Chapter Text
In the absence of light, shadows thrive.
Threnodies 8:21
The blight receded relatively quickly after Elgar’nan fell but it left huge swaths of Minrathous destroyed in its wake. The carnage wasn’t restricted to any one quarter. The Archon’s Palace was half rubble along with the Argent Spire and the Divine’s manor. Old mage families, the upper echelon of Tevinter, saw their opulent, old homes that had stood for centuries, demolished by the rampaging Lusacan and Fen’Harel.
The death toll was high, and the number of missing and unaccounted for was higher. Unidentified, unclaimed corpses were burned in piles before they could fester. Venatori, darkspawn, and civilians turned to ash together and were swept into the harbor. Clouds of putrid smoke wafted over the city for weeks. Slaves weren’t even counted among the dead or missing, but instead tallied up as damaged property alongside furniture and silverware for insurance claims.
As always, Dock Town was hit the hardest because the only thing that ever trickled down was shit. The whole city may have been wrecked with relative indiscrimination, but only the Altus received sympathy afterward because everyone liked to pretend the Soporati didn’t exist. Dock Town remained overlooked as it always had, although its harbor was one of the busiest and its people provided numerous goods and services to the whole of the city. City guards and templars searched tirelessly for the missing members of mage families and repairs began right away to homes and businesses in Hightown, disregarding that there was a lot more to the city.
Meanwhile, in Dock Town, guards protected ruined shops and stopped starving people from stealing rotting food from abandoned carts. Instead of helping search for the missing, they scoured alleys for slaves that attempted to escape in the chaos, so they could be returned to their owners. They arrested anyone so much as suspected in aiding escapees and walked past people screaming for help trapped under debris, past people crying for help searching for their families. The guards and templars remained securely in the same pockets they had always been in.
Dock Town tended to Dock Town. In the face of this new adversary, communities came together to help one another when no one else would. The Threads provided more assistance than the templars, and the Shadow Dragons continued helping slaves escape through the catacombs and then through the eluvian network via Rook with the ports in ruins. The Veil Jumpers sent healers and physicians in search of the injured and the Lords of Fortune got food and supplies in while the Wardens dealt with any lingering blight. People with intact homes opened them to the homeless and still-standing shops became makeshift infirmaries for a time. Dock Town and the poorer quarters of Minrathous struggled long after the crisis was considered passed and the rest of the Imperium lost interest in the tragedy. Dock Town had always been ugly and dirty, with hope waxing and waning along with the tide. Hope was low, the tide was high, and people were drowning because there simply weren’t enough lifeboats, yet it wasn’t quite bad enough for the Altus to take notice.
The Magisterium remained in shambles for months with a slew of vacant seats, but the Slave Bazaar reopened right away and thrived with the wealthy in need of labor for their reconstruction efforts. Any surviving Venatori skulked back into the shadows, and just as they had done after Corypheus, the mage houses distanced themselves from the defeated cult. Weeding out corruption, finding any remaining Venatori, and passing reforms proved particularly difficult, not easier, after the devastation. Surely, when the dust settled the changes would begin under the new Archon, people thought or at least wanted to think.
But the dust didn’t seem to be settling in Dock Town, and hope of progress came to a screeching halt. Archon Tilani’s attempts to provide relief to Dock Town were immediately decried as handouts by the Altus, with most of the remaining Magisters outright opposing humanitarian efforts due to a supposed lack of funds, which were needed in case of qunari invasion or slave uprising. Concerns about a potential assassination began startlingly early and not even for her anti-slavery agenda, but just for her trying to help all of the people of Minrathous, not just the mages, after the disaster. Dorian Pavus took over rebuilding homes with money from his own coffers, refusing to turn a blind eye to any citizens of his city, and drew the ire of several of his fellow Magisters as he did so, but they couldn’t confabulate a way to accuse him of treason for this. He hired workers from Dock Town and paid them well, which would surely bankrupt House Pavus, his opponents said.
In spite of this, in spite of so many people trying to help and doing their best, some began seeking easier solutions as the suffering dragged on, seemingly without end. Newly homeless people began indenturing themselves to mages just to have shelter and consistent meals for their own families. Some of them unwittingly also signed over their families to the Imperium. It became all too common for a parent to sell one of their children on the slave market to be able to afford food for another. A lot of ugliness stemmed from desperation, but some ugliness grew from darker places. The many slumlords of the Soporati quarters increased rent, price gouging became common, and yet still there were some that had been waiting for the opportunities presented by turmoil. A lot could be hidden with all eyes focused elsewhere. Atrocities would be overlooked.
The Catacombs, like the city of Minrathous, were divided, and not because they were a mix of elven ruins and slave-carved tunnels and excavations. The Catacombs under the different parts of the city served vastly different purposes depending on who, or what, used them. The Shadow Dragons’ mapped sections provided fast routes around the city unseen to help freed slaves reach ships to provide passage to the mainland. Smugglers used other sections to move relics and goods into and out of the city. The Catacombs belonging to the Altus held the food stores and other supplies in case of siege. When it was said the supplies could feed the city for a year, it meant the Altus not the Soporati. The mages also hid valuables in vaults - family heirlooms, artifacts, their all-important documents of lineage. Then, of course, the Venatori used the Catacombs for dark rituals and secret meetings, thinning the Veil even more than it had already been thinned over the centuries.
