Welcome to the Fade.

Fear

I fell into a world I could see.

"Are we dead?" Hawke asked as I rose slowly to my feet from the ground that had taken hold of me when I touched it. It took me a moment to realize she was above me, standing comfortably on a rock surface that appeared vertical from my perspective. "If this is the afterlife, the Chantry owes me an apology. This looks nothing like the Maker's bosom."

Even with no idea what "the Maker's bosom" was supposed to look like, I could see her point. The landscape was one I typically only caught glimpses of between fully-fleshed-out dreams, green-skied and rugged with the emotions of the dreamers who shaped it. "I can see, which means this is the Fade," I told her. "I don't think we're dead." Even here, the Veil cast a strange shadow that seemed indefinably wrong , as though it simply should not exist. I quickly ascribed the feeling to both finding myself physically within the Fade and to the fear demon that must lurk nearby.

"The Inquisitor opened a rift," Solas explained helpfully. "We came through…and survived . I never thought I would ever find myself here physically." He gestured. "Look - the Black City, almost close enough to touch."

"First thing - is anyone injured?" I asked, deliberately not thinking about what had happened, what was happening, and what might be about to happen. "I know this is unusual and exciting, Solas, but please don't forget where in the Fade we have found ourselves?"

"It isn't the place I would have chosen," he allowed. "I believe Cassandra may have wrenched her elbow while she was grabbing for me?"

"It's not worth wasting resources on," she replied so stoically that I knew it had to be giving her pain.

"There's no such thing as wasted magic here," I told her. "As long as Solas and I remain conscious, we can cast indefinitely. Show him."

I turned, seeking the litany of curses I had identified as originating from Sera, slowly growing in volume. "Shitballs," she whimpered as I approached her, "fuck, shit, crap. Fade, shit, arse, demons, crap!"

I caught her hands as the last word emerged in a near-wail. "Sera," I said. Pressing her hands together between my own, I noticed for the first time how much larger hers were.

"I agree with what she said," Bull rumbled from a few steps away. "I'll fight whatever you give me, Boss, but nobody said nothing about getting dragged through the ass-end of demon town."

"I know," I told him, my thumbs stroking Sera's wrists as I tried to soothe her. "Ir abelas. " I paused, thinking it over as I glanced between them. "Would it make you feel better to know the absolute worst-case scenario?" I asked. "With the understanding that it's not full possession," I added hastily as Sera whimpered again.

Bull hesitated, but then said: "Actually…maybe. Yeah. Knowing what to expect if it all goes to shit might help some." He snorted a brief, humorless laugh. "'Hey, Chief, let's join the Inquisition! Good fights for a good cause!' I don't know, Krem, I hear there are demons. 'Ah, don't worry about the demons Chief! I'm sure we won't see many!'" He took a breath. "Fucking asshole."

"But…dragons," I reminded him.

"If I get possessed…" he began.

"You won't," I told him. "Or…not bodily. Not the way we worry about with mages. A demon with an affinity for whatever weaknesses you have could reach into your mind and trap you while it uses your body for its own purposes, but it would remain a separate entity, and once it was killed you would be free. And - that's assuming that it works the same way for non-mage Qunari and dwarves as it does for everyone else. I wasn't taught much about the way demons can affect their minds. It's not an issue among the Dalish, for obvious reasons."

Bull let out a long breath. "That's…something, I guess."

"It won't be every demon, either - only the most intelligent, and only if one finds a flaw within you that corresponds to its own nature." I gave Bull an apologetic half-smile. "You may not find this comforting, but it's true anyway: the only reason I know this is because powerful and intelligent demons can do it in the waking world, too. It's just that there will be more here, and they're less likely to be maddened by getting pulled through a rift. There shouldn't be anything about being in the Fade that makes it easier , at least as far as I know."

"Fucking demons," he muttered, but he wasn't as wound up with tension as he had been.

Sera, however, still clutched at my hands, trembling, and so I focused on her. "I won't leave you behind," I promised her. "We either leave together or not at all. All right? And when we get back to Skyhold, I'll - I'll throw you a party full of girls who would love to kiss you."

She laughed again, and, though still a bit desperate, at least it sounded something like her. "Sure, right, great. Except there's only one girl. Has been ever since Satinalia." She sighed and a giant grin briefly lit up her face. "Dagna. And shut it," she added as an automatic defense, sounding much more like herself.

