When the gunshots started, Varric didn't look up because he couldn't risk the distraction. His hands needed to remain steady in spite of the cries from outside the gates. Thankfully, Harding's white knuckle grip on his tablet didn't falter either as she tersely reported on what their camera saw as it flew above the snaking road leading into Haven.
"A dozen more trucks coming up towards us." She reported grimly into her cell phone. "Advance force, I think. Trucks are armored, but I'm not seeing any external weapons."
"Keep the drone out of their sight." Cassandra ordered tersely through the speakerphone. Varric fought the urge to roll his eyes, speeding the device through the air higher, pushing as fast as it could go. He hadn't even realized he crested the next mountain until he watched Harding angle the camera down on the tablet, getting a good view of what sprawled out below their flight path.
Varric barely bit back a curse while his stomach dropped. He saw hundreds of people marching forward, carrying flashlights and flood lamps, identifiable against the snow only by the glowing spikes of red lyrium piercing their skin. Harding lost her voice beside him, but he heard her gulp audibly. He chanced a glance up from the tablet to meet her eyes and noted she looked pale, but maintained her calm exterior like a veteran combat reporter. She brought her phone up to her lips and hit the button without tearing her eyes from the screen.
"How many templars are there in the order?" She asked into the silence.
Curly answered, voice taut. "There are three brigades. With the exception of the battalions stationed in the Free Marches, many of those north of the Waking Sea remained in their posts."
Cullen said it like he answered the question. Harding swore and hit the mute button on the phone before addressing her question to Varric. "Any idea how many people are in a brigade?"
"Fuck if I know." The mass below the drone seemed endless, a sea of trained soldiers bent on destroying Haven with no peace talks, no chance to fight back. "It's like a riddle. How many humans does it take to fuck it all up for the rest of us?"
"Just one." The Iron Bull's low growl at their backs caused Harding to squeak, although to her credit she didn't drop the tablet. Varric appreciated her nerves of steel more and more. Bull continued speaking, unperturbed by her reaction. "About three thousand troops in a brigade. Three-hundred and fifty in a battalion. How many people are out there, Harding?"
Harding hit the mute button again, the silence heavy while she tried to calculate. Varric knew the number he came up with sat heavy in his mouth.
"At least three hundred in the mountain pass." She unmuted herself to inform the group on the phone. "Maybe five hundred. Hard to tell in the dark."
Varric thought four hundred, but shit, who knew. More soldiers than they had by far, enough to threaten Denerim itself if they turned back into Ferelden.
"Maker preserve us." Cullen's prayer came across the line as a whisper. Varric repeated it in his own head, uncertain if the Maker deigned to listen to dwarves, but at times like these really what was the worst that could happen for trying.
"Overcompensating." Bull grunted, stalking past. "Makes me wonder what they're afraid of."
The observation threw Varric for such a loop that he finally looked up, shocked into snark. "What is this to you, Tiny, warm-up?"
Bull's grin was more a vicious baring of teeth. Varric realized that the Qunari ditched his shirt, again, and wore nothing from the waist up except the assault rifle slung across his chest. Maybe they didn't have a bulletproof vest in Bull's size.
Did they make bulletproof vests in Bull's size? The author in him needed to know the answer, but he shoved it back down. Research for a later date, he thought, if they survived tonight.
"Hell of a lot of men for a bunch of witches, especially since most of 'em are barely old enough to shave." Bull muttered darkly. "So what kind of magic do they think Boss has? And why are they so afraid of it?"
Maria had magic that let her walk out of the vortex, then slam it shut. She had magic that closed cracks in reality and banished demons. She had magic that drew people to her in droves, like moths to a light.
Varric didn't know which kind the templars found more dangerous.
Varric glared back down at the image flickering, static lancing it. He pulled the drone up farther, away from the interference of the red-lyrium infected templars. Bull turned his attention to Harding. "Where's she at?"
He didn't need to specify. Harding unmuted her phone again with a single push of the button. "Seeker - you still got eyes on the Herald?"
