Skyhold, Present Day
She first spotted the smoke from perhaps a mile and a half away. As they rounded the bend, Tempest saw the dark grey plume drifting into the sky with lazy menace, and she knew what was burning. She ran a few steps instinctively, but the rocky uphill terrain and twisting roots soon slowed her.
Perhaps she should be ashamed that the soldiers in the Inquisition's service back at the Keep were only her second thought. Her first was of the man commanding her army. Cullen was at the Keep. And if it had fallen...
No, she couldn't think that way. They would get there in time.
"We have to get back!" she urged her comrades - unnecessarily, of course. None of them were inclined to linger as Skyhold burned. Four people might do little to reverse the tide of battle, but little was better than nothing.
"I'm coming, Cullen," Tempest whispered. "Hold on, we're coming..."
Kirkwall, 9:24 Dragon
Her name had been Cara, back then...
"You will never tell anybody about this," the templar said when he had finished, pinning her again with his body and whispering in her ear. His beard scraped against her cheek. His touch sickened her. The weight of him made her bruised, violated body ache. She'd been a virgin, until tonight.
"I won't," she lied. As soon as he let her go, Cara had decided, she would run to the First Enchanter. Orsino might not be the most proactive when it came to defending the interests of the mages in his charge, but surely he would recognize the seriousness of this, the unacceptability. A templar could not simply... not even to a mage.
Lost momentarily in thought, she didn't anticipate Ser Boniface's shift of position. His beefy shoulder trapped her own slender one, and he grasped her opposite hand and twisted it, exposing the delicate pale flesh of the inside of her wrist. He drew his dagger across it, cutting five sharp lines into the skin.
Cara cried out as blood welled - from shock more than pain, at first, since her frazzled nerve endings took a few seconds to register the sensation. She tried instinctively to pull away, but Boniface held her arm still. He dripped a healing potion into the wound, and smirked as the flesh sizzled and she whimpered. When the wounds had mended, there were five raised white scars on her wrist.
What was this, some strange form of torture? Tears dripped down her cheeks as the templar repeated the process with her other wrist.
Ser Boniface drew back and admired his handiwork. "Now you won't tell," he said. "Because if you do, I'll accuse you of blood magic, and show them the evidence. You can never tell anyone, or you'll be digging your own grave. No one will ever believe you, when you swear you're not a blood mage. Not when they see those scars. No one will listen when you beg for your life. A few words from me, and you're dead."
She stared at him in horror, realization dawning.
Boniface smiled at the expression on her face, then leaned forward and kissed her. "See you tomorrow, love."
As an foundling abandoned at the chantry orphanage, Cara didn't know her birthday, but she thought she was fourteen that year. As Ser Boniface predicted, she didn't tell a soul. The scars on her wrists ensured her silence.
Skyhold, Present Day
The Keep was overrun. Chucks of stone had fallen, clogging the passageways and courtyards. Wooden beams burned. Trees were going up like torches. And everywhere Tempest could see, her soldiers were fighting creatures from the Fade, twisted monstrosities she couldn't even put a name to.
Tempest fought too, her staff moving in a blur and sweat trickling down her forehead as her brow furrowed in concentration. She took a few hits herself, but scarcely felt them. She was fairly sure that most of the blood on her clothing wasn't her own.
There was no trace of Cullen. That was a good sign, wasn't it? Tempest stepped over the bodies of soldiers who had died, and each one she passed drew a stab of sadness and guilt - and a selfish relief that none of the staring dead eyes were the familiar hazel ones of the man she loved.
Yes, she loved him. It was easy to admit that to herself. There was so much to admire. His bravery. His kindness. His intelligence. His loyalty. It had been much harder to tell him how she felt. At first she had only spoken with a lingering glance, or a hand on the wrist. She had fussed over him a bit, ensuring that he had his injuries tended to, bringing him dinner when he worked straight through the evenings. Cullen ate well, thanks to Tempest. Such was her love.
She despaired that she had so little to offer. Surely nothing that he would want. Just a body another man had defiled for years, a head full of bad memories, this burden of magic, the scars... and a silly little heart that couldn't seem to let Cullen go.
The heart hadn't kept its secrets well. One day she had looked at him a little too long, smiled a little too brightly, and suddenly nothing was hidden anymore. It could have been a moment of abject humiliation, another dull strike on an already bruised heart. She would have survived the ache. But instead, that was the day she had discovered he loved her back...
Kirkwall, 9:26 Dragon
"Please, just let me hold her," she begged. She pushed herself upward from the bed, craning her neck, catching just a glimpse of her baby. The child had thick black hair like her mother's. Then the lay sister whisked her away, and the door slammed shut behind them.
