Tel'enfenim, da'len

Irassal ma ghilas

Ma garas mir renan

Ara ma'athlan vhenas

Never fear, little one,

Wherever you shall go.

Follow my voice-

I will call you home.

Dalish Lullaby – Third Verse

It lasted.

It lasted a long time before there was no more sound, and before Dorian dared lower his own focus – it had, perhaps no longer been needed for the past hour, not since Solas had collapsed to both knees, and not since the silence was broken by no more than pained gasps.

The Magister lowered his arm, and let the eye of the long forgotten dragon God rest between his fingers. It weighed nothing, and nothing cataclysmic happened when he let it drop and it rolled to the side, somewhere, clinking on arcane bevels and grooves.

The unnatural upwards rainfall of Solas' blood towards the maghrallen had not slowed, yet the arch of magical power that linked him, Veldrin, and Radonis' focus orb had fully waned. It had shrunk to a trickle, a small stream running along a one mighty riverbed desiccated by millennia of draughts…and then, even that stream had dried to illusive, disparate flecks, before seeping into nothingness. Only the blood kept flowing, and though he had kept focus, Dorian well understood that no human or Elvhen body could possibly hold as much blood as Veldrin had drawn from Solas; horses, bears and giants could not possibly have held so much blood, yet…while there still was blood, there was no more power.

It was done.

He swallowed dry, and walked away from the hushed whispers of the others. He spared Solas a glance, and saw the truth of his mortality, for, despite the fact that his body in itself might have held an extraordinary make-up, despite the fact that his armour must have held magic of its own, he was dying, this man…this man who'd created the veil, the last living God, and he would die for no other reason other than plain and simple loss of blood; that too would last, however – it would last longer than Dorian felt he could watch.

'Vel,' Dorian said, reaching for his wife's right arm and not being afraid to touch it; the demon turned its red eyes on him, but he was not afraid of that, either. 'Veldrin.' Dorian repeated, grasping her wrist with more strength than his rational mind, the part of him that still somehow recalled she was a quarter of his size and that he could grasp her wrist between his thumb and middle finger, remembered necessary.

She turned her glance to him, her golden, red-rimmed pupils letting him know that Imshael was falling out of full control. Her features were remarkably void, though tears were streaming down her cheeks and knotting under her chin; all Dorian's anger, awe and tension melted, and his grip on her wrist loosened. Instead, he placed his arm around her shoulder, and gently turned her towards him.

'It's over,' she whispered. Dorian bit his lower lip and nodded.

'So end it,' he whispered in return. 'Let it end, Amata.'

'I wish I could,' Veldrin said, slipping her fingers amid his; Radonis' orb remained suspended in mid-air, shy blue flames replacing the previous crimson ones and licking at its surface. The elven woman looked its way, and it gracefully floated to the side, casting all others as dancing, frail shadows upon the dark canvass of the tower's wall.

'Is it not letting you…' the Magister softly began – the red ring around her pupils grew, for a mere second. Veldrin closed her eyes and gritted her teeth; when she reopened them, the red was little more than a thread's width.

'It is that too,' Veldrin said, pointedly looking away from Solas. 'They…it…don't…want him dead.'

They, they…who are they, Dorian thought to ask; her grip on his hand became painful enough to rend the question from his mind.

'Let Sera do it, then,' the man said. 'Let the Bull…'

Veldrin softly shook her head. 'It's not that, Amatus – it's the armour. He should be dead thrice now, and there is nothing left of him but his life, but the armour is not letting him…die. I will defeat it eventually, Dorian, but not…not in time.'

Veldrin briefly squeezed his fingers, before gently pushing his arm off her shoulders – she turned away from all of her companions, and towards her defeated prisoner. She was not staggering, but her steps were small, and Dorian wondered whether he should have followed, but swiftly dismissed the notion.

Perhaps, he thought, instinctively reaching his arm out to stop the Bull from advancing, the only thing that was more intimate than love was death, and Vel…

'She deserves at least this,' he said, not looking over his shoulder at Bull. 'They both do.'

'Hmph,' the Iron Bull said, not taking his hand off his axe's hilt. 'Do we even know if it's Veldrin…'

He did not have time to finish the phrase – a small, blue barrier surrounded the bloodthirsty maghrallen, cutting it off from its prisoner. The blood that still linked it to Solas to it hung eerily in mid air for a second longer, then slowly began drifting backwards inside his body, as Veldrin slowly kneeled by his side.

