#ameridan:verse:wintersbreath

[skyheld]

"You can't blame yourself." from asharen to ameridan

ASKBOX MEME 059 / ARCANE S02E07-09 | selectively accepting | @mercysought

It's the second time he leaves a place where he was meant to die.

Stands up on shaking legs, brushes the dust of time off his clothes and picks through the remains of his old life for things he needs to keep. There isn't much left, now. He gave most things away when he joined clan Lavellan, to the few friends he has made in the last ten years, or to the clan itself. He had no need or interest then in riches or treasure. Only a few keepsakes.

Some people watch as he comes out of the aravel. The last few weeks as his strength waned he left is more and more rarely, and while many come to visit him, there are some faces he hasn't seen in all that time --- faces of those he was never close to, or who felt too uncomfortable to sit in a room with a dying person, seeing the way life left him a little bit more each week. When he steps out now with a small pack slung over his shoulder and the staff in his hand, he stands straighter than they've ever seen him. There's strength in his legs, carrying him down the landing, and in the hand that holds his staff. His eyes are unclouded, his lungs draw deep the air of the forest around them. But he doesn't look at those faces, even the ones he loved most dearly. He's afraid they'll turn away.

And anyway, how can he ask for them to look at him? How can he deserve a heartfelt farewell from these people when he failed them so utterly? They took him in so he would be safe, so he would know peace. He risked their lives, allowing a demon to possess him. He brought them war.

Thanks to that they live, but he isn't sure that matters.

"I do not blame myself", he tells Asharen as they meet below the aravel's deck. She sees through him, of course, sees the guilt clawing at him from the inside, but it isn't blame. "I did what I did to save them. Now I live with the consequences. I just wish... I wish there'd been another choice."

Hakkon looking out through his grey eyes, seeing the things he sees and adding his thoughts and emotions to Ameridan's mind, blurring them both. Hakkon coming to him that night when the clan was attacked, Hakkon's strength in his dying body, Hakkon tearing their enemies to shreds, laughing with Ameridan's voice but not his laugh, not his joy in the killing.

He wishes the others didn't have to see it. That they didn't have to look at him now and know that the one they called hahren and bestowed the name of their clan is an abomination. That his back is straight and his hands strong and that he stands in the sunlight again because something else is standing with him.

Ameridan Talvas Lavellan, he was for a while. But he cannot use that name anymore.

"We should be off", he says. A little further away, others are waiting for them to catch up. New faces, but they seem like good people. The one they call Rook has put together a capable group. Harding. He'll need to tell her too when they reach their sanctuary.

He's not sure if it's grief or shame that wells up and fill his eyes with tears, but he turns quickly, lowering his head to brush them away. He wanted to stay here. He didn't want to die, but he was ready to let it happen as he knew it would; he got the peace he always yearned for, and if it had to end, at least it would end in the best way possible. But now all that is different, and that peace is gone.

You are making this so much harder than it is. Hakkon has been quiet in his mind, and now that he speaks it sounds like mockery. And yet he is right in a way. Staying here, thinking about what he's walking away from makes the walking harder. He needs to just leave. Without another word he brushes past Asharen and joins the others, giving a single nod of his head when Rook asks if he's ready for the walk to the nearest eluvian, if those are all his things, is he is alright---

But before they've reached the edge of the camp, where signs of recent battle are still visible, blood drying brown in the grass where Hakkon's battleaxe tore throats and chests open, someone cries out behind them. A girl has escaped her parents' vigilant eyes and come running, calling his name.

Elirin. She's lost two front teeth since last he saw her. When he was strong enough to sit by the fire and tell stories, she'd ask for ones with Da'harel in them, then curl up with her head on his leg and pretend to be a very small wolf while he spoke. Now she wraps her arms around his legs and sobs into them until he manages to untangle himself from her grip so he can crouch down and hug her properly. Her parents wouldn't want him to. They'd worry about the demon. But he can't push her away, and he knows there is no danger.

She's holding a straw hat, like the ones the members of the clan make for themselves and to sell. At first he thinks she must have just been working on it when she saw him leave --- it's clearly her handiwork, childish and clumsy and therefor lovely --- but she presses it into his hands.

"Oh", he says, as his hands close round the brim. "Is it for me?"

She nods, her face set with determination.

