Author's note - Things get worse for our heroes before they get better.
SPOILERS! This section of the story takes place after "Here Lies the Abyss" and Before "What Pride Hath Wrought". I've been writing this story under the assumption that you have played the game before. At this point this story diverges heavily from the main plot. A lot of what goes down is extrapolating from a variety of tidbits through all three games that explain the nature of demons, mages, magic, and possession. I took a bit of my own spin in this story, and I'm sure there's some rules I don't know about or just plain get wrong, so please forgive and keep reading.
If you're in this for the smut, I'm sorry that the juicy parts aren't going to be back for a while. Hang in there, romance fans.
Trigger warning: Much of the this story deals with anxiety, personal demons, mental anguish, and human misery. I think a lot of why I've written this story is to try and communicate a reflection of my own struggles, but please know I don't write this to make those who are suffering feel worse. Instead, I hope to show that eventually there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it just might take your friends dragging you physically along the train tracks to reach it.
Please review! This is my first time ever posting to this site. I've written and drawn other stories, but this sort of blindsided me from nowhere. I'm just hoping others enjoy the story as I try to spin it out of my head.
LASTLY! I do not own Dragon Age or the characters, nor do I receive compensation for this work.
"NO!" Haba screeched back at Sera as the older elf tugged her along.
"See? THIS. This is why I never want to make babies," Sera grumbled, and continued to drag the protesting young girl deeper into the shadowed parts of her Fade realm.
"Look, Tadwinks," Sera turned around to shake Haba by the shoulders. "Tell me this is all fine and dandy, huh?"
Haba stopped protesting for a moment to sniffle. "I'm not a 'Tadwinks'!"
Sera rolled her eyes, "Ugh, Habrynn, You're no fun."
"It's Haba!"
"Right," Sera quipped. "Tadwinks."
Haba scrunched her nose, but continued, "I know it's not real, but it's like my home! And I know I can't go home!"
Before Sera could point out just how weird that sentence was, a metallic voice echoed high above them, "Where is that little brat?" The trees seemed to rustle alongside the voice as it drew nearer and further away in turn, like the sky was searching for them. The keening metallic sound continued, and warped into a difference voice, crying back, "You'll not harm my daughter! Speak for your own children's crimes!"
"Mema," Haba whispered, looking to the sky for understanding.
Sera shook her again, and hissed, "Listen. Do you hear it? Like a wind chime, but under water?"
Haba nodded, and then pointed down a dirt pathway that was little more than a worn-in patch between two bushes. The kind of traill children made between the places they were allowed to go and the places no one thought to put off limits. As Haba pointed, the sound lowered in tone, and a faint emerald glow peeked out of the shadows of the underbrush.
With a shove of encouragement from Sera, Haba tiptoed forward, frantically looking back to Sera for reassurance, like someone being sent to catch a cornered creature. A sharp squint finally persuaded Haba, and she crept under the boughs, and the glow burst forth around them both.
In the memory, Haba was walking down a dirt pathway. Her bonnet and apron were almost pristine, and she held two books to her chest, leaned back and tottering under the weight of them. Screams of delighted cruelty erupted from all sides as a group of boys burst out of the bushes around her, knocking the books away and shoving her to the ground. They called out names and screeched insults too fast for words to be understood, and spit on her before they strutted away, congratulating each other.
Haba was ran, stumbling while she carried the dirty broken books, and tried to wipe mud from her face with an equally dirty hand. A Qunari woman with hair like flames and dark skin held her arms out, and hugged her tight. A Qunari man with golden hair and skin pat her head and took the books from her, and began to leaf through them carefully and clean them. They all sat together in a little Cottage barely big enough for a fireplace, bed, and desk. The woman mended the clothes, and the man mended the books, and Haba scrubbed herself with a cloth by the fire as a baby lay in a cradle tucked between her and the bed.
Light danced at the edges of Sera's vision and burst into a blinding flash before the cold dismal forest ruins returned around them both. In the brush, Haba was standing still as an emaciated hand reached towards her with cold mist unfurling from them both.
With a snap, Sera struck through the wraith with one arrow, and then another, and it hissed and shot away like a snake, rustling underbrush in it's dash to escape. Sera breathed quickly, and felt the tension in her chest ease a little. "Well… see… that wasn't so bad… right?" She stammered.
Haba sobbed back at her with terror in her eyes, "I don't want these memories back!"
