"I could," Neria muttered. She let the healing energies fizzle out on her fingers, shaking the green sparks away in irritation.
Anders didn't stop laughing. Actually, he wheezed a little bit.
She puffed up, annoyed. He was the only one who laughed at her. She didn't like it. "It's not funny. An-"
"Quiet, mages!"
Neria went still, shoulders stiff. She swallowed.
Clank. Clank. The scuff of metal silenced when the templar stepped into the carpeted section of the library, blocking off the light from the windows at the back. A metal visor hid his face, but the body language was enough of a hint that the templar was not tickled with good humor.
Anders kicked her under the table, squirming his toes up into her sock. It might have been a show of support, or it might have been a poorly timed come-on. It was hard to tell with Anders. Either way, she roused up the gall to softly kick him back.
He made an odd sound, like he was clearing his throat. "Right. Quiet. Of course." The easy grin Anders shot up at the templar had just a bit too much teeth. "We'll be quiet as spiders in a cellar."
The templar scoffed. The sound echoed around his helmet and empty head. "Loghain could have had the decency to take the annoying ones with him. Waste of a prime opportunity to clean up the tower."
Neria found Anders' foot again and pressed against it in warning. She could see the color rising in his face. He was going to say something smart and wind up in the caves below the tower with the spiders and mold. His foot was twitching.
'Don't do it, Anders. He's looking for an excuse. If you get locked up, I'll have to study alone, and the class might catch up to me.'
By some miracle, Anders subsided. His posture relaxed. "You're right," he agreed, almost cheerfully. "I get tired of smelly rubbish clanking around the corridors. If the king's men come back, let's hope they bring enough soap for all the hairy old bigots."
'Goddamnit, Anders.'
The smite knocked them both off balance. Anders jerked into the table and wheezed when his ribs met wood, but Neria's chair teetered sideways on two legs. Her world was spinning and there was no air in her lungs and it was so cold, so cold in the tower. She yelped and put her arms up- and the templar wrapped his metal gauntlet around her forearm. The chair slipped out from under her body, but she didn't fall. She scrambled to find her balance, placing her feet firmly between the piles of books and odds and ends that had blown off the table. Acid crawled up her throat, sour and bloody. She didn't know if that was a reaction to the smite or to being touched by one of those things, it was touching her-
"Oh my," the templar said flatly, staring Anders down. The joints of his gloves were pinching her skin. "How clumsy of me." He let her go, almost throwing her arm away. Like she was dirty or-
Neria breathed in slowly through her nose and righted the chair. It smelled like something was burning. She didn't watch the templar continue walking away on his rounds. It was fine. She picked up her books and kicked away a broken ink bottle, pretending not to see the green bleeding out onto the dark carpet.
There was a heavy sigh. When she looked up, Anders was rubbing at his temples and scowling. When he felt her stare, he looked up with a fake and thin smile. "Ahem." He tapped his chest. "You were saying, darling Surana?"
She looked over at the empty doorway again, just to be sure. Neria kept her voice low and confidential. "If I demonstrate interest and have a good proposal, they'll let me out. Just like-"
"Ines the Botanist," Anders cut her off. He snorted again, bitterness clawing at his fair features. "Yes, if you want to spend your life searching for the Southern Prickleplant, you too could earn a small amount of freedom, doled out by the teaspoon by our Chantry masters." When her tutor reached out to muss her hair, Kenna didn't manage to duck away in time. "Aim a little higher, duckling."
'It's not like I would actually go look for the Northern Prickleplant.'
The replacement templar clanged into place, positioned so that he could see down two stacks at once. Ponderously, the templar placed their feet wide and rested a hand on the handle part of the murderously oversized templar sword.
She messily gathered her books and dignity. "I need to go." Neria slipped her quill into her waistband, ignoring the ink spotting from the tip.
"Why?" Anders tipped his chair back, displaying a shocking disregard for the sanctity of the library. The tortured squeal of the chair drew a stern look from the new templar across the stacks, but he didn't come to investigate. "You should have plenty of freetime, now that that old people are off to play at war instead of hounding apprentices in class."
