strangers in fate

What was it like for those that had been forgotten? Did they still dream? Were they even able to, so reduced to mere fragments of what they had been in life? Did they simply fade away, gradually rendering the whole of their essence to the forces that held the world together? To the forces that sundered things apart? She didn’t know. No, she wouldn’t know, would she? Mythal had never been forgotten. She had been powerful in life; she had become even more so in death — a legend that had grown in the telling, worshipped and spoken of with reverence.

The Fade had been created out of retribution for her.

Elgar’nan, it seemed, held that same sort of single minded devotion, twisted and mangled though, so that the familiar pieces of him that she recognized were made all the more unfamiliar because of it. Are you still so lonely then that you must cling to my shade to bring you joy and comfort? He wouldn’t see it that way. He never had. The fault was hers, as always. As ever, and Mythal could feel the weight of it bearing down on her now, as she had then.

She glanced up towards the sun again, closing her eyes against the glare.

You share nothing, with no one. I remember it well. I have heard tell that you were too much of a coward to kill me, too weak. Isn’t that why you sent another? Goading, prodding. Perhaps he would see through her and know that she sought a reaction from him. Any sort of reaction in which she could gauge the creature he had become, what sorts of madness cling to his thoughts, his mind. Or perhaps he wouldn’t and she could find some way to thwart him, as she’d once done to Andruil. Weaken him before they met face-to-face. For they would. It was inevitable. Drawn together, like the moon and sun of the Dalish creation myths.

Why not simply destroy my shards and those that held them? Surely that would bring you greater peace than this. To know, for certain, that no one and nothing would further stand in his way. But the Dread Wolf was a formidable foe, and she wanted to know what the despot thought of him, her Feredir, now after all this time.

Mythal smiled then, eyes still closed. What she wanted, and what she expected, were not the same. It would be just like Elgar’nan to ignore her questions.