Solona's fingernails rapping on the table echoed through the silence of the War Room. Garavel was out rounding up the Wardens for their follow-up meeting while Varel sat across the table, the quill in his hand scritching against a piece of parchment. Solona eyed the map laid out before her, two large X's marked over the spots in the hills that she'd identified to them after her return. One of the X's was close to the Pilgrim's Pass, marking a crack in a mountain which would no longer spew darkspawn now that she'd sealed it. This would hopefully reduce the number of attacks on trade caravans traveling throughout Amaranthine. The other X covered the mountain not far beyond the Keep itself.
Sighing, Solona opened her hand and stretched her fingers, glad to have movement returned. A dull ache from her injury still echoed in her cell's memory, but moving the fingers confirmed that the flesh was mended and the bones were whole again. Exhaustion thundered through her body, her thoughts wandering to the bath being filled for her that very moment. Another sigh turned into a deep yawn.
Just get through this next briefing.
She could only hope that Varel didn't mind doing most of the talking, as she was too tired to do much of it herself.
The promise of sinking into a bath of hot, cleansing water was enough to keep her from crawling under the table and catching some sleep. The injury she'd sustained the night before had ensured a long, entirely sleepless night before. Though even if she hadn't been nursing a mangled hand, sleep wouldn't have been easy. The winter winds coming off the bay seemed both wetter and colder than ever. They blasted straight into the little cave she'd found on her way home, filling its rocky darkness with an eerie howl. It had been impossible to keep a fire going, and she was out of practice with that anyway after months of traveling with Nathaniel. It seemed a cruel irony that her attempt at getting away from Nathaniel resulted in her appreciating him more than ever.
This fact complicated the decision of whom to take on the upcoming trip. On the one hand, traveling with Nathaniel meant considerably more interaction with him than on the days everyone was left to their own devices around the Keep. But on the other hand, no one could make a camp comfortable like he did, and there would be at least one night on the road where camping would be their only option. He was unfailing in his ability to build and keep a fire, and his hunting skills were unmatched by any she'd ever traveled with. Leaving him behind would mean they would all suffer, while bringing him meant that only she would. And besides, a lockpicker was an absolute necessity, particularly for all the looting she intended to do. She made a mental note to seek out another with such skills for their next Warden recruit.
One by one, the other Wardens trailed in. Anders could have stayed after he'd healed her arm, but Ser Pounce was posing too much of a distraction already, so he'd wisely chose to take Pounce back to his quarters. He was the first to enter and take a seat next to Solona, his eyes warm with worry. He offered a meek smile and seemed almost as though he wanted to reach out to her and offer some token of affection. Solona stared at him numbly, unable to muster up even a half smile. She stifled another yawn and looked away from his searching gaze.
Next came Velanna, her stride hurried and vibrating with pent up energy. Solona knew Velanna was ready to get out of the Keep, but since only three people usually accompanied her in her travels, Solona was prepared to disappoint her again. Though she was also toying with the possibility of letting her come anyway. That would mean a group of five and no Wardens left behind at the Keep, but perhaps that wouldn't be too bad.
Oghren strolled in and plopped into his usual seat, followed finally by Nathaniel. Solona kept her eyes trained on her fingers while she scraped dried blood and ichor out from her nails. Nathaniel's gaze prickled at her like a blast of cold wind, and though she refused to look at him directly, his image burned in the corner of her vision. She swallowed a hard lump that had gathered in her throat.
Absently, her hand traveled to her collar and searched out the warm lump of stone that hung from a cord. In the four days she'd been wearing it, it seemed to have grown into an extension of herself. Part of the group's curious looks at her had to have been due to the stone's effect, cloaking her taint from the others so that their Warden awareness of her was cut off. The stone had become an unexpected source of security and privacy, and she'd hardly set it down since that initial thrill of creeping up unnoticed behind a darkspawn.
She'd spent a lot of time over the past few days fingering it and studying its strangeness. It always seemed the same temperature as her skin, yet had an unnaturalness to its appearance, never reflecting any images or ambient light. It was an actual abyss made manifest, and she was surprised the moment she realized she no longer hated it. She certainly had hated when Nathaniel picked it up in the tavern, and the awareness of him dropped completely off her internal radar. But that must only have been because she didn't give her mind time to acclimate, to reconcile her eyes with the lack of sensation it expected.
