Chapter 48: Eyes of Wolves - Separated

“Rav!” Zacky called out in distress.

Raviathan put Justen down with a quick kiss on his little cousin’s head. Zacky cried out again, his tears evident in voice. Children ran around him as they played their games. Shining hair and bright eyes contrasted with the muted colors of their clothes and the mud-covered misery around them. Their laughter mocked the alienage’s despair, kept light the hearts of those who heard. The vhenadahl rustled when a chill wind escaped over the alienage walls. The tree reached high enough that it’s tallest branches rivaled the nearby buildings, its white, blue, and indigo paint glowing with life. Sunlight trickled through the leaves to make lace-like patterns on the ground.

Tear tracks streamed down Zacky’s hollowed cheeks. Raviathan made a mental note to talk to Venri about the children’s care. Many of them were looking thinner than he remembered. “What’s wrong, little bird?”

All the children wanted affection, but the orphans were starved for touch. Given the chance, they clung to him like squirrels to a tree. Zacky hiccuped, shifting to settle into Raviathan’s lap. A fresh scrape bloodied the child’s knee. “They won’t let me play.”

“Why not?” Raviathan held him tight, the child folded in his arms. They got so little attention, the orphans. Justen sat next to them, resting his head on Zacky’s back.

“It’s because he’s smaller,” Justen said. “When we were playing lines, he couldn’t break through. He got pushed down and hurt his knee.”

“Is that true?”

“So what if I’m smaller?” Zacky’s chest jerked in a sob.

“That’s right,” Raviathan said, kissing Zacky’s soft hair. “So what. That’s the smartest thing you could say, little bird. We’re smaller than humans, right?” Zacky nodded, his little head tucked into Raviathan’s chest. “But have you seen their flat eyes? Or those ugly red bumps they get on their faces? Or those silly ears of theirs? Heh. I’d much rather be an elf. You know what? Next time, sneak under their arms.” Zacky gave a little laugh. “You can only do that once because they’ll start to expect it. So you know what you do then? Tickle them. Right under their arms. Just like this!”

Zacky shrieked, squirming around in Raviathan’s lap. Instead of sending Zacky back to play with the rest, Raviathan made up a story for the two boys. Tales of Hairy the Werewolf always entertained Zacky. The poor child had been born underweight then left alone when his mother died of alcohol poisoning, but his will and determination touched Raviathan and gave the boy a special place in his heart. Odd what touched him. It wasn’t the most talented or the prettiest, it was the ones who tried the hardest. They were his favorite of the children.

More shrieks came from the children, high and piercing. The sound caught his attention. The difference between laughter and panic could hard to discern, but this had a tone he wasn’t used to hearing.

Red-headed Aenera ran around the corner first followed by a half dozen others. Raviathan’s heart skipped a painful beat at the look of fear on their faces. No game. The children were terrified.

Swinging Zacky under the platform, Raviathan ran towards whatever danger lurked behind the building.

A werewolf bounded around the corner, his long limbs devouring space as he ran. Long talons swung out. A scream wrenched from the child who spun from the brutal strike. Long gashes brutalized the tender flesh down to his broken spine. The child howled as his blood pooled in the furrows of mud.

No!

A second werewolf came. Fangs bared, the two continued in their vicious onslaught. Raviathan screamed, unable to stop the carnage. His legs wouldn’t move fast enough. He had no weapon, no way to stop the horror before him.

Serrena, an extraordinarily beautiful child with a wreath of lustrous sun-colored hair, cried as fangs shredded her shoulder. Blood ran down her dress in a river. Her azure eyes met his, begging for help, terrified with pain. He could do nothing to stop the werewolf from tearing her body apart. Ropes of pink intestines clung to the werewolf’s claws.

Raviathan screamed as if he was dying.

He woke with a start. Raviathan could feel his heart beating at a pace he associated with battle. He lay in his tent, gulping in frosty air that burned his lungs from cold. Maker, he hated this forest. His heart took a good few minutes to relax into its normal, steady pace. Sleep would be long in coming.

Instead of lying in the tent with his mind tumbling about, Raviathan pulled on his cold boots and cloak to go sit by the dying camp fire. To his annoyance, not only was the fire down to a few embers, the person on guard duty was missing. Probably off to relieve their bladder, but the fire should never have gotten to this pathetic state. Raviathan tossed a few pinecones into the fire pit, two logs on top, and let his magic slowly heat the fire so that it looked natural when the person on guard duty returned.

Raviathan ran his fingers through his hair and sat with his head in his hands. This whole quest had been a debacle from the start. They couldn’t work together as a team, everyone constantly sniped at each other, and this mission was now bordering on the ludicrous. He felt an utter fool leading the insane.

Blast these people! Why couldn’t they, just once, follow orders without glares or questions? They chose to be here, so why did they push him at every opportunity? Bad enough he knew he had no idea what the right course of action was, did the rest have to keep reminding him?

