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Chapter Text

The horses and mules picked their way two by two down the path, red rocks rising all around. The air swam hot over dunes in the distance.

Above, a shadow crossed the sun, with a challenging, tearing scream. Cassandra’s mount started and reared its head, eyes rolling, dancing. A high dragon: a big one. The wave of alarm spread quickly through the other animals as it circled back. 

Only after the dragon left the sky could she calm the horse, leaning down to pat its shivering neck. 

Beside them on the trail, Leliana’s horse was already taking careful steps forward. Cassandra glanced at her. “Tell me we won’t be fighting that today.”

A quicker shadow passed over her face before she said, “Take it up with our Inquisitor.” Ahead, astride his own horse, Cadash was pointing up, roaring with laughter at something Blackwall said.

Wardens and dragons and more Wardens. Leliana had come out of Skyhold with them by her own choice, but this could not be easy for her, and she was hiding her dark moods less successfully. 

“Maker preserve me,” Cassandra said, trying for levity. Leliana’s smile was only half of one, and her hands tightened on the reins.

Cassandra turned her gaze back to her horse. How have I said the wrong thing now?

The southern Inquisition camp was atop one of the desert rock formations, a sandblasted overhang with little shade and no water, but a good view of Nazaire's Pass in the twilight as they arrived.

The Orlesian scholar camped across the way happened to know a great deal about dragons, and specifically the local one, which might be useful. The man conversed well, with little foolishness.

When she returned, she found Leliana standing apart on the edge of the tent circle, hand-feeding the caged ravens brought from Skyhold. She held a piece of meat while a bird tore into it, then stepped away into the shadows to fetch another. .

The raven dropped its meal and struggled in the small space to retrieve it. Cassandra reached into the cage to help. It snapped, seizing her hand.

“Don’t!” Leliana wheeled around and caught the raven as she pulled back bloody fingers.

“There you both are!” Varric’s voice broke in. He stepped out from between the tents. “Any word from Hawke? When’s the meet?”

“No word yet.” Leliana didn’t look up from the cage, smoothing the bird’s feathers. “You need to wait.”

He held up a hand in surrender. “Okay, okay. I get it. Wait … Seeker, are you bleeding?” 

A tear through to the skin and a stain across her left knuckles. The glove would be harder to mend. “It’s nothing.” She flexed the hand.

“If you say so.” Varric shrugged and turned back toward the camp, making for the cookfire.

Leliana finished her business with the raven and locked the cage. “The birds are not settling as they should.”

Because you are not, she thought, but held back. “It is nothing. I should know better.”

Leliana took off her soiled gauntlets and examined her own hands, pale in the growing dark. “Put this on it.” She handed Cassandra a jar from the supply chest. “Their beaks are beyond filthy, you know. I go through enough myself.”

It was an apology, and Cassandra accepted it. She set her jaw against the sting when she rubbed the salve into the cut.

As they walked between tents toward the fire, Leliana slipped on a cheerier tone. “Well, it is Warden Blackwall’s turn to feed us tonight, no? Has he produced anything?”

The smell of cooking suggested he had. Cassandra let her change the subject. “You really still doubt him?”

“There is something about the man I can’t let go. Though I am fairly sure it’s not his cuisine.”

She chuckled, following Leliana past the Inquisition banner into the camp’s center, but it was her turn to stay troubled.

The next morning, Hawke’s promised word arrived: a raven from Craggy Ridge Camp to the northwest, carrying a sketched map and directions to the Tevinter ruin where, she wrote, they might find answers, if not peacefully.

The five of them set out across the expanse of sand below the pass. The sun, unrelieved by clouds, beat on their small party through hot wind and radiated back from the sand. Blocky, angular shapes of other ruins rose up every now and then in the distance, between the red rocks.

Varric was full of enough words for all of them, mostly about how much he hated the desert, but plainly looking forward to seeing the Champion again. Cadash and Blackwall laughed at his jokes and passed waterskins back and forth. It had to be gallows humor with the Warden, approaching the unknown doom of his sisters and brothers.

Leliana walked with her hood pulled up, bow and quiver across her back, absently surefooted, silent. Cassandra took rear guard, cursing the blowing sand that would get in everywhere it could chafe. Varghests,  hyenas, and other hungry beasts had plagued the company on the way in; she followed the others and watched the rocks for their dens, and the dunes for signs of equally opportunistic raider bands. 

Distances were deceiving through the heat-haze, and they trudged for much of the day to reach the opposite side of the valley. The wind was stronger across the sand flats bordering the Abyssal Rift, driving up dust clouds over brush and wizened trees colonized by deathroot. 

Finally, a figure unfolded from the shade of a stone ahead, and Varric let out a whoop. Hawke raised her staff and waved, and when they met, lifted both him and Bianca up in a bear hug.

Her companion, an open-faced man in Grey Warden colors, got up beaming at Leliana.  “We came straight from Crestwood,” he said. “I thought we’d miss you.” 

“It’s been too long,” Leliana said, and—with a surprising softening—stepped forward into a similar hug, staying on her feet. 

“Sister Nightingale,” he said, muffled. “Still not used to that.” She patted his back like one of her lost birds.

Then she turned, folding down her hood so the sun touched her hair, and gestured to Cassandra. “Warden Alistair, Cassandra Pentaghast. I don’t know why you haven’t met before. He was a templar, you know.” 

“Almost. Not for long.” He took Cassandra’s hand, eyes widening. “But … wow. We heard of you even in backwoods Ferelden. I had a—” Leliana nudged him. “Sorry. You don’t care. Right. The mission.”

Cassandra shook it. “It is good to meet you, too. I hear things from Leliana, when she wants to reveal them.”

“None of your secrets,” said Leliana, smiling a little, blue-eyed in the sunlight, “don’t worry.” 

He laughed, wryly, like a man who had none. Cassandra liked him more for it, and for the smile.

Cadash interrupted, then, to greet him with a hearty “Well met again, Warden.” 

Hawke stepped in beside them, rubbing her sunburnt, red-streaked nose. “Glad to have you both with us, Seeker, Sister.” Her eyebrows made it a question.

“I have an interest in the fate of the Grey Wardens, as you must know,” said Leliana.

“I wish it were a better one. We’ve already seen lights from the tower.” She regarded the group, leaning on her staff. “Lucky we have one mage.” Her expression, uncharacteristically solemn, sharpened the edge on Cassandra’s nerves. 

She and Alistair had come south along the edge of the Rift, she said, over the Giant's Staircase, picking up rumors of Wardens traveling with Venatori along the way. This was still the place. It would undoubtedly be dangerous.

Inquisitor Cadash held up his hand, glowing green, and closed it into a fist. “Bring it on.”

But none of them were prepared for what they saw.

Maker, we should have known, should have stopped them. 

Cassandra fought the blighted magic that held her as, in the shadow of the ritual tower’s pillars, the Inquisitor strained to move, and the living Wardens stood like the statues above them.

Above them, Magister Livius Erimond smirked as demons circled, rage and terror feeding on the red-eyed mages and the blood—so much blood, too much for the waiting barrels of sand and straw. A noble, ancient order reduced to puppets and victims. 

Cassandra forced her blade forward with a shout, denying his authority to hold them— 

And the spell shattered into shards of light as Cadash sprang up from where he’d been doubled over his hand, power flaring from the mark. 

The magister tumbled to the ground with an apoplectic “Kill them!”

She rushed over the bloody stones straight for him, bracing her shield tight for impact, knocking the bodies that had been Wardens aside. Behind her, Leliana cried out, and arrows sang past her.

Hawke’s voice joined in, a barrier leaping into existence, blue-tinging her vision. And then the others, “For the Grey Wardens!” and “Bianca!” as she forged toward the dais, Cadash on her heels with his axe. A Warden mage came at her, blank and automatic. She shattered his spell again and he fell against his rage demon, which surged over him, sizzling and roaring heat.

The demon frozen, fractured, gone with a shriek, and she was on the steps, close enough to see Erimond’s grin turn vindictive as he got to his feet, jerking a raven-feathered arrow from his shoulder. He raised his staff, mouthing words. Behind her, Leliana’s battle cry became a choked gurgle. 

Cassandra flinched, glancing back. Amid the melee, a wall of energy caged Leliana, lifting her off her feet, shrinking around her as her body contorted.

When she looked again, the magister was gone. “Rusting shit!” Cadash threw up his hands and jumped back into the fight. 

No trace of him, but there was a path to her. Cassandra ran. As she gathered the will to break the cage, Alistair yelled something and the snap of a templar dispelling passed her through the air. The man was useful. 

Leliana fell in a graceless heap. Stunned: she must be stunned. 

Cassandra slid to her knees. Blood and straw tangled in Leliana’s hair, split arrows scattered around her. She reached out, almost shook her, then thought better of it. Her arm felt solid and unbroken. She was breathing.

The Inquisitor bellowed to one side. Hawke moved in from the other, renewing the barrier. Demons closed the distance behind her. She raised her shield to cover them, and in its shadow Leliana’s eyes opened. Cassandra let out a breath herself.

She twisted to slash back from the ground, stabbing and hamstringing until the last demon screeched and evaporated.

Leliana’s hand came up to grip her arm.

“Are you hurt?”

“It’s nothing.” Leliana pulled herself to a sitting position. “Did you—”

“No. He escaped.” 

Another darkness on her face before she composed it. “I should have aimed better for his throat.” She reached for her fallen bow and felt along its length for cracks.

Only the seven of them remained on the tower top, amid the corpses and the blood and the smell of death. Alistair lowered his sword, his back stiff, bloodied blue and silver like the dead around him. “Clarel,” he said in a numbed voice. “She ordered this. Maker.” He stumbled toward the wall and caught himself against it, looking sick.

Cadash stepped over to pat his shoulder in gruff sympathy. “Water, friend? Or something stronger?” 