A second of silence, then the sound of gunshots as Cassandra answered her phone tersely. "Southwest of the entrance, third barrier. Has the package been delivered?"
"Working on it." Varric muttered. His sentence, unfortunately, was punctuated by a rather large explosion that caused him to look up again, startled.
"Might want to work a bit faster." Bull advised, streaking off with a surprising amount of speed. "And dial me into that line, Harding!"
xx
Maybe it was for the best that the darkness hid the carnage. Maria didn't want to know if she recognized the slumped figure beside her, the one whose entire uniform was dark with fresh, shining blood. She could still smell the iron of it over the overpowering scent of gasoline and gunpowder. Whoever the girl had been before she took a bullet to the neck, she was gone now, and for what?
The thoughts spun in circles like water down the drain, but she didn't stop moving. Her fingers didn't shake while she loaded the pistol in her hand again, the empty magazine falling to the ground abandoned while she slipped a new one in.
Beside her, Solas murmured something under his breath, eyes closed. When he opened them, they glowed bright green in the night. She felt the prickle of magic in her skin, on her tongue. Solas rested his hand on the ground near them and Maria swore she felt it lurch in a way that threatened to make her stomach send the shitty beer she drank earlier in the evening back up her throat.
Still, she moved. She popped up from the barrier and aimed at the monsters surging towards her left. One fell, a neat shot to the head sending it sprawling, his red lyrium arm crumbling to shards when he hit the ground. Another shot sent a woman with spikes coming from her cheekbones staggering.
The ground beneath the rest of them erupted in thorny vines that moved like whips, flaying through the camouflage uniforms, shattering red lyrium. Solas muttered still, and it sounded like Elvish, but nothing like the Elvish she'd heard in the slums. This sounded ancient, powerful, breathtaking. It sounded like what curses and hexes should sound like if this was a story from Varric's books.
One of the templars caught sight of her over the barricade and leveled an assault rifle in their direction. Maria ducked back down and listened to the wicked crack of gunfire piercing the night. Solas clenched his fist and a bright, shimmering bubble burst to life above their heads, rattling as the bullets struck it.
"THERE!" Someone bellowed. "THE FALSE HERALD!"
"Should someone tell them I've tried to stop that?" Maria asked weakly. Solas didn't quip back, he simply threw his arm out around the edge of the barrier. Maria didn't quite see what the magic he cast accomplished, but she heard the pained scream of a man.
Then something hit the barrier above her head and it popped, just like the bubble it resembled. The force resonated like a high pitched whine, one she felt in her teeth. Solas gasped, but before Maria could examine what happened, an opposing force blew past her like a gust of wind, washing away the ringing in her ears. "Careful, darling!" Vivienne shouted from somewhere behind them.
"What the sodding hell was that?" Maria asked, laser focused on the way Solas brought his fingers to his temple.
"A smite." Solas spat venomously. "Madame Vivienne skillfully deflected the worst of it."
"Are you alright?" Maria asked, distracted at a fatal moment. The templar jumping the barrier surprised her, although she scrambled to raise her pistol as quickly as she could, the muzzle of an assault rifle swinging towards her…
A loud crack. She flinched in spite of herself, but it was the templar that pitched forward and another hulking figure that crouched down behind the barrier, a much harder feat for him than for her.
"Boss, where's your phone?" Bull asked calmly, relieving the templar of his rifle and slinging it over his shoulder. The one he carried had a suspicious bloodstain on the butt of it, she suspected it came from the templar knocked unconscious at her feet.
"Charging." Maria answered, shocked by the normalcy of the question. "Ran out of battery. Didn't think to grab it on my way out the door. Good news, Varric told me once it's done charging it'll show up. Bad news, Varric is sometimes full of shit, so I can't be sure it will."
Bull huffed in disbelief and pulled his own from his pants pocket. She could see he was on an open call. "I'm with Boss. Southwest barriers are holding, but barely. What's the situation?"
