I have a few chapters of this written already. I think I am gonna keep going until I run out of steam, or Veilguard kills me. Whichever happens first.
In this world, Lavellan managed to convince Solas to start acting like an immortal for once and hold off on his plans to tear down the veil. It wasn't going anywhere and a few years wouldn't make a difference. Solas was swayed and promised to look for a better solution. In the mean time, a child popped into the equation and out came Elianna. She is 15 at the start of this story and, fair warning, she does get quite hurt.
A tangible tang of fear fizzled on her tongue. The taste, rusted, metallic and sharp. Amplified by a thousand bodies called to action. Shouts were lobbied, orders demanded. Here. There. Now. Now. hurried clink of armour sounded all too close to Elianna's hiding spot and she flinched back, ducking down further behind the crate.
She couldn't be caught, not yet. Not until she found out why the horns of war had sung during peace time. Elianna worried at her pendant, thumb tracing over well worn grooves. A shot of warmth coated her fingertips.
"What were they thinking? Did they not hear our warnings?"
So close, they were speaking right above her. If she leaned back she could potentially catch a glimpse of them but she dared not risk it. Their voice was familiar enough in passing but not enough to assign a face to. One of Papae's lieutenants maybe? There had been more elves than ever making the pilgrimage to their cause. It could have been any number of them. Most would undoubtedly recognise her.
A wave of mana swirled over her skin, tickling her nose. Held breath and frozen limbed, she became a statue. Part of the stonework. Still. Unmoving. Should anyone glance they would just see a wall.
"Some hear the word Dread Wolf and stop thinking all together. They refuse to see reason," another voice spoke, rough, angry and with a hint of orlesian accent.
The crate shifted, lid popping. Hands rummaged within, thumping against the side where her forehead rested. It took everything not to move, not to react. Then the crate slammed shut with a resolute bang. The jolt was like a lightning shock and she squeezed her eyes closed.
"Fear makes fools of us all," that second person spoke again.
"Fools? You make them sound like children throwing toys. Fucking about with ancient blighted gods is beyond foolish, it is insanity."
"You don't think I know that!"
Their voices drifted further away, freeing her to move again, but Elianna found her limbs to be uncooperative.
Blighted gods? They were talking about the Evanuris. They were talking about the Evanuris in present tense and not as a scary bedtime story.
But they were locked away, in a prison of Papae's making. The key crushed to ash and scattered to the wind.
No one would be stupid enough to start chipping at the walls of that jail cell, surely.
Elianna had heard both sides of the Evanuris coin. As would be creators from Mamae's old stories, and as malevolent warmongers from Papae's. The myth and the truth. Yet both too detached, too abstract. A far off nightmare you forget the details of upon waking. Something a little frightening, but ultimately not worth your full attention. Elianna never imagined them as a real threat. They were something Papae would deal with when his plans came to fruition. He could solve anything.
Elianna cursed her idiotic thinking, she was nearly 16 for crying out loud. Only a child thinks their parents untouchable and all powerful. The real world rarely worked out so neatly or without damage. By the void, just look at where her parents met!
She peered around the crate once more. Cracked mosaics of Mythal littered the ground. Almost completely covered by feet, bare and booted, as they strode across it. An army was amassing in the old temple of Mythal. Armoured, armed and ready for a fight. This was not what she had expected to see when she had sneaked out.
What did I expect? Sunshine, rainbows and handholding. Those were war horns I heard, not a symphony.
A faint tremor built within her. A hummingbird trapped beneath her skin. Desperate to flee, fly, escape. Her disillusionment slid away from her like water, as her mana roiled in a tumult of panic. She shouldn't be here. She shouldn't have followed Mamae and Papae through that damned eluvian.
But the guards they had assigned to look after her were laughably easy to slip past, it had felt like a challenge rather than a true demand to stay put. Maybe if they had just answered one of her endless questions she wouldn't have stumbled into an actual war camp, with actual evil gods to contend with.
She needed to go back, right now. She needed to get up from behind this stupid box and slip back into the eluvian she came in by. Shit, did she even remember the way back? The crossroads were always confusing and the path would look different in reverse. She was such an idiot.
Shame and panic drove her upwards onto shaky legs. Her hands slapped against the leather helmet covering her head, ensuring it was still there and it was pulled down enough to shadow her face. What once felt reassuring now felt like papier mache that would disintegrate on a simple breeze. Hardened leather was not going to protect her against a foe this big.
