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The Spectral Breath
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Chapter Twelve: A Mighty Fall
It seemed as if they had been travelling for years.
She was sure Solas knew maps as well as anyone, perhaps even better than a lone vigilante in the wilderness. Two days spent on a wild track. Two days of using a poorly painted map the Dalish provided just in case Lahris lost her way, had finally had his head reeling sore. She could tell.
The humorous part of it all was that the Dalish created the map in knew the forest as innately as one of the living trees. They needed no parchment to find their way home.
Certainly, she tried to keep her good humour down in his presence, but the creasing of his brows and the snort of indecision as the map crinkled this way and that, had her cheeks burning plum.
It was worse with the dwarf's attempt to wheel his cart into riverside dales, fens and bogs. Jaras and Velani had to carry him to calmer sides. It was the way his arms soared between them like a flabby bird bulging at the waist belt that keeled her over, her laugh so mountaneous that tears sprang from her eyes. Songs of his flight stirred the crows that truly could fly from their nests.
Lahris half wondered through her pants if it was worth the Dalish carpenters constructing the wheeled chair from the spare parts of aravels. But the way he chased after them like a sturdy steed proved it was the moral choice. As for all his effort, Dwyvaris Durnoch seemed more than pleased with himself.
The company happened upon the steep foot of a mountain when the world turned still and grey.
Though being known as a mountain, the incline itself was more of a rocky mound. It was smaller than most. Its peek only snowed when the first frosts of winter took claim to the land. Nevertheless, taller it was than any oak, fir or evergreen within the forest. It was the hidden crown of Ferelden.
Like any crown it had sceptres, once, jewels a-plenty. Minarets that met the very clouds. Eluvians that dotted its cliffs in interconnecting ramps that no longer claimed its breadth.
The ruin she sought lay inside such a beast, and like the outside, she feared the golden glamour had withered to dust.
They continued their travel on foot through the grandest of thickets, choosing to head away from the overgrown paths and to instead follow the light of the sun blotching through the mass of nature above them. Shades danced between them like crossing swords.
"I'm surprised the ruin still exists," announced Solas, one leg bent over the top of a risen root - his focus forward. "Or that others have not attempted to claim it sooner."
Velani rested beneath the netted fingers of an elder oak, seated on a stone layered in moss. Her bow of well-wrought wood lay across her lap, and she polished the grain along its rind with a jar of oils. "Wouldn't suppose a flat-ear would understand. The forest? T'is cursed, t'is it. Ancient curses. Only we elves can live under Ghilan'nain's sacred safely. And even then we see the wolves hunting us at night. They just never come to the door."
"The temple used to be cloaked with a spell, or so the Keeper explained," Lahris added, nibbling on a piece of salted venison. "The mountain as well. Now, the spells have withered away." Like so many other things.
Dwyvaris cursed when his wheeled chair rocked down the hill. His mount collided into a neighbouring stump and he lugged a shaggy arm over his brow, sighing when the stench of sweat filled the valley.
"Didn't stop me from finding the wretched place," he gasped, only calming once a skin of water downed his throat.
He threw the empty flask away, spitting flem into a patch of grass. "Ancestors used to say the stone was in our blood, as the first children and all. Guess some of that sense stuck to me. That's all I can describe of it. Doubt I'd have found it otherwise."
"Do you ever miss life beneath the earth, master dwarf? The call of the stone?" Solas inquired.
The dwarf ruffled through his beard with a finger, itching at the whiskers so studiously that the horde of a dwarven thaig could very well spring out raining gold. "Stone? Err, never knew it. I'm not an under-dweller, ser elf. Born and raised on land, I am! The brightest of the Durnoch clan this here topside! Nope, never saw the mighty majesty of my kin but whose to say underground is better anyway? How could I miss something I never believed I had? Only a sixth sense, I have. And even that I'm not quite sure on."
The elf looked away, disappointed. "A pity."
"Do elves miss the life of… err…what is it you elves miss again? Frolicking in the forests?"
Solas scowled. "We do not frolock."
"Oh?" the dwarf winked, the mischievous glint in his eyes dying in Solas' lengthening glare. "Oh. That's not what I heard back home. Though I could've sworn the elf was on something.. hmm… should never trust a brothel wench…"
From the outskirts Jaras called from the height of a distant evergreen, "Can't seem to find a ruin! You're sure we're going the right direction?'
Lahris nodded once, turning her attention to their surroundings. Something within their camp told her that they were close. Very close. She could not quite describe it other than a feeling of returning home. Then her eyes caught a familiar arch in the valley.
It was only enhanced by Solas' own shift in curiosity, his mutter of, "I can sense a great power here," acknowledging what she saw.
