6.
“Danarius!”
Fenris’ yell echoed unanswered through the dark and dusty halls of the merchant’s estate, but he was not to be dissuaded. He stormed through the first room the back entrance had granted them, his greatsword drawn from where it had been hidden under his cloak. The shadows seemed to move to avoid him, and Brona turned to watch with a growing sense of dread, but still following the elf as best as she could.
“I know you’re here! Danarius!”
His hand glowed to rip the lock from the door, and the metal fell with a clang to the tile. He threw his shoulder into the door as he opened it, at the ready for an assault in the next room, with Hawke there at his back. Fenris growled as they were still greeted by nothing but cobwebs and shifting shadows.
“What’s his play?” She breathed, eyes scanning the room and the whispering darkness.
“I don’t know,” he snapped, but then seemed to check himself. “You can feel it, though, can’t you? There is something here.”
“The Veil is thin here,” Anders agreed, coming to stand beside Hawke, and then following her as they moved through the room. “The pull is— something happened here.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling,” Varric murmured, unable to keep his usual casual demeanor. A shudder rocked him, and his grip tightened on Bianca, looking for any sort of reassurance.
Fenris broke the next door like the one before, and it led out into a hallway, long, and dark. There were lanterns present along the walls, but they weren’t lit at the moment. He held out an arm to stop Brona from walking down the corridor into the darkness, his eyes trained on the shadows. She expected another yell from him, but he was so silent, she wasn’t even certain that he was breathing. She followed his gaze, but could see nothing. She felt nothing except the impending doom and the feeling that she had blatantly thrown herself and her friends into a mess that they wouldn’t be able to get out of.
A scream split the thick silence, followed by another, and then quickly a third until they were all overlapping, and she couldn’t keep track of how many or where they were. She backed up into Anders, whose hand was on her arm before he slid to be in front of her, spinning his staff and sending out a giant ball of fire to illuminate what they were about to go up against.
His fire just narrowly avoided demons in the form of shadows that were quickly hardening into real forms as the blood grew at their feet. Some of the demons shifted to avoid the fire, their attentions trained on the mage who had dealt it. Anders was staring at the group with widening eyes, only breaking the stare to glance at Fenris beside him. “What’s the plan? Do we have a plan?”
“They will die like anything else,” he returned. “You have fought demons before?”
“Not like this.”
That group of demons was defeated by the four of them working together, though not entirely in unison. Fenris there beside her meant that both him and Hawke had to be more careful, but he was more than competent with his sword. He set the blade to the tile as he knelt down on it afterwards, examining one of the dead bodies.
“He used the slaves and servants to achieve this,” he noted, moving some hair from the woman’s face so Hawke could see her. “Blood magic at its finest.”
“He’s a monster.”
Fenris grunted an agreement, looking from the woman’s corpse up to Anders. The mage was healing a burn on Varric’s arm, and Fenris watched this for a few breaths before he turned to Brona. “He’s a mage. You trust him?”
Her eyebrows rose. “Yes. He’s nothing like this Danarius.”
Their eyes stayed together. Fenris’ hand retreated from the corpse, and returned to his greatsword, but he was still studying her, as if trying to evaluate every aspect of her through her eyes and her statement. “And the dwarf?”
“He knows more than he should, but he’s good, too.”
“What of me?”
“I hardly know you, but you’ve given no reason to distrust you as of yet.” She fell quiet with a little noise, eyes moving over his features carefully. “Though after this, I have many questions.”
“I’m sure you do,” he replied, but pulled away from their conversation by standing. “Come. It’s time for this monster to die.”
Anders was walking through the corpses, but at seeing them ready to move on, he joined the warriors again. “You think there’s more?”
“Undoubtedly.”
They battled three more groups before they were standing at the top of the stairs. Fenris had busted into the final room, and now he was yelling in a blind rage at finding it empty. He threw down his sword, and it skittered across the tiles. Someone had obviously been there recently, based on the coals in the hearth and the still-fresh food scattered about, but his former master wasn’t there now.
Fenris turned from the room to Hawke, standing in front of her with a growl. “We weren’t fast enough! If we—“ Another growl as he couldn’t seem to form the words necessary.
Hawke sheathed her sword calmly, and then her hands rose to in front of her. “He probably left before we even read that note, Fenris.”
