Chapter IX

Her eyes shalt speed thee to death

By the time Solas came back to the hut the copy of the new portion of the dictionary lay on the side of the table . Little did he know that the heart of the woman sitting next to him at the table was beating wildly in her chest, like a giant drum commanding the rhythm of war. Had he walked into his hut mere seconds earlier, he would have found her doing something far more... wolfish.

But, shall we start from the beginning?

The moment the elf left the house in the noble quest to supply them with dinner and wine, Bogna put down the makeshift dictionary and listened, frozen in place. As his footsteps became ever so distant and lost in the soft snow outside - she sprung into action.

If she had estimated correctly, she would have around ten minutes to search his house. It should take him about seven to order and get the food. On top of that her wine request granted her another three.

She started by preparing her alibi. She pulled out the word list copy she had already prepared earlier and added elven to it. Initially, she had planned just to drop by and get an update on the language. Then maybe throw one or two shades to irritate Solas and ultimately move on. She did not anticipate a da-dinner. Just dinner.

A 'dinner' with an elvhen version of Thanos. Or maybe a magical Hitler.

Now, that was surely an exaggeration. Bogna believed there were better ways to solve the problem, sure, but the problem was undeniably there. Besides, from what she had understood from Wisdom's suggestions about the Veil, the thing was a creation of a genius. And she wanted nothing more than to dig into that beautiful mind of its creator.

Mind. Mostly.

If it was so, then why is the Veil falling? Why does it not work properly?

Now - that was the big question, wasn't it? To find out what went wrong and find a way to revert it without such inconveniences as committing a genocide.

Three minutes down, seven to go.

She moved on to pulling very thin sheets of paper from her bag and a long charcoal stick. She didn't have enough time to make a pretty copy of his notes, but a calque or a print? Granted. His handwriting was elegant, but heavy enough to leave slight hollow lines in the paper as he calligraphed the letters. She could rewrite the calques later. Or transfer them directly to the Fade using her memory of it. Knowledge will know how.

Having finished that, she rearranged the papers as they had been before and hid her prints in the inner pocket of her bag. Good luck finding anything in a woman's bag.

Six minutes down, four to go.

Bogna looked around the cabin. Solas appeared to have invested heavily in his 'apostate hobo' persona here as there really wasn't much to look at. It was almost disappointing. Everything was neat and clean - save for the working table - and almost without a hint of personal touch. On the other hand - what else did she expect? A muzzle maybe? Woof woof anypony?

You would want that, wouldn't you? To trap him like a spider traps a prey. To make him your own, personal desert entangled in your sweet web. To put a muzzle on him and make him bite into it as you ride him into sweet oblivion?

There was his backpack leaning against a wall in the far left corner. She supposed it was somehow magical, for otherwise it should have fallen into pieces before he managed to reach Haven. Medieval design of buckles did pose some issues to her modern MSc. , but after a quick struggle she emerged victorious.

The inside of the bag presumably hid no mysteries. There were some camping supplies that looked like they might have been third hand, with all their previous owners being violently eaten by a bear. She also found some spare clothes that would give Dorian a serious fashion stroke, couple books written in languages that she had no knowledge of and personal toiletries that she had refused to touch. The elf was a couple millennia old, who knew what STDs or other crap had he picked along the way.

In the end however, her rummaging had been rewarded when she found his sketchbook. She flipped it open and was greeted with a scene from some elven ruins. He had expertly captured the light shooting from the ceiling holes like angelic ribbons, the ancient walls telling untold stories through colourful mosaics and a sad melancholy of a world long gone. She went through the next pages - more ruins, some woods, deserts, mountains, cities. He had travelled far in the last year.

The next page was a hit. A diagram of the Anchor, along with a picture of how it was rooted in her brother's hand. To her it looked like some cyberpunk gear that could integrate into one's body and merge within it. Or potentially consume the wrong owner with its power. There was no other way than to copy it by hand, as simplified as she could without losing the significance. The next page contained the outlines of his first mural that he had done - or he would do - in Skyhold. Would the last one stay unfinished that time as well?

