Chapter Text
Before
There is a girl.
She is a child – as much as one can be in this place, anyway – but not for much longer. Already, she can feel things changing. In her body, of course, but also in the world outside of it. In the way her teachers speak to her, voices full of anxiety as they warn her yet again that someone with her gifts must be vigilant. In the growing uneasiness of her captors as they silently observe, their condemnatory gazes lingering on the more adept children. On her.
She is a child, but she is a curse. She is a burden to be unwillingly borne. She is a mistake. If she is lucky, she will only ever be these things. If she is not lucky – if she shows herself to be weak-minded or wicked – then her death will be a blessing.
But for now, for this moment, she is only a child. A child called Cordelia.
And she is crouching beneath a table in the dining hall with another child.
“We’re going to be in so much trouble, Erli,” she whispers.
“They won’t even know it was us, Cora!” her companion replies. He is grinning and nearly shaking with excitement. “That’s what makes it a perfect plan!”
The girl tugs on a lock of dark hair that’s come out of her braid. She twists it around in her fingers and listens for the telltale clank of steel. In the next few minutes, the chime will ring for dinner, and a pair of templar recruits will arrive in the hall. There is a strict rule in the Ostwick Circle that none of the apprentices can enter a communal space until at least two templars are present. Knowing this, and not wishing to risk being alone with them, no apprentices come to the dining hall for the first five or so minutes after the chime has sounded.
“Remember,” the boy says, “We don’t move until…?” He looks at her expectantly.
“Until we count ten pairs of feet,” Cora replies, now gnawing at her bottom lip.
“Then cast and throw.”
“Erli?” She takes a steadying breath and tries one last time to stop this stupid prank. “Just listen, for a moment?” He rolls his eyes but looks at her expectantly. Even when Cora is trying to ruin his fun, Erlicar always gives her a chance to speak. This is one of the unspoken rules of their friendship: what the other says is important, even if it’s also so stupid.
“I know you think we won’t get caught, but what if we do?” Cora pleads.
“Probably a whack on the head and a load of extra chores, but so what?” he says.
At least he’s actually thought it through, she thinks.
“Someone could…could get hurt.” Her voice is low and fearful, and she has drawn a spot of blood from chewing on her lip.
“Cora,” Erli says earnestly, his face now serious, “no one is going to get hurt. It’s just fun, alright? And besides, they need to know they don’t control us all the time.” He hesitates before adding the final sentence, but saying it seems to have strengthened his resolve.
“You just said it was only for fun!” Cora bites back.
“It is for fun and just to, you know…give them a little scare,” he says.
“But I don’t want to give them a scare!” The dinner bell chimes as she finishes her sentence, and she lets out an involuntary squeak.
“Cora, are you afraid of them?” Erli asks. His words come quickly; their time is now short.
“Of course,” she says incredulously. “What a stupid que–”
“Well they should be afraid of you, too,” he says. There is an edge to his voice that Cora has heard only rarely – when he’s talking about his parents or venting his frustration over being unjustly punished for another child’s misdeed. When he has been wronged.
Before she can answer him, the doors swing open. Cora can see the boots peeking out of the bottom of the recruits’ steel greaves as they walk in and take their places, one on each side of the door. This is it, then. No more whispering or fidgeting lest they give themselves away. Erlicar is no longer looking at her; instead, he is craning his head down toward the hem of the tablecloth, trying to get a better view. Cora didn’t convince him, and now she’s lost her chance. The only alternatives to the plan are letting him go it alone or popping out of hiding beforehand. Either of those leaves him in more trouble than her, which just isn’t how they operate.
Later that night, she will be lying awake on her bed in the dormitory. She’ll be hungry because the first order of punishment is taking away the children’s food. There’s very little else that can be taken from them.
She’ll be hungry, and a bit angry, and positively dreading four o’clock, when the First Enchanter has decreed she will be woken up and put to work scrubbing grease stains off cookware. If she and Erlicar enjoy spending their time in the dining area, then they can do so for the next seven days. No classes. No speaking to one another. A templar each to follow them around and tell them they’ve missed a spot. Was it worth it, Cordelia, for the chance to toss a snowball? And at one of the men who’s given up a normal life to protect you? I expected better from you.
There is a girl.
She is a child, but they are afraid of her anyway. And perhaps, she will think as she lies awake that night, they should be.
Perhaps they should be afraid of the monsters they create in this place. Perhaps they should be afraid, because she will not be a child for much longer. Perhaps they should be afraid, because something is shifting, inside of her and in the world.
For now, though, for this moment, she is only a child. She is a child, and they will try to keep her here forever.
They will try.
---
Everything has changed since they fled Haven. Cordelia recalls feeling, as she and her companions had made their way toward the Breach, that this task that had once seemed impossible – sealing a literal hole in the sky – might actually be within reach. Even being the Herald of Andraste, though daunting at first, had asked surprisingly little of her. Yes, she had suddenly become a quasi-mythical figure, beloved or reviled depending on one's persuasion, but the role itself had turned out to be largely symbolic. She had still been Cora. Her surroundings and company had changed drastically, but she was still spending her days practicing magic – albeit in a more practical way than before. Once the initial shock of it all had worn off, the whole ‘Inquisition thing’ had begun to seem almost manageable.
No longer. Cora feels as though she’s been tossed into a roiling sea, disoriented, barely treading water, hardly able to keep her head above the waves. She is nearly thirty years old but feels about as competent as the children she has spent most of her adult life teaching.
