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Hanal’ghilan, the golden halla, is said to visit the Dalish in times of great need.
Amarië and Dorian had not expected this fight.
They had done well. Two of the four attackers lay on the ground, leaving one apiece remaining, but Amarië had only the dagger from her belt and her draining stamina left to her as the spear came at her again and again, unrelenting. Dorian was better off, channeling the full arsenal of his abilities through his staff as he battled behind her, cursing with every other tired breath as he worked to flush out the archer who taunted them with heavy bolts. Amarië was on her own. She dodged another thrust of the spear, rolling aside, searching for an opening to slip through, to close the distance and strike. She was fast but he was skilled, his thrusts powerful, and she was slowly losing ground.
She needed that opening. She gripped her dagger tightly in her blood-and-sweat-soaked hand, uncomfortable with the small blade. With a sword she could counter the spear, knock it aside and leap in, but she would need much more precision and force to do the same with a dagger. His stance shifted, thrusting directly at her, and she had her opening. She lunged, swinging hard to deflect the bladed tip when she stumbled, knocked breathless and off-balance by a bolt that drove deep into her upper back. The spear, unhindered, plunged through her belly, through muscle and bone and lung and punched through the leather on her back.
Her own momentum and the clear path the spear now had through her body brought her killer staggering toward her, close enough to kiss. His teeth were bared with effort, face smeared with dirt and blood, eyes blind to his victory, survival his only focus. She coughed, blood spraying his face. He jerked back and she drove her blade through his now-exposed neck, tearing through jugular and tendon and artery.
“Amarië!” Dorian screamed as she fell. Even at this distance she could feel the inferno that ended the life of the archer. We did it. She hit the ground, the immense pressure inside her body making it impossible to breathe, impossible to think. “Kaffas! No!” He was still so far away and there was so much blood. Was it even her own? Terror crept through the haze in her mind as she grasped weakly at the spear still impaled in her torso, jutting into the air like a victory flag. She shook violently, unable to even close her fingers around it. Horrible sucking noises gasped from her throat as she struggled for breath, struggled for strength, struggled to fight back the screaming in her head.
She was going to die.
Please!
The sun disappeared behind the wide brim of a hat and she stared up into the face of Compassion.
“Cole,” she wheezed. It had been years since he had returned to the fade. Of course he would return in this moment, called back through the veil by the desperate need of his friend. His hand slipped into hers, filling her with the spirit of warmth and comfort and compassion and release.
“You are still bright,” Cole’s quiet words wove through the encroaching darkness. “It was not the anchor, it was you. The birds flocked to you, lost in your brilliance, but you are fading. I am sorry.” His hands moved to her face, painting it with her own blood and passing over her eyes to close her lids as he whispered her own thoughts to her. “'I can’t leave him alone'. I can help.”
When she opened her eyes again it was in the fade.
She stood amidst trees that smelled of the home she had left behind and the hint of ruins that felt like the home she had always longed for. She touched her unopened belly with two hands, filling her lungs effortlessly, chasing away the fog in her mind. Here she was whole and unbroken, and when she looked up he was before her.
“Oh, Solas,” she breathed. The tears that would not find their way out in the waking world spilled over in the fade. She cursed them for blurring her vision as she drank in his presence.
He stood before her, hesitant, concern flooding his features as he realized where he was. “Amarië? How- what has happened?”
“Ir abelas, vhenan.” She fell to her knees, overcome with the confession, with what it meant and what it would do to him. “I am dying.”
He pulled back sharply. “Tell me where you are. I can find you. I can-“
“She is fleeting, failing. You will not reach her,” Cole spoke from behind her. “No one can reach her where she is now.”
He stared at the spirit, eyes wide with horror. “No,” he whispered.
Amarië reached for her lover, taking his hands in hers. “Don’t go,” she couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. “Please, don’t leave me.”
“'Not again',” Cole said.
Solas dropped to his knees, taking her face in his shaking hands and searching it, eyes stricken with panic. “No,” desperation strained his voice. “No, no, not now. Not like this.”
Amarië pushed herself into his embrace, pressing her forehead to his, breathing him in. Even here he smelled just as she remembered, of fur and soft leather and autumn leaves. “I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured as he pulled her close. “Just stay with me.”
“Always,” he managed. A choking sound shattered his frame as he pressed his cheek to hers, clinging to her warmth.
She took another deep, shuddering breath. She had to tell him. Before it was too late. “’Ma lath. They need your help.”
He pulled away, looking into her eyes, despair etched deep into his features. “They? The elves?”
Her smile was sad but tender. She reached up, running her fingers over his cheekbones, down his lips, relishing the feel of him. “The elves,” she agreed, “and the dwarves, and the humans, and the qunari.” Her lips met his, kissing away any protest that would have escaped them. “There is oppression and war and blight, my love, but they are people and they need to be protected.”
“Amarië…”
She kissed him again. “I know. You don’t need to promise, just remember. Remember that they are people.”
He stared at her forever, his fingers running through her hair, down her cheek, entwining with her own. Her eyes never left his, patient and understanding and resolute. “I will remember,” he whispered, and she smiled. She pulled him close and the forest that surrounded them began to darken, the edges blurring.
“Please don’t go,” Solas pleaded, voice breaking. His grip on her tightened, as if he could anchor her to life if he held tightly enough.
“Ir abelas,” she whispered again, pressing herself into him. “I never wanted to leave you alone.”
“Vhenan!”
Her lips met his, tender and trembling, filled with a lifetime of unspoken words and unlived memories. “You will be alright. Var uth’lath mala suledin,” she whispered. “Ar lath ma, vhenan.”
He held her, clinging to the last moments of her life until his arms crushed against his own chest as she faded into nothing. He pitched forward, bent over and face twisted with grief as he shook with silent, violent sobs. The tears on his face burst and shattering like diamonds as they fell, as they could only in the fade.
How long he remained this way, hands clutched to his chest, he could not say. After a time Cole knelt beside him. “The fade remembers her,” he murmured.
When Solas lifted his eyes it was to the same forest, whole and bright and no longer fading. A halla stood before him, golden and glittering in the dappled sunlight, her antlers spiraling tall and proud and sharp. She looked at him, peaceful and unafraid, flicking an ear and bending her head to taste the flowers at her feet.
“Hanal’ghilan. Of course.” Of course Amarië would shape the fade so strongly, and of course this is the form she would be given. She was there for her people in their time of need. For all people.
Cole spoke again, Amarië’s cadence guiding his words. “'I am not a hunter. A hunter seeks and stalks her prey. I wear my horns on my head, as the halla.'” The memory of her voice whispered through the trees that surrounded them. “'A sword is bold, brave, unabashed and unhidden. I wear my weapon for the world to see- as a warning to my enemies that if they choose to threaten, I will engage. And, like the halla, I use my horns not to hunt, but to protect.'"
Cole stood and the halla leapt into the air, melting into the form of a golden wolf as it touched back to the ground, eyes locked on them, as cautious as any wild animal in the forest.
"'Until that is not enough. Then I will show my teeth and fight for those I love.'” The wolf turned, melting into the shadows of the trees. Cole turned to Solas. “Pride is always with her."
The fade dissolved and Solas opened his eyes. Nothing had changed from the moment he had been pulled into the fade, but he now opened his eyes to a world which was irrevocably altered. It was suddenly a world in which his love no longer drew breath.
Remember, she had said. His fists slowly unclenched as he focused on the waking existence around him. The ground at his feet, the fabric that rustled against his skin, the air that filled his lungs. He turned, the eluvian behind him bursting to life with a gesture, and he stepped through it without a backward glance.