*,*,*
Solas slipped and tumbled down a craggy slope as the structure around him shifted in an instant. A surge of pain burst out from his shoulder and ribs as the knitted magic gave way for a moment. As he concentrated on subduing the injury again, he looked around at his new surroundings. The branching structure had collapsed inwards, as if the furthest out sections were spiralling back towards the core. Though the tumble had been painful, he had landed next to an outcropping covered in arcane script he knew all too well.
With a few moments of concentration and a stamp of his staff, he pulled the fade around itself to dispel the energy fixing the barrier in place. "It's progress," Solas thought as he watched the rock crumble. The pieces floated as they fell away, carrying a pale green spark with them that burst into a plume of veilfire.
"Leave!" Habrynn's voice echoed through the stone, "Before I hurt you too!" As fast as the veilfire had ignited, it dissipated again.
Slowly the pieces pull themselves back together, fusing into one form against with thin flashes of light until no crack remained.
"That voice?" Solas muttered. "But, it can't be. That would mean that Adaar herself set these boundaries… no." Solas spat, "She's done this to herself? It's madness to split yourself this way! Even if it bought you time, the repercussions would be worse than the aid it brought-"
A memory shot through Solas's mind. The backdrop and the actors were unfamiliar, but the lead role was instantly recognizable, even in her young form.
"That must have been Adaar's memory… and the veilfire…" Solas mumbled, glancing at the Fade around him for some answer. "I think I see the connection now." When he looked back to the barrier stone he was trying to weaken, he could see now that it was not quite the same as before he had made the attempt.
"Then it is progress." Solas nodded in agreement with himself, "This can be fixed from the inside. I just have to trust that the others will do their best for her as well." Solas looked down into a crystalline crevasse below him, where Cassandra struggle reflected back.
*,*,*
Decayed limbs rose up all around Cassandra. Sightless sockets and milky dead eyes glared back at her as the dead awoke around her with moans of protest. She slammed her shield into the first, and stomped the next into the pile and climbed forward, keeping her sights on the pedestal where the Inquisitor lay. She had read Habrynn's reports of Therinfal Redoubt, and recognized Habrynn's nightmare taking form around her. Cassandra's skin crawled constantly now with the aura of a high demon prickling over her senses. Whatever roadblocks rose before her, she knew in her gut that she needed to reach the Inquisitor more than anything.
A blood-slick hand grabbed her ankle, and then another clutched at her knee. The slain clawed her armor and dragged her into their fold hungrily. Her sword sliced through jellied flesh and sang as it knocked back oxidized armor. With each step she pressed back flesh and stomped the corpses back into their illusory graves, and then began again with the next step, fighting for each approaching inch.
"Inquisitor!" Cassandra yelled. A strike from the side buffeted her helm, and she fell hard onto a templar glowing red. Spittle flew against her cheek as the man cried out in tongues at her, clutching at her with smoldering hands and scowling with eyes and veins pulsing with blighted energy. With a righteous cry Cassandra plunged her sword through his chest, and the evil glow subsided. Her cry grew and extended, and she shouted with all her breath into the horde, feeling her fury condense around her in a blast of white-hot light. Energy pulsed out, knocking back the nearest greedy corpses, and the afterglow of her holy circle glinted in the air, giving the pausing the remaining onslaught in all directions.
Leaping to the stone altar, she tumbled and glanced back before lifting herself up to the higher slab. Cassandra was not expecting the Inquisitor to seem so old and frail when she reached her. Her body was bleached and shrivelled, clothed all in white like someone given their last rights for internment. Even her hair had bleached to white, and flowed out around her like she had been here for years. Dust caked the slab like a fine gray snow. For a moment she despaired, until she saw a puff of dust as the woman breathed long and slow.
"Inquisitor," Cassandra pleaded, now that she could see the telltale yellow hint in her skin, and the lightly sloped long black horns. Despite the wrinkles, the sunken face and the gaunt frame, she could feel the connection deep in her soul. "Habrynn," She repeated more softly.
The old woman opened milky blind eyes and stared past Cassandra. "Who... is Habrynn?"
*,*,*
The tremors had grown to a loud rumble descending from all sides. "Crouch there," Embrim commanded, pointing down at her feet. "You're not going to like this," She smirked, "But I'll keep you safe."
For a moment, the vibrations and the sound stopped, and then the walls burst open, and People streamed in from all sides. Lyrium-enraged Mages, Red Templars, dark-eyed Wardens and even some of their own guards charged at them. Embrim swooped her arm to the side, and then slammed both hands to the ground launching a barrier out in all directions from them. The wave of bodies slammed into them, and piled against the boundaries of the dome in the press, blocking out the light around them bit by bit.
