By Gods Forsaken

by inwardtransience

One day, the shadows will part, and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see. (How do you do a summary for something this big? Total retelling, Mahariel!Warden, mage!Hawke, Dreamer!Trevelyan!Inquisitor, worldbuilding, too many OCs, serious plot edits, primarily F/F.)

20. Broken Circle — V

9:30 Nubulis 25

Lake Calenhad, Kingdom of Ferelden.

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When they finally came for her, Solana had begun to think she'd been forgotten.

One of the more peculiar things about life in the Circle that she'd become familiar with over the last years was the odd, slippery nature of time. There was a rhythm to ordinary life, one which marked the passing of days and months and years on a visceral level, one more felt than explicitly considered — or at least, there had been such a thing, before, when Sola had lived an ordinary life.

It was partially a matter of the daily routine in the Tower. There was a contradiction in the Circle, a baffling mix of the tyrannical and the capricious. Mages of the Circle were, for all intents and purpose, slaves under the domination of the Chantry — which was ironic, given how the Clerics spoke of Tevinter. There were unyielding strictures limiting the acceptable bounds of their behaviour that were zealously enforced, monitoring and controlling everything from their personal possessions, what they were allowed to read, what magics they were allowed to study, their relationships, their writings and correspondence, what they did and where they went and when. So long as a mage stayed within these boundaries, one could live in a relative degree of comfort and safety...unless a Templar randomly decides they aren't being shown the proper respect, or there was something undefinably suspicious about something the mage was doing. Or simply that the mage was pretty, and if they did as they pleased, well, who would even care, really?

(From the beginning, Sola had taken particular care to avoid the Templars as much as possible — she had just seen them murder Father and Rhianu, they'd stolen her away from her home and her sister and her brothers, she'd been terrified of them. On only one occasion had she gotten cornered on her own, but she'd made enough noise they'd been interrupted before he could get too far.)

(She'd immediately told Seeker Esmond about it, and started subtly encouraging Cullen's infatuation with her, gambling his obvious interest would put the other Templars off. And it worked like a charm, both of them.)

Yet, at the same time, there was very little structure in the daily routine of their lives here. Meals were served at particular hours in the day, there were occasional assemblies and the like, certain supplies and tools in the enchanting and alchemy labs had to be signed out. As apprentices, there were a few subjects they'd been required to demonstrate proficiency in before advancing. Besides those limited matters, they were largely left to their own devices. Sola had gotten the best tutors money could buy, and while they would take her input on what she wanted to study and adjust their plans accordingly, she'd never been just...let loose in a library and told to learn. Without particular goals to aim toward, certain coherent subjects or programmes to follow, Sola had had absolutely no idea how to manage herself. It was just...

Directionless. As though she'd been dropped in the middle of the sea, no land in sight in any direction, and told to just...go.

Day to day life in the Circle ended up being dominated by distractions and petty annoyances. Sola had never had to share a room with anyone before. Well, that wasn't entirely true — she'd share a bed with Vera or a cousin on the rare occasion — but not near so many people all at once, nor for anything near so long. So being tossed into the apprentices' level, in a room with rows of beds one after the other after the other with absolutely no privacy to speak of, had been something of an adjustment. For the first months, on top of her homesickness and mourning and loneliness, she'd felt all too naked and vulnerable, surrounded by strangers in this strange country, forced to dress among them, sleep among them, bathe among them. She'd adjusted in time, but it'd been slow.

As they had little else to do, much of the mages' time that wasn't spent on their studies was whiled away playing cards or dice or other games, and gossiping, Andraste save her, the gossiping — Sola had thought some of the ladies back home had been bad, but the people here never stopped! They had so little to entertain themselves with they must invent distractions from whole cloth, she supposed, but half of it was completely made up, and the vast majority just asinine. It was difficult to socialise with her fellow mages much, for the simple fact that any attempt she made at conversation inevitably devolved into discussions of what this or that of their fellows had said or done, and she was soon bored thoroughly out of her skull.

Perhaps she'd done herself no favours in the early months, there'd been little she'd been able to do about that. She'd been emotionally volatile, at first, wavering violently between sobbing and terrified shivering and fits of rage — regretting too often that there was nothing easily smashable around, and the Templars would react badly if she started setting the furnishings on fire — so she couldn't really blame the other girls for not putting much effort into trying to talk to her. And by the time she'd arrived the others had already been here for years, divided into disparate social circles. By the time the shock of what had happened to her had begun to resolve, and she'd had any interest in dealing with anybody in the Circle, she'd found their cliques frustratingly difficult to penetrate, and before long she'd simply given up.

Even now, nearly a decade later, Sola couldn't say she even had that many friends — a few among the Libertarians of the Circle, but...

(Most of them were surely dead now.)

The days here dragged on with a maddening mundanity, the same diversions and distractions day after day after day after day, on and on. And so the really strange bit reared its ugly head: time had no meaning here. It'd taken her a while to notice, as preoccupied as she'd been with her misery and frustration, but here in the Tower they were unmoored from the rest of the world, an unreality settling into the concept of time itself. The traversing of the sun through the sky was almost entirely hidden — there were windows, but they were few and far between, most rarely giving any sense of the quality of the sunlight, where exactly the damn thing was.

Sola used to be woken by the sunrise piercing through her curtains onto her bed, every morning. She hadn't even seen the dawn in a decade now.

And as they were never allowed outside, never, the passing of the seasons was entirely obscured to them. The walls were thick enough the patter of rain against stone was muffled to nothing, at high gales one might hear a low, barely perceptible groan, the force of the wind ringing the Tower like breath over a fife if it hit just right, but that only rarely. In certain out of the way spots, it might grow quite cold during winter, but anywhere people frequented was enchanted or spelled to be comfortable at all times. Even in the height of summer it didn't grow noticeably hot — perhaps there was a difference in the climate inside the Tower between winter and summer, but if there were it was so small as to be unnoticeable.

Outside the tower, the sun rose and set, the moons cycled, the seasons run one into the other into the next, the world continuing its endless rhythm around them. And the Tower was cut off from it, inside these walls still and sterile and unchanging, as though they here weren't part of this world at all.

It'd taken a couple years in the Tower — when she'd glanced at the calendar in the Chantry and realised Arie's birthday had been the week before, and she hadn't even realised it was spring already — for Sola to start finding it seriously unnerving. Viscerally, something fundamentally wrong in a way she couldn't quite put words to.

When Sola had been young, so young she hardly remembered, Father had found someone to teach them magic — Rhianu, a Rivaini Seer, who'd been traveling for whatever reason and had agreed to stay. She'd lived with them, almost like a part of the family, how Sola imagined having an aunt might be like. (She did have an aunt, technically, but she'd run away to Ferelden when Sola had been a baby — Leandra had never been heard from again, could be dead for all she knew — and her great-aunt had been old and sickly for as long as Sola could remember.) Growing up, Sola had been taught Rivaini magic, and their arts were...well, Rivaini.

Rivain was an interesting place, an eclectic mix of the traditions of the natives, Chantries both White and Black, the Qun, and even elvish heathenry, though of the sort emanating from today's Arlathan Forest instead of the Dales. Their approach to magic reflected that mix, though more Rivaini and Qunari than elvish or Andrastian. As contradictory as it might sound to the uninitiated, Rivaini traditions and Qunari philosophy meshed surprisingly well — there were reasons the Qun had had more lasting success in Rivain than the Chantry, though not without innovations. (Most prominently, the Qunari of Rivain had their own perspective on the role of magic in the Qun, reportedly to Qunandar's perpetual bemusement.) The Rivaini believed that, as each person and each living thing clearly had an animating principle, everything else did as well, physical objects of all sorts and even the land and the water itself had souls of their own. What the Qun had added to their thinking was something Rhianu had called spirit of the act: all the different things people do, from something as simple as walking to something as complex as crafting or executing the powers of their office, the particulars of all social interactions and relationships between people, all of these had their own soul too — and in honing one's skill with an act one can open oneself up to its spirit, to embrace it and take it into oneself, metaphorically allowing themselves to be possessed by this spirit of the act, essentially a religious experience attained through the pursuit of perfection.

Which was a very Qunari sort of thinking, really, though conceptualised in a way that was surely alien to them.

And so it was with their magic. Rivaini mages were taught to open themselves up to the spirits of the world around them, to commune with them, to entice them into action, or to incorporate the nature of these spirits into one's own. When Rhianu had first been teaching Sola to cast fire, they'd gone out to their lodge in the hills, waited for the sun to fall, and Rhianu had built a fire out in the gardens. They'd sat before the fire, and Rhianu had told Sola to reach out, to know the fire for all it was — the heat, the light, how it consumed the wood and inhaled the air, hissing and crackling and climbing and dancing — to feel its spirit acting its will upon the world, the faint echo of its magic reverberating in her own. And to make that spirit her own, to feel it on the inside as she felt it on the outside, to make a portion of her own spirit kin with that of the fire. And to push it out into the world, to work her will.

