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[rubypop]

"The hunger throttled every scrap of thought he could salvage. He drooled and languished against the boulder. The cavern remained. Someone was there — someone else, besides this ravenous torment. Yes. He was beset by compelling love. A young girl, a human, a mage, such a little thing. She gaped at him through the darkness. He wanted nothing more, then, than to embrace her, surround her, take her into himself. Yes. The love coalesced with his hunger, and heightened it, and became a very powerful thing indeed."

- Chapter 6

 

Over a couple of years, I wrote a trio of fics about Hawke and her relationship with blood magic, as well as how being a blood mage affects her relationship with Fenris and Anders. It frustrated me that no one in the game notices Hawke's blood magic. It also disappointed me a little that there was no source to her power (as seen in Origins when the Warden makes a deal with a Lust demon -- so cool!). 

 

I decided to post Part 3 of the trio here. It's the strongest and (mostly) stands alone. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 on FanFiction.net if you're interested. (Noncon/rape warning about the first fic.) The catalyst moment for this story -- and the demon Hunger's big intro -- happens in the final chapter of Part 2, if you'd like to start with that.

 

Final warning: this story contains graphic violence and, later, a couple explicit sex scenes.

 

Thank you for reading!

 

Jump to:

• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6 (Hope you enjoy Fenris and Anders' bickering as much as I enjoyed writing it! Every playthrough, man.)
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8 - Action! Adventure! Bickering! A tasty(?) meal!
• Chapter 9 - The mysterious flowered village. The most awkward dinner party.
• Chapter 10 - In which everything falls apart, and the word filter muffles the impact of several key lines.
• Chapter 11 - One ticket to crazytown, please.
• Chapter 12 - The belly of the beast. The exciting conclusion. New!

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 1

 

She had only been a child.

 

Years ago, years before the Blight, before her time in Kirkwall, Hawke walked the plowed fields of Lothering. She was barefoot, against the chiding of her mother — she loved the texture of the soft, loamy soil between her toes, the cool springtime breeze that carried with it the scent of things growing. She was not an uncommon sight as she wandered the outskirts of the village alone, and the farmers always smiled and greeted her, this dark-headed child who explored with no need of anyone to look after her.

 

She was searching for goldberries. Her younger brother, ruddy-faced and indignant, had insisted on their existence, and dared her to find them. "The butcher's son told me so," he whined when she taunted his gullibility. "He says they grow out by the Wilds, along the city wall. Solid gold, they are. He says they give you strong magic — you go an' see, if you're so special!"

 

She and their sister Bethany had been delighting themselves for some time with modest shows of budding magic. At first they reassured the sulking Carver that his own magic still had yet to show, and should he wait long enough he would be rewarded, but as his impatience grew they determined to needle him mercilessly: they fired tiny spurts of flame over the dinner table, and giggled over suddenly-frozen dandelions that shattered at his touch. It was all in good fun, they reasoned, but a sense of competition was brewing, and Hawke readily accepted the challenge to find the fabled goldberries.

 

She paused now in the field, wriggling her toes with pleasure at the cold soil oozing beneath her feet. She scraped at the dirt with her heels, and when she glanced up again she spied a line of armored men at the village gate.

 

Instinctively, she ducked her head. She knew without looking that Knight-Captain Clerval was leading them. Her mother had warned them all to stay clear of the Templars, though for many years Hawke could not see why — these great armored men who kept the gates free of bandits, who stayed ever watchful at the doors of the Chantry. And kind-eyed Ser Clerval had rescued the apothecary's children from a bear (she recalled, guiltily, how she had dared them to explore the caves by the river). He'd carried the young sobbing boys back to their mother, and given her the skin of the beast itself.

 

But Ser Clerval was not always kind. Just weeks ago, she had awoken in the night to screams and shouting. The windows of Roland Tynham's home had lit up with flickering blue light and crackling sparks, and the crash of splintering furniture echoed through the once-silent evening. In mere moments the ruckus had quieted down, and she watched the Templars leave through the front door: one led a frail woman by the manacles at her wrists, and she walked with her head bowed and eyes running with tears. The Templar behind her carried the still, outstretched form of a man whose linen shirt was darkened with blood. When he turned to glance back into the house, the moonlight caught on the ridges of the fallen man's gaping chest — his heart had been cleaved open.

 

Ser Clerval emerged at last. The sword he carried was dripping blood.

 

He unrolled a sheet of parchment and nailed it to the door. He then signaled the other Templars and, trembling, she watched them lead the crying woman away.

 

The following morning, she'd stood clinging to her mother's skirts as they joined a whispering crowd at Roland Tynham's now-vacant hovel.

 

"'By the order of the Grand Cleric,'" her mother was reading from the parchment on the door, "'and in Andraste's name, the Templar Order declares this home tainted by maleficarum. Roland Tynham is condemned to death for the sacrilege of blood magic. His surviving assets are heretofore seized for dissemination by the Chantry.'

 

"Blood magic, poppycock," she scoffed then. "Roland was a good man. He would never dabble in the likes of it." She shook her head.

 

The Templars were marching in a solemn line from the gate, following Ser Clerval, who sat atop an enormous blue roan. Hawke held her breath in the open field.

 

Not long after the death of Roland Tynham, Hawke was chasing dragonflies by the riverbank. She ran with her skirts bunched in one hand, trying inexpertly to snatch a bottle-green dragonfly straight out of the air. The sky was growing dusky with the sinking sun, and despite her best efforts the river water had splashed all over her dress. Cold and frustrated, she stomped her little foot and fired a bright spark from her outstretched hand. The spark caught the dragonfly and sent it smoldering and spiraling to the pebbled shore.

 

She beamed in triumph and, when she turned, she saw Ser Clerval making his way toward her from across the field.

 

She froze. The image of Roland Tynham's opened chest flashed through her mind, and Ser Clerval's dripping sword.

 

He was smiling gently as he approached, taking his time. His sword rocked at his side. He nodded to her when he reached the shore.

 

"What are you always doing out here all alone, little one?" he inquired, and though she listened for a hint of suspicion in his voice, she detected none.

 

"Nothing," she said. She toed the shallow water that ran over her feet. Then, trying to sound tough, she said, "Hunting bears."

 

His face lit up with surprise and he laughed. "Andraste's sword, they must be running scared," he said.

 

Her lower lip poked out. She couldn't decide if he was making fun of her.

 

He crossed the shore and knelt down before her.

 

"Although I did see something peculiar as I was returning from my patrol," he said.

 

Her heart jumped. Thinking quickly, she said, "I was catching fireflies."

 

His dark eyebrows lifted. "Fireflies?"

 

"Yes, serah."

 

"Quite an extravagant firefly I saw then, from so far away."

 

She gripped her skirt. Cold river water dribbled between her fingers.

 

"It was a really big one," she offered.

 

He smiled.

 

"A clever tongue," he chuckled, not unkindly. He ruffled her hair with one hand. "You're one of Leandra Amell's little ones, are you not?"

 

"Yes, serah," she said.

 

"What is your name, if I may ask?"

 

"Marian."

 

"Marian. A lovely name." His hand lingered on her head, heavy and strong. "Tell me, little Marian. How old are you now?"

 

She thought for a moment, and counted on her fingers. "Eight," she said.

 

"Ah. I see. So you are almost a woman."

 

She stuck out her lip again. "I don't know."

 

"Why, you are. In just a few short years, I imagine you shall be married."

 

She made a face, prompting him to laugh again.

 

"That does not appeal to you, does it?"

 

She shook her head.

 

"Well. As do many things, that will change. And a young lady such as yourself goes through a great deal of changes during this time." He tipped his head to one side and leaned toward her conspiratorily. "Have you noticed anything — strange, about yourself lately?"

 

She shook her head again, slowly this time, not quite knowing what he meant.

 

"Have you come into any unusual talents, I mean?"

 

"Oh. Well, certainly." She wished, suddenly, that he weren't so near, that he would remove his hand from her head. "I can jump much farther than I used to," she said, forcing a note of pride into her voice. "All the way across the brook!"

 

He chuckled. At last he lowered his hand, propping it on his knee. "I see. Jumping brooks and hunting bears. You are quite the force to be reckoned with, my dear."

 

She fidgeted with her skirt then, and glanced at the sky. "It — it's getting dark," she said. "I've got to go home, or Mummy will be angry with me."

 

"Just a moment, then," he said, and reached out to take her wrist.

 

She dodged, sidestepping him, and when her foot came down there was a loud crunch against the pebbles. His eyes dropped, but she was already running back to the village, her heart pounding, leaving him to stare at the scorched remains of the obliterated dragonfly.

 

Hawke thought back to all of this as she watched the Templars approach.

 

She began to walk casually, trying to look as though she were daydreaming, as Ser Clerval's gaze alighted on her. She decided to hum, and felt as though a long, strong thread connected them, she and Ser Clerval, drawing them closer together. She stole a glance at him, regretting it instantly. From atop the majestic horse, he caught her eye and nodded. She quickly looked away.

 

They passed one another, and Hawke hurried past the line of Templars, ducking her head.

 

She sighed with relief as she crossed the field to the great stone wall. She paused at the first step, feeling a sudden hum in the thread, and looked back.

 

Ser Clerval was signaling to the other Templars, had pulled his horse to one side as they walked on. Two other Templars joined him, glancing at her.

 

She took off running, scrambling up the stone steps. One of the Templars shouted; she heard the thunder of hooves.

 

She raced along the wall, her bare feet smacking against the stones. She crossed the bridge — and heard rattling armor, heavy boots on wooden planks. She could not outrun them.

 

Before her stretched the Wilds — miles of wilderness and tangled brush that her mother had strictly forbidden her from going near. "It's 'cause of the Witch of the Wilds," Bethany would whisper. "She'll gobble you up, she will!"

 

She was ready to face any witch, if it meant escaping poor Roland Tynham's fate.

 

She sprang forward, sliding down a slope choked with nettles, which tore at her arms and legs. The Templars were shouting, commanding her to stop, she dove into a tangle of brambles, wriggling between the dark, thick branches.

 

She glanced back. They were right behind her — Ser Clerval's horse reared up at the brambles, tossing its jet-black mane. Ser Clerval had drawn his sword, was chopping now at the thorns. Hawke hit the ground and crawled away, her fingernails scraping through the dirt.

 

"Leave me alone!" she cried.

 

Hooves pounded the ground behind her. She spun onto her back and thrust both hands into the air.

 

Flames erupted from her fingers, sudden and hot, surprising even her. The horse reared again, braying, and Ser Clerval yanked the reigns as he struggled to control it.

 

"She is a mage!" one of the Templars called out.

 

The flames died too soon — she still knew too little of this mysterious power — and she had only singed the horse, could smell the acrid burning of its smoke-blue mane. She snatched thorns from her hair and squirmed through the brush.

 

"Do not run!" Ser Clerval said, hacking away the remaining brambles. "No harm will come to you, little one."

 

"You're lying!" she cried. She shoved herself from the ground and bolted away.

 

The other two Templars had burst through the brush, thorns glancing from their armor, and they gave chase. She flung a spark of flame at the nettles beneath her feet, and they ignited. She turned a corner, glancing back — the Templars had extended their hands, whispering spells of their own to cleanse the fire with ease.

 

When she turned back around, Ser Clerval's horse thundered to the ground before her. Her feet skidded in the dirt; he must have circled around her when she was distracted, had leaped from a rocky hillside without her even seeing.

 

He had raised a hand, approaching her.

 

"You must cease this," he said firmly. "Else you set light to the whole of the Wilds."

 

"I don't want to die," she said.

 

"You will not," he said, though he did not sheathe his sword. "We will not harm you. But you must return with us."

 

"Liar," she stammered. "You — you killed Ser Roland. You stabbed his heart."

 

Ser Clerval's face softened at the tremor in her voice.

 

"Mother says — Mother says the Templars hurt us. They steal away children and lock us up and they kill us. And Ser Roland . . . he never did anything wrong."

 

The nettles rustled behind her. The other Templars stood waiting.

 

"Your magic is untrained," Ser Clerval said carefully, "and new. I would not lie to you, little one: no harm will come to you. Roland Tynham was a maleficar — he was not a good mage like yourself. He tried to ensnare us with blood magic —"

 

"I saw fire that night," she said. "Fire and ice."

 

She heard one of the Templars take a step, and Ser Clerval raised his hand again, silently.

 

"There is nothing you can do, little Marian, save heed my words. There are plenty of children at the Circle. It is safe there, for your kind."

 

"No," she said. "I won't go."

 

Ser Clerval pursed his lips for a moment, looking rueful. He nodded then to the Templars, who went to grab her.

 

She panicked, flung out her arms, and the earth rumbled beneath them, shifting, and it ruptured, throwing the two Templars off of their feet. A chasm opened behind her, collapsing, as the earth gathered into a sharp spear that erupted beneath Ser Clerval.

 

It was a moment in time that was seared into her memory. The horse reared up, and the spear of earth caught it, gouging it between the ribs. She heard the muted thud of penetrated muscle, the crack of splitting bone. And the horse screamed — a terrible, squealing wail of agony that drove her little fists to her ears. The smell of blood hit her — so much blood, more than she had ever seen — as Ser Clerval was thrown, striking the gnarled base of a tree. The horse was thrashing against the earthen spike, its magnificent coat speckled with red, and foam dropped from its mouth, flung every which way.

 

Horrified, she fled, caring not if they saw where she went, wanting nothing more than to leave this place, to run until she heard the dying animal's cries no more.

 

Her surroundings whipped by in a blur. She did not know which direction she had taken, could not tell if she ran farther into the Wilds or would somehow find her way back home. She wondered, vaguely, if she had killed Ser Clerval, and found that she did not care if she had.

 

#

 

On and on she ran, twisting and turning through the wilderness, until the sky had begun to darken, and she could run no more. Her little chest heaved, and she shuddered with exhaustion. Scratches covered her arms and legs from the reaching nettles; mud and calluses marred her aching feet. She paused for breath by an overgrown tree and glanced around, hoping to glimpse the stone wall through the trees. There was nothing beyond the prison of wilderness surrounding her.

 

She squatted to the ground, hugging her knees. She would have cried, if she were prone to such a thing; but instead she silently despaired, wondering if the Templars still searched for her, or — worse yet — if they had returned to Lothering for her family.

 

She was unaccustomed to such guilt and dread, and they pierced her heart terribly. She chastised herself for mentioning her mother, for speaking to Ser Clerval at all. How stupid I must be, she thought, for chasing dragonflies in the first place. How could she be so careless, so childish? Was she not almost a woman? She buried her face in her hands.

 

Night descended with a chilling pall. She wandered aimlessly, utterly lost. She could scarcely see a thing, and was too consumed by dread to light a torch lest they see her. And so on she went, convinced she was going in circles, jumping at every sound, the snap of a twig, the buzz of insects.

 

She came to a cave, and felt along its lip with her fingers. The thought of sleep was tantalizing; the lure of a hiding place gave her hope. She went cautiously inside, plunging now into absolute darkness.

 

#

 

Within the cave, she smelled old earth, still water, the encroaching odor of niter.

 

She heard distant echoes of things that dripped, the scratching of some small creature, the hesitant shush of her own bare footfalls.

 

She saw a muted blue glow in the distance.

 

She went toward it, mystified. It was faint, seemed to come from very far away — but it was there, yes, a gentle suffusion of light unlike anything she had ever seen, save for the emissions of magic that had lit up Roland Tynham's windows.

 

Magic, she thought. Surely there was something for her here, some magical essence that could help her?

 

She took another step, and found herself stumbling. Her heel had come to rest on a fragile shelf of rock, and beneath her toes there was nothing. The rock was crumbling, her balance lost. She was falling now, and threw out both hands to catch herself, but there was nothing, nothing now, she was falling. Her shoulder struck a wall as she dropped, and within seconds she hit the ground, sprawling on water-slick rock.

 

She grunted and slumped down, dizzy, uncertain of how far she had fallen.

 

She shivered. Her palms slid against the rock as she pushed herself up. Her head pounded so loudly that she wondered how hard she had hit it — found she couldn't be sure.

 

When she turned, she saw two bright lights, like eyes, peering at her from the darkness.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 2

 

Fenris crawled, could do nothing more than crawl, along the baseboard of Hawke's bedchamber, feeling the wall with shaking hands. He picked through splinters and shards of debris, shredded wallpaper and daggers of glass. He muttered to himself, counting out paces that he could not take, checking for crevices, hollow spots, something, anything to indicate the hidden recess that he knew was there, behind which was a passage underground, and a path to Darktown, the only place he could think of to go.

 

#

 

Hawke held her head there in the blackness of the cavern, staring back at the white glowing eyes. They did not blink, and their gaze was penetrating, all-seeing, immobile.

 

She heard then, when the pounding in her head had ceased, the deep reverberations of something breathing.

 

She did not move from the dripping boulder, and dared not look away. She swallowed hard, gathered her courage.

 

"Hello?" she called out, though quietly, and her voice carried on the air, echoing against the rock walls. "Is someone there?"

 

The eyes stared. The breathing, slow and even, continued.

 

Then, a voice:

 

"Hello there, little thing."

 

The voice was sonorous and rumbling, so low in pitch that its words were nearly indistinguishable. She felt a deep vibration run through her, as subtle and unsettling as the tremors from some distant earthquake, and it gave her an odd sense of being physically sick.

 

She hugged herself tightly. "Who — who are you?"

 

A long pause.

 

"A friend," said the voice.

 

"You sound — scary," she said.

 

A soft chuckle then, that quivered the rock underneath her.

 

"I can't see you," she said.

 

The eyes glinted, and from beneath them a slow light grew.

 

A long shape emerged from the darkness, indistinct and pooled in shadow, what appeared to be a man, but was not. She saw wide shoulders behind a bowed head, flesh that shimmered like nacre, long arms, impossibly long. A smooth chest, and beneath it the dramatic jut of ribs. Its abdomen was a cavity, emaciated, it seemed hollow to her, as though no internal organs could possibly be housed within. And between the legs she saw the dark genitals, that mysterious male organ that she had glimpsed only on farm animals and wild beasts, that brought her a curious shame now to see, as though she should not have.

 

The creature sat cross-legged, its arms trailing on the ground, hands folded — but they were not hands, she could see this clearly for the dim light that bloomed from them. They were claws, large gnarled things much too big for their skinny arms, with powerful fingers that curled into thick, barbed points.

 

The creature lifted his head, and she saw a startlingly human face, save for the unblinking white eyes.

 

"What is your name, little thing?" he said, his rumbling voice sounding tired.

 

"Marian," she answered, was too afraid not to answer.

 

He stared at her. His broad chest, so incongruous to the cavernous stomach, the skinny arms, moved gently as he breathed.

 

"Wh-what's your name?" she stammered.

 

He tilted his head. The shadows shifted; she saw now that he had not hair, but a bristling spray of spikes that rose from the crest of his brow like a myriad of horns. When his lips parted, she saw long, pointed teeth.

 

"Hunger," he said.

 

They gazed at one another in silence. She shivered in the damp chill. She wondered how someone with so human a face could have so bizarre a body, proportions so wrong that they confounded her merely by looking. But as she observed him, she began to feel less afraid — in some way, he seemed sad to her, as though he were just as lost and weary as she.

 

"Do you live here?" she asked. "Is this cave your home?"

 

He shook his head slowly.

 

"Why are you here?" she said.

 

A low rumble resounded through the chamber, as though the entirety of the cave sighed in resignation. He lifted his claws, and the light with them, and he raised his head.

 

A thin, dark vine was lashed about his black neck, stretching taut to the wall beside him. The vine had been wrapped, tighter than a ship's rigging, around a boulder that jutted from the wall. A small brass pin gleamed in the light, stuck fast into the knotted vine.

 

"You're a prisoner?" she said.

 

He lowered his head and nodded.

 

"Have you been here for a long time?"

 

He nodded again.

 

"Did someone do that to you for a reason? Because you did something bad?"

 

He shook his head.

 

She hugged her knees to her chest.

 

"Where did you come from, little thing?" he asked her then.

 

"Outside," she said softly. "A village outside the Wilds. I'm lost. Some — some bad men chased me."

 

"I see," he said, and said nothing more.

 

She sat, shivering, on the boulder for some time. The creature remained by the wall, tethered fast, with his great head bowed. The pair of lights that were his eyes had gone out, and she wondered if he had fallen asleep, though the level cadence of his breathing went on, uninterrupted.

 

She sneezed suddenly, and his eyes opened again.

 

"I'm sorry," she said, without knowing why.

 

He chuckled. She glanced at him shyly, saw his hands working, though at what she could not tell.

 

"Tell me, little thing," he said then, as one set of his claw-tipped fingers picked over his other palm. "Are you frightened?"

 

She shook her head, although she was, very much so. "No."

 

"You are not? Truly?"

 

"No, serah."

 

He chuckled again, though whether it was at the honorific she used or the obvious lie, it was unclear.

 

"And what of the bad men that pursue you?"

 

"They don't scare me," she said, staring back into those strange eyes. "But . . ."

 

He waited for her to continue.

 

"But I am afraid that, if they do not find me, they'll — they'll get my brother and sister and my mummy."

 

"And why is that, little thing?"

 

"I did something bad."

 

He lifted his head once more, gently, and offered his hands. His arms, with their odd length, stretched a great distance, and he reached much more closely to her than she'd thought he could.

 

His fingers opened, and upon his smooth glossy palm was a tiny wooden horse.

 

"Did you make that?" she whispered.

 

He gestured with his hands: take it, take it.

 

Tentatively she reached out. His great curving claws formed an intimidating barrier around the little horse, and they gleamed in the low light, so close that she could see every detail of the stinger-like barbs at their ends. They parted when her little hand came near, and she had a sudden vision of them snapping shut, of being dragged back into the darkness, but his fearsome claws remained still, and she took the wooden horse without incident.

 

It was rudely carved, clearly the result of those thick talons, though inured with detail, and its resemblance to Ser Clerval's great roan was not lost on her.

 

"How did you know?" she murmured.

 

He retracted his hands, and tapped one claw against the side of his head.

 

"I walk the Fade, little thing," he said.

 

She clutched the horse.

 

"Your thoughts weigh heavily," he went on, "on this side of the Veil, and the next."

