#when varric told him to stop

[baphometsss]

if i see one more post about how solas/mythal/elgar'nan had a weird love triangle thing going on i'm gonna scream

[rexomi]

Something something. Making Solas a liar in Veilguard actively brings back a problem they fixed working on Inquisition.

On December 20 2019 VGS posted an interview with Trick Weekes about their work on Solas. This whole sentence is a link so its large enough for mobile but also disclaimer this is before they changed their name so deadname warning.

Here's a transcription I found here which is where i took the screenshots above. Since I know not everyone has 40 minutes to listen to an online radio interview.

I however highlighted the main point since most of you are not reading the screenshots anyway but skimming through. Rant under Read-more. Also bc i try to not be too negative on people's dashs but also i wanna ramble some more.

"But he lied a lot more. And it really weakened his character."

You can tell this happened during the game. Solas lies only once within Inquisition. He says something he can't be vague about and you push him so he lies, badly. He usually tells the truth vaguely. Typically Solas lies no more than Blackwall.

I fully believe that if in Inquisition your inquisitor figured out that Solas was Fen’harel and asked him bluntly to his face he'd confess. He might even be impressed. But why would you ever start to think that. No one assumes that their coworker is actually Poseidon regardless of how much they love the beach and ocean.

He hides in your expectations.

You can't ask him about being an ancient elf or being Fen'harel of myth because those aren't very probable. They're astronomically low to be truth within that universe. And outside, no one finished DA2 and went i wonder if one of our next companions is the Dread Wolf. Sera said, impossible things can't be surprises. He doesn't have to lie so when the truth comes out it's becomes obvious on a second playthrough.

They then actively bring back a problem they fixed in Inquisitions development. That they were open about fixing. That having a character that outright lies to you makes you have no intention of even hearing out the character. It retroactively undercuts Inquisition bc i see people trying to find Solas' lies in it when they aren't going to find any beyond the court intrigue.

It undercuts any lore we do get from Solas bc people dismiss it outright as being a lie from Mr "I abhor blood magic". I feel like shaking people's shoulders like no, dont do it.

They retconned him guys i have proof from 2019.

And its like if you hate Solas is this even satisfying? Like that's not Solas. His motivations are gone (that's a whole other post) and so is his core personality trait. It's like they went here's the Dreadwolf but during the ten years they replaced the smug asshole who was insufferably right with a 20 yo senior chihuahua that doesnt have any teeth.

My favorite villains are those that tell the truth. Because nothing hurts more than the truth. Can you imagine if he told you the truth. If he told you horrible things that you dismissed as lies to only be true. Wouldn't Varric’s death have more weight if he told you Varric was dead only for you - for everyone - to see him in the Lighthouse. If it was a spirit who took his shape to help you or even because it saw something worth reflecting in your memories.

So you dismiss him until it's revealed near the end oh he was telling the truth and you have an oh shit maybe he was right about other things but its too late to try and stop any of the truths he told you which could be from allies/companions betraying to stuff about Ghilan'nain and Elgarnan.

Like the only way to redeem Solas was to listen to him and by going out of your way to address problems he sees and you can find the alternative to tearing down the Veil by a series a little puzzle pieces throughout the game.

Have it be he will only listen to you if you listen to him. That he'll reject your other solution bc why the hell would he trust you if you couldnt extend the same.

Like Solas couldve been a great villian and he should've been great for both the haters and those that liked him. Not only the romance but for those who became his friend. Like i keep coming back to if i hated Solas would i be satisfied with Veilguard.

And the answer is no because that isnt Solas.

Tricking him has no weight bc he's an idiot in Veilguard like not even in the ending bc doesn't notice you switch the dagger around like right in front of him but none of his actions make sense. Ppl have mentioned the regret prison makes no sense for Elgarnan and Ghilan'nain bc they don't have regrets.

Attacking Solas has no weight because he literally needs the shit kicked out of him by a dragon for it to even begin to work. They literally need him to be at deaths door before its realistic that Rook could take him in a fight.

Redeem has no weight bc of the massive retcons to his motivations. They had to retcon the post credits scene bc even if Flemythal went hey i don't want you to do this Dai Solas wouldve went okay but that doesnt solve my other problems with the veil including the corruption of spirits and the fact its in literal shambles so i guess is still coming down.

I'm just disappointed. By the end of Trespasser they had a great villian and they just tossed it to the side and reverted him and people are arguing about a character who's sole defining trait in Veilguard is a problem they solved before Inquisition launched.

Basically we can sum it up with a screenshot.

[malewifegustave]

knowing the truth about solas being a spirit and regretting it, and being responsible for the tranquility of the titans and loss of connection to the Stone makes. me. insane when looking back on his conversations with varric. and just their relationship on the whole.

"why do the dwarves not know? why have they forgotten? did someone make them forget? how can they not care what i did to them?"

"do you miss the stone? do you know what i took from you?"

"look at what i did to you. your people are mutilated, forever forced to change from what they once were. and i did this to you."

"you don't even know what i did to you. the horrific crime i comitted against you and your people. you have no idea what you lost or what i did. you're not even angry at me. why aren't you angry at me?"

"you should be angry at me and trying to restore what i took. how can you continue on the way that you are? how are you even whole?"

and then we have harding's comment in da:tv

this comment from harding, after all of the conversations with varric, in hindsight, really does highlight something about solas. for all his guilt and regret, being practically one of if not THE only person who knows what truly happened to the titans. being one RESPONSIBLE-

at no point does he make attempts to fix that until he is convinced to potentially at the end of da:tv.

his conversations with varric are clearly some self projections, and wondering how varric can't be like HIM- he DOES know what the elves lost and what was done, and so he DOES want the old world to be restored. it's to absolve himself of his own guilt, along with trying to fix his mistake. how can he NOT fight? how can his own people not see what they lost and not try to put it back? he has to undo what he did.

but he never does this for the dwarves.

he often will say how he doesnt relate to the elves, and how when asking him 'who are your people', he avoids the topic. because the elves are NOT his people. he is a spirit! and his priorities always align with one simple thing:

that he regrets being made flesh. if he could go back to being a spirit, if all the elves could, if it could all just go back to the way it was before, everything would be fine!

it takes at least four people at the end of da:tv to make him see that this is ultimately selfish and unrealistic. that no amount of regret or attempts to put things back the way they were will undo what he did. in his obsession with self absolution, he completely forgets about the titans, and the blight, all being because of HIM.

he talks to varric, he talks to harding, all the while knowing what he did and being oh so sad about it but never stops to think. wow i actually may have the power to help with this!

he is so, SO focused on his own crusade for himself while also convincing himself that it's for the greater good. telling himself that oh! this time his great plans for the 'right thing' will go well, surely! the last few times, with the titans, and the blight, getting mythal killed, the sealing away the evanuris and changing the world because he messed up the ritual, then trying to awaken his orb only to give it to an immortal blighted magister that explodes the veil- those were all just! flukes! this one will go right FOR SURE!

and is that not just very similar to varric? how varric repeatedly also makes mistakes, and then doesn't face them? he brought hawke into the deep roads and put them in danger, possibly got their sibling blighted, brought back the red lyrium which led to (gestures) all THAT, introduced hawke to anders which led to (gestures) BOOM, led hawke to corypheus, told bianca about the deep roads which led to corypheus getting his hands on red lyrium.

but their key difference? varric simply accepts his mistakes and attempts to do better the next time. varric accepts that the past cannot be changed, no matter how badly he regrets it. he has to move on, he has to do better, he is still here, people are still here, and theyre worth trying for.

"That's the world. Everything you build, it tears down. Everything you've got, it takes. And it's gone forever."

"The only choices you get are to lie down and die or keep going. He kept going. That's as close to beating the world as anyone gets."

like of course. of course solas couldnt keep rook inside a prison of regret by using varric as the catalyst! because that's just not who varric is! that's who solas is. solas saw parts of himself in varric, but didn't listen enough to what varric has always been saying. he never does! he doesn't self reflect, he doesn't consider, truly consider that he's wrong until he is being held at knifepoint and confronted with the literal specters of his past telling him to stop fucking self flagellating and convincing himself that he knows best or that this isn't just out of self pity. 'it's for the elves', he says every morning when he wakes up.

for all solas' wisdom, he truly is poisoned by pride and regret. it's just so. (clenches fist)

he spent all this time using varric's memory, surely he is familiar enough with how varric thinks and feels at this point? surely he undersands now?

you have to stand with him at the edge of the world, teetering on the edge of the abyss and decide if he's worth putting in the effort to make him truly take everything varric said and did to heart. to take what we have now and make it better, instead of dragging a corpse of guilt around for eternity.

[fangsandfeels]

Playing Veilguard and making it everyone's problem

I am going to rant, and I will rant a lot, and there will be spoilers, so if you're not afraid of them and the game criticism, buckle up.

Elves and their gods

I am absolutely fucking livid about how Veilguard handles the Dalish and elves in general. The events of Trespasser made it clear that the elves started flocking over to Solas, including the elves working for the Inquisition:

After the events at the Winter Palace, elves left the Inquisition under mysterious circumstances, as did elven servants across Thedas. None could say where they went, but those who believed the Inquisitor's story about Fen'Harel wondered just how large the Dread Wolf's forces were... and what the ancient elven rebel had planned.

Solas had multiple spies working for him during Trespasser, and If I remember correctly, there was even a note, left by one of the elves - they were anticipating the great change and the return of the elven glory. Anyways, the established fact is that: elves learned that the stories about their gods were true and one of them now was going to restore the world as it used to be. At least, this is how they interpreted it (maybe, this is the version Solas didn't debunk) and so they started following him.

You might think, the Inquisitor and their allies are going to have a huge problem with breaking it to elves that their chosen leader isn't going to make things better and that their gods don't love them. Especially, if the Inquisitor is a human or anyone who isn't an elf. You'd imagine any attempts will end in failure because of course elves aren't going to listen to outsiders trying to explain their own culture and gods to them. You'd imagine that their trauma caused by centuries of oppression and discrimination will make it impossible for the Inquisitor and anyone else to make them see the truth.

You'd assume anyone who tries to find and stop Solas will be sabotaged every step of the way, feeling themselves horrible for having to clash with people desperate for a chance of a life without injustice - even if it means burning the rest of the world down.

You'd imagine that they will only change their mind if/when they see the harm done by Solas' actions and get to witness their gods true intentions by themselves - which would lead to a massive crisis of faith and schisms happening between elven tribes and groups.

You'd imagine will get all this incredible drama in the Veilguard, with elves initially resisting the group's attempts to stop Solas, then trying to pull themselves together after the revelation. You'd assume there will be zealous groups doubting Solas (because the Dreadwolf is a liar and a deceiver) and intending to use him to actually free the elven gods. You'd think this is how actually some of them get out.

But, NOPE. Not only Solas ends up working alone, with none of his followers throwing themselves at Rook and the party to buy him time, but also all elves now hate Solas because...Varric said so?

You meet a group of Veil Jumpers (elves devoted to exploring their ancient culture and history, learning more about their gods and reclaiming their heritage) and their leader instantly calls Solas an asshole. Based on WHAT?

I get it, Varric had met them before and told them that Solas was Fen'Harel...

(needless to say if you expect players to find and read other media in order to make sense of the events in the game, you are doing something wrong)

...but why were they so fucking calm about it, instantly eating up the "yep, he's bad" version? Even if the Dread Wolf is vilified in the Dalish mythology, wouldn't they be curious about what that means? Wouldn't they have gotten tempted or excited by the implication that other gods exist too? They weren't told the full story - why the fuck did they instantly accept the "Solas is an asshole" narrative? Especially when Solas comes with a promise of a world for the elves like it was meant to be?

WHY?

The Veilguard has no response for that. I guess, Dalish never cared about their history and traditions, and city elves were dandy about Alienages and oppression, so they easily believed some randos over a literal god promising a new, better world.

I don't even play Dalish, but I love their plotline and arcs - and I was bracing myself for some downright painful choices and conflicts during the next Dragon Age. But it felt like the writers couldn't be bothered with developing such a nuanced narrative, so they just waved it all down with "Nah, elves are chill now and they never really cared about their gods in the first place".

[pi-creates]

I can’t stop being upset about Veilguard’s writing, and apparently the only way I can get it out of my thoughts is to put it down in words, so here we go…

I’m frustrated, I’m upset, and the longer I think about the way this game was written, the more problems present themselves… and I bloody hate that. It feels like a first draft writing effort, and every time I’m reminded that this game was in development for so many years, I cannot fathom this being the end result. Dragon Age 2 had 16 months of development, and it feels more cohesive and put together writing-wise. I can see the years of polish in the visuals, but the spectacle of the game doesn’t blind me to all the problems in the writing.

Naturally, these are personal opinions, I am genuinely thrilled for people who have played the game and enjoyed it – I wish I could be there enjoying it with you – but clearly these things get under my skin more and spoil the experience for me when they aren’t problems for you. And I also acknowledge there are genuine good parts of the game which I enjoy, but those moments aren’t enough to overshadow the negative experiences that irk me.

And because this post has apparently gotten away from me… I’m gonna put some headings to summarise the problems I’m having, because otherwise this is just a massive rant with no structure.

Show me things, stop just telling it to me.

So much of the game feels like writer’s notes where they put “what the player should take away from this scene” and instead of being creative with how they do that, they just say it verbatim. My immersion in this game was being broken by the game reminding me it’s a video game – which yes, I know it is, but I want to be invested in this world and feel like I’m part of it.

Varric and the game’s own pop-up system is the main problem that’s consistent through the whole game – constantly dropping narration or mission summary where they have zero problem dropping exposition on us and/or spoiling future content. Forget letting me explore these things and reach my own conclusions, the game is going to make sure I know exactly the interpretation I’m meant to have for every moment.

And it’s so damn frequent, I feel like they don’t think I’m paying attention and therefore need to constantly poke me with reminders instead of trusting me to reach my own conclusions. Do they not trust me to have an attention span long enough to go on a walk with Davrin without reminding me at the end of the walk that I did that?

To add to that problem, I absolutely hate how the writing just has people know things – they shouldn’t know this, they shouldn’t be talking to us about this, all evidence points to them not being able to know or be ok discussing this, but for some reason they do.

The Veil Jumpers suddenly just know how to translate and interact with ancient elven artifacts, ignore how the Dalish have been trying to do that since the fall of the Dales (and realistically, even before that) and their efforts over those hundreds of years were a scrap, a pittance of what could be known. But I guess the Veil Jumpers are just better than those hundreds of years in the few years they’ve been active.

Oh, and the scary reputation of the Dalish is just gone? These people just go to the elves they have deemed “savages” because they simply know these ones have good intentions? This world has been established as very untrusting of the intentions of other groups, but that’s simply gone now for this one – I wish I was shown how this started in some way instead of just being told it’s chill now.

And don’t get me started on Strife and Irelin and their seemingly endless knowledge that they shouldn’t have. I read the comics, I get that they’d probably know about the Dreadwolf and have a vested interest in learning more once that particular bit of information was revealed to them – but they somehow also just know about the mask Cyrian is wearing? They know it will influence him but not control his will? Why do you know this with no doubt whatsoever?

Why can’t these things just be presented as theories? Or give us something to find and reference where that information comes from? I want to learn things without just having characters tell me things they know.

And overall, I hate how this game decides to just exposition dump information on us, then we sit around and talk about the exposition dump – it’s overwhelming in magnitude. It feels like such a passive way to have us engage with everything, and this is supposed to be an interactive experience. Instead of being force-fed exposition in big chunks, drip feed details, let us put the puzzle together, let us gather and discuss what we learn with multiple interpretations like the RPG this is meant to be.

And this exposition problem also ruins the stakes in the game for me. Personal interpretation, probably, but the stakes in this game feel artificially inflated to me via having characters constantly tell Rook they are going up against the biggest threat ever. We bring in past heroes of the series to reiterate that, how they think we’re up against worse things than they faced… and I don’t feel that. Telling me constantly how hopeless things are, but every obstacle ends up being overcome relatively easily and without great losses… no, I don’t feel the stakes are real.

Oh, and hearing the talk of how all of Thedas is in trouble, there is so much destruction and only Rook can save them… why don’t you find a way to show me that? Because I’m not feeling that, I’m not seeing it, and I’m starting to think the Inquisitor is making stuff up so Rook doesn’t ask them to get involved again when they’re so busy.

This is a lore problem in the series…

Plot holes and wonky lore can happen, it’s not surprising… especially when there are three games prior to this as well as several books, comics, and other branches of the universe. There have been inconsistencies since the start, and a lot of it doesn’t matter – I don’t care if the second moon is forgotten about, the moon not being there isn’t going to make a problem with the way the story is told since that moon is never something elaborated upon in the plot.

This game though… it has problem that are both related to information in this game not being consistent with previous games, and information within its own contained plot contradicting itself.

