lovingvambrace | For pavus

For pavus_redemit Kirkwall

The taste of ash lies thick in the air. For once something manages to overpower the foundry stench and blacken the perpetual orange of Kirkwall's night sky. Rubble lies massed in the streets, flung from the highest point to almost the lowest. Insanity and sudden chaos in the wink of an eye, a fateful explosion that has Cullen still blinking back blue lines, negative light impressions burned onto retinas.

Knight-Commander Meredith has left the Champion with an ultimatum that she not surprisingly doesn't take, murder her companion and choose their side, or the mages will all face the consequences. Hawke has vowed to fight to the bitter end to protect the mages of the Circle from the Right. Cullen privately hopes that she'll keep that word whether he agrees with her sparing of the abomination or not. This is all moving too fast with blame falling in the wrong quarter. The right answer isn't more blood. Meredith is implacable with all of them drawn along in her wake of righteous fury.

Cullen doesn't stay silent, arguing about the Champion. Surely arrest will be enough. Kirkwall's nobility won't stand for one of their grudging own being murdered by the arm of the Chantry. It isn't their place, Viscount or no Viscount in office. To his surprise, he earns concession on that front.

Then there is no more room for talking. They come upon their first wave of demons and abominations slaughtering unfortunates. The night turns red and black, a mist of blood and ichor. Cullen bashes his way through wave after wave of evil torn straight through the Veil, called by violence and horror. His sword arm burns. His shield feels as though it gains twenty pounds of its own volition, all of that before they reach the Docks District.

He hears a sound up toward the boarded up Qunari compound, more fighting. He peels away from the main force following Meredith, promising to catch up shortly, and runs up the steep steps. Breathless at the top, he sees flashes of fire past the barrier. He throws his weight behind his shield and bashes it in enough to gain entrance. A lone figure stands in the long abandoned plaza battling demons with magic and not an abomination himself. Without further thought, Cullen charges into the fray. "Aid behind you!" he shouts. He doesn't want to be mistaken for another enemy in the fight.

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"I will take a closer look at it tomorrow, talk with some of the mages more familiar with warding than I am," he said with a small nod. "In the meantime perhaps you keep your Templars away from it. Mages are very good at resiting demons."

Mages were more careful with lyrium perhaps because they had seen what it could do to Templars. Dorian isn't as familiar with it as the mages he's come to know here but they always sound like the Templars are bound with lyrium. It's an odd thing to think.

"If they're having troubles with it and we're not, it seems easy enough to pass things on to us."

"We don't understand it well enough to know what kind of trouble anyone is having with it. Let's keep all but the senior enchanters clear, too." Better safe than sorry. He has already ordered his people to give it wide berth and had to punish three of them for breaking orders.

Maybe he should have a rotating guard set on the thing. He gives an involuntary shudder. "I wonder what that smell means." There's no real way to know. He hopes it's not some sort of rotting flesh wrapped up in the metal. If that were the case, surely he'd smell it, too?

He shakes his head abruptly. "Perhaps we should speak of something else. It's a dark subject." In addition to giving him the shivers, it makes him sad. "I don't think I've ever asked you what brought you to Kirkwall. Were you just passing through? What rum luck if that was the case."

"I agree with that and as much of the public as we can as well. I don't think the children should be playing around it," he says with a sigh. He could see people who aren't aware of the dangers sticking their fingers in it.

He tilts his head at the little shudder that doesn't go unnoticed. "Nothing good. Lyrium shouldn't change scents."

"I was just passing through," he says with a small shrug. "Unfortunately, I didn't have the gold to move on and was stuck here."

"Agreed. They seem scared of it for now. It won't be too long before familiarity brings curiosity. The idea of children being corrupted is completely unacceptable." Perhaps they could construct some sort of barrier around it. It seemed fused to the flagstone, so there was no hope of having it removed, no matter how much he wanted to. It was only part of what was still wrong with the Gallows courtyard. The remains of ruined bronze statues also littered shattered stone. Any hope they had of moving such heavy things lay in contact with the dwarves, and Cullen had already decided they were best put to work in the city where the hazards of unstable walls and foundations threatened safety rather than a sense of aesthetics or unpleasant memory.

He made a small moue of distaste for the other man's sheer bad timing. "I hate that your misfortune is our gain. I'm hoping that before you're ready to move on we can do something for you that will leave you with more than nightmares of your time here. Such a thing to take home and share with friends. Ah, yes, Kirkwall, a stinking pit of demonic incursion and ignorant southerners without the good sense not to make it worse."

