AN: hah hey guys remember how i said 4k-5k words every ~2 weeks?
my bad. but hey we reached over 10k reads! and we're at 102 followers! and that's really just amazing!
thank you to the guest reviewers c: i cannot respond to you, but rest assured i get your reviews, and i adore them (and you)!
In the week that followed their first training session, Atlas managed always to catch Eden just as she was leaving her cabin, and not, fortunately, before she had even begun to wake up. Inevitably she would be led to the training area, where the daily beatdown would commence.
Maybe that was being dramatic. He had not made so much of a show of flaunting his skill as he did the first day; instead, he made a point of being just faster than her, just stronger, just prescient enough to still be incredibly, damningly frustrating. His strikes found contact with her body often, but they were just controlled enough to be annoying, painful on occasion, without, say, bruising. Mostly. But... she had to admit, she never felt like she was being given an impossible task.
And tasks there certainly were. She was assigned particular focuses for her bladework for the day, ranging from the strictly technical to the philosophical, to the in-between. Sometimes it was fight linearly, like he had the first day, and to not deviate from a line he drew in the ground in the process:
"Combat is a matter of lines. No matter where I step, where I move, you do not step away, nor do you turn. You may retreat, you may advance, but you do not twist nor look away." Atlas had instructed, and she'd frowned. "
"That seems a tad unfair. You could just walk behind me, and I wouldn't be able to do anything. Do you expect me to fight without seeing?" At that, Atlas had given her a small smile and his eyes twinkled.
"No. That comes later. Now, hop to it, Edie. Time is wasting." There were a few things to address there, not the least of which was his continued use of a nickname which persisted in catching her off-guard. She was given no time to consider, however, and left to defend herself when he began to fight.
She'd learned, after several painful thwacks, that he wasn't teaching her a fighting style so much as a principle. If she could control the plane on which she fought, she could force her enemy to adapt to that same plane. In that fashion it was aggressive, dominating, imposing herself upon him to ensure that he was on the defensive more often than not, even if the parries and counter-attacks he threw in were enough to force her to retreat. It bore further thought.
Similar and yet opposite was when he'd drawn a large circle and told her to continue moving along it without stopping:
"Combat is a matter of circles." He'd said, in opposition to the lesson of the day before. "You may switch directions and speed, but never stop moving. You can turn in whichever direction you need to respond to my attacks."
"I guess this is one way that I can dance circles around you." She'd quipped, and he exhaled sharply through his nose.
"Dancing is a different lesson entirely. Well... mostly." He'd responded, and before she could query him and perhaps earn herself another bout of conversation to rest her arms, he'd continued: "We'll see how well you're dancing in a moment. Extend yourself." Which was another thing he said often: to extend herself, instead of defending herself or to attack him. Regrettably, every time he said it was also when she was about to have to fight, so she couldn't afford to give it much thought.
She'd started moving immediately, a hurried blur of footwork responding to his probing attacks and devastating swipes. More than once she'd had to stop because she ended up retreating backwards instead of moving to the side, or moving to the side instead of moving along the circle. She'd discovered that the way to correct this was to not respond to his attacks linearly, as she had been doing, but instead in the same fashion as the circle she was standing on. Subverting his attacks away and to the side instead of meeting them more-or-less head-on.
That did nothing to save her poor calf muscles, which were on fire after only a few minutes. Atlas wasn't a slave master at least, and allowed her a few minutes in between bouts to rest, always with an air of easy acquiescence, as though it wasn't time to rest so much as it was time to think. She didn't figure out why until after a few unsuccessful rounds later.
Atlas was fighting aggressively, and she was responding in time with his attacks, unconsciously adopting the rhythm he imposed when the fight began and tiring herself out in the process. He'd said she could switch speed, so she tried that. It had had a greater effect than she'd expected. Now, instead of moving in response to him, he was moving in response to her. His inability to guide her speed and, to a lesser degree, direction, meant that he was beginning to orbit her in his offense. She circled the line drawn on the ground even as she was oriented towards him the entire time, no matter where he attacked from.
