Chapter 2: The Breach
As the group closed in on the reported location of the breach, Eka noticed that it was eerily quiet, a stillness that she had never encountered in all her time walking the earth. She looked back towards Solas and Dorian, a worried expression on her face. "Have you guys noticed how quiet it is? It's as if all of the birds have vanished from the skies, taking the mammals, insects, and even the wind with them." Neither of the men said anything, perhaps out of fear of provoking Cassandra's ire once again. She was indeed correct, and Cassandra, in an attempt to rally her companions, announced, "I have yet to encounter a breach that we cannot seal," as she looked at Eka, forcing a smile. Eka appreciated her bravado, though she noticed that Cassandra's eyes had betrayed her, giving away doubt. Eka still rewarded her attempt by smiling back obediently.
Upon cresting the next hill, all was made clear. The enormous breach threatening the once peaceful sky stretched further than any breach they had yet encountered. That monstrous rip in the sky with illuminating and iridescent green patches shifting back and forth caused Eka to freeze dead in her tracks as if she were a halla caught in the gaze of an enormous predatory wolf whose murderous intent was made all too clear.
She failed to notice that Solas had ridden up next to her and had gently placed his left hand over her right hand, which was still clenching the reigns of her prized red hart. "Sahlin Darthen, emma lath." "Now in this moment be alert, my love." Eka snapped to attention, looked at Solas and nodded, her right hand interlacing her small digits between his. Dorian stepped gracefully off of his horse and proceeded to tie her up along a rather large outstretched branch.
The land was sparsely forested with large pine trees dotting the area accompanied by thorny bushes and a plethora of short brownish-green grass. It was almost spring, and in a few months that grass would be a long and vibrant shade of green. Agreeing that this seemed to be the best place to tie up their mounts, the others quickly followed suit. Now all that was left to do was to form a solid and cohesive plan of attack.
Solas volunteered for the quick reconnaissance work and announced that he would likely be back within thirty minutes. As he departed, Eka passed him several slivers of druffalo jerky in hopes that they might give him energy for the fight to come. She then passed some out to Cassandra and Dorian, who both promptly thanked her. She walked to her red hart to retrieve one of the large canteens of water from her bag before approaching the group.
As she looked from Dorian to Cassandra, the tension in the air was palpable. Dorian was sitting down cross-legged in the grass, his left middle finger rapidly tapping his left knee in alternating succession with his pointer finger to an unconscious rhythm as his right hand steadied the pieces of meat on which he was slowly gnawing. He was uncharacteristically quiet, and it made Eka even more apprehensive. As usual, largely due to the bulkiness of her armor, Cassandra remained standing.
Usually it was Cassandra who rallied everybody and riled them up before a fight, but she was lost in an all too familiar vacant expression, her eyes not unlike Eka's minutes earlier as she gazed at the harrowing and impressive breach in the distance. It was disheartening seeing her companions like that, and Eka internally decided that despite her fears, she needed to motivate her team and get their spirits up. She sat next to Dorian and placed her hand over his shaking fingers, bracing the rest of his hand in hers. He said nothing but smiled back at her, thankful for the gesture that had once again grounded him in reality. She smiled up at Cassandra and said, "About that breach..." just in time for Solas to return to the makeshift camp. They all knew that it was late afternoon, and the group would have as little as three hours before nightfall.
"So what's the count," asked Cassandra, who was promptly answered with, "two rage, three fear, and six lessers." Dorian piped in with, "two rage AND three fear," almost in disbelief. "I did not stutter," scowled Solas, followed by a brief apology for being short-tempered with the Tevinter mage. "Alright, so what's the battle plan," responded Dorian, rather timidly after the response to his last comment.
The fear demons were the most dangerous and the most detested, as they were smarter than the other demons, manipulative, less predictable, and they had the ability to teleport with ease across seemingly large distances. The rage demons were larger than fear demons and took more than twice the amount of time to kill, but they were predictable, as they were the embodiment of an emotion driving them to blindly attack the closest living thing with as much force as possible until there was but one survivor. The lesser demons were much weaker than the other two in that they possessed a weak constitution and knew nothing other than simple attacks of scratching and biting. They were still dangerous when they attacked in unison, often known to overwhelm an unprepared target.