Varel began to speak, explaining quickly what the marks on the map in the middle of the table were. Two caves which were the source of darkspawn had been sealed, and the next morning the group was to depart for Knotwood hills, which was rumored to hide an entrance to the Deep Roads. Since they didn't yet have the soldiers to protect against the waves of darkspawn terrorizing the lands, the natural next step — and a better option altogether — seemed to be to find the sources of the darkspawn's entrance to the lands and close them.
It was a solution that came to her by accident. After Nathaniel had delivered his blistering rejection in the trophy room, she'd needed solitude yet couldn't bear to return to the depressing confines of her quarters, where she'd likely be found and bothered. And with the watchtower roof too exposed to the winter winds, she'd instead climbed into the higher levels of the Keep and found the balcony that Nathaniel had taken her to once before. As with the last time she'd been there, she caught a glimpse of darkspawn meandering aimlessly over the distant hillside. So, she'd run back down, stopped off at her quarters to grab one of the black stones, and slipped out of the Keep in pursuit.
Keeping her steps quiet, her appearance cloaked by the moonless night, she'd watched the darkspawn, counting at least ten. Aware that she was vastly outnumbered, she'd carefully timed her attacks. Waiting until the group all faced the same direction, she'd begun to pick them off. Using a combination of paralysis and her staff blade, she began with the individuals at the rear of the pack and then dragged the bodies to a bush, concealing her work from those who remained. The darkspawn hadn't registered the reduction in their numbers until she'd already killed four of them. When the remaining six finally faced her, she'd unleashed spell after spell in a purge that emptied her energy down to her every last cell.
Controlling the adrenaline that usually incited her to recklessness had been an exercise in self-discipline, but she'd managed it. The stench of darkspawn inflamed the same murderous rage within her as it usually did, but she breathed through it and hunkered down, waiting for the right moment rather than charging ahead with her staff blazing. Once the wave of rage passed, she found her focus and cleared her mind, an act helped by the sharpness of the frosty air and clear night's sky. When it was over, she made her way back to the Keep without so much as a scratch. Nathaniel would have been proud.
After that, she'd fallen into bed and into an almost instant, blissfully dreamless sleep, with the memory of Nathaniel's kiss, and his rebuke of her emotional fragility, scrubbed from her consciousness. Yet by the time she woke she realized she'd also birthed a plan. It had occurred to her that regular roving groups in this particular location meant that there must be a place nearby that was emitting them, some crack in the earth that went deep enough to leak darkspawn like the rooftops of the Keep leaked rain. She and the guards could keep cleaning up the mess, but without sealing the cracks there would always be more. And she had decided to investigate.
The next morning, she informed Garavel and Varel that she would be leaving the Keep for a while, though she didn't know how long, and she didn't want anyone to follow her. She wanted not only the stealth afforded by traveling alone, but also the time without annoyingly concerned eyes upon her, without well-meaning questions or chatter.
She sat in wait on the hillside, and when she spotted the first darkspawn the next afternoon, she attacked. And then she spotted another. And another. The trail of darkspawn eventually led to a cave. By the end of the day, she'd emptied herself into a blast of force magic powerful enough to collapse the cave entirely. Not ready yet to return to life within the Keep, she'd walked to Amaranthine. Though it was a dangerous walk, she felt protected by the black stone, and she made it to the city without incident.
A day of drinking, talking to people and running small errands for the residents had reaffirmed her desire to better the lives of those under her rule, and when she'd begun her walk back to the Keep and spotted another roving group of darkspawn, she hid behind a tree until she perceived a good opportunity to attack them as she had the others. And as with the last time, she followed the stream of walking horrors until she'd eventually located an opening between two mountains, a giant valley which she had to travel deep within before the rift narrowed to something her magic could handle closing. Unfortunately, she'd also stumbled upon a great congregation of darkspawn. They were concentrated in such a narrow chamber that her Warden sense registered them as a small group, when really it was a corridor dense with walking horrors. The resulting fight had taken everything out of her, and had only ended when she crushed the horde by collapsing the walls around them.
Doing do hadn't been easy. The battle had drained much of her mana, and she'd had to retreat multiple times to down a draught of lyrium. She'd hardly had the minutes of peace needed to whisper the chants of the force spell, at least not without running out of range of the spell's reach. But when the darkspawn continued to stream out from within it, she'd had no choice but issue the spell hastily, while also deflecting attacks from two sides. Within the chaos of fighting and tumbling rock, she'd been hit by a falling boulder, her hand pinned. She had fought the remaining darkspawn one handed, and then had to wait for her mana to return to use another force spell to free herself. By then, darkness was falling. She found a cave and passed a miserable, sleepless night before making her way back to the Keep.
