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May. 22nd, 2011 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindranaI have a few ficbits that I'm never planning on finishing (for various reasons) hanging around my hard drive. I thought some of you might be interested, so here they are, in all their unedited glory. (On that note, if you've ever wondered what my first-draft roughs look like, here's your chance to see! It's also a good show of how my writing's improved, I think.)
Enjoy!
oOo
Title: Ever Second
Pairing: F!Aeducan/Gorim, F!Aeducan/M!Dwarf prostitute, (and was going to have manipulative F!Aeducan/Alistair)
Rating: T
Wordcount: 1878
Written: Feb, 2011
Reason for not finishing: As much as my Aeducan is terrifyingly awesome, she just wasn't very fun to write, especially as it was more of a summary of the events of her playthrough. I did, however, enjoy writing the opening - when she's lost in the Deep Roads.
"Don't you remember how this game goes? I get undressed, then one of your brothers or cousins appears and thrashes me. I'll take my chances outside the palace, if you don't mind. Perhaps after the feast?"
Gorim's words haunt her as she stumbles on through the Deep Roads, feet still bare even while she's clad the rest of her body in ill-fitting, old, scavenged armor. They'd never found that time, after the feast or anything else. There had only been time for jokes and looks and quick kisses, never enough time for a quick tryst. And now there never will be.
Exile. She supposes that, in a way, she deserved it. To be an Aeducan and to have not seen her brothers' betrayals coming was shameful. But she'd trusted Bhelen, foolishly, trusted that they were allied against a common enemy for the time being. And she'd underestimated him.
She can't help but laugh, pausing and leaning against the orange-lit tunnel wall. Bhelen is- he's good. He's smart and wicked and would make a perfect king if only he wouldn't destroy everything to get there. To play her and Trian so effectively against each other- to make her step into a blunder even she couldn't dance out of again. He's brilliant.
May the Stone destroy him and save him at the same time.
She's been walking for what she estimates to be almost two days. It might be less, it might be more, but she's alternated between walking and half-sleeping for so long now that her lips are cracking, her throat is too dry to move, and her stomach's ache has become so constant that she can almost ignore it. She can't ignore, however, that she falls more and more often. She can't ignore how her head swims. She can't ignore the knowledge that she's only going to last at most another day until she dies of thirst or the darkspawn finally overwhelm her. It wouldn't take much.
She can't ignore these things, but she can turn from them and look instead at might-have-beens. It's painful, too, but emotional pain seems so unimportant when faced with certain death.
Stolen kisses, murmured promises, playful games. She and her Second. He fifteen years older than she, both bearing sword and shield and wit and passion. Sereda Aeducan is not one for uncalculated indulgences or thoughtless words. She plays the game of politics with easy elegance, a quick mind, a sharp blade. But with Gorim, she was often impulsive, reckless, needy. He was her confidante, her second opinion, her loyal guard. Friend. Lover without touches.
Memories of brief contact dance as she sways, unsteady. The day of the Proving and the feast held in her honor, he'd knelt at her feet fitting her greaves around her firm, rounded calves and pressed a kiss to the back of each knee. Five years ago, when they'd met, his fingers had brushed hers during the sparring match between them that she'd ordered to test his readiness. Quick kisses when behind closed doors, fingers brushing against thighs beneath tables during games of cards, accidental falls into the other during practice. Everybody knew. Nobody approved. Except, perhaps, Harrowmont, who had allowed Gorim to say goodbye.
She still remembers how tightly he'd clasped her hands from across those bars.
She curses herself for caring, then curses herself for her urge to be hard-hearted mere hours from death.
The Lady Aeducan is kindly imperious, slick-coated and firm. She is not foolishly in love, except that the man she loves is gone and she is dead and she is, indeed, more foolish than she ever thought.
She staggers on, running out of memories too quickly. Too few moments, too few glances of unarmored bodies, too few moments of skin to skin contact. She recalls them all and is left with nothing except the tunnels. They're empty too, though, and she wonders for a moment at the lack of screeches, howls, groaning stone. Nothing. Nothing-
Except she begins to hear voices, distant and faint, and she swallows hard. Voices. And Gorim had said that Duncan and the Grey Wardens were down here, still. They had been when she was thrown in. She'd nearly forgotten that she was moving towards anything at all, but the sound of quiet speech makes her stumble forward, run on blistered and bruised feet, crushing old bones and fractured stones beneath her. She falls in a moment of terrifying weakness, and a proud part of her hopes that Duncan doesn't come across her prone on the ground. But as the voices grow louder and stronger, as she becomes connected once more with the living, the Lady Aeducan repairs the cracks in her facade.
