When we settled, at least provisionally, in a sparse valley that had gone untrod by human feet for a thousand years or more, the outlook was bleak indeed. We were no longer the Inquisition, but rather a desperate and disparate rabble, united only in our fear and our quickly-growing hunger. Two days of excuses passed; Leliana, Josephine, Cullen, and I argued with growing rancour and slimming hope about what our next steps should be, as our charges grew weaker by the hour and the diseased among them began to perish. We were in the midst of just such an altercation, each arguing in a different direction to no end but wasted air, when a runner from the edge of our shabby encampment came sprinting to interrupt our quarrel.

"Forgive me, m'ladies, m'lord," she panted, when she came to a staggered halt before us. "We found them...on the path..." Surprise robbed the force from our argument, and as one, the four of us united in our desire for clarity from our interlocutor. Our voices mingled, but the demand was the same, to learn who was on the animal-carved road that had moved her so. "The Herald," she spat, once she had caught her next breath. "And her friend, the elf."

Such an announcement sufficed to put an end to our bicker, at least for that instant. Cullen met my questioning glance, and I saw that we were of one mind. Together we set off in the direction the runner had come from, daring not to breathe our hopes aloud for fear of seeing them dashed. We found them on a hard-packed spit of snow, only recognisable as a path by the fresh boot prints of the scouts set to patrol it; the runner's partner had her back turned as Cullen and I approached, guiding Suredat-an and her charge, and when she turned, I saw that she was Lace Harding, looking dirty and drawn but very much alive. I could only return her grim nod as I drew near enough to resolve the hulking figure from shadow. Cullen was the first to find his voice. "It's the Herald!"

And indeed it was the giant; she limped laboriously, her right arm hanging uselessly by her side, swinging with each pained step. Her left arm was wrapped protectively around the shrouded figure of Sera, whose arms and legs were fixed about the giant's neck and torso, though the elf did not appear conscious. "It cannot be," I mused, unable to comprehend the magnitude of the miracle I witnessed. "You are alive!"

The Herald kept plodding forward, unwilling-or simply unable-to acknowledge her audience. As she drew nearer, I saw her scarred lips move, as though in prayer, though I came to realise that she instinctively muttered a string of incantations, which drew the better part of her focus. "You are here," I insisted, driving forward to stand athwart her path. "You have found us, Suredat-an. You are safe."

The Herald's quicksilver eyes focused upon me with all the speed of an advancing glacier, and she managed to stop her trek before she tripped and bowled us all over. "No," she rumbled.

The answer, so familiar to me by then, came as a paradoxical sort of relief. Laughter tore at my breath, and I reached up, intent on unburdening Suredat-an by taking Sera to the camp under my own power. But the Herald flinched, and Cullen's hand grasped at my forearm with the subtle pressure of warning. "Don't touch either if them," he hissed, and I had but to follow his gaze to interpret his meaning.

Both the Herald and Sera had bled from a dozen wounds apiece, and their bodies were streaked besides with ichor from fallen darkspawn which was no less dangerous for having dried upon their flesh. Cullen brought his torch to bear, and I saw clearly the black tendrils crawling up Sera's neck even as she slept, and my heart leapt into my throat. "It cannot be," I repeated, meeting Suredat-an's gaze once more. "Is there nothing we can do?"

"Yes," the Herald allowed, and I was on the verge of asking for clarification when she provided it. "Move."

I was forced to spectate as the qunari limped each step to our camp without relinquishing her one-armed grip upon her charge. She was not long in drawing attention from the huddled mass of refugees that her actions had helped to save, and soon enough, Cullen and I were occupied with keeping them back, for their own security. Only Fiona broke rank with the crowd, striding forward with naked concern on her face. "I will take her," she pronounced, expectantly.

Suredat-an arched a scabbed brow in my direction, as though it were my decision, and I understood that her earlier concern was solely for my welfare; she left it to me to decide whether any others were worth risking. Fortunately, I also knew that Fiona had once been a Grey Warden, and that she still stood in no danger from the taint. When I gave the Herald a slim nod, she gave over the wounded elf to the grasp of her hale counterpart, and staggered with the effort of rebalancing after Sera's weight was relieved. It was all I could do to keep from extending a hand, as futile-and fatal-as such a gesture might have been.

