Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age. I do own Valeria Morn and the world from which she comes.

Author's Note: I have no good excuses for how long it took for this chapter to happen. Just, you know, standard life shit, mixed inspiration concerns, and so on.

Just because it's not a very common term in regular parlance, I thought I'd clarify here - the term 'Alatrist' refers to someone who believes that gods or god or some deific being exist (they're not an atheist) but they don't worship them - usually because they consider worshipping them unnecessary, unwise, silly or anything along those lines. Being that Valeria comes from a place where the gods appear to have a very direct and clear impact on the world - granting spells to their followers - true atheism is rare there.

As always, there's a lot of Valeria's internal monologue - I offer this because it is important to understand how she sees the world of Thedas, in comparison to her own (which, despite her own coloring of events and details, is not actually better than Thedas in every way, and Kantrias and her Church are both flawed in their own ways), but also because Valeria herself will be no more static and unchanging in the face of Thedas than Thedas will be in the face of her and the Inquisition.

Thanks to personnongrata/verynonyideas for beta-reading

Inquisitor-Captain

By Kylia

Chapter 5: Worldviews and Perspectives

It was not a simple thing, getting used to wearing armor - even chainmail armor, which was lighter and easier to move in than some of the other options - when fighting. Nor were her styles of fighting easily applicable to Thedas. Few people used the heavier swords favored by most in Thedas - rapiers, sabers, and other lighter blades were the order of the day, and though she didn't lose every bout she did against Cassadra as they travelled, sparring every evening so she could practice, she lost almost all of them.

The chainmail she wore wasn't fitted to her, though that mattered less with chainmail than other armors, she gathered. Still, the smith, Harrit, told her he'd have one made to her measurements - which he took - when she returned from the Hinterlands, and Cassandra assured her that would be good.

Travelling with her and Cassandra were Solas, and Varric, being among the few other people at Haven she felt comfortable talking to for any length of time. Most of the rest got too worshipful, or asked things of her she could not give - blessings, assurances that the Maker hadn't abandoned them...

Answers, about how she had survived, and all others at the Temple had died.

Varric didn't press, and Solas seemed to know more than she did. She had been unsure about bringing the dwarf, since Cassandra clearly didn't like him, but he was handy in a fight, and she needed to learn more about Thedas - and he was the one to tell her the most, given that he was a storyteller.

And he clearly liked hearing himself talk, at least to a point.

The five days to the Hinterlands, first down the mountains and then across some of the lowlands of Ferelden, relatively unpopulated regions nonetheless, were largely uneventful. They passed a few would be pilgrims, heading to Haven, to be blessed by the Herald of Andraste, or to join the Inquisition. Or just to gawk at it, or to be involved, in some sense, with something that some claimed would change the face of Thedas.

Isn't the whole point, though, to stop Thedas from being changed? Restoring order, stopping the Breach from destroying Thedas or reshaping it entirely... and if the Breach truly was what it seemed, stopping it from someday reaching Bayetz...

If it ever starts to grow once more, it could... someday, reach all the way across whatever distance of oceans I crossed to come here...

As they drew closer to the formal region known as the Hinterlands, and passed a few small villages and various somewhat isolated farms, Valeria could almost trick herself into thinking she was in some rural part of the Kingdom. Not Vissaros - not enough hills, once they reached the lowlands - but maybe parts of Inquestra, or Leutria. Definitely like Falkan.

Add in a few steamboats on the rivers, maybe some old muskets in the hands of hunters, and Karelist clergy, and it really would have felt like rural Kantrias. Life in the distant countryside was more or less the same everywhere, it seemed.

Every day, after sparing, she was left nearly exhausted - she'd wear the unfamiliar armor all day, then have to fight in it. But she still had the energy to speak to her three travelling companions, trying to learn more about them, and more importantly, the place and mess she'd founderself lost in.

Varric was gregarious and happy to share details, but he was also the one who wanted to know the most about her homeland, and her past. He had shown remarkable sensitivity about avoiding topics she didn't want to discuss - Kyseen, or really, any of the people she'd left behind she cared about. Friends, allies, compatriots.

But she did learn a lot from him - more about the adventures of the Champion, the real ones, not in his story. She found herself quite interested in this 'Kiandra Hawke', and her approach to things in Kirkwall - the woman had done everything she could to keep things from getting worse, and yet every time, she had failed. It was a study in failure, but failure because reality was simply too big for one person to change on their own. The tides of change and history could not be held back by one.

Or that was her takeaway, anyway. And it applied to her, here. She couldn't do this herself - thankfully she didn't have to - and more importantly, she could not correct the myriad of flaws and injustices she saw here. Even if she managed to negotiate some truce between Mages and Templars to get their help with the Breach, she could not hope to fix the underlying problems all by herself.

She shouldn't seek to change Thedas, even if the changes seemed so obviously and manifestly better.

Not on her own. Which burned at every instinct in her that told her how wrong everything about the handling of mages in Thedas was.

In exchange for the things he told her about his past adventures with Hawke, about life in Thedas and the history and culture of the people that lived there, Varric dragged more details of her own life out of her. She lacked his talents as a storyteller, but did tell him of some of her many and sundry missions criss-crossing Kantrias and all her provinces, hunting heretics, renegade witch covens, law-breaking mages, pagans and all their ilk. She didn't find them particularly exciting, but then, they were her life. After a while, most missions felt repetitive.

It was one of the many reasons...

One of the reasons she'd enjoyed working with Kyseen so much. Sarcastic alatrist and frustrating at the best of times... nothing had ever been boring, or repetitive when Kyseen had been around.

Not that she'd ever told the other woman - no point in letting Kyseen know she was even capable of being bored. It would have undermined her image.

Of course... Well, that train of thought, as all trains of thought regarding Kyseen, brought her back to the...

... other things Valeria had never told her.

Things that, in all honesty, she probably never would be able to.

Let's be honest here, Valeria. She'd told herself, more than once, trying to stay realistic, the odds of you surviving this are low... the odds of you somehow getting home from here, when you're still not sure where 'here' is...

