The council was shocked to hear of the possibility of a Qunari invasion, and again, they brought as many people as possible to try and solve the problem.
“We haven't found anything,” Leliana said. “But if they are simply scouting ahead, it's unlikely that we would.”
“The Ben-hassrath are better even than your spies, Nightingale?” Briala asked, her eyebrows raised and a smirk playing about her lips.
Leliana simply nodded. “They are more ruthless than anything I could imagine,” she said.
Briala was taken aback.
“Well, if it was a full-on invasion, they'd be pretty obvious about it,” Bull said. “So you might be able to head it off.”
Merrill covered her mouth with one hand. “We've been having more of the strange eluvian problems,” she said.
“It is entirely possible for the Qunari to re-open an eluvian and break into the network,” Solas said. “The network was never as far as Par Vollen, but it reached as far north as Tevinter--”
“And the Qunari would already have a vested interest in dealing with Tevinter,” Dorian said. “I don't think any Tevinter could have re-activated an eluvian--they'd have mentioned it--but it's more than likely that someone has kept one in good shape.”
“Meaning that the Qunari may acquire one, yes.”
“So,” Arethin said. “What do we do?”
“Corypheus is still the main priority,” Vivienne said. “The Qunari appear to be moving much slower, and with less disastrous intent.”
“I agree,” Leliana said. “The Qunari seek to conquer. Corypheus seeks to destroy.”
“Corypheus is also in possession of an extremely powerful artifact he has little idea how to use,” Solas said. “He must be dealt with before anything else—I would not advise waiting.”
“Is there any possibility of allying with the Qunari?” Cassandra asked. “Any at all? Could we deter them from invading--”
“No, not likely,” Bull said. “The big problem is—well, the Qun kind of works like the Chantry. They're both ideas that need to spread.”
“The Chant of Light is rather different than the Qun,” Dorian said.
“How so?” Solas said. “They both involve imposing a foreign ideology upon people who do not wish it.”
“That is not true,” Cassandra said. “The Chant has never been forced--”
“Don't be ridiculous,” Ambassador Yara said. “We don't really need to have a lesson in the Exalted Marches, do we?”
“Or the annulment of Dairsmuid?” Fiona asked.
“Fiona, darling, as usual you misunderstand things,” Vivienne said, tutting.
“Really? So you can somehow justify wholesale slaughter of innocent people for the terrible crime of letting their families see them?”
“People have many justifications for such things,” Solas said.
“Enough,” Arethin said. “Iron Bull, there's really no stopping them if they get it into their heads to invade?”
“Not really, no,” Bull said. “And the south has less of a chance than Tevinter against them. Tevinter and the Qunari are pretty evenly matched, hate to say it—the south? Not so much.”
“Perfect,” Arethin sighed. “Would they just ignore Tevinter entirely and invade us? Could they do that?”
“If they had access to your eluvians, they could,” Bull said. “As it is now, it'd be a lot harder, but that dreadnought...” he shook his head.
“It's interesting—I never got the impression that they would try and take the south before Tevinter,” Dorian said, his brow furrowed. “Of course, if they did, they could try and take Tevinter from two sides, not just one, but still...it's a rather extreme strategy, and there are many ways it could go wrong.”
“The Breach spooked them,” Bull said. “That's way more dangerous than any of the crap the 'Vints have been doing for the last hundred years.”
“How do we prepare for them?” Leliana said.
“We'd need to have more information first," Bull said. “We can't do anything if we don't have that.”
“We should look into the eluvian network,” Arethin said.
Merrill nodded. “I'll try and find who's been using it,” she said. “I've already told some people to keep an eye on the ones that have gone dark, and we're guarding the active one.”
“Orzammar will send more people to help with that,” Ambassador Vhelan said.
