Genesis brought up the rear as Bugenhagen led him and Hawke down into the Cosmo Canyon libraries. They wound down steep and narrow stairs carved inside the red rock. It was cool and still, utterly unlike the hot and sandy exterior. They passed halls filled with books and tablets, but still they descended, deeper and deeper into the archives.

Hawke walked with her head held high, no sign of her earlier skittishness, and with all her usual outrageous swing in her hips.

Genesis narrowed his eyes at the back of her head. He had every intention of teasing her relentlessly for kissing him like she was made to be in his arms and then running away, but she glanced back at him with laughter in her eyes and a self deprecating grin. Taking back the joke for herself, the greedy woman. He wasn't going to stand for it.

They left the stairs before they reached the bottom, and walked along a long, wide corridor. He swept forward and slipped an arm around her waist.

"I'll ask him where the exits are in case you need to run away," he whispered.

"Good idea, should I tell him he can stop putting so much coriander in everything now?"

He scoffed. "I doubt an elder has anything to do with the cooking."

"No, he does," she replied with suspicious certainty.

"Oh. You little rat!"

She flashed a brilliant, galling smile.

Bugen cleared his throat. "When you're ready. These are some of our older records, laid down in the early days after our town was settled. We don't usually let new visitors in." He stood before a heavy stone door and gave them a hard look, wiry eyebrows bristling pointedly. "I'm sure you're both honoured."

"Oh, I'm speechless with honour," Hawke said. "I'm incapacticated by it."

"I have never been so honoured, Elder, thank you," Genesis added with gravitas.

"We shall treasure this moment always," she said.

Bugen chortled. "Alright, don't hurt yourselves. Or each other. I'm busy today, you'll have to provide your own relationship counselling."

Hawke cleared her throat and looked sheepish. Genesis narrowed his eyes at the old man who had abandoned him at the bottom of a Fade pit all night.

Bugen pushed the door open to a wide hall full of rows of shelves. It stretched out, tall carved pillars holding up the ceiling. White light drifted down in shafts from windows high in the red stone wall. Genesis' breath caught in his chest. Hawke squeezed his arm in excitement.

"If you want to be allowed into the restricted sections," Bugen started, his voice hushed and conspiratorial, "you will have to convince the librarian you are worthy." He nodded at the desk.

A giant red lion lounged on it, his front paws pulled in under him and his head propped up on a stack of books. He watched them through a single scarred eye, while a flaming tail flicked behind him.

Bugen left them to it. Genesis and Hawke swapped a look. He hadn't expected it to be so big, and this was just one level!

Hawke went and spoke with the librarian and Genesis roamed the nearest shelf. He skimmed a finger over old leather bound spines, many unlabelled, and pulled one down at random. The Dragoon's Guide for the Breeding and Keeping of Wyverns, said the neat calligraphy inside the front cover.

He nearly dropped it. Wyverns had been extinct for centuries, and dragoons were so long gone their very existence was doubted.

They would be hard pressed to stay focused here. He was sorely looking forward to it.

The librarian barked a startled laugh. Genesis looked up to see the creature staring at Hawke as though she had an unexpected number of heads, before the creature shook his head and leapt down from the desk. The two walked back his way and Hawke wove her arm through his.

"We're getting a tour," she said with a wide grin.

The librarian, who offered no name for himself but spoke with a deep and clear voice, explained how it was all arranged, where they were free to go and what they were permitted to do. Ettie had given them both strict instructions to take extensive photos, on pain of never being let through the museum doors again if they didn't. The librarian gave permission for it. They kept the information so that it might be shared, not hidden away.

The two of them set up at a low table in a corner.

He handed Hawke a book, lightly brushing her fingers.

She was still wearing the loose linen shirt the locals had given her, even though they had their regular clothes back. Without the long tails of her tunic to hide such details, her soft fennec-hide trousers were extremely form fitting. She lounged about on the low seats, every movement making the linen drape against her form most arrestingly. He watched without shame.

She winked at him and turned a page. "What were you saying about dragoons?"

He leaned back in his chair.

"They were lance wielding warriors who would never run away from a challenge," he replied.

"Perhaps if they had been more strategic about it they would have prevailed in the long run and would still exist today."

He raised an eyebrow. "Strategic?"

She tossed her fringe aside. "Circumspect."

"The word you're looking for is cowardly."

She sniffed and flipped through a few more pages.

"Or perhaps a little overwhelmed," he drawled.

She cut her eyes at him. "I believe Sun Tzu said something about feigning disorder before crushing the enemy."