 

"Are you a demon?" she whispered.

 

He smiled.

 

Her words quivered. "Somebody tied you up here for a reason."

 

"And I presume that someone chased you to this place for a reason as well, little thing," he said lightly.

 

"They —" she said, and swallowed her words. The rough edges of the wooden figure bit into her palm.

 

"The Templars," he offered.

 

She began to tremble.

 

"Little mage," he said.

 

"I —" She groped for words, could find only few. "I — I ran from them. They were going to — to kill me, or lock me up in a tower. I didn't mean to hurt anybody."

 

"Of course not," the creature said, with a note of pity.

 

"And now — they — oh." She cast her eyes upward, into the dark pit from which she'd fallen. "Oh, I hope they're still searching for me," she said softly. "I hope they haven't gone back. They must be . . . terribly angry with me. And if Ser Clerval is dead . . ." She fell silent at the horror of it.

 

"And I was glad," she said at last. "I was glad to think I had killed him."

 

The creature's spiked head listed from side to side. "Do not fear, little thing," he said. "Do not fear."

 

Her eyes dropped to his.

 

"The Templar of which you speak still lives," he said. "He and his men wander the Wilds even now."

 

"Is it true?" she said, her heart giving a flutter. "They haven't turned back?"

 

"Well. For three lyrium-consuming mage-hunters, a pup such as yourself is not difficult to track, one might say." He looked up, as though his gaze penetrated the very ceiling. "Yes. They are nearby."

 

She felt a momentary surge of relief, followed instantly by an influx of dread.

 

"What can I do," she whispered, "when they find me?"

 

She pulled her knees to her chest, as though she could pull herself smaller, shrink into herself and disappear.

 

Silence then, punctuated by the minor clicking of the creature's claws. She buried her face into her arms, and did not look up again until she sensed movement.

 

The creature had extended his hands once more. He held out three wooden figures — little soldiers, each wearing a miniature suit of armor and carrying a tiny sword.

 

She couldn't help but smile as she took them, one by one, from between the parting black claws.

 

"Maker's breath," she said with delight. "The Templars."

 

"See how tiny they are," the creature said, "even when held in your little hands?"

 

She giggled at the absurdity of it. Three little Templars, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Harmless dolls, no more than playthings now.

 

"They're cute," she said. Then, "Thank you."

 

The creature had folded his hands again. He nodded to her.

 

She studied the figures for a moment, and singled one out as Ser Clerval — for it was the only one with a tiny beard — and she pretended to make him walk, moving him across the curve of her knee.

 

"My, but the little mage has grown big," the creature mused. "They do not stand a chance."

 

She laughed.

 

She sat playing with the figures, making them scamper to and fro across the boulder, and dueling with their little swords, as the creature looked on.

 

He leaned his head to one side, away from the tethered boulder, as though testing the vine.

 

"Little thing," he said then, gesturing with one hand.

 

She looked up at him.

 

"To me," he said.

 

She was holding Ser Clerval aloft, about to place him on the back of his resurrected steed. She did not move from her perch.

 

His fingers paused, then motioned once again. "Little thing," he repeated, sweetly. "Why do you hesitate?"

 

"You're," she said slowly, "you're a demon."

 

"Am I?"

 

"Your name. You said your name was Hunger."

 

He smiled.

 

"Mummy told me," she said, "that demons . . . they're people's desires made real. Bad desires. Things so strong that people do evil because of them." She named them off her little fingers. "Rage, lust, pride, sloth . . . and hunger."

 

"A clever child," he said. "A learned child."

 

"You must have hurt someone," she said, "to end up here."

 

"As did you," he said mildly.

 

"I didn't," she stammered, then, glancing at the horse figurine in her hand, "I mean, I didn't mean to . . ."

 

"Many things are said of my kind," he murmured, "that are simply untrue. Slanderous. Many things said, too, of mages, who are then locked up, put to sword. A tragedy, yes?"

 

She fidgeted with the dolls.

 

She heard, then, a distant echo — far-off clamoring steps, exchanging voices.

 

Hunger lifted his eyes. She stiffened with fear.

 

"They've found you, little thing," he said.

 

She scrambled from the boulder, slipped on the condensation. She fell.

 

He reached out and caught her.

 

She supressed a yelp of surprise, and he drew her toward him. His large hands gripped her easily, and gently, the claws slick and yielding to her form, and never did their barbs meet her flesh. He lowered her to the rocky floor, huddling her against the hollow cavity of his middle.

 

"You are a fellow Fade walker," he whispered. "You are a friend."

 

The barbs ran through her hair.

 

The voices, the footsteps were growing louder.

 

"You must do something for me," he said.

 

She twisted about and stared up at him. The vine stretched, strained against his neck.

 

"You must pull the charm from the rock," he said, so quietly, his voice the faintest rumble now, the distant shifting of earth. "You must release me."

 

Her eyes traveled the length of the vine, and settled on the brass pin that pierced the boulder.

 

"I," she stammered.

 

A shout from above — Ser Clerval's, close now, distinct.

 

"I will protect you," he said, and it was strange how delicate those thick claws had become, how gentle were the great fingers that stroked her cheeks. "I will let no harm come to you."

 

She could see torchlight now, it emanated from the pit overheard, along with voices that shouted inquiries.

 

"Marian," called Ser Clerval from above.

 

"Release me," Hunger said, and he hunched down over her, he whispered now in her little ear, "and I shall owe you a great debt. And I shall give you a gift — one that would guarantee your own freedom for ever."

 

She pushed him away. She dove for the boulder and plucked the pin from the knotted vine.

 

The tether snapped back from the rock, so quickly that she instinctively shielded her face, and behind her Hunger had lunged forward, yanking the vine from his neck. He scooped her up in one arm and bounded to the dripping boulder where the wooden Templars lay scattered. Hawke clutched the tiny horse as she clung to his chest. His smooth flesh was startlingly hot now against hers, felt likely to burn her, and she broke out in a fevered sweat.

 

His long arm reached up, up into the pit from which she had fallen, and his claws bored easily into the solid rock, and he lifted himself at once, ascending.

 

She saw the Templars then, all three of them, as Hunger burst over the lip of the pit, and the shock on their faces was almost comical, though laughter was far from her mind now. And how bizarre a sight it must have been, how unexpected to the Templars who'd pursued a mere child of eight, and saw her now clinging to this heaving beast with eyes like blazing torches.

 

"Andraste preserve us!" one of them cried. "An abomination!"

 

One of the great claws lashed out and struck the closest Templar. In a brilliant display of red the barbs caught the flesh at his throat and ripped in an upward arc. The flesh tore — it shredded, she realized, for such claws were not capable of slicing cleanly — and blood wet the man's neck at once, spattered in thick drops across his silver chestplate. He fell, gurgling, and Hawke was horrified to see the meat-red muscles in his throat working, the gobs of flesh that hung like tattered fabric from his jaw.

 

"Oh, Maker," she stuttered. "Oh, Maker, oh."

 

Hunger's claw came down, wet and shining. With one liquid movement he pivoted and deposited her gently on the ground. He turned back just as Ser Clerval and the remaining Templar charged.

 

He caught Ser Clerval's sword in mid-swing, and though the sharp edge bit into his palm he gripped it savagely in his claws. He knocked back the second sword with his elbow and seized the Templar, lifting him from the ground.

 

She heard his laughter all around her, it shook through the walls, raucous, joyous.

 

The Templar thrashed, his armor rattling. Hunger's lips had pulled away from his long teeth, stretching wide, wider. He threw Ser Clerval back, who fell still gripping his sword, and Hawke looked on in terror as the demon's mouth opened, kept opening, his jaw seemed to unhinge and the yellow teeth glinted like knives, they could have been as long as her arm now. And the Templar screamed, oh, how pitifully he screamed, as he was lifted to that great mouth, and the fearsome teeth snapped shut.

 

Hawke shrank back against the wall, staring between her little fingers. From behind him she saw Hunger lower the man, saw the armored legs twitching, the streams of hot fragrant blood, and then the great dark cavity where the man's shoulder should have been, the chestplate bent and ripped away, exposed ribs and splintered bone.

 

She heard the terrible grinding of powerful jaws, and glimpsed the dangling human arm that swung free from the demon's mouth.

 

She slumped forward in what was nearly a dead faint.

 

Ser Clerval had bellowed a name, surely it was the name of that poor wretch whose eyes now stared, distant and cloudy, up at nothing, as Hunger leaned down again and ran a long, dark tongue along the ruined shoulder, lapping up the sumptuous blood.

 

"Oh, please," she whispered, though to whom she knew not.

 

She met Ser Clerval's eyes for the briefest moment — they were blue, pale blue, and she saw in them that hint of softness he'd betrayed in the Wilds, and she wondered how she must look, pale and shivering in the wake of this great monster.

 

"You will release him!" Ser Clerval cried then, launching from the floor in a fearless sprint, his sword held aloft.

 

Hunger turned to him, swallowing flesh and nerves and bone. She saw, from this angle, how his face had lost any resemblance of humanity — may never had truly looked human at all — and instead it was now twisted and gnarled and grinning. He flung down the maimed wretch, his arm no longer emaciated and lithe, but thick and roped with muscle.

 

He ducked low, and Ser Clerval's sword glanced from the chitinous spines on his head.

 

He snatched with one hand and five barbed points pierced Ser Clerval's back, his ribs.

 

He lifted Ser Clerval from the floor, plucking away the sword from his hand as though it were a mere toy.

 

Hawke moaned, covering her eyes.

 

"Marian!"

 

She looked up.

 

Ser Clerval had twisted toward her, was staring at her over the rise of Hunger's shoulder. Blood dotted his bearded mouth in a fine spray. The five claws were buried deep, had penetrated his armor with ease.

 

"I'm sorry," she found herself whispering. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

 

"Marian," he said again, and his face was suddenly paling, going slate gray. "You must run. Run now, far from here, far from him . . ."

 

Hunger's great jaws sprang apart and he howled with laughter.

 

"Run to your mother's arms," Ser Clerval went on. "Go! I will not let him come for you."

 

"The Templar lies, little thing," Hunger crowed. "He cares nothing for you. He desires only to see your kind locked away, slaughtered and trampled underfoot, until none are left to walk free."

 

"This creature is an abomination," Ser Clerval said firmly, though his voice was growing weak. "Be strong, you must be strong. Do not give in to him. Do not believe the things he says."

 

"Silence, fool!"

 

"Safeguard yourself," Ser Clerval said. "For the worst things he can take from you are your body and mind."

 

Hunger lunged forward, his jaws stretching wide. Ser Clerval held her gaze as that razored maw descended over him.

 

He must have only whispered them, though she could swear that she heard his final words loud and clear.

 

"Don't look," he said.

 

The mouth closed over his head.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 3

 

In Darktown, the sick and the needy had no time to wait on Anders's troubles. He mended wounds and mixed medications with his mind abuzz and his heart dropping in his chest. He could not help but welcome the distraction of his work, though it tinged him with guilt to think of his patients in this way. It was good to keep his hands busy, despite how they sometimes trembled when his thoughts wandered to other things.

 

He found himself reciting, silently, what he might say to her when he saw her next. Heartfelt excuses, sincere confessions, bold lies, they all spun wildly in his head: my love, you do not understand, my love, Justice has been out of control, my love, he would have killed you, he would have killed you, he would have killed you.

 

Heat rose in his blood as he recalled the look of horror on her face, the force of her hands as she shoved him away to save such a man's life.

 

And then just as quickly the heat drained from him. What must she think of me? he wondered with despair. What must she think now, after stumbling upon such a scene?

 

He dared not guess whether Fenris had lived or died. He'd cut the man's jugular with precision. He knew well the point at which even magic could save no one.

 

#

 

At midday a beggar came seeking his care, a young woman draped in filth and rags. Anders saw, as he gently scraped the mask of grime from her face, that she was quite beautiful, her eyes large and clear, her lips lovely, though chapped, and full. He sensed within her an aching gratitude that stirred some deeply-buried fragment of himself. He realized, as he inspected the running sores at the base of her neck, and lightly touched her with his fingertips, that she reminded him of someone. Someone from long ago, back when the walls of the Circle had been his home, back when secret trysts among its prisoners were common and numerous. He found, with a flush of shame, that he could not remember her name, that comely mage who had slipped his hand into her robes one night in the deserted chapel, who had pressed his fingers to the soft dampness between her legs and smiled, tipping back her head to meet his gaze, just as this young beggar looked at him now.

 

His heart pounded then. He recalled the sensation of opening her lips with careful fingers, the velvety wetness therein. How she'd rocked gently against him, sighing in his ear.

 

He took a breath, guiltily quashing the memory, and he lifted his hands from the woman's throat, perhaps a bit too quickly, for he realized that they were lingering there. He turned away from her and busied himself grinding poultices, silently chastising himself, and then a quiet disgust rippled through him, that he felt as strongly as the insistent erection beneath his robes, disgust which he knew, without doubt, stemmed from the discomfort of the Fade-born spirit that he housed within.

 

#

 

He could scarcely look the beggar-girl in the eye when her treatment was done, when he sent her away with ointments, bandages, recommendations of rest and fresh water. She hesitated at the clinic entrance, staring longingly at the blankets that he had laid out for bedridden patients, but still he sent her away, shaking his head. He could not have her here in the dark privacy of night.

 

More patients awaited him, but he slipped into the back room of the clinic, carrying the carved wooden basin with him. He sat on the meager bed and splashed his face with cold water, trying to rid himself of these prurient memories, to calm Justice's restless shifting.

 

I am a different man than I once was, he told himself. And how true it was. It seemed an entirely different lifetime, back when he'd flee the Circle on a lark, when he'd loved many women, unconcerned with the plights of the world. Hazier still were the memories of those brief days when he and Justice had met as two instead of one, how Justice had often scolded him for his flippancy, for loving so easily, for ignoring the misfortunes of his fellow mages in exchange for an aimless life of wandering freedom.

 

And now he was a different man. They had both changed, though he could not be sure who had had the greater impact on whom. Anders was a man now steeped in the rigors of this joined life, and it felt at times like a constant battle, though admittedly he derived some gratification from it. Truly he could call himself many things: Grey Warden, clinician, a coagent of justice seeking the liberation of his kind.

 

A murderer, now, in his own right, who'd slain a man bound and helpless.

 

Water dripped from his eyelashes, his chin, the tip of his nose. His hands scooped into the basin and he splashed his face again. He sat staring at the wall, could see that gagged and blindfolded face there, the dark throat slit wide. He shook his head, and drops scattered from his face.

 

There came a low knocking then, sudden and muffled, from the wall behind him.

 

He turned.

 

Silence for a moment, and then the knocking sounded again, louder and more insistent. It came, without doubt, from the hidden door just behind the bed.

 

He rose, setting aside the basin of water. His pulse quickened — very few knew of the passage at the rear of the clinic, the one that snaked behind the walls of Darktown to the matching egress in the Hawke manor. He'd used it at times to smuggle refugees from the Gallows, but no apostate would be traveling to him on their own. He thought, vaguely, that it must be Hawke, surely she had come to see him now — but why would she knock, or forego the main entrance altogether?

 

He thought of the Templars at the Gallows, the close calls he'd risked for so many, and reached for his staff, sliding the bed from the wall.

 

The knock came again. It echoed from the base of the wall, low to the ground. He hefted his staff and eased his fingers into the crevice along the hidden door. He sucked in his breath and drew the door from the wall.

 

He saw first the shadowed chasm within, the narrow brick-lined passage that he'd traveled so many times. He heard the slightest groan, and his gaze dropped to the floor.

 

A dark-skinned hand was reaching for him, it was caked with blood, criss-crossed with lines of shining silver.

 

A shock of white hair, reddened staring eyes.

 

A long, pale, ridged scar across the neck, from ear-to-ear.

 

"Fenris," Anders murmured, not believing.

 

"She's gone," Fenris sputtered, his voice weak, his bloodied hand reaching. "She's gone, she's gone."

 

#

 

Before long he had cleared out the clinic, doing what he could for those patients whose needs were immediate, distributing the potions he had already prepared, apologizing vaguely when he shut the front door at last and turned the lock.

 

Fenris had slumped against the supply chest, picking through glass bottles of disinfectants and anodynes. Anders left him to it, and dropped down on the edge of the straw bed, distraught. He buried his face in his hands, and his shoulders heaved.

 

From the floor Fenris looked up at him, yanking the stopper from a bottle with his teeth.

 

"Oh, Marian," Anders moaned. "Marian."

 

He heard the splash of disinfectant on Fenris's arm.

 

"Maker's breath," Fenris hissed, and from the corner of his eye Anders saw him cringe.

 

He remained in the back room, his eyes blurring with tears, as Fenris mopped at the wounds on his arm.

 

"My love," he cried. "My beloved."

 

"Andraste's sword, pull yourself together," Fenris said.

 

"Do not test me!" Anders roared. He lurched from the bed with a start. "Do not — not when you are the one who has caused all of this — I swear on my life I shall finish what I started."

 

Fenris's face darkened, and despite his scowl he said no more.

 

Anders flung out an arm, and then because he had not expected this lack of response he flung it out again, and then he began to pace from one side of the clinic to the other.

 

"And you are sure of what happened?" he uttered, his mind racing.

 

"Yes," Fenris mumbled.

 

"You are absolutely sure? Your mind wasn't muddled, you — you weren't disoriented from the loss of blood —"

 

"I saw the bloody demon with my own eyes!" Fenris shouted. "It tore half the house apart just to get to her! She knew it, too, she'd said —" His voice grew quieter, and he sat back, looking nearly stunned by exhaustion. "She'd said, 'I didn't think he would come for me this soon.'"

 

Anders squeezed his eyes shut, for they burned suddenly with tears.

 

"You know who it is, too," Fenris said, his words knife-edged and accusatory. "You know, you have known — and you've done nothing —"

 

"Silence, fool, be silent!" Anders cried, and it was not just Anders then but the booming unbounded fury of Justice, and searing cold flame erupted from him then, pealing from his flesh and bones and the very membranes of his eyes, until he fought it back, quelling the embattled spirit at once.

 

He stood very still, panting, as Fenris glared at him from the floor.

 

"How dare you," he said then. "How dare you even breathe the words, when you know nothing, absolutely nothing."

 

"This was no secret she kept from you," Fenris said. "Shall I speak of it plainly, then? Those scars on her body: she'd had them for some time."

 

Anders bit down on the inside of his cheek, felt the sharp blossom of pain, kept biting.

 

"They were the work of a demon," Fenris went on, his voice rising. "That very same demon. She'd dealt with it, she'd — she'd courted it. It — it kissed her, touched her —"

 

Anders let out an agonized wail and turned away, grinding his knuckles to his forehead as though he could shut out the sound of Fenris's words.

 

"You can't pretend it didn't happen!" Fenris was shouting now. Anders heard the creak of his hide tunic as he rose from the floor. "You can't shut your eyes and plug up your ears. She's gone, Anders. And it's all your doing —"

 

"My doing?" Anders spun back around, and though he shed a spate of blue light he kept the raging spirit in check. "You beast, you lunatic. I had nothing at all to do —"

 

"It took her because of you!" Fenris cried. "It came to collect her because — it only let me live because —" His voice dropped suddenly, and his eyes settled on some great distance. "It knew my face," he murmured. "She — it said to me — it said that it would not kill me, not after she had given so much to save my life."

 

"You're lying," Anders said. "She didn't, she would not, not after what you'd done."

 

"How else did she find me?" Fenris extended his arms, shrugged his shoulders in a gesture that seemed almost helpless. "How else did she arrive at the very moment that you — that you —"

 

"Enough!" Anders raised a hand as though to ward him off, as though to send him away. "No more, I need to think."

 

"No, you will listen, and you will answer me." Fenris came forward then, his face twisting, angry. "The demon took her, but I know she must still live. You must tell me everything that you know about it, about the history between the two of them, no matter how much it pains you. Your blubbering will do nothing to save her. We must act —"

 

Anders seized him then by the collar, crushing the black hide in his fingers. An overwhelming hatred was boiling now in his brain, flashes of memory, the image of Hawke stumbling into the clinic, her bleeding neck, the tremors in her voice as she answered his careful questions, the startling confusion he'd felt when she'd urged him, over and over, to do nothing, to quiet Justice's vengeful rampage.

 

"You will say nothing more," he said. "You are in my stead. Remember this: in those last few moments, I drove Justice off. Remember what he put you through. I control him. And now, right at this moment, you are at my mercy."

 

Fenris's face contorted. His mouth worked as though he meant to speak, and then thought better of it, and he exhaled, deeply, through his nose.

 

Anders held him for a moment more, and then released him, and the two stood facing one another.

 

"I shall never forgive you," Anders said. "Do not forget that."

 

Fenris merely glared.

 

"I shall tell you what I know because we need to work quickly, and find out where the demon has taken her. For your part, you must rest, and allow your wounds to heal. Though it galls me," and here Anders grit his teeth for a second, "I shall treat you."

 

"You will not touch me," Fenris growled. "No one touches me. I have dressed wounds before. I will do it."

 

"Fine. If you must continue to be petulant, I shall leave you to it." Anders turned to pace again across the clinic, waving a hand at his supplies. "Use what you need. But you will not speak again, not while I am explaining this to you."

 

Fenris returned to the supply chest, and rummaged through the bottles once more.

 

Anders crossed the room, wrung his hands, crossed again. He took a deep breath, uncertain of where to begin.

 

"I have never met this demon," he said slowly, "though I do know it has been present in her life for as long as I've known her. She has never spoken of it much, would tell me very little when I asked, and, eventually, because her discomfort over the matter became too great, I simply . . . stopped asking.

 

"I knew at once what the scars meant," he said. "I knew . . . it was our first night together."

 

The rattling at the supply chest slowed, and he sensed the faint scowl that darkened Fenris's face.

 

"By that point, her blood magic was no secret," he went on. "Truly, it's impossible to hide such a thing. But I had chosen to ignore the implications of it —"

 

"That there are no blood mages naturally born," Fenris muttered. "That such magic is only gifted — no, bargained for. A power never given for free."

 

"I had thought — I had hoped — that Marian's part in the exchange was long past, that it lay buried in some minor happenstance of little consequence. But on that night, I told her that I loved her."

