Chapter Text
She wakes to a pounding headache, a pressure between her brows that only worsens when she opens her eyes. The room’s light is dim but the onslaught drags a groan from deep in her throat, a parched, dry croak that makes her wonder how long she’s been out.
She tries to sit up, her whole body protesting against the motion, but she can’t remember what she’d done to put herself in such a state. Creators, did she take a tumble off a cliff? But there are no bruises or broken bones, and it’s with some effort Ellana manages to push herself up.
The door clatters against the frame, and the gasp that escapes into the quiet draws her eyes to her visitor, in time to see them drop what they’re carrying in surprise.
“I didn’t know you were awake, I swear!”
Her thoughts are sluggish, slow in dragging across her mind and through the confusion that clouds it. A glance about the room yields no answers. A cabin?
“Is this another prison?” No shackles digging into her wrists, but a soft mattress beneath her. No cold, unyielding stone, but the pale warmth of the candlelight.
The elven girl stutters. “I…no?” I mean, I don’t think so.”
The lack of answers tries her surprisingly thin patience, making her voice hard when she snaps, “Then where am I?”
Her intention had not been to scare the poor girl out of her wits, but she falls to her knees as though she’d threatened to physically strike her. “I beg your forgiveness, and your blessing. I am but a humble servant.” A pause, and Ellana wonders if that’s all she’s going to get, when the girl adds, “You are back in Haven, my lady.”
Words race through her mind as she struggles to push herself towards the edge of the bed. Haven. Forgiveness. Blessing?
My lady?
The servant is still talking, with something like reverence in the gentle lift of their head. “They say you saved us. The Breach stopped growing. Just like the mark on your hand. It’s all anyone’s talked about for the last three days.”
She turns her eyes to her hand, sitting in her lap. It’s there when she uncurls her fingers, the slit across her palm, glowing softly. An eerie, foreign sight.
She tries not to make it sound like a question, when she asks, “Then the danger is over.”
And though it’s the answer she expects, it’s not the one she’d hoped for. “The Breach is still in the sky, but that’s what they say.” Pushing to her feet, the servant takes a step back, as though afraid she might suddenly pounce. “I’m certain Lady Cassandra would want to know you’ve awakened. She said ‘at once.’”
She hears the words – hears the servant pick up her feet, and the door rattling against the hinges before it swings shut. But she has trouble thinking past the offhand declaration that seems to have rooted itself in her mind.
The Breach is still in the sky.
Something like panic swells in her chest. The rift – she remembers the rift. A hand clamped around her wrist, thrusting it upwards, steady and sure even when her own knees shook from the strain. And then the one at the ruined temple, that yawning gap like a great maw, ready to swallow her whole. The effort to keep herself standing had been beyond anything she’d ever known. It had pulled at her hand, her whole body, and she’d thought this is it, this will take everything I have, there’ll be nothing left. She’d survived, but she hadn’t succeeded. The Breach had stopped growing, settling like calm waters but hiding deadly currents. It’s still there; still her responsibility.
And suddenly it’s too much, the knowledge of what she must do – what she now is, to these people, if the servant’s reaction was any indication – and the weight of it settling on her shoulders makes her want to throw up.
They haven’t shackled her. A sign of trust, perhaps, or faith in that she’d wake and accept what they’ve put at her feet. And the realization strikes her then, that the servant has likely gone to alert the Seeker, and desperation kicks her tired limbs into moving, pushing her off the bed. Her left arm feels like she’s tried to lift a great weight, muscles contracting to pull a hiss from between her clenched teeth.
She has to leave.
The cabin is quiet and her fingers are quick, rifling through drawers and chests. She finds a stack of healer’s notes and her coat, folded up on top of her boots, and she skims over the first while dressing in a hurry, fingers stiff and trembling against the buckles. She remembers the words of the servant. Three days. She’s been out three days.
