◜ᴠɪʀ·ᴀʙᴇʟᴀsᴀɴ◞

As requested by @swevenfox - a short little drabble for you !

This temple swallows him.

Light bleeds through the narrowing embrasures, but it casts the ribbed vaults in an unfeeling, frozen glow. Too much light for it to be wholly real, wholly bound by so petty a thing as the laws which govern the workings of this world. What is law before that which exists beyond it? It is a vastness he cannot grasp, could not try to. The light issues with a searing whiteness that devours all it touches, furnishing the pooling shadows into dizzying abyssal chasms of an unending black. His eyes swim, spots blinking in his vision, and he must tear his gaze away, eyes pinched tight against a red seam of hungry illumination. His skin does not rise to chilled gooseflesh even in the cold bath of this searching brilliance. It does not burn his cheeks a shivering pink, and he is emptier for it.

He feels, lurchingly…nothing, not heat nor chill, and the vacuum of sensation passes a tremor through down his shivering vertebrae. He is glad for that - it reminds him his body is grounded, is here. How easy he finds it to drift into mindlessness, suffocating in this smothering void of being. He could forget himself, his duty, his life. This temple - and the god who claims it - press down upon him, cloying, greedy, grasping. The Will is impossible to disobey - it is all that seems tangible, a living entity beyond death itself, witness to the birth of the only world he has ever known. Creator and guide, whose hand ushers its end. In the shadow of the exquisite, that which offends in their insignificance - personality, thought, will - are scorched away.

Before it, Mythal’s sentinel kneels in penitential devotion. Love and fear taste the same to a god.

He is bent and bowed in genuflection, head drooping like an overripe fruit, fecund and ponderously weighty upon the branching arc of his neck. His tongue cleaves dumbly to the pate of his mouth, working uselessly, a bloated and numb organ. And it feels right, although it does not, that a thing so small and base as he should know the mercy of having the burden of words taken from him.

This place is sacred, yes. He can sense that what makes it cruel makes it holy - there is a terrible rapture in his wonderment. He knows there should be currents vortexing from the airy windows, bearing the heady fragrance of syrupy honeysuckle and nitrous earth. He knows he should hear the covetous murmurings of the Orchard trees, swaying to a windless breeze. But that which has narrowed to his only world - this temple - is consumed by callous silence. Perhaps this is a blessing, to be spared the drowsy languors of the white grove, the slow lethargy that renders him sluggish and thick, and so tempted to just lay his head upon the mossy vegetation, invitingly lush, and rest a while.

He cannot but tremble, humiliated for his weakness laid bare, profane and scaled large against the perfection of the infinite. He has knelt at altars of the gods, offered each their burnt offerings of sweet-smelling things, and he was firmed and consecrated before Their presence. And yet, his fear betrays the Great Mother now, all strength failing him, humbled and laic as he is.

Amusement ghosts unseen in the threads of the Weave, the brush of a thing so sibylline and immense that he knows it can be nothing else but the the shadow of the presence of the divine. And the fabric of the world ripples - a laugh without form or sound, unheard but deafening. He cannot dampen or escape its resonance, teeth ground chatteringly together in an aching jaw. The words he was meant to deliver flee him, a shame so profound and so crude that he can taste it like a bitter scorbutic closing his throat. He drowns in the sorrow and fractured ruin of his duty on his goddess’ behalf, poisoned hubris of this worthless priest to convey Her words, a mistake, a mistake, a mistake, a—

GO TO YOUR MISTRESS. YOU DO NOT YET KNOW WHAT SORROW IS.

He starts, scrabbling untidily to a drunken stagger, casting about in sheer, animal terror. He is alone, and the memory has already left his body. Only the reverberations remain - some hollow echo in the cavity of his chest that sharpens his breath and leaves him reeling as though struck by a terrible blow. His breast heaves, brow puckered with beads of sweat, and the mortal stench of it sours the air. He recalls nothing but the memory of ruthless light, of the spiritual glimpse of something grander beyond all knowing.

The sentinel stares sightlessly with hooded eyes, the fresh fir green of Mythal’s brand shining with perspiration upon his brow. Lost, nonplussed, he pays his obeisances to the great temple of Falon’din, and cannot but shake the whispers of the woods he leaves behind.

★

He communes with his goddess in silence.

His prayers sing from the tapered edges of his blade, conjured energy condensed into cutting spirit, each muscular pull and torsion sensed like an infinity in the hyper-aware. He weeps benedictions from his pores. Sweat collects in the hollow of his throat, trickles like oil beneath the metal plate of his armor, beads in the furrows of brows knitted in essential focus. His gratitude looks a grimace, but in battle, he is touched by the the breath of clarity.

He knows Mythal best when he keeps to her path. He strains for her answer in the sharp inhalations between each arc of his weapon, in the waiting static just after the crackle and flow of his magic shrieks through the web of worlds. He waits for her in the spaces between heartbeats. He knows her hymns and theodicies, has spent a lifetime in negation of self, and extends all his being into a manifestation of her justice in all the spheres he has ever touched. He loves her as he loves the Vir’Abelasan: the infinity pressed into the spaces of the finite, respected, ineffable, feared, adored. The love of a deity is a terrible thing, consuming and splendid, platonic pathways lingering in the echoes of the wisdom she has shared with the People.

He senses her still, in the drooping jungle trees, the dense moisture of the fetid tropical air. He breathes and inhales the memory of her, and sees her shadow cast in the impressions of the Veilfire. But he knows they are dying; his memory of her, his People, and the empty beings in the edges of his vision who glint gold and bronze, ghosts just like him.

