[slothquisitor]

I Will Show You Fear In a Handful of Dust: Chapter Two: Death by Water

Summary: In Treviso, the First Talon sees to his responsibilities. CW: suicidal ideation. Lucanis/Rook, but like...the worst timeline, friends. 5.4k.

Also on AO3.

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"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.                                    A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool." - T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Lucanis returns to the villa with the rising of the sun. He takes the Crow's Road in the half-darkness, silently leaping from eave to eave, sure footing taking him along the well-worn paths he's traced countless times before — the rote familiarity welcome as he counts down the minutes until oblivion. It's close now; he can feel it with every step closer toward the villa. He need only do his usual checks and check-ins to ensure it is secure, and then he can retreat.

It is almost a disappointment to find it another quiet night, no threats to speak of. Lucanis has spent the better part of the last eighteen months cutting down House Dellamorte's enemies — reminding any Crow or House just exactly why Dellamorte is the first. It has been a long and bloody campaign to secure the place of a dying House. Not everyone has been content to blindly let an abomination lead the Crows. He has learned that religious fervor often far outweighs logic — that there is no arguing or convincing he can do that isn't at the end of a knife.

It is such a waste, he thinks, to have to slaughter so many from his own cuchillo houses simply because they would not accept what he is. Would not accept that he is not somehow controlling Caterina through blood magic or worse. The worst part is that so many remained loyal to House Dellamorte all the way to the end. And that when he had plunged his daggers into their chests, when he had slit their throats, when he had watched the light in their eyes extinguish, he had known that they believed he was the true threat to House Dellamorte.

Caterina, at least, seems content with the current state of things. Her approval, as elusive as ever, is not something he can boast despite doing everything asked of him without question. Still, it is so much easier to exist with someone telling him what to do, the contracts he must take, the meetings he must attend, the Crow Houses that must be slaughtered wholesale. It was why he had returned here, after all. It had been the only path he could see. In truth, it had always been the only path there was. Caterina named him First Talon in front of all the Crows, and there was never going to be any escape from this life. He had thought, perhaps, he might put it off a while. He had hoped, at least, that he would not be returning here alone. He had believed, naively, that it wouldn't be so bad if she were by his side.

There is no sense of homecoming to the rooms Caterina had prepared for him. They are the First Talon's rooms, bedecked in all the finery fitting his station. He barely uses half of them. Lucanis has never been a man of excess; it was not a choice. The villa he called home always stood in stark contrast to the reality of his training. Before the Ossuary, he'd had an apartment in Treviso. A quiet, unassuming space, the kitchen taking up most of it — lots of windows to let in the light. It had been the first place in his life that really belonged to him. The furniture and walls didn't hold memory or ghosts or judgment. It was simply his. Sometime while he was presumed dead, Caterina had it emptied, all his possessions brought back to the villa. And when he had, at last, returned, this room had been populated with his things. It had felt oddly violating to see all the furniture and books he'd picked out and placed in his apartment with care suddenly here. It all still looks out of place in this room. A bureau here, a desk there. He hadn't asked for this in the same way he hadn't asked for the title of First Talon, but what do his wants matter now, anyway?

He removes his armor and weapons automatically, routine and muscle memory taking over. He is grateful that so much of his life can be given over to perfunctory movement, how little thinking it takes to lay out his knives, cleaning and oiling the blades. His gloves are blood-soaked — ruined, he thinks. He'd been sloppy, but he'd been spoiling for a fight he didn't get. And in the end, it hadn't mattered anyway. The contract is done.

Somewhere, buried in the back recesses of his mind, there is a door, and he can feel the pressure mounting inside of it as his demon paces, frustrated behind it. They do not speak, and they do not fight. Lucanis's waking hours are his own, his mind blessedly quiet. His sleeping hours, however, belong to Spite. That is the deal they made when tangled up so much in each other's grief.

Losing her felt like it happened in triplicate. There was his grief, the gnawing open void of it all. There was Spite's, the animalistic, feral edges of his demands for her return that have never entirely ceased. And then there was everyone else's. Their sorrow and their pity, their very existence a reminder of her. It had been too much; it is still too much.

And so he reaches for the sleeping tonic on his nightstand, downing it as quickly as he can, the astringent, bitter taste as familiar as it is unwelcome. He lies back against the bed, embracing the empty nothingness of the oblivion it offers. He cannot sleep any other way these days.

He looks forward to and dreads these moments before oblivion in equal measure. His body still, his mind whirring, his demon aching to escape his confines. Lucanis drifts, feels as though he's drowning in the quiet, but she feels closer in these moments between wakefulness and sleep. Though she never set foot in the room, he still listens for her footsteps among the many in a house stirring for the day. He feels somehow that if he listens carefully enough, he'll hear her familiar tread, the soft sounds of her breathing beside him. That she will return, plucked out of a rift in the Fade, and all of this time and pain will be just a pleat in time, a wrinkle he can tuck away and never think of again.

When he wakes, he is alone. Again.

The sun shines with mock brightness through the windows of his room, the curtains drawn back by Spite sometime as he slept. The sun's position tells him it is early afternoon. He is draped over his desk, a stack of papers beneath him, ink staining his fingers. Spite was writing again. His mouth is dry, and his teeth ache. A side-effect of the tonic, and one he never quite manages to banish.

He runs a hand down his face and wishes he had slept longer. He does not wake rested, not with Spite as active as he is. Some days, Lucanis wishes he didn't wake up at all. If Spite did not retreat on his own, he is not sure he would fight for that control again. It would be so easy to fade away. Perhaps that is why Spite does not fight for more than he has been given.

He looks down at the pages scattered beneath him. Spite's writing is a cramped, dark scrawl; each word looks as though it is scratched into the page. It is a miracle he doesn't break more quills. No part of Lucanis really wants to read whatever Spite has written, but it is impossible not to glance through it, not to see whatever compels his demon so.

If there were water

   And no rock

   If there were rock

   And also water

   And water

   A spring

   A pool among the rock

   If there were the sound of water only

   Not the cicada

   And dry grass singing

   But sound of water over a rock

   Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

   But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Spite's ramblings make little sense. Who is a third Spite is referring to? There is only him and his demon here. If only there was someone else, someone to make sense of all this for him. Someone to calm Spite. If only upon waking, Lucanis wasn't met with the bone-deep certainty that his happiest days are behind him.

He stands and attempts to wash his ink-stained hands in the bathing chamber. The ink flakes away the same way old blood does, and neither he nor his demon speaks to one another. Spite hangs just there, just outside of his periphery. If he doesn't look, he doesn't see him. He prefers it that way.

Caterina awaits him in the office. It used to be solely hers, but she's had another desk brought in, so now it is theirs. He's always hated this room, never went into it unless he was summoned. Now, he walks into it every day, walks inside like a target to a waiting blade.

At least there is coffee that awaits him in the enchanted carafe on the sideboard. He steps there first, pours himself a cup. This is one of the few pleasures of his life, and he savors it, draws out the moment before he has to face Caterina.

"You were back late," she says, every staccato stop of the words laced with disapproval.

The question goes unasked, but he hears it anyway. "It's done."

He senses her displeasure in his curt response in the slight pursing of her lips, but she does not inquire further. "Andarateia has requested your presence at the Diamond tonight."

"Whatever for? It was her birthday last month," he mutters as he sits down at his desk. There is a stack of missives to go through; no doubt everything Caterina has already looked through and has decided is not important enough to handle herself. If the contracts and the late hours don't kill him, the paperwork definitely will.

"I'm told a delegation from Minrathous is coming. They want more help from Treviso."

He waves a hand. "Teia can handle it."

Caterina looks unsurprised. "Good. Perhaps she will listen to me finally about ceasing aid."

"What?" The Crows have been sending aid to Minrathous at his behest since before Elgar'nan attacked their city. Since the dragon attack had blighted Dock Town, and he'd been so drowning in guilt he'd been able to do nothing less than send supplies and people and help.

"We cannot continue in this way, sending aid to Minrathous for nothing. Our own people are struggling. The Antaam may be gone, but the scars they left linger. Trade routes are still mired. Take the energy spent on them and invest it here."

"It could have been Treviso -"

"It wasn't."

"I'll go. See what they want, at least."

Caterina doesn't seem annoyed or even surprised, and he has the distinct feeling he's somehow played right into her hands. But the truth is, if Caterina outright bans him from helping, he's not sure he can tell her no. He's not sure he can do anything at all. He has become exactly what she wanted. The perfect First Talon. He does everything she asks, pliant to her every whim. He welcomes it; he doesn't have to think or consider or decide. In so many ways, he wears the title but bears little of the weight. She is still in charge, still pulling every last string. And he does not fight it at all; instead, he has sharpened himself into the shape she likes best and handed her the hilt.

What else is he good for if not to be her blade?

There was an evening, a moment, a time, when she had found him in the gardens after a nearly silent, melancholy dinner with her and Illario in that old, haunted dining room. He'd retreated there, taken refuge beneath the moonlight, trying to breathe air that wouldn't fill his lungs, drowning on dry land. Strange, how the mind reaches for old stories whenever it finds itself at the jagged edge of grief. His had reached for the drowned sailor — the Antivan folktale of the man whose eyes became pearls, who forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell while the currents worried his bones into silence. Still he pleaded with the sea to let him descend once more, to rescue the love trapped within the whirlpool's heart. He'd never understood that level of despair, the futility of bargaining with forces older than memory. He understands it far too well now.

Months of numbness, unchanging stretches of nothingness, and suddenly, a great heaving thing in his chest, the weight of his grief catching up to him. He had not heard the click of Caterina's cane, didn't realize she was beside him until she spoke, words quiet, full of a tenderness so foreign he wasn't sure the woman beside him really was his grandmother.

"When I lost my Adriano," she began, "it felt as though the world had ended."

He had never heard her speak of him, his grandfather. He is not sure he had ever heard her say his name. Humiliated, he had wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at her, waiting to see what lesson she was there to bestow. It had been years since she's raised her cane to him, but still he braced; where would it descend?

"They brought his body here, and I paced outside the room. Unable to go in because if I did I'd have to see him dead, I'd have to see that he was really gone. And when his pyre burned, part of me wanted to throw myself upon it."

A hand upon his shoulder; it had taken everything in him not to flinch. "We endure because we must. It will be a wound you will carry with you always, but you will carry it because your House demands it."

Before he could form words to reply, she was gone, and so was the moment, the shared vulnerability. They haven't spoken of it again or since. But he always was good at recognizing a command when he heard one: endure.

And so he has. Like a marionette on a string, he does everything demanded of him. He works until the light changes outside his office, until the sun has very nearly set. And then he returns to his rooms and dresses, puts on the armor and the mantle of First Talon. He feels as though he is losing a piece of himself every time he does this, every time he buries more of Lucanis and becomes the First Talon. There is a numbness, a quiet that settles over him; it is almost as welcome as oblivion.

Behind the closed door in his mind, he can feel Spite thrashing. Angry and trapped, frustrated and fighting, he can feel his demon's unhappiness every time he carves bits of himself away to fit into the frame of First Talon. It doesn't matter; it doesn't get to matter. It is what it is. Spite or no Spite, this was always his future.

Because appearances matter, and that's been drilled into him more times than he can count over the years, he won't be taking the Crow's Road to the Diamond, though he'd prefer it to the carriage that jostles through the streets. He makes his way to the foyer, pulling on his gloves as he steps toward the covered veranda where it waits. He is surprised to find he is not alone; Illario is there.

He doesn't see much of Illario these days. Lucanis half forgets his cousin's existence most of the time. After he was let off of house arrest, Lucanis expected Illario might leave. But he hasn't. He's still staying in the guest house, away from the main building of the villa. He's still present at the family dinners Caterina insists on every single week. But beyond that, Lucanis doesn't know how he fills his hours. As First Talon, he certainly has the means and resources to have him tracked or followed, to have every hour of his time accounted for. He simply hasn't had the energy to care.

"Lucanis." Illario's voice is soft, an entreaty.

Lucanis stares at his cousin, tries to feel something, anything. Illario had betrayed him, had sold him out to the Venatori. He tries to grasp at something — rage or anger or sadness, but there's nothing there beyond the hollowness that's settled into his bones.

Any softness that might have existed is gone now. Perhaps it was never there; perhaps it was just quiet he mistook for care because he always was more generous with Illario than he's ever been with him. "Let me guess, off to play Caterina's loyal Talon at the Diamond?"

He is reminded, unbidden, of when they were boys. Illario used to steal things from his room. Books, seashells from his windowsill — small, inconsequential things. And then he'd display them proudly, openly, as though begging for Lucanis to ask about them. He never did. He never knew why Illario did those things; he still doesn't. As a child, he had felt as though he was missing something important, that asking would somehow reveal his own weakness or ignorance.

There is something happening here, something Illario is doing, and once again, Lucanis isn't sure what it is, what it means. And, just like when he was a boy, he knows that asking will do more to show his own weakness than yield him answers.

"What do you want, Illario?" he asks, not rising to the bait. Illario would not seek him out for nothing.

Something flickers in Illario's eyes, an emotion Lucanis cannot discern. "I could come with you. We both know I'm much more charming than you are."

Lucanis tries to shoulder past him. "No."

"Come on, Lucanis. It's true! Perhaps you'll get your way if I'm there!" The words are laced with some sort of desperation Lucanis cannot quite pinpoint. Illario doesn't care about Minrathous or this meeting; what is he trying to do?

"Why do you care?" Lucanis asks, the words out before he can stop them.

Illario looks bolstered by the question, eyes flashing. "I don't. I'm just bored out of my mind. Give me something to do, cousin."

The curiosity that rose in him withers. What does it matter? What does any of this? "Do whatever you want, Illario," he says; the words sound defeated even to his ears.

Illario steps aside then, looking for all the world like he has lost something here. Which simply doesn't make any sense. "Good luck, First Talon."

The title is deposited at his feet with so much bitterness that Lucanis has to look away. Once, he would have given up the title of First Talon to Illario without question. He never wanted it, but now, when he cannot hand it over, when he has nothing else anchoring him to living anyway…

Lucanis half expects Illario to pad along after him, but he doesn't. Illario didn't actually care about coming, not really. He wanted…Lucanis isn't exactly sure. The carriage door closes; he is alone.

As a rule, Lucanis avoids the Diamond. He avoids the Grande Market, Cafe Pietra, anywhere memories of her press too close. A lifetime of memories in Treviso, and it is the ones from those months with her that are the most vibrant, the most present. They overwrite everything else — a palimpsest he cannot escape. In the Diamond, it is impossible not to look for her. Impossible not to listen for the lilt of her Nevarran accent making a joke with Chance, or checking in on Jacobus. Impossible not to expect her to be at his side, tracing the path to the eluvian.

He drifts through the Diamond like a ghost; Crows shift to let him past, the greetings few and far between. There was a time when entering the Diamond felt welcoming, a relief to be among so many Crows in a familiar place. Now, it just feels like the precursor to exhaustion.

When he arrives to the meeting room on the second-highest floor, he is one of the last to arrive, though it's clear the meeting hasn't yet begun. Teia and Viago are already there. Ashur and Neve are too. Neve looks the same as ever, graceful and poised beneath the wear and exhaustion she carries as much as he does.

"Lucanis," Neve says with a smile. Her eyes are warm; the smile is genuine. She moves as though to hug him, but seems to think better of it, halting there awkwardly half-outstretched towards him.

He does his best to summon a smile, something that will convince her that despite ignoring her letters and avoiding her for months, he is fine. "It's good to see you, Neve."

"It's been a while."

He sidesteps the obvious concern in her tone. "How are you? How are things in Minrathous?"

Her mouth tightens, eyes dimming a little. "Surviving. But we wouldn't be here if things were good."

Of course not. "Excuse me, I should check in with Teia." He steps away before she can ask him questions, before he will be forced to lie or struggle through half-truths. Neve is too clever by half, and the only chance he has of avoiding her pointed questions and the weight of her concern is simply to limit how much he talks to her. He can feel Neve's disappointment in him as he steps away, but he lets it ride. He's here, isn't he? It has to be enough.

"Teia," Lucanis says as he approaches the Seventh Talon.

She smiles widely. "I'm so glad you could join us, First Talon." There's some admonishment there, but there's no graceful way to acknowledge it, so he doesn't. He feels a sort of specific pain whenever he's with Teia, the pain of knowing he is a disappointment to her as well. That dealing with him requires some generosity of spirit, some amount of shoring up beforehand.

"Glad to be here," he says instead. It's not even entirely a lie.

The meeting begins, and Lucanis is grateful that there is so little asked of him now. He can simply sit at the table and listen. The concerns of his own House have kept him well enough occupied that he has not spent much time at all concerned about broader Treviso unless it was intertwined somehow with his affairs. Flooding had been the immediate concern. Treviso and Antiva's other coastal cities have always been protected from the dangers of more open water by the safe embrace of Rialto Bay. Elgar'nan's moving the moon had changed that. The Merchant Princes are antsy, frustrated at their inability to move their goods the ways they used to before the blight. That while ports are reopened, the seas are more treacherous to cross than ever.

Neve and Ashur's petitions are simple ones: their people are starving. For all of Tevinter's pretending at decadence, the moment the supply lines were cut off, it was revealed how little there really was to go around. Antiva has been fine, most of its farms and countryside spared entirely by the blight. There is more than enough food; what there isn't enough of is work. Fewer ships to unload, fewer merchants willing to brave the seas, means that excess sits in overfilled warehouses with no way to leave.

"We have been providing aid since long before Elgar'nan's attack and asking for little in return," Viago says, steepling his hands. "It is not that we do not want to help, but at a certain point we have to stop doing it for free."

"What does Treviso need? We were able to build the tidal gates to keep Treviso and Salle from flooding. We have magic and engineers, we have-" Ashur's voice is desperate.

"Reliable trade routes?" Viago asks. "That is what we need. If we could open up the Crossroads-"

"That is out of the question," Neve interjects.

"Why?" Viago asks. "The Crows, Watchers, Shadow Dragons…all use them to move small shipments, deliver messages, for travel back and forth. Why shouldn't they be used to move goods? If we opened them to merchants, it wouldn't matter that the ports are unusable. Goods are spoiling in dockside warehouses because they cannot be moved quickly enough anymore."

"And our people starve in the streets because you won't share," Neve accuses.

"Let our Merchant Princes use the Crossroads, and your people will want for nothing," Viago replies simply.

"That permission isn't mine to give," Neve is looking at Lucanis pleadingly, begging him to jump in to say something.

"Then whose is it?" Viago demands. "If not yours? You were one of the people who resided there, were you not?"

Both Viago and Neve are looking at him questioningly, and he finds the words elude him. Because they are perilously close to talking about her. And he cannot do that. He cannot sit at this table, cannot remain in this seat while they all casually bring up her name, what she might have wanted. He's not sure what's worse: listening to other people misremember her or that she is so often forgotten completely.

She had not come down from the Archon's Palace, and somehow, that meant she was forgotten. He wasn't in any state to fight it, to insist the world repeat her name, that she be remembered as a hero. She was a nobody before Varric plucked her from obscurity, and it is only in the Necropolis's halls that her name is spoken of at all.

Neve is still looking at him as though she expects him to say something, to do something. "The Caretaker, the guardian over that place, only really answered to Rook."

Rook. That wasn't her name. Not really. In the back of his mind, Lucanis can feel Spite stirring with the thoughts of her, the familiar contours of it. He tries to fortify that shut door between them. The last thing he needs is Spite making a scene here.

Viago seems undeterred. "Everyone has a price, do they not? Speak to this Caretaker. Find out what needs to happen."

"And in the meantime?" Neve stares at Viago in disbelief. Beside her, Ashur puts a hand on her chair as though he is trying to keep her from jumping out of it, across the table, at fighting Viago on her own.

"House Dellamorte will get supplies to the Shadow Dragons," he says. It's not an apology, nor is it enough, but it will have to do. Perhaps Caterina doesn't even need to know if he uses his personal accounts instead of the House's. What else is he going to spend it on?

Neve sits back in her chair, looking like she still wants to argue with Viago, but she doesn't. She looks tired, her face wan. He doubts she's sleeping enough. Part of him wants to invite her back to the villa, sit her down in his kitchen and not let her leave until she's eaten a home-cooked meal. He'd even make that fried fish she likes so much if it meant she stopped looking so haunted.

But he hasn't cooked in a long, long while. He's not sure he could survive an evening of her attention anyway.

"We appreciate all that the Crows have done for us. You've been steadfast allies, and we won't forget it," Ashur says.

Teia at least looks sorry. "It's not that we don't want to help more, but things in Antiva are not what they once were. And with the unrest in Tevinter, and with Orlais….We have to look out for our own."

Beneath his veil, Lucanis swears Ashur grimaces. "And we thought we had to make hard choices during the war."

"If you have a problem that is more easily solved with a knife, you know where to find us," Viago replies. The offer is a kind one, but it will not feed hungry citizens.

The meeting ends, and Lucanis knows it is in his best interest to disappear quickly, to throw himself out a window and onto the nearby rooftops into the night before he can be stopped, but Neve is at his side in an instant.

"We need to talk," she says, voice low but urgent.

She leads him out of the meeting chamber and down a cramped hallway, trying doors as she goes until she comes to one that opens easily, some sort of storage space by the looks of it. She beckons him inside. It's his guilt that propels him forward, that has kept him here instead of offering up some excuse and retreating back to the villa and to the sleeping tonic that will be waiting on his nightstand and the oblivion that will follow.

He is not sure he has ever seen Neve look quite so defeated, her face twisted with concern. "Are you alright?"

Anger, he had expected. Yelling even. Her concern feels like a cresting ocean wave, comes down upon him heavily, knocking the air from his lungs. He cannot meet it or shoulder it, finds himself sinking ever lower. Neve used to be one of the few people he trusted with his thoughts, his fears, his concerns. His friend.

"I'm fine," he replies, words familiar and practiced and false. He finds he cannot meet her gaze.

