Fic: Atonement
Title: Atonement
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters/Pairing: Velanna, Nathaniel, with hints of Nathaniel/Velanna
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, semi-graphic descriptions
Word Count: 5,034
Summary: When a routine Deep Roads mission goes awry, Velanna is forced to come face to face with her prejudices.
Notes: Written for the 2011 girlsavesboyfic ficathon.
The battle had become a blur.
Velanna leaned on her staff and concentrated on just breathing, air whistling in and out in harsh rattles. The Deep Roads seemed to tilt back and forth around her like some demented child's plaything, and the odd red haze in her vision just wouldn't go away-
She reached up to push back her bangs, blinking and shaking her head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. Her hand came away damp, and she squinted at it, scowling at the streaks of blood across her palm.
The spinning continued as she drew another deep breath, and her heart kept on pounding like a halla stampede, its rhythm uneven in her chest. Too many spells, too fast, she thought dimly, and her shaking fingers scrabbled for a stamina draught.
She nearly dropped the tiny vial once or twice before she was able to throw back the amber-tinted liquid. It burned all the way down, but the effect was immediate, and the world mercifully began to clear. Velanna let out a long, wheezing sigh of relief, and pried her fingers off her staff. They felt clumsy and cold and stiff, and she grimaced, shaking out the kinks as she looked around the cavern.
The first thing she registered was the silence.
Dead darkspawn lay in piles with their glittering eyes staring up at her, blood spreading in black pools beneath them. She swallowed as she skirted around them, eyes scanning back and forth across the darkened chamber for any sign of life.
She almost stumbled over the first dead Wardens several feet away, two of them lying side by side. She knelt down long enough to brush their eyes closed, straining to pull their names out of the haze still clouding her brain. Nearly all of the others in the small band had been strangers to her, a varied bunch of humans that she'd met only once or twice before the Commander had assigned them all to this blasted expedition.
A sudden flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye, and she pivoted on her heel, so fast she almost fell over. Her heart slammed up into her throat and throbbed in her ears, and her staff was in her hand again before she realized she'd grabbed it. Fire pulsed at her fingertips as she called up another spell, ignoring the protests of her aching muscles.
"Easy, Velanna," a voice rang out, hoarse and lanced with pain, but familiar. "It's just me."
Velanna straightened out of her defensive stance and crossed the distance with choppy strides, picking her way through the darkspawn corpses.
"I never thought I would say this," she admitted as she approached, "but I'm glad to see you alive."
"That makes two of us, then." Nathaniel looked up at her from where he lay half-sprawled on the cavern floor, bracing himself on one elbow, both legs stretched out in front of him. In the muted light, Velanna could just make out his expression of mingled pain and relief, almost masked beneath the smears of dirt and blood caked on his face in patches of dull red and brown.
She could also make out the thick black arrow jutting from his right leg just above the knee, the feathered shaft stretching toward her like a demon's fingers. She sucked in a sharp breath.
"Creators," she murmured as she knelt next to him, grimacing. "Is it broken?"
"No, the arrow missed the bone," he said. Each word was short and tense, the sentence ending with a breath hissed through clenched teeth. "Barely."
"Best thank your Maker for small mercies, then," Velanna said dryly, and reached into her pack. "I have a few poultices left, and there ought to be enough bandages to-"
"Wait."
She almost backpedaled out of reflex as the pads of his fingers brushed over her cheek and into her hair, archer's calluses snagging on the strands already stiff with dried blood. His normally steady hands were clumsy with pain.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his gaze fixing on her despite the cloudiness in his eyes. "There's blood all over your face, and your hands are shaking."
"It's nothing." She jerked away, the sudden unsteady rush of her heartbeat bringing the dizziness back in full force. "I cast a few too many spells, that's all. And the blood is just from a minor cut. You know how head wounds bleed like a skewered boar."
He studied her face a moment longer before nodding. His hand returned to his side, fingers clenching as another spasm of pain flickered on his face.
"You have to take out the arrow," he said.
Her heart gave an unpleasant jolt. "If I do that, you could bleed to death within minutes."
"I know." He drew the back of his hand across his forehead, his expression grim. "But our only chance is to make for the surface, and I won't get far with an arrow in my leg. With any luck, the poultices and bandages we have left will be enough until I get to a healer. If not…" He gave a shrug, his lips twitching. "I suppose a relatively quick death by blood loss would be preferable to ending up with my head on some darkspawn pike."
Velanna snorted, folding her arms over her chest. "Thus leaving me alone in the Deep Roads with only darkspawn and corpses for company. How very noble of you."
He managed a smirk at that. "I didn't say death was the goal, my lady. Though I am pleased to hear that you consider my company more pleasant than darkspawn and corpses."
"Barely," she huffed, ignoring the now-familiar way her cheeks warmed at his words. She cleared her throat, settling back on her heels and fixing her eyes on the arrow. Blood was seeping from the wound, trickling down to leave crimson stains on his armor.
"Perhaps there's another way," she said, narrowing her eyes in thought. "If the bleeding is severe, bandages and poultices won't be enough to stop it-but I may be able to use a different method." She held up a hand, letting fire crackle between her fingers.
Nathaniel's expression didn't change, but Velanna could discern a subtle blanching as the blood drained from his face. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
"All right," he said, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I suppose I should have something to bite down on, in lieu of my tongue."
"I didn't realize your pain tolerance was so low," she retorted, but the verbal jab lacked its usual bite. She worried her lower lip between her teeth, then sighed. "Very well, I'll find something."
She sawed a strip of leather from one of the dead Warden's belts and placed it between Nathaniel's teeth, then repositioned herself by his leg, hands hovering over the arrow's shaft. She took a deep breath.
"Are you ready?"
Nathaniel nodded, and Velanna felt a sudden ridiculous urge to make a snide remark about how he resembled one of those slobbery hounds the humans loved so much, with that leather flapping in his jaws-
With a start, she realized she was stalling. She ground her teeth and forced her eyes down, closing her fists around the arrow.
