Chapter Text
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite a flower picking expedition. Cirridwen's attendants clutched about her, whispering lowly. She reigned Bun in and the others slowed in concert.
“What is it?” Cassandra asked.
Cirridwen held out her hand and the wisp settled into it.
“Bandits, I think.” she tilted her head. “No, not quite. Mercenary bandits? It's hard to parse, something to do with not-bandits and orders.”
“You can't get anything more precise?” Cassandra asked.
“No, that would need a more... developed spirit. Whoever these people are, it's somewhat complicated, and these ones are too simple yet to be able to understand.”
Cirridwen slid off Bun carefully, and Duty sprouted arms again to take the mule's reins. Bun flicked a long ear and tried for scritchies from the spirit. Duty gently rubbed between the animal's ears.
“Weird.” Varric muttered under his breath.
“Polite,” Cirridwen corrected.
They made their way forward cautiously, Cassandra at the lead and Varric surprisingly close behind her. Solas slipped off further to their left while Cirridwen brought up the rear, attendant wisps keeping up a small murmur.
“Over the next ridge,” Cirridwen said lowly. “Six souls altogether.”
“It makes it so much creepier when you phrase it like that,” Varric commented as he braced Bianca on his shoulder and reached into a pocket with another. “I got smoke bombs.”
“Any further details?” Cassandra asked, tactical mind already spinning.
“Two long. Three short. One.... big.” Cirridwen frowned a little at that. Cassandra nodded and settled her shield.
“I see them,” she said, and then broke into the open, shield raised.
“Company!” One of the archers announced and lifted his bow. He didn't get far when he was shot in the shoulder by Varric. “Attack!”
Cassandra bulled forward like a druffalo, smashing into the bandits. While they weren't badly armoured, per se, their armour consisted primarily of gambesons and mail. That didn't really do a great deal for not being winded by a determined warrior with a heavy shield and a sword. He managed to catch the shield and parry it with his sword, dancing away from the heavy swing of Cassandra's sword. Another two were trying to get through the gap in the rock to deal with her, not noticing the ominous crackle of frost in the grass under their feet.
A crystalline ping sound echoed around the close walls of the ravine as Cirridwen dropped a pair of lightning bolts out of the clear sky onto the two bandits Solas had frozen, causing them to pop and shatter into little frozen chunks of meat from the stress of rapidly expanding water.
“MAGE!” came the slightly hysterical scream from the injured archer Varric hadn't quite killed, distracting as a large man with a two handed maul lumbered through the gap over the remains of his allies. He hadn't noticed Solas, but Cirridwen was rather easy to spot from her position at the back. The injured archer struggled to draw his bow around the bolt in his shoulder. Varric's next bolt hit him in the eye, while the second archer stopped watching for an opening in Cassandra's dance with the other bandit and took aim at Cirridwen. The arrow broke on her barrier, while spirits mobbed him and he panicked, flapping his arms frantically to get rid of them. Another bolt of lightning from Solas this time stopped that performance while Cassandra yelled in triumph, having found an opening in the swordsman's guard.
“Seeker, Big Bastard!” Varric yelled, and Cassandra turned in time to block the blow. From the frown on her face and the frantic swearing from the enforcer, something had gone unexpectedly.
“I've got you, Seeker!” Cirridwen called. The blue barrier on Cassandra rippled with her movements as she resettled her stance and the bandit went for a sideways swipe, movements frantic. It meant he wasn't prepared for Bianca to punch him one in the face, quarrel sticking out as he swayed and then collapsed.
“Eat dirt!” Varric yelled as Solas melted out of the rocks and approached them.
“Bandits?” he asked.
“Unlikely,” Cassandra said, crouching to examine the weapons while Varric vanished to snoop through their camp. “Their weapons are good quality, and while eclectic their armour is well made. These are mercenaries.”
“They also have a standard,” Cirridwen nodded up to the hanging flag. A gauntlet clutching a snake.
“Somebody was paying these sorry bastards!” Varric called from around the bend, and Cirridwen daintily picked her way past the bits-of-bandit in the rock passage. On the other side of the convenient boulders and man-made palisade was a small camp, and Varric brandished a letter.
“Why does everyone insist on keeping their correspondence to hand and easily legible?” Cirridwen asked. “It certainly makes things easy for us, but that really should be the last thing they want.”
“Says here they were patrolling, and it's real specific about keeping us away from the Villa. Wherever that is. Who builds a villa in Fereldan?” Varric asked.
