Andarin: The Mountains: Free me!

“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.:
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save Us!'...:

...and I'll look down, and whisper, 'No'"

Nicodemus was not unintelligent. Nor was he...in any way shape or form what you could call slow. Perhaps it was shock, perhaps it was something else. He had been a slave for so long and had never been able to understand why. Nicodemus barely knew Saphira even now. Maybe he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quite a possibility with him.

But usually it wasn't him who needed the rescuing

What was she asking of him? He really didn't understand. The only way out for him was to die, kill Saphira, or hold a relic.

(He thinks softly of Skylar then, and the lost promise that she had made him. He knew it was impossible, and he hadn't let the promise give him any hope.)

And as she flashed the relic to him, he felt the shard scream in pain, as though the very presence of such good had cut it from the flesh of it's keeper. Nicodemus scoffed at the shard. Useless parasite.

But Nicodemus, he gazed longingly at the relic, beholding it in all of it's beauty, studying all the intricacies of it. Andraste chimed in, her eyes leaving Fenris to gaze at it. For once she found herself admiring something rather than being admired. Though I take it for more the fact that it was shaped like her, a great Phoenix.

The stallion does not say much to her remark of the shards. He made it a duty to know where they were. A simple nod.

But it is the words of Jormungandr that spark something like interest in him, and he tilts his head in curiousity. "She does?" He shuts his mouth quickly, because it seemed a silly thing to ask. Him being a Seer and all. He attempts at nonchalance. "What makes it odd? Am I so hard to like?" But it came out even sillier and he laughs. "I'm sorry."

A pause.

"I like her too."

SEER

**NICODEMUS**

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.