Actions

Work Header

stillness is its own reward

Summary:

“I have journeyed deep into the Fade in ancient ruins and battlefields to see the dreams of lost civilizations,” Solas says in a low voice. Cillian leans forward to hear him. “I’ve watched as hosts of spirits clash to reenact the bloody past of wars both famous and forgotten.”

Cillian studies the glyphs in the Dirthavaren with the aid of the Inquisition's Fade Expert. A companion piece to youworeblue's Chrysalid and subsequent comic, Dirth'ena Enasalin.

Notes:

Betaed by kiastirling and delicatefade (thank you both!).

Work Text:

The last time Cillian had stepped foot on this land, he had followed in the wake of thousands of migrating butterflies. 

He has no such guides now, beyond those who haunt this land already. He knows that if he were to dare to dream here, he would find such spirits as Sorrow, Rage, and Despair. As it is, in the Waking, every blade of grass he now passes through is gilded with the bloody memory of the Dirthavaren. 

Cillian bears the accumulated knowledge of three Dalish clans — in his travels for the Inquisition, he had invoked Vir Sulevanan to obtain them. It was difficult, with no clan at his back, to convince the Keepers of his right, but he is Dalish. He bears the marks of June on his brown face to prove it. In the end, it was only with the promise to bring back the translations of what he found that his right to their people’s knowledge was honoured. 

The Inquisition has found elven writings in the Dales, and who better to interpret their intricacies than he? Well, perhaps one other person. Cillian is to meet the Inquisition’s Fade expert, who also serves the Nightingale, at the four sites that bear the markings. 

Cillian has heard the mutterings about him, this man he is bound to work with over the course of the next week or more. In his passage through Skyhold to Leliana’s rookery, he has seen the frescoes he crafts — he has only witnessed their like in the most ancient of elven ruins, and of those many are shattered. Cillian wonders if the man finds the art in his dreams, as Cillian had learned his own craft. 

Scout Pellane is the one who hails him as Cillian draws near to the first site. It is a broken ruin, exposed upon the plain, and it is clear many have camped here before. What had once been perhaps a gallery, or an open extension of a greater structure, is reduced to crumbling pillars and arches laced with vines. 

“No need,” he tells Pellane when asked if he would like to rest. “I am ready to begin.”

For it is nearly nightfall, and the glyph will be easiest to read in the dark. 

All but the writings of his people are stored away easily enough in the tent set aside for him — the treasures that will allow him to translate these glyphs remain tucked near his heart, wrapped in paper to protect them from his skin. He sets aside his armour that he had found at that ruin deep in the southern jungle, content to work in the relative safety of a camp protected by the Inquisition’s scouts in his simple jerkin, shirt, and leggings. He approaches the portion of the wall that bears the markings, rolling up his sleeves and all but trembling with eager anticipation. 

The ground is grit beneath his feet, composed of eroded stone and sand from the nearby river. He feels no weighty presence here, besides the old and new pain that lingers beyond the Veil that he can feel has become thin. And as he approaches the low balustrade, he spies a Veilfire torch already lit, for it washes the space in its moonlight-like glow. There the Dreamer works — Cillian can see only the top of his head over the edge of the stone, as he seems to be sitting on the ground, deep in thought. 

“Aneth ara,” Cillian tells him, carefully heralding his presence. He knows his footsteps can be quiet. “I am Cillian. May I join you?”

Solas — for that is his name, Cillian remembers, and he has no formal title — looks up. Cillian’s impression of him is of a stern, sharp man, dressed simply, and Cillian feels as if he has caught him in a rare moment of concentration, when all people forget to present their masks to the world and instead turn inwards. The moment of nakedness passes, and Solas smiles. 

“Of course. The Inquisitor sent word that you were coming,” he says, rising to his feet. He brushes dust and sand off his threadbare breeches. “I understand you have brought some texts that may be of use in deciphering these glyphs?”

