rubypop

[rubypop]

“Even Death” - Overwatch (MercyKill)

from The Wheel and the Sparrow - Part 1 of 5

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely. - The Buddha

In order to calm her ever-buzzing mind, Mercy attends to a bedtime ritual: making tea. She picks through the little boxes of leaves that have arrived, one by one, in packages from Nepal, bound in string and knotted with a sparrowhawk feather. She reads over the unpronounceable names with some amusement, at times trying to sound them out — White Prakash, Oolong, Kanchanjangha — and chooses Black Shambali, named for Genji's home in the Himalayan mountains. She shakes the silver-black flakes into a glass kettle, breathing in the liquory bloom of honey and malt.

The ritual helps. She thinks of mindfulness, the steps outlined in Genji's letters. It comes in all flavors: meditative, walking, even steps for eating mindfulness (she imagines him examining a piece of the Swiss chocolate she's sent, taking a whiff, nibbling a corner, all for the sake of spiritual betterment). She sits by the brewing kettle and simply breathes, not thinking of her coming mission to Iraq, the battlefields punctured with explosions and ordinance, the bodies she will pull from the wreckage, the wounds she will heal.

Before she knows it, the tea is done. She pours a cup, blows gently at the steam.

Her apartment in Zürich is modest, compartmental, often empty. She is so rarely in the country these days, and she will be leaving again, for who knows how long? Staying busy, saving lives is the only thing she can do to take her mind off of the past. She shakes her head, remembering the ritual. She tries to clear her thoughts away again and takes a careful sip.

A wave of cold goes through her, goosebumps chasing down her arms, incongruous with the balmy summer night, the hot tea tumbling down her throat. She lowers the cup.

She turns, is still turning when the whorl of blackness behind her rears up, and she drops the teacup onto the table, amber streaks across the sanded birch, and the shadow is gathering, solidifying, resolving itself, and her blaster is out of reach, stashed away with the Valkyrie suit hanging in her bedroom, so she can only rear back, nearly falling from the chair, when the dual barrels of a shotgun level with her face.

She freezes, half-propped by her elbow against the table, tea soaking her sleeve.

The white face stares back over the shotgun, a mask beneath a black hood, soulless cut-out eyes. A horrible flash of recognition twists through her. She tells herself: stay calm. Stay calm. Feeling her heart rate begin to spike.

"Angela," Reaper says, deep voice echoing through the mask.

She manages to raise her eyes from the nose of the shotgun. "Gabriel?" she stammers.

"Gabriel Reyes is dead," he growls.

She swallows hard and does not argue.

"I need something from you. If you'll be so kind."

"It's true, then," Mercy says. "The reports. The black-robed terrorist. But you — you died —"

"You're pushing it, Doc."

Her voice is shaking, despite herself. "What do you want?"

"Names," he says. "Coordinates. I know about the little charity you run. And all the partnerships you've had with members of the old order."

"No," she says at once. Her heart beats faster. The black-robed reaper's kills, the familiar names. She's known, had picked up on the pattern long ago. She tries to swallow and can't force it down.

Reaper pushes the shotgun into her forehead. She smells hot metal, oil, the stink of spent shells.

"What happened to you?" she whispers.

He seizes her then by her shirt, a white silk button-down that tears in his grip, and flings her to the floor. She sprawls, banging her chin on linoleum, and an enormous boot comes down on the small of her back, pinning her down. She gasps.

"Names," he says again. The barrel now grinding into the back of her head. "Coordinates."

She gasps again for air and squeezes her eyes shut from the pain. His foot bears down, crushing her. She balls her fists. Breathe! she tells herself. Calm. Slow. Just breathe!

"I have all night," Reaper says, his voice rumbling low.

"You," she says, inhaling, exhaling a steady stream, "You — you used to call me — Angie —"

He laughs, short, derisive. He grinds down with his heel, a sharp point of pain that makes her cry out. She balls her fists, releases them, tries to relax.

"I know you remember," she says, "that night years ago. Christmas Eve —"

She senses a sudden tension, a stiffness in the weight pressing down on her spine. Hope flutters in her chest. She boosts herself up on her elbows, tries to twist around and look him in the eye.

"It was a mistake," she says with a shaky laugh. "We both called it a mistake. But you remember it, I know you do."

"Shut up," he says.

"Gabriel didn't die. He's right here with me —"

"I said shut up!"

He kicks her hard in the side, sending her spinning against the wall, and she retches, the wind knocked out of her. She cradles her stomach and tries to sit up. He advances, a massive deadly thing radiating anger. He kneels over her and grasps her by the jaw, the points of his armored fingers digging into her throat.

The mask, so close, she sees is scarred, more bone-colored than white, hiding everything, exuding cold.

"Gabriel Reyes," he says, "is dead."

His other hand comes up, the shotgun discarded. He works his thumb beneath the chin of the mask, and his fingers grip. He slides the mask up, back over his head, pushing the black hood away.

Horror again, that horrible recognition.

A corpse's face, she thinks at once. She has seen so many, after all. A face so bloodless, scarred, far more than the death-mask that hid it. The mouth bisected with gashes, waxy eyes devoid of a soul.

The cold coming from him is stronger now, a tang of frost spiking her nose. He breathes — he is breathing — and she catches a glimpse then of something impossible, a flicker of decay, a whiff of rotting meat, and then it is gone again, the white flesh renewed as though nothing has happened.

Spontaneous cellular regeneration. She looks away, feeling sick. She knows that her research has led to this, biotic technology fallen into the wrong hands.

"Look," Reaper growls, forcing her back.

She stares at the resurrected corpse of Gabriel Reyes.

He laughs, just a bit. Wisps of wraithlike black scatter from his face. "How can you look away from this," he says, "when your little experiments produce freaks like Genji Shimada?"

"I saved his life," she says.

"I seem to remember him hating you for it. Though it looks like he's come around."

She looks, unwisely, at the packages of tea.

"A trip to Nepal sounds nice," he muses, and then he grins at her, horribly, an expression so unlike the man she knew that she trembles in his grip.

"He was your ally," she says.

"They all were. Weren't they?"

"You can't do this, Gabriel. I won't let you —"

"I've killed more people than you could ever save."

"I know you're still in there. We can help you. We can undo this."

"This?" He slams her against the wall by the throat and she chokes out a gasp. Spittle flecks his waxen face. "You can undo this? You and your God complex."

He flickers closer, much faster than she expects, and he's much too close now, their faces nearly touching. "I like it better this way," he hisses.

Her heart pounds and pounds. He's going to kill her, she knows, whether she tells him anything or not. And he'll enjoy it, too.

She makes the decision before she can second-guess herself, cradling his shorn head to draw him closer, kissing the cold lips.

He pulls back, his face rewriting with shock.

"I know you remember," she whispers, pulling him back.

Be calm, she thinks. You can handle this.

His mouth on hers chills her. She tastes metal, old blood, as though the scarred lip was bitten long ago. The semblance of Gabriel Reyes is there, but only in the physical form of his lips, his tongue, the shape of his jaw; in his movements and his actions, he is truly someone else.

But still he is human. Tentatively she gropes at the silver buckle of his belt, and her hand grazes his crotch, the hardness that is rising there.

She hesitates. He pulls back, both hands at her jaw now, pressing her to the wall. His eyes flicker to her chest and remain there. She realizes that her silk shirt is torn, had ripped open when he first threw her to the floor. Instinctively she tries to cover herself and he kisses her again, hooking a finger between the cups of her bra and pulling up.

It had been a mistake, that Christmas Eve from years ago. Heady with eggnog, stumbling arm-in-arm from the yearly party. She kissed him first, her thoughts churning with a newly-formed disconnect between the doctor side of her and the woman. She'd let it go too far, this affection, not for the Blackwatch leader she was undressing but the broken man she'd treated for weeks, reassembling piece-by-piece in her lab. Genji Shimada, shredded almost to nothing, blinking vacantly at her from behind his oxygen mask, gripping the bloody sheets. With so many other patients she had maintained that professional distance, but this young man, formerly handsome, maimed to the brink of death, had stirred in her an affection so deep that it stuns her even now.

For so long, Genji hated her. It hurt her deeply, his disgust with the work she had done, the arduous cyberization that had cobbled together a new, less-than-ideal lease on life. Man or machine — which was he more of? He agonized over it, the hours he would pace away at night because he no longer needed sleep, the savagery with which he trained and sparred, the Blackwatch missions that nearly ended in more bloodshed than necessary. And all along she watched him, monitoring vitals, replacing parts and pieces, and her affection grew, deepening into something she was afraid to call love.

She could not bring herself to cross that line. And so that Christmas Eve she sought comfort in Gabriel Reyes, redirecting the molten tide into sexual desire, and he, though surprised, had been willing, even if solely due to the drunken fog that encouraged the both of them.

She knows that this man is nothing like him. She shudders away from his icy mouth at her breast, and he drags her back, biting her fiercely. Tears prick her eyes. His armored fingertips clatter at the buckle of his belt, pulling it free. His pale tongue trails up her neck, a stinging line that ends with another bite, hungry and cold.

"Gabriel," she says, without knowing what else she will say, and he turns her over, one hand gripping viciously at her breast, the other pulling at her skirt, the elastic of her panties.

There is a moment where Mercy begins to doubt if she can go through with this. But he's pressing close, spates of black shadows winding down her arms and her legs, curling from his breath on her ear, and then he's inside of her, that cold stiffness, an invasion into the heat of her body.

It shocks her, this cold. He envelopes her, grasping her neck, her abdomen. The warmth is draining from her, running in rivulets of icy sweat, her flesh erupting with goosebumps at his touch, the hairs on her neck standing on end.

"You," he utters, husky and low, "are warm. Scorching."

His cold tongue again, teeth that test her ear.

He fucks her now, groping at the shreds of her shirt. She can scarcely hold herself up, her arms trembling, and she shuts her eyes again, sinking, awash in the miasma of his atmosphere. He pulls her back up, wrapping her throat in his arm, and she digs at his white bicep, choking.

He eases the pressure with a laugh. "Stay with me, now."

"You're hurting me," she says, and he laughs again. He seizes her hip and grinds into her deeper, to the hilt, and she cries out at the sting of cold that penetrates her core.

"I do remember that night," he says. "I remember your . . . enthusiasm. Where is it now?"

She grits her teeth, and because the tension makes things worse she forces her muscles to ease, to relax into his embrace, and together they lower back to the floor, back to the linoleum that is warmer than her draining flesh.

"So many gifts from our ninja friend," Reaper says, his breath at her ear again. Fingers wind through her hair, and he drags her head back. He gnaws at her neck, pausing to suck a welt into the skin. A jolt runs through her. "I imagine, then, that he wouldn't be very happy with this?"

"He would not care," she mumbles, though the thought of it pains her, oh, how horrible it would be for him to know.

"Only so many monasteries run by those tin cans," Reaper says.

She twists around, and his fist tightens in her hair, holding her there. She doesn't know whether it's a trick of the light, or if the shadow-fumes have confused her, but color seems to be returning to his face, the waxen hue now flushed, if only slightly, with vigor.

"That got your attention," he says with a smirk.

"Don't go near him," she says. "He's nothing to you. He's a simple monk now —"

"I like you when you're riled up. That cool-and-collected act gets old."

"Please, Gabriel."

"Are you begging?"

She nods, her scalp smarting from his grip on her hair. "Gabriel, please," she whispers. "I'm begging you."

He kisses her a final time, stealing the breath from her. She's losing her senses, smothered in this vortex, and the heat is gone from her now, wracking her body with shivers. She's beginning to fade. He whispers against her mouth, "You'll see me again," and she is gone, all of it is gone.

#

Mercy awakes curled up on her kitchen floor. She blinks slowly at the weak morning light and sits up. She only remembers what has happened when the welt on her neck causes her to cringe. She spins around, frantically checking if he is still here. The silence reassures her.

She gets up and teeters slowly to the sanded-birch table. The streaks of spilled tea have long dried. She runs her fingers over them. She savors, for a moment, her returning warmth, confounded by the memory of the reaper's shadow. That was not her work, that created them. No. Even if she were responsible for him — for the methods that have ripped him back into the world of the living — she cannot comprehend what technology has disrupted his resurrection, and given him command over shadows.

The boxes of tea lie scattered across the floor. She does not remember them being knocked over. She's almost finished tidying them up when she realizes that one is missing. The box of Black Shambali, the photo of the monastery printed on its face. She drops the boxes in her arms. Leaves scatter across the floor, black flakes, silver needles and gold tips, and with them are breaths of vanilla and baked fruit, sparked flint, a lingering cold that chills her to the bone.

###

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 12 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 12

Garbed in lyrium, Fenris traversed the pulsing throat. He fell headfirst through fleshy pathways illuminated only by the white-hot burn of his markings. From all around throbbed the muffled beating of a massive heart.

When he tumbled against resisting tissue, he clawed his way through, and ghosted, and burrowed deeper. He did not think about whether or not he would suffocate here, or become lost, or exhaust the energy required to maintain his gleaming aura. He merely fought on, focused, seeking her in this nightmare-place.

The walls of flesh pressed close, palpitating. He could feel the shiver of sensory nerves. He dragged himself through fluid and cilia. Deeper.

He heard voices.

He thought, at first, that he must be mistaken, confounded by the sheer heat and compressing space. But, yes, there were voices, distant and moaning, crying, begging. As though the soul of every poor wretch that the beast had devoured lay trapped here, as corporeal as shadows.

He remembered Ser Clerval. He remembered the empty cottages. He remembered the mountain of pieces and parts.

He emerged into a chamber lined with seams of jagged teeth. He remembered, from his glimpses in the Fade, the sensation of swallowing bones, many bones, and thought of these great pointed teeth grinding the bones to pulp. He saw, then, a fleshy mass hanging from above, and realized it was all skin and veins and hair, pulsating, protective. Pieces and parts.

He flickered to the mass and ripped, and tore, and shredded with his claws.

The chamber spasmed. A guttural roar echoed from seemingly far away, echoed from the throat that he had navigated. The voices wept and pled. He did not stop. With both hands he slashed and yanked errant flesh away, succumbing to a wild frenzy, until the shadows thrown by his markings withdrew from a sallow inert face, and pale lips, and dark hair.

He uttered her name.

Her eyes opened. Her brows drew together. She mouthed, and then said, "Fenris?"

He stripped away the imprisoning flesh. He flung his arms around her. He hugged her close.

The chamber spasmed again, and shook. The walls undulated in horrible waves. Fenris leapt, clutching Hawke, back the way he had come. Adrenaline urged him on, and he climbed. Hawke buried her face into his chest. His arm tightened around her.

The fleshy walls rebelled. Their contractions fought him, rippling back, forcing him down. Fenris realized that Hunger was swallowing them, to wrest them back into that toothed prison.

His markings, now, were searing him, lit for so long. As though hot knives followed along their patterns, slicing through every layer of skin. He raised a hand and it grew hotter, brighter. He plunged it deep, claws out, into the pulsating wall.

A retching shiver screamed through the walls. Fenris and Hawke swayed against a long, violent lurch. Another tremor flung them forward. They pitched and rolled along the undulation. Moving forward. Climbing higher.

Fenris enveloped Hawke in his arms. With a blinding burst of light he ignited. The heat scorched him, agonizing and total. Together they were flung through the cavern of the demon's mouth, between the yellow teeth, which snapped closed behind them, and they went sprawling on the ground, into the sweet air.

Hunger was roaring, screaming, writhing back.

Fenris cradled Hawke, unable to speak, to formulate any kind of conscious thought. The light from his markings died and with it the agonizing heat.

She was small against him, limp with exhaustion, peering through half-lidded eyes, shocked by the sight of him. He brushed the wet dark hair from her forehead.

"Never," he said. "I will never lose you again."

Tears ran freely down her cheeks.

#

Justice hurried along vesicular pathways, blindly following the fetid air, the breath of the cavern, and he glanced up at every drip of condensation, every clatter of loosened rock. He steeled himself for what he knew was to come, unafraid, and knowing still that he must face what awaited him alone.

I will die for her, he thought, as he flew along the echoing corridor. If it must come to that, I will die for her.

Some human fragment of himself was trembling with doubt, and angrily he quashed the notion, briefly bringing light to the jagged shadows.

If I must die, that human side whispered, what of my people? What of Darktown? What of the beggar-girl, kicked down and used and starving?

I will die for Marian.

What of the bed, from which she was taken?

Justice shed a current of light, gripping his staff.

I cannot fight the demon alone.

I will. There is no other choice.

Do I not have a choice?

No. You do not.

He flickered onward through the black caves.

#

"I will never lose you again."

Hawke shut her eyes, opened them again. She did not know where she was. She could not identify the howls of agony that were echoing throughout the cavern. She saw only Fenris, the tears in his eyes, the sticky peritoneal residue that covered them both. She vaguely remembered flesh, the monstrous pulse-beats that had surrounded her. She vaguely remembered that kernel of strength, and thoughts of Anders that had sustained her.

Fenris embraced her again. Shaking, she reached up and touched his face.

"Fenris," she repeated.

Her mind was slowly clearing. She saw, then, the demon that thrashed behind them. He caught sight of her, and his white eyes lit up, and he reached out with long barbed claws.

"Little thing," he said, his words strangled.

Fenris lifted her and stumbled. Hunger reared back and scrambled toward them, enormous and spiked and screaming, and like lightning his long arm lashed out, his great claws came around, and Fenris let out a horrible choking sound and collapsed.

Blood flecked the rock walls. Hawke sprawled from Fenris's arms, and she caught sight of ragged wounds, the ripped leather of his tunic. A small wooden totem fell from Fenris's pocket and skittered across the ground. With an intake of breath she recognized it: the tiny wooden horse, rudely-carved and stained with blood.

She flung herself upon Fenris and grabbed the figurine. She held it close.

"YOU." Hunger's eyes flashed, were blinding, his claws tense and splayed and razor sharp. "BELONG. TO. ME."

"Our contract is fulfilled!" Hawke said. "Leave me or kill me, I will never become a part of you!"

Hunger howled, and shook the walls.

"I will not lose myself," Hawke cried, "and all that I am!"

She clung to Fenris, and ran her hand over his wounds, sealing them with a prayer.

Hunger was descending over them, his jaws stretched wide with fury, his claws flexed and ready to separate them, to tear them apart, to shred them to nothing if necessary.

A great arcane projectile flooded the cavern with light. It smashed into Hunger's gaping mouth, sending him backward, to crash against the stalagmites.

Hawke wrenched around. Anders stood with his staff raised, heaving and dripping sweat, staring at them both.

She shouted his name, but his eyes snapped up, and Hunger was rising, the flesh of his mouth black and smoking, the teeth scorched, still intact. Anders whipped his staff to one side and fired again.

Hawke smoothed her hand over Fenris's face. "Fenris," she said urgently. "I need a dagger. Please."

He blinked several times. His eyes rolled to one side, and trembling he sat up. "There."

She turned. The body of a young woman draped across the ground like withered flowers. The hilt of a knife protruded from her red bodice. Lifelessly she stared up, at nothing either of them could see, or ever hoped to see.

Hawke crawled to the body and gripped the knife. She apologized silently and yanked the knife free. The blade was long and curved and sharp: a skinning knife. It would do. She wiped it on her robes.

Fenris staggered to her. Anders was shouting, feinting and skirting Hunger's claws. Fenris said, "I have to help him."

"Your sword —"

"They stripped it from me." He nodded to the body.

"We must bind him," Hawke said. She proffered the horse figurine. "It's the only way."

Fenris glanced askance. "But how —"

Hawke dropped the figurine to the ground. She raised the knife and brought its wicked edge down.

The wooden totem split. Its jagged halves splintered and fell away, revealing the gleam of a long brass pin.

"Maker," Fenris said.

"This charm is our only chance," Hawke said, palming it. "I pray it still holds the same power, after all of these years."

"Marian!" Anders shouted, and Hunger swatted him, and he collided with the wall, his surcoat falling open. He struggled to rise from the ground, as Hunger rounded on them.

"NOW I SHALL KILL THEM BOTH," he howled. "I WILL RIP THEM APART, BONE BY BONE, AND SUCK THE FLESH FROM THEM, AND GORGE MYSELF ON THEIR BLOOD."

"Fenris," Hawke uttered.

"I WILL SLIT THEIR BELLIES AND UNWIND THEIR GUTS."

"I need your help," she said.

"I WILL CRACK OPEN THEIR SKULLS AND SLURP UP THEIR EYES AND THEIR BRAINS, ALL WHILE THEY STILL LIVE."

"Anything," Fenris said.

She touched his throat. He placed a hand on hers, and realized she was tracing the scar there.

"We have a blood bond," she whispered. "I forged one, when I healed you in the sea cave. When I made this scar." She met his eyes. "It is the same bond that Hunger made with me, when he sealed the first scar in my wrist, when I was a child."

He searched her face.

"I need you to trust me," she said.

"AND YOU. WILL. BE. MINE."

"I trust you," Fenris said.

She embraced him. He clung to her. He pressed his cheek to hers, shutting his eyes fast. He thought of the small window in the roof, and its rose-colored light. He thought of her pale, scarred arm beside his on the staircase. He thought of Dragana questioning him in the garden, what he'd said, what it'd meant.

"There is great power," Hawke whispered, "in blood freshly spilled."

The edge of the blade met his throat, met hers, connecting the space between them.

"I love you," he said, and she drew the blade, cutting their throats.

They fell away from one another. Hawke heard Anders scream as though from some faraway place. The pulse of old maleficar magic thrummed in her veins, filling the space left by draining blood.

The blood danced in a frenzied mist. Scarlet gyres whirled between them. She spread her hands. She conducted. She stirred at the air. The crimson mist ribboned and swooped. It hurtled across the cave. It penetrated Hunger's flesh.

He shrieked.

The walls trembled. The cavern floor rocked beneath them.

Fleshy sinews and strings spilled from Hunger's nacreous hide. They lashed against the floor, around boulders, clung to reaching stalactites. Hawke stumbled forward. She touched her sliced throat. The pin flashed in her hand.

"MY LITTLE MAGE," Hunger screamed. His claws combed at the fleshy sinews, to no avail.

Hawke's chest heaved. Her vision was darkening. The black fleshy strings held fast, stretching as Hunger thrashed. Hawke collapsed at his feet. She glared up at him.

"I am not yours," she said, and pierced the strands with the pin.

The demon howled. His screams shook the cavern itself, and Hawke flung herself back, as rocks and boulders shook free of the ceiling and crashed down. She scrambled back to Fenris and shielded him, pressing her palm to his throat, and a palm to her own, whispering, as the cave threatened to bury them all.

Old magic scented the air. Hawke could feel it radiating from the pin. Old magic, borne from skilled hands somewhere deep in the Wilds, made to punish, to bind, and bind forever. She glanced back. Hunger yanked and tore at his bonds. They held fast. Rocks rained down around him. From behind him, Anders rose up, bleeding. He raised his staff like a beacon, and brought it back down. A long crack tore through the earth along the wall, across the ceiling, over Hunger's head. And he brought the ceiling down, caving in over the trapped beast.

Hawke squeezed her eyes shut, clinging to Fenris as the falling earth thundered around them. The crashing boulders blotted out Hunger's accusatory wails. The vibrating earth slowly grew still. After what could have easily been an eternity, all was quiet.

Hawke opened her eyes. She stared down at Fenris. He had grown pale and sickly-looking, from the loss of blood. His red eyes opened. They stared at one another. Neither noticed Anders as he shakily crossed the cavern to join them.

###

From rubypop:

Thank you, so much, to everyone who's been reading. Your encouragement has really meant a lot to me, and I'm happy to have finally finished this one. I appreciate your patience during my long absence, and I look forward to writing more fic in the future.

Thanks again!

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 11 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 11

Anders blinked slowly at the gathering clouds, lacking the sense to wonder whether or not he was dead. At first he saw only the overcast sky, which gradually stained pink with the setting of the sun. The pain was slow to creep through him, until it ignited his nerves like a line of fuses, and he cringed, and almost screamed, for suffering this mistake.

He could scarcely feel the ground through this pain. He writhed over cold, jagged limestone. A slow panic was taking hold, and he, well-versed in healing, urged himself to relax, to calm down, but, oh, such pain was unlike any he'd yet survived. He had the impression that he was not here, sprawled upon the ground, but was instead standing over himself, staring down at bruised-black flesh and crushed bones. Neurons in his brain were fireworks, explosions, conflicting bursts of information. I am dead, he thought; I am going into shock; I will not leave this place; I will never see her again.

With something of a whimper he forced himself to lay still, letting go of the instinct that screamed for all of his muscles to cramp around his injuries. Tears flooded his eyes. He breathed deeply, and counted: one. Two. Three.

With great effort, he took stock of his condition. He could move his head, just barely, and thanked every deity and spirit he could imagine that he hadn't snapped his neck. He felt slightly less grateful when he caught sight of a splintered, yellow length of bone, and he lowered his head again dizzily. He breathed, and counted again. One, two, three.

"Oh, Maker," he said.

In one hand he still clutched his staff. Miraculous. He could not lift it. A sharp new pain sliced through his shoulder when he tried, and he knew that his collarbone must have broken in at least two places. He dared not guess how many bones, exactly, he'd shattered, in case that tide of panic were to rise again. Instead he focused on the staff, urging all of the warmth he had left into a single focal point, and he whispered words of healing, stopping to cringe, to gasp, and to begin again.

He was forced to work slowly, forced to identify as many individual wounds as possible, one at a time, so that the healing would be total: every clot of blood, shredded muscle, fragment of bone, and traumatized tissue. He thought, at first, that the worst of it was over once he'd repaired the punctured lining of his lungs, and then he arrived at his left leg. Here was the yellow point of his femur, which had split, vertically, almost in two.

"Maker," he said again, and twisted the fabric of his coat between his teeth, and he tried not to call too much attention to himself as he rejoined the halves of the bone.

He lay still for quite some time, feverish and doused in sweat. The sky, by now, had grown dark.

He sat up. His newly-repaired nerves were raw, and protested.

Black carcasses were stretched and crushed around him. The rest had gone over the sheer drop. He had slammed onto an outcropping, which now was littered with the boulders he had brought down the cliffside. He stared up, beyond the white wall and its crooked scarlet mineral veins. He did not know what awaited him at the village. He could not be certain how much time had passed, and hoped it had only been half a day — though even now it might be too late.

He found himself praying, for the first time in his life, that Fenris was still alive.

#

"Little poppet," Dragana sang softly. "Little girly poppet, with snipped strings."

She lay next to Fenris, her eyes staring.

"Little girly poppet, with your ribbons and things."

Her teeth stained red.

"Little poppet, why do you not walk?"

Her gaze settled on Fenris, focusing at last.

"Why do you not walk?" she whispered.

She forced herself up. Her dripping hair dragged through blood. She leaned over the silent body. She skimmed at the blood with her hands, but it had already begun to coagulate, and she gagged, and could not get it down. She stared at Florian as though seeing him for the first time, and screamed.

She fell upon the body, weeping and shrieking. "I'm sorry, dearest." She fumbled at his doublet and stroked his black curls. "I'm sorry, oh, sweet dearest, look at you, oh, those clothes will have to be replaced, just look at your shirt, I am sorry, I am sorry."

She reared back again, covering her mouth. "Oh, Maker. Oh, Maker. Oh, no. Oh, no."

She backed away and crawled across the floor, stamping it with handprints, until she cowered against the wall.

"Little poppet," she whimpered. "Little girly poppet."

"Dragana," Fenris managed. "Lady Dragana."

She stared at him incredulously.

"Please try to be calm," he said.

"Ser Silver Elf?" she said, as though she had forgotten him.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, Dragana. Please, just look at me, and be calm."

She gathered handfuls of her hair. She pressed her fists to her scalp. She was about to speak when she glanced up suddenly, her mouth hanging open, and Fenris turned to look. Grasin gaped at them from the doorway.

"Grasin," Dragana said.

Fenris watched his gaze move first from them to Florian, then to the knife, and back to Dragana's blood-spattered face. He turned and ran.

"Grasin!" Dragana shrieked.

The slamming of a door echoed from the foyer.

Dragana began to weep hysterically and crumpled to the floor. Fenris strained against his bindings, but his wrists had been knotted fast, and he could not reach the rope with his claws. He struggled and twisted about on the floor.

Just as suddenly as she began, Dragana stopped crying. Fenris froze. She'd sat up again, her face inscrutable. She swayed. She said, "I've done something wrong."

She met his eyes. "I must have done something wrong."

Painstakingly, she stood and tottered across the room, waving her arms for balance. She dropped down beside Fenris and stared, for a very long time, at Florian. Fenris dared not move.

"You said you hurt her," she said, without taking her eyes off of the body.

Fenris didn't speak.

"Do you think — she will forgive you?"

"I," Fenris said.

The glassy stained face turned to him.

"I don't know," he said.

She sat back and ground her little fists into her lap. She rocked back and forth and hummed.

"Little girly poppet," she mumbled. "With snipped strings."

She lay her head against Florian's chest and was silent.

#

Anders leaned against his staff like an old, old man. He slid to his knees. His heart hammered. He could not focus. In his mind, he saw Fenris groping at the cleaver in his shoulder. He saw Florian, enraged and deadly. He saw Hawke vanishing into the maw of the beast.

He groaned and stabbed at the cliffside with his staff. He drew upon all of the natural energies that he could summon, all that would listen. He felt for the pulse of the earth. Cracks ran like ripping seams down the sheer wall. The rock shifted, caving here and jutting there, crumbling and cleaving and reshaping, and he had, for a horrible instant, a vision of the entire cliff coming down on him, destabilized and vengeful. He clung to sheer concentration, until the fractured rock settled and became still, forming a series of inexpertly-wrought steps that led back up the cliffside.

Exhaustion leached through him. He slumped. I must go, he thought. I must go.

#

Dragana flung open the garden doors. Dressed in moonlight, the overgrown rafflesias lurked. She staggered against her cane into the vines. She seized handfuls of flowers and tossed them away, and kicked the largest foul-smelling bloom. She wedged her cane beneath its spotted lobes and wrenched it from the ground, revealing a black, rocky cavity. She turned back to Fenris, her wet eyes shining.

With the long, curving knife she cut the rope from his feet. She tugged the bindings at his hands, urging him up, and dragged him into the garden. He went unsteadily. When he swayed back, more for lack of balance than any genuine attempt to escape, she rounded on him with the knife, pressing its edge into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

"You will come," she said. The knife trembled in her little hand. "Or I will kill her myself."

She yanked the lead at his wrists and together they descended into the mouth of the cave.

The heat, here, was familiar, and for an instant Fenris was racing along the manor stairs again, cradling Hawke to his chest. A fist of longing squeezed his heart. He followed Dragana through absolute darkness. He breathed hot, wet air, and a more potent carrion stench, upon which he gagged, and which stirred the bile in his gut. He heard deep, steady breathing, a rhythm which grew gradually louder, and it seemed to emanate from all around him, seismic, ever-present, swallowing him whole, as though they walked the gullet of a behemoth.

They came to a vast, torchlit cavern. Condensation, which dripped even now, had shaped these calcareous walls, and stalactites choked the dome of the ceiling. His gaze fell upon a pile of corpses. No — a mountain, staggering in its implications, of parts and pieces, twisting limbs and reaching fingers and unidentifiable viscera. Fenris retched and tried to turn away, but Dragana yanked his lead, unmoved by the sight, and he glimpsed bones, and gaping jaws, and all that was now mere detritus of the villagers who'd once lived ignorantly above this place.

"My Lord," Dragana said.

The great beast turned, with brilliant unblinking eyes.

#

Anders laboriously climbed the cliffside, his fingers bruising against jagged rock. Wind stung his eyes and yanked at his tattered robes. His nervous system howled. Despite his healing, the trauma of broken bones and punctured organs still rattled his skull like a cage. Cold reason penetrated his thoughts: certainly this outcome was preferable to being eaten alive. Anders found that he could not argue as he groaned and dragged himself up, and up.

Justice did share his bodily pain, at least.

This did not comfort him — that mortally fragile side of all human brains which seeks self-preservation. He could not deny that Justice had rendered him a helpless passenger in the body that they both shared, in a body which Justice had sent purposefully over the edge of a cliff. Cold reason, again: but we have survived.

His frightened brain: I would not have done that, could never have done that. What else will I be made to do?

Onward he climbed, white and shaking.

He neared the peak. He wished desperately to pause, to catch his breath, but forced himself to go on, to spare no time. A dark face peered over the edge, long-nosed and pointed-eared. For a wild second he thought it must be Fenris, until he recognized the harrowed expression.

Grasin reached for him, and Anders grasped his hands gratefully, allowing himself to be hauled over the edge, until he sprawled on solid ground, heaving, exhausted. Grasin helped him to his feet.

"I saw you fall," he stammered. "I thought, for certain . . ."

Anders waved his hand. "There's no time," he said. "I must hurry. I have to find her. And I have to find Hunger."

Confusion clouded Grasin's face for a moment, and then he seemed to understand. "But, your companion —"

"I will have to come back for him."

Grasin lowered his head regretfully. He nodded. "I will take you to the Lord's den," he said. "But we cannot go through the manor."

Anders jolted. "The demon is in the manor?"

"No. You misunderstand. There is an entrance. There are many entrances. This way. Hurry."

He beckoned, and led Anders toward the butcher's shop, the front of which gaped open, all splintered wood and shattered glass. Anders stopped short.

"I cannot go back in there," he murmured, and Grasin turned, not hearing. At that moment, ice flooded Anders's veins and poured from his eyes, stinging, stealing his breath and his voice.

"Lead on," Justice growled, and Grasin trembled where he stood.

#

Fenris and Hunger faced one another for the first time since the abduction at Hawke Manor.

The demon huddled against the concave wall, massive, solid, its black hide shining. Its teeth clenched and unclenched as it breathed. Its gaze penetrated Fenris as readily as the curving talons on its fingers.

"You brought him here," Hunger said, and growled, long and resonant.

"My Lord —"

"WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT HIM HERE," Hunger roared, and Dragana ducked her head, hiding her face.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I'm sorry."

The demon groaned then, leaning back, so different, now, than the first time Fenris had seen it.

"I didn't know what to do," Dragana said, near tears.

"I have told you what to do. Useless little twit." Hunger dragged its enormous claws against the wall, and fleshy tumors sprang up, bloated and pulsing, and it settled back against them wearily. "Tell me that is the blood of the mage."

"It is not," Dragana whispered, touching her face. The blood had long dried, and flaked from her mouth. "But he is dead. I swear it."

"And you've not brought his head?"

"He fell from the cliffside."

"Then I am not convinced," Hunger snarled, "until his head is in my hands."

"My Lord." Dragana began to cry. "You treat me so poorly now."

The white eyes narrowed without pity.

"Please hold me. Please kiss me, and tell me that you love me."

"You are undeserving," Hunger said.

A long, pitiful sob escaped her. She nearly crumpled, swaying against the silver cane. She smeared blood across her arm as she roughly wiped her tears.

"I killed Florian," she wept. "I cut his throat. I drank his blood."

Hunger said nothing.

"Still the tremors have not stopped," she stuttered. "My legs. They will not stop shaking. Nothing has changed."

"Stupid, foolish girl," Hunger said, and Dragana fell silent.

Hunger's claws raked against its forehead, dancing along the crown of spikes. "It is beyond my power to heal you," it said.

Dragana stared. Her arms lowered to her sides, and hung limp there. "What?"

"Did you think I hold sway over miracles? That blood rites and rituals are enough to eliminate the affliction that is just as much a part of you as your red hair? My dear. My silly, stupid girl."

"What?" she said again.

Hunger sneered. "Do you still not understand? Nothing, my dear," and the demon rose, towering above them both, "will ever banish the tremors from your body. 'Twas a hopeless dream of your father's."

"You lied to me?" Dragana said.

