Chapter 1: Immutable as the Substance of the Earth

At last did the Maker
From the living world
Make men. Immutable, as the substance of the earth
With souls made of dream and idea, hope and fear,
Endless possibilities.

Threnodies 5:6

Elisabeth Trevelyan had always been confident in her position as the hero of her own story. She just hadn't given stock to the thought that the villains of said tale would be so bloody wordy.

"You...are a mistake. You never should have existed."

The magister pulled out an amulet as he seethed, glowing that sickly, ominous shade of green that never brought anything good into her life. She heard the other mage cry out. Saw a line of force rip across the magister's torso, knocking the evil trinket into the air. Watched as it imploded into a tear in the very face of reality, pulling at everything from the air to the light towards the lifeless black in its heart.

Oh, balls, she thought.

She had barely closed her lips around the b before the air was sucked from her lungs and the world went dark around her.

"Blood of the Elder One!" she heard someone exclaim as she came back into awareness, choking on a mouthful of sickly, stagnant water as she did. By this point in her strange, strange path through life she really shouldn't have been surprised to feel the heat of a fireball sailing over top of her singe at the back of her neck, but she yelped nonetheless. As she sloshed to her feet she saw a man in what was clearly a Tevinter's armor burst into flames. His stunned-into-inaction companion was easy enough to dispatch with her blessedly still attached knives. She did not lower her weapons when she turned to face the caster.

"What. The. Fuck," she panted at Dorian, who looked to be equal parts disturbed and fascinated.

"I...I'm not entirely sure, actually." He swiped some of the swampy water off his shoulders with a grimace. "Displacement, perhaps. The amulet must have moved us to what...the closest confluence of arcane energy? It's certainly not what Alexius intended, at least."

"The last thing I remember was being in the throne room," Elisabeth said, glancing around the dank cell as the throbbing disorientation began to pass. "Where in the Void are we now?"

Realization dawned visually on Dorian's face. "Maker's breath, it's not where, it's when! The amulet must have moved us through time!" He proceeded to explain the theory behind the magic with the excitement of a child at Solstice, which did nothing but confuse Elisabeth to the point of boredom.

"If this isn't what Alexius wanted to happen then what was?" she sighed wearily as she sheathed her knives.

"I believe he was trying to remove you from time entirely. So that you would never have been at the Temple of Sacred Ashes to foil his scheme."

"What a convoluted load of horse shit." Elisabeth slicked her hair back from her face and started towards the iron bars at the end of the chamber. The lock on the door was more rust than metal, snapping open with little more than a terse glance in its direction. Pleased, she straightened and rolled her shoulders.

"Time to save the day, again, then." She smirked and swept her arm out towards the open door.

"Shall we?"

An hour and a handful of rather surprised guards later, Elisabeth found herself crouched down before a much more persistent lock, swearing under her breath each time her blood-slick hands slipped and scraped her tools against the innards of the mechanism.

"All this lyrium is giving me a bloody migraine," she growled, hissing in displeasure when her hand slid out again.

"It's remarkable, isn't it?" Dorian called out from across the metal walkway where he was examining a large stalagmite of it. "I've never seen red lyrium before. And it's everywhere! I wonder if they've found a way to cultivate it."

The lock finally popped open, the door behind it grinding back on rusted hinges. "Perhaps a little less admiration of the crystallized evil and a little more working on that 'get us back to the right time' plan, Ser Pavus?" Elisabeth suggested with a grunt as she returned to standing.

"You southerners and your honorifics. So quaint." Dorian breezed past her with a winning smile before starting down the dimly lit stairway. "We mustn't get ahead of ourselves, my dear Herald. Before our escape plan can solidify we must first find out how much time has passed in our absence, then deduce where we might find Alexius."

Elisabeth was so preoccupied with wondering if every Tevinter was so insufferably verbose that she failed to notice Dorian pulling to a sudden stop before a torch at the midpoint of the stairs, and walked right into his back.

"Ow! What the–"

"This is veilfire," he said abruptly, the tone of his voice far more sharp and worried than it had been not moments before.

"So what?" Elisabeth asked, walking around him to examine the torch. "Using ridiculous magic for perfectly ordinary things seems to be pretty normal for you lot."

"You don't understand. Veilfire is only possible where the Veil is incredibly thin. Thousands upon thousands of deaths in the same space sort of thin."

"There was an incident during the Blight that wiped out about a third of the village, but that couldn't have been more than a few hundred." A crawling feeling started creeping to life beneath her skin, the edge of something deep and unnamed. "What does this mean, then?"

"It means our timetable has been drastically accelerated." Dorian positioned his staff more aggressively as he started back down the stairs. "We have to find out what happened while we were gone."

