Borders and horizon lines
We're alone but side by side
We're yet to dream we're yet to dream
Nothing here is what it seems
Chapter 3
-o-
She dreamt of Halamshiral. The Winter Palace lit up against the backdrop of those countless stars she'd seen while she laid under the canopy of the Exalted Plains. There was somewhere she needed to be. And while she couldn't create a clear thought as to where that exactly was, her legs guided her out of instinct.
Her steps determined, she passed glancing eyes and hidden faces , giggles made behind elaborate fan's. Through the Hall of Heroes whose statues should have seemed recognizable, but turned unfamiliar and odd in passing, and into the guest wing where the tapestries and adornments were not the lavish orlesian decor but something almost alien to her eyes.
Replacing the gold filigree, winged cherubs and beautiful maiden's laden in roses, were intricate knots in wood so polished they could have been embedded with gems, opalescent and swirling up and down in a twisting dance. The archways were tall and curved and layered in fashions that were familiar to Lavellan but not in this particular place.
There were vines of ivy and other twisting growth that climbed the walls into the hall, hanging from the ceiling like emerald curtains, a thing no self respecting Orlesian would let happen when entertaining was not the Winter Palace she remembered. Slowly Lavellan began to realize that the people around her wore no mask as she previously had thought, infact hardly any were human.
They were elves, all wearing heavily intricate vallaslin, among them humans that stood among the throng of elves,who to her horror and surprise also had the snaking lines of the creators tattooed onto their faces.
Her body filled with a sudden urgency as she scanned the hall for the man she came looking for. She'd thought she would find him at the window like she had during the ball, gazing into the room with that air of separation and intrigue.
He wasn't there of course, not even a memory of him, But she knew that in her dream's he was never far away. Leaning against the windowsill , Lavellan placed both her hands at the ends and pushed her will into it, reaching out through that shared memory. For a moment there was silence and she began to believe that he would not come, but then she felt the air shift behind her and she knew he'd heeded her call.
"Vhenan." Though his words were soft, they lacked the concern she wanted to hear. She turned to face him and she saw that haughty prideful look that she'd had a glimpse of in the crossroads all those years ago.
"Solas" She let her voice fill with that longing that she'd felt since the day he'd walked through the Eluvian. His expression faltered a bit and then completely, his posture easing as she embraced him and he her.
"Vhenan, you should not have come here" He whispered softly into the shell of her ear, his hold tightening before he released her.
"Solas, I need.." She started but he shook his head.
"I can not help you now emma'lath, even here it is a risk"
"I dont understand…"
" These things are not as you remember them ,correct" He let his hands fall away from her, and Lavellan was sorry for the loss even if it were just in the fade.
"No they're not,it's as if it were in a parallel world" She reached out to touch a flower on one of the vines and it unfurled , releasing a strong perfume that she recognized from no flora she knew.
"It is the Evanuris,their magic has trapped you in your own mind,a technique used to syphon information without the victim knowing" Lavellan frowned. she couldn't understand out of all the memories to trap her in, why would the Evanuris pick this . That night had been filled with nothing but tiresome politics and running through the huge palace and eavesdropping and fighting ridiculously dressed grand duchess's. They could have chosen a memory of her clan or of skyhold.
She thought of the first thing she'd done when she realized where she was. That night had not just been about orlesian politics. It had been the first night that she and Solas….
"There looking for you!" She nearly shoved him away as if he were had known she'd call out to him the moment she could and she'd not thought about the consciences to contacting Solas.
"Be calm vhenan, they can not find me unless I tell you where I am " It seemed like that last part hurt for him to say, but Lavellan understood as much as she didn't want to admit it. She knew that while Solas could handle a single of the Evanuris, joined by the other three he would need more than just the power that he had.
"I don't need to know then...I won't be a liability to you" She could be brave for him, she could be his spy if need be, she'd endure their tortures.
"You shame me" He held her face and bent to brush his lips softly against hers in a gesture that was not quite a kiss, but sent her heart fluttering in her chest nonetheless.
"If I could pull you through the fade from them to my side I would…" His words struck her and she regained enough of herself to recall the folded parchment that Elgar'nan had given she could recall the curving and fluid characters of the strange ancient elven, so old that none besides those who had lived in the time could still remember their was a small hope in her that held onto the possibility of learning the language, of being able to read and write in her ancestral tongue.
