Translations, bottom.

I am actually super sympathetic to Solas's need to bring down the Veil. The argument against, I think, goes like this: the elves of his time had their chance, and what did they do with it? Started wars and raised up leaders who were terrible, so terrible they were willing to end the world to get at each other. So he stopped them. The world became what it is, and it...functions. Mostly. So far, no one has gotten powerful enough to destroy it, which means the people of this time are doing a little better than the people of his time.

The counter to that is probably that the Veil is artificial and doesn't seem to sustain itself very well, the way something arising from nature likely would. There's also the question of spirits. If you accept they are people of a sort, cutting them off from the waking world and grinding them into demons nearly any time they try to get access to it is...horrific.

So yeah, I'm sympathetic. Now if only I could believe he had given all possibilities due consideration instead of rushing ahead with the first path that presented itself, as he seems to do all the time. (I can't. I can't believe that.)


The Letter, Day 3

This is a letter never meant to be sent or handed off to its intended recipient, yet still I attempt to maintain lies. Very well: I cannot know what you think of me, or whether those thoughts still trouble you, but I have no need to speculate to explain what I see in the Fade each night. This is the third time I have picked up a pen to write, in case we are keeping up the fiction that you may someday need to be able to follow my thoughts, but this time I did not make it to even a semblance of morning.

I still believe my friends have been to see you, and their behavior still gives me reason to believe that all is not well with you, and that at least some of it is my doing. But for the rest - the nightmares that haunt me - my own fears are enough, and more, to explain them.

I cannot know, arasha, what will happen when I bring down the Veil, just as I could not know what would happen when I first raised it. How much of your world will burn or be driven to madness? Will your people become my people, either all at once or by degrees? I believe the energy released will instantly kill some, though I cannot say how many, and likely me with them, as I will be at the site where the first great breach occurs.

If it does not, then the Evanuris will likely survive as well, and I will be forced to fight them with weapons that may well destroy or ensnare all combatants, myself included, for I haven't the time to make them both effective and safe for the one wielding them.

I already have plans in place to call you far away from both Val Royeaux and Skyhold before I begin to work my magics, for either location might be too near my chosen site, and I want to give you all the chance I can.

But what if the Veil comes down more smoothly than I imagine? What if my weapons take aim at their proper targets and spare me? What if the elves of this time are transfigured, and once again join the ranks of the People? What if I, against all odds, survive? Would it not be the crowning irony of my life if I finally manage to lay claim a victory almost untainted by bitterness, and find that in the interim I have burned all bridges with the only woman who has ever seen me clearly, and loved me in spite of it?

I do not think of this as I lay my plans. I cannot. To become distracted might mean overlooking something vital, either to my success or to mitigating the damage I wreak. But I don't have to think to fear, and the spirits of the Fade reflect those fears back to me when I sleep.

From our time together in the Fade and the Nightmare's manipulations, you can likely guess what my greatest fear is: to die alone, last of my kind, remembered only in fragments by the bitter descendants of those I so grievously wronged. When I first loved you, I told myself I could explain everything to you, and you would support my work of restoration. It was only after the temple of Mythal, the very evening I had wound up my courage to admit who and what I was, as I was looking down into your face - the face of someone with absolute faith that my love was just as selfless as her own - that I realized what I was about to do, what I was about to ask of you. The things I must do, the thing I must become - I would be asking you to choose between me and yourself, and if you insisted on choosing me, it would break you.

After all, my restoration is likely to end your life. What kind of association could we have, with that knowledge hanging over both of us - that I would sacrifice your life for my people and to avert my own worst fears?

What other options do I have? To abandon my plans and make a life with you - it would break me, eventually. And - though I wish bitterly I could be the man who sacrifices his own self-interest for you, I cannot do it at the expense of the natural order of things. Think of the suffering caused by my actions - the people, the spirits driven to madness and lost forever. How many wars have been caused by imperfections in the Veil allowing just enough of the Fade through to throw fuel on coals already smoldering? One, at least - the war between the templars and mages started in Kirkwall, where the Veil has nearly ceased to exist. Everything that happened there must be laid at my feet.

And yet - your mere existence comes near to balancing the scales weighing my regrets. Did you need this world to be what it is before you could become what you are? I think it might be so, for I have never met anyone like you. You are nearly enough to justify millennia injustice.

Nearly. You are mortal, my love. One day, even if I do not act, you will die. Then what justification will I have for having allowed the Veil to endure?

I wish

You know what I wish. Ir abelas, vhenan. A hundred, a thousand times, for all the ways I have wronged you, your people, and your world. Never doubt that I feel every one of them.

Now I truly can have no more to say, at least not without endless rep


Elven translations, in order of appearance:

Arasha: My joy

Evanuris: (I guess it's technically Elven?) The collective name for the elven gods.

Ir abelas: I'm sorry

Vhenan: My heart/my home