"Would a wall around it be too much? An iron vault?" he muses, mostly as a joke but honestly the idea has some merit. If the statue isn't going anywhere and they can't ward it with magic a wall might be their only option left.

"You'd be surprised by how ignorant Tevinter can be," he says with a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. Demons aren't just a problem of the south. Blood magic is not just the last resort of trapped southern mages. "I won't be going home straight away, though. I think I will head on to Denerim. Perhaps have an audience with the King."

"When we can afford it, probably not." He can see it happening eventually, making it a column, a statue plinth surrounding the real statue, monument to the fallen. Something, anything other than what sits exposed, a nightmare given form.

It's somewhat surprising to hear him critical of his homeland when he has seemed defensive at other times. His esteem raises in Cullen's eyes. He appreciates practicality and a willingness to face and speak truths, especially difficult ones. His hazel eyes light with amusement, although he's controlled enough not to laugh. "You don't want much, do you? Good luck catching him at home. I believe it's the queen who tends the home fires while her husband wanders." It could sound disparaging of Anora, he realizes, when nothing is further from the truth. She's the shrewd steady hand on the reins, Alistair by some accounts a perpetual child who would rather keep adventuring than shoulder the responsibility of a kingdom. If it works for them and Ferelden, who is he to criticize?

"I hope you like dogs." More amusement. More than any other complaint he ever hears of Ferelden, it's the smell and the noise. Mud, dog shit and wet dog, and constant barking.

"Perhaps get some noble to give up the money in an attempt to make themselves seem better than they are." Nobles like to do that. Dorian's very familiar with the things nobles will do to make themselves seem better.

"King, Queen, whoever is willing to see the noble son of House Pavus. What else is there to do in Denerim but brothels and taverns?" His question is somewhat genuine. He doesn't know the details of Ferelden's capitol besides that it is the capitol. No one in Tevinter cared.

He makes a face at the question. "I've not spent a lot of time around dogs. I had a pet baboon for awhile until my mother made me get rid of him. Victus insulted an important guest."

"That is an idea." Bran might be the better one for drumming up such funds and guilting the nobility into dipping into their pockets, if only Cullen can come up with a reason that would suit the irascible seneschal. He'll think of something.

He laughs and shakes his head. "Oh, how could they possibly turn you down with that attitude? Denerim is... No. I'd hate to spoil the surprise." He can't help but to wonder how he'll take it when he arrives. Cullen is Fereldan and would still be hard put to describe the capitol to someone unused to the landscape and their culture.

"A baboon? Really?" A few of the years drop away in an instant. He has heard of exotic animals in Tevinter and even seen a few with a traveling menagerie. Never one of those. "How did it give insult?"

"I know nobility almost as well as I know magic. Magic is a bit more predictable." Dorian would be happy to talk to Kirkwall's nobility on behalf of Cullen but he doubted anyone in the South wanted to hear what the Tevinter Magister had to say.

"Oh, well, now I have to go with that ringing endorsement." He could head off to Denerim and then perhaps to the dwarven city. He had heard it was a beautiful city. They would be welcoming at least.

"He bit another Magister on the leg," he explains with a fond smile. "Personally, I thought it was fine. The man was an asshole but he was important to my father's political career. So, the baboon had to go and the man got a formal apology from me."

He chuffs an amused sound. "You can say that again. I'm afraid I'm not the best choice for diplomacy. I'd rather deal with the magic." He's trained for that, after all.

He tries to imagine what Queen Anora would make of a Tevinter noble showing up at the portcullis expecting an audience. To be a fly on the wall. The amusement lingers. It's the most cheerful he has looked in weeks.

His smile widens. "Animals are often better judges of character than people. A shame he was banished. I'd love to see a baboon one day. The drawings are so fierce."

He has nothing so exotic in his background other than the golem. "In the village where I grew up, there was a huge, frozen stone golem. Birds loved it. The last I heard the Hero of Ferelden somehow awakened it and traveled with it for a time."

"We both would." While he misses many things about his home, Dorian doesn't really miss the politics and backstabbing. He's more free than he's ever been. It's fantastic.

Dorian doesn't truly expect an audience with the Queen or the King. It might be nice if they were willing to listen to him but he has no real power here, not like in Tevinter. Denerim will be a fun distraction at best.

"They are but they're also intelligent animals. You can teach them like a small child, almost." He has fond memories of teaching his pet numbers and colors. Those were happier days.

"A working golem outside the Imperium?" His eyebrows go up in surprise. "That's quite impressive. They guard Minrathous."

