"It is not worth your life."

"It never is," she says, tiredly.

Fortunately, one of the scouts, a dwarf by the name of Harding, comes skidding into their camp by the side of the road at the foot of the mountains. "Lady Cassandra! Your wors- uh, Lionheart! A rift, up ahead."

Oh good, a distraction from the awkwardness.

Onwards to deal with that?

Yes, and any others they come across. The rifts should take priority, even if it slows them down.

Fortunately, most of the rifts don't seem to have opened right on top of any civilians...

Not that there are too many of those on these backcountry roads. Nor are there too many demons at the rifts... It might make more sense for the soldiers to continue ahead to the Crossroads, while the others delay to close the rifts.

They're handling them okay even with a small group, and the soldiers will be more useful establishing a forward base, probably.

That will be more efficient. With no objections, Cassandra orders it done.

It honestly makes their own job a bit faster in some ways, for things like 'clearing rifts' a small group can hit a lot of small rifts in quick succession. 

Yes. (For all their differences, Cassandra will admit that Varric and Solas are indeed competent.)

(High praise indeed.)

Hn. Don't let them know.

She can keep a secret. 

Appreciated.

All told, Bellona's party is behind the soldiers by about a day and a half by the time they reach the Crossroads. The soldiers have already set up a base camp on a shady overhang above the road and begun quietly evacuating civilians. Mage and templar forces have been regularly clashing down at the market area. Now that the heavy hitters are here, it should be possible for the Inquisition to decisively intervene in one of those battles and buy everyone a little breathing room.

If they've been reliably clashing in the same area, that works to Bellona's advantage pretty well. 

Yes, usually they wind up near the center. She probably can prepare some alchemical traps or the like.

Are they observing the area at all? 

It seems like she's in the clear, for now.

Then prepare she shall. 

And around midmorning the next day, the combatants come pouring in.

She knows just enough alkahestry for chained arrays, so from where she's hiding she's able to see the forces entering and their front lines engaging -

And she carefully sets off a subset of the small landmine arrays she'd seeded along the roads - powerful enough to take off an unarmored leg or seriously injure an armored foot, not so powerful to damage buildings, the energy bound in them directed upwards away from the road.

There's a very, very brief moment of glowing energy before the explosions begin.

The heavily armored templars are the quickest to react, shields snapping downwards to block the blast, and the bright shine of their smites reaching out in attempt to overwhelm and diffuse whatever magic trickery is afoot. Unfortunately for them, alchemy (as Bellona so often says) is not magic- or at least, it's sufficiently different that their smites don't do anything to help them.

The mages' barrier spells fare slightly better at protecting them, but far fewer mages were able to react in time to shield from the ground below. They don't have the templars' years of combat training behind them.

The templars unlucky enough to be standing directly on an array still won't be running anytime soon, unless they had the foresight to jump on those shields (or were fast enough to get off the array, of course).

An awful lot of her enemies won't be running anytime soon.

Relatedly, walls of glassy stone rise up to cut off easy retreat, and to separate the mages and templars from each other. That array originates directly from where she's kneeling on the ground on a rise above her enemies, and they might be able to track her rough location by the tiny discharge. Not that she gives them much of a chance; further pre-scribed arrays are triggered by the explosions to set off a cascade of flash-bangs, disorienting and preventing her enemies from easily tracking what she's doing.