Dragon Age Inquisition: Their Wonderful Abnormality

Broken Hero

The shutters smashed against the stone walls and the Commander leapt from his seat, already reaching for his sword. But it was just the wind. He deflated, breathing shakily and wove around his desk to close it. Halting the shutters from their frantic bashing in gloved hands he stopped to listen to the great wailing of the storm. The charcoal sky rumbled and growled, laced with threads of silver lightning and his face was lashed briefly by a wave of need-like rain carried on a scream of wind.

 He slammed them closed and the howling died.

 Elsa was out there somewhere.

 Cullen half-collapsed, resting his forehead against the cold wood and he forced himself to block her from his mind... for tonight, at least.

His days since her departure had been plagued by incessant worry. He found himself in a glue of unproductivity, simply staring at a wall or a blank page, pen in hand. He lay awake, trying to envision her safety and worrying further at the fact he found it so hard. He planned, promised to deliver and failed. Everything reminded him of her, dragging his mind elsewhere. There had been a meeting, in the War Room and he had entered with the intentions to finally put himself to use. But then, his eyes wandered to the bar-like beam of light spilling through the small window and across the floor, dust dancing in the light growing rich in gold as the sun began to set.

 He had remembered how she used to wander, lose interest like a child and run her fingers through the golden light like a springtime brook. She would always cross to that window. She always looked longing.

 Perhaps he had too.

The thunder, close above him rumbled again and he was torn from his thoughts and back to the cold dampness of his room. A lone drip sounded its miserable beat in the corner and proved a perfect soundtrack to his current mood. Upstairs was so ruined, it was uninhabitable and the bed would be sodden by now so sleep was hardly an option, despite the unthinkable hour in the morning it was. He slammed the book shut and threw down his pen.

 He'd just have to go somewhere else. There were spare rooms on the guest wing still. There was even Hawke's old room but such a thing seemed slightly wrong. Slightly eerie.

The storm was terrible walking through it, head dipped against its howling as it batters and shrieks but the main hall was far worse. The storm echoed. It thrummed through the emptiness, cold and stony and Cullen was almost apprehensive to enter the chamber of strange sounds. There were doors lining the hall, little more than black obscurities in this kind of light, leading off to different wings and different rooms and at the far end sat the dais, on top of which, the shadow of a throne. For a split second that made his heartbeat skip lighting illuminated the room and the shadows grew darker then faded. They shifted and snuck about in the darkness it seemed but caught in their skulking by the sudden light. He swallowed.

 There was a door closest to the throne at the far end and Cullen knew this to be the entrance to Elsa's corridor. It was open a crack, a triangle of darkness seeping out from behind it and placing his hand on the bronze handle, it almost seemed to swing open without him pulling, silently, as though something was gently pushing from the inside. The wind sounded quieter up those stairs and the shadows seemed deeper. They beckoned; that, the Commander couldn't deny.

 He shouldn't go further. The thought of being up there without her was something that had never occurred to him. Until now. Now, he was seriously considering such a thing and he wasn't sure how that made him feel. Untrustworthy? Yes, it made him feel untrustworthy. Yet he took the first step upwards, scarcely thinking.

Strangely, the door closed behind him again with a soft click.

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