Chapter Text
She hears their footsteps approaching from the hallway, even through the heavy doors, and lifts her head, tearing her attention from the book in her hands to glance over her shoulder at the room’s entrance. She will not be pleased at yet another fruitless interruption, but she knows this lead is good, and it sounded, when it was discussed, as if they really had found the man. If that’s true, this time will be different. If that’s true, she’ll finally have what she needs in her hands.
The doors fly open and two men march in with a figure between them, hanging limp in their grasps, held up by his arms. She narrows her eyes and watches them in silence.
They cross the room in silence except for the sound of their boots on the flagstones, and throw the prisoner into the chair waiting for him. He stirs and groans, lifting his head to rub his brow with stubby fingers as he looks around the room.
“I’ve had gentler invitations,” he says dryly.
She steps forward into the light and drops the book on the table. The sound of it echoes thunderously in the great chamber.
“I am Cassandra Pentaghast,” she announces coldly. “Seeker of the Chantry.”
He lifts his chin, studying her calmly. “And what, exactly, are you seeking?” he asks at length.
“The Champion,” she says, and thrusts the book at him across the table.
He raises his eyebrows and drops his eyes, not to look at the book, but to examine the fingertips of his gloves. “Which one?” he asks, pulling idly at a loose thread.
Shre slams both her hands on the table, leaning over him. “You know exactly why I’m here!” she snarls, and daws her knife to put the tip to his throat.
He glances at the blade of the knife and regards her with no more concern than before. He knows, damn it - he knows she can’t do anything to him. Frustrated, she turns the knife over and drives the point into the book, so hard it goes through the pages and hits the table. “Start talking, dwarf,” she commands, straightening. “I’m told you’re good at it.”
“Alright,” he says, his voice finally betraying some trace of - not fear, certainly, but perhaps surprise. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me everything about her,” she orders, glowering at him as he examines the damaged book. “Start from the beginning.”
There’s a wicked gleam in his eyes when he looks up at her. “Whatever you say,” he says, smirking, and sets the book aside. “You probably already know, it started with the Blight. Darkspawn poured out of the wilds. On the edge of the cliffs in the south of Ferelden, the Champion herself made a stand against the darkspawn.”
“Here they come!” Marian calls, pulling an arrow from her quiver and readying it. Beside her, Carver steps back, raising his sword with both hands and bracing himself for the attack, and on her left Garrett grips his staff more tightly.
They appear over the ridge: darkspawn, first three, then four of them, sharp teeth bared in hideous grins, black eyes sunken into their withered and terrible heads. “Now!” Marian shouts.
No sooner are they in view than Garrett slams his staff into the ground and throws a ball of fire at them with one hand. They all howl horribly. Marian draws back her bowstring and fires at the one nearest, loosing an arrow into its chest. It staggers, grunting, and jerks its head around to find the source of the attack. She’s already turned her bow on the next one, and her next shot strikes it in the shoulder hard enough that it drops its weapon.
With a wordless yell, Carver rushes at them, his head down and his sword ready to swing. He delivers a blow that knocks one of them to the ground and sets a second off balance. Before it can recover he turns his blade back on it.
Marian sees another coming at him from the side, and pulls back her arm. The arrow goes right between its eyes, and it stumbles back, gurgling.
“Thanks!” Carver shouts, and whirls to take off its head with a clean blow. Garrett gets the next, encasing it in ice so it can’t move. Carver’s next strike lands solidly across its chest and it cracks into pieces.
Everything falls silent, for a moment, and Carver drops to his knees on the ground.
“Scouts,” he says in a slightly shaking voice, looking up from the corpses to meet Marian’s eyes. “There’ll be more behind them, and close. We’ll have to face them sooner or later.”
Marian lowers her bow and glances at Garrett, who nods. “Then we make our stand here,” she says. It’s as good a place as any to fight the darkspawn, a flat plateau stained black with the sludge from their veins, with the great mountain of a dead ogre’s figure rising next to them. It’s as good a place as any to die, if they’re going to die.
“There’s more!” Carver cries, climbing to his feet. “Shall I give them a taste of my blade?”
“They’re all yours,” Marian says grimly, turning to survey their surroundings. There are more of them approaching from the other path, and likely more still behind them, yet out of sight.