“We can track him. We have to. He must’ve left on a ship—“
“But you’re free,” she reminded him, cutting him off. “You’re free,” she repeated as it seemed to catch his attention. Her hands came to cradle his face carefully, gently. “If he left, then he knows he no longer owns you. You can do whatever you wish, now. Go wherever you wish.”
“No more running,” he breathed, and she nodded. “I still wish to kill him.”
“If I ever see him, I will be sure to capture him and send for you so you can do just that.”
There was a hint of smile before his hands rose to her wrists, pulling her touch away gently. “Thank you, but if he was here, then that means he knows I am, too. I’ll stay, and if he wants this place back, he can come and take it from me.”
“You might want to clean it up, first,” Varric said from beside them. Fenris released her wrists and stepped back, as if only just remembering that they weren’t alone. “I might be able to help with that.”
“I’d appreciate it, if by clean it up you mean the piles of corpses.”
“In fact I did.” He cleared his throat and looked up at Anders, who was leaning against the railing and doing his best not to look at either warrior. “So, are we done then?”
“Besides payment, yes. Thank you, Varric.” Fenris had retained some of his decorum, and even offered him a crooked smile, though it didn’t last for too long. “Perhaps Hawke can help me collect it.”
“You think he left something valuable here?”
“He left in a hurry.” He waved her to the room he had vacated, and she went in to investigate. With her out of direct earshot, his attention was to the mage. There was silence that was palpable until Anders looked to him as well, arms crossed but staff still firmly in his hand. “You have an issue?”
“Do you? I saw your looks as we were fighting.”
“You’re an apostate.”
“An apostate who saved your skin more than once tonight,” Anders snapped in reply. “Good thing I was here to work through those wards. What would you two warriors have done without me?”
“There are ways to break magic without relying on more of it.”
“I am a mage, and that isn’t going to change. If you plan on staying in Kirkwall for a while, if you plan on befriending Hawke, then that is just something you are going to have to come to terms with. I’m not going anywhere.”
Fenris took a step towards him, and the mage didn’t move as he met those eyes. “I saw her reaction back there, I saw how she shrunk back from the demons and their effects. Why are you here at all?”
“You don’t know either of us well enough to understand that answer,” Anders replied with a cold menace. “And Maker, I hope that you never do.”
“I don’t need to know her at all to see that she’s terrified of you—“
“It’s not me she’s afraid of,” Anders cut in. “And she has no reason to be. You, on the other hand, seem to be looking for a reason to hate me and my presence. Why? Because I’m a mage?”
“How can a mage be trusted? How do I know you won’t run off to your brethren and inform them of me?”
“You think I would want to join the Imperium?” Anders was shocked at the prospect, but he composed himself again quickly. “Why in Thedas would I want to do that? I’ve heard the stories about what they did in Denerim, I’ve seen their slavers here, and in Ferelden, and I saw, just as you did, what was done to those poor souls tonight. I’m a healer, Fenris, a healer, and a Grey Warden, and if you think that I stand for blood magic and unfettered cruelty, then we have nothing to speak about, and I will loathe to ever be in your presence.”
Fenris didn’t move as he thought this over, and then acknowledged it with a nod. “On that at least we can agree.”
“Fine, then get out of my face.”
The elf shifted his feet. “The blood magic and slavery.”
Anders murmured a quiet “oh.”
“You’re a healer?”
“Yes. I have a clinic in Darktown.”
“And a Grey Warden?”
“Yes, that’s how I met Hawke and Varric.”
Fenris glanced at where the dwarf was standing by the room’s door, far away from the pair of them in case a fight broke out. “Why aren’t you off fighting Darkspawn?”
“Well, I’m really a former Warden, if it’s all the same. I left Amaranthine and the Warden-Commander a few months ago, and I have no intentions of ever seeing a bloody Darkspawn again. I’ve killed enough of them to fill three lifetimes, with horrors to boot.”
“How did you meet Hawke?”
Anders cracked a half-smile. “She needed a map, I needed a favour, so we exchanged.” Fenris frowned at the vagueness of this. “Really, the details aren’t important, just that it’s done, and now we trust each other.”
“As much as she can trust a mage, anyway.”
“She comes from a family of apostates, so perhaps lay off on the ‘damning all mages’ thing if you want to stay on her good side.”
The elf grunted an acknowledgement. “Anything else I should know?”
“Hm,” he murmured, looking through that door to where Brona was going through another chest and pulling out coins. “She lost her brother in the Blight, and her father before that— I don’t know how. She was in the army that fought at Ostagar. She’s rather devout, and she doesn’t seem to ever tell a lie. I’m not sure if the two are related.”
