Chapter Text
“How far back will I go?” Hruse asked.
“I do not know for certain,” he answered. They were surrounded by a barrier of his making, unwavering against the wildfire raging outside it. In the garish light, he looked like he had that fateful night when the world began this downward spiral to its end. Hruse flinched as a tendril battered against the magical wall, but he did not. He didn’t even look. “The timing may be...imprecise, but you should be able to find me.”
“You won’t know me, though. And anything I do will change…”
“That is the point!” he snapped, his voice louder than the wind outside. But not louder than the roar approaching. Hruse couldn’t tell who it was, but it didn’t ultimately matter. They were all as abominable as the next. Another miscalculation among many.
They’d thought the Evanuris were gone.
They weren’t.
At least, not as gone as they should have been. What little relief there was from knowing Ghilan’nain and Elgar’nan were truly dead had been utterly wiped out by the rest. Andruil in particular showed a cruelty that matched her ‘brother’s’. To a huntress, everything was prey. The Dalish had been the first to learn it, the lesson driven home until none remained to tell it. What was born of their defeat didn’t bear thinking about. The others’ ‘gift’ for creativity in no way matched Ghilan’nain’s, in form or execution. Returning the monsters made of living flesh to rest was nothing more than a mercy.
Hruse supposed she should be grateful that the Evanuris were all mere fragments of themselves, like Mythal had been. But like Mythal, splintered and disparate, there was no appealing to them with sentiment. They were cold, calculating and undeniably, thoroughly mad from the blight. And like Mythal, there were several pieces of each one to deal with, some stronger than others. When one fell, another rose in their place. Again and again.
It had been too much to fight against, and now they were here, at the literal end of the world. Retreating to the Lighthouse had kept them safe – well, safer – but in order to enact their plan, they had to venture out of it. All they had left was this. Watching the world burn, mourning the countless dead and doing something desperate to escape the sheer horror of it.
“I wish you could come with me,” she said, for the umpteenth time. He bowed his head. She didn’t need to hear him say it. If he could go back and undo all this himself, he would have. But he was all that anchored the current world and the Fade at all. All that kept spirits alive and uncorrupted. He was the last refuge, and wasn’t that just the greatest irony of all? “Solas…”
“Dareth shiral, vhenan. You will see me again.”
“But you won’t be you,” she sobbed as the archdemon screamed again over the rush of fire and wind. It was close, and nearly swallowed the sound of her voice as she repeated her words. “You won’t be you.”
She felt his lips on her brow, cool and firm. She lifted her head to kiss him properly one last time, tasting his tears mingling with hers. And then the bubble around them collapsed, or maybe it was just that she was thrust outside it, sent hurtling through the vortex he’d made. Away from the fires and death and blight. Away from horrors that couldn’t be vanquished because there was simply nobody left to fight them. If she was their only hope, it was a sad state of affairs. She was no one, really. She’d always been no one.
You are Hruse Ingellvar, born of the Necropolis, raised by the Mortalitasi. Mourn Watcher, Rook, bane of Elgar’nan. Heart of the Dread Wolf. You are not no one.
She didn’t know if the words were his or hers. She suspected that in pushing her into the magic he’d finally let himself fall, so it didn’t matter anymore who said what. She didn’t know which way was up or down. She tucked herself tight into a ball within the cyclone of arcane energy, letting it carry her like a leaf. He’d ever been terrible at thinking things through, but he’d never been bad at magic. She trusted him that far. And Dorian had helped until the blight consumed him.
Hruse was supposed to stop him from even beginning this madness. That was the plan. But she had no tools, no weapons. Nothing save the knowledge in her head and a small token around her neck.
Solas was aiming to send her back to the start, before he had a chance to give the orb to Corypheus. He’d told her where it was, that if she couldn’t get through to him – or find him in the first place – that she should steal it herself and hide it. He’d attuned the magic to a specific point, he said. That she would be drawn to that point because of the token she wore. He’d done his best to tell her everything, hiding nothing at long last. He made her memorize it all, because they couldn’t allow anything written down to fall into the wrong hands. He told her that if all else failed, to find the lyrium dagger where it rested at that time. If she needed funds, they would be available to her in the Crossroads. The Vi’Revas would still respond to her, because he’d told her the master password.
They’d done their best to think of every contingency. Now it was up to her to make sure none of them were needed.
Her, a simple woman more used to spirits than people. She missed those days, when her greatest challenge had been stopping a blown out of proportion feud between two undead families. When exile had been the worst thing she’d ever experienced.
She fell from the vortex and crashed to the ground near a campfire that burned in odd colors. The vortex closed, leaving a gust of wind in its wake, making the flames dance. She groaned and rolled over.
A dead man was watching her.