By the time Margo finds Commander Cullen, Haven feels vacant. She estimates that about a third of the troops are missing. She passes by the Apothecary on her way down to the training grounds – which are depopulated too – and is therefore forced to walk by Solas's hut. The door is closed, and from what she can tell, locked. She still knocks, on impulse. There is no answer.
The tavern is deserted too. The only patrons are a bard, who isn't even pretending to sing, and a couple of older soldiers who look like they've just settled in for a long game of cards. Margo riffles through her pocket, and produces some copper. Flissa – as the barmaid is apparently called – sets her up with some meaty porridge and light ale.
Pragmatics out of the way, Margo makes her way towards the tents, and sure enough, there is Commander Cullen and Adan, sitting on a pair of upturned barrels next to a particularly badly damaged log dummy. Margo walks towards them, stuffing her hands deep into her pockets. Will this fucking cold never end?
"Reporting for duty" she announces brightly. And if the delivery is meant to be at least a little tongue-in-cheek, she is genuinely pleased to get two toothy grins, complete with vigorous claps on the back and a "you did it" sort of reception from both the alchemist and the military man.
"Glad to have you with us, Agent." That's Cullen, and if he had any doubt that she would make it out of her little interview with Torquemada in one piece, he doesn't let on.
"You can just call me Margo" she says, hoping that her name is not too strange by Thedas standards.
"Margo" he smiles. "Then please, call me Cullen."
She nods. She has to constantly catch herself, because he does look so much like Jake. She has another pang of anxiety at the thought. Her little brother didn't deserve this shit either. Mourn the death – or, minimally, the disappearance - of another loved one. But Jake has always had a strangely cavalier attitude about these things. Even when baba passed, he had been… What had he said? "There are other worlds than these, Margo." It had sounded like some sort of bullshit New Age dictum at the time.
"You ready to get some work done, Apprentice?" Adan is still grinning. "Your patrol is leaving tomorrow morning."
"Hold your horses, Master Adan. We can't neglect her battle skills. I'm not sending out another underprepared operative." He looks up at her, a bit sheepishly. "No offense, Agent. Uh… Margo."
Margo returns the smile.
"None taken. If Master Adan can spare me for a couple of hours, a refresher course sounds good."
After that, she's sent off to Master Harritt for a proper set of armor. The blacksmith sizes her up with a quick critical look, and goes off to rummage in the back of the forge for some ready-made pieces. Really, she shouldn't feel so damn giddy at the results, but the armor is amazing. It is lightweight, but sturdy, fits her comfortably, and the leather has a kind of soft creamy consistency that makes you want to sort of… pet it. "Nugskin" Harritt explains, nodding at his handiwork with obvious approval. "Too light for most of our frontline troops, but I always keep some spares on hand for you sneaky, stabby types."
Then, it's off to find the Commander again, and before she knows it, he has her running through various drills. He turns out to be a patient teacher, which is a good thing, too, because she is a pretty obtuse pupil.
"You're overthinking it" he finally breaths out, both of them a bit winded, and by now covered in a freezing snowy slush. She gets the footwork right off, but when it comes to attacking, especially with the daggers, she freezes and pulls her punches. She relies on her body to guide her through the steps – and while she gets the whole avoid opponent at all costs part, the rest of the "sneaky, stabby" stuff is an uphill battle. Poor Cullen spends more time chasing her around the rink than engaging in actual sparring.
"It'll come back to you with practice. The movements are all there. But…"
He seems to hesitate, and Margo decides that he's looking for a way to phrase his criticism constructively. Glass half full kind of guy, that one.
"You might try your hand at ranged weapons. I have a feeling you'll find that… easier for now. Have you had much practice with a bow?"
"You aim and pull the string, right?"
He chuckles.
"That's the gist of it. How's your throwing hand?"
Hell if she knows. So they try that next, and as it turns out, she can lobe things pretty damn well – courtesy of long summers spent playing vegetable wars with the village kids, stealing the neighbors' tomatoes and other projectile-ready produce, and winters where every school day would be followed by a merciless snowball fight to the death, or, at least, to first tears. As long as there's a degree of separation from her and her target, the in-built "do no harm" mechanism doesn't seem to kick in.
"How do you feel about grenades?" Cullen asks, cleaning another snowball out of his hair.
"What's not to love about grenades?" Of course, by this point, Margo's grinning deviously. Cullen gives her – and the quickly solidifying snowball she's packing in her hands - a slightly worried look.