Well that’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it? Erlicar would have teased. It was true that, as an adolescent, she had been prone to hyperbole; but then, wasn’t everyone at that age? Erli had liked to tell her that she’d read too many fairy stories as a child, to which she would reply that, if true, it was his fault. He’d been the one caught smuggling “contraband literature” into the Circle when they were young. It was just one of many fruits of his infatuation with the farmer’s son who delivered the Circle’s firewood each week. Cora recalls watching Erli attempt to flirt by calling a snowball into the boy’s hand out of thin air, or summoning a static field that made their hair stand on end. Erli’s friendship with the young man – and eventually, their desperate young love – had been a source of everything from saucy books to taffy to an ill-fated pet toad (rest in peace, Ser Ribbit).
Cora has not thought about Erli this often since she was still a teenager. Something about recent events, though, brings him to mind. The way he carried himself, the swagger with which he practiced magic, the disdain for their captivity. In her young mind, he had been the very picture of bravery. She wonders whether, had they gotten to finish growing up together, that courage might have finally rubbed off on her at some point. It would certainly make the current situation less terrifying.
She swipes roughly at the tears that have filled her eyes and calls herself back to the present, which, incidentally, also makes her want to cry. She shakes her head, squeezes her eyes closed, and takes several deep breaths. Her mind has been prone to wandering back to Ostwick more frequently in the days since their arrival at Skyhold. She cannot let it continue. Onward, then.
She picks up one of the many papers strewn atop her cot. There are dozens for her to tackle yet, and she’ll need to make quick work of them if she hopes to have time for any sleep tonight. When Josephine had handed her the stack just after dinner, she had clarified that it was “not some kind of ‘Inquisitorial homework'; but merely a bit of light reading for your free time, to give you a chance to become better acquainted with your people.” And yet, as hard as everyone around her is working, Cora is not going to arrive at her first War Council meeting as the Inquisitor without having read through every single dossier.
She can do this. She will do this. She has no choice.
“Alright then,” she says to herself as she begins reading. “Cassandra Pentaghast.” At least this one is about someone she knows, sort of.
Each of the dossiers is brief, a single sheet of paper (both front and back, in the case of someone like Cassandra) with a broad biographical sketch, accomplishments, skills of use to the Inquisition, and potential liabilities. In truth, Cora had been blissfully unaware that anything this official even existed. She has learned a great many things since being declared Inquisitor earlier in the week. She can’t help but see her previous self – her Haven self – as hopelessly naive, stupid even, content to hurl fireballs at demons while ten thousand invisible cogs were turning in the background all the while.
No longer. Fortunately, she soaks up information like a sponge. As I should, she thinks grimly. Otherwise, what was the point of the last twenty years? Cora feels adept at almost nothing, but she certainly knows her way around a book. Oh, and the ability to close interdimensional tears. She has become quite proficient in that area recently.
She learns little new information from Cassandra’s dossier, having spent a fair amount of time getting to know the Seeker during their month at Haven. A rather unlikely friendship, she thinks, grateful to have Cassandra fighting beside her rather than against her. It took only a few conversations for Cora to realize that Cassandra was her polar opposite in most regards. The Seeker is confident, accomplished, commanding of one’s attention with a mere tilt of the head. She knows what she wants and what she believes, and she does not waver once she has chosen a course of action. Cora wishes she could be even one of those things.
It is not lost on Cora that, if not for the mark on her hand, she would very likely be rotting in a cell in Val Royeaux. Best case, they would have executed her immediately; worst…well, the Rite, she supposes. Every time she hears the phrase, “Your Worship,” she longs for the mark to disappear. A moment later, she panics at the thought of that wish coming true and rendering her useless to the cause – less than useless, even, but a liability. An apostate hemmed in by thick stone walls and dozens – hundreds now, perhaps – of Chantry faithful.
She wonders if, absent this mark, someone like her could ever be indispensable to anyone.
Her advisors have made lives for themselves out of doing just that. Cassandra as the Right Hand of the Divine, Leliana as the Left. Josephine as an ambassador from one major world power to another. Cullen as…well. Onward.
Cora takes a sip of tea and then reads through the dossiers for Sera (across which someone has drawn a cartoonishly large penis); Harritt, the blacksmith (ten children back in Redcliffe, Maker preserve us); and Dorian Pavus (allergic to shellfish and stripweed) without learning anything particularly useful. Nonetheless, she must admit that she’s beginning to relax a bit and even to enjoy herself. There is something so charming, so wonderfully humanizing in knowing the little things about the people around her. With each page, she feels less like the Inquisitor and more like…well…herself. A person. Just a person, to whom something absurd has happened. Just a person, trying to rise to the unfortunate task of saving the world. But still – just a person, surrounded by other people.
She breezes through the suspiciously brief, almost certainly fabricated dossier for Leliana, chuckling a bit because she would expect no less, then moves on. Because she is clearly meant to have no peace tonight, the top of the next page reads CULLEN RUTHERFORD.
Cora feels her throat drop into her stomach. The paper begins to crumple in her grip before she thinks to relax her hand. She has no desire to read this document. She knows what she’ll find there.
When Cassandra had led a still-dazed Cora around Haven that first day, Cora had forgotten names and faces almost immediately. She’d been disoriented and exhausted. Looking back, almost all of it is a blur. Apart from him. Cora had never met the commander, of course – she had met relatively few people in her life up to that point – but she knew his name. She wonders now whether the confusion she’d felt, and most certainly shown, during those early days had masked her reaction during Cassandra’s introduction. Really, though, she decides, she doesn’t care. Why should she? Being made to feel uncomfortable is so much less than men like Cullen deserve.
In the year between the collapse of the Ostwick Circle and the Conclave, Cora had met mages from all over the Free Marches, including one from Kirkwall. The travelers rarely shared their real names, but this apostate had called herself Alene. She never spoke of her escape from Kirkwall – they all gave as few personal details as possible – but she did give a full account of the uprising. Cora recalls how the light from the hearth fire had illuminated Alene’s tears as she told what had transpired.
