three cats in a trenchcoat

Sometimes Davrin catches sight of the little crew of Wardens marching with him through the haze, and they look more like ghosts than people, trudging toward another town, canvassing another road. Dusk gathers around them, and no one has to say a word before the pace quickens. Hope is a dangerous thing. It doesn’t have to be large. Sometimes it is nothing more than a little smoke on the horizon.

It is still a marvel to Davrin how many tiny towns like this survived the blight. The way people retreated into the hills and mountains, took care of each other, isolated, without news for weeks and months. Some of the towns they arrive in don't exist on any map, the buildings new. That's partly why they're here, to take an accounting of how the Blight has changed the land.

But something prickles at the back of his neck as they approach this town. It's very nearly winter, sure, but there should still be some signs of life. The farms and fields they pass are empty of people. Some druffalo and cows graze in a pasture walled in by a wattle fence that follows the road. There are sheep too, already bedded down against the cold, their bodies dots of white amongst the browning grass of the hills.

 He throws his attention out like a net as they trek along the road. There is no sound of blight here, no pinpricks of darkspawn catching his attention. But still, something is not quite right.

"Where are all the people?" he asks, turning towards Ilona.

They pull their cloak tighter around their face. "Something's not right here."

"There should be people, right?" Matthias says, coming up alongside him and Ilona.

The crew Davrin leads is small. Just Ilona, Matthias, and Adal. Well, and Assan, who soars above them. Davrin gives him a quick whistle, and the griffon swoops to land.

"Stick behind us, boy," he says. Assan assents with a squawk that tells him he's not happy to be grounded, but also that he has picked up on something wrong in the air, too.

"Stay ready," he says to his Wardens.

Davrin has spent the better part of the last year in Ferelden. He'd told Antoine and Evka to send him wherever the need was greatest, and after about six months in Minrathous it became clear that the need was greatest elsewhere. So, he'd packed his bags and said goodbye to Neve and come down here. Skyhold had been the staging area, and then there were the groups attempting to retake Redcliffe. There are rumblings that Denerim is next, but he's heard it's even worse than Minrathous, so it's more a far-off dream. He's not sure what he thought he'd be doing by coming here, but it's not this. His days are simple, at least. Walk the roads that still exist. Clear what blight and darkspawn there are, and report on what they find in these small villages and towns. Who is still here? What do they need? What can they provide?

Davrin had traveled hunting monsters before the Sixth Blight. He thought he'd seen a good chunk of the world, but Ferelden feels endlessly vast. Information is sparse in these areas. Some didn't even realize the Blight was over or that the archdemon had been killed because no one had come through with the news. Much of what Davrin and his crew have to share with these people feels impossible to explain. In some towns filled entirely with humans, he is all too aware that his welcome is dependent upon the armor and shield he carries, emblazoned with the Warden crest because his vallaslin and ears mark him as other.

Sometimes, when they're unlucky, the villages they come across are empty. It's impossible to know when people left. Perhaps when the blight first appeared, they fled into the cities, went elsewhere to escape. Perhaps they left in the winter, when it stretched long and cold and harsh, and travel was better than starving in place. Perhaps some fled bandits or the violence of those they called neighbors. Desperation pushes people to do terrible things to survive. All that is clear is that they did not return.

This village bears none of the hallmarks of neglect. The fields look worked, the road well-traveled. Homes stand tall and proud and complete. He keeps a hand on his sword as their small group enters the village proper. He feels as though he's being watched, but there are no faces at the windows, no curtains swaying with someone putting them back in place. As they trudge deeper into the town, the source of the smoke becomes clear: the chantry at the center of it is a smoking ruin.

"Maker's wrinkly ballsack, what's that smell?" Matthias says, lifting his hand up to cover his nose.

It's a miracle any of them can catch anything beyond the stench of blight these days, but Matthias is right: there's something here. His stomach roils because the stench is familiar.

"Burning flesh," he replies grimly. "Someone must have been in the chantry when it caught."

Ilona is already ahead of them, using their sword to carefully poke through the still smoldering ruins. "Still hot. Bandits, you think?"

There are plenty of roving bands. Desperate and lawless, they find towns no one even knows still exist and take and take and take. Davrin's put an end to more of them than he has darkspawn in the last six months. It would be bold but not unheard of for them to round up a town and lock them in the chantry before setting it ablaze. He's reminded that not all monsters have claws.

Matthias has picked his way up to the doors of the skeletal structure. "The door isn't barred. At least not from the outside."

