Chapter Text
Sitting aside while others fought wasn’t any easier with practice, but Ophelia had a great deal more than Hawke and the party she’d chosen to infiltrate the keep with her. She adjusted her sweaty grip on her staff, eyeing where Cullen stood with a chevalier in deep conversation. “Do you know who that is?” she whispered to Bethany who followed her gaze and cocked her head.
“Baron… Uh… Baron…Amis, I think,” said Bethany, shifting on her feet. “I’ve heard you and Captain Rylen had a run-in with him.”
“He is very blunt.”
She tracked Cullen’s argument with her lip firmly between her teeth until they separated and Cullen was swept up in a sea of soldiers once more. There had been no chance to see him before the siege and the anxiety of it chewed through her nerves.
A scream echoed in the air, and she flinched. It was one of many they’d heard since the siege began. Though they had attacked in the dead of night with enough surprise to push close to the fortress, the wardens fought with vigor. Where their limited numbers failed, the demons prowling the battlements and flinging death upon the Inquisition was--
Her stomach twisted, and she held her breath until it passed.
Hawke frowned. The look on her face was nothing short of stony as she scanned over the friends she sent with the first wave of Cullen’s soldiers. “Do you see Fenris?” she asked finally, huffing.
Warden Tilly pointed to where the elven man stood with other soldiers bringing the ram to the fortress doors. Wardens and demons wrought damage from above. An arrow sliced through the air, downing a soldier near Fenris. Varric and the Hawke sisters winced in unison.
“We need--” Hawke didn’t finish. Overhead, one of their trebuchets struck the battlements of the fortress with a thunderous crash. The raining fire on the ram ended with more screams. “Right, that helps.”
A ringing sounded. Her body hummed with the sound. Ophelia peered around for the source, but though everyone in their party watched with bated breath, none of them noted the noise. The Inquisition’s ladders struck the wall, managing to breach the rampart amidst the chaos.
The sound grew piercing. It stabbed through her like a blade, and now the hum in her body was a shout. She hissed, staff clattering, as pain shot through her hand.
Hawke settled a hand on her shoulder, a steadying presence against the vise. “What is it?”
“They are doing something,” she said through gritted teeth.
Alistair snorted. “Yes, summoning demons, isn’t that what we are here to stop? Ow, Tilly, I’m just saying.” He rubbed his arm where Warden Tilly pinched him.
“No,” Ophelia cut in. “I mean, yes, it…” The spasm ended and she let out a breath. Warden Tilly nudged the staff from the ground and handed it over. Ophelia flashed a brief smile, still trying to piece together the pain. “They are drawing something powerful. The veil feels so… wrong.”
Hawke pursed her lips, swinging her gaze back to the battle. The ram was at the doors. Their trebuchets fired again. Soon, they’d be in the fortress proper. Unease snaked through Hawke’s blue eyes before she smothered it with a short, sharp nod. “I’ll speak with Cullen,” she said tightly, marching away.
Bethany filled the silence. “Solas and Your Trainer will do what they can with the veil, they had a plan of sorts, didn’t they?” she offered a hand, magic pooling on her palms, then settled them on Ophelia’s arm. Though the ache in her jaw from clenched teeth and the bite of a headache faded, the gnawing mark didn’t settle.
“It’s okay. It doesn’t respond to much healing,” said Ophelia with a disappointed sigh, drawing her arm from Bethany’s grasp.
A soldier fell from above. Ophelia winced. “They have a lot of demons,” she whispered, spotting their shadowy forms weaving among the wardens. Shades and wraiths, for now, but Ophelia was certain her marks reaction was a warning. An omen.
Alistair grunted. “We knew we wouldn’t save all of them. But I had hoped there would be more warden enemies and less demon ones,” he noted, eyes focused on the fighting. Then he looked to Tilly at his side with her grave face and he grinned, finger prodding against her cheek. “This waiting is worse than the time we tried to sneak our way out of Fort Drakon during the blight.” She flashed a smile and a nod, gesturing. Alistair laughed and shook his head, but did not explain.
