#the spell the torturer used made their skin crack and shrink all over their body so the scars are everywhere | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ourdawncomes · 5 years

Text

The Year That Wasn’t

repost of an ongoing thread between @theshirallen, also featuring myself (again) on @theharellan. set during the events of in hushed whispers.

Thora

Dorian talks like this place is a bad dream.

Thora’s new to dreaming, but this doesn’t feel like one. Her boots are heavy on the floor, her breath loud in her ear, she still feels wet under her armour where they’d fallen into a flooded cell. Dreams – it’s like seeing everything fast and slow at once, here time turns as she remembers.

It’s all real. It’s all happening. Behind her, Solas is dying (the world is dying), and it’s her fault.

She reaches for a door handle, hesitating before she grips it. Every room so far has only led to more horrors, bodies fresh and decayed, all sacrificed to some nameless nothing that she’s not sure she wants to take the time to understand. She doesn’t have so much as a chance to turn it when she nearly jumps out of her skin, her heart leaping into her chest when inhuman growls sound from beyond the door. “Demons?” she asks, almost to herself, but Solas has an answer.

“No.” His voice is thick with a lyrium-coated throat, but his words still ring true. “It sounds like an animal.”

A mabari, maybe, from when Redliffe’s rightful owners walked its halls. “Be ready,” she warns, and throws the door open.

No attack comes, nothing bears down upon them, but the growls grow fiercer as she steps into the room. Like every room they’ve been to, this one still reeks of torture. A man lies rotting against the wall where he was chained living, and for everything else, an impression of blood where a life was taken. But in the corner, a sickly red glow like what had shone at the back of Solas’s prison. A sign of life, though not a long one.

This thing does not hide, however. Lyrium-rusted metal creaks and cracks as a chain is pulled to its breaking point, teeth flash through the kennel’s door as a wolf lunges towards them. She flinches, anticipating a blow she knows will never come. “The poor beast, I wonder what it’s doing here,” Dorian muses from beside her. There’s no room in her heart to wonder at the possibilities of why, it’s too full of fear– and pity.

She’s wanted to cry since they first found Lysas reduced to fevered singing, and the lump in her throat only chokes her more as she looks at it. There’s fierceness in its eyes, but its mane is tall with terror and its jaw is bound with a bloodied muzzle. It deserved better, too. “It won’t give us any answers,” she sighs, unsheathing a knife from her side, one sharp enough to give it a clean death. The tears hot on her cheeks feel stupid, of all things to cry about it’s this that pushes her over the edge, but she won’t sob, she won’t, she–

A small gasp halts her, and for a second she thinks someone’s walked in, but it’s Solas that reaches forward. He grabs her arm and pulls back, twisting it to where it hurts. “Wh–”

“Your knife, Herald,” he whispers with a strange desperation. Thora doesn’t ask why, her fingers loosen and he pries it from her. “Open the kennel.”

“Solas–”

“– Please.”

The second she’s at the doors, the angry front melts and the wolf cowers at the back of its prison, so small she almost wouldn’t believe it a threat. While her eyes examine the lock, she hears Solas speaking, but not to her. “I did not think to find you,” he mutters, “I had hoped…” Dorian exchanges a glance with her that looks just as lost as she feels. Her fingers link through the gaps in the cage, and she pulls, trusting Solas still knows what he’s doing.

The door pops off with the meagerest effort, lyrium eaten hinges brittle beneath her fingers. Solas wastes no time making use of her knife, but does not plunge it into the wolf’s heart. As the wolf’s growl softens into a heartbreaking whine, he reaches forward to allow it his scent with a tenderness she’s not seen from him yet. Then, the blade cuts the first leather strap that holds its jaw together.

Iander

He lays on his side, as comfortably as he is able. As comfortably as he is able, which means very little. Every breath is aching, and his bones burn beneath his skin. Air bubbles in his lungs, and over the eerie silence of the castle he can hear the rasping rattles of his inhales. He fights for breath, yet, without conscious desire to do so. It would be easier to stop, but something base within him demands that he continue. It can’t be hope. It can’t be. It’s something else, something stubborn.

