Chapter 4 – Things Can Only Get Better

I'm going to die.

Miniature cyclones of snow and sleet appeared to have taken up temporary residence around legs already so numbed with cold that the term 'walking' no longer applied. Moving involved violently throwing her lower limbs forward from the hip, her arms punching the air; a strategy that made her look as though she were attempting to swim through the snow piling up about her in layering drifts that fought her at every hurl of a foot, every pitch of a cold-locked knee. Slow progress though it was, it was still better than simply staying in one spot and giving up; giving in. It was her at war with the elements. The might of the human will pitted against nature.

First I'm going to be turned into a mage-sicle and then I'm going to die.

Audria had tried to look on the bright side. No, really. If there ever had been a bright side to freezing to death on her own in the middle of nowhere she had gone there, decided the food was bad and the service worse and come straight back home. At least she could say she had tried. Her teeth had stopped chattering ages ago but that was only because her jaw had frozen into a grimace of abject misery. How many times had her mother warned her that if she made that face, and the wind blew the wrong way, it would stay that way?

Well, mother dearest you'll be happy to know – when archaeologists unearth my body hundreds of years from now – that you were right. Yes. My face has frozen in that expression.

The one you warned me would never catch a husband.

Bah.

She was more likely to catch the attention of a pack of ravenous wolves first, if those eerie howls were any indication.

Hah.

Good luck to them! Audria thought as a dark shape slunk from behind one tree trunk to another in the deep, not too distant half-dark.

Hope you like gnawing on frozen mage, you overgrown Werepuppies!

She attempted to curl her hand into a fist but the most she could manage was a slight finger twitch and a flicker of sickly green; almost as if the Mark had gone into hibernation. Mark of the Herald huh? Proof the Maker existed and He was watching over them all and not – as some believed – gone to the godly equivalent of a retirement home for the mighty and omnipotent (or as she preferred to think; batty and incontinent).

Fzzt…shhhshshsh…the Mark died out altogether, plunging her into snow-swirling darkness.

That was okay, Audria told herself philosophically. It wasn't as if the thing wasn't entitled to a holiday from time to time. Heck, no one wanted to spend all day every day destroying demons. Saving the world and stuff. Willy nilly. Psht. Folk had better things to do…wash their hair, take their goldfish for a walk. Die by demon…

"Not freeze to death, dam…mit!"

Her foot snagged on something concealed beneath the icy layers, pitching her face-first into a snow bank. Eyeballs could feel cold she discovered, desperately trying not to think about how warm the Free Marches were at this time of the year.

But she did.

Give up? It wasn't an option. Nuh uh. Not in this life time or the next…She hadn't just fought waves of red lyrium-crazed Templars, a foul-smelling megalomaniac claiming to be an ancient darkspawn and his pet dragon to lie here in the snow with her eyeballs slowly turning solid while waving a white flag.

One, she didn't have a flag conveniently to hand. Two, she was too Maker-damned frozen to wave anything, much less a bloody flag.

Three?

The look the Commander had given her when Chancellor Roderick had suggested evacuating Haven's survivors through the mountain path was worth No Giving Up.

Damn. I'm going to die before I get to see what colour underwear Cullen wears.

"Son of a tainted Bronto bottom, damn you, universe!" she attempted to yell but it came out muffled through stiffened, cracked lips so it sounded like the far less poisonous statement; 'snfamngrr bromgnrom!'

It was that look that had changed her mind on following the other survivors up the summer path after all and stay behind. That look had been enough to cause her to raise her hand when the question 'Anyone feeling particularly, stupidly heroic today?' came up. That same look had kept the fires burning when Odiferous Corypheus and Mr Spiky had landed between her and Commander Cullen's underpants with one of the longest and most boring bad guy monologues she'd come across so far. The time-travelling Tevinter? He knew how to monologue. Sonny boy Korth in the Fallow Mire? That was some classy monologuing right there. A deep booming voice and maniacal laugh? Yep, she'd scored that pretty high. At least a seven and a half.

I have seen the throne of the gods and it was empty?

What? Did the secretary to the Maker and his minions forget to tell Corphy they were Out of Office?

Heck, it was worth the avalanche just to shut the…thing up. What was he anyway and holy Maker she wasn't going to get the smell out any time soon.

And she thought darkspawn smelled bad on the outside…

Yeah. They smelled like that after stewing over a pile of bitter herbs and a pot of simmering bile for a few thousand years or so.

That was if she believed the putrid, stinking pile of lame insults. Which she so wasn't. She had other things on her mind.

White. Uh-huh. The Commander definitely looked like a white underpants kind of guy. Practical. Conservative. No nonsense. Yet damned sexy. Like a librarian with a sword. Ohhh yeaaah.

Except I'm going to die first and I'll never know, Maker dang it.

'What, giving up already, Herald?' a voice sounding suspiciously like Cassandra spoke up in her – clearly – delirious brain. 'You're unlikely to find out the colour of the Commander's underpants lying in the snow.'

Yeah. I know that, Cass.

'Either way, it'd make a heckuva epitaph,' another voice – this time uncannily like Varric - mocked her.

'Phst, what kind of a man wears underpants anyway?' What? Dorian too? 'Real men don't wear that sort of thing…Not unless it's edible.'

'Elves invented edible underpants…Humans stole the idea from us, did you know?'

Audria groaned. Not Solas too. Oh Maker help her she wasn't ever going to be able to look the man in the face ever again.

