Chapter Text
They give her new clothing: worn-in leathers that smell of sun and sweat, a thread-bare linen tunic, just enough to keep the sun off her shoulders, and a pair of boots that mostly fit. Dawn is slow to arrive, but the Antaam pay no mind, ignoring the gathering clouds as the Butcher’s men gather in front of his stolen manor. It once belonged to the Antivan nobility, though Rook can’t be sure. It hardly matters now.
“This way,” an elven woman, a former slave, if she had to guess, tugs her by the arm toward a large wagon, mostly filled with supplies - weapons, rations, and the like - save for a few seats left to make room for those who won’t be walking. “You’ll be riding with Lady Immy.”
Immy glares at her, unimpressed, as the only other passenger in the cart, another elf, wraps the dar-saam, the red ropes signifying allegiance to the Qun, to the Antaam, along her left arm.
Before Rook can cross to the wagon, another passes in front of her, pulled by two enormous, masked Saarebas and filled completely with clay jars almost half her size.
“Ever heard of gaatlok?” Immy calls, smirking. Rook searches her memory, but comes up blank, and Immy must read her ignorance on her face, continuing before Rook can say anything in answer. “Qunari explosives - safer than the lyrium stuff the dwarves use down in their mountains and, by most measures, much more powerful.”
“Shit,” Rook murmurs, pulling herself into the wagon and glancing back at the number of jars bearing the explosive powder, “and we’re taking so many?”
“Many,” Immy snorts, as if Rook’s an idiot, and she wonders if maybe she is after everything she’s done lately. “Forget you signed up to go to war last night?”
“Of course not,” Rook settles onto the bench she supposes will be her seat for however long they’re on the road - she’s still not entirely sure where they’re headed - and remembers to keep up the careful act from the night before, “but like I said, I’m willing to -”
“Save it,” Immy interrupts, rolling her eyes and holding up a hand, “I can tell whatever you’re doing is an act.”
“Why would I possibly act my way into a war?” Rook asks, adding as much incredulity to her voice as possible. Thank the Maker the idea is ridiculous enough that she doesn’t have to work too hard to make it sound like Immy’s gone mad for the thought.
“An interesting choice, to be sure, and not one I can confidently explain just yet but don’t worry, I will,” the smirk that crawls across her face, so beautiful it’s almost disturbing, almost unreal, brings goosebumps to Rook’s skin, “and when I find out, you can be sure I -”
She doesn’t finish her accusation, biting her tongue and instead forcing a saccharine smile to her face as the leader of the Antaam in Antiva approaches, donned in the heavier, more noticeable armor than the rest of his soldiers. The Butcher looks rested, despite their late night, and greets Immy with a soft hand to her smiling cheek - a strange visual contradiction to his enormous, brutal exterior.
“Good morning, my ladies,” he nods to them both, and Rook - despite all her experience in battle, with the Wardens, with the Crows - feels small under his gaze, “we begin our march momentarily. You will ride here, as your short legs will not keep up with the pace we set toward Rivain.”
Immy only nods, obviously more informed of whatever plan is in place, but in spite of the voice in her head yelling to stay quiet, Rook has to know more. “Rivain? How long will it take to get there?”
“It should not take more than a day and a half.” The Butcher doesn’t seem to have any qualms about answering her question, his focus entirely on Immy, who bats her eyelashes at him so dramatically that Rook finds her own expression faltering in reaction. Something like maybe disgust or sheer, unfiltered surprise probably mingle in the pinch between her brows, the set of her mouth, plain enough that the elven woman at the other end of the wagon lets out a barely audible snort of laughter, then covers her face with a scarred hand.
A day and a half of travel, she thinks to herself, trying to visualize a map of Rivain in her mind and in the shaky, half formed image, calculate the distance they need to travel in that time. How that relates to the conversation back on the ship a day ago, with another map she should’ve paid much closer attention to, as the group theorized on where this first battle might take place. It’s all muddy in her mind, too much to try and visualize in the blue-grey light of dawn.
