My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Cullen shrugged, he'd felt the urge to call the other knights that and much worse at times. Especially given the recent crops proclivity for pranks. "It is lonely at the top," he said, then shook his head. No, that wasn't right. He wasn't lonely. He was determined, quiet, introspective, but not lonely. Sadness or grief had no place in the order, not when there was duty.

  Lana did not call him out, she only sighed again and slipped her eyes closed. A thousand emotions played across her gentle features, each a story he could only read a sentence of before it disappeared behind her commander mask. It tugged at his heart to see the steeled eyes deny her internal pain. They mimicked the same that stared out at him through the mirror each morning.

  "Ah!" she cried, her finger bouncing the correct depth into the rabbit, "dinner is done." Stabbing into the carcass with her own knife, she lifted the rabbit out of the pot, yellowed water dribbling off the pale skin. Dropping it onto the cutting log, she sawed into it. Without any hint of jocularity, Lana asked, "Are you a chest or thigh man?"

  Chapter Four

  Dreams

  Cullen picked at the ashes now barely warm hours after they'd been doused. He could sleep, she assured him it was safe of darkspawn, and bandits would find a rather unfortunate end if they tried. After a few hours of twisting upon the ground, never missing his creaky bed more, he gave up on the fruitless effort and sat beside the dead fire. Maybe it was being in an unknown location for dubious reasons, perhaps it was the incessant crying of the wild animals echoing through the trees. Or, most likely, it was due to the woman curled up on her bedroll. She had her knees almost tucked up to her chin, her cloak stretched out across her body like a blanket. It must not have been as warm as he suspected. On occasion, her arms would tremble deep in sleep, shaking the cloak like a flag in the wind. She'd grip tighter to her knees, pressing them deeper into her chest until the tremors passed.

  It was idiotic to even entertain the notion. Cullen was more certain of that fact than almost any other in his life. He'd watched countless mages sleep, or feign sleep, during night shifts counting beds. A few would glare back at him, their sullen eyes sullen daring him to say a word against them. They were technically in bed, and there were no orders they needed to be asleep in said bed. For a brief moment he was powerless against them. Those were far from the worst. It was discovering a mage missing not because he tried to escape but was in anothers bed that ratcheted up his anxiety.

  At twenty and as inexperienced as a hermit with a fascinating pin collection, stumbling upon two people becoming very well acquainted all but drew the breath from his lungs. Something of an order had tumbled from his throat, though to his ears it sounded like a goose cry. The activities froze and both heads sheepishly dug out from under the blanket. Uncertain of what to say, Cullen -- with a face as bright as a strawberry -- suggested they go to sleep. He did not let them rise from the bed or even disentangle, just sleep like that for the whole night.

  Knight-Commander Gregoir found the report humorous and gave a 'people will be people' response, but there was an announcement to the apprentices to try and contain their affections as best they could. There was no mention of Cullen's idiotic order to the pair, but somehow the mages found out, because there was nothing they loved more than gossip. It spread faster than a misplaced fire spell. They would whisper "Finish quick or you'll have to sleep like that," every time he passed. Apprentices thought they were oh so hilarious.

  Lana stirred in her sleep and she rolled to face him. Slips of dawn barely breaking up the horizon lanced across her face. She was beautiful, you'd have to be an idiot not to see that. He thought time would temper that, reveal his idolization as little more than youthful folly. She could not be as heart racing as he remembered. This trip had done nothing to shatter his fantasies, even a hard day of traveling and finding rest upon the dirt did nothing to mar her temperament or beauty. Of course, she could not care for him, he was...not good enough, for her or anyone he'd wish to spend time with. It was an oddly comforting thought to know where he stood, a shield against the traitorous parts of him that dreamed of dangerous things. Though, he could not stop watching her slumber.

  The cares of the world were erased from her brow while she traipsed through the fade in her dreams. It was her smile that shifted her from a beautiful woman into someone that knotted his tongue every time he stood near her. It took almost three weeks upon first meeting her before he could even bark out a "move along." Before that, he'd made squeaking noises and wave with his hands, which only made her smile wider and -- on occasion -- laugh. Andraste's breath, he was finished when she'd laugh.