Leliana’s expression was a mask that betrayed nothing as she pulled her hood back up and stood. Spiked pillars rose behind her like an empty hand thrust over the abyss.

Hawke was feeling in her pockets, and eventually produced a glowing vial. After a muttered exchange with Alistair and a shrug from Blackwall, she drank down the lyrium and raised her staff. 

A rush of fire consumed the Wardens’ bodies, throwing back an intense heat across the stones.

“Ashes we were, and ashes we become,” Cassandra said, rising from her knees. This at least was the right thing to say. “Maker, grant them a place at your side.” 

Leliana bowed her head. Alistair stared into the distance. “I know where he’d run. There’s an abandoned Warden fortress that way. Adamant.”

Hawke nodded as the flames hissed and spat. “If that’s where he’s gone, let’s get out of here.” She glanced at the Inquisitor. “We’ll scout it out and catch up with you.”

The journey back to Nazaire’s Pass seemed twice as long in the strained, somber mood among the party. 

Varric’s face was set in a grimness she recognized from Kirkwall, which didn’t suit him. Behind him, Cadash had begun a quiet discussion of battle strategies with Blackwall.

Leliana stayed impassive, keeping pace with her and showing no injury. But she was paying attention: she interrupted with a rather vicious point about setting traps for the Venatori using their own codes.

Cassandra felt neither calm nor cool-headed enough to debate siege strategy. Erimond’s smug disappearing face hung before her, and all she wanted to do was obliterate him. As she’d failed to, in order to fail again.

She took point and walked ahead as fast as she wished, spurred by queasy anger at the magisters, and at the Wardens for collaborating. Those knives, descending. A demon army. Will they truly rest with the Maker? Do they deserve it?

No answer presented itself before they reached camp.

The Inquisition soldiers had prepared an entire dinner, in anticipation of meeting the woman Varric talked so much about. When they saw no Hawke, their faces fell, and most trailed back to their tents.

Cassandra had little appetite, but she folded her legs on the dusty rock by the fire and made herself eat what she would need.

Across from her, in the shadow of the tents, Varric, Cadash, and Blackwall were passing a bottle of Antivan brandy, on their way to drinking themselves insensible.

Leliana sat equidistant from them, just inside the firelight, not eating or drinking, face occluded in her hood.

Setting aside the remains of her meal, Cassandra tried to quiet her mind in the way she was trained. The first lesson, the hardest lesson for a rageful child. Concentrate on the fire, will your emotions to burn. Rise out of yourself.

But she couldn’t. The Wardens’ choice offended her on a deep, elemental level, the blood magic and possession and lies and desperation. She could not be calm.

How could they? Making deals with these Venatori. Thinking a demon army could ever be a good thing. Allowing themselves to be taken in, deceived, used to betray their own reasons for being.

Just like the Seekers, and her heart was still sick to think of them. Daniel. The other innocents.

She glanced over again, but Leliana was turned inward around her grief, unreachable.

Enough. She could not be calm. She would go out in the dark and look for a fight, and maybe the Maker would grant her one.

Leliana stared into the fire, arms folded on her knees.

The flames filled her vision, became the burning at the tower. The Wardens. Other flames, other times. The charnel stink of battle and corruption.

The magister’s sneering voice. “In death …” Her mind skittered away from the word. 

Cassandra charging straight for him, a silhouette against his red-bright magic, not looking back.

Arms burning, draw-aim-loose, draw-aim-loose. It had been a waste of energy to shout—as if her voice could hold demons—but she nearly had him before the spell flashed down and pinned her like a butterfly in crushing, headsplitting air, stupidly vulnerable. 

She shuddered, remembering the ripping feeling of breathing again, opening her eyes to see Cassandra, grateful to still have eyes. 

The bruises were stiffening all along her body, making graceful movement impossible. But she lived to accept it and walk on, while the Wardens were dying. Maybe the last of them. In front of her, while she watched.

If only she’d poisoned the arrow. If only she’d scouted the west earlier. If only she’d gotten to Clarel, not taken them for granted, learned their secrets …

She could have done better. Stopped this. Prevented this. The Nightingale’s refrain, she thought, once more with feeling, and pressed her lips together to stop a cheerless smile. The Nightingale’s curse. 

She returned her gaze to the fire.

By the time Hawke and Alistair limped into camp, the moons were up, and the dinner was long cold. They helped themselves and thanked the two soldiers still on duty before collapsing by the tents, battered and bloodied.

Varric, on his third bottle, poured for them. Hawke drained hers and poured more. “They were there,” she said to Cadash. “Holed up, reinforced. I’ve a map somewhere. In the morning.” She sank back into methodical drinking. 

A little way from her, Alistair studied his cup, looking more than ten years older. He glanced up and caught Leliana’s eye. “No chance of a song, I suppose.”

The question was as familiar but strange as he was. Hardly anyone now would ask or dare. Leliana shook her head.

He held out the cup to her. “She always loved your singing.” There was only one she he could mean. “Told me you could sing the Blight away, at least for a while.”

“Did she?” A small new pang inside all the others. Leliana took it and drank.

“I shouldn’t complain. Not everyone gets a nightly lullaby from Corypheus.” His smile was grim, edged; maybe like one of hers.

In the letters and journals and histories she’d unearthed over the years, indescribable was the most common term for the Calling. Then came horrible and beautiful. But she’d never know what they meant.

The fire snapped, sounds of the night thick in the desert air. 

For her old friend’s sake, and to be that girl for a moment again, she started to hum, testing her voice: Andraste’s prayer for the dead. Under her breath, imperfect, but the song needed nothing from her.

Varric and Hawke fell silent. Alistair’s face relaxed, as if the false Calling had quieted.

When it was done, she took another swallow of brandy and handed back his cup. The firelight was too bright, the dead too present. She had to go.

Leliana climbed to her feet, ignoring the aches. She squeezed Alistair’s shoulder and left him there with the other men and Hawke. If only a song could really help—but this would have to do.

They might think she’d gone to bed, but she walked by her tent and kept going. As she passed them, her ravens croaked and beat their wings against the cage.

Away from the fire, the rock faces of the pass, blue-gray in the moonlight, were filled with nooks and niches where one could perch unseen. Not the best news for their security, but it suited Leliana’s purpose: to find a high dark place where she could watch the stars. 

When she’d climbed to a promising ledge above the path, a breeze picked up, cool on her face. She unfastened the hood and raked fingers through her hair, felt dried blood and scraped it away.

Then she leaned back on her hands, dangling her feet over the drop. The desert spread out below in a thousand shades of ink and silver; the sky was a sparkling void that called her as the dwarves feared.

She looked up at one solitary point of light, bright and cold. She’d told someone a story about stars once. It might have ended differently if they had more time. If. 

But that path was closed; and she’d never wanted that pain again, though it laced through her life like a needle through skin. 

No: she wanted to escape it, transcend it. Freeze it out, if she had to. She didn’t have the luxury of feeling it— 

Unexpected footsteps below interrupted her line of thought. Boots on gravel, then a silhouette that passed into moonlight and resolved into Cassandra, trudging up the path with a large, mottled, spiky shape slung over her shoulder.

She tilted her head and stopped. “Leliana? Is that you?” She sounded worried, the way she’d been ever since they left Skyhold. She radiated it, all through her voice and movements. No better at hiding than poor Alistair. 

But she was, far too evidently, right to be. Leliana leaned over the edge, despite her protesting bruises. “What in the world do you have there?”

“I was just … patrolling the area. I found a … whatever this is. Or it found me.”

“Another unlucky creature, then.” She gestured up. “I just came out to see the stars.” 

Cassandra lowered the dead thing to the ground with some effort and gazed up. “I can barely see you.”

“It’s not a difficult climb.”

Leliana told her where the footholds were, and caught her hand by feel for the last of it. 

When she was secure on the ledge, Leliana let go. Cassandra sat down not far away, a darker, warmer patch against the rock, on the border of her space. 

“Are you all right?” More concern in her tone. “No, that’s a foolish question. I think none of us are.”

Leliana let the night sounds fill in between them for a time, looking up, and Cassandra followed her lead, sharing the ledge without speaking.

The moons sank lower behind the ridge, and stars stood out brighter.

Eventually, she fit her thoughts to an acceptable sentence.  “This … abomination with the Wardens,” she began. “It can’t go on. We can’t let it. I can’t—”

“I understand,” said Cassandra.

Did she?

“It is a horror that Corypheus seems to love. Deceiving them this way, so it makes a mockery of their purpose.” She shifted position. “And it makes you think of her, does it not? The Hero of Ferelden.”

The pain laced itself tighter. Yes, she wanted to say, but— 

Leliana knew she wouldn’t break down here in front of her. The ability was well sealed away, already frozen. And Cassandra was carrying too much already. But it drew her, for a second, in the dark; a selfish temptation, if she could have.

Cassandra gave a small sigh. “I am sorry. I will leave you and take my … creature into camp.”

She climbed back down, her warm presence fading, and then the sound of her feet.

Leliana exhaled heavily. And now she was alone the way she wanted, wasn’t she?

She pushed herself back against the rock wall, looked up at the star again, and hardened herself like a diamond, locking her burdening feelings away. She would not fail again. The world couldn’t afford a repeat of that refrain.

Chapter Text

In the dawn light, everyone but the requisition officers looked haggard and drawn, but there were messages to send without delay, and plans to be made. 

Leliana wrote to Skyhold, then to the closer Inquisition garrisons to summon forces, and to Jader, where Josie had struck a prescient deal for siege engines. Three copies of each, as insurance. 

Her hand ached when she set down the pen, joining the rest of her. Spending the night awake on bare stone after taking a beating was not the wisest choice she’d made of late. Out of so many wise choices, she thought acerbically.

