Vesryn could think of few times when his connection with Saraya had been more inconvenient than this.
There was the considerable pain to deal with first. Her mere existence in his mind was an agony at this point, and that pain was made all the more acute whenever she felt something strong enough for him to experience it as well. That was happening now, in a way that was unlike anything he'd felt before. The feeling itself was inconvenient, too. Panic, disbelief, guilt, shame, fear... all of those were present, but they were mixed in the strangest way with a sheer joy that floored Vesryn. It was enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he reaches up to wipe them away. He needed to see for this, and the pain was already making things blurry enough.
"Who are you?" the elf atop the balcony asked them. "How is it that you are here?"
"We're the Inquisition," Stel supplied in answer from beside him. Probably not the most salient fact she could have used, but true nevertheless. "We are here because..." She pressed her lips together, hesitating probably more because of the length of the real explanation than because she was considering deception. "We're here for two reasons. The first of them is the Darkspawn magister and his army, who I'm sure you've noticed. He seeks the vir'abelasan. We seek to stop him. And we made it this far because the temple allowed it."
She stopped there, perhaps sensing that follow-up questions were likely.
It was hard to tell if her words meant much of anything to the man. He lifted one gauntleted hand to his face, concealing his features even more while he thought. Even still, Vesryn knew him. Saraya knew him, rather. He was the elf from her dreams, the one she'd spoken to in this temple, back when she'd still walked Thedas on her own two legs. The word Inquisition likely meant little to him. Unless he was somehow aware of the history of the world, he'd locked himself away in here long before even the first Inquisition, let alone their new one.
"I am called Abelas," he said at last, though his soldiers all around them did not lower their weapons yet. "We here are sentinels, tasked with standing against those who trespass on sacred ground. We wake only to fight, to preserve this place. Our numbers diminish with each invasion." He studied them longer, using the ample space atop the balcony to pace back and forth.
"You claim you wish to stop the magister from claiming the vir'abelasan. This I can believe. But how am I to accept that you do not seek the same? To drink from its waters?"
"And what if that was our intention?" The words were Harellan's, spoken in a tone less curious than melancholy. "You know the choice that lies here before you, I think. The power that darkspawn commands is of our people. Mythal's focus is in his possession, save for the fragment of its power etched into the hands of my lethallan and one other. Your numbers will not be able to stop his assault, and you will be devastated if you try. That means either you destroy the Wellā" here he paused, lifting from beneath his shirt a symbol exactly like Stel had worn since Arlathan. The silverite teardrop glinted in the sparse light of the hall.
"Or you allow everything it contains to be delivered back into the hands it exists for." He dropped the necklace so that it sat over his armor instead of under, armor clearly not all that different from what the sentinels wore. "In doing so, I can promise that you will be giving your peopleāoursāa chance to do something other than diminish. Perhaps one of the last chances left to us."
That surprised him, or at least got his attention in a way that was sure to get them somewhere. He narrowed his brow as if in suspicion for a moment, but that moment soon passed, and then came the order for the archers to lower their bows, a mere flick of his hand. Abelas vaulted over the railing of the balcony, a swell of magic slowing his descent until his feet lightly touched down on the tiled floor. He approached slowly, and lowered his hood, revealing golden eyes and a clean shaven head, to display his vallaslin all the more proudly.
"You bear the crest, yet I do not know you." He studied Harellan, his eyes briefly passing over the others. Stel first, Abelas finding more interest in her marked hand than the rest of her, then Cyrus, the sibling relation plain to see. He spared a glance for Zahra before his eyes sweeped over Astraia and Vesryn, noting his obvious poor condition, and then his focus movedback to Harellan. "A descendant, then. I did not think it possible. Unless this is all some great deception."
Saraya yearned for Vesryn to say something, to reveal her, but he held his tongue. "The Well is not something I have the authority to grant to anyone, even one such as you. My duty is to defend this temple from trespassers, nothing more, nothing less."
"You're going to allow it to just... sit there?" The question came from Astraia, though even she looked surprised she'd asked. "Forever?"
