Soundtrack:

Video Killed the Radio Star - Buggles

Internet Killed the Video Star - The Limousines

The Man Who Sold the World - Nirvana

Southside - Moby

Salty Sweet - MS MR

Come as you Are - Nirvana

Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie

Chapter 3:

Varric stared at me for a good five solid seconds, then he leveled Bianca at me and said, "Prove it. Prove you're Elyria."

I didn't dare move a muscle. Varric is, was and will always be insanely good with that thing. He could split hairs on a flea. "You tried out a bunch of nicknames on me before settling on Ellie."

His eyes narrowed, "Name one."

"Pumpkin. I asked you if you were calling me short, fat and orange."

He visibly relaxed, easing up on Bianca and moving her to his back. "Andraste's knickers! I could have shot you!"

"Could have, but didn't. Nice language by the way. There are templars here, you know. Do I get a hug?"

"No. Handshake?"

"We've been friends for nearly a decade and you want me to shake your hand? Seriously? Bro hug, at least."

"What on the Maker's green grass is a bro hug?"

I grinned at him and went for it. Seconds later, while he was awkwardly trying to push me away, "I said no hugs."

"Bro hugs are not hugs."

"Are you two quite finished?" Cassandra's impatience bled through our mildly happy reunion.

Still crouched a bit to look him in the eye. "Want to save the world again shortstop?"

"With you?" Varric repositioned Bianca into his hands with a grin and a wink. "Always."

"Absolutely not," Cassandra stepped up nearly between us, "Your help is appreciated Varric, but…"

His expression was somewhere between trying not to make snide remarks, and this chick for real? "Have you been in the valley lately Seeker? Your soldiers aren't in control anymore." Then he smiled that charming, Varric signature smile. "You need me."

In response, she made a disgusted noise and threw her hands up.

Solas nodded his head at me, taking the opportunity. "My name is Solas, if there are to be introductions. I am pleased to see you live."

Sure you are. You're the guy who brought this thing into the world.

"He means," Varric said, "'I kept that mark from killing you while you slept.'"

I flexed my hand. "Thank you."

Solas gave me the briefest flash of a smile. "Thank me if we manage to close the Breach without killing you in the process." He turned his attention to Cassandra who was still, at least a little bit, annoyed with Varric's nonchalance. "Cassandra, you should know: the magic involved here is unlike any I have seen." He motioned to me. "Your prisoner is no mage. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine any mage having such power."

My ass you liar.

With one more annoyed glance at Varric, the Seeker was back to business. "Understood. We must get to the forward camp quickly."

"Well, Bianca's excited!"

I snorted. "You still talk about her in third person?"

He almost pouted at me. "She's a sensitive woman."

Cassandra rolled her eyes. She pointed with her sword. "This way, down the bank. The road head is blocked."

Solas readied his staff. "We must move quickly.

After disposing of the shades up the hill, and then down the path to dispose of the next round of shades, Varric spoke up again. "Where have you been Ellie?"

"Who is asking my friend or the writer?"

He fired off at a wraith in the distance. It burst like a overfilled water balloon. "I won't dignify that with an answer."

"What did you write in Hawke's book?"

"That you disappeared on the docks," Cassandra inserted before Varric could drum up a protest, "while in full view of your companions."

I made a buzzer sound. "Close, I was bringing up the rear. When did they notice?"

"Alistair told me he made a comment about a harpy on Collins Row. When you didn't say anything, he turned around and you weren't there."

His sister lived on Collins Row. His sister that wasn't really his sister.

"I'm sure that went over well." My reply thick with sarcasm. "Were any of them arrested?"

Varric snorted. "That's the first question you ask?"

"Knowing Fenris, yes."

"So it's true then, you two were together."

I came to a full stop and turned around, gritting my teeth both in anger and from the pain shooting up my arm. "Tell me you didn't publish that."

"He never out right said it. There were hints," Cassandra told me with a pointed look at the dwarf. "Heavily implied hints."