He gestures, and Cillian sees the shimmering thing on the pillar. It reveals itself to the light, like the flash of light appears in a gem when tilted towards the sun, and Cillian makes out two ravens. One grips a heart in its talons, the other a mirror.

Cillian reaches into the front of his jerkin and draws out his folded treasures. He can feel Solas’s eyes upon him, like two pinpricks of heat, as he unfurls the paper and bears the documents to the light of the flameless torch. 

“One wonders,” the Dreamer chuckles, “what worthiness one Dalish mage had to prove in order to convince the clans to part with such things.”

“I will return them,” Cillian promises. “What belongs to one clan belongs to us all.”

Solas’s eyes shutter, as if closed off from within, and he smiles again in that brief, unconvincing way. “I know of the Dalish tradition of Vir Sulevanan, lethallin. Shall we put their sacrifice to good use?”

They bend their heads together over the first document. For all his haughtiness, Solas is not too good to sit in the dirt, and he seems more concerned with keeping their reading material clean than himself. He had had the sense to pull a makeshift table near their working space, and Pellane takes the initiative to set up an oilskin over them in case it begins to rain. Which it does, at roughly midway through the night. 

When dawn stretches its rosy fingers over the horizon, Cillian stretches his cramped spine and peers at his companion. Solas has filled page after page with his cramped, spiky writing — he seems to have felt the effects of their night at work, for he scrubs one hand at his bleary eyes. 

“I had not realised —” he begins, sounding nearly apologetic. 

“It is nothing,” Cillian assures him. “All the better to study it without the sun obscuring its finer details.”

Cillian ravenously eats the meal offered to him by the scouts — he had forgotten himself in his study, as he suspects Solas had as well. He wishes distantly for ham with his bread and cheese, but gruel would have served him perfectly fine. He eats so quickly he would not have tasted the difference. 

It is almost strange to sleep during the day — he has not done such a thing since his time meditating in that distant ruin, when time slipped and the line between night and day had not been so stark. He is so exhausted, however, that no slide into the Fade awaits him. His rest is deep and dark and dreamless.


Cillian wakes before nightfall. Solas has not yet emerged from his tent, so Cillian wanders to their working space and picks through their notes, mindlessly gnawing at an apple. He realises, with a sense of faraway fascination, that all of Solas’s notes are in Elvhen. 

He supposes that is not so strange — they are studying an ancient form of the language after all. But even Cillian has gaps in his fluency where he is forced to speak a word or two of Trade to clarify his meaning. Solas does not seem to require such a thing. 

The notes themselves are rambling, fragmented scribbles. Cillian pieces together such remarks as prior to the establishment of the Dales and segment 3b matches the form found in Document A. Cillian peers at the lifeless glyph, which is reduced to a dull smudge without Veilfire bringing out its clarity like a rainbow within an abalone shell. They had mapped it out with chalk the day before into a grid pattern — 3b corresponded with the mirror in one raven’s claws. 

“You have just awoken,” grumbles a sleep-thickened voice behind him. “The work will remain until we are ready to resume it. Come.”

Cillian turns — Solas gestures to him with a nod of his head in an invitation to walk up the hill. He has a bundle of rations and a tin of water in his hands. So Cillian follows, and they settle upon a rock overlooking the plain, facing the setting sun. Cillian finishes his apple and replaces it with a bit of hard cheese.

They eat in a silence that surprises Cillian with its calm. He feels no tension in Solas, nor challenge as he had when they had met the day before. It feels like a truce, earned through a night of hard work and strained eyes. 

“I had not expected the Dalish to have interest in the Inquisition,” Solas finally says. He’s picking at a piece of bread with his long, pale fingers and popping it, bit by bit, into his mouth. “Considering the implications of working with an organisation so closely resembling the Chantry, especially in these lands.”

Cillian shook his head. “It would be inaccurate to say the Dalish as a whole have an interest. You have met the clan that camps nearby.”

“They have reason to be cautious,” Solas concedes. “And you are correct, I apologise. What brings a solitary Dalish elf to our cause, then?”