"Then I'll get Josephine to plan you an elaborate date, and find a dozen well-crafted runes you can make into a rune-bouquet for her," I assured my friend, reaching for things I thought Dagna would like. "All you have to do is live through this with me."

"Right," she said quietly, and then took a deep breath. "Right! We're going fill all the demons with fucking arrows, and I'm going back to kiss the frig out of Dagna."

"Exactly," I agreed, giving her hands a squeeze before releasing her.

I looked around. Solas had finished healing Cassandra, and the two of them were helping Hawke join our frame of reference, while Bull and Varric did the same for Stroud. All it seemed to require was touching the ground the rest of us shared, though I didn't blame either of them for looking slightly queasy at the end of the process.

"So…where exactly are we going?" Varric asked while Hawke and Stroud sat, eyes closed, waiting for their dizziness to subside.

"In our world, the rift the demons came through was nearby - in the main hall," Stroud observed quietly. "Can we escape the same way?"

"No," I said at the same time Solas answered, "Theoretically, yes."

We looked at each other. "That's where the demon is?" I reminded all of them, but maybe most especially him. "The big one that Erimond was trying to bring through?"

"Well," Hawke said, "can you open another rift, like the one that brought us here?"

I looked down at my left hand. The sparks had subsided somewhat, though the Anchor was still more active than usual, vibrating my bones with a quiet hum. "I don't know," I said. "I suppose I could try."

"Absolutely not," Solas snapped. "To begin with, you have no way of controlling where the rift will open. We were, if you will recall, about to die falling into the Abyssal Rift, and we have no way to determine where we are with any certainty without stepping through. As an additional matter, I have spent all my knowledge coaxing the Anchor to quiescence, and each time it wakes, it does you further harm."

"I will do whatever I have to if it keeps the rest of you safe," I insisted.

"Leaving aside his second point," Hawke interjected before Solas could offer a retort, "the first is a fairly persuasive one. I did more or less promise Varric he wouldn't have to write to Fenris telling him that I plummeted to my death in the Abyssal Rift. Which I suppose he gets out of if he dies, too - but it isn't my preferred way of keeping my word." She climbed to her feet. "I'm less afraid of a demon than I am of either remaining in the Fade or stepping blindly through a rift that leads Maker-knows-where."

"I agree with the Champion," Cassandra said.

"We've killed a lot of demons, Boss," Bull pointed out. "What has you so jumpy about this one?"

I suddenly wished that someone else had heard it whispering to them from the other side of the Veil - maybe then they would have understood my passionate desire to stay as far away from it as possible. "It's a - primal fear," I told them slowly, trying to find words that might convince them to take literally any course other than this one. "I don't - I don't know what name to give it, exactly, but - it was there at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. I think - I - I must have encountered it in one way or another, because it - " I took a breath, searching for a better way to explain, but my memories were still missing. All I had was instinct and conjecture. "It was whispering to me all through Adamant," I admitted. "I could hear it - urging me not to trust anyone, to look out for myself, to snatch up victory by whatever means were necessary."

"Had it been whispering similar counsel to Clarel all this time?" Stroud wondered quietly.

If true, I felt a sudden sympathy for her. "Perhaps. It might explain some things."

"I don't like the thought that it was clever enough to get into your head," Bull rumbled. "But…"

But.

"Are there any other options?" Cassandra asked. "Real ones?"

My mind raced furiously, trying to come up with something.

"No," Solas said, and as gentle as the word was, I didn't want his compassion. I wanted to avoid the demon.

I turned my back on his approach, rejecting it, my thoughts looping in an increasingly panicked need to find some other solution. His arms closed around me anyway. "I won't leave you behind," he said into my ear, pulling me back against his chest as he repeated my words to Sera. "We leave together, or not at all."

He was watching me when I gave in and looked up at him. "Why don't I remember?"

"If forced to guess, I would conjecture that the demon does not want you to remember," Solas replied. "I wish you had told me you could hear it, vhenan - but I am also suitably impressed by your ability to isolate and ignore its insinuations. You remained true to your own priorities, and not to those it urged on you."

"I know better than to accept what demons tell me," I replied.

"And so do many others who fail when faced with the test of acting on such wisdom," he countered swiftly, pressing a kiss against my hair. "You are not walking into certain death - not with all of us at your side. Come."

He released me but didn't protest when I slid my hand into his. We turned towards where we all sensed the demon waited, the direction as clear as a compass needle finding north now that we were resolved to confront it.