"Varric!"

"What? The sexual tension between you two was thicker than fog on the coast. All I did was wave off your competition. Broody received a lot of female attention after the book was published. Making him look like he was pining for his lost lady was just the way my muses wanted to go."

My chest tightened. "Never mind," I told him, them, "we've got work to do."

We crossed the riverbed after I insisted we check for supplies in the not burning cabin. I know there are supplies and money in the burning cabin, but I'm a person now, not a character on the screen. Fire effing hurts!

As we reached the stairs, a few items heavier from the cabin, the mark flared up. My hand turned bright green for a moment, and the pain, though not as awful as before, thrummed its way up my arm like one long, painful guitar chord. This one reached into my chest, echoing around a couple of my ribs before leeching itself back down into my hand.

Meanwhile, on the outside, I was grimacing and breathing hard. My blood pressure must be in stroke danger territory. The blood rushing in my ears is a warning. This thing has to ease up or I'd die.

"Shit, Ellie, are you alright?"

Through gritted teeth I breathed out and in once more and allowed myself a deep breath. Then, to myself, under my breath, "I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear." I hadn't used the litany against fear since I was a teenager. Not once in the past eight years. But here, now, faced with the imminent horror and agony, it came back crystal clear. Clearer now than it was when Simone Thorne, Marie Baek and Valencia Santiago had me cornered in the bathroom freshman year. "I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path." I flexed my hand, forcing my fingers to curl and uncurl against the mark. "Where the fear has gone there will be nothing."

That was the first time I threw a punch. I taught those nasty little wanna-be-alpha bitches not to mess with me. "Only I will remain."

"We must hurry," Solas spoke almost sympathetically, "my magic cannot stop the mark from growing further. For your sake, I suggest we hurry."

"Lay on Macduff," I said and we began climbing the stairs.

"So…" Varric began, "are you innocent."

"As virgin snow."

He laughed, slapping his thigh. "See where telling the truth gets you? Should have spun a story."

Cassandra made a sound of irritation. "That's what you would have done."

He scoffed in response. "It's more believable, and less prone to result in premature execution."

We crossed to the next set of stairs, steeper, narrower. There were outcroppings of boulders and a hell of a lot of snow on each of them. My boots were good, they supposedly had plenty of traction, but I could almost feel the thin layers of ice under everything. The tags on them said they'd be good in up to negative ten degree weather.

At the top of the stairs there were more demons. I forgot how big greater shades were. Varric fired off and nailed both wraiths before any of the demons actually saw us. Moments later we'd made quick work of them and we're heading up the hill toward the forward camp. There was snow covered rubble here, solid and broken bricks everywhere. A section of what looks like might have been a section of wall is quietly burning away around twenty feet to our right.

Cassandra sighed. "I hope Leiana made it through all of this."

"She's a resourceful woman, Seeker."

"We will see for ourselves at the forward camp. We're almost there." Solas piped up.

"She's survived worse." I added as we continue up the hill past burning things and dead people. "We fought a dragon up here. She'll live through some demons playing hide and seek."

At the very top of the hill my thighs began a real protest. At the same time, Cassandra called out, "Another rift."

"We must seal it, quickly!"

One of the soldiers called out, "They keep coming! Help us!"

The smaller shades and couple of wraiths were easy enough to get rid of.

"Hurry!" Solas' voice came less than a heartbeat after the last shade was down. "Use the mark!"

As I'd seen my character do on screen a thousand times, as I did earlier, I lifted my hand, palm out to the green swirling rift several feet away. Just as the last one did, this one seemed to connect to the mark without me having to do anything. And, yes, just like the last rift, it drained my pain away like a vampire draining a blood bag.

"The rift is gone! Open the gate!" Cassandra's voice seemed so extra loud.

I realized that was because the blood had stopped rushing and pounding in my ears. Using the mark eased the angry pump of blood. I was willing to bet my pulse had returned to a normal-ish pace.

