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Skyhold had already changed much when Tilda blew back in from Crestwood. Rubble no longer littered the courtyard and the fragile remnants of the Inquisition had set freshly repaired doors back on newly oiled hinges. As her companions left her side, bound for baths and bed and booze, the Inquisitor paused and let the sounds of the fortress wash over her.
Chatter from every corner; overlapping sounds of orders and exclamations, the hum of day-to-day work. Farther off she heard the pounding of nails into wood and the dulcet tones of the Commander shouting at his recruits. She took a deep breath and the crisp mountain air burned pleasantly against her nose.
Tilda headed up the stairs, listening carefully for familiar voices, making note of where the healers and the quartermaster had set up in her absence. She trailed her fingers along Skyhold’s outer wall and the ancient stone resonated through her in a way she did not feel but definitely felt.
It couldn’t compare to Dwarven stonework, but it would do.
As she crossed the upper courtyard, a hidden smile curled in the depths of the thick hood she wore. Even now, what must be half ‘til midday, the sound of revelry and clanging mugs filtered from the shapeless blob of structure that must be the tavern. She would find Bull there, certainly, before the night was through.
For now, her feet carried her ever upward through Skyhold. More stairs than between Dust Town and the Diamond Quarter, this fortress. She stepped surely, even as the looming towers of the main hall cast darkness over her pale pink eyes and what shapes she could see blurred into nothing.
They had cleared the debris in the Great Hall as well and now the space hummed with conversation, the creak of Templar armor, the pop of roaring fires. Tilda ignored the dip in noise as she entered and beelined for the nearest door.
The rotunda was no longer empty as she’d left it. Warm torchlight glowed around indistinct pieces of furniture and the shadow of something tall and spindly reached up toward the ceiling, where she heard the call of the Spymaster’s ravens. To the left, splotches of varying shades streaked down the first segment of wall in a pattern she couldn’t make out, even as she cocked her head to consider it.
She heard the shink of someone descending a ladder before Solas cleared his throat.
“Welcome back, Inquisitor.”
His familiar scent of elfroot and ink washed over her and she smiled. “Made yourself comfortable, have you?”
“The space was available,” he answered dryly. “Something about the difficulty of fitting furniture against rounded walls.”
“Seems like a problem the Orlesians should have solved by now.”
“One would think.” Skin rasped on skin as Solas clasped his hands behind his back. “I trust your journey to Crestwood bore success?”
“Well I’m not dead, so.”
“That is always an appreciable outcome.”
“You’ll hear about the shit with the Wardens soon enough.” Tilda waved her hand. She was not of a mind to manage Solas’ distaste for the Wardens right now. Instead, she paced over to the paint-darkened wall and tilted her face up at the details she could not see. “This was your doing, I assume?”
Solas hummed a confirmation. His bare feet padded against the stone until she felt him settle just behind her shoulder. Despite standing as tall as Tilda twice over, he was careful, as always, not to disturb the swath of light that stretched before her face.
“What does it show?”
“The start of all of this,” Solas answered. “As I saw it. It is the first of several I have planned.”
“Can I…?”
“Certainly. The paint on this wall is long since dried.”
Tilda’s bow calloused fingertips brushed over the plaster. She felt the extra layer of paint, but it told her nothing of the image, nor the intent Solas put behind it. Smears of red and orange and black danced together, far above her head, but she could not discern their shapes or what his interpretation of all this shit really meant.
A wistful huff escaped her as she dropped her fingers back to her side.
“You will experience the story as it unfolds,” Solas said. “The recording of it is for you, of course, but it is also for the ages to come. I would give them one source to study free of scribes’ bias.”
“Surely you are not claiming to be free of bias?”
“Only that of the Chantry.” A smile ticked at his words. “I could show you the details in the Fade, if you wish.”
Tilda shuddered. “And what’s wrong with simply describing them, hm?”
“I could do that, as well.”
“And I’d like that, but not now. Crestwood has other concerns beyond the Wardens and I would have you with us to sort them. We ride out again at dawn.”
“Other concerns?”