There clearly is no fighting that. He would hurt her if he tried to decline. Blinking away more tears he takes the hat and puts it on --- it's a little large, probably not made for him to begin with, but it stays in place if he's careful. There are places where the straw sticks out and places where the woven pattern breaks. He loves it. One of the adult's perfectly crafted hats wouldn't have filled him with as much love as this one. "Thank you", he says, voice brittle. "That should keep me safe from the sun in Antiva."

Satisfied, Elirin turns to run back to her parents. Ameridan straightens up. The straw hat casts a shadow over his face until he turns back to the others, facing the sun.

Ameridan Talvas Lavellan. Maybe he keeps the name, at least for now.

"I'm ready", he says, and this time he feels it. "Let us go."

[skyheld]

"I can see through your tricks." from asharen to ameridan/hakkon

MEME TAG | SELECTIVELY ACCEPTING | @mercysought

"This is the Dreadwolf's doing, I take it", Hakkon says as he pushes an awl through the thick leather of the coat, making a hole for the needle to follow with its red string. "He lied to you, so you learnt to see lies in plain truths. He tricked you, so now you feel tricked when you aren't. You spook at shadows, Frost-thaw."

He sits on the edge, thin legs dangling over the abyss that surrounds the Lighthouse, the gaping maw of the Fade swirling underneath. In his lap, a coat of bear hide, dyed a greyish blue, with the fur on the inside for warmth. It was a gift from the Avvar of Stone-bear Hold and has seen some use lately even here in the north. At the outpost of the dwarves of Kal-Sharok high up in the mountains, where frigid winds blew and snow lay deep as home, a seam was partly torn.

A small thing, easily mended. Ameridan said no word of it when they returned to the Lighthouse; he laid the coat aside to deal with on the morrow and went to sleep. Yet Hakkon needs not sleep, and though the body needs rest he has leave to rise from the bed and find somewhere else to rest, some small activity to perform --- something that will not hinder its recovery but will give him a chance to live the world as his own. Maybe you could read, Ameridan told him, dryly, knowing Hakkon does not read. He is a spirit, used to watching and listening and existing with nothing substantial in his hands, he needs nothing to do.

But he saw the coat draped over the back of a chair and he took it outside.

It is a strange thing, mending. War doesn't mend, it tears, but it comes to him quite easily. He wonders if the knowledge is in Ameridan's hands, but more likely it comes from the Avvar, loom-weavers and skin-stitchers, who prayed him into being. This is armour, after all. Armour-makers, leather-workers, blacksmiths; they are all part of war.

He supposes, from the outside, it looks wrong. Using this body while its true owner sleeps. Perhaps she thinks he's trying to win someone over, doing chores; that this is some attempt to gain sympathy or trust.

She needs not trouble herself, but this he has learnt of Ameridan --- he has something which makes people want to trouble themselves over him. Some quality that makes them care. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he cares. Hakkon would not know. War does not care.

"I would say I am what you see. But you see an enemy, and that I am not." Not now. "All gods are not liars, Frost-thaw, because all of yours have been."

[skyheld]

@mercysought petitioned a very benevolent and humble god

"I thought our meeting overdue, Asharen Frost-thaw."

Cold and callous Hakkon watches the Fade-scarred lady who healed the sky, heart hammering with emotions not his own. Ameridan's spirit is strong even when he slips into the background of their being, listening but not leading; what he feels Hakkon feels, a faraway fire in the depths of them. The heart that isn't his beats with the fear that she will be unforgiving. The hands wants to close around the prayer that she will understand. The head wants to bow while it waits for judgement. The mouth wants to say, again: I am sorry I had to do this. I am sorry you must see me this way.

Yet Ameridan remains silent, as promised, down in the depths of them. Asharen must know who it is she is working with now --- both of them. It is Hakkon who watches the woman who once killed him through pale, piercing eyes, and Hakkon who lifts the head instead of bowing it, mouth set in an insolent quirk.

"I must, at least, apologize." (He feels Ameridan stir in surprise at this, but if he hopes Hakkon would beg forgiveness for his actions, he will be disappointed.) "In my dragon's-pride, ages bound, I did not consider you a worthy foe. I should have challenged you to duel."

A duel? You were a dragon, Ameridan says in his mind. Do not use my mouth to speak nonsense.

