Chapter Text
Even though she opened her eyes to a ceiling made of old stone, the last thing Solara remembered before closing them was a starless sky, piercing rain, and ribbons of shredded Veil.
Her body felt atrophied, almost to the point of not feeling it at all. She was tired–too tired even to panic–and she let the ceiling she didn't recognize blur and fade. Someone was saying her name, and she swore it was her mother's voice, which was impossible, because the Inquisitor was far too important. Thedas needed her more than her daughter did.
That, too, slipped away like a boat over the horizon, and Solara decided it would hurt far less if she sank to the bottom of wherever her consciousness was dragging her.
Wake up, kid.
Like every mage she had ever known, she awoke in the Fade. A darker, bleaker version, if such a thing were even possible. But if anyone alive knew the world beyond the Veil so intimately, it was Solara.
Perhaps she wasn't alive anymore. Maybe this time, she would not be going back. There were worse things. Receiving her older sister's scorn after twelve years of not receiving so much as a letter.
Or even worse than that, meeting her father–her real father–for the first time, only to have him refuse to stop destroying the very world he helped bring her into.
She heard her mother's voice call her name again, somewhere so very far away. It was as sad as she remembered it to be, but not as sweet. It sounded sharp and strained and so angry.
Solara knew her sister's fury like the back of her hand. No amount of time or distance could rid her of the fire that had once protected her so fiercely.
Now it was burning her. Her name being called consumed her like dragon's breath, and even though Solara wanted to scream in anguish, she couldn't seem to do anything but sink.
She kept falling through the dark, deeper into some cavern that surely had to have a bottom.
She was sitting at a table. There was a candle, the wax dripping onto a pewter dish and, further still, onto the wood.
There was a meal untouched. Solara arrived without an appetite for the second time, because she had been here before.
“Did you hear what I said?”
The empty chair became suddenly occupied by an anxious, freckled, kind Dwarf. Her name was Lace, but there was nothing delicate about her at first glance. She wore metal and scars and regrets and a deep, worried frown.
Solara knew differently. Once, Lace Harding held her beside a creek as she mourned the loss of a baby bird Solara had found below its nest. She was as much a hunter as a scout, but above all, she was Solara's aunt. She was gentle and sweet, just like her namesake.
She shook her head in response, the same as before. Something nagged below her skin to try something else. Say anything, Solara.
Harding pressed her lips together and patiently exhaled through her nose. She tilted her head as if figuring out a puzzle.
Solara felt a familiar blush. Once again, she was embarrassed.
This already happened, she thought to herself.
“And then?” a voice asked from over her shoulder, so close to her ear that she should have felt breath in it.
She turned, and the table was gone. Harding was gone.
She was back in the Fade. A rock the size of a cannonball drifted dangerously close to her, and she leaned back to avoid it.
When it passed, another figure was standing before her. She had only ever known him in stories and warnings and other people's memories.
He looked so much grander before the torn Veil than he did here. Here, he looked… cornered. Like he was searching for a way out of the corner he had been backed into.
“And then?” he repeated, his head in the same tilt as Lace’s at the tavern.
The muscles in her mouth flexed as she worked out both the stiffness in her jaw and an answer worthy of Fen’Harel. “And then we found Uncle Varric and Revas,” she said finally, the words automatically pulled from her like a loaded fishing line.
His chin lifted. I have the same chin, she thought, darting her eyes over every other part of his face to determine what else she inherited. She hardly had the time when she saw him at the ritual site.
“You haven’t seen your sister since you left to live with the Dalish,” he noted.
How did he know that? Solara shook her head. “Not since I was twelve.”
Something moved behind him. It looked like a shrouded figure, hovering and a sickly grey-blue. She felt so cold, unbearably cold. “What’s happening?” she asked him cautiously, her eyes fixed on the figure.
Suddenly, the unbearable cold felt like it was digging deep into her bones, and she was standing so close, too close. She wasn’t supposed to be this close to despair demons.
An arrow whistled over her shoulder and impaled itself into the chest cavity of the demon, shattering its empty ribcage and rendering it to dust.
“What’s happening is, the ritual is starting, and we still need to find Neve Gallus!” Harding shouted over the chaos. She lowered her bow and flicked her head to the other Shadow Dragon in their company. “You two can hash it out later, okay?”
Solara looked over at an older version of the sister who had left her behind twelve years before. The one who got to stay at Skyhold. She wasn’t a mage and therefore wasn’t a threat.
Revas notched an arrow and aimed it at another demon too close for comfort. “There’s nothing to hash out,” she shouted back.
This person felt like a stranger. Revas was often angry, but never at Solara. Never at Solara.
The look the Dwarves gave each other couldn’t be missed, and both Revas and Solara scowled defensively, not wanting to be treated like the children Varric and Harding had helped raise.
“Can we just get to Dumat Plaza? We’re running out of time!” Revas didn’t wait for an answer, and when she passed Solara, she didn’t even look at her.
Something inside of her broke apart, and when she looked down, she had fallen to her knees, the Minrathous street replaced with Fade rock.