He lays on his side, and he closes his eyes. The darkness behind his lids is softer than the glare of iron bars and the hum of hungry lyrium. It wraps around him, muffling the bite of the bands around his muzzle and the chain at his throat.

He lays on his side, as comfortably as he is able, with his eyes closed. The world is limited to the raking of air against his ribs, the darkness behind his eyelids.

And then it expands.

Footsteps. Boots against stone.

He chokes on his fear. Boots against stone. A hand at the doorknob. He knows what comes along with boots on stone. He knows what hands carry.

Heaving himself to his feet is agony. The band at his throat shifts, pulls at matted fur and scabbed wounds. Flexing his jaw to give warning fills his nose with the hot stench of his own lyrium stained blood. He feels his fur lift as he tenses, shoulders bowed in readiness.

The shapes at the door are distorted, but they advance despite his warning. He lunges again, growls broken by the force of his weight against the chain. He coughs, wheezes, lunges again. Metal flashes–he recognizes the sheen of a kept blade–and he retreats. His warnings fade to pleading, and he backs up until he folds at the back of his cage.

His pleading is as ignored as his warning, and hands extend to remove the bars that separate him from the rest of the room. Hands extend, and he cries, flailing as the knife approaches his face. There is no room to move. Nowhere further to retreat, and any advance is blocked by the hand that holds the knife.

He bucks his head, and he keens his pleading. He bucks his head, and the knife misses his flesh. It tears instead at the strap that binds his teeth, and he rips forward before a second attempt can be made. He rips forward, and the muzzle falls away, and he puts his teeth to use.

Solas

He cannot name what he felt when he saw Ian in that cage.

Is it relief, to know that he still lives? Sorrow, from the realisation that he has lived these months in agony? Regret, that he had not taken the chance to end Ian in a dream when it offered itself? There is something selfish in how his heart lifts, as he realises that if he dies tonight, it will not be alone.

His hands shake as he reaches for him. Hunger has made him weak, and although he moves his arms, they are alien to him. Yet still too heavy for him to slip away from, even in dreams. Solas breathes before he makes the first cut, stilling his tremours long enough that he poses no danger. Leather yields to the blade, and he feels a spell unravel as it breaks. It is too late that he realises he sees no recognition in Ian’s eyes, only blind fear that drives pointed teeth into his arm.

He cries out. The pain is white-hot, and his own teeth come down upon his lip to hold back a whimper. Air hisses between his teeth. Magic ripples over his skin as Dorian casts a barrier, and he hears his companions ready themselves. “Don’t,” he commands, with as much strength as his voice allows.

Freedom has a blood price, this time it was his.

Teeth so eager to kill retreat just as quickly (just as painfully) and Ian shrinks back, lips still curled to show off the blood that drips from his canines. What hope had kindled in Solas’s heart is tempered by how he pulls away. He swallows, and feels the lyrium inside him pressing like a knife against his throat. “Solas, you’re bleeding,” he hear Thora say.

“And dying,” he adds, “we shall see what kills me first.”

He fixes his gaze upon Ian, ears coming forward as if to mimic his. He lowers the knife to the floor, right hand reaching across his body to cradle his injured arm. “Perhaps it is presumptuous of me, but it seems you have a history with this…”

“Ian,” Solas finishes Dorian’s sentence for him, though he still speaks towards the elf before him.

“I– I don’t…” Thora’s confusion is as palpable as Ian’s, but for the moment he does not have time to spare upon explanations. Not when action will make his reasoning clear. Perhaps severing the muzzle might have undone a spell, but it was only one step forward. There is personhood behind his eyes, but only Solas seems to see it.

“I can remove your collar,” he says, “I need only your trust to do it.” But trust is hard to come by in cages, and he does not sound or smell as he did in dreams. He opens his hand, slick with his own blood, his left arm pounding with his heavy heartbeat. Though his skin smells of sweat and grim and his voice rasps from lack of use, the magic he summons smells the same– of cool rainfall, the likes of which neither have felt in a year.

