The demon surged forward, leaving a scorched path in its wake. Poising its arms high above his head, it launched itself at Solas. He dived to the side, skirting the demon's impending attack by seconds. He quickly snatched a staff lying across a lifeless body to his left; its owner would have no use for it any longer. He channeled his mana into the staff, bringing it to life and faced the demon once more.
The staff itself had a static aura; dull pulses of electricity ran down its length in currents, giving off small sparks the moment Solas ignited it. In a sweeping gesture he unleashed a frost spell upon the rage demon, encasing it in a wall of ice. Whipping the base of his staff around, he fired two consecutive bolts of lighting, shattering the demon into little frosted fragments. A dull ache of guilt burned in Solas' chest as he observed the fragments dissipate, the demon's essence dissolving into nothing. It had not deserved this.
The bellowing cry of a group of Templars caught his attention next. He spun away from the racket and ducked behind the edge of the nearest building. He watched as the hoard of Templars charged down the steep path towards two fleeing mages. The metallic taste of mages' magic and Templar's nullification spells being thrown between the two factions was suffocating. The clang of metal against staves rang through the intersection, and Solas knew the fight had turned against the mages. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of a sword piercing flesh and strangled cries reached Solas' ears. His jaw clenched as the snow a few feet away from where he was crouched was painted with bright red splatters.
When the voices died out, Solas moved from his place of hiding and crept down what he expected to be a deserted path; carefully side stepping the fresh corpses, he tried not to let his gaze linger for too long on their still forms bleeding out. As he slunk around the corner of the street, he ran into one of the Templars wiping blood off his blade. The staff at Solas' back suddenly felt like dead weight as the Templar's eyes narrowed in on it.
"Apostate!" He called out to his unseen brethren, dropping the bloodied rag he had been using to clean his sword and raised it, shifting into an offensive stance.
"I am no threat to you. There is no need for senseless bloodshed." Solas commanded, lifting his hands so they would be in plain sight for the Templar.
"Unfortunately for you, I don't care. All mages are now apostates, and apostates are enemies of the Chantry. A crime punishable by death."
The Templar lashed out with his sword but Solas was too agile, easily evading the swing by fade stepping around the man.
"I will take no pleasure in killing you, but I will to defend myself should you continue to attack." Solas threatened coolly from behind him.
It only seemed to enrage the Templar more, and the man let out an aggravated cry before spinning around and attempting to dispel Solas' magic.
Raising two fingers to his temple, Solas centered his mana. In a bright burst of radiating energy, the Templar was blasted backwards before he could reinforce his nullification onto Solas. The Templar was sent careening into a few barrels and crates that had been clustered around the outside of the nearest building. Solas summoned a jagged rock, pulling it from the fade and throwing it against the Templar, and pulverizing him against the building. The Templar did not get up. Solas bolted down the street to avoid having anyone else jump out and fight him. He didn't get very far before skidding to halt in the town square.
To his misfortune, the Templar's troupe heard the dead Templar's warning; they sanctioned off every alley way and exit out of the village. Solas scanned the area quickly doing a count. Ten.
"Surrender now spellbinder, you are helplessly outnumbered. We will give you a swift death." One of them ordered, unsheathing his broadsword as he stepped forward.
Solas did not have time for this.
He whirled the electrical stave above his head in a circular motion, drawing upon the energy of darkening sky above. Static was tangible in the air as he thrust his staff down harshly into the ground, summoning lightning to rain down from the sky. The bolts were immediately attracted to the metal armored uniforms of the Templars, like magnets.
Solas weaved through the electrical storm, past the Templars being electrocuted and dropping like flies, and down the path that led out of the village. He did not look back.
The directions in his missive were useless now. All the passage ways and tunnels in Temple had collapsed in the explosion, leaving climbing over blown out walls and fallen pillars as the only way of maneuvering throughout the place. Twice his cloak caught on jagged rock before it ripped. He abandoned it all together when it set aflame passing a fire that had not yet burned itself out.
He scaled down the inner sanctum wall to the center point of destruction. Burned corpses lay strewn about, sticking out at odd angles, contorted in agonizing poses where they were seared from existence.
A giant crystalized rift was situated in the remnants of what was once a grand hall connected to the hole in the sky. Jagged pieces of rock were growing and shrinking from the rift. He watched it as he moved to the center of the room. Light from the rift illuminated the entire room, casting eerie shadows on the fallen rock.
Immediately he began to search for the orb. Once it was back in his possession, he could begin to repair his past and erase these nightmares of the future.
