Chapter Text
With a groan, Rhyleigh Trevelyan stirred, his head aching as though he'd spent the night in a dwarven tavern. When he tried to put his hands to his face, he realized his mobility was restricted. Opening his eyes showed irons around his wrists, and his left hand glowing a vibrant, swirling green.
Rhyleigh had never been afraid of any part of himself before but this, this was definitely something to be nervous about. Before he could even begin to panic about that, or the fact that he was locked in a cell, the door burst open with enough force to bounce back off the stone wall. From its opening came a woman with dark hair and an even darker expression, her armor and sword gleaming in the half-light of the torches. "Divine Justinia is dead," she said immediately, causing his mind to whirl all the more. "The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is now dead... except for you."
There was instant alarm in Rhyleigh's head. What? Everyone dead but him? Why not him? Why was he still here? "And you think I had something to do with it?" he snapped.
She seized his hand, holding up the glowing mark. "Explain this," she spat, throwing it back down.
As though she'd triggered something, pain like lightning lanced up his arm into his shoulder. "I - I don't know what that is!" he gasped, holding his hand against his chest. Maker's balls, what was going on?
"How do you not know?" she snarled, seizing him by the front of his jacket. "You were there, you're the only one who made it out! It's your hand!"
"But I don't remember!" he shouted back. "Do you think I'd let you tie me up if I was some mastermind who destroyed the Conclave? I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'm certain if my father-"
"Do you think family relations will help you worm your way out of this? If you don't start answering my questions, I'll-"
"Cassandra," said a second woman who had entered with the first. She pulled the warrior back, giving her a meaningful look. "We need him."
Rhyleigh stared at the two, feeling cold, shaky, confused. He was not supposed to be here. Either someone was being very cruel, or he was in very, very big trouble.
"What do you remember of this incident?" asked the second woman, far more calmly than the first.
Rhyleigh thought back. He'd snuck into the Conclave, uninvited, just to see what was going on and maybe embarrass his mother. He hadn't meant for any of the rest... whatever the rest happened to be. "I don't know," he said honestly. "I-it was like a nightmare, these horrible... things were chasing me, and then... there was a woman."
"A woman?" she asked, raising her eyebrows.
"She was there, and I reached for her, and then... I'm here." He looked up again. "So I don't know what you're on about, let me go."
The woman called Cassandra put a hand to her face, turning away. "Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will deal with this."
The woman with the cowl nodded, then left the cell. As for Cassandra, she turned back to Rhyleigh, and he was neither surprised nor concerned about the disgust in her face. "I don't care what you say you know or don't know. Right now, you're the only thing we have that might stop the Breach."
He looked up at her, tilting his head. "Breach?"
She grabbed him by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. For a moment, the anger in her eyes dimmed so that sadness and pain broke through, and he didn't miss it. "It would be easier to show you," she said, dragging him with her out the door.
He protested the sudden onslaught of light, easily pulling his arm from her grasp to shield his eyes. When he finally adjusted, he nearly turned back into the cell.
The sky was torn. Not like the way a twisting wind tunnel looked when it was about to hit the earth, no. It was rent, like giant hands had pulled it apart. In that moment, looking at the monstrosity made every other remotely horrible thing entirely possible.
"What... is that?" he breathed, hardly aware of himself saying the words.
"That is what was caused by the explosion at the Conclave," Cassandra replied.
As he watched, the Breach flashed, expanding, and suddenly pain like before flared in his arm, and he hit the ground, cradling it to his chest. Cassandra knelt before him, pointing up at the sky. "Each time the Breach grows, so does your mark. And it is killing you."
He looked at her, now panicked on top of his horror. "Wait - if I help you, does that mean I live?"
"The goal is for us all to live," she pointed out.
"But we don't all have a fuckin' glowing arm, do we?" he said, waving his hand at her. "Just show me how to make it stop doing the flashing thing."