The following sketch surprised her, for she saw herself. It depicted a woman standing in the middle of ruins of a courtyard in the Temple of the Sacred Ashes, her whole body on the verge of collapse and her hands outstretched towards the sky trying to control the beam of energy. She looked like a vision in the sketch, a newborn goddess or a fearless challenger. Yet the woman herself remembered little of what she had done in that moment, except the desperate need to protect her brother and the pain of magic burning through her very existence. It was a strange feeling, but not unfamiliar. Like a long lost friend crushing you in a too tight hug. She looked at the picture again and just one detail struck her so much she opened her mouth in disbelief.

That old, shameless, perverted, outrageous -

She was not that generous down there!

By the time Solas came back to the hut the copy of the new portion of the dictionary lay on the side of the table. He had to shove it to the side to make space for two plates of the same roasted meat paired with vegetables and two wine glasses. Bogna herself was half-lying in the chair. She took off her shoes, put her feet against the frame of his bed and put the notes on her outstretched legs to study them comfortably. At this point, he began to doubt that she had understood nothing from them. Otherwise, why would she be studying them so religiously?

"Thank you, Solas." Bogna looked above the papers at the steaming meal on the table. Her stomach made another hungry growl and the woman blushed slightly.

"I'm sure you will find a way to repay me the favour." he said smoothly as he graciously poured two glasses of wine.

A few lines appeared at her forehead as she frowned.

"Repay me the favour - meaning?" She took the glass from his hand and smelled the rich scent of late autumn wine.

"I give you dinner, you give me something - it's a pleasantry, a custom, a sign of good manners." he said casually and focused on the blood-red colour of his own wine swinging delicately in the glass and took a small sip. It was semi-dry and had some interesting flavour just at the very end of the tasting experience. He had drank better wine, granted, but it was not terrible for modern standards.

Bogna gave him a little smirk. "You are greed, not pride."

Solas didn't even try to deny her, instead focusing on the movement of her throat as she took a single, small sip of wine. Her scar, white line prominent against her otherwise tanned skin, came to life as she drank like a snake in the desert.

"And I give you what you want now."

"Oh, how so?" He appeared amused by her statement and tried to downplay it.

Bogna sent him a look from her eyelashes that suggested she wasn't buying the game at all. "Simple. You asked 'Have dinner here'. You give dinner, I give you my time. And words your greed wants."

"True. My greed and my pride wants knowledge." He agreed and gestured at her dictionary, scattered over the table and his notes on her lap and said pointedly "But you also desire knowledge."

"Knowledge - meaning?" She asked, only further proving his point.

"Eolas - to know. Knowledge is the things we know."

"Ach, true than. Ar nuvena eolasa. I desire knowledge" She rolled the elven words on her tongue and took another sip of her wine. Her lips moved around the elven syllables in the most sinfull of ways. "Knowledge is power."

"Wise words." Solas took the wooden fork and dug into his dinner, content to hear her talk. And talk elven.

"Ma nuvenin, but are they? The man that sayed this words is dead." Upon seeing that he had taken the first bite, she also took hers. She did the same with wine.

She really, really didn't trust him.

But why? He didn't give her any real reason so far to be that wary of him. Maybe she was like that to every new person in her surroundings. For some reason, she and her brother were travelling alone. Maybe she had some hidden animosity towards mages, despite being one. Or perhaps she was afraid of what he might discover. And how he might react to said discovery. What could have made her so careful that she even feared he had somehow drugged her food? She probably suspected he was digging for answers, but his paws were tied. She was a sister of the Herald of the Andraste and he was an apostate with presumably no allies. He could not risk being discovered as a spy in such a foolish way.

He needed more people in Haven. He needed Nirasha and her bubbly personality. He had a strange feeling that the two women could become fast friends.

"Said, and he? And why did he die? Maybe it was a coincidence." Solas suggested between careful bites.

"Coise... coincyd... eeeh- meaning?" Bogna tried to eat while still half lying on the chair with her legs prompt up. She failed, miserably when her elbow hit the wall with a painful thud and she realised she had to have her torso rotated at a strange angle constantly. She made a face of utter dissatisfaction and misery at which he couldn't help to chuckle and finally sat like a civilised person.

"Coincidence. Chance. Not his fault." He supplied with mirth still clear in his voice. Bogna glared at him while trying to look threatening, which only made it harder to conceal his smirk.

