I wake up lying on my backpack. A jagged stone is digging into my ass, and a body is sprawled across my legs.

"Hey, wakey-wakey." I shake Felix's shoulder. He groans; his eyelids flutter. He squints and frowns at my looming form, focusing on my horns.

"Herald?" Felix scrambles up, freeing me to do the same. "What happened?"

"Beats me. Looks like we are inside an acid trip with a heavily reduced colour palette."

Around us, the broken landscape of endless stone formations is swathed in shades of black, grey, and green. Rocks fly around. Heavy, burdened with rain green clouds blot the sunless sky. On a wall perpendicular to our plane, Dorian sits up. He rubs his forehead.

"Mmhhm. Is it… The Fade?"

"Must be. Not blue enough for the Void," I mutter. The words taste like soap bubbles.

"What?" Felix asks. I glance up. He is standing upside down on another wall.

"Oh, look, that's the Black City." I point at the spires piercing the clouds high up on the horizon. More like the Black Castle, honestly.

"Your mark," Dorian says, walking down the wall, "it opened a portal to the Fade. Remarkable! We are physically here!" An incredible laugh escapes him. Dorian grins. His eyes are anime-wide. "We are the first people to step foot here in a thousand years. Not you, of course, if the rumours are true, but…" He shakes his head. "Simply astonishing. And not at all how I imagined the Fade to be. Where are all desire demons to chat me up and feed me peeled grapes?"

That was more words than I've heard him say since our first meeting. Must be the shock talking.

"I do not see anyone else," Felix says. "It seems, only the three of us were in the spell's range."

The feather-soft drip-drip-drip of liquid distracts me with its solid taste. Sliding over floating boulders, water falls upward.

"Dorian, as much as I understand the impulse, please don't touch unknown substances." That's Felix again.

"But Felix, when will we get another chance to explore? Aren't you even a little curious, what is it?" Dorian makes as if to poke a dark oily puddle that smells like sugary pop, and my hand shoots out to stop him ahead of my brain.

"Nope. Bad idea." Thinking of touching it tastes like cotton shavings, which doesn't make any sense.

"You are right." Dorian sighs. "We should search for a way out. It is rather empty here, and I do not believe the spirits and demons will avoid us for much longer."

"I agree. We shouldn't be here," Felix says. In the diffused, eery light, his colouring is ghastly.

"So how did you do it?" Dorian asks. "Can you open another portal to lead us back to the waking world?"

"How the fuck should I know? I've never done it before."

"You have closed rifts. It shouldn't be too hard to reverse the process." Dorian waves a hand in dismissal.

"Worth a try." I crack my knuckles and take a deep breath. Stale, dusty ash fills my lungs.

Raising my marked hand, I search for a connection with, well, anything.

"Oh, there's something on your horn."

"Hm?" My fingers snap into a fist. A low voice whispers words like living darkness into my ears. All colours change to shades of sepia.

"Your horn," Dorian repeats. He is wreathed in an orange glow; yellow beams shine out of his eyes — his line of sight. Wow, I turned on heat vision!

"Hn…"

Dorian moves. The beams swing down to rest on my face. Interestingly, I can see through them.

"Here, let me—" he reaches up and plucks something from above my left shoulder. "Aha! We are in luck! It's the amulet!"

Powered down, it looks underwhelming: a plain metal cube with a fissure on one side.

"Is it broken?" Felix asks, coming closer.

Dorian runs his thumb over the empty crack. "Not beyond repair. Lyrium and some tools, and it should be simple enough to fix. I wonder if we will even need it. After all, its purpose isn't to transport to other dimensions." Pulling his own backpack off one shoulder, he hides the amulet inside.

"So, a portal to the waking. Maybe you should get on with it?"

"Why?" I blink. The colours switch back to greens, greys, and blacks. Thank gods it wasn't permanent. "Didn't you want to explore just a moment ago?"

"And now I find myself eager to leave this place and see if we moved through time as well." Dorian shivers and offers me a strained smile. "I am notoriously fickle."

I shrug and raise my hand again, mentally chanting, 'Connection, connection, connection,' and staring at a rock thirty feet away.

