The Fade was green.
It was also slightly insubstantial and gravity didn't work right. It made Varania feel nauseated. She had this nagging feeling of deja vu from the moment the rift closed behind them, but it wasn't until she started to gather her lost memories that she realized why.
She really had been here before.
As they walked, they found relics, strange reminders of how the Fade was crafted from the fears and the joys of mortals. Letters, notes, journals. One after another, they recorded the fears of dreamers, the lost and the dead.
Solas was greatly intrigued by these, as he was by the entire experience. She wanted him to guide them, but he admitted he'd never seen this part of the Fade before, nor had he physically been to the Fade.
"This is a place created by many fears," he explained. "Not just a single dreamer. Who's to say how we will affect it? Not even I know this." His voice had an edge of bitterness to it, so she dropped it. She couldn't help but want to understand, but now was exactly not the time.
They needed to get out of here and fast, before their presence managed to create something worse than the Blight. So instead, they followed the Divine, or the thing that looked like her. Whatever she was, she was their best bet for getting out of here.
The nightmare demon shouted at them, trying to pry at their fears. She saw how it reached to the core of each of them by the haunted look in their eyes as each had their turn on the block.
Varric and Hawke hung close together, seeming to get comfort from their familiarity. Blackwall stood back, silent and pale as a corpse under his tanned skin. Loghain was stoic as ever, snapping back at the demon in kind.
"That's all you've got?" he shouted into the air as it taunted him for his failures. "Nothing I haven't said to myself."
The disembodied voice laughed coldly, the sound echoing off the black jagged rocks.
"You killed her. She's here. With us."
Loghain stopped cold. There was a pedestal of black glassy stone in front of them with a piece of curled paper on it. Beside it, sat a tea cup. It looked Orlesian, with pale flowers and a gold rim, but worn thin to the china in spots. Steam rose from it, but it wasn't comforting. It looked more like tendrils of some toxic plant than steam.
Loghain looked at Varania instead of moving; it was almost as if he couldn't move. She reached for the letter instead and curled her fingers around it. She felt Solas come up beside her to look, unable to resist his curiosity. Loghain looked away.
"We arrived at the Temple of Sacred Ashes right after sunset and barely in time. The talks are to begin on the morrow. I asked to speak with the Divine ahead of schedule, but those Templars are really not kidding around. I only hope I can be up to this task and that I don't make things worse with my temper."
There was a little smudge on the paper there, and Varania brushed at it. It left a little smear of black ink on the tip of her finger as she continued to read aloud.
"Mostly, I hope I can survive this with some semblance of my freedom still intact. I need to find that cranky old Grey Warden again and remind us both there are things worth living for, not just worth dying for."
Loghain made a strangled sound.
"Please stop."
Varania looked up at him and swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. His cool veneer had slipped. The raw emotion in his voice was so intense she could feel it herself. She offered him the letter but he waved it away.
"This fucking demon," he swore, uncharacteristically, "Has had enough from me already."
Varania folded the letter carefully and stuck it into a pouch at her waist. She didn't know if it would still be real outside the Fade, but it seemed worth keeping, just in case.
The Nightmare's laugh echoed again.
It seemed to sense that it had wrenched all it could from Loghain as they started to move again, instead, turning it's gaze to Solas. It spoke in elven, with archaic words. Varania didn't understand enough to follow what it said.
"Dirth ma, Harellan. Ma banal ensalin. Mar solas ena mar din?"
There were only a few words she understood. Traitor. Inevitable. Pride. Solas replied with almost no emotion, though she saw a flicker of it across his face.
"Banal nadas," he snapped at it.
Those words she knew. Nothing is inevitable.
She didn't have time to ask for a real translation before another wave of demons came at them. Varric and Hawke said they saw spiders. For Varania, they were snarling beasts, canine but indeterminate between wolves and coyotes and foxes. They were ragged, rabid and had otherworldly red eyes, as many as any spider.
She wasn't afraid of wolves. She didn't understand.
