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The Dread Wolf has a soft heart.
It does him credit, they know. In kinder times, it is a boon; a blessing.
But.
These are not kind times.
They wake from their sleeping places behind the eluvians to a world severed in half. They wake to torture and ruin, to rat-like creatures that write vallaslin on their faces, to the soulless Children of the Stone, and the strange, round-eared ‘humans’, and horned beast men, shemlen all, filling out the corners of their once-glorious empire. Thriving like unwelcome weeds that have sprouted in the hollow space created by the Veil. Like an infection in a clumsy wound.
It had to be done, to seal off the evanuris before they could unleash even fouler things upon the world.
But now that it is done, it must be undone, if they are to have any hope of restoration.
Soft hearts are a liability, if they yield to pleading eyes. The Dread Wolf has become entangled with one of the pointy-eared vermin, and mistakes her for a Person. She breeds hesitancy in him.
They are not pitiless, of course. He woke from a long sleep to a baffling world and precious little company. In another life, it would be a simple matter to allow him his pet, and his strange indulgences towards her. But it is one thing to forgive a few quirks and odd attachments, and it is another to let their leader risk their cause for the sake of some short-lived animal, only half real, with an existence that seems scarcely worth enduring.
Even if she were a Person, as Fen’Harel claims, it would be a mercy to end it for her.
It takes a surprising amount of effort to secure the creature. She is often surrounded by others, and trades locations swiftly, journeying to stranger and stranger parts of the broken world. And some of the other shemlen, the vermin-people pledged to Fen'Harel's noble quest, have even been assigned to watch her. Resources they could use elsewhere, wasted on this needless effort. She is a small, crippled being, no longer even claiming the title of ‘Inquisitor’ among her own kind. There is no reason to endure her continued interference when the solution to the matter might be much simpler.
But it would not do to let Fen’Harel catch on to their intentions before the deed is done. Afterwards, he will forgive them. The great revolutionary who overthrew the evanuris understands necessity. But before, he may try to stop them; it would create strife, and could render their efforts futile.
They finally catch their prey in Tevinter. A good tip pays off, and they pluck her from the streets, not far from the abode of her magister ally. The bare-faced shemlen who are with her almost thwart the effort, but in the end, they manage to disappear, target in hand.
They will learn what she knows of their plans, and what she has shared with her allies, and then dispose of her. Humanely, for the sake of Fen’Harel. There is no need to be cruel, they think; and then the creature breaks free of her bonds, and manages to badly wound one of them in a failed attempt at escape.
This nightmare world offers only primitive healing solutions. Even the magic is a dim, dull thing, and it will take weeks for the injury to heal.
Cornered animals can be vicious, they know, but every blow that one of the People must suffer in this trial of existence burns. It is a stark reminder of how tenuous their position truly is, of how low their supposed descendants have fallen, that one would even dare lash out at a True Elf. That this pale mimicry cannot even recognize how unforgivable her assault on one of them is.
The sooner these creatures are brought to heel, the better.
This one that has Fen’Harel’s inexplicable favour is stubborn, on top of being violent. She gives them nothing, not even when the inevitability of her fate is pressed upon her; not even when they attempt to invoke whatever primitive sense of duty might bind her to the People. She stares, stone-faced and silent. She spits blood when they finally give up on politeness, and result to more vulgar forms of coercion.
They do not enjoy causing her pain.
Well, perhaps the retribution feels fitting. But it would be better to have an unmarked corpse to offer the Dread Wolf, to mitigate his anger as much as possible.
They try spells that will not bruise, instead, but the magic is so strange here. Crackling wounds break her skin, and she curses and thrashes, injures herself on her own bindings. It becomes apparent that neatness will not be an option. Better, then, to do what they must, and burn the remains. It will seem more suspicious, but that’s what some of these shemlen do, is it not? They burn their dead.
It could be made to seem like respect.
None of them think to worry about Abelas. He is one of them, and no more enamored of this world than any sane being would be. He had not been included in the initial plans only because he was too busy, but when he returns, and finds them at their task, they only explain it to him. Why should they have expected him to feel strangely about the matter? As one more devoted to Mythal than to his own freedom, he owes the Dread Wolf’s whims even less consideration than the rest of them do.
Yet, shortly after Abelas arrives, he disappears again; and their valuable, dangerous prisoner goes with him.
They brace themselves, entertaining some faint hope that Abelas has chosen to exact personal revenge on the creature for the defilement of Mythal’s temple. They had not obtained the information they wanted yet, but if he has taken her for that reason, then the situation is still salvageable. Perhaps even better, if it might mean that Fen'Harel never discovers their involvement in the matter at all.
Alas, it is not to be.
In yet another inexplicable display of soft-heartedness towards this particular shemlen, Abelas returns her to her allies. She lingers for several days before succumbing to her wounds. The rumours say that she dies in her sleep.
