Shadows in the Dark

by Seab1rds0ng

Solona Amell has a deathwish. It's 7 months after the death of the Archdemon and the Hero of Ferelden longs to join her beloved Alistair at the Maker's side. The darkspawn swarming the land around the Warden's new base means plenty of opportunity to make that a reality. But while an old crush provides a powerful temptation, it's the broody archer who just might change her life.

1. Chapter 1

Solona's eyes shot open as the familiar sensation of approaching darkspawn tickled the edges of her awareness. The bone pale moon through her dingy window colored the ceiling above a silvery cerulean blue. Her head throbbed, her mouth was parched, but it wasn't the darkspawn that set her jaw tight with pain. It was the large flask of cheap Brandy she'd emptied only a few hours earlier, while perched alone upon the roof of one of the Vigil's Keep watchtowers. She couldn't say that was a particularly Commander-like thing to be doing on such a regular basis, but nevertheless it seemed to provide some kind of solace, even if only the feeling that she was closer in some intangible way to her beloved.

Distantly she recalled that one pair of dark eyes had actually seemed to catch sight of her up there. Normally everyone just made their circles in the courtyard, oblivious to her presence above them while they flitted from conversation to conversation like a horde of social butterflies. But she supposed if there was anyone in the Keep who knew all the best places to get some peace and quiet, it would be the man who'd grown up there. It wasn't lost on her that if Nathaniel still desired that revenge that so many others continued to caution her about, he'd merely need to sneak up behind her on almost any night and give her a little push. Over the edge and down five stories she'd fall, and no one would be the wiser as to why. Nathaniel already had that infuriatingly silent way of all archers she'd known, so such a feat could be accomplished easily provided she had enough liquor in her system to override her Warden sense. Not that she'd try to stop him even when she did sense his approach.

He hadn't done anything like that though. He'd stayed visible for a while, his face shadowed in its usual dour frown until the hour grew too late to justify standing around out there with little to do.

She'd spent the rest of the evening hyperaware of any sounds at her rear. She didn't bother to turn around, however, not wanting to interrupt the plans of any stealthy avenger. She welcomed the attack. Hoped, even, as much as she was loathe to admit it out loud. That someone might finally do what she couldn't quite seem to do herself, what the Archdemon should have done, would have been a relief.

It was an error she suffered for every day since she lost him. She and Alistair were supposed to have died together, the way they'd promised each other after rejecting Morrigan's offer. Solona was supposed to be with Alistair right now, this very moment and every moment of the past seven months, and on into their eternal afterlife. She shouldn't still be here , alone, walking around, going through the motions as though she was anything more than an empty, dejected husk.

Solona sat up in her bed, the silence of the room punctuated by the throbbing of her blood trying to navigate through alcohol-constricted veins. She felt the darkspawn clearly, as certain of their numbers as she was of anything. They were close and getting closer, creeping through deep passages somewhere below the room she slept. The bloody bastards still crawled through in small waves, but never seemed to bring along the full battalion that had greeted her upon her arrival at Vigil's Keep. And they'd never woken her from a drunken sleep before.

She was out of bed, ignoring the robes draped haphazardly over the cabinet doors but instinctively grabbing her ironbark staff. The silvery ball at the end pulsed with power as it connected to her magic, shining a flash of a purplish light through the room. She paused a second to consider shoes, and then continued mindlessly toward the door without grabbing them. One who is hoping to meet their end has little need for protection, she figured dimly, even of the most minor variety. She wondered for the hundredth time as she let herself out of her bedroom door why she even bothered to fight. If she really wanted to die, she could simply stand before the darkspawn and let them come.

But it was never that simple, was it? First of all their smell was literally repulsive. Her body rejected it on a cellular level, their stench of death and decay mixed with something deeply treacherous that seemed to cause her limbs to lash out of their own accord. Secondly, there must have been something inherent with her Grey Wardenness that wouldn't let her stand idle as they approached. Her job had been to kill these creatures for a year and a half now, and at times, despite the smell, she even enjoyed it. Tapping into some inner current of hatred and bitterness worked wonders on the force of her magic, magnifying her power into something terrifying. She'd begun combining her spells in newer, more grotesque ways in order to administer deaths that grew increasingly spectacular in their destruction. It was as close as she'd gotten to anything resembling fun in a very long time.

And then there was the knowledge that to allow herself to be killed in such a way would mean the probable deaths of others, innocents who would later find themselves in the path of whatever darkspawn she failed to destroy. And she'd never uncover the mystery of the talkers. That wasn't an option. It would, in fact, be a dereliction of duty.

