Chapter 27: Gods and Pretenders

It was almost shocking, how quickly it happened. One moment, everything was normal — just another day, waiting, on edge, a moment in the War Room, discussing options, Cullen's normally neat hair mussed from waking up next to Errol that morning and subsequent activities, Leliana and Josephine gently ribbing him even as they discussed sending envoys into the deep roads or the progress of their soldiers returning from the Arbor Wilds — and then it was all green light and noise and Errol knew the end had come.

"He's in the Valley of Sacred Ashes," Errol said, her hand sparking emerald fire. Of course — starting where it all began.

"You either close the Breach once more, or it swallows the world," Morrigan said with an almost supernatural calm. Errol could already feel the witch gathering her power, preparing for the change, the dragon whispering under her skin.

"But that's madness!" Josephine exclaimed. "Wouldn't that kill him as well?"

They all read the answer in each other's faces. Corypheus was willing to die for his mad plan.

Cullen shook his head, his face pale. "Our forces haven't returned from the Arbor Wilds. You'll have no back up."

Errol clenched her hands into fists and nodded slowly. "I'll have enough. The best team I can ask for is here at Skyhold." She forced herself to look relatively calm. "Besides, I promised Varric he'd get a few shots in. And you know Iron Bull has been waiting to kick some demon ass."

"I'm coming too," Cullen said, moving quickly to her side of the table.

Errol shook her head. "No."

"I'm afraid this is not up for argument," he said, hand on his sword. "I'm not letting you go there alone."

"I won't be alone. You are the Commander of our forces and—"

"Right now you are our forces!"

"I agree with Errol," Leliana said. "Remember your position, Cullen, you can't—"

"I watched Errol die once, at Adamant, and I was too far away to do anything about it," he snapped, his back straight, looking far more like a lion than he had any right to. "Damn being a Commander and damn my position, I won't let that happen again. I am going with the forward team. If I die, there are capable men who can take over. Choose one of them. I leave with Errol." With that he put his hand on the small of her back and forcefully propelled them out the doors.

He led them past Josephine's empty huge chair and through the second set of doors, pausing just before the doors that led to the great hall. In that last private space he pushed her against the wall and kissed her, hard, his teeth nipping at her lower lip, his tongue urgently demanding access to her mouth, which she gave willingly, twining her arms around his neck.

Errol tried to memorize how he tasted, the sounds he made, the way his hair felt under her fingers and how his stubble rasped against her chin. After a long moment he drew back, shaking, and pressed his forehead to hers.

"Do not try and make me stay behind," he said harshly. She shook her head.

"I know you won't."

He kissed her again, even harder, his hands tangled up in her hair, his mouth almost punishing on hers, like he was trying to imprint the feel of her. When he spoke again his words were ragged. "If you die, I die," he whispered. "So you best not die."

"I'll try really, really hard," she promised. "But only if you promise not to die as well."

He nodded, his thumbs gently sweeping the curve of her face.

"I love you," he said. "More than I have ever loved anything. More than I ever will."

She kissed him, letting her tongue tangle with his without finesse or subtly. "I love you, I love you, I love you," she breathed. "No matter what happens, never doubt that."

He nodded and leaned his forehead against hers again. "Good." Then with a shuddering sigh he stepped away.

The Great Hall was still and eerie; it felt like a breath being held. The nobles had fled to the Chantry or their rooms, and Errol found her friends already waiting for her. Iron Bull stood with the Chargers; Cassandra was the consummate Seeker, shield on her back and sword at her waist; Dorian had his skull staff in one hand, his mustache perfectly curled; Blackwall stood apart, and he met her eye with a determination that bordered on suicidal; Vivienne was all elegance and ice-cold strength.

"Suit up, Inquisitor," Varric said, balancing Bianca on one shoulder. "We're all waiting on your command."

Cole slipped one hand into hers. "He won't hurt you," he whispered fiercely. "I won't let him."

"Time to shoot Coryface, yah?" Sera asked, shifting restlessly. "Come on, then, let's move it. Sooner there, sooner back for the after party and the things-getting-back-to-normal party."

Solas lingered in the doorway of his room, armor on and staff in his hand, watching, waiting.