Leaving her post to fumble through weed and fern, her legs walked on their own accord as if another were guiding her steps. Dried leaf beds fell to paved stone. From bushes ascended walls wrapped in lichen. Just like her dream, there was a mouth to the ruin. Only it lay tucked between two boulders with a sheet of hanging moss shielding it from the world.
Lahris glimpsed around the grove, finding the edges of stone that had given way to a cliff once upon a time. There were statues of elvhen, bow in hand, that had been severed over the ages. Only fragments of their craftsmanship remained buried in the clutches of the Brecilian.
It had been over a thousand years, but she had returned to the temple as a visitor once again.
Weariness caused her mind to pause when she pulled the moss to one side. There was a split between the boulders. A crevice leading into the very roots of the mountain. The comfortable ease that ceased her nerves from bundling felt wrong. In her dreams she had been positively terrified of the ruin. Many nights she had awoken quivering in her bed with her pillows wet from tears and sheets drenched in sweat. Strangely in that moment she felt nothing at all. That in itself should have worried her. Instead, it urged her onward.
Inside there was no light. Only a darkness that rivalled the Deep Roads. Behind, daylight distanced into a flickering candle flame. Ahead, stray hands grazed prickly walls cold with moss and a hundred years of humus ran thick under their bare toes, consuming the taps of their feet. Though the dripping of water echoed deeper in, and the groans of the dwarf's wheeled contraption swallowed all other noise.
In the wave of a hand a small wisp of light materialised from the Fade to guide their way. Lahris watched the wisp playfully bounce from wall to wall, rising high when the hall ascended to a high vaulted ceiling, and down again to circle her. It came to rest over Solas' left shoulder, gently nuzzling the fur pauldron draping his tunic.
Some believed wisps themselves were smaller essences of spirits. They just lacked the consciousness of intrinsic thought. Seeing how it interacted with those around like a child, Lahris understood how one came to see the similarity.
It hovered over her wrist gingerly, only resting when her hands freely opened. Solas watched her reactions with a gentle smile.
Eventually the hall ended with no where else to turn. Walled torches were lit on each of the three faces and a podium stood just behind them. It was a square-based sceptre ringed at its pinnacle by eight sharp petals. On its surface was a design laced in lyrium. One of etched elven script that glowed even more in the wake of rising veilfire flames.
Solas's hand shaded the light momentarily. Green spells washed over the altar like mist, as he waited for it to imbue the ancient mechanism, access its secrets and wake its heart. Only the lyrium remained a vibrant blue. The podium did not move at all.
When Lahris raised her hand over its dial and circled the runes with a finger, the podium responded in a blissful light, transcending and ethereal. Rune stones tiled along the floor glittered in answer. One by one the plates descended into the floor, carving a spiral stairway around the podium's base.
"This was Dirthamen's temple," Lahris informed in wistful pride. "As Falon'Din's reflection he was the maker of secrets. There will be many more around here. Somewhere."
Solas regarded his student with an intrigued vigilance. He tested her knowledge with his own. "In ancient times they called him the Harbringer of Whispers. Tales of Dirthamen's lust for the unknown were as few as the truths of his mirrored visage. But fewer still were tales of his deceit and trickery."
Her fingers twitched over the podium, her answering shudder causing his riled lour to soften pitifully. "Deceit? Trickery? I'm not sure what you mean."
"I'm not surprised. You never believe a bear cub vicious until you turn your back. By then it is all too late."
"And what were your sources? You cannot have seen those in the Fade, hahren-"
"There is much the Fade tells, lethallan. You simply have yet to open your mind and allow the truth to be seen."
Her lips firmed direly, and voice spat acid. "Being cultured is not closed minded! And to believe the gods were not all the monsters you believe them to be only shows how biased you are to the ancestors. You can teach me many things, hahren. I truly treasure it, but to twist my faith will not be one of them."
"If only that were true. Then I could simply overlook the death and destruction that followed them. But no, history cannot be warped by faith alone. Though it might should the ignorant continue to disregard the truth.
"Enough bickering the both of ya!" commanded Dwyvaris. "Do you know where we are? That sort of lallygagging was what killed my guards and had my legs cut clean off! Now shut it the pair of you. We need to concentrate on finding my supplies- I-I mean the cure to your condition, m'lady. Blessed be my manners."
"Why do you care for a cart of oranges anyway, dwarf?" inquired Velani, whom towered over the smaller man in intimidating stature. Even he for all his tales squirmed under her baring like a babe caught mid-swindle.
