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The Spectral Breath
~~o~~
Chapter Nine: Lessons
"You have nothing to fear, da'len. Close your eyes."
Lahris did as he commanded, inhaling deeply the scent of herbal incense. Her mind drifted, dispelling the chirping of birds and scribes from above to the gentle tapping of the metronome. Her fingers eased over the sofa armchair, her sigh clouding the illumination of candlelight to varying intensities of grey.
He caressed her cheek and forehead, murmured a spell that sent her further and further into slumber. Until she was completely consumed.
When she awoke she found herself in the atrium once more. Reclined across dusty straw and cotton sheets, she was small compared to the rounded walls that bounded up and up to no apparent end. The candles flamed green around her, casting much of the lower rotunda in living shivers. "Am I-?"
"Having a pleasant dream?" Solas smirked, gently taking her hand and aiding in her rise.
Lahris slowly twirled around the room, using her finger to pick out parts of the world that did not seem quite right. She eyed the arched ceiling joists high above her, though she was sure a moment ago there was no ceiling to be had. Magic crackled around her as if something intrinsically new, fluent and easy even to mould into a form. She attempted it, cupping her spell into a ball of light that with little thought stretched into a winged butterfly. In the blow of a kiss the spell fluttered free, rising high above until it finally disappeared.
"This place cannot be real-"
"A matter for debate," the apostate chuckled, bidding for her hand once more. "Shall I show you more?"
"Would that not attract the attention of spirits?"
Solas scoffed, as if finding the very notion absurd. "We already have." He linked their fingers loosely, coaxing her towards the west-wing doorway. "Let us begin."
They disappeared from the Keep to the bailey without seeing the throne hall. However, the very depiction of the bailey was far too detailed to be of Lahris' imagination. It was true she had ventured through Skyhold when nights afforded it, but even she knew that she could not recreate the bright orange flays of its shrubbery; the glistening white-blues of its flooded grassland, or the indent of netted lichen over the stonework bridge to the forge. Even afar she heard the hammer damming the anvil, the chisel's quarter, the graver's score. Saw forged blades be hammered to hilt, and for steel to rise smouldering flame to white.
Her tongue even tasted leather. Though that was always the case when passing the formation of sculptured ironwork.
Still they circled the steps, met the paved earth sun-touched and shivering in the shadows of dusk. The hearths of the tavern billowed smog into the sky, yet the deep blue-purple patterns beside the sparse cloud cover lay unaffected.
Lahris gazed over the twin crow pillars placed on either side of the stairway and noticed that if she lingered on them just enough, their one ruby eye would wink emerald green.
"Is this your memory?" she asked, noticing the fluency in which he walked, with dead leaves cackling under his clothed toes. Even he seemed overly perfect in some sense, in his rough-spun tunic of cotton white. It even swayed in the breeze in elegance, reminding her of a confident royal.
The apostate turned from surveying the area, a surprised smirk lifting his sharp cheekbones. "How very observant. Indeed it is. Pray tell, how did you know?"
She smiled, raising a hand to the figureheads. "I could never recreate these, Solas. It is like one of your paintings. You have mastered every detail, but one."
He quirked a brow. "Oh? And what would that be?"
"The Inquisition do not have crows on their banners, hahren. The Inquisitor likes Orlais far too much. They are all throughout his halls: golden lions with great red bows over their manes. He would have them or the naked bosom of Andraste. Dirthamen knows I have seen that more than once in those Chantry monestaries."
She shuddered, remembering the utter shock in first witnessing those golden orbs dented into the delicate frame of a crowned, curvaceous maiden. The artistry of mortals truly was… unique.
His smirk fell into a confused frown, lightly quirking at the corners. "Those are not crows, da'len."
The elvhen looked back to find that the pillars had strangely changed. Neither were of a winged bird in flight but rather four blades pointing outward with a star-burst banner on their podiums. She blinked twice, unsure if what she had seen had been truly there.
Solas stared at her a moment longer before returning to his speech. "You were correct. You have yet the mastery to project your own thoughts into the Fade and have it shape to your desire. It will come in time. But if we chose a dream for the Fade to take, your self conscious would not see it as you do now. You would be consumed by it until the morning."
"So, this is my potential?"
"Indeed it is. But let us focus on the basics for now." He cupped his hands behind his back, gesturing outward to the place she saw before her with a light nod. "All of this is a reflection of my thoughts on Skyhold. You might find parts of this place that might not seem real to you, like the way the grass shivers in the wind, or the colour of the water. As it is a reflection, it can be altered."
Within a moment the drowned grassland of the bailey transformed from a shivering blue-white into a dim, murky green with patches of algae forming along the bay. In the flick of a wrist the water changed once more, becoming completely black with a twinkling night sky reflecting in the surface.