'Yes,' Dorian said, softly. 'We know it's her.'

And so does he, the Magister thought, watching Solas painstakingly straighten to one knee and weakly reach for Veldrin's face.

'Ar abelas,' she whispered, reaching for his pale cheek in turn.

He smiled though the pain. 'You should be, vhenan,' he whispered. 'You defeated me…before changing my mind.'

'I was arrogant to ever imagine I could.' Vel said.

'I'd never fault a dreamer for a dream,' Solas gently replied.

His hand drifted from her cheek, over the crook of her neck, then lower, to her shoulder, then lower still over her upper arm and to her elbow. Their fingers finally entwined, he decisively guided both their hands behind her back, towards her herb knife – a small, rounded, deceivingly innocent blade…one with a rounded tip…

'Not your throat,' Veldrin whispered. 'I can't…'

'Not my throat,' he eerily agreed. 'My heart,' Solas said, once more in control of both of their hands; even as they kneeled facing each other, even though he had no magic left, with his mere presence, with his gaze alone, he was the one who towered over her and the entire scene from very far above.

Still in control. Still in possession of Veldrin.

She weakly tried to shake away his grasp, but he gripped her fingers with both hands; her hands were weak, thus the inevitable drift of the blade towards the centre of his chest was merely slowed, not stopped, invisible sprockets of a merciless mechanism slowly, finally, falling in place.

'The armour,' Veldrin whimpered; Solas nodded, and pressed both of their hands atop the gilded, Fade forged metal; the overlapping plates drew aside, pushing the wolf pelt off his shoulder and to the cold floor. They folded back even further, then, sliding past each other, and weaving themselves together, until the entire enchanted chest piece was no more than a shoulder guard, perched eerily upon the shoulder where the wolf pelt had been draped, mere seconds before.

'Here,' he said, when the only thing separating the rounded edge of her knife from his skin was his medallion, and the linen shirt beneath it. 'My heart is here,' he whispered. 'Take it; it was only ever yours.' Solas said, and, with his hands still around hers, Vel pressed the knife in – to Dorian's eye, it still felt as if though Solas was the one who made the choices, the one who had the power. As if, although she was the one holding the knife and willing it to its target, Solas was still the one claiming the kill.

Then, something snapped – a crack of energy, a whiff of…something, something he could not place passed over him and through him; at his side, the Bull drifted forth an inch, in sign that he had felt it too, and feared the same thing that Dorian himself did: that this was some form of final trick on Solas' behalf, that he would somehow rise and turn the knife, and that he'd be too slow to stop it, because he'd stubbornly and foolishly believed that Solas had truly loved Vel…He tried to focus, but his mind was void – his magic would not come, his body would not move; all he could do was look towards the two elves and…

Fear was replaced by overwhelming shock, for he'd expected to see some glint in Solas' dull eyes, some form of triumph on his features, but he saw nothing of the sort; the expressions on both elves' faces perfectly mirrored each other's, and his own. There was no triumph.

It was pure, unadulterated terror.

'Don't let them have me, vhenan,' Solas urgently breathed – she pressed and pressed and the knife, yet it seemed as if she could not shatter the flimsy barrier of the dead bone medallion…

'No, no, no, no…' Veldrin screamed, and Dorian closed his eyes, and chose to imagine that the tremendous noise that suddenly overpowered her scream was his imagination of the blunt tip of Vel's herb knife – the knife Dorian thought he remembered she sometimes used to butter her toast, this, the least of all weapons they held...

He imagined that the roaring thunder he was now hearing was that little, overused and underrated knife breaking through the wolf jaw that Solas wore about his neck, then through the linen of his shirt, then through the elvhen male's skin, then, through his sternum…

He imagined that the sudden hurricane of debris showering him from above, and below and from all sides was merely the protesting scream of a world that had finally lost its last wonder.

It was not.

The Bull pointlessly tugged at him for what seemed an eternity, and it was an eternity before he realised that the flying pieces of rock were not in his imagination – that they were very real, that though they were still sixty feet down a shaft, the domed ceiling above them had been simply torn off, and that the rocks were falling as well as flying upwards because the batting of a gigantic dragon's wings, as it hovered above, created a massive updraft.

Of course, we are down in a tube, so the dragon's flight is sucking out all the air and creating a vacuum, Dorian thought. Of course.

It was simplistic and rather stupid, but it was a mere question of physics – apples fell down, the seas followed the moons, sustaining flight required an updraft.