  But that was a lifetime ago, another man, a foolish and naive man who thought mages were good people at heart. Now he knew the truth, bore their scars on his body and...elsewhere. And yet, Lana was different. Even becoming a Grey Warden, those fearsome slayers of darkspawn, she maintained her gentleness. She was one of the good ones.

  Lana stirred again, but this wasn't a soft tremble from dawn's chill. Her shoulders pivoted back and forth, slamming her sides into the ground. Whimpers vibrated up her throat.

  "Lana," Cullen whispered in the air.

  If she heard him, she gave no sign, her eyelids undulating in pain. Her calm face shattered, dragging her lips into a rictus of horror. She screamed something that sounded like a chant, the words foreign to him. Her voice hissed and snapped, giving the strange tongue a demonic turn.

  "Lana," Cullen tried again, leaping to his feet. "Solana!"

  Still she would not respond, her fingers clawing at the cloak around her neck while more of the unholy chanting broke from her throat. He dropped to a knee beside her bedroll, ignoring dawn's frost chewing upon his shin.

  "Lady Amell," Cullen reached out to her, prepared to catch her hand and yank her awake from whatever ensnared her. "Warden Commander!" he shouted.

  Lana's eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright. Her fists both flared, blue light warping around her hands as magic gushed out of the fade. Ice shards erupted from the ground spearing through the sky nearly twenty feet in all directions around them. She blinked thrice, then stared at her hands. Shaking away the buildup of magic, Lana finally turned to him. It was only her that peered out through her eyes.

  "That was all the wards, wasn't it?" she asked, tapping her fingertips together "Ouch! Yep, all of them. The blowback's the worst part."

  "Are you..." Cullen's hands froze, one inches from her, the other inside his armor.

  Her fingers raked across her forehead, leaving furloughs of red flesh in their wake. "I, sorry. It's a Grey Warden thing."

  "A Grey Warden thing?" Cullen repeated, his body rigid.

  "We, uh," Lana's eyes slipped closed for a moment as she continued to claw across her skin. "On top of sensing darkspawn sometimes we hear them as part of...part of what makes us Grey Wardens. It's most prevalent in dreams."

  "You have nightmares about darkspawn?" It should not be surprising, few came back from war unchanged, but he couldn't stop the shock upon his face. She was the Hero of Ferelden, surely she was strong enough to resist the horrors of war. Somehow, despite knowing her before she became that mythic warrior, he'd bought into the hype around her. Perhaps it was because he knew her before he wanted so much to believe it, to think she was untouchable.

  Lana pursed her lips and nodded, finally pulling her fingers away from her forehead. The scratches were deeper than he expected, more reminiscent of a cat attacking than her chewed down nails. "I should have warned you."

  "Do they happen often?"

  "It's worse the closer I draw to the deep roads. Some remnant of my joining during the blight." Her eyes didn't water, but her gaze drifted past Cullen and towards the lightening horizon. For a time neither said a word, they only shared in the silence of the early morning broken by the chirp of birds. "I should probably get up, anyway."

  It wasn't until she struggled to rise to her feet that Cullen noticed how close he was to her. He staggered back to let her up, and t
urned his back to her. Certain that she was Lana and nothing else, Cullen released his hold on the knife hidden inside his armor. His fingers trembled and he held them close to his chest, trying to will away the rapid beating of his heart. If she noticed how close he nearly came to killing her out of fear of possession, she did not voice it, only scooped up her water skin and headed towards the creek. Any mage was vulnerable, Cullen repeated, watching her unsteady steps. Any mage was dangerous.

  Chapter Five

  Stairs

  Lana kept a close eye on the maps while Cullen was supposed to keep an eye on the trail. The fact he could not find this imaginary path only aided in him smashing his boot through every tree, puddle, and rabbit burrow along the way. "You have no idea where you're going," he chided himself as he plunged calf deep into a hole. Mud suckered up while he sneered at his bad luck.