That wasn't at all how magic was taught in the Circle. The way magic was conceptualised here, the instruction they were given, was...mathematical. Like geometry, shapes and forms and translations, everything given a strict, technical analysis and broken down into quantitative terms. Their way of doing magic was cold, and lifeless, and sterile — she'd hated it from the beginning, and still did to this day. The only thing that'd changed with time was that she was better at hiding her distaste.

And so the Tower itself was cold and lifeless and sterile. Once her attention had been drawn to it, she could feel how wrong it was, viscerally. She'd never entirely believed as Rhianu did, and she didn't think she did now, but she had to admit there was...something. She didn't necessarily believe these spirits existed, in the wind and the water, the subtle rhythm of the earth moving from summer into autumn into winter into spring again. But, being isolated from them as she was, she'd eventually noticed she felt unmoored, cast adrift from the world, the months passing by reduced to a meaningless, directionless, soulless smear, bland and empty, and it just...dragged on. She didn't know, she never did manage to put words to the feeling that could properly encapsulate it — she'd tried to explain it before, to Dora, Finn, Eda, Uldred, Alim, but they never quite got it — all she knew was that it was wrong and she didn't like it.

Sola hated it here. She had from the beginning, and it'd never really gotten any better.

That sense of being cast adrift from the world, of time smearing by with no meaning, had never been any worse than it was now.

The room she'd been stuck in wasn't an unpleasant living space, exactly. It belonged to one of the mages who watched over the apprentices, though Sola didn't know who — it'd been some years since her Harrowing, she never went down here anymore, and the childminders were swapped out every now and then. It followed the basic floorplan of the Enchanters' flats far above her head — part of the draw, using the lure of being given private space to attract mages to the tedious job — the door out into the hall opening into a drawing room, and deeper in from there the bedroom. By how the furnishings in the drawing room were arranged, and the various bits and bobs scattered throughout the room, Sola assumed that whoever this room belonged to frequently had groups of apprentices over, to chat or play cards or whatever else.

The bedroom was similarly scattered with the detritus of its inhabitant's presence — clothes, scraps from one enchantment project or another, little keepsakes accumulated over the years, a few empty potion bottles waiting to be washed and restocked. Poking about, she found in one drawer a row of filled bottles, so she knew what those had been — whoever owned the room had herself on a regiment to prevent pregnancy. There was a faint smell of sex lingering in the room, Sola assumed her lover had been staying with her here. That was somewhat irritating, but it wasn't like Sola had never slept in a soiled bed before, especially since the bedding wasn't laundered here as often as she'd like — granted, normally she would have participated in the soiling, but all the same — and it wasn't as though there was anything she could do about it anyway. Besides, the night Alim had taken her here she'd passed out right off, she hadn't even noticed until the next day.

That had been...three nights ago? four? She wasn't certain. Time was strange and meaningless in the Tower to begin with, but in isolation the surreality only intensified. The rooms she was stuck in had no window, the only light from a few enchanted lamps — most of the lighting in the Tower was magical, cutting down on the need for oil and preventing the buildup of smoke or accidental fires — so it was impossible to tell simply by the lighting if it were day or night. If she stood near the door into the hall, she might catch footsteps passing by on occasion, very faint, but enough to guess when large numbers of people were moving through the hall at once — but there were multiple reasons that might be so, people going up for meals or down to bed, or heading down or up for whatever other reason, that was no help at all.

Even opening the door, looking out into the hall, there was no true way to tell — there were no windows anywhere on the lower floors, and the lights in the hallways and stairs were never put out. She could, perhaps, determine it was night due to the doors into the apprentices' rooms being closed...but that would require stepping out into the hall, and she didn't want to do that. There were a pair of Templars posted outside the door at all times, and she was aware they had orders to kill her should she try to leave. Even just looking around to check the time of day was far more of a risk than Sola was willing to take.

And she hadn't been allowed to leave, for however long she'd been here now, for any reason. Meals were brought to her — bread and broth and cider, plainer and rather less than the mages were normally given at mealtimes. She wasn't certain how often they came, but certainly no more than twice a day, and she suspected they weren't even at the same intervals, so she couldn't use them to estimate how much time was passing anyway. She wasn't even permitted out for the necessary, instead she'd been given a flat, wide-mouthed sort of chamber pot she recognised from the Tower hospital — she'd been poisoned with a botched potion on one occasion, had been held abed for nearly two weeks — or to the library to pick up a book or two, or to the baths.

Though the baths had been another irritation when Sola had first been brought here. Most buildings on this scale raised by the old Tevinters had open baths — the Tevinters had a tradition of social bathing going all the way back to before the fall of Arlathan, to this day there were large, complex, and sometimes quite ornate public bathhouses in every previously Tevene city (the original structure in Hightown was still used, though Sola had never been) — and Kinloch Hold was no different, a few of them spread through the structure top to bottom. The water was pumped up from the lake, filtered, and heated by a system of enchanted piping and reservoirs, which wasn't exceptional by the standards of Classical Tevinter architecture, but still quite an impressive project. The baths were well-maintained as well, the enchantments regularly touched up, each one cleaned daily by the Tranquil (or the occasional mage or Templar as a punishment).

The problems with the baths were two-fold. One, there were many mages in the Tower, and the same few baths had to accommodate them all. There was a schedule all the mages were rotated through — cohorts split by sex and assembled by age, with some deviation on the latter — but while one could request to be moved to a different cohort if one didn't get along with the others, getting into the baths more often than once every three or four days was pretty much impossible. Before coming to the Circle, Sola had been accustomed to bathing daily, and it hadn't been long before she'd started feeling quite disgusting. It didn't help that the robes the mages were given were of absorbent materials, and the laundry wasn't done frequently enough for her taste, it was vile.

Of course, most of her fellow mages had come from the commons, so the cleanliness of the Tower was a great improvement to them — many hadn't been amused by her complaints, she'd quickly learned to shut up about it. After a short time, she'd come into the habit of washing herself out of sink basins with bits of scrap cloth, every day before dinner, which most of her fellows found peculiar, but at least stopped her robes from reeking too badly, and attracted far less attention than complaining about not being allowed to bathe as often as she preferred. Her human fellows, anyway — her elven friends and acquaintances appreciated it, since apparently human body odour could be quite offensive to the elven nose if allowed to develop too long.

But she wasn't allowed out to do that at the moment either. She'd been brought a spare robe to change into, so she wouldn't be stuck in one torn and stained with her own blood, but she was worried that the thing would be absolutely vile by the time she was let out, however long that was going to be. (Wynne, checking up on her recovery and bringing the robe, had been her only visitor, and she hadn't known.) Sola had solved that problem by simply not wearing it most of the time. She still threw it on when she heard the door open, the next meal being brought in, or whenever she opened the door herself to set out the used chamber pot, but other than that, she saw no pressing reason why she shouldn't just sit around nude — it wasn't as though anybody else were around anyway.

Besides, what modesty she'd had in the beginning had been worn down by now anyway. That was the other problem with the baths here: they were completely open, with no privacy to speak of at any point in the process, and she was never there in a group of less than a dozen. Sola had been accustomed to bathing with her sister and their handmaids, her mother when she'd been very little — bathing with several strangers had been an entirely new experience, and one she had not liked. She'd gradually adjusted over the years, it didn't so much bother her anymore, but at first she'd found it terribly humiliating, made all the worse by some of the other girls finding her retiring behaviour offensive for some inexplicable reason. But while she still didn't like bathing with twelve other women, she'd been deadened to the embarrassment by now.

Though that process had probably been accelerated by a related issue. There was no privacy in the Tower, at all, and if she'd wanted to be intimate with anyone ever she'd needed to accept that — everybody in the Tower knew who was shagging who, since they were all heard at it by someone practically every time, and often even seen. It'd been humiliating at first, enough she'd put off having any sort of encounter with anyone significantly longer than most of the other mages, but after powering through it a couple times it hardly even registered anymore.

Mostly — she could have done without Dora teasing her immediately after her first time with a man, that girl, sometimes...

(Was Dora even still alive? Sola had lost track of her in the fighting...)

Stuck in this little pair of rooms, Sola was mostly just bored. There was vanishingly little to do — the owner hadn't kept many books around, and what few she had Sola had either read before or didn't find interesting enough to hold her attention. There was a deck of cards, Sola had spent she didn't know how many hours idly lying on the floor in the bedroom playing solitaire, just whiling away the time until something happened. She'd quickly lost hold on her sleep schedule, kipping for a short time whenever she was tired of consciousness for the moment. She'd pleasured herself more often than she ever had in her entire life, simply out of boredom — and partially to soil the bedsheets in anticipation of the owner's eventual return (turnabout being fair play). And so the hours passed in a featureless smear, one into the next into the next, Sola drifting, unmoored.

