#cassandra pentahast

[punwolf]

Whuffie’s “I need more Dragon Age on my dash so I’m making gif sets” replay. Set #3 Return to the Temple of Sacred Ashes

[punwolf]

Falling for You (Autumn Prompt with Dorian, Cas, Bull, Blackwall)

Prompt: Falling for You from this list Pairing: Friendships / Non romantic - Dorian, Iron Bull, Blackwall, Cassandra, Inquisitor

Time Period: During Inquisition and before Trespasser

Rating: T

Warnings: None

Content: Action and Dad jokes.

@cozy-autumn-prompts​

It was a Greater Mistral. Big. Scaley. Trying to gobble all of them up. Annoyed beyond all belief. Able to spit more ice than the average Orlesian noble at a social event. It was just as flashy as a bunch of Orlesians, too, with all its buffed, brightly colored scales. The dragon probably ate fewer people than they did, but was just as fancy as their clothes. That was beside the point.

How did Audrie know exactly what kind of dragon was screeching like a terror demon someone stuffed into a corset? Because after so many flying menaces tried to turn her into a flaming, toasted mage kabob, she’d learned everything she possibly could about dragons. The shape of the head, coloration, and placement of horns signified a specific breed. “Ever so helpful to know what’s trying to swallow you whole,” she hissed with dripping sarcasm under her breath.

“Dorian!” she belted in the general direction of the other mage as she ducked beneath a spiked tail the size of a tree. “Shoot it with fire! It’s vulnerable to flames!”

“Shoot it where?” Dorian demanded, somehow keeping his balance on a boulder and managing a debonair pose which would have done credit as a cover for one of Varric’s Swords and Shields books.

“In the mouth, up it’s aft end -- I don’t care, just shoot it!” Ice rained down around her, freezing batches of red and gold leaves as they pelted the top of her head. She knew it was fall, but this was ridiculous.

“Has anyone told you that you have a very quaint and eloquent way with words?” Dorian called back across the field with a sardonic, mocking laugh.

“All the time! Don’t make me set Sera on you when we get back to Skyhold!”

“The horror!” Dorian snorted, sounding anything but terrified. “Whatever will I do?” He and Audrie coordinated an attack of swirling flames around the beasts head.

While it was distracted, Bull ran in with his usual dragon killing enthusiasm, bellowing almost indecently. He swung his two handed sword, aiming for wing membranes or joints. Cassandra tried to give him some cover with her shield and Blackwall closed in from what they all hoped was the dragon’s blind spot.

A hind foot the size of the Free Marches drug furrows in the ground with it’s claws before mule kicking Blackwall. His shield came up, taking some of the impact, but he flew backward through the air until he landed hard on his back. From past experience, the Inquisitor knew his shield arm was badly bruised or broken from the incredible force. The bearded bear of a man was weakly moving his legs, but couldn’t regain his feet.

“Cassandra! Healing potion to Blackwall!” Twitching meant alive. Not running or screaming meant injury. Audrie was relieved he was still among the living, but he wouldn’t be for much longer if the dragon got its teeth over him. She had a warm place in her heart for Blackwall. The last thing she wanted was her friend to wake up in the belly of the beast as an icicle.

Cassandra didn’t waste time and Audrie threw a magical shield around the Seeker as she boldly barreled beneath the dragon’s chest, weaving through legs. It snapped at her, huge maw descending to give Cassandra a view of draconic dental hygiene from the inside of its mouth.

Audrie didn’t envy her. Yuck.

A confused expression seeped over the mistrel’s stiff face as it chewed ineffectively on the transparent magical barrier. Never one to waste an opportunity, Cassandra drove her sword upward into the roof of the creature’s mouth, aiming for a weak point which would skewer the brain.

The dragon got crankier and spit Cassandra out faster than stinkstalk. Blood ran in ropes from the corners of its mouth, but it didn’t have the decency to roll over and actually die.

“Pity,” Dorian commented loudly enough for the group to hear. “I thought we might be done in time for lunch!”

“You’re going to be lunch if we don’t finish this thing off!” Audrie grumped, joining him in another fire attack. Bright blasts of orange pummeled down, sizzling through scales and making the creature belch a volley of ice toward anyone in its beady, vengeful gaze. Who knew a flaming dragon smelled like chicken? If she lived long enough to pen memoirs, maybe she could write a cookbook. 101 Ways to Roast Dragons: Eat before being Eaten.

Blackwall sprang upright as Cassandra flung aside the empty potion bottle. Charging toward the dragon while sheltering behind their shields, they gave Bull the distraction he needed to launch himself at the opposing wing. His sword slashed it to ribbons, assuring the monster was grounded. It was just as deadly, but lost the advantage of strafing by air.