The only thing that did defy the implacable laws of physics was the fact that Vel was frozen, and her little knife was barely scratching at Solas' medallion, though she looked as she'd been leaning her entire weight on it, and sweating and weeping with the effort of doing so. The knife was blunt, he thought, but not that blunt, and Vel was not that light, in the end of all things.

The other great question upon the laws of physics and matter was the actual presence of the dragon. That, and the fact that instead of howling with pleasure and charging at it, the Bull said 'Well, this is most definitely not a good day.'

It was thus that Dorian learned how it felt to be trapped in the time warp spell that he had so arduously mastered; the only creature aside Veldrin and Solas who could not move was himself. The Bull was tugging at him still, and he was distantly thinking that if the Qunari warrior pulled harder, he would literally tear his arm from its shoulder joint.

The dragon itself landed on the edges of the suddenly exposed, circular sky; Ath Velanis shook along with the entirety of Seheron, and all corridors to the chamber crumbled, even before the dragon began to crawl down along the widened shaft. It fanned out a wing, unwinding it as if it had been a masterfully and gracefully designed staircase – still carrying herself with as much grace a reanimated suit of armour might have held, Cassandra Penthaghast rushed down, skipping and sliding, frost in her hair and an unhealthy redness in her cheeks.

'No, no, no,' Veldrin loudly begged of the monster inside herself. 'Please, no, please – we made a bargain so that I could kill him, so that I could spare him this – please.'

'Undying annoyance,' the dragon roared, its eyes fixed on Vel's still kneeling, frozen form, yet clearly seeing though it. 'Forbidden even to the few! Blight of too many to count – begone! Offer no treaties that have not been approved by your Gods!'

'You are no Gods,' Solas and the spirit of choice who called himself Imshael hissed, in perfect synchronicity.

A mist of a woman, with a mist of a smile drifted through the Iron Bull, finally making his efforts at getting Dorian to budge cease; she was there and not there, he could feel her and he could not, but her purple eyes held all manners of promise, and her presence, the overwhelming, stifling presence kept Dorian trapped for a crucial minute longer.

This mist of the mystery kneeled beside Solas, and beheld the knife stalled at the bone medallion with benevolent curiosity; she brushed the shoulder guard off Solas' shoulder with a gesture careless enough to pass for gentle.

'You will suffer,' the woman whom Dorian did not yet know as Razikale said, kindly; she rested her shoulder against Solas' shoulder in the complicit manner of an old friend inviting another friend for a stroll she knew he did not want to take. 'And whatever your pains will be…I assure you, we will invent many, there will be no torment greater than knowing that she did all in her power to save you.'

'And that thou did all in thine power to thwart her,' the sapphire dragon said, his voice inside Dorian, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

'Ours was not a lonely prison,' the woman followed. 'We shall make sure that yours is not a lonely one, either – but while you imprisoned us, together, friends and lovers and sharers of minds, you and her shall not be sharing cage, Solas,' she whispered. 'You'll have a small one. The entire world will be her cage. And every day that your cage is not lonely, you'll know that no matter how far she goes, or what she does, she'll never escape hers.'

'Not without fully crushing what is left of you, and becoming what she is. One of us,' she whispered.

'And who, pray tell, are you?' Dorian shouted, stepping up, despite the fact that Cassandra was trying to bar his path. He side stepped her, with celerity he did not know he had, only to face a short, dark haired man with cat like eyes, another one he did not know; the dragon's wing had fallen limp against the wall but he'd not noticed. 'Who are you? What are you?'

But he knew, he knew, he painfully knew…Because Vel had tried to tell him, and the demon had not let her ruin the surprise…He knew. They'd not started a Blight.

It was much worse.

'You already know the answer,' the unknown woman simply said, echoing his thoughts. 'You simply fear it, though you've no reason to.'

'Dorian of the Pavus line,' the man said, looking him in the eyes. 'Bringer of Dawn, The One Who Woke the Sleepers, we greet thee as an equal.'

'…aaand, see, I told you you'd have the most amazing surprise - so there we go,' Imshael cackled, reading his thoughts. 'Blights, demon armies…Pfeh. Nothing compared to this – congratulations, little boy, you've succeeded where even Corypheus failed, you've brought back the Imperium, in all its ancient glory…'

'Did we not tell you to be gone?' the woman with the purple eyes queried; in the entire madness Solas whimpered, and Vel remained steadfast, her red eyes still shedding tears, her hands still pushing at the knife.

