Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There’s a mirror in front of him when he turns away. He sees himself – ancient in the eyes and nowhere else. A shadow looms over his shoulder, an outline of a lifelong friend. Six glowing red eyes shine against the darkness of the shadow. A familiar sight, one he would know blind. 

There’s a mirror behind the shadow, too. The two mirrors – placed directly opposite one another – bounce off the other. An infinity of repeated images going further and further back into nothing. That reflection is raw in a way it shouldn’t be, like looking an arrow in the eye. 

“Don’t give up on this world before you even know it,” Felassan says softly into open air. The air acts as a vacuum, sucking out anything else but the sound of his voice echoing in a meaningless space. He watches the shadow behind him shift, bits swirling around each other to form an ever-wiggling mass of darkness. It’s angry. 

He understands. It’s a common feeling. Felassan had felt the same when he’d woken up in this world foreign to the one he remembers. To look at the elves of this time in the face and be told their silent world is great is out of the shadows’ understanding. Felassan understands this. But he also understands the precipice his friend stands upon. One wrong push, and he’d break the foundations of the world they find themselves in. One outreached hand in the middle of a cold winter, and he would become more real than any of them. Felassan hopes he is that hand and not the sea the man plunges into. 

“This world is an abomination.” The shadow replies. For a moment, the shadow comes together in a mimicry of a wolf. He knows that face well; he knows any point he tries to make will bounce off a silent wall. There was no reasoning with the wolf when he was like this. Anyone who attempts is a fool. 

“This world is alive,” Felassan replies. It is the wrong word to say. He sees the glint of magic before he feels it. He watches the movement as if in slow motion, the opening of a figurative maw that closes around his soul and tugs. He doesn’t scream; he doesn’t have enough time for it. 

The Dread Wolf’s magic skewers Felassan through the heart. The slow arrow, a shimmering beacon of hope, goes dark in the realm of dreams. 

–

Before, there was everything. It’s hard to describe ‘everything’ – the spirit will try later and fail – but to say it is all-encompassing. It is the smallest particle in the world to the largest mountain, the highest cloud to the deepest trench, the warmest laughter to the saddest scream, and so much more. It was everything all the time, for there was never a clear beginning or an end. There was the spirit and everything it touched, and everything that touched until the points connected into a full picture. They couldn’t be left out because there wasn’t anything to leave out. They could not be included because to be included would mean exclusion. And there is none of that, none of anything, but everything. The world seen through the eyes of a spirit is something the living will only truly understand if they become one. 

A song is the best word to describe the systemic existence they led. A thrum of life that runs through everything and anything, bouncing off of whatever it finds until that echo is absorbed into it. But it isn’t a perfect word because there is no perfect word for everything. Before, everything that existed was a point, and that point was them, and they radiated their bit of everything, and the things around them absorbed that, too. There was no ‘there’ or ‘not mine’ or even ‘possession’. They didn’t exist because to exist is to know something without. 

Confining limitless existence into a single point is also an experience they can’t vocalize. It felt much like grabbing a sword too tightly. That prickle of pain that takes a whole body and forces it on that single, bladed point. The sudden realization of parts and wholes and metal and air and pain. All of that pulled down into a single point of birth. 

And a spirit opens his eyes. And he breathes. And he feels every nerve in a body spur into motion. Skin and bones and muscle and blood all spasm into knowing. He moves his hand and feels the pull of it all to his core. The way a tree’s branches are felt in its stem. The way the ocean feels the rush of a wave a million miles away. 

There is grief, for a moment, a feeling he doesn’t know and can’t place. The solemn understanding that everything and nothing was lost all at once. A brief nod to stepping forward into a darkness he can not name. But it didn’t last for long. Like the fleeting memory of a picture-perfect image disappearing in the nerves of a mind, the feeling of everything faded to a steady strum beneath his eyes. He’d never feel that again, yet he can not focus on that now. And by the time he has time enough to focus on it, he will not care. 

The newly born blinks, the peeling of skin foreign to him, and the sun’s bright glare blinds him. Colors – because he vaguely remembers the experiences of things he’d watched and now became – blur and shift until they take form. Another new concept for him, but one he becomes intimately aware of within a moment. 

He’s aware the world looks different at the same time he’s aware he’s seeing it for the first time. If he’s seeing it for the first time, how can it be different? He grasps for an explanation, but it slides through his mind's eye like sand through his fingertips. Sand he’s never seen or touched; hands he’s never grasped into a fist. 

A gentle murmur enters the spirits' mind. It’s confusing, for a moment, until a moving form enters his sight. He’s aware it's a woman, aware she’s a beautiful woman, and knows he knows her. Something echoes deep within him as the woman’s lips pull upwards. A smile, he remembers, and a joy to her eyes. 

“Welcome,” The woman says, soft hands lifting to drape something over his shoulders. 

“You’ll overwhelm him. Be careful,” another voice speaks, and the spirit knows it’s masculine. He also knows it's further away. The words bounce off of more space before they reach him. He’s aware he should probably investigate the voice, but the woman before him steals his attention. She moves, and her hair flows all around her shoulders. It shifts in small strands, cascading like water over rocks. He’s mesmerized by it.

“Sael'las,” The woman says softer now. “Now?” 

There’s a beat of silence, but the world isn’t quiet. There are the high sounds of birds and the low rumble of water over the dirt of a riverbed. The woman takes Sael'las’s hands and leads him to grasp a soft material. He grasps it because he is told, pulling it tight over his chest. Skin slides against skin, and it's a new sensation, feeling two points through two parts of his body. 

“There is hope, especially now at the seeds of so much change.” The man’s voice moves closer and then further again. He’s wandering behind Sael'las, past where he can watch him. “Rebellion means many things. It is only a loss for one side of the battle.” 

“It is hope for many others.” Sael'las bristles at the man saying his name, though he isn’t sure why. It sounds different from his tongue, somehow. He’s not even sure exactly what his name means. There's an emotion connected to it, an emotion he used to know better than he does now. But the two voices say it so differently. One emotion suddenly becomes two. 

The woman isn’t watching him anymore. Her eyes slice through the air to a point behind him. He goes to follow her. His creaking neck – bones against muscles – throws him off balance. He slides to the side, caught only by the woman’s soft hands. 

“Careful, now. Bodies take a while to get used to.” The woman speaks with a bit of humor, a lift in her tone that makes Sael'las want to smile, too. He grips the fabric he’s been given tighter. Cold blows across his skin – wind – and he’d rather it not. “Solas, stay.” 

“No.” The response is curt and cold in a way that prickles the skin. “Enjoy your hope. I have things to consider.”

“Solas.” Sael'las feels the outstretched hand offered in the word even without its physical counterpart. There's so much held there, so many different emotions that he didn’t know could go together. He imagined this world as lesser but could see how it could be more. Sael'las envisions how this part of the world could be better than everything he has already forgotten. 

“Goodbye, Mythal.” The curtness continues, and the man disappears. The woman in front of him lets out a huff of breath. There’s anger in that move. When she turns back to him, all bits of that anger slowly disappear. She offers him a small smile. 

“I’m sorry about this, my friend. You have decided to find us at a bad time.” The woman offers a kind smile as she lifts her hand. Magic – drawn from his old home – slides over his skin. He feels it numb his overwhelmed senses, his hearing goes out, and the pull of his muscles weakens. The world goes fuzzy, and then it fades away.

Chapter Text

The first time Sael'las sees Solas, he knows the man is something. For one, he is not at work. He walks among those with bent backs unburdened by weights. It shows in his walk; he wasn’t afraid to take up room in a finite space. Sael'las, like many other of Mythal spirits, is transfixed by the liveliness of the man. 

He is dressed in the clothes of the common. The regal, gold threads and crowns of the ancients are free from his person. If he didn’t walk like a man in charge, Sael'las would assume him a commoner. 

That’s not true. No one could mistake the presence of that man for a commoner. Sael’las reasons that if he had a way to look as far back as history allowed, he’d never see Solas work a day. His clothes are formal, the gear of one who has won Mythal’s favor, and his hair is cut in the foxtail a hundred commoners wear along the streets; hair kept in shaved sides and long locks that complimented the sharp curves of his jaw. Ears undecorated. Hair bare of any jewelry. Yet he walked much like the ancients, through the halls of the slaves. 

Solas wasn’t new, not like him. The elf walking by him was as old as elvehenan and had lived far more eternities than Sael'las knew. A spirit of wisdom, his fellow slaves had said, swayed to join the ranks of the elves by his vhenan. Vhenan, a word Sael'las does not understand so young. Even now, the word hangs over him like the sun; warm, welcoming, and hopeful. He hopes he knows that feeling, someday. 

Solas walks right down the center of the hall. Commoners part ways for him, their eyes searching for his gaze as he passes. There is no arrogance when he meets their eyes, no deep-held belief in power like others that have looked upon them. He holds the opposite in his eye; the look of regret cold as he steps past the bowed workers. 

Sael’las feels Solas’s gaze more than he meets it. It’s a cold shot of emotion down his spine that forces him to stand straighter and hide the dirt beneath his fingernails. He wasn’t unused to the feeling, having been in Mythal’s presence more than most, yet it was new to feel outside of his lady. The feeling rattled him, though it did not make him fear. 

Solas walks out of the hall with little fanfare. A breath Sael’las hadn’t realized he was even holding leaves him, his shoulders relaxing. It’s obvious Solas felt nothing; the metal cord of importance that he held around his person did not extend from anyone else to him. Maybe Mythal, Sael’las guesses. Only he was affected by Solas, not the other way around. Much like a spirit wandering the fade with no ground, Solas had not felt the chill of him. 

It is jarring, to realize how small one is. A pebble among many; a stream in between a field of glorious mountaintops. 

There are whispers, in the halls around him. The commoners cast glances at the door Solas passed through. Rumors and news fly across the room. Some of it slides across Sael’las’s ear. None of it he holds close to his chest. He’s heard the echoes of those stories a hundred times. The stories of a man walking amongst their highest generals. The story of a wolf in his shadow. The whisper of unease amongst the masses. 

Sael'las knows it is Solas behind every one of those stories. The fire behind that man’s eyes does not lie. 

–

“They’re using the titan’s dreams,” one of the slaves blurts out, under the light of their dining room. She’s one of the youngest of them, Mirisa by name. Sael’las spends a lot of time with her. Not only were they the closest in age – though they differed by about six hundred years – but they also had the same strain of humor. 

Servants of Mythal’s house – with which Sael’las finds himself – eat separately from the lady and her generals. Their dining home is marble and gold; the servants is wood and the blaze of a fire. The same table the servants had chopped food on mere hours ago was cleared, plates stacked high of day-old vegetables and scrap bread. 

They number twenty, though that number has but doubled in recent years. Each of the servants is pushed tight against the wooden surface. Belath, an older servant, strums lightly on a lute on the edge of the table. Their strum fails when Mirisa speaks. 

“Raw dreams. Leftover from the ritual.” Mirisa hisses, “From the war with the Titans?”

“That’s absurd.” The oldest of them, Amirisha, speaks, her arms elbow-deep in raw dough. She’s one of Sael’las’s favorites; a spirit of compassion that continues to strive for a warm heart and open arms. “The war ended a decade ago. If they were going to use that, they would have already done so.” 

Sael’las listens but does not participate in the conversation. Most of the dining table has gone silent at the fresh piece of gossip. He’s no stranger to the chatter of the servants, often adding in his rumor or gathered gossip on long nights. Tonight is different. The memory of Solas still hangs on his eyelid like a bad dream. There's a feeling in his chest like the sight of him is important. It won’t let him leave it alone. 

“The old generals have been debating it for a decade, now! And they’ve finally decided. They’re going to use the Titan’s dreams!” Mirisa exclaims. “Imagine! The power of the Titans in the hands of the best of us! What they could do with that sort of power.” 

“They could build a world.” Belath hums, their words taking on a melodic tune. “And I imagine they will.” 

“Stolen dreams are dangerous,” Amatisha replies, turning her head to look at the now-silent dining table. “There is power in those Titans' dreams, and that power is quick to corrupt. We don’t fully understand the outcomes of disconnecting the Titans from the fade.” 

“They’re the best of us. If anyone can use those dreams correctly-” 

“The older one gets and the more one sees, the more jaded they become.” Amatisha goes back to kneading dough. She holds respect among them, as no one is older than she is. She sometimes claims she’s about as old and batty as the generals. She’s even gone into Uthenera. Of Mythals servants, she is the only one to have done so. 

Mythal didn’t always have servants. As Sael’las understands it, she’d cooked and cared for herself for a long time. She lived alone with Solas until the war forced her to be away. It was only then, when she took the mantle as a general beside the others, that she began to take new spirits under her house. 

“Are you saying they’re untrustworthy?” Mirisa asks. “You shouldn’t speak that way of our lady.” 

“It isn’t that they are untrustworthy, exactly. Mythal is the only general I’d trust, da’len.” Amatisha pulls out a bit of dough and starts rolling it on the already-floured surface. “It is simply that I have seen many things change; I have seen Mythal turn colder and colder towards us. If she is cold, I fear what the others are like. I fear what they will become, with time. Especially after the Titans.” 

Sael’las lets his bit of bread drop amongst the now cold carrots on his plate. He’s heard much of the Titans, though the information he’s gotten isn’t the best. The conversation has lost him. His curiosity peaks. 