That caught Fenris’ attention. “She doesn’t lie?”
“She has lied, but they’re easy to spot. Suffice it to say: if it falls from her lips, it’s very much true.”
“Unlike me, who lies as if its life itself,” Varric mused. “Hawke would be terrible at Wicked Grace.”
“Also good to know,” Fenris murmured, his eyes going to Brona now that she was returning to them. She caught him looking and offered him a smile, which he returned quickly before it fell again. “Did you find anything worth our time?”
She nodded, but stepped to Anders first to hand him a small bag. He accepted it, weighing it in his palm. “Unmarked pieces, so they’re less likely to be traced back to you.”
“You really do think of everything,” he returned in a whisper.
She bit her lip as she turned, tossing a similar bag to Varric.
“What, no spicy little whisper for me?” He complained, and she clicked her tongue at him. He tossed the bag back. “Keep it. Put it towards the fund.”
“Fund?”
Brona glanced at Fenris, but was already heading towards his stairs, eager to leave. “Yes, Varric and I are sponsoring an expedition in the Deep Roads.” The elf, dwarf, and human followed close behind her, the sentiment mirrored in each of their thoughts. “So, I am gathering together funds to invest.”
“The Deep Roads,” Fenris murmured. “The thought being that after the Blight, they’ll be emptier than before?”
“Something like that,” Varric said.
They paused at the front door, and Brona produced a key for the elaborate door to unlock it. It was then handed to Fenris, who quickly stored it under his armour without even a comment.
The first breath of outside-air— even Kirkwall-air— was very much welcome, and they all spent a few moments in the shadows of the estate to relish in not smelling immediate death.
“So, what are you going to do with your freedom?” Brona finally wondered of the elf, who looked back at the estate.
“Well, once it’s somewhat cleaned out, I’ll be staying here. I’d rather be here so that if Danarius chooses to return, he has no doubts on where to look.”
“That’s it? You’re just going to sit in this empty estate?”
Fenris grunted and looked at her again. “Perhaps if you need any assistance, you’ll think of me. Allow me to get some exercise.”
“How do you feel about the Deep Roads?”
“I’m rather neutral about them,” he answered in an amused tone. His eyes turned to Anders and Varric in turn, since they were kind of hovering without joining in. “Varric is going as well?”
“I have to, being the younger brother and all. Can’t let the head of my house go and get himself killed. I’d never hear the end of it.” Varric looked to Anders, raising his eyebrows.
“Absolutely not,” he answered. “There is nothing that would persuade me to go to the Deep Roads again.”
Brona gasped softly. “You’re not coming with us?” Their eyes locked, and his frown grew more intense. “Really? Why not?”
“I just told you why. I will gladly stay here and look after your family in your stead, Hawke, but no— not even for you.”
“But you’re a Warden, can’t you like—“ Varric wiggled his fingers into the air around him. “Do something with Darkspawn? Sense them? Combine that with your healing, and there’s no reason for you not to come.” The mage said his name sharply. “So you had a bad experience. So did Hawke, and she’s spearheading this entire thing.”
“It’s not the same!” Anders argued. “I was in the tunnels, I’ve seen things that I can never unsee, I’ve spoken to Darkspawn— spoken, Varric— and that is an experience I never want to relive. You will survive the expedition without me.”
Varric made an unconvinced kind of noise. “I bet Hawke will persuade you. You’ll be tripping over yourself to not spend the weeks without her.”
“Please shut up,” Anders muttered. His hand went up to his hair, glancing at Brona, before he turned and left.
Varric’s smile grew, wiggling his eyebrows at her before he was following after the mage, off to sleep himself, she was sure.
Fenris grunted, fixing his cloak and some of his armour that had shifted while he waited to make sure they weren’t coming back. “You and the mage?”
Hawke returned her attention to him. “No. I don’t do romance.”
“You’re saying there’s nothing there?”
“No,” she said with a little hesitation.
“So, you and the mage, then.” Hawke frowned at him. “I’m curious about the dynamic here. You are clearly afraid of magic, and yet you allow a mage to be so close to you. Why?”
“I have nothing against mages,” she clarified. “My sister is one, as was my father.”
“But that mage is neither.” She didn’t reply, so he continued, “he implied that he will be around you a lot.”
