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“Shit,” the Avvari man heaved down his fourth pint of ale in two gulps. “Fuck.”
He slammed the mug on the bar twice as a rude request for more. Cabot’s gaze was positively venomous as he refilled Sky Watcher’s stein. Grumbles about slipping poison into the Avvar’s next round poured from the crotchedy dwarf’s mouth.
The growls traveled back to where Solas sat, tucked into his nook. The moment he’d found the table, he’d marked it up with aura spells that exuded his possession of the area. It was a small table, initially chosen for its nearness to one of the fireplaces. It had a singular cushioned bench, fit snugly against the wall. The opposite end of the table was also flush against a dividing wall, making it impossible for someone to approach and sit where they were uninvited. The position was as secluded as one can expect to be in a tavern, and it gave a view of nearly every person in the Herald’s Rest over the lip of a book. It was sometimes like sitting in a box, but the overall advantages of his little nook kept Solas coming back to it. It also had excellent reading light.
Solas wondered if Sky Watcher was feeling any buzz yet. The last time he’d tried to keep track of the barbarian’s ale intake, it had eluded him. Sera had started spraying derogatory comments toward him, and he’d been in just the mood to argue with her. Unfortunately, the cost of bickering with Sera had been to lose count of the number of mugs the Avvar drank. Today, Solas was mildly curious about attempting to keep up, if for nothing more than a trivial occupation.
“Hey, hey now,” Bull thumped his friend’s back, jostling the large man slightly. “It can’t be that bad, Star Gazer.”
“Shut up.” The glum man sent a brooding scowl over to the Qunari. “You have no idea what it means for a shaman to receive the message of a white raven.” He rolled his hulking shoulders violently, as if to quash chills from his spine. The next sentiment left his lips in a reverent, terrified mumble. “She’s coming for me…”
“What? Who?” An ornery grin spread over the Iron Bull’s teeth. “Your Lady of the Skies? Because, in most contexts, a woman coming for you is generally a good thing.” Krem groaned dramatically from the Charger’s usual section, and Skinner snickered. “Or a very sacrilegious thing,” Bull tagged-on the moment he saw the snarl twisting Sky Watcher’s face.
The Avvar seemed to accept Bull’s statement as cover enough for the potential offense, and so he lamented his worries aloud. “I abandoned my tribe on a whim,” he took a few more practically sized swallows of drink. “Oh, I told them I was going, but I didn’t weigh their replies before departing. I was the last caster left. Though I refused the role of Augur in favor of watching after the Lady, I know healing magics. Without me, they will have to trade brides or goods with another tribe in order to procure a healer, if they don’t just snatch one up from the traveling mage groups roaming around.”
Solas’ stomach gave a sickened twist. He kept the grimace off of his face, casually flipping a page in his book. The idea of the ruthless Mire folk they’d faced dragging some poor mage off into their swamp made him feel ill.
“Thing is,” the man’s words slurred slightly, and Solas distracted himself away from thoughts of mage-knapping by marking that four-and-a-half mugs of ale was when it began to hit. “They must not’ve gotten themselves another caster. The white raven is one of a flock that serves as the hold beast to a particular tribe. The Avvar of Pale Feather Hold are rich in Dreamers. The Lady gifted them with ivory birds and touched their blood thickest with magic. You want a mage child?” Sky Watcher took another swig. “You fuck a woman from Pale Feather Hold.”
Solas didn’t hide the flare of disgust that edged his left nostril and curled his upper lip. From mage-knapping to mage-breeding. Classy.
“Yeah?” Bull prompted, sounding a bit tetchier, but managing to keep the rigidity out of his body.
Despite keeping a mage as his lover and another (two, if you counted the all but official acceptance of Sky Watcher into the Chargers) in his team, the great Iron Bull fared poorly with hiding his revulsion of magic. Oh, indeed. He could put it aside in favor of seeing the person “behind” the casting. It wasn’t just a mage; it was Dalish. It wasn’t some Vashoth Bas Saarebas; it was Nazah. In addition to his preference for excising magic out of a given mage’s identity, Bull claimed that it was only demons and spirits and such that vexed him… but Solas knew better.
It was in the way he shied from spells on the battlefield. It was written in the taught lines of his anatomy when a mage offered healing. It was in his eyes when he’d gazed toward the Breach, still when he looked upon the mark in his lover’s palm. Most telling, by far, was that magic often happened to be featured as the punchline of his simple jokes. The Iron Bull tried to bury his fear beneath humor, but forced laughter always reeks of cowardice.
“What kind of message did the mage tribe send you?” the Qunari asked. “I didn’t notice any parchment attached to the bird.”
