- Posts
- 118
((Wintermarch, 9:41; Cullen ))
The good news was, Andvar and Ilsa’s baby boy wasn’t dead.
The bad news was, Varric wasn’t sure how long that was going to last.
The bigass hole in the sky had stopped growing, but it was still shitting demons with depressing regularity, and reports arriving from Ferelden and abroad had dashed any lingering hopes that it was just a local phenomenon. Whatever had happened, it had gotten its claws into the whole south of Thedas, maybe further. Rifts were scattered across the countryside, with demons popping out of them to attack anything in the vicinity. Some of them were in the middle of nowhere, easy to avoid, as the demons didn’t seem to wander far from the rifts.
Others … not so much. He’d heard plenty of nightmare fodder the last few days, every bit of it as real as the memories in his own head that he couldn’t stop seeing and hearing. The green flash and thunderous detonation that had filled the world for several heart-stopping seconds. Cassandra’s anguished shout as the smoke cleared to reveal the smoking ruin where the Temple of Sacred Ashes had been. The debris that had rained from the sky for a full ten minutes, some of the bits and pieces unfortunately not burned beyond recognition. The first glimpse of the Breach: eerie and immense and almost beautiful … until you realized that what looked like shooting stars radiating from it were actually demons hurtling toward the ground.
And then the demons themselves: tall and gangling, hazy and eldritch, spiky, fiery … pretty much anything you could think of and some that you never wanted to, all of them without fear, without mercy. Screams of terror, screams of pain, and blood - lots of blood, along with parts of bodies never meant to see the light of day on garish display. And the deepest fears of your life - the ones that you had admitted to absolutely no one - dragged out of the dark places in your brain and shoved down your throat.
Which was to say, the last week in the life of one Varric Tethras: merchant, information broker, and best selling author, had reached levels of suck that all the other weeks combined couldn’t match. And that was saying something.
And nobody still had any idea how it had happened, at least as far as he knew. He wasn’t exactly part of the inner circle. So far as he could tell, in fact, he was free to go, albeit without so much as a thank you for helping out on the venture two days earlier that had stopped the growth of the Breach and closed the only rift within the borders of Haven.
But where would he go? Assuming he could find a ship that would take him back to Kirkwall, he’d still wind up fighting demons there, and while having people he trusted at his back and his own cozy suite at the Hanged Man would be a vast improvement on a bunch of terrified and hostile strangers and the tent he’d managed to convince the grim-faced quartermaster to part with, unless they found a way to reverse what had happened, it would be a delaying tactic, at best.
And their best chance for fixing this mess was currently unconscious in one of the many cabins that had been left vacant by the explosion. Or feigning unconsciousness. Sati Adaar had gone from being the chief suspect in the deaths of the Divine and several hundred others to being the only hope of Thedas. Or maybe she was both, in which case he really couldn’t blame her for pretending to be in a coma. He’d seen her closing the rifts with that strange, glowing mark on her left hand, but closing the big one had nearly killed her … and it hadn’t sealed the Breach. Assuming she could ever do that, would all the other rifts just vanish, or would she have to close them one at a time? Talk about a lifetime commitment; it was a lot to ask of a Vashoth merc who he was willing to bet wasn’t even Andrastean.
Not that he thought they’d actually ask her, any more than he’d been asked, which was another reason he was staying. She’d seemed a good enough sort (bearing in mind that he’d thought the same thing about Anders at first), but she had also seemed sane, which made it even odds that she’d try to bolt when she realized just what was expected of her. It wasn’t entirely selfish on Varric’s part; he’d always had a soft spot for an underdog, and she definitely qualified. Josc would like her -
Nope, not going to even think about Joscelyn Hawke right now, because if a certain Seeker had had her way, Josc would have likely been at the Conclave when it blew sky high. She had been through enough, so for her sake, he was sticking to his story that he didn’t know where she was or how to reach her, which was at least half true.