 

Fenris had grown still. Anders risked a glance his way; he sat staring into the supply chest, his jaw firmly set.

 

"She was quiet, she did not respond at first. I feared that she'd rejected me, that I'd said too much, gone too far. And there was fear in her eyes as well, but a different sort: it made my blood run cold. I realized then that there was something greater involved, but she would not say, no, she would not."

 

He took a shaky breath "The demon, it is . . . a jealous entity. It visited her that night."

 

Fenris's head turned.

 

"It comes to her in dreams," Anders explained. "When the Veil is thin. It knew of me, it was. Angry with her. She awoke drenched in cold sweat. Shaking and pale. She clung to me like a child.

 

"It was many nights, no, weeks later, when she finally told me. The demon . . . when they'd met . . ." And here he swallowed, and swallowed again, for the taste in his mouth had thickened his words, and they stuck, fast, in his throat.

 

"She had only been a child," he said, his voice rising and shuddering so that his words ended at last in a beleaguered sob.

 

#

 

Hawke sat drenched in the smell of freshly-opened things, staring at the wall. It was a mixture of odors both familiar and strange to her: the bitter tang of sweat, the smothering rich brassiness of blood, and then bile, thick and gritty coupled with the eye-watering ammonia sting of spilled bladders.

 

It took much longer for Hunger to devour them than she would have expected. The ecstatic furor with which he'd dispatched the Templars was now replaced with a slow sweetness. She did not watch, but listened to the dismemberment of the corpses, the sensuous cracking of ribs and sinking of teeth. She imagined, as she struggled not to picture it, that he ate daintily, holding morsels with just the tips of his claws, patting his black lips politely after each bite, and now she felt giddy at the thought, giddy and quite near to cracking.

 

After a great deal of time had passed, and Hawke had not moved from her place at the wall, long fingers glided over her head, touching her tenderly. She started; she'd sunk into such a deep reverie that she'd been nearly comatose, her thoughts unspooling like the frayed end of a thread. She hadn't even heard him approach her, and he crouched behind her now, combing through her hair and stroking her cheek. She thought, maddeningly, that he must have licked his fingers clean.

 

"Look at me, little thing," he cooed.

 

She imagined desiccated remains, ravaged entrails, a little pile of human teeth like discarded pearls. She did not turn

 

"Little thing," he said again, sounding hurt, though it was a farce, the very thought of it made her want to laugh, and laugh, and keep laughing.

 

She tilted her head to the slightest degree, her eyes still trained on the wall. His great hand curled over her shoulder and eased her around, and she went without protest, unfocusing her gaze so that the space behind him blurred into incomprehensible shadow.

 

His white eyes bored into her.

 

She had not seen him so close, so still. Indubitably he had changed from the sad, weary prisoner that she had met before. His black flesh was no longer smooth and nacreous, but gnarled and spiked and formidable. His lips had pulled back from his long yellow teeth, endowing him with a perpetual grin. The bristling spikes at his crown had lengthened and grown in number. His once-cavernous stomach, now full, had become distended and firm.

 

He cradled her face with surprising delicacy. His blank eyes appeared to be studying her.

 

"How pale you are," he said, the rumble of his voice sinking into a lower, gentler register.

 

She stared at him emptily.

 

"You are not well," he said.

 

That great mouth, she kept thinking. They disappeared into that great mouth, behind those long teeth. All three of them are there, inside him.

 

"Do not fret," he said. "Do not worry, little thing. Soon you shall return home."

 

He's lying, she thought. He's lying. He's lying. He's lying.

 

"In return for your kindness," he said sweetly, "a gift."

 

He took her by the wrist, pale and reedy against his massive palm. One of his claws slid across the heel of her hand, and then it traced a line downward. The claw flicked lightly away, and she flinched: a single barb had bit into her flesh, slicing a clean line down her wrist.

 

Her eyes pricked with tears as blood trickled to her elbow.

 

"Hush now," he said, cupping her chin, so that his thick splayed fingers surrounded her neck, curled behind her head. "Shh."

 

She pictured him wrenching her head from her shoulders, popping it off like a cork from a bottle.

 

"This is a promise, little thing," he whispered. His thumb pressed into her forearm, and though it pained her, the pressure against the wound was almost soothing. "This means I shall love you forever."

 

When he lifted his thumb, she saw that the wound had sealed, leaving only the fine, white ridge of a scar.

 

"We are even," he purred, releasing her.

 

She ran a hand over her arm in silent disbelief.

 

"You," she said at last. "You're not going to eat me?"

 

His terrible grin shimmered wetly in the dark.

 

Her eyes drifted briefly behind him, searching for exits. In the darkness beyond she glimpsed black pools and spatters of blood. There was nothing else, save for the fallen swords, to show that the Templars had ever been there.

 

"Your village," he said delicately. "You said it was nearby, little thing?"

 

She met his terrible eyes again and nodded.

 

"I see. And your mother waits for you there. As do your brother, and sister — a lovely young mage, much like yourself?"

 

A thick bead of saliva had gelled at the point of a long, yellow fang, and dangled there precariously.

 

She nodded again. A knot of fear blocked her throat like a gag.

 

"Bethany," he said. The bead of saliva dripped, slapping wetly at her feet.

 

Hawke clutched her wrist, as though he'd burned her there.

 

"I will take you to them," he said.

 

She opened her mouth to speak, to say anything, what it was or even could be she did not know. But he scooped her up again, easily, cradling her to his chest. He took off, racing through the cave as though he knew its vesicular pathways by heart, and when they burst free from its rocky mouth the cool air of morning kissed her cheeks.

 

"I don't know where to go," she stammered, clinging to his chest. The close-crowding foliage of the Wilds swayed with a deceptive benevolence in this gentle light.

 

"Do not worry, little thing," he said. "Your thoughts will guide me. Simply let me in."

 

"I don't understand —"

 

The Veil ripped open wide at his beckoning hand.

 

She shuddered against his arm. It was as though she'd been plunged into an icy waterfall, a churning vortex, and she lost all sense of direction, falling upward, twisting back. Her senses lurched, confused, disoriented, she tasted sight and glimpsed sound in twitching shapes. Her surroundings shivered, melted, reformed. And Hunger continued onward, a native being in this alien place.

 

The Fade. Her mother had spoken of it, weaved tales of this dream-realm where demons walked and nightmares became real. She felt then the sharp tug of an invisible thread, much like the one that had connected her and Ser Clerval in the open field, and she knew it was Hunger who pulled it now, drawing from her the memory of her home, of her mother and Carver and Bethany asleep in their beds, soon to rise with the gentle morning.

 

Her breath caught, sharp as a blade. There was Lothering in the distance, emerging from the very matter of this place.

 

She shouted it before she even knew what she was doing.

 

"Stop!"

 

He paused then, drifting to a halt in the dizzying, shifting air. She twisted about in his grip.

 

"Please don't," she said.

 

"Why, little thing," he said, his tone a mockery of surprise, "do you not wish to go home?"

 

"You'll hurt them," she whispered.

 

He stroked her head then, plaintively.

 

"Don't," she said. "Please. I — I helped you, didn't I?"

 

"And I returned the favor," he said simply.

 

"I didn't want them to — to —" Her voice broke, sickened now to be so close to him, to be pressed against that hard, engorged stomach.

 

"To die?" He cocked his head. "I recall you feeling differently, little thing. My very deepest apologies."

 

His great fingers were sliding along her cheek, wrapping about her shoulders, drifting down her spine, forever touching her.

 

"Ah," he said, in a lowing rumble. "You are so — very soft."

 

She was gripped, then, by a deep sense of alarm, a sudden panic that commanded her to shove free of his touch, to plunge into the unknowing abyss of the Fade, if only to put that much distance between herself and this creature.

 

But Lothering was in sight, there on that shimmering horizon, and she was not going to leave him now, not for the world.

 

"My mum told me a story once," she said slowly, carefully, so as to eliminate the quaver in her voice.

 

He leaned toward her expectantly.

 

"It was a bedtime story. About a little girl who was selfish. She wanted a pretty bracelet that belonged to another girl. Her friend. And a demon came along because she was so, so jealous. He offered her a diadem," and she stuttered here, tripping over the difficult word, "all covered in jewels, to make her happy. But she wasn't happy — it wasn't the bracelet she wanted so much. And the other girl wore it all the time, showing it to everyone who would look, and the demon saw how angry this made her, so he offered her a bracelet this time, an exact copy of the one she wanted so."

 

Hunger listened intently.

 

She paused for breath, trying to bide her time. "But she threw it back at him," she said. "It doesn't sparkle the same, she shouted. The gold isn't as shiny. The gems aren't as round. It wasn't the same, not if it wasn't the very bracelet that hung around her friend's wrist.

 

"And so one day, one day when the two girls were playing by the river, the demon came along again. He snatched the girl's friend right off her feet and swallowed her whole, just like that, and then he reached down his throat and rummaged around, plucking out the sparkling, shiny bracelet, and he offered it to the selfish little girl."

 

"And she took it?" Hunger guessed.

 

Hawke shook her head. "She was horrified. She could hear her friend crying and crying inside the demon's stomach, begging to be let out, and she wouldn't take the bracelet. He asked her, is this not what you wanted? This exact treasure, this shiny gold trinket? But the little girl said, I don't want it anymore. I want you to let her out.

 

"But the demon was troubled. After I have done so much for you, he said, and brought you just what you asked, you still ask me for more? Because the demon was hungry, and he did not want to give her up, not for nothing. And the little girl realized at last where her selfishness had gotten her."

 

Hunger smiled.

 

"Take me, the little girl said. Take me in her place, and never bother her again. And so the demon did — he reached down his throat and plucked out her friend, and then he swallowed the little girl whole, leaving the bracelet, and he went back to the Fade, satisfied."

 

"A fine story," Hunger said. "A good lesson to learn."

 

Hawke glanced behind her. The image of Lothering glistened, shimmered like a mirage. She could see the ball of the sun as it rose, the brown chickens strutting by the well, the tireless farmers etching the earth with rusty hoes.

 

"Take me," she said, scarcely managing a whisper.

 

"What's that, little thing?"

 

"I said take me instead," she said, more loudly this time. "Leave Bethany alone. Leave them all alone. My family — the entire village."

 

"You, for an entire village?" His eyes glistened. "Why should I not get my fill, after whetting my appetite on those wretched Templars?"

 

"Because." The words caught, and she swallowed hard, tried again. "Because you like me so much. You — you said you loved me, right?"

 

His gaze seemed to penetrate the very walls of her skull. "Indeed," he said.

 

"So please," she said. "Please. Take me. Eat me up. Possess me. I don't care. Just don't hurt them."

 

"Little thing. This is not a proposal to make lightly."

 

She remembered Ser Clerval's warning. She saw his blue eyes, sad and kind.

 

"I know," she said. "This is what I want."

 

The heat rose in him then, swelling from the rise of his belly, and she knew now that this meant pure joy, ecstasy which grew from the unending hunger which drove him and sustained him and made him real.

 

"You have tempted me," he breathed, "greatly, my dear. For no demon can turn down such a deal if a mortal comes so willingly."

 

But she was not willing. The panic had returned, a strident alarm ringing in her ears, a rabbit-like instinct to flee, to hide, to save herself. She did not want this. She did not, oh, she did not — not while he leered at her so, while his teeth dripped and salivated, not while Ser Clerval and the other Templars swirled in the vortex of his guts.

 

"Take me," she said, "and leave them alone."

 

A shiver ran through him, sudden and violent. He stroked her head again, lovingly.

 

"So be it," he whispered, the susurration of his voice barely penetrating the shivering clench of his saber-like teeth.

 

#

 

She awoke to the sound of her mother's voice, the grittiness of dirt in her mouth. Her eyes jerked open. Her mother's strong arms were wrapping around her. She felt the cold press of soil oozing against her cheek, her bare arms and legs, wetting her dress. Her mother was lifting her now, repeating her name, and it took a few moments more for Hawke to realize that she was lying facedown in the field.

 

"Oh Marian, sweet girl, stupid girl," her mother gasped, clapping her daughter into her bosom. Hawke saw that she was crying. "Oh, where have you been?"

 

Hawke's mouth moved, her throat struggled for words, but none came. Tears of her own sprang to her eyes. She threw her arms around her mother's neck, nearly wringing it in her embrace. She cried then, a child who was not prone to crying, and smeared her running nose in her mother's hair, oh, the soft sweet scent of her hair. And as her mother carried her home, too stunned by this sentimental display to chide her further, Hawke thought for a few blissful seconds that it had all been a dream, yes, surely it had been, surely she'd fallen asleep in the field and dreamed it all up.

 

But as she lifted her arm to wipe her tears, she saw the scar on her wrist, fine and white and shining, as real and permanent now as the memory of Ser Clerval's unfortunate end.

[rubypop]

Explicit sex warning. Click the cut to continue reading.

 

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 4

 

Fenris had not expected ever to return to the mansion, and as he climbed the stairs to the sitting room he felt in the air a wrongness, a sense of invasion.

 

He shook his head as though to dispel the notion. His greatsword, newly-recovered, rocked against his back. At last he had rid himself of a bothersome sense of vulnerability, having picked his way to that loathsome cave on the Wounded Coast to gather his affects. He'd found them covered in sand but otherwise no worse for wear, and returned to the manor for a grindstone, a change of clothes, and a meditative session with a cask of wine.

 

"I don't keep wine or spirits here," Anders had said when Fenris had begun rifling through the clinic larder at a particularly galling part of his tale.

 

When he'd glared, Anders shook his head. "With Justice I must make — compromises." Then he'd added, delicately, "Besides, I think wine is the last thing you need, all things considered."

 

Blood and ****, he'd wanted to fire back, but Anders had continued on then, somewhat hurriedly.

 

He avoided the sitting room itself, the green crushed glass and gilded couches, and went first to the wine rack in the east wing, where one bottle remained.

 

This he nursed as he paced to and fro, turning over Anders's story in his mind. To have seen the demon itself, to have been utterly useless as it seized her, as she'd gone willingly, to spare him — it brought the disgust roaring to his throat like bile. But could he have stopped it, carried her from that place, convinced her not to go? If he had not been so weak, weaponless, befuddled by Justice's methods . . . if Anders had kept the vengeful spirit in check, if he had not gone to the Wounded Coast, if she had not come to the mansion that night . . .

 

His fist clenched, ignited, the claw tips sliced his palm, he turned and struck the wall, again, the wine rack rattled, the crack of plaster and wood paneling echoed, he struck it again until he'd put his very fist through the wall.

 

He swore, loudly, in Tevene, and withdrew his hand, scattering splinters.

 

Continue reading . . .

[rubypop]

Explicit sex warning (last one). Click the cut to continue reading.

 

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 5

 

Flesh. She was wrapped in flesh, in pulsing swaths of it that pressed close. Veins pounded within, and without there were pores, and fine hairs, and sweat. She could not move. She could see nothing. She hung in this crowd of flesh, her mouth pressed against warm clamminess, awash in the march of blood that traveled some grotesque network of veins.

 

She could not tell how long she had been here, how long ago he had walled her up in this place. She knew only that he went away sometimes, leaving her for hours, what could be days. It was peculiar to her. She wondered where he would go, what matters he attended to, when he was not here.

 

Stranger still was how he did not touch her, did not even speak to her in this place. She could only hear his breathing, the great labored heaves of those monstrous lungs, and feel his presence, the unmistakable penetration of his gaze, even through these layers of flesh.

 

She dreamed, though in dreams she still did not walk freely through the Fade. Anders came to her sometimes, the memory of him swimming through the fever-fog that blotted out her senses. The sight stirred within her a sensuous longing, and she dreamed, often, of sex, of desperate and savage lovemaking that was both real and unreal to her. At times her dreams were reenactments of nights they had spent together, fiery and enraptured when their passions were new, and slow and sweet as the love between them deepened. And then at times her dreams were mere sensation, the clasp of his hands, the heat of his mouth.

 

It was easy to lose herself in this place, to become one with the teeming mass of flesh, for what was she now beyond a mass of flesh herself, of bone and hair and offal? How simple it would be to join the pulse of these veins, to merge with it at last, like a drop of rain in the sea. Was this, then, her due? Was this what he waited for as he stared at her, unspeaking, while she was awake, while she was not haunted by these memories of the man that she loved?

 

In her solitude, she was exhausted beyond the need to despair.

 

But the memories remained. Some kernel of strength germinated within. Anders's face, his body, his touch. She would forget it all if she ceased to exist now, damning it to the Void, dissolving the very reality of her life as she had lived it.

 

And so in her solitude she reached out and touched it, that kernel of strength, and grasped, and as she hung imprisoned Marian Hawke thought about her life, refusing to release her very memories from that grasp.

 

Continue reading . . .

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 6

 

Dragana Croceum stepped into the copper tub. The servant Grasin milled about, glancing surreptitiously, as she steadied herself at the tub's edge. She ignored him and sat down as carefully as she could manage on shaking legs. The heat of the bath flooded her, near-scalding, and her skin pinkened, and she sighed with pleasure. Against the rim of the tub her hand twitched and twitched again, and she lowered it into the bath, which churned and swirled.

 

Grasin said, "The temperature is to your liking, milady?"

 

"I need Florian," she said. "Get him. And a flask of milk. Frothy this time, if you please."

 

He bowed and quit the room.

 

Dragana sang to herself and skimmed both arms just beneath the surface of the bath. She enjoyed the ripples and dips, enjoyed the grace of all liquid movement, in fact, for what she saw as a sense of causality appealed to her. Her trembling knees steadied now, and she sighed again.

 

Florian entered, frowning, and he shut the door quickly. "So you've moved the tub in here, have you?" he said at once.

 

She smiled exuberantly. "I am a flower," she said. "I prefer to dally in the sunlight."

 

He circled the room, yanking at the window-curtains, and Dragana protested, her voice simpering like a child's.

 

"Think, my dear," he said, "should anyone see you bathing in the center of the drawing room. What then?"

 

She pouted. "Oh, you hate me so."

 

He closed the final curtain. "Just as I hate you for stringing rafflesias in the doorway, and wandering the village at all hours, and insisting on dancing about without your cane?"

 

"I would say so. You could use more flowers and wandering and dancing in your dusty life." She drew her hand from the bath and watched it drip, and she flicked her fingers so that the droplets scattered. "A beautiful pattern," she said. "Like stars. Little constellations."

 

Florian folded his arms. "You must —"

 

"Andraste's ****, where is that milk?" She swung toward the door and screamed, "Grasin!"

 

The harried servant swept back into the room, balancing a cut-glass jug of milk. He bowed. "Deepest apologies, milady," he stuttered. "My very deepest." He offered the jug. "Is the quality satisfactory?"

 

Dragana seized the edges of the tub and shoved herself up, craning to peer at the foamy head that sloshed in the jug. Florian modestly looked away.

 

"It is sufficient," she said, easing back into the bath. Florian took the jug and sent Grasin away. She began her song once more and splashed at her freckled shoulders.

 

"You are preparing for the Lord?" he said.

 

"Of course, of course." She studied her palm. "I do need some color, don't you think? Some ruddiness to me. I hate for him to see me as I am. I've got the complexion of a corpse." She scowled at him. "Well, go on. Pour it in. Don't keep me waiting."

 

He tipped the jug over the tub and the milk streamed into the bath, white and frothy. She swirled it about with both hands and her face lit up with delight.

 

"Oh, lovely. So lovely. Oh, how beautiful I shall be for him."

 

Florian set the jug upon the floor and knelt behind her. He rolled back his sleeves and stroked her shoulders, pressing his cheek to hers.

 

"The Lord has been very pleased with you?" he murmured, and he slid his hands into the bath, closing them over her breasts.

 

She nodded dreamily. "Oh, Florian. I have never been so happy."

 

He nuzzled the feathery edge of her ear. "I see."

 

"Florian, our love was a mere precursor. The Lord, now — he is my whole life."

 

He nipped at her earlobe and she went on washing, her eyes distant and luminous. He worked his hands over her softness and kissed her throat, resigning to merely enjoy her. It had been long ago, a very long time ago, after all, and now the Lord had come calling. He must make do with what he could in the interim.

 

She giggled and flicked droplets at him. He reared back, startled, and scowled at his stained doublet.

 

"Must you be such a pest?" he said, carefully reaching for the muslin towel that lay folded by the tub.

 

"I am a pest because you bore me so," she said, and stood up. She staggered and he swept forth and caught her, and the bath sloshed and drenched his front, and he cursed.

 

"As graceful as a newborn ass," he spat, dragging her from the tub. "You could not have waited for Grasin? All of these clothes will need to be replaced."

 

"I say a little color is good for them," she said.

 

He heaved her to the floor and she wriggled and complained of the cold. He tossed the towels over her.

 

"A lady such as yourself, acting like a petulant child," he said with disgust.

 

"Lord and Lady," she sang.

 

"Get up and dry yourself now," he said. "I shall fetch Grasin to scrub the floor. Surely it will stain."

 

"Good! Good. Lovely red. I see you moving the tub. I am not done with it."

 

"You are done," he said firmly. "You will wait for Grasin. You will have him dress you and you will not go without your cane."

 

She rolled her eyes, but plucked up a towel obediently. "Pour the bath into the garden," she said. "Over the rafflesias. They will drink it up gratefully."

 

"As you wish, my dear."

 

Florian hauled the copper tub across the room, carefully so as not to spill, and she sang and swabbed herself dry, and he glanced back to see her standing and swaying, draped in towels. In her nakedness she was pink and scarlet and lovely. He pushed open the courtyard doors and dragged the tub along, off to pour milk and blood into the garden.

 

#

 

Anders awoke to Fenris standing over him and jerked back with a start.

 

"It's nearly mid-morning," Fenris said.

 

"Maker's breath," Anders said, rubbing his eye with annoyance. "How did you get in?"

 

Fenris scowled. "You left the clinic door unlocked." He flung the buckled surcoat at him. "Get dressed. We have work to do."

 

He stalked out. Anders cursed and climbed from the bed.

 

He found Fenris stuffing a satchel with potions from the supply chest. "No, by all means, help yourself. Are you going somewhere?"

 

"I found something," Fenris said, lashing the satchel closed. "While you've been mucking about and sleeping in, I've been searching for a way to find her."

