a/n- Here I am, giving you another chapter. I figure one good one to start off the final month of 2015. Its been a busy year and yet another busy semester for me. And I have to confess all the writing I did over break has taken a toll on my studies in that I am woefully underprepared for the finals that I will be experiencing in many of my classes over the next week or so. That being said, after that I'm free as a bird on an afternoon breeze. My point is, you very likely won't be seeing a chapter next week as my procrastination has cost me time for writing. Anyway, enjoy this chapter and, you know, review.

In The Darkest Night

The crackling of fires overpowered all sound but the cries of the archdemon as it circled overhead. They had fought together so often, the rhythm of battle seemed like a dance. Enya trusted Varric's arrows to miss her, and she was able to cut in front of him to take down one of the mutated men. She trusted that the ice Solas cast would not harm her, though it could chill her enemies to such an extent they would break under a single blow of her sword, or a bash of Cassandra's shield.

Each enemy fell upon them with great ferocity and they held back no battle cry nor pained exclamation. The Elder One's dragon circled their party like a vulture, waiting for them to fall. Why didn't it attack? They pressed their advantage, moving against their enemy as a untied force to reach the last trebuchet.

Enya spotted the men Cullen had sent ahead of them on the path as they dispatched yet another group of Red Templars. The young recruits had not made it to their destination. Instead blood melted the snow to congealed salmon pink around their bodies. The trebuchet would not be ready when they arrived.

"Maker take them to your side," Cassandra knelt next to both and closed their eyes.

The trebuchet loomed before them and they took out the group of men that surrounded it in a matter of moments. It was primed, ready to fire but they had not been able to turn it. Enya cast her sword to the ground and got to work on the wheel. This trebuchet was bigger and heavier than the other two and she strained with it as it turned. Another group of men fell upon them and Enya began to wonder whether even the skill of her companions would allow them the chance to win the night.

From around the curve came a creature so encased in the lyrium it barely seemed human. It surrounded them with a wall of the scarlet substance, trapping them all within its reach as it attacked with a great, red lyrium arm. It knocked Enya to the ground, crushing the barrier Solas had cast on her completely. Her sword flew out of her hand and she scrambled to get it back as the monster attacked again. This time she was able to roll out of the way of its giant clubbed arm, but only just.

Sword in hand, she swung at its legs, trying to give it something from which to flee. The behemoth of corrupted lyrium took several steps back and then charged again, breaking through the wall of its own making. Varric fired three arrows in quick succession. They sunk deep into the cracks between the crystals, eliciting a great roar from the beast. Enya leapt onto her feet just as Cassandra lunged past her with a yell, slicing and shattering some of the creature's crystals. A blizzard fell down upon them, just as Enya felt the hum of a magical barrier slide over her. She spun to glance at Solas, just in time to take notice of the lyrium infused soldiers behind him.

"Solas!" she warned.

The elven mage spun to face his attackers but not before one landed a blow to the back of his calf. Enya ran toward him, taking the next of the strikes meant for him on the flat of her blade. She shoved with her sword, throwing her weight into it and then spun out of the parry to cleave the Templar's head clean off his shoulders. It landed with a dull thump on the icy dirt. Behind her, Solas clamored to his feet. Enya could not remember him mentioning past battles, but his resolve was more that of a seasoned warrior than of a scholarly mage when he resumed his attack on the behemoth. She shook her head. This was not the time for questions. Her blade slipped into the space between the armor of one of the Templars arms and chestplate. She withdrew it and kicked the man in the chest. The last, dropped like a stone as she slid her blade through his throat. Moments later, the behemoth fell, shattering with the sound of a glacier.

Enya panted and then remembered Solas' injury. He leaned heavily on his staff and tossed back some of the elfroot tonics they'd been given. At her look of concern, he shook his head.

"I'll be fine, lethallan."

There was pain in his eyes, but it did not overwhelm him. She nodded and ran over to check on Varric. Cassandra was helping the dwarf up from the ground. With a growl, Varric brushed off her arm.

"I'm fine! I'm fine," he insisted, "I've had worse headaches from drinking."

Cassandra let out a disgruntled sigh, "Thank the Maker, you still have your humor."

She waved a hand at him and turned to face Enya, "Herald! Are you hurt?"