The crowd parted for Fiona, and she carried Sera to one of the pavilions we had erected in the centre of the camp. The Herald followed her, and I took up the rear, while Cullen remained without in order to disperse the gathered folk. Vivienne and Mother Giselle were within, sharing tea, seeking but a few moments of normality amid the unfathomable stress of our circumstance. "Clear the table," Fiona commanded, her voice echoing with an authority she must have had when she was accorded the title of Grand Enchanter.

Though she had expressed the desire to supplant the elf in the role, at least once the Circles were restored, Enchanter Vivienne quickly moved to obey. She and the revered mother swept their spindly table of its paltry sundries, and they stepped back as Fiona lay Sera down upon it. "Water and lyrium," she said. "Also deathroot and saffron, if you can find any. Any amount of those would suffice, but the lyrium must be in quantity."

The mage and the Chantry woman moved to obey the elder woman's request without question, and I began to understand how Fiona had earned her former position. "What do you mean to do?" I asked, looking from the supine elf to the giant who somehow remained upon her feet. "I thought there was no cure for Blight sickness."

Fiona answered in Suredat-an's place. "There is but one," she allowed. "Though it requires a measure of sanguinity which you might not care to witness."

I did not know what she meant, but I could certainly guess. "Blood magic," I surmised, grimacing, and I glanced at Suredat-an once more. "I have already witnessed far too much of the art to turn my face from it now." I looked to Sera, who shivered with fever, even as she lay unconscious. "She must be saved, if there is any way on the Maker's earth to do it. Tell me what you would have of me."

Fiona nodded in gratitude, and she directed me to gather instruments. This was Vivienne's personal tent, modest by her standards, and so it was well-provisioned with the tools of magic and potion crafting. I located a fine chalice, a knife, and a mortar and pestle for grinding. There was also a small measure of powdered lyrium, though not sufficient for Fiona's purposes, and we could find none of the other ingredients she required.

Vivienne herself was not long in returning, laden with items to redress the deficit. She had made a bargain with Ser Barris and Rhys for a healthy measure of lyrium from each, and deathroot she had secured in abundance; even, miraculously, a sprig of saffron was not beyond the mage's talents of acquisition. Fiona offered Vivienne the same warning that I had been given about the particulars of the ritual, and the human mage gave a reply similar to my own. With great care, we crafted the potion which would save Sera, by taking the Herald's tainted blood into the chalice and concentrating it several times over with the aid of the deathroot, before slaking the mixture with powdered lyrium and saffron to fuse the tincture with the Fade. All three mages added their own magical energies to the concoction under Fiona's guidance, using arts foreign even to my experience, and I was relegated to keeping watch over the dying elf until it was finished.

When that was so, and Fiona held the cup before her, Suredat-an limped forward. I felt the brush of magic, and a moment later, Sera's serene face twisted with agony as consciousness returned. "Hey, you," she managed, weakly, once her greyed eyes found purchase on the Herald's features. "Wotcher."

The corners of Suredat-an's scarred lips twitched up, perhaps even beneath her own notice. "Wotcher," she replied, before her expression dissolved to still water once again. "Do you wish to live?"

The elf took a pained breath that ended in a wet cough, the veins of ichor almost visibly crawling just beneath the translucent surface of her skin. "Yeah," she managed, after recovering her breath. "You can't get rid of me that easy, Buckles."

"Then join us, sister," the giant intoned, after a pause, echoing the words that had been said to her when she herself lay upon the cusp of death. As she went on, Fiona's voice echoed her word for word. "Join us in the shadows where we stand vigilant. Join us as we carry the duty that cannot be forsworn. And should you perish, know that your sacrifice will not be forgotten...and that, one day, we shall join you."

