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It wasn’t that Hawke wasn’t thankful for the chance at coin; she was going to need a lot of it for Varric’s expedition. Which she still wasn’t sold on no matter how much Varric had run circles around her with his fast talk, but if they had the coin they could get the estate, and the estate would make them safe.
And it was supposed to be theirs in the first place. Which was an irrational thought; they had been running all over Ferelden for over two decades, so they shouldn’t be upset about what Gamlen had done with the estate.
Still though. It chafed. It made her irrationally furious. She knew she was being irrationally furious about it but couldn’t stop how peeved she was. It was supposed to be hers. She was going to get it back, and the only one more determined about getting it back than her was her mother. And so, she needed the coin to get the investment so she could hopefully end up with even more coin.
And for that, simple odd jobs, even if they were ones she was dubious about for any number of reasons.
“You think the guards should be dealing with this? Instead of, I don’t know, a bounty?” Hawke asked, looking at the dead body.
“You’d think,” Aveline said grumpily. “Apparently our supervisor thinks our resources are ‘better spent elsewhere’. What better things we could be doing is beyond me.”
The body was- well, torn into. Deep ragged cuts that tore the flesh off the bone. There wasn’t a lot of flesh left, actually, to the point it was hard to make out who the person was supposed to be. Male? Female? Elf? Probably not a qunari, right? There’d be horns otherwise.
“I appreciate you helping me look into this,” Aveline continued. “I know this isn’t your area of expertise, but with cases such as these I prefer backup, and more importantly, another set of eyes.”
“The bounty helps,” Hawke said. “I mean, I’m happy to help. I don’t much like horrific killings in the city where I live-”
“There’s a lot of them,” Aveline said tiredly. “There’s so much crime in Kirkwall.”
“-but you know how it is. Need money to survive. Not just for me, but for my family as well.”
Hawke glanced around the area but couldn’t pick up anything. The floor was wooden, so no trails, and there weren’t footprints of blood or dust or anything. The room had been busted into, but there weren’t scraps of cloth left behind. And mostly what Hawke smelled was blood, and fish, and the stench of Lowtown.
The fish was making Hawke kind of hungry. That probably wasn’t a good sign. She should be more put off by the dead body. And the last thing she needed was to start associating ‘dead body smells’ with ‘food smells’.
“People heard a disturbance in the night,” Aveline said. “But no one wanted to go check on their neighbor. That’s likely when this happened, and also based on the stiffness and state of the corpse.”
“I mean, there’s not much left of the corpse,” Hawke said. “So I’m not sure how you are getting that information.”
“I’ve seen a lot of corpses in varying states.”
“You’ve only been with the guard several months?”
“And they’ve been some months,” Aveline said sounding dead inside.
Well, Hawke couldn’t blame that.
“And how many similar killings have there been?” Hawke asked.
“Three in the past month in this general area,” Aveline said. “And I don’t know what to do other than patrol at night when I’m supposed to be sleeping for my day job.”
—
Ultimately, they didn’t find anything conclusive. Aveline was sorely disappointed, but there was nothing that could be done.
Hawke still wanted that money though, so she tried to continue to review what little evidence they had, up and into the night time card game Varric had called.
“I remember when we all just played cards around the table instead of investigating grisly murders,” Varric said with a sigh, flicking through his cards.
“We’ve only played cards twice?” Merrill asked confusedly.
“It’s about the principle of the matter,” Varric said.
Anders frowned and gave Aveline a strange look. “Wait. When did this happen again?”
“Last night,” Aveline said.
Anders raised his eyebrows.
“What?” Hawke asked, feeling a little nervous.
“You’ve got a heavily mauled body, place was broken into with little evidence other than splintered doors, on a Satina full moon night.” Anders took a swig of his water. “Sounds like werewolves.”
“Oh come on,” Varric said, putting down his hand of cards. Hawke managed to catch a glimpse of at least a pair of somethings. She probably should drop out then as she had nothing. “Werewolves? Really? I thought Ferelden made those stories up to make it sound like there might be anything at all interesting about itself instead of being a country filled with rocks and mud and the occasional angry bear.”
“Oh they exist,” Anders said casually. “The Wardens ran into some while I was there.”
“Really?” Isabela asked curiously. “I heard werewolves are pretty sexy. That werewolves are hot. That werewolves can get it.”
Hawke gave Isabela a confused look.
“What?” Isabela asked. “Think about it. It’ll make sense. Everyone’s always on about sexy vampires. I think it’s about time for sexy werewolves to take center stage.”
“These weren’t sexy,” Anders said. “They were Blighted, which had caused their faces to rot off, and oh yeah completely feral and monstrous and tore into anyone that moved. They were in a marsh filled with demons, and honestly I would rather take the demons than the Blighted werewolves. Ugh.”
“Maybe that was the Blight?” Merrill suggested. “I know a lot of Blighted animals become a lot fiercer after infection.”
“Werewolves are inherently linked to Rage,” Anders said. “It’s like being an abomination, but without actually being possessed by anything. Well, usually. There are some werewolves that are literally possessed by Rage demons, but most of them are just cursed to become like Rage demons.”
“You’re an abomination,” Fenris flatly pointed out.
“Yeah,” Anders said. “And I’m saying werewolves are monsters.”
Fenris put his drink down, with a challenge in his eyes. “I’ve met werewolves, and they were perfectly pleasant people. I think you are full of shit.”
