"…The Chant of Light says, 'Magic exists to serve mankind, and not to rule over him.' And so it has been. The mages have served well, in many wars over many centuries, yet in times of peace how well have we served them?" –Divine Justinia (Dragon Age Asunder)

One

My Name Is Revas

A low whistle cut through the air, jagged against Solas' sensitive ears. "Where'd you find this one?"

The glitter of metal swam in Solas' bleary eyes. He managed to hold his head upright and force open his eyelids long enough to get the impression of a bulky humanoid figure ahead of him: the man who'd woken him into this world of agony with his whistle. But the effort of lifting his head left his neck and eyes quivering with a stabbing pain. He let himself sag between the two Templars hauling him forward, down a dark narrow hallway, dragging his legs over the hard stone.

"I know, right?" the Templar on Solas' left replied to the speaker. "We get all the weirdest charges."

"Did you find those other apostates? The knife-eared ones?" the whistling man asked, his voice nearer now that Solas' captors had halted. Solas could barely concentrate on their voices over the white-hot pain burning in his arms and shoulder sockets. The Templars had a firm hold on him and he was too weak to do anything but stay limp and hope they put him down soon. If he'd been just a little stronger he could have flexed his arms and supported some of his own weight—but he barely had the energy to continue breathing, let alone any other movement.

"No," the other Templar on Solas' right, a woman this time, answered. "We lost their track somewhere in the woods to the east of here. Blighted elves are as sneaky and dodgy as weasels out in the bush."

The whistler grunted. "Not this one, clearly."

"This bastard's barefaced. City elf. Poor sod was barely alive when we stumbled on him," said Left-Templar. He adjusted his grip on Solas, hiking him higher and the excruciating pain made him gasp, but his voice was too hoarse to do anything else.

"Should've just left him to rot," the whistler said with a cluck of his tongue.

"No, Ser Jeremy," Left-Templar said. "He's an interesting fella, too interesting to leave out to die. Had a strange magical artifact on him, clutching onto it for all he was worth. No stave on him, but my gut says he's got to be a mage."

"How you figure that?" the whistler asked.

Left-Templar explained, "No weapons. No calluses on his hands. And yet he's out deep in the woods in some kind of ancient giant spider-infested ruin. What else could he be? Bugger's just too weak to even call magic now."

"Or speak," Right-Templar added. "I agree with Ser Bartholomew. No ordinary man handles something like the artifact we found with him. This rabbit isn't some peasant. He has magic...or had it, anyway."

With another grunt and a pop of joints, the whistler spoke again, even closer than before. "What in the void is he wearing? Nightclothes?" Solas felt the whistling man's fingers plucking at his shoulder and struggled to roll his head to the opposite side and look at the man.

He saw again the glint of the whistler's metallic armor, dark and crude compared to the fine, thin metals of Elvhenan. The man's face swam into view: a black beard flecked with gray and brown eyes. A bulbous nose and thin lips that spoke of an unkind nature. A brutish man then, propped up by the Andrastian faith as a pillar of righteousness and given the authority to lord over captive mages. A shemlen whose life had been shaped by fear and superstitions. A shadow and a mockery of a world long gone.

The world Solas had destroyed.

"What's your name, elf?" the whistler asked, tapping Solas' cheek.

How should he answer? He had so many names, accumulated while he was awake and while he slept. Roamer of the Beyond. The Bringer of Nightmares. Lord of Tricksters. The Old Wolf. The Great Wolf. The Lone Wolf. He Who Hunts Alone. The Dread Wolf. Fen'Harel. Pride. Solas.

But his lips lacked the strength and coordination to shape any of those names. Worse, his voice and mouth were dry as dust. Much longer in uthenera and his physical body would've dissolved into dust as well. At that moment he rather wished he'd never woken. Everything hurt.

He let his eyes drift shut. His head sagged forward again.

The whistler grunted yet again and his booted feet scuffed on the floor. When he spoke again his voice was farther away and above Solas now. "Put him in one of the cells and we'll see if he lives. I've got ten royals that says he'll wind up dying tonight."

"You're on," Left-Templar answered with a guffaw.

