Chapter 11: Aftermath
The first sensation was the rough, dry texture of wool against his skin. Then, the deep, smoky scent of peat fire and the sharper tang of hanging herbs—elfroot, maybe, and embrium. Something astringent, like crushed leaves.
Daylen opened his eyes. A low, heavy ceiling of smoke-darkened thatch swam into focus. He was on his back on a bed of furs laid over a hard earth floor, naked save for a thick blanket draped over his hips. Every muscle in his body hummed with a deep, bruised ache. His head pounded a dull, rhythmic complaint against his skull.
A shadow moved at the edge of his vision.
“So, the sleeper awakes.” The voice was cool, female, carrying a lilt that was both melodic and vaguely mocking. Morrigan stepped into view, looking down at him with golden eyes that held no pity. Her dark hair framed a face of sharp, knowing beauty. “You have been dead to the world for a day and a night.”
Daylen pushed himself up on his elbows. The movement sent a lance of pain through his ribs. The last clear memory was the Beacon’s heat on his back, the sight of the bridge falling, Alistair’s shattered expression… then a roar, an impact, blackness.
“Where?” His voice was a rasp, unfamiliar in his own throat.
“The wilds. My mother’s hut,” Morrigan said, turning to stir a small pot hanging over the hearth. The firelight traced the line of her neck and shoulder. “You were pulled from the rubble of the tower. Rather impressive, surviving that. Though you have my mother to thank for the extraction, not I.”
“Alistair?”
“The other one lives. He broods outside. He is less bruised than you are, physically. The same cannot be said for his spirit.”
Daylen let the names settle in his aching mind. “Duncan? The King?”
Morrigan stopped stirring. She didn’t look at him. “The mighty king is carrion for the darkspawn horde. Your Grey Warden commander fell with him. As did nearly all who fought on that field.” Her words were precise, clinical, devoid of ceremony. “Your order, it seems, consists of you and your moody friend.”
The weight of it landed in his gut, a cold, solid stone. All of them. The senior Wardens, their experience, their guidance. Gone. He saw Duncan’s face in the dim light of the camp before the battle, the solemn weight of the treaties he’d pressed into Daylen’s hands. "Should anything happen..."
He pushed the furs aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. The cold air of the hut prickled his skin. He was unabashedly, utterly naked. Morrigan watched him, one eyebrow arched slightly, but said nothing. Her gaze was an assessment, not a modesty. He found his folded clothing on a stool nearby—his smallclothes, his woolens, the dark leathers and chainmail, all cleaned of blood and grime. Someone had taken care. He began to dress, the motions stiff and painful.
“Thank you,” he said, pulling a linen shirt over his head. “For taking care of me. Of us.”
Morrigan shrugged, a fluid roll of her shoulders. “Do not thank me. It was my mother’s whim. I merely ensured you did not die of your injuries or poison from your own tainted blood. A fascinating condition, by the way. It sings, you know. A dull dirge in your veins.”
Daylen fastened his trousers, then his armor, each buckle and strap a deliberate action that grounded him. “I’ll take your word for it.”
Once dressed, he felt more himself. The armor was a second skin, a weight he understood. He nodded to Morrigan, a gesture of curt acknowledgment, and pushed open the heavy hide covering the doorway.
The outside air was a slap of damp cold after the hut’s stuffy warmth. The mist clung to everything, muting the colors of the wild grasses and twisted trees. The world felt muted, hollowed out.
Alistair was sitting on a fallen log a dozen paces away, staring at nothing, his forearms resting on his knees. He looked up as Daylen approached. For a moment, his face was blank, etched with exhaustion and grief. Then a profound relief shattered the stillness. He surged to his feet.
“You’re alive.” The words came out rough, almost an accusation. He crossed the space between them in two strides and pulled Daylen into a hard, back-thumping embrace. The gesture was so sudden, so un-Templar-like, that Daylen stiffened for a second before returning it. “When the tower came down… I thought for sure you were buried. Flemeth pulled me out, told me she had you, but you weren’t waking up…”
“I’m harder to kill than that,” Daylen said, extracting himself. The simple statement felt true in a way it never had before.
Alistair’s face crumbled back into its weary lines. “Everyone else isn’t. Cailan. Duncan. Ser Jory, Daveth… all of them.” He kicked at a clump of wet moss. “Loghain… he just left. He watched us light the beacon and he turned his army around and left.”
“I saw.”
“What do we do?” Alistair asked, and the question wasn’t rhetorical. He was truly asking. “Two junior Wardens—a disgraced templar recruit and a Circle mage who’s probably been declared an apostate by now—against a regent who controls the army and a sea of darkspawn?”
Daylen felt for the pouch at his belt. It was still there. He loosened the drawstrings and pulled out the three rolled vellums, sealed with the griffon wax of the Grey Wardens. They felt impossibly light for what they represented.
“We do what Duncan told us to do,” Daylen said, his voice gaining strength. “We use these. The treaties. Right of conscription, owed by ancient oath.”
Alistair blinked, focus sharpening. “You have them?”
“He gave them to me before the battle. Said to keep them safe.” Daylen unfurled one slightly, the crisp parchment crackling. “The Dalish elves. The Circle of Magi. The dwarves of Orzammar. They are bound by these. We call in the debt.”