"No chance. He - Small Finger - played a game and losed. His greed for power maked him dead." She was the one smirking delicately now. She had to be making fun of him with her bizarre answer. Or that was another translation error.

"Lost, not losed. Made, not maked." She huffed an irritated exhale at the irregular verbs "And, small finger?" He indicated his pinkie.

"Yes, Smallfinger'' she said with utter conviction. "Like Chuckles, Magpie - Smallfinger." Ah, a nickname then. "Name - Peter Belysh."

He would have his agents after the man. It was the first name that sounded believable from the siblings' surroundings.

"You knew him?"

"Yes, no." she again made a 'so-so' gesture with her hand. "Never eye to eye. But I like him." She just smiled and shrugged.

"He played chess?" Asked Solas, remembering she liked the game.

"Oh, no. He played the game of big chairs. Good game." She again said the most bizarre thing with the most conviction in her voice.

"You are jesting." accused Solas, but with no real ire in his voice.

"Jesti-"

"Jesting as in joking. Lying for fun." Solas interrupted her.

"Oh, no no. I'm not joking or lying . I... eh,..." She shook her head and made a gesture with her hand, lying it on her heart and straightened her posture, as if...

" I swear..." Solas suggested, with a hint of doubt and took a sip of wine at the spectacle that she was making of herself.

"I swear on Dreadwolf's...'' she looked at her notes. "...ugly tail that I always tell the truth."

Solas almost choked on his wine. It seems the dalish were even more blasphemous and creative in their hatred towards their least favourite god then he had believed.

"Dreadwolf's ugly tail?" He asked, not wanting to break her belief that the Dreadwolf had a tail at all. Because, he did not.

And even if he did, it would not be ugly.

"He is a wolf, no? Wolfs have tails. So 'I swear on Dreadwolf's ugly tail' works, no?" She thought for a second- "Maybe there are more good swears? 'I swear by Dreadwolf's small edhis'? Da'edhis? Fen'harel da'edhis? (Fen'harel's small dick?) It works in elven? You build word on word on word to get a new word?" She asked completely innocently in a very matter-of-fact tone and took another bite of the dinner.

This blasphemous, shameless, outrageous, improper, insolent, lewd-

Solas took a swing of wine and refilled his glass.

"Wolves, not wolfs." the elf stoically corrected Bogna and changed the subject "Speaking of edhis, did you read Varric's books?"

"Ehh..." Bogna started her answer eloquently and took her time to think by taking a rather large bite of the stew. She looked like a nug hoarding the inside of their cheeks with nuts and seeds. She would even look cute if she was not so infuriating .

Focus, stupid Wolf.

Bogna chewed the food for several seconds, making sure she would not choke on it. Overcooked stews were famous for such dangerous tendencies. Finally she swallowed and gave him a short. "No, I... no."

"Really? Your brother said something different. He said you liked Varric's smut." continued Solas unfazed. She was uncomfortable and took time to answer. And he was going to help her dig that hole for herself.

"Smut - meaning?" She asked, shooting her eyes over the room.

"Jutuan ma ir rosas'da'din, ma tel'aman melin." ( I will make you cum so much that you won't remember your name.) Solas' smile as the words rolled out on his tongue was positively wolfish.

"Ah, smut... Varric's smut. I like, ehh, yes." Bogna said meekly and took a swing of wine.

No, they were not done so aptly.

"Yes, I have heard it is passable. Did you read it?" He asked calmly, almost disinterested in the topic whatsoever. Like he was just making small talk between the bites.

"No, I not read it. I heard of it. I heard of Varric." She said and again, it was only a half good if not outright a bad lie. Or, at the very least, it opened a passage for even more of his questions - like when did she hear of Varric's work or from whom did she hear of it. As far as he knew, Varric's books hadn't been translated to any other languages other than Trade and Orlesian. Moreover, Marcel mentioned it as a very casual thing. And obtaining books was usually not a very casual thing. Paper and leather was expensive, not to mention the content of the work.

She could play the word games adequately, but when it came to actual lying - that was atrocious. He supposed that with a couple centuries or millennia of practice she could pass for tolerable, but she could not be any match for the creatures like him. It-

"There is a mistake." Bogna dragged him back from the depths of his head to reality with her unexpected comment.