Fiona passed the cup to Suredat-an, who in turn held it up to Sera's lips. The elf hesitated for but an instant, and then she drank greedily of the foul mixture, managing three full swallow before it got the best of her. She tensed and convulsed, once, but as she fell back to the table, her chest continued to rise and fall. "She will live," Fiona pronounced. "From this day forward, she will be a Grey Warden."

"Yes," the Herald agreed, and she did not sound pleased by the prospect. Then she woozed, before sinking down to her knees, her placid visage replaced by a rictus of tormented exhaustion.

Again I moved to intervene, only to have Fiona remind me of my own vulnerability to the very curse they had just expunged from Sera, though at great cost. "I will care for her, Seeker," the ambulatory elf assured me. "And I will let you know when it is safe to approach."

I could offer little more than gratitude. "Thank you," I sighed, and I left the tent in the company of its ostensible owner, who appeared hardly ruffled by the eviction, nor by the evening's broader events. It surprised me that she had offered so little protest. I was interested to know the lay of her thoughts, but my curiosity was to be left unsated, for the gathered throng of refugees had not parted. Cries rang out, pilgrims beseeching to know whether the Herald yet lived. Cullen, Leliana, and what professional troops they could muster held back the crowd, but only just. "She lives," I pronounced, wearily. "But she needs peace and time to rest. In Andraste's name, I beg that you will make it so." I spoke words of reason, but my tone was tempered by my years as the Right Hand of the Divine, and my will carried through without being challenged. Slowly the crowd dispersed.

When I let my attention wander, I saw that Vivienne had also departed, off to seek her own ends, beyond my reckoning. With little and less to occupy my nerves, I set to patrolling the ramshackle village we had carved out of mud and canvas upon the stone, knowing that despite-or perhaps because of-the Maker's recent favour, we could not tarry here beyond necessity.

I was unexpectedly joined by Varric at the perimeter of the mages' quarter. "How do you do, Seeker," he said in greeting. When I did not reply to the courtesy, he fell into pace beside me, taking three steps for each pair of mine. It was not the first time of late that we had ambled in silence together in this place, one of us happening upon the other and simply walking for a time. It was...comfortable, oddly, after all of the hours we had passed in tense interrogation.

Except this particular evening the silence was strained, and several times I caught him on the verge of speech, only to pull back into his brooding. "Out with it, dwarf," I groused, when the air grew frustratingly pregnant.

He took a long breath, vapour streaming from his nostrils as he exhaled. "Shit," he allowed, glancing guiltily up at me. "I've been trying to riddle out how to say this without you shanking another book while it's uncomfortably close to the Tethras family jewels..."

"Ugh," I scoffed. "If you wish, we could forego the codex."

I had meant it as a jest, but Varric shuddered regardless, clearly not simply from the cold. "I know who attacked us," he admitted, brusquely. "...I think, anyway."

"You are familiar with darkspawn?" I wondered, my patience sharpened to a fine edge by exhaustion. "Remarkable."

He snorted, more out of frustration than amusement. "I'm talking about the big scary asshole that brought all of those fucking things to our doorstep in the first place. The Old Guy."

"The Elder One?"

"That's the one," he gruffed. "You remember in our little chats in Hawke's sitting room, when I told you about Corypheus?"

I stopped short, my irascibility forgotten for the moment. "You believe he is the fiend we saw?"

He nodded. "I didn't get a good look at him on the hill, but there's only one time I've seen a silhouette like it, and that was in the Vimmarks."

"But in your tale, you said that Athadra killed Corypheus," I recalled, with a grimace. "Were you mistaken?"

"No," Varric demurred. "When we left the bastard on the floor of that tower, he was dead. But he's a thousand-year-old darkspawn, maybe one of the first. Who the hell knows what he's capable of?" He returned my grimace. "And it was more of a team effort, anyhow. You know Merrill and I were there, too. And...Hawke."

A shadow of guilt passed over his face, then, rousing my suspicions. "What about Hawke?"

He cringed, taking a half-step back into the snow. "I...might have a bit of a confession to make," he admitted. He threw up his hands in surrender, and the warrior in me had my eyes flicking to his shoulder, where I saw he had neglected to equip his beloved crossbow.