The portion of the Fade in which we found ourselves was deeply unpleasant. Solas regularly sought fragments of dreams and shards of memories, and had shared both with me in the past, but all those lodged here appeared to be nightmares of fear, despair, and loathing, most centered around the Blight. Even knowing I could do nothing for the people who had left such marks within the Fade, I found myself driven to ease the echoes of their suffering anywhere I could, offering up my own memories of hope, safety, comfort, and beauty as counterarguments to the trials that had broken them. Though I hadn't precisely expected Solas to protest, the satisfaction that radiated through our bond as I completed these small tasks caught me off guard.

"The demon of fear that rules this place only grows increasingly strong as the Fade reflects its twisted purpose," Solas told me, catching my surprise. "And even if we were to destroy it, these sites would be fertile ground for the corruption of new spirits that might yet arise here. In the soothing of these old wounds, you are weakening the demon even as you plant the seeds for kinder spirits to take root here in the future." He hesitated. "By that same token, I do not expect it to ignore us for much longer."

He wasn't wrong, though another spirit found us first.

Or, at least, the woman who looked like the presumed-dead Divine Justinia was certainly a spirit. What was uncertain was whether she was only a spirit.

I didn't recognize the face, and identified the robes only as belonging to the Chantry. It was Cassandra who named her: "Divine…Justinia? Most Holy?"

"Cassandra," she replied, her voice warm with both affection and regret.

"It…cannot be," Stroud said. "It is likely we face a demon - or a spirit."

"We have survived in the Fade physically, have we not?" Solas asked. "Perhaps she did, as well. Or - if it is a spirit that identifies so strongly with Justinia that it believes it is her, how can we say it is not?"

"Do you recognize what it is you see, Inquisitor?" she asked me.

"You are a spirit," I said. She was so bright that I had to blink if I stared at her for too long. "But you have an aura like a human, only…more. Almost like a mage. I can't say what you are, but I do know you are uncorrupted."

"Most Holy was not a mage," Cassandra said, disapproving.

"What is a mage but one who can manipulate the energies of the Fade?" I asked. "All humans and elves have that potential - who can say what might happen if one were stranded in the Fade for months?" I took a breath, possibilities crowding my mind - but then I shook them carefully away. "But - this probably isn't the time or place to make a thorough inquiry."

"How hard is it to answer one question?" Hawke asked. "I'm human, you're an elf, she is…?"

"You make the error of assuming one cannot be multiple things at the same time," Solas replied, "and, too, that ideas - which includes ideas of people - cannot have a tangible form."

"I am here to help," the Divine said, interrupting whatever Hawke might have said in reply. She fixed her eyes on me. "You do not remember what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Inquisitor."

"I don't," I agreed.

"The demon that serves Corypheus, that rules and shapes this section of the Fade, took your memories from you," she explained. "It is the Nightmare you forget upon waking. It feeds off memories of fear and desperation, growing fat upon the terror. The false Calling that terrified the Wardens into making such grave mistakes? Its work."

As we had speculated.

Still, Stroud looked at me: "I would gladly avenge the insult this Nightmare dealt my brethren."

"You will have your chance, brave Warden," the Divine told him. "This place of darkness is its lair."

"What kind of magic is Corypheus using, that he can command such a powerful demon?" Hawke asked, her voice hard with suspicion.

I expected she thought the answer would be "blood magic," but Justinia answered: "The Nightmare serves willingly, for Corypheus has brought much terror to this world. He was one of the magisters who unleashed the First Blight upon the world, was he not? Every child's cry as the archdemon circles, every dwarf's whimper in the Deep Roads…the Nightmare has fed well."

"A primal fear, just as Inana said," Cassandra sighed.

"Well, shit," Varric huffed.

The Divine refocused on me. "When you entered the Fade at Haven, the demon took a part of you. Before you do anything else, you must recover it." She gestured, and a memory lodged in the Fade lit softly. "Your memories are scattered. This is one of them."

I could access memories in the Fade - I had often accessed those others left behind - but it wasn't as though I took them away with me when I did it. It seemed as though Justinia meant for me to do something different with my own, or else they would remain, in some sense, in the possession of the Nightmare. "How do I reclaim them?" I asked.

"As with anything in the Fade: intent," she answered patiently. "This lair shaped to the Nightmare's will is unlikely to give them up without a fight, however."

There was only one thing that could mean. "Anyone want to fight some demons?" I asked my companions.

"Fucking finally," Bull replied.