My Love

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  Lifting up the false bottle of ashes, Cullen plucked out her journal from below it. He'd read it all, every word, even tried to decipher the ones she'd scribbled over. Oftentimes it helped to see her thoughts, to almost consult her words as if she was the chant of light or something equally as blasphemous. He'd taken to hunting out the books she'd mention, most of them dry reading on magical theory. Plowing through her old studies took focus, and more than a few on theories of time dilation were abandoned by the third paragraph. He was surprised to find that on top of the scholarly tomes, she also had an appetite for adventure stories. They weren't the dark, angst ridden tales that proved popular in the aftermath of the blight and the mage rebellion. No, Lana seemed to adore books where the hero was good, the villain was bad, and everyone lived happily ever after. Oddly, Cullen found himself smiling while reading them - regardless of how trite they might have been. As if the simple story could wash away his pains for a few hours at least.

  Stored along the shelf with her not-ashes were her favorite books in random order. On occasion, his soldiers would catch him with one and inquire about it, but Cullen felt embarrassed to explain he was sharing his reading with a dead woman. Then, one day, he spotted Addley consuming the same tale of the Serpent Empress and he stopped. During the darker days he'd seek comfort in Lana's words, but even those seemed to break. He hadn't read her journal in nearly a month. A film of dust coated the cover from his blunder. Gentle wiping it against the edge of his coat, Cullen held up the poor thing. She hadn't taken the time to properly bind it, and Maker knew he wasn't gentle when it came to such things. Pages threatened to scatter from a soft breeze, but he knew how to get them into proper order even without dates. He'd read the entire book so often he could recite every line, remember every punctuation mark -- all of it but the last entry. The words burned into his soul, but he couldn't bring himself to face them again.

  Honor broke from gnawing upon her leg and barked at the door. Still holding the journal close, Cullen shook his head at the dog, "Quiet."

  The barking ceased and Honor rolled her big brown eyes at him. Wagging her stump of a tail, she contorted her entire face into becoming the most pathetic creature he'd ever seen. "Maker's breath," Cullen sighed. "That won't work on me." Despite his insistence, he reached into his pocket and unearthed a strip of dried meat. Tossing it to Honor, she bounced up on her paws and caught it in the air. The meat vanished down her throat without any of her teeth getting involved. "You're liable to choke that way," he said scritching along her head.

  A knock bounced against his door. Most likely Addley back with the report. He'd been enjoying her company as of late, it was true, but Cullen wasn't in the frame of mind to face whatever she seemed to want from him. Still, the chantry waited for no man. Turning back to his desk to grab a few missives and give the illusion he was working, he shouted, "Enter!"

  "I heard from a few of the best saluters you were up here and...you have a dog. Are they giving out dogs now at the Winter Palace? I never got a dog."

  Cullen flipped on his heels and his jaw nearly hit the floor. The blighted King of Ferelden stood in his doorway. Instead of dressed in his armor or even gilded finery, the man gave the appearance of an average merchant fresh off the road. Abandoned on the side of the road, more like. Dirt muddied up his sandy locks and face giving him an even more common appearance than normal. "What are...your Highness, what are you doing here?" He shook off the shock of having a king stride into his office, and an explanation for this sudden appearance burned in his brain. "If you've come to dismantle us further, you're too late. The decision was made and approved by the council."

  The king of Ferelden dipped to a knee and took on a full face slobber from Honor. Cullen probably should have called her off, but it did clear off the dirt at least. Leaning back from the dog, Alistair's brow wrinkled in an apparently well known confusion, "What?"

  "You, all of Ferelden, were braying for the dismantling of the Inquisition. I assume you've come to try and..."

  Alistair waved his hands scattering away Cullen's thoughts. "Yes, yes, that bureaucratic posturing, big bad pompous stuff. Teagan was handling it. Said it was done, anyway."