There was no denying that. Almost all classes had been canceled since the king's men had come to demand mages for the army. The newly harrowed mages were almost all off to Ostagar, under the supervision of Senior Enchanter Uldred and a bevy of Enchanters. They could probably still hear the roaring of angry Templars and Chantry sisters and the infernal complaining that the king had originally been much more reasonable about how many of their mages he wanted.
"Just think, you'd have gone with if anyone trusted you at all," Neria shot back, irritated because that had all been his fault and if he could keep his bloody temper in check, she wouldn't be losing feeling in her fingers. "You could be halfway to the border by now."
Anders mimed an arrow to the heart, grin turning sour. "Nonsense. They trust me here with a circle full of impressionable young apprentices and the bare minimum of idiot templars. That's the kind of trust that should be rewarded, don't you think?" He tilted his head, and he looked like his cat- all tawny mischief.
When he turned to look out the window, Neria couldn't help but turn with him, caught on his tide.
The lake was billowing under a cold autumn wind, hundreds of red leaves bobbing ambitiously on the swells. Beyond the dark lines of the village, the sun was just beginning to touch the horizon.
'Take me with you.'
She kept the words behind her teeth.
Her phylactory was still in the tower, after all. She wouldn't get very far before the templars tracked her down and knocked the heat out of her lungs again. She wasn't ready yet. When she did run, she wanted to be skilled enough to make a clean break.
Even Anders had never gotten very far on his own, and he'd been so exceptional that he'd been harrowed when he was about her age. He needed the handicap of an average mageling about as much as she needed the scrutiny and suspicion that a failed escape attempt would bring. A mage that the templars thought was a flight risk was a lot more likely to turn out to be an excellent candidate for joining the Tranquil ranks. The only way to really be free was to kill the templars on your trail and destroy your phylactery. It'd be hard to do that alone and without preparation.
The moment passed. She was herself again.
"Thank you," she said honestly. "I don't want to be behind when Wynne gets back."
She didn't give a damn about Wynne right now. She and Anders both knew perfectly well that Neria's current spellwork was level with what Wynne expected in classes. But the drive to outperform her classmates was a hard habit to break, and a good distraction from the upheaval in the tower.
Anders waived her gratitude away with his usual nonchalant disregard. "Don't speak of it. You're notably less terrible than you were only a year ago."
She stuck her tongue out at him before she left. Silence rang in her ears outside the isolated classroom area Anders had commandeered for tutoring sessions. The corridors weren't nearly as crowded as they used to be. When she passed a sallow, anxious apprentice loitering outside the chapel, he looked away from her eyes.
It took a moment to place the face. The reason she never talked to him was the same reason it was odd to see him around- he was one of the oldest apprentices. When the crown had demanded more mages for the army, the templars had started to take an apprentice to Harrowing almost every night. Most of them had joined the senior enchanters at Ostagar, still fidgeting from their ordeal.
'Maybe he's praying to pass his Harrowing,' Neria thought scathingly. 'He's almost one and twenty years. He must be a terrible mage if they haven't taken him yet. He'd be better off practicing than begging for the miracle he needs. He used to run around with the First Enchanter's pet pupil, didn't he?'
Precious, perfect Amell had been the very first apprentice roused out of bed to be prematurely tested. She'd passed in record time. Of course she had. She was a pretty prodigy who had awed her teachers by demonstrating mastery of opposite elements, which was just showing off. Amell had been gone the following morning with the first group to Ostagar, ready to earn glory with her textbook perfect chain lightning and ground shaking earth spells and those damned group healing sessions that Neria was years away from mastering. Amell probably hadn't even seen most of her friends before she left to war in Enchanter's robes so new they squeaked (and of course she got brand new robes, she was so damned tall that none of the discarded ones would fit her and ugghh).
Oh well. Not her problem.
'It might be my problem soon enough.'
Her gut churned. She tossed her books onto her bed and climbed up after them, eager for the safety of drawn curtains. When she pulled them shut, she could breathe a little easier in the darkness.
'All the older apprentices are gone, except for the real losers. Does Loghain's army have enough? Or will they move on to my age group?'