The young mage tried to struggle into a standing position, but one of the templars grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and pushed her back onto the blood-soaked bed. A brief but furious scuffle ensued, leaving the new mother bruised and battered with a split lip, and no closer to her baby for it.
One of the templars hit her again for good measure, then they left without a word. She pressed her hands against her swollen belly, now emptied of its precious cargo, wincing at the pain with every movement but craving what little comfort she could find. All her tears had been spent during the birth, but she sobbed in dry gasps, curled in on herself and rocking back and forth.
When they must have judged her sufficiently calm, the lay sister returned - no baby in hand - and began methodically cleaning up Cara and the bed. For all the emotion she showed, she might have been scrubbing the floor.
"Please," Cara said, clutching at the lay sister's hand. "Please, you're a woman too. Let me see her. Please, just let me hold her..."
The lay sister jerked away from the girl's grasp, but sat down on the bed a safe distance away. "She's gone," the woman said. "Forget about her. She's gone."
"How can I forget my own child?"
"She's not your child," the lay sister said rather sharply. "She is not 'your own,' and she never will be. She'll be adopted by a nice couple, and they will be her family. Not you. You aren't a mother. You were the vessel that brought that child into the world, and nothing more."
"But I... I love her..." Cara murmured weakly.
The lay sister chuckled faintly at her naive proclamation. "Your love is worth nothing, my dear. You have nothing to offer that baby. A sixteen year old mage? You will never see her again. She will never miss you or think of you. You have two options now. You can give up and die. Or you can forget and move on."
Cara had no intention of dying. With time, she would surely find a way to move on. She was equally certain that she would never forget. Perhaps, she told herself, the lay sister was right and the baby was better off without her. Still, Cara knew that deep in her secret heart, she would never stop feeling like a mother.
Skyhold, Present Day
Slowly, the tide turned. Then, abruptly, the battle was won. It seemed that it took only an instant for the frantic fray to turn into a scene of soldiers chasing straggling monsters. Tempest smiled, but without any real happiness. The costs had been high. The costs might yet turn out to be unbearable; there was still no sign of Cullen.
Her soldiers had taken a creature that appeared to be some sort of lieutenant, directing the rank and file of the horde. Perhaps it would have the information she sought.
"Where is Cullen?" Tempest demanded. She gripped the twisted Fade creature by the throat, and with a combination of momentum and anger, managed to shove it against the stone wall and thrust her staff against its chest.
"Cullen?" the creature wheezed, but Tempest knew the look in its eyes. She'd been too long in Kirkwall not to recognize deception.
"Don't play games with me," she said, leaning the weight of her body on her staff.
The creature smiled, laughed a cruel laugh that sounded like the creaking of bones. "Where is the lady's love? Trapped, tormented. Perhaps tortured, yes? Perhaps... dead?" Its deep-set yellow eyes momentarily flicked toward across the courtyard, blocked with fallen stone.
Not much of a hint, but enough. Tempest finished off the monstrosity with a blast of magic, then turned to her companions. "Stand back. I need to get rid of the stone."
Cassandra stared back at Tempest, worry written clearly on her face. Tempest knew how she must look. Bloodied, exhausted, drained of mana. It didn't matter. Not while Cullen was out there somewhere, alone and in pain.
"We can shift it by hand..." Cassandra suggested.
Tempest shook her head. "That'll take too long. I'm fine." She closed her eyes for a moment, said a quick and silent prayer in her head, and gathered what reserves of strength and magic she had left for this one final push.
She could save him. She would save him. By the Maker, she would not let Cullen die...
Kirkwall 9:37 Dragon
When the chaos began, Cara didn't know where to go, so she followed two other mages who seemed to have some idea what direction would lead them to safety.
One word hung heavy in the air, and on every tongue: Annulment.
She started to run, her soft-soled shoes slipping on the pavement, and she turned the corner... nearly running straight into a knot of templars. The mages fell to their knees; Cara's own legs bent as if on cue, a desperate and instinctive act of surrender.
She knelt silently, heart pounding with terror, as her comrade begged for mercy. As Knight-Commander Meredith, with Knight-Captain Cullen at her side and flanked by more templars, refused it. Cara braced for what she knew was coming. A sword to the back, or perhaps the neck. No way to save herself or ward off the blow. She could only hope it would be over quickly.
