#dailore

Something the color of emerald green peeked out from a slivered valley between two portraits. A fresco painting?! I gathered the disorderly miscellany into my hands with great care, despite my impatience biting at my heels, urging me to hurry. I would have to be more subtle than I was in Skyhold’s rotunda and knowing that thought slowed my grasping fingers and frantic arms. The whispers returned, swarming my mind with an insistence to listen. I brushed them off, I needed to see this. It could be a missing piece of this unfortunate puzzle, perhaps it held the journal, maybe another trap door?

I carefully cleared the wall of its decaying and friable camouflage and set the discarded papers at my feet. The candles rejoiced, casting vivid displays of amber, orange and gold galad along the grey lodestone.

Planes of grey that absorbed nearly the entire wall were interrupted by deliberate strokes of black. They carved into irregular shapes I recalled as familiar and chains of dabbles stippled into points, indications of something—mountain ranges? This was a… map. An informative landscape enlaced with the poetry of a painting. I waved my left hand over the fresco, just a fingers length away from the surface, hoping to illuminate every detail. I couldn’t afford to miss even the minutest scrap of information. My hand hovered over the circular green item that initially caught my attention. I gasped in surprise and my eyes were drawn upwards and downwards and from east to west. They were everywhere glinting back at me like daggers in the moonlight.

There were no names, nothing written to indicate where this was, only the blaringly obvious detail that horrified me beyond belief, the little green cylindular object represented an Elven artifact and they were drawn in all over this map. Covering what was now the Kingdoms of Ferelden, Orlais, The Free Marches and Tevinter. They gleamed in the firelight like the hungry eyes of wolves in the sight of a feast. As I looked closer, a red mark emerged from the darkness, for this fresco delivered it secrets within the twist of a methodical tease. Drawing its curtain back in a deliberate performance brimming with suspense and mystery.  There were red slashes blazingly struck through their centers, through all of—no, through most of them. I glanced at the open topped jar, its liquid contents flickered crimson, the smell originated from there. I dipped my finger in-- it was fresh, this was recent?  What did all of this mean?

I counted them, my anxiety growing with every stacked number, as every digit upgraded higher and higher until the number was finalized. Eighteen. Fifteen of them bore red slashes, almost as if they were being crossed off of…a tangible list. One of them sported an X instead of a slash, it was situated within what looked like a mountain ridge. It must have been the one I destroyed inside the mountain, I surmised.  With my finger I was compelled to trace an invisible line from one to another, at some points I strained on my tiptoes in my attempt to reach. I sought a link in this reign of madness.  Why were they all in these locations? There must be a purpose to their locations. These were his hooks after all, wedged into the fabric of the fade, the drastic tools in which he would rip it down. My finger caught on something sticky, red fresco clung to my finger. It was still damp. 

I studied the artifact’s surrounding area for any potential indication of a location. It was situated in what I believed was near Amaranthine on the corner right edge of Ferelden’s northern coast, small strokes swathed in bristled blotches spoke of trees and then there was a sketchy waterfall…I remembered this one. The place I had begged for him to end my life, the place where he informed me of my clan’s purpose and the cost of death. The red slashes confirmed what I feared most, oozing down my finger like a mimicry of blood; this indeed was a record. A headcount of all his artifacts, and which ones were activated; a destructive plan drawn up in the melodies of paint. Which meant, if I counted the one I activated in the deep roads, there was only one left that remained untouched.  My arm swept from left to right as I hazily mapped out each location with my red stained hand, I felt like I was drowning in a daze.

I withdrew as I absorbed the shape of my work, there in muted scarlet was the outline of a wolf, the constellation of Fenrir. This is what will bring that wolf into the world. His wolf.  As soon as recognition struck, my head spun and the whispers climbed into screams.

(The constellation Fenrir has 8, BUT for this story it is made up of 18 stars.)

Thank you for reading!