[ Master Post ]
Title: Rhapsody in Ass Major – Chapter 320
Co-Conspirator: 
MaverikLoki
Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: Varric ♂, Isabela ♀, Fenris ♂, Gytha ♀, Anders ♂, Aveline ♀
Rating: T (L2 N0 S0 V2 D1)
Warnings: Dick jokes, weaponised dildo, canon-typical violence
Notes: Dicks, dicks, and more dicks. It's a dildo shop, innit? Now with dickish dicks with extra dickery.
By nightfall, the shop looked much more like itself, and Varric had sent a runner to fetch them food from the market. They all perched on counters and cabinets, as Gytha attempted to replace some of her broken stock.
Over the lathe, Varric called out, "Good thing Cormac's not here."
"Cormac is not allowed to eat my cabbage salad. Not if he doesn't want to sleep alone, although, knowing Cormac, I wouldn't be surprised if he did that on purpose, sometimes." Anders laughed, licking spicy oils from his knife, between bites.
Fenris looked like he might have something tart to say, but the sound of the door swinging open interrupted them. Humans, all of them, at a glance. And not just a few. The front of the shop filled with thugs.
"Hey, lady, give us the blood stone. The boss wants it, he says you got it, and we're gonna take it either way. You give it to us, and nobody has to get hurt," one of the thugs proposed. "Of course, we might be doing Kirkwall a favour, in here. A store full of dicks? Who goes to the shop to buy dicks?"
"I do!" Anders and Isabela said, at the same time, offence clear in their voices and faces.
"Oh good," Varric said with a tight smile, lazily pulling Bianca over his shoulder, "this store was looking short a few dicks, and here you are! Do me a favour and line up for me."
"What is this?" one thug asked another, pulling a pair of daggers from his belt. "Did you hire bodyguards for the dicks? Dickguards?"
"They're paying me in whiskey," Fenris felt the need to clarify. "Now get out of here before Isabela stabs someone. And not necessarily with her daggers."
The thugs looked around, but the only woman they saw was Gytha. "Isabela?"
"Hello, sailor!" Isabela appeared as if from nowhere, stabbing two daggers into two backs.
The store became a chaos of blades, bolts, and fists. Gytha stood to the back, dildo at the ready and watching for an opening.
As one of the thugs turned to block Isabela's blades, Gytha darted out behind him, slamming him in the back of the head with the dildo she'd been wielding all morning. The thug crumpled, and she kicked him under a table. "We need answers," she reminded Varric's friends. "If we don't know why they're here, they're just going to keep coming. Like ants!" She clubbed another thug who'd come up behind Varric. "Do you know how hard it is to get rid of ants? Even if you take out everything they want, they just don't leave!"
"Ants? I would think this is somewhat more serious than ants," Fenris noted, plunging a fist into a thug's chest and squeezing his heart until it burst. He paused, with a wince. "Sorry. Questioning. Right."
In a matter of minutes, the thugs were no longer standing, most dead, some bludgeoned into unconsciousness, and the damage was much less than it had been, in the morning, even if Fenris's sword had taken out a freestanding rack. They piled the corpses out front, and Varric went to summon the guard, again, while Fenris and Isabela helped Gytha bind the others.
Gytha stopped to examine the remains of the broken rack. "Well, I never liked that one, anyway," she sighed.
"Well, now you have an excuse to redecorate," Izzy told her, with a friendly nudge of her elbow. "What do you think about an interactive display?"
"I'm not hearing this," Fenris grumbled, grabbing one of his bottles and stepping outside.
By the time Varric had returned, Aveline and a couple of her guards in tow, the ladies and Anders had cleaned up the worst of the mess and Fenris was slurring his words.
"Well, this is lovely," Aveline drawled, eyeing Fenris, the bottle, and the pile of bodies outside.
"Only a few of these are my fault," Fenris assured her. He paused, tilted his head. "No. Their fault. They're the ones who attacked."
Aveline rubbed her forehead and sighed. "Yes, Varric told me what happened in a way that wasn't the least bit embellished, I'm sure." She gave Varric a droll look and motioned for her guards to take care of the bodies.
"Twice in one day, Aveline," Anders pointed out. "An assault on a dildo shop. It's ridiculous."
"The dwarf and the whore are here. Of course it's ridiculous. I don't know why I would expect anything else." Aveline sighed. "So, why are they here? Did they just think this place would be easy to rob? Did they need more excitement in their lives?"
"That is still the question," Varric said, leaning against one of the counters. "Here, slap that guy a couple times. Looks like he's waking up."
