Veilfire Library

It was not loneliness that engulfed them this time, but absolute terror. The wave of light shrieked as it passed them, crackled like every flame he’d ever seen and pierced each joint as if he’d been struck by lightning. Battles flashed before him, battles he’d fought himself against the behemoth titans. The earth rattled around him, mountains split asunder from the force of Mythal’s spells and melted under Elgar’nan’s heat. And then it was gone and he was howling.

“Atish, emma lath, ea eth.” The Inquisitor’s voice seemed impossibly small. Distant. He could feel the imprint of her hand shaking on his arm and looked down. “Telir somniar,” she said, craning to see his face. In his panic, he had transformed. He let his wolf body diminish, dwindle away. “It’s over, it’s over,” she said. “How did you remain calm?” he asked, pulling her into him. “I didn’t,” she said, returning his hard hug. “This one will be more difficult.” “Yes,” he said, staring over her shoulder at the approaching wave. “It is panicked. The pulses will be closer together.”

“A good dream. A safe dream,” she muttered. “It is the size of mountain ranges. What can it fear? How do we make something like that feel safe?” He closed his eyes, mostly to shut out the scarlet sparks of the approaching wave. There was nothing else to see. Not yet. “It is about the sensation, my love. Not the setting.” “I feel… stripped of any such memories, Vhenan. I cannot think of much aside from this overwhelming dread,” she admitted.

“It’s the only fair way,” Varric’s warm voice broke the blank. Solas felt her flinch slightly against him, but did not halt the dream. He only had a few moments before the terror returned and the memory would scatter if it was not solid enough. A bard sang somewhere nearby. “Then perhaps I should not play. For everyone’s comfort,” Solas remembered saying. “Bull’s got the same, droopy. Come on, ‘s just three drinks. Seen you do that at the ball in ten minutes flat and never blink.” 

“They really do want you here,” Cole’s voice floated through the air. “It isn’t for the cards, it is just better with you here. And it’s not just her. They all want you here, even Blackwall. Even if you said no to the rules. Please, Solas, you want to stay, too.”  Floorboards creaked and then became visible, solid under his feet. The Inquisitor’s grasp on him loosened slightly and she looked around, her own mind already filling in gaps before his own could. The Rest’s large fireplace bloomed into being, flickering against several tables shoved unceremoniously together. Solas could feel those tabletops even now. Perpetually sticky no matter how many times Cabot swiped at them with a damp rag and reeking of stale wine. Scratched with dozens of Inquisition names and symbols. Uneven chairs that squeaked and tilted dangerously.

Cole perched upon the bar beside him, his hat pushed far back, legs kicking the wood. Cabot did not scold. Solas had guessed the others did not see him. “You do not have to be a god. Or a commander. Or someone else’s wolf. They love you as you are. You can stay.” “Come on, Chuckles, I’ll make Cabot break out the good stuff.” Varric appeared with Sera leaning on his shoulder. Both younger than when he had last seen them. His chest ached, but he did not push the memory away.

The Inquisitor’s terrified expression dissolved into something more comfortable. She reached for Varric and melted when he embraced her. Solas knew it was not really Varric. He thought she probably knew too. Not like Blackwall or Felassan had been. A dream, only, but solid enough for her to smile.

“Oh no, darling, don’t let him order the drinks,” Vivienne laughed over Solas’s shoulder. “Three of Varric’s choice will put you under the table and taste like Cabot’s dishwater all the way down. Trust me to handle it.” “Pah,” said Sera, “You don’t fool me, you can outlast Bull if it came to it, Vivvy.” “True. But I choose not to suffer while I do so. Inquisitor, is that West Hill Brandy still in the cellar?” The Inquisitor turned toward her. “I’ll go and—” she gasped as if struck and the dream shattered.

Solas reached for the Inquisitor’s hand but she screamed when he touched her. He had only an instant to feel sorrow for it before fear swallowed him whole. It was not Titans this time. And it was not Solas who was in danger. Mythal’s hand was outstretched, offering Elgar’nan their dagger, offering proof of what they had done. Elgar’nan’s smile was cruel, surely Mythal must see his cruelty. Surely she would step back, shield herself. But of course, this was not real memory but only how Solas imagined a scene he had never been present for. Elgar’nan’s voice was treacherous, arguing coolly that they had been mistaken. That Solas’s ire had surely led Mythal astray. That she should not let such things alarm her. Mythal shook her head, pleaded with them. Her attention called by Sylaise, she turned. Elgar’nan’s arm raised, Mythal stepped back too late, too late to put the distance she needed between them and— the dream dissolved.

  The Herald’s Rest slowly reappeared around him, piece by piece as if it were a child’s toy being constructed. The bard’s song was different. A weaving song, a hymn to Sylaise sung in an unfamiliar man’s voice. He found himself sitting beside Cassandra. The Inquisitor frantically reconstructing the memory around them. “Well?” asked the Seeker, nudging his arm gently. He glanced at her cards, even as Blackwall appeared on his other side and pressed a glass of brandy into his hand.

“These,” he said, pointing to her knights with shaking fingers. “But I thought snakes were better.” Varric sighed. “Serpents. And it depends, remember?” “Dunno why I insisted on the brandy,” muttered Blackwall, “No way you can win with the Seeker, she just tells everyone her cards.” “Hmm,” said Solas, not really listening. He was looking for the Inquisitor.

