Chapter Text
Here once the Avvar ruled. Their remnants are layered onto the landscape, between the elves who came before and the lowlanders who came after. Avvar marks upon the stone of elven ruins kept fresh by their descendants, Avvar paths through the mountains where Fereldans now walk with their dogs and their goats. Avvar spirits whispering in forgotten caves, mouths newly thrown open by the magical upheaval of the war.
It is one such cave they walk, the floor cracked and uneven and slippery with algae, when the thing occurs.
This is how it happens:
Cautious step by cautious step, they make their way down into the waiting dark. Their torches seem to provide only a very small pool of light by which to see; the Mark on Kos' hand is almost brighter. Unfriendly and harsh and so entirely unlike its bearer.
"Are you certain," Cassandra says, a little too loudly for the confined space, and pauses to let the fragmented echoing shadows of her voice die away, "that this is entirely wise? The cave seems to run deep below the mountain, and we are unprepared. We might send for scouts instead."
Kos' laugh is muted. "I think we'll manage. There's a rift here somewhere. I want it closed." Flickering green light. Kos' horns and the Iron Bull's throw unnerving shadows across the walls.
Two mages, a Seeker and a Qunari spy walk into a cave. But what is the punchline to be?
The Bull's hand on Dorian's back, catching him as he begins to slip. Dorian curses, startles; thinks for a terrible queasy moment that it is the Bull's inexplicable attempt to save him that will cause his fall. But the Bull is, after all, very strong.
"Let go of me, if you please," Dorian says, too sharp, too unnerved. "You needn't trouble to pretend we're friends."
"Don't need to trip and throw yourself into my arms if it's like that, Dorian," the Bull says. "Could just ask, if you're interested."
Dorian hopes he does not shiver noticeably. One ought not show fear; one knows better. One ought not show anything else, either. "In placing myself at the mercy of a Qunari? I assure you, I value my capacity for independent thought rather more highly than that."
"Ouch," the Bull says, aggravatingly unpained. Unashamed of himself, of what his people—
Never mind that.
What must one do to get a rise? The Bull is so open and so closed at once. People find him—what? Unthreatening? Ludicrous.
The warmth of the Bull's hand fades from the space between Dorian's shoulderblades.
"You might try not assuming the worst," Kos says from ahead of them, but a little absently; two steps more, and Dorian understands why.
The narrow passage of the cave has opened here into a round chamber, statues placed at regular intervals around its circumference. In itself this would not be terribly remarkable, but there is—a feeling. Call it a feeling.
"Oh," Dorian says.
"What is it?" Cassandra asks sharply, and then falters herself. "Oh."
"If this is about demon crap I can't see," the Bull says, irritable now in a way that Dorian couldn't make him, "I'm—"
"Hush," Kos says.
Dorian expects argument, but the Bull only nods, a neat clean gesture—a soldier's gesture, of course.
Kos walks the chamber with slow determination, as though following an unseen path. If Dorian focuses he can see that this is in fact the case: spirit-lines, of a sort, laid to be followed like a thread in a maze.
Cassandra is watching the Herald with a careful intensity that surprises Dorian a little. Perhaps he thought that she would watch them and their magic with the dispassionate eye of a Templar. On occasion, she does. But this is not that. This is—what?
Interest?
Kos' breath sighs, becomes a whispered chorus in the high dome of the cave roof. "Never mind. I thought I had something."
"You do not know the purpose of the path," Cassandra says flatly. "It was made to lead to something, certainly. But perhaps it is best we do not learn what."
Kos shrugs, one shouldered. A smile. "You could have stopped me earlier."
"It does not feel—" Cassandra shakes her head. "No matter. Search the chamber, in any case. There are spirits here, and whatever their nature, we must be careful."
"Ugh," the Bull says.
Blind and deaf among the murmuring stones. Dorian might feel sympathy for him, were he a little less concerned about being stabbed in the back.
They search.
Something in this chamber stretches after a thing it cannot reach. There is no sense of malice, and that must have been what Cassandra had begun to say, before she remembered herself; but that need not mean so very much. Does a sword hate flesh?
The mouths of the unforgivably ugly statues are as dark as the mouth of the cave, as gaping.
"What is this place?" Cassandra asks, voice no more than a murmur now, face turned up to examine a statue more closely. "I feel almost that it measures us. Perhaps after all we ought—"
But in this moment, several things happen at once; among them, the important thing, the one that will prove to be of immense significance to Dorian for some time to come.
So:
On the far side of the chamber, Kos bends over something unseen, mark flaring wildly.
The Bull, straightening sharply as though looking for the source of some unseen attack, says: "What the—"
And Dorian experiences a violent yank below his ribs which has him stumbling, for the second time that day, quite nearly straight into the Bull's arms. The sensation of something fluttering across his head, down the back of his neck, there and gone.
