Chapter Text
The market reeked.
It was high summer, in the sixty-fourth year of the Blight, and the sun beating down on the Vyrantium flagstones raised waves of heat that caught and magnified the normal stench of city living. Excrement, both animal and human -- horse and dog droppings in the street, chamber pots emptied out of windows into gutters, the sweat and blood of the mass bodies of people mingled with the effluence of industry: tanners airing rotting leather and bleach, hot metal and brimstone from the forges, farmers and fishmongers trying to hock their fragrant wares faster than the heat could rot them. And over it all -- as in every city in Tevinter -- the tang of blood.
Mhairi had no idea how Duncan could stand it. She was suffering from the stench, and it was worse the further they pushed through the markets, yet Duncan seemed oblivious to any malaise. Perhaps years of fighting Darkspawn had inured him to merely human scents. If so, Mhairi wasn't sure whether that was something to look forward to.
It didn't look like they were going to get away in a hurry, either. Their party moved slowly -- a train of pack mules weighed down heavily with baggage made slow going through the heavy crowd. Most of the other market-goers didn't bother with mules; Mhairi scowled at the sight of a train of ragged elves and scruffy humans following an elaborately-robed man across the flagstones, each one staggering under a crushing weight.
"This place is a pit," she muttered, and Duncan chuckled.
"Wait until you get your first deployment into the Trench," he said dryly. "That's when you'll learn about pits."
Mhairi shook her head, glaring around at the city streets in their blackened, sharp-edged grandeur. All of it built on the backs of slave labor, to support indolent lifestyles of waste. "We ought to let the Blight roll over the rest of this Maker-forsaken country."
Duncan's chuckle died, and he sent a sharp glower her way. "That's not what the Wardens are, Recruit," he said severely. "We are sworn to defend all the kingdoms of men from the darkspawn menace. It is not our place to look at them and decide in the Maker's place which of them are worthy of defending."
Mhairi frowned, but didn't argue; Duncan was still her commanding officer, and it wasn't her place. Even if -- as everyone knew -- the Blight that ravaged the land was all the fault of the Tevinters in the first place, anyway. Everyone knew that their hubris and greed had pierced the Golden City, offending the Maker so greatly that he punished mankind with the Blight, endless ravages of diseased monsters to devour and destroy all that man had built. It would serve them right if the Grey Wardens stood aside and let the Blight have them all.
But still the Wardens fought, as they had for more than six decades onwards, struggling to stem the tide of the Blight and stand as a bulwark against the darkspawn armies. And even Wardens must eat, and repair their weapons, and a hundred other things from day to day; and so they needed supplies, tithes from the lands they shielded. Tevinter paid their dues as well, if more grudgingly, than any other kingdom. Mhairi knew enough of strategy and logistics to know that the mundane cargo of vegetables and rice they were hauling back to Griffon Wing Keep was as critical for their success as any number of enchanted swords.
The Commander halted now, reining his horse in as they reached an intersection. He hefted his purse in his hand, and seemed pleased by the jangling of metal. "I got a good deal from those old skinflints today," he said. "There's still a good bit of coin left over. Let's see, how can I best spend it to benefit the Order today?"
"You shouldn't have needed to pay them anything at all," Mhairi grumbled. In theory, the supplies were supposed to be free, tithes given to the Wardens in return for their protection. Mhairi had been puzzled at first by the heavy purse Duncan had brought along, until she saw him at work with the millers and quartermasters: in order to keep the goods flowing freely, certain bribes had to be paid to the right people at the right points in the chain of command. Just more evidence of how deeply the corruption had worked its way into this land, she thought in disgust.
Duncan paid little mind to her grumbling. He glanced around the market, taking in the wares at every stall. "Ah, I know," he said, and turned his horse down a nearby alley. Mhairi followed, leading the mules.
The sharp-chiseled stone walls loomed even closer together overhead as they left the wide-open emporium for a cramped, crowded flea market. The flies grew thicker, and Mhairi had to cover her nose against a thick wave of stench blown into her face by a hot breeze.
They pushed through the crowd until they rounded another corner and found themselves in a large stall. Two of the walls were lined with stalls and cages, and the space between them bore a pair of solid stone blocks. Sweeping the ground in front of the blocks was a tall, meaty woman with a shaven head and a blocky tattoo covering half her face.