The camp was already packing up to move toward Adamant that day, joining troops from the other Western Approach camps and Griffon Wing Keep. Cadash had agreed with her and Cassandra that they couldn’t risk Erimond escaping before reinforcements arrived. As for his demon army—Maker, let it only take longer to summon than it takes them to get here.

It was a long march for tired people, and none of the Inquisitor’s party spent it talking. She followed the wagon that carried the remaining birds, and kept her mind busy with plans to delay or disrupt the magister’s efforts. Not the Wardens, not the future, nothing outside this focus.

The campsite Hawke and Alistair had suggested was far enough from the walls to be out of weapons range, partly sheltered from the wind by a curving mass of rock. In the distance the fortress hunkered on the edge of the Rift, casting a deep shadow on the blowing sands, as it must have since the Second Blight. Points of firelight winked from battlements and windows within its bulk.

Leliana steadied the wobbly camp table and swept grains of sand off her paper. It was in the ink already, sticking to her quills and blotting her lines.

Cassandra paced past her for the eighth time. Jumpy, angry tension came off her in waves, just as in the first days after the Breach; uncontrollable dangers, no good options, forced waiting, name your reason. At this moment, it wasn’t helping. 

Pushing herself to think, Leliana shaded along the outer wall on her sketchy map. The gate was the only obvious entrance, but there had to be others. Sewer outlets, hidden posterns, climbable unguarded walls. The Warden group must be spread thinly in a space meant for many more.

How could she get someone inside? Any knowledge would be invaluable: how many committed fighters, how many demons, how close the plan was to completion. Sabotage would be better still, but likely a suicide mission, with Corypheus watching day and night through his possessed mages. 

If she chose someone, what chance would they have to reach Erimond—or Clarel—before discovery? If she went herself …

Leliana set her face in her palm and pressed at her temples.

Something cool and heavy brushed her other hand; Cassandra had set a waterskin beside her. The touch of it made her remember desert air and thirst. She replaced the rocks that held down the paper, and drank.

Cassandra leaned on the table opposite her. “Do you know, I dreamed last night of drowning, of all things. A nightmare I used to have as a child. I woke, here, still believing I was under the sea.” She rubbed her eyes. “I hadn’t thought of it in years.”

Leliana swallowed, letting the moisture hang on her lips before the wind dried them. “I didn’t sleep.” She acknowledged the pointed look she got. “But I don’t think anyone is having sweet dreams in this place.”

“I don’t know if I have since the Conclave.” Cassandra peered down at her work.

Leliana turned the map toward her. “I told you I sent the fastest birds. Maker willing, the commander will be on his way, and prepared for a siege. The question is what else will go wrong, and how to stop it.”

“Indeed. How many contingency plans now?”

Leliana fanned them across the tabletop, lines upon lines, mostly her own hand, dashed off in a fury of thought. Cassandra turned one to read right way up. “I spoke to Knight-Captain Rylen about placing his men around the walls, and … yes, these measures for dealing with the demons. I cannot be everywhere—they will have to ...”

She trailed off, examining another sheet, and another. She gave Leliana a searching glance, as if about to ask again if she were all right.

Before she could, they were interrupted. “Cassandra!” came a shout from the tents, carried by the wind. After a second, Cadash emerged on the slope below them, axe in hand. “There’s a rift open not far away. Hawke says the Veil is less stable here.” He raised the blade, waving at her.

Cassandra hesitated. “Someone has to watch him.” She touched the plans. “And you don’t need me stalking around behind you.” It sounded part joking, part convincing herself.

“It would be such a shame to lose him now,” Leliana said, grateful she didn’t need to lie.

Cassandra pushed away from the table and grabbed the corner to right it as it tipped. She walked down to the Inquisitor the way she always did into battle, unafraid not to come back again. 

It was a single rift. One of hundreds. It was Cassandra. Of course she would. Leliana shook her head and returned to the papers.

On top, askew, was her unfinished plan to infiltrate and take out Erimond alone. Well, it might not come to that, if Cullen made good enough time. But she wouldn’t be left outside the walls.

The days of waiting were slow, tense drumbeats. Each day the fortress looked the same, except for the shifting sands. No one entered or left; scouts saw nothing but strange lights from within and volleys of arrows when they got too close. 

Cadash pronounced himself unable to sit still in these sodding big open spaces and charged off on different self-assigned tasks with Hawke and Varric. Cassandra frowned, put sharper edges on her swords, and followed him each time. 

On the seventh day, soldiers reported darkspawn near Griffon Wing Keep, and Alistair and a subdued Blackwall, as the only Wardens available, turned back to clear them out. 

On the eleventh, a tired Skyhold raven brought the news that Inquisition forces had set out later than she hoped. On the thirteenth, her attempt to send a scout through a sewer grating was foiled when rage demons flowed down and nearly burnt the man alive.

Unaccompanied in camp, unable to plan more than she had, Leliana fed her nervous energy into systematically repairing three quivers of arrows, preparing an array of difficult poisons, and sending terse updates to Charter. 

The soldiers stepped uneasily around her and sat subdued at their night fires, muttering to each other.

At first sighting of the army on the borders of the Approach, the party hurried back like birds before a storm—all present and whole, one worry Leliana could let go. Behind them, the drumming tension flowed into action. Camps going up, messages in all directions, runners exhausting themselves to bring the parts together: the business of war that she was learning again in this cursed year.

The day was appropriately dark-clouded and threatening when the might of the Inquisition finally arrayed itself before Adamant. Cadash climbed partway up a siege tower to greet the reinforcements, shouting what was meant to be a rousing speech into the wind. He ended by punching the air with his glowing hand, and got a cheer.

Other towers rolled into range, horses dragged trebuchets, scouts skirted the walls, Cullen yelled orders with impressive volume; everything was in motion. 

And they’d moved past at least half of Leliana’s plans. Now she only had to ready herself to follow the Inquisitor.

Clean linen, leather, mail dulled for stealth. Bow, arrows, vials. While she sat fastening her greaves outside her tent, Cassandra came out of hers, fussing one-handed with a tricky buckle beneath a plate and muttering. Leliana got up to help her. 

“Thank you.” She sighed in irritation. “Why they cannot make this reachable is—”

“Here.” Leliana turned her arm and picked at the buckle, loosening it as she craned to see it. “I believe they design for two hands, no?” she said while their heads were together. 

Cassandra laughed.

“And now you will have to adjust this as well. Hold still a moment.”

She waited while Leliana rethreaded the strap, shielding her eyes from the blowing sand. After a moment she said more quietly, “You could still stay with the army, Leliana. If we don’t come back, someone will need to carry on.”

“If you don’t, there will be nothing to carry on.” It was the self-evident truth, but Cassandra stiffened like she’d dropped ice down her back. 

“If the Inquisitor dies, we have nothing,” Leliana continued. “And we both died in his future to stop this. You need me for this, too. I’m going with you.”

Don’t ask me to carry on again, she didn’t say, didn’t want to think. She pushed the rerebrace into place and yanked the buckle tight to hold it. Cassandra bowed her head. When she glanced up, mouth resolute, wind pulling her coat and hair, Leliana felt a discomfiting blurring of edges she wanted even less to examine.

She willed them sharp and let go. Then she fetched her bow and quiver and walked toward Cullen’s command post, veiling her face.

Alistair and Hawke were there already, squinting into the wind to see the battlefield. 

“Never expected to get caught up in saving the world twice,” he said. “Most Wardens don’t even see a Blight.”

“Maker, tell me about it,” said Hawke. 

Leliana had chosen this long ago, jumping at the door Justinia opened, snatching up these strings she couldn’t drop. She made a sympathetic noise anyway.

Below, siege engines rolled toward the fortress, pulled by armored beasts and pushed by soldiers wading through sand. Inquisition banners streamed and flapped, tiny before the huge dark walls. The first figures to reach the walls began raising ladders. Behind the lines, trebuchet crews cranked back their machinery and heaved up the stones they would fire. 

There was a brief commotion when the others arrived from the campsite all together. Cassandra was close behind the Inquisitor, watching him like she might grab and shake him at any moment.

As they looked on, Wardens fired down from the ramparts with blasts of flame and magic, and inhuman silhouettes appeared among them, floating to the ground, clambering down the siege ladders. More demons than she’d hoped to see. And it couldn’t be all, or they were too late. 

They were out of bowshot range. Leliana was used to holding herself back from direct action. She made herself observe dispassionately as the Inquisition forces struggled below. 

Varric dug his boots into the sand, Hawke muttered curses, and Cassandra gripped her sword hilt like she wanted to pace but had no room. The line surged, faltered, and rallied against the demons with distant screams and battle cries. Finally, the soldiers opened and held a clear path to the gates for the battering ram.

Cullen strode across the sand with his sword raised, ordering the ram-bearers to form up. Then he turned back to see them. “Ah, Leliana, Cassandra, Inquisitor. Are you ready to move out?”

Cassandra met her eyes over Cadash’s head, then gave a brief nod.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Cadash said. “Get us in there.”

Cullen snapped out more orders, and a turtle wall was formed over the ram. The three warriors placed themselves at the end of the formation, holding their own shields for the others to duck beneath. Leliana was last in, behind the Inquisitor, backing under Cassandra’s shield with an arrow pointing out.

The bearers lifted with grunts and marched, counting off their steps, down across the long expanse of battlefield. Outside the shield wall, demons flowed and spidered and jumped toward them, the mind that drove them recognizing the threat. 

Before the gates, the bearers counted again and swung, with a resounding crash. The battle closed around them, the unearthly shrieks and stink, the smoke of fires inside the fortress. Cassandra was in her element, holding the demons off with flurries of blows; Leliana timed shots carefully to keep them off her and the others.

A second swing of the ram, and the hinges groaned. The ancient wood of the gates splintered and split. A last great swing smashed the last timber, and they were through.

