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Chapter Text

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"Waking up to a brand new day is a win," Melai would say every time she woke. It was her apple a day to keep the dark thoughts away.

It was her silly little nothing. But she would feel sillier if she said it in a dream. So she didn't.

Because she was in one.

She followed the dance of shadows as firelight flickered over all the stones in the room: stone ground, stone walls, stone-faced medieval guards. Compared to her other dreams of fantasy though, this was lackluster.

She was in the world of Dragon Age. She could have traded poet-tree with the Grand Oak, poked around the Black Emporium, crossed the bridges of the Wellspring, watched a hologram play in an amphitheater in Minrathous, or read books in the Shattered Library. But no, she had to be stuck in a dingy dungeon in the third game's prologue.

...Honestly, it wasn't too bad.

She even wanted to pat herself on the back for finally having a healthy sleep schedule because all her senses were alive. Or rather, all but her sense of smell—she could never make it work in her dreams.

And her sense of touch was on overdrive: the cold bit so deep that her body would shiver at times, the dry air tightened her exposed skin, the metal stocks pinned her arms down to her knees while the rough floor pinched from below, and the mark on her left palm ached as if she genuinely had it. She'd experienced these sensations one or two at a time but never all at once.

Clarity aside, a drab dungeon was still a drab dungeon.

She could change how this played out, but she wasn't one to take the reins. Well, not since she went past her twenties. Nowadays, it was enough to know she was dreaming while she let her subconscious shape the world. Maybe she could nudge the dream to a proper reenactment and then let go of her control. She raised her head to one of the guards holding her at swordpoint.

"Hello. Can you get Cassandra and Leliana in here?" She visualized their appearances to make sure the right people came in.

"Håll käften, din mördare!"

She frowned. Was there something wrong with her hearing? The sound was garbled, like hearing someone scream inside a swimming pool. She did catch the tail end when the guard called her a murderer, which was just rude. Appropriate, given the situation. Still, her brain didn't have to roleplay that hard.

Despite the guard's rudeness, her summoning worked; the wooden door in front of her burst open, admitting the two women. A thought niggled as they drew close: the door had banged against the wall, but all she heard was a dull thud, as though her ears were stuffed with cotton balls.

Cassandra now stood an arm's breadth away, towering over Melai like a giant that she had to crane her neck back and then some. The firelight in the room limned sharp cheekbones and a healing scar that started from under the jaw. Another niggling thought: it shouldn't be there.

Melai leaned to her side to peek at Leliana. Unfortunately, all she could make out were wisps of red hair escaping Leliana's shadowed hood.

"Manöver," Cassandra said, her voice distorted but heavy with authority.

The sheathing of swords from Cassandra's command lacked the sharp screeching Melai expected. It was definitely a hearing problem. She tried inserting a finger in each ear to trick her brain into fixing the muffled sounds, but a heavy slab of metal smacked into her mouth and her nose, and—ow, that would bruise. She glared at the offending object trapping her hands, feeling betrayed. You should've vanished, you piece of—!

Metal.

She smelled metal.

Her heart dropped to her stomach.

No no no. This could be an exception.

For all she knew, she'd just turned her body over in the waking world, fell off the bed, and hit the floor face down so hard that her nose bled—and that blood was what she smelled.

Other scents invaded her nostrils, mocking her theory.

Her nose, lips, and teeth vibrated. Her ears popped and rang.

Then, what happened after was a blur. One moment, Cassandra was crouched in front of Melai, their faces almost touching. The next, Melai's head was between her knees, her arms behind her back and bent painfully at the joints. She was shoved so low that she could smell the dirt caked between the ridges of the floor.

"Försöker du ta livet av dig?" Leliana hissed right next to Melai's ear, clear as crystal.

Nothing registered for her, but the How dare you? was unmistakable. Tiny pinpricks of fear crawled throughout her head and down her spine.

"Inte förrän vi får några svar," Leliana pressed on, as if swearing an oath.

"Tala!" Cassandra demanded, squeezing the skin at the back of Melai's neck.

A feeling of impending doom overcame her—but then she remembered the doom was already outside this dungeon, spitting demons from the sky. She stifled a hysterical laugh.

She was awake.

And this brand new day was not a win.

* * *

Chapter Text

* * *

An offensively orange winter coat had assaulted Cassandra's eyes when the soldiers brought an unconscious female dwarf into one of the open makeshift shelters in the camp.

"It's not silk," Leliana said, thumbing the thick material with delight.

"What it is is ugly," Cassandra retorted.

"The dwarves have been holding out on us." Leliana marveled at the coat's various trappings, particularly fascinated with the metallic blunt teeth lining its front edges and the pendant in the middle gliding to open or bind the coat closed.

"Burn it anyway," Cassandra said when it was removed so the healer could check for injuries. She could jest; everyone in the camp ran with little to no sleep. Finding a survivor had been an immense relief.

They would finally get answers.

The survivor's attire was a curious mix of exotic and expertly crafted. Her tunic and trousers were the more familiar high-quality wool clinging to her form, unlike the atrocious coat that previously engulfed her body. Several slashes damaged the thick trousers, though the layers she wore underneath prevented her from sustaining deep wounds.

Upon closer inspection, they considered the possibility that she was half-human. She had no weapons, no physical tells to indicate she was a mage or a templar, and no signs of experience with any form of labor or combat. They put her down as the daughter of an affluent dwarven merchant or a human noble—of which country they could not identify. Black hair, dark brown eyes, and brown skin; her facial features were unusual for a typical Antivan, Rivaini, or Tevinter. Her small, flat nose doubly made her hard to place.

"Thank you, Adan. We'll take it from here," Leliana dismissed the healer, and once he'd left, quietly said, "Take caution. She may be a spy—or worse, an accomplice."

The survivor had fallen out of a tear in the Veil, appearing from nowhere beside the Temple of Sacred Ashes. One of the soldiers recounted their encounter and said, in awe, that before the tear vanished, he saw the silhouette of a woman bathed in light from the other side.

"Was this the case for the rest of you?" Cassandra asked, feeling a glimmer of hope but quickly suppressing it. People see what they want to see.

"By the Maker," she joined their awe when the rest of the soldiers corroborated the claim.

Was it divine providence? Was the woman Andraste herself who had come to deliver the key to heal the giant tear in the sky and bring to light the sinister attack that claimed the lives of the Most Holy and hundreds of innocents? If so, Maker willing, the survivor's mere existence could transform their forces from scrambling like chickens to a righteous institution the Most Holy had envisioned it to become.

Unfortunately, Cassandra's grand visions were dashed when the survivor's left hand flashed, the glow eerily similar to the Breach. The people in the neighboring shelter gasped in alarm at the sight, fearing the emergence of yet more demons. They lobbed their accusations, their words spreading like wildfire to the other shelters and beyond. Further chaos erupted when rifts emerged, splintering their forces and leaving their camp caught between two rifts.

She called for a retreat, but Cullen and his men elected to stay so as not to lose gained ground.

"There's a limit to the trajectory of the expelled ether from the Breach," Cullen advised. "Find that perimeter and set up the new camp a mile from it."

She had done so. But the people insisted on heavier measures. A scout even took matters into his own hands, and he would have succeeded if not for Varric's intervention.

She made a show of arresting the still-unconscious survivor, forming a small contingent of sympathetic soldiers and a healer, and transporting her charge far and away to the safety of the holding cells underneath Haven's chantry. Varric followed hours later, accompanying an apostate named Solas, a missive from Leliana in his hand.

The survivor-turned-prisoner endured the nights through Solas and the healer's painstaking work. Many more unnamed individuals had kept her alive. But now, the prisoner spat on their efforts, taking the first opportunity she had to hurt herself upon gaining consciousness.

Cassandra's awe turned into a sense of betrayal.

Her heart yet pounded from the exertion of immobilizing the prisoner. The musty air suffocated her. The constant drip of water pierced her ears. Self-recrimination burned like molten iron inside her lungs.

"Everyone in the Conclave is dead. Save for you," she said through gritted teeth. "Your attempt just now reveals your guilt. If you have any remorse, you will tell us what happened."

No answer.

The absence of response was getting to her—she barely controlled the impulse to squeeze the vulnerable nape under her hand. Just when she was on the verge of falling into temptation, the prisoner spoke:

"Aym saaree. Ay downt uhndrstand. (I'm sorry. I don't understand.)" Her voice was small and high, rasping from days of disuse.