  Cullen crossed his arms and stepped around behind his desk. He was off kilter from a king of all things in his office unannounced. But being behind his own seat of power gave him a strength that something told him he'd need to get through this. "You seem to not even care about the outcome despite Ferelden calling for the Exalted Council in the first place. In spite of the years of service we've provided to you, Orlais, all of thedas itself."

  "Yeah," he scratched the back of his ear, and shrugged, "then you nearly went and started a war with the Qunari. And almost blew up my palace. Kinda hard to wipe that one away unnoticed."

  Cullen growled and he noticed Honor matching it, the hair along the back of her nape rising. He cooed to her, and the stance broke, but she wasn't as ecstatic to see the king anymore. Alistair waved both hands in the air in a strange mea culpa, "This isn't what I meant to get into. Qunari bad, invasion bad, stopping it good. Miniature flags all around. That's not why I'm here. Mind if I sit?"

  It felt idiotic, the king asking if he could sit. Kings didn't do that, they sat where they pleased and you rushed to find a chair to catch the royal butt before it hit the ground. This man was infuriating at every level. Cullen waved his hand to the empty chair and Alistair slipped into it. Rather than sit himself, Cullen placed both hands upon his desk and leaned down.

  "If you do not care about the Inquisition breaking apart and joining with the chantry...?"

  "Just what Leliana needs by the way, to be even scarier."

  Sighing at his mention of Divine Victoria, Cullen continued, "What are you doing here?"

  Alistair knocked his knuckles against the desk in a cheery greeting as if he expected someone to open it up from inside. "I don't know if she mentioned it, but a few years back Lanny gave me her phylactery."

  Cullen tightened from her mention, and even more so the king's preferred name for her. "She did tell me, actually."

  "Oh?" Alistair's head snapped up. "Interesting, didn't think she was the type to go blabbing her secrets to templars. Anyway, after carefully securing it from the chantry, Lanny..."

  "She told me the chantry gave it to her," Cullen interrupted.

  "Yeah 'gave.' Like they were going to turn in their trump card without a major fight. But she didn't want to worry about random templars coming for her in the night, especially if politics went egg shaped. You know the drill, Banns band together, bribe a few sisters or a mother to get her phylactery, hire a lyrium addicted templar and then set a trap to take her down."

  Cullen glanced down at the desk trying to piece together his thoughts. She hadn't been explicit about it, and they were rather in flagrante at the time. Not to mention she had no way of knowing how he'd react to the truth, even he was uncertain if... "What is your point?"

  "As I said, I've had her phylactery for a few years."

  As well as every damn thing she ever touched. The king of Ferelden, despite Lana banning him from her life, swooped in to snap away all her personal belongings. Relics of the Hero were stored in a glass display locked around her statue in Denerim. Leliana described it to him once before she moved to Val Royeaux. Cullen never had the stomach to visit it.

  "She's been gone for two years," Cullen said.

  Alistair nodded, dirt scattering from his hair onto the desk. "Yeah, two years," his words fell down into his chest, all flippancy drained as each day of her death wore raw against his sentence. "Funny thing about phylacteries. I'd never used one before to chase mages around, but I'd been put on cleaning duty before. You know, go through the storehouse and toss out all the old ones. The...uh, dead ones."

  Cullen threw his head back and glared at the ceiling. He was about to beg for a point to be found somewhere, anywhere. But tossing a king out of his office would reflect poorly upon him and the recently rebranded Inquisition.


  Shifting on his side, Alistair's fingers dug into a satchel wound about his hip. "The dead ones, they stop being all bright red. You know."

  "Yes, I know," Cullen glowered, his ire building against the man.Maker, what did Lana ever see in him?

  "Funny thing." Alistair placed his hands upon the desk, then removed his fingers to reveal a small bottle hidden in his palm. A red light pulsed through the blood contained within the clear glass, beating to match its owners heart. "Hers started up a week ago."

  Cullen's legs gave out and his ass fell hard against his chair. His hands lay upon both sides of the bottle, terrified to touch it, to entertain hope that it was real. It looked familiar, like the ones Ferelden's circle used before they all fell. The words 'S. Amell' were engraved into the glass up the side. Templars never bothered with the full name unless they had siblings. "This can't be...I don't understand. How?"

