"This is a fucking disaster!" I cried, flinging Blackwall's beautiful bow into the stiff snow.

"It takes practise, Nev. Maybe you'll learn to appreciate your depth perception a little better when that eye heals." Bull chimed, without looking up from his bowl of stew. Solas stirred the pot slowly, looking between the two of us, a look of worry sitting on his face.

It was our third evening travelling together and we had made a quite a bit of headway in regards to finding Skyhold. Solas had told us the name of our hidden fortress during our first day. He said that it had been used as a stronghold for many, many years. It had seen the rise and fall of countless empires and stood against it all. There seemed something familiar about the name and something foggy in my head switched it to The Place Where the Sky is Held Back. However, as fascinated as I was with the history of this oh-so-ancient castle, it was hardly at the forefront of my mind.

On our second day, we ventured lower down the mountains to avoid the worst of a snow storm. Unfortunately, a pack of bandits had had the same idea and so we were set upon. They jeered and whooped with the same desperate arrogance all of their kind seem to possess and I took it upon myself to fire the first shot. I expected it to hit the man not five feet ahead of me, but to my utter astonishment the arrow flew wide and landed pathetically in the snow.

"Now you see why you need me." Bull had said.

I had to stand back like some sort of liability. I had never felt so useless. My hands itched with a want to defend myself and I couldn't. I had to sit back, run away from the fight because I couldn't even shoot straight.

I slumped down heavily on the stump opposite the fire. Solas watched me carefully from the other side of the flames. My skin buzzed with frustration but above it all there was that hollow feeling in my chest of what if this was it? What if I had lost my sight? I'd never be able to shoot again. And then where would I be? Where would I stand with the Inquisition? I'd be a useless, blood magic practising nuisance. They'd have to get rid of me. I'd get rid of me.

I heard movement beside me as Bull stood up and retrieved my bow. His heavy footsteps trudged towards me before he through it into my lap. I jostled to catch it and shot him a fierce look.

"Practice." he said, tapping his eye patch. "I've only got one eye and I do just fine."

"Its different."

"How so? Pick up your weapon and practice."

I jerked my head to look up at his, tears burning my eye, "It is bloody different alright? Look all you have to do is swing an axe around and hope you hit something. Shooting takes focus and skill and time and years of practice. And a good fucking amount of eyes!" I said with a heat in my throat.

He said nothing. Only smirked and shrugged and returned to his stew. "Practice." he said once more.

I growled and stormed back to where I'd been firing my arrows at one lonely dead tree. It was silent, the only noise the winds over the mountains in the distance. They picked up silvery swirls of snow from their peaks and carried them off into the pale navy sky. Like the calming breaths of some giant. I tried to copy the strange rhythm of those silver streams and focused once again on the tree in front. The crudely painted target was smudged by snow now, but I could still make it out. I tongued the piercing in my lip and remembered Mahanon's lessons. Back straight, bow pulled just to the corner of my mouth. I looked to my elbow, turned it in a bit more and looked back to the target. I felt every muscle quiver and tighten like it always did as I readied for a shot. I took one final long breath in, the world around me becoming a blur in my ears and just as I exhaled... I released it!

I heard the arrow hit wood and my heart rose. When I looked at the target however it had flew right of the bulls-eye. My heart sank once again.

"Better!" Bull said and I could hear the smile in his voice.

"What's the use in aiming if you don't hit your target..." I echoed the strange words I once heard in my dreams.

"What she say?" Bull said behind me and I realised then, the words had rolled off my tongue in Elvhen. It startled me, once again and I was forced to admit that these were not in fact mere dreams anymore. They were memories, but not mine. They couldn't have been, it wasn't possible. The Dragon, the dreams, the speaking a language I had never previously known...

"Nevalla..." Solas' soft voice came from behind me, it had a sort of worried tone to it.

"I can't do it." I hissed.

"Of course you can! Look you were just wide this time. Give it another shot." Bull said and I could hear him getting up to stand beside me. He nudged my shoulder, "Go on."

I did nothing. I only stood stiff, gripping the bow in my left hand so hard I thought I might snap it. This was it. I had put every ounce of effort into that shot and still, I missed. I could not afford to take that amount of time in the middle of a battle. I was just as useless, like some novice who had no real skill at archery at all.

"Look Nevalla," Bull began, "You can't get anywhere in life by just giving up. I know it came easy to you before but this might be something you have to get used to." He hesitated, "We don't know that yet! And hey, you could take that bandage off right now and see fine. But in the worst case scenario, you'll have to get used to this. And in the worst case scenario, giving up is not an option."

I turned to look up to him and looked at his eye-patch. That could be me... I could be blind and no matter what he said, I couldn't shoot with just one eye. A smirk spread his face and he ruffled my hair.

"You know you can do it. I believe in you." He said, very, very cheerfully. It irked me. He didn't understand.

"You and I are not the same, Bull." I growled and he didn't even look offended.

"Sure we are!" He said brightly, taking a step back. "I lost my eye and practice made me damn near the best mercenary there is."

Smug. That's what he was. He was being smug, and I felt a pit of anger form in my chest.

"You know what got me through it all? When, I had my eye burned out of my socket?" His voice got harder now, sterner, like I was one of his recruits. "When I smelt my own flesh burning and my eye pour down my face like warm jelly, do you know what made me pick up my axe and keep trying?"

