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The Spectral Breath

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Chapter Fourteen: Battles Fought

Her name had been Var'sulahn, once.

She had clawed and lashed and sieged through a temple created under the name of her saviour, Dirthamen. In those ruins she had witnessed the turn of an age and the fall of a people in little under a day. Cold, shaken, still coated in the frost of a past millennium, she had limped from the past and into the present. Var'sulahn fell into the care of the Dalish, and was reborn as Lahris Elgar'shiral.

A forename to establish how distant the lines of true elvhen history had become; where even names were no longer poetic literacy. And her surname to be what her change had made of her: a journeying spirit, destined to be a cursed soul forever.

When she woke from what felt to be a memory rather than a dream, her stomach lurched in rising from the Inner Sanctum's floor.

Damp clung to her skirts, though where she feared blood, it was in fact simply water. A pool in actuality. The lower halls of the sanctum had been flooded ankle-deep, casting a worrisome ripple when standing over a cold, murky surface.

Steep rocky banks overgrown in moss rose over the stairways to block any way to leave. She stood inside a bowl of quagmire that had bubbles hissing in the algae. The air was chill and bitter, full with fog that itched against her shivering skin. To her surprise, another had awoken before her. Bald, dressed in fur and cotten. A bubble of hope rose in her chest, rising higher to hiccup in her throat when she called out his name.

When he turned, her eyes flashed to the leaden patch of fabric between his left shoulder and collarbone. The fur sash had taken most of the damage, although the memory of slashing into him whipped into her mind. She cupped her quivering lips, quickly shaking her head. "Hahren! By Dirthamen, I-I am so sorry-"

She reached out to touch him, then retracted her fingers. What had her frown was his lack of scorn. Instead he stumbled towards her, carrying his staff in the crook of his other arm and holding his shoulder like a sling. "You are a talented mage, da'len," he admitted, wincing when he attempted to roll his injured shoulder backward, "but fortunately for me, poor in accuracy."

Her fingers naturally threaded into the fabric, picking at the severings to focus on the wound beneath. Her lip curled at the sight, although she forced a smile. "I thought you were someone else. We were also in the dark."

"Ah, yes. Darkness. Perhaps I should thank that as well."

Her staff had ripped a tear into his robe. There was a jagged cut beneath the tunic, one that had mostly healed by what she could only presume to be a spell. Still, though the muscle had been mended, some of the tissue still required a healer. Weaving ice across her forefinger, she begun to cut her rainment at the skirt, severing it from the body and then tying it loosely around his shoulder. She blew cold air over the final patch, which froze the outer layer of bandage to help stem inflammation.

"I truly am sorry, Solas," she muttered, keeping her gaze to the water. "Something changed the way I saw you. I thought you were going to kill me."

"I understand. There is a demon here. Far more powerful than I anticipated. It fooled you as it fooled me. I admit, I'm surprised you woke so quickly. The others have yet to even stir."

Correct he was in that they were not the only ones that had floated in the water. Jaras, Velani and Dwyvaris were the same with their faces raised in such a way that they could not possibly drown. Strange, how the demon had not yet killed them. Which meant it wanted something. Or that they were important in some way.

All of a sudden the remaining three begun to stir. Velani's eyes fluttered open first, though her soft features scrunched in confusion. She suddenly lashed out of the pond searching for her bow and quiver. Jaras was the second, though he merely yawned, spreading his arms out before scratching the back of his neck and peering dimly around the hall. Finally was the dwarf, but at the first feeling of water he thrusted his arms out and begun to paddle, with tiny bandaged stumps kicking the air for purchase.

"Stone, stone, stone! Cursed stone, get me out! I can't swim!" he cried, gasping for breath.

Velani rolled her eyes and wrenched him up to his buttocks by the scrunch of his jerkin. "The lake's not even knee-deep, dwarf. Not even rats could drown in this."

His arms immediately stopped waving. He squinted down and nodded. "Suppose it was an easy mistake on my part. My apologies, m'lady."

Jaras languishly eyed the hall before a scowl darkened his face. "Lass, where are we? I could've sworn we were in a tunnel before…"

"It seems we were all ensnared by a demon," Solas explained.