As they started dragging him again the pain in Solas' arms reached a crescendo and he gasped once more—and welcomed the blackness that closed over his consciousness a heartbeat later.

Solas opened his eyes and found himself standing in the dappled light and shade of a verdant forest in midsummer. Pollen tickled his nose and he saw an apple tree nearby, its branches laden with fruit. His stomach clenched, an unusual sensation that made him frown. He had not felt hunger for a millennia. Uthenera left his body in a stasis so complete he no longer ate or drank but instead clung to magic from the Fade to sustain himself. He knew this was a dream, but he had no recollection of shaping it. His mind felt foggier, his thoughts and memories dim and scattered. His willpower and his mana core seemed nonexistent, as if he were little more than a spirit or a sleeper with little or no conscious connection to the Fade. Like a…

His thoughts panned around, finding the faint memory of the emotionless , broken ex-mages he'd seen in the dreams of other mages over the ages. What were they called? They weren't weak mages, slaves, or servants, but something else that hadn't existed in Elvhenan.

Tranquil. That was what they were called. Tranquil. He felt as if he'd become one of them, sundered from magic, even if he could still touch the Fade.

Turning away from the apple tree, Solas saw grayish stone off to his far right. As he pivoted to face that direction properly, he gasped. It was a ruin. The walls had collapsed around the entrance and tree roots had interwoven through the gaps, widening the hole. The darkness beyond swelled in his eyes, filling him with a cold sensation and the feeling of fluttering inside his chest.

From inside he could hear ragged breathing and saw a pale shape worming its way forward through the darkness, crawling. Drawn forward almost against his will, Solas strode ahead, picking his way through the collapsed stones, vaguely realizing they were of Elvhen design, not one of the countless newer structures he'd seen favored in his dreams across Thedas. At the entrance of the collapsing ruins, he squinted into the dark, lips parted and hands trembling as he recognized the mosaic in gold and green tiles that'd been set into the walls—the Dread Wolf.

It was his uthenera chamber. It should have been deep belowground, hidden away, but somehow the earth had shifted, cracking long ago to expose the entrance.

He shook his head, a wave of vertigo making him sway. He remembered this place, this scene—but from a different vantage point. Lifting his eyes again to the distant, pale figure on the stone floor in the darkness, Solas felt queasy, knowing the man was himself. This was not someone else's dream or memory. It was his own.

He'd woken alone in his sealed chamber, the foci orb clutched to his chest. It'd woken him after millennia asleep, charging gradually from the stray magic in the air until it jolted him awake, ready for use. Pulled from the Beyond, Solas had woken skeletally thin, with wizened muscles and a body that'd been ready to expire. He should have had attendants—loyal servants who'd gone into stasis to sleep through the ages, wakening magically to fight if the tomb was attacked and to aid him in recovery—but half an hour of lying motionless on his bed with no sign of them had been enough to tell him something had gone wrong.

Without attendants to help him immediately after waking, Solas knew he had little chance of survival. He was just too weak to be able to find food and water without aid.

But his purpose kept him from giving up. He'd mustered up enough strength through sheer force of will to unseal the chambers and crawl out of his uthenera chamber, still clutching the orb. From what little he could discern while crawling on his belly through the ruins, it seemed grave robbers had entered it ages ago, slaughtering his attendants when they woke. He found bodies, little but dust and skeletons now, but there were two different sets of armor among them, a clear sign of intruders. His own chamber had been magically sealed, preventing the raiders from harming him.

He'd managed to crawl outside and into the sunlight, to the apple tree outside and slowly, laboriously, eat a few that'd ripened early and fallen from the tree. That little bit of sustenance had kept him alive until…

The sound of hooves pounding the earth echoed through the trees and made Solas whip around, staring through the forest. There was a game trail out there and chance had brought the pair of Templars along it and past the ruins of his uthenera chamber. The memories that followed were hazy in Solas' mind, but he recalled the glint of their armor in the sunlight, the taste of the water they'd given him, and the musty smell of their horses.

"Fenedhis," he cursed and reached outward with his senses and his right hand, willing this dream-memory away in disgust. The raw Fade appeared around him, wet with slimy, stagnant pools and misty with green ether. A pair of wisps darted around each other, circling and humming, like butterflies trying to catch one another in a mating dance. The sight would've made him smile at any other time, but now he watched without really seeing it as he considered his physical reality.