Alene had named them all with the clarity and fervor of a woman determined to have her revenge. Knight-Commander Meredith was dead, yes, but there had been others, and the evils they had inflicted on Kirkwall’s mages had begun years prior to the rebellion. Alene herself had been jailed after rejecting the advances of a young templar recruit. He had informed his commanding officer – Knight-Captain Cullen, one of a dozen monsters at various levels of leadership in the Order – that he had seen the young woman attempting to break into the phylactery storage. Naturally, the Knight-Captain had ignored her pleas of innocence, and she was confined to a cell, alone and in complete darkness, for months. Alene was finally freed by some unknown apostate in the chaos after the destruction of the Chantry, and she had been running since then.
Now, everyone around Cora seems to be convinced of Commander Cullen’s commitment to the Inquisition, a fact that sometimes makes her question her own judgment and sometimes makes her question all of theirs. He made a conscious decision to leave the Order, their argument goes, and has pledged himself to this instead.
“But…the Order’s been a shambles for the past two years,” Cora had said in reply to Varric’s having given her exactly that line one evening. “Can a person even really leave a thing that doesn’t exist?”
“Well,” Varric had reasoned, “at the time Cassandra recruited him, he wouldn’t have known the Order wasn’t going to, I don’t know, reorganize itself, right?”
“Maybe it still can. There’s nothing stopping him from returning once all this is over,” she had said.
“Sure, but that’s true for all of us, Herald. There’s no telling what lies ahead.”
Varric was right about that, of course, but it hadn’t quelled Cora’s anxiety. She hadn’t felt she’d known the dwarf well enough then to continue voicing her doubts, particularly about the templar dependence on lyrium. The commander – all of the former templars in Haven – were getting enough from the Inquisition to stave off withdrawal symptoms. What would they do, Cora had wondered, when the Inquisition achieved its aims? If they had to choose between insanity and eventual death, and returning to the Order, how many would go crawling back?
No, she reasons. She knows their kind. She spent two decades under their constant scrutiny. She knows what their malice can do.
As she begins to toss the commander’s dossier aside, she feels a pang of guilt. Leliana and I have compiled these from the Inquisition’s many notes, Josephine had said, cheerful as always. They are not comprehensive, of course, but they’re enough to acquaint you with the key individuals under your command. I’m happy to answer any additional questions you may have, Inquisitor.
This is Cora’s job now. This is the responsibility she has – somewhat regrettably – accepted. Everyone around her is pulling their weight, and she can hardly begin her tenure by brushing off tasks that make her uncomfortable.
Thus, she takes a breath and, holding it firmly in both hands, looks at the dossier.
Cullen Rutherford
Age: 30 years
Place of Birth: Honnleath, Arling of Redcliffe, Ferelden
Currently: Commander of Inquisition Forces
Formerly: Templar Order, spec. Knight-Commander of Kirkwall; fmr. Knight-Captain of Kirkwall; fmr. Kinloch Hold
Well, that’s certainly enough, isn’t it? No need to read the biographical information, really – learning about this man’s childhood is hardly relevant to her – certainly not a good use of her time, considering the size of the remaining pile of dossiers. Best not to dwell, and all that, Cora tells herself. And, really, isn’t she quite aware of his skills as a member of the Inquisition? Cassandra went over the main points that first day, which should certainly be sufficient. Yes. Sufficient.
Cora sets the page aside, stifles a yawn, and moves onto the next one.
---
Before
Cora has been crouching in the hallway for what feels like hours, occasionally peeking around the corner to where two templars flank the doors of the Harrowing Chamber. Any closer and they will send her back to bed; but if she stays out of sight, they can pretend they don’t know she is there. The young ones are generally assigned to guard duty, and they also tend to still be afraid enough of mages that they choose the path of least resistance.
She had awoken with a start, shaken awake in the dormitory in the middle of the night by Luciana. Luci had snuck out to the library for her Thursday night snog with Kael, but he hadn’t been in the mood. They took Erli, he had told her. In the middle of the night they had taken him. Cora doesn't know how things work elsewhere, but in Ostwick, they have never taken an apprentice at such an hour. Loyal friend that she is, Luciana had flown back to the dormitory to alert Cora.
And now, here she is, curled against the cold stone in her dressing gown, while her best friend is being made to do his Harrowing as the Circle sleeps. Cora bites at her nails, a habit she thought she’d broken years before, and tries to rationalize the late hour.
Erli has been restless for weeks. He has struggled to concentrate when they study, has barely eaten, has even raised his voice at one of the enchanters – the sort of thing one might expect from a child, not an eighteen-year-old. Several days prior, as they had sat in the courtyard reading after dinner, Cora had looked over to see tears silently rolling down his cheeks. When she had tried to talk to him about it, he had given her nothing. He felt strange, he had said. He didn’t know why. Just…I don’t want to talk about it, Cordie. Maybe tomorrow.
Maker, protect him, please, protect him. Cora’s lips tremble, and she fears she will cry. Any noise will force the templars to acknowledge her presence, haul her out of her hiding place, and march her back to the dormitory. She runs a finger back and forth across the pendant of Andraste at her wrist while pressing her cheek to the cool stone. The feeling of the granite against her skin – chilly, hard, slightly damp – always helps to ground her when her fears grow unmanageable. Cora begins silently mouthing the Canticle of Benedictions to herself, as her father had taught her to do when she’d had night terrors as a young child.