Most of her gear is missing, but the coat and boots will have to do. A knife used for cutting herbs is stuffed into her boot, while the available salves and poultices find their way into empty pockets. Not enough to last her long, but if she can manage to stay out of trouble, hopefully enough to get her to the nearest village to restock.
A nagging at the back of her mind deems it fit to remind her of what she’s doing – that she’s running when she’s needed. The apostate, Solas – he’d said the mark on her hand was the answer to closing the rifts. The key to our salvation, he’d called it.
But she’s no saviour, Ellana knows. No salvation lies in her hands. She hadn’t been able to close the Breach, only halt it, and what good is that in the long run? A temporary fix, if anything. And when they realize how useless she truly is, who will be blamed for her shortcomings but herself? She’ll be lucky if they don’t execute her on the spot.
Everything hurts, her arms straining against her movements, but she pulls herself onto the window ledge, forcing her breath through her nose. There might be guards stationed, but from her vantage point she can’t spot any. Another show of trust, and guilt burns in her chest as she hoists herself through the window.
Her landing is muffled by the snow, and she tries to ignore the cold creeping through her coat. If she’d had all her gear she wouldn't have a problem, but with how the servant had reacted at the sight of her, she doesn’t dare brave the village itself to look for warmer clothes. No – if she’s to slip away without anyone’s notice, there’s only one way to go.
And so, with her eyes set on the forest and Haven’s beckoning warmth behind her, Ellana Lavellan picks up her feet and runs.
“Keep going south, and you’ll find the King’s Road. But I’d watch my back if I were you, lass. There’s rogue apostates on the road. Right now this region’s not safe for travellers.”
The warning is accompanied by a searching look, as though he’s not entirely certain he should trust her to not be one of said apostates. But she carries no visible weapon, and despite her somewhat dishevelled appearance, Ellana hopes she doesn’t look desperate enough to draw the notice of the templars.
Except you are desperate, and if they catch you they won’t stop to ask why.
“Thank you,” she offers, and tries for a smile that feels so forced she thinks it might look more like a grimace. But the merchant only nods, and when he trudges up the dirt road, he doesn’t look back.
She glances down the way he’d come, towards the bottom of the slope, where the sparse dotting of trees grows thicker. Better to hide in than the snow-covered forest climbing the steep rise of the Frostbacks. And she knows how to cover her tracks, should they send people looking. As they most likely have.
Two days since she’d left Haven, most of which she’s spent on her feet, moving. The thought of the Seeker on her heels, her Maker’s wrath a fire in her eyes, had spurred her on, and made her vow to keep going until the snow gave way to greener things. It had meant travelling through the night, but the fear of what lay behind her had outweighed the fear of whatever might await between the trees, and so she’d pushed onwards, keenly aware of her solitude and that making camp and settling down to rest could easily cost her whatever head start she’d won herself.
But she’s made it far enough to escape the snow, at least, and from the word of the merchant she’d hailed she’s not far from a settlement. And when she begins to make her way down the slope, Ellana allows herself to slow her pace to a walk, one that doesn’t include the constant strain of being constantly prepared to take off at a run with every branch snapping. Still, she’s bone-tired and half-asleep on her feet when she stumbles out of the tree-line some hours later, to find smoke rising towards the sky in the distance.
Relief surges like new energy, urging her on, but she’s only made it a few steps when the breeze carries a voice towards her.
“Please – please help!”
Her suspicion is immediate, and makes her fingers twitch towards her boot. Dalish elves know well the ploys of bandits, luring well-meaning travellers off their route, to rob them blind. But there is genuine pain in the plea, and if it’s an act it’s a damn good one.
Her instincts are proven wrong a moment later when she spots the owner of the voice by the path, holding onto what is clearly a broken leg.
She tucks the knife back into her boot, and despite her exhaustion her feet are quick to cross the distance between them, until she’s kneeling beside him. “What happened?”
Either his pain is too great for him to notice her ears, or he just doesn’t care. “Hunting,” he forces the word out. “Got my leg stuck up in the hills. Managed to crawl here, but I-I can’t – Oh, Maker.”
