Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was all only a matter of time, wasn’t it.

The Inquisition rose up during a time of great chaos, a nascent organization rising from the rubble of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. The Chantry had been in tatters, its formal leadership all but wiped out. In the meantime, Orlais labored under a civil war as Empress and Grand Duke squabbled over issues of rulership. All of Southern Thedas strained under the weight of war as mages and Templars fought skirmishes that had the potential to burn entire regions to the ground.

The world floundered and fractured.

Then, in the wake of massive destruction that split a mountain, one man stepped out of the Fade.

They called him the Herald of Andraste, messenger of their Maker and bringer of order to the world.

They still called him the Herald of Andraste. They still called him Inquisitor. But the world had changed. For the Inquisition had stepped forward during that time of great chaos and brought order to the world.

Orlais stood strong once again, its civil war broken as all three parties within stood shamed and cowed and forced to work together by social convention.

Ferelden stood resolute as ever, the scars of the Mage-Templar War fading fast beneath new growth.

The Chantry rallied around their new leader, ascended to the seat of Divine by the Herald’s own unseen hand. The unpleasantness at the Divine’s installation ceremony was rarely mentioned in polite company anymore, though the whispers were inevitable given the nature of Madame de Fer’s accusations and the strange enduring lack of rebuttal from the Inquisitor.

Mages enjoyed the freedoms they fought for, no longer forced into slavery under the Chantry’s banner due to their Maker-given gifts. Many formed a new organization, a College of Enchanters, and claimed as Academies the same towers they had once called their prisons. Some even began to experiment with the one task always deemed impossible for people like themselves - trying to find the families they’d been stolen from. To go home.

Kirkwall, the site of the war’s beginning, had begun to rebuild with the coin and influence of its new Viscount filling the city’s coffers. Starkhaven’s invasion hadn’t helped matters, a boot to the neck of the already fallen. Nor had the Qunari rampage of a decade before, and then two prior decades of weak leadership…

The world had been changed in the past years. Two years of peace was far too quick to claim ‘unprecedented’ but there were those who wished to put it all behind them, to forget the past before learning from it.

Those voices had grown in recent months and now…

Now the Inquisition had no choice but to answer the charges.

The world stood upon the precipice of change. Now that the Inquisition had taken the leap, had spread its wings and learned to fly, now that same world would see those wings clipped and broken.

Inquisitor Deskar Trevelyan, Abomination of Prideful Wisdom, stood in the empty Council hall. Banners of the Chantry, of Ferelden, of Orlais, of Kirkwall, of Nevarra, of Tevinter, of Starkhaven, of Ostwick, of Antiva, of the Inquisition hung around the hall in vast tapestries meant to hide lurking spies as much as to keep public scrutiny away from the main proceedings. It was built like a courtroom, an Inquiry, with himself sitting in the middle around an entire court of ambassadors and rulers and Divine Victoria herself. He might have Josephine with him, maybe, if the Council were feeling generous. Otherwise he would be alone, man and spirit laid bare to the prying eyes sent from all over Thedas to gaze and glare and judge and pick apart his fading veil to see the demon beneath.

At best the Inquisition would be dismantled, carved up like a roast with sections taken away by various nobles all seeking to sink their teeth into their pound of flesh.

At worst…

No. The possibility was unimaginable. Once he’d been twisted and coaxed into a Deal with a demon of Vengeance, his words and meaning twisted by the demon who began the war and won Trevelyan his freedom. Once he’d swore an Oath.

There would never be a Templar Order again.

Once, eight hundred years ago, the Inquisition joined the Chantry. The Chantry gained an army, taking the Templar Order for their own, while the Inquisition leadership became the Seekers of Truth.

Now the Chantry expected history to repeat. The Chantry wanted their army, one to replace the Templar Order that left when the mages rebelled. The Inquisitor and his Inner Circle could all take their place in the Chantry’s shadows, an Order barely beholden even to themselves the same as the Seekers had been. Faith Falling to Pride over and over and over…

Trevelyan felt his stomach roil and panic rise in his mind as the possibility crossed his thoughts. Prideful Wisdom snarled in the back of his mind, behind a handkerchief raised to their face to hide their snarling fangs and violet tongue and expression of utter anguish induced by even the thought…

No. It couldn’t happen that way.

He couldn’t let it happen.

There would never be a Templar Order again.

This Chantry would take no army from the Inquisition. The Inquisitor would see it all destroyed first.

He would burn it all down himself before letting a Templar Order rise again.

His Oath to Vengeance would allow nothing less.