Embrim pressed up to him, gritting her teeth and counting under her breath, "Two… three… four…" There was a heavy slam as another wave crushed into the pile, and their small world under the barrier became dark and suffocating as the last light was blocked. A short sob caught in Embrim's throat, before she continued, "Six… seven."
"What the hell now?" Bull snapped.
"Shh… nine-" She whispered. A final crushing crack of weight, and she breathed, "-Ten."
As Embrim rose to her feet, the barrier expanded outward, and The Iron Bull was blinded as it instantly changed to an explosive nova of fire that launched the piled bodies, incinerating them into a cloud of ash.
The ash disappeared like a mist, and even the ring of char on the floor faded as if the fire and the onslaught had never happened. Embrim panted and wiped sweat from her brow. Bull stood just in time to steady her as she wobbled. He shivered off the fear before he finally found his voice again to ask, "How often does THAT happen?"
Embrim shook her head wearily as she clutched her temples. "Every hour or so? What's an hour in the Fade. I feel like I'm been here for months-"
A loud crack rocked them, and he caught her again as she almost fell from exhaustion. A low rumbling traced it's way around the perimeter of the room.
"That's... new," Embrim muttered.
"Any Man! Any Woman!" a frantic, resonate voice hissed from behind them. The demon stood astride the fully reformed Inquisition throne. She did not even try to take Habrynn's form. She smiled too wide, and jostled in her seat as she spoke, like she was rushed. "You could take anyone to your bed! Defeat any enemy! Even Corypheus would-" Her words were swallowed up by a targeted lance of fire that left corrosive blood splattered across everything, and a smoldering circular hole through the back of the seat.
"I. Hate. That. Seat." Embrim hissed. She eased herself back to her own feet just in time to be knocked to the ground as the roof collapsed onto the throne and the whole hall was shaken with one deafening impact. From the hole left behind a giant slitted eye stared back at them both, then blinked the inner and outer lids at them as it's anger reverberated through the stonework.
"RUN!" Embrim shouted, and Bull didn't bother to question as she dashed out a new hallway. Fires licked at their heels, already engulfing the Main hall and blasting down the tunnel behind them, launching them through the next doorway out into a mosaic tile street.
Octagonal spires rose up in the distance, and a smooth geometric city of colorful repeated tilework sprawled out around them. Qunari were frozen mid-task all around them. Bakers held perfect loaves aloft to the awaiting hands of content looking men and women. Masons' hammers hovered inches away from the next strike on a series of stone blocks. A line of soldiers feet were all poised above the ground in a coordinated march.
"Where-?" Embrim asked.
"Par Vollen," Bull sighed. "This is my baggage. Come on, we should go-" He gently put his fingers around her arm and tugged, but she pulled back to take in the still reflection of the city around them.
"You know…" she pondered while aimlessly sauntering around the the plaza they'd found themselves in. "I gave you no end of grief about the Qun, but when I was alone, I couldn't shake this… awe. I imagined what it would have been like to be born into this life instead. To let go of my responsibilities, and just be told what to do…"
The Iron Bull frowned back at her, "Oh, I'm not surprised at all. I know what you're really like. I've seen how you respond to commands."
Embrim smiled back at him seductively, and for a moment Bull glimpsed another life where they might have been paired for no more than a night of emotionless passion. Bull shook his head and whispered, "but you could never have lived that life Saarebas."
Embrim's smile collapsed as the sky began to crack. Shards of blue and white rained down like the heavens were just another mosaic. People around them burst into motion and frantically dived for cover as the towers fell and buildings crushed their inhabitants under their weight.
A bellow of anger ripped out where the same slitted eye from before glared in at them, now with a scaley snout and horn visible through the hole above them.
"Ataashi!" Bull growled. It wasn't even as large as the one they had taken down together in the Hinterlands! The fire in his blood began to spark, but Embrim grabbed at his armor and dragged him against the flow of the crowd.
"Just RUN!" She cried. He could hear the fear in her voice. The beast was oblivion, or it was her captor. He couldn't tell yet, but he could see in her panicked expression that she knew it well.
Every visage of his old life crashed down around them as a clawed reptilian foot smashed the neighboring building, launching stones and bolts of fabric out in all directions. Blood trickled down their arms and faces as shrapnel shot through the air.
"Why don't we fight it?!" Bull snarled.