I’m not going to beat the dead horse of “this isn’t how the previous games did it/explained it”, people who played the previous games are aware, I don’t see a point of elaborating in detail all the instances of this. Just take some dot points of the one’s I noticed:

The Crows are a horrifying organisation that are suddenly presented wholesome

The Qun offering to rehabilitate Karash is horrifying and it’s presented wholesome

Slaves are meant to be everywhere in Tevinter, but we don’t see that

Racism is supposed to be rampant in Tevinter (and other nations, but particularly here for any non-human), and we also don’t see that

Handling pure lyrium is fine now (unless you’re Harding)

Adult Dalish without vallaslin (Elgar’nan’s captives)

Fenharel’s agents are just gone now – as are all signs of mass elven exodus from cities

Solas’ opinion on blood magic is suddenly negative instead of neutral

Spirits dying is given the same weight as people dying

Flemeth…….just everything about Flemeth and Morrigan

Re-write of the after credits scene in Inquisition to recontextualise the Flemeth and Solas interaction

Isabela’s attitude towards Shathann sending Taash away without their knowledge (the comics make me doubt she’d be cool with this)

Non-Dalish elves knowing things about ancient elves and elven language

Blight sickness and how darkspawn are “born” (some leeway for this one since the blight is overall just different in this one, but it does feel less interesting this way)

Morrigan naming the Crossroads in lieu of the true name being lost to time, but everyone uses the term now

Crossroads looking different through elven eyes

You can’t just make people be magic/not magic (me side-eyeing Illario and his random ability to do magic now)

This is a contained problem in this game…

What troubles me more is the inconsistencies within the same game… that isn’t just deciding “this is how it works now in this iteration”, this is a problem that they wrote into existing, then either didn’t notice or didn’t resolve appropriately. And granted, some of these things aren’t inherently plot holes, but when you put certain aspects under inspection, it doesn’t make things look good.

For starters… I have to talk about Varric. Or more accurately, not-Varric.

I’m under the impression that not-Varric is simply Rook’s memory of Varric being projected for them. I personally don’t think there’s some extra level of Solas interference in what Rook is seeing moment to moment… and I feel the need to state that because Rook’s memory cannot conjure up information that Rook doesn’t know.

So why does not-Varric point out that the ritual dagger is the dagger from DA2?

Rook could not recognise it, there is absolutely no reason for Rook to even theorise that – so not-Varric should not be able to impart this knowledge to Rook. And what makes this worse for me, aside from being an impossible situation as the plot presents it, is that this observation doesn’t matter in the slightest. They put this backstory to the McGuffin Dagger and I don’t know why since all it does is create a plot hole. The only purpose I can see for this moment existing at all is to bolster the illusion that not-Varric is real and trying to help with the cause in whatever way possible.

Then there are other issues with Varric not being alive which makes other character’s lack of talking about him feel awful. Like, it’s not natural the way people avoid mentioning him when it would be very appropriate to do so – and I understand that to an extent, the game’s gotta game – they want to surprise us and therefore the characters aren’t going to blatantly give the surprise away early. But the Inquisitor doesn’t ask after him at all? Doesn’t mention how Kirkwall is coping now that the viscount is dead? Dorian doesn’t say anything after learning Varric found Solas in his city and then died? Isabela has nothing to say about Varric until after the illusion is broken for Rook?

It makes it feel like Varric’s friends (aside from Harding, the only person who seems to actively mourn him at the start of the game) don’t give two shits that he’s gone.

That’s not even accounting for how characters don’t bother to check in with Rook who is constantly talking with the companions about their various issues of mourning, hearing voices or apparitions, and just checking in with them overall – but none of that is seemingly reciprocated.

Frankly, this makes me feel awful. I feel awful for Varric being seen as so disposable that his friends don’t mention him or his absence. I feel awful for Rook who is apparently not worth the direct effort that they offer others.

And I try to think of how a new player to this series would feel about all of this – because Varric was just some guy who walked us through a tutorial in this game. Most of our time with him is fake, any connection I saw form between Rook and Varric in this game isn’t real – but then Rook mourns Varric more than he mourns the companions we have spent most of the game with.

I don’t like it.

And I don’t like the utilisation of returning characters. Morrigan, or as she’s utilised in this game deus-ex-Morrigan, has a new view of Flemeth and therefore she will take on Mythal’s soul fragment so she can again swoop in and save the day by handing us the means to get a reconciliation type ending… it couldn’t be something that characters in this game figure out, just have a returning character provide us with the magic solution. Also ignore how the whole reason Morrigan was afraid of her mother in the DAO and DAI was that her body would get taken over by her spirit… but I guess that doesn’t happen now. We can just create new rules for this iteration because it’s easier to tell the story this way.

Solas is also just… I’m so upset by what was done with him. He was a character in DAI who told half-truths or lied by omission, leaving others to assume false information without him actually saying it – it was never just blatant lies to take advantage of others. And his motivations were about restoration of something he felt he had robbed the world, it was about righting what he viewed as a mistake which lead to such a cascade of problems that he needed to somehow rectify it. Whether you agree with his point of view or his desires doesn’t matter, his principles remain the same in terms of what motivates him.

Then this game happens and he’s just a liar constantly, and not even a clever one if you can apparently just trick him up with a “woopsie, this isn’t the real dagger”, and he also apparently has no insight into the idea that Rook would anticipate that.

They make him act like the worst interpretation someone could have of him, the thing he actively was trying to tell us was a false interpretation in DAI and the comics. But history was written and remembered by those who experienced the negative outcomes of his choices, and they remembered that as the greatest evil in comparison to what else could have been. But apparently in this game, that’s the truth now. His motivation is about his desires and he cares nothing for the people who has hurt or will be hurt. But it’s ok, because just as easily as his motivation changed between DAI and Veilguard, it will be changed again at end game if you listen to deus-ex-Morrigan.

Then there are smaller things, but things that really would have been caught if someone was just paying a little bit of attention…

Like Harding and Emmrich going camping in Fereldan… which if we’re to believe the things the Inquisitor was saying about Southern Thedas, I don’t think you’re going to have a fun trip. But I’m glad they’re able to find some time for a vacation while the refugees are getting blighted all over.

Or Rook actively saying “I should talk to Varric” directly in front of characters in the lead up to end-game, and those characters choosing to completely ignore that.

Or in Neve’s companion story, Aelia deciding to interrogate the witness to the red lyrium deal right next to where it happened. She didn’t need to be in the area, she was puppetting the smuggler, and she clearly has insight into what the person is seeing and doing while puppetting them. So I guess she’s just there so we can figure out she was involved.

Or the game telling us that Anaris need Cyrian to perform rituals for him since Anaris doesn’t have a physical body to do them himself… except he apparently doesn’t because he can kill Cyrian when he disobeys. I still would like to know if Cyrian ever died originally, by the way, and if so how he’s back and seemingly normal – this game likes to answer big lore questions like it’s nothing, but they just gloss over details like this.

Or how in Emmrich’s missions, Manfred’s spirit dies and can just be brought back to life… so I guess spirits dying means nothing if they can be brought back with their memory and personality intact. So that Solas flashback where we were supposed to be appalled that spirits died? Apparently there was nothing lost there, someone just needs to revive them and they can carry on as normal.

Or how the rewrite of DAI’s ending cutscene implies that Solas killed Flemeth/Mythal… before he had the power to do so since the whole reason he has been able to do anything in this game is because he absorbed her amassed power. So Flemeth/Mythal would have to let her power go willingly since Solas should not be able to forcibly take it, but clearly, she didn’t since the dialogue we’re given is her being reluctant. Solas apparently has the power he needs to do things when the plot demands it, but also no power when the plot demands it (aka, when Rook needs to prove they’re better than him).

Or the crew making a fake Ritual dagger near end game. For no reason whatsoever. They just decided to do that knowing it would only be a prop, but they had no plans that even involved a prop at that point – so they just did this because the plot told them they had to.

And speaking of that Ritual dagger… all the old elves want that dagger for one reason of another, but they never seem to try to get it when they can, or they don’t seem too concerned when it’s not in their grip anymore. Solas doesn’t try to hold onto it after Varric gets stabbed. Elgar’nan doesn’t try to pick it up after it kills Ghilan’nain, in spite of him knowing it’s the one thing that can kill him… nope, just leave it there and peace out.

Or my personal most hated thing – Isseya and her stupid motivation making no sense.

I cannot fathom the logic of having Isseya, a warden who was forced to blight griffons, who came to resent this order as she watched the griffons go mad, made it her mission to safeguard a clutch of eggs, takes the blight from the eggs into herself while using magic to put the eggs into status, then goes off to her calling which doesn’t actually end in her death… and somehow, 400 years later, she’s decided that since those eggs have hatched and the griffons are healthy and unblighted, the thing she wanted, but they’re in the hands of wardens which she doesn’t really like, so now she’s gonna go get those griffons to blight them.

Literally doing the thing that made her so mad at the wardens. Because she wants to save the griffons from the wardens and their cruelty… by repeating it… I just… this is nonsense.

If she’s capable of articulating that she’s mad at the wardens for their cruelty to the griffons, then she shouldn’t be repeating it thinking she’s saving the griffons. If she was just keeping the griffons captive to keep them away from the wardens, then I could buy that, but adding the element of her wanting to blight them just makes this nonsensical.

Oh and never talk the First Warden down – it will make the final scenes with Isseya even worse if he tells you about the feather from her griffon and show it to her. Because I don’t even think Isseya dies in that variant of the cutscene, she just says sorry and rolls on the floor while I guess Rook and Davrin let the griffons out…

Who is Rook?

Usually, in a game like this, choices are what make us feel like an active participant in the world. It helps us build up our own character and determine how/why they behave the way they do, and also how the world around them is shaped by the consequences of those moments.

But this game feels so stripped of choice, especially choice which is any way related to morality or priorities that aren’t standard ‘Hero traits’. Rook will always do the right thing, they can’t be motivated by personal desires, excitement, monetary gain, fame, etc…. and when Rook is forced to make a choice, there is no option which would be looked at as unreasonable by companions. They might give us an approval/disapproval pop up, but it never really feels like Rook is capable of being incompatible with anyone, they will always be seen as justified in companion’s eyes. And to me, this makes Rook as the game presents them incredibly bland.

Most of Rook’s unique characterisation happens in the character creator – the game gives us minimal chances to expand or form a personality for Rook that is significantly different from any other person who plays the game. We do the heavy lifting here, we transpose qualities on Rook because the game won’t give us meaningful opportunities to do that.

And not only do I feel like the game lacks choices that would help us define Rook, it lacks decisions that make me feel like I’m having any impact on the world overall. I can defend Minrathous or I can defend Treviso… this is the one choice we make which seems to actually shape the world we play in.

And it doesn’t even come up as something Rook can regret in the sequence about regrets… Rook apparently is faced with only regrets that are the result of other people’s decisions to volunteer to do something. But the one thing where Rook actually has to actively choose something, something they are actually responsible for the suffering on the side they don’t defend… that isn’t something they can regret.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Surely, if Rook should regret anything it should be the thing they feel direct responsibility for, no? But Rook doesn’t. Because Rook doesn’t regret anything they do, because they aren’t written with choices that they can regret since they aren’t seen as responsible for negative outcomes.

Honestly, that sequence might as well have been about mourning or sadness rather than regret, because Rook has to be upset at the loss of companions, we don’t get to influence that. But Rook isn’t regretful – that’s how they get out – but I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t then make us able to actively regret the legitimate choices we make, rather than feeling regret for our companions deciding to risk themselves.

Rook feels like an outside observer to everything that happens around them. They are the mediator, the sounding board, the magic-8-ball for decision making when companions need a push because they’re stuck. Sure, they do things, but for an RPG the way they go about things feels so linear.

And on another note… why is Rook seen as important? They start championing Varric’s cause in his absence, they want to stop the veil coming down and that starts with stopping Solas, then stopping Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain. But to the outside observer, Rook is just some guy who says they are on an important missions, and they really need to speak with all these important leaders of factions – just trust them, I’m sure the First Warden is happy to make time for a meeting. And also the First Talon of the Crows, I’m sure they are fine with just some foreign person saying they need to meet your leader.

What I’m trying to get at is that Rook has no title, your group isn’t given any proper title or status which these people can look at and assume Rook is being truthful, trustworthy, or even worth their time. No one has any reason to hear Rook out, but in this game, they either just do, or they don’t and it’s because they’re actually a bad guy.

But Rook is no one special. They realistically shouldn’t be trusted like they are, they should absolutely be struggling to be taken seriously by others but it’s portrayed as unfair when that does happen. But they’re the protagonist, and it’s like everyone in the world simply knows that. I want Rook to struggle, I want them to grow and prove themselves, but it feels like we skip passed that to get straight to the fantasy of being in charge and considered fit for that role. 

Pacing and feeling like something was missing…

The start and ending throw a lot at us and expect us to keep on running – but then the middle portion of the game suffers due to the companions putting a stop sign on the plot so you can do their companion quests. And they aren’t shy about telling you “you need to stop and do our quests or we’ll be distracted at end game”… and again, thank you game for explaining game mechanics to me.

I was going to complete character quests, because if I care about the characters of course I’m going to do that. Having to actually pause the plot and have the characters explain to you that you have to care… I don’t know how to explain this, but it immediately took me out of the fragile immersion I was trying to get into. It makes me upset with the companions for reasons I can’t put into words. Maybe it’s because in one fell swoop it made me see them as checklists to be completed instead of people I wanted to know? I’m not sure, if someone had a similar reaction to this moment and has a better explanation, I would love to be enlightened on what it is that makes me so uncomfortable about this.

But I digress, the problem here is that the plot grinds to a halt. We stop doing things which feel like we’re advancing our plan of stopping the big baddies, we just kind of patter around and make sure our companions feel ok. And most of those missions to help our companions aren’t connected to the enemy we’re facing… Aelia, Anaris, Hezenkoss, Illario, The Dragon King, Isseya – they aren’t agents of the big baddies, they are just enemies that pop up at the same time as the big baddies are around, and are therefore making the situation worse.

So yes, we’re still doing stuff, but it feels like fluff. It feels like a detour while we just hope the world doesn’t burn while we stop to go on another picnic.

This is something that happens in a lot of games, the urgency isn’t real because you can stop progressing plot to go for a long walk if you want to – but in none of the other games did it feel so blatant to me. I still felt like most of the little tasks in the interim of plot advancement were at least advancing the cause in little ways… I don’t feel that with a lot of the things that happen in the middle of the game. It just becomes about companion missions; the bad guys will wait until we sort that out, the blight will stop advancing so we can have family dinners and go for walks.

And I really don’t know how to explain this, but it feels like something is missing in how the story progresses. Like extra things were meant to be happening and they are just not there. Maybe this is another part of how the game often just tells me things that happen in scene transitions, or it’s me really wishing there were more actual plot advancing missions in the middle of the game.

This problem I think also is most evident in the romances. Veilguard seems to take its romance pacing more from the Mass Effect games than the previous Dragon Age games – and while it was acceptable in Mass Effect to have very few romance scenes, and predominantly only having one big scene which culminates at end game, but suddenly introducing it in this series makes it feel like a huge downgrade from previous instalments.

It feels like we’re missing things, we’re given banters by companions commenting on the progress of our relationship and our partner can talk about how close they feel to our Rook – we’re given the impression our relationship is strong and established midway through the game. But with how strong the characters talk, it feels like we should have experienced so many more interactions with our partner to substantiate that.

For comparisons sake, in DAI if you enter a romance prior to going to the Winter Palace, you get romantic dialogue with your partner if they’re present, you get a dance, you get to feel like you’re in a relationship as it’s developing into something deeper. You get more interactions as the game goes on, moving from spoken interest, kisses, and intimacy (in most cases). It’s a slow build, and let’s you feel the build up by giving you glimpses of each step as the relationship develops, and then letting you just experience being in the relationship.

This game feels like it gives us the bare minimum in actual content, but has characters talk about how established the relationship is. The heavy lifting is again left to us to interpret all these blank spaces and fill in how this relationship is developing. The problem isn’t inherently with what the game gives us, it's what it doesn’t.

It lets us choose a relationship in the middle of the game, then it doesn’t give us all the progression – rather it gives us the minimal amount of snippets to meet the checklist of “they express interest, they mutually agree to be in a relationship, the relationship is consummated physically”. Sure, we can continue to pick flirt/love based dialogues, but it doesn’t feel nearly as strong as the banters seem to be telling us it is. And over all, we can go a very long time between each progression point.

I love this franchise, and I so desperately wanted to like this instalment… and instead I feel hollow.

[ephemeralinstance]

It's the Inquisitor who redeems Solas

There's a slightly odd narrative structure to Solas' overall arc, because although he does undergo significant growth, it's almost all in Inquisition. 

