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The first assumption that Alistair makes upon meeting Keerla Tabris is that she is a young boy. One minute he’s alone talking to the Circle representative, the next she’s standing there, her small frame held stiff, her hair up, and the bottom part of her face covered by a piece of fabric, and Alistair is certain the newest recruit is, in fact, a teenage boy.
The second assumption that Alistair makes is that Keerla is mute. She remains still as a statue – no, as a cat watching its prey –, her eyes following the exchange with interest as Alistair finishes his conversation, and she just nods when he asks if she’s here because Duncan wants to see him.
He realises she isn’t a boy when Duncan later introduces her as “a fine young lady from Denerim”; and he learns she isn’t mute when she answers one of Duncan’s questions out loud. Quietly, and laconically, but still out loud.
When they head out to the Korcari Wilds Keerla places herself at the front of their party, her daggers never leaving her fists. She’s the first to know danger is coming, and Alistair is reminded of the stories people have told him about elves’ hearing abilities. It’s not that he’s never been around elves, but he certainly hasn’t paid that much attention to any of them before. Or anyone, for that matter, he suspects as he notices the way Keerla walks; putting more weight on her toes than heels, as though she’s always ready to begin running at a moment’s notice.
She keeps her mask on to fight. It’s flimsy and it looks old, but it barely moves from her face as she pounces on genlocks and wrenches her daggers free before they hit the ground. Alistair can’t see her face, and there isn’t anything in her posture either that gives away her feelings on the situation. She’s efficient, focused, and although her fighting style is far from a trained soldier’s standards, something about it tells Alistair he never wants to be on her bad side.
Then they encounter the Witch. She mocks them, but when Keerla’s voice rises, surprisingly clear, the witch softens a little. Keerla doesn’t speak loudly. Her words are scarce, always, but she gets her point across with eloquence, and Alistair wonders so many things about her.
He doesn’t even try to ask her about any of them. He knows what the Joining entails, and he knows making friends now is foolish, so he just sticks by her side when wolves attack them, and he forces himself not to think about the fact that she might die in just a few hours.
She doesn’t.
The other two recruits do.
As much as Alistair hates seeing potential soldiers die before they can even have a chance to help their cause, he can’t help the wave of relief that washes over him when Keerla doesn’t fall.
He’s so glad she survived that he barely notices how terrible the food is when another Warden hands him a bowl of brownish would-be stew. He sits with other soldiers he’s been becoming friends with, but he’s too focused on Keerla’s shape in the distance to really hear their chattering about the next day’s battle.
Keerla sits alone, far from the fires, under a tree. She has to remove her mask to eat, so she balances her bowl on one hand as she lowers the fabric covering her face with the other. From where he is Alistair can’t see much, but he does see her rub at her cheeks as her shoulders slump ever-so-slightly.
Alistair waits to be done with his dinner before he excuses himself and makes his way to her spot. She watches him approach from the corner of her eye and squints as his voice squeaks a little awkwardly when he clears his throat. Her fingers tighten on her spoon.
“Keerla, right? Can I sit here?” Alistair asks in the most enthusiastic tone he can muster under that glare.
Her eyes shoot to his feet and travel back to his face, calculating, and she makes a noise of agreement. The dry grass Alistair sits in creaks under him, already bearing the mark of the oncoming taint. He settles next to her at a little more than an arm’s length – she’s still carrying her daggers, after all.
Now that he’s there, this doesn’t seem like a randomly picked spot. It’s a decent vantage point; from here, they can see almost every single person in the camp, which isn’t an easy task given the chaotic arrangement of tents that has been growing for the past weeks.
“You did good today!” he tells her. “I think Duncan is proud of you.”
No answer. Alistair risks a quick glance toward her, which darts back to the camp as soon as he sees the glint of a scar on her cheek, right where she was covered by her mask during the day.
“How do you feel…about the two other recruits? The ones who didn’t make it?”
In the corner of his vision, Keerla shrugs and brings a full spoon to her mouth. Alistair tries again.
“I mean, are you okay? It’s not the best welcome you could’ve had.”
“I don’t care,” Keerla says plainly, and although Alistair is mildly excited to be getting a verbal answer, he’s taken aback for a moment.
“You don’t care?” he asks, voice tight and high, and searches her face.
Keerla glances up, holds his gaze for a few heartbeats, and then her eyes drop back to her food.
“People don’t live long, where I’m from,” she says. “Better not get attached.”
Alistair opens his mouth, and then he closes it again. Can he really argue with her doing something to protect herself when he was doing the same mere hours ago?