Carver runs at the approaching gaggle of ‘spawn, twisting his sword back so he has the widest possible arc to swing it. The momentum as he does carries the blade through all three of them at once, cleaving their spines in two and dropping them all to the ground. The next wave, approaching from the south, is met with a rain of fire that Garrett calls down, and Marian follows it with a hail of arrows that scatters between them to pierce them all.
“Look out!” Carver shouts, and she can feel the ground shaking under her feet before she even turns to look, knows before she sees it what’s approaching. A second ogre is charging up the slope towards them, as big as a tree, its monstrous face twisted with hunger.
“Prepare yourselves!” Marian shouts, readying her bow.
It roars as it reaches the top of the bluff, lowering its head. “Carver, move!” Garrett shouts, and Carver leaps to the side as he hurls a fireball at it. Marian fires at it, aiming straight at its head while Carver goes after its legs, his sword whistling as he cuts through the air. The ogre drops to its knees, howling.
Marian looses an arrow into one eye, and then into the other. It flails blindly, great fists whipping through the air grasping for something to attack, but Carver dodges out of the way, and she and Garrett are out of its reach. Garrett whirls his staff through the air and sends shards of ice into its heart.
“Its mouth, Marian!” Carver yells. “Aim for its mouth!”
“I’m trying!” she shouts back, her bowstring drawn back as tightly as it can go as she waits for the opportunity. “Look over here, you massive brute, over here - “
It works; the ogre turns towards the sound of her voice, trying to get to its feet, and she fires directly into the back of its throat. It roars and falls, shaking the bluffs around them as it drops to the ground.
“There’s no end to them!” Carver calls desperately as he looks around. More darkspawn are climbing towards them, already almost upon them. “We can’t keep this up forever!”
“Maybe they’ll run out of darkspawn,” Garrett offers dryly, settling back into a fighting stance, his staff angled across his chest.
“We have to keep fighting,” Marian says fiercely, turning so she’s back to back with her brother. “We can’t give up now.”
“Then let’s give them everything we’ve got,” Carver says grimly, backing away from the approaching horde to join them.
But before the ‘spawn reach them, there’s a roar, not from around them nor from ahead but from above, and a great shadow passes over the sky. Marian lifts her head, and sees above them a dragon, its wings outstretched, spitting fire in a vast arc at the darkspawn encircling their group. Flames rise up around them as the creature comes to rest, with another roar, on the cliff towering over them, and Marian stares up at it in awe.
“Bullshit!” she snaps, striking the table with her fist. “That’s not what really happened!”
He stops and looks up at her, raising one eyebrow. “No?” he asks. “Does that not match the story you’ve heard?”
She glares, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m not here for stories,” she tells him. “I’m here for the truth.”
“And what makes you think I know the truth?” he asks, spreading his hands.
“Don’t play games with me!” she snaps. “You were there when it all began! You knew her, even before she was the Champion!”
He scoffs and shakes his head at her, one corner of his mouth twisting up into a mocking smile. “Even if I did,” he says, “I don’t know where she is now.”
She leans forward, slapping both palms against the table so hard it shakes. “Do you have any idea what’s at stake here?” she demands.
He actually has the nerve to laugh at that. “Let me guess,” he drawls, resting his elbows on the table and putting his chin in one hand. “Your precious Chantry’s fallen to pieces, and you need the one person who could possibly help you put it back together.”
She turns her back on him, clenching her fists and gritting her teeth as she fights the urge to punch him. “If you can’t point me to her,” she says, “then give me everything you can.”
“You’re not worried I’ll just make it up as I go?” he says, taunting.
She looks back at him and studies him. His eyes glint like steel as he looks back at her. “Not at all,” she says after a moment.
He shrugs. “Alright,” he says, leaning back in his chair with a smirk on his face and folding his hands in front of his chest. “But you’ll have to hear the whole story.”
“Then tell it,” she says.
He gives her a long, calculating look before he nods. “Alright,” he says. “I should start with Ostagar.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “Ostagar? You don’t mean at the same battle where the King of Ferelden…”
“The very one,” he says. “The things that led the Champion to Kirkwall, they all started there. After all, it was the Blight that drove the family out of Ferelden.”
“Hm,” she says, regarding him coldly. “In that case, carry on. I would hear of their involvement.”
He nods, still giving her the same smug look. “The morning before the battle,” he says, “the king’s army left the ruins and marched to the edge of the Wilds, where King Cailan planned to make his stand against the darkspawn horde. And among those soldiers, fighting with the third company, was the Champion herself.”