  But it was Solana who answered, "No, I've got a fairly good handle. That pile of rocks there, the white ones. I think they were part of the old temple from before the second blight. One of those pagan ones later altered into an Andrastian pre-chantry, then burnt down during an exalted march years after."

  Cullen only saw vines and moss sprawled across a lumpy hill, but he had no reason to doubt her, she was the grey warden. "Do you do this often?"

  "Chase down blood mages?" she asked, her face buried in the map. After a moment, she pointed towards the east and nodded her head. "I'm not a templar."

  "No, I know. You couldn't be a..." he tried to rise up from his stuck boot and sighed. His leg refused to budge. "Hunting for entrances to the deep roads long lost. I wondered if this is part of the average grey warden duties."

  "Ah," she smiled and rolled up the precious maps into the pack slung across her back. "A grey warden's job is to stop blights. Which means I peaked rather early in my career, I suppose." She stepped close to Cullen, her body so near the wind ruffled the hem of her robe onto him. His heartbeat picked up from the heat of her inches away.

  "That's a shame," Cullen squeaked out. He snapped his teeth to try and hide the ecstatic terror building at the back of his brain.What was she doing?

  "Truly. So, some of my sunset years involves traveling across the land, finding darkspawn, following them to their filthy holes, and destroying them." Her tone was stark and dry, but her eyes sparkled in a dangerous mischief. Lifting half her smile, Lana dropped to her knees. His hands reached for her shoulders to raise her out of the mud and to stop her from... Maker, whatever she was doing, it could not be that. Cullen swallowed a squeak when her fingers grasped around his calf and she began to yank upwards. Andraste's tears, of course. If the blood mage or the darkspawn didn't end him on this trip, his runaway mind would. Together they worked to unstick him from the mud.

  "You don't send some of your underlings to do that?" he gritted through his teeth, trying to distract from the awkwardness blooming up his cheeks. To even think that, no, it was only a passing...Maker, when did it get so warm? His boot erupted from the sinkhole, the ground popping in rage from losing its toy.

  Lana held out her hand and Cullen took it, helping her rise. Her robes were filthy, the knees down to her feet coated in mud and moss. She paid it no mind as she grabbed up her staff. "Sinkholes are a good sign."

  "To predators looking for an easy meal," Cullen grumbled.

  "It means the ground is weak, and where the ground is weak an entrance to the deep roads is near. Come on, should be just past that hill."

  Lana strode ahead of him as she always did. On occasion she'd bang the end of her staff into the ground, listening to the noise. After a few steps and bangs, she resumed their earlier conversation. "I don't like the idea of sitting on a throne. I made a lot of sacrifices to be what I am, and I don't want to waste them."

  "I never--" Cullen began, but Lana gasped and ran up the hill away from him, her lighter steps making the climb much easier than his. He gritted his teeth and, not as excited about the fragile ground, took each step with more caution. The last thing he wanted was to force her to have to fish him out of a sinkhole by the waist. As he rounded up the hill, Lana waved her hands over a cavity dug so deep into the earth to render it essentially bottomless. Packed mud around the entrance gave way to rock chiseled away from the earth after five feet down into the pit. Further than that was inky blackness, an ominous fog drifting atop the impenetrable bottom. The hole was a good twenty feet in diameter, more where the rock cleaved away from the mountain like a cracked bone. Rotted boards were nailed up by a blind man working off the instructions of a deaf man to create a staircase for giants. The staircase circled around the edges of the pit, down into the depths beyond sight -- at least what parts of the stairs that hadn't fully succumb to time and their poor craftsmanship. Cullen tried to see to the bottom but could only spot a hint of a wood pile hundreds of feet below them. That must be where the stairs went to die.

  "Here we are," she said, waving her hands at it.

  "We'll never survive that." Cullen tried to sound optimistic, but it always turned into pessimism when possible death was involved. "Is there another entrance closer? One nearer to the ground part of the deep roads?"

