Well, it's been a while, right?
So, let's do shoutouts!
-Damfino505A: Thanks for the alert!
-amkraemer: Thanks so much for the alert!
-GunWarThief: Thank you for the alert!
Let's just say that certain global pandemic not only took up a ton of my free time, but also made me crazy depressed for a while. All to say that we're back! Thanks for continuing with me.
Happy Reading!
~Garnet
Hidden Cottage
The smell of rain permeated the air thickly; loud, quick drops pelted against the Veil. Sara floated, incapable of moving, in the Fade and watched as the rain from the walking world hit the sky and failed to fall, though the smell and the sound still reached her. The sky was its murky, unnatural green and eerily dark and while she wanted to feel fear or unease at whatever was happening to her unconscious body, all the felt was relief. If she was sleeping, she wasn't yet dead.
Perhaps... perhaps she will let me go home, Sara thought.
"She wouldn't have." The voice was all around her and within her and nearly made Sara scream. It was a women's voice... but not quite... the voice was too grand and piercing and commanding.
"Where are you?" Sara asked, so stiff she couldn't even turn her head. "Who are you?"
"You don't know my voice by now, da'len? Despite our years together?"
A hand took Sara by the shoulders and brought her gently to lay on solid ground. Above her stood a woman, an unrivaled beauty with sun-bronzed skin and long dark hair that fell in soft waves. Black silks were draped around her and flowed like nimble limbs and a silver circlet was positioned just above her brows.
"I don't... We've never met," Sara murmured weakly. The woman's hands gently went over her body, granting her feeling and relieving her stiffness. The Fade gifted Sara her arm and the woman rubbed that too, so Sara could wiggle her fingers.
"When we met, I was taking the form of another woman; but before that, you had already heard my voice." The woman offered the warmest, saddest smile Sara had ever seen; a mother's smile, her mother's smile, her smile at Aiden and Amelie, the smile of a peasant woman to her newborn and the smile of a noblewoman, watching her son take a bride. She is all mothers, Sara thought, then knew.
"You're Mythal," she stated in quiet disbelief.
Mythal helped Sara stand and held on to her hands. "I am part of her, yes. A visage she cast in the Fade for the bearer of the Well of Sorrows."
"Why have you come to me now?" Sara asked. "I've had the Well within me for almost seven years."
"You have suffered a great deal today," Mythal soothed and tucked Sara's hair behind her ear. "I would be with you through this."
"You want to help me?" Mythal led her to a peaceful clearing and sat at a carved bench with glittering fireflies surrounding them.
"I do," Mythal assured.
"Because I bear the Well?"
"Yes, among other things. Your grandfather requested for me to watch over you when you were born; your mother asked for the same. You took my vallaslin in the hope that I would look on you favorably. I have been very pleased with you and proud. I will do what I can to help you."
Sara touched her cheek where her vallaslin once was. "I don't wear your mark any longer but I'm still bound to you."
"Your children are no longer attached to you but you are still bound to them," Mythal explained. "It is similar for you and I."
"What do you want from me?" Sara asked, though the potential answer terrified her. Mythal was powerful beyond understanding and could probably force her to do anything for her. Solas warned her; he was so angry that she absorbed the Well.
Mythal laughed gently. "Solas has always been superstitious and prudent. He mistrusts what he cannot control. Don't let his warning scare you."
"He knew you. He claimed that he punished the other Evanuris to avenge you." Sara locked eyes with her, uncertain of how to ask what she meant to him.
"He did. He believed it was just and, at the time, he could think of nothing crueler to do to them. If he knew what the consequences would be, I know he would have done something else." Mythal's smile curled fondly, with a hint of mischief glinting in her eyes. "He was my very best friend. He was the only person I knew completely, that I could trust implicitly."
"And now?"
"Now?" Mythal sighed. "Now, he is so lost, da'len. Blinded by shame and lost in a quest to put things back to how they were. Solas wants to repair a shattered vase back to perfection. No matter how much the glass cuts his hands; no matter that half the pieces have been ground to dust."
Sara swallowed the tears threatening to form in her throat. And too soon, she felt a lurch in her back, between her shoulder blades as her body began to wake.
With a gasp, she took hold of Mythal's hands and gripped her tightly as the tears began to fall. She was being pulled toward the Veil, up and away, and though Mythal held her, her legs were flung above her head and toward the sky.
