Dragon Age Inquisition: Their Wonderful Abnormality

A Dancer in Scarlet

Elsa Trevelyan gnawed her lip.

Tonight was the night she must survive the Winter Palace.

And those hours grew only closer.

Alone, nervous and restless she had relentlessly paced the room over and over, crossing to the great glass doors and back, the scarlet garment ever in her sight. But only just. A red ghost, lingering in the corner of the room.

She threw herself down on the four-poster bed, the rich fabrics sinking beneath her as her hands grasped her hanging head by her hair which was freshly washed and combed, smelling of sweet, fragrant oils. In fact, her entire body had been scrubbed raw with the perfumes in a bath slightly too cold.

They had docked this morning, leaving the Archer and her crew to await the Inquisitors return. Some noble had been all too happy to accommodate the Inquisitor and her trusted companions with the right strings pulled and, for most of the day, she had wandered his sprawling rooms, corridors and gardens alone, happy in the solitude she knew would be short-lived this time. But the day soon turned to a chalky dusk and as the sun settled on the horizon, so did the dread.

Elsa had lived the days of balls and parties and they had been the darkest days she had ever known. Reopening wounds scarcely healed felt like a punishment in itself. Although, perhaps a punishment she deserved. Wine glasses clinking reminded her of anger, fluttering fans reminded her of hurting, beautiful dresses reminded her of the nights she had spent slumped in their creased, bloodied skirts, eyes stinging with tears and head pounding too hard to bear any more.

But this dress.

This dress was undeniably the most beautiful dress she had ever seen.

She peered through her hair to see it once more; an invisible lady hanging from the wardrobe, calm, cold, scarlet.

Elsa pulled her thin satin gown around her naked body and crept back over to the fiery garment so strangely alluring in its almost dead, shell-like form. Without a body to wear it, arms through its sleeves, or legs beneath its skirts it felt like looking at a dead butterfly; beautiful but lifeless. And yet, any second, you almost expect it to flutter away, perhaps after mistaking the nudge of the wind for life.

Elsa reached out attentively to touch the silken skirts. "Statement", Josephine had declared at Elsa's sceptical glance when she had been presented the dress. "Statement and grace."

The dress came with an abundance of jewellery; simple, gold arm bands, a handful of bangles that sung and chimed with movement, hairpins studded with amber and ruby, a delicate collar of filigree gold, the lattice so intricate you had to peer to see the individual patterns.

Elsa had tried to forget why they were gifted to her. She had to view them as armour, her usual leather attire that smelt of pine and horses. But there had always been something particularly sinister about a murderer in a beautiful dress.

"What makes you so scared of it?"

Elsa didn't even flinch at the sudden voice.

"What scares me is what it means... what it's meant in the past."

There was a pause in which the Inquisitor's Spymaster sauntered through the doorway where she leant and crossed to stand beside her next to the scarlet dress.

"I understand." Leliana told her softly.

"You know about my past, don't you?" Elsa asked her, so oddly soothed in the Spymaster's presence. Leliana was a strange woman of beautiful, fair features and a mannerism about her as smooth and as silent as black silk.