"I don't believe so. I talked to Marcel just a few days ago-"

"No, not that." She interrupted him. He lifted his gaze from the food before him to her. There was only a little trace of her previous uneasiness left. She put his notes between them on the table and encircled a row of calculations and tapped on the solution to the equation for good measures. "Here."

Well, now she must have been joking.

He looked at her as if she was an idiot.

She looked at him as if he was an idiot.

He felt like they had been in that situation before.

"You think I made a mistake in my calculations?" He asked her in a tone suggesting she couldn't spell a word 'mistake' correctly, let alone find one in his notes.

"Yes, you did." Bogna countered in a tone suggesting that she wanted to spell 'mistake' on his forehead. Correctly.

"You must be mistaken, da'len." Solas said in an unmistakably patronising manner. Bogna just chose to disregard him, to his irritation, and started to write something on the clear sheet of paper. She just wanted a distraction, a change of a subject. Very well, he will give her that - and a quick lecture - and then they will come back to the matter that had just started to be interesting.

"I understand that you may regard yourself educated in comparison to the majority of current Thedas population, given that almost three quarters of them are illiterate and can hardly spell their own name, but I'm sorry to imply that this opinion is heavily overestimated. It is to be remembered that although I don't doubt you have certain mental capabilities and also have received... some form of education, formal or otherwise, you have started learning Trade and elven only about a week ago. The calculations that you have examined are taking on a subject of mildly complex magic theory. Furthermore, they include heavy usage of mathematical tools, such as integrals, differential equations, limitations and then various techniques of both static and dynamic optimisation. Casting a spell correctly depends as much on the experience and skill of the caster as on their preparation for it. Although many, and by many I mean mostly the Chantry, circle loyalists, the Qun and other obtuse bigots I'm not aware of, might say that magic is unpredictable and unexpected or even volatile, yet in reality it all comes down to proper and precise execution. Moreover, to achieve a satisfactory delivery of any spell or other magical operation one needs knowledge of the general magic theory and the workings of both the Fade and the Veil as well as proper mathematical and linguistic tools capable of precisely describing the topics mentioned. That can be found nowadays in very few individuals -" and excluding himself, these are "- namely high enchanters... Well, those high enchanters who are open minded and not yet too indoctrinated to do their own research and flourish their knowledge. Then there are the magisters, granted they don't become blood mages or other abominations before that and perhaps Avar mages, although regrettably they were classified as barbarians not worthy of much attention so we know little about their ways. One can hope. And of course, the dalish, if they would stop being so deeply invested in falsifying the history and twisting the old traditions. The point that I'm pursuing is that a mage needs years upon years of extensive cultivation of various sophisticated and complex matters to be able to understand my notes and then some more brain to perhaps try to-"

Solas was cut off by Bogna passive-aggressively shoving his plate to the side and making space for a page of her fresh writing.

The elf gave her his most unimpressed look. "Da'len, as I was saying-"

"You say lots of words. Before you say" she interrupted him again in an infuriatingly calm voice and tapped her finger again at the page. " read it. You think I made a mistake - ma nuvenin, but show me where."

"Fine, let us be done with it." Solas finally gave in and took the paper from her hands. Their fingers brushed again. He had no idea how he was going to explain her mistakes to her with her broken trade, but at least they will be done with this little absurdity.

The elf looked at the paper. The first row of Bogna's calculations followed what he had written. Of course, he had to look past her handwriting that was so messy it almost insulted the art of calligraphy and lack of proper names and annotations to the laws and theories he had been using- probably because she hadn't actually known the names.

But aside from that, it was fine.

Solas' mind came to an abrupt halt.

Because it should not have been fine. It absolutely should not have been fine.

At the first glance, he couldn't find any mistakes in the calculations that Bogna had done. Her work was a little messy, no point being snarky about it again, but he could not find anything that was technically and explicitly wrong . Methods used by her were mildly foreign to him, granted, but he could see a similar core, the same principles and sense in them.