Elianna sidestepped into the fray of people, eyes cast down, to avoid catching anyone's attention. She was no one, she was shade, and shadow, and smoke. Curving around the flow, nothing important, nothing to see. She–
A sting of grasping metal and a sharp grip on her arm had her spinning. The face of an angry elven woman leaned in close.
"It's this way soldier, don't lose your mettle now," she said, forcing Elianna back the way she came.
"I wasn't," she said, the high pitch of her voice making her cringe. She forced her next words down an octave. "I was just checking something."
The elf woman's face twisted with distaste and disbelief. "I don't care about what you think you were 'checking', we're needed now. Gather your weapon."
"My weapon?"
Elianna was being herded, the death grip on her arm did not relinquish. She was dragged into the crowd, a braying, living entity unto itself.
"Gods who sent these new recruits," the woman whispered under her breath. "Bow, sword, or stave?"
"Bow?" Elianna said, tentatively.
She hadn't had much practice with a staff. Her gift of magic was stronger than the average mage thanks to Papae. It made simple spellwork easier to cast without a focus. But it also made staffwork a little 'explosive' to say the least. She can still recall the last time she held one. The wood and ash and sparks as her magic ruptured the stave from within. There was still a scar across the palm of her right hand. Papae had promised to teach her more control with a staff when she got older. Unfortunately that day hadn't come yet and she was not about to send burning projectiles across the room.
Mamae had at least taught her how to use a bow. The mechanism of her prosthetic creaking as she brought the bowstring to her cheek. The slow breath, the quick release, the dull thud as arrowhead tore through muscle and hit bone. She could use a bow. Though she had not used it on anything more sentient than a nug.
Curved wood, polished to a sheen was unceremoniously shoved into her hand. A quiver thrown over equally quivering shoulders.
What was happening? She needed to get out of here. Slip away. She could shroud herself again, but there were eyes on her. Too many. Expectant, irritated, fearful.
A horn blasted, high and keening and close. Too close. Her pointed ears twitched against the onslaught. As one, the crowd moved. They fell into rank, closer, tighter, trapping her. A wave flowing onwards, towards something she is desperate to run from. They slipped around a corner and Elianna paled at the sight.
An eluvian. The biggest she had ever seen. Large enough to lead an army through. Line after line of soldiers moved in steps and disappeared. The surface rippled, tugging and melting, swallowing them whole. There was no telling where it would lead. There was also no avoiding it.
The elf woman had taken her for a deserter and refused to let her go. Elianna was swept into the current and pulled through the riptide of the eluvian.
The feeling was stronger than she was used to. It didn't feel like water, a gentle draping over her body. It felt like static. The ghost of a charge fizzing over her skin. A warning. A promise. Breath was sucked from her lungs and forced back in with the same intensity. By the time she stumbled through to the other side she was half way to hyperventilating.
That eluvian was more powerful than any she had stepped through before. It took them further, deeper into the crossroads than she had ever been. The well tended, slowly healing patch of the crossroads she usually trekked through was nothing compared to the chaos in front of her.
The 'sky' was a sickly, fade green. A beating, glowing thing that pulses strongest from the horizon ahead. A shattering of ruins, swayed in the sky like thieves on a hangman's noose. One loose thread, one unwinding of magic would send them all hurtling towards the ground. Towards them. Lines of dark tar, earthen rot and loam spiderwebbed under their feet, seeping through cracked stone. A taint. A blight. A wrongness she needed to get away from.
But there was no way back the way she came. Bodies pressed through, unending, pouring in only one direction. Ahead of her was no better. Flashes of spellfire, bright, burning. The loud clash of sword on sword.
Fighting. The normal kind at least. As far as slicing a person's throat or blowing them apart with fire was normal. No ancient malevolent gods had made their appearance yet as far as she could tell. Just elves and a slew of something demonic at their side. What was happening?
The soldiers on their side were pushed and pulled into rank. Sent forward into the clamour, or high above on rough broken ledges. They focus on a central point. A flash of light in the middle of the mess. Elianna found no familiar faces in the sea. Her racing heart did not know if that was a good thing or not. The polished wood of her new bow grew slippy beneath her sweat soaked palm. She had to get away.
Well, if forwards and backwards was not an option, sideways it would have to be. Maybe she'd find a nice rock to hide behind until this whole nightmare was over.