"Whatever that thing is on your hand, Ellie, you have to admit - it is useful."

"I admit nothing." I told him while watching another meteorite of green slam down somewhere in the distance.

We headed through the gates to the forward camp on the bridge. More soldiers were there, some huddled around a fire trying to stay warm, a few more at a table with stocks of what looked like potion vials, and one guarding a couple of unbound dead bodies. Ominous.

Toward the other side of the bridge we came to Leliana arguing with the thorn in everyone's side.

"Ah, here they come."

Leliana's shoulders drop slightly with the release of tension. She saw me and the slightest hint of relief crossed her face. "You made it. Chancellor Roderick, this is-"

He looked exhausted with deep blue-purple bags under his eyes. He still managed to level me a scathing look. "I know who she is." He turned his attention to Cassandra. "As Grand Chancellor of the Chantry, I hereby order you to take this criminal to Val Royeaux to face execution."

Cassandra in turn bristled. "Order me! You are a glorified clerk. A bureaucrat!"

"And you are a thug, but a thug who supposedly serves the chantry!"He shot back in anger.

"We serve the Most Holy, Chancellor, as you well know." Leliana told him pointedly, watching him before turning her attention back to us and Cassandra.

"Justinia is dead! We must elect her replacement, and obey her orders on the matter."

"So we're just going to ignore the big, green, roaring hole in the sky then?" I asked with the snarkiest tone I could muster.

"Roaring? It is not roaring." Leliana shot me a look of confusion and for a moment everyone gave me the 'why you so crazy?' expression.

I turned to Solas and said, "Thundering, rumbling, practically groaning when it shoots out meteorites of demons. You don't hear that?"

"I hear the falling of the meteorites, as you call them, yes. When it expands there is a sound. But now," he turned his head to look at it, brow creasing in what I assumed was concentration. "No, nothing."

"Great, well this," I held up my left hand with the mark across my palm, "is letting me hear it loud and clear. And it is getting louder."

"You brought this on us in the first place!" Roderick snapped at me. "Call a retreat, Seeker. Our position here is hopeless."

"We can stop this before it's too late." Cassandra replied evenly.

"How?" The Chancellor demanded. "You won't survive long enough to reach the temple, even with all your soldiers."

"We must get to the temple. It's the quickest route."

"But not the safest." Leliana added. "Our forces can charge as a distraction while we go through the mountains."

"We lost contact with an entire squadron on that path. It's too risky." Cassandra warned her.

"Listen to me." Said the Chancellor. "Abandon this now, before more lives are lost."

And then, just like on the screen, the breach expanded violently. The mark hit me hard. My whole left arm felt like something ripped upward through every inch of flesh, and as an added bonus, my arm began to tremor by itself. I grabbed my wrist, pointing my palm downward, while my fingers strained involuntarily. By then it had spread across most of the middle of my hand, breaking some of the lines in two.

Wonder what a palm reader would say.

Cassandra waited until I was no longer gritting my teeth or breathing hard from the pain to ask, "How do you think we should proceed?"

"We charge with everyone else." I told them through clenched teeth. "I won't ask men and women to run into battle while I take the other way."

Cassandra nodded at me and went into business mode."Leliana. Bring Everyone left in the valley. Everyone."

Roderick, scowling, leaning on the table to address gathering his spread out papers, "On your head be the consequences, Seeker."

There weren't stairs upward, instead much as I had the last time I climbed to the Temple of Andraste years ago, we took a snow covered path up the side of the mountain. The party might have been different, but the trail was primarily the same. The higher we went, the colder and windier it got. The winds swept loose snow into our paths, some of it depositing on our clothing as we climbed.

Thank whatever god listening I decided to wear my extra thermals under my clothes. The jeans and thermal leggings were a little damp in spots, but otherwise the cold didn't seem to bother me all that much. Still wished my food and supplies had come through.

