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The man’s name, they said, was Solas. To Ameridan’s growing dismay, they seemed to know very little else of him - and worse, were comfortable with this fact.
“He’s an apostate, but a Fade expert,” Cassandra had said, any concerns about the former outweighed by their need for the latter.
“Chuckles?” Varric had shrugged. “Elf, mage, helping. Sure he’s got a story, but the best ones unfold by themselves.”
“He’s one of us,” Maara had said firmly. Solas had fought at her side, gotten them out of more than one tight spot, so that was good enough for her. And she was Inquisitor, so that was good enough for everyone else.
Certainly her word mattered more than Ameridan’s. Rescued from the Frostback Basin and given a hasty history of everything he had missed by Josephine, he had been reintroduced to the rest of the Inquisition as another elven mage, a Knight-Enchanter (the modern successor to the Dales’s Arcane Warriors, it seemed) and expert on the early Divine Age (almost as if he had been there, how they all laughed.) The world had had to adapt to a number of miracles lately; Ameridan’s very existence and survival would be one too many.
So only a few knew who he really was, and, he suspected, Solas moved through Skyhold with a similar mask upon his face.
The story of him being a humble elven apostate was clear nonsense. Oh, he took care to keep his voice gentle and unassuming, but a strident tone bit through when his pride (his pride) was offended. He kept his shoulders slouched, his steps soft - until he was threatened in battle, and then his instinctive reactions, his muscle memory and his way of casting, spoke of a cold mastery beyond what could be self-taught.
Perhaps he might still have let it go, let him keep his secrets, if his chosen Creator was not Dirthamen. And if not for the fact that he had heard of a Solas before.
“He was terrible at mornings,” Felassan had recalled fondly, on one of their many nights ranging in the Dales. They had lain together on their bedrolls, Ameridan’s head on his chest, Felassan’s fingers stroking gently through his hair as he looked up at the stars. “If there was a battle, he’d stay up all night the night before. He claimed it was for final strategy, but we knew, he just couldn’t handle mornings. Otherwise he’d have me waking him up., and I’d usually let Athim jump on him in bed.”
“Because you’re a menace.”
“A pest,” Felassan agreed, with a happy sigh, and kissed the top of Ameridan’s head. “And yet you put up with me, as well.”
Ameridan had snorted in amusement, and propped his chin up on Felassan’s chest to meet the man’s eyes. “He always sounds much more like just another man, when you talk of him.”
“Ah, but he was, da’isenatha,” he corrected, tapping Ameridan on the nose. “It’s the other stories that get it wrong. He was never a god. None of them were.”
“You know, we used to tell the story of The Slow Arrow amongst the Emerald Knights.”
Ameridan chose his time to make the casual remark carefully. He waited until they were out in the Hinterlands - him, Solas, Maara and Varric, carrying out some errand for the local farmers involving a lost druffalo. He didn’t say it to Solas, he said it to Varric, but watched the man’s shoulders tense where he walked ahead of them.
“Oh yeah?” Varric had said, always interested to hear a story.
“It’s one of the stories about the Dread Wolf. Fen’Harel?” They had encountered a pack of wolves recently. Let them assume that was what had brought it to mind.
“Ah, Daisy mentioned him,” Varric recalled fondly. “Go on then Kiddo, fire away.”
“Alright. Back when the world was new, Fen’Harel was asked by a village to kill a great beast, to protect them. He says sure, waits by the village at dawn, and here the beast comes, but it’s huge. He knows it’s beyond him, that it’ll kill him if he tries to fight it. So he shoots an arrow up into the air, and leaves. The villagers, obviously, panic - he’s abandoned them, he’s left them to their fates - and the beast comes into the village and starts killing, warriors, crafters, gatherers, elders, everyone.”
“Fen’Harel’s a baddie, right?” said Maara, frowning.
“Wait for a twist,” said Varric, and Ameridan nodded with a growing smile.
“Finally, with all the adults slain, the beast turns on the children. No-one left to protect them! The beast opens its jaw wide, ready to eat them all - when the arrow, the Slow Arrow, Fen’Harel had set loose, falls from the sky and slays the beast in one blow. And so the children were saved, and Fen’Harel kept his word - technically.”
