Freedom's Price

A Bad Joke

Commander Cullen trails along the Chantry walls, nodding politely to recruits who's gaze lingers too long upon my face as if it's bulging with plague. He regales some of its history, voice low and meant only for myself.

I try to absorb it, but am lost in the thunder of my heartbeat as we exit the building and are met with pale white mountains being devoured by an emerald, hungry gouge in the sky. The mark upon my hand aches ever so slightly, as if it sees its mother and is reaching out to suckle. Snow crunches beneath our feet and Cullen greets somebody, rounding a corner and taking us towards the front of the fortress where recruits practise sword fights to the sound of a hundred chings.

'We've had pilgrims,' Cullen leans in slightly towards me, nodding towards a singular man amongst the crowds who's teasing the edge of a blade. 'People want to fight with us. They heard of your heroics, and have travelled to join your cause.'

Pursing my lips together, I pull a steady breath. Your cause. 

'This must be hard for you,' Cullen strains, but all I hear is another weak mage, pathetic and untrained, Maker why have you sent us her?

'I just want to wake up,' I breathe. 'I wonder if somebody will punch me in the gut, or pinch my arm?'

'Herald,' Cullen sighs out a laugh and then straightens his features. He looks towards me with sincerity, and for a short moment it feels like home. The home I left, abandoned, that now possibly sits engulfed in flames and death across the Ostwick lake. 'Whatever burdens us, whatever caused the breach and the rifts around Thedas, we will fight it. And you will not be alone.'

His eyes are brown. Not mud-brown, home of burrowing insects and plants, salt of the earth brown like Kitsuma's, but almost amber; like pooling water beneath an orange sunrise. 'You sound sure.'

He tries to hide the soft flicker of his gaze, the swell of his throat as he swallows, but I see. 'I am.' Liar.

I swallow and glance at the white ground. 'I wasn't supposed to be at the Conclave.'

Flashes of heat, burning bodies bright, the chug of energy unleashed and endless now, devouring everything. 'Who was?' 

Steady your breath, you fool. 'My friend. Her name was Kitsuma... the last I saw, she was...' I press my eyes shut, swell the throbbing rock at my throat. 'I want to speak to her. She would make sense of all of this.' 

Cullen glances forward, and behind his head the breach pokes out. 'I have found that writing helps. As if you were speaking to her.' 

'Have you lost somebody?' Stupid question, considering where we are, who he is. Was. He's lost thousands, likely. Mages desperate for freedom, bright and strong and worthy and him, their captor. My captor. 

Cullen sighs deeply. 'Many people.' His smile falters. He squares his shoulders. 'Maybe... you were. Supposed to be there. Even if it feels not like it now. Our Maker works in mysterious ways.' 

'Do you really believe in that? That I'm some sort of Herald?'

Cullen steadies his gaze upon me, and everything else blinks away, melted snow on hot skin. 'In my life, I've learned that practically nothing makes sense until it all comes together. After a while, I decided to... trust in the process.' Trust in the process. The process shatters through me, a hammer upon my thoughts: my parents, enraged, the Circle, entrapped; cold and dark and lonely and pointless years, and Kitsuma, who had an entire life to live beyond those walls and would have thrown herself, fighting, to ensure every mage got that same privilege. It is hard to trust in something so violent as the process. Cullen clears his throat. 'It might help for you to talk to those who have travelled here. To see what motivates them to join your side.' He gestures towards the solitary man cutting wood across the grounds, and we begin to meander towards him. 'A band of chargers arrived just yesterday, headed by a rather large Qunari who calls himself Iron Bull. They travelled from a hideous place called the Storm Coast, and brought fifty-two fingers of Venatori agents,' Cullen grimaces. 'To prove their worth, they said.'