“What did the Titans have to do with any of it?” For the first time that night, Sael’las speaks up. He’d been born after the Titans had already been taken away from the world. The stories they tell about Titans – from experience – meant little to him. He’d never seen them in anything but murals. Their corpses litter the earth, though he’s never wandered far enough outside of Mythal’s home to see them. 

Why would he? He trusted his lady. She’d never done anything to make him not trust her. He worked, sure, but he was given room and freedom to pursue his own interests outside of the workday. 

The table turns to him when he speaks. Amatisha hums, her hands digging into the soft dough harshly. 

“You have not seen war, Sael’las, and I am glad for that.” She sighs, “Do you remember the tale of how the Titans were slain?” 

Sael’las looks between the crowd of elves. They all stare at him, wide-eyed, waiting for his answer. 

“Of course I do. It’s all the spirits ever talk about.” Sael’las chews on the inside of his cheek. The spirits were loud when he was new, the chatter revealing their own sorrow at the lost dreams of the Titans. They’d hung around him a lot in those days. Mythal said it was because he had no memory of a time they’d rather not dwell on. “We didn’t slay the Titans. Solas fashioned a dagger that Mythal used to sever their connection to the fade. Then, they trapped the dreams in a prison. It buried a whole city.” 

“And the significance of that?” Amatisha asks as if she is a teacher and Sael’las is a child in tutoring. 

“Well, it was definitely important.” Sael’las retorts. 

Amatisha sighs once again. She did that a lot, around Sael’las. 

“What Mythal and Solas did, on that night, was dramatically change the balance of our known existence. An entire race of beings more powerful than us rendered powerless. They did not understand what they were doing.” 

“Which is why the Titans died.” Belath butts in, “A lot of stories talk about a grand march to wipe out the fadeless titans, but that’s not what happened.” 

“When Mythal cut away the fade from their minds, she also severed their connection to their dreams. Without dreams, they felt nothing.” Amatisha scoops up the piece of dough she’d been kneading and plops it down in a basket. “They starved themselves. Because they no longer dreamed of tomorrow.” 

The lute player strums their last chord, a minor key with dissonance that rattles through the suddenly cold air. Sael’las no longer feels like eating. He’s sure if he tried he’d end up throwing it all up. 

He tries to imagine what it would be like to not dream, but he can’t. Sael’las is a dreamer – one of the few in Mythal’s house – and his connection to the fade is closer than most of those around him. Its magic cradles him in the dark and whispers to him under the glass roof of Mythal’s temple. 

Without the fade, there would be a void in his chest. A void big enough that it might just eat him right up. That same blackness that had eaten up the Titans. 

It makes him feel cold from his fingertips up to his chest. 

“And now our generals take the magic from their graves and carve it for their own use. It is not exciting, it is concerning.” Amatisha turns from her bread-making once more. She leans back against the edge of the table, eyes boring into Sael’las’s.  None of them were eating, anymore, many of them staring at empty spots at the table in front of them. Most of the other servants stare right back at her; frozen in the heavy words she lays on them. “What kind of power comes from the genocide of an entire race?” 

Dinner ends in silence.

Chapter Text

Eternity is long, and it stretches like taffy in the hands of an immortal. ‘Lifetime’ is a meaningless word to elves. When they refer to a lifetime, they use it in terms of the dwarves. Often, there is a sort of pity dripping from their tongues as they do. They all fear death – elves do not age, but it does not save them from physical ailments – but to have a timeframe on natural life is beyond the realm of understanding to those who do not die. Perhaps it is this lack of time that makes elves so reckless. Perhaps it is this timeframe that makes dwarves so ambitious. 

As such, it seems to Sael’las an eternity before he sees Solas again. The man is absent from Mythal’s temple, though that does not stop him from looking. Sael’las sees ghosts in hallways and catches the bitter spit of words that belong to no one. He always has one ear to the ground, searching for the familiarity he felt lingering in Solas’s gaze. In the face of eternity, it was barely a moment. 

Sael’las changes in that time. He grows out of newness and learns the grief of waiting. He learns how to hold magic in his hand and, when he earns the scorn of his fellow servants, how to hide it from their eyes. Sael’las grows like a wildfire started in the middle of a dry brush; he’s loud, brash, and reckless. His tongue is silver, and his laugh is gold. 

Perhaps this is what draws the attention of the wolf. 

Sael’las had grown to hate work. It was repetitive in a way that bored him. His eyes would slide from the dull pounding of hands against dough to the sunlight glittering through the glass. Amatisha called him a daydreamer, a term she invented to describe the far-away look in his eye as he worked. Whenever he got the chance, he found a way to make those dreams a reality. 

The sunset is his favorite daydream. He likes the way sunlight lingers in the air. Likes how the spirits seem to linger around the shadows, waiting for the night to begin and the dreams of the physical to infect their world with life. They’re forever hungry for it, Sael'las has learned, and grasp any new idea the physical can give them. Sael'las has wandered through the fade only to find his thoughts written across its surface. Special attention is paid to a fallen statue he cried over right after he was born and the flicker of sunlight through the clouds that still takes his breath away. 

The spirits mill around him, chattering amongst themselves. They also like it when he abandons his station. He imagines the bubbling excitement he feels while doing it draws them in. It’s a rare feeling, and he gives it off in waves. 

He’s drifting, listening to the gentle chatter of the spirits on a balcony forgotten by the other servants. It’s peaceful, the gold of the sky outlined by the green reaching trees of Arlathan. It is this dream that takes him away. So far away, he doesn’t hear the gentle footfalls of another person approaching. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Sael'las jumps out of his skin at the voice. He knows it well, for how can he not when he strains his ears to hear it through closed doors? It’s melodic and poetic in its calm. And it is cold in its anger, whenever it arises. 

Sael'las all but forgets the grace of his kind as he contorts himself to meet the eyes of Solas. The elf isn’t looking at him; his eyes are focused on the disappearing glow of the sun. The upturn of his lips gives away that he knew Sael'las had stumbled. 

Sael’las’s heart jumps in his chest. He’s suddenly all too aware of the way he’s sitting, legs spread and hair down from its bun. There’s a prickle of embarrassment under his skin. 

Solas is as radiant as the first time they met. Dressed in casual clothes, much like the ones Sael'las wears when he is off duty. 

“Oh, uh, yes?” Sael'las stumbles over the words as he stumbled over his movements. It’s unlike him to speak as if something affected him. He’s aware of that because the other slaves chastise him for it constantly. 

Solas’s eyes flicker to his for a moment. He walks with grace around the small chunk of stone Sael'las had turned into a seat. When he sits down, a wave of fragrance hits Sael'las in the nose. 

He smells of the forests outside the grounds, like the flowers that are blooming there now. He smells, Sael'las muses, much like freedom. 

“I’ve seen countless amounts of sunsets,” Solas speaks in a soft tone, his words flowing over each other. The Evanuris speak like that, their words all-encompassing and praiseworthy. Lifetimes of speaking and mastering a language they created would do that. Sael'las isn’t sure it fits the man in front of him. “All of them are different. With each new spirit that admires them, they get warmer.” 

Sael'las isn’t too sure how to respond to that. The elf is speaking about something he can’t wrap his mind around. He’s seen a lot of sunsets, too, but it seems pale in comparison to the sheer amount of days this man has witnessed. Solas was powerful before Sael'las had even materialized in the outskirts of the fade. 

“The spirits have been drawn to this area recently.” Solas continues. He wasn’t expecting much of a reply from Sael'las, which he finds himself rather grateful for. “I wondered what was doing it.” 

Sael'las is already looking at Solas when the man turns towards him. The weight of that gaze lands on him like a mountain. Everything Solas considers is important. Sael'las had overheard him talking about the beauty of a fallen leaf and had rushed to the forests to find one himself. Solas was right, as he was about everything else. The leaf was one of the more beautiful things Sael'las had seen at that time. To have that calculated look directed at himself made him feel ripped open, real in a way he was still learning to understand. 

“Maybe they just like the view?” Sael'las blurts out. Solas pauses for a moment that calculated gaze settling. 

“Spirits are drawn to places of high emotions. Sometimes, they are attracted to novel ones, too.” Solas responds. Sael'las is glad he ignored his stupid words. His eyes do shift to the spirits lingering around. He’d never noticed it before, but their eyes were not glued to the sun. No, many of them are watching him with rapt attention. Sael'las feels their gaze like a prickle upon his skin. 

Was he the cause of this crowd? He feels a sort of coldness wash over him at the thought. The commons were often drowning in spirits. The other servants say it's because of the newly appointed gods and the way they treat their slaves. The spirits, the others echo, stay close to them because of things they expect to happen. Emotions they believe will appear amongst the people of Mythal’s house. Even if they never come, the spirits linger to the possibility. 

But to be attracted to a singular elf? Sael'las knows that's not a good idea. Any sort of attention is something he’d like to avoid.

“I didn’t mean to disturb them.” Sael'las offers, suddenly very aware that the man sitting beside him just so happens to be the same one that stands beside Mythal. The best way to avoid drawing her ire was not to exchange conversation with Solas. 

Something he can not stop himself from doing. Knows, looking into the man’s purple eyes, that he would never turn down time spent next to him. 

“You are not disturbing them,” Solas replies, and that calculated look has found itself back on him. “Can you sense what spirits linger here, Sael'las?” 

The question is lost on Sael'las at the sound of his own name on Solas’s lips. It drips like honey over freshly toasted bread. He balks at the man and almost opens his mouth to ask how he knew who he was. He doesn’t. That would probably make him look even clumsier than he must already. 

“Uh-” He says instead like that was any better. 

The older elves could tell spirits apart easily. They look at the spirits hanging around and call their names. Sometimes, the spirits would even answer. It was taught to most of them, but it took a lot of time and meticulous practice. Sael’las can tell a twisted spirit from a true one, but that’s about as far as his spirit knowledge goes. 

“Curiosity is here,” Solas holds out his hand to the gaggle of spirits behind them, “Learning is, as well. Both are often found close to younger elves. You tend to have a thirst for both.” 

Sael'las finds himself blushing at that. It is true he is young in elven minds, but he was not born yesterday. 

“I’m not that young.” Sael'las vocalizes his own embarrassment. It comes out a lot more spiteful than he wishes. 

Solas only laughs in reply. 

“You do not not understand what young means.” Solas offers, his voice taking on that humored tilt that Sael'las has become accustomed to. Another spirit drifts onto the small balcony. Darker than the others, twisted in a way that could become harmful if left too long. “Oh, and look at that. Spite makes an appearance.” 

“That seems pointed,” Sael'las grumbles, watching the new twisted spirit as it whispers quietly with the rest. 

“Hope is here, though I do believe that is more because you are from the same vein.” Solas hums in confirmation. Sael'las knew that spirit, at least. He remembers the resonance of his soul before he was shackled in a body and lost the ability to sing with the rest. Hope still sings to him, even now. “But there is another spirit here. One of a growing breed.” 

Sael'las follows Solas’s gaze. A spirit lingers against the closest wall to them. It’s dark, like spite, yet its form is completely straight. A heavy emotion but not a twisted one. The spirit is silent, not conversing with its fellow souls. Its eyes stare right at Sael'las. 

He can’t place the emotion he feels looking at it. Though, that doesn’t say much. Sael'las is bad at putting a name to the feelings in his chest on a good day. One without a common name? He’s lost. 

“Rebellion,” Solas voices for him. The word holds a hint of danger in it, and a wave of raised whispers from the spirits accompany it. 

Sael'las shivers at the word. He’s not even sure what it means, but he knows he’s seen it before. The way the servants will gloss over some of their duties when Mythal takes another of their freedoms away. The way they make fresh bread from the leftover ingredients and feed it warm and fresh to themselves. Sael'las, walking away from work to watch the sunset. 

None of it seems negative to him, but he knows it is. Alongside all of these actions, there is fear melded into the movements of the slaves. They know what they are doing is wrong, but they do it anyway. Breaking the rules and regulations set up for them purposely, instead of the fumbled way, Sael'las sometimes dropped a plate and apologized profusely for it. 

It’s not a spirit that is welcomed in this place, Sael'las knows. 

He catches Solas’s eye, expecting a hundred different things to be written across his mind. The man holds none of it, no contempt or anger or displeasure. Instead, he looks rather content with the spirit hanging so close to them. 

“I didn’t mean to-” 

“You face no danger from me.” Solas began, cutting the frantic apologies from Sael'las’s mouth. 

“Rebellion bubbles under the foundations of this system. It will come to a breaking point.”

Sael'las considers the words. He sees it, sure, in the servants working side by side with him. Even Mythal, who is not a full-fledged Evanuris, walks above them like she belongs there. The tensions of that inequality festered long before Sael'las entered the world. He was born into feelings of contempt and negativity; he grew from whispers and heated words. It seems that feeling is a lot bigger than he had originally thought. 

“They call you the wolf,” Sael'las says lowly, hoping the words don’t travel too far. The spirits don’t bristle at the mention of rumor. He doesn’t fear them telling anyone about the conversation. Even if they did, there is a good chance the Evanuris already know the stories.

Something happens to Solas, then. There’s a break in the calm demeanor Sael'las had always expected of him. A snarl of the lips, a crinkle at the top of his nose. Solas hisses out his next words. 

“Elgar’nan calls me the dread wolf.” The word rings with a cold intensity. It rattles Sael'las down to the bone. He tries to imagine the moniker fitting the calm, gentle man before him and comes up short. Nothing about Solas screams predator, and none of it makes him feel dread. 

