Meant to do this in the morning, but then I was running late for taking my daughter to the beach. So...sorry about that, heh.

Unsought

Walking through the remains of Haven reminded me strongly of walking through the remains of Redcliffe: both had the same sort of horror and unreality clinging to them. While Redcliffe had been worse - I had, among other things, been able to see it - I had lived in Haven for months now. Smelling it burn, the acrid smoke mingling with the stench of red lyrium corruption and the sickly-sweet rotting smell of the Blight, seeing light where there should be none, and missing the bulk of buildings that had been demolished - all of it hollowed out my stomach in a way the horrible future I had witnessed had not.

"The houses don't feel any longer," Cole murmured to me. "No one lives inside. All their hopes live in you now."

I didn't know whether that made me feel better or worse.

The walk to the ruined gate was interminable, and then, when it finally terminated, I found that I wished it had been longer.

Within the palisade, there had been few enemies. Outside there were more - waiting for their fellows so they could form up and mount a concerted attack, perhaps. Some of our soldiers had also gotten caught beyond the gates, and some of them were still alive. The templars were toying with them. I concluded it from what I could see of their auras, and Cassandra confirmed it in outraged tones. This was hard for her, I thought: once again seeing the failure of her own order in the atrocities being committed.

Cole had a few words for her, too, though I didn't catch most of them, and I saw her take a long breath, her shoulders squaring.

Making our way to the trebuchet was no particular trouble. I had mana reserves and potions at my belt if I needed more, and so I slung the templars in our path precisely where we needed them to be. They fell in droves, and a handful of Inquisition soldiers managed to scramble past me, heading for the chantry at Cassandra's urging.

Things were trickier once we reached the trebuchet. It made the most sense for me to aim it, but I had to do so while keeping an eye on the battle around me, tossing templars aside if they came too close or got in behind one of my companions. Then, for just a moment, the waves of enemies stopped coming. I turned the crank furiously, dimly aware of the ground trembling ominously as something made its way toward us. There was a terrible screech, like metal against stone, and a hissing, keening sound that might have emerged from a throat, and that ended in a series of gurgling sobs.

"Maker's breath - what is that thing?" Blackwall gasped, and I looked up to find out what could horrify a Grey Warden - and just as quickly wished I hadn't. Red lyrium made my vision entirely too clear in the worst possible ways.

"Evil," I heard Cassandra say grimly, and agreed. The creature stood half again the height of a human man, and looked as though it might have once been one, though his frame had been stretched by magic and red lyrium into a shambling parody of humanity. His skin appeared to have been burned away, leaving behind gaunt sinew and muscle, held together with the malice of the red lyrium that erupted here and there from his body. One fist was entirely encased in the Blighted stuff, giving him, in effect, a maul attached to his arm. The other arm boasted needle-sharp lyrium claws. His head was just visible within a nest of lyrium spikes, the jaw twisted and permanently broken, eyes glowing like coals.

"He just wants to die," Cole whispered, "but he wants the world to share his shroud, to serve as his shroud. The rest of them will burn it with him on his pyre."

"Not today," Cassandra said, and threw herself at the creature.

It was too large and heavy for me to pull through the Fade, but I could keep the other templars off of my companions while they dealt with it. In fact, the swings of the creature's maul-hand were ponderous enough that I was able to position its allies in its path to good effect. My companions gained living shields until the less-corrupted templars stopped coming, and the behemoth did the work of killing its own forces for us.

In between spells, I finished aiming the trebuchet.

By the time the creature fell, I was drinking off the last of my lyrium potions to restore my mana.

This time, the world was quiet enough that we heard the dragon - the archdemon - coming, the heaving beat of its stinking wings audible even at a considerable distance as a rumble in both air and stone. It passed close overhead, breathing out fiery corruption, but missing both us and the armed trebuchet in its first attack.

"Fenedhis," I swore, knowing a second pass was inevitable. "Go!" I yelled at the others, hands coming to rest on the edge of the trebuchet's platform. Someone had to trigger it, and it wasn't as though I could run.

I heard two sets of feet obeying. "Herald - " Cassandra's voice said. "Inana - "

"Someone has to stay," I pointed out, turning to look towards her, hoping she would see my resolve. "I can't run - someone would have to carry me, and there's no time. Go. I can't wait long - you aren't much more likely to live than I am."