 

Justice stirred within, and Anders flushed with rage. "How dare you accuse me —"

 

"Shut your mouth and look here." Fenris produced a small token from his tunic and held it aloft, glaring back at him.

 

"That is —" Anders swung forth. "That —"

 

Fenris's claws snapped around the horse figurine and he jerked his fist away. "It stays with me."

 

"Where did you find it? How could you have found it?"

 

"She left it," Fenris said. "For me to find."

 

Anders stayed rooted to the spot, clenching and unclenching his hands. "She's still had it," he said, "all of this time? That is the — the — horse, from the cave?"

 

Fenris nodded slowly.

 

"Where did you find it?"

 

"I was right," Fenris said bitterly. "She'd summoned the demon. I found, in my bedchamber, a pool of blood. Her blood. She'd performed a ritual of some kind, some wretched blood magic rite."

 

Anders remembered then the blood spattered on Hawke's thigh, and saw again the horror on her face when she'd looked upon him, and Fenris, and the knife. His shoulders slackened. "She'd opened one of the scars," he said. "She'd summoned it." He then shed a spate of blue light and roared, "She performed the rite where?"

 

Fenris's hand alighted on the pommel of his greatsword. "Control yourself, you fool, or we shall never get anywhere."

 

Anders sucked in his breath. "The figurine was there?"

 

"Yes. See how it was coated in blood?" And he parted his fingers to show him. "This must be the key to finding her. She must have known, she must have realized how much she was giving up, to plead for his aid."

 

"Give it here."

 

"I will not have you run off with it," Fenris growled.

 

"I have to find her."

 

"If blood magic were not involved," Fenris said, "if I could traverse the Fade myself, and pluck her from it, then I would not need you. But I am loathe to say I do."

 

"Well, then. I do not need you."

 

"You will need this." He grasped the figurine in his claws. "Therefore, you need me. I have a debt to repay."

 

"A debt, you say?" Anders laughed. "I say you've done enough damage, and the last thing she needs is more of you."

 

"I will not hide from the consequences," Fenris said evenly.

 

"And my punishment is spending more time in your presence." He shook his head. "Perhaps Marian will forgive me, then. Fine. I accept your aid. But you shall not come near her ever again, when all of this is over."

 

"That is for her to decide," Fenris said, and Anders gave him an odd look.

 

#

 

A journey to the Fade was needed, Anders determined, after Fenris had relinquished the totem to him. Fenris scowled and argued, and Anders, with great annoyance, insisted that it was the only way.

 

"We can use the figurine as a focus," he explained. "It may very well provide us some clues to her whereabouts. Or the demon's. You do not have to go to the Fade yourself. Justice and I can manage without you."

 

Fenris reasserted that he would not be left behind, Justice be damned. Anders stiffly agreed that he would go.

 

Neither of them mentioned the last time they had ventured to the Fade. They focused, instead, solely on Hawke.

 

And so Anders prepared the ritual once more, there in the middle of the clinic. Fenris watched suspiciously, his markings bristling and pulsing. His mind wandered to the drunken memory of entwined limbs and heaving bodies at the very place that Anders now stood. When the glyph was done, he elected to anoint himself with the lyrium dust, and he and Anders stood facing one another in the center of the glyph.

 

"There is much you will not remember of what you see in the Fade," Anders warned in such a manner that Fenris presumed was one last effort to be rid of him.

 

"Then I shall have to be extra attentive for both of us," Fenris said.

 

Anders rolled his eyes. "I'm sure this will be a happy reunion for you and Justice," he quipped, and hurried into chanting the spell that would complete the ritual, as Fenris's face twisted.

 

#

 

The ground, which was not the ground, pitched and rolled. Fenris stumbled and swung about blindly. He'd known that the Fade would not be kind to him, but, then, the Fade was never kind.

 

When he had gathered his wits as best he could, he realized he was holding the horse figurine, and clutched it greedily. He cast about the shifting landscape and saw only cragged spears of black rock. The sky blurred and unblurred and rippled like the surface of a murky pond.

 

Blue light glossed the crags at the edge of his vision, and he turned and found Justice standing there.

 

"The mage could not do it," Justice said simply, his voice resonant despite the heavy air.

 

"He did, in actuality," Fenris said. "He was certainly quicker about it than you."

 

Justice gave a terrible smile.

 

"Now that we've said our awkward pleasantries." He raised the figurine. "Help me find her."

 

Justice's expression did not change. "Know that I am not finished with you, elf."

 

"Please queue up, then." Fenris spat and set off, stumbling along the fickle landscape. Before long he realized that a blue glow was following him and glanced back to see Justice walking along with ease.

 

"Let's see it, then," Justice said, and Fenris handed him the totem with a scowl.

 

Voices called out over great distance. Fenris swung around. Justice did not notice, his eyes unmoving from the totem.

 

"The Fade is a place of dreams," Justice said. "Do not be distracted."

 

"Then shape it to your fancy," Fenris said. "As you've done before."

 

"This is not my realm. Many spirits, many demons make their home here. And it is susceptible to many things. Errant thoughts." He looked pointedly at Fenris. "Particularly those of mortals."

 

The voices called out again, two, three, many more.

 

"They are calling for me," Fenris said.

 

Justice returned to the totem, turning it over and over.

 

Fenris shook his head. He shook it again. The ground rolled smoothly to one side. He pitched and righted himself. Justice glided past, bent over the figurine.

 

"I can see things," Fenris said, slurring. "That you cannot. I can see."

 

Justice turned back to him. Over the gleaming blue shoulder, Fenris saw a crouched figure rise. It was a Qunari, horned and massive, but then just an impression of one, a flickering shade. A Fog Warrior, from long ago. Fenris blinked hard and it was gone.

 

"You say the Fade is susceptible to me," Fenris said, struggling to speak with clarity. "To errant thoughts."

 

"Indeed," Justice said.

 

"Then return that totem to me. And we shall see what happens when errant thoughts have focus."

 

Justice held it out. Fenris stepped forth, staggered, and snatched up the figurine. The world around him shuddered. He first held the totem close and then raised it up, tracking it with his eyes. He uttered her name. He closed his eyes. He uttered the demon's.

 

"You will remember nothing," Justice said.

 

Fenris remained very still, as forces that he did not know gathered around him. "That," he said, "is why you are here, I suppose."

 

#

 

Fenris lay in a cavern, imprisoned. The darkness crowded close. He slumped against a jagged boulder. A tether was lashed to his throat, and he swallowed and gasped and scrabbled at it. He had been here for many years, would surely die in here. Fury blinded him, and maddening hunger wrenched at his guts. He twisted about and moaned, and he tore at his binding.

 

His surroundings collapsed and folded over him.

 

The hunger throttled every scrap of thought he could salvage. He drooled and languished against the boulder. The cavern remained. Someone was there — someone else, besides this ravenous torment. Yes. He was beset by compelling love. A young girl, a human, a mage, such a little thing. She gaped at him through the darkness. He wanted nothing more, then, than to embrace her, surround her, take her into himself. Yes. The love coalesced with his hunger, and heightened it, and became a very powerful thing indeed.

 

His surroundings collapsed once more.

 

Oh, the pleasure was agonizing. Fenris filled his mouth and bit down and swallowed and kept biting. Oh, his first taste in so long. The split bones sizzled on his tongue. The rich marrow in golden drips. Meat and muscle so yielding, and the chewy lining of fat. He was in ecstasy. He was in love.

 

All of it crashed again.

 

He lapped at the tongue of his little mage. He reveled in the sweetness of her texture. He reveled in denying himself of her. But, oh, this taste. For all else, the pleasure ended too soon, leaving him alone with his hunger. The mere possibility of consuming her utterly, of glutting himself on her bones and her blood and her offal, set his desires ablaze. He must prolong this sensation, for now. He must only taste. This must be the first of many, many self-denials. And even through denial, it meant he would not be alone.

 

Everything toppled and reformed.

 

Fenris saw many caverns. He devoured endlessly. He watched over his little mage, following her from the shadows, slipping into her dreams. He would only taste. He would inhale the heady perfume of her blood, and prod at her softness, and he would taste her. Nothing more.

 

The more he consumed, the more he fed his hunger and felt it come clawing back, the greedier he became for her. He watched her, tracked her, followed her across the sea, and whenever she made love he paced and howled and invaded her dreams. Carnal desire was an unfathomable stranger that incited in him only rage.

 

All of these things Fenris experienced, and observed, and was, until he was lost, until he knew nothing else, until he was reunited with his little mage once again, and she was giving herself up now, giving herself to him, in exchange for the insignificant life of a wretched bleeding elf.

 

It all dissolved, reformed, flurried past. He could make sense of nothing, for all of his joy. He sliced through the flimsy wood of a bedchamber door. He sank down over a collapsing bed. He flickered through the Fade, clutching his prize. He traversed mountain and forest. He settled back into his den. He opened his mouth, wider, wider. He descended over her.

 

"Fenris!"

 

Chilling blue light glanced from his eyes. He rubbed them vigorously. Icy fingers gripped his shoulders and shook him, over and over. His heart hammered and hammered. He could not stop now, no, he was descending over her, his tongue reaching out, sliding around the column of her waist, lifting her, his throat tensing, relaxing.

 

The thunderous voice shouted the name again. Fenris. Fenris. Insistent as that annoying blue light. He reeled at the interruption. The walls and sky snapped back. Fenris pitched and rolled. He sprawled upon the ground. He looked up, and up.

 

Hunger looked back.

 

The great black throat tensed and relaxed.

 

Hawke was nowhere in sight.

 

Fenris howled and hurtled forth, reaching out, forgetting himself, and Justice pulled him back, kept pulling, until the burning white eyes of the demon that observed them were extinguished, and were gone.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 7

 

Fenris awoke on a bedroll, lurching upright as though to keep himself from falling. The taste of bile cleaved to his tongue. Anders, on his hands and knees, was scrubbing the floor.

 

"You were sick all over the glyph," Anders said, and Fenris spat several times. Anders wrinkled his nose. "It smells of sour wine, of course. Honestly."

 

Fenris ground his fists into his temples. "I was there," he murmured. "I was — the demon. But so much of it is leaving me. Like a dream."

 

Anders vigorously rubbed his brush with a cake of soap and scrubbed harder. "I saw," he said. "Justice saw."

 

"He saw everything?"

 

Anders nodded.

 

Fenris covered his mouth, his eyes listing to the ceiling. "Never have I felt such overwhelming hunger. I wanted to — I could have devoured the world, and never been satisfied. The torment. I can still feel flashes of it." He gagged and swallowed the bile roughly back. He spat acrid mucus to the floor. "Maker. I remember. I was eating people. Men. The Templars from the cave."

 

Anders nodded again and looked away. "I saw."

 

"I wanted her." Fenris raked his claws through his hair. "I wanted her more than anything I have ever wanted before." He did not mention the familiarity of this sensation, and hated himself, intensely, in that moment.

 

"Do you remember the last thing that you saw?" Anders said.

 

Fenris shook his head. "You — Justice — jarred me back." Then, accusingly: "You pulled me back, just as I had her. Just as I was about to —" And horror dawned on him, stunning him into silence.

 

Anders stared gravely at nothing, then seized a bucket and flung water onto the floor. He mopped with short, angry jerks.

 

"She must still live," Fenris said. "She must."

 

"Just as those Templars still live?" Anders said. "Just as all of the others the demon has devoured?"

 

"You can't tell me you're giving up."

 

Anders hurled the mop down. "Never," he said.

 

"Then we must go." Fenris scrambled up, and stumbled, and righted himself. He spat a final time and collected his sword and satchel. "We must go immediately. When I took her — when the demon took her — I cannot remember — but Justice must have seen —"

 

Anders had already taken up his staff. "What Justice sees, I see," he said. "The demon traveled partially in the Fade. But it traversed the mountain, a forest. It went north of Sundermount."

 

"I felt a sense of home. It has a den."

 

"I saw the roofs of a village. It must be nearby there. If we find the village, we will find the demon."

 

"And then," Fenris growled, "I shall cut her free of its guts myself."

 

#

 

Enfolded in flesh, Hawke remembered:

 

Bethany was dead. Her mother wailed with anguish and clutched the girl to her breast. Carver screamed and charged the beast that had killed her. Hawke knelt, her heart pounding in her ears, and gripped a wound in her shoulder, the tissue soft and fragrant and wet.

 

The ogre laughed — had been laughing — and tossed Carver aside. His blade nicked the beast on the arm and did nothing. Hawke swayed to her feet and clutched her staff. The scars along her thighs, years old, seared her. They drove her forward. She twisted her fingernails through ragged flesh, comforted by the scent of her own blood.

 

She raised her staff with an incantation. She gave her fingers a final twist, spilling blood down her breast. She'd learned of the great power in blood freshly spilled. The ogre turned its massive head towards her. Her blood arced and lanced into a red mist, and the mist fell upon the ogre, and penetrated the pores in its hide.

 

The beast convulsed. Its head pulled back and its lips twisted in a horrible grimace. Hawke shrieked for Carver to charge. He flew to the ogre with unmitigated fury. His blade split the massive throat. The ogre fell, stiff and spraying blood, like a tree that thundered to the ground. Heaving, Carver collapsed, and he and their mother stared at her in horrified wonder.

 

Hawke remembered.

 

"You are enjoying your gift, little thing?" Hunger crooned within the Fade, within her dreams.

 

Hawke shrugged impassively.

 

"You have grown into them very well," he said. His fanged grin gleamed.

 

"I am already an apostate," she said. "I suppose being a maleficar hasn't changed things much."

 

"You see, then, how special you are to me."

 

"I would not call it a gift. But it has been helpful."

 

He beamed. Waves of heat radiated from him.

 

"I must ask you something."

 

"Yes, little thing?"

 

Hawke fixed her gaze upon him. "No, I will not ask you. I will tell you. You must leave Anders alone."

 

He chuckled. It rumbled throughout the texture of her dreams.

 

"I am being serious. I don't care what jealousies you may harbor. He has nothing to do with you."

 

"You are mine," he said simply.

 

"As I will be. But for now, I am my own."

 

"You may play at such." He lifted his spiked shoulders in a parodic shrug. "Do you claim to love this whelp?"

 

"I do."

 

"Ah, but he does not see your dreams. I do, little thing."

 

She frowned. The fabric of the Fade rippled and tugged around him. He changed, as she had seen him change before, but now his flesh became soft and pale; his crown of spikes melted into fawn-colored hair; the lanterns of his eyes became human, and blue. Arrayed in gleaming armor, Ser Clerval stepped toward her.

 

"I have seen him in your dreams," he said.

 

Hawke turned away. Ser Clerval reached for her, brushing her wrist with gentleness.

 

"Do not do this," she said. "Do not."

 

"How the memory of this fallen wretch returns to you, over and over," he said, pulling her close. "Do you forget how he hunted you? How he brought you to me?"

 

"I have no control over such dreams," she said, turning her face away as his beard brushed her cheek.

 

"I can make those dreams into reality. As much of a reality as can exist in the Fade."

 

She pushed him back. "Don't toy with me," she said. "Do not. His memory haunts me. I don't care if that amuses you. But do not play at shadows. Maker's breath, after all these years, your mockeries affect me no longer."

 

"Mockery?" he said, Ser Clerval said, feigning hurt. "I would not mock the one that I love so much."

 

"Love? You are incapable of love."

 

"Am I?" His face darkened.

 

"You will leave Anders alone. You may take your fury out on me. I do not care. I am used to your tantrums." She shook her head. "Blood magic repairs as well as it damages. You taught me that much."

 

"Indeed," he said, and his face, his body liquefied and shifted. Anders gently smiled at her. "My love."

 

She turned away in disgust. "Give me your word."

 

"Does my word mean that much to you, little thing?"

 

"It will have to do," she said.

 

"Your trust in me — 'tis such a sweet thing." He shrugged. "You shall have it, then. My word. But know this." He raised a finger, which was and was not Anders's, smooth and soft and tipped now with a long black talon. "Should he provoke me in any way, his life is forfeit. If he must know of me, he must also know our contract is not one with which he can interfere."

 

"It was a choice I made," she affirmed. "My choice alone."

 

"The same applies to that nosy spirit he harbors within. Justice." He chuckled. "A foolish burden, indeed. Now." He took her hands and pulled her against him. His claws gripped her wrists, gently but insistently. "My darling. Let us seal it with a kiss."

 

Upon waking, Hawke rubbed her mouth vigorously and slid from the bed. Anders snored quietly among the sheets, and she did not look at him, shaken by the image of Hunger speaking with her lover's face. She crossed the room to the oak chiffonier and stared at a small jewelry box. She stroked its hammered-metal lid uncertainly, and then eased it open. Within were two items: the miniscule horse figurine and a glinting brass pin.

 

She took the pin and raised it up. Its point flashed, hair-thin and sharp.

 

"Do you still bind, little charm?" she whispered. "Or have you lost all that you are, after so many years?"

 

She took the figurine and turned it over and over. She grazed her thumb against its roughness. Hot anger flooded through her. She jabbed the back of the horse's head with the pin, pulled back, and stabbed harder. The pin broke through the wood and sank easily. She studied it for a moment, held her breath, and pushed the remainder of the pin into the token. It vanished altogether, save for a faint glint of brass when the light hit just so.

 

"Coward," she said, to no one, to herself, to the demon that lurked at the corners of her dreams.

 

#

 

Dragana found Florian bent over the table in his workshop, raising a cleaver into the air. She flounced to his side just as the cleaver hit its mark and crunched through bone.

 

"How lovely!" she sang, and Florian traded his cleaver for a boning knife.

 

"Come to admire my work, have you?"

 

"My Lord sends his greetings," she said, giving a little twirl.

 

Florian glanced at her. She was resplendent in white and crimson silk, her face aglow. She steadied herself against the table and hooked her cane over his elbow.

 

"You will prepare my supper, will you?"

 

"Of course, my dear." He slipped the knife into the haunch of meat and worked at the bone, severing cartilage from flesh, then gripped the knob of bone and slid it free. It came out wet and shining.

 

"Florian, my Lord is troubled," Dragana said, her voice dropping low.

 

Florian guided the knife just beneath the skin, tugging it between thumb and forefinger. He swept the blade around the haunch and peeled the skin back in a ghostly layer. "Is he, now?"

 

"Yes. He has been alerted to invaders."

 

"I see."

 

"He is most unhappy."

 

"And who shall I be expecting?"

 

"Two men." She raised her little fingers. "An apostate who harbors a Fade-born spirit in his flesh. And a savage elf, wreathed in strange markings of silver."

 

"Hm." He skimmed the fat from the haunch and flicked the knife along the seam of two red muscles. The connective tissue gave way, and he cleanly pulled them apart.

 

"You shall have to sharpen your knife," she giggled.

 

"My dear. My knife is always sharp."

 

"I think," Dragana said, and then her voice dropped again to a whisper, "I think they're coming for the ******."

 

"The young lady, you mean."

 

"The ******." She frowned, indignant.

 

"Of course. And what would you have me do while we are awaiting their arrival?"

 

"Why, send an escort. I would certainly love to meet them." She ran a hand along the pale membrane of skin that Florian had set aside. "Strange silver markings," she murmured. "How lovely they would look plated on my Lord's table."

 

Florian nodded thoughtfully.

 

Dragana stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. "You are wonderful," she said. "Thank you, Florian."

 

"Anything for you, my dear."

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 8

 

In silence, Fenris and Anders negotiated the peaks of the Vimmark Mountains. They travelled north, carrying only what was needed, and were weighed down by heavy thoughts. After the ritual, Fenris had palmed the tiny wooden horse, and Anders, noticing this, had insisted they throw it into the fire.

 

"It may give Hunger some window to spy on us," Anders had said, to which Fenris had replied, "The demon already knows we are coming. I say let him quake with every step."

 

They hiked into the forest that bristled just beyond the mountains. They navigated densely-packed silver pines and pushed through golden stalks of flax. Underfoot they crushed rosemary and watercress, suffusing the air with fragrance. Neither of them was a stranger to such terrain: both Anders and Fenris had scouted unknown wilderness in their respective flights from those who hunted them. Despite the ease of this familiarity, an unsettling pall had fallen over each of their moods.

 

Close to midnight, they made a meager camp in a closed-up thicket. Anders swiftly built a fire and lit it by magic. Fenris produced a flask from his satchel and gulped down liquor. When he coughed, Anders said, "I take it that isn't water."

 

Fenris capped the flask. "It is enough."

 

"I should have suspected that your best survival instincts would lie at the bottom of a bottle."

 

"Instincts that have preserved my life so far. You'll find I shall do as I please. You see, I have no demonic spirit constantly henpecking me about my habits."

 

Anders tossed rushes onto the fire, which smoked and sent up sparks. "After this ordeal I shall be glad to be rid of you," he muttered.

 

"I do appreciate your penchant for stating the obvious."

 

Anders glared. "And I see Danarius did not keep you around for your charming personality."

 

Fenris smiled wryly. "My expertise was in swift and indiscriminate killing. Do not forget that."

 

"One does not forget a rabid dog's teeth."

 

"Your posturing bores me." Fenris unscrewed the flask again and took a long draught.

 

"A shame," Anders said hotly, "that Marian has suffered so much just so I could enjoy your company."

 

"You did not have to come," Fenris said.

 

"And have her trade one monster for another? Hardly."

 

"I am making amends. For your part, you do not seem too troubled by loneliness."

 

Anders's frown deepened. "I would give everything," he said tightly, "to have her back."

 

"Everything? You would abandon the mages that you claim need rescuing? You would abandon your so-called noble cause?"

 

"I love her."

 

"You are a hypocrite of the highest order."

 

"Says the beast who toils only in self-obsessions."

 

"I have never claimed to be anything more than what I am." Fenris rolled his eyes. "You play at love. You play at impassioned speech. You would rend your garments over a trodden-on mouse. It sickens me."

 

"It sickens you that others have something to fight for." Anders shook his head. "I don't know why I bother trying to reason with you. I fight for them — my people — and I fight for her. The difference between you and me is a sense of obligation. You wish only to repay debts. I love my people, and I love her."

 

Fenris ground an armored claw across the flask, and there came the squeal of metal, slow and minacious. "How quickly your attentions flit from here to there," he said. "You gnashed your teeth and wept and carried on when I told you she'd been taken. 'I love her, I love her,' you croon, even now. So last night how many times did you say the same to that piteous ******?"

