Dragon Age Inquisition: Their Wonderful Abnormality

The Name of Inquisitor

It was nightfall when they reached the castle and beneath its starry cloak, path lit by the few remaining candles, the weary refugees trudged across the great bridge, voices low. It was incredibly dark but beyond the thin stone bridge and Elsa could feel the endlessness howl beneath her. From up in the mountains Solas had pointed to a tiny collection of miniature stone towers, not this monumental fortification that watched over them silently as they passed through its gates.

 Skyhold.

 Elsa craned her head back to see the towers, black beneath the stars, wind whispering around its battlements as if disturbed by their entrance. A horse behind them whickered, rearing against its bonds, hooves flailing. Elsa wondered what had spooked it.

“I wonder how many years it’s been sleeping.” She murmured, not expecting the reply that came from the mage a few paces behind her.

 “It’s changed many hands,” Solas said lowly, looking up too, cloth scarf tightly around his neck against the night’s chill. His staff gave a comforting wooden click as he stepped. “It’s known many stories too.”

 Elsa shivered despite the furs slung around her.

 “I’d better live up to standards then.”

The vein of people seeping into Skyhold was more than she had imagined. Had she truly saved so many? They came through the gates in a slow, exhausted trickle, collapsing upon their furs and blankets as soon as they found space. The courtyard was big too, if a little ruined. Trees susurrated at their entrance, their branches bare black fingers. The overgrown grass would have whispered back if it hadn’t been for the stiff, heavy frost. Torches around the fort had been discovered and lit, relighting a small golden heart in the mountains. Here a curse, there a laugh, slowly the vein of people fed life back into the stone walls, awoke it again.

 Elsa couldn’t believe that perhaps this was down to her…

 “The night is long, and the path is dark.” She whispered as quietly as she could muster. “Look to the sky, for one day soon… the dawn will come.”

 She looked up. Stars, steadfast and silent looked right back.

 “You did it! We made it! You’re the hero!”

Elsa whirled around only to stagger backwards, wincing at the glaring light of a lantern, upholstered close to her face.

 “Woa, sorry!” Came a playful city accent as the lantern was lowered, relieving Elsa’s eyes who had grown rather accustomed to the cool darkness.

 “You trying to blind me?” She asked snatching the lantern and blowing out the candle, leaving them back in that soothing darkness. “I need these eyes for… doing things. Important things.”

 “What like… looking at the sky and talking to yourself like an utter lunatic?”

 “Exactly, Sera. See? I have bigger, grown-up things to deal with now.”

The city elf grinned impishly, a row of slightly crooked teeth glinting in the distant candlelight. Freckles peppered her nose and cheeks and bangs of short, tangled hair hung about her face that bounced when she moved. They had met in the oddest manner and perhaps that’s why Elsa had taken to her so.

 “Yeah, yeah.” Sera looked up too, following her gaze “Shite. It is big though isn’t it? The sky n’ that.”

 “Huge.” Elsa breathed with a laugh. “And we’re so tiny.”

Sera frowned, getting bored of the sky and pulling herself up to sit on the wall Elsa leaned on, overlooking the lower courtyard and its candle-lit cluster of exhausted yet thankful refugees.