When she strides out into the juncture of tunnels where Duncan and his men are resting, her back is straight and her head is held high. Her voice is hoarse but confident, composed.
"Take me to the surface."
--
She isn't impressed with Alistair.
She tolerates him, but he makes a poor Second. He follows orders well enough, but he doesn't offer anything, it seems, but self-deprecating quips, and he doesn't fight like a dwarf. She finds it hard to predict his movements, and more than once he's actually tripped over her. That certainly didn't make the events of Ostagar any more pleasant to deal with, and she's less than comforted when it's Alistair she wakes up to, nervous and fidgeting and waiting to tell her about, oh yes, the nightmares.
The mabari is more promising as her right hand... hound, strong and obedient and intimidating, but he can offer nothing but a warm flank to lean on, and he eats more than his share of food. And of everything else.
The combined frustration of both of them, along with buried heartache, drives her first to Denerim, ignoring the clarion call of duty. She reads the old treaties over and over to keep her mind busy, but instead of returning to Orzammar or seeking out this Arl Eamon's help, she marches them towards the capital. She's heard rumors, as they've traveled, of a dwarf merchant recently arrived in the city, with the look of the Stone still about him. The physical descriptions she gets are worthless; to these topsiders, all dwarven men seem to look alike. Beard, some braids, hair. Noses that don't protrude much at all, but are upturned and broad-nostrilled. Broad shoulders.
They describe half the dwarves of Orzammar when they try to describe this merchant.
But she has a feeling, a fear and a hope, and she lets it pull her to Denerim. She's still finding her place at the head of this group, and while making decisions comes naturally, they first come based on selfish desire and not duty. Even the trappings of duty are thin. Resupply. Seek out information. Keep an eye on Loghain's movements.
Alistair buys it. So does the Chantry girl they've unwittingly picked up, and the mabari can't question her except with a small whine that she silences with judicious use of bones. But the witch (who Sereda does not trust, will not trust, but has grudgingly come to admit is useful while they lack for poultices) and the qunari are as unimpressed with her half-truths as she is with Alistair's naivete. The qunari is silent in his censure, but the witch presses and pulls at her shaky justifications with as much wicked glee as she tormented Alistair during the height of his grief. (Sereda does not begrudge Alistair that grief; she remembers all too well wandering the Deep Roads in the haze of such loss, and while it affected his sword arm terribly, she can't bring herself to hate him for it.)
"Why," the witch asks as they wander into the Denerim marketplace, Alistair wide-eyed, the mabari running off ahead, and Morrigan cornering her by a stall, "are we here? 'Tis not the time for pleasure calls."
"I told you," Sereda responds easily, "we are here for supplies. And for reconnaissance, so please, find some human men to seduce for information. You will do so well at that, I'm sure."
Morrigan rolls her eyes. "If you will not tell me, how am I to help?"
"I do not need-"
Four stalls over, not even fifty feet away: "Fine dwarven crafts!"
Sereda falls quiet, and Morrigan laughs. "We are here for a man? Oh, this is rich!"
But Sereda has her eyes fixed beyond Morrigan, and she pushes past the witch without a thought, unsteadying the taller woman with a shove to her thighs. Morrigan dances out of the way, and only watches as Sereda lifts her chin and regains her bearing before she approaches those last few feet to the merchant shouting across the whole square.
His back is turned to her when she approaches, his attention off in the direction of the Alienage gates, but soon he turns back. It's his turn to fall silent, mid-sentence, mid-word, and Sereda's heart hammers and sings and reaches out towards him.
"My Lady Aeducan," he breathes, and she steps right up to the edge of his table with the faintest of smiles on her lips.
