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Long ago, da’len, when the world was younger than it is now, the Dread Wolf had the great and terrible fortune to fall in love.
The name her kin gave her is long forgotten, for those who knew it have long since gone to sleep. The world yet awaited an end to the chaos of the Fall, and she was one of the shemlen elves, born with the features of our kind but denied her true birthright, suffering in ignorance. By chance she came upon the Magister Corypheus as he worked his terrible magic, thinking to use the Dread Wolf’s stolen power for his own fell purpose. Caught between the villain and his sacrifice, she instead received the gift he had meant for himself, thwarting his best-laid plans and forcing him to look elsewhere for the strength to take it back and destroy what remained of the world. Seeing then no way to take the magic from her without taking her life, the Dread Wolf disguised his intent to restore what had been lost, and joined her in her quest to stop Corypheus.
As he fought beside her in the following year, he came to see her worth and quality, and even to admire her, for she was a woman of great courage, compassion, and curiosity. He resisted, but he had long been alone, and yearned for companionship, and so it was that he laid down his cares for a little while, pretending that their time would not have to end. She made him happy, but that happiness led his heart to stray from his great purpose, and though he loved her, and though it broke his heart, he turned away from her, and left her side as soon as the evil one had been defeated.
In time she learned the truth, that the man she loved was the being she most dreaded, and meant to overturn the world and restore what once was. Having saved the world once, she would defend it fiercely from him, even unto death, but for all the pain and lies she loved him still, and could not bear to think of him alone and suffering. She told him such when he came to her at last, powerful enough now to reclaim his magic from her with only the cost of her arm, but he would not listen to her pleas, and left her once more at great cost to his heart. Naming herself Keeper of all Thedas, she vowed she would protect the world from the Dread Wolf, but in her heart she hoped to save him from himself.
With great persistence and luck, she found him again on the eve of a great battle, consumed with thought and sorrow, and little was he pleased to see her.
“When last we spoke, I was too surprised to marshal my thoughts. There are things I must ask, and things I must say,” she insisted when he protested, “and so I demand parley, as one leader to another.” This he could not rightly refuse, and at the core of his heart he had yearned to hear her voice once more. The seat he offered her went refused, and she regarded him a moment before she spoke.
“Do you remember the vallaslin I bore?”
“You had sworn yourself to Mythal,” he answered, for he had memorized her face, marked and bare, long before he ever touched her.
“I had. And though you lifted them from my face, and though I did not drink from the Well of Sorrows and am yet unbound to her, I cannot forget the lessons I learned from the legends, or the reasons I chose her when my Keeper thought me better-suited to others.”
There was something in her voice he had never heard before, a conviction that brought to mind an old friend--one he had killed for the power to restore the world. Mythal was in her words and in his mind that night, whether in truth or in intent it cannot be known. “And what are those?”
She did not answer, but looked at him intently, a sadness beyond her years in her eyes. “To whom are you accountable, Solas?” For this was his first name, and the name by which she had known him. “When you have seen this thing through, is there any being you respect, anyone to whom you would listen when they told you that you had done enough?” He started to answer, but she held up a hand, and he could not but heed her. “I would say more. Who is to grant the absolution you seek?”
“Vhenan--”
“I let my heart curb my purpose when last we met. I will not do it again.” When she spoke now her tone was fierce, her words set loose with pointed intent like so many arrows. “Who will tell them? Who is to tell them that Elvhenan was an empire built on the backs of slaves, beholden to magisters more terrible than any that ever ruled over them in Tevinter? Or are they, like me, to be lied to only by omission? Will they know their world was bought with the lives of my people and countless others?
“I ask you, Solas, pride, not to sway you but because I want to know if the man loved, the man I thought I knew, can see that he is making a terrible mistake, that he is blinded to what could be by some desperate wish for the past. What if this goes as badly as the last time you saved the People? What if the waking world and the Beyond have grown too far apart? What right have you to judge this world and find it wanting, when we have suffered for your pride, when we are the children of your mistakes? We have fought bitterly for what little we have, and you would take it? Can you erase a world from time as easily as you erased my vallaslin? As easily as you erased me from your heart?” He backed away to counter the steps she had taken forward.
