a/n- So, you may notice that my dialogue is a bit different than that of the game. This is because, in moments where it was possible, I tried to bend the dialogue so that it said the same thing but was original. I don't believe that, even in an endeavor like this, I should take someone else's work and use it as my own, regardless of my intention. Additionally, each chapter was going to be based around some of the main missions with some exposition and character interaction chapters interspersed. However, as "The Wrath of Heaven" chapter turned out to be 9500+ words, in the interest of chapter length consistency, most missions will likely be split. Enjoy, and leave a review.
Guilt from Necessity
The room was dark, and fear scented the air that stung her lungs as she sucked it through her throat. Her emerald eyes swam against the flicker of green light. her ears rung with the crackle of lightning around her. She squeezed her eyes shut searing pain threatened to drag her back into the abyss of blackness and dreams from which she had just emerged. She flexed the hand, hoping that somehow it would relieve the fire that lanced through her veins. Her eyelashes fluttered against the skin of her cheek as she struggled to focus. The brightest of green light shot from her hand, where a wound lay across her skin like the smallest of cracks in a wall, yet seemingly as deep as any canyon. She gasped in surprise, shock, perhaps even fear, folding it closed again. The iron manacles tug roughly against her skin then, but she took little notice. She searched around the room in a panic, taking stock of where she was. There were four heavily armored soldiers with swords drawn…pointed at her throat, though they stood a distance away
The door slammed open. Enya pulled away from the figures that strode through as far as she could, trying in vein to see their faces more clearly through her blurred vision. The first, dark hair, short in length though she was quite tall. Was she a Templar? The elf blinked again and turned to the second. Purple hair? No, she wore a hood over hers, and a long mail tunic protected the rest of her. While her focus had drifted to the second woman, the first had come to stand behind her.
"Who are you?" She had a low voice, filled with alto, and her words were tinged with the drag of Nevarra.
The elf recoiled slightly from the woman's sudden presence at her ear. She could not speak, her voice rough, course, like pine needles dragged across paper. She coughed and tried again.
"My-my name is Enya," her words were weaker than she wanted them to be, betraying the wash of confusion and anxiety that filled her mind.
The female Templar paced around her in a lazy circle. Enya could read the tension, the anger, the control in each of her steps.
"Tell me, Enya, why we shouldn't kill you now." Her words were deliberate and measured. Just like her step.
Enya's eyes widened as the words made impact; her breathing quickened. Her painless hand scrabbled against the manacles.
"The Conclave is destroyed. The mages, the Templars come there to negotiate peace? Dead," her voice wavered, she was looking at the floor, a finger shaking in Enya's direction. Her eyes snapped onto her captive, cold as ice, accusatory, "Everyone…except you."
It was a question wrapped in a truth and Enya realized with a jolt why she was here. They though that she had…
"What do you mean everyone's dead?" her voice was stronger, but still, it shook.
She received no answered. Instead, the Templar woman stepped forward and took her left wrist in a cruelly tight grasp considering the destroyed skin the shackles left in their wake.
"Explain this!"
Enya's hand seared with more blindingly hot pain as green light erupted from her wound. The woman let go, and the iron carried her hand back down to her lap.
"Ah-I…" her voice snagged again on its way out, though she could not be certain that this time was not through fear rather than disuse. The elf gathered herself, "Can't."
"You can't!" The templar leaned toward her slightly, leaning closer to her face.
"It wasn't there before! I don't know what it is!" She tried to appeal, her face open, eyes wide with fear.
The woman shoved her, "I don't believe you!"
Enya took the push as gracefully as she could, surprised as the woman in the purple hood stepped in to defend her pushing the Templar back.
"Calm yourself, Cassandra. We need her," the woman dropped her hand from the other's shoulder. She also spoke with the cadence of Orlais though her voice was decidedly more feminine, a gentle, flowing soprano that seemed incongruous with her position and dress.
Enya's eyes darted around the room quickly, noticing only now that the soldiers had lowered their blades. These two women we more than capable of fighting her themselves. Then her focus returned to her interrogators. They'd known each other for quite some time, she concluded, for without words, they spoke in the brief moment.
Enya stared past them, her mind reeling with the information they had just imparted to her. The conclave, the people the mages, everyone…
"I can't believe it." She paused and drew a rough breath, "All those people. Dead."
"Does you memory serve you? Can you tell us how this began?" The hooded woman spoke now, her voice more emotionless than the Templar called Cassandra.
Cassandra paced past her and Enya watched her present interrogator's eyes shift cautiously for a moment. Enya glanced to her hands as the pain flared again, struggling to focus.
"I was running from..." She licked her lips, "Something was chasing me and…and."
An image flashed before her eyes of a figure, perhaps in robes, but glowing, an arm outstretched toward her.
"There was a woman," she asked and then looked up at the purple hood. The elf noticed then that the woman's hair was red.