It threw back its head and shrieked, spewing furious arcs of ice across the battlefield. Wide eyed, Dorian threw himself into a cluster of boulders for shelter. Bull flattened and hugged the grass, inspiring Audrie to follow his example. Blackwall folded to his knees, head tucked behind his shield, and Cassandra rolled beneath the blistering cold. While it’s head was still in reach, the Seeker thrust her sword through the tough sinew and muscles of its neck where they connected to the head. Putting all her weight into the strike, she plunged the blade deep, twisted it, and watched the life drain out of its baleful eye.

While she took a much needed breath, Audrie cautiously picked herself up, boots slipping on the premature ice crust. “Is everyone all riiii–eeeeeetttttt!”

Although dead, the dragon’s tail spasmed a final time, socking the Inquisitor squarely in the gut. She sailed for a sickening moment before crashing to earth. The world was still tumbling and spinning when her mind processed there was nothing under her feet. Showers of pebbles and mud flaked from under her soles as she slid over the edge of a cliff. Her fingers instinctively clawed for purchase, slipping on the wet vegetation slithering out of her grasp.

“Inquisitor!”

“She’s over the cliff!”

“Help me pull her up!”

A cacophony of familiar voices broke out as she didn’t dare breathe. All her weight was in her arms and the precarious finger hold which kept her between life and death was slipping. What a stupid way to die. What will they tell Cullen? I don’t want to leave him. Not now, just when I’ve started to love him. What are they going to do about closing Rifts?

She hung between disaster and survival for less than a minute, but it could have been ten lifetimes before strong grey hands grabbed one wrist, anchoring her. Gloves and gauntlets clamped around the arm, and Dorian latched on to the back of her coat.

“We’ve got you,” Blackwall’s calm, serious voice reassured her. Steady warriors inched her to safety.

“Don’t let go, Boss,” Bull agreed and gave her a mighty heave which hurled her into a pile of armor, padding, mud, ice, and people.

Her heart hammered in her ears and giddiness flooded through her body as it always did when she narrowly escaped certain death. Breaking out into a fit of giggles, she took the staff which Dorian placed into her hand. “Thank you,” she gasped, rocking into a sitting position as the other mage knelt beside her. “You know what? I almost fell for you.” She dissolved into peals of high pitched, manic laughter.

“Naturally,” Dorian retorted mildly, “but I think there’s a strapping young templar who might object.”

Audrie plopped face first into the grass, ignoring how it froze her nose, and tried to stop. “He’s not – he’s not a templar any more.” The preposterous fact she’d chosen Dorian made her heave with even more ill-timed laughter. He was a very handsome man, but lacked all romantic interest in women.

Audrie gulped down air and coughed a few times. Blackwall and Cassandra had seen her in this state before, so the bearded warrior rubbed her back until it passed.

When she finally sat up, she pushed tangles of blond hair out of her face and focused on breathing. “That was too close.”

Nobody disagreed, although Dorian arranged a very put upon expression to hide the fact he enjoyed her enthusiastic hug. “Yes, well, do be more careful next time, will you?” He patted the top of her head. “I haven’t enough friends to go losing them over the edge of cliffs you know.”

[punwolf]

You Take My Breath Away (Cassandra/Cousland Story)

Prompt: You Take My Breath Away from this list

Pairing: Cassandra / M!Cousland Warden

Time Period: After Inquisition / before Trespasser

Rating: T

Warnings: None

Content: Canon friendly AU. Warden found the cure and went to Skyhold. All other content follows the game storyline. Cassandra doesn’t become Divine.

Note: Romantic fluff drabble

@cozy-autumn-prompts

Nothing deterred the single minded focus Cassandra leveled on an offending practice dummy. Silently, it awaited its fate. She whirled with a warrior’s grace and her blade came down with a satisfying thunk in the Autumn afternoon. With an expert tug, the sword came free in a shower of splinters.

Reginald lounged with his shoulder resting against a stone wall, green eyes alight with mischief and admiration.

“You watch me very intently, my lord,” Cassandra commented aridly.

Reginald’s grin stretched like a cat poised over a forbidden dish of cream. “That is because I quite enjoy watching you. It is not often I am graced with so beautiful and formidable a woman.”

A familiar disgusted sound didn’t completely cover her tiny, pleased smile. Her eyes flicked his direction. “Beautiful am I? I’ve been called many things, but seldom that.” Briskly, she spun in a series of practice jabs, landing each on the dummy.

Reginald’s delightful charms once wooed any number of prospective bed partners from kitchen maid to noblewoman. He deployed them a great many times to earn delights untold through his life, alongside more than a few sticky situations. In his sixteenth year he nearly lost his best armor and went streaking naked as a greased nug from the wrong lady’s bedchambers. She had insisted she was unattached and available. Her husband disagreed. The jealous, disagreeable man would have pinned Reginald’s pale hide to a wall had he been more spry. Thus began a career of mayhem and lessons he never forgot. One must never, under any circumstance, get caught.

