Author's note: Hey there! I come bearing my first attempt at Dragon Age fic and I hope it doesn't disappoint, even if it is another playthrough story. I'd like to thank Dasque, Casey V., and SurelyForth now, and will most likely thank them throughout this fairly ambitious project, for the beta jobs and the rambling. I do a lot of rambling.
Disclaimer: Dragon Age belongs to people who aren't myself; I just like to play with the characters they created in my free time.
Prologue: Ransom Notes Keep Falling Out Your Mouth
"You don't really think there's a test tomorrow, do you?" Gwynlian's voice was small and muffled, so buried underneath the blankets that only the top of her blonde head was exposed to the weak light of the dimming fireplace. She shifted under the scratchy cotton, her blue eyes peeking out of her warm refuge to study the girl in the bed opposite hers. "I mean, Enchanter Ceeley wouldn't just assign one right there at dinner, would she?"
The girl in the bunk above hers snorted loudly, her long black hair slinking into Gwynlian's vision before her shrewd eyes did. "Of course she would." Wreda's voice was just on the nasal side, her sharp manner of speech reflecting her gaze. "She's always been a sadist." Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly in amusement as Gwynlian fought the urge to slip back underneath the covers and avoid her mocking stare.
Another snort came from the bed Gwynlian had originally addressed, and a girl with tousled brown hair propped her head up on her hand, leaning forward so the firelight put her face into sharp contrast. "Perhaps she would've been happier as a templar, you mean?" Her grin seemed almost feral in the shadows as it tilted toward Wreda, but her eyes were soft as they settled on Gwynlian. "It's probably better this way, actually. Think about it: we only get two hours to study everything we've already been studying for two weeks, and we'll wake up in the morning and panic for another hour before we take the test and realize that everything's sunk in already."
Gwynlian's hand peeped out from under the blankets, pulling them down so she could return the smile. Then Wreda cut in, "Except for Solona, who'll realize she's still crap at Creation."
"Wreda!" Gwynlian chastised softly, raising her hand to swat at the other girl's dark hair. "That's mean!"
"It's all right, Gwyn," Solona laughed. "I am crap at Creation." Her tone was wry, mocking her own ineptitude in the school Enchanter Ceeley had dubbed "most elite". Of course, Torrin had claimed Spirit was superior, Iva swore by Entropy as the school that never failed, and Meerdan had taught Solona how to do something useful with her talent for frosting window panes.
She noticed Gwynlian was about to issue further reassurances and waved them away. "All I need to do is prove that I have an understanding of the school's properties and I'll still be fit to leave the tower. Someday." She added the last part softly, almost in a whisper, as if afraid to jinx the possibility.
Mages in the Circle Tower were confined by superstition and an agreement that was forged under that same fear and mistrust, but temporary leave on business was not unheard of—difficult, yes, but not impossible. All an official mage had to do to was master the theory of each sanctioned school and present a credible enough matter of business. The first part, oddly enough, was the easiest; try convincing a templar that darkspawn in the south was somewhat dangerous and still only seven mages were allowed to join the war effort.
Not that Solona particularly disapproved outside of needing to ask to defend their home—after all, not all mages in the Tower knew how to fight, and most of the mages that had been permitted to travel to Ostagar were healers. Including Senior Enchanter Wynne, who seemed to be the only enchanter proficient in Creation spells who could explain the intricacies of the school without waxing poetic and leaving Solona a jumbled, near-babbling mess.
Wreda's own opinion was, as always, equal parts comforting and annoying in her honesty. "That works for a mage who can't shoot fire out of her fingers; the only mages they ever really grant leave to are the ones who can support a templar. Which leaves out Jowan, I suppose." The frown twisting her thin mouth betrayed her own fears—for an apprentice whose talent was increasingly apparent in the entropic arts, her nerves had to be just as rattled as Solona's.
Still, Wreda at least had a knack for casting glyphs and could manage a pass with a simple paralysis spell. "Bloody glyphs," Solona grumped, falling back onto her pillow with a muted thump. "Oh, and leave Jowan alone," she muttered offhand, her defense of her somewhat hapless friend habitual these days, especially since more and more of their peers sought to get in their own two bits on his botched lessons. Wreda's derisive laugh and Gwynlian's sympathetic clucking provided more honest comfort and annoyance.
"You'll get out, Solona," Gwynlian reassured softly, "I know you will."