Duncan stepped forward, and the bulky woman looked up and set her hands on her hips. "Oi, you Warden!" she called out, and gestured behind her at the row of stalls. "Come back to pick up some more meat?"
With a shock, Mhairi realized that the stalls were not empty; they were full of people. Some of them stood, some of them slumped against the bars, and some huddled or lay listlessly on the ground. "Commander!" Mhairi protested. "This place is…"
"Part of the slave markets. Yes, I know," Duncan said, unperturbed. "I always visit here when I'm in the city, to see if there are any promising recruits I can pick up for the Wardens."
"That's right, chickie," the big woman said. She grinned, a horrible leer that showed several broken-off teeth. "Lothera's Refurbished Goods, you won't find a deeper discount anywhere in Vyrantium. Assuming, of course, that you don't mind other people's leftovers."
"Leftovers?" Mhairi felt almost faint.
"I get my goods cheap," Lothera said proudly. "Pick 'em up from dark alleys, off midden heaps, up from under the docks -- even from the morgue sometimes! You'd be surprised how many magisters make that mistake, dumping 'em off when they're only mostly dead. Clean 'em up, chuck a bit o' food and drink down their gullet, and put 'em on display. I get 'em cheap, so any sale I make is a profit, too."
"That's vile!" Mhairi said, feelingly.
Lothera shrugged, unbothered by Mhairi's evident contempt. "No skin off my nose if you don't want to make a sale," she said. "There's always a taker -- if not grubs for the army, then blood for the wards up on the city walls. At the end of the day, we all bleed for the glory of Tevinter."
Mhairi shook her head, bereft of words. Through the whole exchange, Duncan had been walking along the row, looking carefully at the slaves penned in the cages. A few he only glanced at before moving on; others he stopped and studied them intently. At one such, he stood up straight and called out "Lothera, a moment."
The slaver dropped Mhairi from her attention and bustled over to Duncan's side, eager to make a sale. She followed reluctantly, trying to peer around their bodies to see what had caught Duncan's attention.
The slave in question was hardly recognizable as an elf; half-crouched on the floor of the pen, he resembled nothing so much as a pile of raw meat. His skin was covered with open wounds, long lines that wound up and down his limbs and curled around his joints. A few of them still bled sluggishly, staining the straw below. He shifted slightly, and through the fall of dark hair she momentarily caught his eyes; a dark green, clouded with pain and fever and shot with blood, but those eyes…
There was a steel in those eyes that all the blood and brutality in the world couldn't break.
Duncan gestured to the pen, his intent gaze never leaving the elf's face. "What happened to this fellow?" he asked. "Those don't look like any flogging scars I've ever seen. Did he get these in some kind of fight?"
Lothera guffawed. "That would have been redundant, wunnit?" she said. "He's got a story, that one."
"They all have stories," Duncan reminded her, and she chuckled.
"That they do, but this wolf has a good'un! Now, up till a few weeks ago, he was a bodyguard -- the personal guard for Magister Danarius. Not just your run-of-the mill gladiator, oh no! The Magister was a big fan of old Arlathan, and he had his bodyguard done up like one of them fancy old Arcane Warriors. Got pure lyrium tattooed right into his skin, patterns that were supposed to let him fight half-in, half-out of the Fade.
"Well, this elf got in his head to do a runner. They caught up with him, o'course, and that would have been bad enough for him, but when his master caught up with him he tried to fight back! Don't know what you expect, when you go teaching a slave how to fight. After that Danarius was done with him -- but he wasn't going to let him go with a fortune in lyrium still under his skin, oh no! He took it back first -- peeled it right out with magic, so they say -- and went back home with his lyrium, leaving the elf behind to bleed all over creation.
"That's where I came in," Lothera said, thumping her chest with a hollow noise. "Because who just leaves a perfectly handsome elf bleeding out in the gutter like that? One thing I'll tell ya, though; if he lives, he's gonna have one interesting pattern of scars."
"Yes, I imagine he will," Duncan said. He nodded, coming to a decision. "I'll take him. How much?"
