Chapter Text
Cassandra woke me at dawn to let me know that our scouts had returned with news of a site that matched the vague description offered by the spirit of Lady’s Rest. I was still drunk, and had to suffer the humiliation of Solas using the same spell on me that I had used at the Winter Palace, and then later on him, just before I had run away to learn about Titans. There were no other healers present, and so he was the only one available to get me into a condition suitable for leaving camp.
At least he was as uncomfortable as I was throughout the entire process, and he dealt with my headache and nausea, too.
“Anyone ever told you that you got a nice voice, Boss?” Bull teased me as Solas soothed my aching head.
“I have an average voice,” I corrected him, not yet in the mood to humor whatever sly observation he intended to make. “You only think it’s good because I can carry a tune, unlike most of the Chargers.”
“Didn’t you warn us not to get drunk, Vanish?” Varric prodded as Bull chuckled.
“I couldn’t very well refuse their toasts, could I?”
“Ahhh,” Dorian sighed dramatically from somewhere near Bull. “I know this isn’t truly vengeance, but after the torture you inflicted on us at Halamshiral, it is deeply satisfying.”
The affectionate banter made Solas feel even more of an outsider than he already had as the divide between him and those of my inner circle I took with me to perform tasks deepened, but I didn’t know how to fix that. I suspected he would have resisted having it fixed anyway. He was probably telling himself, even as I noticed his growing loneliness, that it was better this way and that he deserved it anyway.
Felasil.
“Are you going to come with Bram after we’ve secured the site?” I asked him, too quietly for anyone else to hear, as he finished and before he had a chance to move away.
“Would you prefer I stay in camp?” he asked stiffly.
“No,” I said. “You’ve been good at keeping your feelings in check, and a mile or two makes little difference to our bond. You won’t distract me merely by being present.” At least not much.
He was still near enough to meet my eyes. This was more bearable when you were angry at me. I couldn’t hear the words, of course, but the sentiment was so clearly written on his face and in his feelings that I couldn’t help putting those words to it.
I wondered which was worse for him: my continued affection or my ability to come to terms with my grief and find things to smile about in spite of it. Then I realized there was no worse. Both of them were equally torturous, in different ways and for different reasons.
This wasn’t my problem to fix, though - he had chosen all of this himself and would reject any attempt I made to right things. I sighed and patted his arm with somewhat exasperated sympathy before rising from the bench where I had seated myself for healing.
Dorian claimed my arm as we left the camp, but Varric soon fell in beside me. “So,” he said, and then stopped significantly, either uncertain how to go on or waiting for me to divine what he wanted to speak of.
“So?” I prompted after a moment.
“By my count, that’s the first time you’ve touched Chuckles since…you know,” the dwarf prodded. “Things looking up there?” I couldn’t see his expression, but I could imagine it: real concern imperfectly masked by the detached posture he liked to assume.
“I honestly don’t know,” I told him. “They’re more or less unchanged on his end, as far as I’m aware. The only thing that has changed is my perspective, I suppose. I can’t force him not to drown in his own misery, but that doesn’t mean I have to let him drown me beside him. I love him, and I’ll find a way to be content in doing it from a distance if I must.”
Dorian snorted. “You could stop loving him,” he pointed out.
“Perhaps I could,” I replied, feeling a hint of sour amusement, “but that has been his goal all along. Leaving aside my own desires, conforming to his wishes gives him far too much satisfaction, don’t you think?”
Dorian opened his mouth to retort, and then shut it again, thinking over what I had said.. “My dearest friend…that is positively cold. I approve,” he decided at last.
Varric snorted. “Well, I did try to warn him. Two royals says he breaks within the month.”
“You’re underestimating his stubbornness,” Dorian countered. “I give it two months. Especially as I very much hope Inana will make him work for it when he comes crawling back.”
“Nah,” Bull called back from just ahead of us, “Lady’s Rest already shook him. I give it a week. ”
“I can’t believe you’re thinking of wagering on this,” I huffed.
“ Thinking of it?” Dorian echoed. “My sweet little lamb, what makes you think we haven’t already wagered on it?”
“Sparkler already lost a royal on whether you would kick Chuckles straight out of the basin,” Varric informed me.
“And I just won three on how long it would take the Boss to forgive him,” Bull added.
“Whoa, whoa, no one said anything about forgiving him,” the dwarf protested. “You haven’t, right, Vanish?”
“I…don’t know,” I replied slowly. “I’ve given up resenting it, anyway, though I still don’t think any of what he’s done can be justified.”
“That’s forgiveness,” Bull argued.