It’s a bad break. And she has no potion or poultice to offer for that kind of injury, the ones in her pockets paltry comforts, meant for headaches and sore muscles. And with only limited training in the healing craft, her magic is of little help, save to perhaps numb the pain. But then there’s the matter of having to reveal that she’s a mage – an apostate. And if things are truly as bad as she’d been told, it might soon be her life on the line.
By some grace of the Creators, her indecision goes unnoticed. Or perhaps he simply thinks she’s contemplating how to help him, not whether or not to take off running.
“The Crossroads,” the hunter grits out. “It’s not far. If you help me I’ll–” A groan swallows his words. “I’ve got coin, if that’s what you want. But I need a healer, my leg – I can’t hunt without my leg. And we need – we need food. Please.”
Ellana spares a glance towards the Frostbacks, rising tall and imposing in the distance. Somewhere in that direction lies Haven, and the fate she’d run from, with her coward’s heart. If they’ve sent someone after her, every second she lingers is in their favour.
But she remembers an old friend from her clan, who’d gotten his leg stuck in a rusted bear trap when she was young. He’d been a hunter, too. Had been, before the infection took his leg. He’d never been the same. And human or elf, the pain on the stranger’s face is hauntingly familiar, and it’s what pulls the words from her mouth, the decision made by her heart long before her mind has caught up.
“I’ll help you.”
He means to thank her, but the words are lost, made indiscernible by the pain as she bends to help him stand.
Moving is difficult, the gap between their heights complicating things to the point where she’s certain she’s undertaken a task beyond her capabilities. But she grits her teeth and bears his weight, down the winding path towards the trail of smoke, a grey column against the steadily darkening sky. They have to stop at steady intervals for Ellana to catch her breath, and she tries not to think about Haven’s ever-looming presence at her back.
The sight of the Crossroads greets them when the roses of late dusk have bled dark with evening’s colours, a tumult of refugees, soldiers and Chantry Sisters, and she draws some comfort from the thought that if anything, it would be easy to shake off pursuers in the chaos.
She steers them towards where a number of cots have been set up, and a pair of white-and-red clad Sisters are tending to the wounded. Their approach is first noticed by an older woman, lifting dark eyes to regard them, before murmuring to a waiting man to assist. He wears the robes of a Circle mage, and wordlessly bends beneath the injured hunter’s free arm. The relief from the weight lifted off her shoulder nearly topples her, and though she’s aware that it’s not in her best interest to linger, the mere thought of moving makes her want to curl up.
“Maker bless you, child, for your kindness,” come the quiet words, the voice calm and soothing. The ground is hard beneath her knees when she sinks down, and she can only manage a nod, too tired to speak.
“You are of the Dalish, yes?”
The remark makes her eyes lift with surprise, to find the woman regarding her with a curious look. Curious, but not unkind. “Your markings,” she elaborates, when Ellana has not spoken, reading her silence as confusion. It’s unexpected. Most humans can’t tell the difference. “You are not with your clan?”
“I’m–” But the thought strikes her then, that they may have sent word ahead about her escape – that they’re looking for a Dalish mage on the run, possibly the culprit behind the explosion at the Conclave – and panic forces an impulsive lie off her tongue. “I’m from the Circle.”
Brows raise. Ellana can’t tell if the Sister believes her or not, and is considering taking off at a run when the woman asks, “A Dalish Circle mage? Interesting.”
Creators, but she’s never been a good liar, but she’d pray to Fen’Harel himself if it would keep the Sister from sending word to the Haven Chantry. “I was taken in when I was young. My clan, ah – they’d abandoned me. I spent my life in the Circle, before – before the uprising.” Not a far-fetched lie, but a lie nonetheless. Ears burning, she’s contemplating just how far she’ll make it if she bolts–
The woman’s eyes soften. “It saddens me to hear that. But our adversities are sometimes beyond our understanding. Your presence today was fortuitous.”