Ridiculous. No one wanted 16 year old mages on the front lines.
Granted, it wasn't strange for bowmen of that age to go to battle. It wasn't her age that was the problem, precisely. No one trusted mages in general. Unharrowed mages? No one would be so mad as to rely on one. And the templars were usually sane enough not to Harrow unprepared candidates. The system kept casualties to a minimum and the young, volatile mages safely locked away from normal people and any way they might live normal, happy lives.
Seventeen of the mages who had been taken to the Harrowing in the past months, since they'd moved to taking younger apprentices, hadn't come out. That was almost a third of the apprentices who had been taken. Surely the rate of successes was usually better than that?
She didn't remember going to sleep. When she woke up the next day early enough to make it to all her canceled classes, the 17 year old entropy apprentice two rows down was moving his personal belongings upstairs while a templar stood sentinel. That left another empty row of beds- Eadric had passed his harrowing and moved upstairs a week prior.
The day after that, she was up early enough to see another empty bed. Prim, who always fell asleep in astronomy (and had never forgiven Neria for accidentally setting her hair on fire just one time) was missing. No, wait. She was being carried out the door to the courtyard.
At least, that was probably who was wrapped up in a rug and dripping on the stone.
'She failed her Harrowing. Why? Prim wouldn't bother with a demon. Isn't that what they test us for? If we seek out demons?'
Neria raised her head and tried to make eye contact with the templar as he shouldered the door open. Something burned in her gut, low and angry.
The templar didn't seem to notice her. The door swung shut behind him with a final thud.
Of course it did. Templars were free to go outside. They could just quit their jobs and leave the tower. The only way mages left it for good was in pieces, in the small hours of the morning.
Muffled clanking crossed into her hearing at the other end of the hall, and then stopped. Neria wrapped her arms around her torso and determinedly turned towards the library. She had studying to do.
The templar in the doorway might have been eyeing her from under his visor. He was tall, even for a templar, with wooden posture and one leg slightly turned to the side.
She pretended not to see him or the tinder in his hands. Tinder. Because of course they burnt the bodies of mages. There wasn't enough earth in the lake to bury all the mages who lived and died their whole pathetic lives in the tower. If they didn't burn the bodies, the stink would be as bad as the piles of bones.
But.
Tinder, like Prim was a fireplace and not a rude, grumpy teenaged girl. She didn't even care about being a mage or casting spells, she just wanted to lay in bed at all hours and read. Where was the harm in that? What would Prim have cared about making deals with demons? Did she sell her soul to get out of classes? Ridiculous.
Tinder.
'I hope that he's the one chasing Anders next time and gets electrocuted.'
"Apprentice Surana."
He didn't make to move from the doorway.
Hearing her name on a templar's lips lifted the hair on the back of her neck. Neria bristled, steeling her shoulder. She could have turned and slipped through the space between his armor and the frame without touching him. Instead, she purposefully jarred the bastard, putting her shoulder into his arm. The sound of jostled metal squealing against his chest armor wasn't as satisfying as she had hoped it would be.
He'd let her do that.
"Sorry, ser," Neria said tonelessly. Her arm ached. She didn't turn.
There was a cough. "It's Cullen."
'I don't care what your name is. I don't want to know.'
Neria kept walking. She was rounding the curve of the hall before Ser Cullen's armor started clanking again.
Other apprentices were talking when she came in. Their voices hushed at the sound of the door. Gradually, they worked their way up in volume again. It was loud enough in the quiet, emptying tower that Neria couldn't help but pick out bits and pieces.
"-ust watch, they'll all be sent home when the king returns from the capital." Her peers seemed to think they were conversing in private tones, pitch dropped ominously. But if Neria could hear them, so could at least one templar. "Yes, Loghain prefers Fereldan mages to normal foreigners. But he's only in charge for a time, isn't he?"
Neria pointedly stacked her books at the end of the row so they could see someone was actually working in the library. They quietened for a moment. She relaxed and flipped through her notes on ice work. She almost had it- she knew she did. The theory all made sense, but it seemed to get stuck in her fingertips and sputter at the last second. Neria shook out her wrists and nodded at the templar watching her practice. He didn't say anything, so she inhaled deeply and turned a black stare at the target.
