Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

In the blue-shaded courtyard of her palace, Mythal stood under her magic’s gossamer canopy and weaved.

It was a protective spell, one meant to shield a city entire. Or at least it would when it was finished—for now it floated gracefully between the trees’ limbs, silvery and slender. Her ladies-in-waiting knelt with their hands dancing industriously, feeding her the raw spool thread by painstaking thread. Mythal took each disparate filament and steered it with a practiced, stern eye, guiding it to its proper place. Each line where it belonged; every part of it important.

Then—a chime lilted. An intruder. Or, no, nothing so harsh. A familiar presence, one that belonged: Solas. Except his soul churned darkly even from this distance, agitated and prickly.

Mythal held back her sigh. “We will finish this later,” she told her ladies, lowering her arms. She waited for them to bow and retreat, then set out herself.

She found Solas pacing furiously in the little garden that was his particular favorite, the one with the lily-covered pond he liked meditating in front of. His harsh movements didn’t suit the environment. His angry aura pressed down and oppressed the air, grim as a stormcloud.

“And what fight did you pick this time?” Mythal asked him, keeping her disapproval airy. For now.

Solas stopped in his tracks, the muscles on his back clenching with tension. “A necessary one.” He looked over his shoulder with one piercing eye. “A final one.”

Alarm gripped Mythal’s belly, though she didn’t let it show. “Don’t speak rashly.” She led Solas to a nearby bench and sat him down—he resisted at first, but gave up in the face of her insistent patience—then cupped his cheek, touched his shoulder with her free hand. Her magic poured forth, calming, healing. “Tell me what happened.”

The frown left Solas’s brow, though his mouth still tightened bitterly. “Elgar’nan happened.”

This time Mythal did sigh, a long and tight-lipped exhale. Her alarm mingled with worry—and with frustration. “I’ve told you not to talk to him alone,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. Fear and anger in one, as always with her. “He brings out the worst in you—in all of us, in truth. His spirit is indomitable; it will eat us before it is eaten.”

“I know it,” Solas admitted tiredly, closing his eyes. He looked so pale. What did Elgar’nan do to him? “I’ve never felt such hate as when I speak with him. Just being around him… it unbalances me. Diminishes me.”

“Then why do it? Why talk to him? You will never change him, no matter how hard you try, what words you use.” Mythal let her magic flow deeper, smoothing all the jagged and hurt edges of his soul. “Leave him to me, and focus on what you can change.”

Sola’s eyes flashed open, all tension instantly returning to his frame. “So I should stay indifferent in the face of injustice?” he demanded, fired-up and loud. Too loud. “He’s calling himself a god, Mythal! He’s using the People as we speak! And most damning of all—he doesn’t feel the slightest guilt over it at all. If we ourselves don’t speak up, who will?”

“Don’t raise your voice at me,” Mythal said coolly. She retracted her arms, took her healing magic with her. “And none of Elgar’nan’s acolytes were coerced. They go to him willingly, to serve him and our kingdom as best they can. Who are you to dictate the trajectory of their free-willed lives?”

“Just because they want to do it doesn’t mean they should!” Solas jumped rudely to his feet and went back to pacing, ignoring Mythal’s offended glare. “Is this the society we want to build? A place where the strong subjugate the weak, and we all close our eyes and pretend it is the natural state of the world?”

“You're exaggerating, as usual,” Mythal said, wrapping herself in cold dignity. “Our kingdom is prospering far beyond anything we ever dreamed of. Thanks to everyone’s hard work.”

“And thanks to the unsung labor we’ve built our foundations on. Or have you forgotten the Titans?”

“That’s—” Mythal winced. “It’s more complicated than that.”

Solas whirled on her. “Is it? You’ve heard their song, Mythal. You know they’re suffering!”

“We didn’t know they were sentient, Solas,” Mythal said, clinging to her calm with gritted teeth. “And now that we do—we can’t just upend the basis of our daily lives like it is nothing. Our existences are intertwined; we need time, and careful effort, before we can begin untangling the knots.”

“And while we wait, what happens as Elgar’nan’s ambitions go unchecked? No,” Solas said, shaking his head, “I cannot allow this to go on, not while it’s in my power to do something. I threw the gauntlet at Elgar’nan’s feet; I am determined to carry out the challenge.”

