“I know I’ve mentioned this before, Your Inquisitorialness, but I’m really not built for this.”
Solas glanced over his shoulder at Varric, finding the dwarf barely two steps up the broken battlement the Inquisitor was eagerly scrambling over. He couldn’t blame his companion, they had just slain a dragon after slogging through the stinking fens. They had plenty of excuses to not climb this rubble, but Inquisitor Brynowen Lavellan was nothing if not curious. As much as he enjoyed following her little adventures, he could understand Varric’s agitation.
“I told you,” Bryn chided, the grin audible in her voice, “you didn’t have to join me. I just thought I saw something up here.” A rock tumbled by, loosened by her exploration.
“True, but then you went and got me curious.” Varric heaved a sigh and nodded to himself before continuing to struggle up the slope.
“Do you need some assistance?” Solas offered. “Perhaps Cassandra and I could-“
“Nope.” Varric cut Solas off before he could continue with his teasing. “I’m not giving the Seeker here any reasons to throw me.”
“I would not – “ Cassandra paused to heave herself up the steps a little more, “ – throw you, Varric.”
Before Varric could spew some venom lazily disguised as a joke back at Cassandra, the four of them crested the ridge and were met with their prize.
“That is what we did this for?” Varric huffed, though with exertion or disappointment Solas couldn’t discern. “What even is it?”
“It doesn’t look like anything to me.” Cassandra glanced between the two elves of the party and the…whatever it was.
“It’s a shrine,” Bryn said, her voice soft. “Some of my people were here, worshipping one of our gods.”
Solas glared at the ‘shrine’ – the most pathetic example of such a thing he had ever seen, just a few old baskets and a single stick of incense beside a crudely carved wolf totem. He ground his teeth. It was a ‘shrine’ to him, to Fen’Harel. A joke of a thing, a mockery of veneration he didn’t even want, which made it all the more insulting.
“There’s shrines to your gods all over the Dales,” Varric said, nudging a clump of dirt away from the baskets. “They all look damn near palatial compared to this, what gives?”
Solas watched Bryn closely. Would she revile him like her kin? He wasn’t sure his fragile pride could handle such rejection from the woman he’d come to care so much for. He couldn’t blame her if she did, of course. Her people had filled her head with the lies they passed down as truths. She was proud of her history, as mangled as it was.
Still, he couldn’t help but desperately hope she would surprise him again.
“It’s…complicated.” Bryn sighed and picked up the potato-like wolf figure, wiping some dirt from its face with her thumbs. “This is a dedication to Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf. He’s…not very popular.”
“Not popular as in ‘oh I forgot about that guy,’ or as in ‘man, I hate that guy?’”
Bryn grimaced. “The latter.”
Solas closed his eyes, taking a slow, grounding breath as quietly as possible. His mind flooded with excuses to leave the area, to stop this confrontation, but everything he came up with had one fatal flaw: it would look really weird for him to want to leave the site of some old elven lore, and he would have to explain himself. So, he resigned himself to silence, cursing how predictable he’d let himself become. At least Varric hadn’t made a drinking game about his love of old elven lore. Yet.
“What do you mean?” Cassandra’s Andrastian confusion bled into her voice, “How can you worship a god you hate?”
“The story of the Dread Wolf is...” Bryn sighed again, still gently cleaning the statuette, though it seemed to be less of a cleaning gesture and more of a nervous tick. “He’s complicated. The story goes he sealed away the other gods, cutting my people off from their aid, and let ancient elven civilization fall.”
“That would do it,” Varric said, nodding. “People don’t generally like the one person responsible for everything going to sh*t.”
“He’s known as a god of betrayal, deception, and trickery.” Each word stabbed at Solas’ pride, but he was surprised to find she also seemed to find them distasteful - incorrect, even. “Anything you ask of him will be given, but corrupted. Ask for advice and he’ll steer you in a direction that seems perfect before it completely backfires. Ask him to hunt a monster for you and he’ll only kill it after it’s destroyed your village, that sort of thing. But,” Bryn finally set the little totem down, nestling it just so in the center of the shrine, “he’s still a god. He still has power over the People, and therefore deserves our respect.”