"Templars breached the southeast." Cullen's terse voice answered. "Driven off, thank the Maker, but it was close."
"It looks like they're reorganizing." Leliana began speaking over Cullen, calm but talking quickly. "Directing their forces towards the southwest. I recommend redirecting our efforts…"
"They saw me." Maria met Bull's eye helplessly. "Bull, what if they don't want anyone else, what if…"
"Doesn't change anything." Bull hit the mute button on his phone quickly. "How much ammunition do you have left?"
Maria spotted Bull's lie, but she didn't call him on it. He'd been a soldier, after all, he could do the damn math. If all the red templars wanted was one unlucky dwarf, and her surrender would save the people cowering in the chantry…
"Not much." She admitted, tongue thick with fear. She didn't want to die here, wanted to be captured even less. Bull swung his rifle around with a brisk nod.
"Make it count then." He advised grimly. "Horns up, boss."
She choked on a laugh tinged with hysteria. "Horns up." She repeated, wrapping her fingers tight around the pistol.
xx
The harried, frightened voices coming from Harding's phone took a turn for the desperate. They were joined by a mishmash of shouted instructions punctuated with gunfire and screams, echoing from all directions, the scent of smoke and blood hanging in the air.
Just like the final showdown at the Gallows, down to the rising certainty Varric felt that, yes, this was probably where they were all going to die. He'd give his right nut for Hawke's magic, Fenris's stockpile of guns, hell, even Merrill's demons. Anything to even the fucking odds.
"We're overwhelmed!" Vivienne called out across the line.
"More coming up the road!" Cullen replied.
"Varric!" Cassandra's voice cut through all the babble, the panic. "The package must be delivered now!"
"Almost, Seeker!" Varric called out into Harding's phone. It had to be perfect, too close to Haven, they'd get caught in the avalanche. Too far away, they'd miss the bulk of the templars entirely. "Bianca, how far?"
"ETA for ideal placement is roughly five minutes. Advise beginning descent as soon as possible." The AI answered. "Security footage suggests Maria Cadash's position is untenable, but the Iron Bull, Solas, and she have not retreated."
Varric didn't look away from the navigation controls, but his heart stuttered in his chest. He forced his voice to stay calm. "I need five more minutes and Cadash needs to move her ass."
"If we pull back, we lose this entire line." Bull grunted out immediately over the line, Varric imagined the Qunari punching a templar as efficiently as he'd once punched a terror demon. He heard the steady pop of gunfire, thought he heard Maria spitting out instructions in the background but he couldn't be sure.
"I need a guarantee, Tethras!" Cullen barked. "If you can't deliver that avalanche in five minutes, we can't fall back!"
"If the soldiers don't retreat now, casualties will mount. Beginning in the southwest quadrant." Bianca advised again, more insistently if possible. "Surveillance footage indicates the Herald is in direct line of fire."
Varric didn't know whether he wanted to shake her or kiss her.
"Five minutes or I'll shave my chest, I swear." He promised. Anything, anything to get them to fucking move. On his tablet screen, the drone's camera showed only snow-covered pine trees flying beneath them. For a second, the only answer on the line was silence. Varric could count his own panicked heartbeats.
"Fall back."
Maria's voice, full of grim determination, issued the order. It sent a wave of relief crashing through him and he released a breath he didn't even realize he'd been holding. As if everyone had been waiting for direction from their Herald, the forces at the gate threw it open. On top of the crumbling wall, soldiers aimed rifles down, prepared to cover the retreat.
"Harding!" Varric thrust the controls back in her hand. "Keep her straight and when I give the word drop the package."
"Right." Harding ducked below their own barrier with his tablet and the controls. She thrust his shotgun towards him like she read his damn mind. "Don't get shot before giving the signal, Tethras."
If he had his way, there wouldn't be any dead dwarves tonight.