Somewhere, out at port, the same crew is undoubtedly trying to figure out what to do about the decision she made last night. Zevran surely spotted her leave, from wherever he lay in wait, and she imagines his meeting with Davrin and the other scouts, relaying to her best friend how she went, arm and arm, into the dark with an enemy.
“For now,” the Butcher rumbles, as movement begins on the far side of where the majority of the Antaam are gathered, lines beginning to form in preparation of the long march, “rest, do not worry, for we meet Seheron forces with a strength these silly elves cannot dream of.”
She dozes alongside Immy and the three elves, two more having joined the woman who sat with them since dawn, as the sun moves to sit hot and heavy in the sky. She feels her skin going pink in the exposed places and wonders, absentmindedly, if the Qunari warriors, in their ropes and pauldrons and not much more, are ever left with peeling skin after a day of marching.
Immy seems unbothered by the sun, her scrutinizing focus entirely on Rook, and after a while, with both the sun and the woman’s eyes burning into her, she decides to roll over and pay no mind to either. Instead, she keeps one hand in her pocket, flipping the stone there between her fingers again and again and again. The smooth surface is a comfort, cool to the touch despite the warmth of her pocket and her hands, and she knows her rescue, her friends, are just a spell away. A spell spoken into what looks like little more than a shiny grey pebble, picked up in a hurry in Treviso’s market, will be her ticket out of this mess. She pinches her eyes shut to keep from rolling them, irritation quick to burn under her skin with sweat sticking her clothes to her in so many places. The rhythmic bumps in the road and the quiet but constant chatter of the soldiers is company enough though, both to entertain while awake and to ignore while she fades into sleep.
It’s in the middle of one of her drifting naps, sometime in the later afternoon, well after they portioned rations in the wagon for a lunch between the five of them, watching as the soldiers ate and continued on, that a hand shakes her leg. She wakes to find Immy, a surprisingly cold hand still on her calf, her lined, green eyes wide, that Rook rises, sleep leeching from her as nerves quickly take its place.
“Question for you Rook,” Immy asks sitting back, fingers moving to start absentmindedly braiding her hair, “if given the option between riches, power, or virgins, which would you choose?”
She looks up at the woman, completely taken aback by the question after the near total silence since departing Treviso, “I - what?”
“It’s a simple enough question,” she looks down at her nails, unbothered, “just a matter of which you’d choose.”
“And this is just, what, some strange hypothetical?”
“If that helps you, sure.”
“You woke me up for this?” Immy shrugs, as if the answer were obvious and Rook just stares at her, then considers the earlier question. “In this hypothetical, can whoever’s asking actually grant me one of those things or are we just -”
“Ugh, you’re so boring,” she interrupts after a sound of utter disgust, “just answer the damned question.”
Rook rolls her eyes, looking over to see if the elves on the other side of the wagon are listening to Immy’s pestering and finding them all talking quietly and intently between themselves in Qunlat. The ropes on their arms shift as they talk, showing lines of where the sun lingered on their skin.
“Hmm,” Rook considers, letting out a breath, “I guess gold. Everyone needs gold, right?”
“Right you are,” Immy grins and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Why? Are you going to rob a bank for me or grant me untold power? Pull a dozen virgins out of the Fade for me?”
“You have no idea how hard it is to find a dozen virgins in this day and age, in the Fade or otherwise.”
She can’t help but snort a small laugh at that, earning an almost smile from Immy in return.
“Say that I could though,” Immy continues, “grant you a pile of gold tall enough to make a high dragon seethe with envy. Or coffers deeper than the oldest families in Tevinter, with all their plunder from the ancient world. What would you trade for such treasure?”
Rook just squints at her, “Why in the name of the Maker would I ever tell you that, Immy?”
The woman stretches, her long legs on display, her grin growing wicked, “Maybe it’d help if you knew what the Butcher wanted when we first met.”
At this, Rook feels her eyebrows raise, her thumb nail digging into the stone in her pocket, as temptation, curiosity, floods her system.
“What…what do you mean?”