When he called the end to a bout before she'd yielded, she'd been confused, before he simply smiled and said: "Combat is a matter of circles and lines, and where you draw them."
That was another thing about him. He didn't teach by lecture, like her past teacher often had. There was no lengthy explanation of the technique involved in the lesson. Instead, he took her to the training area, told her what to do, and she did it. In the process she saw exactly what it was that he wanted to show, even if internalizing the lessons would take a bit longer than a week. Much more difficult was when it came to the more... abstract lessons, when something approaching lecture was given:
"You do not attack me. You do not see me. I do not see you. You attack the space in-between us, and the space I occupy. You do not fight for gain or for loss; you do not retreat nor do you advance. In this way, you fight without ever laying eyes on your opponent, because you do not need to." She had stared at him.
"Are you - is this what you meant when you talked about 'fighting without seeing'?" She said, confused. "Because I can assure you, I do in fact have to see my opponent to attack them." He'd smirked in that maddening way of his.
"You don't. You have to see where they are. You have to see only space, and then you can control it." He had reached an entirely different level of 'not making sense', and evidently he could sense she wasn't getting it, because he simply shrugged. "Think about it." Then he'd attacked.
Philosophy, maybe, wasn't her strong suit. That duel had gone a lot like the one on the first day, a whole lot of Atlas being better than her and her getting tantalizingly close to actually hitting him but not quite.
Working with Atlas pertained to the first hour or so of their training, then they went for a lunch break. When the break was over, she was instead working with the recruits of the Inquisition, who were in turn working with Atlas.
It was an... interesting experience, to say the least, because being fit and trained in swordplay was one thing, but the soldiers were soldiers, and trained like it. She prided herself on not being anywhere approaching as arrogant and snobbish as her family and distant cousins, but she was still undeniably a noble born, and had been raised as such. One didn't get rid of those sensibilities in a day.
As such, it was a small pang to her instinctive pride when she was doing everything with them, but she swallowed it without complaint - as though she had any reason to complain. Pushups in the snow, jobs around the vicinity of Haven, footwork exercises, sword-and-board drills, and more. She was utterly unused to that much physical exercise, but by the Maker she managed. She often flagged behind with some of the other slower recruits, but she still managed. When it came to the actual technique, she was better than any of them, and they knew it, but she did her upmost not to be obvious about it. She appreciated the practice and experience nonetheless.
Plus, most of the soldiers were pleasant to be around. It seems that when one was getting smacked around by the same instructor, it did wonders to disillusion one party to the perceived superiority of the other. Which was a complicated way of saying that many of them were beginning to see her as more than 'the Herald of Andraste' for which she was inordinately thankful - judging by the occasional smirk Atlas favored her with, the smug bastard was entirely too aware of it.
The lunch breaks were not what she expected by far (she could say that about every part of these lessons, and about Atlas in general, but that was beside point). For one, she hadn't expected Atlas to appear with a container of some food and set down across from her to eat.
"What's this?" she said, having expected to head into the tavern for whatever they were cooking there.
"A traditional dish." He said, opening the top to reveal a steaming bundle of noodles with a variety of small additions: diced carrots, bits of bread, and various seasonings among them. "Or, well, as traditional as I could make it, sans a few ingredients I suspect don't exist in Thedas." She looked at him and lofted her brows.
"You made this?" He nods. "When? Did you disappear from training and I was too exhausted to notice?"
He snorts. "No, I made it last night. Commandeered the tavern's kitchen when no one was about." She blinked.
"That's impossible. It's freezing cold out," she glanced upward: judging by the clouds, it was going to snow again soon. Joy. "and this is still as warm as if it was freshly made." Unless he tended the fire the entire night, which more likely would have resulted in burnt food.
