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Chapter Text

The Iron Bull receives his next marching orders between being ass-deep in darkspawn and stumbling upon his actual Vint targets on the coast.

It’s pouring out. The giant hole in the sky stirring clouds into massive thunderheads all across Ferelden. He can barely make out the words on his missive as the ink runs, staining his fist black. The Chantry, or what’s left of it after the shitshow that was the Divine Conclave, is looking for someone who can speak Qunlat.

He squints his one good eye and rubs a fist across his eyepatch for good measure.

He can’t think of any reason why he’s been chosen for this task. There are agents bedded down with the Chantry. Someone had to be alive. An elf or a human can move in and out easily, figure out what the translator was needed for and get out.

This far south in Thedas, he tends to stick out. Stick out more at least.

He hadn’t been aware that Par Vollen had sent a contingent to the Conclave but that was probably on need-to-know basis. And a Ben-Hassrath agent masquerading as tal-Vashoth didn’t need to know.

His orders are a sad pulp in the palm of his hand. He blows his nose and heaves greatsword up high for a swing.

He takes note of the survivors who look like they’re in need of a good meal or five. Some of them even manage to make Skinner look fat. Mages, those that haven’t taken their chance braving the mountain side, huddle together at the edge of the camp under watchful eyes.

It’s a good idea in theory but it gives them the opportunity to pull stupid shit.

Dalish can do magic without a staff. The fucking things break easy and are expensive.

But it’s not his place. Right now, he’s just a tal-Vashoth mercenary reeled in by the promise of gold.

“Your resume is quite impressive.” Sister Leliana says in a clipped tone. It feels a lot like reporting to Salit while the roof is coming down between his ears. Except this isn’t Seheron, Seheron is far away and a long time ago, and it’s snow instead of sand in his boots. And the giant hole in the sky. Can’t forget the giant hole in the sky.

He does wonder how the Left Hand of the Divine survived when the body itself did not.

“How did you hear about us?”

He shrugs a shoulder.

“Oh you know.” He says. “Word gets around. Not every day someone’s looking for a tal-Vashoth translator.”

Red purses her lips thoughtfully.

“Very well. It goes without saying that discretion is necessary.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He won’t need to and she knows. It’s only a matter of time before people find out—whatever this is.

He is led into a chapel turned into a makeshift cell. He has to duck and shuffle sideways to get through the doorway and his horns still scrape against the low ceiling before it opens up to a wall of crates.

Under the perfume of incense and burnt beeswax, he can smell sickness.

The guards, guarding the wall of crates, pushes them apart and The Iron Bull sees why he was brought in. Why it had to be him here, now, with the survivors of the Conclave.

Blue eyes look up from a sweep of white eyelashes. Its hands are tied behind it as though chains can hold it back. It’s been polled. It’s head shorn. There’s a nasty looking cut down the side of its head, barely missing the eye, and cutting through the upper lip. He recognizes the scar pattern on its cheeks.

Its face turns.

It’s a saarebas.

Chapter Text

Someone needs to give him a special commendation. Maybe a posting in Orlais, Rivain’s always sounded chill, Antiva seems like it’s his kind of a crowd. Maybe a nod from Salit II, she of the white vitaar which makes her look more like a baker than a Ben-Hassrath agent.

Orders to stay away from Ferelden. Hopefully.

But he’s got a job to do and he stands his ground like taking a hit from a bogfisher with a toothache and shifts his momentary lapse to make it look like he’s got an itch on the horn that he’s punched through the ceiling. He stares, not at the saarebas but at the smear across the wall where there had once been a tapestry.

Red clasps her hand behind her back. She misses nothing but hopefully she doesn't see quite as much as she thinks she does.

He unsticks his jaws long enough to say, “That is a saarebas.”

The word rolls off his tongue and shit, how else is he pronounce it except as is?

The saarebas looks up at the familiar tone and cadence, its eyes blown wide and almost black.

“You know what he is.”

He.

He swallows.

“He wouldn’t have been alone. Where is the arvaarad? His karataam?”

Fucking great. He doesn't exactly have a control rod handy. 

Not that it matters. It's unmasked and its face wiped clean. Its collar is just gone. The humans have divested it of its retraints. Its shirt is actually a dusty horse blanket pinned around its shoulders. It's narrower at the waist than his has been since he was an imakari and they might actually see eye to eye if it stood up straight. 

“That is your version of the templars is it not?” Red answers, evading the question.

“It’s the Qun’s version.” He corrects.

He needs to keep his head. He is treading on shaky ground. “He’ll kill himself.” He breathes. “Once he is free.”

“We know.” Red nods. “He’s already tried.”

For a moment, The Iron Bull is furious on its behalf. They left it defenseless. It is alone. He sees the bruising around its throat where the skin is dark and the blood even darker, hands bound behind its back in a parody of how Sister Leliana stands, thoughtful.