 

Surprise rewrote Anders's face. He pushed himself from the ground. "****** —?"

 

A flock of nightbirds burst screaming from the walls of the thicket. They surged overhead in frightened circles. Fenris sprang up and snatched his sword. Anders careened back. The birds gave a final lurch and tore back into the trees, whipping the branches into a frenzy. Anders stared around, his eyes like bald globes in the firelight.

 

"Maker," he said.

 

There came, then, a creeping heat upon the wind, like the breath of some living creature. Fenris felt the tingle of his markings and the slow, telltale rise of goosebumps.

 

"Arm yourself," he uttered. Tension strung his muscles into steel cables and then released, flooding his veins with adrenaline.

 

Anders had already lifted his staff from the nettles. "I feel it," he said.

 

The heat rose in a brief, billowing cloud. "The demon," Fenris said, "carries with it a feverous haze. But this . . ."

 

"Suppose Hunger has come to meet us?"

 

"No. This feels different." Fenris turned, tensing his fingers against the handle of his sword. "You saw the movement of the birds?"

 

"Erratic. They circled about. Instead of going straight through."

 

"We are surrounded," Fenris said.

 

They stood back-to-back in the center of the thicket. The heat pulsed and faded again. Fenris had been right: it came from all sides. A peal of blue light emitted from Anders, and a faint glow remained, seething against the backs of the pines. Fenris sucked in a deep breath, held it, and released it through his nose.

 

"Now, then," he said.

 

A torrent of heat sluiced over their heads. Black forms rained down from the trees, squat and slick and lithe, screaming and full of teeth. Fenris swung and split a leathery hide. Anders hurled great daggers of ice that thudded into their marks and splintered into the trees.

 

Demons, no less than a dozen of them, dove with mouths agape. Fenris blazed silver and charged. Anders caught a pair of them against his staff and battled them back. They trampled over the fire and scattered kindling. Fenris seized one of them with a ghostly hand and cleaved its skull.

 

Teeth ripped and sank into Anders's shoulder, and he roared in fury. Cold light streamed from his eyes and Justice's voice thundered in the night. A second demon leapt upon him and snapped its jaws around his forearm. He reeled and tried to fight them back, and still another bit down into the meat of his thigh.

 

A spectral lyrium shade flashed forth, and Fenris wrenched the demon from Justice's shoulder. His fist closed and ribbons of blood striped them both. From the staff, arcane energy unspooled in gleaming threads and blasted another demon to the ground. Justice raised his booted foot and stomped down, and stomped again, baring his teeth.

 

"Down!" Fenris shouted, and swung out his sword, and Justice ducked low. The blade hacked through one of the creatures in mid-leap. It sent the remainder of them scurrying to the edges of the thicket, where they chittered and stared. Justice snapped forth his staff and doused them all with hot, blinding light, roasting them in their skins.

 

The air grew very cold, and Justice's glow faded. Anders dropped to one knee and clutched his forearm. Fenris remained very still, panting, and he looked slowly around, studying the movement of the trees.

 

"Any more?" Anders gasped.

 

Fenris shook his head, relaxing his body. He scrubbed sweat from his face.

 

"Well. Hunger certainly knows we're coming," Anders said. He waved his staff and whispered words of healing. He cringed and his wounds knitted up.

 

"Such a small welcoming party," Fenris said. He turned a full circle, unable to trust the nighttime silence.

 

"Perhaps it's underestimated us?"

 

Fenris knelt and turned over a leathery black carcass. He recognized it as a lesser entity, a demon minion of the kind who cavorted in stolen flesh. He scowled.

 

"All of these beasts," he said to Anders, "were once human. The poor wretches were possessed."

 

Anders grimly surveyed the fallen creatures. "This does not bode well for what awaits us."

 

"That village that you saw —"

 

"We cannot be prepared to face an army."

 

"Even so, we are running out of time. We cannot leave her."

 

"I did not say we would leave her," Anders shot back.

 

"Then we will press on." Fenris sheathed his sword. "We cannot rest here. Not tonight. We have no choice. We will press on."

 

#

 

Dragana found, increasingly with the passage of time, and with the trembling of her limbs, that she remembered very little of her childhood. There had been much dancing, a great deal, yes; how she'd loved twirling round and round so that her skirts bloomed, full and flowing. At times she could recall the sound of her father's laughter when she'd taken center stage at some village festival or another, and she would leap and spin with abandon, drinking in the praise and shouts of encouragement that the villagers would rain over her like petals.

 

She did recall, very clearly, waking up in the garden one particular evening in autumn. She'd been six, opening her eyes to ashen gray clouds, and snow had been falling for some time. She'd sat up among red snowy crocuses and brushed the powder from her eyes, and had seen a strange man burst from the house, and he'd bent over her, chanting, "Dragana, Dragana," and she'd parted her cold lips and inquired sweetly, "Who is Dragana, sir?"

 

For the first time in her life, Dragana had sensed that something was truly wrong. For her father had wept and wept, and gathered her up, and said nothing more as he'd born her inside.

 

From that day on, Dragana regained her senses but never again the stability of her legs. At times she trembled and shook with such violence that she was confined to bed for days. She no longer danced at springtime festivals, and no longer did she venture beyond the locked doors of the family estate. She suffered fainting spells that left her witless and dizzy, and saw again behind her eyelids those ashen gray clouds and falling snow. Her father pled with healers and medicine men and apostates, and spent a great deal of gold on bitter potions and foul-smelling ointments. The lord of a humble village can only do so much, however, and her house grew poor, and her father became withdrawn and hopeless.

 

Dragana recalled, though she'd loved him very much, growing weary of her father's dire disposition. Dallying in bed bored her so. His constant weeping annoyed her, and she snuck away from the Croceum estate as often as she could, only to be collected by the harangued Grasin.

 

At fourteen she was to be wed to Florian Lefebvre of Ostwick. He had come to call with his father, a wealthy banker, the summer before her promised birthday, and the elder Lefebvre became enraged at the destitution of the Croceum name. Florian had wandered the gardens as his father ranted and spat, and came upon Dragana bathing and singing in the lily pond. He'd frozen in place, transfixed by the sight of her draped only in purple hyacinths and the damp tresses of her red hair. She'd smiled at him and invited him to stay, and he'd sat and watched her until Grasin discovered them and flung a bedsheet around her shoulders and hurried her back inside.

 

Florian had returned to his father to declare his love for the prospective bride, only to discover that Lefebvre had broken the betrothal. Florian then disavowed his own name and pledged himself to Dragana, and Lefebvre had returned to Ostwick in a violent fury.

 

There would be no wedding. After suffering such disgrace, Dragana's father had vanished into the Vimmark Mountains, leaving his household in a state of panic. Dragana had been glad to be rid of him, happy to tease the lovesick Florian, who'd apprenticed himself to the village butcher. For two years they courted and enjoyed one another, until the day that her father returned, harrowed and haunted-looking, with a strange guest.

 

It was then that the Lord came into their lives, and the Croceum house changed, and Dragana's father vanished once more, this time for good.

 

Dragana now smiled dreamily at such sweet memories. Florian stood on the other side of a dark glossy table, scraping his cleaver against a length of honing steel. Between them lay a delectable feast on scrolled silver tableware. Deftly he began to carve an enormous roast into steaming slabs. Dragana poked her finger into a tureen of stew, and he shook his carving fork at her.

 

"Mind your manners," he said.

 

"Silly Florian, supposing I have manners to mind." She stirred the hot stew with her finger and licked it clean. "Mm. The stew is heady with garlic. Delectable."

 

"Well, last time you loved it so."

 

"Indeed!" She pushed herself up over the table and arranged her knees upon her chair. She plucked and prodded at various dishes, tasting this and that. He swatted at her hand, and she whined, "Oh, you are a beast, a beast."

 

"Honestly. Let me finish this."

 

"I will do as I please!" And she snatched up a plate of liver and dropped it loudly at her place setting. Florian rolled his eyes and continued carving. "I think I shall begin with this," she declared, scooting back down into her seat. She cut a small slice and ate it, chewing with relish. "Delightful."

 

"I am pleased, my dear."

 

She sighed decadently. "Oh, Florian, it is just so delicate and soft, like custard on the tongue. Do tell me, is it from the young chap I saw delivering bread?"

 

"Yes, my dear. The baker's boy. You'll find the roast to be quite tender as well. The meat is sensuous and yielding to every bite. It's been slow-roasted for hours."

 

"Ooh, I cannot wait. Just the thought of it makes this liver seem absolutely pedestrian." She slid her finger back into the stew. "And the stew here — his blood?"

 

"Yes, my dear."

 

She sucked her finger clean. "Oh, you spoil me. You spoil me."

 

"It is eternally my pleasure, darling."

 

Florian finished his work and sat across from her, serving himself, as she took little bites and nips of everything, and he refilled her glass of wine over and over until she was lolling and giggling over the table. He watched carefully as she propped herself up to reach for a platter of sweetbreads, and her elbow began to violently shake, so that she nearly fell onto her own plate.

 

He sipped at his stew and drained his own glass. "So, my dear," he said. "Has the Lord spoken any further of his promises?"

 

Dragana wobbled back into her seat and popped a morsel into her mouth. "He has been somewhat distracted," she said, and she wrinkled her nose like a child.

 

"I see. It has been . . . four years, has it not?"

 

"It's the ******'s fault," she sniffed.

 

"And she has only so recently arrived," he remarked. "But he says he has been pleased with us. With you."

 

"Yes. Of course. He has been my everything, my whole life. Why do you question that?"

 

He shook his head. "I do not question it. Of course not, my dear. I am merely concerned for your well-being."

 

"Is that so?"

 

"Yes. He promised to take the tremors away, did he not?"

 

"Of course."

 

"But still you are not well."

 

"It takes time," she spat. She gave a little huff. "We must continue to do everything he asks, and he asks of us so little. He has treated us well and here you are, speaking poorly of him."

 

"I am not."

 

"Would you like me to go to him, then, and inform him of your doubts?"

 

Florian lowered his cutlery. "That would be quite unnecessary."

 

Dragana mopped her lips with a napkin and flung it to the table. "Unnecessary? Absolutely not. I shall fetch him right now." She shoved her chair back.

 

Florian rose to his feet. "Now, Dragana, honestly —"

 

"Ungrateful wretch, that's what you are, such an ungrateful wretch." To his surprise, tears were collecting in her eyes. "How dare you, to say that I am not well."

 

She spun around and Florian darted around the table. He touched her shoulder. "My dear —"

 

"Do not!" She jerked away and sprinted to the door, and with a thrill of alarm Florian caught her round the middle and lifted her, thrashing and squealing, off her feet. He staggered back and the heel of her hand smashed into his face, and her little foot jabbed his stomach, and he turned then with a growing fury and flung her onto the table. She gave a theatrical shriek as plates and bowls clattered; he bore down on her shoulders and shook her once, twice.

 

"Silence! Stop wailing like a foolish child."

 

"Let go, oh, you are hurting me."

 

"I said be silent!" He ground his mouth against hers and she squealed again, twisting away, and he pulled her back, kissing her savagely. "Oh, how I love you," he moaned. "Oh, my dear. How I love you."

 

She bit down on his lip and he jerked back, dripping blood. He slapped her and she howled. "I have given everything for you," he said. "I have given everything — my home, my inheritance — gladly, and I would do so again. Why." He shook her again. "Why will you not love me?"

 

"My Lord is everything," she cried out. "Oh, my Lord, save me, save me."

 

"Dragana, please. I beg you. Please." He stroked her reddening cheek. "Why must you be so cruel?"

 

"Get off of me, get off, get off."

 

"I cannot bear it, these long years. You wander about as though you are dreaming. You glut yourself with flesh and hot blood."

 

"It is all for my Lord."

 

"Your Lord, who has done for you so little. Who I have never even seen. How am I to know that he is not just some hallucination?"

 

"If that is what you truly think, then why do you stop me?"

 

Florian said nothing. Tears had rolled down her face and wetted his fingers.

 

"I will do all that he asks," Dragana whispered. "Everything. He will make me walk again."

 

"How can you be certain?"

 

"Because I have never in my life felt such love. Such happiness. Because I have never felt so beautiful than when he makes love to me. I am in awe at his touch, at his slightest glance. Without him, I have nothing. I am nothing."

 

She began to silently weep, her body giving little helpless fits and starts. Florian relaxed his grip, and slowly he pulled away, his heart cleft with pain. She turned onto her side and pulled her knees to her chest, upsetting her glass of wine, which toppled to one side and flooded the tablecloth. The crimson stain seeped into the tresses of her hair.

 

"I am nothing," she wept, and Florian merely watched her, unable to speak.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 9

 

Anders trailed after Fenris as they tracked their demonic attackers. They followed a path of indiscriminate destruction: the shredded-bare backs of pines, the heads of kingcups and brush trampled flat, the residuum of partially-consumed and regurgitated creatures. At one point they discovered the hollows of a fox's den, silent, and redolent with spilled blood, where nothing remained except for telltale scratches and scrabblings in the dirt.

 

"They would have cleared the entire forest, had they lived," Fenris observed, and moved on.

 

It became very obvious to both of them, over time, that Fenris was the only one speaking. Neither of them addressed this. Anders wandered behind Fenris with downcast eyes. He could not prevent the invasion of the beggar-girl's memory. He could not shake that sense of altruistic ecstasy that had briefly eclipsed his despair, nor the sight of her haunted eyes, the sound of coins ringing against a tin cup. Guilt chewed at the edges of his mind, where thoughts of Hawke were too painful to scrutinize. He cursed himself, repeatedly.

 

For Fenris's part, the satisfaction of proving, to him, Anders's unequivocal hypocrisy had been short-lived. He found he could not delight in Hawke's betrayal. He continued on with a hunter's focus. He would exterminate the beast. He would find her. He would keep her safe.

 

For days they tracked and traced, and slept fitfully, until one evening they broke free of the forest and caught sight of thatched roofs just beyond the ridge of a limestone promontory.

 

#

 

Dragana faltered within the cavernous den. The cragged floor was hot beneath her feet. She toyed with her cane. He stood against the far wall with his back to her, just as she had last seen him, heaving slowly and deliberately. She curtsied and said, "My Lord."

 

He sucked in his breath and emitted a long, steady gust of air. The temperature rose.

 

"It is your Dragana," she said.

 

"I do not smell new blood," he rumbled. A tremor shook the chamber.

 

"My Lord, I am so sorry. I did not have time to bathe."

 

"You would risk my displeasure?"

 

"I'm sorry," she stammered.

 

His shoulders returned to their rhythmic rise and fall. He leaned forward, propping his forehead against the wall.

 

Dragana took a hesitant step. Sweat was beading her face, her lip, the bony knuckles of her hands. "My Lord still feels unwell?"

 

There came a soft growl from the walls, from the ceiling.

 

"I wish there were something I could do."

 

"What have you come here to say, that you would present yourself to me unwashed?"

 

"I just wanted to inform you — to tell you — that —" Her voice failed her. She tried again. "That Florian. He —"

 

A second growl, and Dragana leaned hard on her cane. She lowered her eyes with shame. His massive form shifted, just slightly, and she saw that he was touching his stomach with great delicacy.

 

"It is her, isn't it?" she said softly.

 

He growled again.

 

She pressed on: "Oh, I hate how she makes you suffer. It fills my heart with distress to see you this way. She is hateful, a hateful thing."

 

"You are testing my patience."

 

"Please, forgive me. Nevermind silly old Florian." She flung out her hand, as though disposing of the very idea. "My Lord, your envoy has not returned. It has been several days."

 

"Have your butcher send out more, then."

 

"My Lord. Florian says there are not enough —"

 

"You do not listen to the butcher. You listen to me."

 

"Such is the truth, my Lord."

 

He sighed, breathed in, sighed again. His great fingers curled into a fist against his stomach. "I cannot sense them in the Fade," he said. "They have all been dispatched. A grave disappointment."

 

Dragana chewed her lip.

 

"No matter. You will meet them, then."

 

"I, my Lord?"

 

"Yes. I leave this to you and your butcher. Ensure they come nowhere near this place. Or I shall be very displeased."

 

She nodded vigorously. "Yes, my Lord. Of course. I will not disappoint you. I will make you so very happy."

 

He groaned then, faintly, and sagged against the wall. She chanced a step.

 

"My Lord? A gentle touch, if I may?"

 

She crossed the chamber without awaiting an answer, and laid a hand against his arm, hoping for a kiss, an acquiescing gesture, some sign of his former tenderness. No sooner had she brushed the torrid flesh than he rounded on her with an echoing bellow, and she leapt back, her heart leaping similarly in her chest.

 

"LEAVE ME," he snarled, and she fled to the exit, his deafening fury ringing in her ears.

 

#

 

Fenris and Anders skirted the promontory with great caution. It was a vast, sheer cliff of bone-colored rock, within which the dusky sunlight revealed gleaming crimson seams. The village itself crowded along the knurled steps of the cliffside. They came to a gate of weathered stone and stood observing it from a distance.

 

A breeze ruffled through them, and Anders wrinkled his nose. "Maker, what is that stench?"

 

"It smells of corpses. Old ones."

 

"Pleasant." Anders pointed to the gate. "Ah. Do you see those?"

 

Fenris squinted. Swaying against the columns of the gate were large, fleshy blossoms, at least half a dozen of them. Each had five russet-colored lobes — petals — dappled with white spots. Bloated flies dodged and dove around them.

 

"Flowers?" Fenris said.

 

"Rafflesias," Anders said. "A jungle plant, known in the Donarks as the Carrion Flower. At least, according to the books they allowed us in the Circle. The odor attracts botflies. Rafflesias are — a parasitic species." He frowned. "Strange to see them here in the Free Marches."

 

"Quite." Fenris scanned the wall that surrounded the village. "The question is, are they a decoration or a warning?"

 

"The gate is open. It is possible the village has nothing to do with Hunger."

 

"I sincerely doubt it." Fenris huffed a short sigh. "Well. Let us see what we find."

 

They approached the gate and crossed into the village proper. The terrain was a notched series of limestone shelves dense with stone cottages, the roofs woven with lichen and bulrush. Stray vines crept across the gravel paths, sporting more specimens of the curious flowers. All was quiet save for a lone lamplighter, a young man precariously standing on tiptoe to light a high torch. Perhaps a third of the houses were lit from within, and the rest stood dark and silent.

 

"You there," Anders called, and the lamplighter glanced about, missing the torch completely. He lowered his wick.

 

"Me, serah?"

 

"Yes. Tell us, whereabouts is the inn?"

 

"You'd have us sleep here?" Fenris muttered between gritted teeth.

 

"The inn?" The lamplighter removed his cap and wiped his forehead. "I'd say it shut down close to two years ago. There's a pub, though. Might have a couple spare rooms."

 

"I see. Not many visitors, then?"

 

"Not many travelers in this corner of the Marches, serah."

 

"Strange flora you have here," Fenris said.

 

The lamplighter glanced down at a cluster of rafflesias that clung to a cottage wall. "Ah, you mean these? Didn't used to get them. We had a strange season a few years back, awful strange, when the village Lord died."

 

"Did he?"

 

"Yes, serah. Lord Croceum. Fine man. Loved his daughter more than anything. The place was lousy with crocuses back then, red as rouge-cakes. Quite sad when he died. Broke everyone's heart. These ugly plants sprouted up not long after. Now the entire cliffside stinks like a charnel house."

 

"How," Anders said slowly, "many years ago, did you say?"

 

"Not sure. Three, maybe four."

 

Anders turned to Fenris. "Well. A drink certainly seems to be in order, don't you agree?" He nodded to the lamplighter. "Thank you, serah. And where is that pub?"

 

He pointed with his wick, the flame streaking along the end of the long pole. "Just up that way along the cliff. Sign says 'The Adder's Root.'"

 

They thanked him and hurried off, and he stretched back up toward the torch. It flared to life as they passed, throwing their shadows against the darkened cottages.

 

"You heard him?" Anders said under his breath.

 

"Of course I heard him."

 

"Four years ago. That was when Hawke arrived in Kirkwall, was it not? Strange coincidence, that."

 

"More than coincidence."

 

They approached a squat public house that ran to the very edge of the cliff. It indeed bore a sign, "The Adder's Root," in elaborate script over a carving of a strange flower, all pointed spadix and spathe, like the head of a spear. They paused before the door and glanced at one another briefly, and then they went in.

 

A low fire crackled and spit in a central hearth. This and a small glassed lamp at the bar provided the only illumination, which seemed to lessen as the sun sank lower. Tables and chairs stood empty over a rust-colored throw rug. A single patron slumped at the bar, downing a flagon of ale, and a barmaid banged trays in the washbasin.

 

Anders lingered, and Fenris went to the bar and sat. The barmaid turned to him, her expression weary and unchanging.

 

"Dalish?" she said pointedly, as she looked him up and down.

 

"Thirsty." He tapped a trio of coppers against the counter. The other patron drank deeply from his flagon and ignored them.

 

She held out her hand. The lines in her palm were etched black with dirt. He dropped the coins onto it.

 

"Sun Blonde Vintage."

 

"Don't got it." She closed her fingers around the coins. "Sack mead, ale, or nothing."

 

"Fine. Sack, then."

 

"Never seen Dalish tattoos like that," she said, pocketing the coins, and she bustled away with a glass as the lone patron raised his head and finally noticed them.

 

Anders crossed the room. He did not see how the stranger's eyes alighted on Fenris, how they followed the silver paths along his arms to his throat, to his face. Fenris watched the barmaid vanish into the larder and, feeling eyes upon him like prodding hands, returned the stranger's gaze with a scowl.

 

"Yes?" he said impatiently.

 

The man smiled. His face, well-cut and boyish, bore a shade of noblesse that was absent from the few locals they'd seen. His nose was long and avian beneath sharp eyes. A crop of black curls drifted about his face.

 

"Not Dalish, those markings," he said. Traces of a foreign accent gilded his words.

 

"No," Fenris said.

 

"Magnificent work, regardless."

 

Fenris merely glowered at the larder door, and the barmaid returned, setting an egg-shaped glass of mead in front of him. He seized it and drank. The wine flashed gold in the firelight.

