet. The first rays of sunlight were just peeking over the horizon. The birds were chirping, the lake was still and the entire world seemed quiet and peaceful.
It did not seem at all appropriate.
And it made him want to scream. The way he used to in the quiet of the abbey. When he was ‘just checking’. Just checking that he was still alive, just checking that he could still be heard, just checking that he hadn’t gone stark raving mad.
Maybe he had.
That would certainly be a more palatable set of circumstances.
He heard the door to the hut creep open behind him and somehow without looking, he knew it was the mother, not the daughter, this time.
“Is she-” he asked, still unable to form the words.
“Nothing is certain. But she is strong.”
Perversely, he wanted to laugh. He knew that.
“The others. They’re all dead, aren’t they?”
“Perceptive,” she drawled. “Good. That will do you credit in the end.”
“What happened?” he asked, not entirely certain why he thought that she would know, but knowing that somehow she must. She seemed to know so many things.
“What always happens,” the witch sighed. “A king falls. Heroes fail, and new ones rise to take their place. Which place will you take, I wonder?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He deliberately ignored the twist in his stomach.
Later, he got the full story out of Morrigan. The King and all the Grey Wardens falling in battle. The Teyrn’s betrayal. The darkspawn roaming wild and unchecked and Elissa…
Elissa still hadn’t woken up.
Knowing his luck, she was probably going to die too, and he would be left all alone in the world. Directionless but for his duty to stop the blight. A task that he was not in any way equipped to handle.
Everything he’d ever cared about was gone. There was no hope, none at all. He thought that when Arl Eamon had abandoned him to the abbey he’d understood what losing everything meant.
Turns out that he hadn’t.
It was his habit to joke. Even in the privacy of his head he searched for a sarcastic comment, a witty one-liner. The ray of hope that he’d always had to carry for himself, because no-one else was going to provide that light.
For the first time in his life, he couldn’t find it.
There was nothing there but all-consuming, black, bottomless grief…
At least, until she walked out of the door.