#if the ena/varric/solas trio of clowns had ANYONE else to supervise them

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

travelogue: Rebel Queen's Ravine, the Hinterlands

(more here, because Inquisition is a game about going on wilderness hikes with your weird coworkers)

“They’re talking about lyrium,” Ena says, waving a roll of parchment at the group. “The fake bandits who overran the area. Says they’d think it’s growing if they didn’t know better.”

“They mention any of the red stuff?” Varric asks.

“No.” Ena tucks the letter in her belt. “But I wouldn’t discard the possibility.”

“‘Course not,” Varric says. “Counting it out’d be too easy. Couldn’t have that.”

“Hold a moment,” Solas says, as Ena starts to walk deeper into the ravine. “Look around you. The scouts asked that we keep appraised of locations to establish new camps. This area seems suitable, does it not?”

Ena turns in place, eyeing the flat ground and tall stone surrounding, and overhanging, the ravine. “It would,” she agrees. “So long as there are no red lyrium deposits nearby. Shall we continue ahead a moment, to be sure?”

“We just gonna leave the bodies here or what?” Varric asks, nudging one of the “bandit” corpses with his foot. The sorry bastards hadn’t stood a chance.

Ena purses her lips. “We’ll come back,” she decides, which is, admittedly, not what Varric had wanted to hear. He shouldn’t have asked, and they could’ve left it for the poor Inquisition sods who came after them. Now he’ll get to help the Herald of Andraste drag bodies, which is not the kind of glamorous tale that he’d like to include in his memoirs of this sordid affair when it’s all over. Maybe it would make her look - down-to-earth? No, she’s far too comfortable with blood and guts for this to be a vignette which will endear her to common folks.

They pass deeper into the ravine. The columnar stone closes off the sky above them, but already they can see the sunlight at the other end of the passage. The ground slopes uphill to the exit. Ena stops at the crest of the hill, scanning the land that opens before them - another section of the Hinterlands that, to Varric, looks identical from where they just came. “This seems like a good spot,” Ena says. “I - what is that?” 

She indicates, down the gently sloping ground ahead of them, a beast far too close for comfort. “That,” Varric says, “sure looks like a young dragon.”

“A dragon?” Ena gasps. Fear flits across her face, along with something else Varric likes even less: eagerness. Of course she wants to see a dragon.

“Don’t,” Varric says, and he feels, for a moment, like Aveline.

Ena pulls back against the stone walls of the ravine, but she keeps moving, as if she thinks she’ll try and skirt around the creature. Madwoman. “I just want to–”

It’s like everything - the ground, the air, the sky, everything - shakes. Wingbeats, thrumming in his ears, quaking in his bones - if there’s a young dragon, then sooner or later there’s gonna be a bigger dragon. Lesson from the Bone Pit: don’t fuck around with those. Not that it stopped Hawke. 

It’s huge, it’s yellow, and it’s not that fucking far away from them. Varric shrinks back into the shadows; Solas has gone completely still. But Ena steps forward, her eyes wide, her lips parted - maybe she can appreciate the majesty of this display, even if Varric sure can’t. All he’s thinking is that thing is too close, and it swings around in the air, a sudden sharp turn so that it’s facing them—

—and it dives. 

“Ena!”

Varric yells at the same time Solas yells at the same time the dragon passes low overhead and spits a massive fireball. Varric is flung off his feet and even before he hits the ground, he feels the strange sensation of a magical barrier surrounding him. The impact still rattles his teeth and every other bone in his body, but it hurts a hell of a lot less than it could, and he’s got Solas’ quick reflexes to thank for that. He sits up. 

Ahead of him, a ring of impact smolders on the ground, the grass still alight with tiny fires, and Solas stands in the middle of it, dragging Ena to her feet. They stumble, together, away from the flames, back into the shelter of the ravine, and topple to the ground just behind Varric. He doesn’t dare try to look back out at the sky. 

Solas drags a hand across his face. He looks at Ena. “Thank you,” she wheezes. “I’m sorry.”

Solas closes his mouth.

Slowly, quietly, more battered than they were a minute ago, they retreat back through the ravine. 

“Still think we should set up camp here?” Varric asks. 

Solas turns a withering glare on him. Ena laughs weakly.