Chapter Text
In another life, Thom Rainier might have taken a twisted pride in the extreme precautions used to hold him in the cells beneath Haven’s Chantry. The heavy cuffs attached to a wide strip of the same cold dark iron, the six Fereldan soldiers stationed around him with swords pointed at his kneeling form. But that Rainier was dead, left on the shores of the Storm Coast with the body of a good man whose memory he’d tried to live up to, and now only a battered weary fraud awaited the judgment of the Right and Left Hands of the Divine.
Thom looked down at the poisonous green-black mark on his left hand, grunting at the pain which lanced with every spark. If only he could remember what happened! He would try to explain, try to find the murderer of the Divine, gladly sacrifice his life for the sake of justice.
The door opened and the familiar silhouette of Cassandra Pentaghast was limned by the torchlight. She strode forward, athletically graceful as only a born swordswoman could be, strong, scarred features twisted in disgust as the soldiers sheathed their weapons. In one fluid motion, she drew her silverite blade and placed its edge at Thom’s bearded throat.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you this instant,” she demanded in that Nevarran-accented voice.
In another life, Thom would have wanted to seduce the handsome woman and boast about the conquest. Now, he wondered if she’d be the one to end his miserable existence.
“Everyone is dead! The Conclave. Most Holy! All dead but for you!”
Thom looked up at her grief-stricken face and bowed his shoulders. “I can give you no reason to keep me alive, Lady Pentaghast. I just wish I could give you answers.”
“What do you mean you can’t give me answers? Explain this!” She grabbed the marked hand.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember!” Denial burst from Thom’s lips.
“You’re lying!” Cassandra pressed her sword against his throat, the edge splitting his skin. Thom felt blood trickling down his neck and wondered if the Maker would take a sinner to His side.
“Cassandra, we need the prisoner!” Leliana, the Nightingale, Hero of the Fifth Blight and half a dozen other titles, pushed the Right Hand back. “We must get him to the Breach.”
“Fine.” Cassandra wiped her weapon with a rag and sheathed it. “Go to the forward camp. We will meet you there.”
Leliana regarded Thom with sad eyes. “I wish you could give us answers, Warden-Constable-“
Thom cleared his throat. “I’m not Blackwall. My name’s Thom Rainier. The Warden-Constable of Val Chevin Conscripted me but died later trying to protect me from darkspawn. I… took his name to keep the memory of a good man alive.”
“Captain Rainier.” Yes, the Left Hand knew who he was, judging by the contempt in her dulcet tones. “I will see you at the forward camp.”
Cassandra hauled Thom to his feet as the bard exited the dungeon. “You should come and see your handiwork, Rainier.”
She dragged him outside. The cold blue sky was marred by a vortex of green-black energy that ran from the Temple of Sacred Ashes to the heavens.
“I didn’t do this,” Thom said weakly. “I swear it. I’m scum, Lady Pentaghast, but even the man I was wouldn’t have done this.”
“I doubt that greatly,” Cassandra said harshly. “Still, the mark on your hand and the Breach are linked. As one grows bigger, so does the other.”
Thom looked once more at his hand. “Then take me there, my lady, and let me see what we can do. I will come willingly.”
“We shall see.” She shoved him through a jeering crowd until they were past the gates, then uncuffed him.
Like any skilled soldier, Cassandra settled into a ground-eating lope that Thom matched until the pain of his hand brought him to his knees. The Seeker helped him up with a grimace. “The mark is killing you.”
“So long as I can use it to close that fucking thing, it will be a good death.”
She snorted sceptically and shoved him along once more.
Near the centre of the bridge, a bolt of energy blasted the stone structure in half, sending them both tumbling to the frozen brook below. Cassandra was the first to regain her feet, drawing her sword as demons emerged from nowhere. “Stay back!” she ordered.