"I know shit about magic." Said Bogna with clear intention in her voice. Yet, she wasn't being aggressive anymore, or overly triumphant that he had been wrong. He lifted his gaze from the paper to her. Just maybe a little smug."- but I know numbers. And numbers -"

"Don't lie." finished Sola and once again looked at the calculations, both his and hers. By the laws of logic, if they had done everything correctly, starting from the same equation they couldn't have achieved two different results. Two contradictory results. Yet, this is exactly what had occurred, for the numbers at the bottom of each of the pages were different.

Which ment one of them must be wrong. They just had to find out which one of them.

And so they began their new battle. The battle of dissecting their calculations and transformations done at each step of the equations and trying to determine which one of them has lost this clash of wits.

A wise man once said that a pen was mightier than a sword.

Paper was flying all around the cabin, the innocent victim in their machinations. The pens were scribbling violently against the pages, creating deep dark scars of letters, symbols and numbers that would never heal. Wine, red as fresh blood, was flowing generously between them. Marcel visited somewhat before midnight in search for his missing sister, but he stopped at the threshold of Solas hut upon seeing what they were doing. Just a mere glance thrown at the rows of merciless equations caused his face to go white as the snow outside. The Herald just gave Solas a very distinct look that meant 'Something happens to my sister in your hut and you become a shooting range dummy. Do not try me.', turned and muttered something along the lines "Co za nerdy." as he shut the door behind him. If they weren't so focused on their conquest, they could have heard Varric asking outside the building "She's in there, Handy? What are they up to?" followed by Marcel's "You don't wanna know man.".

About an hour after they had run out of wine they made the most terrifying discovery. At that point of the night they had already forgotten any attempts at being formal and refined. Solas was half lying in the chair with his legs propped against the bed frame, a small but steadily growing heap of these metallic chocolate papers next to him on the table and a pencil in his hand. Bogna, on the other hand, was sitting across his bed, feet deep buried under the blanket because 'fuckin cold' with also a pencil in her hand. And the moment they crossed out the results on both of the papers they found out the horrible truth - not only one of them was wrong, but both of them were wrong.

Solas had not anticipated such an outcome of their crusade. And clearly, neither did she.

"Well" she took a sip of her tea and put the mug back to his bedside table "We find the third way, no?"

Or so they tried. It was by no means an easy task. He had to try and describe to her the laws and principles on which magic and the fade operated for her to correctly try to apply her ideas to the problem, as well as understand his reasons for using them and double check him. Yet sometimes she had to just accept the answer 'It is like that because I say so.'. She, on the other hand, also had to try to describe, sometimes on simpler examples, the law and theories she was using in her calculations. He understood the general principles of course, but that didn't guarantee that he could double check her work without further discussion.

Frankly, he was amazed and positively surprised by the level of Bogna's understanding and knowledge. She really was quite gifted with analytical thinking, but when he asked her where did she receive such education she just winked at him and answered.

"You are a master of the Fade, I plan to be a mistress of the Coin."

"And do what?" He asked curiously.

"Fuck Orlesians." Bogna deadpanned, swallowed a chocolate and crossed out something on her papers.

"You are joking." Solas accused, popping another chocolate to his mouth and finishing a line of equations.

"No, I du nut joke mony." The woman said with her mouth half full of sweets and passed him a paper of calculations to consider. She looked critically at the ridiculously large pile of chocolate foils next to him. "You don't have cukrzyca (diabetes), do you?"

"I beg your pardon?" Solas raised his eyebrows.

"Sugar... " she dug for a second in her notes. "disease. You eat too much sugar, you get cukrzyca." Bogna explained, nodding her head at the evidence of his sweet tooth.

"I don't normally eat sweets. You bring them to me almost daily. Perhaps you are trying to make me ill?" Solas asked her with the utmost serious expression and straitened in his chair. "Already tired of me?"

"So this is my fault? Oh no, no, no. I bring you chocolates, but I do not make you eat." Bogna countered in a falsely offended tone. "I bring you sword, you also eat it?"

"No." Solas chuckled. "Would you?"

"Depends what sword it is." Bogna winked at him and innocently dropped her gaze to her notes.

Solas only shook his head. "Shameless woman."

"Dupek." (ass) muttered Bogna.

"Wanton."

"Kundel." (mutt)

"You do realise I don't even understand how you insult me?"

"No harm then? I also do not always understand you. And your Hahren mode, boże..." (oh god) She laughed unexpectedly. "Hmm, ironic."