“Oh?” said Varric with a glint in his eyes and a humorous smile on his lips. If the battle bothered him, he didn’t show any strain. “Do tell us more about Fort Drakon. How'd you end up there?”
Ophelia tuned them out. The sick feeling in her stomach was back, but she couldn’t tell if it was her body sensing changes in the veil as the wardens drew demons free or the nausea of the battle. She’d known it would be bad, she hadn’t known… she hadn’t known it would be this bad. Ophelia’s heart was somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach.
Bethany lurched and shouted. A barrier sprang to life around them as a blast of cold from above slammed against them. The barrier shimmered under the onslaught.
Gossamer cracks formed, spreading further and further like ripples in a pond, until Vivienne’s magic snared through it and repaired the breakage.
Dust flooded the area outside the barrier, prowling at the edges. Screams echoed all around them. “Tilda!” Bethany was shouting, the only noise Ophelia could hear over the ringing in her ears. “Tilda!”
Cullen, her thoughts screamed, stumbling over to the edges of the barrier. Ice formed on the outside of it. She held up a hand, joining her magic to Vivienne and Bethany’s as the cold continued.
“It’s a despair demon,” said Vivienne. Outside the barrier, Ophelia could only vaguely see the outlines of people moving.
Varric hissed, hefting Bianca, as if he might strike through the barrier to the demon even while dust left them blind. “Someone should have seen it. They aren’t exactly subtle.”
A trebuchet cracked, and the cold ended. Magic whooshed through the air and the dust parted.
Where their solders had been climbing the ramparts was nothing more than cracked, blood smeared walls. Bile rose in her throat, but she fought against it, still straining against the edges of the barrier for a sight of Cullen.
Then, striding over the bodies with careful steps, Hawke was there. “Change of plans,” she said sharply, blood on her face and a bruise on her cheek. “Alistair, Varric, you’re with Ophelia and I. Tilly, Bethany, go help clear the ramparts. Blackwall, Vivienne--help them and then help Cullen. Cassandra--join the front charge.”
Alistair and Tilly exchanged charged looks, a thousand thoughts exchanged with no words at all, before Tilly grinned. She had dimples, Ophelia noted, her chest squeezing at the love on their faces. With a kiss, Tilly departed with Bethany. Blackwall and Vivienne peeled away with short, brisk nods.
Cassandra hesitated, frowning. “I am most familiar with the Herald and her fighting style.”
“We need more people holding them off while we reach Clarel. You’re the best suited to keeping people off our backs, and the best suited to making sure less of my people die,” said Hawke.
“Very well.”
Their party split at Hawke’s orders.
“Is Cullen…” Ophelia didn’t finish, throat tight.
Hawke didn’t need to answer. Cullen’s voice rang through the fray of flattering feet. Another ladder appeared, and the siege pressed on, never pausing and never ceasing. As if they hadn’t lost anything. Ophelia thought she would be sick then, seeing them dodge narrowly over the bodies of their friends with only the slightest of hesitations.
And there he was. He was among the tide of people, helping fill the gap, his eyes locked on the ram.
“Ophelia,” said Hawke, voice low and eyes fierce. Ophelia tore her gaze away. “We’re going at the first opening. Whatever fancy tricks you’ve been practicing, use them.” At Ophelia’s expression, Hawke pat her shoulder. “You can do this. Let’s go end this.” Before its too late seemed to lurk at the end of her words, unspoken.
She nodded, grit her teeth again, and forced away discomfort. The fortress doors broke, and a roar of cheering clanged through their people. Together, they entered the fray with a contingent of soldiers.
The carnage didn’t end when they breached the fortress. Everywhere she looked was a slew of fighting people and screaming. Through it all, demons surged from the shadows like a tale of horror.