Cillian looks towards the setting sun, and the green scar that still slashes the sky. “I would stand against whatever tore the Veil. Once I might have said the desire for glory, but my time travelling alone has instilled in me a sense of duty. I am apart from my people, and while they shaped me, they are not all I am. The world is larger than the reach of my clan.”

Solas’s face is furrowed when Cillian glances back towards him. The remainder of his bread dangles from one hand. 

“I am of clan Ralaferin,” Cillian concedes with a smile. “Among the Dalish, such a name is synonymous with betrayal, for our past Keeper, Gisharel, told many of our stories to the shemlen. But why hide ourselves away? Fear is fed by ignorance, and I would remove that ignorance wherever I can.”

“So you joined the Inquisition.”

Cillian inclines his head. “So I did.”

“Is that not dangerous for you?”

“And not for you?” Cillian gestures with his mug, then takes a drink. “You too bear pointed ears and magic. Would you be any better off in your alienage?”

Solas’s eyes shutter as they did once before. Nothing about the man’s expression or posture changes — Cillian can’t even say how he knows that Solas has shut himself away. 

“I grew up in a village to the north,” he says easily. “I knew no alienage nor Circle.”

Cillian can feel the disbelief manifest on his face. “How lucky that you were protected there.”

“I am well-versed in remaining unnoticed.” Solas’s smile is tight. “And I was asleep for much of those years, in any case. I grew to treasure my dreams, for there was so much to explore.”

His disbelief transforms into barely-shuttered excitement. Cillian fixes his gaze on the man beside him, hoping to finally glean the truth from the source rather than hearsay from pilgrims to Skyhold. “I had heard you were a Dreamer. What do you see? What do you learn?”

Solas regards him for a long moment. He finishes his breakfast — he pensively draws the tip of his thumb through his lips, taking the last of his food with it — and brushes his hands clean on a cloth. Only then does he gesture at what lays before them — the Dirthavaren, the ruins below them, the shattered remnants of the Dales and a time that came before. 

“I have journeyed deep into the Fade in ancient ruins and battlefields to see the dreams of lost civilizations,” he says in a low voice. Cillian leans forward to hear him. “I’ve watched as hosts of spirits clash to reenact the bloody past of wars both famous and forgotten.”

“As I have always wished to,” Cillian says, almost breathless in his excitement. He has lost any sense of self-consciousness in the face of such knowledge and experience. “I have meditated and studied in ruins and shrines, but my dreams so often fade upon waking.”

Solas cocks his head, regarding Cillian with a pale gaze that is not quite so brittle as it was before. “Tell me of your meditations, lethallin.”

“No!” Cillian gasps. His hands sweat where he has gripped his knees — he sits back, realising he’s all but lurched forward. “Ir abelas, no, I should not have interrupted. You were telling me of your dreams.”

Cillian will not say that Solas smiles, for all the smiles he has been given thus far were for politeness’s sake. This is more than a smile, and yet does not alter much of the set of Solas’s features. His face is merely warm where it was once cold. 

“When I dream in such places,” Solas resumes, carefully, “I go deep into the Fade. I can find memories no other living being has ever seen…”


Their study of the glyphs proves fruitful quite quickly. And just like the glyphs themselves, Solas gives himself up bit by intriguing bit. All he needs, Cillian discovers, is a listening ear — and Cilian is very good at listening. 

He had once listened for such wisdom from the susurrus of leaves and insect wings, the murmuring found in ruins long abandoned, the vocalisations of a dream barely remembered. Cillian thinks often of the wisp of shattered Valor, his teacher all that time ago, and can hear some of its repeated counsel in the pattern of Solas’s tales. 

The entire while, they work in the hours between sunset and sunrise — Cillian feels somewhat like a spirit himself, bound to the nocturnal and arcane. He holds Veilfire, as Solas teaches him, in the palm of his hand to illuminate their findings. Solas leans close, notes spread in his lap, and marvels over the craft of the elves who made the Dales their home. 

