Chapter 152: Triggered

***Trigger Warning: Descriptions of torture and sexual assault**

When we woke the next morning, after transferring the mana from six exhausted templars back to me, we got started on ‘the plan’ for dealing with the Architect.

The first step to our plan was simple – yet difficult. We needed someone who could carve stone.

In that effort, it turned out both Bel and Jowan were indispensable. Jowan had demonstrated a keen affinity to earth magic – apparently different than the typical spells taught in the Circle, which was why he’d never known it – and Avernus had helped him hone them to a fine edge over the months Jowan had spent at the Peak. And Bel’s stone sense was the strongest after Faren, and he had an instinctive understanding of what properties any given piece of stone had without requiring samples or direct sight.

The two men – mage and warrior, human and dwarf – were sent into the mines with a contingent of soldiers to help them with some of the labour. With a single morning’s work, they had identified a section of stone strong enough to withstand what we had in mind, and Jowan had used his magic to carve an enormous stone block out of the wall of a little-used tunnel. It was nearly ten feet long, four feet wide and six feet tall, and heavy enough to require a whole squad of soldiers using ropes and rollers to bring the thing up to the fortress.

Once there, an exhausted Jowan took a nap and a Lyrium potion before carving the massive block further – into a sarcophagus, complete with tightly fitted lid. Each wall was nearly a foot thick, and the lid alone would take several strong warrior-types (or a strong mage or two) to lift. When requested, Alim provided some sort of magic to assist the carrying, making the block lighter, and it was slowly, carefully brought inside and up the stairs to Avernus’ tower. I’m glad most of this tower – including the stairs – is made of stone, or it might not be strong enough to support it!

The next step belonged to Greagoir’s templars, Tranquil, and mages. With the exception of the six templars who’d been awake all night, they were well-rested and ready to work. Up in Avernus’ tower, in the library outside the room the Architect slumbered in, they began preparations. The goal was to cover every inch of the inside of the sarcophagus with the Lyrium-etched runes that prevented magic use.

None of us were allowed to be present for the process; Greagoir was paranoid about the knowledge escaping from Chantry control. His own mages were only allowed to be there for their specific parts; certain mages performed certain spells one day, others different spells on different days. Even the templars and Tranquil rotated through as needed – not any one person, with the exception of Greagoir himself, knew the entire procedure.

It took four days in total. During that time, Avernus and Jowan isolated themselves in his lab to prepare, but the rest of the Peak had settled in and turned to routine activities. The issue of Justice and Vander had been put on the backburner once Avernus had declared himself too busy to deal with it – though I guessed it was his way of not admitting that he knew nothing that could help us. I was disappointed, if not totally surprised. Guards and Wardens got used to patrol routes and the boring business of standing outside important doors. Aedan and Alistair spent hours in meetings – both private, with just the two of them planning the future, and with each Warden individually to ascertain their desires and goals, as well as document their skills and formalise training requirements.

And I finally got to see Solona.

The mage sent Anders to deliver an invitation; she wasn’t willing to come out of her room, and had seen no one but her lover since they’d arrived from the Circle. Aedan and Alistair were hoping to get to speak with her, but understanding her ordeal, were willing to be patient. There was no rush.

I knocked on her door lightly, after Anders had requested that I visit; I still hadn’t really heard much about what happened – by her request, as she’d asked the few who knew much to keep it to themselves. I had no idea what to expect. I could feel her inside her room, though, taint unchanged from before. She opened her door almost immediately, standing behind the thick wooden plank as it swung open so that no one in the hall would see her. There were two guards at the end of the hall keeping away unwanted guests, but they didn’t have an angle to see her even if she hadn’t been hiding.

Her room was dimly lit with only a few simple candles scattered around; the arcane lamp was unused, and she hadn’t lit a fire in the small hearth. The room was cold, and I was briefly glad for the warmer clothes Leliana had thoughtfully ordered for me before she’d left. Solona looked comfortable despite the chill, wearing only a robe that covered her from neck to wrists and was long enough to drag on the floor.

I examined the woman curiously as she gestured to the one chair and seated herself on the bed. She was pale, her hair dull and messy, instead of shiny and smooth as it normally was. There were dark circles under her eyes, and I wondered if she’d been sleeping. Her room was messy, with blankets fallen halfway off the bed, a tray with the remnants of a meal that hadn’t been returned to the kitchen on the only table, and dirty clothes strewn on the floor. There was a bedroll on the floor, made up neatly with blankets and pillows. I guess Anders isn’t sharing her bed. It doesn’t feel like that’s a good sign. She pulled her legs up in front of her, gaze flickering around the room as if seeing it for the first time, and her cheeks coloured slightly. Even that embarrassed blush was in improvement over her sallow complexion.

The biggest change, however, was her overall demeanour. Solona normally possessed a quiet grace, an ethereal beauty, but she virtually pulsed with vitality. The person before me shrank from the light, refused to make eye contact, and huddled into as small a ball as she could make. It was a striking change, and it made me feel sick to imagine what she’d been through to make someone like her cower.

I didn’t want to ask – it wasn’t my place, wasn’t anyone’s place to force her to retell that story – but I didn’t have a good idea of what else to talk about. I’m certainly not going to ask if she’s okay – the answer to that is clear and obvious enough without discussion.

I settled on something oblique, but innocuous enough to allow her to deflect if she wished. “Have you been sleeping?”

