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[shivunin]

Danse Macabre

For Day 1 for @veilguard-appreciation-week (The Grand Necropolis/Curiosity), here is a fic about Lenore trying to explain the Necropolis to Lucanis:

(Rook Ingellvar/Lucanis Dellamorte | 2134 Words | No warnings)

“Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Arrow and the Song”

The Grand Necropolis, undying, was so thoroughly choked with memories that Lenore almost felt she might pass a younger version of herself inside. 

Walking through its halls to reach the professor had been an exercise in suppressed heartache: here, she had taken the first of her classes with the Mourn Watch after she had been certified as a mortalitasi. Here, she had hidden under the steps and inside sarcophagi as a small child.

Here, she had walked away from the only home she’d ever known for what she’d thought was the last time. 

Was it better that she’d been allowed to come back, she wondered, or would it only mean a greater pain when she walked away again? She did not know. And so, even though it hurt her a great deal, she looked and looked and gathered memories like lost pages of a treasured manuscript. 

When they descended to the Shrouded Halls at last, it was a relief to find herself in a corner of the complex that’d never mattered much to her. Apprentices were not often allowed down here, for it was one of the oldest sections and thus one of the more dangerous. When she’d joined the order in full, her research and duties had taken her elsewhere more often than not. It was, in short, a place that felt like home without bearing the weight of the regret she’d been dragging behind her since they’d crossed the threshold. 

It was…nice, even considering the Despair demons and restless dead. Reminded her of her childhood, in a vague way: creeping through dusty hallways in the flickering green light with a thrill in her chest and a song in her throat. She had almost forgotten what that secret joy had been like. Not even their enemies could rob her of it now. 

“Are you alright?” Lucanis asked as they rounded another corner. 

The professor had hurried on before them, the hem of his coat swinging behind him as he descended the stairs. Lenore slowed slightly and glanced over her shoulder at the assassin. There was a set of stairs before them and she wasn’t keen on the idea of meeting them at a full sprint.

“I don’t think I’ve taken any wounds yet, unless you can see something I can’t. These dead are restless, but I’ve seen them so before. It doesn’t really bother me now.”

“No,” Lucanis said, and sped up slightly so they walked apace. He turned his head to peer down at her, apparently aware of the stairs without needing to look at them. “You’re humming. I have never heard you hum before.”

“Oh!” she said, because she had been humming without noticing it, and stopped so abruptly that she almost slipped down a step.

 Lucanis stopped a step lower than her and turned, brows raised. Their eyes were almost level with each other like this. What an odd thing it was to see him thus, his dark eyes fixed expectantly on hers. Something about the change in perspective is likely why she did what she did next.

“You can’t hear it too?”

“Hear what?”

Sometimes, she forgot that not everybody perceived this place as she did—as Professor Volkarin likely did, too. This had beenLucanis’s first time within the confines of the Necropolis, and it had been clear that he was far from comfortable with it. How could he be? The rest of Thedas had little experience with…well, all of this. 

Rook blinked at Lucanis, momentarily at a loss. Lucanis had not grown up here; he was neither a musician nor a mage. He would have no way of knowing, would he?

“May I take your hands?” she asked impulsively, tugging off one glove, then the next. “It will be easier to show you that way, I think. This will only take a moment.”

She could still see Emmrich below, though he’d slowed slightly. From the gesture he was making, he was likely casting a spell—perhaps attuning himself to the disturbance they sought. Their task was urgent, she knew, but—he had not explained to Lucanis about the bell, about the currents and the eddies of magical energy. Much of the explanation would probably be oblique to one who did not know this place, who did not know magic, but thinking about this particular sort of resonance had been her singular passion for years. 

A brief lesson will not be amiss, she thought. Perhaps it was even something he’ll need to know when we reach the upper levels. 

Lucanis removed his gloves deftly, though there was a question in his eyes. When he held out his hands, she rested her palms under the back of each and lifted them, as if they were cupping the lower sides of a sphere together.

“This won’t hurt,” she told him, “though it may feel a bit odd for you, Spite. Let me know if you’re uncomfortable and I’ll stop.” 

Gently, she reached out for the slow current of magic in the Necropolis and allowed it to fill her palms. She asked nothing of it, called it to no task. Instead, she let it pool there until it became pinpricks of visible light, swirling in the space above their hands. When she had enough, she stopped reaching and held it instead, the soft motes of moss green hovering in the air between them. 

“What is this?” he asked. 

The light reflected in his eyes, now and again glowing purple instead of green. She had to tear her focus away to remember what she was trying to show him. 

“It’s the Necropolis. A little piece of it. I imagine this as its breath, or its blood. I’ve borrowed only a very small bit of it for the moment. Here—close your eyes. Take a deep breath.”