Back in the Wending Wood, she had relished the human travelers' screams, reveling in grim satisfaction as her magic snuffed out their lives. They had stolen her sister; she had been well within her rights to exact retribution. Even later, when she had found that the humans weren't responsible for Seranni's disappearance after all, the flickers of guilt had been few and rarely allowed to surface. They'd been nothing but shemlen-oppressive and brutish and utterly uncaring of the devastation their kind had brought to her people.
Yet as Nathaniel arched his back and yelled, hoarse cries of pain barely muffled by the leather, she found the memories brought nothing but bile rising in her throat.
* * *
He was not doing well.
Velanna stole another glance at the limping human by her side-at least the fifth time in the past minute that she had checked to make sure he wasn't on the verge of collapse. His breaths came quick and shallow to her ears, and his face was pale as halla's milk. He had been pressing forward in dogged silence for what seemed like hours, but as time wore on, Velanna could just begin to make out muffled grunts of pain as his weight came down on his injured leg.
"We should stop for a minute," she finally said, fingers already digging into her pack for a fresh poultice. "Your leg will give out sooner rather than later if you keep putting weight on it, and if you're expecting me to drag you by the ankles through miles of Deep Roads, you had best think again."
She couldn't tell if his expression was a smile or a grimace as he lowered himself gingerly to the ground. "The thought never crossed my mind, my lady."
"Well, good." Velanna shoved the poultice into his hand. "Here."
Nathaniel set the potion onto the ground next to his leg as he began to peel back the sodden bandages. "How many are left?"
Velanna automatically checked her pack, even though she was already well aware of the number. "Two." She gnawed at her lower lip. "I went through the other Wardens' packs, but they must have used up all their potions in that last battle-for all the good it did them."
Nathaniel's hands stilled, and his face settled into an inscrutable mask.
"Two poultices," he said softly. "And at least another fifteen miles to the nearest surface entrance."
He stared off into the distance for a moment before he raised his eyes to hers, grey and calm in the gloomy light. "You should go on without me."
She scowled. "After all that trauma and agonized howling when I removed the arrow and cauterized the wound, you want me to leave you to have your head skewered on a darkspawn pike after all?"
"There's no sense in both of us dying," he said. "I've only slowed you down thus far, and the road ahead will be no easier. I can barely walk, let alone use my bow. I'll be of no help to you if-when we come across darkspawn patrols."
"Save your human nobility," she snorted. "It's just an arrow wound. You aren't that far gone yet. And when we come across darkspawn, I'll destroy them with fireballs. I'm not defenseless."
For a moment he looked as though he were about to argue, but then his face relaxed into a wry smile. "No, indeed," he murmured.
He held her gaze a moment longer before he resumed unwrapping his leg. Velanna turned to stare down the path, hiding the disquiet in her eyes.
* * *
She dreamed of murky shadows, amorphous shapes flickering in and out at the edges of her vision. She whirled around, her hair whipping in her face and stinging her cheeks, but each time the figures darted away, disappearing before she could identify them.
She pivoted again, and the forms solidified into trees, rising tall and proud from a lush green expanse of gently rolling hills. Velanna's restless movement stilled, all senses alert as her eyes darted from trunk to trunk. The forest should have been comforting, familiar, yet the unnatural silence raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent chills sweeping down her arms.
A scream pierced the stillness, and her whole body jerked, her heart beating fast and thready and leaving her dizzy and nauseous. Darkness began to gather, swallowing her up, as though the trees had bent their heads together to block out the sun. In the distance, faint pinpricks of ruddy light grew brighter, and she realized they were fires-burning caravans filled with people who screamed and thrashed as the flames engulfed them.
Her dying victims' sounds were far more deafening than they had been in life, growing louder and louder until she reached up to clutch at her ears. A sudden impact jolted her body, and she realized she had fallen to her knees, the rock-strewn ground digging into her skin.
"Go away," she hissed, hunched against the noise as the crescendo continued, forcing past her covered ears and driving into her skull. "Go away, go away!"
Her eyes snapped open. The forest and the caravans disappeared, replaced by the Deep Roads' dirt-brown ceiling stretching overhead, pressing down on her. The ground was hard and unyielding under her back, and a voice was calling her name.
She jerked upright, ignoring the black spots that danced before her eyes at the sudden movement. The darkness slowly cleared, and she felt Nathaniel's hand gripping her arm.
"It's all right. It's all right." His voice was low and gravelly, a welcome antidote to the ear-piercing screams still echoing in her mind. "Here, drink."
He pushed a canteen into her hands, curling her nerveless fingers around the leather surface. She fumbled with the strings before tipping it back and gulping down the water, grateful for the cool rush against her parched throat. Nathaniel's hand moved to the small of her back, large and warm through her robes, and she shuddered.
"Thank you." She let out a deep breath, pressing her knuckles against her eyelids.
His hand left her back as he reached out to accept the canteen, and she felt conflicting relief and regret at the loss of contact. The small campfire had burned down into embers as she slept, and the chamber suddenly seemed cold and drafty. She folded her arms around herself, shivering.
"Was it darkspawn?" Nathaniel asked, settling back against the wall. His voice was still soft, his eyes intent on her face.
"No, not this time." Velanna looked away, fingers clenching at her side. Human faces floated in her mind's eye, their mouths gaping, fiery halos surrounding their heads. "I would…rather not discuss it."
"As you wish." He hesitated, stretching his leg out in front of him. "I will continue to keep watch, if you need more sleep."
"It would be pointless to even try, I'm afraid." She sighed and pulled herself to her feet. "We had best get moving."
The dream lingered in her thoughts as they continued down the path, the maddeningly slow pace providing few opportunities for distraction. Unbidden, her mind flashed back to the months immediately after her rampage in the Wending Wood, to the time she had spent with the Warden-Commander and her motley band of allies.
"This thing you did, the murders of those men in the forest…what you did was wrong. You must make amends."
She sighed, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead as Justice's solemn words ran through her mind, not for the first time.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
The concern in Nathaniel's voice pierced through the fog, and she shook off the remnants of dreams and memories. Now is not the time, she told herself firmly. It's idiotic to fret over nightmares and some foolish old spirit's ramblings about atonement when you don't even know if you'll survive the next few hours.