'Edible elven underpants?' scoffed Iron Bull's voice also in her head because clearly no collector's set would be complete without something from him. 'I piss on your edible underpants!'

That comment really did. Not. Help.

"And by the way, can you lot clear out of my head please? You're giving me a migraine!"

'Pft! Underpants!'

"Ahurgh…"

'Never mind, dear. When you're dead you won't actually be in a position to actually care, now will you?'

Really, if by some miracle she did survive, she was going to walk up to the Knight Enchanter and tell her that hat looked really, really stupid. Like the woman had a bat's bottom roosting on her head.

The very thought of being able to insult Vivienne's choice of head wear some day was incentive enough to force Audria to lever herself upright. Or at least, she thought it was upright. She wasn't too sure. Well, she was as sure as ever being able to emerge victorious in a war of the words with Vivienne because the woman had a tongue sharper than shattered glass. Which, was to say she had no idea. Audria could barely see her hand in front of her face. Heck she couldn't even feel her hand anymore and she wouldn't be surprised to find it had snapped off in that last fall.

Where was she?

Oh yes. Librarian Cullen and his big sword.

Which I'm never going to see because is it me or did this storm just get worse?

At least, the tiny spark of optimism still existent in her numb body told her, the wind is carrying me onward. Horizontally sure, but at least it was heading in a direction that wasn't…here.

A blob of darkness darker than the other dark darkness loomed suddenly ahead, the squall lifting her and hurling her right into it. There was a sensation of falling a very long way, followed by the equally distressing feeling of something hitting her hard. It could have been the ground. It could have been a pile of rocks. She didn't know. What it did feel like was meeting a full charge of a battalion of qunari head-on.

A battalion of qunari mounted on stone golems.

Some vague thought tentatively reminded her that she was a mage and if she really, really, really wanted to, she could conjure up a jolly good fire to keep herself warm (or at the very least, slightly less rigid with cold), send up a flare to let everyone know she was out here, even cast a protective barrier about herself. A slightly less doolally thought sharply reminded her that she'd expended the last of her mana sorting out that last wave of demons and closing the mini-Breach and the cold was making her brain refuse to remember how to cast any fire spell, much less anything more complex like a barrier. Any lyrium she'd had on her had been expended on the advancing horde of crazed Templars in any case so, no top-ups were an option either.

Besides, since her encounter with Conniption-eus her Mark had been acting funny. Not ha-ha funny because anything from the Maker quite frankly, had no sense of humour, but weird-funny and she didn't trust it to backfire or turn her into a turnip.

More importantly, in order for a mage to use magic – generally speaking – they had to be mostly conscious. Right now, that was a state that was beginning to prove…elusive.

Audria briefly entertained the crazed thought of attempting to roll her way off the mountain like some human snowball, except in order to do that she would have to first move.

Okay. I'm not going to die. I'm already dead.

It certainly explained why she wasn't going anywhere, could feel nothing, could see nothing and her thoughts were not exactly…particularly coherent. Fine, they weren't coherent at the best of times, jolly good, let's all have a guffaw at the Herald's expense, ha-ha, who's going to save the world now, eh?

Quite frankly, could things get any worse than they were now? Audria attempted to compile a list in her foggy, uncooperative head:

1. The Inquisition's base of operations had just been destroyed.

2. Not only did the Chantry loathe them, but the Chantry's army of Templars – some of the best trained and armed soldiers in Thedas – had appeared to ally itself with the enemy.

3. Said enemy was an immortal monster of unknown origin with delusions of godhood which it was determined to achieve at any cost.

4. He had a dragon.

5. A. Bloody. Dragon.

6. All of the above seriously messed with her designs on the Commander of the Inquisition, a man who was notoriously hard to read unless you made him annoyed and even then all he was willing to acquaint you with was his sword.

7. That last statement was not a euphemism.

8. Damn it.

9. Meanwhile demons and horrors continued to pour into the mortal world eating babies and stealing granny sticks.

10. No one so far had handed her a stiff drink and an offer to make it all go away.

Sigh.

Light pierced caked eyelids. Audria hadn't even noticed falling asleep, much less the passage of any amount of time. Ah…the bright light...Shall I go towards it? That was what you were supposed to do, right? Like a moth towards a candle. Onward into the Fade, which she had to admit was really not full of sunshine, daisies and an unlimited, all-you-can-eat dessert buffet, but an incredibly good reason not to die.

Which…she was beginning to realise, she had not – miracle of miracles – actually…done.

Audria blinked, her eyes stinging in the glare of harsh sunlight. The storm had moved on. It was morning.

She.

Was.

Alive.

Hah! Take that…whatever it was that nearly did me in…whenever it was going to…ah, I can't keep this up and oh look I appear to have retained all my limbs.

As things went, this counted as a victory in her tired, cold eyes.

Then…"Over there! She's over there!"

Commander Underpants…

Oh and he looked – actually looked – relieved to see her. Like…like…he liked her…or something. Which was good. Really, really, really good. So when she face-planted into the snow for the umpteenth time, it was with happiness and she didn't much care that it hurt like the demon. She was alive. He was alive.

And.

"…Corypheus…" she vaguely heard.

"…thank the Maker…"

"…with the dragon and…"

Audria had no idea what they were talking about, nor did she care. All she did care about was the very real possibility of the Commander's underpants (and hopefully the rest of him) being part of her very near future. Corypheus? Yeah, he could totally hang. No one but no one was going to get between her and getting lucky.

Ever.

-oo-