In that funny way time in the Tower could have, it felt both as though weeks must have passed, while at the same time as though it'd been none at all. But it had to be a few days, at least. And she was starting to wonder if the Wardens hadn't changed their minds about recruiting her. Or, her mind — according to Alim, all the senior Wardens had been killed at Ostagar, leaving those who remained under the command of a freshly-promoted lieutenant by the name of Lýna. If there had been a change of plans, it would have been this Lýna's decision.

On the way down here, Alim had assured her he didn't believe that likely. Lýna hadn't been there at the end — apparently she'd had a nasty turn with a sloth demon a couple floors down and hadn't been up to continuing on, which was understandable. But Alim had been certain Lýna would want to take her. She was Dalish — which was peculiar, Sola had been given the impression there weren't any Dalish in Ferelden any longer, they'd fled during the Orlesian occupation — and according to Alim she hadn't any respect for Chantry law concerning magic. It would make no difference to her that Sola was a maleficar.

Sola had sort of forgotten about that herself, to be honest. In that wild moment of panic, Sola had reverted to her old Rivaini-taught instincts — their traditions had a somewhat different perspective on blood magic. Sacrificial blood magic was either deprecated or proscribed, depending on the particulars, that was so, but that wasn't what she'd done. To the Rivaini, a person had two spirits — their soul, their mind, the aspect of them that walked the Fade in dreams (their anima, in Tevene), and also the animating spirit of their physical body (overlapping with the animus, but a somewhat broader concept) — which could both act and be acted upon independently. Sola had linked her magic with her blood, an old Tevinter trick fundamental to all proper blood magic, then reached through that connection to the magic of her body and cast with that, forcing a curse into the magic of their bodies — altering the character of it to something fundamentally hostile to a living body's ordinary function, essentially tricking their own magic into burning themselves up from the inside.

That wasn't blood magic as the Circle understood it, and she was all but certain it technically wasn't covered by their prohibitions — and Sola would know, since she had studied blood magic in secret (with Uldred's guidance). She doubted the Templars realised that...but she also doubted they would care if they did. They likely thought what she'd done had been unnatural and disturbing enough that she should be executed, whether or not what she'd done was truly proscribed.

After all, Templars were hardly rational creatures.

They were going to kill her. If this Lýna had changed her mind, and Sola didn't leave with them, she was going to die.

In a way, that would almost just be appropriate, wouldn't it? After all, her friends were all dead. Or they possibly were, she'd lost track of a few in the fighting — Dora, she didn't know what had happened to Dora, she tried not to think about that. She tried not to think about any of it, really.

Most anyone in the Circle she had much of a relationship with at all had joined them. There were a couple exceptions, but not many, and all the people she was closest with... It was pretty much just Alim left, the precocious little shite. Unless Dora had lived, Sola didn't actually know. And Finn, she didn't think Finn had been in it at all — he might have gotten killed in the fighting, she guessed, but he hadn't joined them, so if he had survived the Templars shouldn't have any reason to execute him.

But then, Templars were hardly rational creatures, were they?

Sola had been awake again for...a while, she didn't know. Her last meal had come hours ago, she'd taken a nap since then, and she had absolutely no idea how much time had passed. She'd played solitaire for a while again, but she hadn't even finished the game, laid across the floor, staring up at the ceiling, unmoving. She hadn't really done much of anything for what had to be a few days now but, paradoxically, she could hardly summon the energy to move. Not that there was anything to do even if she wanted to, but. She just lay here, dark thoughts bumbling back and forth in her head to no end, the chasm in her chest splitting deeper and deeper by the minute, strangling her breath.

Thinking about things wouldn't do any good. Either her friends were all dead, or they weren't; either the Templars would kill her, or they wouldn't. Lingering over the possibilities would not change anything, and was clearly just making her miserable. She needed to find something to do to distract herself.

She wasn't even certain she could work up the energy to masturbate again — it just seemed like too much effort at the moment...

After some time lying there, mind drifting aimlessly — she really had no idea how long, because time had no meaning in here — there was a sudden crash, the door out into the hall slamming open. Sola nearly leapt out of her skin, scrambled over to her discarded robe and started pulling it over her head. She'd just barely gotten herself covered, hadn't even had the opportunity to tie the sash yet, when Templars burst into the bedroom — three of them, a pair in the lead, a third with sword drawn coming up behind them.

Cold terror started crawling up her spine, just for a second, before she forcefully pushed it back down again.

An instant later, a disruption field crashed over her head. (That was pointless, she was still wearing these damn cuffs.) Her head spinning and her skin itching, Sola grit her teeth, barely managing to restrain the urge to cringe. Forcing her spine straight and her shoulders back, she opened her mouth to ask the Templars what was going on.

She didn't get that far — her breath caught in her throat when the pair didn't stop at a conversational distance, instead moving to reach for her. Her heart jumping into her throat, Sola reached for the magic to hold them back — not by a conscious decision, an instinctive reaction to gauntleted hands coming down on her — but of course it dissipated instantly. The Templars must have felt even that small flutter of magic, tensing a moment before snapping out to grab her.

The one on her left reached her first, grabbing her by the arm — hard, the grip bruising — wrenching her forward. A pained gasp was torn out of her throat, her right hand automatically jumping to the flare of warm, dull pain sprouting in her abdomen — she was mostly healed, but the tissues were still sensitive. The second Templar yanked away her right arm, and after a second of shuffling they were standing behind her and just to her sides, each restraining one of her arms, held at the wrist and just under her shoulder.

She forced herself to keep breathing, as slow and calm as she could — which wasn't at all easy to do, her blood singing with instinctive terror and her head tingling with nerves. Before she could quite find her voice (or more to the point, be certain her fear wouldn't be revealed on it), she was already being marched through the door, stumbling a little with the unexpected movement. It hardly mattered, the Templars holding her so firmly she was borne forward anyway, her feet carrying hardly any of her own weight. "Where are you taking me?"

"Silence, maleficar," snapped the one behind her — the one following them with blade to hand, ready to cut her down should she show the slightest sign of resistance.

As they forcefully marched her down the hall, Sola took a slow, deep breath, valiantly struggling against the terror crawling along her spine. She didn't like this. It'd been days, the Lieutenant had never shown up to talk to her, and now they were— No, she didn't like this.

She was brought down the stairs to the lower apprentices' level — having been brought to the Circle late, she'd never actually lived down here — curious eyes peeking through doorways as she passed, indistinct, childish whispers following them. Quickly, before she hardly realised it, they were at the stairs down, out of the Tower.

Sola had been through these doors only once before — when she'd first been brought to the Tower, nearly a decade ago now. Despite her unease with how this was happening, she still felt her heart rate pick up, an eager thrill shooting through her head to toe, her lips twitching with a shadow of a smile.

And then they stepped into the isolation field, and all of that was crushed immediately. Sola hated isolation fields. It was like a limb being suddenly cut off — or, more accurately, like suddenly being made blind and deaf, a sense of the world around her she wasn't consciously aware of severed, her surroundings made surreal and stark and dead. And cold, she always felt terribly cold, the chill seeping into her not from without but within, progressive numbness sapping her strength. By the time they got to the bottom of the stairs she was entirely incapable of holding her own weight, her bare feet dragging against the floor as she was carried through the heavy enchanted doors.

Some steps into the hall beyond — it'd been years since she'd seen it, she knew it was the same one she'd passed through the first time but she didn't recognise it at all — they finally passed the edge of the isolation field, and the world came rushing back. She gasped as sudden warmth flooded into her, achingly at first, like winter-kissed skin before a fire. It left her shivering, a little, but she still forced her legs to move, taking up her own weight again, if only so the unforgiving grip on her arms could loosen a little.

Not for the first time, Sola reflected how lucky they were Templars couldn't just cast isolation fields — disruptions could be overwhelmed with cooperate casting or the use of lyrium, or simply ignored to cut the Templar down with enchanted weaponry, but an isolation would render Sola and many other mages practically helpless in an instant.

Her silent escorts brought her down another set of stairs, the space wider and the steps shallower than the ones in the Tower, turning down the hall. Soon they were stepping into the Grand Gallery, the large open room at the centre of the garrison forming the floor of the structure, directly underneath the Tower stretching up far overhead. Sola had been through this place once before, and it was largely as she remembered it — a space suggesting at a grand, elaborate past, but stripped down for a more utilitarian purpose, the space beyond the columns along the rim now even used for storage.

