Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

Strangers with Cookies	By : pirouette Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 9211 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age/Bioware, its characters, or any content used for the basis of this fanfiction. I am making no money from this work.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Title: Strangers with Cookies
Chapter Six: �I thought that their warriors, at
least, would be larger.�
Rating: T

Word Count: 2, 884

Characters: f!Mahariel, Sten, Leliana, Alistair, Wynne, Morrigan,
Zevran, and Asala.

Summary: Sten dislikes Orzammar. And fire traps. And the way
the assassin has taken to looking at Adhara.

Dwarves are such a maddening race. Tiny, needlessly proud,
and determined to cling to a partially lost and very broken system that slates
people to occupations based upon family, not skill. No wonder the city
is in chaos. He is not sure exactly how it became their responsibility to bring
order, though he supposes that it should not surprise him.
Less than an hour after gaining access to the city, Adhara
enters some sort of competition on behalf of an important dwarf, and he and the
rest sit on the sidelines and watch her take down combatant after combatant.
Now that he is not on the receiving end, he finds himself capable of enjoying
the way she fights. She appears especially fond of smashing her foes in the
face with her shield. Amusingly, this often sends the dwarves flying onto their
backs. Her style is similar to Alistair's, but she is far less graceless and
uses momentum much more effectively. Fascinating, really, the way that she moves.
And then they are sent to kill dwarves on the behalf of
other dwarves. They are told that these dwarves are outcasts, animals, but it
quickly becomes clear that many of them are better fighters than the so-called
warriors that Adhara had just fought. This time they battle them together, but Sten
continues to watch her fight, and almost gets himself killed before he realizes
that he is distracting himself. It doesn't help that the dwarves are so short;
he has to stoop to swing at them, and soon his back and legs are shrieking in
agony. And still they continue on, and even more dwarves oppose them. How have
they not taken over the city? Clearly they lack a leader with vision.
A leader without vision, yes, but she does seem to be
possessed of an unhealthy love of fire traps. The closer they become to her,
the more they encounter, and he soon learns that neither Adhara nor Zevran have
any skill at discovering them. She walks right into two of them before outdoing
herself and igniting one directly beside a stack of flammable barrels.
�Kadan!� he shouts, catching her to the chest as she is
knocked backward by the first blast. He grabs her in his arms and spins her
against the wall nearby, curling around her and taking the brunt of the next
explosion with his back.
He kneels there, stunned and partially deafened, waiting for
the worst of the flames to subside behind them. Her arms are about his neck,
holding him low and shielding his exposed skin from shrapnel; she is no
stranger to these sorts of blasts after their experience at the Circle Tower.��
The heat is uncomfortable, and the air stale, dry, and
thick, and his back is angry at the angle after swinging at so many little
rogues. But what bothers him the most is that when he opens his eyes he finds
himself pressed into the pale skin where her neck and shoulder meet. He inhales
in surprise and floods his nerves with her scent. Within seconds his eyes have
dilated; everything is too bright, and his pulse races and becomes the only
thing his abused ears can hear.
He can't pull away: the fire rages behind them still. So he
closes his eyes, relaxes into her neck, and inhales her again.
The light and heat begins to fade on his fifth breath. ��en?
Sten,� she says, taking his face in her hands and staring at his eyes. �Are�
alright?�
Vashedan. Her face is too close to his. He shakes his head
and attempts to clear the ringing from his ears, but his pulse is still racing.
�Just stunned.�
�Wynne,� she says, and he feels himself being cast upon. His
ears stop ringing, and he is able to pull away from Adhara and rise to his
feet.
�Let us move on. I would prefer to be above ground once
more.�
Sadly, he speaks too soon. They plan to leave Orzammar after
the leader of the dwarf gang is dead, but not to return to the surface.
Instead, Adhara informs them, they will proceed further underground, into the
remains of the dwarven empire. For Sten, whose back is already aching from
stooping and ducking and swinging at dwarves, this is not welcome news. When he
mentions his reluctance to venture into caves created by people the size of his
legs, Alistair quickly offers to go in his stead.
�No. That's stupid,� Adhara retorts. �You and I are the only
Grey Wardens in the country. We can't both be endangering ourselves at the same
time!�
�But I never get to fight��
�No,� she insists. �You put me in charge, so deal with it. I
need you above-ground in case the archdemon moves.�
�I�but we don't��
Her eyes narrow. �Enough. The qunari comes with me.�
Sten looks to Alistair, who gives a defeated shrug.
The entire party travels with them through the city to say
goodbye and receive final instructions. Sten continues fuming until a short,
smelly, and drunken dwarf practically accosts Adhara and insists that he be
taken with them. To his surprise, she agrees, and sends Wynne back to the
surface with Alistair.
When they reach the entrance to the Deep Roads, the dwarves
guarding it stare up at Sten in horror. �I'm not sure we made the mines tall
enough for humans,� says the leader. �Let alone you.�
�Well, he can always crawl,� Alistair mutters.
�Qunari do not crawl,� Sten replies.
But in fact, qunari do crawl. When the alternative is
remaining trapped behind a minor rockslide, qunari crawl quite well. Not so
well as Adhara, who moves in the front as though she has been a four-legged
creature all of her life, but better than Zevran, who is too busy staring at Adhara
to watch where he is going. The dwarf, naturally, does not even need to kneel.
�Heh. Your giant makes a bronto look graceful,� he slurs at Adhara, and she
scowls.
Once they make it through the mines, travel becomes easier.
Oddly, the roads underneath the city appear to be needlessly large, especially
when considered that these paths were excavated. When Sten ponders this,
he is told that it was for the golems and war machines were once to be used
against the darkspawn.
�'Course, then we lost the golems,� the dwarf adds, �and now
that we're not trying to retake old thaigs, there's no need for the machines,
either, so some places might be a little worse for wear.�
To put it lightly. In the days that follow, what Sten sees
gives necessary context to the dwarves of Orzammar: their race is dying. The
elves lost their old ways during their enslavement, and if the dwarves are any
indication, that likely ensured their survival. Better to forget it all than
cling to what is half-remembered at the expense of progress. Still, he decides
not to share this observation with Adhara.
She pushes hard, and they cover great distances and slay
countless darkspawn together. One night, he stands beside her over a great
trench, staring down at a sea of darkspawn as the call of the beast that has
kept the Grey Wardens awake almost every night echoes through the cavern, and
suddenly understands why she has acted the way that she has. Not even the qunari
force could counter this alone. His kind lacked the numbers. And if half of the
human army had already been decimated....
Adhara was right when she called the Blight a nightmare.
It had not been flippancy, as he had assumed at the time. This fact becomes
more obvious the further they travel, and the more they see of what the
darkspawn are capable of doing to those that they capture.
Abominable. Atrocious, awful, abhorrent.
In many ways, exiting the Deep Roads feels like stepping
outside of his cage in Lothering. When they finally leave the city, and he
feels wind and hears the creaking of tree branches under snow, he realizes that
he has almost forgotten these sounds. The others appear to come to similar
realizations. None are as stunned as the dwarf, however, though he refuses to
change his mind about accompanying them on the rest of their quest.
Adhara leads them on a hard trek downhill, keeping them
walking until well after their usual time to put as much space between them and
the city as possible. Only when Alistair stumbles and nearly concusses himself
on a rock does she pause and glance back at them.
�That's enough for tonight,� she relents, helping Alistair
to his feet, and everyone begins setting up camp. The priestess and Templar see
to the fire and dinner while the witch and assassin set up tents for those who
tend to use them. The overbearing mage busies herself with making everyone's
tasks more difficult, and Sten finds himself seeking refuge with Adhara, who is
sorting through their gear.
�I hear water,� she says to no one in particular. �We can
all have baths tonight.�
�I assume we will be appropriately segregated by gender for
once?�
She laughs. �Yes. I'm not about to be naked and in water
near Zevran again.�
�A pity,� calls the assassin. �The moonlight would do your
wet and naked body credit.�
�Does he rehearse those?� Sten mutters, and Adhara laughs
again.
�I'm not going to let him ruin this bath. I can't
wait to get the last of the darkspawn and the Deep Roads off my skin.�
Sten feels at his hair, which is matted with cave dust and
old darkspawn blood. He is not relishing taking the braids out, but it will not
come clean otherwise; the blood has seeped too far into it all. After dinner,
he sits before the fire and begins the slow process of loosening his hair while
Leliana sings for them. He has two rows unwound when he feels a second set of
fingers above his left ear: Adhara is standing behind him.
�I am capable of doing this without help.�
�And I'm too impatient to wait and see what you look like
with it down,� she retorts. �I had no idea that it was so long!�
He humors her, which turns out to be a mistake: when he
returns from bathing, she insists on re-braiding it for him. Her fingers run
deftly through his hair, gently but firmly tying it all back again. When she
leans over to measure and begin a new row, her hair falls forward and envelops
them both with the smell of clean elf. She is warm against his back, and he finds
himself hoping that she will crawl into his lap during their watch shift. The
Deep Roads hadn't been cold enough to make such a thing necessary, and Sten was
moderately infuriated to discover when she stopped that he had become accustomed
to it. What is even more maddening now is how much time he spends wishing that
she would sit in his lap anyway. He has been battling this and similar
nonsensical thoughts ever since the fire trap. The oddest part is that when she
is touching him, he doesn't think about her: his mind continues to function
normally. But when she isn't close enough to feel or smell, he fixates.
The military branches of qunari society are highly
segregated by gender. Sten rarely saw women in Seheron except in shops or on
the streets as they performed their tasks; before coming to Ferelden, he had
never gotten to know one because they were not part of his life. Other qunari
had children and dealt with women on a daily basis. The tamassran who assigned
him his role in life and the Qun which gave it purpose dictated that he never
needed to, and now he is beginning to see why.
Perhaps women weren't soldiers because they lacked the
proper traits. Perhaps it was because they were distracting. Long ago,
the ashkaari must have realized that it was safer to keep the fighting force
male. It is even possible that some qunari women have the skills necessary to
fight, but likely that men are more suited to it overall. And so the women do
not fight, because when away from their intoxicating smell, the men won't mourn
their loss.
Now that he is attuned to it, Adhara does not even need to
be touching him for her scent to linger like perfume after she leaves. On
countless occasions now, he has found himself lamenting that Fereldans have not
yet developed an appreciation for incense. Eventually the smell of darkspawn in
the Deep Roads had deadened it, but now she is clean, and his eyes keep
drifting shut heavily.
It is an unfortunate mercy when she finishes and everyone
separates for watch or bed. Of course she sits watch with him, as is their
habit, but she is glad to be outdoors once more and so perches in the lower
branches of the tree he is resting against rather than in his lap.
Sten ponders his complex reaction to this choice until Adhara
breaks the silence with a sigh of relief. �I thought that I'd go insane if I
saw one more rock arch or vaulted ceiling, you know?�
�Yes,� he agrees.
�Or beards,� she adds.
�Is that why the dwarf you brought along as a souvenir lacks
one?�
She flings a small branch at his head. �Leave Oghren alone.
He's fine when he's downwind and not talking.�
�I have never witnessed those events occur concurrently. Do
dwarves smell so strongly to find one another in the dark, I wonder?�
�You'd better be more polite to my people when we get there,"
she laughs. "Dwarves will challenge you to a duel for an offense. A Dalish
will simply shoot you through the throat.�
�I have no intention of being rude to your clan.�

�Well, they won't be my clan. Other Dalish.� He hears rustling; she is
kicking her legs. �I'm glad we'll be seeing a different clan, actually.�
�Why?�
�If I met mine again, I don't know that I could leave.� He
thinks back to their earlier conversation, and glances up at her face. Her eyes
are downcast, and her voice when she continues has grown softer. �I didn't want
to in the first place, and I miss them. Do you find Ferelden as strange as I
do?�
�To put it lightly,� he frowns. �But I was honored to serve
the arishok.�
�I didn't leave for the right reasons,� she admits. �I was
dying, and becoming a Warden was what would save me. Duncan said he didn't
recruit me out of mercy, but the truth is neither of us were happy about it.�
Neither of them speak much after that. Adhara leaves the
tree, but rather than resting in his lap, sits beside him and performs minor
repairs to her helmet until it comes time to wake Alistair and Leliana for
their turn.�
When Sten rises the next morning, the assassin is watching Adhara
stretch. He tolerates it while he is folding his bedroll, but as soon as the
elf begins to actually leer, he rises to loom behind him. �Is that
strictly necessary?�
�Am I not allowed to appreciate the beauty of the morning?�
�No.�
�And why not?� Zevran raises an eyebrow. �Don't tell me
you're immune to her charms.�
�I do my best not to think of them.�
�Ah, you are missing out, my friend.� Zevran turns his head
to gaze at her once more and begins ticking off features on his fingers. �Her
hips, well-rounded buttocks, and the way the chainmail hugs at her breas��
�You are not my friend, elf. Go help the witch raze her
tent.�
Zevran glowers up at him, but obeys. Once he is out of
earshot, Sten marches toward Adhara and scowls when she bids him good morning.
�We should purchase new armor for you.�
She glances down at the chainmail curiously, though appears
as oblivious about the way it hugs as Sten had been before Zevran pointed it
out. �Why, what's wrong with this?�
If they had met in that armor, he never would have mistaken
her for a man. No, she needs something heavier. Perhaps plate. �You need armor
which will withstand your tendency to activate fire traps.�
Adhara sighs. �Fine. We'll get me new armor. Happy?�
�No.�
�Why am I not surprised?� When she smiles, he decides that
an answer is unnecessary.
As they walk, he busies his mind with his normal training
exercises, but that proves dangerous, as well, because the first object to
catch his eye is a stone.
Stone. Sword, slice. Shudder. Skin, scent, smell,
soft. Parshaara. Another thing that he does not need to think about. Tree,
then. Talk, tongue. Teeth, taste, tender, tiny, tight.
Shok ebasit hissra. Today, struggle does not feel
like an illusion. And when the breeze picks up, whipping Adhara's ponytail
behind her, Sten realizes that it is only going to get worse.
- 5
- 6
- 7
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Strangers with Cookies