Well, those are minute.

The other area where she'd not indulged Varric's curiosity was her revolver - she had sixty one bullets. She could hardly waste any with a demonstration, at least not without that demonstration also killing an enemy.

"You'll see how it works when battle is joined," she'd told him.

"The thing about being in a battle is you're too busy fighting to watch the cool shit everyone else does," Varric had countered. Which Valeria knew wasn't true, not if there really was someone worth watching in the battle.

No matter what Valeria tried, her thoughts kept returning to Kyseen.

Such as even when talking to Solas - one would think that the soft-spoken bald elf mage would be nothing like the brash, outspoken - when not pretending to be someone else - spy and assassin would have nothing in common, but on the subject of the Maker, of gods in general, he had a sort of mildly amused contempt for the whole idea. She tried to ask him about the Dalish gods, and he'd spoken little of them but to deride those among the Dalish who followed them. He had even less time for Andraste and the Maker, and had little regard for the idea of her being the Herald of Andraste - on which she agreed with him.

He'd asked her a few brief questions about the Karelist gods, but with such a maddening arrogance behind his questions that seemed even worse than Kyseen's alatrism that she stopped speaking on the subject with him.

But that arrogant, amused contempt for religion, for the notion of worship, for paying homage to gods, any gods, was so reminiscent of Kyseen that it hurt.

At least the rest of discussions with him never tread too close to thinking of her - he wanted to know more about how her magic worked, and though she was unable to explain it in terms he understood, she did demonstrate all the magics she knew, such as they were.

It was quite satisfying to see that the man genuinely seemed to have no clue how to respond to the reality in front of him. Her wards could repel his blasts of ice against her, but they worked nothing like a 'Barrier Spell' as he knew them, and the utter lack of the Fade in her magic seemed to disconcert him. Though it was hard to tell - he was good enough at guarding his emotions to be nearly impossible to read.

Nearly.

She did also speak with Solas about his people, and what little she could remember about the elves of Bayetz, dredged up from schooling as a youth and a teenager, learning the history of the world, the role of elves in the earliest days of the continent, warring with the Dragons, conflicting with Arelis as it rose to dominate the continent through it's mastery of the trade routes, surviving Arelis and then... just sort of vanishing.

She apologized for how little she knew, since it was all just a sketch of an outline, really, but he was grateful for the information. He told her that in his dreams, he walked the Fade, observing the memory of the distant past - even the distant past of the ancient domain of the elves, before the coming of humans.

"I have never heard of the ancient Elvhen traveling to a distant continent," Solas had said, "But there is much that lies forgotten over the thousands of years that have passed since the fall of the ancient empire of the People."

From Solas, she learned some more about the workings of magic, and how Lyrium and the Fade played a role. Much of it went over her head, because she truly lacked the frame of reference to understand it, but she did get the basics. Ultimately, though her magic and his came from very different sources, it worked on similar principles in its execution.

He also offered a different perspective on the world, than Cassandra and Varric. He was no partisan of the rebel mages, but seemed to find them more admirable than the templars. He seemed to disdain, or at least, have a distaste for most of his kind - the Dalish and the elves in the alienages.

Both systems - the nomadic, tribal, pagan Dalish, and the oppressive, foul alienages, offended her on a very visceral level, like so much about Thedas.

In a perfect world, Valeria would be home in Kantrias - and Kantrian soldiers and Karelist missionaries would be here, turning this continent into a place that made sense. Not that she could see the Queen endorsing any such invasion.

Nor is it really truly worth the cost... what it would mean to Kantrias to expend so much blood and treasure. She shuddered to think what Voluz, or the Free Cities, or even worse,Telvir, would do if Kantrias spent its armies and fleets and treasury halfway - or more - across the world in something that would no doubt turn out to be Tessos, writ large.

Guns and cannons and airships and integrated magic can only take us so far. Though I suppose we wouldn't be banning the Chantry, just forcing it to accept people choosing to convert to Karelism... or any other legal faith.

The Maker wasn't a pagan god, the Chant of Light no pagan text - the role of nature barely came up at all, and when it did, it was understood to exist largely in service to the Maker's children.

Not a pagan faith, no.

But it was still insane, like the entire continent.

She kept that to herself - especially that - when she spoke with Cassandra. She tried to avoid too many one on one conversations with the Seeker. Part of her wanted to - it was always nice to be able to appreciate beauty, and she deeply respected Cassandra as a warrior, a woman of conviction, and a woman of faith.

But Cassandra always seemed to be on the verge of demanding to have a conversation about her own Faith, about the Maker, about Andraste... she didn't think that was a conversation she truly wanted to have right now.

So she did speak with Cassandra, but she kept the topic to the one of weapons, and training, and combat in Thedas, and the things the Inquisition needed to do. Often before and after sparring.

She didn't want to insult Cassandra, or her faith. But she didn't want to pretend that she respected the Maker, or frankly, most of the Chant of Light. Or the Chantry, as a whole. And as she grew more and more irritable without the Mist, as she developed that telltale agitation, that superabundance of energy, the odds of being unable to stop herself from doing just that and more increased. Even as it was, her fingernails spent a great deal of time digging into the flesh at the base of her hand, short though they were, to try to ever so slightly stave off that need.

That need was another reason why she'd insisted on sparring as much as possible, insisted on always taking the first watch - if she exhausted herself enough, she could perhaps sleep a few hours, even that superabundance of energy only lasted so long, against so much tiredness.

But she could feel her irritableness - she'd nearly bitten the heads of Solas, Cassandra and Varric off, more than once, especially when they argued amongst themselves, and she knew it was all to likely that she'd lose the battle.

She should say something, let them know in advance...

But what good would it do? How would they react? They wouldn't understand. She had always been able to control her use of the Mist. They wouldn't grasp that.

But then, she'd always had access to more.

And now...

And now she had three doses left. And potentially a lifetime to face without it.

So it was a conversation to avoid, for now. She changed the topic whenever any conversation seemed to tread close, and Cassandra - for now - seemed unwilling to force the issue.

Yet.

