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Samahlen	By : BronxWench Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 1568 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age: Origins, and I make no money from this story.

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AN: The following are responses to the weekly Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales Challenges, with each chapter representing a separate prompt word. These chapters initially appeared as oneshots published between 12/6/10 – 3/3/12, but given the common theme that bound them, I decided to combine them into one tale. Vir dirthera...
Response to Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales Weekly Challenge
Prompt word: Evergreen
Format: FlashFic (up to 1000 words)
Bad Dreams

It was dark. Not just the dark of night, but a bone-chilling, all consuming dark that seeped into the soul. The air smelled faintly of rot and something older, something that skidded like magefire along his nerves. Wraith blinked a few times, but nothing appeared before his eyes other than the unrelenting blackness.
Wraith stretched out one hand, cautious, and felt stone beneath his questing fingers. A faint coat of grit covered the stone, dry and powdery. As he stretched his hand further away from his body, he reached what felt like a wall. More stone, this time with faint indentations that could have been carvings, had he been able to see them.
It seemed foolhardy to remain lying on the ground, exposed and vulnerable in the dark. Wraith rolled over and pulled himself into a sitting position, with his back firmly against the wall. He heard the scrape of his weapons as he shifted, and once again, he stretched out his hand, feeling along the dusty stone of the floor. He winced as he brushed against a hilt, the sound of the blade scraping along the floor far too loud for comfort. Wraith lifted the weapon, running his other hand along it lightly. It was his dar'misu, and Wraith felt immeasurably better with it in his hand. He resumed feeling about for his dar'misaan, and found it just a few inches further along.
Armed once again, Wraith debated the wisdom of trying to stand and explore a little. The smell of this place was vaguely familiar, the knowledge hovering just at the edge of his awareness. He sniffed a little, his brow furrowing as he struggled to remember where he had last had this scent in his nostrils. He was a hunter, damn it all, and a good one. This should not have been so difficult. And then he remembered.
The ruins in the Brecilian Forest, the ruins that the shemlen had told Tamlen about, that was what this place smelled like. That faint reek of corruption, that was the smell of darkspawn. Wraith's hands tightened on the hilts of his weapons, and he got to his feet, back still against the wall. He could feel the darkness pressing all around him, and his breathing quickened. It was irrational to be so afraid of an empty ruin, no matter how dark it was. He could not sense darkspawn, and by now he should at least be able to feel something. Doubly touched by the taint as he was, it seemed reasonable to think so.
That was when Wraith heard the song. It was beautiful, haunting, and it called to him as nothing had ever done before. He wanted to follow that song, spiraling ever downward into the darkness until he could throw himself before his beloved master, the ancient god whose siren call burned in his blood like madness. As he took that first step in answer to that call, it vanished. Wraith cried out in sorrow for the lost beauty of the song...
"Bad dreams?" The shem's voice was sympathetic.
Wraith sat upright, the light of the fire almost blindingly bright. Someone had thrown an evergreen branch onto the fire, and the scent tickled his nostrils. The shem, his fellow Grey Warden, Alistair, sat across the fire, watching Wraith.
"I've had better," Wraith admitted wryly. He ran a hand through his hair, still feeling the aching need to follow that song. He looked at Alistair, knowing very well that his vallaslin made it difficult for the man to read his expression. "There was this song," Wraith explained.
"That was the archdemon." Alistair gave Wraith a small smile, his expression still sympathetic. "I remember the first time I heard it. I wanted to go and find it, too. Duncan told me it would get easier to resist."
"Did it?" Wraith found himself returning Alistair's smile almost involuntarily. Had anyone told him that he would be starting to think of a shem as a friend, he would have laughed at them, but Alistair was rapidly becoming just that. There was something about the man that drew Wraith in, a shy charm masked in bad jokes that was strangely appealing. Since they had first met when Duncan brought Wraith to Ostagar, Alistair had tried to make the Dalish hunter feel welcome among the other Grey Wardens, all of them human save Wraith. It was kindness Wraith had not expected to find outside his clan.
"It did," Alistair confirmed. "Some of the older Wardens claimed that they could actually understand what the archdemon was saying." He shrugged. "I can't. Anyway, you looked like you were dreaming about something nasty, the way you were thrashing about."
Wraith stood, reaching for his weapons and rolling his shoulders to relieve the tension that lingered in them. Alistair stood as well, brushing a hand through his close-cropped hair.
"I appreciate it, Alistair. Really," Wraith said. "I never got much of a chance to talk to the other Wardens at Ostagar. Is there anything else I should know?"
"Other than the whole dying young bit?" Alistair's smile widened into a full grin. "Did Duncan tell you that part? We don't have to worry about growing old, thanks to the taint. We've got thirty years, give or take."
"It just gets better and better, doesn't it?" Wraith replied dryly.
Alistair laughed. "Think of the slogans we could write to lure in new recruits. Well, since you're up, maybe we should break camp and get moving."
Wraith watched Alistair for a moment as he packed away his bedroll, admiring the man's economy of movement. The hunter turned and squatted to pick up the maps littering his own bedroll, folding them carefully before tucking them in his pack, the leather strips of his kilt fanning out across his thighs. He finished rolling up his own bedding, straightened up and turned to find Alistair watching him. A friend, and perhaps more, Creators willing.

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