[skyheld]

@theodosiani petitioned a very benevolent and humble god

The shift is subtle until it isn't.

It's only halfway through dinner when Ameridan pushes his plate away and slumps back in his chair, withdrawing from the conversation around the table. This is nothing unusual; he eats little and tires early, even with a spirit giving strength beyond what should have been the end.

But a moment later he shakes himself, straightening, and pulls the half-finished plate closer again. His posture has changed. Casual and careless now, one elbow on the table, he shifts one leg to fall over the side of his chair instead of the front.

Why should the war-god not be comfortable? it is not as though he can hide his eyes alight, spirit setting flesh afire.

"Well? Continue the story, teller", Hakkon demands when the silence stretches stringlike, eyes on the mage across the table. "He is still listening, lest you think him so rude as to leave a tale half-heard. He says he is done eating, I say we are not. So I shall eat for the both of us. I wish to hear of your death-magic, how you bested the barons."

[skyheld]

Hakkon quirks a brow.

"Lesser?" he echoes, holding up a slender hand, spotted with old sunlight, as though to look at it anew. "In stature, perhaps. In raw strength. I can fell fewer foes then I did in my last body, it's true. But i am not lesser."

The hand is warrior's hand, but not one he would have chosen to wield. Those narrow fingers have never held a greataxe before and are too weak now to do it without spirit-strength in the sinews. Hakkon was a more fearsome foe when the Dreadwolf last met him, scale-slick and winter-winged, tail a lash and a spear in his frost-fury. And yet...

"War is more than bodies on the battlefield", he says. "I slew thousands in that form, yet I was dragon-bound, chained to her fury... I am more now, while this body holds. Perhaps that is why I see you clearer now." He looks at the Dreadwolf in the dim greyness of the prison, and wonders how he ever thought him fangless. "Then I saw the figurehead, fate and Fade in their hand, but not the true threat behind. Dragon-eyed, all I saw was prey, for to a dragon all things are prey until they meet the one that kills them."

His had been the command to find and bind her, and to call him across the Veil to fill her flesh with frost and beat her wings with war. But her wrath had been greater than he had expected. Her will he could quench, her spirit he fought down but her wrath became his before he knew it. Only when reborn could he see what he lost in her mind. Sense. Honour. When released from the binding spell, weak and bewildered, he could have gathered his remaining followers and fled, north to nurse wounds and numbers until they were ready to strike again. But he had not. He saw no strategy. Like the dragon frightened and furious deep inside her mind, he wanted only to kill.

"I wonder if it is the opposite for you", he says, mouth a snarl at the wolf's lunge. "What did you lose to stand taller than you did then?"

War has become him so utterly, so completely, that he scarcely notices its approach. Its drum has beaten without relent, without rest, since he was inflicted upon the world. Its rhythm is that of his very heart within his chest.

And, as always, he rises to face it.

(He has no other choice).

It wears a different face than he remembers. A face that ought to have been allowed to rest, and yet, like so many of the People, is called to violent purpose. Again, and again, and again. He smiles to see it, though it stretches like a ghost across his face.

"Perhaps it is a matter of perspective- you are lesser now than you were then, after all," he suggests. "Though I have said before that lies are inherent to the lives of every apostate, or at least every successful one. Can there ever be honesty in a world that penalises truth?"

He is no god, but if he were, what better patron than apostates? Liars and tricksters, all, neither part of the world nor separate from it, tethered in some liminal nowhere that has always been his fate. Allowed to touch community, to feel its warmth as one feels sunbeams on the skin, but to never become it.

Solas bristles at the observation. His right hand makes a fist, the left bending to cradle it behind his back.

"I have lived in a cage since before you were a dream in the Avvar's eyes," he seethes, fist trembling behind his back. "Those centuries you spent, impotent, waiting for more capable hands to free you, are but the bat of an eye compared to what I have lived.

"It seems even war breeds complacency. But fear not, Lord of Winter."

Over his right eye, an old scar burns, hot with the memory of his own blood. And hers.

"I will free myself."

[skyheld]

AMERIDAN:VERSE:WINTERSBREATH

VEILGUARD COMPANION VERSE.