It tried to kill itself and it failed. They stopped it.

It’s on the tip of his tongue. If the saarebas had been successful, he wouldn’t be here. He’d still be on the coast, drinking sour ale with an ocean view.

Ass-deep in darkspawn would have been safer.

He shakes his head.

“Look, Red, why am I here?”

“We have other Qunlat speakers.” Red says instead. “Experts in Qunari and the Qun. Yet, he won’t talk to them.”

He breathes out.

“Because they’re either elves or humans. Or dwarves.”

He can’t imagine a regular tal-Vashoth being happy with the gig either—they’re mad, not suicidal.

“Are all 'arvaarad's, Qunari?”

He thinks.

“Qunari are big.” He says carefully. “Hard to pin down a two meter mage when you’re fifty kilos soaking wet.”

Red lets out a small hum.

“He cannot be allowed to die.”

She commands two guards to get it to its feet. It's barefoot. It stumbles but follows willingly enough to the swish of chainmail cloth.

In the sunlight, it looks even worse.

What he dismissed as shadows and torchlight is starvation and pain. He doesn’t know a lot about the saarebas, only that if you wanted to kill them, you do it quick. 

“What—Leliana!”

A woman breaks off from a line of soldiers practicing on the frozen ground. Anger is obvious on her face. She gives him a look, pauses and moves on.

Cassandra Penderghast, the right hand of the Divine. Where were the two hands when the sky broke open and demons began falling out over their heads?

“Leliana, why have you brought to prisoner out?”

The sound of a lock opening takes his breath away. Chains clatter on the ground yet the saarebas does not move. Its eyes, half-mast, fixed on The Iron Bull.

It is his every nightmare come to life.

Onlookers gather, curious at the presence of strangers in their midst. They marvel at his horns, to which he preens a little bit, and point at the saarebas kneeling in the mud.

Red raises its slack arm over its head. It doesn’t even blink.

“One of our mages believes that he may be the key to closing the Breach.”

“The Breach.” He says flatly.

She looks up.

The tear pulses, spitting up more demons and the saarebas’ left hand clenches, crackling with the same freaky green color.

He catches the eye of an elven servant with her hands in her pockets. Her dark eyes are flat like stones, her hair is mousy brown. Her mouth is a pale slash across the bottom half of her face.

She will kill it if he cannot.

He is trapped.

“What do you want me to do here?”

“Ask him,” Red says, in a voice sharpened by her Orlesian accent. “What happened at the Conclave?”

Chapter Text

“Shanedan, Saarebas.”

The Iron Bull stares down the saarebas in disdain, masking the pinpricks of fear at the base of his spine.

Saarebas are always at the risk of temptation, of possession. And this one is marked. Its left hand glows green where it’s been split at the palms. A Rivaini seer once told him that the headline goes through the middle of the hand. Maybe it’s fucked in the head. Maybe that’s why it’s so slow to answer.

“Shanedan.” It greets in a surprisingly deep voice. It squints briefly looking for his identity in his face and in his scars. Its eyes travel down the swell of his arms and his vitaar which give away nothing.

It kneels, stumped. “Shanedan.” It repeats. Its pupils do not contract.

He doesn’t see the fine pattern of scars on its bruised eyelids. There is no indication that it has ever been blinded.

Its eyes, he hopes, are chemical in origin than anything supernatural.

“Saarebas.” He says, when its gaze becomes too much.

He takes a breath. He has to sell it; he has to make this look good. There are too many people now, more on their way, at the spectacle of a tal-Vashoth warrior and the saarebas at his feet, to bluff or to fight through. He recognizes the face of Cullen Rutherford, the former Knight-Commander of Kirkwall among others.

He grimaces. Kirkwall had been a shitshow.

“What happened at the Conclave?”

“I don’t know.”

He tells Red who thins her lips.

“Ask him why he was there.”

It lowers its eyes at the question, its interest in the Iron Bull waning.

“I was with my karataam.”

“Where is your karataam?”

It makes a show of looking around.

“They are not here.” It replies.

“Did you leave them?”

It shakes its head, stops, and stares at the Iron Bull as though he can fix whatever’s going on its squirrely little head.

The sad thing is, the Iron Bull does understand. In full armor, it would have been masked, collared, with a heavy set of pauldrons with chains attached them. A saarebas does not need to speak. Its intent is within its movement and the sound of its chains.

It looks overwhelmed by the silence.

“One does not leave the karataam.” It says firmly when no chimes reach its ears.

“They,” He says and nods to Red. “Say you can close the Breach.”

“The Breach.” It repeats.

