A Second Chance

Kendra knew this day would come, she could feel it in her bones and her soul that every ragged breath she drew would bring her closer to her last. The only person at her bedside was her twin brother Kendrick.

Orphaned at birth by a mother who couldn't care for sick children, they had no family besides each other and Kendrick's wife Amber. Kendra had come to terms with her death fifteen years ago, when they first gave her a year to live when she was only ten. Dying didn't frighten her, it was leaving her brother that scared her.

Chemo extended her time by fourteen years, but she had stopped two years ago. Kendra was tired; of being sick because of the radiation the doctors pumped into her veins, tired of losing all of her hair because of the poison that killed cancer cells. Her cancer was terminal, she knew there was no miracle cure and it was just inevitable. She had accepted death a long time ago, Kendrick wasn't alone anymore, he had just gotten married.

"Don't cry. We both knew that I wouldn't make it to twenty-six. I was lucky to make it to fifteen. You have Amber to take care of you." Kendra said as she held on to her brother's hand weakly. He kissed her hand and lay his head on her lap. After that there was no sound but the flatline warnings on the machines that monitor her vitals. Kendrick cried for the loss of his sister, such a good person didn't deserve to die this way.

Kendra had thought heaven would be much different, not that she had been a firm believer in any sort of God. This was just… empty. It was nothingness. No pain or fear, just darkness.

"You had such a terrible fate, child. Why did you not find a cure?" A female voice said from the dark, it seemed familiar, but at the same time she was sure she'd never heard it before. It was aged and wise, but the accent threw her.

"My time was up. I've accepted my fate. Who are you?" Kendra asked, her bare feet echoing on the wet terrain she could barely see.

"I am the one who has decided to give you a second chance. I have helped many achieve great things, I am curious to see what you do with the gifts you have been granted for this new journey." The voice said, it seemed to move around Kendra, where did she know this voice from?

"Flemeth…" she said aloud, it was neither a question or a statement, more of a realization. That's when an elderly woman in grey and red armor stepped into her line of sight. She expected the wrapped horn hair and maroon studded leather with feathers.

"Very good, child. You have been granted the gifts of immortality and knowledge. A second chance to live a life without sickness in a world you think of often and fondly." Flemeth said, seriousness in her voice.

"Thedas… but… Thedas isn't real!" She said, shock entangled itself around her brain. Flemeth chuckled.

"It is very real, girl. And so is he. Maybe you can change the Dread Wolf's decisions. He is my friend, but tearing down the veil is a disastrous choice. Life will not be easy, but I have faith in you as I did the Warden and the Champion." Flemeth said and Kendra knew what that meant.

"What?!" And everything fell from beneath her.

When she woke the first time, there was a throbbing in the back of her head and she could hear voices, someone close by. Darkness enveloped her once again.

The next time she was laying on cold stone, her wrists ached before she realized she bore Solas' mark on her left hand. But it didn't hurt her when it flared. Kendra sat up and the door flew open. The tall woman in plate armor was not the Cassandra she knew. This woman had longer hair, about chin length. Her eyes were a dark brown and she didn't have any scars on her face. The bright light assaulted Kendra's eyes.

Kendra remembered the game well, but why couldn't she remember anything after her talk with… who did she speak to?

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you now?" Cassandra's voice was rough, threatening. Her hand never leaving the pommel of the sword on her hip. "The Conclave is destroyed, and everyone but you perished. Why?" This was not video game lines, Kendra actually feared for her life as green light spewed from her hand once more.

Kendra stayed silent, she didn't remember anything. She actually couldn't even remember what happened at Adamant Fortress, where she knew she got her memories back later. "I don't know." She said, tears threatening to overflow for the loss of life Solas caused. No, she knew Solas wasn't the true culprit here, but if his orb had never been allowed to be located, none of this would have happened to the Inquisitor. To her.