 

The stranger looked to Anders. "Traveling?" he said lightly.

 

"Passing through," Anders said, shaking his head at the barmaid when she approached him expectantly.

 

"I see. You do not look like a Marcher. A refugee, then, like so many others? From the Blight?"

 

Anders nodded. "Very good," he said. "And your accent?"

 

The man's smile widened, and he propped his jaw against his fist, where golden rings shimmered. "My father hails from Orlais," he said. "I myself am from Ostwick. Florian." He nodded. "Of the Lefebvre family."

 

"Pleasure," Anders said, as Fenris threw back his head and drained his glass. "So you are traveling as well?"

 

"Alas, no. I make a humble living here, as a butcher. 'Tis an enlightening way of life."

 

"I see. Have you lived here long?"

 

"Not long."

 

"Before, perchance, the death of Lord, ah —"

 

The black eyebrows lifted. "Croceum? Yes."

 

"Right. We noticed some strange flowers at the village gate, and strewn all about. A villager told us that they have not always been here."

 

"Ah. Yes. They are a favorite of the Lady Croceum."

 

"His wife?"

 

The butcher shook his head. "Daughter. A lovely eccentric. One of the flowers was given to her as a gift by an esteemed visitor. They've since rather taken to the place."

 

Anders scratched his beard thoughtfully. "I didn't think such plants would flourish in a mountain clime."

 

"Ah, but the air here has grown quite warm over the years. Some say it is the final breath of the late Lord, gone out of him."

 

"Poetic," Fenris said, waving to the barmaid, who took his glass back to the larder.

 

Florian's gaze alighted on him once more. "And you," he said. "From where have you traveled?"

 

"It does not matter where I am from," Fenris said.

 

"I see. Your companion here," and he nodded to Anders, "has quite a telltale look about him. Such light hair, as in the arid lands. You are from the Anderfels?"

 

Anders blinked. "Quite impressive."

 

Florian laughed. "I am well-traveled, myself. Your name?"

 

"Anders."

 

"Anders of the Anderfels." And he laughed again, pleasantly, each note like music. "Very good, very good. You are a delight, serah."

 

Anders smiled, despite himself. Fenris reached for his second glass of mead.

 

"We were hoping to find a room for the night," Anders said.

 

"But the inn, you see, has closed."

 

"So we were told."

 

"Allow me to help." Florian drew from his breast pocket a silver coin and pushed it toward the barmaid. "When I arrived at the Root tonight, I was in quite a poor mood. You have lifted my spirits considerably. I personally serve the Lady Croceum. Her house will have plenty of room for you tonight."

 

Fenris looked at Anders sharply, who said, "Oh, my. That's unnecessary —"

 

"It is my pleasure." Florian pushed back his stool and offered his hand. "I will not hear otherwise. Come and meet Lady Croceum. I am sure you have many interesting stories she would love to hear. I imagine she would adore telling you more about the flowers, as well."

 

Anders smiled uncertainly and grasped his hand. "Well," he said, "how could we refuse?"

 

"You cannot." Florian's lips pulled back, just slightly, from his perfect teeth.

 

#

 

Florian escorted them from the Adder's Root to a flower-riddled path ascending the cliffside. The sun had long vanished, and the pair of moons lit the limestone with a subtle glitter. Fenris and Anders exchanged meaningful glances as they followed the lean, boyish butcher: Fenris glared, at which Anders helplessly lifted his eyebrows, prompting Fenris to nod at the way ahead, where a stately, if modestly-sized, manor awaited them. Anders saw then the rafflesias strung in the door frame, numerous and lurid and reeking, like fleshy tumors.

 

An elven servant opened the door for them, and for a moment he appeared startled when he saw Fenris, though he snapped to attention as Florian spoke.

 

"Grasin, please alert the Lady Croceum that she will have guests tonight. Ser Anders of the Anderfels," he said with a grin, "and his traveling companion, a reticent elf etched in marvelous silver."

 

"Of course, messere."

 

"And add two place settings to the table. I am sure that our guests are quite hungry."

 

"Yes, messere."

 

His stare lingered on Fenris and Anders, and he was gone.

 

"Please, come in." Florian led them through a foyer furnished in glossy dark woods and precisely-cut stone. Fenris glanced around, acutely aware of the silence in this place: no other servants seemed to be about. They next passed through a drawing room that smelled strongly of fresh varnish, its windows draped in heavy velvet, and from there they entered a dining room, in which a long table was set for two.

 

"Take your seats," Florian said. "Dinner shall be served very soon, and then you will be free to freshen up and rest. I shall go fetch the Lady. Grasin will return with your tableware."

 

He waited first for them to sit down, and left, leaving the doors to the drawing room open, so that the odor of varnish lingered.

 

"Quite eager to have us, that one," Fenris remarked.

 

"We'll see what the Lady of the village has to say," Anders said. "Considering the oddities that have occurred here since Hunger followed Marian from Ferelden . . ."

 

"Suppose they slit our throats while we sleep?"

 

"Why would they? Ser Lefebvre seems friendly enough."

 

"But this woman, this 'lovely eccentric' . . ."

 

A voice sang out then: "Ah, guests! Wonderful, wonderful!"

 

They rose from their seats. A young woman, younger than they expected, skipped through the drawing room and curtsied to them extravagantly. She wore a poppy-colored dress with flowing skirts and a generous bustle. The red of her hair nearly matched the dress, blanching a youthful, freckled face. Her feet, beneath a lacy hem, were petite and bare. Anders bowed in return. Fenris briefly nodded his head.

 

"So good to meet you." She flounced up to Fenris and, much to his surprise, took both of his hands and kissed them. She smiled up at him. "I am Lady Dragana Croceum."

 

"A pleasure," he stammered.

 

"What fearsome claws!" she cried, tapping the points of his fingers.

 

Florian entered the room then, followed by Grasin, who carried two sets of plates and cutlery.

 

"You shall have to remove them before dinner," Florian remarked.

 

"Nonsense, poppycock," Dragana said. "They are beautiful. Though, even more beautiful . . ." And she turned his hands over to admire his palms. ". . . are these strange and shimmery tattoos. You are quite a sight, lovely stranger."

 

"Now, Lady Croceum. You're embarrassing him. And again you have forgotten your cane."

 

"Hush, Florian." She laughed, light and brassy, and squeezed Fenris's hands. She released him and hopped into a chair, at which Grasin was laying a fine bone plate. "Everyone sit, please sit. Grasin, fetch the wine, will you?"

 

They sat. Grasin hurried from the room, and returned moments later with a decanter of jewel-red wine, which he emptied skillfully into their glasses. Dragana stood and raised her glass.

 

"To our guests," she announced, "weary travelers, please make yourselves at home. I do hope you find our hospitality acceptable."

 

"Here, here," Florian said, and Fenris and Anders nodded their thanks, and they drank.

 

Anders sipped his wine politely. Fenris waited an imperceptible second, until he'd seen the throbbing of his hosts' throats, and he downed his glass with a single gulp.

 

"My, my," Dragana said. "So glad to see you enjoy the wine."

 

He said nothing, and Anders hurriedly supplied, "We thank you for the generosity. It is undeserved."

 

Grasin returned with a great platter, upon which he balanced glazed and steaming meats, dishes of soup, and a basket heaped with bread. He lowered it to the table with little effort, though it must have been immensely heavy, and began to serve them all. He caught Fenris's eye as he leaned over Dragana's plate, and held it, and hastily returned to his work, as Fenris wrinkled his brow.

 

"Florian says you are interested in the rafflesias," Dragana chirped between swallows of wine.

 

"Ah. Yes. Quite unusual in this part of Thedas, I understand?" Anders said.

 

Grasin circled the table and distributed cuts of meat onto Fenris's plate.

 

"'Tis absolutely a rarity, in the Free Marches," Dragana said. "I am fortunate to have received one. I planted it in my garden, and it began to grow all over, happy as can be."

 

Grasin bent to one side, presumably to adjust a porringer of soup next to Fenris's plate, and whispered, "Do not eat the food."

 

"The, ah, scent does not bother you?" Anders said.

 

Grasin bowed himself out. Fenris did not turn his head.

 

Dragana gave an enchanting smile. "My sense of smell is rather lacking," she said. "I am often ill, you see."

 

"The Lady is delicate," Florian said.

 

"I see. My apologies for calling attention."

 

"Not at all, not at all." She plucked a roll of bread and licked up a bead of honey. "I do not mind sharing. Please, feel welcome to ask what you wish."

 

She bit into the roll, and Florian ladled soup into his mouth. Fenris glanced subtly at his dishes. Bands of coarse, treacly sauce coated the strips of pink meat. Stewed bones and offal steeped in liver-colored broth. Anders lifted his knife and fork. Fenris reached beneath the table and jabbed him, gently but firmly, with a single claw. Anders jumped, but their hosts seemed not to notice.

 

"Ser Lefebvre has told us that he is from Ostwick," Fenris said, perhaps too loudly. "What brought you here, to this place?"

 

"Oh, we were betrothed," Dragana said airily. She giggled again.

 

Fenris raised his eyebrows. "Were you?"

 

"Yes," Florian said, taking a considerable draught of wine.

 

"May I ask, then, since I am welcome to," Fenris said, as Anders shot him an irritated look, "why you are not married?"

 

"My father bankrupted our estate," Dragana said. She sawed a cutlet of meat. "Florian's daddy was not happy."

 

"A banker," Florian explained.

 

"But Florian stayed behind. Such a sweetheart."

 

"And so your father was still alive then?" Fenris said.

 

"Briefly," Dragana said.

 

"Erm," said Anders.

 

"He wandered off into the mountains," Florian remarked. "Not for the first time. He was a frequent depressive. He likely flung himself from the cliffs."

 

"I see." Anders lifted his wine glass and lowered it again.

 

Dragana braced both hands against the tabletop and pushed herself up. She stared pointedly at their plates. "Why, you haven't touched a morsel," she said.

 

Anders glanced, far too obviously, at Fenris.

 

"Eat, please." Dragana smiled. "Both of you."

 

"Alas, our journey this day has been long, exceedingly long," Fenris said. "We are utterly fatigued."

 

"Utterly," Anders said quickly.

 

"Oh, but it is so early."

 

"We traveled through the night," Anders said.

 

"A pity." She teased, "Perhaps you should not have drunk all of that wine so quickly, Ser Silver Elf. It has made you sleepy, and is robbing me of your company."

 

"My deepest apologies," Fenris said. He rose to his feet. "I do not wish to appear ungrateful."

 

Anders and Florian rose as well. Dragana remained seated.

 

"Promise you will dine with me again," she said, pointedly, to Fenris, "before you leave."

 

"I would not refuse," Fenris said, giving a short bow.

 

"We thank you," Anders added.

 

"Well. Florian." Dragana waved her little hand. "Though it pains me, please show our guests to their rooms. It is as they wish."

 

Florian went to the door. "Come, gentlemen."

 

They followed. Fenris glanced, momentarily, back. Dragana was smiling at him. She gave a little wave, and he turned away, a chill climbing with icy fingers up his spine.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 10

 

Fenris lagged behind Anders as Florian guided them to the western side of the manor. It was difficult for him to resist the compulsion to keep a hand on his greatsword, ready to draw at any time. Florian walked with a maddening leisure, taking time to describe the significance of this family heirloom, the workmanship of that local sculpture. Anders nodded along like a fool.

 

They came to a pair of guest rooms, and Florian bid his farewell. Once Anders had entered his room, Florian took Fenris by the arm.

 

"The Lady Croceum is rather prone to jovialities," he said, smiling in a manner that did not reflect his tone.

 

Fenris stared back impassively.

 

"You will not take her flirtations seriously."

 

The skin of Fenris's arm tingled, and pricked deeply, where Florian touched him.

 

"I wish you a pleasant night." Florian released him and, with a shallow bow, departed. When he had left, Fenris's markings lit, flashed hot, and dimmed again.

 

He went into Anders's room, shut the door, and said, "The food was tainted."

 

Anders was sitting at the edge of a generous four-poster bed. The guest room was small but comfortably furnished, though lacking, Fenris noted, in windows of any kind.

 

"How did you know?" Anders said.

 

"I did not. Though I should have suspected." He shook his head. "The Lady's servant — Grasin? He warned me, as he set my plates."

 

"Such a risk for him to take, with his mistress right there."

 

"Agreed."

 

"But Dragana and Florian both ate the food. And all of it was served from the same dishes."

 

"Something was wrong. Something we would not have wanted to chance."

 

Anders touched his throat. "The wine. We both drank it."

 

"Somehow I feel the wine was not at issue."

 

"Well, that does not surprise me, coming from you."

 

Fenris glared.

 

Anders went on, "But why not simply kill us now, if they had gone through the trouble to poison the food?"

 

"It may not have been poison." Fenris glanced back, as though the butcher were standing at the door. "I cannot say."

 

"We are walking a fine line, staying in this place."

 

"But she is here," Fenris said firmly. "She must be. Somewhere, hidden in this village, the demon has her."

 

"Suppose Dragana knows Hunger? Her father's death, the Carrion Flowers — they all happened just as Hunger arrived in the Free Marches."

 

"That I also cannot say. If she does, she is very dangerous. It is likely Hunger already knows that we are here."

 

"Suppose it flees, then, and leaves no trail?"

 

"Then we shall not give it the time to do so."

 

Anders suddenly looked away. The muscles in his throat throbbed. He said, "And you still think. That she —?"

 

"Is alive? Of course I do," Fenris snapped. "She is. She must be."

 

He fell silent. Anders swallowed hard. Tersely he rubbed his forehead, and then he looked directly at Fenris.

 

"What are you really thinking," he said, "when you think of her?"

 

Fenris stared back. "I am thinking," he said evenly, "that I owe her a great deal."

 

"I do not think you are," Anders said.

 

A slow and creeping heat was rising, somewhere, within Fenris.

 

"And?" he said.

 

Anders blinked very quickly, and his chest rose, and fell. He paused a moment more before saying, "Why did you. Do that. To her?"

 

The heat blistered behind Fenris's eyes. He leveled his gaze. "Still you will not speak of it plainly?"

 

"You — harmed her."

 

"I fucked her."

 

Blue light sparked from Anders's fist, which Fenris now noticed was clutching the long staff. "You raped her."

 

"That's it. Finally you are capable of saying it out loud. And why does it matter to you now, why it happened? Are you worried that she'd lied? That she'd cuckolded you?"

 

The presence of the beggar-girl bled into the room like an unwelcome, unacknowledged guest.

 

"Why that night?" Anders said. "What happened? Why was she with you?"

 

"I do not have to explain myself to you," Fenris said.

 

"You do. You very much do. Tell me." He breathed in, held it, released it. He said, with great pain, "When she came to me, after it happened, she was practically. Maker. She was practically apologizing —"

 

Fenris lunged toward Anders, who rose from the bed and backed around it, bearing his staff. Silver light spouted from Fenris's body.

 

"Listen to yourself, you fool," he roared.

 

They stood with the corner of the bed between them, tense and coiled, as Fenris's markings guttered out.

 

"She loves you, the idiot," Fenris spat.

 

Anders lowered his staff.

 

"The Void take her," Fenris said. He struck the bedpost with his fist. "She loves you."

 

He glared at Anders with renewed hatred — foolish, simpering Anders. He was reminded, then, of Florian's warning, of the butcher's grip upon his arm, the jealousy that had radiated there. Disgust surged through him.

 

"She came to me of her own accord," Fenris said. The words rushing from him like water from a dam. "She did not know that I was angry with her. Because of this."

 

And he snatched the silken cord from Anders's neck, before Anders could react, and pulled the hateful thing free: flashing silver, the delicately-engraved amulet swung from his hand, Tevinter-made, Chantry-blessed, given with love from one apostate to another.

 

"You were not there, when we found it," he said bitterly. "It was locked away in a slavers' den. Where I tracked down Hadriana. Where I killed Hadriana. I am sure that you remember that name, having so thoughtfully dredged her memory from my mind?"

 

Anders looked from Fenris to the amulet and said nothing.

 

"Hadriana," Fenris snarled. "Blood mage. Witch. Foolish groveling ******." He flung the amulet across the room, and it clanged against the wall. "And Hawke thought it sweet to give it to you. I drank, and I boiled, and when we were alone, she seemed to me no better than that witch.

 

"In Tevinter — you would not know — the magisters, they all delight in blood magic. It is sport to them. It is power, but it is sport. Hawke's blood magic — all magic — it's an abomination, an aberration. And so . . ."

 

The tension in him was weakening. He had the sense, suddenly, that he was no longer speaking to Anders, or for the benefit of anyone who could listen. He turned away. He turned back again.

 

"And so I used her," he said. "I used her, as Danarius had used me. But. No." He ground his knuckles into his forehead. "He'd never hid his cruelty, but he had always treated me with tenderness. Certainly, the same tenderness a master shows his pet, or a swordsman his weapon. But still there was tenderness. For her, I felt only hatred." He said it before he could stop himself. "And a need to conquer."

 

Anders stood up taller then, rigid, and Fenris sagged against the bedpost.

 

"I had not known. I'd thought — I saw Hadriana when I looked upon her. I hadn't known that Hawke had been a child. When she'd forged her contract. To protect her home." His eyes grew distant. "Especially now, now that I have seen what becomes of a village when it is the plaything of a demon."

 

He glared again at Anders. "Does that answer your bloody question?"

 

"I don't give a blighted ****," Anders said, "about your inferiority complexes."

 

Fenris's muscles locked together. The heat was returning.

 

"You hadn't known?" Anders said. "You hadn't known she'd been a child — that she wasn't one of the 'bad ones' — and so you attacked her? It was justified, until Hunger showed up?" He shook his staff. "I want to know why she was there. And I want to know why she took you back to her manor." Lines of cold blue gleamed beneath the surface of his skin, behind his eyes, scarcely contained. "I want to know why she was taken from her bed. Why you were there with her, when she was taken."

 

And he bit out, "You desire her."

 

Fenris sneered.

 

"You always have."

 

"Who would you say has done her more harm, then?" Fenris said. "The man who violated her? Or the man who now accuses her of hiding something?"

 

Anders lunged then, but Fenris was ready. He twisted the staff in Anders's hand and slammed it, lengthwise, into the other man's solar plexus, using his momentum against him. Anders choked and crumpled onto the bed. He clutched his stomach. Fenris tossed the staff away.

 

"My answer to you is to trust her," Fenris said, walking to the door. "Even though she should not trust you. We will wake at dawn. And soon she shall be happily back in your arms."

 

He left, shutting the door, as Anders coughed into the blankets.

 

#

 

"You shall have your reward."

 

"Yes," Dragana breathed.

 

"You have pleased me. Very much."

 

"Yes."

 

"You will bring me the head of the mage. And the skin of the elf."

 

"Ahh. Yes, my Lord."

 

"You shall be cured."

 

"Ah. Ahh."

 

"The healing method may be . . . demanding. Are you prepared to do whatever I ask?"

 

"Yes. Yes, my Lord. Anything."

 

#

 

Anders and Fenris awoke separately the next morning, and neither approached the other, hungrily eating the few rations they had, and independently explaining to Florian that they were to stay an additional day to rest from their journey. Florian smiled, and graciously agreed with each of them, as though he had not already spoken to the other.

 

Anders set out to explore the village. It was just as quiet as when they'd arrived, and perhaps only a villager or two milled about, drawing water from the well, or hanging laundry to dry in the breeze. Most of the cottages still appeared empty, silent and still.

 

He wandered past the Adder's Root, glimpsing the barmaid as she stacked wood in the hearth. Beside the pub was a bakery, its sign bearing the carved relief of a spray of wheat. Seeing how smoke emanated from the chimney, Anders went in, and inhaled the aroma of baking bread.

 

"Hello?" he called.

 

The storefront was attended only by a heap of barley rolls cooling on a counter. He leaned to the side, trying to peer into the back room. A woman came from around the corner, patting flour across her apron. She stopped suddenly when she saw Anders and said, "Oh."

 

Anders bowed shortly. "Good morning. I hope I didn't interrupt your work."

 

"Oh, no. My apologies. I thought you might be Messere Lefebvre." She dusted her hands again, shedding clouds of white flour. Her eyes listed wearily across the room. "He comes by routinely. The Lady loves pies and sweets."

 

"I see. Well. I am Anders, a passing traveler." He nodded to the windows at the front of the shop. "I am curious about your village. It seems very quiet today."

 

She glanced past him and folded her hands. "It is, usually. Serah."

 

"But there are so many houses."

 

She nodded mutely.

 

"Where has everyone gone?"

 

Her white fingers twisted around one another. She glanced past him again. "Well, they just. Go. Serah."

 

Anders knit his brows. "They go?"

 

She began shaking her head, and took a step away. "I am sorry, serah. I must return to my work. I am sorry."

 

"Wait. Please. I apologize if I've upset you —"

 

"You haven't, serah —" Stepping back again.

 

"But the flowers, if I could ask —"

 

"There's dough to be pounded, serah. I am sorry."

 

"Is there no one here to help you?" Anders craned his neck to see around her, to the back room.

 

To his surprise, her eyes filled with tears. She roughly wiped them away, streaking her cheeks with flour. "There used to be, serah. My son. A very. A very hard-working boy, he was."

 

Anders said, as carefully as he could, "Where is he?"

 

The woman's chin dropped to her chest. "He. He went, too."

 

Anders moved forward, and she backed away suddenly. "Leave," she said tearfully. "Please leave. Please go."

 

Wet tracks had cut through the flour on her cheeks. Anders bowed his head. He left.

 

#

 

Fenris strode through the drawing room of the Croceum manor. He nearly collided with Grasin, who was hurrying through with a jug of water. The servant ducked his head, nearly dodging away, but Fenris caught him by the shoulder and said, "Wait."

 

Grasin stared at the floor, hugging the jug to his chest. "The Lady expects me, messere."

 

"Do not call me that," Fenris said. He dropped his voice low. "What was in the food?"

 

"Nothing, messere."

 

"Then what did you warn us for?"

 

Grasin glanced nervously at the door. "I must go, messere."

 

"You are terrified out of your wits. How long have you served here?"

 

"Since the Lady was a child, messere."

 

"You are a slave?"