No, she'd have to fight them, wagering that eventually she might meet one, or a horde, who would finally be her match despite her best efforts.

She'd only lived in the Keep for a month, but the path from her quarters to the closest exit was an easy walk, done quickly with eyes still blurred from a brief, poor sleep and the remnants of drunkenness still fogging up her thoughts. Down a hall, around a corner, across a large main room and around another corner before reaching a side door to the courtyard. It wasn't typical for her to walk these halls wearing only a thin slip of a nightgown, but there wouldn't be many souls awake to see it.

Only two bodies stirred in the courtyard. Two guards marched quietly along the perimeter and were speechless as they passed her, likely disbelieving their eyes. Or perhaps thinking that she was just sleepwalking.

She rounded the main building and entered the door across the yard to the Howe basement. Without pausing to adjust to the utter darkness, she padded quietly down the pathway. She channeled power into her staff and slowly the dark rooms and halls revealed themselves in her staffhead's glow. This building always retained an unnatural chill, which she supposed was about right for a structure built over the entrance to the innards of the earth.

These darkspawn might never actually find nor attempt to breach the door, but still Solona knew it was only a matter of time before this fortress was overrun again from the inhabitants of the depths below it. Perhaps this was merely a wayward band who'd gotten separated from their horde, or, for all she knew, they might be a scouting troop checking the entrance in advance of a new invasion. Many times in the past month an awareness of the shadowy figures wandering in the deep had tugged at her mind, but tonight they were sharp and distinct, indicating that they were especially close to the surface. She counted eight separate bodies, consisting of just simple brutes and genlocks, none of them ranked terribly high in power or ability. She sighed as she wound her way down closer to the entrance, knowing that eight on one wasn't exactly a cakewalk, but it wasn't anything she hadn't handled before.

Still, she wondered if perhaps tonight might finally be the night it all came to an end after all.

She breezed through another doorway to find the purple glow of her staff cut by a dull bleed of outside light. To the left, down a short descending hallway, an orange slit glowed around a partially opened door. Someone must have left some braziers lit in one of the lower rooms, though most of those in the neglected parts of the keep were antiques, only capable of burning for a few hours before needing another application of kerosene. Solona paused for a moment and listened, hearing nothing behind the door to indicate anyone was active in there. The hour had to have been exceedingly late, though she had no way of knowing what time it actually was.

She shrugged and continued on. Those braziers would burn themselves out eventually.

The opening to the Deep Roads was a gash of extra-dark black that seemed to breathe a dank, frigid air through her satin gown. With each step, the freezing rocks beneath bit painfully at the soles of her feet, but she relegated the discomfort to the back of her mind. It was a pain she'd chose, and it certainly wasn't the first over the last seven months. She entered the passage fully and the hair all over her body stood on end, both for the growing chill and the knowledge of what lay before her. One never really got used to the appearance of darkspawn, no matter how many times one faced them down.

But their familiar, fetid smell had another effect on Solona now, one which she counted on to deaden her anxiety and drive her forward into battle. It was a reminder of what had been taken from her, conjuring up a memory of when that smell had been considerably stronger. It had been the backdrop to those long, eternal moments that she'd sat beside the Archdemon's cooling corpse, while the last of Alistair's life bled out of him before her very eyes. That scent was unbearably thick then, like an oily blanket of death that smothered the air and wound tightly around her throat, removing the prospect of beginning her cherished eternity by Alistair's side. It was a blanket of death that had never lifted.

That scent was all she needed really. Was there anything more potent than a scent for resurrecting an emotion or experience with blazing clarity? She'd never experienced anything else her life which had reliably set fire to her blood in the same way as the stench of darkspawn since Alistair had gone. It clouded her vision in a red, homicidal haze and sent adrenaline raging through her veins. She caught the first breath of it in the rocky passages before her, confirming that the darkspawn were indeed unusually close to the entrance, and felt the adrenaline begin to rush into her blood. She increased her speed to a charge, letting the pulsing rage take the reins of her body and propel her deeper down the pathway. The rocky corridors flew past, the bone-chilling cold now hardly an afterthought. Her Warden sense honed in on them like a beacon, and her staff was fully charged and ready to fire before she even heard the first snarls echoing from around a shelf of rock.