“She doesn’t need to bother writing a message, the bird serves as enough.” Sky Watcher grimaced, then finished off the fifth ale and slumped over the bar top.
“Just this ‘She’ again? Not the whole of them?” Varric swaggered up to the two gargantuan men at the bar. Solas turned another page. “That seems at least vaguely positive.”
Master Tethras was ever the optimist.
“There only needs to be her. She’s the Augur. Not an Augur, the Augur.”
Cabot and Sky Watcher were in a stalemate of sorts. Each extending a violent look to the other, the dwarf withholding further drink. Sky Watcher continued, not breaking his stare with the bartender.
“Because the Pale Feathers have so many mages, they’ve deemed themselves fit to nose into the bride exchange and training of most tribes’ casters. This is not a simple task, for many reasons. She scraped and clawed her way to the highest mage position to be obtained, and she is the one to nose into everyone’s business.”
The bitterness in his tone was palpable, and Solas was not sure if it was directed toward the woman from Pale Feather Hold, or Cabot. His motivation was all the more muddled because the Avvar was headed toward drunkenness, and his speech took on some mushy aspects. Beneath the hateful tone and ale, Sky Watcher’s words began to be chanted in the rhythm of one recounting a legend. It tugged Solas’ half interest out of his book on Nevarran funerary customs, and he focused fully on the human man.
“The Lady’s children swoon when she dreams, and she has been gifted greatly by their favor. Her love for conflict is fierce and cruel. She strikes with lightening and terror, shredding your mind beneath horror and feeding you to the storms she summons. That’s what she is called,” the man insistently shoved his cup toward Cabot. “The Stormbringer. Her white raven was a warning and a summons. She means to punish me for abandoning my tribe to sickness and wounds. She will likely kill me.” Sky Watcher’s voice dropped, caving beneath the weight of his worries.
He gave up the staring contest with Cabot and simply allowed his face to hit the bar. “At the very least,” his words were muffled and nasally with his face pressed into the glossy wood. “She will try.”
“Well,” Varric took a deep breath, glancing at Bull across the giant’s bulky shoulders. “Shit. You think we could help you take her, or is that against some kinda’ Avvar challenge rule-type-thing?”
“It will not be a challenge, it will be a punishment,” the Avvar droned. “And she has more magic in her left little toe than I have in the whole of my practice. She’ll decimate us with a flick of her wrist, then giggle and fiddle with her pretty hair.”
The Iron Bull shrugged at Varric, and Solas quirked a brow.
Hm. An intriguing notion.
He would not weep for the death of the Qunari, nor for Sky Watcher. The loss of Varric, however, would be disheartening. Solas decided that if this mage woman was truly a challenging opponent, he’d involve himself and nullify her threat before it escalated to fatality. He’d have to be quick about it. If Solas employed anything but the most basic dispelling, word of it would get back to the Inquisitor as well as the Seeker. Then the two would become more suspicious of him, if that was possible.
Nazah had looked to him for direction too much. She’d seemed unsure too often. Cassandra had quickly seen through his attempt to credit the newly dubbed Inquisitor with the rediscovery of Skyhold. His knowledge of its location had disturbed both of them, thus he was avoiding conflict with Cassandra by occupying his nook in the tavern as opposed to the rotunda.
Also because if he had to suffer listening to that damned Tevinter rearranging his library for another moment, he’d tear the man to pieces.
It was difficult enough to quash his dominant tendencies as things were. He’d given up conveying a beta level feel back in Haven. Still, Solas had refrained from allowing his alpha nature to rule over him. Where he usually had the desire to exert control and confidence, he played aloof. He wasn’t as low key with his nature as Varric, who one often overlooked as an alpha, but Solas was far from asserting himself the way his instincts demanded.
“By ‘the Lady’s children,’ are you perhaps referring to spirits?” the question left him before Solas had time to consider the repercussions of involving himself with this particular discussion. He continued with a mental shrug. “And if so,” in for a penny, in for a pound. “What do you mean when you say that they ‘swoon?’”
Five eyes turned to blink intently at him, as though they’d forgotten he was there. That was unlikely to be true of them all. The Iron Bull was too observant to have forgotten, so the attempted effect was to make Solas feel as though Bull didn’t pay any mind to his being there. He pondered Bull’s choice to give that particular impression.
It was clearly an act of dominance, something of which the Qunari was prone to displaying. It said that the tavern belonged to Bull, and that he felt the need to show Solas, however subtly, that he wasn’t a threat to Bull’s custody of the place. That chafed somewhat, considering the fact that the whole of Skyhold technically belonged to him, and he’d already been chased out of his library.