He swiftly knelt beneath the ever changing rift and tore into the ground. His fingers scavenged the rubble for his stolen foci, slowly becoming blackened with ash and dust. His search grew frantic as he found no signs of the orb. He expanded his search; spreading out to all corners of the hall with chapped hands, burned from sifting from still scorching rubble. Occasionally he wiped them on his breeches, smearing soot across the soft green fabric.
Solas could find no traces of his orb. A horrible realization dawned on him; the orb had been dormant for too long and exceeded the threshold of power, rendering it entirely unstable and deadly. Unlocking it must have destroyed it, unleashing all the power stored inside instead of simply opening it. The result was the expulsion of excess energy, the explosion. Everyone caught in its radius perished in its detonation, including Corypheus. There were no signs of the Magister either, but any of the twisted and blackened bodies melted into the ground could have been his.
Despair sunk in as Solas fell to his knees, defeat lodging itself in his chest. He scooped up a handful of ash that could have easily been that all remained of his foci and let if fall slowly from his fingers. Without the foci, he would never be able to command enough power to enter the fade and sunder the Veil. He would never get the chance to redeem his greatest failure, his most regrettable mistake. He watched as the dust slipping out of his hand got carried away by currents of wind being whipped up by the ever shifting rift hovering twenty feet above his head. No sooner had all the ash escaped his clutches did Solas clench his fists and slam them into the ground, pent up frustration manifested as magic and blasted away larger chunks of crumbled stone from where he knelt.
He had failed again.
The swollen rift suddenly expanded, bleeding out energy from the fade. Beams of light lit up the defiled hall in scattered places and ragged green crystals burst from the ground.
Demons.
Despair spawned all the around the room, as if drawn to Solas' suffering and understandably so; the Veil was thin, fractured, and broken, feeding off nuances of this world more strongly than ever before, naturally spirits across the veil would be more susceptible to the lure of his emotions.
Beams of frost erupted simultaneously from the five demons that had been pulled through, too tempted to resist his lingering anguish. He weaved through their icy rays with grace, silently positioning himself in a better, more defensive position. Walls of fire erected themselves between the demons, their wailing cries rose in terror as fireballs summoned by Solas collided with their brittle forms. They began to dissipate as the heat and flames engulfed their figures.
As the last demon's essence was absorbed by rift, Solas found his way back to the center of the room. As he surveyed his handiwork, an odd glimmer caught his eye. Something was gleaming from a pile of ash just a few steps away beneath the rift, the dying flames dancing across a reflective surface in the firelight.
Delicately, he plucked the damaged artifact out of the rubble and cradled it in his hands. Upon closer inspection, Solas realized it was a piece of jewelry, a fragment of an amulet, a glistening oval emerald inlaid between two Silver Dragons. It was cool to the touch; much too cold for a stone that just been laying in a pile of smoldering embers. He turned it over in his hands, admiring how skillfully it had been crafted. He detected the faintest traces of magic lying dormant beneath the stone's exterior. He rubbed away as much dirt and soot as he could, in an attempt to restore some of its lost splendor.
Common sense told him to throw it back, what use would an old, elegant charm be to him? He could sell it for a sovereign or two, but he had no need for personal wealth. He could get any of the supplies he needed through his network of spies.
It gave off no extraordinary power that he could detect from his simple inspection, nor did it offer any solution as to how he was going to repair the tear thundering menacingly above him. Another valid reason to toss it back to burn.
But the irrational part of him, the part that desperately clung to the hope that the nightmare he awoke in could be undone; that this world, this future, was capable of creating something of value, caused him to pocket the trinket safely in the lapel beneath his light layer of armor.
He turned his attention to the rift above him. He stalked around it, observing it from every angle, pushing his aura out to test just how stable it currently was. He tested its fluctuations and found a weak spot. He could feel the charge of his mana intensifying being so close to the raw fade. His mind began to race. Maybe there was another way. There was a possibility he could draw upon the fade's energies seeping through its open wound in the temple, and channel enough power from the weakened Veil to seal the rift. If the rift could be sealed, it would cut off the power supply to the ever expanding breach in the sky. Its connection would be severed and the massive tear would snap back upon itself, sealing shut.
Hypothetically.
It was still the best plan he had.
Drawing deep into his mana pool, he unleashed a current of magic, reaching out to make contact with the rift. It hitched, and began fighting him for dominance. Within seconds the unstable connection severed itself, instantly rejecting his control. His magic snapped like a whip, ricocheting back to him in painful pulses. He was forcibly thrown aside from the impact, crashing into far side of the room. He slid down the wall into a pile of dully burning embers that seared his exposed skin. He groaned and pulled himself up out of the ash and dirt, furrowed his brows at the taunting challenge before him, and tried again.