And so Sorrow prays more fervently, more desperately, in each waning century. His unspoken invocations metamorphose into dirges and laments. And he waits for his goddess to answer.

★

# ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵇᵒᵘⁿᵈ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵉ ᵛⁱʳ'ᵃᵇᵉˡᵃˢᵃⁿ { ϙᴜᴇᴜᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗᵘʳᵉ ᵇᵉᶜᵒᵐᵉˢ ᵃˢ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ { ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴ } # ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

journey-over-mirrors

As this was requested - finding purpose after Sanaa's death (AU) ? :>

He had known this day would come.

He had not thought to face it so soon.

Abelas had been a witness to the inevitable crush of the passing of ages, time wearing away at the foundation of all he had ever known. Time had swallowed away whole worlds, erasing even what rebellions and wars could not. Time had been denied to the elves born after the sundering of Elvhenan – what had been the feature endemic to all the People had been denied in the legacy of all their children. They were mortal, now. They would die, in their turn.

So many lives, like the sparking of dying stars. Even the most ancient sun in the celestial firmament must, in its own time, fade away. He had known the skies over Mythal’dhru’an as he had known himself. Should but one star blink away from existence, its loss would have been keenly felt. The Dalish were like such stars, but they were stars with which he was unfamiliar. Some perished with great fanfare, brightening before the end, as always, claimed them. Most simply…faded away, lost within the sparkling multitude. They would be replaced, their stories forgotten. It was the way of things, now, and Abelas had lived a thousand lifetimes, unchanging even as the world beyond the Temple did nothing but change.

And so the lifelines, worn thin and ragged, eaten away by the slow rolling of years, snapped ! –He was cast adrift into the void, purposeless when it had been purpose, alone, which had kept him aloft for so long. What few of his brothers and sisters remained chose to stay by his side. Abelas never knew, but it had been for love of him, and not the faded memory of a distant goddess, that had bade them stay.

What else had been left for them, then, but to wander the earth like the shadows they had become? They were no better than the restless, homeless Dalish – distinct only in their sacred traditions and the knowledge, the memories they carried in their breasts. They might have wandered like this for a thousand years or more – or else allow themselves to be claimed by the eternal sleep of uthenera. and this time, never to wake again.

But Abelas would not lay himself down for rest, not when the shadows of the old world still clung to the curvature of space. Whispers of Elvhenan were locked in the secret places of the world. The ruins, the temples, the hidden realms which opened only for those of the People. It was not his way to abandon himself to mourning without cause. He carried sorrow with him forever – but he would not be stopped by it. Not even when he lacked a guiding principle to anchor himself through the ages.

{ And then she had given him reason to believe that purpose yet existed. }

She had called herself Sanaa, and she had given him hope by showing him how he might, himself, find it on his own. Mythal’s vallaslin had marked her as sure as the branches, green like a winter fir, reached across his own brow. For a time, they had traveled together. For a time.

There was a finality to everything is this world. There was a beginning and an end, where once there had been eternity. Once, long ago, Falon’Din might have eased the passing, guiding souls not to an end but to a journey begun anew. He, above all the Creators, had known the liminal paths and the transitory nature of all things. And then the Guide, himself, had been led astray. He was a shepherd no longer. The People struggled, living - and dying - alone.

So, too, had Sanaa been lost. Abelas knew why she had felt she must, but hers was a life departed too early from this world. He had come to love her, a pure, platonic love that bloomed with the thanks of being alive, being whole. She sought to save him – from the past and from himself, laying the foundation for the chance to make a life from the ashes of the old world.

He had known, from the moment of their meeting, that he would live only to see her die. He had not thought it was to be like this. For a time, Abelas and his sentinels grieved. They mourned her as they mourned for all their own, and swore themselves to the duty of honoring her enduring spirit.

Yet, while his grief was real, Abelas had learned. He had grown.

He held on to the memory of her in his soul, along with all of his many dead. She had been a light among the Dalish, challenging his long since held beliefs, forcing him to question all that he had not questioned. The Dalish were still not his People, and could never be again. For all that his life would extend into the ages, it was no longer his time. But he might turn aside his sorrows and look to the future of this world, guiding the Children of the Dales as he had once guided the children born into a life amongst the sentinels. Both had been born after the death throes of their empires existed only in living memory. Both lived in want for someone with the heart and knowledge of the elvhen to guide them when their Creators could not - would not.

It was for their sake, and for his own, that Abelas knew what he must do. In the wake of all his losses, he endured and would always endure. Emma him Suledin.

★

# [i'm not too confident with this ... i hope it's what you wanted] # [omg i'm exhausted] # journeyovermirrors # swevenfox # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵃᵛᵉ { ᴏʙʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴs } # death mention cw # long post # long post for ts # journey-over-mirrors

Anonymous

How would your muse feel about meeting a tranquil for the first time?

He has seen them before. They haunted the darkened thresholds of golden Arlathan, pooling like runoff, like flotsam, in the unseen spaces of the city. The towers are tall and strong, but the shadows they cast are long indeed, and it is here they gather. They wear vallaslin. They are bound by unseen threads, blood magic seizing their will, directing the body to live, to do as bidden. They are not elvhen. They are rattus, and most all are known to be punished for some terrible - or perceived - crime.

The rest are simply weak. It is known.