That said, he resolves, it was only short-term, right? It’s not like he’s refusing to make friends with the other Wardens, even when he knows they’re all eventually doomed.
“Alright,” he finally says, eager to keep what little conversation they’re having going, “but you can’t live without being close to anyone, ever! You got to care for someone eventually!”
“Those people you care about. They can hurt you both by dying or by betraying you. How do you know they’re not going to do either?”
Alistair scoffs and shakes his head, looking for his words. “Because… I… am an optimistic fool?” he attempts.
Keerla fishes a soaked piece of bread from her bowl and bites into it. She chews her mouthful for a long time, and then she says, just as plainly, “I don’t think you’re a fool.”
Alistair laughs. “Are you trying to enter in my good graces? I don’t know how far it’ll get you, but you should know, it’s working!”
Ignoring the joke, Keerla continues. “I’ve seen you fight. I’ve heard you speak. You’re smart, and you’re nice.”
Alistair feels his cheeks heat up. “Hah! Thanks!” he says.
“The second one wasn’t a compliment. Nice boys don’t live long.”
She says that with no vitriol, just speaks it as facts, and the tone of it shocks Alistair enough that all he can respond with is a low, emotionless “Oh.”
Keerla wipes her mouth with the back of her hand as she gets up, spoon and empty bowl hanging from her other hand, and she leaves without a word. Alistair isn’t any less determined to find out everything he can about the new recruit.
The wait before the battle is the worst part. It’s what older soldiers have told Alistair before, but he’s never really understood it before the night of the battle of Ostagar.
He’s alone with Keerla on the path that leads to the Tower of Ishal, both of them in full armour. She’s perched on a tall stone, her hair still up in that tight bun and the lower part of her face hidden underneath her usual cloth.
He walks in circles, slowly marking the grass with his path. Each time he lifts his right foot from the ground, the sound of Keerla sharpening her knife cuts through the tense silence. It’s soothing. Somehow. Alistair has always found comfort in rhythms.
Keerla jumps down from the stone just as Alistair is about to make a nervous joke about music.
“They’re here,” she says, and sticks her whetstone back into her belt without looking.
In the distance, down the tall bridge separating them from the Ostagar camp proper, a few shouts rise, shaped like fury and terror both. The soldiers on the bridge begin shuffling around nervously, and soon the first batch of lit arrows are notched and sent flying downwards into the abyss.
Alistair can’t see any of the darkspawn, from where they are, but he can picture them just as well as if he were in the thick of it when roars begin echoing back to them. He can almost see the arrows falling onto their disorganised ranks like a hail of fire, sending only a few to the ground as the others run over their fallen kin in their haste to reach the enemy.
The prey.
Alistair is hit by the image of the Wardens being like one of those shoals of fish the kids in Redcliffe used to chase into shallow areas of the lake, only to trap them there, where they were easy prey to the birds flying by.
He shakes the thought away. With Loghain’s men waiting just across the hill, the casualties are sure to be kept to a minimum. He forces himself to push away the mental image of his Warden companions readying weapons to face the darkspawn army.
“Let’s go,” he says.
When he turns away from the noises of the battle and toward the Tower, Keerla is already decidedly making her way to its entrance. The Tower looms above them, darker than the black clouds gathering in the sky, somehow looking even more menacing than it does during the day, and Alistair finds himself suppressing a shiver.
He realises something is wrong when they get closer. There’s a scream ahead, in the darkness; Keerla’s whole body tightens like a bowstring, and she launches herself at a hurlock Alistair hadn’t even noticed. He isn’t sure what she does; but she leaps up at its face, plunges her daggers several times in its body, messily, and in a few instants the hurlock is falling to the ground. It moves still, though. Keerla follows him to the ground and stabs it again, twice, where its heart would be. By the time Alistair has caught up with them, Keerla is covered in darkened blood, and the hurlock is well and truly dead.
“What–”
The grounds surrounding the Tower is in a state of mayhem. Bodies strung about, most of them allies, some darkspawn. It reeks of blood and burnt grass. Alistair can see fewer than half a dozen of their people still standing, a few soldiers and a Circle mage forming a would-be defence line holding the door to the Tower and losing terrain by the second. He whirls around out of pure instinct as a genlock surges on his right, and he buries his sword deep in its abdomen.
By the time Keerla and him reach the door, two more allies have perished. One of the remaining soldiers begins babbling about abandoned tunnels and traps, eyes wide and mad under the blood covering his face.
“We have to get up there,” Alistair says. “We have to. Otherwise, Loghain’s men won’t know it’s time. It’s our priority right now.”