Was there any other motive that better fit Bull’s actions?
When he did not find one, Solas debated whether or not it would be worth the effort to shake Bull’s sense of ownership. It would be easy. A casual spell placed here or there to spread heat or keep the sediments of fermentation out of the ale. More aura spells stamped into a few choice locations. A slow satisfaction spread through Solas. He knew quite a few easy parlor tricks that would displace the Iron Bull’s mistaken notions of claim.
No, he decided. It would not be worth the effort. So long as he remained undisturbed in his nook, he’d leave Bull to think whatever he wanted.
A luxury for people like him.
“Yes,” Sky Watcher reined in Solas’ mental tangent. “You lot refer to the Lady of the Skies’ children as spirits. What I mean when I say that they swoon for the Stormbringer is that she is touched by them often.” Wistfulness crept into the Avvar’s voice. “They covet her dreams. She visited my tribe once, and I remember, even camping out away from the gathering as I was, the way that the Lady’s children rushed and scrambled to be near her. She was just a little lass then, too. No more than ten and five.”
An infant. He was talking about an infant as though she reigned over the sky. Preposterous.
Sky Watcher lost the smoothness, returning to a simplistic grumble. “The babbling in the Fade made it bloody impossible to sleep. I doubt a single mage in Pale Feather gets any true rest with her around.”
“Isn’t that demon shit really dangerous? Think she’s possessed or something? If she is, I’d really rather not deal with that bitch.”
Bull’s statement was ignorant, though not unexpected. Solas did not know much about the magical practice of the Avvar, but it was abundantly clear from his first meeting with Sky Watcher that the Augurs of the wilder folk valued spirits as companions rather than fearing them on principle. It had initially given Solas a flare of interest and hope. That hope had quickly been snuffed beneath crudeness and lack of willing communication on the part of Sky Watcher. He’d have poked through some of the memories in the Fade that focused clearly on the practices of Augurs if he wasn’t so nervous about leaving Nazah to her own devices.
The encounter with Corypheus and what remained of his foci has clearly altered the Anchor is some way. It had given her a new sense of ownership over it, certainly. But it also forced the remnants of his magic more deeply into her flesh. It was not settling well. While Nazah was not someone whose company he was willing to bare on a daily basis, Solas did not want his ill begotten decisions with the orb to cause her any more pain than they already had. When he’d strayed a bit in his dreaming before, he’d felt the tug of the Anchor.
Sour and excruciating. Day by day, the magic was rejecting her.
It was only a matter of time before it began to rend her limb. If he stayed relatively close, he could usually curb the magic’s desire to consume her flesh. Solas did not recall his magic having such a destructive attitude unto itself, but he imagined that whatever had transpired with the orb in Corypheus’ hands had warped many things about it. The unique motivations that accompanied the mild sentience belonging to any magic would have likely become hungry, desperate, and repulsive with Corypheus as the will behind its use. It was none the less disturbing, however, to feel his own presence within the fumbling, hollow recreations of former power being thrown about in this hell of an existence.
He needed to find a way to still the Anchor once more, or to make peace with Nazah becoming deformed. He would feel more at ease with either eventuality realized. One was simply much more preferable.
---
It had been a nasty trek. Nazah had remained in Skyhold attending various duties. Bull, his Chargers, Solas, and Varric had been sent to get to the bottom of the strange reports still surfacing in the Mire. Solas could think of only one thing he enjoyed less than traveling in the Fallow Mire, and that was traveling with the Chargers in the Fallow Mire. Varric, at least, was amiable and entertaining company.
The Dwarven storyteller had wheedled his way into something very akin to friendship, though Solas resisted the notion of becoming overly attached to anyone in the Inquisition. This last few weeks spent slogging through undead and muck in search of a malevolent apostate had quickened the companionship between Solas and Varric considerably. The two had pushed past many of Solas’ less than considerate questions pertaining to Dwarven culture. They’d spoken long into the night of various ornery escapades and desperate attempts to right wrongs encountered by those they considered friends. Solas kept a veneer of falsehood over his true self, but Varric had coaxed quite a bit more of the contumacious trickster out of his attempts to be the modest hermit.
While Solas was usually entertained by the Chargers from a distance, the others traveling with them cut through his patience much more quickly when there wasn’t a tavern wall blocking their antics from his person. He was a frequent target. Bull’s poorly hidden suspicion toward him had made for an awkward atmosphere, and Krem was quick to rally and attempt to dispel the residual unease the only way he knew how: teasing. It had resulted in the mercenaries goading and testing Solas in any arena that surfaced. While he should have declined participating in any of their games, he found himself slipping into a petulant mood after a week of constant prodding. He relented, giving into the lesser desires to best the others in whatever challenge arose. A competitive nature was something with which he had always struggled, and it didn’t do much for the character he was attempting to portray.