Sael'las had never seen Elgar’nan in person. The only impressions he has of the man are the same as everyone else. Stained murals of a god send colorful light jumping across grey concrete. He’s heard stories, of course, mixed in their interpretation of the man. Some call him a hero. Others call him a tyrant. Sael'las imagines the simple act of giving a man a name like ‘the dread wolf’ proves half of those false. 

“Maybe it’s not a bad thing.” Sael'las hums, looking Solas up and down. “The gods think of you enough to give you your name. Rather they hate you or love you, it speaks to your influence.” 

“Wolves are-” and Sael'las has to stop to consider his next words. He’s still getting used to putting words and phrases together, still getting used to speaking in the tongue of the living. He’s slow to take it up. The threads of his spirit are still strong enough that sometimes, when he wishes to say something of importance, he wishes to sing it like the souls. But he is not a spirit anymore, and the song always sounds dull on his lips. “Wolves are predators when faced with prey. They are also fiercely protective of their own. The leader of the pack takes care of them all. I find it comforting. That the creatures care so deeply about one another, perhaps, one day, the elves can learn to care for one another in the same way.” 

Solas simply watches him as he speaks, and the silence continues after. Sael'las fears that he’s overstepped. Fears the harsh hammer that could come down for speaking out against his gods, even in such a small way. But the fear doesn’t build. It is a steady stream, an undercurrent. Solas said he had nothing to fear. Mythal is but a general. Sael'las wants to believe that more than anything. 

The sun has long since dipped below the horizon, bringing with it a chill that bites at their skin. Spirits enter into the world by the dozens. They drift through the air hand in hand with dreamers. Sael'las hears their songs like a cacophony, a symphony of harmony that stretches from sky to sky. He wishes to join them. He imagines Solas would join them soon, as well. 

Solas stands, his robes falling around him with whisps of the fade clinging to the material. He doens’t look at Sael'las. His eyes follow the same dance, glazing over the magic that freely flows in the moonlight. The spirits always seem closer in the night. 

“Youth brings with it an overwhelming feeling of life.” Solas crosses his arms, purple eyes lowering to Sael’las. “It is easy to feel a connection to others, but it is not the way of the elves. No matter how much we wish it so.”

Solas walks back the way he came, around the cracked rock and towards the broken wall Sael’las had claimed as his own. His outline is as regal now as it always seemed, graceful and godlike in a way that screams importance. The harsh pounding of Sael’las’s heart only quiets as the man disappears from view. His words hang in the air like a poison. 

“What’s stopping us from loving another?” Sael'las whispers into the cold air for no one to hear. But the spirits hear, and they ripple with the words so much it evolves into a feeling. A spirit in itself. 

The fade twists into knots far away from the balcony Sael'las sits upon. A new idea, a new emotion that crackles with magic and explodes. The space left behind is taken up by a form. It opens eyes that are not eyes, webs of fade stretching out to encompass empty space. Others crowd it, spirits of hope, knowledge, and curiosity, and the new spirit takes its first steps under their watchful gaze.

Chapter Text

Things change quickly, too quickly for most of the elves' liking. The choice for Mythal to join the Evanuris is made in a month, and within that time their entire lives begin to change. 

With the rank of Evanuris, Mythal takes the mantle of a protector. Most had always seen her that way, but the name is said with a much louder beat. The stained windows shift and change to include one more amongst the growing number of gods before them. Beside Elgar’nan, bathed in golden light, sits their lady. She doesn’t look much like the glimpses Sael'las has caught. She’s colder, somehow, and her pointed crown cuts into the skies above her head.

Things didn’t change all in one day. The loss of freedoms hit them slowly, one at a time. It was easy to miss in those first few months. One harsh word for things they once were free to do and are now barred from—a lashing of the servant who got in the most trouble. More servants, and then slowly the name ‘slave’ being tied to their eyes. 

One moment changed this. There is often an event in time that tips the balance from a slow descent into a fall. One crack of a rock sends a whole cliff into the dark ocean below. That thing is the vallaslin. 

Vallaslin are more than tattoos. They were blood, carved into the skin in a brand. It is not a needle that pushes ink into the skin, but magic that seers the blood into a darker shade along one’s skin. The first time Mythal uses blood magic on those in her temple. 

Blood magic is heavier than other types. It doesn’t pull from the fade and doesn’t press around one’s skin like the weight of the whole sky. Instead, it wells up from within. It’s the burst of blood from an open wound, the pressure of puss under a blister. For the vallaslin, it was a mass exodus of blood magic that pulled at every one of Mythal’s slaves. 

One moment, Sael’las is eating breakfast. The next, his face burns with the bitter pull of blood against his cheeks. He’s not the only one that grabs at his face. He’s not the only one that cries out in pain. 

He watches the elf across from him. Sees the blood bubble and forms thin lines. It starts right above the tip of his nose and spreads up along the brow bone. Little branches that break off and curve over his brow bone up onto the flat plane of his forehead. A tiny tree sprouting from their blood. More accurately, the branching of Mythal’s spirit form. The whole room looks at each other with mirrored trees. Some have bare branches that end on the forehead. Some have extra ones along their cheekbones. 

All of their cheeks are red with the blood that pulses right underneath their skin. 

He sees his markings for the first time on a broken piece of glass. He hits the glass just right, the glint of the sun sending his face into bright light. His face is strange to him. Nothing had changed. His bones are where they were and his eyes curve in the same way they used to. There’s still the cuts in his eyebrows from wounds long healed. Everything is as it was, yet it felt so foreign. He runs his fingers over the black markings on his face and feels nothing. Physically, and emotionally, he is numb. The stranger in front of him frowns. His lips pull down. There is a disconnect between the reflection of the glass and himself. 

The worst part is the markings go further than his skin. He feels their pull deeper, past his blood and grasping at his core. It is as if shackles descend upon his spirit. Where it used to move freely it is bound, now, small and cut to fit into a box far too small for it. Something further had changed than just the plain nature of his skin. 

Sael’las crushes the glass under his heel. 

There are guards, now, around their quarters. And one at the entrance to the balcony he had once escaped to as the sunset. He watches the sunset from the cracks of the window as he scrubs a floor, now, and feels the deep sadness of missing its descent. More slaves show up by the droves, each one with tears running down their eyes. So different than his birth. Their spirits were ripped from the fade. No guidance happened, under the rule of the evanuris. Just the pull of an iron fist against their bare necks. These new elves were different. They stumbled, unable and unwilling to gather themselves on their feet. 

Sael'las sees Elgar’nan for the first time, too. He’ll never forget it. The power of that man was something he never wanted to feel again. It was a pull, a poison that grabbed his body and bent it to his will. He cracked his knees on the harsh ground as he was made to bow. Only through his eyelashes did he catch sight of the man. Tall, imposing, with a frown that never seemed to disappear. Behind him trails slaves much like him. Bruises lined their face, covered by the thick black lines of Elgar’nan’s vallaslin. 

Mythal had walked beside him. She seemed so fragile next to such power. A head shorter, her body narrow, with a crown that seemed to shadow her face. Not once had she so much as looked at her bowed slaves. 

Things change. Rapidly. Sael'las feels much like the joys he’s experienced fade away in the months of Mythal’s rise to power. Even the spirits echo this; more and more twist with each day. Their life shifts to a darkness Sael'las wishes he did not have to grow accustomed to. 

For a while, all Sael'las thinks about his duties and the desperation that mounts on all sides. There isn’t much time for anything else. Even when there is time, he is too busy trying to avoid the ire of the guards and Mythal’s growing army. Years pass under that dull light. The days are longer and shorter in cycles he barely recognizes. The flowers bloom and then die again. Sael'las sees new elves walk into their halls and elves leave for the last time. He grows. He learns. And, above all else, he keeps his head down. 

Solas abandons Mythal when she turns to the Evanuris. That betrayal rings out amongst the spirits, who gossip about it through the walls late at night. Sael'las lays awake for hours listening to their chatter. They replay the same bits of dialogue over and over. He feels the pain behind the words shared between those two. More than that, he imagines the look on Solas’s face as he walks away. 

In the place of Solas comes the Dread Wolf. The slaves both know and do not know the two are connected, at first. It’s a sort of hushed speculation for a long time. Elgar’nan gives speeches about the greatness of the Elvhen empire. He speaks about the royalty and the nobility and of the enemies of them all. At the end of most of his tirades, he mentions the poison of the dread wolf. 

Sael'las wishes he could turn away at those points. He mourns the loss of the sunset more bent at his knee than after hours of lifting heavy stones. 

But he can not turn away. Because he has no free will in those moments. Elgar’nan’s magic is a heavy burden. It is toxic, unlike Mythals, and tugs at every muscle until there are only two options; bend or break. He is forced to listen through clenched teeth. His curses fall on deaf ears; they don’t even leave his lips. 

Mythal is the first of a few. Other gods pop up on the glass walls, windows that shed more and more gradients onto floors Sael'las wipes at every week. The slaves watch them expand with a sort of morbid understanding. They hear the news of a war approaching with quiet contempt. They spread stories of the Dread Wolf through hushed whispers. 

It’s years before Sael'las finds a way to slip outside of the slave quarters again. He’s older, wiser, and a little less whole when he sees the sunset again. 

He stands on the castle grounds alone this time. The Evanuris – they number six, now – are inside. Most of the guards stick close to them with tensions so high. He’s caught many of his fellow slaves in similar positions as himself; tucked inside dead-end halls with no lights and in small balconies that face the setting sun. None of them venture as far as he does. The guards' influence hangs over all of them. 

The sunset is arguably the same as it was the last time Sael'las watched it. A bit more hidden, now, behind the large buildings that the slaves had built. Arlathan was well underway. The elven empire had come to spread much more land than it had when it was introduced to it. The sun sets over it all without prejudice. Its light scatters around reflective walls and glittering enchantments. Magic intertwines with the rays to form splays of color that dance in the golden hour. 

Yet the shadows of the buildings cast the wilderness into darkness. No longer do the sun’s rays touch every blade of grass or treetop. Parts of them are left without the warmth of the sun. The plants suffer from it, too. Trees that had been green since they were small wither. The trees that had always harbored changing leaves harbor them less, now. Wildlife is scarce in the city. 

Sael'las ponders this until the sun goes down. He reaches his hand up into the air, catching the last bit of sunlight as it disappears above his palm and into his fingertips. Then he, too, is cast in shadow. The sun dips, the light disappears, and night reigns for another bout. Sael'las breathes out a fogged breath that drifts up into the darkness.

He has never felt so alone as he does standing in this meadow. He wonders when the friendship of Mythals house had stopped. He wonders when he has grown silent in the crowded dining halls. There was a time when he was the loudest in the room. His laughter had lit a darkened hallway. Heads had turned, urging him to be quiet, and he had slipped right past them on bouncing heels. 

Sael’las had been alive at some point he is sure. Now, he is not so sure. When was the last time he grasped anything with purpose? When was the last time he reached out and felt anything but sadness for his circumstances? 

He knows he is dangerously close to losing himself. A spirit twists so easily, and it is hard to undo that damage once it gnarls their form. Felassan feels the twisting cage of his spirit, feels it gnaw at its bar, and whimpers when the metal chips his teeth. 

What would happen when hope broke? 

Perhaps it's the darkness that allows him to see it. Or it’s the spirits standing in an odd pattern that draws his attention. 

A flicker of a glow catches Sael'las’s eye. He turns, expecting to see a guard walking towards him with a grim expression on their face. Instead, he sees a crack in a wall. A wall that should be perfectly built. A wall that, by all accounts, should have seen no weathering. 

Behind the stone a steady cyan color gleams. It reaches out of the crack like fingers into the dirt. As soon as Sael'las faces it directly it seems to fade completely. 

His interest is peaked. He hasn’t had much to be curious about recently. The days had been the same, passing in a series of blurs that blended one into the other. Between the heavy beat of Elgar’nan’s voice and the gentle chastising of Mythal, there wasn’t much adventure to be had. 

So, he walks towards the light. 

Spirits seem to part for him. Some of them whisper loudly in his ear in a language he has made himself deaf to. He feels the cold glide of the fade against his skin through the crowd. They watch him approach. He wonders distantly if he should be more cautious; if there is a warning written in the spirits. But none of them stop his movements, none of them warn him from continuing, so he throws the thought to the side. 

The wall is cracked, is currently cracking, as Sael'las approaches it. He can see the energy inside of it expanding. It’s far too close to complete chaos for his liking. The energy is familiar in a way he can’t describe, and when he reaches out to it with his magic it tangles together in a way that makes him recoil. 

It’s interesting enough that he tries again. The ball snatches at him, this time, and with a big bang, the whole wall explodes outwards. Sael'las is flung back onto the ground. Spirits all around him buzz with a sort of low excitement. 

Sael'las looks up to the ruins of the ball of energy. It’s not a ball at all but a small mirror. The mirror’s frame is half engraved in the rock, bits of it peaking into the stone. The magic of its surface thrums. 

An Eluvian. The realization has him scrambling to his feet. If anyone found out about this- 

Sael'las looks all around the courtyard and sees no one. Not a single guard is present in the dark field. Only spirits watch him, their eyes wide and their bodies buzzing with an excitement Sael'las can’t really name. One spirit in particular holds his hand out as if waving the man away. 

A seed of fear sprouts in Sael'las’s chest. Eluvians were off-limits to slaves. There were no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The only ones to ever walk through the magic mirrors were the Evanuris or those given the right by the gods. Yet he’s staring right at one. And there’s no one around to stop him. 