"He also said the opportunity to defeat the enemy is provided by the enemy himself," he replied with a smile, selecting a book for himself from their stack.

"How very fortunate, then, that we are not enemies."

"Quite. We shall have to find something else to do with our time."

They poured over the books together and whiled the hours away, flirting and teasing with reckless abandon. The various locals who overheard them rolled their eyes, but Genesis could not have cared less. With the truth finally out he felt lighter, and as though a wall between them had been torn down. Maybe nothing more would ever come of it, maybe their days together were numbered. That wasn't going to stop him from luxuriating in every moment.

If one day he was just another name in her storied past then he was going to make damn sure she would never doubt that his affection for her had been genuine. And if he allowed himself to be selfish, he would concede that he wanted every other man or woman she ever looked at to fall short in comparison to him.

They wined and dined on the terraces then returned to the libraries. Their search yielded mixed results, trails that looked promising but didn't amount to much, so they turned increasingly to the older books, working their way back through the archives.

As they quietly read together Hawke gently ran the sharp little tips of her gauntlet along the inside of his wrist. All of his attention rerouted to the sharp teasing points. He kept his eyes rooted to the page, while the galling lack of pressure against his skin felt like it might increase but never actually did. His heart rate leapt and he wasn't seeing a word, he wasn't even sure he knew his own name.

He took her hand to make her stop, firmly entwining his fingers with hers. She turned a page with a wistful sigh, not remotely remorseful. He narrowed his eyes and let his mana drag against hers, a brazen and alarming thing even on his world let alone hers.

Her breath hitched and she looked at him with rapt attention. It was his turn to play coy.

She harrumphed. He laughed.

Between distracting each other, Genesis found mention of a magic mirror that had one stood where Bugenhagen's observatory now did. The records called it broken, and said guards were posted, lest anyone tried to fix it.

The desert had been no such thing then, but lush grassy plains. Something corrupted it and the ground waters turned poisonous. Everything died and the earth rotted. The Cetra dug the first tunnels in the rocky face of the Canyon then to serve as a library, as their numbers were falling and whole clans disappeared.

They had slowly but surely purged the corruption, but even when gone, life struggled to seep back in. The disease grew in the very walls of their cities and the cetra had to bring them down themselves to stop the spread. The wounds in the land had become scars, cold and dead. So ended the settlement age, and the Cetra took up their nomadic ways again.

He lowered his book.

"This is the tale of the Calamity," he said. Told from a perspective the great legends didn't dwell on when there was a shapeshifting imposter to focus on. The records spoke of the corruption as separate from the woman who fell from the skies.

Hawke nodded and didn't say what he knew she was thinking.

"You think it's the Blight," he said for her.

"If it is… I'd say it was A Blight," she replied. They were standing in the stacks of the agricultural section, Hawke had found the word 'vhenadahl' in a copy of an ancient botanical text and was trying to find any information on the author. She had paused midway through drawing out a tome. "And if it was then they did it." She looked at him. "The ancient Cetra cured it."

"Aerith is already halfway there."

She looked away again. She slid the book back into its place on the shelf. "Forgive me for being a Maferath about it, but I don't think I'll fully believe it until I see it."

He nodded. He could understand that. There had been a time, during his sixth tour in Wutai, when he began to believe the war would never end. They had been pushing through mud and mountains for so long, taking ground only to lose it six months later, that the constant state of tragedy felt like all life ever had been and ever would be.

"I suppose that means they didn't need to defeat the archdemon," Hawke mused. "They must have just healed her corruption away. What a pleasant anti-climax."

"Hmm. If it is the Blight does that mean the Calamity came from Thedas?" he asked.

"I don't see how. The Calamity arrived and ate everyone, what, two thousand years ago?" She turned to face him and leaned back against the stack.

"Give or take a century or two."

"Then she predates the First Blight by a millenia. If there was any cross contamination, you gave it to us."

He scoffed. "Please, mine is not the planet with an excess of eldritch abominations."

"Don't you go calling me the Calamity too, I've already had Bugenhagen throw that at me."

"Well," he drawled. "You did fall from the heavens."

She laughed, low and with a sharp-toothed smile. "Do you want me to eat you, Genesis?"

He resolutely held off his smile. "If you feel so inspired."

"Hm." She reached for his jaw, running her fingers along his chin. He fell still under her touch. Her thumb brushed his bottom lip and she leaned forward to whisper, "you should be so lucky."

