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In good times and in bad	By : kruemel Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 14749 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Dragon Age and the characters of the game do not belong to me. This is a no profit fanfiction

Chapter List
- 5
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- 7
The beast soars into the sky. I am dangling from its claw, my arm is killing me, all my friends and brothers are dead, Rori is probably dead - and all I can think about is Vaughan Kendells and the cat.
When I was a kid, Arl Eamonn would travel to Denerim each year and we would visit the estate of Arl Kendells. His son Vaughan is a prick. He liked to hurt animals back then and I doubt he has changed much. He's probably worse now. Anyway, one summer, I was eight then, Vaughan caught this old cat that was living in the kitchen. And then he went and threw her off the highest tower. Her crashed body lay in the grass and her dead eyes stared at the boys gathering around her. Vaughan just left her lying there. I used to sleep with the dogs there, so nobody noticed when I crept out of bed at night to fetch the cat and bury her in the herb garden. I just couldn't let her lie there.
And now the crumbled body of that cat is haunting me. I am terrified the bird will drop me. At the same time I wonder why I care? I got nothing to lose. Nowhere to go. Nothing to look forward to. So what would be so horrible about falling out of the sky and crashing into the ground?
I think I must have been drifting in and out of consciousness. And I for sure have weird dreams. As far as I know the bird could be a dream, too. Maybe this is the Fade? Who am I to know? The bird must have set me down. I cannot remember when that happened. The next time I open my eyes the face of the half-naked witch is looming over me.
"Hmph, he's alive. Fortune favours fools," she says. Her voice sounds like she is miles away. There's another voice in the background but I can't hear what it says. The witch, Morrigan, I recall her name, reaches out to touch me. I don't want her hands on me. I don't want her anywhere close. I try to get up and away from her and my vision becomes blurry.
"Silly ass, keep still. You are going to mess up the healing!"
I drift back into an uneasy sleep. I shift uncomfortably. My arm hurts. My head hurts. There's probably no single spot of my body that does not hurt. Worst my heart. Duncan is in my dreams. And Gregor. Sawyer. Liam and the others. Rori is there, too. She lies in a puddle of her own blood. Her eyes have rolled back in their sockets.
I wish the dreams would stop. I wish everything would just stop. Actually I wish for oblivion. They say that there are demons who can manipulate your mind into believing in an illusion. I am a Grey Warden and an almost templar. Demons are ranking very high on my to-kill-list. But right now if one came to me and went: "Alistair, I can give back to you all those you lost. It will only be an illusion but it will feel real to you. In return I get to absorb your life until you die." Well, I think if that happened I'd be like: "Deal!"
But it doesn't happen. Instead when I wake there's Morrigan's boobs hovering right in front of my eyes. Maker have mercy! I want to go back to my nightmares full of darkspawn!
I sit up so abruptly that I bang my skull against hers and send her tumbling back. "Take your hands off me, witch!"
"Ow, you stupid idiot! I really don't get why mother insisted on rescuing you." She rubs her forehead and pulls a face.
"Your mother rescued me?"
"Of course she did. Who do you think that huge bird was that carried you and your friend away from the tower? The archdemon?"
As far as I am considered it could have been the archdemon. Two wild witches are very close to my idea of how evil the archdemon is. "My friend? You mean Rori?"
"Yeah, the redhead and her stinking dog."
"But Rori is dead. I saw her die!" I can't believe what Morrigan says. I don't feel like I can endure any more hope that then fails, casting me deeper into the darkness that surrounds me.
"You saw her fall. But you didn't see her die. She's quite fine. If she will be as well once she figures she is still loaded with you, I doubt it."
"Where is she then?"
"Resting of course. The things people do while recovering."
I cannot stay in bed any longer. I have to get out of here, away from Morrigan. I need fresh air. I stand so abruptly that I almost faint. My vision goes black and when I can see clearly again, Morrigan is there with her arms crossed in front of her chest.
"I'd put something on if I were you."
Only then do I notice that I am completely naked. I flush from head to toe, quickly cover my most private parts with my hands and glare at Morrigan. She seems bored. "What did you do? Where are my clothes? Why did you undress me?" I squeak. That much for sounding manly and strong.
Morrigan rolls her eyes and sighs. "You were covered in blood and your arm was broken. All we did was heal your injury and clean you and your clothes. I still don't know why we did it. One of mother's secret plans, I guess. It has to be something big or she wouldn't waste her time with someone like you." Morrigan points to a chair. "Your clothes, armour and weapons. Once you are dressed, mother wants to talk to you."
I hurry to cover myself properly, then flee from the hut. There's no place far enough from Morrigan I can reach at the moment. So standing in front of her hut will have to do. Her mother is sitting on a wooden bench, reading. She puts the book down when I stumble out of the hut.
"Ah, so at least there's one of the Grey Wardens left. With a bit of luck the second one will join us soon."
"Where am I? What am I doing here?" I feel panic rise inside of me. I am alone in the Kocari Wilds with two apostates. This is like the worst nightmare of any templar.
"If I didn't know you are the dopey one of the two of you I'd be worried now," the old hag says, completely unimpressed by the fact that my hand rests at the hilt of my sword. "Relax, young man, you will see your friend again soon and then we can discuss the matter at hand seriously."
That said she picks up her book again and goes on reading. I blink and stare, wondering if I should force a conversation. But actually I am glad nobody wants to talk to me. Not when there's so much I have to think about. So much to digest.
I stand there and stare. My eyes don't focus on anything specific. It's as if I watch right through what surrounds me. The pain inside my heart is agony. I cannot believe Loghain didn't show up at the battlefield. I want it to be a mistake, maybe he was detected and attacked by the horde. Maybe something else happened. Something that would perfectly explain why the army that was meant to help Cailan and his men abandoned them. In my heart I know there is no excuse. I know this was murder. Loghain murdered his king, and even more important, he murdered Duncan and all the other Grey Wardens. He took away what got closest to a family for me. He took away my home.
