Come midnight, the wolf stalks...

II. Come Midnight

For two decades, I searched. For there to be another way. I did not want to do this. Anything, but this. I am Pride, and yet I have none. The irony. Because in the end, I knew I would do it, commit this crime, deliver this last great insult, no matter what kind of monster it made me. On the path I walk, there is no such thing as coincidence, only the illusion of it. I sealed my fate long ago.
Fen'Harel

Even hours later, I lay on my bed by the light of a single candle, marvelling at the landscapes of colour hidden in the jewel's core. As far as birthday presents went, this deserved to be put on the top shelf. My eyelids grew heavy at the hypnotic display and I drifted off to sleep, faintly noting that I hadn't even changed into my nightshirt.

Dreams. They had always been vivid, lifelike, of a substance so rich that my mind often slipped and struggled waking me. I walked a labyrinth of mirrors now, dozens upon dozens. As though time had frozen in the middle of shattering a dome of glass. A crystal spire rose before me in the distance. Flawless, not of this world. Waterfalls tumbled from floating planes like stardust scattered to the wind. In between ancient trees who had witnessed the beginning of our time stood towers of ivory, so white and so perfect. I felt sad looking at them and briefly wondered why. A red sky spread out above, with a crimson sun burning at its zenith. The heavens were on fire.

And behind it all, six eyes watched me from the shadows. Watched me. Pierced me. Knew truths horrifying and lies destructive. Knew weeping beauty and pitiful ugliness. Knew me. I have come for you.

I woke with a jolt, shivers skittering along my spine like thousands of tiny ants. My heart tossed itself wildly against the wall of my chest, thud-thud-thudding all the way into my eardrums. I looked around. The room lay in complete darkness. My candle must have gone out. One floor below, the great grandfather clock in the parlour struck midnight. It gave me such a start that I wanted to run down there and smash it with a brick. A soft, summer breeze blew through my open balcony doors. The white gauze curtains flittered playfully.

But I couldn't remember… Opening them… My heart dived. Dived and dived without stopping. I felt every hair stand to an end and fear swallow me whole. Because I was not alone. Someone stood in the shadows the moonlight did not reach. My eyes teared up with the strain to see the trespasser. There, a silhouette. A mere outline.

And then it separated from the darkness and lunged. I opened my mouth, but the scream never came to be. The figure grabbed hold of me and in that touch, magic surged like a hurricane. A deluge. All of my muscles went motionless. Slack. Control slipped from my fingers, tongue turned to lead. I could do nothing as the intruder offhandedly threw me over his shoulder. Muscular arms, broad shoulders. It had to be a man.

Oh Maker, what was happening?! I was going to be killed. He'd kill me – Everything suddenly shifted, and we were in motion, out the door. Down the winding corridors to the first floor, where my wonderful, night-owl of a mother was still awake, reading in the library. She heard. She heard! I thanked all higher power for her odd habits.

"Cullen! It's him! He has Arlenna!" Her scream could have woken a dead man. It certainly did wake the entire estate. But the next moment we rounded a corner and darkness fell again. Sounds trailed behind us though, frantic shuffling of feet, yells and doors being ripped open. You will not get away, bastard. My father will run you down and kill you like a rabid dog. The moment I formed that savage thought, I sensed something stir in my abductor. It seeped through the layers of armor and clothing, skin to skin, mind to mind, as though he wanted me to understand. To sympathize. Guilt. An ocean of guilt that he had to do this, to me, to my parents. And also purpose. There was no other way. It had to be.

I didn't know if he'd feel my answer, but I battered my rage against him although I had no voice. He shuddered and staggered just a bit, giving me a rush of satisfaction. Good. If he deluded himself into getting my consent for ambushing me in my home, he'd wait until the Maker's Day of Reckoning!