She draws back as though his words have hit her with a physical force. "Strange. You're not answering letters…you haven't been to one of the dinners in months. No one has seen or heard from you."

"My responsibilities-"

"Fuck your responsibilities," she says, brow furrowed.

He cannot get her to drop this, and so his own recourse is to twist the knife away from him. "My responsibilities mean that your people aren't starving."

Neve's face twists bitterly. "For now, but even the First Talon of the Crows cannot single-handedly keep my city from dying."

"And neither can a detective," he murmurs. "Ashur could have done this meeting alone. Why are you here? Is there something you needed?"

And then her arms are around him. It takes a moment for his mind to realize what's happening, to catch up. His hands hang there for a moment, useless before he realizes the expectation to return the embrace. He cannot remember the last time he was held in this way, the last time someone sought to give or receive comfort from his bloodstained hands.

Neve's emotions were always buried things. Care tucked in sarcasm, hope beneath well-cultivated cynicism. Which has always made the moments she allows her care and love to show important. He tries to feel anything beyond the current of guilt dragging him down, down, down.

"I've missed you," she says as she pulls away.

"It's been…" He cannot find the words for an apology or a sidestep to absolve him from the guilt that twists ever more tightly around him.

"I know," she says with a nod. That small acknowledgement is enough to encompass all the months of his silence have meant to them both. "Look, I'm going to the Necropolis. To see Will and Emmrich….things have been happening around me…and I….don't know…I need answers, and maybe it's not connected to R-"

"Stop."

"Lucanis-"

He raises his hands in surrender. "Please, Neve."

Undeterred, she steps forward. "Come with me? Please."

He shakes his head, stepping back, putting distance between them. "I can't."

"Because of your responsibilities?" The final word feels like a mockery.

Yes. No. He wishes it were that simple.

"I just can't. It was good to see you." That, at least, he means. That, at least, feels genuine.

Neve steps around him, opens the door to go. She pauses at the threshold. "I'm not the only one who misses you, you know. And when you're ready, we're all waiting."

And that is part of what makes this so hard. "Good luck, Neve."

And then she's gone, and he feels like he is somehow that sailor who has refused a life raft, still drowning in the vast, unending ocean of his grief.

[thewyvernrising]

Also available on AO3!

Chapter Thirteen

Willow paced.

It was not a particularly useful activity, but the best one she could do at the moment. As soon as they had heard Ivy's startled yelp and found Bellara's body crumpled in front of the base of a broken statue, they had immediately carried her out of the ruins. They had made little progress in their investigation, but at this point that was a far less immediate concern than figuring out what in the void had happened to their friend. Ivy was particularly distraught, repeating over and over again that everything had seemed fine one minute, and then the next Bellara had collapsed. No matter how much the others tried to assuage her guilt, the Veil Jumper wavered constantly between frustration over her inability to wake her friend and her insistence at self-recrimination.

Willow could relate, perhaps a little too well. She had been responsible for leading dozens of teams of Mortalitasi through crypts and tombs throughout Nevarra, often as an informal mentor for the youngest of their number, and it never seemed to get easier to have someone get hurt on her watch. And perhaps this was all the more devastating because, once again, Willow had failed to keep Bellara safe. The only saving grace this time was that they had at least still had her with them, albeit in a deep sleep.

"Dearest?"

Willow snapped back to reality at her husband's voice, and despite his standard calm demeanor she could see a hint of concern in his eyes. "Any news?" She asked, keeping her own voice down, though she was not exactly sure why she felt the need. Something about the forest simply demanded that show of deference.

"Yes, and no," he sighed, tucking his arm through hers and steering her away from the main camp. It would look for all the world as though he were simply joining her on a walk to calm her nerves, but Willow knew better. It meant he had something to say, something important, and he needed her to hear it first and decide whether or not to share it with the others. "Whatever caused this, it has not lingered, at least not in poor Bellara's mind. There is no evidence of a persistent malevolence. There are traces of the magic used on her, which I daresay may be useful in our investigation, but they are the sorts of traces that I would expect from any spell, malicious or benign. What I find odd, however," he hesitated, his brow furrowed as he seemed to consider his next words, "Was the rather substantial bruising around her neck."

Willow felt her heart sink. "I had very, very much hoped I had been imaging that," she admitted. "Perhaps a trick of the light in the temple, or simple paranoia."

"It is rather more perplexing than it seems on the surface," Emmrich continued. "You and I, we have seen too many victims of strangulation in our line of work. We know the signs, and the resulting trauma to a body. But this… whatever did this to Bellara, I do not think it intended to kill her, merely incapacitate her. Once it had, it let her go."

"And we all left the ruins," Willow said slowly, puzzle pieces slipping into place. "Did it want us gone, or was it simply trying to force us away from that specific spot?"

"I could not even begin to guess, my love," Emmrich sighed. "I have no reason to believe that Bellara will not wake up once her mind and spirit have had a chance to recover themselves, but I admit I am beginning to question the wisdom of including her in our forays into the ruins themselves. It is becoming more and more apparent that, whatever occupies those ruins, it has taken a particular interest in our young Veil Jumpers."

He was right, and Willow knew it. She just also knew Bellara. "Emmrich, there is a less than zero chance that she will allow herself to be kept from this mission. I do not disagree with you, but at this point I think our best option will simply be to keep her close. No more splitting up."

"Agreed," Emmrich nodded, bending down to press a brief kiss to her lips. "I am certainly not eager to put any of us in peril."

The relative peace of the creeping dusk was shattered by a sudden exclamation from the main camp. Willow exchanged a glance with Emmrich before they both dashed back to the huddle of tents and the steadfast cheer of the campfire. Davrin jogged over to meet them halfway, Assan prancing anxiously at his side. "Bellara just came to," he explained as they returned. "Not sure what prompted the scream, but Ivy's in there with her. If anyone will be able to get answers, it'll be her."

"Oh thank the Maker," Willow exhaled, leaning briefly against Emmrich and allowing him to steady her before she took a seat on one of the dead logs they had dragged closer to the primitive firepit. The four of them waited with as much patience as they could muster, saying their silent prayers to whoever might be listening. Or, as Isabela had put it at Willow and Emmrich's impromptu wedding, 'whatever gods or monsters are running the show these days.'

It felt like ages, but based on the sinking of the sun it must have only been half an hour or so before Bellara took a few tentative steps out of her tent, guided by Ivy, who was holding her friend gently at the elbow and murmuring words of encouragement as they settled down by the fire across from Willow and the others. Bellara looked up at them, her eyes locking with Willow's first.

"Before you ask, I'm ok, I promise," she croaked, her hand instinctively reaching up to graze across the bruises on her throat. "A little embarrassed that I got caught so off guard, again, but ok. It's just me up here," she managed a weak smile as she tapped her temple.

"Something definitely interfered with her consciousness, though," Ivy jumped in. "Look, I know none of us want to go there, especially after-" She stopped short, shooting an apologetic and slightly sheepish glance in Bellara's direction, "After all the bullshit that's happened recently, but unless anyone else experienced a weird hallucination where the entire temple complex was somehow restored to its past state, I think we need to acknowledge the probability."

Bellara nodded slowly. "Ivy is right. Something got in my head, or at least was able to affect my perception of the ruins without the rest of you noticing. Maybe I'm more susceptible to it after Elgar'nan tried to enslave me in his blight, I don't know."

"I suppose that is a possibility," Willow replied, "But for what it's worth, I do not think it is a likely one. The hive mind nature of the blight was unique to its initial creation; namely, the severing of the Titans. I wish we had Harding here; she would be able to say for certain, but from what I understand from you two," she gestured to Emmrich and Bellara, "This magic feels different. Foreign from that we dealt with during the war."

"Indeed! Elgar'nan's magic was old, and it carried a certain… how do I say this… weight, to it, I suppose? And the blight itself lacked the sort of fine control we are experiencing here," Emmrich explained. "Without an archdemon or, I suppose what we now recognize as an evanuris, to direct it, I do not think it would be able to target Bellara specifically. Or any of us!" He hastened to add when Bellara's face turned a shade more pale.

It was then that Willow realized her friend was clutching something tightly in her hand: a small wooden carving, but not the one Davrin had carved during his downtime at the Lighthouse. "Bel?" She asked gently, "What is that?"

Bellara swallowed hard, her eyes squeezing briefly shut as she held out her hand. Slowly, one by one as though each joint had to be individually persuaded to pry itself loose, her fingers moved away to reveal a small, simply but carefully carved wooden statuette of a halla. And for a moment, it seemed as though Bellara was going to pass out all over again.

And for a moment, Willow was well and truly confused. The statuette did not seem particularly unique: she'd seen at least half a dozen of them poked into various nooks and crannies of the main Veil Jumper camp, and she knew Davrin was hardly the only Dalish elf with a penchant for whittling in their spare time. The wood was impeccably smooth, not so much as a single rough edge or curve where an unwary hand might find a splinter, and it appeared to be simple pine rather than the coveted ironbark. "It is a lovely bit of carving," she finally said. "Where did you get it? Was it in the ruins."

Bellara did not reply, not at first. Ivy glanced at Willow, then back at her friend, biting her lower lip and clearly trying to decide if she should jump in with an explanation that did not seem to be forthcoming. Before she could, however, Bellara's lips parted and a voice that was barely audible wove its way into the song of the crackling fire and the distant fauna of the forest.

"It's mine," she said, almost as though she did not believe the words themselves. "Cyrian made it for me when we were kids. It was the first thing he'd ever carved that ended up looking like what he meant it to instead of a hacked up piece of wood, and he was so proud when he gave it to me. I loved this thing. Carried it around with me everywhere, even when the room in my pack probably should have been used for something practical. Then one day, it disappeared. It had been in my pack, and then it was just… gone. It made no sense, like… who would take a little toy halla? They're not exactly in short supply and, I loved my brother, but this isn't exactly the nicest one out there."

"I remember that day," Ivy spoke up, a comforting hand resting on Bellara's shoulder but the rest of her posture tense and alert, as though she were waiting to combat an as of yet unseen threat. "We were, what? Twenty-three? Twenty-four? Investigating what we thought was an archive but turned out to just be a really well-organized kitchen."

Bellara gave a small giggle that turned into a hiccup at the end. "Yeah, that one," she confirmed. "Anyways, I know how silly it sounds, but I was just devastated when I lost the stupid little thing. Or at least, when almost everyone managed to convince me that I'd lost it. Ivy was the only one who believed me from the start when I said it had been taken."

Willow fought back an urge to smile as Bellara's eyes met Ivy's, a flicker of something that may have been dawning comprehension there before she shook herself back to the present. "Anyways, sorry, I'm rambling again. The point is, it disappeared. But when I woke up in my tent this evening? This was placed carefully on top of my pack."

Oh… oh no…

Willow took a deep breath, resisting her initial impulse to gasp. "Bel, are you absolutely certain this is the same carving?" She asked, already knowing the answer. They were well past pretending any of this was a coincidence anymore. "Like you said, it is a common enough design."

"It is," Bellara conceded, "But look." She handed over the statuette, pointing to its underbelly. There, clumsily but lovingly carved, was a minute hummingbird, and the elvish words for 'to my sister.'

"Alright, yes," Willow sighed, handing the carving back to Bellara. "I suppose we all already knew we wouldn't be that lucky. But we've been here this entire time, and you haven't been alone in your tent for more than, what, ten or fifteen minutes?"

"Apparently that's all it took," Ivy retorted. "And yeah, look, I know I'm the obvious suspect here. What's to say I didn't take the halla all those years ago and now I'm putting it back out of guilt or just to be an asshole?"

Bellara tilted her head in Ivy's direction. "What? No, Ives, I never even considered that. Why would you? Why now? You had a billion opportunities to do it before this, and it would have made way more sense back when we were still best friends and it would have had more impact. Oh, not that we're not best friends now! I mean, I hope we still are? So much has happened-"

"Ok, well let's start there," Willow interrupted gently, and Ivy shot her a grateful glance. That was a conversation those two still needed to have, and they would need to do so without an audience. "For the record, Ivy, I agree with Bellara: I would not even consider you as a suspect here. You did not know Bellara would be here when you were invited by Thea, so it is not as though you could have planned this as a prank or some sort of malicious joke. What we do know is that there have been five targeted instances now: three that have focused on Bellara, and two that have focused on Ivy. Of those, two of the three that affected Bellara were creepy, but benign. Almost kind. Only the illusion at the temple ended up harming her. The two that affected Ivy were decidedly malicious: the dagger driven into her bedroll, and the attempt to draw her into the forest against her will."

"But it doesn't seem like whatever choked out Bellara actually wanted to kill her, right?" Davrin pointed out. "An argument could be made it actually saved her life by knocking her out from whatever was trying to draw her deeper into the temple."

"Well it picked a void of a way to go about it," Ivy interjected, heat rising in her tone. "She could have died!"

Willow raised a hand, and the others fell silent. "But she didn't. I am not willing to go so far as to say the entity that did this was benevolent, but I do think Davrin's suggestion cannot be dismissed out of hand. The longer we are in this forest, the more I am getting the impression there are two distinct entities in play. What their respective motivations or goals are I could not even begin to guess, but things do not quite add up otherwise." She paused for a moment, weighing her next words carefully. "If I had to speculate, and please know I am extremely reticent to do so, I would say that at least one entity is attempting to draw Bellara in while attempting to keep Ivy out."

No one spoke up at first. Bellara looked to be in a daze, and Ivy had bitten her lower lip so hard she had drawn blood, but she also seemed to be keeping her thoughts to herself. Maybe so as to not frighten Bellara, maybe out of self-preservation, but Willow suspected the other woman had also been chastised more than once for speaking without thinking. Not helpful at this particular junction. "We can no longer pretend this isn't targeted," Willow finally continued. "So we have two choices: we either try to get back to Gwaren, leave Ivy and Bellara there, and come back with different people to try and help. Or, we press on and return to the ruins tomorrow, but this time we stick together."

"We can't go back," Bellara shook her head. "And I'm not going anywhere. I can't really explain it, but I've kind of got the feeling that whatever is out there? It's not going to just let me leave even if I wanted to. It seems super determined to draw me in, so… maybe we let it?"

A bolt of alarm flashed across Ivy's face. "Bel, you can't be serious. You want us to just let it take you?"

"No, not at all!"Bellara corrected quickly. "Been there done, that, ya know? But like… maybe we just see where it's trying to lead me? Maybe that would keep it from trying to hurt Ivy if it thinks she's going along with what it wants rather than trying to keep me away from it?"

Willow considered for a moment. On the one hand, Bellara could be right: if they stopped trying to fight whatever was attempting to draw the Veil Jumper in, perhaps they would find answers. She was hesitant, however, because she could not shake the feeling that it was Ivy the entity was specifically intent on harming. And, while she had no proof, she suspected that was because of the… unique… relationship between the two elven women. The gestures made towards Bellara seemed kind; almost romantic, with the flowers and the return of a childhood trinket. The actions towards Ivy were decidedly violent, and there was still that damn word she had heard twice now: mine. Was it possible, perhaps even probably, that whatever out there was attempting to lay a claim to Bellara? One that it felt Ivy challenged?

"For what it's worth, I agree that going back isn't the answer," Davrin chimed in, his hands drawing a short blade over a stray bit of wood as it evolved into something that might eventually be a griffon. "I think that option disappeared the moment we crossed the border into this forest. And I agree with Will: I think there's more than one 'something' out there. One is definitely messing with us, but the other… I don't know. It almost feels like it wants us to figure this out; to get rid of the other entity for whatever reason. Whether that's a good reason or not, couldn't guess, but maybe we're not completely on our own out here. For better or worse."

"Yes," Willow sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"For better or worse."

---------------------------------------------

No one slept well that night, but there were no further instances, for which Willow was immensely grateful. Each incident provided them a little more information, a few more disparate clues, but at what cost? Willow was fine with this, sleep deprivation be damned.

It was a subdued party that made their way once again to the temple ruins deep in the heart of the forest. They seemed so peaceful in the light of day: quiet, the passive hand of nature sweeping over them with brushes of moss and vines and the faint tear stains of rainstorms long passed. The temple must have been beautiful once, in its own cruel fashion, and even in ruins Willow could feel the awe this place must have once inspired. There was precious little else left in this forest that would give hints to those who had dared to construct such a monument in a place even more ancient than they were.

It had already been decided there would be no further splitting up. It was too dangerous, and at this point Willow would rather take things slowly and methodically than cover more ground and risk losing a member of their team. She'd had quite enough of that for one lifetime.

As they approached, the forest suddenly fell utterly silent: no birdsong, no breeze, no distant halla calls… nothing. Willow was reminded of the sort of stillness that lay over the deep tombs of the Grand Necropolis; the sense of anticipation for some unknowable event or an omen of what lay beyond the vibrant lands of the living. "At the risk of this sounding like an unbearable cliché, I don't like this. It's too quiet."

"It's a cliché for a reason, Will," Davrin sighed. "Because it's happened often enough that most people even vaguely familiar with their surroundings will know when the quiet is the normal type where there is still ambient noise, and when it's this," he gestured to the eerie stillness of the pines. "Something has got everything else in this place spooked-"

His words were cut short by the sudden resumption of the forest's natural song. At her side, Willow noticed Emmrich shiver violently. "Love?" She asked quietly, brushing the back of her hand against his.

"Another tremor," he replied, his gaze slightly unfocused for a brief moment. "In the Fade, to be more specific. I daresay whatever force is being harnessed here, it is not pleased with its confinement. It is fighting back."

Willow fought back a shudder of her own. She had been considering the implications of a second unseen entity ever since it had come up, and she still could not decide if that made their situation better or worse. Certainly more complicated. "Alright," she said, keeping her voice low but calm and even, "We are going back in, together. If anything catches your attention, no matter how small, we investigate. We are primarily looking for signs of life: anything that appears to be relatively new or that would indicate the presence of the missing humans or elves."

She did not say aloud what she knew damn well they were all thinking: that even if there were signs of life, the likelihood of them finding any of the missing people alive was low. Very low indeed. Instead, she pried open the stone door to the main hall, wincing as it ground and groaned against the floor in protest.

…did we close this door when we left yesterday?

Their footsteps echoed, hollow calls answered only by indifferent silence. No one argued when Willow did not take the direction of the western door. She turned instead to the main door facing north, except…

"Everyone, have I completely lost it, or is there a new door here today?"

The others huddled closer despite the yawning space of the room. "Oh dear," Emmrich murmured, "I believe you are correct. I distinctly remember there being three doors yesterday, and yet today-"

"There's four," Ivy interrupted, her eyes scanning the wall in front of them. "Actually, take a closer look: this door has always been here, but it must have been designed to be a hidden passage. You can see where there is fresh disturbance in the moss and dirt on the ground, and where it's flaked away from the walls. So the good news is that we don't have new doors or passages forming, probably. The bad news is that something left it open. The worse news is that it is almost definitely trying to lure us deeper in by doing so."

"And the worst news is that we're gonna go through it," Davrin finished with a wry grin. "Assan and I can take point, sniff out anything that might be trying to ambush us."

"No," Ivy shook her head emphatically. "Let me and Bel go first. We know ruins like this, and we know better what traps to look for and what magical triggers there might be."

They both looked to Willow, who felt a sudden twist in her stomach. She'd had to make decisions like this before. Both times, someone had, ostensibly, died. For awhile, at least. "I agree with Ivy," she finally said, the words steadier than she had expected them to be. Good, she was still maintaining at least some veneer of leadership. "This is exactly why we brought her and Bellara along on this mission, and it would be silly of us not to take advantage of their knowledge. Davrin, I want you and Assan bringing up the rear. You're more likely to notice something stalking us than I am."

Ivy shot her a grateful smile, then took the lead, Bellara close behind her. They slipped into the newly opened passage, but found it to be mostly empty. There was evidence of giant spiders, long since gone based on the crumbling condition of their webs, but little else. The only illumination in this part of the ruins came from the steady glow of mage lights summoned by Emmrich, Ivy, and Bellara. It was slow going: Ivy and Bellara were thorough in their assessment of the hallway, all the more so because it appeared to be completely empty, which made very little sense.

Why build a passageway that went nowhere? Because that seemed to be where they were headed at the moment. The hidden door had concealed nothing more interesting than what seemed to be a long, narrow corridor with no other doors or points of ingress. They were barely able to traverse it two abreast, and Willow could feel the anxiety clouding her lungs as the thick fog of claustrophobia began to seep in. No matter how far they seemed to travel down the path, they did not seem to be making any progress at all, or at least none that could be marked, and they still had not reached the end. Whatever that might entail.

"What was that?"

Willow turned to face Davrin, who had whipped around to peer into the darkness of the direction they had come. "Did you hear something?"

Davrin shook his head slowly, a rare hint of uncertainty in his features. "No… but I could have sworn I saw something dart past us out of the corner of my eye. Something big, and fast, which makes no sense. This tunnel is barely wide enough for us, so how could something get past us?" He shrugged, but Willow could tell he was still discomforted. "Must've just been a trick of the light. Think I'm just a little on edge, that's all."

He wasn't convinced, and Willow wasn't either, but they both knew there was nothing to be done for it now. They had exactly two choices: go forward, or go back, and she had the sinking feeling that the latter was probably not much of an option at all now that they had started. "Alright," she said, "Let's keep moving, but tell us if you see it again, alright?"

They continued on, one careful footfall at a time, no one speaking much save for when Ivy or Bellara instructed them to halt so they could re-assess for traps. "Anyone got any idea how long we've been walking this hall?" Ivy asked, her voice echoing against the stone.

"Roughly thirty minutes, by my estimate," Emmrich replied, and Willow felt her entire consciousness tilt on its axis. How could it have been half an hour? It felt as though they had been at this for over an hour at least, or perhaps… perhaps not nearly that long. With nothing to mark their progress along the passage and no exterior light to mark the journey of the sun, time had become meaningless. Or maybe this place was simply manipulating their sense of time in a way she couldn't pick up on.

Ivy paused, looking back to face Willow. "How far do we keep going, do you think?"