“Wouldn’t you want to know?” She leans forward, her smile growing, twisting. As if they’re co-conspirators, confidants of some sort, and she finally can share this grand secret she’s been keeping. But it’s like sharing a secret with a venomous snake, waiting for it to change its mind and lash out, and Rook knows in her gut not to trust Immy, whoever, whatever she is. “Wouldn’t you want to know if the Butcher took Antiva all by himself?”
“I…”
“And what might you do with that knowledge, hmm?” Immy’s eyes go dark, as if lustful, or perhaps hungry, “What would you do if you knew your precious Antiva -” but before she can finish her twisted thought, she pauses, looking around for a moment and the twisted grin on her face shifts to something else, something like concern.
“Something’s wrong,” Immy murmurs, eyes darting toward the elves, who remain keen to ignore her, “can you sense it?”
“Wrong?”
No one around them seems suspicious of anything, and in a trained military company, she assumes they have scouts moving ahead to check for such things. Either way, Rook looks toward the line of trees on the horizon, assuming if something should attack them, it’d come from there.
“Not scouts,” Immy shakes her head, reading the thoughts before Rook can speak them, auburn curls catching the sunlight, “the Fade.”
“I’m not a mage, I don’t -”
“Focus,” the woman insists, looking around, then toward the sky, “focus on the energy around you, and maybe, even your little nitwit excuse for a mind might -”
“Excuse me?”
“Where’s Butcher?” Immy makes to stand, but the bumping of the cart knocks her back before she’s able, “He needs to know. Look, they can feel it too.”
She’s pointing at the Sarebaas, the two pulling their wagon, who have spent the bulk of the day in stoic calm, or perhaps complete resignation of their circumstances, but now look tense, daring even to glance at each other and risk the whip of their master for doing so.
“So ask them,” Rook says with a shrug, to which Immy only rolls her eyes.
“Void take me, you’re absolutely useless.”
“Does the Butcher know he’s bedding a mage? I’m sure he’d find that awfully inter -”
The world cracks before she can finish the retort, and the entire company of five dozen Qunari comes to a shuddering halt, watching as the sky splits and tears above them. Watching as a rip of green light, and memories of a few years ago where stories abounded of such rifts tearing open the skies all over the world, appears before them.
Everyone seems to hold their breath after the thunderous boom of the rift appearing. Waiting to see what happens next, what horrors will appear. Only Immy has the presence of mind to react, and when she does, Rook finds herself immensely grateful for the woman all of a sudden.
“RUN!”
The Butcher echoes the order in Qunlat and at first, Rook questions why - surely whatever handful of demons pulls out of the Fade would stand little chance against this small army of well-trained Qunari. And then she remembers the woman who sent her out on this mission in the first place, her missing arm, the only way the rifts were ever closed and the only one to ever do it.
And she’s quickly glad they begin to move as the first demons step through.
She hears one of the Qunari leaders under the Butcher issue an order and a small group charges back down the hill toward the rift, weapons raised toward the demons in an attempt to ensure the rest make it into the safety of the trees ahead.
“We can’t close it, right? Without the Inquisitor?”
Immy pauses, as if struck between the choice to act and give up her act as a mage in this group of avid followers of the Qun or risk the onslaught of the demons.
“Do you live under a rock, Rook, or are you just stupid? The Inquisitor can’t even help us now.”
To which Rook finally remembers the woman standing before the map with a missing left arm, and fear truly settles under her skin, raising the flesh with goosebumps and sitting in her guy like heavy stones. Their only option is to get away, far away, and hope no more rifts open. Otherworldly shrieks split the noise of their thundering through the northern Antivan countryside as the first of the demons meet the blades of the Antaam, and she watches tall, monstrous creatures tower and fall. Only for more to pull out of the rift, one by one.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chants under her breath, half wishing she were equipped with a weapon, any weapon, to help in defending this group. At the very least, defend the elves, all three cowering behind her and whispering a prayer in either Qunlat or Elven.