“Just bring a good cloak,” Tilda grumbled. “You’ll be fine.”
Cool, damp air enveloped Tilda like a familiar lover as she slid down the ladder. She barely registered the thud of her companions in her wake. As she pressed a palm to the cavern’s roughened wall, a few drops of cold moisture slipped between her fingers, down the back of her hand. Crestwood’s Stone sang beneath her skin and she felt the reverberations through her core.
“Dark as shit down here,” Bull muttered, an apology in his touch as he brushed past Tilda. He shuffled ahead, paused, then the crack of a match and the hissing of a long-dormant torch flaring to life.
“Now that you’ve got your crutch,” Tilda smirked, “let’s go. We’ve got a job to do.”
Above ground, Cole and Solas had dealt with the spirits while Tilda and Bull stood at as much distance as they could justify. But in the depths of this cave there was no such comfort. And there was no distinguishing between the mundane touch of damp air and the brush of a spirit against her skin, for in the bright glow of Bull’s torch she could not track the movements of glowing amber that made the Anchor crackle and set her teeth on edge.
Her companions ran interference as best they could, but it was still a relief when Bull growled out a warning and there was a demon that she could put arrows into. Despair made fools of the melee fighters, but Tilda felt its movements, the way it pirouetted away from Bull’s axe and Cole’s daggers, and when it landed against the Stone once more her arrow was already loosed and felled the demon with a strike right between its empty eye sockets.
“Demons don’t like lakes,” Cole told her, catching a drip of water on the tip of his finger. “Water isn’t different enough.”
“Feels different enough to me,” Tilda grunted. She wiped the ichor from her arrow’s broadhead and shoved it back into her quiver. With Cole’s hand in hers, she clambered back through the spiky outcroppings and they continued down, down, down, every layer of Stone between them and the surface a weight lifted from her shoulders.
When she stepped off the wooden ramp and into the ruins proper, solid familiarity reverberated up her feet. She stepped outside the circle of Bull’s torch, guided by darkness to the muted red glow of Dwarven workmanship. As her fingers found the edges worn smooth by time, Solas came to stand at her shoulder.
She did not need to trace the patterns her ancestors had chiseled into the Stone, nor have Solas or Bull or Cole tell her what they saw. If they saw.
She knew .
“The dwarves build well,” Solas commented. “Their ruins still sing.”
That they did. Tilda felt the tune humming across centuries of abandon, striking a chord she had thought absent within her.
“Will you…dream….here?” A foreign question that felt awkward in her mouth. But if he would—well, she would know what he did, at least.
Solas chuckled. “I fear for my bedroll, were I to lay down in these ruins, lethallan.”
“But what you might learn—“
“Would be minimal, for a soggy night’s rest.” Solas clicked his tongue against his teeth. “It is as I’ve told you, Inquisitor. Your people do not dream, so the traces they leave upon the Fade are faint, at best. I doubt I could glean much more from these ruins than we could ascertain from a visit to your Shaperate.”
“And that comes with a headache.” Tilda sighed. Someday, she thought. Someday she would ask and his answer would not be no.
They rid the caverns of Despair and Rage and the revenant and Tilda closed the rift that plagued Crestwood with a snap. In the dimness that followed, she paced to a nearby door—just her height, for once, but blocked and unmoving. An unfortunate metaphor. She pressed her forehead to it and leaned into the resonant hum, trying to preserve this peace for when they had to surface again.
Despite the water pooled around her, there was no splashing as Solas approached.
“Do your people gravitate toward high-quality stone for their settlements, or is it skill that allows them to build so thoroughly below ground?”
“What kind of question is that?” Tilda snorted. “Do I look like a shaper? Stone’s stone. Either you work with it, or you don’t.”
“Fascinating.”
“I s’pose.” Tilda pulled her flask from her hip and tossed back a swig, grimacing as the alcohol burned down her throat.
“Hey boss, think we could head back up and deal with the mayor before we hit the booze? Damn cave is making my nose itch.”
“Sounds like a skill issue.”