Willow glanced over her shoulder to the yawning darkness that stretched behind them. She was absolutely certain they had left the passage door open, allowing some meager light in as they traversed the corridor, yet she could see no hint of it now. The anxiety in her chest constricted further, and she inhaled deeply through her nose to try and wriggle out of it. "I don't think we can go back the way we came," she finally admitted. "Whatever is herding us, I suspect we are going to have to go along with their game for now."

Ivy gave a brief nod, then continued on down the passageway. It seemed to grow even more narrow as they progressed, until they were forced to walk single file. Without speaking, a chain was created between them with Ivy reaching back for Bellara's hand, Bellara's to Emmrich's, and so on. The darkness felt heavier now, a wool blanket wrapping around them and threatening to suffocate them should they press on. Willow tightened her grip on Emmrich's arm, watching the steady glow of magelight waver as she did.

When it felt as though the walls were truly going to prevent further ingress, a sudden gust of wind barreled down the corridor, knocking them to their knees. The balls of magelight summoned by Ivy, Emmrich, and Bellara extinguished, leaving them in utter darkness. Willow scrambled to her feet, helping Emmrich before reaching a hand back to blindly search for Davrin or Assan. Emmrich hurriedly summoned a new globe of light, but Willow's heart sank when she realized he was the only one.

They were no longer in the passageway. In fact, they seemed to have been forced into a large, echoing chamber much like the main hall, though this one was marked by curved walls and painstakingly carved columns reaching towards a domed ceiling. Davrin took his flint and steel to a torch along the wall. Ignited, it seemed to flare with unusual energy as it set off a chain reaction that resulted in a series of more torches sparking to life and illuminating the chamber.

Willow almost wished it hadn't; almost wished she could have stayed in the oppressive but elusive darkness where she could pretend her instincts were wrong.

That Bellara and Ivy had not gone missing.

"Why?" Davrin asked, shaking his head in disbelief, and Willow knew he had made the same realization she had. "Why in the void is this thing so intent on Bellara and Ivy?"

"Perhaps this might shed some light on our quandary?" Emmrich suggested, waving his hand towards one section of wall with an exhausted gesture.

Willow stepped closer, squinting at the clumsily and obviously hastily scrawled message gouged into the stone. It was a grim sort of luck that was with them, as whoever had carved the words had not bothered trying to use the ancient elven dialect they'd seen at the altar to Elgar'nan a few days (had it only been a few days?) prior. Willow could translate the words, though she wished to the Maker she could have pretended otherwise.

"'Flee, unworthy mortals, lest the righteous wrath of the old gods smite you down in their eternal glory."' She felt her shoulders sag. "Damn it. A nest of old believers, I'd wager. Elves who refused to abandon the bloody legacy of the evanuris, and instead chose to embrace it. It would explain why they want Bellara: she's one of the only elves still alive who has actually been touched by the mind of one of their so-called 'gods.'" She felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach.

"And it means Ivy is in incredible danger."

[slothquisitor]

I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust: Part I: A Heap of Broken Images, Chapter One: Unreal City

Summary: Eighteen months after the battle of Minrathous, Neve is still digging out her city. CW: Death, references to starvation. Worst Timeline, Bad AU. 3.2k.

Also on AO3.

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"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water... Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many." - T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Eighteen Months Later...

Neve Gallus covers her face with a handkerchief and ducks inside the newly uncovered ruin of a house in the heart of Dock Town. To call this single room a house is perhaps generous, but even flattened as it is, it was clearly once a home. Neve has long since lost track of just how many spaces like this she has entered, how many houses and storefronts and streets she's been called to in order to identify the dead.

"There are three sets of remains," Elek explains, his voice muffled through the cloth tied around his face. In the aftermath of Elgar'nan's death, the blight that choked her city had changed — desiccated was how the Wardens described it. As it was cleared in the coming days and weeks and months, it left behind a foul dust that coated the city, hung hazily on clear days and turned to mud in the streets on rainy ones.

Today, the drizzling rain means the air is clean enough to breathe, but the damp and cold it brings with it offers little relief in a city like this.

The story of this home is all too easy for Neve to read, even if she hadn't been in a space like this countless times before. The three bodies she notes first, an adult and two children, crushed. The stone roof of the building has been lifted, is now propped up above them, the magic gently pulsing. She can imagine it all perfectly. This small family locking their door, believing, wrongly, that if they simply stayed inside away from all the danger that raged in that final battle, they'd be safe. They had probably blocked the windows, turned out the lights, stayed very still and very quiet. If they'd run, they might have lived. Maybe. They certainly wouldn't have been crushed when the blight tore through their neighborhood and collapsed this little house and the rest of the block with it.

She pulls out the book she's kept on her for eighteen months, a book of names and descriptions, and next of kin. At night, when she cannot sleep, she pulls out these notes, pores over the pages of those she still has yet to find. She has it very nearly memorized, these names, descriptions, the last time they were seen. Already, she has a guess as to who these bodies are, but she turns to the page anyway, to be sure.

It comes over her slowly, a feeling of being watched. Not by Elek, though she can feel his careful gaze on her — no, there's something else. It happens sometimes when she is working or when she pulls at the Fade. She used to keep track of these happenings, as though maybe she could find the pattern in them, but if there is a rhyme or reason to them, it is lost on her. The book is very nearly knocked from her grasp by some unseen, invisible force. She shakes it off, characterizes it as a bit of unsteadiness in the dimness of the room, perhaps the floor is slick beneath the hook of her prosthetic. Nearly everyone she knows is far too afraid of saying the wrong thing to her about her foot, so it's easy to pretend at a bit of clumsiness rather than acknowledge what might actually be happening.

She turns her attention back to the book without comment. The page is easy to find, the ink fading with time and use. "The Sosotris Family. Marie, Lil, and Magnus." Their address matches this street, the last time they were seen alive. It's lucky to have the identification so easy. Sometimes, she has to gather skulls or bits of bone fragments and wait for Emmrich and a bone reader's monthly visit to Minrathous for identification.

Three more names to mark off the list, but still, there are too many unaccounted for. A year and a half later, and her city is still digging itself out. These tiny residential neighborhoods are low priority; they're not streets for trade or travel, there are no residents clamoring to get back into these half-destroyed homes.

She's got a name and address for the next of kin, so she knows her next stop for the evening. "Thanks, Elek. I should go."

"We'll get them to the chantry, wait for you or the family's say so before they're put to pyre," he replies. What's left of the Threads answer to her, but it's hard to run a racket in ruins. They do just as much digging as anything else these days.

They do not need to say more, and for that, Neve is glad. They have done this same dance many, many times before. She thinks with some despair that it will not be the last.

Neve tucks her handkerchief away as she steps back out into the cold, persistent drizzle. These days, Minrathous feels empty, hollow. Those who could afford to leave have fled, and those who couldn't eke out some version of survival.

It is hard, she thinks, to explain the changes in her unreal city, to its rhythms, its patterns. It is something she feels that only someone else from here can truly understand. The way the city breathes is different; something changed in it while she was away, something deeper than the obvious blight and suffering. Every day, she feels that she is trying, grasping, attempting to find the thread of this place again, that maybe if she does, she will find absolution for not being enough to save it completely. But she knows she's not the only one who seems to be searching, seeking. Those acknowledgments live in glances, in nods on familiar corners where she is seen and therefore known. It is impossible for her to travel in obscurity these days.

She passes families begging on street corners, knobby hands reaching for help. Normally, Neve would press whatever coins she could spare into their hands, but the entire city is starving, and coin is just as useless as empty bellies.

Instead, she pauses. "Go to the Metropole, tell them Gallus sent you. The Shadow Dragons have food."

The mother glances at her, seemingly recognizing her at last. "You're one of them….aren't you?"

Neve dips her head, ensuring that her hat conceals her face, and continues on. The Shadows have food because they've got access to the Crossroads and ties with the Crows and Mourn Watch. They do what they can, but in a city where everyone is starving, it barely moves the needle.

Because Neve's city is emaciated, dying, fumbling in ways she's never seen it before. Dock Town, always scarce, always characterized by people with far too little, is now somehow, impossibly smaller, somehow impossibly less than it was before. It angers her and saddens her in equal measure. It feels far too heavy for one woman to hold, but hold it she must, because who else will? She has not given up on this place. Not quite. Not yet.

The Archon has his lofty promises, his proclamations, but he's spread too thin. Dorian had done too much too quickly, and she'd never thought she'd see the day when she wished the Archon had done less. Outlawing slavery in Tevinter at the same time that her country was hurting so badly from the blight had only caused deeper, angrier rifts. The Venatori are largely gone, but their spiritual successors, the Tiresias, have risen up, loudly opposing every change he tries to implement. Whispers of uprisings in cities across Tevinter make Neve feel like civil war isn't far off. And then there's Orlais's posturing that's making both Nevarra and the Imperium nervous; Neve worries it's making the Shadow Dragon's agreements with the Mourn Watch even more perilous.

She ducks out of the rain and into Mylae's Rest. The tavern is busier than expected, but she supposes even in a starving city, people gather anyway. The mood flickers on the edge of violence, balancing on a knife's edge. She feels it shift when she walks in. Feels it calm, and she still doesn't know how she feels about that level of deference, about being that well known.

"Looking for someone?" The barkeep asks. Neve thinks her name is Valia.

"Yeah. Know a Tomás Sosotris?"

Most of the addresses in her book lead to places like this. Gathering places rather than homes. In a city as fractured as Minrathous, it's the easiest way of finding someone. She almost always finds the poor souls she's looking for in these spaces; she wonders about that, if they come back night after night waiting for her to darken the doorstep.

Valia points towards a back table. "Not sure he'll be glad to be seeing you."

Neve ducks her head. "They usually aren't." Because these days, the only news she carries is the bad kind.

Tomás barely looks up from his drink when she confirms his name. "You found them?"

Neve nods. "I did. Their bodies were taken to the Chantry if you'd like to-"

"Thank you."

It shames her that she doesn't remember their initial conversation. She doesn't remember if he found her on the street or in a tavern, if he was one of many she met with in a long, dismal line of people at the Metropole. His face is familiar, that's all. She wishes she had more to offer, wishes there was more to say. She hates that she's the harbinger of death. It has been so long since she was able to tell someone their loved ones are alive and safe. Beside her, a chair moves of its own accord, as though it is begging her to sit. She ignores it, and she leaves.

The Metropole was an old, decaying building before the blight destroyed her city. Now, it is an old, decaying building, half held together by magic and hope and shoddy craftsmanship. The building leaks dirty rainwater, and Neve has to step around a myriad of containers scattered like autumn leaves across the floor to catch it. The main room of the Shadow Dragon's base is crowded, filled to the brim with people hunched in groups over wooden bowls and crusts of bread. She recognizes the family from the corner among them, smiles a little at that. The low susurration of chatter is punctuated every so often by wet, rattling coughing — another charming side effect of the dust that coats the streets.

"Gallus!" Tarquin calls from behind a table near the back, where he's busy spooning out watery-looking soup and crusty bread to the huddled masses. He passes his ladle off to another so he can meet her.

"Tarquin."

He looks tired, more so these days than ever. He takes two bowls of whatever they're serving and leads her around to a back room. In another life, this room was probably the proprietor's office. There's a large pockmarked desk and a few decomposing chairs that look likely to break under their weight.

"You look like you could use some food," he says, holding out the bowl to her.

She takes it because she's not sure what she'll find to eat otherwise back home. "Been a long one?"

"Always is 'round here," Tarquin replies, sinking heavily into one of the chairs. The safehouse the Shadows used to occupy was more spacious than this, but this is less a safehouse than a soup kitchen these days. They're no longer smuggling slaves, but help comes in all sorts of shapes.

She nods at that, sips at her watery soup. It's surprisingly good, and it feels nice to have something warm after the freezing rain. She takes a moment in the quiet to remove her hat, sliding the pin out and rubbing at where it had rested against her scalp.

"Heard you were down in the Lanes today."

She raises an eyebrow. "Keeping an eye on me?"

Tarquin shrugs. "People talk."

"Marked some names off the list," she says, words stiff and dry as the bones they'd uncovered.

At that, Tarquin pulls out two mismatched glasses from the desk between them and pours from the flask he keeps in his robes. "Did you think that we'd still be finding bodies this long after?"

The short answer is no. The more complicated one is that she's a little surprised they've dug out at all. She remembers looking out at her unreal city from the Archon's Palace before they descended back down to the street level. She's not sure she can ever forget the ruination of it all, the fundamental belief that this was the end of Minrathous. How could they possibly emerge from all of that blight, all of that death? It was probably the exhaustion and grief talking.

Because of course Minrathous had rallied, of course, it is still here.

"I don't know," she replies and knocks back whatever Tarquin poured her. It burns a little, not enough for exculpation.

Across the room, a spindly shelf clatters to the ground. Making them both jump. Tarquin shakes his head. "This fucking place, falling apart about our ears."

But that feeling is back, like something or someone is watching her, but it is impossible in this tiny room. It is just her and Tarquin here. "Do you think that the magic here in Minrathous feels strange?"

"Strange, how?"

Neve struggles for words. She wishes Bellara were here. She sees her friends as often as she can, but they meet at the Lighthouse or in Arlathan or the Necropolis. Never here. She tries not to resent that too much. Can she really blame them?

"I don't know. Just…strange."

"You'd know better than me," Tarquin replies.

"Ashur around?" she asks, returning to her soup.

He shakes his head. "I can leave him a note if you'd like. He was wanting to meet with the Crows, though, work out some deals to get more food here through the Crossroads. What good did clearing the ports do if there aren't ships coming in?"

She has no answer for that. According to Taash, the tides are still fucked from Elgar'nan's moving the moon. The cities that still exist to trade have had to rely on roads still choked with blight and darkspawn. No wonder Dock Town feels like a ghost town; ships used to arrive every hour of the day, and now the ones that survive the journey are too few and far between.

"He's going to Treviso?"

Tarquin shrugs. "Probably. I think he wanted to take you with him."

Well, she's been meaning to pay Treviso a visit anyway. A certain First Talon doesn't answer anyone's letters, and she's sure that's not quite the half of it. "Tell him to reach out. You got other work for me?"

"No. Go home."

She shoots him a glare. "Really? When was the last time you went home?"

"I practically live here now that we're not all secretive."

"I'm seeing reports of the Tiresias making noise."

Tarquin sighs. "Yeah, in Vyrantium."

"Do we need to be worried?"

Tarquin looks as tired as she feels. "I don't know. Maybe. I feel like I'm too busy trying to keep people fed. I don't give a flying fuck about some Venatori adjacent bastards mad their slaves are free out in fucking Vyrantium. And neither should you."

"If a rival group is gaining steam-"

"What are you going to do about it? You've done enough, Neve. You were the hero Minrathous needed during the blight. You led that team, gave us all a fighting chance."

"Rook led the team," Neve says firmly. She feels that she is always reminding everyone that it was Rook who brought them all together. Rook that led the team. She didn't come down with the rest of them from the Archon's Palace, and somehow, it seems that everyone else has forgotten her. She's not ignorant of the way she's left off of every graffitied mural or memorial.

"Same difference. You were there, up in the palace. You stopped it all. That's enough for ten lifetimes."

And somehow, it still isn't. "I should go."

"I'll tell Ashur to find you when I see him next."

"Thanks for dinner and the drink," she says as she stands. It takes some effort. She's feeling the weight of it all tonight. She retrieves her hat, pins it back in place.

"Anytime. I always know you'll take a break if I do," Tarquin says with a slight smile.

She rolls her eyes, but there's something comforting about it too, about being known. At least there's one place in this city where things are just the same as before.

Home is an apartment a few blocks away. She'd moved into it about a year ago, after finally admitting to herself that her time at the Lighthouse had come to an end. It's a third-floor walk-up in an ancient building, but it's more spacious than her last. The bedroom and the sitting room are, in fact, two separate rooms this time instead of just being listed that way on the lease.

It's all still sparse, nearly empty. She hasn't even bothered with a couch for the sitting room; instead, she's got the entire far wall organized as a crime board. As she gets inside, she shucks off her coat and changes her spare prosthetic since she's too tired to clean the detritus of the city off this one. She'll regret it in the morning, but tonight, she's too tired to care.

She's also greeted by a small regiment of wisps. They'd followed her from the Lighthouse for some inexplicable reason. She tries to blame all the weird happenings around her on them. The forces that knock into her, the chairs that pull themselves out, the books that fall open off her shelves, the way she feels something moving near her, into her.

Far better than admitting what she really thinks: she's haunted. Though by what she's not sure. She surveys the living room, taking stock of what sort of mess the wisps might have made of her space in the intervening hours since she was last here. It's easier to blame it on them than to interrogate it as anything else. For a detective, she feels very uncurious these days.

"Alright, what have we got here?" she asks the wisps that bob and chitter as though they're thrilled she's home.

The wall of her apartment has been mostly untouched since she moved it here wholesale from the Lighthouse. Two missing persons take up the space: Rook and Harding. Two hopeless, dead-end cases — her specialty.

Sometimes, she thinks about pulling it all down. There's been nothing to add in months to either thread. She writes to Fade experts in her spare time, leverages her contacts where she can. The answers don't change, and neither do the courteous platitudes that arrive with them. But she can't stop looking, can't give up the search.

Giving up would feel too much like admitting Rook had made the ultimate sacrifice for Minrathous, for Thedas. And where would that leave her? What has she done for this place?

Her papers have been scattered haphazardly across the floor of the sitting room, the lone chair looking lonelier than ever. She sighs and bends to pick them up. And freezes at what she finds.

Writing has appeared all over the pages, some symbols repeated over and over again, and in thick, black ink as though someone was scratching them into the very pages. There's a pounding in her ears as this new clue appears before her. An all too familiar sense rises in her, the twisting, coalescing truth: she's got a lead.

Across the pages, she recognizes these as Old Nevarran symbols, though she cannot read them.

But she knows those who can.

[thewyvernrising]

Also available on AO3!

Chapter Twelve

Bellara stood there beside Ivy, her hand refusing to let go of her friend's until she felt Ivy's pulse slowly return to something resembling calm. Even then, she found it difficult to bring herself to let go, the warmth of Ivy's skin against hers both dizzying and comforting. Ivy's gaze remained fixed on the border of the forest, eyes darting rapidly amongst the trees. Bellara felt her tense up at the exact moment her own attention was drawn to the faint shimmer of carmine light that was barely perceptible amidst the dusky gloaming of the forest. Two pinpricks, perhaps eyes, perhaps something else entirely, but whatever they were they were growing brighter rather than fading into the dark as they had in the past.

A sudden tremor seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet, and they spun around in time to see the campfire Ivy had been carefully constructing die without leaving so much as an ember. Turning their attention back to the trees, they stared wordlessly into the night, but whatever had been out there was gone. Vanished, leaving only a lingering sense of anxiety in Bellara's stomach. She already knew that, if they went to investigate? There wouldn't be anything to find.

"If that thing out there is really after me," Ivy said slowly, her voice so low as to almost be a growl, "And if it really wants me dead, then the feeling is fucking mutual. I'm tired of being toyed with."

By that time, the others had joined them, varying degrees of alarm written on their faces and Assan sniffing aggressively at the ground, squawking with indignation when Davrin refused to let him dart into the forest. "I think camping this far back was probably a good call," he observed wryly. "Whatever that thing is, I don't think it's brave enough or stupid enough to come into the open where we will see it coming and have an advantage."

"Is that," Bellara swallowed hard, trying to force the words out, "Is that why it tried to get into Ivy's head? Why it tried to pull her into the forest? Do you think it knew that, even if the compulsion didn't work, she'd be angry enough to go after it?"

"Yeah, probably not one of my better ideas," Ivy admitted, giving Bellara's hand one final squeeze before placing her hands on her hips and studying the treeline. "That thing really does not like me. Which, you know, I probably ought to be used to by now, but usually I've done something to deserve it, right?"

Despite the grin Ivy offered the others, Bellara could hear the undercurrent of pain in her words. Ivy could be impulsive, true, and that had definitely been the case tonight, but she was also quick to take responsibility for her mistakes and to try to make things right, or at least try not to make the same mistakes twice. She just also had a really bad habit of accepting blame for things that weren't her fault just for the sake of keeping the peace. "It is really weird," she said slowly, "That it seems to be targeting Ivy in particular. Why? It was my face plastered on all those posters back in Copse Hollow, and I was the one who got the mystery flowers in my room at the inn."

Emmrich and Willow exchanged a look at that, but it was one Bellara couldn't quite parse out. Then again, she had never exactly been consistent in her ability to read social cues, so maybe it was nothing. Or something. Either way, they both looked more worried than Bellara felt good about. "That is a very good question, Bel," Willow replied carefully. "And one I think we need to prioritize, along with the missing villagers from both Shiral'Din and Copse Hollow. Did either of you notice anything new or unusual? Anything at all?"

Ivy shook her head. "Not really. Well…" She hesitated, her eyes falling to the ground as though she didn't really want to say what she was about to. "When it, whatever it is, was in my head, it kept saying one word over and over again. 'Mine.' It's the same thing I heard that night we stayed in Keeper Lanaya's cottage."

"The night we found the dagger driven into your bedroll?" Willow asked, peering keenly at Ivy.

Ivy nodded slowly. "Yeah. That time, it was just a single word, but it had been saying other stuff too that I just couldn't really pick out or understand, it was so quiet. But I heard that one word super clearly, very distinctly: 'Mine.'"

Another glance passed between Willow and Emmrich, but this time there was clearly alarm there, and Bellara felt her stomach drop. "What does that mean?" She asked, already knowing that none of them had the answer.

"It means that we investigate those ruins tomorrow," Willow said, and Bellara was grateful for the decisive note her friend's tone had taken. "Whatever that thing is, it's escalating, which means we are running out of time."

