aberratic: (𝟏𝟓𝟔.)
ᴇɴɴᴀʀɪs "𝔫𝔢𝔰𝔰" ᴛᴀᴠᴀɴᴇ ([personal profile] aberratic) wrote 2025-04-27 11:08 pm (UTC)

She flicks her eyes over his arms, thinks of ceremorphosis—but makes no comment, betrays no hint of trepidation.

"I regret to disappoint you, Warden, but there was hardly an opportunity to observe their behaviour before the melée began. I can't offer any more insight on the topic than Warden Siorus might have."

She may sound dry as the Hissing Wastes and resentful of his insistence on the topic at all—but she's considering, too, because not being able to answer the exact question he asked doesn't mean she has no information to offer at all. Ness hums, mind on the treasure-seeker's diary, the state of the village, the children trapped in their cellar, how it all culminated in the Deep Roads. There is a story that can be spun by putting each piece of the whole together, a puzzle of Darkspawn and lyrium—but it requires so much conjecture, assumption, inference.

"It's hard to say anything about the events of the Pass before we arrived there with any certainty," she says eventually, sighing, "but what we saw did suggest a Darkspawn raid was what finally left the village abandoned, and that the Darkspawn who conducted the raid were mutated by the lyrium in the same manner as we would discover native Thedosians could be.

"But they left no bodies, Warden," she says quietly, "I don't think they killed a single person. We fought mutated humans below the Deep Roads right beside the Darkspawn."

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