  "You're a templar, were a templar. Go on, touch it." Alistair sat back in his chair, his legs crossed as if he had all the time in thedas to wait.

  Gulping from a terror crawling up his spine, Cullen fought inside himself. He wanted so badly to grip it, to feel Lana's life calling out from somewhere in thedas, but Maker, to have that hope dangled before him and then dashed as soon as it began? Screwing up his courage, Cullen yanked off a glove and lightly caressed the glass. Every hair on his body twisted towards the west, and more than that, he felt a taste of something cold on the winds, the ground rocky and unforgiving, and sea airs hissing from the high altitude. Not like the frostbacks, these treacherous mountains were near unscalable without knowing the terrain.

  His eyes snapped open and he stuttered, "The Anderfalls?" Alistair nodded. "How can she be there?"

  The king picked back up the phylactery and turned it in his fingers. "With Lanny, there's probably a dragon or twelve involved. Maybe a flock of baby griffins saved her."

  Holding his head tight, Cullen tried to wrap his mind around this. Lana was alive, could be alive. Out there in the world. Reachable, after all this time. "Why bring this to my attention?" Cullen started, struggling to find any sense.

  Still lost in the pulse of her blood, Alistair's voice drifted, "I've been testing it, trying to find her but something's wrong. The location never changes. Whatever Lanny's gone through, been through, I know she'd never stay away from...be kept away from Ferelden unless she's in trouble. Well, better trouble than being dead."

  "She could be with the wardens," Cullen said and the rage he thought he'd buried long ago stirred inside. Two years and if they'd had her, if she'd joined with them without a single letter or note...

  But Alistair shook his head negative, "Doesn't feel right, something's up. Something's wrong and I intend to find out." Wrapping his fingers tight around the phylactery, the king returned it to his satchel. "So, now it's up to you, Commander of the newest arm of the chantry."

  "What is?"

  "Travel the world, save the girl. Are you in or out?"

  Cullen scoffed at him, "You're mad, beyond mad. Why would you even invite me? Why would I travel with you?"

  "First, probably not nice to call a king mad. Either he's not and takes offense to it, or he is and takes real offense to it. Then it's all bathing in blood and talking to decapitated heads. Messy. Second, I never unlocked all the high level templar skills. I can get a sense of Lanny's direction but narrowing it down requires one who was really into the mage killing." That drew a snarl to Cullen's face, but he didn't respond. "And third, the phylactery's mine. If you want to find her, and I'm guessing you do, I'm leading this. That's how it works, soldier man."

  The king of Ferelden rose off the chair and tested his weight upon the balls of his feet. "Come with me, or stay here and wonder. It's up to you. Either way, I'll be waiting in the gardens for your decision." Bending down to pat the dog one more time, Alistair gave a half hearted salute and sauntered out of Cullen's office.

  Glaring through the insipid man, Cullen's mind tripped around. How could he even entertain the thought? The very premise was flimsy. She'd been dead for two years, lost to the fade. People don't just walk out of it. But Corypheus did. Right, and he blighted the world for it. Lana would never, could never... His life was here, he devoted himself wholesale to the Inquisition. Even if now the organization was only to play the role of peacekeepers for the chantry, placing him back under the wing of the ones he'd once broken from, at least...at least it hadn't broken his heart.

  Cullen slipped away from his desk to his bookshelf. His fingers ran along the grooves carved into her bottle. It wasn't an urn, not a proper one. There hadn't been time to craft enough before the funeral. Josephine offered to find him something more proper after, but in truth he didn't care what the fake ashes sat in. They weren't her, would never be her because there was no body. There was no finality to her loss, no last glance at the empty body before it was given to the flames.

  He knew what he should do. Remain with the Inquisition, honor his word. They were in a precarious state already, to pass it all off to someone untested would be cruel. Perhaps finally settle the way everyone kept asking about. Marry, have children. Entertain the idea of retiring. Maker save him, even attempt farming again. That was the smart thing, to leave the bottle closed, let hope remain trapped inside of it. Wait for Lana to whither to little more than a soft, yearly pang in his heart and nothing more.