Errol's heart suddenly felt too big for her chest. She nodded. "Give me two minutes," she said. "I have no idea how you all got ready so quickly."

"We went straight for our armor and weapons," Dorian said, then gave her and Cullen a suggestive smile. "What were you doing?"

She shook her head. "Two minutes," she promised, then turned and sprinted up to her room, the pulsing green light pouring through the windows. As she dressed she made a point to tuck Cullen's coin, now hanging from a chain around her neck, under her armor where it would stay safe. She still couldn't quite wrap her head around the fact that the final battle was now. After all this time, it was here, and she would be damned if a single person in that hall died today.

She thought of Flemeth's words, when she had asked her for advice, how the Witch of the Wilds and Goddess Incarnate regarded her with one eyebrow raised imperiously.

'You?' Flemeth had said, right before she walked away in a haze of smoke and magic. 'What would I even offer, spirit child? You never have nor ever will take anyone's advice. You plow forward, heedless of the cliffs below, and I fear it may end in blood and fire. If you think that a few words now can stop you, well, you've overestimated even my power.'

Perhaps Flemeth was right, Errol thought, clasping the last of her buckles into place. She would die before a single one of them fell. That was a forgone conclusion, and she had made peace with it. No matter what she told Cullen, Errol intended to fight to the death to make sure that they lived.

She emerged back into the hall in full battle gear, staff in her hand, once more and perhaps for the last time the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste.

It was time.


"I knew you would come," Corypheus crowed, the orb spiraling madly and glowing red between his clawed hands. She felt rather than heard Solas' sharp intake of breath at the sight of the elven orb so corrupted.

"This ends now!" she shouted, feeling like a cliche but meaning it, down to her bones. Her staff erupted into fire just as her left hand burst into green flame, and it felt like her whole body was burning. Andraste's holy fire, indeed. "Motherfucker!" she added for good measure, because it felt good to curse at him, to feel like her old self again, once more the Owl, sharpening her talons.

"And so it shall," he said, and then everything glowed that awful red and groaned and snapped and broke and there was screaming and it lifted

Errol fell to her knees as the ruins of the Temple started to rise from the ground with a thunderous roar. She turned and saw the rest of them struggling to stay upright, the stone under them crumbling, Cullen valiantly attempting to put one foot in front of the other, Solas leaning hard on his staff as it anchored him to the ground.

This was exactly what she needed. Errol opened her hand and filled it with green light. Forgive me.

Varric realized her intent first, but he couldn't let out more than a strangled cry before her barrier blasted him back. It took even the mages off guard, and by the time they attempted to rally the Temple had rocketed upward, stranding them hundreds of feet below. She thought she heard Cullen scream her name, but it was carried by the wind; she knew she felt Solas' mana press against her, the attempt at a Fade-step, but even he was blocked by the speed and the vicious, tainted magic.

"Noble but ultimately foolish, as all noble deeds are," Corypheus drawled in the smug voice of someone who knew he had won. "You merely spared your friends the honor of being killed by a God, but they will find death on the ground, I've set loose enough demons to ensure that." He passed the orb through the air from hand to hand, though it never touched skin. "But it is only right that it ends as it started, the God and the pretender, the lost spirit from another world, alone at last. I've been waiting eagerly for the chance to take your world, and now in my victory I shall have it."

With that, his dragon emerged, all rotten scales and blighted body, but Morrigan pounced on it, lithe as a great cat, huge teeth snapping at its neck, and the two beasts screamed through the sky in a fight as graceful and wicked as a dance.

"You dare," he breathed. "So be it." He vanished behind what was left of the crumbling stonework of the Temple, and his voice echoed restlessly around her. "Come to me, little spirit who calls herself Herald, she who would be a pretend God, and I will flay the Fade-skin from your false bones and craft you as a my own pretty bridge to your world. Come, and die."

Errol gripped her staff and watched the dragons keen overhead. She would not follow Corypheus to her death without confirming the great beast's demise first.

