At long last, the Inquisition story I always intended to write - Blackwall has such depths. And I wanted to explore a mage suddenly thrust into the world outside the Circle and how she manages. As with all my stories, I love your feedback, and if there's anything you'd like to see between them, I'm always happy to take suggestions.

Deep in the wilds of southern Ferelden, a man threw aside the flap of his worn tent, the canvas patched many times in the past decade, and he looked up into the sky, at the glowing green rent that had appeared there.

Another man might have been curious. But not Blackwall. He had passed on the chance to be curious about what the rest of the world did a long, long time ago. This green thing was just the latest of the world's foibles that he wanted no part of.

Instead, he picked up some kindling and began to stir the coals of his fire. He could already smell the hot coffee he would put on, taste its rich bitterness chasing the cold away.

But despite his avowed intention to ignore it, the green glow drew his eyes over and over again. Strange crackling fingers of light shot from it, toward the land, and he couldn't help but wonder. What was it? Why was it there? How long would it last?

It wasn't that far from him—off to the east, in the mountains, but not far north.

The fire caught, crackling, and he went down to the stream to wash his face and fill his battered coffeepot. When he came back, he frowned at the sky. Was the green thing bigger? Yes, he thought it was bigger. It still didn't have anything to do with him, though.

Or so he told himself. He made the coffee, savoring the aroma, the heat, the flavor. Was there anything nicer than a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning, only him, the birds, the stream splashing in the distance—and the imagined sound of those fingers of green light shooting out above him.

Blackwall frowned at the thing in the sky. After years of solitude, years of flogging himself mentally over his misdeeds, years of going over and over the events of his past as if he could change things if he just thought about them hard enough, he had finally won through to some measure of … contentment, at least, if not peace or acceptance of himself and of his crimes. The last thing he needed now was some big tear in the sky to remind him of everything he had tried so hard to put behind him.

Maybe if he went further south. He knew most of the wilds of Ferelden by this time; he had tromped over half the country, it felt like, these last ten years and more. During the Blight, he had done his best to fight as many darkspawn as he could, but quietly—rumors reached him that there were still one or two Grey Wardens in the country after the battle of Ostagar, and he had no wish to find himself among them and have to answer any awkward or incriminating questions. Just as he had no wish to be drawn into whatever work would need to be done to fix this hole in the sky.

No. He shook his head decisively. Once he had finished his coffee, he would pack up his kit and go somewhere to the west, leaving the sky to mend itself.

It was the cold that roused her. After a lifetime in the Circle, always indoors, always in thick warm robes, Bridget Trevelyan was not at all familiar with being cold; and what she had experienced of it since the Circle fell, she didn't like.

This was a particularly bone-deep cold. As she came slowly to wakefulness she became aware that it came from a stone floor she was kneeling on. Her eyes opened, blinking as they adjusted to the dimness of the room, and she lifted her arms, only then realizing that her hands were locked to a metal bar.

There was a strange itching tingling sensation in the palm of her left hand, and she dearly wished she could scratch it. Then it spread, the itching and tingling becoming burning, paralyzing pain radiating out from her hand, and a green glow filled the room.

She cried out, clenching her fist around the green thing as the pain intensified and then ebbed away. Bridget slumped on the ground, shivering and terrified. Where was she? Who was holding her, and what had they done to her hand?

Reaching for her magic, she found it ready and waiting for her, but it wouldn't do her much good in her current situation. The Ostwick Circle had been a peaceful place, and the Templars had firmly encouraged the mages to focus on theory and healing in their magic. Bridget could whip up a mean healing potion, and she could quote chapter and verse on the properties of various herbs … but none of that got her out of these shackles.

She cast her mind back, trying to plumb the shadows of her memory for anything that would tell her where she was and how she'd gotten here.

The Conclave, she remembered that, sitting in the back row between her friends Franko and Drea. The three of them had escaped the fall of the Ostwick Circle together, thanks to the intervention of Bridget's brother Malachy, Bann of Ostwick, and after some time recuperating with Malachy's family, had been … well, the best word for it was gifted to the Chantry. They had been tributes, Bridget thought. She wasn't bitter about it for herself, but she had argued with Malachy about Drea and Franko's fates.