“I’m also not sure that adds up Anders,” Aveline said. “Though for different reasons. I don’t know enough about werewolves to say one way or another, but even if they were inherently destructive, we have had killings on nights that weren’t the full moon.”
“Nobody listens to me about how mages aren’t all evil but apparently with werewolves everyone’s a fan,” Anders muttered. He sighed, and tossed his hand down, and Hawke did see his entire hand, and at least she could beat him. “Look, I’ve actually done a lot of research on werewolves. It’s not as clear cut as getting bit and then augh monster! It’s more… subtle than that. People seem fine at first, but as time goes on, the condition worsens. They grow more and more monstrous. At first it’s just flipping out on a full moon night—physical transformation for the main moon, and mental transformations for the second moon, and Maker help you if both moons are full—and then they start flipping out on normal nights. And then all the time. So sure. Sometimes you’ll meet a werewolf, and they’ll seem fine, really. But how long have they been a werewolf?”
Fenris looked very much like he wanted to argue, but for some reason, wasn’t saying anything. Hawke’s eyes narrowed as she watched him. Interesting.
“That sounds… very concerning,” Varric said. “So, it’s, um, progressive then?”
“Yeah,” Anders said.
“That’s not how the werewolves worked in the Brecilian Forest,” Merrill said.
“So they were more reasonable then?” Fenris asked, and Hawke could almost hear a flicker of desperation in his voice.
“No, they were worse,” Merrill said. “It was a permanent transformation, not linked to the moon cycles at all. And they were like Anders said, furious and monstrous. We had to make sure not to get too close to their grounds.”
Isabela snapped her fingers. “That’s because they were under a specific kind of blood magic curse infection instead of the standard curse infection around Ferelden.”
Aveline stared at Isabela. “You- how would you know?”
“Surana, yes that Surana, liked talking magic,” Isabela said with a smirk. “Though at first I thought he meant entirely something else by ‘magic in the bedroom’. And you know, after a bit, it kinda worked for me too? Sex, but educational! Sexucational? That should be a thing.”
—
Eventually the group split up for the night. Aveline left earlier than the others to the apartment she was renting. Hawke hadn’t been by often, and Aveline weirdly seemed to prefer it that way.
Hawke tried to not let that hurt her feelings, but she couldn’t fault Aveline. Her space was her own space, and some people just didn’t like having people up in their space.
Varric asked if Merrill wanted to stay the night as Lowtown was filled with all sorts of things, but Merrill waved him off, saying she hadn’t been mugged yet, and really, she wasn’t in any danger. Hawke really doubted that, but Merrill was also a blood mage, and Bethany had taught Hawke that mages really could take care of themselves.
Anders slunked down back towards the sewers, grumbling to himself about how nobody ever listened to him, and to be fair, Hawke was ignoring him in favor of following after Fenris.
He hadn’t said much, but what he had said had caught her attention, and she was curious.
Hawke caught up with Fenris at the door to the dilapidated mansion Fenris was squatting in. Some of the neighbors were starting to poke their heads out, so Fenris quickly ushered Hawke inside. Hawke didn’t like inside. Inside had many bad smells: mold, corpses, damp, rot. Surely these had to bother Fenris as well, right?
“Are you okay?” Fenris asked after a moment’s pause, as they stood in the foyer.
“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Hawke said.
Fenris raised an eyebrow.
“It’s just, you almost sounded like you were lowkey supporting werewolves,” Hawke said. “And that comes from mister ‘mages are vipers’.”
“I do apologize for what I implied about your sister,” Fenris said in that smooth voice of his. “I did not know her character, and she has since proved not unreasonable.”
“I’m glad you are getting along now,” Hawke said, and she did want them to all get along. She wanted to them all to get along so much it made her scream into her pillow at night over the latest stupidity that one of them said to another. But Hawke was nothing if not a person who never knew when to quit, even when others were, in fact, telling her it was a good time to quit. “Though I don’t think Carver will ever forgive you.”
Hawke had been worried Carver was going to kill Fenris then and there. The twins were even more protective of each other after running through the Blight. There had been a number of really close calls. That ogre-
“I agree with Anders though that it’s weird,” Hawke said. “I mean, you, who distrusts all magic, wouldn’t also cast suspicions on werewolves? They don’t have the best reputation.”
There was more she could say, but she didn’t want to hog the conversation. Fenris was defending werewolves! She was curious about that.
Fenris sighed, and then led Hawke to the room Fenris had been staying in. It was a complete mess, but you know what, maybe that worked for Fenris. Hawke sat down politely in a chair, and Fenris sat across from her.
It was rather touching Fenris actually had two chairs in his room. He’d planned for people to be over. That was- that was something. Maybe there was hope yet for this group.
“I didn’t initially escape,” Fenris said after a long pause. “I was abandoned, in Seheron, when the Qunari invaded. Danarius didn’t want to leave his ‘prized possession’ behind, but he was not in control of the ships. I ran, because I had no desire to join the Qun—I still don’t—when I met natives of the islands. The fog warriors. They were so… so free. With life, with possessions, with affection. I was in awe.”
“And… they were werewolves,” Hawke guessed.
“They were,” Fenris said, with an incline of his head. “They… teased me endlessly over my name.”
“Your name?”
“It translates to ‘little wolf’.”
Hawke bit her lip.
Fenris glared at her. “Don’t start.”