The peace talks in Halam'shiral were still not for some time, and they still had minimal information to go on about either the Venatori or the Qunari. Getting alliances in Orlais was cruicial—Briala could only do so much. Giuseppina had contacts within the remnants of the Chantry, much like Giselle, Leliana, and Cassandra. It was important that the business with the Qunari be handled relatively quietly, so the Alliance did not lose what ties they had gained.
Arethin suggested that they see what eluvians had been tampered with themselves, meanwhile, Leliana and Josephine could deal with Orlais. Leliana could also investigate the Venatori, with some assistance from Dorian and Vivienne, and with those things covered, this freed Arethin to investigate the eluvian network. Merrill agreed to show her which ones were the real problems.
Arethin followed Merrill into the Crossroads. With her she took Sera, Iron Bull, Varric and Solas, as they would be the least harmed by the affects of the place.
Everyone except for Arethin was still uncertain about Solas, but the fact remained that he, like Merrill, knew the eluvian network very well, including the dark ones that hadn't yet been explored. He also had a working knowledge of how eluvians functioned, unlike the other mages.
It took two whole hours to reach one of the problem eluvians. The Crossroads were absolutely massive, with some eluvians only existing to take one to other parts of it. Even though they shortened traveling time considerably, in some ways going through the Crossroads was like taking a hike through the wilderness, especially considering how many ruins and overgrown plants there were.
“Here's one of the ones that went dark,” Merrill gestured to the eluvian, which was indeed still dark. “We never awakened it to begin with, but I knew when it activated.”
"How?" Varric asked, raising his eyebrows. "You only just got it to work when I last saw you, now you know when they turn on and off?"
Merrill nodded. "You have to be--um--well, I suppose attuned to the Crossroads and the network is the way to put it," she explained. "If one wakes up, it sends a sort of...ripple through the Fade, like a rock thrown into a pond. That's how I can tell if one is working or not."
“This would have lead further north,” Solas said, touching the frame.
“How far north?” Arethin asked.
“Very far—well into Tevinter territory.”
“So we wouldn't have bothered with them anyway,” Merrill said with a nod. “I see. How did you know where it would go?”
“The frame,” Solas said. “Do you see?” he pointed to the top of the frame, which was inscribed with plants and animals. “The eluvians within the crossroads have images on them which tell one where they might go.”
“They couldn't just write on 'em?” Sera demanded.
“Concepts in Elvhenan were more easily inscribed in images, rather than words,” Solas explained.
“But there are still books,” Merrill said.
Solas nodded. “Yes, but as I understand it, written Elvhenan was...recent. It originally began as hieroglyphs and images. Much of the meaning would also have a reflection in the Fade.”
“Can you wake it up?” Arethin asked, glancing from Merrill to Solas. “Maybe we can see where it leads.”
Merrill pursed her lips, examining the eluvian. “Usually I try to activate ones that I know where the destination is,” she said. “But..not always.”
There was a thrum of magic in the air, and the eluvian lit up, glowing soft purple.
“Thank you, Keeper,” Arethin said.
Merrill beamed.
“Come on, then,” she said.
They came out to a large stone bridge. It was nighttime, and the building before them had several windows that were alight. It was a curious place, some of the stonework recent, but mostly it was old.
Solas examined the place intently as they continued on.
“What is it?” Arethin asked.
“I recognize this place,” he said, and they all looked at him.
“Where are we?”
“This was one of my fortresses,” Solas said, frowning.
“What would the Qunari be doing here?”
He shook his head. “I could not say.”
They went forward, but very carefully. Though there were lights in the fortress, there did not seem to be anyone there.
Bull shook his head, frowning.
“Something wrong?” Arethin asked.
“This is weird,” he said.
“How so?”
“There should be more people here...they all left in a hurry to leave the lights on. They might have seen us coming."
Arethin fingered her staff, wary.
They came to a huge pile of broken glass.
“What's all this?” Sera muttered, kicking one of the shards with her boot.
Merrill spotted an empty frame. “Eluvians!” she exclaimed, looking around and seeing more empty frames. “They're all broken eluvians.”