Respect. Not typically the word Solas heard the Dalish use for their relationship. The rest he was used to. He hated all of it, but he was used to it. At least she hadn’t mentioned the giggling yet.
“You’re being awfully quiet, Chuckles,” Varric’s drawl clawed Solas into the conversation. “I mean, you’re usually a fountain of information when it comes to old elf stuff.”
It was unavoidable now.
“I don’t give much thought to Fen’Harel in my studies.” He knew he sounded too stilted, but it was the truth, he didn’t need to study himself, after all. His unwanted title felt strange on his tongue. “He is a lesser figure in the myths and texts compared to the more popular gods, and is typically only mentioned to appease his ire or curse one’s enemies.” He desperately hoped that was enough to keep them from prying any more.
“Curse one’s enemies?” Cassandra echoed, clearly appalled at the perceived savagery of the Dalish.
“It isn’t much different from how you’ve said ‘Maker take you’ to our enemies, Cassandra,” Bryn said, her voice taking on a bit of an edge. “Telling someone off is more impactful when you bring the divine into it.”
“Even more so when said divine is a real bastard, huh?” Varric nudged Solas with his elbow. Solas ignored him.
Cassandra shook her head, still clearly not understanding the foreign tradition. “If that is true, why is there a shrine to him at all?”
“Some of my people think he can be appeased. A little token here and there as an offering to keep the peace.” With a sad little smile, Bryn summoned a spark of magic and lit the incense. It took a few tries in the rank humidity, but she kept at it until a healthy stream of smoke rose to the heavens. “So many of my people are scared of him. Putting up offerings like this far away from camp to keep him away, like throwing meat to the wolves.”
Before he could stop himself, Solas asked, “And you?”
“I always thought he was just lonely. I mean…” She huffed, her typical response to being asked about her beliefs by someone she knew was going to judge her severely, she did the same any time Cassandra questioned her. “He’s the only one of the gods left in this world, if you believe the story. Allegedly, he hated the old elves, locking away the other gods just to spite them, but that also left him stranded from his kind.”
“You pity him?” Solas could barely keep the disgust restrained in his voice. He was sure too much had slipped through, but none of his companions seemed to notice. He hated the usual response of fear or anger. He hadn’t considered being pitiful – the thought alone shook his damnable pride.
Bryn lifted her shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “It just never made sense to me that he would do such a thing ‘just because,’ just to inconvenience some people he disliked. There must have been more to it.”
“More doesn’t necessarily mean good, Waffles.” Varric shuffled to look down the slope they’d just scaled, evidently deciding he was done with the place.
“True.” Solas watched as Bryn closed her eyes in what appeared to be a moment of reverence, evidently offering a silent prayer at the makeshift shrine. “But I don’t want to make a real judgement before I know more. Considering I probably never will, I’d rather give him the benefit of the doubt.” She snorted a little laugh, turning to join Varric in the scrabble down the rubble. “If only to appease him, I guess.”
Solas remained at the top of the ruin, letting his companions descend first while he mulled over the conversation.
Once again, Bryn had surprised him. He never expected to hear such sympathy from any of the Dalish, their fanatical adherence to their idea of tradition had perverted the stories into children’s tales of good versus evil, with him squarely in the latter category. Yet there she was, a proud and true modern Dalish elf, suggesting that the story was more nuanced – suggesting he might not have been as wicked as the stories said.
More importantly, she had taken the time to clean up the shrine, light the incense, and pray over it. He didn’t hear her prayer, no matter what the Dalish thought it simply didn’t work that way, but the gesture alone was…touching.
Perhaps one day he would find the courage to tell her how much her little gesture meant to him.
For the moment, though, he resigned himself to the imminent mud between his toes as he slid down the rubble to rejoin the group in the fens.
