And Stay

Chapter 1

Nathaniel Howe stared at the creature before him. He could not wholly deny it humanity; beneath the helm that seemed a part of its very skull was a face that had once, he figured, belonged to a woman. But the lips were drawn tight in death, and rot and wrongness rolled from its tall, broad frame.

Once a woman, yes. Now, however, it was only a possessed corpse, a revenant of the nastiest order, locked away in chains and bonds that even a fully manifested demon could not hope to break.

Commander Surana stood beside him, arms crossed over her narrow chest. "Well," she said, watching as the revenant began to hiss and pull against its lyrium-inlaid manacles. It fought the lingering paralysis with spastic jerks. "Have you decided?"

"There must be somebody better suited to this," Nathaniel said, refusing to fidget or step away. Even now, showing weakness to his father's murderer- executioner, he corrected himself, and with that correction stopped that track of thought where it stood.

"Care to name them?" the willowy mage asked, turning to look up at him fully. Her dark hair curled wildly, out of its customary ties, and her brown eyes held violet around the large pupils. She was unsettling even without the tattoos, a shade lighter than her golden skin, tracing fierce lines up and down her cheeks and forehead. "Anders is long gone, as is Justice. Velanna is missing. And I won't send the new mageling Sigrun found wandering around near the Wilds on her last expedition - that's just a recipe for an abomination."

"Perhaps we should just put it off, then, commander."

"And lose the opportunity? Oh, no."

Surana turned back to the revenant, which watched her with unblinking eyes. Its fingers jerked, but she did not follow closer. No getting skewered this time around. Nathaniel idly touched at his side where the creature's great blade had nearly pierced him all the way through. Magic was a wonderful thing; he'd barely have a scar.

"I've had to fight more than enough of these things, and yet none of my books and none of the Weisshaupt Wardens know anything about them beyond legend."

"You've killed enough of them, what does it matter?" he huffed.

"I would like," she said, slowly, as if speaking to a small child, "to know how they are made. In order to stop them from being made."

"I'm sure you will be very successful in your campaign to burn all of our dead. After all, if Andraste could get them all this far-" He felt a crackle of power up his spine and gritted his teeth, growling. "Enough!"

"Then come with me, Howe. Or I'll make it an order, and we'll see if you're up to a new round of insubordination."

His scowl turned to a grimace. Back when the immediate danger of talking darkspawn faded, he had found himself back in the same damn prison where he'd met her. At least she hadn't pushed him about training his nephew from birth to be a Warden since, and he had left a respectable scar on her left cheek.

And she hadn't kept it from scarring.

"Fine," he said at last. "But you know how much I hate the Fade."

"And if I offer you the chance, once we're done, to stay here in Denerim on leave a little while longer…?"

"Just do it," he said, and hoped his relief at her offer wasn't too apparent.

From the way she smiled, he didn't think he'd been too successful. "Let me just go get my lyrium," she said, a delighted trill in her voice. The King had given the Wardens a great gift of lyrium, a portion of the new unblocked trade between Ferelden and Orzammar. The Chantry, of course, wasn't particularly happy about the whole situation, but Surana rarely seemed to think about what the Chantry thought anymore. Thank the Maker she isn't a politician, he thought, then passed a hand over his head, smoothing his hair down.

They had come to Denerim to formally accept the gift, with him as Surana's acting second. He hadn't been terribly surprised when the attacks began; trouble and danger followed at Surana's heels like an adoring puppy. Undead, a few arcane horrors - the remnants, she had suggested, of the battle for Denerim a year ago during the Blight. The question why now hadn't passed his lips.

The woman, after all, was usually infuriatingly correct, even in the most unlikely circumstances.

It was routine clearing, snapping old bones and burning bodies. Even the revenant, dragging an ornate, heavy sword and batting aside their assisting guard like flies, was almost expected. It was either pure luck or skilled planning that Surana had hit the thing with a series of spells that rendered it paralyzed, disoriented, and quiescent.

Where the shackles had come from, he wasn't sure he should ask. A questioning look had only gotten him a little covert smile.

And now he was in the same room with a leashed revenant, all six heavily muscled feet of it, waiting to go into the Fade and track down its origin. Its purpose.

It just wants to kill us all. Isn't that what all demons want?

The eyes were ragged pits with a light seeming to burn from within, little pinpoint pricks of sight. Could it see him, the form of him? Or was he only a sack of meat, to be slain and devoured? He watched as the beast slowed its frenzied thrashing, and instead began methodically testing each link.

It was down to its ankles by the time Surana returned, bearing a basin of the sparkling, silvery-blue liquid. It was odorless, but his nose twitched all the same at its presence, throat going dry. Maybe the brig isn't such a bad idea-

"I don't have to drink that, do I?" he croaked out.

"Absolutely not," she said with a cheerful grin, setting it down on a small table. "Just come over here, place your hands over it." While he moved, grudgingly, to obey, she slipped up to the revenant and reached up a hand, plucking one half-rotted strand of black hair from beneath its helm. "There we go."

"What in the Void are you doing?" he asked as he fought to keep his hands from trembling over the basin.

"If we don't have an anchor, we're liable to end up anywhere, you know." She sauntered back, dropping the strand into the dish of lyrium. "We'll probably be separated when we arrive, though. Keep an eye out - for me, and for our friend here."

Nathaniel took a deep breath. "Right."

"Ready?" Her eyes glinted in the torchlight of the dungeon chamber.

He looked to the corpse and met its staring gaze. "As I'll ever be."