Bridget staggered, putting a hand to her head. She was so dizzy she couldn't think straight. Where was she? Was this the Circle? Her Harrowing again?

She heard a voice shout "Blood of the Elder One!" and she blinked at the blurry image in front of her, trying to make sense of it and of what it had said.

Someone else said, impatiently, and in a more familiar voice, "Don't just stand there! Strike them down!" and a blast of icy cold air shot past her, the frosty droplets grazing her cheek, and hit the blurry thing.

Slowly her head was clearing, her memory returning. Redcliffe. Alexius. The amulet. She shook her head violently, recognizing Dorian, and seeing an armored man closing in on him. She reached for her staff, but there was no time. Instead she tried to call down the lightning. She didn't manage much more than a bright light, but it was distraction enough for Dorian to finish the man off.

He looked at her, frowning. "Don't tell me. You're no good at combat magic."

"All right, I won't tell you."

"Naturally. Stuck Maker knows where by Alexius and with only my own skill to count on. It is considerable, mind you, but still …" He studied her. "Perhaps we should give you some pointers."

"I'll take whatever you can give me," she said fervently. "Like any speculations about where we might be."

"Well, if he was still using the guidelines we had been working from when I studied under him, the rift would have taken us to the closest confluence of arcane energy. But … that was right where we were." He looked around. They were in a room built of stone, with water standing in pools all around them. "The dungeons? But … what would have been the point of—" He broke off, staring at the wall. "Fasta vas! It's not where we are; it's when."

"You mean … Alexius moved us through time?" Bridget shivered. No wonder she had felt so disoriented at first. She thought of her people, of Blackwall and Sera and Vivienne. "Would the others in the hall have been drawn through the rift as well?"

"I doubt it. Alexius wouldn't have wanted to risk catching himself or Felix in it, and they were standing closer to us than your people were."

Bridget tried to make sense of it all. "So … they've lived through … however long it's been since we left?"

"Yes. I—hope they fought well."

"I'm sure they did." Bridget felt sick. What if they couldn't get back to where they had been before?

"I suppose it's some comfort if we imagine having been moved forward in time. Alexius seemed to want to remove you from time completely, so that you would never have been in the Conclave in the first place to disrupt this Elder One's ritual. Of course, if we have gone backwards in time … that's probably very bad. Never mind what this could do to the fabric of the world. We didn't travel through time so much as punch a hole through it and toss it in the privy."

"You're a real barrel of laughs, aren't you?"

"I'm known to be quite a morose companion," Dorian agreed. "Just wait until you get to know me."

"It looks like I'm going to have the chance to get to know you very well, if we're stuck here together. Here, push on this, will you?" She had managed to get the iron gate holding them in what must be a cell to move just a bit. Dorian joined her, and their combined strength worked on the rusty hinges until the gate opened enough to let them through.

"Do you know who this Elder One is that Alexius mentioned?" Bridget asked, trying not to think about what might be lurking in the puddles of dark water she was walking through.

"Same old tune, I imagine, some magister aspiring to godhood. 'Let's play with magic we don't understand; it will make us incredibly powerful.' Because that never goes wrong."

Bridget thought of the Inquisition, and of her people. "What if we can't get back?"

"I would say we get comfortable in our new present, but that looks difficult to do, so let me suggest that we don't think about it until we have to."

"I like that plan. Almost as much as I like the idea of getting out of here."

They climbed a flight of stairs, and then another. These were clearly dungeons, but they were eerily silent, deserted other than the occasional skeleton behind bars. And the walls were liberally festooned with red lyrium. It seemed to be … growing there. And it sang, something Bridget could almost catch. She found herself stopping to listen for the tune, and shook herself violently. That way lay madness.

In a far corner of the dungeons, a place they found only because they had gotten hopelessly lost, they found Fiona. The red lyrium had taken over her body; it was growing out of her. And yet, grotesquely, she was still alive.

She turned her head wearily to look at them, her eyes blinking slowly. "You're … alive? But … how? I saw you … disappear."