Suddenly, a sword was pressed against her throat and she could feel the sharp edge of the blade slice through a bit of skin and warm blood dripping down her neck. "We need her Cassandra!" A voice, very delicate and truly almost french, said from behind Cassandra. The blade was pulled away and the warrior backed up.

"Do you remember what happened?" Leliana asked. She looked very different from her video game counterpart as well. Instead of purple chainmail, she wore leather breeches under a chainmail and leather cuirass. Her red hair was long, in a single braid down her back and she had darkened circles under her eyes.

This was where video game dialogue would come in handy, "I was running… things were chasing me and there was a… a woman?" It wasn't a false account, she could remember being chased by giant spider things, and there had been a woman.

"I will take her to the rift, Leliana." Cassandra stated and lifted Kendra by the arm roughly. Kendra still felt weak, like when she was lying in a hospital bed. Her health hadn't recovered after dying, she was still very weak and her immune system was probably shot, but at least she couldn't die, right?

As soon as they stepped out into the daylight, Kendra covered her eyes. She could feel a buzzing in the air around her. Then she looked up, the swirling green hole in the sky over the beautiful mountains. It surged, and the force actually knocked her to her knees. It didn't hurt, but the pull of the breach to the mark was powerful, she could feel it.

Cassandra helped her up, "I want to help close it, I don't remember how I got this, but it may close that thing." Kendra said. She had always been a very deductive person, even as a child. Her sand colored hair whipped around her face as she was escorted through Haven. People threw things at her and called her things like 'knife-ear' and 'filthy heathen'. Had she been brought here as an elf? A quick touch to her now pointed ears confirmed it.

They came upon closed gates, and Cassandra removed the heavy metal shackles, handing them to a nearby guard. It was both uncomfortable silence and the cries of thousands as the breach expanded. Kendra took a moment, only one, to look down at herself.

She wasn't in a hospital gown, but wore leather breeches tucked into light boots, a vest over a loose cotton shirt that had been torn in places, and soaked with blood. She couldn't find any injuries.

Looking at the soldiers, she felt meek and small. She wasn't a fighter, she spent most of her childhood and her adulthood in a hospital bed, raising money for cancer research and helping the Make-A-Wish foundation. Kendra weighed maybe a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, there was no way she could overpower anything like what she believed she'd face.

Her feet stopped by themselves. Instinct put her on hyper alert before she set foot on the stone bridge Cassandra led her to. "What's wrong?" Cassandra asked, rolling her eyes at the small woman.

Kendra had to come up with an excuse quick, "I just... I don't like bridges." She said, looking up and then at the center of the bridge where a meteor hit it in the game.

Cassandra crossed the bridge and nothing happened, so Kendra followed, as quick as her legs could carry her. Instead, the meteor hit on the ice and Cassandra rolled her eyes as she ran towards demons who appeared almost out of thin air. One of the wraiths skirted across the ice and sliced Kendra's arm open as she tripped over a wooden box. Her screams received attention but when she threw her hands up in front of her face, the damn thing froze!

"You're a mage?" Cassandra asked, anger laced in the question.

"What? No… what?!" Kendra looked absolutely terrified as she examined her hands like a manic germaphobe.

"You… didn't know?" Cassandra asked hesitantly as Kendra still looked at her own hands in shock and shook her head.

"I mean, I was a… very sick kid, very sick adult too. It…" she was going to say her illness had killed her and brought her here, but thought that would sound just too odd. "My illness kept me from doing much of anything, it nearly killed me recently." She said as Cassandra offered her a hand up. A chill ran through Kendra and she shuddered before continuing to follow Cassandra through the valley.

More demons fell from the breach but Cassandra had dispatched them quickly as Kendra watched red lightning dance across her fingertips at the first sense of danger. She always thought magic was a force of will for those born with it, hers seemed instinctual.

"We're getting close, you can hear the fighting." Cassandra yelled over the sound of shrieking and the loud clang of swords against something hard as stone.

"Who's fighting?" Kendra asked as she followed Cassandra, holding her injured arm to try and staunch the flow of blood.

