"Good morning, Commander," Leliana called, swooping out of the room.
He banged the back of his head against the stone wall, but still managed a somewhat cheery, "Morning."
Lana chased after Leliana, "I, this is, I know what it looks like, but there's a..."
For only a second Leliana's crystal face cracked and a whisper of a smile curled up her lips. But by the time Lana blinked it was gone. "It doesn't require much thought to discern what that was. I will be in my rookery when you wish to talk," And Leliana turned away from the door, her porcelain fingers lifting her hood back up. "By the way, you're wearing his trousers."
Lana glanced down at her legs and cursed with every expletive she knew.
* * *
When she threw back the door to her room, Lana didn't expect to find Hawke sitting in the chair with a book in her lap. It wasn't that her cousin wasn't the reading type, she simply required numerous breaks in between pages. Breaks that tended to involve breaking things. And her only time spent indoors was when sleeping or during deluges. Even average storms couldn't keep Hawke back, they had to be reaching near on hurricane status. She'd watched Hawke race around in rain, the water drenching her clothes flat, just to work off her energy.
"Hey, you're back!" Hawke shouted. She closed the book without bothering to mark it and tossed it on the pile.
Lana grumbled something noncommittal and slammed the door shut behind her. Her visit to the rookery went not as badly as she feared - at first. Sure, every inch of her skin was burning with a shame she shouldn't suffer anymore. For the Maker's sake, it's not as if she's some 18 year old caught sneaking off with a... But that was what she did. She slipped away with a templar, ex-templar. Regardless, the man in charge of an entire army. Lana was certain she'd hear the never-ending spiel about how dangerous it was to distract him, to risk the certainty of the army for her own selfish wants.
But Leliana continued to surprise her. After giving her the formal report on the Western Approach, and introducing Lana to a few of the Nightingale's most respected spies, Leliana made no mention or drew no attention to what she discovered. On occasion she'd pause, glance over to make certain Lana managed to dress in her own clothing, then continued with her speech. It wasn't until she dismissed her people, when Lana was about to slip out the door that Leliana glanced up from her table.
"You and the Commander..." she began. Lana sighed, steam almost hissing from her nose. How could she think she'd get out of this without a proper denouncement?
"What of it?"
Leliana tossed back her hood, and for a moment all the spying, the dark shadows and night games, all her work as the Left Hand vanished. She was the little, red-headed Sister Lana tripped across in a tavern in Lothering, before she tripped over people trying to kill her. "Are you certain that this is wise?"
"I know that stopping Corypheus is important, the most important factor here, and the army-"
Leliana waved her hand, cutting her off, "The commander is more than capable to handle his soldiers, as he's proven. A few...distractions are unlikely to throw him off." Now she stood up, her pale hands grabbing onto Lana's slack ones, "My concern is only for you. He is, was a templar."
"I am aware of that."
"He was in Kirkwall."
"I'm aware of that as well," she clenched her shoulder blades back as if standing in formation. Opposition was a certainty in her life, even if it was her private life, but why could no one wrap their mind around a mage and a templar?
"And..." Leliana tenderly bit her bottom lip with just the tips of her teeth, preparing her for what she had to say next, "he bears a striking resemblance to Alistair."
"Of, for all the-" Lana slipped her hands out of Leliana's grasp. "No, that isn't why, it's not...you're leaping to conclusions."
"I've noticed you tend to avoid invoking the King of Ferelden's name. Last I heard you two were friends, even good friends at times. But something has obviously changed."
"That's because...It has nothing to do with-" she balled her fingers into a fist and slammed it against the table. Some of Leliana's scrolls shook from the force, but nothing dared to fall off. "What happened with Alistair is unrelated. It is, he is of no consequence to me anymore." She felt Leliana peering at her, wanting to say what Lana knew. If Alistair was in her past then why did she wince when she said his name. Why did he still have a power over her?
But that cold, watchful Leliana wasn't the only face remaining. She wrapped a friendly arm around Lana's shoulders, "If you say so, then I believe you. I just, I don't want you to get hurt again."