  Lana shook her head, "Not for miles, and in the opposite direction. If we take it, we could lose White forever." Above the squawks of carrion birds was an eternal creaking from the staircase shifting to its inevitable doom. He leaned over the edge, trying to see if enough the stairs remained in place all the way to the bottom to insure their survival, but shadows either hid vital sections or they did not exist. He couldn't tell.

  "Cullen," she spoke so close to him, he jumped from her whisper, "you can still turn back. Once we take this, it's the deep roads and I don't think there will be any getting out."

  He nodded and reached for the sword upon his hip, the same blade he'd carried since landing upon the shores of Kirkwall. Pulling it tighter to him, he said, "I am willing to enter the deep roads, though I'd prefer to do it one piece."

  "Oh, that," Lana waved his concerns away as if they were little more than a child's insistence that the bogeyman lived in the wardrobe, "I can help with that. Come on." She stepped to the edge of the stairs and, without pausing to test it, slid two down. The entire structure groaned in pain from her addition but did not collapse.

  Her eyes bore into him and she waved for him to get a move on. After composing himself, Cullen stepped forward, "I should go first."

  Lana sighed, "No, I'll test it. With your, um, greater weight, it's more likely you'd break the stairs and leave me stranded."

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he asked even as he eased onto the rickey case. Amazingly, it continued to hold him upright, even with his "greater weight."

  "Grey wardens don't work in hugs and comforting lies. Though we've got a smashing pie recipe for some reason," Lana chuckled, her lighter steps twisting her deeper and deeper down the staircase. She vanished below Cullen and he increased his careful steps downward.

  "You're telling me you don't hug darkspawn to death?"

  "Not particularly," her voice carried from below. It was a strange comfort to speak to the voice. Even if he couldn't see her, at least he could still hear her. It also covered up the mournful wail of the structure supposed to be supporting him. "Do templars kiss demons?"

  "Some of them," Cullen dead panned. He didn't even notice the joke until she began to laugh below him, light as air. How was she not bothered by this? Digging his fingers deep into the wall, Cullen increased his gait while gravel scattered from his handholds. It also drew forth even more groans from the stairs. "Why Lana?" he asked, needing anything to cover over the sound.

  "Huh?" her voice was even more distant now. How far did she get below him?

  "Why do you call yourself Lana? I thought your name was..."

  "Solona," she spoke the name as if a curse. "I never liked it. No idea what my parents were thinking, sounds like an estate by the sea for addled Orlesians."

  Cullen chuckled at her rather apt description. It was days befo
re he learned the name of the apprentice that caught his eye, and that was only from inspecting a class roster he wasn't supposed to see. Amell was good, but the given name did not fit her in the least. While the senior enchanters called her Solona, her friends all had some version of Lana or Lanny. She seemed content with either, but frowned when anyone used her proper name. Templars were supposed to call the mages their rank followed by family name but he almost called her Lana once on accident. After the tower mages and templars took the rare trip outside to stretch in the sun, she and a few other apprentices wandered off to a blueberry bush. Cullen wished to follow, but he clung to his duty and remained watching over the others tending to a haphazard garden. When thunder broke above them, the mages scurried inside all save Lana and her friends. When he ran over to them, they were gorging on the berries, their laughing faces blotted in purple juice. That was when the familiar name almost broke from him, "La...Solo...mage, there is a storm beginning!" He thought for certain he twisted his words quick enough to hide his blunder, but she didn't look him through that day. It was the first time she looked at him.

  And now she was somewhere in the depths of a certain-to-break-their-necks staircase, dragging him into the pit of a darkspawn lair. Cullen twisted around another turn of the hole and spotted Lana's back. Her hand clung to the wall to steady herself as she leaned over, peering down through the depths. He must have huffed harder than he meant to from the climb, because she twisted away from the long fall.

  "We've hit our first rough patch."

  He followed from the edge of the staircase, broken like a jagged tooth, down towards where it picked back up again. It was a neck breaking jump, no way anyone could make it. Cullen stopped five stairs above her and tried to crane down to see the bottom. Only darkness glittered back despite their moving deeper into the earth. "What do you propose we do now? Head back up?" he asked, pointing towards the climb that might hold them.