 

"Liberati, messere. From Tevinter." He met Fenris's eyes. "I recognized your markings, messere. The designs. The work of a magister." He ducked his head again. "I must go, I must go."

 

"Please, tell me —"

 

"The garden," Grasin said then, and bowed, and raced away.

 

Fenris watched him go. He turned to the heavy velvet curtains.

 

#

 

Anders stood outside of the bakery, rubbing his beard.

 

"They just go," he murmured.

 

Wind fluttered through his robes, and the stench of rotting flesh invaded him. He wrinkled his nose. A braid of vines had twisted its way across the path before him, and he knelt down to prod a rafflesia bloom with his finger. The thick, lobed petals scarcely gave at his touch. He delicately turned the vine. No part of the parasitic plant was visible beyond the bloom. He pinched the base of the flower and gently pulled. The flesh of the vine tore, and with a small burst of fetid odor the bloom ripped away. He pried at the shreds of the vine, trying to find some evidence of a root, a stem, but there was nothing.

 

He rose, wiping his hands, and produced a small knife from his pocket. He followed the vine until he came upon a larger flower and squatted down again. He slit the vine and peeled apart its fibrous flesh. Again, he saw nothing. He wondered, then, whether or not the blossoms were merely for show, and the parasite itself had overtaken the vine completely.

 

"A cruel fate," he mused, and conceded silently that such was the nature of hunger: to consume, and to consume utterly.

 

He contemplated this, and recalled Fenris's stunned recollection of the demon in the Fade. Starvation with no foreseeable end. The ecstasy of feeding at last, of feeding a hunger that would never truly end. The lonely madness of such a state. And he saw again the longing in Fenris's eyes: "I wanted her more than anything I have ever wanted before." And he thought, wildly, of the urge to conquer, so different, yes, from his own private urges, so beyond what he felt he could understand that he was overcome by a staggering relief.

 

He knew then that he would never voice his doubts to Hawke. No. No matter how it had transpired, or why she'd gone to Fenris alone, or . . .

 

The memory of traversing the Fade came to him then, of walking by Fenris's side, of accompanying Fenris in Hunger's skin. He saw again the moment that Hunger descended upon the Hawke Manor. The bedchamber door splintering away. The sight of Fenris at the bed, weaponless, defenseless. Hawke on the coverlet behind him.

 

Why, Anders thought, knowing he could never ask her, knowing he would never truly know. Why. Why.

 

He followed the vines, allowing the rafflesias to lead him next toward the butcher's shop, and he breathed in their scent, the redolence that abides at the end of all things.

 

#

 

Fenris pushed open the drawing room doors and stepped into the garden.

 

The stench of rotting things gathered here like dense fog. Tangled vines thick with rafflesias choked everything, creeping up the walls, winding around the slender trees. The blooms were massive here, and a darker, rustier shade. The black hollows of their central cups gaped like hungry mouths. Fenris took a careful step forward, flattening vines and stiff petals, and he suppressed a shiver as their texture met his naked feet.

 

The odor here was different. He gazed about, though it was nearly impossible to see what might lay hidden beneath the foliage. A sense of wrongness etched at his brain, not unlike what he'd sensed when he'd discovered the site of Hunger's summoning: the blood-drenched sheets, and among them the concealed totem which now was safely tucked away in his pocket.

 

Blood. Yes. He was no stranger to that scent. There was blood here. Old blood, as well as fresh. He knelt to examine the soil, and the door behind him opened.

 

"Ser Silver Elf!" Dragana cried, clapping her hands with delight.

 

Fenris turned, startled. She skipped from the drawing room terrace, and nearly fell, catching herself with a silver cane. She fluffed her hair a bit and, unfazed, traversed the mat of vines. He rose, and she seized both of his hands.

 

"Oh, how it pleases me to see you here," she said, kissing his hands once more. "Admiring the garden, I see?"

 

"It is most," Fenris said, and paused. "Remarkable." He pulled his hands away.

 

"This garden is my most favorite place in the entire world," she said, and beamed. "Its beauty is simply breathtaking."

 

Fenris followed her gaze from wall to wall.

 

"I often come here to think, or when I feel blue." She gestured to the sky with her cane. "Or to watch the snow in the wintertime. It falls in great fluffy puffs, here in the mountains."

 

"It must be very beautiful," Fenris said.

 

"Yes." She turned to him with a feigned shyness. "Though I feel my present company would shame it."

 

He turned to her, and she giggled, hiding her mouth.

 

"I feel that your eyes stare into my soul!" she said.

 

"I —"

 

"It is all right, it is all right." She waved her hand. "Oh, I wish you would tell me your name. I cannot stand mystery. Or do you perhaps prefer Ser Silver Elf?"

 

"Fenris," he relented, and she clapped her hands again.

 

"Fenris," she said. "So fierce and lovely. A fitting name. And tell me, for I would like to help if I am able. Where are you going, that you have come across our humble village?"

 

"I am searching for someone," he said carefully.

 

"Someone you've lost?"

 

He nodded.

 

"I see." She dropped her eyes and toyed at the vines with her toes. "Someone you love?"

 

He looked beyond her, at the largest of the rafflesias, which reached, and gaped, and dominated the garden. "Yes," he said.

 

"Ah. The lucky she-devil." Dragana lifted a little hand, which Fenris noticed trembled of its own accord. "Perhaps I do not want to help you any longer, then," she teased.

 

Fenris forced a charitable half-smile.

 

"Florian and I. We were in love once," she said. She gave a shrug. "I suppose we were."

 

"You suppose?"

 

"I have loved since," she said simply. "It feels — it is — different."

 

"I understand."

 

"And so you know, then," Dragana said, "that you are in love?"

 

"Yes."

 

"How?"

 

Fenris observed her, this sharp, slight woman, perhaps not much more than a girl. She pushed red hair from her face and smiled. He wondered how much she knew. He wondered whether she were playing some sort of game, or if she truly had been in love, and was truly curious, now, about its nature.

 

"I know that I have caused her pain," he said. "I know that I have done her great harm. And that she has given — a great deal — in exchange for my safety. And I tried to protect her, then. And could not."

 

Dragana's eyes, large and attentive, searched his face.

 

"I was not prepared for what that would do to me," he said. "How that would affect me."

 

"Your heart," she said.

 

"Yes."

 

"So you are puzzled. You are confused."

 

"Yes."

 

"But are you in love?"

 

"I had not given thought to the word itself, until you asked. But. Yes."

 

Her eyes listed away from him then, and she lifted her head, gazing into the sky. She rocked back on her heels.

 

"How very romantic," she sighed. "Oh. How lovely."

 

Fenris, uncomfortable, looked away. As he glanced, a blanched spot among the vines caught his eye. He squinted.

 

"I wonder if she truly appreciates you," Dragana was saying. "How beautiful you are, I mean."

 

He stepped closer, as her eyes settled on him again.

 

"Such beautiful markings," she said.

 

He saw it then. Worked out its shape, from beneath the vines.

 

"Such beautiful flesh."

 

A skull.

 

She touched his face. Surprised, he turned. She was standing on tiptoe, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, smiling, her eyes dreamy and narrow.

 

"Oh, please," she whispered, and kissed him.

 

He was too caught off guard, at first, to do anything, and stood with her hanging from his neck, her lips like dry, soft petals against his own. Gently he pushed her off, and she clung to him, vine-like.

 

"Lady Cro —" he said, and she kissed him again.

 

"Hush, now," she said. "I simply want to taste you. Simply taste." And she giggled.

 

A thrill of recognition raced through Fenris.

 

She whispered, "In my opinion, you can have the ******. But my Lord does not agree."

 

He shoved her, harshly, then, and saw Florian standing at the drawing room door.

 

#

 

Anders ran, panting and sweating, toward the Croceum estate.

 

His thoughts raced. His mind was all panicked blur.

 

The few villagers who loitered about stared at him.

 

The butcher, he thought. The butcher.

 

He'd found the shop empty, of course. Florian did not appear to have any fellows in his trade. But a thick overgrowth of rafflesias had beckoned Anders to stray beyond the storefront and into the workshop behind. And there . . .

 

"Maker," he gasped now.

 

He stopped short, when Fenris burst through the front door of the manor and strode quickly out. His heart pounded with relief. Something in Fenris's face sent a chill through him.

 

"We must go," Fenris said.

 

"Fenris," Anders said. "You must come, I've just —"

 

And the front door of the manor slammed open again, and Florian stormed out, his eyes wild, and before Anders could utter another word he raised a flashing cleaver and struck Fenris on the shoulder.

 

Fenris collapsed to his knees, spattering blood. Anders cried out. A crash thundered behind him and he turned to see demons, black and razor-mawed, pour screaming from the butcher's shop. He lifted his staff and Florian kicked the back of his knee, and he stumbled, and the demons came surging forth, teeth and claws at the ready. Fenris groaned.

 

Icy splinters seemed to shred the back of Anders's eyes. Justice shoved him aside and plunged him into freezing cold. He slammed his staff to the ground and hooking spears of earth erupted before him. Many of the demons were caught, impaled, driven back. Florian threw Fenris down and was kicking him savagely. Justice had no time to turn. With arcane power he wrenched the earthen spears from the ground and flung them into the horde, and he pitched and rolled, as claws tore into his arm.

 

He could not tell how many there were. They shrieked and scrambled and lunged. From the corner of his eye he saw a red flowing figure race from the manor. The young Lady — Dragana — now seized Florian by the sleeve, begging, pleading. Fenris was trying to lift himself from the grass. The mirrored surface of the cleaver, still buried deep, glinted against his shoulder.

 

In the wind, Justice smelled rotting flesh. He smelled wet blood.

 

The demons coursed around him, pushing between him and Fenris. They were driving him back. He conjured fire. He doused them in flames. Still they came, and teeth ripped into his arm, his shoulder, dangerously close to his throat. He staggered. They were going to devour him alive.

 

He swung around. His gaze lit upon the edge of the cliff. The limestone gleamed. He went to it, raising his staff, and the demons swarmed after him. He slammed his staff down, and the rock beneath him cracked, it crumbled and shattered, and he went over, the black churning horde going with him.

 

Together they plummeted down the cliffside.

 

#

 

Fenris awoke, many hours later, in a dark room, to the touch of a wet cloth. Loss of blood dizzied him. The cloth smoothed over his face, cold, and he murmured something, some nonsense, and the cold wetness lifted away.

 

Dragana smiled down at him.

 

She cradled his head in her lap. She patted his cheek with trembling fingers. He tried to reach up, and could not. His wrists strained against coiled rope.

 

"I am sorry," she murmured, "for Florian."

 

She combed at his hair with her fingernails. One of her fingers trailed down to a bandage, linen and dark crusted blood, at his shoulder.

 

"I did my best to dress the wound," she said. "So that it would not scar. I hope." She flicked a line across his throat. "I hope it would not scar, like this ugly thing."

 

Fenris blinked slowly.

 

"I do not know, I suppose, if my Lord would like there to be scars."

 

She hummed a little, the tips of her fingers skipping along the silver lines in his skin. "Pretty," she said sometimes. "Very pretty."

 

She got up, and lowered his head gently. He smelled fresh varnish. The drawing room.

 

"I think it is sad," she said, "that you love her so much."

 

She went to one corner of the room, out of his sight, and rummaged around.

 

"She does not need your love," she said.

 

Drawers opened and closed. Dragana returned, settling back down, and cradled Fenris's head in her lap again. She smoothed a sweet-smelling balm over his chest, her fingers running beneath his tunic.

 

"A tragic romance," she said. "The tragedy lets you know it's real."

 

He breathed in.

 

She smiled. "I think it's all fairytales, otherwise." Her hands slowed, then, and came to a halt. "My Lord loves her. He does, and always has, and very deeply. And for that, there is nothing you can do."

 

She was startled then by the opening of the drawing room door, and her hands tightened into little fists against his chest. She twisted around to look, as someone came into the room.

 

"I should not have left you alone with him," Florian said.

 

"I've done nothing wrong."

 

"I've brought my tools. Let's get this done."

 

Dragana's arms tightened over Fenris. "His wounds need a chance to heal," she said defensively.

 

"The Lord demands his skin," Florian said. "He shall have his skin."

 

"He did not tell us to gouge it open with a cleaver," Dragana said.

 

"Well, perhaps you should have relayed that to me earlier." He came into Fenris's view then, tall, tousled, eyes gleaming. He passed a long, curved knife from hand to hand. "The Lord will have him as he is."

 

"The Lord gave me very specific instructions —"

 

"**** him," Florian said. "We finish this, now."

 

Dragana stood rigidly up. "You cannot say that," she said.

 

"I can, and I have. Don't you see our business with him is nearly done?"

 

"We do not have the head of the mage," she said primly.

 

"I am not convinced of the efficacy of ritual," Florian said. "The mage is dead. The elf will be dead. He has the woman. You will walk. We are done."

 

"No," she said. "The Lord will stay here. This is his village. I am his."

 

"Perhaps you will see differently, once you are well again. I have dreamed so long for this madness to be over."

 

"You are cruel," Dragana said. "You are cruel."

 

"Cruel?" He rounded on her. "I have walked by your side all of this time, while you have wandered in dreams, if only to see you made well again. And you say I am cruel?" He seized her by the arm.

 

"Do not grab me," she said.

 

He shook her. "You have been spared of the blood," he cried. "As you flit about in your stupor. While I have drained and dismembered and flayed, all for your Lord. Why do you not see?"

 

He slapped her then, and to Fenris her cry of pain seemed bird-like and small. She shoved Florian and they both crashed to the floor, and Dragana's hands snapped to the handle of the knife, and the thin curving blade slid deep into Florian's throat.

 

He choked and gurgled. She leaned over him, straddling his chest. Warm wetness pooled against Fenris's arm.

 

"I shall walk again," Dragana said, "without you."

 

She held the knife steady, and his hands groped and stretched.

 

"My Lord gave me the healing ritual," she said. "Because he loves me so. Would you like to hear it?"

 

He gasped, and could not speak.

 

She released the knife and left it, buried to the hilt, in Florian's flesh. She pushed her hair from her face. She turned to Fenris with an extravagant smile.

 

"Drink the blood of the butcher," she said dreamily, "and you shall be healed."

 

She gripped the knife and pulled it, releasing a current of blood. The blade clattered to the floor. She cupped her hands beneath the lurid spring. She raised her hands to her mouth, and she drank.

 

Florian had grown still. Scarlet striped her white arms. She lowered them, and gagged a little, and pressed a hand to her stomach. She closed her eyes, and silence pervaded.

 

After a long moment, she rose shakily up. Her knee pitched beneath her, and she took a step to right herself, and fell. She stood up again, and took several unsteady paces. Fenris watched the trembling of her knees. She paused, breathing in deeply. She approached Fenris and fell again.

 

She tumbled all white and scarlet beside him. Her eyes grew wide and distant. Her hands quivered. She stared past him, through him, her mouth caked and dripping with blood.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 11

 

Anders blinked slowly at the gathering clouds, lacking the sense to wonder whether or not he was dead. At first he saw only the overcast sky, which gradually stained pink with the setting of the sun. The pain was slow to creep through him, until it ignited his nerves like a line of fuses, and he cringed, and almost screamed, for suffering this mistake.

 

He could scarcely feel the ground through this pain. He writhed over cold, jagged limestone. A slow panic was taking hold, and he, well-versed in healing, urged himself to relax, to calm down, but, oh, such pain was unlike any he'd yet survived. He had the impression that he was not here, sprawled upon the ground, but was instead standing over himself, staring down at bruised-black flesh and crushed bones. Neurons in his brain were fireworks, explosions, conflicting bursts of information. I am dead, he thought; I am going into shock; I will not leave this place; I will never see her again.

 

With something of a whimper he forced himself to lay still, letting go of the instinct that screamed for all of his muscles to cramp around his injuries. Tears flooded his eyes. He breathed deeply, and counted: one. Two. Three.

 

With great effort, he took stock of his condition. He could move his head, just barely, and thanked every deity and spirit he could imagine that he hadn't snapped his neck. He felt slightly less grateful when he caught sight of a splintered, yellow length of bone, and he lowered his head again dizzily. He breathed, and counted again. One, two, three.

 

"Oh, Maker," he said.

 

In one hand he still clutched his staff. Miraculous. He could not lift it. A sharp new pain sliced through his shoulder when he tried, and he knew that his collarbone must have broken in at least two places. He dared not guess how many bones, exactly, he'd shattered, in case that tide of panic were to rise again. Instead he focused on the staff, urging all of the warmth he had left into a single focal point, and he whispered words of healing, stopping to cringe, to gasp, and to begin again.

 

He was forced to work slowly, forced to identify as many individual wounds as possible, one at a time, so that the healing would be total: every clot of blood, shredded muscle, fragment of bone, and traumatized tissue. He thought, at first, that the worst of it was over once he'd repaired the punctured lining of his lungs, and then he arrived at his left leg. Here was the yellow point of his femur, which had split, vertically, almost in two.

 

"Maker," he said again, and twisted the fabric of his coat between his teeth, and he tried not to call too much attention to himself as he rejoined the halves of the bone.

 

He lay still for quite some time, feverish and doused in sweat. The sky, by now, had grown dark.

 

He sat up. His newly-repaired nerves were raw, and protested.

 

Black carcasses were stretched and crushed around him. The rest had gone over the sheer drop. He had slammed onto an outcropping, which now was littered with the boulders he had brought down the cliffside. He stared up, beyond the white wall and its crooked scarlet mineral veins. He did not know what awaited him at the village. He could not be certain how much time had passed, and hoped it had only been half a day — though even now it might be too late.

 

He found himself praying, for the first time in his life, that Fenris was still alive.

 

#

 

"Little poppet," Dragana sang softly. "Little girly poppet, with snipped strings."

 

She lay next to Fenris, her eyes staring.

 

"Little girly poppet, with your ribbons and things."

 

Her teeth stained red.

 

"Little poppet, why do you not walk?"

 

Her gaze settled on Fenris, focusing at last.

 

"Why do you not walk?" she whispered.

 

She forced herself up. Her dripping hair dragged through blood. She leaned over the silent body. She skimmed at the blood with her hands, but it had already begun to coagulate, and she gagged, and could not get it down. She stared at Florian as though seeing him for the first time, and screamed.

 

She fell upon the body, weeping and shrieking. "I'm sorry, dearest." She fumbled at his doublet and stroked his black curls. "I'm sorry, oh, sweet dearest, look at you, oh, those clothes will have to be replaced, just look at your shirt, I am sorry, I am sorry."

 

She reared back again, covering her mouth. "Oh, Maker. Oh, Maker. Oh, no. Oh, no."

 

She backed away and crawled across the floor, stamping it with handprints, until she cowered against the wall.

 

"Little poppet," she whimpered. "Little girly poppet."

 

"Dragana," Fenris managed. "Lady Dragana."

 

She stared at him incredulously.

 

"Please try to be calm," he said.

 

"Ser Silver Elf?" she said, as though she had forgotten him.

 

"Yes," he said. "Yes, Dragana. Please, just look at me, and be calm."

 

She gathered handfuls of her hair. She pressed her fists to her scalp. She was about to speak when she glanced up suddenly, her mouth hanging open, and Fenris turned to look. Grasin gaped at them from the doorway.

 

"Grasin," Dragana said.

 

Fenris watched his gaze move first from them to Florian, then to the knife, and back to Dragana's blood-spattered face. He turned and ran.

 

"Grasin!" Dragana shrieked.

 

The slamming of a door echoed from the foyer.

 

Dragana began to weep hysterically and crumpled to the floor. Fenris strained against his bindings, but his wrists had been knotted fast, and he could not reach the rope with his claws. He struggled and twisted about on the floor.

 

Just as suddenly as she began, Dragana stopped crying. Fenris froze. She'd sat up again, her face inscrutable. She swayed. She said, "I've done something wrong."

 

She met his eyes. "I must have done something wrong."

 

Painstakingly, she stood and tottered across the room, waving her arms for balance. She dropped down beside Fenris and stared, for a very long time, at Florian. Fenris dared not move.

 

"You said you hurt her," she said, without taking her eyes off of the body.

 

Fenris didn't speak.

 

"Do you think — she will forgive you?"

 

"I," Fenris said.

 

The glassy stained face turned to him.

 

"I don't know," he said.

 

She sat back and ground her little fists into her lap. She rocked back and forth and hummed.

 

"Little girly poppet," she mumbled. "With snipped strings."

 

She lay her head against Florian's chest and was silent.

 

#

 

Anders leaned against his staff like an old, old man. He slid to his knees. His heart hammered. He could not focus. In his mind, he saw Fenris groping at the cleaver in his shoulder. He saw Florian, enraged and deadly. He saw Hawke vanishing into the maw of the beast.

 

He groaned and stabbed at the cliffside with his staff. He drew upon all of the natural energies that he could summon, all that would listen. He felt for the pulse of the earth. Cracks ran like ripping seams down the sheer wall. The rock shifted, caving here and jutting there, crumbling and cleaving and reshaping, and he had, for a horrible instant, a vision of the entire cliff coming down on him, destabilized and vengeful. He clung to sheer concentration, until the fractured rock settled and became still, forming a series of inexpertly-wrought steps that led back up the cliffside.

 

Exhaustion leached through him. He slumped. I must go, he thought. I must go.

 

#

 

Dragana flung open the garden doors. Dressed in moonlight, the overgrown rafflesias lurked. She staggered against her cane into the vines. She seized handfuls of flowers and tossed them away, and kicked the largest foul-smelling bloom. She wedged her cane beneath its spotted lobes and wrenched it from the ground, revealing a black, rocky cavity. She turned back to Fenris, her wet eyes shining.

 

With the long, curving knife she cut the rope from his feet. She tugged the bindings at his hands, urging him up, and dragged him into the garden. He went unsteadily. When he swayed back, more for lack of balance than any genuine attempt to escape, she rounded on him with the knife, pressing its edge into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

 

"You will come," she said. The knife trembled in her little hand. "Or I will kill her myself."

 

She yanked the lead at his wrists and together they descended into the mouth of the cave.