Of course, there had been contests of physical combat and magic of various sorts. Dalish had proved to be a rather accomplished mage for this generation. It was exciting to engage in magical bouts with her, though he’d been forced to give her a few wins that she would have gained over an average middle aged elf by younger body and warfare experience. The Chargers had also tested his knowledge of the undead and the possible causes for their fascinating residence within the Mire. They’d nudged his tolerance for drink and found themselves woefully disappointed when six ales and a healthy dose of hard liquor had done nothing to his sobriety. Immortality offered many things, and an eventual insusceptibility to most alcohols was typically one of them. Varric had been particularly fascinated with Solas’ level of tolerance as his own buzz set in, and a haphazard vow to write a booze-resistant elf into one of his stories had been slurred in his direction.
All in all, Solas had perhaps allowed himself to enjoy a few too many petty victories. He’d blacked Krem’s eye and marked Skinner’s forearm with one of her own daggers. In fact, he had beaten most everyone in one sparring match or another. He’d eaten more than Bull, and created a black powder than was more efficient than Rocky’s usual recipe, then graciously allowed the dwarf to keep his notes on the mixture. When Solas realized he was racking up wins, he’d veered a bit too violently away from dominant gestures of success.
He gave Dalish her handful of conquests sparring against him. Stitches was allowed to overcome him in a general race to create the most potent healing draught. And then there was Grim. Though he’d put on a show of losing to the other two when he realized that he’d succumbed his childish competitive tendencies, Solas was doomed to fail the contest against Grim genuinely. He had, miraculously, managed to not speak a single word for two days before relenting and admitting true defeat against the subdued man. Bull hadn’t bought the losses against Dalish. It was too sudden. Fortunately, the Qunari didn’t seem inclined to press or question about it beyond an awkward stare while Dalish gloated.
Things in the Mire somehow grew progressively worse. It seemed that the rainy season commenced during the opening of their hunt for the apostate. Storm after torrential storm brooded over the group, pouring so violently at times that the undead were stirred from the waters without provocation from wandering feet. Every issue involved with traveling in the Fallow Mire was exacerbated as the storms grew to be so frequent, they coalesced into one never-ending deluge. It was a nightmare come to life. Several Chargers developed a heavy cough. Food spoiled at an unbelievably quick rate, even in enchanted bags meant to keep things fresh. Slobbering, senseless, angry undead scathed their reserves until the band was driven into the shelter of an abandoned windmill lost to a far corner of the Mire.
While the windmill certainly wasn’t luxurious or spacious, it was about as dry as things in the Fallow Mire could be expected to manage. The firepit in the large space offered a comfortable warmth to combat the miserable wet cold. Stitches was fiddling with a tonic for the sickness that was sweeping through a number of their group.
The official plan that had been passed around stated that they were waiting for the rain to let up before heading back out. At the time, they’d had supplies to last a good week or so without stopping into an Inquisition camp, and no one was really interested in wrestling through the abysmal wastes outside awaiting them.
A simple spell that Solas passed along to Dalish produced small, subtle globe-like lanterns that drained little mana and, more importantly, did not draw the attention of the undead. They were already pushing their luck with keeping the fire burning. Many lanterns were summoned and bobbing about the mill at the moment. Solas had played with their colors. His lanterns ranged from delicate pinks through fiery oranges and mellow greens. There were a few wispy blues and a touch of purple here and there, but he’d mostly focused on the warmer hues. Brighter colors seemed to improve morale. Dalish had tried to conjure something that wasn’t the buttery yellow of a normal candle wick, but failed miserably. The spell had exploded in her face, rather comically leaving her coated in an opaque glowing residue that was reminiscent of the dribble spewed from a giant’s nose. The woman had gotten a good round of laughs before she’d trudged out the door to let the rain rinse her clean.
It had been about three days, though it was hard to tell the passing of time with the constant cloud cover. The storm had eased for a handful of stretched intervals, though it did not ever truly break. These lulls were staunchly ignored by the entire party. Leaving the windmill was not pursued for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, it was dreadful outside. The Fallow Mire appealed to no one with its muck and undead hoards. They’d been dredging through the worst of it for a month, and everyone had simply had enough. Secondly, they had no idea where the apostate Widris was holed away. It was impossible to track her through this weather, not that they’d been having any luck finding her before the storms set in. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, they were lost.