Cassandra frowned. It seemed like a mix of Trade and Ander. Together, however, the words made no sense.

Qunlat? she mouthed at Leliana.

No, Leliana mouthed back.

"Seeing as you do not value your life, I will bargain: the truth for the mercy of a quick death—through my sword."

The prisoner groaned, resting her head on the stone floor.

"Dees kant bee reel. (This can't be real.)" Her fingers twitched in the air as her wrists twisted uselessly inside Leliana's tight hold.

Cassandra scowled. The words were pure gibberish now.

Leliana sent her a look.

Cassandra withdrew her hand in turn.

Leliana pulled the prisoner upright, who cried out, red-faced and breathing heavily. She skimmed a dagger against the prisoner's jaw, from ear to chin. "Or I can make it very, very painful. I can make it last for weeks. Months. Your choice."

The prisoner's fear was palpable.

"Wayt, lehmee thingk! Oh… Orlesian! Orlesian ees french! Suhpowzuhdlee. Ay can… (Wait, lemme think! Oh… Orlesian! Orlesian is French! Supposedly. I can…) Juh… Je suis ?" She inhaled with care but still winced in pain, wilting under Cassandra's sharp stare. "Je suis Melai Dimagiba. Je suis…" she paused, her eyes flitting about in panic, her lips moving like a fish out of water. "…Juste un idiot," she finished in terribly mangled Orlesian. Bereft of her hands, she extended her tongue to point at her nose. "Je vais bien."

Cassandra almost snorted. The prisoner's nose was far from good. It was red and swollen, as was her mouth. Soon, they would be black and blue.

Leliana was quiet, though Cassandra could hear her leaf through her mental list of noble families. She arched an eyebrow. "Vous parlez l'orlésien ?"

"Vehree litl. (Very little.) Uh… un pue ?" The pitch of the prisoner's naturally high voice went higher, the whites of her eyes showing around her irises as if she couldn't believe what she heard.

Cassandra—and Leliana, from the looks of it—echoed the prisoner's disbelief, but for a different reason: Orlesians, by and large, spoke Trade to foreigners lest they subject themselves to butchered elocution (imperfection, as the lofty nobles in Val Royeaux would say). But knowing no Trade and only a little Orlesian? Such a case could only fit a—

"Vous êtes Viddathari ?" Leliana asked.

The prisoner balked. "Viddathari ? Non !"

"Vous vous souvenez de ce qu'il s'est passé ? Comment ça a commencé ?"

The prisoner blinked and mulled over Leliana's questions. "Je ne sais pas. Je suis…" her eyes flicked toward the ceiling, seemingly searching for words. She shook her head, stilling and drawing back when she felt the blade press on her. "Amneezuh? (Amnesia?)"

"Amnésie." Leliana sighed through her nose in disappointment.

"All I hear are excuses to keep your mouth shut," Cassandra growled into the prisoner's face.

The prisoner froze, reminding Cassandra of a nervous lap-nug taken from its owner. "Je ne comprends pas." She sagged in defeat. "Désolée."

This weasel! Cassandra's temper boiled over. "You lie!"

Leliana blocked her with an elbow, her dagger still deftly trained on the prisoner. "We need her, Cassandra," she warned.

"Ugh." Cassandra stood up and paced the length of the floor until the urge to throttle the prisoner abated. 

No answers, more questions. Unfortunately, time was not on their side.

"Maker guide us," she breathed as she turned to Leliana. "Go to the forward camp. I will take her to the rift."

Leliana nodded, letting go of the prisoner. "I will send you a few people to assist on the way," she said as she passed.

The prisoner hissed from the pain of her arms going back to life. She stayed on the floor, gawking at Cassandra, as still as a statue, as though she had no reason to escape. 

Cassandra turned to the soldier nearest the door and said, "Get me a scout."

An elf runner was the first to come in. He examined the prisoner's bruises, left, and returned with an ice pack and a salve.

The prisoner bowed her head when the runner tossed her the items. She kept her head down, smelling the salve before smoothing it on her bruises and the mark on her hand. Once done, she fumbled around her clothes (as if she had no clue where was where) until she found a pocket on her trousers to slip the salve inside.

Other scouts and runners carrying medium and heavy armor trickled in. Most of what they brought was too long or loose, so they had to help the prisoner secure her fittings. Once she was ready, Cassandra tied her wrists together and led her outside.

The prisoner shivered and squinted at the Breach, her face scrunching as though her stomach gave her trouble.

"The Breach. La Brèche," Cassandra added in Orlesian. The prisoner could be deceiving them about her ability to communicate, so she would not let the prisoner weasel her way out of this by claiming a misunderstanding. Cassandra explained the situation as simple as she could manage, continuing her switch between Trade and Orlesian.

The prisoner's eyes went vacant midway.

"Ugh!" Cassandra held the urge to punch her frustration on the ground. She flung her hands in the air instead.

"Désolée," the prisoner said. She seemed genuinely apologetic.

For her failure to give answers? For causing the explosion? Cassandra couldn't say. Exasperated, she waved for her to go.

Flashes of green lightning discharged from the Breach before the prisoner could take a step. The sky roared as the mark on her hand pulsed in response. Her face crumpled in distress as she exclaimed in pain. She fell to her knees, tightening her fingers around her wrist as if to stanch the blood flow. The pulses eventually died, but she stayed on the ground, unable to look away from the mark. A minute passed, and her hand had turned a blotchy red.

Concerned, Cassandra went to her, knelt on one knee, and tapped the fingers constricted over the prisoner's wrist.

The prisoner whimpered as she went back to her senses, shuddering as she loosened her death grip.

"Désolée," Cassandra said with sincerity, regarding the expanding burn mark on the prisoner's palm. Solas had said the mark would kill her in the future, if not soon. Guilty or not, she couldn't help but pity her.

The prisoner whipped her head toward Cassandra in bewilderment.

The words of Cassandra's late mentor came unbidden: Look to the eyes of your heart and not just the ones in your head. Not everything is what it appears on the surface.

Would that she could, but this was no ordinary circumstance. As it were, her main concern was what she would have to do—what she feared she would let happen against better judgment.

She pulled the prisoner to her feet. "Follow me."

* * *

Melai left Haven with Cassandra and two guys who dragged supplies strapped in a sled (a pulka, they had called it). No one spoke, but it was no peaceful trek because the Breach howled nonstop; it even drowned the crunch of snow from their footsteps and the sound of falling sand from the slide of the pulka.

She squinted and looked up to where the Breach's rift would be. It stood far from where they were. She hoped the supplies they brought were not an indicator of the distance they needed to cover but just for resupplying the forward camp. She hadn't left her house for years and was essentially a couch potato, so this hike was a Herculean task.

Years.

She racked her brain for a definite number, but her memory was murky. She could, however, recall when she holed herself in her room. It was hard not to, considering it was the month before the world went on a pandemic lockdown. She'd stopped caring if it was a weekday or a weekend, and the dates had blended together until every day was gray. The days bled into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years.

Then, one day, for some inexplicable reason, she woke up in a game world, like a generic isekai protagonist. Had someone with an outrageously sadistic sense of humor whisked her here and dropped the responsibility of all the lives of Thedas into her terribly unqualified hands?

Or maybe no one had.

Maybe she had ended up in isekai purgatory, falling in line with her fellow dead to get sorted and sent to their next life. And when she'd stepped in for her turn, she'd have to crane her neck to a woman with silver hair, thick red horn-rimmed glasses perched atop a big nose, all judgemental.

With an arrogant British accent, the woman would say, "Oh, dear. My records say you've forfeited your life. I'm afraid I won't be able to offer you your free VVIP S-Class Heavenly Package. You've also been locked out of choosing Stardew Valley as your next destination. My sympathies. I know how you love that game dearly.

"Due to your unfortunate demise, you will be sent to the Dragon Age series, where every living multicellular organism is out to destroy you. Maybe you'll learn to appreciate the life you had so wasted."

Yeah. That made total sense.

Then Miss Isekai Admin would go, all condescending, and say, "Not to worry. We won't let you freeze to death. We'll give you a nice new pair of winter boots, thermals, thick trousers, and a vest warmer quilt thingy—"

Well, excuse her for not knowing what it was called. She'd lived in the tropics all her life, tolerated snow on a trip once, and vowed never again. Where was she? Right.

"But let's forget the jacket, gloves, and a hat. Wouldn't want you too comfortable."