She sat at the far corner, next to Iron Bull who was playing much the same role for her as Solas had been for Cassandra. She watched him intently.  “Are you well?” she called down the table.  “He’s already got at least a pair on the first play, I’d say he’s doing well,” said Iron Bull.  But Solas knew that was not what she had meant. “Yes, Vhenan,” he said. Sera whistled.

“Well,” said Dorian, “are you going to play Seeker, or should we have another open hand to go over the rules again?” “Are you certain?” Cassandra asked him. Solas wanted to get up, draw closer to the Inquisitor so that he would not be parted from her when the next wave of fear came, but the dream was fragile. Push it too far from what they both remembered of this night and it would collapse. “Yes. If it were my hand, I would bet a crown that Varric has the Angel of Death. He always goes quiet when he does or leaves the table to order another round. It is the best you will be able to draw.”

Blackwall groaned and slid his cards onto the table. Iron Bull raised an eyebrow. Pointed to a card in the Inquisitor’s hand before Sera tapped at his glass to remind him to drink. Solas closed his eyes as the play moved on. Tried to remember the warmth of the fire, the texture of the tabletop, the glass in his hand, what the weather had been. Tried to layer in complexity as a buffer against the Titan’s panic. So something of the memory would remain when the next wave passed. Like digging pits in the sand as the tide comes in. 

He had felt easy in this instant. A little tipsy and it didn’t make him nervous to realize he had let himself become so. He had just been a man among friends who did not look to him for anything more complex than which card was better to play or to call a bluff.  He had been certain, just for the instant, that if he had told them all, if he had sat at those creaky tables awash in old ale and grimy coins and related the tale, they would have listened. All of them.

He even knew how it would have gone. Immediate empathy from the Inquisitor and Cole. Startled denial from Cassandra at first and then a barrage of questions. Varric would have laughed and then his cards would have dropped to the table and he’d have hunted for a quill. Vivienne, alone, perhaps, would have shown no shock. And when he was done, they would have helped him. He knew it, in that instant. He was certain. But it had passed, as instants do, and he doubted again. He clung desperately to that surety as the Titan’s emotions swept over them again.

It was not enough. He had no flesh, only essence, only purpose. There was no Inquisitor. No Felassan. Elgar’nan had vanished, his bright presence winking out of sight. Then Mythal, Dirthamen, Falon’din, they slid away, one by one and the Fade emptied. It echoed with the vacancy. It ran down, eroded. Solas was often alone. When Mythal returned in a strange shape, strange voice, strange thoughts, Solas had feared she would disappear again. He had followed her from the Fade in terror and— 

He was back in the dark. He could hear the Inquisitor weeping but could not tell the direction.  “Mamae, halani,” she whispered into the void. Her outline sparked and sizzled with light. “Halani,” she said again and he tried to close the distance, but found he drew no closer to her no matter how he reached. Panic threatened to engulf him again, this time native to him. It would not relent if he gave in to it. The sparks around her intensified.

“Vhenan,” he called to her. “It is too small. We are too small,” she said with a sob. “Ir abelas, ar nuven’in Mamae.” The sparks swirled around her, lighting her face and then gathering beside her. The spirit did not resolve into a definite form, but its work began immediately anyway. 

Solas smelled the sweetness of crushed berries and trampled grass before he could see anything. Then that weaving song slid through the dark again, the same man’s voice, though it dipped and surged as if he were moving his whole body as he sang. Grass and slick, soft wetness squished between his toes. Then the sun, blazing and immediately overhead. He looked down and saw loose blackberries scattered across the grass. A basket, overturned, lay between the Inquisitor and himself. She was weeping heavily. A woman knelt beside her. Familiar but young. As young as the Inquisitor had been when he met her. She swept her fingers over the Inquisitor’s cheeks.

“All is well, little Bramble,” she said gently. “We will gather them again together.” “No, Mamae, there is something evil beyond the grass,” said the Inquisitor, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “It is coming and I cannot stop it. Don’t go.” “What has frightened you, da’len?”

That it had started as a memory, Solas had no doubt. This— the smell of blackberry and the weaving song were too specific, too intense to be a dream, even one plucked from her by the spirit building the scene. This was no imagining. So it startled him when the Inquisitor reached for his hand and told her mother: “Something enormous. It is consuming all the world with its terror and we cannot hold it back and it is so swift— we cannot flee.” The woman glanced up at him and then back at her daughter. “Then do not, da’len. Let it come, this terrible thing.”

“We can’t, it will take everything.” The woman laughed gently and began gathering up the blackberries near the Inquisitor’s knee. “No, dearest, it cannot take everything. Many, many men and gods and beasts have tried to take everything, but we remain. You remain. You cannot outrun this dread. You cannot halt it. Then you must turn and face it.” “I can’t Mamae.”

Solas slid down into the grass beside her, crushed by the hopelessness in her voice. Her mother only calmly gathered up the fallen berries. “You thought the same in Haven, little Bramble. Shivering in the snow while Corypheus closed in. You could not run. And you were not strong enough to defeat him. So you turned and faced him.” “This is bigger than he was,” she protested. “Vin. And you are bigger than you were then, too. When the Blight chased you up the mountainside and all aid was out of reach, you turned around and faced it, too. You held the fortress until the horde retreated. Called home by their makers. And you marched after. To shield others. And you remain. Even here. You did not flee from the Void itself, fanor. You turned and faced it for the love of him. Why should you flee from the nightmare of another now?”

