Interlude 1

It was the night before they set out to the Hinterlands, and Solas was nearing the limit of his patience.

Solas was not used to being denied information of any kind. He had seen the patterns of people and institutions reiterated countless times, with every conceivable variation on the themes. For centuries, he had been accustomed to being able to take the accurate measure of someone with hardly more than a glance, knowing them and predicting their behavior even better than they themselves. Race, gender, religion, creed—it didn't matter in the slightest. Solas was that experienced at reading people.

And now Solas found himself utterly stymied by the mystery that was Aaron, and it galled him to no end.

At first, Solas had been content to wait, but only because he'd expected that Aaron's true identity would be common knowledge within days. Yet here they were, on the eve of their first expedition, and still no answers were in sight. There were simply too many possibilities and too little evidence to narrow them down. Solas' curiosity was, as Varric had put it, eating him alive.

Worse yet, all his efforts to surreptitiously observe Aaron's sleeping mind in the Fade had failed. It was not something he would normally do, but frustration coupled with his burning desire to know had overridden his ethical considerations and his fear of being caught.

However, even in the realm of the Fade, Aaron proved elusive. Aaron apparently did not sleep very often, or perhaps his dreams were different somehow. Solas' search for him in the Fade had been in vain. He was a mage, his dreams should have been a beacon in the Fade—yet not even the faintest wisp was stirred by his presence.

Finally, after he could wait no longer, Solas dismissed all of the subtle wisps and spirits he had used to spy, and went in search himself.

Under other circumstances, Solas would have enjoyed exploring Haven in the Fade.

The village was quite old, by human standards. It had sufficient time to truly etch itself into the realm of the Fade, layered with the echoes of many generations of cultists that had slowly grown more corrupted with each generation. The village still thrummed with the violence of the purge that the cult had ultimately orchestrated against its parent sect, vibrating with the terror and bloodlust like the plucked string of a lute. It harmonized and mingled with the more recent massacre, the extinction of the cult ten years ago at the hands of a grim, noble young Warden, a shapeshifting witch, a snide golem, and a younger version of their very own Leliana. For all that the human had barely aged physically, this ghostly impression seemed like a completely different person, but that was the subjective nature of the Fade's recollection.

Diverting, but irrelevant to my current task, Solas thought as he watched the spirits reenact the battle between the cultists and the Warden's group.

With an effort not unlike refocusing one's eyes on a close object, Solas' surroundings shifted to the Haven of the present day, as the Fade saw it. Different aspects of the village were emphasized and exaggerated, seeming to warp in space as well as time, the landscape shaped by the perceptions of those who now lived here and the changes they had made. The difference was so drastic, the village was hardly even recognizable as being the same one that stood just a decade prior.

Solas expanded his senses and began his search. He would overturn the very stones if necessary to find where Aaron was hiding.

Solas found the dreaming minds of many people, none of whom even noticed his presence, neither mages nor the mundane. None of them were his quarry, and he moved into the Fade's rendition of the Haven chantry. That had been the first place Solas had checked the nights before, but Aaron's sleeping mind had never been in the building he had spent nearly all his waking hours in. It was strange indeed.

Solas descended into the musty dungeon once again, his head circling all around, trying to find some sort of clue, some sort of discrepancy between the dungeon of the Fade and the real one.

With a jolt, he realized something was indeed out of place. His attention focused on a section of wall, completely nondescript save for a curious patch of pure black.

That wasn't just a shadow on the wall, it was a hole. It was the size of a single brick; not even the slightest person could possibly have fit through it. The Fade was not a place of logic, however, and doorways and passages had a vastly disproportionate significance to this reality.

Solas pressed his hand against the blackness, feeling a resistance as if the blackness were made of solidified air, and willed himself through.

With a familiar instantaneous shift and momentary disorientation, Solas found himself within a dream that could only be Aaron's.

Solas did not recognize the place, but it was immediately obvious that he was underground, in a Thaig of some sort. Not Orzammar—Solas' knowledge of the dwarves was extremely limited, but he could recognize that much.

Aaron's dream fairly hummed with emotion. It was almost stifling in its atmosphere of loneliness and grief. Even Solas was shocked by its intensity.

It was strange, Solas thought, examining his surroundings. He was unable to find the source of Aaron's distress, or how this place would even relate to those feelings.

The blocky, gray stone buildings were bathed in the light of many-colored glowstones and lamps, which made the place festive and nearly as bright as day. The buildings were all stacked up atop one another in a haphazard manner, forming broad roads as well as tight alleys, with stone bridges and stairways reaching out to connect them. The ground itself was so rolling and hilly that it occasionally gave way to stairs, lending everything a vertical complexity that Solas had seldom seen in other cities. There were brightly colored merchants' stalls and shopfronts set up amongst the many levels, packed with tools, jewelry, books, and intricate textiles. It was obvious that this had once been a trade quarter, a popular place bustling with life and activity.