“What happened?” Hawke asked. “If they were so great and all, why aren’t you still with them?”
Fenris grew somber. “A story for another time. It is not one I am comfortable with sharing, but they were not at fault. Seemed stable. Didn’t have these problems Anders mentioned, but he’s a mage who studied books. He has all the”—he waved a hand in the air—”official education, and I have what is anecdotal evidence. That is an argument not easily won.”
“It is hard when all you have is anecdotal evidence,” Hawke said. “If it helps at all, I don’t think Anders is entirely right.”
“Entirely?”
“Well, it’s hard to dispute cases of werewolves going mad and attacking and eating people,” Hawke said. “That does definitely happen. But maybe there are some werewolves that figure out how to manage. And if they were, then they wouldn’t be very well noticed, would they? Because nobody would know.”
Fenris seemed mollified by that.
And then because Hawke couldn’t help herself, “Just like how the well-behaved mages aren’t the ones going around hurting people, and mostly just don’t want to be hurt themselves.”
Fenris gave her a look.
Hawke raised her hands. “Just saying.”
—
For the second (or fifth) corpse, Hawke and Aveline brought everyone along in hopes for any kind of clues. This one was in enough of a shape left that Hawke could tell that they’d been human once, and that was about it. The flesh had definitely been eaten off of the body, instead of cut off and then eaten, but the tooth marks weren’t long and jagged.
Then again, a werewolf didn’t have to be in wolf form to eat someone.
It was a similar situation, where the door had been busted in, and there wasn’t much in the way of evidence left behind. There was more smashed furniture this time, but no clumps of fur, even if they did find a few shreds of cloth. It seemed like cloth. Hawke had certainly found some evidence and had no idea what to do with it.
What they also found was a lot of blood though, spattered across the walls, the floor, the counters.
Aveline pointed to a particular blood pattern. “You can tell by the spatter pattern that that was from an arterial spray,” she said helpfully.
“So they died like that. Great. That doesn’t tell us anything about who killed them,” Varric said, grumbling to himself, and keeping in a relatively clean corner.
Merrill walked over, dabbed her finger in some blood, and then licked it. “Well it wasn’t demons.”
“I’m not going to ask,” Hawke said.
“I am!” Anders said. “How do-”
“Demon blood doesn’t taste like mortal blood,” she explained, bouncing on the balls of her feet slightly. “Mortal blood tastes metallic. Spirit blood tastes like ozone. And you can tell if someone is possessed by how their blood tastes. Yours, for example, doesn’t taste at all like how human blood is supposed to. Not nearly metallic enough, and it has that tell-tale hint of ozone, so, even if you hadn’t glowed blue in front of us, I would have figured out you were possessed anyway.”
“On one hand, that’s kinda cool,” Anders said appreciatively. “Makes a weird sense. On the other hand, when did you taste my blood?”
“So definitely not demons,” Merrill said.
Hawke made the decision to focus on the information of that, and not anything else. “So, not demons. I don’t suppose you know if it tastes like werewolf?”
“Oh, um, I wouldn’t know, at all,” Merrill said, fiddling with her scarf. “For, well, a number of reasons? So the thing is, the only werewolves I’m familiar with are Dalish werewolves, and they aren’t at all like normal werewolves. They’re, well, Dalish.”
“That sounds ridiculous,” Fenris said, who had apparently long since decided that he was against everything Dalish.
Anders snapped his fingers together. “No, that’s right. Dalish have their own specific kind of werewolves. Velanna—she was a Dalish Warden—mentioned that once, the differences between them and the Blighted fuckers in the Blackmarsh.”
“Oh so you know!” Merrill said, clapping her hands together and sounding delighted. “How much do you know?”
“This sounds fascinating,” Hawke said, and she wasn’t lying, “but we are in the middle of a murder investigation.”
“Sorry, sorry. I just got excited,” Merrill said.
“It’s fine,” Hawke said, since reassuring Merrill seemed important.
Merrill looked very reassured, and somewhat relieved.
See, important!
“Anyone notice anything else?”
Isabela gave the dead body a look. “Well I’ve noticed whoever that person is has been gnawed on. And with the slashes and all… might be a werewolf? That’s- hm. Not a good sign, I don’t think.”
“It really isn’t,” Hawke said.
“So, a werewolf,” Anders said. “Great. So, just a suggestion. Anyone see a werewolf eating someone, maybe just kill them quickly?”
“If you can,” Fenris said snippily. “They heal fast. It’d be interesting seeing you try.”
“Let’s not have a new thing to argue about,” Hawke said tiredly.
—
They had a new thing to argue about.
—
The doors had been busted in rather than lockpicked judging by the damage to the door and the splintering. All of the blood seemed to be from the victim, at least according to Merrill, and had definitely not been possessed. Neighbors had heard a commotion but ‘didn’t want to get involved’ and ‘that sounds like a good way to lose a face’. Which, if it had been a werewolf, which it was starting to look like that was a possibility, then they were up shit creek.
They did find out the identity of the deceased, a Thomas, who was a Kirkwall native and apparently had a job ‘somewhere, doing something, I don’t know, wasn’t any of my business’.
Hawke had wanted to go back later and give the crime scene a personal ‘just her’ look at, but the landlord had given them only that day to investigate, as he already had several someones interested in renting and willing to clean the bloodstains off themselves if it meant a roof over their heads.
The rent situation in Lowtown had only gotten worse as time had progressed.