"I know," Lana patted her hand, "I don't want to either, if it's all the same."
"Then you intend to continue forward?"
Lana snickered, "If there is a forward. What's forward? Everything in the world's all...I have no idea. But don't worry about me. I'm better at guarding my heart." She gave a weak smile to re-enforce her lie. Leliana sighed, but allowed her to get away with it. "If that was it, I should get back to my room and pack..." Lana began, gesturing down the stairs. Her friend tipped her head, releasing her. Their work was always the more pressing matter.
Lana slipped down towards the library where she spotted a tuft of Dorian's hair bobbing around. Maker only knew who he was talking to, or why he was so animated, but a small fear gripped her. She turned to Leliana and asked, "By the...if, could you keep it secret? Things are complicated enough with my being here and with him as the-"
A smile twisted up her lips, "Lanny, I happen to be very good at maintaining secrets."
Hawke threw a stack of her books at the table, snapping Lana out of her reverie. "We heading out then?"
"Ah, yes, to the Western Approach. We won't be traveling with the Inquisitor, so it's just you and me."
"Perfect!" Hawke grinned wide, "Though I'm gonna miss Varric. Eh, he can catch me up on the wheelings and dealings in the Inquisitor's camp."
"Sometimes I wonder how you two aren't controlling half of thedas," Lana muttered. She unearthed her pack from under the bed and rifled through the scattered contents. Her bag of herbs crunched dishearteningly in her grasp. There'd have to be a stop by the herbalist before setting out for certain.
"Easy, I don't want to and Varric's too busy. But look out if anyone ever did get him onto a throne." Hawke shuddered, then waved at the air, "Nah, he'd be too miserable to even try. All right, what's got you in grumping frowny face mode today?"
"Nothing," Lana frowned, then she tried to tip it up to a smile.
"I thought after you and a certain dashing templar worked out a few kinks behind that snow you'd be skipping around here."
Lana's head snapped up at her lackadaisical cousin. "Tem...snow? You knew?!"
"What? About you and Cullen? Was I not supposed to?" Hawke's eyes glanced about the room, trying to see if she was being set up for some prank. "I mean, get you two in a room together and it's a wonder it doesn't catch on fire. Ignoring the fact you're a mage and could do it anyway, but you know what I'm driving at."
"I..." Lana whipped her head back and forth trying to breathe in some sense. She didn't want her private affairs dragged into light, not if, not when so much was still uncertain. But Leliana now knew, and Hawke apparently always knew. Who else smugly sat in the knowledge of her cursed heart?
"It was kinda obvious you go all curly toes around him. And Cullen, shit he was waxing rhombus about you years ago back in the Gallows."
"He..." Lana shook her head, "He was?"
"Yeah, it was, um..." Hawke tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling while counting on her fingers, "five years ago, something like that. Before I got this snazzy title. Talked about an amazing Amell mage he knew. Didn't take a sharp mind to figure out he meant you. You'd expect rainbows to fall from his lips he was so far gone."
"Five years, but that would have been..." before she went to him. Before she recruited him to take down White. Andraste's tears, Lana, what are you playing at? How did you not realize that he was...?
She shook away the thought. This wasn't the time to worry, to twist her mind up with questions of the past. They were finally heading out to find the wardens, to find the remnants of her wardens. That was her life, whether she liked it or not.
Hawke took Lana's sudden silence in stride, "When I saw you two slip behind the snow I figured you needed some freedom to work out all the tension. If ya catch my meaning. In the morning, I told the Spymaster where you were so she could get mages to dig you out. Then I had the most Maker-awful blood sausage for breakfast. I think it was made out of darkspawn blood it was that bad."
"You...thank you," Lana said, her heart lightened by Hawke's thought, perhaps less her deed. "Though we...worked out that tension at the Winter Palace."
"Did ya now?" Hawke's grin spread wide, "Hope you left the wet spot on the Duchess' sheets."
"It, uh," Lana massaged her neck, then grabbed her pack and swung it into place. She slotted her staff blade into the pocket on her back and picked up her staff. "We should head out to see what the wardens are up to."
