It had taken her a while, but eventually, Estella had grown used to the cold.
Which wasnāt to say that she could just walk around outside without a cloak or anything, but she didnāt find it especially unpleasant to do so. And right now, it was actually about the most relaxing thing she could think of. Sheād abandoned Haven in favor of walking around outside as the afternoon drew to a close, unable to deal with the awkward scrutiny for much longer before she felt she might crack, so a break from people had seemed in order.
Sheād wanted to spend a little time down in the makeshift bailey, running drills with her friends, but after an attempt to do that earlier in the week, she knew it wouldnāt go well. She wasnāt the most inconvenient distraction, but she still did occasionally draw too much attention, making it harder for the others to do their jobs, and in turn impossible for her to get any meaningful practice. Sheād never been comfortable with people watching her drill, and only with time and friendship had she come to enjoy practicing with the other Lions, even.
So today sheād decided to get her exercise some other way, and had run for a while around the village before concluding her jog where she was now, which was the bank of a frozen lake, legs dangling off the wooden dock, back planted firmly on the chilled wood, which gave her a rather spectacular view of the darkening sky. Night fell early and quickly here, which made sense, she supposed, since the sun went behind the mountains and all.
The sheer number and enormity of the things that had happened to her in the last fortnight was actually kind of staggering. She hadnāt made lieutenant more than a month ago, somehow managed to make the biggest possible mess of her first assignment, get her whole squad killed, and then stagger out of someā¦ rift in the Fade or something, only to discover that she was now somehow really important to fixing a gigantic problem that hadnāt even existed before that point.
It was quite a lot for one simple mercenary to handle, not that she was the only one in a predicament. Still, she couldnāt help but wish her brother were here. Heād know what to do. Or even her Commander, or even that Rilien actually had time to talk to her for more than a few minutes. Groaning, she threw one arm over her face, shielding her eyes with the crook of her elbow.
"You'll freeze out here, won't you?"
The question came from behind Estella, the man who'd asked it just now walking onto the dock. Romulus was bundled as he had almost always been while outside, though this time at least his hood didn't shroud his face. His arms remained firmly crossed over his chest, though. He came to a stop beside Estella and slowly took a seat, not dangling his legs over the edge but instead keeping his knees up around his chest, where he draped his arms over them. "Or does living with the southerners give you some resistance after time?"
She let her hand fall back away from her eyes, a small motion curving one side of her mouth upwards, just a fraction. āI havenāt stopped missing the Imperiumās weather, but I did get used to this, eventually.ā With a small sound, she raised herself so that she was sitting upright as well, hunching slightly to lean her weight on her hands, which grasped the edges of the dock.
Up here in the mountains, the sunset was pale, pastel compared to the explosion of color one got over the ocean, for example, but pretty in its own way. āI guess my name probably gave me away, right?ā She actually didnāt use the whole thing that often, for exactly that reason, because while Estella could be passed off as something from the northern Marches, there was no mistaking Avenarius for anything but a Tevinter name. Sheād even been cagey about it with her friends in Kirkwall, at first, which had proven almost humorously unnecessary. She doubted they would have cared if she was anything short of a murderous blood mage.
"Perhaps mine should have as well," Romulus said, a slight glint in his eye. "I have no other name. No family to belong to, save the house of Viridius." He sniffed, the cold air having turned his nose quite red, making it serve as a sort of centerpiece for the dark lines marked into his face. Lines of ink ran from the inner corners of his eyes jaggedly across his cheeks to the jawline, while various dots and smaller patterns were more faintly marked into the skin. That particular practice was more commonly known to be Rivaini, rather than Tevinter in origin.
"The Inquisition's plan is to not allow word of my circumstances to spread. It doesn't look well for them to be following a Tevinter magister's loyal blade in their supposed holy calling." He made it difficult to tell how he felt about many things, as any of his expressions of emotions were subtle at best. A very slight quirk to his lips was all he showed now.
"You have the easier story to sympathize with, I suppose. And the easier face."
That got a laugh out of her, a soft one, but a laugh nevertheless. āI donāt know about that. At least yours has real characterāI could be anyone.ā She paused, then shrugged. Maybe that was the point. āAs for the rest of it, wellā¦ I suppose I can see why they think that.ā Her tone indicated that she was not particularly amenable to it, though. Still, it wasnāt like either of them really had much of a choice here: they were necessary, of that much she was certain, but there was no mistaking that their lives were being more or less used for everyone elseās benefit, at least for now.
She didnāt mind, really. In fact, she was mostly just afraid that sheād fail somehow.
Silence reigned for a while, but then an errant thought struck her, and she furrowed her brow. āViridius, though. Is Magister Chryseis related to Cassius Viridius?ā It seemed unlikely that they were not, but families in Tevinter were often large, and they may not be closely connected at all.