The four discussed their options for nearly an hour. The general assumption was that the demons would originally attack Cassandra because they had a pattern of attacking with a pack mentality and then branching out later. Her usual task was to purposely charge in first to a fight in order to attract the enmity of her attackers, which distracted them from the mages, who were much smaller, physically weaker, and adorned with less armor.
Eka was a knight-enchanter and had mastered her spirit cloak, fade stepping and most fire spells and basic ice spells. That said, she was well-suited for solo work because her abilities allowed her to generate her own barriers, so long as she had something to hit. There was some leeway in the fight where Eka would likely have to attack a few demons on her own because if Cassandra was too outnumbered, the fiends would quickly overwhelm and kill her. Solas was a rift mage who specialized in ice magic and barriers, which made his role crucial for their team's survival. Dorian's necromancy and lightning magic was extremely potent and would account for a significant amount of damage. For their plan to work, Solas needed to be relatively close to Dorian and Cassandra, as both of them would need the protection of his barriers, which could only be spread across a small area. Also, they needed some luck to be on their side.
After seeing that the mounts had ample food and water, the four departed the makeshift camp and solemnly trudged through the grass towards the battlefield. Solas and Eka were hand in hand, while Dorian and Cassandra looked straight ahead. Eka took the opportunity to look up at Cassandra, whose lustrous armor gleamed in the rays of the late afternoon sunlight. What little fear or doubt Cassandra had portrayed earlier was completely absent and instead replaced by perfect posture and a look of indomitable stoicism and bravery. Eka had seen this determined look on Cassandra many times and knew that she was not feigning confidence. It was in these moments of unwavering faith that Eka admired Cassandra the most and felt that she was at her finest.
Finally they could see the position of each of the demons, spread out over a large distance. This positioning was not anticipated, and Eka briefly panicked internally before recognizing that she needed to stay strong for her friends. Dorian looked up at his three companions, who didn't appear to be phased by the surprise. He had his doubts but tried his best to keep them inside of him. With a short breath, he then looked up towards the expansive breach in the sky and secretly prayed that they would live to see the light of another day.
One of the fear demons noticed the group's approach and let out a shrill, deafening shriek to alert the others. Eka had heard that shriek enough to hate it, and it made her shudder. Solas quickly put up barriers as Cassandra led the charge. Most of the demons descended on her in a frenzy. In an incredible stroke of luck, the smaller rage demon and one of the fear demons stayed away from the group, most likely patrolling the periphery for more potential trespassers.
The first part of the plan worked out quite well. As Cassandra shielded her face from the scratching lesser demons, the barrage of spells from the fear demons, and raw brute force of the towering rage demon, the three mages quickly dispatched with five of the six lesser demons in a powerful display of fire, lightning, and ice which combined on the battlefield in a brilliant and nearly blinding array of color.
As one of the lesser demons made its way towards the group's northern flank, Cassandra was left with the large rage demon and two of the fear demons eating away at what remained of her shields. Solas stopped temporarily to put up a protective energy barrier around the group of four, which enabled them to withstand the onslaught of new advances from their enemies. The three mages quickly took down both of the fear demons in the same manner that they had executed the lesser demons.
At the same time Dorian and Solas started on Cassandra's larger rage demon, Eka noticed that the smaller rage demon, now at their southern flank, was approaching the group. A combination of careful fade stepping and running allowed her to travel thirty yards south of the group to battle this unwelcome assailant. The remaining fear demon took notice and teleported from the periphery to Eka's location to assist the rage demon in trying to devour her. Eka was used to getting hit like this and lashed out at the rage demon with her spirit blade while her shields completely soaked the spells coming from the fear demon. She knew they would hold. For every blow Eka's shield took, her spirit blade, spirit cloak, or a well-placed fire spell would increase her shield two-fold. Of course she couldn't take the large amount of hits or the big blows that Cassandra was capable of handling, but against her two current adversaries, Eka was doing just fine, and everything was going smoothly.