“Many of the dreams I find are older even than the creation of such things,” he explains one night, so quietly that Cillian strains to hear. “I had not imagined that magic could be painted in this way, at least not... and to reveal it with a memory of half-forgotten flame, drawn from the Veil itself? It is remarkable.”

Cillian brushes the tips of his fingers against the grit of the wall as he holds the flame closer. He wonders, as he did in Valor’s tutelage, if simply meditating upon the glyphs could show him some of what had happened here once. 

“You dream within ruins,” he says. “Have you dreamt here?”

Solas’s open wonder closes into something more careful. The planes of his cheeks are hollow above the flickering of their blue flame. “I have slept here, as you have.”

“But you could learn more, couldn’t you? If you dreamt instead of slept?”

Solas is still wary. Cillian wonders what has taught him to hold his thoughts so tightly, what has thinned his mouth to a pale line to withhold the truth. When he speaks, his words seem to slant sideways. 

“It is wise to be cautious, especially in these lands. One can lose oneself in the despair and death that have seeped into its soil.”

“But you haven’t.”

Cillian feels audacious. He is tired. He is curious. And Solas is avoiding the question. He closes his hand around the Veilfire and casts them into something akin to darkness — the sun approaches, and the sky is grey. Solas’s eyes are dark when he casts them up to meet Cillian’s. 

“I have not,” he says. “No.”

“And you’ve dreamt?”

A sigh. “Yes.”

“What did you see?”

Solas’s lips are thin once again, and his jaw pulses with tension that he finally releases with a resigned sigh. He rises to his feet, stores his notes, and puts out a hand to Cillian — Cillian takes it, grateful for the help. He has neglected his routine, and his muscles and bones ache from crouching and remaining so still. 

“Come,” Solas tells him, gesturing to his own tent. “I will show you.”


The birds awaken before Cillian falls asleep. 

He is too aware of the man beside him, who slips into dreams far too easily for someone unaccustomed to sleeping during the day. Cillian is not sure why he could not dream within his own tent, but he does not challenge Solas — not when he is so near to knowledge he could not find on his own, or without the assistance of spirits. 

Cillian closes his eyes with a sigh, determined not to open them again until he has slept. He murmurs a prayer to Sylaise under his breath, asking for her comfort — he finds it in the warmth of another body near his, not so close to touch but enough so to feel. 

He slips. 

He falls. 

Something — someone — catches him. 

He still hears the birds. Their song is different from that of those who sang as he drifted. When he opens his eyes, the light is vivid and clear, lacking the smog of faraway, fiery civil war. 

“Lethallin,” Solas says. “Look.”

Cillian follows the pale, pointed finger of his companion. He does not pause to look at him — he is immediately engrossed by the sight of the ruins they stand within, but are ruins no longer. He knew they had once been baths, but knowing is not the same as seeing. 

Colonnades soar to support a faraway ceiling, which arches into flower petal upon pointed flower petal. To Cillian’s upturned eyes, the inner walls of the arched eaves are painted, as well as the ceiling itself, with blues, ochres, scarlets, and greens. The curves of leaves, flowers, and animals lend themselves to the architecture with such crisp perfection that Cillian wonders if they could possibly have once been real. 

Sunlight streams between the columns, and beyond is nothing but hazy golden nowhere. Cillian does not spare it another thought. 

Cillian follows stairs — perfect in their symmetry, unshattered by time and Chantry forces — down into a room he has no name for. Fire crackles in a constructed ring in the center of the floor, and the air is thick with steam. He keeps moving. 

The next room is wide and spacious, and Cillian recognises it as he descends more stairs into the space — it is like an arcade, or an amphitheater, but as he gazes upon it he realises the floor is deep, clean water. The walls, dotted with tall windows that culminate in graceful arches, are lined with Veilfire braziers that wash the room in cool light. Pale curtains flow in the passage of a gentle breeze from the golden beyond. 