It’s hard to convey the word ‘Breach’ in Qunlat. The Trade tongue, influenced by the Chantry and the Cult of Andraste, put too much emphasis on fate and divinity. The closest word he can think of is the eye.

An eye is an atmospheric phenomenon. This one just happens to spit out demons.

It looks up, maybe noticing for the first time that it’s out in the open and not where it had been confined in a cell, in the dark, waiting for either death or demons to stake the first claim.

Qunari aren’t good at improvising. They are meant for a role. He is playing his role. It has lost it.

They are both out of their depth.

The mousy elf is gone. He will be hearing from his superiors soon. If he survives. It’s a cheery thought.

“The eye is real?” It frowns. It shakes its head. It frowns and it shakes its head again.

The Iron Bull shoots Red a look of deep irritation.

“Did you tell,” he, not it. “Him anything?”

“We tried.” Red shrugs easily, taking half a step around it. It tilts its head at the swish of her chain cloth. “He will not speak to us.”

Penderghast erupts like a copper kettle. “He is pretending! The Most Holy is dead! The Conclave was hers. It was a chance for peace between the mages and the Templars. She brought their leaders together. Now they are dead. Except him.”  

“How.” He asks. “The explosion was big enough to break the sky open. I was on the ‘Coast. Hells, I bet even the Vints saw it in Minrathous.”  

“We do not know.” Sister Leliana interrupts. “What we do know is that the Breach must be sealed. It is growing by the hour and it is not the only one.”

The Iron Bull turns his head towards her in alarm.

Penderghast swears, “Unless we act, the Breach may grow and swallow the world.”

“We thought a familiar face might help.” Red says easily.

If the Iron Bull was a thinking man, he might have taken great offense to those words. He’s not exactly dressed as a Qunari. It’s like saying all humans look alike, even the bald ones. Or saying all elves are skinnier humans. At least dwarves are easy to tell apart by their hairlines.

But the Iron Bull is a mercenary, tal-Vashoth, lured to haven by the promise of gold.

He stretches his neck and says, “I assume you have a plan.”

Penderghast nods.

“There is a small rift not far from here.”

At a certain pitch, sound becomes inaudible to humans. Lower and even elves and dwarves have a hard time picking words apart.

He drops his voice. Because Hissrad is a liar. He needs Hissrad now.

“Saarebas, stand.”

Chapter Text

This is what the others do not hear.

I am your arvaarad.

I will be your caretaker.

I will be your gaoler.

I will keep the world safe from your weakness.

Its knees lift with a wet squelch and look at that, he was right. The saarebas stands almost as tall as he does even with a semi-permanent crick in its back. The Iron Bull is big, even among the Qunari. He can tell that the saarebas must have had an impressive rack before it started throwing sparks everywhere.

They gave it pants at least but its shoes are standard issue. Probably didn’t have anything in its size. He hates to think what it must smell up close and he cuts Red a curt nod.

“Let’s get to it then.”

Seeker Penderghast leads them up the side of a mountain.

It’s a short distance but the roads are broken and snow feels unpleasant shoved down his boots. And there are demons, obvious against the white backdrop, which Red picks off with ease. Redheads—the saarebas flinches after every arrow that leaves her quiver and he orders it to stand straight.

On top of the winding path there is a group of bas gathered outside what used to be a building.

And there is a seam in the air, green and obvious, crackling with the same eerie light the saarebas’ mark does at their approach.

It shudders and stops. Red nearly knocks into him.

“Seeker Cassandra.” A dwarf greets. She’s cute and has freckles all over. He’s always had a thing for redheads.

He would have bought her a drink or two if they had been anything else.

An elf, not a fighter, a bas-saarebas, leans on its staff.

Fuck.

“You come at a fortuitous time.” It nods at the saarebas. “And I see you’ve brought the prisoner.”

“He means you’re welcome.” A blond dwarf grunts, cradling a sweet-looking crossbow in his arms. “We just took out the recent wave.”

“Come.” The bas-saarebas says without further explanation. It latches onto the saarebas which raises its head in alarm. It was fiddling with its marked hand a moment before and clenches it closed, digging its heel in.

You don’t touch saarebas. He’s been around the antaam often enough that he knows not to touch saarebas.

That’s literally an arvaarad’s job.

But the elf is insistent and the saarebas’ feet slides in the snow.

It raises its hand forcibly towards the rift, pinching a nerve at the base of the palms to keep it open as the green mark explodes with magic.

There is light. Light imprints itself across his retinas like staring at a barrel of gaatlok as it goes off.

The saarebas’ fist is knocked backwards from the kickback. The elf lets go and it nearly kicks the blond dwarf in the face in its haste to get away.

He laughs.

It’d be funny if they weren’t absolutely fucked.

Its feet slides, standard-issue footwear isn’t meant for the Frostbacks, and it goes head first into the snow.