At first, Inquisition soldiers charged with them, but as they pressed deeper, they shed soldiers to battle and blood. Before long, only Dara remained of the ones who marched with them, standing at Ophelia’s left like another shadow.
Deep in the fortress, the piercing noise returned. A pain punctured through her like an arrow, stilling her steps. Her eyes dropped to her chest, but it was not a physical wound, only the mark hissing and biting like a feral beast.
“Wait,” she called, stomach churning. The others halted, Hawke with reluctance. Blood coated her, only some of it her own, but if she tried hard enough, maybe she could forget it.
Focus.
“What?” said Hawke, impatient.
“A rift. No, the fade. I--” Another flare, and her hand spasmed. Hawke softened, coming closer. Ophelia gave a slow hiss, forcing words against the marks torment. “That’s where she is. I can feel it.” All the practice with Your Trainer taught her to read the veil in a way she hadn’t understood until then.
Though she thought with the fade pressing in as it did, any mage should sense it.
Hawke studied her face a heartbeat then jerked a nod towards a set of double doors on their right.
“Maker help us,” said Alistair with a sharp exale, charging past them towards the haze of green in the center of an empty fountain. Wardens surrounded it, flinching at their entrance. Above them, Warden-Commander Clarel stood with Magister Erimond.
Hawke sped up to catch Alistair, and the magisters voice rang across the courtyard.
Ophelia didn’t hear them. She watched the green haze, transfixed. It was a rift or something like it, her mark churning in reaction to its presence. She trailed closer, only halting when Dara thrust out an arm to block her. “It feels so weird,” she said in a low, tight voice.
“I know.”
It was wrong. Worse than a rift, or maybe it was whatever lurked on the other side.
“--and then you’d bind the mages to Corypheus,” spat Alistair, drawing her attention. Alistair and Hawke stood soldier to shoulder, an impenetrable wall, with Ophelia, Dara, and Varric behind them, as if they might shield them from whatever the fade held.
“Corypheus?” breathed Clarel. “You lie. He is dead. You killed him, Inquisitor.”
“And I was wrong because he’s very much alive.”
Clarel said nothing, fingers pressed against her face.
Ophelia hissed as her hand spasmed again. The magister’s eyes swung to her, widening with understanding then narrowing. He pressed closer to Clarel and made no move to lower his voice. “They think to blame a dead god to spare their herald. They would doom the world for friendship. But we cannot let them, we are here for a higher purpose,” he said with sharpness, not tearing his gaze from Ophelia.
Hawke shifted, planting herself between them, face hard.
Ophelia didn’t care. At his words, the mark sparked again, shooting its way up her arm. Understanding clicked an instant later. “Be careful,” she murmured to Varric and Dara. “There’s something on the other side. Waiting. If they set it free…” The veil was thin enough, she feared another drop of blood would be enough for it to be burst free.
Both shifted with slight nods, hands on weapons.
“Bring it through,” ordered Clarel.
Ophelia shivered. Hawke swore. Something flashed in the rift.
Magic sparked in the courtyard.
Hawke snarled. “Don’t--”
Alistair interrupted Hawke, and he held his hands up. His voice rang through the air, containing none of its usual humor and instead heavy with the weight of his experience. “I know how tempting it is to think we can rid Thedas of the blight forever. We have fought and bled and died for this cause. But this won’t end the blight. It will tie you to the corruption, it will tie you to that man’s blighted master.”
“Clarel, don’t let them sway you. You are the only one who can do this.”
“If you don’t believe the Inquisition, if you don’t believe me, believe Warden-Commander Brosca. You know who she is. She stopped her quest and returned because she knew this Calling was wrong. She is here. Fighting to save the wardens from a grave mistake,” said Alistair, swooping an arm out to encompass them.
There was a murmur from the wardens, swallows, because even if Alistair was forgettable to them, Tilly was not.
“Do not hate the wardens for what they must do. They say Warden-Commander Brosca is here, but where? I do not see her.”
Alistair pressed Clarel, eyes like slits and chips of ice. “She is here.”