Abelas scrutinized her. Vesryn wondered how familiar he was with the modern Dalish. She wore the vallaslin as they did, but next to them, she looked about as different as Stel and Cyrus did. A different people entirely. "The vir'abelasan is not meant to be claimed. It is a reminder of what was lost. What will never be again." It was impossibly bleak, but Vesryn could understand why. Abelas did not live in a community such as the one that produced Harellan. These elves had the shadow of what was lost hanging over them always, because they remembered, not just in texts but in their minds. Their existence was to defend a monument to what was lost. The very name he'd taken for himself... sorrow. Abelas was not his true name, Vesryn knew, though Saraya could never tell him what it was instead.
"We will fight alongside you to destroy the invaders," Abelas declared. "But after that, it would be best for all of you to leave. And never return."
"Not everything that is gone is gone forever." Harellan said the words as though they were more a recollection than his own thought, seemingly undaunted by Abelas's resistance to his intentions. It was hard to say what he was thinkingāhe'd never been one to share much of himself directly, but the lack of concern surely meant he hadn't actually given up on obtaining whatever lay in the Well. Still, he didn't fight it, nor attempt to press the point at the moment, instead moving his attention to Vesryn.
"While there is yet timeāas lethallan said, there is another reason for our presence here."
When Abelas's attention shifted fully onto Vesryn, the feeling that overwhelmed him was one urging caution. To proceed, but to do so carefully. Vesryn could understand why. This was not likely to go over very well.
"Who are you?" Abelas asked him. "You wear a relic, but you are not one of us." He studied him, obviously seeing the pain in his eyes. "You have some ailment as well, I see."
"I'm not all that important really," Vesryn said, managing a smile. "But it was a friend of mine that guided us here. Her memory of this place helped us learn of the darkspawn magister's desire for the vir'abelasan."
"Her... memory? Explain yourself."
"She was a friend of yours, as well, at least it feels that way." He was never sure how to say this, but somehow this situation was the most difficult of all. Someone that already knew Saraya. "Tell me, do you... do you know what became of an elven general by the name of Marellanas Arayani?"
The name forced a look of complete shock on the otherwise stonefaced elf's features. It was enough to force him a step back, and several of the bow-wielding elves still around them shared uncertain looks with one another.
"I cannot say how it is you know that name. I... know it well, however. And I know what became of her. Imprisoned, for all eternity. Though surely she is dead by now."
"Not quite." He winced, evidence that eternity would find its end fairly soon here, if nothing could be done. "She endured the ages, until a fool boy stumbled into the ruin where she was kept, and now..." He touched a finger to the side of his head. "Now she is here. With me. And with us."
His look was disbelieving, but by the way he took another half-step back, by the way the elves visibly tensed around them, they had to believe at least some part of it. It was too outlandish a claim to be completely false, given the sheer amount of time that had passed since any of them had last seen her.
"That is... not possible," Abelas declared, looking to the others. "This cannot be."
"But it is," Stel said quietly. "I've..." she huffed softly, reaching for the words. "I've dreamed with her, I suppose you could say. She had a husband, and a sonāI know their faces. I've seen the bloodshed from after the Fall. The war with Tevinter. The way the armies of Arlathan were pushed southāhow many of them perished only to lose more ground, the desperation." Her eyes had unfocused a moment, but she blinked and they sharpened again, lifting to meet Abelas's own. "She's there. Here. Impossible as it might seem."
It took him a long moment to accept it. When he did... anger was the expression that crept over his features. "Why do you tell me this? I have nothing to say to her, and I would pass a thousand more years before hearing more of her lies. Marellanas betrayed us all."
"Not this place," Vesryn pointed out. "She made a mistake. She trapped herself in an impossible situation. And she paid the price for it a thousand times over. Ever since I found her, she has worked to make the world a better place through me. I... I can't even put to words what she's feeling right now. To see you again. She thought you were long dead as well."
"Not with a thousand of your lifetimes could she ever undo the damage she caused."
"I know. She knows. But she has done everything in her power, all the same. Even knowing that she can never make up for her crimes." Abelas met that with only silence, which Vesryn took as permission to continue. "But we're running out of time. This bond we have, it's... it wasn't meant to happen this way."
"It was never meant to happen at all," Abelas corrected. "It is killing you, I would imagine."
Vesryn nodded. "Rather quickly, unfortunately. We hoped that the magic of this place might... might be used to stabilize us. Save both of our lives, so that we can keep paying back some small piece of what is owed."
A huff left Abelas through his nostrils, something close to a dark laugh. "I am unsurprised that the traitor thought to defile this place, and harness its magic to prolong her unnatural long life. Disrupting the magic here would end us all, destroy the last faithful of Mythal that protect the vir'abelasan. We who have endured since the Fall. All for what? Fifty years?"