“Yes, my sister is helping him in the clinic, and if tonight is any evidence, then he’ll be quite useful in my work, too.” He took in a breath, but she cut him off. “This feels a little like an interrogation. Why so curious?”
“Why are you avoiding the central question?”
“Did you ask one?”
He sighed. “Are you romantically interested in the mage? If we become friends, will I be forced to see him quite often?”
“Regardless of any romance, he is my friend, we do work together, so if you and I become friends as well, you will see him. At least be civil with him.”
“I can be civil.” His eyes narrowed. “And you avoided the question again.”
“There is… something, but we haven’t known each other long. He just— he’s grieving still, and there’s a lot more things to worry about than this. You could’ve asked me a thousand different things.”
“I was curious.” This was not a satisfactory response, so she frowned. “I cannot sleep here tonight. Is there an inn, perhaps?”
“There is, but you don’t have to stay in an inn. Come home with me.”
“That really causes more problems than it solves.”
She just turned to head towards Lowtown, and it was a while before he joined her.
“Are you sure?”
“Unless you think Danarius is in one of the many Inns in Kirkwall, yes.”
He made a very curious noise. “Well, it would be loathsome of me not to be thorough. Somewhere up here, in the fancy area, I’d imagine.” She turned to direct him towards the only one like that she could think of, and he close beside her. “There’s an image, the two of us— you holding the weasel of a man while I—“ His hand lit up suddenly with white light, and he squeezed it into a fist with a fresh growl. “Oh, I will dream well tonight.”
“One of these days, I want to see how you do that.”
“Oh—“ he seemed surprised, and the glow faded as quickly as it had begun. “Danarius had lyrium laid into my skin, and I was taught how to harness it. For fighting, for killing.” He let out a low growl. “I hated it all, at first, but without them I wouldn’t have been able to escape at all.”
“So, he hunts you because of those markings?”
“In part. No doubt he wants his investment returned— that kind of lyrium ritual is no small expense— but the other part is that I have escaped him so many times, it’s on principle and revenge now that he hunts me.”
“Well, that would certainly be a shame.”
He looked to her quickly, almost tripping. “What? Why?”
“For your skin to be carved out, simply for the lyrium?” She met his eyes for a second. “Why wouldn’t it be a shame?”
“I don’t think I’d be alive for that part.”
“All the more shame.”
“You are quite the curious creature, Hawke.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You are clearly a skilled warrior, yet you are surrounded by magic at every turn. You claim to have no interest in romance, and yet say things that make me think otherwise. You are clearly enamoured by the mage, but you deny it. I know it goes both ways, but here you are, confusing me all the same.”
“I didn’t mean to confuse you. If I didn’t express the sentiment that I don’t wish to see you dead and enslaved again correctly, then I apologise.”
“No, it came across.” His head tilted as she stopped on the stoop of a large building, and he looked up at it. It was certainly an inn, and he studied it there in the permeating silence. “Come in with me.”
Fenris didn’t wait for an answer, or a denial, but opened the door to the Inn, and was met with an array of pleasant smells. She followed after him.
The lobby was a rather small area, but quite well decorated and maintained. A dwarf sat on the far couch, reading a book while drinking wine, and utterly ignored them. There was an elf behind the counter, and he cleared his throat at them to get their attention. Fenris leaned against the counter and whispered to him things so fast that Brona could not understand, and the elf took his time to look through the books there. After a shake of his head, he slid Fenris a room key at the same time that Fenris slid him a bag of coin.
And then Fenris took Brona’s hand and led her quickly out of the lobby, and out of eyesight of everyone else, where the touch stopped immediately. He held up the key with a smile. “No, he isn’t here, but we do have a room.”
“Oh, I wasn’t—“ She cut off because he looked at her, and the rest of her denial fell. “I can, if you’d like me to.”
“A fancy room isn’t at all enjoyable unless you have someone to make fun of it with,” he mused, leading her through the hallways until they found their room on the the third floor. It was small, and clearly unused, but he didn’t seem to care. He threw open the curtains over the window and leaned against the paned glass, looking over all of Kirkwall they could see. Brona joined him there, much more reserved as she took in the view. “After all this time of running and fleeing on my own, it’s… pleasant to have someone here with me.”
“You’ve been alone the whole time?”
“No, not the entire time.”
Fenris looked from the city to her, and granted her a small smile, which she hesitantly returned.
Toro Tokuda 