"Master Adan will get you started on a basic set."
She spends the afternoon in the apothecary, preparing small, sturdy flasks of something flammable. Adan is so pleased with this new turn of events – and with the opportunity to produce things that will blow up on impact – that he's practically dancing around. The light outside wanes, and they ignite the oil lamps to get enough illumination for their work.
"Alright, Apprentice. This is where the fun and games end. You need to learn how to work with lyrium. You'll be taking magica potions with you to the Hinterlands tomorrow."
Margo looks at him with interest – because even when he was working with the highly volatile oil-like stuff they've been using for grenades, none of the awed reverence was there.
"So, what is it, exactly? A mineral? An oil?"
Adan simply shakes his head.
"It's what makes the world go 'round, fledgling."
He tells her about Lyrium mining then, and about the ways in which dwarves have been processing it for centuries. About the substance's addictiveness and detrimental long-term effects. From what she can glean, it's both a mineral and more than a mineral. In the parameters of her own world, it's petroleum and morphine and panacea all rolled into one. A truly classical example of Plato's pharmacon – at once poison and remedy, boon and sacrifice.
Adan tells her about the way the Chantry controls the Lyrium trade, and Margo is finding herself nodding vigorously when she realizes that this is their way of keeping Templars – who are, from what she can understand, the local religious organization's military arm – on a short leash. And she learns about the Circles, and how mages are branded with the stuff if they step out of line. It is as if this substance is the lynchpin of this entire world, the heartbeat at the center of its many complicated arrangements.
So by the time they are donning gloves and tying on face masks, she has developed a healthy reverence for the stuff. And so, even if the potion making itself is actually rather simple – take granulated processed Lyrium (which, to Margo, looks a whole lot like blue Miracle-Gro water crystals), heat them in a hermetic cast-iron capsule, and then dunk the whole thing into an ice bucket to break the crystalline structure, then mix into an infusion of what else but Elfroot and Some Fungus – she still feels like she's just learned one of Alchemy's greatest secrets. Like, say, making mercury ash.
"We don't calcinate ourselves, I guess?" Margo asks, once they have a neat little row of potions aligned on a shelf specially freed up for the purposes. At this point, several hours of work into it, they are both sweaty, sooty, and cranky.
"Makers' Breath, no! Even not all dwarves are able to process this stuff. Did you miss the highly addictive will drive you mad part?"
It'd be interesting to follow the commodity chain, though, and Margo finds herself daydreaming about mapping Lyrium trade against the history of Thedas's political conflicts.
After everything is done, Adan sends her to the back of the temple, where a make-shift bath house has been set up to keep Haven's populace from complete filthiness.
"Make sure you scrub. The particles get everywhere. You don't want that stuff to absorb" he cautions her.
He doesn't have to tell her twice.
She makes her way up the hill. The feeling of emptiness is eerie – Haven seems like a ghost town, or some kind of remote monastic outpost for particularly misanthropic ascetics. By the time she makes it to the bath house – a simple, but surprisingly clean and well-heated sauna with one steam room, another one with large wooden vats that she supposes are bathtubs, and a common area for washing and mending clothes, the camp is almost still.
The bath house, though, turns out to be inhabited. She surmises that this is the women's shift. There are six or seven women in there already, with one or two familiar faces. Margo collects a threadbare towel from a grumpy elf who charges her two coppers for it, sets herself up on a bench, and begins to peel off her clothes. None of the women seem to be particularly shy about nudity, so Margo shrugs, and does as in Rome. She opts for the sauna – bucket of water option instead of the questionably clean bathtubs. The place smells strongly of pine, wood smoke, and caustic lye soap.
It turns out that she has a companion in the sauna space. The other woman is short – Varric-short, as in Homo Dwarvicus of some kind – with an elaborate hairdo that she is trying to pry apart.
When she looks up at Margo, the dwarven woman's face breaks into a grin.
"Hey! You actually really made it!"
Oh great. Now someone recognizes her.
"I only sort of did" Margo offers tentatively. "I got pretty severely contused and…"
"I know, I know. Memory loss, they've told us. I'm Lace Harding, in case you forgot. I started up with Charter pretty recently – well, I suppose that we officially came in at the same time once Charter signed up with the Inquisition, but you've obviously been with her for much longer than I. You might not remember, but you took me in during the first few weeks. Showed me the ropes. Told me whom to watch out for – which I really appreciate." Hair finally managed, she takes a chunk of soap and a small bucket, and begins to scrub herself with enthusiasm.