The bas-saarebas tries to help it up and now he has to intervene.

“Don’t touch.” It. “Him.”

The bas-saarebas raises its hands.

“My apologies, I did not mean to offend.”

The saarebas is breathing hard. Its nails, blunted, dig into the meat of its left arm, drawing blood.

The Iron Bull curses and throws his coat over its head.

A coat is no mask and it’s no collar but it covers its eyes, still fucked like it swallowed a shot of deathroot on a dare.

Its trembles die down.

He sees the droplets of blood on the snow.  

“Hear me, arvaarad.”

“I will hear you, saarebas.”

In a voice pitched too low for even elves and dwarves to make out, it says “Ebasit kata. I have lost my way. End me.”

Chapter Text

The saarebas sits pretty in its makeshift cell, the crates gone and the stain still marking the opposite wall, hands tied behind its back and blinkered like a nervy mount. There’s a growing puddle of drool in front of it and the bald apothecary, Adan, shakes his head while checking its pulse.

Anywhere else, anytime else and anyone else, the Iron Bull would have chortled ‘kinky’ and moved on. But the saarebas proved that it can close rifts and well—he doesn’t exactly see too many people walking around with a glowing green mark on their hands.

The Iron Bull is in a bind, stuck between the ol’ rock and a hard place. He’s sitting on a powder keg with a lit fuse. It’s like being herded by the fog warriors towards the tide with the moon loping overhead.

He scratches at his horns. They hadn’t needed a translator once it started bashing its brains out. The message couldn’t be clearer unless it started smearing shit on the wall and from the manic glint in its eyes before the embrium took hold, that seemed more like an eventuality than anything else.

The thing is—he can’t blame it. It’s doing what it’s supposed to. It’s tainted. It’s a matter of time before it goes mad.

The humans are about as happy as he is.

He is invited, to put it politely, to the war room. He stands bored, wondering when he can slip out and find the black-eyed elf he had seen outside the chapel, when Red asks, “Iron Bull, do you have any suggestions?”

Her tone reminds him of the whip-crack of a tamassran and he stands straight.

“It’s The Iron Bull.” He corrects. “You need to put ‘the’ at the front.”

Seeker Penderghast makes a face.

Sister Leliana says, “Very well, the Iron Bull. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Keep him drugged.” Qamek would be the best but they don’t have it. Par Vollen might give him a special dispensation for it but then he would have to explain where he got it.

The elf loses its patience.

“We need him. I have dreamed since the breach appeared in the sky. It shakes the veil between our world and the fade.”

The Iron Bull tunes it all out. He doesn’t have the head for magic so he doesn’t try. The conclusion is that they need to close the breach. They need the saarebas.

“You are Qunari. You can order—“

“First of all, I’m tal-Vashoth.” He says patiently. “I know it doesn’t make a difference to you but it does to me. Second, it’s a saarebas.” And to normal, reasonable people, it would be an explanation enough. But he is talking to people who coddle their mages and give them political power.

Look where it got them—he thinks bitterly.

It—“He thinks he is tainted. He’s without an arvaarad.” The Iron Bull’s cover had been blown the moment he stopped it from offing itself. “Saarebas are supposed to immolate themselves to protect those around them.”

“But why?” The elven saarebas exhales in exasperation. “He has no signs of corruption. No demon possess him. No spirit would come to him uninvited.”

He picks at his ears.

“I’m just telling you what I know.”

“Forget it chuckles.” The blonde dwarf, Varric, interrupts with a downturned mouth. “Probably faster to tell the demons to go home.”

The saarebas’ death is an inevitability.

The thing is, Hisrad is Ben-Hassrath. He was trained as a spy, to lie and to obfuscate. He is also given a plenty of slack to make decisions that puts the world state in favor of the Qun and has on occasions, tipped the scale one way or another whether killing a nobleman more trouble than he was worth or letting one tal-Vashoth live so that he can hang the rest.

This is a little bigger than things that he is used to. This is possibly world-ending and he happens to like living at the moment. He likes being the Iron Bull. He likes the motley crew of strays and ex-convicts.

He wants to enjoy it a little before the big wigs order a march.

Magic ruins everything. This frankly has Tevinter written all over it. The whole song and dance about how the Maker’s golden city turned black.   

“Can’t you just take his hand?”

It is a testament to how desperate they all are that they don’t immediately put down his idea like a lame horse.  

“Maybe we can keep that on the backburner.” Varric says wryly.

Color rises in the bas-saarebas’ face.

“Transfer the mark onto someone else? No. I’ve studied the mark while the prisoner was asleep. It is permanent. The mark is anchored to him.”

“How did he even get it?” He asks.

It’s Penderghast who answers.

