#tranquilweek24

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chantry critical

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pro-templar

pro-mage

[character] critical

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nsfw (including, but not limited to, explicit sexual content)

major character death

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Prompts

Use of prompts is optional! Mix and match, switch the days, don't follow our prompts, or don't use prompts at all, as you prefer.

Any form or level of human-made art is allowed! Drabbles, sketches, fiber art, podfic - if you made it, it counts.

Sun 25: Enchanting || Rite of Tranquility || Skyhold Mo 26: Focus || Mage Rebellion || Kinloch Hold Tu 27: Logic || The Breach || Wonders of Thedas We 28: Free Will || Oculara || The Gallows Th 29: Research || Cure for Tranquility || Haven Fr 30: Dreams || The Harrowing || Ostagar Sat 31: Lyrium || The Conclave || Redcliffe Village

Alternate Prompts: A once fond memory || The Fade || Spirits & Demons || The Gull & Lantern || A friend they knew before

Still, they had to take the respites when they could. But as they broke to sit and rest their weary limbs, something brushed against the far edge of Cassandra’s awareness.

Something familiar.

“Galyan,” she breathed. The magic’s signature was unmistakable—she knew it well as the back of her own hand. Without a word, she leapt over a crumbling stone wall and sprinted toward it.

“Seeker?”

“Seeker!”

Her companions’ shouts were lost to the wind. Hooking her shield to her back as she ran, she focused her senses on the magic, Regalyan’s magic, letting it guide her up the hill, closer to the center of the temple. It grew and sharpened and clarified in her awareness, until finally it overwhelmed her and she skidded to a stop in what might have been the Temple’s foyer. She saw only corpses when she looked around, burned to a crisp as every one they’d found—

There.

Nearly invisible against the snow was an opaque semi-circle of magic. To Cassandra’s eyes alone, it pulsed and drew her in, the taste of bitter elfroot and a threatening storm on her tongue.

Regalyan had cast this spell, that much she knew for certain. She could only pray that he was the one beneath it, rather than one of the corpses littered around it.

“Seeker, what’s going on?” Varric, the apostate, and the Commander finally caught up to her, panting to various degrees. She heard the shink of Cullen’s sword as he, too, immediately saw why she had stopped.

“Wait,” she said, holding out a hand. “I know the mage who cast this. It is a shield. There is likely someone—or something—beneath it.”

“A survivor,” Cullen breathed. “Your mage?”

“Maker willing.” Taking a deep breath, Cassandra stepped within reach. “I will dispel the magic. If it is demons—“

“We stand ready, Seeker.”

Cassandra nodded. She reached for that place of peace and certainty within her, the font from which she drew her skills. Her gloved fingers brushed against the misty exterior of the shield and she pushed against its construction in the Fade.

It collapsed.

The entire party cringed as a scream of utter anguish cut through the momentarily quiet air. It reverberated within Cassandra as she realized that it was not Regalyan within the shield, but a woman. Biting back grief and anger, even as she understood what he had done, Cassandra fell to her knees and clasped the woman’s shoulders.

“Avexis,” she said, struggling to comfort the girl. What little instinct she had for this sort of thing was rusty from disuse. “Avexis, please. It is okay. You’re safe.”

“I’m not,” she cried. “He kept me that way, but he’s gone! He told me not to lose him, but I lost him, I messed up. Of course I did, of course I did—“

“You did not—“

That was the wrong thing to say. Avexis struggled against Cassandra’s grip. Around them, the Fade pulsed dangerously under the force of emotions she was failing to control. The air crackled and behind Cassandra a loud crack echoed as Avexis’ terror made itself know. If they did not act soon, her tenuous control would give way, and the Veil here was in no state to bear that kind of assault.

“Avexis, you must calm yourself,” Cassandra urged.

“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I don’t know how.”

“You do. Galyan was teaching you—”

Mentioning Regalyan was a mistake, as well. As soon as his name fell from her lips, a fresh wave of sobs overcame Avexis and Cassandra felt the Fade bow dangerously at her back. Then, that hiss and spark that was becoming all too familiar.

“Seeker, we must calm her!” Cullen snapped, the tension of days without sleep wearing through his patience. “If not by words, then by force—we cannot have more rifts opening!”

By force. Purge her, he meant. But as Cassandra stared down at the brand that no longer sequestered Avexis from the Fade, as she remembered Regalyan’s grief over the girl’s fate, years ago, she froze.

Demons spawned from the new rift; their talons clattered against the ice and screeching hisses split the air. Solas’ staff and Varric’s bolts whistled by with deadly accuracy, but there was only so much they could do. As Cullen said, they could not have more rifts opening while they had no way to close them.

