Mihra stood in the musty silence of the Skyhold library. The noises of Leliana's crows in the rafters were effectively dampened by the thick wooden bookshelves crowding the walls of the rotunda. Only a few markers remained of the room's previous occupant, for which Mihra was grateful. She made a concerted effort to not look at the frescos peeking up and around the bookshelves' silhouette.
Solas's old study had spent months untouched in the time following Corypheus's defeat. In the immediate euphoria following, Mihra had left the room alone with the vague hope that Solas would eventually return, as he had after the death of his friend in the Exalted Plains. He had promised Mihra an explanation, after all. For all his evasiveness, Solas had always stayed true to his word.
But the months dragged on. Leliana's scouts still were unable to find a trace of him, and the deep sense of wrongness left in the pit of Mihra's stomach at their parting words—'No matter what comes, I want you to know that what we had was real'—only grew in size, twisting around Mihra's gut until it seemed to consume her.
The room had then become a sort of hallowed ground, proof that Solas had lived and breathed and worked in the space for the better part of a year. Something had to be wrong, Mihra thought as she redoubled the Inquisition's efforts to find the elf. If Thedas had not continued to exist in a state of political uproar, Mihra would have gone on the search herself. But, as the revered Inquisitor, she had been all but shackled to Skyhold and the Thedosian capitals.
And then one day Mihra had woken to find that Solas's ghost had disappeared. She no longer walked through Skyhold expecting to see him in quiet debates with others of her inner circle, no longer set aside books that would be of particular interest for him. Solas was gone—had been gone for nearly a year—and Mihra couldn't close her eyes and picture his facial tells in Wicked Grace, couldn't recall the distinct rhythm of his steps or the order in which he preferred to pack camp.
It was only then when the loss of her companion had sunk in, and she felt as if she'd somehow lived a year missing her left arm and not noticed. Mihra craved his company like never before, pining for the man more intensely than she had when he had officially ended their budding romance. At least then, he had still been at her side.
So Mihra had transformed Solas's workspace into a much-needed extension of the Skyhold library. Not able to bring herself to scrub off his frescos, she crammed as many shelves and lights into the space as possible to block their view. A good sum of Inquisition funds was spent to stock the room with the rarest and best tomes on Thedas available. In doing so Mihra managed to strike an uneasy truce with the room's past: the resources of the library became alluring enough for Mihra's gut to not ache when she was surrounded by its familiar walls.
Today, it seemed, the room's ghosts were more restless than normal.
It had been three days since Deshanna's letter had arrived, and Mihra was nearly at her wits end for the waiting. As information trickled in from Leliana's scouts, everything had become more confusing. The clans appeared to have literally been winked out of existence. Leliana's scouts could see signs of clan movement—aravel tracks, halla droppings, fire pits—and track the clans up to a point. Then the tracks simply disappeared. There was no signs of struggle, no signs that the clans left in a hurry or were chased away, certainly nothing to indicate any violence. They were just gone.
Mihra had dismissed Cullen's initial suspicion that magic was involved as little more than ex-templar superstition, but now? Magic seemed to be the only explanation left, although Mihra has difficulty even imagining the kind of power that would be needed to accomplish something like this. The Dalish certainly didn't have the power to do this to themselves, nor could Mihra picture the Circles of Magi or the newly-formed College of Enchanters condoning the kind of research that would lead to this.
Venatori, then? Mihra's advisors seemed to think so, but to Mihra these attacks held a kind of subtlety that the Venatori had never displayed before. Corypheus's old allies had always displayed a flair for the dramatic; if they were behind the attacks, Mihra believed they would want her to know.
Mihra exhaled slowly, willing the nausea from her pulsing headache to lessen.
It had been this uncertainty that pushed Mihra to attempt to use the vir'abelasan to answer her questions. In the months following Corypheus's defeat Mihra had learned how fickle the spirits of the Well of Sorrows could be: given a general question, the voices in Mihra's head would clamor forward, full of conflicting answers and opinions that quickly became overwhelming but did little to lend clarity or a solution to the question. Mihra imagined the sensation was not unlike possession. At points the voices became so demanding that she would all but lose herself trying to pick apart the meaning. Realizing the potential danger of leaving the Well unchecked, Mihra had spent the better part of months training herself to muffle the spirits' voices in her head unless she called on them.
Of course, spending the last two days with her mind fully open to the experience of centuries was bound to leave Mihra in a sour mood. She had been searching for any clue as to the kind of magic that would be necessary to cause the clan disappearances, but her questions were so general that the vir'abelasan seemed incapable of giving a direct answer. Certainly the elves of Arlathan knew of magic that would do something similar, but the specifics of the spells or who would have access to them now were details Mihra was having a difficult time isolating from the crowd.
At her wit's end, Mihra poured over her pages of notes, racking her brain for new questions to ask of the vir'abelasan. The writing swam on the page as Mihra felt her pulse on the skin of her eyelid.
"Fenedhis!" she moaned, scrubbing her face. Never had Mihra felt as trapped in her own skin as she did now. She sank into the desk chair uselessly, the polished wood of the chair feeling cool through her robes. Mihra eyes stung angrily as she closed them, willing her gut to calm itself.