No defenders emerged. The soldiers milled about, re-forming around Cullen behind the Inquisitor’s party. Hawke slipped out from under the shields to go with one of the ladder teams. “I’ve missed this sort of thing, if you can believe it,” she said, slinging her staff onto her back and mounting the ladder. “I’ll see you up there.”

Inside the broken gate, smoke rose from scattered fires, obscuring the way forward. Stone crashed in distant booms as trebuchet balls landed: farther, closer, then deafening overhead, making them all jump as the walls shook. The Wardens must have retreated inside.

“Let’s keep moving,” Cadash said, sidling along the nearest intact wall and waving them after him. Leliana kept an arrow nocked as they advanced through the smoke. 

Halfway into the hall, a darker cloud moved and coalesced into the unfocused shape of a shade, grasping hands manifesting above the Inquisitor. Cassandra lunged in front of him, knocking it back as he cursed. 

As more shapes bloomed out of the air, Leliana’s arrows tore at their solid parts, and Varric followed suit. Light threw the shades back further, and swords and axe dispatched them, the others coughing in the smoke. 

When no more shades appeared, they collected the arrows they could find and moved on over black stones buried in drifted, weedy sand. Adamant felt like part of the desert, a maze of ancient quarried rock, shaking under the trebuchet fire.

Around a corner behind a pile of rubble, flames illuminated three Wardens guarding a stairway. “I just need to get to your commander!” Cadash called to them.

“Our orders are not to let you pass,” replied their leader from inside his griffon helm.

“Please,” said Alistair, stepping into the light and holding up his hands, “you don’t need to do this,” but the man attacked, pressing him back into their party with practiced blows.

Leliana withdrew into herself, distancing herself to see these men as tools of Corypheus, as much as the mages were. Before she could think again she put an arrow cleanly through the helm’s eye, and the man dropped. 

From there on, making their way through Adamant was a grim slog of a fight. Up black carved steps, through doors tall enough for giants, down winding corridors, she saw threats and shot to bring them down, ignoring her fatigue, her emotions, and the constant din and danger of the battle on the walls.

Possessed mages came with more demons, harrying them on the long climb to the battlements, atop inner walls and rickety lashed-together scaffolds. Rage, terror, despair, and on the highest ramparts, pride, sweeping soldiers off the walls with whips of arcing energy.

They'd barely come out under the sky, dark clouds swirling with reflected flame, when they saw Hawke and a group of Inquisition climbers pinned down by the first pride demon. Varric and the Inquisitor ran to draw it off. Cassandra hurried away to stay with him, ducking and deflecting one of the blazing whips over her head.

The ugly thing was too big not to hit. Leliana grabbed for an arrow. And wait, she had that demonbane poison— 

Glancing down to find and open the right vial, she missed the other whip until it blinded her peripheral vision. She threw up her arm and the lash sizzled across her wrist, shock deadening her muscles and dropping her to her knees before it snapped back. The blessed liquid spilled on the stones. Her glove was scorched through. She wasn’t sure she was burned until the pain hit, making her suck breath through her teeth as she got up. 

The demon’s attention was all on the figures around its feet. It lurched back and forth to evade them and roared as the tiny shape of Cassandra hewed at its ankle. Hawke sent fireballs into its face.

Leliana pulled herself together. She was here to, needed to cover them. Aiming for its eyes and other weak points, she moved closer, dodging the whips.

After a last coordinated attack from the warriors at its feet, the pride demon teetered and fell, tearing down structures and banners in its thrashing. Boards of a scaffold creaked out of shape, then clattered down with Wardens inside, screaming. The demon convulsed as if someone had delivered a coup de grace.

Hawke, Varric, Cadash, Alistair, and Blackwall hurried one after another past her, on to clear the way for the next siege ladder. A putrescent smoke began to rise from the bulk of the demon, now sprawling on the battlement, mixing with the smoke of the fires. Leliana held her breath as she circled it, then found Cassandra kneeling beside a figure on the ground: a dying Warden, his body wrapped about with burns. 

“Mercy,” he croaked. 

“The blow was meant for me. He was running away." Cassandra touched his eyes to close them, lifting her sword.

“Wait.” Leliana knelt by his other side. “I’ll do it.” She reached for another vial, a few drops of sweetness for a numbing, deadly sleep.

As the Warden’s body relaxed, Cassandra stood, her face settling in grim lines. “Let’s go. The Inquisitor.”

From further down the wall, Hawke was shouting for them, amplifying her voice with some trick. Leliana stopped her wince as her glove slid across her own burn, readied her bow, and followed Cassandra back into the fight.

Once the Inquisition held the ramparts, the seven of them descended into the keep again, Hawke bringing up the rear.

Time felt capricious, speeding up, sluggish. The sky above the confining walls was the same menacing dark, the explosions and screams a constant assault, the smoke stinging Leliana’s eyes and nose as she sucked breath through her scarf. Her arrow shafts were bloody, scorched, and sodden from killing and retrieving. The burn was a cuff of hot pain radiating through her arm, and what might be more blood squished in her boot, but no chance to find out.

Finally, dashing into an inner courtyard, the Inquisitor stopped short. A green glowing mist hung in the air over the heads of a mass of Wardens. At the top of a flight of steps stood Clarel de Chanson—Leliana knew her face, hard-bitten and weathered, now grieving and angry—with a bloody knife in her hand. Another Warden’s body slumped at her feet.

“Don’t do this!” Cadash bellowed.

The Wardens blocking him raised their shields. Below the commander, a circle of red-eyed mages began a spell, spinning threads of the dead man’s blood into the air among them.

The hateful Magister Erimond came up beside the Warden-Commander, urging her to complete the ritual, talking about a demon so strong only she could bind it. Years ago in Montsimmard, she’d seemed hardheaded but reasonable; now the Venatori had her on a chain of fear.

Clarel dropped the knife onto the body and unshouldered her staff. “Wardens sacrifice ourselves for a world that doesn't understand,” she called out, in a gravelly voice with a mismatched Orlesian lilt.

Ignoring the pain in her wrist, Leliana weighed her chance of a lucky shot against the surety of retaliation. Without Erimond, would the Wardens summon this demon? Without Clarel, could he?

“He’s binding the mages to Corypheus!” Alistair pushed to the front of their group. He stabbed his finger at Erimond.

“Corypheus?” The Warden-Commander looked taken aback. “But he’s dead.”

“He’s lying.” Erimond touched her arm. “Your army is waiting.” Clarel shrugged him off, still staring down at them.

“I wish he were!” Hawke raised her own staff, which flared with light in the green gloom. “I’ve seen a lot of blood magic, and it’s never worth it!” 

“I fought the archdemon in Ferelden!” Alistair yelled. “Listen to me!”

“You're being used!” Cadash said to the Wardens, gesturing with his axe. 

The courtyard filled with shouting, confusion, Erimond continuing his lies, free Wardens calling questions to each other. If they kept it up, Leliana might get close enough, fast enough, to take both mages out. She had a pouch of something an herbalist swore would help. Or if Cassandra—

Leliana glanced to her, tensely quiet beside the Inquisitor, and mouthed Cover me, hoping she read the plan in her body language.

But as she braced to run through the shadows for the steps, Clarel turned, suddenly, to challenge Erimond. The tightest chain could snap.

“Maybe I should get a better ally,” the magister sneered, and something crashed through the air like an explosion of blight and roaring, ramming the nearby tower, rearing up to breathe sickly flame.

Tingling horror hollowed Leliana’s body, stopping her forward motion. Corypheus's corrupted dragon. Haven again, Denerim again, fire and wings, whirling putrid air, blasts of sound.

Clarel, still moving, struck Erimond to his knees with one blow. She leveled her staff at the dragon, grief become defiance, reclaiming a Warden’s place. "Help the Inquisitor!" she shouted.

And then the rest of them were moving, Leliana swept along with them, the Wardens parting to let them through.

His master’s pet rained down red-black fire, and Erimond fled. Clarel ran after him, scaling stairs two at a time, and they disappeared into the upper battlements of Adamant.

Cadash was cursing, Cassandra praying as light sprang up around them, Alistair racing headlong up the steps ahead of Blackwall. Hawke was behind, shielding them. Varric’s bolts flew. 

They gave chase along the walls again, dodging the dragon’s corrupted breath and the remaining demons.

On the highest level, far above the army outside, Clarel and Erimond were facing off, trading blasts of magic that  lit the low clouds. Erimond rallied, then lost his footing before Clarel’s counterattack, rolling to cover his face. 

Wind buffeted the walls, snapping the surviving banners with their tattered griffons. “You've destroyed the Grey Wardens!" Clarel growled, hitting him again and again.  

She seemed about to finish him. A gleam of hope gathered within Leliana. The tide could turn. 

"You could have served a new god!" Erimond shrieked, prostrate at her feet. 

Before any of them could make a move, the dragon’s hulking form cannoned up from behind the wall and crashed down, snapping Clarel away from the magister, shielding him with its wings.

The Warden-Commander screamed a single time as it shook her body in its jaws, then slammed her to the stone beside her fallen staff, limp in a heap. 

Dead? No—a faint glow of magic pulsed around her. Dark blood soaked her blue coat and smeared the stones as she clawed her way to hands and knees, face hidden in shadow. The dragon snorted and licked its chops with a twisting forked tongue, still focused on her. 

“It’s not looking,” muttered Cadash. “We can flank it. Hawke, draw its fire. Cassandra—”

“It’s not looking, what we do is run,” Varric interrupted just as Leliana said, “A Warden must destroy it.” Her voice came out colder than she intended. 

The dragon eyed Clarel, weaving its neck back and forth. She pushed herself up with her staff, wavering on her knees, and spat blood. 

Leliana couldn’t look away. Denerim flashed before her. A traitor’s sacrifice was not the same, but— Come on, she thought, needing to witness and wishing not to.

“Let her have it, if she can.” Had Blackwall read her thought?

