Her head hurt worse the higher they climbed. She did her best to hide how it cost her to straggle behind the other three, but she hadn't been able to hide the bright red blood running from her nose endlessly, hadn't been able to wipe it away quick enough onto the hem of her shirt.

"Sorry." She mumbled as the tall elf with the old, serious eyes loomed over her with a grim look of concern. "I'm trying not to bleed out on your coat."

"The coat is of little consequence." Solas smiled at her feeble attempt at humor and damnit if she didn't appreciate it. "It is only a bit further. Please stay with us, Miss Cadash."

Well, it wasn't like she had much of a choice. The creatures they fought through to get this far were torn from the realms of nightmares and fairy stories, twisted dangerous things that made her blood run cold. Maria thought she knew monsters, thought the worst evil wore the skin of the people who looked just like everyone else. The ones who smiled when people cried.

The man sleeping next to her on a lumpy mattress with his arm thrown across her ribcage like the gate of a prison while she stared at the water-stained ceiling and tried to think about anything else but his hands on her.

She'd been wrong. There were monsters with twisted skins and too many teeth who poured from the thing above them like vengeance on a world gone astray. She couldn't go back through the monsters alone, she couldn't flee Haven, she couldn't stay where she was unless she was finally prepared to give up, lay down, and die. What were the chances of her making it back home after this anyway?

She fucking told Dwyka this was a suicide trip.

"Here." A scrap of cloth was shoved impatiently in front of her face. It was dark violet and stained suspiciously in places, but more importantly Maria recognized it. The scarf the Seeker was wearing fluttered in the cold wind as the Seeker thrust her whole arm out more insistently. "For the bleeding."

Maria didn't want to take it, but she also didn't want to risk Solas caught between her and that gun again. She nodded while she pulled the soft fabric from the Seeker and pressed it against her bleeding nose.

"Path ahead looks clear from the satellite."

Varric fucking Tethras himself peered down at a slim white tablet, the silver glasses pushed up on top of his head like they'd been forgotten. He looked exactly like the man on the back of all his novels, the portraits lit moodily in black and white where he reclined at empty tables in hipster coffee shops. She'd also seen him on talk shows, heard him on podcasts, watched him on the news at the elbow of both Bianca Davri and Reyna Hawke, looking suave and debonair as the women sparkled in risque gowns and expensive jewelry.

He looked less like a celebrity on this blighted mountain. More like a real person in his leather coat and the button-up shirt that had a truly distracting number of buttons undone to reveal the hard planes of his chest and a tempting trail of blonde hair just a bit darker than the strands pulled half away from his face.

If the world wasn't ending and she wasn't dying, she thought mournfully. It would be a damn accomplishment to be proud of - ensnaring Varric Tethras for one night.

His presence almost convinced her this was a dream. She'd wake up and tell Bea about the nightmare where Varric Tethras and friends dragged her up to a tear in the world while he called her princess. Her sister would get a fucking kick out of it.

"She can't get a great look though." Varric continued, oblivious to her starstruck scattered thoughts. "We're damn close to losing that satellite link and the second we do, our limited communication capabilities are going the way of my sanity."

"She?" Maria's voice was muffled by the fabric that smelled of camp smoke and sweat. Varric's whole face lit up and Cassandra scoffed, rolling her eyes heavenward.

"Bianca, my virtual assistant." He tapped the screen quickly, turned the tablet to face her. "Say hello, Bianca."

Maria didn't expect the cool, calm voice to float out of the speakers as clear as if a woman stood right next to Varric. "Hello Maria Cadash."

Holy shit. "Your computer is named Bianca?"

"Here we go." Cassandra muttered as Varric put away his tablet inside the pockets of his jacket with a fairly injured expression.

"She's not just a computer." He sighed dramatically. "And the Seeker just doesn't like to admit we'd have all been dead sometime yesterday without her."

Sometime yesterday? Had it been more than one day? She couldn't remember, even as Solas offered his arm to help her climb up a broken section of the staircase.

"Her abilities are most impressive." Solas couldn't quite hide the wry smile on his lips born, she suspected, from a desire to frustrate Cassandra more than anything else. "The fact that we now have some limited form of communication with the outside world at all is remarkable."