Adal is already up the street, knocking on doors and peeking in windows. Davrin doesn't dare attempt to bash the chantry's doors in to get inside. The structure already looks weak; he can tell that most of the roof has collapsed on whatever and whoever was inside. He arcs around the side of it, finds a wall nearly missing where there must have been a window that shattered from the heat. The smell is even worse over here, and finally, with horror, he sees why: there are people sitting in the pews. Well, their burned corpses are anyway.

Their legs and arms are raised as though praying, but Davrin wishes that he hadn't seen enough death to know that's just what happens to a body that's burned. What he cannot discern from his vantage point is why not a single one of these people seems like they tried to escape.

Adal jogs over to him. "I don't think there's anyone in these houses. Should we start opening doors?"

Davrin breaks away from staring at the smoldering mess of the chantry. "Yeah. Be sure to announce yourselves though, someone might be hiding in a basement or cellar."

Adal hesitates a little, her gaze cutting to the corpses. "What do you think happened here?"

Davrin shakes his head. "Nothing good."

He has suspicions about what might have occurred. These tiny, far-flung towns are superstitious places. In the absence of answers, people will look for them wherever they can find them, will assign meaning where there is none. It takes so little. Just one person claiming to have the answers, a few words in the right tune. In such uncertainty, people are all too desperate to follow someone who promises security and safety and truth.

He doesn't know that is what has happened here, but the chantry door wasn't barred from the outside. That leaves few other explanations. He turns away from the smoldering skeleton of the building, but not before something in it catches his eye. Like a shadow moving in the smoke. He pauses, waits, looks for whatever it might have been.

But it's gone.

***

Freezing rain pelts the house their group has claimed for the night. There were no survivors to find, but there was some food to scavenge. With night already falling, their group had little choice but to sleep here for the night. They'd picked an empty house as far from the chantry as they could. At least the rain will choke out the embers, and tomorrow, they can get inside and look for more certain answers.

Davrin takes first watch; the other three Wardens set up their bedrolls in another room. It feels like a luxury to sleep with a roof over their heads, to have cooked their meal in a hearth. There had been an air of disquiet all through dinner, and Davrin wonders what he can do to keep morale up. There's a well outside this house, and perhaps they can all stay another day. Take time to bathe and have another night of easy rest despite the morbid atmosphere.

Davrin unrolls the map he keeps enclosed in a waxed canvas folder, runs a finger along the mark of the road until he finds what he thinks might be the town name: Providence. He opens up his nearby journal and writes a description of the road, how far they traveled along it, and everything about the town they've found thus far. When he and his crew return to Skyhold, his notes and this map will go back to the cartographers who will update the records for Queen Anora. The refugees who still wait to know if the towns they fled survived or what the conditions are for travel will know the best routes to take, if the travel is worth it at all. It is important work, he supposes.

He sighs and leans back in his chair, casting his gaze across the humble room of this house. Assan is curled up at the hearth, almost too large these days to fit through the front door. He dozes untroubled, and Davrin wishes for something like that sort of simplicity.

Not for the first time, Davrin wonders if this is what it means to be a Warden now. He misses Weisshaupt, and the shared purpose of commitment to a unifying cause. There was a camaraderie that came with knowing they'd all signed up for the same sort of death. Davrin knew his life would never be long, but that it would be meaningful, and that had been enough. He'd barely hesitated when it came to killing the archdemon at Weisshaupt, but he'd lived. And then he'd lived through Tearstone, and Minrathous, too. He'd have traded his life for Harding's or Rook's in a moment, but the world doesn't work that way.

And now, he doesn't know how long he'll live. If the Calling even still exists. No one is sure, even Evka and Antoine, how whatever happened in Minrathous to the blight changed the Wardens. But he feels it, that change — even if he doesn't know what that means.

A fair few Wardens put down their swords after Minrathous. He can't say he blames them. They'd all signed up for a life of sacrifice, signed up knowing that they might be the one to put their swords through an archdemon. Years of their lives traded away for the ability to protect those that need protecting. And to suddenly be given time without purpose? There are no archdemons. There will never be another blight. Darkspawn numbers dwindle. The world doesn't need Wardens anymore.

Davrin supposes he could have left, too. But he wasn't sure where else to go. He couldn't return to his clan. Even spending time with Eldrin in Arlathan feels less like coming home than visiting somewhere he used to know. He'd mostly stayed in Minrathous because it had seemed like the right thing to do. The city was choked with blight, and Neve… well, neither of them wanted to be alone in their grief. It had made sense at the time to stay there while the Wardens regrouped. And now, what's he doing? Walking the roads in Ferelden helping make maps?