Margo decides to follow her example.
"I'm sorry about your patrol. There's been some weird… rumor about what happened, but I'm personally glad you made it out alive."
Great. Because Margo's life was not sufficiently complicated without "weird rumors." Instead she nods, and smiles through the stinging soap.
"Thank you. You're not out scouting with Charter?"
Does she remember this right? Charter is supposed to be gone for two weeks, doing whatever it is that Charter does.
"Nope. I'm better suited to the Hinterlands, since I grew up there. In fact, I just came in for the day to collect you, after we got the Herald all set up and on her way. You and I head out tomorrow bright and early. I'm glad you were on the roster. We're really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time around."
Margo turns to her, while trying to get soap out of her hair. It's the first time she's had her host's – well, ok, maybe she can start thinking of it as her hair by this point - unbraided, and damn it's long and unmangeable. Next time she comes across a pair of scissors…
"What do you mean" she asks, trying to rake the tangles out with her fingers.
"Well, I don't mind the twins, and Jon's alright when he's not trying to climb in your breeches – which, come to think of it, is most of the time - but Marek and Dylant are…"
Margo makes a face. That must be Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
"Chauvinistic nug-humping dipbags?" Margo offers, paraphrasing Varric.
Scout Harding laughs.
"Couldn't have put it better myself."
She listens as Harding describes the situation in the Hinterlands, and the more Margo hears about it, the more the whole thing sounds like the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. Not necessarily their mission, which is, relatively speaking, a fairly straight forward one. Go find some herbs. Stuff herbs in sack. Send crow to Cullen with location of whatever herbs you didn't have room for. Set up camp site. Make some potions.
It's the part where Evie and the others have to cut their way through an active war zone to get to this clergy woman - whose name is apparently Mother Giselle – and who may or may not agree to come along, or even help.
Body clean, small clothes washed and dried, and hair more or less detangled and re-braided (into a much less complicated arrangement), Margo makes her way back to the Apothecary. There's another plate of food for her – apparently, Master Adan has noticed her tendency to skip meals, and has taken it upon himself to not let his wayward pupil starve to death. After she's done with the meal, she chews on a piece of astringent bark – hopefully not toxic – in an effort to clean her teeth.
She doesn't, in fact, remember falling asleep. And once again, no dreams trouble her.
They set out the next morning. Jan and the Tweedles, and the Twins, who turn out to be two very scarred, very scary wardrobe-sized blokes with a Scottish brogue so thick you could slather it on toast. They are, apparently, from a place called Feredlen.
The Twins, Margo decides, are the best thing since sliced bread. As Tweedledum starts on his misogynist speciest needling sometime by mid-morning, one of the two men – either Sheldon or Shelby, she's not sure which is which – emits a long string of ear-curling obscenities about the moral character of Tweedle's mother, and then proceeds to sock him in the ear with a cannonball-sized fist. As it turns out, the Twins were adopted by a dwarven couple, and their nurse-maid was an elven woman. After that, there are no more commentaries about ears, asses, tits, or any specific species' willingness to do it for three coppers and a bowl of soup.
As they travel down the mountain and along the valley, the climate changes radically, and by evening they are all sweaty and peeling off as many layers as is safe. They do not run into much trouble on the way – which surprises Margo quite a bit, based on Harding's stories – but the scout mentions that the detour allows them to skirt most of the dangerous areas. Still, Margo can hear the echoes of some kind of skirmish in the distance, faint, but definitely there.
They stop for the night next to a wide lake, the evening breeze blowing pleasantly cool air off the water. Margo wanders around for a while along the pebbly shore, and discovers that the place is overgrown with reeds, also known as Blood Lotus. Since the Tweedles are managing the campfire, the Twins are setting up tents, and Harding is off to hunt for dinner, she decides to recruit Jan for some herb collection. He follows along happily enough.
"So" he trails, sometimes after the third burlap sack is filled with Blood Lotus. "You have anyone to warm your bedroll at night?"
Yep. One-track mind, that one.
Margo tells him to fuck off, but amiably enough that he just laughs.
"Let me know when you change your mind."
"You'll be the first to know" she grumbles, and then they both freeze, because as they come out from behind a bend in the shore, there is movement in the small ravine ahead. Jan docks behind a boulder, and Margo follows him, with a brief lag. What the hell is that thing? For a second, she could have sworn she saw a kind of orange, glowing goat.