"A demon?" Velani swiftly nocked an arrow. "Where is it now then? Show yourself, demon!"

As if waiting for an introduction, an earth-shattering screech pierced the sanctum. The terrible scream tore the temple apart, crumbling pillars, statues and columns. Ruptures above split into further cracks, causing the golden roof to hail down in thick clusters, splashing dents into the lake.

From below the water ascended a presence carrying drenched wings. It rose to tower over them all, concealing everything in its profound tenebrosity, as poised as a phantom driven to the beyond only to return a god. It swayed over the water, masses of linen wraps draping brittle bones caught over torchlight as pale clayed weave. Shackles clinked at its heels, while mist floated eerily over the surface like a film ready to conceal its escape.

Still, there was an essence of familiarity to it that had Lahris' legs sloshing forward, only to be faltered by Solas' hand catching her own. He coaxed her backward until he was in front of her, protecting her, with his staff cast waringly out.

He does not wish to kill the demon, she realised. But he will if necessary.

"What name do you call yourself?" he demanded.

The demon's teeth curled back in disgust. It began to emit a series of squeaks and clicks, before finding a voice they all could understand. "You dare command me?"

"I dare to know what you are! What brought you here? Why do you linger?"

"I am a whisper in the shadow. A tear upon the cheek. A darkness in the mind. I harden the ice in your heart. I am the burn inside your throat. I am the whimper in your voice when you ask death a question, and I am that question's answer." It continued,"From the shadows, I crave the tears of the weak, whimpers of the strong. I thirst for the misery that only pain can bring. I lavish in its juices. I am no fear. But despair, I am named. And you, little elflings, have much to tempt.'

It cascaded over the lake in a flush of yellowed grey. Black goo seeped from its talons and jaws, tainting the water beneath in tar and sludge. Decayed vegetation clung to its great incisors like dung to cattle, scattering its filthy slime. It approached the two elves until there was only a sheen of the tiniest mote of dust between them.

From there it dipped forward, inhaled deep, and cackled. "Yes, elflings. You have much to tempt, indeed. The despair, the agony… it is thrilling."

It will never let me go, Lahris realised, scrunching Solas' tunic so tightly he cringed in pain, throwing his shoulder back to knock her hands loose.

"The other took you from me once, Var'sulahn. She will not take you from me again."

The fear originally settled in her chest was quickly replaced by curiosity. Lahris peeked out from behind her friend's shoulder, watching the sunken sockets under the demon's hood sheen. "Other? What other?"

Despair snapped it's neck to the breastbone. "You do not remember. Even when you rehearsed the haunting in your mind. Do I be kind or cruel, I wonder? For your final moments. Perhaps I shall be a merciful ghoul before your end." Talons uncurled from the demon's claw slowly, while tar dripped from the punctures. In one there was still a nail, dead and flakey. "Do you dare take my bargain, little elfling?"

Solas tapped her feet back with his ankles. His own staff glinted emerald.

When Lahris saw the demon, she saw the hand of Falon'Din himself beckoning her to taste divinity. Her own hand reached out subconsciously. She needed to know how her marks came to be. She needed the missing fragment of her past if she was ever to feel whole again. It was a risk and she took it in a leap.

Lahris saw her own horror and surprise reflected in Solas' face, but before he could turn to stop her, she had shoved him aside and taken the offering freely. Black slime coated her hand in a coldness that could rival an iced sea. It clung to her like acid, searing her flesh in flushes. Then, her entire world sunk into the pits of Despair.

For a heartbeat she was in utter blackness. Strangely, she found herself devoid of any fear. Cleansed of all emotion, in fact, save for a nip of curiosity and a hand that faintly burned. The elvhen took a single step forward. The blackness gradually receded within the glow of a Fade being. Back in the rotunda with the old glassed eluvian behind her, she saw from the tunnel her own frozen body, as it was gradually layered in an ice that would entomb her for centuries.

Cushioned in the lap of a spirit, the benign creature with a complexion of a flushing dawn soothed her mind to sleep in light caresses of hair and cheek. As the essence of winter lapped the warmth from Lahris' vision of her neck, a tear wet her nose, though even that solidified into a crystal droplet.