That served to make me more wary, not less. It was only the respect he had earned, however grudging, which kept me from reaching for my sword. "Speak, then."

"Not here," he beseeched, glancing around. "Somewhere private."

As close-pressed as our quarters were, and as angry as I was already worried of becoming, I knew there would be no chance of privacy anywhere within the camp. "Come, then," I told the dwarf, and I forged past him into the driven snow. We walked into the darkness, beyond even the penumbra of torchlight from our shanty. The night was cloudless, however, and though I have never seen as an eagle from a distance, I acquit myself rather well in near darkness, so we were in little danger of falling as long as I kept my wits. "Speak," I commanded, once I judged our distance even beyond the elves' hearing. "Make your confession."

He huffed from the trek, billows of steamed breath making a silent plea for moments as they rose from his parted lips. "I lied," he admitted, once he had caught his breath. "About Hawke, I mean."

My eyes narrowed. "You think I had not surmised as much, dwarf? Or do you truly imagine me so foolish as to believe you a coward, even after all this time?"

"I guess not," he sighed, pulling his overcoat more tightly about him in a vain attempt to ward off the cold. "But it's more than where she is, Cassandra," he pressed. "It's who." His use of my pronomen surprised me; I could not recall if he had ever called me by my name, at least within my hearing. As far as I could recollect, he had been as fastidious as a Qunari in referring to me by my occupation. Calculated or not, I found my anger arrested, though it was hardly abated. I nodded for him to continue, not trusting myself to interject. "Hawke is...different, from the character in my story. And not just the real woman doesn't live up to the legend sort of way, either." He rubbed his jaw, thick with several days' growth. "Tell me who you think Hawke is," he demanded.

The questioned confused me. "She is the Champion of Kirkwall," I rejoined.

"Yeah," he conceded. "That's what she is...or was, anyhow, before Isabela finally convinced her to get the fuck out of there." He shook his head, looking off into the dark for a long moment, until he seemed to come to a decision, and he once again met my gaze. "What's her name?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Her name," he repeated. "Tell me Hawke's first name."

My brows drew together in my confusion. "Cethlenn," I said, "as I have heard it reported to me from several reputable sources."

The dwarf managed a stuttered laugh, made frigid by the brisk air. "And all of those reputable sources come back to me, in one form or another. And I lied my hairy ass off to everyone who'd listen."

I still did not comprehend the magnitude of the dwarf's deception. "Hawke is flesh and blood," I insisted. "You could not have conjured her from nothing." There had simply been too many witnesses to her presence.

"Not from nothing," he admitted. "But Cethlenn Hawke doesn't exist, except in my story...and an unmarked grave outside if Lothering, if she's lucky."

Only then did I begin to understand, and the sheer audacity of the man's claim kept me grounded. "Then who...?"

Varric shrugged once more. "It's amazing what you can do with a little sunshine," he allowed. "Which we could use right about now, by the way."

"Are you referring to Bethany Hawke, or are you being literal?"

"Both," he hissed, shivering more obviously. I was still too shocked to feel anything but numbness from the cold. "The story I told you-the one in my book-is accurate in every way, except all the details are wrong. And...I figured it was time to come clean about it, given...things."

And he told me the truth about the Champion, then. The tale Justinia had urged me to hear, rather than the tissue of lies he had reinforced during his interrogation. I will not belabour the details within these pages, but I shall relate the bare facts as succinctly as I can manage. The Tale of the Champion had as its protagonist a woman by the name of Cethlenn Hawke, jovial of tongue and utterly lacking in any magical talent, both of which were made up for by her more modest sister, Bethany. Their brother, Carver, had supposedly perished in the flight from their childhood home of Lothering; Bethany was recruited into the Grey Wardens two years thence, and two years later still Cethlenn became the Champion of Kirkwall in a duel with the Qunari Arishok.