"Elgar'nan is dead" She told him as she leaned into him, hiding her face in her had gone still at her words. There were so many mixed emotions about her meeting the Creator and she did not know which of those would be appropriate to show Solas. Would he grieve the man, or would he be relieved. From Elgar'nan's words they had ended on bad terms, but had seemed close before that.
"He gave me a message that I can't read, I think it might be meant for you" Solas relaxed and stroked her hair pressing her face just a little more snuggling into his chest as if he too did not want her to see his expression.
"It is a sad day indeed then" There was something in his tone that made her pull away to search his grey eyes .Did he truly feel the lost of Elgar'nan, Lavellan wished she knew the history, wished she wasn't just getting glimpses and pieces of the whole story.
"Solas…" She started but was silenced by another kiss, this one heavy and his hands down the length of her arm,he held her fingers slightly as he pulled away.
"Vehnan when the time is right, I will come for you" He let her go completely then and turned his back on her.
"Elgar'nan's message!?" He needed to have it, but there was no way she could recall all of those strange letters enough so to produce a cohesive idea of it in the fade. Solas however did not seem to concerned with it.
"When we are not being watched" His tone was steady but Lavellan noticed that the foreign elvhen participants of her memories had all been paying too close attention to the eyes focused directly on herself, now alone, Solas having vanished was enough to jolt her awake from the magic induced dream.
She awoke, vision bobbing up and down, the road passing underneath her at a quickened gait. She was tied down, securely and tightly. Lavellan knew the feel and smell of halla as well as any other dalish, but never had she ridden one where she'd been slung across it like a sack. The position making her stomach churn in sickness.
Lifting her head she locked eyes with Dirthamen and she knew he'd been the one who had been charged with constructing her dream couldn't hide his discomfort behind that handsome indifferent mask.
"enjoyed the show?" Her quip was filled with venom, the glare she gave him with hatred. The Evanuris had the decency to look embarrassed, lavender eyes looking away from her for a moment. It was small gestures like those that reminded Lavellan that they were not untouchable gods.
"I learned nothing that we had not already known" He was haughty but there was a hesitation behind that arrogance as if the intrusion on her mind had made him uncomfortable. The irony of it did not pass Lavellan by, he must know just how violated she felt.
"bully for you" The Halla moved into a leaping gait to avoid obstacles on her path and Lavellan bounced along on her back, knocking the wind from chest and out her mouth in a gasp .She closed her eyes tight for a moment, trying to hold back from embarrassing herself in front of this person, as her head throbbed and her stomach flipped
"It isn't the Hallah shemlan, Andruil struck you heavily, Ghilan'nain fears you may have swelling in your skull" He kept up with the halla with as much ease as an adult would keep stride with a child
"that's just great" She groaned wanting to reach and touch the swollen knot she felt on the side of her head but the restraints had been done secularly this time and her damaged hand was immobile. The hallah seemed to read her and slowed a little,her trot no longer jostling Lavellan.
"what happened to the others? Did you hurt them" Lavellan gulped, the emotion in her voice breaking as her head spun shut her eyes trying to stop the moving scenery from making her more nauseous.
"That group of false Elvhen that aided the humans? We left them be but what Andruil did was barbaric,those who wear our vallaslins are our charges, to bend his will like she did it was discourteous"
"Discourteous!?" She couldn't believe he'd used such a ineffective word.
"She had him kill those unarmed people, people who they had worked hard to save, he had no control! how can the people have faith in their gods when those gods are so cruel" Lavellan was livid,but riding along strewn across the back of the halla took the bite from her words.
"the shemlan elves wear the blood writing without understand them, it is not any fault of ours if the geas they place themselves under is not what they thought it would be" He didn't seem moved by her anger. It always amazed her how the ancient elves disregarded those of this time so easily. Abelas and his fellow sentinels, even Solas had not seen them as Elvhen.
" The blood marks are a contract, even your lack of vallaslin marks you as Fen'harel's agent, even without my knowledge of your relationship"
"I am no more his agent then you are Falon'din's" She snapped.