Lahris' own heart pulsed suddenly and she cradled the area with a hand, swallowing thick. The spirit. It was the one that comforted me. But why has the demon shown me what I have already seen?

As her ghostly vision's eyes fluttered for the last time, an exceptional phosphorescence ensnared the chamber. Hidden in the depths of her robe, the mirrored gem that could only be described as her shard illuminated in a foreign shine of lilac. Locks of white-gold slipped down the spirit's shoulders when it dipped to see what caused such a wonder. It's fingers rested on the stone and the chamber instantly flashed in an array of bright, white light.

At that moment the dreadful truth hit Lahris. As did the anguish of a pain that was not meant for her to bare. Lahris gasped for breath as her heart pounded and laboured in her chest. Spasms of burning heat rippled from fingers to knuckles, to wrist to elbow, all of which were readily being consumed by a lilac radiance like a star devouring a comet.

Lahris tore her gaze from her arm to the spirit, where she found the mirrored actions, expressions, hurt. In that instance she was the spirit and she was being ripped apart.

In just one touch the shard had sought to guzzle her power though not just in soul but in material body as well. The spirit lurched to her knees. The last of her light beamed into the case. In a final flash its fate had been sealed and Lahris was thrown from the clutch of Despair, panting heavily in the murky water of Dirthamen's Inner Sanctum.

When Solas caught her chin he saw for the first time true vulnerability. Pale arms trembled when cupped to her chest. Eyes wide with terror and tears that threatened to fall had she not sniffed them away. For so long she had fought the artifact she had stolen. Blamed it for the curse she bore. When in actuality the spirit caged inside was as much a prisoner to its torment as she was. Only she had the chance to walk Thedas with the sun at her back and the moon at her behest. Pleasure and laughter and joy were still to be hers if she tried. The spirit knew only pain, all on the action of a careless empathetic whim to keep her calm in her most dire time.

Another burden to add to my list.

"The trade has not yet completed, Var'sulahn," taunted Despair, cracking its fore-talon back in come-hither. "As promised, I granted your final ties to this ruin. Now you must grant me your soul as boon and payment."

Solas growled. "Her soul was never part of the bargain!"

"It never needed to be. She willingly gives it." Despair's voice wormed its way eagerly into her mind. Lahris clasped her hands over her ears, yet even that did not end its infernal ridicules. "Remember the screech of your sibling when your lord wrenched the heart from his chest and threw the orfice to the lessers! Remember the blood pooling from your dead elder's throat when her lungs were severed and gnawed. Hear the screams of the champions that died for your life. I have to ponder, was it worth the sacrifice? So you could pass through the new lands cowering in fear? Would you do the People proud? Would you do Dirthamen proud?"

Her eyes flickered open upon the utterance of her god. The demon, oblivious, continued. "You are the unintentional phantom of malice, it is true. Fate has destined you down this path, but you readily consume it. Even now. The deaths hang heavily around your neck, little elfling. I can almost taste the agony. Let me lessen the noose. Let me feed on your burden and grant you peace on the other side. Let me be your salvation."

Her focus shifted from the sanctum to her wrist: drenched, cold and shaking against Solas' furred sash. From the sleeve peeked silken embroidery. The material of a skirt or cowl faded at the seams with blood. The blood of my people, she thought. The last of my people. Dirthamen still has his plan for me. Dying here is not it.

A sudden surge of courage hidden in the depths of her being sprung free like wildfire. Var'sulahn may have caused the deaths of a hundred, but they died in the line of duty. They died for the plan of her lord to rise to effect. Her brother died to continue their legacy. If she perished in the sanctum, then their sacrifices would be for nothing. She was a survivor and she was alive.

"You call yourself Despair," she muttered, finding courage in the arms by her waist and the company the sanctum kept. Even when speaking her Dalish companions had gathered their quivers and nocked their bows. Even the dwarf had found safe harbour in a patch of mire, nicking from crumbled slabs the degraded hilt of an axe.

Using her staff as a cane, she gingerly stepped into the demon's shadow. The staff's crown glistened in wild, bustling magic, blushing her soft cheeks and stern scowled lips in the magic of her shard. She drew in a shaky breath and clamped her weapon's end into the floor, cracking the stone beneath her feet. "You may think you are cunning, but you know very little of my grief!"