Enya spotted a line of blood running from the Seeker's ear down to her chin where it dripped onto her enameled chestplate. She noted that the other warrior was unphased by this damage.

"No. But Solas,"

The other elf cut her off, "Will heal," He limped past her, "Master Tethras, might I have a look at your head?"

"You should talk! Have a look at your leg,"

At Varric's thorny reply, Enya caught Cassandra's eye. Were there not still a dragon circling overhead, they might have smiled. Enya grasped the wheel again but before she began to align the trebuchet, she caught the end of this argument.

"I daresay you've had it worse, Varric."

Varric grumbled, "Whatever you say, Chuckles."

It took her several long moments to fully aim the trebuchet and another few for her to set the tension correctly. She scanned the horizon for the sign. For a moment, she wondered if she'd missed it during the fighting. Enya failed to notice the disappearance of the dragon. It appeared out of nowhere, as it had before, raining sickly red fire down upon the trees on the hill above them.

Cassandra stood next to the trebuchet, gazing up at the beast. Enya watched as the Seeker seized Varric's coat and hauled him up from where Solas was tending him. The elven mage cast a barrier around them all, but Enya shook her head.

"Go!" she screamed to them, "Get out of here!"

All three of her companions stared back at her, indecision halting what should have been a simple choice.

"It is me he wants. I'm the threat!" She shouted, "Someone has to stay here and fire this, but you must go!"

"No," Cassandra's argument struck Enya to her core, "If one of us is to die, let it be me."

Enya opened her mouth to speak again, her eyes flickering up to the burning trees. The dragon came back around. Solas grasped the Seeker's shoulder and took the words from Enya's lips.

"It can be no one but the Herald."

Enya watched the fire in Cassandra's eyes die. The Seeker searched Solas' face for a lie but Enya could tell the woman found nothing. Cassandra's resignation was as heartbreaking as her desire to take her place. Cassandra and Varric ran down the path. Solas cast her one last glance before he too set off, his gait hindered only slightly by his injury.

She leapt off the trebuchet as the world exploded. Enya lurched forward through the air. She hit the ground and rolled several times. The world faded in and out. Spots danced across her vision. Enya gasped, for the wind had been knocked clean out of her lungs. What was more, she could not feel her sword pressing against her back. A frantic search of her surroundings revealed it to be lying many metres away, a distance she might have been able to travel had she not been so disoriented.

Smoke invaded Enya's nose. Flames crackled around her echoing through the ringing in her ears. She pressed a hand to her head as she pushed herself up. Through the walls of fire around the clearing, she spotted a tall figure approaching. There could be no mistaking that this was the Elder One. He was larger than any man should be, a towering silhouette in the flames he passed through without flinching. So narrow, it seemed he could be snapped by a twig, but Enya knew that was far from the truth.

Enya clamoured to her feet, though she knew it would do little good. She was at his mercy now, and she doubted that could save her. Free of the flames, she could see him clearly, graying skin stretched almost as though it was sewn in place over a body so riddled and scarred with Red Lyrium it could take the place of armor. His sneer formed from a gash in his face where lips might once have been but the cracks around them obscured their original shape. Scarlet crystals of lyrium emerged from the skin that covered his face, stretching spiderweb tendrils of the dead tissue over themselves in spots.

He was a terror, a nightmare to be certain, something fallen out of the deepest, darkest corner of the Fade. Enya straightened as he approached her. If these were to be her last moments, she would not spend them cowering in fear; there would be dignity. Dark fire burned in her adversaries eyes, a brilliant fury that echoed the chaos he'd created of an innocent village, just to get to her.

It can be no one but the Herald. Solas had understood why she was the one to stay at least her reasoning. In truth, Enya could never have allowed any of them to take her place. Any of their deaths would have blackened her heart. Of course fate had given her a reason, and excuse. The Elder One would not stop until her knew he to be or believed her to be dead. He would follow the wounded Inquisition to the ends of Thedas to destroy her, for she'd betrayed the true strength of the power she had only begun to understand. She was the one thing that stood in his way.