Maria's mouth went dry and she whirled to Cassandra, her blood soaking into expensive fabric that belonged to the Seeker. Maria's hands shook with the effort of climbing up the damned mountainside, her head ached and her breath came shallow and uneven. "You said you couldn't get communication out of Haven."

"There are more important things than a call to your lawyer." Cassandra snapped.

"How long? How long was I unconscious?" Maria looked to Solas. He frowned tightly, gently placing his hand on her shoulder as they stumbled forward.

"Two days, I believe. I knew you would wake very early this morning." He answered simply.

Two days. Two fucking days. People had to know what had happened at Haven, it must be all over every news channel in Thedas.

"I had a phone." The words tumbled and she could feel panic starting somewhere in her throat. Bea would be trying to reach her, desperately, and Cole would have called using the cheap burner they gave him…

"Fried like an overcooked egg." Varric had his glasses back on, but even underneath them she could sense something like warm, genuine concern. "Technology and magic don't always get along. Particularly when shit like this happens."

"Even if it was not, no cell phones have been working within a thirty mile radius. We are uncertain if they work farther or not." Cassandra had the rigid line of her back to her. "You can call your lawyer after…"

"Fuck my lawyer!" Maria exploded, a flash of temper that made her vision swirl and caused the Seeker to look back with a cocked eyebrow. Her lawyer wasn't the most important call she needed to make, not with Bea…

Bea did such fucking stupid things when she was scared. Reckless and impulsive to the very core and she couldn't risk… the very thought of what Bea might do made her heart thud even more unevenly. "You brought me up here to die and you didn't think there might be someone I wanted to say goodbye to?"

Her outburst, the first complaint she'd made on this arduous climb, seemed to startle the motley crew. "This will work." Solas tried to soothe, as if she was simply a spooked cat or a frightened child. "Do not despair."

"Perhaps I should have…" Cassandra hunched her shoulders defensively. "I did not… I wanted…"

"I can't get a call out, but I can probably get a message." Varric interrupted. "No guarantees, but if you've got a phone number I'll give it a shot."

It was better than nothing. She rattled off Bea's phone number and waited for him to pull out his tablet but he only tapped his ear, near the garish golden ring piercing the lobe. She had to look again to note the small, flesh colored earpiece. Varric nodded tersely, as if listening to a voice in his head, then met her eyes. "Go ahead, Bianca's listening."

What did one say in a situation like this? If these were the last things Bea ever heard from her, what did she need to know? Varric's amber eyes were calm, empathetic, and patient, but Maker the thought of telling anyone besides Bea anything this personal made her stomach ache.

"Can you tell her I love her?" Maria's throat compressed and she had trouble swallowing. "Tell her I'll find a way, but if I don't… tell her to go. Get out of Ostwick and go as far as she can. Take what's under my bed, sell it, and go."

As far from Ostwick as she could get, beyond the reach of Dwyka's grubby fingers. Without Maria to protect them, Dwyka would have Bea turning tricks in a month or in a shallow grave outside the city when she didn't cooperate. Varric frowned, weary lines appearing in his forehead. "Anything else?"

A million things. She wanted to confess she'd always loved the way Bea danced, wild and free. That she lived for the nights when it was too hot to sleep in the shitty apartment they crammed into and they climbed onto the roof to try and catch sight of the stars. She wanted to apologize for fucking everything up, for thinking she was clever enough to escape the jaws she stepped into all those years ago. She wanted to reassure Bea it hadn't been her fault, it had never been her fault.

"No." She said instead. "That's all."

She stormed past the Seeker and thrust the blood covered scarf hard into the woman's chest without a second glance. She'd rather taste her own blood.

The inside of the temple seemed to be floating in the sky around the vortex, a slowly revolving circle of debris that probably once had been the pride of the Chantry.

Now, the only thing standing was the gray stone exterior of the ancient holy site. Maria stared up at the ashen walls, heartbeat pounding inside her head, the taste of iron in her mouth, fire licking at every nerve in her body.

"Thank the Maker you've arrived." A male voice boomed, both authoritative and relieved. Maria turned her blurred vision to the figure striding forward, trying to focus on small details because the whole of anything was too overwhelming. The man was tall, blonde hair. Scar on his lip. "We've been nearly overwhelmed. Casualties are growing. Please tell me you can stop this madness."