He huffed and she gave him an affectionate pat on the cheek, before turning back to the book shelf.

"The calamity didn't literally eat people, by the way," he said, crossing his arms. "She cannibalized their minds, their spirits. Then she wore their faces and spread out to take more."

"If it's not the Blight, it was blood magic on a scale to make Tevinter jealous," Hawke replied. "Or something else I cannot even imagine."

She pulled out the book she had started to draw out before and it fell open to a spot in the middle where someone had placed some papers covered in sketches. He glanced over her shoulder at it. He heard her sharp intake of air half a second before he recognised Avalanche's logo, and what must have been its earlier iterations as the designer refined the idea.

The two shared a look. She snapped the book shut and slid it back into its place on the shelf.


The flirting stretched on through the day, until they woke in the Fade.

Hawke sat up from the dusty, endlessly shifting sands atop a butte, looking up at what must have been the village's Fade representation. Cosmo had only a weak presence, ramshackle builds scattered atop the natural rock formation, the observatory sticking out at an odd angle.

"I didn't see any of this last night," Genesis said, standing further ahead, looking up.

A massive stone piling rose from the butte, a hundred meters higher than the observatory, crumbling arches from what must have been a tremendous aqueduct or bridge reaching across the desert. All that remained was the single sturdy piling.

Hawke stood in her full armour, staff in hand. She traded a look with Genesis and they stalked forward to explore it.

As they approached they could see it must have been a crossroad of some kind, the arches crumbled away in four directions. Dark gold sand poured infinitely from the dry paths, whisked away by the wind.

No spirits lingered, no voices cried. Hawke felt the weight of a presence nonetheless and kept her eyes peeled.

At its base they found nothing but sand. Modern Cosmo wouldn't be there for long until it too was buried by time.

They slung their weapons onto their backs and began to climb. The wind howled and sand scratched at them, until they broke out, up above the lower levels.

Genesis made it to the platform first and helped her up. At the top, there was no sand. Bare rock, carved with old glyphs sat cold and powerless beneath their feet. The remains of ancient anchors for spirits decorated the edges. The platform was bigger than the remaining space implied, very old memory keeping it in place. There were crumbling stables for chocobos, dry fountains, and red canvas covering forgotten courtyards and alleys flapped in the wind.

At the heart of it all, elevated on the highest platform, sat a mirror with a spear protruding through it.

"Look," Genesis said, his voice hushed. It felt wrong to disturb the silence. He stretched out his arm to point at the edge of the high platform.

Two sets of deep gouges cut deep through the stone. Hawke turned her head as she studied it. It reminded her, absurdly, of the kind of scratches her mabari left behind in the dirt when he tensed and then pounced.

The gouges were so big whatever was responsible would have rivalled a high dragon in size.

The weight on the back of Hawke's mind grew.

She frowned. She remembered this place.

They climbed higher, until they stood upon the gouges and faced the mirror. It was larger than the mirror in the museum by many meters with bigger and less detailed decorations. The elven spear pointed directly at them at about head height.

It looked so much more real in the Fade.

Genesis gave her a nod, and she let out a slow breath, and closed her eyes. She opened them a moment later and let the memories come.

The spear melted away, and the memory of power rippled through the Eluvian's surface. Cetran guards stood on either side of it.

A wolf the size of a dragon leapt out through the mirror and passed directly through them. They spun, and saw it spring from the edge of the platform, over the bustling crossroads, over the company of Cetra soldiers, and across the strong stone bridge. In the distance the next way point glowed under the view of a fort.

Complex magic blasted the Dread Wolf, but he blasted it back, his shields impenetrable. The Cetra moved quickly, blowing up the supports of the bridge. Stone cracked and fell.

Heavy wings cracked, and the silhouette of a dragon soared above. The magic turned against the defenders. Mythal's shadow raced along the bridges, guarding the wolf from the air.

It lasted only a moment before the memory collapsed. Hawke heaved a breath and shook her head as the details became smudges of colour, and then there was nothing but stone and sand and wind.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she felt glass shatter. She pushed through the sensation.

Genesis let out a hissing breath and spun back to stare at the mirror.

"Why didn't they destroy the Eluvians themselves?" he demanded. "They knew they were a vulnerability!"

"What would happen to Midgar if all the roads and train tracks disappeared overnight?" Hawke asked, her voice quiet.

He frowned and stared down the spear tip. Gradually he tilted his head in concession.

"The supply lines would all be down. The city would starve. Riots would destroy the people hogging resources, the people thought to be hogging resources, and eventually the resources themselves."