"My Second," she responds, and she has to fight the urge to grin, to shout, to dance, because now they have a chance against this Blight, and she has a chance on this damnable sky-heavy surface where she feels as if she could fall upwards at any minute- she has a chance at being anchored, she will be anchored. He is her Second. Alistair and the mabari are unnecessary, and will never disappoint again. She will be whole once more, and here, away from Orzammar-
"No," he responds after a much too long silence, and his expression is grim. He can't meet her eyes.
The hammer on anvil of her heart falters in rhythm, then dies away.
"Gorim," she cautions, with her old familiar tone of warning and building anger disguised with gentle quiet, and he recognizes it, flinching away.
"My Lady- I cannot."
"What do you mean, you cannot?" she repeats, voice dropping even softer. "You are my Second. You are-"
"Married, with a child on the way, and an injured leg that's healed too wrong to let me fight at your side. My Lady, if I could, I would- but you were dead. You are dead." And he passes her the shield of her father with no other words, then turns away, leaving her alone and dying in the Denerim marketplace.
She tries her hardest, that night at the Pearl, to cry to the Stone that she is alive, alive, alive! but there is no answer except the insipid remarks of a man who wears his beard in the same style as Gorim but has none of his strength or glory. She leaves unsatisfied and unsteady, the sky too wide and the stone too far below her feet. They leave the city in the morning, and head for Redcliffe.
oOo
Title: Blessed Andraste, Bride of the Maker (wears a strap-on)
Pairing: Maker/Sebastian/Andraste D/s
Rating: PG (the part I wrote, anyway)
Wordcount: 994
Written: April, 2011
Reason for not finishing: I COULDN'T DO IT. It was originally a hilarious What If with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smaragdina concerning religious ecstasy and trance states and how the Maker was probably a pretty cool guy but would never let another person touch Andraste, so she'd just have to do all the touching...
But I suck at writing crackfic. :( So you only get the serious opening (which quotes heavily from the Chant) and a bit of where things started to get weird.
Post-game spoilers and all that jazz.
"O Maker, hear my cry:
Guide me through the blackest nights
Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked
Make me to rest in the warmest places."
The room was baking hot and Sebastian had long ago stopped noticing the sweat rolling down his nose. His knees ached from hours of kneeling and his head spun from the day's fast. His lips moved over words so familiar that he didn't need to concentrate on them. But every word was shaped deliberately and he focused on each sound.
"O Creator, see me kneel:
For I walk only where You would bid me
Stand only in places You have blessed
Sing only the words You place in my throat."
Hawke was gone, the murderer still at her side, and it was his only comfort that the two were seemingly incapable of staying hidden. He had tracked them across the Marches to Ostwick, where they'd taken to ship (possibly Isabela's, though rumors were untrustworthy at best about her involvement) to Antiva City. Prince Vael, for he was finally that at last, had then quietly shifted money to Crow hands. Then he had loudly shifted money to Crow hands, and the latest reports were that Hawke had been badly injured and they had fled along the coast until they reached Bastion. They sailed now towards Ferelden.
He wondered, sometimes, why Starkhaven was so far inland that he had no navy.
"My Maker, know my heart
Take from me a life of sorrow
Lift me from a world of pain
Judge me worthy of Your endless pride."
As it was, he was leading his army into Orlais with the blessing of the Divine. His was the first assault, the first pursuit, and he would make sure that there needed to be no others. He would be the sword of the Chantry and would put to death those who opposed the Maker. He had his purpose. He'd had his sign.
"My Creator, judge me whole:
Find me well within Your grace
Touch me with fire that I be cleansed
Tell me I have sung to Your approval."
And yet he feared. The Kirkwall chantry had been destroyed and Elthina had been murdered- and he had been given the sign he'd prayed for over six long years. He had taken back his rightful throne, was leading his men to arms in the name of Andraste, was performing the service of the Maker, but still he feared that in his heart lived only greed and pride. And so, every night of the march, he had come before the Maker and his bride and asked for guidance, for deliverance, for answers.
Most nights it was to a small statue of Andraste that the Sisters who traveled with the army carried that he spoke. Some nights they stayed in towns and he knelt in the chantry before towering statues both simple and grand. This night, he'd been welcomed into a keep and its small, private chapel. In the morning, they would cross the final miles to the glory of Val Royeaux and there receive the Divine's hand in truth. Tonight, he purified himself in the heat of an Orlesian summer kneeling before the holy brazier.
