Chapter Text
The Herald of Andraste. Really? I wasn’t even Andrastian, I wasn’t even human. Most frustratingly I could not remember how this cursed mark ended up on my hand to begin with.
If I were being perfectly honest, not only was I not Andrastian, I barely worshipped the Elvhen Gods… or I found no use in praying to them. I’d seen many a foe call for their deity just before they died upon my sword, for all the good it did them.
No, faith in some higher power was not for me. Could something greater than ourselves exist? Of course it could, in fact, with the rather large hole in the sky it was beginning to seem more and more like something did, but in any given moment the only thing a man could ever really count on was himself. Believing that Andruil would guide your arrow to your target did nothing if you were just a lousy shot. Believing that Andraste had sent me to save these people would have done nothing if I’d just gone home.
Luckily for Cassandra and the rest of the Inquisition we’d started gathering in these past six weeks, my years as a warrior in Clan Lavellan had taught me to recognize the desperation in someone’s eyes when they needed you. Luckily for them I was used to sacrificing anything I wanted in life for another’s cause.
And so I’d stayed, not only because I’d hardly had a choice but because I was downright surrounded by desperation, and I’d believed that if I could help then that was the right thing to do. Andraste had no hand in that and yet all of these humans believed me to be their holy savior now. Me. The tall, lanky elf with the close-cropped, dark hair and black-inked June vallaslin on his face. The one with an abrasive personality due equally to my natural disposition as well as to the sheer terror I felt at all that had happened. It was almost laughable. And sure, it did make me smirk to hear the Shems call me “Your Worship” rather than “Knife Eared Bastard”, but I wasn’t exactly convinced it could last. Not when, though we’d sealed the original rift and kept the Breach from growing, we still hadn’t succeeded in closing the thing entirely and numerous smaller rifts cropped up every day. No, if I failed them, I saw this ending one of two ways; me swinging from the gallows at Val Royeaux as Chancellor Roderick wanted, or me on a leash in some Noble’s manse as an oddity, my glowing hand and I auctioned to the highest bidder as something to put on display. That was all I could picture now that I was surrounded by humans day in and day out, and it was nothing but nerve-wracking, but still I stayed.
I still hadn’t decided whether that made me an idiot or an optimist. Given my history I had a feeling it was not the latter.
Even Solas, whose pointed ears I’d been relieved to see upon approaching the Forward Camp, didn’t seem to appreciate the Dalish. I supposed I couldn’t blame him though, my people hid in the forest and... what? Pretended our flat eared cousins weren’t slaves across all of Thedas? It had never sat right with me since I had learned it to be true when I was just a boy. I’d always had nightmares about the passing merchants plucking me up and carrying me off bound and gagged in a cart and it had tempered me young. Serious, distrustful, and determined to be physically stronger than any enemy. Skilled with a bow, skilled with a sword and shield, skilled on a mount, forever honing my body to be powerfully agile and my mind to see beyond the falsehoods that so many people would spew without so much as an ounce of shame.
Maybe that was why my newfound title irked me so. It was a falsehood. I may not have remembered what actually happened that day, but I would say with certainty that Andraste herself did not pluck a Dalish warrior-turned-spy out of the Fade to be her champion.
”So, who do you think is the toughest? Josephine, Leliana, or Cassandra?” Varric’s voice cut through my sulking.
His playful banter, however different from my carefully controlled demeanor, did often manage to make me smile. I might have even called the dwarf a friend. At least he admitted being prone to extravagant lies. He’d also been the first to ask me how I was after this had all started, not the Herald of Andraste, though he liked to use that title as an ironic sort of nickname, but how I, as a person thrust into this without warning, was doing. He didn’t seem to worship me or tremble in the wake of my footsteps, and ultimately, he’d stayed for the same reasons I had. Varric was a realist, and that had earned him my respect.
”I’m right here, you know!” Cassandra exclaimed in exasperation.
”Cullen is not up for consideration?” Solas chimed in.
”Curly?” Varric scoffed, “They just keep him around to look pretty.”
That, well that had me openly grinning. Because I agreed. For all of his flaws, I rather thought Cullen was a fine specimen of a human man, and I had a thing for human men. It might have been another side effect of Elvhen oppression. An elf forcing a human to their knees? Fen’Harel take me, I could do that all day. Cullen, of course, wasn’t interested in that, I’d asked, but he was still nice to look at.
”Cassandra would slaughter me in combat,” I decided to speak up, “A force of nature, that one.”
”Again, I’m right here,” she rebuked, but I knew she remembered me telling her as much in the training yard outside of Haven. I wondered if she was blushing now as she had then? Cassandra might have been the one who’d had me waking up in shackles after the Conclave, but then she’d released me, let me take a weapon in hand, fought by my side as an equal, and defended my innocence at the top of her lungs. She’d begun this Inquisition, she’d asked me to stay, and she’d been a staunch supporter ever since.
Truly we’d become quite an inseparable pair. She, Solas, Varric, and I had spent a solid two weeks in the very same hills we traveled now expanding the Inquisition’s influence, though that mostly looked like aiding refugees from the conflicts between Mages and Templars, but we’d indulged in friendly sparring matches on more nights than I could count.
”I’m well aware,” I replied nonchalantly. Her attraction to me was not entirely misplaced, she was quite a striking woman to behold, but as devout as she was I sometimes thought that attraction might have had more to do with the Herald of Andraste of the Inquisition rather than Amheotil Lavellan of the Free Marches. Still, every so often I offered her a compliment. Someday, assuming we all survived the demon horde, I could believe that she would make a fierce wife to somebody.