"Mabari are like that, if children could rip out throats and disembowel horses." He shakes his head. It's such an unusual experience to speak to an animal and see genuine understanding behind the alien eyes. It has him even more curious about these baboons than before. "You know, they say the breed originated in Tevinter. I wonder if it's true." How much about the dogs is truth and how much legend? There's no real way to know these days.

He nods, as ready to warm to the topic of the golem as to pets. "Mind you, I've only heard the information at a distance. The golem was functional when the mage who owned it acquired it. Wilhelm, his name was. My parents have recollection of it moving about when they were much younger. It was deactivated by the time I was born. They say it killed Wilhelm. Or rather, he was found dead at its feet with it frozen in place."

He leans back and drums lightly on his desk. "When I was a little boy, my siblings and I would dare one another to run up and touch it. Or we'd pretend we were fighting it. It was shocking to hear Solona managed to wake the blasted thing up. I'm just glad it didn't kill her, too. There's no telling where it is now or what it's up to. They say it's sentient, if you can believe that."

"From what I've read of Tevinter history the ancestor of the mabari did originate from a Tevinter breed called the molossus used to fight lions and other dangerous animals," he explained, his eyes lighting up because he adores talking about history. "The molossus ended up in the hands of Ferelden barbarians and through time and breeding became the modern day mabari."

Modern Thedas owed a great deal to ancient Tevinter. Dorian could spend hours talking about the Tevinter contribution to all modern societies. They would be here all night if Cullen let him talk.

"Golems don't go inert, they don't die," he says with a laugh, "They have a spirit bound to the shape and spirits do not die. Think of it like sleep. With the right application of magic they pop back to life. I imagine your Hero found the right magic."

"Fighting lions. I could easily see it." There's almost nothing that can stand against a trained onslaught of a pack of war dogs. He's grateful that the few he has ever had to fight were feral and not coordinated by human trainers or Ash Warriors.

He shudders visibly. "It's awful to think of that thing just...asleep all that time, or worse yet awake and frozen. How it must have hated us all if that's the case. They put costumes on it for festivals. My brother liked it. I always thought it a ghastly thing. She must have. I haven't been back to the village since I left for my training. It's hard to imagine the town square empty." He doesn't even know if they ever rebuilt or if the village stayed empty after the Blight. The thought pricks him with guilt.

"Interesting world we live in, isn't it? No shortage of wonders and horrors." He reaches up to rub at the bridge of his nose with steepled hands and pulls them slowly down and off the end of it. "What time is it? Do you have any idea?"

"They usually do better than the slaves tossed to them in the ring." Dorian said with a hint of distaste. It was one thing to make trained warriors and mages fight but executing criminals and run away slaves by feeding them to lions and other beasts never sat well with him.

He shrugs a shoulder. "It's possible they dream, they are Fade spirits. Nothing wrong with them going between the golem and the Fade. I never studied it in detail. I was more interested in death." A chilling but true statement. Necromancy was a fascinating field. It required much more skill than throwing balls of fire around.

Dorian glances out the window to see where the sun has gone. "Late, I'd imagine. Perhaps we should both consider sleep."

His expression of distaste speaks volumes. Of all the things that can be said of southern customs in comparison to the north, he can think of no sanctioned instances where people are tossed to animals to be torn to bits. He shakes his head to rid himself of the mental image.

"What's so interesting about death?" It's not phrased in the most diplomatic way, but his interest is sincere enough. To him death is an ugly, sometimes necessary business. He has seen plenty die at the end of his sword or bashed by his shield. He has witnessed others go in far more horrific or ignominious ways. The thought of studying it is foreign, to say the least.

He glances over his shoulder at the dark rectangle of window. It's not a bad idea, sleep, but it will also mean the end to a conversation he is finding more interesting than he expected. "Perhaps in a bit," he says.

"It's not the death itself but what it does to the Fade. You see, when souls move on the Fade is weakened and a talented mage can sense the Fade spirits that are drawn to that feeling," Dorian sits forward in his chair, his hands moving as he talked. "A Necromancer such as myself can draw on those spirits to terrify enemies minds or even take control of their corpses for awhile."

It might seem creepy to someone that Dorian would talk so openly and so passionately about death and death magic but he adores the mental challenge around it. The skill it takes makes him feel superior and he is.

"Death leaves an energy behind," he continues, "When there's enough of it the dead can linger like memories. It's why you find so many walking dead in places of mass death like battlefields or ruins. It's also why you might feel unease. The Veil is thin and dangerous."

Cullen knows enough of the Fade and how it works to be able to follow along. One isn't a templar for this long without exposure to some of the theories and the trappings. His brow furrows as he listens closely.