Vesryn was stopped cold, his thoughts halting. Saraya had known, as soon as she'd noticed the elves here. She'd known that to save themselves would mean all of their deaths. And she'd known instantly that she could not do it. Certainly not to save herself. And not even to save Vesryn. These elves... they represented the result of what she'd done in the past. A sorrowful vigil, watching over the dead. Her desire was only to help them, and right now that meant abandoning this idea of using the temple's magic to save themselves.
"No." Stel probably hadn't even meant to say the word aloud, so soft and broken was the whisper. She turned to him, and from the look on her face alone, Vesryn knew that she understood what their answer had to be. Understood how wrong it would be to even consider the alternative.
It still broke her heartāher shoulders slumped, like something heavy had finally settled over them. "Isn't thereāisn't there anything else?" She asked the question of Harellan no doubt, but she didn't look away from Vesryn.
"I believe Abelas is right." Harellan sounded deeply weary, and the muted sound of a sigh had likely come from him. "I hadn't thought to encounter anyone living here, but there's no mistake that their lives are tied to the magic. It can only be used for one or the other, not both."
Cyrus's face twisted; he shot a dark look at the sentinels for a moment, something no doubt acidic at the tip of his tongue. But he glanced once at his sister and swallowed it, whatever it may have been.
It wasn't right. Leaving it like this wasn't right. Saraya wanted something from them, and Vesryn didn't have to guess much to know what it was. Not life... she'd experienced enough of that, and while she wanted it for Vesryn, he understood that she couldn't accept something this horrific in order to save him. He couldn't do it to save himself, or to save her. No, she wanted something far sweeter.
A loud, distant blast cut off any further discussion they might have. The elves shifted and raised their bows again, moving out without needing to be told. Abelas shook his head, and pulled the hood back up once more.
"We must attend to this together if we hope to be victorious," he said, meeting Vesryn's eyes. "If you can still fight, perhaps you can demonstrate Marellanas's desire to atone."
"Oh, I will." He hefted up his axe. He wasn't sure he'd survive the fight, but confidence was never something he'd had trouble exuding. "You can be sure of that."
There was the considerable pain to deal with first. Her mere existence in his mind was an agony at this point, and that pain was made all the more acute whenever she felt something strong enough for him to experience it as well. That was happening now, in a way that was unlike anything he'd felt before. The feeling itself was inconvenient, too. Panic, disbelief, guilt, shame, fear... all of those were present, but they were mixed in the strangest way with a sheer joy that floored Vesryn. It was enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he reaches up to wipe them away. He needed to see for this, and the pain was already making things blurry enough.
"Who are you?" the elf atop the balcony asked them. "How is it that you are here?"
"We're the Inquisition," Stel supplied in answer from beside him. Probably not the most salient fact she could have used, but true nevertheless. "We are here because..." She pressed her lips together, hesitating probably more because of the length of the real explanation than because she was considering deception. "We're here for two reasons. The first of them is the Darkspawn magister and his army, who I'm sure you've noticed. He seeks the vir'abelasan. We seek to stop him. And we made it this far because the temple allowed it."
She stopped there, perhaps sensing that follow-up questions were likely.
It was hard to tell if her words meant much of anything to the man. He lifted one gauntleted hand to his face, concealing his features even more while he thought. Even still, Vesryn knew him. Saraya knew him, rather. He was the elf from her dreams, the one she'd spoken to in this temple, back when she'd still walked Thedas on her own two legs. The word Inquisition likely meant little to him. Unless he was somehow aware of the history of the world, he'd locked himself away in here long before even the first Inquisition, let alone their new one.
"I am called Abelas," he said at last, though his soldiers all around them did not lower their weapons yet. "We here are sentinels, tasked with standing against those who trespass on sacred ground. We wake only to fight, to preserve this place. Our numbers diminish with each invasion." He studied them longer, using the ample space atop the balcony to pace back and forth.
"You claim you wish to stop the magister from claiming the vir'abelasan. This I can believe. But how am I to accept that you do not seek the same? To drink from its waters?"
