Chapter Text
Epilogue: The Hollows of Their Footprints
“Is there anything else?” Varric asked tiredly. No, not tired, just bored.
“Some correspondence. You have a letter from the Merchants’ Guild.”
“Put it on the pile.”
Seneschal Bran rolled his eyes a bit, with what might be called a long-suffering kind of sigh. “And one from the Prince of Starkhaven.”
“Put it on the other pile.”
“And one from Comtesse Rutherford.”
“Oh, I’ll read that one.” The dwarf accepted the scroll and unrolled it eagerly. “You can go,” he added, glancing at Bran over the top of it.
“Yes, Excellency.”
Varric’s guest watched patiently while he read his mail. “Good news, I trust?” she ventured after a moment.
“Very good. We can expect Eyebrows and Curly here in time after all. I was afraid they weren’t going to make it.” He rolled up the letter again, looking satisfied. “Looks like they’re paying a visit to her parents in Ostwick, and then they’ll come here.”
She looked at her notes. “Well, I think we can safely say we’ve wrapped up the story. What happened to everyone?”
“Well, I had Cole talk about it a little in that last chapter. Most of the gang didn’t leave immediately, except for Vivienne. Things having gone down the way they did in Orlais, and with Bastien, she decided to resume her post in Celene’s court. Moral support for the empress and that sort of thing.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“And Solas was gone, obviously, so the Inquisitors were down two mages at a shot. Sunshine had to involve herself in everything a little more than I would have liked.” He chuckled. “She enjoyed it, though.”
“That's good.”
“Leliana couldn't run off right away to be Divine. She had to get some of her people ready to fill in for her, mostly Charter and Harding. I think Eyebrows is still to this day a little shocked that she took the name Divine Victoria, but Nightingale thought it was an appropriate thing," Varric mused. "She didn't just name herself after the lady boss, but also after the whole victory over Corypheus. It works, I guess."
"And the others?"
"Blackwall stuck around for a while, but then he went off walking the world doing his atonement thing. Sera had some work to do with her Jennies, and I couldn’t even tell you what Cole was doing at some points. Eventually some of us got on a ship and came to this side of the Waking Sea, which ended up being fairly important.”
“Important to you or important in general?” she teased him.
“A little of column A, a little of column B. But we’ll get to all that in the sequel,” he added. “If I don’t miss my guess, we should have just enough time to write it before people start showing up for this party.”
“Sequel?” she repeated, startled. “You never said anything about a sequel.”
“Of course we have to have a sequel, Scholar!” He chuckled, enjoying the expression in her eyes. “How else will the readers know what happened during that business with the Avvar? And the Deep Roads? My return to Kirkwall? Not to mention the whole Exalted Council nonsense. I mean, if nothing else, you’re going to want to know about how Eyebrows became Comtesse Rutherford, am I right? And if you want to know, then other people probably do too.”
“Well, yes, fair... but you really think we can get it done in time? This is a pretty big event you have planned, and I don’t want to interfere.” She looked doubtful.
Varric shook his head, chuckling. “We can get it done. We might not do a lot of sleeping, but we can get it done. Besides, the event details are being handled by someone I trust completely.”
“But it took us this long just to do the first story! What makes you think we can get an entire sequel done in time?”
“We’re writers, Scholar. It’s what we do.”