Chapter Text
He carried his heart in his arms—heavy, cold, and lifeless.
The waters of the Fade rose from the wounds of the Earth and along the divide, the sky began to bleed green. Above him the darkness was the graveyard of dying stars. Down below, the plains burned red and the sea froze to black ink. The sweet onion smell of charred flesh was everywhere. Clouds of islands crumbled into powder and it rained down like a gray blanket. Bone dust and ashes collected in the stagnant air, foaming at the exposed gaps between the intangible dream and materialized reality like gas from a bloated cadaver.
The world was ending.
Vunal alin'din. Din'an alin vunem. 1This world must die so another can begin anew. A clean slate.
And yet all he saw was dirt and ruin.
There were no heroes in war, only the dead and the victor. The remains of a broken world was hardly a consolation.
The storm boomed around him like a distant war drum as it hammered down countless pillars of blue-white bolts. He half-expected, half-hoped lightning would strike him—let this all be over with—but it never did. He wandered aimlessly amidst the theater of destruction he orchestrated and felt nothing, only an expanding hollowness that grew deeper and darker than the abyss.
His joints creaked as he bent, tired from walking for days uncounted. Or perhaps it had only been hours. He could not tell anymore. Day and night bled into each other and the difference was no longer consequential. In the larger scheme of things, nothing ever was. Alone, time seemed to tangle; a confused, melancholic medley, and he was weary.
He laid his heart down slowly.
Her pale skin and hair were all drenched in gore. The welts of her facial scars shone red; the ridges of traumatized skin looked as fresh as the day she carved them. Ashes of her clan were buried beneath the integument and it rose at the pinkish soil of her face like newly buried bodies. The angry markings bore the image of Dirthamen’s vallaslin, crude and ugly. Even still, she was beautiful.
When she came into his life, his world began to be defined by her: silence became her presence; the waves became the undulation of her voice; the warmth of the sun became her caress. Life reminded him of her and she reminded him to live, dreaming and longing for the summers to come.
But she was gone now.
The dream had sailed.
At the horizon, enshrouded by thick mist and smog was the thread-like beginnings of dawn.
His dry lips bled as he smiled full of black hope. He raised her head close to his heart and rasped: "Vhenan… look," pointing at the dazzling hues. It was striking in its finality.
The memory of her song, wrapped itself around him, a comforting lull.
'Too long I have travelled, soon I'll see her smiling…
the girl from the Red Crossing I'm longing to see…'
‘I've dreamed of the kiss I stole 'neath the arbor…
I've dreamed of the promise 'neath the old ash tree…’
‘One last stream to cross, one last hill to wander…
Until I read the love I'm longing to see…'
The world was ending and he found he did not care.
The ground split open. He clutched her. The earth rocked beneath them. The light suddenly flashed then burned hot. Scorching heat prickled his skin like a thousand jabbing needles.
A raw scream tore from his throat—a howl, inhuman and unearthly.
It hurt.
Oh, how it hurt.
His body and mind were completely unshackled; a floating consciousness, melting and melding, like waste water muddied and trampled endlessly in the reckless comings and goings of a summer’s humid rain.
And yet, within the infinite sea of tangled sensations something shifted. A sudden influx of understanding so whole, so large, it left no room for sanity. Everything disappeared, and everything reappeared all at once: pain, pleasure, hunger, satiation, joy, sadness, anger, all in its potency. It surged through him, battering the walls of his being, peeling him, shaping him, molding him like a lump of clay in the potter's hands.
He let out another agonized scream. But there was no mouth to scream out of. No ears to listen to, no room for the sound to echo. Everything was vast and endless. The storm of sensation eroded all until everything that has been, everything that is, everything that may yet past would cease to exist. A return to nothingness. A clean slate.
Oh, how easy it would be to allow so! But he held on. His mind was his. His memories were his. Nothing could wash away who he was and what she meant to him.
I will never forget you.
A bubble seemed to burst in his ears and he began to hear a shrill cry. It was distant at first, but it thundered through until he realized the sound was erupting violently from his throat.
He held on tighter to his wretched and shredded heart, agony be damned, and within the torrent of torment and desire, he found her.
Only her.
In the chaos, it was her memory who shone brightest.
He reached out for her. The madness about him calmed and he felt himself come alive.
The Dalish were right, he supposed: the world was ending and the Dread Wolf hugged himself with glee.
Hope.
Hope is a horror.