Chapter 26: Through Everything
Summary: Solona plays the game of the demon to find her way out from the Fade.
A/N: I accidentally deleted the original chapter, so needed to repost. Sorry :(
Trigger Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence
One of my dearest friends, the wickedly talented author and artist Dirthara-ma made this painting of Solona in the Fade and she is absolute stunning, beautifully captured her and made me so happy with it :) .
art/Solona-Amell-635473737
The warm summer sun shone down on the glade and the wind brought a familiar lullaby. All led back there. The glade with the oak tree. The little girl went there again, despite the strict orders of her father. He would have never understood. The spirit of her mother was there singing to her, telling her tales. She had always been happy there. She found there something lost, something dear and precious.
The butcher's son promised to teach her climbing a tree. He promised to teach her stone skipping at the lake near Starkhaven. And her father promised her they would have watched the star falling together.
She was making a flower wreath, made by dandelions and daisies yellow and white like her favorite dress she was wearing, as hummed the same song the trees whispered around her. She made the wreath for the butcher's son. The little girl liked him, his chubby face and warm brown eyes. He was a foot taller than she was. He was higher and stronger than the rest of the children in the hamlet. The girl's cheeks turned to pink as she thought of the boy and the moment when she would have handled the wreath to him.
"What a lovely view," the demon snickered.
Solona watched her younger self who was full of dreams and hopes, who didn't know the ugliness of the world or had only vague memories of it. The girls she had been before all this. "What is the meaning of this?" she asked the demon. "I know how it began. I relived it countless times in my nightmares. Do you think you can show me anything new? Do you think I hadn't played it in myself over and over again to understand what I could have done differently?"
"Of course I know how you ate yourself night by night weeping yourself to sleep hoping you wouldn't see this again," the demon scoffed. "But here things are different. It can show how things could have been different, how your life could have been different. Aren't you curious, little girl?"
"The past is past. It is pointless to think about how it could have been."
"Liar," the demon yelled and Solona winced by her own twisting voice accusing her. "I know your deepest thought and dreams your fears and desires. I could show you how different it should have been. I could offer a different life."
"Are you lost, lady?" the little girl's innocent and tinkling voice broke the demon's and it disappeared. And two innocent green eyes looked on her. Her own ones but brighter .
"I'm not. In fact, I know this place from another life" she smiled as looked around. "What are you tinkering?" Solona asked.
"A flower wreath for the butcher's son. It is almost Summer Solstice," Solona chuckled and remembered why she made that wreath, to ask the butcher's son, whose name she didn't even remember to be her flower knight in the festivities. "He is in late?" the little girl disgruntled.
"His father maybe found some work for him. The sun is going down, you should go home, little girl," Solona wanted to scream at her younger self to run away to not stop until she reached Redcliffe and found an ash blond stable-boy. To run away together from the Circles, Templars, and Grey Wardens. Away from everything and everybody. But it would have been an illusion. A trap that the demon wanted her to walk in. "Your father must be worried by now. Go, he promised you to watch the star falling together,"
The little girl looked up at her, the tears gathered in her eyes, reddening them. "They will take me away." Solona's heart skipped a beat and her throat grew dry. "I don't want to go with them. I want to stay here with Papa. They are frightening and they want to look me up in that Circle. Please, don't let them." the little girl wept.
"I can't help you," she breathed sounded like a wail.
"LIAR!" the little girl screamed as jumped up sweeping the wreath away, letting to fall down and ruin. She stormed to Solona and shoved her with full strength. then again. The little girl was weak, Solona had forgotten how much. She hit, kicked her, as the fat tears trickled down her face. "Why you let them do this to me again? Kill them please, save me and Papa.
Solona crouched and grabbed the little girls hand, feeling her quick pulse, the awakening and boiling magic in her veins, She felt the licking flames around her consuming the old oak tree, mutating the sweet lullaby the wind brought. And she heard nothing but the roaring of the raging flames the unmistakable cracking sound of destruction, she sniffed the scent of burning grass and flowers. The fire purified her mermory, the demon tried to twist. The fire had always understood her.
"Look at me," she took the little girl's head between her hands, sweeping the tears out of her face the stray locks of the unbound braids of her ginger hair. "Everything will be fine. They will protect you in the Circle. The way your father can't, Little Poppy."