Sara was terrified; there was so much she wanted to know but knew that she may never see Mythal again.
"What do you want me to do?" Sara cried as her fingers slipped from Mythal's grasp and flew toward the sky to wake.
"Live."
The rain pattered, the sound nearly lulling Sara back into deep unconsciousness. Eyes closed, she slowly felt her surroundings sink, like a horse in mud. Wherever she was lying was soft and warm and around her, she smelled logs burning and fresh herbs.
Then, suddenly, light fingers glided something wet across the skin of her wrist and, after a moment, her legs.
That touch was enough to break through her semi-sleep and her eyes fluttered open. The cottage was small and until now very unused. Cobwebs lined and corners of the ceiling and dust collected on the rafters. The hearth where the fire was crackling had a mantle lined with bottles of medicine and small clay pots of elfroot.
And moving around the cottage was a figure that made Sara's blood run cold.
"Solas?"
The strained rasp of her voice seemed to startle him. Sara felt frozen to the bed and she watched him briefly meet eyes with her before going to a basin across the room and returning with a damp cloth. He approached her tentatively and wiped her brow.
"I tried to be gone before you woke," he confessed. His voice rang in her ears like a song she'd been nostalgic for; she forced herself to remain composed and not break because of his mere presence.
"Are you in pain?" he asked. "Tell me where and I'll heal you before I depart." Sara nearly choked on her words so she refrained from speaking as he put aside the cloth. He continued, "I healed the bruises where the shackles were and the ones on your thighs." His brows furrowed in sudden anger. "If I knew the extent of their torture, I would have killed them."
"They were following orders; I don't take it personally," Sara replied.
"Interrogation is understandable," Solas fumed. "Violation is abhorrent."
"Violation?" Sara stared down at her legs and realized the reason for his fury. "Solas, those bruises happened days ago; Briala's guards didn't... they didn't harm me that way."
He stared at her dubiously, so Sara said, "I was travelling with Bull and we were doing his stick exercise." She nearly laughed at the memory. "He promised Josie that he'd only swat me where no one would see the bruises, thus my upper legs."
"I see," he conceded. "I heard you screaming, though, and I can't see any other injuries."
"Yes. It's because they used corrupted veilfire," she explained.
Solas' jaw clenched in anger. "Empress Briala is as nostalgic as she is cruel."
"Nostalgic?"
"The use of corrupted veilfire was a common interrogation technique in Arlathan," Solas explained with a scowl. "She's modeling her entire reign after what was with no personal knowledge of what Arlathan was like or how we lived. It's foolish at best and at worst... Arlathan was not a utopia and countless atrocities happened to the poor and powerless, just as they do now." Solas stood with a disdainful shake of his head and went to stoke the fire and returned to bed with a goblet of cold water and a thick cut of bread. "Here. Try to eat, you'll feel better."
Sara's attempt to sit was completely in vain so Solas cradled her head to help her drink; the water was so sweet and soothing on her dry lips she nearly sighed with relief. Yet, his presence unnerved her; which she assumed he spied at the ball, the fact that he rescued her from the dungeon was madness. He could've jeopardized his entire plans and considering he expected for the world to end, she didn't understand why he bothered preserving her life.
"Why are you doing this?" Sara asked and he paused, searching for words.
"You knew you'd compromise yourself by helping me." Sara struggled to sit and winced at how heavy her body felt. "Briala is convinced we're working together and you've all but proven her right."
"You had several allies at the Winter Palace; many could have secured your release," Solas reasoned.
"She'll believe it was you," Sara muttered glumly, taking a large bite of bread. "It's what she suspects anyway."
The room was very quiet for several moments and Solas refused to look at her. Eventually, he whispered, "I'm sorry." Gazing outside at the rainfall, he said, "I did not foresee Briala's anger with me effecting you. That was an error and I will fix it."
"She hates you because of someone called Fellassan." Sara stared at him, hoping to note any changes in his expression.
"Yes." He looked at Sara, his eyes firm but melancholy.
"Your agent said he was a traitor."
"He... He betrayed himself," Solas murmured. "Fellassan woke from his uthenera several months before me and was responsible for retrieving the eluvians."
"He's like you, then," Sara realized, "an ancient elf. And he was your partner."