As long as he was sticking around, he might as well get a feel for the place. He’d gone from knowing everything that was worth knowing in Kirkwall to flying blind, and he didn’t much care for the feeling. He’d spent much of the previous two days wandering around Haven, chatting up the people there, entertaining them with stories and listening to what they said … and didn’t say. Despite the Breach no longer growing, hope was in short supply and dwindling by the hour. He’d heard Sati Adaar referred to by turns as ‘murderer’, ‘horned devil’, ‘heretic’, ‘Maker’s chosen one’ and ‘Andraste’s herald’. The latter two seemed to be gaining prominence, but only because the proponents of the horned devil theory were slipping away from Haven in ones and twos. Definitely fewer people milling around today than there had been yesterday. You could only expect people to stay in place with no word for so long, and if Sati didn’t wake up soon, even the ones who wanted to believe in her would start jumping ship.
He was making his rounds now, stopping to chat here and there, considering heading to the tavern for a drink and letting people come to him for a while, because shit it was cold. He started to turn back to do just that, then paused, peering in the direction of the Chantry, which was where the Important People met for Important Business. Or just to get drunk together. Hard to know when no news was coming out, but if they were drinking, they were awfully quiet about it, which to Varric’s way of thinking not healthy. If you weren’t at least going to sing, what was the point?
He’d seen the man exiting the Chantry now at a distance and in passing a couple of times the last few days, but hadn’t been sure it was him. They hadn’t really been bosom buddies in Kirkwall, after all, and there was no shortage of serious-looking men in armor striding around Haven right now. Seeing him closer now left no doubt, and coming out of the chantry without a second glance from the posted guards, which made him one of the Important People. Interesting.
Deciding the drink could wait for a bit, Varric ambled up to the one-time Knight-Commander of Kirkwall. “Long time no see,” he offered by way of a greeting. “Did the Seeker arrest you, too?” It wasn’t exactly a long shot. Cassandra had been in a certifiable mood when she’d slapped the chains on Varric, and it seemed quite possible that she’d decided to increase her haul. Maybe Aveline was stashed around here somewhere. He’d have to ask.
The good news was, Andvar and Ilsa’s baby boy wasn’t dead.
The bad news was, Varric wasn’t sure how long that was going to last.
The bigass hole in the sky had stopped growing, but it was still shitting demons with depressing regularity, and reports arriving from Ferelden and abroad had dashed any lingering hopes that it was just a local phenomenon. Whatever had happened, it had gotten its claws into the whole south of Thedas, maybe further. Rifts were scattered across the countryside, with demons popping out of them to attack anything in the vicinity. Some of them were in the middle of nowhere, easy to avoid, as the demons didn’t seem to wander far from the rifts.
Others … not so much. He’d heard plenty of nightmare fodder the last few days, every bit of it as real as the memories in his own head that he couldn’t stop seeing and hearing. The green flash and thunderous detonation that had filled the world for several heart-stopping seconds. Cassandra’s anguished shout as the smoke cleared to reveal the smoking ruin where the Temple of Sacred Ashes had been. The debris that had rained from the sky for a full ten minutes, some of the bits and pieces unfortunately not burned beyond recognition. The first glimpse of the Breach: eerie and immense and almost beautiful … until you realized that what looked like shooting stars radiating from it were actually demons hurtling toward the ground.
And then the demons themselves: tall and gangling, hazy and eldritch, spiky, fiery … pretty much anything you could think of and some that you never wanted to, all of them without fear, without mercy. Screams of terror, screams of pain, and blood - lots of blood, along with parts of bodies never meant to see the light of day on garish display. And the deepest fears of your life - the ones that you had admitted to absolutely no one - dragged out of the dark places in your brain and shoved down your throat.
Which was to say, the last week in the life of one Varric Tethras: merchant, information broker, and best selling author, had reached levels of suck that all the other weeks combined couldn’t match. And that was saying something.
And nobody still had any idea how it had happened, at least as far as he knew. He wasn’t exactly part of the inner circle. So far as he could tell, in fact, he was free to go, albeit without so much as a thank you for helping out on the venture two days earlier that had stopped the growth of the Breach and closed the only rift within the borders of Haven.