"Hold on," Elisabeth called out as they reached the bottom, drawing the long knives strapped to her back. "I think I hear someone in the block to the right."

The door was unlocked, groaning open under the weight of her shoulder. She heard the sound again; not the snarl of startled soldier, but the rattling moan of a thing within sight of death.

"Is someone there?" the voice asked, weak and heavily accented in the style of Orlais. Elisabeth edged closer to the sound, rearing back in horror at the sight she found.

"Bride of the fucking Maker! Are you...Fiona?"

"You're alive?" Her voice rang of hope, scratched and distorted as it was. "But I saw you...the rift..."

"Is that...is that lyrium growing out of your body?"

"Yes," Fiona ground out. "Red lyrium is a disease. With enough exposure, you become this. Then they mine your corpse for more."

The crawling sharpened into a cold panic that rippled up and down her arms. The lyrium was everywhere, growing up from the floor, down from the ceiling, snaking across the walls in a horrific reflection of geometry. It was everywhere and it was people, it was all people who had lived and breathed and died in the agony she saw etched into the Grand Enchanter's face.

"I'm...I'm so sorry," Dorian startled, pale with revulsion himself. "But can you tell us the date? It's very important." Fiona nodded. Swallowed down her pain.

"Harvestmere. 9:42 Dragon."

"There's no way it's been a year," Elisabeth insisted again, hoping that if she said it often and loud enough that it might be true. "The world couldn't have ended in one year without us here."

"It appears as though it not only can, but has," Dorian replied as he forced open the rusting door to the next cell block. "And I suggest you pull yourself together so we can find the associates of yours that Fiona mentioned and find out way to Alexius."

"I am together," Elisabeth hissed, cracking the flat of her hand against the damp stone wall and focusing in on the pain. "This is just insane."

"Whozat, then?" she heard echo from the far end of the dank chamber. "Back for another round, you frigging bastards? Bring it!"

That voice she knew, even through the lyrium's distortion. "Sera?" she called out, jogging down to the cell. Sera was there, gaunt and snarling up against the iron bars. When she saw Elisabeth, she recoiled with a look of utter horror.

"Piss, not this again," she whispered to herself. "She's dead. Dead don't come back, you know that, you know that."

"I'm no more dead that you are, you prat," Elisabeth replied with a frantic little laugh, hoping to goad Sera into the banter she'd grown so fond of in their time working together. Sera edged closer with narrowed eyes. Maker, she was barely more than skin and bones.

"Don't do me much good, you shite demon. I'm dead as the rest of them soon enough."

Her eyes were red as the lyrium, splintered through with fear and anger. "Sera, it's really me," Elisabeth said more gently, voice shaking around the edges of the words as she took a step closer. "Ask me anything. Something they wouldn't know."

"They know everything," Sera spat, lurching forward to grab a handful of Elisabeth's collar and yank her hard against the metal. "They are everything, and you're frigging..."

She stopped short. Breathed in.

"You're her."

Elisabeth's head was still spinning from contact with the bars, blood starting to drip thickly from her nose. Sera released her with one hand and pushed open the unlocked cell door with the other.

"Don't know how, but it's really her, Bull," Sera called out. "Probably means pretty-boy's real, too, so don't kill him, yeah? Might need someone to magic through the door." Elisabeth looked unsteadily over her shoulder at where Dorian was, indeed, restrained in a chokehold by a hulking mass of Qunari.

"Are you sure? I really wanted to kill something," the Iron Bull said with something akin to exasperation, releasing Dorian only to watch him crumple to the waterlogged floor, gasping. "Like really wanted."

Sera rolled her eyes and bent over to dig through a rotted chest in the opposing cell. When she reentered the main block there was a worn-out bow slung over her shoulder. She looked at Elisabeth expectantly.

"Well?" she prodded. "What's the plan, Tadwinks?"

"Plan?" Elisabeth spat out some of the blood that had leaked into the back of her throat. "Tadwinks?"

"S'a name, right? Weren't no Andraste for you to be the Herald of, was there?" Elisabeth glanced briefly over at Bull as he made his way to the same cell, liberating a rusted broadsword from a growth of lyrium. "Magister arsehole's hold up in the throne room. Big magic door in the way. Gotta give us the plan."

"I..." Elisabeth stammered, struggled to find words under the pressure closing in around her chest. Why shouldn't they look to her, after all? She was the hero. She should know how to undo this wretched future. Maker's breath, even Dorian was looking at her now like he was waiting for the answer. She had to think of something, anything, but she couldn't focus, couldn't look away from the steel in Sera's spine and the weight of exhausted resignation pushing down on Bull's shoulders.

"She's two steps away from snapping," Bull said gruffly, heading towards the stairwell outside the cell block. "We should find Red."

