Solea and the Seeker weren't close to being friends. She still resented the woman for stealing Varric away, but she had a grudging respect for the woman and both her stalwart dedication to duty and her skill in battle. From the moment Solea had awaken after the conclave, the Seeker had been a rock in the storm, never relenting and always pushing forwards against whatever stood before her. Solea didn't realize how much she come to rely on that steadfast nature until she saw the woman collapsed against a wall in a cell. Fatigue was evident in her posture and her voice.
"Nothing you do can help me now. I'll be with the Maker soon." Solea wanted to protest but she could feel the red lyrium eating away at the Seeker's body and see it glittering in her eyes. Finding out from Fiona that she and Dorian had been sent a year into a future ruled by Alexius' master, some self-proclaimed god called the Elder One, had been startling. But seeing the broken Seeker added a dose of reality to the situation.
"We can fix this." Solea said desperately. "Alexius sent us forward in time, but Dorian says if we find his amulet we can return to the present."
"Go back in time?" Cassandra stood up. "Then…can you make it so none of this ever took place?" As she described the events that had occurred since Solea and Dorian's disappearance, Solea was relieved to see a spark of determination grow in the Seeker's eyes despite the woman's doubtful tone.
Solea didn't know how they would stop the assassination of the Orlesian empress or fight off a demon army, but she knew now was not the time to voice this concern. "We will stop all that from happening. I promise." She offered a hand to pull the Seeker to her feet, wincing internally as she felt the sting from the red lyrium in Cassandra's body.
The trio set forth, scanning the cells around them in case any more of them were occupied. Solea was surprised that they didn't run into anymore guards. Maybe they thought the red lyrium was a sufficient security method.
They found Solas in the room just next to Cassandra's, standing with his back to the bars of his cell. His entire body was shrouded in an aura of crackling red light no doubt a result of the red lyrium that he shared his cell with. The mage spun around upon hearing their approach but didn't seem to believe what he was seeing.
"You're alive? We saw you die."
"I got better." Solea shrugged, focusing on unlocking the door as she let Dorian explain more. She was comforted to see that Solas appeared less affected by the red lyrium. Besides his red aura and the slight warping of his voice, he seemed no different from when she'd left him in Redcliffe Castle. She could really use his level-headed wisdom right about now.
"This world is an abomination. It must never come to pass." Like the Seeker, Solas seemed to be revitalized to learn that this future could be prevented. "I will help however I can." Solea was disappointed when, after learning he had nothing new to share about the last year, Solas dropped back to walk quietly beside Cassandra. She'd hoped he would have more advice, but he seemed just as lost as they were and, like the Seeker, talking seemed to be a painful endeavor.
"Solea, over here." They'd been searching through more cells when Dorian's voice drew her to the corner of the room where he stood in front of an occupied cell. She recognized the compact frame on the floor instantly, her stomach dropping.
"Uncle Varric!" Not waiting for Dorian to pull out the keys, she sent a ball of energy at the lock. The metal door exploded inwards, ricocheting off the stone wall with an echoing clang and almost smacking Solea as she rushed into the cell.
"Andraste's sacred knickers! Flicker, you're alive." Varric caught her with a grunt, wrapping his arms around her tightly. "Where were you? How did you escape?" The dwarf's voice was gruff and he was slow to release her as his eyes traced her form as if reassuring himself that she was really there.
"That portal we got sucked into sent us forward in time." Solea gripped his arms reassuringly, ignoring the pain from the red lyrium that was poisoning his body. She felt a knot of anger form beneath her breast as she saw the telltale red veins framing his eyes which glowed an unnatural red, masking his usual hazel.
"Everything that happens to your family is weird." Solea was relieved to see Varric's humor was untouched, though she wasn't sure there was anything that could dampen it.
"Maybe it's just a result of hanging out with you too much."
Varric chuckled, "So, what's the plan? There must be a reason you came back, besides trading quips with me."
"We get to Alexius, and I just might be able to send us back to our own time. Simple, really." Dorian explained helpfully.
Varric chuckled again, "You and I have very different definitions of the word simple." A rarely seen anger darkened the dwarf's features. "You want to take on Alexius? I'm in."
Solea was struck by the realization that this Varric was not the same dwarf she'd last seen in the throne room of the castle. She wanted desperately to ask what had happened to him but there was no time to stop and talk. A part of her was too scared to know. All of the companions they'd rescued had been quick to share about the state of the world, but none had been forthcoming about their own experiences, though it was clear it hadn't been easy.
The longer they roamed the infested castle, the more Solea felt her energy drain, but she plodded on relentlessly as she remained silent, focusing on fighting her internal battle. Her solemn mood had spread to the rest of the party as they found Leliana in the castle torture chambers. Intimidating enough normally, Leliana struck a horrifying visage with her gaunt face, naught more than skin pulled taut over bone. Her normally bright, fiery orange hair was dull and lifeless as it fell across her brow, and there were clear patches of missing clumps. The rest of her body was completely clothed but singed holes and bloody tears in the fabric hinted at the damage beneath. If that wasn't enough, her harsh words had dampened the mood further. The spymaster had cared little for explanations or promises to set things right and she cut Dorian off sharply as he tried to explain their plan.