Inquisitor Deskar Trevelyan wandered the grounds of the Winter Palace. The last time he’d been here the wandering was tainted by the sense of a lurking assassin, the golden statuary all dulled by the night. Now the white marble gleamed in the sunlight, the gold shining bright and yellow and pure.

It was all awash with blood, wasn’t it. He remembered Divine Victoria’s words as he greeted her behind their careful masks of social ease. Even she saw it, the blood that dripped from these gilded lions. Hands rubbed raw from scrubbing gold until it gleamed. The blood of eight hundred years of lies tying the Chantry together.

Now the Inquisition threatened that.

Leliana would do what she could to shield the Inquisition from the greedy grasping hands of the nobility. But there was no wisdom in relying on her power. She had no army and the Inquisitor knew he could never give her that army. The entirety of Thedas stood against him, all ready to shout above the din to make their demands heard.

Trevelyan shook off his maudlin thoughts. He had old friends to greet and nobles to seduce. After all, both Dorian and Varric would be sitting against him on the Council. He should meet the rest, Duke Cyril de Montfort of Orlais and Arl Teagan Guerrin of Ferelden, Prince Sebastian Vael of Starkhaven, Duke Tythas Pentaghast of Nevarra, Baroness Elvira Campana of Antiva, Deskar’s sister Lady Evelyn Trevelyan of Ostwick. Maybe not his sister. He hadn’t seen her since he was taken to the Circle and if there was any mage who could never go home again it would be himself.

He wandered the grounds, following the sound of water as he traced the marble fountains with his footsteps. He knew he looked like the height of Orlesian extravagance, the peacock feather cape trailing behind him like the feathers of a great teal bird. The colors of the season were purple and salmon for some strange reason. The mica dusting to his cheeks gave his purple-blushed cheeks a flush of plausible deniability as well as a shimmer. That purple deepened around his eyes, to a deep violet that he couldn’t hide any longer. The horns at his temples twisted, just short enough to hide beneath the headdress of his own long brown hair and the soft veil of blue feathers.

It all detracted from the glaring glow of the mark that made his hand cramp and twist into a claw of pain. At times he could barely use it, the fingers curled in a painful clench that threatened to dig his own claws into the palm. Today the magic was easier, the flow of it less painful as he allowed the magic to flow behind him in a visible green trail of mist that reflected in every black peacock eye.

Dagna had a glove made for him, a splint to keep the hand from clenching too hard, but then he swore her to secrecy. The others knew the mark was getting worse, its magic growing stronger, but he didn’t want them to know just how bad it had gotten.

Or what it all meant to someone like him.

Once Prideful Wisdom could have left him behind, before Imshael toyed with them and they began to lose themselves in true Abomination. Now there would be no separating them. Not without a ritual the likes of which Wisdom had seen performed only thrice before, once to bind and twice to separate. A ritual that Wisdom did not have the skill to create or perform.

The mark would kill them both.

Chapter Text

The Winter Palace was almost as Varric remembered it. The deadly machinations, the careful dance of propriety, the various sides eyeing each other across from opposite corners of the courtyard, even the subtle hint of assassination. It was all about the same.

Though this time Varric wore an iron crown on his head and the sun beat down like a mallet.

He’d already signed enough autographs to bind into a new book if he had cause. The Council of Heralds hungered for new stories and it turned out he had them, or at least the stories he felt he could safely tell without being shivved by a Chantry assassin.

No, but he was more than willing to stand back and watch the assassins hunt prey who wasn’t him. Knowing those assassins were so far out of their league made it funny as he watched the results of House de Ghislain’s vendetta against the Inquisitor. Mostly it involved a lot of harlequins being found, shamed, and given to Inquisition soldiers.

And then…

“Maker’s breath.”

Varric heard Seneschal Bran’s soft swear and turned to look into exactly what terrified the man. For he was terrified, the look of barely controlled fear on his face was impossible to ignore. It took a moment to realize…

“This shit is weird,” Varric whispered.

It gave Bran the ability to describe exactly what he saw, what approached them.

“That is a demon wearing the skin of a man, all wrapped in blue feathers,” Bran whispered. “It cannot be any other. The headdress doesn’t even hide the horns, it accentuates them, binding the twisting horns into part of the disguise. His skin shimmers like mica, but then I look away and the glow fades and I see the scales beneath. The violet light of his eyes burns to look at and, Maker’s mercy, he sees me. He’s coming this way. Varric, his claws will rip me asunder.”

“Is that what he looks like to you?” Varric wondered. He didn’t see any of that. He saw the Inquisitor approach, claws carefully pointed and lacquered blue. His violet eyes burned blue, the deep purple around them looking for all the world like some stupidly complex makeup. His lips were deep purple, deeper than the purple inside his mouth as he smiled and bared too many sharp teeth.