The first push of her magic brought the blackness alive with a shock of purple and white, throwing the eight ambling bodies back onto the rocky ground below and giving space for a swing of her staff that would whip a wall of ice in their direction.

Without pausing they rose again, but quickly the ice slammed into them, locking them into column of glassy shards. Capitalizing on the second of stillness, Solona fell quickly into a deadly rhythm, sending forth undulating waves of power, the light around them flaring and then dimming as her lightning sought its target. The moisture in the ice magnified the electricity, cooking their flesh around their bones and emitting a cloud of smoke that stung her eyes. Two of the genlocks fell relatively quickly, leaving six to break free of their icy shackles and continue snarling toward her.

Another blast of ice to stun, and then a fist of rock to pummel the stilled figures, breaking limbs into unnatural angles with a satisfying crunch. The blackness behind them breathed a gust of rank air, which intensified in noxiousness as it blew over broken up darkspawn bodies, feeding into her rage like a direct line. She let loose a barrage of raw, jagged power, this time aiming for the shins of those left standing, at least as much as she could see to do so in the flickering stafflight. A vulnerable, straight-forward bone that made itself an easy target, she'd always honed in on their enemy's shinbones as a matter of instinct, immobilizing hordes to make them easier for Alistair to cut down with his sword.

Seven months since their last battle together and she still hadn't overcome the habit of fighting as though he was by her side, of watching out for him and keeping a constant tracker on his silver suit of armor, compensating how and where she threw her spells, so that Alistair could weave between them, slicing his way through the darkspawn like scythe. The two of them together had executed thousands of darkspawn with a brutal efficiency, magnified further by Leliana's arrows and blows from Sten's massive warhammer.

But the battles were so very different now.

It was almost easier to fight alone sometimes, easier to just let all the habits and tactics she'd learned with Alistair fall away completely, rather than have to be modified, adapted to new personalities that served only to remind her every single second that they weren't him. The knowledge always hit like a punch to the gut, as effective a blow as any the darkspawn themselves could level.

Solona took a breath and tuned herself back into the adrenaline, reaching deep into her mana for an increased blast of force. When the magic hit their shinbones, those who were standing crumpled to their knees, roaring with frustration as they struggled to remain upright, their hooked swords and spears flailing and swiping ineffectually at the air. In a moment of pause Solona saw that an easy victory was imminent, and began pulling together a storm of lightning that would swirl above them and steal what was left of their lives slowly. If the fight had to end so disappointingly soon, she figured she would at least put some artistry into the final kill, building the power around them until it exploded every intact cell that remained on their bones, leaving them little more than a liquified pool of decay.

She stacked stream of power into stream of power, doubling and tripling its strength and intensity, letting the creatures growl and writhe helplessly before her while she took her time. She relished the knowledge that these hellions would suffer, and quietly rededicated herself wiping out as many of them as she was able to before she couldn't any longer.

At least when she finally joined Alistair in the afterlife, she'd do so knowing that their separation had been fully and soundly avenged.

Solona felt her lip curl at the thought, though it wasn't much of a real smile. There was a certain satisfaction in being an agent of death, to cleanse the land of this vile disease, using methods as vicious and ruthless as the darkspawn's own. The joy was a perverse one, but it was undeniable, and quickly had a palpable effect. The energies she conjured grew in intensity to the point that her smile twisted into something dark, while her hands began to tremble wih the force of her own power. She had to clamp her teeth to stop their chattering.

Without warning or provocation, one of the darkspawn flew backward, landing with an audible force that denoted an impact. A second followed shortly after, their bodies instantly replaced by a gap of black space. Solona snarled at the sight. She should have left more life left within them, so that her final storm wouldn't be wasted on only two. A flare of light illuminated the cave, and in the time it took to expose the scene it seemed yet another was gone. Solona steadied the stream of light and blinked through the effort of controlling her power, but by then only a single darkspawn was visible above the pile, its broken teeth gnashing as it tried to raise itself up on shattered bones.

Confusion infected Solona's focus. She hadn't done anything herself to finish off those three, not yet anyhow. As she wondered, she felt the energies she held growing unwieldy, spinning loose of her grip and beginning to bleed errant bolts of electricity out of her staff. She hissed as she tried to rein it all back in. Without careful application, she could inadvertently bring the cave walls down upon her very head. She took another breath of putrid air and struggled to refocus, slowly recapturing the electrical storm. The close call left the air tingling, charged with an ionic tang of lightning.