"Fiona! Let us get you out of there."

"No! Don't … touch it. I … am dead already. They … will mine my corpse … for the red lyrium it contains."

Dorian asked, "Can you tell us the date?"

Fiona thought hard, or tried to. "Last I knew … was … 9 … 42. Dragon."

"Forty-two? We've missed an entire year."

"We have to get back in time, fix … this." Bridget looked at Fiona again. The red lyrium was still singing, and Bridget felt revolted that she found the song compelling, despite what she was seeing.

"Yes. Please … stop this from happening." Fiona was breathing with difficulty. "Alexius … serves the … Elder One. No one … challenges him … and lives."

Bridget hadn't been all that impressed by what she had seen of Fiona, but that didn't matter in the face of what had been done to the former Grand Enchanter. She felt anger rising in her, hot and choking. "That magister is going to regret he didn't kill me when he had the chance," she vowed.

"We must find the amulet Alexius used to send us here," Dorian said. "I should be able to use it to reopen the rift at the exact spot we left."

"You can?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. It might also turn us into paste."

"Better than nothing."

"You … must … try," Fiona gasped. "Your spymaster … Leliana … she is here. … Find … her. … Quickly. Before … the Elder One … learns you're …" Her last words trailed off and her head slumped forward against the red lyrium.

Bridget stared at the body of the former Grand Enchanter. She wanted to mourn, but there was no time for that, not if she was going to prevent it from happening. The whole situation made her feel as though she was going around in circles.

They left Fiona and plunged back into the labyrinth of the dungeons. They were about to take a left turn toward what Bridget was certain were stairs leading up and out when she heard a familiar laugh. It was tinny and strange, but it was unmistakably Sera's. She tugged Dorian in that direction. Sera and Blackwall were together in a single cell, Blackwall standing stolidly and staring at the wall, Sera alternately singing to herself and laughing.

She jumped when she saw them. "No no no no no no no. Dead. Not real. Dead and gone. They don't come back."

Blackwall slowly turned his head. A red glow surrounded him; even his eyes were red. Sera was the same. Both of them looked wearied and sick and half-starved. Bridget wanted to hug them, but she had to admit she also wanted to back slowly out of the room and then run back to her own time and safety. She was ashamed of herself for even thinking it.

"Andraste have mercy," Blackwall whispered. "The dead should rest in peace."

"It's really me," she assured him, "and I'm definitely not dead."

"I was there. I saw you fall. Nothing—nothing was left but ash."

"We went forward in time," Bridget explained. She looked at both of them; they were too far gone to understand her. "Look," she said, "we're going to get you out of here. Does that help?"

"Like I'm going to believe some demon or whatever," Sera said, sounding more like herself. "The day you died? I ran out of arrows making them pay. Then … nothing mattered anymore."

"Let's make them pay again."

"The Elder One killed the Empress," Sera told her. "And then invaded. With a demon army. Demons everywhere. Everything is gone—or red. No one makes the Elder One pay."

Bridget looked the elf straight in her unnatural red eyes. "I am going to make him pay," she promised. "No matter what." Anything, to keep this horror from coming true.

"Maybe you are. I want—I want them to hurt. If you're really here, I'll frigging die just to spit in their faces."

"I'm really here," Bridget said gently.

"Then what are we waiting for?"

Blackwall stared at her, as if lost in a dream. Or a nightmare.

"Come on," she said to him. "Let's go find Alexius. Maybe … maybe we'll find Vivienne on the way."

"Not that one," Sera said. "She was the smart one, didn't let them catch her. Made them kill her instead. Smart."

Bridget nodded. That sounded like Vivienne.

"We're all going to die anyway," Blackwall said.

"Not today," Dorian told him. "Not I."

Blackwall looked at him, but didn't speak. With her companions following, Bridget and Dorian returned to trying to make sense of the labyrinth.

At last they made it up the stairs to another level of dungeons. The air was slightly more fresh, at least. And Bridget thought maybe she understood the layout better now.

