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halla-hunts-the-wolf · 3 years

Text

A short-story preview.

Set in a story where years down the line, Fen'harel has yet to destroy the Veil, but his plights are making all of Thedas weary of the modern elves.

Four Dalish elves band together to avenge a massacre. Will they inflict Justice or Vengeance on those responsible? And what secrets will they uncover along the way?

Warning: Violent acts & Character Death.

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On the outskirts of Ansburg, a Dalish settlement had been destroyed.

They had been camping beside the coast, where a river drained off from the ocean.

They’d thought that the lack of freshwater would make the paths less favorable towards merchants or humans in general. Their aravels had been pitched and their halla let loose to graze.

They lasted three days.

On the fourth day, when two cloaked riders closed in on where the Dalish were meant to be, the stench of death still remained, carrion birds harvested bodies, and a started fire had laid waste to everything.

Blood ran the river red by the time the two riders reached the desolate camp.

Their movements became slow and they approached with caution; anticipating an ambush, but all they were met with was the silence that the massacre left behind.

“Maker,” one of the riders mumbled, bringing his arm up to cover his nose. “Who could have done this? Do you think it could’ve been Fen’harel?”

“No,” the other rider says, his voice somber and distant. “No, these elves were not his enemies and they did not deserve his wrath.” As he spoke, he would have abandoned his mount, an older Dracolisk, beside the river. Carrying on by foot, he would assess the carnage. Bodies lay to waste around him, many of which were missing their pointed ears. It was sickening, deplorable, and a byproduct of fear. “Even so, this act is unforgivable.” His voice would crack, overwhelmed by anger and grief. “There are so few of our people left, and the only thing they have done is chosen not to take a side in this foolish war.”

“The war that we are fighting.”

“Yes, because even though it is foolish, it can not be ignored. Not when innocent people are being slaughtered like this.” The second rider would crouch down, to close the eyes of an elf who was staring up at the sky. “Falon’Din enasal enaste.”

“What are we going to do now, carry on to Tevinter?”

“We are going to bury them, and find those responsible.”

The first rider lets out an exasperated sigh. “Lavellan, we don’t have the time-”

“- Then we make time.”

The first rider says nothing more, hanging his head in silent compliance.

They spend their evening in this way, gathering bodies and offering them final prayers. They didn’t have the means to do a proper ceremony, but they would do their best with heavy hearts.

Nightfall had soon come and gone, and as a new dawn broke across the sky, the two men sat across from each other, swallowing down their rations despite lacking a proper appetite.

“So you didn’t find your dalish contact amongst the dead?” The first rider would ask, his bright green eyes were growing red, as he fought the need to sleep. Only in his mid-twenties, and a recently freed slave of the Tevinter Imperium, he was not used to the constant traveling and combat he had to endure while shadowing the former Inquisitor. He rubs at his face, hands running across his mutilated vallaslin. The branches that spread over his cheeks had been cut into and burned by his former master, when he was only eighteen and freshly kidnapped from his own clan. “Perhaps he went after those responsible?”

“No,” Lavellan would shake his head. “Ryland would have waited for us, had he still been alive and of his own free will.” The older elf would be fiddling with a string around his neck. He clutched at the sending crystal as if it was his life line with one hand, while the other, a prosthetic, would be clutching a potion. “This group was made up of smaller dalish clans, ones that were left abandoned by their clanmates when they joined Solas. Ryland was traveling with them, to bring them to another encampment on the other side of Nevarra.”

“That was very noble of him.”

“Yes, and I’m the one who asked him to do it.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what happened, and drink your potion.”

Lavellan would stop fiddling with his necklace, taking to unscrewing the cork of the bottle in his hand. “If we had gotten here a day sooner Ma’hallian, we may have prevented this from happening entirely.” He would down the bottle in one go, guzzling it’s dark purple liquid, looking as if he’d just bit into a lemon afterwards. “This thing could be a poison.”

“A poison that keeps you from keeling over in pain.” Ma’hallian would remind him gently, before reaching out to take the empty bottle from the other man’s hands. “And we didn’t get here a day sooner, so we have to keep moving forward.”

“We will, as soon as the person responsible is brought to justice.”

The white-haired elf would lean forward, fixing the former Inquisitor with a narrowed gaze.

The older elf was on the cusp of fifty, with silver streaks in his long chestnut hair and wrinkles overtaking his darkened skin. These days, his hands shook whenever he lifted his sword, and his amber eyes always smoldered with conviction. “Is it justice you are after, or is it vengeance?”