"See, here's your fellow Grey Warden. You worry too much, young man," the old hag says behind me, pulling me out of my gloomy thoughts. I turn tomeet a very pale Rori. Her knees are wobbly and she looks as confused as I feel, but there she is. Her face lights with a shy smile when she sees me.
"You... you are alive." Of course she is, stupid. She's standing there right in front of you, isn't she? "I thought you were dead for sure."
"Nah, I hurt too much for being dead," Rori replies, sounding as surprised as I feel that we both are here. "I'm glad I'm not... dead I mean. And even more glad that you are not... dead... thanks to Morrigan and her mother. Boy, would you have ever thought we'd get rescued by two witches? Somewhat funny, isn't it?" She laughs. It sounds rather choked. "That's the third time I almost die within no more than a week," Rori adds sulkingly. "It's getting rather old."
"Oh, this doesn't seem real. If it weren't for Morrigan's mother, we'd be dead on top of that tower." It actually sounds so unreal, I have to repeat it to myself.
"Do not talk about me as if I am not present, lad," the old hag reminds me of her presence.
Oh. Ouch. Being rude to a witch doesn't seem a good idea, does it? "I... I didn't mean... but what do we call you? You... you never told us your name."
"Names are pretty but useless. The Chasind folk call me Flemeth. I suppose that will do," the old woman remarks as if this was of no importance at all.
"Aunt Agatha told me stories about Flemeth when I was a child," Rori murmurs, taking one step closer to me. Then another. "Creepy stories. You're not that Flemeth, are you? You don't look that scary."
I cast a startled glance first at Flemeth, then at Rori. My fellow Grey Warden answers with a shrug. She's as confused and wary as I am. "The Flemeth? From the legends? Daveth was right, you're the Witch of the Wilds, aren't you?"
"And what does that mean? I know a bit of magic and it has served you both well, has it not?" Ah, yeah, well, it has. Obvously. Just what price will we have to pay?
"So, why did you save us?" Rori asks curiously, probably wondering the same. "It had to be quite an effort to get us from the top of that tower, so certainly you did not do this to turn us into frogs. What does the Witch of the Wilds care for two junior Grey Wardens?"
That is a very good question. If I wasn't so busy mourning my loss, I'd have grabbed Rori's hand and ran for the hills with her by now. My templar instincts tell me not to trust Flemeth no matter what she did for us.
"Well, we cannot have all the Grey Wardens dying at once, can we? Someone has to deal with these darkspawn. It has always been the Grey Wardens' duty to unite the lands against the Blight - or did that change when I wasn't looking?"
"It changed when most of them were slaughtered! I've only become a Grey Warden yesterday. I know absolutely nothing about what is happening here!" Rori points out. "How can we possibly deal with all this all alone?"
"Hey, don't look at me," I mumble. "I am as clueless as you are."
"If you think small numbers make you helpless you are already defeated." Flemeth snorts.
"Well, you cannot deny that some backing wouldn't hurt," Rori retorts. "The whole you against the rest of the world stuff sounds great in adventure stories. It doesn't work in real life. We will need support. Lots of support if we want to have a chance at all." Rori runs her fingers through her short red hair tiredly. "Seems we have to figure this out then. We cannot just do nothing at all."
"But we were fighting the darkspawn!" I cry out. "The king had nearly defeated them. Why would Loghain do this?" That's something I just cannot understand. It absolutely makes no sense to me at all. I feel I could cope with this easier if there was a reason I could understand. Or I am fooling myself. I don't know.
"Now, that is a good question. Men's hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature," Flemeth says solemnly. "Perhaps he believes the Blight is an army he can outmaneuver, Perhaps he does not see that the evil behind it is the true threat."
"The archdemon." I gasp.
"Loghain cannot be that dumb, can he? The way my father always talked about him, he is a great man, a hero." Rori wonders. "I mean, he saw the darkspawn. And then his first idea is to betray his king and run from the battlefield? What kind of hero is that?"
"One that is still alive?" I remark gloomily. Rori puts her hand on my arm in silent comfort. First I flinch but meeting her gaze I see the grief and sympathy in her large blue eyes. She even manages a shy smile and surprisingly I smile back at her.
"What exactly is the archdemon?" she asks, returning to business. She has already set her mind on getting this done, despite having no clue how.
Flemeth tells the tale about the old gods - which actually makes neither Rori nor me none the wiser.
"We should contact the rest of the Grey Wardens then, shouldn't we? Something as big and dangerous as an archdemon doesn't sound like anything one would want two beginners to mess around with," Rori puts it in a nutshell.
"Cailan already summoned them," I tell her. Duncan adviced him to and Cailan listened - mostly - to Duncan. "They'll come if they can. But I expect Loghain has already taken steps to stop them. We must assume they won't arrive in time."
Rori groans, kicking a nearby stone into the lake angrily. "How can anybody be so ignorant and foolish and... stupid? This cannot all be about Loghain getting more powerful. Nobody can be so incredibly dumb!" She's cute when she rants. She clenches her fists at her sides and sticks out her chin defiantly and her cheeks burn red with anger. It almost makes me chuckle.
"Well, whatever Loghain's insanity, he obviously thinks the darkspawn are a minor threat. We must warn everyone this isn't the case," I exclaim.
"I'm afraid we have to do far more than just warn them." Rori sighs, looking both tired and stubbornly defiant. "We need an army to fight the darkspawn. Now, anybody got any idea where we could find one?"
- 5
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- 7
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In good times and in bad