"I'm fine," she said aloud, and gave Nathaniel a pointed look. "You are the one with the injury, as I recall."
His face creased. "Thank you for the reminder."
"My pleasure," she said airily, then lapsed into silence, putting one foot in front of the other and listening as his uneven breathing overlapped his uneven footsteps.
* * *
The shrieks of darkspawn were somehow much easier to listen to than the screams of humans.
Velanna watched the fire spell roar before her, scarlet-orange flames clawing at the ceiling like fingers twisting in pain. In the midst of the inferno the darkspawn writhed and wailed as they died, and the smoky heat seared at her eyes and throat, so intense she nearly turned her face away.
When the last genlock had fallen and the taint quieted in her blood, she turned her back to the charred, reeking corpses and scanned the tunnel, wiping soot from her face. Nathaniel was braced against the far wall, a dagger in his hand. His right foot hovered several inches above the ground.
"Very efficient," he commented, sheathing the dagger. "I didn't even need to use this."
"You had best keep it close at hand, just in case," Velanna said. "We may come across larger groups up ahead." She replaced her staff across her back, folding her arms. It was better not to even think of what might happen if they encountered an ogre.
Nathaniel nodded and pushed himself off the wall, face set with concentration and pain as he regained his balance, his boot barely touching the hard-packed floor. Velanna's eyes traveled to the tightly wrapped wound, the once white bandages now streaked and spotted with dust and congealed blood.
"How is it?" she asked, making a vague gesture in the direction of his thigh.
"It's…" He hesitated, then sighed. "Not good."
Something in his voice made Velanna's stomach drop. "How 'not good,' exactly?"
He looked at her for a long moment before reaching down to pull at the wrapping. The bandage loosened, then fell away in his hand, and Velanna drew a sharp breath.
The injury was swollen and festering, blood and pus leaking from the wound. The surrounding skin flared an angry red in grisly contrast to the blackened flesh that she had burned away to stop the bleeding.
"Nathaniel!" She jerked back, reaching for the last poultice. "Why didn't you tell me it had taken such a turn for the worse?"
He was already shaking his head as she pulled out the potion. "Keep it. There are miles still left to go. It may be needed for something more serious."
"More serious?" Her voice pitched up an octave. "Your leg is about to fall off!"
"We're running low on bandages as well," he continued, as though he hadn't heard her. "If we use up what little we have left at this point, we may find ourselves in even worse trouble later on."
She let out her breath in an agitated huff. "Fine, but if it gets any worse, I'll force this poultice on you in your sleep."
He slanted a smile at her, his eyes warming. "Your concern is touching, my lady."
"Ugh." Her heart wouldn't stop racing, and the tunnel felt uncomfortably warm, though the fires had already burned out. "Stop that. This is no time for-for-smoldering."
She almost jumped in surprise as Nathaniel burst out laughing, the pain easing from his face for a few short moments.
"Smoldering?" he managed, shaking his head and grinning. "I don't think that word has ever been used to describe me before."
"I don't believe that for a second." Velanna rolled her eyes, grateful for the distraction from the shock of his wound. "I'm sure you must have charmed your way under the skirts of countless high-born ladies at all your fancy human parties."
His laugh turned to a quieter chuckle. "'Countless' is a rather generous estimation." He sobered. "It's been many years since I went to a fancy party…and all those people who used to attend them would turn up their noses if they saw me now."
"I know what that's like." She looked away, remembering the sneers and insults of the former clan-mates she had met on the road with the Warden-Commander. Human screams and the crackling of burning caravans played in her mind again, echoes of the vengeance that had cost her her clan.
Then the corpse-strewn caravans disappeared, replaced by Justice's decaying, uncomprehending face. Why do you believe that atonement is unnecessary?
"Velanna?"
She blinked, jolted from the memory. "What was that? I didn't hear you."
Nathaniel's lips twitched. "I said that the Maker must have a sense of humor-the two of us exiles, winding up together in the Deep Roads."
"Hmph." She tried to scowl, but somehow it came out as a grudging smile instead. "If that's the case, then your Maker's sense of humor is nothing short of twisted."
* * *
They pressed on, the hours ebbing away as slowly as the miles of Deep Roads. Each tunnel looked the same as the one before it, monotonous and dust-choked with little but the occasional frail beam of light peeking through a crack in the surface. Though Nathaniel never complained of his wound, it seemed to Velanna as though his steps grew more labored with each passing hour, and her eyes often strayed to his bandaged leg.
Rest was hard to come by and sleep even harder. Whenever she closed her eyes she was plagued by dreams of roaring darkspawn or screaming humans, and she would wake gasping, feeling more fatigued than she had before. Exhaustion, anxiety, and the taint all combined to drag her down like shackles on her wrists, and each spell that she cast at the straggling bands of darkspawn seemed more difficult to conjure.
She was trudging down the path, mired in fuzzy and meandering thoughts when Nathaniel staggered and fell.
Her heart lurched as she dropped to her knees next to him, grabbing at his shoulder. "Nathaniel!"
She rolled him onto his back with difficulty, and he coughed weakly as a cloud of dust floated up around them. His face was flushed and damp with sweat, his eyes sunken and glittering in his face.
"Damn it," Velanna whispered, raising her hand tentatively to his cheek. His skin burned under her fingers, and she drew back as though scalded. Unthinkingly, her hands flew to the pack at her waist, but her fingers met only leather and cloth. She had given him the last poultice hours ago. Perhaps it had even been days.
"Velanna…"
His voice interrupted her before she could descend into full-blown panic. The words were scratchy and rough, barely audible. "You have to-"
He coughed again, more harshly this time, a deep rattle in his chest. "Go on without me."
She clenched her jaw. "No."
He caught her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. She could feel them shaking in her grip as the fever coursed through him. "I'm not afraid to die, Velanna."
"I don't care." Her breaths came fast and shallow, making her head spin. "You're coming out of the Deep Roads with me."
