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The stone floor is cold. A trail of water drips slowly down the far wall. The light is dim, a few grumpily smoldering coals in a brazier above.
Her left hand aches abruptly, a pulse like all her joints ossifying at once before the sensation fades again. This is accompanied by a dull flash of green light. She's kneeling, hands locked shoulder-width apart by a metal bar clasped tightly around her wrists.
Sounds of footsteps in the corridor beyond say she may have visitors soon.
" - I'm not really familiar with faith stuff, but - yeah that sounds important." She tries very hard not to make it a question.
...Wow this is weirdly uncomfortable.
"There's nothing comparable for my people," she says after a few long moments. "We don't have prophets, nor religion. There's famous sites that draw tourists, some of them historically significant, but most are... Museums, or libraries, and the historical sites often are set up as museums anyways."
"Our calling is science and reason. The study of the natural world. There's things beyond what we can see with our eyes and feel with our hands, but..."
"The guiding principle of Amestrian alchemy is equivalent exchange - nothing can be created nor destroyed, only transmuted. Or, to gain anything, something of equal kind and amount must be lost, and all exchanges happen according to unmutable laws of physics."
"The drive, then, is to learn those unmutable laws, through observation and experimentation, and through learning of the investigations done and knowledge gathered by others."
"That sounds a cold world to live in," Solas comments. "That all gains and losses must be recorded, and to find only that which was present already."
"It isn't, for us. It's - mystery, and wonder, and discovery. Everything that happens must have a cause, and everything that exists has somewhere it came from - and because of the regular laws of the cosmos, you can trace that complicated history. And we don't know all the laws, all the ways the world works - like, we know that matter is made of tiny particles we call atoms, and that different atoms have different properties which make up the eighty six confirmed elements - there's another eight we're pretty sure should exist but haven't confirmed directly - and we know atoms are in turn made up of smaller particles, but we're not sure yet what those are made of, or why atoms of different kinds are that way."
"It is good you can find joy there. I am not sure that I could."
She laughs. "It might get horribly boring once we do discover everything in our universe - but having found this world suggests there's even further vistas we've never imagined."
He smiles slightly. "A commendable attitude."
"That quality will surely carry you far."
Such as that, yes - she can climb quickly, and she can alchemize her way through any barriers (and repair or create any ladders needed).
That will help. Her team will be her, Cassandra, Varric, Solas, and a squad of soldiers.
Then off with the advance force.
The path up to the old mine is narrow and unmaintained, featuring at a couple points rickety ladders where switchback stairs have collapsed.
Less rickety ladders are often easier than repaired stairs, but she can alchemize a path almost as fast as she can walk it - burrowing straight through the mountain would be exhausting and risky, but she can head up first on some of the repaired ladders to work on faster and safer roads past them.
Then she will be the first to find the mine's entrance and the faint green glow of wisps (aimlessly, for now) floating within.
Hm...
She holds back until she has more allies with her, signaling back to said allies the presence of the wisps.
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