“It absolutely is not,” Varric replied, speeding up to catch the Qunari so they could argue more easily. “She hasn’t even let him back into the party…”
“Truly,” Dorian said, “how are you handling…things?”
It was clear he referred to our bond and the burden of Solas’s feelings. “He’s been keeping a tight rein on his pain,” I told my friend, “which was my demand in return for him remaining in place as Bram’s assistant. Lady’s Rest was hard, but otherwise I haven’t minded having him about.”
“ Will you invite him to rejoin the party?” Dorian asked.
I hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe - eventually - but Lady’s Rest was difficult, and it wasn’t something we could have expected or prepared for ahead of time. I’m concerned he’s still a particular weakness for me. Besides, I’m not sure the rest of you are ready to accept his presence for long periods - you’re all avoiding him.”
“Bull, Varric, and Blackwall aren’t,” Dorian told me with a little sniff that demonstrated his disapproval. “Neither is Cole, of course. Cassandra has been…polite, from what I’ve seen. Vivienne is downright approving - she never thought him good enough for you. Which in retrospect…”
“People can be good for each other or not, but no one is good enough for someone else,” I told him.
He extracted his arm from my grip so that he could wrap it around my shoulders. “You only say that because no one is truly good enough for you. This entire world isn’t good enough for you.”
I huffed a laugh. “ That is just absurd.”
He just hugged me tightly enough to make me stumble, and didn’t bother to argue.
We arrived at the metal spires before midday, having only encountered and fought our way through a single group of Hakkonites along the way - a testament to how well the scouts were holding out against them with aid from Stone-Bear.
The fortress where we found ourselves was set against - perhaps even into - one of the sheer walls of the basin, and unlike the rest of our trek, the ruin was clearly held by the Jaws of Hakkon. There were two enormous brutes waiting outside, each easily on the scale of Sky Watcher and only a little smaller than Bull. They were too massive for me to sling around thoughtlessly, but I positioned Cassandra and Blackwall to good advantage as Bull charged into battle with a savage cry.
More Avvar poured from the ruin as the sounds of our battle alerted them to the attack. I neutralized their two spellbinders quickly, and then returned my attention to controlling the flow of battle, repositioning anyone who needed it, and keeping their warriors as corralled as possible without wasting my mana repositioning the two largest.
We were outnumbered and the battle wasn’t easy, but we eventually prevailed with only minor wounds. “Well,” Cassandra said, still catching her breath after cutting down the final archer, “the Jaws of Hakkon must have been guarding this place for a reason. Let’s find out what was so worth protecting.”
“Cole,” I said, “Bram should be here before we begin a thorough exploration of the structure. It’s obviously been touched already by the Hakkonites, but we shouldn’t proceed without his input. Can you run a message to Harding?”
“Yes!” the spirit answered, and then was gone.
“Let’s at least go in - with any luck they’ll have left us a fire,” I told the others.
They had, and we warmed ourselves as we awaited Bram’s arrival. Cassandra and Bull eventually began poking around the courtyard, reporting stairs up to sections of the walls that hadn’t yet crumbled, and a door leading into the structures that butted up against the cliff face. Varric and Dorian described the structures I couldn’t see - which was most of them - to me so that I could join them in speculating on the site’s purpose. From what I overheard, Sera spent the entire time telling Blackwall dirty stories and making him laugh.
Eventually Cassandra returned to the fire to warm herself. “I’ve been thinking of the Avvar rituals, and what you said of Andraste,” she told me as Varric and Dorian wandered away, trying to piece together what Tevinter might have been doing in the basin in the first place all those centuries ago.
“Oh?” I asked, pulling my attention from Dorian and Varric. Cassandra sounded uncomfortable.
“The practice of binding spirits to people is not entirely unknown in Nevarra,” she admitted. “There is a Mortalitasi practice, similar in some ways. Not performed on children, certainly, and using ritual objects rather than a host’s body, but as I understand it the connection between mage and spirit is much the same. They can speak to each other with a thought, and share in each other’s experiences. It has always made me…deeply uncomfortable, despite being a long-standing practice.”
“And what happens if that connection sours?” I wondered.
“Abominations,” she replied. “There is, perhaps, more hope for a cure. Since the spirit is bound first to an object, sometimes that binding can be used to draw it into the Fade where it can be killed and the mage freed. With enough lyrium. But the Mortalitasi rarely take such pains, unless the mage is of high rank.”
“That’s why you rejected Rune’s claims so readily,” I mused.
“Yes, though it shames me to admit my prejudice,” she said. “Inana - is there something we can learn from the Avvar?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Their cultural assumptions are so different from yours - or from mine, for that matter. It may be that to make use of their understanding, we would have to restructure our societies from the ground up.”