"Stubborn," he wheezed, half affectionate and half accusatory, and she felt his fingers spasm around hers. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?" she snorted. "Trying to save your sorry human life?"
"In so many words."
She scowled. "Perhaps you should ask fewer questions and work more on your gratitude."
"I am grateful." He squeezed her hand. "But not long ago, you would have been more than happy to leave me here to die. You probably even would have done the deed yourself."
Velanna flushed. "I already told you I misjudged you. Must you make me repeat it?" She made a halfhearted attempt to tug her fingers free from his grasp. "If you're expecting some dramatic confession of feelings or a pretty speech about fulfilling my duty as a Warden, you may as well prepare yourself for disappointment."
His chest convulsed, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop, until she realized he was laughing.
"Worth a try," he managed.
She threw up her hands. "Only a human would still be so incorrigible while lying in the dirt half-dead from a fever." Heaving a longsuffering sigh, she grabbed his other hand and got to her feet, giving a sharp tug. "We must be nearing the entrance. If you give up and die now, your family's name will become even more scorned than it already is."
It was a momentous task to get him back on his feet, and for a moment she held her breath as he teetered and swayed, bracing herself for him to fall again. Instead he leaned on her heavily, one hand on her shoulder, and she nearly staggered under the weight.
"It can't be far," she said, unsure of whether she was trying to convince herself or him. "Come on."
Another mile passed, step by laborious step. Velanna felt as though she were wading upstream with a sack of bricks tied to one shoulder. Nathaniel's harsh, panting breaths and grinding teeth sounded in her ear with every footfall, and sweat poured down her back in rivulets. She could almost feel the force of his effort to cling to consciousness, his hand convulsing on her shoulder as though to remind him that she was still there.
And then his grip loosened, the weight disappearing as his fingers slipped from her shoulder. His armor groaned in protest as he pitched forward and crumpled to the ground, his eyes closed and his jaw slack.
She was too exhausted to even dread as she knelt and reached out to feel for his pulse. It thrummed weakly against her fingers, sluggish and faltering, and she let out a long, slow breath.
For a moment she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes, to curl up next to him and sleep until the darkspawn found them. Her eyelids fluttered, her shoulders slumping forward.
Gradually she heard the crackling of flames, as though from a great distance. A scream echoed in the back of her mind, a warbling cry that faded into ash and dust.
She forced her eyes open.
The chestpiece of Nathaniel's armor rose and fell with his breaths, the movement almost invisible. Velanna reached for it, her fingers following the leather straps until she found the buckle.
"You asked why I'm doing this," she said as she released one fastening, then the other. The breastplate came free in her hand, and she set it aside. "It's because you are one of the only decent humans I've ever met."
She moved on to his gloves, peeling them off one at a time. "It may well be that you are the only decent human in the whole species, in which case I would do the world a disservice to let you die." The gloves joined the chestplate, and she set to work loosening his belt and greaves. "But the notion is not lost on me that if one decent individual human exists, there may be others. Every time I close my eyes I see burning human faces in the Wending Wood, and wonder if someone like you might have been among them."
She pulled his bow and quiver free from his back, adding the quiver to the steadily growing pile. "This does not mean I forgive your race for all the harm it has done to mine. But if I save you, even one human, then perhaps…perhaps it will be a step forward."
She forced herself to her feet, slinging his bow across her back next to her staff. Turning toward the path, she reached down to wrap her fingers around his ankles, every muscle tensing.
"Don't die now," she whispered. It was half a command, half a prayer.
She pushed herself forward, dragging him behind her, first an inch, then two, then three. Her face twisted into a grimace as she called on her last reserves of strength, bent almost parallel to the ground as she pulled and pulled. Every breath burned in her lungs, muscles she didn't know she possessed screaming and straining.
Her head throbbed as though a vice were twisting around it, and sweat matted her hair and poured into her eyes. Time stretched and waned and stretched again, and the Deep Roads blurred into a red-brown haze around her.
When the entrance finally came into view, she could only stop and blink, wondering if it was a mirage before realizing she didn't care. She threw herself forward, straining and pulling, and when she dragged Nathaniel across the threshold the sudden burst of sunlight nearly blinded her.
She fell to her hands and knees, sucking in breaths of clean, sweet air, feeling sprouts of grass under her fingers. Shading her eyes, she glanced up, scanning the horizon. Voices reached her ears, and in the distance she glimpsed figures silhouetted against the sky-whether human or elven, Warden or otherwise, she couldn't tell.
She raised one hand, sending a burst of magic in their direction.
The faraway sounds of conversation stopped, and she saw their heads swivel in her direction. When they began to move toward her-first walking, then running-she finally let herself slump to the ground, eyes closing. The grass was soft and cool under her cheek.
Dimly she was aware of babbling voices surrounding her, hands grasping at her arms and turning her over. She forced her eyes back open, trying to focus on the faces above her.
"His leg," she croaked. "Swelling and festering. He's burning with fever."
She tried to concentrate on the words as the voices buzzed and washed over her, but her tired brain could pick out little more than Wardens and healers. Then she was being lifted up, half dragged, half carried away from the underground entrance. Structures rose into view on the horizon, and then her vision faded, her head lolling back as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
The sunlight disappeared, and she felt fabric under her cheek. She opened her eyes to see a roof above her and a pillow beneath her head. A healer was leaning over her, and she batted weakly at the woman's outstretched hands.
"I don't need help," she protested. "Nathaniel-his leg…"
"There." The healer pointed, and Velanna's eyes followed. Nathaniel lay in a bed across the room, several other healers surrounding him. Their hands moved back and forth above him, glowing pale blue with magic.
"Will he be all right?" she asked. Her voice felt thick and slurred, and every muscle ached. "Did I save him?"
"You saved him." The healer's voice was soft and gentle, and she held a potion to Velanna's lips. "Rest, now."
Her eyes drifted closed almost before she swallowed the draught, and she felt all her limbs grow heavy as sleep finally claimed her.
She did not dream.