The thought no sooner flitted through his head than the first soldiers stumbled back through the gates, dragging fallen comrades behind them, a mess of blood and horror, shouting in confusion. Varric vaulted over their barrier to stand in front of it, waiting as another group stumbled through.
No sign of crimson beyond the dark shine of blood on their uniforms. No small figure crouching among the humans. He spotted Cassandra climbing the walls, her gun pointed down, heard her voice shouting something incomprehensible.
The third group didn't come in alone. One of the soldiers, an elven woman, fell with a strangled scream, pitching forward while some sort of… monster stabbed an arm of red lyrium, sharp as a machete, through her abdomen.
This was what the red lyrium turned the templars into. Mindless, bloodthirsty creatures willing to tear a damn kid to shreds for… for what? What was any of this shit even for? And the only person responsible for letting this poison out into the world stared back at him in the mirror everyday.
Blackwall ripped the templar off the girl, threw it onto the ground before aiming his rifle coldy right at its head. Varric didn't bother watching him pull the trigger. Cullen shouted orders, pulling in stragglers, witches carrying each other and throwing flames, sparks, and hexes of all sorts over their shoulders. Vivienne pushed more in, ordering them in terse, clipped tones. Varric watched a former templar sling a witch with a broken leg up over his shoulder.
It was nearly enough to warm his heart.
"The drone is approaching optimal deployment range. Two minutes." Bianca chimed in his ear. Sera scrambled through the gates, shooting over her shoulder. Varric leveled his gun and blasted the creature staggering in after her.
"GET DOWN!" Cassandra screeched. Something hit the solid walls of Haven, knocked some of the soldiers to the ground below. Varric didn't tear his eyes from the gate, waiting. Waiting with nausea rising in his stomach, waiting with breath caught in his throat.
"Where the fuck is Cadash!" Blackwall shouted over the fray. More templars tried to stream in, growling and gnashing, shooting guns and stabbing with limbs of red lyrium, madness gleaming in crimson eyes.
Then Dorian appeared in the gates, shadows of darkness rolling around him like a living being, grabbing the templars, throwing them back to the ground, hard enough to shatter bones. Sparkler looked less like a witch every second and more like an old god back to wreak bloody vengeance.
Finally, a small blur of red ducking under his arm, trying to load her gun and move at the same time. Bull slipped past on the other side, Solas up over his shoulder, the Elven witch too still. He booked past Dorian, but Maria stopped, pressing her back to the witch's. An empty magazine fell at her feet.
"Is there anyone else?" Cullen shouted hopelessly.
"Not alive!" Bull stuffed Solas's boneless form behind a house, pulled his assault rifle and began picking off the templars trying to slip past Dorian. "Close the damn gate!"
"Package ready for deployment." Bianca insisted smoothly.
"HARDING GO!" Varric shouted, watching as Maria twisted around Dorian to direct a perfect shot into a templar's heart. Varric's shotgun took out another's leg, sent him sprawling to the ground for Sera to pick off from above.
"It won't deploy!" Harding screamed back. "The limbs are stuck, I…"
"CLOSE THE BLIGHTED GATES!" Cullen roared the order. Inquisition troops raced forward, tried to close the heavy iron gates while the templars continued to press.
"Bianca, what's the damn issue?" Varric asked, struggling to reload the shotgun. Cullen and Cassandra joined the soldiers at the gates while Dorian and Maria stood in the center of the square just inside, trying to push the templars back out.
"The drone is not obeying commands to release the package." Bianca answered calmly. Rather too calmly, in Varric's opinion, since his death appeared imminent. "The failure appears mechanical and unrelated to software operation. I'm unable to correct it."
"Herald-tits!" Sera yelled, lobbing something across the square. Maria managed to catch it before it sailed past. Whatever it was made her swear violently. She lobbed a disbelieving stare back in Sera's direction.
"Tell 'em to eat it!" Sera exclaimed. "Sooner is better!"
Varric couldn't agree more. This needed to end, and if they couldn't drop the package…
Well, they could drop the whole damn drone out of the sky.