"Right!" Hawke slapped her knee and rose up, the woman always ready at a moment's notice to leap to attention whether for a city or just a friend. "Let's go be big damn heroes!"
Chapter Seventeen
Blood
Blood splattered across her robes, clots clumping up her hair, the sand buffeting through crimson puddles and coagulating into a sticky mass on the stones. Scarlett dripped down the ruins, rivulets meandering through the carvings into the floors from numerous throats sliced open - the bodies left in a heap on the side. He cared nothing for their sacrifice, but the wardens should have. They should have... There was so much blood, too much. Lana's fists strangled her staff, wringing her fingers against the wood while she glared at the form limping away in the distance. Every inch of her body screamed for her to give chase, to rip apart the veil itself and drag him back to the void from where he slithered out. The dark part of her, the one she only tapped into when there was no other choice, demanded she make it slow. The rest of her agreed with it.
Hawke clapped a hand upon her shoulder. Normally, Lana would have bowed from the force, but her body was rigid and unbending. Her eyes hunted across the wardens, all dead, all bound to a demon by something far worse stalking their lands. She knew anger, she'd often butted heads with it in the personified form from the fade. This wasn't anger stirring inside of her, it ran deeper through her marrow than anger could ever reach. They were going to pay for this blood.
"Where do you think he's going?" Hawke asked. She yanked her greatsword out of the impaled spine of a warden and inspected it. "Damn blood mages. Even when you think it's not blood mages, it's always them bastards."
"Adamant," Lana watched the sands blanketing the sky from Erimond's wake. She flipped around and honed in on the Inquisitor, "He's heading to Adamant, an ancient Grey Warden fortress."
The Inquisitor was ragged, the mage's blood slicking back his hair as he rotated his daggers in bruised wrists. He panted beside a broken statue while Dorian tried to will a slip of energy into him. For a brief moment, the elf accepted his help but then he rose away, trying to force on the command role. "What are the Grey Wardens thinking? Binding themselves to demons? Sacrificing their own?"
Lana felt every eye in the party land upon her, even Hawke's, but she didn't care what they thought of her, of wardens. She needed to kill Erimond. She was going to kill him. "Hawke and I can scout out Adamant. Make certain that's where he's headed."
"We can?" her cousin asked, batting at the back of her head. Lana glowered at her, and - for the first time since they met - Hawke gulped from the mage's power, "I mean we can, of course."
The Inquisitor looked about to argue, but even he bowed his head, acquiescing to the vengeance inside of her. Lana flexed her fingers once more, drawing as much energy as she dared back into her limbs. The blood remained untouched, drying to a sickening brown in the desert sun. She was many things, but she'd never become a malifecarum, never become one of them. "Come on," she said, slapping her hand against Hawke's armor. "Let's go."
"Ah, Warden," the Inquisitor spoke softly, still gulping in air from the fight or perhaps from Erimond knotting up his anchor. "Did you know any of the people here?"
Lana's strides stumbled and she turned back to the bodies both mutilated from their weapons, as well as the ones drained to feed the demons. They were too young for this; too young to have death dangled above their heads, death whispered in their ears, and the only hope given to free them was a suicide run to save the world.
"Yes," she admitted, noting the ones she'd cursed to this life. Without elaborating, she swept up Hawke, slid down the backside of the ritual tower, and raced after Erimond. His tracks were easy to follow, even for the warrior and mage stumbling through the ankle deep sand. The man didn't care that they were following, he thought he was stronger than they were, believed himself untouchable. She'd prove him wrong. Lana stalked across the dunes, her jaw screwed tight, the burn of the sun not reaching her frozen heart. Yes, she'd known some of the people split open like a water skin, their life's juices poured across the ground. She'd been the one to recruit them, the one to put the Calling in their head, the reason they were manipulated into destroying their own. And he'd murdered them all for his own master's glory. Visions of how she'd slit Erimond from nape to navel kept her focused as sand poured into her boots trying to drag her down into the earth with it.