Miss Isekai Admin forgot to give her glasses too. She turned her head to the source of the sickly green tinge to stare at the blurred edges, wishing very badly that reality would bend itself and fix her eyesight because she was not looking forward to all the future bouts of vertigo and migraine. She breathed in, busying herself on coming up with a shorter nickname for her made-up character so she could ignore the bile slowly creeping up her esophagus.

Oh. Miss. Isekai. Admin. MIA!

Was she really speculating how she got here using fictional logic with a fictional godly world generator? Yes. Yes, she was.

It was a long hike, and Cassandra had given up monologuing after the second time around, keeping to herself in mute anger. Melai wouldn't have zoned out (again) if she was better at French. As it was, all her French were phrases to survive as a tourist. She had replied to Leliana entirely through context because she played the game. Seriously, how was this real?

MIA probably went, "Your record also shows you play games in Nightmare mode because of your masochist streak. We aim to please our dearly departed clientele! To simulate this experience, we switched the game localization to a language you can't speak. My, how exciting!"

"Ohoho—!" Melai choked on her own spit once it dawned she was doing a villainess laugh aloud like she was still in the comfort of her home.

Cassandra turned to her, suspicion in her gaze and possibly staring at her like she was a deranged lunatic. "Quoi ? Vad är det?"

"Nothing!" Melai looked away, face burning as she buried her nose in the thick scarf they provided. She clenched her left hand, wondering if the strength of her mortification could open a rift to swallow her.

Best get used to the feeling, she thought glumly. This is me we're talking about.

Honestly, the worrying part was waking up in the dungeon and not remembering her brief trip to the Fade, where a Nightmare demon would have taken her memories of the ritual. Maybe it took more? Wait, what if it had taken more? What if it found the whole plot of Inquisition and told Corypheus?

Her stomach lurched as the world around her spun nauseatingly. She jumped from the loud crack of thunder. Her left palm sparked like a Roman candle.

Intense and unpleasant heat spread through her arm. The radiating pain flowing in her veins gave her the panic-inducing feeling that her blood was getting sucked into the Anchor. She'd wrapped her fingers around her wrist like a tourniquet the first time she went through it, and she couldn't help but do it again. But it was pointless—her blood was still there.

The slopes before her toppled sideways as her legs buckled.

Cassandra was there to catch Melai before she faceplanted on the snow. She took a glove off, placing a bare hand on Melai's forehead. "Ingen feber, men din hud är blek," she said, not unkindly. "Vi tar en liten paus," she directed to the supply guys. "Ge oss mat och vatten."

"Ja, Lady Cassandra."

"Du," Cassandra helped her stand with a hand to her elbow and pointed to a stack of boulders near them. "Sitt där borta."

Melai did as Cassandra ordered, wondering on the way if that Breach flare-up came from MIA, laughing in isekai purgatory because Melai had found the actual trial of her Nightmare mode. Her chest hurt from the heavy thumping of her heart, as heavy as when she'd wake from night terrors.

She had to stop thinking of what-if scenarios and leave them aside as a problem for future her when it was safe to go into hysterics. Thankfully, the lingering pain from the Anchor—the ache akin to someone putting pressure on her hand to split it in half—made it easy to focus on it.

She replayed the conversation that transpired between Cassandra and the guys. She'd learned mat was food when she asked for some back in Haven. Some of the words sounded like cognates with English. Fever? A little pause? Get us food or water? Sit there?

And now that she wasn't being threatened by a knife, she could distinguish the rhythm and the vowel pronunciation from a family of languages she now recognized: Scandinavian. She thought getting to narrow it down like this would give her a sense of accomplishment, or at the very least, comfort. Instead, it gave her dread. It was as if MIA had delved into her brain and saw she'd consumed a few Scandinavian films and series and used it to tailor this world.

The guys passed Cassandra a parcel and two waterskins, and then they sat on their pulka, giving her a wide berth and wary looks as they kept to each other.

She turned away from them.

She bit her cheek as she stood beside the boulder. They'd hiked for a while before she noticed the random stacks of boulders they passed through every half hour or so were not random. They were trail markers for pilgrims heading to the temple—a detail not in the game and one she'd never considered, but it nevertheless painted a lived-in world.

She set aside her headache-inducing "Is this real or fantasy?" thoughts. She was tired, thirsty, and weak from hunger.

She brought up a mental image of Cassandra's eyes, focusing on the hint of sympathy she found as they ate cured meat and hard bread. It didn't make it easier to breathe. She knew this was the calm before the storm.

If she had any luck, she'd keel over from exhaustion on the way. They could pull her on the pulka, have Solas grab her arm to point his Anchor to the rifts, and have her wake to the safety of the cabin.

If she had more luck, she'd wake up in the safety of her bedroom.

* * *

Arriving at Penitents' Crossing, Cassandra hoped the Maker had made their journey swift to have made it before noon. But the overcast sky made it hard to tell time.

The two soldiers saluted her before they left, towing their pulk toward the camp.

A male dwarf with an axe and a female elf with an unstrung bow met them once the gates opened. The dwarf had black hair and a matching beard that was kept in check by multiple braids. A thick line of dark tattoos ran across the middle of his face. The elf had silver hair, a Dalish tattoo, and an ethereal air that reminded Cassandra of a young Avexis.

"Sister Nightingale sent us to escort you," the dwarf spoke once they were near.

Cassandra nodded before turning to the prisoner, raising a dagger, and beckoning her to raise her restrained wrists. However, the prisoner wasn't staring at her but at the escorts. Hard.

"Do you know her," she asked the pair, eyeing them like a hawk.

According to Leliana, the dwarf arrived the morning after the explosion, and the elf arrived after the prisoner stepped out of the Fade. They both volunteered to help. They went through her vetting check; by the next day, they knew the dwarf was part of the Carta clan and the elf was a hunter of a Dalish clan. She had warned Cassandra they were most likely spies—they were too near the temple to be anyone else.

Vigilance in mind, Leliana restricted their movements by requesting them to patrol the path between Penitents' Crossing and the slowly advancing forward camp. They had done so, keeping the demon infestation at bay.

The escorts responded to Cassandra's question with a shake of their heads. It did not seem like they were lying.

"Kaal drowgow and duhnehruhs (Khal Drogo and Daenerys.)," the prisoner whispered reverently.

The escorts turned to Cassandra, curious for answers. Clueless, she ignored them and turned to the prisoner instead. "Vous aurez droit à un procès, je ne peux rien promettre de plus. There will be a trial. I can promise no more," she said as she cut the prisoner's bindings. "Vous comprenez ? Understood?"

The prisoner furrowed her brows, mouthing a few words. She seemed apprehensive, but she nodded and said, "Thuh traiuhl. (The trial.)"

They were still gibberish, but the nod satisfied her.

"Hello," the prisoner said, bowing at the curious pair waiting for her.

"Hello," the elf said, looking surprised to be addressed.

"Hey," the dwarf said, giving the prisoner a once-over through narrowed eyes.

The prisoner blinked at them, her mouth opening as if to speak, but none came forth.

Cassandra led their party through the crowd of soldiers on the bridge, the pair next, then the prisoner. From her periphery, she caught the uninjured soldiers leering at the elf. The others stared at the prisoner and the dwarf from wary to outright hostility. She put on her scary face while keeping a hand near her longsword.

She trained her eyes ahead when they passed through the dead wrapped in burial cloth, taking solace in the Orlesian passing through the priest's lips as he recited the Chant of Light.

The three behind her sighed in unison once they were off the fortified bridge and shared a relieved laugh.

As they traversed the dirt path, the dwarf told the prisoner to stand between him and the elf.

"She doesn't speak Trade."

Surprisingly, he readily believed Cassandra's explanation and tried again. "Hey, come here," he said, making a space between him and the elf and motioning to the vacated area.

"Okay," the prisoner said, lengthening her stride until she was level with the pair.

Cassandra clenched her jaw. The prisoner had now said two words in Trade she knew didn't come from them.

"Hey. Can yoo speek inggluhsh? (Can you speak English?)"

"Can you what…?" the elf asked.

"You Avvar?" the dwarf asked.

Cassandra intended to question the dwarf's words, but the Breach pulsed, roaring thunder following the prisoner's pained exclamation. A massive green sphere hurtled ahead of her and exploded, flinging earth and snow into the air.

A shade materialized.

"Demon!" she warned, drawing her longsword.

A sphere exploded to its immediate right, a wraith materializing.

"Elf, deal with the shade. Dwarf, stay with the prisoner," she shouted. "Face me, you fiend!" she hissed to the wraith.

