Another short story based off my playthroughs of Dragon Age Inquisition; as a longtime devotee of the Grey Wardens, I found Blackwall, his whole story and the revelation of his past a fascinating and really well done part of that game. While most of the female romance options in DAI (with the exception of Solas now) don't really appeal to me, I like to imagine that my Inquisitor and Blackwall had a strong, platonic friendship that was shattered to pieces by the revelation of his past, but slowly recovered a bit before the end of the game, so this is just my take on that. Not sure how good it is, but I'm happy with how it's turned out, and like a lot of my writing projects at the moment, if I don't draw a line under it and call it done, I never will.

Set in the same universe as From the Ashes.

Hope you enjoy!

"We came all this way, but now comes the day to bid you farewell"

The gelding snorted softly as Blackwall fastened his bags to the horse's saddle, making sure his supplies for the journey ahead were secure. It would be a long journey across Orlais back to the Western Approach and Adamant Fortress- or what was left of it after the siege- and he wanted to be sure he had all he required.

It had been three days since the final battle at the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Three days since the magister Corypheus had been slain, his last desperate effort to seize victory from the jaws of defeat and gain the apotheosis he coveted thwarted. Now that the celebrations of the victory were coming to an end, and the fact that the world had been saved from Armageddon was beginning to sink in for all present at Skyhold, now came the greater task…putting the broken world back together. 'A task we will all contribute to as much as we did to save Thedas, though the parts we play will all be different' Blackwall mused.

Leliana had already departed for Val Royeaux, accompanied by her daughter, Madame Vivienne, a good number of the Inquisition's soldiers, freshly returned from the Battle of the Arbor Wilds, and a significant number of the Inquisition's mage allies; though nothing official had been yet determined, it had been more or less taken for granted that their spymaster's position as the late Divine Justinia's protégé- as well as Inquisitor Lavellan's private but vocal support for Leliana's view that significant reforms were necessary to bring the Chantry forward and away from the near destruction that it had suffered thanks to centuries of adherence to near-sighted ambition and dogmatic tradition- would see the College of Clerics elect Leliana as the new Divine.

Solas had, of course, vanished without a trace in the battle's aftermath, while Cassandra, Dorian, Varric, Iron Bull and Cole had all departed as well, along with Cullen and fresh troops, though their missions were less permanent- they had gone to mop up any surviving demons that had slipped through the last remaining rifts, along with the last marauding bands of Venatori and Red Templars; with their cause defeated and their masters dead, such were roaming the countryside, eking out what meagre existence they could terrorising the people they'd sought to dominate before the Inquisition tracked them down and came to exact justice. Their foes always fought to the death in such engagements, seeming to prefer death by the sword over surrendering to face the hangman's noose at Skyhold.

Blackwall would have liked nothing more than to join them in hunting down those wretches, but he had his own duty to fulfil, one laid on him while he knelt in chains before the throne. With the war over and the forces that had rallied to the Inquisition's banner leaving to return to their original duties, Blackwall would join the Grey Wardens properly and return to Adamant to rebuild and restore both the Order's numbers and its reputation after the disaster with the false Calling and the blood rituals it had inspired. Also, based on the chatter and gossip Blackwall had heard from the men and women who would soon be his comrades-in-arms, while none of his bestial ilk had joined his cause, the Wardens feared Corypheus's near success might embolden the darkspawn to assault the surface in numbers not seen since the Fifth Blight, and that was something the Wardens wouldn't allow. 'One darkspawn did enough damage to this world' Blackwall mused. 'The last thing we need right now is an army of the bloody things making matters worse'.

Ensuring his armour was securely packed away in his saddlebags on the gelding's back, along with enough supplies for the journey to Adamant- the Wardens having already said they wanted to make as few stops as possible- Blackwall turned to collect the last few items, only to see his sword wasn't on the bench where he'd left it.