  Cullen popped open the top of the top of the bottle and, out of his slit of a window, he dumped the fraudulent ashes into the wind. He could do all that, he knew it, give in to what was right, what was simple. But, if he had a chance, if there was even a sliver of hope that Lana was alive and needed him, he couldn't live with himself if he never tried. Emptied of the ashes, Cullen placed the bottle on the shelf. He wrapped her journal inside his shirt close to his chest and whistled for Honor to follow. The Anderfells awaited him.

  * * *

  Pain returned first, with sound on its heels. Her hand ached, the one that clung to her staff as if her life depended...actually, it had depended on it. Maybe. This was the fade, sense was a luxury now. Lana extended her gnarled hand out upon the ground, trying to will away the sting from the cramp, when she started. The fade's ground which had once looked like any random cavern chewed up and spit out by a nightmare was now replaced with lain stone. Cold to the touch, she recognized the pattern of the grout, one she'd glare at often when not paying attention to Banns demanding she care about petty things.

  Slowly, Lana raised her aching head away from the floor. In the distance she spotted a table attached to a wall, its flatware all in place despite nature trying to dash them against the ground. An ogre's severed head was the centerpiece. More pain seared up her body, and she reached towards her stomach prepared to heal the wound, but only enraged muscles cried out at her. Her fatal, or nearly fatal, blow was healed by something beyond her understanding. Lana felt the crunchy dried blood coating her robes and slicking up her glove, but any hint of the gash was gone. What was going on?

  "Good morning, lazy. Took you long enough."

  She yelped from the voice and spun around on her knees, magic crackling across her aching fingers. Standing above her was a mage, a mage she'd known far too well and not well enough. He held his hand out towards her, his smile cocksure. "Jowan?!" Lana started, very aware of how dead he was. She'd been there for it, watched it for his sake. "How are you...? No, wait. This is the fade, like the Divine, you're not really Jowan."

  He gripped onto her hand and it felt warm, real, the skin clinging to hers as he helped her to rise. Lana swallowed down a wave of nausea and glanced around what remained of the fade she'd watched obliterate itself in the wake of the rift closing. If someone yanked up the circle tower's walls, smashed them into Vigil Keep's floors, then ripped off the roofs to expose the Black City hovering in the sky, it'd approximate what she saw looming in all directions across the horizon. Lightning crackled on the horizon, and she spotted the first of Maker only knew how many spirits or demons floating through the ruins
.

  Grinning as if he had all the time in the world, Jowan, or whatever was posing as him, cocked a hip and waved a hand at the monstrosity, "You're a long way from home, Lanny."

  TO BE CONTINUED IN MY HOPE

  My Hope

  Cullen thought he lost Lana Amell when she sacrificed herself to remain in the fade, but now the king of Ferelden has her phylactery and insists she's alive somewhere on the other side of thedas. Can he trust this man he barely knows or can stand as they travel through treacherous waters and lands while searching to find the woman he loves? All he has to cling to is his faith and hope.

  Chapter One

  Prologue

  9:36 Denerim

  Lanny prodded a spoon into the grey mass attempting to ooze off the table and consume them all. Then, against all common sense or fear of it fighting back, she dug in and brought the traitorous gelatinous mash of dinner to her lips.

  "You're balmy, you know that," Alistair said shaking his head as he grabbed the second spoon. Stabbing deep into the middle of the gurgling lump to make sure it stayed dead, he inched off a small section. It tasted like someone dumped sewer water onto the tavern floor then tried to sop it up with rancid flour. "Hm, it's getting better," he remarked returning for seconds.

  She smiled brightly but jabbed her own spoon upright into the shared "chef's surprise" her delicate Arlessa sensibilities unable to handle that much food poisoning. In reaching for her clay mug of the second cheapest wine in Denerim, Lanny yanked back her nondescript sleeve.