The snow as so heavy it stuck onto her very eyelashes, leaving trails like needles dripping down her face. Kesa Trevelyan shuddered where she sat, shaded from the raging storm just barely by a line of trees. She exhaled, drawing in her focus. For a moment, fire flared from between her palms, a rush of warms going through her body in the moment before it faded, a dull green glowing from her palm to replace it. She hissed, leaning forward at the stabbing pain her hand and the shattering weakness in her body.
In the distance it sounded like noise, growing like voices somewhere behind the wall of whiteness. Rising, Kesa continued to walk, dragging her boots through the ice as she continued uphill, following the most logical escape path and whatever it was her ears claimed to hear.
She collapsed by an opening in the higher peaks, falling down against the stone. As her eyes closed she was certain she heard voices, and felt them touch her and begin to move her as she drifted asleep.
"There is no escape, here. I smell it, your fear, drip, drip, dripping."
Kesa felt the eyes, lines of them as they stared at her, laughing as they blinked and watched.
"Give into it, give me the strength, let out your fear."
She thrashed wild enough to almost toss herself right off the cot. Mother Giselle grabbed her arm as Solas stepped back, a look of mild concern on his face as the Mother adjusted the sleeping woman, exhaling sharply as she went back to mumbling, sweat on her face. She used a cloth to wipe it off, glancing out across the fire where their leaders stood. Josephine, holding onto a her fine cloak, face drawn with stern anger. Leliana paced, staring out across the horizon as she often did, as if looking for some kind of secret. Cassandra threw twigs into the fire, burning almost as hot as the flame, well the Commander stared across the fire, a tense look of panic on his face.
"You'd think we lost or something," Varric said, Bianca across his lap as he sat in the corner. "Oh wait, we did." He looked down in the light of the tent as Kesa twitched again, her lips moving in her sleep.
"Today many fell in this battle. We did not win this fight, but the war can continue. We did not lose as much as our enemy had hoped," Mother Giselle replied. Varric grunted, he had grown rather tired with all this hope and such around him. After his time beside Hawke, watching just what exactly happened to heroes these days, the whole cheery attitude had grown to irritate him. Every battle seemed to just open up the chance for an even shittier one, with an even worse enemy, and even harsher consequences. And here he was once again, stuck in the middle, friends with someone raising themselves up right in the center of insanity. He wanted to blame Cassandra, after all she had kidnapped him and dragged him along, but it was his own crazy that had kept him here. Or maybe it was guilt, for dragging that damn idol out of the Deep Roads in the first place.
"The wards should begin to work soon. She should be awake within the hour, and back to herself soon after that," Solas stated with his usual level of disinterest. He stood for a moment longer, before nodding to himself and walking off, disappearing into the shadows of the small makeshift camp. The snow continued to fall, making his footsteps vanish. Varric wondered sometimes if the odd old elf even made footsteps.
"It's always a damn dragon." Varric spun one of his crossbow bolts around. He missed the old days, when all his enemies were angry Carta rogues, instead of blood mages, abominations, red lyrium monsters…and of course dragons. He was even beginning to miss gunlocks, who seemed rather boring and ordinary these days. "A dragon. Maker help us all," Varric grumbled.
"Has he not already?" Mother Giselle smoothed the blankets where they clung close to Kesa's neck. She shook slightly, her body still recovering from the cold, but she had grown calmer. "Our hero rose again." Varric laughed, a bit bitterly as he got out of the chair.
"Trevelyan just has a great combination of skill, luck and insanity, Mother. I don't think the Maker had anything to do with this one." He walked out of the tent, shaking his head as he also faded into the distance. Across the fire hushed whispers had grown, voices rising to a near yell. All of them, blaming the other, frantically searching for some kind of reasoning.
"Where are we?" Mother Giselle looked back down as Kesa exhaled, blinking her eyes a few times and glancing around.
"The mountains, Herald." She pulled the blankets close.
"How is there even any snow left?" Kesa mumbled, causing Mother Giselle to laugh slightly.
"I see you have kept your sarcasm, Herald." Kesa rubbed her face, pushing back soggy blonde hair. It had melted off layers of ice, dripping itself onto the towels piled beneath her head. "How are you feeling?"
Kesa sat up, rubbing at her neck as she rung out her hair. "Like I got backhanded by an archdemon," she replied, wincing as she rolled out her shoulder. Her head was throbbing from having drained so much magic, a feeling she hadn't had since her early days at the Circle, and her whole body tingled as her temperature rose.
"You are miraculously unharmed. Nothing but a few cuts and bruises." Kesa stared down at her hand, the anchor glimmering beneath her skin. It hurt burned, her whole wrist and arm ringing with pain, like someone had tried to yank out her skeletal structure. Across the camp, voices continued to rise. She looked up, glaring as her advisors stood in a circle, arms and mouths blaring. "But you should continue to rest. You can worry about them later," Mother Giselle stood up, tsking her tongue as she pushed Kesa back down, having changed the towels behind her head.
Kesa rolled onto her side as the Mother walked off, shushing the group and sending them off in different directions.
Where only hours before she had a sense of dread that the end was close, and whatever came with it, now a new fear filled her. They had just touched the beginning of a war no one had imagined or prepared for, and she had accidently stumbled into the front of it. And still had no damn idea how.