"And what if that was our intention?" The words were Harellan's, spoken in a tone less curious than melancholy. "You know the choice that lies here before you, I think. The power that darkspawn commands is of our people. Mythal's focus is in his possession, save for the fragment of its power etched into the hands of my lethallan and one other. Your numbers will not be able to stop his assault, and you will be devastated if you try. That means either you destroy the Wellā" here he paused, lifting from beneath his shirt a symbol exactly like Stel had worn since Arlathan. The silverite teardrop glinted in the sparse light of the hall.
"Or you allow everything it contains to be delivered back into the hands it exists for." He dropped the necklace so that it sat over his armor instead of under, armor clearly not all that different from what the sentinels wore. "In doing so, I can promise that you will be giving your peopleāoursāa chance to do something other than diminish. Perhaps one of the last chances left to us."
That surprised him, or at least got his attention in a way that was sure to get them somewhere. He narrowed his brow as if in suspicion for a moment, but that moment soon passed, and then came the order for the archers to lower their bows, a mere flick of his hand. Abelas vaulted over the railing of the balcony, a swell of magic slowing his descent until his feet lightly touched down on the tiled floor. He approached slowly, and lowered his hood, revealing golden eyes and a clean shaven head, to display his vallaslin all the more proudly.
"You bear the crest, yet I do not know you." He studied Harellan, his eyes briefly passing over the others. Stel first, Abelas finding more interest in her marked hand than the rest of her, then Cyrus, the sibling relation plain to see. He spared a glance for Zahra before his eyes sweeped over Astraia and Vesryn, noting his obvious poor condition, and then his focus movedback to Harellan. "A descendant, then. I did not think it possible. Unless this is all some great deception."
Saraya yearned for Vesryn to say something, to reveal her, but he held his tongue. "The Well is not something I have the authority to grant to anyone, even one such as you. My duty is to defend this temple from trespassers, nothing more, nothing less."
"You're going to allow it to just... sit there?" The question came from Astraia, though even she looked surprised she'd asked. "Forever?"
Abelas scrutinized her. Vesryn wondered how familiar he was with the modern Dalish. She wore the vallaslin as they did, but next to them, she looked about as different as Stel and Cyrus did. A different people entirely. "The vir'abelasan is not meant to be claimed. It is a reminder of what was lost. What will never be again." It was impossibly bleak, but Vesryn could understand why. Abelas did not live in a community such as the one that produced Harellan. These elves had the shadow of what was lost hanging over them always, because they remembered, not just in texts but in their minds. Their existence was to defend a monument to what was lost. The very name he'd taken for himself... sorrow. Abelas was not his true name, Vesryn knew, though Saraya could never tell him what it was instead.
"We will fight alongside you to destroy the invaders," Abelas declared. "But after that, it would be best for all of you to leave. And never return."
"Not everything that is gone is gone forever." Harellan said the words as though they were more a recollection than his own thought, seemingly undaunted by Abelas's resistance to his intentions. It was hard to say what he was thinkingāhe'd never been one to share much of himself directly, but the lack of concern surely meant he hadn't actually given up on obtaining whatever lay in the Well. Still, he didn't fight it, nor attempt to press the point at the moment, instead moving his attention to Vesryn.
"While there is yet timeāas lethallan said, there is another reason for our presence here."
When Abelas's attention shifted fully onto Vesryn, the feeling that overwhelmed him was one urging caution. To proceed, but to do so carefully. Vesryn could understand why. This was not likely to go over very well.
"Who are you?" Abelas asked him. "You wear a relic, but you are not one of us." He studied him, obviously seeing the pain in his eyes. "You have some ailment as well, I see."
"I'm not all that important really," Vesryn said, managing a smile. "But it was a friend of mine that guided us here. Her memory of this place helped us learn of the darkspawn magister's desire for the vir'abelasan."
"Her... memory? Explain yourself."
"She was a friend of yours, as well, at least it feels that way." He was never sure how to say this, but somehow this situation was the most difficult of all. Someone that already knew Saraya. "Tell me, do you... do you know what became of an elven general by the name of Marellanas Arayani?"
The name forced a look of complete shock on the otherwise stonefaced elf's features. It was enough to force him a step back, and several of the bow-wielding elves still around them shared uncertain looks with one another.
"I cannot say how it is you know that name. I... know it well, however. And I know what became of her. Imprisoned, for all eternity. Though surely she is dead by now."
"Not quite." He winced, evidence that eternity would find its end fairly soon here, if nothing could be done. "She endured the ages, until a fool boy stumbled into the ruin where she was kept, and now..." He touched a finger to the side of his head. "Now she is here. With me. And with us."