"O Maker, hear my cry:
Seat me by Your side in death
Make me one within Your glory
And let the world once more see Your favor."
He'd knelt and sung and spoke and finally mumbled the words of the Chant for hours unending. The windows, open to the night, were showing the faintest bits of grey dawn, but his eyes were unfocused and watering and filled with the dance of orange and gold. He began to sway with the thoughts forgive me, support me, I am your creature, keep me from temptation, guide me echoing through his head over and over.
The words on his lips grew indistinct.
"For You are the fire at the heart of the world
And comfort is only Yours to give."
They fell away and the world went with them.
--
He was... somewhere. He was somewhere only because it was impossible to be nowhere, but he couldn't make out surfaces, edges, light or dark. It simply was. It had the blurred edge feel of a dream but none of the vibrancy, none of the uncertainty of its reality. It was. But it was not how it had been.
The chapel was gone. The statue of blessed Andraste had evaporated in the heat and he was kneeling even as he drifted. He tried to reach out, to perceive, but all he felt was himself and the barest echo of warmth.
He closed his eyes but there was no darkness.
When he opened them again (or whatever the feeling, the memory of opening his eyes was here), though, there was something else. It was indescribable but unmistakable, towering over him and enveloping him.
SEBASTIAN.
It wasn't exactly a voice. It reverberated through him and he could tell that this voice, too, was male. Sebastian turned towards it.
IT HAS BEEN A LONG NIGHT.
"Yes," he managed, the sound alien on his lips (did he have lips? Yes, he did- he had to, or else how would he speak?) and in his ears (did he have ears? Perhaps- he could feel just as well without them) after so many hours of only the Chant, only song, only prayer.
YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A SIGN.
"Yes-"
YOU ASK FOR MANY SIGNS, SEBASTIAN.
Sebastian swallowed (did he have a throat? That logically followed on having lips, but he wasn't certain) and tried to see (and eyes-). Above him, around him, before him- what was there? The words that moved through him were so familiar and yet so distant, like a dream struggling to be remembered.
And then he knew.
The Maker was incomprehensible; Sebastian could perceive no figure, no shape, barely a location, and yet he was distinctly certain that He was wearing tight black leather.
And with that, I'm going to get to work on Couper and ASNAWOH. :)
Enjoy!
Title: Ever Second
Pairing: F!Aeducan/Gorim, F!Aeducan/M!Dwarf prostitute, (and was going to have manipulative F!Aeducan/Alistair)
Rating: T
Wordcount: 1878
Written: Feb, 2011
Reason for not finishing: As much as my Aeducan is terrifyingly awesome, she just wasn't very fun to write, especially as it was more of a summary of the events of her playthrough. I did, however, enjoy writing the opening - when she's lost in the Deep Roads.
"Don't you remember how this game goes? I get undressed, then one of your brothers or cousins appears and thrashes me. I'll take my chances outside the palace, if you don't mind. Perhaps after the feast?"
Gorim's words haunt her as she stumbles on through the Deep Roads, feet still bare even while she's clad the rest of her body in ill-fitting, old, scavenged armor. They'd never found that time, after the feast or anything else. There had only been time for jokes and looks and quick kisses, never enough time for a quick tryst. And now there never will be.
Exile. She supposes that, in a way, she deserved it. To be an Aeducan and to have not seen her brothers' betrayals coming was shameful. But she'd trusted Bhelen, foolishly, trusted that they were allied against a common enemy for the time being. And she'd underestimated him.
She can't help but laugh, pausing and leaning against the orange-lit tunnel wall. Bhelen is- he's good. He's smart and wicked and would make a perfect king if only he wouldn't destroy everything to get there. To play her and Trian so effectively against each other- to make her step into a blunder even she couldn't dance out of again. He's brilliant.
May the Stone destroy him and save him at the same time.
She's been walking for what she estimates to be almost two days. It might be less, it might be more, but she's alternated between walking and half-sleeping for so long now that her lips are cracking, her throat is too dry to move, and her stomach's ache has become so constant that she can almost ignore it. She can't ignore, however, that she falls more and more often. She can't ignore how her head swims. She can't ignore the knowledge that she's only going to last at most another day until she dies of thirst or the darkspawn finally overwhelm her. It wouldn't take much.