"Nobody's collecting the rubbish, cleaning the hospitals, or delivering medicine," Hawke added. She'd seen Kirkwall under siege enough times to know that Hightown didn't escape just because they were well fed.

"Starvation, disease, panic, and the city tears itself apart in under a week," Genesis said. He made a noise of frustration. "So they couldn't afford to destroy the mirrors. But the other side could?"

"There are still functioning Eluvians on the other side." She shrugged. "It must have been two separate networks."

"Or the elves simply knew how to make more."

"Or that."

Hawke looked up at the towering thing. A crack in the glass ran the length of it from the spear to the very top. Where her reflection should have been was only misaligned glass. She stepped to the side to escape the visual metaphor.

Genesis was still studying the spear. She didn't want to look at it. He ran a finger along its edge. His glove split and blood welled from his finger. He examined it dispassionately.

She reached out and healed the shallow cut, unsettled by it. It didn't pay to go bleeding on ancient artefacts.

"This ended the war," he said, nodding at the weapon.

"You think the elves won?"

"Nobody did, they couldn't have. This is a concession, destroying the only route for anyone to take ground, cut off forever." His eyes narrowed. "Unless they learned to fly through the vacuum of space."

She shook her head. "I doubt even spirits could survive the journey."

"You did."

"I came through a mirror in the Fade. One that didn't have a spear sticking out of it."

He looked at her then back to the spear.

"It's identical to the one in the museum," he said. "Down to the grooves of the hammer blows, the grain of the wood, the metal detailing." He raised a hand to the gold head but she grabbed his hand before he could touch it again. "Correct me if I'm wrong but even the reservoir of spent magic feels the same."

She braced herself, and then finally looked at it head on.

"It is the spear in the museum," she said, and felt the knowledge settle into her mind from both things she could objectively see, and things she couldn't know. She accepted it.

She reached out, hesitated, then brushed her fingers along the gold-hued head. The sheer depths of the magic reservoir stretched out before her mind. It was so obvious in the fade, the void so profound she couldn't find its walls, she could have drowned in the absence of what power had once dwelt there. She knew what it was.

"There was only ever one spear like this, forged from the stars by Andruil. Sundered a thousand times over as it shattered a network of a thousand mirrors."

The cracked glass in the back of her mind splintered, shattered, and green and purple magic curled in at the corners of her vision. There was a flash and for a split second a furious, towering, blood splattered Mythal hurled a spear of light straight at them through a mirror.

The dream came crashing down.


They scoured the library for days after that. Genesis looked to the empty space above Bugen's observatory where the great crossroad's mirror was not.

Teasing mentions of Thedas adjacent subjects kept Hawke digging but never quite finding anything concrete.

There was so much information to sift through. Overwhelming amounts. Genesis would have happily spent months on end chasing every thread, but they had limited time. For every day that passed Hawke skipped more passages and discarded more books. Someone had to have planted the first mirror, and as neither species could travel through the hard vacuum of space, someone, somewhere, had to have crossed the distance magically.

If the archives knew they weren't telling.

Genesis pulled her away for the night when she grew too close to pulling all her hair out. They walked together around the town, Hawke listing the reasons why teleportation was impossible only to turn around and talk herself into it again.

"So theoretically, it could be possible," she said, gesturing emphatically and making her red poncho flap, "so long as you have full belief in a functioning magic system that doesn't contradict the existence of teleportation."

"'Anything is possible,'" he said, quoting her own lessons. The town was quiet and the surrounding desert dark.

"But not everything . If you take the Mortalitasi at their word then my own arrival here from the Fade was a matter of spirit displacement," she said, then she was off on another tangential theory.

He nodded along, arguing when she contradicted his own school of thought.

He raised his chin. "It's a matter of perspective. Or interpretation, if you will."

"Mmm, interpret it for me, Genesis," she sighed.

"Magic is a function of belief, yes? You believe, no, you know the mirrors connected the worlds. Why should they not do so again if you command them?"

"For the same reason the clouds won't rain cheese, no matter how much I insist they should," she replied, looking wistfully out across the silvery plains. "Reality does exist, magic isn't just contextless nonsense. It's all context."

"And the context of your presence here is a definitive connection between worlds. You know your people were here before, and you already made that journey once yourself. So I ask you, why not?"

She shrugged helplessly. "How?"

"...Infinite in mystery is the gift of the Goddess. We seek it thus, and take to the sky."

She laughed. "Not an interpretation of magical theorem, no points awarded."