“They say he walked out of the fade. And that a woman was behind him.” The seeker chokes on her last few words. The Iron Bull narrows his one eye. To him, it sounds like possession. To her, it has religious connotations. She probably think that the saarebas got help from Divine Justinia or even Andraste herself.

“Regardless of its origins,” The elf stresses. “We must try and persuade him.”

“The Iron Bull,” Red says. “If the saarebas receive orders from the arvaarad, who gives the orders to the arvaarad?”

He rubs his chin, pretending to think.

“That would be the Arishok.”

“Can you ask him?”

He tilts his head. He must have misheard.

“What?”

Red tucks her hands behind her back and nods.

“Ask the Arishok to order the saarebas to live.”

Chapter Text

The Iron Bull throws his head back and laughs for a full minute while the others look at him like he has gone mad.

He thinks about it, briefly. An easy denial rests on his tongue. He has multiple character witnesses and happy customers. Because there is no way Red simply knows. The Iron Bull’s only tells are the ones that he allows.

Sister Leliana has good instincts.

He wipes a tear from the corner of his eye.

“Good one.” He snorts. “What gave it away?”

“Nothing.” She concedes, one spy to another. Oh right, humans called them bards. “But not everything can be passed off as simple coincidences. The prisoner would not speak to the Qunlat translators. Half the tal-Vashoth wanted nothing to do with him. The ones that stayed, the prisoner tried to attack them.”

The ones that stayed were probably Vashoth.

He shrugs.

“Maybe I’m just that convincing.”

“I have no doubt that you are. You will need it to convince the Arishok.”

The Iron Bull sighs.

“And if he doesn’t?”

Sister Leliana smiles. It’s not very nice.

“He will.”

It doesn’t take long to get a response. It never does. The Qunari use a more reliable method of communication than birds. He’s just had enough time to set his ass down on a too-small barstool for a drink. He’s already passed up on the offer of gruel with what might have been bits of horsehide disguised as protein. He should have just stayed on the Storm Coast.

A black-eyed she elf comes up to him with a nod instead of a curtsy. Her name is Tallis and she tells him that Salit is waiting.

“Thedas is in disarray. This is an opportunity.”

She gives him vitaar. Some tarry, red stuff that arvaraad like to bathe in.

A dab of it on his shoulder hardens the skin and shows up black under his tats.

“What is this?” It’s not the usual red pigment like vermillion or hematite. It’s brighter. It tastes sharp.

It also rankles him that all this time, it had been the vitaar. The tin he receives is well used, a noticeable dip in the side in the shape of finger grooves. Fraternization among ranks is frowned upon but both he and Salit II were far from home. They were both consenting adults.

And technically, fraternizing with outsiders was even worse. You didn’t stick your dick in crazy and Vashoth were, weird.

Saalit laughs, grinding a knee into his abs, lower and lower.

“The saarebas will know what it means.”

He grimaces at the thought of the work ahead.

“If the saarebas is possessed.”

“If the saarebas is possessed?” Salit raises an eyebrow. “Kill it.”

He has no reason to hide this. The bas get what they want and he gets something back. A real pro quid quo.

The bas-saarebas doesn’t bother hiding his anger.

“He is not possessed.”

The Iron Bull shrugs nice and slow, a roll of his shoulder to work out the kinks in his neck.

“Yeah well, I don’t know that.”

It shuts the elf up quick enough.

The saarebas has more chains on it now. The bas put more chains on it. He sees the dent in the wall where it tried to bash its brains out and failed. There is no word for mercy in the Qun. Forgiveness roughly translates to acknowledgement of due diligence.

But maybe, the Iron Bull thinks, maybe when the saarebas has closed the giant rip in the sky, he can give it the death it craves.

The door opens and the saarebas looks up in anticipation, nostrils flaring. It’s caught the smell of vitaar on his chest, a handprint not his own.

“Saarebas.” He rumbles. “You are being called to duty.”

It bows its head in submission. The chains lay against its shoulders and swings uselessly from the wall. It lets out what might have been a scoff.

“I will obey.”

Chapter Text

There is no point wasting resources on the dead.

But certain concessions are made. Chains, delicate and made of real silver, weighed down with Andrastian pendants, loop from the holes in its ears to its crown. It wears a hood now. The camp has been turned upside down for clothing in its size. The Iron Bull’s trousers had simply slipped off its bony hips and he did not wear shirts as a rule. Someone fetches a belt. It keeps its boots. It won’t live long enough to care.

It licks its teeth.

The Iron Bull lets out a gusty sigh.

Red’s got an ornery look in her eyes. The Lady Ambassador stands by with a quill and parchment in her hand.

“He needs a name.”

“Must we really—“ Commander Cullen says, startled, an aborted gesture to his temple to starve a headache.

“He,” it, “is saarebas.” He protests and is quickly overruled.