She tried as best she could to reach inside her jacket and see if her locket still hung around her neck. If they had taken that, she'd … what would she do? She was powerless. Just as she had been in the face of Malachy's determination, and that of his wife Deirdre, that she should be sent far away from their home, far away from Declan. Their son. Her son, adopted by her childless brother and his wife as their heir. Declan who had her very own brassy golden curls, whose little face was Mykal's and her own, who had looked at her with no fear and a great deal of curiosity.

A tear rolled down her cheek. Bridget couldn't blame Deirdre for wanting her gone. If she had stayed, she wouldn't have been able to hide the truth. Declan would have read it in her face, or enough of it to disturb the careful plan they had made together so long ago. It was the best she could have hoped for for her son—he was being raised by her family, she knew how he fared and what he was doing, she knew he was well cared for. None of that would have been true if the Chantry had taken him, she reminded herself. And so it was far better for all of them that she was nowhere near him. Still … leaving him behind had created an emptiness inside her even greater than the one she'd felt when she gave him to Malachy in the first place.

A door opened, jarring Bridget from her memories, and two women came in. "Up," one of them said harshly.

Bridget tried to rise, but with her hands shackled, it was nearly impossible to get her balance. Impatiently, the woman grabbed the bar holding Bridget's hands and hauled her to her feet.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you."

"I … don't know who you are?"

The woman raised a hand as if to strike her, and Bridget shrank back as best she could.

A gloved hand caught the woman's wrist, and a softer voice said, "Cassandra, stop."

"Why should I, Leliana? She killed the Divine!"

There was a deep grief in Cassandra's voice that told Bridget what she said was the truth. "The Divine is dead?"

"Do not pretend you do not know!"

Bridget shook her head, trying to remember the Conclave. She'd gotten up, she remembered, going to find a privy, and left the main chamber, but then … "Everything's a blur," she whispered. She looked up at the woman. "My friends?"

"Everyone who was at the Conclave is dead. Everyone but you."

"No. No!"

"It is the truth." The woman with the softer voice, Leliana, stepped in front of Bridget. Her eyes were soft and wide and blue and even appeared to hold some sympathy. "I am sorry about your friends."

Cassandra, the angry one, made a noise of disgust and stalked off into a dark corner of the cell, as if to collect herself.

"Tell me what you remember."

"Not very much. I was sitting in the meeting, and I had to … well ..."

"You must be joking. You claim that you are here because you had to piss?" Cassandra spat a word that was unmistakably a curse, even though Bridget didn't understand the language.

"I'm sorry." Bridget thought of Drea, who had been her mentor in the Circle for so many years; of Franko, with his charming smile and keen wit. "You're certain? Everyone?"

"Unless you had accomplices," Cassandra said.

"I didn't do anything! I was … running? And something, something was chasing me. I remember someone stretching out her hand to me …"

"Her hand?" Leliana asked. "A woman?"

"Yes? I'm not certain."

The other two women exchanged a look, and Cassandra sighed in obvious reluctance and exasperation. "Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her to the rift."

"The rift? What rift?" Bridget asked.

"Cassandra will explain. Won't you, Cassandra?" Leliana's tone was a warning.

"Yes. I will explain very carefully and without harming the prisoner," Cassandra said, as if reciting a particularly annoying lesson.

"Very well." Leliana left the room, and Bridget and Cassandra stood looking at one another.

"Was that … the Leliana?" Bridget ventured after a moment.

"What of it? Shall I call her back so that you can get her to sign your shackles?"

"I'm sorry," Bridget said. "About the Divine, and … and everyone. Truly. They were my friends, too."

"So you say." Some of the hostility had left Cassandra's voice, however. She unlocked Bridget's hands from the shackles and bound them in front of her with rope, instead. "Come."

Bridget followed her outside, blinking in the sudden light. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that the light was somehow … greenish. Like the light that had come from her hand. It was itching more fiercely now, almost painfully, as Bridget lifted her eyes to see a great tear in the sky. She could feel magical energy pulsing from it, pulling at her, and could almost hear the whispers of demons in her mind. She recoiled from it, and Cassandra nodded, staring up at it herself.

"We call it 'the Breach'. It grows larger with each passing hour. Can you feel the demons through it?"

There was no censure in the voice, just curiosity.

"Yes," Bridget whispered. Her short time in the world outside the Circle had taught her that no one trusted a mage, and she didn't want to draw attention to herself here in the outdoors, not knowing who might be able to hear her.