Wreda's scoff was just on this side of mean-spirited this time. "You have a better chance at getting out of here than either of us, Gwyn, and you just sit there and nod and smile for the templars like a good little Circle mage." Her grip on the edge of her mattress tightened and she pushed herself further off the bed, all of her face coming into Gwynlian's view so the other girl could clearly see her scowl.
Gwynlian's cornflower eyes sparked and she sat up, hunched forward so she wouldn't hit her head on Wreda's bed. "There's no one for me to heal right now, Wreda. What am I supposed to do—go to Ostagar? I've never even been to a simple market stall but suddenly I can go to war? Don't think that just because I am practical I desire to see my sister any less."
Wreda twisted and slipped out of her bed, her bare feet slapping softly against the stone floor. "I don't know why you've spent so much time worrying about this test when you know you're going to pass… and do nothing with it, even with family out there who still gives a damn about you." Their voices had risen in volume, and several nearby apprentices began to stir and mumble in their sleep.
"Wreda," Solona's voice was quiet, carefully neutral, "I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to go to Ostagar either." Her gaze met her friend's sharp gray eyes, seeing yet another peer's desperation to get out threatening to overwhelm her. "We'll be granted leave," she promised. "On our terms, all right?" She watched Wreda's mouth open, close, and then her long hair whipped around as she spun and tugged herself back up onto the top bunk, refusing to allow someone as weak as she deemed Gwynlian to see her lip tremble.
Gwynlian looked as if she were about to say something to placate her, but Solona shook her head, catching her eye; the last thing Wreda would want right now was for someone to calm her down, her disposition typically bristling at best. "Just go to sleep, Gwyn," she whispered, rolling over onto her opposite side so the other girl would assume she would do the same.
In truth, Solona was fairly certain she'd be awake for most of the night. No matter how she tried to dress it up for her own benefit, Wreda was right: the templars weighed in their own opinions heavily every time a mage of the Circle sought leave, and they tended to favor those who could heal or rejuvenate. While Solona knew well enough how to cast the spells, Creation demanded proficiency in visualization, something that she couldn't quite master.
It was easy enough to picture fire or ice, things that you saw without magic involved, but in order to heal she first had to find the ailment and know how to mend it; in order to cast a glyph she first had to see the symbol clearly—and her circles were always less than perfect—and know that the glyph was going to paralyze or repel, ward or neutralize. Solona was aware that most of her shortcomings came in self-doubt, but realizing that she wasn't confident in her own abilities didn't do much to convince her otherwise, and Enchanter Ceeley had little patience and liked to play favorites with mages she believed had a knack for Creation, like Gwynlian or the ever-irksome Finn.
Solona's eyes closed, summoning images of Ferelden outside of what the Circle Tower's windows provided; they were getting harder and harder to recall, years inside an old, musty tower fading the sights and smells of grassy fields, the feel of rainwater sliding along her scalp and down her neck. Every day she grew just as desperate as Wreda to get out, to sink her feet in muddy roads and smell fresh herbs and buy her own food from an innkeeper. Her ambitions seemed small, perhaps, to anyone who only had to open the front door, but some mornings these goals were the only reason she got out of bed in the morning.
Her biggest hurdle was becoming an official mage, which all began and ended with the Harrowing, looming over the light at the end of the tunnel, its challenge just as unknown as it was inevitable. Solona wasn't sure which was worse: feeling unprepared for a test she couldn't anticipate, or knowing that it would be something dangerous and some apprentices either never returned at all, or came back with faces she knew that had not an ounce left of who they used to be. And for a reason Solona couldn't quite define beyond a feeling, she knew that her Harrowing was near, imposing, significant.
She'd noticed templars and senior mages alike observing her, and her mentor had suddenly snapped out of her usual airy "learn by trial and error" demeanor and begun to drill already memorized lessons into her head, as if over ten years of learning was no longer enough and they were out of time. Solona tried to find comfort in the notion that if she passed her Harrowing and Ceeley's Creation test, she would be able to continue her studies outside of the tower, but she still had to appeal to over a thousand years of Chantry influence.
Wonderful.
Her first order of business, however, was to sleep. She tried to relax her eyes, find a position against her pillow that wouldn't leave a crick in her neck, listen to the soft noises of the other apprentices sleeping around her. While they usually soothed her, tonight each snore just seemed to remind her that she was now the only one awake. Solona grumbled and buried her face into the pillow, shifting until feathers no longer poked at her cheeks through thin cotton.