Hawke was considering cutting her losses here. She wasn’t sure how she was going to magically catch a werewolf serial killer, other than through magic, and Merrill and Anders were not being helpful, and she already knew Bethany didn’t have any magic for that.
Maybe it was time to wash her hands, say she tried, and do a different job. Meeran wanted her to kill someone. That was easy. She was much better at killing people than tracking down a killer.
In the meantime, she took a different job, one Isabela had found. A simple one with minimal pay, just stashing some ‘goods’ off the coast somewhere for a ‘friend’ to find them later. It wasn’t a lot, but she needed money.
And other people also needed rent and food money. And they’d gotten in the habit of doing jobs together and splitting the costs. Anders, Merrill, Isabela, and Fenris all traveled with her, each carrying their own sack of product.
It said something that Hawke was really hoping the product was just drugs.
“So, kitten,” Isabela said to Merrill sensually as they walked down the coast, and Merrill giggled at the pet name. “Tell me all about Dalish werewolves.”
Fenris seemed interested despite his earlier statements, and by the glance Merrill gave to him, she had noticed his interest and seemed smugly pleased about it.
“Well, it’s a tradition actually,” Merrill said, clutching her package to her chest. “The whole thing is linked to god Fen’Harel who has a, hm, mixed reputation. Sometimes he does good, and helps you. For example, statues of him are used in the Clan to scare off demons who would prey on us. And sometimes he causes mass ecological disasters and locks away the gods.”
Now that was a mixed reputation.
“Get you a god who can do both?” Isabela asked tentatively.
“I suppose,” Merrill said. “Anyway, Dalish werewolves are modeled after Fen’Harel, who is also associated with wolves and, according to legend, is where Dalish werewolves come from. They look like huge wolves, but with six glowing red eyes. And their teeth- I suppose the description isn’t important. Oh, but what is important is that sometimes an elf will want to do something against the wishes of their Clan and Keeper. Sometimes, they believe in that very strongly, enough to take the path of Fen’Harel."
Hawke was paying enough attention to Merrill that she missed the root in the path and nearly face-planted. Thankfully, nobody seemed to notice.
"It’s rare," Merrill continued, "because the elf actually has to find someone else who has also taken the path and get them to agree to turn them, so they have to persuade them their cause is worthy over the Clan’s wishes—I obviously considered it but, well, we are in Kirkwall, and there weren’t any around, so I just got exiled—and if they agree, they are turned. Not by biting, but by a, hm, a dream infection? And then there’s another dream ceremony where the new werewolf presents themself to Fen’Harel as a bondmate.”
Hawke gave Merrill a suspicious look that Merrill didn’t see because Merrill was walking in front of her.
“Oh,” Isabela said. “So. Wait. How many spouses does Fen’Harel have then?”
“A lot, while also none,” Merrill said. “See, it’s not really actually being bonded, it’s just a ritual thing, though it does mean you can’t bond with someone else, and a number of people end up taking it purely so they don’t have to bond with anyone. Of course you still have to take up some path against the Clan, and there's this tradition of silly claims in such circumstances- anyway it’s also a long story to explain why it’s a bondmate thing, and that’s mostly linguistical changes over time, and okay a little bit of a pun, because following a path, and bonding yourself to someone- maybe it makes more sense in elvhen. But we don’t know if he cares about bonding, so it’s more of better safe than sorry—even if some people then completely ignore that and still frolic around—since Fen’harel is a trickster god who is the kind who does revel in those word plays. Because even if it was really being his bondmate, it wouldn’t matter, since he’s a very slutty god.”
Hawke choked.
“He what?” Isabela asked delightedly.
“That’s- not how Velanna phrased things,” Anders said slowly, but there was a ghost of a smile on his face.
“Oh there’s all sorts of tales of the various people Fen’Harel has frolicked with,” Merrill said chipperly. Hawke was starting to get a suspicion that she was using the word ‘frolic’ to mean something else entirely. “There’s one tale of how he was, you know, frolicking with Mythal, and then Elgar’nan found them, so obviously the solution was to seduce his way out of that situation as well. Like if there’s a prominent figure in Dalish legend, then there’s about a 50% chance Fen’harel has, you know, with them. That’s just how he is. So some of those bonded to Fen’Harel claim if that’s the behavior of their bondmate then they don’t have to stay faithful either.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Fenris said pointed out, voicing Hawke’s suspicions.
“Well I was the Keeper’s First,” Merrill said. “And I looked into the idea of it, but, again! There aren’t any other Dalish clans in the area, and I couldn’t find anyone else who walked the path. So. I just learned blood magic anyway and got exiled for it.”
“That close to being married to a god ?” Isabela asked. “And it sounds like a god who knew what he was doing in a certain department. That close to sleeping with actual divinity.”
“Oh he never shows up for the nights, so it ends up being a disappointment,” Merrill said. “Or. So I’ve heard. Just another way the god Fen’Harel has let us, the Dalish, down yet again.”
“You would just willingly become a werewolf?” Anders asked, giving her a look, and killing the mood. “And yeah, somewhat different, but still. You’d choose that?”
“It’s her choice, isn’t it,” Fenris said, and Hawke was pretty sure despite past conversations it was entirely to be contrary to Anders.
Anders’ eyes narrowed. “Oh well, you know the thing about wolves. They can’t ever be tamed. If you try, you get your hand bitten off. They’re wild beasts. They can’t be with other animals, like cats.”