Dorian turned around to look at their two companions. Both were keeping up better than Bridget had imagined they could, given their emaciation, but neither had yet said a word.

"I don't suppose either of you know where to find Alexius."

Blackwall didn't answer. He had gone somewhere else in his head, Bridget imagined, and seemed to be finding it difficult to come back.

Sera scratched her head with the tip of her bow. "I think … once I heard a guard say he never left the throne room. Maybe?"

"That does sound like Alexius," Dorian agreed. "The throne room it is, then. If we can find it."

The red lyrium was less prevalent on this floor of the dungeons, and Bridget could hear something else over the song of the lyrium, finally—a voice.

"How did Trevelyan know of the sacrifice at the Temple?"

Bridget couldn't hear an answer, just a cry of pain. She moved faster in the direction the voice had come from.

"There's no use to this defiance, little bird. There is no one else left for you to protect!"

Now Bridget did hear an answering voice. Leliana. "You're wasting your breath." And then another cry of pain.

"Quickly," Bridget urged Dorian. "Leliana. She's in there."

"Leliana?" Blackwall asked. "Alive?"

"Takes a lot of killing, the nightingale," Sera said. "Caw caw!"

Bridget shoved the door open. Leliana hung there in chains, and in front of her stood a man with a knife, ready to begin making cuts in her flesh. Leliana's clothes hung in tatters, her skin was scarred everywhere, her eyes sunken in her face.

"You will break," the man promised her.

"I will die first," she told him, matter-of-factly. Over his head, her eyes met Bridget's. There was no surprise in Leliana's face; just satisfaction. "Or you will." With some remnant of strength, she hauled herself up in her chains, wrapped her legs around her torturer's neck, and snapped it. He fell to the floor.

Bridget rifled through his clothes until she found keys that looked like they might fit Leliana's shackles, and got busy setting her former spymaster free.

"You're alive."

"Alexius sent us into the future. This—his victory, the Elder One—it was never meant to be."

"We need to find Alexius and reverse the spell," Dorian said. "If we can get back to when we left, we can prevent this future from ever happening."

Leliana looked at Bridget, then at Dorian, and then, her face slightly softer, over their shoulders at Blackwall and Sera. "You talk of this as if it is only pretend, some future you hope will never exist. I suffered. The world suffered. It was real." As she spoke, she looked to Bridget like one of her own birds, her bones sharp and defined in her face, her nose like a beak. It was a frightening image; but Leliana had survived, in the face of a year's worth of who knew what kind of torture. Bridget felt a new appreciation for the woman who had been the Left Hand of the Divine. She hoped someday to have a chance to get back to Haven and tell Leliana—the real Leliana, of her present—as much.

As they made their way out of the dungeons, Dorian asked, "What happened? Exactly."

Leliana cast him a withering glare.

"I'm just trying to understand."

"No, you are talking to fill the silence. Nothing happened that you want to hear."

Finally they reached the main floor of the castle. The windows were filthy, a dingy, greenish light coming through them. Bridget looked more closely, and she gasped. "Maker, look at it. The Breach!"

It had grown to fill the whole sky.

Dorian said some things in Tevinter that sounded unpleasant. Blackwall stared stolidly out at the green sky. Sera gave a keening cry as she looked at it. "It wasn't this bad, last time I saw it. it's … grown."

"Yes." Leliana said. She didn't bother to look. "Let's keep going."

Dorian caught up with her again. "At least … do you know what happened to Felix?"

"Yes. I know."

"Are you going to tell me?"

Leliana moved faster, leaving him behind. "You'll find out. Soon enough."

At last they found the throne room. This whole day—half a day? Couple of hours? It felt like forever to Bridget. She was exhausted to the point of wanting to lie down on the stones and sleep, weary of trying to ignore the song of the red lyrium, dry-mouthed and starving, but she wouldn't have eaten or drunk anything in this time if it was the difference between taking another step or not. By the time she stumbled into the throne room, she was as close to the end of her rope as she had ever been, and only knowing that Blackwall, Sera, and Leliana had been through unimaginably more and they were still on their feet kept her moving.

