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I am not a story to tell, I am not someone's metaphor,"
- Jill Jones, from "Walking Home in the Dark through a Succession of Categories,"
Shianni was curled up on herself. Kallian stands guard over her, covered in blood and holding a broken bed post prone in the air, her wedding dress in tatters and dried blood on her legs, but with her mouth set in a grim line, she stands sentinel.
“Darrian will come for us.” Kallian promises, looking back at her cousin briefly. “He wouldn’t leave us here.”
Kallian wishes she could comfort her cousin, wrap her in her arms and protect her at the same time, but she can’t move from her post. She has to stay vigilant. Kallian looms over Shianni, it seems, like the statues of Andraste do over the Chantry’s they’re posted in front of.
Silent, inviting you to kneel at her mercy — if she deigns to give it.
The man in the corner won’t be getting up again, but Kallian doesn’t know if - or when - anyone else will be coming in, so she has to be ready.
There’s a sudden flurry of commotion down the hall, grunts of pain and yells of fury, and Kallian feels a feral grin spread over her face.
Shianni wraps a hand around her ankle, a nervous, questioning noise finding its way out of her throat.
“Don’t worry.” Kallian looks down, and Shianni finds herself slightly unnerved at the manic look in her cousin’s eyes, the way her frizzy, tangled hair frames her face and the way her sharp elven incisors are emphasized by her smile.
“Help is here.”
The door bursts open, splintering as it hits the wall with its force. Standing in the doorway are Darrian, Soris and Nelaros.
All of them are blood splattered, but Darrian is covered in it, dripping in gore; panting, snarling, baring his teeth — Shianni has never seen him so angry.
When he sees the two of them, hale and whole, he grabs Kallian in a hug so tight Shianni can hear the breath leave her chest.
Then he kneels down in front of his cousin. “Shianni, can you walk?”
“I’ll carry her,” Soris says before Shianni can reply, which is good, because she isn’t sure that she can walk.
Darrian just nods. Before he stands, he gently presses his forehead to her own.
“We have to go. We won’t be alone for much longer.”
Soris, without much ceremony, encourages Shianni onto his back, all the while apologizing for jostling her as he stands. Darrian hands Kallian the other dagger he had acquired somewhere, Shianni doesn’t want to know where. She just wants to get out of there.
“Neisara is here somewhere too,” Kallian tells Darrian. He nods, continuing down the hallway to the doors that haven’t been flung or kicked open.
“Darrian, where are the…”
Shianni stares at the carnage left behind in the halls as the group carefully makes their way out.
Darrian looks back, his face hard but his eyes alight with fire.
“They won’t hurt you again. They won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
When they’ve cleared all the rooms, creeping through the hall weary and skin tingling with fearful anticipation of attack, there is only one door not open. Kallian picks the lock easily, and the light of the hall floods the dark barren room, illuminating a figure lying still, so still, on the bed.
Kallian rushes forward, kneeling at who can only be Neisara’s side, and presses her fingers to her throat. “She’s alive.” she reports grimly. Her eyes say what she doesn’t — barely.
Neisara’s chest rises and falls in staggered movements, her body laboring to draw breath. Kallian gathers her in her arms carefully after handing Darrian the dagger back. They all know that she is too far gone to save - they are bringing her back to pass in dignity, now, though they don’t say it.
Neisara stirs in Kallian’s arms as they walk, Kallian’s arms trembling not from the weight or exertion, but from the previous assault she had endured and the toll it took on her body, but she refuses to give up Neisara to Nelaros.
“Kallian?” Neisara murmurs, blood dribbling from her lips.
“Sh, sh,” Kallian says, her face set. “We’ll be back home soon.”
“I wanted… to try,” Neisara says, coughing. “I wanted to try.”
Kallian takes a deep breath of her own, and she sounds pained. “I know. I know.”
“We could have had flower wreaths, at our own wedding,” Neisara continues faintly. “I would have braided blossoms into your hair. I would have made you quilts.”
“I know, Neisara. Save your strength.”
Neisara fidgets with something, and it takes some time and clumsy fumbling, but then a cold object presses against Kallian’s chest.
The ring Darrian had given her - that Kallian had chosen for Neisara. Kallian had the one Darrian picked for Nelaros still, and had not the time or opportunity to return it to its intended owner.
Darrian, having turned his head at Neisara’s quiet mumbling, has them stop. He reverently loops the ring onto a throng of leather before tying it around Kallian’s neck, as her hands were quite occupied.
They say nothing as they continue through the manor, all of them too consumed by grief and tormented by the day's events.
“Imagine for me a home where we could have been content,” is the last thing Neisara says before her eyes slip closed.
Kallian doesn’t reply, and Neisara would not have heard her if she had. She has not passed, but Kallian knows she will not wake again.
It takes them a bit to carefully escape the estate. Darrian has to fight once again, and Kallian passes Neisara to her brother before encouraging Nelaros to stand back and guard Soris and Shianni.
The two of them, in tandem with one another - the moon and the sea - are ruthless. They spare no mercy, they don’t look down at the men their daggers rip through. Kallian even spits on one as he chokes on his last breaths.
When she goes to take Neisara back, stopping to brush sweaty hair out of her face gently, blood bubbles from Nelaros’ mouth, his eyes widening and his hold on Neisara suddenly slackening all at once, leaving Kallian to hurry to gather her in her arms and left to watch the horror in front of her unfold.
A man who had been kicked down the hall was not quite dead, and in his dying moments shoved his sword through Nelaros’ abdomen in retribution. Nelaros’ eyes are frantic, blinking rapidly and moving about to each of them as it slips through, the sword clattering to the floor with the last dying breath of the man who committed the act.
Nelaros falls to his knees, clutching his stomach. Darrian looks down at him, jaw clenched, before kneeling at his side.
“Nelaros…”
“Not what you expected for your wedding day, huh?” Nelaros chuckles bitterly.
Kallian, kneeling now, shuffles her hold on Neisara before silently offering her hand, where his wedding ring sits for safe keeping, and Darrian takes it, pressing it into Nelaros’ hand before, similarly to his sister, picking him up.
“Let’s go.”
The carnage they pass as they pick their way through and make their escape speaks to the ruthlessness with which they originally cut their way in with. Shianni begins to understand how he and Soris and Nelaros fought their way in.
“Did you… did you kill them? Did you kill all of them?” Shianni’s voice is barely above a whisper. She notices Nelaros’ grimace out of the corner of her eye, even as he closes his eyes and his breaths become shallower.
Darrian’s tone is indiscernible when he replies bluntly, “Like dogs.”
Kallian nods along. There’s a noticeable tremble in her hands, but her focus is steady and unwavering.
“Like the mabari these Ferelden shem find such pride in; that eat and sleep better than any elf could dream, put down as soon as they’ve run out of use. We put them down.”
Darrian looks at Kallian, her in her wedding dress, him in his formal best, both blood splattered and weary. “Like dogs, Shianni,” They finish, each eerily echoing the other. Soris seems as unsettled as Shianni feels, if the way Soris stiffened is anything to go by. “Like dogs.”