An arrow whizzed from her left and hit the shade; it screeched and chased after the elf. She threw her hook at the shade and yanked it next to her.

"Two incoming," the elf said. Two explosions followed.

"They've flanked us," the dwarf growled. "Kid's down, Seeker!"

Cassandra heard a war cry, then a loud crunch.

Another explosion came further from the dwarf's side.

"Fenedhis," the elf cried. "We're outnumbered! What is happening?! Is that thing on her hand attracting them?"

"MELAI!" Remembering how the prisoner had been distracted by the mark, Cassandra went full power, bashing the demons to the ground and cleaving them in half with an overhead strike.

"Aym traiuhng! (I'm trying!)"

Cassandra turned and was set to run when the elf appeared beside her, the prisoner hanging by her side. The rogue had fade-stepped to her. 

"Desperate times," the elf shrugged, assisting the prisoner to the ground.

Apostates were not Cassandra's priority. Nevertheless, she scowled at her.

The prisoner's hand had ceased glowing. She didn't look the worse for wear, but she was shivering, her eyes glassy, and her skin gray.

"Keep her close," Cassandra ordered the elf and went to help the dwarf dispatch the rest. A barrier engulfed them both. An arrow shot past her left side. The elf is exemplary, she thought begrudgingly. She would give her that.

All the demons were downed when a screech came from where she had cleaved the first shade. It was still clinging to life and had clawed its way to the prisoner.

The prisoner had walked backward on all fours away from it, chest heaving as if she'd run through the whole valley.

The elf stepped on the shade's outstretched arms and shot an arrow into its head.

It turned to ashes.

"Good work," Cassandra said once they caught their breaths, distributing flasks of healing potions.

The dwarf ignored the flask and spat, "What the hell was that?"

She pursed her lips.

"Look, Seeker, we've been here three days. Your soldiers talk. We know about the mark. The elf's seen it when they carted the kid over the roadblock. But nobody's said her mark's a damned demon beacon."

"I didn't know," she snapped.

That shut him up.

"Should we not call for reinforcements?" The elf was crouched beside the prisoner, tending to her cuts with a salve.

"No. We do not have the time. The pulses are coming faster now. The larger the Breach grows, the more rifts appear, the more demons we face."

"Then we should go before the next pulse comes."

* * *

Today's forecast was cloudy with a chance of homing demons. It was the kind of day you'd get when demons fell from the sky and proceeded to scream in your face.

To be fair to them, they were screaming at nothing as they clawed their way out of the dark goo, clutching at their heads like they were having the world's most hurty migraine. The freakiest thing was how they seemed to hone in on the Anchor (which was woefully attached to Melai's hand), then they would rush to her and scream in her face.

They even got so close that she smelled a mixture of burnt matches, ammonia, and rotten eggs. She'd gagged, nearly up-chucking the rations she ate.

She'd been so disoriented that she never noticed being teleported out of the danger zone, her body down on the ground twitching from too many internal aches, her arms stinging from claw marks that pierced through the leather. Her jaw had locked itself from terror the entire time.

Before she had even processed her first taste of magic, a half-dead shade nearby had screamed at her.

She could still picture its long claws on the ground, the claws that had reached for her and, miracle of miracles, backed off when she pleaded, "Please don't hurt me!"

Was she reading too much into it, thinking it had understood and done what she asked? But they had responded aggressively to the taunts from Cassandra and Mini Khal Drogo.

Maybe the shade was just surprised she talked to it.

Maybe she just wanted the story to be kinder to her since it chose to have no chill, hurling her into lethal situations one after the other. And she had yet to reach the bridge slated to collapse.

She had accepted the story had gone off script the moment Mini Khal Drogo and Daenerys came into the picture. She wouldn't question the how and the why. All that mattered was that they were friendly to her, as though they instinctively knew she didn't start this. Their shared sigh when they passed through all the hostile humans on the bridge might have helped her standing with Mini Khal Drogo; she could tell he was extra protective of her. And nothing cemented a sense of kinship with a Thedas elf like sharing that look with someone who'd also experienced being thought inferior for having certain features.

She had shoved the words trying to form in her head into a box at the realization of who these people were, burying it deep in her mind when she witnessed them fight—not because of their expertise with a weapon, but in their selfless determination to help. Why else would an apostate and a criminal stick around? They needn't be here; neither were saddled with the Anchor. She could wax poetic extolling their virtues she sadly lacked, but she didn't want MIA anywhere near that box in case it was an oversight. Hence, the code names.

She knew the MIA Controls Everything narrative was becoming ludicrous, but she couldn't help it. It was better to entertain crazy thoughts than go crazy trying to make sense of everything.

She was so lost in thought that she barely registered they were on the second bridge—the one meant to collapse. And with the way things had gone, there was no doubt in her mind that things would go differently. With her luck, the green comets would hit someone instead of colliding with the flagstones.

"Cassandra, paus!"

She ran ahead of Daenerys and Mini Khal Drogo, yanking on their shoulders as she passed, waving her arms like a frantic runway traffic controller for the people on the far side of the bridge and yelling, "Back up! Back up!"

Fortunately, Cassandra did stop, swiveling around and screwing her eyes at Melai like she'd done something she should feel guilty about.

Melai set it aside as another problem for later and focused on pulling at Cassandra's gloved hands with all her might. She suspected she hadn't budged the absolute tank of a woman at all since Cassandra got blasted toward her when the comets hit. She flew a few meters away, but the wind was knocked out of her as Cassandra, a fully-kitted warrior made of dense rocks, landed on her puny body.

Long ago, she had wished to be in this very position, being under Cassandra, but this was not how she imagined it.

"Är du okej?"

"I'm... okay," she gasped between words. She probably broke something.

Cassandra probably had the same realization since she immediately took her weight off.

What a smashing day this had been. Ha ha. Get it? 'Cause I smashed my face and now my chest? The boos were loud in Melai's mind.

Mini Khal Drogo crouched on her left and said, "Inte okej."

Daenerys crouched on her right with a glowing palm over her prone form and said, "Får jag?"

Right. Daenerys was a mage. "Okay."

Daenerys's smile was gentle.

With her eyes no longer darting everywhere to locate demons, Melai could focus on Daenerys properly. She found it unfair to call the elf Daenerys; she was much prettier than her namesake, especially with those bright violet eyes. She could imagine how easy it would be to charm nobles and garner support if Not Daenerys was made Inqui—

Nope, we're not going there. Don't jinx it.

The feeling of something scraping inside her body interrupted her thoughts. As it passed, the hurt left behind was like pouring alcohol on an open wound, like the burning sensation of wasabi at its peak, but never-ending.

Maybe healing doubled as a potent antiseptic? She tried to regulate her breathing, repeating no pain, no gain in her mind.

"Okej," Not Daenerys said, giving her a toothy smile. She seemed to be done, though her hands were above her chest to prevent Melai from moving. She pointed to Melai, inhaled exaggeratedly, and then formed an X with her arms as if to say, "Don't breathe deeply."

"Okay." She smiled in return, hoping it was enough to convey her gratitude since she didn't know how. Wait, she did know. "Tack," she said with a wide grin.

Cassandra was a bit subdued while she helped Melai to her feet, her eyes unreadable as she guided her to sit on the closest stable parapet.

"Du är okej," Mini Khal Drogo said, pointing to Melai. He pointed to himself. "Jag är okej." He pointed to Not Daenerys. "Hon är okej."

Not Daenerys grinned and pointed to Mini Khal Drogo with her thumb, joining along. "Han är okej."

Melai slowed her breathing to temper her excitement and not exacerbate her lungs. They were willing to teach her the language sans suspicion and contempt.

"Ja. Vi är okej," she said, beaming at them. Her eyes prickled, threatening to water.

Cassandra's method hadn't been working for her. Sure, some words Cassandra had uttered caught her ear since English borrowed a lot from French, but it overloaded her brain. She was second-guessing her word recognition and missing the rest. Heck, she understood better when Cassandra quit mixing Orlesian and Trade.

This was what she needed: having people willing to dumb down their vocabulary to simple words she could follow. Simple words that mattered. They were her lifesavers in more ways than one. She was going to keep them by her side. The Inquisition would have to pry them out of her cold, dead hands.

Cassandra probably noticed the pair's strategy worked better than hers. She called Melai, miming feeling the back of her hand with her other, and said, "Känner," gestured to Melai and said, "du," pointed to the Breach and said, "sprickan?"