His blue eyes twinkle with mirth, and his eyes creased minutely in a fashion she was beginning to associate with him proceeding to subvert her expectations and/or teach her something new. He lifts the steaming container of food, needless of the heat, high enough to where she could see the bottom. He points with his free hand to to some symbol inscribed on it, which looked to her like someone practicing Orlesian calligraphy but otherwise meant nothing.
"I told you I was a mage, yes? This is what is referred to as a 'seal'. It stores energy. In this case, the energy of heat. Thus, the food is warm, and could remain so for another few weeks." He sets it back down, begins to put a portion in a bowl for them both.
"That's… surprisingly practical." He doesn't verbally respond, but instead ticks a brow. She continues, "I mean, you only ever hear of magic being used in… combat. Things like fireballs, or structures of ice, or storm magic. Maybe healing magic, though I've never seen it." She had never heard of seals either, but she didn't know enough about magic to question him in that regard.
"Yes, well… I did also say that my magic was different from yours. Even so, I suspect that Thedosian magic is limited primarily by the perception of its denizens. 'Entrepreneurs' of magic and magical theory are discouraged if not outright… removed." She could see clearly his disapproval of the general perception of mages, and she couldn't really blame him.
"'Limited by our perception' - how so?" she asked generally, curious of his perspective.
"Do you know that trope of how prophecy works? A great and terrible fate awaits someone, so they spend their entire life fighting that prophecy and in the process, bring about the very fate they wished to avoid. It's a bit like that. They're so afraid of what mages could be, that they end up facilitating that fate themselves. Mages are placed in gilded cages, with all the appeasements that it's done ostensibly for their safety as well as the people's." He takes a bite of his food. 'They' clearly referred to the Chantry.
"You feel strongly about this - for someone who isn't from here." She says, careful to keep any undue accusation out of her tone.
"My people's history lends me… definite knowledge, of what happens when power is not understood, but instead is shackled because of fear." He adopts the deliberate tone that he uses when he knows more than he wants to reveal. She is versed enough in his expressions to determine this, but she can't yet figure out his reasons for hiding things.
She takes a fork-ful of some of the noodles into her mouth, and any further questioning on Atlas' opinions is halted by the sudden intensity of flavor that overwhelms her taste buds. She chews, more out of reflex than anything, and blinks several times as her eyes begin to water. It's not - it's not bad, exactly, but it's… spicy. There's a lot there and she was altogether not ready for it.
"Maker," she says after swallowing with a small cough, "that's… something."
Atlas looks up from his bowl, having had no such reaction. "Do you not like it?" He tilts his head.
"No, it's not that, I just wasn't ready for it. That's pretty intense." She didn't know if she was ready for another bite either. "How much spice did you put in that?"
He blinks. "Well, I've noticed that the food I've had recently is rather bland. I assumed this to be due to a potency, or lack thereof, of your spices, so I compensated accordingly." She stares.
"So what you're saying is, you drowned the dish in seasoning?" She approximates. He looks between her and the dish for a few seconds before breaking into the smile. She, meanwhile, looks around for a drink.
"I see. It would appear that my taste buds are rather more developed than yours." He says with a touch of smugness. She had found a cup of water and drank gratefully.
"If you want to ingest pure black pepper and salt, then be my guest," she retorts, "but here in Thedas we prefer civilized meals, with appropriate amounts of seasoning and spice." Her tongue was still stinging, for heaven's sake. It wasn't supposed to sting.
He rolled his eyes, but there was no real heat in them. "This wasn't what I had intended to converse with you about," he remarks, and now it was her turn to raise a brow.
"Oh? Enlighten me." Something about her words caused him to pause a moment, observing her.
"Enlighten - ? Ah. Well, your swordwork is progressing well, all things considered. That's not all I aim to work on you with, however."
"Are you going to try and refine my palate, too?" She says, casting a suspicious look to the bowl of food. She had yet to take another bite.
He sniffs. "No - I suspect you're much too far gone for that. I'll simply have to become accustomed to making new dishes. No, skill with a weapon is what makes a fighter, a soldier on the battlefield. But what makes a warrior is the potency of their mind." At that, his lips began to curve upward and his eyes seemed to brighten in a way that both enticed her and told her she wasn't going to like what came next very much.
