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The tent grew darker as the candles burned out, one by one, their small and flickering flames dying in a puddle of melted wax. The night was quiet, except for the rush of winter wind and the cawing of ravens not yet asleep. Leliana set her quill down and pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes as if it would cure the ache from reading and writing an endless number of reports.
It did nothing to alleviate the pain.
She took a deep breath and lifted the quill again, returning to her report only to find that the inked words on the parchment had become a blurred, unreadable mess to her swirling vision.
There was still much work to do—there would always be work for her to do—but even she knew there was nothing she could do in her current state. Trying and forcing herself to keep going now would only bring mistakes, and even the smallest of errors could have catastrophic consequences for the Inquisition, as new, small, and fragile as it currently was. She could allow herself a few moments of rest, a few minutes to close her eyes and give them a break before she returned to her work.
She set the quill back down and, with a groan, rose from her seat and felt her spine and neck pop and crack as she stretched.
Her ravens cooed and cawed as Leliana pulled back the flap of her tent to step out. With another stretch, another wince, she raised her head to look above. The cloudless sky above Haven glittered with countless stars, their beauty marred by the pulsating, green hole torn into the heavens. It was a disheartening sight, but one that also fueled her desire to work, to do everything she could to make sure that the Inquisition succeeded—that the Herald succeeded.
There were very few still awake at the late hour. Most only being guards patrolling the village and stragglers in the tavern. However, she could hear the faint sound of metal on metal further out, a sign that at least a few soldiers were training, even now, too restless and anxious to sleep and thus throwing that nervous energy into something productive. It was hard to say if Cullen would be proud of it or if he would chastise them for it.
She took another deep breath, feeling the frigid air stinging her throat as it filled her lungs, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.
Haven. To say that Leliana had mixed feelings about the village was an understatement. She was grateful that they had found refuge here, that the Inquisition had a place to call home for the time being, but she could still remember the first time she had been to this little hamlet.
They had been fighting the end of the world, then, too.
“It is so unnecessarily cold. Why does it need to be so bloody cold?” Elio had complained, sneezing loudly as he pulled his fur cloak tighter around his narrow shoulder. It was old, smelled, likely had fleas, and was bought from a very shady merchant, but considering their group was—to put it kindly—broke, no one dared complain at what little warmth they could get from the harsh winter wind and deep snow. “Let’s just get Genitivi, get the ashes, and get someplace warmer.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him; I’ve so many questions I want to ask about his work,” Leliana breathed as she fiddled with the strap to her quiver. So excited had she been to meet someone as renowned as Brother Genitivi.
Their group hadn’t even entered the village before they were stopped by a man at the entrance, hostile and reluctant to allow them in, outsiders not being welcomed. When they mentioned a Chantry brother, he had stiffed and scoffed, denying ever seeing one in their little hamlet. A lie that Leliana had recognized immediately.
The village had been dead. Not a soul to be seen, all supposedly at the Chantry further in, listening to a sermon from a Father Eirik.
“A Father and not a Mother, huh?” Elio murmured as they slowly made their way to the building, looking for anyone and seeing no one. “If it weren’t for this ‘Disciples of Andraste’ talk, I’d suspect the Imperial Chantry is taking root here. Though I still have a bad feeling about this, stay on your guard.”
When they had reached the Chantry doors, there was still no one. But they could hear the screaming and cries from within clearly. It wasn’t the screams of pain or fear but of jubilation and worship. Fervent, passionate, and unsettling.
Elio took point, standing before them as if to be their shield as he pushed the doors open.
The Chantry was empty. It didn’t look the same when she first stepped foot inside all those years ago. Candles burned to provide dim lighting, and books on the Chantry and of the Chant filled several shelves. Some cobwebs had yet to be cleaned out, and several pews empty save for forgotten papers and books.
Most of the furniture from her first visit was gone. The wooden platform at the front where speeches and sermons were made was done away with, as were most of the shelves and desks covered in scrolls and books, burned—if Leliana remembered correctly—for their heretical, blasphemous contents. The Chantry looked barren now compared to when the Disciples of Andraste had made it their home.
Not for the first time, Leliana wondered if she looked hard enough, if she would be able to see the bloodstains from that night. She could still remember, vividly, where each person had been felled. How could she not? It hadn’t been soldiers or monsters that they had killed that night, but normal men and women, farmers and bakers and crafters.
