✨️NOVA✨️

Taliesin welcomes a new member of the Veilguard. Lucanis notices she has an endearing habit.

It wasn’t until he had begun taking contracts in Tevinter that he had seen what a true tyrant was like when left unchecked. He had been privy to what true hopelessness could be twisted into. Fear, rage, desperation. And in Zara’s hands he had felt all of that and more. In Zara’s hands, he had found that while Caterina’s methods had been harsh to the point of cruel abuse, she had ensured that he would survive. She had ensured that he would not slump down into the dirt like a beaten dog and give in. And he had fought and thrashed and killed his entire year in that Maker-forsaken pit of misery. He had not become some pathetic mongrel, crawling on his belly with his head bent as he’d cowered. No, he had been a wild thing with bared teeth. He had bided his time beneath the waves and decided that if he was to die there, that he would take as many Venatori with him as possible.  He would take Calivan as he’d intended to on his last journey to Minrathous and complete his final contract like a true Crow. And if luck happened to be on his side, he would take Zara Renata down with him too.  Lucanis still wonders if he would have died in the Ossuary, hunting down Venatori mages unlucky enough to be left behind once the blood witch had moved her more successful experiments from the prison. If the wards would have crumbled and collapsed and trapped himself and Spite inside to drown as the ocean poured in, filling his lungs with the thick brine of saltwater. He wonders what would have become of him if Taliesin had not barged into the cell when she had, with an untamed tempest hot on her heels. She moves now in his periphery, a hurricane of swishing skirts and the crackling of her lightning filling the air. She seems to slice right through the rippling of blood magic that lingers in the villa like she is an imminent storm surging forward to wash Tevinter’s filth from Antiva’s shores.