A Silence was at the tips of her fingers. But Cassandra could not find the strength needed to call it forth.

She had so many doubts.

“Seeker!” Cullen’s boots crunched on the snow, closer now. If he recognized what ailed her, he did not berate her for it. His Purge took hold and reality reinforced its existence, tight and sharp around them.

Avexis’ sobs quieted, gentle hiccups through the tears still streaming down her face. It did not hurt her, Cassandra knew, not the way it did when called with intention. But somehow that did not soothe her conscience as it should have.

Cullen’s gauntlet fell briefly on her shoulder. “Take her back to Haven,” he said gruffly. “We will deal with the demons as best we can. Just get her out of here before it wears off.”

Cassandra scooped Avexis into her arms, and this time she gave no resistance. Just sobbed quietly, her tears streaking through the ichor and blood on Cassandra’s armor. She seemed unharmed, physically at least, but her psyche teetered precariously.

As they descended off the mountain, Cassandra’s exhaustion and grief coalesced into anger. Galyan had had enough time to throw up a shield, yet he used it to save Avexis, not himself. He was the healer—if he yet lived, they could save countless others. Many more than a single, unpredictable mage. His control was not so unstable that it would open yet more rifts, and allow yet more demons into the world.

If he had saved himself—oh, who was she fooling? All she could think was that if he had saved himself instead, her heart would be just a bit less broken. As it was, it beat a steady ache, weeping grief into her chest behind the stoicism that the people needed to see.

“I’m sorry,” Avexis mumbled. Her tears had slowed and though she spoke, she cast her eyes aside. “It should have been me.”

It was her own thought, reflected back at her, but shame immediately crashed over Cassandra. Of course Regalyan had saved her—hadn’t that been what he was after all along?

We failed her when we left her, Cassandra. I failed her. There has to be a way to make that right.

“He would not have wanted that,” she said. “He would never have been able to live with himself if he lost you again.”

“What good can I do?” Avexis sniffled. “I’m less than useful—I’m a danger.”

It might not even matter, Cassandra thought, looking up at the Breach. Justinia was dead, the sky torn open, the balance of the Fade and reality rent asunder. In all likelihood, they would be overrun with demons in a matter of weeks, and dead long before then.

“You do not have to be useful,” she said, belatedly, climbing the wide steps to the healer’s cabin. “You can simply be. What the future holds beyond that…well, the Maker knows, and you will find out.”

She stopped short of telling Avexis they would keep her safe. A promise she knew Regalyan had made—but that guarantee had died along with him. But it was not a function of who, or what, she was. They could no more keep Avexis safe than anyone else in Haven.

As she laid the woman down on one of Adan’s empty cots, a breathless messenger burst through the door.

“Lady Cassandra, Lady Cassandra, urgent word from the commander—“

She caught the messenger, by the shoulder, holding him upright as he swayed. He was a boy of few summers, swimming in a hood several sizes too big. “Slow down and breathe. What has happened?”

“A woman—there was a woman in the Temple! A dwarf! She fell out of a rift! And her hand—”

“Fell out of a rift…” Cassandra’s eyes widened. “A survivor? A dwarf? And what is this about her hand?”

“It’s magic like—“ the messenger gestured upward, where the cabin roof hid the Breach from sight. “All—green, and going crazy!”

Cassandra’s hand flew to her sword. “Back up the mountain,” she ordered. “Fetch the apostate, Solas. I want him in the Chantry at once.”

He pressed a fist to his chest and vanished, slipping and stumbling in his oversized boots. She started to follow him out, then remembered why she was here, and looked back at Avexis’ frightened, but curious face.

“Stay here,” she said, trying and mostly failing to soften her voice. “Rest.”

She took off for the Chantry, tamping down the hope that wanted to leap in her chest. If this survivor had any information, any explanation—

Their fear was as palpable to Avexis as her own. It hung in the air like a dense fog, coating her throat when she breathed and sitting on her skin like a cold, sticky sweat. Fear of the Templars, fear of the Breach, fear of the Tevinters and what their presence spelled for the mage rebellion.

Cadash grunted and the door clicked open, creaking ominously. Within, the cabin’s dirt floor was dappled with sunlight through the rotting roof.

“Why was it even locked?” Varric huffed.

They found out soon enough. Over a dozen skulls watched them from makeshift shelves, their empty eye sockets gleaming with Fade-touched crystals. Pointed stumps with odd runes etched into their ends were stacked against the wall and tipped over on the floor. When Avexis brushed her fingers across the runes, they flared a bright green.