'What came next' amounted to essentially logic puzzles of a very intriguing variety, and all manner of conundrums and thought exercises that were largely practical in nature, with some metaphysical concepts thrown in here and there.
She couldn't divine the true purpose of the exercises - she didn't need to think too terribly hard to best demons or bandits, or even rogue Templars and mages - but she also couldn't say that she didn't enjoy it, despite her initial misgivings.
"You are having tea with someone of ambiguous loyalties whom you are attempting to establish diplomatic relations with. While having drinks, you suspect that they have slipped a poison into yours. What do you do?" Atlas asked casually. She noted that this was the first day he had brought drinks for the both of them. Nothing exotic, thankfully, just some water. She very carefully did not go for a drink considering the nature of the question.
Eden purses her lips, giving it some serious thought. "What do I know of the other person? Their history, possible allegiances elsewhere?" She decided to ask, and read the minute curve of his lips as satisfaction at the question. She looked away from said curve before she got too distracted.
"Little-to-nothing. You can draw no concrete conclusions, and must proceed with negotiations soon. One cannot put off a drink for very long, either." He says, implying that she won't get anymore out of the question other than what was given.
She ponders. What does one do if they think they're about to be poisoned? She can't raise a fuss, clearly, if she's attempting to form a relationship with the person. There were very few ways to get out of accepting a drink with another person, even fewer if you were in negotiations. If the drink was alcoholic, she might be able to claim she was pregnant, but that was a risky gamble. Well… stupid, really. She would eventually have to admit that she lied - but then, if they had poisoned her drink, negotiations were going to have fallen through no matter what she did.
The crux of the point was that she didn't know. Switching the drinks seemed viable, when the other person wasn't looking, but it seemed cheap. One of those 'obvious' courses of action, like saying you'd dodge or block if someone tried to hit you.
"I would feign being unwell," she decides, "and 'accidentally' spill the drink. It would be easier to ask for forgiveness and appear perfectly innocent than it would be to act under the assumption that they have poisoned my drink."
He grins. "I like your thinking." he says mildly, clearly pleased, and she glows under the praise before calming herself. She had managed to be civil thus far, she wasn't going to preen like a child at the first hint of his satisfaction.
It still felt nice, though.
As such, lunch breaks always promised to be interesting affairs. He was infinitely more pleasant than any tutors she'd ever had, and that was without considering the fact that they weren't learning dreadful topics like the history of the Free Marches and Orlais, or languages, or calligraphy, or those absolutely horrendous classes that were meant to teach her how to be a 'lady, right and proper'.
She was biased, of course, because she was completely and utterly enamored by Atlas, who did absolutely nothing to not endear himself to her, with all of his nicknames and teasing encouragement and…
It was frustrating in the extreme.
It was on the first day of the second week that he failed to show up both outside of her cabin and at the training area. She had been perturbed, to say the least, because he hadn't shown any indication of being unwell the day before, nor had he mentioned calling off training. She was disappointed, but couldn't deny that the chance to rest was nice, because she was all kinds of sore.
It was Atlas' night to sleep, and he'd already resigned himself to having a late start for training the next morning. Even so, he'd slept fitfully. His nightmares had not yet come to fruition, had not yet become severe enough to result in true night terrors, but the visions he had were bad enough to mean that uninterrupted sleep was a thing of the past.
But then, he couldn't quite remember the last night of true rest he'd had. On Eo, the nightmares had faded with centuries of isolation, but never fully disappeared. He often found himself wandering the island in a sort of strange moving meditation. Threading the line between sleepwalking and being lost in thought.
He'd thought he'd been managing fine until he had exited his cabin to head to the training grounds. His thoughts were on the lesson of the day; perhaps he'd bring the twins about to give Eden someone else to practice with. Until he looked up across the field, and he was no longer in Thedas.