"My livestock is all the fruit I labour for. How'd you like a human taking your prized pelt, huh? No damned spirit is gonna take my labour, elf. And that's the truth of it."
Jaras flinched when the stairway spat dust into the hall. He raised his bow to the hole, nervously fiddling with the pigeon feathers along the arrow's shaft, even when the bristles tickled the edge of his square jaw. "Can we just agree that magically opening doors aren't creepy at all? Yes? No? Back me up here, Da'mi. Stairways don't just open from the ground!"
"Getting cold feet, brother?" Velani grinned, twirling down into the open abyss with her polished bow armed at her side. "Wait until the clan hears of the hare you've become. What women will lay with you then, Jaras? Maybe the old and frail. They may take your trembling like a leaf for courage with their poor eyes and deafly hearing."
"That depends, lass, do you like rabbit?"
"Only wolves," she chuckled, each tone of merriment fading into the temple's shadows.
Delving into the depths of the unknown, it seemed that the wisp Solas carried would be their only light source. But when the air turned musty, torches of veilfire seeped through the darkness.
"What manner of fire are these?" Velani asked, having seen the cold flames burn before in the hall but to see them so close had her hands inching towards the mounted braziers.
Solas snatched her wrist just before she did, frowning deeply when she wrenched herself free. "It is ancient magic. A memory of flame that appears when the Veil is weak. Even as a memory it can still scold your skin. Be careful."
"The day I need aid from a flat-ear is the day the forests run red in flame, shem. Remember that."
Lahris passed the veilfires by with only sadness. For she saw the splatters of old-aged crimson staining their handles and winced at the crunch of bone under her heels.
She tore a piece of cloth from one handle and examined the intricate threads it still bared.
Parts of a cowl or skirt? There is no way to tell anymore.
She tied the knot around her wrist, only to be surprised when it meshed with the remainder of her clothes quite fittingly.
Does this mean I am to be like the dead? Or that I carry the last of their memory?
The stairway levelled to a passage of ancient corridors with statues of priests and banners guarding the sanctum from spoils. There were gouges in the ceiling, debris along the floor, bookcases and pedastals that were little more than imprints in the sand.
Below the surface world the entire chasm had been completely segregated from life itself. Cool air dried the previous day's sweat from their brows, wafting from half-guessed fissures in the rocks.
As the passages continued onward an unsettling chill creeped up Lahris' spine. It swept up her legs, bundled under her robe, peaked out of the crinkle at her neck and caught the hairs at the nape.
She raised a hand to her shoulder. Felt ice nip her fingers. Frost had gathered over her shawl in clumps. She blanched, tearing it from her person and wringing the ice from the material in manic throws.
Jaras grasped her shoulder gently.
She growled, eyes warning of murder, "Vara em, shemlen!"
The curse echoed down the passageways. Ended at those drowned in rubble. Feeling the anger dissipate as swiftly as it came, Lahris raked a hand down her face and shrugged the shawl back around her. "I am sorry, Jaras. This place just gets to me."
He scratched the back of his neck, and nodded. He must think me mad. Perhaps I am to be back in this place.
The passage turned a striking corner and through the foundered graves of once great doors, the Inner Sanctum rose to greet them in earnest. It was little to how Lahris had remembered it. Once polished in gleaming silver strips along the pillars and as grandiloquent as a cathedral roofed in tremendous, reflecting gold: eluvians once whole had walled the corners between pillars and walkways; under stairways both level and above, and on paths that clung to the higher walls. It was a time when gravity had changed its nature to allow the monks to walk the sides as if the correct way up.
She had remembered walking those stairways once and peering up to see the elder clerics passing through bubbled groves above her, though they themselves walked upside down.
Now the stairways were cracked remnants of an ancient labyrinth that had succumbed to the will of aging. Gravity once set by different rules now had one code. One way down. The sanctum had collapsed because of it, with the domed ceiling rustic, dented. Not even the books had survived the disaster, left in a flurry across the stone, littered under spindleweed or simply a faded mark where great literature once lay.
Fear had finally caught Lahris Elgar'shiral, for she tasted the bitter tang of magic in the air and spied burned imprints along the floor where elvhen once stood. The Inner Sanctum had been a battlefield. And she was the only survivor.
"I have no knowledge of this place," muttered Solas, standing in dubiety under the entrance arch.
He waved his staff across the walls in the hope of finding some tapestry or script to help his understanding. Only the scripts etched into the tiles were warped in undulations, making the very history completely illegible to even him.
"Trust the god of secrets to keep his findings hidden even to this day. There are protective spells all over this hall. The reason for this temple's downfall will not be clear here. We must press on."