“Where did they get all of these?” Arethin knelt down to brush one of the eluvian shards with a hand.
“Ruins to the north, perhaps," Solas said.
“And they're all just...here,” Merrill murmured, picking up a shard.
“Isn't it dangerous to leave magic just lyin' around like this?” Sera demanded. “Thought the Qunari didn't like all of that.”
“They shouldn't,” Bull said. “Most magical artifacts are kept under lock and key, not just...lying around.”
“Then this doesn't make sense,” Arethin said.
“No,” Bull agreed. “Not unless something's gone wrong.”
They continued on, past the eluvians. The place was still empty, and things were left lying around, left in a hurry. They came at last to a large, open chamber.
The room was vast, the ceiling vaulting far overhead.
On a ledge above the room, there was an eluvian that glowed faintly.
“That one's active,” Arethin said, pointing.
They started towards the active eluvian, when someone came through the other side. On the ledge, a huge Qunari woman appeared. She was tall, even for a Qunari, dressed in heavy Qunari armor.
The woman narrowed her eyes.
“You,” she said, looking down at Arethin.
Arethin stepped forward.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Who are you?”
“Viddasala,” Bull breathed.
“You, the one they call Herald,” the Viddasala curled her lip. “But for you, we could have guided the south along the peaceful path. Now must come the way of blades.”
“Is that so?” Arethin said, folding her arms.
The Viddasala nodded.
“Couldn't you have just talked to us first?” Varric asked. “The Arishok in Kirkwall didn't go for invasion for years.”
The Viddasala ignored him, centering her gaze on Arethin. “Surely you know this magic is unnatural,” she said. “Had you any sense of the correct path, you would remove yourself from this.”
“Why?” Arethin asked, scowling. “Because you don't like magic?”
“Magic is dangerous. It is wrong. He who set the Veil knew this—that is why it exists.”
“No,” Solas stepped forward. “That is not true.”
The Viddasala stared down at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “We have heard that you believe your bas god walks among you,” she said. “Or your ancestor. This cannot be true.”
“How would you know?” Arethin asked, raising her eyebrow. “You don't know magic. You do not know us. You choose to fear what you don't understand.”
The Viddasala's lip curled. “If you will not see the truth, you cannot be made to,” she said, shaking her head. “Kill them,” the Viddasala turned her back on them.
The Qunari turned on them.
Arethin's group backed up.
The Qunari did not slow down, did not stop. Sera sunk her arrows into many of them, and only when she started aiming for throats and eye sockets did that do more than slow them down.
At last, however, the Qunari were defeated. Only one was still alive, vainly trying to staunch the flow of blood from his abdomen.
Arethin stepped on the Qunari's chest. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “How did you waken the eluvians?”
The Qunari snarled and spat at her.
“How?”
The Qunari died, and Arethin sighed.
“Now what?” she muttered.
“Who was that, Bull?” Sera asked, pointing to where the Viddasala had left.
“The Viddasala,” Bull rumbled. “She's the one you talk to about magic.”
“And she's here to...what? Why would she be here?”
“Scout ahead, most likely,” Bull explained.
“Come on, then!” Sera exclaimed. “We need to find her!”
They went through the eluvian that she had gone through, back into the Crossroads.
“Is there a way to track her?” Arethin asked. “I don't know where we are...”
“This place isn't—I've never been to this part before,” Merrill said, looking around. “I bet if we find the closest one that's lit up, we'll find her.”
“Or the one that has most recently used magic,” Solas pointed out.
Merrill nodded. She looked around, till she spotted an eluvian that was a hair brighter than the other ones. “There!” she said, pointing, and they hurried over to it.
Merrill ran her hands over the eluvian, and it blinked back to life again. They went through it, and found themselves in a massive cave, lit by lyrium glow..
“Where are we?” Arethin asked.
Merrill shook her head. “Not near the Deep Roads that have been resettled,” she said. They explored the cave, and found that it had signs of being recently occupied, but could find no sign of the occupants. A little further in, and they found a rather curious anachronism.
