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“we need to hold that hill at all costs.”
“Come on Krem, you’ve got a shield, use it!” The Iron Bull bellows as he charges his opponent. The young Inquisition warrior hesitates, unsure whether he should correct the qunari, but the spat is over quickly without an opportunity for the soldier to say his name.
Bull knows it wasn’t Krem. It was just another brave soldier who’d probably be killed during this demon war before it was all over.
Sometimes, Bull wishes for a brave, quick death in battle like those soldiers.
Sometimes.
Bull finds the Inquisitor in the courtyard one day, talking with an Inquisition specialist, a dwarven explosives expert.
“Inquisitor, I think i’ve almost got the secret to qunari blackpowder,” the dwarf says excitedly. “I’ve been working on it for months!”
“Bull?” the Inquisitor interrupts the worker. “Do you need something?”
“No,” Bull says, staring at the dwarf. “You don’t have it.”
He leaves the Inquisitor and the expert standing silent behind him and goes to get a drink.
The Inquisitor informs him that the remains of the chargers have been recovered a few weeks after the qunari alliance is sealed. Bull doesn’t go to see the bodies, not yet, but the Inquisitor sends him the salvaged weapons and armor of the chargers with a note saying Bull could decide what to do with them.
He is examining Dalish’s staff when two eager children run up to him, children of inquisition scouts. With eyes full of wonder, they point to the gleaming crystal at the top of the staff and ask,
“What’s that for?”
“It’s an old elven trick for aiming,” Bull tells them.
He packs the staff away carefully among his things and never looks at it again.
Bull is fighting alongside the Inquisitor in the Emprise Du Lion against an seemingly endless surge of red templars when a blade slips through the chink in his armor and sinks into his skin. He roars in pain and spins into a blood frenzy, causing the templars to retreat in terror. The Inquisitor calls for a healer as the last of the red menaces vanish into a mountain cave.
Bull is only semi-conscious when the healer forces his mouth open and slips a potion down it. The potion tastes sweet and pure and cools his burning mouth like fresh honey.
It tastes wrong.
Later that night, he vomits up every trace of it from his stomach. They try to give him more the next day but he refuses.
It takes two weeks for the wound to heal.
The Inquisitor stops the party to rest in a struggling city on the way back to skyhold from a mission in the western approach. Bull passes the Inquisition guards and takes a walk alone through the city after several fruitless attempts at falling asleep. He is walking by the elven alienage shoved into the corner of the city when he hears the screams.
He is inside the gates of the alienage in a split second, just in time to witness a drunken human chasing after a pair of frightened elves. Bull tackles the human from behind and breaks his neck. He calls out to the elves but they dart behind a corner and disappear from sight.
Bull drags the dead man out of the alienage and into the silent, uncaring city. He leaves the man slumped in the street and returns to stare at the gates of the alienage.
The only charger’s body that the Inquisition couldn’t recover was Skinner’s.
Bull walks away from her alienage and back to the crumbling hotel the Inquisition is in. The nightmares begin that night.
There is a young boy sitting on the outskirts of redcliffe, right outside the gates when Bull passes by with the Inquisition. The rest of the party heads inside but Bull stays behind.
“What’s your name?” he asks the boy.
The kid shrugs and makes a noncommittal sound.
There is no response from the boy at all when Bull then asks if the kid has a name.
“Do you want one?” Bull says, eyes hard and piercing as he studies the boy.
The boy hesitates. He nods.
“Try Grim,” Bull tells him as he strides through the gates into redcliffe after his companions.
He never sees the boy again.
“change of plans. nothing personal… bas.”