It was not Estella's first visit to Lydes—the Argent Lions had been frequent guests in the Commander's home. But she found that now, looking at it like this, everything seemed completely different.
They'd arrived at the heart of the evening, the sky violet and indigo and fading into blue, but light still set the dark grey stone awash with the last smears of dusk, and though the edifice was forbidding in its sturdiness, the way it stood as firmly on its hill as it it had been shaped directly out of the earth itself, nostalgia and hope lent it to her a lightness not truly reflected in its architecture. It was a beautiful edifice, in the way some swords, pieces of armor, shields could be beautiful: shaped perfectly for the purpose of war and defense.
While she didn't anticipate going to war again for some time, it was reassuring that this was their home, and not some airy, spindly thing that would be easily overrun, however lovely to look at. The last few years had perhaps ensured she'd never feel completely safe in a palace again, but a keep—a keep, she could get used to.
"There it is," she breathed, sharing a brief glance with Romulus mounted beside her. "Lydes Castle."
He eyed it, unable to keep a smile from creeping onto his face. He'd been quiet most of the way over, which wasn't unusual for him, though it was becoming more and more so with each passing month. Estella could hardly forget how he'd been when they first woke in Haven. Silent, defensive, wary at all times. He was probably still wary, but now it was under the surface, allowed to be more subdued, when surrounded by friends like he was.
"Any spot you've got your eye on?" he asked her. "The tallest tower with the best view, maybe?"
She laughed, partly at herself for never even having considered it. "Honestly, I think I was expecting to just use the same room I did when I was here with the Lions. But maybe I should consider this more closely. There are an abundance of options." Fortress it might be, but the place was massive, and though certainly not every wing was dedicated to bedchambers and the like, many of them were. It was sort of easy to forget that they were about to set up shop in a castle built by the founder of the Empire, and then only improved over the ages by generations of fastidious descendants. Military men and women, almost to a one, if the late-night stories Lucien sometimes favored them with were true.
"How about you?" she rejoined, pointing Nox's nose towards the cobblestone path leading towards the keep gate and urging him forward. "I'm pretty sure all Lydes has in the basement is cellars, storage, and a dungeon, so I think you might have to pick something with an actual window this time."
He laughed at that. "You're probably right. I don't know, I haven't given it much thought either." He paused and clearly did some now, eyes wandering over the length of the battlements before them. "Maybe a tower somewhere along the wall, like Leon had? I don't know, might be more convenient if we can work somewhere close to each other. No stairs or long walks involved that way." It was true that anytime she'd needed to bring him something in Skyhold, she'd needed to descend a lengthy flight of stairs to reach the Undercroft. And the opposite was true as well.
"I guess we'll have to take a look around and see. We've got a lot to choose from." It was a larger fortress than Skyhold had been, but not so gargantuan that it would feel empty. While the Inquisition had no army anymore, they still employed enough guards to man the castle and fill its barracks.
"There's something we haven't talked about in a while." His tone grew more serious, contemplative. "Andraste, the Maker, the things the Inquisition was in part built on... do you feel any differently about them now? About how they relate to us, what we've done, and our future?"
Estella hummed, leaning back slightly to compensate for Nox's downhill descent. After a while, it had grown so much easier to not think about any of that kind of thing. Corypheus claimed that the Golden City had been empty. He'd seemed to believe it. If even that much was true, then many of the things she'd been raised to believe were not. But even setting that aside—the faith instilled in her by early years in a Chantry—at a Divine's knee, for goodness' sake... it had evaporated.
Maybe not completely, and not in the bitter way it did for some people. She wasn't jaded or disillusioned with the Chantry like others became, the mages in particular. She'd spent enough time with Leon and Séverine and even Sophia to understand that, like anything else, how good the Chantry was for the people it purported to protect had more to do with the people it comprised than anything else. But its claims and ideals had become something she didn't really think about anymore, the last vestiges of need washed away with the change in their titles, and the execution of Anais. It had just stopped mattering whether they were the chosen of Andraste or the Maker. It had become enough that they were the ones chosen by circumstance.
But even knowing that, Romulus's questions were not easy ones. "I'll happily let the Chantry take back the names of the Maker and Andraste," she admitted after a while. She'd never been too comfortable claiming them anyway. "But I think when it really comes down to it... the things we were built on will still be here. At the core, we were always just—" She passed her tongue over her teeth, trying to find the right way to put it. "A bunch of people thrust together by something—whether it be fate, the Maker, or just random chance—and the real foundation was us deciding to trust each other. At our different paces, in our different ways. Accepting what needed doing and who was around to help, and then just... doing it."
She huffed softly. "I don't see that much changing, to be honest with you."
He shook his head. "I don't either. Obviously I had my own run-ins what was supposedly the Maker's doing, and all of Thedas knows how that turned out. But still..." He shifted in the saddle, never as comfortable a rider as some of them were.
"I don't know what I believe in. I don't know if I believe in a Maker or Creators anything imaginable like that. And I don't know if they ever had a hand in the things we did. But... all the same, I feel blessed. I guess that's the word I'm looking for." He tore his eyes from the castle ahead of them and brought them to her. "To have been given the opportunities I had, the people I needed to face every trial... the chance to finally figure out how to live on my feet."
He shook his head again, eyes settling ahead of him. "Sorry, that's... I can't imagine you've been feeling anywhere near blessed, with what's happened recently."
Estella shook her head, seeking immediately to put him at ease. "It's—the immediate past hasn't been the easiest, but..." She blew a breath out her nose, almost a sigh. "I feel like it all sort of had to go together this way, you know? And if the choice was all of this or none of it... I'd choose all of it, every time."
Without Harellan, enacting his plan from the very beginning, none of this would ever have happened. And though it had brought about so much pain and death, the more Estella thought about it, the more sure she was that there was always going to be pain and death, and at least this way, there'd been so many good things to go along with it. People met, obstacles overcome, victories won. The world looked a lot better and brighter today than it had on the day of the Conclave, and much of that was owed to them.
A very not-insignificant portion of it, heretical as the thought still sounded, was owed to her. And while she'd never sought that, it was the consequence of walking a path she was, in retrospect, glad to have walked. For she had done so alongside the best people she knew, and found everything she was looking for along the way, even if she hadn't always seen it immediately. "So I suppose... when I can get myself to think about the big picture, I feel pretty blessed, too."
"For what it's worth... whatever it takes to get Cyrus back and fix all of this, I'm up for it. We may not be able to close rifts, open new ones, or teleport anymore, but we're still skilled. And I'd say we make a pretty good team."
But they were drawing near to the gates now, the way forward already opened for them. Romulus broke into a smile. "Can't stand the wait anymore." He kicked his heels in and urged his horse faster, taking off ahead of their column.
She laughed aloud, momentarily turning partway in her saddle and gesturing the others forward with a broad sweep of her arm. "No time to be slacking!" she called, spurring Nox forward as well.
"We're almost home."
RPG