“We must soothe it. The Titan thrashes in its sleep. It sends the Blight over all the world. We have to stop the nightmare until we can wake it.” She patted the Inquisitor’s prosthetic. “It cannot be calmed by a memory of your Mamae. Nor of your comrades. Those are past. What it fears lies in the future. To soothe it, you must face what it fears and turn it aside.” “I do not know what it fears. It is larger than the Vimmarks, what future threat could be dire enough to give it a nightmare?” The woman smoothed the Inquisitor’s hair. “You do not know what it fears, da’len, but he does. He fears the same and he must stop running.” The Inquisitor looked over at him.

“Yes,” said Solas, “I know what it fears. And what I must do.” The Inquisitor’s mother clucked and beckoned him. “Come here, pup,” she said. He stepped toward her and bent down as she waved him closer. She gripped his shoulders gently. “You have many tasks behind you, Solas. Set both by others and yourself. So many that you have forgotten your purpose. Mythal did not create you. She only gave you form. You were not created for tasks or heroic deeds or to be the Dread Wolf who stalks our stories. You exist to be loved, da’len, just as every other creature. That is your purpose. No matter the outcome of this next task you have set yourself. Don’t forget.” She pressed her lips to his forehead before releasing him.

Some part of him knew that the love that flooded him was predictable. It was, after all, a spirit the Inquisitor had called. It made sense that the result would be favorable to him. Biased. But most of that realization was subsumed, swept away by the comfort of the spirit’s words, by the warmth of the dream. You exist to be loved. That is your purpose.  “Now, little Bramble, it is time.”

The Inquisitor reached for him just as the memory collapsed. Her fingers found his sleeve, pulled tight as the Titan’s panic came shrieking past. Five warm spots just beneath his elbow, seeping through the cloth. He wrapped around her and her prosthetic crumbled beneath his hand and then her arm, her shoulder, her breast— “We have to turn into it, Vhenan,” he whispered into an ear that was already shattering stone. “We have to follow the wave.”

He wasn’t certain how much she could hear over whatever nightmare she was lost in, but he did not let go and she stopped crumbling away. He let them float in the crest of the wave, a million prickles and sparks of horror crept over his skin. He let himself change into what he knew the Titan feared. 

Vast and thrumming with power, ice feathered along his unfurling limbs as if he could not quite maintain control over them. Below him, the Titan’s heart tried to call it’s familiar tune. But it sped and skipped and the song was out of sync. The heart seemed small enough that if Solas had still had hands, he might have cupped it in one. Unguarded. Alone. 

“Vhenan, you are…” her shocked voice was distant, a thin echo he strained to hear. She was far beneath him and he bent to lift her but found his axons each tipped with a lyrium dagger. “It is a mask only, my love. What the Titan fears. I am still myself,” he whispered, fearing his voice could shatter the stone around them.

“What will you do?” she asked him, craning to follow each of the light fronds that he was composed of.  “It fears I mean to destroy it completely. I must show it that I mean it no harm. I do not know if that is possible, given how badly I harmed it in keeping it here.” “It is difficult to concentrate here,” she admitted, “but if I can help, I will try.” “We caught the fringe of the wave. If we can remain here, it will get no worse. I am having trouble as well.” He waved the dagger tips of his form well away from both her and the heart to demonstrate.

“Perhaps altering that would be a good start. You are… intimidating.” He focused on shedding the daggers first. They went slowly, the Titan’s fear made it a slow process, stubbornly resisting the transformation. The Inquisitor, in the meantime, had not been idle. A gap-toothed wall of stone encircled the heart, jutting from the ground as if grown there. She was far slower than he, having to contend both with the dread that permeated everything and with her inexperience shaping dreams, but she had managed to grow several of these rock panels in the time it took him to shift into something less threatening.

“I saw the Sha-brytol do this to defend their Titan,” she offered. “I do not craft them half so well but I thought it might… understand these, at least. Though… I do not know what we are meant to be defending it from. Perhaps the feeling of being less vulnerable will be enough to ease its fear.” She was so far from him. He tried to coil around them both, the heart and the Inquisitor, wishing she could touch him, soothe the constant rub of the Titan’s dread against him as if it would chafe him raw. What is to be done? I cannot convince the Titan I do not mean it harm simply by waiting, can I? It has feared me for millennia.

“This is how you appeared to them?” she asked, peering up through the strands of magic that were him. “I had flesh when I first encountered them. But perhaps the Titan could see what I had been. What I still was beneath.” She reached out hesitantly, let her fingertips graze him, disturb the glow of him. “Perhaps. But Mam— the spirit— said that it did not fear what was past, emma lath. What it feared was yet to come. And you said…” “That I knew what it feared. Yes.” He let the Titan’s heart sing its erratic anthem in the silence. “I do not wish you to see,” he admitted. 

She glanced at him, a wry smile crossing her face. “What is it you said to Varric? ‘We cannot change our nature by wishing’ I believe. We have done far more than wishing, Vhenan. We have already engaged with this memory. Why should we be surprised that it altered? You built this place hoping it would cause the Evanuris to change their natures, why should it not do the same for us?”

A deep, chilled seed of dread unfurled in his chest. “But what has it altered? How have I altered?” he whispered. “What am I becoming?” he hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but he must have, for she stepped closer to him, blocking his view of the figure that waited, still humming.  She pressed his left hand between hers, warm skin on his palm and the hum of magic and smooth metal against his knuckles. It grounded him. “Whatever it is you are becoming, it is something you are choosing this time.”