He'd been abducted by Templars, who'd most likely taken him to a Circle tower. He had zero chance of escaping in his current physical state. He pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed to himself with frustration as he tried to remember everything he'd learned and seen in his dreams about Circles.

Then the skin at the back of his neck prickled. Solas recognized the sensation at once for what it was—the presence of a hostile spirit. Raising his head, Solas found himself staring at an elven woman with a long black mane of hair and golden eyes that made him think of honey. Her features were regal with high cheekbones and full lips in a heart shape.

"Fen'Harel," she greeted him with a warm smile. "How good it is to see you again, but how sad that you are trapped and suffering in the waking world. I can help you."

Solas scowled as he regarded the elven woman. "A poor likeness," he declared. "I almost did not recognize her. You should be embarrassed, nuvenathe. Doubly so, for you should know better than to try tempting those who you have no chance of deceiving."

"If my visage displeases you, you have only yourself to blame," the nuvenathe said in Mythal's deep, commanding voice. "It has been so long since you laid eyes upon her that your memory has withered and faded—just as your body and your magic have in the waking world."

Solas felt the sting of the hostile spirit's words and bristled, but he bit back the retort riding on his tongue, already seeing and sensing the mirth in the nuvenathe's eyes. Like all of its brethren this creature relished toying with physical beings. Even in Elvhenan the nuvenathe had been renowned for their tendency to provoke and antagonize. Yet, of course, in those days their goals hadn't been as hostile as in the post-Veil Thedas. Pre-Veil the nuvenathe, like most spirits, tempted physical beings in order to understand them and further embody their representative emotion or ideal—desire, in this case. Post-Veil they were seeking to possess physical beings to reach the waking world again.

With a flick of his hand, Solas summoned rock from the Fade ether swirling around them and launched it casually at the nuvenathe. "Be gone," he commanded.

The stone blasted through "Mythal," making her shape blur and dissolve into an amorphous, red-black mist as the nuvenathe dematerialized for a heartbeat. When it returned, again bearing Mythal's appearance, it cackled in a distorted voice. "You will regret turning away my offer, Fen'Harel. Without my help you will shrivel and die. The Templars care nothing for their mage charges. They will use your foci as a paperweight and laugh as they bury your body."

Irritated, Solas launched another stone at it. "Did you not understand my meaning earlier?" he griped. "Away with you!"

The nuvenathe cackled again as it backed away, fading again into red-black mist before flickering as it vanished completely. Alone now in the raw Fade, Solas noticed the wisps still chasing each other and smiled slightly to himself. "Well, it would seem I have passed my Harrowing." He laughed to himself, bitter and dry. "It is a shame my Templar captors were not observing this."

Harrowing. Solas sneered to himself and hoped the nuvenathe wouldn't be correct after all about the Templars killing him while he was still weak.

A stinging sensation in his neck made Solas gasp. His eyes sprang open and found near-darkness except for the dull circle of light on the opposite wall from a torch or a sconce. A figure had crouched down beside him, its hands at his neck. Solas flinched and tried to pull away but his body screamed with pain and shook, protesting the attempt. He tried to speak but found his lips and tongue were dry and clumsy.

"Apologies," the person crouched beside him said, her voice monotone. "I will provide you with food and water when I have finished drawing blood for the phylactery."

Phylactery. Something like panic fluttered in the back of his mind and he groaned, a string of curses running through his head. The Templars would use a few drops of his blood in a vial to track him, the way they did with all their mage captives.

The tinkling of glass instruments rang in his ears and a moment later Solas winced as the vial glowed a deep, brilliant crimson. The Templars and Chantry forbade blood magic and abhorred spirits and the Fade but the phylacteries were allowed because they were convenient. Hypocrites.

"I require a name for our records, ser," the woman said in the same monotone.

Solas' stomach clenched and his skin seemed to crawl as he realized this woman was Tranquil. A mage the Templars had mutilated, severing her connection to the Fade and rendering her emotionless and magic-less.

"Your name, ser?" the Tranquil repeated.