The dull pang of the past few years weighs heavily on Sael'las. He knows he’s plateaued under the thumb of Mythal. Harsh rules and limited movement have made him stop trying. That passion that drove him to pick up language and comradery in his first few eternities had dwindled into a low, sad hum of apathy. Sael'las didn’t much feel like a spirit of hope when he spent most of his days toiling at work he’d never see the fruits of. 

Sael'las casts a glance at Mythal’s temple. It looks eerie in the darkness. Elgar’nan’s power does not hide and today is no exception. The gentle rumble of it rolls off the rooftops like a slow wave. Nothing was pulling Sael'las back to that place. 

Sael'las looks at the mirror, takes a deep breath, and steps through.

Chapter Text

Sael'las isn’t sure what he’s expecting when stepping through the Eluvian, but it surely isn’t this. 

From the short conversations he’s had concerning Eluvians and their functions, they tend to lead to different parts of the world. One could step into one from their bedroom and walk into their sister's half a world away — Eluvians snake under Thedas, roads through the fade that connect continents like stepping stones. 

No one had ever mentioned the world behind them. 

Sael’las steps into a bubble in the fade. He’s standing on solid rock but the ground beneath his feet is floating above his head. It’s dark like it’s night but the sky is a deep, empty pit below him that doesn’t have any end. Where stars should be it’s just dark grey sky wrapping all around. 

It smells vaguely of the kitchens, too. Sael'las catches the scent of freshly baked bread that he snatches from Amatisha before the sun rises. The undertones of cinnamon and sugar — a favorite snack amongst Mythal’s servants — seep through the air along with it. But there’s no kitchen anywhere to be found, and the only Eluvian in sight is the one he just walked through. 

When he turns to look at said mirror a blank frame looks back. The Eluvian, it seems, was only one way. 

“Well, shit.” Sael'las sighs. 

He can’t find it within himself to mourn. The presence of tyranny lingers along his skin. It is a festering blister amongst the slaves. In the same way sickness sticks, the dark eyes of the gods never escape them. That sort of domination is exhausting. It makes a step feel like a mile, and a mistake seem like a war. In this place, that gaze is gone. For the first time in a long time, Sael’las walks unseen. A weight lifts from his chest and a smile spreads across his lips. 

Freedom at last. If even for his last days. 

With nowhere else to go but forward, Sael'las starts on his way. There’s only one singular path. It’s narrow and cracked, but it is almost as if the crack comes from building up rather than tearing away. On either side of the walkway, there are large pieces of stone that hang, weightless, in the air. Some of them float to the places beneath his feet and slot like a puzzle piece into the path. 

There are figures in the landscapes that are still forming in the distance. This, at least, resembles the fade. A statue of Mythal is erected with an island of floating waterfalls. The water swirls around in a big overlapping oval, spraying bits of crystal clear water on Sael'las’s face. Mythal’s stone eyes weigh down on him as he passes. 

There’s a flicker of a gleaming wall and the slash of a mural. Sael'las catches glimpses of familiar rooms and doors with no handles. If he wasn’t familiar with the fade it would be strange. Yet this place reminds him much of dreams he’s wondered, molding to the twists of his mind. 

The world takes form around him, or whatever this plane of existence is. He watches Arlathan fall away to nothing but bare forests and empty spaces. He sees the rubble of cities in their entirety. He sees the corpse of a titan buried under a mountain of snow. All of it passes on a singular walk. 

The pathway eventually comes to an end. It’s so complete he almost walks right over the edge. He stops abruptly a few inches before the falls off, a bit of stone sliding and tumbling down into the empty air below. 

For a moment Sael'las stands there in silence. There’s absolutely nothing below him. The space just stretches as far down as the eye can see. Though he can see islands, there are no connections between them. In short, he’s utterly trapped on this narrow pathway. 

A multitude of curses leave his lips. 

He’s trapped. He knows it. Has known it, since he saw that empty Eluvian staring back at him. No one knew he was here. Not many would care that he drops off the roaster. There’s no search party coming for him, and even if there was, they would just as soon stab him through with a sword than help him find his way to safety.

There’s a panic in that realization. It builds in his throat, a ball of emotion that rips at the soft flesh of his lungs. But there is also a sort of peace hidden there as well. Dying here seemed just as good a fate as dying due to his eventual mistakes in Mythal’s servitude. Starving seemed bounds better than torture. 

Sael'las falls to the ground in a heap. He wills the fade to change around him, catches the light in his mind’s eye, and pushes it to do something. Anything. But it does not. This is not the dreaming fade, and he is no longer a spirit. Tethered to a physical body in a world he can not meld, he is powerless. 

Powerless. A word he’s become all too familiar with. How he hates that word. Hates the look he sees in the gods' eyes when they watch him. Hates that he sees that word reflected in their every gesture and order. 

“Visitor.” The voice is calm, but it doesn’t stop the jarring surprise that courses through Sael'las. He twists around, coming face to face with a spirit.

He can’t place what kind of spirit it is. It has the makings of a demon, but the lack of obvious violence that often came with them. No, this spirit floats peacefully above the ground. It’s also in a boat, making Sael'las feel better about his own survival. 

“Hello?” Sael'las tentatively asks the creature. He has to be careful. Some spirits are sensitive; flying off the handles with a wrong push or a rushed word. Thankfully, this one stays right where it is. 

“I am the caretaker.” The spirit speaks, “You are the first non-spiritual visitor in a long time. I welcome you.” 

Sael'las considers the spirit. It hadn’t offered him gold, glory, fame, or freedom. There wasn’t anything to tell him it wanted his body. Even the song that hummed under the spirit’s skin is peaceful. 

“You welcome me where?” Sael'las pushes up from the ground and onto his feet. He’s shorter than the spirit and has to crane his neck to meet his eye. The spirit clasps its hands together in front of itself. 

It’s a blue spirit with wings that glide along its fabric attire like ribs. Sael'las knows it would be beautiful without the fabric to hinder it, for it is already gleaming in the fake moonlight. The mask it wears does not cover the blue glow of its eyes as it stares at Sael'las. 

“The crossroads.” The caretaker replies helpfully. “It is a specialized transportation method using Eluvians.” 

“What god do you belong to?” Sael'las asks immediately. He’s not a master of Eluvians or Elven politics, but he’s more than sure none of the Evanuris would hide an Eluvian in between the walls and vines of Mythal’s temple. The spirit doesn’t waver at the question. It shifts further back in the pathway. Its boat lifts to the stone pathway. 

“I am the caretaker.” The spirit repeats. “Other worlds await you, traveler.”

Sael'las wearily eyes the boat floating in the ether. On one hand, he would rather do anything else but get in a boat with a spirit he doesn’t know. On the other hand, the spirit seems calm. And he doesn’t exactly have many other options at the moment. 

The end of the pathway is clear behind him. If he stayed he’d wither here, at the foot of these broken rocks. He would fade away. 

“Don’t spear me in the back?” Sael'las mutters as he steps into the boat. It rocks like it’s in water —  what the fade says the rock of water is like. He has to grab at the sides of the wooden boat to keep himself from stumbling. 

The caretaker watches, silent and patient, as Sael'las settles amongst the wooden seats of the boat. It’s ice cold, definitely an echo of actual wood rather than planks itself. And when Sael'las runs his hands over the top of the side he feels it squish underneath his fingers. Rotten already. Sael'las wonders if the boat was old and the island new, or if the boat was new and already rotten. Neither one really made Sael'las feel any better about being stranded in this odd part of the fade. 

“Onwards,” is the only warning the caretaker gives before the whole boat shoots forward. It’s not as quick as falling, but faster than a run. There’s no ground for it to slide across, so the boat moves like a leaf down a calm stream. The caretaker holds an oar but the swing of it does nothing for their gentle glide. 

The world Sael'las had seen is small in comparison to the ones he sees now. He watches them fly past on the verge of begging the caretaker to stop. But he never does. Because something settles in his chest as he flies through this space. 

Who would need an Eluvian like this? Who would care enough to place one of them in a hidden corner in Mythal’s garden? 

The caretaker speeds them through open fade for so long that Sael'las starts to lose hope that they’re even going anywhere. As he confines himself to death in a boat, an island comes into view. It’s different than anything they’ve passed. Instead of landmarks, there are trees with wildflowers growing from their bark. The dock is unmarked and the stone is barely patched together enough to be called a path. 

And at the end of it stands a man. The man is straight as a board. His arms cut sharply at his side, hands clasped behind his back. He wears clothes common to elves, free from any Evanuris-specific platting. The distance between the boat and the path closes. The man looms. 

Sael'las recognizes him right before the boat docks. It would be hard to mistake that cutting look for anyone else.

Solas himself stares down at him, eyebrows furrowed together and face set in a harsh frown. He is different than the last time they met. That must have been ages ago, at least ten years by the calendar days. The years had not been kind to him. There are dark circles under dull eyes. His skin is paler than it was before as if he’d been trapped in blackness for years. And, most noticeably, there is a scar above his brow. 

The facade of godhood falls away with the scar. Evanuris don’t have them; their magic is too efficient to keep them. 

This moment echoes in the moments before. That feeling of revere, like he should be bowing before him, infects him. It’s worse now that he’d bowed so much. 

Solas still walks the world as something more than the other elves. It isn’t godlike, nothing like the iron fist of the Evanuris. More like a gentle caress of soft hands over skin. An urge to bow instead of a demand. A promise of better things in an everlasting storm. 

Solas forgoes all sorts of introductions. He holds his palm out and a blast of magic keeps the boat stopped a few feet before it makes contact with the pathway. If Sael'las wanted he could jump it, but knew he’d never touch the ground without Solas’s okay.

“How did you find this place?” His tone is spitting, violent in a way Sael'las only remembers being directed at the Evanuris. 

Sael'las glances between Solas and the caretaker. The spirit doesn't seem bothered by the sudden stop of his boat. He holds the oar right above the invisible dip of the nonexistent sea. 

“What is this place?” Sael'las asks instead of answering the question. It seems to be the wrong thing to say. The boat shakes as Solas’s magic threatens to send him flying into the ether. 

“How did you find it?” It’s phrased like a question, but the words could be nothing but a demand. “Did Mythal send you?”

“I don’t-” Sael'las feels Solas’s magic hit his chest like a strong gust of wind. The wooden seat of the boat leaves him and suddenly he’s staring down at nothing. Magic swirls around his ankle, the only thing keeping him from plummeting to his death. Sael'las grits his teeth to keep himself from yelling out. The feeling of weightlessness settles in his chest like rocks. It’s a very, very long way down. Probably an eternity. 

“Answer the question!” Solas all but spits at him. Sael'las’s body twists through the air until he’s face to upside-down face with Solas. The eyes that stare back at him hold none of the warmth they had the times before. Cold hard anger roots him to his spot. 

Solas is gone. The Dread Wolf stands on that dock. 

“I don’t know, you oaf!” Sael'las lets the anger spill from his lips. The magic only holds his ankle and he decides to make it Solas’s problem. The man twists and wiggles in the open air, grasping for the bit of the boat he could realistically reach. 

“You expect me to believe that?” Sael'las’s fingertips graze against the wood only for him to be pulled higher in the air. He flails his arms for a moment, fearing he really will be dropped. “You wear her marks!” 

Sael'las snorts. The vallaslin on his face burns under the attention. He’s never wanted so badly to reach up and tear the markings from his face. 

“Oh yeah? I had so much of a choice in that!” Sael'las turns his glare to Solas. Solas has the sort of smugness behind his eyes that lets Sael'las know he won’t be giving up the fight any time soon. If it were up to him, Sael'las would rot to death hanging from the magic shackle around his ankle. “Oh for- If you didn’t want one of Mythal’s slaves to stumble onto your stupid fade island maybe don’t leave an open Eluvian in her back garden!” 

The words seem to stir something in the man. Solas’s face falls, relaxing around the thought. Sael'las watches a million emotions play across the man’s face. The caretaker calmly steers his boat into the dock. A soft clank sounds as it makes contact with the stone. 

“I will have dinner prepared for two.” The caretaker states. 

“That is not necessary.” Solas answers, his eyes still on Sael'las’s dangling form. 

“It is already in preparation.” The spirit disappears from the boat in a bit of magic. It sparkles up around him and flickers into Sael'las’s hair. The crackle of it sends shivers down the elf’s spine. 

Solas curses under his breath as the caretaker disappears. As if the words themselves had decided Sael'las’s fate, he’s turned right side up and sat gently on the stone dock. Blood rushes from Sael'las’s head, leaving him dizzy enough that he stumbles when the magic lets him go. Solas waits patiently as the man gathers himself. 

Sael'las runs his hands over his clothes, straightening them out of their ruffled appearance. He is a man tossed through a blizzard.

“Are you going to listen to me, now?” Sael'las spits. He knows he shouldn’t be poking the wolf, especially not when he’s standing at the man’s metaphorical front door. In his defense, he had just been stung up like beef for a stew.

“Are you going to do something other than trip over yourself?” Solas replies. A lot of the coldness of his voice has left. What is left is the tired, strained tone of a man two seconds from falling to exhaustion. He hides it well, Sael'las is sure, but in the light of his own home, the mask slips just enough to catch a gleam of something deeper inside. 

Solas might remember Sael'las, but if he does he has not given this away. He stands and speaks like a man to a stranger he cares little for. Nothing about his gaze or the treatment Sael'las has received reminds him of the man who watched the sunset with him all those years ago. If the man has forgotten, Sael'las fears the reasons behind it. Is it the vallaslin? Do they change his face as much as he fears; do they hide the curves of his cheeks and his nose to the point he is not himself? Or is it the strain of war that weighs Solas down and drags the pool of his memory across the rotten streets? 