Iander

The way skin yields to his teeth is less satisfying than he imagined. Blood is hot against his tongue, and it bites back with the same rancid taste of lyrium that lines his own blood. He yelps, retreating, his own cry overlapping with that of–of whoever he had bitten. He retreats, and the bars behind him press cold against his fevered pelt.

Magic hums in the air, pushing between him and the shapes that fill the room. It feels clean, bright. A little empty. It lacks the heat, the anger that fuels everything. It’s foreign, and might be a comfort if fear didn’t bind at his throat. He doesn’t understand. His lips pull back, snarling another warning. He breathes, pulling air past bloodied teeth as his sides heave and he waits for the knife to advance again.

It does not. It sings a quiet note as the blade comes to rest against stone, discarded by the hand that wields it. Confusion builds, bubbles at his tongue. Confusion is a soft noise, softer than he believed he might yet birth. It bursts like a hiccup, and he shrinks further back. The pads of his feet slide, scrambling for traction against the filth at the bottom of his cage.

The shadows speak to each other, but it isn’t the way he remembers shadows speaking. There’s urgency there, but not cruelty. And–

His name.

He had forgotten it. Forgotten that he had once existed beyond these chains, this fever, this fur. Hearing it now, it feels distant. As if it still belongs to someone else. Someone months lost.

He shudders.

It hurts to hear, to remember. He doesn’t want to. He had forgotten that he–that there was anything else he might lose.

He shudders, flinching away from an outstretched hand. He should strike again, put force behind his warning, but…

Ian….

Magic rises in a bloodied palm, and it–

He recognizes it. Rain on a cold spring morning. Mist over hills where the sun crests the horizon.

It’s been so long.

It’s been so long, but he recognizes it. Recognizes how it fills his lungs and soothes his aching. It feels safe–deceptive, something in his gut protests–it feels like comfort. The fur along his spine relaxes, and he moves. Slowly. Carefully.

His tail remains low, and he crouches as he moves forward, pushing his nose closer toward the smell of rain.

Solas

The nose that presses against his palm is dry to the touch, sick from starvation and abuse. Solas swallows thickly, pity welling in his chest as his hand moves to stroke his fur. He can feel the bones beneath his skin, body sucked dry of any fat that once clung to them. Death is near for the both of them, and yet Ian still shrinks back, as afraid to face it as he is.

His eyes fall to the collar about Ian’s neck. Rust has eaten away at it, and it will not take much to break it. A winter spell, an application of force, and it would shatter– but that would only cause its wearer undue stress. His bloodied hand reaches forward, arm throbbing where canines sank into his skin, to touch the lock that holds the device together.

“Can either of you see a key?” he asks. Solas turns his head, but room is veiled in darkness he had not known before this. Darkness elven eyes ought to see through, but strain as he might, it makes no difference.

Behind him, Thora moves with surefooted steps. Her eyes gleam, but not as his do. He remembers seeing dozens, hundreds of those eyes gleaming in places that had never seen the sun (though not as kindly as hers). As she searches, his fingers curl in fistfuls of fur, pushing past the revulsion as how tightly his flesh clings to his bones. He hears a soft thud, and then, “I think I found it.” She stops as far from him– and the cage– as she can afford, holding out a key as rusted as the lock it pairs with. Solas reaches out, only for her to pull it away before he can hold it. “Wait–” she says, brow furrowing. “You, I… explain what we’re letting out.”

“Not a ‘what,’” he returns, leaning further to pull the key from her grasp. She doesn’t try to stop him, it slips from her hands like water and holds it like it will fly from his. “Where you might see a wolf, I see more.”

“That’s not–”

“He is a shapeshifter, a prisoner the same as I was.” Solas holds the lock in hand, and fits the key inside. It resists, rust scraping off with a sharp scream that pushes his ears against his head. His heart is in his throat as the lock crunches open and his hands pull apart the collar, red rust tinted redder by bloody fingerprints. It falls, clattering against the cage, singing metal sounding out freedom louder than his voice can manage.