Curling my fingers, I feel the world shift and reform. A moment of vertigo, and suddenly, the scenery is different. There are ubiquitous floating boulders, dark puddles, and waterfalls, but also, a staircase. Floating. Perpendicular to the ground.

"Not what I had in mind," Dorian calls from thirty feet behind me. "Perhaps, another try is in order?"

"Sooner would be better," Felix says with some urgency. "We are about to have company."

All right. I can do it. Jumping from the rock, I float upward. Startled, I flap my arms through the syrupy air. Up and down swap places as I land on a stone platform. My fists close, the left one catching something intangible and elusive. The mark lights up, and the right connection forms.

"Finally," Dorian says, materialising beside me along with Felix.

The fabric of the Fade tears with a high-pitched whine, and an oval opening with fluttering, insubstantial edges unfolds. I stare at it numbly. It's a green Oblivion gate.

"Open Sesame."

Dorian pats my arm. "I knew you can do it! Now, let's check where it leads before those beasts catch up with us."

"What beasts?" I ask, though the answer soon becomes obvious. A cluster of giant spiders is climbing over a wall a hundred feet to our left. Ten, twenty, thirty arachnids… They do not end. All at once, their mandibles open, and hissing and chittering rack over my skin like glass splinters.

"Holy shit! Where's Miss Muffet's Revenge when you need it? What are you waiting for?!"

Whipping my head around so fast, I get dizzy, I push the guys into the portal and follow. It feels like falling through water. Time stretches — eternity compressed into a second. And then, like pushing through a membrane, the portal spits me out. The resistance evaporates, and regular gravity asserts itself.

I hit the ground, coming to a jarring halt on my hands and knees. It smarts, but thankfully, the drop wasn't long.

"W-who are you? What are you?" a voice croaks.

Ignoring the speaker for the moment, I half-turn, throw my hand up and, with the efficiency of long practice, close the rift. The telltale green glow that precedes demonic presence cuts off. Immediate danger avoided, I drop on all four and sigh. Time to face the music.

"Hello, my good man. Would you kindly assist us in getting our bearings?" Dorian asks as I stand up. Attempting to brush the dirt off my pants, I soon give up and, instead, survey our new location.

A torch beside a heavy metal door at the end of the long, narrow corridor provides only enough light to see endless vertical bars. An unmistakable smell of mouldy hay mixed with less pleasant odours. The scurrying of tiny clawed paws, and a lethargic, ominous drip...drip…drip of, hopefully, water. Ah, it stirs up memories. Next, someone'll shout that the prisoner is awake.

"You see," Dorian continues, "it so happens that we find ourselves—" he lights up his staff and cast a glance around "— spatially and, perhaps, temporarily displaced."

"Um," says the same unfamiliar voice. "You are in the Redcliffe Castle dungeon."

"Good, good. We didn't go far." Dorian nods. His focusing crystal illuminates the cell bars and a startled face behind them, throwing the rest of the dungeon into denser shadows. "And the date?"

The owner of said face shields his eyes. "I… I wouldn't know." The skin of his arm is pale and smudged with caked-on filth. "It was Umbralis when I was put here, and that was months ago. Three? Maybe four? The last visitors who spoke with me didn't make any mention of it." He wets his cracked lips. "Feels longer, but it should be Pluitanis or Nubulis now."

"So it might not be time travel, but we did translocate. That's something, at least."

A niggling suspicion knocks into my head. I bite the inside of my mouth. "And the year?"

The prisoner lowers his arm, squints, and blinks. "31st, of course."

"Oh." It takes a moment to process. Beside me, Felix inhales sharply. Dorian utters a loud exclamation along the lines of 'Amazing!' My brain stalls, showing a blue screen. "Um. … Mmm."

"The Dragon Age," the man adds.

Seemingly of its own volition, my right hand rises and slaps my cheek with enough force to rattle my teeth. I reboot.