Distantly, he recognised that the layout of the tents and training areas had not changed, but the landscape, as opposed to the bright view of freshly fallen snow, had somehow morphed into the plains of Adelor.
It was not Cassandra who was hacking away at a practice dummy, but Aryn. Some distance away, Mnthn'iir and Sundari bickered over freshly opened rations, probably discussing some new magical technique they'd concocted and would undoubtedly implement in either their next training session or their next battle.
Naeruso was in an intense discussion with Krom, the both of them passing a piece of paper back and forth; undoubtedly, Naeruso had found some Iroizi plans and was trying to have Krom reverse-engineer the technology.
Orikhid excused themselves from a conversation with another figure clad in black, practically gliding across the field to the other mages. And then the figure turned, and Atlas' breath hitched, because -
Because that was Valera looking at him, his hair tied into a messy bun as usual and amber eyes quizzical, brow ticking upward. The corner of his mouth inched upward into that familiar smirk, and he was certainly going to make some smart remark -
Atlas blinked and it changed again, and now the look in Valera's eyes wasn't curious but searching, and his smirk wasn't familiar but biting, cruel as it had never been when he was himself. The sky behind him was on fire; the familiar emerald plains were gone, replaced by the Temple - the Temple that was crumbling, burning, painted in blood.
Atlas closed his eyes, willing the visions away, aware he was breathing heavily. He dug his nails into his palm until he thought the warmth he felt was blood, and he opened his eyes again and saw everything for what it was. He was in Haven, in Thedas. He turned heel and headed back towards his cabin, ignoring the looks some of the people nearby were favoring him with (as if he had the wherewithal to do anything but). Once inside, he slammed the door behind him.
"The war is over. The war is over. The war is over. The war is over." He repeats, falling to his knees next to his bed. It was a mantra, meant to draw his attention to something true. Unbidden, the grounding exercises from the mind-healers came to him, drilled into his memories by rote.
"I am Atlas. I am in Haven, a village in Thedas. I am next to my bed, trying to breathe. I am having a panic attack." All perfectly reasonable observations. He gripped the sheets and shoved his face into the bed. His face was tingling, like his nerves were all shifting and rearranging themselves, managing to make him feel completely numb and achingly oversensitive.
He was burning, Valera's fire magic overriding his shields and searing him to the bone -
He slapped that thought away.
"The war is over. I am in Haven. The war is over. I am in my cabin. The war is over. I am safe." He mumbled the words into his sheets, trying to get his breathing under control. He could do this. He wanted it to end. It was going to end. Was it going to end? If he didn't move then the spectres of his past couldn't get to him, couldn't reinflict the same tortures, and he wasn't sure what was worse: the original event or his memory of it.
He could've been like that for minutes or hours, but all he knew was that eventually he could feel again, and he could think without his shattered memories forcing themselves into his perceptions. He sat himself on the bed and stared at the wall, because the panic attack was over but that didn't mean he felt any better.
On Eo, when this would happen, he would sometimes sit immobile for days, just staring. Or maybe he would walk through the forest barefoot in order to feel the ground beneath his feet, hands on the trees as he passed to feel their life-whisper caress his senses, the animals of the island sensing his distress and coming to offer him companionship.
He could not do that here, but he could cling to those memories of peace and tranquil solitude, of far better substance than the others. They were all he had, because all of those other memories of good times were tinged with loss and sorrow, of what-ifs and could-have-beens and never-will-bes.
He thought he'd been doing well. No, he had been doing well. The nightmares had begun to come back, but he thought that was a given because he was in a warzone, and he was thankful that they weren't worse. He'd made friends here, had begun to forge the foundations for lasting connections. He was doing good work, and wasn't fighting over the blurred lines of us-versus-them, but for a genuine cause, for genuine people. Training Eden and the others had given him a focus, a distraction -
But it was just a distraction, wasn't it?