"We planned to restore our home together; while I slept, he would begin the arrangements. The most important of which was to have control of the eluvians. He learned that Briala had dominion over several and befriended her to eventually take them from her. By the time I woke, he was unwilling to take them from her."
"Did you kill him?" she asked, her stomach turning in dread. To her horror, all Solas said was, "I did what needed to be done."
"Because he changed his mind?" Sara felt anger flare in her heart. "Because he woke to a world different than the one he left behind and, unlike you, actually gave a damn about the people he would sacrifice to get his old world back?"
His glare would have been intimidating if Sara weren't fuming herself.
"You have this short-sighted notion that I enjoy the idea of the destruction that will occur when I remove the Veil," he accused.
"No! I have the correct notion that you have the arrogance to think that you alone can decide which people have value and thus, which people to sacrifice on a whim."
"On a whim?" He chuckled humorlessly. "I've been planning this redemption for millennia. This is not some childish impulse."
"But it isn't thought through!" Sara argued. "You couldn't have fathomed what happened when you you created the Veil in the first place; how can you confidently say what will happen if you remove it?"
"Things will go back-"
"You think." Sara interrupted. "You hope. You don't know. You can't know."
"I am willing to take that risk," he stated firmly and Sara's heart twisted.
"I imagine you are," she whispered bitterly. "Gamble us all away, then. Murder your friend, abandon your conscious and do whatever you want. When you're all alone in your new, decrepit world I hope you'll have exactly what you want. I hope it'll all have been worth it."
His eyes suddenly shifted from anger to deep sorrow. "I'm not doing this for only me. If the result of my efforts is perpetual solitude, then it will be a worthy punishment for all I've done."
"Is there nothing I can say? Why am I not enough to stop you." Her eyes suddenly welled up with tears and before she could stop herself she sobbed quietly. "How could you risk my life, too?"
Sara reached to take his hand and recalled how deeply she'd loved every piece of him once. His long fingers, the fine hair on his knuckles, the way she could feel his pulse in his palm. How could it be that these hands, that healed her injuries and caressed her so gently would be the hands that doomed them all?
Solas squeezed her fingers soothingly and brought his other hand to her face to wipe her tears away. "This is bigger than you and I," he murmured. "Under different circumstances, you have to know that there's nothing I wouldn't do for you."
He cradled her wet face in both her hands to look into her eyes and Sara allowed herself sit in the grief of loving someone tied to such a dark duty. But for the sake of their children, he had to be stopped. Somehow.
Exhaustion swept over Sara, and she felt his hands gently guiding her back to the comfort of the bed. A spell, she realized, fighting the forced sleep.
He brought the blankets to her chin and kissed her forehead gently.
"I'll be gone when you wake, vhenan," he whispered. Weakly, Sara reached for him and caught him in a limp embrace.
"Don't do this," she managed, her eyes fluttering closed and he said something she didn't catch into her ear and pulled away. As the sleep consumed her, she felt his lips on her own.
The rain left the air damp and cold when Sara finally woke. True to his word, Solas was long gone by the time Sara regained consciousness.
On a small table near the bed, he left a pair of leather leggings, a wool tunic, a dark blue cloak and a map of northern Orlais with a small marking noting the location of the cottage. Her wooden arm rested under the clothing along with the dagger Bull gave her.
On another table, closer to the cold hearth, was a flagon of water, loaf of bread and several apples.
Numbly, Sara dressed and ate what she could while gathering additional supplies in a sack she found in the cottage. Outside, a young, honey-brown mare was tied up and feeding on the rain soaked flowers that grew around the cottage.
She was within a seaside forest; the smell of salt water was much stronger outside. The plants had grown around cottage so densely that it was practically hidden under the mass of trees and leaves.
Sara stroked the nose of the mare; she was amiable and didn't buck when Sara mounted her. Map in hand, Sara began to ride toward the harbor where she and Bull disembarked. The ride would give her time to consider the next best move. Since words wouldn't sway Solas, she had to find another way. And since Briala was likely furious, she had to get out of Orlais quickly.
I have been stalling to keep myself from having to stop Solas with violence, she realized. But I cannot let my feelings risk everyone's lives. The next time we meet, either he will be convinced to stop or he will be forced. If he has no choice, then neither do I.
No new Elven phrases
So, I know this has been a long wait. But thanks for reading anyway!
Please review!