As it turns out, it's a couple of unaccommodating looking fellas with bows and very anonymizing head-gear. The kind of head-gear you'd want to use if you would rather that the travelers you're robbing not identify you in a line-up later.
She is about to ask Jan whether they should sneak back to get reinforcements, when a commotion draws their attention, and they both peek out from behind their shelter to get a better look.
There's a small group of men – or, boys, really – suddenly bursting out from behind a lake fjord, and charging at the two presumed brigands with screams that are probably meant to be awe-inspiring, but come off as rather the opposite. But that's not what has Margo gawking. They are led by what appears to be a very heavily armored bear. Except said bear is also brandishing a sword and a shield, and is moving in a distinctly non-bear like fashion.
The boys mostly provide vocal accompaniment, but the bear is all business. He knocks one of the archers off his feet with one shield strike, before the poor sod gets a chance to so much as draw his bow, let alone fire, and, pivoting around with a speed that defies the basic laws of physics, lops the head of the other one – now charging at him with a dagger – clean off his shoulders. Then he turns around again – all part of the same fluid movement – and plants his sword in the supine shape of brigand number one. As he does, his armor catches the waning evening light, and Margo notices a strange design on his breastplate – something with wings, she thinks.
"Andraste's Knickers, that's a Grey Warden" Jon whispers next to her. By his tone, he might as well have said "Purple Unicorn."
Margo squints against the glare of the setting sun, trying to see what this apparently mythical creature looks like. Maybe Grey Wardens are some kind of werewolf species? But… no. From this angle, the bloke looks human enough. It's just that he has truly spectacular facial hair. And, based on his size, he might even give the Twins a run for their money.
Carnage all done with, he trails back to the group of boys, who are chittering excitedly at each other. She can't hear what he's trying to impart on his small flock of followers, but she suspects it's some kind of pep talk. And then, before they can really do anything about it, he gathers his things, and begins walking away, towards the hills.
Margo shoots Jan a quick look.
"What do you figure he's doing" she asks, because, really, unless this is some kind of performance art…
Jan shrugs.
"He might be recruiting, I guess. One way or another, Harding needs to know at once. We'll need to send a raven to headquarters."
So they trail back to the camp – burlap sacks in tow – and by then, Scout Harding has returned, and is gutting something that looks like a goat, or a ram.
"A Grey Warden, are you sure" she asks - at least twice - after they relay their story. "Leliana will want to know right away." And then, the small woman whistles and a bonafide raven – except with some kind of reddish plumage around its throat – alights on her outstretched hand.
Dinner finished, the Twins and the Tweedles start a game of cards – something called Wicked Grace, which, from what Margo can surmise, is just good old poker – and she decides to beg off.
"Want some company?" Jan tries again, hopefully.
"No."
"Ah, well. Another time."
She's asleep almost as soon as she hits her bedroll.
When she opens her eyes, Margo realizes immediately that she is dreaming. The chartreuse quality of the light reminds her too much of that first night with Brother Rufus's thrice-bedamned manuscript. But the landscape is not the non-Euclidian mind-bending horror of her trans-universal travel, but something much more familiar. A soft, fragrant, quiet field of tall summer grasses, speckled with bright splashes of color – poppies and knapweed, yarrow and chamomile…
She turns around, and there, next to her, is her baba, digging up an early-purple orchid with a neat little rake, and gently cleaning the clumps of earth from the bulb.
"Ah, my soul, you have finally come" baba comments without lifting her head from her work.
Margo doesn't dare to move, lest the vision disappears. She extends her hand tentatively, and puts it on baba's forearm. It's solid. And then tears are welling up in her eyes, and she throws her arms around the old woman and nestles up into her embrace with a relieved hiccuppy kind of sob.
"Shh, child. Do not fret. There's no helping what's done."
They sit like that for a few moments, and baba is gently brushing her hair with her earth-covered fingers.
"Baba, I think I got lost" Margo finally manages.
Her grandmother turns, her slate grey eyes mild.
"You can't find yourself without getting a little lost on the way, heart."
The old woman's face crinkles into a sad smile.
"But you're not here for your old baba, are you my little thistle? You're here for the wolfling."
Margo frowns, but in the logic of the dream, baba's words are nonsensical, and yet she can feel the truth of them down to her very bones.
"I don't understand" she pleads.
Baba chuckles, a little wistfully.
"All the other children, they always wanted the treats. The juicy currents, and the sweet frost apples, and the candied cloudberries. But you, I could never keep you away from the bitter roots." She laughs softly, entertained by the memory. "There you'd sit, gnawing at the darn things – heavens know where you'd even find them - your little face all puckered up with the taste of it, but you'd just keep at it!"