“It is unusual?” Cassandra asked.
“It's unusual to hear of somebody building one in Fereldan. Villas always make me think of Tevinter as far South as Orlais, and further East into Antiva and Rivain. Not so much in the Marches, and very rarely in Fereldan.”
“Ah. I see. What do the nobility waste their time building instead?”
“Statues of Mabari,” Cirridwen quipped.
“Either way, there is something at this Villa that somebody wants to remain unseen. Perhaps we should warn refugees to remain clear, before the mercenaries do.” Solas suggested.
“Good idea. Does that mean we go back the way we came?” Varric asked.
“Not quite. There's still that Rift to deal with.”
“Can you feel it, Bright-Eyes?”
“Yes.” Cirridwen gestured. Given that she waved her hand at a large and very non-Fade-y boulder, Varric assumed she meant that the general direction was that-a-way.
“Alright. 3 copper says you can't guess how far.”
“Really, Varric?” Cassandra sighed as Cirridwen shunted the bodies of the mercenaries into a more or less tidy pile.
“What, you're not curious to find out how far she can find them from? Seems like the kinda thing a Seeker would be all over.”
“Yes, that is important. But betting on it?” Cassandra asked.
“5 copper says she can.” Solas said and Cassandra shot him a faintly betrayed look. There was a whump of flame behind them that made all three startle, and Cirridwen turned away from a floating cloud of ash.
“Did you just...” Cassandra began.
“No bodies, no undead.” Cirridwen said mildly. “I'd say it's that way, approximately forty feet.
It turned out, Cirridwen was more or less right. Turning up a small pathway under the arches (“We must be near the villa gardens,” Cassandra guessed) and into a grotto, they faced the green tear.
“Brace yourselves,” Cirridwen advised. “I think this one will be hard.”
The curse of being right. There was a Despair demon, and Duty only just managed to haul Varric out of the ice beam it projected in time to save his fingers. Cassandra was nearly buried by the wraiths before Cirridwen forced them off with sheer will. Solas was bleeding from a shade's lucky swipe across the back of his head and when Cirridwen finally managed to close the damn Rift, she'd wrenched her good knee and was limping heavily.
The minute the tear was darned over and the Veil restored, Cirridwen flumped down on the ground. Cassandra approached her quickly, face pinched in a scowl.
“Herald, are you well?” she demanded. It was almost caring, coming from her.
“I'm done for the day. We can clear the King's Road tomorrow, they've waited this long.” Cirridwen declared. Varric appeared at her elbow, looking downright avuncular as he hovered.
“Took it out of you, huh? And here I thought we'd have the Hinterlands tidied up in two days tops,” he teased. Solas knelt on her other side.
“May I?”
Cirridwen nodded assent and he flipped the hem of her dress up so that he could palpitate her leg and knee through her trousers. She hissed when he pressed and manipulated her knee.
“Sprained, likely. Were you trying to save the other knee?” he asked.
“Yes.” she sighed in relief as he pressed a little healing to ease the strain and then heat to ease the swelling. “If I do the other one in, it'll be days before it eases. This one is easier to repair.”
“What if you injure both? Do you request aid from your attendants?” Cassandra asked, looking somewhat troubled.
“I crawl.” Cirridwen answered shortly. Solas and Varric helped her to her feet while Cassandra poked at a couple of demon remains to bring back to researchers at Haven.
“Here, lean on me. I'm a good height for it,” Varric offered and Cirridwen took him up on it as she hobbled to the mouth of the dell. Duty fetched Bun and came to meet them, dipping its head to them. Seized by an impulse, Varric made an over blown hand gesture worthy of the dandiest Orlesian while managing to keep his shoulder steady for Cirridwen. It earned a small strained smile from Cirridwen as Duty picked her up and lifted her over Bun, the spirit not concerned with things like a consistent hovering height from the ground. Once seated, Cirridwen held a hand out to the spirit.
“That's enough thank you. Go home.” Duty seemed to stare at her for a moment, and Varric had no idea what, if anything, was passing between them before the spirit faded, taking Cirridwen's little wispy glow things with it.
They headed back northwards, through mercifully empty woods. They were anything but silent however. Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, followed by two more. Birds chattered ceaselessly and two Fereldan Fantails darted past, cheeky as they flitted back and forth to chase the insects Bun flushed from the grass.
Cassandra looked rather charmed by the small birds. Varric was decidedly less so as he fought not to inhale the same gnats they were chasing.
“Herald,” Solas said, drawing further up with her while Cassandra fell back to the rear and Varric marched ahead, waving his hand in frustration.