Eventually, with my legs burning and my lungs feeling like I just ran a marathon, we reached the staging area. More dead bodies, though it looked like a chantry sister was tending to them. A handful of soldiers scattered around, and a weapons table. A sheath caught my eye.

"Anyone using this?" I asked, grabbing up the back sheath for a sword.

One soldier shook his head at me, the other two spared me a glance before returning to sharpening their weapons. I grabbed a lone stiletto off the table, and tested it in one hand. Much better. The balance wasn't quite as off as the one I had been using.

I pulled on the sheath quickly, and slid the sword into it. The stiletto went into the belt holding up the pouch at my side.

"Be wary," Solas told us as we moved up the stairs to the doorway. "Another Fade rift is just there." He pointed with his staff to a darker, smokey area in the distance.

Cassandra leapt down first, then Solas. Varric gave me a 'ugh seriously' look, then moved Bianca onto his back before jumping down too. I took one last look. The destruction was mind boggling. I pulled the helm back on and jumped down as well.

I knew what the temple was supposed to look like, both in game and in person. The reality of the devastation stopped me in my tracks. Oh god. Those poor people.

Loose bricks, burning wood, charred bits of what I prayed wasn't pieces of people were everywhere. Everywhere. Sections of wall still standing, slanted from the brutal force of the explosion. Then, as I began moving toward the rift, I saw the bones. Skulls, a rib cage, what I think was a thigh bone, tiny yellow and white bones like something from a hand or a foot. All of them loose and charred on one side. My stomach roiled in response.

Knowing the smaller rift was there spilling demons was the only thing that kept me from tossing whatever was left of the food I ate this morning. Or was it yesterday morning? Either way, the demons had begun to clash with Cassandra. Varric paused fifteen steps ahead of me and began to fire Bianca with deadly precision.

"How many rifts are there?" Varric called out as the last shade went down.

"We must seal it if we are to get past!" Solas responded.

Cassandra nodded at me, "Quickly then! Seal it!"

I raised my hand but it felt like the pull the rift had on me the last two times was stalled. Like it was almost pushing back at me. "It isn't working." I shook my hand and tried again. Then the ground turned green and black. "More coming!"

The terrors rose up like the great unholy monstrosities that they were. This kind of demon I had never seen in person before. Crouched as they were with oddly bent legs, they still towered over us. They must have topped nine feet at least. I remembered that these ones, they could teleport.

Solas froze one immediately, while Cassandra slammed into it with her shield. Meanwhile, Varric and I took the other one. A minute or so later they were gone and I had a series of fresh scratches tearing open the shoulder of my sweater.

This time when I raised my left hand the rift responded instantly. It closed with a resounding pop.

"Sealed, as before. You are becoming quite proficient at this." Solas told me in what I assume was a congratulatory tone.

"Let's hope it works on the big one." Varric said as he went around picking up bolts that had been left behind when the demons were sent back to the fade.

"Lady Cassandra," a familiar voice called out, coming toward us in a quick lope, "you managed to close the rift? Well done."

"Do not congratulate me, Commander. This is the prisoner's doing."

Cullen looked at me, but with my helm, he didn't see my face. "Is it? I hope they're right about you. We've lost a lot of people getting you here."

I pull off my helm and his face went through a series of expressions ranging from 'no way' to 'damn.' "We're all hoping that, but as history has proven, I'm a survivor."

He composed himself. "The way to the temple should be clear. Leliana will try to meet you there."

"Then we'd best move quickly." Cassandra said, though her tone had gone from business as usual to a touch curious. "Give us time, Commander."

"Maker watch over you - for all our sakes." Then, with a nod to her, he turned and went to help the soldier hobbling away. Look like someone mellowed out in the last few years.

Ahead of us was another jump down, one I wasn't looking forward to. There would be bodies down there. Human beings frozen in terror and agony, preserved forever as charred husks. Some of them would still be on fire.