”You would never know Leliana despised you,” I continued my analysis of Varric’s query, “You’d simply wake up one day and find your secrets in scattered pamphlets around Haven. Or, more likely, one day you would not wake up at all. And Josephine, well, we’d all be lost without Josephine.”
Varric laughed. “There you have it!” he proclaimed.
”A little further up, we’re almost to Redcliffe” Cassandra announced.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than a soldier approached shouting that the gate must remained closed. She did not need to say why as I could already feel the mark sparking in my palm as though I were a lightning mage. Such tedious things these rifts were. Cassandra and I were running into the fray before Varric and Solas had even unsheathed their weapons off their backs.
She and I both fought with the sword and shield, and in a pack of demons we kept them off one another. For all our differences in heritage, this was where our similarities lay. Stern, focused, and always ready for the fight. We made short work of our enemies and then, as always, I grit my teeth and held out my left hand, letting the searing mark do, well, whatever it did. I didn’t understand a single thing about it. I wasn’t Solas who had traveled the Fade for decades. I wasn’t even an apostate hedge mage who could will a snowflake into existence.
In fact, to me, this mark was often nothing but a hinderance, sometimes getting so painful that my shield arm grew weak. It was the very reason this budding army needed me and I despised it. I thought Cass knew. The day we’d traveled to find Master Dennet we had gotten trapped between a bear and a Fade rift. Sticky situation that one, especially when, as we failed to close the portal, my glowing palm had started to burn up to my elbow. The bear had taken a powerful swipe at my shield and what I normally would have been able to withstand had knocked me clear off my feet. I had had to roll out of the grasp of its jaws just to end up in the path of a Shade.
All the Seeker had asked after that battle was ‘are you alright?’ but her face had clearly read ‘can this elf really be our savior?’
I had hated that look, letting people down simply was not my strong suit. I had a high tolerance for pain, but being as unfamiliar with magic as I was, having some this powerful living in my arm did me no favors.
We were through the gates and into the Gull and Lantern where our meeting was set to take place. We were being told that the Mage Rebellion was now in the hands of a Tevinter Magister and I could barely contain my rage.
”You’ve made a huge mistake!” I told Enchanter Fiona, wondering what kin of mine would ever make that deal. Tevinter? What elf would hand themselves over to Tevinter, of all places? Speaking for myself I had no greater hatred, no greater fear, than the mere mention of it.
It even bothered me more than the fact that she was pretending we’d never met. She’d invited us to Redcliffe, she’d actively sought us out in Val Royeaux. I thought perhaps she did not want to admit that in front of her new ‘master’ but things simply weren’t adding up. When exactly had this deal with the Tevinters been worked out? If it were immediately following Justinia’s death, as we were supposed to believe, then why travel to the Orlesian capital at all? They claimed they’d been walled up in Redcliffe with the Templars at their gates but that couldn’t be true. We’d cleared the Templar encampment shortly after we’d initially found Mother Giselle. I’d have tried to make sense of it but no coherent thought on the matter could break through the simmering contempt I felt at being shepherded into the same room as the mage’s new slavers.
And now here I was, being forced to speak with this Magister Alexius himself complete with pompous robes, fake smile, and ugly face because Fiona claimed she no longer had the authority to advocate for her and her people on her own. That Krem fellow might have seemed all right, but I firmly believed there was no worse breed of human than the one that now sat in front of me, leaned back and smug across the tavern table. I could barely hear the man speak over the blood rushing in my ‘knife’ ears. His words eclipsed by the desire to put a blade between his third and fourth rib, finding his heart, or perhaps his lungs, either would please me greatly.
”Felix?” he was looking over my shoulder.
The young man he had introduced as his son did not look well and as I rose to ask if he was all right, he suddenly pitched forward. My natural instinct took over and I reached out to catch his fall with his father was already upon us, taking him from me and excusing himself from the negotiations that had barely begun.
When the room cleared I was left standing with my companions in confusion until I realized there was a note in my hand. It read “Meet at the Chantry, You are in danger.”
In danger? From a Tevinter? I fought the urge to roll my eyes. No shit.
I shared this development and my entourage just stared at me. Solas as unreadable as ever, Varric ‘hmmm’ing with a hand on his chin, Cassandra with a furrowed brow and her grip on the pommel of her sword. They thought it a poor decision and I agreed, this was probably going to be a trap, but we had to know what the fuck was going on around here and the Chantry was just up the hill, so I figured we might as well go step into it.
Along the way there were some merchants who might want to buy the Fereldan Long Sword I’d taken off a dead Templar anyway. Waste of good steel laying in the Dale when the world was going mad and the villagers needed to protect themselves.
I didn’t get much for that sword but the shop owner seemed grateful to be adding it to her stock and I was happy that I could afford a drink from Flissa on my return to Haven, not that I was required to pay for it. The title of Herald earned me free liquor, but Flissa was a sweet woman and I liked to put a coin in her pocket for how often she had to restock on account of the Chargers I’d hired.
With the day I was having, drinking was really all that was on my mind as we walked up the steps of the Chantry. In drawing closer, though, I thought I could hear a commotion inside and when I threw open the door, I found I was right; it was absolute chaos. Lightning cracked and green mist swirled around another Gods damned rift. Right in the middle of the building!? Sylaise have mercy, we needed to get that Breach contained.
”Good! You’re finally here, now help me close this, would you?”