"Looking for this?" a voice he hadn't expected to hear chimed in his ear; he spun round to see Cyrene Lavellan leaning against one of the stable stalls where her own mount was kept, dressed in the usual shirt and breeches of silver-grey linen and calf-high boots she donned at Skyhold, holding his swordbelt in her hand, staring at him intently with her pale green eyes. Blackwall had seen so many of their enemies- and a few of their allies- quail under that unflinching state; even he had shrunk beneath it when the Inquisitor had had him dragged before her to answer for his sins. They stood in silence for several long moments- though she had spared his life, and they had fought on in most of the bloody final battles against Corypheus and his lackeys, the few conversations they'd exchanged that hadn't been related to strategy for the coming fights had been blunt and to the point, with none of the warmth, respect, camaraderie and even, to an extent, playful friendliness he'd enjoyed with the elven girl before.

"Leaving without saying goodbye?" the elven woman asked with an arched eyebrow, and Blackwall looked away, unsure of how to respond.

"I wasn't sure you would want to...let's face it, you made your thoughts about me quite clear after Val Royeaux..." Blackwall turned away at that, remembering the coldness that had saturated the conversations between them in the aftermath of his revelation to save Mornay. Though she had continued to be courteous, and often called upon Blackwall to fight wherever the pursuit of final victory had taken them, she, like most of his fellows in arms had been curt and direct when having to deal with him and the old nights of drinking and card games with the gang upon returning to Skyhold had, for him become a thing of the past. 'So to say I'm surprised to see you've come to see me off is an understatement...!'

"Well, I could hardly let you go without saying thank you for all you've done. You've given the better part of a year to our cause, not least of all helping me keep my head on my shoulders..." she noted with a rueful smile, both of them remembering the Temple of Mythal weeks before...

'Samson gave a bellowing roar of fury as the last of his Templars fell, speared through the throat by the blade at the end of Cyrene's staff. His frame and musculature swollen to twisted and gargantuan proportions by red lyrium, pieces of his ruined armour clinging to his limbs and chests by leather straps and fragments of belts and buckles that had survived the destruction Dagna's rune had wrought on it, but even with the greatest advantage to him destroyed, Samson was still a foe to be reckoned with; crossbow bolts jutted from his shoulders, arms and abdomen, but Samson paid them no heed. Solas hurled a magically summoned boulder that slammed into the Templar's chest; it barely slowed him down. Samson raised his blade and charged Cyrene, the Inquisitor managing to get the blade of her staff between the Templar's greatsword and its intended target of cleaving her head from her neck. Sparks flew as the blades clashed together, Cyrene wielding her staff like a spear as she wrenched the greatsword away to the side and pulled the blade back to stab at Samson's throat. The Templar reacted quicker than she anticipated however, a gauntleted fist darted out and seized the staff, wrenching it to one side before Samson, wielding his greatsword in one hand as if it weighed no more than a willow wand, brought the blade crashing down, spliting the staff in two. Cyrene staggered back, suddenly unbalanced and Samson didn't give her a second to recover, seizing her shoulder with his free hand, driving an armoured knee into her stomach and an elbow into her back as she doubled over to send her to her knees. Cyrene collapsed to the floor, choking for breath and Samson raised his sword over his head in both hands, about to bring it down for the killing blow...

"Get away from her, you bastard!" Blackwall bellowed as he charged Samson and drove the corrupted Templar back from the supine Inquisitor. The Warden's shield slammed into Samson's gut, sending him staggering back towards the lip of the river flowing through the temple's inner sanctum to fall away into a gaping crevasse below. Samson staggered back, snarling angrily at having been struck…but he took a step too far and lost his footing, his expression melting into one of terror as his arms frantically wind-milled, trying to regain his balance...in vain. There was a last horrific shriek as the ground at the waterfall's lip gave way, taking the overbalanced Templar commander with it. Blackwall raced over to look down in time to hear an ugly wet squelch and see the Elder One's general impaled on one of the stalagmites ringing the mouth of the cave into which the river flowed. There was several loud clangs as Samson's greatsword fell from nerveless fingers and fell away into the darkness below, ringing off stone as it bounced away into the void. Samson thrashed frantically to free himself, but his struggles steadily grew weaker and weaker as his corrupted lifeblood, darkened almost to black, poured forth from the wound, staining the stalagmite a deep red as the last of Samson's strength, the power Corypheus had imbued him with, bled away into the earth's hungry maw...

