Chapter Text
I’m not her anymore
Adaia Tabris had read Caden fairy stories every night when she was a little girl. At first, there had only been the one book from which the mother read to her babe, too small to understand the words, but the rhythmic cadence of Adaias voice combined with her warm milk and the gentle rocking had lulled the baby to sleep with relative ease. As she grew older and began to know what the words meant and how the stories rose and fell towards an end she became restless with the single book containing only seven stories. Adaia found the second book in due course which bore another five stories, slightly longer ones, and her small child was gratified by the extra tales. Soon however young Caden became tired of those stories as well, but Adaia was one step ahead of her and had already procured for her nameday the third book, with more complicated words, albeit shorter stories and so Caden was the proud owner of a total of twenty-two stories.
Adaia taught Caden to read from these books, beginning with the first which had the easier words and working their way up until she could read both the first and the second books fluently, with the third to be taught in good time. Caden preferred to have her mother read them aloud even as she grew in age and height and her mother never missed a night without reading to her daughter. It was their thing, part of their unbreakable bond. Something they did together, something which inspired the young girl to pick up a stick and wave it as though it were a sword. Adaia took this spark and nurtured it into a flame that burned in the breast of her daughter, matching the fire in her own. By day they practised the art of sword fighting and by night they read stories of girls who fought and fought back. Caden took her own small tidbits of inspiration from the stories; the one about the girl who was turned into a cat gave her the idea to try to climb the walls and scurry along rooftops, the story about the boy who became invisible after taking too many baths compelled her to practise the art of stealth, tiptoeing up to the rats, the story about the knight who completed a series of quests to win the maiden’s heart convinced her to finish her chores in record time— but it also taught her to be suspicious of the old lady down the road in case she was truly a disguised witch with a dark agenda.
It wasn’t until after Adaia died that terrible day and Caden awoke from her fever like a princess restored by a gentle song, that Caden learned the truth about the stories. It took her several weeks to even crack the covers in the wake of her mothers’ death, the wound too raw to try, and even when she did it took longer to read through the first two books. Her eyes filled with tears and she wept onto the pages, which absorbed her grief as though the books were feasting on it. It was half a year gone before she reached the final book. This one she read slowly, for she had never read it herself before. She knew the stories, of course, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have to concentrate hard on the words. With crystal clear hindsight she might have elected to start with that one as the sheer focus she had to employ to piece the words and the sentences and the paragraphs together meant she had no time to feel sad, let alone cry over the book. She read each tale three times before moving to the next and there were ten stories in all so it took a long time to reach the last story.
That was the day she learned that she hadn’t owned twenty-two stories, but twenty-three.
The last tale of the last book felt like a prize, but soon she realised why her mother had never read it to her. It was a dark story, much darker than the other fairytales. It involved a tale of a princess, as was often the case, who stipulated that should she die before her eventual husband she expected him to be buried alive with her corpse. It was an expectation that frightened off most men, but as Caden had come to expect from such stories, there was always one, often a lowborn child who was too bewitched by the beauty of a princess to worry about her terms. They married and as if she had foretold it, the princess died young. Her new husband in his grief was led to her tomb to be walled up inside with only a few provisions to hold off death for a short while. Before he could succumb to thirst or hunger, he observed a snake slithering towards the body of his beloved and he chopped the white creature into several pieces, declaring that it would not feast upon his love. The snake lay dead in three parts until a second snake appeared and, seeing its kin dead, fetched three large green leaves which it set upon the snake where it was parted from the rest and as if by magic, the leaves knit the skin together once again and both snakes departed, alive and well. The husband collected the leaves and set them on his wife, praying to the Maker that this strange magic would restore her and it did. They returned to the land of the living, he overjoyed to have his wife back.
The reason why Adaia had likely kept this story from her daughter was what happened next.