"I followed along with the fantasy." Hunger sat again amongst the tumors. "The one that so blinded your father. A pleasant dream. It gave sweetness to the taste of his flesh."

"But — the rituals. The sacrifices —"

"All a pleasing way to pass the time." The black lips curled back over yellow teeth. "Marvelous, sensuous entertainment."

"Entertainment?" She turned to Fenris, as though he could explain. Her frightened eyes stirred within him a deep pity. "Entertainment?" she said again. "My love . . ."

A deep purring sound emanated from the beast.

"But. What was it all for? What do you want?"

Hunger shook its head. "Her," it crooned, stroking its hard stomach. "The contract she and I shared has been fulfilled. I thank you, for providing this waiting-place. You have been a most pleasing host."

She stared, dumbfounded, at nothing. Her fingers loosened around the knife.

Hunger chuckled. "And the little girl realized at last," it said delicately, "where her selfishness had gotten her."

#

Justice and Grasin passed through the gaping portal and into the butcher's shop.

They followed a long, snakelike vine that was smothered with rafflesias. Justice ignored the human trepidation that resisted every step, and he went into the back room, awash in the fetor of rotting blood.

A great butcher's block stood on wooden legs in the center of the room. Its stained surface bespoke frequent use. A series of tools, well-cleaned and gleaming, hung on pegs all around: cleavers of varying sizes, honing steels, skinning knives, bone saws, wicked little larding needles. Over a long draining trough dangled a telltale row of hooks. Justice observed these. They had not been empty, mere hours ago.

Earlier when he'd arrived — when Anders had arrived — he'd heard moaning, low and piteous, and, going into the back room, had found bodies — villagers — contorted and hanging from the hooks. Naked, mewling, twisting about, discolored, inhuman. They'd reached for him, many with maimed hands, as blood sluiced into the trough. Mid-ritual. Mid-transformation.

Grasin hurried through the workshop, ducking his head low. Justice followed. They came to a wooden slat set into the floor, and Grasin drew it open. Underneath there was a staircase that sliced deep into the earth.

"Messere Lefebvre," Grasin murmured, with sorrow thick in his throat, "lured villagers here. Routinely. And he butchered them. He brought them in pieces to the Lord, through this passage. He — and the Lady Croceum — dined on their flesh. I — they had me cook it. Prepare their meals."

He gave Justice an imploring look. "Please spare her," he said. "If you can. I have cared for her since she was a babe. Since she learned to walk. Before her illness made itself known. She was not always the monster that she has become." He blinked away tears. "Her mother died to bring her into this world. I've been told it was a difficult birth, very difficult, one that should have taken both mother and child. But my Lady survived. I believe with all of my heart that this trauma was the cause of her affliction." He wiped his eyes. "A terrible curse, to have obsessed her father so, and brought this demon upon us."

"I will do what I can," Justice said. "But I will also do what I must."

Grasin took a deep breath, and dropped his head. "Save her," he whispered. "End this atrocity."

Justice nodded. He turned to the staircase. He descended.

#

"You," Dragana murmured. The knife shook in her hand. "You. I killed Fluh. Florian. I . . ."

The demon watched her, amused.

"He loved me." She stared at the blade. "And I. I . . ."

"I knew that you would," Hunger said. "If I only asked."

"And Daddy?" Her eyes were glassy now, unfocused.

"His flesh was sweet," Hunger repeated.

"Daddy," Dragana said.

"You did not seem to care, when he had gone."

"Stop this," Fenris said suddenly, unable to take any more. "Stop taunting her, you beast, you monster."

"Ah, you. Elf." The penetrating gaze fell upon him again. "Such a waste, for my little thing to have surrendered herself for you. Now I shall have to devour you, and her trade will have been for nothing."

"Where is she?" Fenris cried.

Hunger's claws again ran over its stomach. "She is with me," it said. "I could not resist. I swallowed her whole. So that she will always be with me."

"She still lives?"

Hunger's smile remained, stretching wide, secretive.

"Daddy," Dragana murmured. "Florian."

"Your time is done, child." Hunger flicked a hand in her direction. "Go. Leave me. Live out your miserable existence elsewhere, where I will not be bothered. It is my gift to you, precious hostess.

"But first." The demon turned again to Fenris. "Bring the elf to me."

Dragana lifted her head. She stared, for a few moments, at Hunger, and then turned to Fenris. He saw new clarity in her eyes, as though a pall had been lifted for the very first time.

She drew close to him — slight, pale, trembling Dragana. She released her cane, which clattered to the cavern floor. She cupped his cheek.

"Perhaps she will forgive you," she whispered, and, with one stroke of the knife, cut him free of his bonds.

Hunger roared — a deafening, earth-shaking sound. Dragana smiled sadly at Fenris. She turned the knife and plunged it between her ribs.

Fenris started. He moved toward her, but Hunger had thundered onto all fours, had begun to charge. Dragana collapsed with a rattling breath. Fenris turned. He stared down the approaching beast.

Hunger's jaws sprang open wide.

Fenris leaned forward. He sucked in his breath.

He ignited, silver, hot.

Hunger dove.

Fenris charged.

He sprinted, and sprang up, ghostly bright, and dove into the great gaping mouth, and vanished.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 10 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 10

Fenris lagged behind Anders as Florian guided them to the western side of the manor. It was difficult for him to resist the compulsion to keep a hand on his greatsword, ready to draw at any time. Florian walked with a maddening leisure, taking time to describe the significance of this family heirloom, the workmanship of that local sculpture. Anders nodded along like a fool.

They came to a pair of guest rooms, and Florian bid his farewell. Once Anders had entered his room, Florian took Fenris by the arm.

"The Lady Croceum is rather prone to jovialities," he said, smiling in a manner that did not reflect his tone.

Fenris stared back impassively.

"You will not take her flirtations seriously."

The skin of Fenris's arm tingled, and pricked deeply, where Florian touched him.

"I wish you a pleasant night." Florian released him and, with a shallow bow, departed. When he had left, Fenris's markings lit, flashed hot, and dimmed again.

He went into Anders's room, shut the door, and said, "The food was tainted."

Anders was sitting at the edge of a generous four-poster bed. The guest room was small but comfortably furnished, though lacking, Fenris noted, in windows of any kind.

"How did you know?" Anders said.

"I did not. Though I should have suspected." He shook his head. "The Lady's servant — Grasin? He warned me, as he set my plates."

"Such a risk for him to take, with his mistress right there."

"Agreed."

"But Dragana and Florian both ate the food. And all of it was served from the same dishes."

"Something was wrong. Something we would not have wanted to chance."

Anders touched his throat. "The wine. We both drank it."

"Somehow I feel the wine was not at issue."

"Well, that does not surprise me, coming from you."

Fenris glared.

Anders went on, "But why not simply kill us now, if they had gone through the trouble to poison the food?"

"It may not have been poison." Fenris glanced back, as though the butcher were standing at the door. "I cannot say."

"We are walking a fine line, staying in this place."

"But she is here," Fenris said firmly. "She must be. Somewhere, hidden in this village, the demon has her."

"Suppose Dragana knows Hunger? Her father's death, the Carrion Flowers — they all happened just as Hunger arrived in the Free Marches."

"That I also cannot say. If she does, she is very dangerous. It is likely Hunger already knows that we are here."

"Suppose it flees, then, and leaves no trail?"

"Then we shall not give it the time to do so."

Anders suddenly looked away. The muscles in his throat throbbed. He said, "And you still think. That she —?"

"Is alive? Of course I do," Fenris snapped. "She is. She must be."

He fell silent. Anders swallowed hard. Tersely he rubbed his forehead, and then he looked directly at Fenris.

"What are you really thinking," he said, "when you think of her?"

Fenris stared back. "I am thinking," he said evenly, "that I owe her a great deal."

"I do not think you are," Anders said.

A slow and creeping heat was rising, somewhere, within Fenris.

"And?" he said.

Anders blinked very quickly, and his chest rose, and fell. He paused a moment more before saying, "Why did you. Do that. To her?"

The heat blistered behind Fenris's eyes. He leveled his gaze. "Still you will not speak of it plainly?"

"You — harmed her."

"I fucked her."

Blue light sparked from Anders's fist, which Fenris now noticed was clutching the long staff. "You raped her."

"That's it. Finally you are capable of saying it out loud. And why does it matter to you now, why it happened? Are you worried that she'd lied? That she'd cuckolded you?"

The presence of the beggar-girl bled into the room like an unwelcome, unacknowledged guest.

"Why that night?" Anders said. "What happened? Why was she with you?"

"I do not have to explain myself to you," Fenris said.

"You do. You very much do. Tell me." He breathed in, held it, released it. He said, with great pain, "When she came to me, after it happened, she was practically. Maker. She was practically apologizing —"

Fenris lunged toward Anders, who rose from the bed and backed around it, bearing his staff. Silver light spouted from Fenris's body.

"Listen to yourself, you fool," he roared.

They stood with the corner of the bed between them, tense and coiled, as Fenris's markings guttered out.

"She loves you, the idiot," Fenris spat.

Anders lowered his staff.

"The Void take her," Fenris said. He struck the bedpost with his fist. "She loves you."

He glared at Anders with renewed hatred — foolish, simpering Anders. He was reminded, then, of Florian's warning, of the butcher's grip upon his arm, the jealousy that had radiated there. Disgust surged through him.

"She came to me of her own accord," Fenris said. The words rushing from him like water from a dam. "She did not know that I was angry with her. Because of this."

And he snatched the silken cord from Anders's neck, before Anders could react, and pulled the hateful thing free: flashing silver, the delicately-engraved amulet swung from his hand, Tevinter-made, Chantry-blessed, given with love from one apostate to another.

"You were not there, when we found it," he said bitterly. "It was locked away in a slavers' den. Where I tracked down Hadriana. Where I killed Hadriana. I am sure that you remember that name, having so thoughtfully dredged her memory from my mind?"

Anders looked from Fenris to the amulet and said nothing.

"Hadriana," Fenris snarled. "Blood mage. Witch. Foolish groveling whore." He flung the amulet across the room, and it clanged against the wall. "And Hawke thought it sweet to give it to you. I drank, and I boiled, and when we were alone, she seemed to me no better than that witch.

"In Tevinter — you would not know — the magisters, they all delight in blood magic. It is sport to them. It is power, but it is sport. Hawke's blood magic — all magic — it's an abomination, an aberration. And so . . ."

The tension in him was weakening. He had the sense, suddenly, that he was no longer speaking to Anders, or for the benefit of anyone who could listen. He turned away. He turned back again.

"And so I used her," he said. "I used her, as Danarius had used me. But. No." He ground his knuckles into his forehead. "He'd never hid his cruelty, but he had always treated me with tenderness. Certainly, the same tenderness a master shows his pet, or a swordsman his weapon. But still there was tenderness. For her, I felt only hatred." He said it before he could stop himself. "And a need to conquer."

Anders stood up taller then, rigid, and Fenris sagged against the bedpost.

"I had not known. I'd thought — I saw Hadriana when I looked upon her. I hadn't known that Hawke had been a child. When she'd forged her contract. To protect her home." His eyes grew distant. "Especially now, now that I have seen what becomes of a village when it is the plaything of a demon."

He glared again at Anders. "Does that answer your bloody question?"

"I don't give a blighted shit," Anders said, "about your inferiority complexes."

Fenris's muscles locked together. The heat was returning.

"You hadn't known?" Anders said. "You hadn't known she'd been a child — that she wasn't one of the 'bad ones' — and so you attacked her? It was justified, until Hunger showed up?" He shook his staff. "I want to know why she was there. And I want to know why she took you back to her manor." Lines of cold blue gleamed beneath the surface of his skin, behind his eyes, scarcely contained. "I want to know why she was taken from her bed. Why you were there with her, when she was taken."

And he bit out, "You desire her."

Fenris sneered.

"You always have."

"Who would you say has done her more harm, then?" Fenris said. "The man who violated her? Or the man who now accuses her of hiding something?"

Anders lunged then, but Fenris was ready. He twisted the staff in Anders's hand and slammed it, lengthwise, into the other man's solar plexus, using his momentum against him. Anders choked and crumpled onto the bed. He clutched his stomach. Fenris tossed the staff away.

"My answer to you is to trust her," Fenris said, walking to the door. "Even though she should not trust you. We will wake at dawn. And soon she shall be happily back in your arms."

He left, shutting the door, as Anders coughed into the blankets.

#

"You shall have your reward."

"Yes," Dragana breathed.

"You have pleased me. Very much."

"Yes."

"You will bring me the head of the mage. And the skin of the elf."

"Ahh. Yes, my Lord."

"You shall be cured."

"Ah. Ahh."

"The healing method may be . . . demanding. Are you prepared to do whatever I ask?"

"Yes. Yes, my Lord. Anything."

#

Anders and Fenris awoke separately the next morning, and neither approached the other, hungrily eating the few rations they had, and independently explaining to Florian that they were to stay an additional day to rest from their journey. Florian smiled, and graciously agreed with each of them, as though he had not already spoken to the other.

Anders set out to explore the village. It was just as quiet as when they'd arrived, and perhaps only a villager or two milled about, drawing water from the well, or hanging laundry to dry in the breeze. Most of the cottages still appeared empty, silent and still.

He wandered past the Adder's Root, glimpsing the barmaid as she stacked wood in the hearth. Beside the pub was a bakery, its sign bearing the carved relief of a spray of wheat. Seeing how smoke emanated from the chimney, Anders went in, and inhaled the aroma of baking bread.

"Hello?" he called.

The storefront was attended only by a heap of barley rolls cooling on a counter. He leaned to the side, trying to peer into the back room. A woman came from around the corner, patting flour across her apron. She stopped suddenly when she saw Anders and said, "Oh."

Anders bowed shortly. "Good morning. I hope I didn't interrupt your work."

"Oh, no. My apologies. I thought you might be Messere Lefebvre." She dusted her hands again, shedding clouds of white flour. Her eyes listed wearily across the room. "He comes by routinely. The Lady loves pies and sweets."

"I see. Well. I am Anders, a passing traveler." He nodded to the windows at the front of the shop. "I am curious about your village. It seems very quiet today."

She glanced past him and folded her hands. "It is, usually. Serah."

"But there are so many houses."

She nodded mutely.

"Where has everyone gone?"

Her white fingers twisted around one another. She glanced past him again. "Well, they just. Go. Serah."

Anders knit his brows. "They go?"

She began shaking her head, and took a step away. "I am sorry, serah. I must return to my work. I am sorry."

"Wait. Please. I apologize if I've upset you —"

"You haven't, serah —" Stepping back again.

"But the flowers, if I could ask —"

"There's dough to be pounded, serah. I am sorry."

"Is there no one here to help you?" Anders craned his neck to see around her, to the back room.

To his surprise, her eyes filled with tears. She roughly wiped them away, streaking her cheeks with flour. "There used to be, serah. My son. A very. A very hard-working boy, he was."

Anders said, as carefully as he could, "Where is he?"

The woman's chin dropped to her chest. "He. He went, too."

Anders moved forward, and she backed away suddenly. "Leave," she said tearfully. "Please leave. Please go."

Wet tracks had cut through the flour on her cheeks. Anders bowed his head. He left.

#

Fenris strode through the drawing room of the Croceum manor. He nearly collided with Grasin, who was hurrying through with a jug of water. The servant ducked his head, nearly dodging away, but Fenris caught him by the shoulder and said, "Wait."

Grasin stared at the floor, hugging the jug to his chest. "The Lady expects me, messere."

"Do not call me that," Fenris said. He dropped his voice low. "What was in the food?"

"Nothing, messere."

"Then what did you warn us for?"

Grasin glanced nervously at the door. "I must go, messere."

"You are terrified out of your wits. How long have you served here?"

"Since the Lady was a child, messere."

"You are a slave?"

"Liberati, messere. From Tevinter." He met Fenris's eyes. "I recognized your markings, messere. The designs. The work of a magister." He ducked his head again. "I must go, I must go."

"Please, tell me —"

"The garden," Grasin said then, and bowed, and raced away.

Fenris watched him go. He turned to the heavy velvet curtains.

#

Anders stood outside of the bakery, rubbing his beard.

"They just go," he murmured.

Wind fluttered through his robes, and the stench of rotting flesh invaded him. He wrinkled his nose. A braid of vines had twisted its way across the path before him, and he knelt down to prod a rafflesia bloom with his finger. The thick, lobed petals scarcely gave at his touch. He delicately turned the vine. No part of the parasitic plant was visible beyond the bloom. He pinched the base of the flower and gently pulled. The flesh of the vine tore, and with a small burst of fetid odor the bloom ripped away. He pried at the shreds of the vine, trying to find some evidence of a root, a stem, but there was nothing.

He rose, wiping his hands, and produced a small knife from his pocket. He followed the vine until he came upon a larger flower and squatted down again. He slit the vine and peeled apart its fibrous flesh. Again, he saw nothing. He wondered, then, whether or not the blossoms were merely for show, and the parasite itself had overtaken the vine completely.

"A cruel fate," he mused, and conceded silently that such was the nature of hunger: to consume, and to consume utterly.

He contemplated this, and recalled Fenris's stunned recollection of the demon in the Fade. Starvation with no foreseeable end. The ecstasy of feeding at last, of feeding a hunger that would never truly end. The lonely madness of such a state. And he saw again the longing in Fenris's eyes: "I wanted her more than anything I have ever wanted before." And he thought, wildly, of the urge to conquer, so different, yes, from his own private urges, so beyond what he felt he could understand that he was overcome by a staggering relief.

He knew then that he would never voice his doubts to Hawke. No. No matter how it had transpired, or why she'd gone to Fenris alone, or . . .

The memory of traversing the Fade came to him then, of walking by Fenris's side, of accompanying Fenris in Hunger's skin. He saw again the moment that Hunger descended upon the Hawke Manor. The bedchamber door splintering away. The sight of Fenris at the bed, weaponless, defenseless. Hawke on the coverlet behind him.

Why, Anders thought, knowing he could never ask her, knowing he would never truly know. Why. Why.

He followed the vines, allowing the rafflesias to lead him next toward the butcher's shop, and he breathed in their scent, the redolence that abides at the end of all things.

#

Fenris pushed open the drawing room doors and stepped into the garden.

The stench of rotting things gathered here like dense fog. Tangled vines thick with rafflesias choked everything, creeping up the walls, winding around the slender trees. The blooms were massive here, and a darker, rustier shade. The black hollows of their central cups gaped like hungry mouths. Fenris took a careful step forward, flattening vines and stiff petals, and he suppressed a shiver as their texture met his naked feet.

The odor here was different. He gazed about, though it was nearly impossible to see what might lay hidden beneath the foliage. A sense of wrongness etched at his brain, not unlike what he'd sensed when he'd discovered the site of Hunger's summoning: the blood-drenched sheets, and among them the concealed totem which now was safely tucked away in his pocket.

Blood. Yes. He was no stranger to that scent. There was blood here. Old blood, as well as fresh. He knelt to examine the soil, and the door behind him opened.

"Ser Silver Elf!" Dragana cried, clapping her hands with delight.

Fenris turned, startled. She skipped from the drawing room terrace, and nearly fell, catching herself with a silver cane. She fluffed her hair a bit and, unfazed, traversed the mat of vines. He rose, and she seized both of his hands.

"Oh, how it pleases me to see you here," she said, kissing his hands once more. "Admiring the garden, I see?"

"It is most," Fenris said, and paused. "Remarkable." He pulled his hands away.

"This garden is my most favorite place in the entire world," she said, and beamed. "Its beauty is simply breathtaking."

Fenris followed her gaze from wall to wall.

"I often come here to think, or when I feel blue." She gestured to the sky with her cane. "Or to watch the snow in the wintertime. It falls in great fluffy puffs, here in the mountains."

"It must be very beautiful," Fenris said.

"Yes." She turned to him with a feigned shyness. "Though I feel my present company would shame it."

He turned to her, and she giggled, hiding her mouth.

"I feel that your eyes stare into my soul!" she said.

"I —"

"It is all right, it is all right." She waved her hand. "Oh, I wish you would tell me your name. I cannot stand mystery. Or do you perhaps prefer Ser Silver Elf?"

"Fenris," he relented, and she clapped her hands again.

"Fenris," she said. "So fierce and lovely. A fitting name. And tell me, for I would like to help if I am able. Where are you going, that you have come across our humble village?"

"I am searching for someone," he said carefully.

"Someone you've lost?"

He nodded.

"I see." She dropped her eyes and toyed at the vines with her toes. "Someone you love?"

He looked beyond her, at the largest of the rafflesias, which reached, and gaped, and dominated the garden. "Yes," he said.

"Ah. The lucky she-devil." Dragana lifted a little hand, which Fenris noticed trembled of its own accord. "Perhaps I do not want to help you any longer, then," she teased.

Fenris forced a charitable half-smile.

"Florian and I. We were in love once," she said. She gave a shrug. "I suppose we were."

"You suppose?"

"I have loved since," she said simply. "It feels — it is — different."

"I understand."

"And so you know, then," Dragana said, "that you are in love?"

"Yes."

"How?"

Fenris observed her, this sharp, slight woman, perhaps not much more than a girl. She pushed red hair from her face and smiled. He wondered how much she knew. He wondered whether she were playing some sort of game, or if she truly had been in love, and was truly curious, now, about its nature.

"I know that I have caused her pain," he said. "I know that I have done her great harm. And that she has given — a great deal — in exchange for my safety. And I tried to protect her, then. And could not."

Dragana's eyes, large and attentive, searched his face.

"I was not prepared for what that would do to me," he said. "How that would affect me."

"Your heart," she said.

"Yes."

"So you are puzzled. You are confused."

"Yes."

"But are you in love?"

"I had not given thought to the word itself, until you asked. But. Yes."

Her eyes listed away from him then, and she lifted her head, gazing into the sky. She rocked back on her heels.

"How very romantic," she sighed. "Oh. How lovely."

Fenris, uncomfortable, looked away. As he glanced, a blanched spot among the vines caught his eye. He squinted.

"I wonder if she truly appreciates you," Dragana was saying. "How beautiful you are, I mean."

He stepped closer, as her eyes settled on him again.

"Such beautiful markings," she said.

He saw it then. Worked out its shape, from beneath the vines.

"Such beautiful flesh."

A skull.

She touched his face. Surprised, he turned. She was standing on tiptoe, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling, her eyes dreamy and narrow.

"Oh, please," she whispered, and kissed him.

He was too caught off guard, at first, to do anything, and stood with her hanging from his neck, her lips like dry, soft petals against his own. Gently he pushed her off, and she clung to him, vine-like.

"Lady Cro —" he said, and she kissed him again.

"Hush, now," she said. "I simply want to taste you. Simply taste." And she giggled.

A thrill of recognition raced through Fenris.

She whispered, "In my opinion, you can have the bitch. But my Lord does not agree."

He shoved her, harshly, then, and saw Florian standing at the drawing room door.

#

Anders ran, panting and sweating, toward the Croceum estate.

His thoughts raced. His mind was all panicked blur.

The few villagers who loitered about stared at him.

The butcher, he thought. The butcher.

He'd found the shop empty, of course. Florian did not appear to have any fellows in his trade. But a thick overgrowth of rafflesias had beckoned Anders to stray beyond the storefront and into the workshop behind. And there . . .

"Maker," he gasped now.

He stopped short, when Fenris burst through the front door of the manor and strode quickly out. His heart pounded with relief. Something in Fenris's face sent a chill through him.

"We must go," Fenris said.

"Fenris," Anders said. "You must come, I've just —"

And the front door of the manor slammed open again, and Florian stormed out, his eyes wild, and before Anders could utter another word he raised a flashing cleaver and struck Fenris on the shoulder.

Fenris collapsed to his knees, spattering blood. Anders cried out. A crash thundered behind him and he turned to see demons, black and razor-mawed, pour screaming from the butcher's shop. He lifted his staff and Florian kicked the back of his knee, and he stumbled, and the demons came surging forth, teeth and claws at the ready. Fenris groaned.

Icy splinters seemed to shred the back of Anders's eyes. Justice shoved him aside and plunged him into freezing cold. He slammed his staff to the ground and hooking spears of earth erupted before him. Many of the demons were caught, impaled, driven back. Florian threw Fenris down and was kicking him savagely. Justice had no time to turn. With arcane power he wrenched the earthen spears from the ground and flung them into the horde, and he pitched and rolled, as claws tore into his arm.

He could not tell how many there were. They shrieked and scrambled and lunged. From the corner of his eye he saw a red flowing figure race from the manor. The young Lady — Dragana — now seized Florian by the sleeve, begging, pleading. Fenris was trying to lift himself from the grass. The mirrored surface of the cleaver, still buried deep, glinted against his shoulder.

In the wind, Justice smelled rotting flesh. He smelled wet blood.

The demons coursed around him, pushing between him and Fenris. They were driving him back. He conjured fire. He doused them in flames. Still they came, and teeth ripped into his arm, his shoulder, dangerously close to his throat. He staggered. They were going to devour him alive.

He swung around. His gaze lit upon the edge of the cliff. The limestone gleamed. He went to it, raising his staff, and the demons swarmed after him. He slammed his staff down, and the rock beneath him cracked, it crumbled and shattered, and he went over, the black churning horde going with him.

Together they plummeted down the cliffside.

#

Fenris awoke, many hours later, in a dark room, to the touch of a wet cloth. Loss of blood dizzied him. The cloth smoothed over his face, cold, and he murmured something, some nonsense, and the cold wetness lifted away.

Dragana smiled down at him.

She cradled his head in her lap. She patted his cheek with trembling fingers. He tried to reach up, and could not. His wrists strained against coiled rope.

"I am sorry," she murmured, "for Florian."

She combed at his hair with her fingernails. One of her fingers trailed down to a bandage, linen and dark crusted blood, at his shoulder.

"I did my best to dress the wound," she said. "So that it would not scar. I hope." She flicked a line across his throat. "I hope it would not scar, like this ugly thing."

Fenris blinked slowly.

"I do not know, I suppose, if my Lord would like there to be scars."

She hummed a little, the tips of her fingers skipping along the silver lines in his skin. "Pretty," she said sometimes. "Very pretty."

She got up, and lowered his head gently. He smelled fresh varnish. The drawing room.

"I think it is sad," she said, "that you love her so much."

She went to one corner of the room, out of his sight, and rummaged around.

"She does not need your love," she said.

Drawers opened and closed. Dragana returned, settling back down, and cradled Fenris's head in her lap again. She smoothed a sweet-smelling balm over his chest, her fingers running beneath his tunic.

"A tragic romance," she said. "The tragedy lets you know it's real."

He breathed in.

She smiled. "I think it's all fairytales, otherwise." Her hands slowed, then, and came to a halt. "My Lord loves her. He does, and always has, and very deeply. And for that, there is nothing you can do."

She was startled then by the opening of the drawing room door, and her hands tightened into little fists against his chest. She twisted around to look, as someone came into the room.

"I should not have left you alone with him," Florian said.

"I've done nothing wrong."

"I've brought my tools. Let's get this done."

Dragana's arms tightened over Fenris. "His wounds need a chance to heal," she said defensively.

"The Lord demands his skin," Florian said. "He shall have his skin."

"He did not tell us to gouge it open with a cleaver," Dragana said.

"Well, perhaps you should have relayed that to me earlier." He came into Fenris's view then, tall, tousled, eyes gleaming. He passed a long, curved knife from hand to hand. "The Lord will have him as he is."

"The Lord gave me very specific instructions —"

"Fuck him," Florian said. "We finish this, now."

Dragana stood rigidly up. "You cannot say that," she said.

"I can, and I have. Don't you see our business with him is nearly done?"

"We do not have the head of the mage," she said primly.

"I am not convinced of the efficacy of ritual," Florian said. "The mage is dead. The elf will be dead. He has the woman. You will walk. We are done."

"No," she said. "The Lord will stay here. This is his village. I am his."

"Perhaps you will see differently, once you are well again. I have dreamed so long for this madness to be over."

"You are cruel," Dragana said. "You are cruel."

"Cruel?" He rounded on her. "I have walked by your side all of this time, while you have wandered in dreams, if only to see you made well again. And you say I am cruel?" He seized her by the arm.

"Do not grab me," she said.

He shook her. "You have been spared of the blood," he cried. "As you flit about in your stupor. While I have drained and dismembered and flayed, all for your Lord. Why do you not see?"

He slapped her then, and to Fenris her cry of pain seemed bird-like and small. She shoved Florian and they both crashed to the floor, and Dragana's hands snapped to the handle of the knife, and the thin curving blade slid deep into Florian's throat.

He choked and gurgled. She leaned over him, straddling his chest. Warm wetness pooled against Fenris's arm.

"I shall walk again," Dragana said, "without you."

She held the knife steady, and his hands groped and stretched.

"My Lord gave me the healing ritual," she said. "Because he loves me so. Would you like to hear it?"

He gasped, and could not speak.

She released the knife and left it, buried to the hilt, in Florian's flesh. She pushed her hair from her face. She turned to Fenris with an extravagant smile.

"Drink the blood of the butcher," she said dreamily, "and you shall be healed."

She gripped the knife and pulled it, releasing a current of blood. The blade clattered to the floor. She cupped her hands beneath the lurid spring. She raised her hands to her mouth, and she drank.

Florian had grown still. Scarlet striped her white arms. She lowered them, and gagged a little, and pressed a hand to her stomach. She closed her eyes, and silence pervaded.

After a long moment, she rose shakily up. Her knee pitched beneath her, and she took a step to right herself, and fell. She stood up again, and took several unsteady paces. Fenris watched the trembling of her knees. She paused, breathing in deeply. She approached Fenris and fell again.

She tumbled all white and scarlet beside him. Her eyes grew wide and distant. Her hands quivered. She stared past him, through him, her mouth caked and dripping with blood.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 9 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 9

Anders trailed after Fenris as they tracked their demonic attackers. They followed a path of indiscriminate destruction: the shredded-bare backs of pines, the heads of kingcups and brush trampled flat, the residuum of partially-consumed and regurgitated creatures. At one point they discovered the hollows of a fox's den, silent, and redolent with spilled blood, where nothing remained except for telltale scratches and scrabblings in the dirt.

"They would have cleared the entire forest, had they lived," Fenris observed, and moved on.

It became very obvious to both of them, over time, that Fenris was the only one speaking. Neither of them addressed this. Anders wandered behind Fenris with downcast eyes. He could not prevent the invasion of the beggar-girl's memory. He could not shake that sense of altruistic ecstasy that had briefly eclipsed his despair, nor the sight of her haunted eyes, the sound of coins ringing against a tin cup. Guilt chewed at the edges of his mind, where thoughts of Hawke were too painful to scrutinize. He cursed himself, repeatedly.

For Fenris's part, the satisfaction of proving, to him, Anders's unequivocal hypocrisy had been short-lived. He found he could not delight in Hawke's betrayal. He continued on with a hunter's focus. He would exterminate the beast. He would find her. He would keep her safe.

For days they tracked and traced, and slept fitfully, until one evening they broke free of the forest and caught sight of thatched roofs just beyond the ridge of a limestone promontory.

#

Dragana faltered within the cavernous den. The cragged floor was hot beneath her feet. She toyed with her cane. He stood against the far wall with his back to her, just as she had last seen him, heaving slowly and deliberately. She curtsied and said, "My Lord."

He sucked in his breath and emitted a long, steady gust of air. The temperature rose.

"It is your Dragana," she said.

"I do not smell new blood," he rumbled. A tremor shook the chamber.

"My Lord, I am so sorry. I did not have time to bathe."

"You would risk my displeasure?"

"I'm sorry," she stammered.

His shoulders returned to their rhythmic rise and fall. He leaned forward, propping his forehead against the wall.

Dragana took a hesitant step. Sweat was beading her face, her lip, the bony knuckles of her hands. "My Lord still feels unwell?"

There came a soft growl from the walls, from the ceiling.

"I wish there were something I could do."

"What have you come here to say, that you would present yourself to me unwashed?"

"I just wanted to inform you — to tell you — that —" Her voice failed her. She tried again. "That Florian. He —"

A second growl, and Dragana leaned hard on her cane. She lowered her eyes with shame. His massive form shifted, just slightly, and she saw that he was touching his stomach with great delicacy.

"It is her, isn't it?" she said softly.

He growled again.

She pressed on: "Oh, I hate how she makes you suffer. It fills my heart with distress to see you this way. She is hateful, a hateful thing."

"You are testing my patience."

"Please, forgive me. Nevermind silly old Florian." She flung out her hand, as though disposing of the very idea. "My Lord, your envoy has not returned. It has been several days."

"Have your butcher send out more, then."

"My Lord. Florian says there are not enough —"

"You do not listen to the butcher. You listen to me."

"Such is the truth, my Lord."

He sighed, breathed in, sighed again. His great fingers curled into a fist against his stomach. "I cannot sense them in the Fade," he said. "They have all been dispatched. A grave disappointment."

Dragana chewed her lip.

"No matter. You will meet them, then."

"I, my Lord?"

"Yes. I leave this to you and your butcher. Ensure they come nowhere near this place. Or I shall be very displeased."

She nodded vigorously. "Yes, my Lord. Of course. I will not disappoint you. I will make you so very happy."

He groaned then, faintly, and sagged against the wall. She chanced a step.

"My Lord? A gentle touch, if I may?"

She crossed the chamber without awaiting an answer, and laid a hand against his arm, hoping for a kiss, an acquiescing gesture, some sign of his former tenderness. No sooner had she brushed the torrid flesh than he rounded on her with an echoing bellow, and she leapt back, her heart leaping similarly in her chest.

"LEAVE ME," he snarled, and she fled to the exit, his deafening fury ringing in her ears.

#

Fenris and Anders skirted the promontory with great caution. It was a vast, sheer cliff of bone-colored rock, within which the dusky sunlight revealed gleaming crimson seams. The village itself crowded along the knurled steps of the cliffside. They came to a gate of weathered stone and stood observing it from a distance.

A breeze ruffled through them, and Anders wrinkled his nose. "Maker, what is that stench?"

"It smells of corpses. Old ones."

"Pleasant." Anders pointed to the gate. "Ah. Do you see those?"

Fenris squinted. Swaying against the columns of the gate were large, fleshy blossoms, at least half a dozen of them. Each had five russet-colored lobes — petals — dappled with white spots. Bloated flies dodged and dove around them.

"Flowers?" Fenris said.

"Rafflesias," Anders said. "A jungle plant, known in the Donarks as the Carrion Flower. At least, according to the books they allowed us in the Circle. The odor attracts botflies. Rafflesias are — a parasitic species." He frowned. "Strange to see them here in the Free Marches."

"Quite." Fenris scanned the wall that surrounded the village. "The question is, are they a decoration or a warning?"

"The gate is open. It is possible the village has nothing to do with Hunger."

"I sincerely doubt it." Fenris huffed a short sigh. "Well. Let us see what we find."

They approached the gate and crossed into the village proper. The terrain was a notched series of limestone shelves dense with stone cottages, the roofs woven with lichen and bulrush. Stray vines crept across the gravel paths, sporting more specimens of the curious flowers. All was quiet save for a lone lamplighter, a young man precariously standing on tiptoe to light a high torch. Perhaps a third of the houses were lit from within, and the rest stood dark and silent.

"You there," Anders called, and the lamplighter glanced about, missing the torch completely. He lowered his wick.

"Me, serah?"

"Yes. Tell us, whereabouts is the inn?"

"You'd have us sleep here?" Fenris muttered between gritted teeth.

"The inn?" The lamplighter removed his cap and wiped his forehead. "I'd say it shut down close to two years ago. There's a pub, though. Might have a couple spare rooms."

"I see. Not many visitors, then?"

"Not many travelers in this corner of the Marches, serah."

"Strange flora you have here," Fenris said.

The lamplighter glanced down at a cluster of rafflesias that clung to a cottage wall. "Ah, you mean these? Didn't used to get them. We had a strange season a few years back, awful strange, when the village Lord died."

"Did he?"