She pressed her palm to her forehead to stave off the wicked throb his voice brought and closed her eyes tightly. "Stay with us, Princess." Varric's gentle voice was calm and measured. "Just a bit further."

"We have to hurry." Cassandra's voice sounded too far away, a stray echo in a wind tunnel. Everything seemed to stretch and fade, colors, sound. Even the pressure of Solas's hand on her shoulder seemed to slip away, seemed to belong to another place and time.

She opened her eyes. Around her, everything was gray, quiet, empty. She took a trembling step forward, searching blindly for anything familiar. Even the stone walls of the temple above seemed wrong, twisted, like a dream. Like a nightmare.

Then everything snapped back with a shock that tore a scream from her throat and she dropped to her knees in the snow of the battlefield with everyone shouting nearby. Too loud, too bright, too…

"Seeker, that wasn't a damn flicker. She was gone."

"It is the vortex. She slipped bodily into the fade for a moment, and will continue to do so until…"

"Something else came back with her. I can feel it, stay on guard."

"Stay here, Commander. Hold the line and we will assist her."

Cassandra's arm slipped under her shoulder and the woman hoisted her back up with an expression of grin determination. "Quickly."

She couldn't fight the Seeker pulling her into the temple even if she wanted to, but a part of her didn't want to fight it. She felt like a magnet pulling pulled forward by a force too compelling to ignore. She nearly missed the torrent of cursing from behind them as they began to descend into the shattered temple, but she couldn't miss the cause.

Maria knew lyrium, but she'd never seen it like this. It was blistering hot and burned red against the carnage around it, burnt skeletons and twisted corpses. The news said it was poison more powerful than anything ever before seen, but it was only in Kirkwall.

Except they were a long way from Kirkwall. "Dwarf…" Cassandra called menacingly.

"I see it, Seeker." Varric sounded tired, old. "Shit."

Maria felt something snap in the air again, something that made her teeth hurt. Then a voice, a voice she knew she heard before.

"Someone! Help me!"

xx

It was a shitty day when a dead woman's voice wasn't even the strangest thing that happened. Still, the Divine's thick Orlesian accent was unmistakable and it made Cassandra pale to nearly the same shade as the dying dwarf she supported.

The whole room shimmered, magic climbing up the shattered walls, rendering them whole. The entire scene took on a muffled quality, muted, and Varric watched a shadow take shape as she passed through Cassandra, heading straight towards him unseeingly.

It was Maria Cadash's ghost, quiet and faint, but undoubtedly the woman in front of them that could barely go on. This whole scene reeked of malevolent magic, but Varric couldn't stop it, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from the curious, eager face perusing the paintings that had probably been worth millions. The false Maria wore a small, rapturous smile as she examined them, one hand raised as if fighting the urge to touch…

"Someone! Help me!"

The shadow of Maria froze, turned to look over her slender shoulder with a tight frown. Her other hand went to the waistband of her jeans on instinct more than anything else, but clasped on nothing. Still Maria was moving, footsteps quick and light as she pushed against a heavy wooden door with all her strength armed with nothing but an indignant rage burning in those stunning eyes.

"You failed, Seeker." The scene froze and Varric spun from the ghost pushing the doorway to the creature lounging comfortably against the wall grinning at Cassandra. It wore the Seeker's face, but it was dressed in an expensive red gown and impractical matching heels. The demon's skin crackled with electricity as she pushed away from the wall and stretched suggestively, calling attention to the powerful athletic curves hidden under the skin tight dress. "You had one job, protect the Divine. But she's dead now and all you got in exchange was a thief and a liar."

The smile the demon wore had too many teeth as she advanced threateningly. Cassandra, thank Andraste, showed no fear. She shot a bullet from her hip, one that landed in the abdomen of the demon, leaving a smoking crater. The creature barely flinched and only laughed, tossing back its head.

"This is my world now." It promised, vanishing into the ether. The magic around them faded, revealing the scene of destruction once more. Cassandra stared down at the top of Maria's head.

"The Divine called out to you." Something like awe suffused Cassandra's voice. "And you answered, unarmed."