We continued the devil-may-care flight in which I was less a participant than an observer, but I felt his strength waning. Carrying a live body – even one of a young woman – all through the countless winding corridors of Vigil's End would take a toll on anyone. His breath came fractured and the before sure steps slowed a little, but he ploughed stubbornly on. I heard glass shatter, and the next moment we soared, out a window on the first floor. For the fraction of a second, I saw my father storm into the corridor, sword in hand, my mother at his heels, bow held high – an arrow zoomed past us, missing my kidnapper's leg by an inch. Damn it, Mum! You never miss –

We landed on the flowerbeds, uncomfortably hard. All coherent thought was slammed from my mind by the impact. The man groaned in pain and buckled over, but to my infinite frustration, he gathered himself again. Survival instinct, probably. He knew what was coming for him, I surmised by the trickle of unease that carried over to me. This had not gone at all the way he'd planned. He did not want to face my parents, look into their faces, feel their searing hatred –

"Release my daughter you fucking coward or you shall not see the light of day!" My father, as I had never heard him. Fire and steel had forged his voice. Even I was frightened by it.

We flew again. Galvanized by some inner demon, or maybe the unveiled threat against him, my hijacker ran across the moon-flooded gardens, darted between elderberry bushes and into the hedge-maze. Fool! I wallowed in glee. He would be caught, for the maze was a dead-end. Nothing there but a giant, faded mirror that served no purpose except the one of being a pretty sight. And yet… Mirrors… Something about mirrors the Enchanter had said… One could bewitch them to be connected, look into one and see what the other side shows. No, that was menial magic. Mirrors as gateways, old enchantments, too complex to be reproduced by Circle mages. Eluvians.

It had never occurred to me before that my parents might have an ancient elvhen gateway standing around in their garden. Why?, I thought wretchedly. No time to contemplate. We had reached the centre of the maze and the man holding me captive came to a halt. I sensed him evoke magic, in an utterly alien way. Elegant, effortless, flowing like a shimmering piece of silk. It reminded me of my mother's songs, the voice that so naturally left her lips to form a beautiful melody.

The spell this man weaved died mere seconds after it had begun though, and from the depths of the hedges came my parents with half our house guard. The force of my father's lockdown was staggering. It made my ears pop as though the air had suddenly thinned, lost pressure – the whole area plunged into magical vacuum. An eerie sensation, like being blindfolded, deafened and silenced all at once. But I revelled in it, enormously grateful.

"Da! Mum!" My voice returned, together with the control over my body, and I made good use of both. I thrashed wildly in my kidnapper's grip until I saw my mother's desperate face as she aimed her bow, hands trembling. She could not shoot while I struggled. I went still.

"Move even an inch and you die, Dread Wolf.", her words cracked, sharp as whip. What? Dread Wolf? That name… It was impossible not to have heard it at some point, although the stories have faded from people's minds over the years. But not in my family. My mother had known the man once believed to be a god, fought with him in her time as Inquisitor, before he betrayed her and disappeared on a mad quest of his own. I had not been told any of this by her, since she adamantly refused talk about the issue. Rather I'd ferreted out some loose pieces of information from their correspondences with old Inquisition associates, like Aunt Leliana and my godmother, Divine Victoria. Treacherous ambition, self-justice, ruthless, dangerous, obsessed. Those were the words they used when describing him.

For over a decade, nobody had heard a thing about the Dread Wolf. People's memories were short that way, and so his threatening presence had dwindled out of remembrance, becoming a mere ghost few feared anymore.

The man turned infinitesimally. A jolt of his magic hit me as his arm clamped down even tighter. I was paralyzed once more, and realized he'd been gentle the first time. He shouldn't have been able to cast a sorry echo of a spell inside the nullification field, and yet power churned inside him, a river bursting its banks. A hammer-strike to the senses. I went motionless, my parents' silhouettes flickering before my eyes. No… No…

"I gave you due warning, Da'Assan.", Dread Wolf spoke. Measured, calm. Calculating and cold.

