"What can I say? I cannot know what another history would have brought, all choices vanish, once they are made. If we had stopped taking the lyrium sooner, or never taken it at all. If the dwarves had been less mindless, in those days, or our leaders more compassionate..." Solas shakes his head, "By that time, there only two ends to the conflict. And by far the most likely seemed that the elves would be killed, all of us that there were."

He falls silent, a moment, thinking of the cities buried under landslides, the villages crushed underfoot, or swamped under waves of fire. The refugees pouring into Arlathan, their feet bloodied by the long road, the smell of sulfur clinging to their clothes.

"...It would not have been the end, not completely, of every aspect of what we were, but the death toll— the Spirits who survived would rebuild over a marshland of blood. We had already gone too far, I believe, to simply surrender and yet live."