"Enough! This is all pretend to you. Some future you hope will never exist." There was a sharp, furious glint to her eyes that frightened Solea. "I suffered. The whole world suffered. It was real." Leliana grabbed a discarded bow and quiver of arrows, slinging the latter onto her back while testing the string of the bow. "Alexius is in the throne room, but first there is one stop we must make." She exited the room without another word.
Solea was so stunned by the woman's words that she was the last to leave the room, trailing at the back of the group as Leliana lead them further into the torture chambers. She appeared confident in her direction until she stopped in front of a room whose door looked exactly like that of the room in which she'd been held in. Nocking an arrow, Leliana kicked the door in and swept into the room. She was followed swiftly by Dorian, Varric, Cassandra and Solas.
Solea was just stepping through the threshold when she heard various exclamations of surprise and suddenly Varric was in front of her, trying to push her back out the room. Startled, she fell back a step as he desperately tried to cover her view of the room. Solea had long since overcome the dwarf's short stature however and she peered through where the others had gathered around a table in the middle of the room. She couldn't see much more than a body strapped to the table and the telltale glow of red lyrium.
"Varric, stop. What's the matter?" Solea couldn't understand what had upset her uncle. Then, at her exclamation, Dorian turned around and gave her a clear view of the victim's head, and the achingly familiar white hair.
"Papa." Confused recognition pulled the word from her tongue at a whisper. For a moment, the world was still and silent, as if all noise, movement, color, and even time itself, had been sucked from the room. Life seemed to stick on that moment for an eternity, as the blood froze in her veins.
She didn't realize she had moved until she was standing at the table in the middle of the room and the world shattered into motion once more. Light, sound, motion and more flooded her senses as her heart raced into motion again. She wasn't sure if she'd run or fade stepped across the distance and she didn't care.
Her father was pinned to the table by simple leather straps, and she would have thought that a foolish mistake on the Venatori's part if she hadn't been able to see the rest of him. Clad only in a worn pair of cloth breeches, the lyrium markings that branded Fenris' flesh from chin to feet were exposed for all to see. The swirling patterns were as familiar to Solea as her own two hands and she could have traced them in her sleep, but they had been corrupted. Instead of blue, the lyrium blazed a tainted red and in some places, she could see solid crystals sprouting grotesquely into his flesh.
His emaciated body was deadly still on the table, with more resemblance to a cadaver prepped for dissection than a living being. Ragged scars and barely healed wounds marked his entire body, covered in dried blood and grime. For a single heart-stopping moment, Solea feared he was dead but then she saw his chest expand slightly as he breathed. She shook his face desperately in her hands.
Fenris' eyes flew open and Solea flinched back in surprise. His eyes were nothing but two solid, glowing red orbs that crackled with every darting movement they made. She felt tears leak down her face as he cringed away from her touch, curling as far away as possible in his restraints.
"Papa, it's me." Knowing better than to touch him again, she busied her hands by cutting him free of the straps keeping him tied down. She had to bite her lip to fight the urge to help him sit up and then stand. She'd never in her life thought she'd consider her father to be fragile.
"Lea? Is that you?" His head darted around as he spoke, as if searching for her. Fenris' voice was twisted and distorted into something guttural and grating. It reminded her of the unearthly red lyrium music. "You mother and I- we…we thought you died."
"It's me, papa." Solea was standing right in front of him and he finally faced her fully as she spoke. Staring at his solid red eyes, tears clouding her vision, she realized he couldn't see her and bit back a sob. She could only think of one thing to convince him it was actually her. The phrase her family used whenever they had to leave each other. It was a shortened version of the farewell her mother first told her in Kirkwall, when they had to leave her with Varric or someone else to go on a quest. Clearing her throat of tears, she said, "Not in your eyes."
His face immediately softened, and he finished the phrase slowly. "But always in my heart." Then, she was in his arms and she felt safe again. He hugged her like he never wanted to let her go again. Her father's embrace was a comfort she hadn't had in months, but the feel of his bony arms and the taunt of the red lyrium in his body ignited a rage in her heart.
A significant absent occurred to her and she pulled away to ask, "Where's mother?"
Fenris flinched. "She's dead." He let the phrase hang for a moment before continuing, "We came as soon as we heard you'd disappeared but by then the castle was already overrun. She died while we were trying to fight our way inside through hordes of demons." His body flickered red with his rage. "I would have died too but Alexius stopped them from killing me. I was brought down here instead…an experiment."
Solea felt like she'd been sucker punched as every bit of air was sucked from her lungs. She heard Varric cry out somewhere behind her as she collapsed against the table, feeling weak on her legs. Her mother couldn't be dead, it wasn't possible. The famed Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, did not die. She was as invincible and enduring as the sun.
But her father did not lie, and his face bespoke of a grief too strong for words. He did not try and comfort her or offer soothing words and as she took in the exhausted set to his battered body, she wondered. Before the hellish year of torture and corruption he'd suffered had destroyed his body, it was her mother's death, she thought, so shortly after her own presumed one, that had broken him first.
