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“You all know what this is,” Lavellan says, holding up the book. This is how it all began, and how it’s going to end: “A writ from Divine Justinia authorizing the formation of the Inquisition. We pledged to close the Breach, find those responsible, and restore order. With or without anyone’s approval.”
Her jaw clenches, gaze darting from Cyril to Teagan. “It wasn’t a formally authorized treaty that saved Ferelden’s people. It wasn’t careful diplomacy that ended your civil war. It was never about the organization. It was about people doing what was necessary. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a world to save. Again.”
Lavellan drops the book, the loud thud of it interrupting the rush of blood in her ears.
“Effective immediately, the Inquisition is disbanded,” she says, turns around, and walks away.
*
It is the right choice. It has to be. Arl Teagan is right — she could hardly sit on the border between Ferelden and Orlais with an army forever. She could have sworn it to the Divine — Leliana — but their ranks are already compromised. Who is to say what would happen, what the Inquisition would become, to what end it would be used, if something happened to her, or to Leliana? To begin with, the title of ‘Inquisitor’ felt off, like an ill-fitting costume that pinched in all the wrong places; even after learning the truth of the first Inquisitor. She does not trust the Chantry, nor the damned nobles of Orlais; she is tired of their games; their numbers had grown too big; and Solas knows the Inquisition too well.
*
In the carriage back to Skyhold, to wrap up their affairs, Lavellan sits silently, watching the scenery. Occasionally, she tries to lift her left arm, only to remember it is gone. She hears the soldiers talking outside. She won’t be able to fight the way she used to. Here begins her tally of grievances.
“Are you alright?” Cullen asks softly, after a while. Lavellan inhales, remembering where she is, and glances at him. A day since their spontaneous wedding, it feels like an age has passed. “I guess that’s a stupid question,” he adds. Her mouth twitches into an almost-smile.
“I will be,” she says, taking his hand into her remaining hand. He squeezes it and holds tight. An anchor — the kind that doesn’t hurt and try to tear you apart.
*
She keeps it together until they reach their destination. She’s had plenty of time to learn the art of it, after all. Asking to be left alone until the morning, she walks to her room.
Once inside, she steps out to one of the balconies, and looks out over the snowy mountains. The white expanse that nearly killed her, years ago.
It hits her then, all at once: a homesickness so profound, it turns and twists her stomach. It takes several deep breaths to keep herself from emptying her insides, and she lowers herself to the ground, pressing her back to the railing. The sting of cold air is, for once, welcome.
Maybe homesickness is the wrong word. A grief that is hard to name.
Lavellan lifts her hand to her shoulder, where the phantom weight of another limb remains. The memory of the mark trying to tear her apart. The flash of Solas’ eyes. Fen’Harel. May the dread wolf never hear your footsteps. What meaning did any of it have now? “Mythal, All-Mother, great protector, be my guide,” she prays. It leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
“Ma halani, Mythal,” she says, listening for the Well of Sorrows, “ame banal.” Help me, I am empty. There is no answer but a few hushed whispers. A quiet laugh escapes her, then, throat burning with tears. The air is cold and bites her skin. She covers her eyes with her palm.
Back when she was another woman — before this cold mountain, the hole in the sky — she was a hunter. Every dawn before the hunt, she offered prayers to Andruil and Mythal. Andruil, aim me true. Mythal, preserve us. Her vallaslin given in honor of Mythal. They are slave-markings, the murals said, used to bind them to the gods who were mages. We are the walkers of the lonely path, and never again shall we submit. Lavellan, bound to Mythal through the Well of Sorrows, touches her fingers to her forehead. Time folds in on itself.
You are certain, da’len?
Yes. I just know it’s right.
Mythal, then. May she protect and guide you.
She had stayed quiet until her vallaslin was complete, held onto the memory of the sea in her mind, the rush of waves against the shore.
None of it makes sense. She feels torn open: a bunch of pieces that don’t fit together anymore. If she went back home, found her Keeper, she could not talk about any of it. None of them had seen what she saw. There is an unnamable ache in her chest, and a fury that burns, all of it with no direction. Sorrow, indeed, to find your gods and lose them.
*
“You are sad,” Cole says. Standing on the battlements, Lavellan doesn’t startle, too used by now to his comings and goings. “Lost, confused, what does it all mean? They were true, but they weren’t. Are but are not. Why are we always chained? Humans, magisters, our own. What am I missing? He called me lethallan; he lied to me; how dare he think our lives mean less? — You are so angry, because you’re hurt. You miss home but can’t go back.”
Lavellan feels the sting of tears again, though a smile lifts her lips. “Something like that, Cole,” she says. “Thank you.”
“I am sorry,” he says, “It hurts. I want to help you.”
“You already did,” Lavellan says, looking at him. “You already do.”
*
In a private notebook, Lavellan writes:
Mythal — Fen’Harel
When I asked if he wanted to drink from the Well of Sorrows, he warned me not to ask him again. I thought he feared the temptation. He was angry when I drank from it. “You’re Mythal’s creature now. Everything you do, whether you know it or not, will be for her,” he said.
He was upset about what happened to her temple, too. I should have questioned it further, then.
“Mythal was the best of them,” he told me. That when they went too far, it was because they killed her, and that made him create the veil.
Some pages later:
Whatever the truth may be, our people have lived thousands of years since then — thousands of tragedies through which we carried each other and failed each other and survived. Maybe what mattered most was less the truth of the Creators themselves, but the ideals they signified for us, and the strength we drew from the idea of them in resisting empire after empire, when we needed it most.
The Chant lies. Our legends lie. “The Herald of Andraste” was a lie. The gods are real and unreal. What makes a god a god in the first place?
Every time I call on Mythal for guidance, habitual and cyclical, my heart aches.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything. If I know anything, it is that we are real, here and now, we are alive, all of us, through our efforts for each other. In the end, that is all we have. Fen’Harel — Solas thinks our people as tranquil, incomplete, looks upon us as pitiful vestiges of the world he knew. He has no right. I will not let him.