He starts out the game dismissive of all of modern Thedas and gives his orb to Corypheus without really thinking at all of the consequences it might have; he kills Felassan for daring to question him; he seems to have complete moral certainty in the rightness of what he's doing. But in the course of Inquisition, everything changes. He comes to admit that he was wrong about the people of modern Thedas. He comes to respect and care for many of them - not just the Inquisitor but also other companions like Varric and Iron Bull. As he spirals after the Temple of Mythal, we can see that he is clearly starting to feel more and more guilty about what he's doing. 

And by Trespasser, he is almost ready to give up on his plans: he tells us explicitly that he would 'treasure' the chance to be proven wrong. Moreover, although he does proceed with trying to take down the Veil, he is now putting a lot of effort into mitigating the damage, something that didn't even occur to him when he first woke and gave his orb to Corypheus. We're also told in Veilguard that he's been leaving hints and clues in a way that suggests he wants to be stopped. In that sense, most of the growth he needed has already taken place. He already knows that what he's doing is wrong, there's just something blocking him from fully admitting that to himself. 

By contrast, we don't really see much additional growth in Veilguard. He's trapped in a prison and largely static throughout the game. Even if he comes to respect Rook, this doesn't change anything about how he proceeds with his plans. And the Atonement ending doesn't really involve him undergoing any significant change either. Rather, the memory of Mythal plays the role of a catalyst: he was already prepared to stop his plans, he'd been prepared for ten years, he just needed one last thing to push him over the edge. Rook's role here is not to change him but to provide that final push, allowing him to do what he's wanted to do ever since Inquisition.

While this does make Solas' arc a bit unbalanced, it makes sense. The Inquisitor is the person who spends (at least) a year in close company with Solas, who gets to know him well, who may become a close friend or lover. Even an Inquisitor who Solas doesn't get on with still has a major impact on him by virtue of spending so much time together. Rook, by comparison, just has a few short conversations with him. It would be quite strange if Rook's input had a significant impact on Solas' arc compared to the Inquisitor's. 

In that sense, although Rook is the protagonist of the game, they don't really contribute to the growth in Solas that leads to the Atonement ending: it's the Inquisitor, and the Inquisition more generally, that really makes that growth happen. And this of course is exactly why the Inquisitor needs to be present for the Atonement scene. Because it's really the Inquisitor, and not Rook, who is responsible for making this possible. 

[lucinedoodles]

Pssst- Fiorella "Rook" De Riva was cautious of Lucanis when they first met but not for the same reason Harding was.

She saw this man- who's a legend amongst the Crows and is seen as the perfect blueprint for all Crows- and expected him to be like Viago.

She's been away from Antiva for six months, under Varric and Harding's care and guidance, and she was aware that she had grown lax without Viago's strict watch.

She expected to be berated and told off and lectured. But then she slipped and nearly fell off a ledge and Lucanis caught her easily. Instead of telling her off, he shares a story about the time he and Illario had been playing on the roofs of the Dellamorte estate and a sudden raven flying by caught him off guard and sent him down into the canal below.

He told her how Illario had pissed himself laughing as he helped Lucanis out of the waters. His cousin stopped laughing when Lucanis accidentally slipped again and pushed Illario in the icy water instead.

Then another day, he caught her snacking on a half rotten apple and had her sit down to help him make churros. He didn't lecture her about how it's "too much sugar", he just said after the day they all had, they deserved a treat.

When he finds out the reason behind Fiorella's banishment, he goes up to Viago and tells him off- how dare the Talons blame her for doing what was right? How the hell was she supposed to know about the operation? Viago was the one who should have informed her. A Crow of her position should have been privy to such a large scale operation to begin with.

Fiorella never had anyone sticking up for her before.

The Antivan Crows learn to stop gossiping about Viago's Ghost Crow after that point. Even when they start seeing her about, timidly clutching onto Lucanis' cape as she follows him around the market.

[felassan]

More on the Varric deaths stuff, two, as well as on DAII Exalted March and DA:I -

"This expansion was going to be called Exalted March, and here, Varric was going to finally step out from the interrogation room so we could play in the present day, so to speak. It was also here that Varric - in a climactic confrontation new villain Corypheus, introduced in Legacy - was going to die. "So what I wanted to do with the expansion was: there's a lot of stuff we cut and I really wanted to put a bowtie on the Dragon Age 2 story," former lead writer David Gaider told me earlier this year while chatting about the creation of the Dragon Age world for a piece about maps. "It had the confrontation with Corypheus and the whole thing. We'd introduced him in a DLC, which I didn't want to do, but we did it, so I wanted to sort of tie that off. And I wanted to kill Varric because he was the viewpoint character and I'm like, 'This is his story, it needs to end with his death.' "He was the unreliable narrator, right?" he added. "I felt like it had to end with him. So we had this great moment where Corypheus is using the Red Lyrium and it's growing out of control, but [Varric is] a dwarf so he's a little bit immune, so he's able to do the Wrath of Khan Spock thing and get in close and destroy it. And he gets Corypheus enough so the party can take him out, but then he's dying from Red Lyrium poisoning so there's this nice moment with him and Hawke as Hawke says goodbye. And with his death, the story ends. And I felt that's appropriate for Dragon Age 2's arc." Exalted March, however, was never released. BioWare cancelled Exalted March to refocus the studio on new game Dragon Age: Inquisition and the move to new engine Frostbite. The expansion was "cannibalised", as Gaider put it, talking to me, and expanded to become Inquisition. Which is how Corypheus suddenly became the main villain in Inquisition, and how Varric managed to stay alive. It didn't stop Gaider trying to kill him again, though. "I tried to kill him in Inquisition," he told me. "I think mainly because I didn't get to do it in [DA2]. And everyone was like, 'But the Inquisitor isn't Hawke! It lacks the same meaning.' And I was like, 'Yeah, I guess you're right.'" Still, it was a difficult thing to let go of. "I was a little bit upset," he said, "and I remember I went and said - because they wanted to start work on Dragon Age 3 immediately - 'Well, you can make me do that, yes, and I will just be the guy in the meetings doing this [he makes a standoffish posture]. Or you can let me go home for a month or so, get this out of my system and grieve, and I will come back. And I swear, when I come back, I will be ready to go.'" He was true to his word, but he still wasn't entirely done trying to kill Varric. In March last year, Gaider revealed there were once plans for Corypheus to attack the Inquisition's mountain castle base, Skyhold. "The threat of Corypheus after Haven was never truly realised," Gaider tweeted. "An attack on Skyhold would have upped the ante. Maybe I could have killed someone finally... but instead, Corypheus remained a remote villain you chased but were rarely chased by. "By the way," he then added, "if you're wondering who I would have killed in Skyhold, given the chance, the answer is obviously Varric. That dwarf was meant to die in the (cancelled) DA2 expansion and escaped his fate despite having been in my crosshairs ever since." Varric survived again. "After Dragon Age Inquisition came out I'd already left the Dragon Age team," he told me."

[source]

what I'm reading, if I understood it right, is that Varric has survived death at least 3 times thus far.. (；・∀・)

[sweetmage]

I love the drama of the "Varric sees Anders when he looks at Solas" posts that have been going around, but I personally do not vibe with the common "I should have stopped Anders from blowing up the Chantry" narrative that some of them have but instead "I could have prevented it from even getting to that point." I've been putting some thought into how I would spin this for my own purposes. I'll place it under the cut since it's a little lengthy :)

To begin with, this was not an overnight decision on Anders' part. He held out for years, tried to find other solutions, tried to rally a group of supposed friends who would not hear it. Varric thought himself a listening ear, a supportive companion, but he was as deaf as the rest of them. Varric had the resources and connections to keep the templars away from his clinic, he had the fondness to invite him out to drinks and trade jokes with him, but when the threat grew larger and more serious, Varric's response did not.

Anders, who had spent most of his life in a prison surrounded by uncaring jailors watched his home, his friends--family even--become no better. And Varric became one of them, meeting every silent plea or cry for support with words and actions that protected those walls, those structures, but not the people who lived within. That was, of course, unless they were quiet, uninvolved. It was easier to face than the reality that the city he loved was rotten and diseased.

In the end, he never gave Anders what he needed. He never used his resources to fight or his words to speak out, he never even told him that he understood him, that mages shouldn't have to go through that. And in the end, Anders had to do what he could alone and Varric lost his friend and the city both.

Anders lived, but at the cost of his own freedom, his home, his friends he had tried until the very end to convince. But that didn't settle in for Varric right away. It was easier to be angry, even if much of that anger was turned inward. He disparaged Anders in the same breath that he called him a fond nickname, he protected his and Hawke's location while claiming he never wanted to see him again, he placed blame upon him for what went wrong in the world while pretending to himself that the world itself was not at fault.

It wasn't until he was faced with another friend, another mage, in a situation all too similar that Varric realized what he had done. Or rather, failed to do. And what he must do this time in turn. It was too late for Anders, he could never go back to Kirkwall and the trust he lost for his old friends must have been near irreparable, but it was not too late for Solas.

So to me when he looks to Solas and sees Anders he isn't seeing some mage who did a bad thing, he's seeing the friend he could have saved, or at least could have tried to understand, but didn't. So it's personal. He throws every resource at tracking Solas down, every contact, every favor, and when it finally pays off and he stands before him, he tries, even when it puts his life on the line. But, like before, it seems too late. He could look back and see every moment he could have offered his ear or his aid to Anders before things reached a breaking point, but he didn't have that time with Solas. He may as well have been trying to talk Anders down that evening in the Gallows when the culmination of so many years of injustice were ready to boil over. But he never tried then, he had to now for Solas.

[megthemariner]

Rook Origins Prompts

Mercar

1. Was Rook born in Ventus? How did they end up in a battlefield as a baby? If this wasn’t how the Mercars found them, how did Rook end up being adopted by the Mercar family?

2. What is life like for Rook growing up? Do they like/love their adopted family? Do they even know they’re adopted? How do the Mercars treat them? Do they have any siblings?

3. For Mage Rooks, when is their magic discovered? What is their training like? Do they specialise in any type of magic, or further any research into magical theory? Are they interested in climbing the ranks of the Magisterium?

(3a) Do they enjoy the status and power given to mages? Does it make them uncomfortable? Is it normalised to them, as it’s how things are in Tevinter?

4. For rogue/warrior Rooks, what drew them to their preferred method of fighting? Do they like fighting? Was their father involved in their training? If not, how were they trained?

(4a) Was there an expectation that Rook would become a soldier, since their adopted father is a high-ranking Commander? Did Rook join the army? Did they want to? If they didn’t, how did their adopted father/family react?

5. Were the Mercars living in Ventus in/around 9:44 Dragon when the Qunari/Antaam invaded? Was Commander Mercar still an acting member of the military there? If so, what happened to them? If Rook wasn’t in Ventus at the time, when did they hear about it? How do they feel about Ventus being captured?

6. What caused Rook to see slavery as something that needs to end? Did the Mercar family have slaves? If so, does Rook start there, and convince the Mercars to free their slaves/pay them as servants? If not, what caused the Mercar family as a whole to break from Tevinter’s status quo and pay servants/free their slaves?

7. How did Rook first learn about the Shadow Dragons? Did they join a cell in Ventus, or find them in Minrathous? When did they join? What did that entail? Does their family know they’re part of the Shadow Dragons, or do they keep it as anonymous/secret as possible?

8. What was Rook’s first job or operation with the Shadow Dragons? Was it a solo job, or part of a bigger team? Was it successful?

9. Does Rook have a ‘day job’? If so, what is it? Does it help the Shadow Dragons, or is it just to keep up appearances/make enough money to make ends meet?

10. How involved does Rook become with the Shadow Dragons? Does this change over time? Do they move cities, stop using the Mercar name, or make any other efforts to hide their identity? If so, do they do this to protect the Shadow Dragons, the Mercar family, or both? Is it required of them as they get more involved in Shadow Dragon operations?

11. How does Rook end up with the Nessus job? Why are they chosen to “guard a visiting dignitary”? Who is the dignitary? Are they a secret member of the Shadow Dragons? If not, how did Rook get the dignitary’s cooperation while they went “deep into Venatori-controlled zones and brought him back, along with the rescued slaves”?

(11a) What led Rook to conclude that “the mission would fail without throwing caution to the wind”? What was their mission? Was it always the plan to free the slaves in the slavery ring in Nessus? If so, what would have caused the mission to fail? Has Rook always been the type to be bold and take chances, or was this new for them?

12. When Rook learns that the Nessus job brought attention to them (and the Shadow Dragons), how did they feel? What repercussions did this have, for them personally and/or the Shadow Dragons as a whole? Did they regret any of their actions? Were they told to leave for a while, did they volunteer, or was it a group decision? How did they feel about leaving?

13. Was Varric involved in the Nessus job in some way? If not, how does Rook meet him? Do they become part of the team to stop Solas right away, or does it take some time for Varric & Harding to fill them in?

14. Does Rook like travelling with Varric & Harding? What do they think of each? What do they think of the mission to stop Solas? Were they worried about returning to Minrathous as part of the mission?

———

For use as writing prompts, as an ask game, etc! Enjoy fleshing out your Rook's origin!

Ingellvar | de Riva | Thorne | Aldwir | Laidir

[rook-laidir]

Got y’all banter at the banter store

Idk why y’all like these so much but hey, I like doing them. Enjoy!

~

Emmrich: I do envy you, Rook. The tales of the Lords of Fortune and their adventures reach even the Necropolis.

Rook: They’re good people. Sort of.

Emmrich: I’d love to hear more about your excursions. You must have seen the most fascinating crypts and burial sites. To see remnants of a world before cremation became so normalized. The dead must have some incredible stories.

Rook: I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s not gold and glory all the time. Sometimes the crypts are empty or another group already picked them clean or an asshole of a noble decides to double-cross you and leave you and your crew to die.

Emmrich: Ah. Even still, I’d love to hear about your journeys when you’ve the time.

~

Rook: Up for some Wicked Grace later?

Davrin: No, you cheat.

Rook: Fine, what about Fool’s Gold?

Davrin: No, you cheat.

Rook: Dominos?

Davrin: You already know what I’m gonna say.

Rook: You can’t cheat at dominos!

Davrin: You’ll find a way.

~

Bellara: When’s your name day?

Rook: Why do you need it?

Bellara: I’m trying to keep track of everyone’s name days so I can bake cakes and we can celebrate.

Rook: Aw!

~

Bellara: You still haven’t told me your name day.

Rook: Oh, right. It was a couple weeks ago.

Bellara: What?

Rook: What?

Bellara: Why didn’t you tell me?

Rook: Because I haven’t celebrated my name day in years. Also I kinda just forgot.

Bellara: Rook!

Rook: It’s fine, Bellara. Really. I don’t need a celebration.

Bellara: But I like celebrations! Especially if they’re for my friends!

~

Bellara: So how was the cake?

Rook: It was really nice, actually. Thanks, Bellara.

Bellara: Anytime! Well, anytime as long as it’s your name day. Or if we have another cake-related celebration.

Rook: I’m sure we’ll think of something.

~

Harding: Remember when we were in Antiva City-

Rook: And Varric accidentally set up a Crow contract against himself?

Harding: He kept saying it wasn’t an accident, it was to see who would take it, but I still don’t believe him.

Rook: At least the Crows called it off before we had to fight off assassins.

Harding: He really didn’t like having to fight off assassins whenever we had to do it.

Rook: Can’t say it’s my favorite either.

~

Taash: Isabela asked for you at The Hilt.

Rook: Am I in trouble again?

Taash: I dunno, probably. But she also misses you.

Rook: Really? Isabela said she misses me?

Taash: She said you need to stop embarrassing her when you leave your back exposed in the Hall. She taught you better than that.

Rook: Aw, she misses me!

~

Neve: So you’re in a crypt or a dungeon with the Lords, you find some ancient treasure, and then what? What do you do when the job’s done?

Rook: Depends. If it’s a big haul or if it’s something we need to get appraised, we bring it back to Isabela. For the rest, we each take a cut and the rest goes to the vault.

Neve: You have a vault that’s filled to the brim with treasure?

Rook: The entire thing is booby-trapped. The last people who tried had their feet stuck to the floor and then they were incinerated.

Neve: Huh. Good to know.

~

Neve: Have you ever seen the inside of the vault?

Rook: Nope. I like being alive. If the traps don’t kill me first, Isabela will.

Neve: Makes sense. You’re not the type to steal from family either. Especially when you’re not in it for the gold.

Rook: Of course, I’m in it for the gold.

Neve: It’s nice that you care about each other so much.

~

Rook: What makes you think I don’t care about the gold? I’m a treasure hunter, that’s kind of a big part of it.

Neve: You’re the first to buy everyone a round at The Hilt and you wait for everyone else to take their share before you go for yours. When anyone asks about a job, you light up when you talk about the traps and the puzzles and you spend barely any time talking about what you did with the treasure if and when you found it. You’re never disappointed when you come up empty or if there’s not enough to go around. You’re in it for the adventure and because the Lords of Fortune is your family.

Rook: Well, that’s…

Neve: You’re family to them too. It’s sweet.

~

Rook: I’m really sorry.