“Technically,” echoed Varric, unconvinced.
“Huh,” said Maara. “I like that. Fight smarter not harder.”
“Tough luck on the villagers, though,” noted Varric.
“If he had not left the villagers to their fate, the beast would not have been there to be hit by the arrow,” Ameridan pointed out. “He sacrificed them to save their children.”
“Coulda taken five minutes to think of a better plan.”
“I believe the druffalo is ahead,” Solas cut in loudly, and Ameridan suppressed a smile.
Later that night, when they were settled by the campfire, Ameridan spoke again to Solas.
“What did you think, of Fel assan?”
Solas’s head jerked up. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Slow Arrow,” he said innocently, taking a sip of his tea. “The story earlier. Had you heard it before?”
Solas’s face settled back into something probably meant to be neutral, but Ameridan had spent years in the Orlesian court, learning to read faces just from what he could glimpse through the eye holes. The smallest tightening of skin, betraying wariness, suspicion.
“I had,” he said finally.
“Not one of your favourites?” He took another sip of tea. “Do you think Fen’Harel could have saved the villagers in a better way?”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged. Then, after a moment’s pause: “But hindsight is an intoxicating thing. It is foolish to assume all solutions considered later, at peace around a fire, would be obvious in a moment of danger.”
“Perhaps,” Ameridan agreed, agreeably, agreeable. “Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
Felassan’s Solas had detested tea. Ameridan got to his feet and wandered away to find some chore to do, softly humming a song that Felassan had taught him. To the wind and melody. Pretending he didn’t notice Solas’s eyes following him, boring into his back.
Most mornings, Ameridan would practise his drills in the castle courtyard. Whilst his body had been preserved in stasis, his connection to the Fade was, in a word, temperamental; a muscle that had been under constant strain for eight hundred years, and yet barely exercised in that time. He had to return to basic mana control exercises he had not done since he was a child, and it was a frustrating experience. He would then usually blow off some steam by fighting physically with Cassandra, or the Iron Bull, though the latter tended to devolve into flirting, pinning, and Bull sauntering off with a wink of his only eye and an invitation to find him later.
Tempting, if the man wasn’t Ben-Hassrath. Ameridan knew a spy when he saw one.
“I find myself wondering why you do not seek out an actual challenge.” Solas’s voice sounded from behind him one cold morning, where he had been practising staff movements.
Ameridan suppressed a smile, but did not turn round, focussing on moving from one position smoothly to the next. “You don’t consider Cassandra trying to kick your head in a challenge?”
“No. And neither do you.” Silence, as Ameridan shifted his weight from foot to the other, moving the staff in a smooth arc from a defensive to offensive position. “Is it that you are afraid of failure?”
Someone had come looking for a fight. Ameridan dropped out of the movements and obliged Solas by turning round, planting the staff on the ground as he looked at him, tilting his head. “Something got your morning off to a grumpy start already, hahren?”
Solas blinked innocently, unmoved. “Hardly. Unless you count my witnessing someone continually not bothering to try hard enough.”
Ameridan raised an eyebrow slowly. “Would you care to elaborate, before I simply take that as an insult?”
“Take what you like. Your strengths lie in your combination of wielding magic alongside your physical combat. But you have still not sought to recombine the two. I have to wonder whether you are afraid to push yourself in this regard, or simply do not think the Inquisition is worth the effort.”
Ouch. He must have gotten under Solas’s skin, for him to seek to return the favour in such a way. “Perhaps I have not found anyone I want to put at risk of harm when my magic in unstable,” he grinned, “Unless you’re volunteering?”
“I am, in fact.” Solas set his own staff out ahead of him. “Rest assured that I will be quite safe.”
“Because you are so confident in your own abilities, or doubtful of mine?”
“Yes.” A small smirk tugged at Solas’s lips, and it was hard not to match it.
They took their places in the practise ring. “To the yield,” Solas instructed, and Ameridan nodded in agreement. “Begin.”
Barriers flared into life around them both, and Ameridan moved quickly, seeking to close the distance. Solas stepped through the Fade to the other side of the ring, leaving a lightning rune in his place, which Ameridan dodged narrowly enough for the smell of ozone to fill his nose. Turning, he sent ice at Solas, binding thick around his ankles, slowing him enough for Ameridan to reach him and swing his staff at his head - but Solas raised his own staff to catch the blow, to parry it and the one that followed, and the next, a quick flurried exchange before they broke apart again, circling, looking for weaknesses.