"This is not the only such rift," Cassandra told her. "Just the largest. All were caused by the explosion at the Conclave." Her grey eyes rested on Bridget thoughtfully.

"What kind of explosion tears holes in the sky?"

"I imagined you could tell me that."

Bridget shook her head. "I would never do anything like that. Please, you must believe me. You can write to my brother, Malachy Trevelyan, Bann of Ostwick. He can tell you."

"You are the sister of the Bann of Ostwick? Indeed." Cassandra chuckled. "Quite the illustrious prisoner."

"That isn't what I meant."

As she spoke, a stab of green light shot from the rent in the sky, and Bridget could feel it, the spike of pain from her hand sending her to her knees, screaming. After a moment, it subsided, but the itching sensation was stronger now than it had been before.

Cassandra knelt next to her, her voice kind in spite of herself. "Each time the Breach expands, your mark spreads … and it is killing you."

Bridget turned her hand over, seeing a miniature version of the Breach in the middle of her palm, almost as if she herself was a rift in the Fade. The energy from the mark was like nothing she had ever experienced before, and nothing in all her knowledge, all her hours spent in the Circle library, told her how to fix it, or make it go away.

"So … there's nothing we can do?"

Cassandra looked at her for a long moment, her grey eyes studying Bridget's face. At last she said, "There is a chance that your mark could be used to close the Breach, if you are willing to try."

"What have I got to lose?"

"An excellent point." Cassandra got to her feet. She grabbed the back of Bridget's jacket and hauled her up as well and they made their way through a wintry, makeshift camp. People scuttled away from them on all sides, and Bridget could feel the sharp cold of their stares as surely as she could the biting wind that whistled through her clothes.

"They have decided your guilt," Cassandra said. "They need it. The people of Haven mourn our Most Holy, Divine Justinia." She glanced at Bridget. "Did you see her?"

Divine Justinia. Something about that teased at her mind … but no. Bridget shook her head. She didn't think so.

Cassandra sighed, genuine grief crossing her scarred face. "The Conclave was our last chance for peace between mages and Templars. Most Holy brought their leaders together; now they are dead. We lash out, like the sky." Cassandra turned to Bridget, her hands on her shoulders, her face twisted with grief and fear. "We must think beyond ourselves now, as she did. Until the Breach is sealed." She looked deeply into Bridget's eyes for a long moment, searching for answers that Bridget didn't have, before untying her hands. "There will be a trial; I can promise no more."

"I understand."

"Come," Cassandra said. "It is not far."

"Where are you taking me?"

"You will see when we get there."

There was little Bridget could answer to that remark, or the cold finality of Cassandra's tone. There were so many questions running through her head, she couldn't have picked which to start with, so for the moment it seemed easiest just to follow Cassandra and hope the Breach didn't widen any further and assume she would have answers later.

The second of those was a vain hope; in the middle of their walk up into the mountains, the Breach expanded and the pain that ran up from Bridget's palm and swirled around her body was like nothing she had ever experienced before. She fell to the ground, screaming and clutching her hand.

Cassandra, her face concerned and her hands gentle, came back to help her up, and she let Bridget lean on her shoulder for a few steps until she could walk on her own again.

Looking up at the tear in the sky, Bridget couldn't believe that anyone could have survived it, much less that she herself had done so. "How did I even escape? Does anyone know?"

There was a pause, as if Cassandra had to swallow back a sharp response, before she said, slowly, "They said … that you stepped out of a rift, and fell unconscious. Those who were there at the time say that a woman was in the rift behind you, but it closed before she could escape. No one knows who she was." She looked at Bridget curiously. "Some are saying she was Andraste herself."

"Why would Andraste bother with me?"

"My question precisely." As they walked, Cassandra surveyed the snowy lands before them. "Everything farther in the valley was laid waste, including the Temple of the Sacred Ashes."

"Cassandra." They both stopped walking, looking at one another. "I didn't do this. Whatever happened, I could never have—I would never have done anything like this."

"You say that, but you do not truly know what actions of yours may have led to this. Is it possible that when everyone else perished, you alone stepped from a rift, unscathed, bearing a mark that is connected to that … thing," she pointed to the Breach, "and yet you were uninvolved? It would take someone of more … faith? generosity? naivete? than I possess to believe such a tale." Her face softened, just a touch. "But I believe you when you say you have no knowledge of what occurred, and I will … endeavor to have faith until you prove yourself unworthy of it. I can promise no more."