The princess was alive, but she was not well. Something had changed inside her, something had rooted within and grown twisted and wrong, as though her heart was still as cold as ice and just as unlikely to beat. The husband was so blinded by the joy that his wife was alive that he did not see it coming when one night as the couple lay in their marital bed, the wife arose from slumber and with the moon shining down upon her porcelain skin, she strangled the life from her husband as he dreamt.
Caden had the sense that she was like the princess in the story. She was being entombed beneath a mountain, never expected to return to the surface and the sunshine and the flowers above. If she did make it back, she would be changed. Her heart would be cold, her mouth unable to smile, her every movement stiff and crooked. She was taking with her a breast filled with rage that burned hot, but it was hotter still below Orzammar. She would burn up to ashes in the fire.
They walked in silence from the first moment the gates closed behind them. Shutting those heavy stone doors cut the noise from the Commons in one moment, as though they had dived into deep water. Caden had found herself in the terrifying position of sinking beneath the surface more than once since the Battle of Ostagar and this was the same, except hotter and with no chance of coming up for air.
They walked on.
Rocks upon rocks upon rocks upon rocks.
Sometimes the rocks were carved into enormous statues that disappeared into the darkness above, like a vast army of headless giants. Sometimes the ceilings grew much lower and Alistair had to duck to pass underneath. Caden was grateful for the fact that the ceiling never quite reached her or she might have gone mad entirely.
Sometimes the way was lit with glowing rocks set into braziers, like embers that would never go out. Sometimes those rocks were still unmined, weaving through the sides and ceilings and floor in veins of pure ore. Sometimes those glowing stones were nowhere to be seen and the pair had to wordlessly busy themselves with lighting torches in the gloom, trailing smoke behind them. Caden had watched the wisps dissipate behind them, sometimes finding the tiniest cracks to filter through. She wished she was smoke so that she might float away from this hollow mountain to find the sky.
They made slow progress, but it was difficult to mark the passage of time. They were weighed down with stuffed packs, forsaking extra clothing to make better use of the space inside the bags. Food rations packed for daily use and extra water, though they were given a basic map that pointed to fresh springs they could make use of and given a five-minute lesson in how to spot the signs of water in the mountain. Piles and piles of bandages, salves, potions, tonics and herbal pastes. They wore their armour over their single set of clothes, Caden hating the feel of the leather in the heated tunnels, and feeling the first pang of sympathy for Alistair in his plate metal. They didn’t discuss how hard going it was; they merely walked on, consulting the map and stopping when one of them had had enough. It was Alistair the first few times, but soon after even Caden realised she was pushing too hard and started to call it as well.
They ate their one meal of the day, marked the wall with their initials and a number, approximating the day without the sun and moons guidance, and slept on top of their bedrolls, sweating even in their thinner shirts and breeches. After a while, even that got to be too hot and Alistair gave only an apologetic glance to her before removing his trousers to sleep a little better. Once again Caden suffered through several nights before she came around to his way of thinking and started removing hers as well. Her angry fire was equally as hot as the air they breathed, and so it became harder to notice. It was still there, still pulsing but slowly, like the wings of an insect on the hottest day of the year, where even the flies were too slumberous to buzz for long. She felt it, lightly brushing those wings against her ribs, but it was easier to ignore. Even so, she would not speak to Alistair if she could help it. Her fire had kept her alive so long and she would not let it go out again.
Her dreams were empty at first, a small blessing. She woke so frequently in the mountain at first, struggling with the heat and the sounds. It seemed as though there was always a sound of rocks scraping against each other or water dripping from the fingers that reached down from the ceiling. Sleeping beneath rocks made her feel as though she would wake to see them tumbling down to crush her and she would jolt upright with a start. Then she would cast her eyes about in the dim light — at first, they always managed to sleep near a luminescent vein, finding comfort in the glow — and find Alistair, sleeping so far away from her that they could have fit three ogres between them. Sometimes he would be awake as well and though for the first few times they averted their eyes at once and rolled away, soon they came to seek the eyes of the other. Without speaking they would hold the other’s gaze and let it pass unsaid just how miserable they were, how they hated this place and how lonely it was in the mountain.