He wishes, often, for the clarity of purpose that he'd followed to the Lighthouse. For a monster to hunt — a singular goal. But instead he's stuck just asking where is the need greatest and trying to get to that place, but unable to save anyone anyway. What's the fucking point if people just lock themselves in a chantry to burn?

He leans back in his chair, tossing down his quill. He rolls his shoulders back, seeking some relief from the weight he's been carrying. He finds little.

Tch. Tch. Tch.

He freezes. The scratching sound is too regular, too rhythmic to be a tree or bush or something else disturbed by the wind. It is coming from the window across the room. The fire in the hearth casts too much light to see out into the dark night through the fogged glass.

The sound has not woken Assan.

Tch. Tch. Tch. Tch.

He throws his consciousness out almost on instinct, but whatever is making that sound isn't darkspawn; he feels sure of that. He stands on silent feet, reaches for his sword that is never far, and carefully pads closer to the window.

The sound doesn't come again. He wars with himself as he stands there wondering: should he wake Asssan or one of the other Wardens? Do a quick perimeter check? It's strange, but nothing feels malicious here. Perhaps he is simply tired, the horrors of the day weighing too heavily upon him. Perhaps it is just the rain outside.

He glances out the window as though there might be something there, and through the foggy glass, he sees nothing but darkness.

He returns to his chair, but keeps his sword close. He'll investigate if he hears it again.

But he doesn't.

***

Morning arrives bright and cold and icy. Davrin wakes without feeling particularly well-rested. He'd had strange dreams through the night. He'd dreamt of a road. Long and winding, stretching through a desolate wasteland. A figure had walked there, and he had tried to catch up to them. Felt as though he needed to reach them for some reason, but he never quite caught them. In the distance, a chantry burned. Even from that far, he could feel the heat of the flames, hear the popping of the wood. So when Adal wakes him with a hand to his shoulder, he jumps a little, the vividness of the road and the fire taking far longer to desert him than his usual dreams. Nothing is said about it. Wardens are known for having nightmares.

She gives him a moment, and then brings him a bowl of whatever is passing for breakfast this morning. Davrin doesn't care because it's warm.

"You need to make a circuit of the house," she says.

"Why?"

"You know how you mentioned scratching on your watch?"

Davrin nods. "Yeah."

"There's these…symbols beneath the window."

"Symbols?" Davrin asks. Adal shrugs. "Pretty sure they weren't there yesterday, but hard to say because I wasn't exactly looking for them."

Davrin shoves his feet into his boots and pulls on his gambeson as quickly as he can so he's protected from the worst of the cold and ventures outside. The world is strange and glass-like around him. The rain had fallen and then frozen; everything seems like it is somehow encased in a thin layer of ice. It reminds him of Neve's magic, the way her fingers had so deftly directed bursts of freezing air. The ground below him crackles beneath his boots as he disturbs the fine casing of ice on the ground. He can see, already, where his companions have moved about this morning: Adal's careful tracks around the house, Assan's hopping about.

And there beneath the window is a set of symbols.

He stares at them uncomprehendingly at first. It is not that he doesn't recognize them, but instead, that their appearance here makes so little sense that he is unsure he's not mistaken in what they are. He's seen symbols like this all over the Necropolis. He cannot read what they say, but he knows it to be the same symbols on so many of the tombs and graves where he had once followed Rook and Emmrich.

At the thought of Rook, that old, familiar pang of grief arrives. He welcomes it. She is another in a long list of friends dead and gone. He misses her, sure, but he thinks he might miss more the way she'd united all of them together. That group that called the Lighthouse home. He hates the way they've all fractured, splintered off. She had brought them together — made them a team. He shakes the memories away because they don't matter this morning. These symbols do.

And they don't make any damn sense. Why would these be scratched into the wood beneath this window? Perhaps they are a protection ward of some sort. Rook and Emmrich's magic had often utilized symbols for ward placement…maybe someone in this town had been from Nevarra….perhaps…

But it simply doesn't make sense.

And then there is the fact that there is no explanation for the scratching coming from this window last night. There are no trees nor bushes that could have been disturbed by the wind and rain. It cannot be a coincidence.

Davrin goes back inside to retrieve his journal. He cannot read the symbols, but he can copy them down and show them to someone who can. Eventually, he will get answers. When he gets inside, Matthias, Adal, and Ilona are sitting together at the table. They stop speaking as he enters.