“Overlooked again.”
His voice should have brought her comfort. Blackwall’s did. He always sounded like a father when he spoke to her. With Solas she felt… lost. Like she was barely able to keep her head above water.
Like it was far too easy to be overlooked.
When she lifted her eyes towards his voice, her stomach dropped at how close he was. And it was so fast–he was there, looming over her, and then he was an entire platform away, shifting through the Fade the way Cole navigated Skyhold.
“You did manage to find the infamous Dock Town detective. It was she who led you to the Eluvian.” Solas’s hands clasped calmly behind his back. He spoke as if he had been right beside them the whole time. Solara was beginning to think that maybe he had. The Dread Wolf had to have too many eyes for a reason. It might as well be to keep a watchful eye over those who were chasing him–those who had chased him for twenty-eight years.
A rough, broad hand took her shoulder and pulled her back.
“Wake up, kid.”
Solara opened her eyes. There was that ceiling again. Candlelight danced across the stone, and the hand on her shoulder squeezed. When she followed the arm up to the person pulling her away from the Fade, she found a black eye, a bruised, broken nose, and a shit-eating grin that belonged to the only person she knew who could be so cheerful despite a faceful of injury.
“Varric?” she whispered, her throat raw and her voice strained. Everything on her hurt, but she was alive. He was alive.
“Revas–” she said suddenly, instantly regretting turning her head to look for her. She winced in audible pain, and Varric’s hand tightened its hold on her.
“Is perfectly fine,” he finished. “She and Harding got a little beaten up from the falling scaffolding, but you and I got the worst of it. Damn Chuckles and his contingency plans.” He rolled his eyes and heaved a laugh that took more effort than he let on. The bandage wrapped over his chest already looked like it needed changing.
“Let me heal you,” Solara offered, her palms flat on the thin mattress in preparation to sit up.
“Whoa, hey, not so fast,” Varric warned, his hand now pushing her back down as if she would be strong enough to fight back. “You hit your head pretty hard. I know you want to help, but you’re not in any state to use magic.” He sighed and sat back down on his bed beside her, rolling his knuckles in a circle over his sternum.
“Besides, it’s gonna take a lot more than a little gods-summoning to take me out,” he teased, and Solara wanted to believe him. She’d been raised by strong men. Blackwall, Cullen, Dorian, Bull… even Cole lived forever. They all did.
But Varric looked tired and smaller without his trench coat. Despite wanting to heal him, he was right. She couldn’t so much as think about channeling her mana without the world spinning.
As she combated a wave of nausea, she focused on a crack in the ceiling directly above her head. “Where even are we?” she asked, irritated that everything seemed so completely wrong compared to what their original plan intended.
She heard Varric give a thoughtful whistle. “Definitely the Fade. Took a while to get us here. Unfortunately, Harding, Revas, and Neve had to drag us the entire way. It looked like some kind of tower, maybe? Or a lighthouse?”
When she looked over at him, he gave a sad smile and shrugged. “I’ll let the detective play Detective and figure all that out.” He crossed his arms and leaned back against a small pile of pillows, then glanced at her nervously.
“How much do you remember?” he asked.
Solara closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. Trying to recall everything felt like trying to separate drops of water in a lake. “I remember you trying to convince us you could talk him down all by yourself,” she said, annoyed that he had even attempted to keep her from her real father when he was so close.
“I’ll go in first. Maybe I can talk some sense into him,” she heard Varric say.
She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter than before and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what you said.”
When she opened her eyes, the sky was alight with streaks of green and blue and purple. The rain somehow was worse in the Arlathan Forest than in Minrathous, and each flash of lightning was a spotlight on the grey streaks in her uncle’s hair and the worried lines in his forehead.
“I have to try. I owe him that, at least,” Varric said, hefting Bianca in front of him.
Neve took a step forward and shook her head. Her artificial leg clinked against the stone in defiance. “This isn’t the time to act like a hero, Varric,” she warned.
Varric assessed her for the outsider that she was. “No offense, Detective, but this was an Inquisition matter, first.” He gestured to Harding with a flick of his chin. “And we’ve known him the longest, so if I’m going to listen to anyone tell me not to do this, it’ll be her.”
Neve threw up her hands and walked away to keep watch for any approaching demons.
Harding placed a hand on his forearm and begged him with her eyes. “Don’t do this, Varric.”
Varric said nothing for a moment, his lips sealed tight and jaw chewing on how to best respond.
“Let me come with you,” Solara said, eyes wandering past him to see if she could catch a glimpse of her father around the dilapidated archway.
Revas whipped her head towards her. “Absolutely not,” she ordered.
Solara ignored her. She answered to her Talon, and even then she took liberties.
Varric nodded. “Alright, but you stay back a ways. This has been his pet project since before he joined the Inquisition. I doubt he'll be thrilled that we're here to stop him from finishing it.”
Revas pulled Solara a safe distance away, outside the circle they were forming.
Always outside.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Revas nearly snarled. “That's not the same man you knew thirty years ago.”