The grip on her arm had slackened as the elf woman turned to shout orders. Spying her opportunity, Elianna drew her mana around her and fade stepped away. She could only manage a short jump. A fumbling yank of magic rather than the slow pull it was supposed to be, but it was better than nothing. Her feet were scraping across rough ground, pumping her legs faster, faster away before she heard the shout.
"Stop her, get her back in formation."
Confused faces turned at the commotion, eyes widening as she shouldered passed people. Comprehension bled through more quickly than she would have liked. Arms reached out, bodies threw themselves into her path. She sidestepped, ducked, slid and spun away from them. A buffet of wind sent one particularly large, grabby human stumbling backwards. She would have considered it a success had he not knocked down several others in his flailing. They went down hard, weapons flying from loosened grips. A crash and chaos. A lapse in concentration when they were supposed to be readying for combat.
It made her slow, made her cheeks burn. She didn't mean to do that.
That was all it took for someone to grab her.
"What in the Maker's name are you doing?" A human man bore down on her. His full plate armour made him look larger than life.
"Ir abelas! I didn't mean to!"
The fire of fury sputtered out in his eyes at the sound of her voice and he leaned closer, peeking under the too big helmet. His gaze roved across her face, scrutinising every detail. A gasp left him as recognition bloomed.
"Wait, you're the kid!" His exclamation drew the attention of everyone close.
She was caught. A bug in a jar, the lid closing in.
"Shit! Giggles, is that you?"
Elianna nearly sobbed at the familiar baritone. "Varric?"
The dwarf in question pushed his way towards her, Bianca over one shoulder, long greying hair over the other.
"Let her go sergeant, I got this," he said, with flippant ease.
The human sergeant nodded to Varric, stepping back and allowing her to breathe. Varric used the space to guide her away. His confident mask slipped as the crowd around them thinned.
"Andraste's tits what are you doing here kid?"
"No one would tell me what was going on," she said, tone almost petulant. "I just wanted to know. But then someone saw me, they thought I was a soldier or something and they pushed me through the eluvian. I didn't want to be here. Wherever here is."
Varric pinched the bridge of my nose. "Have you never heard about how curiosity killed the cat?"
"Yes, and satisfaction brought it back," she said, not missing a beat.
"I'm going to be fully grey by the time this is over," he muttered to himself. "You can't be here, giggles. This Dalish sect is bad news."
"Dalish?"
Varric led them forwards, to a break in the lines where a group had formed a bubble. She had no idea where they were going but she trusted the dwarf implicitly.
"Yeah, the uber religious ones that see your dad as a demonic entity hellbent on destroying all life. A small but very vocal number of them have got it into their heads that they need the help of theircreatorsto stop him."
"Shit,"
"Yeah, shit," he echoed "They used to be like an annoying fly but they somehow got access to the crossroads and now they're one step closer to their beloved blighted gods."
Elianna's mind reeled, a whirring, stuttering of half formed thoughts lined with dread. By the time she recognised the raised voices of the group ahead it was too late.
Papae's eyes locked with hers and her muscles seized in place. Fear, molten and smouldering hung there. A moment stretched to eternity where she felt her own face pale. Then a mask of cold, tempered, neutrality settled across his features instead.
Unlike hers, Papae's fade step was perfect.
In the time it took her to blink, her view was filled with a gleaming armoured chest and the sharp jut of a chin. His arms bracketed her own, gripping with a nearly imperceptible shake.
"Elianna what are you doing here!" Papae's anger was barely contained, bristling under the surface of his words.
She could count the times on her hands that he had raised his voice at her. More likely to get a stern faced, yet calm, lecture than a shout.
Elianna froze in the face of it, eyes drawn wide.
"Ir abelas Papae. I didn't mean to. I–"
"Da'len? You are supposed to be at Skyhold." Mamae's voice joined the fray and Elianna felt her throat tighten.
She stepped into view, white blonde hair braided down her back. The lyrium runes in her prosthetic arm glowed a muted blue. Mamae's hold on her fear was not as strong as Papae's. It took over her features until it consumed her whole face. A sight that had Elianna's gut twisting, nausea rising in her throat.
"Did you think we were depriving you of adventure, da'fen? That we left you behind as a deliberate slight against you?" Papae scowled.
"No but–"
"Look around you, does this madness look like a place for a child?"
"I'm not a child!"
"Yes you are!" he yelled, a waver belaying a tightly gripped fear.
He closed his eyes. A sigh sounded down his nose before he looked down at her once more. His voice reduced down to almost a whisper. "You are a child. Not only that, you aremychild. There is no greater target for my enemies than you and your mamae. They would hurt you to get to me, do you understand?"