Valeria did want to know more about Cassandra, but she was reticent to speak much about her past. She did learn that the woman was a distant relation to the Royal Family of Nevarra, and Varric had told her that she'd famously slain a Dragon, and the whole story of that, or at least the version that he knew - which may or may not bear a relation to the truth.

Cassandra had been close with the previous Divine, her Right Hand, and had been a Seeker for much of her life, and quite torn when most Seekers defected with the Templars, away from the Chantry. But her loyalty to the Divine had superseded her loyalty to the Lord Seeker.

The more she learned about Cassandra, the more she was intrigued by her - the woman reminded Valeria of herself, in many ways, and yet, in others, not at all. Perhaps most fundamentally, in the way they behaved - Valeria, though was getting harder as she resisted the urge to take another half-dose of the mist, to try to stretch it more, take it only when she vitally needed it, was a woman who favored calm serenity, trying to approach the world with perfect equanimity as she pursued her duties...

Valeria fought with well-trained and drilled forms and styles, her skill with the blade more taught than innate, and she practiced them with rigor, mixing them to achieve different results, but she was no instinctive bladeswoman.

Cassandra was no wild berzerker, and she too fought with clear training, but she was almost an artist with her sword and shield, unafraid to innovate in a battle, or so it seemed as they sparred, and she was a woman who had strong passions,and wasn't afraid of them - her thirst to see justice done for Divine Justinia, she fought with a passionate drive. She embraced her anger and fury at what had happened - though she was able to prevent it from ruling her. She did restrain her passions, control them - but she did not shun them, as Valeria always tried to.

And in not doing so, she doesn't find herself in need of anything like the Mist to do it...

-Inquisitor Captain-

The Crossroads were in chaos - Corporal Vale and his men engaged in a stand against more numerous attackers, from both sides. Templars on one side, full armor, shields and swords - and some archers backing them up from a distance.

On the other side, mages, swarming, staves glowing as they threw spells at the Inquisition soldiers, at the templars...

And at the civilians. A bolt of flame hit a woman cowering underneath a cart, a blast of lightning hit a fleeing older man in the back.

But the templars were no better - her eyes racing over the battlefield, Valeria saw a family - two young parents, the mother holding a very young child - and then a templar charged after them as they tried to flee, raising his sword to attack the mother from behind.

She wasn't really close enough to aim well, but Valeria didn't care - she didn't need to hit, just get him away - she lined up the shot, her eyes still racing, bouncing around the battle as she pulled back the hammer - it was a force of will to return her focus to him, as he closed the last few feet between himself and the mother, sobbing as she tried to escape, and then she fired.

The sound of the bullet was loud, cracking through the air, and drawing attention from every combatant for a split second, the projectile punching through the Templar's armor and into his stomach from behind - he stumbled and nearly fell, his blade missing the young couple by mere inches it seemed, but missing them nonetheless. The would be child-killer dropped to one knee, but Valeria didn't give him a moment to breath - she took aim at the nearly still target as he tried to stand, and fired again after taking several steps closer, the surreal stillness of the battle stretching for a second, two seconds -

And a second bullet punched through the Templar's helmet, dropping him to the ground moments later.

59 bullets. Valeria knew it was a bad idea, but she had to exploit this - as the combatants began to fight once more, Valeria fired again, and again,and again, three more shots, each at one Templar, all archers aiming at Inquisition soldiers. One was felled completely, another dropped his bow and looked in mute surprise at the hole in his hand, and the last clutched his leg.

56 bullets.

In a fluid, practiced motion, she holstered her pistol, drew her saber and charged, running towards the fighting - she knew from her sparring with Cassandra that her saber was not well equipped to go against the Templars armor, and so she ran for the mages, her longcoat billowing behind her as she charged.

"In the name of Vitralia, your judgement is guilty, your sentence - death!" Valeria called out, out of instinct as much as anything else, but it got their attention, regardless - several mages cast fire at her, but she held up her free hand, calling up a defensive ward, watching their flames crash against her, moving closer - she reached one mage, slashing out with her saber, getting him in the arm as he swung at her with his staff, proving surprisingly adept with the weapon for a mage. But she was more adept - she ducked under the swing, at his legs, watching him stagger back to avoid the swing and drove the saber right into his stomach, watching his eyes open widely as left bled quickly from him - she lifted her leg, pushing him off her saber with her foot and moved on to the next, her ward blocking more spells as she moved onto the next mage.

In many ways, for the first time since she'd woken up in that cell, she felt like she was back home, in every way. The familiar act of slaughtering rebellious mages, slaughterers of innocents - she was loosely aware of the others, Cassandra and Solas addressing the Templars, Varric's crossbow tearing into the mages and the sword-bearing warriors - mercenaries, Scout Harding had said - fighting alongside them. He fired it far faster than she'd ever seen one fired before, the stopping power of the contraption deadly nearly to every foe hit.

She didn't have time to admire the craftsmanship of the weapon in Varric's hands, as one of those mercenaries came at her, swinging a massive two-handed sword. Gripping her saber with both hands, she brought it up, catching the blade, sliding backwards under the force of the blow as her saber scraped along her enemy's steel. Jumping backwards, away from him, she darted to the left, evading his swing, dropped to one knee and swung at his legs - though he dodged the attack, nimble on his feet despite his weapon and breastplate. Her own ability to continue moving hampered by the chainmail, her body urging her in fifteen different directions all at once as the battle and the demand for another dose of the mist warred in her mind.

She'd never fought someone using a weapon like this - she pulled back again, trying to get around him, but he kept up the attack - she wasn't stupid enough to try to catch the attack on her own blade again, however. Enchanted or not, a sword could only take so much punishment...

He swung for her head, and once more, she dropped to a knee, but this time, he was ready for it, switching his grip with even more surprising side and slashing diagonally downwards at her.

Valeria tried to drop and roll away from the swing, but the burden of the chainmail and her own inexperience with this sort of foe cost her dearly, and she nearly cried out in pain, biting her lip bloody as she felt the sword cut across her upper back, her coat reducing the force of the blow, the chainmail helping as well, but the distribution of the blow still leaving the rings of the armor digging into her, the coat itself no doubt torn for the moment there, sliced right through.