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters/Pairing: Velanna, Nathaniel, with hints of Nathaniel/Velanna
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, semi-graphic descriptions
Word Count: 5,034
Summary: When a routine Deep Roads mission goes awry, Velanna is forced to come face to face with her prejudices.
Notes: Written for the 2011 girlsavesboyfic ficathon.
The battle had become a blur.
Velanna leaned on her staff and concentrated on just breathing, air whistling in and out in harsh rattles. The Deep Roads seemed to tilt back and forth around her like some demented child's plaything, and the odd red haze in her vision just wouldn't go away-
She reached up to push back her bangs, blinking and shaking her head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. Her hand came away damp, and she squinted at it, scowling at the streaks of blood across her palm.
The spinning continued as she drew another deep breath, and her heart kept on pounding like a halla stampede, its rhythm uneven in her chest. Too many spells, too fast, she thought dimly, and her shaking fingers scrabbled for a stamina draught.
She nearly dropped the tiny vial once or twice before she was able to throw back the amber-tinted liquid. It burned all the way down, but the effect was immediate, and the world mercifully began to clear. Velanna let out a long, wheezing sigh of relief, and pried her fingers off her staff. They felt clumsy and cold and stiff, and she grimaced, shaking out the kinks as she looked around the cavern.
The first thing she registered was the silence.
Dead darkspawn lay in piles with their glittering eyes staring up at her, blood spreading in black pools beneath them. She swallowed as she skirted around them, eyes scanning back and forth across the darkened chamber for any sign of life.
She almost stumbled over the first dead Wardens several feet away, two of them lying side by side. She knelt down long enough to brush their eyes closed, straining to pull their names out of the haze still clouding her brain. Nearly all of the others in the small band had been strangers to her, a varied bunch of humans that she'd met only once or twice before the Commander had assigned them all to this blasted expedition.
A sudden flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye, and she pivoted on her heel, so fast she almost fell over. Her heart slammed up into her throat and throbbed in her ears, and her staff was in her hand again before she realized she'd grabbed it. Fire pulsed at her fingertips as she called up another spell, ignoring the protests of her aching muscles.
"Easy, Velanna," a voice rang out, hoarse and lanced with pain, but familiar. "It's just me."
Velanna straightened out of her defensive stance and crossed the distance with choppy strides, picking her way through the darkspawn corpses.
"I never thought I would say this," she admitted as she approached, "but I'm glad to see you alive."
"That makes two of us, then." Nathaniel looked up at her from where he lay half-sprawled on the cavern floor, bracing himself on one elbow, both legs stretched out in front of him. In the muted light, Velanna could just make out his expression of mingled pain and relief, almost masked beneath the smears of dirt and blood caked on his face in patches of dull red and brown.
She could also make out the thick black arrow jutting from his right leg just above the knee, the feathered shaft stretching toward her like a demon's fingers. She sucked in a sharp breath.
"Creators," she murmured as she knelt next to him, grimacing. "Is it broken?"
"No, the arrow missed the bone," he said. Each word was short and tense, the sentence ending with a breath hissed through clenched teeth. "Barely."
"Best thank your Maker for small mercies, then," Velanna said dryly, and reached into her pack. "I have a few poultices left, and there ought to be enough bandages to-"
"Wait."
She almost backpedaled out of reflex as the pads of his fingers brushed over her cheek and into her hair, archer's calluses snagging on the strands already stiff with dried blood. His normally steady hands were clumsy with pain.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, his gaze fixing on her despite the cloudiness in his eyes. "There's blood all over your face, and your hands are shaking."
"It's nothing." She jerked away, the sudden unsteady rush of her heartbeat bringing the dizziness back in full force. "I cast a few too many spells, that's all. And the blood is just from a minor cut. You know how head wounds bleed like a skewered boar."
He studied her face a moment longer before nodding. His hand returned to his side, fingers clenching as another spasm of pain flickered on his face.
"You have to take out the arrow," he said.
Her heart gave an unpleasant jolt. "If I do that, you could bleed to death within minutes."
"I know." He drew the back of his hand across his forehead, his expression grim. "But our only chance is to make for the surface, and I won't get far with an arrow in my leg. With any luck, the poultices and bandages we have left will be enough until I get to a healer. If not…" He gave a shrug, his lips twitching. "I suppose a relatively quick death by blood loss would be preferable to ending up with my head on some darkspawn pike."
Velanna snorted, folding her arms over her chest. "Thus leaving me alone in the Deep Roads with only darkspawn and corpses for company. How very noble of you."
He managed a smirk at that. "I didn't say death was the goal, my lady. Though I am pleased to hear that you consider my company more pleasant than darkspawn and corpses."
"Barely," she huffed, ignoring the now-familiar way her cheeks warmed at his words. She cleared her throat, settling back on her heels and fixing her eyes on the arrow. Blood was seeping from the wound, trickling down to leave crimson stains on his armor.
"Perhaps there's another way," she said, narrowing her eyes in thought. "If the bleeding is severe, bandages and poultices won't be enough to stop it-but I may be able to use a different method." She held up a hand, letting fire crackle between her fingers.
Nathaniel's expression didn't change, but Velanna could discern a subtle blanching as the blood drained from his face. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.
"All right," he said, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "I suppose I should have something to bite down on, in lieu of my tongue."
"I didn't realize your pain tolerance was so low," she retorted, but the verbal jab lacked its usual bite. She worried her lower lip between her teeth, then sighed. "Very well, I'll find something."
She sawed a strip of leather from one of the dead Warden's belts and placed it between Nathaniel's teeth, then repositioned herself by his leg, hands hovering over the arrow's shaft. She took a deep breath.
"Are you ready?"
Nathaniel nodded, and Velanna felt a sudden ridiculous urge to make a snide remark about how he resembled one of those slobbery hounds the humans loved so much, with that leather flapping in his jaws-
With a start, she realized she was stalling. She ground her teeth and forced her eyes down, closing her fists around the arrow.
