It’s a load of pretentious angst. Did you even expect anything else? :-)I borrowed your dark AU Iseran for this one. (When dark AUs collide…)
….one last thing between Das and the final trip to the Deep Roads.
petrichor - the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of dry weather
His heart is a blighted waste.
Once he fought because one way or another, he cared.All those good and noble reasons are now forgotten – his bleeding soul and his righteous fury…
Vengeance is the last wall between him and the Call, the last shred of self he’s got left. It is a cold flame that burns even when all other fires have gone out.
It’s got a face – his vengeance.Bronze, gold and amber, eyes like sunrise, smile that would melt ice-caps off the Frostbacks…Face of what could have been. Should have been.Iseran’s hand in his own, Iseran’s lips on his brow, Iseran’s hot breath against his skin, Iseran’s laugh in his ear…
Even after all these years, it is hard to tell what hurt more.That Iseran betrayed him – or that he betrayed everything Das thought was right? It hardly matters now.Every string can only stretch so far, every cup can only hold so much and his heart was dead even before the Blight took over.
…
The surrounding landscape matches the mindscape within as they march across the Drylands and towards the Arlathan Forest.The soldiers around him look miserable and nobody talks.
…
Once he led armies into battle.Now he’s one of the thousands of nobodies following the Commander’s lead. He blends in as well as he can. It helps that everyone’s face is wrapped in a headscarf and covered in a layer of dust.
His own people declared him dead once he became too much of a ghoul to be the face of the Inquisition. He didn’t protest. Leliana may have been a friend once, but he didn’t doubt for a second she would have him killed should he refuse to play along. It wasn’t even a lie. Not really. He doesn’t feel quite alive. It is almost a welcome respite. Nobody’s eyes are on him, nobody’s hopes or destinies ride on his decisions. He’s here to pursue his vendetta, to keep the cold flame burning. Nothing else matters anymore.
…
It’s hot and they haven’t seen rain for weeks. They’re running out of water and their rations are running thin. And their eyes are as starved as their stomachs. The land is flat and brown and the dust stirred by their feet hovers about them in an acrid cloud. It smells of ash, copper, and death. The dreary landscape seems to suck all life and spark out of the eyes and hearts around him, but he couldn’t care less. There is no dissonance. The blighted waste around him feels like an extension of the blighted waste within.
The land around them begins to change. Wave upon wave of tall grass is gently swaying about them now and the breeze is whispering and hissing among the bushes.Everyone’s spirits seem to rise a bit. But they are parched, starved – and they are now on the Dread Wolf’s turf.
…
They’ve been expecting an ambush, but they are still caught off guard when a twang of a hundred bowstrings unleashes a rain of arrows.Das’s long-lost left hand begins to itch, tingle and burn and there’s a faint flash of green in his muddy grey eyes. ‘Rifts!’ He wants to scream. ‘Fade portals!’ But all that comes out of him is a feral screech, drowned in the sudden crackling of opening fade rifts and panicked screams of Inquisition soldiers.
The second wave of arrows comes and some find their mark.The Wolf’s army charges at them, pouring out of the rifts, leaping out from between the bushes and from underneath the rolling waves of grass.He lets out another shriek.The Song is a roar of a thousand gales in his veins - and he’ll let them all hear it. Maker’s blighted arse, they’ll sing it before he is done with them.
He reads both fear and disgust in his opponents’ eyes when they descend upon him like wasps. He hears the desperate cry of ‘Take down the blighted one!’ more than once.Well, the more, the uglier…Blight magic is not pretty. Taint spreads from him, vein and branch-like, and the Song echoes along the paths he’s carved in the enemy’s ranks and flesh and rises past their vocal cords and from their throats - before he slices their blood and air supply short.He moves too fast, manages to block or dodge most incoming arrows and those few that hit him barely slow him down. He feels the enemies’ magic, bright and burning, putting up walls, resisting, protecting, pushing against him.
But his power comes from the place of pain and he’s still got a lot of pain left…
…
‘Retreat! We need a clear shot!’He knows that voice.‘Stay away from him! His corruption only carries so far.’Maker, does he know that voice.Suddenly he’s all alone in a field of dead soldiers, sticking out like a broken thumb. The battle’s not over yet, the Inquisition still keeps up a few pockets of resistance – but it will be over soon.For him, anyway.
Iseran looks glorious in that gleaming armour and he rings with power, the bright flame he always was. He raises his arm. ‘Archers!’
And Das would swear he can see an odd glint in the corner of Iseran’s eye. He can’t read the mind behind that look, but something in it takes him to a different time and a different place – when they both were very different men.Das’s vision becomes a blur, a haze of saltwater, and his eyes and cheeks suddenly burn with hot tears – a sensation he hasn’t felt for so long it almost feels new.Something stirs in his heart, dots of crimson struggling upwards, like blooms in the desert after the year’s first rainfall.His fight ends here and his vengeance is forgotten.His love has a face of bronze, gold, and amber and eyes like sunset.And it’s the last wall between him and the Call.What’s left of his soul flickers to a warm, steady flame.
He lets out one last war cry, yelling his heart out as he charges forth. Iseran’s hand goes down.
