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Fenris should have known better than to drink the ale at the Hanged Man, especially when it tasted even more horrid than it usually did. It normally smelled of rat droppings and sour sweat, but tonight there was a distinct moldy tinge to it that overrode everything. Isabela was drinking her whisky, as usual, but even Varric had taken one sip of the ale, made a face and pushed it away,
“Tastes just like real dwarven ale, only with more shit.”
That should have been a warning in itself, but for some reason he felt obliged to choke it all down in one go. One mug was plenty, so he tried to settle into the game and forget about the wretched taste that was now coating his mouth.
A few hands later he became aware of a strange feeling running just underneath the surface of his skin. Not exactly an itch, he thought as he ran his fingertips over the rough surface of the table, more like a heightened awareness of the difference between the outside and the inside, and the casing that separated the two.
He frowned and sat up straighter in his chair, as if the motion would banish such strange thoughts. The noise in the tavern was growing unbearably loud, even though it was no more crowded than usual. He found himself becoming distracted by conversations going on at other tables because the volume of conversation was such that it felt like the people were talking directly into his ear.
Isabela noticed his distraction and laughed; her throaty chuckle, which he normally quite liked, sounded tinny and metallic, ringing dissonantly off the walls like a cracked bell. The room seemed to have shrunk in size, and he was suddenly overwhelmed by the din and the too-close presence of so many others. He tossed his cards down and pushed himself back from the table, saying as he rose, “I have had enough for the night, I am going home.”
On the walk back up through Lowtown his normal alertness felt stretched into pure paranoia. No, not paranoia,there was real malevolence seething in the air around him. It wasn’t just that he was certain there were things moving in the shadows; it was that the shadows themselves were moving, gathering behind him and following him up the long stairs like so many stray cats. As soon as that thought took shape one rubbed himself against his leg and he abruptly laughed, forgetting his fears of a moment before.
His laughter rang oddly in the quiet and at the sound a figure at the top of the stairs paused and turned around to go back the way it came as though his laugh was a physical force that could drive them back. Yes, let them all run from the sound of his fearsome laughter, he thought, and he threw his head back and laughed again.
With his gaze tilted skyward he suddenly took notice of the luminous moon overhead, larger than he could ever remember and so close he it seemed he could touch it. He was suddenly struck by the notion that it was beaming its approval at him, and why wouldn’t it? Wolves did belong to the moon after all. It was comforting to know that he had belonged to something larger than Danarius all along.
Fenris reached his arm upward half-saluting, half just yearning and he as he did he marveled at the feel of his own muscles pulling and stretching. He was so strong! Still holding his arm overhead he lit his markings, admiring the cerulean blaze and watching it flicker against the stones, driving back the shadows. The moon belonged to him as well; they belonged to each other. He laughed again and struck by a wild impulse he started running, streaking past a startled guard in the deserted Hightown marketplace.
He arrived at the manor too soon and not even out of breath, the radiance of his tattoos dimming as he slowed to a walk. He clambered in the back way, as he always did, and once inside the shadows pressed in on him once more, their friendliness turning to menace and bringing him to a frightened halt.
Forcing himself to keep walking, he passed a table piled with dusty, empty bottles on top of an old serving tray. There was something mocking about the shape in the gloom, and he hurried his step before his thoughts could take a solid form.
“Pour the wine, my pet”
He whirled in fright, his markings flaring again, but there was no Magister standing beside him, issuing commands. Nothing but contemptuous shadows, dancing just out of reach.
He should have stayed outside where the moon could find him. This place was filled with ghosts, and they all bore him ill. There was no escaping into the sky when the ceiling pressed so maliciously close. That thought sparked another, and he ran for his room, exhaling in relief when he saw the moonlight pouring in through the hole in the roof.