"Care to elaborate what was so funny?" Solas encircled one of the equations that she had given him and wrote an alternative path to achieve the solution. They matched so he went on.

"No. Inside joke." The woman answered and took one of the books lying next to her on the bed.

"I'm convinced that you are just making up words and phrases that don't really exist."

"Really? So do you, smartass." She blew him a raspberry. "By the way, how do you know so much? I never meet a mage with so much knowledge of both history, magic and spirits. It's like…" she dug for a second in her notes "ancient knowledge." She raised her eyebrows, displaying almost genuine curiosity.

"I-I've spent many years searching the Fade." Solas was not fully prepared for this question. Truth being told, he had overshared. Tragically overshared. No mage of the modern times should have such knowledge he had just been discussing with her. But he had forgotten himself as it was so easy, so easy to speak freely with someone with an open mind and ability to understand the complexity of the world around them. He did not know why, but he felt like he had just stepped into a spider's web.

And so, the rest of their night passed on such light bickering and intensive problem solving.

It was at the break of dawn when they ran out of Bogna's really impressive stash of chocolate. The rising sun just broke the line of trees and bathed the snow lying in Haven in its golden glow. One of its rays hit Bogna and woke her up from her regenerative nap. She blinked a few times and then rolled to the side so that she was fully facing him and the window. She started to speak, too quietly to him to catch exact words, but sleep hadn't left her completely as she was muttering in her native tongue. And maybe it was that she was still not fully awake, but her face seemed so open at that moment. She looked just as she was - a woman in her twenties, thrown in a place with a completely different language, culture and unfamiliar people connected together by a world threatening event. For the past several days she seemed to be the one sibling that was coping better than the other, but that could have been just a facade. Often taking care of her brother when he was in pain, doing anything she could to learn the language as fast as she could and integrating into the society of Haven by working with the servants - she did it all. Yet it was only natural that deep down she had to be terrified, stressed, helpless, confused or more probably all of the above. It was such a utterly wrong and utterly right sight - her, in his bed on the break of dawn, all those papers full of black ink splattered around her on the blankets and the floors. It-

"Inny wymiar!" (other dimension) Bogna suddenly jerked right up to a sitting position on bed. "To jest to Solas, inny wymiar!"

"Trade, Bogna. Trade please or elven. Tevine or Orlesian if you must."

"Wymiar, Solas, wy-miar." She syllabised slowly as if it could change anything.

"Describe the word or draw it." Solas urged her with a piece of paper. Bogna started to draw several lines that soon formed a cube and next to it, a dwarven mechanism commonly used to measure time known as a clock.

The woman then encircled the length of the cube, then its width, then the height and finally the cl-

"Dimensions, you are asking about dimensions?" Solas felt like an idiot, once again waving his hands in the air before him signalling the horizontal surface, then the vertical surface, then the depth. Yet, after 23 hours of intensive brain usage without sleep he discovered that somewhere along the way he had lost his sense of cringe.

"Yes, dimension - wymiar, great. Now many dimensions in Thedas?" She asked, aggravated and fully awake now. She had such a wonderfully bright shine in her eyes when she was discovering something that she could have put the sun itself to shame.

"Four - the ones you wrote."

"Great - how many dimensions in Fade? Not four, right?" She urged him further.

Now it was Solas turn to make big eyes. Because definitely not four. The Fade, for starters, was not even a physical... entity. It was its own realm, its own space built solely from dreams, memories and emotions. There, the three spatial dimensions didn't really matter, as the Fade had no constant coordinates anywhere, if "somewhere" existed there at all. It was easier to describe it as a giant ocean with memory and dream-islands constantly drifting across it. Except the islands themselves also didn't have any constant measurements. Time worked in a similar fashion in the Fade. There was no constant flow of time, there was no day or night to mark its passage. Time was relative and depended solely on its surroundings. If one was visiting a memory from the Ancient Atharlan in the Fade, were they really "now" or were they "then"? Those were only a couple of questions, as much scientific as philosophical that he had encountered during his centuries of researching the Fade. As for other dimensions, they were a topic of a whole different debate. The spirits, for instance. Were they just their own entities, ideas and symbols given form - or did they actually create their own separate dimensions that described their existence? Because how come that anger had time? It can lessen with time, or grow, but that also did not necessarily mean it really grew in height. It was just a visual representation, a simplification that their brains prescribed to the emotion when they imagined it. How one could effectively place misery and knowledge within the basic four dimensions? One could not, thus there had to be something more. So, after centuries of research and countless debates with the spirits themselves about their nature and existence, of course to the extent of which they were aware of, Solas settled with a theory that the Fade was a constantly growing, limited, but infinite dimensional space. So...