“And if it is monstrous?” She laughed, low and sweet. The humming behind her stopped. “It is not. Selfishness is what creates cruelty. And no matter how many times you try to ascribe that fault to yourself, I have never seen much evidence of it. I think it far more likely that you become less monstrous now that you no longer serve the selfishness of others.” “But if you are wrong—” She released his hand to touch his temple, to draw his gaze back to her eyes instead of over her shoulder toward the waiting figure. “Then your reach is vastly smaller than it ever has been, emma lath. I am the only being you can be monstrous to here. The prison will not let you go until these memories are resolved. A monster would only revel in them."

He took a breath. The dread had spread through him, prickling like a thornbush choking his veins. “Then let us resolve them. I would not become a monster to you, above all.” He helped her unclasp the prosthetic as they walked. She winced as they grew closer to the eluvian and her arm shone through her sleeve, but she did not falter. Neither did Solas. The figure had stood while they approached and before Solas could fully make out the figure’s face, he knew by the way they held themselves that it was an old friend. One he had, indeed, become a monster too, long before the final betrayal.

“This is not how it happened,” said Solas, uncertain whether he were telling the Inquisitor or the Fade itself. Felassan gave him a bitter, angry grin. “It appears that she knows that already,” he said waving a hand toward the phantom image of the Inquisitor on her knees, clutching a hand now long dead. “Though I confess I’d like to know how it did, because she is still beside you when I am…” His expression flickered as he trailed off and turned to the Inquisitor. “I confess that my information has been… limited of late. Especially now that I’ve landed here. Even so, I am impressed with how much Fen’harel exposed to you in so short a time. I wonder if the same question haunts you as has haunted me all these years.”

She did not move or reach for Solas, nor even glance at him. Only waited. Solas braced himself for a bitter accusation he could not evade from Felassan. But Felassan seemed sorrowful as he asked sofly, “How much of our actions were for the love of our people, lethallan, and how much were for the love of him instead?” The Inquisitor raised her fingers to her face, tracing the lines of vallaslin that were no longer there. “I find myself less and less certain of who our people are as the years pass,” she admitted.  Felassan’s smile was back, less angry, still sour. “We have that in common at least.” “But— yes. I have doubted my actions when it comes to Solas more than once,” she added.

Grief seeped into the memory, though which of them it was from, Solas could not say. Likely it was shared. “You should not. Either of you. When my interests diverged from those of our people, you always stood with the people,” Solas said. “Ir abelas, it should have guided me. I should have yielded to your better judgment.” “You think my defiance was betrayal. I was only trying to shield you from your own recklessness, falon. If I had done as you asked, if I had become the Dread Wolf in that moment and tricked Briala into giving us the eluvians, what would now remain? Only you. Only your rage and the Titans and the Blight. I was ever your friend. I was always faithful.” Solas felt the deep biting sorrow that tinged the memory. “Ar eolasa,” was all he said. The shade of Felassan said nothing.

“Who was this?” asked the Inquisitor, touching Solas’s wrist. “I am Felassan, lethallan. Since he is too absent minded to make introductions.” “Ir abelas,” she stuttered, “We— I thought you a memory only. I should have expected other Evanuris could enter here. I am—” “Inquisitor Lavellan. The Fade has been stingy with what it shows, but I have gathered that much. And I am no Evanuris.” It startled Solas. Part of him wanted to deny it was possible, but Blackwall had also been impossible. “How— why are you here? If you are not a dream why have you come to this place?” Felassan sat back down beside his fire. “Where did you want me to go, Fen’harel? The Void is closed to me while my body breathes and you have sundered me from that. I wandered the Fade for a time, keeping an eye on you. And on a few of our people,” he glanced at the Inquisitor. “Thank you for trying to aid Briala. It is difficult to remember the effort matters when the results fall short.”

She crouched beside him, absently rubbing the remains of her arm where it pained her. “Sundered?” she asked. “Solas— made you tranquil?” Felassan flashed that bitter smile again. “Tranquil? You mean those poor automatons the Andrastians create? No. What you call tranquil is the result of an inept attempt to sever someone from the Fade, certainly, but there are… strands remaining. Pathways that can be rebuilt. Like a frayed length of cord that someone sawed through instead of a clean cut. Fen’harel is nothing if not thorough. The tranquil, at least, have their wits and some autonomy over their frames. It is only the passion that is lacking. My body, on the other hand, lies on the forest floor in dreamless sleep through snow and wind and carpeted in moss. The first year, I hoped a predator would find me. Alas, he could not even leave me that fate. Some ward protects my flesh while my spirit rots in here.”

“I expected to restore you,” Solas protested, “when my work was through. I did not—” he stopped to steady his voice. “I could not bear for you to meet the same fate as Mythal. I would not fragment you.” “Alas, all goes awry. I fear that has become a habit for all three of us,” Felassan said, his smile relaxing into something far more familiar. The Inquisitor hissed in pain as Solas’s thoughts flickered through a series of mistakes that had led them here. Felassan clucked and cast a spell with a wave of his hand. The anchor’s glow diminished.