He is young, and yet Arlathan is already old. He has taken the vallaslin of his own, but it will be many centuries yet before he claims the name Abelas and wears it like a shroud. Now, he is Vallasvhen, and his tasks are many. It is in Mythal’s Grand Temple that he first speaks to a Sundered One. It is a monumental place, meant to stand as testament to the power of the Great Protector. It is meant to grant her the right to stand as the arbiter of the People, caring and harsh. She loves them all, but silences the unworthy forever with divine censure.

And so became the Sundered Ones, and they walked among the People like ghosts.

Vallasvhen is still young, and the brand upon his face wills him to slip unnoticed through the halls of burnished gold. His tasks are many. His time is short. Long before he had been bound to her temple in the far distant south, he had been here, quietly laboring in the service of the priestly caste.

In the twilight temple, they speak to him.

Vallasvhen tends to the oblations, the secret flames. Magic sustains it all, but his are the hands to inscribe veilfire runes upon her temple walls, and he does so with a quiet reverence and enduring grace. He had thought himself alone - no others were needed for such a task, and all had retired to their pallets, far from the nave proper. Only he remains, and his ears are filled with the ringing hum of hot magics singing in the pulse of his fingerpads, shimmering with the thread of the weave.

The magic flows, and so he writes.

But a voice calls out to him, an elvhen voice, and he thinks, at first, that it feels grey. It is the first thing, like a bolt of lightning, arcing across the planes of his mind, that he senses. Grey. It is a muted sensation, significant in all that it lacks.

They, too, are branded by vallaslin. They, too, labor in the temple. But they are not as he is, and he feels it in the core of his soul. He knows, logically, what they are. He knows that this had been someone, once. This had been a person, and now his heart knows not where to place them.

{ He settles with something less, and realizes his callousness only after the turning of an age— }

They labor, in turn, for Those Who Serve. They exist beneath the slaves, a faceless, voiceless people that nevertheless numbered in the thousands. The Sundered One had been bidden to call Vallasvhen to the priestess’ side, and the way that he speaks chills him to his marrow. Never had something living been so dead, and the weave of magic fell flat. The Sundered One is hollow, a void.

He is inverted space.

Vallasvhen’s teeth grate, but he does not waver. He follows the elder in silence, aware of the expanse between them. It is not a physical barrier, but it is thrown up between them, and he sees, for the first time, how it is that he, himself, is seen by others born free. Beneath Mythal’s protection, beneath the shadow of her swift justice, it is said that all are judged equal.

And yet, despite this, Elvhenan is not.

His whole world is thrown into question. He does not regret laboring beneath Mythal — she is the goddess he loved above all others — but he is ever aware that he is not free. { At least he is not like them. } They walk in silence, and Vallasvhen’s curious, wandering eyes catch the face of the other. It is not vacant, and it surprises him. Theirs is a face all too aware, and yet it shows nothing at all. There is no feeling, no thoughts behind it, but what may be used to process and analyze. For all that it intrigues him, it terrifies him, and when he is left alone before the feet of the priestess, to speak to her of duties borne, he is glad at the retreating steps he hears echo behind him in the long, dark chamber.

He does not want to think of the eyes that looked at him, met his own, and felt nothing.

★

# [whoops this got long] # ✮ ┅ ❛ ʷʰⁱˢᵖᵉʳˢ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵉˡᵍᵃʳᵉⁿ { ᴠᴇɪʟᴇᴅ ɪɴ ɢʀᴇʏ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵃᵛᵉ { ᴏʙʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴs } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ˢᶜʳⁱᵇᵉ ᵒᶠ ᵗʰᵉ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ᴀʀʟᴀᴛʜᴀɴ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵒᶠ ᵗᵒʷᵉʳˢ ᵍᵒˡᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ˢᵗʳᵒⁿᵍ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ᴀʀʟᴀᴛʜᴀɴ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ˢᶜʳⁱᵖᵗᵘʳᵉ ᵇᵉᶜᵒᵐᵉˢ ᵃˢ ᵗʳᵘᵗʰ { ʜᴇᴀᴅᴄᴀɴᴏɴ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵈⁱʳᵗʰ'ᵉⁿᵃ ᵉⁿᵃˢᵃˡⁱⁿ { ᴀʀᴄᴀɴᴇ ᴡᴀʀʀɪᴏʀ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # kind of? # slavery cw / # idk just in case

swevenfox

Time changed, the world changed. Not only in its structure but also in its colours, smell and feels. Having now this bitter freedom over his own life felt more of a burden then a blessing came from his Mistress. This night was one of those dark nights where the starless sky called for him to end this unasked life of his. But from this dark moment a thin golden light smiled upon him as a mysterious Golden Halla approached to his campfire out of ... nowhere. A Gift. | continue please :>

Hanal’Ghilan, they called it. The Pathfinder.

The Dalish said it came to them in times of great need — a thing wrought by the Creators, woven of old magics. It was a legend, in truth, that had preceded even them. Abelas remembered a boy with a different name, in a different time, with vallaslin green as a fir in winter and fresh upon his face — even then, the name of the Pathfinder was invoked in reverential whispers, uttered like a benediction.

It was said that it left its cloven mark upon the earth before even the teeming beasts of the land and sky and sea, and it was said that it would remain, even after the meanest of such creatures had breathed its last. The more daring braved to suggest it was no halla at all, and that it was not of Ghilan’nain’s making; a thing beholden to no one man nor god, but to all the People, unto eternity.

In his youth, Abelas had believed in the existence of Hanal’Ghilan with the same dubious superstition so common in the hearts of all the elvhen. It was not so impossible to subscribe to such beliefs, in a time that breathed magic as effortlessly as air, and wove it as fine as corded samite. But he had never seen it.