If Cassandra noticed the rage demon's attention wavering, a full-bodied slam with her shield was usually enough to provoke it once again. Solas casted his ice mines and blizzards, which slowed the entity's movements quite effectively, while Dorian filled its body with various types of lightning bolts and static charges. Their magic working together in such harmony was quite a beautiful and spectacular sight to behold; however, before the rage demon was abolished, Solas noticed the last of the lesser demons loose towards the other end of the breach and opted to fade step twenty yards north to finish it off quickly before it could make its way back to the group or towards Eka. Right as he did this, Cassandra noticed that she had exhausted most of her resources and was in dire need of a new energy barrier. She called out to Solas, who was more than happy to oblige, having just blasted the last of the lesser demons into oblivion.
After slaying the rage demon, Eka readied an immolate spell to greet the angry fear demon, but to her horror, the devious entity teleported across the battlefield and reappeared right behind an unsuspecting Solas, who was still in the middle of casting his barrier on Cassandra. Eka's heart immediately sank deep into her chest as time seemed to stand still. In that brief instant, she knew that his barrier had already dissipated and that a single shot from the fear demon would likely spell the end of her beloved Solas – the one whom she loved more than there were stars in the sky.
In that sheer moment of panic, Eka closed her eyes and focused on Solas' location, the alarmed warning shouts from Cassandra and Dorian a cacophony of blurred voices in her head. When she opened her eyes she had seemingly teleported more than fifty yards and had arrived precisely at the point between the fear demon and Solas, right as it was baring down to strike him with all of it's force, Cassandra's and Dorian's shouts still unfinished and Solas' back still turned to the monster. Eka met the force of the demon's blow with a very weakened spirit blade and the last remainder of her shield, which just barely deflected the hit and sent her tumbling more than 5 yards backwards, head over heels. She knew that she was at her limit and wouldn't be able to cast anything in the imminent future. With a wide-eyed expression over what he had just turned to witness, Solas quickly put an ice mine under the fear demon. It promptly erupted, freezing the entity in place just long enough for Cassandra and Dorian to arrive and help finish it off.
Exhausted, Eka sauntered off towards the center of the breach and raised her left hand to seal it before any more demons could fall out of it. She allowed herself to fall back to the ground in an attempt to catch her breath as Dorian shouted, "Are you alright over there?" Eka nodded but stayed on the ground in a daze, a torrent of thoughts flooding her mind, and at the forefront an almost immobilizing terror at the realization of what she had just almost lost. Dorian ran up to her, grasped both of her hands, and pulled her up to her feet. As he embraced her in a huge bear hug, he exclaimed, "I absolutely cannot believe that we just survived that. Halamshiral is still my favorite memory, but this... THIS was amazing! I definitely owe you a drink when we get back to Skyhold, hun," he exclaimed with glee. Eka forced a smile and wondered how Dorian could still have enough energy to display such exuberance.
She was still lost in thought when Cassandra and Solas caught up to them. "Thank the maker we made it through that one intact," sighed Cassandra, who was huffing and struggling to conceal the inordinate amount of pain she was experiencing. She felt as if she were an apple that had been placed in a small bag, shaken around, squished, and bruised almost to the point of being unrecognizable. Solas barely noticed Eka's troubled expression, as he was busy probing his own mind trying to make sense of what had just happened, replaying every detail of the fight over and over again. He should have died or at least been critically injured, and yet she was suddenly there. He could swear that she had been nowhere near him. How did she do it? He desperately wanted to address the issue but noticed Eka's wavering focus and blank stare and decided to table it until later that night. Besides, he and Dorian needed to help Cassandra, who at this point was so sore that she had trouble walking. She put an arm over each man's shoulder and thanked them for helping to steady her as they started the trek back to camp. Eka followed quietly behind, still lost in thought.