Harding winced. “Revas, please,” she pleaded.
“No, Aunt Lace. He ruined Mamae’s life. Ruined it. There's no reasoning with him.” She was already reaching back for an arrow in her quiver.
“He's our Dad,” Solara said quietly.
“We already have a dad, and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if we didn't come home,” Revas shot over her shoulder.
Neve returned to the group, shifting uncomfortably. “I'd rather the ritual be stopped peacefully.” She looked at Varric. “If you're sure you can convince him…”
Varric shook his head. “I'm not sure. But this isn't the first friend I've had who carried a world-ending amount of righteous indignation.”
He gestured for Solara and Revas to join him for a heart-to-heart with both of his nieces. “And no one is saying Blackwall isn't your dad where it counted. But Solara has the right to meet him.” His gaze settled on Revas. “You both do.”
He looked down at Bianca and readjusted his grip. “You kids don’t get it,” he started, then looked up sharply. “Not because you’re not capable of it. It’s just…” He sighed. “Look. Your aunts and uncles all rallied around Hops because we believed in her. We survived because we believed in each other.”
His eyes looked so sad, so weighed down with exhaustion. How long had he wished for it all to be done and over with, Solara wondered. The chasing and the exchanging of secrets and the political maneuvers to try and outsmart and outrun a god.
“At the end of the day,” he continued, “He’s my friend. After everything we went through together, and after all this time, I would still put myself in front of any threat to keep him safe. Because I believe that his heart is in the right place.”
He scoffed and rolled his eyes. “I could do with a lot less of the ‘destroying the world to make it better’ part. But…” His shoulders rose and fell with all the weight of a thirty-year-old burden, and then he turned to look back at Harding standing nearby. “You’d do the same for me.”
Harding’s brows turned sadly upward and her frown asked him to reconsider. “Varric, he’s not going to stop just because an old friend asked nicely.”
Something in her uncle shifted, then. His resolve hardened his stance, his grip, the kindness in his eyes. Solara made a motion to reach for him, and Revas shot her a look that said to stay out of it.
“You would do the same for me, Lace,” he said, his tone low, even, and void of all the charm Solara was used to.
Harding drew in a slow breath and held it. She closed her eyes, and for a few moments, the only sound was the universe’s anguished cries as it split apart.
They were running out of time, and as Solara waited on bated breath for her aunt to respond, she could see that she wasn’t alone in that realization.
Finally, Harding nodded and opened her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I would. Like you’d do for me.” Revas made a sound in protest, and Harding frowned. “He’s right, Revas. You have to trust us on this.” Then, with a final nod in approval, she stepped back and looked around the ritual site.
“We need to find another way to stop him, if Varric’s plan doesn’t work,” she said, then gestured for Neve and Revas. “You two help me while Solara goes with him.”
The smell of wet stone and unmistakable Fade filled Solara’s nostrils once more, and she turned around. Solas walked the length of a platform only a few feet away. She had enough experience traversing a city skyline to know that she could easily make the jump. Her feet, however, remained firmly planted.
At the end of it, he turned in place and regarded her. “He should not have brought you two.”
Solara shook her head, the headache relentless and too sharp behind her eyes. “I don’t know about Revas, but I made that choice on my own.”
“For what purpose?”
Solara faltered before answering. “To meet you,” she finally managed. “That maybe you’d see us and change your mind about destroying the world we’re in.”
Solas looked confused. “It is in part because of you that I am so adamant to see this through. You deserve to see the wonder of the world I once knew. The world where Elves were truly free.”
“You don’t have to raze all of Thedas to accomplish that, Chuckles.”
Solara spun around to Varric, eyes lifted and hopeful. He was washed in a teal light that was more forgiving on the scars and lines in his face that spoke to all he had survived.
“All you had to do was trust us. We could have figured it out together,” he continued, moving past Solara and taking the first step of a flight that wasn’t there before.
Solas stood at the top, his back to them, arm raised, a lyrium dagger in hand, poised to continue to cut. His hesitation seemed to muster some confidence in Varric, and he gave Solara a look that said that they weren’t out of the weeds just yet.
“Because that’s what family does, you know. We stick together. We work through the tough shit.” He looked around them and breathed a laugh. “And it looks like you’re about up to your neck in it.”
“I know what I am doing, my friend. And I am sorry it has to be this way, but there is no other choice.” Solas’s voice reverberated off the crumbling walls, making him sound like he was everywhere at once.
There was a flash of movement near one of the giant Elven statues, beneath some old scaffolding that was supporting its weight. “Like how you didn’t have a choice to stay after having Revas?” she blurted. She could hear Varric groan, and Solas’s shoulders flinched.
He slowly turned, his silhouette framed in Veilfire, looking so much like a god. Solara needed to get a closer look, and she swallowed back the fear and took another step closer.
“After having me?” she continued. Her voice carried an old wound, but she held herself high. “Because you’d be wrong. You did have a choice, just like you have one now.”