She remembers though, that she’s not supposed to be a Warden right now, or a woman who made it very far with the Crows, or really anyone at all. She’s supposed to be a failure, a waitress who couldn’t do any better and who’s simple task in the battle ahead is to prove she can stay alive. A show of competence, of, Maker forbid, skill, and she might meet her end even if they survive the rift.
Whoever or whatever Immy is, she’s clearly making similar considerations, knuckles white where she holds to the bouncing wagon pulled along by their thundering Sareebas’. Wild eyes scan the field; summer scorched grass creating a golden divide between the bulk of their party and the melee unfolding under the brilliant green crack in the sky.
When a demon taller than the others, thunderous cackles erupting from its awful mouth, emerges in the fray, Immy hisses. Rook watches as her lips curl back from her teeth, a genuine snarl escaping the woman who’d been all grins and purred lines not moments ago.
“That wretched dog and his awful ideas,” she grits out, and finally turns, shaking her head. When she meets Rook’s eye again, her pupils are so wide, so dark, the green is nearly gone from them entirely. Something in her, in the way her back arches as she stands, no longer struggling against the unsteady rhythm of the wheels hitting the ground, brings goosebumps to Rook’s skin.
And then Immy speaks... but to call the thing before her Immy feels wrong.
“I suppose I have nothing else to do but tell you now,” the being intones, in a voice that seems to contain Immy’s, the Immy she knew anyway, but also many others, the sound deep and resonant but somehow also echoing and high. It sounds as if it’s coming from all around her, louder than the wagon, or the rift, or the drumming of the blood in her veins. The voice is within her, coming from her very marrow, and she wants, no, she needs to hear more. To know what else it might say.
“Promise you’ll do something interesting with this information, hmm? I’m not usually wrong about people, so if you are just a vapid little roach of a waitress, I’ll be so annoyed.”
She hears the words in her head, even as Immy turns, facing the end of the wagon - facing the rift - and extends both arms. Her - its - skin ripples, and Rook hears the prayers of the elves behind her grow louder, finally remembering their presence. She can’t look away though, not as Immy claps her hands before her and, like a blink, disappears.
Somewhere, not far down the rampaging line of Qunari, she hears the Butcher yell, loud enough that several of his company, trained as they are, come to a halt.
“IMSHAEL!”
But the being, Immy or Imshael or whatever it is, appears once more, and even from a distance, Rook can make out her hands coming together in another clap as she lands between the demons and the remains of the Butcher’s forces. With another spell, the earth shudders.
She’ll look back on it and guess that perhaps the rift had something to do with it, but Rook swears it’s the first time she’s ever felt the Fade on her skin while waking. Like the lightest flash of lightning dancing along her knuckles, her forearms, her nose; begging her to take it in hand, to stretch it and mold it into something more.
In the moment, however, she can only watch as the demons and the Qunari alike are swallowed in a roar of brilliant, purple fire. The magic is all consuming, towering into the sky like it might reach into the Fade itself. Eventually, all the Qunari come to a stand still, watching as their friends, perhaps their family, burn in the fire of the creature that warmed their commander’s bed.
And then, as the chaos on the field slows, the fire beginning to dim, Rook remembers the words spoken by Imshael, whispered somehow all around her and nowhere at all, and hopes that whatever she was, she was honest.
She picks up the stone, scanning the group around her and sure it’s likely the best chance she’ll have to get the message out, and whispers the keyword. The carved swirl in the grey surface glows dimly, showing its working, and she presses it close to her mouth, a silent prayer in her mind that someone is close enough to hear.
“Zev, please,” she only says it once, though instinct tells her she ought to beg that he hear her, she knows she has little time, “They’re marching to Rivain. We were right. Ayesleigh. Tell her -” Rook pauses, noticing the flames have died down and all that were around the rift are now gone, Imshael included. Worse yet, the Butcher is barrelling in her direction, pushing aside his men as he makes for the wagon. She puts the stone back to her lips and finishes, praying he won’t have seen, and she won’t be hung for everything that just happened.
“Ayesleigh. He’ll be in Ayesleigh.”