She needed something to distract her mind, something that didn't require too much thought but still engaged her enough to settle her nerves. Ah, that's it. One more maneuver to draw her knees up to her chest, and Solona settled in for the night, reciting the introduction of the Creation text she'd been studying since finishing her meal of lukewarm soup—if there was anything to dull the eyes and mind, it was any book ever written by Senior Enchanter Phillis Roban.
A hand on her shoulder shook her awake, and Solona could tell by the chill in the air that it was too early—and by the hardness of the metal digging through her nightdress that her visitor was no mage. Her eyes snapped open and she found herself staring at the impassive visor of a templar. "Wha—?" she trailed off, still groggy from the dream she couldn't quite recall now.
"Get dressed," a man's voice instructed, the metal of his armor making the sound hollow, tinny.
"Who—" Solona was already sitting up, her fingers almost unconsciously drawing her blankets around her shoulders.
"Quickly," the templar added, backing away and turning to join two more templars waiting at the door. They each faced the wall away from her, but they didn't leave the room.
Were they afraid she would bolt? She knew better than to ask for more privacy—if they hadn't answered her previous questions, they weren't likely to respond now. Solona let out the shaky breath she hadn't realized she was holding, planting her feet onto the icy stone of the tower floor and tiptoeing to the communal wardrobe that held her robes. She almost wished one of the other girls would wake up, but she knew the templars had waited to act until her departure would go unnoticed; Harrowings were routine for them.
She pulled her apprentice robes out of the wardrobe and threw them on over her nightdress, the tower too cold to go without both. Besides, even if the templars had come for her in the middle of a sweltering heat wave, Solona wouldn't have trusted them not to sneak a peek; most templars were honorable, even mortified at the thought of mages having fleshy bits underneath their robes, but she had noticed more lately, especially now that she was no longer a child, who didn't have the same reservations.
She straightened her robes over her nightdress, reassuring herself in her actions as much as she was stalling for what little time she could, and shoved her feet into her one pair of shoes, simple dark blue slippers suited for life indoors. Perhaps, if she passed her Harrowing tonight, she would be able to replace them soon with boots that could trek through snow. "Couldn't wait until after the Creation test?" she sighed.
A cough from one of the templars at the door spurred her into action, and she slowly turned and approached them, clearing her throat when she drew near so they didn't have to look for her. The templar who'd shaken her awake wasted no time opening the door and ushered one of the waiting two out into the hall; Solona was expected to follow, and she assumed the remaining templars would fall into step behind her. Which was great, really, because if there was anything Solona loved to do in the middle of the night, it was be led around by a bunch of templars.
As they left the room, Solona thought she heard a faint click from the boys' dormitory—her eyes shot to the right and caught the doorknob's fractional turn as it was released. Another glance to her front assured her that the templars either hadn't noticed or simply didn't care because their current task was more important. It wasn't anything new for mages to sneak around the shadows of the tower, but most waited until late afternoon when templars were more likely to be occupied; at night, the only duties the templars had were staying awake and standing in the halls. Even the adults on the second floor, the senior mages, had to steal away precious minutes in a dark corner if they wanted to so much as kiss.
The rest of their trek along the corridor and stairs was silent, but Solona's mind was far from the same and her heart wasn't fairing much better. Despite years of running up and down those winding stairs, she was oddly breathless before she even set foot on the first step. The templars, at least, seemed to understand her apprehension and kept their pace slow—or maybe it would have been better to just hurry up and get to the Harrowing Chamber so she could get this over with, starting with finding out just what the Harrowing was.
Solona knew it was dangerous—hundreds of years of secrecy and the ceremony wasn't just having tea with the first enchanter. The mages who survived the Harrowing still walked and laughed and cried, but always looked different, as if whatever they had seen or heard haunted them. The test was dangerous enough to kill or worse: there were apprentices who came back, but as Tranquil—without dreams or emotion, no longer people in their fear of what they had to face.
"It changes you, Loony; for better or worse, you're not the same person. She remembered brown eyes, so full of determination and mirth and sadness, but Anders had come back from the Harrowing a different person. No, that wasn't right: he played the same boy she knew, but underneath there was anger and desperation that made him more impatient than usual, more rebellious, until one day he leapt into the unstable waters of Lake Calenhad in a half-cocked try for freedom.
