#aryrha lavellan

It wasn’t necessary to be running this fast when her pursuants could manage an ambitious shamble at best, but it never hurt to put as much distance between oneself and walking corpses as possible. Especially when they were gaining on her with mysterious ease for reanimated flesh-sacks. They moved like a game of statues. When she chanced a glance over her shoulders, though they were close, they moved at the expected snail's pace. Yet if she took her eyes off them, she’d begin to smell the telltale rankness of their breath which foretold that they were closing in. Every time she turned around they were always just within reach of overtaking her, no matter how hard she pushed herself to run.

Until she tripped.

It was hardly surprising, running through a bog in the dark half-panicked. She never even saw what sent her sprawling. It couldn’t matter. The army of dead was upon her before she had time for any thought at all. Lying face-up, rain blurring her vision, Ari squinted up at the moon as dark shapes drew near to blot it out. The scent of decay was overwhelming, in her nose, in her throat, in her lungs. With the benefit of closeness, she was able to distinguish the features of her attackers. What she saw failed to surprise her, though it carved a chasm of dread deep within. 

Jana, the elf she’d met in Crestwood, was grabbing her arm and pulling. Like all of the corpses her skin was green and ghoulish but it was certainly her. A red smile that sat just below her chin marked her as the unlucky elf whose blood had been used to call forth the demon for Clarel. Jana’s eyes had sparked with such fervent hope that day, but they were milky white in death. Joining her was no shortage of other familiar faces whose hands grasped and pulled at Ari’s cloak. Minaeve, Adan, and even Stroud each took a limb. The rest of the crowd behind them consisted of people Ari did not have names for, but their uniforms suggested that they’d been Wardens, mages or Templars. Their faces were familiar enough to have most likely been people she'd met in battle, a few she was dead certain of. She still remembered most of her early kills, before it had become second-nature to go for the throat.

Coldness gripped her suddenly when the corpses heaved her into the bogwater and she realized with mounting horror what it was that they planned to do, and began struggling in earnest against their hold. They were going to drown her. Maybe she’d rise like they did, a walking shell of what had once been. There were statues of her in towns and villas, yet her actual body's final resting place would be in a swamp where no one would ever find it. Just like Ameridan. She thought, as her head was dunked under the scummy surface. Beneath, the world was tinted green and dark. The muck of the lakebed roiled where more bodies emerged, seemingly made of it rather than from it. Cold water entered Ari’s mouth and reached like a hand down into her chest. In spite of a feeling like her lungs were on fire, she couldn’t ignore an undercurrent of peace that started at her center and spread slowly out. Though she was still struggling, it was more of a formality at this point as the moonlight above grew dimmer the further they descended.

She wasn’t unfamiliar with this sensation. It had been with her the day the breach had opened. At Haven. At Adamant. The Well of Sorrows. And lastly when she fought Corpyheus in the sky. A feeling like a heavy weight had suddenly lifted. Ari wasn’t clueless, at 25 years she knew herself well enough to know that this was merely the sudden removal of her anxieties. None of them could matter if she was about to die, after all. At all those battles she’d been in a damn near high chance of dying, and as a result she’d been more carefree than ever before. 

But there was a thin line between ‘about to die’ and ‘actually in the process’ and once she crossed that threshold a weird paradox occurred. Suddenly the assurance of the void transformed into the source of her dread rather than its reprieve. In battle, when she truly felt within a hair of her actual demise that feeling kicked in just in time for her to lunge out of the danger. Dodge just a bit faster, swing just a bit harder. Because inevitably she’d remember what would happen if she did die. The Breach would never stop growing, the demon army would be unstoppable, Corpyheus would win. She couldn’t, in good conscience, let those things happen. She had to stay alive. Vivienne had called it her raison d'etre, in Orlesian it meant ‘reason for existence’. And it had come to rescue her every time. 

But Corpheus was in the ground. That reason was gone. The war was over, and she was just a tool without a use now. Like those decorative swords that slumbered behind glass cases with plaques that described their deeds.

No.

A small voice bloomed in the back of her head. Even as utter blackness threatened to overtake her.

Estol. Scab. Warryn. Cotyth. The names came unbidden. I want to help them…find what they’re looking for. Not because I have to. Because I want to.

Two years had passed in her search for her own origins. At this point it was just an exercise in avoiding anyone from her past. But that didn’t mean her life had to be nothing but running and hiding. It could mean more, again. It would mean more, if she had anything to say on it for herself for a change.

With this kernel of hope, Ari threw herself into battling the corpses in earnest. She was satisfied that they were as rubbery and insubstantial as she remembered them. They fell away easily with well-aimed kicks and punches. She was moving upward, light touched her face once more. But once more a set of hands tugged on her shoulders, shaking her body vigorously. Oh no you don’t, she thought. Rearing back, she threw a punch at whatever was behind her just as she broke the surface and sat up with a gasp.

She was sitting in her bedroll, sleep-clothes plastered to her body which was sweaty and clammy. Around her were tents, a crackling campfire and a brilliant starry night overhead. Her false arm was still stretched out in front of her, and she realized that she was not alone.

“E-Estol-” Her voice died when she saw their face. It hadn’t been a corpse she’d thrown a punch at, at least not out here in the waking world.