Not even when all Arlathan burned had the Pathfinder come to offer succor.

And so, like magic, love and belief had dimmed in his heart, until only his duty remained. Now, he had not even that with which to sustain himself. For millennia, his service to Mythal had been the tether which kept him anchored; which kept him from slipping headlong into that dark abyss, ever yawning beneath his feet since the fall of the world that he had known. He had failed Mythal twice over; first, in saving her life, and in keeping whole and sacrosanct her great and final gift to the People. Her temple breached, made profane in its ruined sanctity, and finally usurped. There had been nothing left for elvhen such as he.

And yet he could not deny the beast that stood before him now, its eyes dark and round like polished stones of jet — yet deeper, somehow, than all the oceans of the world. Abelas was never one to be surprised, and yet, impossibly, this animal had nearly come upon him without his knowing. It stood without fear, and the dying light of his campfire threw a symphony of colors over a hide that was, unmistakably, golden even beneath the great void of starless black.

His breath catches, tongue cleaving to a dry pate. He had thought himself beyond such moments of awe, he who had swept aside oceans of time like a curtain as he surrendered himself to uthenera. Time, he knew, would come to claim the temple eventually - and it had - but Abelas had become an embittered and aching soul, doggedly pressing on even as his spirit begged him to rest, to submit himself to the waking dreams of the Beyond one final time, never to awaken.

Age and tradition were the factors which molded a young elvhen devotee into a cynical and wearied keeper. Mythal the Protector demanded justice delivered with clear minds and open hearts, and these were the gifts inherent to his being which she treasured in him, the gifts Abelas had lost.

And yet it was he, above all others, to whom the Pathfinder had come. What words finally do come to him are a soft stream of uttered elvish prayers, whispered oblations lost to all the world’s memory, but his own. Those wide, intelligent eyes consider him as the elf reverentially approaches, his head bowed. This is a significant moment, more precious to him than starlight over Arlathan, than all but the grace of Mythal, of the chaste press of her lips upon his brow.

Hanal’Ghilan utters no sound at all — no soft whickers nor trumpeting cries of distress. Even as it stands before him, more resplendent in its wild simplicity than those ancient halls of burnished gold, Abelas cannot come to understand its nature. It is an ancient thing, a gift, and its presence here is mystifying to him. He yields, movements arrested. He cannot bring himself to dare lay a hand upon the creature, not even in devotion.

And yet he does not have to.

The Pathfinder steps forward, nosing into his palm. He is slow to react, the world around him lensed by water. It is only when hot tears stain the dry earth beneath his feet that he understands why. The title, he thinks, is suiting. Even in all their willful ignorance, the Dalish have not distorted this name over the long march of time. Some things, like spirits of Purpose, will always be clear. Some meanings, too.

I will endure.

He knows it with a certainty in his heart, an assurance that had eluded him, slipping through his hands like the cool waters of renewal, the waters of the Vir’abelasan. He is blinded for all his tears, and it is only when the heat of the animal, and the touch of the magics of the Beyond have faded that he knows that Hanal’Ghilan is gone.

Abelas’ vision is restored, and his eyes tell him that he is alone. But his heart, and his spirit, revived after so many years spent withered, know that he is not. There are others, elvhen who yet linger. Elvhenan is a lost and forgotten dream, a corpse whose crumbling towers sit like bleached bone against the sky — but the People remain. For the People, he will, too.

★

# swevenfox # ✮ ┅ ❛ ʷᵃⁿᵈᵉʳᵉʳ ʷⁱᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᵒʳ ᵍᵒᵈˢ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ʙᴀɴᴀʟ sᴜʟᴇᴠɪɴ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵘˡᵉᵈⁱⁿ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ sᴇᴇɴ ᴀɴᴇᴡ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵗʰʳᵒᵘᵍʰ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵉᵃᵛᵉ { ᴏʙʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴs }

swevenfox

Hello again! :D | So next scenario; thoughts and reaction on the first human cruelty over elves (including him) the first time meeting close up the reality of the place of the today elves and see the "respect" they get. It can be bandits or nobles wanting to have fun on a violent way. One thing to defend the temple against intruders - another to see this and experience first hand what the today elves have to endure and face sometimes even daily base. I suspect it can be a bit of a shock to him

The first time that he was called ‘knife-ear’, he did not understand. There had been no such terms, in his time. There was only the People. Now, the lands are teeming with life again, but the People are gone. Painted children bear his features, but they are not of one flesh, one spirit. The Kossith are no more — or perhaps they are, but they bore children of a different fruit — colorful, but prickly, and these Qunari shadow the lands of the north. The Durgen’len have emerged, blinking, into the light, their hammerblows on surface stone a fell and alien sound. And the humans have spread as a sickness over the corpse of Elvhenan, their blighted, greedy presence metastasizing until they were irreversibly dispersed.

{ There would never again be a land where there were not also humans. }

Abelas had…difficulties…in accepting such a world. Navigating it was a trivial thing. He spoke the common tongue with fluency, and it did not take much to grasp the zeitgeist and minutiae of the time. But it was never wholly real to him, not truly, and the surreal sensation was only heightened, like a lurid fever dream, when he witnessed the insidious violence which he had once known so intimately.

All it took was a roughspun traveler’s cloak, clasped simply at the front, the weave knotted by shaking hands upon the loom from whence it had been born. It was an innocuous thing, and it aided in his travels. His sentinel’s armor caught hungry, too-curious eyes.