Lucanis: I forgot to label it and you wanted a snack. I’ve already forgiven you.

Rook: Spite hasn’t.

Spite: It was mine!

[tench]

Veilguard is such a weird game.

It's not a Dragon age game, it's bately a role playing game. It's an ok action. Even though it is the most stable AAA release it is still just a bunch of barely tied together stuff in a trench coat.

The writing (insultingly dumbed down and absolutely incapable of taking itself seriously untill the last 1/6 of the game) is all over the place, the direction is nonexistent judging by the tonal shift from one quest to another. We can have very heart felt monologue about the fear of death sit right next to a conversation where a lot of things are told using one specific phrase (I really hope in a clumsy attempt at emphasis) repeated till these words lose any meaning to you.

There's also a problem of role-playing in this "rpg" and the Rook. None of your dialogue choices matter in terms of defining your character, no matter the option you choose, the general conversation will carry the upbeat silly tone. "Your backstory and class matter more than your race" works untill it doesn't, like when you are a dwarf but you are denied your own journey and realizations tied to the titans, and maybe it is not your journey to take yet you can't even try to be a part of it, even when Harding is actively reaching out to other dwarves to share this connection. It's also weirdly more interested in writing romance between npcs than for the main character (Lucanis comes to mind, it feels like the game is actively punishing you for pursuing him, you have to lose the whole shadow dragon faction, you won't get to hang out with Dorian and still you have bare minimum and he more interested in Neve anyway), that's extremely funny that this game is player-sexual yet completely player-aromantic. (And I miss the dai option where you can come up and kiss your LI whenever you feel like it).

I won't even touch on the weird and unnecessary sanitation of everything, like we can't allow people or factions to have negative traits whatsoever. And it's not "southern propaganda", it's "we are not engaging with complex topics for the sake of clear dichotomy between good us and evil overlords". Speaking of which

The whole plot.. The general idea of it is ok. You come to stop Solas, you make the situation go sideways, you have to work together to fix your mistakes and maybe learn to sympathize with the antagonist haunted by his own transgressions with the main theme being legacy and your relationship with your culture and the baggage it brings. But the journey is a complete disaster. Part of it works solely because the characters absolutely Refuse to make a plan and the other - because the main character has a blunt head trauma. Maybe it's related. Maybe it's all a mass hallucination. I may try to elaborate on how it's absolutely ridiculous how little the inquisition and the politics have any impact in this game yet somehow 8 people squatting in the Fade with no political affiliations are held responsible for providing for every faction they come across. I won't even try to make sense of it. It's the usual case of "the main character does everything".

The direction is not only absent in the writing. Some lines that are ok in text delivered in such a way you may think they were allowed only to use the very first take.

The music is absolutely forgettable. Also the odd riff during the dramatic reveal absolutely took me out because I thought I heard kazoo (but I bet Varric would love it).

The visuals are.. Ok. It's pretty on the first glance but the more you travel the more you realize that the general design of the locations are kinda lacking. They have this weird gradient that makes everything a little bit more unfocused and a bit washed out. There are also too many cases of the horisont just drowning in the fog. Air perspective is great and it suits locations like Necropolis, but I would argue that these establishing shots should be used for environmental storytelling in other places, with some focal points in the background, like during the final mission where you see the world absolutely drowning in the blight, devouring local statue of liberty. Or the dead Titan. Or the first shot of the Veil jumper forest (I forgot how it's called) where you see the ruins going into he sky. But because of the fog (or sometimes darkness) it feels like the game is more interested in cheating the optimisation than to hint on the bigger picture (like the chantry and the gallows buildings that you can see almost from all locations in DA2 or the andrastian/dread wolf imagery of inquisition)

So, in conclusion. Not the worst game I played, yet disappointing, even if we pretend it's not an installment of a beloved franchise that people were waiting for 10 years.

Ps. Also making such a game with nerfing all the lore only to nuke all the legacy locations is a choice I won't ever understand. It's like it is not for the fans and it's not for the new people but a secret third thing.

[merrinla]

Not exactly cut content, but rewritten. I tried to restore the lines from the previous version of the prologue, when Rook first meets Harding and Neve.

Meeting with Harding

Varric: You are here. Harding: I secured the area for you. Oh! And my ma sent snacks. Hope you like jam pudding! Varric: Rook, this is Lace Harding. Formerly, the lead scout of the Inquisition. These days, she works with us.

Harding: Nice to meet you, Rook! Varric's told me stories.

Option: It's a pleasure. Rook: It's good to meet you, too. I was starting worry the whole team was just me and Varric. Harding: No, no! There's three of us! Which... admittedly isn't much better. Harding: But... the team is a work in progress.

Option: Wait, what stories? Rook: He told you stories? What were they? On a scale from one to ten, how bad are we talking? Harding: I mean, I wouldn't say, "bad," exactly. More like... implausible? Really, really implausible.

Option: Ready to train? Rook: Harding. Are we training together, then? Harding: I've been looking forward to it! This'll be a change of pace from my usual scouting.

Rook: So... you've got me here. What's the job? Varric: Remember the Breach? Rook: That big hole in the southern sky a few years back? Varric: The Inquisition thought we'd stopped the person responsible for it. We were wrong. Varric: The real culprit is loose. And the Breach? Just a failed first try. Varric: We're going to find and stop him before his second attempt kills... pretty much everybody. Rook: Oh, great. That's... that's great.

Rook: So... our team? It's just the three of us? Varric: I'm still recruiting the others. The kind of people we need aren't easy to find. Varric: By keeping the Aegis* down to small teams of specialists, we stay fast, flexible, and avoid becoming a target.

*Aegis - previous name of Veilguard

Rook: So... the rest of Aegis is... where, exactly? Varric: All over the place. The Inquisition's problem was being a giant organization. Easy to find and infiltrate. Varric: Our enemy was an inside man in the Inquisition. He knows us. Knows how we work.

If the Inquisition was diabanded Varric: That's why it had to be dismantled. But the world doesn't stop needing heroes just because an institution falls.

Varric: I need someone he doesn't know. Someone he can't predict. Rook: And that's me? Varric: That's Aegis. All of us together should be able to act in ways Solas doesn't expect. Varric: We've got a lead on Solas. Our contact is waiting for us in the city of Minrathous.

Meeting with Neve

Varric: Rook, Harding, meet Slick. Varric: She's the best damned detective in Minrathous. She can find anything. Neve: Almost anything. And call me, "Neve," please.

Option: Pleased to meet you. Rook: Good to meet you, Slick. Er, Neve, sorry. Neve: Varric and his nicknames. Why are you, "Rook," and I'm, "Slick," but she's "Harding"? Harding: Because Varric's scared of me. Varric: Yeah, she's got me there. Varric: She's tiny, but terrifying.

Option: What can't you find? Rook: There are limits to what you can find? What are they? Size? Shape? The color yellow? Neve: Got hired to find a stolen dog once. Except the client never had a dog. He just wanted to hire a detective. Rook: So... you draw the line at finding imaginary pets. Neve: And house keys. Standards are important.

Option: You found our target. Rook: Varric said there was a lead. Yours? Neve: That's why I'm here. Neve: Elven man matching the description you gave me was seen here yesterday. Varric: I don't know what Chuckles is doing in the capitol of Tevinter, but you can bet it's not going to end well.

Neve: Witnesses saw Solas enter this building, but not leave. And, well... see for yourself.

If Rook is a Veil Jumper Neve: Rook, you've probably seen more ancient elven relics than most. Rook: You could say that.

If Rook is a mage Neve: So, Rook... what's your tolerance for ancient elven magic? Rook: Right now? Undecided.

Neve: Rook, you had much experience with ancient elven relics? Rook: A little.

Neve: Come on, there's something you should see.

If Rook is a Veil Jumper Rook: An eluvian.

Rook: Is that... an eluvian? Actually working? Where does it go?

Neve: The big guy already went through. Said he was going to reconnoiter the area. Rook: Big guy? Varric: Our last specialist. Come on, let's not keep him waiting.

[thesummerstorms]

So all that is canonically defined about Viago's relationship with Rook is (paraphrasing):

He is the current Talon of their House

He sent them away with Varric when they fucked up and told them to treat it like a contract six months later

Addresses them as idiot but also tells them not to die.

And not just not to die but "Don't get careless out there. Don't fail, and don't get yourself killed, or I will come after you in the Fade myself. " Which does imply a certain level of gruff affection.

In a similar vein, Rook and Viago have similar banter ("Don't die, Viago would kill me", "Don't embarrass House de Riva", "Rook stop getting hit" "I'm not doing it on purpose!") during Murder of Crows.

Again, some level of affection or at least acceptance (not quite the word I'm looking for? I'm looking for something between "acceptance" and "ownership" but the word won't come) with "You are a Crow and a De Riva. You're expected."

"You're a damn fine Crow" (end game Treviso) vs "You always think of something. But not this time." (Saving Minrathous.

Rook is close enough with Viago to joke about his habits with Lucanis and for Viago to sarcastically ask if they really remember the night they became a full fledged Crow.

All of this points to a closer relationship than just Talon and a Crow of their House nd a certain level of approval or investment or affection from Viago depending on how you choose to read it.

That said, while fandom uses the word Protege a lot (including me for Arsinoë de Riva!) I don't think there's any direct text evidence that canonically confirms a student teacher relationship.

It definitely can be inferred from the given evidence, especially with the text of the CC faction screen, but there's room for other interpretations too.

Half sibling is also a popular one, I know. Someone made a post I now can't find about the idea of Rook being Viago's ex arranged marriage wife parted on amicable terms and it was great.

But there are potentially other ways to interpret the Viago & Rook background for sure.

All that said and knowing this can't be confirmed in canon with the facts we have now...

If you do read Viago as a mentor figure to Rook, especially a mentor figure with any kind of important age difference, I wonder how the experience of taking them under his wing, so to speak, affected his positions in Crow politics, if at all.

Like, did mentoring a young Rook de Riva have any impact on him siding generally with Teia in the Reformist faction of the Crows?

Of course depending on the order you imagine his ascension to Talon and meeting with Rook went, it could be reversed. His reformist impulses leading his mentorship of Rook.

But while I don't expect them to ever define it concretely because they need to leave room for player interpretation l, I really do kind of want to know his motivations and how if at all Rook played into or reinforced them.

Teia's motivations are made clearest by Eight Little Talons, but most of Viago's introspection there seems more to do with his interpersonal relationships and ambition towards the Throne than his motivations for Crow internal politics.

[lostinthewiind]

Be Still, My Beating Heart

Varric Tethras - Dragon Age

Genre: Fluff + Smut

Rating: 18+

➤ 10 years after the Inquisition's victory against Corypheus, Varric is older, wiser, and greyer—and you're still as in love with him as you were 10 years ago.

Lately, it could be hard to recognize the passage of time. 10 years ago, a hole was ripped in the veil and threatened to end life as you knew it. Now, a hole has been ripped in the veil, threatening to end life as you know it. Cassandra had once rattled off some quote about those who didn't learn from history being doomed to repeat it.

That certainly fit.

In the grand scheme of things, life hadn't seemed to have changed much in the past 10 years. When he stepped into the room, however, the passage of time hit you like a ton of bricks. His once shorter, red hair was much longer and greyer now. His five-O'clock shadow was now a neatly trimmed, salt and pepper beard. There were two scars slicing through his right eyebrow. But most noticeable of all, his eyes had lost some of their light.

This was not the same Varric you had parted ways with 10 years ago, and yet your heart thrummed steadily against your ribcage just the same when you locked eyes.

"Maker, you're just as beautiful as the day I last laid eyes on you." Varric's voice was rough but quiet in your ear as you trailed kisses up and down his neck, arms draped loosely over his shoulders.

That morning, Solas was on a mission it tear down the veil. Tomorrow, Solas would still be on a mission to tear down the veil. But for that evening—for a measly 8 or so hours—it was just you and Varric, locked away in a shabby room in some inn, catching up on lost time.

You hummed softly before sitting back in Varric's lap, fingertips lightly ghosting over his exposed chest. "We have to stop meeting like this." You slid your hands up his chest and neck slowly until you were cupping his face. "The end of the world does not a romantic time make."

"After this, I'm done. I'm done saving the world," Varric said. He waited for you to lean down and kiss him once before continuing. "Once we deal with Solas, we're turning tail and finding somewhere quiet and peaceful."

You smiled softly. "And who is this 'we'?"

"You and me, doll. Who else?"

Your eyes flickered over to the corner of the room, where Varric's crossbow was resting against the wall. Varric let out a warm laugh.

"I'm smart enough to know when I'm the other woman." You adjusted your hips and felt Varric harden beneath you. An involuntary gasp passed through your lips as Varric sucked in a sharp breath.

"There's no 'other woman'." Varric gripped your hips hard and pressed himself up into you again, eliciting the same reaction from you both. "It's just you. It's always been just you."

You chuckled as you pressed you lips to Varric's, the kiss quickly deepening into something more hungry and needy. "You really expect me to believe there's been no one else in 10 years?" you whispered into his mouth.

Varric's warm tongue licked along your bottom lip before catching it between his teeth. "Doll, you know I like to talk a big game, so what I'm about to say next should prove to you I'm telling the truth." He buried his face in your neck and began sucking on the sensitive flesh there. All the while, his hips bucked upwards to meet yours, desperately seeking friction. "All we've done is make out a little and grind like teenagers and I'm seconds away from cumming. Trust me when I say, there's been no one else."

"Seconds away?" You gave an experimental roll on your hips. "Really?"

Varric let out a strained groan. "Fuck, doll, I'm serious. Don't-" His words were suddenly cut off by a choked grunt, and as his hips thrust upward, he bit down hard on your shoulder. "Fuck," he panted as he kissed the spot where he had left bitemarks in your skin. "Fuck, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

You, on the other hand, were the opposite of sorry. "Don't apologize," you told him. That warmth from your core had spread like wildfire to your entire being. "That was hot."

Varric chuckled under his breath. "I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but there's nothing hot about an old man's premature ... ending."

"Varric." You grabbed his hand and stuffed it down your pants, guiding his fingers over your soaked underwear. "That was really fucking hot."

Varric's eyes widened when he realized you weren't just trying to staunch the bleeding of his ego. "Oh, you weren't kidding. This is because of me?"

You nodded, unable to form words as his fingers prodded at your aching clit. When Varric's sheepish smile turned to a devilish smirk, you knew you were in trouble.

"I'm the luckiest man in all of Thedas." Varric pushed your underwear to the side and gathered some of the wetness on his fingers before pushing inside you. "And tonight I'm going show you just how grateful I am for that."

You threw your head back at the sudden but pleasurable intrusion. Cursing under your breath, you began to gently lift yourself up and down on Varric's thick fingers. The angle was slightly awkward due to still being seated in his lap, but no amount of discomfort could ever possibly overcome the ecstasy you were enveloped in.

"Varric," you moaned.

Oh, how he had longed to hear his name drip from your lips like honey again. There were many times where he had sworn that if he could just spend one last night with you, he could die a happy man. Now that he had you though, dying was the last thing he intended to do—not when he had just gotten you back.

You weren't sure when you had closed your eyes, but when you opened them again, Varric was staring up at you with a level of adoration you had never seen before. Finally, the light in his eyes had returned.

Calloused thumb moving to circle your clit, he smiled wide—a smile of pure, unabashed joy. "I can't believe you're really here. You're here and you're mine again." He pressed harder, the look in his eyes screaming for you to come undone for him. "I missed you every second of every day."

That tight coil inside you that had sat neglected for a decade had finally been brought back to life, and now it was ready to snap. "Varric." You planted your hands on his chest and pushed, trying to prevent the inevitable. "I'm gonna ... stop, please. You're gonna make me-"

"You're so breathtaking like this." Varric held you firmly in place, ignoring your pleas. "I could cum again just from watching you squirm and listening to you moan."

Sure enough, when you looked down, Varric was hard again. His erection was pressing firmly against the wet spot on his pants where he had already ejaculated.

You couldn't help but chuckle. "And there you were trying to make me feel sorry for you, old man."

"This is the effect you have on me," he said. "Now be a good girl and cum on my fingers so I can make love to you properly."

Thumb grinding hard into your clit, Varric's fingers curled tightly inside of you until you were seeing stars. Eyes rolled back, the muscles in your legs gave way as you climaxed and you sunk down all the way to the knuckles of Varric's hand.

After a few seconds, Varric pulled his hand out of your pants and gave your ass a gentle pat. "Up we go." He encouraged you to stand up on your wobbly legs and take your pants off. "Steady there."

As soon as you had disrobed from the waist down and Varric had pulled himself free from his pants, he hurriedly pulled you back down into his lap. Before moving any further, however, he decided to slow things down a bit.

"I want to savour this moment." His cock twitched against you and he pulled you closer for a kiss. "Maker, what I would give to stay in this shitty room with you for the rest of my life."

"Alas, someone has to save the world." You ran your fingers through his hair, tugging ever-so-slightly. "Again."