One could easily get lost in the Catacombs, and many did during Elgar’nan’s ascension. Altus not associated with the Venatori took to their underground shelters as they had when it rained demons, leaving most slaves to fend for themselves or chained in their slave quarters. They thought they could wait out the worst of what happened above them and emerge to join whichever side won, but Elgar’nan’s takeover proved to be much worse than the demon rain. Sections of the Catacombs collapsed, changing the landscape of the already difficult to navigate tunnel system, and homes toppled, trapping occupants in their vaults and storerooms.
In the panic, people unfamiliar with the complex passages, attempted to use them to escape, believing they could surely find their way to other islands or to a ship. They got themselves lost deeper and deeper under Minrathous rather than making it anywhere. Some drowned in flooded sections, got trapped in the depths by cave-ins, and others starved when they couldn’t find their way out nor back to their storehouses. Still more ended up staying underground for weeks after, not knowing the violence concluded. Some remained months after. Some had not emerged, and unbeknownst to them, they’d been counted among the unidentifiable dead.
There had always been talk of things also lurking the Catacombs. Ancient things. Trapped things. Sleeping things. Most thought they were fables to scare children at bedtime and that the real monsters were just people. Some knew the truth was actually both, and both had been woken up.
#
Floundering amid the wreckage of the aftermath was Rook. She had been lauded as a hero, Savior of Tevinter, Liberator of Minrathous, Godslayer, and some other grand titles, but she made fast enemies among the Altus and her novelty wore off as soon as the fascination with the tragedy dwindled. It may have lasted longer had she been a mage and maybe not an elf. People did not care for the elevation of a Liberati, and known rebel-rouser, particularly after elven gods made such a mess. Soon enough, she returned to being another forgettable face on the streets of Minrathous, just one of the many trying to help, trying to make things better a little bit at a time, and hoping for the changes to come. Rook’s motley group frequented the city and continued helping in whatever ways they could, but they were only a handful of people, and eventually they all went their separate ways though they remained only a short distance between eluvians in the Crossroads. Rook remained, and Neve too, of course because the shithole city was her home, and she’d have to be pried away from it.
After having lain waste to an elven god and stopping another from ripping down the Veil, the team climbed down the blight stalk to seemingly boundless adulation. The Shadow Dragons were momentarily praised, no one batted an eye at the assortment of elves, dwarves, and qunari that helped free the city from the reign of terror. People were pulling one another out of tangled blight tendrils, regardless of their social class. For a moment, on top of the rubble, Minrathous wasn’t a divided city filled with injustice and bigotry. For a moment, while the city built on ruins was in ruins, it somehow didn’t feel broken. At some point during the jubilee, Neve disappeared though. Rook didn’t know how long she had been gone, but she began shouldering her way through the crowd looking for her as soon as she noticed her absence.
Rook correctly assumed where she’d gone. It took her a while to make her way to Dock Town, having to maneuver through the devastation. She stopped to help several people along the way, but eventually made it to the docks. She found Neve kneeling down, petting a raggedy cat.
Hearing Rook approach, the cat startled and skittered between some crates. Neve turned and half-smiled, “I figured I should go see if my apartment was still standing.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.” She stood and then looked listlessly toward the water. “Demons falling from the sky, a blighted dragon, general blight, an archdemon, a giant wolf with a bunch of eyes, half of the city is on fire or smashed to pieces, and somehow my apartment is exactly how I left it.”
“Are you disappointed or…”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “If it were a smoldering pile of rubble, I could get a new place and not deal with the hassle of moving all my things.”
Rook joined her, looking out at the harbor, which seemed abnormally calm given the state of the city. “Where would you move?”
“Just up the street a bit. It’s hard to speak to availability with the current state of the city.” Her voice cracked at the end of what she meant to be a deadpan joke.
Rook took her hand and didn’t say anything else. They stood together quietly, their backs to the broken city they’d eventually have to face, sooner rather than later.
“At least you didn’t die,” Neve said and wiped her eyes with her free hand.
“Neither did you.”
“That counts as a win.”
“We also saved the world.”
She hummed faintly, “I guess that means I finished the job Varric hired me for.”
“I hope he paid you up front because I don’t have any money.”
“Surely there’s some sort of fund when you save the city?” She then reminded her, “You also need to pay Lucanis, I think.”
Rook sighed and let Neve turn her around to look back at Dock Town. Minrathous was saved, but it didn’t look saved at all. Maybe they could build something new and better on top of what was left though. Maybe this could be a fresh start of sorts. Maybe she was grasping for hope because if she didn’t, she would break down on this dock because she didn’t know if what she’d saved was worth saving. They stood quietly for another few moments. Rook felt Neve’s grip tighten and she looked toward her. Neve stood still, looking remarkably expressionless, but her hand trembled. She was barely holding her shit together too.
From where they stood, Dock Town appeared deserted aside from them and the cat. Rook had never seen any part of Minrathous so empty. It could get quiet at night sometimes, but this was different. The city wasn’t sleeping, the city was struggling to stay alive and gasping for breath. The thought crossed Rook’s mind that killing gods might be easier than changing Minrathous, much less the whole of Tevinter, but she pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
“I’m going to go check on my neighbors. I don’t know how many were able to get out before…” Neve’s voice trailed off and she abruptly released Rook’s hand. She started toward The Cobbled Swan, which still stood.
“I’ll come too.”
“You don’t have to,” she responded without turning.
“I know.”