Bellara tried to sort through the rush of thoughts and impressions crowding her brain, attempting to pick at anything that may be relevant and trying to push aside the ones that actually wanted to surface; namely, the way Ivy's hand had felt in hers and the way her friend's pulse had seemed to calm at Bellara's touch, only to quicken again when their eyes met. "I think… I think that whatever it is, it's not human. Or maybe not entirely? The magic feels really chaotic, but in a really different way from wild magic, if that makes any sense? Almost like there are competing consciousnesses trying to speak up or assert dominance."

"Great," Davrin sighed. "So not only are we dealing with something supernatural, it may or may not be in control of itself."

"Exactly!" Bellara nodded, excitement beginning to overtake her fear. A puzzle piece had just fallen into place. "Emmrich, do you remember those spirits that Hezenkoss was manipulating? The ones at Blackthorne Manor?"

"Regrettably," Emmrich replied, his face drawn. "That magic left a very distinct mark. If we are able to locate the source, or at least a locus nearby, I ought to be able to determine if we are dealing with a similar sort of spell."

"Do you think you can try and maybe ask around?" Bellara suggested. "I know you tried reaching out to the spirits earlier, when we weren't as deep in the forest, but maybe…" her thoughts trailed off, and a pang of guilt hit her at the brief flash of fear that darted through Willow's eyes. It was a terrible suggestion. Of course it was. Emmrich had gotten hurt the first time he'd tried to connect with the spirits of the forest, and it was probably just blind luck he hadn't been more grievously injured. She shouldn't have even brought it back up; it was so selfish. She didn't want anyone else to get hurt, not for her, not because of her silly ideas or-

"I believe we may have better luck once we are in the ruins proper," Emmrich interrupted her mental spiral with a kind smile. "Your suggestion is certainly not without merit! At the moment, however, there is such a veritable maelstrom of interference in the Fade that I doubt I would be able to hone my focus enough to detect a specific entity, even one acting with such targeted malevolence to our young Ivy here. As we approach what we suspect is the source of the spiritual unrest, I may be able to provide more assistance."

Willow's shoulders relaxed a fraction, and Bellara gave a vigorous nod of agreement. "Of course! That sounds way better, and at least a little bit safer? I hope? Sorry, that's probably not much better. Obviously we don't want to put you in danger again, professor. Emmrich. Sorry," she finished, painfully aware of just how much she was probably rambling. To her immense relief, Willow did not seem to be holding Bellara's momentary lapse in judgment against her.

"Of course not, Bel," she said, her tone devoid of any sort of blame. "I daresay we are all just… a little rattled right now. Better to make suggestions, any suggestions, as they come to us rather than forget them altogether once the moment has passed. Speaking of," her eyes flickered briefly towards the forest, "Are the rest of you sensing anything else out there? Is that thing, whatever it is, gone? At least for the time being?"

Emmrich, Ivy, and Bellara all shook their heads. Davrin took one last, long look in the same direction as Willow, then did the same. "Yeah," he sighed, reaching down and absently scratching Assan behind his ears, "I'm not getting anything anymore. That weird tremor definitely set something off in Assan's senses, but whatever it is, it's gone now. I don't know if I'd say we're 'safe' exactly, but I think we can finish setting up camp for the night."

They slowly returned back to the tasks that had been abandoned when Ivy had been pulled away and the tremor had rocked the now deceptively peaceful meadow. If Ivy was still shaken up, she was doing a pretty good job hiding it. Bellara hovered nearby as her friend reignited the campfire and began setting up a flat baking sheet. She wasn't exactly sure what else to be doing at the moment, which was not ideal for her at all. She did best when she had clear tasks in front of her, or at least something to take apart or tinker with, but her tent was already set up for the night and she was on dish detail, so for the moment…

"Sorry," she blurted out before she could stop herself, "I'm probably being a pest just hanging around watching you work."

Ivy laughed, the sound pleasant in the soft spring air. "You're fine, Bel, promise," she reassured her. "I don't mind the company. At least, not yours."

Bellara couldn't quite decide what to read into that addendum, but she knew her cheeks suddenly felt very flushed, and not solely because of the now cheerfully roaring campfire. "How are you feeling?" She asked carefully, then immediately questioned whether or not it was a stupid thing to ask. She knew how it felt to have one's thoughts invaded; how terrifying that seizing of control could be.

Ivy didn't seem terribly bothered, though. "Eh," she shrugged, pulling a hairpin from her pocket and pinning her long pink ponytail into a knot to keep it from the flames. "I'm ok. I know that you know better than most how unnerving that experience can be, and I barely got a hint of what you went through. Not pleasant, sure, but it could have been way worse. Honestly, I'm more interested in how easily I was able to break free of it. Like… it took some mental willpower, but it wasn't that hard to shake it off once I focused. So either whatever had hold of me wasn't all that intent on actually following through, or whatever was controlling it doesn't have that great of a handle on things."

"That… that's good, right? It means we may have an easier time defeating it, right? Oh… or it could be way worse," Bellara said with a bolt of realization. "If they can't control it, and it decides it's done playing whatever game they're playing, the backlash could be bad. Really bad. If there are still survivors from the villages, they'd be in incredible danger."

"Yeah," Ivy sighed, rubbing her forehead briefly. "But Willow is right: I don't think there's anything we can do about it tonight. And hey," she flashed a grin, "You're in luck. We're having one of your favorites." She reached into one of her saddlebags and pulled out three loaves of carefully wrapped bread, as well as an assortment of cheese odds and ends from the meals they had been making during their journey.

"You're making khachapuri!" Bellara exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "I haven't had it since Neve and I made it with the Veilguard. How did you get bread? The baker back in Copse Hollow wouldn't even speak to us, let alone sell us anything."

"Yeah, but his son thought I was cute. I think he liked my hair," Ivy replied with an ever so slightly self-satisfied smile, preening the bright pink strands briefly before returning her attention to the cook fire. "He wasn't even going to take my coin, but I was able to convince him eventually. It won't be quite as good as it would be if I could make the bread from scratch, but it'll do in a pinch. Besides, like I said: I remembered how much you love it, and I figured you could use something of a morale boost."

Bellara's cheeks were growing warm all over again. "Ives, that's… that's so nice of you, really. You didn't have to go through all that trouble though, or I guess you don't have to now, but you're already cooking so maybe it's a moot point, but maybe I can help? I feel bad letting you do all this work just because I like khachapuri, but I also really appreciate that you're doing it for me and I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful."

She was rambling again, and she knew it, but she also found she couldn't quite stop herself despite all the work she'd put into her mindfulness exercises. Something about Ivy, about being around her again after the years apart, threw all that carefully constructed caution out the window. Fortunately, Ivy didn't seem to mind or, if she did, she was too polite to say so.

"You can help by keeping me company?" Ivy suggested. "I don't know about you, but I'm still… I'm still a little freaked out by all this." She gestured in a wide arc encompassing their camp and the woods beyond. "Plus, while I was able to break free of the compulsion last time, I probably also gave them more information they need to refine their process, and there's no guarantee I'll be able to shake it off a second. I'd definitely feel better with someone keeping an eye on me. You know, just in case I completely lose my marmalade."

The last bit was said in a rush, almost as if Ivy as trying to cover up an admission she shouldn't have made, but Bellara could not for the life of her figure out what it could be. She just knew she wasn't mad about the excuse to stick around a little longer. "Deal," she said, settling down on a moss covered stump to watch Ivy work. In a way, this was the most normal she'd felt in a long time: sitting by a campfire, cooking a meal with whatever they'd been able to scrounge up in the forest or barter for from wandering traders, laughing and talking about the day's discoveries. It was part of what she'd loved best about being part of the Veil Jumpers, but it went back farther than that. She still had great memories of her and Ivy 'camping out' while they were kids. It had never been far from the main Dalish encampment; they'd still been within shouting distance of their parents, but it had been fun to pretend nonetheless.

Part of her wondered if she had never really stopped pretending. And then another part immediately wondered what exactly she had been pretending about.

Their party gathered around for the evening meal, chatting quietly in deference to the forest around them and whatever might be lurking in its depths. There were no further tremors, and no one reported any signs of being called or pulled towards the gloom. Bellara was almost able to forget just how bad things were, and how much danger they were still in, until it came time to assign the night watches.

"Anyone object if I take first watch?" She piped up after she had finished the dishes and packed their supplies away. "I'm still pretty wound up and I don't think I could sleep even if I wanted to."

For a brief moment, she considered adding a request to her offer: asking if Ivy would take first watch with her, as she had that night in Lanaya's cottage. Bellara knew she ought to offer it to Davrin. He probably needed it way more, but then again Ivy had not exactly had the easiest day. Really, it might be less selfish to offer it to her so that she could have the rest of her night's sleep uninterrupted. Theoretically, at least. Oh, but if she specifically asked for Ivy… maybe she would get the wrong idea?

But… then again… maybe Bellara wanted her to get the wrong idea. And wouldn't that make it the right idea in the end?

Oh… oh no… where in the void did that thought come from?

She was saved from a fresh thought spiral when Ivy herself spoke up. "I'll stay up, too. I'm sure it will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that I'm also really keyed up after everything that happened earlier this evening. Who wants to trade off with us at moon's zenith?"

The others discussed the remaining watch shifts, but Bellara's mind was in too much of a fog to really listen. She was grateful they were able to keep a thread together; to keep things on track even when her mind was running a million miles a minute, but now she was bogged down by a brand new anxiety: had her friendship with Ivy changed? And if it had… how? Why? Ivy was her friend, probably her best friend, even now. They'd been through so much together, but… but then everything had changed. Ivy had disappeared. Bellara had joined the Veilguard, had been captured by Elgar'nan, had fought back the blight that had threatened to consume her and the world.

So why did it still feel like Ivy was home?

"They're good people, your Veilguard friends," Ivy observed as they settled against a fallen log facing the forest, shaking Bellara from her errant thoughts. "Willow and Emmrich are adorable together, they know that, right? Like, I'd have never in a million years though of people bonding over dead bodies, but here we are. Kind of wish they'd brought Manfred, though, he sounds like an absolute delight."

Bellara laughed, grateful for any distraction other than how nice Ivy still managed to smell despite being on the road for as long as they'd been. "He really is, especially since he started learning how to talk. Got Neve in trouble, though: just like with kids, he was real quick to pick up on Tevene swears but still hasn't quite mastered the word for 'teapot.'"

She stared up at the velvety expanse of blue arcing over them. "You know, as cool as it was hanging out in a relatively safe pocket of the Fade and all the experiments I was able to run there, I missed this. Just being outside. Stars and trees and real water, even if it was flowing up instead of down. Things that were real."

Ivy didn't say anything at first, then she glanced down, her pine green eyes softened to a fathomless emerald in the darkness as they met Bellara's. "I know exactly what you mean, Bel," she said.

And with that, they both fell silent, cradled by the comforting light of the stars.

And Bellara tried to pretend it was sheer happenstance that their hands were touching ever so slightly.

------------------------------------------------

Dawn came too soon, just as it so often did. Bellara groaned, pulling her blanket up over her head to drown out Emmrich's cheerful chatter as he prepared their breakfast. They needed to get an early start today if they were going to make any progress exploring the temple ruins and still make it back to camp before sundown. It had been tacitly, albeit not explicitly, agreed by everyone that no one wanted to spend the night in or anywhere near the ruins.

They loaded up their bags with the supplies they thought would best serve in their exploration, leaving the bulk of their camp as it was. There was always the risk of something or someone tampering with it in their absence, but they had agreed it was unlikely. Whatever was out there, it was almost certainly going to follow after them rather than bother trashing their camp or stealing their supplies. They once again set off into the forest, picking their way along the path watched over by the weather-worn statue of the Dread Wolf where it sat in solitary vigil away from the main encampment.

"Ah," Emmrich sighed, "It seems the markers I left on our journey out yesterday have vanished. I cannot say I am surprised, though I am admittedly disappointed."

"Yeah, I kind of suspect that whatever caused that tremor last night also did a number on any wards or runes we put in place within the borders of the forest," Ivy said with a resigned shrug. "I don't know about you guys, but I could practically feel the threads of the Fade snapping when it happened."

To Bellara's surprise, Willow just laughed. "And this, loves, is why you always bring a couple non-mages along on these sorts of mission. Davrin?" She turned to the warden, who gave a wide grin.

"What would they do without us?" He asked with mock exasperation, then looked to Assan, who was waiting beside him with one paw raised expectantly above the ground. "Alright boy, find the trail."

Assan darted forward, pausing when he got too far ahead to give the rest of them a chance to follow. "Magic can be tampered with, or even destroyed," Willow explained, following the enthusiastic griffon along the path. "I learned that the hard way growing up in the tombs and relying on the magic that others before me had set down to navigate the deep crypts. It's always a good idea to have a more mundane back up plan for those of us without magic, and even for those of you who do have it, in case of this exact scenario. Even better if you have a handsome boy like Assan to track down familiar scents."

The griffon gave a pleased chirp at the compliment before diving deeper into the woods, darting amongst trees and occasionally leaping into the air to soar briefly above them before diving back down and picking up the trail once more. Just like the day before, it took them longer to locate the ruins than it had to leave them, and Bellara was beginning to fear they never would when suddenly the forest opened up in front of them and there, towering in all their dilapidated glory, were the temple ruins.

They still felt wrong in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. There was old magic here, much of it seeped in blood, but that made sense at least? Especially with what Cataline had told them about the history of this particular spot in the forest and the incursions by both werewolves and darkspawn. The werewolves had long been freed of their curse, the survivors moving on to try and settle in the populated lands to the north or choosing to eke out an existence in the forest, and the darkspawn had pretty much disappeared with the death of Elgar'nan. Which was why the magic Bellara was picking up on, the 'new' magic, was even more blatantly obvious.

"Alright," Willow nodded decisively, though Bellara thought she could detect the faintest hint of hesitation in her friend's voice, "We won't find any information, or the missing villagers, standing out here. Let's make our way inside, carefully. No one rushes ahead, no one takes any unnecessary risks, alright? We still do not know what this place was, or what might be lurking deeper inside. Stay alert."

With that, she pushed open the ancient stone doors and strode purposefully into the temple. Emmrich followed close on her heels, then Davrin, and finally Ivy and Bellara. For her part, Bellara was practically vibrating with a mix of anxiety and anticipation. Even from the exterior, she could tell these ruins were different; familiar to Arlathan, yet unquestionably unique.

Yet when she stepped inside the cool stone halls, they almost felt… ordinary. Even in ruins they were grand, no question, but somehow Bellara had expected something more. She wasn't exactly sure what, but something. Instead there was just an utterly mundane silence. Light filtered in from overhead where parts of the vaulted stone ceiling had disintegrated over the long millennia, and a heavy carpet of moss, leaves, and other woodland detritus littered the floor and huddled in windswept corners. Marble statues towered over the forsaken entry hall, features worn smooth by the twin ravages of time and neglect, and a wide, shallow basin dominated the center of the floor. Any water, or other fluid, it may have once held had long evaporated into the ether of the forest.

"This is it," Willow said, her voice muted by the vastness of the hall. "It's exactly as Cataline described, and what I remember from Varric's stories about her adventures. Though," she paused, a small smile tilting at her lips, "The statuary seems to be far less… endowed… in the bust area than I would have expected based on his retelling."

Davrin snorted. "Still wish I'd met him," he said with just a trace of wistfulness. Bellara understood the sentiment: most of their team had only joined up with the Veilguard after Varric had died, but his presence had loomed large over their mission even before they realized the effect Solas's blood magic had held over Willow. "Wonder what kind of stories he'd tell about this mess?"

"Well, let's just make sure we make it out of here to tell the tale ourselves, alright?" Willow laughed. "How do we want to proceed? I see three doors, but at least one is blocked by a rather impressive amount of rubble. We could clear it, but it would take time, and personally I would want to take a closer look to see if it appears to have been blocked off recently or not. Bellara, Ivy, do you two have any initial impressions?"

Bellara snapped her attention back to Willow. "It's weird," she replied, painfully aware of how inadequate that answer was. "It's a mix of Tevene and ancient elven architecture, but what in the void is it doing all the way out here? And according to Cataline, this was a resting place for ancient elves, so why is there Tevinter influenced building styles? Was it built by Tevene architects who were under the thrall of the evanuris, or does this somehow predate the Imperium and the elven architecture actually influenced them? And if this site was sacred to the ancient elves, what were all these additional chambers used for? It's clearly not all dedicated to the concept of Uthenera."

"What she said," Ivy shrugged. "If we can find some sort of written records or inscriptions I can probably at least get you a decent translation, but who knows how much help that'll be. I will say that the magic in here is so jumbled we'll be lucky if we're able to pull out anything unusual from the rest of the background noise."

"Agreed," Emmrich sighed. "Which is unfortunate. If we had a specific thread to track, perhaps, but…"

"Ok, so next time this thing comes after one of us, maybe we let it?" Ivy suggested, and Bellara felt as though she'd been punched in the gut. So far, whatever was tracking them had really only been malicious towards one of them: Ivy herself. "Maybe then we can get a 'sample' of sorts to track through the ruins?"

"Are you insane?" Bellara blurted out. "Ives, I don't want that thing anywhere near you! Any of you," she amended quickly.

Ivy gave her a look Bellara couldn't quite interpret, and she let her eyes fall away to focus on the splintered mosaic on the floor. "Fair," Ivy said evenly. "Ok, maybe that should be Plan B?"

"I think that would be wise," Emmrich nodded. "Perhaps for now we should press a bit further in and see what we might uncover?"

They split into three groups without even really realizing they were doing so. Willow and Emmrich were together, of course, examining the northernmost door that appeared to be sealed tight. Davrin and Assan began poking at the rubble-strewn eastern door, the griffon pawing insistently at the stones. Which left Bellara and Ivy to investigate the western door.

"Do you feel that?" Ivy murmured as they approached. "Like… a current, maybe, in the magic flowing in this direction."

Bellara tried to open herself up to the magic beyond the veil, but something almost felt as though it were trying to push her out, or to block her from sensing any magic, let alone the current Ivy was feeling. She found herself unfocused in a way that was unusual even for her, a strange haze settling over her consciousness that seemed to cast the entire room in a distorted veil. Glancing at her surroundings, she realized they had changed; shifted. Sunlight no longer streamed in from a broken ceiling, but instead illumination bloomed from the familiar teal glow of veilfire hovering in sconces along the wall. T

The statues that had been little more than crumbling pillars were now perfectly intact: pristine tributes to elves who named themselves gods, adulatory perfection carved into every detail. She had never seen one so intact, but Bellara found no comfort in them, only a growing sense of unease. Dread. There was no benevolence in the lifeless stone eyes set in the cold marble. Somehow, inexplicably, each one seemed to have its silent gaze focused on her, passing judgment, rendering a sentence for crimes she could not name.

Then, as she stood in silent horror, a statue of Elgar'nan slowly lifted its hand, reaching out to wrap unfeeling fingers around her neck. Bellara opened her mouth to scream, to fight for breath, anything, but she couldn't. All she could do was stare into the eyes of the god she had renounced and struggle helplessly against his unyielding grasp.

And then… darkness.

[thewyvernrising]

Y'all will forgive me while I sit over here in the corner SCREAMING FOREVER about the Widow's Bay season finale.

(Side note: Rosemary is an icon).

[slothquisitor]

I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust: Prologue

Summary: A post-canon exploration of Veilguard's bad ending. Lucanis/Rook, angst, 1.3k.

Also on AO3.

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"There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust." T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

"Promise me," Lucanis had said at the end of the world, "if Solas betrays us again and you see an opening, you take it. And so will I."

He'd simply had no idea how damning extracting that promise from Camina's lips would be.

Elgar'nan is dead, but the world is still ending. The Fade is tearing itself to shreds, unraveling in long, ragged tears, as though some long, spindly fingers have hooked themselves into the very fabric of creation and begun to pull. Lucanis can feel it in his bones, behind his teeth — the terrible tilt of the world, the sickening sensation of something fundamental slipping out of place. Spite is howling inside his skull, frantic and feral. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The air tastes wrong. The sky feels wrong. Everything is wrong.

He watches Camina stand there amid the collapse of everything, battered and exhausted and somehow still managing to be hopeful, holding out that fucking dagger. Offering trust and mercy, and one last chance to Solas, as though the world isn't already bleeding out at their feet. As though hope alone might be enough to stitch it back together.

For one impossible, devastating moment, Lucanis wants to believe her.

But Solas betrays them anyway.

Solas is halfway up the steps when Lucanis hears him say, "To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

Camina's desperate glance back over her shoulder at him is one of the many images he will carry after this day is done. But in the moment, he has no way of knowing it will be the last time she looks at him. There is a question in her eyes that seems to ask, Are you with me?

The answer is as it ever was: always.

She sprints up the steps at Solas, the spirits she calls upon reaching up from the ground below, the clutch of their bony fingers slowing him, making him stumble. In all the time he's known her, she has never been a very proficient fighter. He'd noticed it the first day he met her in the Ossuary. He hadn't understood why she wielded her magic like a blunt instrument, why every spell and twist and turn was clumsier than any fledgling he had ever seen. He'd learned later that it was because she is an academic, had been trained to protect and ward. But she was never like him — born and honed into a weapon until little else remains. She holds her staff up anyway, fighting for this world.

Camina always knew this was a weakness. She spent hours in the courtyard training and learning. He'd even sparred with her a fair few times, but she never had any hope of besting him. She'd asked him more than once for his assessment of her abilities — he was the mage killer after all. And he'd stumbled through some awkward assessments, watching her amethyst eyes for any sign he'd somehow overstepped.

Now, he wishes he'd said more. Wishes he had woken her up at whatever passed for dawn in the endless brightness of the Lighthouse. That he had insisted on training her himself. Maybe then she would have had some hope at besting Solas now.

Solas is injured, but he is still a god. And she is just one stubborn woman.

Solas's magic lashes out at her, the green sparks knocking her off her feet. Spite is furious, and Lucanis lets that rage and fury guide him. He has killed one god today; what is another?

"LEAVE. ROOK. ALONE," Spite yells as together they pounce at Solas.