Pure horror thrummed in Mythal’s veins. “You will do no such thing!” she hissed in terrified fury, grabbing Solas by the shoulder as if she could physically stop him. “Are you listening to me? He will destroy you—and it will destroy us all in the process. We must stay united. We must lead with discussion and discourse before we resort to violence.”

But Solas was unmoved. “Words will not sway tyrants,” he said, his voice deep, his eyes determined. “Only actions will.”

Who was this stranger, gazing at her with such misjudged anger and prideful confidence? Stubborn, unbending, deaf to reason—he never used to be like this, not when they were entwined so peacefully in the Fade. He'd changed, when he'd joined her in embodied life. For the worse.

Mythal stepped back from him, turned her expression as cold and disapproving as a wall encrusted by ice. “Do you know what I see when I look at you, Solas? When I see you so eager to wage a wasteful war? I see him. I see Elgar’nan.”

That, finally, punctured Solas’s confidence. He deflated, the shame obvious on his face. “I—I’m sorry,” he said, sitting down on the bench, his bowed spine the very picture of defeat. “I don’t want to spill anyone’s blood. I just—I feel so...” He stared unseeing at his empty hands. “Helpless.”

His honest dismay was enough to make Mythal thaw. “No one can change the world alone, pup,” she consoled him, going to him and lifting his face with a cupped hand on his cheek. “None of us are meant to. Let me talk to Elgar’nan; he will listen to me.”

Solas didn't look reassured. He gazed back at her, too serious, somber and troubled. “I’m not powerful enough to go against him alone—that much is obvious after today. You must stand by my side.” He took hold of her hands—though his eyes were too determined to fit a supplicant’s. “Please. Promise me.”

Mythal squeezed his thin fingers, a pulse of reassurance, before letting go. “I will fix this,” she promised. “And you—you must promise me you will not go on with that mad plan of yours. Don’t leave the palace until I return.”

Solas hesitated—the signs were there, in the slight twitch of his mouth, his carefully still stance.

“Solas,” Mythal warned, her ire rising.

“I—won’t do anything rash,” Solas said, meeting Mythal’s eyes head-on. His gaze was steady, calm and opaque as the surface of a placid lake. He blinked, just once.

Mythal felt her anger crystallize around her heart, an icy, unforgiving barrier. This conversation was over. “If you want to dance around with words,” she told him contemptuously, with all the finality of a parting blow, “at least learn to do it better.”

She took that anger and nursed it like a splinter, grinding her teeth as she left her palace, went through the Eluvian, arrived at Elgar’nan’s arid lands. The sun burned down mercilessly on her brow, the heat of it like a physical blow. The sky was too blue, bright enough to irritate. She stalked her way up to Elgar’nan’s tastelessly tall tower, ignoring the wheat fields murmuring and swaying at her sides. Her rage was rising, rising, an endless ocean to drown the world entire; her righteousness gave it shape, kept her intent.

She slammed the doors to the atrium open, clearly interrupting some sort of ritual. Acolytes in white and red were kneeling with their arms outstretched, a dozen’s dozen on each side. On a sun-gilded throne sat Elgar’nan with his palms turned skywards, the focus at the center of it all, the endpoint all magic must inevitably flow to. He opened his eyes. He looked surprised to see her—but only for a second. Instantly his expression turned guarded and careful, his magic aggressive and alert. He knew her too well.

“You dared to touch him?” Mythal screamed, dragon wings spreading on her back with the full force of her unfurling fury. “You dared lay hands on him?”

“The bastard came to me!” Elgar’nan roared back at her, rising to his feet with his teeth bared like a wild animal’s. “And I should have done more than touch him—I should have struck him like a pig and fed him his own entrails!”

Mythal screeched. She flew at Elgar’nan with clawed-hands first—the acolytes cried out and fled the punishing gale of her wings, ants running from the hurricane—and struck him with such force the floor cracked under his back. Elgar’nan yelled and punched up with fire-wreathed fists at her ribs, her belly. Mythal’s rage turned incandescent. She reached down and clenched, blood and flesh squelching between her viscera-tainted talons.

