“Pink halla tavern, I'm gonna keep on daaancing at the pink halla tavern!”

Emmrich looked up from the leather-bound tome he was reading, having decided to take his studies out of his personal library and into the communal dining area for a change of scenery and a cup of peppermint and lavender tea, which was cooling on the table next to him, wisps of steam curling gracefully into the air. A moment of perfect peace, shattered by...

“Goodness me, what is that egregious caterwauling?”

“You're a mage! How can you not know?”

Harding's incredulous voice strained to be heard above the sound of the rushing waters pouring into the chamber. Already the small stone room was filling up. The arcane glyph hovering before the sealed door shone with a blue-white radiance and slowly rotated in the air, symbols spinning clockwise like a valve to let the water flow in through several slits cut high up in the walls.

Early morning sun had burned the mist off the rolling fields, which shimmered with golden waves as the wheat, almost ready for harvest, danced in the breeze. Smoke from a campfire lazily swirled upward, wood crackling gently.

“So I've been thinking about Solas”, Alana said, lowering their tin cup of bitter and burned campfire coffee. “And, look, I’m a damn good mage, but I don't even know if I can kill a god”.

Viago de Riva's eyebrow twitched, and the muscles in his jaw tightened. The master assassin’s hand moved with precision, in a fluid motion borne from long practice. With a flick of his wrist, the king was dead.

“Checkmate”, he said in triumph.

“I'll get you next time, old man”, Alana replied, creasing their mouth into a half smile at the frown this quip drew upon Viago's face. He was probably less than a decade older than them, but Viago had mentored Alana during their training, and they never missed an opportunity to wind him up about it.

“You need to be less impulsive”, Viago explained with an air of exasperation. “Not every battle can be won through attack alone, Rook”.