"Hey, I..." Hawke shouted from behind her, "I know we need to scout this place out but maybe we should stop."
"No," Lana answered, her lips barely opening through her rigid jaw. "I'm going to kill Erimond."
"Okay, that's good. Killing blood mages, I can get behind that. It's just, how do you think we're gonna catch him? He's on a horse. Maybe we should swing back and get one," Hawke continued. Her massive form, while graceful on the battlefield, was a clogging mess in the dunes. She had to lift her legs twice as high to overcome the pull of sand.
"There isn't time," Lana hissed, "I won't give up his trail." Without looking back, she pushed some of her own fade energy into her cousin. The veil bit back upon her fingers, unhappy with this abuse, but she didn't feel it. An insurmountable cold radiated out of her heart leaving her skin dead and her thoughts crisp, fear would find no hold inside of her nor would compassion. She knew what she would do with a crystal clarity that shoved aside any possibility of doubt.
Revived from the magic, Hawke fell silent again, the two of them making it miles further through the dunes with Lana leading like a hound on the chase. Unlike some poor wyvern driven to extremes by bored nobility, her prey deserved to be put down without any concern for his suffering. The sun shifted across the sky, the shadows lengthening as it prepared for a descent. She didn't relish walking through the desert at night, but there was no other option.
"So," Hawke suddenly started up, her voice closer than Lana remembered. She snapped her head, willing away the fog that blanketed her mind. Somehow she missed the past few hours. "That thing Erimond said, about the other Grey Wardens being scared of you..."
Lana blanched. It was true, it was why she never mixed much with them. The younger ones, the ones who didn't know why a warden was needed to end a blight, loved her. They loved the hero thrust upon the world stage to remind thedas of the importance of wardens. They didn't watch her with slit eyes waiting to see if an archdemon would suddenly erupt out of her skin. Ten years counting and still no return of the blight. "What of it?"
"Well, I was wondering about the other part. The bit about his master having a great interest in you," Hawke continued.
"He's collecting warden mages for his army. I'm a warden mage," Lana said without explaining. She suspected what Corypheus would want with her, but had no idea why he hadn't done it.
"Right, right, and we're heading to the heart of all the wardens who are scared of you and the man who wants you stuffed in his trophy room. Doesn't that seem rather...how can I put this nicely? Stupid? Idiotic? Death Sen
tency?"
Lana flared her fingers up and cast a scrap of light into the sky. It trailed through the cotton pink air until landing a few hundred feet upon the darkening dunes to highlight Erimond's shifting wake. She trudged for it, her eyes upon the light. "We're not giving up now. I have a plan."
"Oh, that's good, a plan. Here I was concerned about just the two of us invading some fortress armed with only a stick and a sword. But if there's a plan..."
"If you want to leave..." Lana left the door open for her. She didn't need her. Hawke shouldn't even be here -- this was warden business, personal warden business.
But Hawke snorted at the offer, "What? And let you have all the fun? I'll have you know I invade fortresses for breakfast, assuming they've got that rich butter sauce you pour over eggs. Otherwise there's not much point."
She was trying to get Lana to laugh, but it wouldn't work. Nothing would crack through her. The blood hardened to a brown char across her hands, but she didn't stop to wipe it away. She needed it, needed her hands stained with the warden's blood while she choked the life out of Erimond. Let him look upon what he wrought for the last second of his life. Hawke gave up her attempt at lifting the mood and would only speak up to point out the wildlife. Either the animals roaming the sands weren't hungry for the lone pair crossing through their home, or even the varghasts and phoenixes could sense the depths Lana was willing to delve to reach her goal.
After her third flare, when the half moon hung high in the sky, she spotted Adamant in the distance. It looked like a cockleburr silhouetted by the stars, the towers mimicking the spikes of the burr prepared to draw blood from anyone who dared trod on it. Hawke whistled at the sight, "So that's it? That's what we're taking on our own?"
"We're not taking Adamant," Lana assured her.
"Good, because that seemed rather, excusing my Orlesian here, fucking bonkers. We can see that little toad's horseprints up to the door, no reason to..."
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