I've got no real idea how many parts I'm going to make out of this chapter. Suppose it's however long it takes to cover the prologue of the game.
And Bram – the custom Herald of Andraste that I made for this story? He's an asshole. You're probably not going to like him much for the foreseeable future.
The gust of fresh air did nothing for Bram when he emerged from the chantry to find dozens of accusing eyes trained on him. It was just Cassandra's presence that kept them at bay.
Bram knew this, so his focus wasn't on them. It was on the green, transparent light in front of him. Bram followed the trail to the sky, and it was then that he saw what everyone condemned him for.
"We call it the Breach." Cassandra informed him. "It is a massive rift into the world of demons that grows larger with each passing hour."
"There's a reason for the name." Adam added. "There's more rifts, but none as big as that one."
"All of them were caused by the explosion at the Conclave." Cassandra finished.
Bram's eyes remained on the tear as it bled into Thedas. His right brow twitched – a small tell of inward thought. "And I'm the only one who walked?"
Adam shrugged lightly, and shook his head. "They were as thorough as can be, given the circumstances. If anyone else survived, they didn't find them."
Bram accepted most of that line. Or at least, as much as he could without seeing for himself. It was because of that that he let hope linger at the back of his mind, to tell him that his charge escaped the blast, if it was too much to endure. It wasn't impossible – he had done the same.
But that train of thought would reach no destination if he let himself sink into it. Wouldn't have been able to anyway, as he was reminded of the urgency of the matter when a sharp, increasing pain took hold of his left hand, where the mark resided.
The sensation nearly brought him to his knees. Bram stood his ground, and closed his eyes to focus on numbing the pain, but his suffering was plain to see.
"Each time the Breach grows, the mark expands." Cassandra told him. "And it is killing you."
He gathered as much. There was a reason he lived when everyone else died.
"It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn't much time." Cassandra urged.
Bram's jaw clenched. He took a deep breath, and opened his eyes to find the Seeker staring back at him. The look on her face only reinforced the words she spoke.
"So why are we still here?" Bram said. Cassandra turned to the gate leading to the temple, and began backtracking towards it. No signal was needed – Bram and Adam soon followed.
Cassandra got ahead of them enough that Adam felt safe in talking with Bram through relative whispers. Even still, his eyes were planted at the back of her head as he spoke.
"How bad is it?" He asked.
"I'll live." Is what he got.
He wasn't a social person. Adam understood that now.
"Llynn and I are close friends." He went on. "I don't know if she ever told you about me, bu–"
"She did."
"Oh? Well…You know why I'm here." Adam looked off to the crowd – who still had their eyes on Bram – for a small moment.
"What I don't get is why she brought you. You wanted nothing to do with this, right? Why didn't you skip town?"
"Because I made her a promise." Bram answered. "And distance means nothing to something that teleports."
Their conversation was cut short by Cassandra's order for the gates to open, and they increased their pace to be with her when she moved though them. It was at this point that she unshackled Bram completely, telling him that there will be a trial once this was over.
They had gone over half the road to the next checkpoint before the Breach pulsed once more – both in the sky and on Bram's hand. He stopped hard, and grunted loud enough that Adam and Cassandra took note.
Cassandra's past words were not lost on Adam; "with each passing hour," She said. It had been mere minutes since the last pulse. This knowledge worried him.
"Come." Cassandra said, and cocked her head towards the checkpoint as she moved to it. "We cannot waste time."
Both men followed, but Adam's caring for his newfound "friend" pushed him to ask questions regarding his condition.
"Seeker," He began, "You never told us how he survived. What happened?"
Her knowledge of the fact came from reports of the men that found him. She did not see the event herself, which made her tone – the tone one would normally take when they're beyond skeptical – all the more believable.
"They said he stepped out of a rift…Then fell unconscious." Cassandra said back. "There was also a woman behind him, but no one knows who she was."
Adam waited for her to say more, and a look of confusion and exasperation took hold of him when she didn't. "That's it?" Adam asked. "He fell out of a tear and went to sleep?"
The tone he took with her answer irritated Cassandra. "We can discuss it after the immediate threat is over." She told him, and signaled for the next gate to open.
The three barely crossed the bridge ahead of them before a greenlit fade "meteor" crashed into it, sending everyone and everything careening to the ice below. It was through luck that they fell on the same side, though it was very little, for the next salvo of meteors carried more than emeralds.
Demons emerged from the remains; shadows cloaked in rags, roaring to make their presence known. These creatures were known to drain the living. Feed on their psyche until there was nothing left of it, or them. Something they all knew.
Cassandra regained her stance first, and drew her blade to charge. "Stay behind me!" She shouted, but they were far from helpless.
A few crates of supplies managed to fall to their side as well, and Adam took note of it as soon as Cassandra engaged the shades. Lady luck was especially kind to him, for a bundle of staffs lay untangled in the wooden debris.
