[open] I've been down with the coldest war; any

[leliana]

I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

She sleeps in fever dreams.

Wrapped in magic and exhausted from the war, she stays underneath the flowing magma for days. She can feel the earth warm around her and then cool again in response to Brennan’s magic and her fractured mind slowly begins to piece itself together again. As she dreams, she reaches for Vulgaris, trying to find his subconscious but she continues to come up empty handed. Where, before, she had been able to find him in her dreams, this time, she finds only the darkness. She finds nothing but the abyss.

And her mind reaches a crossroads because of it. 

She could go one way and find her way back to her old self. She could discard the magic into the soil of Tephra and emerge as the quiet, mild woman who mothered children and healed strangers. 

She could go another and find a new path entirely. She could cling to her magic and emerge as a warrior; she could take vengeance on Loess for the description they wrought and her losses because of it.

In the end, she chooses neither.

Something within her hardens, the pain calcifying in the pit of her stomach. The rest of her continues to flow around it, pieces of herself breaking off and blooming in her chest. She clenches the agony of losing Vulgaris until it becomes a knife that slides into her ribs and pierces her lungs. She solidifies herself around the ache, wrapping herself around her heart until she can no longer hear the scream of it.

When the days have passed and the magma has hardened, her eyes finally open. 

They are no longer golden and they no longer glow; instead, they are as white as the ash that continues to fall from the sky. Above her, the ground begins to crack open, splintering as the bubble that she has been wrapped in begins to float upward. Within seconds, it blossoms open and she stands in the middle of it.

The sky above her is stone grey and the volcano lies dormant. The majority of Tephra lies quiet and sullen, the ground beneath her thick with the same ash that continues to float through the air. The flowers in her hair are no longer the crimson orchids they were before but instead are clusters of white, small and delicate. She takes a deep breath and turns her gaze outward, to where the rest of the land waits.

She can feel the faintest beat of her heart in her chest and in it, she knows that she can feel the wound of Vulgaris that still bleeds, the self-loathing that rages, the mourning for the damage caused. But she closes herself off to it. Her mind hardens, her heart retreats and she focuses instead on what she can manage.

Beneath her hooves, flowers begin to blossom, emerging ashen through the cracked, cooled magma.

She would rebuild.

Queen of the ashes. But only for now.

This is taking place several days after the war thread and everyone can continue to respond to that. I am just impatient and have zero chill. Anyone who wants to come back to Tephra is welcome to reply. <3