She made a noise of disgust, but pulled him to his feet again to trail along behind her.
She showed him the camp of people who were attempting to take shelter from the chaos. It wasn't that he wasn't accustomed to having a lot of people giving him disapproving glances, but this many people, people he didn't know, were looking at him with utter hatred for something he neither did nor understood. But they blamed him. They looked at the nightmare in the sky and he was the face they associated with it. For all the trouble he'd ever gotten himself into, it had never been this bad.
And it only got worse from there. The Breach continued to grow, and demons began attacking them every time they turned a corner. And Cassandra still didn't want him to have a weapon, as though leaving him defenseless was going to make anything better. And he pointed this out, fighting with her on it until she finally let him keep the two-handed sword he'd picked up. It was cheap, not well-balanced, and had nicks along the blade, but it was all he had, so he'd use it.
At least he found she wasn't only this mean to him. When they found the elven apostate and dwarven prisoner, he realized she disliked almost everyone to varying degrees. The apostate, she could tolerate. The dwarf, absolutely not. At least she knew when help was warranted, and she accepted theirs.
And as if this uptight Seeker wasn't bad enough, the Chantry clerk they met at the forward camp was ten times worse.
"As Chancellor of the Chantry, I hereby order you to take this man to Val Royeaux for execution!" were the first words out of his mouth.
Rhyleigh's jaw dropped. "Wow, not even a hello. Whatever happened to me being your only hope?"
"He is, Chancellor," Cassandra said. "He has the mark, it's connected to the Breach and currently our only means of closing it."
"Closing it?" he blustered. "Seeker Cassandra, you can't even approach the blighted thing! Call a retreat, there is nothing more we can do."
"We can stop this before it gets any worse!" she argued, the force in her voice far more than professional as she leaned on the makeshift table.
"There's no hope! The best we can do is elect a new Divine and await her orders."
"Right, yeah, good plan," Rhyleigh said with a nod. "Not like it takes ten years for your guild of pretentious idiots to elect a new one. By then, we probably won't even have a sky anymore, or people to elect. We'll all be getting the chance to see if your precious Maker is really up there."
"Enough!" Cassandra barked, whirling on him.
"Still voting to stay his execution, Seeker?" Roderick asked smugly.
Leliana stepped forward, putting a hand on Cassandra's shoulder. "We don't have to charge head-on. There is a pass through the mountains that can take us down to the Valley."
"It's too dangerous," said the Seeker. "We lost contact with an entire squad up there."
"Listen to me," Roderick said, the pitch of his voice lowering with intensity. "Stop this, now, before more lives are lost."
Rhyleigh opened his mouth to fire another scathing retort at the chancellor, but his voice disappeared in a grunt as the Breach expanded once more. Cassandra turned, watching his mark for a moment, then looked him in the eye. "What do you think we should do?"
He stared at her, raising his eyebrows. "Wh - now you're asking me?"
"Yes, I'm asking you," she said snappishly.
"You are the one with the mark," Solas pointed out.
Rhyleigh paused, wondering how best to say aloud that he really should not have been the one making this decision. No one had ever trusted him with anything important like this. The pressure, combined with the lingering pain in his arm, threw him off so badly for a moment that he had to look away.
He happened to turn right towards the Breach. Troublemaker or not, by his own volition or not, there was a big fucking hole in the sky and for some reason he was the only one with the power to close it. Someone up there was probably laughing their arse off, and that just made him angry. Things like this didn't just happen, no evidence supported that. Someone had done this on purpose, mortal or divine, and it was going to fuck everyone over. It had already ruined his life to an unreasonable degree.
"We'll charge with the troops," he said. "It needs to be closed now."
Cassandra nodded. "So be it."
Despite protestations from the chancellor, the little party marched onward to join whoever was still up and fighting down near the valley. Rhyleigh was ready for this to be done, for this nightmare to end so he could go home and pretend it never happened.
How little he knew, nightmares were never so easy to disperse.