Around the time of Solas' ritual, Ameridan has been living with clan Ghilain in northern Orlais for about a year. While he tried to stay in the fight for as long as he could, he no longer has the strength do it; he is, at this point, actively dying, and he knows it. Shortly after the ritual, Keeper Levinia sends a message to the Inquisitor, saying that his health has deteriorated; he barely eats and no longer leaves his bed. She’s seen many old (older) people on their deathbed. This is it. The message is forwarded to Harding, not only because they know each other but also because of its second part: Levinia is also asking for help to defend the clan against bandits, displaced in the chaos after the failed ritual.

Rook will find an eluvian leading to the clan's location. It has just been attacked, but the bandits have all been slain --- cut down mercilessly by someone extremely powerful. As Keeper Levinia points out Ameridan sitting solitary on the outskirts of camp, suspiciously well for someone who was supposed to be dying, she explain that he saved their lives --- and that he has to leave, now. While she has promised the Inquisition she would keep him safe as he lived out the last months of his life in her care, things have changed. She never agreed to harbour an abomination.

Once approached, Ameridan will explain what happened. When Solas attempted his ritual, the disturbance was felt throughout Thedas. That was when Hakkon Wintersbreath, the Avvar god of war who was his enemy so long ago, appeared to him in his dreams. Killed by the Inquisitor a decade prior, Hakkon has been reborn from the prayers of the Avvar, but while powerful he is still unstable. He was drawn not to his worshipers, but to someone he had an even stronger connection to — eight hundred years caught in the same spell. Feeling the Veil weaken and the Fade shiver and maybe the awakening of powers beyond his own, he made an offer.

Ameridan refused it multiple times. Each time it was made more favourably for him --- more desperate from Hakkon. He kept refusing until the clan was attacked, at which point he finally accepted, and took Hakkon's spirit into his own body to give himself his strength back. Now the Keeper wants him gone, and he has no reason to stay. He's strong enough to fight again, and will offer Rook to become a companion. When you go to war against the gods, what better ally than a god of war?

MISC.

he combines his own force and nature magic with Hakkon's skills as a two-handed warrior.

his 'room' at the lighthouse

on the avvar gods

on the deal with hakkon

PERSONAL QUEST TBA.

while Ameridan is too old and, frankly, too stubborn to be easily moved by a single person's decisions, Hakkon as a newly formed spirit is more susceptible to change. If the people around him --- namely the Veilguard and their allies --- are honourable, just and kind, Hakkon will remain so, and honour the deal he made with Ameridan. If, however, they lie, break promises, and use underhanded methods, Hakkon may become more ruthless, and perhaps tempted to break his promises and take control.

[skyheld]

The Inquisitor is uneasy. It's evident in the way she looks at him as though she hopes to see through him, see the person inside of him --- but she will not find him now. It's Hakkon who looks out through his pale eyes, setting the irises aflame in cold frost-fire and making the Chantry sun glow on his forehead. It's Hakkon who pulls the thin lips into a smile, shaking his head slightly.

"I never flatter." When has war ever flattered anyone? War drags people through the dirt of the battlefield and tosses them out either shattered into pieces or hardened into steel. Some may imagine themselves lifted to the heavens by it, having waged their war to take throne and crown, but such illusions fade swiftly. A throne washed in the blood of one's enemies will never lose its stains. A crown wrought from the bones of the slain will sit like a vice on one's brow.

"But fair enough, Frost-thaw", he says, leaning forward slightly, "it would have been an uneven fight. I would have crushed you, and the world would have suffered for it. It is for the best that you slew me then." Death angered him. He'd hated the Inquisitor when first he saw her, and he hated her even more as the death-blow fell, when life went out of his dragon-heart and he, bound to that great beast, felt his own being unravel like the threads of a ruined tapestry. He died as the dragon did, as he'd died many times before, in other shapes, other bodies, other wars.

But there is no anger now. She killed him fairly --- more than fairly, with her three companions against all his might --- and she saved the world. If she hadn't, it would have been the end of the Avvar and thus the end of Hakkon. It's expertly done.

"Still", he leans back again, "it is a shame. I wonder if we would be more evenly matched now, but unfortunately I am not allowed to duel you." Ameridan would make sure of that. So far he and Hakkon too were evenly matched in their minds, though there hadn't yet been a true battle of wills between them. They had a covenant. It had yet to be put to test.

This, he supposes, is what the Inquisitor fears. It's what she's looking for, studying his face --- Ameridan's face --- wondering if he's even still there. And if he is, for how long?