I could almost hear her fighting the truth of my words, but slowly it wore her down, made cracks in her relentless need to defend, and ultimately drew her, haltingly, toward safety. The process took two breaths - which was at least one breath too many. The dragon was on top of us again. It had a strange aura - flickering and sick-making - but one I could see. And I saw where it was headed - where it would land.

Cassandra.

Time slowed, and the meaningless words Solas kept repeating came back to me: find the her at the heart of her aura. An aura wasn't a perfect sphere around the person who generated it, wasn't even or smooth, didn't remain still. It bulged and fluttered, advanced and retreated. Sensations that were almost color streaked through like lightning, and were gone just as quickly, changeable as the moods and thoughts of the person within. And yet - an aura was also personal, a reflection of the person generating it. I would never have mistaken Solas's aura for Vivienne's. Now that I was better at reading them, I would never mistake Cassandra's for Blackwall's.

Which meant it wasn't all chaos, any more than a person was all chaos. Every movement, every sensation meant something - meant, in this case, Cassandra. I couldn't read all those movements, especially not in someone who wasn't a mage, but I didn't need to read them in a mage to find the person at their heart. My eyes closed, and I shut out the Veil and the Fade beyond it as thoroughly as I could, focusing all my attention on Cassandra. It was all just a matter of degrees. Shut out the extraneous - reach for what mattered.

Desperation and fear that I might have to watch an archdemon's aura swallow and snuff out Cassandra's finally demanded the necessary focus from me. Cassandra was all that existed. I knew her, and therefore I knew where she was. I reached out with confidence, wrapped my friend in the Fade as gently as I might wrap a newborn halla in a blanket, and thrust her as far from the battle as I could - just as the dragon settled on the place where she had been standing.

My eyes snapped open. The monster turned its head towards me, the stench of its carrion breath managing to overpower even the stench of its rotting, lyrium-eaten body. Involuntarily, I stumbled back a step, and perhaps that was all that saved me when its breath-weapon struck, because only the edge of it caught me. I was thrown back in a wave of snow and debris, and fell hard. For a moment I lay there, stunned, but the shaking ground as the dragon changed position recalled me to where I was, and I climbed to my feet with a groan. Blinking, I wondered if I had hit my head, because the dragon's aura seemed to be twinned now - an echo of its tattered horror closing on my position.

No, I realized - the dragon shared its aura with another. They were tied together, a part of the same will, the same intent, and the owner of that intent was approaching me now.

"Enough!" a voice called out, and, though it was deep and authoritative, it didn't boom with the uncanny command I had half expected. I could make out the thing's figure now - at least as tall as the lyrium behemoth had been, and similarly stretched and gnawed at by the corruption it carried. Its skin was intact, though - mostly. That was a mercy. "Pretender," the voice rolled over me, its accent reminding me of Dorian's, "you toy with forces beyond your ken no more." The accent might have been like Dorian's, but the phrasing was straight from a historical serial.

"Toy?" I echoed, the word jumping out at me for its utter senselessness - as though I had been banging on pots with spoons or using my magic to choreograph dances for falling leaves. "I have been using forces beyond my ken to prevent the world from unraveling!"

"You mortals beg for truth you cannot have," the monster sneered. "Know me, and know what you have pretended to be, rattus. Exalt the Elder One. The will that is Corypheus!" One taloned hand rose to point at me. "You will kneel."

"I'll happily kneel," I replied, my legs shaking so badly that I didn't think it would be much of a choice for long - my flight through the air had cost me my staff, "if, in return, you go away and leave everyone alone."

"I do not require your cooperation. What I want is not in your power to give - but that will not stop me. I am here for the Anchor. The process of removing it begins now." Something in the Elder One's hand, its presence previously masked by his aura, flared to life. The magic within it vibrated an unwilling counterpoint to the Elder One's own, crying out, somehow, at its subjugation. It sought out the mark - the Anchor - on my hand, sympathetic magic seeking its kin.

"It is your fault, Herald." Corypheus went on, manipulating the device in an attempt to wrench the Anchor gracelessly from me. I hissed with the pain of it, but was even more outraged by his blunt, inelegant use of his tools. "You interrupted a ritual years in the planning, and instead of dying, you stole its purpose. I do not know how you survived, but what marks you as 'touched,' what you flail at rifts, I crafted to assault the very heavens."

