Chapter 1: The Wolf Who Hunts Alone
This time he watches.
He didn't watch before. He couldn't last time, he was already asleep. He never saw it all fall down, slipping, sliding down towards the stone. He killed the dreams and they all fell together. Faded and free, but they never saw each other again.
But this time he watches the sky. He has to watch, waiting and weary. Everything is falling upwards, backwards becoming forwards. The sky is apart and familiar, the curtains drawing back but he can't see on either side. He can't see, he can't, if he looks it all falls down again. He can't look and I can hardly feel her. But she's still there, holding him up, waiting, watching and weary. Weathering in the storm, the faithful flooded and washed away. A tiny thread tied together to the corners of the Fade, floating on an endless ocean of song.
She already forgave him, she already knew. The game is over, and the king and pawn return to the same box.
The Veil is shattered. Its cut crystal fragments are falling across Thedas, and the Fade is flooding through. He can finally feel it properly again, the magic is all flooding back. But he did not smile, because the world is burning.
He waits, watching the chaos of the unstrung Fade wreak havoc on the world around him, until it's far too late for him to halt its course. Solas tears his eyes away from the merging green sky and back down to her. He would surely have collapsed from the effort of bringing down the Veil, if she had not been there to stop him from falling over. Solas blinks and tries to smile at her, but he cannot. He had hoped a tiny insignificant hope, that when the Veil fell and the Fade was free again, he could finally see her spirit for what she truly was. What he had always glimpsed from her, shining brightly through the Veil, disturbed only by the passage of her magic like the wind.
That was before she started to die.
It began happening nearly a year ago. His plans had been in motion and progressing well, the Qunari had been crushed, and the Tevinter slaves had been freed, rebelling against their masters. The elven artefacts they stole so long ago had been returned to him. His spies had reported whenever they could of her actions, where she went, who she was seen with, what she was researching, but the information was always scarce and often hardly useful. She had continued to seek him out in the Fade, not always, for she knew he would not allow it, but she seemed to keep hoping every time she dreamt that she could convince him otherwise. She left clues and questions for him to find, on paths they often found themselves on, asking about the Blight and the Old Gods. She convinced spirits to communicate with him, to close the gulf between them. Her magic grew stronger, her spirit shining brighter than ever as she began striding down new paths of magic, soon outstripping the capabilities of any Dalish Keeper or First in memory. By day and night she experimented, gathered information, formulated theories, all to convince him to stop his plans.
Then one day she stopped trying. She began to actively avoid him. From the reports he had gotten, she had seemed weaker as if suffering from disease, but her body was physically healthy. After that the reports stopped, and Solas realised that she had allowed them to do so before then. He received no more messages and the clues never came again. Worse, her spirit began to dim and become quiet in the Fade, growing darker and colder until could not resist searching for her, to try to understand what had gone wrong, to talk to her. And still, she avoided him.
Now, what was once a marvellous spirit had almost faded away completely, an echo of what she should be. He wound her hair between her hands, cursing himself, but of course knowing full well that he forged this path. She was dying; from something that he could not understand, but they were all dying anyway. He should not be surprised that she did not want his help. What options had been left? It was this, or let the Blight consume the world.
No. You don't deserve this. You never deserved this. That's why she forgave you. She didn't want you to die. She wanted to help you. Not your goal. You.
Leave here Cole, Solas thought. You cannot help me. Find a safe place to endure the chaos. Let me be.
"He wants to help," she whispered. Her eyes were calm and still, lingering, but not pierce him, but that gaze still drew his heart upwards.
"Compassion is what this world will need the most from now on," he murmured, "It needs to be built on that foundation."
She nodded slowly. She looked down at his arms around her, frowning, "You idiot."
Solas frowned, "I'm sorry?"
"Your hand," she nodded at it, charred by the overwhelming power he had channelled through himself, "You've burnt it."
Solas could not tell if the statement was of genuine concern or an attempt to inexplicably lighten the mood. Both seemed too weak to want to argue the point, it was almost comical at this point. Solas could not smile. The Veil was almost completely gone, a thin green line receding towards the horizon, a whip cracking at the tip to unleash more chaotic bolts of energy over the horizon. The sky rumbled in protest.
"Why did you come here, vhenan?" he asked, "You should be at peace. You should be comfortable."
She looked down at the hard rock beneath them, "You're right, this isn't very comfortable," she said through a parched throat.
She had not lost her humour, despite the affliction riddling her. In fact it seemed drier than it ever had been.
"Could you have stayed away, if it had been you?" she asked. Solas felt his eyebrows knit together, his eyes pulling upwards.
Of course I could not. We are both too stubborn.
Solas shook his head, "What has happened to you?" he asked. There was so little time left. He could hear the hurt in his own voice, as if she were somehow responsible for the disease afflicting her spirit.
She was silent for a long while, watching the Veil fragmenting and falling around them, the green fires burning outward like sunlight through trees, before finally regarding him, "Something broke, I think."
"You gave up."
She stared at him. There were no tears, her face barely moved but even with such a diminished spirit, he could tell that the statement had hurt her. Just a tiny frown and twitch of her eyes as she looked away. It stabbed at him again. She should be more than this. She glanced up at the sky. A bolt of energy struck some distance away with a roar, cascading energy billowing out in all directions at high speed. Solas saw it and shuddered. That firestorm will soon reach them.
"Yes," she said to it.
"Then why come here? Why choose to see me now, after all this?" Solas asked desperately.
She looked away from the burning sky rapidly approaching, down to his chest, then back up. Moving slowly on weak muscles, purposefully, she put a hand gently over his heart, "To pass on a message," she whispered to him.
Something warm and glowing passed from her hand to his chest; Solas almost didn't feel it as the heat of the approaching firestorm grew. New magic. Its light lit the side of her face and brought more life into her eyes for an instant. He shut his eyes quickly, capturing the image in his head and placing it alongside the others as they flooded into his head unwittingly, images of happier, simpler times when he should have known better. He pulled her into a binding embrace and kissed her fully, his unburnt hand lost in her hair as everything grew hotter. It was selfish, but it hardly mattered anymore.
"Solas," she breathed the treasured secret, barely audible above the roar, "Vir suledin, ar'shiral sumeil vhenan, sahlin din'an'melana."
Then suddenly, she pushed him hard. Solas felt himself lose balance and fall backwards, and before he could react, she was on top of him, magic streaming out from her glowing eyes and body, her skin seeming to dissolve from her back towards her front. He cried out in horror, before the world went white and hot and shuddered as he felt himself leave the ground behind.
