#sovellan

Prelude: Shattered:

Lavellan

Pain. Lancing up her arm in a sluggish, dream-like state is what finally pulls her back to the surface of consciousness. Her head pounds and her body aches. The stone is cold beneath her legs, but it helps anchor her back into the world rather than her dreams. A cold draft raises goosebumps along her skin. Didn’t they get that fixed forever ago? There shouldn’t be any cracks in the formidable walls. Though, the latest siege surely left more repairs wanting.

"Dorian—” she gasps out weakly, the skin of her head dragging against the stones as she pulls herself to her knees. Metal shackles announce themselves with a tale tell rattle with each shift, loud in the silent room. Finally, her eyes open, clearing away bits of blurriness with each blink. Thankfully, it’s a dark room. Lavellan doesn’t think her splitting headache could handle any level of brightness.

Everything shatters apart and scatters about her like puzzle pieces when a sharp, blinding pain spikes up her arm. It’s too sudden to scream. It’s too much to cry. She can only gasp in shock. Familiar and foreign. This pain is not natural. This pain shouldn’t exist. It’s not a phantom pain of a lost limb. It’s real.

Lost limb? She’d never lost a limb. Where had that thought come from? An echoing lance of pain stabs her mind and she groans until both the oddly green mark on her hand and the ache in her skull pound to the same rhythm of misery. Why isn’t she panicking? Anyone else would be panicking to find some mark upon their hand, causing enough pain to long for unconsciousness again. In fact, it’s almost comforting to find it there. Why?

Fragments of answers shaped like memories or dreams swirl around her, and she tries desperately to reach for them. Before any progress can be made, she’s disrupted by a door banging open and two figures joining her in the damp cell. Soldiers standing guard around her all sheathe their swords. Had they been there the whole time? Why did they need to keep their swords drawn? Her manacles clink. Had they been afraid of her? By the Dread Wolf, Shems really would use any excuse, wouldn’t they?

But they’re not important. The two that had entered are. Lavellan squints through the darkness, stuffing the glowing mark between her legs to dampen the glare of its light. Immediately, the name of one the women jumps to her tongue, even if she does not say it. The other floats near the surface of the murky lake of her mind but quickly submerges again before she can grasp it.

Cassandra, dressed in the familiar armor of a Seeker, stands tall and proud despite the heaviness of catastrophe. Stomach full of mantra, she burns like a beacon. “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you now?” Cassandra asks. “The Conclave is destroyed. Everyone who attended is dead. Except for you.”

Lavellan shakes her head, trying to clear it as flashing images surface and submerge again, too rapidly for her to comprehend. Screaming. Nothing tells her anything of where she is or what’s going on. She should know. No matter how hard she claws for them, they do not return. Even if her memory refuses to comply, everything here is far too familiar. Can’t they see something is horribly wrong?

Cassandra reaches down, grabbing Lavellan’s wrist in a near fracturing hold and forces the mark onto display. “Explain this.” The Anchor flares slightly for dramatic effect, as if it knew people were talking about it. The sickly green light casts the room and her mind in shadows, illuminating only the sharpest angles of Cassandra’s face and reflecting off her armor.

Words whisper around them, words that only Lavellan hear. Incomprehensible riddles and phrases, lost before they’re found. Why is the air so loud?

“I—can’t.” Lavellan’s eyes are glued to her hand. To the anchor. Its light dances between them. The only thing keeping her alive and the very thing damning her to death.

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Lavellan insists. Finally, her gaze pulls free and snaps to the face of the Seeker. She can see it now, where she couldn’t before. Anger, yes. Anger risen out of fear. Terror. The world has come crashing down and there’s nowhere to go. Nothing to defeat. Only a hole in the sky and endless, devastating death. Wait. Hole in the sky? Her head is jumbled again, tripping over itself. What’s real? What’s delusional? That’s a matter of debate.

“You’re lying!” Cassandra insists, gripping Lavellan roughly by the collar. An act of desperation made by a terrified woman, grasping for answers in a world gone mad. The sudden wrench of her muscles sets her whole body into dull aches, as if she’d tripped and tumbled down a steep hill.

“We need her, Cassandra,” the other woman intervenes. The Left Hand. Left. Reaching. The Left Hand remembers a knife slipped to her in darkness and wonders why the flower blooms.

“It blooms because even in the darkest of night, there will always be dawn,” Lavellan mumbles, dizzy and aching.

The Left Hand freezes. “What did you say?”

Lavellan shakes her head, forcing her eyes to focus on the familiar face. “Did…” It takes her a moment more to pull back together. “Did you say people died?

The Left Hand frowns. “Do you remember what happened? How this began?”

“I remember…so much screaming.”  Her eyebrows knit together in thought. Cassandra paces. There’s a steady drip of water somewhere distant in the cell. Several sets of lungs breathe, in and out. “running,” she finally says. “Things were chasing me. And then…a woman?” It’s starting to come back to her. Her clan. Her mission. The Conclave.

“A woman?”

“I don’t know,” Lavellan says, looking up at them. “I can’t remember.”

Cassandra studies her for a minute. Her steely eyes against vivid green. Lavellan can see the moment she makes up her mind. “Go to the forward camp, Leliana. I will take her to the rift.”

Full Chapter Available on Ao3

Tagging those that expressed interest earlier this week ^-^

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