But then, as if it had too, the dragon jerked its massive head up, fixing mad little eyes on their group of seven. Any chance of surprise was lost. 

Beating its wings against the wind, it snaked its body toward them, onto the wide bridging walkway where they stood. The structure shuddered under its weight with a horrible grinding. Cracks appeared, traveling quickly. 

“I’m no builder, but that isn’t good either!” Varric’s voice approached panic.

“Go! We cannot stay here! Leliana!” Standing like a salt statue, she became aware of Cassandra tugging at her right arm. Her body flowed, grain by grain from her elbow down, until she could run.

Clarel glanced back toward them once. She cried out sharply, regaining the beast’s attention.

“This way!” Cadash broke for the inner stairs across the bridge. The rest of them followed, not waiting to see the end; but Leliana looked over her shoulder as she did. 

A barrier flared blue around Clarel, a parting gift from Hawke. As the dragon’s teeth closed on her, her staff blazed with power. “In death!” she shouted, bringing it down, and then a cataclysm swallowed them all. 

The dragon thrashed to the deafening roar of stonework collapsing around it, disappearing in lightning and dust. Under them the bridge buckled, following it down, massive blocks splitting from millennia-old settings as the party fled across them. This could not be their end too. 

Leliana was running for her life now, throat raw, skidding on loose sand, pain shooting down her arm. She hauled Cassandra forward from the edge as it crumbled. Then they were both slipping, nothing below them but gusting desert winds, and falling— 

The Inquisitor screamed, the air fractured into green light, and they fell through.

Chapter Text

They could have been tumbling forever through that light, strangely weightless, until, abruptly, they were not.

Green haze, swirling. A blinding golden blaze too cold to be the sun. Dark, pointed, curved rock formations, giant red lyrium crystals bleeding into them. Some of the rocks floated, impossibly.

Everything felt wrong, and Cassandra could not get her footing or her breath. 

Leliana caught her arm again as they wavered, panting and leaning on each other, knee-deep in green water that bubbled with flames.

“Are we dead?” came Hawke’s voice from above. She hung suspended upside down, and Alistair stood on another rock at right angles to the ground.

How could they not be? But Cassandra’s heart still raced with adrenaline from the dragon and the fall, and she was beginning to feel all her cuts and bruises, in a very prosaic way. Surely death precluded this.

She saw the same confusion in Leliana’s eyes. One glove was torn and bloodstained, and damp hair straggled down her forehead. She winced as she let go Cassandra’s arm.

Alistair said, still perpendicular, “The Inquisitor did something with the mark. Opened another rift. I think we're … in the Fade?”

“Right,” said Cadash, lifting his head in front of them, rubbing his hand. “You’re welcome. I think.” He turned in a circle, taking in the surroundings with more muttered curses.

Cassandra stepped out onto what she decided were sand and gravel. Water squelched in her boots; it was real enough for that. Her sword and shield had come with her through the fall, but she had nothing to dry them. 

“And only us?” Leliana’s voice was composed now. She glanced around, marking each of the others. “I don’t see the magister or the Warden-Commander.”

“Clarel died a hero,” Blackwall said behind them. “Whatever else she was.”

“But how the hell can we all be physically in the Fade?” Hawke descended, describing a graceful arc in the air.

Varric sloshed past the floating boulders. “No, Hawke, the question is, how the hell do we get back?”

More water fell out of nowhere into the pool, reflecting the green of the air. Strange twisted sculptures grew from the rocks and the ground, unfinished, surrounded by patches of red weeds. A flame sprang from the water, then extinguished itself.

Paintings and illuminations depicted the Fade in many ways, but to stand within it was far stranger. Nor had Cassandra seen these things in dreams, though it felt as uncertain as a dream.

“I suggest we head for the rift the Wardens opened,” Alistair was saying above them. “I mean, if it works the same in reverse.”

Cadash stopped muttering. “Worth a try.” He squinted up and pointed. “Think that’s it?” A sickly green vortex, identical to the Breach, hung low above a far-off monolith.

It seemed to be their only choice. No one disputed it. 

So they moved out through the black rock formations. Cassandra kept her sword out of the soaked scabbard, staying alert for demons. When she reached for it, the power was still there to call on, though everything else confused her senses—not least that dazzling light that could not be a sun. 

Leliana, beside her, shifted her bow to the other hand and shaded her eyes. “To think, we may be this close to the seat of the Maker,” she said. “And yet, still so far.” Her shoulders moved in a barely visible shudder.

They passed a large stone piled around with skulls, then a row of half-carved statues, then a fully set dining table and chairs hovering against a wall, which Cassandra had to call odd. And everywhere burning candles, in ones and twos and small tableaux of offerings. Who lit them? Could they ever burn down? The mist around them appeared to move, but the air—if it was air—felt still. It was all compelling, like a sore tooth she kept prodding. A constant uneasy creeping at the corners of her vision, as if at any moment what felt solid might change, or dissolve into chaos. 

The two dwarves, who didn’t dream, looked even queasier than she felt. 

"I've seen a demon pretending to be my sister in the Fade,” Alistair said as they walked, “but I've never seen it like this."

“Yes!” Leliana glanced at him. “That is, I saw something different, but it was just like a strange dream until she ...” Kicking through a tangle of weeds, she continued, “This is so much more … whatever it is.”

Hawke said, “I’ve seen some things, too. Back in Kirkwall, we went after this dreamer kid, and my friends … well.”

“Let’s just get out before the demon temptations start,” Varric said, keeping his head down.

That chapter of the Tale had sounded very imaginative when he read it. Cassandra was not going to apologize now for thinking so, but she redoubled her vigilance.

Still, no demons appeared; this part of the Fade seemed deserted. Perhaps the Wardens had conscripted them all. Once, she thought she spied the brighter green of a wraith drifting in the shadows before it vanished.

A little way on, they came to a steep flight of steps quarried by who knew what hands, and Cadash nodded for them to climb. More candles flickered from niches in the walls; more skulls grinned from corners like unwelcome echoes of home.

At the top step, Alistair, first in line, jerked to a a stop. “It can't be.” 

Cassandra stepped up behind him. On the open ground ahead stood … "Divine Justinia?” She faltered. “Most Holy?" 

“Cassandra.” It was her voice. Her robes bright amid the green, her wrinkled face, her blue eyes. She glowed with a steady, warm light. “Leliana.”

At her name, Leliana took a convulsive step forward. “No!” Cassandra stopped her. “It could be a demon!” Leliana shook off her hand, but didn’t go closer. 

Cadash looked from the Divine to the two of them, lines of confusion deepening on his forehead. “What is this?"

“I do not know,” Cassandra answered, honestly. 

“It’s said the dead pass through the Fade and linger for a time.” The naked hope on Leliana’s face was transformative, difficult to behold.

“But we know the spirits lie,” Cassandra said, not trying to touch her again, speaking as much to herself. “Inquisitor, be wary."

“I don't remember the Divine glowing,” said Alistair. “In my experience, that's something spirits do—”

“It would take too long to explain to you,” the figure of Justinia interrupted. Living woman or spirit, she retained the tone of authority. She gestured. “There’s no time. It's not important now.”

Leliana was clasping her hands tight in front of her, holding herself still with tiny taut motions.

“She’s not trying to kill us yet.” Cadash stepped up past her, knuckling his mustache. “I just want out of the sodding Fade. If she can help, I’m all ears.”

Justinia bent her head, focusing on him. “You do not remember what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Inquisitor.” In that familiar, deliberate voice, she explained that his memories of that night had been stolen by a demon of nightmares, another servant of Corypheus.

“Never had a nightmare in my life.” Cadash threw up his hands. 

“It is the one you forget before waking,” Justinia said. “This place of darkness is its lair. Every child's cry as the archdemon circles, every dwarf's whimper in the Deep Roads feeds it.”

“Fantastic,” muttered Varric.

Cadash circled the open ground, scuffing at the red weeds. “Then how do I kill it?” He paused. “Guessing that’s the way out.”

Gliding past without another word for her former Hands, Justinia led him toward a shimmer in the air nearby. “You must recover your memories.”

Cassandra glanced again at Leliana, whose answering look admitted this was strange. She followed and watched while he endured some invisible trial, reaching into the shimmer and wincing. Once, twice, three times. 

With the fourth, his memory swallowed her. 

The Temple, the chamber not yet in ruins. Mages in Warden armor held the Divine with bonds of magic, pinioned and floating above the floor as she struggled.

Cassandra tried to lunge for the nearest mage but couldn’t see her body, could do nothing. Maker, where was I? How could I leave her? How could they take her? She scanned the room for clues she couldn’t find. More red magic crackled, and Justinia cried out in pain. 

Corypheus’s voice, ordering a sacrifice. Something interrupted him—Cadash picked up an orb of light. A wild flash—

And she was in the Fade again. Had they all seen it? Everyone looked shaken. 

Cassandra leaned with hands on her knees and breathed as her heart slowed, suppressing the urge to fight. Even then, he was using the Wardens? I should have been there.

The other Justinia stood before them unruffled and glowing. “You cannot escape without recovering all of yourself,” she said. “It knows you are here now.”

“Most Holy—” Leliana reached out to touch her robe, and Justinia vanished, leaving empty air at her fingertips. Her face crumpled, then hardened. 

Hawke and Alistair were already arguing over the Wardens, drawing the others into their squabble. 

Cassandra let Leliana pull her aside. “We weren’t there,” Leliana said before she could. “I know that Corypheus would have killed us.” She tightened her fists. “Why was neither of us with her?”

Cassandra had no answer, only the same question. They stood two handspans apart, not touching, unable to speak of it, as the party moved away from them. 

“Her face, Cassandra. What did they do to her?”

“I only saw the magic. His corruption.” Cassandra shook her head, numbly. “But is she with us, now? Can that truly be the Most Holy?”

