#what me tangle myself into too many threads im drowning

[spainkitty]

Shout out to @sillyliterature for tagging me in things!! I love being tagged. Also, I really love and am obsessed with my Lanil (Surana) Lavellan oc. While about 80k of her as the Inquisitor has been written, I've gone down a rabbit hole of "What if Lanil had stayed in the Circles and joined the official Mage Rebellion instead?" so here we go 🤗 My amgry gorl~ living in my head rent free~ I might do this again from my handers/fenhanders fic because I know sillylit loves Anders as much as I do.

So basically this is like Find The Word, but with a phrase instead, or if you don’t have it, something with a similar vibe. The phrase is: This can't be real.

My phase: I don't quite have that in this fic, but I did have "You can't seriously [...]"

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“You can’t seriously be going without me?” Lanil demanded. Fiona’s mouth twitched, her dark eyes amused. Lanil immediately looked away, scowling as heat suffused her cheeks.

“I am more than capable of travelling to Val Royeaux alone, although I will be taking a few mages with me, if that will assuage your concern,” Fiona said at last. “I do not want to seem as if I’m bringing a fight with me. Pardon me for saying so, Lanil, but you walk into a room like you’re walking into a fight.

“Can you blame me after this year?” Lanil muttered. “So, the Herald… are they really a qunari?”

“She is. I suppose the term is Tal-Vashoth, if the reports are true and she is not of the Qun. It may be impertinent to ask in the same breath I ask for aid,” Fiona said dryly.

Lanil smirked and shrugged. “I doubt a real Qun-loving qunari would let themself be called the Herald of Andraste.”

“I’m still not sure if this is a good idea,” Fiona said with a quiet sigh. “We’ve already seen what little the Chantry is able to do for us." She waved in the vague direction of… out there, where, yes, rebels that refused to join Redcliffe tore up the countryside, but also where roving packs of violent Templars wandered and cut down any mage or mage sympathizer, violent or not, they happened to see. “And both the Right and Left Hand of the Divine are heading this Inquisition.”

“The late Divine. But... Connor did say Arl Teagan told him that a former Templar is their Commander, too,” Lanil said with a grimace. Fiona’s lips pursed slightly, eyes narrowing. “A Templar from Kirkwall.”

Fiona pressed fingers to her temples. Lanil, as always, couldn’t help but be impressed by Fiona’s control. She herself would have at least cursed out loud by now. Lanil wondered if Fiona had always been able to do that, or was it something she made herself learn?

“Perhaps Linnea is right,” the Grand Enchanter whispered. Her eyes caught on the warrior statuette and she took it in hand again, rolling it between her palms. “How many more refugees have come this week?”

“About a dozen, and maybe three are actually capable of helping defend the keep. The only mages with any sort of combat skill are out in the fucking hills making it worse for everyone. We need to stick together or we’re all going to be hunted and cut down like nugs at this point,” Lanil snarled, lightning crackling at her fingertips.

“Or perhaps we’ll let you loose on the Templars and apostates alike so you might glower them into submission,” Fiona teased. Her voice was weary, quiet, but her dark eyes gleamed. Lanil glared at the nearest wall and crossed her arms over her chest. Her mouth was twitching, though, and her heart felt lighter. “The general opinion? Any increase in Tevinter sympathies?”

Lanil groaned and rolled her eyes upwards. She knew Fiona bringing up Linnea didn’t bode well. “Yes, all right, there are more people pushing for sending word to Tevinter, but it’s definitely not the majority. Linnea is two seconds away from running for the hills and going staff-happy on the countryside herself, don’t listen to her, Grand Enchanter. We don’t need them. They’re slavers.”

“And so many of us are elves…” Fiona frowned. “Our choices are a heretical Chantry organization and a mage-friendly slave nation. We’re not even sure either would help.”

“You need to get the Arl to contact the King,” Lanil said flatly. Fiona’s eyes flickered towards her and away. “He put us here. He promised us aid.”

“He promised us shelter. He did not promise us soldiers.”

“Then, ask for them! Fuck the Chantry, or Inquisition, whatever, and fuck the Vints, too. Do you think the King and Queen would give us Redcliffe just to let the Templars burst in and slaughter us!? The King obviously cares a little. Wynne was his advisor for years, Orzammar has its own Circle and the King and Queen refused to break the alliance with King Bhelen to support an Exalted March, and Anders…” Fiona raised a hand to stop her, but Lanil barrelled on anyway, “The Warden-Commander, King Alistair’s well-known friend and advisor, made Anders a Grey Warden. She protected him! Not only that, she’s an elf. They appointed an elf a Bann of the Denerim Alienage. They care about mages and elves both. The King is our best bet and you--”

“Surana, be silent.”

Lanil’s mouth snapped shut. It wasn’t often Fiona used that tone of voice, and it never failed to send prickles down Lanil’s spine. Instantaneous obedience. Silence fell hard between them and fire crackled in the fireplace. Fiona’s fingers curled around the statuette she held, enveloping it in her fist.

“Let us see how the Herald responds to my invitation first. I’ll return from Val Royeaux as swiftly as I am able,” Fiona said decisively. There was no arguing with that tone. Lanil inhaled and exhaled roughly through her nose. Fiona smiled and crossed the room. Gently, she cupped Lanil’s face in her hands, dark eyes tracing over Lanil’s features and meeting her stormy grey glare. “Mon petite tempête, you will take care of our people while I am away.”

“Of course,” she grumbled.