“The two are not so different, when faced with a situation like this.”

“We both know that they are.”

Lavellan hated being shown up by his assistant, someone who could be so callous and shy towards the rest of the world. The boy had spent the majority of his life either in solitude or servitude and yet, he still managed to come out of it with a remarkable sense of responsibility and level headedness.

“I-” He does not get a proper sentence out, as a distant sound causes his ears to twitch. Ma’hallian hears it too and they rise to their feet.

Ma’hallian draws a dagger from his belt and Lavellan pulls free his sword from its sheath. They approach the source of the noise with silent steps, until they are looming over the site of a destroyed aravel. It’s red fabric and splintered wood had made a heavy pile, and something dared to move beneath it.

“Careful,” Lavellan murmurs, “it may be an abomination that’s risen.”

Leering forward with one foot, the elf would kick the debris away, his sword poised to strike down, but he would stop just short of skewering another elf.

An elf also nearing his fifties, with deep red hair that was coated in soot and streaked with soft greys. His face, while well defined, was covered in laugh lines and scars alike. They danced along his vallaslin for Ghilan’nain, etched in blue to match his eyes. This new elf stares up at them, as a cough rattles throughout his chest and past his lips. “Well, hello your highness. I survived then? Unless you managed to finally kick the bucket too.”

“No, Ry, you’re just that lucky.” Lavellan would put his sword away before holding out a hand, hauling his former partner from the aravel. Eyeing him wearily, in search of any wounds that could prove fatal.

“Ah well, what can I say? The universe loves me.” Ryland dusts himself off, wincing as he does so, but seemingly unharmed save for a few aches, bruises, and perhaps a concussion after being crushed beneath one of their landships. “How bad is it?”

“You’re the only survivor.”

The red-head takes in a sharp breath. “That can’t be right. Where are the bodies?”

They take him to the people who they had wrapped or covered, ready to be buried, as time permitted them. He looks them over, with blue eyes watering, before he shakes his head. “There were younger elves here, children, and a mage. None of them are with the dead.”

“Perhaps they perished in the fire that ravaged the camp?” Ma’hallain offers, supervising Ryland as Lavellan wanders off to their mounts. “Or animals picked off their remains?”

“You are a grim young man, Ma’hallain, but no. The only scavengers in this area are the birds, and they wouldn’t be able to devour a body within a day, let alone a dozen or so. The person responsible for the siege must have taken them.”

“And who was responsible?” Lavellan had rejoined them, bringing a fresh pair of clothes to Ryland from his carry on.

“There’s a human settlement nearby, Ansburg? They’ve recently come into new leadership and the man appears to be terrified of us knife-ears.” Ryland would strip there, pulling his otherwise tattered shirt over his head and tossing it to the ground. Lavellan would hand him the clean one and Ma’hallian would have the decency to look away as he took off his pants as well. “When the local militia arrived, I told them that we had no ties with Fen’Harel or the Qun. They said that they were under orders and at the end of the day, all elves were the same.”

“Yet they would never claim that all humans are murderers, would they?”

“Fear is bred by ignorance, highness. They’ll get what’s coming for them.”

Lavellan would grumble, “Did you at least scout Ansburg when you first made camp?”

“Course I did, seemed like a normal shemlen village. Smelt of rotten fish and wet dog. There weren’t any elves, but I didn’t find that odd. There aren’t many flat ears left in the smaller settlements.”

“Did you find where this new leader lived?”

“It was the first thing on my list, but something seemed off about it. The whole village was sort of dreary, but his estate was shimmery, almost. Like the stones were reflecting the light.”

Ma’hallian snaps back to attention, his ears drooping just so. “That sounds like warding, and a very obvious one. I bet he is using it to scare others away, people do that in the Magisterium. Either to scare the already fearful, or to make a spectacle out of something valuable.”

“So we’ll need a mage?” Lavellans asks.

“Unless warriors suddenly know how to dispel things? Rogues most certainly do not.”

“Oh,” Ryland would croon, “Do you know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like a call to Dorian. Tell him I said hello, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to know that I survived.”

Rolling his eyes, Lavellan would turn away from the other men. Knowing that Ma’hallian was glib due to his many years living in darkness and Ryland was only using humor to cope with the carnage around them.

#dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dorian pavus #lavellan #original character #post trespasser #pavellan

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