Chapter Text
Elissa trudged up the hillock, taking care not to stumble on the uneven ground and praying to both the Maker and Andraste that she hadn’t gotten herself lost in the wilderness.
And also that she wasn’t on a completely hopeless, desperate quest, that would ultimately end in abject failure.
Which, to be honest, she probably was.
She had only been to her destination three times before. The first time she’d had a guide, the second time she’d been unconscious, and the third she’d had the benefit of very precise directions. But that had all been years ago, of course, and, as good as her memory was, it wasn’t that good.
Beside her, her lone companion barked and wagged his tail. She smiled at him, bending down to scratch his ears. If Alistair ever got wind of the fact that she’d trekked through the Wilds, telling no-one where she was headed, with only Dane for company, he’d probably have a fit.
But what he didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt him.
As long as she walked out of the Wilds alive and well.
The rational reason for her somewhat-lacking adventuring party was because she doubted that Morrigan – especially a Morrigan determined to go into hiding – would appear if she’d brought half her wardens with her.
The slightly less rational reason was because honestly? Elissa wasn’t sure how she was going to react if the impossible happened and she actually found Morrigan.
Attempt to claw her eyes out for being able to provide Alistair with what she could not? Fall to her knees and beg for help, any help, no matter the cost? Rail and scream? Or re-extend the hand of friendship?
She didn’t know. Anything was possible.
And that was before you factored in whether or not Morrigan could actually help her, and whether or not the child would be with her.
It had been almost four years. Enough time for he or she to have grown. Enough time to tell whether or not they would take after their father…
She hadn’t planned to come here. It had truly only been a half-formed idea, borne of desperate wish fulfilment, but when one of her scouts had told her that they’d seen a woman, alone, in the Wilds, she’d deemed it too much of a coincidence to ignore, and had set out in search of her friend.
Because she could still call Morrigan a friend.
Couldn’t she?
She owed the witch more than she could ever repay. Both her own life and, more importantly, his. But then, the price of saving their lives had been high. Perhaps too high. After that awful, horrible night, she had only been too glad to grant Morrigan’s request to leave her be and not seek her out.
It made it easier to ignore the consequences.
And, perhaps, to hate her, just a little bit.
But then… The victory ball, the argument in Amaranthine, the arrangement.
She’d have been able to let him go after the ball, she was almost sure of it. She wouldn’t have been happy and she wouldn’t have ever loved again, not like that, but she could have survived.
She wasn’t sure that she’d survive it now.
Wasn’t sure that, after years of being with him – after years of loving him completely – that she’d be able to stand in the chantry and watch him marry another without crumbling entirely.
But he’d do it, eventually.
He likely wouldn’t want to, but she knew him well enough to know that he would, one day, place his duty above their relationship. That he would find someone who wasn’t too objectionable, who could love him as much as she did and, most importantly, provide him with what the kingdom needed.
And, on that day, a part of her soul would be lost forever.
Part of who she was would die, never to be resurrected.
Unless…
Well, when you got right down to it, the problem – the thing that truly kept them apart – was the inability to provide an heir. A deficiency caused by the taint in their blood.
The same taint that should have seen one of them die atop Fort Drakon.
But Morrigan had known how to prevent that.
And if she knew how to prevent that, perhaps she might also know how to circumvent the other… issue.
Of course, she had no evidence to support her idle imaginings – just hope.
A lot of hope.
Like the hope that she wasn’t totally and completely lost.
Dane gave a loud and happy bark, then took off at speed. She followed, her heart thrumming in her chest with that awful combination of fear and hope.
And, finally, there it was.
Nestled in a slight valley in the middle of the Wilds, she finally beheld the ramshackle hut where so much of their journey had begun.
It looked no more or less abandoned than it had the last time she’d seen it. But that wasn’t particularly telling. It had always looked abandoned even when Flemeth and Morrigan had lived there.
The only way to know anything for sure was to brave the inside.
Maker, she hoped her scouts hadn’t been wrong.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she told Dane, attempting to use conversation to distract herself from her own thoughts. “I couldn’t do this alone.”
He only barked and leapt towards the hut.
She chose to take that as a ‘you’re welcome’.
*
Of all the things that Elissa had thought that she might find inside the hut, a Dalish elf was not one of them.
She’d expected to, if she was very lucky, find Morrigan. If not, perhaps some scant evidence that she had been present recently, and maybe – maybe – a clue to her whereabouts. A hint of her plans.