He dragged the bed over so that it was directly beneath the opening, and lay his sword down on the mattress and curled up around it like a lover. With a flash of lucidity he knew there was something…off in his head but he couldn’t think clearly enough to know what to do about it. He was sick, perhaps, and just needed to sleep until he felt normal again. So he would lay here where the moon could protect him from the shadows and force himself to sleep.
It was difficult to lay still with his mind wandering crazily and all the parts of his body feeling so unfamiliar. His teeth felt too large for his mouth, and he couldn’t remember what he usually did with his tongue so he spent some time moving it around from one side to another and even letting it hang out like Hawke’s mabari.
He must have dozed off for a just a little bit, because when he awoke he was still bathed in moonlight, but now he was lying on his stomach without a stitch on even though when he had laid down he was still dressed in his armor.
There were hands gently caressing his back, three sets of them from what he could tell, and instead of the alarm he knew he should feel there was a strange…languor. Fenris never let anyone touch him, and no one’s touch had ever brought him pleasure. Yet he had no desire to roll away from these touches, and he felt only a mild curiosity about who the hands belonged to.
He turned his head and out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of someone. The figure was indistinct but the moonlight flashed on red-gold hair and he got the impression of feathers. Anders, then. The idea of the abomination touching him should have filled him with disgust, but he noticed only that his hands were the smoothest and gentlest of the three.
The smallest set of hands seemed to move over him with the most deliberate, and wide-ranging motions. They traced his markings from the top of the back of his neck, along his shoulder blades and down to the small of his back. A lilting Dalish voice spoke softly,
“There must always be three. All the oldest magics required three, for balance.”
Merrill, then. Again, how odd that the little blood mage’s touch felt soothing instead of disturbing.
The last set of hands was also the biggest and the most coarse. They prodded where the other’s rubbed, poked where the other’s soothed. He grew frustrated with straining his neck around to look and relaxed instead, feeling an airy sensation as he drifted up out of his body to hover above the trio of mages.
Anders at his head, Merrill standing opposite him at his back and Hawke at his legs. The bed was narrower than it usually was, more the size of the cots in Anders clinic. He lay unresponsive under their hands as they moved them back and forth across his markings. Their voices mingled together, sometimes seeming to flow in conversation and sometimes seeming to be answering questions that he couldn’t hear.
“See how lines go both with and against the natural lines of power? No wonder he is so terribly cross all the time.”
“Sing the lines that guide our hands.”
“Was this the thread that tied him first?”
His perspective changed again and he was back in his body but still able to view the room. Now as their hands rubbed his skin began to respond in the strangest way. He felt as if he were made of something almost as movable as liquid, as if he were one of those jellied treats the Magisters liked to eat. He felt Merrill’s fingertips digging in lightly against the end of one tattooed line and pushing; there was that feeling from within and without, the kind of pleasurable pain that comes with pulling a scab off an almost healed wound.
Then all their hands were digging in at him and that pulling sensation was felt all over his back, the backs of his legs and down his arms.
“There, see how this one is cutting off his heart line? Straighten it just so.”
A different voice, familiar; beloved and hated. He saw without looking the bright red hair pulled back from green eyes where Merrill had been standing. As though in response to a question she said,
“There must be three. Always.”
“There are three and it will be complete.”
Yet another voice, this one less familiar, although he recognized the silvering hair of the First Enchanter, bending over him in place of the healer. Beyond him he noticed the young boy mage that they had rescued from the slavers. Feynriel?
All these mages touching him, some of them barely more than strangers, and he knew he should be angry or frightened. But the moonlight touched their heads in benediction, and her approval was his approval. Once he was in the sky no magic would touch him. He startled the room with azure light and from his feet Feynriel and the others urged him to quietude,
“What’s inside must stay inside until we are through.”
“This is work to be done in the dark.”
The hands continued their ministrations and at some point although he heard nothing he apprehended some signal that drove them all to reach under him and turn him over to his back. For a moment the three heads loomed over him, his sister and the First Enchanter; their eyes alike enough to be father and daughter. The young mage who looked almost entirely but not at all like a pure human. Then they moved away and when they turned back it was once again Merrill, Anders and Hawke who surrounded him.