The old woman's expression turns serious, and she tucks a stray salt and pepper lock under her kerchief.
"Fate's not a dog, child, you can't chase it away with a stick." And there is steel in baba's voice, just as she remembers it. Baba rarely scolded, but never coddled.
"Baba, help me find my way. I don't know what I'm doing."
"Wish that I could, my soul." The old woman gets up, tucks the bulb into a pocket, and brushes twigs and leaves off her apron. "If you want to see him, you better go soon. There's not much time left."
And with that, baba scoops her into a last hug, plants a kiss on Margo's forehead – licorice and lemon balm and home as nothing else will ever be - and vanishes into thin air.
Margo looks around, trying, and failing, to keep the tears at bay. She begins to walk down the field's gentle slope, and as she does, the grass seems to dry out and fade away, and soon she is walking through a thin dusting of snow. The air turns dry and bitter cold, and before long, she is shivering.
There is a copse of short craggy trees, gnarled with the elements, and she trudges towards it, sort of hoping at this point that she would wake up already, because she doesn't need to also dream of cold when there's plenty of that when she's awake too.
She turns her head, and startles. Next to her, there's the elf.
"Is this your dream?" she asks. "Or mine?"
"Hard to say." He looks at the sky, a small smile on his face, and then turns his gaze towards her. "Somewhere half-way, I think. I am glad you found your way here. And that you are in one piece!"
"Are you alright? The four of you?" She tries to keep her voice neutral, but doesn't manage.
His expression turns troubled.
"We are alive, for now. Though for how long, I cannot say."
"Did you run into trouble?" Not that she could swoop in to the rescue. It's not like she can fight.
"It is more that trouble seems to keep running into us." He looks at the sky again, and his forehead creases into a frown. "I must go soon."
She stops, then, and briefly brushes her fingers against the sleeve of his forearm.
"Solas, wait. I need to ask you something."
Another smile, and there is really something so gentle about him here, as if all the hard edges and brittleness is smoothed over by the dreamworld's soft currents.
How does she do this? But it seems important that she know.
"I passed my Alchemy…ah… entrance exams. But…"
The elf's smile widens – and, of course, the warm fuzzies don't miss their opportunity to strike - but then his expression turns quizzical. Well, as far as she's concerned, warm fuzzies beat incoherent lust any day. She'll take it.
"What troubles you, Lethallan?"
No point in beating about the bush, right? Better just rip the band-aid right off.
"Enchanter Minaeve and Master Adan had me make a particular formula. Its effects, while not lethal, were, for lack of a better word, odd." She exhales, finding words to continue. "It created a very localized sort of hallucination that seemed… incredibly real. Are you familiar with anything like that?"
Solas looks at her thoughtfully. But Margo also realizes that there is no sparkle of recognition, or humor, or playfulness to his response. Polite, even warm, interest, yes. But nothing that would suggest that he would know what she is talking about.
Her blood turns to ice.
"I imagine that any number of draughts would be able to create illusions of some sort, especially if they work to thin the veil between the Fade and the waking world. What was specific about this one?"
She should tell him. If she's going to ask him for advice, then really, she should just bite the bullet and stop acting like a teenager with a crush. They're all adults here, right? She's too old for this shit. And really, so is he.
"It… manifested someone…hmm…familiar. Except their behavior was…" Oh she's such a chicken. "A bit off. Plausible, perhaps, but not entirely."
Solas peers at her, as if trying to figure out what's hiding behind the words.
"This figure from your vision, what did it do?"
Margo squirms under the elf's gaze.
"Well. The draught…" Oh, to hell with it, she's being a child about this. "Look, the draught is an aphrodisiac." She watches his eyes widen. She's actually a little bit disappointed that elven ears don't reflect emotional states. She keeps expecting them to do a kind of Yoda number when they go up in surprise or excitement. "So, as you can imagine, while it's in full swing, you end up with a rather one-track mind. That's really what makes it so challenging, it's hard to do any work when you're…" she trails off. Her cheeks are burning hot.
"Ah." He pauses, and his expression is… impish. "I can certainly see how this could interfere with one's focus. And, may I ask who the familiar figure in your vision was?"
Well, wouldn't you like to know. She narrows her eyes at him.
"Not important at the moment" she answers a little tersely. "The important thing is that I'm trying to work out if it was only a hallucination, or something else."
