Wyheree's Musings

He watches Camina stand there amid the collapse of everything, battered and exhausted and somehow still managing to be hopeful, holding out that fucking dagger. Offering trust and mercy, and one last chance to Solas, as though the world isn't already bleeding out at their feet. As though hope alone might be enough to stitch it back together.

For one impossible, devastating moment, Lucanis wants to believe her.

But Solas betrays them anyway.

Solas is halfway up the steps when Lucanis hears him say, "To stop now would dishonor those I have wronged to come this far."

Camina's desperate glance back over her shoulder at him is one of the many images he will carry after this day is done. But in the moment, he has no way of knowing it will be the last time she looks at him. There is a question in her eyes that seems to ask, Are you with me?

The answer is as it ever was: always.

She sprints up the steps at Solas, the spirits she calls upon reaching up from the ground below, the clutch of their bony fingers slowing him, making him stumble. In all the time he's known her, she has never been a very proficient fighter. He'd noticed it the first day he met her in the Ossuary. He hadn't understood why she wielded her magic like a blunt instrument, why every spell and twist and turn was clumsier than any fledgling he had ever seen. He'd learned later that it was because she is an academic, had been trained to protect and ward. But she was never like him — born and honed into a weapon until little else remains. She holds her staff up anyway, fighting for this world.

Camina always knew this was a weakness. She spent hours in the courtyard training and learning. He'd even sparred with her a fair few times, but she never had any hope of besting him. She'd asked him more than once for his assessment of her abilities — he was the mage killer after all. And he'd stumbled through some awkward assessments, watching her amethyst eyes for any sign he'd somehow overstepped.

Now, he wishes he'd said more. Wishes he had woken her up at whatever passed for dawn in the endless brightness of the Lighthouse. That he had insisted on training her himself. Maybe then she would have had some hope at besting Solas now.

Solas is injured, but he is still a god. And she is just one stubborn woman.

Solas's magic lashes out at her, the green sparks knocking her off her feet. Spite is furious, and Lucanis lets that rage and fury guide him. He has killed one god today; what is another?

"LEAVE. ROOK. ALONE," Spite yells as together they pounce at Solas.

Neve is back on her feet too, the icy shards of her own magic flying Solas's way. Lucanis trades blows, his rapier scraping the length of the lyrium dagger's blade. By then, Camina is at his side, her familiar necromantic magic an onslaught aimed directly at Solas.

There is a pulse of power; he and Neve are knocked off their feet. His head slams against implacable stone, and everything is blurry for too many painful seconds. When he manages to lift his head, Camina has her hands on the dagger, wrestling Solas for control. Their fighting is ugly, desperate — action and reaction.

Lucanis ignores the ringing in his ears and rolls his shoulders as he stands, readying to leap at Solas once more. Another pulse of Solas's magic, and this time he tries to roll, to dodge whatever spell is coming his way. It turns out to be pointless because a barrier has emerged, protecting him as much as it keeps him from rushing to Camina's side. He thinks it must be Neve, but the magic isn't hers. He whorls quickly, looking for the answer, to see who it is that is keeping him back. Morrigan and the Inquisitor are here.

"Solas!" The Inquisitor pleads.

How useless their attempts to persuade the Dread Wolf; Solas has control of the dagger now.

"Camina!" Lucanis screams the moment before Solas plunges the dagger into her side. He sees the blow coming, the awful arc of it, the way her dodge is far too slow.

Solas looks almost surprised to see the blow land, and Lucanis wonders if he is remembering another ally he had stabbed in much the same way. Camina seizes the opening, grits her teeth, and rips the dagger from where it was plunged, her blood spraying out, coating the ground. In another world, he thinks he might be proud of the way she uses a move he knows he taught her. The way she drops low, sweeping the dagger around to knock Solas off his feet. He knows she's sliced the backs of his legs in the process, and Solas groans as he collapses to his knees.

"Now your blood is on the dagger, too," she spits.

"Rook!" Morrigan calls, a warning, a portent.

But it is far too late. Tendrils of magic are already reaching, already seeking, already curling around them both. It happens slowly and then all at once. The Fade tear hangs open above them all like some terrible maw, and they are lifted, both of them flying into the air. The magical tendrils have pushed Camina and Solas together in some facsimile of intimacy, their bodies flush as they struggle against the magical bindings. They hang there for a moment in their struggle, suspended, caught.

And then it swallows them both before it disappears.

"Nooooooo!" The word emerges from him in a primal scream as he watches the woman he loves disappear for the second time in so many weeks.

He staggers to his feet, running at the space she just was as though he might still be able to catch her. As if there is still some echo of her to grasp onto. He glances around wildly, looking back at Morrigan — the shade of Mythal — surely she has a way to fix this, a means to make this right, to bring Camina back?

"Bring. Rook. Back!" His demon rages, and for once, he doesn't mind the way Spite rips the words from his throat.

"'Tis done….at far too high a price," Morrigan says. "The Veil repaired, sustained once more. Where they have gone, I dare not even think to follow."

"Then send me! I will go," Lucanis pleads. He'd told himself never again after Tearstone would he feel so desperately hopeless again, never again would he allow her to go somewhere he cannot follow. If only it was up to him.

It is the pity in Morrigan's eyes that is an answer in itself. He falls to his knees beside the puddle of her blood, stays there so long it runs against his knees, seeps into the leather and stains it.

There is no victory without her.