Adam was no pushover, but he was a mage; most of his combat experience lay in the manipulation of energies drawn from the fade. While it was vast, it was a trade off for what he could do physically – both offensively and defensively. And that made him a target for whatever decided to get close.
A part of him hated that – not being able to physically help. But so long as he could, he would do so – and his opportunity came in the form of a shade that attempted to blindside Cassandra as she slew one of its comrades.
Its attempt failed, of course. Before it could, a wall of flame sprung around Cassandra like a shield, igniting the shade's talons when it touched it, and engulfing it soon after. Its shrill alerted Cassandra, who turned to behead it before it could recover. Its head turned to ash when it fell, as did the rest of its form.
Cassandra felt the warmth of the flames when they were willed into being, and immediately turned to the men she was escorting to find the culprit. To her relief, her protector was a man she knew to be a mage. As Adam stepped forward however, her relief turn into horror, as his leaving Bram's side left him a vulnerable target. And the shades capitalized on it.
One emerged from the ice behind Bram, and raised its hand to strike him down. With Cassandra as the only witness, she called out to him, that he could live long enough to prove he was innocent.
But she did not have to, as she soon discovered.
Before its claws could draw flesh, Bram gripped onto its arm, and bisected it with a single right hand chop. Before it could react to the sudden pain, Bram cut through its torso twice, and severed its head from its body. He kicked away the remains as they fell to ash.
He was not done. With that same hand, he made a throwing gesture toward Adam and Cassandra – as if he'd ejected a spear from his wrist. It didn't become apparent to the two until what he was throwing formed into existence; a stone spike, large enough – and strong enough – to drill through either one of their skulls.
They dodged the attack, but they soon learned that it wasn't for them. Cassandra followed the course of the spike to its destination; into the face of ambushing shade, who collapsed almost as soon as it was viewed.
He had saved their lives. But how he did it unsettled Cassandra. And she let him know it.
The edge of her blade fixated on her charge, who she now knew – like Adam – was also a mage. But one she'd never seen before.
"Dispel your magic!" Cassandra commanded. "NOW."
Her sudden hostility – at least as Adam perceived it – nearly infuriated him.
"Seriously!?" He said to her. "He just saved our lives, and you mean to cut him down!?"
"How are you to know?" Cassandra argued back. "That attack could've killed us both!"
As much as he wanted to refute that, he couldn't. Had they not moved when they did, they would've surely become unintended victims – a thought that perplexed even him. His brows briefly furrowed, and he looked to Bram to hopefully provide a better case than he could.
But Bram did not care about placating someone he had no love for.
"Let me ask you something." He dismissively began. "Do you want to die?"
Cassandra's grip on her blade tightened, but before she could respond, Bram continued.
"Because that is exactly what's going to happen if I don't get to that Breach – you said it yourself."
Bram intentionally walked into striking distance of Cassandra, almost daring her to cut him down by action alone.
"I could care less if you trust me. I don't trust you."
He pressed his chest onto the point of her sword.
"But you've got to be pretty fucking dumb to kill your only shot at taking that thing down. Tell me. Are you that stupid?"
Poking the bear, as it were. From this, and the small talk he had with him prior, Adam had learned that Bram had no tolerance for other people, least of all authority. From his limited interaction with Cassandra, he gathered that she was prone to violence. Taunting her might have lit a very small fuse.
Or it would have been the case, were Cassandra the woman Adam hoped she wasn't.
Her interaction with Adam told her he meant well. He was overly concerned for what he believed to be his last friend in Thedas. Or a link to one thought lost.
Her interaction with Bram did him no favors. Not to Thedas. Not to the people of Haven or the survivors of the Conclave. Especially not to her. For Cassandra's tale was rife with the men she now perceived him to be.
But he did have a point; it would be detrimental to her cause if she had slain him there. And if he intended to do the same, it would've been easier to let the shade take them. While she had concerns of his allegiance, it would need to wait until the Breach was sealed. After which…only time would tell.
Cassandra moved her blade from his chest and sheathed it. Her eyes never left her charge.
"Adam. Go help Leliana." She said.
"Why?" He asked. "She has men, y-you need me here."
"No, I don't." Cassandra replied. "And neither does he."
After Bram's display, he was in no position to argue. He wanted to tell her to keep him safe – that if anything happened to him, he would hold her accountable. He was rather prepared for it. His mistake – he learned – was assuming that Bram was anything like him.
With his loss apparent, Adam turned for the hills. He stopped just short of it to ask one final question.
"What do you want me to tell her?"
Cassandra's eyes remained locked onto Bram's, halfway expecting him to charge her the second she looked away. With an elevated voice, she responded.
"That we will be there soon."
With this, Adam departed. When he was out of view, Cassandra took a step forward to Bram, her composure regained.
"You will stay ahead of me and in view at all times." Cassandra instructed. "If there are demons, I will handle them. You'll not raise your hand again. Am I clear?"
Bram lightly shook his head. "You do know I'm going to disregard this the second you fail, right?"
"For your sake, I hope you do not." Cassandra said, and cocked her head to the road forward.
"Move."