Thom would have obeyed except green-black energy boiled at his feet, producing a shade, and he had no choice but to reach for a templar’s abandoned sword and shield nearby. He then lost himself in the familiar dance of steel, driving the shade into oblivion or the Fade as Cassandra executed her opponents with a templar’s holy smite.
“Drop your weapon!” she commanded on turning around and seeing Thom armed.
“Yes, my lady.” He lowered the weapons until she sighed.
“Wait. I may not be able to protect you. You came with me willingly.” Her brown eyes glittered. “Do not make me regret this.”
“I won’t, my lady,” he vowed.
Halfway to the forward camp, they found a group of soldiers – and a crossbow-wielding dwarf and bald elven mage – fighting off more demons. The elf, an aquiline man with unexpectedly regal features, grabbed Thom’s marked hand and put it up to the small breach that spewed demons. He groaned in pain as a whip of energy connected them… and then in relief as the rift shut audibly.
“Ah, it worked as I theorised,” the mage observed. “You closed the rift.”
“You mean the mark did,” Thom corrected, rubbing his throbbing hand.
“Good to know. Thought we’d be ass-deep in demons forever,” drawled the dwarf in a Kirkwaller accent, adjusting his gloves.
“You have the mark. Therefore you are the key to our salvation.” The elf inclined his head. “I am Solas.”
“Solas is an apostate who came in after the Breach opened,” Cassandra explained as she sheathed her weapon.
“I am an expert on the Fade and kept the mark from spreading,” the apostate (no Circle mage would wear such simple homespun garments with a wolf-jawbone necklace) confirmed.
“What he means is he stopped it from killing you while you slept,” the dwarf added wryly. “I’m Varric Tethras. Rogue, storyteller and occasionally unwelcome tagalong.”
He winked at Cassandra, who made a disgusted noise.
“I’m honoured to meet the most famous author in the Free Marches,” Thom said with a dip of the head. “My name’s Thom Rainier. Not Warden-Constable Blackwall.”
“Heroic Warden suspected of murdering the Divine is in reality a hardened war criminal who killed children. Now there’s a twist I wasn’t expecting.” Varric cocked his legendary repeating crossbow Bianca.
Solas’ ginger eyebrow arched but he said nothing beyond, “Seeker, we need to get Rainier to the Breach quickly.”
“I know. I hope Leliana has made it to the forward camp.” The Seeker looked uncertain and in a moment of clarity, Thom realised that as the Right Hand, she’d essentially been a lone agent and bodyguard, not a leader of men.
“She’s resourceful, Seeker,” Varric reassured her. “Now let’s go.”
“Absolutely not! You’ve done enough!”
“If you haven’t noticed, the Fade is raining demons like a storm in Kirkwall,” Varric retorted.
“Four soldiers – especially two ranged fighters – are better than two,” Thom growled. “Cassandra, take rearguard. Solas, Varric, you’re on right and left flanks respectively. I’ll take point.”
The Seeker looked ready to argue the point but Solas and Varric were already arranging themselves as commanded. Thank the Maker for that.
They fought their way through to the forward camp, a unit that operated flawlessly, and Thom closed the rift that barred their way. Solas had taken samples left behind by various demons – no doubt for later study. He had to admire the elven apostate’s guts for coming into a hostile camp full of templars who liked to cage his kind.
The gates were opened and Leliana, wearing a magnificent dragonthorn bow, was arguing with a robed male cleric. On seeing Thom leading in the others, he snapped orders for the soldier to be chained and taken to Val Royeaux.
“We need Rainier up at the Breach,” Cassandra said flatly. “He stays.”
“The situation is lost,” the cleric protested.
“He’s closed two rifts so far,” Varric observed. “Let’s give him a chance.”
“I am Chancellor of the Chantry!”
Lovely, another jumped-up bureaucrat arguing about protocol at the end of the world. “What about the Breach? I don’t know what happened at the Temple of Sacred Ashes but we need to close that fucking thing before it swallows us all.”