Blood drained from her face and a coldness, that had nothing to do with the air, seeped into her skin. She had not thought about that. It had not even crossed her mind that she could be the one in danger. A stinging creeped into the corner of her eyes, sharp and shamed.
"Ir abelas," she choked out.
A hand found her cheek, warm and strong and steadying. His thumb swiped an errant tear. Her breath came a little easier and she leaned into it.
"If I had my way you would both be far away from here," he said.
"Not on your life," said Mamae, resting a hand against his shoulder.
A small, tired smile tugged at the corner of Papae's mouth. "As I know your Mamae would never allow such a thing, I was content with knowing at least you were safe."
Papae straightened, fatherly demeanour reforming into General. "Cole."
The spirit appeared in front of them, wide brimmed hat pulled low over his gaunt face.
"Fear bubbling in the back of the throat. Beating, burning, biting. She should not be here. Not in the searching shadows cast by old gods."
Papae's lips pursed, displeased. "Yes Cole. Please escort Elianna back to Skyhold. Her safety is your utmost priority. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, I will keep her safe. I will help her."
"Thank you, Cole."
Papae turned back to her, a soft kiss on her brow. "You are in so much trouble when we get back da'fen."
"I know," she laughed wetly, accepting fate, along with a bone crushing hug from Mamae.
"Now go, before–"
"GET DOWN!"
The world erupted. A chromatic aurora of colour. Scorching, searing, spreading. A blast so violent they were all thrown back. Limp and ragdolled. Sound was swallowed, devoured. Air torn from shaking lungs. Blood and ash and ozone coated her tongue like a foul cocktail.
Awareness bled through in flashes. Slow blinks and wavering mirages. Pain. It blossomed outwards from a point in the back of her head. Her arm, caught beneath her back, ached and pulsed in time with her erratic heartbeat. Something hot and sticky paved a trail down her neck. When her hand came back shiny and red, it took a few seconds to understand.
Blood.
Sound returned like a slap to the face, sharp and keening. Screams upon screams. Of pain. Of anger. Of…triumph?
Her vision settled into something vaguely steady. The battlefield had been levelled. People batted away as if by a giant's hand. They littered the ground. Most, unmoving. Bodies formed a circular pattern away from a central point. The object they had been fighting over. A swirling, smoking mass of energy and magic. It undulated like a living thing and through the gaps in the cloud she spied what it was.
An eluvian.
They had been fighting over an eluvian. Only this one looked different. Not just because of the seething power pouring from its surface but its shape, its colour. Short and square, lined with unvarnished wood, it looked almost unassuming. Like an afterthought, unimportant.
A disguise.
"It must be destroyed, quickly!" Papae's voice boomed across the battlefield. "We cannot let anything through."
"We can't, some of our people are on the other side." Varric cut in.
"Nothing would have survived what those fools have wrought." Papae wasted no time. A spear of mana shot upwards, cutting through the ruins above and moulding it to his will. Molten meteors rained down from above, hurtling towards the mirror. But rock and fire and ash never found its mark. A whip of bristling power crushed them to dust before they even got close.
Others joined him. Mages. Archers. They blanketed the thing in fire, ice, metal and wood. A clash of sound but little damage.
Hauled and hefted, hands found their way under her armpits. A deep tremor shook through her legs but Cole's steady grasp kept her upright.
"Unfettered, unbound, unbroken. A huntress freed to stalk and chase and butcher. A scent is caught. A smile stretches. In the shadows she moves."
"What–What does that mean?"
"They sought to kill a wolf so they released the god of the hunt."
"Andruil," she gasped in recognition. Those idiots had freed Andruil.
That must mean that the eluvian had connected straight to the fade. To her jail. They had gone there physically to find her.
"No, no, no." Papae threw spell after spell at the roiling surface of the mirror. Each bounced off harmlessly. Its protective barrier too strong. Something was stopping him. Something big.
With each spell he drew closer, teeth gritting with determination. Mamae's arrows and Varric's bolts pinged uselessly, clattering against glass and stone.
Laughter. Piercing, manic and full-throated. It punched through the thick, smoke filled air. Rebounded from rock and ruin until it sounded like it came from everywhere at once.
Papae faltered in his casting.
The surface of the eluvian bulged outwards. A shadow of a hand, overly large and pawing. It slid beneath the veneer with almost sensual reverence. A lover teasing skin. Then nails–no,claws, sliced through, shattering the illusion. They were black as pitch and dripping, already bloodied.