Clarel hesitated then set her face. “Do--” Her order faltered as an arrow smacked against the ground at her feet, carrying with it a torn warden emblem.
All of their eyes shot to the ramparts above, and there was Tilly in all her glory. Her bow sat prepared in her hand, another arrow notched and ready. She said nothing--could say nothing. Yet her green eyes locked in silent, steely conversation with Clarel. It was only a moment, but Clarel inhaled.
“Clarel--”
“Perhaps we can test these charges.”
Erimond’s demeanor changed. “I had hoped you’d prove a valuable ally, but I see I was mistaken.” Clarel didn’t have time to react before the magister shifted his attention to them. His eyes stayed on Ophelia as he tapped his staff. Red sparked at the bottom, magic twisting out from its edges. “My master thought you may show up here, Inquisition. He sent me this to welcome you.”
A rumble of noise like thunder washed over the fortress. A dark shadow fell over, and heat in the form of blaring red fire shot from the clouds. Where the flames shot, screams emitted, warden and soldier alike flung like ragdolls all across the fortress. Above their heads, a dragon roared.
…
…
“Not again,” groaned Alistair, dragging his hands through the dirt, grasping a floating rock. Ophelia watched Hawke twist to regard them, her white hair dangling impossibly normal on her face despite the fact she stood on a wall.
“Again?” asked Ophelia. The fade swirled around them in a haze of green. “You have been in the fade before?”
“Once. In the Ferelden circle.” He dropped to the ground near her. “It was most unpleasant though thankfully brief.”
Hawke cut in. “Everyone alive?”
“Alive,” said Varric.
“Alive,” said Dara, still holding his short-sword, his eyes narrowed on their surroundings. “How did we get here?”
Hawke stepped off the wall, brows furrowed. “Ophelia, how did you do that?”
Their eyes swung to Ophelia at Hawke’s words. She glanced at her hand where the mark was oddly silent, content, as if it saw no need to fight in the place it was meant to be. “The mark, it… When I faced Corypheus last, when I was in the mines, I opened a rift with it. I haven’t been able to do it again, but I’ve been…”
Practicing, she wanted to say, but that hadn’t been the intention of the practice.
She squeezed her hand closed and shook her head, voice pitched low. “I must have done it again when we were… when we were falling. I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” asked Alistair. “Maker, we almost died. Splattered on the stone and everything.”
“If you hadn’t opened that, we would have died,” said Dara firmly.
“I don’t know if I can open it again.” She clenched her fist. A laugh echoed in her ears, and she shivered. “We shouldn’t linger.”
Hawke inclined her head in agreement. “We don’t know where that demon is, no. But, what, you want to just wander the fade indefinitely?” she asked critically, staring at the breach. “Maker, this echo gives me a headache. We should have brought Solas.”
“The Herald might not need to open anything. The rift, the one in the main hall, it was nearby. We should be able to escape the same way,” said Alistair. “We just need to find it.”
Their footsteps echoed with the same strange quality as their voice. Hawke twitched each time a strange sound drifted from the ether, peering with suspicion as they pressed deeper into the fade. Before long, a cavernous room opened in front of them and across the way was a set of stairs.
The silence stretched taut. Varric broke it with a whistle. “Do you remember the last time we were in the fade, Hawke?”
It didn’t lighten Hawke’s mood. “Oh, yes, how could I forget? All my friends showed such loyalty in the face of temptation.”
“You were in the fade before, too?” said Ophelia, peering behind them. It was hard to escape the sensation of someone watching them. Following them.
“In a way, yeah. I--” Hawke stopped, blinking. Dara made a noise of surprise, stumbling over a tuft of rocks so abruptly that he caught Ophelia’s arm to straighten. Ophelia followed their gaze, head tilted. A chantry mother stood at the base of the stairs, her face lined with age, regarding them with a smile.
“That can’t be,” breathed Alistair.
“Divine Justinia,” said Dara, ducking his head in reverence.