“Harsh, boss, real harsh.”
“I’ll be along in a moment,” Solas said as they began to trek back toward the door. “I’d like to examine some of these carvings in greater detail.”
That gave Tilda pause. What did he hope to gain, and why did he wish to hide it from her? Plus, she did not relish the idea of encountering any more of those stray apparitions without a mage. Cole popped to her side and slid his hand into hers.
“Dark, damp, dwelling, safe in the Stone but shadows, shapes in the dark. Shoot but stop, don’t, don’t know, don’t care, have to care.” Cole murmured. He squeezed her stubby fingers. “I will scout ahead; without Solas, I will move faster. You will be safe.”
Tilda wrinkled her nose, and yet part of the knot Solas’ request twisted in her stomach eased. Stone-sodden Fade nonsense.
“Suit yourself,” she shrugged, chewing idly on the split ends of her coarse hair. “Don’t get eaten.”
Solas’ indulgent smile caught at the edges of his voice. “I’m sure I can manage.”
“Right then. C’mon Bull, we’ve got bodies to deal with.”
By the time they’d wrapped the dead of Old Crestwood and carried them to the waiting Sister, Solas had found his way back to the surface—and a disgruntled Inquisitor. In sealing the rift, she’d brought forth the sun, of all blasted things, and though her hood kept her skin and eyes protected, Tilda regretted not running around Crestwood while the region was rainy and gray.
Between the heat and exertion, none of them were fit to tackle a wyvern by the time they made it to the cave, so they made camp just ‘round a set of hills from the entrance. As Tilda waited for the fire to burn down to embers, an oddly heavy pack thudded to the ground where Solas was settling.
“What do you have in there, rocks?” she snorted. “Hope you have magic to unfuck your back from carrying it around all day.”
“There is such a spell, as it so happens. I’m sure it could ease the tension in your—“
Even as a pink blush heated the tips of her ears, Tilda shuddered. “Don’t even think about it. If you want me to sod off, just say that .”
“It was you who suggested the spell.”
She scowled at him and instead turned to her own pack and the potatoes there, just waiting to become delicious and smoky for their supper. She poked at the amorphous flare of the fire, listened to how the wood popped and hissed, and sighed.
“Watching will not make the flames burn any hotter, lethallan.”
Tilda made a face in his direction, but dropped her fire stick. Flicking at a fraying cuticle, she leaned back against Bull’s legs and tilted her head up toward stars she could not see. Bull’s axe, newly cleaned, lay across his lap, the blade he was sharpening just level with her ear. The shink of his whetstone might have drowned out any other sound, but Tilda knew the scrape of stone like she knew breath in her lungs. There was nothing else Solas could have.
“Is he actually carrying around rocks?”
Bull grunted. Shink. “Yep.”
“What for?”
Shink. He paused, and his horns cut a shadow across Tilda’s face as he cocked his head. “Huh. Interesting.”
Tilda hummed in question, impatient fingers tapping curiosity against Bull’s shin.
“I dunno, boss.” She could hear the shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s pretty magey. I don’t think you wanna know.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Figures. Can’t even keep the Fade away from rocks.”
Shink . “Preachin’ to the choir, boss.”
The fire popped again, this time the hiss and crackle of coals. She scrambled upright. Curiosity and Solas were constant, after all—roasting potatoes was now.
They killed the wyvern at first light, while it and its younglings were still slow and heavy with sleep. Solas wrapped the liver carefully for Judith and they headed south toward her cabin, closing a couple of rifts along the way. They were well-practiced at it by now, but Tilda was still shaking out a cramp in her wrist when they stumbled across Butcher’s lyrium-ridden corpse.
“Damn,” she muttered, kneeling over his remains. She recognized the feel of blood-soaked parchment and passed the missive off to Cole, who murmured its contents to her. “Dragon’ll have to wait, Bull. Charter needs to hear this. Probably all the way back to Skyhold, if he was as relevant as she said.”