"—leave," Cassandra finishes, turning. And then, frantic, "Herald."
"I," Kos says, and, "what?"
One ought to turn to see what is happening between them, there on the far side of the chamber.
But Dorian feels—he feels—
"What the crap is happening?" the Bull snaps, and he is—
Afraid. Genuinely afraid.
Dorian ought not know that he is afraid.
"I think," Kos says faintly, "I may have made a mistake."
And oh, that is certainly true.
Up, up, to the surface, to the sun—all in a rush, as though it could make any difference now. If one falls more than a few steps behind the Bull one stumbles, one's entire being lurching, and so one must accept the indignity of the Bull's hand wrapped huge and strong around one's arm, dragging one on through the dizzying shadows.
Gasping in the afternoon sun, unbalanced again by the sheer normalcy of the day, Dorian and the Bull stare at one another in anxious confusion.
"Back to camp," Cassandra says. "This instant."
No arguments from Kos in that moment. But later, returned to the relative security of the nearest encampment, a great many; Cassandra and Kos on the edge of the cliff beyond the camp, talking rapidly with their voices pitched low, the ongoing rise and fall of it. Sharp emphasis caries. Compromised. Life. What—thinking.
Understand.
"Would've thought you'd want to join in," the Bull says. He sits very close beside Dorian; necessity. His voice is tense, as tense as his shoulders, as the unhappy line of his back. His awareness of Dorian itches down his spine, hunches him forward; feeds back into Dorian's awareness of him. A strange, echoing thing. Flashes of sensation, of emotion. Sudden unwelcome insight.
"Oh, yes," Dorian says. "I'm certain arguing about a thing we don't understand but which has undeniably happened will make it ever so much better. If I only had a real library at my disposal I might—"
A noise of frustration.
He might what?
Well, he might do something, at least. One finds oneself bound, and not in the way one generally prefers; one must be able to work out some method of unbinding. Comparable magic from other sources—Tevinter has nothing of the kind that he is aware of, nothing which exists as a known cultural form. One would not tie people together in this way—and oh, they are tied, body and mind. Mutual understanding is not necessary, nor intimacy; these are not things one would typically force, although people must try, of course. In private, guiltily. No academic debates to read on that topic.
There may exist things of a less balanced nature made to inflict upon slaves, however. Voyeuristic, controlling—these things one may reasonably be, as a Magister. These things one may write about.
His nauseated horror at even having been able to imagine the thing has the Bull jolting away from him. Feeling—what?
Shame? It must be shame. Hot and prickling at the base of the throat, a bur lodged above the sternum.
"Kaffas," Dorian says. The warmth of the Bull's arm fades from his skin. He misses it; of course he misses it. A spirit demands that he miss it. Hopefully a spirit, and not the other thing. "It wasn't about you."
The Bull makes a little sound in his throat, a suppressed grunt that might mean anything.
It means a faint thread of relief, wound through a thousand things that are frightening and unwelcome and incomprehensible.
The Bull is unreadable. It's why Dorian feared him. Fears, say fears, hold that present tense. The man is a spy, a Qunari, no way of knowing—
Dorian reads him now; cannot understand how to stop. Oh, no, not his thoughts, and thank the Maker for that; but his state, his way of being. The Bull is afraid, scared to the edge of reason, and still his face is only slightly irritated, the sort of look he'd give an inconvenient tree root or a notched blade.
"Next time the Herald of Andraste decides to touch some piece of magical crap," the Bull says, "let's be on the other side of the Frostbacks."
"This entire business does seem a trifle unfair," Dorian says.
Well, if they cannot find any common ground in general, they can at least agree that this is ludicrous. Of course the Herald wouldn't be the one to suffer the consequences of stumbling across unknown magic. Kos may have been marked the last time, but everyone else died.
What a beautiful moment of Qunari-Tevinter solidarity. Bitter humour to the thought.
"How long do we have to put up with this crap," the Bull says.
"If I only knew what the purpose of the thing was," Dorian says, "I might be able to offer some meaningful speculation. I suppose we'll at least return to Haven now. Assuming we don't have the remarkable good fortune to be released from this farce sooner—"
"Hah," the Bull says.
"No," Dorian agrees. "I suppose not. Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. If you refrain from displays of savagery I will attempt to keep from springing demons on you, and we'll do our level best to pretend that this is not happening to us."
"I only display my savagery for people who ask nicely," the Bull says, in a good impression of himself.
"Now that I don't believe," Dorian says.
Neither of their hearts are really in it.
Dorian sighs, and leans his forehead against his raised knees, and wishes that he could only relax and enjoy the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck as well as it deserves. At least for a time.