Neve is back on her feet too, the icy shards of her own magic flying Solas's way. Lucanis trades blows, his rapier scraping the length of the lyrium dagger's blade. By then, Camina is at his side, her familiar necromantic magic an onslaught aimed directly at Solas.

There is a pulse of power; he and Neve are knocked off their feet. His head slams against implacable stone, and everything is blurry for too many painful seconds. When he manages to lift his head, Camina has her hands on the dagger, wrestling Solas for control. Their fighting is ugly, desperate — action and reaction.

Lucanis ignores the ringing in his ears and rolls his shoulders as he stands, readying to leap at Solas once more. Another pulse of Solas's magic, and this time he tries to roll, to dodge whatever spell is coming his way. It turns out to be pointless because a barrier has emerged, protecting him as much as it keeps him from rushing to Camina's side. He thinks it must be Neve, but the magic isn't hers. He whorls quickly, looking for the answer, to see who it is that is keeping him back. Morrigan and the Inquisitor are here.

"Solas!" The Inquisitor pleads.

How useless their attempts to persuade the Dread Wolf; Solas has control of the dagger now.

"Camina!" Lucanis screams the moment before Solas plunges the dagger into her side. He sees the blow coming, the awful arc of it, the way her dodge is far too slow.

Solas looks almost surprised to see the blow land, and Lucanis wonders if he is remembering another ally he had stabbed in much the same way. Camina seizes the opening, grits her teeth, and rips the dagger from where it was plunged, her blood spraying out, coating the ground. In another world, he thinks he might be proud of the way she uses a move he knows he taught her. The way she drops low, sweeping the dagger around to knock Solas off his feet. He knows she's sliced the backs of his legs in the process, and Solas groans as he collapses to his knees.

"Now your blood is on the dagger, too," she spits.

"Rook!" Morrigan calls, a warning, a portent.

But it is far too late. Tendrils of magic are already reaching, already seeking, already curling around them both. It happens slowly and then all at once. The Fade tear hangs open above them all like some terrible maw, and they are lifted, both of them flying into the air. The magical tendrils have pushed Camina and Solas together in some facsimile of intimacy, their bodies flush as they struggle against the magical bindings. They hang there for a moment in their struggle, suspended, caught.

And then it swallows them both before it disappears.

"Nooooooo!" The word emerges from him in a primal scream as he watches the woman he loves disappear for the second time in so many weeks.

He staggers to his feet, running at the space she just was as though he might still be able to catch her. As if there is still some echo of her to grasp onto. He glances around wildly, looking back at Morrigan — the shade of Mythal — surely she has a way to fix this, a means to make this right, to bring Camina back?

"Bring. Rook. Back!" His demon rages, and for once, he doesn't mind the way Spite rips the words from his throat.

"'Tis done….at far too high a price," Morrigan says. "The Veil repaired, sustained once more. Where they have gone, I dare not even think to follow."

"Then send me! I will go," Lucanis pleads. He'd told himself never again after Tearstone would he feel so desperately hopeless again, never again would he allow her to go somewhere he cannot follow. If only it was up to him.

It is the pity in Morrigan's eyes that is an answer in itself. He falls to his knees beside the puddle of her blood, stays there so long it runs against his knees, seeps into the leather and stains it.

There is no victory without her.

Because she's gone. For good this time.

[thewyvernrising]

Tag Game: tag ten people you'd like to get to know

I was tagged by the SUPER amazing @dags-over-caravans. Thank you so much! :D (Who I have to also give a special shout out to because my partner and I are also practicing Gaston for karaoke, but I fear I must voice Le Fou as I lack the appropriate gusto for Gaston XD). Answers, tags, and related shenanigans below the cut!

Last Song: Alright, shameless plug here. :'D My husband's boyfriend is a legit musician and I have been obsessed with his song The Light and The Minute Hand. Look, I already love this boy as my own son/brother/twin from another uterine spin, so I am probably biased, but also, this song just slaps.

Currently Watching: I am fully obsessed with Widow's Bay, and unreasonably smug about the fact I was watching it before it below up on the socials. XD I just happened to catch the preview for it when we were wrapping up Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (I'm a goji girl to my core), and thought it looked kinda neat. Friends, I AM HOOKED. I am devastated we're down to the final episode of the season next week.

Current Obsession: Spooky shit, but that's really just ongoing. See my obsession with Widow's Bay referenced above, but honestly? It's really helping me stay in the 'spooky' mindset as I write the final five chapters of Shadows of Divinity. I've also admittedly been playing a lot of my 'cozy' game go-to, Disney Dreamlight Valley, because we just got the new Hercules expansion and I am yearning for them to add my goddess Meg to the game.

Currently Reading: Non-fic wise? I just stared The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey, and I'm loving it so far. In the fic department? I am moving way too slowly on all of them just because work has been A Lot, but I cannot say enough good things about The Crows of Purple Haze arc by @dags-over-caravans, All My Friends are Sad and Bright by @sorrygoldfish, Everything and Nothing to Lose by @gatesofminrathous, and OF COURSE I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out to the absolutely wonderful modern teacher au that @slothquisitor just wrapped up, Halfway to Whole. I am well and truly spoiled for choice when it comes to fic right now!

Currently Working On: Honestly... work has been taking up way too much of my brain space recently. That being said, I've been trying to make a conscious effort to make time for creative endeavors, even if they're just for me, so I do try to write on my current project every week day (this also just helps keep me in a routine, which in turn helps keep me sane when work goes bonks), I sketch (badly), and play piano or guitar (varying degrees of competence :'D). I just started drafting chapter sixteen of Shadows of Divinity and I've started eyeing the modern au outline that I still need to sketch out the last few chapters on, but that's about it.

Currently Wearing: My 'work clothes', which today consist of my old (and about to be retired) Leliana tarot art t-shirt from the good ol' DAI days and my Snorlax pajama pants. My chunky sweater has been requisitioned by Lilith, so it's a good thing it warmed up. =^.^=S

Last Internet Search: I think it was the menus for a couple new brunch spots we are thinking of checking out tomorrow. :'D Our normal place is doing bingo which I would normally love to stick around for, but I've got way too many errands to run to get sucked in to that sangria-fueled wormhole. XD

Favorite Flower: Sunflowers. A classic, and what I had at my wedding. I also love lavender and poppies, and if we're talking scents? Velvet tuberose.

And I will tag @slothquisitor, @sorrygoldfish, @leothelionsaysgrrrr, @thefrostyshepard, @blightwashed, and @girlwonderers, if any of y'all are so inclined!

[thewyvernrising]

Tell Me Today

Pick a scene/chapter/whatever from one of your fics (or I'll suggest one!) and add any commentary you feel like. Why that line? How come this plot twist? What does the eyebrow waggle MEAN?!?! I want the dirt and I can only smash my face up against the glass of your stories so hard before I start to leave smudges.

I was tagged by the absolutely amazing @sorrygoldfish and @gatesofminrathous, and really, I cannot recommend highly enough that you go read their responses to this, because they are so well-thought out and beautiful and a ringing endorsement of why you should be reading their work.

I will in turn tag @slothquisitor, @dags-over-caravans, @blightwashed, @thefrostyshepard, and @blackestnight, if any of you all are working on something you'd like to share!

In the meantime, I will offer my own humble analysis of a piece that I never expected to write, mostly because I fully expected the OC in question to be a one off mention in the first fic I wrote for this universe, then, well... :'D Here's some thoughts on my Shadowheart x OC piece in the BG3 universe, Of Your Courage Last.

Full disclosure? I could not stand pre-Gauntlet Shadowheart. Maybe because I am way too familiar with cult-level religious devotion (my partner was raised Mormon and had to do a lot of de-programming), maybe it was just the blind adherence to a goddess that demanded cruelty in her worship, I don't know. So you can imagine how absolutely outraged when multiple people, people I love and trust, told me I reminded them of her.

Excuse fucking me?

But honestly, post-Shar Shadowheart? Yeah, I get it. I actually really do. We have a similar dry sense of humor, we love animals more than we love most people, and at our core, we have a good heart. So in between my eight million Halsin x Rowan playthroughs (ok, I'm exaggerating. I think I've only done my canon Halsin arc like... twelve times), I decided to create a 'throwaway' OC to do the Shadowheart romance arc. I named her Teveskaya, she was the sister of my main OC Rowan, and she was a rogue. That's about as much thought as I put into the initial character. :'D

Then... then as I played through her arc with Shadowheart, the character started kind of spinning out in my head. Veska hated her home life just as much as Rowan had, and wanted to escape it just like her sister. She has been sheltered, but not so much as her parents might have liked. And she fell hard for Shadowheart.

I recently went back and re-read that piece (it's fairly short by my standards; only five chapters), and I realized that, as I was writing it, I was writing kind of my own wish fulfillment of how I had hoped my own relationship with my girlfriend (who was thankfully not my primary partner) would have turned out. I can see hints of both of us in Veska and Shadowheart, and I can see that I was writing through the lens of 'what if' rather than what actually happened.

The reality is that my secondary partner had deep mental and emotional scars that lead to mental health challenges I could not be expected to handle on my own, especially when they refused to get the help they needed. I want to say I left after they hit me, or after the countless remarks criticizing my appearance or my personality, but the sad reality is that it was only after they completely ghosted me after my dad died that I kind of snapped back to reality and realized how much of myself I had lost by sacrificing it to them. They had warned me from day one that they were not a good person. And I finally believed them.

Shadowheart and Veska were a way of beginning to heal those wounds even before I had fully extricated myself out of the relationship. I was extremely lucky that my primary partner, my wonderful husband, has been supportive of me and loved me through it all, but it was also really cathartic to write a story in which, hey, they made it through ok. They both came from traumatic backgrounds and they survived. They were still capable of love. And so am I.

I love this piece a lot. It kind of got overshadowed by the ghost story au I wrote next (which is probably the best thing I've ever written, ngl), but I feel like it captured a time and place for me that I am at peace with now. I can go back, re-read it, and smile for these two beautiful idiots and the simple life they are able to build together after everything they lost.

XOXO,

-Wyv

[thewyvernrising]

Also available on AO3!

Chapter Eleven

"Bel, don't even go there."

Ivy couldn't help it. She knew Bellara, possibly better than anyone else there, and she could already see the gears grinding inexorably forward in her friend's head. She knew Bellara was already looking for a way to blame herself for what had happened back in Copse Hollow, and that it would not be any great leap for her to spin out a web of guilt from that singular incident to the rest of the disappearances and deaths that had scourged the forest. "I already know what you're thinking, and there is no possible way this has anything to do with you. You literally had a one in seven chance of the symbol carved on Amos's chest being associated with the god that you chose for your vallaslin."

"Ives, it's not just that it is the symbol of Dirthamen, it-"

"It doesn't matter!" Ivy interrupted, softening her tone at the look of surprise in Bellara's eyes. "It just… it doesn't matter, Bel. What happened to Amos wasn't your fault. None of this was. I mean, prior to this mess, did you have a single even tenuous connection to this forest? To the Dalish who live here? There's just no logical reason someone would be targeting you with all this. It doesn't make any sense."

"None of this makes sense, Ivy," Bellara countered. "But it's not just the symbols matching up." Her eyes fell away, which was a sure sign there was something she hadn't told them yet that, at least in her mind, she probably should have. "You all said that none of you slept well at the inn that night, right? Weird dreams, insomnia, anxiety, whatever. But somehow I get a perfectly blissful, restful night's sleep? Only me, the one person who is chronically staying up way too late because her mind can't just shut up for thirty seconds? I've been getting better sleep since I entered this forest than I have since I was just a kid."

Ivy felt the hairs raise on the back of her neck. When Bellara had made her admission, a wave of something had seemed to wash over the forest: something that almost felt… pleased with itself. "Ok, so you're sleeping better. Maybe it's just the fact we're riding every single day and when we're not in the saddle, we're investigating a bunch of people who really, really don't want to talk to us. Maybe your brain's solution for all the stress and exhaustion is to finally cut you some slack and let you get some rest."

Bellara did not respond at first, instead exchanging a glance with Willow where she had remained quiet during Ivy's outburst. Ivy couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy at that: there had been a time when Bellara would have just confided in her directly, but now… well, maybe now she didn't know Bellara better than the rest of them did. There was, in fact, the kind of terrifying possibility that she didn't know her at all anymore.

"It is certainly a possibility," Willow offered diplomatically, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over them. "I agree with Ivy that it is perhaps too great a leap to assume that Dirthamen's symbol showing up on Amos's body means the killer was somehow trying to make a connection to you, Bellara, or that your newfound ability to sleep through the night is necessarily ominous."

To her credit, Willow's tone did not seem to indicate she was merely patronizing either or them, but Ivy could tell that the Guardian was worried. Whatever was going on, it wasn't normal. Then again, absolutely nothing about this fucking forest was 'normal.' "Ok, I'm getting the sense there is a 'but' coming up here pretty quick."

Willow shrugged. "I do not know, Ivy," she admitted. "So far, these could plausibly be written off as coincidence, but they are odd enough that I think they are worth keeping in the back of our mind. Unless there is something else you would like to add, Bellara?" The question was pointed but not unkind, yet Bellara flinched slightly despite the gentleness of the inquiry.

"Yeah, I… I should probably tell you guys. When I woke up this morning, back at the inn, there was a small, simple vase on the windowsill with snowdrops arranged in it. They've always been my favorite flower, ever since I was a little kid. We used to have play bonding ceremonies with me, Ives, Cyrian, and his best friend Cormac, and the only way they could ever get me to play was by crafting elaborate bouquets of them for me to use as the 'bride.'"

Ivy couldn't help a chuckle. She remembered those games. She also remembered that both her and Bellara had always hated it, and as often as not the two of them would run off together to have adventures of their own, leaving the bewildered boys at the 'altar.' She wondered if either of them had ever figured out that, at least for Ivy, boys were never going to be that interesting. "Ok, so there was a nice bouquet of flowers in your room. Maybe they were left by or for the previous occupant, or maybe Amos just hadn't gotten around to replacing the vases in the other rooms before we got there. I didn't get the vibe he was exactly expecting a large crowd."

"No, you don't understand," Bellara shook her head forcefully. "They weren't there when I went to sleep. Someone, somehow, snuck into my room while I was having weirdly deep, peaceful sleep, and left a bouquet of my favorite flowers on the windowsill. That can't be a coincidence, you guys. And that's why I can't just write the other stuff off as coincidence either, and why I can't just pretend that none of this may somehow be linked to me."

Ivy felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach, and across from her, Willow sat back against a tree with a heavy sigh. "Well, shit," she said, her eyes squeezing shut as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Alright, that… certainly lends some credence to your concerns, Bellara. We need to go chat with the others, see if we need to adjust our plans."

"No! I mean, I don't think that'll be necessary," Bellara rushed to say, almost tripping over the words. "Like, this is weird. It's definitely weird. But nothing bad has happened yet, exactly? At least not to me. The last thing I want us to do is completely upend our plans or abandon those people who have gone missing just because I got spooked by some flowers. I think as long as I stay with the group I'll be ok, right? This only happened when I was on my own and in a separate room from everyone else, so it'll be fine. Honestly, if we're worried about anyone, it should probably be Ivy, since we still don't know who that dagger that was driven into Keeper Lanaya's floor was meant for, or how they even got in her house in the first place, and-"

"And that kind of feeds into Willow's point," Ivy interjected before Bellara could spiral any further. "We. Don't. Know. And yeah, this time it was some pretty flowers instead of a dagger, but that still leaves the question of how in the void someone was able to get in and out of a locked room without leaving a single trace."

Willow nodded slowly. "I agree with both of you," she said, standing up and brushing the forest detritus from her trousers. "Bellara, you are correct: we cannot just abandon those who have gone missing and may still be out there somewhere, almost certainly in danger. We will continue on into the forest as planned, but we are also going to inform Emmrich and Davrin about this latest development. I do not want any of us in the dark on this. Ivy, you are also correct: we need to uncover the 'why' behind all of this, because I strongly suspect that answer is going to prove more readily available than the 'who.'"

The trio returned to the main camp and Willow provided Emmrich and Davrin a succinct summary of their discussion. Ivy was grateful she didn't have to make the attempt, and she suspected Bellara was, as well. She still didn't know all that much about Willow, beyond the fact she was some sort of chosen one amongst the Mourn Watch despite not having any magic, but she was proving to be a damn good leader and was willing to make decisions when the rest of them couldn't, and that was good enough for Ivy. She had enough to worry about with Bellara being targeted by… whatever this thing was. That was where her focus needed to be.

And, ok, maybe on whoever had tried to stab a dagger through her torso. She should probably keep an eye on that too.

"That is where we currently stand." Ivy came back to the present in time to hear Willow wrap up her summary for the others. "As much as I do not like the fact that someone, or something, out there has taken an interest in Bellara, I do not think running away is going to solve the problem. In fact, I think that because Bellara has attracted its interest, there is a more than zero chance it would not let her leave even if we wanted to. Our best bet is to continue on and find whatever it is that is causing all this. Are we in agreement?"

"Indeed, dearest," Emmrich nodded firmly. "I shudder to think what those poor souls might be suffering out there, and I cannot abide with them abducting one of our own. We must press forward."

Davrin was quiet for a long moment, then gave a brief nod. "I agree. I also think we need to consider the possibility that the usage of elven symbols is a red herring; something to throw us off the scent of the real culprit. I'm not saying it couldn't be one of us, I'm just saying that using that sort of scare tactic would be a real easy sell these days after everything that went down with the evanuris. Bellara got flowers, sure, but Ivy just about got a dagger through the ribs, so we're running even money on elven targets just within our own little group."

"And, while I hate to muddy the waters even more," Ivy spoke up, "There is also just the general bizarre vibe going on that doesn't necessarily seem to be directed at us, just… I don't know… I guess 'around' us? Whatever tried to call Bellara deeper into the woods, or the glowing eyes I keep seeing in the dark, or whatever it is that has been setting off Davrin's weirdness senses… There is definitely something out there, and we've definitely attracted it's notice one way or another."

Even as she spoke the words, Ivy felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and a minute flash of pain dart through her nerves, almost like when she had tried to pet Assan after walking on a rug in her stocking feet. She glanced at the others, but no one else seemed to have been affected. Ivy decided to keep it to herself, for the moment. It was probably nothing.

It had to be nothing.

-------------------------------------------------

They continued deeper into the forest, this time with Davrin and Assan at the head of the column as they picked their way along the narrow path, and Emmrich and Willow bringing up the rear. No one had said it, but it was clear they were trying to keep Ivy and Bellara as shielded as possible given they were the two that thus far appeared to have drawn particular interest from whatever entity lurked in the shadows. The steady sound of their horses' hoofbeats seemed muffled by the canopy overhead, and while Ivy still had the distinct feeling of being watched, it didn't exactly feel malevolent. In fact, it almost felt as though it were simply observing; waiting to see what they would do next.

The path opened up slightly, and Ivy took the opportunity to nudge her horse closer to Bellara's. "Hey," she said carefully. "I'm sorry I kind of freaked out earlier. Whatever other feelings I have about all this bullshit, I shouldn't have put that on you, and I shouldn't have escalated an already scary situation."

"Oh!" Bellara said, blinking rapidly a few times before turning towards Ivy. "Ives, it's ok! Really! I wasn't mad, just kind of surprised. I didn't expect anyone to react that strongly to the connections I was making, especially since you know I kind of have a habit of just saying ideas as they pop into my head and kind of going with a 'stream of consciousness' narrative. I know it can be a lot and not everyone really has the time or patience or inclination to listen to me ramble. It's why Irelin and I never really worked out, you know? Or… anyone, actually. Willow and Neve and Emmrich are always so nice about it, but I can tell sometimes they get lost too, even though they try really hard to follow my thoughts. They're all so nice and I'm really grateful they give me that space to just be who I am, but I'm also trying really hard to be more mindful of it and just-" She stopped short, offering Ivy a sheepish smile. "Well, you see what I mean."

Ivy just laughed. "Oh, Bel. I could listen to you ramble all day if you wanted. And Irelin is lovely, but if it wasn't a good fit for the two of you then it wasn't a good fit. No one's fault." She had to pull that last bit out of herself with a little more effort than she should have admitted to, but it really was true. As insanely envious as Ivy had been of Irelin while she and Bellara had been together, she bore her no ill will, and she really saw no particular blame to be foisted onto either party for their parting of ways. "And I promise I'm not mad that you made the connection. I just don't want you to, and I say this with love, do what you usually tend to do and end up blaming yourself for something that was one billion percent not your fault, you know?"

"Like I did with Cyrian?"

"Yeah," Ivy sighed. "His death wasn't your fault either, Bel. Either time."

Bellara was quiet for a long moment, then nodded. "I know," she finally said. "And I know that if I did blame myself, I would be cheapening his sacrifice; trying to diminish the way he did finally die and the hero he actually was at the end. He told me that I had a good heart, and that he'd listened to it. So maybe in the end we both got some absolution."

Ivy's heart splintered a bit at Bellara's confession. Even with as much time as she spent far afield from the main Veil Jumper camp, she knew there had been some really shitty rumors that had been whispered by some of their members, though fortunately very few, about Bellara's loyalties. Which may have resulted in Ivy picking a few fights. Correction: it resulted in Ivy winning a few fights. And somehow, for once, Strife hadn't chewed her ass out for it. In fact, Ivy almost could have sworn he was proud of her. Which was weird.

"Bel," she said softly, "It wasn't your fault. Whatever absolution you think you needed, you just… you didn't. Cyrian's actions were his own. You and I both know he was a good person, in his heart, he just… he lost his way for a bit, you know? And he needed you to remind him of who he was. Who he really was, not who he became under the sway of Anaris."

Bellara flinched a bit at the mention of the Forgotten One. "I don't know what he experienced wearing that damn ugly mask," she said. "I know Irelin said it couldn't really control him, but experiencing the feelings of a so-called 'god' had to be overwhelming. I can barely keep my own thoughts and feelings straight, let alone trying to carry those of a megalomaniac bent on world domination."