They weren't alone in here. Standing in the middle of the floor were a small collection of people. Irving, Greagoir, a few Templars mostly wearing the sash of a Knight-Captain, the Knight-Enchanter (a term Sola felt should be held synonymous with traitorous, boot-licking coward), Mother Léonie. Standing somewhat behind and apart from the group was Seeker Esmond, steadily watching her like all the others. Eyes all hard and unforgiving, in a few cases simmering in obvious hatred.

The fear that had been shocked out of her passage through the isolation field began rising again, her skin prickling and her breath quickening. This couldn't be a disciplinary tribunal — that would be held in the Tower, and there would be more Enchanters involved. No, this was a sentencing tribunal.

Her heart echoing almost deafeningly in her ears, her chest clenching, Sola's mind was wiped blank of all but a single thought ringing painfully in her skull: I'm going to die.

A handful of metres away from the line of Templar officers, the ones dragging her forward — Sola had frozen at the realisation of what was about to happen, they were practically carrying her again — stopped, then shoved her down to her knees, hard. Agony radiated up from where her knees had hit the stone floor, a gasp of pain was wrung out of her throat, but Sola had gone so breathless the sound was thin and weak, she barely heard it herself.

Nor did she hear most of what was being said. The words drifted over her, like waves over the shore, submerging her but not properly penetrating. Through the fugue that had overtaken her, a few little snippets slipped their way in now and again, largely disjointed, meaningless out of context. But it hardly mattered, she knew already what would be being said. That she'd rebelled against the authority of the Chantry, by that action making of herself an apostate, that she'd performed blood magic to lethal effect, meaning she was also a maleficar. Both had been directly witnessed by multiple Templars, so they wouldn't be brought forward as claims to be debated, but facts to be taken into account.

The faint, distracted thought flittered through her head that maybe she should speak in her own defence, to point out that that hadn't been blood magic, truthfully. But she doubted it would make any difference. The Templars' understanding of what they'd seen likely couldn't be shifted, and the apostate bit was true anyway — even should the accusation of maleficares be rejected, she'd be executed for apostasy anyway.

And they wouldn't listen to her even if she did. She knew she wasn't permitted to speak in her own defence. At a disciplinary tribunal, yes, but not at a sentencing — the naked blade hovering in wait off the right side of her neck reinforced that idea quite plainly. And maleficae, those who'd been witnessed committing proscribed acts, didn't get a disciplinary tribunal at all, they weren't given the opportunity to defend themselves. She wasn't a participant in this process, but the object of it. She would be given the opportunity to beg for mercy at the end, but that was it.

The words washing over her, her breath rasping noisily in her lungs, her heart pounding in her head, it was quickly decided — couldn't be more than a few minutes, but she wasn't paying much attention — that she was to be put to death. And that was that.

Mother Léonie stood before her, Sola blinked up at her. She hadn't been listening, too numb to interpret the words, but she knew, if the appropriate process were being followed, that she'd just been offered intercession. But Sola just stared up at the woman, blankly, without words either verbal or even internal.

Her family had never been particularly religious — obviously, her parents had had no difficulty inviting a heathen witch into their home to illicitly teach their children magic — but what little faith in the Maker she might once have had had died the day she saw a consecrated defender of the Chantry cut down her father in front of her.

The Mother muttered something, Sola didn't hear what. And then she was yanked up to her feet, the hands on her already bruised arms painful, and she was hauled off again. Turning into a hall, on the other end of the long, meticulously cleaned and polished passage tall double doors, hanging open, letting sunlight and the faintest hint of a breeze pour into the building — the main entrance, letting out onto the island Kinloch Hold stood on.

They were going to do it outside. After all, there was no use in making a mess in the Gallery — they'd just gotten the place cleaned up.

Sola was struck with the mad impulse to break out into giggles, bit down on her tongue to hold the outburst in. She felt strangely giddy, her head swimming, the colours in the corridor pulsing vibrant, her breath harsh in her throat and chest, each beat of her heart setting her skin to tingling. Nothing entirely made sense, what she was seeing or feeling or thinking, all of it smashed to scattered bits by the weight of what was about to happen, and it all seemed hyper-real, the hallway sharp and bright around her, her clothes scratching against her skin — she abruptly realised she wasn't wearing shorts, improperly dressed to her own execution, her mother would be so embarrassed... — the tendrils of wind let through the door tugging at her hair, yet at once all too distant, smearing by her in a blur, blink and she missed half the walk down the hall, the Templars holding her like statutes of metal without any impression of personhood, her own body and mind numb and clumsy and...

She shivered, her legs too stiff and shaking to carry her weight, and there was nothing she could do. It was over.

She wondered if it hurt. It must, they said a person often remained conscious for a couple seconds after being beheaded, it seemed unreasonable to expect it wouldn't hurt. And that was assuming it was done cleanly, if it took multiple strokes...

Horror prickling across her skin, painful yet also almost ticklish, Sola had to bite down on a giggle again — she never thought she'd hope for competence from a Templar...

Stepping into the sunlight, Sola's eyes watered at the assault, ducking her head against it. It was warm. The windows filtered out a lot of the heat, and that was assuming you could find anywhere sunlight would be cast into a room like this — Sola hadn't felt the sun on her skin in a decade. Something thick and hot churning in her chest, she struggled to breathe, half-strangled by the wild, contradictory feelings constricting her throat.

She was happy to be outside, finally, after so long.

She was about to die.

They hadn't been outside for long — the sun wonderfully warm against her face, the cool, wet spring winds dancing in her hair and fluttering her robe — when they suddenly halted. Had she missed so much time somehow? She couldn't imagine they'd be executing her right outside the door, they'd take her further away first, right? Blinking her eyes open again, everything smeared and washed out by the intensity of the sunlight, Sola picked out a few figures in front of them, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

She only recognised one of them: Alim, his vibrant red hair burning in the sun, the scales on the armour the Wardens had given him gleaming painfully bright. There were two other men, humans, armed and armoured, tall and thick and broad-shouldered — one stood next to Alim, practically dwarfing him, wearing heavy plate well-made but unornamented (too plain to be nobility or a landed knight, but too fine to be a common soldier); the second man, standing a bit to the side as though not part of their group, was even taller than the first, with bright Alamarri orange hair, his armour noticeably more colourful and carefully-crafted (this one could be a landed knight or the like). Standing in front of Alim and the first man, the pair looming behind her shoulders, was a tiny elf girl — it could be hard to tell sometimes, but Sola thought she might be a little younger tha—

Sola twitched in the Templars' grasp. The girl had tattoos on her face. Twisting, wandering vines, sketched across her forehead and cheeks, framing her eyes, brown-black stalks and green leaves, little red blossoms here and there. Far more elaborate than people associated with certain criminal elements back home, Sola had never seen anything of the like before, but she'd seen drawings. This girl was Dalish.

The man standing behind her, next to Alim, etched into his breastplate was a large image of a gryphon rampant.

...Oh.

They were Wardens.

Oh, good...

Her eyes were dragged back to the elf as she spoke. (This was the Lieutenant Alim had mentioned, had to be.) She had one of those soft, smooth, lilting voices a lot of elves had, but somewhat slow and over-precise, in the way of a person less than entirely comfortable in Alamarri — which did make sense, she almost certainly hadn't grown up speaking their language. Definitely had an accent, sounded vaguely Rivaini to Sola, or maybe Tevene. "I, Lýna Maharjeᶅ, invoke the Right of Conscription on behalf of the Brotherhood of the Grey Watch in the Kingdom of Ferelden."

Sola felt her eyebrows twitch. That was strangely formal language — nobody ever called the Wardens that, she only knew it was the organisation's proper name from books.

"I must warn you, Lieutenant—" She jumped again at the sudden appearance of the familiar voice from her right — she hadn't realised the Seeker had left the Tower with them. "—this woman was witnessed in the act of capital crimes in the eyes of the Crown and the Chantry. For these crimes, she has been sentenced to death. I cannot guarantee the safety of you and your people should you invite her into your Brotherhood."

"I have heard your concerns, Seeker. Release her into my custody now."

"As you wish. Templars, release the prisoner." Abruptly, the disruption the Templars had been holding lifted away, and a second later the hands gripping her arms were gone. Her legs taking her whole weight again, Sola staggered a little, her knees unreasonably weak and unsteady, before she could fall Esmond was there, grabbing her right arm. It wasn't to steady her though, he roughly gripped the magic-restraining cuff around her wrist, after a bit of fiddling slipped the key into its hole — with a twist, a clacking of metal against metal, the cuff levered open, was lifted away. Sola raised her left hand to a convenient height before he could reach for it, he wrenched the cuff around, and a few seconds later it was gone.