Her eyes flickered to front of the space. A podium now stood over where Elio had cut Eirik down, his sword had cut through the man’s neck so deeply he had nearly lopped his whole head off. Not for the first time, but it was always a grisly sight. Even now it chilled her knowing just how easily he could decapitate someone in a fight—a feat that needed the executioner to be either incredibly precise in how they land that final blow, or incredibly strong to not worry about the resistance of muscle and bone.
And yet despite the nervous fear there was always a rush of admiration, of awe. Her Warden had always been a stalwart leader to their party, and when he fought, no matter how soaked in blood he became from the carnage he carved, he always incited a flutter in her chest, left Leliana wanting to reach out to him and—
She never did. Theirs was a friendship, close as it may have been at the time, but nothing more.
Leliana walked onwards, towards the end where the door to their makeshift war room was. She didn’t go inside, instead stopping at the statues that stood on either side, and knelt at the foot of one, her head bowed as a silent prayer was made. Faith could only get them so far, she knew that now, but that wouldn’t stop her from asking the Maker to aid them on their quest.
The shadows flickered and she realized she was not alone.
Raising her head and turning, she spotted the Herald sitting in the corner on an empty barrel, fiddling with a trinket in his hands. He was staring owlishly at her, as if he hadn’t expected someone else to come here, or for someone else to catch him here. She must have been more tired—more distracted—than she had realized to have not noticed him when she entered the Chantry.
For a moment, she considered leaving. The Herald, for all the good he had done for them so far, was still an unknown with dangerous powers, potentially blessed by and brought to them by Andraste herself. A part of her wanted to back away, unworthy to be in the presence of someone like that. But—no. Blessings or no blessings, she had just as much right to be in the Chantry as him. So she rose from her knees and discreetly pulled her hand away from the concealed knife at her belt.
The Herald blinked, wide eyes not leaving her as his fingers tightened around his trinket. “Leliana,” he greeted with a nervous bite to the name. She didn’t need to be observant to know that he was still just as nervous around them as most were around him.
“Herald,” Leliana greeted.
His attention stayed on her as the silence settled back in between them. Like most of his kind, his eyes were large, colored a deep, vivid green, like a vibrant forest, that mixed perfectly with the brilliant red locks of hair that fell just past his ears in tussled—fluffy—curls. He looked older than the Hero of Ferelden had been, yet somehow his gaze felt younger, full of the wonder and fear of a child. He was in his early twenties, this much Leliana knew, while Elio had barely been twenty when they met, old enough to be married off, old enough to go to war, and still a child.
She shook her head at the thoughts. “I apologize if I disturbed you, I hadn’t expected anyone else to be here so late at night.”
“No,” the Herald coughed, looking away from her and at the candles, the books, at anything but her. “It’s fine, anyone’s allowed to come and go in here.” He was taller than the Hero had been, she noted. Elio had been the shortest in their group until Oghren joined. The Herald was taller—more at an average height for their race, she supposed—and just as slender as any other Dalish Hunter she’d seen—toned arms and legs, slender features, lithe.
How ironic, Leliana thought, the last time the world was in danger, it was an elf from the slums who rose above all to save them, fighting on even as the rest of them fell in the final battle, striking the Archdemon down and ending the Blight. Now, as the sky is left wounded, torn open into the Fade, their fate and salvation rests upon the shoulders of an elf yet again.
She settled into a seat of her own, not too far from the Herald, but not beside him either. “What brings you out here so late, anyway?” she found herself asking, and then knitted her brows together. “You’re supposed to be leaving for Val Royeaux at dawn, are you not? You should be resting.” It was going to take several weeks, even with horses and if they travelled along the Imperial Highway, to get there. Cassandra would have his head if he was exhausted when they began their journey.
The Herald looked at the trinket in his hands again—a Dalish necklace, Leliana finally saw, an amulet for one of their Gods. “Couldn’t sleep,” he murmured quietly, “Everything’s just been so….” Pausing, he shook his head. “Sleep just kept eluding me.”
She understood that feeling more than she cared to admit.