So they dropped the liver with Judith and turned back, leaving her cabin in the dragon’s shadow. Charter accepted the grim news with just a nod and agreed to send a few clever archers to harry the beast away until the Inquisitor could deal with it properly. So they began the familiar trek back up into the mountains.
“We must move carefully,” Leliana said. They were alone in the war room and her irritation palpable, even as she stared away from the Inquisitor, out the window. Tilda knew the feeling; betrayal, of any kind, was never something easily swallowed.
“To have escaped my detection for so long…” the leather of the spymaster’s gloves creaked as her hand clenched. “This traitor is a master of the craft.”
“We are better,” Tilda said confidently. She flicked a speck of scum from between her teeth and pointed her dagger toward the Ferelden side of the map-shaped smudge on the war table. “We will weed them out, and their motivations. Find who filled their pockets, and we will be more secure for having stopped the gap.”
“Of course.” Leliana stared at the map, though Tilda could still feel her guilt, the bend of it now as it had been after the deaths of her people at Haven.
“We will find them,” she reiterated. “Make them pay, and we will turn their foolish betrayal to our advantage.”
“Of course, Inquisitor.”
Tilda found her way out of the war room, thinking perhaps a visit to Dagna was in order. Perhaps a fresh set of arrows in the vein of dragon-slaying before their return to Crestwood. But instead her feet found their way to the rotunda, where a second section of wall now bore the swipes and shades of Solas’ handiwork. It was definitely different, but no clearer to her than the first. Still, Tilda came to stand at its base and craned her neck up at the indiscernible design.
“Ah, Inquisitor.” Scaffolding creaked as Solas descended, sounding pleased. His presence at her shoulder felt eager, but restrained, like a puppy performing a newly-learned trick. “Do you have a moment?”
“As good as.”
“Excellent. If you would?” He brushed her shoulder with a gesture and Tilda followed the motion to his settee, which aligned now with the back of his desk. The vantage point allowed her to sit and look up at the blobs of his painting; she recalled, as she sat, his wish to describe the designs to her. With a smile, she crossed her legs beneath her and waited.
But instead of his voice, something solid and heavy slid into her hands. She saw the shape of Solas kneeling before her, supporting the back of the slab as her fingers explored its roughened top.
No—not roughened. Carved , expertly so, in certain shapes in specific ways. Long, protruding spikes striking downward and a variation of textures. Though she could discern something of a pattern from her touch, she raised a quizzical brow at Solas.
“I realized,” he began haltingly, clearing his throat. “Well. To tell your story is a worthwhile goal, but I would have you see what I have to say. In that, I must produce in a medium that you can experience as I intend it. So this—“ he gestured to the first of the painted walls behind him “—I have carved into stone. I would still describe it for you, as any artist might explain their intent but—“
His lithe fingers covered her stubby, scarred ones. “In this way, you can feel it for yourself as I do.”
She saw it clearer, then, through the sensitive tips of her fingers. How the stone dipped and swelled in time with the brighter shades on the wall; how the blobs depicted above sharpened into edges and shapes when she felt their placement in his carving. She flexed her fingers taught, palms flat against Solas’ handiwork, breath held between them for one long moment.
Then she surged the barest space that separated them and her roughened, chapped lips met his. The kiss was chaste, but poignant; a moment where he might pull away, as he often had, but instead melted into her, his free hand covering the side of her cheek.
His laugh rumbled across her face when they finally pulled apart and she did not hide the smile that answered it.
“You like the idea, I take it?”
Tilda nipped affectionately at his lip. “You went through some effort to create this— twice . I would have you tell me of it.”
“As you say.” Solas’ hands covered hers, guiding them specifically to the center top of the slab. Beneath her fingertips, Tilda felt nested circles, hatch-marks between them, and a small icon at the very center, spikes and turrets that might have been a castle. Beyond that, broad rays spread out into their more prominent counterparts she’d felt originally.
“It began, as you know, in the Fade,” Solas said softly. Tilda’s nose twitched, but even her reticence at the spirit world could not spoil the moment. He brought her fingers sideways, so she could feel the the swiping horizontal arches that separated the top section from the rest.
“It began with the Breach.”