In a whip of metal the demon jerked away. Goo sprung from its knuckles in a scream. It's severed talon flung from the root to plop into the watery abyss bubbling beneath its toes.

"You will not take me, Despair!" Lahris roared, striking the demon once more with a lash of soaring ice.

The demon hurled away from the elvhen mages, narrowed its sights on Jaras and dipped its rags to flare his way. Another strike caught it by surprise, causing a high-pitched shriek to shudder the very temple as it floundered to the water. "You will not take them, either!"

Despair settled on the far end of the quagmire and raised its oozing talons in prayer. Near suddenly the lake shattered in many decayed corpses. Some elvhen. Some simple Dalish, and some dwarves. Dwyvaris' caravan guards, no less. Built in sturdy, leather cuirasses rimmed in lyrium alloys. Of course they were the first defence of the Fade ghoul. They were likely to be the last, either.

As the reanimated corpses cracked into formation, Despair bayed his prey come with curled claws."Then," it chuckled, "let us begin."

Before anyone could react, Despair's cruel dark magic was flung high above. The ceiling rumbled once again. Earth broke beneath them all as pelts of stone pounded the ground into craters, splitting the banisters into thousands of tiny pieces.

The elves and dwarf dashed away. Powder drifted through the air and covered the water in sand. It took time before the cloud dust settled, and when it had, lain in front of them all was the demon's devastation: ceiling fragments that ripped the sanctum into two parts. The mages on one half, the Dalish on the other.

The animated ghouls seemed to react to movement, charging forward in sluggish drags of leg and foot when the mages begun to cast their spells. One had no arm for its bow and instead held it high as a blade ready to pierce their eyes. On the opposite side, the Dalish nocked arrow after arrow into their gnarled skin, piercing chest and shoulder, worm-soaked gut to sagging rot.

With the mages, the air sparked to life in magical battle. Bolts of frost and Fade encompassed the hall in a fiery display of will and power. Lahris' hands danced across each other in a cast of white and blue. The cold further embraced her magic, each spell growing in intensity and shine.

Then, as the corpses groaned into the depths of the murk, never to arise again, the drowned mounds of dust from the ceiling morphed into soggy tempests of sand. Long arms bent inwardly at the elbows, gaunt fingernails clawed at the world with mauls wide and gaping. It was then that Lahris realised that it was not dust but ash. Ash of the once fallen sentinels within the tower renewed in twisted malice. Ash that had hardened into thick bones and stony skulls twisted around flaming bodies.

"Ash wraiths!" announced Solas. "Be ready. These are not the simplest of foes! Watch their movements. They favour surprise."

Though Lahris' wave of ice took effect on the wraiths, hardening their bodies at the waist down, it did not slow their onslaught. Snapping their bodies from the frozen water, they dashed over the surface like slim eels, far too nimble to catch. The remaining spells reflected off their bony exteriors in glints of light. Calloused, twisted hands shielded their hearts of flame.

In one swift glide of his staff, Solas had harnessed the energies of the Fade, using its essence to tear open a rift in the air. The rift was a temporary tear in the Veil, one that slipped out long, glowing tendrils to smother the demons in a binding hold. The ash wraiths howled out as the swirling vortex sucked them back into the centre of the hall. There, their arms were ripped. Their flame left exposed. The spells Lahris cast finally hit their mark. Fire thought eternal quickly extinguished from the wraiths in a blinding wisp of wind. Their bones clanked to pieces, turning into a mound of fine powder floating on the lake.

However, in the midst of battle she had not seen Despair's slow approach until it was too late. In the demon's seething wake it caught her underarm and pulled her sleeves taut. It's other claw whipped across her chest, fraying the cotton and tinging the colour in dark crimson. Her blood.

Lahris shrieked out in agony. She threw her arms out to close the wounds while her knees bent in submission. Pain flared over her shoulder-blade, waist and spine. Blood sluiced into ruptures of burning flesh like liquid rubies. Each time she screamed, the demon's mirth grew tenfold.

Then finally it chuckled. Its skeletal toes barely grazed Dirthamen's alter, but in its descent cursed enchantments wafted from its being like poisonous fumes of rotten cabbage. It's robes folded and flickered as it met the water. It's shackles rattled in an outward gesture. A claw ready to be taken.