Against the wall, a large statue of Mythal rose, flanked by a pair of wolves.
“Elvhen ruins?” Arethin muttered. She turned to Solas. “Do you know this place?” she asked.
Solas shook his head. “No, but Mythal had outposts in many places,” he touched the side of one of the wolf statues.
“Why are there wolves?”
“We were...allies. And even after we had parted ways, wolf motifs figured greatly in her artwork.” his mouth twisted, expression uncertain.
“So this was something of Mythal's?”
He inclined his head. “It must have been—perhaps something of an exploratory nature.”
They explored the caves, finding more strange anachronisms indicating that the Elvhen had been here a very long time ago. However, they found no people, at least not at first. There were many indications of people having been there recently, but it took them over an hour to find the first living soul in the caves.
They stumbled across him quite by accident, a human man in plain clothing, who was very startled to see them.
The man stared at them, then backed up several steps.
“Be easy,” Arethin said. “We aren't here to hurt you.” most likely.
“Can you tell us what's going on here?” Merrill asked.
“I—well,” he glanced at all of them. “I'm—I'm with the Qunari,” he admitted.
“They passed through here too?” Merrill asked, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
“Could be more of the Viddasala's people,” Bull said.
The man nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, that's right,” he said. “And you're—who are you?”
“Who do you think would be interested in Qunari meddling with eluvians?” Arethin asked, raising an eyebrow.
The man swallowed, and paled visibly. “The...Herald?” he whispered, eyes drifting down to her left hand.
Arethin snorted. “Don't be ridiculous.”
“But your hand--”
Arethin raised her marked hand. “True. But I'm no Herald.”
“What are you doing here?” Bull asked.
“I—I'm here to mine,” he said.
“For lyrium?”
The man nodded.
“Interesting...” Arethin frowned. “It makes sense that they'd start mining it for themselves.”
“What...what are you here to do?” the man asked. “Are you here to stop the Viddasala?”
Bull glanced at him sharply. “Is that important to you?”
“What the Viddasala wants to do, it's madness,” he said.
“What is it she wants to do?”
The man shifted from foot to foot and bit his lip, avoiding their eyes. “I don't know, not for sure. It's about magic, those—magic mirrors--”
“Eluvians,” Arethin corrected.
“And...the Herald.” the man looked at Arethin's hand again. “You. She's angry about you.”
“Big surprise there,” Sera muttered.
“I see. And what exactly does she intend to do about me?”
“That's—that's the problem,” the man wrung his hands, and they could see lyrium-flecked dirt under his fingernails. “I joined the Qunari to get away from all the madness with the Chantry--!”
“The Chantry?” Arethin stared at him. “What do you mean?”
The man shook his head. “The Viddasala—she's made some kind of partnership with that Divine Themistoclea woman,” he said. “Dunno why, they hate each other at the best of times.”
The others looked at each other, worried.
“I joined the Qunari because I saw what magic could do,” the man continued. “I know its dangers...but this...” he sighed.
Arethin snorted. “If you joined the Qunari to be rid of magic, you can't know very much about it,” she informed him.
He frowned, looking confused. “Aren't you...didn't Andraste say--”
“You're not really good at being Viddethari if you still talk about what Andraste said,” Iron Bull pointed out.
The man sighed. “I suppose not. I've not been very good at a lot of this. Look—the Viddasala and the Divine—I don't know what they're doing. But I know it isn't good--” he shuddered. “Not with those mirrors. Not with the lyrium.”
They left the man to his own devices, and he pointed them to the pits where they mined the lyrium. They continued to find strange Elvhen structures, confirming that this place had been some sort of outpost of Mythal's, long ago. The Qunari had even set up inside some of the structures, making notes on the statues and even the architecture.
“If the Viddasala has a continuing interest in eluvians, it is reasonable that she would be interested in Elvhen ruins,” Solas said. “And if her quest for lyrium lead her to both, it would make sense she would be here.”