Footsteps sounded off behind her, quiet and cautious. Solona turned to face whoever was approaching, her hands and staff still outstretched before her and thrumming with a massive current of unreleased power.

Nathaniel dropped his bow to his hip and quickly pulled his gaze up from her thin nightgown. He went still as he met Solona's eyes. Whatever he saw there drained the blood from his face.

"Oh," he gasped, more a hitch of his breath than an actual word. He bowed his head deferentially and took a step back.

Solona growled in frustration, realizing that now she'd have to change her tactic. A single darkspawn wasn't worth the masterful storm she'd crafted anyhow, though the energy she'd put into the spell still needed to be released. She closed her eyes and spun the magical current back through her tether to the Fade, changing its power from electric to one of a cleansing fire. It took some time to work her way through it all, and each moment seemed to require more and more effort to hold it all together. She could feel herself depleting, but mustered up the last reserves of her strength in order to finish.

At least she'd sleep well when this was over and she made her way back up into her bed.

With one hand pushing outward and the other directing her staff, she let her beautiful storm complete its transformation, ripping forth not in a wave of electricity, but in a blast of orange and blue flames. The sound of the inferno was deafening, roaring like a gale force wind as it sucked up the air in the passage and consumed the life of the last living darkspawn. She held the blast steady until she could see the flames reducing the pile of bodies first to a pool of bubbling black oil, and then to a black stain of ash on the pathway. With the last of the flames went the last of her mana. Overkill to be sure, but her grand finale would have been satisfying nonetheless, had she actually been able to see it through unaltered.

When it was over, the acrid plume of resulting smoke hit her in the face, searing her eyes and throat with a fire of its own. She took a gulp of fetid air and turned to outrun the smoke, pushing Nathaniel back toward the entrance to the Vigil's Keep basement. They moved quickly out of range, though the adrenaline that had driven her deep into the passage was waning fast, leaving an empty exhaustion in its place. By the time they reached the door, coughing and holding their breath, she once again felt the cold penetrating deep under her skin. Her bare feet had gone fully numb, and with the fire in her blood extinguished, her body was beginning to shiver. Waves of tremors worked their way through her, her body desperately trying to work some warmth back into its cells.

Nathaniel cleared his throat quietly from behind. Solona ignored him, letting her staff light guide her through the crevice in the basement wall and toward the maze of dusty basement rooms. But she could feel his eyes still on her, that icy blue stare of his, often as cold and penetrating as a winter wind. She glanced over quickly, confirming that she was being watched. Nathaniel's expression was grim and disapproving, his pointed stare brimming with questions.

She continued to walk. The rooms in the Howe basement held onto to a slight odor of death, the result of the numerous victims left to litter the place when the estate had been overrun by darkspawn a month earlier. It had taken a few days to locate and clear all the bodies out, and in that time the smell had set in.

Gooseflesh rose over her body as she shivered, and she was reminded of what a sight she must have been. Her hair still tousled from sleep, shoeless and clad in only a thin, sleeveless gown. Surely Nathaniel could hear her teeth chattering. She glanced at him again, annoyed to find that steely gaze still locked upon her expectantly. At least he didn't appear to be trying to get an eyeful of the goods, despite how easy that had to be.

If she didn't deal with this now, she figured he'd probably want to talk about it the next day. That was not a conversation she would want to have. Solona stopped mid-stride and turned to face him. He came to a halt without a hitch, his lips downturned, pale skin flickering with the dull purple light.

"What?" she demanded impatiently. "Ask your questions."

Nathaniel was silent. His eyes fell down to her feet, taking in her bare skin with concern. She knew what he had to be thinking, how supremely stupid it was for anyone to enter the deep roads wearing so little. Even without the possibility of facing down a group of darkspawn, lack of any armor or protection down there was reckless. The frigid temperature alone was dangerous. He, on the other hand, had on a long coat and had apparently had time to throw on boots. Actually, the longer Solona looked at him the more clear it was that he hadn't even been to bed yet. Beneath his coat were portions of his leather armor, his knee-high boots fully and carefully laced. The coat was not one that he normally wore, but it was far colder down here than it was in the courtyard. Storms had been rolling through regularly, bringing with them the early winds of Ferelden winter, but there was still another month or two before they had to worry at all about snow. Down here, however, their breath puffed out in large white clouds, made all the more noticeable as her stafflight refracted the moisture against the darkness behind them.

She wondered if perhaps it'd been him in that room with braziers lit. Then again he had likely sensed the darkspawn too, and was prepared for where he was going.

