#i fic

The universe is vast and not always observable. And yet, it never confuses Hyun Soo as much as people do. He cannot understand them.

Fixed it. 

Red Right Hand by @not-a-natural-born-idjit

Satin and Sawdust by @ltleflrt

With Bells On by @saltandbyrne

Cullen/Lavellan (Primary), Dorian/Bull [T]

She really had just been passing by after running a message out to one of the Carta watchposts on the edge of town.  Okay, maybe she was lingering a little as she passed things or people who caught her interest, but she hadn't really been out to people-watch this particular day.

But hearing the boisterous conversation about recent combat was too much for Nurbryn to resist, so she may have eavesdropped a little longer than she should have.  

It was a bit early in the afternoon to be quite that drunk, but mercenaries don't usually care about such social restrictions.  But while they had lost their volume control and any remaining bit of something resembling decorum, some of them were still capable of keeping their own watch.

"You there," the closest thing this particular group had to a Lieutenant called out, "get over here.  You don't gotta be hiding like a scared little nug from us."

"Hey, don't call 'em nugs, it's kinda racist," the member of the group that definitely wasn't a mage, absolutely not - no mages in this group, yelled at the lieutenant.

"What?" Another person jumped in to the discussion, "how?"

"Hey, shut up" the lieutenant interrupted, "I'm talking to the dwarf girl... woman... girl? Shit, I can never tell if when one of you is a woman or still just a girl."

"Definitely racist," muttered the Not-Mage.

"Shhhh," the lieutenant dismissively flapped his hand at his fellow mercs before making a summoning gesture to the girl. "But nah, I've seen you around. You like to watch the Guard train."

She shrugged and approached the group, "Fighting is interesting.  Wanna learn some day."  It was the truth, sort of. She was interested in the fighting styles, but the clan paid her a few silver every week to observe the way the guardsmen in training acted, and a full sovereign every time she reported a suspected ex-Templar (and therefore possibly someone interested in purchasing lyrium) to the appropriate contact.  This was not something the mercenaries needed to know - besides, this mercenary group already had a contract with an unpleasant clan in Hercinia for their totally-not-a-mage's supply and her clan was not particularly interested in starting a skirmish over it.

"So you watch the guard huh?  Come over here, we'll show you how real men handle their weapons," one particularly drunk mercenary leered, gesturing suggestively, before the boss of the group finally joined the discussion and punched the lecher in the side of the head.

"She can't even be fifteen, you stupid sack of arseholes," the boss bellowed, booting the drunkard the rest of the way to the ground. "Watch yourself."

She was in fact thirteen, but that was neither here nor there.

The boss grabbed a massive battleaxe from where it was leaning against the wall of the shack they'd co-opted for their stay and walked over.  "Here, give this a try." He held the axe near the head, poking the haft in her direction.

Nurbryn eyed him carefully before taking hold of the haft in her hands.

The boss let go of his end of the axe and the weight of it brought the whole thing down with significant force, throwing her off balance.

Drunken snickers from the other mercenaries and an amused smirk from the boss.

She glanced over to where the weapons had been laid out and saw that the boss had handed her axe with the longest haft of all of them - it made the weapon taller than she was.

Ah. A joke to them then.

Still though... the reach would be impressive if she had the strength to deal with the weight of the blade.

Shifting her hands so there'd be more distance between them - she'd seen enough fighting to understand how the lever effect would work on a weapon like this - she made an effort to lift the blade up.  It took a number of tries, and each time failure was met with more laughter from the observers.

Finally, when she was able to keep the blade up out of the dirt for more than 5 seconds at a time, Nurbryn tried a variation on a ready position she'd seen Guard members do in practice, but the weight of the axehead and the length of the haft made it too hard to maintain and she was forced to set the blade down again after only a few moments, the weight again shifting her a little off balance.

But with time.... yeah, she could make use of a weapon like this.  She prepared to attempt another lift, ignoring the continued sniggers, when the sound of a Chantry bell came from the direction of town.

Oh right, she had things she should be doing.

"Close your mouth for a moment," she instructed, leaning over him.

"So since when do you get to give orders in the bedroom anyway, kadan?”

Commander Cullen had immense respect for Inquisitor Cadash as a leader. She would carefully listen to experts and advisors before making a decision that she felt took all points into consideration, and once made, she did not waste time second guessing her choices; which wasn’t to say she didn't take failure as hard as anyone else. He'd certainly disagreed with her on a number of operations, but found that, when he asked about it later, he couldn't fault her logic even if they didn't see eye to eye on certain details.

She'd be the first to share credit for successes and the first to steal blame for failures. She was quick to see which people would respond well to carefully formed responses straight from etiquette texts, and which people needed to hear a sharp-tongued remark instead.

He once wondered why the Carta had wasted a natural leader like her on stash-running and spying. Well, their loss became the Inquisition’s gain.