Morrigan was fierce, tearing into the soft throat and belly of the red lyrium tainted dragon, but it held part of Corypheus' essence, and was vicious in its counter-attacks. It shredded one of her wings, leaving her barely able to fly, and she latched onto its foot, crushing it in her powerful jaws, taking it down with her. They tumbled to the ground and landed hard, but when the smoke cleared the dragon was still alive, and Morrigan was once again a wisp of a witch, her arm shattered, blood streaming from her side.

Oh, shit.

The dragon turned on her, crumpled foot trailing behind it, the gash in its side streaming red intestines. It snapped foaming white teeth, half dead but vicious, angrier in its death throes, its wings beating frantically, crawling toward her, neck stretched and whining with bloodlust. Errol spun her staff and willed her heart to be calm and her hands not to shake. She lit it up with fire, still her strongest element, and followed that with spirit magic, the antithesis to the dragon's lightning. The massive jaws snapped; she Fade-stepped, something she had only just learned to do, and found herself by the heaving wet mass of intestines.

Errol drove her staff into them and sent fire straight through the dragon's innards. The stench was horrific as its stomach and bowels released. The dragon roared and spun its head around, crashing into her barrier with enough force to send her sprawling. Her back slammed against a jagged, broken wall. The teeth came up to her face and only the wood of her staff, coated in a film of spirit magic, stopped it.

Errol gritted her teeth as the beast pushed closer, its drool spooling in a long hiss to land on her armor, her staff creaking with the force of keeping the great jaws off of her. She whispered a curse, gathered the last of her energy, and shot a ball of fire from the cramped tips of her fingers down the dragon's open gullet. It lit the beast up from the inside out, and after a few final, delirious jerks, the huge head crashed down on her, eyes wide and unseeing, and a wisp of red fled from its body and up to where Corypheus watched the battle with rage-filled eyes.

"Let it end here!" he screamed, raising the orb high. "Let the skies boil! Let the world be rent asunder! You have no power left, and I will see you broken and bleeding before me, a sacrifice to a new God!"

The Breach yawned at his command, widened and grew, until she could feel the raw Fade tingling against her skin. If anything, it rejuvenated her, gave her the energy to push the massive head from her legs and stand again, shaking but determined. He was right — she was almost spent. But she was a spirit, and he was opening the Fade to her. Power flowed out, perhaps not enough to defeat him, but enough to—

What? What was her plan? Errol climbed the stairs, her trembling legs slowly growing stronger with each step, the Fade brushing against her skin, fellow spirits urging her on, tracing her skin with invisible fingers. The orb, the orb, they whispered urgently, and she felt it, the pureness, the heart of it that he couldn't taint, the true power that he couldn't hold.

The needle that pulled the thread.

She flexed her left hand and felt it burn green and righteous.

Finally she ascended the last step and came face-to-face with the would-be God. He attacked immediately, his power all lightning and red lyrium, and she met him with fire and spirit and Fade, but it was all a distraction, a decoy. She watched his eyes burn crimson, everything in him red and aglow, the orb above him like a rift she needed to close.

That's all, she thought as she danced and dodged another attack, letting him singe her, hurt her, her fire just missing her mark as his taunts grew more frenzied and victorious. It's just another rift you need to close. You just need to reach, and pull—

She lifted her hand, and flicked her wrist in that way she had so many times before, and yanked, hard, so hard it nearly took her off her feet. The orb jerked like its chain had been pulled and it spiraled out of its orbit and into her hand. The moment it reunited with its Anchor it turned emerald again, the poison red leeching out, and Corypheus' face changed from triumphant to confused to panicked in one beautiful instant.

"No," he snarled, and reached with his magic, trying desperately to pull it back. "Dumat, ancient ones, I beseech you, if you exist, if you ever truly existed, aid me now!"

The orb trembled but didn't move from her hand. Errol opened her palm and it floated there, peaceful, powerful. She felt the elven magic thrumming through her spirit body, and for an instant she was an elf again as she was in the Fade, the orb shaping her into its perfect vessel, into what it needed her to be at that moment.

She raised it up and it shot into the sky, into the heart of the Breach, the needle pulling the thread and knitting the ragged edges back together, neat and closed and perfect, until the scar in the sky was gone and it was nothing but clean heavens above. Then it barreled back down and she caught it, its weight comforting and familiar.