Alexius was standing in front of the fireplace, staring into it. Near him crouched a pale creature that closer inspection revealed to be Felix. His mouth was open, drool running out of it and pooling on the floor.

"Felix," Dorian said, in a voice so soft it was almost a moan. "No."

At the voice, Alexius turned toward them. "I knew you would appear again," he said slowly. He looked bent and old and worn, as if victory had been nearly as difficult as defeat. "I didn't know where, or when, but I knew I hadn't destroyed you. My final failure," he whispered.

"Was it worth it?" Dorian asked sharply. "Everything you did to the world? To yourself?" He gestured at Felix. "To him?"

"It was all for him," Alexius cried.

"And this was what you saved him for? You call that living?"

"I don't call it death." Alexius shook his head. "It doesn't matter, anyway. Not now. Now all we can do is wait for the end."

"What do you mean? What's ending?" Bridget asked.

Alexius laughed bitterly. "The irony that you should appear now, of all possible moments. All that I fought for, all that I betrayed, and what have I wrought?" He reached down and touched Felix's cheek. Felix didn't react, as if he didn't even feel the touch. Alexius turned away. "Ruin and death. There is nothing else. The Elder One comes: for you, for me, for all of us."

Then Felix suddenly rose to his feet. Everyone turned to look at him, seeing Leliana standing behind him, holding him up, a knife at his throat.

"No! Felix!" Alexius stepped toward them but stopped when Leliana pressed more closely with the knife. "Please, don't hurt my son. I'll do anything you ask."

"Hand over the amulet," Bridget said.

"Let him go, and I swear, you'll get anything you want."

Leliana looked at him. "I want the world back." And she struck, the knife making a jagged hole in Felix's neck. He fell to the floor without a sound.

"No!" Alexius went to his knees next to his son's body.

Leliana pointed the knife in his direction. "The amulet, or you will join him."

"What if that's what I want?"

"If that's what you wanted, you would have let him die a long time ago rather than force him to live in that … horror," Dorian said. He came closer, rifling through Alexius's robes. "You didn't even have the courage to let him die." And then in a quick, decisive movement, he snapped the magister's neck.

Bridget looked at him, knowing how difficult it must have been to see his former mentor reduced to such a low. "I'm sorry."

Dorian laughed, a harsh, bitter sound. "Once he was a man to whom I compared all others. All those lies he told himself, the justifications … it was never for Felix, not really. It was about him, all the time. He lost Felix long ago and didn't even notice. Sad, isn't it?"

"There is no time for this sentiment," Leliana hissed. "You must perform the ritual to send you both back to the time you came from."

Dorian turned the amulet over in his hands. "It could take some time."

"Time is a luxury you do not have."

Bridget became aware of sounds from outside the room—groans and shouts and the clanking of a large army on the move.

Sera's head turned toward the door. "There's a reason they won."

Blackwall looked at her, and she at him, and they nodded to one another. Blackwall turned, then, to look at Bridget, and she thought he might say something, but then he broke the look and he and Sera left the throne room, to face down the approaching army alone. For her. She wanted to weep, but she knew she didn't have that luxury. She might not have it again, not until this Elder One was dead. And that was her task now; hers before anyone else's. She couldn't put it down any more than she could scrub the mark off her hand.

"Work quickly," she said to Dorian. Something of what she was feeling must have shown itself in her voice or her look, because he didn't argue, he just nodded and got to work, his focus complete.

Leliana came toward her. "Look at me; at them." She gestured with her head to the door Sera and Blackwall had gone through. "We are already dead. The only way we live is if this day never comes. If you get back—"

"I will stop it," Bridget said. "You have my word. Whatever comes."

"It is enough." Leliana nodded, as if satisfied. To Dorian she said, "Cast your spell. You have as much time as I have arrows."