Varric hummed in agreement before pressing a kiss to the column of your throat. Deftly, his hands worked away at the buttons on your shirt. "I need to feel every inch of you pressed up against me," he explained as he helped you out of the rest of your clothes. Once his shirt was off as well and the two of you were completely nude, he pulled you flush against his chest and kissed you again.

Unable to deny yourself any longer, you began to fidget, slowly but surely lining Varric up with your entrance. Varric didn't stop you, and once his tip was prodding at that warm, wet hole he had dreamt about for a whole decade, he wasn't able to deny himself.

"Be gentle with me," he breathed into your mouth. "Slow and steady."

"Slow and steady," you repeated as you lowered yourself down inch by inch.

Varric's death grip on your thighs was enough for you to tell he was already dangerously close to finishing again. You had no room to judge though—not that you ever would—because you were teetering on that precipice just the same.

Once you had steadied yourself, you began to move. Immediately, Varric pushed you back down, nails digging into the soft flesh of your legs. "Not yet, doll," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Fuck, you feel so good. Too good. Maker spare me, you're too good for me."

"Please," you begged. That fire was raging inside of you once more, yearning to be extinguished. "Just a little. I promise I'll go slow."

"I don't want it to end. Not yet." His hands moved to cup your ass. Maintaining complete control, he guided your every movement. The feeling of his cock dragging along your walls caused you both to moan, one of euphoria and one of desperation.

One single stroke had left you both panting, foreheads pressed together as the two of you worked to maintain your composure just a little longer. Eyes closed, you sighed happily when you felt Varric's lips against yours.

"I promise next time will be less pathetic." He smirked against your lips. "Next time I'll make love to you like you deserve."

You shook your head, unable to picture sex better than this. This was what you were sure everyone craved—what people waited their whole lives for and some never achieved. Every nerve in your body was electrified—every touch lingering and leaving you wanting more.

"No," you told him. With that, you began to ride him properly—fear of finishing too fast be damned. "This is perfect."

"Maker's breath!" he cried out. Realizing that you truly didn't care if it all ended just as fast as it had started, he met your enthusiasm halfway and helped you bounce up and down on him. When he came not long after, he came moaning your name.

You weren't far behind, and as your second orgasm ripped through you, you clung to Varric and pressed into him as hard as you could.

"I missed you too," you returned the sentiment after replaying the entire interaction over again in your head. The mixture of Varric's hand running up and down your back and the sweat cooling sent shivers through your body.

"Well, better or not, there will be a next time. And it won't be after a decade apart." He held you close and pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses to every inch of skin he could reach. "I'm not done with you yet—not now, not ever."

[thegeminisage]

✨🎉IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!🎉✨

for my BIRTHDAY i am posting the first chapter of my rookanis fic (link for excerpts), exclusive to everyone on tunglr dot edu bc i don't like to put fic on ao3 til it's finished but i want people to see it and since it's my BIRTHDAY i get to do what i want 👍

a few things to know:

it is a sequel to the ossuary, but you don't need to read that to read this. i'd be really happy if you did though 👉👈

i don't mind reblogs! that would also make me happy.

this is about 13k

it's a rough draft. when it goes up fr it'll be different don't judge my mistakes 😭

if you need visual aid, here is rook image

warnings are under the cut <3

CONTENT WARNINGS:

flashbacks/references to lucanis and spite's time in the ossuary. nothing graphic but a bit upsetting. includes starvation, torture, lucanis and spite being bonded without their consent, and a suicide attempt by lucanis that spite interrupted.

fake grief re: caterina's fake death, and then whatever the opposite of that is re: varric's real death

non-graphic description of burned bodies

rook is a trans woman and lucanis notices this without having to be told when he sees her adam's apple. however, she kind of allows him to see this on purpose without caring if he will realize she is trans, and she comes out to him herself pretty quickly, but the coming out bit is not in this chapter

without further ado.........

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A white light blinds him. Restraints snap closed around his ankles, wrists, and throat. He can't turn his head. His panicked breath is too loud in his ears.

"Liar," hisses his own furious voice, something inside him squeezing his lungs until he struggles for air. His lips shape the words. "Treacherous filth! I hate you! I want out!"

But he can't get out. How many times has he cut his own skin open on these manacles trying?

A shadow moves above him, briefly blocking out the light. Blinking away stars, Lucanis struggles to make out a face. 

It's Calivan. He's holding something. An eyedropper. "One way or another," he murmurs, his voice muffled and distorted under the sound of Lucanis's breathing, "you're going to stop giving me that fucking look."

Something's not right. It's not right. Lucanis remembers Calivan's head under his heel. This is—

Calivan reaches for Lucanis's face, and gently spreads open his eyelids. An unfamiliar hand shakes Lucanis's shoulder.

"I want out!" Lucanis hears himself snarl. "Let me out, let me out, let me—"

The caw of a nearby crow startles Lucanis to wakefulness, and he gasps as though drowning.

"...out," Spite finishes, uncertain.

They're on a rowboat. Sitting across from them is the young mage Crow from House Cantori in charge of their getaway, and on the opposite side are Rook and Neve, looking as startled as Lucanis feels. Rook's hands are up in the universal sign of surrender. It was she who shook him just now, he realizes, trying to wake him from his nightmare. "Lucanis?" 

"I'm fine," Lucanis tells her automatically, struggling to slow his breathing. He runs a shaking hand back through his filthy hair. "What is it?"

Rook waves her arm, gesturing to their surroundings. "We're here. You're home."

"Home?" Lucanis repeats, frowning—and then he looks up and understands.

It's Treviso: the spires against the moonlit sky, the lights lined up on strings, the fireflies hovering over the canals—and, of course, the crows, perched on ship masts and gondolas. Their rowboat is moored fairly close to the market, wood gently bumping wood with the motion of the waves, and the sounds of people—so, so many people—echo over the water. A snatch of conversation, a shouted bid on a painting, children laughing as they play with the stray cats. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls, freely announcing to everyone what Lucanis would have once given almost anything to know: the time, which is currently nine in the evening. People are getting ready to eat; distantly Lucanis can make out the clink of dinnerware, and a gentle spring breeze greets him with the first aroma of food Lucanis has smelled in an entire year, spiced meats and fried dough. 

And—what is that? Lucanis inhales.

"It's understandable you dozed off," Rook is saying, "you've had a pretty fucking big day—"

"Smoke, pendejo," Spite informs him tersely. "Smells like smoke."

It does, and not the cooking kind. Lucanis squints, searching the skyline—there. He points. "That's the Cantori Diamond," he says, interrupting Rook's chatter. "It's on fire!"

"What?"

Rook, Neve, and the Crow jump to their feet. Lucanis follows, feeling unsteady; he used to be fine balancing in boats, but ironically, his sea legs were lost in the year he spent beneath the waves. "Shit," says Neve, stepping out of the boat. She offers Rook a hand out, too, hesitates, and decides not to offer one to Lucanis.  "We've got to go—now."

"What?" Lucanis asks. "Why?"

Rook's eyes have found the skyline, that thin thread of smoke splitting Satina, the smaller moon, in two. She turns her face to Lucanis, apologetic. "The Cantori Diamond is where we left from," she explains. "Lucanis—it's where we left your family."

Caterina Dellamorte had the foresight to have the Crow from House Cantori bring along a cloak, presumably to conceal Lucanis's identity, but she needn't have worried: after a year in prison, he's certain he's unrecognizable. His worn prison clothes are thin and full of holes, covering very little of the damage done to his body. Though he did his best to keep clean with nothing but the pump in his cell, the wild overgrown tangle of his hair and beard have matted in places with dried blood and filth. Lucanis dons the cloak anyway so he doesn't scare passerby; if he saw himself coming down a dark alley, he'd turn around and walk in the other direction.

Unfortunately, Caterina did not send boots. On his best day Lucanis wouldn't want to walk through this city in bare feet—and this is not his best day.

"Careful," says Spite sharply, as Lucanis makes to turn down a side street, at the same time that Rook stops him by the elbow and goes, "Not that way."

"What?" Lucanis asks, jerking away from her touch. Maybe it's been a year since he was here last, but he still knows Treviso better than a pair of Vints. His family needs him. "We can get roof access from here, it's the quickest way!" And there will be less broken glass, hopefully.

"Only if you feel like going through the Antaam," Neve replies. 

"Antaam?" Lucanis repeats, a little too loudly, and a few people at a nearby fruit stand nervously turn their heads. He lowers his voice and hisses, "There are Antaam in Treviso?"

"In much of Antiva," the Crow says, her expression pained. "You've been gone a long time, Master Dellamorte. Let me lead them away—you should get to the Cantori Diamond as quickly as possible." And, cleverly, she slips down the side street before he can object; had he told her to stop, she would have had to obey.

There's a shout of Qunlat from around the corner, and then the clatter of weapons and boots racing over cobblestone. The Antaam pass by in a flurry of movement just visible at the mouth of the alleyway. Neve takes a cautious look around the corner and reports, "Clear."

Around the corner, behind a loose place in someone's fence, and up a trellis, and they arrive safely on a nearby rooftop. From here it's easy to spot the red banners of the Antaam rolled out over the edges of buildings and ropes strung over the streets, the groups of heavily armed Qunari milling around the markets. "Smells like sweat and metal," Spite observes, as Lucanis leads Rook and Neve through the city, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. It feels good to stretch his legs; it would feel better if he were not racing as fast as he could to find out if his family's still alive. "They want. To hurt."

That sounds right to Lucanis. The Antaam, the Qunari army, have been troubling Tevinter for a few years now. The Qunari, who live in the northernmost lands of Thedas, have been warring with Tevinter for as long as anyone can remember, each trying to conquer the other over...various cultural differences. But the Antaam decided enough was enough, and more extreme methods were required to end the conflict for good. They went rogue and began carving their way through Tevinter in defiance of the orders of their government, starting with the city of Ventus and working their way south. The last Lucanis heard of it before being captured was that they were attacking Vyrantium, but he never learned how the conflict ended. 

Because Antiva shared a border with Tevinter, Caterina and the other Talons have been worried about the Antaam showing up on their doorstep for some time. But their countries are separated by the Hundred Pillars mountain range, and though Antiva has no standing army, it's got trade contracts and allies all over Thedas—not to mention the business it's made of rearing assassins. Lucanis always thought it was unlikely they'd ever have to deal with the Antaam personally.

It seems like he was wrong.

Now that he's running over it with a crow's eye view, he can see the ways the occupation has changed Treviso. The markets are open, but no one is congregating in large groups. Armored Qunari stand on street corners with spears. The canals, normally packed with gondolas at this time of night, are all but empty. More people are staying home after dark.

The smoke above the Cantori Diamond has begun to dissipate by the time they get close. Whatever happened has already started and ended, without Lucanis there to do anything about it. Lucanis hesitates before the final ladder leading to the rooftop entrance, looking up at the high arched windows, the large statues of crows with open wings, and says without meaning to, "Don't tell them."

Rook and Never come to a stop behind him. "What?" asks Neve.

"If they're alive," Lucanis says, eyes still on the Diamond, "don't tell them about Spite."

Inside his head, Spite growls. "You. Would keep. Me secret? Lock me in! Hide me! Bury me—!"

"Spite?" Rook repeats, an unknowing interruption. "You mean...the demon?"

"Told them my name!" Spite roars, furious. "Like Calivan! Fool!"

Lucanis shakes his head sharply. He can't even tell Spite to be quiet without reminding everyone else that he's there. "Please," he says instead.

He feels more than sees Rook exchange a glance with Neve. Then she says, "All right," and they go up the ladder.

Closer to the rafters, the smell of burnt wood and flesh is inescapable. "Like burned feet," says Spite, agitated. "Hot fire pokers. Damp files! Made. Into. Ashes." Lucanis gets the distinct impression that with so many sounds and smells, Spite is getting a little overwhelmed. "They're all dead," he hisses. "They're all dead!"

Please, Lucanis thinks, as he takes the last flights of stairs two at a time. Please.

They're not all dead. As he, Rook, and Neve pick their way past burned corpses and overturned furniture, Lucanis spies the shapes of their backs, instantly recognizable even after a year away. On the left, Andarateia Cantori, Seventh Talon and the only person in the world closer to Caterina than her own grandchildren. On the right, Viago de Riva, Fifth Talon and Teia's lover. And in the middle—  

He is alive. Illario is alive.

Elven ears catch the creak of the floorboard first. Teia whirls, dagger in hand—and then her dark eyes widen. "Maker," she breathes, stunned. 

Viago turns in nearly perfect sync with her, his face going bloodless. "Lucanis?"

In answer, Lucanis throws back his hood. It takes him a long moment to find his voice. "What happened here?"

"A message." Now it's Illario who speaks—the real Illario, not a dream or a memory or blood magic—though his tone is as somber as Lucanis has ever heard it. "From Zara Renata."

Finally, he turns, and steps into the light. 

What was Lucanis so worried about? Illario hasn't changed at all. He looks healthy, well-fed and well-rested, clean and clean-shaven. There's not one wrinkle in his clothing, not a single hair out of place. The only difference is that he has never looked at Lucanis this way before: like he is seeing a ghost. "I can't believe it," he whispers. His eyes are bright, voice choked with emotion. "You're home."

Lucanis isn't sure which of them starts moving first. He knows how he looks—Maker, he knows how he must smell—but his fussy, fastidious cousin yanks him into an embrace without hesitation. His arms press on old hurts and new, but Lucanis doesn't care. After the year he's had, there is no one else in the world Lucanis would let touch him without reserve this way. It is only right that he should see Illario first. 

After Illario lets go, he presses his forehead to Lucanis's, just for a moment, shaking him hard by the back of his neck. He pulls back and ducks his head a little, searching Lucanis's face. Lucanis, throat too tight to speak, nods.

"Family," Spite sighs, like some new understanding has clicked into place.

And at that, Lucanis must pull away so he can master himself. "Where—" He clears his throat. "Where is Caterina?"

Silence falls. Lucanis looks back and forth between Illario and Teia, but neither of them seem able to speak. Dread rises in his chest like seawater.

Lucanis asks again, "Where is Caterina?"

It's Viago who falls on the knife. "She's dead," he says curtly, quick and clean as a killing cut. "During the fire, a support beam fell, and..."

Lucanis doesn't hear the rest. His pulse is rushing in his ears. Unbidden he remembers Calivan's final words, uttered only a few hours ago: Zara will never stop hunting you...your precious family. Walk out if you like, Lucanis. You'll never be free. Lucanis is used to ignoring the lashing out of dying targets, but now the words have the ring of omens.

Caterina Dellamorte, dead.

"Where?" says Lucanis, cutting through Viago's next sentence.

The corner of Viago mouth twitches in a frown, but he allows the interruption without complaint. "You should know that the body is in poor condition. It was not a good death—"

"Where?" Lucanis presses, so Viago leads him back downstairs to a section of the vine-covered terrace outside where several bodies lay covered with sheets. Lucanis hears the others follow, even Rook and Neve, but he doesn't care enough to stop them. He kneels beside the body Viago stops at, steels himself, and pulls down the sheet.

"I get one of you back," says Illario, "only to lose the other."

Their grandmother's face has been burned almost to be unrecognizable, blisters and char hiding any hope of identifying her by face. But she is wearing all of her rings, her fine clothes. Her skin is even still warm. He takes the body's left arm in hands that he forces not to shake and pushes up the sleeve. Here is the correct birthmark on the back of her elbow. There are the faint thin white lines of old knife cuts on her forearm. 

"We've already started burning them," Teia says as he continues his examination. Cremations are always a quick business in Thedas; outside of a few outliers, most people don't like to leave a body laying any longer than they have to, lest it tempt demons looking for a host. "But for this, we wanted to wait for you. Vi says it's impossible, but it's Caterina. I have to be sure."

Lucanis checks the body's right arm, searching for the puckered scar tissue that healed wrong around a rapier wound, courtesy of the Orlesian baron Caterina killed with nothing but a thimble. He finds it.

"Sure?" Neve echoes.

"That the Venatori didn't use blood magic to alter the corpse, as they did for the one they passed off as Lucanis," Viago explains. "It happened so quickly I doubt that's the case, but only Lucanis can be certain."

The correct mole on the left knee. The tiny marks on her right calf where she received stitches after a conflict with House Velardo. That wound is the reason she began using a cane.

"You can sense blood magic?" Neve asks. She sounds impressed.

"It makes the backs of my eyes hurt." Lucanis lets the body go, pulling the sheet up again, and sits back on his heels. "I don't feel anything," he says, addressing the group in general, but staring at the corpse. "There's no scars or birthmarks missing, and there's none there that don't belong. This is—this is Caterina."

It was Caterina's training that helped Lucanis survive the Ossuary. It was Caterina who found him and sent people to his rescue. All her hard work, all the time she spent never giving up on him, and Lucanis missed her by less than an hour. She might have even still been alive when his boat reached Treviso.