“No one is here,” Cillian breathes.

Solas is beside him, hands behind his back. He stands taller, straighter, here. “The land remembers how this building once stood. The spirits remember a more violent time, one that occurs in the years to come.”

The other man ventures before him — he takes stride after confident stride, and passes beneath the arches, into the grander portion of the room. Stairs carry his feet towards the still waters, and when he steps into it, the water does not so much as ripple. 

“We pass through this space as if we were not here” Solas calls. “You will affect nothing. But watch, and see what you can see.”

Solas’s clothes billow around him as he steps waist-deep into the water. With one more step, he suddenly drops beneath the surface.

When Cillian follows, first on tentative footsteps that turn more confident as he goes, the water feels like warm air, rather than something wet and cool. He looks into it, wondering if a mosaic decorates the floor of the bath, and finds it no longer clear — it is ink-dark, and he cannot even see his own foot below the surface. 

His heart is pounding, but this is the Fade — he remembers the litany his Keeper taught him, one that protects against conjuring demons with the power of one’s emotions. He closes his eyes, focuses on the sensation of the warm water, and murmurs, “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”

Cillian takes another step and sinks to his chest.

“I will face my fear,” he whispers, and feels his heart slow. “I will permit it to pass over me and through me.”

Another step. He sinks to his chin.

“When it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.” The movement of his lips does not disturb the black water. He cannot taste it. “Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.”

He does not open his eyes. He holds his breath, and takes one last step. 

Only I will remain. 

All is warmth. There is no floor, no sensation of sinking. Cillian is cradled in this water as he is cradled in this dream. 

Breathe, lethallin. 

His eyes fly open as he gasps in a breath. This is the Fade, he reminds himself — there is no need to breathe, thus no need to hold it. But where he had expected blackness, Cillian sees magic. 

What flows around him is the same opalescent light as what makes up the glyph in the Waking. He gazes around, mouth slack and eyes wide, as it ripples around him with depth he could not have imagined on his own. He imagines it forms words that dissolve before he can read them, then dances into the bodies of animals and elves alike before it bursts into shining, shimmering particles — he puts out a hand and watches it flow through his fingers, as if he’s raking them through flowing tendrils of pure lyrium. 

When his eyes land on Solas, he is unfamiliar for a split moment — a face, warped, a body, twisted and agile and long — before Cillian blinks the imagining away. For he had imagined it. He must have. The impression of his companion’s face bearing too many eyes lingers, but only for a moment more — as if Cillian had looked too long into a fire before glancing away into darkness, just to see the same flame with every blink. 

Are you frightened?

Cillian draws near to Solas, who is plain and unremarkable in this dream. “Not anymore.”

Solas gives the impression of a smile, somehow without smiling. Despite their surroundings not feeling like water, Solas’s shirt is soaked and translucent, and its sleeves float when he moves. Cillian wonders if he appears this way because he dreamed it so, or if Cillian himself has imagined it into being. 

You keep your composure here, even without instruction, Solas remarks. Good. 

Cillian feels Solas’s words, rather than hear them — Solas’s mouth had not moved. A quick, wolfish grin, and then his companion speaks normally. 

“I have a friend here who would show us the painter of this glyph. They will present it to you, should you be patient and composed. Their nature is a delicate one, easily warped by dreaming minds. They do not often reach out to the living.”

Cilian feels a surge of warmth and energy swell between his ribs — he takes in a quick breath. “What manner of spirit is this?”

Solas considers him for a moment, guarded but not shuttered as he had been many times before, then reaches out and touches Cillian’s shoulder. With the most minute of nudges, he guides him to turn — as he does, Solas reaches past him to point.

“There,” he murmurs, close beneath Cillian’s ear. “Contemplation.”

The shimmering magic takes shape. No longer are they cradled in deep waters — instead, the bath has run dry, and they stand upon its floor. Cillian glances down and finds it is indeed a mosaic, but its tiles have discoloured or become lost with time or wear. He cannot determine its pattern. But Solas turns his chin back up with a curled finger, and Cillian’s gaze lands upon a person. 