Her lips parted into an 'o' and eyes rounded immensely. She dipped a hand into the water, watching how it shimmered between day and night.
Solas knelt beside her, lightly stroking the grass around it with his fingers. "Do you know what reflects all of this?"
"Spirits?"
"Correct. Unlike what the Chantry believe, all spirits born are benevolent. They only change when their source has changed. If I were to meet a spirit of compassion without judgement, it would remain compassionate. However, if I were to reach out to it in grief, the spirit would then adopt that mentality, reflecting the same grief until it is no longer what it once was."
"And that is how demons are formed?"
"Precisely! Even now I could twist the very nature of the spirits around us. But what would be the point of that? Spirits are the heart and soul of the Fade, da'len. Who are we to temper with the very nature in which they were created?"
Lahris frowned down at the water, finding his own scowl mirroring hers. "Is that why you isolate yourself from other mages? Because you blame, or maybe expect them to make these mistakes?"
"They will never change," he whispered, glaring deeply into the pool.
She leaned further forward, catching the musk of pine from his tunic. The very answer seemed to spill from her lips without even a thought, having experienced and knew it for herself. "Shemlen."
The very first day she awoke to the new era, shemlen had been the bane of her existence. She had seen the faults of humanity, of dwarven kind, even of the Dalish themselves. Nothing compared to the land before, nothing. And her soul wept for it everyday.
His eyes met hers, grey to green, and it seemed in that moment that they understood each other. She was not sure why he seemed more elvhen then than any other elf she had come across, was not sure what about him intrigued her to know more. Perhaps it was his sense of pride. Perhaps it was his determination to find the ancient world she had lost and recover it. Perhaps it was that sense of attachment to the old that allowed her to listen to his words. To how wise he thought he was. In that instant, it made her feel more at home than any other.
He nodded once and returned to full height.
"The Dalish can change," she said, catching him by surprise. "The clan I came from are surprisingly open-minded. You could teach them what you believe. They will listen."
"They wouldn't listen," he answered, gazing over the land he had formed. "You are the exception."
They continued to travel through the world he had created. Through it all he explained the manner of spirits, of how they had aided in his search of history and how in time she would be allowed to visit one in its domain, once he was sure she possessed the mentality necessary to keep it stable.
It could have been hours they were in the Fade. It could have been days. In it all, she did not wish it to end. Until she happened upon the Herald's Rest.
Solas did not see her pause in their exploration. Instead, he was too preoccupied in his own explanations to see the oddity that was the door to the tavern. The stone-thatched building had become unusually cold, its arrow-slit windows dark save for one high in the loft, cradling a green-flamed candle on its mantle.
The presence of Andraste's painting by its doorsign made her frown. It swung eerily without breeze. Then, as she dared a step closer, the doorway parted without force. Whispers tore through the gap like a song, coaxing her legs to drift towards the tavern even without her own self awareness. Before Lahris knew it her hand was against the door, cranking the iron handle down and causing its hinges to creak into the dark.
She stepped through, leaving the domain of her hahren to the isolated dwelling of another. And He did not share Solas' decorum for picturesque. In the shift of the Fade she was welcomed by the cold-hearted vision of what she feared most. Lahris lurched back, but the doorway had disappeared. Replaced by a gorge so deep its abyss was endless. Her toes teetered over the edge of a cliff.
Jerking back when a gust of wind teased her over, Lahris fell to the ground with a thud. She quickly clawed back to a stand, her gown bellowing dust when whispers once more chilled the air.
Grey mist rose from the brittle weeds and dry earth crunching beneath her toes, even though the very vines dangling from the canopies above dripped in a foreign, sickly dew that stuck to her skin. As the mist began to dissipate into the surrounding undergrowth, the outline of a grove emerged into the clear.
Ahead, the mouth of a temple bore its jagged fangs. Woven into a dark, decaying forest, there was no telling where stone ended and flora began. But she knew it all too well. It had her clutching her gown tight, shivering.
It is just the Fade, she told herself, forcing her eyes closed. It is not real. It cannot hurt me.
"A matter for debate," she remembered Solas say. She cursed under her breath, opening her eyes and cowering further under the webbed cover of a dead oak trunk.
The steps to the temple were cracked pieces: the mortar between the stones dry, crumbling. But the skeletons of her People littered them, with arms askew from speared chest plates and mouldy bones arching from bloodied rags. From within the mouth, where the doors had been shattered in two and the very darkness of the temple's inner hall grew outward, the same whispers of her nightmares past hissed into the grove like a mute man's prayer - wordless and animalistic.
Though she did not cower. She could not. For she had witnessed it far too many times and needed for once to face its ghosts.
"Var'sulahn," the temple whispered, instilling her chest with fear. "Var'sulahn," it exhaled in another drowsy murmur as soft as thistledown. So very familiar to her. Like those very seeds grown from the root, it lured her out from hiding.