Out of the silence comes a sudden muffled scream. Cora jerks her head up and dares to peer around the corner. Whispering to one another and turning toward the door, the templars draw their swords. Shouts, grunts, the shuffle of feet, the clank of steel, all diluted by the stone and the heavy wood of the door. The noises grow louder, the shouts more frantic, and then a second, more desperate scream rings out. The fracas ends as quickly as it began, and then all is silent for many long minutes.
When the First Enchanter emerges with a death grip on her staff and her brow furrowed in distress, Cora is crying in earnest. Next, the Knight-Commander appears. He is a large man with long, grey hair and a close-cropped beard. Though he has a stern face, Cora has always thought his eyes seemed…kind, perhaps, or at least understanding. She has been in the Circle for nearly a decade but has never heard him speak.
When the man steps out from the shadow of the doorway, Cora sees that there is blood spattered across his armor from waist to feet. At some point, she must have emerged from her hiding spot, must have cried out, because the Knight-Commander and First Enchanter have both turned their heads to her, eyes widening in alarm.
Their reaction is swift. The Knight-Commander sheaths his still-bloody sword and wheels round to face his recruits. “You were to guard the door!” he fumes at the younger templars, both of whom cower beneath him. The First Enchanter, meanwhile, hastens toward Cora with her arms outstretched. She throws a berobed hand around the weeping girl’s shoulders, turns her around, and whisks her down the hall. Cora knows that her feet are moving along the familiar corridors of the Circle, but they do not seem to belong to her. Indeed, she has the unnerving sensation of no longer being physically present at all.
It is as though she is watching this scene from elsewhere, or through a pane of imperfect glass. She sees a girl with dark hair in a messy plait. The figure walks on the balls of her bare feet, though her steps are halting because she is struggling to breathe through the sobs that shake her entire body. An old woman walks beside the girl with an arm thrown across her shoulders and a hand resting at the nape of her neck.
Cora’s vision begins to blur then, as though the glass has begun to melt. Yes, she can even feel the heat: a warmth begins to emanate from the top of her spine, where the First Enchanter’s hand was resting. Cora closes her eyes, stumbles, and remembers no more of that night.
---
It turns out that even Josephine’s dossiers are not enough to keep Cora from making an utter fool of herself at the War Council. She knows, it is now abundantly clear, less than nothing: about Fereldan political strife, about Orlesian customs, about supply chains, about mining operations, about horses, about literally anything other than state-sanctioned magical study and the making of poultices. In Haven, she’d been able to simply listen to the others debate the merits of a certain course of action; this morning, they wanted to hear her opinions. After asking her third clarifying question, Cora had realized that she was going to extend the meeting by several hours simply through her ignorance. She instead tried a different tactic: asking her advisors – even the commander (needs must, she thought) – what they recommended the Inquisition do about a given issue, and then agreeing as though it made perfect sense to her. Fortunately, the others had not questioned this, almost certainly to help her save face.
The meeting having (finally) ended, Cora now strides directly out the front doors of the keep and looks around for a sword, or perhaps just a pointy stick, on which she can impale herself. Alas, all such objects are surrounded by people – so many people, all of them bowing or nodding or “Your Worship”-ing or all three – and, since she cannot very well turn around and walk back through the archway, she looks around in (hopefully unnoticed) desperation.
Stairs! Yes, stairs. Of course. Just what I was looking for. Cora begins striding toward a flight of stone steps determinedly, purposefully, Inquisitorially. She feels certain that every person she passes can see right through her. Is she fooling a single person? Are they all questioning themselves, for having cheered her appointment as Inquisitor? She smiles at each one, silently praying that she looks like anyone other than the person she knows herself to be. Like Cassandra, maybe, or Leliana. Brisk steps carry her up onto the ramparts, where the wind catches her braid. The gentle tug feels somehow grounding. Her heartbeat begins to slow, and the burning behind her eyes subsides a bit.
Cora slows her pace and runs her hand along the merlons of the outer wall. In spite of the early autumn sun, the stone is cool to the touch. It reminds her of her bedroom in Ostwick. How many times had she laid her forehead against the wall and picked absently at the spots where the mortar was crumbling? How many nights had she risen from her bed, unable to sleep, and sat on the floor with her back to the stone? The resistance she felt from it. The permanence of it. There is something depressing, she now realizes, about the way she had depended upon the calming sturdiness of the very structure that imprisoned her, and yet the memory of it now is a comfort. Her memories are still hers. She is still Cordelia. She may feel utterly useless, but it needn’t stay that way. After all, her life thus far has been devoted to learning; why should she not be able to master this as well?
Still, she begins to cry…again. After Erli’s Harrowing, Cora had become a different person. She had not cried for a very long time after that: not when she was captured in an ill-advised attempt to escape the Circle as a teenager, not when she learned of her father’s death, not when she failed to heal her comrades after the battle for the Ostwick Circle, and not, remarkably, when she had awoken in a dark room with a giant glowing hole in her hand.
It was Flissa’s death, back in Haven, that had broken her. The tavern had been entirely engulfed in flame, and the roof groaned as the central support beams began to fail. Cora had made it through the doorway, had seen the barkeep there on the floor, had even met the panicked woman’s eyes – and then the trestle on the back half of the building had given way. Flissa was the first of several people Cora would fail to save that night while tears streaked the soot coating her face.
It seems to Cora like she hasn’t really stopped crying since then. She finds herself ducking into closets or beneath stairwells to weep for a few minutes before once more emerging to be the Inquisitor. Now, out in the open with her tears flowing more freely, she feels suddenly exposed. Maker’s breath, why did she come up here? There are dozens of soldiers standing watch on the ramparts at any given time; one could step onto this stretch of walkway in a matter of seconds. The familiar panic sets in again, the certainty that she is one false step away from exposing herself as a fraud, from being rebranded an apostate and hunted down. She rushes toward the empty tower to her left – the one with the fennec infestation problem. Everyone has been avoiding it because the mother fox is frighteningly territorial; in other words, the perfect hiding place.