“You’re the one who dangled me over the fade,” Sael'las reminds the man. He does not miss the twitch of Solas’s lips or the way he turns his face from him. Solas watches something in the distance, though Sael'las does not follow the gaze. 

“You said you came through an Eluvian?” Solas asks. The man doesn’t wave Sael'las after him, though he turns to walk further into the island. Sael'las is stuck with the choice of staying put – out of spite – or following the man to his hopeful salvation. 

It is not a hard choice to make. Sael'las jogs to catch up to Solas’s stride. 

“Yeah. It blew up a wall in the garden. Flashed light at me, too. If you want to hide that thing I’d move it. Soon.” Sael'las says it all matter-of-fact. The guards patrol the garden enough they’d stumble upon it eventually. It would happen even quicker now that Sael'las had blown the wall up. 

The island expands from the singular dock Sael'las arrived on. Other pathways branch off into nothing, bits of stone still flying through the air to form the walkways. Sael'las assumes they’d all make docks one day. Each dock would travel to another part of this place, and eluvians could lie on the other side of each one. Connecting the whole world at one single point. 

“The crossroads is a new concept. I did not think any of the eluvians were capable of opening. Considered even less that the caretaker would notice an intruder and lead them through its paths.” They come up to a staircase that curves on either side. There’s a big open space in front of it that seems emptier than it should be. Even now bits of material float above the air as if asking to take shape. Sael'las follows them with his eyes and catches faint glimmers of spirits under the weight of the stone. “I have to destroy that pathway, you understand.” 

“How do I get back?” Sael’las asks. He’d rather stay here, in the freedom of the crossroads, but feels the weight of this place on his shoulders. It was not made for him. 

“They will kill you if you return,” Solas replies. “More than that, I can not risk you returning with information on this place.” 

“So what happens to me?” Sael’las turns to watch Solas. He is pointedly not returning his gaze. There’s a pinch to his brows like gears turning in his head. 

At least that means he won’t be killed for stumbling through a mirror. 

Solas called this place the crossroads. It brings images of crossing paths on a long field, dirt paths carved by feet that meet in the middle to crowds casually sliding past one another. The name is fitting on only one of those aspects. It crosses paths, but there are no souls for the paths to cross over. 

“The Evanuris use Eluvians.” Sael'las states it as a fact. It seemed a better topic than the question he had just raised. It has the desired effect of calming the tension that had settled across them. There is a small fear of seeming incompetent around the man. The revere he had felt around Solas has not yet disappeared. “Do they use the crossroads?” 

“No.” 

Solas leads Sael'las up the rounded stairs. They are shaky like an image in a stepped-on puddle. With each step, the ripples spread out. The stone settles into the ground. 

“Basic Eluvians are much simpler. There is a key, a destination, and a direct link from one place to another. There might be a small path one must tread, but it is little more than a stroll across a field. This system is much more complex.” 

Solas comes to a stop at the foot of a large Eluvian. It’s monumental, looming in the sky like the stained glass built into the gods’ temples. The metal frame stretches three or four times over his head. It’s rounded at the top, dripping in gold, and the insignia on its tip sits broken halfway up. Simplistic carvings run off of the centerpiece and fall over the mirror like vines on an old stone wall. It is also already lit with magic. What should be a reflection fades away as Sael'las stares into his own eyes. The image ripples and breaks into a dark room with a radiating green light.

“And this one?” Sael'las reaches his hand out for the surface of the glass. His fingertips touch the cold surface and slide right through. He flexes his fingers, watching the tips of them reflect a different world. When he glances at Solas, he’s looking at Sael’las’s hand. 

“Vi’Revas,” Solas offers in a detached way. The word glides off the tongue in a way only achieved by the Evanuris. There’s a lilt to his voice. A rhyme that is just on the cusp of being too archaic for Sael’las to understand. The mirror ripples as he pieces it together.

“Freedom of ways,” he translates into the modern tongue. It’s clumsy compared to Solas’s pronunciation, but it gets the point across. Solas grits his teeth. His eyes scan over Sael’las. 

There is a point of recognition in a forgotten mind. Where a blank face fills with remembered features. A blow of dust off an old book. Sael’las watches recognition fall upon Solas. Sees the dust disappear from his cheeks. Knows the second Solas connects his face now to the face of the man he’d talked to all those years ago. 

Sadness fills in the cracks of Solas’s eyes. 

“Sael'las.” Solas sighs, and it is a deep sorrowful sound. He turns his head from Sael’las, cold eyes staring at the ripples in the Eluvian’s surface. He feels the need to grab Solas by the chin and force their eyes to meet. 

‘Look at me,’ Sael'las wants to say, though he does not understand why. ‘I am here.’

“I did not recognize you.” Sael’las expected those words to fall from Solas’s lips. The realization, that moment of seeing, hits Sael;las harder than the aloof moments shared between them. 

“Is the vallaslin that bad?” Sael'las offers, half joking. The word falls flat at the visible fall of the man’s shoulders. Like he’d just dropped the largest rock on his shoulders without a harness to help him carry it. 

“No, they are not.” Solas’s voice is steel, unbending as he speaks to the wall. “I simply had forgotten your face.” 

“Sure,” Sael'las replies. He follows Solas’s sharp profile, cutting through the shadow of the Eluvian like a knife. He gnashes his teeth together in a grinding motion. The resounding ‘crack’ of his jawbone reverberates through the fade. 

The Vi’Revas looms ahead of him. The hum of its magic is almost a lullaby, comforting after the grating churn of Elgar’nan’s prideful beat. Sael'las steps through it. 

It’s not as disorienting as the last one, at least. Perhaps it's because they don’t traverse from the fade to the physical, or because he’s already built up an idea of the area he was entering through the hole of the Eluvian. 

The glow of the fade comes from below a long, smooth path. Sael'las casts a look down at it, watching as the magic swirls against the floor in a way that mimics the gentle currents of an ocean wave. A soft whistle echoes through the room, followed by a flash of light. Footsteps sound as Solas steps up beside him. 

“Where are we?” Sael'las asks. 

He has an overwhelming urge to jump off the side of the path. 

“This is the lighthouse,” Solas hums, walking past Sael'las’s wandering gaze to an open archway that is shifting as it forms. “It is my base of operations.” 

“Base of operations?” Sael’las looks over the edge of the marble path. Water reflects up from the floor. It’s not real water, more the essence of water that ripples against nothing and floats like a shadow. The light of the Eluvian reflects off of hanging golden chandeliers. It sends rainbows swirling on the walls of the room. 

Solas slides past Sael’las. Their shoulders hit one another, but Solas doesn’t even bend away from the push of it. His eyes linger on Sael’las. They’re thin, half opened as he twists his body to walk and stare. It’s a captivating look. One that draws Sael’las further into the waving room. 

“Welcome to the Dread Wolf’s lair.” Solas’s mouth curves up into a smirk around the words. His lips glide out poetry; the memory of a song. 

Sael’las feels its promise heavy against his skin. The waves of the fade below seem microscopic in comparison to the magnitude of that look. 

When Solas turns around, Sael'as notices the wrap thrown over his shoulders: fur, a wolf’s, midnight against the deep blue of Solas’s armor. 

Chapter Text

“Rebellion?” Sael’las sputters at the word. He’s stuck for a moment, mind turning the meaning of it over and over. Solas does not pause except to send a smirk over his shoulder. 

As Sael’las steps from the Vi’Revas, head swinging to take in the room around him, the angry spew of magic dwindles into a calm murmur. The scent of the familiar that had clung to the crossroads dips into something else. It is the scent of ozone that crackles around spirits. The scent of fire right as it goes out. 

Solas walks with steady steps. His shoulders are set, pulling at the tendons there to give him a broader appearance. His hands are clasped behind him, still and white-knuckled. Even in such a simple task, he is divine; hands in perfect balance to the shift of armor over shoulder blades. Cyan light from below bounces off pale skin, giving him the illusion of stepping through water. 

“You remember the spirit of rebellion?” Solas speaks off-handedly, a throw in the dark.  

It is a contradiction to the first few words they’ve exchanged. Direct, to the point; connecting two frames of time that had crossed decades from one another.  Older elves were guilty of this sort of thought; eternity slides into a blur of time with no clear categorization. Events become pinpoints, centuries, days under their revitalized eyes. Sael’las lacks this methodical connection. It takes a moment to connect the green light of the fade to the orange blaze of the sunset. He sifts through the painful memories, a blight upon the retrospection threatening to devour it, to the blurred flashbacks at the edges of his mind. 

Images of a beautiful sunset bombard him. The balcony rises from the ashes. He feels the cold stone under his fingertips. Sunlight warms his front and disappears to the chill of a new night. Spirits linger behind him, their gaze cold against his skin. Solas is there, he remembers, though the face from so long ago seems a different visage. Another being, soft and innocent compared to the hard-cut stone before him. It is a simpler time, that balcony and the last rays of sunlight that cling to him. 

For that to be a simpler time already, still so young on his feet, is terrifying. Why do days like those, filled with so many shackles, bring him comfort? It had seemed so overwhelming. A barrage of emotions throwing him off the side of his gentle existence into forceful, white waves beneath. Yet even that trench is shallower than the chasm he finds himself in. 

“Yes?” Sael’las answers after a beat too long. He blinks away the memory from his eyelids and moves to follow Solas. Fade grasps at the physical objects around them. It is a crackle against the skin, the buzz of magic echoed from his core and along his extremities. For a fearsome moment, he expects to wake up. He imagines the harsh tug of the sun; feels the ripping of the fade as he is thrust from peaceful dreams. 

“That spirit is one of many,” Solas explains with the coldness of a lecturer. “And there are countless more now than there were then. Each day, another one sprouts somewhere in the world. The grace of the Evanuris, I am sure.” 

The walkway opens up into a circular room, buzzing with sound, the murmur of spirits a barrage upon his ears. It’s colder, too, than the almost wet air of the Vi’Revas. When he breathes in, the burning of ozone fades away to the smell of old books and leather. A library. 

Mythal’s library was purely physical; an imitation of the world she subjected herself to. It was a logical outlay for the feet of physical slaves, which had taken over the library as time marched on. Shackles became heavy and warded off the wisps of dreams that drew the spirits to the temple. Knowledge, unlike curiosity and wisdom, felt no pull to a world finite in its ability to give it. 

Solas’s library is different. It is more a mimicry of a library. Shelves that should be plastered to the ground fly high above Sael’las’s head. He has to crane his neck to its extreme to see the towered top of the room. This place is in no short supply of spirits. They fly amongst the novels, all emotions with heads bent over echos of pages held tightly to their bodies. Magic makes a home here, threads of it that weave through the room around a massive sphere of energy. Its glow shines upon the room in a blue sun. Alongside it is the groan of metal bands that ghost across each other, eclipsing the magic with which it contains. 

Nothing gives away a living presence within the library. Books soar, but spirits grasp them. Only a single table gives clues about Solas’s presence here; a single chair in front of a half-read book and barely touched tea. Steam still rises from the mug. The chair is on its side as if thrown off in a hurry. 

Rooms offshoot from the main library, though they are still disordered. It is unfinished in a different way than the rest of the room. Vines snake up from the stone floors, covering something up rather than constructing it. It was as if the intent for the rooms existed, though they were unused at the time. 

“Wow,” is the most elegant thing Sael’las can manage. The off-centered feeling he’d gotten since stepping into this place had not dissipated. He’s off-balance and tries to right his footing, only to stumble into the table. “Is this still the fade?” 

Solas turns at the clatter. His brow is raised. Sael’las hurries to right himself, not meeting the mage’s eyes as he rights the stack of books that had clattered into chaos. He hears a soft huff of laughter from Solas. 

He knows this must be the fade. Cities float in Arlathan, sure, but they are dripping with magic and power that radiates through the bones. There is no rattle, here, no cry of slaves as they wash the already pristine marble floors. No, this place is silent and peaceful. It’s freedom in a bottle, an island in a landscape torn by twisted spirits and sad memories. This place breathes life in a city that cries death. 

It’s also too physical for the fade. The fade is an imitation of the living; the building blocks of coherent objects that maneuver to find meaning. Buildings are rare except in ruins. Often, anything in the fade is splintered and seamed together a hundred times over. Echos of the past cling to the fade as if present.

“A pocket of it, yes.” Solas concedes, humor clipping the edges of syllables. He slows his step, eyes settling on Sael’las. There’s a twitch to his lips, the start of a smirk. He tips his chin up as he speaks, a lilt of pride ringing through the words. “It is called the lighthouse by many.” 

Sael’las lets out a slow breath. Those words are not two he’s heard put together by anything but spirits. He’d heard of ‘light,’ both as the light of the sun and the light of a feather. He’s heard of ‘house,’ as a building and a place to consider yours. Together, they are something totally new. Still, the meaning of it materializes in the back of his mind, in the part of his subconscious that clings to dreams he walks through. He sees the concepts formed in small tidbits by spirits, the chill of their minds pressing into his own to imprint the idea there. 

“The spirits know it,” Sael'las speaks, barely a whisper. He turns his face to Solas in wonder. “I’ve heard them talk about it.” 

“Yes. For a long time, the lighthouse has been a place of learning. Spirits visit it freely. Before you were brought into this world, elves from all over Elvhenan knew this place.” Solas’s voice is thin. His gaze settles amongst the books, presenting Sael’las with sharp contours of cheekbones thrown into dark light. 

