WIP, still painting. It’s been over six years since Alistair died and ruined Christmas 2009, but I return to this continuity with its crack pairing often. Where is my Warden now? What is she doing? Unlike Hawke, who never got it, and unlike Lavellan, who was just confused by the crazy shems and her even crazier almost-boyfriend, Vermille Amell learned that sometimes, the only way to survive was to surrender herself to the person she had to be, instead of the person she wanted to be. I like to think this faith is rewarded somewhere, perhaps in a soul-affirming grand adventure alluded to in Inquisition’s Warden-related war table mission.
***
“She went west,” Leliana told the Inquisitor.
“Is that all?” Qui Lavellan crossed her arms and arched one brow. Leliana always had more.
Leliana cocked her head. Qui could see her spymaster weighing her words, measuring old allegiances over new.
“She was last seen traveling through the jungles west of Orlais with an Antivan Crow, a large mabari, and a Qunari bodyguard.”
“A Qunari bodyguard?” Qui thought about Iron Bull. “A Tal Vashoth?”
Leliana smiled a small smile. “That would make sense. They say he is her lover.”
“What could possibly interest her to the west?”
“Rumors of lands ruled by surface dwarves, and flying cities?”
Nothing relevant to Corypheus, then. “I thought those were children’s tales.”
“If she is going there, they will be tales no longer, Inquisitor.”
“If she returns.”
“Indeed. If she returns.”