"Harding, crash it!" He ordered.
"What?!" She screamed back.
"I'll owe you one!" He retorted quickly.
Harding swore, but Varric didn't pay her any mind. In front of him, he watched Maria look at whatever was in her hand, her steely gaze directed back out the gate. Varric heard something roar and finally saw what had hit the gate the first time.
It stood as tall as a house and took huge, thunderous footfalls. Varric thought it was a giant formed of nothing red lyrium and rage, a behemoth to make them tremble. It bellowed as it stalked forward, more templars running beneath and around it. It approached regardless of the gunfire and spells slung at it, approached like a mountain of inevitable death.
"Drone is losing altitude." Bianca informed him.
Varric worried it was too late. Cassandra and Cullen couldn't get the gate closed, and even if they did, it couldn't stand against that monster. But instead of aiming her gun, Maria dropped the pistol to the ground. She fiddled with the thing in her hand, threw something small and shiny behind her and waited a split second, eyes focused.
He didn't realize what she had until she threw it, her aim precise. It sailed over the templars storming the gate, arched gracefully in the air with an almost lazy spin as it flew through the narrowing opening, straight towards the giant. Maria pushed Dorian down to the ground behind her, both witch and dwarf falling to the old cobblestones.
"GET DOWN!" Cullen ordered.
As soon as he did, the grenade exploded just in front of the behemoth. The explosion threw a cloud of smoke into the air, sent the shattered, agonized screams of men into the air. Cassandra bolted back up from the stones immediately, Cullen beside her, Blackwall joining them. The gates thrust shut on the templars outside, slammed securely with deadbolts and locks. Sealed with magic just to be safe.
"Impact eminent." Bianca warned. Not even a second later, Varric heard the explosion far away in the mountains. He dipped back behind the barricade, pulled the tablet impatiently from Harding's shaking hands. The camera from the drone had gone dead, but he had security footage in another app, the cameras posted on the walls outside Haven. Half of them showed nothing but static, broken by magic or shot to pieces, but he zoomed in on one of them.
It happened to be pointed right at the mountain and he saw, breathless with relief, the avalanche as it began to roll, gathering steam, heading straight to the approaching army.
"We did it." He felt dizzy with the success. "By my ancestor's sweet tits, we did it."
xx
The frail, brittle cheer behind her sounded choked with exhaustion. Still, it was a cry of victory, of bittersweet relief and Maria choked on her own hysterical laugh. Her hands shook while she pushed off the gritty stones, looking to Dorian on her right. The witch pushed himself up on hands and knees and looked over to her. Amazingly he managed to look both unbearably weary and delighted. "Do you mean to tell me we've somehow survived the impossible again?"
She was as astonished as he was, frankly. Instead, she parroted his words back to him with the barest hint of a smile, but it was all she could conjure up. "We're too pretty and clever to die in the Ferelden muck, remember?"
"And she jokes." Dorian chuckled, standing stiffly and offering his arm to pull her from the ground. Around them, people murmured, both anxious and hopeful. Maria saw Vivienne crouching beside Solas, examining his wounded leg. Sera cackled madly, leaning on Blackwall. Cassandra and Cullen still pressed against the gate and Bull climbed the top of the wall to look over it.
Maria retrieved her discarded pistol and rolled her own sore shoulder. She could feel blood sticky on her cheek and her knuckles, scraped raw and bloody, protested when she clenched her fist. Still, she was alive. A whole lot of other people fucking weren't.
As if Dorian read the thought in her face, he squeezed her hand before dropping it. He didn't say anything, he didn't need to.
"Did you seriously catch a grenade Buttercup lobbed at you?"
Varric approached from behind Dorian, a grin tugging his lips upward, ambling along as if they weren't in the aftermath of a pitched battle for their lives. Dorian's own expression turned unbearably smug as he swept himself gracefully out of the way, spinning to stand beside her instead of between the two dwarves. Maria pushed back her hair impatiently, unable to quite meet Varric's eyes.