“Before I was born?” Sael'las can’t help but ask. It was an odd connection to make, one that made his heart stutter in his chest. He’s greedy as he searches Solas’s face for any tell of an underlying admittance there. 

“Before the war was won,” Solas corrects with pursed lips. His face remains a mask that gives nothing away. He’s tense, neck straining as he avoids the observing presence. 

Sael’las leans against the lone table. When he runs his fingertips along it’s surface there is dust. It’s thick, broken by small circles where past cups had laid upon the wood. 

The lighthouse is an amalgamation of new and old, pristine and rotten. It is caught between two frames of time. This isn’t too out of the realm of Sael’las’ understanding. Emotions dictate the outlook of the fade. Impressions of living minds can easily sway its currents. If the purpose of the lighthouse has changed, the emotions that build its foundations very well could have as well. Their inflictions upon the world could shift the surface of the fade into something new, a new creature from a similar outline. 

Sael’las can almost grasp the echos of what this place once was. It hangs in every stone and clings to the bookshelves that seem separate and in dissonance with each other. 

“So. Center of a rebellion, huh?” Sael’las asks slowly, searching for precision in each word. He lifts his dust-covered fingertips and rubs them together. The dust spreads across his skin. He barely pays attention to it, ears twitching in anticipation of Solas’s reply. 

It still feels wrong, those words from his lips. Academia twisted to a war table. A place of learning and wisdom into training and command. The little table – as lonely as it seems – already has the faded outline of maps along its surface. 

“You’ve certainly changed tunes,” Sael’las adds when Solas does not offer an immediate answer. 

“I will, yes.” Solas’s words come out clipped. Sael’las cuts his eyes to him, watching the furrow of brow as he turns on his heel. “Come, the caretaker has prepared us a meal.” 

The tap of Solas’s feet against marble echoes in Sael’las’s ear. There is no room for argument on that front. He sighs, wiping away the dust on the edges of his pants. He casts one more glance around the room, eyes sliding past the gleam of fade energy that runs past. 

As he turns to leave, he slips the cover of the book closed.  The title is in elven. The script is intricate and looped, with a gentleness to it that does justice to the slide of it from elven lips. He can’t gain any more information from the script than that. 

Sael’las all but jogs across the room to catch up with Solas. The mage does not hesitate, now, his stride long and pronounced as he advances. 

Double doors guard the library from the outside. They are grandiose in nature, with intricate carvings etching a story into their very arms. As they approach, the doors click and slide open without a hand to guide them. For such heavy stonework, they go seamlessly. A perfected motion of false attributes. 

The outside of the lighthouse reads like a courtyard in disarray. It’s similar to the half-built pathways that had led him to the Vi’Revas, bits of path that break off into nothing. Buildings hang half-formed a way into the emptiness surrounding the lighthouse. 

Spirits linger here in crowds. Their whispers sing through the open air, a soft cacophony of music that is pleasing to the ear. A melody singular to the fade. Sael'las spots many different spirits among them. Some of them are twisted, their edges shifting in that unstable way that threatens to rip them into the physical world. Spirits on the precipice of something sinister, weighed down by the pressure of emotions leaking through into dreams. Even the worst of those twisted spirits did not compare to the barest of demons in Mythal’s court.

There are forms Sael’las is familiar with, among the spirits that linger here. Some echo the elves, pointed ears that drip energy into the air. He notices the rounded tips of human bodies, but the most interesting among them is the primordial forms. The versions of spirits from before the elves had first walked the physical world. Bodies of pure magical energy resonate with the body when in close proximity. His eyes catch on these. They’re pure light, and if he looks at them too long, it actually aches. Smaller spirits run between them, their song a hint of laughter that bubbles with mischief. 

The sight is nostalgic. Sael’las had not heard a full symphony of spirits with physical ears in many years.

The courthouse is a wonder. Spirits linger on the path, but they also stretch out in every direction. Sael’las finds himself once again stuttering in his steps, turning on his heel to capture every part of the world. It’s not like a dream, but it is also not really the fade either. It’s something entirely new. 

 Solas’s presence ghosts along Sael’las’s skin. In his sightseeing, he’d forgotten about him. When he comes to a stop he’s all but pressed against the metal platting of Solas’s shoulders. 

Solas’s attention is dedicated to the spirits rather than the landscape. The crowds part for them, conversations passing between Solas and spirits. Many of them bow their head to him, a sign of respect mirrored by the tip of his own. 

Solas leads him through a parting sea of spirits. It doesn’t seem to surprise him, how easily the spirits allow him passage. Sael’las wonders if this was the closest Solas got to social interaction in the lighthouse. 

There’s only one connected building, and Solas leads him right towards it. Its doors, wooden this time, swing open as they approach. 

The beat of fire fills the air. It’s the main focus of the room, what draws Sael’las’ eye. The orange glow of a fireplace localizes the light source guarded by two more wolf statues with upturned snouts. Liquid light reflects off metal plates and silverware, a single set of each at either end of a long dining room table. Only two chairs are pushed up to the wood. One of them is new, its wood sleek with finish. The other shows sign of age. Cracks run through its arms. Its cushion outlines the ghost of a body that had sat there many times before. 

The scent of food reaches Sael’las, and his stomach grumbles in reply. Warmth rises to his cheeks at the loud noise. 

“Your food, dwellers.” There’s a ripple in the energy of the place as the caretaker appears from nothing. Little beads of ash wave around his form as it takes shape. The caretaker nods to the table and the food that sits upon it. 

Solas stops at the opposite of the table from the spirit. He unfolds his hands to cross them over his chest. The two seem to have a conversation that Sael’las is not privy to. After a moment, Solas lets out an exasperated sigh. He turns from the caretaker to Sael’las. His lips are pressed tightly together. 

“Sit, please.” Solas all but deadpans, throwing out an arm to one of the chairs at the table. There is skepticism in every word. Purple eyes do not meet his own, a pointed neglect of Sael’las. A tension settles between them. An unwilling concession, influenced by another force who demanded the conversation. 

Sael’las stares at the outstretched hand. His stomach cramps with hunger, yet he still hesitates. There’s an urge to turn tail and leave. Save them both the misery of sitting through this next conversation. He could simply go back the way he came. Wander out onto the crossroads until he found a lit mirror. Step back into the physical world and let this meeting dissipate from his memory with the strain of his hands against whatever task Mythal sets him to. 

“The Eluvians are inactive. There is nowhere to go, " the caretaker offers from behind Solas. A mask hides any gives in the caretaker’s appearance. The spirit is a calm presence against the harsh light behind, hands clasped together in front of it. A steadfast force of brutal truths. Sael’las is all but trapped here. With a sigh of his own, he steps towards the offered seat. 

The food in front of him is familiar, at least. It’s grainy bread, the kind melded from just ground wheat. Cheap meat, the parts of an animal saved for the third or fourth cut, lay beside it. It struck Sael’las as below the company he now seemed to keep. Solas would eat nothing but the best, surely. In a place so connected with all parts of the world, what would be the point of cheap food? The question passes in and out of his mind at the rumble of his stomach. 

Sael’las grabs his utensils and tears into the food silently. There’s the clink of silver against porcelain, evidence of Solas doing the same. They sit like that for what seems like an eternity; Sael’las shoveling down food as if it would be stolen from him and Solas methodically taking his share. 

It’s the caretaker that breaks the thick silence between them. 

“I will have a room prepared for our new addition, dweller.” With such a simple sentence, the bubble of tension pops. Sael’las grips his fork so tightly that his knuckles turn white. 

Sael’las feels Solas look at him, though he keeps his head pointed at his plate. It is a burning glare, a predator through the trees as its prey frolics in tall grass. 

“He is not staying.” Solas all but spits through his teeth. “I’ll take him to the nearest Eluvian and send him on the way.”

“That is ill-advised. The Eluvians are sporadic and new. You risk sending him halfway across Elvhenan if you try,” the caretaker responds, not giving in to the irritation dripping from Solas’s tone. “He is strong. You are building an army. That has to start somewhere.” 

Sael'las fidgets in his seat. He twirls the fork between his fingers, watching it slide over the greasy top of the steak. This feels much like the continuation of their earlier silent argument. He knows, distantly, that it was not his to fight. Interjecting would only stir the ire of the Dread Wolf. 

They are speaking of him. Speaking over him, actually, while he sits only a few steps away. The injustice of that prickles along his skin. It is in dissonance with the safety he feels in this place. A safety he had blindly allowed himself to fall into. 

The image of Solas so long ago, backdropped with the glow of the sun, once again cracks along the edges. Sael’las would never have believed that the same elf who spoke so highly of rebellion would ever speak as if he was not there. 

Perhaps that is what it’s like, to lose faith in something. The eyes of a child see their parents as parents rather than infallible figures of righteousness. When someone opens their eyes for the first time and realizes how bright the world is. It stings, a bit, to see such a physical and rash part of Solas so close. 

Sael’las looks up from his plate. Solas’s face is set in harsh lines. The muscles of his jaw click as he snaps his mouth closed around his rebuke. Eyes skim over him, not seeing. The irritation pulling on his every word, the sadness dripping from any wisdom he gives, it is not like him. Irritation that gives way to grief around the edges. It is surprisingly lacking wisdom. 

No, it is not wisdom. It is pride that clicks silver forks against plates set for him. Wisdom has left the room, filled in with a sort of betterment that makes ignoring Sael’las seem just. The shift – like looking through a cracked mirror – is one he’s familiar with. When courage cowers, when purpose desires, when compassion fears; A story he’s heard from dozens of lips through a dozen minds. 

It pulled at something deep in his soul. Solas had always seemed untouchable, a glorious ray of light in a crowd of slaves who reached, desperately, to get out of the shadows – if only for a moment. The man looked much like a shadow, now, cast over by the lighthouse. 

“I’ll be killed if I go back,” Sael’las blurts out the words he’s been repeating to himself since stumbling through that mirror. It surprises them all, Sael’las included, and he shrinks away from their sudden scrutiny. “I wasn’t supposed to leave the castle grounds. I’m not a soldier or anything, just a house slave. Mythal will know I left the castle if I walk in her door smelling of magic.” 

Solas defends without missing a beat. “Mythal would not kill a slave for such a minor thing.” 

Sael’las can’t help but scoff, which does not make the glare from Solas lessen. Mythal had once been caring, maybe. That time has long passed, filled in with steel looks and thin lips. She was another victim of the same story; a spirit twisted from its purpose by the corruption of the physical world. She, however, had been twisted by someone. 

Sael’las hopes, at least. 

“Elgar’nan is there,” he replies, voice cutting into the name. “She can’t show mercy with the Evanuris sat at her round table.” 

Desolation descends on Solas’s features. He hides it well, the planes of his face disappearing into a mask of disinterest in a second. Sael'las catches it, anyway, that hurt that drips at his eyebrows. 

“There are other matters to attend to. More important ones. Anaris awaits your response, and you must clear out the crossroads of rogue spirits.” The caretaker adds, “Sael'las is not the main concern at present. And he has shown himself to believe in the rebellion.” 

Sael’las looks up at the two between his eyelashes. Their conversation rolls over him, his name leaving their lips as if he did not exist. It twists in his heart, echoes of their words billowing out through his blood. Troden over like he had been so many times before. 

They speak the truth. He does have a violent urge to stomp upon the face of the Evanuris. It is a rage he knows he shouldn’t have; a rage that is harmful to his spirit. Yet it festers in his chest, a ball of dust that sweeps across his lungs and convulses them in time with each breath. The need to bring change to the world is there, within his muscles and the ache in his knees. 

But there was fear hidden within his bones. A cold chill that rattles with every infuriated breath, threatening to take away the bite of his anger. It makes his fingertips cold. 

Rebellion was a dangerous word. The Evanuris had grown in power and influence over the past few years. With every step they took up the golden ladder of their godhood, the more slaves had been carved down by their blades. Any foot out of line put Sael'las at risk. 

But could he stand idly by, now that he’s been given an opportunity to fight against them? 

“Anaris can wait. And I do not want him here.” Solas' eyes zero in on Sael’las, narrowing. The next line breaks off into a snake-like hiss.“I do not want her mark upon my doorstep.” 

Sael'las’s vallaslin burns. It sparks something in him, the pride in the man’s voice. It’s more than pride, it's arrogance. He slams his fork down on the table. 

“If you are fighting a rebellion you will have to get used to seeing them. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but slaves outnumber the unmarked a hundred to one. And every single one of them is suffering as you sit in your empty house eating from a silver platter.” Sael’las gestures in the vague direction of the Vi’Revas, the memory of his fellow slaves heavy in his mind. When he takes a breath the air hurts with how cold it is. He spits his words out, letting his body move with every syllable. “You’re fighting for us, good. But you can not fight for us and call our plight ugly or unseemly. Not if you want our help. Not if you want my help.” 

“It is not the-” Solas takes a deep breath, gathering himself. He does not meet Sael’las eyes, hand coming to tap at the edge of the table. Sael’las can’t find it within himself to mind it. His vallaslin seems to slither across his skin. 

“I didn’t ask for them.” 

Sael'las bites before Solas can continue. He lets out a breath, cursing that it shakes as he does. He crosses his arms over his chest, looking into the blaze of the fire and the caretaker who watches them both silently. 

“None of us did.” 

There’s a heavy silence in the room. The fire crackles from the fireplace. Solas moves and the slide of his uniform against itself echoes. There’s a breath. The graze of fingertips through perfectly fixed hair. 