She could do this. She breathed, and ice caught in her lungs. Frost sparked over her chest, sizzling and glistening where her body heat melted it. She fought it, pitching her will against her body. Her body didn't make the decisions. She would be where her mind put her.
'Halfway there. Don't lose it.'
"But Senior Enchanter Uldred said-" someone whined in the distance.
The ice melted. Her jaw clenched. She kept her glare on the target.
'Idiots.'
Neria tried again. Ice was important. No elemental spell branch worked as fast as ice- ice mastery made an excellent combat mage. The precious seconds it took to call up fire or move earth were a death sentence. Her fingers turned blue with cold and deadened. The magic was so close to spinning out and crystalizing, manifesting off of her body ever larger-
"Of course the king's an Andrastian," a man scoffed loudly. "Right whipped by the Chantry-"
Her ice dropped to the carpet in an angry, useless lump. The thud rattled around the room and the light overhead shook ominously. Neria took a conscientious step to the side, dark eyes warily judging the angle of the old iron candelabras overhead.
'That was better. Now I just need something that could kill a man or three in full armor before he gets off a smite.'
She was still in the library when angry shouts announced that Anders had escaped once more. Neria tucked hair behind her ear and hid a grim smile behind her numb hand.
Good. She hoped he made it to the border and got lost in the confusion.
There was less than an hour of peace in the tower until chaos broke out again. The only warning was a rising sense of pressure. Then her ears screamed, one popping painfully.
No? That was actual screaming. And a horrid clash of metal against stone. Neria stood so fast that her head spun, heart thudding against her chest. The templar standing watch in the library was already moving, taking great strides to the door. He reached the doorway-
and flew backwards, crashing into a stack. It collapsed in on him. Paper flew. Neria screamed, throwing an arm up to protect her face. It caught the sharp corner of a book. Footsteps were flapping down the hallway and wood splintered, but she wasn't thick enough to poke her head out.
A metal gauntlet was still poking out of the fallen stack, but nothing else was visible. In the distance, wood splintered.
Somewhere deeper in the stacks, she could hear cursing and steps running away from the commotion. They were headed towards the stairs, where the senior enchanters would be working. It was a good idea.
'He's probably fine. Armor protects from things like that, right? Anyway, what do I care if a templar dies?'
She didn't care at all. The world would shine a little brighter with one more dead templar in it. So she wasn't sure why she stumbled across the wreckage and began pulling books up. It hurt a little to mistreat them but the templar wasn't moving, so she began flinging them back instead of stacking them. She dug out an arm. It was still. Then she stopped, because metal fingers were tightening on her shoulder.
She hadn't even heard him come up behind her.
Neria's breath caught. She flinched.
The templar let go as if burnt.
"Apprentice Surana? I heard- Go to your quarters, now."
The templar sounded younger and more familiar than such a hulking metal beast had any right to, but she still knew better than to argue. She left Ser Cullen to dig out his comrade.
Neria didn't find out what had happened until the apprentices had all been herded into the chapel to wait and pray away whatever sinfulness the chantry thought they were harboring along with sole responsibility for the imperfection of the world.
"Jowan? A blood mage?" She curled her feet in her flexible slippers and pressed the tops of her toes against the cold floor. She hated being in the chapel. It made her think of her mother.
Kallis looked offended at her skepticism. "I swear it's true." Kallis would say that, though. She was so eager to impress anyone who she thought was remotely interesting.
Neria made a face, drawing back a little. "It's just hard to picture. He was always..." Neria drew the word out, searching for the right phrase. She hadn't even remembered his name until Kallis had said it, for pity's sake.
Her fellow apprentice sniggered. "Don't say he was so nice you can't picture it."
"No," Neria agreed shamelessly. Jowan hadn't been rude, but he hadn't been especially kind, either. Mostly, he had been twitchy and strange. "More that he was such a loser. It's hard to picture him casting scary forbidden magic when he couldn't do his homework."