Spite, who has been uncharacteristically silent during Lucanis's examination, makes a low sound of pain Lucanis has never heard from him before. "Family," he says again, but this time, it's mournful. He sounds as devastated as Lucanis feels. 

Lucanis wishes they had a moment to talk. Spite hasn't sounded quite like himself since they left the Ossuary, and strange as it is, Lucanis worries. What's wrong with him?

"I'm so sorry," Rook says, and lays a hand on Lucanis's shoulder.

Lucanis is on his feet in an instant, all the better to escape her touch. "Don't be," he says briskly. "We had a contract, no? That's good. I need to work."

Rook starts, "Good is not exactly—"

"You just got back, and already you want to leave again?" Illario asks. "You should take some time—"

"I don't need time! I need a target!" His cousin really hasn't changed. Lucanis spent a year and a day rotting in that pit, their grandmother has been assassinated, and still Illario will take nothing seriously. "Someone is making a move against our family. Zara is still out there somewhere. And Caterina gave me a contract," Lucanis says. "I'm not breaking the last deal she ever made!"

"Kill," Spite agrees. He has made an appearance at last, manifesting an image of Lucanis's own self behind Illario, complete with his overgrown beard, his filthy clothes, and borrowed cloak. "Find Zara. Make. Her. Pay!"

All the more reason to go, Lucanis realizes, jerking his eyes away so no one will wonder why he's staring at empty space. How long could he keep a secret like Spite under the watchful eyes of Talons? Under the eyes of Illario, who knows him best? 

Illario gazes at him across an insurmountable five feet of space, his mouth a flat unhappy line. Lucanis has always hated fighting with him, but he's been away so long that even this feels achingly nostalgic, so much better than not seeing him at all. 

"I owe them," Lucanis says finally. He forces himself to meet Illario's eye; it would be impossible, at this moment, to meet Rook or Neve's. "They helped me escape. If you had any idea what it was like down there..."

He doesn't have to say more. Because Illario does know Lucanis best, he knows it's pointless to argue once Lucanis has made up his mind. The only person who could ever make him change it lies dead at their feet. "And when the job is done?" Illario asks.

Lucanis hears the unspoken end of that question: which of them will succeed Caterina as First Talon? Her wishes and the wishes of her grandsons could not be more different: Illario has always wanted the job, while Lucanis can think of little he wants less. But Lucanis is older, if only by a month, and he has always been Caterina's favorite. He was still trying to think of a way to convince her to make a different choice when he was captured. 

But he didn't get the chance, and now—  

As much as he doesn't want the job, as dangerous as it would be for him to take it when he's got a demon inside him, he knows what Caterina would want, and more importantly, so does everyone else. Could he really disregard her final wishes so easily?

But Lucanis has finally reached his limit. "When the job is done, I'll come home," Lucanis says, firmly shutting the door on that question. He can't face it now, not yet; the sand from the sea floor is still stuck under his nails. 

Illario's not happy with it, but if he has anything else to say, he wisely keeps it to himself. It's a discussion for family. 

Their group breaks. Teia and Viago go back to overseeing the damage control of the Cantori Diamond, Illario promises to return shortly and ducks down a flight of stairs, and Rook and Neve show Lucanis how they got to Treviso: a tall thin mirror that's pointed at the top, carefully concealed on an unused corner of the terrace with vines. There's no reflection; instead, the mirror glows, and like peering through a fogged-up window Lucanis can make out a blurry landscape on the other side.

"What. Is. That?" Spite asks. The apparation of him reaches out as if to touch it, but draws back before he makes contact and vanishes. "It's strange! Smells like magic."

"It's called an eluvian," Neve says, almost as though she heard the question. She gives it an approving look. "Ancient elven stuff. You step through one like it's a door, and just like that, you pop out of another one hundred of miles away. It's convenient and stylish." 

It makes Lucanis's eyes itch. "Where does this one go?" he asks, wary. 

"Somewhere safe," Rook replies. She makes wry eye contact with him. "It's complicated."

That's exactly what Lucanis told her and Neve back in the Ossuary to explain away his situation with Spite. They haven't prodded about it so far, but Rook clearly hasn't forgotten. 

Her eyes drift over his shoulder. Lucanis knows without looking that Illario is back. "We'll go on ahead," she decides. "See you in a minute?"

Lucanis gives her a short nod. She and Neve step through the mirror without the slightest hesitation, the surface rippling behind them like water. 

"I kept all your things," Illario says from behind him. "Your clothes, your knives. I couldn't bear to throw anything out. I even fed your stupid snake."

Lucanis, still watching the last of the ripples that followed Rook's departure fade away, feels his mouth curl into a reluctant smile. "No you didn't." His cousin would sooner swallow his own tongue than touch a dead mouse. 

"No, I didn't," Illario agrees. "I paid someone else to do it. Same difference, right?"

Lucanis finally turns. Illario is carrying Lucanis's well-worn travel bag. It's made from genuine, full-grain leather, carefully waxed on the inside to remain waterproof and full of hidden pockets in the lining. It's just big enough to hold two outfits and an assortment of small weapons, and strong enough to be carried over the shoulder if those weapons are a little heavy; Lucanis's best boots are even clipped to the side. Caterina is not—was not—one for displays of affection, but she had a matching pair of these commissioned for Lucanis and Illario when they turned eighteen. Lucanis never leaves Treviso without his; he had it on him the night he was captured. He never expected to see it again. "Illario, how...?"

"The Crows who recovered your so-called body also brought back your effects," says Illario, and there is a carefully hidden, trembling rage around the word body that would be inaudible to all but Lucanis's ears. "It still has everything you put in it a year ago. When I learned you were alive, I went back home to fetch it. By the time I returned, Caterina..." He trails off. 

Lucanis reaches out, hesitates, and then puts his hand on Illario's shoulder anyway. "Don't blame yourself, cousin," he implores. "I don't blame you."

Illario closes his eyes. He lays his hand over Lucanis's and grips it like a lifeline. "Please don't say that."

"This is Zara's doing," Lucanis continues firmly, "not yours. And she's going to pay."

Illario opens his eyes again. "When you find her, Lucanis, I want—I need—to be there."

Lucanis cannot picture them in the same room; his blood turns to ice when he tries. Illario would try to charm Zara, he's certain, but Illario doesn't know what she's capable of. He has not faced her in combat. He has not had his eyes and ears deceived by her. He has not laid under her on that table.

Never. It's never going to happen. 

Aloud, Lucanis says, "Of course."

"Liar!" Spite growls at once. "Why. Do you. Always. Lie?"

Lucanis wishes he could explain. How can he do anything else? Zara has already taken so much from him, even his grandmother. Lucanis will be damned if he lets her take Illario too.

Illario drops his hand. "I guess I'll see you around, cousin," he says. He gives Lucanis back his bag. "Good luck on the contract. Try not to get killed again."

Lucanis slips the bag over his shoulder. It's good to have the weight back. "Thanks," he says—for the bag, for everything.

Then he turns and steps into the eluvian, leaving Treviso—and Illario—behind.

-----------------------

They call it the Lighthouse.

Stepping through the eluvian is a strange experience. It's not that Lucanis has never been teleported before—in his line of work, it happens—but even then, he always stays on the one side of the Veil. Once he steps through the eluvian, however, he experiences a near-unbearable itch behind his eyes, and—

"The Fade," Spite says, his voice as clear as Lucanis has ever heard it. "The Fade! A piece, a peace—!"

"The Fade?" Lucanis repeats, forgetting himself.

Rook stands nearby, on a wide intricately built mosaic pathway standing over...some dark chasm Lucanis can't make out the bottom of, though he thinks there must be water, given the patterns of light cast on the darkened ceiling. Lucanis recognizes both the mosaic work on the path and the support columns leading to another door at the end of the room as very, very ancient elven architecture; he's been staring at near-identical designs for a year. "Can you feel it?" Rook asks, surprised and curious. "You're not a mage."

"Spite," Lucanis explains shortly.

Rook's expression closes. "Ah."

Spite is oblivious to any awkwardness he might be causing. "Home. But not," he is saying. "Close. Moldable. Shapeable. Bright and burning. A shelter, but a cage. Let me out!"

If Spite thinks they're going to start soaring around the Fade when they've got a job to do, he is deeply mistaken. "Is it safe?" Lucanis asks. "Stories of mortals getting pulled into the Fade rarely end with them coming back in one piece."

"It's sort of...sectioned off from the rest," Rook explains, and begins to walk. Lucanis follows. "Think of it like a pocket of the real Fade, like—"

Lucanis misses the next part because of Spite. "A pocket?" he repeats, outraged. "Too small. Let us out! Lucanis, kill her! Make her! Let me out!"

Fortunately, Rook cannot hear him, so she keeps going. "—and our targets are probably hunting us, but they can't touch us here. This is actually the safest place."

Right—the job. "Who are the targets?" Lucanis asks, as Rook pushes open a heavy wooden door. She takes a set of stairs that eventually split, curved around the edge of some room Lucanis can't yet see, going right at the top. "I didn't get the details yet."

"We have a lot to discuss," Rook agrees, "but first..."

The curved staircases have led into a round room with a stone floor. Bookshelves line the wall touching the stairs, but some bookshelves also float, rotating serenely around the room's edge. In the center of the room is a squat round table, filled with clutter and surrounded by worn, mismatched pieces of furniture. More stairs lead to a higher level of the room, a pathway around its edge, where Lucanis can see quite a few doorways and balconies. On their level, there are a few wide doors that are perfectly circular, leading into darkened hallways. 

The room is lit with a white light: floating above it, at the center of the bookcases' orbit, is the same kind of artifact Lucanis and Spite destroyed in the Ossuary only a few hours ago.

Rook turns into one of the dark hallways, and Lucanis jerks himself out of his reverie to follow. 

"...I thought I'd let you get cleaned up," Rook finishes. She opens the door at the end of this hallway and steps aside far enough to allow him to enter the room without quite turning his back on her. 

"Smells like soap," says Spite, surprised. "Heat. Humidity." He's right. The room looks like a bathouse, nearly identical to some of the invitation-only ones in the wealthier parts of Tevinter. The difference is that this is elven architecture the Vints never got to paper over with their gaudy snake facades and bleed slaves dry in. The mosaic work is still visible, and in better shape than it was in the Ossuary, on the small set of stairs that leads down into the bath. The bath itself, a large square recess in the floor, is filled with steaming water that fogs the windows, and surrounded with arched elven columns, though they're overgrown with vines. At the base of each column is a wash basin and small shelf, and each shelf is packed with thick towels and colorful glass bottles of soaps and oils. 

"...use whatever you like," Rook is saying, "because we brought some stuff ourselves but the rest was just here, like the place keeps making more of it, and do you know, the water just stays hot all the time—"

"Thank you," Lucanis interrupts. He's tempted to pinch himself to see if this is real; in the Fade, would it still hurt?

"Yes," says Spite. "Idiot."

"Right," says Rook. "Well. I'll leave the...two of you...to it. You can catch up with us when you're finished; we'll be out the front door and up the stairs." And she vanishes back through the doorway before the moment can get more awkward, a circle of stone rolling it shut behind her.

The instant she's gone, Lucanis sets his bag down on the colorfully tiled floor and heads for the nearest wash basin, stripping off his prison clothes for, what he realizes giddily, is the very last time. He scans the bottles of soap for only a moment before reaching out to take one of the purple ones at random. He doesn't care what it is; after a year of nothing to wash himself with but cold water on a sandy floor, he's happy with anything. He pops out the cork.

"Lavender oil," says Spite at once. "Rook's."

All right, maybe not anything. Lucanis flushes and puts it back, taking the one next to it instead. 

"Eucalyptus," says Spite, even though nobody asked.

That will do. Lucanis grabs the first brush he sees—and what a luxury, to not have to use his hands!—and starts scrubbing off a year's worth of grime with efficiency born of a year's worth of practice. Teeth, face, arms, chest, legs, groin: by the time he's started, he'll be halfway finished. In the Ossuary there was often a constant guard outside his cell, which meant no privacy at any time, for anything, and that included his attempts to keep relatively clean. Some Venatori were polite enough, or cowed enough, to keep their heads turned. Most were not, and they found glee in remarking upon everything from the dirt on his feet to the prominence of his ribs to the size of his cock. The only way to stop their taunting was to pin them with his most dead-eyed stare, the one Illario says is so intimidating. Even then, give them long enough to get bored, and they'd start in again. Lucanis perfected the art of a two-minute wash by necessity. 

"Let me out," says Spite suddenly. "Lucanis! Let me leave!"

"We haven't gotten clean yet," Lucanis reminds him. He's almost finished at the basin, only interested in getting off enough filth not to ruin the bath water. "Look at the state of us!" It occurs to him that, having lived in the Fade as a formless spirit until the Ossuary, Spite has never had a bath. Maybe he'll love it.

He does not love it. "Burning!" he howls, as Lucanis steps into the water. 

"Isn't it?" Lucanis sighs. The water is just this side of too hot, and it hurts a little where it makes contact with the countless small wounds Lucanis sustained during the course of their escape and before, but it feels wonderful against his aching muscles. Everyone likes a hot bath—everyone except Spite, apparently—but after a year of torture at the bottom of the sea, his body feeling good is an entirely novel experience. 

Lucanis spies a small bucket on a hook and uses it to dump the hot water directly over his head, then pours a generous amount of the eucalyptus soap on top of it. His hair and beard are both matted, but he gets them clean enough; the beard's not staying, anyway. When he's done, he slips under the water entirely, ignoring Spite's protests, and leans back until he lies flat on the bottom of the bath.

Lucanis opens his eyes underwater, ignoring the sting of the soap to stare at the now-blurred ceiling above him. He exhales slowly, watching the bubbles float to the surface. Everything is warm and clean and quiet and still. This may be the first moment of true peace he has known in a year.

"Drowning," Spite tells him, with genuine urgency. "Drowning! Lucanis, we—"

Unfortunately, he tries to say it with Lucanis's mouth, which leads to Lucanis actually inhaling water after all. Lucanis bursts up through the surface, coughing, and shakes the hair out of his eyes. "We're not drowning!" he complains. "Would I kill us?"

"Yes," says Spite, and tries to tug Lucanis's legs to get him out of the tub.

Lucanis allows it, mostly because if he had to do it on his own he might never leave. Spite walks his naked self right out of the bath, water running in rivulets down his newly-cleaned, heat-pinked skin, and dripping all over the floor. He heads for the exit. 

"We're not done yet," Lucanis protests. He stops them by one of the wash basins with a mirror over it.

Lucanis can look down at his body anytime he chooses to, and he's been watching it waste away for a year. His muscles have become harder and more wiry, his stomach has curved inward, and his skin has been broken open and scarred more times than he can count. But his face was something else that was scarce inside the Ossuary's walls. Once he caught sight of it on a polished shield; other times, he'd see it on the edge of a blade or helmet, or as a blurry outline laid overtop the warding that kept the seawater out. And every time Lucanis caught his reflection, the image of Spite changed. Spite never looks exactly the way Lucanis does; he looks the way Lucanis sees himself. It's been months since the last time that happened. Lucanis isn't sure what to expect; he knows only that Spite is about to change again. He braces himself, and wipes away the fog.

It's pretty bad. The first thing Lucanis notices is the dark bruising under his eyes, how they're sunk so deeply into his face he can see the outline of his own eye sockets. His hollowed-out cheeks aren't much better, but at least the beard covers them a little, though it's wild and unkempt. His throat looks like someone has taken a machete to it; Lucanis broke it open against the restraints so many times it's started to scar, like his wrists and ankles. It's a wonder his cousin recognized him at all.

Lucky Illario brought his bag. If it's all as untouched as he said, Lucanis's comb and shaving kit should still be in there. Lucanis goes to fetch it and finds what he's looking for.

Spite tolerates the comb yanked through Lucanis's hair with only minor complaining, but when Lucanis flips out his shaving razor, he loses his mind. "Stop!" he commands, and the image of him—wet and naked, like Lucanis—appears and yank's Lucanis's his arm away from his face.

"Careful with that!" Lucanis scolds.

"You be careful," Spite seethes. Lucanis feels a familiar spasm in the muscles near his elbow; just in time, he squeezes his fist tightly enough that Spite's attempt to chuck the razor away fails. 

"I'm just shaving, Spite—"

"Liar!" Spite shrieks, using Lucanis's mouth again to force him to stop speaking. He manages to dig deep and find the very depths of Lucanis's lung capacity. "Deceiver! Weakling!"

Lucanis is so busy trying to wrest back control of his vocal cords that he misses the telltale tugging of the tendons in his left arm. The razor gets thrown after all, hurled into a nearby shelf. Precariously stacked thousand-year-old bottles wobble and then fall, shattering into colorful pieces against the beautiful floor. 

"He's killing us!" Spite shouts. "Come get him!"

Blood of the Maker. Lucanis is still trying to figure out how he's going to pick his way over to where his razor lies without cutting his feet open when he hears the stone door slide open a single inch.