I shuddered as we approached the edge. From my vantage point I could see them. A lot of them. Hands up, heads down trying to cover themselves, god these people never had a chance in hell. Some of them were melted into the floor.

Angry and sick to my stomach, I jumped down, landing in a crouch to absorb the shock with my knees. I used the helm to cover and put out a fire on what used to be a person a few feet from where I jumped down. They died bowing their head in prayer, hands gripped together before them. "These people will receive last rights later, won't they?"

"As our people recover them." Cassandra told me as we began walking again.

"The Temple of Sacred Ashes." Solas observed as we approached the smokiest part of the ruins.

"What's left of it." Varric said.

"I know, I've been here before." I told them. "I fought a dragon somewhere down the road up with the Wardens during the blight." I grabbed a nearly unblemished cloth hat tossed haphazardly on the ground and dusted it off. Fire resistant. "Here, Solas, you need the armor."

He took it wordlessly. "Intact? The enchantment on this must be very strong." He shook it a bit to loosen up any dirt, ash or dust and then donned it, covering his bald head.

We passed more bodies, at least a couple of dozen, all in some stage of destruction. There are more skulls here, loose bones, and bits of what used to be stone and people crunched under our boots. I tried to dredge up some prayers from those years when my parents used to go to church, but only vaguely mishmashed pieces of the Lord's Prayer and Hail Mary came back to me.

"There," Cassandra stopped, pointing her sword at a point near a wall. "That is where you walked out of the Fade and our soldiers found you. They said a woman was in the rift behind you. No one knows who she was."

"She was a bright silhouette, a light in the dark. She held her hand out to me, strained to grab me and pull me up." And she had. I remembered it distinctly. All of those fade spiders clicking and clacking at me with over sized pincers. I shuddered again, violently. "I can't tell you more than that."

We headed into what was left of the temple.

Varric let out a low whistle as he looked up, "The breach is a long way up."

I looked up. Big mistake. I dropped my gaze immediately. The mark, the mark, whatever the hell it is, let me hear the roaring but it also let me see things no human being should see. I took a deep, slightly unsteady breath. I'd been to the Fade as whole person before. It wasn't an experience I wanted an encore of any time soon.

Leliana and a small contingent of soldiers arrived a moment later. "You're here! Thank the Maker."

"Leliana, have your men take up positions around the temple." Cassandra tells her.

Leliana nodded and walked away to give the men direction.

Then Cassandra turned to me. "This is your chance to end this. Are you ready?"

The mark flared a little, sending fire ants up my bone and into my chest. I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth and clenched my left hand tightly. "As I'll ever be."

"This rift was the first and is the key." Solas spoke up. "Seal it, and perhaps we seal the Breach."

"Then let's find a way down." She replied. "And be careful."

The soldiers with Leliana leading them followed us further into the ruins of the temple. We began to pick our way past outcroppings of shattered stone and destroyed brick sections. "Leliana," I called over to her, "is it my imagination or did the chantry fill in that giant hole from the guardian's tests?"

She lets out a low, slightly amused sound. "You remember that?"

"It wasn't that long ago!"

"Yes, it took nearly seventeen weeks, over a thousand units of dirt to fill and pack the hole and then we had to disenchant and disassemble the test itself." She shook her head. "I cannot believe you thought of that now."

"Well it was technically the last time I was here. Before, you know, some lunatic decided to explode the Fade into a vortex of monsters and madness in the sky."

Then, as we reached a place where the stone became darker, indicating it was closer to the central blast, the echoes of voices began.

"Now is the hour of our victory. Bring forth the sacrifice."

Here is where the fuzzy part of my memory began. I know that I heard something about a sacrifice when I came through. I also know that I realized I was the only person in that hallway. I distinctly remembered the feeling of having to go in there, despite being alone and unarmed because he was going to sacrifice the Divine.

Cassandra's voice cut through my reverie. "What are we hearing?"

"At a guess: The person who created the Breach." Solas answered her.