He rolled his eyes and was about to retort that he could build a magical theory around Loveless if he really wanted to, when a cheer rang up beneath them. They looked over the edge of the walkway to the bonfire at the village's heart.

That explained where half the townspeople had gone, a crowd was sitting on the raised platform around the Cosmo Candle and a single figure stood before them, their words lost over the distance.

"What are they doing?" Hawke asked, before leading them down to find out.

The wind had dropped and the chill of the night seeped in but it was warm by the Candle. Scraggly clouds covered the stars like a lacy veil and the shadows of the townsfolk sitting around the crackling bonfire danced on the surrounding buildings.

The crowd gasped and then gave a chorus of boos as they approached. The voice of the man in the centre rang out, strong and melodic. He was telling a story.

Hawke gasped and looked to Genesis with wide, excited eyes. He grinned back. A living oral tradition! She took his hand and pulled him up onto the wide platform where the crowd sat.

It was bright and hot in front of the fire. They wove through the people to find a good spot. Someone pushed mugs of hot, spiced wine into their hands and threw a blanket their way. They sat together under it and the storyteller spoke on, egging the crowd along.

It was clear they all knew the story well and were waiting eagerly for the dramatic turns. Genesis had never heard anything like it before, both the folktale and the medium unfamiliar. He and Hawke listened in rapt fascination.

The story came to an end: the exiled son of an elder returned home with a beautiful new wife, and the wise old holy man turned into a golden fish and swam away, which he assumed was referencing something from earlier in the tale they had missed. Everyone cheered and the storyteller bowed low, then asked who had made off with his drink. Someone else got up and took his place, launching into another tale.

From what he could tell there were a couple of different nomad tribes staying at the village and they were sharing their stories, the hosting tribe inviting the newcomers to speak. It must have been a well worn tradition, everyone knew everyone else's tales just as well as their own. Logs cracked on the fire and sparks rose into the night. The wine was strong and the atmosphere relaxed and contagious.

There came a lull in the stories, the first speaker was flirting with a young lady and the second and third had sat down and were disinclined to get up again.

"Share with us, visitors," someone called out, and several eyes fixed on them.

Genesis smiled politely and shook his head. He wasn't that kind of performer.

"Go on, tell us of your travels!" someone else called, who sounded suspiciously like Bugehagen.

Genesis looked to Hawke.

She was biting her lip but her eyes turned thoughtful. He gestured with his head at the stage, an eyebrow raised in question.

"It's been a long time. This was normally Varric's act..."

"You'll blow them all away," he said quietly.

She grinned then and handed him her mug. She climbed to her feet, shedding the blanket, and stepped forward to a few scattered cheers.

Genesis leaned back on his hands and watched. A wealth of eyes turned to her with curiosity. He narrowed his eyes at the few hecklers, they were going to sorely regret it if they opened their mouths now.

The crowd hushed.

Hawke stood alone in the centre of the ring of people, before the cracking fire, and lifted her head.

"Tell the tale of Tyrdda Bright-Axe, mountain maker, spirit's bride," she declared, raising her voice to the stars. "Free, her people, forged in fastness, made in mountains, hardy hide."

It wasn't wholly the same as the local traditions and they weren't certain what to make of it at first, but she held steady and the tale built in momentum and grandeur. Exciting verses written to be shouted to a crowd who shouted back. The audience picked up the rhythm and cheered back at her. Sheer confidence glossed over the more thedas-y lines.

There were duels, lovers, and betrayals. Her voice fell soft and husky at the crushing lows and thundered with power at the soaring highs. Hawke carried it all and took the audience along with her. Draped in red before a roaring fire, she raised her hand and commanded their attention.

Genesis watched her soar, her voice strong, her eyes sparkling, and his heart yearning.

He understood how a whole city had been compelled to follow her. Mages to rise up and scream for freedom, Templars to tremble and flee. She was magnificent.

It came to a triumphant, bittersweet ending. Applause and cheers went up around the fire.

Hawke bowed low, and laughed off calls for a second tale. Smiling widely, she came back and sat down at his side, slightly breathless and rose cheeked. He held the blanket out for her. She sat close, leaning into him, and accepting a mug of hot wine. He put his arm around her shoulders. The cold of the night closed in, but they shared warmth together under the blanket.

Someone else stood to speak next. The stars glittered overhead, and the Candle burned on.


A/N: Sorry for the delay. Some chapters just don't want to cooperate. Reviews are greatly appreciated.

Next Time: Sephiroth and Aerith