Valeria did not usually get hit, but she was no stranger to it, and or the pain of such brute, blunt force - but it wasn't something she felt often.

But this... this is not enough to stop me! Spitting out the blood in her mouth, she jumped up and backwards, onto a rough stone half-wall. The mercenary charged her again, pulling his blade up from the ground and swinging -

Valeria took a step back, dropping off the wall - and letting him run completely into it - he tried and failed to jump the wall. He didn't fall, but he stumbled forward, and that's all Valeria needed - her saber slashed across his exposed neck, thanks to the angle, the man fell, gurgling, his body draping over the half-wall.

The fight continued for a short time more, but her arrival - and that of Cassandra and the others just as much if not more - seemed to have served to rally the Inquisition's soldiers, and soon enough, the remaining mages and templars had been put to flight, leaving dozens of dead behind them, a refugee camp in ruins, flames still smouldering in several places, the work of both sides.

Valeria spat blood again, the iron taste disgusting in her tongue, but she'd bitten through her lip, so it was hardly a surprise. She took in the battlefield - Corporal Vale and his men were starting to gather, and Cassandra approached the man.

"So that's what that fancy shooter of yours does, then," Varric said, approaching, looking entirely unharmed. He collapsed his crossbow and slung it backover his back. "Handy."

"Very. I could have made much quicker work of all of... this, had I the bullets." She pulled her revolver from her holster, wincing, grunting, clenching her teeth a moment as the movement of her injured shoulder caused her body to scream at her. "Speaking of," she quickly emptied the spent cartridge and reloaded her gun. Shooting five bullets in one battle was an unacceptable waste, but she'd had to start with two, to save those civilians, refugees who did no wrong.

And with any luck, the survivors might have spread word of her gun. The mages would speak of her ward - far sturdier than any common barrier spell, from what Solas had said, for all that it only worked against magic.

"Still - Templar armor is some of the best in Thedas, and your gun went right through it," Varric shook his head. "And you say everyone has these?"

"Far from it - the revolver's quite new, and muskets are too cumbersome for smaller battles." But a foe with a brace of pistols could be quite deadly, in the kinds of fights she was used to. "But guns are the primary weapon of war."

"Andraste's tits..." he shook his head, looking around, "I'd heard the Templars and Mages left out in the open had gone crazy, but this... I won't say it's Kirkwall all over again, but you can certainly see it from here." He shook his head again, "well, maybe not."

"The mages may have rebelled against the Chantry for their oppression - an admirable goal, if the Law truly failed to provide for them," Valeria murmured, walking over to the body of one of the mages she'd killed and rolling the corpse over with her foot. It was a young man, perhaps even a boy, barely an adult. But he'd laughed as he'd fought, eager for battle, thirsting to kill...

"But these ones can't be called rebels, or even terrorists." At least the Tessoi Terrorists who fought, over a hundred years later, against the Kantrian conquest of their homeland and the outlawing of their pagan gods had a purpose when they used explosions and assassinations and manufactured riots...

They killed their own people, but there was a logic to their actions. A futile, pointless effort against the tide of history, one that she couldn't really understand why they could want.

But it was a clear purpose, a goal, and they acted to advance it. Not always perfectly, and never to success, but they understood this wasn't about slaughter.

"They've become bandits, or even less, truly. The madness and desperation of rebellion, no doubt." She turned from the dead boy, "But that's no excuse." She sighed, and turned to look at the approaching Solas and Cassandra. "Why were the templars slaughtering civilians?" She asked, "Why attack the Inquisition's soldiers?" She was fully aware they'd rebelled against the Chantry, but they seemed to have even less logic in their acts than the mages.

"War breeds a madness all its own, as you suggested," Solas offered. "And perhaps the Templars, restrained and addicted to Lyrium by the Chantry as they were, feel as though they were ill-used by the people of Thedas."

She couldn't deny that the elf had a point, but she looked to Cassandra, curious what the Seeker would say.

"I cannot deny that what Solas says rings true - for some Templars, believing themselves taught to hunt and kill mages and nothing more..." Cassandra shook her head, "It is an offense to even try to stand neutral. Likely they first tried to merely requisition resources, conscript able-bodied warriors to their cause. But as the common people resisted such-"

"They'd start to see everyone as the enemy. So mere bandits and less as well," Valeria nodded. "There will no doubt be more of them in the Hinterlands, and we must work to address all the rifts here, before we return to Haven." She looked around, looking for the telltale hat of a reverend mother in the Chantry.

Kyseen would be poking fun at those hats if she was here now.

"First, Mother Giselle," she said, picking a direction to see if she could find her. As she moved again, she winced once more, shifting her arm, sheathing her saber.

"You're injured," Cassandra observed, a slight concern in her voice. Valeria saw Solas approach, his hand glowing as he prepared a spell of healing, no doubt.

"Not much. I'll live," Valeria countered. But she didn't protest Solas giving her a small amount of healing magic, easing away the worst of the pain and making it so she could move her arm without a problem. "Thank you." She pulled off her coat, shrugging out of it quickly and looking at the back.

"I thought you said your coat was enchanted," Cassandra observed, "And yet it seems to have broken under one attack."

"All the enchantments in the world won't change that a coat is a coat. Besides, it's better against blunt force. But it's not broken," she pressed against the tear, the fabric closing against itself, and the same magic that kept her uniform and coat perpetually clean took effect, quickly fusing the tear closed, the fabric repairing itself and leaving no sign.

Even Solas seemed to look a little impressed at how easily it was fixed, and Cassandra looked troubled.

"Your people really use magic for something so simple? So freely?" Cassandra sounded... not afraid, but concerned, still - just not for Valeria. About her. Concerned by her. And what she represented.

"This is still quite expensive - it takes a certain skill to enchant one of those long coats, skill that is in high demand, and several costly reagents to make the magic stick," Valeria explained. "But the Church has the resources to outfit every inquisitor with one." That didn't seem to make Cassandra look any less disturbed at the free use of magic in every level of her society.