"Daughter," Romulus answered, readily, as though he'd expected the question. "I was originally purchased by Magister Cassius, while I was still a child, and worked on his estate for several years. My actions eventually saw me transferred into the service of his only child and daughter."
He fell silent, perhaps to allow the information to linger on the cold air. It was evidence that he had known perhaps more about Estella from the moment he'd heard her name than he had originally let on. But he didn't hold on to the subject, instead reaching up to pull his hood into place. His ears, uncovered by any hair the likes of which Estella had, had turned quite a bright shade of red.
"Do you believe in the Maker?" he asked, quite out of nowhere. Clearly the question had been lingering on his mind. "Everyone else seems to think we're touched by Andraste, and not just horrible luck."
She accepted the change of topic with equanimity, though not before noting the information to herself. It seemed to collude with the vague sense she had that sheād met this man somewhere before, though it didnāt elucidate the feeling any further. She looked back out at the frozen lake, the way the light from the setting sun reflected off it, coating it in brilliant silver so bright she couldnāt really look at it for too long. She couldnāt help but think she knew a lot of things like that, and many of them were actually people.
āI do,ā she replied softly. āMaybe notā¦ not the same way I used to. But I do.ā She turned her eyes down to her hands, the right one currently bereft of a glove. Sheād woken without itāperhaps trying to close the rift had shredded it or something. The green mark was still there, smaller, but yet alight. She closed her fingers over it.
āBut I definitely donāt think I was chosen for anything. I canāt bring myself to believe that it was Andraste in there. Iāve never heard anyone respond to my prayers, and people of much more merit and faith than me have been praying longer and harder to be met with just as much nothing.ā There was something beyond this world, she knew that much. But whether that something would ever have anything to do with them, that was harder to say. Certainly they wouldnāt pick her of all people to affect so directly, and it was arrogance to assume otherwise.
āWhat about you?ā She knew that slaves in the Imperium as a rule werenāt known for being religious, but then, the Chantry was at odds with the Magisterium often enough that some of them did end up inclined in that direction, so it varied.
"I've never believed," he answered simply. He let it sit for a moment before clarifying. "I've never had a reason to. The Tevinter Chantry decided I was fit only for servitude. And I have served no one that even mentions the Maker's name in passing. My life... has never had time for questions of faith."
He looked up and to his left, at the Breach that still hung in the sky. "Inconvenient that I think to ask only now." As the daylight faded its unnatural glow became more prominent, casting reflecting green trails across the ice and the clouds, though they were slower moving than before, when the tear in the sky had been much more volatile.
"I don't know who it was that saved us. I know little of magic. But I do know what I have experienced, from when I was a child, to this moment." He twisted where he sat, to look more directly at her.
"Tell me. Do you remember me? From before. Long, long before any of this ever happened."
It was the same question that had been nagging at the back of her mind, and she wondered if she was transparent enough that heād read it right off her or if heād been wondering as well. She bit her lip and searched her memory, which really seemed to be failing more often than it wasnāt lately.
āThereāsā¦ something. I have a sense that Iāve met you, but I canāt recall where or how.ā She was sure if it had been some time after sheād been apprenticed to Master Ignis, she would have recalledāshe hadnāt been lying when she said his face had a distinctive character, especially with the tattoos. But though she knew of the Viridius household, sheād never been there, and it was unlikely that was the right avenue, which left only one.
āThe orphanage, maybe? I was so young then that I barely remember most of it, butā¦? She let the end of the sentence become a question, hoping he would have the answer.
He smiled, not broadly, but certainly the closest he'd come since showing his face in Haven. "I was a wild, stupid, angry child, no more than nine years old. I remember the little twins. After I was shuffled off in the night and clapped in irons, it was many years before I heard of either of you, and then, only of the other Avenarius. But my domina let the name fall enough that I did not forget."
There was a gleam in his eye, like he was truly interested in the coincidence the pair of them had fallen into. "I sometimes wondered where the girl had gone, but did not trouble myself with it. And looking back now, what have we gone through to be here? What have you gone through that lets you even function after what happened? How is it that both of us are still alive?"
The questions were obviously not meant to be answered, as he stood then, looking out over the lake. "I never believed before... but after the two of us, so far from Tevinter where we were placed as children, fell out of a rift, the only survivors... after all of that, I find it hard to believe that it was only luck that chose us." It was apparently all he wanted to say on the subject, as he turned and quietly departed, heading back for the warmth of Haven.
Estella contemplated that for a while, but no answers presented themselves, at least not to what seemed to be the larger question. Still, Romulus had definitely given her something to think about, something she was still doing when she, too, rose and headed back towards the gate into the village.