Back in the Wending Wood, she had relished the human travelers' screams, reveling in grim satisfaction as her magic snuffed out their lives. They had stolen her sister; she had been well within her rights to exact retribution. Even later, when she had found that the humans weren't responsible for Seranni's disappearance after all, the flickers of guilt had been few and rarely allowed to surface. They'd been nothing but shemlen-oppressive and brutish and utterly uncaring of the devastation their kind had brought to her people.
Yet as Nathaniel arched his back and yelled, hoarse cries of pain barely muffled by the leather, she found the memories brought nothing but bile rising in her throat.
* * *
He was not doing well.
Velanna stole another glance at the limping human by her side-at least the fifth time in the past minute that she had checked to make sure he wasn't on the verge of collapse. His breaths came quick and shallow to her ears, and his face was pale as halla's milk. He had been pressing forward in dogged silence for what seemed like hours, but as time wore on, Velanna could just begin to make out muffled grunts of pain as his weight came down on his injured leg.
"We should stop for a minute," she finally said, fingers already digging into her pack for a fresh poultice. "Your leg will give out sooner rather than later if you keep putting weight on it, and if you're expecting me to drag you by the ankles through miles of Deep Roads, you had best think again."
She couldn't tell if his expression was a smile or a grimace as he lowered himself gingerly to the ground. "The thought never crossed my mind, my lady."
"Well, good." Velanna shoved the poultice into his hand. "Here."
Nathaniel set the potion onto the ground next to his leg as he began to peel back the sodden bandages. "How many are left?"
Velanna automatically checked her pack, even though she was already well aware of the number. "Two." She gnawed at her lower lip. "I went through the other Wardens' packs, but they must have used up all their potions in that last battle-for all the good it did them."
Nathaniel's hands stilled, and his face settled into an inscrutable mask.
"Two poultices," he said softly. "And at least another fifteen miles to the nearest surface entrance."
He stared off into the distance for a moment before he raised his eyes to hers, grey and calm in the gloomy light. "You should go on without me."
She scowled. "After all that trauma and agonized howling when I removed the arrow and cauterized the wound, you want me to leave you to have your head skewered on a darkspawn pike after all?"
"There's no sense in both of us dying," he said. "I've only slowed you down thus far, and the road ahead will be no easier. I can barely walk, let alone use my bow. I'll be of no help to you if-when we come across darkspawn patrols."
"Save your human nobility," she snorted. "It's just an arrow wound. You aren't that far gone yet. And when we come across darkspawn, I'll destroy them with fireballs. I'm not defenseless."
For a moment he looked as though he were about to argue, but then his face relaxed into a wry smile. "No, indeed," he murmured.
He held her gaze a moment longer before he resumed unwrapping his leg. Velanna turned to stare down the path, hiding the disquiet in her eyes.
* * *
She dreamed of murky shadows, amorphous shapes flickering in and out at the edges of her vision. She whirled around, her hair whipping in her face and stinging her cheeks, but each time the figures darted away, disappearing before she could identify them.
She pivoted again, and the forms solidified into trees, rising tall and proud from a lush green expanse of gently rolling hills. Velanna's restless movement stilled, all senses alert as her eyes darted from trunk to trunk. The forest should have been comforting, familiar, yet the unnatural silence raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent chills sweeping down her arms.
A scream pierced the stillness, and her whole body jerked, her heart beating fast and thready and leaving her dizzy and nauseous. Darkness began to gather, swallowing her up, as though the trees had bent their heads together to block out the sun. In the distance, faint pinpricks of ruddy light grew brighter, and she realized they were fires-burning caravans filled with people who screamed and thrashed as the flames engulfed them.
Her dying victims' sounds were far more deafening than they had been in life, growing louder and louder until she reached up to clutch at her ears. A sudden impact jolted her body, and she realized she had fallen to her knees, the rock-strewn ground digging into her skin.
"Go away," she hissed, hunched against the noise as the crescendo continued, forcing past her covered ears and driving into her skull. "Go away, go away!"
Her eyes snapped open. The forest and the caravans disappeared, replaced by the Deep Roads' dirt-brown ceiling stretching overhead, pressing down on her. The ground was hard and unyielding under her back, and a voice was calling her name.
She jerked upright, ignoring the black spots that danced before her eyes at the sudden movement. The darkness slowly cleared, and she felt Nathaniel's hand gripping her arm.
"It's all right. It's all right." His voice was low and gravelly, a welcome antidote to the ear-piercing screams still echoing in her mind. "Here, drink."
He pushed a canteen into her hands, curling her nerveless fingers around the leather surface. She fumbled with the strings before tipping it back and gulping down the water, grateful for the cool rush against her parched throat. Nathaniel's hand moved to the small of her back, large and warm through her robes, and she shuddered.
"Thank you." She let out a deep breath, pressing her knuckles against her eyelids.
His hand left her back as he reached out to accept the canteen, and she felt conflicting relief and regret at the loss of contact. The small campfire had burned down into embers as she slept, and the chamber suddenly seemed cold and drafty. She folded her arms around herself, shivering.
"Was it darkspawn?" Nathaniel asked, settling back against the wall. His voice was still soft, his eyes intent on her face.
"No, not this time." Velanna looked away, fingers clenching at her side. Human faces floated in her mind's eye, their mouths gaping, fiery halos surrounding their heads. "I would…rather not discuss it."
"As you wish." He hesitated, stretching his leg out in front of him. "I will continue to keep watch, if you need more sleep."
"It would be pointless to even try, I'm afraid." She sighed and pulled herself to her feet. "We had best get moving."
The dream lingered in her thoughts as they continued down the path, the maddeningly slow pace providing few opportunities for distraction. Unbidden, her mind flashed back to the months immediately after her rampage in the Wending Wood, to the time she had spent with the Warden-Commander and her motley band of allies.
"This thing you did, the murders of those men in the forest…what you did was wrong. You must make amends."
She sighed, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead as Justice's solemn words ran through her mind, not for the first time.
"Are you sure you're all right?"