Ignoring the startled looks thrown my way, I clear my throat. "We landed in the middle of the Blight, guys. Joy. We need to get back to the future before one of us gets ganked by a genlock."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Dorian says. "The amulet worked once, and I am positive it will do so again. Your mark is the key, I'm sure of it. If you get it to interact with the spell on purpose, perhaps, we will avoid revisiting the Fade entirely. Hm…"

"Y-you are time-travellers, and you were physically in the Fade?!" The prisoner's voice hits a high note, edging into a squeak.

"Yes, yes, we've already established that." Dorian shifts and glances at the door as if expecting company. "More importantly at the moment, we are trespassers on the Arl's property. I don't know about Ferelden, but in Tevinter, people rarely take kindly to intruders. So if we don't want to join this fellow here" — he nods at the prisoner — "we should leave."

"There's no hurry," the man is quick to reassure. "A guard brings my—" his gaze slides inside his cell; he grimaces "—slop once a day, and he'd come by just before your arrival."

"Why are you here?" Felix asks, snatching the words off my tongue.

Long nails scratch an unkempt beard. "I poisoned the Arl."

"Yes," Dorian says after a pause, "I can see why they'd want to lock you up. That, however, raises the question of why are you still alive."

"It was a terrible thing to do," the man says, his eyes wide and pupils pinprick-narrow, "and believe me, I regret it so, so much, no words can't describe it! But the Arl isn't dead. He just can't wake up. You have to believe me; I didn't intend anything bad to happen!"

"And poisoning isn't a bad thing — how, exactly? No matter. So you put the Arl in a coma and, what, they are waiting for him to come around and pass judgment?" I frown. "Sounds weirdly familiar."

"You might have heard about it from the storyteller in the village," Felix offers. "There was something about reanimated corpses being involved."

The free part of our four-person assembly stares at the man behind bars. Looking supremely uncomfortable, he sighs and delves into an explanation involving forbidden romance, blood magic, a botched assassination, demonic possession, hordes of undead, and Grey Wardens.

"Let me get this straight," I say after he has finished. "You found out the jailers at the Circle were about to make you tranquil without giving you a chance to prove yourself, so you mixed with the wrong crowd and made a break for freedom. Right so far?"

The man, Jowan, nods.

"A famous general, a war hero, the man in charge of all Fereldan military, the second to or, arguably, the person in power of Ferelden right now entrusted you with a mission in service to the crown. In exchange for a promise to return you to your glorified prison."

A nervous twitch of his head. I take it as agreement.

"He probably said" — I lower my voice a register and adopt a pompous expression — "'the country needs you,' and 'do it to avenge the king,'" I muse aloud. "So. You carried out the task with questionable success, and that landed you here, in the dungeon."

Another wordless confirmation.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you lifted the plot from one of Varric's novels."

"Whose?"

"Varric Tethras? Oh, right, you wouldn't know. He's not that popular yet. Damn, this timey wimey business is screwy. Anyway, fuck that shit. Anyone good with lock picks? No? All right. You might want to stand back. I'm about to perform my newest magic trick." I waggle my eyebrows, raise my twice marked hand and try to recreate the correct mindset.

Jowan warily backs up to the wall. "What are you doing?"

"Springing you out of here, duh," I mutter and release the spell. Instantly, with a peculiar sensation of free-fall forward, the world changes. Here and there switch in a blink.

"You—you went through the bars. That's not possible." Slack-jawed and even more wide-eyed, Jowan stares at me like I suddenly grew a second pair of horns.

The full extent of his enforced negligence of proper hygiene hits me like a sucker punch to the dick. At least, there is no underlying smell of sickness. He must have healed himself to some extent.

Swallowing, I hold my breath, grab his shoulder — the tattered cloth covering it crunches under my fingers — and teleport us the fuck out of the cell. At the periphery of my vision, black wisps swirl, then settle as they reform our bodies upon our reappearance.

Releasing Jowan and turning to my fellow travellers, I brush dark brown flakes off my gloves and force a cheerful smile onto my lips. "Ha! A perfect crime! They'll keep wondering about his disappearance for the years to come."

"Yes." Dorian nods. "Very inspiring. You will explain the mechanics of your technique later, surely?"