When her dreams started up, they took on a new horror.
They had marked the stone after eating their meagre rations. An A, a C and finally their guessed number which was already in double digits, but at least was easier enough to carve as it was two vertical lines. Caden fell asleep first and was swallowed by blissful slumber.
After a while the darkness of her sleeping mind became oppressive. She was underground and she could hear the worms moving through the earth to get to her, to feast on her corpse. She was dead and buried, nothing more than food for the insects. She heard noises and turned in her grave to find the skeletal grins of those she killed. Vaughan was laughing from his dirty jaws, stretching long pale fingers towards him. Uldred was there, unable to cast without a tongue, but moving his bony hands as if he were casting a spell after all. Zathrian watched her from hollow eye sockets, arms around his children. Father Eirik was surrounded by his followers, all moaning low from their empty ribcages. She looked around in the unending blackness to see others behind them. Others she had slain on her journey to this moment, the moment of her own death and interment, the moment of reckoning. Her hands were bloodied by her interactions with all these people, these skeletons, who laughed or cried or moaned or jeered. Bandits, knights, mages, elves, humans.
A new sound spun her head around past the dirt and she saw a pair of arms reaching for her. She was too tired to fight and sank into her mothers’ embrace, the cold bones clacking as they enveloped her and she let herself sink further down.
It was harder to sleep after that, though not for want of exhaustion. They carried on walking and walking and at night she slept and she dreamt. The deeper they went, the stronger the feeling of darkspawn presence, though they saw none for a long time. Her Warden senses were on constant alert and it felt as though they were always mere moments from bumping into the horde. The constant low-level dread eked throughout Cadens very being, leaving her on edge.
They found a waterfall the next day, which was slipping down the slick sides of the rocks, wearing hard edges smooth until it gathered into a lazy river that meandered slowly down into the darkness. Small pale fish darted through the gentle current. They set their things down without a word, removing their armour in a hurry, Caden tugging her hair loose and both climbed into the pool beneath the running water. Caden pressed her hand to the wall where the water ran down, letting it spray over her face. The shock of the chill, probably still warmer than it would be on the surface, but colder than the hot air, startled Caden so much that she laughed without thinking. The noise shot from her throat and ricocheted around the space, freezing them both in place. Caden’s eyes were wide as she looked at Alistair, fearful of what she might bring to them out of the darkness by her voice, but he lowered himself silently into the water, his shirt billowing before he sank entirely beneath the surface. A few bubbles were all that remained for a moment, the small capsules of air captivating Caden as she stood still on a rock shelf, the waterfall still spitting on her. Then Alistair rose back up, his hair slick and his clothes heavy with the clear water. He shook his head, sending more water drops over Caden and she flinched, but her face formed into a smile. Alistair met her gaze and she watched his face mirror hers. His beard was thick again after he had managed to shave while they were staying at Tapsters Tavern and the droplets clung to the hairs, lit up like stars by the glowing rock above them.
Caden turned back and pressed her entire body against the smooth wall and facing towards the pool, she let the water cascade over her head, creating a film of waves before her eyes, dragging at her hair as it soaked up the water. She could see the blurry form of Alistair moving in the water, but keeping his distance from her. When she emerged from the waterfall, her hair was plastered to her skull. She watched Alistair float on his back, quite effortlessly and felt a thrum of jealousy at his ease in the water. The water was so fresh that she could see the bottom and it was quite a bit further than she was happy about, but the desire to feel weightless overwhelmed her and she grabbed the rocks at the side and stepped off the ledge she had found. Her body sank like a stone, bobbing under the water, just leaving her hand on the rock, but it was slick and her fingers slipped. She panicked, opening her mouth in a startled scream. Her fingers curled as if they might grab something solid. Her legs kicked, but felt tangled and she sank.
A hand hauled her to the surface, her face breaking the water tension with a loud gasp. Alistair scooped his other arm under her backside and lifted her bodily from the water, propelling her out and onto the rocky bank while he trod water below. Caden sat on the bank bracing herself on her arms resting on her hip, legs tucked under her. Neither spoke, both catching their breath.