Fen’Harel’s reaction is… subdued.
At first.
He asks them all questions. Quiet, thoughtful questions, about the shemlen, about following orders, about concocting plans and missions behind his back. All concerns they expected to be confronted with, and they tread carefully, knowing of his sensitivities. They are loyal to him and loyal to his cause, in the end, and only have his best interests at heart. They know the creature had compromised him, made his decision difficult. Perhaps it was misguided to think of removing her from the situation, they concede. Certainly, they never meant to injure her so gravely; these shemlen are so fragile, and the magic here is so strange, that they erred.
They are sorry, for that. When the world is restored, they will be kinder to these creatures. They will make a place for them, give them shelter, food, tasks to perform. Put them to use. Give purpose to their short, pitiful lives before they eventually die off. Perhaps they may even be part of Elvhenan’s restoration, and serve something greater than themselves.
They do not deserve cruelty, it is true. It is hardly their fault that they are not People; that they are only eerie imitations of such. But they cannot take priority over the restoration of those who are People. One does not reach into the fire to rescue kittens while there are still babes that might burn.
Fen’Harel listens, and he seems calm.
He retreats for a time, in contemplation, and they entertain the tentative hope that he has seen reason. That this incident has reminded him of what is truly important.
The People.
But when he re-emerges from his isolation, the smile he wears does not reach his eyes.
“You have done what I did not think possible,” he informs them. “What wisdom could not convince me to see, and what even love could not reveal, you have miraculously made clear.”
The notes of his voice ring hollow and strange.
It is a peculiar start to his speech, and it fills them with unease. Some of them remember what he was like, when Mythal was killed. How hot the fire of his outrage burned, how reckless grief made him. This is not the same. This is quiet, and so they think, with brittle optimism, that it is lesser. It is calmer, and so it seems that the wound must not be as deep.
Which only makes sense. She was just a shemlen. She would have died soon enough on her own.
“I will not tear down another world just to replace it with more of the same suffering. Not again,” the Dread Wolf declares.
They glance at one another, uncertain. Obviously not? They will bring down the Veil to restore things to their rightful state. That has always been their goal; not further diminishment.
“You would have power, and you would abuse it as surely as those we once rebelled against did,” he condemns, and his voice cracks like thunder. His eyes flash. “While this world has grown and changed and suffered, we have slept. And like spoiled evanuris, we wake, and think that we have been robbed of what is rightfully ours. We think it is only just that we reclaim it, that we take it from those who have endured all the ruination and suffering of the long years that have passed, despite the odds stacked against them. You disdain those who have done what should have been impossible, and survived this disaster. Those who stood against the tide. Because their struggle has weakened them, while we have only slept; waking to complain about the mess left behind. We salted the earth, and now you mock the plants that still managed to grow for being less beautiful than the blossoms cultivated in fertile soil."
Those who once saw Elgar’nan, who once saw Mythal at her most wrathful, feel a deep and old fear spark in the backs of their minds. Fen’Harel had never been like the rest, but that was before. Now he is power incarnate. Now his eyes contain storms, and the air around him burns.
Vengeance, they remember. Vengeance tastes like this, when it breaks forth. Mythal’s soul sits in Fen’Harel’s breast. Next to a broken heart.
They have erred.
Grievously.
No one dares break the moment of silence, and all of them wonder if they have just taken their lives into their own hands.
“I should thank you, for finally making me see my error before I actually made it. No one else could have illustrated it so irrefutably,” Fen'Harel finally pronounces, cold and disdainful. “I will ensure that the People – all of the People – find a way to continue to survive in this world. Even you. It is my fault as much as yours that it has come to this, in the end.”
In this world?
In… this world?
“You cannot mean…?” someone murmurs.
Surely not? Fen’Harel finds this existence as intolerable as the rest of them. And with the shemlen female gone, he should have even less motivation to preserve it. He cannot possibly be abandoning their mission now, they tell themselves. It must be some mistake. There would be absolutely nothing for him to gain from it.
“She would have died anyway, Fen’Harel,” one of them points out. Sensibly, the rest of them think.
The Dread Wolf turns away from them.
“And so shall you, when your allotted time is up,” he says. “So shall we all. I believe you will find the years much more precious now that they are numbered.”
Then he is gone. A flash of light through an eluvian that cracks and goes dark behind him.
Panicked disbelief follows in his wake.
It scarcely seems real. Fen’Harel has abandoned them. Accusations fly, fury and fear rife through the air, arguments over the wisdom of ever taking the shemlen to begin with, of interfering in their leader's personal matters, of defying orders. Some hope that it is only a display; that the Dread Wolf means to teach them some lesson in humility or obedience through threats and fear. How could he leave this broken world to continue its decay? Over a shemlen?
His fury must cool, eventually.
…Mustn’t it?
She was not one of the People, in the end.
Not at all like the rest of them.