The templars brought Anders back only a day later, damp and scraggly and shivering, but that anger, that sense of injustice, still lingered underneath his smirk and his quips about the bathwater in the tower being colder than the lake. After that day, their friendship had changed as well, slipping into something almost as routine as her relationship with Jowan. Now Wreda was beginning to crack, a storm already brewing in her eyes even before her Harrowing—how long before Solona lost her as well? Would the Harrowing mean the loss of herself?
They passed other templars as they went, men stationed by the quarters of the already-Harrowed mages, and as they drew close to the Tower's chapel, Solona could see a Chantry sister kneeling in front of Andraste's outstretched stone arms. The templars guiding her seemed to slow, as if they expected Solona to request a little time for prayer, and only her fear and her interest in the girl in the chapel kept her from rolling her eyes—if anything, they should've stopped in the library so she could look up a few more defensive spells before they threw her into what was likely going to be a fight… with templars? Other mages? She knew the Tower kept dragonlings in the templars' quarters, but she really didn't want to think about them just then.
Solona realized she'd been staring at the sister as her thoughts drifted, and the other girl likewise seemed to have noticed her interest, as she began to rise to her feet. "Can I help you?" she asked, her voice high and reedy. Her brown hair was pulled back into intricate plaits, and her lips were lightly painted with rouge, an odd compliment to her pale skin and Chantry robes: former nobility.
Normally Solona wouldn't have paid so much attention, but for some reason this girl seemed to have been waiting for her arrival—to counsel a frightened apprentice? She shook her head silently, tearing her focus from the chapel and the sister's motives, and the templars took the hint and continued to lead her onward and upward. As they reached the stairs that would take them to the third floor, she heard a hushed "Maker be with you" come from behind her, and looked out of the corner of her eye to see the sister returning to her vigil with Andraste. This time, Solona's apprehension wasn't quite enough to keep her eyes from rolling.
They ascended yet another winding staircase and came out on the landing of the Great Hall, the torches along the wall bolstered by the pale light from long, narrow windows. Solona shivered involuntarily, just as much from the chill in the air as what awaited her at the top of the tower. Determined not to show the templars how vulnerable she felt, she refused to wrap her arms around herself as she wanted to and instead remarked, "Lovely evening for a Harrowing, isn't it?" As soft as her voice was, it still echoed on the bare walls of the imposing hall.
"Ssh." The templar behind her, the one who seemed to be in charge, decided to brush past Solona and match his pace with the templar leading them.
Solona cleared her dry throat, rubbing her fingers against her thighs as surreptitiously as possible to try to bring some warmth to her legs. "So I'm probably right," she said lowly, her breath fogging the air. "No tea." The templar turned his head just enough to warn her into silence, and it worked—it wasn't any good getting herself imprisoned or run through before she could even attempt her Harrowing, after all.
However, for good or ill, the templars appeared to pick up on her impatience and began to walk faster, their boots clanking against hard stone, shuffling over thick carpet. She almost changed her mind and told them it was okay to move at a pace that was more on the side of glacial, or even backtrack altogether and let her go back to bed. Since such suggestions were more likely to get Solona idragged/i up the tower, she kept her thoughts to herself.
The rest of the journey rushed by, and all too soon, each footfall on the steps to the Harrowing Chamber resounded in Solona's ears just as loudly as her rapidly beating heart. Her simple robes and nightdress, which had been too thin just seconds before, now seemed to tighten uncomfortably as sweat made her bangs stick to her forehead. The door loomed in front of her, and the leading templar reached out and opened it before Solona could say anything about it—not that she trusted her voice to work in her parched throat.
On the other side of the heavy door, moonlight illuminated the chamber within, streaming in through stained glass and painting the room's inhabitants. There were more templars, all forming a semi-circle around the first enchanter and knight-commander, who both stood before a basin of water. As Solona drew closer, Irving removed a vial from his pocket and emptied its contents into the basin, making it glow with an ethereal blue light.
Solona was temporarily blinded by its brilliance and her mind seemed to scramble to pick up the slack. They couldn't possibly think she was ready to undertake this test; she only had a Creation exam that morning, after all. She was also beginning to fear that she would have to drink from the basin: the disorientation she could already feel, the whispers in the back of her mind and the tingling in her fingertips, could only mean Irving had added lyrium dust—distilled lyrium, yes, but lyrium nonetheless.