“How did you?” she asked, staring down at her arm.  “They are not my memories. And it is not your guilt. Not this one. Fen’harel may be powerless to halt this regret, but we are not. You can push it away if you know how. Here,” he pressed his hand against her living one, moving it gently to illustrate. “Ma serannas,” she said, repeating the spell carefully. She frowned. “We cannot leave you so.” “I fear it cannot be altered. Not from here. If you were in the Waking, you could perhaps stab my body as thoroughly as— ah!” Felassan twisted, trying to reach between his shoulderblades. Solas tried to distract himself, to place his thoughts anywhere except upon that night he had last seen Felassan. 

“Would you mind, lethallan? It is painful even if in dreams,” Felassan admitted.  “Of course,” said the Inquisitor, immediately casting the spell he had just shown her.  Felassan sighed in relief. “I would rather restore you than kill you,” said the Inquisitor as he recovered.

“Hmm. No,” Felassan decided. “I have watched you too long to believe that, lethallan. Even in the limited glimpses available to me, I have seen you mourn what is lost but never wallow in it. It is a good trait. One that I have long tried to persuade Fen’harel to adopt. I do not crave restoration, much as he may prefer that. It cannot undo what has been done. If there is one lesson this dreadful place should impart, it is that one.” He stared past the fire at Solas, considering. “I know this eluvian leads to the Void. I can feel its pull. I do not know what awaits there, but I know it is not restoration. For me or our people.”

“It is the dream of a Titan,” she said. “The Blight leaks through the Veil. It will overwhelm Thedas if we cannot soothe its anger.” “Ah. The Veil endures then. So Elgar’nan won after all?” Felassan asked gently. Solas sank down onto the rocky soil and clutched his head in his hands, ashamed and despairing. “Ir abelas, isa’ma’lin,” he groaned. “Ma’elgar nedan.” The warmth of the Inquisitor’s hand sank into his knee. “Elgar’nan is gone, lethallin,” she said over his shoulder. “He did not triumph. They all are gone.” “All?” the awed disbelief of Felassan’s voice at his other side was an extra little dagger in Solas’s chest. “How then, are we here, in this repeating anbanal?”

The Inquisitor’s hand squeezed. “The remnant of Mythal released him. He chose to return and attempt to soothe the Titans. The Veil survives, for now, to protect Thedas. One day we will find a way to restore the Titans without destroying the people. I am sorry, I do not know how you came here, Felassan. I assumed it was willing. There must be a way to release you as you wish.” Felassan did not reply to that. The silence seemed to stretch on. Solas raised his head to stare into the campfire, feeling Felassan’s gaze pinning him. Solas pressed his own hand over the Inquisitor’s. An anchor of his own.

Finally, Felassan sighed deeply. Flipped a small stick into the fire as if it actually needed fuel here. “It always was Mythal he listened to, lethallan. I wish I could tell you that the sting will fade when he chooses her advice over your own but… I am still waiting for that day. I suppose I am grateful, at least, that our advice overlapped this time and the world is safe. For now.”

Solas ran a shaky hand over his scalp, the other pressed firmly over the Inquisitor’s, fearing she’d at last pull away from him. “It was not,” he managed, before his voice broke. “It was not Mythal I listened to in that moment. She released me from my duty, yes, but it was not her voice that echoed in my head as I held that dagger, falon. Yes, your advice in this matter at last overlapped. It took thousands of years of existing in the waking world, years that I slept and ought not to— but you both agreed they deserved a chance. I betrayed you both for it. Ir abelas, sul banal.” “Tel’banal, Fen,” said Felassan. “Evanuris emma laiem. Elvhen ena eth.” He paused. Reached for the cloak he’d hung on the shattered pillar beside them. “And here the three of us remain, anyhow,” he said, pulling a leaf-wrapped hearth cake from the pocket. He offered it first to the Inquisitor.

“I do not find myself hungry here, do you?” he asked her. “Not yet.” “Yet I like the comfort of it, anyhow. And the company,” he said still holding the food out to her. She gently extricated her hand from Solas’s grasp and broke the cake into three. She took one and handed the rest back to Felassan. “Ma serannas,” she said. Felassan held out the cake to Solas. “I remember you liking these, Fen,” he said, when Solas hesitated. “I wish you would not call me that,” he sighed and took a piece. “I know you do. Perhaps when you stop acting the wounded god, I will consider forgiving you. Until then, you stay Fen’harel.” He leaned back and picked up his piece of the cake. “It appears we have time even for that.” He bit into the hearthcake.

“Good, isn’t it?” he asked the Inquisitor after a moment. “Much sweeter than my clan’s,” she said, “Very good. Though they make me…” “Homesick,” Felassan offered. “Yes, I suppose so.” “Ir abelas, I’ve been alone so long now I forgot that would come through in the Fade. Next time, you will have to offer me your clan’s. Perhaps your memories taste— happier?” “There will not be a ‘next time’,” said Solas. “I will restore you.”

Felassan smiled and the bitterness was back. “You have had enough impossible tasks set before you. I will not be Mythal’s replacement. I do not wish to go back to my body. The world is exhausting. My work is long done. The Evanuris are gone. The Dalish must have been confronted with the truth in the process. The rebellion is over, wolf. Ar’an ane revas. I do not know what I wish to come next yet, but it is not a return to that existence. I searched a long, long time for the friend I lost so very long ago. I think I might find him here, if I wait a little longer, hmm?”

She looked skeptically at the expanse of long grass before them. “How is that possible? I didn’t think you could will away what the Fade would show you here.”