It seemed clear that Nathaniel would have to come on the next day's trip, since she simply couldn't endure more nights in a cold, horrible camp. But that fact hung uncomfortably over Solona's head. She had no idea what to say to him, how to just be in his presence without hearing what he'd said about her echoing in her head. But the more she thought about all his advances over the months, the angrier she got. She'd mostly ignored his advances at first, and now she wished she had continued to. Mostly she just wanted to know why? Why spend all that time shielding her, protecting her, saying the things he said and taking every opportunity to touch her, if only to reject her when she finally began to desire him in return?
He was toying with her. Fucking with her emotions.
Or, much more likely, he had been like so many others in her life since the blight; idealizing a non-existent version of her, and then finding themselves disappointed when they finally got to know who she was for real. When they learned that she wasn't the infallible, brilliant hero of the stories, and was in fact just a sad, traumatized woman who struggled with life just as much as anyone. Sometimes more.
Solona's attention wavered in and out of the briefing. Varel and Garavel identified where they were going to the other Wardens, laying out the plan to hit an Inn a day's walk outside of the Keep, camp the second night, and arrive at Knotwood hills on the third day. When they finished, Solona took a breath and forced the last bit of energy into her voice. She sat up and explained to the others that their goals on the trip were threefold: sealing any sources of darkspawn they could find, including that at Knotwood Hills, spreading the word of their need for new soldier recruits, and bringing back as many valuables as could be carried.
"Pack as little as possible," Solona instructed. "We need space for all the loot we can carry, particularly metals that can be smelted down into armor and weapons, and coin to buy what materials we can't find. We need to be prepared to equip any new recruits so that we can get them out into rotation as quickly as possible after their training."
Nathaniel nodded, his eyes sharp and attentive. Solona glanced to Velanna, deciding on the spot to let her come. For whatever inconvenience a fifth party member might bring, at least it meant one more pack for hauling loot.
"We'll all be going. And if it's true that we'll be going down into the Deep Roads, then it's likely we'll come into contact that with that talking darkspawn again. And with him we might also see—"
"Seranni," Velanna interjected. Solona nodded, glad to see the elf's eyes brighten. She was smartly dressed this time, wearing a thick velour robe in a deep shade of green.
"Lya will have breakfast ready at dawn. Please be prepared to leave straightaway from the dining room."
Heads were nodding, but the expressions on their faces were a blur. Stifling another yawn, Solona rubbed her bleary eyes and gave a dismissing nod before rising, turning to stride toward the door, anxious to get her bath over before she fell asleep on her feet.
A hush came over the Main Hall as Solona crossed toward her quarters. She made eye contact with several peasants, noting the deep worry lines etched into their faces, the sunken in cheeks and haunted darkness in their eyes. In contrast, the nobles looked well fed, and appeared more annoyed than genuinely fearful. Their condescending sneers seemed directed at Solona's disheveled appearance as much as to the peasants behind them. It was clear who was most in need of the Warden's resources, but Varel had warned that the Keep's stores were quickly depleting. Solona whispered a quiet plea to the Void that the upcoming trip be fruitful. Coin would not only mean well-outfitted soldiers, but it could be invested back into the community, with the people who obviously needed it most. She rubbed at her furrowed brows as she exited into the hallway that led to her quarters.
Approaching quickly from behind came the sensation of another Warden. She expected this, of course, and a part of her knew she probably should have explained her absence to the Wardens during the briefing. Varel had pointed out the two caves she'd sealed on the map, but didn't go into detail about how she found them, and Solona simply hadn't the energy to do it herself. She stopped as she unlocked the door and turned to face the Warden behind her, unsurprised to see it was Nathaniel who approached.
Her chest clenched into a knot at the sight of him. With a purple blush below his eyes, his face seeming gaunter than the last time she really looked him. He appeared about as tired as she felt. She waited, heart throbbing harder in her ears each second it took for him to close the distance between them. She broke her gaze away from his and glanced around the hall. Deep red carpet lined the long corridor, and somewhere beyond the wall milled two other Wardens. Swallowing hard, she leaned against the door, resigning herself to letting him ask his questions so that he could go away and leave her alone. He likely wouldn't go until she'd let him speak, and she just wanted it to be over. Solona kept her eyes cast downward as he came to a stop before her, taking in the scuffed shine of his boots, the deep wrinkles in his breeches. His hand hung at his thigh, and Solona was startled to notice his slender fingers trembling.