We came up on some of the soldiers holding position. A couple of archers holding steady, watching the area of the rift. Nearby red lyrium, practically pulsing in time with the rift's roaring jutted out of the ground in a stalagmite.

Varric let out a series of colorful curse words. A couple of them not in common/English. "Elyria, tell me that isn't what I think that is."

"I don't lie to my friends Varric," I reminded him.

He cursed again. "Seeker…"

Cassandra's voice held just a touch of fear. "I see it, Varric."

"But what it's doing here?" The dwarf demanded.

Solas went close to one of the stalagmites, eyeing it the way a scientist might an anomaly. "Magic could have drawn on lyrium beneath the temple, corrupted it…"

"It's evil. Whatever you do don't touch it." Varric tried to warn him off of getting too close.

More Echos. The male voice said, "Keep the sacrifice still."

The voice of Justinia came less than a heartbeat later. "Someone help me!"

"That is Divine Justinia's voice!" Cried, Cassandra and her pace picked up.

We reached the end of the path quickly, the group of us and the soldiers lead by Leliana. Down a set of stairs and then down into the central pit where the rift had taken up residence. More dead people here, though they're bone and not the horrors of burned humans frozen in horror.

The mark flared, and goddamn it hurt so much worse than all of the others. This one was a pulse, one that slapped my palm at the same time it managed to hit all the other parts, including my spine. I moved involuntarily, my upper back and neck responding in kind to the pain.

More voices from the Fade followed the flare up.

"Someone help me!" Justinia cried for help.

My voice came, "Put her down asshole!"

"That was your voice." Cassandra's voice held a mix of emotions. "Most Holy called out to you. But…"

"Not to me,"I corrected, shaking off what I could of the effect the mark had on me. "To anyone to help her. I was the closest person."

The flash was almost blinding when it came, leaving me with spots of blue and white in my vision. I wasn't the only one. Leliana had her hand up to shield her face. Cassandra used her arm to block the worst of it. Varric's head was bowed, finger already rubbing his eyes. Solas, on the other hand, either wasn't bothered by it or had already recovered. He pointed upward to the nearly transparent images above us.

The spectral projection of Divine Justinia floated midair, held in place by an angry red energy trapping her arms. She looked desperate and terrified. The dark figure looming over her was ominous and threatening even for a shadow.

I entered the room a moment later brandishing what looked like a letter opener and, what the shit was I thinking, a heavy looking hand mirror. Guess I hadn't been able to get a decent weapon. "Put her down asshole!"

"Run while you can child!" Justinia warned me. "Warn them!"

"We have an intruder." The dark shadow's voice reverberated off the stone walls around us. "Kill her."

The next flash was just as blinding. One of the soldiers, I think, cursed like a sailor in response.

"You were there! Who attacked? And the Divine, is she…? Was this vision true? What are we seeing?" Cassandra's voice cut through the recovery time.

"I don't know, that's the point where everything gets fuzzy. I don't even remember grabbing something to try to defend myself!"

"Echoes of what happened here. The Fade bleeds into this place." Solas began. "This rift is not sealed, but it is closed… albeit temporarily." He looked over his shoulder at me, then at Cassandra, "I believe with the mark, the rift can be opened and then sealed properly and safely. However, opening the rift will likely attract attention from the other side."

"That means demons." Cassandra's voice rose over the steady rumbling of the rift. "Stand ready!" The soldiers in the pit readied themselves, swords drawn, shields at the ready. The archers on the rise above us knocked arrows.

I took a handful of steps closer to the rift, raised my hand. I felt the rift reach for the mark and pull it from me. A long, green tendril of energy shot off the giant rift in the sky and into a random spot mid-air around fifty feet from me. A pride demon, at least fifteen feet high, broad and muscle bound roared at us louder than the rift.

Now came the hard part.

Am I messing with you though? Twelve pages says I'm not.

There's a kitty on my bed looking at me. Or maybe she's looking at you. :-P