Lothera's eyes gleamed avidly. "How much ya got?" she said.
"Now, Lothera, you wouldn't try to cheat the Wardens," Duncan said mildly, and Lothera chuckled.
"I'm just messin' with ya. Thirty silver, as always, and I'll throw in a potion for the road, so that he doesn't up and die before you get ten miles down it. Wouldn't want him to die to anything but darkspawn, yeah?"
"Done." They shook hands -- how Duncan could bear to touch that stained, filthy paw, Mhairi couldn't imagine -- and coins clinked, the Warden's purse returning to his doublet. The slaver unbarred the pen and reached down, gripping the elf's arm to drag him off the bloodied straw; he looked even smaller against her bulk, and made a few groggy attempts to stand on his own bare feet as he was dragged stumbling onto the street.
The slaver didn't bother with chains or manacles -- too cheap to part with them, most likely -- and Duncan made a quick assessment of the elf's condition and gestured to Mhairi. "Recruit, help me get him up on the horse," he said.
"Will he be able to stay in the saddle?" Mhairi said doubtfully, though she slowly moved forward to assist Duncan in trying to manhandle their new acquisition into the saddle. It was hard to find a place to grip him that wasn't sliced with open wounds, and her hands cringed and faltered against the bloodied skin. Duncan's grip was casual and firm, not seeming to notice the sticky smear of blood that was left every time he touched the elf.
"He's in no condition to walk; and the straps on the war saddle will hold him in place," Duncan said. "It's a long way to go back to Griffon Wing Keep."
"Commander, what are you doing?" Mhairi hissed, once they were out of earshot of the slave stall. "Buying slaves? This isn't what the Wardens is about!"
"The Aerials are always shorthanded; you know this," Duncan said reasonably. "Especially with Furiosa's latest clutch of eggs recently hatched. We need more riders."
"You have riders!" Mhairi protested. "There's no lack of solid, promising young men from good Orlesian families who would be honored to join the Aerials."
Duncan shook his head. "I don't need young men from Orlais," he said. "I need elves. You know this. The days when our griffons could carry two men in full armor into battle are past; even one full-grown human is too much for most of them nowadays. It slows them down, they fall to the Darkspawn, and we lose the rider and more crucially, we lose the griffon. Recruitment from the Dales has fallen to an all-time low, but the fighting along the Western Approach is heating up again. I need more elvhen recruits and I need them now; and if I can't get them from the Dales, I'll find them in Tevinter."
"This is wrong," Mhairi argued under her breath, even as she worked with Duncan to get the half-conscious elf boosted aboard the horse. "You can't just buy a person and… and throw them against the Blight like some kind of ammunition!"
Duncan didn't answer her at first, taking the time to pull the leather loops and fix the buckles meant to strap an injured soldier into the saddle; it would keep the rider in place even if they passed out from their wounds. Only once the last knot was tied did he turn back to Mhairi, and his eyes were iron-hard in a set face. "Recruit," he said, "We fight daily against a darkness that if left unchecked will swallow this world, and every man, woman, child and slave in it. What is the freedom of any man worth when measured against the life of the entire world?
"We cannot, by our oath or by conscience, neglect any weapon that can turn to our advantage. To this end we have the Right of Conscription; we can press any man, elf or dwarf into service as a Warden which they have no legal right to refuse, their lives forfeit to our cause. Once conscripted, they are bound to the army and they must obey orders, else face punishment or death. What is the difference, truly, between a conscript and a slave?"
Mhairi scowled through the Warden's soliloquy; she knew that nothing he had said was untrue, but it still felt wrong. Duncan took his mount's reins in hand and began to walk, leading his horse forward; Mhairi followed, and the mules obligingly fell in along with the train's leaders. "The difference is that a conscript is still a person," Mhairi said at least, after several minutes of road had passed. "Not property. Not a thing."
"Precisely," Duncan said. "And he will not be property. He will be a recruit, and a Warden of equal standing to any other Warden. I cannot give him his freedom, but I can give him this -- one more chance."
Doubt still seethed in her heart, but Mhairi kept them to herself; the baggage train moved off again, through the heat and stench and chaos of the city. They passed under the city gates -- huge, looming bulwarks thrown up to halt the spread of the Blight, reinforced with magics fed daily with the blood and sweat of slaves.