Shoulders tense with resentment, Raviathan raised his head back up to measure the growth of the fire. And just where in the Maker’s name was their guard? Did that moron leave off again chasing some wisp to his death? Would serve him right.

The fire popped but shed no more light than before. Raviathan scowled at it. His magic should have it at a comfortable if small blaze by now. He added more force to his magic, but nothing. What in the world? A scrape caught his attention, and he looked up into the shadows of the forest.

Dozens of pairs of eyes stared back from the shadows. Raviathan went still as a chill numbed his body. The eyes caught the low firelight and reflected it back in red and white glows. The werewolves?

“Ambush!” Raviathan reached for his weapons to find nothing but air. He hadn’t donned his armor or weapons. Defenseless. “Wake up! Ambush!”

Silence from the tents.

From the forest, the eyes moved, coming closer, stalking him. Maker’s ass, where were the others? Raviathan kicked at the closest tent to no avail.

A low growl, almost too low to hear, vibrated through the thin air. Raviathan’s gut clenched in fear. Where was everyone? “Venger!”

Escape. Where? Climb a tree?

Raviathan yelled for help as the eyes came closer.

Movement flashed at the corner of his eye, then long, yellow teeth sank into Raviathan’s face.

Raviathan woke with a gasp, his body jerking. Next to him Venger let out a little whine, feet twitching in his sleep. Paranoid, Raviathan grasped his sword and poked his head out of his tent. Sten sat by the ash pit of their campfire, ignoring the drizzle. Without looking at him, Sten said, “It was a dream. Go back to sleep.”

Sweat chilled Raviathan, making his clothes uncomfortable as if he had worn them for too long without a wash. He ducked back in, lay his sword next to him, and curled up on his side. A dream like that would have kept him up for hours, but they were all too exhausted to miss out on any sleep, bad as sleep could be. In a few minutes, his mind shut down.

The sound of children playing drifted like music in the alienage.

“Rav,” Zacky called out in distress.

Rain continued to fall as it had for the last three days, numbing them all until warmth became a memory. Though in mid-spring, the land remained in the grip of the frozen southern winds. Raviathan glared at the cliff’s edge as if it personally insulted him. The wind howled up from the mountain side, pressing against him like an invisible hand, sending the rain sideways. The forest spread out like a blanket below them, showing off all shades of verdant hues hidden behind veils of grey rain. Raviathan would have reveled in the new sights and beauty of this land if it wasn’t constantly trying to kill him.

Even with the Elder Tree’s branch, the forest didn’t open for them as it did for the werewolves. The terrain no longer changed on them, and unnatural mists didn’t turn them around anymore, but the forest continued to be a challenge.

They started down the trail and found the narrow path in grave disrepair. Sections had been weathered away or had boulders blocking all but a hand’s worth of walking space. The path curved around crumbling precipices that had Raviathan’s heart skipping in staccato from the height, or fell in sudden dips that exposed sheer stretches of unforgiving granite. Thickets of saplings hindered movement and obscured passage. Nearly every step reminded Raviathan of how easily a person could be broken. He kept having visions of one of his companions crushed at the bottom of a sheer cliff’s edge, bones broken, blood pooling, organs ruptured, and in agony while their life didn’t pass quickly enough to escape the pain.

With his back pressed tight to the cliff’s edge and a treacherous drop of hundreds of feet just past his toes, Raviathan thought that maybe he didn’t want to be a bear. Morrigan’s bird form appealed to him more and more as they traversed the terrain. At odd moments he thought of jumping off the cliff, of spreading wings for flight, but his mind shut down in a clamoring ‘no!’ Was it normal to think of jumping off a cliff? The strange impulse wouldn’t leave him alone as he finished inching across the thin path.

Alistair shrieked when loose stones caused him to skid towards the edge of the deadly fall. He found purchase long enough for the rest to wrestle him back to safety.

“You scream like a girl,” Leliana said. The too high giggle in her tone hinted at frayed nerves.

“Just don’t try to dress me up in heels. I don’t think I have the legs for it.”

“Don’t be silly, Alistair. While I’m sure your legs would be well turned out in high heels, a pair of duckbill shoes is more to keeping your style.”

He snorted at the comment. “Less likely to break an ankle, I’ll bet.”

Whatever Leliana would have said was lost at the resounding crack that shook the mountain beneath their feet. They had a frozen second of shared horror when the stone beneath them collapsed.

Alistair didn’t move. He couldn’t remember what it felt like not to hurt, but this was a whole new level. He felt like every single bit of him had bruises on top of bruises.

“Alistair? I don’t suppose you could get off me?”

“Oh! I ... uh.” So that shifting rock underneath him was Leliana. He did his best, rocking to get some momentum since flexing his muscles to move caused searing agony. He gritted his teeth, held his breath, and shifted. With her help, he rolled to his side. Alistair didn’t dare breathe for a moment as his abused ribs screamed bone-snapping pain at him.

No moving. No more moving would be nice.

“Sorry ... Leliana. You alright?”