There’s a protest on her tongue, but she swallows it. This is not the time to spark a debate about providence, least of all with a human Chantry Sister.
“I am Mother Giselle,” she introduces then, with that same, almost eerie calm, and correcting Ellana’s assumption about her position. And she doesn’t ask for her name in return, but it’s an implied courtesy. She could lie, of course, or claim her reluctance on giving out her identity on fear of discovery by the templars. The lie would work well with the one she’s already begun spinning. Dread Wolf take me.
But the woman’s unprompted kindness, despite her ears and the fact that she’s just revealed herself to be an apostate, makes her falter. And she never did tell anyone her name in Haven.
“Ellana,” she says at length, and wonders if she’s making a mistake.
But, “Ellana,” Mother Giselle repeats, with a small smile. “Your journey has not been easy, I can see it in your eyes. But still you offered aid when it was needed, though you could have turned your back. There is grace to be found, even in this broken world.”
You offered aid when it was needed. And the words burn like shame, pushing up her throat, but she clamps her teeth shut to keep from blurting out the truth about her cowardice.
Mother Giselle kneels then, and a hand comes to rest on her shoulder, the first touch that has fallen with kindness since before the Conclave. Not like the Seeker’s rough handling, or the hand gripping hers, to thrust it towards the rift.
“Rest, child. You have earned a moment’s peace from your running.” A smile. “You are safe here.”
Safe, she thinks, but doesn’t feel it in the least. Because the thought of what she’s running from leaves no room in her heart for peace.
They give her a hot meal and a cot, though there are few to go around, and when night settles she lies awake, wondering when they will find her.
She thinks about the Breach, quiet now but in the sky still. It follows at her heels, her every thought, gnawing at her conscience, and she wonders if she isn’t better off turning herself in; to give herself up and allow them to use her, for whatever they intend to do.
But then she remembers the voice – the one she’d heard at the temple. It slithers around her ear like the caress of a knife’s edge, and in it sits the promise of a death that is anything but quick. If death is what awaits her, and not something worse. Whatever the plans of the people in Haven, there are darker things brewing. Things beyond her understanding, that she wants nothing to do with.
She looks at her hand, gloved and covered, the mark hidden, but even if she can’t see it she can feel it. And what’s worse, it feels like a part of her, as natural as one of her own limbs, and it’s this thought that makes her rise from the cot. If only it had felt like an anomaly, perhaps her guilt would be easier to live with. Perhaps she’d feel more justified in running.
Picking her way between the sleeping refugees, she offers a quiet apology to the night and Mother Giselle, before setting her sights on the path curving up between the hills in the distance, between houses and tents.
She’s gone before dawn comes.
Despite having put quite a bit of distance between herself and Haven, however, the journey onwards does not get any easier, and she hasn’t slept in two days when she stops at a signpost pointing in the direction of Redcliffe.
The thought of a village, a bowl of hot stew and somewhere to sleep, undisturbed, beckons with gentle fingers. Her last meal had been at the Crossroads, well over a day ago now. She’d found some berries, but precious little else. With only a knife for hunting and barely enough strength to keep walking, her stomach is tearing itself apart with hunger.
But a village also means people. People who might be looking for her.
She’s contemplating which direction to go, when she catches sight of something at the corner of her eye – a spark of green that cannot be anything else, reaching towards her from the copse of trees across the river.
“Shit.”
Fingers curling towards her palm, she feels the tug – like a tether pulling, even when her good sense screams at her to run in the opposite direction. But she’d seen the demons at the temple; heard their laughter in her sleep. The Crossroads lies, miles behind her now, but there are farms in the area. Rebel mages hiding from the templars. Innocent people going about their lives. What would happen if she just let it be?
The answer is a dark thought, and an oath tears free of her lips as she makes to cross the river, unmindful of the water sloshing into her boots. The rift sparks and hisses, growing at once bigger and smaller, but it feels impossibly large where it sits above the small clearing.