It took her a minute to understand what Cassandra intended to ask: feeling the Breach meant she knew when and where demons would come. It was a logical deduction, if not totally correct. She latched on to the convenient lie and said yes.

The Breach pulsed; the Anchor pulsed back. The draining feeling still made her panic.

No one was surprised to see a couple of comets careening into the frozen river below. Cassandra and Mini Khal Drogo vaulted over the parapet wall.

She peered over the parapet. Holy mother of—the ground was so far! If she had taken the fall, she would have broken her legs. What were their bones made of, steel? Were Thedosians innately stronger than Earthlings?

"Melai!" Not Daenerys was on the end of the broken bridge, pointing a finger to the ground. She jumped past the edge, but her shoulders were still visible when she met the ground. She wobbled and had to stabilize herself on the edge of the bridge with a hand. She beamed, beckoned with her other hand, and said, "Kom!"

Melai huffed a laugh at her infectious smile. Maybe she wouldn't be dooming everyone in this world. She clung to the tiny bud of hope in her heart.

* * *

Chapter Text

* * *

"I don't understand why they don't just kill the blighted dwarf. The hole in the sky is green. Her hand is green. Ergo, the culprit."

"Dwarves can't do magic, idiot. I heard she's a Tevinter magister. And they're keeping her alive so she could return the sky to how it was."

"Ha! If she is, I don't need fancy education to tell me it'll be the last thing she'll do. I'd bet my last sovereign she'd make slaves out of us first."

"I've seen her," said a dwarf wearing a duster coat, a red tunic, and a thatch of chest hair on full display. "Poor thing caused a commotion when rifts started appearing around her." He bent down, pulling a bolt from a shade's melted corpse. "They moved her to a nearby village for safety. Someone posed as a healer and got too handsy with a dagger. I shot it off his hand, along with a finger," he winked knowingly at the pair of foot soldiers resting on a crumbled wall. "Or two," he added, the threat unmistakable in his voice.

"I see," Solas said as he swung his gaze away from the amiable pair of eyes and back at the rift before him, bitter with resentment.

"How's it going," the dwarf asked, standing beside him.

"Fixing this is beyond me," he said with resigned finality. It was a testament to how weak he yet remained.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. We can't all perform miracles."

The words stung, and the dwarf appeared to have noticed, for he said:

"Say, since you're interested in the survivor, I can probably get you a letter of introduction from Sister Nightingale. Get you permission from Seeker Cassandra to study her."

The dwarf laughed at Solas's doubtful look.

"Worry not, my friend. I can vouch for you. Varric Tethras is the name," he bowed with a flourish. "Cassandra's prized prisoner."

Ah. The prolific and sensationalist author. "Well met, Master Tethras. My name is Solas," he bowed in return. "Hedge mage."

When they arrived at her tent, the spymaster was very accommodating. "Of course. Your theories on the Breach and the rifts' behavior have helped our commander with his soldiers' sleep rotations. The demons are easy to counter, but they are numerous and unending. We have lost too many of our forces to exhaustion." She bent down to pick up a bulky pack below her rickety desk, plucked two sealed missives from a pile on top, and passed everything to the dwarf.

The dwarf arched a brow.

"Give these to Cassandra. Tell her the package is for Lady Montilyet." She smiled serenely. "Thank you. You saved me a trip."

"Well, I guess it's story time," the dwarf said once they stepped out.

En route to Haven, Solas was regaled with a tale of misadventures that started with a book stabbing and ended with a shockwave that scared the dwarf beardless. His straight face through the last joke had the dwarf calling him Chuckles instead.

True to his word, the dwarf—Varric, greased Solas's way to the seeker's good graces and got him to the survivor not long after their arrival.

"Let the man work without someone breathing down his neck," Varric said, his voice resounding inside the underground prison. "Someone who is every apostate's nightmare, by the way."

"I'm not—ugh!" The seeker wrenched the cell door open. "I'll be back in an hour. Watch him," she said to Varric.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be a prisoner, Seeker!" Varric threw at her retreating back, shaking his head as he faced Solas. "I'll chat up the guards to give you space to work."

The two guards posted at the door were neither templars nor mages. And with Varric being a dwarf, Solas should be safe to cast without worry. So he did.

To the Anchor, he wrote wards to dampen its tie to the Breach. To the survivor were wards to dampen her bond with the Anchor. It would delay the Breach's expansion, but it was only a matter of time. A tear to the Veil of that magnitude—by all rights, the survivor should be dead.

After reading the results of his diagnostic spells, his skin crawled.

For a year, he had walked this world and seen how the Veil had impacted the inhabitants' connection to the Fade. Most had it blocked, the Tranquil severed, and the rest waded through it like molasses. But the survivor? Hers was alarmingly nonexistent.

She had no means to control the Anchor, and much in the way oil never mixed with water, the Anchor should not have branded itself into a mortal being. Yet here lay one, disproving it.

But was she a mortal, living being?

The facet that baffled him so was the feeling that she was ancient, yet she was no child of the Stone who strained to hear the song of her ancestor. The sense of foreboding he felt around her half-convinced him that had she been stabbed, nothing would spill, for inside her was the abyss, and in turn, it would swallow everything in the world. It was profoundly irrational, yet the feeling persisted.

He did not think he would be amongst the rabble of walking shadows, speculating about who she was, albeit his question was: what was she? To him, she was an unwelcome anomaly. An aberration.

He could not fathom how she managed to stay alive. Yet she had physically walked the Fade and came out in one piece, a Spirit of Faith guiding her (for no one else would have done such a deed).

Perhaps Faith had seen something in her. In the meantime, he would place his trust in it as it had done with her. And it was with this resolution that he, two days later, once again stood upon a rift instead of abandoning the place as a lost cause.

"The prisoner will arrive soon," the spymaster said, approaching him.

Prisoner. What had the aberration done to warrant the change in appellation?

Varric, who stood with the foot soldiers on the wall on the far side of the rift, stepped towards them. "And what exactly are we expecting to happen here," he asked. He raised both hands in defense and said, "Only if you're willing to tell me. I would love to come out of this with my chest hair intact."

"A miracle," the spymaster muttered, her mouth barely moving. Aloud, she said, "We shall see soon enough."

The rift sparked.

"A new wave approaches." Solas gestured to the rift. "I bid you leave now."

The spymaster inclined her head in acknowledgment and left with her squad.

A short while later, he felt the presence of a mage near the vicinity right after the rift reawakened and expelled corrupted spirits. It made him pause, leading to a foot soldier bleeding from a claw to his side because of a barrier cast a second too late. None of his agents had informed him of another mage in camp.

While it held no importance that another mage was within the area, it was of consequence that he was aware of all happenings, at least within the confines of this fledgling organization that seemed to have taken charge of dealing with the Breach. After all, it was his overconfidence that the millennia-old darkspawn priest would sense the colossal power in the orb and attempt to reenter the Fade in its sanctum in Orlais. Yet now he stood on a far-flung mountain to the south after an explosion that caused the untimely end of many.

It took another wave before the seeker's party made an appearance. The newly arrived warriors charged right in and took hold of the battle, efficiently gathering the scattered shades away from him and Varric, freeing them to focus on offense.

But then the aberration walked into the fray piled up in a mishmash of ill-fitting armor, brandishing of all things, a staff.

He tripped on a displaced brick from his shock. Had he misread the aberration? No, he could not, not after such close observation. It was all he could do since intelligence reports from the Chantry and his side turned up with nothing, as though she materialized out of thin air.

One of the shades stopped attacking and cocked its head to the side as though it heard something. It pulled out from the melee fighters and slithered towards the aberration, who lowered her staff until the sharp end pointed at it.

He cast a sheet of ice on the ground beneath the shade, rooting it safely away.

The shade reached for her, heedless of anything else.

He and a Dalish he had just spotted took care of it before the ice broke. A feeling of absurdity washed over him as he realized the one nocking arrows was the mage, not the one wielding a staff like a barge pole.

"Quickly, before more come through!" He beckoned the aberration from afar, raising her marked hand as soon as she skidded to a halt in front of the rift.

The Anchor hummed and vibrated, its tendrils reaching for the rift and mending the Veil.

He did not bother to mask his relief.

The tear had continued to expand despite the aberration's unconsciousness, but it was not her will that began the sundering. At the very least, she was not the enemy. At best, she had afforded him time, an opportunity to prevent a reckoning from the force of the Blighted Evanuris.

"What did you do?" the dwarf warrior said, his mouth agape.