His look was disbelieving, but by the way he took another half-step back, by the way the elves visibly tensed around them, they had to believe at least some part of it. It was too outlandish a claim to be completely false, given the sheer amount of time that had passed since any of them had last seen her.
"That is... not possible," Abelas declared, looking to the others. "This cannot be."
"But it is," Stel said quietly. "I've..." she huffed softly, reaching for the words. "I've dreamed with her, I suppose you could say. She had a husband, and a sonāI know their faces. I've seen the bloodshed from after the Fall. The war with Tevinter. The way the armies of Arlathan were pushed southāhow many of them perished only to lose more ground, the desperation." Her eyes had unfocused a moment, but she blinked and they sharpened again, lifting to meet Abelas's own. "She's there. Here. Impossible as it might seem."
It took him a long moment to accept it. When he did... anger was the expression that crept over his features. "Why do you tell me this? I have nothing to say to her, and I would pass a thousand more years before hearing more of her lies. Marellanas betrayed us all."
"Not this place," Vesryn pointed out. "She made a mistake. She trapped herself in an impossible situation. And she paid the price for it a thousand times over. Ever since I found her, she has worked to make the world a better place through me. I... I can't even put to words what she's feeling right now. To see you again. She thought you were long dead as well."
"Not with a thousand of your lifetimes could she ever undo the damage she caused."
"I know. She knows. But she has done everything in her power, all the same. Even knowing that she can never make up for her crimes." Abelas met that with only silence, which Vesryn took as permission to continue. "But we're running out of time. This bond we have, it's... it wasn't meant to happen this way."
"It was never meant to happen at all," Abelas corrected. "It is killing you, I would imagine."
Vesryn nodded. "Rather quickly, unfortunately. We hoped that the magic of this place might... might be used to stabilize us. Save both of our lives, so that we can keep paying back some small piece of what is owed."
A huff left Abelas through his nostrils, something close to a dark laugh. "I am unsurprised that the traitor thought to defile this place, and harness its magic to prolong her unnatural long life. Disrupting the magic here would end us all, destroy the last faithful of Mythal that protect the vir'abelasan. We who have endured since the Fall. All for what? Fifty years?"
Vesryn was stopped cold, his thoughts halting. Saraya had known, as soon as she'd noticed the elves here. She'd known that to save themselves would mean all of their deaths. And she'd known instantly that she could not do it. Certainly not to save herself. And not even to save Vesryn. These elves... they represented the result of what she'd done in the past. A sorrowful vigil, watching over the dead. Her desire was only to help them, and right now that meant abandoning this idea of using the temple's magic to save themselves.
"No." Stel probably hadn't even meant to say the word aloud, so soft and broken was the whisper. She turned to him, and from the look on her face alone, Vesryn knew that she understood what their answer had to be. Understood how wrong it would be to even consider the alternative.
It still broke her heartāher shoulders slumped, like something heavy had finally settled over them. "Isn't thereāisn't there anything else?" She asked the question of Harellan no doubt, but she didn't look away from Vesryn.
"I believe Abelas is right." Harellan sounded deeply weary, and the muted sound of a sigh had likely come from him. "I hadn't thought to encounter anyone living here, but there's no mistake that their lives are tied to the magic. It can only be used for one or the other, not both."
Cyrus's face twisted; he shot a dark look at the sentinels for a moment, something no doubt acidic at the tip of his tongue. But he glanced once at his sister and swallowed it, whatever it may have been.
It wasn't right. Leaving it like this wasn't right. Saraya wanted something from them, and Vesryn didn't have to guess much to know what it was. Not life... she'd experienced enough of that, and while she wanted it for Vesryn, he understood that she couldn't accept something this horrific in order to save him. He couldn't do it to save himself, or to save her. No, she wanted something far sweeter.
A loud, distant blast cut off any further discussion they might have. The elves shifted and raised their bows again, moving out without needing to be told. Abelas shook his head, and pulled the hood back up once more.
"We must attend to this together if we hope to be victorious," he said, meeting Vesryn's eyes. "If you can still fight, perhaps you can demonstrate Marellanas's desire to atone."
"Oh, I will." He hefted up his axe. He wasn't sure he'd survive the fight, but confidence was never something he'd had trouble exuding. "You can be sure of that."