She tucked my arm through her own. “I trust you to learn all you can without being blinded by your own prejudice, and that you will guide us in distilling what may be of use elsewhere.”
“That’s a great deal of trust,” I told her with slightly bitter laugh, briefly overwhelmed by the implications of such a responsibility. Still…I couldn’t shrink from it. Perhaps there were others who could help me bear it. Sky Watcher was a likely candidate. Cole might have insights. There might be others, somewhere. “I will do my best,” I promised her.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry to add another burden to those you already bear.”
“I’m sure it won’t all fall to me,” I told her, trying to believe it. “And I’m in a good position to ask the right questions to get things started.”
Harding, Bram, Solas, and a small group of soldiers arrived an hour or so later, and I suspected that they had left our base camp not long after my party to wait at one of the northern camps so they could be near at hand when we found what we were seeking. “This is brilliant!” I heard Bram exclaim from somewhere near the gates. “This must be what the spirit meant.” Then he was advancing on me, taking my hand in both of his to give it a firm shake. “Excellent find, Inquisitor.”
“Technically, it was the - ” I began, but he was already turning away.
“From what I can see,” he went on, taking no notice of my attempt to redirect credit where it belonged, “this is an ancillary station - likely a scouting post for the larger structure to the east.” He paused thoughtfully. “What can it tell us about where Inquisitor Ameridan went next? Why did the spirit send us here? Hmm…”
“Hello, Lace,” I greeted my scout as Bram considered. “Tell your people they did well - this seems to be exactly the site we need.”
“I will, Inquisitor, thank you,” she replied.
“Have you found any clues? Inscriptions? Artifacts?” Bram asked.
“Not much,” Bull replied. “Nothing anyone wore - all of that seems to have been picked clean by the Avvar.”
“Shame,” Bram sighed.
“We haven’t explored the fortress itself,” Cassandra told him. “The Inquisitor wanted to wait for you.”
“Ah,” he said, immediately sounding heartened. “Very kind of you, Your Worship.” He offered me his arm. “Shall we, then?”
“Of course,” I replied, smiling up at him.
Solas smothered a stab of jealousy.
The interior of the structure had, at first glance, been picked as clean as the courtyard, though Bram and Solas pinpointed the century it was built based on the construction techniques used. At the back of the fortress, though, we found a magical barrier that refused to yield to our attempts to dispel it.
“Blood magic?” Cassandra asked darkly.
“It’s always a possibility, particularly in places Tevinter occupied,” Vivienne answered. “Though I see none of the telltale marks of blood magic.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t…taste right for that,” I said. “It tastes…” It tasted elven, but I wasn’t certain that was something I should say.
“There’s a word scratched into the wall here,” Bram announced. “But I can’t quite…”
“ Theneras, ” Solas said.
“The Elven word for dream?” Bram asked.
“ Waking dream,” Solas and I said at the same time. I cleared my throat and continued: “Telana was Ameridan’s lover, and it’s likely she was Dalish. She might have known enough of the language to leave a clue opaque to humans of the time.” And the humans of this time, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
“But what does it mean?” Bram asked.
“ Theneras refers to a dream so real it can be mistaken for waking,” Solas said, and I felt myself inexplicably blush, even though I had no reason to think he was even looking at me.
“Well,” I said, trying to dispel my embarrassment, “perhaps if we look around, it will become clear what the hint means.
We spent several minutes casting about for something - anything - of potential interest before Solas drew our attention to a brazier on the wall, probably once used for lighting fire arrows. “Veilfire has been kindled here, long ago,” he told us confidently. “The mark is faint, but the memory of Veilfire lingers as long as the memory of fire remains.”
“A dream so real it can be mistaken for waking,” I said, repeating his words. “Veilfire. Of course.”
He called forth the memory of flame as I took the torch Blackwall handed me, and lit it carefully from the magical flames. We returned swiftly to the barrier. “I hope this works,” I muttered, and thrust the torch into the barrier.
It unraveled immediately, granting us access to the damp room beyond.
“Oh, well done,” Bram congratulated us. “Well done, indeed. Look at them!”
“That’s…something you don’t see every day,” Harding commented.
“Would someone care to enlighten me?” I asked a little impatiently.
“I apologize,” Bram said quickly, claiming my arm from Dorian and leading me forward. “A pair of shrines,” he explained, letting me lean forward close enough to make out some of the details. “This part, the statue, is clearly Andrastian, albeit from a very early period - likely pre-Divine. But this…”
My breath caught. “Those are Ghilan’nain’s symbols,” I said. “Why is Andraste holding symbols of Ghilan’nain ?”