"We have an agreement", Hakkon replies evenly. "The terms are in his favour, because he is stubborn and refused me until both our hands were forced. I do not take control; he grants it." As he speaks, the brow creases, and lines deepen around the mouth. His acceptance of his terms, or even his offering of them, does not negate frustration. "We are speaking now because he wills it."

His face looked wrong. The way that Hakkon wore Ameridan made her feel uncomfortable, and she guessed that was part of the reason why he did it. It was Ameridan's voice, his face, yes. But that mean spirited quirk of the lips was enough to put her off the entire situation.

The concept of possession was not one that she was unfamiliar with. She had read some notes about some cases of possession that worked more like a parasite and host instead of a full, immediate take over. There was Cole, of course, whose existence wasn't so much possession of a living host but of remembering a living host too closely in hopes they could keep living through them. Morrigan herself was in a specific situation that was harder to place, not quite this either but being able to pull from knowledge and feelings that were not truly her own.

If Asharen truly wanted to stretch, she supposed her own situation with the Well of Sorrows could be seen akin to those two situations, however, she would truly need to be stretching to reach such a conclusion.

She is still watching him in silence as he apologises, her brow quirking lightly.

   "You are trying to flatter me." she hums, giving him a clipped smile, holding her brass hand over her flesh one, feeling the coldness of the metal against it. Which was saying something however, he would not be the first God trying to court her ego and she had had enough to those, elvhen, Avvari or otherwise for a lifetime "I am wiser than to fight a dragon one on one, or head-on, for that matter."

She pauses, her brows knitting together for a moment as she studies his face. When she had received the letter from Rook she had feared the worst and now? The fact of more, and more loss was going to continue being a constant in Asharen's life, she knew this, but it didn't mean she wished to see it come to fruition any swifter than necessary. That she saw him walking, that she knew he was in there? And yet to talk to Hakkon, the same dragon that they had slain so many years ago, how long until the tables turned and he would pull the rug from under them? Ameridan and her both.

   "How?..." she starts but her words disappear as she attempts to place her thoughts into line. She takes a good look at him again, lips strained into a line. She could only wonder, for now, given what she knew of Ameridan how much of a difficult thing this had been. If it had been a choice at all "How does it work? Between you and Ameridan."

[skyheld]

@theharellan petitioned a very benevolent and humble god

It is easy for Hakkon to slip between the many-folded furrows of the Veil and find the Dreadwolf down deep in his lament-cage, burden-bound, sorrow-scourged. When his host sleeps he is free to go where he wills, taking the body or not. Down here no body goes, the border cannot be crossed physically, and on the way he considers shedding the form of the elven mage and take on one more familiar, wear the warrior of windblown mountains, or the augur scrying his sacred skies. But the form clings, like clothing tied by a too-worried mother, like war-paint slathered too generously, then left to dry for too long. He enters the prison with a curious side-step, trying to slip out, but finding that it follows.

Ah, well. No matter. War has a thousand and a thousand more faces, and Hakkon wears them all. The grieving father, grave-bent, keening; the orphan fearing the face of her foe. This one, too, he knows. The old commander, worn and wearied, forced to fight once more. He walks proud in that shape, wearing a smile it has never worn.

"You seemed smaller back when you killed me, Dreadwolf", he says by way of greeting, voice his filling the vast Fade-space. It is a good voice, deep and resonant; it carries well. He uses it more liberally than its true owner. "A Dreamer, dull and dreary, staff-bent and sullen. Had I looked closer, would I have seen this then, the cunning trickster?"

Perhaps he had seen. He remembered, after all, when most of the others had faded. Perhaps in his arrogance and anger, awakened after ages bound, Hakkon had only ignored what stood before him.

"Though not so cunning after all, for here we stand in reverse. Infuriating, is it not? To be trapped and trammeled, caught is a cage of your own creation, all because you underestimated your foe. I know. So many times I wished I could stretch my dragon's neck and bite his head clean off his shoulders." He is not gloating, unless it's in the sense that he is always gloating, because the nature of war is to gloat over the defeated as it drags heavily across to the next border. He is, in his own way, sympathetic. Rebellion, too, is war. He has worn the face of the trickster, the traitor, the truthsayer.

"Fear not. One gets used to it."