“Thank you,” Caden said finally, her voice hoarse from the water and the days of silence.
Her hair was mostly dry by the time they had refilled their water skins and moved on. It was crinkly and light where it was dry and heavy where it was damp and she shoved it back up atop her head, where it sat like an unwieldy bird. She was constantly sweating from her scalp, the perspiration flowing in tunnels down her neck and to the valley of her spine.
A few days after the incident at the lake Caden sat down after their meal and let her hair down. It fell around her in a heavy blanket of gold. She was sick of it. Sick of carrying around this excess weight that brought nothing helpful to the mission. The flickering core of rage that had tempered since being inside the Deep Roads flared. She hated it underground. She hate the feeling of being closed inside, locked tight surrounded by unyielding rocks. She hated the silence between her and Alistair, broken by constant noises of the cave system. Hated the stupid dwarf statues that loomed out of the dark like ghosts. Hated her dream, hated that she had left people on the surface, hated that they were living in the open air while she languished underground with the dead. Hated the constant terror that the darkspawn would find them and overwhelm them. She hated her hair.
She fumbled in her pack for a knife and found one. Not a dagger, not a weapon, but a small knife for cutting rope or apples. She grabbed a fistful of her hair. Held it tight beneath her ear and then guided the knife to the strands, sawing them apart piece by piece. The hair gave little fight and soon she was holding a length of gold in her hand, quite apart from her scalp. She tossed it aside and reached for another chunk of hair. Methodically, but with hasty slices she hacked at her hair, letting the golden snakes fall around her. She chopped the strands that fell over her shoulder, but a good half was still behind her, and she reached around, twisting her arms into strange positions to reach it and in her haste she nicked her neck. It was blood that sped down her back now, a thin stream of heat and she winced at the shallow pain.
Alistair got up from his set across from her and want to stand by her side holding out his hand. Caden tensed, but after a moment she passed him the knife. She held herself very still as he moved behind her and gathered her hair carefully in his fingers. His cuts were small, gentle, keeping the jolts to a minimum. He took his time and handled her hair with great care, as though it were something precious. Caden placed her hands in her lap, looking down to give him better access. His fingers skated over her skin as he worked, but he said nothing and gave no indication of overstepping the boundary of his task.
And yet as he worked and Caden felt the whispers of her hair falling to the cave floor so was lulled into a feeling of peace. The flame flickered on, but quieter. She closed her eyes and for a long moment, she felt like she might have been anywhere. He might have been anyone. They existed for a breath outside of the Blight and the caverns and the terrible fear. It was relief she felt at that moment. Glad of the momentary respite from actively hating him every waking moment of every day.
When he was done Alistair set the knife down and walked back to where he had been sitting on his bedroll. Caden opened her eyes to see the sheaves of gold on the floor. She reached a tentative hand to her head and touched the short strands that remained. She had no way of seeing herself, but perhaps that was for the best. She had never been convinced she had much beauty to speak off, but what she had had was likely centred around the long golden hair. Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked them crossly away. She was a warrior, not some noblewoman who spent her days being dressed and coiffed. What did it matter if she had hair or not?
Caden didn’t really know what to do with her discarded hair so she left it where it was and, shaking her head to loosen any final scraps of hair, she left it and went to her own bedroll. When she looked up she saw Alistair lost in his own world. He still held a single length of hair in one hand and with the other he ran his fingers along the soft strands. Her breath froze in her lungs at the sight and her hardened heart gave a pathetic beat.
She hated so many things and he was among the long list, and yet she hated being alone the most. She missed the comforting weight of Rosa curling up on her legs and missed being able to wake at night and reach for another warm body. She could have picked up her bedroll and dragged it to him, setting it down beside his. She could see herself doing it in her mind’s eye. Could see the shock on his face that would melt into delight — wouldn’t it? — when she curled up against him. No-one would see her weakness down here in the darkness and perhaps they would both die down here, alone, and carry the secret of her still wanting him, needing him to their graves.