For the briefest moment, she saw a face—square jaw, blank, gray eyes, freckles that sprayed up to the sunburst brand that marred his brow. Before she could dig up a name, or even where she knew him from, the vision was gone; the part of her mind that she knew was Cole slipped between her and the magic and whatever it meant.

And that meant only one thing. “Something's not right,” she murmured, skittering back a few steps. Cole was matching her rising panic with soothing comfort, but it was a cycle—the more he soothed her, the more she feared what, exactly, she needed soothing for.

She flinched at the too-loud crunch of parchment in Cadash’s fist. “That is fucked,” the dwarf hissed.

“I had noticed their disappearance, but imagined nothing like this.” Avexis could hear Cassandra’s scowl and that defensive mix of guilt and shame that the Seeker usually directed at her. A horrible realization was coming to her, sinking in her mind like boots in cold swamp mud. As if in a trance, she paced back to the shelf of skulls.

Varric coughed pointedly; she could feel his gaze boring into her. “Maybe we shouldn’t—“ he began loudly.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” she whispered. One hand cupped the smooth arch of a skull, thumb tracing the sharp edge of the dormant crystal. “We found the Tranquil.”

No one answered, not that it mattered. Their silence was all the confirmation she needed.

“Avexis—“

“Don’t,” she choked. Before she’d even taken a breath, her eyes glossed over with tears. She made no move to stem their tide. Her grief fell in heavy drops, each one sending poofs of dust up where it landed on the earthen floor.

Her other hand clasped the same skull and she stared into its empty sockets as though she could divine their identity that way. Who were you? she thought desperately. Did I know you? Is anyone missing you?

Of course not. No one missed the Tranquil. That was how this had happened; how the evidence of it existed right under the noses of the mage rebellion, and yet no one cared enough to know, or even ask.

Avexis trembled, an inappropriate laugh bubbling from her lips as anger ripped through her like an earthquake.

That should be me. Then, out loud: “I shouldn’t have— that should be me, too.”

“No.” Cassandra’s voice was closer than she’d expected and Avexis flinched. Her gloved hands caught the skull where Avexis’ grip left it bare and she slid it gently out of the mage’s grasp. Setting it back on the shelf, the Seeker put herself directly in front of Avexis instead.

“It should not have been you, and it should not have been them either.”

“Why don’t we mean anything to anyone?”Avexis whispered. She clenched her fists. “Why doesn’t anyone care?”

“Hey, we care.” That was Varric, and Cadash, coming closer as well but—thankfully—leaving the path to the door wide open. “We’re here, we see you. We care.”

“You see me,” she repeated, shaking her head. “As I am now. Would you still see me if I remained Tranquil? Would you have noticed that I was gone? Because apparently no one—” she gestured angrily to the shelves “—noticed them.”

Cadash caught Avexis’ fist in her roughened palm. “Hey. You’re right.”

“I—what?”

“You’re right,” Cadash said again. “The Circles used the Tranquil because they were conveniently controlled. Because the comfort of those in power was more important than those lives. Because they could.”

Her voice was steady and grounding. Though Avexis' sorrow remained heavy, the tension wound in her relaxed. She pressed her palm flat against Cadash’s and curled her fingers down over the dwarf’s blunted nails. As she searched her eyes for answers and assurances, the filtered sunlight shifted and caught the casteless brand burned into her cheek.

“But the Circles are gone,” Cadash said firmly. At her back, Cassandra scowled, but wisely bit her tongue. “We’re not putting them back unless we’re sure they can do better. For the mages, the Templars, and the Tranquil.”

Avexis exhaled slowly. She knew that was what Cadash thought, but it was good to hear her say it anyway. And yet—

“They’re still gone, though,” she whispered, nudging her chin toward the shelf of skulls. “They still died like that. Were murdered like that. It’s not something we can fix.”

“They were. And it’s not.”

“That hurts,” Avexis whimpered. She ground her teeth together. “It hurts, and I want it to stop hurting. How do I make it stop if I can’t fix it?”

“Sometimes, you can’t.” It was Varric who answered, but Cadash nodded. “Sometimes you just have to sit with it. It might never go away, but you’ll go on. And eventually, you’ll grow around it, instead.”

“That bloody sucks.”

Cadash snorted. “Yeah. It does.”

“Can we…” Swiping at her eyes, Avexis took a shaky breath. “I don’t want to leave them here. Not like this.”

“There is a Sister up the hill—“

“No.” Cadash cut Cassandra off. “We have time, and they deserve better than the Chantry’s biases. We’ll take care of them ourselves.”

Relief flooded Avexis where she hadn’t realized she’d grown tense. “Thank you,” she murmured, ducking her head. Cadash laced their fingers together and squeezed.