“You know, Leliana asked me about that village you said you were from,” Ameridan remarked, as though he were talking about the weather. “In case it was from my time. She’s had real trouble finding it on the maps. Why don’t you help her out?”
“I was not aware she was still looking,” said Solas coolly, before shooting off several fireballs in quick succession. Ameridan pulled up a wall of ice to block them, and neatly sidestepped it to shoot a dispel in Solas’s direction, forcing him to stop and pull his barrier back up before Ameridan could lunge to attack him once again.
“It must be a remarkable place,” Ameridan went on, “To be so accepting of elves and mages. To allow you to grow up with no pressure to follow the Creators or the Maker.” Solas swung a blow at Ameridan’s head that he had to duck, and he laughed. “I did not think such a place existed in modern Thedas.”
“The Thedas you helped create, you mean,” pointed out Solas, and caught a blow to his arm that hurt Ameridan almost as much as the words did. “Did you only seek to involve yourself in matters not your business after you got Dirthamen’s mark across your features, or were you an annoying brat from the start?”
He laughed again. “I have always been like this, hahren. If your true nature was written across your face, what would that be?”
Solas answered with a swift blow to his ankles which swept Ameridan’s legs out from under him, knocking him to his back on the ground with an oof. Before he could move, Solas’s staff swept back to rest just over the soft flesh of his throat.
“Yield,” he ordered softly.
Ameridan raised a hand in surrender. “Well fought,” he acknowledged, and a ghost of a smile crossed Solas’s face.
“There are no problems with your strength.” He spoke as if he truly were a teacher. Perhaps he couldn’t shake the habit. “It is your focus where you must devote your attention.”
“So I’ve been told,” Ameridan panted from the ground, feeling each delightful bruise blossoming like a gift. “It’s what my tutor always said. As he had been taught by his tutor before him.”
“That tutor was correct.” Solas removed the staff and offered Ameridan a hand up, which he took.
“He was.” He found his feet again, and gave Solas’s hand one last squeeze. “Full of Wisdom. Aren’t all hahrens like that?”
Solas narrowed his eyes. “Focus,” he repeated in a stern, low voice. “And be mindful where you place your steps.”
Ameridan just smiled pleasantly at him. “Do you know the difference between knowledge and secrets, Solas?”
The man visibly suppressed an eyeroll. “I’m sure you will enlighten me.”
“Who I tell.” He tapped Solas’s nose with his finger, as Felassan had done for him all those centuries ago. “Thank you for the workout.”
He walked away whistling. To the wind and melody.
It was on the Exalted Plains, where Solas’s friend Wisdom died in front of him, that the confrontation finally came.
Solas had departed, Maara watching his back anxiously as he disappeared across the broken land. Ameridan had considered one second, two, before saying to her, “I’ll follow him,” and setting out before she could argue.
He did not close in at first, simply following Solas as he crossed the river and made his way north, picking across the wartorn terrain. He must know Ameridan was following - Ameridan was quiet, but made no assumption that he could sneak up on the Dread Wolf - but did nothing, unless he was too clouded in grief to have noticed.
Just being in the Exalted Plains had made grief light a freezing fire inside his chest, and it chilled and burned together. The ruins of viaducts, fortresses, temples. The bathhouse. Desiccated corpses of the Exalted March. He had been unable to stop thinking of the bathhouse, its location, its bones open to the sky, did the view match? Was this one he’d- But that was torture, it was cutting himself open on knives over and over, bleeding for a crime he could neither charge himself with nor forgive himself for.
Was the whole world this, for Solas?
That was the question that kept him following, until finally, after the sun had set, Solas’s path led them to a ruined temple in the shadow of a monumental wolf statue atop a hill. He crossed the threshold, a great towering arch with the remnants of walls clinging to its sides, into a great hall where what must have been a vaulted ceiling instead opened upon the starry skies.
Ameridan followed, not bothering to hide his presence any more.