Solona shifted on her feet, feeling her irritation grow into something more fierce, but unleashing any more vitriol would require energy she no longer had. He still hadn't spoken, just continued to study her quietly, taking her in as she fumed before him. And what answers could she give him anyway, for making such a foolish decision to set out on her own as she had? Why did anyone think she owed anyone else answers anyway? No one here could understand what it was like, how utterly shattered her world had become since that fateful day seven months ago. Everyone else celebrated that day; it was a day that the Blight should have ended, that the venerable Grey Wardens had given the land its life back. But to her those celebrations had felt like a slap to the face. Worse than a slap, a hammer. A complete obliteration of everything she had been living for.

And it hadn't gotten much easier. And now, yes, a part of her — a very large part — wanted to fail in battle. Counted on it, in fact. It would happen, and until then there was no point in trying to explain to anyone else. And it didn't really matter what anyone thought about it, if they thought she was mad or just reckless, or whether they even liked her, as long as they all stayed committed to the cause of putting down the darkspawn.

To that end, Nathaniel had seemed to make a decent Grey Warden. She respected him for his obvious skills, but she still owed him nothing.

She studied him in return, seeking in his eyes the questions he wasn't asking. His brow had softened and that blue gaze had the look of a tumultuous ocean that had suddenly stilled, revealing profound and complicated depths. It seemed that somehow he already knew the answers.

The silence grew heavy. Solona felt silly for all her shivering. It suddenly seemed like she was fully exposed.

She turned and continued up the pathway to the next level. She'd given him his chance to ask, to address whatever concerns he had and he'd stayed silent. So that was it. She shrugged it off and marched forward. The darkspawn had been handled and now she wanted only to go collapse back in bed, to pull the covers around her chilled skin and try not to dream until the sun came up, where she could go through the motions for yet another Maker-foresaken day.

Step after step she navigated along the corridors, through spacious rooms that housed enormous shadows and creepy paintings. Nathaniel's steps were nearly inaudible behind her, but even in those moments that he'd go completely silent, she'd still have felt him there, the same as she'd felt the darkspawn. The same as he felt her and they all felt each other and he'd known about her fighting in the deep roads in the first place. The others must have been sleeping too deeply, but if they were awake, they'd have felt it too.

It failed to be terribly comforting, feeling the locations of the fellow Wardens. They were nearly indecipherable from how a particularly powerful darkspawn felt, and one always had to be careful to look in the heat of battle in order to prevent striking a fellow Warden accidentally. And when there was no possibility of darkspawn, that awareness felt very much like the taint that it was: a black spot in the mind's field of vision. That field had limits of course, and on the edges of it everything got blurry. She could tell the general vicinity of Oghren and Anders as she continued her ascent, but couldn't tell what they were doing or if they were even moving. Nathaniel behind her was the sharpest, remaining only seven or eight steps at her rear and off to the left, though for some reason his pace was quickening, slowly closing the distance between them.

Solona wondered idly if maybe he was actually going to go for it. Maybe he had seen what she longed for, had decoded the plea for mercy within her foolishness and had decided to give it to her. For a brief moment she felt elation, a new lightness that had her close her eyes for the next few breaths, honing in on the man behind her as each hurried step brought him closer and closer. The way he looked at her made it seem as though he could have known. Hadn't he said something similar once? After she'd released him from his own home's prison, he'd said that he'd expected to die. That he maybe even wanted to. Perhaps he knew what it was like. Perhaps he didn't have to voice those questions, ones she wouldn't have known how to answer anyway.

It didn't seem truly possible, it seemed more like wishful thinking, and certainly it was. But she was sure to keep facing straight ahead, wanting to make it easy for him. She imagined his dagger in his hand, his blue eyes clouded with renewed resolve to complete the goal that had brought him back to his home in the first place. To get revenge on the woman who'd murdered his father. But his revenge was her salvation.

She was holding her breath in the moment he should have been on top of her, the skin of her back tingling in anticipation. But instead of a blade piercing her skin, something heavy and warm fell over her shoulders. She froze in place, confused, her heartbeat blaring in her ears. It took several tense breaths to realize that it was simply Nathaniel's coat. He continued on walking, passing her up with a cautious sideways glance and then was gone, disappeared into the shadows ahead.

It wasn't enough to stifle her shivering. Though she was trying not to care about the intense discomfort, she found herself pulling the heavy leather tight around her body as she made her way out of the basement door and into the moonlight.