If she was honest and realistic, really she’d expected to find nothing at all. To return to the Vigil, her life still in shreds and her shoulders heavy with the knowledge that she would still, someday, lose the man she loved forever…
Instead, she’d found Ariane.
The hut itself had showed all the signs of being long abandoned, except for the fireplace, which had been recently lit, judging by the scant remains of a few logs. Whether it had been lit by Morrigan, or by Ariane, she couldn’t tell. Just as she couldn’t tell which woman had been the one her scouts had seen.
But Ariane had no reason to lie, and after her experience in the Brecilian Forest with Zathrian’s clan, she was all too aware of how carefully the Dalish guarded the fragments of their past.
It was not quite the same thing, but when Castle Cousland had fallen, she would not have parted with the family blade for all the world. She could well understand holding onto the past, and the importance of keeping it alive.
The question now was what could Morrigan possibly want with a tome on some ancient elven… something? Eluvian? Had that been the word? She had always claimed to possess knowledge beyond that of any Circle mage, but she had never indicated that such knowledge might reach back to Arlathan.
Why would it? Neither Morrigan or Flemeth were elven.
Not that you could necessarily say that Flemeth was human… Perhaps she had lived so long that some version of her had lived among the elves of Arlathan. It was certainly possible, at least.
Ariane’s insinuation that Flemeth might be alive was also troubling. Though the Witch of the Wilds had seemed prepared for their arrival – had known why they had come to her that day – she had still fought. Killing her hadn’t been easy. The idea that there was an immortal, apparently unkillable entity of great power out there, who might hold a grudge against the wardens that she had saved killing her was… not good.
Though really trying to guess at Flemeth’s motivation was an exercise in futility. She was too strange, too unique, too unknown.
But Morrigan wasn’t.
Or was she?
The grimoire that they had extracted from the Circle Tower had been utterly unintelligible to her, and more importantly, also to Alistair, who had far more experience with such things.
But Morrigan had been convinced of what she’d read in its pages, and she’d been scared by it. She’d never thought she’d ever see Morrigan scared. Not by anything. That, more than anything, had been the reason Elissa had agreed to slay Flemeth.
Or at least, to try and slay Flemeth.
Apparently the Dalish – or, at least, Ariane – wouldn’t consider her slain for several centuries.
They knew her. The Dalish. They even had a name for her. That in itself wasn’t surprising. Flemeth herself had once said that she had many names. But was there a deeper connection there? Was there a reason that the clan had welcomed Morrigan into the fold?
By far what concerned her most, though, was the method by which Morrigan had obtained the elven tome. It threw a lot of other things into question.
Had she taught Morrigan how to affect friendship? Or had the witch known how to do that all along, and everything she thought they’d shared had been a grand manipulation from the start? Had everything, from following them through the Wilds, to fighting the Archdemon side by side… been a lie?
Morrigan had always had her own plans. Her own designs. She’d said as much that awful, awful night when she had revealed the solution to their impending death. At the time, Elissa had thought that the pain on her face had been genuine. That it gave her no pleasure to offer what she’d had to offer, but that she had also wanted Elissa – wanted them both – to live.
Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe she’d been manipulated all along.
It wasn’t a comfortable thought.
There had been so much to consider that night. So much that was uncertain and scary and awful, and her mind had been too full of grief already. She’d had no space to consider what Morrigan’s plans might have been after.
Morrigan had said that she would go, and they’d never see her or the child again. And that had been enough.
But was this part of it? This tome, this Eluvian? Was it the same plan? And if so, was it hers or Flemeth’s? Morrigan wasn’t one to be unnecessarily cruel. She was, at her core, practical in all things. If she had taken an Elvish tome by manipulating an entire clan, it was for a purpose.
But what that purpose could be… she hadn’t a clue.
She’d put good sovereigns on Morrigan being able to read and understand such a tome though.
They needed more information about the book – about Eluvians – so that they might divine her next move. And, as much as she hated it – as bad as her memories of Kinloch were – the Circle was the only place she could think of to go to for such a thing.
She was just glad that Ariane needed her to gain entry.
Not that that should be the case, of course. A matter for the King to address perhaps? Providing she could bring it up without revealing why she thought it such an issue.
It was an odd sort of lead but she was curious now. How did a child with the soul of an old god, Flemeth, the ancient elves and Eluvians all connect?
If she couldn’t find Morrigan, then perhaps she could at least understand her a little better, and – if she was really lucky – retrieve the priceless Dalish tome while she was at it.