“Saarebas.” Red hums. The pronunciation comes to her easier than other words. He wonders why that is. “Qunari mages. Are they all called that? How do you tell them apart?”

Easy, they belong to different units. Arvaarads get real creative with vitaar. But Red isn’t Qunari. She is human. Humans fail to understand that names don’t hold meaning.  

The Iron Bull crosses his arms across his chest.

“Hellathen’Sahlin.” The bas saarebas proposes.

Everyone grimaces.

“Too long.” The blond dwarf groans.

Red clasps her hands together behind her back.

“How about—“

“No.” Seeker Penderghast says, crushingly.

Red pouts.

“Perhaps,” Lady Montilyet suggests. “He should be allowed to choose his own name?”  

They all turn to look at it. The saarebas stares back. When they don’t say anything, it turns its gaze to the ground, at its boots which have been given a hasty polish.

It looks wrong. It’s going into battle. It should be wearing armor. It should have its collar and pauldrons and leashed by ceremonial red threads. It should be with an arvaarad. It shouldn’t be here.

“Heron.”

The saarebas lifts its head. It does not speak the common tongue of southern Thedas. It will not have a chance to learn. It looks to him for answers for the sound it’s never heard before tumbling from the Commander’s mouth.

Cullen purses his lips shut as though he can take the word back in his mouth.

“There used to be one on Lake Calenhad. I used to admire it from afar—it was white, tall... quiet.”

He’s got the tall and quiet part right.

“Heron.” Lady Montilyet repeats hesitantly.

The dwarf shrugs. “It’s got a nice ring to it.”

And what is the Iron Bull supposed to say to that?

So, Heron it is.

Chapter Text

The red vitaar itches. The Iron Bull is not used to the compound. It’s heavier than what he normally uses; it’s brighter than vermillion and sharp like lye. He idly scratches the side of his neck and his nails make a metallic rasp going down. It spooks one of the soldiers they have with them and the saarebas shifts without a sound, head tilted as though it still had its horns and back stooped like it’s about to charge.  

Saarebas-Heron’s beginnings are unremarkable. It is of standard antaam stock like the rest of its set. Its files note that it is docile and agreeable. It is not simple—it has achieved the standard milestones. It is good with sums. Its penmanship is adequate. It is of excellent physical development. Perhaps priesthood might suit him it, its tamassran suggests. Its intelligence is an asset. It may do well with further education.

It is assigned to the antaam. It performs well in basic training. It strikes the right balance in being obedient and motivated. It is a good soldier. Not exemplary—it falls square in the middle of the pack. It’s a credit to its breeding and upbringing. The quartermaster does not think it an adaari material. It is too tall to be ashaad.

But its first career ends with not a bang but a whimper. Maybe it woke up on the wrong side of the bed one morning. Maybe one of the officers was having a bad day. Or maybe it was raining and there was a bit of mud on its shoe. It thought about simply wiping it off when it did, all by itself.

The Iron Bull will never know. The events are left unwritten and leaves details to his vivid imagination. The report does state that the saarebas manifested abilities during morning attendance. There were no casualties. It was detained before being removed from premises. It was assigned to an arvaarad two days later.

Nothing is left to chance. It is in training for over a year before it resurfaces. Its arvaarad grades it adequate and he doesn’t know what that means. What does adequate mean for a saarebas? Adequately dangerous? Efficient? Frightening?

When a soldier is adequate, he receives a raise. When a spy is adequate, he is demoted. Saarebas are weapons. They are a resource. They are respected. They are maintained.

There are logs of dates the saarebas is sent out in the field. The most recent was in Rivain in an operation against a ‘Vint warship.

Then the conclave.

It was part of the Qunari delegation and objectively, the Iron Bull can see why. The saarebas are a show of force. Even without the armor, the painted pauldrons, polled and without horns, Heron stood a head above the rest. It must have cut an impressive figure against the arvaarad and its karataam.

And here is the problem. The big wigs don’t know that the saarebas is not responsible.

Nothing in its history suggests madness. In fact, its entire history is peppered with observations on its calm disposition.

But no one can be sure that the saarebas did not, snap.

Saarebas-Heron falls back at his heel, leaving the soldier to seek comfort from his comrades. And as though sensing his mood, the saarebas leans towards him instead. The Andrastian pendants swing at the end of silver, adding to the swish and scrape of its chains.

Pearls before swine, he thinks uncharitably.

The bas-saarebas explains that the rift is closed but incompletely. Like a button in the wrong hole. Closing this one will allow them to figure how to close the big one in the sky.

The Iron Bull translates, slowly, Red hanging onto each word.

“You didn’t tell him about the fade.” She remarks.

“Hey, if you want to do my job, be my guest.”