Letting out a long, shaky breath, she rubbed at her wrist with her fingers, grimacing at the little throbs of dull pain. She'd been wearing those things for a few days at least, her skin raw and underlying tissues bruised, she should try to heal these when she had a moment...

Esmond turned back to the Wardens, one hand gripping Sola's shoulder. "I have no choice but to honour your request in this matter, but I have one of my own, Lieutenant: Solana Amell will never return to this island."

For just a second, the little elf hesitated, deep blue eyes blinking once. "The Solana Amell you know will never return to this island."

The Seeker's hand tightened on her shoulder slightly — she was certain he'd noticed the little rhetorical evasion Lýna had just pulled — but then he let out a short sigh, pushed her forward a couple steps before letting go.

As out of sorts as she was, still numb and shaky, that odd giddiness soaring again as it sank in that she wasn't going to die, even that small push was enough to send her skidding, she nearly ran right into the tiny Warden. Staring down at her, Sola froze for a second. Wardens were typically accorded the dignity of knights of a foreign (but friendly) kingdom, the officers landed knights...but the Warden-Commander was addressed as a lord of a foreign (but friendly) kingdom — before a marquess but after a duke (or teyrn) in precedence — and while Lýna wasn't technically Warden-Commander she was apparently acting in the capacity of one. Marchioness, would do. (Slightly peculiar, given this was an elf she was talking about, but such peculiarities happened with Wardens.) The heads of the noble families of Kirkwall were comtes, meaning she was—

Oh wait, no — Sola had been severed from the family when she'd been taken into the Circle, and the Amells had since been dispossessed as well. A curtsey it was, then. One foot automatically slipping back where it belonged — reminding her the Templars hadn't given her time to put shoes on, she was still barefoot — Sola pulled out the fabric of her robes a little, gave an approximation of the appropriate graceful dip. (Mother would have been less than satisfied, but she was out of practice, and also Chantry robes weren't designed for the wearer to curtsey easily.) Trying not to be self-conscious over her rusty etiquette, she said, "Lieutenant. My name is Solana Amell. Thank you." She cut herself off there, quite nearly physically biting her tongue, to stop herself from saying anything possibly embarrassing.

(She owed this tiny little heathen elf her life.)

Lýna stared at her in silence, eyes asymmetrically narrowed and head tilted — somewhat raised and to her right, putting her face slightly in profile — which Sola took to be an elven expression of bemusement. It abruptly occurred to Sola that, being Dalish and all, it was very possible Lýna had never even seen someone curtsey before. After a moment, she seemingly shrugged her confusion off, nodded. "Yes. I'm happy you live."

Sola bit her cheek to hold in an hysterical giggle, and didn't entirely succeed, a few barely-audible flutters escaping from her shivering throat.

While she struggled with that, Lýna's eyes flicked over her shoulder — Sola heard the tromping and scraping of heavy armoured boots against stone, the Templars already returning to the Tower. Turning back to her, "You know Alim, yes. This is Alistair," she said, nodding at the man standing over her other shoulder. "He is senior of the Wardens now."

The man gave her a cheerful wave, metal clinking as he shifted, a friendly smile rather at odds with his martial dress. "Hello, there. Do my nerves a favour, Solana, and take it easy on the blood magic — we've already got more than enough crazy apostates in the team for my tastes."

"We have a Chasind witch working with us," Alim explained, smirking a little. "She likes to scare Alistair by pretending to be a much scarier heathen apostate than she really is."

"So you say, that woman is just unsettling."

"She's fucking with you, Alistair. She explicitly told me she's fucking with you."

"No need to sound so jealous, Alim — I'm sure she'd fuck with you too, if you asked nicely."

Alim scoffed, rolling his eyes, but didn't respond.

Leaving aside the suggestion that Alim might have picked up a Chasind Wilder lover at some point since he'd left the Tower, with an almost physical effort, Sola said, "Yes, well, you needn't worry about that. About the blood magic, I mean — I've never really used any before, and I have no intention of making a habit of it." Well, she'd done experiments before, in controlled settings under Uldred's supervision, but that didn't really count.

"Alim said he saw you kill two mages with blood magic," Alistair said, eyebrows furrowing in a suspicious frown.

"Alim being the expert on the subject, of course — that was an exploit I came up with based on Rivaini ideas, not blood magic."

The precocious little shite in question rolled his eyes. "Uh-huh, sure. You know, Lýna here doesn't give a damn if you're a blood mage, you don't have to do that."

"And perhaps I wouldn't, if that were actually blood magic, but it wasn't. Though the Chantry considers Rivaini arts equally anathema anyway, so I suppose it hardly matters."

Alim opened his mouth, perhaps to ask where the hell she'd learned Rivaini magic — she'd never told him about Rhianu, but then she'd told hardly anyone — but Lýna spoke before he got it out. "This is no difference. You can argue on it later." Alim let out another huff, but nodded. "And this is Fergus," Lýna said, nodding at the other man, "a friend."

The man took a couple steps closer to Sola, held out a hand. "Fergus Cousland."

Sola blinked — Cousland like the Couslands? Bryce and Eleanor, the Teyrn and his wife (before they were murdered recently), wasn't their eldest son named Fergus? That would make this man the Teyrn of Highever now, the liege lord of the lands they were standing on right now. Though that was slightly complicated. The island was technically held by the Chantry, and while the Teyrnir of Highever was served by the Waking Sea Diocese based in Amaranthine, the Circle was administered by the River Drakon Diocese based in Denerim. That meant, technically, that the island was an exclave of the Arling of Denerim, which meant the Teyrn of Highever, technically, had no direct authority over this island. The towns on the shore were part of the Teyrnir, though, so for all practical purposes the Couslands of Highever were still considered to be the worldly overlords here.

Which meant the duke of the lands Sola had been living in for near on a decade now had just casually walked over to her and offered his hand. Wild.

Cousland's hand was held perpendicular to the ground, so she reached out to clasp his arm — his grip was firm but gentler than she'd expected, probably conscious of the fact that she was only wearing robes — dipping a little just automatically, she hadn't even meant to. He was a duke, okay, she'd been very well-trained once. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Grace. Solana Amell."

He chuckled a little, probably not expecting the formality. Retreating a step to a more polite conversational distance, he asked, "Is that Amell like the Kirkwall Amells?"

Sola tried not to scowl — she supposed she should be grateful he hadn't asked about the Tevinter Amells (or Emalhi, or whatever they called themselves these days). "The same, Your Grace. I have four siblings in the Circle," assuming they were even still alive, "and so far as I am aware we are all that remains of the family."

"It is a shame what happened to your family, you have my sympathies." Thankfully, Fergus went on before she could decide how to respond to that, especially in light of recent events in Highever. "And please, you needn't bother with the formalities — it seems a little peculiar to me, insisting on proper address and curtseying and whatnot while in the circumstances we find ourselves in. I'll be sticking with the Wardens for some time, I think, and I wouldn't want my presence to make anyone overly uncomfortable."

That did make sense, she guessed. "Of course, Fergus." Ha, she'd just called a duke by his name, Mother would be so flustered...

Once that was settled, they started their way down the rocky, switchbacking path to the shore. The island itself was a craggy, randomly-twisted mess, but the path wasn't much better, stone beaten down into an only somewhat uneven surface, strewn with loose stones that had a nasty habit of sliding about underfoot. (Not an original feature, the Tevinters had built a grand stone bridge connecting the Tower to the mainland but it'd been destroyed in a battle during the War of the Crowns several centuries ago — mages had still participated in warfare in significant numbers back then.) Sola remembered she'd had a terrible time getting up the path the first time, slipping and skittering all over the place, but it was actually a lot easier to manage without shoes. She assumed bare skin had better traction than the soft cloth house shoes she'd worn then, and she could try to grip with her toes a little.

Some of the loose stones were kind of sharp, but that was easily solved with a protective spell over her feet. That should even prevent them from getting too dirty too, so.

Navigating the weaving slope down to the shore wasn't so treacherous she was in serious danger of hurting herself, but it was bad enough she kept her eyes firmly downward, keeping a close watch on the placement of her feet. Sunlight was still shining down on her, warm and soft and alive — soon her hair had grown noticeably warm to the touch compared to her skin, she'd forgotten it did that in the sun — almost dazzling, the reflections off of armour or a few flickers off the water when she glanced up burning spots into her vision. The air was cool, cooler than it ever got in the Tower, enough she was starting to feel a little chilled, though not quite uncomfortably so, and fragrant — the spicy tang of sprouting greenery, a tingling thickness of rain and lightning to come.