Ophelia gaped, and Divine Justinia watched them with a peaceful smile. Then, slowly, her smile dropped. “We must hurry. The Nightmare does not know you are here, but it will not be much longer before it does.”
…
…
“Your memories are whole again. But the demon will not let you reach the rift so easily. It will not want you to leave, and it will do or say whatever it takes to keep you here. Do not let it,” warned the Divine before vanishing between one blink and the next, leaving them standing before a vast emptiness. Flashes of blurry, shadowy objects appeared and disappeared. Their surroundings struggled to pull together a single image.
Hawke frowned. “How are we supposed to reach the rift? I don’t even see it.”
“It’s that way,” said Ophelia, staring at her palm. “I can feel it.”
“Are we all seeing the same thing?” asked Dara warily.
“I’m still thinking about what we saw,” grumbled Varric.
“Can’t believe…” Alistair murmured, both hands in his hair. “The wardens, they must have been under his control. I cannot imagine what else would possess them.”
Hawke huffed a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, because clearly their judgment is always so sound. They were willing to bind themselves to demons.”
“To stop the blight!”
“Justified, is it?”’
“Oh, so terrible actions are only justifiable when you do them? You tore Kirkwall apart! We got here because you started the Mage Rebellion!”
“To protect innocent mages! Not… not madmen drunk on blood magic!”
“Maker, I’m not defending what they are doing! But we cannot write all the wardens off because Corypheus has him under their thrall. We stop this demon, we stop the calling.”
“Is that what I should tell my people?” snarled Hawke. “Tell them its okay, it was for the greater good? Who knows how many are dying out there while we’re trapped here!”
Ophelia stepped between them, throat tight. “We cannot have this conversation now. This isn’t the place. Hawke, we must get back.”
“She’s right,” said Varric. “We can discuss how to handle the wardens later. It’s a moot point if we’re wandering forever. Where even are we?”
Hawke sucked in a breath and blew it out harshly. “Fine. We’ll discuss this later,” she said, gruffly, then squinted around. “I see. Uh. Fade stuff and more fade stuff. This reminds me of the envy demon all over again, but not… as distinct. I feel like we’re floating on nothing.”
As Ophelia watched it, she thought she saw a flower, there and gone as the divine had disappeared. “Is it feeding off one of us, or all of us?” she wondered.
“It stole your memories specifically,” said Dara.
“Then wherever we are, whatever we see, it must be mine.” Ophelia focused, trying to let the fade shape what it wanted her to see. A blurry image came together. Like paint on a canvas, she could see the vague shape of a--
“A field?” asked Hawke.
The trunk of a great tree sprang into form around them, branches and leaves cascading like hair down its sides. Colors glimmered to life, purples and blues, and on the branches dangled bits of colorful twine. She spotted a familiar set of green and knew where they were. “No, it’s my family home. There was a tree--it was tradition to tie something to the tree upon a new birth.” Her words brought the image into focus, soft grass sprouting beneath feet and the feeling of a warm breeze and the distant sound of a brook.
Hawke whistled at the home to sit at the far end of the field. “I forget you’re a noble sometimes.”
Ophelia didn’t smile. She hadn’t seen her home in so long, and the last time she saw it, it was through panicked, desperate eyes as the templars led her from the estates front gates.
If the lands around them reflected her memories, this picturesque glimpse was from her childhood.
“Onwards then, Herald, you know where to take us,” said Alistair with a tinge of impatience, something skittish about the way he glanced around their surroundings that had nothing to do with the greenery.
They walked slowly through the field. The estate never grew closer. She didn’t know if she remembered what it looked like in its entirety anymore.
Before long, there came laughter. Small figures darted through the field, their childish giggles echoing in the space. Ophelia followed the shadow with her eyes until the little figures solidified into a smaller, younger form of herself and Alfonso.