The ground shook with the sound of an earthquake. Enya spun away from the Elder One just in time to see his dragon running across the ground toward her. Instinct prodded her into a fast backward run, the little good it did. The dragon fixed her with one of its beady, dead eyes, sniffed the air, and the rose high on it forelimbs, loosing a great, screeching cry into the heaven. Enya's blood froze like the pond behind her as goosepimples burst across her skin. Her heart pumped erratically, like a bird trapped in a very small cage. She was surrounded, trapped. Her eyes found her sword, trapped under the claws of the dragon. A weapon is only powerful in the hands of those that wield it. Her mentor, Varevas, had once explained. Now her sword was no more than a slab of metal she could not reach.

"Enough!" The Elder One's voice was deep, calm, and far from what she'd expected.

She raised her hands to shield her face from the blast of wind he sent across the ground, whipping up a spray of snow. The dragon behind her calmed. So he was a mage. Enya was not surprised. Too often mages had become the root of Thedas' problems, and Solas had supposed great power would have been required to rip open the Veil as this man had presumably done.

"Pretender!" He accused from the edge of the fire, "You toy with forces beyond your ken."

Enya spared a glance toward her hand, which ached again, as it had before she closed the Breach. She shook her head. She had to keep him talking.

"What forces? Who are you? Why are you doing this?" her voice tore from her throat, hoarse from the hot scent of the fires.

The Elder One smiled, though through his slit of a mouth it appeared more like a grimace. His voice quieted as he delighted in his explanation, his superior knowledge. The gleam in his eyes was unmistakable in its arrogance, and yet Enya did not doubt that he had great power. She paced closer to him, her eyes catching sight of the undamaged trebuchet.

"Know what you are, what I once was," he hissed, "Know me; know what you have pretended to be." He drew himself up with a grace that should not have been possible for one so disfigured, "Exalt the Elder One, the will that is Corypheus."

His name was dark, shadowed and bloody. In Enya it evoked and even deeper fear. Some names evoked power, exuded an essence that was unexplainable. Corypheus was one, blackened to its core. The man himself imbued it with such terrifying depth. She took a breath, tamped down the fear for he was nothing more than a man, or so she told herself, nothing more than a red lyrium corrupted madman, who wished to destroy her world.

He pointed a long, mutated finger at her, its tip sharpened to a razor's edge, "You will kneel before me."

"This doesn't make sense," She shook her head, "Help me understand why you are doing this?"

His sneer deepened, "Your understanding is not required. If you gain it, consider yourself blessed." Corypheus' gaze fell to his waist where he took an object and lifted it in his spidery fingers.

The orb he held in his hand was covered in lines that intertwined and overlapped spiraling over it surface from pole to pole. As she watched, these lines flooded with red light, the same energy that the dragon produced when it breathed fire. It hummed a high, metallic chime reverberated from inside it, like a lock falling open.

"I am here for the Anchor," Corypheus stepped toward her and thrust out his arm, "The process of removing it begins now."

Enya's mark blazed to life as the red magic made contact. She grabbed her wrist with her other hand.

"It is your fault, Herald. You interrupted a ritual years in the planning and instead of dying, you stole its purpose."

He twisted his hand, began to draw back on his own magic, and the pain exploded. Enya fought the urge to fall, to curl about her hand in pain. It was what he wanted, his anger and arrogance drove him to believe she wouldn't fight him. She tugged back on the magic in her hand, for all the good it would do. He was powerful and his anger gave him fuel. He was right, the power of her mark was as foreign to her as the Abyssal Reach of Western Orlais, and she understood little of how it worked or even how magic worked.

"I do not know how you survived," His grimace contorted further with his efforts to draw the magic from her, "but what marks you as touched, what you flail at rifts," his face took on the pallid mask of pride, "I crafted to assault the very Heavens."

He clenched his fist and the pressure in her hand increased with a sickening explosion. The pain raced through her arm, her hand, her side, reaching through her and into her, as though a part of her was being torn away. She was on fire. A scream tore from her throat and she collapsed to her knees. A little surge of anger touched her as he got his wish, for on the ground before him she knelt, crippled by his magical assault.

"And you used the Anchor to undo my work," he continued, "The gall!"

She balanced herself with her other hand. While her left burned with the heat of a thousand suns her right stung and prickled in the sharp cold of the snow. Her jaw was clenched against the pain, everything she could do to keep herself from screaming again. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing the pain this caused her. Each breath was an effort, a gasp drawn through a blanket into lungs clogged with sand. She tore her eyes away from her blazing hand to address him.