"You should not have disobeyed me," it said, it's tone as deep and pitted as the under-croft. "Cease your fighting, little elfing. I have already won. Come. Know what it is truly like to face death."

He was right. All around her, her companions were amid a battle they could not beat. Upon a high ledge, Velani's arrows bounced off the ashwraiths and their armour, for their sanded flesh has grown too thick to pierce. The stone-serving dwarf swung his axe back and forth, but as the demon bodies piled, more emerged from the lake.

And Solas. The mage called out to her. Begged her to stay strong while he fought against the growing hoard. A moment later, she heard it. A cry of pain so similar to her own yet not as equally devastating. It was worse.

Lahris stared at the open gap between the debris splitting the sanctum. In the slash of a blade Jaras' jerkin was torn free from his person, lashed into severs. He collapsed onto his knees in a display of clenching fists, trembled arms and ragged breath.

Var'sulahn had once been told that time could never truly be controlled enough to slow, merely still for seconds. The thought crossed her mind, as in that moment, she was sure Despair had taken time from her purposefully, if to watch the slow death of her most beloved friend, and family.

She tore through her bloodied rags. Shrieked when her elbow swiftly popped. If pain could only have been so blinding to shield her crying eyes from the gradual decline of an undead dwarven axe eagerly gnawing the air to split his ribcage in two.

She screamed, helpless, as the tip sliced into his body; sunk deep into bone. His wails twisted her stomach, tore the last shred of willpower she had. Lahris sobbed, mouthing his name for no sound slipped from her throat. She could taste only bile - spit only the last of her pleas before succumbing to utter shock.

Her ears deafened on the final crack. Then, Lahris Elgar'shiral fell silent.

Pain was no more. Despair was no more. There was only numbness. A numbness that deafened her ears to all but her heart. Even that barely uttered a whisper. She merely stared, lips slack and cheeks frighteningly white, at a crumbling mass of elven flesh, soon concealed deep in lashing water.

A queer coldness fluttered across her chest. A dreamy, ethereal coldness, one that had her mind feathery light yet also in a misty haze. At first she recognised only little. Dirthamen's ancient sanctum had seemed to become a world of mist and shadows in a matter of heartbeats, with a presence upon her, watching her, though not truly there. Here and there the mist gave way to visions, some small and clear as if glassy reflections, slowly parting to a truer clarity. There was no sound to speak of, only bright, wavering images. The tragedy of her friend had caused a reaction. Due to it, she was seeing through the eyes of an oracle.

Eastward she saw mountains parting to erect the very foundations of Skyhold, before the shemlen masonry had morphed the vivid beauty of the past: hacked the great towers into rubble, and sucked the very magic from the polished monuments to feed the hunger of their mages. Westward she spied uncharted plains, nameless lands, pale-white dunes, places yet unexplored. Northward a great river lay beneath her, ribboning a land of groves and forests. A place stood over hissing waterfalls and beneath creeping cloudcover. A place that crowned the sky with spires, jutting through even the highest pinnacle of blue to reach the sun. The vision shifted down to the land beneath the city, to a long pond only clear in vibrant waves. From across the pond a shadow begun to walk, with twin birds perched over stern pouldrons, and a cane so unlike her own, dazzling the faintest purple. Mist from her reality slowly enclosed them, with only his cane shining like a lantern caught in an eye of fog.

Lahris matched his ghostly steps, feeling the lake part as if nature itself owed her fealty. They ceased drifting five metres apart. Close enough to feel a lingering attachment that seemed to draw each of them together, yet distant enough to cloak their faces in mist. The masked man reminded her of Solas' fresco. Of the painted mage that held the daunting depiction of her most lost god. Perhaps, in a way, he might have been him, for from the masked man's presence had come whispers. Secrets that her ears could not decipher, no matter how far they stretched. All Lahris could do was stand before him, breathless, as his light expanded before her very eyes to swallow her world.

In reality, Dirthamen's Inner Sanctum erupted in the light of her lord. No presence of the Fade could hide from such a power, and in the presence of an ancient divine, could only be torn asunder.