She hadn't needed to. Nobody would blame a Carta girl from the rough streets of Ostwick if she turned tail and ran from an old woman's cry, from the consequences of a war she played no part in. Varric wished he could say she benefited from the brave, stupid choice. Instead, it looked more and more likely the woman who ran towards a cry for help would perish up here.

"I throw a mean punch." A joke. Maria Cadash made a damned joke. He almost didn't believe it except for the flicker of a smile through her pain. She wiped the blood off her face with shaking fingers, staring at them in dismay and missing the shattered expression on Cassandra's face. It was the look of a woman who just realized she'd made a catastrophic error in judgement, leaping to the conclusion far too quickly that their sole survivor was the instigator instead of a would-be rescuer. Varric kinda hoped they all survived just because it'd be nice to watch the Seeker chew on that for awhile.

"The demon is not gone." Solas warned, stepping forward with eyes blazing green, nose in the air like a wolf scenting trouble. "Be on guard, it is a demon of pride and it is grown powerful from the vortex."

"Duly noted, Chuckles." Varric muttered, shifting his rifle. "Any tips for dealing with it?"

"Do not die." Solas said gravely. Varric simply sighed, resigned. Why, he pondered uselessly, did witches and warlocks never have any sensible, helpful advice?

"Varric Tethras." The voice in his ear purred, but it wasn't the voice of his AI. The AI hadn't been heard from since they spotted the temple walls, Varric suspected even Bianca couldn't break through the roiling storm above him to get a signal down. It made Varric uneasy, he wasn't used to being completely on his own. However, he'd prefer it to the voice whispering through the earpiece like a snake, a near perfect imitation of the real Bianca's voice if he was somehow able to ignore the multi-leveled tones, dark and sinister underneath. "They say pride goes before a fall, don't they? Poetic. You were so very proud."

Varric's shoulders tensed and he brought his gloved fingers up to his ear. Before he could yank the bud from his ear, the voice continued, a laugh curling within it like smoke. "All your money. All your influence. But your city burned and so will everyone you love."

He ripped the device out of his ear and pocketed it, staring at the red lyrium he was responsible for. The shit Bartrand found in that mine Varric sent him to check out with Hawke. He could remember the two of them perfectly, Hawke's hands hooked in her pockets as she shot a pleading look over Bartrand's shoulder, begging Varric to leave his scheduled meetings and come with them because Bartrand was boring, Bartrand was strict and rude and…

Bartrand locked her in that red lyrium infested mine to die. If it wouldn't have been for Sunshine showing up hours later, looking for her sister…

He would have lost his best friend to his own selfish bastard brother.

He heard the tell-tell click of the zippo, the case snapping back and forth. A nervous habit he found oddly soothing, in normal circumstances. These weren't normal circumstances, and he could have done without the horrifying version of Hawke that stepped from behind the red lyrium, dressed in threadbare leggings and that damn oversized coat, flicking her zippo open and shut while her eyes glowed red.

"Before you ask, Seeker." Varric aimed his rifle levely at Hawke's chest. "That's not her, promise."

The false Hawke grinned, all wicked teeth behind the shoulder length fall of Hawke's dark curls. A spider crawled from the corner of her pink lips, up her pale cheek. "You couldn't protect me. You couldn't protect Bethany. You couldn't protect mother. You promised me we'd be safe, Varric. You promised."

"Begone." Solas commanded, thrusting his palm out, wolf jaw held between his thumb. Varric felt the pull of power in his teeth, shadows racing towards the false Hawke by the red lyrium. The creature snarled, morphing, changing, rearing up too tall, teeth elongating, laughter booming.

"You cannot banish me, wolf!" The creature growled, stomping forward and shattering the lyrium beneath it's heel. "I am immortal! Eternal!"

The pop of the pistol drug him from his reverie, although it didn't seem to do much except annoy the demon. The aim was just about perfect, right where a normal creature would have a heart.

"Head!" Cassandra directed tersely. Varric spared just enough of a glance to see Maria nod, ducking behind the red lyrium growing up out of the ground.

"And don't touch that shit, Cadash!" He yelled, tucking himself beneath a crumbling portion of what he thought was a nave, at some point in time. "That's no normal lyrium!"

"I'm fucking aware of what normal lyrium looks like." Maria called back, voice no less impressively irritated for the faltering quality of it.