As her vision came back, spotted with the traces of light left behind by the lyrium's flash, so did her awareness of what was going on around her. She started as she realized the knight-commander was addressing her, and had probably been speaking since Solona entered the chamber with the other templars. Her mind caught up to Greagoir's speech and she recognized a verse from the Chant of Light that all Circle mages had memorized nearly the day they'd been brought to the Tower; something so familiar she could have easily tuned him out again, but this time Solona clung to his words desperately, listening for some clue as to what was coming next.
"Your magic is a gift, but it's also a curse," Greagoir continued, beginning to pace the room in front of her, taking care to maintain eye contact with Solona as he spoke, "for demons of the dream realm, the Fade, are drawn to you and seek to use you as a gateway into this world." He drew to a stop in front of the basin, and Solona was less worried about fighting all of the templars and the first enchanter, and even more worried about the lyrium—something about Greagoir mentioning the Fade was too significant.
As if able to see Solona putting the pieces together, the first enchanter began to speak. "This is why the Harrowing exists." He gestured to the basin behind him, his other arm outstretched to her, beckoning her forward. Solona felt her foot shuffle forward across unrelenting stone, her leg following after it since it was attached, her body propelled forward with the motion, and her accursed left foot following suit. Somehow she wound up at Irving's side, staring down at the disquieting lyrium with much more than a hint of foreboding.
"The ritual sends you into the Fade and there you will face a demon, armed with only your will." Irving's hand was at her elbow, his fingers barely brushing against the fabric of her robes, and all Solona could do was let her eyes travel to them, study them, count them, do whatever she could with this presentation of fingers while she waited for one of the templars to laugh and yell "just kidding!" Of all of the trials she had been imagining on her way here, for some stupid reason she hadn't even considered the possibility of the first enchanter summoning and trapping a demon for her to fight, and the knight-commander condoning it. Frankly, Solona would've rather taken on the dragonlings.
Her voice was barely audible, but Solona was determined to keep it from trembling as she spoke. "And what happens if I can't defeat this demon?"
She nearly flinched when Greagoir immediately supplied the answer. "It will turn you into an abomination and the templars will be forced to slay you." Years of serving in the Tower, years of passed and failed Harrowings, added weight to his practicality and made "forced" sound more believable than any other templar could have managed. But still, no clean slate?
Greagoir joined Solona at her other side, not touching her as Irving was, but trying to provide as much comfort as he was able. "This is lyrium, the very essence of magic and your gateway into the Fade," he said, his words reassuring her with what she already knew. Even so, as he spoke, he bore them toward the basin and Solona found it very hard to stand, let alone keep pace with him. Her mouth opened and closed, trying to find words, but none would come. Instead, she turned her head back and forth between them, still unable to believe that either of them would put any apprentice through an ordeal like this after what seemed like inothing/i to prepare her for it. Irving's grip tightened, encircling her upper arm and nearly digging into her flesh in his urgency to break through to her before it was too late.
"The Harrowing is a secret out of necessity, child. Every mage must go through this trial by fire—as we succeeded, so shall you." His words were little more than a whisper, his eyes boring into hers with a significance that finally cracked through her daze and left her blinking, then nodding as the numbness left her legs. Irving returned her nod, releasing his hold on her arm. "Keep your wits about you, and remember the Fade is a realm of dreams: the spirits may rule it, but your own will is real—"
"The apprentice must go through this test alone, First Enchanter," Greagoir interrupted, and Solona felt more resolve to see this through seeping into her core, offering her strength. "You are ready," Greagoir added, knowing that this feeling of injustice was often more effective at getting an apprentice through this trial than "you can do it" would ever be. And Solona was ready: to prove to everyone in the chamber—Irving, Greagoir, the numerous templars waiting behind her with swords and helms that concealed any passion—that her will was not only real, it was pissed off.
She drew her lower lip between her teeth, biting down on the soft flesh in an attempt to anchor her consciousness as she reached out and touched the pale blue water in the basin. Even the lyrium potions she'd had once in awhile couldn't prepare her for its potency, a burning pain shooting up her body from her fingertips to sear behind her eyes. She knew as the Harrowing Chamber faded from sight with a flash of white that when she woke up, she'd have a split lip to compliment her inevitable splitting migraine.