Solas remained silent and motionless, though his mind was spinning as he wondered how he would overcome this new obstacle to his eventual freedom. He'd followed Circle mages who'd fled from their towers before via dreams and had seen the way the Templars employed the phylacteries. It was crude tracking, at best, but the idea of these cretins having a phylactery with his blood inside it rankled him. Even if they had no chance of finding him with it, Solas would know it existed somewhere—like invisible chains around his hands and feet.

He would not be a captive.

Metallic scraping from somewhere outside his cell alerted Solas to the fact that the Tranquil wasn't alone. A Templar stood outside the bars to his cell, arms crossed and his face twisted in a scowl. "Hold off for now on the name, Lyn. I'm not sure he can talk right now. Give him something to eat and drink first."

"Yes," the Tranquil, Lyn, replied. "That is logical." With a rustle and shuffle of her feet, Lyn rose from her crouched position and left his cell for a moment. Her footsteps were slow and quiet, careful but steady. Only a few heartbeats later and she was propping him up into a sitting position by leaning him against the cold stone wall behind him and pressing a flask of water to his lips. Though Solas knew it would make defiance more difficult once they knew his throat was suitably wetted, he drank greedily. When his stomach cramped at the liquid he rolled his head away, gasping for air.

"Don't drown him," the Templar said with a chuckle. "I want that ten royals. This bastard has got to live."

"Yes, Ser Bartholomew," Lyn replied in her monotone. Next a cold spoon with gruel on it pushed past his lips. Solas scowled at the taste—what kind of barbarians considered this acceptable sustenance? The least they could do was infuse it with an enchantment to give him a buzz of pleasure or contentment or—

He grunted, the closest he could come to chuckling in his current state of weakness. Fool, he scolded himself. Enchanting food was something these shemlen couldn't do. He'd forgotten. It was so common in Elvhenan that virtually all meals were enchanted.

"Don't go too fast," Bartholomew warned.

"Yes, ser," the Tranquil answered as she pushed another spoonful into Solas' mouth. Despite the blandness of the taste he swallowed it without a fight. He could almost feel his body coming alive at the influx of new energy.

Bide your time, he counseled himself. Play along. Be docile and unassuming. Eventually he would recover enough physically that he could escape. It might take months, but he would do it. He had to do it to unmake this world and destroy the Veil. To set right the mistakes of his past and save the People.

He'd need the foci to do it, of course. He peeked at the man standing outside his cell quickly out of the corner of his eye and then away again when he saw the man's fixed stare on him. The Templars must have his foci. What would they do with it? Would they have any inkling as to its full potential and danger?

Of course not, he thought and almost let out another little grunting laugh at his own foolishness. Asking whether the Templars understood something as ancient and complex as the foci was like wondering if halla could read or if dwarves could dream and cast magic. These were shadow people, after all. They and their world were a mistake. They weren't real.

When Lyn had spooned the last of the bland gruel into his mouth and Solas had swallowed it down, the Templar cleared his throat and spoke directly to him for the first time. "What's your name, mage?"

For a moment Solas weighed his previous stubbornness, considering defying Bartholomew's request. It'd be satisfying to thwart their work with the phylactery, but the truth was Solas couldn't stop it. They already had the blood in the vial and he was far too weak to escape now or any time soon. His best option was to be compliant and to pretend this Circle really would be his prison for the remainder of his short, shem life.

He started to speak, his voice croaking, "My name…" but he cut himself off, wincing as he realized he was speaking in elven.

"Come again?" the Templar asked, sounding more amused than irritated for now.

Solas had learned the human's common speech ages ago, pre-Veil. He'd picked it up in the wilderness at first after encountering a few traders. In those days he'd learned it as an idle curiosity, a tool he could employ on the off chance he'd need it. Oh, and of course, it came in handy for impressing others at court. Arlathan had always delighted in the rare and exotic and the shemlen tongue had even greater allure for its savageness. It'd only been in the Fade, post-Veil, that he'd learned it properly. But he'd barely had occasion to speak it aloud before. Until now.

Concentrating with a frown, Solas repeated himself, forcing his lips and mouth to form the unfamiliar sounds of the human's common tongue. "My name is…" He screwed up his face as he made up his mind to lie to them. "Revas."