Embrim ducked a burst of splinters as a tower of crates was crushed beside them. "You don't understand! I want to BE that dragon!" She hissed with a manic smile stretched over her face. "All power! No responsibility! No control! No feelings! Just bliss and freedom! There's no WAY I'm letting a damn demon take me over by giving me that!"
Bull grunted, "Okay. Maybe you have a point." And he thought to himself, "Vashedan that sounds hot. I can't blame her-" Bull continued, "Then why not just kill it? This is YOUR fade, right?"
Cries of dismay and crashing anarchy rained down around them until they gripped a door handle tight and leapt through a riveted timber door that felt completely out of place amidst the fine stonework of the Qun.
The carnage of Par Vollen slammed to a halt as they passed over the threshold, and Embrim yelled, "I TRIED!" And then softened as quiet enveloped them, "I couldn't beat it."
"Yeah, but you didn't have ME before-" Bull stopped as a child's cry cut through the air. As he looked to see where it came from, Bull and Embrim both found themselves enthralled.
*,*,*
Haba and Sera ran full tilt through an empty library and crashed through a tea service set up in a waiting room off to the side. They both clutched each other as they crouched low amidst shattered gilded china. Behind them floorboards creaked and groaned as something that breathed like a wolf but bore the silhouette of a man stalked through the hallways of her memories.
"It's Lord Rosmont Évreaux," Haba whispered as she quaked against Sera's arm. Sera ignored her as she listened for the Shade to finally pass by. For a few long moments, neither one breathed while the long panting breaths of the human-shaped creature finally lost track of them.
Haba was still shaking as Sera pried her loose and held her at arms length. Though she had grown a little since the first memory was opened, she still had the mannerisms of a young child. "Listen," Sera hissed, "If I know one thing, it's that you can't let the Fade know you're scared. Scared gets the Fade all bitey. Lock it up, right?"
Haba sniffed snot back up her nose and drew a cross over her heart with her finger. "Locked up…" She whispered. In the silence, they could hear the soft chiming song from the Fade, humming through the floorboards. They followed it's trail through an immaculate library that towered over their heads like a forest, and through hallways of tiny golden trinkets on pedestals that seemed to encroach closer as they walked, urging them to break everything and lure their pursuer onto their trail again.
"You know it isn't him, right?" Sera griped.
Haba only nodded. "But he's scary like the real 'him'."
"Pff. I'm scary. He's all wind and Fade shit. Arrow didn't take him down just means we gotta be smarter than him. He showed up after that first memory, yah? Means they're important. Means we should take back more a' them."
Haba nodded and tugged Sera back as they passed a small, simple wooden doorway into a sunlit side room. A dozen tiny desks were arranged in rows around a stool, where another emerald orb sang and swirled with motes of light. Sera nodded to it and Haba hesitantly approached. Haba pulled her hand back, but Sera shoved her forward and light flew out in all directions.
Haba's Mema was furiously shouting at a older, portly human woman in servant's garb, as the Lord watched with growing frustration. In the memory, Haba flinched as the boys who had picked on her were struck with canes in front of her. As she tried to turn away, the Lord pulled her face to watch.
The Estate garden was a blur around Haba as she ran as fast as she could around the outer wall. Curses of 'cow girl!' and 'tattletale!' and 'mud-foot!' screeched out behind her. The boys were bigger and older and were catching up fast, until a young man with a fair complexion grabbed her arm and tugged her into a crevice of the building and chuckled as the boys went by.
He looked over her head as they ran past, and whispered, "You're the Matron's daughter, right? I'm Julian."
Haba craned her head around to look at him, and asked, "Lord Évreaux's son?"
The boys doubled back and found them, but their faces went pale at the sight of the young man, and they muttered apologies and ran away as if they had already been struck by canes again. Haba just blinked back at them as Julian kept his hands on her shoulders reassuringly.
The memory burst around them both in a blast of warmth that lit the room like sunlight for a moment, until it returned to the azure gloom that had fallen over everything. Sera rubbed her eyes and watched as her breath condensed in the air.
"Shite!" She cursed under her breath. "It's back. Time to run!" She snatched up Haba's hand and pulled her behind her as she kicked down the back door and they ran out into the night through twisted rod-iron fences and partially-built walls. Behind them, a man in tattered robes touched the doorway. Frost slowly covered the building's facade, and the grass died away in waves.
"We're getting the hang of this, yeah?" Sera tried to sound cheerful, but Haba was almost as tall as she was now, and her face was wet with tears.
"It always ends badly," was all Haba replied.