He seldom did, until Cassandra captured him in a way which left nowhere to run, no tricks to aide him, and no will to try. For all his hedonistic pursuits, he never fell in love until his path crossed the warrior woman with two dozen names and a stubborn streak to match a bronto. She always insisted in her matter-of-fact manner that she was no beauty. He would never be swayed into believing it. Her toned body was muscular, fit, and strong. She scoffed when he gave her such compliments, aware of her scars and absence of the soft voluptuousness popular among noble ladies. He saw only a woman victorious over enemies and beautiful curves that leant to strength rather than assets pushed up by a corset. Cassandra’s body was svelte as a lioness. One of his favorite parts of physically showing his admiration was to touch, caress, and kiss every inch of his intoxicating warrior lover.

If only he could badger her into marrying him, life would be complete. Thus far she was resistant to his proposals, but it didn’t stop him from trying. Like the rogue he was, he lay in wait and sprung it on her now and again when she was on unrelated topics. The tactic worked to break through her walls and confess how she wanted to be wooed. He was confident it would eventually wear her down to binding him to her for life in the eyes of the Maker.

As a man in love who had eyes for no other woman, he could be quite dogged.

Usually glib and clever, he was abashed to realize she was looking at him, sword relaxed at her side, waiting for him to speak. He had been lost in the sight of her and filled with quiet longing of many kinds. “Beautiful,” he argued with his taunting grin. “Strong, capable, and gorgeous.”

“Now you go too far,” she snorted. “Perhaps you would care to join me?” The tip of her sword waved toward the sparring ring.

“I could,” he agreed. She was an inch taller than he was and his equal in strength. Her training made her one of the best, but he was a Grey Warden. His lithe grace and speed matched her power and precision. They were an equal match on the training field, but he stepped closer to her in one of the startling quick moves of his class. “In our quarters, perhaps?” It wasn’t what she meant and he knew it, but he enjoyed teasing her. “It so happens I brought you a gift in my travels today.”

“A gift is it?” She sheathed her sword blandly at the hip with practiced confidence and pointedly looked at the book sized bulge in his hip satchel. Apparently she was in the indulgent mood he brought out in her. “What might that be?”  

“That,” he pretended to be grave as he looped his arms around her hips and leaned in to kiss her, “would be telling.”

Their lips met, and if anyone might have thought that Cassandra Allegra Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast was a disinterested or aloof lover, they were sorely mistaken. She was as passionate in kissing as she was in battle or the bedroom. He met her fervor with a lusty caress of lips, dancing teases with the tip of his tongue, and drawing nearly as much pleasure from it as  more intense attention shared only in private. “We could go practice, but really, Dear One, where is the fun in that just now?” A flash of smug chiding lifted the corners of his lips and neat goatee.

“You are a terrible distraction.” Another kiss lingered pleasantly between them before she plucked a stray leaf from his auburn hair. Because of the season the foliage was nearly the same color. Yielding to a rare, open smile she relented. “Very well.”

Both of them were well armored, but he put an arm around her waist no differently than if they were sweeping through the halls of a castle dressed in silks. “How are things with the Inquisition now that a mage has become Divine?”

They spoke of the state of politics for a brief moment, and Cassandra’s concern for the Mark which was beginning to trouble the Inquisitor. When they crossed the threshold of their quarters, the conversation was shelved for another time. The simple living space was their sanctuary away from the burdens and trials of the outside world.

The fire burned low but the coals were still active and glowing. Reginald found the temperature pleasant to both of them, but wanted to avoid future distraction. He tossed some logs on it and gave it a gentle prod with a poker to stir the flames to life then removed his boots.

He and Cassandra knew one another in every intimate detail for long enough that she wasn’t startled at his silent tread circling around her. Laying his lips on her jaw, he made easy work of her armor buckles.

Although born in luxury at Highever, the Blight honed him into an adept thief with quick, light hands. The sense of mischief saturating his soul prompted the same hands to unerringly find certain places on her anatomy he which he knew savored sensual attention once divested of metal and leather. Most of the exploration was through cloth or padding, but he had his ways of sneaking fingers in to brush skin from time to time.

As part of the game, she always returned the favor, and after he lavished some playful, physical affection on her, she unfastened his Warden armor. Once it was hung up side by side on their armor racks, he withdrew her gift. Sprawling on his side of the bed, he held it up so she could inspect the cover. You Take My Breath Away. “I should say that you certainly do that for me. More importantly,” he flipped it over to inspect the back, “it is ranked six out of six fluttering scarves. It is not one of Varric’s, but I believe it might catch your interest.”