The scent of spring. She'd known spring had a smell, one of those things she knew she'd once been familiar with, but she hadn't been out for so long, she'd forgotten what it was actually like. For some reason, she couldn't put her finger on it, she felt her chest tightening, a storm of emotion welling up fit to burst, but she choked it all down (she could break down in private later, like a respectable young lady), kept moving on, one step after the other after the other.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt wind in her hair — when it wasn't a side-effect of one bit of magic or another, she meant, that didn't count. It was wonderful, she was so happy she could cry.

She wished Dora was here with her.

፠

Sola could count the number of times she'd been on a boat on the fingers of one hand.

Which might seem peculiar to the only partially-informed, given that Kirkwall was a major port city — trade coming west through the Waking Sea often unloaded at Kirkwall to avoid tariffs in Orlais and Nevarra, Orlesian and Nevarran merchants themselves hiring out vessels with hardened Marcher crews to brave the Straits of Alamar at the mouth of the Sea and the Felicisima Armada further north. (Most sailors-for-hire operating out of Kirkwall were essentially mercenaries, due to the ever-present danger of piracy.) Kirkwall had, in fact, been the first proper port city built on the Waking Sea, predating the original Tevinter development of Cumberland's dockyards by nearly a century. The ancient highway linking Kirkwall and Perivantium in Tevinter had been devastated during a rebellion in the Minanter Valley and then the First Blight, the Cumberland–Vyrantium route replacing it as the primary land artery connecting north and south, but Kirkwall's importance as a major port had never truly diminished over the tumultuous centuries.

But there was one major difference between Kirkwall and the other major port cities, like Cumberland or Amaranthine or Val Royeaux or Treviso or Quarinus or Asariel: Kirkwall's harbour was ugly. In most of these cities, there was a culture of the nobility and well-to-do owning a variety of pleasure craft, on which they would cast out into the shallows — sometimes just for fun, play-acting at being proper sailors, or to hold lavish private festivals out on the water. Despite the long-standing importance of Kirkwall's port, the volume of sea traffic coming in, the same marine culture didn't exist back home, because it was just so bloody ugly.

The same peculiarity of geography that made Kirkwall's port so defensible also made it unappealing for pleasure cruises — the harbour was recessed into the cliffs lining the northern shore of that part of the Waking Sea, a roughly circular pit burrowed into harsh stone, a single narrow band of water connecting the almost entirely enclosed inlet to the sea. Due to the high stone walls standing relatively near in all directions, the winds in the harbour were very weak — boats were almost always required to row through the Gate and around the harbour — and the view was lacklustre, nothing but cliffs and the city itself in all directions. There were a few eccentric individuals who would go out onto the water for one reason or another, but it was very rare.

Sola had been on a boat on precisely four occasions. (Eight, technically, given all but one had been round trips and the last had had two legs.) When she'd been young, she'd gone with Father, just the two of them — Mother had been pregnant with Colin at the time, and Vera had been too young, they hadn't been able to come with — to visit his relatives in Starkhaven; the distance was shorter overland, but taking a ship east and north to Wycome and then down the Minanter actually took less time. Her family and some of their cousins had all gone to one of the islands in the Planasene delta, just a short distance west of Kirkwall — it'd been on the occasion of a wedding, but they'd stayed there for a couple weeks total. After Sola had turned thirteen, she'd spent a winter with the Orlesian court at Halamshiral — such wasn't unusual for noble boys and girls in the south, and she suspected her parents had thought an advantageous marriage with a suitable Orlesian lord could have done much to reinforce the family's still fragile circumstances.

In fact, she suspected her parents had been in correspondence with the Marquess of Verchiel concerning a potential marriage with his eldest son until the Templars sniffing about had put a hold on everything else as they planned their escape. Sola had met him during her winter in Halamshiral — he was older than her (by five or six years, she thought, so not too much), and she recalled he'd seemed decent enough, so if it had developed to a point her parents asked her opinion she probably would have agreed. In another life, she might well be an Orlesian marchioness right now.

And, of course, the final occasion had been her removal from Kirkwall to Kinloch Hold. They'd crossed the Waking Sea on a caravel owned by the Chantry — intended primarily to ferry the Grand Cleric to the Convocation in Val Royeaux, Sola didn't know if it was ever used for anything else — in a day or two arriving in Strike-over-Dane in Ferelden; from there, they'd taken a flyboat up the River Dane to Lake Calenhad, and right up to the same docks Sola had finally just stepped off of.

Sola would say she had virtually no opinion about maritime travel in itself. She'd heard from people who loved being out on the water, and she'd also known people who found it absolutely miserable — her mother and her brother Arie were among the later — but she had no strong feelings about it either way. It was convenient, in that travel by sea was the quickest way to get to almost any city of note in all of Thedas...if risky in places, due to the persistent presence of pirates. But that was really it.

This was absolutely her favourite trip on a sailing vessel ever, though not for what were ordinary reasons by any means.

Their boat was ready to go by the time Sola and the others had gotten down there — they hadn't been certain how long it would take for the Templars to sentence her and for the Wardens to scoop her up before her execution, so everyone else had come down and gotten ready to leave in the meanwhile. There were the sailors, of course, who nobody bothered introducing Sola to — it was likely she'd never see them again anyway — along with Fergus's men-at-arms, a pair of men named Corin and Sedrick.

Wynne was also aboard. The Arl of Redcliffe — Eamon Guerrin, the recently-deceased King's maternal uncle — had been put under some kind of spell by an abomination, the Wardens' original intent in coming to the Circle had been to ask for their assistance in healing him. (And good thing they had, Sola would almost certainly have died otherwise.) Being the best healer in the Circle, Wynne was no doubt capable of handling it herself, and she also planned to accompany the Wardens from here on out.

Sola was less than pleased about that, to be honest — she'd never gotten on with Wynne very well, for what she admitted were at least in part very petty reasons. Part of it was that she didn't like Wynne's politics much — she was one of the leaders among the Aequitarians in the College, and while she was critical of the Circle system in some ways she was a hard-liner when it came to apostasy and the prohibitions against certain magics — but it didn't help that their first meeting had gone terribly. And Sola admitted that was...partially her fault: she'd still been in shock and mourning over the murder of her father and Rhianu and being separated from her mother and siblings, and she had not taken Wynne's attempt to comfort and include her, make her feel welcome in the Circle, at all well. She realised Wynne had had good intentions, but at the time Sola had found her overly-familiar, amital bearing incredibly grating — she'd lashed out at her rather harshly, and their relationship had never warmed in the years since.

Wynne had just saved her life a few days ago, with that intensive healing she'd done, so Sola was trying to be polite, at the least. No idea how well she was managing it.

And Lacie was here, Sola couldn't even pretend to be surprised by that. Sola didn't really know Lacie well. The only reason she was so familiar with Alim was because he was a precocious little shite — he'd been flirting with practically anything that moved (and also happened to be female) since he'd been maybe fourteen, and he'd managed to wiggle himself into the community of Libertarian-minded mages at the Circle long before undergoing the Harrowing. Sola had been aware of Lacie's existence for a few years now, but only through Alim, they hadn't interacted much.

She was aware Lacie rather disliked her, but she honestly had no idea why. At first, she'd assumed it was because Lacie didn't like that they were both shagging Alim, but she didn't seem to have the same issues with Alim's other lovers, and Lacie herself had some of her own too, so. (Monogamy was practically nonexistent in the Circle.) Perhaps she'd offended Lacie somehow back when she'd been an apprentice as well — their time as apprentices did overlap, though Sola was maybe five or six years older — in an incident Sola simply hadn't thought worth remembering. Whatever the source of her dislike was, Lacie seemed to be trying to be polite (like Sola with Wynne), if only to avoid making a scene with the Wardens and the others around, so Sola was just playing along for now.

Also, the Wardens apparently had a Sister with them, which was fucking weird. Even more fucking weird, she was equipped for battle — wearing heavy padded linen, carrying a bow and a sword. She realised a Sister being trained to fight wasn't actually that unusual, since the Templars were technically all consecrated Brothers and Sisters, but since she wasn't a Templar...it still seemed really weird. Leliana was Orlesian — a retired bard, Alim whispered in her ear, which, wow, okay then — and she seemed pleasant enough, with the same warm friendly softness as most Sisters Sola had ever met. (Or the good ones, anyway.) And that was actually slightly unnerving, when she thought about it, since Leliana was walking around openly bearing arms and was apparently a retired Orlesian bard.

Quite a band the Wardens had put together. And Sola had yet to meet the daughter of the Bann of Portsmouth (that was on the southern shore of the Firth of Drakon, she thought) turned Denerim city guard turned Warden, or the elven "blacksmith's assistant" Alim was pretty sure had actually been a professional thief, or the heathen Chasind witch who'd been ordered to assist the Wardens by her mother — a multi-centenarian abomination and possibly the actual historical Flemeth. Alongside all of them, Jowan, the escaped blood mage now falsely imprisoned under Redcliffe Castle for high crimes against the Arling, was practically a mundane recruit for the Wardens by comparison.