"Twice, as I recall" Cyrene added as they both recalled the second moment in the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes days ago...

A lash of red lightning struck Cyrene full in her chest as Corypheus lashed out with the full fury of his power, coruscating whips of magical energy blasting her barriers into nothing. The death of his monstrous pet and the realisation that he was finally vulnerable seemed to have sent the magister into a frenzied rage, uncaring of what happened to him now, determined only to see his enemies and the world dragged with him into oblivion if his ambition to rule was to be denied.

"LET IT END HERE! LET THE SKIES BOIL! LET THE WORLD BE RENT ASUNDER!"

As Cyrene collapsed beneath the onslaught, her barriers obliterated by the ferocity of Corypheus's attack, a defiant yell broke out; the magister whirled round to see Cole leaping down from his perch on high atop a ruined structure like a raptor, both his daggers aimed for their enemy's chest. The magister leapt back to avoid being skewered through the heart and seized Cole in mid-air by his right arm, holding the spirit-turned-human up to his face; it was difficult to tell which was regarding the other with more loathing.

"You dare come before me, demon?! I will bind you like I have so many before you!"

Blackwall got back to his feet, about to go to Cole's aid when he was stopped stock still as the boy did something that unequivocally proved his humanity...Cole spat defiantly in Corypheus's face.

"I am no demon...and you are NO GOD!" Cole shouted as he buried the dagger in his free hand into the elbow of the withered arm holding him. The boy dropped to the ground and rolled away; Corypheus tried to rip the blade out of his chest and raised his hand to the source of his power, no doubt seeking to seize more to scour Cole from existence, something went terribly wrong; instead of flowing into his hands, the power slipped from his grasp, exploding in his face and knocking Corypheus back, scoring deep wounds into his withered visage.

"Not like this!" Corypheus raged, his voice breaking as Blackwall saw the Elder One begin to succumb to an emotion he didn't think the magister had felt for centuries.

Panic.

"I have walked the halls of the Golden City, crossed the ages!" Corypheus's tone became ever more frantic as the crackle of blood-red lightning from the brass orb clutched in his fingers became ever greater, the magical electricity burning away skin and flesh to expose bone wherever he touched the metal's surface. Out of the corner of his eye, Blackwall saw Cyrene stagger back to her feet- her staff was a shattered ruin, her face streaked with ash, dirt and blood, her right arm hanging limply by her side, clearly broken- but despite the pain, she raised her left hand, the Mark upon its palm glowing emerald bright and her fingers clenched like claws. As he watched, like iron drawn to a lodestone, the orb struggled to reach her grasp.

Corypheus's eyes went wide with shock at the realisation and he clutched it tighter, heedless of the agony it must have caused as the lightning emitting from the artefact flayed his hands down to the bone.

"DUMAT! Ancient ones, I beseech you!" The Elder One pleaded to the leaden sky – magical knowledge, political deceit and military might had failed to yield him his prize and so now he turned to desperate prayer, the last refuge of the damned. It would have been easy to pity him, but Blackwall felt no such emotion. He might have empathised with the Elder One's need to make sense of the world he found himself in, but there was no excuse for all the magister had done, the death and destruction he had unleashed in the name of restoring the world back to a form easier for him to grasp. His demented dream had to end and here was where it would die, as it should have done a millennia before.

"If you exist- if you ever truly existed-AID ME NOW!"

But the Old Gods did not heed his prayers; with a sickening crunch of bone snapping as it slammed into his jaw with the force of a shot from a Qunari dreadnought's cannon, the orb flew from Corypheus's grasp into Cyrene's outstretched hand, who held it aloft to the heavens, sending a spear of emerald fire hurtling into the sky, lancing into the Breach and, with a deafening thunderclap and a wailing shriek of thwarted rage from the magister, sealing it shut for good. Letting the artefact fall from exhausted fingers, the elven girl stormed over to Corypheus and seized him by the chin, disregarding the garbled cry of pain that her none-too-gentle grasp on the broken bone elicited and spat a final curse into the face of her nemesis.