She can't ignore these things, but she can turn from them and look instead at might-have-beens. It's painful, too, but emotional pain seems so unimportant when faced with certain death.
Stolen kisses, murmured promises, playful games. She and her Second. He fifteen years older than she, both bearing sword and shield and wit and passion. Sereda Aeducan is not one for uncalculated indulgences or thoughtless words. She plays the game of politics with easy elegance, a quick mind, a sharp blade. But with Gorim, she was often impulsive, reckless, needy. He was her confidante, her second opinion, her loyal guard. Friend. Lover without touches.
Memories of brief contact dance as she sways, unsteady. The day of the Proving and the feast held in her honor, he'd knelt at her feet fitting her greaves around her firm, rounded calves and pressed a kiss to the back of each knee. Five years ago, when they'd met, his fingers had brushed hers during the sparring match between them that she'd ordered to test his readiness. Quick kisses when behind closed doors, fingers brushing against thighs beneath tables during games of cards, accidental falls into the other during practice. Everybody knew. Nobody approved. Except, perhaps, Harrowmont, who had allowed Gorim to say goodbye.
She still remembers how tightly he'd clasped her hands from across those bars.
She curses herself for caring, then curses herself for her urge to be hard-hearted mere hours from death.
The Lady Aeducan is kindly imperious, slick-coated and firm. She is not foolishly in love, except that the man she loves is gone and she is dead and she is, indeed, more foolish than she ever thought.
She staggers on, running out of memories too quickly. Too few moments, too few glances of unarmored bodies, too few moments of skin to skin contact. She recalls them all and is left with nothing except the tunnels. They're empty too, though, and she wonders for a moment at the lack of screeches, howls, groaning stone. Nothing. Nothing-
Except she begins to hear voices, distant and faint, and she swallows hard. Voices. And Gorim had said that Duncan and the Grey Wardens were down here, still. They had been when she was thrown in. She'd nearly forgotten that she was moving towards anything at all, but the sound of quiet speech makes her stumble forward, run on blistered and bruised feet, crushing old bones and fractured stones beneath her. She falls in a moment of terrifying weakness, and a proud part of her hopes that Duncan doesn't come across her prone on the ground. But as the voices grow louder and stronger, as she becomes connected once more with the living, the Lady Aeducan repairs the cracks in her facade.
When she strides out into the juncture of tunnels where Duncan and his men are resting, her back is straight and her head is held high. Her voice is hoarse but confident, composed.
"Take me to the surface."
She isn't impressed with Alistair.
She tolerates him, but he makes a poor Second. He follows orders well enough, but he doesn't offer anything, it seems, but self-deprecating quips, and he doesn't fight like a dwarf. She finds it hard to predict his movements, and more than once he's actually tripped over her. That certainly didn't make the events of Ostagar any more pleasant to deal with, and she's less than comforted when it's Alistair she wakes up to, nervous and fidgeting and waiting to tell her about, oh yes, the nightmares.
The mabari is more promising as her right hand... hound, strong and obedient and intimidating, but he can offer nothing but a warm flank to lean on, and he eats more than his share of food. And of everything else.
The combined frustration of both of them, along with buried heartache, drives her first to Denerim, ignoring the clarion call of duty. She reads the old treaties over and over to keep her mind busy, but instead of returning to Orzammar or seeking out this Arl Eamon's help, she marches them towards the capital. She's heard rumors, as they've traveled, of a dwarf merchant recently arrived in the city, with the look of the Stone still about him. The physical descriptions she gets are worthless; to these topsiders, all dwarven men seem to look alike. Beard, some braids, hair. Noses that don't protrude much at all, but are upturned and broad-nostrilled. Broad shoulders.
They describe half the dwarves of Orzammar when they try to describe this merchant.
But she has a feeling, a fear and a hope, and she lets it pull her to Denerim. She's still finding her place at the head of this group, and while making decisions comes naturally, they first come based on selfish desire and not duty. Even the trappings of duty are thin. Resupply. Seek out information. Keep an eye on Loghain's movements.