Yet now it stood silent and empty.

There was not a single person in sight. Not even the facsimiles of people that the Fade produced, and there was certainly no Aaron to be found. On closer inspection, there was a thick film of dust over everything, a soft layer between Solas' bare feet and the cobblestones. It was a patina of age and disuse suggested that no one had been alive here for decades or possibly even centuries. Everything had seemingly been in the process of being packed away, awaiting the return of people, but the people had never come back.

Solas noticed that there were footprints in the gray dust. They were very recent, and seemed to go up the widest road in the quarter and towards a vast, pyramid-like structure that rose up in the distance. Solas checked his surroundings one last time, and followed the footprints, a mounting unease tugging at his heart.

As the ziggurat loomed larger above him, Solas realized that this was a place of profound importance to Aaron. It weighed down the Fade around it like a stone on a bedsheet. The emotion of the place was a force gusting against Solas as he moved forward.

It was simply astounding that a demon hadn't possessed Aaron yet, if his emotions were so completely open like this. Most mages learned very quickly to build some sort of wall between their power and their emotions, to restrain them lest they attract demons. However, Aaron was akin to a man in a dark forest full of monsters, screaming at the top of his lungs instead of staying quiet.

Then again, Aaron had been extremely hard to find in the first place. It was an uncomfortable contradiction, and Solas was at a loss as to how to explain it. It was almost as if Aaron's presence had been muffled—or he had been deafened. The Fade held a perverse reciprocity like that, sometimes.

Solas ascended the wide, smooth black steps of the ziggurat. There was no gate, no wall, no guard posts. Not a keep nor a palace, then. The ziggurat lacked any sort of door that could close, only had a vast, yawning entrance to the bottom tier of the structure, the walls of which were decorated in the austere, angular style of the dwarves. Solas stepped inside. In the perfectly still air, the dust had failed to gain much purchase past the threshold. There would be no more following footprints here on these bare stone floors.

The interior of the monument was a hall filled with regular, identical black marble pillars holding intricately wrought metal sconces, glowing with a soft orange light. The walls between the pillars were covered in stone mosaics, endlessly repeating into the distance as if infinite. Shockingly, the dark ceiling was decorated with tiny points of light—they looked for all the world like stars.

What strange sect of dwarves would pay tribute to the nighttime sky in such a way? From what Solas knew, that would not comport with their religious practices.

Despite his earlier apprehension, Solas felt himself being drawn into the vast, fascinating place.

As he drew closer to the mosaics, he saw that each one held a different scene of history, and he could feel a powerful source of Lyrium was contained in them.

These were the Memories, Solas realized. Experiences, written directly into Lyrium. But they have been made into... artwork?

Somehow, even through Aaron's miasma of emotion, Solas could feel the attachment of each of these scenes, an echo of the feelings Aaron had associated with them. A whisper of wonder at the mosaic of a dwarven explorer, a susurrus of joy at the stone image of two lovers locked in an embrace. It continued down the enormous hall—sorrow, triumph, epiphany, tension, levity, curiosity, love. At the last, Solas paused to look closer at the mosaic, feeling slightly transgressive as he did so, as if he weren't already violating Aaron's privacy just by being there.

The mosaic was a simple and unassuming portrayal of three people on some kind of trek, two women and a man, sharing equal prominence and holding up what seemed to be a map. It was incongruous, but Solas wasn't mistaken, Aaron had felt love here, gentle yet strong. It was the sort of love one would feel towards dear companions, those that one had shared much of life's trials with.

A journey, perhaps? Did he live vicariously through these Memories, as Solas did with the Fade?

Solas frowned at that. It was an unsettling thought, considering he had next to no experience with the dwarves. The Fade and spirits took little notice of their presence, except in times of great bloodshed or when present in another race's memory. The idea that there was an entire world of experiences he had never dreamed of in his long slumber…

Solas hurried onwards, further into the ziggurat.

The only architectural variation in the ebon ziggurat was the regular branching corridors. Everything else was exactly the same, a great even grid of parallel lines that made it feel like being surrounded by mirrors. It was a strange sense of aesthetics the dwarves had possessed; they valued precision over beauty. The only thing preventing the halls from being identical to each other was the artwork.

Finally, Solas sighted something different, a distant figure standing before one of the mosaics at the end of the corridor.

Solas immediately ducked behind one of the ubiquitous glossy black pillars. This section of the ziggurat seemed no different from the others, but some of the wall spaces were blank, not yet holding one of the Memories. Somehow, it gave off a sense of living change rather than incompleteness.

As soon as he dared, Solas peeked out, hoping to get a better look. What he saw chilled his blood.

The black and red figure was looking up at one of the mosaics, but he was too far away to make out anything else. Then, after a heartbeat, the figure walked into the mosaic, as if it were just another doorway.

Everything else in this dream had been so unusually firm and unambiguous, Solas was startled by the sudden intrusion of dream logic.