"Lucanis?" calls Rook's voice through the gap. "Is everything all right in there?"

"Yes!" says Lucanis. 

"No!" wails Spite, still at top volume. "Weak-willed! Pathetic! A prison! Of bone! And flesh! And blood! And fear! And—!"

Lucanis lets Spite occupy himself with the yelling until he can slap a towel around his waist. He throws a second towel over the glass and scoops up his razor, mostly to distract Spite. While Spite tries to throw it again, Lucanis takes advantage of his moment of split attention to call, "Everything's fine!" To Spite he adds in a hiss, "Be quiet!"

"You lying snake," Spite shouts, as loudly as he can. He gives up on the razor, knocking the entire shelf over with his right wing to make more noise.

"Are you sure?" Rook calls. "I can come in if you...need anything...?"

Clothes. He's got to find his clothes. "We just broke a bottle," Lucanis says, hurrying past the remnants of the overturned shelf and a dozen broken bottles to his bag. "Everything is good. We don't need anything." He pauses. "Perhaps a broom."

Rook hesitates. "I'll see what I can do," she says, and mercifully, Lucanis hears the door close. 

He tosses the razor—gently—to the floor a few feet away from them. "There!" he says. 

Once he gets his way, Spite settles and stops shouting. "Weak!" he spits triumphantly, inside Lucanis's head. He has won.

"Mierda." Lucanis runs a hand back through his wet hair. Think, he reminds himself. Stop and think. Spite may thrive on making life difficult for the people around him, but he stopped making life difficult for Lucanis after the understanding they came to in the Ossuary. They may have trouble understanding one another, but they're still allies. They share a common goal.

Right?

Their common goal was escape. The Ossuary is flooded at the bottom of the sea now, so that goal has been realized. What's left after that? Spite betrayed Lucanis once, the first time they tried to escape together, but the suffering they endured after at Calivan's and Zara's hands taught him the value of working together—didn't it? He'd never betray Lucanis again—would he? What if he got angry? He keeps demanding to be let out. Where does he want out of? Could he want out of Lucanis's body? Maybe this taste of the Fade has made him homesick. 

Lucanis is not in the habit of lying to himself. And, strange as it is, the absolute truth is that part of him would miss Spite. Though it's not easy being a possessed man, he's grown used to the angry voice in his head, the wings on his back, the demonic strength coursing through his blood. But Spite doesn't belong here, especially if he doesn't want to be here. Lucanis got to come home, however briefly; after everything they've been through together, how could he deny Spite the opportunity to do the same thing? It would make him no better than their jailers. Besides, it would be safer for everyone if Lucanis was no longer possessed; there's little more important to an assassin than control, and Spite by his very nature defies anything of the sort. But is splitting them up even possible?

If that is Spite's problem, it still doesn't explain his sudden aversion to personal hygiene. Lucanis pulls the towel off to finish drying and then returns to the mirror, squinting at their reflection. "You have to let me shave," he says. He has been dreaming about getting this scruff off his face for so long. "We look like...like...like someone who has been in prison for a year. We'll scare people."

"We. Look. Like a corpse," Spite says.

Harsh, but he's not wrong. Lucanis runs his hand over his beard, trying to decide if the hollows of his cheeks being visible would be worse than looking poorly groomed. In so doing, the pad of his middle finger brushes over a shallow line hidden by his facial hair, just below the center of his lower lip. It's not as though he's never felt it before, but—Lucanis leans forward, narrowing his eyes at his reflection. There's another on the left side of his upper lip. A third on the right side of his lower lip. A few others, fainter, mostly hidden beneath his facial hair. 

A sudden suspicion grabs him, and the steamy air of the bathroom turns cold against his bare skin.

Lucanis lifts both hands to his face. He tries to imagine he is wearing gauntlets. He splays his fingers over his mouth as if to prise open his own jaws.

They land perfectly along his scars. Lucanis jerks his hands away as if burned.

That was the last time he was ever alone.

"Let me out," says Spite again. 

Lucanis can almost feel him pulsing, a phantom beating at the bottom of his throat. "Not now," he dismisses, badly shaken. Spite is right. Lucanis is never going to be able to shave again; what was done to the two of them will almost literally be written right across his face. Was that what he was so upset about? Lucanis attempts to compromise. "Will you at least let me trim it?"

"Trim?" Spite repeats warily. 

"I want to make it shorter. With scissors."

It takes longer than Lucanis would like to both explain to Spite the concept of scissors and actually get around to using them. He's realized that it must be getting late, and they've all had a long day. If Rook or Neve is waiting to brief him or show him where he'll be sleeping, it's poor manners to keep them up long. He pulls out the first set of clothes he lays his hands on. 

What a novelty, clothing! For a year Lucanis and Spite wore only a set of over-loose trousers that raggedly cut off two inches above his ankle and a sleeveless shirt with more holes than material that both felt like they were hewn from a burlap sack; they weren't given socks, boots, or even smallclothes. Now Lucanis wraps them up in layer upon layer: smalls and undershirt, soft, thick trousers, a gray overshirt with a high collar, and a dark button-down argyle vest. It takes a heroic amount of self-control not to add a jacket and gloves. Finally—at last—he pulls on a pair of socks and his fine leather boots. No more bare feet. 

Once his beard is trimmed (his hair he will have to consider later), his bag is packed, and his clothes are on, Lucanis spares a final moment to take another long hard look at the mirror, memorizing his own appearance. It's not as dramatic of an improvement as he'd like, but it is much better. He hopes, the next time he sees Spite, that Spite will look better too.

Lucanis picks up his bag and, as an afterthought, grabs his prison clothes. There's nothing he can do about the overturned shelf at the moment, but there must be a fire somewhere around here he can throw these rags into—

Something plinks to the floor. Lucanis pauses, crouching to get a better look.

It's the seashell. 

Lucanis picks it up in wonder. The Ossuary may be lost beneath the waves, but it appears Lucanis has brought a piece of it with him to the surface. This is the seashell he found on the ocean floor near the pump in his cell. It's the seashell he carefully sharpened for days under the influence of that desperation demon, willing to do anything—anything—that would get him out of that prison. It's the seashell he later held not an inch from his own carotid artery, with only Spite standing between him and his self-made demise. 

Suddenly Spite's outburst makes sense. The shaving razor against Lucanis's throat—he thought—  

Lucanis lets out a huge breath. Spite isn't going to betray him. He's just doing what he did in the Ossuary: trying to keep Lucanis alive. Lucanis can handle Spite, and keep him pointed in the direction of their enemies, if they can only learn how to communicate better. Not all is lost, not yet. 

And in the meantime, if Spite wants out of this body so badly—

Well. Lucanis will have to see what he can do.

Lucanis rises to his feet, slips the seashell in his pocket, and makes for the door.

-----------------------

Lucanis emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, and, after a quick look around, locates what he thinks is the front door, opposite of the stairs they came up earlier. This leads to a small entryway, but just as Lucanis opens the second door, at the end— 

—he runs directly into Rook, carrying a broom. "Maker," she yelps, and without even really thinking about it Lucanis catches her by the elbows, steadying her enough so that she doesn't fall. He doesn't realize what he's doing until the pads of his fingers make contact with her smooth skin; the instant she's out of danger, he withdraws the touch. "Thanks," Rook gasps, clutching her chest, then does a double-take and adds, "You look...better."

What she means is that he no longer looks like a crazed and possessed madman who spent a year in a dark hole biting off Venatori fingers. "Thanks," Lucanis says in return.

She looks different too. While he was bathing she changed out of her fighting clothes and into something resembling typical Minrathous leisure wear: a dark outfit comprising a sleeveless top, baggy trousers, and sandals. Her hair is tied back loosely. Without sleeves, Lucanis can see she packs more muscle than he realized, especially around her shoulders; there are also lightning-flower scars winding up from her palms to her elbows. And without the high collar she was wearing earlier, it's easier to see the—his mind briefly gropes for the word in Trade before he remembers there isn't one—bump in her throat.

He's gotten sloppy. It's the kind of small detail he's been trained his whole life to notice, and he missed it. It's not as though he's never met anyone like her, either. Lots of women don't realize they're women until later in life. It happens. It's not a big deal to anyone except Vints—who, naturally, have a problem with it because everything they think and do in Tevinter is backwards. 

"—careful around here, or you'll go tumbling right off the edge," Rook is saying. She pushes open the door, leading him out the way she came in. "Andraste's ass, what a shit first day on the job that'd be for you. Last day, too, actually."

"The edge?" Lucanis repeats politely, trying to hide the fact that he got distracted. It's poor manners to get caught staring at a woman's throat.

In answer, Rook steps aside. 

Cobblestone stretches out in front of them, leading to a double staircase parted around a statue of one of the elven gods—Fen'Harel, if Lucanis is not mistaken, but elven history was never one of his points of study. Beyond that is an outbuilding with a large, arched roof. More like it can be found to the right and left, each ancient, each with their own unique look: one has a green sea glass roof, one is tall and skinny with some floors open to the air, one has a golden device atop it. Pink blossom trees grow out of the crevices between bricks, roots crawling along the wall to gain purchase. 

And everything is floating. The stairs leading to each building hang over an infinite void, and the drapery around the lighthouse floats as if weightless; ivy tumbling down the sides of ruins swings gently in a breeze Lucanis cannot feel. Nothing is touching the ground because there is no ground. There is only an endless sky in all directions. And what a sky it is—speckled with the bright pinpricks of stars of constellations Lucanis doesn't know and an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of blues and greens and purples. 

"Beautiful," Spite sighs, from inside his head. Lucanis feels his warm satisfaction roll out from his chest and spread into his limbs. It's a new sensation: Lucanis isn't sure he's ever felt Spite experience contentment before. Perhaps he's been homesick for a sky like this.

"It's something, isn't it?" says Rook, almost as if she heard. "I once heard a sailor in Ostwick say that this is what the sky looks like over the Sunless Lands. Thought the fucker was shitting me! But look at this."

"Look at this," Lucanis echoes, eyes on the sky.

A moment passes where they admire the view together—but then it's over, and Rook turns to Lucanis with a serious expression, making eye contact again and not breaking it. "Listen," she says, "whatever goes on between you and your family, that's family business. But I can't lie to my team. They need to know who they're fighting beside. So I told them about Spite."

Spite growls. "Go ahead. Tell everyone. Better than him."

What is that supposed to mean? But Lucanis cannot ask, not in front of Rook; he would like very much for the people around him to forget Spite is there. "I understand," he says reluctantly. He's not looking forward to the inevitable suspicion and wariness he's going to get, but he supposes it's only fair. Before the Ossuary, if he was fighting alongside a possessed man, he'd be wary, too. As long as nobody's trying to kill him or torture him and nobody tells his family, what right has he to complain? He clears his throat and nods at her broom. "Were you bringing that to me? I should go clean up."

Rook waves him away. "It's late, leave it for tomorrow. I've got to drop by the infirmary—" She gestures to her arm, still sporting a small burn from their prison break. "—but Neve and the others can brief you. I bet you're starving, and we made food—or, well," she corrects herself, "something resembling food. It probably beats whatever the Venatori were feeding you, though." 

The scars near Lucanis's mouth itch. He tries very hard not to remember the sensation of Spite being forced down his throat. "Probably," he agrees noncommittally. 

"Want my advice?" asks Rook, and continues without waiting for an answer: "Avoid the potatoes. Harding tries, but it takes a brave soul." And with that, she vanishes back inside, leaving Lucanis standing under the colorful sky alone.

-----------------------

The largest outbuilding is silhouetted against a ribbon of purple-blue light. From here Lucanis can see high windows glowing warmly with firelight, a stark contrast to the sky. And even though Spite has never eaten anything but Venatori mush before, he still starts naming the foods being served before they even reach the door. "Smells like...pork—reheated twice," he says. He's talking faster than usual; maybe that means he's excited. "Bread, baked at noon. Beans, badly burned." He hesitates. "Potatoes...?"

Lucanis pushes open the door. The aroma of warm food rolls over him; the following pang of emptiness in his midsection is nigh-unbearable. But he can bear it—he has been hungry for a year, and this is what he trained for. Twice a year he and Illario would be denied food for seven days, and were still expected to go about their usual business: exercises, education, and all the other kinds of Crow training, which in Lucanis's case included a weekly lesson with the kitchen staff. When Caterina was feeling merciful that would fall on the first day. When she was not, it would fall on the seventh day, and Lucanis would prepare food that he would not be allowed to eat with shaking hands.

Inside what Lucanis realizes now is the dining hall, three women, situated in armchairs around a small table in the corner, all cease talking at the same time and get to their feet to face the door.

The first, of course, is Neve; she's let her hair out of its bun, discarded her hat, and undone the top three buttons of her blouse. Lucanis has yet to be introduced to the other two, a tall elf with the traditional elven vallaslin tattooed on her face and a great deal of silky black hair pulled back into a bun, and a dwarf with braided hair and freckles. 

Neve makes the introductions. "Lucanis, this is Bellara Lutare and Lace Harding. Bel, Harding, this is Lucanis Dellamorte."

"And company," says the dwarf—Harding. Her arms are crossed, her expression distrustful.

"Smells like jam," Spite says, pleased to be acknowledged, and the image of him, clean and dressed, appears next to Harding to look her over. Lucanis only just swallows Spite's words back in time; for now, his voice remains one only Lucanis can hear. "Campfire smoke. Deep stone. Dreams."

"Harding," Bellara scolds. "I'm so sorry, she's Ferelden. Come sit down, help yourself! We can tell you about your target, and you can tell us about...uh, you know. If you want."

"Smells like pine sap," Spite observes, as Lucanis follows her to the table. Lucanis clenches his jaw. "Halla hair. Blossoms. Old things."

Lucanis keeps his mouth clamped tightly shut until he's certain Spite is finished, then says as diplomatically as he can, "I would like to know more about the job." For now he ignores both Spite's remarks and Harding's hostility; he's not going to make his life any easier by snapping at the people he'll be working with, or snapping at his demon in front of them. He hates social situations like this. What would Illario do? Crack a joke, probably. "Thanks for dinner. I didn't have time to swing by the café on my way out of prison." He's not surprised to get a smile out of Bellara; he is surprised to get a snort out of Neve. It wasn't a very good joke.

They all sit around a long, rectangular dining table in front of the fire and under an ancient metal chandelier. To the left of this is a staircase, under which the actual kitchen is nestled—stove, a small countertop, and a smaller shelf—and to the right, aside from the armchairs, is a door that must lead into the pantry. The ceiling is very high, but somehow, there are no cobwebs. Lucanis takes the only place that still has a plate; everyone else has eaten without him. It puts his back to the fireplace. He forgot a person could be so warm.

Lucanis, as instructed, helps himself while the others brief him. The target is a pair of ancient blighted mages, ones calling themselves elven gods. "They're only kind of gods," says Bellara, "They are Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, from our history, but they're just people. Or they were once. They were imprisoned in the Fade for thousands of years by Fen'Harel—or Solas, if you prefer. He's spent the last ten years trying to tear down the Veil that separates the real world from the Fade. Rook and the others stopped him just in time, but interrupting the ritual in the middle let the gods out of their prison—and got him stuck inside instead."

It sounds a little familiar. "I heard the guards talking, down in that hole," Lucanis offers. "Now and then the subject of their old gods would come up. The Ventaori seemed certain they had returned. I dismissed it as the ravings of mad cultists. But it cannot be a coincidence."

They make polite, work-related conversation like this while Lucanis eats. Spite was right about the food. The pork is dry and far too chewy; it's a bad cut of the meat, and poorly reheated besides. The beans are overcooked to the point of being mushy except the crunchy places where they are burned. Lucanis isn't even sure how the potatoes could have gone so wrong. Only the bread is passable. It's a mediocre dinner prepared with inadequate ingredients by inexpert hands. But there was an effort made here. It's not stale bread crusts and cold vegetables and spoiled undercooked fish tossed into a cell as meat scraps are tossed to dogs. Lucanis isn't sure he's ever been so grateful to eat anything in his life. Even Spite, who usually despised the whole ordeal of eating in the Ossuary, has little to complain about now.

Lucanis knows from hard experience he must eat slowly after a period of starvation, but even his hunger training didn't prepare him for how ravenous he'd be after a year and a day of going without. He's going to have to work on finding good food, he realizes, and lots of it, to build back his muscle and strength. If they are fighting gods, he can't afford to be in anything less than perfect condition. But it's nothing he hasn't done before; only the severity is new. Even now that he's safe, he falls back on Caterina's training. She's still helping him get through this, even though she's gone.

He does wish he was not the only one eating. It makes it all the more crucial not to act like he's starving; to not let the fork shake in his hand when he hasn't had cause to touch one for a year. He counts his chews out and works counterclockwise around his plate, so that nothing seems to disappear too quickly. Harding and Bellara don't notice him struggling, but Neve is too keen not to see it. He doesn't like anyone knowing that he needs something, especially something as simple as food. It's a massive vulnerability that is far too easy to exploit. He's glad Rook isn't here.