A bitter, herbal sweetness flooded her mouth, spilling down the back of her throat and causing her to cough. When her breath caught, she panicked, but she felt a hand cradle the back of her head, the thumb rubbing small circles into the nape of her neck.
“Shh, it’s okay, Solara. You’re okay. You have to drink this, though, alright? It’ll help.”
She opened her eyes to Harding smiling in relief. “There you are. We were worried there for a second. You were slipping in and out of consciousness pretty fast.”
Solara swallowed the elfroot tonic still in her mouth, then let her aunt pour the rest. Her eyes fluttered closed again. “Dad… talking to him,” she muttered, and she could feel Harding’s hand squeeze protectively.
“Yeah… your sister said something similar. Are you safe? It’s not your grove. It doesn’t even sound like the same one your mom was in, and it definitely isn’t the same one we’re in now.” She jostled her gently. “Are you okay? I can stay with you, if you’d like–”
Solara turned her cheek into the pillow, damp with sweat, and shook her head into it. “Varric,” she whispered.
Bianca was primed and aimed. For such a clunky weapon, the finesse with which Varric handled her was always so impressive to Solara. Now, all she saw was a crossbow bolt pointed at her father’s heart, as much a warning as it was a threat.
If Varric pulled the trigger, regardless of if a god could even be felled with an arrow, she would lose any opportunity to know him.
She had so many questions.
What does rift magic feel like?
What was it like to take down Corypheus?
“Why is it so hard for you to let people help you?” She asked a question she already knew the answer to. It was why she wasted away for a year making mages tranquil in Treviso. It was pride, and fear.
The Dread Wolf would never admit that he was proud and afraid.
Solas flicked his eyes down at the bolt aimed at his chest. He assessed Varric with surprising calm, then looked at Solara.
“Ask the other question,” he said, and as he did, the ritual melted away, and they were standing in front of each other in the Fade, on the same platform this time, so close that she could touch him.
Solara had always felt swallowed up in some of her family’s shadows. Her mother, especially. Cullen, as a Commander. Dorian, as a Magister. Josephine as a Diplomat. The shoes she had to fill were mighty and renowned.
Solas was a god, and he was her father. He was standing before her in the Fade, as real here as he was in the waking world.
And all she felt was small.
“Ask the other question,” he repeated quietly.
Solara swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Do you regret leaving us behind?”
She felt her shoulders seize like someone was desperately shaking her awake, and she bit her tongue hard as her teeth clattered together. Blood filled her mouth, and she drew in a sharp breath and choked.
Pulled up by her arms, she was being held upright in her bed by her sister.
Revas sighed like Solara was an inconvenience. “You don’t get to leave us behind as soon as we get started,” she said, holding her by her chin and tilting her head up so she could look into her eyes.
“You stopped breathing for a bit, and it freaked me out,” she said, then, seeing nothing egregiously wrong, she sat down on the edge of the bed.
Varric eventually leaned back into his pillows again, letting out a slow breath as he did. “Been a long time since you scared me like that, kid.” He stared at her, unamused. “Maybe don’t do that anymore, okay?”
Solara nodded and swallowed back the rest of the bloody saliva gathered in the well of her mouth. “Don’t die… got it,” she muttered, wiggling out of Revas’s grip so she could lie back down. Rolling onto her side was exhausting work, and she whined that the blankets were too far down her shoulders.
“Lara, you should stay awake,” Revas warned quietly, her voice strained as she worked through her own injuries to pull the blanket up to Solara’s chin.
“After twelve years, now you want to tell me what to do?” she asked, deliriously angry and confused and exhausted.
She could feel the mattress rise at Revas’s absence. “Very mature. Fine. Varric will keep an eye on you.”
Her pillow opened up to black and she floated into the darkness until she felt Fade rock below her feet. “I don’t like this,” she called out, turning around until she found Solas waiting patiently for her.
She took a step forward, and the crevasse between them yawned, and great stone hands reached up from the depths and clashed against the walls of each platform. Her toe pushed some loose rock over the edge, and she watched it sink into the forever.
“Am I dead?” she asked, looking up at her father. She hoped that that would be the person answering her question, and not the God of Lies, and not the trickster, and not the Dread Wolf.
“No,” he answered curtly, the corner of his mouth twitching against his frown. “You are not.” He straightened his shoulders and walked to the edge of his rock. “You and your sister, however, have all but sealed the fates of everyone in Thedas, thanks to your interruption.”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
“Then enlighten me, da’len. How do you remember it?”
Solara crossed her arms, and when she saw that he was studying her reaction, she squeezed them tighter. “I… I think we stopped you,” she stammered.
He raised an eyebrow. “You ‘think’.”
Solara nodded, although there was no confidence in it. “We… we had to have. Otherwise the world would be in ruins.”
The disappointment she could feel from Solas snapped across the platform like the crack of a whip. “That is not what would happen,” he said through a jaw wound too tight.
She didn’t want to make him angry, and it wasn’t because she was afraid of him. “But we did stop you,” she said slowly.