Past the encampments of the ragged Tevinter army, the jagged pattern of trenches and earthworks meant to slow the advance of the encroaching scourge; slow, hinder, but never triumph, not completely. Past the burnt-out fields, the blighted ravines, into the blasted wastes -- empty now of darkspawn only because their work was already done; nothing more could survive there. It was the sixty-fourth year of the Blight and there seemed no reason it should ever end.
Fire. Fire fills the sky from horizon to horizon, beating down on his head in waves. Sweat trickles down, or perhaps blood; either way it hurts the same. Razor wires of pain wrap around his body from his legs on upwards, and pulse pain with every heartbeat; rivers of sweat-blood running endlessly down his chest, down his legs.
After an endless time the fire dies, and is replaced by a freezing cold. The cold crawls into him, throbs at every line… no, there are no more lines, they were all ripped away. Ripped out with his blood still dripping from them, shreds of flesh still hanging from them, again and again without end. What's left of him?
He will not die.
Fire, then cold, then fire, then cold. Pain pulses and sweat drips. Everything hurts, but he is still alive. He is still alive.
Flashes of faces, snatches of sound. Familiar? He isn't sure. He thinks he hears Shokrakaar, but she's dead. Isn't she? Is he so close to death that he is seeing into the world beyond?
He doesn't want to die.
When the fire dies but before the cold envelops him, the churning, lurching world stops and hands lower him to the ground. Water is poured in his mouth, and he grabs at it, gulps at it; food is pressed in his hand and he grips it with all his tenuous strength. It's hard, it hurts to eat; chewing is like a mouthful of glass shards, drinking is like swallowing fire. But he swallows anyway, because he must eat and drink if he wants to live.
He wants to live.
Fire, then cold. Fire, then cold. A burning sun in an endless stretching sky, light reflecting off pale barren ground. Cold darkness, lit only by a campfire. The lowing of livestock, beasts of burden, the muttering of human voices. They are not speaking Tevene, and he can't remember any of the Dwarvish tongue right now. But they push food and water in his hands and he eats.
Are these his new masters? Human men and women in dark brigandine and chain, bearing weapons that reek of blood and worse. He doesn't remember being sold. He doesn't remember anything after Danarius' magic set its claws in his flesh and ripped, tore, shredded. But he is not where he was; they are not in the city, and he knows none of the faces or voices that make up his new world.
He has been sold, then. He doesn't know why, or who his new masters are, or what they want from him. But he will watch, and he will listen, and he will learn. He will learn their moods and their whimsies and their wants and their weaknesses, and he will do what he's told, he will do what he must to survive.
He doesn't want to die.
He wants to live.
By the time they cleared the ridge of the mountains his fever had broken, at least enough to let him see clearly again, although his head still swam and noises of the sea roared up in his ears if he tilted his head to the side. They had him riding, perched like a child's toy atop a mountain of a war steed, which puzzled him. But perhaps they recognized that if he were made to walk, as a slave properly ought, the climb up this breath-stealing ridge would have killed him.
He would neither questions his new masters, nor thank them.
The baggage train heaved up and over the ridge and began down the switchback trail on the other side, a fractured black slope of rock and gravel. The basin ahead opened itself up to Fenris' eyes for the first time, and the view was breathtaking.
From here they could see clear across the basin to the other side, where the horizon disappeared into a jagged wound in the earth. Looming at the edge of the canyon, its bulk massive and daunting even from this distance, was a fortress; the land around it was cut with moats and trenches. Tiny figures crawled across the land in the distance; be they men or monsters, he could not make out from here, as the harsh light still made his eyes swim.
But it seemed they were not headed for the fortress today: once they made it to the basin floor they turned aside, instead, and made towards the edge of the canyon further north. The plain was overgrown with grass -- in places it grew so long as to brush his feet as he rode. In other places banks of grass lay withered, fading as quickly as it grew. Perhaps it knew that in the face of the end of all things, one season of life was all it would get to have.
