Not a day goes by during which hawke doesn’t think about bethany ; doesn’t, in her sleep, dream of dark, disgured features, of the t a i n t in her skin --- of leaving her behind. she’s as good as dead, they’d all said, tugging the prey-bird away with screams in her lungs because that couldn’t be true. bethany was too strong to let the blight get the best of her !! they’d outrun it before !! but there was nothing to be done. nothing to be done, of course… except, she wonders, every single day, if there might have been. wonders if she could have carried the burden her sister had become on her back, up to the surface --- expose the illness overtaking her to the populace of kirkwall … but, no. she couldn’t have.
that nary means she doesn’t wish that she had. because hawke can be a selfish creature, for all of her good intentions. but that’s all in the past, a blight on her history she can’t escape even in sleep. varric has tried to distract her from skyhold --- sent her, as he often does, on a little task. to look into something fishy, something uncanny. that was, after all, her forte. someone’s slaughtering demons in droves --- and it isn’t the inquisitor. best take a look, they’d said. so, they sent the hawk with nothing better to do.
killian hates travelling alone, for all that she’s been doing it for the past year. still isn’t used to the eerie silence, but has become quite good at using it to her advantage. it’s the silence that has her on high alert, the subtle noise of death on the near horizon --- a shriek and a simpering wail, a horrifying noise unlike any other, that has her hurrying to the source of the chaos. and it is chaos, when she finds it, a small stretch of settlement covered in corpses and smothered in the stench of demon blood. and although the act is in itself a benefit to her, she worries about the source of power to do such a thing -- and so quickly. her steps, silent as a wolf, stalk towards a small cabin, her voice steady, calm, and commanding as it has alway been. “ show yourself. ” @blightfed
