This is my first long fanfiction. I will be posting a new chapter every Sunday, so you'll know when to expect them. As I wrote in the summary, this story will eventually become rated M.
None of this would be possible without my lovely beta Melicious Intent, who checks that I'm not disgracing the english language and that everything looks just fine for you people out there.
oOo
Chapter 1: Through blizzard and pain
I will not suffer even an unknowing rival. You must die.
You arrogance blinds you. Good to know. If I'm dying, it's not today!
The words were still coming out of her mouth when she kicked the lever of the trebuchet and ran as fast as she could to get to cover before the avalanche buried Haven with her in it. In the back of her mind, she remembered how her body instinctively cringed while escaping when Corypheus' dragon roared behind her, her legs moving frantically, even though her mind was screaming that it was useless. The beast was about to devour her, or worse, take her alive so it could eat her slowly and painfully to the satisfaction of its master. Even then she kept running, the part of her that refused to die spurring her forward and into safety. Andraste knew how she managed to find the hole in the ground, and how she had the clarity of mind to jump into it, making sure to turn her body in midair to avoid falling over her front and possibly breaking an arm while trying to soften her landing.
And here she was.
She could feel the chill through her leathers, despite being as strong as any other rogue armor, as well as the wooden boards digging painfully into her side. Her neck and hair were damp and she could hardly feel her scalp, freezing as it was... How long had she being lying in here? Had she succeeded? Were the people of Haven able to escape in time? Was the village lost?
She took a deep breath, thinking about all this in a matter of seconds. Making assumptions about the victory or defeat would accomplish nothing. She had to concentrate in the moment, not dwell on anyone else right now, not the refugees, not the mages that she had practically conscripted to their cause, not the ones she had recruited along the way, or the ones that were with her from the beginning... Not the fathers, mothers, and children that ran for their very lives for the last hope Chancellor Roderick gave them through his agony.
Not even in how Cullen's voice had cracked when she refused to look at him after he had asked her how she was planning to escape after she buried Haven in an avalanche. She felt his hesitation, and knew that if she looked at him, he may argue with her, delegate his responsibility to someone else (maybe that kid, Cole, since he seemed able to enter Roderick's mind and guide the people to safety) in order to stay and fight like the warrior he was. But she couldn't, she wouldn't let him; it had to be Cullen. Only his determination and ability to command the meager army could guide all the villagers out alive. Besides, the farther they stayed from her, the better. She was the one carrying the mark, the only thing Corypheus was after, the only reason he attacked Haven in the first place... And now that he knew that he could not take the anchor back, he would never stop tracking her down to kill her.
She moved tentatively to check for broken bones while she tried to make some sense of all Corypheus' ramblings about her mark, the gods, and her inopportune timing to, apparently, interrupt important rituals. Then her left hand glowed ominously and caused an acute pain that crawled over her arm to her shoulder, making her cry in pain, only to fade away as fast as it began. Steeling her resolve, she stood up and tested her legs with a few steps. Her right thigh hurt a little, and when she looked down, it was no surprise to find her trousers ripped, coagulated blood coming from a considerable gash in the outer side of her upper leg. Well, at least she had to thank the snow for keeping the bleeding at bay. She looked up and saw the hole where she had fallen, now covered in a dense layer of snow, a broken wooden beam still clinging to the rest of it while it dangled precariously. That must be how she injured herself; she must have hit that thing in mid-fall. She moved a few steps away - the last thing she needed was to be hit in the head by that low-hanging beam - and glared around the darkness. Both her daggers where there, buried partially in the snow, and she felt lucky and a little more secure knowing she had something to protect herself. She was in a chamber of sorts, a place long forgotten by the looks of it, with only one exit: a big arc leading to a corridor that kept going as far as she could see. Without any other option, she sheathed the daggers on her back with a little difficulty, considering the scabbards had been crushed by her weight and were not in the best shape, and began walking through the tunnel.
After a while, hours maybe, she was fairly certain she was lost. While she had thought she'd been relatively unharmed when she woke up down here, the pace she had imposed on herself was taking its toll on her. Her ribs ached and she was forced to stagger though the road, slightly hunched as she held her middle with a hand, keeping pressure on it so it would lessen the pain. She was trying her best not to think about everyone out there, wondering what had happened on their end. Would they think she was dead and move on? Had they already done it? Or were they waiting for her, risking freezing to death or starving? She knew they hadn't had time to take enough provisions with them to stay in one place for too long, and she had already caused enough death without adding more casualties on her behalf.
Oh, Maker, she did not deserve to be alive... How many had she left behind, buried in the snow, forgotten as if they were not important for the wild animals and the weather to dispose of their corpses? Some Herald she turned out to be, leading her people to death like this.
While lost in her thoughts, she almost didn't notice the wooden planks now beneath her feet, or the ones holding up the walls at her sides, breaking up the normal scenery so far. Maybe she was heading toward an exit after all...
The passage made an abrupt turn, and as the adjacent chamber came into view, a green light flashed and four despair demons appeared out of nowhere. There was not enough time to think; she unsheathed her daggers and stepped forward to face them. Suddenly the mark sparked to life, the power forcing her to raise her left hand high in the air, and she was astounded as a rift opened and pulled the creatures to its center.
Maybe her intervention was not necessary beyond that; maybe she could just relax with her left hand in the air and watch as the demons disappeared into the veil, but she was not going to risk it. The moment the pain in her hand receded and she was able to move it again, she picked up the dagger from the ground where it had fallen when the mark had activated, and with its twin, she moved as quickly as she could, stabbing and slicing the creatures' flesh until even without the help of the rift, they would have died irrevocably. Once they were dead, as if by its own will, the rift closed itself and the light in her hand extinguished.