His eyes narrowed just slightly, just enough that it could be argued he was merely trying to figure out a stranger, and he finally nodded. “You did. But with a great cost. Because my focus was diverted, two of the Evanuris managed to escape their prison.”
There was a splintering explosion behind her, and flashes of blue-white lightning against the green from the seeping wound of the Veil caused her to raise her arm up to shield her eyes.
The scaffolding groaned and shuddered, and the precariously seated stone statue beside it leaned too far over. Dust wisped up in thick plumes, obscuring the others, and she had to trust that they would be okay. Harding had to have been used to falling rocks as a scout. Revas must know how to navigate narrow spaces as a rogue.
She couldn’t speak to Neve, but if her aunt and uncle trusted her, then she could, too.
The electric light reflected off something at her feet, and she looked down at Bianca in pieces. She was now at the bottom of the steps, Varric and Solas’s shouting silenced at the statue’s collapse.
She dropped to her knees and gingerly picked up a shattered lathe. She traced a delicate pattern over the design engraved in the metal. It felt like watching an old friend die.
“I loved her,” Varric said, his voice soft and nostalgic.
She could feel him stand behind her, and was prepared for a return to the bed in the unfamiliar room.
When she turned her head to look back up at him, she was home.
In Skyhold.
Varric was warmer here, fuller. His duster was new, because he had just gotten it as a gift from her mother on the last Wintersend. The only scar on his face was a nose that had been broken too many times. His eyes were clear and shone like stars. She had forgotten that she used to be able to see the universe in them.
“She’s beautiful,” Solara responded, and startled herself by how small her voice sounded. She looked down at her hands, and they were small, too. They were soft, unpracticed, and cradled Varric’s most treasured possession like it was a baby, or someone’s heart, or a plum-starved spider.
Varric hummed a pleased chuckle and sat down at the table Bianca was resting on. He began to turn his chair, then suddenly gestured to the door. “Lock that thing, would ya? The last thing I need is Hops catching me letting you hold a weapon.”
Solara nodded dutifully and rushed to the door to his room, throwing the bolt with the confidence of a conspiratorial child, and when she returned to his side, she danced eagerly on the balls of her feet.
“Alright, c’mere,” he grunted, opening an arm to invite her to his side. “You know, besides Dagna, I think you’re the only one that I’ve let touch her. So don’t go bragging about this to Revas, okay kid?”
She promised and sidled up to him. He smelled like cedar. He always smelled like some kind of wood, but not a forest. Not the dirt or dead leaves or muddy river banks. Only the meat of the trees. He was always only the sturdiest part of everything.
Varric pulled Bianca across the table towards them, the wooden stock hitching softly against the treated wood of the desk. “Now,” he said through a stretch, “I’ll show you the parts, but I’m not going to load her inside. We’ll have to do that out in the archery yard when your mom’s not home.”
He watched Solara touch each piece with deep respect, and he smiled fondly at her care. “That’s called a bayonet,” he noted as her finger very delicately touched the flat of the blade, just as Cullen had taught her.
She wrinkled her nose. “It looks like a dagger,” she said skeptically.
Varric nodded sagely. “And you’re correct. But when it’s attached to Bianca, it’s called a bayonet. Just a precaution in case the bad guys get a little too close for comfort.”
“What are these symbols?” she asked curiously, leaning in to work out the design etched into the lathes. “Are they words?”
Varric turned the stock to change the angle. “Orzamarrian. Dagna’s addition, since that’s where she’s from. My family is from there, too, but I can’t read it, so I have to take her word for it when she says it’s a prayer for protection.”
Solara looked up at her uncle with serious eyes. “Dagna wouldn’t ever lie.”
Varric laughed, lighting up his face and the world around him. “I would never suggest otherwise, kid.” He eased into a deep breath and followed Solara’s gaze to the next part. “That’s where you fit the bolt. It’s important to keep that crevice especially clean, or it may not hit its mark.”
“Like when Uncle Bull says to always oil your leather. So it doesn’t crack,” Solara explained.
Varric nodded. “Exactly. Take care of your equipment,” he gave Bianca a hearty pat, “and your equipment will take care of you.”
“Where did you get her?” she asked, leaning onto the table with her elbows to marvel at all the tiny, intricate details.
Varric whistled. “I’ve told many different versions of that story.” He eyed her. “Which one do you know?”
Solara shrugged. “I think once Sera told me you found her in a Kirkwall sewer, but I think she was just spreading rumors.”
Half-offended, Varric smirked and clicked his tongue. “See, now that just hurts my feelings,” he said to himself. He considered her for a long time, then gave a deciding nod and extended his hand to her.
“If you promise to keep this secret, I’ll tell you the truth about where she really came from. And only Hawke knows this. No one else. So you have to take this to the grave, Rook, to keep the mystery alive.”
Solara slipped her tiny hand into his large one, swallowed up by a pact that she would never, for her entire life, dare to betray.
When he shook her hand, it moved her whole arm. Being seven was wobbly work. He grinned and leaned back to look down at her. “I… bought her.”