The concern in Nathaniel's voice pierced through the fog, and she shook off the remnants of dreams and memories. Now is not the time, she told herself firmly. It's idiotic to fret over nightmares and some foolish old spirit's ramblings about atonement when you don't even know if you'll survive the next few hours.
"I'm fine," she said aloud, and gave Nathaniel a pointed look. "You are the one with the injury, as I recall."
His face creased. "Thank you for the reminder."
"My pleasure," she said airily, then lapsed into silence, putting one foot in front of the other and listening as his uneven breathing overlapped his uneven footsteps.
* * *
The shrieks of darkspawn were somehow much easier to listen to than the screams of humans.
Velanna watched the fire spell roar before her, scarlet-orange flames clawing at the ceiling like fingers twisting in pain. In the midst of the inferno the darkspawn writhed and wailed as they died, and the smoky heat seared at her eyes and throat, so intense she nearly turned her face away.
When the last genlock had fallen and the taint quieted in her blood, she turned her back to the charred, reeking corpses and scanned the tunnel, wiping soot from her face. Nathaniel was braced against the far wall, a dagger in his hand. His right foot hovered several inches above the ground.
"Very efficient," he commented, sheathing the dagger. "I didn't even need to use this."
"You had best keep it close at hand, just in case," Velanna said. "We may come across larger groups up ahead." She replaced her staff across her back, folding her arms. It was better not to even think of what might happen if they encountered an ogre.
Nathaniel nodded and pushed himself off the wall, face set with concentration and pain as he regained his balance, his boot barely touching the hard-packed floor. Velanna's eyes traveled to the tightly wrapped wound, the once white bandages now streaked and spotted with dust and congealed blood.
"How is it?" she asked, making a vague gesture in the direction of his thigh.
"It's…" He hesitated, then sighed. "Not good."
Something in his voice made Velanna's stomach drop. "How 'not good,' exactly?"
He looked at her for a long moment before reaching down to pull at the wrapping. The bandage loosened, then fell away in his hand, and Velanna drew a sharp breath.
The injury was swollen and festering, blood and pus leaking from the wound. The surrounding skin flared an angry red in grisly contrast to the blackened flesh that she had burned away to stop the bleeding.
"Nathaniel!" She jerked back, reaching for the last poultice. "Why didn't you tell me it had taken such a turn for the worse?"
He was already shaking his head as she pulled out the potion. "Keep it. There are miles still left to go. It may be needed for something more serious."
"More serious?" Her voice pitched up an octave. "Your leg is about to fall off!"
"We're running low on bandages as well," he continued, as though he hadn't heard her. "If we use up what little we have left at this point, we may find ourselves in even worse trouble later on."
She let out her breath in an agitated huff. "Fine, but if it gets any worse, I'll force this poultice on you in your sleep."
He slanted a smile at her, his eyes warming. "Your concern is touching, my lady."
"Ugh." Her heart wouldn't stop racing, and the tunnel felt uncomfortably warm, though the fires had already burned out. "Stop that. This is no time for-for-smoldering."
She almost jumped in surprise as Nathaniel burst out laughing, the pain easing from his face for a few short moments.
"Smoldering?" he managed, shaking his head and grinning. "I don't think that word has ever been used to describe me before."
"I don't believe that for a second." Velanna rolled her eyes, grateful for the distraction from the shock of his wound. "I'm sure you must have charmed your way under the skirts of countless high-born ladies at all your fancy human parties."
His laugh turned to a quieter chuckle. "'Countless' is a rather generous estimation." He sobered. "It's been many years since I went to a fancy party…and all those people who used to attend them would turn up their noses if they saw me now."
"I know what that's like." She looked away, remembering the sneers and insults of the former clan-mates she had met on the road with the Warden-Commander. Human screams and the crackling of burning caravans played in her mind again, echoes of the vengeance that had cost her her clan.
Then the corpse-strewn caravans disappeared, replaced by Justice's decaying, uncomprehending face. Why do you believe that atonement is unnecessary?
"Velanna?"
She blinked, jolted from the memory. "What was that? I didn't hear you."
Nathaniel's lips twitched. "I said that the Maker must have a sense of humor-the two of us exiles, winding up together in the Deep Roads."
"Hmph." She tried to scowl, but somehow it came out as a grudging smile instead. "If that's the case, then your Maker's sense of humor is nothing short of twisted."
* * *
They pressed on, the hours ebbing away as slowly as the miles of Deep Roads. Each tunnel looked the same as the one before it, monotonous and dust-choked with little but the occasional frail beam of light peeking through a crack in the surface. Though Nathaniel never complained of his wound, it seemed to Velanna as though his steps grew more labored with each passing hour, and her eyes often strayed to his bandaged leg.
Rest was hard to come by and sleep even harder. Whenever she closed her eyes she was plagued by dreams of roaring darkspawn or screaming humans, and she would wake gasping, feeling more fatigued than she had before. Exhaustion, anxiety, and the taint all combined to drag her down like shackles on her wrists, and each spell that she cast at the straggling bands of darkspawn seemed more difficult to conjure.
She was trudging down the path, mired in fuzzy and meandering thoughts when Nathaniel staggered and fell.
Her heart lurched as she dropped to her knees next to him, grabbing at his shoulder. "Nathaniel!"
She rolled him onto his back with difficulty, and he coughed weakly as a cloud of dust floated up around them. His face was flushed and damp with sweat, his eyes sunken and glittering in his face.
"Damn it," Velanna whispered, raising her hand tentatively to his cheek. His skin burned under her fingers, and she drew back as though scalded. Unthinkingly, her hands flew to the pack at her waist, but her fingers met only leather and cloth. She had given him the last poultice hours ago. Perhaps it had even been days.
"Velanna…"
His voice interrupted her before she could descend into full-blown panic. The words were scratchy and rough, barely audible. "You have to-"
He coughed again, more harshly this time, a deep rattle in his chest. "Go on without me."
She clenched her jaw. "No."
He caught her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. She could feel them shaking in her grip as the fever coursed through him. "I'm not afraid to die, Velanna."
"I don't care." Her breaths came fast and shallow, making her head spin. "You're coming out of the Deep Roads with me."