But where would he go? Assuming he could find a ship that would take him back to Kirkwall, he’d still wind up fighting demons there, and while having people he trusted at his back and his own cozy suite at the Hanged Man would be a vast improvement on a bunch of terrified and hostile strangers and the tent he’d managed to convince the grim-faced quartermaster to part with, unless they found a way to reverse what had happened, it would be a delaying tactic, at best.
And their best chance for fixing this mess was currently unconscious in one of the many cabins that had been left vacant by the explosion. Or feigning unconsciousness. Sati Adaar had gone from being the chief suspect in the deaths of the Divine and several hundred others to being the only hope of Thedas. Or maybe she was both, in which case he really couldn’t blame her for pretending to be in a coma. He’d seen her closing the rifts with that strange, glowing mark on her left hand, but closing the big one had nearly killed her … and it hadn’t sealed the Breach. Assuming she could ever do that, would all the other rifts just vanish, or would she have to close them one at a time? Talk about a lifetime commitment; it was a lot to ask of a Vashoth merc who he was willing to bet wasn’t even Andrastean.
Not that he thought they’d actually ask her, any more than he’d been asked, which was another reason he was staying. She’d seemed a good enough sort (bearing in mind that he’d thought the same thing about Anders at first), but she had also seemed sane, which made it even odds that she’d try to bolt when she realized just what was expected of her. It wasn’t entirely selfish on Varric’s part; he’d always had a soft spot for an underdog, and she definitely qualified. Josc would like her -
Nope, not going to even think about Joscelyn Hawke right now, because if a certain Seeker had had her way, Josc would have likely been at the Conclave when it blew sky high. She had been through enough, so for her sake, he was sticking to his story that he didn’t know where she was or how to reach her, which was at least half true.
As long as he was sticking around, he might as well get a feel for the place. He’d gone from knowing everything that was worth knowing in Kirkwall to flying blind, and he didn’t much care for the feeling. He’d spent much of the previous two days wandering around Haven, chatting up the people there, entertaining them with stories and listening to what they said … and didn’t say. Despite the Breach no longer growing, hope was in short supply and dwindling by the hour. He’d heard Sati Adaar referred to by turns as ‘murderer’, ‘horned devil’, ‘heretic’, ‘Maker’s chosen one’ and ‘Andraste’s herald’. The latter two seemed to be gaining prominence, but only because the proponents of the horned devil theory were slipping away from Haven in ones and twos. Definitely fewer people milling around today than there had been yesterday. You could only expect people to stay in place with no word for so long, and if Sati didn’t wake up soon, even the ones who wanted to believe in her would start jumping ship.
He was making his rounds now, stopping to chat here and there, considering heading to the tavern for a drink and letting people come to him for a while, because shit it was cold. He started to turn back to do just that, then paused, peering in the direction of the Chantry, which was where the Important People met for Important Business. Or just to get drunk together. Hard to know when no news was coming out, but if they were drinking, they were awfully quiet about it, which to Varric’s way of thinking not healthy. If you weren’t at least going to sing, what was the point?
He’d seen the man exiting the Chantry now at a distance and in passing a couple of times the last few days, but hadn’t been sure it was him. They hadn’t really been bosom buddies in Kirkwall, after all, and there was no shortage of serious-looking men in armor striding around Haven right now. Seeing him closer now left no doubt, and coming out of the chantry without a second glance from the posted guards, which made him one of the Important People. Interesting.
Deciding the drink could wait for a bit, Varric ambled up to the one-time Knight-Commander of Kirkwall. “Long time no see,” he offered by way of a greeting. “Did the Seeker arrest you, too?” It wasn’t exactly a long shot. Cassandra had been in a certifiable mood when she’d slapped the chains on Varric, and it seemed quite possible that she’d decided to increase her haul. Maybe Aveline was stashed around here somewhere. He’d have to ask.