"You are either his equal or his disciple, his servant for no shemlan can be the equal of an Evanuris" He looked so offended. It seemed it took little to offend Dirthamen, he was so sure of his place, the place of the Evanuris that he could not fathom Lavellan claiming to be their equal.
" He calls me ma'vahenan. the dread wolf would not call an inferior such"
"The fact that you are his lover proves nothing, you were are an instrument just as any other creature that walks beside another of greater power? the bond I and Falon'din share is beyond that, the Evanuris are the smiths, not the tools"
She fell silent, her head throbbing to hard to argue with someone who was so sure in his creatures lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, when their cities had been built in the sky and through magic, they knew without a doubt who they were and elves like her were still digging through ruins to find themselves. He'd brought up past insecurities that she'd thought she'd conquered, but they had only been buried just below the surface.
They traveled in relative silence after that. Dirthamen stopping only to inspect a plant or gaze at a ruin in a sort of dazed he remembering when the ruin had been something else? could he see grand structures instead of delapidate stone? She could hear Ghilan'nain arguing in their ancient tongue with Andruil possibly about which path they should be taking, dithering a few times when the road forked. At a point they'd come to a full stop about it.
"Can I be sat down, i feel ill" She asked Dirthamen who eyed her cautiously but then relented to her request lifting her smaller frame effortlessly from the hallah and sitting her down on the ground.
"I admit your are most resilient for a quickling" He crouched balancing on the balls of his feet in front of her, Strange eyes inspecting her closing like one would do a strange insect or tiny animal.
"Meet many before the fall did you?" She said closing her eyes again, she hoped that she wasn't suffering this long because of a concussion.
"I did not but the disciples told me of them, I was not allowed outside once my father ascended" He let his fingers touch the knot on her head lightly and she winched a little at the was the first he'd spoke of Elgar'nan to her. She remembered realizing how much they looked alike almost like carbon copies. It was evident that though they did not age Elgar'nan seemed so much older than his son.
"Elgar'nan right! your father, and Mythal is your mother" She thought through the headache that began to fade as Dirthaman let his magic slip across his scalp, a relieved sigh escaped her lips and she leaned into his hand absently.
"No"He slowly removed his hand and watched her again, Her head had stopped throbbing, but whatever magic he'd used to heal her tingled across her skin, causing gooseflesh, it wasn't painful but it was uncomfortable. This hypersensitivity to magic was not something she'd expected to suffer through when the veil came down. With the relief from the headache Lavellan wanted to ask him to elaborate on his simple answer, but her inquiry would have to wait as Ghilan'nain approached,the fabric of her white cloak looking just a pristine as it had when Lavellan first saw them. Infact none of them looked travel weary, while she probably looked like a mange infected nug.
"There is village ahead that seem's to be suffering the effects of the fallen veil. Andruil wants to avoid it, but its road connects to the path that leads up into the mountains and to Tarasyl'an Te'las "
"Why not just go through it. Their just shem's" Lavellan said it before she could keep her snark to herself. It was becoming progressively harder not to mouth off,it was all she had left as a prisoner. Ghilan'nain removed the hood from her head and shook out her hair, the mass of brown curls falling around her face and gave Lavellan a complete look of disdain. This one would not humor her as Dirthamen did.
She spoke rapidly to Dirthamen in ancient elven, words flying too fast for Lavellan to even make out simple pronunciations. Ghilan'nain pointed at her and it didn't take much to figure out who she was talking about.
"She amuses me, and the more I read from her the more I learn about this new world we've walked into" He fell into the trade tongue purely for Lavellan benefit. It was a kind gesture until she realized the implications of his words were.
"You've been reading my mind this entire time?"She should have known better
"It was the path of less difficulty to understand how our world has changed" She supposed she'd have done the same thing if she'd the power. Lavellan remembered swiftly flipping through books or glancing over old scrolls to acquire the knowledge she needed for missions as Inquisitor. Her head now was full of useless information that she'd never need again, lovers notes, squabbling brothers, lost recipes , tombraiders journals. Dirthamen must have had to pick through an awful lot of nonsense. She shrugged
"I don't blame you, I suppose my throbbing head was your doing too"
"Naturally" He didn't even try to lie. "your head injury was taken care of before we left the shemlans camp, But the after effects of my magic were not foreseen, it's very curious your natural aversion to it " Ghilan'nain made a sound somewhere between disgust and impatience. Maybe she was still sour about the blow she'd been dealt. It had been nothing personal, just survival.