And of course that peacock feather cloak. The train of peacock eyes fanned out like a display tail, like the Inquisitor might at any time puff up in annoyance and then splay that cloak like a massive tail.

The thought made Varric snicker.

“Varric!” Trevelyan called.

Bran watched in horror as Varric clasped hands with the demon before him, as familiar as any old friend but with fewer drawn weapons this time.

“Inquisitor!” Varric greeted. “It’s so good to see you.”

The Inquisitor would have questions now that the scope of the Exalted Council became all too clear. Varric could answer some of them, at least. After all, he wasn’t allowed to sit upon the Council.

No, the honor of representing Kirkwall’s interests fell to Seneschal Bran, the man who stared in barely contained horror at the abomination before him.

Well, shit.

“Tell it to me straight, Varric,” the Inquisitor said. “How fucked is this shit?”

Varric had to snicker at Bran’s offended look. At least it got him something other than terrified.

“Every major power in Thedas is supposed to have representation here,” Varric warned. “Except Tevinter, they sent a low level ambassador meant to make the Inquisition look too attached to Tevinter interests.”

“I know, I ran into Dorian,” Trevelyan said.

“Good, so you know all about that,” Varric said. “He’s on the Council. So are representatives from half the cities of the Free Marches, also Orlais, Ferelden, Antiva, Rivain, the Anderfells, I don’t even know. It’s going to be a madhouse in there. I’m glad I’m not on the Council.”

“Is Kirkwall without representation?”

“No, I shall be representing Kirkwall’s interests,” Bran said.

“Seneschal Bran Cavin, former Viscount of Kirkwall,” Varric said, introducing him. "Certain dignitaries thought I couldn't be impartial, me!. Can you believe that?" He ignored how the Inquisitor snickered at him.

“Provisional Viscount,” Bran corrected. “I have returned to my duties of Seneschal and I am bloody well glad to step down.”

“Wise man,” the Inquisitor complemented. “You know that city is cursed, right?”

“Luckily the curse died out with the last member of that family living in Kirkwall,” Bran said. “Gamlen Amell’s funeral was a relief to many among the nobility. None other of his line have returned to Kirkwall.”

“I’m not so sure that lack of the Amell curse is a good thing,” Varric mused.

“Not this again,” Bran complained.

“The Amellius curse is an old one indeed,” the Inquisitor said, remembering something that Wisdom had once watched millennia ago. “Far older than Kirkwall. It was originally meant to be a blessing from the Old God Urthemiel to its most faithful servants, to always find the beauty between every mundane dichotomy.” He blushed, his cheeks flushing purple. “I watched it bestowed.”

Bran shivered.

“You…” Varric cleared his throat then tried again. “You are telling me this story when all this is over.”

The Inquisitor smiled, not even hiding the fangs among his teeth.

“But I must continue my rounds,” the Inquisitor said, brushing his claws over the points of Varric’s crown. He bowed his departure and left, peacock eyes trailing behind him in a long train of feathers and magic and just so much power.

“Was he serious?” Bran whispered.

“I don’t even know,” Varric admitted. “Before the Breach that was a spirit of Wisdom that watched Andraste march across Tevinter and remembered what the Old Gods sounded like. The Maker sent it because sending Trevelyan wasn’t enough, the Inquisitor had to be sent twice. He Bound Vengeance to a suicide mission in exchange for one verse of a song. He turned down the Avvar gods when they tried to incorporate him into their pantheon. He mocked Corypheus personally before killing the Magister. Once an elven god asked him to dance and he agreed and they did. I know better than to dismiss anything he says when he admits to something like this. I think he’s serious.”

Bran let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Whatever the Council decides, we will have to reckon with that,” Bran realized. “Orlais will seek to control power like that. Whether they understand such power or not. I see why you would rather the Inquisition be allowed its independence.”

“That kind of power should never be wielded by any man,” Varric agreed. “Luckily for us, that is no man.”

The Inquisitor descended the steps to the overlook. He knew Cassandra sought the silence, the relative peace and quiet away from the bustle of the entire Council.

The overlook was beautiful. The cliffs overlooked the valley below, fertile farmlands that stretched to the east to the line of the mountains in the distance. Yet even so far away, even with the line of the Frostbacks just visible on the horizon, he could see the faint green line of the Breach still marring the sky. It glowed like a strand of aurora in the sky, like the great southern lights visible in the skies over Orlais and Ferelden during the long nights of winter.

The Breach still there to remind the world of what had to be done. And now this Exalted Council sought to control the one power who closed that Breach. They would see him collared or destroyed. 