I make a noncommittal sound. It's not as if I understand it myself. Shouldering my backpack off, I rummage inside for a waterskin and something edible.

"Are you sure about it, Herald?" Felix says with an audible frown.

"Bit late for that, isn't it? The big, bad maleficar's already out." I snort. "He could have made a deal with a demon and be out of here long ago."

"I—I wouldn't!" Jowan protests in the background as I delve deeper into my backpack.

"That's not what I meant," Felix murmurs.

Nuts, jerky, hard cheese… No. Something easy on the stomach.

"I bet he could have used his own blood to enthral or kill whoever visits him here." Glancing up, I pin Felix with a brief but weighted look. "He didn't."

"He didn't influence us, either," Dorian says without inflexion. "I can attest to that." That's… a topic to address later.

A piece of bread will have to do, I decide and give it to Jowan.

Seeing my meagre offering, he damn near starts weeping. His eyes unfocused and wet, Jowan takes the week-old bread roll and the waterskin with shaking hands. What did he go through? Months of solitary confinement, starvation, a side-order of torture. Even considering his indirect culpability in the undead uprising, this inhumane medieval treatment is an overkill.

To give him a moment to collect himself, I turn to Dorian.

"Can you find the secret passage from here?"

He can. With ease, at that. Two rooms away from Jowan's former cell, Dorian hits a stone sitting in the third row from the ground level. With a click and a quiet rumble, a part of the wall cracks open. Dorian catches the edges with his fingertips and pulls the door all the way, revealing a square of nigh-impenetrable darkness.

"Ta-da!" He gestures at it as he does most things — with a dramatic flourish, and into the damp, cold tunnel one by one we go.

Both Felix and I light up focusing crystals on our staves. The tips of my horns scrape the ceiling, and crumbs of moist, muddy earth fall onto my neck. I shiver, bend forward, and hit a wall with my elbow. A sense of dread floods my being, threatening to overwhelm and drown me in a panic attack.

I shut my eyes and imagine an open field with fresh, tall grass spreading for miles in every direction. Sparse trees are scattered around the landscape. The air tastes sweet, like morning dew, and sunshine spills like liquid gold over the flowers. A bumblebee flies from one delicate bud to the next, the buzzing of its wings — a low humming note to compliment the birdsongs.

Counting to ten, I fix the image in my mind, open my eyes, and start walking, thinking, 'La-la-la-la-la,' as loudly as I know how the whole excruciatingly slow trek through the passage under the lake.

-[break]-

Several billion years later, I help Jowan climb up a ladder into a cellar of a mill. Gulping for breath, he falls onto a grain sack as soon as I let go of him. My waterskin makes a reappearance and does the rounds.

"We are lucky nobody reset the traps if there are any. I haven't spotted them, but then, I am no rogue. Alexius' were runic or magical in nature."

"Thank you for your timely warning, Dorian," I drawl. "Next time, how about you speak up first and don't stake our safety on a hope and a prayer? I'm all for living dangerously, but not when people depend on me for survival."

"I didn't say I am completely inept, did I?" Crouching before the opening we came out of, Dorian pulls a lever. A plate slides back, reforming the floor into a stone monolith.

"This, at least, is dwarven work." He pats the plate and gets up. "You'd need a strong magnifying glass to find a hint of a seam, and if you do, it will look like a thin scratch which you'd expect to see on an aged stone, unremarkable. And there" — he points at the far wall — "is a key-hole for a signet ring. It's the only way to open the passage from this end." His whole posture projects admiration. "Ingenious, isn't it?"

"You, and your fascination with mysteries." Felix shakes his head, a fond smile softening his face. "I never asked, how did the introduction to your paragon go?"

Even in the bluish-white light of our staves that makes everything washed-out, Dorian's cheeks visibly darken.

"Oh-ho!" I laugh in delight. "You are Varric's fanboy?"

Dorian crosses his arms over his chest. "Yes, well, there's no need to make it awkward. Everyone has hobbies. At least, mine doesn't require murdering slaves in droves for bloody sacrifices."