She flinched at the sound, but then relaxed slightly and cleared her throat. “A little,” she whispered. “Anders has been giving me a sleeping potion to help.”

I nodded encouragingly, wondering if she’d keep going; I wasn’t quite sure why she’d wanted to see me, and as glad as I was so see her, I was still confused and feeling awkward. We sat in silence for a moment that stretched on until it was slightly uncomfortable, while my mind raced, trying to think of what to say next.

Finally she broke the silence. “I need your help.”

“Anything,” I agreed immediately. And I meant it; the poor woman was a Warden because of my recommendation, and she’d been exposed to something horrific as a result. I would deny her nothing within my power. I shuffled the chair forward until I was only a foot from the edge of the bed, and reached my hand out – slowly, cautiously, watching her face the whole time – until I was able to take her hand. She allowed it, eyes wide but not pulling away, and when she finally relaxed and gripped me back, I took a deep breath of relief. “What do you need?”

She stared at our hands distractedly; I wondered if anyone had touched her since she’d woken. Her sunken cheeks and wide eyes made her look somehow childlike, and it triggered a maternal instinct in me that hadn’t been active since the first time I’d seen Blake in Redcliffe. I rose slowly, never letting go of her hand, and shifted to sit beside her on the bed. When she leaned almost instinctively against my side, I put my other arm gently around her shoulders. A shudder ran through her at the contact, and I went to pull away, berating myself silently for pushing too hard, when she turned toward me, buried her face in her free hand, curled into my shoulder, and wailed.

The pure heartache in her voice, the sobs shaking her shoulders, brought tears to my own eyes. I let go of her hand to wrap both arms securely around her, holding her gently and stroking her hair as she cried like the world was ending. “Oh, Solona,” I muttered, rocking her slightly like I would a child. I felt her hands grip the material of my jacket like she was afraid I would leave, and I just let her hold on, resting my cheek on the top of her head and murmured soothing nonsense like Alistair had done for me so many times since I’d come to Thedas.

After a while, she quieted, pulled away, and sniffling, began to talk.

“I don’t want to be a Warden anymore,” she began.

I closed my eyes, feeling guilty and sick; I knew it wasn’t possible, as much as I could wish otherwise. “You don’t have to tell me, Solona. I’ll do anything I can to help you, no matter what. You don’t have to tell.”

“I think I need to. If you ... if you don’t mind? I’d tell someone else, Aedan or Anders, but I can’t ... it needs to be someone who knows, but every time I feel someone with the taint, I think it’s him. Or them. At me again, touching, holding, feeding, trying to change me, to make me into one of those things.” She shuddered again, and I reached for her hands and squeezed them. “You know, but you’re also safe.”

I nodded, reluctant, but unable to deny her anything.

She took a shuddering breath. “They tried to make me a Broodmother ... how he tried. First they gave me magebane that they stole from the templars so I couldn’t cast. And then I wouldn’t eat, so they force-fed me, cut up one of the darkspawn we had killed and shoved it down my throat, but I didn’t change.” She closed her eyes, like it was too difficult to make eye contact when talking about it. “They did ... things to me. And I wouldn’t change. He would get so frustrated, he’d beat me, and then let them have me – two, three at a time. Did you know darkspawn are always ready to ... to ... they don’t need any rest, even.”

She laughed, the sound so bitter and disillusioned and just tired that I couldn’t stand it. “And still I wouldn’t change. Then he’d heal me and start again. I begged him to kill me, and he’d just shake his head sadly, like I was a disappointment to him. Then he’d kill one of them, collect its blood and pour it into my mouth until I had to swallow or I’d drown. I even tried to drown, but I’d end up swallowing involuntarily after I passed out. And then he’d start again.

“He finally decided someone had done something to me, had changed my taint somehow. Made me immune. I assume you guys ‘improved’ upon the Joining formula from the original, somehow?” She glanced at me briefly, and I nodded helplessly. “He was going to leave me there for those creatures to ‘take care’ of while he went off to do research on what he could do to overcome it. I was too good an opportunity to let go, he said – being both a mage and a Warden, and having Anders there to feed to me after. He was preparing to leave and gave me something to make me sleep; when I woke up, we were halfway to the Circle. I was surrounded by the taint, and being held down because apparently I was thrashing. Poor Anders; I lost control of my magic, in my panic, and almost set off a firestorm over the camp. I screamed so loud I tore my vocal cords. Only Rolan stealing my mana stopped me, and then Anders was able to calm me down, heal me, and put me to sleep.”

I suppressed my startled gasp; I hadn’t even known that Rolan knew that particular trick.

Solona took a shuddering breath, finally looking up and meeting my eyes for the first time since I’d stepped into her room. Her face was a mess of tears and snot, not that she seemed to even notice. “Every time I feel someone with the taint nearby, I start having flashbacks. I think it’s him again, or them, and I start shaking and I can’t breathe and...”

I hushed her, reaching out to pull her into a desperate hug. Tears streamed down my face too, and I couldn’t stop them. Even just hearing about it second-hand had me feeling sick, wanting to scream or kill something or both, but Solona needed me, and I wasn’t going to leave her to assuage my own feelings. But rest assured, I’m going to HURT that god-damned Architect before we bury him so deep no one will ever find him.

“I hear you. It’s okay.” I squeezed her, and she squeezed back.

“I lived in the Circle for twenty years without being raped. Lucky me!” She sobbed again, once, before seeming to stifle it and try to pull herself together.