After all, people choosing to join the Wardens to avoid execution was so ordinary as to be cliché.

The trip across the lake was largely uneventful. It would only take roughly a full day for them to get all the way to Redcliffe — Sola had overheard one of the sailors telling Fergus and Lýna that the winds weren't cooperating with them for the moment, but it'd be better once an approaching storm passed them, so it might be a few hours longer than usual. Sola lingered up top — just to feel the sun on her face and the wind in her hair, a smile tugging at her lips and tears prickling in her eyes — until after the clouds had overtaken the sun, casting their surroundings into a moody half-light. To the north was a clump of swirling grey Sola knew was the storm itself, darker and thicker, a banded smear of rain stretching down beneath them visible in the distance, the dark mass flickering with lightning.

Sola recalled she used to like the rain. Kirkwall didn't get vicious, rampaging storms so often as other regions — the prevailing winds and currents tended to carry storms off the Amaranthine Ocean south, breaking against the Straits of Alamar and the Fereldan Storm Coast, and the rains rising from the Waking Sea fell the thickest to the west, in the Dales and the Orlesian Heartlands. And even when the harsher winds did reach Kirkwall, the cliffs surrounding the city protected them from the worst of it. But, along the northern shore of the Sea just as much as the south, lesser rains were an almost constant feature of the climate — the only season Kirkwall might go a whole week without rain was in the dead of winter, and in the wetter seasons light showers flittering through on the daily wasn't unusual.

It was these little rains that Sola had always loved. In summer or early autumn, still hot enough the drops hardly seemed to hold any noticeable chill at all, falling light and almost playful, the sun peeking through the clouds to cast bands of colourful light and wildly slanted shadows all around, washing away the stench of the city (which normally wasn't so bad in Hightown anyway), light and clean and refreshing. Sola remembered, when she'd been very small, running around the Lower Court — a large, elaborate courtyard in the classical Tevinter style, complete with grasses and flowers and trees, right at the base of the grand stairs up to the Keep, lined with the homes of the oldest of Kirkwall's noble families (including the Amells) — playing around in the rain with other children of the nobility or the occasional wealthy merchant, chasing each other and splashing in puddles.

Eventually, she'd gotten to an age when it hadn't been appropriate for her to do that sort of thing anymore — she might actually be seen by the sort of person who gave a damn about the eldest Amell girl displaying un-ladylike behaviour, after all. So instead she would just go out onto the balcony overlooking the Court, sometimes with her siblings, sometimes with Thanil chasing after her, (laughingly) insisting she get back inside before she ruined her hair. The balcony wasn't entirely private — it was high up enough it couldn't be seen from the Court and there were treillages along the edges, but there were enough gaps here and there to theoretically be seen from a window of one of the neighboring estates — but it was private enough that it wasn't nearly so scandalous for her to be up there in the rain. In fact, she was certain she'd been seen at least once, one of the neighbour boys had blushingly admitted to it (her housecoat had gotten clingy enough to be noticed from a distance, apparently), but no gossip had really come of it.

Struck by a sudden, intense pang of homesickness, Sola was tempted to stay out in the rain. But this wasn't to be one of those sweet, soft, warm kinds of rains. This was to be a spring tempest, merciless and violent. So, reluctantly, Sola went down with the others to wait out the rest of the trip below. Besides, it was still cool out, she probably would have given herself a fever...

The Wardens (and company) all took the evening meal with Fergus and his men, crammed into the captain's cabin — it was the only space with nearly enough room for them all, but even then it wasn't at all comfortable. The food was very plain, porridge augmented with little bits of vegetables (onions? carrots?), some spices someone had tracked down somewhere, but that was fine, after getting nothing but broth and stale bread for a few days Sola wasn't picky.

There was conversation going on around her, an eclectic, ever-shifting mix of gossip, things from this or that person's history, and serious matters concerning what the Wardens would be doing next — apparently, Fergus was considering accompanying them to Orzammar, though it would depend on how things went with the Arl — but Sola didn't participate much. She wasn't a very talkative person to begin with, not after the Circle, and she didn't know these people. Unless she was directly asked a question, she didn't really have anything to say. She'd somehow ended up wedged between Alim and the Sister — Alim made occasional snarky comments to amuse himself, elbowing her in the side now and then to make sure his audience was paying attention (honestly, little shite), and Leliana made an effort to include her now and again, so she wasn't completely silent.

In any case, she was glad when it was finally over.

Most of their group were making for bed not long after. Sola had been drifting in and out of sleep her entire time locked up, but she was weirdly tired for some inexplicable reason, so she might as well. This little boat wasn't really meant for long-distance travel or taking on many passengers, so there wasn't a whole lot of room, but they made it work. Fergus and his men-at-arms had taken over the captain's cabin, and the Wardens' company had been split in two, the women put in the spare cabin and the men in the crew bunks. (The sailors were all men, and a somewhat vulgar bunch, so they'd decided that was appropriate — Sola might ordinarily worry about an elf in close quarters with that kind of company, but Alim could more than defend himself.) There wasn't truly room enough for five people, only two small bunks that would be a tight squeeze for one person, let alone two.

After a short discussion on the subject, Sola volunteered to sleep on the floor, if only to avoid having to share one of the bunks with anyone. It'd be tolerable with enough quilts and furs, and she doubted she'd be sleeping very much tonight even in ideal accommodations. Neither Wynne nor the Sister seemed pleased, wheedling at her about it for a few minutes, but she wore them down eventually.

Taking her spare quilts and furs toward the back wall, Sola set up a makeshift bed for herself on the floor, close but not too close to the smouldering brazier in the middle — that hadn't been here before dinner, but it was rather nice, filling the room with dry heat and soft, moody red light. (It must be packed with dwarven coal, no fumes.) While she fiddled about with that, the other women undressed for bed. She noticed Lacie and Wynne were both wearing light gowns under their robes — good, Sola had no wish to see the old Enchanter in her underthings — and the Sister had stripped off her armour, revealing plain linen shirt and trousers.

Lýna was the odd one out. Her armour was strange and asymmetrical, clearly altered in stages — Sola suspected the base was leather (perhaps the same nearly skin-tight, head-to-toe suit Dalish warriors were said to wear), but various bits had been attached to it, scales and splints and little plates placed seemingly at random, the left side obviously different from the right. Sola suspected Lýna must have put it together herself, since she couldn't imagine even a Fereldan armoursmith would craft something so...haphazard. The cloak she wore was also rough, heavy linen — though perhaps not, the fibres didn't look quite right — trimmed with what looked like fennec fur, the stitching visible in a few places — it hadn't been fashioned from a single large bolt of cloth, but pieced together from several segments — dyed variegated brown and green — in the shadows and vegetation of a forest, it might actually work as half-decent camouflage, or at least distort her figure, making it harder to pick her out to shoot at.

The cloak had already been bundled away when they'd come belowdecks, rolled up with her things at the foot of the bed, but Lýna also couldn't sleep in the bed in her weird, lopsided armour. It looked like the whole thing was laced shut — the little knots running up the outsides of both legs were obvious, though the ties holding the top together were more subtle. And under the armour she was wearing...nothing. It looked like her things had been lined with some kind of cloth, so the leather didn't sit directly against her skin, so she didn't really need to wear anything under it. She was left in a pair of shorts (also laced together, along her hips), and that was it.

Sola watched Lýna and the Sister crawl into bed together, one eyebrow stretching up her forehead. Okay, then...

She didn't settle in immediately — staring into the burning coals, trying to clear her mind of any unpleasant preoccupations before trying to sleep — so she noticed something curious. While Wynne and Lacie were lying side by side with as much space separating them as they could manage, Lýna and Leliana hadn't bothered. They appeared to be snuggled up under the blanket, Lýna's head settled on Leliana's shoulder, scattered elf-white hair seeming to glow in the faint light from the brazier, Leliana's arm resting over her waist — Sola thought, they were covered, and it was hard to tell from this angle in this light. That was...weird.

Over the next seconds, Sola found the thought so distracting, she just had to know. She certainly wouldn't be able to sleep any time soon without getting some kind of answer. Her voice low, barely a whisper, "Lacie, if you're still awake I want to talk."

Silence lingered in the air for a moment, but then she heard a sigh of breath, the light shifting of cloth. Lacie slipped out of bed, a pale ghost in the darkness. As she neared, Sola lifted her left arm, opening the quilt wrapped around her, inviting Lacie to sit next to her against the wall — elves had much better hearing than humans, if she didn't want Lýna to overhear they'd have to be sitting right next to each other. It was hard to tell with her face half-hidden in shadows, but Sola thought she saw Lacie scowl. But whatever she was thinking, she stiffly sat next to Sola anyway, their hips pressed against the other's, Sola settling her arm over Lacie's shoulder, wrapping the quilt around them both.