A face followed, filled with too many teeth filed to sharp points. Eyes a vicious, seething red stared out with unreserved glee. Not just the irises, the whole eye. No whites to be found. The only variations were the dark pits of her pupils that tracked the chaos and the death. Her hair may have once been blonde but it was now slicked back and sticky, the dark brown colour of drying blood. Jagged shards of crystal peak out from beneath corpse pale skin. Red lyrium, Elianna realised.
Glee turned to revulsion, turned to savage anger as Andruil's eyes found Papae's.
"Nuva mar'edhis banafelas i miol'en av ra, Fen'Harel,"May your dick rot and the insects eat elvhen language turned vile and guttural in her mouth.
"Su an'banal i'ma!"To the void with you. Papae yelled, drawing a glowing dagger. "You will find no place outside the fade, Andruil."
Magic, sharp, blue and sparkling, shot out of the dagger. It warped and stretched, spinning like a thrown fishing net. This magic found purchase where the rest slid right off. Strands like spider silk stuck across the surface. Thin as twine, strong as steel. It hummed upon contact, glowing, strengthening.
Andruil screamed, her claws struggling against the new barrier. The lyrium in her skin started to smoulder, glowing from within. She cast her eyes back to Papae and unleashed a wave of something dark and lethal. A shadow with spikes. A darkness with teeth.
Her feet moved before conscious thought caught up. "PAPAE"
She slipped through Cole's desperate grasp, stumbling forwards. A spell stung at her fingertips, forceful, instinctive, lacking finesse or true form. It landed around Papae's shoulders, enveloping like a warm cloak. The crude, yet sturdy, barrier glistened, opalescent.
"Elianna, no!" Papae threw himself sideways, hands directing the flow of malevolence away. It nicked, sizzling, against the barrier before it crashed against a crumbling ruin. A bubbling, acidic mass.
The barrier sputtered yet held. Papae was safe.
Yet the goddess' eyes now turned to her. Elianna's limbs locked and she froze mid step. A many-toothed grin stretched across Andruil's face. Too wide. Wrong.
"The Dread Wolf has a Dread Pup?" Andruil inhaled deeply, eyelids fluttering in rapture."How delicious."
Papae moved to stand between her and the goddess. Arms wide, protective. "You will not touch her!"
"Been fucking the chattel have we? My how low you have fallen."
The strands of magic blocking Andruil's escape bristled with energy. A rush of cold lightning that had the goddess hissing between her teeth.
"I wonder how it will taste when I suck the marrow from her bones. It's always sweeter when they're young."
A cry hummed in Elianna's throat before she could tamp it down. Her heart was a wicked, wild thing clawing its way out of her chest. She shouldn't be here. She wanted to go home now. She wanted to wake up.
But this was no dream.
An arrow rang against the eluvian. A second. A third. None found any purchase but that did not stop Mamae's determined hand.
"You will not have her!"
"Selene, stop, arrows are no use," Papae tried but Mamae released another with a snarl anyway.
Andruil smiled at the display, her clawed hands plucking the strands like a chord.
"There is no escape for you here, Andruil," Papae said, levelling the lyrium dagger once more.
The goddess stopped pushing against the barricade, head tilting. She plucked another string, releasing a shrill discordant screech.
"No, I think you are quite right," she hummed to herself, scrutinising the magic in front of her. "I could throw all my power against this and still never get through."
Andruil's face turned jubilant, a direct contrast to her words. Why was she smiling like that?
"But you are forgetting one thing, Fen'Harel. You must be slipping in your old age."
"What could I possibly be forgetting?" he growled, increasing the voltage on her cage.
"Your little barrier is only one way."
There was no time to comprehend meaning, before a lasso of tainted power latched onto her leg. Needle sharp, burrowing under leather and skin. The ground was viciously torn away as she was yanked forwards. Distance was devoured in seconds, rushing towards the eluvian. Frenzied, poring hands, scrambled at loose stone and dirt, gaining nothing but bloodied palms and cracked fingernails.
"MA HALANI!"Help me!
All she saw were her parents' terrified faces, her name on their lips, as her body slipped through the surface of the eluvian and it shattered in her wake.
Ir Abelas- I'm Sorry
Ma Halani- Help me
Nuva mar'edhis banafelas i miol'en av ra, Fen'Harel- May your dick rot and the insects eat it
Su an'banal i'ma-To the void with you