The little girl stopped weeping, her expression shifted to something bone-shaking, untelling like a porcelain doll. "No one can protect anyone, "she said, her tone flat and mechanical. She freed herself from Solona's holding and strode into the sea of flames. The fire didn't harm the little girl, just embraced. until she vanished behind the high walls of, taking the glade away with it leaving nothing behind and Solona was falling into the endless void.
"The darkspawn are an evil that must be destroyed, it's true. Though not as evil as the birds... damnable feathered fiends!"the stone golem grumbled as they left the Imperial Highway and stepped on the narrow passage lead to the remnants of Lothering and into the Korcari Wilds. Alistair didn't hear any of the banters around him, just felt relieved they had finally reached those cursed wilds again.
Two weeks.
Two weeks had passed in the consuming unknown, in desperate praying and with more desperate fights. but as the eternal days had passed with snail pace. Nothing gave him ease. Not the killing, not the praying, not the certainty of his duty, nothing. Everything felt numb tasted like ash and had the stink of smoke.
"She must have been waking up by now," Leliana stepped beside him. "I'm sure." Her understanding voice infuriated him but he couldn't tell why. She had kept telling this to him all the way to Honnleath and back again and the more he heard it the less he believed them. It should have been the last glimpse of hope something he could cling to but instead felt like a bigger lie every time it left her mouth.
Alistair snorted. "She'd better be for her sake, for mine and for Morrigan's," he spat out the name of the witch as if it was rotten food on his tongue and his hand involuntarily wandered on the hilt of his sword. His eyes scanned the perimeter searching for the smoke of the camp puffing up, the ragged tents and maybe two jaded green eyes and stray ginger locks waiting for him to return.
"Alistar, we have to speak about the possibility of-" Leliana's voice was uncertain, hesitating.
"You, yourself said she has woken up," Alistair snapped. "You dragged me away from her to go to Honnleath for this pile of talking rock with the promise she would wake up," he hinted backward to the golem they found in Honnleath, who called itself Shale. It was nothing else but another unwanted companion.
"You have responsibilities, Alistair, with or without her-"
"Don't you dare to preach me about responsibilities, Leliana," Alistair thundered loud enough to silence the clattering forest. "You had left the Chantry for some hazy vision of yours. I've never forgotten who I am and never left my duty for some daydream."
Leliana jumped before Alistair and stopped him. "And how so you would call Solona if not a daydream?"
"She is my sister, my comrade I share the burden with, she is-" he bit the end of his sentence. "She is the only reason I want to end this blasted Blight. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if this whole mess perished with the darkness, with the Chantry, the Templars, the nobles, and Monarchs, with all the dark secrets and rotting sins. This world gave me nothing and gave nothing to her but pain and loss," he burst out in a bitter and unamused laughter." Don't you find this ironic, Leliana? That your lives in pariahs' hands you always hurt and toss away like trash? Nobody needed me or her before the Blight. So pray to your Maker to wake her up, because you need her more now than ever."
He gently tossed Leliana from his way and strode forward. "You... really... love... her..." Leliana's voice trembled. Alistair turned back to the bard.
"I'm sorry, Leliana... but I do," he said as noticed the looming up female silhouette and Alistair's face brightened, but as he saw the old and jaded lines of Wynne and the resigned pain in her eyes the time froze around him. He rushed to the camp and tore the cuirass open and saw her lying there, guarded by her faithful mabari, sleeping in rigid stillness.
Two weeks had passed.
Chilling breezes woke her from her dreamless sleep. Her eyelids were heavy, the whispers around her allured her to stay like this. Staying there forever, tricking the game, leaving her body to die and decay. It would have been easier. Burn her soul away in the Fade, let her body die at the other side. But through the mist of despair, she heard a familiar voice echoing.
In death, sacrifice. Wouldn't it be a sacrifice? To get the world rid of herself? Or, it would be just another chain? This time a permanent one. Even death couldn't set her free, she realized. Then why not live?
She felt the calloused hand sweeping her hair away. She felt a familiar and fluid motion caressing across her chapped lips. And she smelled the familiar scent that was still hidden in a sane nook of her mind.
"Alistair-" she breathed. It felt too false to not be real.
"Shhhh," she heard the soothing purr. "It was just a bad dream, it wasn't real."
Solona became wide awake by the familiar voice jumping to a sit on the cold mosaic floor covered with snow blanket. She saw a Templar sitting next to her, his amber eyes staring into the void filled with endless emptiness. His skin was like wax rigid and cold. She looked at the cloudless, starry night sky. The constellations were clear and bright. Everything felt still and unmoving, trapped in a frozen image of a memory.