The movement was subtle at first; a minute stirring of the center, as a ripple in a still pond. The rest of the light was shifted by it, stirring like the soft revolutions of hot water meeting cold, and then all at once it was moving. Movements; not physical ones, but those created by a grand orchestra, dancing to a tune that was not sound. She could feel it against her palms as she felt the vibration in her violin when she drew the bow across the strings. It wasn’t music, not really, and yet she’d always felt strongly that it was. 

Rook caught the rhythm at once and hummed along. It was not quite a waltz, but it was also not quite anything else. Lucanis’s eyes remained lightly closed, the dark lashes fine as cobwebs against his cheek. She could not think of another time she’d looked at him so still, so quiet. Here, in this place of memory, he was something new. 

Focus, she reminded herself firmly. You are explaining a measurable phenomenon, not writing poetry.

“If it’s anything,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet, as if speaking louder would disturb the moment, “it’s this: the Necropolis is often called a house of many mansions. A whole of many parts, which are themselves separate and complete entities. I have always imagined it as music. An orchestra has violins, cellos, clarinets, violas, timpani and so on. Individually, they play their own unique and distinct sounds. Together, they make up something greater than the creation of one.”

Lucanis opened his eyes again and looked at her through the light in her hand. After a moment, he focused on the motion between them instead. Rook cleared her throat and went on. 

“All of this is to say that the magic of this place is…many small movements, many independent pieces of magic, which in their motion create a greater whole. Each wisp and spirit and bone contributes to what you see here, and what they make is not unlike music. Unguarded, they can slip from what they ought to be—demons, off-key versions of what already exists here. When we ring the bell, the reverberations will sound along these lines, mix with this existing current, and…let’s say tune everything up. Drive out the dissonant sounds. When it rings again, there will be no space left for Despair to inhabit. The resonance of the song will not allow it.”

She hummed a few more notes, smiling at the light before her, and recalled what they were about. As easily as she’d gathered it, she let the energy go. The magic flowed back into the Necropolis as rainfall into a river. When it was gone, she was left with the warmth of Lucanis’s hands against her palms. She blinked away the afterimages, wishing they hadn’t obscured his expression, and drew her hands away from his. 

“At least, that’s how I understand it. I hope that made any sort of sense outside my head; I’ve never had to explain it before,” Lenore said, realizing abruptly that Lucanis had said nothing for several minutes. 

Gloves; she should put them back on now. She gathered the pair of them from her belt and slid each of them back on again, glancing past Lucanis to where Emmrich waited at the bottom of the steps. He was discussing something with a wisp now, hands gesturing carefully as he explained something to it. They were too far away to catch any of what he said, but she understood the idea anyway. Wisps were good at scouting ahead if one was very specific about what one was looking for. He’d want a glance at whatever came next. 

“I understand,” Lucanis said, and she returned her attention to him. 

When she shifted to the side and started walking again, he matched her pace. 

“I did not think—” he began, then paused. Lenore tucked her newly-shorn hair behind her ears and tried very hard not to look at him. 

“You said that you have not been here for the last year, yes?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. 

Lucanis did not say anything for a moment. Did not, in fact, continue until they’d descended half the stairway. Emmrich glanced up at them as he passed through the doorway to the next room. Hurry, he was likely saying without directly saying so. Lenore grimaced and sped up slightly, careful to keep an eye on the steps. She’d fallen down stairs just like this more than once when Mischief had decided to play a trick. Death was not so serious a consequence to the wisps.

“I did not think I would ever see Treviso again,” Lucanis said abruptly. 

The stair rail was cold and slightly uneven beneath her hand when she gripped it. 

“When I saw it again that first time—I almost wished that I had not. You understand?”

Lucanis saw too much. Talking to him felt, sometimes, like stepping onto a stage and realizing she was the only one standing in front of the audience. She didn’t have to look hard for an answer, though it all but choked her to say it. 

“I understand perfectly,” she said. 

And she did. She, too, had almost wished she had no reason to come back when they’d faced down the gates. Shutting away the hope for home entirely had been a simpler thing than returning to this place and knowing that it was, in a way, still lost to her. 

“I don’t,” he told her, and they sped up after the last step. Emmrich was in sight now, already lifting his staff to fight something out of their view. Lenore drew her own staff and heard the soft snick of steel clearing leather as Lucanis reacted in kind. “But—I am glad you showed me.”

What could she say to that? Perhaps it was fortunate that they lost themselves in the fight that followed. Perhaps it was better that she did not have to find the words. 

Later, rubbing her eyes over a half-written journal entry, it would occur to her that he had done rather the same thing by showing her Cafe Pietra. Lucanis had guided her past the veins of the city to its heart, had bared to her Treviso’s subterfuge and its sweetness. Likewise, she had cupped the beating heart of the Necropolis in her hands and held it up for him to see. 

Lenore did not understand the Crows, neither their sharpness nor their lies. She supposed he did not understand the spirits or the song. 

She wondered then, pen leaking ink in a messy splotch onto her parchment, what all of that could possibly mean. Though she stared unseeing at the fish in her room for a very long time, she did not find anything resembling an answer.