He wondered, not for the first time, just what the hell he was doing in Thedas; why he'd gone through that portal, what purpose he thought he'd be fulfilling. Life on Eo as the Ocean Sage had been lonely at times, yes, but he had been content there, healing in the way that immortals did, fading into obscurity with time and becoming little more than a lost legend. He was okay with that.
But he'd seen that portal, tested it and discovered it for what it was, and he'd just… leapt. For Sahaquiel's sake, he wasn't the one who was prone to rash decisions, that was always his brother's purview. It wasn't as though he regretted it, but… well, maybe Eden had a point. He didn't make sense.
But he might regret it. Might regret them all. Might regret Eden. Oh, but there were many parts of him, the majority, even, that yearned for the possibility of something more, something precious and special. Friendships, camaraderie. With Eden, maybe even -
But it would be gone someday, wouldn't it? It would be gone like the blink of an eye, and he would be alone again with no one to share his sorrow.
A knock at the door. He looked at it for several long moments and tried to discern if it was real or not. Another knock. Soft, but firm, just below the middle of the door, not wearing armor. Someone of smaller stature, not a Templar, and probably not Eden. Another knock.
"Atlas?" Lethiel's voice. He relaxed, not even knowing he'd tensed up, and waved a hand without thinking. The door opened of its own volition to reveal Lethiel, hand raised as though he'd been about to knock. "Ah - hello. Thought you'd be in here. Might I come in?" Atlas nodded, and he did, closing the door behind him.
"You were looking for me?" He said blankly, not in the mood to deduce why.
"Well, yes. We were going to have tea today, were we not?" The bookkeeper raised a small box which Atlas knew contained a tea set, and judging by the careful way he held it, the teapot was full of tea.
"Oh. Right." He said simply. Lethiel frowned, turning an inquisitive gaze upon him. Atlas didn't try to put on airs, because of everyone in Haven, Lethiel was the most likely to see through it, and probably the best person to do so.
"Something wrong?" Lethiel says delicately, but bluntly.
"I was… way back then." He says vaguely.
"Ah." Lethiel intones, setting the tea set down and preparing their cups.
Having lived with or near the man for a year, it was impossible for Lethiel not to have learned a few things about him. At some point, Atlas realised this, and opted instead to tell him most of it. Or at least, a very general version about it. He'd not had a panic attack in Markham, but he had had some episodes, and it was better that he didn't beat around the bush.
(Except he had, and Lethiel knew that Atlas was a veteran of many, many wars, and that he'd lost much, but not much else about those times. He had never said their names aloud. He didn't know if he could.)
Lethiel placed a cup of tea in his hands, and on reflex he began to sip at it. The heat was a welcome sensation, the particular blend of herbs a familiar, anchoring taste.
"What are you thinking?" Lethiel says a few moments later, knowing that if left to his own devices Atlas wouldn't say anything.
"At the moment? Nothing." He replies truthfully. He was in a state of unthinking, seeing without observing, without feeling the need to.
"What is it you need to think about?" Lethiel persists patiently.
"You're remarkably insightful, you know." Atlas observes. "You're a good archivist because you know the right questions to ask." It was true. He was enthusiastic about his profession, endearingly so, and sometimes to a degree that seemed to render him a bumbling fool, but he had a keen mind and a sharp tongue.
"You're avoiding the question." Lethiel notes calmly, but he could hear the small uptick in tone indicating a smile. He sighs.
"I have done a lot of thinking, but I have not found any answers."
"To what questions?" Lethiel asks, as Atlas knew he would. He considers.
"What is better: to love temporarily, and to feel sorrow thereafter, or to flee from those feelings entirely, and avoid both the joy and the pain?"
"It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." Lethiel quotes, and Atlas pulls a face.
"How stereotypical." he states and Lethiel huffs a short laugh.
"It's a worthy thought, though. What we've lost makes us who we are, just as much as what we've gained and kept."
"That is irritatingly simple yet profound." Atlas grumbles, sipping his tea. "It shouldn't be that easy."