“I know it was not voluntary.” Solas’s voice has lost its contempt. Sael'las sees a hundred memories held within his eyes. “I’m sorry.” 

‘I’m sorry’ is often such an empty word. Whispered from one servant to another as they bumped into each other; cried to the Evanuris as they brought lashes upon their slaves' backs. But from Solas’s lips, it sounds like a promise. 

“Let me stay, then,” Sael'las replies, only making the choice as he says it. He’s not sure how he could choose differently if he’s being honest. Not with the weight of Elgar’nan’s stare a close memory in his mind. Not with the sorrow echoing through a wolf’s eyes. 

Solas watches a point in front of Sael’las. His eyes are distant. He runs his hands through his hair and bits of it fall out of the styled tail, settling over his forehead. There’s a twitch to his eye, a curl of his lip, and he turns his head away so Sael’las is watching him in profile. 

Rebellion is a dangerous word, but Sael'las clings to it. He clings to the shimmer behind the song, the anger held in every eye of every slave he’s ever seen. He clings to the smile the elves used to have; to the laughter he used to hear from their quarters late at night. They’ve never been free, not really, but they used to exist. 

Sael'las hopes they can exist again. He tries to portray this with his eyes, with the straightening of his spine and the tip of his chin. A challenge, if Solas gives in to his pride. Strength, if he does not. 

“Alright.” Solas nods to Sael'las. “You can stay.” 

Chapter Text

Boredom is not a good state of mind for Sael’las. It is a fleeting feeling, normally, supplied by picking up tasks around the temple or slipping into forgotten paths between the guard’s noses. Often, it feels like a game of cat and mouse between Sael’las and his mind.

Joining Solas means very little to the Dread Wolf, it seems. He speaks to Sael’las rarely, in the off-handed chance they sit at the same dinner table to share a meal. A meal full of Sael’las’ attempts at conversation and the silent, broken branch standing on the other side of the table. Solas eats quickly, sparing him no glance, and returns to his office as soon as the last bit of food leaves his plate.

For Sael’las, it means freedom and good meals. A room to his name. The peace of a good night's sleep under the gentle lullaby of spirit’s laughter. Days that had seemed so short and monotonous stretched into long, harrowing days of boundless possibilities. 

Possibilities that dry up within a few hours. The lighthouse is large, but not large enough to steer him down mazes. The library is vast, with many titles that would interest him if he could read them. The Vi’Revas is closed off to him. It needed some sort of key that even the caretaker didn’t know. Though, he believed that was a lie. 

The spirit was doing it out of spite, he’s sure. 

He's standing in front of the Vi'Revas when he gets the answer to that one, hand hovering over the cold glass surface of it. Solas is far away, tucked into his own office, and Sael'las is entrenched in thoughts of what in the world this damn passcode could be.

Sael'las hovers his hand right above the glass, pushing the barest bit of the fade toward the reflecting mirror. He hopes that is the key; that somehow magic would unlock the worlds hidden away. It was a stupid thought. That would be too easy. Though it was rare for him to see, Solas walked amongst mages of the highest degree.

It wouldn't really do for the password to be freely given to most of Solas's enemies.

The Vi'Revas buzzes, its magic biting into Sael'las's palm. He jumps back from the sensation, thumbing at the soft flesh of his palm to quiet the prickle of pain that shoots through his nerves.

"Fucker," Sael'las grumbles in the eluvian's direction, eyeing his hand to make sure the magic had left no mark behind.

“Solas has the passcode.” The caretaker speaks from behind him. It's jolting, scrambling Sael'las for a moment. He recovers quickly, bottling the shock up. He's not sure if he was allowed in this room. That hovering fear of something darker clenching at his chest in warning.

He turns slowly to the hovering spirit, caught between feeling a scolded child and a criminal. The caretaker floats as nonthreatening as it always seemed, cold eyes staring in his general direction. Not anger, at least. Or so Sael'las hopes.

“And you think he’d tell me the shiny password to his little treasure chest?” He retorts. The words are a risk, he's sure, but he finds he can't help them from leaving his lips. This place has that effect on him. That calming balm that whispers promises of safety and care.

Spirit’s can't smirk, but Sael’las bets money that if they did, the caretaker would be. 

“Perhaps you should ask,” The caretaker tilts its head towards Sael’las, “The lone wolf does not survive in the cold.” 

Sael'las quirks a brow. Solas was a lone wolf, that much was obvious. He seemed rather weathered to survive the cold.

“I think that’s a self-made blizzard.” 

“You would be correct,” The caretaker replies, and Sael’las imagines the mirth in the comment, “That does not change the fact.” 

Which leads him to his current predicament. Pacing back and forth in front of the closed door to Solas’s office, spirits anxiously worming their way through his footsteps. Their whispers only amplify the pulse that beats in his ear. 

Sael’las chews on the inside of his cheek. His hands are crossed over his chest as he goes over the conversation in his head. 

It’s a stupid thing to be anxious about. On a base level, he understands this. If he is a part of whatever Solas is building he would need the passcode eventually. 

But what if he says no? What if Sael’las is stuck in this place, without a way out? What if he's unknowingly waltzing from one prison to another? 

Solas promises rebellion and change. But the method of that change is not one Sael'las is privy to. He has learned, in his short life, that heroes can mask their villainy behind false promises and lies. 

“No, don’t think like that,” Sael’las hisses through his teeth, rubbing furiously at his cheeks as he thinks through it. An enemy of an enemy is surely a friend. Solas was against what Elgar’nan stood for. The Evanuris wouldn’t shut up about how different Solas is from them. How he poses a threat to their hierarchy of power. 

So he wouldn’t. Sael’las has to believe in that. He has to hold onto the hope that Solas is better. Grasp onto the promise that this place is, in truth, a safe house. Believe in the fact that he would do better than them. 

A better, walking amongst them. The man who could be a god yet chose to actively push it away for the betterment of the people. That’s what he is, what he’d always been between the lines of the Evanuris’s lies. 

Those thoughts become something more, whispered in Sael’las’s mind. A promise that blooms into a mantra. A mantra that becomes a commandment. The stone beneath which he walks upon. 

And if that stone ever gives out, Sael’las isn’t sure how he'll handle it. 

He turns on his heel, frightening the spirits around him until they fall back. Some of them reach out, grasping for the anxious energy that sparks from him in an attempt to alleviate it. It doesn’t work. Cold hands over his already icy body send shivers down his spine. 

The spirits push out scents and feelings to him when their hands don’t work. Sweet cinnamon rolls he’d gushed about the night before and the smell of the marble walls right after rain. Comforting images, pushed aside by the overwhelming anxiety that claws at him. 

He’s paced at least a dozen more times before the air shifts.  The spirits move away from the door just in time to miss phasing through it. 

The doors slings open so quickly that Sael’las has to jump back. Their heavy wooden surface hits the stone on either side with a resounding bang that echoes throughout the hallway. 

“You are disturbing the spirits.” Solas spits from the center of the door. “Say whatever you wish to say and quell your anxiety. It is grating.” 

Solas’s eyes narrow at him. Spirits inside sing with tension heavy on Sael'las's chest. He rubs his hands together, shakes them out, and lets them fall by his side. They feel awkward — as if they do not belong. He grabs at his clothes to still them.

Solas stands with crossed arms at the barrier of his office. There's a green glow illuminating his hair, a roar just loud enough to draw Sael'las's attention echos from behind him.

Sael'las's eyes drift past Solas.

Behind a golden desk adorned with piles of paper stands a wall of glass paneling. The glass opens up to a landscape of ocean with fish whose scales shimmer in the bright blue water. It's a perfect picture of what Sael'las imagines an ocean would be, complete with algae-covered rocks and plants Sael'las could not identify peppered with spikes that wave in the currents.

“Is that an ocean?” Sael’las blurts out. He itches to get closer, to push past Solas’s looming form to see the wildlife swimming past. 

It seems to throw Solas off-balance. His crossed arms drop to his side and his gaze follows Sael'las's. There is a beat of silence before Solas speaks.

“It is a version of one, yes,” Solas turns back to Sael’las, “But that is not why you are here. Or at least I assume you would not bother me over something as trivial as my choice in decor.” 

The flicker of fins draws his eye back to the shimmering water. He has to stop his feet from moving forward, his hand twitching by his side with the need to reach out and feel the smooth glass beneath his fingertips. His eyes can't seem to stop moving over every feature of it; the rainbow of light off the scales of a small fish and the peaceful wave of kelp coming up from the grainy sand. A fish flicks its tail and turns around so fast in the water that Sael'las gasps.

“I’ve never seen the ocean.” Sael’las awes, his mind running wild with the images in front of him. He'd heard stories plain enough, but none of them could touch on the beauty of the sun's rays refracting off the water. He can almost smell the salt in the air like the steam of boiling pasta water. Can feel the breeze upon his skin right before a big storm hits.

Solas's gaze is a real presence against his neck, biting into the soft skin there. The spirits echo Solas's turmoil, but the annoyance wanes after a few seconds. He lets out an exasperated sigh and steps away.

“Would you like to look at the fish?” Solas asks, his voice free of any mockery Sael’las would expect. 

He doesn’t respond, just slides past Solas in a trance. Normally, the newness of this area would draw him to over-examine every detail. The rush of water blinds him to the room.

Sael'las presses as close to the glass as possible without touching it. It is only when he gets closer he feels the ends of his hair stand on end. There's a shimmer to the glass itself; it isn't glass but a barrier of fade energy. Magic, encompassing the world held within it. Easy to miss if one wasn't right next to it, but so obvious when he turns his head and catches it at an angle.

The illusion of water goes as far as he can see. The sandy bottom stretches out in infinity, stolen away by the blue glaze of saltwater. A fish passes right in front of him, tiny and fragile, its mouth opening and closing in a rhythmic motion that gives it the illusion of speaking.

Sael'las smiles at the fish, tapping his fingertip against the barrier to test it. The barrier ripples with magic and it sends the fish into a frenzy of movement. He presses his cheek against the barrier to watch it disappear into the horizon.

"There's so many colors," Sael'las wonders, his words dropping off into a quiet laugh. He tries to count them, naming every shimmer of light that cascades through the water. He finds he doesn't have the name for all of them, can't place the shade of yellows and pinks of the plants.

The colorful plants, the ones with the unknown shades, are unlike anything he's ever seen. Fish weave in and out as if playing. A crab — a live one — clamps its claws together and scurries sideways into the shadows. It's as if the plant itself is their home, all of them clinging to its powerful roots and existing within them.

He wonders if the plant protects them, too. 

The shimmer of magic disappears as he watches, and for a moment he feels suspended in the broad ocean. A window into the world below the surface. Cut through the waves and into the depths of a place he had never known existed. 

“What are they?” Sael’las can’t help but ask. “The, uh, pink things.” 

He doesn’t see Solas, not even in the reflection of the ‘glass’, but from the volume of his voice he is close. Right behind him, to the right, head turned towards the same picture of fish in front of them. 

“Coral is what the experts have taken to calling them. They work in colonies. Eat the small creatures we can not see.” Solas’s voice takes on a calm tilt, that familiar soothing tone of wisdom imparted on curiosity. “Together, we call them reefs. Reefs make shelters for fish. As such, they tend to be hotspots of marine activity.” 

Sael'las hums at the explanation, pressing his cheek further into the barrier. It gives, bending inwards.

“It’s pretty,” he offers. 

"That is why I have made it a backdrop to my workplace." Sael'las turns to Solas and watches as the elf's chin tilts up. "The Evanuris were the first to see the sea in this way. June, in particular. He has a marine temple."

“Of course he does,” Sael'las grumbles, the magic of the moment suddenly dead. He pushes off of the barrier, eyes trailing over the scene in front of him. The light is bright even distilled with the sea, casting a greenish glow across every part of the room. “Did he make the coral?” 

“No,” Solas angles his body towards Sael’las, though his eyes linger on the water, “Sea life is as natural as the day it came to be. How long it will remain that way I can not say. But, for now, it is untouched by the Evanuris’s claws.” 

Sael’las nods, eyes finding their way once again to the gentle sway of the coral reef. A larger fish swims by lazily, the swaying of its fin seemingly nonexistent even as ripples form in the water from its massive form. It floats through the water more than moves through it. As it does the fish scurry under the shadows of the reef, disappearing into the shadows of their city. It looks much like the predator in the water. Fish scurry underneath the coral when it gets closer, disappearing into the shadows of their very own city. 

He hopes the sea stays the sea. Even a temple cut into such a place is too much. The Evanuris, with their need to touch every part of this world, would be its ruin. He knows this, has known this, and hopes to know the end of it. 

The thought reignites the pit of anxiety that claws at him. Like the water, it rushes back into his being. He was here for a reason. To keep the Evanuris from taking the ocean.

Sael'las sighs, sending a small goodbye to the fish as he turns his back to the water. He doesn't know what to say now that he's here. He places his hands on his hips and digs his nails into his side. The pain grounds him but does not jumpstart any logical thought. The spirits anxiously waver right outside of his skin.

The hostility is gone, at least, and in its wake is the calming atmosphere of a library. Solas is not frowning. His gaze still lingers on the fish as if considering them for the first time. That consideration infects his being, lightening the feel of the air. In a way, it is inviting.

Perhaps that is where the reverie has always come from. That natural pull towards the wise and the knowing that Sael’las has grasped since coming into being. It should scare him how easily he falls back into that role of student, of learning, under the calm presence of wisdom. 

“Can I have the passcode?” Sael’las eventually asks, holding his breath as he waits for Solas's reaction.