They battled on through the disjointed landscape, through things that shouldn't exist until they came upon a graveyard, with stones that held her companion's names. That was what finally chilled her to the bone.
Cole: Despair
Sera: Nothing
Dorian: Temptation
Cassandra: Helplessness
Varric: Become his parents
Vivienne: Irrelevance
Iron Bull: Madness
Blackwall: Himself
Loghain: Failure
Hawke: Loss
Solas: Dying alone
Varania: Fail her Master
She stared at them blankly until Solas finally pulled her away. Their fears. Their worst, most heartbreaking fears.
she wasn't afraid of being a slave only of being a bad one Maker how had she fallen so low?
"Vhenan," Solas whispered, his grip firm around her upper arm. "Do not let it defeat you. You are stronger than this fear." He squeezed her arm. She nodded at him, taking a breath and forcing herself to look away.
Instead, they forged ahead, the not real water making her boots a very real soggy mess. They fought another mystifying round of demons who were oddly easier to defeat in the Fade than they seemed beyond it, as if they just gave up instead of suffering an actual death. The rest of her memories came flooding back as the last demon fell.
Varania's mouth dropped open.
"It was you." The facsimile of the Divine frowned.
"Yes."
"It was you behind me in the rift."
"Yes."
"And then, you...died."
"Yes."
"We've been following a demon," Loghain said, sounding utterly done with the entire experience.
"You don't say?" Hawke's reply was not kind. They'd started snapping at each other as the stress increased, until Varania wasn't sure they'd be at each other's throats next.
But spirit or demon or Divine, she was there to help them. There were no other options. They followed until the rift finally stretched out in front of them, like a glowing green tear; not so unlike the anchor on the palm of her hand. But in front of the rift, a beast unlike anything she had ever seen blocked their path. It was like a spider, if a spider was the most horrible thing to ever exist with a hundred legs and a thousand beady, all seeing eyes.
"You must go through the rift and slam it behind you as hard as you can. That will sever the demon's hold and set you free!" The glowing apparition that was once the Divine instructed her. "And please, tell Leliana, I am sorry I failed you too."
The spirit flung herself at the beast and in a flash of light, it retreated. Varania could still feel it, still feel the fear of the Nightmare all around them, but all that was left were more of those wolfbeasts and a phantom of a sort, all of which she'd battled before, and defeated.
They fought. Spell sizzled through the air, the ringing sound of steel from Loghain and Blackwall's swords, the distinctive twang of Biana's string as Varric shot bolt after bolt into the demon's undulating bodies. One by one, the horrors fell and it seemed for a while like they might actually get through this intact.
As the last beast fell, Varania screamed for the others to run and she didn't blame them for not hesitating. Varric and Blackwall sprinted through the rift, followed quickly by Solas who did give her and the the Fade a last look before he went.
"Come on," she shouted at Loghain and Hawke, just in time for the Nightmare spider form to return and insert itself between them and the rift again. They scrambled back out of the reach of it's claws.
"Go," Hawke shouted, magic crackling anew at the end of her staff. "I'll hold it off."
"No," Loghain immediately argued. "You were right, the Grey Wardens caused this, a Grey Warden should..."
"Help them rebuild," Hawke interrupted. "Corypheus is my fault, its only..."
"No," Loghain said again. "Inquisitor." He was pleading with her.
Varania's soul dropped into her feet. Someone needed to distract it or they'd all die here. She had to make it through; only she could close the rift and only from the other side.
She had to choose.
Fenris's voice rang in her head.
"Please take care of Hawke. She doesn't...she's willing to throw herself in front of things to save people she cares about."
"I won't let her die for me," Varania had promised him. "No matter what comes."
She saw Fenris's face, both angry and sad. Varric. She saw baby Bethany's eyes. She couldn't let a little girl's mother die. Loghain's daughter was an adult, and apparently already thought he was dead.
And he was willing.
There was only one choice to be made.
"Loghain."
