Chapter Text

Fen’Falon. Had she truly been given such a name from birth? Solas studied the elven woman with narrowed eyes as they headed for the breach, and wondered if he was the butt of some cosmic joke. Mythal would surely be laughing at him right now, to see Fen’Harel’s grand design twisted almost beyond recognition by Corypheus and his orb’s power bonded to one named as Wolf-friend. It was amusing to see Fen’Falon mistake him for a city elf, although he would tire quickly of her attitude if he did not find a way to change it.

Solas heard Fen’Falon gasp in shock as they approached the Temple of Sacred Ashes. The once-grand Temple was shattered, spires of lyrium and Fade-touched stone jutting out from the edges like a giant spiked crown. He wondered what the Dalish elf would think of the petrified corpses as they moved farther in, of those who were not lucky enough to bond with a fragment of his godly powers.

He had studied her as she lay unconscious, tried to see if there was any way to recover his power and mend the breach by himself. Seeing her vallaslin dedicating her to Dirthamen had nearly thrown him the first time, until he recalled that it was the custom of the Dalish to mark themselves so. If only they knew how wrong their traditions had gotten things, had gotten him. He wondered what would happen if he were to tell Fen’Falon the truth of her markings. Solas knew he could not though, for why would a Dalish believe one she thought a city elf? None of the clans he had attempted to approach had treated him as anything other than a shemlen. Another cosmic joke - to be an outsider to the very people he had tried to save from themselves.

The group moved down the mountain path and into the temple. The Dalish elf put a hand to her mouth in what he assumed was horror, some of the petrified corpses were still aflame, even days later. Most fascinating to Solas was the amount of red lyrium present at the Temple. When he wasn’t studying the mark his orb had left on Fen’Falon, Solas was up here, trying to find a way to close the first rift the breach had opened. How bitter was the pill he had to swallow once he realised that after the long sleep of centuries and without his orb he lacked the power to close the tear it had wrought. And now here was this quickling Dalish elf child, marked and bonded to his power, with the ability to undo all of this.

His melancholy at his failure would not get him anywhere. Solas drew even with the Dalish woman as the group stopped in what had been a balcony hallway of the Temple to look up at the breach.

“This is your chance at redemption,” Cassandra said to Fen’Falon.

“Me? When I did none of this? How am I even supposed to get all the way up there anyway?” Fen’Falon asked.

Solas turned her, flexing his power slightly to make sure she looked to him. “The rift in front of us was the first to open. I theorise that closing it could stop the breach from spreading.”

Fen’Falon looked at him suspiciously, likely wondering how this unmarked elf knew so much about the breach already. Solas quirked his lips, enjoying the joke of what the truth would do to her.

“Let’s move,” said Cassandra. “We should find a way down to the rift and finish this.”

Leliana, bearing a bow and arrows in addition to her uniquely hooded armor, came upon them there at the edge. “I will have our men take up positions, Lady Cassandra.”

Closing the rift was of course no easy task, given that a mortal was attempting to wield the power of the gods. Fen’Falon was learning though, determination showing through her golden-green eyes as she tore open the jammed rift. The four of them - Fen’Falon, Solas, Varric, and Cassandra - fought the oncoming demons with the soldiers that were left, until a twisting of the rift indicated that it could be closed safely now. Solas willed the younger elf to focus and seal the rift for good, and surreptitiously lent her some of his power. Even that was not enough. Fen’Falon raised her marked hand and forced her magic through, the swirls of colour nearly visible from her effort. As the pain of holding that much power drove her to her knees again, the rift finally twisted shut and the mage collapsed to ground, unconscious once more.

The Chantry soldiers could not stop talking about Fen’Falon and the closing of the rift the entire way back to Haven, even as they carried the woman with them on a stretcher. Solas stuck close to the elven woman, studying her once again with his magic. There had been a faint hope that the power needed to seal the rift would be enough to destabilise the mark, allow him to reclaim his power. Perhaps when the breach was properly closed itself, he would be able to take back his fragment and complete what he had originally set out to do.

He watched this strange and abrasive elven woman as she sleep off the mana exhaustion, leaving only to return to the Temple of Sacred Ashes to study the breach there. Reports came in of rifts opened all over the world, whole cities being abandoned when no one could close the rifts. Solas was invited to sit in with Cassandra and Leliana as they debated what to do about the elven woman now that the people of Haven seemed to view her as a saviour. The soldiers who had returned from the Temple had spread the tale of Fen’Falon closing the rift and stopping the breach and word had made it’s way throughout the town by sundown that day.

On the second day of her sleep, he helped the herbalist figure out a way to keep the Dalish woman alive and stood as if to guard her outside the door of the house she had been put up in. Many residents and pilgrims came by and tried to catch a glimpse of the elf they were now calling the Herald of Andraste.

On the third day, the elf still had not awakened, and Solas had learned all he could from her sleeping form. He got Cassandra and Leliana to give him a small hut near the herbalist, far enough away from the main part of town that the smell of humans could not offend him. Solas tried to plan his next moves, but without the power of his orb it was slow going. The orb had been central to his plans, and without it he would have to search for either the orb of another god or an artifact of similar power. Solas did not even want to consider that it might be possible to convince the Dalish elf to help in his own ends - all his dealings with her kin had ended poorly. Cassandra and Leliana spent most of the morning in meetings with the Chantry officials and with Cullen Rutherford, who apparently used to be a templar and was now working for them.

In the early evening the Dalish woman awoke, fully healed and rested. Solas made sure to keep to his hut, he wanted to avoid the crowds of people that gathered on the streets of Haven to greet their Herald. The malleability of human minds was still novel to him, how easily they could be turned from reviling a murderous elf to proclaiming the same elf to be a prophet of Andraste. It would be fascinating to see if the elf bought into Andrastianism or if she remained steadfast in her equally misguided Dalish faith.

The female mage was brought to see Cassandra and Leliana. Solas had an easy time tracking her progress, as the pilgrims in Haven shouted out “Praise the Herald!” and other such nonsense as she made her way into the Chantry. The next few weeks were filled with a flurry of activity - Cassandra and Leliana opened an Inquisition, and messengers and birds went to and from Haven to spread the word. The writ posted by Cullen on the Chantry door stated that the purpose was to close the breach permanently, end the Mage-Templar war, and restore order to all Thedas. Noble goals, thought Solas, even if they may turn out to be unachievable. Solas tried his best to stay out of the way and unremarkable, unless they needed his expertise on the rifts. It would not do for them to start looking too closely into him at so early a stage.