"Yes, serah. Lord Croceum. Fine man. Loved his daughter more than anything. The place was lousy with crocuses back then, red as rouge-cakes. Quite sad when he died. Broke everyone's heart. These ugly plants sprouted up not long after. Now the entire cliffside stinks like a charnel house."

"How," Anders said slowly, "many years ago, did you say?"

"Not sure. Three, maybe four."

Anders turned to Fenris. "Well. A drink certainly seems to be in order, don't you agree?" He nodded to the lamplighter. "Thank you, serah. And where is that pub?"

He pointed with his wick, the flame streaking along the end of the long pole. "Just up that way along the cliff. Sign says 'The Adder's Root.'"

They thanked him and hurried off, and he stretched back up toward the torch. It flared to life as they passed, throwing their shadows against the darkened cottages.

"You heard him?" Anders said under his breath.

"Of course I heard him."

"Four years ago. That was when Hawke arrived in Kirkwall, was it not? Strange coincidence, that."

"More than coincidence."

They approached a squat public house that ran to the very edge of the cliff. It indeed bore a sign, "The Adder's Root," in elaborate script over a carving of a strange flower, all pointed spadix and spathe, like the head of a spear. They paused before the door and glanced at one another briefly, and then they went in.

A low fire crackled and spit in a central hearth. This and a small glassed lamp at the bar provided the only illumination, which seemed to lessen as the sun sank lower. Tables and chairs stood empty over a rust-colored throw rug. A single patron slumped at the bar, downing a flagon of ale, and a barmaid banged trays in the washbasin.

Anders lingered, and Fenris went to the bar and sat. The barmaid turned to him, her expression weary and unchanging.

"Dalish?" she said pointedly, as she looked him up and down.

"Thirsty." He tapped a trio of coppers against the counter. The other patron drank deeply from his flagon and ignored them.

She held out her hand. The lines in her palm were etched black with dirt. He dropped the coins onto it.

"Sun Blonde Vintage."

"Don't got it." She closed her fingers around the coins. "Sack mead, ale, or nothing."

"Fine. Sack, then."

"Never seen Dalish tattoos like that," she said, pocketing the coins, and she bustled away with a glass as the lone patron raised his head and finally noticed them.

Anders crossed the room. He did not see how the stranger's eyes alighted on Fenris, how they followed the silver paths along his arms to his throat, to his face. Fenris watched the barmaid vanish into the larder and, feeling eyes upon him like prodding hands, returned the stranger's gaze with a scowl.

"Yes?" he said impatiently.

The man smiled. His face, well-cut and boyish, bore a shade of noblesse that was absent from the few locals they'd seen. His nose was long and avian beneath sharp eyes. A crop of black curls drifted about his face.

"Not Dalish, those markings," he said. Traces of a foreign accent gilded his words.

"No," Fenris said.

"Magnificent work, regardless."

Fenris merely glowered at the larder door, and the barmaid returned, setting an egg-shaped glass of mead in front of him. He seized it and drank. The wine flashed gold in the firelight.

The stranger looked to Anders. "Traveling?" he said lightly.

"Passing through," Anders said, shaking his head at the barmaid when she approached him expectantly.

"I see. You do not look like a Marcher. A refugee, then, like so many others? From the Blight?"

Anders nodded. "Very good," he said. "And your accent?"

The man's smile widened, and he propped his jaw against his fist, where golden rings shimmered. "My father hails from Orlais," he said. "I myself am from Ostwick. Florian." He nodded. "Of the Lefebvre family."

"Pleasure," Anders said, as Fenris threw back his head and drained his glass. "So you are traveling as well?"

"Alas, no. I make a humble living here, as a butcher. 'Tis an enlightening way of life."

"I see. Have you lived here long?"

"Not long."

"Before, perchance, the death of Lord, ah —"

The black eyebrows lifted. "Croceum? Yes."

"Right. We noticed some strange flowers at the village gate, and strewn all about. A villager told us that they have not always been here."

"Ah. Yes. They are a favorite of the Lady Croceum."

"His wife?"

The butcher shook his head. "Daughter. A lovely eccentric. One of the flowers was given to her as a gift by an esteemed visitor. They've since rather taken to the place."

Anders scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I didn't think such plants would flourish in a mountain clime."

"Ah, but the air here has grown quite warm over the years. Some say it is the final breath of the late Lord, gone out of him."

"Poetic," Fenris said, waving to the barmaid, who took his glass back to the larder.

Florian's gaze alighted on him once more. "And you," he said. "From where have you traveled?"

"It does not matter where I am from," Fenris said.

"I see. Your companion here," and he nodded to Anders, "has quite a telltale look about him. Such light hair, as in the arid lands. You are from the Anderfels?"

Anders blinked. "Quite impressive."

Florian laughed. "I am well-traveled, myself. Your name?"

"Anders."

"Anders of the Anderfels." And he laughed again, pleasantly, each note like music. "Very good, very good. You are a delight, serah."

Anders smiled, despite himself. Fenris reached for his second glass of mead.

"We were hoping to find a room for the night," Anders said.

"But the inn, you see, has closed."

"So we were told."

"Allow me to help." Florian drew from his breast pocket a silver coin and pushed it toward the barmaid. "When I arrived at the Root tonight, I was in quite a poor mood. You have lifted my spirits considerably. I personally serve the Lady Croceum. Her house will have plenty of room for you tonight."

Fenris looked at Anders sharply, who said, "Oh, my. That's unnecessary —"

"It is my pleasure." Florian pushed back his stool and offered his hand. "I will not hear otherwise. Come and meet Lady Croceum. I am sure you have many interesting stories she would love to hear. I imagine she would adore telling you more about the flowers, as well."

Anders smiled uncertainly and grasped his hand. "Well," he said, "how could we refuse?"

"You cannot." Florian's lips pulled back, just slightly, from his perfect teeth.

#

Florian escorted them from the Adder's Root to a flower-riddled path ascending the cliffside. The sun had long vanished, and the pair of moons lit the limestone with a subtle glitter. Fenris and Anders exchanged meaningful glances as they followed the lean, boyish butcher: Fenris glared, at which Anders helplessly lifted his eyebrows, prompting Fenris to nod at the way ahead, where a stately, if modestly-sized, manor awaited them. Anders saw then the rafflesias strung in the door frame, numerous and lurid and reeking, like fleshy tumors.

An elven servant opened the door for them, and for a moment he appeared startled when he saw Fenris, though he snapped to attention as Florian spoke.

"Grasin, please alert the Lady Croceum that she will have guests tonight. Ser Anders of the Anderfels," he said with a grin, "and his traveling companion, a reticent elf etched in marvelous silver."

"Of course, messere."

"And add two place settings to the table. I am sure that our guests are quite hungry."

"Yes, messere."

His stare lingered on Fenris and Anders, and he was gone.

"Please, come in." Florian led them through a foyer furnished in glossy dark woods and precisely-cut stone. Fenris glanced around, acutely aware of the silence in this place: no other servants seemed to be about. They next passed through a drawing room that smelled strongly of fresh varnish, its windows draped in heavy velvet, and from there they entered a dining room, in which a long table was set for two.

"Take your seats," Florian said. "Dinner shall be served very soon, and then you will be free to freshen up and rest. I shall go fetch the Lady. Grasin will return with your tableware."

He waited first for them to sit down, and left, leaving the doors to the drawing room open, so that the odor of varnish lingered.

"Quite eager to have us, that one," Fenris remarked.

"We'll see what the Lady of the village has to say," Anders said. "Considering the oddities that have occurred here since Hunger followed Marian from Ferelden . . ."

"Suppose they slit our throats while we sleep?"

"Why would they? Ser Lefebvre seems friendly enough."

"But this woman, this 'lovely eccentric' . . ."

A voice sang out then: "Ah, guests! Wonderful, wonderful!"

They rose from their seats. A young woman, younger than they expected, skipped through the drawing room and curtsied to them extravagantly. She wore a poppy-colored dress with flowing skirts and a generous bustle. The red of her hair nearly matched the dress, blanching a youthful, freckled face. Her feet, beneath a lacy hem, were petite and bare. Anders bowed in return. Fenris briefly nodded his head.

"So good to meet you." She flounced up to Fenris and, much to his surprise, took both of his hands and kissed them. She smiled up at him. "I am Lady Dragana Croceum."

"A pleasure," he stammered.

"What fearsome claws!" she cried, tapping the points of his fingers.

Florian entered the room then, followed by Grasin, who carried two sets of plates and cutlery.

"You shall have to remove them before dinner," Florian remarked.

"Nonsense, poppycock," Dragana said. "They are beautiful. Though, even more beautiful . . ." And she turned his hands over to admire his palms. ". . . are these strange and shimmery tattoos. You are quite a sight, lovely stranger."

"Now, Lady Croceum. You're embarrassing him. And again you have forgotten your cane."

"Hush, Florian." She laughed, light and brassy, and squeezed Fenris's hands. She released him and hopped into a chair, at which Grasin was laying a fine bone plate. "Everyone sit, please sit. Grasin, fetch the wine, will you?"

They sat. Grasin hurried from the room, and returned moments later with a decanter of jewel-red wine, which he emptied skillfully into their glasses. Dragana stood and raised her glass.

"To our guests," she announced, "weary travelers, please make yourselves at home. I do hope you find our hospitality acceptable."

"Here, here," Florian said, and Fenris and Anders nodded their thanks, and they drank.

Anders sipped his wine politely. Fenris waited an imperceptible second, until he'd seen the throbbing of his hosts' throats, and he downed his glass with a single gulp.

"My, my," Dragana said. "So glad to see you enjoy the wine."

He said nothing, and Anders hurriedly supplied, "We thank you for the generosity. It is undeserved."

Grasin returned with a great platter, upon which he balanced glazed and steaming meats, dishes of soup, and a basket heaped with bread. He lowered it to the table with little effort, though it must have been immensely heavy, and began to serve them all. He caught Fenris's eye as he leaned over Dragana's plate, and held it, and hastily returned to his work, as Fenris wrinkled his brow.

"Florian says you are interested in the rafflesias," Dragana chirped between swallows of wine.

"Ah. Yes. Quite unusual in this part of Thedas, I understand?" Anders said.

Grasin circled the table and distributed cuts of meat onto Fenris's plate.

"'Tis absolutely a rarity, in the Free Marches," Dragana said. "I am fortunate to have received one. I planted it in my garden, and it began to grow all over, happy as can be."

Grasin bent to one side, presumably to adjust a porringer of soup next to Fenris's plate, and whispered, "Do not eat the food."

"The, ah, scent does not bother you?" Anders said.

Grasin bowed himself out. Fenris did not turn his head.

Dragana gave an enchanting smile. "My sense of smell is rather lacking," she said. "I am often ill, you see."

"The Lady is delicate," Florian said.

"I see. My apologies for calling attention."

"Not at all, not at all." She plucked a roll of bread and licked up a bead of honey. "I do not mind sharing. Please, feel welcome to ask what you wish."

She bit into the roll, and Florian ladled soup into his mouth. Fenris glanced subtly at his dishes. Bands of coarse, treacly sauce coated the strips of pink meat. Stewed bones and offal steeped in liver-colored broth. Anders lifted his knife and fork. Fenris reached beneath the table and jabbed him, gently but firmly, with a single claw. Anders jumped, but their hosts seemed not to notice.

"Ser Lefebvre has told us that he is from Ostwick," Fenris said, perhaps too loudly. "What brought you here, to this place?"

"Oh, we were betrothed," Dragana said airily. She giggled again.

Fenris raised his eyebrows. "Were you?"

"Yes," Florian said, taking a considerable draught of wine.

"May I ask, then, since I am welcome to," Fenris said, as Anders shot him an irritated look, "why you are not married?"

"My father bankrupted our estate," Dragana said. She sawed a cutlet of meat. "Florian's daddy was not happy."

"A banker," Florian explained.

"But Florian stayed behind. Such a sweetheart."

"And so your father was still alive then?" Fenris said.

"Briefly," Dragana said.

"Erm," said Anders.

"He wandered off into the mountains," Florian remarked. "Not for the first time. He was a frequent depressive. He likely flung himself from the cliffs."

"I see." Anders lifted his wine glass and lowered it again.

Dragana braced both hands against the tabletop and pushed herself up. She stared pointedly at their plates. "Why, you haven't touched a morsel," she said.

Anders glanced, far too obviously, at Fenris.

"Eat, please." Dragana smiled. "Both of you."

"Alas, our journey this day has been long, exceedingly long," Fenris said. "We are utterly fatigued."

"Utterly," Anders said quickly.

"Oh, but it is so early."

"We traveled through the night," Anders said.

"A pity." She teased, "Perhaps you should not have drunk all of that wine so quickly, Ser Silver Elf. It has made you sleepy, and is robbing me of your company."

"My deepest apologies," Fenris said. He rose to his feet. "I do not wish to appear ungrateful."

Anders and Florian rose as well. Dragana remained seated.

"Promise you will dine with me again," she said, pointedly, to Fenris, "before you leave."

"I would not refuse," Fenris said, giving a short bow.

"We thank you," Anders added.

"Well. Florian." Dragana waved her little hand. "Though it pains me, please show our guests to their rooms. It is as they wish."

Florian went to the door. "Come, gentlemen."

They followed. Fenris glanced, momentarily, back. Dragana was smiling at him. She gave a little wave, and he turned away, a chill climbing with icy fingers up his spine.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 8 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 8

In silence, Fenris and Anders negotiated the peaks of the Vimmark Mountains. They travelled north, carrying only what was needed, and were weighed down by heavy thoughts. After the ritual, Fenris had palmed the tiny wooden horse, and Anders, noticing this, had insisted they throw it into the fire.

"It may give Hunger some window to spy on us," Anders had said, to which Fenris had replied, "The demon already knows we are coming. I say let him quake with every step."

They hiked into the forest that bristled just beyond the mountains. They navigated densely-packed silver pines and pushed through golden stalks of flax. Underfoot they crushed rosemary and watercress, suffusing the air with fragrance. Neither of them was a stranger to such terrain: both Anders and Fenris had scouted unknown wilderness in their respective flights from those who hunted them. Despite the ease of this familiarity, an unsettling pall had fallen over each of their moods.

Close to midnight, they made a meager camp in a closed-up thicket. Anders swiftly built a fire and lit it by magic. Fenris produced a flask from his satchel and gulped down liquor. When he coughed, Anders said, "I take it that isn't water."

Fenris capped the flask. "It is enough."

"I should have suspected that your best survival instincts would lie at the bottom of a bottle."

"Instincts that have preserved my life so far. You'll find I shall do as I please. You see, I have no demonic spirit constantly henpecking me about my habits."

Anders tossed rushes onto the fire, which smoked and sent up sparks. "After this ordeal I shall be glad to be rid of you," he muttered.

"I do appreciate your penchant for stating the obvious."

Anders glared. "And I see Danarius did not keep you around for your charming personality."

Fenris smiled wryly. "My expertise was in swift and indiscriminate killing. Do not forget that."

"One does not forget a rabid dog's teeth."

"Your posturing bores me." Fenris unscrewed the flask again and took a long draught.

"A shame," Anders said hotly, "that Marian has suffered so much just so I could enjoy your company."

"You did not have to come," Fenris said.

"And have her trade one monster for another? Hardly."

"I am making amends. For your part, you do not seem too troubled by loneliness."

Anders's frown deepened. "I would give everything," he said tightly, "to have her back."

"Everything? You would abandon the mages that you claim need rescuing? You would abandon your so-called noble cause?"

"I love her."

"You are a hypocrite of the highest order."

"Says the beast who toils only in self-obsessions."

"I have never claimed to be anything more than what I am." Fenris rolled his eyes. "You play at love. You play at impassioned speech. You would rend your garments over a trodden-on mouse. It sickens me."

"It sickens you that others have something to fight for." Anders shook his head. "I don't know why I bother trying to reason with you. I fight for them — my people — and I fight for her. The difference between you and me is a sense of obligation. You wish only to repay debts. I love my people, and I love her."

Fenris ground an armored claw across the flask, and there came the squeal of metal, slow and minacious. "How quickly your attentions flit from here to there," he said. "You gnashed your teeth and wept and carried on when I told you she'd been taken. 'I love her, I love her,' you croon, even now. So last night how many times did you say the same to that piteous whore?"

Surprise rewrote Anders's face. He pushed himself from the ground. "Whore —?"

A flock of nightbirds burst screaming from the walls of the thicket. They surged overhead in frightened circles. Fenris sprang up and snatched his sword. Anders careened back. The birds gave a final lurch and tore back into the trees, whipping the branches into a frenzy. Anders stared around, his eyes like bald globes in the firelight.

"Maker," he said.

There came, then, a creeping heat upon the wind, like the breath of some living creature. Fenris felt the tingle of his markings and the slow, telltale rise of goosebumps.

"Arm yourself," he uttered. Tension strung his muscles into steel cables and then released, flooding his veins with adrenaline.

Anders had already lifted his staff from the nettles. "I feel it," he said.

The heat rose in a brief, billowing cloud. "The demon," Fenris said, "carries with it a feverous haze. But this . . ."

"Suppose Hunger has come to meet us?"

"No. This feels different." Fenris turned, tensing his fingers against the handle of his sword. "You saw the movement of the birds?"

"Erratic. They circled about. Instead of going straight through."

"We are surrounded," Fenris said.

They stood back-to-back in the center of the thicket. The heat pulsed and faded again. Fenris had been right: it came from all sides. A peal of blue light emitted from Anders, and a faint glow remained, seething against the backs of the pines. Fenris sucked in a deep breath, held it, and released it through his nose.

"Now, then," he said.

A torrent of heat sluiced over their heads. Black forms rained down from the trees, squat and slick and lithe, screaming and full of teeth. Fenris swung and split a leathery hide. Anders hurled great daggers of ice that thudded into their marks and splintered into the trees.

Demons, no less than a dozen of them, dove with mouths agape. Fenris blazed silver and charged. Anders caught a pair of them against his staff and battled them back. They trampled over the fire and scattered kindling. Fenris seized one of them with a ghostly hand and cleaved its skull.

Teeth ripped and sank into Anders's shoulder, and he roared in fury. Cold light streamed from his eyes and Justice's voice thundered in the night. A second demon leapt upon him and snapped its jaws around his forearm. He reeled and tried to fight them back, and still another bit down into the meat of his thigh.

A spectral lyrium shade flashed forth, and Fenris wrenched the demon from Justice's shoulder. His fist closed and ribbons of blood striped them both. From the staff, arcane energy unspooled in gleaming threads and blasted another demon to the ground. Justice raised his booted foot and stomped down, and stomped again, baring his teeth.

"Down!" Fenris shouted, and swung out his sword, and Justice ducked low. The blade hacked through one of the creatures in mid-leap. It sent the remainder of them scurrying to the edges of the thicket, where they chittered and stared. Justice snapped forth his staff and doused them all with hot, blinding light, roasting them in their skins.

The air grew very cold, and Justice's glow faded. Anders dropped to one knee and clutched his forearm. Fenris remained very still, panting, and he looked slowly around, studying the movement of the trees.

"Any more?" Anders gasped.

Fenris shook his head, relaxing his body. He scrubbed sweat from his face.

"Well. Hunger certainly knows we're coming," Anders said. He waved his staff and whispered words of healing. He cringed and his wounds knitted up.

"Such a small welcoming party," Fenris said. He turned a full circle, unable to trust the nighttime silence.

"Perhaps it's underestimated us?"

Fenris knelt and turned over a leathery black carcass. He recognized it as a lesser entity, a demon minion of the kind who cavorted in stolen flesh. He scowled.

"All of these beasts," he said to Anders, "were once human. The poor wretches were possessed."

Anders grimly surveyed the fallen creatures. "This does not bode well for what awaits us."

"That village that you saw —"

"We cannot be prepared to face an army."

"Even so, we are running out of time. We cannot leave her."

"I did not say we would leave her," Anders shot back.

"Then we will press on." Fenris sheathed his sword. "We cannot rest here. Not tonight. We have no choice. We will press on."

#

Dragana found, increasingly with the passage of time, and with the trembling of her limbs, that she remembered very little of her childhood. There had been much dancing, a great deal, yes; how she'd loved twirling round and round so that her skirts bloomed, full and flowing. At times she could recall the sound of her father's laughter when she'd taken center stage at some village festival or another, and she would leap and spin with abandon, drinking in the praise and shouts of encouragement that the villagers would rain over her like petals.

She did recall, very clearly, waking up in the garden one particular evening in autumn. She'd been six, opening her eyes to ashen gray clouds, and snow had been falling for some time. She'd sat up among red snowy crocuses and brushed the powder from her eyes, and had seen a strange man burst from the house, and he'd bent over her, chanting, "Dragana, Dragana," and she'd parted her cold lips and inquired sweetly, "Who is Dragana, sir?"

For the first time in her life, Dragana had sensed that something was truly wrong. For her father had wept and wept, and gathered her up, and said nothing more as he'd born her inside.

From that day on, Dragana regained her senses but never again the stability of her legs. At times she trembled and shook with such violence that she was confined to bed for days. She no longer danced at springtime festivals, and no longer did she venture beyond the locked doors of the family estate. She suffered fainting spells that left her witless and dizzy, and saw again behind her eyelids those ashen gray clouds and falling snow. Her father pled with healers and medicine men and apostates, and spent a great deal of gold on bitter potions and foul-smelling ointments. The lord of a humble village can only do so much, however, and her house grew poor, and her father became withdrawn and hopeless.

Dragana recalled, though she'd loved him very much, growing weary of her father's dire disposition. Dallying in bed bored her so. His constant weeping annoyed her, and she snuck away from the Croceum estate as often as she could, only to be collected by the harangued Grasin.

At fourteen she was to be wed to Florian Lefebvre of Ostwick. He had come to call with his father, a wealthy banker, the summer before her promised birthday, and the elder Lefebvre became enraged at the destitution of the Croceum name. Florian had wandered the gardens as his father ranted and spat, and came upon Dragana bathing and singing in the lily pond. He'd frozen in place, transfixed by the sight of her draped only in purple hyacinths and the damp tresses of her red hair. She'd smiled at him and invited him to stay, and he'd sat and watched her until Grasin discovered them and flung a bedsheet around her shoulders and hurried her back inside.

Florian had returned to his father to declare his love for the prospective bride, only to discover that Lefebvre had broken the betrothal. Florian then disavowed his own name and pledged himself to Dragana, and Lefebvre had returned to Ostwick in a violent fury.

There would be no wedding. After suffering such disgrace, Dragana's father had vanished into the Vimmark Mountains, leaving his household in a state of panic. Dragana had been glad to be rid of him, happy to tease the lovesick Florian, who'd apprenticed himself to the village butcher. For two years they courted and enjoyed one another, until the day that her father returned, harrowed and haunted-looking, with a strange guest.

It was then that the Lord came into their lives, and the Croceum house changed, and Dragana's father vanished once more, this time for good.

Dragana now smiled dreamily at such sweet memories. Florian stood on the other side of a dark glossy table, scraping his cleaver against a length of honing steel. Between them lay a delectable feast on scrolled silver tableware. Deftly he began to carve an enormous roast into steaming slabs. Dragana poked her finger into a tureen of stew, and he shook his carving fork at her.

"Mind your manners," he said.

"Silly Florian, supposing I have manners to mind." She stirred the hot stew with her finger and licked it clean. "Mm. The stew is heady with garlic. Delectable."

"Well, last time you loved it so."

"Indeed!" She pushed herself up over the table and arranged her knees upon her chair. She plucked and prodded at various dishes, tasting this and that. He swatted at her hand, and she whined, "Oh, you are a beast, a beast."

"Honestly. Let me finish this."

"I will do as I please!" And she snatched up a plate of liver and dropped it loudly at her place setting. Florian rolled his eyes and continued carving. "I think I shall begin with this," she declared, scooting back down into her seat. She cut a small slice and ate it, chewing with relish. "Delightful."

"I am pleased, my dear."

She sighed decadently. "Oh, Florian, it is just so delicate and soft, like custard on the tongue. Do tell me, is it from the young chap I saw delivering bread?"

"Yes, my dear. The baker's boy. You'll find the roast to be quite tender as well. The meat is sensuous and yielding to every bite. It's been slow-roasted for hours."

"Ooh, I cannot wait. Just the thought of it makes this liver seem absolutely pedestrian." She slid her finger back into the stew. "And the stew here — his blood?"

"Yes, my dear."

She sucked her finger clean. "Oh, you spoil me. You spoil me."

"It is eternally my pleasure, darling."

Florian finished his work and sat across from her, serving himself, as she took little bites and nips of everything, and he refilled her glass of wine over and over until she was lolling and giggling over the table. He watched carefully as she propped herself up to reach for a platter of sweetbreads, and her elbow began to violently shake, so that she nearly fell onto her own plate.

He sipped at his stew and drained his own glass. "So, my dear," he said. "Has the Lord spoken any further of his promises?"

Dragana wobbled back into her seat and popped a morsel into her mouth. "He has been somewhat distracted," she said, and she wrinkled her nose like a child.

"I see. It has been . . . four years, has it not?"

"It's the bitch's fault," she sniffed.

"And she has only so recently arrived," he remarked. "But he says he has been pleased with us. With you."

"Yes. Of course. He has been my everything, my whole life. Why do you question that?"

He shook his head. "I do not question it. Of course not, my dear. I am merely concerned for your well-being."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. He promised to take the tremors away, did he not?"

"Of course."

"But still you are not well."

"It takes time," she spat. She gave a little huff. "We must continue to do everything he asks, and he asks of us so little. He has treated us well and here you are, speaking poorly of him."

"I am not."

"Would you like me to go to him, then, and inform him of your doubts?"

Florian lowered his cutlery. "That would be quite unnecessary."

Dragana mopped her lips with a napkin and flung it to the table. "Unnecessary? Absolutely not. I shall fetch him right now." She shoved her chair back.

Florian rose to his feet. "Now, Dragana, honestly —"

"Ungrateful wretch, that's what you are, such an ungrateful wretch." To his surprise, tears were collecting in her eyes. "How dare you, to say that I am not well."

She spun around and Florian darted around the table. He touched her shoulder. "My dear —"

"Do not!" She jerked away and sprinted to the door, and with a thrill of alarm Florian caught her round the middle and lifted her, thrashing and squealing, off her feet. He staggered back and the heel of her hand smashed into his face, and her little foot jabbed his stomach, and he turned then with a growing fury and flung her onto the table. She gave a theatrical shriek as plates and bowls clattered; he bore down on her shoulders and shook her once, twice.

"Silence! Stop wailing like a foolish child."

"Let go, oh, you are hurting me."

"I said be silent!" He ground his mouth against hers and she squealed again, twisting away, and he pulled her back, kissing her savagely. "Oh, how I love you," he moaned. "Oh, my dear. How I love you."

She bit down on his lip and he jerked back, dripping blood. He slapped her and she howled. "I have given everything for you," he said. "I have given everything — my home, my inheritance — gladly, and I would do so again. Why." He shook her again. "Why will you not love me?"

"My Lord is everything," she cried out. "Oh, my Lord, save me, save me."

"Dragana, please. I beg you. Please." He stroked her reddening cheek. "Why must you be so cruel?"

"Get off of me, get off, get off."

"I cannot bear it, these long years. You wander about as though you are dreaming. You glut yourself with flesh and hot blood."

"It is all for my Lord."

"Your Lord, who has done for you so little. Who I have never even seen. How am I to know that he is not just some hallucination?"

"If that is what you truly think, then why do you stop me?"

Florian said nothing. Tears had rolled down her face and wetted his fingers.

"I will do all that he asks," Dragana whispered. "Everything. He will make me walk again."

"How can you be certain?"

"Because I have never in my life felt such love. Such happiness. Because I have never felt so beautiful than when he makes love to me. I am in awe at his touch, at his slightest glance. Without him, I have nothing. I am nothing."

She began to silently weep, her body giving little helpless fits and starts. Florian relaxed his grip, and slowly he pulled away, his heart cleft with pain. She turned onto her side and pulled her knees to her chest, upsetting her glass of wine, which toppled to one side and flooded the tablecloth. The crimson stain seeped into the tresses of her hair.

"I am nothing," she wept, and Florian merely watched her, unable to speak.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 7 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 7

Fenris awoke on a bedroll, lurching upright as though to keep himself from falling. The taste of bile cleaved to his tongue. Anders, on his hands and knees, was scrubbing the floor.

"You were sick all over the glyph," Anders said, and Fenris spat several times. Anders wrinkled his nose. "It smells of sour wine, of course. Honestly."

Fenris ground his fists into his temples. "I was there," he murmured. "I was — the demon. But so much of it is leaving me. Like a dream."

Anders vigorously rubbed his brush with a cake of soap and scrubbed harder. "I saw," he said. "Justice saw."

"He saw everything?"

Anders nodded.

Fenris covered his mouth, his eyes listing to the ceiling. "Never have I felt such overwhelming hunger. I wanted to — I could have devoured the world, and never been satisfied. The torment. I can still feel flashes of it." He gagged and swallowed the bile roughly back. He spat acrid mucus to the floor. "Maker. I remember. I was eating people. Men. The Templars from the cave."

Anders nodded again and looked away. "I saw."

"I wanted her." Fenris raked his claws through his hair. "I wanted her more than anything I have ever wanted before." He did not mention the familiarity of this sensation, and hated himself, intensely, in that moment.

"Do you remember the last thing that you saw?" Anders said.

Fenris shook his head. "You — Justice — jarred me back." Then, accusingly: "You pulled me back, just as I had her. Just as I was about to —" And horror dawned on him, stunning him into silence.

Anders stared gravely at nothing, then seized a bucket and flung water onto the floor. He mopped with short, angry jerks.

"She must still live," Fenris said. "She must."

"Just as those Templars still live?" Anders said. "Just as all of the others the demon has devoured?"

"You can't tell me you're giving up."

Anders hurled the mop down. "Never," he said.

"Then we must go." Fenris scrambled up, and stumbled, and righted himself. He spat a final time and collected his sword and satchel. "We must go immediately. When I took her — when the demon took her — I cannot remember — but Justice must have seen —"

Anders had already taken up his staff. "What Justice sees, I see," he said. "The demon traveled partially in the Fade. But it traversed the mountain, a forest. It went north of Sundermount."

"I felt a sense of home. It has a den."

"I saw the roofs of a village. It must be nearby there. If we find the village, we will find the demon."

"And then," Fenris growled, "I shall cut her free of its guts myself."

#

Enfolded in flesh, Hawke remembered:

Bethany was dead. Her mother wailed with anguish and clutched the girl to her breast. Carver screamed and charged the beast that had killed her. Hawke knelt, her heart pounding in her ears, and gripped a wound in her shoulder, the tissue soft and fragrant and wet.

The ogre laughed — had been laughing — and tossed Carver aside. His blade nicked the beast on the arm and did nothing. Hawke swayed to her feet and clutched her staff. The scars along her thighs, years old, seared her. They drove her forward. She twisted her fingernails through ragged flesh, comforted by the scent of her own blood.

She raised her staff with an incantation. She gave her fingers a final twist, spilling blood down her breast. She'd learned of the great power in blood freshly spilled. The ogre turned its massive head towards her. Her blood arced and lanced into a red mist, and the mist fell upon the ogre, and penetrated the pores in its hide.

The beast convulsed. Its head pulled back and its lips twisted in a horrible grimace. Hawke shrieked for Carver to charge. He flew to the ogre with unmitigated fury. His blade split the massive throat. The ogre fell, stiff and spraying blood, like a tree that thundered to the ground. Heaving, Carver collapsed, and he and their mother stared at her in horrified wonder.

Hawke remembered.

"You are enjoying your gift, little thing?" Hunger crooned within the Fade, within her dreams.

Hawke shrugged impassively.

"You have grown into them very well," he said. His fanged grin gleamed.

"I am already an apostate," she said. "I suppose being a maleficar hasn't changed things much."

"You see, then, how special you are to me."

"I would not call it a gift. But it has been helpful."

He beamed. Waves of heat radiated from him.

"I must ask you something."

"Yes, little thing?"

Hawke fixed her gaze upon him. "No, I will not ask you. I will tell you. You must leave Anders alone."

He chuckled. It rumbled throughout the texture of her dreams.

"I am being serious. I don't care what jealousies you may harbor. He has nothing to do with you."

"You are mine," he said simply.

"As I will be. But for now, I am my own."

"You may play at such." He lifted his spiked shoulders in a parodic shrug. "Do you claim to love this whelp?"

"I do."

"Ah, but he does not see your dreams. I do, little thing."

She frowned. The fabric of the Fade rippled and tugged around him. He changed, as she had seen him change before, but now his flesh became soft and pale; his crown of spikes melted into fawn-colored hair; the lanterns of his eyes became human, and blue. Arrayed in gleaming armor, Ser Clerval stepped toward her.

"I have seen him in your dreams," he said.

Hawke turned away. Ser Clerval reached for her, brushing her wrist with gentleness.

"Do not do this," she said. "Do not."

"How the memory of this fallen wretch returns to you, over and over," he said, pulling her close. "Do you forget how he hunted you? How he brought you to me?"

"I have no control over such dreams," she said, turning her face away as his beard brushed her cheek.

"I can make those dreams into reality. As much of a reality as can exist in the Fade."

She pushed him back. "Don't toy with me," she said. "Do not. His memory haunts me. I don't care if that amuses you. But do not play at shadows. Maker's breath, after all these years, your mockeries affect me no longer."

"Mockery?" he said, Ser Clerval said, feigning hurt. "I would not mock the one that I love so much."

"Love? You are incapable of love."

"Am I?" His face darkened.

"You will leave Anders alone. You may take your fury out on me. I do not care. I am used to your tantrums." She shook her head. "Blood magic repairs as well as it damages. You taught me that much."

"Indeed," he said, and his face, his body liquefied and shifted. Anders gently smiled at her. "My love."

She turned away in disgust. "Give me your word."

"Does my word mean that much to you, little thing?"

"It will have to do," she said.

"Your trust in me — 'tis such a sweet thing." He shrugged. "You shall have it, then. My word. But know this." He raised a finger, which was and was not Anders's, smooth and soft and tipped now with a long black talon. "Should he provoke me in any way, his life is forfeit. If he must know of me, he must also know our contract is not one with which he can interfere."

"It was a choice I made," she affirmed. "My choice alone."

"The same applies to that nosy spirit he harbors within. Justice." He chuckled. "A foolish burden, indeed. Now." He took her hands and pulled her against him. His claws gripped her wrists, gently but insistently. "My darling. Let us seal it with a kiss."

Upon waking, Hawke rubbed her mouth vigorously and slid from the bed. Anders snored quietly among the sheets, and she did not look at him, shaken by the image of Hunger speaking with her lover's face. She crossed the room to the oak chiffonier and stared at a small jewelry box. She stroked its hammered-metal lid uncertainly, and then eased it open. Within were two items: the miniscule horse figurine and a glinting brass pin.

She took the pin and raised it up. Its point flashed, hair-thin and sharp.

"Do you still bind, little charm?" she whispered. "Or have you lost all that you are, after so many years?"

She took the figurine and turned it over and over. She grazed her thumb against its roughness. Hot anger flooded through her. She jabbed the back of the horse's head with the pin, pulled back, and stabbed harder. The pin broke through the wood and sank easily. She studied it for a moment, held her breath, and pushed the remainder of the pin into the token. It vanished altogether, save for a faint glint of brass when the light hit just so.

"Coward," she said, to no one, to herself, to the demon that lurked at the corners of her dreams.

#

Dragana found Florian bent over the table in his workshop, raising a cleaver into the air. She flounced to his side just as the cleaver hit its mark and crunched through bone.

"How lovely!" she sang, and Florian traded his cleaver for a boning knife.

"Come to admire my work, have you?"

"My Lord sends his greetings," she said, giving a little twirl.