"It's enough. Thank you."

Bridget followed Cassandra along the icy path, her thin slippers hardly suited for walking like this. Her robes were equally thin, and she shivered in the chilly air.

"It is not much farther," Cassandra said without turning around.

There was every chance that Cassandra's "not much farther" was miles away from what Bridget would consider not much farther, but there seemed little point in complaining about it. Bridget was not at all used to walking, or the outdoors, or physical activity in general.

They were crossing a frozen river, or a pond, or a lake—Bridget couldn't quite tell which. Her experiences out of doors had been limited since she was taken to the Circle at nine years old and as a result, she didn't judge distances particularly well.

Ahead of her, she heard the scrape of metal on metal and looked up to see that Cassandra had drawn her sword. A shade hovered just in front of Cassandra, and Bridget shrank back in horror. The Breach was letting demons through, then. Cassandra had said so, but Bridget hadn't truly believed it until just now.

Another shade rose, groaning, from the ice in front of Bridget, and she backed away from it. She considered screaming for Cassandra, but Cassandra had her hands full with the first shade. Bridget threw a hand up in front of her face, flexing the fingers, trying to think of something, anything she could do. Without entirely meaning to, she formed a ball of energy in her fingers, and the energy shot forth, spearing through the shade. It sank back for a moment, then came at her again, and Bridget screamed.

Cassandra came hurrying back, slicing through the shade with her sword. "Why didn't you fight back?" she asked impatiently.

"I—I didn't know how," Bridget admitted. "We weren't taught any fighting skills; the Templars wouldn't have wanted us to be able to fight back against them. I know people who found such spells, and practiced them in secret, but I was never one of them. I hit it with a ball of light I used to use to read in the dormitory at night." It wasn't entirely true—she had known how to fight during her Harrowing, but even then she had done so poorly, barely surviving … and that had been well over a decade ago.

Tapping her foot, Cassandra stared at her. "It had not occurred to me that you would not know how to defend yourself. I will try to stay closer as we move through, but there may be more demons ahead. There probably are. If we run into them again, just hit them with that light spell as fast as you can. Perhaps that will keep them away from you long enough for me to finish them off."

Bridget nodded, keeping to herself the irony that the very woman who had all but accused her of mass murder was now suggesting she use magic in combat.

Cassandra nodded, still studying her. "I will not forget that you agreed to come willingly. You should know, I am a Seeker of the Chantry. I know how to handle mages, should you decide to …" She stopped, frowning. "Never mind. Let's just go."

They kept moving up icy, slippery mountain paths, and more demons appeared in their way. When there were only one or two, Cassandra took them out. To Bridget, her movements were almost too fast to keep track of, each thrust of the sword and tilt of the shield appearing to be timed for maximum damage to her opponent.

Once they ran into a group of four. Cassandra engaged them all immediately, and Bridget hid behind a pile of rocks. She peeked out and found Cassandra slowly being edged back, a scorch mark on one arm from a fiery rage demon. Bridget swallowed hard against her fear. She put out her hand, pretending to herself that it didn't tremble, and the ball of energy formed. Then she snatched her hand back. What if she hit Cassandra with it? Then she would be alone here in the wilderness.

But Cassandra couldn't stand against all four. She was falling further back, and something was wrong with her shield arm. Bridget put her hand up again, and this time, it didn't tremble as she shot the bolt of energy at the nearest demon.

She nearly shrieked and ran when it turned toward her, but Cassandra needed help, and that knowledge helped her keep her spot and send more energy stabbing forth.

At last the demons were gone, and Bridget hurried out from behind the rocks to where Cassandra stood rubbing her injured shield arm.

Cassandra glared at her. "Next time, do not leave it so long."

"I'm sorry. I was … I was frightened. I've been in the Circle since I was a small child—they didn't teach me how—" She let the words trail off, since the truth was she hadn't been taught anything that was useful out here in the world. Bridget reached for Cassandra's arm, placing her hands gently on it. She could feel the torn ligaments beneath her fingers, and she reached out with her mind, pulling them back together and knitting them strong again.

When it was done, Cassandra flexed her arm. "Well, perhaps you are not entirely useless." Her voice was gruff, but her eyes were kind, and Bridget realized with some pleasure that this, at least, she could use outside the Circle. Perhaps there was a place for her in the world after all.