Alistair let out a long, slow breath, a puff of steam in the cold air. A flicker of his old spirit sparked behind his eyes. “Right. So, we just wander up to a clan of Dalish hunters or the doors of the Circle Tower and say ‘Hello, we’re the last Grey Wardens in Ferelden, please hand over your best people to fight an unwinnable war because of a thousand-year-old piece of paper.’ What could possibly go wrong?”
A faint, wry smile touched Daylen’s lips. “We’ll have to be persuasive.”
“Persuasive.” Alistair nodded slowly, the plan solidifying in his mind, pushing back the void of despair. “We’ll need to move fast. Loghain will be consolidating power in Denerim. He’ll brand us traitors, blame the disaster on us, on the Wardens.”
“Then we don’t go to Denerim,” Daylen said. He looked south, where the mist swallowed the horizon. “We go where the allies are. We gather them. And then we remind Loghain what a real betrayal costs.”
Alistair clapped a hand on his shoulder again, grip firm. “Alright. Two men against the Blight. Sounds perfectly reasonable.” He managed a weary but genuine grin. “Where to first, oh wise and newly-conscious leader?”
Daylen looked down at the treaties in his hand, the ancient wax seals gleaming dully in the grey light. The path was clear, impossibly narrow, and fraught with ruin. It was the only path they had.
The hide doorflap rustled behind them.
Morrigan emerged from the hut’s interior, her silhouette sharp against the glow of the hearth. She moved with a predator's quiet grace over the damp ground, joining their tense council beside the log.
"The southron road leads to Lothering," she stated, her tone devoid of inquiry. "If you seek to understand this new world your king’s death has birthed, start there. Refugees will clot its roads like spoiled blood. Their whispers will tell you more of Loghain’s story than any crier's bulletin."
She tilted her head, her golden eyes reflecting the flat, grey sky. "A town drowning in fear is a font of information, if one knows how to listen."
From the doorway of the hut, a low, rolling chuckle echoed. Flemeth stood there, leaning against the frame as if she’d been part of the wood for centuries. Her smile was a network of deep lines, knowing and unsettling. "Wisdom, daughter. Practical and cold. You begin to think like a player, not a piece upon the board."
Her gaze, ancient and appraising, shifted from Morrigan to the two Wardens. "Her suggestion bears merit. And so, you shall have a guide." She gestured a gnarled hand toward Morrigan. "She will accompany you."
Alistair’s eyebrows shot up. "What, into Lothering? She’ll stand out more than a... well, more than a very noticeable person."
Morrigan’s lip curled. "I am capable of navigating a simple shemlen hamlet without causing a riot. Or would you prefer to wander blind, trusting in the kindness of peasants you’ve just condemned to die?"
Daylen held up a hand, cutting off Alistair’s retort. He met Flemeth’s steady gaze. "If Morrigan comes with us, she’s under our protection. No harm comes to her."
Flemeth’s laugh was a dry rustle of leaves. "Oh, I should hope harm comes to her. How else will she learn?" Her expression softened, or perhaps just deepened into something more inscrutable. "But your intent is noted, Grey Warden. Keep it."
Morrigan studied Daylen, a calculating look in her eyes. "Very well. The journey, then. We avoid the Imperial Highway south of the ruined bridge; Loghain’s patrols will scour it for deserters and scapegoats. We take the game trails through the Wilds, parallel to the road. Slower, but unseen."
"We'll need supplies," Alistair interjected, practical. "Food.Potions. My armor's got more dents than a tavern tankard."
"I can hunt," Morrigan said simply. "The land provides if you know its language. As for your battered shell, Lothering has a smithy, assuming it hasn't been looted bare."
Daylen watched her lay out the plan, crisp and efficient. A strange energy thrummed between them, leftover from the intensity of the tower, from the vulnerability of his naked awakening under her gaze."And you?" he asked, his voice lower. "What do you need?"
"A question rarely asked of me," she replied, a hint of genuine surprise coloring her cool tone. "I need nothing from you. But I will observe. Your... condition interests me. The Blight sings in you both, a dissonant chord. I would hear its progression."
"Just try to keep up," Alistair muttered, hefting his shield with a grimace.
Morrigan’s smile was a swift, dangerous slash. "Worry for your own legs, shemlen. The Wilds do not suffer clumsy feet."
"Enough," Daylen said, but there was no heat in it. He stepped closer to Morrigan, the scent of herbs and cold mist clinging to her. "On this path, we speak plain. No games. If you have a thought, voice it. If you see a danger, name it. Be yourself, Morrigan. Not what you think we expect."
Her eyes widened a fraction, the calculating mask slipping just for a heartbeat. She recovered swiftly, a glint of something akin to respect—or challenge—flaring in the gold. "Careful, Warden. You may not enjoy what I am when I am...uncurbed."
"I'll take that risk," he said, holding her gaze.
Flemeth chuckled again from the doorway, the sound fading as she turned back into the gloom of the hut. "Then go. The day wastes, and darkness prefers a moving target."
Alistair shouldered his pack, giving Daylen a look that was equal parts exasperation and concern. Morrigan retrieved a worn leather satchel and a staff of dark, twisted wood from just inside the door. Without another word, she struck out toward the treeline, not looking back to see if they followed.
Daylen took a final breath of the hut's smoky air, the weight of the treaties a palpable pressure against his chest. Then he moved, Alistair at his side, following the witch’s dark shape into the swallowing grey of the Korcari Wilds.