Florian glanced at her. She was resplendent in white and crimson silk, her face aglow. She steadied herself against the table and hooked her cane over his elbow.

"You will prepare my supper, will you?"

"Of course, my dear." He slipped the knife into the haunch of meat and worked at the bone, severing cartilage from flesh, then gripped the knob of bone and slid it free. It came out wet and shining.

"Florian, my Lord is troubled," Dragana said, her voice dropping low.

Florian guided the knife just beneath the skin, tugging it between thumb and forefinger. He swept the blade around the haunch and peeled the skin back in a ghostly layer. "Is he, now?"

"Yes. He has been alerted to invaders."

"I see."

"He is most unhappy."

"And who shall I be expecting?"

"Two men." She raised her little fingers. "An apostate who harbors a Fade-born spirit in his flesh. And a savage elf, wreathed in strange markings of silver."

"Hm." He skimmed the fat from the haunch and flicked the knife along the seam of two red muscles. The connective tissue gave way, and he cleanly pulled them apart.

"You shall have to sharpen your knife," she giggled.

"My dear. My knife is always sharp."

"I think," Dragana said, and then her voice dropped again to a whisper, "I think they're coming for the bitch."

"The young lady, you mean."

"The bitch." She frowned, indignant.

"Of course. And what would you have me do while we are awaiting their arrival?"

"Why, send an escort. I would certainly love to meet them." She ran a hand along the pale membrane of skin that Florian had set aside. "Strange silver markings," she murmured. "How lovely they would look plated on my Lord's table."

Florian nodded thoughtfully.

Dragana stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. "You are wonderful," she said. "Thank you, Florian."

"Anything for you, my dear."

[rubypop]

LINK: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1677449 NAME: Hunger - a story of blood magic and horror THEME: Horror, adventure CHARACTERS: Fenris, Anders, F!Hawke RESTRICTION: NC18 for violence and sexuality SUMMARY/KMEME PROMPT: The origins of Hawke's blood magic, explained. A demonic pact has caught up with her. Now it's up to Fenris and Anders to rescue her -- if they can stop bickering long enough.

To make the community more complete, I’d like to create a LIST OF FANFICS (written by you or suggested by you), to give visibility to young writers, and to provide good material to anyone who enjoys good reading.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 6 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 6

Dragana Croceum stepped into the copper tub. The servant Grasin milled about, glancing surreptitiously, as she steadied herself at the tub's edge. She ignored him and sat down as carefully as she could manage on shaking legs. The heat of the bath flooded her, near-scalding, and her skin pinkened, and she sighed with pleasure. Against the rim of the tub her hand twitched and twitched again, and she lowered it into the bath, which churned and swirled.

Grasin said, "The temperature is to your liking, milady?"

"I need Florian," she said. "Get him. And a flask of milk. Frothy this time, if you please."

He bowed and quit the room.

Dragana sang to herself and skimmed both arms just beneath the surface of the bath. She enjoyed the ripples and dips, enjoyed the grace of all liquid movement, in fact, for what she saw as a sense of causality appealed to her. Her trembling knees steadied now, and she sighed again.

Florian entered, frowning, and he shut the door quickly. "So you've moved the tub in here, have you?" he said at once.

She smiled exuberantly. "I am a flower," she said. "I prefer to dally in the sunlight."

"Think, my dear," he said, "should anyone see you bathing in the center of the drawing room. What then?"

She pouted. "Oh, you hate me so."

He closed the final curtain. "Just as I hate you for stringing rafflesias in the doorway, and wandering the village at all hours, and insisting on dancing about without your cane?"

"I would say so. You could use more flowers and wandering and dancing in your dusty life." She drew her hand from the bath and watched it drip, and she flicked her fingers so that the droplets scattered. "A beautiful pattern," she said. "Like stars. Little constellations."

Florian folded his arms. "You must —"

"Andraste's cunt, where is that milk?" She swung toward the door and screamed, "Grasin!"

The harried servant swept back into the room, balancing a cut-glass jug of milk. He bowed. "Deepest apologies, milady," he stuttered. "My very deepest." He offered the jug. "Is the quality satisfactory?"

Dragana seized the edges of the tub and shoved herself up, craning to peer at the foamy head that sloshed in the jug. Florian modestly looked away.

"It is sufficient," she said, easing back into the bath. Florian took the jug and sent Grasin away. She began her song once more and splashed at her freckled shoulders.

"You are preparing for the Lord?" he said.

"Of course, of course." She studied her palm. "I do need some color, don't you think? Some ruddiness to me. I hate for him to see me as I am. I've got the complexion of a corpse." She scowled at him. "Well, go on. Pour it in. Don't keep me waiting."

He tipped the jug over the tub and the milk streamed into the bath, white and frothy. She swirled it about with both hands and her face lit up with delight.

"Oh, lovely. So lovely. Oh, how beautiful I shall be for him."

Florian set the jug upon the floor and knelt behind her. He rolled back his sleeves and stroked her shoulders, pressing his cheek to hers.

"The Lord has been very pleased with you?" he murmured, and he slid his hands into the bath, closing them over her breasts.

She nodded dreamily. "Oh, Florian. I have never been so happy."

He nuzzled the feathery edge of her ear. "I see."

"Florian, our love was a mere precursor. The Lord, now — he is my whole life."

He nipped at her earlobe and she went on washing, her eyes distant and luminous. He worked his hands over her softness and kissed her throat, resigning to merely enjoy her. It had been long ago, a very long time ago, after all, and now the Lord had come calling. He must make do with what he could in the interim.

She giggled and flicked droplets at him. He reared back, startled, and scowled at his stained doublet.

"Must you be such a pest?" he said, carefully reaching for the muslin towel that lay folded by the tub.

"I am a pest because you bore me so," she said, and stood up. She staggered and he swept forth and caught her, and the bath sloshed and drenched his front, and he cursed.

"As graceful as a newborn ass," he spat, dragging her from the tub. "You could not have waited for Grasin? All of these clothes will need to be replaced."

"I say a little color is good for them," she said.

He heaved her to the floor and she wriggled and complained of the cold. He tossed the towels over her.

"A lady such as yourself, acting like a petulant child," he said with disgust.

"Lord and Lady," she sang.

"Get up and dry yourself now," he said. "I shall fetch Grasin to scrub the floor. Surely it will stain."

"Good! Good. Lovely red. I see you moving the tub. I am not done with it."

"You are done," he said firmly. "You will wait for Grasin. You will have him dress you and you will not go without your cane."

She rolled her eyes, but plucked up a towel obediently. "Pour the bath into the garden," she said. "Over the rafflesias. They will drink it up gratefully."

"As you wish, my dear."

Florian hauled the copper tub across the room, carefully so as not to spill, and she sang and swabbed herself dry, and he glanced back to see her standing and swaying, draped in towels. In her nakedness she was pink and scarlet and lovely. He pushed open the courtyard doors and dragged the tub along, off to pour milk and blood into the garden.

#

Anders awoke to Fenris standing over him and jerked back with a start.

"It's nearly mid-morning," Fenris said.

"Maker's breath," Anders said, rubbing his eye with annoyance. "How did you get in?"

Fenris scowled. "You left the clinic door unlocked." He flung the buckled surcoat at him. "Get dressed. We have work to do."

He stalked out. Anders cursed and climbed from the bed.

He found Fenris stuffing a satchel with potions from the supply chest. "No, by all means, help yourself. Are you going somewhere?"

"I found something," Fenris said, lashing the satchel closed. "While you've been mucking about and sleeping in, I've been searching for a way to find her."

Justice stirred within, and Anders flushed with rage. "How dare you accuse me —"

"Shut your mouth and look here." Fenris produced a small token from his tunic and held it aloft, glaring back at him.

"That is —" Anders swung forth. "That —"

Fenris's claws snapped around the horse figurine and he jerked his fist away. "It stays with me."

"Where did you find it? How could you have found it?"

"She left it," Fenris said. "For me to find."

Anders stayed rooted to the spot, clenching and unclenching his hands. "She's still had it," he said, "all of this time? That is the — the — horse, from the cave?"

Fenris nodded slowly.

"Where did you find it?"

"I was right," Fenris said bitterly. "She'd summoned the demon. I found, in my bedchamber, a pool of blood. Her blood. She'd performed a ritual of some kind, some wretched blood magic rite."

Anders remembered then the blood spattered on Hawke's thigh, and saw again the horror on her face when she'd looked upon him, and Fenris, and the knife. His shoulders slackened. "She'd opened one of the scars," he said. "She'd summoned it." He then shed a spate of blue light and roared, "She performed the rite where?"

Fenris's hand alighted on the pommel of his greatsword. "Control yourself, you fool, or we shall never get anywhere."

Anders sucked in his breath. "The figurine was there?"

"Yes. See how it was coated in blood?" And he parted his fingers to show him. "This must be the key to finding her. She must have known, she must have realized how much she was giving up, to plead for his aid."

"Give it here."

"I will not have you run off with it," Fenris growled.

"I have to find her."

"If blood magic were not involved," Fenris said, "if I could traverse the Fade myself, and pluck her from it, then I would not need you. But I am loathe to say I do."

"Well, then. I do not need you."

"You will need this." He grasped the figurine in his claws. "Therefore, you need me. I have a debt to repay."

"A debt, you say?" Anders laughed. "I say you've done enough damage, and the last thing she needs is more of you."

"I will not hide from the consequences," Fenris said evenly.

"And my punishment is spending more time in your presence." He shook his head. "Perhaps Marian will forgive me, then. Fine. I accept your aid. But you shall not come near her ever again, when all of this is over."

"That is for her to decide," Fenris said, and Anders gave him an odd look.

#

A journey to the Fade was needed, Anders determined, after Fenris had relinquished the totem to him. Fenris scowled and argued, and Anders, with great annoyance, insisted that it was the only way.

"We can use the figurine as a focus," he explained. "It may very well provide us some clues to her whereabouts. Or the demon's. You do not have to go to the Fade yourself. Justice and I can manage without you."

Fenris reasserted that he would not be left behind, Justice be damned. Anders stiffly agreed that he would go.

Neither of them mentioned the last time they had ventured to the Fade. They focused, instead, solely on Hawke.

And so Anders prepared the ritual once more, there in the middle of the clinic. Fenris watched suspiciously, his markings bristling and pulsing. His mind wandered to the drunken memory of entwined limbs and heaving bodies at the very place that Anders now stood. When the glyph was done, he elected to anoint himself with the lyrium dust, and he and Anders stood facing one another in the center of the glyph.

"There is much you will not remember of what you see in the Fade," Anders warned in such a manner that Fenris presumed was one last effort to be rid of him.

"Then I shall have to be extra attentive for both of us," Fenris said.

Anders rolled his eyes. "I'm sure this will be a happy reunion for you and Justice," he quipped, and hurried into chanting the spell that would complete the ritual, as Fenris's face twisted.

#

The ground, which was not the ground, pitched and rolled. Fenris stumbled and swung about blindly. He'd known that the Fade would not be kind to him, but, then, the Fade was never kind.

When he had gathered his wits as best he could, he realized he was holding the horse figurine, and clutched it greedily. He cast about the shifting landscape and saw only cragged spears of black rock. The sky blurred and unblurred and rippled like the surface of a murky pond.

Blue light glossed the crags at the edge of his vision, and he turned and found Justice standing there.

"The mage could not do it," Justice said simply, his voice resonant despite the heavy air.

"He did, in actuality," Fenris said. "He was certainly quicker about it than you."

Justice gave a terrible smile.

"Now that we've said our awkward pleasantries." He raised the figurine. "Help me find her."

Justice's expression did not change. "Know that I am not finished with you, elf."

"Please queue up, then." Fenris spat and set off, stumbling along the fickle landscape. Before long he realized that a blue glow was following him and glanced back to see Justice walking along with ease.

"Let's see it, then," Justice said, and Fenris handed him the totem with a scowl.

Voices called out over great distance. Fenris swung around. Justice did not notice, his eyes unmoving from the totem.

"The Fade is a place of dreams," Justice said. "Do not be distracted."

"Then shape it to your fancy," Fenris said. "As you've done before."

"This is not my realm. Many spirits, many demons make their home here. And it is susceptible to many things. Errant thoughts." He looked pointedly at Fenris. "Particularly those of mortals."

The voices called out again, two, three, many more.

"They are calling for me," Fenris said.

Justice returned to the totem, turning it over and over.

Fenris shook his head. He shook it again. The ground rolled smoothly to one side. He pitched and righted himself. Justice glided past, bent over the figurine.

"I can see things," Fenris said, slurring. "That you cannot. I can see."

Justice turned back to him. Over the gleaming blue shoulder, Fenris saw a crouched figure rise. It was a Qunari, horned and massive, but then just an impression of one, a flickering shade. A Fog Warrior, from long ago. Fenris blinked hard and it was gone.

"You say the Fade is susceptible to me," Fenris said, struggling to speak with clarity. "To errant thoughts."

"Indeed," Justice said.

"Then return that totem to me. And we shall see what happens when errant thoughts have focus."

Justice held it out. Fenris stepped forth, staggered, and snatched up the figurine. The world around him shuddered. He first held the totem close and then raised it up, tracking it with his eyes. He uttered her name. He closed his eyes. He uttered the demon's.

"You will remember nothing," Justice said.

Fenris remained very still, as forces that he did not know gathered around him. "That," he said, "is why you are here, I suppose."

#

Fenris lay in a cavern, imprisoned. The darkness crowded close. He slumped against a jagged boulder. A tether was lashed to his throat, and he swallowed and gasped and scrabbled at it. He had been here for many years, would surely die in here. Fury blinded him, and maddening hunger wrenched at his guts. He twisted about and moaned, and he tore at his binding.

His surroundings collapsed and folded over him.

The hunger throttled every scrap of thought he could salvage. He drooled and languished against the boulder. The cavern remained. Someone was there — someone else, besides this ravenous torment. Yes. He was beset by compelling love. A young girl, a human, a mage, such a little thing. She gaped at him through the darkness. He wanted nothing more, then, than to embrace her, surround her, take her into himself. Yes. The love coalesced with his hunger, and heightened it, and became a very powerful thing indeed.

His surroundings collapsed once more.

Oh, the pleasure was agonizing. Fenris filled his mouth and bit down and swallowed and kept biting. Oh, his first taste in so long. The split bones sizzled on his tongue. The rich marrow in golden drips. Meat and muscle so yielding, and the chewy lining of fat. He was in ecstasy. He was in love.

All of it crashed again.

He lapped at the tongue of his little mage. He reveled in the sweetness of her texture. He reveled in denying himself of her. But, oh, this taste. For all else, the pleasure ended too soon, leaving him alone with his hunger. The mere possibility of consuming her utterly, of glutting himself on her bones and her blood and her offal, set his desires ablaze. He must prolong this sensation, for now. He must only taste. This must be the first of many, many self-denials. And even through denial, it meant he would not be alone.

Everything toppled and reformed.

Fenris saw many caverns. He devoured endlessly. He watched over his little mage, following her from the shadows, slipping into her dreams. He would only taste. He would inhale the heady perfume of her blood, and prod at her softness, and he would taste her. Nothing more.

The more he consumed, the more he fed his hunger and felt it come clawing back, the greedier he became for her. He watched her, tracked her, followed her across the sea, and whenever she made love he paced and howled and invaded her dreams. Carnal desire was an unfathomable stranger that incited in him only rage.

All of these things Fenris experienced, and observed, and was, until he was lost, until he knew nothing else, until he was reunited with his little mage once again, and she was giving herself up now, giving herself to him, in exchange for the insignificant life of a wretched bleeding elf.

It all dissolved, reformed, flurried past. He could make sense of nothing, for all of his joy. He sliced through the flimsy wood of a bedchamber door. He sank down over a collapsing bed. He flickered through the Fade, clutching his prize. He traversed mountain and forest. He settled back into his den. He opened his mouth, wider, wider. He descended over her.

"Fenris!"

Chilling blue light glanced from his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously. Icy fingers gripped his shoulders and shook him, over and over. His heart hammered and hammered. He could not stop now, no, he was descending over her, his tongue reaching out, sliding around the column of her waist, lifting her, his throat tensing, relaxing.

The thunderous voice shouted the name again. Fenris. Fenris. Insistent as that annoying blue light. He reeled at the interruption. The walls and sky snapped back. Fenris pitched and rolled. He sprawled upon the ground. He looked up, and up.

Hunger looked back.

The great black throat tensed and relaxed.

Hawke was nowhere in sight.

Fenris howled and hurtled forth, reaching out, forgetting himself, and Justice pulled him back, kept pulling, until the burning white eyes of the demon that observed them were extinguished, and were gone.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 5 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 5

Flesh. She was wrapped in flesh, in pulsing swaths of it that pressed close. Veins pounded within, and without there were pores, and fine hairs, and sweat. She could not move. She could see nothing. She hung in this crowd of flesh, her mouth pressed against warm clamminess, awash in the march of blood that traveled some grotesque network of veins.

She could not tell how long she had been here, how long ago he had walled her up in this place. She knew only that he went away sometimes, leaving her for hours, what could be days. It was peculiar to her. She wondered where he would go, what matters he attended to, when he was not here.

She dreamed, though in dreams she still did not walk freely through the Fade. Anders came to her sometimes, the memory of him swimming through the fever-fog that blotted out her senses. The sight stirred within her a sensuous longing, and she dreamed, often, of sex, of desperate and savage lovemaking that was both real and unreal to her. At times her dreams were reenactments of nights they had spent together, fiery and enraptured when their passions were new, and slow and sweet as the love between them deepened. And then at times her dreams were mere sensation, the clasp of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

It was easy to lose herself in this place, to become one with the teeming mass of flesh, for what was she now beyond a mass of flesh herself, of bone and hair and offal? How simple it would be to join the pulse of these veins, to merge with it at last, like a drop of rain in the sea. Was this, then, her due? Was this what he waited for as he stared at her, unspeaking, while she was awake, while she was not haunted by these memories of the man that she loved?

In her solitude, she was exhausted beyond the need to despair.

But the memories remained. Some kernel of strength germinated within. Anders's face, his body, his touch. She would forget it all if she ceased to exist now, damning it to the Void, dissolving the very reality of her life as she had lived it.

And so in her solitude she reached out and touched it, that kernel of strength, and grasped, and as she hung imprisoned Marian Hawke thought about her life, refusing to release her very memories from that grasp.

#

For a time there was only the passing of years since that promise made deep in the Fade. Hawke carried on with the passage of winter, of many winters, spring and summer, and before long Ser Clerval's prediction came to fruition: in just a few short years, she was a woman.

She'd sensed the changes in her body before they came, before her menarche ushered in the curving of her hips and the swelling of her breasts, and a womanly lilt added melody to her voice. She knew, from her mother's advice, that this was a time of maturation, of doing away with childlike things, but to Hawke her childhood already seemed as distant and unreachable as the lustrous fruit of goldberries.

As her flesh shifted and filled out, and she endured this years-long state of flux, of little endings and beginnings, the white scar on her wrist remained, faded and ever-present.

She began to notice men. Their lingering glances, the breadth of their shoulders, the grit of a stubbled jaw. She found herself dallying by the Chantry if only to glimpse the Templars on their patrol, a thrilling act noticed by her mother and for which she was reprimanded, repeatedly.

She knew before long that she desired them. She could not say why. She could scarcely describe the feeling, the tightening heat, the instinct to touch, to be touched, by these men who hunted her kind, who at times made sport of hunting. At times, she hated them; at times, she desired them; and, in her most private moments, she remembered Ser Clerval, his kind eyes, the heaviness of his hand upon her head as he questioned her by the brook.

She considered the familiarity of her own arousal, the all-too-real memory of Hunger's ecstasy, the hot press of his engorged stomach. For the first time she had felt it then, as it radiated from him: that pure, exquisite arousal.

But it had been years since that night. The hunger demon was, for now, just a memory, and though she may wonder when he might come to collect, she simply could not know.

Life continued on. Winter, spring, summer. Hawke was a woman with her own desires. She took particular notice of Timothy, a friend of her brother, and they exchanged shy glances whenever they crossed paths, glances that gave way to wandering eyes, secretive smiles, an accidental brush of the fingertips. Often she would watch him till the field, enamored by his sun-browned shoulders, the tendons of his arms pulling taut with the turning of the soil.

There was a particular afternoon, when the summertime sun scorched the sky white, that she went out into the field, her mind filled with daring questions and coy propositions. Timothy had strayed from the budding crops to a trough of water just out of sight. When she approached him, an arc of water caught the light and glittered against his beckoning hand. She sucked in her breath: there he stood, drawing water from the trough with nothing but a gesture.

"You're a mage," she said at once, and he spun about, startled, so that the tendril of water slapped to the ground.

They stared at one another then, and in his gaze flashed a familiar hint of fear, and she blurted an apology, her cheeks burning like coals.

"I just — I didn't —" she said. "I had no idea —"

His face softened. He began to laugh, his relief palpable, and she laughed as well, laughed until she ached, and he took her hand then and pulled her close, for he knew that she too was a mage, had known for some time, and a bolt of warmth burrowed through her at the closeness of their mouths, the salt aroma of his naked chest.

She kissed him because she could suffer nothing else, because she wanted him now, indubitably, as she had never wanted anything. And how sweet it was to fulfill this desire, for his lips to cleave as hungrily as her own, and they clung to one another, exploring, desperate.

They sought privacy. Hawke, unaccustomed to the drunkenness of such bliss, drew him beyond the fields to the brook, across the water to a cave, seeking, without thinking why, the black depths of those places within the earth.

They hid where the sun was weak, nestled within an inlet of folded rock. Timothy's hands, so steady with the spade, were fumbling, and this admission of inexperience touched her. He undressed her with a reverent awe, and she blushed again as the cool darkness met her white shoulders. Gently he cupped her breast, and, oh, the sensation of his moving fingers, the slickness of his tongue against her. She nearly cringed away, and he drew back, glancing askance, but she urged him on.

He groped for the laces at his trousers, but she stopped him, surprised at the huskiness of her own voice.

"Let me."

Her little hand reached. She pulled the leather laces free, her fingertips grazing the hardness of him. Her pulse quickened as she drew it out, this secret part of him, handling it delicately as though it were glass, and she ran her hand over its length, marveling at the sheer heat of him, and then her mind flashed at once to Hunger's fevered flesh, the similarity of his dark genitals, which she'd somehow felt she should not have seen, and dread curdled in her stomach.

He pulled her closer then and she banished the thought, for his fingers were following the curve of her backside, and he lifted her just slightly, so that the smooth stiff head pressed against her cleft, and her eyes opened wide and closed again.

With some urging he eased inside of her, and farther he pushed, as they both held their breath, until he exhaled again, shaking. And for a moment they both simply stood there, as though uncertain of how to continue. And she began to move against him, just slightly, until he met her rhythm, and she felt a sensation of opening, of some deep expanding warmth, a heat that seemed to grow, push by push, from her very blood.

There was pain, and a sweetness to this pain, a catharsis in the roughness with which he bucked against her now. She reveled in its violence, the pleasure in his ceaseless grip, the blossoming bruises, the warm line of blood that dripped down her thigh.

She knew, could tell quite suddenly, that it would all be over soon, as he began to shudder and gasp, and it was too much for her, the thought of it ending, and she lashed her arms about his shoulders and whispered, "Wait, wait."

He slowed. She shut her eyes and pressed her cheek to his, slick to the touch and lovingly hot, as though he were not well, a though neither of them were.

And he slowed, until he stopped altogether, inert against the rocky wall, and she said, "Go on," and he did not move, did not even breathe.

She drew back.

Timothy was staring. With wild eyes he stared through her, past her, his lips agape. His sun-browned complexion sickly and bloodless.

"Timothy?" she whispered.

She could have missed it, the whimper that escaped him.

She disengaged from him with a cold wetness, and she turned.

Eyes like two lights. Heaving cragged muscle. Daggers of yellow teeth, clenching and dripping and unclenching again.

She uttered his name without thinking.

Timothy thrust her against the sharp points of the wall, pushing in front of her, and in a ludicrous moment of self-awareness he yanked up his trousers and looked back, repeating what she'd said with bewilderment:

"Hunger?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

She saw the barbed claws descend over Timothy's head, the fingers splaying, the serrated grin stretching wide.

His voice thundered from the walls, from the ground, from the depths of her brain where fear had burrowed with claws and teeth.

"KEEP AWAY FROM HER."

The claws snapped around Timothy's head, and he let out a muffled scream as Hunger plucked him off his feet. He went as easily as a doll, and Hunger held him aloft.

"Hunger, no —"

"You would let this. Little whelp. TAKE YOU?" The cave itself seemed to shudder, threatening to collapse, to bury them all.

"I —"

"YOU. BELONG. TO. ME."

His great fist was tightening, and Timothy clawed at the gnarled fingers, his cries blotted out.

"YOU. ARE. MINE." And he released his grip, seizing Timothy round the waist instead, and his jaws opened like a chasm. She saw the long dark tongue, the abyss of his throat, wet and shining, and she saw then Ser Clerval's face vanishing behind those teeth.

She sprang forward, reaching out.

The points of his teeth met Timothy's back, met his chest.

She saw Ser Clerval plunging down that bottomless throat.

"Enough!" she screamed, it was all she could think of doing. "Enough! I am yours, that's the promise we made! Stop, stop this!"

She clutched the crook of his elbow as though her strength alone would give him pause, and his eyes settled upon her face, as Timothy hung, paralyzed by shock, with his head at the back of Hunger's throat.

"You will release him," Hawke said, fighting the tremor from her voice.

They stared at one another, there in the cave where the sunlight was weak. A rope of saliva bobbed from his fang. It collected at Timothy's shoulder and oozed down his arm.

Like a trap being pried apart, Hunger's jaws opened, parting so slowly that Hawke feared they would spring together again. But his great arm moved beneath her hands, and he lowered Timothy, lacerated and bleeding, to her feet.

The boy's face was bone-white, and he seemed unable to move, sitting dumbly on the cavern floor. And next he bolted from them, stumbling to the cave entrance, and he was gone.

Hawke heard, now, the heavy cadence of Hunger's breathing.

She knelt, very carefully, and collected her dress from the ground.

"You would command me?" the demon hissed.

She covered herself. Her flesh was clammy and cold and trembling. She raised her head. "Punish me, then," she said. "Me. And only me. No one else."

The blank eyes seared the space between them. The black flanks heaved.

"You promised you would spare them," she said. "The whole village. That was our contract."

"And you promised yourself to me."

"You," she uttered, stopped, began again. "You have not claimed me."

Her voice broke.

Hunger's words were thick. "As he claimed you?"

She shook her head, stepped away, kept shaking it. "No," she said.

A long hiss, as though from a great quantity of air, escaped him. He moved toward her.

She held his gaze. She did not back away. There was nothing but the sheer wall of folded rock behind her.

He reached.

For the first time in nearly a decade, Hawke was face-to-face with his claws. She saw the fine stinger-like points, the hair-thin edges that caught flesh, and ripped, and shredded.

"Little thing," he breathed.

He touched her face. His palm burned against her cheek. His fingers curled around her scalp. His claws moved deftly through her hair.

"I don't want this," she whispered.

He was changing, shifting form, shape and shade, without her quite understanding it, without her ever seeing how, or why. The great teeth receding. The flesh glossy and smooth. The startlingly human-like face.

The cavity of his stomach. The dark genitals.

"I don't want you to touch me," she whispered.

He cocked his head to the side. His thumb caressed her jaw.

"I don't care," he said.

"Timothy. Timothy will tell them everything," she said. "They will know. They will all know about you. They will come for me."

"They will not," he said. He moved closer.

"He knows that I've. Dealt with you. He will tell the Templars."

"He will not."

"You can't face them all. They'll take me. You will lose me forever."

He kissed her.

Her fingernails ground into the knot of her dress. His lips were smooth and jarringly soft. She felt the press of long teeth, the inquisition of his pointed tongue. Claws whispered at her throat.

"Open your mouth," he said.

Barbs pinched at her skin.

She parted her lips. His long, wet tongue slid inside, pushing and probing. She tasted many things: blood, old and new; salt, and a rotten liquory sweetness; and the impression of something deeper, something that worried her just as much as the hand that slipped from her skull to her spine, the barbs that bit like shallow thorns.

A long finger touched her inner thigh and a jolt shot through her. Before she knew what she was doing she'd seized his arm to force it back, and he locked eyes with her, his claw poised at her leg.

She was sweating profusely. Touching him was like laying hands on a hot kettle, a smoking iron. She blinked droplets from her eyes as she stared him down. His other hand lifted. He pressed her against the rocky wall. He licked the beads of sweat from her lip. He shuddered once, again. Kissing her.

His claw moved against her thigh. He traced the thin line of blood that had collected there. His finger glided up, and up. She shut her eyes.

"I had never tasted you before now," he murmured against her mouth.

She held her breath.

"Look at me, little thing."

She whispered a prayer.

"Look. At. Me."

She opened her eyes.

His finger had paused at the top of her leg. She cringed as the point of his claw sank into her thigh. And then another. And another. She cried out in shock, though she hadn't meant to, and he leaned in close, his lip pulling back in a sneer.

"My, but I love you," he breathed.

He sank five more claws into the meat of her other leg. She lurched against the wall. Unable to tear her eyes away from his unblinking gaze.

"This means I shall love you forever," he said.

His claws raked down her thighs. The barbs caught and tore. Her knees buckled. She staggered.

She grew light-headed. Reeling. She glimpsed the slit white flesh of her legs. The blood that at first only seeped, welling in ruby clusters, and then broke in streams to spatter around her feet.

Hunger released her and she collapsed.

She slumped against a boulder, her legs splayed as though she did not know how to use them, as though she were a puppet with snipped strings. She saw in those ten cuts the layers of her body, the beleaguered muscle and soft fat. Her little hands lifted, supplicant, and fell again.

Hunger grinned.

"Do it, little thing," he said.

She stared at him with glassy eyes.

"Use your gift," he purred.

He gestured. To her legs, her wounds, the pools of blood. To her nakedness. To the draining color of her face. To the depleting network of veins that ran the length of her body.

She mouthed it once, before her voice crept weakly into her words. "My gift?"

He nodded.

Her heartbeat was deafening thunder that flooded her head. Drowned out her thoughts. Filled her hours, her minutes, these last few precious seconds, here in this cave where she lay trapped with a monster.

He gestured again, moving closer.

Her arm lifted. It gestured too, in unison with his.

Her heartbeat quickened.

She followed his lead as he traced a glyph into the floor, and she did so in the pooling blood, stirring it with a whisper, a cryptic language that she did not know, had never heard before. He leaned over her and took her hands, and she could feel the blood heating, stirring up, nearly frothing against her legs.

Together they whispered an incantation, sealing it forever in the vessels of her brain.

He pressed her hands to her legs.

The blood stirred. It rose from the floor in glistering drops. It arced in a luminous stream, circling her.

Hunger pushed. He dragged her hands against her thighs. The blood flashed to her trembling fingers. It refilled the severed veins. She cowered back, and Hunger held her hands steady until they reached her knees, and all traces of the blood had left, had been restored, and she crumpled against the boulder as his fingers ran the length of her wounds.

"Your gift," he whispered.

Her eyelids fluttered. Her breath shallow.

"Little thing," he whispered.

He kissed her thighs, first one and then the other, where only long scars remained, knotted and jagged and new. And then he left her, melting away into the shadows, as she sank into the depths of unconsciousness on the cavern floor.

#

She wandered from the cave in darkness. Scarcely aware of the brook that swirled at her ankles. Her dress clinging like a second skin.

She could make out only impressions, the blurred bobbing torches at the village gate, the dark forms of the Templars flickering like specters on patrol. She trembled. She knew her eyes must be like clouded glass, wide and staring. She stepped carefully. She looked at no one.

She did not see the carriage until she was nearly upon it. She stepped back as the Chantry sigil engraved in its side came into view. She backed away, though the Templars milling about merely glanced at her.

A pair of eyes stared out from the barred window.

She leaned against a fencepost. Her lips forming his name.

There was no response in his face. No twinge of recognition. Timothy stared back at her impassively. And she knew at once that he had no idea who she was.

She slid back against the fence. Her feet dragged through the damp grass. She circled around her mother's home and eased open the back door. Her blood roaring in her ears.

Carver was slumped against the kitchen table. His tear-streaked face illuminated by the hearth. Their mother embracing him, whispering words of comfort.

She stopped dead when she noticed Hawke in the doorway.

"Marian," she said, rising at once. "What happened?"

Hawke blinked slowly. She looked from her mother to Carver.

"Marian," her mother said.

"What happened," Hawke repeated.

Carver slammed his fists against the table. He lurched to his feet and seized his chair, flinging it down.

"Carver!" their mother cried.

He tore from the room.

Hawke watched him go. She turned back to her mother, who hefted the chair from the floor and sank into it.

"What happened to Timothy," Hawke said.

Her mother shook her head. She wiped her mouth and grew still, her eyes searching Hawke's face.

"He went to the Templars," she said.

The roar of blood in Hawke's ears cut off. She did not breathe.

"He was gibbering about a demon," her mother said. "No one could understand him. He . . ."

Hawke shut her eyes.

"He asked for the Rite of Tranquility."

She pictured his empty gaze. The shadow of bars across his face.

"Marian."

She held herself.

"Marian. It's been hours. Where were you?"

Hawke opened her eyes. She stared at her mother.

"Why," she said.

She sensed the faintest intake of breath from her mother.

"Where?" her mother said again, clearly forcing a note of stability into her voice. "Where were you?"

Hawke drifted past her. She went silently to the staircase, and she emptied her mind of all thought, ascending.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 4 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 4

Fenris had not expected ever to return to the mansion, and as he climbed the stairs to the sitting room he felt in the air a wrongness, a sense of invasion.

He shook his head as though to dispel the notion. His greatsword, newly-recovered, rocked against his back. At last he had rid himself of a bothersome sense of vulnerability, having picked his way to that loathsome cave on the Wounded Coast to gather his affects. He'd found them covered in sand but otherwise no worse for wear, and returned to the manor for a grindstone, a change of clothes, and a meditative session with a cask of wine.

"I don't keep wine or spirits here," Anders had said when Fenris had begun rifling through the clinic larder at a particularly galling part of his tale.

When he'd glared, Anders shook his head. "With Justice I must make — compromises." Then he'd added, delicately, "Besides, I think wine is the last thing you need, all things considered."

He avoided the sitting room itself, the green crushed glass and gilded couches, and went first to the wine rack in the east wing, where one bottle remained.

This he nursed as he paced to and fro, turning over Anders's story in his mind. To have seen the demon itself, to have been utterly useless as it seized her, as she'd gone willingly, to spare him — it brought the disgust roaring to his throat like bile. But could he have stopped it, carried her from that place, convinced her not to go? If he had not been so weak, weaponless, befuddled by Justice's methods . . . if Anders had kept the vengeful spirit in check, if he had not gone to the Wounded Coast, if she had not come to the mansion that night . . .

His fist clenched, ignited, the claw tips sliced his palm, he turned and struck the wall, again, the wine rack rattled, the crack of plaster and wood paneling echoed, he struck it again until he'd put his very fist through the wall.

He swore, loudly, in Tevinter, and withdrew his hand, scattering splinters.

He threw back his head and wine roared down his throat. He paced from the room and his gait was loping and stiff with rage.

He crossed to the bedchamber and the door was open, and he had not left it this way, no, he had not.

He swayed in the doorway, hesitating. He took a lengthy pull of wine, paused, finished the bottle.

He went to the bed where it had happened.

And there was blood. Old blood, a pool of it, congealed thickly in the twisted sheets, dark and moist and rich with the smell of her, he knew it instantly, yes, she'd summoned it here, her demon benefactor, in the very bed where he'd taken her with such violence, on these sheets onto which he'd lurched back from her and spilled his seed.

He felt like laughing, an increasingly familiar symptom of his own drunkenness, this propensity for laughter at that which horrified him.