At the head of the ancient hall was a statue of a kind Ameridan had been before, in his time; Mythal, as a tall woman with dragon wings. Rather than standing, she was seated on a throne. Solas looked up at it silently as Ameridan approached.
“Did you ever visit this place, in your time?” Solas’s voice sounded unexpectedly loud in the vast space, echoing as though the walls still remained, were not softened by encroaching trees and bracken.
Ameridan had not expected him to speak, and it took him a moment to respond, having settled into the silence of the last few hours. “No,” he said. And admitted, “I don’t think I even knew it existed.”
“Few did.” He did not look round at him.
Carefully, Ameridan asked, “... Did you?” Visit it in your time?
“It has endured,” Solas replied. “Not as it was. But its bones are old. This was an ancient place, before the first elves of the Dales claimed it for their own.”
Answering the question without answering the question. Ameridan had to acknowledge he was a master at it. “Solas,” he began, taking a step closer, “I’m so-”
Magic gripped him where he stood, harsh, brutal, and slammed him against a nearby column. It was too sudden to muster more than a feeble barrier, which saved his ribs, but the wind was still knocked from him.
Falling to the base of it, wheezing, he looked up to see Solas stalking towards him, no trace of the humble apostate persona anywhere to be seen. This, this must be the Solas Felassan had known - tall, proud, and merciless to his enemies.
Which, as his furious gaze pinned Ameridan in place, he had to wonder if he’d made himself one of them.
“Why are you here?” Solas demanded, raising a hand which glowed threateningly with a green magic which Ameridan was not familiar with, “Are you here to toy with me some more, with your stories and your songs? What could possibly give you the idea that I would be in the mood to suffer such a thing?”
“I came to say I’m sorry!” He managed to gasp out the words around the tightness in his lungs, his chest. “For your friend.” Solas did not look calmed. If anything, he looked even more furious, the green magic crackling threateningly. “I knew Felassan,” he all but shouted, not wanting this to turn into a fight. “And I knew Athim. Felassan’s Devotion. I know what bonds can exist between spirits and elves. I know. And I’m sorry for your loss.” He hesitated. “For all of it.”
Solas’s magic and anger eased, just a fraction. The fury in his eyes softened slightly with grief. A grief Ameridan knew only a part of, but still found devastating.
“Is that all?” said Solas finally, the rage giving way to weariness. “You came to offer your condolences?”
“... Yes,” he said, cautiously getting to his feet and brushing off the dust from the fall. “And so that you wouldn’t be alone.”
“With no consideration for whether I chose to be alone.”
“No,” he said easily, and Solas just rolled his eyes.
But Ameridan knew what Felassan had been to Solas. What he had needed to balance him. Someone who was not intimidated by his stern demeanour, or how he pushed others away. Someone willing to tease him, and provoke him out of the moods he could fall into.
A pest, in short.
“Well, you have done so.” He waved at the archway. “You may return to the others. I will be sleeping here to seek out Wisdom’s old demesne in the Fade, and I will be some time.”
“I can wait,” said Ameridan easily. “It’d be nice to have a couple of days off.”
Solas’s eyes narrowed at him. “I do not wish you to wait.”
“Shame.” He went to his pack and retrieved his bedroll, pointedly rolling it out on a nice patch of grass. “Lovely spot! I think I saw some goats nearby.”
Solas sighed, and Ameridan knew he was defeated. He suppressed a smug smile as Solas walked over towards the statue and began setting up a sleeping area of his own.
They spoke little as they prepared for sleep, sharing what rations they had, and Ameridan going to retrieve water and set up a fire. Solas had seemed to have forgotten such basic comforts in his need to seek the Fade, but Ameridan could keep him from dying of the cold or dehydration, at least. It was only when they had both settled down in their respective bedrolls that Solas spoke again.
“Ameridan?” His voice was taut, quiet in the hush of the night. “Why have you not shared my identity with Maara?”
Ameridan just huffed a quiet laugh. “For a secret to remain a secret, the whole point is not to tell anyone.”
Solas was silent so long, Ameridan thought he had fallen asleep. Then: “He would have liked you.”
He? “Felassan?”
“No. Dirthamen.”
Unsure whether that was a compliment or not, Ameridan said nothing. And before long, the toll of the day eased them both from waking, back to the emerald waters of the Fade.