Alistair traveled through Orlais alone. He kept up his identity as a Grey Warden. His old order's title came in handy for a change, as no one questioned why he was wandering through towns, and certainly no one bothered him, for it was normal to see wardens do solo recruiting. A particular reason people especially kept their distance.

  From tainted wastelands to the winter-chilled forests, the Orlesian country was as biting as the Game. Areas of the Dales's mountain and forest scenery resembled a timeless and pretty picture but held the deadliest snakes. Whereas the wastelands like the Western Approach were more honest with impressions of the country's taint.

  Yet, he finally felt he could say that things like the Game and titles meant nothing to him anymore. His cynical outlook was now channeled to a purpose. He cringed to admit that Anri Lavellan wasn't the moron he had first mistaken him to be. While the Chantry and Inquisition used him as the poster boy for the fight against a darkspawn god-monster, Anri was sneakily using them to build up a middle-finger to traditional organizations.

  "Ambitious, I'll give him that."

  He wandered without rest, passing through more than one season in a day and braving extreme terrain changes. But what made his hair stand on end was the sight of static rifts opened and doing nothing in the air.

  He passed through a dense forest mountain path and saw one between two tall, wise oak trees. It just existed like a painting, yet the corruption in his blood made his skin tingle and a sensation of crawling bugs run through him. He shook off the feeling with some drink from his flask. The thing gave him the creeps.

  He closed his eyes and slipped into a meditative focus, akin to a trance, to see if he could locate the Venatori and Rift Orb source. After a while, he let go of his trance and frustratedly tossed a rock at the ugly thing. It went through the space and never came back.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  This was something he felt sure Anri wasn't aware of. If Venatori were able to open rifts and leave them unguarded in a dormant state while they went off to play somewhere else, then they were a much bigger threat than that darkspawn magister could have ever been.

  He wrote an update on a scroll with his writing tools in his satchel, then did a wolf whistle. A short while later a raven landed on his shoulder. He tied his update to Anri and sent the bird on its way.

  He continued his journey, keeping a wide berth from the things. It helped that he could always detect one via the skin tingles: this was also information he sent back to Anri along the way. Suggesting that the Grey Wardens could be useful static rift detectors.

  A few days later, Anri returned with instructions that made him go into a laughing fit. He was to be a walking pinpoint for Leliana's tracking map. The fact that he and Leliana were working together again in some abstract way was just as hilarious as being the moving pawn marker on a Shadow Sect War Table map.

  But he had no problems with this, for the first time in ages, he was finally doing what he should've been doing. This time he wasn't working for any pouncy order or royalty, it was for a situation that needed to be fixed before Thedas became nothing more than ruins in the ocean. It couldn't be simpler than that.

  He did worry that Anri would risk it all with one fatal slip-up. The man almost died at the Ash Hills caverns, which, frankly, was a clusterfuck. But, from his conversation with Maevaris when she had given him one of her ravens, it was clear that their southern architect was already taking actions to negate such critical risks. Still, if the Shadow Sect became like the Grey Wardens they would fall into the same traps.

  Hopefully Anri could live up to his own mandate. It would be harder for him though: why he was constantly struggling to, more or less, remove the ego that was the inevitable downfall to legendary causes like his old order.

  "How can the man be so wise at his age?" Alistair laughed at what he was like when he was 25 years old, which saw his biggest dilemma being sneaky ways of avoiding Chantry rituals.

  Despite his earlier opinions of the man, he admired Anri's ability to lead a world organization and keep all the stuffy traditionalists aligned. Even the Empress of Orlais had once answered to him.

  "Now I can see why. The kid is an idealist and a realist on the same coin. The scariest kind of hero. I guess we're lucky he's trying to save Thedas with pragmatism."

  Alistair turned his focus on speeding up his journey and reaching the Storm Coast within the month.