"It is interesting how similar they are. You definitely have a type, little girl," she heard her twisted voice and saw the demon towering over Cullen's frozen body. "Similar hair, eyes, they are both Templars. Well, sort of. They are both infatuated with you," it snickered. "Foolish men, they can be so easily manipulated by two pretty eyes."
"What is your purpose with all this?" Solona grunted through her gritted teeth. "He thinks I am an abomination. He hates me."
"He hates the idea you could become, not you. There is a difference. You said you are a Circle mage, didn't you? So you are exactly where you are meant to be with the Templar you are meant to be," her own cruel voice sickened her. "Didn't you have homesick, little girl? Didn't you miss your old hiding place? Didn't you miss gazing the stars?"
"This isn't real," she hissed as looked at Cullen.
"The truth is relative it depends on the lens through you observe it," the demon crouched next to Cullen's body and exhaled a soft kiss on the unmoving lips. "Reality is the question of relativity. A madman thinks the projections of his mind are real. A faithful thinks the subject of his worship is real. For them, these things are flesh and blood."
The demon swept its eyes through the astrarium. "For you, this place is a prison, for him-" it beckoned to Cullen," -is a solution to keep this world safer. Are the Templars evil for locking up mages or they are heroes for protecting innocents? Are you evil for bearing magic or a victim because your gift stigmatizes you?"
"For me, this world is fake, an illusion. Nothing more just a twisted game of a creature who wants to go where it has no place," Solona hissed.
"This world can be as real as the one you live in. Even better. You are free here," the demon stood up from Cullen and smiled at Solona showing it's every tooth in a threatening snarl. "You loved Cullen, didn't you? In your own innocent way but you did. Well, he is not the soldier-boy but something you truly and deeply regret. And the question is if you have to hurt someone wouldn't be better him than Alistair?"
Solona felt a spike of energy rushing through her body, charring her veins with raw magic. "I don't want to hurt anyone." she heaved.
"Sadly, some things are unchangeable."
She felt a feverish delirium descending on her. The falling cold snowdrops on her skin were tiny icicles tearing her open. She felt the cool stone floor under her touch heating, melting into lava. The sweltering torridity cracked the surface of the polished crystal dome and soon the drifting snowflakes mixed with glass shards. Frost and scorching hotness collided around her fighting their own battle, tossing everything into raw chaos, to an endless battlefield of the war of elements.
"Solona," she heard Cullen vacant voice, filled with the intoxication of lyrium. His skin was still like wax, smooth and immaculate. The amber of his eyes pale, almost lifeless. "Are you alright?"
He was a lie, everything was a lie.
"You are not real," she hissed and slipped backward jumping up from the hot stone floor. It glowed in angry yellowish heat under her, sublimating into the void.
"It was just a bad dream," he said as stood up. His moves were ragged and rigid. "You are safe here, exactly where you are supposed to be." Cullen strode to her with slow and calculated steps. His hands were up in a defensive pose like he was afraid of her of what she was intending to do.
"You are not real," Solona muttered. "This place is not real. I'm a Grey Warden, fighting in the Blight with Alistair. That is real. He is real."
"He doesn't love you, Solona," Cullen snapped still taking the steps toward her. "He is obsessed with you like I was. None of us loved you, we feared or worshiped you. You hurt him, burned him and eventually you will destroy him. You destroy everything and everybody. You are safer here; the world is safer if you stay here. This is where you belong."
Cullen reached her and towered over her. Solona felt the consuming fire of fear surging through her, heating her skin, the flames licking her fingers and palm. The Templar grabbed her wrist. There were repressed violence, grudge, and primal fear in that motion. Those amber eyes suddenly filled with pain and rage. Cullen deepened his fingernails into her thin skin, shedding her blood. "I shouldn't have been clouded by lust, I shouldn't have craved for you, a fire made flesh, a plaything of demons," he grunted. "I should have been the guardian of the innocents, protect them from you. You destroyed everything I believed in," she felt lyrium creeping under her skin battling the raging fire of her magic, feeding it, trying to suppress it. She was burning inside. "I should have let Greagoir perform the Rite of Tranquility on you."
His other hand rose to her throat, grabbing her throat. "I should have killed you with my own hand."