“Precisely.” Despite the dire situation, Cassandra regarded Thom with approval. “Leliana, gather all the soldiers you can find. We need them and Commander Cullen to cut us a path to the temple.”
“We lost some scouts in the pass,” the Left Hand reported. “If we take that route, we can use the soldiers as a distraction.”
“We need to return to Val Royeaux and choose another Divine!” the Chancellor declared.
“Oh, fuck me,” Thom groaned. “Can you make up your minds before this thing kills me and we lose the chance to close the Breach?”
“So what is your suggestion?” Solas asked quietly. “You have the mark and are a skilled commander.”
Thom swallowed, calculating the potential losses on each side. Then he nodded curtly. “We charge.”
“Good.” Cassandra began to issue orders as the Chancellor fumed.
“On your head be it, Seeker Pentaghast!”
“Odious little man, isn’t he?” Thom observed as they walked towards the gates.
“Chancellor Roderick is unused to thinking for himself,” Cassandra said tartly. “He relies on dogma and protocol when faith and action are required.”
“Such men have always existed,” Solas murmured. “They have their echoes in the Fade – spirits of order, obedience and routine.”
“And here I thought the Fade was nothing but raw chaos,” Varric quipped dryly.
Thom rubbed his head. Maker, he hoped closing the Breach killed him.
Commander Cullen was a heavy-shouldered templar with golden leonine good looks and the eyes of a man who’d seen too much. “This is-“
“Thom Rainier,” Cassandra interrupted. “He confessed his true name to us.”
“Ah.” Cullen studied Thom appraisingly. “We’ve already lost good men and we’ll lose even more on a charge. I hope you’re worth it.”
The soldier raised his marked hand. “I’m not but this is.”
“Understood. Andraste and the Maker have mercy on us all.”
The commander knew his work and his soldiers cut down the various demons boiling from the Fade until Thom could close the rift himself. He fell to his knees, panting heavily, as Solas placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“You are becoming quite proficient at this,” the elf said.
“Here’s to hoping it works on the big one then,” Varric muttered.
Eventually they reached the burned ruins of the Temple, where the charred corpses of the dead knelt in silent horror. Thom felt the gorge rise in his throat. Had he done this?
“Here was where our soldiers found you,” Cassandra said softly. “They say a woman guided you from the Fade.”
“I wish I could remember,” Thom sighed.
“Don’t we all.”
They skirted the edge of the crater, hearing ghostly voices speaking of victory and sacrifice, the Divine begging for help… and Thom answering that call with, “What’s going on here?”
“The Divine… called to you for help,” Cassandra breathed.
Any further speculation was cut short by the appearance of a blood-red crystal that glowed with malevolent life. “Don’t touch that!” Varric warned. “It’s red lyrium. It’s evil!”
The Tale of the Champion blamed many of Kirkwall’s griefs on a strange red idol found by Varric and his friend Isa Hawke.
“I see it, Varric,” Cassandra confirmed. “Everyone, be careful.”
Thom was only too happy to avoid the unnatural veins. Its malevolence pulsed through the mark on his hand in time to his heartbeat.
Once in the crater proper, Solas studied the Breach. “We will need to reopen it.”
“Which means demons. Wonderful.” Varric wasn’t too happy.
“Prepare yourselves!” Cassandra ordered. “Rainier, open the Breach!”
It took the four of them, Leliana and about twenty soldiers to banish several shades and a Pride demon that slunk through the Breach. When it was done, Thom gladly raised his hand and felt the energy surge upwards into the tear in the sky. He felt his life bleed out through the mark.
Saving the world. It was a better death than he deserved.
As the green-black tear exploded, Thom threw himself headlong into the darkness. The Maker wouldn’t have him, of course, but hopefully he wouldn’t get lost in the Void. Maybe he could find Blackwall again and apologise for fucking up the chance that the Warden had given him. That would be good.