"The vortex!" Solas called. "Seeker, if you get her to the Vortex we can end this! The energy signatures will cancel this out, it will…"

The demon roared. "Chuckles, easier said than done!"

The creature towered above them between their small group and the vortex pulsing, twisting behind them. The one Bianca warned would incinerate anything within two hundred feet. The Seeker thrust out her free fist into the air and Varric felt the world around them leeching into her, a Seeker's ability to draw down all the magical energy…

It wouldn't be enough, even as the Seeker grabbed all she could and channeled it back out in a burst of bright blue light, knocking the demon pack before reaching for her revolver. "Cadash, go!"

She didn't hesitate, like she hadn't hesitated when she heard the cry for help. She leapt into immediate action, ducking past the demon as Solas thrust his fist up, vines breaking from the shattered ground of the earth and tangling around the trunks of the demon's sparking stone legs.

She didn't make it very far. She couldn't hope to, really, not between the lightning racing down the creature's body and the vortex sapping her of her own strength. She barely dodged the purple veined fist as it crashed to the ground, her pistol clattering across the stone.

She'd never make it herself. He cursed, invoking every snot-nosed ancestor of his past for luck before he rolled out of the rock cover. "Seeker, cover us!"

He hoped to the Maker above Cassandra heard him, because he raced forward and reached for Maria's hand, pulling her upright. She groaned, other hand touching the side of her head. She was going to die, and he was going to help her do it and pray it saved the damn world. Hopefully, somebody would forgive him for it because he doubted he ever would.

They ran into the storm around the vortex, the energy lashing against them, sparks of burning things flying into the air, green flashes bursting. It got harder to breathe the closer they got. Two hundred feet, he thought miserably as they closed in. She'd have to go the last stretch alone and pray.

"Do you think this is going to work?" Her voice was barely audible over the demon behind them, the vortex in front. They stood on the edge of a crater, the column snapping from the center.

Maybe. Maybe not. Best to keep it lighthearted. "Any bucket list items you want to cross off before you waltz back in there, just in case?"

She looked like she almost said something, then reconsidered. Her flinty eyes reflected the spiraling column and a trickle of blood continued to flow from her nose to her pale lips. She wiped it on Solas's coat impatiently. "Did Donnen die at the end of Hard in Hightown, or is he alive?"

Her last request was for a spoiler from his best selling book series. He laughed, more startled than anything, and grinned sheepishly. "No." He admitted. "He's alive. I hate to kill off a good character."

She smiled almost victoriously, the expression lighting her features up once more to make her more than a dead woman walking. She nodded, satisfied and took one trembling step forward. His hand was still wrapped around her arm and he couldn't quite make himself let go even as she staggered to a stop, even as he heard Cassandra scream behind him.

She seemed to make a decision for him, stepping back just enough to press her lips against the stubble of his jaw. Her breath was hot and heavy, he could smell her blood and sweat, the fierce searing press of her lips to his skin undid him for one tiny moment, long enough to loosen his grip and allow her to slip from him.

She smelled like cinnamon underneath all the gore, the lingering ghost of the scent in her hair or on her shirt, he didn't know. "Thanks, for the message to my sister. I owe you one."

Sister. He'd been wondering if it was a girlfriend, but a sister… A family… someone that would miss her the rest of her life. "If you stop this, I'll call it even." He dropped his hand to his side, helpless, watching as she took another step forward until she reached the very edge of the crater. She slid down into it on both heels and palms, stumbling at the bottom. Her pale skin glowed with the energy of the vortex, and Varric waited to see it start peeling from her in disintegrating strips. She was too close, too damn close, and this wasn't going to work…

Instead she lit up, a bright pillar of white, as if she herself were an angel of mercy sent to salvage Thedas. Her hair was lost in the white light, her features extinguished, and she stepped forward, fingertips outstretched…

Varric didn't pray, but when she reached the Vortex, when he felt the energy implode around her form, when he heard the pained roar from the creature around her, when the energy began to rush past him and raised the hair on the back of his neck…

When everything around them froze, the vortex present but no longer swirling, and he saw Maria Cadash in front of it, body marvelously intact even though she was far too still…

He started to pray fervently with all the devotion of the newly converted.