He ventured nearer, now and then, to linger like a cautious wolf, his eyes hunted but his spirit weary, to the outskirts of human habitation. He grew bold but never incautious, and in time, he was granted passage to the very hearts of the greatest human cities — but one more elf amongst a tide of faces that were - and were not - like his own.

Abelas could not say why he had come to look upon the great towers of human industry. Perhaps it was open curiosity, wondering at the stunted architecture that was so unlike the gem that Arlathan had been. Perhaps he was sick at heart of finding naught but ruins and dust, and sought life even in the empires of fumbling, ignorant shemlen. For there was life here; Abelas could not deny it. Tremendous, teeming life — the likes of which he had not walked amongst for true millennia. It was both overwhelming and familiar, and it reminded him of an elvhen boy with sandal-clad feet, vallaslin fresh on his face, as he navigated the slave and servant pathways of the Elvhen capital, seeking to please the ranks of Mythal’s priesthood with his efficiency and devotion.

…It was like Arlathan, he came to realize. Not in its layout but in the callousness of its people. The time of the Elvhen lords had passed into memory — but what remained of their race fared as such a caste always had: trod into dirt because they had been born lesser.

Insidious violence. Structural violence. The knowledge that even a human laid low by his own society might turn upon an elf with an unjust blow — and the systems of law did not mete out blind justice, for they were blind to it all.

It was but an elven kitchen boy, a slip of a lad who faced the master’s wrath for some slight, real or imagined. It mattered little. No one would protest the beating of an elven boy in the public street — most would call him lucky, to be allowed proper food and rest, earning his keep - pittance though it was - instead of languishing in the Alienage like all the rest of his kith and kin.

The abuse of elves ran deep — old hatreds not fully understood, rumors spread with malignant eye - or unfortunate ignorance - and years upon years of poisonous thought — of the belief that elves were not this young new Maker’s chosen people — and that only in His Light might they be guided.

Abelas well knew what it was to bear the slave’s brand; to live a life as One Who Serves, unworthy even of a name. Only titles. Vallasvhen. Sulevin. Abelas. He never questioned his lot nor bemoaned his fate. He threw himself into his duties with a vigor matched by only few — and they had gone where not even Falon’Din might follow.

Never had he questioned the natural order: slaves were to be slaves, and society was all the better for it. But they had all been one People then, and this human’s spitting vitriol he could not abide.

He surged forward, but heavy hands clasped down upon his shoulders. City guards, who saw justice in the red welts that burst like bloody poppies upon the boy’s dappled flesh.

They thought him some interloper elf, and it was not for fear of their swords which stayed his hand. Abelas eased, slowly, reluctantly, goldenrod eyes never once leaving the sight of the whimpering boy, raw and humiliated in this crowded and sunny square. He might strike down these guards. He might lay low that master. And yet how many more would come to take their place? Would blame elves for inciting trouble in the streets? Abelas was no revolutionary, to risk such a thing. Saving this boy would condemn too many others, and he broke from the heavy steel hold of the guard’s cautionary grasp, fleeing, like a shadow, the way he had come.

He knew that Elvhenan’s time had long ago been laid to rest. He had not known that the People fared no better.

★

# swevenfox # ✮ ┅ ❛ ʷᵃⁿᵈᵉʳᵉʳ ʷⁱᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᵒʳ ᵍᵒᵈˢ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ʙᴀɴᴀʟ sᴜʟᴇᴠɪɴ } # abelas # gOD THIS IS WRETCHEd # violence cw # racism cw # [idk just to be safe?] # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ }

swevenfox:

Her hair was like burnished copper, streaked with flaming shafts of radiance cast by the dying sun, bleeding red on the horizon. The splotch of freckles thrown across her dewy skin was filtered rubicund in this light, eerily reminiscent of splattered plasma thrown across the ridge of her nose, her cheeks. There were colorful feathers in her hair, woven into the straight waterfall of red, and these, too, (even polychromatic as they were) had caught the light and sparked crimson.
He did not even need to utter a command to his sentinels — those few that remained had already splayed out, moving wraithlike through the long shadows cast by the charred remains of the Dalish aravels. He knew already what they would find — or what they wouldn’t.
Abelas might have glanced down at the artifact taken into his care — an ancient elvhen device, older than himself. Older, perhaps, than Arlathan itself, but not even he could not ascertain all its secrets, not even from this artifact with which he had once been so familiar.
{ perhaps it was no wonder he had been led
here, to the ruin of the People, to this girl— }
—But he did not need to look. The artifact had brought him to this place, and the girl would lead him in turn. He knew that she was the last of the People that lingered here, in this place that had once been full of life. It was now little more than a graveyard, and Falon’Din had long ago abandoned his charges to the Void.
Whatever could be gleaned from this smoking ruin of a camp would be information alone — the only survivor stood before him, her eyes bright and intelligent. Yet Abelas was old, and he could read in the youth that which was not advertised in words. Her eyes showed the fear that she would not admit, and he looked down at the blood on his hands. It was hours old, dried into pitch and flecked off the oxidized bronze of his gauntlets. The symbolism was already enough to twist his gut, to curl his lips into something bitter and cruel — but he did not. He was as stoic as a carved slab of veined marble, even as the metallic tinge of blood sat heavy in the air.

There was a pregnant silence between them, and the former sentinel knelt with deliberate slowness. His eyes were nearer to level with her own, and he captured her with the focused intensity of his gaze. The artifact had given him a vision of this girl, saved only by the virtue of luck - or fate - and pinned as her own mother had bled out over her. The enemy had not seen. And so she lived, even as the others had died. Abelas was not one to be moved by feelings of pity, but he did understand what it was to be alone and without a people. Without purpose.