Fenris bristled.
“Hey,” Hawke sharply.
“What?” Anders asked, as if he legitimately didn’t know what he said was highly offensive.
Merrill seemed in favor of ignoring that for answering his question. “You chose to merge with Justice for your cause. Some people would argue that would make you a monster.”
“It did,” Anders said bitterly. “I thought I could do it safely, and I couldn’t. My anger corrupted him into a demon of Vengeance, and I ruined my best friend. I am a monster.”
Merrill’s gaze softened a bit at that.
“Well,” Hawke said, hoping to cut through at least a little of that self-loathing despite what he had just said, “I mean the only truly demonic thing I’ve seen you do is rip some Templar heads off, and even then like. I’m not crying over them. And you seem pretty justice-oriented yourself when you aren’t snapping at people.”
Anders breathed out hard. “That’s not him though. That’s me. He’s not Justice anymore, so I’m trying to do just things to help him remember who he is. To heal him. I have no idea if it will work, but. I have to try, for what I did to him.”
“Okay,” Hawke said, agreeably, because she didn’t want to argue too much here. Sure, Anders was the person who was possessed and had not-Justice in his head, but Hawke had some doubts. Anders seemed pretty hung up on ideas of monsters and not-monsters. It was possible he was just projecting.
A lot of people could get hung up on the ideas of monsters.
—
The third/sixth murder didn’t have the door busted open. No signs of forced entry. Maybe the victim knew the attacker, or was persuaded to let them in, or maybe the attacker was a door-to-door salesman or something.
There was some fur, but that came from the very dead dog the person had. Upon which Hawke had to leave the crime scene and let everyone look at it, and go home and hug and cry all over her mabari Calenhound.
Calenhound was old enough by now that Hawke rarely took him out with her, preferring him to guard the house.
Varric caught up with her later. Calenhound gave him a curious sniff, a quizzical look, looked back to Hawke, shrugged, and then resumed slobbering on Hawke in an attempt to make her feel better.
“There’s no shame in it,” Varric said, sitting on her rickety bed next to her. Bethany and Carver were politely waiting outside the small, cramped room all three of them shared.
She shouldn’t have to. They had an estate. They went to Kirkwall because of the estate. It was supposed to be hers. She’d definitely torn through the slavers camped there with her siblings, and that had been a good day at least.
“There’s some shame in it,” Hawke disagreed. “People are worth more than dogs.”
Not that mabari were dogs. Mabari were people, just, who were very, very similar to dogs. But that dog hadn’t been a mabari; it had been just a dog. Who should have alerted its owner if the stranger was a werewolf; dogs, and mabari, could sniff one out.
Calenhound rumbled and licked her hand, so she gave him some ear scritches.
“Yeah, but emotions are fickle bitches,” Varric said. “Maybe the grisly murder spree is just catching up with you. It’s getting real.”
“Ugh,” Hawke said.
“Now, granted, I’ve only known you for a month,” Varric began slowly, “and I’m still trying to capture your character so I can best write you later in tales of our thrilling exploits-”
“Of crime.”
“-I’ll censor some of the crime. Not all of it. People love a scoundrel. But the point is, it’s okay to be upset. It makes you a person.”
She continued to pet Calenhound. “Is it weird I’m hoping the serial killer isn’t a werewolf? That that’s all a coincidence?”
Varric gave her a strange look. “And… why is that? Out of curiosity.”
Hawke sighed. “Well, look. Yes, it fits. Yes, there are packs of werewolves that maul and eat people. But you know, maybe”—some people had it coming, not these victims at all, but you know, some people who walked around in Templar armor—”there can be more to werewolves than that. And I’m a very stereotypical Fereldan you know, and werewolves have a mixed history there.”
“Oh?” Varric asked, leaning forward slightly. “I cannot tell you how intrigued I am to hear an angle that isn’t monster or Dalish.”
“Well, the history goes back for a while, and unfortunately for you, it’s not all good,” Hawke said. “There’s Dane and the werewolves, where the hunter Dane has to spend a year in werewolf form for taking a pack’s prey. Of course after, he led a campaign to try to wipe out werewolves for good. There was the worship of wolf spirits, which is still done in some parts. But I guess recently, during the old Orlesian occupation, there were a number of resistance groups that willingly got themselves infected.”
Varric’s eyebrows raised. “Now this I haven’t heard of.”
“Well it wasn’t talked too much about openly,” Hawke said. “Especially after Ferelden won. The last thing people wanted was to give the Orlesian Chantry another reason to push for war again, and the occupation had already really pushed the fear of magic and spirits into Ferelden, even moreso than there had already been with the Fereldan Chantry. But, yeah. Some resistance groups managed to find some werewolves to infect them, and they’d ambush troops, attack at supply trains, and sometimes infect Orlesians causing even more chaos. I was raised on those thrilling exploits—Dad loved those—and so I always took some pride in Fereldans and werewolves.”
“So the monster thing is an exaggeration?” Varric asked.
“Well, yes and no,” Hawke said. “I mean, it’s not always. There are nasty werewolves out there. But there’s also good ones. Like- like nasty people and good people.”
“There’s more kinds of people than just those,” Varric said. “All manners of people in between.”
“You know what I meant,” Hawke said, rolling her eyes.