"Speaking of your church," Varric asked, "What was that you shouted when you started attacking the mages?" They were walking and talking, the surviving refugees at the Crossroads coming out into the open, the Inquisition's soldiers hard at work clearing the bodies, soon joined by able-bodied civilians, many breaking down and sobbing as they saw dead friends and family.

Punishing these murderers must take priority. The list of things that needed to be done in the Hinterlands was quite long - the Inquisition needed horses, and if they could get a rancher named Dennet to supply horses to the Inquisition, it would get the rest to agree to deal with them as well.

They needed to close the at least six or seven smaller rifts that had formed - the reports were unclear on just how many of the things there, possibly even more than that. There were bandits around the southern portions of the Hinterlands, preying on the roads, and of course, there were these mages and templars, so far gone as to be expelled by even the other rebels.

"You said you were judging them in the name of... Vitrella?" Varric went on, and Valeria shook her head.

"Vitralia - the First Judge," she corrected. "Goddess of punishment, justice and retribution. These... people," she gestured at the fallen enemies, "preyed on the innocent. Their sins were clear and manifest. Vitralia has no claim on their souls, since I'm sure most of them believed in your Maker-" she saw Cassandra's expression grow even more grave, and the Seeker seemed to be biting back a reaction - again - and perhaps having an even harder time of it than before.

"But none of you can object that they needed to die for what they were doing?" Valeria switched, wanting to avoid provoking the discussion with Cassandra that was no doubt coming eventually.

Delay it. There was still too much she didn't understand about the Chantry and the Chant to be able to have a real discussion about this.

"No, I cannot," Cassandra agreed after a moment, accepting the common ground; Varric made a noise of agreement as well. Solas said nothing one way or another.

With the rush of battle fading quickly, Valeria once more resumed looking around the camp, drumming her fingers against her leg, lightly at first, but with more force and speed as they walked.

As they started to walk through the camp, several people approached the four of them - some were approaching Cassandra, the clear, known figure of authority, the Seeker. But others approached her, speaking in reverent tones as they asked for her blessing, or thanked her for saving them, or for stabilizing the Breach.

Others, though, standing at a distance, glared at her, or cowered from her gaze when she looked to them, afraid of her - perhaps still thinking her guilty.

"Please, your worship-" one started, pleading for a blessing. 'Thank you, Lady Herald,' another praised, bowing low. Valeria grit her teeth and forced herself to bite back every response she wanted, harder than it had ever been.

"Blessings to you," she said quietly, sparing a momentary and murmured a prayer to her own gods for their good fortune, long life and health... whatever it is they wanted and needed, with each one.

Finally, they saw Mother Gislle, after several minutes of searching, and found her tending to the collected wounded - from this battle, and previous ones. As they drew closer to her, she was speaking with a wounded Inquisition soldier, trying to convince him to accept magical healing from one of the mages that had joined with the Inquisition.

"Turned to noble purpose, their magic is surely no more evil than your blade," Mother Giselle told the young soldier, and after a moment's more resistance, he relented.

Perhaps she is someone that can be worked with. She doubted she'd see eye to eye with any of the Chantry's clergy on magic, but anyone who understood that magic could be used to a good end was someone who she could work with, in this situation.

"Mother Giselle?" She asked, stepping forward and calling out quietly to the woman. The powerless cleric turned and stood, facing her. Valeria closed the distance and offered the Mother her hand. "Captain Valeria Morn." It chaffed to leave off the 'Inquisitor', but she did so nonetheless.

Giselle took her hand after a moment and shook it - her grip was firm, for an older woman, and her hand not as soft as her mostly immaculate and elaborate garb would suggest. This was a woman who probably did get her hands dirty, in tending to these refugees. "You are the one they are calling the Herald of Andraste." It wasn't a question.

"That's what some are calling me," Valeria nodded. "Not all in your Chantry hold to that... interpretation of events."

"No, they do not," Giselle agreed. "Walk with me?" She gestured off to the side, away from the people listening, and after a moment, Valeria nodded. She turned to Solas.

"Can you help with the wounded, Solas?" She asked him, quietly.

"I will do what I can," the elf nodded, and Valeria turned back to the Reverend Mother, following her further from prying ears, though they could only go so far.

"I am aware of the Chantry's denouncement. And I'm familiar with those behind it," Giselle said after a moment's thought to frame what she had to say.

"Peers of yours?"

"Indeed, in some cases. I know many of them well, others only by appearance and name, others merely by reputation," Giselle confirmed. The Reverend spoke with an accent similar to Leliana's - Orlesian - which would place her origin closer to those clerics gathered in Val Royeaux, most likely.

"Knowing them as you do, Reverend Mother," she didn't have to hold to the Chantry's faith to respect the woman's titles, "how much of what they're doing is grandstanding, or a desperate attempt to appear like they're doing something, anything in the face of this crisis?"

"I will not deny that some of them are indeed acting as you say," Giselle nodded, pulling up short to stand by a tree. Valeria stopped walking as well, unable to keep from one more drumming her fingers against her leg.

"My apologies for my- my agitation," Valeria said, after a moment, clenching her hands into fists. "I find that battle has a tendency to... leave me with an excess of energy, in the immediate aftermath." Not even remotely true, but better than explaining her withdrawal symptoms of the Mist, her need, her addiction, her superabundance of nervous energy...

"There is no need to apologize," Mother Giselle said softly. "I will not, as I said, deny that some act purely for their own gain, but the fear that others have, that even the self-interested have, is real. The Divine is dead, the Chantry's guardians in the Templars and Seekers have abandoned their duties and the Veil has been split open, with demons invading the world from seemingly countless rifts. And now, a foreign mage that follows heathen gods appears to be all that stands between them, and destruction."

Giselle looked pointedly at Valeria, the matronly grandmother-esque nature of the woman making Valeria feel a bit like she was back at the orphanage, being scolded or lectured by one of the older Sisters.

"Can you blame them for being afraid?"

