Dragon Age: Last Flight Read Online Free

blooming alongside tight buds and lush berries. The carved vine encircled a torch sconce tucked between two shelves, then trailed down to a gray stone bench built into the wall.
    Valya peered under the sconce. Nothing stood out to her there. Under the bench, however, there was another faint shimmer of lyrium dust rubbed into one of the stones in the walls. This time it was so light that she would never have seen it if she hadn’t already been holding on to the Fade.
    With another backward glance to ensure that no one was looking, she touched the Fade again and channeled a second wisp of magic into the stone. It vibrated as her magic touched the lyrium-rubbed rock, and the block shifted outward an inch.
    Tense with nervous anticipation, Valya gripped the sides of the block with her fingertips and awkwardly wiggled it loose. When it was almost out, she eased it down to the floor carefully, and exhaled in quiet relief at how little sound it made.
    Behind the loose block was a little hole in the wall, and in that hole was a single book, small but thick. Its cover was scuffed and bloodstained, and its pages were warped with old moisture, but it seemed to be in good condition. Biting her lip, Valya pulled it out, and then she carefully replaced the stone block and sat on the bench as though nothing at all were amiss.
    She opened the book, unsure what to expect. It was filled with script in a fast, careless hand, feminine but not soft in the slightest.
    In the year 5:12 Exalted, it began, my brother, Garahel, and I flew to Antiva City.

 
    2
    5:12 E XALTED
    The second time Isseya climbed into a griffon’s saddle, she was riding to join a war.
    Neither she nor her brother, Garahel, was anywhere near ready for it. Greener than seasick frogs, their lieutenant had called them, and he’d been right.
    The two of them had become Grey Wardens scarcely a year before, and had been assigned to the Red Wing of the griffon riders only four months earlier. They were still practicing on horses with big wooden boards on their saddles to mimic the obstruction of griffons’ wings. Only once, strapped into back saddles with more experienced Wardens at the reins, had either Garahel or Isseya ever flown—and that was merely a test to see whether either of the young elves suffered from crippling vertigo or fear that would make further training a waste. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have seen aerial combat for another year.
    But the Blight waited for no one.
    Four months earlier, darkspawn had come pouring out of the north, answering the call of a newly awakened Old God. They’d boiled up from the depths of the earth, using the ancient dwarven Deep Roads to travel unseen by human eyes. Caught by surprise, the nations of Thedas had been wholly unable to mount an effective defense against the darkspawn hordes.
    Antiva, which had come under attack first, had lost ground as fast as the monstrous army could claim it. The scattered militias of the towns and villages in its outlying lands were no obstacles to the darkspawn. Their walls were smashed and trodden underfoot, their citizens slaughtered or carried down to the Deep Roads to meet a worse fate.
    The river city of Seleny, fabled for its graceful bridges and sculptures, had fallen after a siege that lasted only four days. For weeks afterward the river had been fouled with corpses. The people of Antiva City had watched them float by, spinning out to sea, day after day, and with each bloated body their fear had grown.
    In such desperate straits, there was no time to finish the young Wardens’ training. And as Isseya flew into Antiva City, clinging to the back of the senior Warden ahead of her and squinting against the whipping wind, she understood just how dire the capital city’s situation was.
    Antiva City sat on the edge of a shimmering blue bay. Rich green farmland and orchards surrounded it in a ten-mile belt inland, stretching farther along the shores of the river that ran to the