Shortsighted

We weren't the only ones following Cassandra, apparently. Various forms of unpleasantness seemed to tag along in her wake. First - further descent along a path littered with more demons. "Keep watch on Inana," Cassandra ordered Solas and Varric. "She doesn't see well."

I felt them both look at me, and burned with shame.

"You seem to have no trouble picking out demons," Solas observed after our first fight, and so I had to, again, recount the oddities in my vision.

"Everything out to roughly my elbow is perfectly clear," I told them after explaining the way I perceived the Veil. "Out to my fingertips, I can make out by squinting. Beyond, my vision rapidly deteriorates, until all I have is colors and vague shapes flowing into each other. And I have very little peripheral vision," I added.

"Hey, as long as you can find and kill demons, I'm glad to have you along," Varric assured me.

"Thank you," I murmured, feeling at once patronized and pleased that someone thought me capable of something .

"You are Dalish," Solas observed as though puzzling something out, "but clearly away from the rest of your clan. Did they send you here?" Disbelief colored his tone.

"No," I said, my voice hardly above a whisper. "What do you know of the Dalish?" He had recognized me for what I was. Had he recognized my vallaslin as the meaningless husk that it was - incomplete and unpowered?

"I have wandered many roads in my time, and crossed paths with your people on more than one occasion," he told me, which was not at all the sort of answer I sought.

"My people," I echoed despondently. "Perhaps, if I survive...and if they want me back."

It was Varric who observed: "I've never seen what-do-you-call-it - vallaslin - that minimal. Which god…"

"Do my markings honor?" I finished for him when he trailed off. "They were meant for Dirthamen, but the spell to bind me to the clan...didn't take."

"That's something that can happen?" Varric asked.

"No," Solas answered softly as I sought a way to explain. I felt my shoulders creep up toward my ears and focused on the ground in front of me.

"Sorry," Varric muttered. "Thought I was making conversation, not stepping in it."

I couldn't truly relax while Solas's eyes remained fixed on me with what I felt was likely disdain, but I sent a smile in Varric's general direction. "As it's unprecedented, you could hardly have known."

Another group of demons arrived, then, shaking us out of any lingering awkwardness following that conversation. I paid close attention to my own capability as I took on demon after demon, and decided Varric was right to be pleased by my presence. My combat skills were satisfactory, at least as long as I could sense my enemy. Whatever disagreements Maela and I had, she had trained me well.

After demons, there was yet more unpleasantness at the forward camp in the form of a man who wanted to see me summarily executed. Chancellor Roderick. I shuddered quietly as he blustered, uncertain whether I was more frightened by the threats he leveled against me personally, or the threat he indirectly leveled against the world by his apparent inability to grasp the magnitude of the disaster represented by the Breach. I stared at my hand, flexing it, trying to trace the lines of power that connected it to the hole in the sky.

As I did so, distracting myself from the distressing argument Cassandra and Leliana were engaging in with the Chancellor, Varric sidled up to me. "Don't listen to this asshole," he muttered. "Nightingale and the Seeker aren't gonna let him hurt you."

I nodded, even though Cassandra had recently wanted to hurt me herself. She seemed honestly concerned about the Breach, and as long as I remained a potential asset, she would try to keep me safe.

"What does it look like to you?" Varric asked, but before I could answer, the Breach expanded again with an ominous rumble, and the mark on my hand flared. I was becoming accustomed to the searing pain of it and only grimaced as my muscles spasmed in revolt.

"How do you think we should proceed?" Cassandra asked. I had only barely been paying attention - something about a mountain path or a straight charge toward the temple. "You know your abilities and limitations better than we."

One thing I knew for certain: "I cannot charge with any speed. A mountain path will no doubt be a danger to me as well, but…"

"What if we were to rope up?" Solas suggested.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed with a decided nod. "That ought to make the mountain path traversable."

I felt myself blush painfully, and Cassandra noticed.

"We do it to protect you," she reassured me. "They are not bonds - not a punishment."

"I know," I told her quickly. "At least not any more than my entire - but, then, I was the one who ran toward an exploded temple that even spirits ran from." It was only the truth, and I felt grim reflecting on my own foolishness. While I had gone with a desire to help - what possible help did I suppose I might have offered? "I no doubt brought all this on myself, one way or another."

"And who can say it isn't well for us that you did?" I heard Solas say quietly behind me, and I wasn't certain whether he meant me to hear or not. It drew my attention once again to the spell bound to my hand, though, and I realized he might be right. One way or another, I had received a means of influencing whatever disaster was occurring - and then I had fallen into the hands of people who wanted to set it right.

I took a breath. "Very well, which position shall I take?"

Roderick continued to protest as we readied ourselves, but no one paid him any mind. Leliana left to ready the soldiers for the charge, and Cassandra ignored him so entirely that, if not for the tension I saw in her jaw as she tied the rope around me, I would have thought she had managed to forget he was there. "On your head be it, Seeker!" he snapped as we passed him, heading toward the mountain path.

The curse was so petty, so absurd in light of what we faced, that I couldn't help replying, though I kept my eyes fixed firmly on what I could see of the ground. "If we fail, I'm reasonably certain that many heads besides Cassandra's will feel it," I said - not quite to the Chancellor, but not so quietly he was likely to miss it.

"Isn't that the truth," Varric muttered, and we began our ascent.