The saarebas needs facts, not the bas-saarebas’ theories.

Varric Tethras looks up at him in interest.

“You don’t look like a spy.”

It’s not meant to be an insult. Varric Tethras is his own warning.

“That’s what makes me good at my job.”

There is a sudden change in air as they set foot in the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. It is something in the earth, soft and gray, warm and waiting discovery. In the southern Thedas, it is said that the ashes are of Andraste—capable of miracles. There are rumors that Sister Leliana witnessed them first hand during the Fifth Blight.

Some even said that she saw the Maker’s kingdom and came back.

Red hums a small prayer under her breath. Varric swears an oath. Seeker Pendrghast tells her men to prepare themselves and the elven bas-saarebas draws its staff.

Saarebas-Heron continues unperturbed. It knows it has a job to do. Everything else is secondary.

“We’re here.”

Chapter Text

Sister Leliana does not give red lyrium a second glance.

Nasty stuff—he’d read reports from Kirkwall. It gives off heat. It hums. It makes his skin crawl. It grows like an infection inside the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

The Iron Bull cannot believe that anyone thought it was a good idea to touch it, to repurpose it, to use it. Supposedly, the artifact found in the Primal Thaig is under lock and key, safeguarded by the Orlesian Chantry. The way Varric squirrels around the drops of fragments littering the ground makes him think it’s all bullshit.

“Keep the sacrifice still.”

“Somebody help me!”

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even look and neither does Saarebas-Heron. To give the voice the attention it seeks is madness. But it turns out he’s not the only one destined for the loony bin because Red, Sister Leliana, turns towards the pleading voice, Seeker Penderghast standing alongside her.

“That is,” the Seeker stammers, “Divine Justinia’s voice.”

First, there are no words to describe how relieved the Iron Bull feels when she invokes the Divine’s name. Because for a moment, just a moment, he thought it had finally happened. He’d cracked under pressure. He’s been driven mad by the saarebas and the red lyrium.

And second—

“What is going on here?”

The words are gruff, slow, spoken in the common tongue of southern Thedas, cut by Qunlat’s husky vowels. It is a voice that no one recognizes, a voice that no longer exists.

Saarebas-Heron lets out a grunt of surprise. Its chains swing like a pendulum to the left and taps his vitaar-hardened shoulders.

And they are granted a vision.

An old woman dressed in the best of Chantry’s fineries is suspended in midair, her limbs thick with smoke. She is alone and she is afraid. There are corpses at her feet. They wear the sigil of the Sunburst Throne.

“Run while you can! Warn them!”

Of what, he wonders even as a magister—of course it was a magister. It could not be anything else. Only the ‘Vints were brazen enough to beget a conquest, an invasion, a political conflict and a religious war in a single sword stroke.

“We have an intruder.”

Saarebas-Heron digs its heels into the earth, mirroring its vision counterpart. It does not speak common. But even it cannot ignore the malevolence in the magister’s voice.

“Slay the Qunari.”

The vision ends and Saarebas-Heron stands wide-eyed, awaiting instructions that will not come. The Iron Bull does not know what happens after. Only, its arvaarad is dead. Its karataam burnt to ashes.

Penderghast pulls the front of its shirt into a fist, wrenching its head down so that they could see eye-to-eye.

“You were there! Who attacked?” She demands.

Saarebas-Heron does not answer. It cannot answer. It does not speak common. It has little idea what happened at the Conclave. It saw an old woman suspended in midair, shrouded by black smoke, its handler and a magister, natural enemies, conversing in a foreign tongue.

It’s not good. The picture it paints is not good.

The Seeker turns on him instead.

“Was this vision true?!”

A Seeker consulting a Qunari on the matters of magic—the world has been turned on its head.

He raises his hands.

“Hey now, you’re scaring him.” He nods towards Saarebas-Heron who looks strangely lost after her outburst, as though it had been braced for a blow that never came.

“These are echoes of what happened here.” The elven bas-saarebas says, gesturing with his wooden staff. “The Fade bleeds into this place.”

The Iron Bull shudders. Now that’s just wrong. Demons and nightmares should stay on the other side of the veil like they’re supposed to.

“Now,” The bas-saarebas is apologetic. “This will likely attract attention from the other side.”

“That means demons.” The Seeker barks at the soldiers. “Stand ready.”

She draws her sword and Red takes her archers to set up a perimeter.

“Steady.” The Ironbull tells Saarebas-Heron. The bas-saarebas looks like it’s itching to interject, nails digging grooves into its staff. Its lips twitches before it thinks better of it. Red is outside earshot but he lowers his voice nonetheless. “You remember the tamassrans don’t you? There’s a trick to getting their shirts off with one hand.”

Its jaw ticks with what might have been a smile. Only its cheeks were scarred. Not its lips. Ceremonial then, Saarebas-Heron has always been dedicated to the Qun.