This time as their hands worked he cast his gaze down to see what they were doing. Wherever they touched became like liquid, and they dragged his markings around like silver ropes in a dark sea, aligning them as they saw fit.
Here where a filament curled one way they curled it back the other way, or straightened, or left alone. When they had arranged a line to their satisfaction and lifted their fingertips the skin once again solidified, leaving behind a pleasurable sensation and a yearning for more. More touch, more pleasure, more hands on him. He couldn’t remember ever being frightened now.
Now where they touched him he pushed up into their grip. He was pushed down firmly, but gently, and Anders voice spoke in the same way,
“Lie still. All your energy must stay inside.”
Done with his neck and chest they all gravitated downwards.
“The tops of his feet are like the lines on his hands, connecting him to everything. Drawing power in and sending it back out.”
Their voices rising and falling, brushing against him like their fingers, just as pleasurable. When he speaks his own voice is thick,
“The moon opened and I was inside. I belong to the moon and she belongs to me.”
Hawke’s voice, or was it Merrill’s? The voices blending and separating so that it seemed one started a sentence and one finished it,
“Of course. Anyone can see you belong to the moon.”
Now they were moving the markings on his legs, along his thighs. The swirling sensation was almost unbearably pleasurable as they created a current near his groin.
“Ah poor fellow, look at the tangle they’ve made here.”
Anders or Hawke, it no longer mattered. There were three, and the three were one and they held the power of the moon in their hands. Three sets of hands ran up his thighs and over his hips and a surge of ecstasy shot through him to his cock. He groaned beseechingly and arched his lower back upwards.
“None of that now. Energy stays on the inside, remember?”
Touching, pulling, and rearranging; wherever their hands went felt exquisite. The ghost of pain that had always lived under his skin was exorcised and all that was left behind was power. Power and a growing need for gratification. Then their hands lifted away all at once, leaving him throbbing and he whimpered.
He saw them join hands, over and around him, and light spread fingertip to fingertips and his markings answered radiantly, until the brightness of the room was such that he had to shut his eyes.
“It is finished.”
They placed their hands on his once-again firm skin and this time there was nothing esoteric in their movements. All the hands, large and small, callused and soft, moved with purpose over his tingling flesh. Lips joined hands, murmuring soft reassurances as they ghosted over his skin. Stubble scratched against his chin, someone’s beard tickled in the hollow at the base of his throat, small sharp teeth grazed the rim of his ear.
The pull that was gathering in his groin was strong enough to pull the moon down close to the roof, the luminous edges of it grew close enough to fill the gap in the ceiling and protrude into the room. Ecstasy coursed through him, following the new path that had been created with his markings from the tips of his fingers to his feet and back again, building and growing until he was certain the moon would shatter. But when he came at last he was the one who shattered into tiny pieces scattered over the surface of the moon, floating back downwards and coalescing on the cool and sudden solitude in his bed.
Fenris slowly drifted into wakefulness, aware of warmth and the faint smell of orange blossoms. With the smell there came a memory of he and his sister sneaking into the orchards at night, when the moonlight reflecting off of the white flowers gave their play an otherworldly feel. Late in the season they would steal a few pieces of fruit now and then, careful not to get caught. The ripe oranges were his very favorite fruit; all that tart sweetness hidden under the thickest skin.
There was a faint smile playing about the edges of his mouth as he slowly opened his eyes, vaguely surprised to be looking, not at swaying orange blossoms, but at the sunlight streaming directly down on him through the hole in his roof.
He had an odd, hollow feeling in the forefront of his skull and his stomach and chest were covered with a sticky residue. Touching it questioningly with his fingertips he suddenly remembered the…occurrence of the night before and grimaced. He couldn’t help but glance at the markings on his arms and was unsure as to whether he felt relieved or disappointed that they remained as they always were.