Leliana began to pace like she’d gotten the bit in her teeth about a plan. “She’s angry with us. Of course she is. We let this happen.”

“We are walking through spirits and dreams.” Cassandra sighed. “I cannot say what feels real.”

With a sigh of her own, Leliana stopped and turned, taking Cassandra’s hand in her good one. “I know—”

“Ah.” A deep, oily voice from the air shocked them apart. “A little boy, come to steal the fear I took from him.”

“The Inquisitor!” Cassandra gasped, and they broke to catch up with him.

“You think fear will make you stronger? The only one who grows stronger from your fears is me,” the voice went on, filling the air. Cadash had stopped in the path with his axe lifted, looking around wildly, the others doing the same. The speaker—the demon?—was nowhere to be seen. 

“But you are a guest here in my home, so by all means, let me return what you have forgotten.” It laughed, pompous as a palace toady with too much power.

“By the Stone, I hate this,” Cadash muttered as Cassandra resumed her position beside him. “Let’s kill it, please.”

“We will,” said Leliana, nocking an arrow and stepping to flank him. The only sign of distress she let slip was a tension in her jaw when she used her right wrist.

They pressed on through the impossible terrain—Cassandra had given up making sense of it—a winding path descending, leading to the top of another stone stair that seemed higher than before.

She saw movement at the base of the stair, a churning and wriggling in the ground, and then the pale meaty flesh of worms—no, creatures like giant maggots on a corpse’s face, writhing in rot, appearing and disappearing. She forced down her revulsion. “What are those things?”  

No one had an answer. The creatures began to squirm up the steps, as if alerted by her voice. Each was easily the size of a dwarf. Their mouths pulsated to reveal round rows of teeth. 

“If they want a fight …” Cadash hefted his axe and started down toward them. 

Maker be praised, the things were easily dispatched with seven against two, and soon the party was catching their breath at the bottom of the steps amid their evaporating remains. “They must have been smaller fears,” Hawke said. “Servants of the Nightmare. Of course they look like spiders—ugh.”

Cassandra turned her head. “Spiders? I saw maggots, crawling in filth.”

“Huh. The demons must take on the appearance of something we fear.”

“Wonderful,” Varric groaned.

Leliana shuddered again, cleaning her arrows. “That must be why everything here feels clinging. Like it wants something.”

“The Fade wants purposes and shapes, and it takes them,” said Hawke, “or so it seems to me—”

“Did you think you mattered, Hawke?” the Nightmare’s plummy voice interrupted, all around. “Did you think anything you ever did mattered? You couldn’t even save your city. How did you expect to strike down a god?”

Hawke scowled and ground her staff into the sand. “And of course a fear demon would know where to hurt us. We must ignore it.” She stepped out onto the path again.

In the distance, on another ridge of Fade rock, a pale light glimmered where Justinia must be waiting for them. They took the paths that seemed to lead in that direction, though often they doubled back or emerged in unlikely new areas.

Glutinous piles of insect eggs began to appear among the rocks on either side. Then sheets of parchment, scribblings and letters, some readable and some scrambled, dream-fashion. And always more skulls, staring from corners, lit by everburning candles. Were these, too, stolen from her own mind? Cassandra wondered. What did the others see? How else might the Fade deceive?

As she turned a corner between two flickering niches, the voice returned, crooning, “Your Inquisitor is a fraud, Cassandra. Yet more evidence that there is no Maker, that all your ‘faith’ has been for naught.” 

“Die in the Void, demon,” she said. This Nightmare was a coward, not showing itself to stand behind its lies.

“And Leliana.” It clicked its tongue like a disappointed tutor. “She never looked back. The hard truth is, you’re just not enough to stay for. And same to you”—it shifted to a stage whisper—”confidentially, the Maker’s just as dead.” 

Leliana’s eyes went steely and she raised her chin, keeping her gaze on the figure of the Divine far ahead. She picked up her pace in silence. Cassandra matched it, to stay with her. 

A scavenger, picking through minds and hearts. Did this demon have a heart itself? How would it look when she had a chance to do the same? She imagined something unspeakable squirming in darkness, and her stomach clenched beneath her anger.

When they reached Justinia, standing before a second clearing, she told them, “The Nightmare is closer now. It knows you seek escape.”

“Yeah,” said Cadash, “I gathered that, thanks.” He leaned to peer past her.  “This again?” 

He stalked by to begin the memory ritual, and once he had, Cassandra moved toward the Divine. “Tell us what you are.”

Shining gaze following the Inquisitor, she said, “I am helping you.”

“Are you?” Do not back down, Cassandra told herself. “Are you the Divine Justinia we knew? Her soul? Some spirit in her form? Why should we believe you?”

“What if the answer was all those things? I am what the Maker made me. Are you what the Maker made you?” 

“When I knew her, Most Holy could answer a question.”

An indrawn breath from Leliana, a caution.

“Corypheus and the Nightmare do an injustice to the world,” said the glowing Justinia, finally turning to them. “Perhaps you were meant to stop them. Perhaps that is why I am here.”

Before Cassandra could challenge her again, the Inquisitor’s second memory claimed her, the ground dropping away in panic.

He half-stumbled-half-climbed, clawing up the black Fade rock through choking green mist, eyes on the beacon light of a rift. Of course he has been here before, she thought. Behind, Maker, too many to count, a swarm of wolf-sized spiders—the same fears Hawke saw?—gaining on him. He gasped a petition to the Stone and climbed faster, but he was tiring. 

Just when he couldn’t go on, a figure appeared between him and the rift. The Divine. Her hand reaching out, catching his. 

With strength despite her age—despite her torture—she pulled him the rest of the way, then shoved him bodily through the rift. His last sight of her was overtaken by the wave of fear demons.

The memory released her like hitting stone, a little more prepared this time.

In front of Cassandra, the Divine’s glowing likeness began to melt and run, rising and coming back together as a featureless shape of light, hovering. “I am sorry if I disappoint you,” it said, still in her voice.

“Then she is dead?” Cassandra had wanted to hope, but this ending she believed.

“Are you her soul?” Leliana stepped up beside her, the spirit’s light playing over her face. “… Mother, Dorothea, did you … stay behind for us?”

“That is a good story, if you want to tell it.”

Varric shouted behind them, “Seeker! Nightingale! Everyone, we’ve got company!” 

A nest of lesser fears was hatching in the open ground behind them, surfacing and humping their blind bodies toward the group. “The Nightmare has found us,” said the spirit who had been Justinia. “You must follow me.”

She glided ahead, showing the right path, and they ran after her, no time to doubt her further. Down the winding ridge they descended, tearing through patches of the red weeds, sending loose stones tumbling off into misty nothingness.

“Do you think you can escape me?” The demon sounded miffed. “I am your every fear come to life! I am the veiled hand of Corypheus himself! The demon army you fear? I command it. They are bound all through me!”

As she flew, the spirit chuckled. “Ah, so if we banish you, we banish the demons? Thank you, every fear come to life.” 

It was so like Most Holy, and the Nightmare’s furious roar made Cassandra smile grimly as she ran.

When the path opened and the ground flattened abruptly, the shining spirit led them on, across the shore of what could only be called a sea. Silent, dead water rippled over sand beneath more hovering monoliths. Farther out, an empty longboat floated in silhouette against the light. A sandbar curved in a perfect, unnatural spiral. Candles winked from the rocks. The party ran through the shallows, feet skimming the water in little splashes, breathing hard now. 

At last, with no pursuers to be seen, they paused in the lee of another ridge.  “Catch your breath, but do not tarry long,” warned the spirit.

Before them, a tumbledown wall circled a graveyard that could have been displaced from a southern village chantry. On the gate perched two ravens—more Fade figments, or dreaming themselves? One croaked. The other flapped to the sand near Leliana, who knelt briefly to observe it before moving through the gate.

Curious and worried, Cassandra left the group to follow her. The gravestones were carved with worn letters in Orlesian and Fereldan styles; not likely her memories, then. Stepping carefully in case they were true graves, she leaned to read the tallest, a square pillar head-high. The inscription—CASSANDRA: HELPLESSNESS—was a jolt that turned to anger. Another cheap trick. 

“So, it taunts us with our fears again.” Leliana walked down the rows, reading. “Some of these are no surprise. Others …”

Cassandra turned back from the graves, refusing the demon’s play with secrets. ”Come away from here.”

“Do you believe it is her?”

“I told you, Leliana, I do not know what to believe.”

Cadash came through the gate, and they both fell silent. He peered at a few stones. “Enough with this cryptic sodding bullshit. We’re all afraid of something. Let’s go.”

Whether it was the Divine or no, she knew he was the only hope of the world. Cassandra fell in behind him. Leliana came after. 

The Justinia-spirit led them away from the dream-sea, up another illogical stair, and into a cave like a transverse split in a floating hill. “We are nearly there,” she called down. 

With each step inside it grew darker, further from the cold brightness of the outer Fade, taking on an offputting warmth. Black, oily water welled up from the floor and cascaded from the roof to pool in the passage. They were forced to wade, holding their weapons high and keeping close to the walls, lit by the spirit’s glow and the red lyrium infecting the rock. 

A sense of great foreboding prickled Cassandra’s skin. This felt like walking into the throat of the beast—but, from the start, it had been too late to do anything else.

She pushed through the water behind the Inquisitor, his hand another small moving light. Preserving him was their paramount task. Leliana was agreed on it. They’d died together for it in at least one thread of time. 

Could the others do what it took to get him through that rift alive? She felt for firm ground under the dark surface, step by step.

They had crossed a space that felt much wider than the hill when the spirit disappeared around a corner, and on the other side, the light reappeared. Dimmer, but there. The familiar green of the rift edged into view at the cave mouth. Another step, and—

No premonition could have prepared her for the sight of it. Crouched with its head between them and the rift, the demon filled half the Fade-sky with legs and eye-clusters and dripping fangs, a spider born of the Void, apotheosis of nightmare. 