"I did nothing. The credit is hers," Solas clarified, nodding towards the aberration. He could only see her hair, bent as she was, but the hand clenched around her left wrist, and her hissed breaths betrayed her pain.

"You mean the mark on her hand did," the Dalish said, stepping closer and observing the Anchor over the aberration's shoulder. "Okay?" she whispered, the worry loud in her voice.

The aberration did not answer.

If she did via gesture, Solas did not see, blocked as she was by the Dalish's taller stature. He suspected the answer was no.

"The prisoner speaks very little Trade," the seeker warned.

"Huh. How little are we talking here?" Varric said, brushing out ichor from his gauntlets and coat.

"She learned all she knows on the way here," she answered, uncertainty lacing her words.

Solas knew Trade only existed as a language in the last twenty centuries, significantly less if one were to be strict with the definition of a language. For its first several centuries, it was but a few hundred words that the former dwarven empire created primarily for trading with the Tevinter Imperium.

He glanced at the aberration, some of his half-formed speculations returning, including a renewed sense of unease. Words flitted about until a few rose with ever-increasing possibility: a simulacrum, a golem, a vessel. He would no longer underestimate the darkspawn priest and his ilk's depraved acts in their quest for godhood; they were sciolists who perverted age-old knowledge, turning them into travesties.

"Is it the same magic as the Breach?" the Dalish asked when the Anchor quieted.

"Not quite. Whatever magic opened the Breach placed the mark upon her hand."

He fed them more of his theory, and the seeker latched on:

"Then it is certain she can close the Breach."

"Possibly." In truth, the Anchor would do as the aberration willed it, though willpower could only take her so far. The amount of channeled energy that would pass through the Anchor was the toll she had to pay.

"Good enough for me! And here I thought we'd be ass-deep in demons forever." Varric preened, for whose benefit Solas did not know. "I say introductions are in order. I'll go first. Varric Tethras: rogue, storyteller, and occasionally unwelcome tagalong," he said with a wink to the seeker.

"The Varric Tethras is with the Chantry?" the dwarf warrior said, his pitch going laughably high. "I mean," he followed with a deepened voice and a rapidly reddening face. "Dieter Cadash. At your service."

The aberration perked up and whipped her head towards the Dalish, excitement lighting up her eyes.

"Uh," the Dalish's guard went up as all attention turned to her. "Eirwen of Clan Lavellan, at your service."

"Ai noo eet! (I knew it!)" The aberration squealed and assaulted Eirwen into a hug, who smiled in confusion.

"Well met. My name is Solas."

"She is—" The seeker started.

"My name is Melai Dimagiba," the aberration spoke over the seeker, parroting Solas's phrasing.

The dwarf warrior coughed. "This is good. More people to protect her."

"Thank you, but your assistance is no longer necessary," the seeker said with a tone that brooked no argument. "Go back to the camp with the elf. You as well, Varric."

"Have you been in the valley lately, Seeker?"

Solas's attention was interrupted when the Dalish, Eirwen, stood to his side with her back turned from the others, saying to him in a hush:

"Messere Solas, I saw you tend to the wounded soldiers back at camp with your magic. I wish to heal Melai's hand or at least provide relief. But I fear If I do, it will hurt her so, as it had done when I healed her chest." She grimaced, her action pulling the vallaslin on her face that Solas couldn't help but notice it was Sylaise's marking.

"Or tried," she continued. "It did not properly heal despite draining much of my mana."

He turned and observed the aberration with fresh eyes, seeing ashen skin and a bruised face and hearing a hardly detectable wheeze as she breathed. Perhaps more evidence of her being a construct?

"Come," he said, stepping away from the noise of the seeker disagreeing with Varric about joining them. "Bring her."

He grabbed the aberration's proffered hand and turned it over, inhaling sharply at the sight of blackened cracks extending from the mark, going beyond her palm into her fingers and wrist. He did not dawdle. He reset his waning ward.

"Putangina!" The aberration punctuated each syllable like a maul battering against a shield, anger coating her agony as she wrenched her hand and took a few steps back. There was accusation as she scowled at him while she tucked her wounded hand to her chest. But then her eyes slowly widened, darting between him and Eirwen.

"Am ai uhlurjuhk to majuhk? (Am I allergic to magic?)"

At the same time, Eirwen spoke with a hand over her mouth, her voice equal parts horrified and mystified, "Is her body averse to magic?"

"Perhaps you have both arrived at the same conclusion." He stepped to close the distance between him and the aberration, raising a hand as he said, "May I?"

The aberration closed her eyes and released a shaky breath. With great reluctance, she nodded.

"I'm sorry." He cast a diagnostic spell.

The aberration doubled over as though she had taken a blow to the stomach, which might as well be what he went through when he saw that her well of energy was almost depleted.

The Veil tore here. Fade energy was abundant—

His blood grew cold. Yet again, he had made an erroneous assumption.

Whatever ritual the darkspawn priest did had corrupted the Anchor. The Anchor had become a parasite. It would devour her whole before it would take from the Fade, but with no host, it would cease to exist. It had rendered itself unusable to him.

"Yor lukuhng at me layk aym aalrehdee dead. (You're looking at me like I'm already dead.) Will I dai (die)? La morte ?"

"Possibly." He doubted she had enough remaining for the next rift, but he lacked the words she could understand.

"Hahr—Messere says maybe," Eirwen supplied with trepidation.

The aberration reached out with her free hand for Eirwen's own, who squeezed back. A faraway look went over her eyes. Her visage radiated resignation, and it gradually morphed into acceptance. A moment later, she turned to Solas with an unreadable expression, offering her marked hand for the second time and saying, "Do what you must."

Any recourse he provided would only bring her pain or hasten her death, but closing the Breach was of the utmost importance. He steeled himself as he poured his magic into her.

She gasped as magic enveloped her, screaming and pulling her hand to her chest when she could no longer take the pain. Her staff clattered to the ground.

"Is everything all right?" the seeker said with suspicion, her sword partly drawn. The others were on their guard as well.

"I'm okay!" the aberration spun around, trembling hands raised in placation.

"I meant to help, not harm, Cassandra. You must know: the magic involved here is unlike anything I've seen," Solas answered.

The aberration's life was forfeit because of it.

Should he share the truth about her condition with the seeker? No, there was no advantage in revealing the aberration's adverse reaction to magic.

Do what you must, the aberration had said.

It is your duty, he reminded himself.

A course of action remained for him to take, provided she survived: magical augmentation. Although the bulk of the energy would have to come from him. It would set back his recovery, but the rewards outweighed the risks.

"You hear that, Seeker?" the dwarf warrior remarked. "It's no known magic. Yet you so readily suspect a kid for starting this whole mess!"

"I no longer do. But something went wrong."

"I will not in good conscience leave an Avvar child to fend for herself under that monstrosity!" he spat, thrusting a finger to the Breach.

"She is hardly fending; you have seen her close a rift. And why are you so certain she is Avvar?"

"What else could she be? We are in Avvar lands! And she—you—" he paused, noticing all eyes on him. "You've seen what she did," he hissed.

"I don't see how that is relevant," the seeker said flatly, her stance switching to offensive.

"Look, I've done a couple of expeditions with the Avvar. I've heard things, all right?"

"That does not make her one."

"She speaks their language!"

"And how would you know? Do you speak it?"

"I may not speak it, but it's looking like I know more than you do!"

"Feels nice to be an outsider to this, for once," Varric mused from the side. The foot soldiers beside him chuckled weakly, stepping away.

"Sister Nightingale ordered the elf and I to escort her safely," the dwarf warrior said.

"And I am superseding that order as the Right Hand of the Divine! Go back to your designated patrol route, Cadash!"

The aberration's eyes widened. She tapped Eirwen's shoulder. "What say?" She pointed between the seeker and the dwarf warrior.

Eirwen smiled somberly and remained silent, exhaling her disappointment. She bent down and fetched the staff on the ground, passing it to the aberration, who seemed to have forgotten its existence entirely. She readied her bow and straightened her back.

"I know how your Chantry works, Seeker," the dwarf warrior said. "One side will want her head on a pike. The other side will care little else but for results," he stepped closer to the seeker, not at all bothered that his head was barely at chest level as he jabbed a finger midair, pointing it at her. "That's you, by the way. You won't give a fuck what she'll go through. Either way, she's dead!"

"Damn."

"Leave out of this, Varric!"

"I was just looking for something," Varric pretended to go through his pockets, angling his face away from the seeker to hide his eagerness to immortalize the exchange.