And again and again.
After the tenth attempt at trying to connect with rift, after the tenth time the energy jolted up his arm and shocked his body, after the tenth the time it threw him against what was left of the cold stone walls in Temple Hall, did he finally concede defeat. The bruises he could feel blossoming under his pale skin from stood as proof of that. The rift would not stabilize to his magic. He needed the orb to bridge the connection. And it was destroyed.
Green light erupted again from the gaping vortex high above the temple, sending down another massive wave of flaming rocks across the castle and its surroundings. Demons were born from the contact and began ravaging the hall. Solas took one last look at the smaller changeling rift that began to spout more beams of light and crystal, and fled through the half caved in tunnel leading off the right of the sanctum. He mind blasted demons that out of his way, in an attempt to avoid wasting his mana in combat. There were simply too many to fight off. The Temple was now crawling with them; demons were slipping out of crevices in the walls, falling through broken ceilings panels, and dragging themselves out of fissures in the floor.
Solas picked up his pace, evading shards of ice and swipes of claws as he continued to meander his way through the collapsed secret passageway he vaguely recalled from his missive. Turning down the last long hallway he broke into a flat outsprint, casting carefully timed barrages of energy behind him to knock back the demons hot in pursuit. He slammed his palm into the hidden door on the wall and stumbled out into the cold, brisk mountain air. His continuing momentum caused the snowy ground beneath his feat to give out, sending him tumbling down a sharp decline in small avalanche.
He landed in heap of white that blanketed his entire form. He lay there for a few minutes, catching his breath and shivering. He flexed his hands, checking to see if anything had been broken in his unexpected plunge. No pain flared as he rolled his wrists, shoulders, and ankles, which mean no major damage and it was safe for him to stand. He softly groaned as he sat up, weak from emptying his mana reserves in the temple, and brushed off the dusting of snow that had settled on his chest and shoulders.
His head fell into his hands, his fingers rubbing concentric circles around his temples as he contemplated his next move. He was no longer safe here, that much was obvious. The Templars were on a killing spree, cutting down anyone they suspected of being endowed with magic. His agents would be at risk even staying to spy on their developments if he kept them stationed in Haven.
There was nothing left for him here. He would have to devise a new plan and find a new source of power. Who knows how long that would take….or if it was even possible? He resigned himself to flee for the time being, traveling would clear his head.
He was about to stand when he heard voices.
He snapped his head in the direction of the noise and immediately dove back down into the snow pile. Soldiers were making their way towards a crumbled stairway leading to what was left of one of the main entrances to the Temple, directly next to the snow heap Solas was occupying.
Inquisition, Solas surmised based on their lack of Chantry commissioned armor.
A soldier in light leathers with a green hood that masked most of his face spoke first.
"The Knight-Commander said—"
"S'not the Knight-Commander anymore, Jim, just Commander." A gruff, hardened voice cut him off.
"Right. I keep forgetting that." The man apparently named Jim replied, somewhat abashed.
"Don't let him hear you slip up an' call him that, you'll put him in a bad mood, bad place. Anyway, wot was he sayin'?"
"Ah, yes! The Commander said to pull back after our sweep, we're to regroup and get a headcount. Something about not wanting to waste men in places they're not needed. Haven's a wreck, it needs better fortifications."
They strode right past where Solas lay, hidden and frozen. When they had climbed a fair amount of stairs, Solas emerged from his snow covered hiding spot. Now was a good time to make a break for it.
"How many they got posted on the prisoner?"
"You mean the woman that fell out of the rift?"
Solas stopped dead in his tracks.
"Yeah, still alive?"
"Barely. That mark on her arm or hand or whatever…it's killing her." Jim's voice dropped lower, forcing Solas to edge closer to the stairs to eavesdrop, hiding in the shadows.
Jim continued, uneasily," I overheard Lady Nightingale talking to the Seeker before I left to find you, they were saying every time the breach in the sky expands, that weird mark of hers grows…neither of them know how much longer she'll live. She's fading, fast."
"If she dies we can't put 'er on trial."
"You think she did it?"
"S' only survivor. Who else could've been?" The gruff soldier stated solemnly, "The Divine's death needs'be avenged."
Someone survived the blast.
Someone bearing his stolen mark that synced with the breach.
Impossible… no one but him should have been able to sustain the anchor and yet….
Solas' mind began to race once more as he swiftly left the perimeter of the Temple with a renewed sense of purpose, making his way down the path back to Haven. He had to see this "prisoner" for himself, if the mark truly anchored itself to this mysterious woman, there might be away to extract it from her.
Perhaps not all hope was lost.