"You can boil all of life down to a few words, but that doesn't make it any easier;" Lethiel counters, "knowing is easy, but understanding takes a while." He continues.
"I suppose." He concedes. One would think he would know this by now, and yet.
"This is about Eden, isn't it?" His friend says, and Atlas shoots him a look. Lethiel's pointed brow dares him to deny it.
"...yes." He admits into the rim of his cup, turning his gaze back to the wall across from him. "Women are terribly difficult." he bemoans.
"I wouldn't know," Lethiel quips, "my tastes were always more refined." Atlas snorts, both at the joke and the fact that he unknowingly referenced a conversation Eden and he had had a few days prior.
"But," he continues, a tad more serious, "coming from someone who has both loved and lost in a similar fashion to which you struggle with now… I would choose love, everytime."
"You miss him, don't you?" Atlas asks, referring to Lethiel's husband and already knowing the answer.
"Of course. I miss him everyday, but it's because of that that I cherish the life we had all the more. It's not the same, I know it isn't, because I know that eventually I'll return to him. But does that not make it all the more precious?" Lethiel posits. "What is a long life if you do not treat it as life, but just existence? What is it they say - surviving without really living?"
Atlas hums. "There are those among my people who would have scoffed at the notion of attachment. They would spend their time in meditation, pondering the great mysteries of existence. Sometimes they would find their answers. Sometimes they did not wake up. Nilarith." He struggles for a moment to find a suitable translation; the Ancients had words for things the mortals did not. "Amaranthine sleep. Eternal contemplation. Many considered it a form of enlightenment."
Under ordinary circumstances, Lethiel would certainly have been delighted to delve into a completely new mythology and culture, but in this case, his concern for his friend won out.
"If you wanted to do that, Atlas, I'm sure you could have managed before now. At this point, though, it'd be - well, it'd be conceding defeat." It was entirely unintentional, but his wording caused Atlas to minutely stiffen.
Atlas did not lose. It was not in his nature. He sighed, forcing the tension to leak out of his body. That was the mindset of the Lord Commander, but he was no longer the Lord Commander, and Sahaquiel willing, never would be again. Now he was a fool falling for a girl and trying to decide if it was worth it.
"You're right, of course. I'm just being a coward." Atlas said.
"No, you're not. You're right to be reticent, and I'd be worried if you weren't. But everyone deserves some happiness. I've seen the both of you this past week, you know. Everyone has - I'm certain Varric is taking notes." At this, Atlas' brows rose towards his hairline.
"Gossip? Oh, good heavens. I should be more afraid of the rumor mills than anything. At least they haven't started betting on things." At this, Lethiel took a suspiciously long sip of tea, and he swiveled his gaze towards him. "Lethiel?"
Lethiel swallowed his tea, and cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. Good thing." Atlas' eyes narrowed. Remarkably insightful Lethiel was, but he was by no standards a skilled liar.
"They have, haven't they." He said flatly.
"I - it's, well, you see, it's only the beginnings of one, Varric sought me out because he figured I would have a, aha, vested interest in the outcome, once it grew." Lethiel defended himself poorly, but Atlas wasn't truly irked. At him, anyway.
"Stars save me from the whims of bards," he groused, leaning over to refill his cup of tea. Lethiel, relaxing now that he was 'off the hook', chortled into his own cup. They fell into companionable silence.
"What do you think of her?" Lethiel suddenly speaks up, earning a curious look from Atlas.
"Of whom?"
"Of Eden." Atlas' brows furrow, but he decides against asking after the nature of the question.
"She is a warrior. Born to be, I'm sure of it. She picks up lessons like no one since - since back then. And… she's very good." He says, a bit lamely.
"Good?" Lethiel prods, raising a brow.