The Qun honors its sacrifice.  

“Now!”

Saarebas-Heron hooks a finger in the invisible seam and pulls it apart. Immediately, demons spill from the rift, shades and hunger demons, despair demons and one that towers over them all.

“Now that’s more like it!” He hoists his greatsword high. He had it especially sharpened at the base camp.

The Pride Demon laughs, allowing the swarm of shades the chance at first blood.

The Iron Bull charges forward.

The funny thing about demons is that they can walk through walls. They can walk inside your head. They disappear like smokestack behind enemy lines.

They also fall like a stack of potatoes if you hit them right, limbs akimbo like a man drowning.

A demon nearly takes off his ear and he elbows it in its face. His elbow goes through a cloud of frost and comes out glazed in ice. He shakes it off and the fragments melt away against the black stone, leaving no trace behind. No proof that he has fought at all.

These are dangerous thoughts to have mid-combat. Heretical even. Way above his paygrade. He is no priest to interpret what is right and what is true. He is not a tamassran. He is not the Ariqun.

But if the ghosts of Candlemas past can be rendered solid, a meat sack filled with tar and viscera, what else is possible? What else is real? Can madness walk Thedas wearing a dragon, glorious and winged, spraying embers from its teeth?

He is knocked down. His skin sizzles against a rage demon and shades swarm him for an easy meal. He shouts.

The Iron Bull does not scream when a demon’s head drops in his lap for a quick hello. And even if he had, it would have been a very reasonable and a very manly one. He scrambles to his feet only to hit his horns against a spinning barrier that nearly shaves them off. Saarebas-Heron does not seem to notice as he releases the barrier and forms a new one, digging trenches through stone.

Fuck, he thinks, as he grasps his greatsword by the hilt. He should have stayed on the coast. Darkspawn and ‘Vints were starting to sound downright friendly as he beheads the one-eyed sloth demon that tries to take a bite out of him. He doesn’t even have his company here. Just bas and saarebas.

Saarebas-Heron rubs its wrists like it is tender. It digs its heels in and spins another barrier which stops the pride demon’s fist for a fraction of a second before exploding like gaatlok. It throws itself sideways in an evasive maneuver straight out of the antaam handbook.

It builds another barrier before standing, another, then another in a rhythm the Iron Bull knows all too well.

He gets a good hit in. The pride demon throws its head back and roars. Even a demon can’t ignore a greatsword to the spine.

“More coming through the rift!” The Seeker shouts. “Quickly, form ranks!”

The rift spits out more shades. Thank fuck, it would have been a hell of a thing if there were two pride demons stomping around.

“We must seal the rift!”

The Iron Bull is tiring. He is starting to think that the bas-saarebas is full of shit. He should have just cut Saarebas-Heron’s throat and gone home. Red and a couple of others lay down cover fire as Saarebas-Heron shuffles right under the sparking, green tear.

Saarebas-Heron raises a hand. Freaky shit, watching the air bulge at the flick of a wrist. It’s a fight. He can tell it’s a fight. The rift doesn’t want to close and one of Red’s arrows takes a shade in the throat. Bas-saarebas slides beside it and throws up a barrier which wraps over the stone instead of going through. The Seeker kicks a despair demon in its face.

“Go on.” The Iron Bull tells it in Qunlat. Saarebas-Heron does not speak common after all. It belongs to the Qun. It has always belonged to the Qun. “Do what must be done.” Its eyes flicker in acknowledgement.

The rift slams shut on top of a lust demon whose front half crumples to the ground. He can feel its sudden absence as it reverberates through the air. Demons shriek in tandem before dissipating into mist. Synapses fire inside the Iron Bull’s head, run, run, run, this is wrong, this is wrong. This is wrong. And he looks up. The breach is still there but lessened. He can see the sky again.

Saarebas-Heron breathes hard. Blood-flecked foam drips from its mouth. It flinches from the grasping hand of the bas-saarebas.

“Don’t touch it him.” The Iron Bull snaps, harsher than he meant to be. He still has to make nice with the bas.

But he’s missing a chunk from his arm and he can’t tell if the red on his chest is still vitaar or actual blood.

“Glory.” The Iron Bull rasps in Qunlat.

It kneels gratefully and bows its head. He draws a breath. He cannot stop the others from checking on it as a healing potion is poured over his wound, a soldier hissing sympathetically as the flesh knits itself.

They will find that it has passed out, neck stretched in an open invitation towards the Iron Bull whom it has taken as an arvaarad.

Seeker Penderghast slaps its face. It remains slack. Its mouth is packed with embrium.

What a waste. He thinks. He is surprised to find that he means it. I could have used someone like you in my company.

The Iron Bull turns away.