[chameleonspell]

200: heart

How to climb a mountain. Step by step, inch by inch, hand in hand. Falling in crevasses and getting back out again, because this is not the hole you're going to die in today. Magic when you can spare it, rope when you can't, and always hands and arms and legs and backs and hearts, yours and others. I know, it hurts. Keep going anyway. It really is a terrible metaphor. There's nothing special about being higher up.

Are we the Bal Molagmer, then? Is that why we climb? Nameless, faceless heroes, braving the mountain of fire, and stealing burning stones? I never did find out what those were for. Perhaps we can use them to rebuild our burned bridges. Burning bridges, building paths, climbing mountains, escaping pits. So many clichés. But they're not supposed to accurately represent the chaos, they're maps out of it. Prophecies are just stories with happy endings, and you can write your own as you go. Leave them behind, so that others might find their way. They'll never know if it was true, and it won't matter. We go different, and in thunder. Each to the beat of our own doom-drum. I'm going to break his heart. That's not a metaphor. According to Vivec, there is no bone that cannot be broken, except for the heart bone. Proving that for all his poetry, he was not immune to sentimental clichés. Of course, with Vivec, the danger is always that it might not be a metaphor. God has no need of theory and he is armoured head to toe in terror. I'm scared, too. But unlike Vehk, I am shielded by my mortality, and I cannot be trapped in the cracked crystal of my (im)perfections forever. Shift ye in your skin, I say to the Trinimac-eaters. Pitch your voices into the colour of bruise. This whole island, ruined and reborn. Surviving the fire, again and again. All of us, finding new ways to survive... and then surviving those. Surviving the forms we had to take, to stay alive in the places we found ourselves, learning to breathe ashes, drink poison, eat shit. We can do this, because whatever survives, grows. And whatever happens next, something will survive of me, because I exist now. I have already existed, and this cannot be undone, short of deeper magic than I'll ever know. Survive, if not intact, then by parts. My blood will join the ash and feed the mushrooms. My bones... my bones will be quiet, unthreatening. My soul is energy, in which all lost possibilities are regained. For now... we are Nerevarine. Failed, false, fallen Incarnates. You are Nerevar, my love, as I am Nerevar, as all of us breathing air and ash and magic are Nerevar, because he died and we live, and we are all the Changed Ones. All Trinimac, all Malacath, bruise-tinted, shit-stained heroes. Stealing whatever godhood we can. Wearing our curses as badges of honour, because fuck you, Azura, that's why. We have no ancestors guiding us. We banished them all, again and again, though they wait beyond the door, always returning. Sometimes because they love us, but love alone is not enough. But then, love is never alone. It is born of, and parent to, so many ugly and beautiful things. Things to grow, to nurture, and be nurtured by. Things to build. A city of swords, to cut ourselves into better shapes. A city of gods and monsters, to be razed and restored, brick by brick. A home, secret and safe as any pocket dimension, which is to say, never as safe as you hope, but... sometimes doors need opening from the outside. I move, and I pulse at the heart of a web of threads... no, a net... no... a bloodline. A lacing network of living support, easily grazed at the edges, but more healing and resilient then I could ever imagine. It's not a thing I can leave behind, because it isn't there, isn't outside. I'll carry it with me. I grew it myself. I'm taking it all. Taking all my blood and ash, all my ghosts and bones. To find what lies beyond my burning, in the pathless, unstoned places between is and is-not-yet. What was and what could be. To plant something new... no... to help something different grow. Not an ocean, wild and unpredictable, sinking all who incur its disapproval. Not a garden, clipped into a false, symmetrical notion of beauty, weeds pulled up by the roots. Something in between, blurring the boundary, like a swamp. If my mother is earth and my father is water, then I am neither and both, a new experiment, my own substance and solution. Soft and yielding... but sometimes, when people think swampland is solid, they drown themselves, trying to step on it. The stone that recalls it is really water... what if it knew how to be both? It's no deception. Unless it is. Say no elegies. Welcoming the living, the dead and the in-between, all who need to rest somewhere with no need to choose between sinking and swimming. A place to be vague, for a while, indistinct. Cocooned, liquid and lingering in the grey maybe of creation, to see what solidifies. Of healing and metamorphosis. Of absorbing toxins, and nourishing sprouts. Tangled and illegible. Hard to translate, because its definitions keep shifting. A ward to its enemies, but part of its charm, to its devotees. Who know that love demands no dissection, no labels. I still hope you might choose to be there. I think you'd understand, too. I don't think ashland is so different from swampland. The Velothi say that on certain days, all the hidden seeds of a certain plant will all bloom at once, and flash the whole land one colour in a brief, day-long frenzy of purple or gold. I'd love to see it. But I already know the Ashlands will teem with flowers, if you're there. I have to go back, because I've changed and it hasn't. I can see the invisible, now. I can see in the dark. I can see through walls, see the pale-fringed lichen on the other side. I can see gently, obliquely. Out of the corner of my eye, for some vanish under the weight of too much visibility. I can see, and be seen, according to my will. I can slip into the molten margins, where touching another soul is possible, and extend a hand. My other will always be yours. I look at you across the fire. And you aren't my true-love, that isn't a thing. But I love you, and we dragged each other through the hardest year of our lives. And whoever I love next, and whoever I am loved by... it was you that taught me how. So until the next change comes... until the ash takes and remakes us, until we are eaten again... look back at me, through the air and ash. See me here, in this moment, alive and whole, safe from all possible harm. If we fall, and they find us, my hand will be in yours, and they'll know who we were. He drew a long, clear breath that lifted and filled him like the sail of a boat. His heart rising with the wind, Iriel moved forwards. end. thank you for reading. previous: 199: keening beginning: 1: numb