Isabela leaned over the table and bounced the thug's cheeks off her palms a few times. "Rise and shine, sailor! It's time for you to answer some questions!"
"I know what you're after, but I don't know why," Varric said, hiking himself up to sit on the edge of the table and watch the thug's face. "Two black eyes, Gytha? You have to make my life difficult, don't you…"
"Why?" The thug looked completely confused.
"Who's paying you? Why do you want it?" Varric clarified, patience already thinning.
"Boss told us it'd be an easy hit. Get the boxes and get out. And don't open them, because one of them's got something scary in it. I don't know. Some magic shit. Boss says he'll be king of Kirkwall, if he gets the box." The thug shrugged as best he could, bound like he was.
Aveline quirked an eyebrow at Varric over the thug's head.
"'King of Kirkwall'?" Anders repeated cheerfully. "Well, that sounds like a perfectly sane person!"
"It sounds like Kirkwall," Fenris muttered. He moved to stand next to Varric, lighting his brands as he glared down at the thug. The thug's eyes popped wide. "And do you know what was in those boxes?" he asked, flexing his glowing fingers.
"H-He never told us," the thug told him. "Honest. For all I know, the magic shit he was talking about is another dick in a box." Fenris cracked his knuckles, and the thug stared at them as he started to ramble. "W-Which might explain why he didn't want us to open them. I don't know. Though it's… Well, it has to be more than that if you're all here to defend it." He cut himself off abruptly, looking terribly worried. "I didn't sign up for this. I got two kids, you know? Well… one kid and a layabout brother who acts like a child. And my wife, she's —"
"We get the picture," Varric said, holding up his hand. "Who is this boss of yours?"
"Jake the Bleeder." The thug paused, realising he'd answered the question, panic spreading across his face. "But, don't tell him I told you. Don't tell him nothing! The last guy wronged him, his blood crawled right out of his eyes, boiling. I don't want no part of that."
"Oh, that's great. Blood magic. That's just what I need in my day." Anders threw his hands up and huffed.
"Look, you and your little friends get to go with Captain Aveline, for a little while," Varric told the thug. "We'll see what we can do about making sure your blood doesn't explode out of your eyes, but don't make us regret it, you get me?"
"Demons," Fenris muttered. "Blood magic. Is it Tuesday again?"
"I think it is!" Isabela wrapped herself around Fenris, looking over his shoulder. "Tuesdays in Kirkwall. Always exciting. … Like last Tuesday…"
"We are not discussing last Tuesday," Fenris growled.
"Yeah, can we not?" Anders asked, plaintively. Four drunks, a broken nose, and Fenris… Yet another thing he could've done without.
"Tuesdays in general or just the one?" Isabela asked, batting her eyelashes.
"Both," Fenris and Anders answered in unison.
"Hey. Varric." Gytha gestured him over, setting the newly re-bloodied dildo down on a shelf. "I appreciate you helping me out, and you know I'm always willing to lend you a hand, but…"
"But you want me to move the shard." Varric nodded. "Don't sweat it, Gytha. Thanks for keeping an eye on it for me. I'm sure I can find someplace else." He hoped. The blighted thing seemed to attract disaster. A part of him wondered if he should just throw the thing back into the Deep Roads, seal it off, and pretend like he'd never found the thing.
"Thanks, Varric." Gytha offered him an apologetic, if relieved, smile, before heading into the back to fetch the package.
After a moment, Anders flinched, eyes shooting to where Gytha had opened one of the boxes. "Andraste's flaming knickerweasels, what is—" He paused. "That's it, isn't it. That's the box."
"How did you—?" Gytha came forward, carrying the box and its lid.
"He's a Warden. It's probably some weird Wardeny shit." Varric shrugged. "Hearing darkspawn, detecting lyrium… I dunno. It's going in the next book."
"I can hear it. I mean, I can hear lyrium anyway, or… you know how that works," Anders said, without mentioning Justice. That was something Gytha still didn't know, and as much as he liked her, he meant to keep things that way. "But, this is different. Like the song's in the wrong key. Put the lid on that, it's making me dizzy." And where had he heard that before. Where had he felt— in that room, of course, but… Meredith's office had sounded like this. He'd thought it was just his nerves. He'd thought Justice was just pissed off about Meredith, which they both were, but this sound.
Gytha locked the lid into place, and suddenly it stopped, the tension running out of Anders almost immediately.
"I think I know who your brother sold it to," he said, after a moment.