Well, when you put it like that. Varric had said something similar, and she knew all about the fear of change, fear of the unknown, during crisis. She'd encountered plenty of both, especially in rural Kantrias in the face of the rise of Industry and modern methods in all fields spreading to even remote parts of the Kingdom.

"No, I cannot. Though I will restate that I am not a mage," Valeria said insistently. "My magic does not come from the Fade, as it does for your mages, or the Aether, as it does for those in my homeland." She still wasn't sure if the Fade was the Aether or not, or some bizzare local manifestation, but either way, she was no mage.

"You used magic - just now, on the battlefield. Word of it will spread, Captain Morn. Though too will spread of the sight you made on the battlefield, garbed entirely in purest white, throwing yourself between the refugees here and attacking apostates. It was an impressive sight."

"That is rather the point of the outfit," Valeria agreed with a slight smile. Even here, where none knew what she was, her garb did its job. "And if word continues to spread that I am a mage, I will keep reminding people that I am not."

"You say you are not a mage, but you do not deny that you serve heathen gods?"

"I come from a land many thousands of miles from Thedas, Reverend Mother - so far that none in my homeland have even had an inkling that Thedas exists. How could I serve your Maker, having never heard of him?" Valeria asked, the words coming out quickly, almost bitingly.

"The Maker is universal," Mother Giselle said in a firm, but even and calm voice, truly confident in her own faith.

"Perhaps so - any god may be worshipped anywhere, after all," Valeria nodded, "But no one in any land I'd heard of before coming here had ever heard of him, so he obviously didn't send us a prophet as he did Andraste for you. I hold to my gods - you may hold to your Maker." And you can keep your arrogant neglectful god all your own.

Valeria could never imagine herself losing her faith in the Karelist Pantheon, she could never see herself turning to another god or gods. But she could see much to respect in some of the other gods worshipped in Kantrias, or on the Continents of Bayetz and Guayas. The Volutian Trimvirate Tribunal were strict, harsh, but tempered that with a notion of mercy and duty for the least in society that she could see much value in. Salzarius held to a drive and ambition akin to that which undergirded much of Kantrias's progress forward. And so too with others.

But she held little respect for this Maker - some of his teachings were reasonable, but any god that claimed sole credit for creation, that he was the sole, only god to truly exist, and yet offered no aid to his followers, no magic, no guidance.

The Gods she knew did not speak to their followers regularly - they had spoken in the six books that made up the holy canon of the Church much more extensively than the Maker did in the Chant of Light - but they had been known to make their will clearly known, with words and manifestations. As had the gods of other faiths, on Bayetz.

It was rare, but real.

The Maker insists they follow, but offers nothing, helps none, and judges all, or so it seems.

"So you do not believe yourself to be the Herald of Andraste?"

"Do you believe me thus? Do you believe that your Maker, or Andraste would send me, of all people?" She was getting tired of putting up with this 'Herald' claim, but she couldn't deny it's utility, as long as it was believed. She had not claimed the title, she did not advance the claim - but if others insisted on foisting it upon her...

Well, if she was to have it, she should make use of it.

"I honestly do not know," Mother Giselle admitted, after a long moment. "I hope so. I hope the Maker would not abandon us against this threat, and I have faith in his creation of the world, his arrangement of all in it - even if you were not directly chosen, I have faith that he assured the right person has come to save us. I have hope that you will be that person."

She paused a moment, looking past Valeria a moment, speaking barely above a whisper. "Hope is what we need - and right now, you offer the hope that will rally people to your banner."

Well, I can respect all that. Hope and Faith. She doubted the Maker had had anything to do with her arrival here, or even her own gods. The Gods rarely got so involved, once they had an established following to act on their behalf. To interfere directly was to invite the same from every god, and then what?

Still, she didn't need to agree with Giselle to know that even that hope would be useful, as she said.

The Breach, the Breach. Seal the Breach, and then I can try to find my way home. And at the very least, she could more openly reject the mantle of Herald.

"I don't need people to rally to my banner - just to help me seal the Breach," Valeria replied.

"That's what they will do." Giselle assured her. "But to do that, you need time - time to find out how to do just that. Time before the rest of Thedas listens to your detractors and decides the best way to respond to the unknown threat of the Inquisition is to destroy it, root and branch."

"Which brings us back to the Grand Clerics and Reverend Mothers in Val Royeaux," Valeria nodded.

"It does. Their strength lies in their unity - they speak with one voice, speaking for much of what remains of the Chantry's leadership. Go to them - challenge them. Assure that you can and will close the Breach."

"Will it really help, if some foreign, heathen 'mage' comes before them?" Valeria asked, skeptically. She doubted that it would help if say... Cassandra did such, had their positions been reversed - Cassandra mysteriously appearing on Bayetz after an explosion destroyed much of the Church's leadership, and then appearing before surviving Karelist leadership, while still following her Maker.

Though for something like that to happen, it would have to destroy much of the Old City to do it. The Grand Vicar and the Conclave of High Priests rarely left the Holy Quarter of the capital's Old City.

Of course, The religious plurality of Kantrias might allow this hypothetical Cassandra a better reception from the surviving Church leadership, if only because the Chuch knew how to relate to people of other faiths. But... equally, were their positions reversed, Cassandra would still recieve a frosty reception, to say the least.

Then again, at least she could poke some of the more pompous windbags in the bureaucracy until they give up. Valeria barely managed to stop herself from smiling openly at that thought. Not the time.

"You do not need to win them all over - merely make them doubt. Convince those that are grandstanding that you will not be so easily beaten, convince those who are afraid that you can close the Breach, and convince those that seek only to be seen as doing something that you are doing something." Giselle advised, and Valeria couldn't disagree with the theory.

"You make it sound so simple," Valeria pointed out.

"If a thing is important, is it ever simple?"

I guess you don't get to be a ranking cleric of any sort without a propensity for handing out 'sage advice', wherever you are, whatever gods you worship.

"No, I suppose not."