Their destination seemed to be a smaller fortress, set further back from the gorge; it had an oddly disjointed, sprawling design as though thrown together haphazardly from whatever buildings were at hand. It was at once flatter and more widely spaced, but with an truly inordinate number of towers; Fenris could not make heads nor tails of the design.
On their way in to the uneven-looking fortress they began to pass through herds of livestock: bawling druffalo, gangly-limbed rams, even pungent colonies of nugs. Although they were largely left to run free, browsing on the grass or the shrub that grew on the rocky hillsides, they had obviously been cultivated for a purpose. He wondered if tending to these herds of animals would be his new task in this place. Quite a comedown from once having been a magister's prize bodyguard, but better to be mucking out the pigs than to be fed to them.
The caravan crossed a wooden drawbridge that creaked over deep, dry ravines, and through a portcullis wide enough to admit five horses abreast. Inside the courtyard, the beasts of burden were pulled aside for unloading. Fenris hesitated, unsure whether he should begin his labors here, but the warrior -- Duncan -- beckoned him onwards, and he followed.
Duncan was accosted several times on his journey through the keep by underlings with questions or problems for him to resolve; most of the details washed over him as the Wardens spoke to each other in rapid-fire Dwarvish, too fast for his still-swimming head to follow.
After several interruptions they reached a large kitchen, full of noise and clatter and the hot smell of overcooked oil. Fenris looked around the room with intent interest, sure that this was to be his new home. Was he to be a kitchen scullion, then? It was not the worst of fates; at least then he would not be starved.
"Another of your strays, Duncan?" a voice cut into the haze of his thoughts, this one speaking Tevene; he looked over to see a red-haired elf, middle-aged, looking at him with a scowl and her hands on her hips. "We're full up on kitchen staff; we don't need any more. Maker! What a mess he looks."
Duncan shook his head. "He's not for the kitchens, Orana," he said, which was more than anyone had bothered to tell Fenris. "He's for the --"
The last word was one that eluded Fenris' ears, although he strained to hear it. Whatever it was, the cook -- Orana looked faintly surprised, and also looked at him with a tinge of pity. Fenris kept his eyes resolutely on the floor.
"Give him a good meal, take him to see the healers, and then bring him down to the -- chamber," Duncan said; again that unfamiliar word. With that he left, and Fenris couldn't help a twinge of regret at seeing the only semi-familiar face disappear through the doorway.
Orana didn't bother to talk to him, which didn't surprise Fenris; even slaves had their own hierarchy, and the head of the kitchens was far above any lowly newcomer. But she was not unkind, pulling him to a corner and setting him there with a plate of stew and bread, which he dutifully ate.
She then led him to another part of the fortress and left him in the care a silver-haired elderly human lady. She undressed him, looked him over, clucked at the mass of open wounds on his skin, and prattled on in a language he didn't know at all; Ciriane, if he had to guess, which had very few speakers in Tevinter. He did his best to guess and follow her instructions so that she would not grow angry at his slowness. Was this the chamber to which Duncan had ordered him taken? Was he to be an assistant to the infirmary, then? How was he to carry out duties in a language he did not understand?
No one had been cruel to him -- so far -- but he was growing increasingly confused and distressed as to what his place was to be in this new fortress. His safety, his very survival depended on being able to obey orders and carry out duties well -- yet how could he do that if no one would tell him what his duties were? He was anxious and half-sick with guessing, second-guessing, trying to interpret every little nuance of those around him. If he could not get it right, could not find his place…
Duties were safety. Value was survival. Those slaves that could not be useful always had a place: as fuel, for the ever-hungry wards atop the city wall. These were Wardens, locked in eternal battle against darkspawn; he did not doubt that their wards were just as hungry. Surely they would not have dragged him all the way from Tevinter just for his blood?
The healer applied a salve to his wounds, briskly but not roughly, though the salve itself stung and ached in the cuts. He couldn't help but cringe from her touch, which made her lips purse, but offered no other resistance.
Once he was dressed again -- more in bandages than in the tattered clothes he'd worn on his journey from the North -- another page in blue and silver stuck their head in the infirmary and inquired of the healer in Ciriane. She looked him over from head to toe -- the same look of pity in her face that he'd seen on Orana -- before answering in the same language.