I looked at him now, still angry but something like fear tickled up my spine too. The stern look on his face fell as if he could see it too, and the smirk stretched back on his face.

"If at first," He began, his shit eating grin getting ever wider, "You don't succeed..." He waved his hand and clicked his fingers at me as if he was expecting me to finish the stupid phrase. His smirk and his smugness and just him in that moment annoyed me beyond reason. He kept clicking his fingers, kept smiling and waiting for me to finish. I wasn't going to.

"I'm warning you Bull." I growled.

"Oh she's warning me, you hear that Solas? She's warning me! You can't even shoot straight what are you gonna do?"

I clenched my fist and felt searing hot tears well in my eyes. I was furious, he didn't understand. None of them did! The lot of them helpless and blind to what I was, to who I was.

"One more time, Nevalla." Bull said, the arrogance in his voice a catalyst for the fury in my gut. I looked at the tree in front of me, its dead gnarled branches like taunting fingers.

"If at first you don't succeed."

"I think you should let her be." Solas said from the campfire, his voice heavy with concern now.

"If at first you don't succeed, Nevalla." Bull pushed.

The world grew quiet, the silver streams of snow on the mountain peaks had stilled and all that was left now was my heavy breathing and the static snapping in my ears. Magic swam around me like tar, the power of it pushing in on me, willing me to let it in. It buzzed so loudly in my ear that I thought it might deafen me.

"Try, try, try again." Bull's voice made it crack. I let the magic flood into my veins in a white heat of rage. I let out a guttural yell, drew my bow and fired. The boom that echoed over the mountain side was shattering. The tree with the painted target was split down the middle and the static around me flickered away. I shook with the force of what I released. The magic that I had felt still hung heavy in the air and in the distance the snow slid away from those distance mountains. I could only hope the Inquisition was nowhere near that avalanche. I looked around to my other companions and the two of them held the exact same same expression. Utter astonishment.

"Well..." Bull said. The word coming out in a puff of steam. Everything was still once again, until I felt a tingling sensation at my back and I noticed their expressions fall. As I turned, very slowly, saw what they were gawking at. Above the fractured tree, a green slit hovered in the sky.

"Is that?"

I turned back and Solas nodded very, very slowly.

I froze, we all did. We had no idea what activated the rifts; whether it was the Heralsd's mark or just sheer bad luck. It was unopened, but still, it could split at any given second...

"Pack up the things carefully..." I whispered not turning my back to it. I heard Bull and Solas scuffle with bed rolls and pans and heard the hiss of an extinguished fire. "Solas, which way do we go from here?"

"West, down between the two peaks and up again." He whispered in return.

I nodded, "Alright, now quickly and quietly we are going to-"

I was cut off by a buzz and a distant scream as the rift cracked open and an onslaught of demons appeared. I abandoned my other idea and turned quickly to my companions.

"Run!" I cried and they did not need any further encouragement. Our footprints scuffled in the snow and the demons followed swiftly behind us, lurching ever closer. "Come on!" I called again. Solas fired out whatever spell he could to slow them down and Bull slashed at the ones nearest to him. I fired my arrows with the same inane focus I had when I caused the rift and they thankfully hit. I laughed in relief, I couldn't help it.

We ran as fast as we could, picking off whatever demons were in our range but we could not hope to stop them all, they were continuous and we didn't have Trevelyan's mark to save us this time. My chest burned with the cold air but I had to keep going, we had to get out of their range. I ran until I stopped suddenly as I came face to face with a sudden drop down the mountain. I barely held my balance, in fact I thought I was falling before Solas had my hand in his vice like grip.

"Thank you." I breathed.

"Ma Nuvenin." He nodded and turned back to the fight but before we could, half a tonne of Qunari barrelled into us.

"Bull wait!" I cried but it was too late, we were launched over the edge, tumbling down the side of the snowy cliff in a ball of limbs.

I finally landed on my back in a heap of snow and my lungs felt like they had been punched from the inside out. There was a weight on top of me, a bald weight that slowly pushed himself up by his arms and looked down at me. He was smiling.

"Nice of you to drop by." I said foolishly, expecting him to roll his eyes and sigh but he didn't. He laughed. It rang over me like silver bells and made my chest swell with some emotion I wasn't quite sure of. As we laughed, a clump of snow slid off his head and hit me in the face which made him laugh even more. We laughed with what little air we could push out of our lungs and the joy that it gave me was like static in my heart. His arms gave out and he let out one final laugh into the crook of my neck and that's when the static sparked me. I stiffened, scared to move in case he realised his lapse in coolness. He didn't move however, he kept his weight on me and if I was not mistaken he smelt my hair... All I had to do was tilt my head and his lips would be on my neck, his breath was condensing there already.

"That was some short cut!" Bull burst out, shaking himself free of the pile of snow he was under. Solas scrambled up to stand and once again, coolly retrieved his staff from the snow.

"Was it a short cut?" I asked.

He didn't turn round to answer me, just brushed the excess snow that lingered on his clothes.

"It was. The stronghold is behind that mountain ahead. All that remains is to trek over it." he said flatly.

I let out a long groan and Bull laughed.

"Well at least one good thing came from all of this." Bull said through his chuckle.

"And what was that?" I sighed.

He picked up his axe and winked, "You hit the target."