This was a lackey of Corypheus, Cassandra reminded herself. A wheedling, cowardly thing.

Leliana, at her shoulder, took a long, controlled breath. Their hands found each other once more, and their fingers locked like iron.

“The rift!” Hawke exclaimed, coming up behind, then gasped as she collided with them. 

“Great, Hawke,” said Varric, “Why not just dare the old gods to stop you? … Oh, shit.”

“Maker, save us,” murmured Alistair.

“You must get to the rift, Inquisitor,” said the spirit. “Get through and then slam it closed with all your strength. Exile this cursed creature to the farthest reaches of the Fade.”

Cadash gave the rest of them a long look, as if committing their faces to memory. “Let’s get it over with.”

They stepped out of the cave onto a steep decline of loose stones and scree. Ahead, cradling one side of the spider’s body, was a ring of broken pillars like a tournament arena, hung or carved with bones, fountaining bloody water. A grotesque display that paled in comparison to its builder.

The spirit paused before her Hands now, and it was so easy to believe in her. “I failed you, both of you,” she said. “Don’t fail each other. Leliana, my dear, I am sorry.”

Leliana’s face twisted, and she covered it with gloved hands. The spirit touched her hair with fingers of light. “Don’t let it happen again,” Justinia whispered, and then, in one motion, she rose above them.

Before anyone could speak, she flew up, out, into the face of the demon, and flared into impossible brightness, immolating and obliterating herself in light. 

Cassandra threw up an arm to shield her eyes. When vision returned, the hell-spider had retreated, no longer blotting out the sky, and Justinia was gone. 

What had she done? Renewed grief surged in her throat. Saved them? Could the way be open?

Cadash gave a wordless yell and broke into a run toward the pillars, waving them forward. With no time for tears, Cassandra ran. The rift.

But things were never so easy. Beyond the pillars, something new was materializing in his path. Towering over him, draped in gray, six jointed arms in place of wings, it floated like a mockery of the bright spirit. 

His yell turned into “Cassandra!”  as she pounded up behind him. One cut toward its legs and it slid back through the air, whirring overhead like a giant insect, unreachable. 

Then it shrieked, dropping, and the arms contracted in unison, revealing wicked points. 

Cassandra tackled Cadash and rolled him out of its reach. Arrows and bolts began to fly. Fire burst against the creature’s ribs, and it shrieked again, veering off.

She wiped dirt from her eyes, crouching over him with her shield as the others formed a knot around them. Lesser demons were advancing from all sides. Corypheus’s reserves?

Bracing her feet beside Cassandra, Leliana plied her bow. Varric muttered under his breath, and Bianca answered with explosive shots. Cassandra adjusted her stance into one third of a shield wall. 

The insect-creature danced above the other demons, dodging arrows and blasts, plunging down and slamming its stingers like six javelins at once, then slipping out of reach. It fixated on the Inquisitor, with more malign intelligence than its followers—children?

One barbed arm stabbed past her and hooked the Inquisitor’s shoulder, jerking him up out of their circle. He screamed, hacking at the thing, and it dropped him, where she could not see. 

Cassandra ducked and charged through the demon ranks, body behind her shield, legs behind her body, closing her mind to the raking claws of terrors and the squirming softness of the lesser fears. Not too far in, she found him, praise-the-Maker alive, and began to drag him out the same way, clearing a path with the sword.

Then Hawke, lunging out onto open ground, spun her staff and slammed it down with a flash and a howl. A blast of heat struck Cassandra’s back. Behind, a wall of fire split the ground between Cadash and the demons. He scrambled after her toward the others.

“We need to keep moving!” Hawke stepped back unsteadily, face paler, and downed a vial of lyrium. Smoke rose from her staff blade. She pointed to the rift.

The creature whirred out of the fire toward them, draperies burning, shrieking.

“Head for that pillar!” Alistair yelled. They dashed across the strange arena. The pillar closest to the rift bowed outward in a half-arch, pouring bloody water from skeleton-ribs.

With their backs to the stone, they panted, resuming the shield wall. Alistair was favoring his shield arm and Blackwall was bleeding. Cadash’s mark was bright, pulsing, and he gripped his axe with obvious pain.

Leliana was counting her arrows. Too few left, Cassandra thought. She began to empty her pockets instead, stacking small objects in her hand.

The demons crawled and scuttled around the fire, the first terrors a few steps behind them. Soon they encircled the pillar, while their leader struck from above, searching for angles to hook and tear.

“We only need to get by them.” Leliana pitched her voice below the din.

“Time to start improvising,” said Varric, squeezing around the pillar. “Pass me a few of those.”

They nodded to each other. “Be ready to move,” Leliana said, and they began to throw, explosions of fire and cold and shock in a tight pattern, breaking the demons’ line, clearing a narrow path.

Cassandra edged into the open space after them, smashing a frozen demon out of the way, Inquisitor in tow. They moved in a tight circle up the slope. As Hawke cast a barrier, a terror demon clutched at her mail and pulled her down, away. Leliana darted back and hamstrung the demon, freeing Hawke. She stumbled up the path. Blood in her face. Moving slower, exhausted like they all were. 

Cassandra grabbed her hand and pulled them both back into cover as the demons crowded around.

Then, growling in pain and fury, Cadash dropped his axe and threw his hand to the sky. Green-white lightning leaped and laddered from the mark, silhouetting everything in its flash. Small momentary rifts tore out of nowhere and devoured the demons, tearing the essence from their bodies into the light, forcing dissipation.

When it stopped, the ground around them was clear in all directions, and the flying demon was gone. 

The silence felt loud until Cadash groaned where he lay, on the ground, clutching his hand. 

Quickly they closed around him. The rift’s light haloed them in green, casting their faces in shadow. Not far. If they could make a run for it, carry him the last twenty paces up the slope—

Then, like an avalanche, the Nightmare shifted its vastness to block the path once more, swinging its head to fix them with scores of eyes, glossy wet like black gems or pustules.

They weren’t fast enough.

Its creature descended from the other side, arms rising to strike, trapping them in the narrow space between. 

The only chance was for someone else to distract it, long enough for the Inquisitor to cross twenty paces.

Thoughts Cassandra had denied rose up in a dark wall of certainty. It takes more than one sacrifice. The Maker shaped me for this. And then strongest of all, I won’t fail her. 

She breathed and knelt beside the Inquisitor. 

“Do what she told you! Get to the rift and slam it closed. Stop the demon army.” She pulled him to his feet. “This is why I am here.”

“Cassandra—” he said. She heard Leliana say it at the same time.

“Go,” she said before she could think again, “take him, now.”

She pushed him toward Leliana and charged the other way, into the Nightmare.

She challenged the demon with all her strength, calling down the Maker’s light in its face as Justinia had. It spit venom at her, dragged its terrible bulk to face her, and she laughed and blinded it again with the wrath of heaven, seeing herself in its myriad eyes, sword raised. Counting the seconds.

The flying one hit, from behind, knocking her forward. Lightninglike, piercing, stinging. Hooking her shield arm and twisting.

Her arm twisted out, and something gave in her elbow. The shield clattered away as she fell. She reached after it in a flare of bright pain. Useless. The arm was, but she could still buy them time. 

Cassandra scrabbled for her sword, cursed at the demon, struggling to rise and keep its attention. The others must be running, should be— 

A shadow and then a figure crouched beside her, hoisting her shield over them. “No! Get up!” Leliana yelled in the tiny space as the stingers came down.

“I’m staying!” Cassandra yelled back, and then desperately, “What are you doing? Go!”

Leliana deflected another strike. “No one is leaving anyone!” She reached under Cassandra’s good arm to lift her.

“Run!” Cassandra shouted, but she wouldn’t be shaken loose, bracing with her feet, arrows dropping.

She couldn’t see the Inquisitor, or Hawke, or the Wardens. Only the head of the great demon spider itself, bending down, its impossible mouth closing over them, both together, no, and darkness …

Then its voice ... 

There’s no way out anymore, Cassandra. It was inside her head, singsong, petulant, surrounding her in the dark. Thanks to your friend—if you can call him that. I certainly wouldn’t. 

But what a parting gift you are. Embodied fear, so sweet, so strong. Its tone was lustful and self-satisfied. I’ll make you both last a very long time.

Chapter Text

True to its word, or simply its hunger, the Nightmare did not kill them. 

On the other side of the darkness, inexplicable as anything in a dream, was a new place. Black rock floating amid false sky, stretching out empty, with none of the manifestations from before. Nothing familiar, and the creeping feeling of chaos even stronger, as if the stone was only solid when observed.

Opposite her in this shallow cave where they had crawled, Leliana was real and clear and a respite for her eyes that helped nothing else. 

“You should have let go.” Cassandra tested her left arm. Swollen, refusing to bend. She stifled a groan. “We cannot both be lost. The Inquisition—”

“Don't tell me what to do.” Leliana’s voice was tight, clipped. “Here.” Moving as slowly and stiffly as Cassandra had been, she felt for the pulse in Cassandra’s wrist, then laced their fingers. “Relax as best you can.”

She gripped hard and pulled down, levering the joint until the bones grated, then realigned. Through the nauseating pain, Cassandra clenched her teeth and didn’t reply. The argument was understood and pointless now.

Leliana finished her work with a handful of cannibalized straps and arrow-shafts and wrapped the makeshift splint around Cassandra’s arm. “You know not to move it.”

The blood pounded from her ears down to her wrist. Outside their hiding place, green mist swirled and writhed, in no pattern she could find.

Leliana spoke again, tearing strips from her hood to bind her own wounds. “What do you think will happen when we sleep?” Unsaid, because we must soon. Had it been hours or days since Adamant? Since they faced the demon? Since it cast them into … wherever here was? 

“Do I look like Solas?” She willed her arm to settle. 