It is an elf — or what appears to be an elf. They have slumped to the floor beside one of the arched windows, and they press one hand to their side. The other is raised to the stone. 

As Cillian watches, the personage murmurs a spell beneath their breath. They drag two paired fingers across the stone, as if to paint it with blood — but gleaming blue, rather than dull scarlet, flows in their wake. The glyph sings. And when the spirit slumps to the ground, clutching at their own ribs, the full work becomes clear — it depicts a pair of hands cupped around the moon.

“An archivist,” Solas murmurs, so close that his breath brushes the side of Cillian’s neck, “a woman tasked with keeping the records of the Dales. With danger so near, she painted an ancient symbol where she hoped others would find it. These glyphs guide towards a precious secret indeed.”

Solas moves past him, a hand outstretched to the spirit. He drops to his knees at their side, then lays a hand on their forehead and closes his eyes. There is the faraway sound of shouting, metal striking stone, and screams. 

Solas’s voice is thick with emotion when he speaks again, quietly but with enough fervour to shake the very air. “Her name was Ashira. Her soul sang out to the spirits, and Contemplation was often at her side as she studied and learned all she could of her people. She discovered many lost arts and forgotten secrets and brought them to light. This was her final gift.”

“Before the Exalted March brought the Chantry to her doorstep,” Cillian whispers. 

Solas cradles Ashira’s echoed form for a moment more before his gaze snaps up towards the entrance to the baths. That same impression from before — one of too many eyes — flits across Cillian’s mind before it is washed away by the approaching clamour of many voices. 

“Come,” Solas says, rising to his feet. “I would not expose you to this.”

Solas snatches up Cillian’s hand, and the oncoming chorus of screams and clattering swords dies away into nothing.


When Cillian snaps awake, tears stain his cheeks. 

He sits up, choking on more tears running down his throat, and hunches over his knees — he presses the heels of his hands to his closed eyes, easing the heat and pain in them with pressure until stars burst behind his eyelids. He does not realise he is still sobbing until a light touch lands on his back. 

“Lethallin,” Solas says, and his voice is heavy with unbearable sadness. “Breathe.”

It is the same voice he used in the dream. It is strange to hear it while awake. 

“Feel the ground beneath you,” Solas continues. The flat of his hand is warm on Cillian’s back. “Feel the fabric rustling on your skin. Taste the air in your lungs.”

Cillian feels a lump in the earth beneath his heel. He focuses on it, then on the contact of his shirt between his skin and Solas’s hand. He takes another shuddering, hiccuping breath, and he can taste the heavy air in the tent, the heat of the day, his own sweat, the scent of the man next to him. He realises that Solas smells much like the crisp air in the dream had, and that begins his tears anew. 

“There is a cricket in the tent.”

Cillian’s breath hitches, chokes him. “W-what?”

Solas is smiling — truly smiling — and Cillian gazes at him through tears that blur the world. He seems almost bashful with this smile, as if he has thought better of this approach, but it is too late to back down now. 

“Listen,” he murmurs. “I hear it, somewhere near that corner. Perhaps by my pack.”

Cillian feels apart from himself, as if some of his soul remained in the dream with the spirit who echoed Ashira’s last moments. But as he catches his breaths and strains to hear, he does detect the rasping song of a cricket. And now that he’s registered it, he wonders how he hadn’t heard it right away — it is a loud strumming, rhythmic and jarring as it searches for the way out. 

Solas hums, and he sounds satisfied. “There. Focusing on what is here, in the real world, can help draw you from a dream gone wrong. I apologise. I had not considered how deeply that would affect you.”

The cricket still sings as Cillian scrubs at his eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath. “No, you owe me no apology. Thank you for showing me.”

“Ma nuvenin,” Solas says. 