Nevertheless, Solas quickly gathered his nerve and silently padded his way over to the mosaic. When it came into view, the ominous feeling returned in full force, sending Solas' heart pounding.

This mosaic was obviously not like the others. It was far more crude, made in a completely different artistic style. More basic, almost tribal, similar to an ancient cave painting. It was mostly black, fading to red at the base, and an indistinct white-skinned person stood at the center, its arms raised in what could be desire or agony. Above it loomed a simplified but immediately recognizable sight: the Black City.

Icy chills broke out over Solas' body. Something was terribly wrong about this, something that scratched at the very edge of his comprehension...

In a rush, Solas realized that none of the other mosaics showed any depiction whatsoever of the Blights, the darkspawn, or the fall of the Dwarven Empire. Solas hadn't even been aware of this omission before, but the conclusion was undeniable. This thaig must have fallen during the very first Blight, or possibly before. This mosaic, then, was a more recent addition. Much more recent, if Solas' instincts were correct. It seemed likely that Aaron had been the lone figure Solas had seen, and he had created this Memory himself. Had he learned how to make this mosaic from one of the others? And if so, why? What was the significance of this picture? What Memories did it contain?

Solas needed to find answers.

Steeling himself, Solas reached out a hand and commanded the mosaic to grant him entrance.

This time, instead of an abrupt shift of location, Solas seemed to melt into the Memory. He found himself standing in a vast cavern, with Tevinter-style pillars and ruins dotting an underground lake. A horrific stench assaulted Solas with no warning, making him gag. The air was thick with the odor of rotting meat, unwashed bodies, sewage, and stagnant water. There was also a disturbing, fishy, musky tang to the air that Solas desperately wished he hadn't correctly identified.

Looking around, Solas could see he was standing on the side of a thin, slanted platform of rock on the edge of the lake. Aaron was nowhere to be seen, and from Solas' vantage point he obviously couldn't be anywhere on the left side of the cavern. Solas clambered over the slimy rocks to his right, hoping to gain a vantage point with which to spy on Aaron. When he reached the summit, he nearly lost his grip when he saw what inhabited the rest of the cavern.

Upon a short peninsula of rock that jutted out into the lake, there was a gigantic, pale gray monstrosity—a darkspawn broodmother. Her grotesque, bloated form nearly filled the entire end of the peninsula, dark tendrils and tentacles reaching out from her pale mountain of flesh like a twisted cross between intestines and roots.

As Solas fought to control his horror and revulsion, he realized this was no ordinary broodmother. She was mutated, even by the standards of the darkspawn, simultaneously more and less human than any other broodmother he'd ever seen in nightmares.

Her upper body could have belonged to a lovely woman, once. She somehow retained a lithe torso and arms, a face with fair features and large, round eyes. Slick black hair cascaded down her shoulders, matching runnels of dark blood that stained her front, no doubt from the people she had devoured. As if to counterbalance the startling humanity of her upper body, her hands and forearms were covered in black, chitinous plates, and six enormous, segmented, insectile limbs sprouted from her back. The swaying tentacles of her lower body were covered in cruel spines.

As Solas stared, transfixed, as a comparatively tiny figure approached the monstrosity. He was clad in black, spiky armor and wore a red cape. His head was concealed by a scale armor cowl, and his back was to Solas, so he couldn't see the figure's face.

The figure slowly kneeled before the calmly watching broodmother, heedless of the huge fanged tentacles within arm's reach. Aaron's deep, raspy voice resonated in the cavern.

"I bring glad tidings, Mother."

Solas bolted awake, hot and sweating. He pushed himself upright and compulsively rubbed a hand over his mouth, struggling to control his clenching throat. He tasted bile in the back of his mouth.

This was ruinous. Aaron was a darkspawn, no better than Corypheus. Aaron was obviously not one of the Magisters Sidereal like Corypheus was, but that hardly mattered. He had intelligence and speech nonetheless, and that made him all the more dangerous. The ziggurat—that had been the creature studying, learning to pass for a person. It was sickening.

All of Solas' plans had been upended in an instant.

Solas would consider his next course of action later. For now, he needed to get away.

Solas grabbed his belongings and left Haven, vanishing into the night without drawing the notice of a single living soul.

He didn't even leave a note.

A/N

In which we find out that Solas isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is. At least, not as clever as Leliana, who came much closer to guessing Aaron's true identity. One thing I found interesting about Solas' characterization in canon is that, despite having at least a millennium of experience under his belt, Solas is still quite able to be taken by surprise. In fact, though his extreme longevity has granted him peerless wisdom and skill, it seems to have made him quite mentally rigid in some ways, though he isn't nearly as bad as Corypheus in that regard. Solas at least had time to acclimate to changing world events.

Don't worry, Solas isn't gone for good. He's going to be taking on a different role in this story, one which may not be immediately obvious.

Once again, thanks to Bioware, thanks for reading, and please let me know how I'm doing in the reviews!