Cora pulls a handkerchief from her pocket – my best friend these days, she thinks – and blows a ball of snot into it with one hand while throwing open the tower door with the other. She rounds on the door and, back against it, pushes it closed with her body weight and the force of a wracking sob. As she wipes her eyes on her sleeve, the pressure in her temples begins to subside. She feels wretched, yes, but also, for this moment, wonderful. For the past week, she has spent sixteen hours a day trying to stand up straight, smile, look her compatriots in the eye, laugh, commiserate, listen, and speak with some kind of authority. Allowing herself to weep unrestrainedly feels like coming up for air after having her head forced underwater. It takes only a few seconds for the relief to begin flooding in. Indeed, she thinks as she wipes her face again, the world already looks a bit brighter.
It dawns on her very suddenly that the reason for this feeling is actual, physical light emanating from a number of candles, and that this tower is not, in fact, the one that’s been taken over by the fennecs.
Commander Cullen is standing behind a desk in front of her. A quill in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, he is looking directly at Cora with alarm, concern, and a great deal of confusion.
Andraste’s fucking tits, she thinks, wondering whether her previous plan to locate a large, pointy object really need be abandoned. That was a rather good idea, in hindsight. Perhaps her best all week.
They stare at one another for several seconds, and for possibly the first time ever, they both want exactly the same thing: for a Fade rift to open right here and whisk them away into another dimension.
“Inquisitor,” Cullen says, blinking several times before setting his face in the stern, impassive expression Cora has come to expect. Nevertheless, he’s fumbling nervously with the implements in his hands.
“I…seem to have gotten turned around,” Cora finally manages. Emotional turmoil, it turns out, makes it rather difficult to think on one’s feet. “On my way to the…er…stables.” She wipes a thumb across each eye and clears her throat in an attempt to get rid of the mucus her crying has produced.
“The…stables,” he says. “The stables are…down the stairs. In the yard.”
“Yes, of course,” she says, attempting a breezy laugh that turns into a rather loud spasm of coughs. “I simply…thought this was a shortcut. I’m afraid I haven’t had a great deal of time to familiarize myself with Skyhold yet.”
“Of course,” Cullen replies. Cora has a sneaking suspicion that he could be trying to help her save face for the second time this day, and it makes her uncomfortable. She wants no false kindness from this man.
“Would you mind pointing me toward them? The stables, I mean.”
“Yes, certainly,” he says, the very picture of professionalism before again reddening and averting his eyes. He points toward the door behind her. “They’re back that way. The…direction you came from.”
“Ah,” she says. Maker, take me now. “Of course. Thank you, Commander.” She nods and forces a smile, then turns and opens the door she entered minutes before.
“Inquisitor?”
Cora freezes and looks over her shoulder at him. He is twirling his quill between both hands and fighting to make eye contact with her again. How is it possible for someone who commands an entire army to be this awkward? she wonders with amusement before realizing how very ironic the question is. “Yes?”
“It…will get easier,” he says quietly. Then, finally, he is able to meet her gaze. His eyes are…soft. He looks surprisingly human, just then. “You’re…doing far better than anyone could…expect. Better than anyone else could hope to.”
Cora has no words, and she thinks that she might start crying again if she tries to find some. Instead, she just nods, turns, and walks out the door, closing it firmly behind her.
---
A soft rap on the door, which stands slightly ajar from the departure of her last visitor mere minutes before. As Cora begins a deep inhale, desperate to calm her frustration rather than hurl her inkwell across the room in reply, Dorian steps nimbly across the threshold. “I personally find it terribly rude to enter an occupied room uninvited, but I hope you’ll forgive my adoption of the local custom of barging in anywhere I wish.”
She exhales, deciding that she’s only slightly rather than extremely perturbed.
“Has someone written MAKER HELP ME across my forehead?” Cora asks in a huff. Dorian takes a beat before electing to close the door behind him. It’s a tight squeeze into the temporary room Josephine has arranged for her in the basement of the keep. A desk, two ancient chairs, and a cot. “Not at all fit for an Inquisitor,” the ambassador had tsked, “but we shall have your permanent quarters ready by the end of the week. All of the…local wildlife…have already been removed. A few more days, and I have been assured their scent will be gone as well.”
Dorian settles into the moth-eaten chair across from Cora. “While I wouldn’t put such a thing past our…cherubic…archer companion, no, it would not appear so. I take it I’m not your first visitor this evening,” he replies. Cora drops her quill onto the desk and sinks further into her own chair with a groan.
“Try the fourth. Or fifth. I’ve honestly lost count.”
“Yes, well, I think a bit of concern is warranted. I’ve never known you to forego dinner, he replies. “Your absence was noted.”
“So the lot of you decided to coordinate a procession of coincidental ‘check-ins’?”
“You give us too much credit, I think. If such a cabal was formed, I certainly wasn’t invited to be a part of it.” He smirks slightly, but his eyes are gentle. “More likely, your colleagues are simply worried about you and want you to understand that, in spite of your attempts to sequester yourself, you are not on your own.”
Cora lets out a sigh and rubs at her temples. “I’m sorry you’re bearing the brunt of my foul mood, Dorian.”
“Well, let’s have it all out, then,” he insists.
Though she has known this man for only a matter of weeks, Cora adores him. Perhaps it was the unfortunate circumstances of their first journey together, what with being hurled by a corrupted magister into a nightmarish future full of death and demons. Her handle of combat magic had been so shaky then (not that it’s fantastic now) that, absent Dorian, she would have been immediately killed in that hellish version of Redcliffe Castle. He knew this, had even teased her about it, but he’d fought harder because she hadn’t been able to. Though still adamant that it was solely to preserve the power of the mark on her hand, he had intentionally put himself in harm’s way to protect her in that place.