But it wasn't until right now though that he realized he'd never seen her in combat. He'd been helping evacuate people when Corypheus brought the fight to Haven, and he hadn't been near enough to the rift when they made the first attempts to close the breach. He'd been helping with the perimeters when they took Adamant.

So right now, as they worked on the last of the Red Templars defending the Shrine of Dumat, was the first time he'd ever seen her technique at work.

"Maker, she’s..." He tried to find the right words for what he was seeing.

"A complete lunatic?" Dorian supplied helpfully, trying to cast a barrier on her as she leapt over one of the stone railings in her charge towards a red lyrium Shadow that had turned in the other direction to take on Bull. It never quite would know what had hit it.

"Not exactly the words I had been looking for." He spotted a Templar archer taking aim at the mage and quickly raised his shield arm to block the shot.

"Really? It should have been," Dorian blasted the archer in retaliation while it struggled to notch another arrow. "You should ask Sera about that time in Emprise when we were surprised by that dragon. I'd tell the tale, but it needs Sera's particular artistry with profanity to do it justice."

"Friggin' animal noises in the middle of the night. Scare me right out of bed," Sera muttered while launching 4 arrows off at once. They neatly pinned down the Red Templars in place to be mowed through by the Inquisitor, who was counter-balancing her weight against the weight of her axe blade as she spun a lacerating circle through them.

"No, the part of the story before that part," Dorian sighed almost dismissively casting some spell towards one of the templars that had gotten free from the Inquisitor’s spin. Whichever spell it was, the target suddenly panicked and in his terrified state blindly ran right into Iron Bull who was obviously pleased with that particular error.

Cullen made a quick tactical decision to not ask Dorian or Sera to clarify and focused instead on the man who had charged towards their archer. It clearly had been some desperate final rush and ended up only gaining the red templar a sword to its chest and an arrow in its face.

"But yes," Dorian continued, "where battles and missions are concerned, she's tactically brilliant. You've seen that." He paused for a moment to set off a chain of lightning across the very few remaining foes in the vestibule. "But for skirmishes like this," he said, as if a temple full of former Templars enhanced with that horrific malformed lyrium was nothing more than a bar fight, "I'm afraid her tactics are best summarized as 'Step One: Charge in yelling. Step Two: Hit something until it stops moving. Step Three: Stop hitting it. Repeat steps Two and Three as needed.'"

"Don't knock it," Iron Bull grumbled, slamming their final opponent into the floor, "it works for her."

"Yes, well, you would think that,” Dorian replied with a slight smirk, “But it's not exactly something that works as a surprise attack."

"Wouldn't say that. A dwarf charging at you, full speed, with a weapon as big as she is? It can be pretty surprising."

Sera laughed, "They make the best faces too! 'Is that a human charging from a distance? Shit, it isn't, it's a dwarf from up close! Fuck, I'm dead'." She laughed again. "Funny."

Inquisitor Cadash stepped over the body of... well, even before the point of its demise, any resemblance to a Templar was long gone, and approached them with a raised eyebrow.  A red spray of blood had bisected one of the thick green lines of her facial brands, making her look impressively fierce. "I’m sorry,” she snapped, “have you been mocking your Inquisitor this entire fight?"

"No!"

"Yup."

"Duh."

"Naturally."

He had briefly been taken aback by the Inquisitor’s reaction but it was only momentary; usually she could only maintain a stern facade for a few seconds before it cracked, typically with the right corner of her mouth quirking upwards in the start of a smile. Still, best to share the thread of conversation with her anyway. "I had just been observing your fighting technique.  It's... not quite what I had expected."

"Ah," she nodded, swinging her axe up behind her so the haft rested on both her shoulders behind her neck.  "Well, I cut my teeth on intentionally setting off bar fights or street melees to distract the city guard from what the Carta was pushing through so, yes. It's probably a style that defies any level of common sense."

"Damn, I'd have loved to see one of those brawls," Iron Bull grinned down at her.

She gave a quick tilt of her head in his direction, complete with a wink and a sly twitch of her lips. "Get one of these Red assholes to call me 'Short-arse' in an Ostwick accent while drunkenly trying to stick their hand down my armor and I'll see what I can do.”

Bull laughed. "Minx."

Another flirtatious twitch of the lips in response and she then turned to indicate the door ahead of them. "We should move before anyone decides to check on their, uh" she nudged something probably once attached to a body with her foot, "welcoming committee."

The door burst open before they even took another step towards it. Filling the doorway was a goliath of moving red lyrium crystals, showing nothing that indicated it had once been human.  The beast stood there menacingly, but for the moment did not appear to notice their presence, actually giving them a chance to form some sort of tactical assault on it.

Cullen turned to the Inquisitor to go over a possible plan of attack against the lyrium behemoth, only to see she was no longer standing there. He looked back in the direction of the shrine’s doorway to confirm that yes, she was already charging in with great-axe at the ready, The Iron Bull not far behind her.