“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be one to judge,” Varric said. “Some of my best friends are monsters after a fashion, though if even Blondie was wary about werewolves…”
“Blighted werewolves,” Hawke pointed out. “Anyway, here’s hoping the guy is just a normal serial killer.”
Varric patted her on the shoulder. “Here’s hoping.”
—
The next week, tensions only rose. They had nothing, and whoever was behind it continued to walk free.
“Of course they are,” Aveline said angrily. “There’s so many murderers in my town just waltzing around murdering people and getting away with it.”
“Yeah,” Isabela said. “And we are some of them.”
“Don’t you start with me,” Aveline said, eyes narrowed into slits.
“Okay we all need to calm the fuck down,” Hawke said. “Seriously.”
So she took everyone out to kill bandits on the Storm Coast. It ended up raining, and soaking through all of her layers, and then sand got in her boots and became like grit against her feet. It was miserable.
And then because it was slick and raining, there were more accidents than normal, and everyone ended up getting injured. Anders didn’t have enough magic to heal everyone all the way. And sure, Hawke was happy to be alive and in a non-critical condition, but one of the bandits had been an apostate who had thrown fire at Hawke even though it was raining, and now it was raining on some burns across her arms.
At least the bandits had money on them, enough that she’d be able to put some into the expedition fund.
“We did this for the wrong motives,” Anders said, leaning on his staff, watching Hawke pick through the bodies. “We did this for coin. That’s- I’m sure that’s not good.”
“Ugh,” Isabela said, who was cleaning her daggers on a dead woman’s shirt. “If we kill them, we get their stuff. It shouldn’t be that complicated.”
“I’m trying to fix a spirit of Justice,” Anders retorted. “I need to do things for the right motives.”
“I don’t think you can heal demons,” Fenris said.
Anders’ eyes flashed a dangerous blue. “He is not a demon.”
Fenris sneered. “You said-”
“I can say that but no one else can say that!”
Hawke tuned everything out after that. She focused on keeping her breathing calm and steady. It was fine. She was fine. Everything was fine.
Eventually they walked back to Kirkwall upon where the guards actually stopped them on the way in and claimed they were ‘immigrants thinking they could sneak into the city proper’. Aveline nearly chewed a guard’s head off, and they were let back in.
All of them tiredly lingered just past the gates, watching people pass on by, ignoring their various states of stabbed, burned, and bruised.
“Let’s just go to the Hanged Man,” Varric said tiredly.
“I have work to do,” Anders said, shooting Fenris a nasty look, who glared back.
“I’ll feed you,” Varric pleaded. “I’ll feed everyone. Just. Please. I need this. I need our together time.”
“Fine,” Aveline said. “If you’re buying.”
Despite the bickering, despite all the arguments, they all walked together as a unit down the streets, following Varric’s lead. And it felt nice, all of them together. She tried to focus on that. And then, faintly, she heard a noise coming from a side alley. It was an all-too familiar scraping noise. Teeth on bone. And sure, maybe it was someone eating perfectly normal meat, but in Kirkwall?
With cannibals about?
She immediately turned into the alley, barely aware if her people were following her. She couldn’t find a door from this side of the building, but she did find a window, and jimmied it open and slipped in.
There was a lot of clutter of boxes, but as she slipped past, she saw him.
A large man, crouched over a dead body, and eating it, currently raising one arm to his maw.
A few things happened really quickly, and in Hawke’s defense, she’d been caught off guard.
The man with a supernatural speed twirled around and stabbed her with a very big knife, even as his skin started to melt away into fur, and he started to grow, tearing through his clothes.
Damn. He was a werewolf after all. And worse, he looked Fereldan.
A scream came from behind her, yeah that would be the people that followed her, but Hawke was distracted by being stabbed, and, you know, it made her angry. She’d gotten to a point in her life where she could deal with being stabbed, and burned, and rained upon, and with sand in her boots, and hungry and tired.
But being stabbed by a fellow Fereldan werewolf? Near the full moon once more? That was too much, and in her defense, her body really wanted to be a wolf right now.
The man stabbed her again even as his jaws snapped for her neck, and this time she did turn, massive and furred, and her clothes shifted away as her fur came out: a special shifting enchantment her father had known and designed all their clothes with. The knife kept her close and at a bad angle as he kept trying to rip her throat out, and even as a werewolf that would be the end, so she dropped to the floor and lashed out with claws far sharper than wolves had, because werewolves were greater than man or wolf or Rage.
He slid away, eyes gleaming yellow, and growled a challenge that echoed in her bones.
He took a single step forward and then was tackled by an even bigger werewolf, red furred and snarling.
“Bark?” Hawke asked confusedly.
And then others showed. There was an oily black werewolf with six gleaming red eyes who snipped at the cannibal werewolf’s flank, causing him to divert his attention, which was a killer in combat.
A sleek grey-brown werewolf put herself between Hawke and the enemy, jaws open in silent threat. Behind her was the tiniest werewolf Hawke had ever seen, not quite managing as fierce a growl but doing his best.
And then in a corner, snarling at them all indiscriminately, was truly a monster. Werewolf in form, sure, but with a rotted face, teeth like knives, fur manged with strange black spikes growing out of it, and glowing blue eyes that dripped fire onto the floor that sizzled.
“Bark,” Hawke said concernedly.
Climbing through the window was Fenris as- as Fenris, with the most incredulous expression on his face.