But then suddenly, the Knight-Captain was speaking. The Knight-Captain was... defending them? Cara looked over at him, her hood falling back slightly so it no longer completely overshadowed her face. The Knight-Captain wasn't looking directly at her, but he was speaking passionately in favor of their potential innocence.
The other two mages looked relieved, but Cara's fear only deepened. She could easily imagine what would come next. The Knight-Captain would drag her to her feet, and demand to see her wrists as proof for his commanding officer. He would see the scars. He would call her a liar - and worse, a blood mage. She would die, here in this courtyard, and the other two mages would likely die because of her too.
He would never believe her...
The Knight-Captain never asked to see their wrists. He demanded nothing, no proof of innocence - proof that would have been impossible to provide. He simply spoke for them, as if they mattered to him. Cara felt her eyes begin to tear up incongruously. There was a good chance she was going to die anyway. But somehow it still mattered that in this moment, somebody cared. Someone thought her life was worth defending. It was an alien feeling, the mattering. And it was a sentiment she certainly would never have expected to receive from the Knight-Captain, of all people.
Yet amazingly, it was happening. Then even more amazingly, Knight-Commander Meredith was walking away.
"Thank you," Cara murmured. She wasn't sure if Knight-Captain Cullen had heard. She wasn't sure if he realized he'd done more for her than just spare her life. He had taught her that she could be believed. Perhaps she should have trusted him earlier. Perhaps if she'd gone to him and told the truth, he would have understood and protected her. She would never know. But somehow, the mere hope that he might have fanned a tiny flame of confidence that still burned within her, buried deep.
The templars set to guard them eventually left the three mages behind - left to fight or to flee the carnage, who knew? The mages took the opportunity to flee, too. Only Cara made it to the docks. One of her comrades was cut down by a templar's blade, and to Cara's horror, a demon overtook the second. She could not save either of them, so she simply ran, hot tears blurring her vision as pure survival instinct kicked in.
Her exit from Kirkwall was far from glorious, stowed away on a ship, hidden between casks of wine and sacks of flour. Freedom was freedom, though. Live was life. On that voyage, tossed by storms, Cara would become Tempest, shedding her old life for a new one as a snake shed its skin.
As the vessel sailed out of the harbor, she whispered a quiet prayer for the safety of the Knight-Captain.
Skyhold, Present Day
Cullen was face-down, his sword a foot away from his open hand. Tempest saw blood dribbling onto the flagstones; the injury wasn't visible from her vantage point, but it was clearly serious. A demon stood over him, taunting him, tempting him with a visage that was a cruel mockery of Tempest's own face.
He was alive, though. Merciful Andraste, he was still breathing. Tempest could see the faint movement of his shoulders.
"Cullen!" She cried. The demon was struck simultaneously by two blasts of magic, a bolt from a crossbow, and Cassandra's sword - the latter cleaving the demon's head from its shoulders. Its true face, horned and purple, was visible as the head rolled to a stop by Cullen's prone form, but Tempest scarcely noticed. Now that the demon was dead, her sole focus was on its victim.
She rushed to Cullen's side and knelt beside him, but he didn't seem to see her. Gently, she touched his shoulder, then lifted him to a kneeling position too so his face no longer rested on cold stone. Their eyes met, and finally she saw recognition. Tears welled in both their eyes as she kissed him and held him close.
Tempest prayed quietly, blessing the Maker for bringing Cullen back to her. The Chantry said the Maker was gone from the world, and Tempest could usually believe that - but not today, not when she had witnessed this miracle.
"You were brave," Tempest told him. "You were strong."
"I lost the fight," he replied doubtfully.
She shook her head. "You survived. You kept your sanity. That sounds like winning the fight to me."
There was a faint smile on Cullen's lips for a moment, then he buried his face against her. She just held him silently, unable to let him go. Not that he seemed to mind. Cullen didn't seem to have any desire to be released from her embrace, either.
Finally, hesitantly, he asked, "My leg?"
Tempest looked down at the mangled flesh and protruding bone, and didn't know. "You'll be alright, love," she said. Not a lie. One way or the other, he would.
Again, there was silence. Not an awkward silence, but a reunion that required no words. Gradually, though, Tempest started to get shy. She had shared Cullen's bed. She thought she had his heart. Tentative promises had been made. But what if he didn't see things the same way she did? What if for him this was a passing dalliance, when she was prepared to give him the rest of her life?
How could she tell him she wanted forever? How did you ask someone to stay? The words just wouldn't come. Not those words, at least... but maybe there was another way.
"My herb garden is ruined," Tempest finally said. "Will you help me replant it when the spring comes?"
"I will," Cullen replied.