"It's definitely got super villain vibes written all over it," Ivy agreed. "Almost like something you'd read out of a serial, it's that out there." It was a less than subtle gambit to change the conversation, and they both knew it, based on the small, grateful smile Bellara threw her way.

"Oh, definitely. Except the villain would probably have to be toned down, right? Otherwise no one would ever believe it."

They slipped back into easy, casual conversation, mostly Bellara filling Ivy in on all the serials Neve had been able to scrounge up for her over the past year and which ones she'd liked best. It was not until they approached a stretch of the desolate path that once again narrowed to a single-rider track through the density of the forest that Bellara's narrative slowly petered out, and her soft oaken eyes looked back to Ivy.

"Ives… why do you care so much about whether or not I blame myself? I know we've been friends for like, literally forever, but then you disappeared for so long and you never really explained why and it kind of felt like you were avoiding me the few times we did manage to be at the base at the same time. Don't get me wrong!" She rushed to add, "I'm so glad you're back and that we're spending time together again and everything, I just… I don't know?"

It was rare for Bellara to be at a loss for words, and even more rare for Ivy to take this much time as she was to consider her words before speaking. "I just… I worry about you. For you," she said, stumbling over the words. "I know I fucked up in a big way by ghosting you the way I did when Strife unofficially banished me over that botched temple mission, and I still feel really guilty about that, but I also really… you mean a lot to me and… I just know you. I know that if there is even a tenuous way to shoulder the blame or responsibility for something that went wrong, you will, because it's a way to defuse tension or redirect anger or frustration from others. And you don't need to. You don't have to carry the weight of everything that goes wrong with the Veil Jumpers, or the Veilguard, or the rest of the world. You're a brilliant, kind, beautiful person in your own right. You don't have to be more than what you are, and I don't want to lose you a second time just because some lunatic in the woods is making you feel like this is somehow your fault. Cause it definitely isn't."

"That… wow," Bellara said, her eyes falling away and her words, for once, completely failing her. "That's so nice of you, Ivy. I… I didn't realize you felt so strongly about all of it."

Ivy let her horse fall back into single file behind Bellara's praying the other woman hadn't noticed the fierce burn that had risen in her cheeks. "I know a lot has changed, Bel, and I know I haven't been there for you like I should the past couple years, but you're still my best friend. Which means I'm still gonna do my best to drag you out of your blame spirals when they pop up."

Bellara's laughter filtered back towards her, muted but real. "Appreciate it, Ives. And, you know, for what it's worth? It's been really great having you around again. I really missed you."

Ivy was pretty sure her cheeks were about to combust they'd grown so warm. "I really missed you too, Bel."

They fell back into a companionable silence necessitated by the narrow trail and the density of the trees pressing in on them from all sides. The Brecilian once again seemed calm. Watchful, maybe, but not particularly malicious or mischievous. Under other circumstances, Ivy may have even been able to enjoy herself in a place like this: quiet, out of the way, only the distant calls of birds and the skittering of small creatures in the underbrush breaking the peace. In fact, the further they delved into its depths, the harder Ivy was finding it to believe that whatever was going on here had anything to do with the forest itself. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but the Brecilian almost seemed… indifferent, maybe? It was certainly aware of their presence, she had zero doubt of that, but thus far their passage had been unhindered.

A few hours past the noon zenith of the sun, they reached a wide clearing that must have once been the Dalish camp used by Lanaya's clan on their annual pilgrimage through the Brecilian. Ivy couldn't help but be relieved that it appeared to have not been used in a long time: the familiar tracks of aravals had been overgrown with wild grasses and wildflowers, and the simple wooden fencing that once enclosed a distant paddock where halla would have been kept was now mostly rotted and sagging boards. Crumbling statues of what Ivy had to assume were the evanuris had been further defaced by mortal hands, and she couldn't decide if that was a good sign or not.

Here, the Brecilian Passage would have once run through the camp, but Lanaya had explained that traders and others who regularly used the sole 'established' path through the woods had slowly shifted to sidestep this particular patch of forest. No one could say why, at least as far as Lanaya knew. It had just kind of happened over the past two decades. It didn't feel super weird or spooky, but then again, Ivy was kind of having a tough time trusting her own senses in this place. There almost seemed to be a constant buzzing in her ear, and she couldn't tell if it was the lazy hum of insects in flight, or the veil trying to put up guardrails against their own crazy insistence on pushing further into the forest.

"Been a long time since anyone set up camp in this clearing," Davrin observed. "I'm guessing that once the Dalish stopped coming here, no one else was in a big rush to claim it. Think we should stop and set up a base camp, or keep going?"

He addressed the question to all of them, but they in turn all looked towards Willow, whose lilac eyes were scanning the borders of the meadow, considering the line of trees that marked the border between the light of the clearing and the obscure depths beyond. "Let's press on a bit farther," she said, swinging back up into the saddle. "Worst case scenario, we can always turn around and return to this spot to camp for the night, but we still have several hours of daylight left. I would hate to waste them."

Ivy couldn't help but notice what Willow had left unsaid: none of them were eager to spend another night in the darkest parts of the forest, at least not without getting an idea for what might be waiting for them.

"Widow Marlowe said the path that would take us to the ruins would be marked by a small wolf statue," Willow said, leading her horse towards the treeline, "Set apart from the others, and facing away from the main camp. Three guesses who that was for," she observed with a wry laugh. "I wonder what Solas would think of us now."

"Probably wouldn't tell us even if he could," Bellara retorted, but there was no bitterness in her words. Ivy suspected that, whatever the Dread Wolf's sins, Bellara had moved past them. Part of her was envious that Bellara had actually had the opportunity to meet the Fen'Harel. Part of her was more envious she'd never gotten the chance to punch him in his smug face personally.

It was complicated.

They picked their way along the path, occasionally identifying landmarks that Cataline had told them to keep an eye out for if they decided to seek out the old ruins. It felt as though they wandered for hours, but by the passage of the sun overhead Ivy guessed it had only been one, two at the most. Half the time it felt as though they were going in a great bloody circle, the path splitting randomly only to meet up again after skirting a wooded knoll or crossing a creek bed. When they did finally stumble upon the overgrown clearing and the towering ruins that crouched over it like a pile of picked over bones, it almost felt as though they had done so on accident. Or perhaps the forest had simply grown tired of watching them wander aimlessly and had nudged them in the right direction.

"Oh this place is all sorts of wrong," Ivy muttered under her breath. For the first time since they had left Copse Hollow, she had the distinct feeling that something, albeit something she could not fully put a name to, was not right about this place in a way that was not reflected in the rest of the forest's relatively indifferent weirdness. An oozing sensation slithered over her feet, and she had to fight the instinct to jump back in disgust. All the moreso when she looked down and saw absolutely nothing there. Every ounce of magic in her veins seemed to be sparking, nervous energy pulsing in time with her rapidly accelerating heartbeat. She risked a glance at Bellara and Emmrich, and was both reassured and frightened to see the nearly matching grimaces on their faces. Ivy realized she probably rounded out the terrified trio.

Davrin and Assan took an experimental step forward, the latter's beak pointed straight ahead and his ears back flat against his feathered head. "Yeah, Will, not sure if we want to try tackling this place this late in the day. I don't know what's in there, but I can tell you one thing: we're not alone out here."

Willow rubbed her forehead briefly as though she were trying to ward off a headache. "Agreed. Let's return to the old Dalish campsite for the night. Emmrich, love, would you place some magical markers along our path back so that perhaps we might find our way a little easier tomorrow? I am aware," she gave a small smile as Ivy was about to interrupt her, clearly already guessing her thoughts, "That there is a fair likelihood that someone will tamper with them or remove them altogether, but I think between that precaution and Davrin's tracking ability we'll be right." She took one last glance towards the ruins. "Strange, how something this 'civilized' could exist in a place as wild as the Brecilian. Perhaps the forest should have been allowed to reclaim it long ago."

Ivy didn't disagree. The other villages that occupied the woods were huddled and small, as though they were perfectly aware they were at the mercy of the forest's whims and not the other way around. But this monstrosity… this was an act of blatant defiance on the part of whoever had constructed it. Either that, or it had been built long before whatever spirit embodied the Brecilian had made the forest its lair. She wasn't sure which option was more comforting.

They made their way back to the clearing, but this time the journey felt almost disappointingly brief. While something clearly did not want them to find the ruins, it apparently had no problem with them fucking off and leaving them alone. Emmrich placed his tracking runes on several rocks along the way, but even with that delay they were back and setting up camp within an hour. Ivy had cooking detail that night, which meant they might not eat fancy but they ran less of a likelihood of something charred (Davrin) or complex to the point of absurdity (Emmrich). She began tucking kindling into the cone of firewood she'd stacked up, and was about to summon a spark to set it alight when something caught her eye at the edge of the camp.

It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but there was undeniably something there. And it was coming from the direction of the ruins.

"Shit." Ivy muttered to herself, straightening her posture and peering towards the border of the forest. There it was again; just a hint of movement, taunting her. Or tempting her. Because even though every rational cell in her body was screaming at her to either stay put or at least alert the others, Ivy found herself taking first one, then another tentative step closer to the deepening gloom of the woods.

To her credit, she could tell she was fighting it. Her feet, while moving, were dragging on the ground, digging shallow trenches with ever step. Her hands were clenched into fists, nails digging into the flesh of her palms so severely she thought she might actually feel the hot stickiness of blood blooming against her skin. Her thoughts swam in a confused murk, but one impulse seemed to float above the rest, a macabre buoy that crooned a single word over and over again.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

"Like the void, you asshole," Ivy spat, the words crawling out of her mouth in a low growl. "I'm not your fucking puppet."

And just like that, the feeling faded, the strings cut. Ivy no longer felt the compulsion in her blood. It had been replaced by something else: blind, white hot rage. She stormed towards the edge of the camp, footsteps pounding the ground, ignoring the startled shouts from Willow and Emmrich. Someone had violated her mind, her very being, and damn it but Ivy was not going to let that stand.

"Ivy!"

She stopped short, Bellara's voice cutting through her fury. Her friend darted forward, reaching out and grasping Ivy's hand tightly. "Ives, don't. That thing out there…" Her wide oaken eyes scanned the dusky shadows of the forest, "It's not right. Like, really not right, Ives." Bellara looked up at her, and Ivy could see the slash of fear there.

"I think it wants you dead."

[slothquisitor]

Halfway to Whole: Epilogue

Lucanis/Rook, 1.3k, modern teacher au.

Also on AO3.

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September is Camina's favorite time of the year.

There is just something about it: the winding down of summer, the cooler nights, and the promise of autumn in the air. "Life begins all over again in the fall," Fitzgerald wrote. A fresh new school year glimmers there, brand new and redolent with the promise of renewal and restart. A clean slate. She is ready for it, excited even. Counting down the days until she gets to be in her classroom with her students once again.

For much of the last year, that feeling of joy and excitement was one she was sure was lost to her forever. But after a spring and summer of careful, deliberate rest and work realigning herself with her job and her own sense of self, she is so fucking relieved to find it has returned. The excitement feels like an old friend welcoming her back.

The last Saturday night of summer vacation happens to fall on one of the hottest days of the year, and so does the teacher dinner Camina is hosting. Teacher dinners were Varric's thing. Once a month, he'd gather everyone at his home for a night of food and drink and commiseration. When he'd died, they'd stopped, and Camina had spent the last year wondering if she should bring them back. Wondering if anyone wanted them back as badly as she did.

Lucanis, of course, was thrilled at the prospect of hosting all their friends. Of getting to show off his garden that's fully taken over the side yard, and cooking a whole meal for them. He officially moved in two weeks ago, but if they're honest, he was basically living here most of the summer anyway. They're already talking about expanding his garden next year, and a potential addition to the house, to make it a bit more theirs.

"Okay, I just moved the cooler to the shade because all the ice was threatening to melt out there," she says as she comes into the kitchen.

Lucanis has an array of pizza toppings laid out on the counter, is busy getting his homemade sourdough pizza into rounds to throw on the grill once everyone has made the pizzas they desire. "Did you get the grill on?"

She nods. "Of course." Spite swims lazily from his spot on the counter, and Aphra watches him with interest, her ears at full attention.

Lucanis glances at the clock over the oven and then continues working. "Mierda, I should have started all this ten minutes sooner."

"Put me to work," Camina says. "What can I do?"

The look he gives her is fond exasperation. She has certainly learned a few things by spending time with him in the kitchen and watching him try new recipes. He's spent a whole month perfecting his grilled pizzas this summer, but she is still rather hopeless in the kitchen.

"You can set out all the packaged ingredients," he says, mouth an upturned grin.

"Are you sure you feel confident delegating such an important task, chef?"

He passes behind her on the way to the sink, but she feels his hand snake around her middle. "Calling me chef would imply that you ever follow my instructions, and we both know you don't."

She leans a little into him. "I thought that was part of my charm."

His chuckle is bright in the kitchen. "You're right, it is charming when you burn the food."

"That was one time!"

"Yeah, because I haven't given you the opportunity to do it since." She tosses the nearest towel in his direction, which he easily bats away, but they're both laughing now.

And then their friends begin to arrive. Aphra is thrilled at all the potential for attention from everyone who enters. Emmrich and Will arrive first, carrying a salad in a gigantic multicolored bowl. Davrin, Bellara, and Neve with drinks tucked into reusable totes and Davrin carrying a twelve-pack. Harding and Taash are late, but no one is surprised or bothered since they're too busy eating the bruschetta Lucanis made with tomatoes from his garden.

"This all looks just wonderful, Lucanis," Emmrich says as the group makes several pizzas, sprinkling toppings on their sections.

"And for dessert, he's got peach cobbler," Camina says.

The entire group 'ooohs' at that. "You're ruining the surprise," Lucanis replies with a shake of his head that does nothing to obfuscate how proud he is that everyone is excited for his food.

Camina watches him cook pizzas on the grill while their friends sit and talk and drink together on the patio, settling at the table or following Aphra through the grass. Emmrich asks Lucanis about work, and it no longer twists her gut to think about how Lucanis's time at the school district is rapidly coming to an end.

The audit is winding down. By mid-September, it will be over, and both he and Rana know their time is running out. Rana already has something lined up at a local nonprofit, so she'll land on her feet. Lucanis, meanwhile, plans to take a beat, reassess, to figure out where his heart wants to go next. He's never had that luxury. Whenever they talk about it, she can hear the uncertainty beneath his careful optimism. The fear of too much empty time, the fear of falling back instead of moving forward. He's more worried than she is; she'll be by his side either way.

Love, she's learned, isn't all grand declarations or impossible sacrifices. Sometimes, it's simply taking turns carrying the weight. It's listening and making space. It's buying something for the dog or helping the other person plant a garden. This love is quiet, gentle. If the road ahead feels at all uncertain, she simply remembers she's not alone in it.

A box waits in the kitchen. The books inside are nothing fancy, spiral-bound copies from the district printer, their covers plain and practical. But when she looks at them, her chest tightens anyway. Varric's book. And hers. Finished at last.

Lucanis is the only person who has read it. He'd called it phenomenal. She suspects he would have found something kind to say no matter what was on those pages, but she chooses to believe him. Some gifts are too precious to examine too closely.

She's not sure what happens to it now. Maybe nothing. Maybe it only lives here, passed hand to hand among the people who loved him. That feels like enough. She wants them to have it, that piece of him she's gotten to sit with this summer. To laugh with and disagree with and extend those through lines of his thinking into something that is also hers.

She'll hand them out at the end of the night, just before everyone leaves. No speeches or long discussions. She doesn't even care if they actually read it. Maybe they won't. But they'll have them, something he touched, something he left behind.

The pizzas have all just come off the grill, and everyone is gathered around them, laughing and talking over one another as they fight over pieces and cheese stretches out over plates. The evening hums with life, with friendship. It feels so reminiscent of those dinners on Varric's back deck that she almost wants to glance around, almost feels that if she looks hard enough, she'll see him just there. He'd be proud, she thinks, of the way they've survived it all. How even the worst years can't quite stamp out these ordinary joys.

This won't be the last hard school year in the same way it wasn't the first, but still, here they are, all of them excited for whatever the next might bring.

She's standing back, a bit apart from it all when Lucanis finds her. Of course, he does. His hand rests gently on her waist, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head.

"Come on," he says softly. "Let's join everyone."

And so she does.

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[thewyvernrising]

Also available on AO3!

Chapter Ten

Willow was growing rather tired of dead bodies.

Ironic, perhaps, given her heritage and her chosen line of work, but generally speaking the dead she worked with had either been that way for some time, or else had died of perfect natural, or at least explicable, causes. After the mess in Treviso, she had hoped she was done with murder for the time being, but apparently such was not to be the case. She had initially planned on leaving Copse Hollow as soon as they'd had a chance to eat a brief breakfast and collect their horses. Now, she had even more questions than she had come in with, and she was going to get answers one way or another.

Poor Amos did not appear to have died in pain, at least. Emmrich had already attempted to speak with the body, but had gotten very little new information. His best guess, based on his interview with the corpse, was that someone had put the late innkeeper to sleep, either by magical means or something slipped into his evening meal, then slit his throat. It had been quick, and likely painless due to the deep coma he had been placed in. A surprising mercy, given the post-mortem message scrawled on the poor man's bared chest.

"Another symbol of the evanuris," Willow informed Emmrich when he rejoined her side. It had been decided that, as the eldest and arguably most respectable-presenting of their group, he would be the best representative to inform the local authorities of the death and to smooth things over enough to ensure they were not suspects. "I wish we'd had an opportunity to examine the other bodies that were found at the border. I cannot help but wonder if they were also killed mercifully, or if this was an outlier. If this is an outlier, why? What prompted them to grant this man a kinder death?"

"Familiarity, perhaps?" Emmrich suggested, rubbing his forehead. He had been the first one up, of course, and he had been the one to discover the body. "Or perhaps it was simply a matter of practicality: a sleeping victim will make far less noise than an alert one, and it was not a secret that we were all upstairs and may have been witnesses to the crime should we have heard something."

"And yet not a single one of us did. Emmrich, are you picking up any magic resonance?" Ivy asked, joining them at the counter. She didn't look as though she'd slept much either, and Willow could hardly blame her. None of them were certain whether the incident with the dagger had been intentionally targeted at her or not, but this newest demonstration of violence was too close for comfort for any of them. "Did anyone notice anything weird last night?"

Willow shook her head. "No. Actually, I thought I had slept perfectly fine, at least until I woke up and saw my reflection in the mirror that suggested otherwise. Truthfully, I thought I had slept better than I have since we left Gwaren, which is… odd." 'Odd' may have been an understatement, actually. Her dreams whilst in the forest had not been nightmares, exactly, but they had been vivid and bizarre, flashes of things that felt like someone else's memories. Strange ruins towering above the trees and great halls haunted by shades of souls long passed. "Is it possible we were all affected by whatever knocked out Amos, but it left us more restless? Unable to truly fall into deep sleep?"

"I'd say it's certainly possible," Ivy replied with a shrug, "Couldn't even begin to tell you for sure, though. Not without knowing what caused it. I'm not picking up on anything weird."

"Nor am I," Emmrich agreed, his brow furrowed as he considered. "Which does not rule out any number of prosaic possibilities, but without access to adequate tools and alchemical reagents for testing I will not be able to provide any more specificity."

Willow bit back a sigh of frustration. He was right: there was little they would be able to do here in this small, backwater village, at least as far as an autopsy or evidentiary investigation. She doubted they would even be able to get permission to do an autopsy if she did have the resources to complete one, but damned if she was going to simply let this man's death pass without question. "We will send another raven to Gwaren and one to Lanaya, let them know what has happened and what our plans are. I still intend to leave this village today, but I am not going to do so before we ask some questions."

Davrin descended the stairs, nearly tripping over Assan. who was chirping with far more enthusiasm than the rest of them were able to muster at the moment. "You really think that's gonna make a difference, Will? They weren't exactly forthcoming when we talked to them yesterday and I can't imagine this," he gestured to the shrouded body on the inn floor, "Is going to endear us to the locals."

"Probably not, no," Willow agreed, "But there is also a chance that a death this close to home may loosen some tongues that otherwise might not have spoken. Besides, other than Amos and Jessa, I do not believe anyone we spoke to actually had a friend or loved one taken. I say we go back to her and try to get some more information."

"You're not worried about the locals causing us trouble?" Ivy asked.

Willow gave a small huff of laughter. "I think the worst thing they will be able to do is freeze us out. Which would be deeply frustrating, but not particularly dangerous. I do not think they will outright harass us or attempt violence. Certainly not while we are all alert and on our guard. And they know perfectly well we are here at the request of the Teyrn and Teyrna of Gwaren and, by extension, Queen Anora." She turned to Ivy. "Could you perhaps go fetch Bellara? I do not feel comfortable with any of us being alone right now."

Ivy gave a brisk nod before dashing up the stairs, and Willow took one final look at the silhouette of the body before exhaling heavily and stepping away. Bellara and Ivy joined them shortly. Bellara looked to Willow and, dead body notwithstanding, there was clearly something going on with her. She looked remarkably well-rested; better than the rest of them certainly, and yet there was a distinct glint of alarm in her eyes as they darted towards the body. "Can I… can I see it, please?"

"Are you sure?" Willow asked, her tone kind but still shadowed with concern she could not quite conceal. She did not want to patronize Bellara or diminish her, but she had also endured so much. Too much.

Bellara responded with an emphatic nod. "Please, Will, I… I need to know."

She did not elaborate on what knowledge she sought, exactly, but Willow thought she understood. She carefully knelt down and drew back the sheet, exposing Amos's deceptively peaceful expression as well as the precise line across his throat and the more aggressive slashes in his chest. Bellara stared at the corpse for a long moment, not speaking, her expression unchanged. Finally, she squeezed her eyes shut and stepped away. "Ok," she whispered. "Thank you. Ivy said we're going to go try and talk to more of the townspeople? Should we split up to cover ground more quickly?"