Raising her chin, she finally met his eyes. She threw her shoulders back, ready to remind him that she was the Commander and she could do as she pleased. Permission was not required for her to leave the Keep, for however long she chose. And it had nothing to do with him. It had to do with ridding the land of the darkspawn, which is precisely what she should have been doing this whole time.
He didn't speak, but she heard a heavy swallow. Without warning, he stepped forward, his movement so swift Solona flinched, but the involuntary recoiling of her body was absorbed into the firm wall of his chest. He released a heavy sigh into her hair. It took a blurry moment to realize what had happened, that the warmth and pressure around her body was his arms, holding her tightly. The steady pounding of his heart quickened against her cheek.
Her body's response to his was automatic, and unstoppable. The spice of his distinctive scent rose over the sour darkspawn ichor still smeared on her clothes, filling her senses, unleashing a wave of emotion that threatened to drown her. Tears pricked her eyelids, and she blinked hard against them. A gentle stroke caressed down her hair, landing on her spine and pulling her closer still. Her first impulse was to dig down into him, to bury her face in his chest and cling to him as though her life depended on it. But she resisted the urge, and merely placed a hand on his hip, waiting with hitched breath for him to speak. All she heard were the steady rhythms of his heart, his breathing.
Solona's mind waded through the thick ache that filled her throat, trying to locate a vein of rationality. Finally she found it, an argument cutting through her body's overwhelming response to his embrace. It reminded her that this didn't take back anything he'd said. It replayed for her the steel resolve in his eyes as he'd spoken his rejection. You are careless. I don't trust that you won't act so carelessly again.
And in his view, she had probably done precisely that, hadn't she? She'd escaped the Keep for four days, on her own. She'd pursued, alone, an enemy that he and the others had been recruited for the specific purpose of helping to fight.
Still, there he was. Saying nothing.
Over the past few days Solona hadn't let herself think too hard on the profound well of disappointment that weighed her down from the inside out since the trophy room. Or she'd tried not to. It was difficult to be too devastated when the change of his opinion was something she half expected in the first place. When she remembered that eliminating a strong attachment to him was something she had been aiming for. She'd sabotaged their relationship just as surely as Anders had. She'd wanted merely to stay the course back to Alistair, but hadn't known that course would really be leading her toward an empty eternity. She was reaping what she had sown.
And perhaps Nathaniel was right anyway. She was too confused, too wounded to be a good partner for anyone. She'd been trying to leave her life, to leave her loneliness behind, to reunite with her friend, lover, companion. And now her future was so uncertain, a vast, blank canvas, with only a few things clear. That was that the loneliness was there, in the emptiness of the other side, not here. Here were people. Sun and rain, Vigil's Keep and Amaranthine. Here, now, were her fellow Wardens, possible friends, and a countryside full of people whose lives could be improved by her efforts.
Solona placed her hands on Nathaniel's chest and gave a gentle shove. Nathaniel obeyed, disentangling himself as he pulled away. A heavy, quiet moment hung between them before Solona turned and pulled the latch on her door. She slipped into the warmth of her room, but stayed against the door, her senses basking in the sensation of him just on the other side. It occurred to her that she still wore the stone, so he couldn't feel her. She pulled it from her neck and dropped in onto the top of her bureau. His presence remained as she glanced around her room, but he did not knock, or move to leave. Another minute passed where neither of them budged their location. Finally, Solona sighed and retreated deeper into her room, leaving his presence stationed motionless outside her door.
A fire roared in the fireplace, and across the room sat the full bathtub. At the mirror above the bureau she caught a glimpse of herself and was momentarily shocked at the horror of her own appearance. Dark circles lined her eyes and her hair was black with dried ichor. Her robe opened in a rip at the shoulder, but the exposed skin was smeared with old, brown blood. She stank of decay, and her stomach rumbled with a reminder that she hadn't eaten since she'd left Amaranthine. On the table beside the tub sat a tray of bread and a large ceramic bowl with a heavy lid. Solona sighed, unexpectedly relieved to be back home.
Home. That is what this was. The Keep, the Wardens. Amaranthine. The other side of death had none of this. It had no one. But here, now, is where she lived, where she belonged. This is where she would stay.