She didn’t let go. Didn’t let go when Elgar’nan brought his hands to her neck and squeezed, her thin bones bending under his unstoppable grip. Didn’t let go when the scent and smoke of burning flesh flooded her lungs. She did let go once they started rolling on the floor, fighting for dominance, for the chance to take the high ground and smash each other’s head in like ripe fruit. The smell of spilled blood hung heavy in the air. The smacking sounds that echoed were animalistic, revolting.

“Enough!” Elgar’nan shouted, his hands slippery with Mythal’s blood. He slammed her head again, as if for emphasis. As if she’d ever lose focus. “Do you want us to destroy each other? Is this how it all ends?”

Mythal’s anger sharpened into a thin blade, a vicious instrument. She allowed her talons to retract, her wings to furl back. They both panted in the aftermath, Elgar’nan sweating and bleeding on his hands and knees on top of her. They stared at each other. The room was silent. Empty.

Mythal waited for Elgar’nan to sit back with a sigh, to lower his guard—then pierced his chest with a spell-wrought spear of luminescent magic.

“You will not harm him again,” Mythal thundered, powerful in her righteousness. “Say it.”

Elgar’nan’s roar was an inarticulate bellow of pain and rage. He tried to move—only for his flesh to rend and heal again, keeping him eternally trapped. His eyes were wild and frenzied with his fury. His chest heaved.

“Say it.”

The tendons on Elgar’nan’s neck flexed and bulged. “Fine!” he snarled. “Fine, you witch! You win.”

“Say the words, Elgar’nan.” Mythal’s voice boomed with full the weight of Justice. “Swear it to me.”

Elgar’nan bared his teeth in defiance, his gaze full of hate. He resisted, and he seethed—but eventually, he ceded. “He won’t die by my hand,” he said, mullish and ungracious, but with his words still ringing with power.

A loophole, Mythal knew, and one easily abused. But to push him any further would break their careful balance, lead them back to devouring each other. Truly, life was made of compromises. “Very well,” she said, and released him from her brutal shackles. “I bind you to it.”

Elgar’nan pushed to his feet and cursed, putting some distance between them. He staggered over to his throne, then collapsed on it with a sigh and a truly kingly grumble. “I should have left you in the Fade to rot,” he muttered darkly.

Mythal snorted. “As if you could manage even half of this without me.” She rose to her feet and calmly smoothed her clothes, wiping off the blood with a small wave. “Now. What exactly did Solas do?”

Elgar’nan had been lying back on his seat with his body loose and slack; now he tensed up in an instant, his fists erupting white-hot fire. “He spat at me!” he shouted in a fury. “I offered him the hand of friendship and he slapped it! Ungrateful dog! I should reach into his belly and carve out his intestines!”

“Yes, yes.” Mythal perched on Elgar’nan’s thigh and brought a soothing hand against his chest, petting him until the fire in his hands banked and quieted. “But his words, his complaints. What were they?”

Elgar’nan made a dismissive sound of disgust somewhere in his throat. “What else? The Titans.”

Mythal briefly closed her eyes. “And?”

“...My acolytes,” Elgar’nan said after a sulky pause. “He disapproves of how I use them. Or the fact that I use them at all.”

“Well, darling, you do treat them quite harshly.”

“They’re mine to do as I wish to!”

“Of course,” Mythal pacified him, carding her fingers through his hair, bringing her palm up to his cheek. Her magic flowed continuously, a healing stream. “But they’re still of the People. Don’t you think you’re being wasteful? Sacrifice should have intention guiding it.”

Elgar’nan grunted ill-naturedly, but otherwise didn’t contradict her. Mythal took it as a victory. She caressed his arm with sweet magic in reward, trailed her hand down his gradually calming chest—and when she reached his stomach his hard cock leapt at her palm, already twitching.

Mythal smirked. The man’s moods were as fickle as the spring wind. “And the religious theme is crude as well,” she added, pressing down to encourage him. “No need to muddle the waters.”

“The People like it.” Elgar’nan relaxed into his throne, opening his legs wider. “It makes them feel like they’re part of it all.”

“They are part of it all,” Mythal said archly, squeezing him harder than she needed to.

Elgar’nan’s groan turned into a laugh. “Yes, yes. You know what I mean.” He waved a hand, his free one snaking idly up her hip. “Acolytes, priests, worshipers—these are all just words. What matters is their function. Our society needs order, needs discipline. It’s not enough to simply live through life; we must look to the future, and actively shape it.”

