He had always hoped she would find a way to stop him, but not like this. Not like this.
She holds him aloft without a single touch as tendrils of her magic wrap around his arms and legs, squeezing tight until his armor digs into flesh. There was only a moment when he was able to resist her, a fleeting second faster than a heartbeat, before the immense wave of her strength swarmed around him as if there was nothing to resist at all. He knew they would clash once again, a final battle where he would inevitably win and lose at the same time, but he did not even hear her coming until it was too late.
No one in this world should possess the ability to thwart him, not even her. She steps through a haze of unnatural smoke to greet him properly and his heart drops within his chest to finally understand. Above her left hand, the one he destroyed years ago, hovers a foci. Pulsing waves of purple lights pour through its lines, a magic he has not seen born anew in millenia. A magic no mortal thing could dare to control but here she is somehow, alive and whole.
Yet when she draws nearer he can see that isn't quite so. There are veins on her new hand tinged with the same color and more of them striking down the lines of her neck, across her temples. The fierce light of her eyes is something wilder now, the curve of her lips more biting than he remembers. Magic shakes around her, seeping from her skin and shivering above the surface before dipping back inside. A storm barely contained.
As she approaches he floats back to the ground with limbs still locked by her control. The wind breezes through her long hair and he breathes in the scent of her, of vanilla and sandalwood and something new, a sting of copper and ozone breaking through.
"It is over, Solas." It is her voice and not, holding an undercurrent of whispers and shadows that scratches down his spine, but it does not change the truth of the words spoken. He watches her dismantle his means of sundering the Veil without even blinking an eye, watches as his own stolen power leaks away in blue and green threads to weave into the swirling mass around the orb.
The process hurts much less than knowing what she has become to guarantee his defeat. It is what he did thousands of years ago to face monsters of his own and now he has created one more.
"I did not want this," he whispers when he finds the strength to speak again.
"Well we don't always get what we want, do we?"
"Vhenan-"
"You left me no choice! You set me upon an impossible path and this was the only way. What else could I do? What else could I become to save it all?"
Magic jumps from her skin to form a corona born of her anger. It pushes closer, scraping claws down his armor and leaving divots and he tries to lean away as far as he can. He feels it lick his skin, hot and cold caresses that long to burn and cut, to destroy. A strand lashes out and snaps against his cheek and he cannot help but twitch and gasp at the raw pain.
"No." He watches her take a breath and the danger pulls away slowly. She moves fast to reach out and run a finger over the small wound and he feels calm healing wash away the hurt yet little can heal this ache inside. "I didn't mean-I don't want to hurt you, not after everything I've done to save you. It won't happen again. Please…don't be afraid of me."
It is not fear that fills him. There is only a sorrow and shame that weighs heavier than any chains for this new ruin he has brought. Her concern has dimmed everything else and for a moment she is just herself, perfect skin untouched and eyes unaffected, a smile with no sharp edges growing on her lips, and he would collapse under this strain if he could knowing he alone has damaged these beautiful things.
A wave of her hand and his armor flakes away in the wind to leave only the cloth beneath behind. She steps into his chest and he loses sight of the orb, the one thing that might stop the devastation, but as her arms wrap around him he is overcome by another need. He has wanted this, to touch her again with his burdens no longer between them. He has wanted to surrender to her for so long.
As the threads of the spell holding him hostage finally loosen he returns her embrace with equal fervor, burying his face into her soft hair. Her relieved laughter fills his ears and he clings to it desperately, to the woman beneath the mania who breathed life into a colorless world. Tenuous hope beats in his breast that she might be resilient enough to withstand this force after all, that he might show her the way to safely survive this sickness so it will not consume all that he truly cherishes.
And then her whole body shudders, an echo of a groan building deep with her that belongs to no living thing and he knows it is likely too late for either of them. The gambit has been lost. He sacrificed so many pieces on the board for his plans and he was a fool for not protecting her, for throwing away the most important one with such little thought to how devastating her fall might be. "I am sorry, vhenan."
"I am not. This power…no wonder the Evanuris wanted more."
"You have taken too much already."
She shakes her head, hands fisting hard around his tunic. "No, I can control it. I will control it."
He has heard that before from a different woman whose madness overtook everything she was. He could not save that fallen god, but perhaps he can still save this one. "You must let it go or else it will destroy you."
"What do you know? Everything you have ever done has been failure, Dread Wolf," she says with a snarl and steps away. Pain sticks sharp through his heart to see the lines of violet seeping back into her eyes. "For all your wisdom, you would make the same mistakes again and again! I will not take counsel from such a fool, even if it is one I love."
"As you have said, it is over. There is no need to continue on this perilous course. I know of its seductive call and you must not let it deceive you. I beg you, vhenan, please allow me to help you."
The orb reemerges in front of her and she passes it from one hand to the other, her eyes glancing down at the land below them.
"You were right about one thing. This world is indeed broken. They all squabble like children, destroy each other over pathetic things and think themselves better than one another. They never deserved the sacrifices I gave. The blood and tears and years of my life wasted, my friends, pieces of myself and now everything I am, and for what? Things returned to the way of before! They were always weak. They are all unworthy, even your precious Elvhen."
Magic blossoms around her like an unfurling flower, growing larger until vines of it reach out and curl around his feet. Her foci lifts above her head crackling with dark lightning as it continues to rise higher into the sky. The maelstrom she gave herself to thunders in the air and rumbles through the ground and soon blots out the world around them until they are in a sphere of only her tremendous influence.
"I know they can be strong when they face oblivion together. So I will give them something worse than mages and darkspawn and false idols to fear. I will give them a horror beyond their dreams and make a world that can fight back against its own destruction. There will be a cleansing fire and those that rise from the ashes will be made into something finally worthy. I will destroy it all to save them."
She turns to him with a bright smile and darkness in her eyes and he falls to his knees as his queen burns the board.