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“Screw you. I hate you. You suck.” huffs a young man's voice over the screaming of alpine wind and the roars of a gigantic fire ice breathing lizard.
A deep female voice imbued with unnatural reverb from all the unnatural events it's been involved in, replies. “Carver, what did I tell you about being nice to my friends?”
“Marian, you have no friends. I can't be nice to what doesn't exist.”
The Hawke siblings, who are not twins but who may as well be, begin bickering and squawking at each other while clinging to the rocky side of a mountain, gigantic swords strapped to their backs. They even partially let go of the craggy face of the monolith and begin batting at each other with their heavily armoured hands. The reason for this minute's argument perches on a precipice just above them, his mismatched eyes lazily peering down at them, just as if some sort of demon cat were staring over the edge. The occasion for his verbal abuse by Carver is him reaching the rest area before the younger man, but Ser Mettin imagines there are many more reasons for this dislike, and it doesn't matter how many times Hawke proclaims that her brother simply hates everyone.
Once Hawke closes in, he offers her a hand. A pale hand, yes, but not a deformed, red veined one. Thanks to previously incurred blood magic related brain damage, red lyrium can only be a pro and not a con for him.
“If you drop her I'm going to remove your fat head from your body and do something awful with it. Stick it up an ogre's arse, perhaps." Carver growls, from further down. To illustrate, he attempts to draw his sword, only to think twice when he considers how many thousands of feet there are between him and terra firma.
“You shouldn't say such things to our bad boy general, Carver. He might freak out and begin throwing red lyrium around. You don't need a spike of that to the face right now.”
“I'll say whatever I want to whoever I want, whenever I want, sister.”
The siblings chuckle evilly, and then Hawke takes her friend's wrist. Actual friend, in fact. As far as either can be friends with anything. Assisting someone up a mountain is a more dangerous operation for Mettin, because Hawke is stronger than he is. Stronger than everyone. But nothing goes wrong, and soon a humongous brother and sister are sitting beside the humongous templar.
Carver huffs, his eyes casting themselves up the rest of the black slope. “Where is this alleged dragon now?”
Hawke, multi time saviour of the world, grins over her glowing green Andraste hand. She's Hawke, so it doesn't hurt, only blows up demons and the holes they leave in the world. "At the summit, presumably.”
“Why have we brought this spectacle with us?” Carver jerks his head at their companion. “Seems like Kirkwall follows us wherever we go.”
“No one else is strong and also crazy enough to climb mountains. Dorian wanted to come, but he stubbed his toe on a bookshelf, and I had to leave him sobbing on the floor.”
Carver snorts, and struggles not to laugh. “This one's hoping to be put out of his misery too, I imagine. You ought to just do it for him, sis. I can't understand why you keep him around, but then again, I'm not female.”
“Yeah, he's my type. Type T for Templar. Also, he's your superior.”
“No, he ain't! And neither is Cullen, anymore. Both of them are doing their own thing.”
"I thought you were all about doing your own thing?"
"Not when it means I end up with no lyrium or bad lyrium."
Mettin speaks. "The boy is a true templar."
"By the Maker, shut up."
The plus side of spending time with Ser Carver, is that Hawke is consequently less of an acid burn herself. Or at least, she appears less of one in comparison to her little brother, whom few in Thedas can tolerate. She offers Ser Mettin her water skin, magically kept cold by one of the only women and mages she likes - Vivienne. In so doing, she turns to stare at her longtime lover in much the same way he himself stares at things, that is, with lazy contempt. “Sorry that I've ruined every one of our recent dates by bringing my brother along, Mettin, but with things all topsy turvy at the moment there aren't any other babysitters available.”
A grin and an eyebrow flash accompanies her words, making Mettin’s black heart flutter. He smirks back, performing his version of an eyebrow flash, which simply consists of opening his eyes all the way. Doing so makes him look more psychopathic rather than less. “I do not mind, Hawke. Children require guidance, after all.”