"But what led you to such a field of interest initially? It seems...well, pardon me for saying it, but it seems rather morbid. Was it a natural inclination?" He knows such is so for some mages, why some take to ice and not fire and so on.

Perhaps it's different in Tevinter.

His smile is sharp like a knife. "The challenge."

Mages in Tevinter saw necromancy as the art of Nevarrans and below them in many ways. Those who did study it usually delved in to blood magic sooner or later but Dorian did none of those things. He refined the school, made it respectable until his sudden departure.

"Necromancy is a very careful art because you can summon demons without meaning to or get overwhelmed and loose control," he explains with his smile easing slightly in to something more genuine. "I like magic more when there's something interesting to keep me coming back for more."

"I don't know if I find that arrogant or admirable, or some combination of both." Cullen waves a hand. His judgment hardly matters. This isn't Teviter, and Dorian isn't his charge.

He stands at last and stretches enough that his plate clanks in places where stretched past its natural overlap. "What I do know is that if I don't get some sleep soon, I won't be keeping up with any conversation consisting of more than three syllables at a time.

"You were right to bring this news to my attention. It's something we'll stay on top of and hope a lead breaks our way before this cult infiltrates Kirkwall. There are enough matches to our tinder as it is." He gestures toward the door. "I'll walk you until we split." His quarters are in a different part of the Gallows than Dorian's. They'll share a path down and up a few flights of stairs before the corridor finally branches.

"It's earned arrogance. I've worked hard to be this good," he says with pride, puffing out his chest a little. He's handsome and he knows it but his mind, his brilliance he earned that himself through hard work.

Dorian feels like he could stay up for a few more hours easily but he gets to his feet with Cullen and falls in to step with him. Walking shoulder to shoulder with a Templar. What a strange path his life has ended up on.

"I'll make sure to pass you any news I hear from my contacts," he says as he starts out of the office. "For now, sleep is the better option. It wouldn't do us much good to fight a cult with our eyes dropping."

Cullen likes him well enough by now to find himself hoping he doesn't ever have reason to regret that arrogance. He'd hate to see this man consumed by a demon or worse. He falls into step with him easily, pausing only long enough to shut and lock his office door for the night.

"Thank you. Agreed. I keep telling myself one day I'll see the proper side of a sleep schedule again." As much as he ever does with the nightmares. He's grateful in a strange way that he's so used to functioning at a deficit, or these past weeks might have killed him.

"The quarters you have are adequate? I've been meaning to ask and keep getting sidetracked." Their footsteps echo on the stone. The carpet runner was taken up some time back, bloodstained and scorch-marked beyond cleaning. Carpet and draperies are so far beneath concern at the moment he hasn't looked into getting them replaced. When some in Kirkwall are doing without food and basic shelter in their crisis, how could he ever?

"I have what everyone else has," he says, hoping not to give away how much he misses goose down mattresses and silk sheets. "It's fine. I don't expect luxuries when a city is burning. I'm not that much of a Tevinter bastard."

There are parts of Kirkwall that will take years to recover. He's seen Low Town and he's seen Dark Town. It will be a miracle if those places ever get their feet under them.

"Don't worry about me. If there is a problem, you'll hear about it. I haven't had any trouble speaking my mind, have I?" He looks over at his companion with a charming smile. It's his best one.

"No, that is one respect in which you seem to have yourself well in hand, Messere." He chuckles and lightly nudges him with his pauldron. He lets out a longer breath and settles back into a normal gait.

"I'm glad of it. The others see you speaking up, and at least a few of them are getting bolder. It may be a few years before they truly accept I'm no Meredith." He's not sure which is more depressing, the thought that he may have those few years to wait out here or that he might not. Not that he's eager to put an end to things or would step stoically into the fire without protest, but ultimately, he'd understand it. He has known for a long time what he actually signed up for when he took those vows, even if he didn't at the time.

"I have faith that they will in time, and you'll help them come to it." He nods once, a firm bob of chin. They exit the main corridor and start down the steps leading into the wide entrance from the portcullis. He turns them toward the wider stairs up.

"They should speak up. Silence gets them nothing and there are abusers who take advantage of it." A little anger creeps in to his voice. Against his will he's gotten close to these mages and the stories they told outrage him.

"I can assure you many of the mages that are here do not see you like her," he says quietly but with honesty. "They speak of her with the same fear they speak of demons and possession. They're cautious about you but they aren't truly afraid."

There's barely anyone out at this hour. They've certainly stay up past anyone else but the patrolling guards.

For pavus_redemit Kirkwall

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