Solona grabbed his strangling hand and he screamed. She felt his skin melting under her touch like the flame melting the wax of the candle. It trickled between her fingers, merged with her own skin. Cullen was vanishing from tissue to tissue, from sinew to sinew, among deafening shrieks until nothing left just a puddle of liquid wax on the hot stone floor.
The scorching hotness won the battle; the ground brought torrid vibrations in the air.
Solona brought her hands to her mouth in her horrid as watched the remnants of Cullen on the glowing stone floor.
"This is not real... this is not real..." she repeated as receded to the giant wood door, her every step brought a new nest of fire on the surface. She stared her palm, the trickling wax on it, and then the astrarium as melted away, as the stone floor under her vanished. Her back collided with the wooden door but she couldn't get her eyes from the mesmerizing rampage of the flames. Her hands blindly searched for the handle as the flames crept closer to her, caressing her skin with silky hotness. The fire had always understood her.
Her hand found the handle and pushed it down and she fell backward on the cool floor tiles. She kicked the door closed before the consuming flames could reach her. The room's air hit her heated skin with coldness. The place was dark, only the dim light of the giant mirror in the middle. The cracking sound of the destruction of the other side of the door sliced the silence of the place, the scent of burning wood flesh and wax penetrated even the thick barrier of the stone wall. She leaned against the wood surface of the door and watched the silhouette of her hand. her veins were smoldering, glowing in the dark as if burning lyrium flowed through her instead of blood. She didn't felt human anymore. She maybe wasn't even a human anymore. The trembles of shock rushed through her in uncontrollable and violent waves. Her back slid down on the wooden surface until she was sitting on the stone floor. She heard the echoes of cruel laughs creeping through the walls, mocking her with twisted amusement.
"Are you having fun?" she breathed but no answer came just more laugh. "ARE YOU HAVING FUN?" she screamed, the end of the sentence faded into a wail. But her only answer was dead silence and bright cerulean light coming from the mirror.
She stared the mirror but has no fortitude to get up. "No more games," she whispered and lay on the cold stone floor. "Just let's get over this." she wept. "You were right, are you happy now?" Everything was still and cold. Only her own sobs echoed back on her. She was alone and lost. "ANSWER ME!" she screamed but again, nothing happened.
She burst out in frantic cry it shocked her violently as curled into a ball. She knew this game, she knew what the demon wanted from her. She knew what she was supposed to do. Her hand searched for the obsidian dagger attached to her belt, the Zevran gave her. Solona gathered all her strength to sit up and watched the cerulean light dancing on the black surface. She was ready and at last felt the determination. she placed the blade over her smoldering veins of her twist and tightened her fingers around the hilt.
A last deep breath, a final glint of determination and...
"Do not dare to leave me alone in all this."
Solona released the dagger and it fell to the ground, the metallic sound echoed from everywhere as if millions of crystal shards fell to the ground in the empty room and she snapped her head to the giant glowing mirror.
"Do you hear me?"
It was Alistair's voice penetrating through the mirror. Her limbs were weak and heavy, the stupor in them brought the piercing of thousands needles but she got up on her trembling feet and with uncertain wobbling steps approached the swirling mirror. She saw herself on the other side in Alistrair's arms, unconscious and broken. She saw the burn marks peeking under his plain and tatty shirt as his hand caressed her pale and lifeless face.. She even felt the scent of sea biscuit and saffron. And a painful still relieved sob escaped her lips. Ir felt so close, so real and it was within reach.
Solona stretched her hands to catch the moment to be there where she belonged but as soon as her fingertips touched the glass the image vanished and she saw an elf looking exactly like her. The elf she saw at Haven. They withdrew their hands in unison, Solona touched her rounded ears and saw the reflection doing the same.
She was tired of these twisted games, her own endless madness.
An uncontrollable scream shook her body as she crashed against the mirror.
"WHO ARE YOU?" she banged on the glassy surface. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" she hit the glass with her full strength again and again with frantic rage and desperation. But of course, she got no answer. But she just couldn't stop to crash glass surface which cracked under every collision until the ragged lines of ruptures abuted and the shards with clinging sound of the falling shards.
"Wake up, Solona, I'm begging you," she breathed with her last strength as fell on her knees, her arms slid on the broken surface, the splinters of the remained glass carved deep and bleeding furrows on her arms. But she felt nothing. just watched the crimson virulent gathering in a pool under her.
It was over.