“This is when I realized I had magic,” she said, recognizing the red dress she wore and the ribbons in her twin braids. She’d burned the dress afterwards in fear, as if the fabric held the magic itself, as if she might blame the dress for what she was. It was the last time she wore a red willingly.
The two children darted close enough for them to hear some of their teasing words.
“Come on, Aflsono!”
“Stop calling me that!”
“I’m not the one who spelled my own name wrong!”
“You look so young,” said Dara, surprised, as a young Alfonso dashed after his sister with a stick in hand. She swatted his attack away with a giggle, retreating further.
“I was only eight or nine.”
“But you didn’t enter the circle until you were older. A teen, I thought,” said Hawke. At Ophelia’s bemused look, she shrugged. “Leliana is very thorough. I probably know more about you than you do.”
“This was the first time I did magic. But, yes, I… I was not taken to the circle until I was older. I was lucky.”
“Alfonso made it seem like they sent you immediately,” said Hawke slowly.
“I suppose it was early to him because they didn’t plan on sending me at all. We thought we might hide it. Teach me enough to keep it underwraps.”
Varric grimaced. “Ah, the good old hiding method. I’ve heard that goes wrong half the time.”
Hawke pointed out, “It didn’t for us.”
“That’s why I said half the time,” he replied with a laugh.
Dara didn’t find their conversation funny. He made a noise Ophelia couldn’t decipher, something similar to the noise Cassandra had made those early days in the Hinterlands. Then, right when she was preparing to ask, he said, aghast, “These stories don’t end well. I can’t believe your family tried it.”
“My family found someone to teach me,” she said, remembering the hours of lessons. Remembered the mage who had taught her to resist temptation, fear lurking in their words. “We were told my magic wasn’t particularly strong. That so long as I didn’t press too hard, perhaps I’d go unnoticed.” By demons, by templars. By anyone.
Silence met her explanation. Alistair, at least, looked mostly indifferent, head tilted to regard her.
Hawke and Varric exchanged glances. “You really took that lesson to heart, huh?” said Hawke.
“Pardon?”
Hawke didn’t get the chance to clarify. Her scream--her memory’s scream, her thoughts corrected--pierced through the air as Alfonso, in his unanticipated strength, smacked the branch from her hand hard enough to break not only branch but the bone in Ophelia’s fingers. “Oh, fuck,” said Hawke. “That looks like it hurt.”
Ophelia winced. “It did.”
The scream continued for half a second then froze. It halted on her cry and Alfonso’s surprise and, there, in her opposite hand, the first crackle of light sparking between her fingers.
Varric hefted his crossbow as a different laugh echoed over the field. “What did the divine say? A demon that feeds off fear?” he said grimly.
“Ah, a silly girl comes to fetch the fear I so kindly lifted from her shoulders.”
Hawke sighed. “Ignore it. It can’t do anything to us here.”
“Brave, Champion. Brave, Inquisitor. You think your lack of fear makes you strong. But I see you, I know what lays beneath your armor.”
Hawke scoffed, and ignored it, nudging Ophelia forward. Together, the group walked, and the memory resumed with a spark of light. Magic sprouted from her hands, a surge of lightning arcing from her grip.
“I almost killed him,” she whispered, remembering the flare of terror, stronger than even pain.
Dara pat her back, voice tight but kind. “But you didn’t. Look, he’s fine.”
If she hadn’t fallen when she did, if Alfonso hadn’t recoiled--
But they had.
She had fallen. Alfonso had leapt. The arc of lightning flew and struck the tree behind him instead, leaving a thick gouge across its bark. In the memory, her scream stopped and Alfonso crouched near her, concern across his face. Together, they limped their way towards the estate and the memory faded away.
Other memories of her childhood unfolded. The small moments of fear when she would show Alfonso the snowflakes she could make flurry and only narrowly avoided detection. It was their secret for a time. Nobody paid them attention and when her control faltered, well, Alfonso was there to draw eyes.
In the end, Ophelia learned to be small, Alfonso learned to be large, and nobody questioned otherwise.