“Hahren.” Cirridwen responded. Solas huffed a small breath out of his nose in acknowledgement.
“Very well. Cirridwen.”
“Solas.”
“Duty has been with you for some time.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember how long?” Cirridwen tilted her head, one finger resting on the bow of her lips.
“Three years, for this one.”
“There have been others?”
“Many. I seem to... foster them.” she admitted.
“Fascinating. Do you find other spirits drawn to you often? Or only Duty?”
“Some. Purpose. Compassion. Strength.”
“That is unusual, to have so many drawn to one person,” Solas observed.
“Sometimes.” Cirridwen said.
“Forgive me my curiosity, but it is rare for me to meet somebody who has known so many spirits.” Solas said, his manner withdrawing a little, cooling.
“No. The fault is mine. Curiosity is good. I am just...” she trailed, wondering how to phrase it. “Sometimes, I am very old.”
“Ah,” Solas said, shifting his staff from one hand to the other. “Forgive me. As one who is hale, it is too easy for me to forget other's limitations. But I would like to discuss them more with you, when you are stronger.”
Cirridwen managed to summon up a faded smile for him and the rest of the trip passed in silence, apart from a curious noise or two from Varric when they passed a small colonnade with a little bird statue on a large block at the centre. Cirridwen was beyond caring. It was not yet three, but the day was starting to take its toll. She'd ridden for a week on indifferent roads to get to the Hinterlands, arrived to a complete mess, and had just gotten scrubbed through the grass by upset demons. She'd care tomorrow. The sun was looking fit to set in about two hours anyway, and she refused to go traipsing about in the dark in strange country.
It was everyone's relief when they reached the camp, Bun plodding up the slope to the entrenched position. Cirridwen pulled her grace back around herself, sitting up instead of slumping as she updated the maps, noting information on the mercenaries to be circulated among the scouts as well as the crystal grace locations and the now closed Rift. Dinner was more potage, although it also had some fresh game that had been chucked in along with fiddleheads.
She then wrote her notes northwards. The heavy fighting. The Tevinters. Inquiries about the shards and occularum. Some of their number had fled to Tevinter and may be able to provide information. A request for certain persons to come south to Haven. A letter home to ease worried parents. The light was fading quickly by the time she finished and people were gravitating to the fire. Small work that didn't need close details or candle light. Oiling of equipment. One of the scouts was spoiling Bun something terrible with a curry comb. Varric seemed determined to ruin his eyesight by scribbling in the fire's light. Cirridwen sent a magelight to hover over him and he startled before stretching, seeming to have remembered how terribly scrunched up his spine was.
“You'll ruin your eyes doing that,” She reprimanded him gently.
“Yes mother,” he said with a grin.
Solas was up unusually late, sliding onto the ground next to Cirridwen's low perch on a sack of grain as he held up a small mug and an earthen ewer. Cirridwen accepted the offering, sniffing at it curiously.
“It is a tea that may help with your aches,” he supplied.
“Thank you.”
“Would you be averse to discussing your spirits with me now?” Solas asked. Cirridwen could practically hear Varric's ears pricking.
“I'm in much better temper now.”
“You said that you had multiple spirits with you over the years, ones that had formed a sense of self.”
“Yes. I don't know if I... begin them, myself. But I do seem to attract people with strength of personality, and of course that's just honey to flies for them.”
“Duty, Compassion, Strength, Purpose. You mentioned those.”
“Yes. There have been a few others. I knew a spirit of Bravery, once. The person she'd latched onto was almost always scared. An anxious, fretting thing. But she kept going. She kept working, hiding, living, lying. All of it through the fear. After all,” Cirridwen smiled. “What is bravery, but being terrified and doing it anyway?”
“That would have been difficult,” Solas observed. “And easy to lose. Did it never waver in its purpose? It would have been easy to lose to Fear.”
“That one required a bit of nudging. And a talk with the woman she'd attached herself to. I have high hopes that they will do well together. She was a Spirit healer, so I'm not too worried.”
“And did you ever have trouble with demons?”
“Sometimes. I had to fight a couple for people in the early stages of possession. But not many nascent ones. They were easy to catch and unravel before they progressed much past wisps.”
“You show a subtlety with spirits that is unusual in this age,” Solas remarked as he stood. “I hope you retain it.” For a moment, Cirridwen had the oddest sense of someone very old, older than anyone she had ever met, before the impression faded and she nodded goodnight to the elf.