Chapter 4: In Your Heart Shall Rage

Closing the breach had been almost anti-climactic. She exulted as she felt the power of the gathered mages flowing into her at Solas' behest. It burned through her in a way that fired her lyrium tattoos and set the red glow of her own power against the green. When the swirling maw broke, snapping shut with a blast of power, she nearly laughed.

Later that night, as the rest had celebrated, she remained apart contemplating how best to turn this victory, and this village of overly hopeful fools, over to her God. Cassandra joined her for a bit, clearly not comfortable with the revelry herself. "Guide me to your side." she prayed quietly as they watched. The other woman clearly believing her prayer was for the false Maker.

Once again, her supplication had been answered almost as soon as she'd uttered it. Within moments the clarion horns of warning sounded. An army approached. Perhaps her master had finally come for her!

When the stalwart form of Samson took his place on the hilltop she knew. She KNEW they were there for her even before he was joined by the towering figure of her God.

Corypheus!

It was all she could do to keep the exultation from her face as the overly hopeful fools around her ran for the Chantry and a very false safety. Though she wanted to stay put and wait for Samson and Corypheus, Cassandra had grabbed her and pulled Bainsidhe along in her wake as she struggled to save those important enough to require the leaderships intervention.

And then Cole arrived.

The strange spirit boy nearly undid her when he stated that she knew the Elder One and that he knew her. She nearly killed him right there where he stood. Only the presence of the Commander stopped her. He seemed to not fully understand what the boy meant, fortunately, or she may have had to kill them both. A tricky proposition with the combat experience of the heavily armed man.

She knew the city was lost. Her master's armies outmatched the ragged village, even with the Inquisitions limited force. Her heart sang as the people around her wept and screamed. Some commenting on her calm in the face of certain doom. Finally even the Commander declared the fight hopeless and a plan was made for them to flee.

It was no hardship for her to volunteer to stay behind and distract Corypheus. As the Commander looked at her with sad eyes, certain of her doom, she bit back a laugh.

She would go to Corypheus, and once again in the bosom of her God, she would show him the path and the fleeing force would be destroyed utterly. All but Cassandra and Varric, those two and Solas she'd pulled with her in the hopes that they would be taken alive when she turned on them. That they would face indoctrination rather than death.

Those three fought the attacking templars while she prepared the trebuchet she would never fire. She couldn't bring herself to attack her brethren and fumbled about in hope that the ferocity of the combat would hide her inaction.

She was ready to scream in frustration at the delay when the master's dragon finally arrived, separating her from her captors with his fiery bulk (and sending her flying in the indiscriminate blast).

And then he arrived.

She could barely move for relief, but managed to stagger to her feet, ready to throw herself forward in worshipful prostration.

He spoke, but his words made no sense to her. "It is your fault, Herald. You interrupted a ritual years in the planning, and instead of dying you stole it's purpose."

Her fault? She hadn't asked for this. She would never have betrayed her God! The displeasure in his voice was clear as he spoke about the painful light in her hand. The Anchor he called it, and accused her of stealing it from him. Accused her of having the gall to use it to undo his work.

"Take it! I didn't ask for this!" She pleaded, all but undone with a frantic need for him to understand. To know that she would never have willingly betrayed him. To believe that she had only undone the breach so that he could create it anew as he desired it. She reached out to him, every urge in her body to fling the stolen anchor back. To be forgiven and taken back into the red lyrium laced heart of his army.

He would not listen. She had served him faithfully nearly all the years of her life. She had undergone the horrifying agony of the lyrium tattooing for him. She had given her body as a reward to Samson for him. She had killed and tormented and left a swath of blood that spanned continents for him.

"Why?" She'd croaked out after he'd nearly broken that body flinging her against the forgotten trebuchet.

"Because you are my enemy. Because you stand in the way of destined power….Because I can."

Derision. She had given him everything she could, and he rewarded her with derision?

His approaching form loomed as she struggled for breath against the strained wood and taut rope. She drank in the scorn of his eyes tracing over her and in that moment she realized a truth that loomed larger than he did. That filled the world and blinded her eyes with it's force.

He was not a God.

If this thing on her palm was a mistake, it was his mistake. If the breach had stayed open to harm him in that twisted future, it had done so because he wasn't a God. A God could have closed it any time he'd wanted. If this twisted parody of greatness could so demean and discard his most effective servants, he did not deserve her loyalty or her praise.

He deserved her rage.

Over his shoulder, a distant flame of a burning arrow caught her blurred vision. The Inquisition had reached a safe distance. He neared her where she cowered against the war machine, readying his own flame to burn her life away and she made a decision.

With a frantic leap she broke the stalemate between rope and wood and the great stone screamed it's way to break the delicate balance of the mountain.

If he was going to destroy her, she would take him with her.

Another sign that he was no God showed in the speed with which he fled the roaring side of the mountain falling on them like the end of the world. And perhaps for her it would be, she thought as she herself fled. The scream of falling stone as if the mountain was itself a dragon, a loud crash near her and then nothing…

When she woke in darkness, she didn't know how much time had passed or where she was or if she had truly survived.

But she knew RAGE.

He'd escaped this time, and the rage that filled that thought sustained her through an attack by demons. Making itself manifest in the great green blast that sucked them in.

Out into the snow and darkness. Her limbs heavy with the freezing sleet and injury she'd sustained. She fell and the darkness embraced her, whispering of a restful death. And she answered it with the fire of her rage.

He would not survive while she died, she whispered to herself as she struggled again to her feet.

He would learn to fear her as his enemies had once feared him, she growled to herself as she staggered past a shadowy forest in the nearly thigh deep white.

He would beg her for mercy and when his tainted and despairing eyes looked into hers…even her enhanced endurance began to fail but her rage screamed to the heavens as she fell to her knees..."HE WILL SEE ONLY HIS TRUE DEATH!"

Her scream echoed off the rocks surrounding her, flinging her rage back at her and filling her heart enough to beat once more, twice more…

Voices answered her rage filled shout.

She had been found. She would not die until her vengeance had taken it's full measure.