"Don't you dare speak that name!", she hissed. "I told you, over my dead body will you take her.", her voice matched his in chill. But I feared for her, and my father. Both in their mid-fifties, their fighting years well behind them. Damn it, they should not be taking up weapons! Mum's heart wasn't as strong as it used to be, her hand weakened by extensive burn marks. Could this man really have fought by their side, half a century ago? He moved with a youthful ease, in body at least, as though he hadn't aged a day since that time.

"I do not wish for that. You were given time. Twenty years. Stand down, old friends. I will not delay any longer." My father growled, a sound of utter menace that raised every hair on my nape. His face was livid, chiselled from hurt, betrayal and rage.

Frantically, I tried to summon any kind of resistance, it didn't matter which, for I sensed the Eluvian coming alive behind me, its magic rippling like a disturbed pond. In that instant, my father lunged. The templar sword swung, scythed through the air with a swish, a glinting silver arc. The Dread Wolf sidestepped gracefully and I watched his gloved hand make a swift gesture, dislocating the blade from its course with a subtle, almost imperceptible spell. It missed by a hair's breadth.

But my mother's arrow did not. They were like clockwork, like two limbs of the same body. The strike had merely been a distraction so she could take a precise shot. Several things happened at once: The arrow buried into my captor's arm and he was thrown backwards from the force. A sound of pain escaped him, yet he turned mid-fall, pushing himself off the stone pedestal.

Mum and Da screamed with one voice as the mirror's shining blue surface swallowed the Dread Wolf, and me with him. The haunting echo of a scream followed us, bouncing around in the endless space.

"I'll get you for this Solas, if it's the last thing I do!"

We fell. Through mist, shadow and star-strewn skies, in a dizzying whirl that made my stomach turn. He held on to me like a vice, and in this strange world between worlds I felt his bottomless sorrow that it had all come to this. He bled it out into the void, but I repelled it, pushed at him, not wanting to feel those things. Never would he get pity from me. Never. Tears stung my eyes, if from the wind that whipped my face or my misery, I wouldn't know.

Then, with a flash of azure light, we were thrown towards reality again. The Eluvian spit us out into a clearing of dark green and I had a mere glimpse of tall trees before I slumped to the ground unceremoniously. Dread Wolf lost his grip on my body and fell over beside me, panting. Serves you right! Soft, damp moss tickled my cheek. I saw nothing but the fuzzy curtain of my own hair and some undefinable shadows beyond that. Still paralyzed. The indignity of the situation was not lost on me. At the scuffling noises and the groan behind me, I drew some satisfaction from the fact that my kidnapper had not escaped unscathed. If only my mother had shot him right through the heart. Or the neck.

"I can sense that, you know.", Dread Wolf remarked. He sounded as though he had a hard time breathing. Pain laced his voice, and still it somehow managed to come across as arrogant, cold.

"You need to… Control your emotions better." An ugly ripping noise cut him short, followed by a muted yelp. Well, he deserved an ounce of credit for removing the arrow without screaming like an animal. That must have hurt something fierce. Mum had not shot to kill, which baffled me. Why? Why, why, why, that seemed to quickly become the perpetual epithet of my life.

I stiffened when hands touched my arm and shoulder. Tentative, with no intention to hurt. Not the iron grip from before, rather cautious and almost… gentle. He turned me over, and for the first time, I saw the face of the man who had torn me from my home. The black fur hood had slipped to reveal him, pale in the moonlight. Elven, through and through. Aquiline, sharp contours formed his features, with high cheek-bones and a pointed chin. Not one hair grew upon his round head. He was completely bald, smooth and polished as a glass orb. Impossible to tell his age. He looked somewhat close to thirty, but… Ancient, fathomless eyes surveyed me so thoroughly I felt see-through. I could not discern their color. Blue? Grey? Green? Some of all, depending on the angle, I surmised. The aristocratic arc of his brows gave him a distinctly haughty look. Especially above those deep-set eyes. Cool. Above it all. And dangerous.