Jaras pointed to the stairways rising up the walls. "Why're they made that way? Surely no one could walk sideways up, could they?"
"In ancient times little was impossible. Even feats that distorted reality itself could be done with very little effort. Shifting the physics of nature was as natural as breathing to the elvhen. But since the fall of the People, you will find that such wonderful actions are no longer possible."
Velani's grip on her bow hardened. "And t'was all because of Fen'Harel. He took everything from us. Even the ability to fly…"
Solas raised a hand, hoping to silence her with a brusque wave. "Not necessarily fly-"
"The ancestors could walk the very walls like a spider, shem. If they could do that, then by the graces of June, they could do anything. Why not fly like a bird if they wished? Or swim in the seas with the water-beasts?"
The apostate sighed to himself, pinning the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "I suppose we will never know."
He spun a finger over his staff's orb, crackling the shadows in luminous waves. Closing his eyes, he listened carefully to the patter of water seeping from the walls, and from patches of disturbed debris raining from the temple's supports. He reopened his eyes in a flicker of shore and sea, cradling his magical instrument tightly when the magic receded into the crystal.
"I sense no spirits here," he said, looking back to Lahris. "If it was once here, it has long since gone."
"Then I suppose we should go our separate ways, shem," Velani said, peering down into the tunnel of a stray archway. She nodded inside. "Might take us all day just to find this dwarf's lost cargo, and Andruil knows the Keeper wants him gone as soon as able. Come on, dwarf. Roll your way inside."
Dwyvaris cursed under his beard before adhering to her command, squeaking along into the darkness. Only Jaras remained, alert and twitching. He watched Velani disappear with a shy flicker of worry catching his long face, drooping his even longer ears.
As if sensing a rift, Solas intervened. "There is no spirit here. If you wish to keep your friend and the dwarf company, know that we will be here. I will take care of her," he said, gesturing to Lahris a nod.
The hunter gave him a guarded glare before returning his attention to the corridor leaving the sanctum. "You better," he warned, glancing back to ensure she was safe. He then fled into the temple, leaving her and Solas alone.
Lahris watched him go in a quiver of shaggy fur, smiling to herself. His relationship with Velani had always been complicated, but he had always held a fondness for her that went beyond the other Dalish.
How could he not? she thought, her small smile waning to an envious lour.
Velani was beautiful in a fierce, simplistic way: a head bright in golden locks, a body hardened in flesh and muscle. Years of hunting in the wilds had granted her the most slender physic that all Dalish males fought to pine. Even the raised cicatrises were remiscient of battles, glory. The pinnacle of what the Dalish strived for. She was headstrong, fearless.
There was no doubt. She could have lived through the trials Lahris had and still not have lost her indomitable boldness. Lahris hadn't.
She tugged the cuff away from her wrist. Leered at the way her scars coiled in strands of ivy - her own little hex intended to eventually claim every inch of her. Even with such unsightly markings she knew some of her body was still a naked canvas, just waiting for the initial poison of a paintbrush. That in some mirrors when tilted far enough from candlelight she was still a different kind of beautiful. Though she was one that did not seem to hold as much sway as she had once upon a time.
From dimpled cheeks to a river of freckles falling down her chest like patters of darker rain. To skin liken to mossy redwood, and eyes the deepest jade. To breasts that had yet to lose their volume. To a waist slipping out to round curves.
Malnourishment had not taken all of her femininity. Even then, she could not remember a time since her wake that a man had been found interested.
So much had changed. Courting used to be so much more intricate. It was a dance of souls twined at the ankle. A slow paced stroll of gifts of wealth and promises of affection. Lahris had once received the most luxurious gown from one of her suitors. If only she had returned to the junior lord that night, instead of engross herself in court intrigue. Her life may have told a very different story.
It was Solas who broke her reverie. "Do you remember where you found your artifact, da'len? Was it on one of these alters? A podium perhaps-?"
She shook the memories from her mind, turning back in question. "Artifact?"
"Your shard?'
"It was…" An air of uncertainty drifted in through the air like the black sails of a sea wreckage veering through a misty sea calmed in unshaken moonlight. Torches of veilfire shivered by the entranceway. Their glimpses of Fade soon extinguished in whispers owned by the length of a hidden wing.
Darkness engulfed all, from the statues of royal monks to the mosaics morphing their texts from legibility. There was no longer the noise of shifting debris or whistling nooks. No rustle of bats in the ceiling joists. Just silence.
The apostate's staff pulsed in the ethereal glow of magic. Her own glowed just as brightly, but she immediately saw the shadow of worry pass across him: the sag of his shoulders, the fleeting frown. His own wisp dove under her shawl, shaking the ice from the fabric.