Solara’s eyes widened. “What? That’s it?”
Varric smiled smugly and nodded. “That’s it. From an old Carta acquaintance. His name was Gerav.” His smile faded just enough to let Solara know he was recalling a memory. “He unfortunately died. Went insane from Darkspawn taint. But he was a brilliant weaponsmith. Better than anyone I’d ever met, at least.”
After a moment, he drew a quick, grounding breath and dipped his chin towards the crossbow. “He built her, and I bought her. Took all my book earnings at the time, but I’d say it was well worth it in the end.”
He looked at Solara and smiled like he was speaking to a close friend, and not a child. “You’ll have your own Bianca one day. It’ll just click. Like true love. And you won’t charge into a single fight without her.”
Solara slumped down to the floor, her vision splitting into three’s, and the warmth of Varric’s bedroom contorting into the cold, wet Arlathan Forest. Bianca was broken. Dead.
A rush of throbbing pain sent her doubling over with nausea, and her chest tightened as she heaved nothing. Her body was soaked with rain, but there was something warm pooling into her collar. She reached a hand back to her neck and felt slick. It came back red.
There was so much blood.
“What…” she murmured, confused because she was just seven years old a minute ago. Varric was telling her a secret…
She looked over to an old, worn duster. Three versions of Varric orbited around each other as she tried to blink them into one. “Varric,” she called in a whisper, the resonance in her voice bursting in her chest despite hardly speaking at all. Everything felt bigger.
She could hear him wheezing, and his hand clutched his chest as he lay sprawled on the stone floor. Something dark seeped through his shirt, and she shook her head to try to dispel some of the dizziness and collapsed forward onto her hands and knees.
“Hold on, I’m coming,” she gasped, forcing one hand in front of the other as she inched closer. There was a sharp sting across her fingers and she wrenched her hand back from the lyrium dagger she’d cut herself on. It looked as if it was mocking her, blood-stained and glistening as the rain clinked against it.
She’d wielded lyrium before. She knew what it could do.
It would not take Varric Tethras.
“I’m here,” she said, throwing herself on top of him and pushing herself up to inspect his wound. Her own blood from her neck, thin from the rain, dripped over his tunic, dotting the grey with specks of red. “I can heal this,” she said, holding her hands on top of his chest and sitting back on her knees. “I can heal you, okay?”
Varric’s mouth was moving, but whatever he was saying was silenced by the rolling thunder and the explosion of collapsing temple rock echoing around them. Solara looked up the stairs, where Varric just was, where Solas was still.
He wasn’t alone. There were two… somethings with him. One was large, as large as what she thought a golem would be. The other was like a spider, or a mantis, or some amalgamation of many different insects and reptiles and anything else that had too many legs, tails, and mandibles.
“Lara, we have to go,” Revas said as she pulled her roughly away by her armpits.
Solara thrashed her legs out from beneath her to kick herself away from her sister. “Stop! I’m healing Uncle Varric!” she shouted, tearing away from her grip and crumbling to the ground. She could feel her hands return, and Solara turned up towards her with her blade unsheathed and pointed at Revas’s stomach.
“Fucking stop and let me do my job,” she snarled. She heard effort sounds behind her, where Varric was, and she spun around to watch Harding begin to lift him up.
Her eyes met Solara’s, and she shot a look at Neve. “Get them out of here,” she ordered as she began to pull him away to safety. Varric’s head rolled forward limply against his chest, the blood beginning to trail down his shirt like tears.
She looked over at her father. His back was to them as he stared up at each creature on either side of him.
“This place is falling apart,” Neve warned, bravely leaning down to attempt to drag Solara away.
“I’m bleeding,” Solara whispered as she attempted to lift her hand to show them the blood. It stayed slack at her side. Everything was so heavy. Maybe it would be alright if Neve carried a little of the weight. Just for a minute.
“And that is all you remember?”
Solas’s voice sounded as commanding as a bell for Chant, drawing her dutifully before him. The crevasse seemed wider, but even as he asked the question softly, she could hear him as if he were right beside her.
She nodded. “How did… you stabbed him?” She looked at her hand, now clean and dry. “With a lyrium dagger?”
Solas’s jaw clicked and he clasped his hands behind his back. “Varric made a valiant attempt to fulfill the Inquisition’s purpose.”
“He’s… he’s your friend,” she said helplessly, her arms falling deflated to her sides.
Solas nodded. “For reasons I cannot fathom, it is what he has always said about me. And I will carry this regret with me always.”
Solara shook her head. “You can tell him that yourself.” She looked around and sighed. “So we’re… what part of the Fade are we in?”
“Unfortunately, it is of my own design,” he said to the floor, swaying in place to determine the finality of it. “It is a prison, so I fear the conversation with Varric will have to wait until I am free.”
Solara frowned at the notion that, like her father, she could also be an architect in the Fade, but unlike him, she made sanctuaries. “And those other two things that were with you?”
She could see the corner of his lip threaten a smirk. “Those things are the Evanuris I spoke of. Specifically, Ghilan’nain and Elgar’nan. Two very powerful, very ancient Elves.”