The enemy werewolf lashed out at who had to be Aveline, but Isabela leaped onto his back. The enemy thrashed, trying to knock her off, and in his weakness, Merrill went right for the throat, ripping it out and spraying blood everywhere.
He thrashed weakly and collapsed. The fur slowly withered away revealing what remained of the man underneath. Merrill spat him out and let the body drop to the floor with a sickening thud. Everyone stared at the dead body for a moment.
And then Aveline took a small step forward.
“Bark!” Hawke scolded. Dead people were not food! Granted it was hard to remember why right now, but she was sure it was important.
Aveline slouched away, chastised, even as a massive growl came from corner Anders-Justice.
It was okay though. She’d seen this behavior before. And more importantly, her father taught her how to deal with such werewolves.
Hawke walked up confidently, letting her body language say that she wasn’t a threat to him personally. Anders-Justice proceeded to then make some kind of hissing sound that frankly sounded like the Void itself was trying to escape through his vocal chords.
Hawke had seen many werewolves. This one scared her shitless, but she refused to let that show.
It’s okay, she communicated through wolven body language instead. Safe now. All friends here.
And it was sad, that this worked at all. Not all the time, but generally so. Sad and sometimes creepy, but it was what it was, and even if Justice was an ex-Justice or whatever Anders had said, he still froze at the friendly body language, confused, uncertain how to handle it.
Because rage alone was so utterly lonely, and rage wanted to be shared.
She gently bumped their noses together before stepping back. It took a bit, releasing her grip, because her body really did want to be a wolf right now, but slowly she shrank back into her old human form, and then, very practiced, still gave general wolvish signs that everything was alright.
Or, not alright, as she was still somewhat bleeding. Not as bad as she was earlier due to some of that quick, quick healing, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
He stared at her wound, and that seemed to prompt him, and slowly, so slowly, he retreated back into his normal body. Which, interestingly, was clothed.
Hawke gave him a smile, to show him it was alright, that he made a good choice. It was important to give that kind of validation to young werewolves. They needed it. “I see you’ve got the same kind of clothes deal worked into yours.”
“Yeah,” Anders said after a moment, looking confused and slightly suspicious. And then he looked over her shoulder. “The same apparently can’t be said for everyone else.”
Oh no. Hawke turned around.
Aveline was trying to rearrange the scraps of her clothing in a way that could be at all modest, but was of course a massive failure. Merrill had apparently undressed a few of her important bits before her transformation and was currently putting them on again. Varric was mourning his shredded coat, and Isabela just had her arms crossed, tunic ripped, and in nothing but her boots.
Everyone looked at Fenris.
“You know,” Fenris finally said slowly, “if I had a silver for every time the people who sheltered me against Danarius secretly turned out to be a pack of werewolves, I’d have two silvers. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it’s happened twice.”
Varric let out a breath. “Okay really, I will buy drinks. Now we definitely need to talk.”
—
It certainly was a walk back. Anders quietly let Isabela borrow his coat.
“This is why I don’t even bother wearing pants,” Isabela confessed to him, bumping his shoulder with hers in a friendly fashion.
Eventually they made it to the Hanged Man. People gave them a slight glance, shrugged, and then went back to their mystery stew.
Varric had several large orders of food and drinks sent up to his room where they all sat around the table.
“So, you weren’t wrong,” Hawke finally said to Anders. “Werewolves can go mad. It is, technically, a curse. You are drawn to Rage, and there’s weird wolf shit in your brain now. But! It helps if you have other werewolves around. Granted that doesn’t help all the rage problems, or if you and your buddies have decided murdering people is the way to go, but the urge to infect people lessens the more you have other wolves around. It’s not a guarantee, but it’s a huge help. Most werewolves that go mad go mad alone. Not always; there are packs of werewolves that feed into that Rage, but generally alone is far, far worse.”
“Why is that?” Varric asked.
“Well, it’s like this,” Hawke said. “The curse wants to replicate itself, so it tries to sense if other werewolves are around. If there are, the urge to inflict Rage lessens. If not, well, your brain can sense you are horrifically, terribly alone. And you want to find people to fill that loneliness, but it’s a special type that can only be solved by other werewolves. But, again, you feel lonely, so you seek out non-werewolves, as your anger and urge to pass on the curse increases, and- yeah, it’s a recipe for disaster. Usually that’s all deep in the subconscious. You are just lonely, and angry, and you want to lash out and really tear into a fucker.”
There was a strong silence around the table.
“That sounds about right,” Anders finally said.
“So,” Isabela asked, “like, if I’ve been feeling the urge to be a bit more bitey in certain situations—sex—than normal-”
“You can only infect during one of the full moons,” Anders said tiredly. “At least for this curse; I don’t know how the other brand of lycanthropy works. I- the Templars caught me, and thought we could reroute through the Blackmarsh and avoid the darkspawn.” Anders gave a very twisted smile. “We all got mauled. I was the only survivor. I spent three days lying dying of fever and Blight alike in a ditch while insects that tried to eat me also died before I was found. Commander put me through the Joining ritual to see what that would do. And it worked. Kinda.”
“When you say you corrupted Justice,” Merrill began slowly.
“I mean I’m a werewolf,” Anders said. “Neither of us thought it through. Werewolves are cursed to be drawn to Rage. So when he possessed me, Justice was too. It- I felt him in my mind being consumed with it, and now he’s drawn to it as well, as Vengeance.”