In the darkness a swirl of mist caught the eye of a loom, with threads of liquid dreams clashing into the pool of a watery vision. Inside, the first she saw was the shimmer of a proud tanned face and ringed knuckle. The second, the distant memory of a well-lit hearth scintillating in the flames of veilfire, with a father perched upon the end of an old notched escritoire. By his veined hand a quill blotted parchment in ink. And upon the creak of a door, thick brows rose over eyes that were the very mirror of her own.
Smiling from his stead, the father placed the feather delicately in its holster. He rose in a sweep of blue robe sashed in cream velvet. Spread his long cuffs wide, with a hearty guffaw shaking the memory twice.
Lahris rose to meet him, her own hands high and shaking. But when her fingers graced the cool water, her father's image vanished in a puff of alabaster smoke. And the call of her name drifted into obscurity.
Lahris gasped. Her hands flew out, attempting to catch the last remaining clouds that only painted her bare hands red. "It was not my fault," she cried, falling back from the temple and striking her hands against the earth, cursing the blood that only continued to smear her palms.
"What do you want with me, demon?!" The forest remained silent. She could only fall to her knees, her shoulders slumped low, quivering as sobs wracked her throat. "What do you want with me? Please, enough of your tricks! My ears are open to you. Tell me what you wish of me."
Her hair stirred in a gust of wind. Grass snapped under a fallen curtain of dry cloth. The frayed ends fluttered like a dove's wing, but the feathers were all wrong: torn and askew. A coldness seeped into her flesh, leaving her frozen and blistered in bumps. Her left arm tingled suddenly, and the black veins of her curse flashed lilac in warning.
The demon had come.
Dressed as a widow drowned in grief, It wore a veil of tattered lace concealing its face from the world. But from its sleeve a claw reached out, tangling in a lock of wet, matted raven and casting it up to the edge of its chin. The demon sniffed once, it's exhale a puff of fire breath. Then it let her go free. For a price.
There was only one word. "Return."
~~o~~
Lahris returned to Skyhold through the arch of another doorway. Little had changed since her leave. The sun continued to shine over the distant mountains. The shrubbery and its land remained a summery gold - an odd contrast to the drafts of sleet twinkling from the rooves on the towers. And the pond in the bailey remained a rainbow of daylight and night, yet to be altered by its creator.
It was not long before she was greeted by Solas, and he seemed to be more curious than afraid for her disappearance.
Lahris quietly stepped into his shadow, raising her gaze under hair that had quickly dried in the new world the Fade took. Only when his lips pursed to speak she raised her hand, causing his brows to rise quizzically and ears to twitch in her direction.
"I must go home."
Solas stared at her curiously. "Home?" She nodded once. "And where would your home be, da'len?"
Far to the east of the Frostback Mountains. Over the white watered shores of Lake Calenhad, through the open plains of Ferelden's Hinterlands to the deep nest of the Brecilian Forest. Over the overgrown roads and under the burrows. Ahead of the treants wailing in the nights, and away from the wolves prowling during the days. There, in the very heart of Elvhenan's own ruins, was where the Sahlin clan was cradled from the very corruption of the world. Only there amongst the Dalish could she find an end to her nightmares. But, she did not wish to journey alone.
"Come with me," she implored, cupping her hands to her chest. "You wish to see more of the ancients. Let me show you what I know."
"You were terrified to leave Skyhold five days prior, da'len. What in the Fade has caused you to change your mind?"
Her ears drooped to her shoulders. She sighed, knowing that such a change in mindset would worry anyone. Especially when in a world of spirits. However, she knew her nightmares would only continue to plague her mind until she did what the demon commanded. There was the threat of her master beyond Skyhold's walls, but the threat to her sanity was something even she could not face forever. It did not matter how safe she was if she turned mad in the process.
"I cannot go alone," she admitted, biting back the urge to spit the honesty from her tongue. Weakness. "I cannot travel the roads alone without knowing I may be ambushed by my… by who burned Hillbreach. And there are questions I need answers to. I may be afraid, but this is something I must do. Will you come with me, hahren?"
"You'd ask me to betray the Inquisition. To face the unruly vengeance of the Inquisitor himself all because you search for answers to questions that might not even bare fruit?" Upon noticing her wavering hope, his small smile only grew ten-fold. "Shall we leave at first light?"
Lahris grinned merrily. "Mas serannas, hahren! You will not regret this, I assure you." She took a step towards the castle's keep, faltering mid-step when she realised that she was not sure how to leave the Fade.
Solas strode alongside her, shifting her shoulders so that she fit directly opposite him. He took her chin in his hand, smiling down when her eyes drifted half-closed. "I will find you by the stables, da'len. Just as soon as you… wake up."
The last she saw was his wolfish grin fading from her dreams like morning mist.
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