#[ also catch me trying to mish mash dhavi and sid into some ma/r/vel multiverse bs in this ]

[extravagantfool]

It is so, so hard not to roll their eyes at him. You knock over one giant statue and stop a world ending ritual and suddenly you are the bad guy. "If I remember correctly the ritual wasn't meant to 'not disturb' the fade, since you were aiming to tear down the dam and let it drown everyone." That's a bit mean, especially after they just mentally tried to reel themself in, but still. The unsaid opinions are clearly spoken on an unimpressed arch of their right brow as they level back Solas' gaze. Unfortunately, if perhaps they hadn't wanted to fidget and pick at their wound, or generally just been more careful, they may have been able to steel themself for what was coming. A wolf's grin is not one that anyone can trust, much less a fox who has strayed too close.

The first shift from the abyss to the new place, wherever it is, makes them flinch. Their sleeping form twitches, so far away from the horrors circling around them. They're stunned by the suddenness, the lack of anything to ground onto as they stumble. They limp a step back and step into decaying flesh and quickly lose their footing as the flesh becomes whole again. The smell of rot and blood overwhelms them as they glance around, their bad eye overwhelmed with colors and-- and-- The Inquisitor shrieks in silence, her life running from her eyes. Hair wraps around her face, one moment curling tight and the next wavy from braids. They see a flicker of vallaslin, of bare skin, of heraldry, and a familiar Kirkwall pin at her nape. Then they only see agony, reaching out to the ghost of a hand, broken apart like the shard of an eluvian.

The next shift makes their body twitch again, curling tight against the back cushions of the couch. Val Royoux they know without a doubt, but this too was wrong. They want to summon their baton, hide their face and throw up a barrier from the-- guard? Demon? Possession? They don't know. The gold seems to bleed around them, the shriek reverberating in their ears in an unearthly silence they can't parse. The flaming weapon sings, but now it sings of a horrible resonance that makes their physical body gasp. Their body sweats as the the blighted beauty sings its terrible song, making them fight against the embrace of love, too young to turn deaf and stay asleep. They step back again, but now they're against a wall. They can smell blight and rot again, the song pounding against their ribs, and they taste the fear. Their fear? The fear of the elves who found them? The fear of a daughter, shoved into a dank, dark place; tasked to hush a crying infant not of her own blood? They don't know.

They're shoved, crumpling into the dark, too small to catch their footing. Their physical body twitches and rolls, thudding down against flagstone without rousing. The fire surrounds them, they watch one family be spared as another must suffer. The dragon speaks, but they can't hear. The silence is a song and they were as deaf as they were blind. The colors kaleidoscope behind their bad eye as old wounds rip open and knit anew, the agony of childhood forced upon them once again. Like a nightmare, it doesn't seem to end. Tumbling through blight, rot, hatred, fire, the first game, the chains, the freedom-- the cage.

They're on their knees when the abyss returns to their senses, the mere lack triggering what confusion had somehow held back. Their physical body sweats and retches, still stubbornly asleep, as their self here-- wherever here may be-- retches in turn. Their eye bleeds anew, throbbing just as bad as it had when the artifact had exploded on them, and they're trying not to cry. Trying not to sob as the pain and confusion clings and clashes; sword against sword, wisdom against pride. They heave, again and again, and their physical body sputters. They were too flat on their back, they were gasping, they were going to choke--

Familiar hands touch them, rounding over their shoulders. The grip pushes them, forcing their body to twist onto its side properly, and let the vomit escape. The hands stay there, dark and formless for just a moment, before they reach deeper. The hands touch the blood bond that tethers the opposing forces between the abyss and should Solas look, should his prison let him see, it's not just a self soothing farce Asha has summoned. The connection is overtaken, just for a moment, and filled with malice. Anger that can only exist in the eternal lashes out, drenched in the blood of countless lives. The formless hands may be like shadows, blurred, but shining with the veins of a spirit. Perhaps instead a demon, with eyes that glower red behind the twisting vines of secretive chains. The anger festers, rotten and twisted, the long forgotten sense of disruption twisted into chaos. Perhaps Solas could recognize that, maybe even the wretched malice of Dirthamen's Needle-- and the paternal anger that floods the connection.