“Gods, you mean,” Solara corrected.
“They are not gods!” His voice launched to her side and above her now, on a higher, inaccessible ledge. She took a staggering step backward. For someone her whole family claimed was more man than god, he held himself like a deity from his vantage point.
“They are delusional tyrants. More powerful than anything you can imagine, but arrogant and drunk with self-proclaimed dominion over our people. They are, da’len, the very ones responsible for Mythal’s death, and for the subjugation of the Elvhen.”
“And the Veil…” she started.
“A consequence of their imprisonment. The lesser of two evils at the time.”
She’d heard versions of this story before. None so direct. The Veil was always touted by the Dalish as much more ethereal and mysterious, when really, it was just a wall. A wall that Solas spent the last thirty years trying to dismantle.
“I can fix this,” he said, the platform sinking to her level, “if I can leave this place.”
“You made it,” Solara said, gently pushing away a rock that had begun to orbit too close. “You’re a Dreamer, right? Like me? Can’t you just… unmake it?”
Solas smiled sadly. “I wish it were that simple.” He sighed slowly. “As it stands, I cannot. I will have to rely on you to ensure Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain do not have the chance to truly destroy the world.”
Solara blinked in confusion. “Me. What am I supposed to do?”
He turned his back to her and crossed the short width of rock he was given. “You are a Lavellan, are you not? A mage? An Antivan Crow?”
Solara frowned. “What good does that do?”
They were back to the crevasse, standing across from each other, an audience of stone hands between them. Solas lifted his chin. “Resources, magic, pragmatism. Surely you can do something with these things. Your sister learned much from Dorian’s agents in Minrathous, but the Crows have always been superior in cunning, and to outwit a self-proclaimed god, you must be a master at the art.”
Solara stopped short of the ledge. “You spoke with Revas? What did she say? What did you tell her?”
Solas’s expression was too neutral to read, but the way his shoulders straightened slightly, Solara wondered if maybe she hung him out to dry acting as their mother’s right hand. “Revas is very much like her mother, and that will only be a benefit in this monumental undertaking.”
She could hear her voice in the distance. The last time she heard it, it pulled her away from him. Solara wasn’t ready yet.
“Wait,” she said, pacing along the edge and scanning the divide to consider crossing it. “I have more questions.”
“There is not much time, but there is enough. We will speak again.”
“Solara!”
She shot up from her bed, soaked in sweat. Her hair stuck to her cheeks and the back of her neck, and she shivered as the air cooled the wet sheets and the shirt on her back. Revas was sitting on the edge beside her, her fingers digging so hard into Solara’s arm that she winced and yanked it away.
“You’re staying awake now,” she ordered, giving Varric a nervous look, and then sighing in relief when he seemed to agree with her. “You stopped breathing again.”
Solara shook her head. “I’m fine,” she argued, her head feeling like it was being flayed wide open. “I hit my head?” she asked, lifting a hand to rub the spot that had been bleeding.
Revas swatted her hand away. “Yes, leave it alone.”
Solara scoffed. “What am I supposed to do then, just sit here frozen in place so I don’t pass out again?”
Her sister shrugged, an irritating, flippant response that earned her a frustrated groan. She at least had the heart to allow Solara to sit back against the headboard.
There was a silence between them that began to open long-closed doors, and Solara shifted uncomfortably under the damp blankets. Revas had new scars, too. A nick in her eyebrow. Something happened on the bottom of her ear that left a pink jagged line up the edge of it. She looked down at her hands and saw bruises on the knuckles of the unbandaged one.
Solara curled her fists into the blankets, if only for the sensation of holding anything, because she couldn’t remember what her sister felt like.
“I’m going to get you dry blankets,” Revas announced, shooting up from the bed and making a beeline for the door.
Solara looked over at Varric, who settled back comfortably into his pillows and closed his eyes. “Give it time, kid. She’ll come around.” He didn’t seem worried.
“Solas…” she said, staring at the bandage wrapped around his torso. “He stabbed you.”
Varric gave a huff of a laugh and coughed once to soothe the scratch of air passing too quickly through a damaged lung. “Believe it or not, Chuckles has done worse.” He opened one eye to look at his niece.
“Rook? Don’t worry about it. I just gotta sleep it off, and it’ll be water under the bridge.”
Solara nodded and let her head fall back against the wood frame of the bed.
Orange light danced on the ceiling. She let the shadows entertain her while she waited for Revas with the blankets. After several minutes of no sister and the loud snores of her uncle beside her, she sighed impatiently and swung her legs over the side of the bed.
The floor was cold, and she wiggled her toes to stretch them awake. Everything was so stiff, and standing at all felt like one of those “monumental undertakings” her father had mentioned. But she placed a hand on the corner of the headboard and pulled herself up, standing still until she could comfortably put weight on either foot.
