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Wood shavings float down into flames. They’ll burn. Certainty. All Grey Wardens die from blight eventually. Wardens who kill arch demons die immediately. Certainty. Davrin wore his planned future as both armor and blanket. How does one Mourn Watcher make him want to stave off death? Surely, a joke made by new recruits, he’d have once thought. Now, it’s his reality. Uncertainty.
Calloused fingers maneuver the whittling knife over his sixth attempt at elven ears. Five other attempts sit beside an unmade bed. He can’t bear to use them as firewood. Even facsimiles being consumed by a fiery void reminds him that Rook is gone. Unbidden, fragments of Tearstone Island erupt inside his mind. Solas’s smirk. Kaleidoscope Fade-light shimmers, green, jittery; it blinds him. Rook’s scream. One hand desperately clawing towards nothing. Vanished, a sleight of hand trick, Elf in—Fen’harel out.
Davrin tosses his carving aside. An exact likeness is vital. Should the replica dagger fail, basswood will be all that’s left; a crooked half-smile lightly scraped, hair etched, strand after strand. Every feature captured forever beneath knife and tender hands. They would get Rook back. They must. Assan stirs, nap now concluded. The griffon sidles up against his legs and chirrups questioningly. “We’ll get them back, boy.” Certainty.