Since Dorian properly joined the Inquisition, the two have often found themselves debating magical theory into the early hours of the morning. Cora’s practical abilities are somewhat limited thanks to her Chantry-sanctioned magical education, but her conceptual understanding is exceptional – even by Tevinter standards.
What had most drawn her to Dorian, though, was that he had only ever used her titles in jest. She was simply Cora (Dorian, in the tavern at Haven, looking rather put-upon: Are you sure you don’t prefer Cordelia? The whole ‘nickname’ business is terribly plebeian…).
“Ever since Haven…since I became the Inquisitor…I just…” She throws up her hands. “It’s easier to be a mysterious figurehead with no real power who traipses around the countryside, bringing justice to the oppressed and what have you. Now…now I’m required to give my opinion on drapery colors one minute and the imprisonment of mages the next, and I’m still apparently supposed to have time for paperwork.” She looks at the sheafs spread before her with disdain.
“Is not the point of an ‘inner circle’ to share the weight of this new role?” he asks, a tone of amusement in his voice.
“They’re all struggling to handle their own work. I can’t burden them further,” she replies.
“Ah, but is it not work to which they are particularly suited? Work that they’ve chosen to do? For an organization of which they’ve chosen to be a part?”
Cora looks up at him and opens her mouth to speak before realizing that she has no answer.
“Come,” Dorian continues, suddenly sitting upright and picking up a handful of papers from her desk. He begins to skim the pages, and before Cora can protest, he has already come up with a system of neat piles. “Let’s see – a meeting request from a Madame something or other – doesn’t matter, we will leave the nobility to our dear ambassador.” Next. “Cloth requisitions for – doesn’t matter, to the quartermaster.” Next. “Reports from a scouting party…something about assassins – for the Lady Nightingale, I think.” Next.
Cora cannot help but smile a bit, and (from exhaustion, she is certain) she feels tears gather in her eyes yet again. She picks up her own sheaf and begins skimming.
“This one’s from a shopkeeper in Denerim. It sounds like he has…oh, he’s taken the salvageable books from the Circle Tower and suspects we could find a use for them.”
“What’s that?” Dorian looks up, his eyes bright, and snatches the paper, scanning it himself. “Indeed…I shall look into this myself.” He places it to the side before continuing through the stack. “Hmm…a handful of former templar recruits interested in joining the Inquisition’s forces – for the commander, of course–”
“What?” It’s now Cora’s turn to snatch a letter away. She reads through it, brows knitted, before placing it into the leftmost pile. “I-I think Cassandra would be better suited to respond to that.”
“What makes you think so?” Dorian asks quizzically. “I’ve personally seen her stare daggers at any soldier who deigns to approach her training area. She’s hardly concerned with the army, let alone this sort of…administrative thing.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure she can make an exception,” Cora replies briskly, already reading the next missive. She can see, over the top of the paper, Dorian tilting his head, studying her.
“Do you lack confidence in the abilities of our illustrious commander?” he asks, his tone at once playful and curious.
“Not at all,” Cora says, pretending to puzzle out the meaning of the paper before her. It is very clearly an inventory of Skyhold’s cheeses, but Dorian doesn’t need to know that.
“Do you not wish to – what was it? – burden him further?”
“I’m not especially concerned about that, no.”
“Then what, pray tell–”
“I don’t trust him, Dorian,” Cora snaps. She immediately closes her eyes and sighs before meeting Dorian’s unreadable gaze. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“Not at all. I should like to give you more opportunities for outbursts. It seems you could use them,” he teases before quite suddenly turning serious. “But…do you not think it potentially problematic that you don’t trust the man leading the army of which you have found yourself the head?”
“Oh, Dorian, it’s hardly so serious as that. You can’t tell me that you trust Blackwall, or the Iron Bull, or even Sera.”
“Goodness no, but that’s altogether different. I am not the leader of this movement. I trust you, and, I imagine, anyone who follows you does as well. We have chosen to make this our cause, and however inane I may find certain of my compatriots, I would ultimately put your wellbeing and that of the Inquisition over my personal feelings. I believe they would do the same. We can fight alongside one another because any extraneous loyalties and desires have been laid to rest for the present. Do you doubt the same is true of the commander?”
“I think…” she sighs, never having planned on articulating these feelings to another person. “I think that he’s been a templar since he was essentially a child. Yes,” Cora says as Dorian opens his mouth to object, “he formally left the Order, I know. Fine. But the reason templars are effective jailers and…and executioners…is because the Chantry obliterates their ability to think for themselves.”
“And was your own experience so different?” he asks slowly. Cora gets the sense that he’s choosing his words more carefully than normal; he is pushing her, but gently. He’s asking her to think, appealing to the academician in her. You sly bastard.
“Perhaps not in that regard, but in all other ways…yes, it was. I was a glorified prisoner of the state, Dorian. He – all of them – are drug-addled slaves to it. I’m sure they could have become different people, long ago, but the Chantry took that future from them the moment they were dosed with lyrium.”
“It almost sounds like you pity them.”
“I do, in a way…or, I suppose, I pity the children they once were,” Cora answers quietly.
“I could say the same of you, you know,” Dorian says. “Indeed I have done, of all southern mages. But it’s clear to me that you, Inquisitor, are no longer a slave of the Chantry.”
“I should hope not. But my leash was outside of my body, outside of my mind.”
“Apart from some minor crushing psychological damage,” he quips sarcastically.