“Ruling with a plan in mind is always prudent,” Mythal agreed, pleased to at last hear some reason. “The matter is finding one we can all approve of.”

Elgar’nan smiled slyly, his dark eyes dancing. “I already have one.”

“Yes?” Mythal drawled.

“It’s simple: we divide the People amongst ourselves. We each have our own followers—fairly shared, of course—and as such our own unique responsibilities. The followers give us power; our power feeds back into Arlathan. All magic flows through us. And so, Elvhenan’s path is carved.”

Mythal paused. “I already have a court,” she said cautiously. “I don’t need more people.”

Elgar’nan snorted. “You have some crones to weave you blankets. I’m talking about real power, Mythal. Followers to carry out your will, the way our limbs follow the mind. Instruments, to enact your judgement. Think about it: your very own adjudicators spread-out over the continent, defending the trodden-upon, disciplining the wrongdoers. And all done in your all-wise name.”

Mythal thought about it. She thought of the supplicants that came to her, bowed from regret or guilt or grief, beseeching her to guide them back on the path of righteousness. She thought of the cowards that fled their punishment now having nowhere to go, no place shielded from her knowing gaze. She thought of herself, a shining light. She thought of Arlathan, bright and unblemished.

She looked down at Elgar’nan. She’d known him for what felt like countless ages, as spirit and body both, and knew that this was when he was the most dangerous. Not when he was raging; when his dark eyes were calm, clever, calculating. Divining the winning hand from the far-flung future and knowing exactly how to claim it. His foregone victory, a reality.

“Well?” Elgar’nan pressed—pressing with his fingers too, those filthy fingers, stained with Mythal’s own blood. But hot as well, and skilled, rubbing at the exact right spot. Infuriating, the way he knew her.

Mythal smacked Elgar’nan’s hand away and shoved him against his throne, slamming both palms against his chest. She straddled him properly. Worked at his belt. “I’m not saying I’m agreeing to this yet.” Her own skirts were easier to manage, roughly shoved aside. “But if I were to agree.” She sank down on him, slow but inexorable, not stopping even when her thighs tensed and twitched, her eyelids fluttering. “How exactly would this work? ‘Fairly shared’, you said?”

“Oh, I’m leaving the logistics up to you, my dear,” Elgar’nan said breathlessly, watching her with hooded eyes. He stayed obediently still, letting her control the rhythm. “I have nothing but absolute faith in your fair-mindedness.”

The size of him. Mythal had somehow forgotten. “The People themselves will have to decide who to follow,” she said through clenched teeth, pushing past the intimate burn. “No manipulation. No poaching.”

“Very well. But once pledged their service is eternal, and their duties under each ruler’s purview. No meddling.”

“We’ll each need a domain, a personal demesne”—Mythal’s breath left her in gasps, sweat pooling on her temples—”it will be our—our responsibility to propagate the proper ideals—”

“Let me guess—Justice for you? And I suppose Andruil can take all the brainless warriors.”

Mythal laughed. The motion travelled through her body, down her core, between her legs. “The best brainless warriors, if you please. This should be an honor bestowed only on those worthy of it.”

“Or a punishment,” Elgar’nan said, his eyes darkening, “for the unworthy ones.”

“There is already punishment enough for that,” Mythal said in a bone-dry tone, her eyebrow raised. “Death.”

Elgar’nan’s white teeth spread in a wicked smile, sly as a snake. “But that is such a waste, don’t you think? By the way,” he added smugly, jerking his hips up, “need a hand?”

Mythal growled. She slapped him; he slapped her back, instantly and with equal force. Mythal dragged his head towards her with both hands and kissed him, biting him hard enough to draw blood.

“Fuck me then,” she murmured against his lips, licking after the taste of metal. “If you can.”

Elgar’nan lifted her up—with just his hands under her hips, pure physical might—and teleported them both, slamming Mythal against the far wall. His cock was still inside her, hot and pulsing. His teeth went for her throat.

Mythal clicked her tongue. “I won’t be manhandled against the wall like some common wench. Take me to a goddamn bed.”