"Wait till we get back. Cas will be delighted to have a fellow connoisseur of fine literature." I grin. "You can gush over the Knight-Captain and her Guardsman from Swords and Shields together. I hear she's a strong, noble soul and he's dashing as all get-out."

"Dashing, you say?" Dorian perks up. "Hm. I heard negative reviews, but, perhaps, I will give it a try."

We lapse into a silence broken only by the sounds of heavy breathing while we rest, sitting, leaning or laying on hard grain sacks. Fumbling with a dark violet vial, Felix takes a sip. The tremor of his hands ceases, but — possibly thanks to the accursed lighting — his colouring doesn't improve.

Finally, Jowan asks, "What are you going to do with me?"

I tilt my head to the side, studying him.

"That's the question, isn't it?"

He's been quiet and jittery on the way up, keeping as much of a distance as walking in the middle of a group through a claustrophobic tunnel allowed. Now he is staying on the other side of the cellar.

"You already freed him," Felix points out. "Letting him go seems like the only option."

I catch Jowan's gaze. "And what will you do if I give you provisions and send you off with my blessing?"

Jowan rubs his patchy beard. Please, please, please, let it not be fleas. I suppress a shudder.

"I—I'll go somewhere where nobody knows about me and where I can help. I want to do good," says the evil maleficar, the bane of the Chantry, the horror story given flesh. "I need—" he swallows. "There's no righting the wrong I've done, but if there's a chance of redemption, I want to—to try and balance the scale."

I turn to Felix. "Knowing what's to come, do you honestly think he, a Circle mage with next to no experience of living on his own, will survive more than a couple of months? Either the templars will find him themselves, or a sanctimonious fishwife will rat on him."

"What do you propose, then? We can't take him with us." Abandoning his languid sprawl, Dorian rises to his feet. "Displacing him in time? That's preposterous!" He starts pacing.

"I'm not opposed to helping a fellow mage out, but you've already done that." Three steps forward, pivot, repeat. "Not only our mere presence here threatens to cause disruptions of the timeline, but removing a person from his proper place? It will create ripples. The consequences could be disastrous!"

I cock an eyebrow, deliberately sinking into my seat. "And what if it was always meant to be? Maybe it's a loop. Maybe we were always meant to come to the past when that ass-faced donkey fucker tried to kill me? No offence, Felix."

Felix raises his hands, palms outward, wordlessly declaring himself Switzerland.

Three steps forward, pivot, stop. "And if not?" Dorian twists the end of his moustache between his fingers. "If our actions here, now, lead to a significantly worse outcome?"

I sigh. Getting up as well, I move to a trapdoor leading to the ground floor of the mill. "I realise we've known each other a week, so you don't know my answer to anything 'predestined'." I do air quotes.

"And that is?"

I turn around. "Screw it!"

And to the tune of the DuckTales' theme song, I do a little dance and sing, "Screw it! Woohoo! Screw it like I do it — with a purpose, woohoo!"

Dropping the silliness like an anvil on a little toe, I add, "And anyway, we are getting ahead of ourselves. What if the amulet fails and leaves us stranded here? Are you okay with being a silent bystander while everything around you goes up in flames? Let's roast marshmallows on the bonfires of the damned? I sure as hell am not."

"E-excuse me," Jowan asks. "but what is going on here?"

"Oh, nothing extraordinary. I'm just recruiting you to the Inquisition." Switching on a megawatt smile that makes him lean away, I ask, "Would you like to help us save the world?"

His answer is obvious and unsurprising.

A.N. DA-wiki says that typically only courts and scholars use the high names for months, but my headcanon's that most Circle mages use them. It started as a fuck-you to the Chantry (since they originated in Tevinter) and just continued on throughout the ages. Also, Jowan is a nerd and, like, used to live in the library. He'd a lot of theoretical knowledge but lacked practice, then he was afraid of using magic at all and barely started practical exercises with Connor, and that didn't last long, too. Ahem. Anyway, using high names for months is a Circle of Magi thing.

Miss Muffet's Revenge is in the top ten of the best spider killers. Never used it myself. *shrug*