Caden furiously kneaded the heels of her hands into her eyes and lay down, rolling away from him.
It seemed strange that the deeper they went they started to come upon other living creatures. Other than the fish they had found in the underground river and mushrooms and moss that grew where it was most damp in the caves, they hadn’t found anyone in what felt like weeks. Caden had almost convinced herself that there was no-one down there with them until they came upon a small pack of deep stalkers. Caden remembered them from her mission to provide Lord Dace with his letter, but for Alistair, they were a new experience. The pack were startled by the pair of Wardens, but the Wardens were slow to set down their packs and draw their weapons and the short fight was brutal on both sides. Though the Wardens were ultimately victorious they were both wounded. Caden dug in her pack for the jar of salve Bhelens household had provided her with and cracked the cork top, scooping out a few fingers full to smear over her neck. The previous rash had been cleared up for days, but now her skin prickled at the acidic spit they had sprayed her with. Some of it had trickled down her front, under her armour and she had to unbuckle it, slipping her hand down her shirt to reach the afflicted area. Even with the salve she could tell this would be an irritating injury when she replaced the chest piece of her armour and the smell of the salve with her own sweat made her eyes water. Alistair had been mostly saved from the spray by the neckpieces of his plate metal, but part of his beard had caught the spittle. He tried wiping at the spray with his bare hand, but let out a thin hiss at the pain on his palm. Caden grabbed his hand and used her armoured elbow to wipe the goop off him. Then she dug into the jar again and liberally smeared the salve over his hand before reaching up and dolloping a second amount on his jaw and cheek, her fingers instinctively working in between his beard hairs. They were coarse, quite unlike the softness of the rest of his hair, and darker, too. Alistair remained very still as she worked and it took her far too long to realise she was touching him on his face and still held his hand in hers. She froze and for a moment neither moved until Alistair’s fingers curled around hers. Caden swallowed and stepped away, sliding loose from his grip.
Sometimes they came upon the evidence of living creatures through finding a swathe of death left behind. They were the first darkspawn they had come across and both drew weapons in response to seeing the first rotted corpse. The smell was horrible from the first body they found and peered at, but that was nothing compared the stench as they followed the path of the dead. Caden could feel her stomach heave with each step, but her belly was empty until they stopped for the night and so there was nothing to throw up. Mercy of sorts. Alistair held his shield out before him and pressed the forearm holding his sword to his face to better mask the stink. Caden opened her mouth to breathe that way, though it wasn’t much better. There was nowhere for the smell to go trapped in this enclosed cavern. Perhaps the bodies could have been burned, but Caden dreaded to think what that might mean, enclosing fire smoke in the same space. They left the bodies to rot and pressed on hurriedly.
According to the map they had passed through the notable locations of Aeducan Thaig and Caridans Cross and now they had found their way to a place marked as Ortan Thaig. Caden wanted to ask what Thaig meant but she didn’t. After days upon days inside the mountain, she had only spoken two words aloud and that was enough to crack her stone heart. She was mad, she was filled with burning hate, she didn’t want to be near him. She also wanted to wrap her arms around him, another living body in the deep dark mountain. Her heart was cold, her rage was hot, her mind was firm, so where was it coming from the compulsion to draw near to him? It was better to remain quiet, she decided, so she let the question of Thaigs slip away.
Ortan Thaig was enormous and crumbling. Great pillars of carved rock in perfect squares reached up to great heights to presumably support the ceiling, or perhaps just to look impressive. This place was drier than some of the damp dripping tunnels they had passed through, lit not by ore, but by great moats carved out of the ground in which the same molten rock flowed as lit Orzammar. The pair of Wardens walked sombrely through the old settlement, seeing dwelling long abandoned and yet more dead darkspawn littered about. Caden’s feet hurt from walking, but there was something so eerie about this place that she did not dare stop. The great empty homes seemed like they were watching them pass, whether because the gaping holes for windows were dark enough for someone to be hiding inside or if the windows themselves seemed like eyes watching them, she could not have said. They walked what felt like streets between houses and Caden could almost have imagined the dwarves who lived their once upon a time. Children running from one house to another to call on their friends, dwarves hanging out their laundry to dry in the heat of the place, sitting on the front steps and sharing gossip and a pipe. It wasn’t home as she knew it with no sky and no greenery, but then again the dwarves might well have scorned the Alienage in Denerim as being so very different.