"No," Willow replied firmly. "Not this time. Emmrich was able to smooth things over with the local authorities and show them our writs from Gwaren and from Lanaya allowing safe passage, but even without a charge of murder hanging over our heads, I would rather not linger here. Let's pack up our things and move out, let the local authorities take over here."

It was a subdued group that left the Dozing Dragon, stepping into the defiantly cheerful sunlight and crisp morning air. Emmrich had, with a great deal of persuasion and no small amount of flattery, persuaded the alderman of Copse Hollow to provide a list of names of those people who had friends or relations that had gone missing. It was shorter than Willow had been expecting, and for a brief moment she had hoped that perhaps the situation was, admittedly still dire, but perhaps less so. That was until Emmrich had gently explained that roughly half the victims had not had not had particularly close ties in the village, or that their partners or friends had also disappeared. Still, it was a start, and at this point Willow would take what she could get.

Copse Hollow was not a large village; perhaps only a couple hundred people at best, and so even with little to no help from its residents they were able to locate the first name on their list fairly quickly. Florian was a farmer, such as there ever could be in the depths of the forest. His weathered features squinted as they approached, and even from a distance Willow could see the stubborn set of his jaw and the suspicious cast of his gaze.

"Whatever it is you want, you just move along," he announced before they even had a chance to speak. "I ain't got nothing to say to the likes of you, and no fancy bit of paper is gonna tell me otherwise."

"We are not looking to cause any trouble," Willow attempted to reassure him, already suspecting it was a wasted effort. "We are just trying to help."

Florian spat on the ground, fortunately in the opposite direction of their feet, and shook his head. "Folks like you are always trouble," he grumbled. "'Sides, won't do no good to anyone. Those that are gone, are gone. Wishing otherwise doesn't change a thing. And I'll tell you the same thing everyone else is going to: we didn't see nothing, we didn't hear nothing, and we don't know nothing. All we know is that our kin are gone, and they're not coming back."

He swallowed hard, and there was the faintest sheen of tears in his eyes that belied the harshness of his words. "They took my youngest. Right out of his bed, they did."

"Maker… I'm so sorry," Willow murmured, and her voice seemed to break Florian out of whatever brief moment of cooperation he had found himself in.

He gave a short huff, then abruptly turned on his heel and stalked back towards the farmhouse. "Well, that could have gone worse, I suppose," Willow sighed. She was about to move on to the next name on her list she heard a small, insistent psssst from behind a shed on the property. Glancing at the others, she raised her shoulders and then tossed her head, indicating they might as well check it out. To her surprise, they were met by a young girl, perhaps no older than twelve or thirteen, with dirt smudged cheeks and wild tufts of loose hair sticking out of her long blonde braid.

"My da isn't telling you everything," she informed them without preamble. "He's given up. They all have. But I saw what happened that night. I saw. And no one will believe me."

Willow tamped down on her initial urge to ask about a dozen questions. "That's alright. I believe you. What did you see, um-?"

"Laurel," the girl replied, offering a hand and a surprisingly cordial handshake. "They won't listen," she repeated. "They're scared. We're all scared. But I know what I saw. My little brother, Sage? He wasn't taken. He left."

The air around them seemed to pulse with a sudden current. "He left," Willow repeated slowly. "Do you mean the first time, or did he come back and leave again?"

"He was one of the ones that never came back," Laurel answered, her grey eyes tired, as though they had already seen too much. She likely had. "When he did go, though, he left on his own. I was meant to be asleep, but I wanted to see the falling stars so I stayed up. At first I was scared when Sage got up out of bed: I thought he was going to tell our parents and I would get in trouble, but he didn't say a word. He looked at me, but it felt like he couldn't really see me, if that makes sense? It almost seemed like he was listening to someone I couldn't hear."

"What happened next?" Willow prompted, her heart racing.

Laurel frowned. "His eyes… they got all strange and glow-y. Kind of like Miss Holly's hands when she heals people, but brighter, and smaller. It was just the colored circle part that glowed, yeah?"

"The irises only.. how fascinating…" Emmrich murmured at her side before directing his next words at Laurel. "Had your younger brother ever displayed any sort of magical inclinations before?"

The girl shook her head. "Nah, only folk with magic in the village are Healer Holly and the twins, Arlo and Sarai. They're in charge of protecting us. They've been real upset about what's happened, though. Arlo's been drinking a lot, and Sarai won't leave her cottage. I'm not meant to know about it, but I listen real well," she added with just a trace of gleeful pride in her possession of hidden knowledge, but her smile faded with her next words. "Then he just walked out of the room. Didn't say a word. I thought maybe he was going to get a glass of water; that I was imagining the light in his eyes. And then he just… never came back. Some of the others did, for a time, but not Sage. I never saw him again."

A tremble had risen in Laurel's voice, and Willow reached out a hand to place on her shoulder, offering what strength she could. There was little enough she could do for her, or for the silent guilt she knew the young girl would carry for the rest of her life. She spared a glance for Bellara, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the conversation. She was standing completely skill, barely blinking, and one hand was worrying at the wooden fox Davrin had carved for her as a focus for her excess energy and anxiety. Willow was no mind reader, but she could guess where her friend's thoughts had drifted.

"It wasn't your fault," Willow said softly, and she could only hope that Bellara would hear her as well. That she would understand. "What happened to your brother was terrible, and unfair, but it wasn't your fault."

Laurel sniffed weakly, her eyes falling to the ground where her shoe was scuffing the dirt. "Yeah…" She said, sounding entirely unconvinced. "That's all I saw. I know it's not much… it's not enough… but maybe it'll help."

"You've done wonderfully, Laurel," Emmrich reassured her with a kind smile. "Every bit of knowledge we can gain will help us uncover the truth."

"Good… good," she nodded, and Willow was fairly certain the girl was ready to be done with the conversation. "I should probably go, now. I've got to get the chores done before my da gets cross with me. But you should go talk to Widow Harlowe. Her husband was taken, and she doesn't give two figs if she's not meant to talk to you or not. If she decides she wants to, she's going to. And if she doesn't? She won't."

Willow laughed at the blunt assessment, and Laurel's face broke out in a crooked grin. "Well then I think our next stop will certainly be to the Widow Harlowe. Could you point us the right way to find her home, Laurel?"

She gave them a few simple instructions, then scurried off towards the hardscrabble garden plot closer to the main house. Willow lead the others back towards the village in the direction Laurel had indicated. Widow Harlowe's home was not easy to miss: various herbs grew in a riotous mob around her house, only barely contained by a rustic wooden fence long past needing a fresh coat of paint. Willow recognized nearly every herb in the garden, and at least half of them were toxic. A few bedraggled but clearly well-fed chickens pecked at worms in the soil, and a surprisingly sleek and healthy-looking cat dozed on the spindly branches of a sprawling oak. Poisonous plants notwithstanding, it was surprisingly peaceful.

At least until the front door flew open, and an older woman with a wild mane of silver hair and piercing dark eyes glared at them, hands planted firmly on her hips and suspicion written on her features. "Eh? What are you lot doing here? Get off my land."

"Wait, please! Mistress Harlowe-"

"That's Widow Harlowe to you, young lady," she snorted. "Took me nigh on forty years to shed that useless lump of a man, so I figure I earned that moniker fair and square." She peered at them intently, pointing a gnarled finger at Willow. "You're the ones who've been asking all those questions, riling up the other townsfolk. She heaved a long sign. "I reckon that's good enough reason to hear you out, I suppose. Well, come on in then. Mind the mud on your boots; I'll not have you tracking it all over my clean floors."

The house was much what Willow expected: cozy, the walls and rafters lined with drying herbs, simple but solid furniture occupying a floor that, as stated, was freshly mopped and gleaming. Widow Harlowe directed them to a table surrounded by a half dozen mix-matched chairs, then huddled over a still-steaming kettle before pouring a measure of tea into a series of clay mugs. When she sat down to join them, she pointed in sequence to Emmrich, Bellara, and Ivy. "You three, you've already got the Fade in your blood. You," she pointed to Davrin, and Willow was surprised to see her expression soften slightly, "Were pulled back from death. It leaves a mark on your soul."

"How in the void do you know that?" Davrin asked, not bothering with the niceties Widow Harlowe probably would have scoffed at anyways.

She shrugged. "Every once in a while, one of us non-mages are blessed, or maybe cursed, with a certain intuition. A way of seeing; feeling things that others can't or won't." She turned her disarming grin towards Willow. "But I'm sure you know something about that, eh Grave Daughter?"

Willow reeled slightly, but recovered quickly enough. "That particular title of mine is not terribly common outside of Nevarra," she pointed out, and Harlowe just gave a cackling laugh.

"Like I said, you're not the only one who the spirits have taken an interest in despite not having a drop of magic in their veins. How do you think I ended up out here in the middle of a haunted forest with a husband that's been more useful to me dead than he ever was alive?"

"How do you know he's dead?" Davrin asked bluntly, but Harlowe did not seem bothered by the question, or its direct delivery.

"Call it intuition, a feeling, a hunch… some things you can't put a name to easily, hunter, but trust me when I say this: Stuart is dead, and frankly, his demise was probably better than he deserved." She took a sip of her tea, clearly unbothered by her loss. "He was one of the ones who came back, you know. Just about caused my heart to leap out of my chest when he walked through that front door. Whatever was puppeting him made a crucial mistake though."

She paused, pulling an elaborately carved wooden pipe from one of the multitude of pockets on her billowing skirt and tamping down some herbs and lighting it before taking a long drag, the smoke rising in elegant curls from the corner of her mouth. "Stuart was a cruel man. Harsh. I'd say the apple didn't fall far from the tree as his da was much the same, but I think it would be more accurate to say the apple was battered and bruised and grew sour in the process. Had I the choice, I would have left him behind long ago, but it is not so easy to be a 'touched' woman in the far parts of the world. Or maybe I simply lacked courage.

Either way, the man that walked through that door had a smile on his face and nothing but kind words for me. Said he was sorry he'd worried me, but that he was back now and everything would be alright. I knew immediately that whatever that thing was? It wasn't Stuart. His eyes were hollow rather than hateful; his touch tender rather than violent. It was the version of a husband I might have once dreamt of as a girl, but this thing almost seemed to not know my name, or anything about our life here in the forest."

She tapped her pipe on the table, sending a few sparks up as she unwound her tale. "I can't tell you what took his form. Couldn't even begin to guess. Might have been a spirit, might have been blood magic, might be something else entirely, unique to the Brecilian. Three days it stayed here, and not once did it eat or sleep or take so much as a sip of water. It wore Stuart's clothes and did his chores without complaint, which I'll admit was a nice change, but then just as suddenly as it had appeared? It left again. Middle of the night, without a word."

"Did he leave anything behind? Anything unusual or out of place?" Willow asked.

"Not a thing," Harlowe shook her head. "Save for all the clothes it had worn had been neatly cleaned, folded, and put back in the dresser, so I have to give it due credit for at least having better manners than the old lout ever did. It didn't even take a pair of shoes. Just walked out the door in trousers and an old patched shirt, never to be seen again."

"You saw him leave?" Willow pressed, trying not to let her excitement run away with her. "Do you know which direction he went? Where he might have been headed?"

Harlowe nodded again, slowly. "Aye, Grave Daughter, I saw. And I can give you a fair guess as to where he was headed. Where they were all headed. Come with me." She stood from the table, waving her hand indicating they were to follow her out the back door of the cottage.

They walked to the far edge of her property, the border marked only by the simple wooden fence between that which Harlowe claimed as her domain and that which belonged to the Brecilian. "Now you may have to squint a bit, but if you look just there," she pointed to a spot beyond the treeline, "There is a path. Not much of one, let's be clear, but a path nonetheless for those who can find it. And somehow, those who need to can always find it. You follow that and it will take you to the depths of the forest, where the deep magic still resides. Your Keeper Lanaya knows it, though perhaps she has tried to forget. Wouldn't blame her if she had. Her clan used to camp out that way, before all that business with the werewolves and the darkspawn, and before her majesty granted them the land to build a permanent settlement on."

"What made it different from anywhere else in this place?" Davrin asked, frowning at the woods and peering into the shadows it cast. "Why would she want to forget?"

Harlowe did not respond at first, her eyes fixed on some distant point beyond what perhaps any of the rest of them could see. "Plenty of blood has been spilled in those woods," she said at last, "And some places drank up more than others. There is a place, deep in the heart of the forest, where ruins yet stand, a testament to the old gods of the elves carved by hands that might have once struck them down. Beautiful architecture constructed by ugly hearts. It has drawn in many, over the centuries, and may yet draw many more."

She turned back to them, and her eyes carried a shadow of uncertainty rather than the sharp glint of suspicion. "There is a path," she repeated, more slowly, drawing the words from herself as water from a deep, deep well. "It will take you to the old Dalish camp, then further on to the ruins. The path itself should be relatively safe: the werewolf curse was broken by Lady Cataline a score of years past, and the darkspawn have vanished after the fall of the gods. Might be an occasional bear or a wolf pack, but they generally leave us be so long as we return the favor and the winter's not been too harsh."

"I hear a 'however' in there somewhere," Willow pointed out dryly.

Harlowe flashed her a grin, her teeth surprisingly still intact and bright despite her years. Even a little sharp. "Clever. I bet you gave your tutors a run for their money, didn't you? However, I would point out that none of us, neither human nor elf, knows what might have taken up residence in the absence of our traditional adversaries. But I will tell you that whatever it is? It's likely not going to welcome visitors with open arms. In fact, I would prepare yourselves for a fight."

The energy finally seemed to leave the old woman's body, and her shoulders slumped forward as she pulled her shawl tighter around herself, warding her body against the chill of the unknown beyond what the sunlight could touch. "I will go with you into the village, help you resupply. There's not a single person that has not benefited from my herbcraft at one point or another, so they may grumble about it but they'll do as Old Widow Harlowe asks. But then… then I would suggest you leave Copse Hollow." She glanced briefly back towards the treeline.

"Not all monsters have fangs."

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Harlowe was as good as her word, vouching for Willow and the others as they resupplied for a longer sojourn into the forest and guiding them to the start of the path that would lead them to the ruins. "Do not stray from it," she gave them one final warning. "There are places to camp along the way that are close to the path, such as it is, and should be fairly apparent as you come upon them. Hunters still use them from time to time so it's unlikely they've been overtaken yet, but then, you never know with the forest. Still," she offered a small, wry smile, "It's allowed you this far. Whatever is causing all this trouble… I would bet my last button the Brecilian is not your enemy. Truth be told, I doubt it thinks much of us at all most of the time, so long as we mind our manners."

"Thank you, Widow Harlowe." Willow extended a hand, and Harlowe accepted it, her grasp warm and firm despite the lingering concern in her eyes. "May we meet again under better circumstances."

"And may the Maker, or whoever is out there running the show these days, not take me before I see them," Harlowe cackled, then turned and trundled back towards her cottage. Willow mounted up, then gently nudged her horse forward onto the narrow path.

There was a sense of anticipation in the air; the Brecilian holding its breath as it waited to see what would happen. To see if they would triumph, or simply be six more souls to add to the teeming roots beneath the soil. Still, at least this stretch of forest seemed relatively normal. There was bird song in the trees, and every once in awhile Assan would dart off after a squirrel or rabbit, kicking up moss and dead leaves in his wake. Even through the dense boughs and leafy canopy sunlight poked persistently through, warming their skin and smoothing away the anxieties that had risen during their time in Copse Hollow.

Willow doubted they would have ever found this path on their own, but it seemed distinct enough once Widow Harlowe had set them upon it. Luck was with them, or perhaps the Brecilian had decided upon a whim to grant them favor by way of easy passage. Eventually, she felt the tension begin to leave her shoulders, and a steady flow of conversation picked up amongst their group once more. Only Bellara remained quiet and uncharacteristically withdrawn. Ivy remained as close to her friend as she could manage on the narrow trail, but did not try and press Bellara overly much to make conversation, so Willow decided to take the other woman's lead for now. She had a strong suspicion Ivy knew what Bellara needed far better than the rest of them did, even as close as they'd become during their time in the Veilguard.

Though the sun was still only a few hours past it's noon zenith by the time they reached the first hunter's camp, Willow made the decision to stop for the night. No one had slept much the night before, and the morning's investigation had been exhausting. It would not do any harm for them to take some time to regroup and consider their next steps. Davrin got a fire going while the others set up their tents, and Emmrich offered to begin preparing their evening meal. Relieved of more immediate duties, Willow approached the towering tree under which Ivy and Bellara had settled once they had finished setting up and, after receiving a nod of invitation from Ivy, sat down beside them.

"How are the two of you holding up?" She asked, looking first to Ivy, who gave a small shrug.

"Not used to this many dead bodies, or at least not fresh ones, but eh. Can't complain," she replied with a grin, then softly nudged Bellara, who still seemed to be a bit lost in her own world, staring at a symbol sketched hurriedly on a spare bit of parchment. It took Willow a moment before she recognized it: it was the same symbol of the evanuris that had been carved into Amos's chest. Dirthamen, she thought.

"Bel?" Willow prompted gently, and her friend turned to stare at her, hands shaking as she painstakingly brushed her hair away from her forehead, revealing the pale lines of ink that formed the pattern of her Vallaslin.

The same pattern that stared back up at them from the parchment.

[slothquisitor]

Halfway to Whole: Chapter Thirty-Four

Summary: It's time for graduation. Lucanis/Rook, modern teacher au, 5k.

Also on AO3.

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The tunnel beneath Minrathous State University's basketball court is already stifling. The narrow hallway is filled to the brim with a sea of purple graduation caps and gowns. Teachers and staff dot the lines, easy to spot because of the bright yellow signs attached to yardsticks they carry and their black gowns. Students are still arriving in droves, stressed about putting their caps on right or the fact that their gown covers their outfits. Everyone stands around calmly, but beneath it all is an undercurrent of anticipation, nervousness, and excitement.

Camina's first year at the Lighthouse, she got roped into helping run graduation, and in the ten years since, her job has changed very little, though they have streamlined a few things. Every year, it seems like they learn something new or there's some unanticipated snag they have to plan for. Currently, she's busy checking off the list of students who will be seated on the stand with Myrna and Vorgoth and the district representatives, including Dr. Tilani and Stalgard. The group includes their speakers and members of the student council. They're the first to walk out, and for once, everyone who will be seated on the stand is present.

The late arrivals are still rushing in around them, holding little golden cards with their names on them. "Remember, to keep hold of your cards. Do not leave them on your chairs!" Harding calls down the hallway.

Davrin is next to Camina, counting out ribbons. "Who do I give these to again?"

"The head of every line. So first kid listed on the sign. That's how Taash will know to start a new row as the kids file in. Also, let the teachers know we're setting up the honor line in five."

"Ms. I! I lost my tassel! I don't know what to do!" Henry says, holding his tassel-less cap out in front of him like it has betrayed him. She's positive he's lost it somewhere in this hallway or during the long walk in from the parking lot.

"Right around this corner, Ms. Wätcherin is greeting everyone and giving them their cards, head on over there. She'll get you sorted."

And sure enough, two minutes later, Henry reappears with a new tassel on his graduation cap. Will comes around the corner, too. "Are we ready for the honor line?"

Camina nods. "Just about. Do we have everyone here?"

Will nods. "Everyone I think is coming anyway. There's a few cards still out there."

In her jumpsuit pocket, Camina's phone buzzes. She has to awkwardly lift her graduation robes to get to it.

Chet (MSU Tech Guy): This is Chet. You told me to text you with any issues we have. We don't have the lyrics to your school song.

"Shit," Camina breathes. Usually, Camina knows the school song pretty well. The faculty sings it at the end of every single faculty meeting. But right now…her mind is blank. "I need help with the school song lyrics."

Will and Davrin glance at each other, and Will hums the initial tune. "Duhhh duh duhhhh duh duhhhh."

"Rooks of Lighthouse High, our team is ready for the fray," Davrin supplies before looking to Will for help.

"Rooks sing your battle cry, the purple and gold will win today. So score for LHS, forever fight for victory…." Will half sings, half speaks.

Camina is furiously typing the words into her notes app. "Lighthouse High, our guiding light, shining through the darkest night…"

And then the three of them pause…no more lyrics coming to mind, but knowing the song isn't done. Davrin glances around. "Where is Harding? She'll know."

Under her breath, Camina replays the tune and the last verse. "Wait! Rooks arise with hearts held true, bold in all we strive to do. Go LHS."

"That's it!" Will confirms.

Harding has reappeared from the main arena area. "Are we ready for the honor line?"

"One second!" Camina yells, angling her phone so that Davrin and Will can read the lyrics, double-check her furiously typed note.

Harding walks over. "What's going on? We need to go."

Camina copies the lyrics and sends them off to Chet. "We're good to go."

"Teachers, head to the end of the chairs and form your line!" Harding calls.

Camina hangs back beside her, letting all the other teachers go first. They won't be joining their colleagues for most of the ceremony; instead, they'll be directing graduates through the maze beneath the stands when it comes time to read names. But first, they've got to get the graduates out there.

Every year, graduation is a complicated mess of moving parts. There's a lot happening at once, and often, no way to communicate with others. So you have to do your job and hope that the next person down the line is doing theirs, too. Camina and Harding's job right now is spacing graduates, so they get into position, looking at the long line of their colleagues in their uniform black robes, clapping as the music begins, and so does the cheering. Camina knows that she'll send the students on their way, and somewhere down the line, Taash will be there to put them in their row.

As the music crescendos, she starts sending kids. She's trying to smile and be friendly with the students, but she's not really paying attention to them. Instead, she's watching the ground, sending each kid after the one before reaches the marked spot on the ground. Families scream and cheer as the graduates enter. Time loses meaning as Camina focuses on sending one graduate after another, hoping that everything is going alright down the line.

And soon enough, the graduates are all in their rows, and the teachers all file in behind them. Camina sits in the back on the edge of the aisle so that she can bail when it's time. Davrin's going to send kids her way, and Taash and Harding will be running the name reading.