"At her core. A good person. She's uncertain, she doubts herself, but she… for her, doubting is the hard part. Everything after that is easy; the challenges, obstacles, lessons, they're just small steps. I don't know that anything is particularly insurmountable for her, even if she may think the opposite. She's… bright." He frowns here, thinking, because that wasn't a measure of her character as much as it was her spirit, difficult to explain. Once magic slowly began to return, sensing people was easy, and to his senses, she was a blooming star. "But quiet, even when she's loud. Or perhaps it's… perhaps it's that I feel quiet when she's loud." He muses over this.
"It's very nice to feel quiet and calm, I think." Atlas continues neutrally, staring at the far wall, lost in thought.
In his focus, he couldn't see Lethiel off to the side, who was gazing at Atlas and smiling in the way that elders often do. He took a sip of his tea and shook his head fondly. This boy is head over heels, he thinks to himself.
(When it came to Eden, he was certainly a boy again, Atlas might later reflect.)
VALERA OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF VYN:
Valera was adopted into the Royal House by then-King Irad and raised by both him and his wife, Maeral, upon it being discovered that he carried the blood of the Ancient Arkanii.
He was the counterpart of Atlas, his adoptive brother, and together they became known as the Twin Conquerors of Aethys, despite not actually being twins. Growing up and through times of serious conflict and being the heir to extraordinary magical power, Valera was known as a powerful sorcerer and leader of the Aethan Kingdom. Although it was Atlas who held the position of Lord Commander, it is well known that for all intents and purposes the brothers were of equal authority and, usually, the same mind. As fit the laws of succession, Atlas took the title of King once his father died, and Valera officially became the Lord Commander, until they both ceded power to mortal-kind after the Great Silence.
It is hotly contested whether the Valera who led the Aethan Kingdom to victory for centuries alongside his brother is the same Valera who would later turn against his people, inciting the infamous War of Night and inflicting great damage upon the land he'd sworn to protect.
In life, Valera was the Lord of Sunlight, a symbol of hope and power for Aethys, but his name is now uttered largely only as the Betrayer, his position in the Royal House's lineage struck. The harm and malice he imposed upon the Kingdom during the War of Night appears more than enough to undo all that he fought for whilst one of the Kingdom's leaders.
THE WAR OF NIGHT:
It was without warning or precedent that one of the greatest heroes of Aethan history, savior of the land many times over, turned against his people in a vicious conflict referred to as the War of Night.
Valera struck first at the Temple of Sahaquiel in Thaen, utterly demolishing the sanctuary of the god he had sworn himself to and slaughtering all inside. Later he would lead armies across the outer edges of the continent, capturing and subjugating where he could, and decimating where he could not.
His army consisted partly of the same soldiers he'd lead decades prior. There were few survivors of this variety, but they would later claim that they were brainwashed into believing that they were serving a 'greater purpose' by Valera himself, but the truth of their statements is still disputed. Some believe they wished to absolve themselves of guilt.
The rest of the Betrayer's army were strange creatures, never seen before nor since. Mages have written entire treatises simply based on the rumors of these creatures, and some, purportedly, had been driven mad whilst trying to study their remains, once the war was over.
Aethan forces were able to halt the Betrayer's advance, but it was only once Atlas was able to face Valera personally that the conflict was resolved. The echoes of their battle can be observed in the form of the Long Canyon, for the scale of their power was such that it reformed the very land they fought on.
After Valera's death, Atlas largely retreated from the world to the mystical island of Eo. It is there that the Ocean Sage resides, ever mourning the loss of his brother.
AN: woo! i know this isn't, per se, 'worth the wait', but i hope it's enough to be entertaining! yeah, i know it took me forever, but like
idk i don't really have an excuse i'm really bad at writing when i need to okay
but uhhhh yeah. i know what is going to happen in the next few chapters, it's just a matter of actually writing them that i'm terrible about. if and when i actually do get to the those chapters, they're mostly going to be a lil character development and establishing relationships between characters (and by that i mean between the dynamic duo atlas and eden, and everyone else)
you know the drill famalam, favorite, follow, review, do whateva ya like and i won't hold it against you if you do none of those things
(sure would be nice if you did tho)
cheers!
~ylri