 

The heat, here, was familiar, and for an instant Fenris was racing along the manor stairs again, cradling Hawke to his chest. A fist of longing squeezed his heart. He followed Dragana through absolute darkness. He breathed hot, wet air, and a more potent carrion stench, upon which he gagged, and which stirred the bile in his gut. He heard deep, steady breathing, a rhythm which grew gradually louder, and it seemed to emanate from all around him, seismic, ever-present, swallowing him whole, as though they walked the gullet of a behemoth.

 

They came to a vast, torchlit cavern. Condensation, which dripped even now, had shaped these calcareous walls, and stalactites choked the dome of the ceiling. His gaze fell upon a pile of corpses. No — a mountain, staggering in its implications, of parts and pieces, twisting limbs and reaching fingers and unidentifiable viscera. Fenris retched and tried to turn away, but Dragana yanked his lead, unmoved by the sight, and he glimpsed bones, and gaping jaws, and all that was now mere detritus of the villagers who'd once lived ignorantly above this place.

 

"My Lord," Dragana said.

 

The great beast turned, with brilliant unblinking eyes.

 

#

 

Anders laboriously climbed the cliffside, his fingers bruising against jagged rock. Wind stung his eyes and yanked at his tattered robes. His nervous system howled. Despite his healing, the trauma of broken bones and punctured organs still rattled his skull like a cage. Cold reason penetrated his thoughts: certainly this outcome was preferable to being eaten alive. Anders found that he could not argue as he groaned and dragged himself up, and up.

 

Justice did share his bodily pain, at least.

 

This did not comfort him — that mortally fragile side of all human brains which seeks self-preservation. He could not deny that Justice had rendered him a helpless passenger in the body that they both shared, in a body which Justice had sent purposefully over the edge of a cliff. Cold reason, again: but we have survived.

 

His frightened brain: I would not have done that, could never have done that. What else will I be made to do?

 

Onward he climbed, white and shaking.

 

He neared the peak. He wished desperately to pause, to catch his breath, but forced himself to go on, to spare no time. A dark face peered over the edge, long-nosed and pointed-eared. For a wild second he thought it must be Fenris, until he recognized the harrowed expression.

 

Grasin reached for him, and Anders grasped his hands gratefully, allowing himself to be hauled over the edge, until he sprawled on solid ground, heaving, exhausted. Grasin helped him to his feet.

 

"I saw you fall," he stammered. "I thought, for certain . . ."

 

Anders waved his hand. "There's no time," he said. "I must hurry. I have to find her. And I have to find Hunger."

 

Confusion clouded Grasin's face for a moment, and then he seemed to understand. "But, your companion —"

 

"I will have to come back for him."

 

Grasin lowered his head regretfully. He nodded. "I will take you to the Lord's den," he said. "But we cannot go through the manor."

 

Anders jolted. "The demon is in the manor?"

 

"No. You misunderstand. There is an entrance. There are many entrances. This way. Hurry."

 

He beckoned, and led Anders toward the butcher's shop, the front of which gaped open, all splintered wood and shattered glass. Anders stopped short.

 

"I cannot go back in there," he murmured, and Grasin turned, not hearing. At that moment, ice flooded Anders's veins and poured from his eyes, stinging, stealing his breath and his voice.

 

"Lead on," Justice growled, and Grasin trembled where he stood.

 

#

 

Fenris and Hunger faced one another for the first time since the abduction at Hawke Manor.

 

The demon huddled against the concave wall, massive, solid, its black hide shining. Its teeth clenched and unclenched as it breathed. Its gaze penetrated Fenris as readily as the curving talons on its fingers.

 

"You brought him here," Hunger said, and growled, long and resonant.

 

"My Lord —"

 

"WHY HAVE YOU BROUGHT HIM HERE," Hunger roared, and Dragana ducked her head, hiding her face.

 

"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I'm sorry."

 

The demon groaned then, leaning back, so different, now, than the first time Fenris had seen it.

 

"I didn't know what to do," Dragana said, near tears.

 

"I have told you what to do. Useless little twit." Hunger dragged its enormous claws against the wall, and fleshy tumors sprang up, bloated and pulsing, and it settled back against them wearily. "Tell me that is the blood of the mage."

 

"It is not," Dragana whispered, touching her face. The blood had long dried, and flaked from her mouth. "But he is dead. I swear it."

 

"And you've not brought his head?"

 

"He fell from the cliffside."

 

"Then I am not convinced," Hunger snarled, "until his head is in my hands."

 

"My Lord." Dragana began to cry. "You treat me so poorly now."

 

The white eyes narrowed without pity.

 

"Please hold me. Please kiss me, and tell me that you love me."

 

"You are undeserving," Hunger said.

 

A long, pitiful sob escaped her. She nearly crumpled, swaying against the silver cane. She smeared blood across her arm as she roughly wiped her tears.

 

"I killed Florian," she wept. "I cut his throat. I drank his blood."

 

Hunger said nothing.

 

"Still the tremors have not stopped," she stuttered. "My legs. They will not stop shaking. Nothing has changed."

 

"Stupid, foolish girl," Hunger said, and Dragana fell silent.

 

Hunger's claws raked against its forehead, dancing along the crown of spikes. "It is beyond my power to heal you," it said.

 

Dragana stared. Her arms lowered to her sides, and hung limp there. "What?"

 

"Did you think I hold sway over miracles? That blood rites and rituals are enough to eliminate the affliction that is just as much a part of you as your red hair? My dear. My silly, stupid girl."

 

"What?" she said again.

 

Hunger sneered. "Do you still not understand? Nothing, my dear," and the demon rose, towering above them both, "will ever banish the tremors from your body. 'Twas a hopeless dream of your father's."

 

"You lied to me?" Dragana said.

 

"I followed along with the fantasy." Hunger sat again amongst the tumors. "The one that so blinded your father. A pleasant dream. It gave sweetness to the taste of his flesh."

 

"But — the rituals. The sacrifices —"

 

"All a pleasing way to pass the time." The black lips curled back over yellow teeth. "Marvelous, sensuous entertainment."

 

"Entertainment?" She turned to Fenris, as though he could explain. Her frightened eyes stirred within him a deep pity. "Entertainment?" she said again. "My love . . ."

 

A deep purring sound emanated from the beast.

 

"But. What was it all for? What do you want?"

 

Hunger shook its head. "Her," it crooned, stroking its hard stomach. "The contract she and I shared has been fulfilled. I thank you, for providing this waiting-place. You have been a most pleasing host."

 

She stared, dumbfounded, at nothing. Her fingers loosened around the knife.

 

Hunger chuckled. "And the little girl realized at last," it said delicately, "where her selfishness had gotten her."

 

#

 

Justice and Grasin passed through the gaping portal and into the butcher's shop.

 

They followed a long, snakelike vine that was smothered with rafflesias. Justice ignored the human trepidation that resisted every step, and he went into the back room, awash in the fetor of rotting blood.

 

A great butcher's block stood on wooden legs in the center of the room. Its stained surface bespoke frequent use. A series of tools, well-cleaned and gleaming, hung on pegs all around: cleavers of varying sizes, honing steels, skinning knives, bone saws, wicked little larding needles. Over a long draining trough dangled a telltale row of hooks. Justice observed these. They had not been empty, mere hours ago.

 

Earlier when he'd arrived — when Anders had arrived — he'd heard moaning, low and piteous, and, going into the back room, had found bodies — villagers — contorted and hanging from the hooks. Naked, mewling, twisting about, discolored, inhuman. They'd reached for him, many with maimed hands, as blood sluiced into the trough. Mid-ritual. Mid-transformation.

 

Grasin hurried through the workshop, ducking his head low. Justice followed. They came to a wooden slat set into the floor, and Grasin drew it open. Underneath there was a staircase that sliced deep into the earth.

 

"Messere Lefebvre," Grasin murmured, with sorrow thick in his throat, "lured villagers here. Routinely. And he butchered them. He brought them in pieces to the Lord, through this passage. He — and the Lady Croceum — dined on their flesh. I — they had me cook it. Prepare their meals."

 

He gave Justice an imploring look. "Please spare her," he said. "If you can. I have cared for her since she was a babe. Since she learned to walk. Before her illness made itself known. She was not always the monster that she has become." He blinked away tears. "Her mother died to bring her into this world. I've been told it was a difficult birth, very difficult, one that should have taken both mother and child. But my Lady survived. I believe with all of my heart that this trauma was the cause of her affliction." He wiped his eyes. "A terrible curse, to have obsessed her father so, and brought this demon upon us."

 

"I will do what I can," Justice said. "But I will also do what I must."

 

Grasin took a deep breath, and dropped his head. "Save her," he whispered. "End this atrocity."

 

Justice nodded. He turned to the staircase. He descended.

 

#

 

"You," Dragana murmured. The knife shook in her hand. "You. I killed Fluh. Florian. I . . ."

 

The demon watched her, amused.

 

"He loved me." She stared at the blade. "And I. I . . ."

 

"I knew that you would," Hunger said. "If I only asked."

 

"And Daddy?" Her eyes were glassy now, unfocused.

 

"His flesh was sweet," Hunger repeated.

 

"Daddy," Dragana said.

 

"You did not seem to care, when he had gone."

 

"Stop this," Fenris said suddenly, unable to take any more. "Stop taunting her, you beast, you monster."

 

"Ah, you. Elf." The penetrating gaze fell upon him again. "Such a waste, for my little thing to have surrendered herself for you. Now I shall have to devour you, and her trade will have been for nothing."

 

"Where is she?" Fenris cried.

 

Hunger's claws again ran over its stomach. "She is with me," it said. "I could not resist. I swallowed her whole. So that she will always be with me."

 

"She still lives?"

 

Hunger's smile remained, stretching wide, secretive.

 

"Daddy," Dragana murmured. "Florian."

 

"Your time is done, child." Hunger flicked a hand in her direction. "Go. Leave me. Live out your miserable existence elsewhere, where I will not be bothered. It is my gift to you, precious hostess.

 

"But first." The demon turned again to Fenris. "Bring the elf to me."

 

Dragana lifted her head. She stared, for a few moments, at Hunger, and then turned to Fenris. He saw new clarity in her eyes, as though a pall had been lifted for the very first time.

 

She drew close to him — slight, pale, trembling Dragana. She released her cane, which clattered to the cavern floor. She cupped his cheek.

 

"Perhaps she will forgive you," she whispered, and, with one stroke of the knife, cut him free of his bonds.

 

Hunger roared — a deafening, earth-shaking sound. Dragana smiled sadly at Fenris. She turned the knife and plunged it between her ribs.

 

Fenris started. He moved toward her, but Hunger had thundered onto all fours, had begun to charge. Dragana collapsed with a rattling breath. Fenris turned. He stared down the approaching beast.

 

Hunger's jaws sprang open wide.

 

Fenris leaned forward. He sucked in his breath.

 

He ignited, silver, hot.

 

Hunger dove.

 

Fenris charged.

 

He sprinted, and sprang up, ghostly bright, and dove into the great gaping mouth, and vanished.

[rubypop]

Hunger

by rubypop

Chapter 12

 

Garbed in lyrium, Fenris traversed the pulsing throat. He fell headfirst through fleshy pathways illuminated only by the white-hot burn of his markings. From all around throbbed the muffled beating of a massive heart.

 

When he tumbled against resisting tissue, he clawed his way through, and ghosted, and burrowed deeper. He did not think about whether or not he would suffocate here, or become lost, or exhaust the energy required to maintain his gleaming aura. He merely fought on, focused, seeking her in this nightmare-place.

 

The walls of flesh pressed close, palpitating. He could feel the shiver of sensory nerves. He dragged himself through fluid and cilia. Deeper.

 

He heard voices.

 

He thought, at first, that he must be mistaken, confounded by the sheer heat and compressing space. But, yes, there were voices, distant and moaning, crying, begging. As though the soul of every poor wretch that the beast had devoured lay trapped here, as corporeal as shadows.

 

He remembered Ser Clerval. He remembered the empty cottages. He remembered the mountain of pieces and parts.

 

He emerged into a chamber lined with seams of jagged teeth. He remembered, from his glimpses in the Fade, the sensation of swallowing bones, many bones, and thought of these great pointed teeth grinding the bones to pulp. He saw, then, a fleshy mass hanging from above, and realized it was all skin and veins and hair, pulsating, protective. Pieces and parts.

 

He flickered to the mass and ripped, and tore, and shredded with his claws.

 

The chamber spasmed. A guttural roar echoed from seemingly far away, echoed from the throat that he had navigated. The voices wept and pled. He did not stop. With both hands he slashed and yanked errant flesh away, succumbing to a wild frenzy, until the shadows thrown by his markings withdrew from a sallow inert face, and pale lips, and dark hair.

 

He uttered her name.

 

Her eyes opened. Her brows drew together. She mouthed, and then said, "Fenris?"

 

He stripped away the imprisoning flesh. He flung his arms around her. He hugged her close.

 

The chamber spasmed again, and shook. The walls undulated in horrible waves. Fenris leapt, clutching Hawke, back the way he had come. Adrenaline urged him on, and he climbed. Hawke buried her face into his chest. His arm tightened around her.

 

The fleshy walls rebelled. Their contractions fought him, rippling back, forcing him down. Fenris realized that Hunger was swallowing them, to wrest them back into that toothed prison.

 

His markings, now, were searing him, lit for so long. As though hot knives followed along their patterns, slicing through every layer of skin. He raised a hand and it grew hotter, brighter. He plunged it deep, claws out, into the pulsating wall.

 

A retching shiver screamed through the walls. Fenris and Hawke swayed against a long, violent lurch. Another tremor flung them forward. They pitched and rolled along the undulation. Moving forward. Climbing higher.

 

Fenris enveloped Hawke in his arms. With a blinding burst of light he ignited. The heat scorched him, agonizing and total. Together they were flung through the cavern of the demon's mouth, between the yellow teeth, which snapped closed behind them, and they went sprawling on the ground, into the sweet air.

 

Hunger was roaring, screaming, writhing back.

 

Fenris cradled Hawke, unable to speak, to formulate any kind of conscious thought. The light from his markings died and with it the agonizing heat.

 

She was small against him, limp with exhaustion, peering through half-lidded eyes, shocked by the sight of him. He brushed the wet dark hair from her forehead.

 

"Never," he said. "I will never lose you again."

 

Tears ran freely down her cheeks.

 

#

 

Justice hurried along vesicular pathways, blindly following the fetid air, the breath of the cavern, and he glanced up at every drip of condensation, every clatter of loosened rock. He steeled himself for what he knew was to come, unafraid, and knowing still that he must face what awaited him alone.

 

I will die for her, he thought, as he flew along the echoing corridor. If it must come to that, I will die for her.

 

Some human fragment of himself was trembling with doubt, and angrily he quashed the notion, briefly bringing light to the jagged shadows.

 

If I must die, that human side whispered, what of my people? What of Darktown? What of the beggar-girl, kicked down and used and starving?

 

I will die for Marian.

 

What of the bed, from which she was taken?

 

Justice shed a current of light, gripping his staff.

 

I cannot fight the demon alone.

 

I will. There is no other choice.

 

Do I not have a choice?

 

No. You do not.

 

He flickered onward through the black caves.

 

#

 

"I will never lose you again."

 

Hawke shut her eyes, opened them again. She did not know where she was. She could not identify the howls of agony that were echoing throughout the cavern. She saw only Fenris, the tears in his eyes, the sticky peritoneal residue that covered them both. She vaguely remembered flesh, the monstrous pulse-beats that had surrounded her. She vaguely remembered that kernel of strength, and thoughts of Anders that had sustained her.

 

Fenris embraced her again. Shaking, she reached up and touched his face.

 

"Fenris," she repeated.

 

Her mind was slowly clearing. She saw, then, the demon that thrashed behind them. He caught sight of her, and his white eyes lit up, and he reached out with long barbed claws.

 

"Little thing," he said, his words strangled.

 

Fenris lifted her and stumbled. Hunger reared back and scrambled toward them, enormous and spiked and screaming, and like lightning his long arm lashed out, his great claws came around, and Fenris let out a horrible choking sound and collapsed.

 

Blood flecked the rock walls. Hawke sprawled from Fenris's arms, and she caught sight of ragged wounds, the ripped leather of his tunic. A small wooden totem fell from Fenris's pocket and skittered across the ground. With an intake of breath she recognized it: the tiny wooden horse, rudely-carved and stained with blood.

 

She flung herself upon Fenris and grabbed the figurine. She held it close.

 

"YOU." Hunger's eyes flashed, were blinding, his claws tense and splayed and razor sharp. "BELONG. TO. ME."

 

"Our contract is fulfilled!" Hawke said. "Leave me or kill me, I will never become a part of you!"

 

Hunger howled, and shook the walls.

 

"I will not lose myself," Hawke cried, "and all that I am!"

 

She clung to Fenris, and ran her hand over his wounds, sealing them with a prayer.

 

Hunger was descending over them, his jaws stretched wide with fury, his claws flexed and ready to separate them, to tear them apart, to shred them to nothing if necessary.

 

A great arcane projectile flooded the cavern with light. It smashed into Hunger's gaping mouth, sending him backward, to crash against the stalagmites.

 

Hawke wrenched around. Anders stood with his staff raised, heaving and dripping sweat, staring at them both.

 

She shouted his name, but his eyes snapped up, and Hunger was rising, the flesh of his mouth black and smoking, the teeth scorched, still intact. Anders whipped his staff to one side and fired again.

 

Hawke smoothed her hand over Fenris's face. "Fenris," she said urgently. "I need a dagger. Please."

 

He blinked several times. His eyes rolled to one side, and trembling he sat up. "There."

 

She turned. The body of a young woman draped across the ground like withered flowers. The hilt of a knife protruded from her red bodice. Lifelessly she stared up, at nothing either of them could see, or ever hoped to see.

 

Hawke crawled to the body and gripped the knife. She apologized silently and yanked the knife free. The blade was long and curved and sharp: a skinning knife. It would do. She wiped it on her robes.

 

Fenris staggered to her. Anders was shouting, feinting and skirting Hunger's claws. Fenris said, "I have to help him."

 

"Your sword —"

 

"They stripped it from me." He nodded to the body.

 

"We must bind him," Hawke said. She proffered the horse figurine. "It's the only way."

 

Fenris glanced askance. "But how —"

 

Hawke dropped the figurine to the ground. She raised the knife and brought its wicked edge down.

 

The wooden totem split. Its jagged halves splintered and fell away, revealing the gleam of a long brass pin.

 

"Maker," Fenris said.

 

"This charm is our only chance," Hawke said, palming it. "I pray it still holds the same power, after all of these years."

 

"Marian!" Anders shouted, and Hunger swatted him, and he collided with the wall, his surcoat falling open. He struggled to rise from the ground, as Hunger rounded on them.

 

"NOW I SHALL KILL THEM BOTH," he howled. "I WILL RIP THEM APART, BONE BY BONE, AND SUCK THE FLESH FROM THEM, AND GORGE MYSELF ON THEIR BLOOD."

 

"Fenris," Hawke uttered.

 

"I WILL SLIT THEIR BELLIES AND UNWIND THEIR GUTS."

 

"I need your help," she said.

 

"I WILL CRACK OPEN THEIR SKULLS AND SLURP UP THEIR EYES AND THEIR BRAINS, ALL WHILE THEY STILL LIVE."

 

"Anything," Fenris said.

 

She touched his throat. He placed a hand on hers, and realized she was tracing the scar there.

 

"We have a blood bond," she whispered. "I forged one, when I healed you in the sea cave. When I made this scar." She met his eyes. "It is the same bond that Hunger made with me, when he sealed the first scar in my wrist, when I was a child."

 

He searched her face.

 

"I need you to trust me," she said.

 

"AND YOU. WILL. BE. MINE."

 

"I trust you," Fenris said.

 

She embraced him. He clung to her. He pressed his cheek to hers, shutting his eyes fast. He thought of the small window in the roof, and its rose-colored light. He thought of her pale, scarred arm beside his on the staircase. He thought of Dragana questioning him in the garden, what he'd said, what it'd meant.

 

"There is great power," Hawke whispered, "in blood freshly spilled."

 

The edge of the blade met his throat, met hers, connecting the space between them.

 

"I love you," he said, and she drew the blade, cutting their throats.

 

They fell away from one another. Hawke heard Anders scream as though from some faraway place. The pulse of old maleficar magic thrummed in her veins, filling the space left by draining blood.

 

The blood danced in a frenzied mist. Scarlet gyres whirled between them. She spread her hands. She conducted. She stirred at the air. The crimson mist ribboned and swooped. It hurtled across the cave. It penetrated Hunger's flesh.

 

He shrieked.

 

The walls trembled. The cavern floor rocked beneath them.

 

Fleshy sinews and strings spilled from Hunger's nacreous hide. They lashed against the floor, around boulders, clung to reaching stalactites. Hawke stumbled forward. She touched her sliced throat. The pin flashed in her hand.

 

"MY LITTLE MAGE," Hunger screamed. His claws combed at the fleshy sinews, to no avail.

 

Hawke's chest heaved. Her vision was darkening. The black fleshy strings held fast, stretching as Hunger thrashed. Hawke collapsed at his feet. She glared up at him.

 

"I am not yours," she said, and pierced the strands with the pin.

 

The demon howled. His screams shook the cavern itself, and Hawke flung herself back, as rocks and boulders shook free of the ceiling and crashed down. She scrambled back to Fenris and shielded him, pressing her palm to his throat, and a palm to her own, whispering, as the cave threatened to bury them all.

 

Old magic scented the air. Hawke could feel it radiating from the pin. Old magic, borne from skilled hands somewhere deep in the Wilds, made to punish, to bind, and bind forever. She glanced back. Hunger yanked and tore at his bonds. They held fast. Rocks rained down around him. From behind him, Anders rose up, bleeding. He raised his staff like a beacon, and brought it back down. A long crack tore through the earth along the wall, across the ceiling, over Hunger's head. And he brought the ceiling down, caving in over the trapped beast.

 

Hawke squeezed her eyes shut, clinging to Fenris as the falling earth thundered around them. The crashing boulders blotted out Hunger's accusatory wails. The vibrating earth slowly grew still. After what could have easily been an eternity, all was quiet.

 

Hawke opened her eyes. She stared down at Fenris. He had grown pale and sickly-looking, from the loss of blood. His red eyes opened. They stared at one another. Neither noticed Anders as he shakily crossed the cavern to join them.

 

###

 

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