I'd expected a ruthless monster, but had to revise that now… This was an intelligent predator. A wolf. My heart sank. Ruthless monsters were predictable. I had no idea what he saw on my face, but a strong emotion flickered in his gaze, brief and fleeting. Melancholy? What did he have to be miserable about? He wasn't the one gagged and helpless in the woods with a man capable of who knows what.

"I will not hurt you. I know that promise means little to you now, but if I had wanted to do you harm, I needn't have gone through the ardour of… taking you away from Vigil's End." What a nice way to phrase it, as if I'd coerced him to abduct me! And now the fault that it had gone wrong lay with me. I supposed he was right, though. At least partially. He could have snapped my neck before I'd risen from my bed. Yet, people could do much worse things to each other than killing…

"Arlenna.", he suddenly said, startling me. My name, spoken in the same musical cadence my mother and grandfather used.

"It means: I am fated. Did you know that?" I wondered how he expected me to answer, since the spell still bound my tongue to utter silence. Of course I knew that. No living thing beneath our roof had ever had a name without meaning, and my mother had educated me on mine when I'd been old enough to ask. Dread Wolf sighed in a tired manner, as if he found me immensely exhausting.

"I do not much care for one-sided conversations. Let me lift the muting enchantment from you. But be warned, if you scream, you lose the privilege of speech before you can utter another note.", he stated matter-of-factly. I blinked. Sensation came back to my neck, throat and the general area of my head.

"Not because you might alert someone. There is no one here who'd help you escape for miles around. This is my forest. And I detest loud noises." He leaned back, wincing. A strip of bloody cloth was wrapped around his arm, and I noted that he looked sallow, dull, like fabric bleached once too often.

"My name is Solas.", he said in the tone of one introducing himself to a noble lady at a soiree. Under any other circumstance, it might have been civil. To me, it just roared with sarcasm.

"Like I give a flying fuck!", I spat out. Grown up in a genteel household I might have, but I'd learned swearing at Uncle Varric's knee, and my godfather had been a good teacher. The very best. I glared at Dread Wolf, or Solas, or whichever name he wished to call himself. I really did not care. Traitor, villain, bastard. Home-wrecker. All of those would have been just as fitting. A frown furrowed his high forehead, eyes turning forbidding.

"Do you make a habit of being rude and waspish to everyone? Let me say this now, before all else: It would make your life a lot easier if you would cooperate with me, Arlenna." I readied another scathing remark, but he went on. "I told your parents that I would come for you one day. They could have prepared you, explained, even handed you over willingly, and this whole mess would have been avoided. But they chose not to. And here we are."

That made me stop short. It's him! He has Arlenna! – I told you, over my dead body will you take her. They had known. No doubt about it. My heart crumbled in its cage. I didn't want to believe him, but the very bones of me knew it to be true. Sequestered upbringing, overprotective parents, the exaggerated, strange fright in their eyes when I'd disappeared for an evening of leisure… It all made sense now. They'd lived in terror that I might be taken from them. Why had they never told me, even as an adult? Was I not to be trusted with a threat that could impact my life so deeply? Turn it upside-down?

The violent outburst from the day before did not return to me. Instead, I felt a dull ache of betrayal, a sort of resentment that can only ever be experienced towards kin. First the thing with my late aunt and grandmother, the reason why the Circle of Magi was reluctant to allow my Harrowing. One maleficar in the family would have been enough to warrant caution, but two… A blaring sign-post of danger. And now this, the fact that my abduction had been heralded by the perpetrator who knows when. But it had never been deemed wise to share that information with the person it concerned! Solas kept his silence, regarding me pensively, the way a bird-watcher regarded some new, unknown specimen.

"Don't fight me." The words were soft, almost an appeal rather than a command. He reached forth and turned me over again. Primal fear struck me senseless for an instant, until I realized he was binding my hands together at my back. Not with shackles or rope. Ethereal chains wound around my wrists, dampening my magic abilities, as effective as any physical restraint. I protested. Vehemently.

"Until I am assured that you won't bash in my head with the nearest stone you can find, I'm afraid you'll have to endure this. Forgive me.", I heard him murmur. A polite villain. How ironic, comical even.