Cillian glimpses that same expression on Solas’s face as he wore in the Fade, when gazing upon the spirit. It feels strange to have it directed upon him, as if this were a part of the Inquisition’s scholar that he was not meant to see. It had been uncomfortable, in a way, to see him so readily fly to the spirit’s defence, to nurture it in its grief and loss. It was far from what Cillian expected from one he once thought to be a hard, uncaring man. 

Then Solas’s hand slides away from Cillian’s back — he had not realised it still rested there, but still keenly feels its loss. 

“To free the cricket,” Solas explains with a twinkle in his pale eye, then rises from his bedroll.


They prepare to travel. 

They have studied all the glyphs the Exalted Plains have to offer, and have pieced together their mysteries as well as they can in the field. Scout Pellane is mystified that dreams have apparently been the key to unlocking the glyphs’ secrets, but he does not press them — after his initial experiences with Charter, he knows better now than to give lip to the elven scholars he protects. 

The plains are riddled with demons and Freemen and undead, so upon breaking camp they leave clad in full armour and armed with their staves. Solas is unremarkable in plaincloth and leather, save for a wolf pelt slung over one shoulder as if to warm him. He wears it belted at his waist — a strange choice, but one that Cillian does not question him on. Even the Fadewalker’s staff is uncarved heartwood, unadorned except for the rune placed within the gnarled tip that lends it its spirit-purging abilities. He looks nothing like the man Cillian now knows he is — one who is vibrantly alive within the Fade, who has guided him now through dream after dream, who has befriended spirits and shared their teachings with Cillian with an eagerness he never expected. Cillian now knows Solas’s true smile, and feels privileged to have seen it in its honesty, even if only with dreaming eyes. 

Cillian himself is armoured in what he had found within Valor’s hidden ruin — the ancient material moves with him as if made for him, its fine mesh all but moulded to his skin. He catches Solas eyeing the bronze plates that compose the outer layer, calculations spinning behind his careful expression. But just as Cillian does not ask about the impractical wolf pelt, nor the jawbone that rests on Solas’s chest, Solas does not ask about the armour or the ancient staff slung upon Cillian’s back. 

Solas does ask, however, about the ruins. 

“Will you tell me now, lethallin?”

Grass swishes against their legs, rasping against bronze plates and soft leather. Solas’s bare feet make no sound. Cillian turns his face towards the setting sun and sighs. 

“What can I tell you that would measure up to what you have shown me?” he asks. “Anything I have found would pale in comparison, hahren.”

“I do not believe you,” his companion chuckles. “And please, call me by name.”

Cillian feels his face grow warm, so he looks away from the brightness of the sky towards the hills on the horizon. They will make it to the dells before nightfall. 

“I once followed a migration of butterflies,” Cillian begins, breathless with discomfort. He has told no one of his experience — for who could understand? His chest is tight with anticipation of his audience’s mockery. “They were singular in their drive, guided as if by an unseen hand. I wished for such guidance myself. I kept to their path, resting when they rested, sleeping when they slept. I prayed in the moments in-between. They led me to sites and ruins no living being had seen in centuries.”

Solas makes a soft sound, but does not interrupt. His gaze scorches Cillian’s face with its focus. 

“They found their destination, and I discovered that this same path had been traced by generations upon generations of the insects. Their chrysalids heaped upon the ground like leaves. Milkweed choked what had once been a grand amphitheatre. But their presence did not diminish the greatness of the structure, for they had become a part of it.

“I lost sense of time. I meditated within that amphitheatre, searching it for its secrets, much as you do. I wish I had been able to dream there and find the faces of those who had gone before me. But what I found, in my isolation, was worth more than the grandest secrets of my clan.”

Cillian feels as if Solas were considering him, or sizing him up. He makes another soft sound, then finally looks towards that same horizon. “Your clan must be proud.”

“To tell the truth? I do not know.” Cillian takes a deep breath. “But I did not do it for them in the end. I needed to know.”

“Knowing,” Solas agrees, “is its own reward.”