To Solas’s benefit, he doesn’t immediately say no. He cuts his eyes to Sael’las, face impassive.

There isn’t getting much past the Dread Wolf himself, and this is no exception. Sael’las knows every one of his concerns flows through Solas’s head. Can see it in the way his lips pinch and his posture tightens up again. 

When he speaks, it is slow. Calculated. 

“You can not,” Solas begins, gaze boring into Sael’las. The words make his heart fall. The edges of deadly whispers tap in his ears. “But not for the reason you assume.

“This place is safe from threats. The Vi’Revas are protected from spiritual corruption and guarded by warriors who can handle even the biggest threat. That protection does not stretch further than the lighthouse itself.” Solas nods his head towards Sael'las, “If you want the passcode, you must prove to me you will not die in the crossroads that lay beyond.” 

Sael’las freezes at the words, toiling over them in his mind. The crossroads hadn't seemed that dangerous when he had walked them the first time. There'd been no demons or monsters to speak of.

“I don’t know if you remember this, but I did come from the crossroads. Didn’t get clawed at or killed.” 

“And you were very lucky not to have run into demons,” Solas explains. There is a true worry, there, is a care that could hold no contempt behind it. “I will not serve you up like a lamb to slaughter.” 

“So I’m meant to be a princess in the highest balcony of the highest tower?” Sael’las retorts. He doesn’t miss the uptick in Solas’s brow. 

“No. I wish to give you the amount of freedom our people deserve.” Solas crosses his arms over his chest, shifting his body back and forth on his heels as he speaks. “I also will not have your blood on my hands.” 

“So?” Sael'las draws out the words, moving his body towards Solas. Words are hanging in the air between them. Solas pointedly does not acknowledge him, his teeth worrying at his top lip.

“If you wish to freely walk the crossroads, you must promise not to leave through the Eluvians without my knowledge. Some of those territories are new to even me. I can not offer protection within them.” Solas's focus twists to the armory set up against one wall. He considers them for a moment, eyes shifting over the metal platting and golden emblems engraved on the chest plates. “And you must prove to me you can handle yourself in battle.” 

Sael'las sours at that. The thrum of magic buzzes in his core just out of reach. He knows it intimately and feels it brush against his psyche whenever his emotions run too high. This does not mean it is his, not really. His magic had never been his to use freely. Caged behind shackles and commands, trapped behind words.

He holds his hand out in front of him, curling his fingers and feeling the bend of his magic under his palm. It doesn't respond to him. It often didn't. Still, the absence feels loud in the silence of the room. He feels Solas's presence and knows the man is as enamored with his hand as he is.

“I have never fought,” Sael’las supplies, finding the rest of his words caught on his tongue.

“I am aware,” Solas replies. He takes a step closer until the tips of his feet enter Sael'las's vision. When he speaks next, his voice is louder, an edge of a challenge fueling it. "But is your magical skill up to par to try?"

“I’ve never used magic,” Sael'las mutters, "well, a bit. Not much."

Sael'las squirms under the scrutiny he feels from Solas. It's a physical sensation, but not one that he finds he dislikes. One that makes him feel tiny in the eyes of someone he believes is greater than himself. Someone he trusts.

Solas hums, clenching his jaw. The muscles under his skin ripple, eyes focused once again on the fish in contemplation.

“You are a dreamer, yes?” Solas's voice is distant, detached in a way that seems out of place for their conversation.

Dreamers. They called it a gift, the ability to visit other people’s dreams. It was rare, at least, within Mythal’s ranks. He wasn’t sure if it was worth praise. Most of the time it felt more like a burden, extra work if nothing else. 

“I am,” Sael'las replies, shifting uncomfortably. He wants to move. Stillness feels like a crime. He drops his hand to his side and fiddles with the edge of his shirt.

Sael'las stands between Solas and the water, and the faint outline of Solas's features reflect in the barrier. Purple eyes shift, catching on a hundred things in the water yet focusing on none of them. He looks lost in the stillness of the water; lost to his world and memories.

Solas is also a dreamer. Sael'las has known that for a while; and has been compared to him when they both resided in the temple. The slaves whisper of dreamers and their importance. The distrustful glances of his neighbors as they discuss their nightmares. Always leaning into the edge of blame but never surpassing it.

"The Dread Wolf steals your dreams," was a fear of slaves, given to them by Elgar'nan. Sael'las's abilities have been lumped together with them before.

Yes, they are both dreamers. However, their ways of exploring the fade differ.

Where Solas explores the memories of the worlds around them, lost in the wisdom he gains from other's experiences, Sael'las looks forward. He builds realms in his minds, gardens of flowers that smell sweet enough to draw spirits in. His meadows offer a haven for wandering mages, though they often don't know they'd wandered in until they face him themselves. None return, but he hopes the sentiment is appreciated anyway.

Solas has never visited his dreams.

“Dreamers tend to be powerful mages," Solas pauses, his eyebrows furrowing as he considers his next words. "You mentioned having cast before. To what degree?”

The question makes Sael'las's vallaslin burn. He understands the world was different before the Evanuris; before the majority were pushed under the heel of the few. Where mages had been free to cast spells no matter what step they stood upon. But that time had long passed. The extent to which shackles had been clasped around their wrists is impossible to grasp for one born with them on their hands.

To what degree? There had been no degree. There had barely been a sentence.

How small and frail Sael'las must seem to Solas.

Sae'las feels the soft fabric of his clothes against the callouses of his own hands. They are rough, cleaner and chemicals having formed large ridges and cracks that never really healed. The hands of someone who has never known rest.

He wonders if Solas's hands are softer.

“I have, but never anything significant. Cleaning spells, mostly. A warming charm in the winters.” Sael'las slides his hands behind his back as if to keep them from view. The vallaslin is heavy on his face, a brand still red hot from the heat of a fire. Solas is not looking at it, can't be, yet it feels seen.

Solas turns away from the water, hair whipping out over his shoulder as he disappears from the fragile reflection.

“Dreamers are powerful mages,” Solas repeats. Sael'as watches Solas as he wanders to the bookshelves, fingertips gliding across raised spines. Their titles glimmer in the light. "Though I imagine you have experienced the fade more than you understand it."

The lettering is incomprehensible, as every string of words are. Big, flashy gold print that is so familiar, just out of reach of his understanding. Like someone speaking in a murmur just low enough to be inconceivable.

"We can train tomorrow. For today, read the theory behind magic." Solas lays a book down on his desk, sliding it across the surface until it is facing Sael'las.

Sael'las takes the book from the desk, running his fingers along the aged leather of it. It's soft, with a give that tells a long story. When he peels the cover open he's hit with the scent of it; old paper and the chemical smell of treated leather. The pages are yellowed and rough when he travels over them, grating in a way that resounds a sort of comfort within his memory.

Worlds upon worlds, locked behind his knowledge. He feels too big for his skin, looking down at the words he can not read. Shame, bright as his vallaslin, burns his skin. He knows his face is red.

"About that-" The words catch in Sael'las throat. The worst part about slavery is the shame that connects to his soul. Every look, every activity, every dip of his hand in chemicals that burn his skin, etch its way into his spirit and twist it into something he is not. Not even an eternity could scrub that feeling from his person.

Solas presses his hands against the surface of the desk, patiently waiting for Sael'las's reply.

Sael'las swallows loudly, and feels it as it makes its way down his throat. He wills the letters on the page to make sense. Prays that they'd snap into focus without having to admit to his shameful failings.

But they do not. The silence stretches out between them.

"What is it," Solas prodes. "Do not be ashamed."

Sael'las feels cold as he meets Solas's eyes. His lips parted, cold air hitting the tip of his tongue. He feels himself tense as he tries to push the words out, to force himself to say the words Solas is surely putting together himself.

Sael'las slams the book closed.

"I can't read," He rushes out, gripping the sides of the leather like it would save him from this conversation.

The spirits burst into a cacophony of noise, though their reaction could be from either Solas or Sael'las. Sael'las's heart beats loudly in his ear. Solas is frozen on the other end of the desk.

"What!" Solas blurts. "That's absurd. Mythal would not-" but his voice catches on itself, a sharp intake of breath cutting off his outburst.

"She wouldn't-" Solas hisses and Sael'las looks away from the spirits to catch his expression.

Solas's face is twisted in something he could only describe as pain. His eyebrows furrow, casting a shadow on bright purple eyes. He runs a hand through his hair and it knocks some of the locks in front of his forehead.

There's a story playing out on his features. A moment where the ground falls out beneath him. A feeling Sael'las has known himself. Has known it in others.

The moment when a thread of trust binding two together snaps, a fragile twine holding up weights in the bitter wind. A loss of faith, a lessening of oneself. The dead emptiness shines behind Solas's eyes.

Sael'las takes pity on him.

“It’s not like I was banned from it.” An awkward shrug precedes his returned attention to the grain of the book. He picks at a bit of the leather that is torn. Images of Mythal's library fill his mind. He remembers the glint of sunlight off of deep brown wood and the stacks of unintelligible books stacked on the tables. "Just never got around to it."

Which was the truth as far as he would admit to it. The library had been locked more often than not. Any glimpse he'd gotten of the shelves of books had been in between duties. They'd seemed a world away, then.

“Are all of Mythal’s slaves illiterate?” There's a twist of an irritation to Solas's lips. Sael'las gets the idea he didn't mean to ask that question.

“No. The higher-ranking ones can read. And the older ones can, too. But most of the older slaves are higher ranking, so,” Sael'las pauses. Their stories were so often lost. They worked and slept and suffered in silence. How many of Mythal's slaves have passed on without so much as a grave marker? Sael'las needs Solas to know; needs him to understand their humanity. “One of my friends is- was learning how."

She'd been younger than him. Born from the flesh of two other elven slaves, born in the same shackles they all wear. The library was her work, and it had fueled the curiosity that was so deep set within her. Her parents couldn't read, so she'd taken to picking up on what she could. Titles, when she was tasked with pulling them from the shelves. He'd caught her thumbing through books right as dinner started, away from the prying eyes of guardians that shut covers when one got too curious.

She'd stolen a book, in her last week. A small one, torn by one of the Evanuris during a meeting. A book that had a hundred copies. A book easily missed. He still remembers the fumble of her melodic voice as she read a fable to them before bed.

She'd been gone the next day. The book was left, charred beyond recognition, on her empty bed. It had only taken a week for another elf to take her place, younger than even she.

"She was sold," Sael'las muses. "Elgar'nan's, now."

Solas gapes at Sael'las with a downturned expression. Sael'las breaks his gaze, turning towards the shadow of the room to hide the branches that stretch along his skin. They can't be covered; designed in a specific way to be visible from any angle.

Solas presses his weight into the wood of the desk until he's half bent over it, hands sliding over abandoned pages. A heavy silence overtakes them, one that hangs on Sael'las shoulders. He's afraid to break it. Holds his breath to not fracture the moment.

Sael'las feels very much like a rabbit stuck in a trap.

Solas was so far removed from the right hand of Mythal. Sael'las wasn't sure if he liked the sharp curve of his lips or the coldness of his tone.

Wolves walked in Solas's shadow, pulling him down into their maw. In a way he was like them; feared among many and misunderstood by more.

Sael'las isn't sure he'd ever understand Solas. He wasn't sure if he wanted to. But here, with the book he so carelessly handed over and the gentle buzz of magic holding a world untouched by the Evanuris, he found he wanted to try.

So he waits for Solas to compose himself. Watches as the man straightens and levels Sael'las with a mask of indifference.

"Meet me at the Vi'Revas tomorrow. I will teach you to fight." It's a command from his lips, one that sets in stone their brittle companionship.

"Okay," Sael'las says simply. He goes to set the book down but is stopped by Solas's hand upon his.

"Keep it," Solas says softly. He releases Sael'las before he can push the matter and settles into the seat against his desk. "I have letters to write. Please, show yourself out."

Solas picks up his quill, the scratch of it against the paper drowning out the hum of magic. It was a clear dismission of their conversation, of Sael'las.

The whispers of the spirits battle with the sounds of work. A crowd presses in on the space their conversation has just taken up. Echos of desperation, sadness, and anger sing in the room. They batter against Sael'las's skin.

He turns from Solas and makes his way out of the office. Spirits part for him, their eyes looking past him.

It is Solas's unease that drives them, now. The minor chord they echo is a testament not to the conversation itself but to the chaos it sowed upon Solas's mind. The scratching of the quill becomes sharper, harsher as Sael'las turns the corner.

The spirits seem to hone in on the discomfort of their host. Even those in the main part of the library are unsteady, their forms zipping in and out of view as they teeter on the edge of negativity. They, too, ignore Sael'las.

Solas is so far removed from the people he claims to fight for as to be unaware of their strife. Like a noble's child handing apple slices to hungry elves. The importance of it is lost on him. Not because he is unkind or because he is cruel, but because he has locked himself away.

And now, it seems, the bubble of this haven has begun to crumble. No longer can Solas be at peace with plans and grief.

Solas has found rebellion in his heart. Born from betrayal and a long-suffered knife dipping too deep into his blood. The Dread Wolf had once been complacent with that dagger, and years ago he had broken from that sense of peace. In the process, he had started a domino effect of revolution that would never quiet.

Now, the rebellion has found him. The hilt of anger that Sael'las voices, one of many and not singular to himself, has unbalanced him.

Sael'las steps into his room only half aware that he has even reached it. He barely pays the book in his hand mind as he places it upon the empty shelves of his wall.

A spirit of rebellion hangs alone in the corner of his room.