Bartholomew hummed his acknowledgement, then spoke to Lyn. "Did you get that?"

"Yes, ser," the Tranquil answered. Solas heard the scratch of a quill on parchment as Lyn wrote down the runic symbols for the name he'd used.

"So, Revas," Bartholomew said, pronouncing Solas' alias name with care and precision. "Tell me about yourself."

Solas breathed slowly, letting his eyes drift shut to feign more exhaustion than he truly felt even as his mind spun in circles, trying to plan out an explanation these shemlen would believe. Deciding it'd be best for them to dig rather than for him to supply information, Solas asked, "What do you…wish to know?" He had to swallow several times to wet his throat again and still the words came out hoarse and strangled.

"You're an apostate?" he asked.

Solas knew he was far older than most of their initiates and apprentices in this Circle or any Circle would be. Hiding magical talent was difficult or impossible, typically, though in this world of near Tranquility it might prove easier than he'd expect. Yet it was natural then for the Templars to label him as an apostate and assume he'd spent his life evading them. Unfortunately that'd make them warier of him in the long run. They'd expect him to cause trouble.

For the first time ever in his long life Solas wished he wore vallaslin. If these Templars thought him Dalish they'd envision a very different past for him as a simple wanderer and "savage." They wouldn't see an elven man who'd lived out his entire life as a fugitive trying to avoid the Circles. His mind spun, thoughts flying as fast as his magic would have had he possessed his full strength. Perhaps he could concoct an intermediate tale for himself…?

He began struggling to speak again, but his voice was hoarse and croaking. Bartholomew motioned at Lyn. "Poor bastard's parched. Give him more to drink."

She obeyed, pushing the flask to his lips. The metal was cold, the water held a faint tang of minerals that made it delicious. After a few swallows Lyn pulled the flask away but Solas leaned forward to follow it with his mouth and Bartholomew laughed good-naturedly. "Like a babe chasing the tit," he observed. "Looks like I'll get my ten royals after all."

Feeling his cheeks flush with heat, Solas turned his head away from the flask, though he remained thirsty. Breathing heavily, he let himself sag as if exhausted. He was exhausted, so it wasn't difficult to let the Tranquil and the Templar see as much. With the food now in his stomach his body felt leaden after so long without a substantial meal. The extra work it needed to do to merely function left him trembling and sweaty. With the Veil in place his body was no better than any of these shemlen. He couldn't draw strength from the Fade and he could feel the cold, ruthless grip of mortality at his throat.

Bartholomew tapped on the bars. "Okay, Lyn. I think he's had enough for now." As the Tranquil rose to her feet, taking the flask and the tray with the bowl of gruel away with her, Solas let his eyes open slightly as he peered up at Bartholomew. The Templar was staring at him, his expression one of bald curiosity. He jabbed a finger at Solas when he met the elf's eye. "Keep kicking, Revas. I expect some answers out of you soon."

The Templar's armored boots clapped away down the hallway with the gentler shuffle of the Tranquil's step behind him. Solas sighed and closed his eyes, eager to slip back into the Fade for the comfort and power it'd give him. At least in his dreams Solas could walk and talk and shape the world with his will. He could still call on magic in the Fade.

Solas probed at that empty, desolate place inside him where his mana core usually waited, as immense and fathomless as an ocean. It was dull and cold now, utterly lifeless. He shied away from it, wincing and swallowing the sudden ache in his throat. How could he have woken so utterly weak and pathetic? He'd been one of the elite, an Evanuris. The most powerful type of mage in Elvhenan. He'd stood shoulder to shoulder with Mythal and Elgar'nan—that insufferable ass—and cracked open the earth in the civil war against Falon'din's forces.

How had it come to this?

Echoing through the hall outside his cell then, Solas heard the metallic screech of a door opening. He blinked, frowning to himself as he wondered if he was to be fed and interrogated by a different Templar now. Yet a moment later he heard a woman's voice rise over the clatter-clank of armored Templar footsteps and the shuffle of what sounded like bare feet over the stone. His exhaustion-addled mind took a few heartbeats to realize the woman was speaking in elven, but as recognition dawned he struggled to sit upright further and turn more toward his cell door.