“I’m sorry,” Merrill said, and it sounded like she meant it. “Though, only your werewolves. Dalish werewolves are drawn to Pride. I, well, obviously lied. I know it was silly, but I was just worried what you all would think. Not everyone was being nice about the blood magic, and then people were saying things about werewolves and- well anyway obviously I found someone who took me down the path. Just. The Keeper kicked me out anyway. That’s against Clan law, but it didn’t stop her. She claimed I carried the Blight and thus was too much of a risk regardless of precedent.”
Merrill took a breath that was only slightly hitched. Varric patted her on the shoulder.
“I just got into a fight on a ship,” Isabela said. “Some people just don’t want to part with their valuables, and that always gets messy. Though, in hindsight, that one guy who bit me just seemed really fighty. I didn’t even realize that was the full moon until the next one happened, and I was very confused to say the least.”
“Mine came with a promotion,” Aveline said. “It was optional, but a number of officers were secretly werewolves. I talked about it with Wesley, and while he didn’t want to become a werewolf, I figured it would help me defend people better. I’ve been doing fine, but then I had them, and after that I had Hawke, and speaking of which-”
“My dad was a werewolf,” Hawke said. “And he turned my mom, willingly. Me, Carver, and Bethany were all born werewolves. A good thing too. I don’t think Carver would have been able to survive that ogre if he wasn’t one.”
“So there I was,” Varric began dramatically. “Naked as the day I was born except for a necklace and a well-placed donut, surrounded on all sides by Orlesian vampires-”
“You’re not going to tell us,” Aveline said dryly.
“Nope, but I’m going to have a different story each time,” Varric said. “Believe me, they are all far better stories. Nobody wants to hear how it actually happened. It’s embarrassing.”
Isabela gave him a look that in no uncertain terms communicated it was going to become a life goal of hers to get that story out of him.
“Well I met werewolves,” Fenris said saltily, “and none of them turned me, and I’m still not a werewolf.”
“You never know,” Hawke said. “Like, if you want, if you really want- I’m a werewolf. And it’s safest to turn during the primary full moon when the secondary one isn’t, so it’s just physical, and I can keep my wits about me.”
“I’ll- consider it,” Fenris said slowly, giving her an almost shy look.
“Being a werewolf would make it much easier to kill Danarius,” Aveline pointed out.
“Or maybe don’t become a monster,” Anders suggested with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t risk being more monstrous than you already are.”
Ohhhh. Anders hadn’t been talking about Fenris, earlier, with that one comment about wolves and cats. In hindsight, he probably didn’t even know what the name ‘Fenris’ meant. He was talking about himself.
Wow Anders’ self-loathing was worse than she thought.
“Charming,” Fenris said flatly.
“I’m just saying. It’s a stupid risk.”
Hawke gave him a glance, but overall Anders did seem to be doing a bit better. The slightest shimmer of hope was in his eyes. Now time to see if she could encourage that.
“If we stick together during full moons—and also in general but especially during full moons—it should really help if anyone’s been having some problems,” Hawke said. “There’s this great patch of forestry on the outskirts of Kirkwall my family has been going to that’s got a lot of tasty wildlife.”
Isabela made a face.
“You’ll like it as a wolf,” Hawke promised.
“I’ve just been getting blackout drunk every full moon night,” Varric said. “And that’s been working for me so far. Anders you can heal livers, right?”
“I might like that,” Anders said to Hawke, ignoring Varric. “I- if all of you were to watch over me, that might help. It’s been… not great keeping us contained. We freak out, and it just makes it worse, but when I’m not contained I end up- it doesn’t matter I suppose.”
That probably wasn’t helping not-Justice at all. Though in hindsight, if Anders was a werewolf, yeah. That might actually corrupt a spirit into a demon. Maybe he did know what he was talking about on that at least.
“I can do that,” Merrill said. “I mean I don’t need to turn any night, but I’m happy to be included.”
“Why turn at all then?” Anders asked. “Why risk losing your mind and killing someone?”
“I don’t lose my mind when I transform,” Merrill said quickly. “Any killing is entirely on purpose.”
“I’d argue my killings are also on purpose,” Hawke said, “but then I’ve developed a lot of control due to being born like this. Which reminds me, I’m going to need to scold Calenhound. I told him we were not threats but friends, but he didn’t even snitch to me about Varric, so I’m going to have to be more specific with him.”
The conversation continued, and they all ate together.
It felt good. It felt right. Sure she’d have to explain it to her mom that she was adding in five, possibly six more werewolves, but Bethany and Carver had already met them and were on decent terms with most of them.
Too many werewolves could also become a problem, as interpersonal problems rose to the forefront and broke groups apart, but their numbers would still be manageable. At the very least, she could stop them from going down the path of that one Fereldan. Which, she hadn’t mentioned, was a guarantee if any of them stayed alone for too long.
She was trying to combat Anders’ pessimistic outlook, okay, and that wouldn’t be helped by scaremongering with real actual facts. She’d tell them that later, after a year or so, once they had some time to calm down by sharing their rage instead of having it have to be focused in just one.
Though she would mention that to Fenris if he got serious about his offer.
Hawke leaned back, and felt good about the day’s proceedings. “Well, I guess we should thank the Maker that I just so happened to stumble upon the serial killer. Like that’s luck.”
“Possibly,” Aveline said. “It’s less likely that you found the serial killer and more likely that you found a serial killer. Cannibalism is way too common here.”
“Well, damn.”