He pulled her gently onward. The grass rustled with their passage and then stilled again. Solas missed the green smell it ought to have made in the sun and the breath of the breeze that used to sweep this place ceaselessly. “This is a piece of the waking world. A splinter that punctured the Fade. It is both contained and partially exempt from the effects of the Fade. Its nature keeps it fixed, as it would be on the other side of the Veil. It means our sorrows cannot chase us here. But it is also sterile. Nothing dies, but nothing new is born. No birds or beasts, no spirits, even the grass and trees are… paused, just as they were when I ripped this chunk of Thedas from where it sat and sealed it here. It is safe. And just for now, that is enough.”

She took more notice of their surroundings. “This is the Black City?” she asked. “It was Arlathan first,” he said. “The Blight is consuming it. There will likely be a time that even this small bit of space is lost as well, but it remains clear for now.” She squeezed his fingers. “Perhaps we can keep it free, if we are able to move swiftly enough. Perhaps it will retreat and return Arlathan to us.” He wasn’t certain if she were trying to comfort him or seeking reassurance. “Perhaps,” was all he said. “I’ll find a way,” she insisted.

He stared up at the silhouette of the city. “You have done many impossible things. And we have… much longer than I think you have yet realized to try. Yet— it is a dead city, fanor. All of this suffering and loss was not for the sake of these empty streets and crumbling walls, you know that, do you not?”  “I do. But I did not mean the city alone. I meant your home, Solas. Our home.” “That may be an impossibility even beyond you, my love. We may secure Thedas against the Blight, but the Fade… when we release the Titans, they may make war again. And this time they would be justified in turning their sight to this realm instead. All of their enemies now are here. Fragmented, yes, but still existing. All the old grievances and wounds remain.”

She released his hand, only to reach for his cheek. “Then we will endure until their vengeance is exhausted. Protect who we can, ease what we can.” He closed his eyes so he would not have to watch her expression as he admitted, “Alas, when I fall, what returns will not be the same. And when you fall, I fear you will not return at all.”

She stroked his cheek, trying to coax him into opening his eyes. He did not. “We both met Blackwall, didn’t we? I am not as familiar with this place as you, but I cannot believe him illusion. If I fall, even then I will return to you. And if you fall, than I would search all the Fade and piece your fragments back together. Or love each splinter if I could not. Tel’nadas. Our fate may not be war, Solas. I do not know if the Titans feel as we do, but thousands of years would be long enough to make me sick of the anger and sorrow and fear of war. I think I would only wish to feel the sun on my flesh and love what remained in peace. Isn’t it so for you?” “Vin,” he said and opened his eyes. “But I am not the party who was wronged.” A shadow flickered in her expression and was gone. “There was more than one party wronged in this war. If your anger and hurt have cooled, then there is hope.” She shook her head as if to clear it.  “You meant to rest here. I didn’t mean to distress you.” “Tel’abelas. You did not distress me,” he said and leaned toward her.

“Ar nuven ar den vun,” she whispered against his mouth and then kissed him. “You are warmer than any sun,” he answered. “Come home, Vhenan. Come and rest with me.” He slid an arm around her and led her across the field and into the tangled wood beyond.  Ancient trees threaded themselves into each other, twining branch and root until only a narrow holloway remained. 

“Is this where you’ve stayed since the ritual?” she asked, picking her way carefully over stones and roots. “Is that why you call it home?” “I have stayed here, yes,” he said, catching her before she could stumble in a sudden dip. “But I called it home because it has been for centuries. Long before I was imprisoned. After I took my body, I quickly found it was… too much. Too many sounds. Too bright, too colorful, too many sensations all at once. Even the thrum of my heart and the cold rasp of breath moving in and out was overwhelming. Everything else on top was… touch was the very worst. It took me a long while to process all that I experienced. I had to leave the city or I might have gone mad. I wandered here. It was almost, almost enough.” He raised an overhanging branch to stop it from scraping against them. “Not entirely silent, not like now, but quieter. Few voices, just the wind and the occasional birdsong or howl of a wolf at night.  And the smell of pine instead of a hundred mingled scents of cooking food or bodies. Nothing touched me except the breeze and the tips of the grasses unless I touched it first. It was as close to what I remembered that I could get. And so I remained, except for the times I was summoned for my duty.”

The trees gave way to a small glade and the wind-whittled stone columns of his home. A surface cavern that melded with the wood and the hills beyond, pierced by sunlight in places and by deep, cool streams in others. It had been little more than a rock outcrop when he first stumbled into it, but with the help of some spirit friends and his own labor he had remade it.

“This was not what I pictured,” she murmured, releasing him to wander forward into the entry way. She glanced back at him. “Not that I’m disappointed, Solas. I only— your armor, your love of the Orlesian court, what Harding wrote me of your Lighthouse. I thought it would be… intimidating and elaborate.” He laughed. “There are occasions I do enjoy being intimidating and elaborate. And times that require it, regardless of my mood. My armor served a purpose. The Lighthouse was not mine, I only utilized it. For my forces first. For my recuperation after. After all this time, you are surprised that I would don a mask?” “No, I—” He was shocked to see she was near tears and reached for her as if to steady her. “Ir abelas, emma lath,” she continued, “I mistook which was the mask.”