"Crafted." Ha. "Cobbled together" would be a better description of the way he used his power. Somehow I had the feeling that the Anchor was far older than he was, and that he understood it little better than I did. The way he yanked at the threads of it, unable even to see that it was quite permanently bound to me, told me as much.

He pulled harder and my knees finally gave way. I fell to the ground.

"You use the Anchor to undo my work! The gall."

"What you're proposing is insane, so - yes," I gasped.

He strode to me, his talons seizing my left wrist and hauling me up to dangle in the air before him. "I once breached the Fade in the name of another, to serve the Old Gods of the empire in person. I found only chaos and corruption. Dead whispers. For a thousand years I was confused. No more. I have gathered the will to return under no name but my own, to champion withered Tevinter and correct this Blighted world. Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods, and it was empty."

I watched his magical artifact as he spoke, finding the affinity between it and the Anchor on my hand. I couldn't draw on it myself - I was quite certain I would die if I tried. That was too much to ask. But perhaps I could...direct it, if he drew on it again.

"The Anchor is permanent," Corypheus told me helpfully, as if I hadn't already known. "You have spoiled it with your stumbling." He let go of my arm suddenly, letting me fall to the ground, where I caught myself on my right hand, my left shoulder screaming with pain. He had wrenched it badly, though I didn't think anything was broken or dislocated. "So be it," he said, turning his back on me and raising his artifact. "I will begin again, find another way to give this world the nation - and god - it requires."

A magical flare went up, rippling the Veil - the signal to let me know that the bulk of our forces had made it to the pass.

Corypheus didn't notice as he ripped power from the screaming artifact, intending, no doubt, to burn me to ash. But the Anchor flared as I called upon it, taking the power in hand and giving it a direction it liked better: the chain holding down the bucket of the trebuchet. I might not be able to see it from my location, but I could picture it clearly - the way it had looked as I slowly aimed the shot - and the magic was pathetically eager to please. It leapt away from me, across the space, burning through the metal in an instant.

Corypheus made a sound of uncomprehending rage, whirling on me to - well, I didn't really know. Stare? Kill me? I couldn't see much beyond his movement. "What have you - " he began in a roar, only to be cut off by the much louder roar of the avalanche I had just triggered.

I scrambled to my feet and ran - an instinct rather than a calculated strategy. I was all too well aware that strategy would not save me. Behind me, the dragon called out in anger or frustration, though I couldn't hear whether or not it lifted off under the rumble of the avalanche that was now upon me and the town.

The ground shook beneath my feet, tripping me, and I knew that was it - the end - and closed my eyes tightly. But instead of hitting the ground and immediately being buried, I continued falling. Above me, the snow rushed over, suddenly muffling all sound and spilling into wherever I had ended up, though not enough to provide much cushion when I landed, skidding across the rough, icy ground. The breath left my lungs and a searing pain screamed through my left shoulder - I had landed on it.

For a long time I merely lay there, struggling both to breathe and to come to terms with the fact that I was, however temporarily, still alive. I slowly pieced together what must have happened. There was a mine near Haven, and tunnels no doubt ran under the village itself. The dragon's immense weight must have disturbed one when it landed, and so it had been there for me to fall into when I started running.

So. I was alive, but trapped beneath the surface in a mine whose tunnels had already suffered at least one cave-in. There was no guarantee that the section I had fallen into had an outlet on the surface at all. Even if it did, my ability to find my way was extremely debatable given my limited sight. The piece of the floor I could see glittered with ice, and, no matter how blurry, I recognized a similar glitter on the walls and ceiling. That meant the temperature was well below freezing, even here. I supposed that was actually a potential positive - if I were trapped, I would die of cold long before I died of starvation or thirst. The former was a much more comfortable way to go.

And while I was thinking of the cold - it was beginning to seep through the layers of armor and padding I wore, not only leaching my strength, but also causing me to shiver, which jostled my shoulder, which hurt. I forced myself upright with a whimper, noting as I did the way the shadows shifted. It hadn't occurred to me to wonder where the light I assessed the tunnel by was coming from, but now I recognized it emanated from my own hand. The Anchor was still alive and sparking after whatever Corypheus had done to it. I didn't think it hurt, but I wasn't in the best position to judge at the moment.

With a shuddering sigh, I put my right hand against the nearest wall and rose to my feet. No one was going to come looking for me. Sightless or not, it would be up to me to find my own way out.