"No, not four. More." He agreed with Bogna solemnly. "You have an idea. Out with it."

"Yeah, so when no Veil the real world has four dimensions and it's everywhere, the Fade has shit loads of dimensions and also is everywhere. Correct?" Solas nodded. "The fade, ehhh... verb... Now, the Veil is physical, like a cloth you say?" Bogna took the blanket in her hand and raised it, imitating said cloth with a questioning look pointed at him. Solas was positively surprised. The girl did occasionally listen to him as he had often made such comparisons. It was a simplification, of course, for his creation was a complex and sophisticated piece of magical engineering, not some barbarian handkerchief.

"Starting from the foundations," Solas began the explanation "the Veil is constructed from millions upon million of separate Fade threads that interwoven-"

"Solas, please. Not hahren mode now. I am tired and want to sleep. Is Veil like a cloth?" Bogna interrupted him with something bordering on begging in her voice. If her irritation had shown itself earlier as a very visible urge to make his life miserable, she was now probably considering freeing herself from the undeniable misery of his company. A very tempting possibility, but not his goal for the moment.

"Yes, you can say that. Some objects cannot go through it." Solas took his sweater in hand and tried to push his hand through it - without much success, but that was exactly the point.

"Like the elven gods, for example?" She asked innocently, gaze focused on his demonstration.

"Well, if you believe in the elven mythology, then theoretically, that could be true." he replied even though he very much knew that it was true. He had designed his creation precisely so that the crazy bastards were the very objects that could not cross it. And that was one of the things that he had succeeded in.

One success among so many failures is still a disgrace.

You are a disgrace to your People.

"On the other hand -" Solas continued "- some things, like the Fade energy, can go through it experiencing only some loss of power due to the transition. But following your point, we are not only losing efficiency by losing energy during transitioning, we are also changing dimensionality." Solas repeated, more to himself than to her. So the process of drawing from the fade now was not only just pulling the energy through the Veil, it was also transitioning it. How could he not have felt it before? How could he not have accounted for it?

When he thought of it, the answer was obvious. He had taken this conundrum into account when he created the Veil itself, however his Orb and the Anchor predated the Veil. Also, at this point, pulling energy from the Fade was subconscious to him, as well for the other ancient elves. Magic was their second nature, so they just made the needed corrections on the run and didn't even think about it. But on paper everything should have been taken into account, otherwise the numbers didn't sum up - like in their case. The modern mages also could not have found anything amiss because they all only experienced the world with the Veil in place. They never had the opportunity to find out how it is supposed to feel without it.

Solas looked at the calculations again and started writing yet again. If he only changed the limitations and dimensions of the derivatives… Also changed some matrixes and these vectors…

"It would have to be calculated from the beginning, but it is a development that could lead us to a solution. I'm... impressed." the elf admitted after some time without any irony in his voice. He really was impressed. Bogna knew only the basics of trade, learned the alphabet about a week ago and received an hour and a half long lecture on the theory of magic and here she was able to help him solve this conundrum. Also, Solas had to admit that he had greatly enjoyed their nightly activities and would not mind repeating the experience some other time.

"You have some other ideas?" The ancient asked Bogna earnestly while doing nothing to hide a hint of respect and admiration that crept into his voice. Solas just kept staring at the new set of equations that would probably take another couple hours to solve. He doubted that the Anchor corrected the oversight just like the ancients - without the Orb, it was just a key. The elf signed and started correcting the diagram of the Anchor pulling the energy from the Fade. He had just finished drawing the intake path when he realised that Bogna was not answering his question for a longer time now. He lifted his eyes to ask her if something was amiss, but nothing was amiss.

Except that the woman was fast asleep.