“I left, vhenan,” and the sorrow in his voice was great, almost greater than she could bear, but she steeled her heart. “But I could never forget you. I could not let you--”
“Do not flatter yourself into thinking you left for my sake. I cannot know that that was not part of it, but you left because I had become too real. Real enough to be worthy of loving, and if I was real, then my people might be real, then humans and dwarves and qunari might be real, and you could not bear it any longer. You left because you knew I would see, and you knew you might listen.” She softened, her voice breaking, leaning closer. “Is there nothing in this world worth saving?”
He turned away. “I must set right that which I tore asunder.”
She came to her full height, and looked upon him, stone again in the face of his suffering, that she might yet save him. If Mythal was there, it was now she spoke.
“There are things for which there can be no apology, mistakes for which the consequences are permanent. Every child learns this. Do you forget Mythal so easily? She stood for justice, and justice is what I shall have of you. If I cannot dissuade you from this path, if I cannot save you from yourself, then I claim the right to judge you. It was you who named me vhenan, the dwelling-place of your heart, and so by blood-right it is mine. Whatever magic is required, whatever I must become, I will wait. I will wait until time is ended; I will wait until all worlds fall into shadow; I will wait until I have forgotten my name, my form, all but my purpose, and when your soul comes to the Beyond to seek the Hereafter, I will be there, and I will weigh your deeds and your heart, and then I will be the judge of you as you have made yourself the judge of my world.
“If I cannot save you, then I will judge you. If I cannot convince you of your folly, I will make of myself a lingering reminder that you, too, will one day face a reckoning. You, too, will face recompense. I will bind myself to the promise of your punishment as you yourself have, and you will know that no matter how many you free, no matter how much you restore, you have killed as many, destroyed as much, and enslaved the bright spirit which you once loved.” Her voice broke, thickened, and her eyes threatened hot tears, for she knew how her words would pain him, but she straightened her spine. “This is my vow. For I am this world’s Keeper, and I will protect it from the Dread Wolf, though it is him I love, and him I wish most to protect.”
[Choice Wheel: Reject Lavellan. She will die protecting the world when you erase it, but the Arlathan will be restored.]
He could bear no more, and sent her from his side by magic. In time she became one of the Lost Ones, the elves whose lives ended for the sake of our world’s return, the blood-sacrifice necessary to restore what was right, who would not turn from their world as it burned. Their deaths were righteous, if misguided, and we honor their deeds.
She did as she had promised, though, and upon her death the field of battle was for an instant washed with blinding green light. Her body was never found, consumed in the energy it had taken to deliver her not to the Beyond, but to some other place between or outside, beyond our knowing.
So it is that she waits for his coming, name forgotten, form abandoned, nothing left but the certainty that one day her lover will return to her, and she will be his judge, and finally she will set down the burden the Dread Wolf laid upon her when he gave her his heart. Of all those who came before the Fall, of all those born in the Darkness, and of all those Restored, it is she who has suffered most at the Dread Wolf’s hands, and though he will not speak her name, it is said he loves her still, the woman who might have saved him and doomed us all.
[Choice Wheel: Agree with Lavellan. You will not restore Arlathan, instead choosing to seek forgiveness from the living Elves and work to reclaim what was lost to them by your hands, without the destruction of the current world. Whether or not you will succeed is uncertain.]
In this moment the veil of pride drew back from his eyes, and his heart softened, and he knew in his heavy soul that she was right. The love and respect he bore her her, far from being the downfall he had feared, were ever his salvation, and he knelt before her, head bowed and shoulders slumped. “I cannot simply leave the path I have walked for so long,” he said desperately. “I must atone. I must put right what I have done.”
Her voice was tender, her eyes gentle upon him. “Then atone. Free those enslaved. Enlighten those ignorant. Help me build this world into something better than was given us, and trust that those that come after will do the same. You have lived for so long without hope, vhenan. We will find another way.”
“You would have me?”
She smiled. “I would have no other.” Softly, softly, she laid her hand on the side of his head as if in benediction. When then she knelt beside him, drawing him to her grace and light, it is likely he wept for what he had done, and what he had nearly done; none but they can know.
So it is we call her Tual’sal’an or Asha’shalal, she who revives, she who saves, protects, redeems. We know the Dread Wolf as the great and terrible liberator of the People, but it was she who freed him to save us, as he had once freed her from the shadow of ancient slavery written upon her face. He grieved still, and long would, for what had been lost, but learned that he did not grieve alone, and learned to see value in what had taken its place, and to seek comfort from the love he had never hoped to find. It was the gift of her bright heart, unlooked-for and freely given, which set him on the path to his own redemption, and together they laid the foundation for the Restoration which was to come.