“Oh!”

The Inquisitor heard her gasp. He glanced over to see Cassandra looking unsure, then steeling herself. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, looking away, out over the overlook, anywhere but at him. “Well… I wanted to speak to you. And now you’re here.” 

This… was strange. The Inquisitor knew he’d begun to lose the battle with his appearance, his nature all but impossible to ignore. But surely it wasn’t so bad she needed to talk to him about it.

Finally she looked at him. “Maybe you should sit,” she suggested.

“I… can stand…” he said cautiously.

“Maybe I should sit,” she said.

The Inquisitor watched as she settled upon one of the stone benches at the edge of the overlook. She gestured to the space next to her, an invitation.

The Inquisitor arranged his feathered cloak, the peacock feathers fanning behind him as he sat next to her, facing her. She looked… demure? Why?

“The last three years have been a great joy,” she said. “I cannot have asked for more love or understanding from anyone. You saw through the mask I was not aware I wore and you taught me how to discard it, without shame or fear. For that I will be forever grateful. But to take such a drastic step? Despite all the consequences, or how it would appear? I fear what it might do to us. Do you not feel the same? Is this Wise, Deskari?”

Drastic… step? The Inquisitor wondered what she referred to. Was it… The Exalted Council hadn’t decided before it even began, had it? Was this some sort of warning? “Maybe I should leave and come back,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I feel like I missed the beginning of this conversation.”

Her sigh of exasperation was too gentle for this type of conversation.

“I am talking about marriage!”

The Inquisitor sat shocked at her words. “Marriage?”

“Yes, marriage!” she said excitedly. “You are here to propose, are you not?”

The shock on his face said it all. He hadn’t even considered such a thing. What use was a mortal marriage for creatures like themselves? It was only the fact that both Prideful Wisdom and Faith were Entwined with separate mortal bodies that kept him from suggesting they Entwine themselves, merging in a desperate world-changing love as they ceased to be separate people and instead blended, merged, their edges fading between each other. It was the most intimate binding he knew of and here he sat already Entwined with a mortal, same as she did.

“You’re not here to propose,” Cassandra said, all anticipation gone from her flattened voice. She stood up to pace before him, her steps careful to avoid the askew eyes of his feather cloak even in her fury. She raised both hands like claws, or maybe fists. “I am going to kill Varric. Why do I believe everything he says? Why?”

“Varric… said I was going to propose?”

Cassandra’s fury cooled as she had to reckon with what must have actually happened. “He… mentioned a proposal,” she admitted. “I suppose I… or Faith… assumed. Or he did this on purpose. That dwarf gets entirely too much joy from my discomfort.”

The Inquisitor considered it now. They were both already Entwined with mortals, they couldn’t get any closer within the Fade. Not now, anyway. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, for their mortal halves to get closer? Wasn’t this the way to do that? “Now that you’ve brought it up…” The Inquisitor stood, using magic and a flick of his feet to spread his feathered cloak behind him properly like a peacock’s tail. He stepped forward, just close enough to take her hands as he gently descended to one knee. “Maybe we should get married.”

She smiled, pulling her hands from his and stroking his cheek. Mica powder gave her thumb a shimmer as she looked into his demonic purple eyes ringed with a touch of Wisdom’s blue. “Perhaps one day,” she said fondly. “It will be a truly romantic proposal, and I will act very surprised. What comes next will not be easy for either of us - but you do not have to fight for me. I am not going anywhere, not even if the Maker Himself tries to stop me. Believe that.”

“I believe you,” he whispered.

She pulled at him, enough to draw him to his feet into a kiss. The kiss drew on, a gentle exploration of hands and lips as Cassandra drew him close and he let her.

“Do you think there will be a ball tonight?” the Inquisitor whispered, his lips brushing hers with every word. “I have an intense need to ask you to dance with me, Lady Cassandra.”

“This is Orlais,” she said. “I am sure there will be some sort of ball to these proceedings.”

“Then I look forward to it.”

Cole watched the tavern around him. He sat the wrong way around in a chair, his arms crossed and pillowed on the back as he leaned his chin on them. The wall behind him gave him a sense of safety as he watched the tavern all around him, and watched her.

Maryden.

Her songs made people feel good and she knew it, that was why she played them. Music bubbled up within her, growing, flowing, heaving, until it broke free in a cascade of song. Her words changed the course of battles, her pen touching lives she’d never met and never would. Hers was a power that Compassion could only have ever Envied in the Fade. But now, as Cole, he could appreciate it. He could take Comfort in her power, he could help her words spread and flow and burst. It made him feel good to weave the Fade around her as she sang, tugging at the threads of pain all around them and pulling them loose, letting the space fill instead with song.

