The cries of the cursed and dying hit him like the storm that had rolled into Lothering a week ago. Hammering, relentless. Their expiring breaths formed a dark cloud of heavy air, too thick for Rhocanth to breathe properly now. It was coming, it said. For leaders, for lovers, and for the lost alike.
Rhocanth stood rigidly beside Falina, not the sentry he wished he could be. He had reached for her hand early on, but could not find it. It was tucked tightly at her side. Watching her watch the victims, knowing she could see the entire scene uncensored, broke his heart twice over. It was all he could do not to haul her into his arms and scale the very walls to find an end to it for her. If only he had said something when he had the chance, protested a little more during their descent down the Frostbacks, had the presence of mind for something other than himself... Every moment he had spent grieving was another knife in his heart. Now the layers of innocence had been peeled away from her and he could do nothing.
And what of himself? He watched just the same as body after body piled up in the shadows of the room, as if they might try to hide them. They were still there, he thought, feeling chilled. Their spirits were watching through their dead white eyes like spilled milk, gone and wasted. Somewhere in the world, the steadily-beating heart of a good knight would never be heard again; the soft footsteps of an elven beauty would never whisper through the halls. They were only the most recent, the freshest. He could see in each of their limp forms ten thousand dwarven bodies to match. Men, women, children. Darkspawn were not choosy. They had ripped the hearts out of peasants and gnawed the bones of kings. So many stories gone unfinished. So many pages turned before their time. They would never speak again.
The burden was finally overwhelming when Ser Flann hit the floor. Rhocanth's eyes were hot, focused on Alistair's face, and when he saw the man whisper a prayer, he silently moved his lips along with it. He didn't even know the words, nor did he believe in the god, but they all owed a moment to the departed... and to their commander. Blaming Alistair was wrong. Simple-minded. Did the protestor, whose name he did not know previously and had lost in the mix, not realize that the Warden-Commander had to watch everyone fall, time after time? Did they think he did not know in the depths of his core what he was doing? He, after all, held the cup. This was a leader's curse, and to one well-versed in the sordid signs of it, was unmissable. ... Nevermind the fool who had tried to save his own skin by feigning bodily malfunction. Simply dishonorable. But there had come many proud and brave as well, and they were credits to themselves and to Thedas. It was heartening to know that, should he live, he would stand beside them. So great they were.
It was time at last. His own name was the next to leave Alistair's lips, and he was glad. The syllables and the sound, the very last shred of his identity, were like music. He breathed in deeply, savored them, and pulled his shoulders back. Rhocanth Garal, son of a deshyr, vessel of the blood of Paragons, would walk with the dignity of those dwarves before him who had charged into the dark, never returning.
It hit him like a shaft of light through the gloom. Perhaps this was it. His title would be willfully forsaken forever with the next swallow he took, his people had forgotten him, he could not even say that his desperately-scrawled letter on that fragile parchment tucked into a Legionnaire's hand had even reached his family. He had watched it fly away into the morning like a little dove in that black gauntlet, and take with it his heart. It lived there still, his love for his home, amongst the crystal gardens and the shimmering heat of the rivers, kissed the hair of the merchant girls with silks in their pale arms, smoothed the labored brow of the shaper, whispered a hymn of hope to the Duster, roosted on the spire of the royal palace where he had once perched to gaze upon the whole world.