Alistair buys it. So does the Chantry girl they've unwittingly picked up, and the mabari can't question her except with a small whine that she silences with judicious use of bones. But the witch (who Sereda does not trust, will not trust, but has grudgingly come to admit is useful while they lack for poultices) and the qunari are as unimpressed with her half-truths as she is with Alistair's naivete. The qunari is silent in his censure, but the witch presses and pulls at her shaky justifications with as much wicked glee as she tormented Alistair during the height of his grief. (Sereda does not begrudge Alistair that grief; she remembers all too well wandering the Deep Roads in the haze of such loss, and while it affected his sword arm terribly, she can't bring herself to hate him for it.)
"Why," the witch asks as they wander into the Denerim marketplace, Alistair wide-eyed, the mabari running off ahead, and Morrigan cornering her by a stall, "are we here? 'Tis not the time for pleasure calls."
"I told you," Sereda responds easily, "we are here for supplies. And for reconnaissance, so please, find some human men to seduce for information. You will do so well at that, I'm sure."
Morrigan rolls her eyes. "If you will not tell me, how am I to help?"
"I do not need-"
Four stalls over, not even fifty feet away: "Fine dwarven crafts!"
Sereda falls quiet, and Morrigan laughs. "We are here for a man? Oh, this is rich!"
But Sereda has her eyes fixed beyond Morrigan, and she pushes past the witch without a thought, unsteadying the taller woman with a shove to her thighs. Morrigan dances out of the way, and only watches as Sereda lifts her chin and regains her bearing before she approaches those last few feet to the merchant shouting across the whole square.
His back is turned to her when she approaches, his attention off in the direction of the Alienage gates, but soon he turns back. It's his turn to fall silent, mid-sentence, mid-word, and Sereda's heart hammers and sings and reaches out towards him.
"My Lady Aeducan," he breathes, and she steps right up to the edge of his table with the faintest of smiles on her lips.
"My Second," she responds, and she has to fight the urge to grin, to shout, to dance, because now they have a chance against this Blight, and she has a chance on this damnable sky-heavy surface where she feels as if she could fall upwards at any minute- she has a chance at being anchored, she will be anchored. He is her Second. Alistair and the mabari are unnecessary, and will never disappoint again. She will be whole once more, and here, away from Orzammar-
"No," he responds after a much too long silence, and his expression is grim. He can't meet her eyes.
The hammer on anvil of her heart falters in rhythm, then dies away.
"Gorim," she cautions, with her old familiar tone of warning and building anger disguised with gentle quiet, and he recognizes it, flinching away.
"My Lady- I cannot."
"What do you mean, you cannot?" she repeats, voice dropping even softer. "You are my Second. You are-"
"Married, with a child on the way, and an injured leg that's healed too wrong to let me fight at your side. My Lady, if I could, I would- but you were dead. You are dead." And he passes her the shield of her father with no other words, then turns away, leaving her alone and dying in the Denerim marketplace.
She tries her hardest, that night at the Pearl, to cry to the Stone that she is alive, alive, alive! but there is no answer except the insipid remarks of a man who wears his beard in the same style as Gorim but has none of his strength or glory. She leaves unsatisfied and unsteady, the sky too wide and the stone too far below her feet. They leave the city in the morning, and head for Redcliffe.
Title: Blessed Andraste, Bride of the Maker (wears a strap-on)
Pairing: Maker/Sebastian/Andraste D/s
Rating: PG (the part I wrote, anyway)
Wordcount: 994
Written: April, 2011
Reason for not finishing: I COULDN'T DO IT. It was originally a hilarious What If with
smaragdina concerning religious ecstasy and trance states and how the Maker was probably a pretty cool guy but would never let another person touch Andraste, so she'd just have to do all the touching...But I suck at writing crackfic. :( So you only get the serious opening (which quotes heavily from the Chant) and a bit of where things started to get weird.
Post-game spoilers and all that jazz.
Guide me through the blackest nights
Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked
Make me to rest in the warmest places."
The room was baking hot and Sebastian had long ago stopped noticing the sweat rolling down his nose. His knees ached from hours of kneeling and his head spun from the day's fast. His lips moved over words so familiar that he didn't need to concentrate on them. But every word was shaped deliberately and he focused on each sound.
For I walk only where You would bid me
Stand only in places You have blessed
Sing only the words You place in my throat."