He… loved her? Cole supposed that was the right word. Her bodice smelled good, her skin tasted good, and her gentle words helped him to grow beyond what he’d been before. Compassion needed help sometimes in this mortal realm of mud and muck and pain and pleasure. And she loved him, he could Feel it, she loved him and what he was.

How to show her…

He was too much like a person now, he couldn’t. Not like this. This wasn’t just the mortal realm, it was his realm now too. But maybe there was another way to show her how much he… loved her. Why that word was hard for him, too small a word to contain everything he felt.

Yes. It was the one way she might ever come to understand just what he felt for her.

A change in the song shifted Cole from his thoughts. 

The Inquisitor burned bright like a beacon, Pride and Wisdom in equal measure all wrapped up in the body of a Circle mage who’d lost everything to Templars who chose to forget that mages were people. That body wore enough peacock feathers to feather a whole flock, every feather taken after last year’s shed so there wasn’t an ounce of pain upon any of them. It let the feathers each sing with Prideful Wisdom’s own will, the black eyes of each feather deep pits that Saw the world around him for what it truly was. Cole could See those eyes, See each one blinking in the Fade, blinking and smiling and scowling and watching.

The Inquisitor spoke with the Iron Bull to distract him, the Bull’s Chargers working to move a dragon skull into position with magic and drinking and antics until the time was right. The Iron Bull wasn’t fooled, but he hadn’t said anything and Cole wondered why until he felt the Joy coming from the Chargers at their efforts rewarded.

Then Sera.

Cole could feel her Fear from here. But Sera didn’t start anything, not really. Instead Cole watched as servants, as serving girls, as the bartender, as maids and manservants and kitchen boys all dropped red tokens upon the table where Sera had sat the Inquisitor down to stare at him. It was a warning, a threat that the Friends of Red Jenny knew where he was and what he was and would be keeping an eye on him.

Cole watched as every eye on the Inquisitor’s cloak smiled. The Inquisitor laughed and accepted his fate, drawing confusion from the other Jennys until the suggestion was made to clean out every tavern from Halimshiral to Jader and back.

It was nice to be among friends again. But there was someone else, someone familiar. Cole needed a table.

He needed that table. But a man sat at that table, drinking alone. His thoughts lingered on a woman, someone he wanted to impress. But how…

Cole leaned over the man’s shoulder and whispered, just enough Intent to make his words sound like the most Important words the man had heard today. Cole whispered about gemstones the color of the man’s eyes, how lovely he would look, and heard this man’s thoughts turn to the woman he longed for.

The table was free. Cole sprinkled breadcrumbs and welcomed the familiar someone.

A black rooster flapped up onto the table.

He was just a rooster. Cole knew this wasn’t Vengeance, this bird had too few wings and the spirit within him was far too small. Once it might have been a wisp, a gift sent to an old friend to satisfy a debt that had not yet been repaid. Now the spirit within had grown, filling the body it inhabited.

This black rooster fixed Cole with suspicious red eyes before deciding Cole was trustworthy enough and pecking at the breadcrumbs on offer.

“Breadcrumbs?”

Cole felt as well as heard the Inquisitor behind him. “Birds like breadcrumbs,” he said.

The rooster rumbled and chirped in response, pecking and scratching.

“I know you…” The Inquisitor whispered. “A mage’s warning, a threat before worse could come. There is no greater vengeance than seeing an enemy led away in chains, raving mad, an accused maleficar. You.”

The rooster sat down on the table, loafing as he got comfortable. He still pecked at breadcrumbs within reach even as red eyes watched both Cole and the Inquisitor.

“Not an enemy,” Cole whispered. “Not a friend. Both and more. Bound by three Deals, willing and willful. He needs reminding of that, knowledge that his crown belongs to the one who Offered it in Bargain. All I ask is one little thing.”

“Are you saying Sebastian Vael took Starkhaven as part of a Deal with…”

“...with Justice,” Cole agreed.

Cole could see the moment it happened, beneath the Kirkwall Chantry, the whole place rigged to explode in a few short minutes, an Offer made in darkness. ‘You will retake Starkhaven with my name upon your lips’. But as for what Sebastian Agreed to do, Cole could not See it.

“Vengeance sends this bird to remind him of that,” Cole said. “And to keep him safe.”

“Safe from what?”

But Cole couldn’t tell. That or he couldn’t believe it. So he said nothing.

The bird said nothing, either. But the Inquisitor swore it leered at them both before crowing in insufferable smugness.