“I think so. A bit bruised but no more than expected, given what happened.”

Didn’t that just describe them all?

“And you?”

“No worse than usual.” Alistair was not a fan of what ‘usual’ meant lately. “What happened? Where are the others? Where are we for that matter?”

Cautiously, Leliana sat up. Alistair could hear by the sound of her armor scraping against stone and the change from where her voice came from. Otherwise, all was blackness that started to flatten out his senses. “A rock slide, I think. I don’t know. And in a cave of some sort? Rather hard to judge in the dark, but it feels like raw stone around us.”

“Yeah.” Alistair shifted a bit, and to his relief, found out that one of the sharper pains he had incurred in the fall was actually a fist sized stone he was lying on. If only that were true for the rest of his pains. “So, since we fell in there’s got to be a hole or something to get out.”

“Mmm ... that would be true assuming that the falling rock did not block our entrance.”

“Oh, Maker. I wish you hadn’t said that.” Slowly, achingly, Alistair tried to sit up. He remembered sliding, closing his eyes and curling up to minimize the damage, and falling. Rocks hit him from all sides. He remembered slamming into a rough wall then bouncing off to be hit by more rocks. As if the demon trees hadn’t been bad enough, he didn’t want to fight sentient rocks.

When he had mostly straightened to a sitting position, his head smacked the slanted rock that was their roof. “Ow!”

“Careful.”

No kidding. Alistair felt around to gage the space they were in. His shoulder protested the movement, so he did what he could with his less injured arm. When a warm, soft rock jerked away, he retracted his hand as if he had been burnt. “Sorry.”

“It’s ... fine.”

Noooo, not awkward at all. “So,” he drawled, “you come here often?”

Leliana made a sound like a held-in snort. “This is not the time for jokes.”

Really? I think it’s the perfect time for jokes. What had he touched? Her leg? “Just trying to find out what kind of space we have here. See if there’s a way out.” If only they could see.

There was a little sound, like a shaky breath, or maybe a sob. He went very still. “Leliana?”

Was she claustrophobic?

“I’m fine.”

Yeah, right. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll get out of this.”

He heard a sniff. “Of course.” She took in another shaky breath. “You’re right. Of course will find some way out.”

He slid his hand over the stone floor, tentatively, and found her hand. When their hands met, she squeezed his tightly. They sat like that, in the darkness where time didn’t matter, and took what comfort they could in not being alone. Alistair closed his eyes, which didn’t make any difference to his vision but made him feel calmer, somehow. With his eyes open, he felt as if he was searching for answers he would never find, but with his eyes closed, he could be quieter. He could listen, offer comfort without feeling awkward as he normally did.

With closed eyes, he made this space one that was more like being inside his own head where he didn’t have to worry about the judgments of others. He slid his hand up Leliana’s arm using touch as his guide, then rested his arm around her shoulders. He drew her close and felt her give in. She rested her head on his shoulder and released the silent tears she had been holding back.

“It’ll be alright, Leliana. We’ll make it through.” On impulse he kissed the top of her head.

“Do you think the others are still alive?”

Oh, Maker, but that was a scary thought. He wouldn’t cry for Morrigan, but she had probably flown off leaving the rest of them to the fate of the rocks. If she was the only other one to survive, Alistair would call all to quits and book passage to the Free Marches. Sten he would be sorry to see go. The giant wasn’t what he had expected given the Chantry’s stories. And while he didn’t like Rav, his full feelings too complicated to be put name to, he would take that hostile elf over being the last Warden. Anything but that. The Free Marches sounded better and better, given his options. “I don’t know, to be honest. But if we survived, I’m sure a few if not all of the others did as well.”

Leliana remained quiet save for a few sniffs. “Should we wait for rescue?”

At that question, Alistair started to fidget. Even in the peace of his own mind, the question forced him to make decisions, pushing him out of his comfortable passivity. “I, uh, perhaps we should, um, maybe get a sense of how big this cave is?”

“You’re probably right.” After a final sniff, Leliana straightened. “Let me. I believe it is easier for me to move about.”

What she didn’t say is that Alistair tended towards gracelessness, especially compared to Leliana, and Alistair was thankful for the lack of admonition. He let her shuffle about and considered, not for the first time, what training Leliana did have. She moved with a similar grace to the elf, their footfalls silent as shadows when they chose. If that wasn’t suspicious enough, the Chantry wasn’t known for their archers, either. Thus far Leliana had shut down every one of his cautious attempts to learn more.

Trying to make himself smaller to keep from interfering with Leliana’s search, Alistair hunched in as best he could with old and new aches throbbing at the abuse he had done to his body. Injuries were nothing new, but the extent of them had never been close to what he endured over the last few months. Alistair smiled in the dark as he thought back on wanting to be in the battles with the rest of the Wardens. That wish had been granted, but the cost of it brought a familiar ache of loss. His chest clenched as if a giant hand squeezed his sternum. Time was helping, but Maker did it ever hurt.