Iander

He pushes his nose closer toward the smell of rain, until it presses against a palm that smells of blood and sweat and biting lyrium and grime. A sigh huffs through him, and his weight comes to rest against the floor of his prison, his body too heavy to keep himself upright.

Solas. It’s Solas. Solas. He came, after all. How long ago had–Ian had given up, and then he had forgotten.

His chain pulls tight at the collar, biting into his neck as he strains to reach beyond his confines. Solas leans forward, and a hand pushes through his patched fur. He shudders, feeling skin slide along his spine, his ribs, loose where he’s become wasted. His sides heave, every breath a battle he is determined to win. Fingers check the lock at his neck, another hand maintaining contact with his fur, reassuring in its refusal to withdraw.

He listens, ears rotating as the shapes behind Solas shift, moving around the world beyond his confinement. He doesn’t quite catch their words, sounds that reach him through a heated fog–distorted and meaningless. But Solas shifts, and Ian breathes, and the lock at his neck shifts, and then it screams.

It screams as if it is reluctant to release him, and his ears fall flat, teeth bared in a desperate plea for his freedom. It comes in a heavy clank, metal chain tangling on itself as his throat is exposed. He lifts himself–body still heavy, but so much more manageable–and launches forward, through the kennel’s mouth and into Solas’s chest.

He wears a new body by the time he’s there. A different body, one that feels foreign, forgotten. But he stretches his arms, wrapping around Solas until he can bury his face, dampness on his cheeks felt only distantly as he breathes in the wrong scents. Solas should smell of more than biting lyrium and dungeon dampness. But there is no doubt in him, now.

“Solas…”

Ian’s voice is unrecognizable, and his ears flatten at the creak of it. Hoarse, harsh, uncertain. Words taste stale, and the movement of his tongue against his teeth is awkward, unpracticed.

“Solas. I remember you. I had–I had–I remember you.”

Thora

She can’t take her eyes off Solas’s arm. It’s bleeding, not enough to kill him, but enough that she knows he feels it. Unless the lyrium has killed all the feeling in his limbs.

All the information coming at her: that this place is real, that it isn’t, that they can undo it, that the wolf isn’t a wolf, it all tangles in her head until she’s ready to scream. She’s dying to sit down and have everything explained, but she can see the lyrium dancing before Solas’s eyes when he blinks, like spiderweb blowing in the breeze, and knows they don’t have the time. “Be–” Careful. The second word of her warning is caught at the back of her throat, silenced by the sound of a rusted lock falling open.

Her hand reaches back for the hilt of her hammer, braced for an attack. The wolf, person, whatever, rushes forward and–

Fur melts into flesh, thought truth be told she couldn’t describe what if someone asked. All she knows is one second, there was a beast, and now… “Ian.” Solas’s voice is soft despite the rough lyrium edge. His good arm braces the elf’s back, holding him like an old friend, or– someone more. She looks away, feeling suddenly as though she’s intruding on something she has no right to see.

A moment passes, and then another, long enough that saying something doesn’t feel cruel, but it’s Dorian who speaks up first. “Shall I fill him in?” he says to her, though loud enough for the whole room to hear.

“No, I can, just– if I miss anything.”

It’s all so much, and none of it sounds real.

“Ian, that’s your name, right?” she says, as she speaks Solas moves his head to look at her, eyes glowing unsettlingly. “I’m Thora, I– uh, people were calling me Herald of Andraste before all this, and I– we,” Thora gestures between herself and Dorian, “got thrown here from a year ago, by Alexius.”

“The same day they captured me,” Solas adds.

“Yeah, exactly.” Now that she’s started talking, she’s realising quickly Dorian should have said all of this. “Dorian here thinks there’s a chance to fix all this, to get back the same way we came here, but we’d like your help.”

“But we do not need it.” This time Solas’s addition is less helpful. He stands, bones cracking, hand extended to help Ian up. “You can run. I promised the Herald I would remain ‘til the Breach was closed, you made no such oath.”

#like dust‚ i’ll rise ( thora | ic )#theshirallen #theharellan #v; once more unto the breach ( thora | inquisitor )#( my writing )#the dawn will come ( queue )

6 notes · View notes