“You’ve a destiny, da’len." He would not offer her words of comfort. Nothing he could do would censure the pain, the unjustice done her. The maddened apostate he had slain — possessed, and leading a bad of marauders — would not undo, in death, the horrors they had committed in life. There was only the assurance that they would trouble only her memories. Nothing more. "Nothing can take that destiny from you.”
In his piety - or his z e a l o t r y - he was confident that Mythal’s hand had guided him here. He knew not what role this girl might play in the unfolding story that was yet to come — but he was certain of her definite place in it. Abelas had never believed himself the foci around which all things necessarily pivoted. He had been pledged to the goddess’ service as a youth, and in it he would stay, he felt, as long as he drew breath. Even when there was no clear place for him, not in this brave new world — he would stay.
Beneath long red lashes, her eyes were large and clear. There were doubts, he was sure, that must have churned within her, but any sign of it could not be seen. To his tremendous surprise, she reached out and enfolded his hand within her own, no longer afraid. She was not beholden to sorrows, as he was. Even in the midst of all this death, she had found reason to smile — she had seen a stranger do her a kindness, and she would see it returned in time. It was not something that Abelas could fully comprehend, this elasticity of spirit. This hope that she carried, burning brightly, in her breast.

“I know.” She said. “My name is Sanaa.”
And her words were laden with the promise of change.

★

# [SCREECHES] # swevenfox # drabble # abelas dragon age # abelas dragon age drabble # abelas # this is like the shortest drabble ever i don't know if i even hit the wordcount but i don't care # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵗʳⁱᵇᵘᵗᵉ ᵇᵉᶠᵒʳᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ᵗᵃᵇᵉʳⁿᵃᶜˡᵉ { ᴏғғᴇʀɪɴɢs } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ʷᵃⁿᵈᵉʳᵉʳ ʷⁱᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᵒʳ ᵍᵒᵈˢ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ʙᴀɴᴀʟ sᴜʟᴇᴠɪɴ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ˢᵉⁿᵗⁱⁿᵉˡ ᵒᶠ ˢᵒʳʳᵒʷˢ { ᴀʙᴇʟᴀs }

swevenfox

Followed the last one - a vision of "rebirth"? It can be anything what can give him a goal/destiny. I am mostly interested how his soul to reborn once he finds a goal he can "grab" and "feel" and by it "follow". That moment when the burden of the lost years of failing at last the well finally lifts from his shoulder. He lives with reasons and he finds that reason.

Going to combine this with armythus’ prompt.

"Dalish child offers the stranger a flower."

For his limited access to the world beyond the crumbling walls he knew, Abelas had seen much. These Dalish were no surprise to him, not when they had pawed at the seams of the Arbor Wilds since the fall of their vaunted homeland. It was a word worth spitting at. Abelas had been content to let them hunt the outskirts, flitting like ghosts through the dense vegetation, the lush, fragrant jungle. They could never pierce the forest here, to its heart, to the temple that was not, and would never be, their birthright. They where not the People. They were not his People.

For true ages, he had never once wavered in his faith. His belief defined him, delineated the grey spaces of the world, parsing them into compartments, into named things that could be referred to once and filed neatly away. And with the fall of the temple — the Well — he no longer had that luxury.

{ they had welcomed him, the dalish. in his travels, it was little more than weary feet and a wearier soul that had brought him to this place. he might have sneered, for it was his vallaslin that named him kin; vallaslin they wore in pride and ignorance. and yet they had asked no questions. demanded no answers. their scouts had cast their quivers aside, singing bowstrings cut. they welcomed him without any reservation, and greeted him in a tongue that, to his surprise, he still recognized. }

The outline of the rolling knolls of the plains was visible only by grace of moonlight’s kiss, limning the fields in starlight. Abelas chose to sit by the fire, saying nothing as Dalish tales, Dalish fictions were related to the little ones. He would not mark himself an outsider by shouting out and sloughing aside the centuries’ worth of lies and corrupted realities. That was not his place, his purpose.

{ what was his purpose, he could not say— }

He lost himself, for a time, to the susurrations of the storyteller’s voice, the dipping intonation and the grain of her timbre far more than to the words that fell from her lips. He wondered where he might go — what might call to him next, and found himself lacking in insight or direction.

Perhaps something in his posture revealed his thoughts, his doubts, more than he had anticipated. The back of his cowl was tugged just gently enough to fall backwards upon his shoulders, his long, single braid lunar white under the stars. He twisted, more bemused than upset, and espied an elven child, hair tucked behind ears narrow as his, one perfect flower in their youthful fist.

And then they offered it forward, the embarrassed flush over soft, yielding flesh of their cheeks and ears cast in an amber glow, the fire’s sparks reflected in their wide, dewy eyes. They were perfect. Sexless. As Elvhen in their red hearts as they were Dalish and they saw him, knew him, claimed him as their own.

He knelt, wordless, and the stoniness of his heart was broken by one sure strike of the hammer. He smiled, at last, transforming the hard angles of his face to something that was, somehow, indescribably softer. At such an urging, the child released a peal of laughter and pinned the flower into his braid, the small hands a truly alien touch, but not an unpleasant one.

The story ended. Or perhaps their interest in old legends had waned, and the children looked to the present — to the future — for suddenly they were all about him, lightly weaving wildflowers into his hair as their elders looked on, amused to see one of their kin kneeling so patiently as the little ones chattered about him. He had named himself Suledin to them, and this they had accepted without comment.