"A woman?" her interrogator crossed her arms as stared at her intently.
Enya went on, haltingly, "She reached for me, but I…" No other memories aided her in her telling of this story. In a mix of aggravation and grief, she looked away, unknowning bitter on her tongue.
Cassandra stepped past her and steered her colleague toward the door, "Go; you're needed at the forward camp, Leliana. You've delayed long enough." She paused and shared a stern look with the other woman, "I will take her to the rift."
Enya looked up at this. Cassandra was staring at her, eyes still filled with ice, though she thought they might have thawed a little. Leliana cast a last glance over her shoulder at Cassandra, perhaps debating whether to leave them alone, before departing. As Cassandra approached her, Enya remained still. Whether it was the slight softening of the woman's posture or simply the elf's acceptance of her likely fate, she allowed the approach, already defeated by her mind. As her shackles were unlocked, and a rope passed through her hands she asked.
"What did happen?"
Cassandra aided her in standing. The uncoiling of her knees was both agony and ecstasy as she rose from her forced kneel. Even at full height, she barely reached her captor's shoulder.
"It would be easier to show you," Cassandra intoned and led her from the dungeons out into the world.
More than the pain of her bruises and the fire in her hand, did the blinding white light of the sun on snow hurt her eyes as she stepped from her prison into the world. Then she saw it, the sky ripped open, curving upward into a vortex of howling green and grey. A lazy coil of green swirled up toward it. She stared, blank-faced up at it. Her stomach turned, and her hand burned slightly more in its presence. Fear and fascination dueled within her chest along with an unnerving understanding that this was all that was left of the conclave.
"We call it the Breach," Cassandra's voice cut through her thoughts.
Enya tore her gaze away, turning back to her captor.
"With each hour it grows widening the wound in the Veil that protects us from the dangers of the Fade."
The Templar, although, now that she was in the light Enya thought that that description was perhaps incorrect, turned toward her.
"It's not the only one, but it alone rends open the sky. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave."
Enya fixed her with a tense stare, "An explosion can do that?"
"This one did," Cassandra approached her.
As though in response to her words, the Breach flared with green light, filling the valley with the rumble of a thousand avalanches. White hot fire burned through Enya's hand as green light exploded from the wound. A scream ripped her throat as she fell to the ground and curled around her hand, as though protecting it could stave away the pain. Cassandra knelt before her and pointed at the Breach emphatically.
"Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads," She paused, and Enya looked up, "And it is killing you. It may be the key to stopping this, but there isn't much time. If we wait much longer, the rift may swallow our world."
Enya looked from Cassandra to her hand and back up, "And you still think I did this?"
"It is possible." Her captor looked up at the sky, "Perhaps you made a mistake. But it matters not. That mark is the most immediate hope for stopping this."
Enya looked away at the breach too, wondering if these would be her final moments, a delay put on her death by misfortune's accident. Would she die in the very place she had survived? She had already accepted her death was unavoidable. Best it come with the chance of saving the world than by the honed blade of an executioner's axe. She turned back to Cassandra.
"I understand."
Cassandra looked at her and hesitated, "Then…"
"I will do whatever it takes."
Her captor paused for a moment, absorbing her words, and then stood quickly, drawing Enya up to her feet by the back of her shirt. She escorted her along with a sideways glance of indecision. The elf's wrists stung as the rope found barely healing wounds on which to scrape.
Cassandra led her past lines of people and tents whose eyes were filled with rage and hatred. Enya had felt dislike before but never had she experienced a place so devoid of empathy. In this crowd, Cassandra's miniscule glimmer of compassion shown like a shining beacon and Enya felt herself drawn closer to her captor out of shear necessity.
"They have decided you're guilty. They need it." Cassandra explained as she pushed her through the streets, "They mourn the loss of our Most Holy Divine Justinia of the Chantry." Her voice again quavered.
Enya wondered how important the Divine was to the people who worshipped with the Chant. She breathed a little more easily as they approached the outskirts of the city.
"This meeting was a chance for our world to find peace. An opportunity for mages and Templars to settle their differences. The destruction of the Conclave throws this war back into chaos."
She paused as they approached a gate. The guards opened it wide for them to pass.
"We lash out like the sky, but we must think beyond ourselves,"
They walked onto the bridge over the valley. Should one of these soldier's that had decided her guilt lose faith in the woman she assumed was their commander and decide to attack her, she would be lost over the edge of this stone arch, and that would be the end of it.
"As She did."
Cassandra crossed in front of her and extended her hand as a command to stop. Enya did as she was bid, letting the last few words uttered by her captor hang in the air, unattached and attached to everything with meaning. She was unsure who Cassandra meant by "she" but clearly the was a deeper meaning in this statement than Enya could devine. The human woman drew a knife and approached her. Enya fought the urge to recoil again as the fingers of one hand grasped her wrist while the other cut the bindings away.