But that was just the story. The truth, as Varric related it to me upon that frozen mountainside, was far more audacious. According to the dwarf, it was Cethlenn who had died in Ferelden, protecting her family from an ogre. Carver survived, first to become known as Hawke during their first two years in Lowtown; in the story, Varric had blessed him with the nickname of Junior, both as a personal rib and to occlude his connection to his fraternal twin. For her part, Bethany was much as the tale described, at least until shortly after the siblings' Ill-fated trip to the Deep Roads. There she was indeed taken into Athadra's care as a Warden. When the Wardens returned to Kirkwall on Athadra's business, however, events conspired to thrust the young woman in the path of destiny. Largely unknown to the nobility of Hightown, she made her own name as Hawke when a mysterious eruption of darkspawn nearly destroyed the city's Alienage and she stood amidst those who drove them back; later, Bethany became known among the city's nobility by eloquently eulogising her mother after her death at the hands of a depraved blood mage. Not long after, she cemented her fame by leading the city's defense against the northern invaders. She fought with blades and skill both forged by Athadra's hands, with mages at her side to cover for her own uses of magic, which allowed the gullible survivors of the Arishok's assault on Viscount's Keep to believe that she was mundane. Such naïveté allowed an uneasy accord between the new Champion and Knight-Commander Meredith, at least for a time. After that, the course of events proceeded more-or-less in accordance with Varric's official version of events; in the end, their city in flames, Bethany and her fellows fled, taking ship and scattering to the east, pausing along the Wounded Coast only long enough to unceremoniously dump her mantle and armour over the side.

Once he had finished, it was near dawn, and we were near frozen. "Anyway, that's it," he shuddered. "I wanted to tell you, before..."

As weary and cold as I was, I did not forgive the hitch in his voice. "Before what?"

"Before one of Leliana's birds finds her and brings her to us, if there's still an us by then."

My surprise reinvigorated and warmed me. I was tempted to anger, though the cold cut through it, and I felt an odd sense of relief that my mission might finally succeed. "The Champion is coming?"

"I figured that we were fucked," he gruffed, "until Harry came stumbling in out of the dark. Then...I thought maybe we might have a chance, after all. And if so, we're going to need to face off against the Elder One sooner or later. And if that thing is Corypheus, there's only one person I can think of that might be able to help us kill it for good and all."

"Hawke," I surmised.

"The Warden," he corrected, with a dark chuckle. "But I really don't know how to find her. So...I guess Sunshine's our best bet." He stamped his feet and rubbed his gloved hands together to bring some life back into them. "Now, if you're not gonna stab me again...can I go to bed? Before I freeze to death?"

"You may go," I allowed, still mulling over the revelations he had shared with me. If nothing else, they explained some of Suredat-an's more contradictory statements about the Champion, and some lingering doubts that I had still harboured. I resolved to corroborate as much of the story as I could with Cullen, who had resided in Kirkwall for the years in question, even if he had not been in a reliable state of mind for much of that time. Though I resigned myself to the inevitability that he would likely be in no mood to talk until we had restored our lyrium supplies, which itself necessitated finding a more permanent home.

That was a much greater challenge, though it had been made possible by the Herald's miraculous return. I did not then know the details that I have shared above, and to this day I am uncertain of just how Suredat-an dragged Sera and herself from beneath the fluss of the avalanche she had caused, but I knew that the feat both presaged and required yet further miracles shortly to come. I was taken with these thoughts as I trod in Varric's distant wake, so much so that I was taken aback by the sudden appearance of Solas before me. I was too chilled to present a challenge, and as he approached, I saw that he walked unperturbed by the elements. Indeed, when he drew near, I felt myself enveloped by the warmth of his magical aura. Rather than shrink back in fear or strike out in anger, I sighed with relief, though I arched a questioning brow at him, regardless. "I hope you do not mind my inadvertent eavesdropping," he broached. "But I had to remain near enough to catch you before you made a fruitless return to camp, as you and I have matters of similar import-and confidence-to discuss."

The mage's arcane energy revivified my frozen flesh, yet in my exhaustion I knew I could not avoid or overpower him if his purposes were nefarious. In any case, the apostate's conduct had earned him a measure of confidence, if not precisely trust. "Very well," I allowed. "Let us speak, then."