As soon as it comes though, it ends. The formless hand is covered with a flesh hand, shaking and clammy, but nonetheless-- real. "Stop." Asha's voice is weak, watery, but firm. The hijack of the connection abates, the malice fading away into waves of concern, the tidal wave of blood that had been ready to drown the wolf receding back towards Asha. The formless consolidates, taking a blurry shape of an elf. "It's okay." Or better yet-- of a spirit never freed of its bondage. Asha stands slowly, knees knocking together like a halla fawn, and the spirit supports them to their feet. The red eyes shine like rubies now, anger still undoubtedly there, but no longer uncontrolled. Asha shares the same vallaslin as the spirit.

They move slowly, stepping away from the vomit, as they rub at their eye. They blink bloody tears down their face, wheezing softly as their physical body begins to shiver. Still, when they look up, their eyes do not hold hate; hate would be too easy. "Do you feel better now?" They rub their bloody cheek on their sleeve and dust the dirt and bile from their knees. They're still a bit shaky, but they're squaring up their stance, lips peeling into a lopsided grin. "You know, you're lucky-- I usually make men pay me a lot of gold to hurt me." The joke falls a bit flat, their voice wet and warbly, but it is still a joke. It's not like a Tethras to just give up, after all.

"We need to teach you some better dream ideas though; those were shite."

Solas raised his eyebrows at the macabre display. It was certainly a unique solution to the problem. As grotesque as it was whimsical. 

“I do know of one way,” he allowed, watching as the red handkerchiefs cascaded onto the ground. “It is a complex ritual that allows for the safe transfer of prisoners into - or out of - the prison without disrupting the greater Fade. It requires a considerable amount magic, time in which to prepare it, and my dagger.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully, but his eyes were hard and unblinking when he met theirs. “I believe you are familiar with this ritual,” he said, the levity of his tone belied by the venom within it, “as you dropped a statue on  it. So unless you believe you can recreate the ritual which you were so determined to stop, we are back where we started.”

Solas sighed. He forgot they were not a trained mage. Not in the traditional sense, at least. Something was different about their magic, but he could glean very little additional insight beyond the impassable abyss. “When you dream - when anyone dreams - your mind enters the Fade. For those who are not mages, it is often no more than a night of sleep reflecting your thoughts and feelings. But a mage may wander the Fade, and if sufficiently powerful may even shape it around them. This connection,” he said, waving at the space between them, “draws you to this pocket of the Fade. But it is simply because you expect to be here when you sleep. You could, by your own will or with help, enter any part of the Fade available to mortals when they dream.”

A grin pulled at the corners of his mouth, distorting his face into a grin that looked very much like the cat that caught the canary. Or the wolf that caught the fox.

“Allow me to demonstrate,” said Solas. But he waited for no allowance or permission. 

Abruptly, they stand not on the cold grey stone of the prison but on an unkempt cobblestone of the main street of some nameless town. Both demon and townspeople lie dead at their feet, their bodies rapidly decomposing and then recomposing in dizzying succession. The Inquisitor stands opposite them. Her blazing green hand is a suspended fracture of reflective fragments orbiting the empty space where her arm should be. Her mouth is open in a silent, unending scream, and her eyes bleed down her fact.

They stand now not before the Inquisitor, but in the glimmering streets of Val Royeaux. A shade wearing the armor of a city guard sees them, and her face swirls into an indiscernible snarl like paint caught in a whirling pool of water. She shouts, but her voice is a muted shriek. She draws her sword, and it lights with the sickly vibrancy of veil fire as she closes in on them.

They stand not on the glimmering streets of Val Royeaux, but the dusty, overgrown floor of an abandoned old home in Ferelden. An elven man pushes them into a cabinet, and his hand on their arm burns like a brand. A great winged beast descends upon them, the great roar of its breath melting the wooden walls of the house into the raw ether of the Fade.

They stand in a world that time has forgotten, with a song that none can hear pounding in their veins, but around them is only emptiness.

And then, they were in the prison. Solas stood now at the edge of the chasm, as near to them as he could get like a dog testing the length of its chain. The great stone hands grasping for a sky that did not exist cast long shadows on his face. His arms were laced behind his back with his head tilted slightly to the side. He was all but powerless in here, but in this, at least, he could take some small revenge.

“As for a system,” he said lightly, that grin still contorting his face, “you need only ask.”