“Do you think there's anything here other than eluvians that might be dangerous?” Arethin asked, but Solas shook his head.
“Any weapons or artifacts of greater power would have been kept hidden in Mythal's temples. Likely this was more of an observation outpost—a way to observe dwarves or Titans.”
“Titans?”
“I am not certain if they still exist,” Solas admitted. “They were—creatures the Evanuris did battle with. They have a connection to dwarves, but I don't know exactly what the connection is.”
“Do you know anything about these?” Arethin asked Varric.
Varric shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “I'm know about as much about dwarf history as I do about magic—which isn't a whole lot.”
They explored the caves further, and decided that avoiding any more Qunari here would be a good idea. The fight at the old fortress had been hard enough, and it was entirely likely that this place would have far more people in it. They soon came across mining equipment and corresponding massive chasms and veins of lyrium.
Looking down into the bottom of the mine, they saw a huge system of machines, veins of lyrium standing out in stark blue down into the deep chasm.
“We need to go back,” Arethin said. “We can't do anything about this now.”
“Can't we blow it up?” Sera asked.
“If we wanted to deal with another large number of very angry Qunari, we could,” Arethin said. Sera frowned, this prospect apparently unappealing to her.
“Maybe Red can send someone to do something about it,” Bull pointed out. “She'd be better at doing it quietly.”
“I can be quiet,” Sera grumbled.
“I'm sure you can, but there are party members here who can't be,” Arethin said, gesturing to herself, and then sending a significant look towards Bull and Solas. Solas only rolled his eyes, but Sera grinned. “In any case, we should return before they notice we're here.”
They made their way back through the caves, until they reached the eluvian again.
“Can you make this one go dark so no one can get through it?” Arethin asked Merrill when they were back in the Crossroads.
“I can break it,” Merrill said.
“Do it,” Arethin advised. “We don't need more people coming through here.”
Merrill nodded.
They went back the way they had come, to the area of the Crossroads they recognized, then made their way back to Skyhold, where they convened everyone and explained their story.
“Well?” Cassandra asked. “What have you found?”
“The Qunari aren't invading, yet,” Arethin said.
“But...?”
“But they're gearing up for it,” she said, the set of her mouth grim.
Everyone was in immediate uproar.
“We cannot fight Corypheus and the Qunari at the same time!” Josephine exclaimed.
“An invasion?” Ambassador Vhelan said. “How can you be sure?”
“Enough, everyone!” Arethin raised her hand. “They've been activating eluvians, scouring Elvhen ruins for useful artifacts, and trying to mine their own lyrium.”
“How did they get around us?” Ambassador Yara wanted to know.
“They used eluvians very far from the ones you have been using,” Solas explained. “Quickly activated then shut down again. Remember, the network extends to the northern coast, far beyond the current scope of the Dalish. The Crossroads itself inhabits a similar space—the eluvians so far to the north would be far away from the ones you frequent, and would hold little interest besides.”
“Why are they mining lyrium?” Vhelan asked.
Arethin shook her head. “For their own mages, we think.”
“It's a very volatile and useful substance,” Vhelan said, leaning her chin on her hands. “There are several uses they could have besides for mages.” her brow was furrowed. “However, if we can't anticipate exactly what they need it for...”
“I will have scouts inspect the lyrium mines,” Leliana promised.
“We need to place more guards around the eluvians,” Merrill said, wringing her hands. “I don't like the Qunari just being able to get into any of them...”
“Neither do I,” Arethin said. “If they knew the eluvians for Skyhold or Orzammar...”
“Some of Orzammar's soldiers will guard the eluvians,” the Orzammar ambassador said.
“And the Dalish as well,” Yara agreed.
They decided that observation was the best way to go for now. They would track the eluvian network more closely, and try to keep track of any eluvians that seemed suspicious. There was little else they could do without more information.