"your pet shem can wait Dirth,Falon is against me in this matter, he too wants to avoid the town but we've been in the open to long, we need a base before we are caught unprepared" Dirthamen seems to consider her words, hand resting under his chin in the universal gesture of contemplation. Why would they need to be so cautious? while so far they had not demonstrated any significant power other than Falon'din teleportation and Dirthamen's mind reading, she'd seen what they had been capable of on the battlefield, she'd seen them fly, so why now were they on foot. Lavellan was clearly missing something.
The sound of thunder and bright flashes of lightning lit up the sky in a electric purple hue. The distant shouts of fear and cries of distress was what made Lavellan hop to her feet.
"What exactly is going on?" She'd not tried to look before, but she could see the buildings that made up the houses and huts of the small village,open space that was undoubtedly used for farming had a small assortment of animals roaming . There was another crash of lightning, and Lavellan couldn't stand idlely there any longer, but her path was cut off before she even began to proceed, Falon'din materializing in front of her.
"The human town will be taken care of to make way for our passing" His unsettling pale eyes watched her lazily. She couldn't read anything from them a she matched his stare. His words irked her and as the sky above the town lit up again in that indigo glow.
"Iras ma Andruil?" Ghilan'nain asked for her but Lavellan knew the answer, even with Falon'din blank expression, cold as stone and just as unreadable. She tried to push past him, but he caught her by her shoulder and gave her a powerful shove. She ended up on her bottom , sitting in the dirt like some kind of petulant child.
Standing back up as quickly as she could , her breathing came fast in her anger.
"Let me go...you let that mad woman loose on those people, they don't deserve this" At that exact moment Lavellan understood truly how helpless she actually was..She'd thought that if it came down to it, she could escape, that she had at least that much skill to fight them off if they wanted her dead. But now she knew, she only lived because they will it. That was the power a god had. To be so strong that if they wanted to wipe out a village, a town, a city...they could without a second thought. Had Solas known that too, had he given up on her being alive until that moment in her dreams. The smell of smoke and fire caught on the wind, and she blamed the watering of her eyes on that.
"It was inevitable,the village needed to be culled...regardless of what they were before, they could not control their magic, and thus they've become neither spirit or human." Lavellan sank to her knee's his gaze following as she laid her forehead into the dirt and slammed her fist into it.
"Anduils does them a mercy, if you seek someone to blame, blame your Dread Wolf" Lavellan kept her face in the dirt, body shaking as her tears mixing into the earth, unable to accept more felt someone move past her still form,and then a familiar hand lay on her back in a comforting manner.
"Blood rushing, singing and flaring. To much noise, sky to bright. They try to help, but there are to many things to feel, too much pressure. I can feel it inside me changing, trying to curb the blood that's on fire, we are one now, blood is all we want" Cole's eyes seemed hollow when she looked up into them.
"The spirit's couldn't help the people, the fear changed them into abominations." Lavellan sniffled an unattractive line of muddy tears and snot covering her face. Cole wiped at her face like a good friend.
"A spirit?" Ghilan'nian asked both she and Falon'din turning to appraise Cole, the urge to protect him welled up inside Lavellan and she scrambled to put herself between him and the Evanuris.
"I am Cole" He made it his own purpose to reverse their positions, but his daggers still hung at his back hand at his side.
"But you are a spirit?" Dirthamen said having not moved from his place behind Lavellan. Cole didn't seemed to threatened by them. But if they attacked and killed him, she would never be able to forgive herself.
"I kept feeling a strange presence, but i never imagined a spirit with a soul" He stepped closer to Cole.
"You saw me a few time, but I made you forget...its easier now that theres nothing seperating me and the fade...i can do that...I can make them forget again Nerys" He seemed both happy and a little afraid of that revelation. She'd helped him forgive the original Cole's killer and in the process had made him more human, he'd lost some of his abilities, but now it seemed that they were resurfacing.