She allowed the room to swell with silence, but it was soon broken by a soft knock on the door. Mihra wrenched her eyes back open.
"Enter," said Mihra sharply, her gaze swinging reluctantly back to her stack of notes. In all likelihood it was Josephine. The ambassador seemed to be making it her personal priority to check on Mihra every few hours, as if Mihra would simply decide to up and off to the coast any moment.
"'Enter,' now, is it?" came a familiar voice floating in through the now open door. "So formal. I only answer your summons, my lady Inquisitor."
Mihra shot to her feet, slack jawed. "Dorian?!"
The mage spread his arms. "Guilty." Mihra stared openly as he crossed the room to pull her into a gentle embrace. "Don't go to too much trouble on my account, though," he teased lightly, stepping back with his arms still resting on her shoulders.
"You look terrible," he advised, a glint of concern lighting somewhere in the back of his eyes. His gaze swept across the room, lingering for a moment on the wall behind the furthest bookcase in a brief moment of solemnity before turning to Mihra again, all smiles. Mihra shook herself.
"How did you—?" she began incredulously. "You were in Minrathous!" Dorian chuckled.
"Would you believe I was actually in Orlais?" he asked, grinning as he folded his hands over his chest. Mihra blinked. "Happy coincidence your messenger found me at all, actually."
"Orlais?"
Dorian waved his hand dismissively. "We've a group of us back in Tevinter, trying to set things right. And one of the ways we've started is by—quietly, mind you—reaching out to the southern nations, helping them put a face to Tevinter that isn't a power-hungry maleficar," here Dorian winked at Mihra. "As it turns out, my involvement with you last year has given me a bit of an international reputation."
"You're a diplomat?" Mihra asked incredulously. Dorian winced theatrically.
"Don't let Josephine hear you say that," he said severely. "I shall never hear the end of it."
Mihra raised an eyebrow, to which Dorian shrugged and scratched the back of his neck bemusedly. "Really, though, it's nothing so dramatic. Mainly I just host teas and attempt to get on the guest list to the right parties. It can be maddening, but we've managed to stay out of the Magisterium's eye so far."
"I take it the Magisterium would have a problem with this?"
Dorian let out a small chuckle. "Oh, I'm sure they would paint it as light treason. We'll have to cross that bridge eventually, but for now—" Dorian spread his arms.
"Is there anything the Inquisition can do?" Mihra asked seriously. Dorian grinned.
"I think not, my friend. We wouldn't want to be too heavy-handed with our work, and the Inquisition's name does pack a punch," Dorian shrugged. "Besides, you and I have more pressing matters here. My colleagues will do fine without me."
Dorian let a congenial silence fall between them. Mihra felt the weight of the last 48 hours lift from her shoulders. "Now," Dorian said after a moment, moving to lean against the desk and look at the map intently. "I only know what your messenger could tell me. Do we know why your clans are vanishing?"
Mihra let out a heavy sigh, scrubbing her face as she sank back into the chair. "No," she said, deflated. "Leliana's people are working on finding a human-based connection. I've been trying to use the vir'abelasan to come up with an elven answer. We are fairly certain there's magic involved, and that whoever is behind this is well-organized."
"Last I heard, you were training to shut away the Well," said Dorian cautiously. Mihra shook her head.
"I've got no choice but to use it. So far, though, it's been less than useless."
Dorian frowned, reading some of Mihra's scribbled notes.
"What has changed between now and when you consulted the Well before? When we were fighting Corypheus, the answers seemed to come easier." Dorian abandoned the notes for the mess they were, instead looking up at Mihra with an academic sort of curiosity. Mihra shrugged.
"Only a few of the Well's spirits has encountered the magic Corypheus wielded," she said slowly. "At least, that what I think happened. So only a few could comment on it. The questions I am asking them now are so much more general that every spirit has a different opinion, or a different legend to try and tell me. Its a thousand voices, speaking an ancient language, telling different tales and giving different advice all at once. I can't make heads or tails of it."
"And being more specific doesn't do anything?"
"There's only so much I can narrow down before I'm stabbing in the dark," said Mihra, throwing her hands up. "I've tried every variation on 'What would make clans of elves disappear each month?' and—"
"Nothing has come up," finished Dorian, pursing his lips in concentration as he stared back at the map.
"Well," he said bracingly after a moment, clapping his hands together. "Now you have me. Although I may not command the last knowledge of a bygone empire in my head, I am quite intimately familiar with your library and happen to know a thing or two about magic rituals."
Mihra snorted, to which Dorian's eyes twinkled.
"For what it's worth," he concluded. "I'm here to help."
Author's Note: Fun fact - this chapter was written way back in July, before Trespasser was a glimmer in anyone's eyes. Imagine how excited I was when I learned that Dorian's canon post-game fate wasn't at all far off from what I had already written!
Huge shoutout to Meiza for the review! And yes, Mihra's sense of Dalish-self/community is going to end up playing a major role as things develop in the plot.
Until next week!