"Up you go." My muscles were granted permission to move with an electrifying jolt. A sure grip steadied me, then pulled me upward until I stood on wobbly legs. Well, so much for running. I felt like a drunk duck. A dirty, drunk duck, if my ruined, smudged dress was any indication. Solas seemed to lose even more color, if that was possible. He really didn't look so well.

"Fate punishes the wicked. Ever heard that saying?" I intended my words to cut, but for some reason I couldn't fathom, the flash of hurt in his eyes didn't please me as much as I hoped.

"I really wish there had been another way. I had no choice." Anger flared inside me, a culmination of all the strain that had worn my patience thin during this longest of days.

"Oh do shut up, will you?! Everybody has a choice. Life itself is about choice!", I barked at him. "If you don't want to kill or torture me, what do you want then? Ransom? Revenge? What is this all about, Dread Wolf?!" My voice had risen to a yell now. A flock of birds cawed in alarm, taking flight from the nearest cluster of trees. I childishly wished I had wings too. Solas just looked at me. How could he be so maddeningly calm? The urge to wipe that tranquil look from his face made me clench my teeth.

"You are a dead man, you know that, right? My father will hunt you down. He does not forgive a slight against his own. Better go searching for some barren rock to crawl under now, for woe upon you when he finds you." That had to rattle him. But the traitor merely sighed.

"I know that. I have known him for longer than you walk this earth, and I am not fool enough to face him in open combat. My intention was never to be found in the first place." He'd barely finished the sentence, before an array of icicles manifested from thin air, floating above us.

"No!", I cried – too late. The projectiles soared in a flurry to hit their mark. I felt the chilly backdraft and watched in horror as the Eluvian's silver glass burst apart. My own face reflected back a thousand times over as the shards rained down, down, down. A young woman, eyes wide, terrified, russet mane porcupined with leaves and twigs. The hope that someone, anyone, would come through the mirror to my rescue shattered together with it. I let out an enraged howl. From the very depths of me, a power came alive, a thing I had never known I possessed. Emerged like a rising sun, a blazing inferno. The chains melted, butter beneath my fire, and I flew at the man who'd stolen my freedom.

"Spirits!", Solas uttered, but I was upon him. My lunge bore him to the ground. No stopping me. Hitting, biting, burning. Scratching with searing claws. I was a hideous, feral creature pushed too far. But my opponent wore armor, and despite his weakened state, his frustrating strength thwarted me. Not to mention, I faced a mage of unmeasured skill. He deflected, ice against my flare, smoke between my fingers.

"Arlenna! Stop this! Your rage, you reach too far into the Fade! At this rate-" But he interrupted himself when I bit down onto the vulnerable patch of skin between glove and jerkin. I gloried in the grunt of pain. Whispers intruded upon my hazy thoughts, urging me on, asking if they could have a go too. They relished in my outburst, my pure undiluted emotions. Share with us! Share your fury, your fire! Burn brighter, I-Am-Fated!

"No! Mar'aleth faras enshal!", Solas cried out, both in my head and in my ears, voice ringing like tambourines. His will overpowered mine, pushing me back into myself. Cooling. Calming. I had no real concept of what he did. It was as though he picked up the pieces of me scattering into all directions and reassembled them, tying knots so they would not escape again. As the fire receded, I had a moment of clarity that I'd been on the verge of doing something horrible. Awareness dawned on me again. I lay, cradled against something warm, surrounded by a pleasant fragrance. Peculiar, herbal… Cloves? And… Sage, yes. A hand pressed gently to my nape, un-gloved, skin to skin. With the touch came a fatigue that I couldn't fight, nor did I want to.

"Such raw power… I was not mistaken…" Not more than a whisper. Did I hear a tingle of anxiety in it? Trepidation? Hesitance? Impossible to know for sure… The sleep spell washed over me and I welcomed the oblivion, the purge of all conscious thought. Still, one persistent question followed into the liberating slumber. What would become of me now?