He did not understand the words, but he grasped the intention, and when the page beckoned him to follow, he went.
Down a long corridor and several flights of stairs, the air became cooler, damper despite the desert clime. Fenris suspected they were underground; at any rate there were no windows. The page left him at the end of a long line of others, waiting in what looked like a long narrow receiving chamber with a low ceiling. Fenris kept his head turned submissively downwards, even as his eyes flickered up to take in the rest of the chamber's occupants.
Most were men, being both human and being male. He caught sight of Mhairi, the human girl who'd accompanied him back from Tevinter, and she smiled tentatively at him and raised her fist in a gesture of victory. He looked away. The only other elf in the crowd was a brown-skinned female with dark brown hair -- he would have taken her for another slave, except that she clutched a staff in her hands. No mage was a slave, not even an elf. No elves of the Dales, with their distinctive facial tattoos. No other elves of Tevinter.
The chamber's occupants chattered among themselves, but their tones were hushed and nervous. Fenris listened as best he could, and caught a wide scattering of different languages: Ander, Ciriane, Alamarri, and Dwarvish. No Tevene. From what he was able to make out of the chatter, they were anticipating something -- some ritual -- but most of them were actively wondering what it would be, no more informed than him.
At last the waiting ended, when a heavy, iron-strapped door at the far end opened. Duncan came out, his brow heavy and face grave, dressed in the most formal Warden uniform. Two other Wardens came in behind him, carrying what looked like a heavy, rectangular… cauldron? Trench? It was full of a dark liquid which sloshed slowly and heavily, not quite like water or even blood, and reflected no light.
Duncan stood in the center of the room and surveyed the crowd with a somber expression. He addressed all of them, speaking a few, simple words of Dwarvish. "Brothers and sisters," he said, "you know why we are here."
I don't, Fenris thought, but he never would have been so insolent as to say so aloud. Duncan kept speaking.
"From this point forth, you may not leave, save by completing the ritual. May the Maker in his mercy spare you; may Andraste in her grace intercede for you. May the Father of Mountains and the Mother of Skies strengthen you; may the Creators and their works protect you."
It was the most bizarre, eclectic mix of blessings that Fenris had ever heard, and something about it made the hairs stand up on his spine. Some undertone of desperation, as though the speaker of the prayer were reaching out to every deity they knew of in hopes of gaining assistance from any at all.
Duncan picked up what looked like a ladle, made of some corroded gold-colored metal, and dipped it into the trench. Stepping forward, he held it up to the first recruit in the line, and he drank.
Moments later the recruit began to choke, dropping to his knees as dark lines began to creep up through his face, his eyes turning white. He slumped to his knees with a groan, twitching faintly, but Duncan had already dipped again and moved on to the next recruit in line.
He went down the line one by one, inducing the black liquid to each recruit, who twitched and seized and fell unconscious. Mhairi was the fourth such in line, and she stepped forward bravely enough and took the vessel in her own hands to drink. But when she fell, the black veins blazing against grey skin, she neither twitched nor breathed again.
Some of the recruits cried out in horror. One tried to run for the door, only to discover the two burly Wardens waiting on either side, their swords drawn. Fenris had seen worse, many times before, in the everyday rituals of Tevinter. No matter where he went, it seemed, men were all the same.
Duncan kept on moving down the line with that same steady, implacable pace. The dark-haired elf was next, her face ghostly grey under her skin, but she did not fight him when he lifted the ladle to her lips. "Andraste watch over you, Fiona," he heard Duncan murmur, as he was now only a few feet away.
He was glad to see that she still moved after slumping to the ground.
At last he came to Fenris. Eyes still on the ground, he had a clear view of the bodies, moving and unmoving; a clear view of a pool of blood that snaked over from the door. Duncan stopped before him, and Fenris still refused to look him in the face. "This is the only gift that is mine to offer," the man said in a quiet, sorrowful voice. "Not freedom, not even life, not for certain. But a chance. Creators watch over you, Fenris."
What choice did he have? Only the same one his kind ever had: obey, or die. But for him, that was no choice at all.
He drank. The liquid was bitter metal on his tongue; like iron but rotted, scalding, molten.