"You are not without allies in the Chantry. I will go to Haven, and give their names to Sister Leliana, and I will add my voice to those who speak in support of the Inquisition. It is not much-"

"It is more than we've been getting so far," Valeria pointed out. "Your aid would be welcome. You need not worry that you are abandoning these people, either." Valeria told her, looking at the refugees, the few homes that made up the original settlement. "I won't abandon them to the mercies of the animals that attacked them," she snarled the word. "And there are rifts here that only I can close. I am here - so I shall do what I can here, before returning to Haven and thence to Val Royeaux."

She looked back to Mother Giselle, "Will I have time for that?"

"I believe so, as long as you move with dispatch here in the Hinterlands. You may not hold to the Maker, Captain Morn, but I hope you will accept his blessing nonetheless."

"I'll accept a blessing offered by you," Valeria answered honestly. "A woman of conviction, dedication and a desire to see good done in this world - if you offer it on behalf of your Maker, so be it."

Giselle actually chuckled slightly, "You are a woman who chooses your words carefully."

I don't want to, but I must.

Could she keep doing that once she was out of the powder for the mist entirely?

-Inquisitor Captain-

After speaking with Mother Giselle, Valeria had gone around the Crossroads, trying to pick up local intelligence. Corporal Vale, the leader of the Inquisitions limited forces in the region, had told her what little they knew: from a few scattered details from letters or notes, usually found on the dead, they had a general idea of where the bandit Templars and Mages were based.

From that information, she could surmise the mages appeared to be based somewhere in the Witchwood, to the Northwest, and the Templars somewhere to the west, possibly near a waterfall, but it was hard to be sure.

Both groups were quite active near the Crossroads in general, however. Not to mention bandits along the East Road, to the south, and rifts all over the place.

The people of the Crossroads too, were in need of food and critical supplies. The latter she could get by going after the Mages, apparently, as they had hidden supply caches. The former - well, if she could simply restore some order to the region and clear out the threats, the hunters at the Crossroads would be able to take care of the rest.

Valeria didn't know how long the effort would take her, but hopefully not too long. They couldn't linger here too long, but equally, they needed to secure the Hinterlands. She couldn't abandon the civilians here to chaos and devastation at the hands of bandits - whatever uniforms they wore and whatever claims they might make to higher purpose - or endless waves of demons coming forth from the rifts.

Regardless, it would soon be time to set out from the Crossroads, but with the sun being at more or less at its highest point, Valeria had retreated to the path leading back up the ridge to the forward camp. Only once there was no one around her, did Valeria drop to her knees on the grass, pulling her prayer book from a pocket on the inside of her coat and opened it, turning it to the page she sought, laying it out before her.

"I make no claims to Wisdom, beyond that which is granted to all Mortals with ears to listen, and minds to hear. I make no claim to Knowledge, beyond that which is granted to all Mortals with ears to listen and minds to hear. It is only my Will, to follow your Guidance, Karel. Font of Wisdom, you are the Perfect Order, and by your Writ, I shall pursue Order, advance the cause of Civilization over Barbarism and Chaos and ever shall I seek Wisdom. In your name, and in the name of all the Gods that you gave rise to, Amen."

She didn't expect or ask for direct guidance, or even a sign. That was not the Karelist Way. Guidance was to be found within, through understanding the teachings of the Gods, through feeling, however faintly, the will of the gods through her connection to them via her magic. But to pray was to honor the gods, and to focus your mind.

Before she could move onto the next prayer, Valeria got the strong sense she was being watched. She'd come away here, hidden from view to avoid causing issues for the Inquisition. She turned her head, starting to stand up, and saw Cassandra standing next to a tree, looking pensive.

"Your prayer - is it a common one, among your people?"

"Less common than others, but far from abnormal," Valeria said, closing the prayer book and slipping it back into her pocket.

"I did not intend to interrupt," Cassandra said, sounding apologetic at interrupting her prayers, "Varric merely said you walked off, and I wanted to be sure of where you were."

"I should have said something, I suppose," Valeria allowed. "I didn't want to cause problems for the Inquisition. It is bad enough, I suppose, that the 'Herald of Andraste' is known, at least by some, to follow 'heathen gods'," even quoting Mother Giselle, and others, to refer to the Pantheon, to Karel, Syrestara, Vitralia and the rest as 'heathen gods', as if they were mere pagan deities, burned at her, the words feeling like acid on her tongue.

"I did not want to be seen by others praying, and create more issues. I did not ask to be seen as Herald of Andraste, chosen by your Maker, but it a useful belief for others to have, for the Inquisition." Valeria gave voice to thoughts she'd kept quiet. She hadn't actually asked Cassandra how she felt about the subject, wanting to avoid the question, but now she wanted to know, now that the question had been raised.

"I do not demand an answer, but I will ask - do you think me a Herald, sent by your Maker or your Andraste, to save you all?"

Cassandra Pentaghast appeared to be a woman as devout as she was, but in the face of what had happened, the death of the Divine, the Breach - did she have her doubts? Valeria wanted to understand this woman who was at once alike and unalike with her.

"I... I do not know. I think you were sent to help us - I hope you were," Cassandra said carefully, perhaps unknowingly echoing Mother Giselle's words. "But the Maker's help takes many forms. It is not always clear what it is, or who it truly benefits, or how."

"I have heard some of the Chantry sisters in Haven speak that the 'Maker works in mysterious ways,'" Valeria summarized, and Cassandra nodded.

"We have only our faith to guide us - and I do not believe that the Maker would abandon us, at this dire hour." Cassandra said. "Why he would choose you in particular, a he- follower of other gods... I do not know."

Probably because he didn't choose me. "Perhaps I was simply, somehow, at the right place, at the right time," she smiled slightly, suddenly channeling Kyseen for a moment, unsure why the words came to mind even as she said them - "perhaps I was simply the best he could do on such short notice." Cassandra grimaced at her words, looking away and Valeria sighed.

"My apologies - I did not mean to mock your Faith." She didn't even understand why the idea occurred to her, apart from perhaps missing Kyseen's biting wit, her irreverent and flippant sarcasm. The assassin would probably be having a much easier time of this - a consummate liar when she needed to be, she could probably convince everyone she was a devout follower of the Maker within a few days.