He backed up again and sagged against the door frame, surrendering to it, the ghastly barrage of laughter that issued from him with little warning.

"Where did it take you?" he inquired of the bed, the bloodied sheets, the remaining essence of her that lingered here. He slid to the floor now, crippled by laughter, and wiped away tears, chuckling with a sort of madness.

"Where did you go?" he called out, into the silence of this place.

And in the folds of the sheets he saw it, the smallest token, rough carved wood, sealed to the bed with her blood.

#

How it galled him, for Anders to see Fenris in his clinic, to tell him those deeply-guarded secrets of the woman he had harmed, to watch him leave unscathed with promises to return. Anders's very nerves screamed to stop him, his teeth clenching until his jaw throbbed, and he indulged now in the solitude of the clinic, seeing the split throat now not with guilt but longing, and his bewilderment returned with an intensity that bordered on anger. What has happened, he wondered, what did he do to her, to cause her to stop me? To drive her to such lengths, to give herself willingly now to the demon that has tormented her so?

Hunger. He knew its name, knew how terribly she grappled with it, despite how little she would tell him. But those mornings when she would awaken in a wan pallor, the long silences and listless stares — he knew, always, when the demon had come. And he'd begged her countless times to tell him, it tortured him not to know what she suffered, whether or not she'd spent those nights beside him, in his arms, simultaneously trapped in the Fade, in Hunger's embrace. And now, it had taken her from him, and she had gone with it, gone away with it . . . where?

He leapt up, he paced, he could not stay still.

Though his mind raced, he sensed a conspicuous absence. Justice had grown quiet since his banishment in the cave, and Anders only sensed him momentarily now, wordlessly, could only guess at the spirit's demeanor in those minor flashes of emotion that were not his own. Anders welcomed this silence, savoring the illusion of being alone.

But then, there was another voice now in his head, Fenris's, his words repeating, over and over.

"I have seen the marks on her body."

"This was no secret she kept from you."

"You know, you have known, and you've done nothing."

"She'd courted it. It kissed her, touched her."

To find out this way, for Fenris of all people to confirm his suspicions, his worst fears — he was so consumed now by jealousy and greed that it shocked him. He loved her, she knew this, and he scolded himself repeatedly to banish these thoughts, this possessive reflex that twisted his guts with fury.

Focus, he urged himself. Focus on finding her. But where to start? Where to even begin?

The air in the clinic was stagnant to him now, it was all close, much too close, he could not rid himself of this anger, the images he'd conjured of her at this demon's mercy, no, how could it be true, how could this cruelty be a reality now?

He rushed for the door, flung it open, for he could stand this place no longer.

He nearly tripped over a small form that lay curled in his doorway. He stumbled just in time, falling against the door frame, and the figure sat up with a surprised jerk. He saw a lovely face, torn rags, mud-caked hair. Two hooded eyes growing large with fear.

He stood staring at her as she scrambled to her feet, this beggar-girl who had returned to the clinic to sleep at his front door.

In her rush, she had kicked over a tin cup, and it skittered off the doorstep with the clatter of small coins. She dropped again to the ground, scooping the loose coppers back into the cup.

Anders knelt beside her, and they nearly knocked heads when she turned to snatch a rolling coin. She withdrew again, shyly, and he plucked the remaining coins from the dirt, and offered them to her.

She averted her eyes as she took them, a reflex that reminded him of a chastened child, and this broke his heart in some way.

She looked much the same as when she'd left the clinic, freshly-scrubbed, though a fine layer of dust had settled on her face, crusted the edges of her fingernails. She rifled through the tin cup now with fingers as thin and pointed as bird talons, and she held out a handful of coins, glancing back at the clinic door.

He looked at the coins, then back at her, and gently pushed her hand away. He sensed a slight twitch where he touched her, a minute jump in her skin that might have been a flinch. She pleaded with him, urging the coins toward him again, and he took her hand now, curling her dirty fingers over the coins.

He stood then, drawing her up with him, cupping her hands in his own. He opened the clinic door and led her inside, shutting it behind them.

Justice shifted within him.

He left her at the door. In his mind there was buzzing noise, the hum of insects, the hush of ocean waves. He shook out a bedroll with movements that were rigid and automatic. He lit a lamp and set it on the floor. When he turned back she was still there, clutching the bent cup with one hand, holding closed the shredded fabric of her tattered dress with the other.

He went back to her and took the cup. He led her to the bedroll and set the cup beside the lamp. She crawled onto the bed gratefully and closed her eyes. She was smiling.

He lingered, thought better of it, went to the back room and parted the curtain. He took a deep breath.

He prepared for bed, though he knew that sleep was not forthcoming, would be all but impossible with these feverish thoughts in his brain. He hung his heavy surcoat on a peg by the door. He unlaced his boots and lined them up beneath the bed. He went back to the curtain and peered out.

She had turned over on the bedroll, was staring back at him across the room. She did not avert her eyes as she had done before.

She was pushing herself up on one arm as he crossed the room to her. With her other hand she reached for him, and he knelt over her, weaving his fingers into her hair. Mud flaked onto his hand. Her arm circled his shoulders, it was slight and bony and sharp. When he kissed her it was as though he were the starving one, and he tasted her deeply, the rancid sweetness of her lovely mouth.

He yanked open her tattered dress, more forcefully than he'd meant to, and here she hesitated, pulling away, but he drew her back gently, smoothing her cheek, caressing her neck. He allowed her timid fingers to pull the shirt over his head as a sign of trust, acquiescence. And then he drove his hand into her hair again, dragging her head back, kissing her, devouring her.

He explored her body, took his time to feel along each protruding rib, run his fingers over the hollows in her arms, her throat, her thighs. He stroked the ridges of her sternum with his tongue, and there he tasted the destitution and poverty that was Darktown, the filth and wanting and sickness and pain, it was all there in her bird-like limbs, the caverns of her eyes.

In this moment he wanted nothing more now than to lift up the entirety of Darktown, to take them from these slime-clotted gutters and stifling hunger, to save them all. And in yielding to her touch, the wetness of her mouth, he felt as though he could give of himself utterly, sustain any who sought his aid, until no part of him was left at all.

When she took him into her mouth he was harder than flint, harder than he'd ever felt, and he cradled her head, urging himself to be gentle, to take time. She was a precious gift, this lovely beggar, kicked down by a world that cared nothing for her, and he reveled in her delicacy, the earnest lapping of her tongue.

I will protect you, he thought. I will save you.

#

Fenris sprinted through Darktown. In spite of his inebriation, the way ahead was clear. He clutched the horse figurine against his palm, that hateful totem soaked in blood, her blood, and he knew that this was the key to finding her, surely she'd left it behind knowing he would discover it.

He knew, though it loathed him, that only a mage had any hope to uncover its secrets, and he hastened now to the clinic. He could not wait until morning, not while Hawke lay trapped in some distant elsewhere, not while his stomach now boiled with purple wine.

He came upon the clinic entrance, and as the knob turned in his hand he heard a voice, a short soft moan that trickled out from behind the door.

He stopped dead. He wavered at the door, confusion rippling raw through the clarity that had brought him here. He listened a moment longer, swaying. Then he pushed open the door, just barely.

He saw two bodies locked in a fevered embrace, there in the center of the clinic. Grasping hands, the sheen of sweat on entwined limbs.

He stared.

#

Anders lifted his head from her, his eyes fluttered, he gasped, kept gasping. Her sharp hands clutched his shoulders, clung to him with a sweet clawing tenacity. The outside world had faded away. There was only her now, and the gentle soft gasps she made with every thrust, his cock an agonizing point of pain to him now, and it was with a certain desperation that he built toward climax, against his every wish to stay buried within her depths forever.

His hands slid down her back, and he gripped her by the hips, his fingers digging into the paltry meat of her backside. Sweat bit and stung his eyes; her mouth gaped; he fucked her now with such brutality that a small part of him feared hurting her, but she urged him on, yes, how beautifully they both suffered for this.

When he came it was sudden and unexpected, and he scarcely had time to shudder away from her, bathing her thigh in the warmth of his seed. He shook momentarily, drunk with orgasm, short of breath, and gave in to it, collapsing on top of her. He held her, heaving into the hollow of her neck, feeling the stickiness of her thigh against his side. As the sensations of the world around him began to return, he thought he heard the soft glide of metal against metal, and he found himself glancing, drunkenly, at the door, but all was as it had been, silent and still.

His heart slowed. He dipped his head to kiss her, and she turned away from him. He sat up, confused.

There was a sudden stiffness in her, a coldness coinciding with the evaporation of heat from the surface of his skin. He crawled off of her. The sweat that had once sealed them together like webbing had grown clammy. She turned over now, tugging on the tatters of her dress. To sit there naked before her became, at once, shameful to him, and he reached for his trousers.

"I'm — sorry," he found himself saying, did not know why he said this, and he was about to continue when the jingle of coins interrupted him.

He saw the cup. She was holding it out, urging it toward him. The sweetness of her face had hollowed into a void.

Words died on his lips. He lifted a hand uselessly, brought it back down. She shook the cup again, as though she were on the street, as though he were a passing stranger.

"I," he stammered.

She cocked her head.

He patted his trousers, flustered, his thoughts, shaken from coitus, would not coalesce. He gestured then, helplessly, not knowing what to do.

She lowered the cup. Her hollow eyes listed away from him, and she rose to her feet. She went to the door, her steps heavy with the weariness of one who had been refused endless times, and disappeared from the clinic.

Justice had not said a word.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 3 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 3

In Darktown, the sick and the needy had no time to wait on Anders's troubles. He mended wounds and mixed medications with his mind abuzz and his heart dropping in his chest. He could not help but welcome the distraction of his work, though it tinged him with guilt to think of his patients in this way. It was good to keep his hands busy, despite how they sometimes trembled when his thoughts wandered to other things.

He found himself reciting, silently, what he might say to her when he saw her next. Heartfelt excuses, sincere confessions, bold lies, they all spun wildly in his head: my love, you do not understand, my love, Justice has been out of control, my love, he would have killed you, he would have killed you, he would have killed you.

Heat rose in his blood as he recalled the look of horror on her face, the force of her hands as she shoved him away to save such a man's life.

And then just as quickly the heat drained from him. What must she think of me? he wondered with despair. What must she think now, after stumbling upon such a scene?

He dared not guess whether Fenris had lived or died. He'd cut the man's jugular with precision. He knew well the point at which even magic could save no one.

#

At midday a beggar came seeking his care, a young woman draped in filth and rags. Anders saw, as he gently scraped the mask of grime from her face, that she was quite beautiful, her eyes large and clear, her lips lovely, though chapped, and full. He sensed within her an aching gratitude that stirred some deeply-buried fragment of himself. He realized, as he inspected the running sores at the base of her neck, and lightly touched her with his fingertips, that she reminded him of someone. Someone from long ago, back when the walls of the Circle had been his home, back when secret trysts among its prisoners were common and numerous. He found, with a flush of shame, that he could not remember her name, that comely mage who had slipped his hand into her robes one night in the deserted chapel, who had pressed his fingers to the soft dampness between her legs and smiled, tipping back her head to meet his gaze, just as this young beggar looked at him now.

His heart pounded then. He recalled the sensation of opening her lips with careful fingers, the velvety wetness therein. How she'd rocked gently against him, sighing in his ear.

He took a breath, guiltily quashing the memory, and he lifted his hands from the woman's throat, perhaps a bit too quickly, for he realized that they were lingering there. He turned away from her and busied himself grinding poultices, silently chastising himself, and then a quiet disgust rippled through him, that he felt as strongly as the insistent erection beneath his robes, disgust which he knew, without doubt, stemmed from the discomfort of the Fade-born spirit that he housed within.

#

He could scarcely look the beggar-girl in the eye when her treatment was done, when he sent her away with ointments, bandages, recommendations of rest and fresh water. She hesitated at the clinic entrance, staring longingly at the blankets that he had laid out for bedridden patients, but still he sent her away, shaking his head. He could not have her here in the dark privacy of night.

More patients awaited him, but he slipped into the back room of the clinic, carrying the carved wooden basin with him. He sat on the meager bed and splashed his face with cold water, trying to rid himself of these prurient memories, to calm Justice's restless shifting.

I am a different man than I once was, he told himself. And how true it was. It seemed an entirely different lifetime, back when he'd flee the Circle on a lark, when he'd loved many women, unconcerned with the plights of the world. Hazier still were the memories of those brief days when he and Justice had met as two instead of one, how Justice had often scolded him for his flippancy, for loving so easily, for ignoring the misfortunes of his fellow mages in exchange for an aimless life of wandering freedom.

And now he was a different man. They had both changed, though he could not be sure who had had the greater impact on whom. Anders was a man now steeped in the rigors of this joined life, and it felt at times like a constant battle, though admittedly he derived some gratification from it. Truly he could call himself many things: Grey Warden, clinician, a coagent of justice seeking the liberation of his kind.

A murderer, now, in his own right, who'd slain a man bound and helpless.

Water dripped from his eyelashes, his chin, the tip of his nose. His hands scooped into the basin and he splashed his face again. He sat staring at the wall, could see that gagged and blindfolded face there, the dark throat slit wide. He shook his head, and drops scattered from his face.

There came a low knocking then, sudden and muffled, from the wall behind him.

He turned.

Silence for a moment, and then the knocking sounded again, louder and more insistent. It came, without doubt, from the hidden door just behind the bed.

He rose, setting aside the basin of water. His pulse quickened — very few knew of the passage at the rear of the clinic, the one that snaked behind the walls of Darktown to the matching egress in the Hawke manor. He'd used it at times to smuggle refugees from the Gallows, but no apostate would be traveling to him on their own. He thought, vaguely, that it must be Hawke, surely she had come to see him now — but why would she knock, or forego the main entrance altogether?

He thought of the Templars at the Gallows, the close calls he'd risked for so many, and reached for his staff, sliding the bed from the wall.

The knock came again. It echoed from the base of the wall, low to the ground. He hefted his staff and eased his fingers into the crevice along the hidden door. He sucked in his breath and drew the door from the wall.

He saw first the shadowed chasm within, the narrow brick-lined passage that he'd traveled so many times. He heard the slightest groan, and his gaze dropped to the floor.

A dark-skinned hand was reaching for him, it was caked with blood, criss-crossed with lines of shining silver.

A shock of white hair, reddened staring eyes.

A long, pale, ridged scar across the neck, from ear-to-ear.

"Fenris," Anders murmured, not believing.

"She's gone," Fenris sputtered, his voice weak, his bloodied hand reaching. "She's gone, she's gone."

#

Before long he had cleared out the clinic, doing what he could for those patients whose needs were immediate, distributing the potions he had already prepared, apologizing vaguely when he shut the front door at last and turned the lock.

Fenris had slumped against the supply chest, picking through glass bottles of disinfectants and anodynes. Anders left him to it, and dropped down on the edge of the straw bed, distraught. He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders heaved.

From the floor Fenris looked up at him, yanking the stopper from a bottle with his teeth.

"Oh, Marian," Anders moaned. "Marian."

He heard the splash of disinfectant on Fenris's arm.

"Maker's breath," Fenris hissed, and from the corner of his eye Anders saw him cringe.

He remained in the back room, his eyes blurring with tears, as Fenris mopped at the wounds on his arm.

"My love," he cried. "My beloved."

"Andraste's sword, pull yourself together," Fenris said.

"Do not test me!" Anders roared. He lurched from the bed with a start. "Do not — not when you are the one who has caused all of this — I swear on my life I shall finish what I started."

Fenris's face darkened, and despite his scowl he said no more.

Anders flung out an arm, and then because he had not expected this lack of response he flung it out again, and then he began to pace from one side of the clinic to the other.

"And you are sure of what happened?" he uttered, his mind racing.

"Yes," Fenris mumbled.

"You are absolutely sure? Your mind wasn't muddled, you — you weren't disoriented from the loss of blood —"

"I saw the bloody demon with my own eyes!" Fenris shouted. "It tore half the house apart just to get to her! She knew it, too, she'd said —" His voice grew quieter, and he sat back, looking nearly stunned by exhaustion. "She'd said, 'I didn't think he would come for me this soon.'"

Anders squeezed his eyes shut, for they burned suddenly with tears.

"You know who it is, too," Fenris said, his words knife-edged and accusatory. "You know, you have known — and you've done nothing —"

"Silence, fool, be silent!" Anders cried, and it was not just Anders then but the booming unbounded fury of Justice, and searing cold flame erupted from him then, pealing from his flesh and bones and the very membranes of his eyes, until he fought it back, quelling the embattled spirit at once.

He stood very still, panting, as Fenris glared at him from the floor.

"How dare you," he said then. "How dare you even breathe the words, when you know nothing, absolutely nothing."

"This was no secret she kept from you," Fenris said. "Shall I speak of it plainly, then? Those scars on her body: she'd had them for some time."

Anders bit down on the inside of his cheek, felt the sharp blossom of pain, kept biting.

"They were the work of a demon," Fenris went on, his voice rising. "That very same demon. She'd dealt with it, she'd — she'd courted it. It — it kissed her, touched her —"

Anders let out an agonized wail and turned away, grinding his knuckles to his forehead as though he could shut out the sound of Fenris's words.

"You can't pretend it didn't happen!" Fenris was shouting now. Anders heard the creak of his hide tunic as he rose from the floor. "You can't shut your eyes and plug up your ears. She's gone, Anders. And it's all your doing —"

"My doing?" Anders spun back around, and though he shed a spate of blue light he kept the raging spirit in check. "You beast, you lunatic. I had nothing at all to do —"

"It took her because of you!" Fenris cried. "It came to collect her because — it only let me live because —" His voice dropped suddenly, and his eyes settled on some great distance. "It knew my face," he murmured. "She — it said to me — it said that it would not kill me, not after she had given so much to save my life."

"You're lying," Anders said. "She didn't, she would not, not after what you'd done."

"How else did she find me?" Fenris extended his arms, shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that seemed almost helpless. "How else did she arrive at the very moment that you — that you —"

"Enough!" Anders raised a hand as though to ward him off, as though to send him away. "No more, I need to think."

"No, you will listen, and you will answer me." Fenris came forward then, his face twisting, angry. "The demon took her, but I know she must still live. You must tell me everything that you know about it, about the history between the two of them, no matter how much it pains you. Your blubbering will do nothing to save her. We must act —"

Anders seized him then by the collar, crushing the black hide in his fingers. An overwhelming hatred was boiling now in his brain, flashes of memory, the image of Hawke stumbling into the clinic, her bleeding neck, the tremors in her voice as she answered his careful questions, the startling confusion he'd felt when she'd urged him, over and over, to do nothing, to quiet Justice's vengeful rampage.

"You will say nothing more," he said. "You are in my stead. Remember this: in those last few moments, I drove Justice off. Remember what he put you through. I control him. And now, right at this moment, you are at my mercy."

Fenris's face contorted. His mouth worked as though he meant to speak, and then thought better of it, and he exhaled, deeply, through his nose.

Anders held him for a moment more, and then released him, and the two stood facing one another.

"I shall never forgive you," Anders said. "Do not forget that."

Fenris merely glared.

"I shall tell you what I know because we need to work quickly, and find out where the demon has taken her. For your part, you must rest, and allow your wounds to heal. Though it galls me," and here Anders grit his teeth for a second, "I shall treat you."

"You will not touch me," Fenris growled. "No one touches me. I have dressed wounds before. I will do it."

"Fine. If you must continue to be petulant, I shall leave you to it." Anders turned to pace again across the clinic, waving a hand at his supplies. "Use what you need. But you will not speak again, not while I am explaining this to you."

Fenris returned to the supply chest, and rummaged through the bottles once more.

Anders crossed the room, wrung his hands, crossed again. He took a deep breath, uncertain of where to begin.

"I have never met this demon," he said slowly, "though I do know it has been present in her life for as long as I've known her. She has never spoken of it much, would tell me very little when I asked, and, eventually, because her discomfort over the matter became too great, I simply . . . stopped asking.

"I knew at once what the scars meant," he said. "I knew . . . it was our first night together."

The rattling at the supply chest slowed, and he sensed the faint scowl that darkened Fenris's face.

"By that point, her blood magic was no secret," he went on. "Truly, it's impossible to hide such a thing. But I had chosen to ignore the implications of it —"

"That there are no blood mages naturally born," Fenris muttered. "That such magic is only gifted — no, bargained for. A power never given for free."

"I had thought — I had hoped — that Marian's part in the exchange was long past, that it lay buried in some minor happenstance of little consequence. But on that night, I told her that I loved her."

Fenris had grown still. Anders risked a glance his way; he sat staring into the supply chest, his jaw firmly set.

"She was quiet, she did not respond at first. I feared that she'd rejected me, that I'd said too much, gone too far. And there was fear in her eyes as well, but a different sort: it made my blood run cold. I realized then that there was something greater involved, but she would not say, no, she would not."

He took a shaky breath "The demon, it is . . . a jealous entity. It visited her that night."

Fenris's head turned.

"It comes to her in dreams," Anders explained. "When the Veil is thin. It knew of me, it was. Angry with her. She awoke drenched in cold sweat. Shaking and pale. She clung to me like a child.

"It was many nights, no, weeks later, when she finally told me. The demon . . . when they'd met . . ." And here he swallowed, and swallowed again, for the taste in his mouth had thickened his words, and they stuck, fast, in his throat.

"She had only been a child," he said, his voice rising and shuddering so that his words ended at last in a beleaguered sob.

#

Hawke sat drenched in the smell of freshly-opened things, staring at the wall. It was a mixture of odors both familiar and strange to her: the bitter tang of sweat, the smothering rich brassiness of blood, and then bile, thick and gritty coupled with the eye-watering ammonia sting of spilled bladders.

It took much longer for Hunger to devour them than she would have expected. The ecstatic furor with which he'd dispatched the Templars was now replaced with a slow sweetness. She did not watch, but listened to the dismemberment of the corpses, the sensuous cracking of ribs and sinking of teeth. She imagined, as she struggled not to picture it, that he ate daintily, holding morsels with just the tips of his claws, patting his black lips politely after each bite, and now she felt giddy at the thought, giddy and quite near to cracking.

After a great deal of time had passed, and Hawke had not moved from her place at the wall, long fingers glided over her head, touching her tenderly. She started; she'd sunk into such a deep reverie that she'd been nearly comatose, her thoughts unspooling like the frayed end of a thread. She hadn't even heard him approach her, and he crouched behind her now, combing through her hair and stroking her cheek. She thought, maddeningly, that he must have licked his fingers clean.

"Look at me, little thing," he cooed.

She imagined desiccated remains, ravaged entrails, a little pile of human teeth like discarded pearls. She did not turn

"Little thing," he said again, sounding hurt, though it was a farce, the very thought of it made her want to laugh, and laugh, and keep laughing.

She tilted her head to the slightest degree, her eyes still trained on the wall. His great hand curled over her shoulder and eased her around, and she went without protest, unfocusing her gaze so that the space behind him blurred into incomprehensible shadow.

His white eyes bored into her.

She had not seen him so close, so still. Indubitably he had changed from the sad, weary prisoner that she had met before. His black flesh was no longer smooth and nacreous, but gnarled and spiked and formidable. His lips had pulled back from his long yellow teeth, endowing him with a perpetual grin. The bristling spikes at his crown had lengthened and grown in number. His once-cavernous stomach, now full, had become distended and firm.

He cradled her face with surprising delicacy. His blank eyes appeared to be studying her.

"How pale you are," he said, the rumble of his voice sinking into a lower, gentler register.

She stared at him emptily.

"You are not well," he said.

That great mouth, she kept thinking. They disappeared into that great mouth, behind those long teeth. All three of them are there, inside him.

"Do not fret," he said. "Do not worry, little thing. Soon you shall return home."

He's lying, she thought. He's lying. He's lying. He's lying.

"In return for your kindness," he said sweetly, "a gift."

He took her by the wrist, pale and reedy against his massive palm. One of his claws slid across the heel of her hand, and then it traced a line downward. The claw flicked lightly away, and she flinched: a single barb had bit into her flesh, slicing a clean line down her wrist.

Her eyes pricked with tears as blood trickled to her elbow.

"Hush now," he said, cupping her chin, so that his thick splayed fingers surrounded her neck, curled behind her head. "Shh."

She pictured him wrenching her head from her shoulders, popping it off like a cork from a bottle.

"This is a promise, little thing," he whispered. His thumb pressed into her forearm, and though it pained her, the pressure against the wound was almost soothing. "This means I shall love you forever."

When he lifted his thumb, she saw that the wound had sealed, leaving only the fine, white ridge of a scar.

"We are even," he purred, releasing her.

She ran a hand over her arm in silent disbelief.

"You," she said at last. "You're not going to eat me?"

His terrible grin shimmered wetly in the dark.

Her eyes drifted briefly behind him, searching for exits. In the darkness beyond she glimpsed black pools and spatters of blood. There was nothing else, save for the fallen swords, to show that the Templars had ever been there.

"Your village," he said delicately. "You said it was nearby, little thing?"

She met his terrible eyes again and nodded.

"I see. And your mother waits for you there. As do your brother, and sister — a lovely young mage, much like yourself?"

A thick bead of saliva had gelled at the point of a long, yellow fang, and dangled there precariously.

She nodded again. A knot of fear blocked her throat like a gag.

"Bethany," he said. The bead of saliva dripped, slapping wetly at her feet.

Hawke clutched her wrist, as though he'd burned her there.

"I will take you to them," he said.

She opened her mouth to speak, to say anything, what it was or even could be she did not know. But he scooped her up again, easily, cradling her to his chest. He took off, racing through the cave as though he knew its vesicular pathways by heart, and when they burst free from its rocky mouth the cool air of morning kissed her cheeks.

"I don't know where to go," she stammered, clinging to his chest. The close-crowding foliage of the Wilds swayed with a deceptive benevolence in this gentle light.

"Do not worry, little thing," he said. "Your thoughts will guide me. Simply let me in."

"I don't understand —"

The Veil ripped open wide at his beckoning hand.

She shuddered against his arm. It was as though she'd been plunged into an icy waterfall, a churning vortex, and she lost all sense of direction, falling upward, twisting back. Her senses lurched, confused, disoriented, she tasted sight and glimpsed sound in twitching shapes. Her surroundings shivered, melted, reformed. And Hunger continued onward, a native being in this alien place.

The Fade. Her mother had spoken of it, weaved tales of this dream-realm where demons walked and nightmares became real. She felt then the sharp tug of an invisible thread, much like the one that had connected her and Ser Clerval in the open field, and she knew it was Hunger who pulled it now, drawing from her the memory of her home, of her mother and Carver and Bethany asleep in their beds, soon to rise with the gentle morning.

Her breath caught, sharp as a blade. There was Lothering in the distance, emerging from the very matter of this place.

She shouted it before she even knew what she was doing.

"Stop!"

He paused then, drifting to a halt in the dizzying, shifting air. She twisted about in his grip.

"Please don't," she said.

"Why, little thing," he said, his tone a mockery of surprise, "do you not wish to go home?"

"You'll hurt them," she whispered.

He stroked her head then, plaintively.

"Don't," she said. "Please. I — I helped you, didn't I?"

"And I returned the favor," he said simply.

"I didn't want them to — to —" Her voice broke, sickened now to be so close to him, to be pressed against that hard, engorged stomach.

"To die?" He cocked his head. "I recall you feeling differently, little thing. My very deepest apologies."

His great fingers were sliding along her cheek, wrapping about her shoulders, drifting down her spine, forever touching her.

"Ah," he said, in a lowing rumble. "You are so — very soft."

She was gripped, then, by a deep sense of alarm, a sudden panic that commanded her to shove free of his touch, to plunge into the unknowing abyss of the Fade, if only to put that much distance between herself and this creature.

But Lothering was in sight, there on that shimmering horizon, and she was not going to leave him now, not for the world.

"My mum told me a story once," she said slowly, carefully, so as to eliminate the quaver in her voice.

He leaned toward her expectantly.

"It was a bedtime story. About a little girl who was selfish. She wanted a pretty bracelet that belonged to another girl. Her friend. And a demon came along because she was so, so jealous. He offered her a diadem," and she stuttered here, tripping over the difficult word, "all covered in jewels, to make her happy. But she wasn't happy — it wasn't the bracelet she wanted so much. And the other girl wore it all the time, showing it to everyone who would look, and the demon saw how angry this made her, so he offered her a bracelet this time, an exact copy of the one she wanted so."

Hunger listened intently.

She paused for breath, trying to bide her time. "But she threw it back at him," she said. "It doesn't sparkle the same, she shouted. The gold isn't as shiny. The gems aren't as round. It wasn't the same, not if it wasn't the very bracelet that hung around her friend's wrist.

"And so one day, one day when the two girls were playing by the river, the demon came along again. He snatched the girl's friend right off her feet and swallowed her whole, just like that, and then he reached down his throat and rummaged around, plucking out the sparkling, shiny bracelet, and he offered it to the selfish little girl."

"And she took it?" Hunger guessed.

Hawke shook her head. "She was horrified. She could hear her friend crying and crying inside the demon's stomach, begging to be let out, and she wouldn't take the bracelet. He asked her, is this not what you wanted? This exact treasure, this shiny gold trinket? But the little girl said, I don't want it anymore. I want you to let her out.

"But the demon was troubled. After I have done so much for you, he said, and brought you just what you asked, you still ask me for more? Because the demon was hungry, and he did not want to give her up, not for nothing. And the little girl realized at last where her selfishness had gotten her."

Hunger smiled.

"Take me, the little girl said. Take me in her place, and never bother her again. And so the demon did — he reached down his throat and plucked out her friend, and then he swallowed the little girl whole, leaving the bracelet, and he went back to the Fade, satisfied."

"A fine story," Hunger said. "A good lesson to learn."

Hawke glanced behind her. The image of Lothering glistened, shimmered like a mirage. She could see the ball of the sun as it rose, the brown chickens strutting by the well, the tireless farmers etching the earth with rusty hoes.

"Take me," she said, scarcely managing a whisper.

"What's that, little thing?"

"I said take me instead," she said, more loudly this time. "Leave Bethany alone. Leave them all alone. My family — the entire village."

"You, for an entire village?" His eyes glistened. "Why should I not get my fill, after whetting my appetite on those wretched Templars?"

"Because." The words caught, and she swallowed hard, tried again. "Because you like me so much. You — you said you loved me, right?"

His gaze seemed to penetrate the very walls of her skull. "Indeed," he said.

"So please," she said. "Please. Take me. Eat me up. Possess me. I don't care. Just don't hurt them."

"Little thing. This is not a proposal to make lightly."

She remembered Ser Clerval's warning. She saw his blue eyes, sad and kind.

"I know," she said. "This is what I want."

The heat rose in him then, swelling from the rise of his belly, and she knew now that this meant pure joy, ecstasy which grew from the unending hunger which drove him and sustained him and made him real.

"You have tempted me," he breathed, "greatly, my dear. For no demon can turn down such a deal if a mortal comes so willingly."

But she was not willing. The panic had returned, a strident alarm ringing in her ears, a rabbit-like instinct to flee, to hide, to save herself. She did not want this. She did not, oh, she did not — not while he leered at her so, while his teeth dripped and salivated, not while Ser Clerval and the other Templars swirled in the vortex of his guts.

"Take me," she said, "and leave them alone."

A shiver ran through him, sudden and violent. He stroked her head again, lovingly.

"So be it," he whispered, the susurration of his voice barely penetrating the shivering clench of his saber-like teeth.

#

She awoke to the sound of her mother's voice, the grittiness of dirt in her mouth. Her eyes jerked open. Her mother's strong arms were wrapping around her. She felt the cold press of soil oozing against her cheek, her bare arms and legs, wetting her dress. Her mother was lifting her now, repeating her name, and it took a few moments more for Hawke to realize that she was lying facedown in the field.

"Oh Marian, sweet girl, stupid girl," her mother gasped, clapping her daughter into her bosom. Hawke saw that she was crying. "Oh, where have you been?"

Hawke's mouth moved, her throat struggled for words, but none came. Tears of her own sprang to her eyes. She threw her arms around her mother's neck, nearly wringing it in her embrace. She cried then, a child who was not prone to crying, and smeared her running nose in her mother's hair, oh, the soft sweet scent of her hair. And as her mother carried her home, too stunned by this sentimental display to chide her further, Hawke thought for a few blissful seconds that it had all been a dream, yes, surely it had been, surely she'd fallen asleep in the field and dreamed it all up.

But as she lifted her arm to wipe her tears, she saw the scar on her wrist, fine and white and shining, as real and permanent now as the memory of Ser Clerval's unfortunate end.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 2 - Dragon Age 2

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 2

Fenris crawled, could do nothing more than crawl, along the baseboard of Hawke's bedchamber, feeling the wall with shaking hands. He picked through splinters and shards of debris, shredded wallpaper and daggers of glass. He muttered to himself, counting out paces that he could not take, checking for crevices, hollow spots, something, anything to indicate the hidden recess that he knew was there, behind which was a passage underground, and a path to Darktown, the only place he could think of to go.

#

Hawke held her head there in the blackness of the cavern, staring back at the white glowing eyes. They did not blink, and their gaze was penetrating, all-seeing, immobile.

She heard then, when the pounding in her head had ceased, the deep reverberations of something breathing.

She did not move from the dripping boulder, and dared not look away. She swallowed hard, gathered her courage.

"Hello?" she called out, though quietly, and her voice carried on the air, echoing against the rock walls. "Is someone there?"

The eyes stared. The breathing, slow and even, continued.

Then, a voice:

"Hello there, little thing."

The voice was sonorous and rumbling, so low in pitch that its words were nearly indistinguishable. She felt a deep vibration run through her, as subtle and unsettling as the tremors from some distant earthquake, and it gave her an odd sense of being physically sick.

She hugged herself tightly. "Who — who are you?"

A long pause.

"A friend," said the voice.

"You sound — scary," she said.

A soft chuckle then, that quivered the rock underneath her.

"I can't see you," she said.

The eyes glinted, and from beneath them a slow light grew.

A long shape emerged from the darkness, indistinct and pooled in shadow, what appeared to be a man, but was not. She saw wide shoulders behind a bowed head, flesh that shimmered like nacre, long arms, impossibly long. A smooth chest, and beneath it the dramatic jut of ribs. Its abdomen was a cavity, emaciated, it seemed hollow to her, as though no internal organs could possibly be housed within. And between the legs she saw the dark genitals, that mysterious male organ that she had glimpsed only on farm animals and wild beasts, that brought her a curious shame now to see, as though she should not have.

The creature sat cross-legged, its arms trailing on the ground, hands folded — but they were not hands, she could see this clearly for the dim light that bloomed from them. They were claws, large gnarled things much too big for their skinny arms, with powerful fingers that curled into thick, barbed points.

The creature lifted his head, and she saw a startlingly human face, save for the unblinking white eyes.

"What is your name, little thing?" he said, his rumbling voice sounding tired.

"Marian," she answered, was too afraid not to answer.

He stared at her. His broad chest, so incongruous to the cavernous stomach, the skinny arms, moved gently as he breathed.

"Wh-what's your name?" she stammered.

He tilted his head. The shadows shifted; she saw now that he had not hair, but a bristling spray of spikes that rose from the crest of his brow like a myriad of horns. When his lips parted, she saw long, pointed teeth.

"Hunger," he said.

They gazed at one another in silence. She shivered in the damp chill. She wondered how someone with so human a face could have so bizarre a body, proportions so wrong that they confounded her merely by looking. But as she observed him, she began to feel less afraid — in some way, he seemed sad to her, as though he were just as lost and weary as she.

"Do you live here?" she asked. "Is this cave your home?"

He shook his head slowly.

"Why are you here?" she said.

A low rumble resounded through the chamber, as though the entirety of the cave sighed in resignation. He lifted his claws, and the light with them, and he raised his head.