"You'll see, we must help them. Try to focus those spells!" Cassandra said as they came upon a broken archway and a two-foot drop. The magic buzzed in the air around her as a horror froze in front of her. The lightning danced across her hands once more and as if on impulse, it surged through the air and dispatched the demons. This didn't go unnoticed, nor did her bloody arm as someone grabbed her left hand and thrust it into the fade rift she was walking towards.

"Before more come through!" She knew that line, and who spoke it.

She turned to see him; Solas, Fen'Harel… The Dread Wolf. He was as magnificent as she imagined him to be.

"What did you do?" She asked, she could feel the adrenaline keeping her upright.

"I did nothing, the credit is yours." Solas said,though his body language said he was sizing up the tiny elven woman with the light brown hair and impossibly bright blue eyes in front of him.

Varric hadn't said anything about being ass-deep in demons, instead he approached her and waved. "You seem useful to have around, Sparky." He said, smirking.

"Sparky?" She asked. Varric and his nicknames.

"Because of your weird lightning. I'm Varric Tethras, rogue, storyteller, and occasionally, unwelcome tagalong." He winked at Cassandra, you let out an audibly disgusted noise.

"I am Solas, if there are to be introductions. I'm pleased to see you still live." Solas said, crossing his arms.

"What he means is, 'I kept you alive while you slept.'" Varric stepped up next to Kendra.

"Kendra Stone. Mage, I guess?" Kendra said, shrugging.

"Cassandra, your prisoner is a mage, though I find it difficult for any mage to have this kind of power." Solas said, effectively ignoring Kendra.

"Understood. Let's get to the forward camp." She said and they were moving again.

Kendra couldn't help but watch the way Solas moved. Anyone with any kind of deductive skills could tell he was no normal apostate. He didn't carry himself like someone who'd been homeless his whole life, there was almost an air of command about him. Even if Kendra didn't know exactly who he was, she'd have realized this.

That was also when she realized that no matter his plans, or what he did, she could never dislike him. She still loved him, and no he was real. A corporeal being she could touch if she dared. She also realized she would have to be very careful what she said to anyone.

That Chancellor guy, Roderick, wasn't at the forward camp, nor was the camp on a bridge. It was stationed on one side of the ice, tents full of the injured and the dead with healers doing everything they could. "They really should boil those bandages before they reuse them. It would cut down the chance of infection or blood-transmitted disease." She said as she saw a man take the bloody bandages off a dead soldier and begin to wrap it around another wound on a living soldier.

"Thank you, Miss. We will." The voice made her jump from where she sat, chewing on a stale piece of bread. The healer came from behind her, and ordered for someone to boil water to clean bandages.

"You know a lot about healing?" Solas asked as he stepped up to her, overhearing their conversation.

"I was a very sickly child. Spent most of my life in the care of several… healers." She'd almost said doctors.

There was no choosing which path to take, they went head on towards the temple, or what was left of it. It was nightfall before they reached the ruins. The adrenaline and fear had dissipated from Kendra's system and now she was beginning to feel the pain her adrenal gland was blocking.

Cassandra took mercy on her and had made sure she had a water skin. The stench of burned corpses had done her in by the time they reached the Temple of Sacred Ashes, however. Kendra emptied the contents of her stomach behind a broken wall.

When they reached the huge rift, her stomach dropped. She knew what awaited her on the other side; giant pride demon. Her head snapped when she heard her own voice bleeding from the tear in the veil.

Jumping down from the broken railing, Kendra followed Solas' lead and put her hand up, wincing in pain. The force of opening the closed rift was more than she could have imagined, nearly pushing her to her knees.

It took a while to take the pride demon down, again, Kendra's magic flared on instinct and she felt as if a weighted blanket crawled over her skin as she disrupted the rift five times. She never took her eyes off the hulking beast who seemed more interested in her soon to be companions and the archers than herself.

Closing the rift proved to be even more taxing as it threw her against a large pile of rubble, and she couldn't keep her eyes open.