"What is this thing meant to do? What is it for?" her voice teetered on the dangerous precipice of fear and anguish.

There was a condescending chuckle in his reply, "It was meant to bring certainty where there is none. For you the certainty that I would always come for it."

The pressure in her hand was gone all at once. At first, she thought he had succeeded in removing the Mark, the Anchor, as he called it, but when she looked down, it remained. Light glinted out of the scar carved into her palm. Confusion took her for only a moment before the gravity of it continued presence made her realize he was incapable of removing. Her eyes found her adversary. She fought the urge to shrink further away from him. Corypheus' calm aggression had mutated into ravenous fury. A growl flooded from within his chest, and Enya stole herself to keep from flinching. He was before her in moments and wrenched her hand from the ground, lifting her by the arm, into the air as though she was little more than a rag.

His face was plastered with a grimace of pure hatred, "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, but no more."

Enya's shoulder stretched leaving a hollow feeling in the joint. She felt no pain, only an emptiness, as her body tugged down on her shoulder and her wrist chaffed in his vice-grip. He fixed her in his gaze with the regard of a god to a beetle, yet in his eyes there was a self-satisfied gleam under his outer rage. He told his tale to Enya as a master would a slave, a method to reinforce his self-pronounced authority.

"I have gathered the will to return under no name but my own. To champion withered Tevinter and correct this Blighted world." He looked away from her, "Beg that I succeed, for I have seen the throne of the gods and it was empty!"

Enya felt the slam of the trebuchet's scaffholding before she was aware she had been thrown. She collapsed to the stage of the war machine, limp as a ragdoll, as the air was forced from her lungs yet again.

"The Anchor is permanent. You have spoiled it with your stumbling." His voice dripped poison as he advanced on her.

Permanent. She shook her head, refocusing herself. The power was hers and hers alone. It gave her an advantage. He could not use it then. There was no easy way for him to enter the Fade. And each time he tried, she could close it. Enya could hold this madman's plans at bay with just a flick of her hand if she wished it, if she was fast enough, tireless enough, an unending stalemate. Corypheus advanced on her and with him, the mutilated dragon. It pulled back its head and opened its mouth, revealing the boiling mass of deep ruby magic within.

A sword lay on the stage, chipped and crusted with iron blood, but it was a weapon. Grabbing it, she scrambled to her feet, holding it before her as a defense. A flicker of amusement filled Corypheus' eyes, for his arrogance only allowed him see the bug under his boot, attempting to fight back. There had still been no signal from Cullen, or maybe there had been and she'd missed it.

"So be it. I will begin again, find a new way to give this world the Nation and God it requires,"

God? Her eyes widened in surprise. Creators! Who thought they could become a god, who wished such responsibility, such dominion over creation? And then she heard the hiss of the flare. The ball of fire streaked high over the far mountainside above the tree line. Relief flooded her with warmth and she turned to the twisted mage before her with a look of triumph.

He'd seen it and the unexpected success of the Inquisition stoked the furnace of wrath within. Daggers of hatred passed through his narrowed eyes as he face her.

His voice the low growl of and avalanche, he said, "And you," he spat, "I will not suffer even an unknowning rival. You must die."

Enya widened her stance as the dragon leaned further forward, the sickly red magic pouring from its mouth and sizzling where it touched the snow. She raised her chin. Mythal enaste. The release for the trebuchet was just out of her reach. Give me the strength. If she was fast enough…

"You stand over there, hoping to be a god, yet you allow your arrogance to blind you!

Her confidence seemed to shake him, for he was slow to respond as she threw her sword, kicked the release and ran. She couldn't look back to see what happened, but she knew the avalanche wouldn't end him. Not with his dragon within his reach. The snow fell in a rush from the mountainside behind her. Adrenaline flooded Enya's veins, stoking her flight. Her thin legs screamed with the strain she placed on the muscles; she'd never run so fast in her life. She clamored over the barricade, spotted a hole in the ground, perhaps the entrance to one of the mining tunnels that riddled the slopes, she couldn't tell, but it was her only chance.

Enya hurled her nimble frame down into the black hole as the entire mountainside fell on the village behind her. She was conscious for the first two impacts on the way down. Pain blossomed through her ribcage and then her head struck the ground and darkness swallowed her into its inky depths.