Now that she's got a chance to breathe, she fishes her phone back out of her pocket. Chet had given her a thumbs up to the lyrics she sent, so that's a relief. But more importantly, the teacher group chat is already going wild. Every year, the teachers play Graduation Bingo during the ceremony. It's how they keep from being too bored through a ceremony that feels the exact same every year. A few folks are sitting the game out, including Bellara, who is scribbling in a notebook, and Strife, who has an entire pocket watercolor set and is already painting something.

It's not the wildest thing she's ever seen. There was one teacher back in Kirkwall who showed up to graduation every year dressed like it was the Kentucky Derby, hat and all. But also, she brought with her an entire Subway sandwich…which she proceeded to eat in the middle of the ceremony on the floor of the arena where everyone could see her. It was sort of iconic behavior, honestly.

Aware that she is seated in a way that everyone in the arena can see everything she does, Camina quickly marks her bingo card, clicking on 'flower crowns', 'graduate wearing their cap incorrectly', 'air horn', and 'money lei'. She also notes that buried in her notifications is a text from Lucanis confirming that he'll meet her at the Hilt after. He'd offered to come to graduation as support, but she told him that only one of them needed to suffer through this. And she'd only sort of meant it.

In truth, Camina likes graduation. There are pieces of it that are rather trite. No matter how much direction or feedback she gives the speakers, the speeches always feel the same…all filled with platitudes and cliches. But there is something beautiful about this endpoint in the year, the joy of getting their students to this threshold of life. She even likes helping run the whole thing. It makes the entire ceremony go much faster when she's got a job to do.

Emmrich wins bingo during Myrna's speech, and Camina can't keep playing because that's her cue to head back into the tunnel. She feels a little self-conscious standing up and walking out in the middle of the ceremony, but soon enough she's back beneath the safety of the stands in the darkened tunnels. She didn't see Harding or Taash with the rest of the faculty, so she glances up the hallway, where the graduates had congregated earlier, hoping that she'll see them.

She does. Only Taash has Harding pressed against the wall with their tongue down her throat.

"Maker's balls, really?"

Taash and Harding jump apart like the teenagers they're supposed to be supervising. Taash doesn't look sorry, but Harding is bright red. "Oh…hey Cam….is it time already?"

Camina is having a hard time containing her laughter. "Yeah…Myrna's speech is almost over."

Taash grins. "We got back together."

"What a romantic location for your reunion," Camina quips with a hand outstretched to take in the cramped hall littered with flower petals, candy wrappers, and at least one missing tassel.

Harding shifts from foot to foot. "You're not…going to like…tell anyone about this?"

Camina shakes her head. "I mean, probably not until we're all at the Hilt. You should get to your places. I'm sending graduates your way as soon as the choir begins performing."

Taash snickers and Harding shakes her head, but the two of them do disappear further down the hallway, and Camina takes her place at the junction to ensure none of the graduates get lost.

For the kids, it seems like this is the moment where it finally becomes real. They file past her and down the tunnel with nervous smiles. Camina accepts hugs and fist bumps as they go, gently asking if they all have their little golden cards to hand off to the name readers. The line of kids seems never-ending, but soon enough, every name is read, and the senior video is playing on the Jumbotron. She walks out a little bit from the tunnel to watch it, but her mind wanders.

Last year, graduation had been a more somber affair, carrying the weight of a funeral beneath its celebration. There had been more talk of surviving, endurance, finding a way through impossible things, legacy. More talk of Varric. More moments where grief sat openly among the folding chairs and flower arrangements, acknowledged and named. This year, the references are more opaque, less specific. The shape of him remains, but the outline has begun to blur.

In a school, memories are short. Every fall brings a crop of new faces, and every spring sends another group out into the world. Memory is always diluted by time. In another year, there won't be a single student left in the building who knew him. Not one who heard his laugh down the hallway or lingered in his classroom after the bell. The memorial in the main hallway will become just another fixture in the building, as ordinary to the students as the trophy case or the drinking fountain. They will walk past it a hundred times without wondering. Someday, the kids will ask, "Who was Mr. Tethras?" and she will have to find a way to answer.

It feels, somehow, like both a kindness and a cruelty.

She thinks Varric would say that's the beauty of a school building, how hard it is for anything to feel permanent, even death. And he'd be right. Schools are resilient places.

The graduates move their tassels to the left, and together, for the last time, the teachers and the students file out onto the grassy, shaded area beside the arena.

Camina can hardly move for the press of people. She and Davrin can't get more than ten feet without being grabbed for pictures and hugs and to shake parents' hands. When they finally manage to extricate themselves from the crowd and start making their way to the parking lot to Davrin's car, Camina hears her name and turns.

She expects it to be students or former students, some last person she hasn't grabbed a picture with or said hello to. Instead, it is Lucanis, leaning against his car in the sunset and smiling at her surprise.

"Guess I don't need a ride after all," she tells Davrin and then crosses the distance to where Lucanis waits.

"You look very official," Lucanis grins, fingers tracing the embroidery on her stole embroidered with a rook and 'LHS'.

"Oh, that's not even the best part," she says. Then she holds up her sleeves, the long dangling pockets of her Master's robes flowing with the movement. "I've got snack pockets."

He gives the pocket a squeeze, and sure enough, there's the answered crinkling of the fruit snacks she's stuffed in there in the green room. He laughs. "I love you."

"You didn't come watch graduation, did you?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "No, just thought I'd pick you up instead of meeting you at the Hilt. Didn't realize I'd also be waiting for the most popular teachers to get pictures with all their students."

"Well, if I knew you were coming, I could have warned you about how popular Davrin is," Camina replies.

"I'm not talking about Davrin," he replies. "Are you ready to go celebrate?"

She kisses him then, around a smile. "Let's go."

***

Lucanis is beginning to understand why the Hilt is so popular. At first glance, it's a bit of a dive with a baffling combination of pirate decor and Minrathous High memorabilia interspersed with the odd Lighthouse Rook or two. The music selection borders on nonsensical, but there's a sort of 'come as you are' welcome that permeates as soon as the door is opened. Lucanis has certainly seen this place more packed, so he assumes that the crowd gathered is just a regular Friday night. Thankfully, a large corner table has been carved out for the Lighthouse crew.

He and Camina are the last to arrive, even Davrin beats them and lets them know it as he waves them over. It had been a fun idea to park near enough to the arena to surprise Camina, but it had been a nightmare to get out of the MSU parking lot.

Camina had joked a few times that it might be faster to walk, but then everyone else was as trapped as they were. Still, the group is already waiting. Harding is perched on Taash's lap, Bellara and Will are animatedly discussing something, and Emmrich has just returned with a tray full of food to the table.

Isabela grabs Camina as they come in the door. "Glad to see you made it this year, kitten."

He watches Camina accept both the welcome and light admonishment with a rueful smile and a returning hug. "I'm just here for the loaded nacho fries."

Isabela laughs and pats Camina on the cheek. "Coming right up."

The group quickly rearranges itself to accommodate him and Camina. He catches Harding's eye as he sits, sees her absolutely beam at him, and he's glad she and Taash made their way back to each other.

"Can you believe Jarren forgot the words to the Tevinter anthem?" Davrin says before taking a drink of his beer.

Bellara grimaces. "At least the rest of the students joined in to help?"

"I thought that was rather sweet, actually," Emmrich says.

Camina leans back in her seat, an arm wrapped around him. Usually, she's not one for public displays, but this is the Hilt, and these are their friends, and there's something nice about her closeness this evening. "Not the first time it's happened."

"Nor will it be the last," Davrin says. "But another year is done."

"I'll drink to that," comes a voice from the door. Neve has arrived.

Their table cheers as she walks in and joins them. Davrin scoots down the bench to make room. "Wasn't your graduation earlier today, too?"

"It was. Four hours long. It's the worst."

The whole group groans at that. "We're an hour and a half in and out," Will says with some pride.

Neve nods. "Well, you don't have a graduating class of nearly eight hundred. They keep the program really short, but it just takes a long time to get through every name."

"Do your job worse. Not everyone needs to graduate," Lucanis teases.

The table laughs, and Isabela walks over then with Camina's fries and a tray full of shots. "Okay, no one over here is quite rowdy enough for school being out. Bottom's up!"

No one is immune to the request, and everyone takes a shot, grimacing a bit at the burn. But Isabela is satisfied, laughing as she saunters off.

"So, guess what I saw when I walked back in to direct graduates before name-reading?" Camina says with a grin.

In response, Harding chucks a napkin at her. Around a lot of laughter from Camina and plenty of glares from Harding, the group gets the full story.

"Well, I for one am glad you're back together. It was awkward when you weren't after everything we heard you two say to each other in the faculty room," Davrin says.

Taash grins and laughs, but Harding, for her part, has buried her face in her hands. "Love makes fools of us all, Lace," Emmrich says kindly.

"And apparently, it makes us not care about HR violations," Davrin replies.

Lace finally makes eye contact with Camina across the table. "Thank you so much for this, Cam."

Camina shrugs and raises her drink. "Happy to be of service."

Taash leans forward. "Come on, Lucanis. We've got to even the playing field here. What's something embarrassing Cam has done?"

Lucanis laughs. "Camina has never done anything embarrassing, ever," he says very seriously.

"See?" Camina grins.

But Neve jumps in. "As admirable as Lucanis's commitment to defending Cam's honor, I happen to know that the way they met was very embarrassing."

Will laughs. "It was!"

It is something to have that first meeting retold through the lens of their friends. To have Neve lean just a little forward and talk about how Lucanis takes his coffee very seriously. To have Will talk about how Camina had stressed about that meeting for days afterward, how Will was the one who searched him up on the posted agenda of the board meeting, and then found his picture in the directory.

Lucanis gathers these pieces, little scraps of the story he's never heard before. How the group was taking bets after he'd chaperoned Homecoming, how they were sure something had happened between them before that Satinalia party. At first, he's a little embarrassed at their open interest. But as the conversation shifts and weaves as the night continues, Lucanis realizes it's all borne out of love and care. Even ribbing Harding is a form of love with this group.

He feels so very lucky to be here, to be included, to be with them. Not just in this bar, not just as this crowded table of comfortable chaos and half-finished drinks and people who know each other so well. He's lucky to have stumbled his way into this bright, wonderful constellation of belonging.

Months ago, he'd sat across from Alicia and confessed his fear that if things with Camina fell apart, he would lose everything that came along with her. But somewhere along the way, that fear has loosened its grip. If things ever went wrong, it would hurt. Of course, it would. There would be awkwardness and grief and all the difficult work of finding new shapes for old relationships. But it would eventually be okay. And, more importantly, so would he.

It's that knowledge that makes it that much easier to reach for Camina's hand, to lace their fingers together and sit in the warmth of her presence without clutching at it, without fearing its loss. To simply love her. To simply be here in the present moment.

When Davrin grabs him to be on his team for pool against Neve and Camina, it's easy to jump up, to say yes. Because Camina might have been the doorway to these friendships, but she is no longer the only thing holding it open. These people care about him, too. Not as an extension of her. Not as someone's partner. Not as a guest passing through. As himself.

It still catches him off guard sometimes.

The game unfolds with all the mandatory shit-talking that accompanies a game in a bar. There are dramatic celebrations over shots that barely deserve applause. Davrin declares himself a god moments before scratching. Through it all, Lucanis keeps finding Camina's gaze across the table. Every time he does, she smiles. And every time, it feels a little bit like being chosen.

There's a lightness to her this evening, as though some invisible weight has at last slipped from her shoulders. He hopes that with the work she's doing and the rest he'll ensure she gets this summer, that it'll only get better for her from here.

At the end of the night, when they all linger too long in the parking lot before finally drifting towards their cars and calling goodbyes into the dark, Lucanis finds himself lingering for a moment. The evening air is cool, and the lights from the bar spill out gold across the pavement.

And he realizes that nights like this aren't rare, effervescent things. They are a part of the fabric of his life now. There will be M&M nights, birthday parties, school dances. Inside jokes and laughter. It is a future so ordinary in its certainty that it feels miraculous.

When he left Treviso, he had no idea what he was stepping toward. What shape he wanted his life to take. But now, with Camina's hand warm in his and listening to the echoes of his friends' laughter fading into the night, he understands that happiness isn't a single evening. It's knowing there will be another, and another, and another.

***

The first day of summer vacation, Camina and Lucanis sleep in so long that Aphra has to herd them into the kitchen to feed her breakfast. Camina feels a little guilty as the dog happily munches away and the scent of fresh coffee fills the kitchen. She's still got a faint headache pulsing from drinking too much last night, but she'd thankfully stopped soon enough that it's not a full hangover.

Lucanis hands her a mug of tea with a kiss, and she asks, "Do you want to help me set up the hammock today?"

His eyes are bright, and he smiles. "You have a hammock?"

It had been an impulse buy a few years back after finally coaxing her backyard into some semblance of order. Now, setting it up always heralds in the first days of summer, the weather is finally warm enough to justify sitting in it for hours in the shade. This year is different. Instead of setting it up alone and getting comfortable with a book while Aphra oscillates between the shade and the sun on the back patio, Lucanis is there.

It takes some rearranging of limbs to get truly comfortable together, but eventually, they do. Lucanis's chin is tucked into her shoulder.

"This is nice," he says. A slight breeze makes the hammock sway. From here, she has a perfect view of Lucanis's garden. The tomatoes are already shooting up, already flowering.

She melts more fully into him. "It is."

"So, a wide open summer?"

She nods. "Yeah." She's got meetings at the end of this month, a few in July, and, of course, August will be busy. But the open stretch of summer is here, blessedly empty. There is nothing she should be doing, nothing she is neglecting by resting. She feels as though she can actually relax. Finally.

Lucanis kisses her shoulder and then her hair. "Good. I was thinking we should go on a trip. A real one. No cleaning out houses or dealing with my cousin."

She hums at that. "Where to?"

"Anywhere as long as it's with you."

"Well, we traveled your way last time. Maybe we do it my way this time? Road trip with the dog. I didn't quite make it as far as the Hunterhorn Icefields last summer."

"Isn't that the road with all the glaciers?"

"Yeah. People's pictures on socials look amazing."

"I'm in."

"End of July give you enough time to coordinate with Rana and Felix?"

In a normal year, after completing all the year-end closures, Lucanis would get most of July off. This year, he and Rana are the experts for the audit the school district now faces. She'd asked him how long an audit like that would take, and he'd given her a long explanation about scope and focus, but it sounds like it's likely to bleed into the fall. How far is anyone's guess. And then both he and Rana expect to be let go for reasons that don't actually matter, but with severance packages large enough, they can't claim retaliation. It's all rather monumentally unfair, but Lucanis seems unbothered.

He sighs. "It ought to."

"I'll put some plans together for us to look over."

She can feel his grin. "Alright, that handles one week of summer. What else will you do with your time?"

Camina hasn't yet told him about the manuscript in the loft, hasn't told anyone. She'd wanted it to be hers for just a little while, something she didn't have to talk about or explain just yet. But she's been thinking about it a lot these last few days.

She twists in his arms so she can look at his face. "Back in January, when I went to the Hilt….Isabela gave me something of Varric's."

His brow furrows. "You never mentioned anything."

She nods, feeling the small prickle of embarrassment. "That's because I didn't open it. Until this week."

"What was it?"

"A manuscript for a book about teaching. It's not complete….it's not even digital…just typed up on his old typewriter."

Lucanis watches her, ever patient. She continues, "I think I want to finish it. I think….I need to finish it. For me."

His eyebrows raise. "To publish?"

She shakes her head, fingers twisting between them. "I don't know about that. Essa said that she'd get me in touch with his agent if I wanted…But I don't know. I think I just….I want to finish it for him. And for me. Even if it never sees the light of day…I just…"

"I get it," he whispers, pressing a featherlight kiss to her twisting fingers. And she knows he does. She knows he understands loss and grief and all the complicated, tangled feelings that arrive right along with it. It is a relief to be so seen, so understood.

"I don't know that I could have made it through this year without you," she says. The admission is quiet, her words barely above a whisper and very nearly lost to the bright morning around them. But it's true. She had met him when she was doing her best to hold herself together, hadn't realized just how exhausting it was to walk the wilderness of grief alone. But he had been there in all his quiet, stubborn care anyway.

"Of course, you would have," he replies, words as gentle as the hand that tucks her hair behind her ear. "You are the strongest person I know, but I am glad if I made it even a little easier."

"You make everything better."

His answering smile is brilliant. "I think the same about you."

For a moment, he looks past her out towards the garden and the wooden fence beyond. "When I moved here a year ago, I had very few expectations. I knew I needed to leave Treviso. I knew I needed to make some changes. Start over. But I did not know what came after that; I did not know anyone.

"And then I met you. This beautiful, brilliant, intimidating woman who seemed so certain of her place in the world. Who loved her job and was good at it, too. It was impossible not to want to be near you. And somehow, you made room for me. I went from having no one to having a best friend. A circle of friends. A dog." He laughs softly. "A life."

There are no words that make it beyond the lump that's formed in her throat. But Lucanis isn't done.

"I wanted so much to make my life my own. I'd done a lot of the work, but in meeting you….you made it whole."

Maker, her eyes are burning, so she closes them and buries her head in his chest. There are no words that capture the fullness of her heart, the way it feels to be told that she is so central to someone else's happiness.

She feels his lips against her forehead. "And, when you finish that book, I'd love to read it."

When she finishes it, he says. When, not if. As though the thing is already waiting for her somewhere in the future. As though all she has to do is keep walking toward it. His belief in her is everything.

Summer stretches out ahead of them both, full of uncertainty and possibility. She stands at the edge of the season, but not alone. Now, she's got someone to walk it beside her.

[slothquisitor]

Portrait of a Family: A Dellamorte Family Character Study

It's the one-year anniversary of my favorite fic I've ever written. In celebration, I thought a repost was in order. This is a fic set pre-Veilguard, examining why the Dellamortes are Like That.

Excerpt:

This woman has held many titles. Many names. All of them bought with blood. Sometimes she feels that she is a woman in pieces. She was Caterina first. Then she was a fledgling, a Crow. A wife. A mother. A grandmother. First Talon. The last one is the bloodiest of all.  Across the years she has lived and the many lives contained within them, she feels as though she has lost parts of herself. Littered them across the landscape, strewn far and wide. She feels as though she could take someone on a tour of it, tell them where she lost each and every piece, the way that when you lose parts of your heart, you never get them back. She could say here, this is my first loss, the first crack in the glass. Some part of her feels that if she could turn back time, follow back each branching, winding crack to the beginning, she might stop it all before it begins. She knows the time and place as well as she knows this villa, every window and door, every hedge in the garden.  Sometimes, at night, she walks the grounds, the moonlight catching in the bits of silver in her once-dark hair, and she looks for them. She is always looking for them. Feels that she will never stop; she isn’t sure she wants to. The villa is full of ghosts, but she is the only one haunted. The only one here who remembers them as they were. Remembers this villa as it once was: a home. 

Read the whole thing on AO3.

[thelastgoodcountry]

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

[thewyvernrising]

What about 14 and 27?

For you most favored SWF, anything. :D

14. Where do you get your inspiration?

As silly as it sounds, a lot of times it's music. Like... Cat and Nathaniel's entire modern au storyline spun out from listening to "Fields of Gold" by Sting on a drive home from my parents' house in the mountains (yeah, this was back when I still had two XD). Thea and Loghain are just an entire mood, and their playlist is epic. Ravenna? Every time I listen to "Maneater" by Nelly Furtado, I think of her.

Weirdly enough, Willow and Emmrich... I mean, the whole Necropolis is just my vibe. I'm very much an herbal witch with a penchant for the dead, so I think their love story just came naturally to me. Bellara and Ivy are a very lesbian stand-in for my partner and myself (and I know you can probably already guess which is which, having met us both XD). Rowan and Halsin also tapped very much into my herbalist/tarot reader/beloved of death vibes, so no surprises there. :'D

27. Your favorite part of the writing process:

The most selfish part: seeing people react to my work. I love when people say they see parts of themselves in my characters, especially my OCs, because to me that means they are connecting to a part of myself as well (because each of my girls gets a part of the true me, for better or for worse). I know my ghost story for BG3 resonated with a lot of people, and I got some of my favorite comments on that piece which in turn really warmed my heart because I think it is the piece I am most proud of. And of course, that one shot I wrote for Willow in conversation with Taash after Taash lost their mom. Like... you know better than most what I was going through at that time. It's still hard for me to go back and re-read that piece because that grief is still, almost two years out, raw for me at times. But I also think of all the people who reached out to me and told me how much it meant to them to have that grief recognized, and that absolute chasm it can create acknowledged...

Those are the moments I live for. That I write for. Maybe it's only one person I reach, maybe it's only for me, but knowing that my stories are heard? It's beautiful. And it's enough.

[thewyvernrising]

4 and 19 for the fic writer asks pls

Thank you for the asks, and your contribution to my continuing efforts of procrastination! XD

4. A story idea you haven’t written yet:

Oh boy, do I have a whole list of those. XD I have a modern au on deck for after Shadows of Divinity wraps up this summer, but I don't really want to count that since it's already in the outline drafting phase. I still have a bunch of story arcs I haven't explored for Thea yet, including a sequel to my Indiana Jones au that started as kind of a joke and then became one of my favorite pieces. :"D

19. The most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic:

Hmm... This may be cheating, but the amount of deep diving I've done into game lore is insane. For DA, I've read all the novels, all the comics, played all the offshoot games, everything, just to get a better context for the world and for the characters (I learned this was a prerequisite if you're going to latch on to an anti-hero). Outside of that? I love doing research into herb lore. More than half my OCs are non-mages, but a lot of them still dabble in alchemy (just like me!), so I love researching that as well!

[museaway]

✍️ more fic writer asks!

reblog & your followers can send asks with the questions they’d like you to answer!

the last sentence you wrote

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how you feel about your current WIP

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first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

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if you had to write a sequel to a fic, you’d write one for…

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favorite weather for writing

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talk about your writing and editing process

if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic

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