The blast of wind knocked them both off their feet. Killeen blinked her eyes clear of snow and grit and stared upwards.
It's still there.
Whatever the fuck it is.
She scrambled up, extending a helping hand to Cullen a half-second after he no longer needed it. Without a word they broke into a flat-out run, pelting side-by-side down the path toward the gates. Killeen checked her stride just long enough to grab one of the Spymaster's scouts and tell him to get the alarm bell ringing if he had to do it himself, then stretched her legs to catch up with her Commander.
The soldiers were standing gaping at the giant rift in the sky, for which I have some sympathy, but now is not the time. Killeen grabbed shoulders, called names, chivied and swore and shoved them into some semblance of order as the alarm bell began tolling and the off-duty rosters began to arrive, streaming out of the gates in various states of dress and undress. She could hear Cullen doing the same, voice sharp with an impatience she shared.
We have to get up there. Fast.
Now.
But they would do no good without troops in good order and so she cursed and cuffed and called up insults from the distant memory of her own training under the toughest drillmaster Kirkwall had ever seen until finally marching order was achieved.
Cullen led from the front, as always, and he set a fast pace that Killeen knew most of their newer recruits would have trouble keeping. She jogged forward to suggest they split into two groups to avoid stragglers ending up cut off, but before she had gotten more than a word out they both saw a figure running toward them from the direction of the Temple — sprinting, desperately, falling, getting up and staggering on. A chantry scholar, from his torn and filthy robes.
He ran right into them and would have run past if Cullen hadn't grabbed him by the arms. "What happened?"
"They're falling from the sky! From the fucking sky!" The scholar pointed upwards, as if Killeen and Cullen might not know where the sky was without his help. "Falling! From the sky!"
"Pull yourself together, man," Killeen snapped. "What is falling from the sky?"
"Demons!"
"In the Temple?" Maker, that was bad if it was so. Thousands of people in there, not defenceless people, true, mages and Templars, but mages could be an extra special problem when demons were involved. "Demons in the Temple?"
"There is no Temple!" the scholar wailed. "It's gone! All gone! Everything! All of it! All of them!"
Killeen allowed herself one half-second of stunned shock, saw Cullen do the same, and then with brutal force of will turned her mind to the soldiers behind her, some of whom had friends or family up there, now murmuring in horror and dismay.
As she turned back to them she heard Cullen telling the now-hysterical scholar to get down to Haven and tell his story to Leliana.
"Whatever's up there, it's bad!" Killeen called to their troops over the rising wind. "Which means there's a lot of people who need help. We're what they've got! Talking won't help! Marching will! So come on!"
It was not the most inspirational of speeches, but she waved her arm, signalling forward, and, thank the Maker, they shook off fear and shock and followed.
Demons falling from the sky. "Can it be true?" she asked Cullen in an undertone as they jogged ahead of the soldiers.
"I've seen worse." His mouth shut in a thin line, eyes cold. It was the way he looked, sometimes, when she woke him from the dreams. Whatever nightmare lies ahead is nothing more than a reprise for him.
"You know what I'd like?" Killeen said conversationally. "Kittens."
It startled him out his thoughts. "What?"
"Kittens falling from the sky. Only not from too high up, of course. That would just be messy."
"Kittens falling from the sky," Cullen repeated blankly.
"Or puppies. Or breadrolls. But no. It's always demons, falling from the sky. Why is that, do you think? Is there some sort of demarcation thing going on? The sky is allowed rain, snow, hail, sleet, and demons, but never kittens or breadrolls."
The corner of his mouth twitched up. "Do you take nothing seriously?"
"Breakfast," Killeen said promptly. "And kittens."
"But not demons?"
"Nah," she said airily. "You and me have killed plenty of those before. How bad can it be?"
They rounded the last corner and the ruins of the Temple lay before them, bathed in the sickly green glow of the giant hole in the sky. Answering glows bloomed on the ground, grew, and took monstrous shape.
"You were saying?" Cullen said dryly, but despite the horror before them his eyes were clear, his shoulders straight. He turned to the soldiers behind them. "First company, with me! Second company, with Lieutenant Kill! Archers, cover! Knock those things back into the Fade!"
It was the beginning of what Killeen would realise only in retrospect were the worst three days of her life.
How bad can it be turned out to be, very bad indeed as they fought their way through the demons swarming outside the ruins of the Temple, more appearing as quickly as they dispatched them. Of survivors, there were few: those outside the Temple had fallen quickly to the demons and those inside … Cullen won't be the only one having nightmares from now on.
If any of us live long enough to get some sleep.
Then, miraculously, a survivor — falling from a newly-opened rift into the Fade almost at their feet, another, woman's form visible for just a moment before the rift closed itself. Killeen and Cullen leapt forward, what was left of their soldiers now a single company at their backs.
"A woman," Cullen said, kneeling to check. "Alive. A mage, I think, and —"
The rest of the sentence died unspoken as he, and everyone else, saw the mark on the woman's hand, glowing and pulsing the same nauseating green as the hole in the heavens.
"It's her!" one of the soldier's said, and there was a murmur of agreement that had an ugly tone to it from the others. "Look! She did it! Kill her, quick!"
Killeen moved fast, spinning around to put her back to the unconscious woman and her shield and sword toward her own troops. She felt rather than heard Cullen move at the same time, rising to his feet and standing beside her, shoulder to shoulder.
"Nobody knows who did it!" he shouted. "And nobody knows if killing her will stop it or make it worse! We have to get her back to Haven to find out!"
"She killed the Divine!" someone shouted. "And all those other people!"