That or she would piss Cassandra off enough to get killed before she could even slow the growth of the Breach.

"Varric has already said as much. And others, of course, have said much worse." Cassandra looked back at her, thoughtful. "You do not think yourself chosen by Andraste, you have said that much. Do you believe that your gods chose you for this?"

"It's not impossible," Valeria admitted. "Perhaps Karel, or Vitralia or one of the others knew what was coming, and chose me to deal with this - but it would be arrogant to think myself the best suited for this task, would it not? I can think of Inquisitors back home much better suited to the... subtler aspects of the Inquisition, or even alatrists who would do better at this task. Much better, in all honesty."

"But you are the one that is here," Cassandra said. "If the Maker or Andraste did not choose you, in your mind, then surely your gods did. Why else would you be here?"

"Cosmic accident? Magical mishap? Perhaps I activated some sort of magical trap when I tried to disenchant that coven's artifact," Valeria suggested theories. "Or even activated its true purpose - they were suspected of meddling in forbidden dimensional magics." She shrugged, "I will even allow that perhaps your Maker or his Prophet did indeed choose me. But I do not think it likely that I was chosen. That is not - that is not how people understand the Divine, in the land I come from."

Cassandra narrowed her eyes a moment, speaking slowly, as if unsure. "I... do not understand."

"We do not merely follow different Faiths, follow different gods, Cassandra," Valeria said, gesturing between the two of them. "We think of the divine very differently. I do not profess to understand the Chant of Light or the Chantry's teachings perfectly - I haven't been here long enough for that, obviously." She gave a hollow chuckle, and paused, grasping wordlessly for the right way to say it, without offending Cassandra.

She did not want to alienate her, for many reasons.

"But, from what I understand, your Make is seen as... all powerful. The creator of the world, and all within it - even the Old Gods of Tevinter are merely powerful spirits he created who turned on him." It was a convenient fiction, she supposed, to co-opt the Old Gods that the Maker's faithful had opposed, by claiming them as renegade spirits. But she rather doubted that mere spirits could have held the faith of an entire empire for centuries.

"Everything happens according to his will, his plan, or at least with him allowing it, correct?"

"That is... not an inaccurate summation," Cassandra allowed her. "The Maker gave his Second Children - mortals - free will to allow them to choose to do right or not, to act in accordance with him or not. But all is ultimately in the Maker's hands." She seemed to be choosing her words as carefully as Valeria was.

Here we are, two devout women, bound to very different faiths, seeking to avoid creating issue with the other, tiptoeing around our different beliefs.

It was almost funny, in a way.

"And that, Cassandra - that is something I find difficulty wrapping my mind around. Neither the Karelist Pantheon, or any other pantheon or god I have heard of - and I am familiar, in passing at least, with the teachings of dozens of faiths - on Bayetz or beyond has ever claimed that they are all powerful. That they are the sole creators of all, that they are the sole god, that they are capable of - or even would - take an active role in the world, to pick a chosen one. They will find prophets, to pass on their teachings, found Faiths in their name, as Karel and the other Gods appeared before the Sacred Eleven, but beyond that..." Valeria shrugged helplessly.

"We who follow their teachings can rely on their word, on our magic, if we are blessed to channel their power, but we cannot ask or expect to be chosen, or granted direct intervention." She went on, watching Cassandra carefully.

"That is..." Cassandra started, then she made a small noise - not of disgust, like she was prone to, except perhaps directed at herself. "There is more to say on this matter, questions I have, things about you and what you say that I cannot understand. But I am not sure I can discuss this more right now. You have said much that needs further thinking on."

"I am not here to try to convert you, Cassandra." Valeria said honestly. Though she wished she could - the Karelist Inquisition could use someone like Cassandra, and it would make her life easier here, if she was a missionary, if she could convert the people to Karelism - or even if they simply had a more rational, comprehensible religion. "Your Maker's teachings are alien to me, and I cannot hold them as true and hold to my own faith, but you are only answerable to your own sense of the divine, your own faith, your own belief in the Maker. I merely ask that you do not try to convert me, in turn."

"I do not seek to - I will not deny that I wish it was possible, that I would prefer to see you following the Maker's will rather than something... something else, but I suspect," Cassandra smiled slightly, "I suspect that you are too stubborn a woman for that."

"And you aren't too stubborn yourself?" Valeria asked with a smile of her own.

"I have been accused of being too strong in my resolve before," Cassandra agreed, still smiling a little, and then her expression grew grim again "but my mine can be changed, at least. I have long since accepted your innocence in the creation of the Breach. I was... wrong, to think you guilty on merely the mark, and your survival. I would apologize for my accusations."

Valeria shook her head, "There is no need to apologize. You had good cause to think I had done it. Were our positions reversed, I would likely have assumed as you did, at first." She inhaled a long, deep breath through her nose, then let it out just as slowly. "If you want to discuss The Maker with me more, and are willing to hear me question him and the Chant, I am not averse to continuing that conversation at a later time. I too have many questions."

She gestured to the Crossroads, "But we do have much to do."

"Indeed we do," Cassandra agreed. "After you," she stepped aside to let Valeria past her, and Valeria did so, unable to stop from smiling a little again.

She'd been afraid of some theological argument that might alienate the other woman, but despite her conviction, she seemed willing to have a rational, calm discussion. A discussion Valeria was yearning to have with someone here in Thedas, and had been afraid of causing problems by having it. The Breach did come first, before her petty confusion.

But at least she'd found one person she might be able to talk about it with.

That that person was Cassandra was an added bonus. The Seeker was so much more than her handsome appearance, but that didn't change that Valeria liked looking at that as well.

Alariesti teaches one must always acknowledge beauty when you see it. And that was one of the teachings of the patron deity of Love, Lust, Marriage and Beauty that Valeria had never had any problem with.

With that pleasant thought passing through her mind, Valeria steeled herself for yet more battles to come. The Hinterlands were full of bandits to slay, rifts to close, and people in need of help, in need of Order.