"How could a spirit make themselves real without a host body, without a soul to tether them?" Ghilan'nain seemed a little frantic. Lavellan suppose if she understood the mechanics of the fade and spirit possession she'd be just as shocked and awed by Cole as they were, but to her Cole had always been..just Cole.
Falon'din did not seemed impressed beyond the initial point.
"he is an affront to the laws of magic and a being should not exisit" Lavellan noticed the tightening grip on the shepherd's crook that he used as a staff.
"Blood lust rages, needs to quenched before it overcomes her, a huntress needs to hunt, and we need a path"Cole said and that stone face creased into a frown as his thoughts were spoken aloud. Lavellan looked up at Cole in confusion, but the words registered with Ghilan'nain well enough.
The slap was sharp and loud. An angry red handprint, small and perfect was forming on Falon'din's fair skin. Ghilan'nain had to lift her head slightly to look him in the eye.
Again Ghilan'nain spoke in that old language, the words coming angrier than those she spoke to Dirthamen about her. Their was so much passion behind the scold and Lavellan had no doubt that the stories about the Huntress and the Mother of Hallah were anything but lies.
even as she yelled, Falon'din showed no signs of emotion either way. DIrthamen edging forward to break up any fight that would erupt between them. They all hung on such a thing thread of alliance that it was no wonder Solas had to lock them up to stop them from fighting.
"Cole listen, this is important, you need to go to Skyhold and tell them that the Evanuris are coming, tell them to leave, take them to Halamshiral or Val Royeaux anywhere but there. And find Solas or one of his agents,tell him that…" She whispered to him ignoring Dirthamen who turned to watch.
"That your captures have no great power...they are missing their foci" Cole answered for her, nodding.
"And I need you to make me forget...make me forget about this conversation with you, about the eluvians and Morrigan and…. about Solas."Uncertainty was plain on his face. Dirthamen was approaching them, but he'd yet to read her mind, his eyes were to clear.
" Do they hurt you,I don't think I can if they don't hurt you" He said
"You have to do it now, or they'll find something in my head that will lead them to him. it might not be now, but they'll find it eventually, a piece I thought was insignificant but wasn't. And if they find him that would hurt more then when he left" She held his hands tightly and Cole seemed to understand.
"Do you want to forget everything?" He asked and that part of him that was human squeezed her real hand in comfort. She wondered if he thought about Maryden and how he would felt if something happened to her. LAvellan accept that comfort and closed her eyes just as Dirthamen came upon them.
"Not the good parts" She spoke just Dirthamen pushed them apart and again she ended up in the dirt on her butt. She landed with a soft "oof" And glared up at the Evanuris
"A bully just like your brother" She growled and stood, brushing at her pants with her hand as he turned in a circle searching for the spirit that was no longer there, taking only a split second for him to vanish, cloaking himself in the fade and fleeing.
"The spirit has fled" He called haulting the one sided argument that Ghilan'nain was engaged in with the stone wall that was Falon'din.
"He did something to her…" He got entirely to close to her, hands on either side of her skull and delved into her mind like before, a shout of discomfort escaping her mouth in surprise at the sudden intrusion. He pulled back just as quickly frowning.
"Where did the spirit go?" Ghila'nain frowned at them,she couldn't recall the last few minutes. She knew she'd been with Cole but then she couldn't recall where he could have gone in such a short span of time.
"I...I dont know"
"He's taken her mind" Ghila'nain with her large eyes looked ashen.
'Not her mind, her memories...but he didnt take them, they are forgotten." Dirthamen shook his head "it was not just those few moments he's erased. there are no significant memories of Fen'Harel that I can find in her head...they are all blanked in darkness"
"Then she is useless to us…" Falon'din grabbed her by her collar and lifted her a few inches from the ground, her toes dragging slightly in the dirt. Those pale pale blue eyes began to shimmer and she felt the pull of magic. dragging across her skin, inside it and to her felt like someone was pulling on her insides and trying to make them come outside.
"Falon wait...she can still be " Dirthamen said hurriedly.
"as bait, a source of knowledge, even if she doesn't remember, those memories are still there, just locked away by the had not the power to take them, simply mask them"His magic stopped and her insides stopped churning,her feet back on solid ground but his grip still holding her collar tight against her throat. Bringing his face close to hers, his tone was whisper low, but held the same weight of a promised threat.