"One last request, Inquisitor," he said, though his voice had an edge of relief in it. He pulled a package out of his pocket, a little drawstring pouch, and laid in into Varania's hand before reaching for his sword again. "Please, give this to Amell with my regrets. She'll understand." He turned away towards the Nightmare, assessing it before give Varania a last look. "It's been an honor, Inquisitor. May the Maker watch over you."
With an astonishingly grateful smile, Loghain charged the Nightmare. Varania and Hawke ran, and in the chaos, made it to the rift. Hawke slipped through and disappeared. Varania looked back and saw Loghain thrust his sword up into the belly of the Nightmare before one of its innumerable legs threw him backwards, his sword clattering loose to the ground.
She couldn't save him and everyone else.
Varania stepped through the rift and closed it behind her to thunderous applause. Her mouth felt like it was full of sand.
"Hawke!" she heard Varric's voice. "You lived."
"Where's Loghain?" this voice, less familiar but still recognizable. Kya Amell was looking at her expectantly, with Nathaniel as her side, his face still as a stone. Varania could only shake her head but Amell read her meaning.
"Maker," she whispered. "No."
Varania held out the pouch to her. "Loghain, he wanted me to give you his regrets," she said. "He stayed behind to save us. He gave his life for us." Varania took a deep breath. Amell was white as snow, her eyes bloodshot as she stared blankly. "He wanted you to have this."
Amell took the pouch and quickly emptied the contents into the palm of her hand. She made a sound, almost a whimper. It was a braid of hair, black and threaded with grey, tied on the end with a red thread. Loghain's hair, from the looks of it. Amell closed her hand around it and looked up at Varania. Her eyes were damp, but she didn't cry, only the paleness of her skin and two red spots high on her cheeks betraying her.
"Thank you," she said, but didn't seem able to continue.
"What now?" one of the surviving Warden's asked from behind his helmet. "Clarel is dead, and...we are..."
"We still hear the Calling," Nathaniel finished for him. Amell didn't comment, but her knuckles were white where she gripped the braid in her hand.
"Then once you are fit to travel," Varania said, making yet another decision she didn't want to make. "Then you need to go to Weisshaupt. You are vulnerable to Corypheus and until he's defeated, I can't risk this happening again."
Nathaniel nodded. "We'll lead them there, once we are well and resupplied."
"Come to Skyhold then," Varania offered. It was only fair that she could offer them something, after all of this. "I will make sure you have everything you need and perhaps, we can have a memorial for Loghain and the other Wardens lost here today."
Amell only nodded and turned away.
"What about me?" Blackwall asked. Varania frowned at him. He'd not seemed affected by the Calling; he was so steadfast, she couldn't imagine any reason he needed to go.
"You've given us no reason to doubt your loyalty, Blackwall. If you want to stay?"
He nodded, perhaps too quickly. "Yes, thank you Inquisitor."
They all started to pick up the pieces then. The aftermath of a battle was always like this. Too many things to do and a strange awkwardness to it all. Varania put her face into her hands.
"You made the right choice," Solas's voice said as he came and stood beside her. He folded his hands behind his back.
"Did I?" she asked him. "I left Loghain to die in there and he was my friend."
"He will not be the last to die, before this is over."
"I know, but that doesn't make it easier." Varania felt the weight of the Inquisition pressing down of her. She straightened her back. She had to bear it, to whatever end.
"Loghain found a good end, likely as he would have wanted. Assuming he did die, though we cannot be sure." Solas cocked his head. "The Fade is, if nothing else, unpredictable. But either way, his sacrifice was honorable and I expect many will think it very noble."
Varania sighed. Solas was right. "He seemed like a noble man."
"Many spirits agree with you; many do not. May we all have enough of an impact upon the world that both men and spirits argue about us someday." Solas smiled enigmatically and she couldn't help but wonder at his meaning.
"I wonder what they'll say about me," she pondered aloud.
"It would be fascinating and painful to hear, I assure you."
He sounded very certain of that. She marveled at his seemingly never ending font of wisdom. At the moment, Varania was only certain of one thing; that she never wanted to see the inside of the Fade again.