For the first time since he had left behind his once sacred duties, he felt a weight lift from him. Age old perceptions and belief would not leave him — neither would his biases, his hurts, his fears. Such were things that only time itself could chip away — and even then, he had proven remarkably obstinate. But this was truly a moment of liberation, of connection to what he had thought lost.

They were not the last hope for Elvhenan, he knew. Not even that moment’s sense of the past overlaying the present did he ever once forget. But that was not to say they did not carry the light of Arlathan in their spirits. That was what made them Elvhen. Perhaps this one clan would be the last. Their stories were no more accurate than any other’s. But their intentions were good, and they had met him with kindness, taken him in as though he had always belonged.

He still had no purpose, no goal to which he could anchor himself for the next thousand years. But, as he lived in the moment, his face broken in a wide grin, he wondered, perhaps, if it was not so bad a thing to embrace the People of today.

★

# [I've decided.] # [His goal is to have no goal. This is his first true moment of freedom] # [because even though he was not chained] # [he was not free until now] # armythus # swevenfox # abelas # abelas dragon age # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ }

swevenfox

Shot me if you are bothered by me - but other variation of my previous speculation; Morrigan stabs him and Mythal giving him a chance before he would bleed out, How that would happen, how Abelas would feel/react getting a chance to live without "purpose" since the Well is no longer there?

Pain. White-hot. Searing. He feels it in his back; he feels it in his bones.

“Mythal sulevin,” he utters, and his words are little more than a dying whisper, a last whuff of air from emptying lungs. He lies staring, eyes wide but unseeing, and the world fades to a grey buzz. Time is nothing. Existence is nothing. Not for much longer.

{ his heart is caught in a tempest, buffeted by the winds of relief and of loss—}

He might have grieved over all that was so carelessly or deliberately destroyed, over all that would be lost in the hands of those unworthy to partake of the well, having despoiled Mythal’s sanctum sanctorum as they already did. But his thoughts were ascending, leaving him, his pain numbing—

—until She called him back from the static abyss. He could not be sure how he knew, with every fiber of his being, that it was his goddess. He could only feel it with certainty, that she was reaching out to from the Beyond, that she looked down with eyes as fierce as the dawn and found his death unsatisfactory. She would have her due, her will extended and justice done.

He came back to himself with wracking coughs and a pain blooming in his body and soul. He dared not look, but instinct, need, and bitterness gnawed at him, and so he glanced at the Well, confirming what he knew in his heart. The Well stolen, its secrets hoarded by those of unworthy blood. His mind reeled, dizzy spiritual from numbness as much as from the physical shock overtaking his body.

His entire soul resisted. The protestations of his flesh were but weak in comparison. Mythal had bade him cleave to life, and he knew not what for. He felt hollow, cold, and a chasm yawned within him like a void that he feared he could never seal. He had no purpose, now. No identity — for who he defined himself as had ever been in relation to others. He had anchored himself to his goddess, and now not even an echo of her remained.

Left for dead, and left alone. It might have been easier if he had passed beyond pain, forever. He didn’t want this — this uncertainty, this aimlessness. He was a shiftless and grieving thing, picking himself up from the graveyard that had once been one of the holiest sites of all Elvhenan. But it was Mythal’s hand that brought him back. Mythal’s hand that gripped tight his destiny…and then cut its strings. It was her final gift to her one of her devoted. He would not waste it. Not ever.

…And yet freedom meant only failure; failure to his sacred duty, to a mistress he swore to protect and yet who suffered twice over. He could not guard Her life. He could not guard Her temple. He could not guard the Vir’Abelasan.

Happiness was not a goal he ever needed. He had once had his duty, his path, his brethren, and he was content. What could freedom bring him that purpose could not? P u r p o s e. The word tasted like ashes. He quelled a flare of resentment. Nursing his wounds and ancient hurts would afford him little. He was not a child, to whine without a mother to usher him along in the right direction. But still, to see eons of service shattered after so slow and wretched a death broke a part of him in some small but fundamental way.

He could not bear to look back upon the empty well, the shattered eluvian. All things that were beautiful were anathema to this wretched world. He took grim satisfaction at knowing he would not have to endure forever. Abelas would fade, as would even the lost and crumbling ruins of Elvhenan, and then at last he could find peace.

— Until then, he would endure. His goddess demanded it.

★

# swevenfox # [this was really hard to write for some reason? not completely satisfied with it but here you go! I tried] # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵘˡᵉᵈⁱⁿ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ sᴇᴇɴ ᴀɴᴇᴡ }

swevenfox

Second speculation. Your thoughts of after the Well is "destroyed" how you would envasion Flemeth/Myhtal personal meeting with her loyal sentinel a bit later time (ignoring the cut scene of the game with Solas now). How would such situation go by?

You know what? I’m just going to make a very short drabble and combine pinkymorty’s request because I had already been thinking of this. Otherwise, I would have been describing the exact same scene!

Abelas' reaction to 'I should never have loved you.'

There was a term, in the old tongue, for what he was now. A lost and bygone soul, a forgotten and broken remnant of the ancient glory that lived on only in dreams and memory. Like all that had passed into shadow, this word, too, was lost, and the once-Sentinel of Mythal had not even the comfort of a title nor an explanation to shape his being.

He wandered this new world, a world which he scarcely recognized, and his spirits faded with each new ruin he discovered. Old Elvhenan was dead, its spires jutting like bleached bones into the sky, and the first time he saw for himself what had truly become its legacy, he wanted to weep.