“Okay. That’s not so bad,” she said to herself, turning her head side to side to stretch her neck. The stretching of skin made her nervous about reopening wounds, but everything felt like it was sutured shut. She touched a pain swelling in her cheek and winced at the evident bruise on the bone of it.
Slowly, she made her way out of the same doors Revas left through and walked down the long hall towards a bright room at the far end of it. Her knees nearly gave out as it opened up to an enormous space, a sort of rotunda that would put a hundred Skyholds to shame.
“Braska,” she whispered, peering up at the impressive feat of perpetual magic spiraling above her head. Grand bookcases orbited idly around the perimeter of the tower, and a giant, illuminated orb hovered in place, surrounded by pieces of curved rock and metal bars. This was undoubtedly keeping the magic in place while the mage responsible was elsewhere. It was powerful magic, enough that she could feel a tremor beneath her skin emanating from it.
“Look who’s awake,” a voice called brightly from the floor below. Neve was walking up the steps from a lower level, and in the blue light of the orb, Solara could make out a black eye and a busted lip. She still, somehow, looked elegant and beautiful.
She swept her dark hair back over her shoulder and beckoned for Solara to meet her halfway. “This place is pretty big. It’s easy to get lost if you’re not used to it,” she warned, waiting patiently at the bottom of the steps for her. “Come on, I’ll show you around. Might be good to move around a bit.”
Solara grimaced as each step felt like a punch to the gut. “I don’t know, I think it might be making things worse,” she guessed.
Neve smiled politely. “Luckily, this place has an entire greenhouse. Harding says she’ll be able to grow a steady supply of elfroot for healing.”
“And smoking,” Solara grumbled as she pinched away the pain in her ribs.
Neve raised a brow and gave an impressed smile. “Now we’re talking,” she said, offering her arm for Solara to hold onto. “There’s a kitchen as well. Pantry’s a little bare, but nothing we can’t stock ourselves.”
As they walked to the large double doors, Solara looked down at Neve’s slender wrist and perfectly manicured nails. She must have painted them since coming back from the ritual. “So you’re in the Shadow Dragons with my sister?”
Neve nodded. “I am. She mentioned having a sister, but not much beyond that.” She chewed on that for a moment and opened the door for them both. “We were always busy, though. Not much time for casual chats.”
Solara knew she was trying to be nice. Revas likely spoke about Solara as much as Solara spoke about Revas, and that was fine by her. She had no idea who her sister was anymore; anything she said would be either a guess or a memory.
“And you’re a Crow?” Neve asked, giving her a sidelong glance.
“Does that bother you?” Solara asked coolly.
Neve shook her head. “No. It might make some people I know nervous, but I’m not that kind of Tevinter.” She seemed proud of that, the kind of pride that spoke to a carefully cultivated moral compass.
“So,” Solara said through a breath. “Now we’re supposed to, what, track down these escaped gods?”
Neve chuckled. “It does seem like our original plan just got a whole lot more complicated,” she admitted. She took each low step to the far end of the courtyard slowly to accommodate for Solara’s pace, her metal leg clinking against the rock.
“We’ll probably need some more help. Luckily,” she gestured around them, to a small cluster of abandoned buildings. “We have plenty of room. Your aunt says she knows someone. And I think I can probably weasel some reliable referrals from the Threads.”
“The Threads?” Solara asked, stopping for a moment to give herself a break.
Neve turned in place and slipped her arm free to settle on her hip. “Crime syndicate back home. We scratch their back…” she let the saying hang incomplete between them. “You’ve got to have something similar in Treviso.”
Solara snorted. “I think, depending on how you look at it, we are the crime syndicate.”
Neve’s laugh was genuine and bright, a welcome change from the uncomfortable heaviness that had been weighing on Solara since she woke up. She smiled along with her, then reached out for her arm again to continue.
“Revas did mention you were a mage. And that you’re very… well-acquainted with the Fade. Maybe you can help me figure out the maze I was just navigating. We have an Eluvian here, but it leads to… well, lots of different places.”
Solara shrugged. “I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ll be happy to take a look.”
Neve heaved a grateful sigh. “Oh, thank the Maker for that. I was about to pull my hair out over the whole thing.” They reached a large building on the end of the yard, the wooden doors already cracked open.
Solara could hear a muffled conversation and the clattering of pans. Harding’s frustrated kitchen curses, having never adopted her ma’s culinary skills, and Revas trying to course-correct from a safe distance.
For a moment, it almost felt like Skyhold. She could almost feel the crisp, cool air on her face and smell the mountain snow and the stables and the woodsmoke from the hearth.
“You coming?” Neve asked, and Solara didn’t realize she had closed her eyes.
She nodded. She had to. Like her mother in the aftermath of the Conclave, and Hawke in the Gallows of Kirkwall, and even the legendary Hero of Ferelden, the King’s Warden, at the Battle of Ostagar: Solara was joining the ranks of heroic women before her, none of them ever having been asked if they wanted it.
They had all paid the price to save the world: a home, an arm, a life. Solara was selfish with what little she had left that she could call her own. And she wasn't ashamed to admit that she was afraid of what her turn would cost.