Carver yelps. “Screw you, I hate-” a dragon roars nearby, cutting off his rant, but the behaviour closer to home has Carver disturbed, and he blanches almost to his ginger frenemy's level of pale when he recalls a pertinent fact. “Ahhhh. Um. Somehow this freak is married, Marian. And so are you. You shouldn't be going on dates with him at all…”
“It's a friendship date.”
“Nooo, it isn't, haha. A friendship date is going with Vivienne to look at silk, or with Varric to the pub. You're a reaver. Killing dragons is a romantic activity for you.”
Hawke looks back at her friend with benefits. “Aww, isn't he cute, Mettin? He thinks either of us cares about morals, or is even aware of what ‘romance’ is.”
Mettin blinks, the eyelid of his red eye moving slightly slower than his normal one. “I am aware of what romance is. And I do care.”
A clawed gauntlet pats a black steel thigh, malign red light beating within the evil armour. “No, you aren't. I know what you get up to behind the scenes, hun. I was there, I got the receipts. Plus, I use Inquisition resources to spy on and dig up dirt on all my besties.”
“I have changed.”
“Into a red templar. It's a good look for you. A natural progression, some might say.”
“No, changed in here.” The man taps his chest. He can't tap the area over his heart, because a profusion of red lyrium is obstructing the way, so he taps as close to it as possible. Hawke - Heroine, Viscountess, and Inquisitor - stares uncomprehendingly. She has never changed. How she was in Ferelden, is how she is now, and that is what makes her so valuable, but most people are not such strange, terrible emanations of the Maker.
Carver comes to the rescue. “I think he's saying that apart from gaining a heart of lyrium, he's had a miraculous moral makeover, sister. But that's bullshit, because he's still sleeping with you. It's a good thing you're so lacking in fertility.,cause I don't need more weirdo nephews calling me ‘Carvy’.”
“Well, you know, I don't give him a choice, brother. Could be that biting Samson’s manhood off turned him into a good guy somehow. Stranger things have happened. At least he's not a whiny sort of reformed bad guy.”
The trio move on, armoured hands and armoured feet unrelentingly pulling and pushing the rest of their bodies up the mountain. This is Thedas, and they’re warriors, so the only equipment they use are deadly ones - picks and their bodies.
A snow white high dragon soars around the snow white summit, and Hawke means to kill it. Kill it, mount its head, stuff its babies, entertain Orlesians over the corpse - the usual. Typically, it's unwise to trot into battle against a giant reptile while sporting less than a full team, especially less than a full team in which there is no mage, but Hawke is the equivalent of many armies by herself, Mettin is superpowered, and Carver is Carver.
The beast lands in front of the humans, and roars a challenge, the inside of its mouth and the underside of its wings cobalt blue. Hawke says nothing more, her dark and demonic gaze transfixing the dragon’s.
“You can bully the lizard to death. Snipe at it till it loses the will to live.” says Ser Mettin to his fellow holy knight.
Mopey as he is, Carver grins. “And you can throttle it. Grow into a giant and spin in circles like your gutter husband did.”
The red lyrium blade, Certainty, makes its appearance, glowing with an eldritch power that matches that seething within Mettin’s armour. “I might just.”
Hawke continues to ignore her two favourite templars. Her own sword is some horrible saw-toothed behemoth she looted off some talking darkspawn a decade ago. Battling an archdemon was a thousand times worse than battling any normal dragon has ever been, and her companions are simply here to distract the monster, as all those armies were there to distract the archdemon. They’ve done it plenty of times before, so the ‘boys’ take a flank each, slashing at the creature’s legs until it’s crippled and takes wing, only to collapse on top of its nest. Hordes of drakes and dragonlings arrive to defend their queen.
“Do the spin thing!” shrieks a young male voice.
“No.” proclaims a slightly older one, much more calmly. Metal zhings and reptiles hiss.
“Do the spin thing, you muttonhead!”
“Minime.”
“Shit, he’s speaking Tevene. Sis! Make him do the spin thing! I’m not joking here! Ahh! My ankle!”
But while her brother is being swarmed by small dragons, Hawke is charging at the big one, her armour generating its own roar, her jagged sword held over her back like a deathly banner.