Which wasnāt to say that she could just walk around outside without a cloak or anything, but she didnāt find it especially unpleasant to do so. And right now, it was actually about the most relaxing thing she could think of. Sheād abandoned Haven in favor of walking around outside as the afternoon drew to a close, unable to deal with the awkward scrutiny for much longer before she felt she might crack, so a break from people had seemed in order.
Sheād wanted to spend a little time down in the makeshift bailey, running drills with her friends, but after an attempt to do that earlier in the week, she knew it wouldnāt go well. She wasnāt the most inconvenient distraction, but she still did occasionally draw too much attention, making it harder for the others to do their jobs, and in turn impossible for her to get any meaningful practice. Sheād never been comfortable with people watching her drill, and only with time and friendship had she come to enjoy practicing with the other Lions, even.
So today sheād decided to get her exercise some other way, and had run for a while around the village before concluding her jog where she was now, which was the bank of a frozen lake, legs dangling off the wooden dock, back planted firmly on the chilled wood, which gave her a rather spectacular view of the darkening sky. Night fell early and quickly here, which made sense, she supposed, since the sun went behind the mountains and all.
The sheer number and enormity of the things that had happened to her in the last fortnight was actually kind of staggering. She hadnāt made lieutenant more than a month ago, somehow managed to make the biggest possible mess of her first assignment, get her whole squad killed, and then stagger out of someā¦ rift in the Fade or something, only to discover that she was now somehow really important to fixing a gigantic problem that hadnāt even existed before that point.
It was quite a lot for one simple mercenary to handle, not that she was the only one in a predicament. Still, she couldnāt help but wish her brother were here. Heād know what to do. Or even her Commander, or even that Rilien actually had time to talk to her for more than a few minutes. Groaning, she threw one arm over her face, shielding her eyes with the crook of her elbow.
"You'll freeze out here, won't you?"
The question came from behind Estella, the man who'd asked it just now walking onto the dock. Romulus was bundled as he had almost always been while outside, though this time at least his hood didn't shroud his face. His arms remained firmly crossed over his chest, though. He came to a stop beside Estella and slowly took a seat, not dangling his legs over the edge but instead keeping his knees up around his chest, where he draped his arms over them. "Or does living with the southerners give you some resistance after time?"
She let her hand fall back away from her eyes, a small motion curving one side of her mouth upwards, just a fraction. āI havenāt stopped missing the Imperiumās weather, but I did get used to this, eventually.ā With a small sound, she raised herself so that she was sitting upright as well, hunching slightly to lean her weight on her hands, which grasped the edges of the dock.
Up here in the mountains, the sunset was pale, pastel compared to the explosion of color one got over the ocean, for example, but pretty in its own way. āI guess my name probably gave me away, right?ā She actually didnāt use the whole thing that often, for exactly that reason, because while Estella could be passed off as something from the northern Marches, there was no mistaking Avenarius for anything but a Tevinter name. Sheād even been cagey about it with her friends in Kirkwall, at first, which had proven almost humorously unnecessary. She doubted they would have cared if she was anything short of a murderous blood mage.
"Perhaps mine should have as well," Romulus said, a slight glint in his eye. "I have no other name. No family to belong to, save the house of Viridius." He sniffed, the cold air having turned his nose quite red, making it serve as a sort of centerpiece for the dark lines marked into his face. Lines of ink ran from the inner corners of his eyes jaggedly across his cheeks to the jawline, while various dots and smaller patterns were more faintly marked into the skin. That particular practice was more commonly known to be Rivaini, rather than Tevinter in origin.
"The Inquisition's plan is to not allow word of my circumstances to spread. It doesn't look well for them to be following a Tevinter magister's loyal blade in their supposed holy calling." He made it difficult to tell how he felt about many things, as any of his expressions of emotions were subtle at best. A very slight quirk to his lips was all he showed now.
"You have the easier story to sympathize with, I suppose. And the easier face."
That got a laugh out of her, a soft one, but a laugh nevertheless. āI donāt know about that. At least yours has real characterāI could be anyone.ā She paused, then shrugged. Maybe that was the point. āAs for the rest of it, wellā¦ I suppose I can see why they think that.ā Her tone indicated that she was not particularly amenable to it, though. Still, it wasnāt like either of them really had much of a choice here: they were necessary, of that much she was certain, but there was no mistaking that their lives were being more or less used for everyone elseās benefit, at least for now.
She didnāt mind, really. In fact, she was mostly just afraid that sheād fail somehow.
Silence reigned for a while, but then an errant thought struck her, and she furrowed her brow. āViridius, though. Is Magister Chryseis related to Cassius Viridius?ā It seemed unlikely that they were not, but families in Tevinter were often large, and they may not be closely connected at all.