"And half our fucking comrades," someone else added.
"And if she did she'll pay. But not like this." Cullen stood firm.
For a moment Killeen thought he wouldn't sway them, felt his armoured shoulder firm against hers and almost laughed. In her most shameful secret fantasies she sometimes imagined that they'd die fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder to the end, but I never imagined it was going to be against our own.
Then she sensed a moment of hesitation, an ebbing of resolve among the soldiers about to become a mob. Cullen must have felt it too, because he picked that precise moment to bellow in his best parade-ground voice, "Stand down!"
Those nearest them backed up a little. Swords lowered towards the ground.
Killeen took a breath and turned to look more closely at the possible mass murderer for whom she'd almost given her life.
Skinny little thing, probably blond under that grime in her hair, can't be more than twenty.
Cullen stooped and carefully gathered the mage in his arms, and Killeen saw her face, pretty as a doll's, saw the mage's face and saw her Commander's face as he looked down at it and saw, for one brief flash of memory, her own face as it looked in the mirror these days.
Saw the future.
Closed her eyes and mind to it and turned back to their troops. "Form up! We've got to get her safely out of here to where she can be questioned - and tried, if it comes to that. Look sharp!"
They delivered the prisoner to the Left and Right Hands of the Divine — the almost certainly dead Divine, now, although identifying any of the bodies in what had been the Temple would be impossible. Their own wounded turned over to the care of Adan, snatched a bite to eat, and back up the mountain.
Back into the nightmare.
In the end, they had to withdraw from the Temple, and back down the valley, step by bitter step. Although smaller rifts were opening all over the valley, the worst of the demons were coming from the Temple and if they streamed out of it, down towards a town full of pilgrims and civilians … no.
Three days and three nights of hard fighting, snatching moments of rest and mouthfuls of bread and dried meat when they could. Their ranks thinned, swelled again with the addition of reinforcements, thinned again. Not much longer, Killeen told herself, as she had been telling herself for days, but it no longer had the tone of an exhortation. Not much longer. Not much longer until there's too few of us to stand against another wave.
Not much longer.
Then the word came to clear a way back to the Temple. They gathered themselves, summoning up every resource, and pushed forward. Men and women Killeen knew, had trained, fell with every few yards gained, with no time to mourn them, with barely enough time to even notice except as one more gap in their ranks, one more tactical problem to be solved.
They reached the Temple and found a rift spewing demons right before it.
"Hold!" Cullen's voice roared above the din of battle and the demon's screeching. "Hold the gates! For the Divine! For your lives! Hold!"
Swords rose and fell, demons shrivelled and burst, but there were always more demons, and there were fewer and fewer soldiers.
Killeen stumbled on a loose brick, too tired to compensate for the uneven footing and felt her ankle go. Move, move, move, the memory of her drillmaster screamed at her. Stop moving on the battlefield and you're as good as dead. Loose your sword and you're as good as dead. Stay down and you're as good as dead. She rolled out of the way of a bolt of energy coming from some sort of green demon. If you want to live, find your sword, get to your feet, no matter how bad it hurts. If you want to live, be on your feet with a sword in your hand.
She tried to get her feet under her and failed. Well, fuck. Something big and black was bearing down on her, all claws and teeth and evil. Well, fuck, so this is it.
A sword blocked the creature's downward swipe and sheared it in half on the backswing, and Cullen grabbed her arm and hauled her up without ceremony. "Fall back," he ordered, and turned to engage another demon.
Killeen took a hobbling step away, toward their rear line, and saw bolts of lighting coming from that direction. She swung back. "We're cut off."
Then one of those bolts of lighting sizzled straight past her and lit up a demon like a candle.
"The mages are here!" someone yelled, and they were, and a woman Killeen recognised as the former Seeker who was one of the Hands of the Divine, and a foul-mouthed dwarf with a crossbow, and then —
The smell of the sea and a flash of light and the demons and the rift were gone.
Killeen decided it was safe to fall over, and did so. Over her head she could hear Cullen talking to the Seeker, could hear her telling him that it wasn't her who had sealed the rift, it was the prisoner.
Turning her head, Killeen saw the prisoner, no longer unconscious, still ridiculously pretty.
"I hope they're right about you," Cullen said. "We've lost a lot of people getting you here."
"We'll see soon enough," the prisoner replied in the clipped, precise accent of the noble-born — the accent Cullen copied, although Killeen had never worked out if he did it on purpose or unconsciously. Well, that seals it, she thought. A delicate, fragile, pretty little mage from the upper classes. He's done for.
It didn't seem a frivolous thought, despite the ending of the world all around them: it seemed all of a piece to her, right then.
"On your feet," Cullen ordered them all. "Withdraw."
Killeen tried to get up, hobbled a few steps, and then Cullen was beside her, pulling one arm over his shoulders and taking her weight. "What do you call that last move, Kill?" he asked as he hauled her toward the path down. "Don't think I've seen you use it in practice."
"Left feint with half-brick," she gasped. "And I save it for very special occasions."
He laughed, no more than a puff of breath. "Let's get out of here. This is in the hands of the Maker — and the prisoner — now."
Half-way down the mountain, another convulsion in the sky made them stop. This time, though, the great gaping hole above them seemed different. Quieter, somehow.
"I think she did it," Cullen said in admiration. "That little thing, and she went up against a hole in the sky and stared it into submission."
"Thank the Maker," Killeen said. Looks like we're not dying today, then.
It was a victory, limited, but still a victory.
But as her Commander helped her down the last stretch of trail to the welcoming lights of Haven, all Killeen wanted to do was weep.