He didn't even register the comment, his head bent over the amulet as he murmured.

It didn't take long before the sounds of fighting came closer, as if they were in the next room. Bridget tried not to think of Sera and Blackwall fighting, dying, out there, alone. She couldn't think of that, because if she did she would have to go out there, have to make her stand with them, and she knew how foolish that would be—she just couldn't seem to feel it in her heart.

Leliana stood in the middle of the room with an arrow nocked. "Though darkness closes, I am shielded by flame," she recited, the words charged with meaning as Bridget had never heard the Chant before.

A tremendous thud outside, and the doors flew open, demons and Venatori fighters coming through. Bridget tried not to imagine Blackwall dead, dismembered, broken … it wasn't him, she told herself. Not really. But it was hard to retain her focus as the demons closed in on Leliana, who sent arrow after arrow flying toward them. Not one missed, but there weren't enough. There had never been enough.

"Andraste guide me," Leliana said. "Maker, take me to your side."

An arrow struck her in the chest and she staggered, but she held her stance and continued firing, the flight of the arrows a bit more off-kilter.

Bridget started to move toward her, but Dorian caught her arm. "You move, and we all die!"

She repeated that to herself, over and over again, while she watched the mob swarming Leliana. At last Dorian said "Now!" and without allowing herself to stop to think for a moment, Bridget turned and plunged into the green swirl of the rift in time he had created. Wherever she ended up, it had to be better than what she was leaving.

And suddenly they were back where they had started, Alexius looking at them in expectant triumph. Bridget felt sick, and weary, and hungry, and exhausted, and dizzy, but she fought them all. She had to be strong just a little longer. Just as Leliana had been. As Sera and Blackwall had been. She glanced at them, to be sure they were there, and still themselves. Both were looking at her, puzzled, not sure what had happened.

But she could see the moment dawn when Alexius knew what had happened, and the blood drained from his face.

"You'll have to do better than that," Dorian told him.

Alexius fell to his knees, suddenly old and defeated, as he had been in the future.

"Put aside all claim to Redcliffe, and we let you live," Bridget told him.

He laughed. "Do you think the Elder One will let me live, now that I have failed him? Failed you," he said, his eyes moving to find Felix. "He would have saved you."

Tears stood in Felix's eyes. "No one can save me, Father. I'm dying. I wish … I wish you hadn't tried."

"Well, I'm glad that's over with," Dorian said.

"What of us?" Fiona asked, stepping forward. "When Alis—when the King finds out what we have done here …"

"Perhaps you should have thought of that before, my dear," Vivienne told her sharply.

Bridget quite agreed. "Fiona, you have bungled this thoroughly. I don't know why, but from this point forth, I can no longer have you speaking for the mages."

"Yes. I understand. But … my people. They cannot stay here, not now."

"No. That they can't." They were all looking at her now. Bridget remembered what she had felt, in the future, that this was her task. At the time, she had been thinking of fighting, which was a simple, straightforward thing to do. But managing the mages, making the decisions, being willing to step forward and take the risk of being wrong, that, too, was part of her task, and she had to begin now, despite her weariness and her hunger and her distress over what she had seen. "We came here for mages to close the Breach, and we are leaving here with mages to close the Breach."

"And our status?" Fiona asked.

"Hopefully better than what Alexius offered. The Inquisition is better than that, yes?" Dorian asked, his voice and look a challenge.

"Think carefully," Vivienne urged. "Look at what they did with their freedom when they had it."

"Yes," Bridget told her, "and look at what we have done with ours. They deserve a chance to decide for themselves, not to have their lives signed away by yet another person who claims to speak for what's best for them." She tried not to look at Fiona as she said it. "For now, the mages will be considered our allies, fighting at the side of the Inquisition."

Vivienne sighed. "I hope you do not live to regret this, my dear."

Bridget hoped so, too. She didn't even want to think about what Cullen and Cassandra's reaction would be. "The Breach threatens all of Thedas," she said. "Maybe it will take all of Thedas working together to fight it."