She comes to a stop some paces away, out of sight of the two wraiths that linger below the pulsating tear. The knife is useless now, but she draws on her magic, pulls and pulls until sparks are jumping between her fingertips.
As expected, the sound draws the attention of the wraiths.
“Oh, I am so going to regret this.”
Without further thought, she launches herself through the trees, hand raised with a cry that rises from deep in her gut as lightning shoots from her open palm. It branches, stunning the wraiths, and long enough to prepare for a second attack.
Mythal guide me. Pulling, she draws another fork of lightning from the clear blue sky, feeling the tremor that shoots through the earth underfoot as it cleaves straight through one of the wraiths. The next is quick to follow, dissolving with a wordless cry, only to be absorbed back into the rift.
Now! Ellana sucks in a breath. Heart in her throat, she tries to remember what she’d done earlier, ripping her glove off to thrust her hand, mark bared, towards the rift. At once a thread of green jumps towards it, and now she’s the one being dragged forward, but she digs her heels into the ground and with another oath, yanks with all her might.
A violent burst of magic nearly knocks her off her feet, but the rift doesn’t close. And with her ragged breath forcing itself past her parched lips, Ellana knows what’s coming even before the demons materialize, passing through the torn veil and into the clearing, surrounding her.
Shit!
One makes to lunge towards her, and she’s barely quick enough to throw herself back, its claws a hairsbreadth from rending her face. Landing on her side, she rolls out of the way, and she’s drawing on every last reserve of magic now as she lets a stream of lightning leap from her hands. It staggers one of the demons, but doesn’t kill it, and there are too many to keep track of, let alone defeat on her own, with dwindling magic reserves and no lyrium potion at hand or staff to channel her attacks. And if the rift stays open, only more will keep pouring through.
The ground trembles beneath her feet, and she isn’t given time to so much as react before one of the demons comes surging up from below, to swipe her clean off her feet. She lands on her back a few paces away, the air knocked out of her lungs and head spinning from the impact.
Her next breath hurts like a stab, and she knows it’s over.
A shriek tears through the clearing then, along with a wall of cold air that shoves against her, and she feels the climb of frost along her legs and arms. Then an actual, physical wall of ice follows, jutting from the ground just above her head, to trap the demons from scattering.
Blood is pounding in her ears but she thanks her luck – it seems that one good thing about travelling through territory occupied by rebel mages is that there is no shortage of magical assistance. Someone has come to her aid, and she’s tempted to ask if they’ve got a potion to spare, when her saviour cuts her off.
“Close the rift!” a voice calls, and she doesn’t have time to question how they would even know her capable of doing such a thing. Instead she pushes to her feet, hand raised and fingers splayed, defiance burning in every bone in her body as she throws the last ounce of her remaining strength towards the rift.
There’s a surge that feels like it’s about to tear her whole arm clean off, and the blast that follows this attempt brings her to her knees, but she feels the release – the rift closing up, and the connection with the mark snapping like a strung wire. Her hand burns and she’s heaving, sweat dripping from her brow into her eyes, making them sting. Around her the clearing lies, quiet and covered in unnatural frost. She thinks she might have felt a chill, if she didn’t feel like she was burning up from within.
Footfalls behind her then, drawing her eyes, but when she turns her head whatever she’d been about to say flees her mind.
“You looked like you could use a hand.” And she can’t tell if the joke is intended or not, but she doesn’t have the mind to linger on the question.
“You,” she says, ragged breath tearing the word asunder.
A smile curves below clever grey eyes. The lingering spark of his magic dwindles like a sigh, rustling the frost-dusted leaves, and despite the battle and the demon blood seeping through his wool coat, Solas regards her with a calm that borders on unnerving. And despite the fact that she’s certain he’s come to drag her back to Haven, to make her answer for leaving, for running away from her duty, there’s no anger on his face. Only a small, patiently amused smile.
“Hello.”