As the darkness engulfed him, roaring with ten thousand hideous voices, Fenris seized onto only one thought: I will not die. I will not die.
I will not die.
When Fenris woke, a raging hunger in his belly and a crushing ache in his head, every one of his wounds had scarred over, leaving pale white glistening lines like spider-silk in their place.
And every strand of hair on his head had turned white.
A Warden paced up and down along the end of the stone room, steps quick with restless energy. He was tall -- tall, even for a human -- but thin, which only seemed to emphasize his height. Dark blond hair pulled into a ponytail from which strands escaped every which way; feathers sticking out of every joint and seam of his Warden uniform; he looked like nothing so much as one of the scarecrows the peasants put in their fields to try to keep ravens away. But if there was any inclination to laugh at his ungainly height and rumpled appearance, it was quickly stifled by the dark scowl on his face and barely-repressed tension in every movement, the faint smell of ozone and flicker of lightning that accompanied every gesture.
"I know that right now, you all think yourself very fine fellows," the Warden was saying, as he paced back and forth before the dark walnut-wooden door leading out of the room. "You were chosen for this duty; you've passed the Joining; and by now you're dreaming of yourself soaring through the sky on the back of a griffon, the thane of all creation and all the land below you at your mercy.
"You imagine yourself with a griffon at your beck and call, slaying your enemies, bearing you faithfully wherever you want to go, and at the end of the day, when you're done living out your adolescent fantasies, you think you can just put your griffon away like a sword or a pair of boots, don't you? Well, that's where you're wrong!" The man's voice cracked out like a whip, causing the line of newly-fledged Wardens to jump nervously. Except for Fenris, who didn't move, staying staring at his feet without change of expression.
"A griffon is not a weapon! A griffon is not a horse, or a chariot, or some kind of mounting-block with wings! A griffon is a living, breathing creature that needs to be cared for and looked after, every second of every day!" The man punctuated every word with a blow of his fist to the table which made the entire chamber rattle. "A full-grown griffon needs at least one large goat's worth of foot each day, and you'd better believe that whatever bones and fur they don't cough up as hairballs, you're going to be shoveling out of their eyrie at the other end. Are you prepared to deal with that? Are you prepared to deal with colic, and broken blood-feathers, and croup, and one thousand and other maladies that the Maker has seen fit to inflict on our noble beasts? Are you prepared to chop fifty pounds' worth of fresh meat every day, and shovel that much shit every night? Are you prepared for rigorous training sessions twice a day, every day, for the next two years? Because if you're not prepared for that, then you might as well just turn yourself around and march right out these gates and back to Adamant!"
"Anders," one of the other Wardens put in, a long-suffering tone to her voice. The Warden subsided, but only slightly, still seething just under the surface. He looked around the room, pinning each of the hapless recruits with a steely brass glare.
"Let's just get one thing clear," the Warden -- Anders -- pronounced into the silence. "You are not what matters here. You are replaceable. You exist only to serve your griffon -- to make sure that it is fed and groomed and properly socialized and trained to fight, and ready to fight. The Wardens need your griffon far more than they need you. Understand your place in this arrangement, and devote your every effort to serving it, and maybe -- just maybe -- you'll be worth my griffon's time."
Diatribe delivered, the Warden at last stood aside from the wooden door, folding his arms over his chest with a thunderous scowl. The other warden heaved a weary sigh, gave them all an apologetic smile, and beckoned them through the door.
The wooden door opened onto a corridor, wide walls and a high ceiling with an oddly spacious feel to it. Breezes moved freely through the corridor, suggesting an opening to the outside somehow. Fenris shuffled along with the rest of the crowd, his head still down, eyes trained on the ranks of rushes lining the floor. He had not needed the human's ranting in the outer chamber to remember his place, and his own unimportance in the face of duties. He was a slave; his duties were all that he would ever be.
Fenris was not impressed by Duncan's speeches of brotherhood. In the end, the rules here were the same as they had ever been in Tevinter: Obey or die. Sometimes: obey, and die anyway. But Fenris meant to live.
When he passed under the first stone archway, a peculiar scent hit his nose that he had never smelled before; it smelled like animals, livestock and manure, but with a particular rank quality that he couldn't place, and an underlying too-familiar tang of blood. A meat-eater lived here, Fenris quickly determined, more than one.