"Red? Who's...oh, wait," Dorian quickly gathered his wits and followed Bull out the door. "Perhaps you mean the red-headed Orlesian woman with the terrifying air of mystery that I met at Haven. Whatever is she doing here?"

Elisabeth didn't hear the answer, could barely hear anything over the blood pounding in her ears. What was she supposed to do now? What in the fucking Void was she supposed to do?

"You never were more than people, were you?" Sera asked, approaching her with a cautious eye. "Always thought you were more, right? All touched and shite. But you were just a person the whole time."

Elisabeth stared back at her, nodded faintly. Sera pulled something that might have passed for a grim smile and punched Elisabeth's shoulder.

"I can do people. C'mon. Stuff to kill, yeah? I'd frigging die to spit in that bastard's eye at this point."

"I want the world back."

The knife sheared across the throat of the ghoul who once was Felix, more tearing than slicing through the skin. Black ichor ran thickly from the wound as he fell, and Alexius howled like a creature too far lost in grief for the reach of words.

The battle that followed was swift, stalled only by the rending of a few half-formed rifts in the Veil. Elisabeth noticed with a fresh dose of terror that the people she had known as friends moved with a reckless lethality she had never seen the like of. Even Leliana, whom she respected above all others in the careful, controlled art of war, seemed to revel in the spilling of blood. With each arrow she said a name beneath her breath. Cassandra. Josephine. Cullen. Alastair. Solana. Solana. Solana.

It was not long before Alexius fell, by that point little more than a mass of gore and shredded cloth. Elisabeth glanced over at Dorian, who looked as aghast as she felt.

"That was too easy," she said, throat hoarse with effort and smoke. Dorian shook his head sadly as he liberated the corpse of the bauble that had brought doom upon all the world. "What did he have to live for, after that?" he sighed.

Elisabeth sat down shakily on the steps as Dorian continued; mechanically pulling out the oiled cloth she kept at her belt to clean her knives of blood. "I suppose it's done now, though. I should need about an hour to trace the magic and rebuild the spell to–"

"An hour?" Leliana whipped towards them, sunken eyes still wild and feral from the kill. "That's impossible. You must go now."

The ground began to rumble as she spoke, a deep roar shaking apart the stone from the mortar.

"What in the Void is that?" Elisabeth yelled over the din.

"How they won," Leliana replied darkly. She started stalking around the throne room, scouting out defensible positions. Sera stared up at the shuddering ceiling, swearing under her breath until Bull laid a broad hand on her shoulder.

"Just another job. Unless you don't think you beat me; with the vint, I'm up by three."

"As if," she replied, shaking him off with a half-hearted, completely ineffective shove. "Was an arrow that did him in."

Leliana quickly smothered that last flicker of normalcy as she circled back around. "Go hold a line outside the door. We must by them as much time as we can."

"What do you mean, buy us time?" Dorian asked, "I assure you it won't take more than–"

"The Elder One knows you are here," Leliana interrupted. "He is descending upon the castle as we speak. You are the only chance left of preventing this all from happening and you must go now."

Sluggish understanding finally arrived at the forefront of Elisabeth's mind. She stood back up so abruptly that she dropped one of her knives.

"No," she tried to say in a commanding voice, wanting to wince when it cracked hysterically at the end of the word. "Abso-fucking-lutely not. I'm not going to let you kill yourselves!"

Leliana regarded her impassively. "Look at us. We're already dead." She looked at Bull over her shoulder and jerked her head back towards the door.

"Bull," Elisabeth pleaded. He spared her only a shrug and a regretful sigh as he started walking away. "Sorry, Boss. Not your call."

"No," Elisabeth repeated again as each of them turned their backs on her. "No, no, no. Stop this. Stop. Fucking listen to me!" Only Sera seemed to hear her, hesitating slightly as she reached the threshold. She looked back over at Elisabeth for a long moment before she turned and walked away from the door.

"Praise Andraste," Elisabeth sighed as she drew nearer. "This can't be the only solution. I will find another way out, I swear I will, I just need–"

Sera wrapped a hand around the jut of Elisabeth's cuirass and yanked down, hard, until their mouths were crushed together. The shock of it nearly stopped Elisabeth's heart.

"You smell like cloves; from the rubbish you use to clean your knives," Sera said tightly, eyes still closed. "How I knew it was really you, right? Can't smell cloves without thinking of you and everything I didn't have words for before you died."

"Sera?" Elisabeth's voice broke in the middle of the name, her hand shaking as she raised it to Sera's face. It was too little, too soon, too fast, too fast. Sera opened one red eye and flashed her a ghost of a grin.

"S'the end of the road, Tadwinks. Up to you to find a new one." She swallowed it down and looked up at Elisabeth very seriously. "I'm shite at this. Really, really shite. But we could be really real, you and me, if you take a chance."