He could not say what pressed him forward, what drove him through the corpse of the Empire-That-Was and beyond the hovels of the shemlen, their stunted cities belching acrid smoke in the sky. These he gave a wide berth, and found little difficulty in doing so. Not only was he some knife-ear — { the word foreign upon his tongue } but also an apostate, as though the natural order of magic were a crime to possess. He was a man out of time; this he knew, and thus his dogged determination to carry on could not be explained, not even by himself.

{ Part of him wondered if it would feel like one last failure, were he to abandon hope— }

He found himself, drawn more than s e e k i n g, to an emanation of power not unlike that which he had once served. Time was meaningless to him now, and how long he had sought this font of energy he could not even guess. What mattered only was that he had come upon it, desperate to glimpse, if he may, whether his kin cried out to him. Who could summon him hence, but an agent of Mythal herself?

The moon was high. The waxing and gravid orb sat heavy in the deep velvet crush of night, a wan and pallid cast contouring the broken courtyards in stark relief against the ruined towers of the Elvhen stronghold. Whether it had fallen to warfare or to the ravages of time, none yet living could say. It was a lost and forgotten place, and few animals tarried long beneath its shadow. No browsing mammals rooted about in the long, tangled grasses, and no birds nestled into the multitudinous skeleton of crumbling towers, sensing the power that was woven into its very stones.

{ and yet there She was, a tall figure in the overgrown courtyard, as resplendent and proud as she had ever been, even in a place that had long since been claimed by the d e a d— }

Abelas’ heart leapt to his seizing throat, his breath catching, his lungs failing — surely he had fallen into eternal darkness, and now he walked the Beyond without so much as Falon’Din to guide him — the Friend of the Dead had abandoned his charges to the Void long ago.

But the sight of Her stilled his heart, and brought clarity to his broken spirit. Time and tradition once molded a young elven devotee into a cynical and wearied keeper. Mythal the Protector demanded justice delivered with clear minds and open hearts, and these were precisely the qualities that Abelas has lost. He had strayed so far from himself, embroiled in millennia of entropy, subsumed by the slow death of Elvhenan that time itself had decreed necessary to rip from him. He had failed Mythal thrice over — when she had fallen, when he had lost himself to sorrows and bitterness, and when her final gift to the People had been taken from him.

He saw Her now, and he knew Her, even though the form was different. She turned, head swiveling towards him, and captured his gaze with her own. She radiated power - and danger - as easily as she dispensed justice, her eyes bright with forgotten magics. He came to himself again only when he was at her side, as though summoned in a trance. Whether it was her mystical power or his own disbelief, Abelas himself could not say.

M y t h a l looked at him, looked beyond his Vallaslin, ever regal and beyond the ken of Elvhen such as he. Such was the nature of those with the power to become as gods.

Something played in her eyes, twin whirlpools of molten gold. He fell to his knees, his mind blank, disbelieving, unworthy of her. That glint in her eyes sharpened into amusement, but also to something distinctly regretful.

“Abelas.” She intoned, and how she knew the name he had taken for himself after her death, he could not even guess. She was…different. It was as though he was looking at the Protector’s reflection in a clear, deep pool, and reached one hand to disturb the water’s surface. Whatever, whomever She was, he knew this was the ripple of that reflection. This was, in some way, truly Mythal.

Words were beyond him. Thought was beyond him. He felt only pain, a great, stabbing pain, clutch his heart. Tears spilled from his eyes like diamonds, until her level stare stood even with him. That Mythal should crouch for elvhen’alas, for one promised to her service — was madness to him.

“You are a lost one, Abelas.” Her even gaze penetrated his withered soul, seeing in him everything that he could not bear to face himself. “You have served for so long I do not think you know how to be anything else.” Cutting words, but not said unkindly. It was an expression of the truth of his being, plucked from his mind as easily as the strings of a lyre. The gravity of her interest in him was immense, a dark wave of emotion and disbelief washing over him.

She sensed that too, of course, and she threw back her head and laughed, lunar hair white as the moon. Her mirth was hollow. Mythal cupped his cheek, as one would their beloved and dying dog. “I should never have loved you.” She said, and the contrition was real. It was no genuine affection, he knew. It was not of Abelas she spoke, not entirely, but of the dreams she had. He once helped fight for those dreams, for a shining empire, a Golden City, an ordered world without the petty infighting and squabbles of vain beings that thought themselves deities. She loved these things and more, and Mythal had lost all that she had sought to protect.

Mythal rose to her feet with deliberate slowness, and she comported herself with all of the dignity and grace he remembered. She pulled back his cowl, eyes sad and sharp all at once —- and leaned in to kiss his brow. “I release you, Abelas. Find a new name, a new purpose, one of your making that is your own path to tread. Until such a day, you are Suledin, and I hope you walk in light. Ar lasa mala revas. Dareth Shiral. We shall not meet again."

And like that, she was gone, leaving Suledin in the courtyard alone, wondering, hopeful. It might have been a dream…
but for the memory of cool lips upon his brow.

★

# pinkymorty # swevenfox # [this got long] # abelas dragon age # abelas # flemeth # mythal # inquisition spoilers # da:i spoilers # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵖᵘʳᵖᵒˢᵉ ᶠᵒʳ ˢᵘˡᵉᵈⁱⁿ { ᴠᴇʀsᴇ ¦ ᴀ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ sᴇᴇɴ ᴀɴᴇᴡ } # ✮ ┅ ❛ ᵃ ᵍⁱᶠᵗ ᵒᶠ ʷᵒʳᵈˢ { ᴅʀᴀʙʙʟᴇ }