“You are incorrigible, but it is very thoughtful. Thank you.” She made to take it, but he pulled it out of reach.

“Oh no,” he insisted as she joined him. He molded his body against her from behind, laying the arm with the book across her ribs. “This is meant to be read together.” He kissed the outside corner of her lips before they rearranged pillows to get comfortable. “Perhaps,” he whispered in her ear, lightly kissing it, “even acted upon if we get to some particularly intriguing scenes. Until then,” he flipped to the first page, “let us see what harrows lay in store for this particular heroine. No doubt there will also be a lover. Although,” he added with a mock seriousness, “never so dashing as me.”

“Or as modest,” Cassandra parried with warm indulgence, stroking his arm and obviously appreciative how he continued to romance her with the same ardor as if they were freshly courting.

“Perhaps.” He didn’t argue, but began to read with the beat and flare of a poet – if a poet would have paused in his narrative to passionately kiss his audience or ended unclothed and tangled together at the midpoint of the book to invent their own chapters.

[madamebadger]

So one of the things I’ve been thinking about is Cassandra’s appearance, and specifically, Cassandra’s attitude to her own appearance. Because I’ve read a lot of things implying that Cassandra doesn’t pay attention to or care about her appearance, and I... am not sure I agree?

Now I will agree that she doesn’t consider it a particularly high priority. If something’s going to fall by the wayside for her when her time and energy is limited, it’s going to be anything she considers frivolous--including romance novels and styling her hair. But I think she definitely notices and cares.

Her hair, for instance. Whether it’s attached to her head or a separate hairpiece, the little braid-y crown thing would require some upkeep to keep it tidy and in place. And the rest of her hair: a short cut like that requires frequent trimming and at least minimal styling to look halfway decent. (I often say that I wear my hair past my shoulders because I’m too lazy for anything shorter. My hair is long and fairly straight and I can wash it, brush it, braid it before bed, tie it back to keep it out of my way, and get the split ends trimmed off once or twice a year. It is extremely low upkeep, and a cute little cut like Cassandra’s would be far more work.) 

And she wears eye makeup--fairly heavy eye makeup, no less. It’s not a soft look, not a particularly femme-y look; it is, in fact, a somewhat harsh and dangerous look. But it’s still a deliberate look, not just a “I rolled out of bed and washed my face and was done” thing. It’s something she does on purpose, and that she does on purpose every day, as far as we know.

(And as far as I can tell, she never mentions her scars--certainly doesn’t seem embarrassed by them--it delights me that there are two major romanceable characters with really obvious facial scars in the Bioware games I’ve played, and they’re Garrus and Cassandra, and the one who makes awkward and slightly embarrassed jokes about it is the alien dude from the warrior society, not the human woman.)

And her pants, her pants, yes, I have probably spent more time staring at Cassandra’s ass than is entirely appropriate but those are the pants of a woman who has great legs and a fantastic rear end and knows it and doesn’t mind if you know it too. They’re clothes for someone who is trying to project an air of deadly grace. They are not courtship clothes but predator clothes.

So yeah, to me, it’s not that Cassandra doesn’t care how she looks. I think she does, although it’s certainly not the highest thing up on her priority list. It’s just that how she wants to look isn’t “pretty,” isn’t femme. Cassandra wants to look dangerous, with her scars, and her severe eye makeup, and her clothes designed to look like the sheath for a blade. But good dangerous. Dangerous like the slinking walk of a panther or the simple grace of a well-made sword.

And she’s actually pretty good at dressing herself to achieve that effect. She doesn’t dress like Vivienne or Josie, but then, she doesn’t intend to.

(She’s always suspicious that Leliana and Josephine want to put her in a dress, and Leliana and Josephine are not above letting her think that because it’s a little bit funny. But I think the first time it ever comes up, after Cassandra has made a disgusted noise at the very concept of Orlesian fashion and left the room, Leliana murmurs, “Well of course I’m not putting her in a dress.”

And Josephine replies, “Naturally not. It would hide those legs.”

And they look at each other and smile.

There might be the occasional pie-in-the-sky plans for a backless dress with a narrow skirt slit  up to the thigh, though.)

[daraasum]

Cassandra: Herald, you mentioned before that many from your family have joined the Chantry.

Rhiannon: Yes, I did. Faith and commitment are encouraged in the Trevelyan family.

Cassandra: I am surprised you did not pursue such a path yourself.

Rhiannon: I did. Several times.

Cassandra: What stopped you?

Rhiannon: I used it as an idle threat to my mother. The idea of me living chastely in a Chantry somewhere almost made her faint.

Cassandra: Somehow.. I am not surprised you would do such a thing.