"So friendly, Solana," Lacie hissed, barely an inch from Sola's ear, warm breath tickling at her neck. "Be careful, or you might give me the crazy idea you like me or something."

Sola rolled her eyes. She wondered whether Lacie had picked it up from Alim or if it were the other way around — that sounded exactly like something that could have come out of Alim's mouth, and almost certainly had, the flirty little shite. "You're hilarious," she breathed, the words mouthed more than spoken. She knew from whispering to elven friends that Lacie would understand that, but it hopefully wouldn't carry the few feet to Lýna. "I wondered, about the...sleeping arrangements."

"What about them?"

"Lýna and Leliana. They seem...very comfortable?"

"Was that what you wanted to ask me about?" Tone didn't carry on the barely-whisper Lacie was using, but Sola thought she still picked up a hint of exasperation.

"I just wondered. You've known them longer."

"By barely a couple days. Alim says they slept together the last couple nights, so I'm not surprised they're less awkward about it than me and Wynne."

Sola barely heard the second half of the sentence, her eyes opening wide. Wait, really?! She'd thought it was possible, but... Leliana was Orlesian, and a Chantry Sister, and the Lieutenant was Dalish!

She hadn't made a sound, but Lacie must have noticed her shock anyway. "No, not like that. I don't think? I meant literally — Lýna has been having nightmares, from one of the abominations in the Tower, she doesn't like sleeping alone. That's all."

"...Oh." Sola left it at that, staring through the dark room toward the pair. As incredible as it seemed for the two of them to be involved, she wasn't entirely certain she bought Lacie's innocent explanation. They just seemed to... Sola didn't know, that wasn't the feeling she got. It seemed like there should be something there.

Now she really hoped they were being quiet enough Lýna hadn't overheard.

But if there were anything going on between them, it was clear from Lacie's ignorance of it that at least they weren't being open about it. So Sola supposed that wasn't something worth talking about any further just now. "Is this going to be a problem? The two of us."

There was a very brief pause. "That depends on you, Your Grace."

...What the hell was that about? "My mother was a countess — it's properly my lady, not Your Grace." Sola had no idea whether the sarcasm was detectable speaking this lowly.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, my lady! I didn't mean to offend you."

Right, not detectable, then. "Using Your Grace is according higher status to me than I ever held. It's not offensive. Most nobility wouldn't correct you on that kind of mistake, but they would mock you for your ignorance behind your back once you've left."

"So you're trying to be helpful, that it?"

That wouldn't be an entirely incorrect interpretation, she supposed. "We're going to be meeting the Arl of Redcliffe later — an arl is addressed my lord, not Your Grace. I assume you don't want to embarrass yourself." Or, more to the point, embarrass Alim — nobody really give a shite about some random Circle mage, but the Wardens were attempting to form an alliance with this Arl — but Sola was tactful enough to not explicitly say that. When she wanted to be, anyway. She and Lacie would be in roughly the same place at the same time for the indefinite future, so they would have to get along, Sola saying that kind of thing wouldn't help matters.

There was a long pause, the only sound in the cabin the steady rasping of breath, the occasional crackle from the brazier, the low, hissing roar of water against the hull. Finally, "I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to that."

Sola didn't think Lacie was supposed to say anything, but she understood well enough that Lacie hadn't expected her to meet even that bare minimum threshold of conscientiousness. "What is your problem with me anyway?"

"I don't know, what's your problem with me?"

"I have no problem with you." Sola didn't know Lacie well enough to have much of an opinion either way, honestly. She was all but certain she'd heard Alim talk about Lacie more than she'd ever talked to Lacie herself.

Lacie let out a little huff — it was too quiet for Sola to pick up any tone on it, but she suspected Lacie didn't believe her, for whatever reason. "If that's all you wanted to talk about, I'm going back to bed."

Sola almost wanted to hold Lacie here so they could work out whatever their issue was right now, but if she insisted she doubted Lacie would cooperate anyway. "Alright," she breathed, lifting her arm from Lacie's shoulders, taking the quilt with her. "Good night, Lacie."

"Solana." Lacie lifted away, the slightly cooler air of the cabin rushing under the quilt in her place, and slipped silently through the shadows back to her bed.

Sola watched after her for a moment, then let out a sigh, lying down across her makeshift bed. She was in for an aggravating few weeks until Lacie got over whatever this was, she just knew it.

She would wonder why Alim had felt the need to bring Lacie along in the first place, but she couldn't honestly say she was surprised. Irritating little shites, both of them...

---

[duke (or teyrn)] — Right, let's talk about this shit quick. At least in the south, the Orlesian way of doing things is generally considered the standard, so titles in non-Orlesian governments will often be assigned an Orlesian equivalent.

Most countries in the south operate on variations of a feudal system. In Orlais, you have the emperor at the top, under him kings or princes (in the sense of a principality, like in Antiva or Starkhaven) — this specifically in times Orlais had overlordship over kingdoms or principalities — and then dukes ("grand" duke is just an honorific), then marquis (spelled "marquess" in the Marches), then counts, then viscounts, then barons, then freemen, and finally serfs.

The marquis are actually a little complicated. A "march" is literally a borderland. When the Orlesian Empire expanded, the new lands they took would be split up and each enfeoffed to a marquis — marquis are peculiar in that the rank doesn't exist at all in the oldest regions of central Orlais, but does in their conquered lands (in the modern day, particularly the Dales). This is also where the name "Free Marches" came from: Orlais conquered much of the region (on two separate occasions, actually), chopping it up into marquisates, but the natives eventually rebelled. The use of "Free Marches" was originally only an Orlesian thing, distinguishing the independent states from the marquisates still in the Empire, but it eventually came into common parlance.

Generally, in the Fereldan system, a teyrn is considered equivalent to a duke, an arl a count, and a bann a baron...but it's more complicated than that. See, in Orlais, a baron is always under a count (or viscount), and a count is always under a duke (or marquis), but in Ferelden it doesn't necessarily work that way — the Arl of Redcliffe, for example, has no teyrn above him, instead a direct vassal of the king, and the banns of the Bannorn have no arl or teyrn over them. For comparative purposes, an arl directly under the king is considered a marquis instead, and a bann a viscount. And this shit starts getting even more complicated when you bring in the ecclesiastical fiefs, or try to actually put together a full order of precedence, it's a huge fucking mess.

Right, that's quite enough of that nonsense...

Heathen — Solana uses this term in the sense of non-Andrastian, there isn't necessarily a value judgement attached to it. Due to her close relationship with her Rivaini Seer tutor, she's actually inclined to be more charitable to non-believers than many Andrastians.

[the Tevinter Amells (or Emalhi, or whatever they called themselves these days)] — Names in Tevinter can be slightly weird, because while Classical Tevene is still used in formal contexts, the old names often preserved as they would have been in that time, people will usually also have names in modern Tevene, that they use at home and in day-to-day life. The Classical form of the name would have been Amāliī (for the family overall, the name a single person would have is different). In late vulgar Tevene the ending was reduced, the vowel of the accented syllable rising, and then the final syllable was completely dropped, ending up with Amell. In Tevinter, it went through different sound changes, resulting in Emalhi (for the family, a boy is Emalhu and a girl Emalha). While in formal settings, like in the Magisterium or when doing official business (and the Tevinter Amells are still a Magisterial family), they're called Amalii, but when talking to friends or just random people on the street it's Emalhi, and commoners will almost never use Amalii.

Which is kind of weird, I know, headcanon Tevinter is weird. This kind of stuff will come up in more detail much later with Evie's Tevinter cousins.

Amital — I'm not sure this is real word, so note. The English term "avuncular" (uncle-like) is from Latin "avunculus", meaning a maternal uncle. There's a coordinate English word "materteral" (aunt-like) from "matertera", a maternal aunt. The problem is, in many cultures the relationships people had with their maternal aunts/uncles was very different than with their paternal aunts/uncles (which is why Latin and many other languages have separate words for them) — the particular character of Wynne's aesthetic reminds Solana more of the archetype of a paternal aunt. "Amita" is Latin for a paternal aunt, so boom, "amital". Don't know if it's an actual English word, but the distinction is important, so I'm running with it anyway.

(The final term in the set, a paternal uncle is "patruus", which is unfortunately awkward to make an adjective out of. Maybe "patrural"? Meh.)

---

Poor overwhelmed, confused Solana...

Oh my god, why am I such a wordy bitch? This and the next one were supposed to be one chapter, but it ballooned to 30k words, again, so I'm splitting it in half, again. It'll be posted tonight, once I'm done proofreading it.

So, I should do that...