It's too early for this shit. "Out with it."

For a moment, none of them speak, the three of them glancing at each other in silence. Finally, Ilona sighs. "We were talking….and we don't think we should stay here much longer than we have to."

"I've got a bad feeling about this place," Matthias says.

Adal nods. "Whatever was done in that Chantry has disturbed the Veil around here. To stay would be unwise. We should continue on."

He's no mage, so he'll have to trust Adal on this one. He can see that his team is united on this, but it is ultimately his call. "Alright. Let's just spend an hour or two. See if we can get any proof of what happened here, get any names to pass along if friends or family are looking for anyone. Then, we'll head out."

"You saw the symbols?" Adal asks.

"Yeah. Any of you know how to read Nevarran tomb script?"

"Is that what that is?"

Davrin shrugs. "It's what it looks like to me, but I'm no expert. I'll get it copied down, and maybe we'll find someone who can read it. But outside the Necropolis, I doubt it."

They go about their morning routines, adjusted slightly within the luxury of having slept all night indoors. But eventually, they do venture back into the town. With the rain and the cold, the chantry is nothing more than a charred skeleton of a building. There's only a little smoke rising from a few places. He's careful as he picks his way through the rubble inside. As he does, he's struck by questions he cannot answer.

What would compel people to sit in a room that was on fire? Were they already dead before the flames began licking their way up the rafters? He cannot fathom what would lead all these people into this place to die. There is no sign of attempts at escape, no sign anyone tried to go for the door or the windows; they are instead just across the pews of this place, as though they were once seated calmly.

Everything is too charred to get any sort of read. If Emmrich was here, he'd hand him the blackened skull of the corpse behind the altar, ask him to talk to it and get them answers. And maybe in another world where he didn't have miles and miles more to travel, he'd pick it up, wrap it carefully, and set it in his pack. As it stands, what happened here may just have to remain a mystery.

Something out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He twists quickly, hand already resting on the pommel of his sword. But there is nothing there. Again. He rubs at his eyes and wonders if he's more tired than he thinks. It is the only explanation for seeing things that aren't there.

When he exits the chantry, Adal is coming out of a nearby house. Based on the number of dried plants hanging from the interior eaves, he guesses it must be the apothecary's home. She holds out a book. "Take a look at this."

He opens it. "Find anything else inside?"

"A shit ton of monkshood."

"That can be used as poison, right?"

Adal nods. "It's a paralytic. The book explains…enough."

He thumbs through the pages. Whoever this apothecary was, they kept a fairly meticulous journal, but it's the last few entries that interest him most. Mentions of following Andraste's example to be received at the Maker's side. It gets less and less lucid, the scrawl messier towards the end.

"Andraste was burned, right?" Davrin asks.

Adal shrugs. "Think so. Matthias's probably better to ask than me or Ilona."

His knowledge of Andrastianism isn't exactly well-rounded either, but he's pretty sure he's right. "So what, they all burned to death on purpose?"

"Hard to say if they all knew, but the apothecary and Chantry Sister certainly did."

Davrin pauses on the final page of the journal, staring uncomprehendingly at the words written therein. Rook. Rook. Rook. Rook. Rook. Over and over again, all over the page. Any other time it might have seemed like an odd coincidence, but taken with the scratched symbols outside the window, there's something impossibly odd here. Is this the work of a demon? He knows that time and distance collapse in the Fade; perhaps whatever compelled the people here had fed on his dreams, his fears, as his group approached this town.

"Why would they have written Rook over and over in this journal?"

"Chess piece or bird, you think?" Adal asked.

Davrin shook his head. "No, Rook, the person. The woman who led the fight against the Evanuris. She was at Weisshaupt."

It never ceases to bother Davrin just how easily Rook was forgotten. He carries with him the weight of so much expectation, a hero of Minrathous, one of the Grey Wardens responsible for saving the world. Every time he has to remind someone of Rook it feels like walking and missing a stair. He cannot fathom how it is possible for them not to know who she was.

"What's it mean, do you think?"

"That maybe we should return to Skyhold sooner rather than later. I need to check in with some friends of mine."

Adal shrugs. "You're in charge. I'm happy as long as we're done in this town."

Davrin tucks the journal away and pulls out the map, traces a route. Redcliffe first, then they can use the eluvian to get to Skyhold, make a report and he can take some leave. Something in him shifts…this feels like the first time in a long time he's had any direction at all.