"Daughter," Romulus answered, readily, as though he'd expected the question. "I was originally purchased by Magister Cassius, while I was still a child, and worked on his estate for several years. My actions eventually saw me transferred into the service of his only child and daughter."
He fell silent, perhaps to allow the information to linger on the cold air. It was evidence that he had known perhaps more about Estella from the moment he'd heard her name than he had originally let on. But he didn't hold on to the subject, instead reaching up to pull his hood into place. His ears, uncovered by any hair the likes of which Estella had, had turned quite a bright shade of red.
"Do you believe in the Maker?" he asked, quite out of nowhere. Clearly the question had been lingering on his mind. "Everyone else seems to think we're touched by Andraste, and not just horrible luck."
She accepted the change of topic with equanimity, though not before noting the information to herself. It seemed to collude with the vague sense she had that sheād met this man somewhere before, though it didnāt elucidate the feeling any further. She looked back out at the frozen lake, the way the light from the setting sun reflected off it, coating it in brilliant silver so bright she couldnāt really look at it for too long. She couldnāt help but think she knew a lot of things like that, and many of them were actually people.
āI do,ā she replied softly. āMaybe notā¦ not the same way I used to. But I do.ā She turned her eyes down to her hands, the right one currently bereft of a glove. Sheād woken without itāperhaps trying to close the rift had shredded it or something. The green mark was still there, smaller, but yet alight. She closed her fingers over it.
āBut I definitely donāt think I was chosen for anything. I canāt bring myself to believe that it was Andraste in there. Iāve never heard anyone respond to my prayers, and people of much more merit and faith than me have been praying longer and harder to be met with just as much nothing.ā There was something beyond this world, she knew that much. But whether that something would ever have anything to do with them, that was harder to say. Certainly they wouldnāt pick her of all people to affect so directly, and it was arrogance to assume otherwise.
āWhat about you?ā She knew that slaves in the Imperium as a rule werenāt known for being religious, but then, the Chantry was at odds with the Magisterium often enough that some of them did end up inclined in that direction, so it varied.
"I've never believed," he answered simply. He let it sit for a moment before clarifying. "I've never had a reason to. The Tevinter Chantry decided I was fit only for servitude. And I have served no one that even mentions the Maker's name in passing. My life... has never had time for questions of faith."
He looked up and to his left, at the Breach that still hung in the sky. "Inconvenient that I think to ask only now." As the daylight faded its unnatural glow became more prominent, casting reflecting green trails across the ice and the clouds, though they were slower moving than before, when the tear in the sky had been much more volatile.
"I don't know who it was that saved us. I know little of magic. But I do know what I have experienced, from when I was a child, to this moment." He twisted where he sat, to look more directly at her.
"Tell me. Do you remember me? From before. Long, long before any of this ever happened."
It was the same question that had been nagging at the back of her mind, and she wondered if she was transparent enough that heād read it right off her or if heād been wondering as well. She bit her lip and searched her memory, which really seemed to be failing more often than it wasnāt lately.
āThereāsā¦ something. I have a sense that Iāve met you, but I canāt recall where or how.ā She was sure if it had been some time after sheād been apprenticed to Master Ignis, she would have recalledāshe hadnāt been lying when she said his face had a distinctive character, especially with the tattoos. But though she knew of the Viridius household, sheād never been there, and it was unlikely that was the right avenue, which left only one.
āThe orphanage, maybe? I was so young then that I barely remember most of it, butā¦? She let the end of the sentence become a question, hoping he would have the answer.
He smiled, not broadly, but certainly the closest he'd come since showing his face in Haven. "I was a wild, stupid, angry child, no more than nine years old. I remember the little twins. After I was shuffled off in the night and clapped in irons, it was many years before I heard of either of you, and then, only of the other Avenarius. But my domina let the name fall enough that I did not forget."
There was a gleam in his eye, like he was truly interested in the coincidence the pair of them had fallen into. "I sometimes wondered where the girl had gone, but did not trouble myself with it. And looking back now, what have we gone through to be here? What have you gone through that lets you even function after what happened? How is it that both of us are still alive?"
The questions were obviously not meant to be answered, as he stood then, looking out over the lake. "I never believed before... but after the two of us, so far from Tevinter where we were placed as children, fell out of a rift, the only survivors... after all of that, I find it hard to believe that it was only luck that chose us." It was apparently all he wanted to say on the subject, as he turned and quietly departed, heading back for the warmth of Haven.
Estella contemplated that for a while, but no answers presented themselves, at least not to what seemed to be the larger question. Still, Romulus had definitely given her something to think about, something she was still doing when she, too, rose and headed back towards the gate into the village.