Her hand was fine-boned, the back littered with small scars earned through life lessons and hard work. The fingers and palm were callused from using a staff, which he found an odd comfort. At the very least, the shadow bearing the Anchor in her palm was a mage, closer to The People as they had been than most of these living ghosts were. Carefully, Solas plucked at the Anchor, attempting to free it from the unconscious elven woman. She let out a harsh whimper of pain. He gritted his teeth at the blowback from the destabilized mark.
What unholy thing did that Blighted magister do before blowing himself up?
To take the Anchor from her right now, he would have to murder her, it was so deeply rooted and entwined in her being. Even worse, he could not even guarantee that he would be able to take it into himself because it was so unstable. Gently, he trickled a stream of healing along the roots of the Anchor, fixing some of the damage it had done to the fragile shell it was inhabiting for the time being. He could feel the Breach pulse outside, an echoing pulse coming from her hand and tearing the Anchor wider.
The cry that tore from her lips was one of disturbingly real agony. Solas pressed his lips together, reminding himself that he had to focus on keeping her alive if he was to have any hope of recovering the Anchor. More healing energies poured into her, and when he felt the balance was right, began carefully weaving the Fade into the Anchor to stabilize it. He pulled the thin threads tight around ragged edges, closing the tears and shoring up the edges so further pulses would be less likely to cause damage. As long as he was allowed access to the elven woman, he could maintain the stability and dig the roots of the Anchor out of her in hopes of preserving her life and removing it as painlessly as possible. Shadow or not, it would be cruel to purposely inflict pain on a sentient creature.
The dirty cell floor was uncomfortable on his knees, and the chill cut through his leggings and warming enchantments far too quickly. Standing up, Solas rubbed his hands together and brushed the floor grit from his knees. He stretched, and took a swig of water from his provided canteen before preparing to hunker down and start working on the Anchor again.
"Oi, knife-ear, you done wiv her?" The guard threw open the basement door with a rattle. "Seeker Pentaghast wants you to help wiv the rifts again, since you know so much."
Maintaining his air of detached calm, Solas replied, "Certainly. Please notify me if she wakes."
The human grunted, malice sparkling in his eyes as they lit on the unconscious woman on the thin straw pallet in the cell.
"I will take that as an affirmative."
He squeezed past the guard to go up the stairs and proceed through the Chantry, taking his staff from where he had left it, just inside the doorway. Shading his eyes from the sun, Solas looked up. In the day since the Breach had opened, the jagged tear in the sky had only grown wider. The time in between pulses grew shorter, and more rifts were forming more often. The forces in Haven were starting to spread thin already, going from rift to rift to clear out the demons emerging from them before proceeding to the rest. The soldiers' shift rotations were kept tight and strict so that every man and woman had a chance to rest and be refreshed to face the constant onslaught, but they wouldn't be able to hold for much longer. A few days, at most.
Adan, the alchemist, had already been pressed into medical duty to deal with the increased amount of injured soldiers. Solas stopped on his way out of Haven to heal a few soldiers who had minor gashes from demon claws. They would be able to return to their regular shifts in the rotation, and it might help hold back the tide for a few more hours.
Solas winced as the Breach tore open another rift, and it belched demons out.
I'm so sorry, my friends.
The poor spirits. So many of them were being sucked unawares out of the Fade and thrown into the waking world, turned not because they wanted to be there, but because they were in the wrong place when a rift opened and it was too much for them.
When he got his orb and the Anchor, he would make it right. He had to believe he would be able to do that. Snow crunched under his wrapped feet as he made his way out to the rift he considered 'his' rift. It was one of the first to have opened, and the one he had studied from the time Lady Seeker Pentaghast had dragged him to it. The blast from the Breach had knocked him off his feet and into a snowbank, and after he'd pulled himself out, he had presented himself to her immediately.
His rift had only spawned a few weak Fear demons, which he was able to dispatch quickly on his own. While he might not have the full breadth of his magic available, he was strong enough to free them to return to the Fade and become spirits of Courage once again. One problem solved, he turned to the main one.
Magically, he tested the edges, seeing if he could weave them together, like a spider with a web, and pull the web tight to seal it off. All it did was absorb the magical strands, and the rift flexed as if it would spew more demons out. His brow wrinkled as he pondered. This time, he tried to form a cap of sorts, to seal it off as the Children of the Stone did with darkspawn entrances.
It was like trying to dam a torrent by throwing a handful of twigs in. A growl of frustration rose in his throat. The rift spat out another Fear demon, and a few daggers of ice sent it on its way. With a testing probe of magic, Solas confirmed that the rift had loosed all the demons it was likely to for at least a few hours.
Breaking into a brisk jog, he moved on to the next in the loop of rifts he and the dwarf, Varric, were tasked with keeping clear of demons for the time being. It was the dwarf's mealtime break, judging by the angle of the sun. His own stomach growled, reminding him he had neglected to take any nourishment for himself when he had the chance, instead studying the Anchor, and the woman who was its vessel.
She was short, as the shadows of The People were, and slender, but more muscular and showed signs of a better diet than their city-based brethren. He had washed out her thick black hair the night before, as it had been caked with mud and other substances that he didn't want to think about after her fall from the opening in the Fade.
Something in her face was familiar, the angle of the slope of her nose, or maybe it was the the shapeliness of her mouth. She was not unpleasant to look at, though a bit plain in his mind. Her forehead a touch too broad and her chin could be called weak viewed from certain angles. His mind touched on, then skipped over the vallaslin of Mythal that marred her high cheekbones with their purple scars. The pride of unwitting slavery carried so plainly on her face made him feel ill when he thought on it too long.
Still, she was more than the other shadows he had met. None of the others had come to the Conclave, or taken an interest in what would happen there, though it would have shaped their world and their future. It was sad that her curiosity would end up being the death of her if he could not remove the Anchor from her palm.
Swinging his staff around, Solas whipped shards of ice towards the Terror demon that was springing for him from the next rift on his route. His duty at the moment was to dispatch the demons and figure out how to remove the Anchor later.
For the sake of The People, he could not afford any distractions.