A thin, dark vine was lashed about his black neck, stretching taut to the wall beside him. The vine had been wrapped, tighter than a ship's rigging, around a boulder that jutted from the wall. A small brass pin gleamed in the light, stuck fast into the knotted vine.

"You're a prisoner?" she said.

He lowered his head and nodded.

"Have you been here for a long time?"

He nodded again.

"Did someone do that to you for a reason? Because you did something bad?"

He shook his head.

She hugged her knees to her chest.

"Where did you come from, little thing?" he asked her then.

"Outside," she said softly. "A village outside the Wilds. I'm lost. Some — some bad men chased me."

"I see," he said, and said nothing more.

She sat, shivering, on the boulder for some time. The creature remained by the wall, tethered fast, with his great head bowed. The pair of lights that were his eyes had gone out, and she wondered if he had fallen asleep, though the level cadence of his breathing went on, uninterrupted.

She sneezed suddenly, and his eyes opened again.

"I'm sorry," she said, without knowing why.

He chuckled. She glanced at him shyly, saw his hands working, though at what she could not tell.

"Tell me, little thing," he said then, as one set of his claw-tipped fingers picked over his other palm. "Are you frightened?"

She shook her head, although she was, very much so. "No."

"You are not? Truly?"

"No, serah."

He chuckled again, though whether it was at the honorific she used or the obvious lie, it was unclear.

"And what of the bad men that pursue you?"

"They don't scare me," she said, staring back into those strange eyes. "But . . ."

He waited for her to continue.

"But I am afraid that, if they do not find me, they'll — they'll get my brother and sister and my mummy."

"And why is that, little thing?"

"I did something bad."

He lifted his head once more, gently, and offered his hands. His arms, with their odd length, stretched a great distance, and he reached much more closely to her than she'd thought he could.

His fingers opened, and upon his smooth glossy palm was a tiny wooden horse.

"Did you make that?" she whispered.

He gestured with his hands: take it, take it.

Tentatively she reached out. His great curving claws formed an intimidating barrier around the little horse, and they gleamed in the low light, so close that she could see every detail of the stinger-like barbs at their ends. They parted when her little hand came near, and she had a sudden vision of them snapping shut, of being dragged back into the darkness, but his fearsome claws remained still, and she took the wooden horse without incident.

It was rudely carved, clearly the result of those thick talons, though inured with detail, and its resemblance to Ser Clerval's great roan was not lost on her.

"How did you know?" she murmured.

He retracted his hands, and tapped one claw against the side of his head.

"I walk the Fade, little thing," he said.

She clutched the horse.

"Your thoughts weigh heavily," he went on, "on this side of the Veil, and the next."

"Are you a demon?" she whispered.

He smiled.

Her words quivered. "Somebody tied you up here for a reason."

"And I presume that someone chased you to this place for a reason as well, little thing," he said lightly.

"They —" she said, and swallowed her words. The rough edges of the wooden figure bit into her palm.

"The Templars," he offered.

She began to tremble.

"Little mage," he said.

"I —" She groped for words, could find only few. "I — I ran from them. They were going to — to kill me, or lock me up in a tower. I didn't mean to hurt anybody."

"Of course not," the creature said, with a note of pity.

"And now — they — oh." She cast her eyes upward, into the dark pit from which she'd fallen. "Oh, I hope they're still searching for me," she said softly. "I hope they haven't gone back. They must be . . . terribly angry with me. And if Ser Clerval is dead . . ." She fell silent at the horror of it.

"And I was glad," she said at last. "I was glad to think I had killed him."

The creature's spiked head listed from side to side. "Do not fear, little thing," he said. "Do not fear."

Her eyes dropped to his.

"The Templar of which you speak still lives," he said. "He and his men wander the Wilds even now."

"Is it true?" she said, her heart giving a flutter. "They haven't turned back?"

"Well. For three lyrium-consuming mage-hunters, a pup such as yourself is not difficult to track, one might say." He looked up, as though his gaze penetrated the very ceiling. "Yes. They are nearby."

She felt a momentary surge of relief, followed instantly by an influx of dread.

"What can I do," she whispered, "when they find me?"

She pulled her knees to her chest, as though she could pull herself smaller, shrink into herself and disappear.

Silence then, punctuated by the minor clicking of the creature's claws. She buried her face into her arms, and did not look up again until she sensed movement.

The creature had extended his hands once more. He held out three wooden figures — little soldiers, each wearing a miniature suit of armor and carrying a tiny sword.

She couldn't help but smile as she took them, one by one, from between the parting black claws.

"Maker's breath," she said with delight. "The Templars."

"See how tiny they are," the creature said, "even when held in your little hands?"

She giggled at the absurdity of it. Three little Templars, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Harmless dolls, no more than playthings now.

"They're cute," she said. Then, "Thank you."

The creature had folded his hands again. He nodded to her.

She studied the figures for a moment, and singled one out as Ser Clerval — for it was the only one with a tiny beard — and she pretended to make him walk, moving him across the curve of her knee.

"My, but the little mage has grown big," the creature mused. "They do not stand a chance."

She laughed.

She sat playing with the figures, making them scamper to and fro across the boulder, and dueling with their little swords, as the creature looked on.

He leaned his head to one side, away from the tethered boulder, as though testing the vine.

"Little thing," he said then, gesturing with one hand.

She looked up at him.

"To me," he said.

She was holding Ser Clerval aloft, about to place him on the back of his resurrected steed. She did not move from her perch.

His fingers paused, then motioned once again. "Little thing," he repeated, sweetly. "Why do you hesitate?"

"You're," she said slowly, "you're a demon."

"Am I?"

"Your name. You said your name was Hunger."

He smiled.

"Mummy told me," she said, "that demons . . . they're people's desires made real. Bad desires. Things so strong that people do evil because of them." She named them off her little fingers. "Rage, lust, pride, sloth . . . and hunger."

"A clever child," he said. "A learned child."

"You must have hurt someone," she said, "to end up here."

"As did you," he said mildly.

"I didn't," she stammered, then, glancing at the horse figurine in her hand, "I mean, I didn't mean to . . ."

"Many things are said of my kind," he murmured, "that are simply untrue. Slanderous. Many things said, too, of mages, who are then locked up, put to sword. A tragedy, yes?"

She fidgeted with the dolls.

She heard, then, a distant echo — far-off clamoring steps, exchanging voices.

Hunger lifted his eyes. She stiffened with fear.

"They've found you, little thing," he said.

She scrambled from the boulder, slipped on the condensation. She fell.

He reached out and caught her.

She supressed a yelp of surprise, and he drew her toward him. His large hands gripped her easily, and gently, the claws slick and yielding to her form, and never did their barbs meet her flesh. He lowered her to the rocky floor, huddling her against the hollow cavity of his middle.

"You are a fellow Fade walker," he whispered. "You are a friend."

The barbs ran through her hair.

The voices, the footsteps were growing louder.

"You must do something for me," he said.

She twisted about and stared up at him. The vine stretched, strained against his neck.

"You must pull the charm from the rock," he said, so quietly, his voice the faintest rumble now, the distant shifting of earth. "You must release me."

Her eyes traveled the length of the vine, and settled on the brass pin that pierced the boulder.

"I," she stammered.

A shout from above — Ser Clerval's, close now, distinct.

"I will protect you," he said, and it was strange how delicate those thick claws had become, how gentle were the great fingers that stroked her cheeks. "I will let no harm come to you."

She could see torchlight now, it emanated from the pit overheard, along with voices that shouted inquiries.

"Marian," called Ser Clerval from above.

"Release me," Hunger said, and he hunched down over her, he whispered now in her little ear, "and I shall owe you a great debt. And I shall give you a gift — one that would guarantee your own freedom for ever."

She pushed him away. She dove for the boulder and plucked the pin from the knotted vine.

The tether snapped back from the rock, so quickly that she instinctively shielded her face, and behind her Hunger had lunged forward, yanking the vine from his neck. He scooped her up in one arm and bounded to the dripping boulder where the wooden Templars lay scattered. Hawke clutched the tiny horse as she clung to his chest. His smooth flesh was startlingly hot now against hers, felt likely to burn her, and she broke out in a fevered sweat.

His long arm reached up, up into the pit from which she had fallen, and his claws bored easily into the solid rock, and he lifted himself at once, ascending.

She saw the Templars then, all three of them, as Hunger burst over the lip of the pit, and the shock on their faces was almost comical, though laughter was far from her mind now. And how bizarre a sight it must have been, how unexpected to the Templars who'd pursued a mere child of eight, and saw her now clinging to this heaving beast with eyes like blazing torches.

"Andraste preserve us!" one of them cried. "An abomination!"

One of the great claws lashed out and struck the closest Templar. In a brilliant display of red the barbs caught the flesh at his throat and ripped in an upward arc. The flesh tore — it shredded, she realized, for such claws were not capable of slicing cleanly — and blood wet the man's neck at once, spattered in thick drops across his silver chestplate. He fell, gurgling, and Hawke was horrified to see the meat-red muscles in his throat working, the gobs of flesh that hung like tattered fabric from his jaw.

"Oh, Maker," she stuttered. "Oh, Maker, oh."

Hunger's claw came down, wet and shining. With one liquid movement he pivoted and deposited her gently on the ground. He turned back just as Ser Clerval and the remaining Templar charged.

He caught Ser Clerval's sword in mid-swing, and though the sharp edge bit into his palm he gripped it savagely in his claws. He knocked back the second sword with his elbow and seized the Templar, lifting him from the ground.

She heard his laughter all around her, it shook through the walls, raucous, joyous.

The Templar thrashed, his armor rattling. Hunger's lips had pulled away from his long teeth, stretching wide, wider. He threw Ser Clerval back, who fell still gripping his sword, and Hawke looked on in terror as the demon's mouth opened, kept opening, his jaw seemed to unhinge and the yellow teeth glinted like knives, they could have been as long as her arm now. And the Templar screamed, oh, how pitifully he screamed, as he was lifted to that great mouth, and the fearsome teeth snapped shut.

Hawke shrank back against the wall, staring between her little fingers. From behind him she saw Hunger lower the man, saw the armored legs twitching, the streams of hot fragrant blood, and then the great dark cavity where the man's shoulder should have been, the chestplate bent and ripped away, exposed ribs and splintered bone.

She heard the terrible grinding of powerful jaws, and glimpsed the dangling human arm that swung free from the demon's mouth.

She slumped forward in what was nearly a dead faint.

Ser Clerval had bellowed a name, surely it was the name of that poor wretch whose eyes now stared, distant and cloudy, up at nothing, as Hunger leaned down again and ran a long, dark tongue along the ruined shoulder, lapping up the sumptuous blood.

"Oh, please," she whispered, though to whom she knew not.

She met Ser Clerval's eyes for the briefest moment — they were blue, pale blue, and she saw in them that hint of softness he'd betrayed in the Wilds, and she wondered how she must look, pale and shivering in the wake of this great monster.

"You will release him!" Ser Clerval cried then, launching from the floor in a fearless sprint, his sword held aloft.

Hunger turned to him, swallowing flesh and nerves and bone. She saw, from this angle, how his face had lost any resemblance of humanity — may never had truly looked human at all — and instead it was now twisted and gnarled and grinning. He flung down the maimed wretch, his arm no longer emaciated and lithe, but thick and roped with muscle.

He ducked low, and Ser Clerval's sword glanced from the chitinous spines on his head.

He snatched with one hand and five barbed points pierced Ser Clerval's back, his ribs.

He lifted Ser Clerval from the floor, plucking away the sword from his hand as though it were a mere toy.

Hawke moaned, covering her eyes.

"Marian!"

She looked up.

Ser Clerval had twisted toward her, was staring at her over the rise of Hunger's shoulder. Blood dotted his bearded mouth in a fine spray. The five claws were buried deep, had penetrated his armor with ease.

"I'm sorry," she found herself whispering. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Marian," he said again, and his face was suddenly paling, going slate gray. "You must run. Run now, far from here, far from him . . ."

Hunger's great jaws sprang apart and he howled with laughter.

"Run to your mother's arms," Ser Clerval went on. "Go! I will not let him come for you."

"The Templar lies, little thing," Hunger crowed. "He cares nothing for you. He desires only to see your kind locked away, slaughtered and trampled underfoot, until none are left to walk free."

"This creature is an abomination," Ser Clerval said firmly, though his voice was growing weak. "Be strong, you must be strong. Do not give in to him. Do not believe the things he says."

"Silence, fool!"

"Safeguard yourself," Ser Clerval said. "For the worst things he can take from you are your body and mind."

Hunger lunged forward, his jaws stretching wide. Ser Clerval held her gaze as that razored maw descended over him.

He must have only whispered them, though she could swear that she heard his final words loud and clear.

"Don't look," he said.

 align="center" The mouth closed over his head.

[rubypop]

Hunger, Chapter 1 - Dragon Age 2

More Dragon Age fic by rubypop. A direct continuation of my previous fics, "The Consequences" and "To Bleed the Mage." Read Parts 1 and 2 before continuing.

Hunger by rubypop Chapter 1

She had only been a child.

Years ago, years before the Blight, before her time in Kirkwall, Hawke walked the plowed fields of Lothering. She was barefoot, against the chiding of her mother — she loved the texture of the soft, loamy soil between her toes, the cool springtime breeze that carried with it the scent of things growing. She was not an uncommon sight as she wandered the outskirts of the village alone, and the farmers always smiled and greeted her, this dark-headed child who explored with no need of anyone to look after her.

She was searching for goldberries. Her younger brother, ruddy-faced and indignant, had insisted on their existence, and dared her to find them. "The butcher's son told me so," he whined when she taunted his gullibility. "He says they grow out by the Wilds, along the city wall. Solid gold, they are. He says they give you strong magic — you go an' see, if you're so special!"

She and their sister Bethany had been delighting themselves for some time with modest shows of budding magic. At first they reassured the sulking Carver that his own magic still had yet to show, and should he wait long enough he would be rewarded, but as his impatience grew they determined to needle him mercilessly: they fired tiny spurts of flame over the dinner table, and giggled over suddenly-frozen dandelions that shattered at his touch. It was all in good fun, they reasoned, but a sense of competition was brewing, and Hawke readily accepted the challenge to find the fabled goldberries.

She paused now in the field, wriggling her toes with pleasure at the cold soil oozing beneath her feet. She scraped at the dirt with her heels, and when she glanced up again she spied a line of armored men at the village gate.

Instinctively, she ducked her head. She knew without looking that Knight-Captain Clerval was leading them. Her mother had warned them all to stay clear of the Templars, though for many years Hawke could not see why — these great armored men who kept the gates free of bandits, who stayed ever watchful at the doors of the Chantry. And kind-eyed Ser Clerval had rescued the apothecary's children from a bear (she recalled, guiltily, how she had dared them to explore the caves by the river). He'd carried the young sobbing boys back to their mother, and given her the skin of the beast itself.

But Ser Clerval was not always kind. Just weeks ago, she had awoken in the night to screams and shouting. The windows of Roland Tynham's home had lit up with flickering blue light and crackling sparks, and the crash of splintering furniture echoed through the once-silent evening. In mere moments the ruckus had quieted down, and she watched the Templars leave through the front door: one led a frail woman by the manacles at her wrists, and she walked with her head bowed and eyes running with tears. The Templar behind her carried the still, outstretched form of a man whose linen shirt was darkened with blood. When he turned to glance back into the house, the moonlight caught on the ridges of the fallen man's gaping chest — his heart had been cleaved open.

Ser Clerval emerged at last. The sword he carried was dripping blood.

He unrolled a sheet of parchment and nailed it to the door. He then signaled the other Templars and, trembling, she watched them lead the crying woman away.

The following morning, she'd stood clinging to her mother's skirts as they joined a whispering crowd at Roland Tynham's now-vacant hovel.

"'By the order of the Grand Cleric,'" her mother was reading from the parchment on the door, "'and in Andraste's name, the Templar Order declares this home tainted by maleficarum. Roland Tynham is condemned to death for the sacrilege of blood magic. His surviving assets are heretofore seized for dissemination by the Chantry.'

"Blood magic, poppycock," she scoffed then. "Roland was a good man. He would never dabble in the likes of it." She shook her head.

The Templars were marching in a solemn line from the gate, following Ser Clerval, who sat atop an enormous blue roan. Hawke held her breath in the open field.

Not long after the death of Roland Tynham, Hawke was chasing dragonflies by the riverbank. She ran with her skirts bunched in one hand, trying inexpertly to snatch a bottle-green dragonfly straight out of the air. The sky was growing dusky with the sinking sun, and despite her best efforts the river water had splashed all over her dress. Cold and frustrated, she stomped her little foot and fired a bright spark from her outstretched hand. The spark caught the dragonfly and sent it smoldering and spiraling to the pebbled shore.

She beamed in triumph and, when she turned, she saw Ser Clerval making his way toward her from across the field.

She froze. The image of Roland Tynham's opened chest flashed through her mind, and Ser Clerval's dripping sword.

He was smiling gently as he approached, taking his time. His sword rocked at his side. He nodded to her when he reached the shore.

"What are you always doing out here all alone, little one?" he inquired, and though she listened for a hint of suspicion in his voice, she detected none.

"Nothing," she said. She toed the shallow water that ran over her feet. Then, trying to sound tough, she said, "Hunting bears."

His face lit up with surprise and he laughed. "Andraste's sword, they must be running scared," he said.

Her lower lip poked out. She couldn't decide if he was making fun of her.

He crossed the shore and knelt down before her.

"Although I did see something peculiar as I was returning from my patrol," he said.

Her heart jumped. Thinking quickly, she said, "I was catching fireflies."

His dark eyebrows lifted. "Fireflies?"

"Yes, serah."

"Quite an extravagant firefly I saw then, from so far away."

She gripped her skirt. Cold river water dribbled between her fingers.

"It was a really big one," she offered.

He smiled.

"A clever tongue," he chuckled, not unkindly. He ruffled her hair with one hand. "You're one of Leandra Amell's little ones, are you not?"

"Yes, serah," she said.

"What is your name, if I may ask?"

"Marian."

"Marian. A lovely name." His hand lingered on her head, heavy and strong. "Tell me, little Marian. How old are you now?"

She thought for a moment, and counted on her fingers. "Eight," she said.

"Ah. I see. So you are almost a woman."

She stuck out her lip again. "I don't know."

"Why, you are. In just a few short years, I imagine you shall be married."

She made a face, prompting him to laugh again.

"That does not appeal to you, does it?"

She shook her head.

"Well. As do many things, that will change. And a young lady such as yourself goes through a great deal of changes during this time." He tipped his head to one side and leaned toward her conspiratorily. "Have you noticed anything — strange, about yourself lately?"

She shook her head again, slowly this time, not quite knowing what he meant.

"Have you come into any unusual talents, I mean?"

"Oh. Well, certainly." She wished, suddenly, that he weren't so near, that he would remove his hand from her head. "I can jump much farther than I used to," she said, forcing a note of pride into her voice. "All the way across the brook!"

He chuckled. At last he lowered his hand, propping it on his knee. "I see. Jumping brooks and hunting bears. You are quite the force to be reckoned with, my dear."

She fidgeted with her skirt then, and glanced at the sky. "It — it's getting dark," she said. "I've got to go home, or Mummy will be angry with me."

"Just a moment, then," he said, and reached out to take her wrist.

She dodged, sidestepping him, and when her foot came down there was a loud crunch against the pebbles. His eyes dropped, but she was already running back to the village, her heart pounding, leaving him to stare at the scorched remains of the obliterated dragonfly.

Hawke thought back to all of this as she watched the Templars approach.

She began to walk casually, trying to look as though she were daydreaming, as Ser Clerval's gaze alighted on her. She decided to hum, and felt as though a long, strong thread connected them, she and Ser Clerval, drawing them closer together. She stole a glance at him, regretting it instantly. From atop the majestic horse, he caught her eye and nodded. She quickly looked away.

They passed one another, and Hawke hurried past the line of Templars, ducking her head.

She sighed with relief as she crossed the field to the great stone wall. She paused at the first step, feeling a sudden hum in the thread, and looked back.

Ser Clerval was signaling to the other Templars, had pulled his horse to one side as they walked on. Two other Templars joined him, glancing at her.

She took off running, scrambling up the stone steps. One of the Templars shouted; she heard the thunder of hooves.

She raced along the wall, her bare feet smacking against the stones. She crossed the bridge — and heard rattling armor, heavy boots on wooden planks. She could not outrun them.

Before her stretched the Wilds — miles of wilderness and tangled brush that her mother had strictly forbidden her from going near. "It's 'cause of the Witch of the Wilds," Bethany would whisper. "She'll gobble you up, she will!"

She was ready to face any witch, if it meant escaping poor Roland Tynham's fate.

She sprang forward, sliding down a slope choked with nettles, which tore at her arms and legs. The Templars were shouting, commanding her to stop, she dove into a tangle of brambles, wriggling between the dark, thick branches.

She glanced back. They were right behind her — Ser Clerval's horse reared up at the brambles, tossing its jet-black mane. Ser Clerval had drawn his sword, was chopping now at the thorns. Hawke hit the ground and crawled away, her fingernails scraping through the dirt.

"Leave me alone!" she cried.

Hooves pounded the ground behind her. She spun onto her back and thrust both hands into the air.

Flames erupted from her fingers, sudden and hot, surprising even her. The horse reared again, braying, and Ser Clerval yanked the reigns as he struggled to control it.

"She is a mage!" one of the Templars called out.

The flames died too soon — she still knew too little of this mysterious power — and she had only singed the horse, could smell the acrid burning of its smoke-blue mane. She snatched thorns from her hair and squirmed through the brush.

"Do not run!" Ser Clerval said, hacking away the remaining brambles. "No harm will come to you, little one."

"You're lying!" she cried. She shoved herself from the ground and bolted away.

The other two Templars had burst through the brush, thorns glancing from their armor, and they gave chase. She flung a spark of flame at the nettles beneath her feet, and they ignited. She turned a corner, glancing back — the Templars had extended their hands, whispering spells of their own to cleanse the fire with ease.

When she turned back around, Ser Clerval's horse thundered to the ground before her. Her feet skidded in the dirt; he must have circled around her when she was distracted, had leaped from a rocky hillside without her even seeing.

He had raised a hand, approaching her.

"You must cease this," he said firmly. "Else you set light to the whole of the Wilds."

"I don't want to die," she said.

"You will not," he said, though he did not sheathe his sword. "We will not harm you. But you must return with us."

"Liar," she stammered. "You — you killed Ser Roland. You stabbed his heart."

Ser Clerval's face softened at the tremor in her voice.

"Mother says — Mother says the Templars hurt us. They steal away children and lock us up and they kill us. And Ser Roland . . . he never did anything wrong."

The nettles rustled behind her. The other Templars stood waiting.

"Your magic is untrained," Ser Clerval said carefully, "and new. I would not lie to you, little one: no harm will come to you. Roland Tynham was a maleficar — he was not a good mage like yourself. He tried to ensnare us with blood magic —"

"I saw fire that night," she said. "Fire and ice."

She heard one of the Templars take a step, and Ser Clerval raised his hand again, silently.

"There is nothing you can do, little Marian, save heed my words. There are plenty of children at the Circle. It is safe there, for your kind."

"No," she said. "I won't go."

Ser Clerval pursed his lips for a moment, looking rueful. He nodded then to the Templars, who went to grab her.

She panicked, flung out her arms, and the earth rumbled beneath them, shifting, and it ruptured, throwing the two Templars off of their feet. A chasm opened behind her, collapsing, as the earth gathered into a sharp spear that erupted beneath Ser Clerval.

It was a moment in time that was seared into her memory. The horse reared up, and the spear of earth caught it, gouging it between the ribs. She heard the muted thud of penetrated muscle, the crack of splitting bone. And the horse screamed — a terrible, squealing wail of agony that drove her little fists to her ears. The smell of blood hit her — so much blood, more than she had ever seen — as Ser Clerval was thrown, striking the gnarled base of a tree. The horse was thrashing against the earthen spike, its magnificent coat speckled with red, and foam dropped from its mouth, flung every which way.

Horrified, she fled, caring not if they saw where she went, wanting nothing more than to leave this place, to run until she heard the dying animal's cries no more.

Her surroundings whipped by in a blur. She did not know which direction she had taken, could not tell if she ran farther into the Wilds or would somehow find her way back home. She wondered, vaguely, if she had killed Ser Clerval, and found that she did not care if she had.

#

On and on she ran, twisting and turning through the wilderness, until the sky had begun to darken, and she could run no more. Her little chest heaved, and she shuddered with exhaustion. Scratches covered her arms and legs from the reaching nettles; mud and calluses marred her aching feet. She paused for breath by an overgrown tree and glanced around, hoping to glimpse the stone wall through the trees. There was nothing beyond the prison of wilderness surrounding her.

She squatted to the ground, hugging her knees. She would have cried, if she were prone to such a thing; but instead she silently despaired, wondering if the Templars still searched for her, or — worse yet — if they had returned to Lothering for her family.

She was unaccustomed to such guilt and dread, and they pierced her heart terribly. She chastised herself for mentioning her mother, for speaking to Ser Clerval at all. How stupid I must be, she thought, for chasing dragonflies in the first place. How could she be so careless, so childish? Was she not almost a woman? She buried her face in her hands.

Night descended with a chilling pall. She wandered aimlessly, utterly lost. She could scarcely see a thing, and was too consumed by dread to light a torch lest they see her. And so on she went, convinced she was going in circles, jumping at every sound, the snap of a twig, the buzz of insects.

She came to a cave, and felt along its lip with her fingers. The thought of sleep was tantalizing; the lure of a hiding place gave her hope. She went cautiously inside, plunging now into absolute darkness.

#

Within the cave, she smelled old earth, still water, the encroaching odor of niter.

She heard distant echoes of things that dripped, the scratching of some small creature, the hesitant shush of her own bare footfalls.

She saw a muted blue glow in the distance.

She went toward it, mystified. It was faint, seemed to come from very far away — but it was there, yes, a gentle suffusion of light unlike anything she had ever seen, save for the emissions of magic that had lit up Roland Tynham's windows.

Magic, she thought. Surely there was something for her here, some magical essence that could help her?

She took another step, and found herself stumbling. Her heel had come to rest on a fragile shelf of rock, and beneath her toes there was nothing. The rock was crumbling, her balance lost. She was falling now, and threw out both hands to catch herself, but there was nothing, nothing now, she was falling. Her shoulder struck a wall as she dropped, and within seconds she hit the ground, sprawling on water-slick rock.

She grunted and slumped down, dizzy, uncertain of how far she had fallen.

She shivered. Her palms slid against the rock as she pushed herself up. Her head pounded so loudly that she wondered how hard she had hit it — found she couldn't be sure.

When she turned, she saw two bright lights, like eyes, peering at her from the darkness.

[rubypop]

The Consequences - Dragon Age 2

This is a direct sequel to my previous fic, "To Bleed the Mage." Be sure to read it before continuing. It's short!

The Consequences by rubypop

Long past midnight, Anders stood alone in the clinic. He was bent over the washbasin, had been scrubbing his hands vigorously, but now he stood still, staring. A dot of blood dropped into the water. Slowly it dissipated, and before long it was joined by another.

He touched his lip. He'd bit through it without even noticing.

"Anders, please," she'd urged him, her voice steady and calm, despite the horror that surged up inside him. "You must not."

He'd cried out, something guttural and strange that could have been a scream, and clutched her against his chest, cradling her head as though she were a child, as though she were the one screaming.

He wiped his mouth, finally tasting it.

A chill furrowed through him. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Goosebumps rippled over his arms. He didn't have to see to know that a cold blue light reflected off the basin. He exhaled as though he could empty himself of air. The chill subsided for the moment.

"I left him there," she'd said, as Anders gingerly applied medicine to the lacerations on her neck. "Twitching." She'd swallowed hard.

His eyes had burned then and he'd squeezed them shut, turning away so she wouldn't see.

Anders went over it now, just as she'd described it in careful, measured words. How she'd whispered an incantation with her fingers dripping blood, how she'd shaken with fear that he would hear her, lying so close to her. But Fenris had been drinking, she'd told him, and if he'd heard anything at all, he hadn't the time to react: she'd turned over just as the convulsions began. Wet choking sounds gurgled from his throat, his eyes wide and staring, staring directly at her with knowing accusation, and as the tremors ripped through him she'd thrown herself from the bed and run.

Cold behind his eyes now, sharp and piercing. Anders wiped his lip again and dried his hands.

"You musn't," she'd said as he held her, rocking back and forth. Laying a hand on his arm to cover a flicker of blue light. "You musn't."

Anders knew that she had not been addressing him.

#

She was sound asleep in the straw-stuffed bed in the clinic's back room. Anders sat down beside her, relieved at the lack of tension in her expression. No nightmares tormented her. Twice he'd already changed the bandages on her neck, and he leaned down to inspect them now.

Dark bruises, eggplant purple and murky green, blossomed beneath the linen. He bit his lip. The image of Fenris — of that wild beast — closing his fingers around her throat . . . no. Even just the thought was too much.

He whispered it as quietly as he could: "I'm sorry, my love. I'm sorry. But he will not listen to me."

He reached out with one hand, a hand that was his but not his, and, wreathed in a cold blue glow, his fingers ran through her hair.

#

Fenris stumbled as he rushed down the foyer stairs. He seized the railing to keep from falling. His balance was off — had been off since he'd awakened in a stupor with bloody spume on his mouth and late sunlight slanting through the windows. He'd had no idea how much time had passed, and disjointed memories of the previous night were slow to return. But in a shattering moment of sobriety he recalled the agony of every single muscle in his body contracting at once as Hawke had looked on, terrified.

He hadn't taken much — didn't have much to take with him, anyhow — and raced now for the mansion's rear exit. It was time to leave this place for good.

He traveled the back alleys of Hightown, keeping close to the shadows, glancing about at every corner. He grasped the handle of his greatsword, ready to draw it at any time. Tied around his wrist was a scrap of red — a knot of torn fabric that he'd snatched from the bedchamber floor in a dizzying moment of partial consciousness.

#

Anders left the clinic, walking a path he did not know, seeing without seeing, and seeking out a purpose that was not his, that he had promised Hawke he would not pursue, and he was a shade moving in steadily-illuminating darkness, a passenger now in his own skin.

#

A tempestuous wind howled across the Wounded Coast, stirring the waves into a frenzy. Fenris picked along the jagged cliffs and shielded his face. The wind whistled through his gauntlets and tore at the sword on his back. Numerous times he nearly fell, and he stepped gingerly, feeling along the rock with his bare feet.

Because the wind whipped so, and the wild sea was roaring, he did not notice the veneer of blue light flicker from the rocks, and could not anticipate the arcane projectile that slammed, full force, into his spine.

He was thrown to the ground so suddenly that he didn't even cry out. He heard the crunching footfalls of someone running through the gravel. He flipped onto his back, reaching for his sword. But a second enchantment knocked him backwards, and he groped empty air.

His markings ignited. He tore from the ground, a blinding shock of silver on the night-black coast, and charged his attacker. A robed figure towered against an outcropping of rock, and for an instant his mind flashed to Danarius, though he knew who it must be, for it could be no one else.

Anders raised a staff, shouting an incantation.

Fenris splayed his claws, streaking forth and spouting hot silver light.

Anders's eyes blazed ghostly blue, and echoes of a deep and powerful voice rang out against the cliffs, and just as Fenris reached him he was struck by a final spell, collapsing at the mage's feet, the gritty shore rushing up to him, and the last thing he saw before blacking out was the wild spectral stare of those two blazing eyes.

#

From deep within himself, Anders watched the preparation of the ritual.

He walked a wide circle, counting his steps, while he drew a glyph in the sand of the cavern floor. He unpacked vials of lyrium and rolls of fraying linen. Fenris lay prostrate against the cavern wall, stripped of his chest plate, the steel gauntlets with their pointed claws.

When all was ready Anders moved him to the center of the glyph. He wondered how so slight an elf could fight with such ferocity. He bound together Fenris's wrists and ankles, and blindfolded him, knotting the linen tightly behind his head. Tiny crescent-moon cuts and scratches marred the dark face. Anders grit his teeth as he stood back up.

From the heap of Fenris's belongings, he produced the scrap of scarlet fabric. He'd recognized it immediately, and wound it now around and around his fingers, pulling it tight. He paced back and forth across the cave, then rolled the fabric into a tight ball. He went back to the glyph and knelt.

He dug his fingers into the soft flesh beneath Fenris's jaw, coaxing his mouth open. With two fingers Anders pushed the ball of fabric deep into the back of his throat. He secured it with a length of linen between the teeth, knotting it with a fierce jerk.

The Waking Sea crashed against the outer wall of the cavern. Anders rose. He collected the glass vials and sprinkled lyrium dust over the glyph. With the pads of his fingers he pressed dust into the silver looping pathways of Fenris's tattoos. He began to whisper, knowing well that the linen would not hold, should Fenris awaken.

He was leaning over Fenris when he caught sight of a white cloud of breath — Fenris's breath, escaping from his nostrils in a visible stream. To Anders, the world was steadily growing darker. He knew how he must be radiating cold, could see the goosebumps emerge on Fenris's flesh. He worked quickly, and stood over him at last, emitting a ghostly vapor that illuminated the room.

"To the Fade," Justice whispered, and Anders plunged into the frigid shadows.

#

Fenris was a child, running across a grassy courtyard. Another child ran with him, a pale redheaded girl who shrieked with laughter as they chased a ball that rolled through the grass. A young woman tended the flowers nearby, picking through scarlet carnations with bright heavy heads, and she glanced at them from time to time as she worked.

The girl shouted to him, calling him by a name that he did not recognize, and he raced to catch up with her, and all about were the sounds and smells of springtime, such sweetness that he could scarcely remember now.

He stooped to catch the ball. Movement from the manor wall surrounding the courtyard caught his eye. The young girl — his sister, yes, she must be, it seemed right to him and he did not question it — raced past and grabbed the ball. She was laughing and a door was opening at the manor wall, and Fenris stood transfixed in the grass.

A man emerged from the door and squinted in the sun. He was bearded and wore deep gray magister's robes, dark like storm clouds and heavily decorated. An elf followed him out and knelt beside him. Across his back hung a large greatsword, and a thick iron collar encircled his neck. He kept his eyes to the ground.

Another magister had entered the courtyard, but Fenris could only stare at the first man and his slave. He was scanning the courtyard, and his silver-flecked eyes came to rest on Fenris.

A thrill of dread ran through him.

Fenris recognized the second man as the master of the manor, his owner, a nervous, chattering slob who gesticulated wildly now, and though he spoke animatedly to his guest the other magister did not listen.

Fenris's master spotted the young woman tending to the garden, and he pointed at her, shouting out suddenly.

The woman — his mother, he knew now — widened her eyes and dropped her trowel. Their master crossed the courtyard, shouting in anger, and Fenris's mother dove into a bow and pressed her forehead to the grass, begging forgiveness.

His sister released the ball and hid her face in her little hands.

The bearded man smiled at him.

Fenris's master flung out his foot and kicked the young woman sharply, and she went sprawling into the grass. Savagely he admonished her and kicked her again, and she cried out, pleading.

Fenris could hear all of this, could see it transpire out of the corner of his eye. But to his great shame he could do nothing but return the bearded man's stare, as though trapped by those quicksilver eyes, the knowing smile.

All the while, his mother wept and begged, and his sister hid her face, as Fenris and Danarius gazed at one another for the very first time.

#

Hawke awoke in the backroom of the clinic. She rubbed her eyes and grimaced. She tested her throat with her fingertips, found the flesh still tender and swollen, and sat back, heaving a sigh.

"Anders?" she called out.

She awaited a response. When none came, she stretched and moved from the bed. She pushed aside the curtain and peered into the clinic proper.

"Anders?" she said again, but the clinic was dark and empty.

#

A deep voice echoed across the courtyard, as though woven into the very air.

"So you do remember this day, do you not?"

Fenris blinked.