"Enough!" The seeker slashed her hand through the air like a sword. "We are wasting time. I have already said more than I should have. You and Lavellan have proven to be excellent fighters. But I will not jeopardize this operation by increasing its chances for sabotage!"

Eirwen tensed and said through tightened lips, "Figures."

"We kept the supply lines demon-free for three days, and this is the respect we get. Fucking religious orders. I'm leaving!"

The aberration gasped when the dwarf warrior stormed off after his outburst. She turned to Eirwen, wide-eyed and barely breathing, knuckles whitened around her staff.

"Wuhts hapuhnuhng? (What's happening?)"

"I'm sorry. Our hands are tied, especially mine." Eirwen's sadness was genuine.

There was true camaraderie here, one Solas did not expect to find shared between a human and an elf so soon after their meeting.

"Leave this place," he advised. "Volunteering to help is commendable, but they will turn on you soon enough."

"What of her? And what of you, hahr—Messere Solas," she asked, her eyes flitting from his face to his ears, then away, her forehead wrinkling. Her reaction was benign as far as his first meetings with a Dalish went.

"You need not stand on ceremony, da'len. My knowledge of the Fade is still needed." He inclined his head towards the aberration. "I have been by her side, trying to unravel the magic on her marked hand since they brought her to Haven. I still have a few things up my sleeve. I shall see this to its conclusion."

Eirwen squeezed the aberration's shoulders, eventually letting go. Walking backward, she said, "Don't die, okay?"

The aberration turned to the seeker, dismayed. "Cassandra! What you do?"

"The child's blood is on your hands, Seeker!" The dwarf warrior shouted for the last time as he and Eirwen exited the area.

"Wayt, pleez! Ai need dem! (Wait, please! I need them!)" The aberration placed her hand on the seeker's arm.

The seeker batted it away, though she regretted her action at once. "I'm… Désolée."

"No, you are not."

It was as though Sloth had taken over the aberration, her body folding in on itself as the light from her eyes dulled. She signaled her distress in silence, and it was as intense as when the seeker and the dwarf warrior were at their loudest.

"We must get to the forward camp now," the seeker said, anger and regret warring on her face.

When the aberration raised her head, her face was devoid of expression. He had not realized how open her countenance had been until this moment. The loss of a dwarf and an elf seemed to have devastated her more than the possibility of her demise.

He looked away.

* * *

He had become conscious of the aberration.

Every step she took was heavy. The thunk of her staff against the frozen ground played a slow and steady beat as though she believed she was marching to her death.

And she was not wrong.

The seeker had directed Varric to walk by her side, with Solas at the back of the party as support. "She cannot fight. Eliminating demons is our second priority. We must protect her."

"I could, but I didn't pack traps. On account of being dragged here against my will," Varric smirked at the seeker's snort of disgust. "Sorry, Chuckles. I'm going to have to rely on you on this one. I'll make sure Bianca and I," he showed off his crossbow, patting it lovingly, "can take care of things before defending becomes a problem."

"Demons ahead," Solas said instead, in no mood for small talk.

Outside of the seeker's commands, nobody had spoken since. Words were inessential; the seeker and Varric were veterans. The aberration needed no directions on positioning herself, and in a pinch, her staff fended off a shade long enough for them to take care of it.

Before long, it was time to close the next rift.

He stayed the aberration's raised arm, speaking to her from behind. "Let me help," he said, touching the mark lightly and releasing magic in his hand.

She flinched, craning her head towards him with an unreadable look. She sighed. "Okay. Thanks for warning." She took a deep breath, braced herself, and raised the Anchor. She whimpered once he augmented his magic.

Green and white tendrils shot out of the Anchor and clashed with the rift. No sooner had it connected that the tendrils snapped, one side dissolving to nothingness, the other dancing and crackling around her left arm like tiny arcs of lightning. He caught her as she fainted. She regained consciousness after he sat her on the ground.

Augmentation did not work either.

"Her power has drained," he informed them grimly. He pulled off his knapsack and placed it beside her, gesturing for her to lie on it.

The seeker knelt near them. He could not tell if the concern in her eyes was for the unchecked danger of the rifts or the woman on the ground trying to regain her bearings. She looked up at the howling rift, her lips tight.

He wondered if she was contemplating the dwarf warrior's words from earlier. He certainly was.

She aided the aberration with a flask of healing potion. Afterward, she said, "We shall stop for today. But we cannot stay here and endanger our forces. We will have to fall back to the camp and retry tomorrow. After she has regained her energy."

He blanked his expression.

The aberration had no means of regaining her energy since she had no connection to the Fade. The Anchor had fed on all that she could spare. Any more, and she'd be dead.

It would be kinder to kill her painlessly if he could help it; he owed her that. He steeled himself again. He would take her life and flee tonight. He would weather the hounding of the Chantry; their forces would be too preoccupied with the Breach in due time. He should request help from one of his agents to book a passage across the Waking Sea. Varric might have inadvertently given him a lead.

The Breach pulsed. The Anchor pulsed back. The aberration groaned and made motions to get up.

He put out a hand to stop her.

"Prepare for demons!" Metal sang as the seeker readied her sword and shield.

"There's usually a long break between the waves, Seeker. We should be—" Varric stopped talking as two shades dropped near the seeker and a shade and a wraith near him. "What in Andraste's Twisted Knickers?"

So this was what "endanger our forces" meant. Problematic, Solas thought. The aberration would have guards all night. He knew not if he could slip into her dreams; he hadn't found her in the Fade.

The aberration protested when he picked her up, her hands scrambling for his neck when she feared he'd drop her. He fade-stepped to a copse of trees away from the hostiles, noting her attempt to yell, but she was too exhausted. He leaned her on a tree, apologized, and kept her directly on his back.

Muscle memory took over as he let loose a barrage of bolts. Varric let loose a shot and leaped near them.

"Uh? Solas?"

The seeker roared at the corrupted spirits and pointed her sword to the sky, summoning a pillar of blinding light.

"Solas!" The aberration dragged the back of his tunic forceful enough that his next bolt bounced off the top of a tree.

"Oh, for—" he cut himself off when he'd turned on his heel and saw her get hit by a rift-green missile. He immediately tracked it to a wraith behind the furthest tree. A straggler. He stepped back to give himself space to cast.

"No, stop!"

The aberration took three shaky steps towards him and was about to push his staff away, but he held the dangerously charged staff out of her reach.

"I'm okay!" she said as another missile hit her.

"Move," he said through gritted teeth, wishing to keep her from further suffering before her end.

"Okay, okay," she insisted. Gone was her black mood. In its place was a fire in her unblinking eyes. "My food."

"What?" Confounding woman!

"Food for this!" She shoved the Anchor to his face.

Comprehension hit him. He scrambled to check.

She still had no connection with which to beckon the Fade, but the well of energy formerly depleted had grown a smidgen. A smidgen. Yet such paltriness had restored a ruined path.

"All right here," Varric asked, crossbow trained on the wraith.

"We may have something," he said, heart pounding.

"What are you doing?"

He turned to the seeker stomping her way towards them, scowling.

"Cassandra, stop!" The aberration pulled on his tunic again. This time, he let her direct him behind her.

"I can close the rift." She motioned to the wraith. "That is food."

A missile pelted her.

The seeker tightened her grip on her sword and turned to Solas with narrowed eyes. "Explain."

He decided to share a truth: "I have studied the tears from both the dreaming and the waking world. The rift pulls spirits through against their will, and the shock makes demons of them. Some suffer the shock more than others and do not survive the transition; a wraith is such manifestation," he motioned to the wraith in question. "Wraiths, much like wisps, are pure essence. What they release when they attack is the essence remaining in their form. Given enough time, they will vanish from this plane."

The seeker's brows wriggled as she digested his words. Apprehensively, she said, "You are saying she is feeding from demon magic."

Leave it to the Chantry to view things in black and white. He would not argue with the semantics of what defined a spirit and a demon. "If you recall, Cassandra, the mark is killing her. It is the mark that feeds. Had your prisoner been a mage—" or not an aberrant, he added internally "—she would have taken from the ambient energy around her to feed it. As she is not…"

He let the unspoken implication stew in the seeker's mind.

He shared another truth to hammer the point: "Food and a single night's rest might not replenish her essence."

Another missile hit the aberration.

The seeker's fingers twitched, clearly dying to cleave the wraith. She searched the aberration for signs of pain. When she found none, she let all her breath out while bringing her sword down. "Your knowledge of the Fade has yet to mislead us. I will give it the benefit of the doubt."