Cillian huffs out a sigh of relief. “I would not trade it for anything.”


When they make camp in the foothills, the grass glows gold in the setting sun. It has been strange to grow accustomed to sleeping at night again, after so long studying by Veilfire in the dark, but Cillian is relieved to live beneath the daylit sky. And after his discussion with Solas, Cillian remembers his long-neglected routines, and resolves to perform them before he allows himself to discard his armour. 

He will not forget what Valor taught him so easily. 

He waits until camp has settled — Scout Pellane and the others circle the fire, laughing and eating and sounding a bit like home. Solas is not among them, and Cillian imagines he must have been ready to retire. 

Cillian ventures into the prairie grass, tucks out of sight of the camp, and draws his staff off his back into the palm of his hand. He spins it easily, refamiliarising himself with its weight. The seedheads of the grass nod in a sudden breeze, and the silky aster flowers are vivid pops of purple in the depths of pale green. He breathes, he listens, and he drops into a familiar stance. 

There is no sky. 

The sunlight fades from gold to wan dusk. Cillian summons the remembrance of Valor’s words, Valor’s teachings, Valor’s faint wisp of song. He draws within himself as he moves. He feels the weight of the staff in his hand, the pull and tug of muscles directing bone. 

No earth. 

Grass does not prick at his feet. There are only the steps. Only the form. 

No future. 

He does not think about their destination, nor the Nightingale, nor even the Inquisition. He does not anticipate the meal awaiting him. He forgets that he is hungry. He forgets that he wishes for sleep. 

No past.

He forgets even the glyphs that he had stared at until his eyes lost focus. He puts Ashira from his mind. He pushes the remembrance of Solas’s smile within the Fade. 

There is only me. 

His spirit blade comes to his fingers without conscious thought — it bends to his will, not his mind. His courage feeds the wisp that assists him. His teacher’s voice, gentle and low and inexorable, reminds him to pull from within himself, for his own well of valor runs deep. 

There is only now. 

His muscles burn from the movements of each successive form — the steps he takes, the swipe of his blade, the paired spin of his staff. He leaps from one form to the next, but there is no enemy to fight, no foe to turn his staff and blade against. He must only slay the weakness inside himself. 

Stillness — and his heart is not still — is its own reward. 

He finishes the form, dipped low into a crouch with his sword and staff extended before him, before he stands. His hands tremble when he releases his blade from its ethereal existence — he can hardly bear to lift his arm to sling his staff upon his back. He does not know how long he meditated upon the old teachings, but it is possible he is simply out of practice. 

Cillian’s heartbeat pounds in his ears, and his breaths wisp past clenched teeth — he barely hears the soft voice of his audience when he speaks.

“Now, where did you learn that, lethallin?”

Cillian spins on his heel — even a week ago he may have felt foolish, being caught this way. But Solas looks upon him, and there is no mockery in his pale eyes. Something gleams there instead, vibrant and proud. A true smile spreads across his face, something Cillian had only seen in dreams. 

He still wears his armour, his wolf pelt, his staff. His hands are clasped behind his back. His shoulders are straight. He suddenly strikes Cillian as being very tall indeed. Cillian wonders how long he has watched him. 

“In my ruin,” Cillian pants. “Among the chrysalids and milkweed. A spirit there rests within shattered armour.”

An expression Cillian cannot name flares across Solas’s severe features. It reminds him of how Valor had spoken of the butterflies — how it had grieved them as they fell like autumn leaves. 

"Valor is not the bravery to seek adventure, or glory," Cillian recites. "Valor is the courage to commit to one's duty. To fight to save all you know and love. This is why I joined the Inquisition.”

Solas strides nearer to him, his movements purposeful and sharp. His hands, no longer clasped behind his back, fly to hold Cillian’s forearms — his eyes, which burn with that same unknowable, joyful grief, scan his face as if searching for an old friend. 

“I am as the sea,” Solas murmurs in response, the closing to his meditation. “Who can stand against the tide?”