It all dissolved — the grass, the flowers, the figures of his mother and sister, his master, and Danarius. He was a child no longer, but a man, sprawled on the crumbling flagstones of a dungeon floor, and the air was wrong somehow, heavy and noxious, the stone walls blurring and re-forming before his very eyes. Anders stood over him, and he knew at once that it was not Anders, just as he knew that this was no real dungeon, not in any physical sense.

"So you've come for me," Fenris said.

Anders's eyes were lanterns of chilling blue light. The air rang with biting cold.

"I've come to rectify your transgression," Justice said.

Fenris launched himself from the ground and tore at the spirit with his claws. A stab of bitter cold pierced the tendons in his ankles and he fell instead to the damp stone at Justice's feet. For an instant his legs were paralyzed, and the heavy air of the Fade smothered him.

"You shall regret your actions," Justice said, as the stone walls shuddered.

Fenris struggled to stand but could only lay gasping; the very environment had sent all of his senses into an uncomprehending frenzy, and he clutched at his head.

"By the Maker, stop this!" he shouted.

A sneer twisted Justice's face. He raised one hand and a heavy iron collar, identical to that of Danarius's bodyguard, materialized in his grip. He seized Fenris and clamped the collar around his neck, yanking a chain through the metal ring. He turned and jerked the chain sharply, pulling Fenris from the ground, and Fenris gagged, clutching the collar, as Justice dragged him across the flagstones.

"You will receive the same amount of mercy," Justice spat, "that you gave to her."

He yanked the chain again, and Fenris choked on a curse, kicking his feet. His fingers strained against the collar.

"You would defend a maleficar, then?" he cried out. "An abomination to your very cause, who dabbles in blood sorcery so freely?"

Shackles emerged from the decrepit wall, and Justice looped the chain through them, pulling it taut so that Fenris lurched from the floor by his neck, and there he dangled against the wall, his toes brushing the floor.

"You wild dog," Justice snarled. "You will not speak of her so."

He clenched the chain harder and snapped his arm back. Fenris's feet left the floor completely and the collar sliced into his neck, strangling him. Needles of pain riddled his chest and he gasped for breath, and couldn't find it, choking for air. All the while, Justice watched him and narrowed his luminous eyes as he held the chain steady.

Fenris struck the dungeon wall with his feet and tore at the collar. He writhed and his eyes watered, his throat scorched and scraped and raw.

Justice released the chain.

Fenris dropped unceremoniously to the floor, scraping his shoulders against rough stone. His chest heaved; he sucked in breath after breath, and his ribs felt cracked. He slumped against the wall, cupping his throat with his hand.

The chain was secured now to the wall, and Justice knelt over him, stripping the gauntlets from his arms. He fastened shackles to Fenris's wrists, bound them together with the chain, and he pulled the chain taut through the eyelet on the wall, so that Fenris's arms stretched over his head.

"I am confident that you recall this place all too well," Justice said.

And Fenris did — it was identical now to the dungeon that lay beneath Danarius's estate in Minrathous. The walls had shifted to slick basalt tiles, the floor a dizzying stone parquet. Empty cells of beautiful wrought iron lined the far wall.

Disgust tore through him and he scowled.

"Demon wretch," he said. "How dare you bring me to this place?"

"How dare you lay a hand on her?" Justice said, his voice dripping with venom.

He gestured around them, indicating realms beyond the room.

"Ah, but there is more than this," he said. "Far more. It was not difficult to shuffle through your memories like so many playing cards. You have many painful ones, yes, from your time in Minrathous."

Fenris sat back, rustling the chain. His voice wavered.

"You would not," he said.

And those terrible eyes gleamed, blistering in the dungeon dark.

#

A leather slipper struck Fenris on the chin, waking him suddenly, and, as he struggled up in the dry straw, the slipper came back down and smacked his cheek.

He raised his arms and cowered back.

She was already shouting at him, and drunk, stinking drunk.

"Stupid bumbling lazy whoreson!" the apprentice Hadriana screamed, nearly falling into the cell as she ambled toward him. She leaned hard on the doorway and flung the slipper at him. It sailed at a clumsy angle and bounced off his forearm.

"How dare you!" she cried, as though the near-miss had been his doing. She dragged him from the cell and kicked him in the ribs, screeching and spitting.

He knew better than to resist or question why. He covered his head with his arms and curled up on his side in an attempt to protect himself.

From the other cells, the dark, wide eyes of his fellow slaves turned to watch. The slave quarters had been outfitted from a decrepit horse stable that had gone long unused by the estate, and they all slept four to a cell on beds of itchy straw. Fenris was the only one with a cell of his own, and perhaps this was why they looked on with little pity as Hadriana attacked him night after night.

He was no stranger to beatings. When scolded for a mistake, he accepted the cuffs and slaps with a bowed head and sincere apology. At times they would beat him mercilessly, until his nose ran with blood and bruises darkened his back — but these punishments had a purpose, always there to correct an error that he made certain never to repeat. At times he would bow deeply to his masters and, stinging and smarting, thank them.

But Hadriana's outbursts had no purpose. She hounded him in the night much more frequently now, waking him with kicks and insults and vitriol, laying into him for the better part of the night, so that he dragged sleepily during the daytime and was much more prone to those mistakes that invoked his masters' displeasure.

"You drooling bloody knife-ear," she shrieked. "Uncover your face, you cur!"

He lowered his hands, and she kicked him then so fiercely that his lip split open and his mouth filled with blood.

"And what are you waiting for?" she demanded, as he spit blood on the floor. "Retrieve my shoe at once."

He crawled into the cell, wincing and shivering. He collected the slipper from the straw and hurried back, lifting it to her with supplicant hands.

She snatched it up and slapped it against his head, and when he cowered she spit upon him.

"You will know your place," she screamed. "Maker, how it sickens me to see you floating about with your smug illusions of superiority — just because you are Danarius's little pet! You think you are better than the rest of us, you flea-bitten dog?" And she slapped him again. "I am apprenticed to the magister!" she crowed. "You belong to me as much as you belong to him! And I will be damned if you forget it."

She seized him by the hair and yanked him up so that they were eye-to-eye.

"Now apologize to me," she said, her voice growing sweet and soft. "Beg my forgiveness for forgetting yourself so."

Blood rolled down his chin when he parted his lips. "I beg your forgiveness," he whispered.

She smiled girlishly. "I did not hear you," she cooed, and her breath reeked with hot wine.

"I am sorry, mistress," he said, "for transgressing you so."

"And?"

"And though I am undeserving," he stammered, as fury crept through him, "I implore you, please forgive me."

He inhaled sharply and spat blood across her robes.

Violently she flinched back, as though he had struck her, and stared down at the spatter of blood on her breast. Her face contorted into a savage sneer, and her eyes gleamed murderous and fierce.

"You great shitting long-eared fucker!" she howled, raising her arm, and without thinking he snatched her wrist and twisted it.

Her eyes widened. Heat rushed through him in wave after feverous wave, his markings flared agonizing silver, and there was raw fear in those eyes, yes, pale blue watery eyes framed by wild tallow-smoke hair, and the scars that lined her arm flattened and stretched as he pulled. A wild thought flashed through his brain, one so mad and untenable that for an instant he questioned his own sanity: he could kill her now, reach through her breast as though it were nothing and crush her heart between his fingers, and, oh, how easy that would be.

He released her then, horrified.

She lashed out, kicking him in the gut, and he dropped, clutching himself round the middle. She produced a serrated steel pin from her hair and sliced open the meat of her palm. Blood ran over the scars on her arm and she seized Fenris's wrist, uttering a string of cryptic words.

A scarlet palm print remained when she let him go.

And suddenly his fingers were twitching, curling painfully into a stiff claw, his muscles snapping tight, contracting, taut. He howled and his entire hand began to twist, the tendons stretched tight as bow-strings, and he crumpled over in agony.

Hadriana was silent, with wild eyes.

The other slaves looked away, rolling over in their straw beds.

With a final lurch his hand veered at an impossible angle, and the bones in his wrist snapped with a sickening, crackling volley, and a high keening wrenched from deep within him, shocking him in its unfamiliarity, and he collapsed back into the cell, and he writhed, as Hadriana giggled and departed from the stable.

#

Hawke stood in the entrance of Fenris's abandoned Hightown manor.

She peered into the foyer, searching for movement. The lamps were dark and cold, had not been lit for hours. She crossed the atrium tentatively and climbed upstairs to the sitting room.

The empty wine bottles were still there, lying on their sides, and jagged glass shards littered the floor in a wreath around the trestle table. She swept past it with scarcely a glance.

Her heart began to pound only when she approached the bedchamber. She instinctively brushed the bandages at her throat and found the memory of it still fresh, the armored joints of those claws slicing into her neck.

She was not new to pain or menace. No mage was, after all, to say nothing of her flight from Lothering. But to think that someone she'd once entrusted with her life, who'd fought by her side in the Deep Roads and called her friend — to think that he would have done this, had driven her to the lengths she'd taken in order to escape him . . .

What she feared most was that she would find him there, lying still on the bed, as she had left him.

She touched the bedchamber door. She sucked in her breath and pushed it open.

The bed was empty. She wavered and went to it. The silk comforter bunched at the edge of the mattress, had been tossed violently about, and she saw him there again, twitching and shaking and staring back at her.

She felt again the crush of his hands, the hatred and hunger in his eyes, the ugly piercing pain as he entered her, and then the points of his claws running down the scars on her thighs, as though imitating their creation. She heard his pointed question: "And so it was not Justice that gave these to you?"

No, she wished she had said, had said anything at all. No, it was not.

#

Justice watched closely as Fenris shivered in his chains, shuddering back from invisible blows, and the iron links rattled against the dungeon wall, and gouts of sweat tapped like glass beads against the stone.

#

Fenris stood alone in the dark carpeted hall beyond his master's door.

His heart thudded. He glanced down the hallway as though awaiting instruction. All was silent save for a distant clock chiming the hour. It was late, very late, and normally at this time he would be drifting into an uneasy sleep within in his cell. But on this night he had been sent for, called upon by his new master.

He waited until the door glided open on well-oiled hinges. Danarius's silent bodyguard filled the doorway.

Fenris had seen him frequently, always at his master's side. He was a formidable-looking man, heavy-set for an elf, his skin coarse and ruddy, but there was something feminine about his face, and there was emptiness in his black eyes. He moved back into the room and swept out his arm, inviting Fenris inside.

"Thank you, Lucan," came Danarius's voice from within the room.

Fenris dropped to his knee and bowed deeply, staring at the floor.

"You may come in, Fenris," Danarius called out with a chuckle.

"Yes, my master," Fenris said, and he rose, and, with his eyes to the floor, went past the bodyguard and entered the room. The slave Lucan shut the door behind him.

Danarius's bedchamber was formidable and vast. A plush carpet, the color of arterial blood, muted Fenris's footsteps. Danarius was seated at an elaborately-carved writing table, from which he glanced only briefly. Fenris waited obediently in the center of the room. The vaulted ceiling dwarfed him, and was lined with stained glass of startling crystal white and ruby red. Bookshelves, crowded with thick ancient tomes of leather and vellum, covered every wall. The writing table was a basalt slab fitted with regal looping hardware that shimmered like silver vines. The resemblance to his freshly-hewn tattoos was not lost on him.

The markings still ached and his flesh had only just begun to scab. Often he awoke in agony during the night, the walls of his cell alit with white-hot light, and the other slaves would crowd away, holding one another in fear.

Danarius lowered his quill. Lucan remained by the door. Fenris could feel his presence, the powerful stare of his empty eyes.

"I presume you are adjusting?" Danarius said, rolling the sheet of vellum into a tight scroll.

Fenris did not lift his gaze. "I am, my master."

"They are still painful?" he asked lightly, sliding a ribbon over the scroll.

"Yes, my master."

"Ah. And they will be always, most assuredly." Fenris could hear the smile in his voice. "But you are strong, Fenris. I have great confidence in you."

The compliment embarrassed him, and he could not bring himself to respond.

Danarius sat back. "No word of thanks, Fenris?" he said, amused.

"I thank you, my master," Fenris mumbled. "Though I am undeserving of your praise."

Danarius was silent for some time, and Fenris risked a glance. Danarius studied him, his eyes following the silver patterns etched into his skin. Their eyes met and Fenris looked away, shamed by his own callousness.

Danarius rose from the desk and leisurely crossed the room. He went to Fenris and circled him slowly, observing him, and Fenris kept his head bowed, his flesh prickling.

"We still must talk of Petra," Danarius said.

Fenris did not speak at first. Then, "Master."

"Yes, Fenris?"

"I beg your forgiveness," he stammered. His throat throbbed and he closed his eyes. "My heart — swells with regret. I am in anguish over the matter."

Danarius said nothing. Fenris shifted anxiously. He could feel Lucan's eyes on the back of his head.

"Master," he said.

"Speak, Fenris."

"The others. The other slaves. They are frightened of me."

Danarius laughed softly. "Ah. Good. That is very good. As they should be."

He reached out then and touched Fenris's face.

Fenris's skin bristled and the sensation cascaded in a wave to the floor. Danarius's fingers ran over the markings on his chin, moving delicately, and the flesh was raised there, still painful to the touch, so that it took great effort for Fenris not to cringe away.

"I must see them again," Danarius murmured.

His hand moved to Fenris's chest, parting the folds of his tunic.

Fenris paused uncertainly. Danarius's long fingers brushed along his markings, following their loops and curls.

"I will not repeat myself," Danarius said.

Fenris lowered his head. He undid the clasps of his tunic and slid it from his shoulders. The tracks of fresh tattoos on his skin tingled, and this time he did cringe, when Danarius rested his palm against the elaborate designs over his heart.

"All of it," he said.

Fenris bowed his head once more. "Yes, my master," he said.

His fingers shook as he unlaced his trousers. He could not explain the flush of shame that overcame him and made him waver beneath Danarius's gaze. Surely it should please him to do his master's bidding. And yet the swooping lines in his flesh were still raw, the presence of those needles, razor-sharp and fine as hairs, that had pricked him and run beneath the skin, was still with him, the memory only days old. And before that memory, there was nothing. Nothing else beyond a blank void that stretched into the reaches of his mind.

He stepped out of his trousers and stood naked before them. Danarius gave the faintest intake of breath.

"Lucan," he said. "Leave us."

The bedchamber door clicked open quietly and closed again.

"Now, Fenris. I assure you that the — unfortunate business with Petra is over and done with. All is forgiven."

He strolled around Fenris again, observing the lyrium framework in full.

"You must not worry yourself so much. In fact, your handiwork was most impressive. It speaks well to the success of our little experiment." He gave a satisfied nod. "We shall teach you to use the lyrium, train you to master it. You have a purpose here, Fenris. Lucan will not be my bodyguard forever. Though I love him dearly, he is growing old." He paused before Fenris. "Ah, but you are beautiful," he said.

Fenris closed his eyes.

"Do not be so ashamed," Danarius said. "You must learn to receive compliments gracefully. It is quite an honor for any slave to serve this estate. And I have chosen you personally. You were wasted on your previous master, wilting in that dank manor like a flower. Did you know he had you fetching water and scrubbing floors?" He shook his head and tutted at the senselessness of it. "Such a shame."

He reached out again and cupped Fenris's chin. "Look at me, now," he said.

Fenris opened his eyes. A quiet dread brewed in the pit of his stomach, due entirely to the hold of those eyes. Danarius's eyes never failed, with an almost mystical quality, to trap anyone in their gaze. They gleamed like precious metals with so captivating an intensity that Fenris, like many others, suspected the enhancement of lyrium.

"I chose you," Danarius said. "I knew, from the moment I first saw you, that you would be mine. That I had to have you. And now, here you are."

He clenched his hands around Fenris's jaw and caressed his cheekbones with both thumbs.

"These markings are quite special. You are . . . wholly unique, now. And they forever distinguish you as mine, far better than any chattel brand." His voice dropped then, lower, and softer. "Oh, how you howled during the ritual. How you cried and begged me to stop. I am certain that you recall it quite well, how many of us it took to hold you down, in spite of your bindings. How savagely you fought, like a wolf caught in a trap." He inhaled sharply, as though catching his breath. "And then. Poor little Petra."

Fenris's heart was pounding.

Danarius smirked. "It is all of these things, and more to come, that shall benefit you, little Fenris. Determination and savagery: together they heat your blood and quicken your heart. Yes. You shall do very well here."

Danarius released him and stepped back.

"Kneel, Fenris," he said.

Fenris sank to the floor.

"Tell me, Fenris. Do you love me?"

"I do, my master," Fenris said, and meant it, because this man, this powerful and dangerous man, was his master, and therefore he loved him.

Danarius extended his hand, offering the tips of his perfectly-manicured fingers. "Kiss me," he said.

Fenris leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Danarius's hand, lingering over the white, hairless knuckle. The magister's skin smelled of fire and spices, of smoldering cedar and scarlet carnations, rich and heady, and somewhere among them all mingled the unmistakable bouquet of sex.

He saw the bed behind Danarius, the rumpled unmade sheets spilling scarlet to the floor, and saw then in his mind the empty black stare of Lucan, without knowing why.

"Fenris," Danarius said lowly. "You are. Beautiful. Yes."

He stroked Fenris's lower lip.

"Lovely," he breathed.

His fingernails traced a line down to Fenris's chin, and ran along his jawline.

"Fenris," he said, in a near-whisper. "Open my robes."

Fenris stared at him, and those silver eyes pierced him, seemed to run him through. A sudden fear seized him, so shocked was he by the raw lust that smoldered there, and the dawning realization of what was to come from this, here in his new master's house.

He tugged loose the knot of Danarius's sash. A muted roar, like the sea, filled his head. Danarius's fingers had slipped behind his ear, were working the flesh there.

Fenris pushed back the folds of the charcoal surcoat, revealing the dark red robe underneath. He clumsily undid the line of hooks, took a deep breath, and parted the robe.

Danarius clenched the base of Fenris's neck and shoved him forward, so that his hardened length plunged into Fenris's mouth, and pushed, deeper and deeper, to the back of his throat, as Fenris gagged.

Fenris writhed and braced his hands against Danarius without thinking, and Danarius held him steady, his fingers digging into Fenris's skull, as he slid farther into his mouth.

"Breathe," he cooed, as Fenris choked and shivered. "Breathe."

Fenris's eyes pricked with tears. He pushed against Danarius and shuddered again. At last he forced himself to relax, to release the tension that strung together the muscles in his neck, and forced air through his nostrils, breathing in deeply, so that the back of his throat seemed to open up, and he no longer felt as though he were suffocating.

Danarius released a long, shaking breath.

Fenris squeezed his eyes shut. Saliva dribbled from his clenched lips and rolled down his chin. Danarius slid over his tongue, easing out, pushing back in, and his fingers brushed through Fenris's hair, caressing it, combing it back. Fenris was acutely aware then of the silence in the room, save for the wet gentle sucking sounds, and Danarius's heavy breathing, which grew steadily heavier.

Danarius whispered words of encouragement, and touched Fenris tenderly with the tips of his fingers, showing such gentleness that Fenris had never known, and when Fenris gagged again he hated himself for doing so, for risking anything that would betray this man and his kindness.

Danarius instructed him then, and Fenris, struggling to steady his breathing, did as he was told, gripping with his lips, caressing with his tongue. His jaw ached, and Danarius pushed deeper, hunching over Fenris and forcing the palm of his hand against Fenris's scalp, so that Fenris choked again, and tried to struggle back.

"Fenris," Danarius whispered. "Ah, Fenris. You are doing well."

The minutes seemed to stretch on. Danarius gasped, and moaned softly. Fenris clung to his master's robes, twisting the plush fabric. He felt as though he were drowning, and gagged again suddenly, and his markings glimmered then, flickering to life as he shoved away, disentangling himself from Danarius's robes, and Danarius staggered and released him with a surprised gasp. Fenris fell, panting, "I can't, I cannot."

Danarius seemed, at once, uncharacteristically dazed.

Fenris was overwhelmed by the desire to hide his face in shame, to turn away, to vanish.

The two of them remained as such while the light from Fenris's markings slowly died.

"Fenris," Danarius said, regaining his composure. He smoothed his robes.

Fenris could scarcely meet his eyes, could say nothing in return.

Danarius snapped his fingers then, loud and sharp, and turned to the bed, and wordlessly he went to it. Fenris watched him go, still catching his breath, and rose unsteadily to his feet. He followed.

For the rest of the night Danarius explored him, in much the same manner as the night that Fenris awoke to those needles in his flesh, the probing press of hands and fingers, though this time he did not fight back, electing to surrender himself fully. And though he knew he must please Danarius, for to a slave there is no higher honor, he found himself distracted, even as he lay heaving on the scarlet sheets and blinking sweat from his eyes. He pressed his face to the mattress, shuddering when Danarius's hands slid over his buttocks, gritting his teeth when Danarius entered him, and stifling his cries as Danarius fucked him, and his thoughts wandered again to the slave Lucan, picturing him among these sheets, trapped as he was now, and wondered if tonight Lucan slept on a straw bed, locked away in the stable now with the rest of them.

And for the rest of his days, Fenris would not forget this night, the exquisite agony of Danarius's invasion, the curious shame of Lucan's expendability, and the aching desperate love that he felt for this cruel man, his master, and remnants of this love would return to him long after he had escaped Minrathous, often during the lonely sleepless hours of night, and hound him with a self-loathing that seemed to wrack his very bones.

And Justice, with his luminous spectral gaze, was smiling.

#

Hawke wandered and paced the chambers of the manor, inspecting for signs of struggle, remnants of magic, and, when she had at last concluded that Anders had not come, she sought evidence of Fenris's destination, but in the dusty unused chambers there was nothing, only ancient shadows and dilapidated furniture.

The only thing of which she could be truly certain was that she was running out of time.

#

"Is it possible, I wonder," Justice mused, among the wrought iron cells of the Minrathous dungeon, "for one to die from the memories through which one has already lived?"

Fenris was slowly coming to in his fetters. Sweat slickened his face, the palms of his hands. His mouth tasted of sick.

Justice came forward and Fenris flinched away. The chains rattled against one another.

"And you have suffered worse yet," Justice said.

Fenris tore to his feet. The collar yanked his throat, though he did not heed the pain. His fists in their irons clenched so tightly that his fingernails nearly drew blood. The tendons in his arms strained, stretched as they were above his head.

He fought his bindings like a terrified animal: savage, wild-eyed, with no thought to the cold links that bit his flesh, the echoing howls of his own voice, and he was prepared to rip the chains from the very wall, no matter how they may rend his body, smash his bones to paste, if only to escape what he knew was to come next.

"I will not go back to that place, I will not!" he screamed.

"I do not deal in mercy," Justice said.

"Wretched demon, you are no better than they, those specters that you force upon me." He gnashed his teeth, overcome now by the shadows of his past; over the years he'd been able to bury them, haunted only by their faintest echoes. To relive them now, to hear again the sick snapping of his own bones, to feel Danarius's touch, was almost enough to undo him completely.

"Do you derive some sick pleasure in torturing me?" he cried.

Justice's face relaxed, icy and solemn. "You ask this," he said, "after delighting in her torment?"

Fenris gave a final lurch against the chains, and his markings pulsed so bright that their incandescence engulfed him, a silver shade bound to the dungeon wall, and with a thunderous splintering crack the shackles tore from the stone. Shards of stone clattered down, and the chain followed, striking the floor with an echoing clamor.

The silver light died and Fenris slumped over, heaving. Lashings of blood dripped from his arms; the hateful collar leashed him still.

"You speak," he muttered, and his words were strained, "as though I have not seen what you've done."

Justice's eyebrows lifted with feigned curiosity.

Fenris touched the lacerations at his wrist, the ruddy raw flesh that bled, and thought of Hawke's slender arm, the multitude of scars that he had found so ugly, and hated suddenly the beauty of the markings on his own arm, those that wound the lengths of his limbs like the silver ivy wreathing Danarius's furniture.

"You are as guilty as I," he rasped, and could make no sense now of the ache in his throat at the lingering thought of that scarred white arm.

#

From the dry stores of the manor, Hawke gathered sprigs of deathroot, distillations of foxite, extract of heatherum. She mixed them with the faintest pinch of lyrium and ground them together, pressing the soft mash into a pellet. This she chewed as she climbed the stairs to the bedchamber.

She went to the bed, swallowing the last of the pellet. She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, to ease the fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She sat upon the mattress and sank into its downy softness.

The sleeping drug had already begun to take hold, and she found herself blinking hard in order to concentrate. In her mind she focused on their faces: first Anders and then Fenris, though it was difficult not to picture them as she had last seen them, sweet Anders so wracked with anguish, and Fenris's wide-eyed accusatory stare. And after a moment's thought she concentrated on Justice as well, for though he and Anders were one in the same, she did not choose to accept this, had never truly accepted it.

She drew the dagger from her belt. The blade shook as she whispered a spell that had not left her lips in some time.

She moved farther back onto the mattress. Her surroundings were beginning to fade and dip into shadow. She took a long breath and drew her robes up around her waist.

The claw marks on her legs cooled in the night air, ten lines of knotted flesh that ached now as though they were new.

#

"Are you so delirious now that you spout nonsense?" Justice said.

"I have seen the marks on her body," Fenris said. "The scars that no dagger could have made."

Justice's eyes flashed. The dungeon air plunged into freezing cold, and Fenris's breath streamed white as he heaved on the floor.

"You know nothing," Justice growled, "of what you speak."

"I know how easily you lose control," Fenris shot back. "The volatility of your emotions, how Anders is too weak to conceal you. And I know well the perverse desires that demons harbor for the flesh."

"I am no demon," Justice roared, and in a storm of blue he lunged and seized Fenris by the throat.

Needles of cold pierced him, they splintered into his brain, and Fenris lashed in Justice's grip, and his chains struck the floor, the wall, ringing like bells.

"How can you claim to love her," he said, "and sit in judgement of me, when you have wounded her so and rent her flesh, yourself?"

"I have brought no harm to her," Justice snarled. "Never — not once — have I touched her."

"You lie," Fenris said.

Justice slammed him against the wall. Fenris's head struck the stone and he reeled. Bursts of light jarred his vision.

Justice knelt over him and released his throat, pulling him forward by the collar.

"Do not claim to know anything of the trials that she has suffered," he said.

Fenris stared at him and saw, for just an instant, something like grief flicker across his face.

#

Hawke's consciousness was rapidly fading. She splayed her fingers, going over the scars on her thighs, one by one, trying to detect that which ran the thinnest, the one least used.

At last she selected one on her inner thigh. She sucked in her breath and, shaking, brought the dagger to her leg.

"I need you," she whispered, her eyes shut tight. "Please. Help me."

The dagger flickered into her thigh, and the flesh parted and opened there, bathing her in warm wetness. The drug claimed her then and she collapsed against the bed, and a long, low, deep voice echoed from the edges of some distance, in answer to her call.

#

Fenris's eyes fluttered, and there was only darkness, cold and empty.

He'd been carried into this room, yes, it must have been days ago, but his addled mind could only grasp at impressions, and he could not recall who had, or why. Slowly he worked his mouth, and his tongue cleaved to his teeth, dry as paper.

He was blind, he realized. He blinked hard, as though he could summon back his sight. He was utterly blind, and in this darkness he could remember absolutely nothing.

#

The pain was carving knives, it was barbs that skewered and scorching flame.

Fenris writhed in his bed as it all returned in a thundering wave.

He'd been locked in a room at his new master's estate, left to thrash and wail as his markings healed, fresh and still bleeding.

He spent days in delusion, pursued by visions of spitting demons, and he cowered against the headboard of his sickbed for hours, hiding his face so they would not find him.

He sobbed like a child for his mother, or some approximation of one, for he had not an inkling of his own, it had all been obliterated in the birth of these markings and he knew this, was certain of it, and he howled in agony over the gift that had been forced upon him.

And, during the last few days of his recuperation, he lay catatonic upon the bed, staring blankly at the wall. Every so often his markings would flicker, gleam briefly to life, and his body would give an involuntary jerk in response.

On the final day, he rose shakily from the bed.

The door was opening. He knew it must be Petra, the kind serving girl who looked after the little room, who wiped his face with cool cloths and changed the sweat-soaked linens. He swung his head to look for her, and his vision was blurred, he could focus on nothing but vague shapes, his mind clouded with fever.

He reached out and his hand ignited with silver light.

A jolt shook him. It was as though his fingers were engulfed in flame — smoldering, scorching, he could almost smell the burning flesh. He stumbled forth, could only stare in numbing horror. He clutched his elbow with his other hand, as though deliriously offering the conflagration.

Petra had moved from the door, was coming toward him.

He reached out to her, and, oh, his hand burned, the pain blinded him, and it was as though he had lost all reason, did not know why he reached for her so.

Her face had come into focus now, had emerged from the murk now that she was so close, and he saw in her eyes a growing realization, a slow onset of fear that had not warned her soon enough.

His silver hand touched her face.

His fingers did not meet skin, no, they did not meet hair or scalp or bone. They ghosted through her flesh as though it were air, as though she were an illusion. His palm vanished now into her temple, his fingertips pointing somewhere deep within her brain.

Her lips moved, as though she meant to speak, and the conflagration extinguished.

Blood then, so much blood, and the sucking sound of her cleaving skull, the soft wetness of gore that weighed down his hand. She was falling, staring at him with a single intact eye. The other was lost now in the ruined mass, a dripping stew of contorted meat and shards of bone.

She crumpled to the floor, and a slippery mash of tissue dropped from his hand.

He was paralyzed then, in the silence that followed. His arm was painted red to the elbow. He began to shiver, unable to stop the tremors that washed over him. He was gasping, and choked out some word that could have been her name, over and over. And then at last he began to scream, screaming for anyone to come find him, screaming for help.

#

"I need you. Please. Help me."

The atmosphere of the Fade pressed close, it was sensation and breathlessness, and at the same time stretched wide like a cavern, where secret things lay hidden.

Hawke lolled on a cold dripping boulder, scarcely able to lift her head. Her surroundings were slow to solidify, and became vesicular rock and clustering niter. Stalactites reached like claw-tipped fingers. The yawning chasm stretched behind her for miles, and in its depths gleamed concealed veins of raw lyrium.

Her voice echoed, and seemed small, and her words were muffled, as though smothered by the air of this place.

"Please," she called out again, as the heat slowly left her.

She blinked hard, though her eyes would not focus. She bunched her robes, she pulled the fabric taut between her fingers. The pain in her leg throbbed. It was much worse than she'd thought, worse than she remembered, although it had been many years since that last time.

She knew he would find her in this place. She knew that he was waiting, was likely watching her now. She had only to wait, as the blood seeped from her leg, soaking the sheets in the bedchamber of the abandoned manor.

#

Justice held Fenris to the wall, he ground him into the stone as the elf's eyes rolled back, and Fenris was elsewhere, years away, his mouth stretched open in a silent wail, and he groped the air as though he reached for someone, wandering in the dark, as though begging for their forgiveness.

#

Fenris lay supine on a basalt slab.

Walls of wrought iron enclosed him on all sides, their patterns looping, curling, exquisite.

His heart pounded in his chest, his head, his throat.

The magisters were coming.

Obediently he lay still, waiting for them, naked and unfettered on the slab.

#

Hawke turned her head in the direction of his voice. It came to her in a low rumble, as though vibrating from the rock, a scarcely discernible quake in the whole of the cavern. Her head dipped back, for she could hold it upright no longer, and he was there with her then, he had reached out and caught her, and her skull rested against his massive palm.

Long claws curled behind her head and moved through her hair.

#

They came with rolls of felt, jars of poultices and lengths of braided cord.

Danarius uttered words of preparation at the foot of the slab, his ethereal eyes shut fast.

The others laid out their supplies, unpacking cylinders of lyrium and dishes of ebony and bone. A pair of them circled Fenris in a slow march, sketching a glyph in the stone.

He glanced at the long table that ran the length of the cell. One of the magisters unrolled the thick, dark felt. A set of needles lay within, long and shining, each thinner and more wicked-looking than the last.

#

He spoke to her in long rumbling tones, a hum at some deeper register incomprehensible to human ears, though she understood him perfectly, attuned as she was to this place.

He cradled her head as though she were made of glass.

"Help me find them," she said. Her voice had dropped now to a whisper.

The air hummed, and the rocks trembled faintly.

"I know they are here in the Fade," she said. "They must be."

His claws, thick and barbed, brushed the hair from her eyes.

"Yes," she said. "I must. If I do not . . ."

He waited patiently, for he knew how weak she must be, knew well how much blood she had lost, was still losing.

"If I do not," she managed at last, "he will die."

He spoke then, and she listened intently. She paused for some time before answering.

"No," she said slowly. "But I cannot let Anders do this, and be tormented with regret for the rest of his life."

He considered this. With his other hand he snapped his fingers and offered her something. She turned her head to see.

He held out a tiny wooden horse, inexpertly carved, dwarfed between his massive thumb and index finger.

She opened her hand and he dropped it into her palm. He eased her fingers closed. The ground beneath them quaked, and Hawke bowed her head.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you."

His finger pressed against the open wound on her thigh, and she cringed.

"Take me to them," she gasped.

When he lifted his finger again, the flesh had knitted closed, and bled no more.

#

Fenris shook against the dungeon wall, he grasped at Justice's robes and mouthed silent words, he wheezed and grasped and shook his head no, no, no.

#

They mixed ink in the ebony bowls, jet black on black, and distributed the cylinders of lyrium amongst themselves. Danarius's hands moved as he spoke the cryptic invocation, gliding over Fenris, tracing over the glyph, and his words were hushed and prayer-like.

The magisters had divided up the lengths of cord, and surrounded him now, and with these they bound him to the slab, eight precise knots to eliminate movement completely, two at his wrists, two at his ankles, four at the joints of his arms and legs. They cleansed him with warm cloths soaked in astringent herbs. When Danarius opened his eyes at last, a magister handed him one of the long, shining needles.

The point of the needle dripped black like the caustic tip of an assassin's dart.

#

With their faces held firmly in her mind, Hawke pointed the way. He carried her as he went, and moved smoothly through the Fade as though he'd known all along where to go, following her lead like a glittering thread.

#

They began at his chest, and the needle slid smoothly into the flesh above his sternum.

He was too stunned at first to utter a sound.

His body reacted, jerking up from the slab, and four of the magisters hurriedly pressed him down. Danarius, anticipating this, held the needle steady. With a smooth stone disc he rapped the end of the needle, pricking Fenris's skin precisely and repeatedly. The magisters remained gripping his shoulders and his legs, forcing him to lie flat as he twitched and shook.

When Danarius removed the needle to bend over the long table, as he dipped it into one of the bowls and the dripping ink seemed to gleam of its own accord, the pain in Fenris's chest continued to seethe, sharpening with burning acuity. It was the taint of lyrium, he knew, the fine glittering dust so dangerous to consume, mixed now in the jet black pigment. It smoldered there at the injection site, and when Danarius returned his body jerked again, and he stuttered protests, regrets, pleas.

Danarius smoothed Fenris's forehead, as though to comfort him, despite the light behind his silver eyes, the familiar predatory smile.

The needle slipped into his flesh again, and he whimpered. The stone disc struck its mark. The lyrium seethed beneath his skin. It was bubbling heat and merciless agony.

#

Fenris was cowering, he was twitching, he was seizing against the wall, and Justice could not hold him steady even if he wanted to.

#

Fenris could smell it, the dust-fine particles of lyrium that boiled beneath his skin. He could smell every dermal cell that roasted and died as it blackened beneath the relentless needle. He opened and closed his mouth like a dying fish, like a drowning man gasping for air.

Danarius followed neither pattern nor design, as though his hand merely drifted where the needle wished. He worked with intense fervor, his eyes lowered and sharply focused, and he mumbled strange words that Fenris did not understand. He handed his needle to a waiting magister, exchanging it for a fresh one, and the magister dropped the used needles into a shallow plate, which grew speckled with blood and pigment.