From the hidden depths of the Inner Sanctum icy fingers crackled along the rune stones, coating all in its way in sharp, pricking frost. It wormed up the banister, caught the cuff of her legs and dared to travel as a ghost of air up her skirts to the very tip of her neck. Lahris breathed in the misty form of a claw and shuddered.
"He knows who you are. Did you think he was swayed by your lies of this ruin? He has known your truth since he first culled the piece of divine from your flesh. Do you not believe? Look at him. Tell me what you see."
At first her eyes roamed him in newfound curiosity. Handsome, she initially thought. Then wise. Layered in a crest of wolf fur, his robe of sage belted in juniper cotton was merely an aspect that made him unique to other elves. It was his own brand of identity, one that flayed with the whispers of dusty spells as he walked, manipulated the ground beneath his feet as the very Fade clung at the ankle. She saw a man wisened by years who held the regret of solidarity heavily upon his brow.
In the Dalish he had mocked and pondered in silent musing. There were times when she caught the subtle flare of a smile or huff of absurdity when children played by his campfire. In those rare moments she had seen the smile fall into sorrow, and his hand snare the jawbone threaded over the base of his neck.
"No," urged the voice, "gaze closer."
The image before her begun to change. Oily branches coiled back from the foreline of his bald scalp, slipped into a groomed slick of auburn roots tied by a tether of ruby. A complexion liken to milk dulled to an ashen, silky contrast; youth that filled wrinkles of hardship. The black fur howled in its descent from his shoulders. In its place was an adopted sash of iridescent scales that gleamed from the remaining velvet.
Lahris inhaled a quivering breath. Felt her knees fall weak. Her staff slouched across the floor for steady purchase, clinking in time with the slow reveal of polished teeth.
He too was once beautiful to her eyes. Only the beauty of slender cheekbones curbed into slick deadly resin. The beauty of eyes the mirrors of honeyed wheat that gradually changed into a prairie set aflame. His own soft gold flecked in embers. No longer a valiant lord that ladies fawned for in the courts, was he. Instead, he grew from the darkness like a droplet of beautiful poison spreading through a chalice of wine.
He was the carnation of nightmares. Her nightmares. And he grinned at her with supple blue lips. "Do you see now?"
Solas was with Him all along. An agent of the most venemous, the most cunning, the most deceitful! He was the very visage that yearned for her screams, thirsted for her tears. Solas was him in all but name: a putrid speck on the world that dominated and corrupted.
Round his staff knuckles of blood cracked in the dark. One hand reached out. Beckoned come like the lapdog that she had been. He still believed it to be true.
"That's it!" screamed the voice in her mind, and all of a sudden her staff's branched head appeared all the more appealing. "Make the cut clean. Let him drown the floors. Let the rats laze in his falsehood. Do it. I command you."
A wing clipped the apostate on the shoulder, caused him to brand the wall behind him in lucid green.
His head shifted momentarily from hair to scalp, teasing her in flashes like a beacon. On where to hit her mark.
The traitor continued to search, clamping both hands back onto the cradle of his instrument of war. "He will use it on you. Even now he formulates the unmarked grave. I can hear him. Outside the temple, you will be. By where the crossing twins lie. Where your spirit will forever face the ashes of your Dalish flooding into the skies."
"No!" she screamed: anger and rage and fear wracking the hall with shame and desire. As the apostate turned her staff slashed down, hacking it's mark with a crack.
He groaned, one hand outstretched over the nearby banister. As wings lifted from the earth his concealment disappeared. A shaken hand clapped her mouth shut.
Her horror gaped before her. A terrifying vision of pooling blood, gurgling gasps, half-fluttering eyes. All she tasted was bitterness down to the very dregs of her soul. The mere thought had her writhe in terror. The sanctum rung in the clatter of her staff, the shatter of its gem. All thought on magic and Fade and dreams were gone. All of it.
With her back to the wall her legs gave way. She slapped the sticky pool knees first. The very substance clung to her robes: wet and warm and oozing.
Solas gave one last gurgle. Afterwards his hand squeaked down to the floor and red splattered her face.
In the depths of the Inner Sanctum her master announced his final squawk. Sleep, he bayed her, slipping icy fingers through her hair that instead of being terrifying, were surprisingly soothing. "Sleep. Let your horrors leave you. Find comfort in my arms and be mine forever, Var'sulahn."
Through torn cloth his bony fingers snapped to her chin, and he smiled deliciously down when her open lips waited to be taken. The last traces of magical light dimmed like cloud cast the sun.
It continued until all had withered and faded into a sightless, unfeeling dream.