Elgar’nan’s sigh puffed against her neck, but he complied. He teleported them again, this time to his room, and dropped her on his bed. Elgar’nan was already entirely naked, the slattern. Mythal lay back with queenly elegance, lifting her arms and moving, dance-like, her wrists. Her clothes melted away to reveal her beauty, shedding themselves coyly like petals from a flower. She brought a leg up, her arms up over her head. A striking pose.

Elgar’nan smirked down at her with gratifying hunger. He knelt on the bed and moved towards her—but Mythal stopped him with her foot pressed firmly against his chest.

“Lick me first,” she told him.

He didn’t like being ordered, that much was clear. But Mythal knew from experience: it paid to handle Elgar’nan with a firm hand every now and then. It kept him manageable. So she met his glare and pushed back at his strong body, feeling it buck defiantly with restless energy.

But soon enough Elgar’nan relented, as she knew he would. He pulled her towards him with one effortless yank—his physical strength really was a thing to marvel at—and tossed her legs over his shoulders. He bowed his dark head between her thighs.

He could be so generous, when he was so inclined. His tongue laved her from hole to bud, over and over, industrious, shameless. Crass like a beast’s. He gripped her thighs tighter and nuzzled her, delved deeper. The wetness he created in her, his crude saliva mixing with her slickness. Mythal fisted a hand on Elgar’nan’s hair and pushed him down, raised her hips to rut against his mouth. It was rushing towards her, that elusive climax, almost there—and oh, there it was, Elgar’nan’s infernal, infuriating cleverness: he found the perfect spot with his lips and sucked.

Mythal grunted her release—like an animal, like a fucking sow—but the pleasure was too intense for her to worry about it. She jerked her pelvis blindly, wanting to smother Elgar’nan’s very face. He took it in stride, suckled her twitching flesh. Licked her clean, again, again.

When Mythal finally collapsed back on the bed Elgar’nan was still on the prowl, pressing his advantage. He climbed over her body and left bruising lovebites in his trail, on her belly, on her chest. He reached the fullness of her breast and bit and nibbled, dug his teeth around her areola. He sucked at her so viciously Mythal could only cry out—then before her abused nipple could recover he was attacking it again, all lips and heat and savage teeth. That ruthless mouth. She would not admit she liked it.

But she would encourage his rock-hard cock. She reached between them to grab at it, pump at it. She guided it towards her opening—a few more seconds, and he would enter her—

Elgar’nan rose off her and sat back, leaving her cold and indignant. “Lick me first,” he said, his hands on his thighs and his prick a thick, demanding pillar. His eyes were dark and glinting; his smile was mean. “It’s only fair.”

it was unbecoming for a woman of Mythal’s stature to roll her eyes, but the urge was there. She sighed instead, a belly-full of an exhale, though without much annoyance in it. It was an easy enough concession to make to satisfy Elgar’nan’s ego—and hardly an onerous one. For all the man’s faults, his cock never gave her any grief. So Mythal knelt prettily on the bed, tucked her hair behind her ear, and took him in her mouth.

Impossible to deny it in this way, the sheer size of him. Mythal hollowed her cheeks to compensate for his girth, taking him slow and thorough until he stuffed her from lips to throat and still had flesh to spare. She licked as best she could—she knew he liked the gracelessness of it, the vulgar sounds—then swallowed and suckled, made her throat work for it. She didn’t look up—to meet his gaze head-on would feed into his competitiveness—but she listened to his groans, rode out the rocking of his hips. Waiting for his short-fused patience to snap.

Predictably, it didn’t take long. “Enough,” Elgar’nan growled, his palm heavy and possessive on her head. “I want you. Now.”

A small upheaval ensued while they kissed and grabbed each other—Elgar’nan wanted her face down, Mythal wanted to ride him again—until they reached a compromise: Mythal on her side with her leg high in the air, Elgar’nan gripping it to his chest and plundering her. Astonishing, the angle of it. The depth of it. Mythal clutched helplessly at the sheets, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

“Fuck,” she groaned. Then could only make animal sounds, guttural, senseless. The lows, this man could drag her to; the indignities, her flesh would stoop her to.