Hours had passed, were still passing. Fenris began to scream when the needle pricked his side — oh, the misery of it, as though the hair-fine point had penetrated each layer of flesh until it hit bone, striking his rib and sticking there, injecting his very bones with the scorching ink. He realized now that he was weeping, hot tears gushing from his eyes as thoughtlessly as sweat, and he begged, how pitifully he begged to be released from this place.

There was no comforting touch from Danarius now, neither a caress nor a pitying smile. There was only the jab of the needle, and the lyrium blistering in his skin.

#

Fenris was whispering a name. Justice could not understand him, so fierce were the tremors that shook him senseless. But Fenris was repeating it now, over and over, a single syllable quivering from his throat, and Justice drew back when he realized what the wretched elf was saying.

Hawke.

#

"Please, no, oh, please, no . . ."

They did not hear him, they would not listen, they held him down when he fought, he did not care if they killed him now, if only to stop the march of that needle, quell the burning.

"Oh please oh Maker oh stop please stop . . ."

I shall bite off my tongue, he thought, his mind a conflagration, his thoughts like scattering flames. I shall bite off my tongue and swallow it, and then I shall die.

"Oh Maker, oh mother, please . . . please . . ."

Pathways were carving into his flesh, long and sinuous, slicing deep, they quartered his bones, filleted his organs. He was choking, hyperventilating, he was going into shock.

"Please . . ."

The black lines in his chest began to flicker.

#

Hawke heard his voice, heard her name echo through the Fade. The vibrations reached her and she did not believe it at first, did not trust her senses in this shadowy realm. But she recognized it, yes, it had to be him.

Fenris was calling for her.

#

Justice backed away from Fenris. The chill in the air had begun to fade. The blue light that netted him flickered once and startled him.

His surroundings grew suddenly hazy.

"No," he said, then, as the blue light flared once more, he roared, "No, I command you! I will be the one to finish this!"

But the Fade was blurring, rearranging, and Fenris with it, and Justice collapsed to the ground, bleeding through the dungeon floor.

#

Gasping, Anders awoke in the cavern by the Waking Sea.

He sat up with a jerk, and winced at the crick in his neck. His muscles ached from what must have been hours spent on the sandy floor. Beside him, limp against the makeshift glyph, lay Fenris, bound still by the linen wraps.

Anders stared at him, his mind working quickly, combing through the familiar fog that always drugged him when his body became his own. He'd driven Justice back, a rare victory. Fenris twitched faintly, eyelashes fluttering as though he merely slept. Saliva coated his lips, had bubbled from the linen gag along the line of his jaw. Sweat matted the hair to his forehead in flat strips.

Anders's heart raced. He heard again the faint whisper, his beloved's name wrapped in the tones of that vile voice. He knew that he could not give himself time to think.

He fumbled through the spare rolls of linen, and his hand closed around a smooth bone handle. He slid a small knife free from the scraps. His eyes focused now on the throbbing muscles of Fenris's neck as he brought the knife around.

#

Fingers crowded into his mouth, and Fenris bit down and tasted blood.

They had known, as though they had read his thoughts, as though they had heard the shallow splitting of his tongue, and they packed his jaw with wadded fabric, balled thick so he would not swallow it, could not even choke on his own blood like he so wished.

The poultices they spread on their own hands to soothe the bites, leaving Fenris's wounds to sizzle.

And on Danarius worked, never sparing a glance, and needles crowded the shallow dish, bathing in ink and blood.

#

Hawke reached out. She could see it now, like a ripping seam in the fabric of the Fade. Her fingers stretched, and he lifted her toward it, she was flying, weightless, she could hear Fenris still, his voice grew louder.

Her fingers touched the seam, and it was as though rushing water thundered over her, cold and piercing, stealing her away.

#

The rumpled bed lay empty in the abandoned manor, its silk sheets pooled in slowly congealing blood.

#

Anders approached Fenris, the silent bound form. The pulse in his thumb pounded against the bone handle. It seemed to reverberate against the very walls, drowning out the roar of the sea.

#

Fenris shivered against the slab, his body smeared with blood, and light was building, white light and lyrium-blue. It bloomed from his limbs and filled the room.

The markings flashed, ignited, and they blistered white-hot, they burned him as though he were bound in searing barbed wire, constricting now, severing him, cutting him to pieces.

His thoughts garbled and blurred into gibberish. Suddenly there was only blankness, and he was no longer a person, no, he had no agency, no language, no thoughts or intelligence at all. There was only this agony, this separation, this obliteration of himself.

#

Fenris lay unmoving in the Minrathous dungeon, slumped against the wall where Justice had left him. In his eyes there was only great unseeing distance and clouded fog.

#

Hawke collapsed onto packed sand. There was rushing water now, real water, and the tang of salt stung her nostrils. She staggered to her feet — for there was no time for wondering now — and limped forward. She grit her teeth, and trusted in him, in this place that he had left her, as real now as the stabbing pain in her thigh.

She reached out to steady herself against the cragged lip of a cave.

#

Anders pulled Fenris's head back, stretching smooth the twitching flesh of his neck.

#

"Fenris!"

#

Stretched out on Danarius's stone slab, Fenris heard it.

Limp against the dungeon wall and dripping in chains, Fenris heard it.

Bound and gagged on the sandy glyph in the hollows of the Wounded Coast, Fenris heard it.

Her voice ringing clear, the tones of a bell, the call of a bird.

Speaking his name.

"Fenris, wake up!"

#

And the blade in Anders's hand slashed deep, it severed Fenris's throat, the flesh opening, it was layers of white fat and red meat and gouts of blood.

When Anders turned, he saw her standing there.

#

"Marian," Anders said, it was Anders, not Justice, who knelt on the ground, who held the knife, whose arm now dripped with Fenris's blood.

Hawke's mouth stretched open. She took it all in, the carefully-drawn glyph, the bindings at Fenris's wrists and ankles, the blindfold, the gag, the crimson spring of Fenris's throat. She might have screamed. She might be reeling forth even now toward the both of them, her steps unsteady, spasmodic.

Pure horror had dawned on Anders's face. "Marian, my love —"

She was aware then of her own staggering gait, the pallor of her face, the dried blood that caked her skirts, her leg, and Anders's eyes flicked down, alighting on the source of her injury.

"My love, my beloved —"

He was talking, babbling. He dropped Fenris and reached out to her, forgetting that he still held the knife.

She stumbled past him and sagged to the ground, driving her hands into Fenris's throat to close the wound.

Anders groped her shoulders, the knife was gone, and she shoved him away, holding fast to the gaping wound, her fingers coloring, her little hands scarlet now. He tried again, cupped her cheek, grasped her waist, and she shouted then, her voice echoing and harsh and strident.

"Leave! You will leave us — now!"

He lurched back, stunned.

She began to whisper, drawing upon her waning strength, but she had lost so much blood, she was dizzy, her magic would not take.

She heard Anders take a step toward her.

"Surely you cannot —"

"Leave us!" she cried.

"Marian —"

"Maker, Anders, if you so much as take another step, you shall regret it."

He said nothing, and neither he did he move. "I don't understand," he stammered.

She tried to focus, tried to concentrate, could not.

"He would have killed you," he said, faltering now, accusatory.

"Anders, what have you done?" she whispered. Then, shaking her head: "I know you will not help, even if I asked you to. I don't want you here any longer. Do you hear me? Now go!"

He departed then, though not without hesitation, and though she heard him pause at the mouth of the cave, his footsteps soon carried him away.

Fenris was growing cold beneath her fingers.

"Oh, Maker," she gasped. "Oh, Maker. Oh."

She tried again, whispering the incantation like a prayer.

She could not release the wound to reach for her dagger, and did not have much blood to give.

She closed her eyes and drew upon the blood that pooled beneath the two of them instead.

With trepidation she drew upon ancient maleficar magic, a ritual steeped in sacrifice, one that had been taught to her many years ago, many, when her gift had still been new. When she'd still had yet to fathom the cost.

#

Fenris's blood stirred.

He opened his eyes to the press of a blindfold and a gag in his throat.

He thought for an instant that he was still in that place, the torment of it, with the mash of fabric between his teeth, the scourge of lyrium perforating his flesh. But his body was cold, his fingertips and toes like ice. He could hear the sea.

Small hands pressed fast to his neck.

He thought: I am awake. I am alive.

#

The spilled blood became mist, it become fog, a fine spray of droplets that rose from the sandy ground, dancing.

Hawke twitched, her spine arched, and the incantation spilled, unbroken, from her lips.

She tensed her fingers and gripped fast to the wound. She urged warmth back into it, life, breath. She pled with ancient, cryptic words.

I will not let you die, she thought.

The red mist surged around them, and there was great power in so much blood, freshly spilled.

It streamed to her now in a glittering arc, hauntingly beautiful, and struck Hawke's hands, rushing between her fingers, despite how they clenched so tightly. And Fenris's throat grew hot, fever hot, it nearly burned the pads of her fingers as she reshaped the flesh, pressing together first the fibers of muscle, the severed veins, and with her thumbs she sealed the wound itself, pinching it closed, leaving a pale, jagged ridge.

The energy left her and she fell back, heaving.

She saw his eyes move then, working beneath the blindfold. He began to teethe at the gag slowly, numbly. Hurriedly she seized the blindfold and pulled it off, and his eyes fluttered, distant, confused. They fell upon her, focusing at last.

He strained momentarily against his bindings, his entire body giving a jerk, but he was weak, so weak, and lay back instead.

She wiped his mouth with the hem of her robes, wiped her hands. She undid the gag and stripped it away.

He leaned over, retching and spitting. He tried to speak and coughed instead. Ropes of saliva drooled from his mouth. Something was blocking his throat.

She leaned over him, cradling the side of his head. She reached, tentatively, with her hand. His eyes rolled upward, meeting hers.

Gently she reached into his mouth, her small fingers gliding over his tongue. He closed his eyes again as the sharp edges of his teeth scraped her skin. She extended her fingers, feeling about as gently as she could, and her fingertips brushed against the soft wetness of fabric.

She grasped it with her fingernails, and, with some difficulty, drew it out.

A ragged shred of fabric, bright scarlet and dripping mucus, slid from Fenris's throat.

He pressed his cheek to the floor, hacking, spraying the ground with spittle. Hawke stared at the scrap of red in her hand. At last he lay still, gasping. She lowered her hand and looked down at him. He avoided her gaze, and in his face there was great weariness and great pain.

His eyelids drooped. He stared at the floor. "Why?" he rasped. "Why did you come?"

The sea pounded against the cave, sudden and booming, like thunder, so close that they could hear the hiss of foam as the waves drew back again.

"Do you think you can walk?" she said.

His eyes flicked back to her own, bloodshot. He nodded slowly.

With her dagger she cut the bindings from his wrists and ankles. She helped him to his feet, pulling his arm over her shoulders, and together they limped from the cave, though they were both weak, staggering against one another along the strand.

#

How strange it was to carry him, bolstering his weight against her shoulders, as they stumbled wearily through Hightown. Fenris had made most of the journey from the Wounded Coast but sagged against her now, head lolling, barely conscious. It was difficult going, exhausted as she was, but the Hawke manor was in sight, and with it some comfort.

Her hand trembled as she lifted the key to the heavy oak door. Fenris slumped, and she nearly dropped the key as she struggled to hold him up. She was struck by the weight of him, and for just an instant she smelled bitter wine, the musk of vast unused rooms, the salt-sweat clinging to a black hide tunic. Shaking, she heaved open the door and dragged him inside.

She feared, momentarily, that Anders would be there, that he had returned knowing she would come, would see Fenris, weakened but living. The atrium was dark, however, and the air did not stir.

She carried him to the stairs, her footsteps echoing and uneven. When she climbed, Fenris stirred, mumbling, and he tipped forward, and though she grappled with him she could not find her footing on the stairs, and together they toppled over in a heap.

She struck her elbow, hard, on the slick stone. He had pinned her arm, and she lay partially underneath him, stunned and unable to move.

"Fenris," she groaned. Her arm throbbed.

He mumbled again. His face pressed against her shoulder, his nose into the back of her neck. She wriggled uncomfortably.

"Fenris," she said again, louder this time.

"Petra," he said then, his breath warm and sour on her neck. "Petra."

She blinked. She was light-headed and her limbs felt hollow. She braced herself against the steps and tried, weakly, to push him off. But he lay still, his arm draped over her shoulders, and she slumped back down, defeated.

"Fenris," she said. "You've got to move. I don't think I can lift you."

She turned her head to face him, and he was so close — much too close — that his hair brushed against her face. She jostled him.

He lifted his head, blinking as though he'd been thrust into bright light. He stared as if seeing her for the first time.

"I can't," he whispered.

Something in his eyes fell away.

"You're so pale," he murmured. "You're — cold."

"Get off of me," she said, and, with some effort, he slid away.

#

They lay side by side on the staircase, he on his back, she on her stomach. Fenris stared at the high ceiling, trying to weave together the fraying strands of his thoughts. In his head, potent memories swirled in bits and pieces. From one minute to the next, he was in Danarius's embrace, bound in chains at Justice's hand, bleeding out in the cold seaside cave, and draped on the foyer steps of the Hawke manor. His heart fluttered at each transition, and suddenly he wanted to do nothing more than sleep, right here on the sharp-edged stones.

There was another memory as well, shuffled amongst the rest. All too real now was the slenderness of Hawke's wrist, the softness of her flushed mouth, and the wicked torture of his arousal, fulfilled at last. He felt a twinge of it now, listening to Hawke's shallow breathing, and next he saw Petra's falling stare, the pulp of brain matter dripping from his hand.

He worked his mouth. His lips were chapped and flaking, and his throat a painfully dry chasm to darker places.

"Why did you come for me?" he said, tracing the gables of the ceiling with his eyes.

Hawke shifted minutely, lifting her ear from the step. She lowered it again. "Anders was — in agony," she said, so softly that he almost didn't hear.

He waited, and she did not continue.

He saw Danarius's shimmering eyes, felt his hand cupping his jaw, felt the probing fingers. He heard the thick muffled impact of Hadriana's foot, smelled the wine-hot stench of her breath. He felt the panicked throb of Hawke's jugular beneath his fingers.

"Do you remember what you said to me?" she said.

He blinked slowly at the ceiling.

She shifted again, just barely. "You said, 'Damn the consequences.'"

He heard Hadriana's cooing voice, saw the black-tipped needle descend, felt Hawke's legs press into his sides.

"So why," she said, "did you call out for me?"

#

In the darkened ceiling, Fenris saw now that there was a skylight, a single four-paneled window, curiously small. Its edges were lightening, blushing faint lilac purple and seashell pink.

Side by side they lay, unmoving, on the stairs, stretched out like skins left to dry in the coming dawn. Their bodies lying parallel, she was so near that he could sense her without looking, feel her presence as physically as though they touched. His fingers lightly rested on the step, inches from her upturned palm, his dark arm, entwined with silver vines, beside her pale scar-striped forearm.

Her faint voice thickened with anger. "You were running away when he found you."

It was not a question.

"You fled."

"What did you expect?" he said softly.

"You're a coward."

He watched the window. The stars overhead were watery and indistinct. "And yet you came for me," he said.

"I didn't do it for you." She paused. "And, despite everything — you don't deserve to die."

He gave a long sigh. "Suppose we both die," he said, "here on your staircase?"

"We won't."

"But if so, would that make sweet Anders responsible for both our deaths?"

"Are you trying to make a joke?"

"Failing to."

"Maker," she said, exasperated.

Fenris smiled briefly, without knowing why.

"You're avoiding my question," she said.

"I don't have an answer."

"Coward."

"And you're resorting to name-calling?" he said mildly.

"Think of it as an understated riposte from a 'maleficar whore.'"

Suddenly it became difficult for him to swallow, and he took a deep breath. He closed his eyes.

"I don't care what you do," she said, after some time, "or where you go when you leave here. I don't care if I never see you again. Fenris."

He opened his eyes to look at the sky.

"But you don't get to just run away from the aftermath."

"Hawke."

"No. I'm not finished."

Beside his, her little hand clenched into a fist. "You've told me about your past," she said. "I know what you've lived through. And I think it's horrible. No one deserves it. And I know it's something you live with every day. But when your demons come out. You allow them to consume you. And you become no better than they."

She struck the step with her fist, and the stone vibrated underneath them. "And that is why I couldn't let you die. I couldn't let you just. Get away with it. What you've done."

"You despise me," he said.

"No. You misunderstand." Her voice, which had risen so forcefully, dropped to a whisper. "I pity you."

They lay in silence as the tension left Hawke's hand, and her fingers slowly unfolded, like the petals of a flower.

"I can't sort you out," he said at last. He awaited a response that did not come.

The tiny window had flushed to a dusty rose.

"Hawke. I. There are." He swallowed, tried again. "I've done many things that I. Regret."

He saw her covering her eyes, there on that bed. He saw Lucan's dead black stare, the faces of the other slaves as they hid from him in their stalls. "I have no explanation for you. I know you would not accept any half-hearted apology. And nor should you."

He thought, strangely: If only I could see the sun through that window, before I must leave here.

"I have hurt a great deal of people. Without quite knowing why. The Fog Warriors. A servant girl, who tried only to help me when I was terrified." He shook his head. "I don't know what to say."

The ache in his throat had intensified, threatening to rob him of speech.

"I can't," he said, and stopped, and then simply let the silence be.

#

He'd closed his eyes for what he'd thought was mere minutes, but when he opened them again he felt as though some significant amount of time had passed. He was disoriented, almost drunk, and a sharp pain, like hunger, ensnarled his guts.

His eyes were thick and bleary, and mucus coated his eyelashes. He wiped at them roughly, felt he could scarcely lift his arms to do so. When his vision cleared, he stared up at the ceiling.

The four-paneled window was red, a burning eye in the shadows.

His eyebrows knit together. Surely he hadn't slept until dusk? And yet the light from the window was not the gentle shade of dawn, but bright scarlet, the color of fresh blood. He heard a low rumble then, of something vast and hidden, and it coursed through him like a seismic wave, and he thought, oddly, that he heard someone speak.

"Hawke," he choked out.

He turned to her. She lay on the stairs as she had been, her face turned away from him. He pushed himself up and a jolt ran through him, setting his teeth on edge, prickling the little hairs on the back of his neck. The air was suddenly too warm, warm like a body, and it thrummed with a living pulse.

The rumble resounded again.

"Hawke," he said more urgently. He reached for her hand. Her skin was ice cold, shockingly cold. He sprang up, much faster than he'd thought he could, and crouched over her, turning her over. She was utterly limp, her eyes half-lidded and unfocused and cold, so cold. Her lips tinged with blue.

"Hawke!" He shook her and cupped her cheek. "Something's coming."

Her pulse was nearly imperceptible, slow but there, moving like sludge. He lifted her from the step, surprised at her lightness, the frailty of her. Her eyelids were dark, seemed to purple even as he carried her up the steps, and he wondered where to go, where they could hide.

Her face had drained slate gray, and there was not a hint of warmth there, no trace of color to show that she was even alive. There was only the slow march of blood in her veins beneath the impossible iciness of her flesh. He stumbled up the stairs, hurtling as though through a nightmare, parting the heat like a curtain. The windows all shone red now, blistering squares that concealed any view of the outside. His chest began to heave, fighting to take in air that was acrid like the blast of a furnace.

The rumble sounded again, a dull roar, closer.

Fenris burst into the master bedchamber and kicked the door shut behind him. He bolted it, as if something like locks were enough to stop that which was coming, and went to the bed, cradling her. Her eyelids, bruise-purple, struggled now, and lifted. The whites of her eyes crawled with veins, and her pupils were dilated, blank black discs that stared from the caves of their sockets.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. Her lips cracked. "I'm sorry."

He laid her against the bed, his arm across her back, his hand smoothing her forehead, her cheek. "Don't," he said. "Don't. What is coming?"

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I didn't think he would come for me this soon."

Another roar, louder, and the floor vibrated, the windows, the posts of the bed. He embraced her, clutching her as though she would be swept away, as though she would blink out of existence if he did not.

"Leave me," she whispered. "Go. Run."

"No," he said.

"Leave me."

"Are you mad?" he hissed. "You mages are a thick-headed lot."

He lowered her to the mattress, his fingers lingering on the ladder of scars at her wrist. He turned, and gripped the bedposts as though shielding her, and another seism shuddered through the room.

"I will not leave you," he said.

The heat had grown unbearable, searing him with the fury of a wildfire, and it flared up as though to drive him back. He flexed his fingers against the bedposts, feeling naked without his armored gauntlets, and cursed Anders for stripping him of these, for taking his greatsword.

His markings pulsed in anticipation, and the pain was sharp and reassuring, as his heart pounded in his throat.

A loud crack shuddered the bedchamber door.

Fenris tensed his muscles, his markings white-hot. The heavy door splintered. Gouges spiraled through the wall, and the door collapsed outward, the splintering wood screaming as it shredded into nothing.

A large hand reached through the door. Thick, barbed claws curled around the frame, impaling the wall. The windows rattled. Picture frames shattered against the floor, and the great fingers tensed and twisted and ripped the very wall away.

The hairs on his arms, the back of his neck, stood on end. He saw two blazing white eyes, rippling muscle, a great gnarled face, a grinning mouth full of teeth.

A demon.

The whole of the house shook at its footsteps. It heaved through the door, its broad shoulders bristling with chitinous spines. When one of its clawed feet thundered against the floor, pustules and fleshy tumors sprang up in its wake and bubbled from the ground.

Fenris's heart quickened. Adrenaline roared in his ears.

The grinning mouth opened, and the demon spoke.

"Little thing," it crooned, in a voice deep like tremors, loud like the splitting earth. "I see you lying there."

"Begone," Fenris said. Sweat ran in rivers down his face and dripped freely from his outstretched arms.

The teeth clenched, long and sharp, behind that terrible smile.

"I know your face," it said then.

In a flash the demon charged, deceptively quick, instantaneous, and Fenris's forearms ignited far too late. The great hand snapped around him and lifted him like nothing. He tore at the demon's face, missed, and his hand ghosted through a bristling shoulder, and when it materialized he clawed with unarmed fingers, ripping free a chunk of nacreous flesh.

The demon laughed.

Fleshy strings and strands writhed from the demon's arm and whipped around Fenris's limbs, climbing up his torso. He tore at them with his fingernails, disgusted at how they pulsed with veins, and they pierced his flesh, wrapped about his neck.

"Don't!" Hawke cried out, from seemingly far away.

The demon turned to her, its unblinking eyes like lights piercing the darkness.

"Little thing," it purred.

Fenris strained in its grip, his markings flashing, guttering out.

"Please don't," Hawke said.

The black lips curled. "How could I kill him," it said, "after you gave so much to save his life?"

"Hawke," Fenris called out.

The great hand opened, dropping him. He struck the floor, writhing. The tendrils snapped loose from the demon's arm and clung to him.

She was still laying back on the bed, too weak to rise.

"Hawke," he shouted, struggling to free himself.

The demon advanced toward her.

"Leave her!" Fenris roared, pulling at the tendrils, though they did not break, would not release him.

"This business is not yours," the demon said. "She belongs to me."

It reached down with barbed claws. It bent over the bed.

"Hawke!" he screamed.

It was whispering to her, its voice so low now that the he could hear only a rumble, feel only the vibrations in the floor. Tumors sprouted on the bedposts, twisted masses of flesh that climbed to the ceiling. One of the claws was sliding down her leg, parting her robe to expose her thigh.

Fenris's throat drained as five claws caressed her thigh, a perfect match to the scars.

He stammered her name, hearing Justice's words, seeing again the grief on his solemn face, the hint of Anders that had emerged.

Her white hand lifted and draped against the demon's massive arm. The barbs caught her flesh and raked through it delicately, reopening the five scars on her leg. The demon's head lowered, its bulk nearly hiding her completely.

Blood ran in ribbons down her leg.

The demon kissed her.

Its other hand slipped down, opening the scars that remained.

Fenris's mouth stretched open, and he howled with fury, but his markings would not light. He had no energy left, nothing at all.

The demon plucked her from the bed, gathering her small form against its chest. It turned to Fenris with a wicked smile.

"I thank you," it rumbled, its eyes flashing so brightly that Fenris squinted with pain. "Enjoy the life that she has won you."

Her head dropped against its chest. Her eyes closed and she did not move.

"Farewell," the demon said, and with an eruption of heat the two of them dissolved, and the tumors and pustules dried up and shattered into dust, the sinews dropping away from him, and as the temperature cooled the red light in the windows faded, leaving Fenris alone in the silent, weak coming of day.

###

[rubypop]

To Bleed the Mage - Dragon Age 2

Fenris and Marian Hawke rape/noncon. This story is continued in "The Consequences."

To Bleed the Mage by rubypop

"Please take it," she urged, pressing the amulet into his hand. "I know you'd at least appreciate the sentiment."

From the clinic entrance, Fenris scowled. Hawke was closing Anders's fingers around the trinket.

"I," Anders murmured, his eyes filling with some knowing emotion. "I don't know what to say."

"Say nothing," Hawke said. She moved closer. "Except for perhaps, 'Thank you.'"

Anders smiled. He threaded the silken cord over his head.

"Thank you," he said, and altogether the threads of lyrium in Fenris's skin burned, like fine razors, when Hawke gently tucked the amulet into Anders's shirt, and her small fingers lingered over his heart.

#

He heard her voice echoing through the mansion only after the dim, momentary suffusion of his markings had faded.

"Fenris?" And then slow footsteps, their hesitation making him scowl.

Fenris swallowed a measure of bitter, biting wine. The Agreggio had not dulled his irritation, as he had hoped it would. Its dry bouquet and sanguine hue only tempered it. He tossed the bottle to one side, and the crash of shattering glass paused her approach.

"Hello?" Hawke called out.

"'Tis only I," he shouted, nearly laughing.

She was at his door then, peering at him disapprovingly.

"You know, your neighbors are bound to call the guard sooner or later," she said.

He lifted his eyebrows in mock disbelief. "Well, then I shall meet them with open arms." He extended his arms and spread his fingers. The firelight gleamed from the long edges of his armored claws.

She shook her head but then betrayed a smile when she crossed the room. She took a seat on the gilded couch across from him.

"Save any for me at least?" she said, reaching for the bottles of vintage that lined the trestle table.

"A swallow or two," he murmured. His eyes fell upon her reaching arm. The sleeve of her robe had pulled back, exposing her wrist. Thin scars striped the white flesh, marching ladder-like to the meat of her palm, where keloids had formed over the well-used gouges. He set his jaw. The sight of that hand closing over Anders's crawled into his brain.

Hawke drank from the bottle and coughed sportingly when she swallowed. "Maker," she gasped. "I can't tell if this wine is just old or if it's turned."

"You can't conjure up a spell that would aid you?" he uttered.

She stared at him, mid-sip. "Excuse me?" she said.

He simply waved a hand at her and shook his head. The wine blurred his vision, and he blinked his eyes hard.

"Fenris," she said, lowering the bottle with a thunk. "If there's something you need to say —"

"Well, serah, I've said it," he bit out. The heat rose in him again. "You've got your dagger with you, I've no doubt. Use it. Throw about your maleficant blood sorcery and reveal the wine's secrets."

"What are you on about?" she said, and the exasperation in her voice enraged him.

He shoved himself from the couch and darted forward, thrusting his face close to hers.

"You know of my past," he said. "You know of the horrors I suffered in Tevinter. And yet you sympathize with their tyranny because you are a mage? So much that you would gift a very symbol of the Imperium like a lover's bauble? To that —" He grasped for the words. "— that wretched, propaganda-peddling, demon-harboring Anders?"

"Sympathize?" she said. "Fenris, I gave Anders a gift. That does not mean I sympathize with slavers. You're drunk." She rose from the couch and reached for him. "Be reasonable —"

He jerked back, and his markings glowed hot, searing him. And then he lashed forth, snatching her wrist, and gripped it in his claws.

"Don't you touch me," he said, as the markings gleamed. "You will never lay a hand on me, or by the Maker I will make you wish you hadn't."

She stared at him and tried to jerk her arm away, but he held it. His eyes narrowed. He studied the lines on her wrist again.

"Tell me," he said. "When you are making love to your precious revolutionary, has Anders never noticed the scars in your flesh?"

"Maker, Fenris," Hawke said.

"Odd, isn't it? How he claims to take issue with blood magic, but eagerly lies with a maleficar when given the chance," he went on.

"Let me go," she said, and leveled him with her gaze.

They remained still for a moment, staring each other down. Fenris flexed his hand, testing her with the fine points of his claws. Then he pressed down with his index finger, penetrating her skin with the pinprick of a single claw. A thread of blood trickled down her sallow wrist.

"How much blood exactly," he said, "does it take to cast one spell?"

She tried to yank back her arm then, tried to step away. But his fingers clamped down harder, and he pulled her closer, so close that they were eye-to-eye, the tips of their noses nearly touching.

"Not enough yet, it seems," he said.

"Stop this," she said, and in her eyes he saw another mage, dark-haired, pale-eyed, saw the apprentice Hadriana pleading for her life.

He flung her to the gilded couch, and she struck it so forcefully that it shuddered back with a crash. He was kneeling over her when her arm came down and a wine bottle smashed over his head.

He dropped. Slivers of glass rained from his hair. She was a tangle of limbs beneath him, flailing arms and clawing hands that shoved him away, and he fell against the table, sending the remaining bottles askew. She flew from the couch and he slumped to the floor.

In Tevene he cursed, his voice slurring.

He snatched her ankle before she could take another step.

A lowing roar in his head drowned out all thought. Warm wetness stung his eyes. He pulled her down. She twisted about as she fell, but he seized her wrists and pushed her back. He rose, grimacing, and staggered to one side, dragging her along. His markings scorched him, an infinite number of fine little strands woven deep into his flesh from the miniscule pinpricks of that years-old ritual.

She was shouting his name, over and over, but he heard only the roar of blood in his ears and the memory of sharp blows and kicks in the middle of the night, when Hadriana would jostle him from sleep. Roughly, he wiped the blood from his eyes.

"Maleficar whore," he said.

He had crossed the room, had released one of her arms to wrench open the bedchamber door, when her hand flew to her robe for the dagger that he knew was hidden there, and he slammed her against the door frame and clenched both of her wrists together behind her back. He ripped the dagger from her belt and flung it back into the sitting room.

"Did you mean to make me your puppet with sorcery?" he said. "Or did you mean to gouge my flesh yourself?"

"Stop this, Fenris," she said. Her voice shook, and she glanced into the chamber. "If you do this, Anders will know. Fenris. Anders will know."

His chest pumped up and down. His head roared. He pulled her arms farther back, so that her legs buckled, and he towered over her, staring her down.

"I would have him here watching," he said.

He clutched her jaw, and when she tried to grapple away he forced her to look at him. He pressed his mouth to hers, and held her there.

Blood on her mouth when they parted, dotting her white lip. His blood, that trickled from his scalp even now.

She spit in his face.

His hand slid from her jaw to her throat, gripping it.

#

He stripped the robe from her shoulders as they stood over the bed. Her throat was shockingly white against the tallow-smoke of her hair, and smooth, unmarked: a pallor that neared transparency, underneath which shone the tender blue veins. The scars marred her forearms, her palms, dark knitted stripes of flesh that seemed to intrude, and were ugly.

He forced her to the bed and she fought him, but in a shock of lyrium his hand glowed against her white breast and he pushed her flat onto the mattress. He yanked the rest of her robe away, and his heartbeat quickened at the sight of her so exposed, the dark thicket between her legs.

He'd wondered, sometimes — there were nights, over the years since they'd met, when he'd lie awake wondering — how she might look, the taste of her, of having her. And now here she was.

His face drew in disgust at the scars on her thighs. They raked downward in parallel lines from her hips to her knees. They were not the thin, neat incisions of a blade, but thickened, knotted claw marks.

He traced them with his fingertips, lightly along every dip and rise: five gashes on each thigh, that must have been cut deeply.

He opened his belt and she drove her foot into the mattress, tried to slide away. His claws clamped about her shoulders and dragged her back.

"Should you scream," he slurred, "should you attempt to flee from me again, I will tear out your throat. Damn the consequences."

She set her jaw and fixed him with a glare. He reached down and undid his trousers. He crawled onto the bed, and, parting her legs, he entered her.

She sucked in her breath. He held her gaze as he shifted his hips forward, pushing deeper, as deep as he could, and he let out a long, shuddering breath. Her small hands lifted from the mattress as if in protest, as if they would stop him, and he gripped her shoulders and bore down on them, pulling back out of her, and pushing back in.

"Ah, Hawke," he breathed.

She was warm, yes, the core of her like fever. He could feel the pulses of blood that ran through those blue veins. He had to force himself to go slowly, to find a rhythm to prolong this sensation. He ran the points of his claws against her cheek, the delicate flesh of this hateful apostate.

She was looking away, looking anywhere but at him, and pain shone in her eyes, a weakness that sparked some anger in him, so that his markings gleamed, just faintly, and prickled the surface of his skin.

He lowered his head, thrusting deeper now, harder, and felt her tense up around him, her knees pressing against his sides, bracing against him, as though she could push him away. He moaned, touching his lips to the damp hollow of her throat.

"Tell me, in the throes of passion," he murmured, "how many times did Justice come to take you?"

She twisted away, but he pushed her back down and held her there.

"We've all of us seen how he loses control over lesser things," he said. His voice was husky, breathless. "And so did he enjoy you, take pleasure in your cries? And how many times did sweet Anders apologize — ah — as it happened again — and again — and again?"

"Never," she whispered. "Justice never —"

His markings lit up, and reflected in her eyes, and for an instant he saw himself in them, his face twisted, scowling, enraged.

"Demon courters, the lot of you," he spat. He ran his hands down the scars on her legs, following each line with his fingers.

"And so it was not Justice," he said, "that gave these to you?"

She looked away.

"Foul beast," he said, and he leaned back, loosening the buttons on his tunic. His fingers slid with sweat. He was panting now, and he closed his eyes, tilting his head to the ceiling, losing his breath.

"Maker," he gasped.

When he looked at her once again, she had driven her fists into her eyes, hiding from him. Her entire body was tensing now, compressing, her elbows clamped to her chest, her knees squeezing him. A thrill of ecstasy raced through him.

The temperature was climbing — beads of sweat had collected on her upper lip, trickled down the soft skin between her breasts. He shuddered against her, into her. He pried her hands from her eyes, wanting, without knowing why, for her to look at him. She sat up then, quick as an arrow, and her hand clutched his face, shoving him back, and she pushed with all of her strength, her fingernails raking his cheeks, digging into his forehead, and he seized her wrist, his other hand forcing her back down by the throat, and he cursed, fucking her harder.

She betrayed a whimper as he gripped her throat with both hands, menacing her, swearing at her, choking her.

She grasped at his hands. The pointed steel of his claws had cut her, were still cutting her. She thrashed underneath him. His ecstasy was mounting, climbing, higher and higher. Beneath his compressing fingers he could feel the desperate throb of her jugular, it quickened with panic beneath her flesh, and he knew how her heart must be hammering, perhaps in time with his, as his own pounded wildly, out of control, in his chest. She tried to gasp, tried again, and shook her head, pleading with him silently. And he fucked her, awash the sweat-salted fragrance of her flesh, the torpid heat, the gleam of her blood on his claws.

She was reaching for him again, weakly, and her hands brushed against his chest and could lift no higher.

Her eyes were closing, the tension that thrummed through her loosening.

He bit out a cry and released her, falling back. His body gave a jolt, and he shuddered, spilling his seed on the silk comforter of the bed.

He steadied himself with one hand and gasped for breath. Hawke lay back wordlessly, had turned away from him, was touching her throat. Fenris wiped the sweat from his forehead, steadied himself again. He closed his eyes and thudded to the mattress beside her. He studied the sheen of red that coated his claws.

"Damn the consequences," he said, and Hawke didn't speak.

###