Just a BioWare Fan

As he listened to his heart a step sounded on the loose scree behind him. He whirled, staff blazing to life as he snapped the blade to ready, and found an old woman standing there, grinning mischievously at him. The rows of studs on her rich armored leathers gleamed in the moonlight and feathers showed black at her shoulders and hips against the rising light. She bore no weapons and stood without fear, waiting for his reaction.

None of this made more than a passing impression on Abelas. It was her hair that arrested his attention. She bore the jutting white horns in which he’d first seen Mythal, though nothing else about her looked the same. Instead of the proud ears echoed by the elaborate style she had a shemlen’s rounded-off nubs. She lacked the glorious decoration with which all the elvhen gods had shown the power and devotion of their followers.

He dismissed all of this as unimportant. None had ever worn their hair thus.

Fen’Harel, often a guest and a dear friend of Mythal, had arrived ashen and furious to sob at the edge of the well, pleading with her to return, to lead him to those that needed her judgment more than any elvhen ever had. Days had passed as the priests milled around the edges of the clearing, distraught and confused, but none had been brave enough to question a god to whom they were not pledged.

His grief had soothed them, somehow. Though everyone at the temple had felt the shock of her death none of them could tell for certain what had happened. Until the god had said it, had boldly stated their beloved Mythal was dead at the hands of another, the priests and sentinels had clung to the hope that she would return. As he had quieted, they had accepted the truth and begun to wonder what would become of them

After a week, Fen’Harel had exhausted the noisiest portion of his grief. He had knelt, slumped and silent, face buried in hands dripping tears, as the moon rose above the pool. The silhouette of a wolf at full howl with three ruby eyes gleaming in its head had been worked into the tail of his long tunic where it trailed between his heels. For a moment Abelas had expected the god to mimic this symbol

At their remove, the priests and guards suffered far less than those at the heart of Arlathan.  They were not, however, immune to the dissolution.  The sentinels had fended off a dozen groups, from bands of slaves seeking asylum to a small army marching under no banner the priests could recognize.  As each gave his or her life to protect Mythal’s Heart the well had grown, from a chalice to a basin to a pool.

Finally Mythal had come a final time.  Abelas, then known by another name, had met with her in one of the forested glades near the temple.  Slaves had brought heady wines and rich cakes, their faces resolutely bent to keep from being blinded by the glittering majesty of their god.  She waited to speak until they were quite alone once more.  Other sentinels had kept guard out of earshot so that none might interrupt their conference.

She’d spoken his name gently, drawing his attention from his contemplation of how pale she looked, how worry shadowed her eyes to a deeper amethyst, and lightly laid a hand on his arm.  “I cannot tell you all that comes,” she said,

The passage through the eluvian brought only a moment’s discomfort.  It hadn’t been pain, precisely, more a dislocation centered on his navel, one that slewed his viscera a hand’s span widdershins and his heart a finger’s breadth to the right.  The twist drove the breath from his body so that he gasped indecorously as he emerged from the blue glare into a diffuse gleam.

Had he been able, he’d have caught and held his breath the moment his eyes adjusted.  On the graveled path before him stood the goddess herself, her flowing gown coated in gem dust so that it glittered and flashed even in the muted light.  It had covered one arm and left the other bare, covered in a filigree of gold chased with bright silver.

The waist had been caught with a wide belt of pale leather on which her symbols had been worked in the same threads that sparkled from his own new cloak.  Her hair had been braided and coiled to lie over the exposed shoulder in tangled profusion while the sides had been tied and lacquered into impressive horns that swept back just shy of meeting well behind and above her head.

Abelas could not recall a time he’d been so afraid.

When he’d strode from the temple that had been the heart of his life in every way he’d had a destination in mind.  Once he’d known the way; he had walked the path a thousand times.  Once Mythal had been alive and her sentinels patrolled a wide swath of the wilderness that protected her home.

Abelas, his name never more appropriate in the anguish of failing in his final and most sacred duty, got no farther than what had been a road before his last, lingering bit of purpose failed him.  What had stretched across miles, shining white stones fitted with precision and arching over the gorge of a rushing river, now lay in rubble and broken spans.

The river had dwindled to shallow, still pools flanking a sluggish stream.  Once-familiar trees, stretching graceful limbs to shade the road, had gone.  A jungle had replaced them, choked with undergrowth and trailing vines that had strangled the trees into tortured shapes.  Yet this was no young forest.  Abelas could see fallen trees with trunks twice his height, their roots long since crumbled from the banks the meandering course of the river had undercut.

I’ve written in a few places about how deeply The Head and the Heart’s Lost in My Mind moves me. Now that I’ve played Dragon Age: Inquisition it has a new layer of meaning for me. I picture Solas, humming this song as he’s painting the mural of your Inquisitor’s story. I imagine the lyrics running through his mind when he’s talking about or to the Dalish.

Most strongly, I want to see him singing this with Abelas, the perfectly pitched, civilized howl of loss and yearning and hope for moving forward. Solas sings the first two verses and Abelas the third then they burst the hearts of shemlen everywhere with the emotion of the chorus, sung together.

Excepting a minor anachronism the words fit beautifully for a pair of ancient elves embarking on a painful journey out of the past to which they’ve clung for so long.