"There will be a trial; I can promise no more." Cassandra let her hand drop free and stepped back, "Come. It is not far."
Enya rubbed the scabs from her wrists and looked up, "Where are you taking me?"
The human warrior did not respond but walked on across the bridge. Enya glanced around at the other soldiers on the bridge, unmoving for a moment and then followed her. Their mistrusting gazes crawled over her skin like ants.
"We cannot know for certain the effect your mark will have on the Breach unless we first test it on something smaller." She responded as Enya drew close. "Open the gate. We are heading into the valley."
They proceeded beyond the gates, and Cassandra broke into a brisk jog. Enya, weak as she was, steeled herself to keep up. Soldiers ran past them, back toward the town. Haven. And ironic name, she thought morbidly. They made it partway up a hill when the sky cracked again. The elf cried out, her legs giving way beneath her as her feet slipped through the snow. She grasped her wrist, curling desperately around it again. Anything to stop the pain.
Cassandra reached her and dragged her back to her feet again. The woman's face twitched with the tiniest amount of concern, "The pulses are coming faster now." She took off again, leading the way to Mythal only knows where, "The larger the Breach grows, the more rifts appear. Demons come through. We are finding one such rift."
Enya glanced up at the sky as she struggle to keep pace with the woman's longer legs and healthier state. She winced a few times as she stumbled on rocks and ice that littered the path. She tried hard to ignore any corpses she saw, for their grotesque visages were not something she thought she could bear haunting her dreams. She looked instead up at the Breach, the source of her pain, of her suspicion, and was awed. Suddenly she understood why they thought only the perpetrator of such an event could have survived it.
"How did I survive?" she asked aloud, though she was not certain whether she had wanted an answer or was simply musing.
Nevertheless, Cassandra explained, "The soldiers said you stepped out of a rift, then fell unconscious. Everything farther in the valley was laid waste. As you did, they mentioned seeing a woman before the rift from which you fell closed."
They stepped onto the bridge and crossed half of its span, Enya working hard to wrap her mind around Cassandra's bleak explanation. Then, with a flash of green energy, or magic, the stone beneath their feet collapsed, and they were falling. Enya went limp as she hit the rocks rolling and bouncing down them onto the icey river in the middle of the valley. Coughing to get back her breath, she looked around for Cassandra. Her captor struggled to rise from the ice as well.
Another ball of rift energy fell from the sky, impacting on the ice in a shower of scintillating shards and from it rose a demon of a sort. Enya froze in her place, looking between it and Cassandra. The warrior had already drawn her sword and held it and the shield with an ease that seemed almost innate. Sword pointed at her target and shield at the ready, Cassandra whisked her gaze over her prisoner.
"Stay behind me!"
With that, she rushed forward. Enya remained still, unwilling to cross her captor until the ground before her boiled with blackish green mist. She took a couple steps back, glancing around for anything to help her. A glint caught her eye as she frantically searched, and she reached the greatsword lying on the crate just as another demon rose from the boiling muck. It lunged at her, and she stepped sideways, twisting with all of her might to bring the sword around and strike her adversary. She landed a few blows before it turned and made for the other demon.
Enya rushed after it. She was not friends with Cassandra, but she would not stand by and let her be killed. The enemy of your enemy might be your friend, her mother had once said. She struck the demon a few more times, but it was Cassandra who decisively finished it. Hot black demon blood dribbled onto the ice.
"It's over," Enya raised her eyes to find the unnervingly steady tip of Cassandra's sword in her face.
"Drop your weapon," Cassandra ordered, "Now!"
Enya raised her chin, sword held aloft before her, "If we run into more demons, I can't let you fight on your own."
Her captor shifted her grip on her sword and then she relented, rising taller so that she might sheath her sword.
"You're right. I cannot protect you, and I shouldn't expect you to stand idly by," She turned away.
Enya retrieved the greatsword's harness from the pile of rubble that had once been a bridge and then hastened to join her. Her captor spun on her heel toward her and Enya stopped, drawing herself to her full height. Her right hand itched to grab the sword, but she didn't move a muscle.
"I should remember that you agreed to come willingly," Cassandra pursed her lips and then reached for a pouch attached to her hip. She took out some small vials and handed them to the elf, "Take these potions. Maker knows what else we will face."
They set off again. The added weight of the sword did little to improve to the pain in her side from the fall off the bridge. It lanced through her chest with each step she took. Cassandra's pace had increased, or perhaps Enya was growing weaker. She paused a moment and pulled out one of the bottles. Downing it like a shot of Antivian brandy, she tried hard not to gag on the intensely bitter taste. She shook her head once and then took off again, relishing the feeling of warmth she got from the potion. It was not healing her, but the lessening of pain was enough to keep her going.