"You wanted into the Fade?" she asked, her voice savage and snarled, her eyes awash with green light. "Wish granted. I'll send you there in fucking pieces." The orb began spinning madly, and as it did Corypheus started to warp. It pulled him in, bit by bit, and as it did the orb's ancient power began to fracture.

Beads of sweat trickled down her face as she struggled to hold on. "You will never hurt anyone ever again," she breathed, pushing through the pain. As Corypheus died so did his spell, but Errol was only dimly aware of them barreling back to the ground, rocks slamming around them; she was flush with power, protected by the orb even as fissures and cracks flared along it as it stretched to accommodate Corypheus, to pull him apart and neutralize him, turn him into a part of the very Fade he had hoped to contaminate.

Finally, and with an agonized roar, the false god was gone. The orb lasted long enough to cushion her blow as the Temple crashed on the ground, and then it shattered in her hands, and everything went dark.


Errol awoke to a gentle healing spell and a cool hand on her forehead. She blinked, hazily, every muscle screaming in protest, and a pair of blue eyes swam in her vision. "Solas?"

"Don't try to move. It seems a piece of floating masonry toppled on you in the fall. You will be fine once they dig you out and you see a healer, but it is beyond me at the moment, I'm afraid."

Errol looked down to see that her legs were indeed under a pile of rubble. "Oh, so that's why I feel like shit."

"Among other reasons." He drifted his fingers over her brow and she felt a cut heal, though blood still dripped down the side of her face. "What you did was so beyond foolish there is not even a word for it. I cannot believe that you still live." There was anger in his tone, but it was buried under relief and a deep, dark sadness that she couldn't fathom.

She tried to smile but it was painful. "I'm still alive, and Corypheus is dead."

"True," he said, his fingers drifting down, his thumb sweeping the blood away from her cheek. "But the orb is destroyed. Had I been there, perhaps it could have been saved."

She refused to feel guilty. "I'd rather it gone and you alive."

"A noble sentiment," he said, sighing. "But ultimately foolish."

"That's what Corypheus said."

"Then perhaps for once in his long, blighted life he wasn't wrong. You should not have underestimated me."

She caught his hand in hers. "I saw you die once. I wasn't going to let it happen again. But I'm sorry about the orb. I am. I had no way of knowing it would crack under the pressure."

He sighed again and shook his head, pain evident in his face. "The fault is not yours," he murmured. "From the first, the fault was never yours."

She could hear desperate voices calling her name, the sound of rocks being overturned. "They're searching for me."

"They'll find you in a moment," he said. "And when they do I must be gone."

Her breath caught in her throat. "Gone? Where? Why?"

"That I cannot tell you, ma vhenan, my spirit," he said, and to her surprise he tipped her chin up and pressed one warm, soft kiss to her bloodied lips. "But I will return for you. I made you a promise I have yet to fulfill, and our tale is not finished."

"Solas," she murmured, grasping for him, but the Fade twisted and he was gone, and she was alone, still trapped under the fallen wall, fingers stretched toward a man who wasn't there.

Moments later Cullen came into view, and his relieved shout of "I've found her!" roused her from her daze. Soon the Inquisition had rallied around her and the stones were lifted from her legs, magic was assessing the damage, familiar arms were gently cradling her battered body, and potions were being tipped down her throat. She swallowed and sputtered, the familiar taste of elfroot warming her freezing skin and washing the tang of blood from her mouth. The world was starting to fade again, hazing in and out of focus, and dimly she realized that it was Cullen who held her, his smell familiar and comforting, and she grasped at his mantle weakly, desperate for something to cling to.

"It's okay," he reassured her, kissing her forehead, her temple, her ear, her cheeks, anywhere he could reach, his whole body thrumming. "You're alive, you're here, I've got you. I've got you. I won't let you go." He pressed his forehead to hers, his breath ragged. "Maker, Errol, you're alive and I'll never let you go again."

"Good," she breathed, and she didn't struggle when they brought her another potion that made the world swirl and tilt to black, a sleep without dreams or hurt or fear.

She was safe.