With trembling hand reached for a bigger shard of glass and tightened her fingers around it, cutting more wounds on her skin. But she felt no pain. She felt nothing but desperate determination. her dark and sticky blood painted her clothes into crimson. It felt so surreal, the pool of blood trickling under her, hot and thick. It was like water rushing away, washing away everything.
"Don't do this," she heard the so loved voice and the bleeding pain of her cuts suddenly reached her. She looked at him, the plain shirt he wore, it sleeves upturned. There was no scars, just immaculate skin, it was nothing else just another illusion. a cheap and pale imitation.
"You are not real," she whispered feebly and turned away from him. Alistair crouched to her, propped her chin and drew her glance back on him.
"Does it matter?" he breathed, his lips brushed hers. "I can touch you the same way he does, kiss you the same way, call you on the same names. We could be free here, away from the Templars, the Chantry, the Blight and the Grey Wardens, from everything and everybody. We could do anything we want."
"This isn't real..." Solona sobbed and wasn't sure anymore who she wanted to convince or did she even want to convince anyone.
"How could I make it more real? with the burn marks on my arm? the blaming witness of your madness?" Alistair or the creature masqueraded him swept away the falling tears from her cheeks. "What is you always saying? Alistair must live? You are his death sentence, not the taint. But he is too foolish and sentimental to see this. The only way to save him to stay here with me. I can give you anything you want just call me on his name," and he kissed Solona.
She didn't protest or moved away just let herself succumb to it. She was too tired to fight back, to remind herself what was true or false. She wasn't sure of it anyway. The world became a twisted and chaotic mess through the lens of the demon. And she found it insane and beautiful.
Solona deepened the kiss. It was really like Alistair was kissing her, the same gentleness and desperate violence, the same love, and hatred, the sweet and hot paradox making the whole world collapse. There was no true or false anymore, no pain, no sense, nothing that made her human.
"No," she broke away. "You can give me anything except the only thing I want," she hissed. "You aren't offering freedom just the chains of an eternal illusion."
She saw something changing in those hazel eyes and the next moment the creature grabbed her neck and smashed her to the ruined mirror, sliding her body up against the surface as it stood up. the remains of the scattered glass surface carved deep cuts on her back. She screamed, felt the piercing pain. It wasn't even remotely Alistair anymore, had his features, his face, his hair, his eyes but nothing else.
But the demon had his strength as his firm fingers tightened around her throat and strangled every air out of her. "Fine," it growled. "If you want to do it the hard way, so be it, little girl." She felt the life leaving her, her muscles relaxing. She couldn't see through the illusion, she still saw Alistair through the stars that blurred her vision "You can't hurt me looking like him, can you? How pathetic you are. You have the power of the ancients and still, you are too weak to use it or give it to someone who could use it."
Her limbs became numb and for moments her vision darkened. The grip on her throat became even more tightened. "At least fight against me, mortal." Alistair's voice thundered. But it wasn't his anymore. It was something cruel and unholy. Solona still held the glass shard in her hand. With her last strength stabbed it into the stomach of the creature and the fingers relaxed against her neck. She fell on her feet and almost lost her balance and collapsed. Solona twisted the shard in it heard the squishing sound of the tearing flesh.
Suddenly Alistair's eyes looked back on her again, the warm hazel ones.
"You are not him," she grunted and twisted the shard again. "And you'll never be me," with her other hand she cast an ice spell tearing it's chest open and crushed it's heart, feeling the last beats pumped blood.
It felt like a rapture, a liberating wave of wind to take a life away. The smell of blood felt intoxicating bringing feverish delirium on her once again. It felt so unholy and beautiful as the hot crimson liquid trickled down her arm.
The demon as Alistair took one last glance on her with a wide smile filled with some kind of divine satisfaction before collapsed into her arms and brought Solona with it.
And she only saw Alistair again, his rigid dead and white skin, the blood trickling from his mouth, harsh against the colorless skin. And for a moment she believed the illusion and screamed so loud and painful that it could have invoked every demon of the Fade. She ordered herself to wake up but nothing happened. So she laid on the corpse of the last illusion of the demon and wept, begged for Alistair at the other side to kill her, to be a good Templar and do her duty, hoping her voice can break through the Veil. But nothing happened.
"Lying here won't solve anything, Dreamwalker," she heard the long-lost voice and looked up into the familiar hazel eyes, framed by wrinkles and the long blonde hair turning to grey. "You don't belong here."
Notes: This was really distressing for me to write.
Anyway. How did you like the chapter? don't hesitate to tell me :)