“If you prefer the armor, I could—” he’d started it lightly, half-smiling, meaning to flatter. But it only seemed to distress her more. “No! No, Solas, you don’t—” she stopped herself. “What I prefer is you. In every way. In any way. Dress as you will. Live where you will. I do not need armor or court intrigue or enchanted towers. It is a relief, in truth. Forget my foolishness. Will you show me your home?” She held out her hand to him again.  Something in the way she said it felt off. As if there were more. He hesitated but took her hand. She has earned her secrets, he told himself.

He pulled her past the stone spindles of the entrance and  through the thick tapestries that sectioned off the cavern.  She paused beneath a large opening to the sky, staring up at the livid green of the Fade above. “It must have been lovely to watch the stars from here. When you were in the waking world.” “It takes more effort here, but the Fade is still persuadable on occasion.” He concentrated for a few seconds, willing stars to wheel overhead until they paused where he wished them to. “Do you remember that first night in Skyhold when I begged a story from you?” he asked and tore his gaze from the memory of stars to look at her. 

She had flushed. “The night I made an enormous fool of myself, you mean? When I told you a story that you knew the truth of, that must have hurt you? I remember it too well.” “Hurt me? No.” He brushed her cheek with his fingers as if he could wipe away her embarrassment. “Your story of Mythal had no more weight or connection to the truth than the stories the Dalish tell of me or any of the other Evanuris. All they share are the names. If you knew how many, many times I heard the echo of your voice telling that story these past years, that one— every time I wanted to strike in anger or frustration, I could hear you. Could feel the warmth of your hand lingering on my cheek as you said, ‘sometimes justice must make way for mercy’. If you knew how many rash actions that echo prevented, you would not be ashamed of telling me that story. Do not let the memory of that night wound you, it is among those I hold most precious.”

She avoided his eyes, staring instead up at the illusory stars. “Perhaps you will give me the truth then, one day. In trade.” “The truth? About Mythal and Elgar’nan, certainly. As much of it as I know. But it is an unfair trade. No matter how garbled the details might have been, there was more truth in the Dalish story than in the actual sordid history. Or perhaps it is only because you told it.” He kissed the tip of her fingers. “Leave this doubt behind, fanor. Come and rest.” He led her further into the cavern to a little spring that tumbled from the rock into a small pool. It was the only sound or movement they did not make themselves. She bent down to touch the water.

“I thought it would be cold,” she said.  “If we were in the waking world, it might be. Chilled from the stone and the dark it traveled through. Or warmed in the sunlight that seeps through the overhanging trees. Alas, neither is true here. But since there is nothing living in the pool, I can warm it to bathe, if you like.” She glanced up at him. “You say nothing changes here. No sun. No dark. No rain.” “Yes. At least— except for when I persuade the Fade to do as I bid,  it has not changed since I have been here.” “The water then, did you create this?” “No. It has always been here.” “Where does it come from? What feeds the spring that feeds the pool? You took this piece of Thedas thousands of years ago. There is no source that could last so long without replenishing it. If we bathe in it, we will not be able to drink from it. How have you not perished from thirst?” She stopped herself, looked down at her prosthetic. “Oh. Spirits likely have different requirements. I had forgotten how different our experiences must be of this place.”

He knelt beside her. If she had forgotten that they differed, then so had he. It alarmed him that she may have felt even more discomfort than he had. “Have you experienced thirst since we returned to the Fade? Hunger?” She considered. “No. But then— we have been here only a short time, haven’t we? A few hours?” Relieved that she was not uncomfortable, he sat and began unwinding his footwraps. “I’m afraid I do not know. It is difficult for me to gather information about events outside of the Fade from here. Even more difficult, perhaps impossible, from where I entrapped the Titan we were with. In truth, I have not cared to try. I fear it has been much longer, though. The Titan was enraged for long, long centuries. I do not think we could have soothed it within hours.”

“I have not felt hunger or thirst, but exhaustion, yes. Perhaps thirst will come.” “Hmm. Exhaustion is something spirits feel too. As is pain and comfort, though the sources of both may vary. If you need water or sustenance, or if they bring you comfort, I will find them. I do not know how the pool fills and empties nor where the spring originates, but it flows regularly. Bathing will not pollute it.” Done with his footwraps, he began peeling more of his clothing from his flesh. It stuck where the blood had dried, but the wounds beneath were long healed. “You have been here several thousand years and you never wondered where the water comes from?” she asked, staring at him. “I was in the greater Fade for millennia, yes. And I was in the waking world for several centuries. But I have only been here for a few months longer than you. The Evanuris were trapped in the city. I was never tempted to visit. Until the disastrous end to my containment ritual, I had not seen this place since it was sealed away. It doesn’t function the same as it did in Thedas and it doesn’t behave the same as a place that is purely Fade. I haven’t had an opportunity yet to wonder where the water comes from.”

He was startled when her expression brightened in pure joy. She gripped his bare arm with damp fingers. “That’s wonderful,” she said. “And the trees and the grass— you say they are paused. If they do not take up the water, then they do not thirst either. And the sun does not dry it, but still it comes and does not flood. And you do not know why and that is wonderful.” She stopped to unclasp her prosthetic, still smiling to herself.