"I didn't know it was a grenade, to be completely honest." She admitted. "Not until I'd already caught it."
"Pin was still in, yeah?" Sera called back with a careless shrug. Maria let her eyes flick up to examine Varric's face, caught in grim shadows, but still somehow cheerful.
She fought back an unreasonable urge to grab him by his ridiculously unbuttoned shirt and kiss him. That, Maria reasoned, was exactly what happened in the terrible romance novels he tried to write. Real people didn't do that kind of shit, though, particularly people like her.
"You alright, Princess?" Varric's gentle question caught her off guard. She finally met his eyes with her own. The residual terror bubbled up while she stared into his warm, whiskey colored depths, but she tapped it down, bit back the tears that threatened with nothing more than willpower. She needed to lock it all away, couldn't deal with it now, couldn't bear to unload all of the horror on Varric just because his eyes sparkled kindly in the darkness and she knew the way it felt to be pressed close to his chest, warm and safe and alive.
She closed her eyes for a second to escape his scrutiny, but that was a mistake too. Flashes of the battle were engraved on her eyelids. She recalled Bull barely dodging the behemoth's fist while they tried to retreat. She saw the bullet slicing through Solas's thigh and him crumpling to the ground. She remembered a witch unable to breathe as a templar closed his fists around her slim neck. She could still feel the sheer terror when a man grabbed her arm and pulled with such force she thought he'd wrench it right out of its socket before she put a bullet in his right eye socket.
She nodded briskly and lifted her eyes to the star studded sky above them instead. "I will be." She answered.
"I'm also quite fine." Dorian made a great show of examining his fingernails disdainfully. "I do appreciate you asking."
Varric simply sighed. "Sparkler, if your mustache was so much as slightly singed we'd have already heard about it."
She smiled in spite of herself, shaking her head to clear it and exhaling slowly. She allowed herself a moment to relax, to believe the worst was over. She let her eyes fall back to Varric's, tried to summon an appropriate response to defend Dorian or even to ask if Varric was alright.
She didn't get the chance.
The screech from above sounded like nails on a chalkboard, but with the volume of an airplane landing. All her hair stood on end and she shuddered instinctively, recoiling into herself. A brief second of silence before another shrieking roar echoed in the sudden silence. Maria didn't know what it heralded, but she knew she'd heard it before. The sound transported her back to the thirteenth floor in Redcliffe instantly and her heart thudded unsteadily.
"LOOK OUT!"
She didn't know who yelled, but the warning didn't prepare her for the dark shape, larger than a fucking tractor trailer, soaring over them. It let out another screech and Dorian swore in that beautiful, musical language of his.
The museum in Ostwick had an exhibit which featured a skull with a jaw large enough for Maria to stand straight up in, massive horns curling from each side, skeletal wings hanging from the museum ceiling. A video played repeatedly on one wall showing what scholars thought the creature looked like. Maria loved visiting as a girl, remembered Nanna taking pictures of her and Bea in front of the creature's bones.
She had to admit, if that skeleton belonged to what she was looking at in the streetlights and dark shadows over her, the scholars at Ostwick did a damn good job recreating it on video. The rest of her froze in shock, insisting that she couldn't be looking at what she was seeing. It was impossible, it was…
The creature opened it's massive jaw again, but instead of screeching, something bright sparked within it. Like a thousand blowtorches lighting up all at once, it spewed fire down below. Maria felt the heat immediately, watched one of the wooden houses catch ablaze.
Then everyone began to scream at once.
"Dragons are extinct!" She yelled, whirling to Dorian. He stared at the thing slack jawed as well, stunned into abrupt silence. It was Varric that moved, pulling both of them away from the spreading flames.
"Yeah, well, that one didn't get the memo!" Varric insisted. The dragon roared again, the sound carrying across the town, more flames erupting from it's jaw, igniting everything.
"Get to the chantry!" Cullen ordered. "NOW! GO!"