“You know what I mean!” Cora rolls her eyes. “The Chantry did not physically change me. I’m not an addict. And I know that, even if I were, I would never have done the things that Cu– that so many templars have.”
“Careful now; don’t let my own limitless self-assuredness exert undue influence upon you. I’ve had a great deal more practice than you have,” he replies. “We are all capable of monstrous things under the right circumstances.”
“Being capable of something isn’t the same as choosing to do it,” she says.
A not-uncomfortable silence falls as the two mages retreat into their own minds. Cora does pity the templars, in the way that she pities a malicious dog. It isn’t the dog’s fault for snapping its jaws at the neighborhood children; it was taught, or forced into, that behavior. But a person would be ludicrous if their pity for such a creature drove them to reach out and pet it.
“Well,” Dorian says, rising from his seat. He picks up one of the piles from her desk. “The hour is late and you, my dear, could do with some rest. I shall hand these off to Leliana.”
“Dorian,” she says as he turns toward the door. He glances over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s nothing at all.”
“It is. For a self-proclaimed narcissist, you spend a surprising amount of time working through other peoples’ problems.”
“I suppose we’ve all been given the chance to choose our better selves, haven’t we?” He opens the door.
“Yes,” Cora replies. “I suppose we have. Goodnight, Dorian.”
---
Before
Cora has to admit that she hadn’t thought she would even make it out of the city, and yet here she is. As a general rule, escape plans found in storybooks ought not be relied upon. This one, however, had actually worked. She’d waited for that week’s hay to be delivered (mages, of course, had no business on horses, but the templars did) and then climbed into the wagon. She had then burrowed under the straw and out of sight. The unexpected ease of it all had gotten her blood pumping such that she hadn’t even considered the possibility of being stabbed with a pitchfork at the wagon’s subsequent stops. Fortunately, the Circle had been the last of that day’s deliveries, and the farmer had driven his wagon directly out of the city gates afterward. Cora’s luck astonished her.
Now, many hours later, the sun has long since set, she has crept out of the wagon, and she is walking tentatively into a copse of trees. The road will not be safe even in the darkness, and she dearly wishes she didn’t need to go into the forest. Dinner is surely over by now, though, and they will come for her.
She stumbles over branches and rocks, wishing she could create a light for herself but knowing she must not risk it. Her face is covered in small scratches from the hay and large ones from a patch of bramble she had fallen into. She is bleeding, and tired, and she hates that she decided to do this. After picking herself up from another tumble, Cora jumps at a sudden crack of lightning. Seconds later, the sky opens up.
She wants to cry. For days, she has felt like hands have been wrapped about her throat. Her head has been pounding. She has needed something, anything at all to release the pressure inside her. Shedding cathartic tears should be simple, and yet she cannot do it.
Earlier that week, she had woken up, disoriented, in her dormitory bed. She’d noticed the other beds were empty, and the light from the small window was minimal: it was late morning, perhaps already noon. Why had no one woken her? How had she slept through the shuffle of five other girls getting out of bed? She had looked toward the door, and there were two templars standing there. In the room. They were stationed outside every door, of course, but she had never seen them inside a dormitory.
And then she had remembered. It had felt like a massive stone was dropped onto her chest, and she could barely breathe. Erli. The Harrowing Chamber. The Knight-Commander. The screams. Erli.
The templars had followed her every movement those first few days, probably waiting for her to fly into a rage, spill the blood of another apprentice, summon a demon in the middle of the library. She had refused to look at them. She had refused to say a word, even to her friends. She had wondered, idly, whether this was what it felt like, the road to becoming an abomination. Emptiness. Despair.
And now, here she is, tramping angrily through a forest in a downpour and relishing every bruise, every cut, every shiver from the cold. She cannot cry, but she can feel.
Suddenly, all of the small hurts are overtaken by the greatest physical pain Cora has ever experienced. Later, she will remember it as a bolt of lightning directly to her skull.
When she awakens, she is sitting on the back of a horse. Her hands have been tied, and they are jammed between her abdomen and the cold steel armor of the large man sitting in front of her. The rope disappears around his side. She gives it an experimental tug and feels one in return.
“You’re awake.” It is a statement rather than a question. “How are you feeling?”
The voice is gruff, but not cold. Cora feels that she’s heard it somewhere before, but she’s so overcome with aches and nausea that her perception feels skewed.
“I…” she croaks, “What–”
“If you think you need to vomit, it will be better for both of us if you tell me first. We’re in no rush.”
“O…kay…” Cora wonders if perhaps this man shoved an ice pick directly through her skull prior to tying her hands.
“It’ll wear off,” the man says. She wishes she could see his face; but then, he’s wearing the armor of a templar, so it hardly matters. Apart from a handful of especially cruel members of the Order, they may as well be the same person. “May take a few hours yet. Suppose you’ve not felt one of those before.”
“One of…” Cora turns her head to see a field, recently harvested, and hills in the distance. The sky has begun to lighten in that direction. She is beginning to remember. “...of what?”
“Spell purge. Nothing overly strong, but I hear it’s a hell of a feeling the first time.”
She was in the woods, and before that, in the wagon full of hay, and before that, the escape, and before that…
“I know your voice.” Cora means for it to come out as a growl, as something menacing, but it sounds more like she’s got phlegm in her throat. The templar doesn’t reply to that, and they sit in silence for some time. The nausea is starting to abate very slightly, and Cora finds herself thinking more clearly. She wishes she could muster some fear – there will inevitably be a serious punishment awaiting her back at the Circle – but she cannot bring herself to care. What can they do to her that would make things any worse?
“So, then,” the templar says, “are you feeling better?”