She took a deep breath, removed her glove, and examined her palm carefully. Nothing seemed off, and she was frustrated with her own ignorance, wishing Solas was around to offer an explanation for what just happened, or how it happened, for that matter... And yet, she felt she could do it again if she wanted to, creating a rift at will, as if she was the key between the veil and their world...
Now you are going insane, she said to herself, shaking her head as she pulled her glove back on and kept waking. The room had only one exit still intact, so she ran for it, ignoring the pain in her body, eager to get away from this place.
She heard the wind before she could see it or feel it. Wind? What was she thinking? That was a blizzard out there, of all places in Thedas! And lucky for her, it just so happened to also be her only way out. She stepped out to the snow and the force of the wind nearly knocked her flat right where she stood. Almost immediately she began to shiver intensely, feeling the cold sting her entire body as if thousands of tiny daggers were piercing her skin. She did not want to even imagine how that would have felt if she were only wearing her herald attire.
And all of them escaped with just the clothes on their back. She shook her head again; she could not lose more time thinking about the others, no matter how much she cared or how close she grew to some of them. She needed to keep herself focused, moving forward no matter what.
With her hand in front of her eyes to protect her from the biting wind, she saw something glowing not far from her. She made haste to it and found a broken wagon burning. How in the Maker's name is this fire not extinguished already? Looking closer, she saw oil smearing from a broken lamp between the wheels. This must have been from the Haven refugees. Maybe they used the wagon to haul provisions and had to left it behind after it broke when the storm picked up strength, realizing it would only delay them further to repair it. At least she was on the right track - that is, if she didn't think about the fact that being near her could be more dangerous than not, for the survivors... Perhaps she could convince them to part ways once she recovered.
She huffed loudly, a breathy plume misting before her face. What was she thinking? So long as she had this damned mark on her hand, there was no way any of her advisers, or Solas for that matter, would allow her to leave... And deep down, if she was sincere, she did not want to. That thing, that "Corypheus", had threatened not only their little village, but the whole world with his presence, and if she and the mark could do anything to stop him, she would do whatever it took to accomplish it.
She kept walking, faltering from time to time due to increasing exhaustion, and stopped for a few seconds when she needed to make sure she was still on the right track, trying to linger as little as possible, especially since a pack of wolves seemed to have taken notice of her presence and was definitely following her. Eventually, though, the eternal white of the landscape gave way to a few trees that formed little groves where one could take refuge, and she turned to them, looking for some clue of her people. Andraste must have smiled on her then, because she found a burnt out bonfire near the trees. She removed her glove and touched the ashes only to find them cold as the Maker-forsaken snow. Well, it should not have surprised her; even if she had woken up only a few minutes after the avalanche, the party had begun their journey long before, but at least the structure, made to warm a pot full of water over the flames, was not broken or covered in snow... As far as she could tell, she was heading in the same direction they had taken.
The moment she began the ascension of the mountain, it all became more difficult. Once again she had lost track of time, having no idea how long she had been out there. Her feet were numb, and the cold of the snow that now covered her to her knees had long since reached through her boots, forcing her to walk more laboriously and drag her feet to push forward though the thick layers of ice and snow. At least up here the wind was calmer and allowed her to see beyond her own hand. That was how she found another abandoned bonfire and almost collapsed on the ground as she reached for it. She did not have to touch it; there were warm embers this time, recent enough to give her a little hope. She only needed to push her body a little more.
Trying to calm her ragged breath, shivering body and chattering teeth, she kept going, but each step was tantamount to torture. Even when she had lost most of the sensitivity of her lower body, she somehow could feel the sting of the cold penetrating her flesh more and more, shutting down her muscles and making it impossible to move forward. She stumbled once, and was almost incapable of rising up, but with a deep huff she managed, only to fall yet again, this time on her knees just a few steps ahead.
In the short seconds before she collapsed, she though she saw a warm glimmer in the distance lighting a few trees. She extended a frozen hand to it, as if with that simple gesture, she would reach that place of promise and find peace again.
-There! It's her!
As she fell into a state of unconsciousness, she smiled weakly, not surprised in the slightest that her mind had associated that feeling of refuge and salvation with his voice...
And in her mind, she tried to call out to him...
oOo
After some reviews about this, I feel the need to clarify something from the start. I'm Argentinian and, as such, was taught, as all hispanic, with different grammatical rules when it comes to dialogue. So when english uses quotations marks, we use what you call hyphens.
As a general rule keep this in mind.
When I write:
-What? What gives you,- he pointed angrily at the three women,- the right to belay my orders to keep me in the dark about the Herald's condition?
It's the equivalent to:
"What? What gives you", he pointed angrily at the three women, "the right to belay my orders to keep me in the dark about the Herald's condition?"
See? It's not hard at all. If the dialogue line ends without further clarification, meaning, if there is no descriptive text between the dialogue, it will end in a dot or simply ends the sentence and paragraph only to begin a new one, like here:
-There! It's her!
It's your equivalent to
"There! It's her!"
I try to avoid using hyphens in the middle of a descriptive text but if that is confusing for you, you might be glad to know that you can always identify a dialogue line because it is separate from the rest of the text. A dialogue line begins as an independent sentence and always with a hyphens.
Hope this helps. There is a review in this story where I explained this too. I think different cultures should not separate us, especially not if you enjoy the story. When I first read an english text (and books) the quotation marks were confusing but if you are open minded you'll get the hang of it in no time
Hope you are still with us. And welcome to my story
TyrnaHamroth
