Aaron's and Hawke's groups met the Inquisitor's first, arriving at a scene of chaos, of a dragon bearing down on them.
"Well, shit, Chuckles," Varric huffed as they ran away from the dragon. "You just had to get in on the action."
"I do love dragons," Hawke replied with an adorable smile.
"What's going on?" Dorian asked, joining the group by seemingly appearing out of thin air.
Hawke screamed, "I thought mages couldn't do that!"
Rolling his eyes, Renan asked as they joined the race against the dragon, "Aren't you a mage?"
"Yes!" Hawke yelled, sounding just a teeny bit terrified.
"That's Corypheus's dragon," Sulahn announced.
"Yeah, we know," Hawke replied, the panic slowly leaving her voice. "Hey, Varric?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think I can talk to Morrigan after all this? I heard she's a shapeshifter. Maybe she can teach me how to turn into a dragon!"
"She is Flemeth's daughter," Arya informed them.
"Wait . . ." Hawke nearly halted, but Varric grabbed her by the fur collar of her armor and towed her after him. The dragon breathed its odd flames behind them, missing them by just enough distance for them to feel the flames.
"Flemeth is Morrigan's mother? Which means . . . Morrigan is the daughter of the Witch of the Wilds, and Flemeth helped you." She pointed at Arya. "Flemeth helped you, and she helped me. She turned into a dragon."
"I know," Arya panted. "Hold up. She helped you? But I killed her!"
"When?"
Arya shrugged and answered breathlessly, "I don't know. A couple months after Ostagar?"
"It took me a while to put that whatever-it-was on the mountaintop. It was definitely more than a couple months after Ostagar, since that was before Lothering, and by trip to Kirkwall . . . I'm sorry. Why are we talking about this while we're running from an evil dragon? I'm in shape, but not that in shape."
"Weakling," Arya muttered under her breath with a smile.
Hawke squinted at her.
"Oh, look. A dead end." Vivienne stopped before the rest of them, settling into such regality that any who saw her would not believe they had run around the entire fortress. "And there's Warden Clarel."
"And Tevinter jerkface," Sera added quite eloquently.
Vivienne shot her a disgusted glare, and Vry frowned at the woman.
Arya rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "I swear, working with you all is like working with children."
Meanwhile, Hawke jumped up and down with her hand on Varric's back as she pointed out the strong tail and unique jawline of the dragon. She had been studying.
"Andraste preserve us," Arya mumbled.
Sulahn marched back to them. Apparently, she had begun her walk to the confrontation of Clarel and the Tevinter tool while everyone else stood and talked at the entry to the one-sided bridge.
"Hello?" Sulahn called over, tone signaling her annoyance at the lack of participation.
"Hello!" Cole greeted sweetly.
Sulahn spared him a motherly smile and then returned to business. "Why are you all so preoccupied? We're in the middle of a battle!"
"So everyone keeps saying," Hawke said, stroking her chin like a detective, "and yet we fail to take the situation seriously. I wonder why that is . . ."
Cole began to list what he thought of the situation, "Broken, bleeding, blighted hearts rending, righted, restless. Unsure, uninterested, unmotivated––"
"Alliteration!" Hawke shouted, puffing out her chest after yet another successful discovery of a literary device.
Cullen, who stood near Sulahn, asked, "What is your fascination with alliteration?"
"Because I'm going to be an editor! Of Varric's books!" Hawke flung an arm around the writer, and the two grinned at each other.
"Aww," Varric voiced.
Sulahn grabbed Solas's arm and towed him after her. "Come on. We're going to stop this guy and go home alone apparently."
Solas glanced back and forth between the Inquisitor and his companions, unsure of what was happening.
"Aw, damn it." Sulahn stared up at Clarel who was now in the dragon's mouth. "See, people? This is what banter gets you."
"But they love banter!" Cole protested.
Hawke stared at him. "Who's they?"
A haunted look, more haunted than usual, came to his eyes. "Outside, peering in, strangers, you, but different. You don't want to know." And he left the unsettling response at that.
Clarel dropped from the dragon's mouth and landed on the stones with a sickening crunch. Somehow, she managed to crawl forward, striking the ground with a blast of lightning. That blast resounded through all the spectators and the stones below.
"Oh, shit," several companions muttered as the ground crumbled beneath them.
"Run." Sulahn urged them. "Run!"
But there was no time. The stones gave way before they could move, and they began to fall.
Until Sulahn's hand crackled, and a Fade rift yawned beneath them.
"What the––"
The Fade swallowed them.
A/N: Cole knows ;)