When I Look at You (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

Prisoners

"My dear, I believe there are more cells in the next room," Wynne said gently, touching her arm.

"What? Cells?" Una blinked, trying to clear her head, to remember where she was and why. "Yes. Let's clear those out." She took a step and her knees gave way beneath her. Zev was immediately at her side, taking her arm and holding her up.

"Breathe, cara. Let the emotions settle until you are yourself again."

Oghren nodded, his face unusually sympathetic. "Felt the same after Branka. Took all the oomph out of me once it was over."

Una nodded, closing her eyes until the dizziness passed. She straightened, tugging her arm away from Zev. "I'm okay," she said. "Just ... want to get this finished." She stepped over the body on the ground, resisting the urge to spit on it, an unladylike action her mother would never have approved of.

"Hey! HEYYYY!" A loud voice was coming from one of the cells.

"I think I know that man," she said softly. "Let's save him for last." If he was Vaughan Kendalls, she didn't want to deal with him until she had felt stronger.

"As you say." Zev was watching her with concern, and she shook her head at him impatiently, turning to a cell where a man who wore only a loincloth crouched, looking up at them beneath the overgrown locks of his shaggy hair.

"Maker have mercy on me ... your faithful servant. Grant me ... grant me a place ... at your side," he was whispering in a hoarse and broken voice, faltering as he spoke as though the words were unfamiliar to him. The voice was Fereldan, though, a Bannorn accent, educated and polished. "Grant me the cleansing flames. Andraste ... Bride of the ... of the Maker, have mercy on me. Please, mercy."

"Who are you?" Una asked, gripping one of the bars of his cell.

At her voice, he leaped backward, then crept cautiously back into the light. "Alfstanna? Alfstanna, is that you, little sister?" he asked, with an almost pathetic eagerness.

The name was familiar to Una, and she tried to place it. Where had she heard that name before?

"No," the man said sadly in his broken voice. "I don't know you. Do I? Are you—are you real?"

"Soddin' right we are," Oghren said.

Una moved closer to the bars. "Are you all right?"

"Alfstanna?" he asked again, brightening momentarily until he remembered that Una wasn't his sister. "I ... don't know. Where is my sister? Have you seen her?"

"Wait, I know you," Una said, suddenly remembering where she'd heard the name. "I've seen you before, at parties. Your sister is Bann Alfstanna of the Waking Sea, and that would make you ..."

"Irminric. Knight-lieutenant of the Denerim Chantry." There was an almost automatic pride in the words as Irminric wrapped himself in the last shreds of his identity, but it dropped away as fear suddenly overtook him and he shrank away from the bars again. "You—you aren't one of the Teyrn's men, are you?"

"No. Definitely not."

He nodded sadly. "I failed, you know. I failed in my duties, Maker forgive me, and there's no telling what he's done now."

"What are you talking about?"

"The ..." Irminric moved closer to the bars, his voice dropping. "The maleficar. He had turned blood magic on Templars and Circle mages to escape the Tower."