"You wanted into the Fade?!"

Blackwall raced to Cyrene's side as she finally collapsed from the exhaustion of the battle and the severity of her injuries, paying no heed to the screaming darkspawn magister as the rift the Inquisitor had opened within his skull excoriated him into ragged chunks of desiccated meat and blood-spattered bone that were dragged in gory fashion into the Fade. "Time to get out of here, lass!" Blackwall roared as he unceremoniously hoisted the barely conscious elf over his shoulder and ran for their lives, zigzagging from side to side as the wreckage of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, bereft of the magic that had been keeping it aloft with Corypheus's death, came crashing down all around them. Sprinting towards an archway past which Cassandra and Cole stood at the top of a flight of stone stairs leading down, urging him on as they waited for the floating ruins to reach a height from which they could safely jump back to solid ground, Blackwall vaulted over a fallen column and leapt forward, narrowly avoiding being crushed as a stone block the size of a bronto crashed into where he had been seconds before...

"Well I take it you're not complaining about the rescues..." Blackwall replied dryly and Cyrene shook her head with a soft smile and a self-deprecating laugh. Blackwall felt himself starting to smile as well, and when Cyrene turned to face him, there was a sense of the old camaraderie and friendship the pair had once had in the air.

"Blackwall...Thom, you have done terrible things, no one can, no one ever will deny that. Those sins will stain your hands for the rest of your days...but in that, you're no different from anyone in this world, certainly not me. And you have done so much good since then. It may be that one good act does not wash out all the bad. But similarly, a single bad act does not wash out all the good. And you have done so much good; you showedthe Grey Wardens the error of their ways and freed them from slavery to the evil they were created to destroy. You saved the peoples of Crestwood, Emprise du Lion and the Emerald Graves from slavery, torture and death at the hands of the Red Templars. Countless Inquisition soldiers still have their lives thanks to you; there are many across Thedas who would call you a hero".

"And what do you call me?" he asked. Cyrene looked thoughtful for a time, remaining silent as she considered her answer before replying in an earnest tone that told him that he hadn't completely lost her because of his past sins.

"I call you a good man, one who recognised what he'd done wrong and did his utmost to right the scales however he could, something all men should do and more than most have ever done" she insisted and Blackwall's rugged features couldn't help but crack into a smile. He hadn't expected the compliment- it was far more than he deserved, but he was glad of it regardless.

Taking the sword that Cyrene offered to him, Blackwall made sure his last possession were secure upon the horse's back and then, turning round, extended a hand to shake with the Inquisitor. She did one better, embracing him in a comradely hug that clearly conveyed the fact she was glad of the time of their association and the help he'd given her, both as a warrior, a Warden and a friend.

"I wish you well, no matter what comes next"

"As do I" Blackwall replied, certain she would need luck but confident she could manage in the new world she'd help create. "I cannot say what will come next, or where I will end up in the world, but if...if I do carry on after my arrival at Adamant, if the day ever comes when you need me, either as Blackwall the Warden or Rainer the soldier, just send word and my sword arm will be at your disposal as ever"

With that, Blackwall mounted and dug his heels into the horse's side, trotting to the gatehouse, where the remaining Wardens at Skyhold waited to depart. He paused and turned to look back at the stables, raising his hand in a parting gesture of farewell to Cyrene Lavellan, stood framed in the doorway, who returned the gesture, then rode out of Skyhold for the last time, riding into an uncertain future, like all of Thedas, but surely better than that which had come before it.

I bid you all a very fond farewell...

Story note: I know Samson doesn't die in the game, but personally, I was never too happy with him being taken prisoner for judgement (I personally feel that like Calpernia, Samson shouldn't have allowed himself to be taken alive). Plus, that is what happened more or less in my very first playthrough (Samson charged to the edge of that chasm that's there when you reach the Well of Sorrows, and a couple of attacks were enough to knock him over the edge, sending down the hole with about 2/3 of his health left and ending the boss fight, and I sincerely doubt the Inquisition would waste time after the battle trying to fish him out when they have no idea how deep it goes, so that was just my attempt to logically explain that in a better fashion).