Just. Fucking. All the AUs.

[teyrnshitup]

She might have known. All signs point to the Deep Roads, and Elissa would rather relive the Battle of Denerim than once again go poking about where the Old Gods sleep and their legions prowl. The dwarves can revere the Stone all they want, but it's never given Elissa anything but a fight for her life. Maybe it's the darkspawn taint, or maybe the dwarves' patron...deity? genius loci? concept? just doesn't find humans worth its while. Regardless, it's back to Orzammar and the Shaperate, which involves riding through the damned mages and Templars currently trampling Ferelden in their eagerness to trample each other.

Elissa had spent most of her reasonably uneventful trip across the Korcari Wilds debating whether to return to Denerim, levy a few armies, and end it. Alistair seems to have decided to ignore the entire bloody war in the hopes it will resolve itself, an action--or rather, lack thereof--that she finds distinctly in-character even as she wonders why Teagan or Fergus isn't reminding the man he's a king. The title comes with certain responsibilities, not all of which can be offloaded onto one's wife.

She still has a few dozen miles of increasingly well-maintained road before she has to pick a destination, but Elissa suspects that she's already made a decision. Chasing out the mages and Templars and dealing with the ensuing political tangle might be the work of years, years that she and the other Wardens don't have. The headman's axe of the Calling waits sharp and ready to fall on her neck, and she does not want to meet her death in darkness with a demon's song echoing in her soul.

The sight of an actual, legible road sign and, praise the Maker, a public house does wonders for Elissa's bleak mood--and for whatever mood the animals might be feeling. Even Hieronymus, the absurdly named pack horse, looks eager for something for the first time in weeks. Elissa and her four-legged entourage come variously clopping and padding up the road, to the the mild interest of a lone donkey standing behind a fence and the consternation of a teenage boy shucking peas next to the inn's stable. She supposes they don't get knights on horseback riding north from the wilds all that often.

"Ser," says the boy, bobbing his head in something approximating a bow after he's gotten his gawking out of the way. It's the wrong address, but wandering about insisting on being called 'Your Majesty' is the opposite of subtle, and Elissa already has problems with subtlety. "See to your horses?" he goes on, already reaching for Heironymus's bridle.

"Yes." She swings down from her mount, the less absurdly named Ember, and pats the mare's neck idly while digging in her belt pouch. Her gauntlets make her fingers a bit clumsy, which she realizes too late when she flips the boy a coin and his eyes go wide. It's gold. She'd intended silver.

Oh well, time to play the ludicrously generous noble. She smiles like she'd meant to do that and sweeps towards the inn proper--insofar as someone in heavy armor can sweep anywhere--Lucky trotting beside her, tongue lolling out in a canine grin. The mabari doesn't care what he's doing as long as he's doing it with her, which is convenient, since lately it's been a lot of walking all day.

Reaching the entrance to the tavern, it doesn't even cross Elissa's mind that a dog might not be welcome. What does almost cross her mind is a beer stein, but years of experience save her as she ducks before it can slam into her head. Hand reflexively flying to the hilt of her sword, she sidesteps the man charging her--and realizes in time not to kill him that it's not a charge. Someone's hurled him bodily out the door, and he goes clean past her to land in an undignified sprawl on the packed dirt.

Ah. Bar fight.