'That is unfair, given how I delivered him to you, oh freaking Gods of nothing,' Imshael muttered, not bothering to use Vel's voice anymore.

The purple eyed elven woman shook her head, in minor irritation – she leaned over, placed her hand on Veldrin's forehead, and simply said: 'Leave the bodies of your Gods to the use for which they were intended.'

'She is no God,' Ishmael protested. 'And you are not a God, and he,' it added, in a strangled breath, twisting the knife at Solas' medallion only to scratch it further, 'certainly doesn't think he is one, so by what right…'

'Only those without power request rights,' the woman said, closing her eyes. 'Those with actual power take them. Be gone – he's ours, now.'

Veldrin shook, for a second; an image of her was then projected outside her body, in red, glittering dust; the form breathed out an outraged puff of even smaller, glittering red dust, then, it was gone, just as the woman commanded.

'Kill him now, Vel,' Dorian barked, issuing a command to his wife for the first and last time. 'You're free, kill him…'

'Please,' Veldrin begged, pushing and pushing the knife, and accomplishing nothing. 'Please.'

Defeat came in a form that none had envisioned – it was Cassandra to grab Veldrin from behind and pull her away from what followed, tossing her out of the way of her own blade as if she were made of straw; had the blade completed its swing, Solas' head would have cleanly rolled. As she swung, Dorian cast a fireball the size of a castle at Solas. Gritting his teeth against the spell's fading heat, the Bull charged forward with a roar, and arrows hissed; another weaker fire spell followed, then ice rose, and Dorian cast again, in his turn, yet... The fire cleared only for long enough to reveal Sera's melted arrowheads and the fact that the Divine was incredulously looking down at the hilt of her sword, which was now missing a blade and looked rather akin to a fully melted candle.

They had, all as one, tried to kill Solas, and all as one they had failed; he was unscathed, and the woman who sat by his side smiled, shaking her head.

'He's ours now,' she gently repeated, and none had time to reply.

Through the open eluvian, armoured soldiers poured; behind them, once assured of his safety, Magister Cassius followed, looking about with feral satisfaction – his expression changed to one of utter disgust at the sight of the still living Veldrin.

The man with the cat-like eyes unexpectedly smirked.

'Too bad we can nay exorcise that one of whatever evil he is possessed,' Lusacan said, rolling his eyes.

'He serves, to our displeasure,' Razikale replied, standing from Solas's side as the human soldiers stepped in, hiding him from view. Some of them broke ranks, though, and tried to turn to Veldrin, but Razikale was in their way before they could truly make full stride – the sight of her by his wife's side should have made Dorian feel renewed and heightened fear; it did not, and for a moment, he thought he was too numb to feel anything anymore.

Still, it was not that: he did not fear, because the woman with the purple eyes was in his mind and telling him – forcing him – not to. For what was even odder, the enforced calm only affected his feelings, not his thoughts, for he could still rationalise that if anyone or anything present in the chamber had solid reason to kill Veldrin, it was her.

It was them – because whomever had learned how to kill a God, would remember how to kill others.

'No,' he weakly whispered; Razikale looked up to him, with nought but curiosity in her eyes.

'Of course not,' Lusacan spoke, in his sister's stead. 'We've nay harmful intent towards her…'

Vel winced, and tried to sit up – she was almost too weak to, but Razikale's hand helped steady her. 'Restorer of Truth, Saviour of the People, we greet you as an equal,' the dragon goddess whispered.

'Restorer of the Truth,' Vel whispered, in return. 'What truth is there…'

'The one you've always held in thine heart, and Solas could not grasp until this hour,' Lusacan said, dryly. 'The truth that the very last of the people are, and always will be, as strong as the first.'

Beyond them, in a place that Dorian sought to block from his own sight and hearing, the armoured soldiers were doing their best to make Solas' new reality clear; when, after many kicks and punches he finally fell to the floor, they whipped him, and Dorian counted the lashes in his mind.

Vel looked down at her hands, and the wolf's jaw that rested between her fingers; she must have torn it from around his neck when Cassandra had thrown her aside. She wasn't crying; in the wide, open world that had become her cage, there was no reason to do so.

Without the demon, both victorious and crushingly defeated, she'd returned to what she had always been. Dorian's practical little sprite.

Did we lose or win here? I cannot tell...

But at least Solas is not dead, and Vel is no longer possessed. That could be good news, right?

...meh, OK. When have you ever known anything Abstract does to be good news?

Thank you for reading and commenting,

Cheers,

Abstract