"Fucking shemlen," the woman cursed vehemently. "Let go of me! Void take you!"

The Templars passed his cell and Solas caught a quick view of their captive. She was elven, as he'd known she'd be, with olive skin and brown hair that'd once been neatly tied up in intricate braids and knots but now had come undone in wisps. She wore armor he recognized as Dalish and in the split second he managed to see her face Solas noticed three things—she wore Dirthamen's vallaslin, she was quite attractive, and she was…oddly familiar.

But what was a Dalish mage doing here?

Tromping immediately behind the struggling, swearing Dalish woman were another two Templars, hauling an elven man between them—but unlike his female counterpart this man was unconscious. Solas caught only the impression of his armor and the messy tangle of black hair.

Solas heard two cell doors opening on their rusty, loud hinges. The Dalish woman shrieked louder, slipping out of elven. "Tal! Creators dammit—wake up!"

"In you go, bitch," one of the Templars snarled. Solas heard the distinct sound of a body hitting the floor and then the slap of flesh on flesh. "That's for biting me," the Templar added. "Savage."

The woman spit. "What did you do to Tal?" she demanded.

The cell door swung shut with a groan. The Templars didn't answer her as they clomped away. One of them slapped his gauntleted hand on Solas' cell bars as he walked by, making him flinch and gasp. Solas caught the flash of the Templar's malicious, squinty-eyed gaze through the slot on his helmet as the man stalked away down the hall. Solas frowned after the man but said nothing—not that his throat would allow him to say much had he wanted to.

What are Dalish mages doing here? He wondered again, his curiosity piqued.

From the cells down the hall he heard ragged breathing and the thump of the cell bars and imagined the Dalish woman must be testing their strength. A little noise cut through the air like a whimper when the hinges finished whining and apparently didn't give way. Then a voice called out softly in elven, "Tal? Brother, are you there?"

No answer came from the other man—Tal, or so Solas assumed. He opened his mouth to reply, to make contact, but then shut it again. He was supposed to be the docile prisoner. The Templars were probably watching somewhere down the hallway and would overhear any exchanges. They might frown upon socialization between prisoners. It was better to stay quiet and give them nothing.

"Mythal protect us," the woman murmured quietly and launched into whispered prayer.

Biting back the desire to scoff at her invocation to Mythal, Solas thought: Mythal could not even protect herself in the end. But of course, that'd been his fault too, to be honest.

Tired of thinking, Solas closed his eyes and let himself fall asleep.

Elven used

Nuven'athe: desire/wish with suffix for "embodiment of". Credit to FenxShiral's Project Elvhen. I think the term for desire demon was something else, using the term for sexual desire. I rejected this in favor of desire in a broader, nonsexual sense because the demon in this chapter tempts Solas with a nonsexual desire. Plus we see "desire" demons such as Imshael offer nonsexual temptations, so "nuven" was better suited.

Next Chapter:

The woman laid a hand over her chest and introduced herself while still wearing the same coy smile. "I am Rosa of clan Naseral." When he made no reply and didn't speak, Rosa chuckled. "What's the matter, flat-ear? Did the Dread Wolf take your tongue?"

He stared at her, pulse racing and sweating as he flushed cold and then hot. It's not possible, he thought, his mind spinning in an endless loop. She can't know me. She can't be a Dreamer.

A/N: Going to try leaving my notes at the bottom now. This is my new story. I had a thought a while ago (while reading Dragon Age Asunder) that the Solas of my other story (Pride Didn't Go Before The Fall) was incredibly lucky he was rescued upon waking by Dalish rather than Templars. I thought how entertaining it'd be if, with a twist of fate, our favorite apostate found himself trapped in a Circle and too weak to resist or escape outright. This tale grew from that.

So this Solas has the same backstory as Solas in my other story, but in this world Ellana Lavellan doesn't exist. Someone else does instead (the two Dalish mages, particularly Rosa of clan Naseral). It's their actions that inadvertently drew Templar attention to the area of Solas' uthenera tomb, leading to his capture and then theirs as well.

I'll try to keep this as upbeat as possible, considering the subject matter. I don't have as much of a chapter lead in this one as I did with Pride Didn't. As a result, only weekly updates will happen for now, on Friday or Saturday.