"I..." Elisabeth choked, frantically touching Sera's face, neck, shoulders. "Of course." Sera yanked down again and kissed her, messy and desperate.

"Make it right, luv." She pressed the hilt of the fallen knife into Elisabeth's hand and started towards the chamber door. "See you on the other side."

Make it right, Elisabeth repeated to herself as Dorian worked on the amulet, swearing under his breath in Tevene.

Make it right, as the impenetrable stone door began to splinter inward like so much rotten wood.

Make it right, as the stuff of nightmares cast aside a small, broken body with wide, dead eyes.

"No!" Dorian yelled, grabbing her by the arm as she began to lurch towards the chaos, burning with the need to give the grief clawing at her chest motion and violence. "If you move, we're all dead."

The world tore open behind him as Leliana, the Nightingale, the unconquerable hero of her girlhood imagination, fell. She looked out at the swelling tide of certain death, and back to the yawning black of inescapable magic. A jerk on her gauntlet, a stumble backwards, and the darkness swallowed her whole.

The throne room was as they had left it; torchlit and thick with sour desperation. Dorian said something beside her, light and sardonic even through the tremble of his voice. Elisabeth was focused only on the magister, on the way his expression crumbled, the way he seemed to stagger backwards under the weight of his own despair.

Make it right, a ghost whispered in her ear. She covered the distance in two big steps, tightened her numb hand around the hilt of her knife and ripped her arm upwards. A line of red opened up across Alexius' throat as he collapsed to his knees, gurgling. The blood sprayed out, spattered across her face as she watched him die like the animal he would have become.

The stunned silence of the room exploded into chaos as his corpse hit the floor.

"What?"

"Father! Oh, Maker..."

"Andraste's tits!"

The knife clattered on the stone as it slipped from her hand. She turned on her heel and started walking, throwing off every restraining hand that brushed against her armor. Thirty steps to the door, left turn, twenty more to the great porch. The night was cool and dry and lovely. She walked into the railing, hard, bent around it, and vomited.

"Oi, slow down you great...ew." She felt the muted pressure of a tentative hand laid on the back of her shoulder. "What the frig was that, Tadwinks?"

Elisabeth spat out the burning taste of sick in surprise. "What did you just call me?"

Sera edged a little closer, face set in discomfort at the edge of Elisabeth's vision. "What, Tadwinks? Just a name, right? You don't like the whole Herald shite when you're not randomly offing magey gits, and I'm not about to call you something soft and nice like Bethy when you're all blood and guts everywhere."

Her eyes were brown again, clear and sharp and cautious. She watched Elisabeth expectantly.

"I'm sorry," Elisabeth said roughly as her knees began to buckle with relief. Sera darted closer, half-holding Elisabeth up with one arm and clinging to the railing with the other.

"Andraste's underpants, you ruddy prat!" she exclaimed. The surprise in her voice, the indignation, the edge of terrified concern; it was all so perfect, so real. She let her head drop down on Sera's shoulder and tried to remember to keep breathing.

"Are you...are you crying?" She felt a hand on her hair then, light and unsteady. "What in the arse happened to you?"

"I had to make it right," Elisabeth said, voice barely above a whisper. "I had to make it right."

"It never went wrong," Sera laughed uneasily. "One minute you're all snark and fancy words and he's all 'blah blah evil rubbish blah', then you tripped into the magicky hole and walked right back out. You're really scaring me, yeah? If you're just having me on you'd better stop right now or I'll stuff you so full of arrows they won't be able to find a person under 'em all."

Elisabeth wanted to laugh, but the sound came out wet and choked.

"We need to get back, right? I'm not the only one you scared."

No, Elisabeth thought. They'll have to know what happened, all of it, all of it.

"Alright," she said instead, biting down against the impotence burning underneath her skin as she pulled herself straight and stepped half away. Sera stayed where she was, looking over cautiously. Her face was tinged red, and she seemed uncomfortable maintaining eye contact. Nonetheless she reached up and awkwardly bumped her hand up against Elisabeth's cheek. It came away wet.

"Chin up, luv. S'a win, this. Even if all we got was a bunch of whinging mages."

"Maker, I don't even know what to do with them now," Elisabeth sighed shakily, running a hand through her hair. Sera snorted, nudged Elisabeth with her shoulder as they walked.

"On your own for that one. I'll help get you drunk once you pick, though."

"Might take a bit of doing after the day I've had." Elisabeth glanced at Sera from the corner of her eye. "Sure you've the time for it?" Sera glanced back, not quite shy enough to be bashful and not quite comfortable enough to be friendly. It made Elisabeth's chest ache with warm, dull hope.

"For you? Always."