And speaking of— "Rook's been gone forever," Neve notes after a while, leaning over to see past Lucanis and out of the window. "I wonder what's keeping her."

"She told me she was dropping by the infirmary," Lucanis replies, and gets identical groans from Neve and Harding. "What? The burn was a minor injury, was it not?"

"It's not that," Neve says. "Have you ever heard of Varric Tethras?"

It takes Lucanis a moment. "That dwarven novelist?" When he has the time Lucanis usually picks up romances, and Tethras writes absolutely terrible romance, so Lucanis isn't overly familiar with his work. But Tale of the Champion was so popular, even in northern Thedas, that Lucanis eventually caved and picked up his own copy to see what all the fuss was about. He didn't think he'd like it; he read it cover-to-cover twice. 

"That's the one," says Neve. "This hunt for Solas, the job to stop him from tearing down the Veil, it was Varric's fight. He and Solas were old friends—they even served in the Inquisition together. When he found out what Solas planned to do, he recruited Rook and Harding and me. But he didn't want to just stop Solas. He wanted to talk him down, get him to change his mind. He wanted to save him."

Lucanis has finally finished eating; he sets his fork down on his empty plate. "What happened?" he asks, even though he already knows.

"Solas killed him," says Harding, surprising Lucanis. She's been the most reluctant to speak so far. If she is Ferelden, that means she's from southern Thedas, which explains her wariness perfectly; they're scared to death of anything resembling magic down there.

"Rook's been taking it hard," says Neve. She debates with herself a moment, then informs Lucanis, "I've known her for years and I've never seen her like this. She never talks about him. Didn't say a word during the cremation. It's been weeks now and she just keeps pretending everything's fine. At first I thought she just didn't want to face it—but turn around twice, and she's back in the infirmary again. It's where we put his things."

So she's grieving? Lucanis, unfortunately, knows the feeling. But they're right: Rook hides it well. Whatever she's going through is shoved down so deeply he could not read it on her face. Lucanis knows that feeling, too. If he thinks about the unfairness of Caterina's death for longer than a moment he will finally go mad.

"I overheard her talking to him the other day," Bellara says glumly. "I never got to meet him, but I know he must have been special because of how much she misses him."

"He was," sighs Harding. She gives the window a sad look. "I think I'll go check on her. Lucanis, why don't...you two...find some place to sleep? The Lighthouse makes as many rooms as we need, so you can just wander around until it gets the idea."

What unsettling instructions. "Thanks," says Lucanis. He stands, but stops before he picks up his bag. "...I have to ask. Do any of you know how to get rid of a demon?"

A surprised pause follows his question. In the interim before anyone answers, Spite bristles. "Get rid of?" he hisses. "No! Won't! I chose you!"

Lucanis grinds his teeth making sure Spite can't say it aloud. He sounds just like he did during those early days of the Ossuary. What is he so angry about? Isn't that what he keeps asking for?

"I have people in Minrathous I could ask," Neve says finally. "But I really wouldn't get your hopes up."

"But demons are just spirits who've been corrupted, right?" asks Bellara. "Maybe if you could turn Spite back into whatever it used to be, and ask it to leave..."

"No!" says Spite again. The force of his frustration is enormous, and Lucanis is starting to get a headache that has nothing to do with blood magic. His skin feels hot and tight, like there's not enough room in this body for him and Spite both.

"That won't work," Lucanis says shortly. He does not explain why.

"I once heard of an abomination being cured by killing the demon in the Fade," Harding offers. "That's not a sure bet, though."

There's a sudden cold feeling in his chest; Spite falls silent. "No, I—" Lucanis presses a protective hand to his sternum, where he feels Spite puffed up like an angry cat beneath his breastbone. "I don't want to hurt him."

There is another silence. All three women are giving him strange looks. Too late, Lucanis realizes he has betrayed himself.

"Hurt who?" asks Rook, and Lucanis jerks his eyes to the dining hall doors. She's back, sporting a fresh bandage on her left arm and not looking at all like she just spent half an hour sitting with her dead friend's possessions. 

"His demon," answers Neve. "Lucanis was asking about ways to get rid of it."

"Ah," says Rook. She walks in and closes the doors behind her, studying Lucanis's face carefully. He is so used to people being unable to hold eye contact with him that it unnerves him every time she does not look away. At last she says, "There's only one sure way I know of."

Lucanis knows too. "You'd have to kill me."

"And we're not doing that," says Rook firmly. She pauses, and then with visible reluctance adds, "To you or to Spite."

Spite uncoils himself at once. "I want to talk to her," he says, appearing beside Lucanis. 

It's all Lucanis can do not to gape at him. Spite's not great at talking; everything he says means ten other things, and it all comes out in a few angry words at a time. Not only is this one of the clearest requests he's ever made, he didn't even growl while making it. And Spite never wants to talk to anyone. He didn't talk to Calivan or Zara no matter what they did to try and force him, and everything they did was terrible. Even when Zara was pretending to be someone she was not, Spite only wanted to talk to her because of how much Lucanis wanted him not to. And now, Spite wants to talk to Rook. Rook, who they only just met. Rook, who Spite has wanted dead multiple times today alone.

Maybe, maybe, if it were just the two of them. Maybe if it was not his first day on a new contract. Maybe if he was not having so much trouble understanding Spite since escaping the Ossuary. Maybe if Spite had not terrified Rook once already. Maybe if he had not threatened to kill her.

Lucanis cannot possibly allow it.

"Lucanis," Spite protests, stepping into his field of vision. Lucanis turns his face away, trying not to wince, and Spite adds, "Why. Are you. Doing this? We had a deal! Don't ignore me!"

"Lucanis?" Rook asks. "Everything all right?"

"Of course," Lucanis answers. "I—"

"—want to talk!" Spite says, trying to take control of Lucanis's voice, and Lucanis only just stops the words from being spoken aloud. Spite is so furious he would crawl right out of Lucanis's mouth if he could, like a moth from a cocoon; to prevent his trying, Lucanis swallows him down, down, down as he continues to shout. Each word sends pain lancing through Lucanis's head, as though Spite's rage is becoming so large it could shatter his skull. "Let me talk! Let me talk! Let me talk! I want! To talk! To Rook!"

The pressure peaks; so does the pain. Lucanis, for all his experience keeping his composure under both, flinches. Warm blood drips from one nostril.

The women all jump to their feet. "Lucanis!"

"No—" Lucanis holds a hand out to stymie the inevitable alarm, jaw set; he can feel already how viciously pleased Spite is to have gotten all their attention at the same time, and the last thing he needs is for Spite to learn that behavior like this gets him what he wants. Spite might have been Determination once, but Lucanis is determined too. It's his mouth. He should get to decide what it's used for at least some of the time. 

"It's fine," he says, schooling his expression and voice into careful neutrality. A gentleman always carries a handkerchief; now that Lucanis has access to his own things again, it's a simple matter to pull out a square of white silk and press it against his face. In hardly a moment, the evidence of Spite's rage has vanished. "I'm fine."

It doesn't calm them as well as he'd like. "You're bleeding," says Rook. "Maybe that's not fine."

"She understands," Spite says, appearing next to her. He delights in her anxiety. "Let me talk."

"I thought he was helping you," Rook says, her tone accusatory. "What did he do that for?"

"He gets frustrated when he doesn't get what he wants," Lucanis explains lightly, refusing to look at or acknowledge Spite.

"Which is?"

"To talk," says Spite.

"Some quiet," says Lucanis, ignoring Spite's wordless growling. Neve, Bellara, and Harding are watching this exchange with eyebrows raised, but Lucanis has the distinct impression that Neve, ever-perceptive, knows he's lying. "He'll settle down once everyone leaves."

Rook frowns, studying his face. Lucanis tries very hard not to break eye contact, but it doesn't matter; she knows he's lying, too. "I don't like leaving you alone with a demon," she says uncertainly. "I..."

Oh. Lucanis flicks his gaze between the four of them. They all seem distressed, but it hadn't occurred to him until now that though they might be frightened of him, they may also be frightened for him. That's...a lot more generous than he was expecting. Before the Ossuary, if Lucanis had found himself in the same room as an abomination, he'd have run them through on the spot. It's what nearly anyone in Thedas would do, save some of the more open-minded Rivaini. You can't save an abomination; it's like trying to cure a rabid dog. Kinder to put it out of its misery. And yet Lucanis is clean and fed, and something so insignificant as a nosebleed has garnered concern. It eases some of the terrible tension in his shoulders. 

"I've been alone with him for a year," Lucanis reminds Rook. "I can handle Spite. You don't have to worry about me."

Rook's mouth twists with unhappiness, but she relents. "All right," she says. "Let's give him just a minute."

She truly is in charge here; though it's not without concerned glances, the others follow her out—and at last, Lucanis and Spite are alone.

------------------------

Lucanis wastes no time in grabbing his bag and trying the first door he sees—which does, in fact, turn out to be the pantry. It's a long, narrow room, made narrower by shelves, baskets, and barrels. There are braided onions and clay pots hanging from the ceiling, and bedrolls propped in the corner. 

Well, it's a damn sight better than sleeping on the sand. Lucanis takes one of the bedrolls and spreads it out at the very end of the pantry. He would like to believe that he plans to find something more comfortable in the morning, but he's not in the habit of lying to himself. 

It's just—so much. The sight of the sky after a year underwater. An embrace from his cousin after a year of torture. A hot bath after Lucanis had grown used to filth. A full meal after starvation. Concern after cruelty. Lucanis has been sleeping on the ground for a year. If he had to lie down on a soft and comfortable bed right now, he might lose his mind. 

Besides, this room has good chokepoints. Easy to defend, and easy to—easy to trap someone inside, should a certain demon decide Rook or one of the others needs killing after all.

"Trap me?" Spite repeats incredulously. He can follow along with Lucanis's thoughts in a way that does not work in reverse. "I want out! Let me out!"

Lucanis opens his bag and begins to unpack, sighing deeply. "You keep saying that, but when I asked about it you were furious! Can't you make up your mind?"

"No!"

"You're going to scare them!" Lucanis protests, kneeling so he can sweep a few cobwebs away from the corner where his head will lie. "Do you realize how lucky we are? Most mortals aren't so eager to make friends with abominations." The word sits bitter on his tongue. "These people aren't Venatori. You can't just do whatever you want to them. You've got to behave."

"Won't!"

Two steps forward, one step back. Lucanis pinches the bridge of his nose. Is it always going to be like this with Spite? "We're not in the Ossuary anymore," he says softly. "We—"

There's a knock on the pantry door. Lucanis jumps to his feet. "Come in."

It's Rook. She comes all the way in, though she leaves the door open behind her. "Were the two of you talking again? I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You didn't." Lucanis smooths down the wrinkles in his shirt. She doesn't say anything, and it takes him a moment to realize why she's here. "You came to ask about Spite."

"I have to," says Rook, though not unapologetically. "I've got the others to think about. I need to know what kind of risk level we're working with here."

That's fair. "That's fair," Lucanis says aloud, both to her and to calm Spite, who has begun seething and threatening to kill her again. Partially to remind Spite, and partially because he wants to know why, Lucanis points out, "And yet, without knowing that risk, you were unwilling to kill him earlier."

"Well." Rook shifts her weight, uncomfortable. "I heard what you said. You're protecting him, and you're a master assassin. I don't think I'd have an easy time killing anybody if I had to go through you. And, you know. He did help you, back in the Ossuary. Even if he's not helping you anymore. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes..."

Spite quiets. 

"Look," says Rook, "there's obviously a lot going on that I don't understand. But I was in Kirkwall when the mage rebellion started. I've seen up close the damage an angry demon can do, I know how it can erase the person inside until there's nothing left. Whatever Spite promised you, whatever deal you made with him—"

"I. Need. To. Talk," Spite growls.

Lucanis cuts them both off with a raised hand. "It's not like that." 

Rook takes another step inside. "What is it like?"

What a difficult question. There is a heat like fever always close to his skin, a chill that settles in his bones when he is not paying attention. A pressure that leaves his body full to bursting, a foreign pain that comes and goes like a sickness. He feels Spite in his body: coiled at the bottom of his throat when he wants to speak, tugging at his limbs when he wants to move and fight and kill. Spite hates him, hurts him, protects him. Spite is every terrible thought he's ever had and a single fixed point to ground himself with. Spite has broken every bone in his body and then turned around and killed Venatori for touching him. Spite condemned him to Calivan's table and pulled him out of the depths of his own despair. Spite will not let him rest. Spite will not let him give up. Spite has been nestled close to Lucanis's bleeding heart for a year now and Lucanis thinks he may be teaching Spite to care. Spite keeps him on his toes, but Spite also keeps him safe. Keeps him alive. Makes him strong. Spite shares his body with Lucanis too, in a way; how many people can say that they know what it is like to have wings?

From everything Lucanis has heard, Kirkwall was a pretty bad place to be when the Mage-Templar War started, and it started because of an abomination gone rogue. But Spite isn't like that. He doesn't care about politics or the greater good. Sure, he's goal-oriented, a vestige from his time as Determination, but from what Lucanis can tell all he really wants is a direction to be pointed in, a warm body to tear apart, plans to ruin. He and Lucanis have wanted the same thing from the beginning: to be free.

"He was a prisoner too," Lucanis confesses. "No one was in the Ossuary by choice—not even the demons. Neither of us agreed to this. He cannot leave. Maker knows he's tried."

Rook, Lucanis thinks, is a person who is very used to receiving terrible information. She doesn't seem shocked so much as exhausted, suddenly aged a decade. She closes her eyes a moment, then opens them and says, "They just...forced you? How is that even possible?"

"They fed me something." Lucanis realizes he's touching one of the scars on his mouth and drops his hand at once. "My deal with Spite did not involve the use of my body. I only bargained with him after we were already bound. And all I promised him was freedom."

"Failed. To deliver," Spite hisses.

"But he's still not happy?" Rook asks archly

Having known them for only half a day, Lucanis can tell Rook and Neve are close, and he's beginning to see why: like Neve, she is also very perceptive. These fucking Vints. It's going to be a rough contract; Lucanis is used to being the most perceptive person in the room. "He is simply adjusting," Lucanis says, trying to give away as little information as possible. Unlike Neve, Rook is quite spooked by Spite—not surprising, if she spent any time at all in Kirkwall, but especially if she was there when that abomination blew up the Chantry—and he doesn't want to give her any further reason for concern.

Rook crosses her arms, considering. "And you—both of you—are all right to work? I know you didn't ask for this, and what you've been through today alone would break most people."

Lucanis feels a hard smile pulling at the corners of his mouth that is not entirely his own. "We would not have given Zara the satisfaction," says his voice, but he and Spite are in such agreement that he's not certain which of them truly spoke the words. He shakes himself a little, hoping in vain Rook didn't notice: she takes a polite step back. Lucanis is quick to add, "You can leave Spite to me. He is no danger to anyone else."

"No danger?" Spite repeats, annoyed. "Don't. Be. Too. Sure."

"All right," Rook says quietly. "Then I suppose we'll see you tomorrow." She hesitates, visibly wrestling with herself, and then adds in a rush, "You know you don't have to sleep in here on the floor."

"I know," replies Lucanis evenly. He gives Rook a nod. "Goodnight."

Rook takes the hint. "Goodnight," she says. She backs away, then slips out of the pantry entirely, closing the door behind her.

Lucanis lets out a huge breath and leans back, sliding down the wall until he's sitting on the bedroll on the floor.

Today, he and Spite escaped from the Ossuary. They cut off Calivan's head, completed Lucanis's contract, and drowned that wretched pit until there was nothing left but fish and ruins. Lucanis's family came for him, and he reunited with Illario, but he missed seeing his grandmother again by minutes. He accepted her final contract, probably the toughest one he'll ever have.

Today was a very big day.

Tomorrow, everything is going to be different.

"And now," Lucanis murmurs, to the empty air, to Spite, "comes the rest of our lives."

He pulls his feet up into the bedroll, boots still on, and rests his chin on his knees. He hooks his hands around his ankles, so that they lie close to the place where he used to keep a hidden blade in his boot. He lost it in the fight the day the Venatori captured him, but he'll replace it soon. It wouldn't do for a man in his position to be caught unarmed. 

He sits like that for a very long time. He keeps his eyes open until he can't anymore. When he finally falls asleep, he falls asleep still sitting up, with only Spite keeping watch on the door.

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AND SO ENDS CHAPTER 1.

i don't know when the entire fic will be finished...right now i have about 55k and i am nearing the end of Act 1 (i like to divide them into acts, like a real dragon age game!), but i'm hoping i will pick up speed once i get to acts 2 & 3. in the meantime you can always check the fic tag for excerpts and if you already read them all i don't mind being (politely) pestered for more!

thank you to everyone who got to the bottom for indulging my BIRTHDAY self-indulgence <3