"How lucky you are shemlan, but the moment you cease to be useful I'll walk your soul to the beyond myself gleefully" He let her go, and Lavellan knew she'd never forget that look of hatred in his eyes. She scowled at Falon'din's back as he
They found Andruil standing amongst the bodies of the deformed human's. She was breathing heavily, Strands of her auburn hair had come loose from its tight plait and she was covered in blood and ichor. She was completely still for a moment, staring at the ground with her bow,a bow that Lavellan had once called her own clutched in her fist. She'd received it as a gift from Kirkwalls ambassadors when she agreed to send aid to Kirkwall for restoration purposes. Where they had gotten it was beyond her.
Non of the bodies that lay on the ground looked remotely human.
She wondered how many small hamlets and villages were experiencing this exact terror. Were cities being overrun with the fearful civilians who, afraid of this new magic, succumb to possession and turned into these...things
"Vehnan" Ghila'nain cried going to Andruil and taking her blood coated hands in her own.
"Come we'll clean you off" She guided the other woman to a nearby well, but a strange look of concentration appeared. They spoke in hushed tone, speaking to themselves in their mother tongue as Ghilan'nain ladled water over Andruil's skin. She seemed to be shocked, a clear look of confusion on her face.
That confusion did not ebb Lavellans hatred for the woman. She'd hurt many before this incident. Lavellan had no doubt that Andruil would have gladly done the same thing with knowledge.
" have you ever had to kill a child shemlan?" Dirthamen was standing close watching the two other women while one cared for the other. It was an odd question, a sudden question, born of her angry thoughts that were probably loud and clear to him.
"Of course not" It was an automatic response but she thought back to all the men and women she'd killed fighting for the inquisition. While none had been children, surely there had been boys who could barely grow beards, or young women, even adolescent mages who simply fought to be free.
"Not small ones"
"magic manifest at all ages, fear and anger to the untrained is far more potent in the children. Andruil hunted abominations, kept them from destroying whole colonies, but never had there been a culling of an entire settlement"
"This is not the first and it will not be the last, the lives that are lost in this transition, they fall upon The dread wolf's shoulders" Falon'din cut through them his staff igniting the bodies that lay around them, ensuring that no wayward spirit would use the corpses the area was awash the brightglow of red , not only from the burning houses but from those that once inhabited them. Soon there would be nothing left of the small hamlet but blackened wood and a distinct unsettling feeling.
"The dread wolf?" Lavellan eyes knitted in confusion. She felt like she was missing half a conversation. Of course if the Evanuris was real then why not the Dread Wolf. But she'd seen no such creature at the falling of the veil. But once she started to think, she could not recall key points from the last few years, like someone had taken to blotting things out with ink.
Whole reasonings became questionable decisions. Why had she done that? What drove her to go here?What made her unable to stop the opening of the Veil when she so clearly knew it was going to happen. Most importantly, why had the Evanuris not killed her yet.
Her expression of bewilderment was clearly written on her face, Frustrated and angered Falon'din grabbed that face roughly between her fingers,intent on telling her what exactly she'd done to herself.
"Yes the dread wolf, or who you so dearly call Solas, you've wiped your memories of him so that we can't find him while he hides, licks his wounds, and prepares to destroy us…" He forced her face to watch the burning bodies.
"And he will go unpunished for his atrocities" The revelation was so strange to hear. A man she'd known for such a short time had loved for even a shorter time(still loved if she were being honest were being honest with herself) had been...no was the dread wolf. The memories she had of him were short and sweet, endearing if mysterious. Though an enigma, she'd never thought his demeanor nefarious. She'd done this to herself to keep him safe out of loyalty and affection, but looking at the burning bodies, she couldn't help the anger that welled up inside her chest. She turned her eyes to lock with the man who held her face, she let that anger show in the depth of them.
"retribution will be sought….but not from you" She slapped his hand away but did not move to leave. She stood, fixed at her spot, staring at the flames.
"it is a mounting list of people he has wronged, there may not be any left when we are done with him"
"He isn't the only one who will be punished for his actions" It was a promise, a vow that she intended to keep. No one here was free of guilt not even herself
Authornote: Sorry for the late,late,late update the holidays were hectic.