Sky Watcher had been forced along for the sole purpose of helping them find their way through the confusing mass of sludge that was his homeland, but he’d been absolutely useless. The slovenly, drunken bastard had spent the entirety of the last month completely wasted. He was near incoherent most of the time, though he did manage to hold his own against the undead onslaughts as well as keep up with the traveling. At this point, Solas was simply shocked that the human man had yet to display the signs of alcohol poisoning. He had to be on the cusp of liver failure. The Avvar’d fought, tooth and nail, to remain in the sanctuary of Skyhold. He’d babbled and bemoaned the coming of his dreaded Stormbringer for months now, and the woman had yet to make an appearance and claim her pound of flesh.
Every bolt of lightning, every rumble of thunder scared Sky Watcher out of his skin. The man was constantly mumbling some prayer or another into his fist, then blowing the words toward the sky. It had grown sad to watch. Initially, it had been a bit amusing. Everyone had taken their turn teasing the drunken fool, especially Varric. Varric had spent a lot of time commenting on Sky Watcher’s ridiculous performance. Now, however, it was infuriating.
They needed the knowledge about the area in the great lout’s head, but since stopping in the windmill, he’d doubled his intake of booze and remained incomprehensible. Even with Sky Watcher incapable of offering any sort of applicable commentary on the environment, no one was willing to admit that they were lost. Solas reasoned that nobody said it because it was so blatantly clear that they were damn good and lost.
Bull had tried simply denying the man liquor when he realized that the remarks Sky Watcher offered were leading the party in circles. In response to being cut off, the Avvar had somehow produced alcohol from a strange plant that abounded near the water. Solas had seen many spells that fermented grains and fruits at a rapid pace, but he’d never come across a result that was quite as disgusting as what Sky Watcher drank from the Mire fruits. Bull stopped denying him at that point, stating something about a man being so willing to suffer for drink deserving a decent beverage.
The truth was that the Qunari was uncomfortable with feeling embarrassment and pity toward someone that he had previously esteemed. He’d rather see him drunk on the normal stuff than half poisoned into madness on whatever it was that he was pulling from the swamp plants. Solas would have left him to pollute himself, picking through his unconscious mind with a spell if he wasn’t so sure Dalish would catch and report the surge of magic that would be emitted during the casting. Bull would put it together quickly if Solas started suddenly pointing through the Mire with precision after a month of blind wandering.
Solas allowed his eyes to slide over the slumped hulking figure of the Avvar. He might get away with blaming the newfangled knowledge on Fade traveling… though Bull was typically cross with that response and reluctant to accept information Solas offered “from the Fade.” It was also unlikely that he would be able to hide all effects of the spell from Sky Watcher’s memory. If he awoke and began spewing accusations about Solas rummaging through his mind, things could become regrettably inconvenient.
Bull strode in front of the fire, batting a few lanterns out of his way. One of the blushy pink globes stuck on the point of his horn, and Solas tried not to grin at the silly accessory it became upon the Qunari’s person. He rolled his shoulders, raised his chin, and attempted to exude a strong sense of dominance. Bull was either ignoring the lantern or unaware of its presence. Either way, the pink bauble spoiled his attempts at relaying an aura of command. “We leave when everyone’s packed. The rain’s obviously not letting up, so we’ll travel through it. Star Gazer says the apostate’s toward the west. We head west. Isn’t that right, Star Gazer?”
The Avvar grunted something of an acknowledgement, though the words were a pulp.
The compasses hadn’t worked since the onset of the storms, and the whole of the Fallow Mire muddled everyone’s natural sense of direction. “And how exactly is it,” Solas stood, keeping his body language modest as he sauntered towards the Qunari. “Iron Bull, that you think we can determine which way is west?” The elf reached up slowly, dispelling the pink bubble with a pop and earning a few chuckles from the attentive crowd.
Bull was now covered in a glittery residue that tinted the holster over his chest and shoulder with a pearlescent, feminine sheen.
Varric’s voice was resolute. “West is west, Chuckles. It’s that way,” he pointed vaguely toward the fireplace.
“How can you sense the direction?” Solas questioned, about to dive into a series of questions about Stone Sense and Dwarves not relying upon a loose awareness of direction developed from instinctual memorization of celestial patterns.
His thoughts were halted however, when Rocky interrupted the beginning of Varric’s reply. “Nah, Tethras. It’s that way,” he jerked a thumb toward the door.
“You’re both wrong!” Dalish crossed her arms and angled her chin over toward another part of the tower. “West is that way.”
“No, all three of you are wrong!”
Iron Bull interrupted the fourth voice with a thundered and irritable, “Aw, for fuck’s sake! Shut up and pack, you assholes!”