Humming, the Herald reached down with his free hand, and she took note of the mabari that had been sleeping beside him, the young one he’d rescued from the Hinterlands—Buddy, if she remembered correctly. The Herald absentmindedly ran his fingers through the dogs short fur and wrinkled skin, looking the part of someone being crushed under the weight of the world, and Leliana was once again struck with memory by the resemblance to her old friend.
Gently running his fingers up and down Garahel’s back, Elio stared at the fire in contemplative silence. The rest of their camp had long since gone to sleep, only he and Leliana remained awake to guard them for the first few hours of the night.
There were bags under his eyes, she had noticed. They were worsening each night, his face aging rapidly from the stress of all that they had faced—and all that they still had to fight. In the quiet of night, he no longer looked the same friendly, cheerful Warden she knew, this was instead a man who was carrying the world on his shoulders, a man whose knees were finally buckling under the weight.
No words were said as Leliana sat beside him. His attention remained fixed, and she looked to the fire as if she might see whatever he did in the crackling flames, and then she turned her gaze away, afraid of what she might see.
Hand still on his war hound, gaze still fixed to the crackling flames, Elio spoke after an eternity of silence. “Do you think we can win this?”
She had been taken aback by the question, not that it had been asked but that it had been the elf who had asked it.
Elio was always the one to assuage their worries of fate and defeat, the one who told them that they were going to win, no matter how terrible the odds were against them. He never doubted, never shied, and treated the future as if their victory over Loghain and the Archdemon was already carved into stone by the Maker.
She couldn’t answer him, and they returned to silence.
Looking back on it, it had been a humanizing moment. Up until then, Leliana had seen her friend as an undefeatable hero, blessed by the Maker himself to be their shield and their sword, a soldier who would never be defeated. To have him express his doubts to her, it meant that he was still mortal, like all of them, that he was human—generally speaking, of course.
She saw that same look of doubt and exhaustion on the Herald’s face, now.
At the time, Leliana hadn’t been able to help Elio, she didn’t have the words, she didn’t have the confidence, and to this day she still wondered how much things would have changed if she had been able to soothe his own fears the same as he did for all of theirs. She hadn’t been able to help Elio, but she could at least help the Herald of—she could help Cian.
“We are going to win this,” Leliana said, her voice firm in the quiet, dim space. She watched as green eyes lifted to meet hers, and she continued. “You’re not doing this alone, Cian. You have me and the others here to support you whenever you ask, you have the Inquisition forces ready to spring to action the moment they are needed—and more still join every day.”
She straightened her back as she spoke, her gaze not leaving his, locked on his wide, wonder filled eyes, “Us winning isn’t a question of ‘if’, it’s a matter of ‘when’. We’ll prove ourselves and gain the Chantry’s support, absolving you of the crimes they claimed, we’ll seal the Breach, and we will find who is responsible. You don’t have to feel like you’re doing this alone, you can share some of your burdens with us.”
Slowly, Cian lowered his head, “I—thank you,” he whispered, his shoulders sagging as he let out a deep breath. “I needed that, I didn’t realize how badly I needed that.”
Of course he hadn’t. Leliana smiled, nevertheless, as she watched the tension fade away from his face.
Cracking a smile, struck by an idea, Leliana leaned forward, “You know…? I was with the Hero of Ferelden when we rediscovered the Temple of Sacred Ashes,” she whispered, feeling her smile widen as she saw curiosity and awe dance across the elf’s face. “At the time, Haven belonged to a cult who believed Andraste was a dragon and worshipped it—we had to fight through so many drakes, dragonlings, and cultists to reach the temple, and the Warden even struck down a high dragon.”
Cian leaned forward in his seat; his mouth opened slightly. “Seriously?” he asked, tapping his fingers to his legs with anxious energy. “I thought it was some Chantry guy who found it, but you helped rediscover the temple?”
“We did, we needed the urn to save the Arl of Redcliffe,” Leliana agreed, her heart feeling feather-light in her chest at the memory of the adventure. “Would you like me to tell you the whole story? It was quite the experience.”
At Cian’s eager ‘yes’, she launched into retelling how Eamon had grown sick from Loghain’s poison, and the journey they took to locate Brother Genitivi and the Urn. It had been a while since had had been a storyteller, but she found that she fell back into the role naturally as she recounted each fight and twist that took them to the Frostback Mountains.