Hawke was gone, the murderer still at her side, and it was his only comfort that the two were seemingly incapable of staying hidden. He had tracked them across the Marches to Ostwick, where they'd taken to ship (possibly Isabela's, though rumors were untrustworthy at best about her involvement) to Antiva City. Prince Vael, for he was finally that at last, had then quietly shifted money to Crow hands. Then he had loudly shifted money to Crow hands, and the latest reports were that Hawke had been badly injured and they had fled along the coast until they reached Bastion. They sailed now towards Ferelden.
He wondered, sometimes, why Starkhaven was so far inland that he had no navy.
Take from me a life of sorrow
Lift me from a world of pain
Judge me worthy of Your endless pride."
As it was, he was leading his army into Orlais with the blessing of the Divine. His was the first assault, the first pursuit, and he would make sure that there needed to be no others. He would be the sword of the Chantry and would put to death those who opposed the Maker. He had his purpose. He'd had his sign.
Find me well within Your grace
Touch me with fire that I be cleansed
Tell me I have sung to Your approval."
And yet he feared. The Kirkwall chantry had been destroyed and Elthina had been murdered- and he had been given the sign he'd prayed for over six long years. He had taken back his rightful throne, was leading his men to arms in the name of Andraste, was performing the service of the Maker, but still he feared that in his heart lived only greed and pride. And so, every night of the march, he had come before the Maker and his bride and asked for guidance, for deliverance, for answers.
Most nights it was to a small statue of Andraste that the Sisters who traveled with the army carried that he spoke. Some nights they stayed in towns and he knelt in the chantry before towering statues both simple and grand. This night, he'd been welcomed into a keep and its small, private chapel. In the morning, they would cross the final miles to the glory of Val Royeaux and there receive the Divine's hand in truth. Tonight, he purified himself in the heat of an Orlesian summer kneeling before the holy brazier.
Seat me by Your side in death
Make me one within Your glory
And let the world once more see Your favor."
He'd knelt and sung and spoke and finally mumbled the words of the Chant for hours unending. The windows, open to the night, were showing the faintest bits of grey dawn, but his eyes were unfocused and watering and filled with the dance of orange and gold. He began to sway with the thoughts forgive me, support me, I am your creature, keep me from temptation, guide me echoing through his head over and over.
The words on his lips grew indistinct.
And comfort is only Yours to give."
They fell away and the world went with them.
He was... somewhere. He was somewhere only because it was impossible to be nowhere, but he couldn't make out surfaces, edges, light or dark. It simply was. It had the blurred edge feel of a dream but none of the vibrancy, none of the uncertainty of its reality. It was. But it was not how it had been.
The chapel was gone. The statue of blessed Andraste had evaporated in the heat and he was kneeling even as he drifted. He tried to reach out, to perceive, but all he felt was himself and the barest echo of warmth.
He closed his eyes but there was no darkness.
When he opened them again (or whatever the feeling, the memory of opening his eyes was here), though, there was something else. It was indescribable but unmistakable, towering over him and enveloping him.
SEBASTIAN.
It wasn't exactly a voice. It reverberated through him and he could tell that this voice, too, was male. Sebastian turned towards it.
IT HAS BEEN A LONG NIGHT.
"Yes," he managed, the sound alien on his lips (did he have lips? Yes, he did- he had to, or else how would he speak?) and in his ears (did he have ears? Perhaps- he could feel just as well without them) after so many hours of only the Chant, only song, only prayer.
YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A SIGN.
"Yes-"
YOU ASK FOR MANY SIGNS, SEBASTIAN.
Sebastian swallowed (did he have a throat? That logically followed on having lips, but he wasn't certain) and tried to see (and eyes-). Above him, around him, before him- what was there? The words that moved through him were so familiar and yet so distant, like a dream struggling to be remembered.
And then he knew.
The Maker was incomprehensible; Sebastian could perceive no figure, no shape, barely a location, and yet he was distinctly certain that He was wearing tight black leather.
And with that, I'm going to get to work on Couper and ASNAWOH. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-05-22 03:21 pm (UTC)And, yay, more Couper and ASNAWOH!
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Date: 2011-05-22 03:52 pm (UTC)