"So. Wraith party?" Varric quipped.

Sometime later, Varric and the seeker had migrated to the gate of the fortified bridge, sitting on wooden crates, munching on crusty bread and jerky, and waiting for the rift's next wave. The sentries on the other side of the gate supplied the wooden crates and the rations in exchange for autographs after they found out a renowned author was among them.

Solas sat with the aberration on the ground, their backs against a tree, as he tested the boundaries of his magic on her.

She had an unfinished jerky in her hand. Her knees were curled to her chest, bouncing up and down since she elected to sit. She had whiled away the time reciting the Trade she learned, and he entertained her with the words for the things she pointed at. Once she had exhausted her words, she went to have a one-sided staring competition with the lone wraith.

The wraith carried on throwing missiles. It was markedly less opaque from the time that had passed.

"Dees fils so meen (This feels so mean.)," she huffed, breaking eye contact. She crammed the rest of the jerky in her mouth and slapped her hands on her knees, standing up and shouting, "Hey!" as she closed in.

It glided away from her, distancing itself from harm on instinct.

She softened her voice:

"Yoo downt buhlaang heer. Eef yoo giv aal of yrself too mi, maybee ai can send yoo back too thuh fayd. (You don't belong here. If you give all of yourself to me, maybe I can send you back to the Fade.)"

It peered over the Anchor when she offered her hand, palm-up.

"Wot uhbowt eet? (What about it?)"

The wraith stilled. Eventually, it extended its incorporeal hand and glided towards her.

A few seconds felt like a decade to Solas as it dissipated into a wave of tiny particles and flew to the Anchor. When he took his next breath, a wave of dizziness overcame him; he had not realized he had held his breath the whole time she conversed with it.

"Maker's Sweaty Balls!"

He meant to retort, "Eloquently put, Master Tethras," but his throat had gone dry. He had to swallow and lick his lips before he could speak again. "I cannot comprehend her words, but the spirit—the wraith—it gave her all it was. Willingly." No one had asked, but he felt compelled to voice it. His heart ached as his memories surfaced—of the honor and reverence placed behind such rare marvels—a sad contrast to witnessing it at the side of a crumbling bridge on a remote mountain. 

His distraction cost him: he was held at swordpoint again. Fury flooded him, but he kept it in check as he looked up at the seeker's glower.

"Cassandra—!"

"Stay there," the seeker sent the aberration—no, Melai—a silencing look.

She turned to him. "You're the mage here. You have done something to her. You have taken every chance to be alone with her unsupervised. The day you arrived," she threw Varric a withering look, who merely shrugged. "And twice today."

"Cassandra, s'il vous plaît. He help me," Melai pleaded, reaching for the seeker's sword.

The seeker tutted and flipped the sword to the side opposite Melai.

It was becoming less of a mystery how the Anchor ended up in Melai's palm, what with her propensity for touching objects that could harm her. Even if it was to get her way—in this case, to protect Solas—it was foolhardy.

"Thrice today," he corrected, standing up with as much grace as he mustered. "I was with her 'unsupervised' until you pointed your sword at me."

The seeker gave him a dour look, dragging Melai to her side and repointing her sword at him.

He quelled the urge to retaliate by folding his hands behind his back. He affected humbleness as he met the seeker's distrustful eyes. "As she says, I aim to help. Whatever help I can give with the Breach. If it is not closed, we are all doomed, regardless of origin."

The seeker tutted. "A non-answer. You must think me a brute."

"If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck…"

"Varric!"

"Can you blame him, Seeker? He's surrounded by the Chantry here, not to mention you."

She bared her teeth angrily at that. She sighed in frustration. "You are right. The Breach takes precedence." She struggled to relax her jaw. "However, she has done it before—talking to a demon. It was a shade. It stopped as if it was stunned."

"Excusez-moi, I'm not demon!" Melai attempted to pry the seeker's hand off her but to no avail.

"And now she has let a demon inside her. Tell me how that was not demonic possession." The seeker's blade held steady, but fear seeped into her words the longer she spoke.

Solas fought against the impulse to scathe about who was possessing who and focused on the seeker's words and her expression. She wished to be talked out of this, he realized. He had thought her a mere religious zealot. Yet here she stood, willing to be reasoned with despite the precarious nature of the magic involved here.

He wondered… no, there was no point in knowing.

"It was not," he answered. "The wraith was dying. It merely hastened its end. Your prisoner may have a limited vocabulary, but she is not mistaken in calling its essence food. No more, no less."

She seemed hardly convinced. She glanced at Melai, who glared at her. "There is more. She—"

"Hold the chit-chat. The rift's back in business," Varric interrupted.

Whatever the "more" was, it wasn't enough of an issue to dissuade the seeker from directing the wraiths to Melai and situating the shades and the rest of the party a fair distance away.

Melai wasted no time speaking to the wraiths in her language.

"She might hold the key to our salvation," Solas had said to prevent the seeker from exacting justice on an unconscious Melai, but not a drop of sincerity had graced his lips.

But now, he let himself believe that perhaps she was.

* * *

Why was MIA making this whole experience exceptionally difficult for Melai? Why was she deathly allergic to magic? Why did she need the essence—or rather, essens—equivalent to a battalion of wraiths to close a single rift? Why was Trade so irritatingly close to English and so different at the same time?

Give me my subtitles, MIA!

It wasn't like she did anything evil in her past life. She just… gave up interacting with her world. Was that so bad?

"Must be nice, not having to do anything," her brother's sister-in-law had said to her once on a family dinner she couldn't get out of, with all the barb of a permanently stressed mother of three.

As if she wanted to be incapable of doing anything.

She put a halt to her thoughts. She couldn't afford to go into another spiral.

She glanced up at the lone wraith floating beside her, knowing her thoughts attracted it again. Since it appeared, it had latched on to her and refused to attack anyone. What was it before a rift dragged it to this world? Compassion? Curiosity?

Speaking of getting dragged, she recalled some of her thoughts from her past life. Specifically, her fascination with the Qun. Maybe her musings about wanting to join the Qun sent her here?

Asit tal-eb. It is to be. Nature was chaos, but there was order to its chaos. And to balance that order with your existence, you had your part to play to maintain nature. At least, that was how she simplified the available text in her head.

"Honestly, I just like the purpose part," she explained to the wraith. "Walk in, have the Tamassran tell me what I need to be. It can be cooking for people or something equally mundane. Saving the world's a bit much, don't you think?"  

 No reaction.

"You know they'll get rid of you eventually, right? Once I have enough power to close this rift. I feel like the non-violent route is the more pleasant choice for you here."

It took her a while to figure out that what mattered to the wraiths were not the words but the sincerity behind them. One by one, she talked until she convinced them. One by one, they went inside the Anchor.

But this one was stubborn.

She yawned. All this downtime was making her sleepy. And broody. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her poking stick.

"—din källa."

She missed more than half of what Solas said.

Ah, Solas, my beloathed, she greeted in her head as she blinked her eyes open. The first grammatically correct sentence in Trade she was set on learning was, "This is all your fault, you self-righteous prick!" She would say it to his face without fear—the MacGuffin glued to her hand would keep her safe from his machinations. Probably.

Her fears were reserved for all the people not named Solas: the implications of the story righting itself by removing Lavellan and Cadash from the picture, her potential failure to prevent the destruction of Thedas, the possibility of Solas killing Cassandra in her sleep because she kept antagonizing him more than in the original story.

"Melai," Solas said, squatting down to her level to grab her attention.

Right.

She affected nonchalance as she gave her okay for him to check her källa. She had heard the word enough times that she knew it referred to the Anchor's fuel gauge.

She fought her next yawn. Solas got his spell down pat that he only needed to cast briefly; the jolt of his magic couldn't chase the drowsiness away.

"Bra gjort," he said with a satisfied nod. He raised a finger and said, "Bara en till." Weirdly, his words seemed to be directed at the wraith instead of her.

Hopefully, it meant she could close the rift soon.

Four years, max. She just had to endure four years of this before Solas literally slices the responsibility of keeping Thedas alive off of her. Then she could fuck off to a farm somewhere temperate and live out her Stardew Valley dreams.

She failed to stifle another yawn.

She woke up to a loud blast, her left hand feeling like it'd been stung by a thousand bees. And when she opened her eyes, it was to a man in Chantry clothing, screaming at Cassandra and Leliana.

* * *