Prologue extract:
For the first time in almost a decade, the soft yet always menacing clink of armour could be heard beneath the Hawke Estate. Light flickered feebly from the tunnels' hurriedly lit rows of torches. They illuminated only jagged, wet stone of labyrinthine walls. A shadow was then cast asthe makers of that soft, menacing noise neared the end of their journey. Two Seekers marched down the passageway, each clinging to the arm of a semi-conscious dwarf. His head was covered by a black sack.
Their movements were methodical and regimental but hurried, for their mission was urgent and time scarce. So scarce they weren't too bothered about the dwarf's well-being, as long as he arrived in once piece. A few minutes ago the dwarf had come to, struggling, kicking and choking against his covering before returning to his state of placid submission. He was alive and somewhat aware of what was going on. That was good: he'd need that sharp mind if he was going to prove himself useful. He'd need it to live.
Few in Kirkwall would have guessed it, but this small, sack cloth-faced figure was Varric Tethras himself. It was quite a spectacular fall from grace for such a flamboyant man. Varric had come to Kirkwall as a silverite-tongued swindler, drinker, fighter and story teller; a distinctive figure to be sure, but never quite able to move out of his brother's shadow. That changed when he met Hawke. Years of gathering riches and siding with Kirkwall's most powerful man had made Varric the most outspoken and ostentatiously dressed dwarf outside of Orzammar. But now his head was hung low in exhausted trepidation, his thick leather finery was torn and ruffled and his expensive boots scraped against the tunnel floor.
Then the Seekers reached the corridor's end, kicking two thick doors open uncaringly. They entered total darkness with only teasing torchlight from the corridor to guide them. The doors slammed shut again, leaving them all in blackness. A third Seeker emerged from a corner, lighting up a low-hanging lamp that cast its light on a tall throne, fashioned of stone and wood and painted with entwined Amell and Hawke crest alike. Feathers of red and gold
glimmered.
The Seeker removed her helmet. Cassandra Pentaghast was her name, and her mission hinged on what this lone dwarf could tell them. She was very beautiful, bearing many marks of the Nevarran royalty in her blood; tall and olive-skinned, slender as the knives she could wield so well. Her heavy-lidded eyes were bright and honey-coloured, her black hair was cut short and kept neat, just like all other children of the affluent Pentaghast Clan. But blood and beauty weren't going to help her today. There were more effective ways of being persuasive. Cassandra hoped her mind would suffice, but wouldn't shed any tears if her well-trained fists or trusty blade needed to enter their discussion. She motioned toward the throne and the other two Seekers threw Varric into it with far more vigour than was necessary.
Varric let out his first cry of pain as his ponytailed head smacked the wood. His small body and nervous posture seemed to magnify the seat further. "I've…had gentler invitations," he grumbled, voice slightly muffled by the cloth.
Cassandra could barely contain her distaste. Dwarves – how she hated them. There was always an air of smug superiority about a dwarf. Surface dwellers were always deceitful, always ripping you off with shoddy, ill-gotten goods and getting back on the move before law enforcement could catch up. And then there were the 'pure' dwarves, wasting away underground in mounds of nug filth and darkspawn corpses, obsessing over their backwards caste system, deteriorating riches and blasphemous doctrines of ancestral worship. They could at least have the decency to stay in their holes where they belonged.
Varric Tethras was the worst kind of surface dwarf, never short of a lewd quip or handy bribe. She smelled him; detecting overstated cologne, Orzammar-brewed whiskey and more Antivan leather than many dwarves, surface or not, would be caught dead wearing. A black-armoured guard pulled off his head covering, revealing the unshaven, toad-like face beneath. Sure enough, it soon adjusted to the glare and widened into that trademark smirk.
Varric ran a gloved hand over his fleshy features. "Not one bruise," he said airily. "I think I like you already."
Cassandra said nothing. Varric looked around, smirking, and squeezed the throne's armrest beneath him. "Underground treasure den, huh?"
He sounded infuriatingly conversational, as if describing the weather instead of bartering for his life, for the world's future. "You know Hawke only had the decency to show me this room once? Once! I knew the guy for nine years and he only let met into the den once."
"I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of the Chantry," she stated, moving into the light so he could get a good look at her. With one nod she dismissed the other two.
Varric made an awed, if rather patronising noise and feigned a sudden fascination with the lining of his gloves. "Seeker eh? I guess this means you are a real group. Looks like I owe that conspiracy nut in the Hanged Man a drink. And um…" he said, looking around at the nothingness "…just what were you seeking?"
"The Champion," she said straight away.
He shrugged and chuckled, trying and failing to sound confident. He'd seen and survived everything from the Deep Roads to Sundermount's undead, why was this woman making him feel so uneasy?
"Champion? Pretty generic term there, especially in Kirkwall. Which one are you interested in? I know a guy who won the annual Lowtown drink-a-thon four years in a ro-"
"YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHY I'M HERE!" she roared. A new rage seized Cassandra. In a single effortless motion she produced two items of use; her dagger and the hand-written tome produced by Hawke himself, slamming the latter into Varric's overexposed chest and sticking the former against his throat. "Time to start talking dwarf." She lowered her voice and leaned in with narrow, threatening eyes. "They tell me you're good at it."
Varric opened the diary at its prologue and lightly touched the yellowing pages as if caressing a lover. "Okay," he said with deliberate calm. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything. Start at the beginning."
Varric yelped as she twirled the blade and thrust it through all four hundred pages of 'Act One.' Its point just missed his heart. The now ruined diary fell to his knees and then the floor. He looked down at it.Cassandra's dagger had gone right through Bethany's hand-drawing of the now ubiquitous Hawke family crest. It shone gold, black and proud on the page, uniting her drawings of all nine of them.
"If I talk, will you let me go?"
"Yes," she muttered with a terse nod. "If you prove your worth and lead us to Bradon Hawke, we may even pardon your companions. With the obvious exception of-"
"I know," said Varric sadly. "I know."
"I suggest you take this offer Varric. We'll be forgiving a lot. She began counting off the offences and offenders on armoured fingers. "The permissive attitude towards apostasy by a corrupt and biased Guard Captain, a Tevinter fugitive taking the law into his own hands, that wicked elven mage-"
"Who has done absolutely nothing wrong!" Varric snapped, pointing an accusatory finger, anger making him suddenly brave.
"Explain that to Ser Yoren," she hissed. They had come for the mage in question shortly before apprehending Varric. The results were not as pleasing. "See if that will cure the burns covering his body."
Varric held back another amused noise. "Yeah, Daisy'll do that if you make her mad enough." He frowned. "It's always the really cute ones for some reason."
Cassandra cleared her throat.
"Alright," he said as if there was any choice in the matter. He leaned back into the throne. "It began with the destruction of Lothering during the Fifth Blight, ten years ago…"
Modifié par JoeLaTurkey, 29 janvier 2012 - 10:16 .
Retour en haut