"That you would think to ask this suggests that this is someone you are reasonably certain you might encounter in the Fade." Oh, and he sounds so carefully neutral about it, too. "Out of curiosity, what was the formula called?"
Margo shrugs.
"Something like Ishmael's Bargain, if I recall correctly."
Solas freezes, his face suddenly dead serious.
"Imshael's Bargain? Are you certain?"
Ishmael, Imshael... Margo frowns. Whatever he is worried about, she doubts it's the environmental consequences of whaling. This is going to be more bad news, isn't it?
The elf's hands suddenly come up, fingers curling in an almost painful grip around her arms, and he pivots her to face him. She finds herself tangled up in his gaze.
"Margo." Her name on his lips sends a jolt down her spine. It's… like an alchemist, tasting an unfamiliar plant for its properties. "Please. You must listen. Did this … vision, did it endeavor to tempt you in any way? Offer a favor? A boon?"
She shakes her head, suddenly numb.
"Not quite. I suppose it offered… help. I turned it down."
"And it did not insist?" he presses.
"It didn't force itself on me, if that's what you're asking."
Solas's grip on her relaxes, and then, a second of hesitation, and his hands come up to cup her face. He tilts her head up, his eyes searching for some kind of answer, though Margo at this points feels a little iffy about what the whole conversation was about in the first place.
"Who was in the vision, da'nas? You must tell me. I cannot help you if I do not know for sure what shape the Forbidden One took for you."
The Forbidden One? What in the ever loving fuck is a Forbidden One? With a name like that, nothing good, no doubt.
"You" she finally says.
At that, the elf pulls back from her as if scalded. He turns around and paces, eyebrows drawn in simmering anger.
"How can these imbeciles not have thought this through? Children, playing with forces they cannot begin to comprehend… Whose idea was it, this draught?"
Margo takes hold of his forearm, and forces him to a stop. His random oscillations are making her a little dizzy, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep the dream in place and prevent it from sort of… drifting away, like a soap bubble.
"For what it's worth, I don't think they were intentionally malicious. It sounded like it's not an uncommon draught to use as a test."
Solas is practically vibrating with irritation.
"If so, then it is selected solely for the perverse amusement of the examiner, and with no consideration for potential consequences."
He is about to start pacing again, so Margo grips his arm more firmly.
"Solas, hold on. This Forbidden One… Varric told me about something called desire demons. Is that the same category of thing?"
The elf nods.
"Yes. That is one name for them. Imshael is a very ancient one of its kind."
"But shouldn't it count for something that, in the end, nothing happened? I didn't turn into a drooling husk, or anything."
"That they would trifle with such a thing is offense enough!" Again, that hot flash of anger. "It was pure luck that the demon miscalculated, and took the wrong shape."
If Margo didn't know any better, she'd have to say he sounds just a pinch… ambivalent about that.
"It…" She looks at him a bit more carefully then. There's still that worried crease between his eyebrows, but there's something else there, too, something almost wistful, and yet resigned, and the combination makes him look… vulnerable. She's pretty sure that in the waking world, it would have been buried under layers of careful shields.
She looks at her feet, then, because at that moment, she can't quite bring herself to meet his gaze. "I wouldn't say it miscalculated in that sense. It made an… educated guess."
She takes a quick look. His eyebrows are raised in surprise, and then there's a dusting of color on his cheeks. But he's still looking pretty thunderous about the whole thing.
"Then perhaps it misjudged you, which is... Somewhat reassuring. But we cannot exclude the possibility that it will try again."
Margo frowns.
"Even if I stay away from any similar formulas?"
"You cannot avoid sleeping. Your body and your spirit are mismatched. They make the veil grow thin, and thus attract attention. And your spirit … stands out. You are quite easy to locate in the Fade – I did not have to look for long before I came upon you. It means that others can as well."
So he has been looking for her? Ah.
"Then help me train to control this better. You still have my memories. Perhaps by integrating them, I can… reattach to this body more firmly. Become less noticeable."
He nods.
"Yes. Yes, we must do this as soon as we can." He seems to hesitate, and then his expression hardens. "Lethallan, this thing between us, whatever its nature, it is proving… dangerous. I would not…" And Margo braces herself for what is likely going to come next, except that Solas suddenly looks off into the distance, and then his face contorts with pain.
"There is no time. Come find us if you can."
Margo wakes up with a gasp, the contours of his face, distorted by pain, like a retina burn on the back of her eyelids.