“My ignorance is wonderful?” he asked. He warmed the water slightly with a spell. “Yes,” she said, laughing. She sighed with relief as she released the prosthetic’s weight and placed it on the stone between them. “Don’t you see? Here, just in this place, we are as close to equal footing as we have ever been. What you know and what I know of it are a mere handful of days apart. I can still catch up. We get to experience it together. We get to be… young together. Curious and ignorant and perhaps thirst and hunger will not come for me as they do not for the plants here. Maybe what has paused for them will also pause for me. I will have time, not just to discover this place with you but learn what you already know. And when you are able to put down your burden and return to the Fade I will not be so far behind. And I will at last be…” she trailed off, seeming to realize what she had been about to say aloud.  He wanted to press her to finish the thought, but he could see she was trying to cling to that little spark of unexpected joy she’d just discovered. He didn’t want to accidentally strip it from her. He slid into the pool as she undressed. 

“Young?” he asked with a smile.  “In a way,” she admitted.  “I have forgotten how, Vhenan.” He reached out a hand to help her into the water. “Will you teach me?” She laughed and leaned on him as she climbed down the slippery stones. “After all we have done, I don’t remember either. We will have to relearn how to be young together.” She gently cleaned some dried blood from his shoulder. He interrupted her, tilting her face toward his. “Then you will have to forgive me looking foolish,” he warned her.  “I believe that comes with being young, emma lath.” He let his thumb glide along her cheek. “So it does. And since we are to be young again, we should not let our lack of knowledge shame us.” She flushed and again it struck him that she was, indeed, ashamed of something that she did not say.

“You said you did not fear the world’s judgment here. What is amiss?” he asked. “I don’t fear the world’s judgment, emma lath. Just yours. I know now the true gulf between us. You will tire of retreading thousands of years of knowledge waiting for me.” It was a deep and terrible blow.  “I will never tire of you, my love.” “You have known me only a tiny fraction of your life, Solas,” she said gently, “The novelty will wear thin.” “That is true. But my affection never will. I am not given to caprice. You know this.” 

Her expression was misery. “It is not caprice to acknowledge our differences. I believe you when you say that wealth was a costume for you. And power— is changeable. Something that neither of us seemingly sought. But the time that separates us— I shall never catch up to you. I will never be able to match what you have experienced, what you know. Ar nuvenan ea anethe. Ar te’elan.”

Worthy? How can she think herself unworthy?

“Ma ane gonathe. You always have been. You believe there is a gap of some kind between us, because of my lifespan.”  He lifted his other hand to her face and droplets plinked from it between them. There was no sun, but the water still cast a fragile light upon her with each ripple. She is so beautiful. “You have asked me before why I slept for so long. Why I did not intervene to aid Thedas much earlier. In truth, it was because I did not want this existence. Before I slept, this cavern— this solitude was my sanctuary for centuries. Very few others have ever come here. I endured this flesh for Mythal’s sake. After I locked this place away with the others, after Mythal was gone and I thought my duty finished, I tried to shed this body. Every rite I could find, every spell to return this frame without fragmenting myself. Nothing worked. The nearest I could come was remaining in the Fade through uthenara. And so I did. That is why I did not wake to aid you. That is why I slept millennia while the Veil weakened and the city blackened. Waking was agony. Heavy and constraining and painful. When I joined Cassandra in the crater at Haven, I wished only to finish my task as quickly as possible so I could return to uthenara and be free. Of physical sensation, yes, but of the guilt and dread as well. And then you woke up, my love. I never expected there to be more than pain and rage and sorrow in the waking world for me. At first, I admit, it was only mild curiosity that drew me in. The same that I felt for Varric and at times Cassandra. It shifted into something more, something— happier so gradually that I barely noticed for far too long. But I can tell you the exact instant that I did not hate this body any longer. Can you guess when it was?”

She shook her head slightly.  “That story that shamed you, the one about Mythal and Elgar’nan, it happened because of that story.” He slid his hand down her cheek, from temple to jaw, just as she had. “You did it in another’s name and I wanted it to be for me. I wanted you to never stop touching me so. In that moment, I knew that if I finally achieved all I’d longed to, that if I returned to what I had been before the Titans, not only could you not touch me in that way, but that I would have to forget everything that had passed or would pass between us. That I would be free of the guilt and sorrow of my past, yes, but that I would also lose what joy you had given me, the kindness you and our friends had shown me. And for the first time, it made me hesitate.”

“It does not seem such a large price. The memory of one elf against all that came before,” she said softly. Her hand reached for him, rested gently against his chest as if testing, as if granting what he’d expressed a longing for. “In that first instant it may not have seemed so to me either. But now it is everything. Now, I fear, I almost understand why we stole these bodies in the first place. You unworthy of me?  When I would betray my own purpose all over again if it meant you would love me?” “Dian. Ar tel’nuvanen.” He smiled. “I know. And that is what makes you far worthier than I. Do not fear my judgment, Vhenan.”

He kissed her forehead, breathing in the scent of sweat and old blood that still clung from the battle in Minrathous. The smell that meant she was real and not a phantom of the Fade. “I will admit there is one thing I’ve learned through the sheer length of my existence that I could have gained no other way. It is only this: in all these thousands of years, I have not met another that I wished so ardently to walk with. Were we to pass through the same memory every day for another thousand, I could not tire of it.  There is no gap. No need to ‘catch up.’ Ar ebala ma. I have no wealth. No power here, for good or ill. And here, there is no span of time to divide us. There is only now, a space between breaths. Love is all I have left to offer you. It is all that remains of what I ought to have been and it is utterly yours. Take it, fanor, sathan.” She leaned into him. Her skin was warm. “As long as you will give it, emma lath,” she said.