The last houses they came upon were strange compared to the ones that had come before and it took Caden far too long to notice why. In fact, it was Alistair dropping his bag that startled her enough for the pieces to click into place so that she followed suit in losing her own gear to draw her swords. The houses were coated in a filmy gossamer thread, but thick, so much thicker than the webs of the tiny spiders she was familiar with. Morrigan shot into her mind on eight legs with a great many eyes and the terror she could induce on the battlefield, but by then Caden heard a hiss and she spun to see the looming shadow of a spider descending from the wall towards her. She cried out, shattering the silence, stumbling backwards swinging wildly. Alistair bashed his sword against his shield and the spider diverted it’s attention to him. It was enough. Caden shook the momentary blind panic off and darted forward slashing her swords at the many legs of the creature. Its body was thick, but its legs were surprisingly easy to bisect and two of the eight were soon sliced apart. The spider hissed again — she hadn’t known they could make a noise so chilling — and stumbled, it’s weight thrown. The great hairy body pitched towards her and she hurried to dive beneath before she could be crushed. She rolled onto her side, head snapping up to see the spider roll over onto it’s back. It seemed a cruel time to strike, but she was already struggling upright to finish it off as Alistair drove his sword into the spiders’ head. The legs twitched and then curled up, dead.
Caden had enough time to suck in a breath before three more slightly smaller spiders scuttled from the houses towards them. She yelped again, gripping her swords tightly. Alistair glanced at her, then bracing himself he spun and bashed the first spider across the face with his shield, sending it skittering backwards. Caden turned to her own foe to find that both of the other two had pegged her for the easier target. She cursed internally and hurried to blocked the bite of the first with one sword, and drive the other into the soft body of the next. It let out a strange noise that almost sounded like a squeak, and retreated a few paces, but the one on her other sword hissed again and she had to turn to focus her entire attention on it. It reared back from her sword block, venom sliding down its fangs. Caden let out a grunt as she tried to push back on the blocking sword, swinging the other around to strike, but the spider was faster. Caden had to quickly adjust the swing to cross the blades in a stronger block. The venom spilled over her arm and she shrieked at the sensation, but though the fangs sharp points scraped against her bracers she didn’t feel them penetrate. Then Alistair was there, barrelling into the spider and shunting it out of her line of sight. She had no chance to catch her breath or thank him because the third was upon her.
Her swords seemed to move of their own accord, automatic reactions taking over as she parried the next set of fangs, managing to slip a sword below the gaping mouth and stabbing into the soft flesh. The bristles on the spider’s body prickled her face as her arm disappeared into the body, spraying ichor over her arm. She clamped her eyes and mouth shut, turned away from her vanishing arm and then the world tipped over as the spider died and curled into a ball, taking her with it. She snapped her eyes open to try and yank her sword arm free, but it was stuck fast and she let go rather than be dragged too far. She heard a cry behind her and spun, one arm uselessly clenched in a fist as she raised her one remaining blade.
Alistair was on the ground, webbing slung over his shoulders and she watched the spider spin him face down, wrapping more thread around him. She knew what happened to flies in the spider’s web and her feet were moving before she could think. She ran towards a rock, leapt up and then launched herself through the air towards the beast, landing on his back and sinking her sword down, driving the blade with two hands into the body of the beast. The spider pitched backwards, sway of Alistair thankfully and then it shuddered to the ground. Caden released her last sword and made to jump down. Her foot became tangled in something and she slid down the body as it rolled over. She watched the ground rush towards her and then she sank into blackness.