"Stubborn," he wheezed, half affectionate and half accusatory, and she felt his fingers spasm around hers. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?" she snorted. "Trying to save your sorry human life?"
"In so many words."
She scowled. "Perhaps you should ask fewer questions and work more on your gratitude."
"I am grateful." He squeezed her hand. "But not long ago, you would have been more than happy to leave me here to die. You probably even would have done the deed yourself."
Velanna flushed. "I already told you I misjudged you. Must you make me repeat it?" She made a halfhearted attempt to tug her fingers free from his grasp. "If you're expecting some dramatic confession of feelings or a pretty speech about fulfilling my duty as a Warden, you may as well prepare yourself for disappointment."
His chest convulsed, and for a moment her heart seemed to stop, until she realized he was laughing.
"Worth a try," he managed.
She threw up her hands. "Only a human would still be so incorrigible while lying in the dirt half-dead from a fever." Heaving a longsuffering sigh, she grabbed his other hand and got to her feet, giving a sharp tug. "We must be nearing the entrance. If you give up and die now, your family's name will become even more scorned than it already is."
It was a momentous task to get him back on his feet, and for a moment she held her breath as he teetered and swayed, bracing herself for him to fall again. Instead he leaned on her heavily, one hand on her shoulder, and she nearly staggered under the weight.
"It can't be far," she said, unsure of whether she was trying to convince herself or him. "Come on."
Another mile passed, step by laborious step. Velanna felt as though she were wading upstream with a sack of bricks tied to one shoulder. Nathaniel's harsh, panting breaths and grinding teeth sounded in her ear with every footfall, and sweat poured down her back in rivulets. She could almost feel the force of his effort to cling to consciousness, his hand convulsing on her shoulder as though to remind him that she was still there.
And then his grip loosened, the weight disappearing as his fingers slipped from her shoulder. His armor groaned in protest as he pitched forward and crumpled to the ground, his eyes closed and his jaw slack.
She was too exhausted to even dread as she knelt and reached out to feel for his pulse. It thrummed weakly against her fingers, sluggish and faltering, and she let out a long, slow breath.
For a moment she wanted nothing more than to close her eyes, to curl up next to him and sleep until the darkspawn found them. Her eyelids fluttered, her shoulders slumping forward.
Gradually she heard the crackling of flames, as though from a great distance. A scream echoed in the back of her mind, a warbling cry that faded into ash and dust.
She forced her eyes open.
The chestpiece of Nathaniel's armor rose and fell with his breaths, the movement almost invisible. Velanna reached for it, her fingers following the leather straps until she found the buckle.
"You asked why I'm doing this," she said as she released one fastening, then the other. The breastplate came free in her hand, and she set it aside. "It's because you are one of the only decent humans I've ever met."
She moved on to his gloves, peeling them off one at a time. "It may well be that you are the only decent human in the whole species, in which case I would do the world a disservice to let you die." The gloves joined the chestplate, and she set to work loosening his belt and greaves. "But the notion is not lost on me that if one decent individual human exists, there may be others. Every time I close my eyes I see burning human faces in the Wending Wood, and wonder if someone like you might have been among them."
She pulled his bow and quiver free from his back, adding the quiver to the steadily growing pile. "This does not mean I forgive your race for all the harm it has done to mine. But if I save you, even one human, then perhaps…perhaps it will be a step forward."
She forced herself to her feet, slinging his bow across her back next to her staff. Turning toward the path, she reached down to wrap her fingers around his ankles, every muscle tensing.
"Don't die now," she whispered. It was half a command, half a prayer.
She pushed herself forward, dragging him behind her, first an inch, then two, then three. Her face twisted into a grimace as she called on her last reserves of strength, bent almost parallel to the ground as she pulled and pulled. Every breath burned in her lungs, muscles she didn't know she possessed screaming and straining.
Her head throbbed as though a vice were twisting around it, and sweat matted her hair and poured into her eyes. Time stretched and waned and stretched again, and the Deep Roads blurred into a red-brown haze around her.
When the entrance finally came into view, she could only stop and blink, wondering if it was a mirage before realizing she didn't care. She threw herself forward, straining and pulling, and when she dragged Nathaniel across the threshold the sudden burst of sunlight nearly blinded her.
She fell to her hands and knees, sucking in breaths of clean, sweet air, feeling sprouts of grass under her fingers. Shading her eyes, she glanced up, scanning the horizon. Voices reached her ears, and in the distance she glimpsed figures silhouetted against the sky-whether human or elven, Warden or otherwise, she couldn't tell.
She raised one hand, sending a burst of magic in their direction.
The faraway sounds of conversation stopped, and she saw their heads swivel in her direction. When they began to move toward her-first walking, then running-she finally let herself slump to the ground, eyes closing. The grass was soft and cool under her cheek.
Dimly she was aware of babbling voices surrounding her, hands grasping at her arms and turning her over. She forced her eyes back open, trying to focus on the faces above her.
"His leg," she croaked. "Swelling and festering. He's burning with fever."
She tried to concentrate on the words as the voices buzzed and washed over her, but her tired brain could pick out little more than Wardens and healers. Then she was being lifted up, half dragged, half carried away from the underground entrance. Structures rose into view on the horizon, and then her vision faded, her head lolling back as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
The sunlight disappeared, and she felt fabric under her cheek. She opened her eyes to see a roof above her and a pillow beneath her head. A healer was leaning over her, and she batted weakly at the woman's outstretched hands.
"I don't need help," she protested. "Nathaniel-his leg…"
"There." The healer pointed, and Velanna's eyes followed. Nathaniel lay in a bed across the room, several other healers surrounding him. Their hands moved back and forth above him, glowing pale blue with magic.
"Will he be all right?" she asked. Her voice felt thick and slurred, and every muscle ached. "Did I save him?"
"You saved him." The healer's voice was soft and gentle, and she held a potion to Velanna's lips. "Rest, now."
Her eyes drifted closed almost before she swallowed the draught, and she felt all her limbs grow heavy as sleep finally claimed her.
She did not dream.