Leliana gave her a pointed glance.

Cassandra gestured to their surroundings with her free hand; at least she had the sword hand. “As far as I know, anything could happen. We could simply die.”

“Or find ourselves elsewhere in the Fade. Better or worse?”

They fell silent again. On the horizon, other stones or islands manifested, stretched, and twisted themselves, out of any possibility of reach.

Cassandra rubbed her eyes. “We should be dead already.”

“Spiders store their food for later.”

“Or perhaps we are being digested.”

Leliana snorted. “We could also starve before it’s finished.”

A problem for later, if there was a later. Leliana had been awake as long, fallen with her, dragged her here. Cassandra was too exhausted to reason. She wanted to sleep, and not to, and to take the risk first.

They bickered, tired and short, until she announced, “I will go first. Don’t argue. With this arm I will need your bard’s trick.”

Leliana frowned. “I don’t like it.” She sighed. “But you do need rest, if we can.”

Cassandra found a smooth area to lay her head, splinted elbow in front of her. “If I die, kill it for me.” She closed her eyes with determination.

Leliana made an unamused noise, then started to hum, a soft tuneless sound building into a pattern that dulled the recent horrors in Cassandra’s mind and the deep ache in her arm.

The weight of fatigue took over, slowly, and what followed felt like sleep.

Chapter Text

Leliana looked up at the strange sky of the Fade and sang low and wordlessly, thinking of sleep but not for herself, a line that was hard to walk with her mind as drained as her body. 

Still, beneath the pain and fatigue lay a kind of relief to have made a choice. Not been left wondering. To have heeded the Divine’s last words—they were hers—to have seen— 

As she shied away from completing the thought, her voice trailed off. Cassandra, still verifiably alive, moved and muttered. Leliana searched for different images. A time she slept without worry? Before the Conclave. A spring night in Val Royeaux, windows thrown open, soft air, rain falling outside. Good. She put it into the song.

If her singing had power it was not of the mage kind, only a little way beyond persuasion and feeling, but slowly it was enough for Cassandra to settle into a seeming real sleep, arm curled before her, face relaxing.

Leliana studied her. She felt splintered, fraying, rent inside and out, and Cassandra looked worse in this punishing Fade-light, but didn’t vanish. She breathed, yes, still. 

And neither of them was alone. Nor was the Inquisitor, who surely lived, so they hadn’t failed him, either. Whatever short horrible future she’d bought them, it could be more hopeless. 

The sky’s brightness never changed. Was the Maker once so close, just beyond this frozen sunset? She squinted. At the corner of her eye something glimmered, like a stray reflection against the rough dark stone, but when she looked again, it was gone. 

Green mist had crept up around them, shallow swirls patterning the black. She waved it away and set a hand on Cassandra’s shoulder. When she didn’t wake this time, Leliana let the song end. 

She leaned her head back on the rock and forced herself more alert. If the demon came, she wouldn’t have done this for nothing.

The air pulsed and flowed overhead as Cassandra slept and she tried not to. She peeled her gloves off, wincing as the torn leather brushed her wrist. The burn looked no worse and no better. Her hands were ghostly in the mist.

Then the ground beneath them—or whatever it really was—started to feel odd. Sticky. Maybe it was her imagination. But wasn’t everything here? She pressed beside her leg to test it, wishing she’d read more writings on the Fade.

The stone lurched. She jerked up in alarm. It softened further, sickeningly, false, dissolving. She grabbed for Cassandra’s arm. And then stone and air were water, clapped cold and heavy around her, and her cry of shock was bubbles.

Panic split her. She flailed and felt nothing but water, dragging on her limbs, blinding and chilling her, surging into her mouth and nose. Her gear weighed her down. She fought it, coughing bubbles, tearing at straps until the heavy mail and quiver fell away, kicking barefoot as her boots sank. 

When her head broke the surface, she sucked in air, thanking the Maker there was one. The rock had vanished for some twenty paces, leaving her in a rippling green pool with steep banks. She treaded water, searching. All empty. Only her own breathing.

The demon was here, its sticky fingers in her mind, or whatever a spider had. Dream-tricks. Hers or—Cassandra’s? She remembered the stone carved HELPLESSNESS and cut off more panic. Don’t feed it. Leliana reinforced her mental walls, filled her lungs, and dived back down. 

The water was crystalline, tasteless, not even salt, lifeless, like the idea of water.  The glaring cold light above sank through it in deepening greens, darker places below the stones. She pulled herself deeper, holding in the air that wanted to burst out. Her shirt and hair drifted around her like waterweed. 

Movement beneath her, a pattern of shadow—there, the black and white of Cassandra’s tabard. At the center of the pool she struggled, pinioned by a rope that sank into the depths. Nightmare logic. Leliana pushed back horror she wouldn’t give the demon and kicked hard to reach her.

Bubbles of Cassandra’s breath rose as she twisted to see, churning the water around them. Leliana grabbed the rope at her back. Stop, she thought, don’t fight me for once. The knots felt simple, quick to pick apart if they were dry, but the fibers were swollen and her fingers numb.

One stiletto was gone with Leliana’s boot. She palmed the small one on her thigh, praying it wouldn’t slip, spots dancing before her eyes. This dream could kill them, whatever the demon’s intent. Fractions of seconds stretched impossibly as she battled with the rope, racing Cassandra’s remaining breath.

One. The coarse rope skinned her fingertips. She tried another angle with the blade, sawing. Two. One more.

Cassandra’s kicking grew more desperate. A big bubble escaped her mouth, silent words. She shook her head.

You think I’ll leave you here now? Abandoning the half-cut knot, Leliana dragged herself to Cassandra‘s face and seized it to share her own breath. An awful, clumsy kiss if it were one, crushing their mouths unevenly together, pinching her nose. 

After a shocked stiffening, she felt her accept, inhale. Leliana’s pulse pounded in her skull, sealed by the water. Cassandra wrenched her hands free to clutch her like a lifeline. Breath passed between them, hungrily. 

For a moment she felt nothing but this. Floating, maybe sinking, deprived of other senses. 

Then, before she could give it all or think more about it, she jerked back, grateful for the control of singing. On the dregs of breath she had left, she grabbed Cassandra’s good arm and drove upward for the light, leaving the rope to drift into the dark.

On the surface she gasped, spluttering and bobbing until her vision cleared, getting Cassandra’s arm over her shoulder. With the last of her strength, she hauled them both onto the closest rock to lie in a limp heap, her cheek on the wet stone.

Beside her, Cassandra’s chest seized and she coughed for an agonizing time, convulsing against Leliana’s back until she breathed for herself.

“Cassandra,” Leliana said into the stone. “Are you—you—we can’t sleep.” She felt sick at the implication. With too much effort she rolled over, avoiding Cassandra’s injured arm. Her improvised splint was gone, another mark to Nightmare’s account. 

Cassandra muttered something unintelligible, then turned her eyes away, coughing again. “The demon,” she said like a curse.

“You dreamed that.”

“Yes.” She didn’t look up. “And it spoke to me down there. Before you—” She coughed and spat more water. “It does not matter what it said. There is no way out, it will feed on everything—more of its lies. I believe nothing it has told us.”

Leliana inhaled slowly, careful of her raw lungs. “When I was caught in dreams before, there was no way out until … someone broke in.”

Cassandra met her eyes then. “You did not have to—”

“No.” Leliana was too exhausted for a sentence, to move away from her, to do anything but lie there like a wet rag in the humming, listening silence of the Fade, feeling every unevenness of the ground through her soaked clothes.

“Thank you.” Cassandra sighed and let her head fall back. “It may say it wants us alive, but I fail to trust its tender care.”

The laugh hurt and made her cough again, muscles seizing. She managed another “No,” curling around herself.

“The Inquisitor must have escaped,” Cassandra added after a bit, like that was what she’d meant.

Leliana summoned another breath. “Most Holy showed him the way. Hawke and Alistair are with him.” 

Cassandra’s exhale sounded like assent. “It was her spirit. At the last. I believe that.”

The words hung there for a long silence. Green mist was gathering again over the water, if the water was still there, below the edge of the sterile rock. This part of the Fade lacked even the red weeds that imitated life.

Leliana’s hair dripped into her eyes, and her bare hands and feet throbbed. She concluded she was too tired to shiver. The burn on her wrist pounded with its own rhythm. 

What had they lost and what was left? Her bow might still be nearby. Cassandra’s sword and armor. She must have dropped the dagger. Their pockets and belt pouches, wet. She remembered grinding herbs at the Adamant camp, and cursed herself for leaving out the no-sleep tonic.

Cassandra’s eyes had drifted closed. “I will try a meditation, to rest without sleeping,” she mumbled. She still hadn’t moved away, touching all along, like warmth under ice. 

Leliana tried to keep her own eyes open, but her thoughts still swam, unfocused. She didn’t want to think about that kiss-that-was-not, a painful bit of thawing her mind kept returning to, hot, liquid, confusing. 

She sealed it over and away. Really, Cassandra beside her now was the least confusing thing here. Her pattern of breathing was familiar as the Chant twice a day. She permitted herself to take comfort in it, the constancy and the basic comfort of living bodies together, in this realm of death and spirits.

And they might be trapped with the demon, but that meant it was trapped with them. 

She would just lie here until she had the energy to move.

The false sun glared through the wet hair in her eyes, glinting from droplets, starring into phantom lights. She started and realized her eyes were closed. She forced them back open.

The energy to search this place, find its edges and rules—

The sky was so bright she could see it through her eyelids. Easier this way. Her body would betray her. She couldn’t stop it pulling her down.  

The rhythm of Cassandra’s breath and her own blurred into waves, far above her, unmooring her from wakefulness. What else did the demon have in store? Could there be a way out?

She hoped Cassandra was really awake. The last thought she could catch was to doubt she could be, as consciousness slipped out of reach and sleep took her.