“But– the door–”
“The whole Tower is going to be useless if we lose Ostagar to the darkspawn,” Alistair explains as patiently as he can, and diverts an arrow by a swipe of his shield that makes his whole arm shake under the force.
“But– Ouch!” the soldier protests as Keerla digs a gloved finger in a gap in his armour.
“We’re going,” she says. “You’re coming with us. You too,” she adds toward the Circle mage, who, thankfully, doesn’t dispute.
Alistair had never been inside the Tower of Ishal, despite having been stationed in Ostagar for several weeks. Some companions of his had been up there, had told him about how good a vantage point it was to try and spot their respective homes out on the horizon. Some others had told him with a wink about dark corners that no one really looked at, and then they’d laugh and nudge each other.
Tonight, the dark corners in the ruined Tower are nothing but more hiding places for darkspawn. It seems as though there are shrieks in every direction Alistair’s not facing, waiting with bared teeth for him to lose focus so they can sink their jagged knives into his gut.
The thick walls around them muffle the roar of the clash outside until all Alistair can hear is the clinking of his own armour, and the blood rushing in his ears. He tries to let his Warden sense take over, just as Duncan’s been trying to teach him, but every shuffle of their allies’ shoes on the old stone makes the hairs on his arms rise anyway.
They don’t encounter any foe until they reach the top of the second floor’s stairs, where a lit arrow barely misses Keerla’s shoulder. Alistair surges in her direction as she hisses in rage, and she gets to her attacker mere instants before he does; she knocks the bow out of its grasp and sinks a knife into its knee right as Alistair bashes his shield into its jaw with as much force as he can muster, grunting on the impact. The darkspawn shrieks as it falls on the dusty ground, where it starts wriggling much like one of those worms used as baits by fishermen.
Alistair is still trying to fight his nausea at the image when Keerla lowers a knee on its chest to keep it in place and, without hesitation, stabs a knife through its eye. The creature sputters and twitches under her once more time, before going still for good.
Alistair is still standing next to her, shield raised, as she removes her knife from its skull and gets back up.
How in the Fade can someone as young as her be as desensitised as she appears to be? Alistair isn’t the most seasoned warrior, but he isn’t fragile either by any measure, and the hesitation he’s had could very much be the difference between life and death for soldiers like them.
“Who taught you how to fight?” He asks.
Keerla looks up at him. There’s dark blood spattered across her hair, soaking into her face covering from the side. She looks as though she might answer, when a cry for help rises from the Circle mage, sending them both running in his direction before they even take the time to think.
The man is painstakingly holding back a genlock with a blast of icy magic while a hurlock is running in its direction from the side and, without so much as a word, Alistair and Keerla decide of their respective adversary. Alistair sees Keerla run off in the hurlock’s direction while he flies shield-first into the frozen genlock from the side, sending its stiff form tumbling down the stairs that it came from. He waits to see the poor creature’s frozen body shatter on impact before running back into the thick of battle, which is far from over if the dozen new enemies that just entered the room are just as tough as the ones they’ve encountered so far.
Battling their way to the top of the Tower of Ishal is hard. Losing the few soldiers and the Circle mage to the ogre waiting for them is even harder. But nothing could have prepared Alistair for the feeling of waking up in a strange house and learning everyone he has talked to in the past few months is dead.
Well, not quite everyone.
He waits on a bench in front of Flemeth’s cabin. The sun looks wrong, here. Too cold. Greenish. He wants to stare at it until it hurts. He wants to walk into the fog and disappear into it, become one with the damp air. He wants to sink into the wetlands, never to be found again. He wants to—
“Alistair.”
Keerla sits next to him. She barely looks like herself, through the bruises and bandages. She’s not wearing her face covering. She slouches next to him, before making a pained noise and standing straight again. They sit in silence for what feels like hours, in the too-cold sun, breathing that damp air that smells of rot, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the marsh. Alistair feels a little bit less like disappearing into the fog when she’s sitting next to him.
When the sun hits the top of the mountain in the distance, Keerla clears her throat.
“My mother,” she says.
Alistair looks at her. She’s still staring off toward the sun, her face unreadable. He grimaces as he feels the urge to joke take over.
“You know, when one is trying to mock someone else, it’s usually the other person’s mother that’s mentioned.”
There’s a bitter taste in his mouth as the joke inevitably falls flat, and Keerla clicks her tongue.
“I meant, it’s my mother who trained me. You asked me before where I learnt to fight.”
Alistair nods.
And just like that, something unlocks between them. All it takes is every single Grey Warden in Ferelden to die.