“Not really,” she mutters. “My head–”
“I meant about whatever made you go on this little outing.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re a smart girl. I’ve been watching you for, what, five years? Six?”
“Ten,” she corrects.
“Hm.” He sounds thoughtful, as though he’s mulling this information over. “Ten, then. But, as I said, you’re bright. I don’t think you actually planned on this daring escape working.”
Just because he’s correct doesn’t mean that Cora has to answer.
“And you know they’ll make you pay for it. The First Enchanter doesn’t suffer foolishness. Which begs the question: why do it at all?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, almost to herself.
Silence once again. He’s probably thinking about the breakfast he’ll have when they return. Templars don’t do anything but pray and eat and stand around, and presumably shit and sleep at some point. They probably don’t talk because they don’t want to give away that they’re absolute dolts. Mindless killing machines, really.
“I understand why you’d think that,” he says, and enough time has passed that Cora has to remind herself what they were talking about in the first place. “And perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Not many things in life do. But I hope that you’ve gotten it out – whatever made you run. There’s nothing to be gained from it, and much to be lost.”
“Yes, I wouldn’t want to endanger my chance of spending the rest of my life in a prison.” Cora almost spits out the words.
“There are worse things than stone walls, girl,” he says.
“It’s Cora. You know that. But you – all of you – act like you don’t. Why won’t you say our names?”
“Like I said, you’re a smart girl,” the templar replies. “I’m sure you’ve already worked that out for yourself.”
The sun has properly risen now, and the brilliant light of it forces her to turn her face to the west and close her eyes. Her head is still pounding.
“Why do you do this?” she asks. “You could do anything you want, be a…I don’t know, be a fletcher, or a smith, or a farmer, or if you like killing so much, be a regular soldier. You have a choice, and you decide to do this. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Another silence then. Perhaps he’s chosen to ignore her question, but Cora has a feeling that he may actually be considering it. He’s surprisingly thoughtful; hardly the idiot she expected, which makes his choice to be a templar all the more infuriating.
“It’s been a very long time since I made that choice,” he finally says. “And you only get to make it once. I know that I had my reasons, back then, and they were good. As good as a young person’s reasons for anything are, I guess.”
“What were they, then?”
“I don’t remember,” he says, and he sounds tired.
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t remember?’” Cora asks derisively.
“I’m an old man. Twenty years, or thirty, of lyrium.” He sighs. “It steals your mind, bit by bit. Chips away at your memories. Poisons your blood.”
“Then why do you still take it?” she asks.
“Some deaths are worse than others. Some deaths are a blessing.” He pauses for a moment. “You may not understand now, but someday you’ll see that your friend’s was one of those.”
“Whatever you have to tell yourself,” she mutters.
“We’ll be at the gates soon. A good time to decide what your excuse will be, I think.” It’s infuriating how little Cora’s words seem to affect this man. She’s seen enough templars fly off the handle at a small child’s taunts to know that this level of composure isn’t exactly typical. But then, he is the Knight-Commander. She’d never seen him express emotion at all until that night outside the Harrowing Chamber.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says again, and she means it. Even the Rite of Tranquility, that final step, the greatest threat the Chantry can produce, seems like a paper tiger now. There are only a handful of Tranquil in Ostwick. They used to terrify her, of course; they are kept in the Circle partly to serve that very purpose. But, she muses now, they do not seem unhappy. Indeed, they cannot actually feel unhappiness. And that might be worth it.
“I caution you against that line of reasoning,” the templar says. His voice is lower now, with a slight edge.
“There’s nothing any of you can do that frightens me,” she says. She does not need to elaborate. He knows what she means.
Before she realizes that the Knight-Commander has drawn in his reins and stopped the horse, the inertia from the sudden halt sends Cora’s still-aching head into the armor plate in front of her.
“WH–”
“Listen here, girl,” the man says. He has turned his head to the right, and Cora looks up, squinting in pain, to see the profile of his face. They can’t have reached the city yet, surely; there would be more traffic. She hasn’t seen another soul since she awoke. It appears that the templar has simply halted his mount in the middle of the road. “Are you listening?”
“A bit hard when you keep trying to concuss me, ser.”
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” he continues, and his tone would be frightening if Cora still found anything frightening. “You’re bright. Gifted, I hear. Which makes you dangerous…and useful. More likely than not, you’ll die in the Circle Tower. But Maker knows, fate is a fickle son of a bitch, and the world is changing. Can’t say how, rightly. Scent in the air, I suppose, or my mind is further gone than I know. But there are rumors of darkspawn in the south. Could be nothing at all, but…could be something. Four hundred years since there’s been a Blight. Could be the darkspawn have found another of the Old Gods. What I mean is this: you cannot know what the future holds. It might be exactly what you think. It might be something else. And if it’s something else, you’ll need your wits about you. Times of change are not kind to the weak-minded.”
Cora does not respond. She does not feel anything, not exactly, but…she cannot help but consider his words.
“Make yourself useful to them. Show them a heart of stone.” That the Knight-Commander is using ‘them’ rather than ‘us’ is not lost on Cora. He continues, his voice softer, and low: “They will try to take your mind, one way or the other. Don’t give it up without a fight. And it will be a fight. Life is not a fairy story.”
Some months later, during an evening when the dining hall is raucous with laughter – including that of Cora, who will have come through her Harrowing only hours before – the Knight-Commander, standing guard around the perimeter of the room with the rest of his men, collapses onto the floor. He is dead before any of the enchanters can even rise from their tables.
Cora will never be sure whether the relief she feels is because Erlicar’s murderer has finally paid for his crime, or because he did not suffer the long, slow march into madness so common to members of the Order. Perhaps, she will think, as with so many things in life, it doesn’t matter.