In the large, round stone room beyond, a shadow stirred, and the sheer size of it broke Fenris out of his habitual submissive gaze: he looked up and couldn't help but recoil, taking a step back towards the stone arch because what lay beyond was a… was a monster.
There was little other way to describe it, the hybrid combination of bird and beast, big enough to fill the room beyond to a ceiling nearly eight feet tall above. It sat back on its haunches and he could barely see past the volume of its wings, but there was a glimpse of feline tufted tail, lashing periodically with tense, agitated energy.
It glared down at the intruders in its lair with golden eyes the size of saucers, narrowed in distrust and murderous bloodthirst, and past the razor-sharp flange that tipped its beak leaked an incessant rumbling growl. It any further proof of its ferocity were needed, the visible parts of the creature's head and neck were riddled with scars, patches of feathers missing to mark the passage of some lucky blade or burn. Yet the creature was here, and its foes were not; whatever peril it had faced in the past, it came out the victor.
It was little wonder that the entire crowd of fledgling Wardens shuffled nervously back against the stone walls.
The tall Warden, Anders, brushed through the crowd with impatient elbows and went right up to the murderous beast, murmuring incongruously as though the titan of beak and claw and sinew were no more than a baby. "There, there, Fury," he cooed. "Hungry? Got enough goats? Your color is looking so good! How are your babies, hmmm?"
The leviathan actually crooned at the madman. Lids shuttered over those bloodthirsty eyes as the beast practically wallowed against Anders, ducking its head against his chest for scratches and pats. As the beast rolled onto its side, lifting its front legs away from the graceful curl of its body, a small herd of… cheeping furry somethings were revealed.
The other Wardens moved forward, nervously urging each other onwards; Fenris hung back, looking around the eyrie with narrowed eyes. Put together with the Warden's speech outside the door, it seemed clear at last what his duties in this strange new fortress were to be. He was to be a groom after all, then, attending to their needs and overseeing the care of these beasts.
He moved around the edge of the eyrie, looking over the nooks and crannies of what was to be his new domain, when a pitiful cheeping sound reached his ears. The tips of his ears flicked as he tried to pinpoint the sound; following it back to its source, he knelt down on the stone floor and ducked his head to look under a stone bench.
One of the brood must have wandered off, and apparently wedged itself under the bench to the point where it could not back out again. Fenris saw the fluffy haunches, the stubby fuzzy tail windmilling furiously as soft claws scraped fruitlessly against the stone. Peering further, he thought he saw the source of the problem; the little stubs of wings are far too small to carry weight yet, but they poked upwards above the rest of the body and got caught against the far edge of the bench, trapping the hatchling in place.
Letting out a sigh, Fenris took a moment to consider the best way to extract the beast; then he reached under the bench with both hands. One hand slid against the roof of the bench to press the stubby winglets down against the hatchling's body, while the other worked forward to grip the scruff of its neck. With one swift, firm pull -- one that made sweat break out against his back; gods, even a baby griffon was heavy! -- he slid the stranded hatchling out from under the bench.
Before he quite knew what had happened, Fenris found himself sitting on the cold stone floor with a lapful of warm, heavy, fluttering hatchling. The baby seemed pathetically grateful to be rescued, and was now jumping up against his chest trying to reach his face with its beak and claws. They were young and soft, still, not sharp enough to be a danger, but Fenris still took a firm grip on the griffon's sides and pushed it back to get a look at it.
It looked back, cocking its head to one side as if for a better angle of view. At this age, there was barely a discernible difference between the fluffy downy feathers and the fuzzy pale fur of its back half; only a thin rim of cinnamon feathers around its eyes broke up the coloration. Fluffy ears stood out from its head, ridiculously outsized in proportion; both the legs and the wings were short, plump and stubby. It was, bar none, the most ridiculous creature he had encountered in all his life.
Those green-gold eyes looked straight into his, soulfully, and the griffon said "Squek?"
Fenris began to wonder -- for the first time since his master had run him down -- if there wasn't more to look forward to in life than living another day of it. If, along with duty, there could be joy.
~tbc...