After finding her father tortured and beaten, Solea did not need more grave words from Leliana to push her forward. She stalked forward with a single relentless purpose. At times the ball of grief tightened her lungs and made it hard to breathe. Her mind conjured horrid images of her mother being torn apart by demons or her father being brutally tortured on a table. She almost cried in relief when they stumbled upon another rift on their way to the throne room.
Fighting was a welcome distraction as it forced her mind to focus on nothing else. She threw herself into battle with a fury. Her rescued companions wielded stolen weapons with no meager skill and Dorian was impressive with his magical skill, but she didn't give them much work. She refused to give the enemy another opportunity to hurt them, darting from opponent to opponent like a whirlwind.
When the demons had been slain, she discovered that rifts in this time were much harder to close than she'd been used to. The Veil had been shredded almost to non-existence and it was much harder to coax the fabric of the Fade to bind itself together once more. Sealing rifts had never been a painless affair but by the time she finished, her left arm from the elbow down was aching. Like the fighting however, the pain gave her focus. It chased away her grief and the music and she welcomed it.
They fought through several more rifts and groups of Venatori guards and mages before finally reaching the door to the throne room. Only to find it locked shut. Solea yelled and threw her dagger at it in a fit of rage. She wanted to go home. She wanted to escape this castle of horrors and crystals that sang, of dead mothers and scarred fathers. Anything was better than this living nightmare and here was yet another obstacle in her way. It felt as if she'd been trapped in the castle for weeks and she couldn't bear another delay.
Dorian walked up to the door to investigate and Solea felt her father walk up next to her and lay a comforting arm around her shoulders. Despite the spark of pain the contact caused, she leaned into the embrace. She'd been worried he wouldn't be able to walk at all when they first found him, but he ran and fought as well as the others, moving with an almost feral intent in his movements. Watching the familiar style of her father's fighting had been a small relief for Solea's nerves.
Now father and daughter stood side by side, matching auras of red and blue light burning from their bodies. Solea had long since lost the energy to control her own lyrium and there was no reason to hide it. She needed it especially for fighting now that she was limited to the one dagger in her right hand. Sealing all the rifts they'd discovered had torn at the mark on her left hand as she'd been forced to channel more and more of her magic through it. Now a constant, pulsating agony radiated all the way up to her shoulder. It felt like a Qunari had taken a hammer to every inch of skin and the muscles in her arm tightened in cramps periodically. She could still move the arm if she needed to but the fine motor control required to grip her dagger was lost to her.
"I've got good and bad news." Dorian admitted. "Good news is we can open this door. Bad news is we're going to need four more shards of specially made red lyrium shards like this." He showed them the strange crystal they'd found on the body of one of the mages they'd killed in the room. "And I doubt they're going to just be lying around."
Around her, Solea could hear various mutterings of despair from the other party members but she stared at the door thoughtfully. She did not want to spend hours searching further into side rooms of the castle hunting down these shards. "So, the shards act as enchanted keys, right?"
Dorian nodded. "As far as I can determine, yes. The door will only open if all shards are put into the slots."
"Well, any lock can be picked, right?" Solea didn't wait for a response. She marched towards the door, shouldering Dorian aside gently as she used her good arm to yank her dagger out. She felt a spark of amusement at how the enchanted blade, aided by her magic, had sunken nearly to the hilt into solid stone.
Sheathing the blade, she placed her good hand on the door and sent an inquiring thread of energy into the door. She sensed the magical mechanism of the lock and saw that Dorian was right about the red lyrium shards being the key. Solea opened her eyes in satisfaction and strode over to a small cluster of crystals that sat in the corner of the room near the door. She drew her dagger, flipping it in her hand to use the pommel to break off some red lyrium. Before she could strike, a hand caught her arm.
"Let me." Fenris said. "I know it hurts." Even though he couldn't see, she felt his sympathetic gaze directed at her through the crackling red that remained of his eyes. She winced, knowing that her father would be intimately familiar with how painful the red crystal could be for someone like them.
"Thanks." She murmured, gratefully putting space between her and the red lyrium. A moment later, Fenris approached her with four shards of lyrium in hand. She gestured for him to fit them into the empty slots of the door. They didn't fit perfectly but they didn't fall out which was fine for what she needed. "You guys might want to stand back."
Solea's left arm moved stiffly as she raised it to place both hands on the door again, right over where the shards fit. Sucking in a deep breath she gathered her energy, pooling it in preparation for what she was about to do. Using the misfit shards as a gateway for access into the magical lock, she sent a surge of lyrium-based power into the door. Abandoning finesse, she focused on breaking the lock through sheer force alone.
The resulting boom was deafening as the lock and the entire door shattered before her in an explosion of masonry and dust. Thankfully the direction of her blast sent the larger pieces flying harmlessly forward but she was still showered in a deluge of smaller debris that coated her hair and armor in a fine white powder. Solea took only a moment to smirk proudly at her handiwork before she stormed into the throne room.