Elgar’nan chuckled from somewhere far away, his hips a piston. “Are you sure you won’t go on your knees for me?” he teased, and took hold of her ankle with one large palm. He bit at the spot under it, then licked it, his breath fire-hot against her skin. “I promise, I will make you sing.”

Tempting. Very tempting, with her cunt stretched-out like this and so deliciously ravaged. But Mythal clung to the tatters of her dignity. “Just keep pumping your cock,” she spat, her vindictive tone marred by her breathlessness. “It’s the only thing you’re good at.”

Elgar’nan laughed loud and savage, the motion of it shaking Mythal to her core. “I do all the work in this family,” he fake-complained—but then he grabbed her, and did something to the configuration of their limbs, and now his cock reached impossibly, maddeningly deeper. “The least you can do is thank me.”

She had no words left. Or breath, or reason. “Elgar’nan,” Mythal gasped, having no plan, no grounding.

Elgar’nan took it as surrender. So be it; perhaps it was one. What mattered was the way he rolled her on her back, and pushed her legs back, and back, so far back she was bent in two. And then he fucked her, powerful, bull-like, pounding his hips with such force the bed threatened to break. It groaned and creaked underneath, as loud as the wet slap of skin against skin. Mythal closed her eyes and screamed.

In the end they climaxed together, as if they’d planned it. Or maybe it was the primal, unending cycle of them, one influencing the other, feeding back into each other: her clutching cunt, his strong, hot seed. The twitching and the squelch, their leaking wetness. Rut, and rut, and rut, until Mythal’s cries went weak and thready, her entire body convulsing. She wanted to milk him dry.

Elgar’nan obliged. He thrust and pushed with increasing force to counterbalance his softening cock, eyes closed and groaning to the heavens, then shook the last of his seed off and collapsed by Mythal’s side. They both panted like they’d just razed a city. Mythal’s bent leg lolled against his strong thigh, her opened cunt trembling with aftershocks. Elgar’nan whole body exuded heat like the sun, like a dropped star.

Slowly, slowly, Mythal’s breathing calmed. She lay there and idly listened to her heart drum in her chest, her mind whirring back to action. She still had to put things into order, to call for an official gathering, to guide and lead the others. She shifted, opening her mouth to speak—but Elgar’nan beat her to it.

“He was right about one thing.”

Mythal blinked. She turned to Elgar’nan and saw him gazing out the balcony, his face hidden. When he met her gaze his expression was serious, his mouth uncompromising. “Our kingdom is in danger of collapsing in on itself. We’ve spread too far, too wide. Too quickly. We need to consolidate our strength; we need to stand united. Any dissent in the ranks is a threat to our existence.”

Cold dread pooled in Mythal’s belly. “Solas cares for the People above all. He will do what he must.”

Elgar’nan gave a cynical snort. “I know he will never apologize, Mythal. I sure wouldn’t.” His gaze wouldn’t leave her alone, probing into her like the merciless, killing blade. “You must make a choice, and soon.”

“No.” The denial flew to her lips without her conscious decision, but she stood by it. “He will not turn his back on us. He’s of my own spirit—he will not abandon me.”

Elgar’nan’s expression was infuriatingly pitying. “He’s of your own spirit, but you don’t know him at all. Not anymore.”

“I know more than you,” Mythal hissed, and pinched Elgar’nan’s vulnerable wrist. A petty, vicious gesture. She didn’t care. She pressed her nails meanly in until she punctured skin.

She waited for the answering violence, for their primordial fight to start again. But Elgar’nan didn’t react. He let his arm lay there defenseless, allowing the pain to wash over him without a single sound. Mythal felt drawn in despite herself, staring at his fingers and their infinitesimal, instinctive twitch. When she looked up Elgar’nan was already gazing back at her. His eyes were dark and steady, and black as the abyss.

Mythal snatched her hand back. “I’ll talk to him,” she said, her one eternal refrain. She prayed it would be enough. “He will listen to me.”

Elgar’nan smiled, his lips dripping with poisoned honey. “Of course, my dear,” he soothed, and kissed her neck as he rolled over her. He slotted himself between her thighs, guided her leg seductively around his thick waist. His fingers felt strong as they dug into her flesh, powerful and clever. “Go talk to him. And when he gives you his reply,” he said, his snake-black eyes glinting with sly victory, “come talk to me.”