A chantry initiate gave them a black look, apparently angered by their whispers in the chapel. "Please keep your voices down." Her eyes were huge and angry in her face, sunken by whatever stressed chantry workers. Probably the mages, actually.
Neria blinked at the older woman, not letting any emotion in particular onto her expression. After a long moment, the initiate swept away, chin held tremblingly high.
After that night, Ser Cullen was everywhere. Maybe he'd already been around and she just hadn't noticed- it wasn't as though Neria made a habit of recognizing the templars. One tin can was as good as any other.
But it wasn't just any tin can who stood silently in the first section of the library, replacing the other templar. His stare was so heavy on her back that Neria packed up hours earlier than she would have preferred. Then Ser Cullen was in the back of the alteration class, disrupting her focus in one of the few subjects that hadn't been canceled for lack of teachers. When she saw him at lunch, she almost didn't recognize him: his helm was off. She wouldn't have known it was the same man, if it weren't for the fact that he kept staring and it sent familiar prickles up her spine.
'He's tan. He looks like he goes outside often.'
Longing welled up so fast that it almost hurt.
"That one?" Kallis leaned across the table to see what Neria was glaring at. "Oh, I see. He keeps looking over here, you know. Maybe he likes you."
Ser Cullen glanced at her again and tipped soup onto his front. He didn't seem to notice.
Neria pointedly gave all of her attention to her meal. "Oh look, fish." She speared some on the tip of her fork. "A treat."
Kallis snorted and buried her own trout under a pile of unwanted beans. They lived on a lake. There was fish at every meal. "Lucky you. Maybe your pet templar would take you out for something else if you asked reaaaal pretty."
"Don't be foul." Neria launched a hunk of flesh into Kallis' mug, ignoring the indignant squawk she earned.
'It wouldn't work anyway. No templar would be that dumb. Would they?'
When she lifted her head again, Ser Cullen jerked his head away too quickly to be discreet, apparently absorbed in blotting at his armor.
He did look rather thick, actually. Looks could be deceiving, but his looks indicated that he was all muscle and very little brain. Maybe...
But she didn't have a chance to work up the courage to try it. Somehow, she wasn't surprised in the least to wake up at the witching hour with an enormous hand pressed over her mouth. That didn't mean she was pleased. She might have been afraid to see metal gleaming facelessly in the moonlight. But all Neria felt was her heart skip a beat. She swallowed.
Ser Cullen pulled his hand away and held a finger to his lips. Then he stepped back so that she could get up.
Neria untangled herself from her sheets with as much dignity as she could muster. Her frightened heartbeat was obscuring the familiar murmurs and soft breath of sleeping apprentices. Thud. Thud.
'They're going to kill me, and I haven't even mastered my first ice spell. It's not fair.'
Thud. Someone was talking in the distance.
Ser Cullen waited by the doorway, looking pointedly away. He was probably giving her privacy to dress. All Neria did was put on slippers and cross her arms defiantly. Her sleeping shift was modest enough- it hung loose to her ankles.
ThudThud.
"I'm ready."
The templar looked at her, but didn't comment. There was a pause.
She gave him an unimpressed look, nodding towards the doorway. She wondered who was talking. She couldn't hear the words, but she knew what they were saying.
Something scraped in his armor when he shifted. The pitch hurt her teeth. "I'm, uh. Supposed to walk behind you."
"Oh." Neria uncrossed her arms and started down the hall. She considered throwing back a rude, Anders-esque comment about the likelihood of mages attempting to run from their Harrowing. But no. She didn't want to talk to him like he was a person. Maybe if she'd known how he watched her earlier, she could have used him to get out.
Too late for that, mageling. Try something else...
'I'm going to have to do this the honest way.' Her footsteps faltered on the steps to the fourth floor. She could smell a fresh breeze- the windows were often open in the upper levels.' I hate the honest way. I'm not good enough as a mage to pass a test meant for people older than me.'
"Apprentice Surana?"
It was talking to her again. Foul beast. Inferior creature. It dared talk to her.
'I probably wouldn't make it very far if I cooked him in his armor.'
The scenario played out like a story in her mind- she could whirl on the templar and send his body clanging down all the winding stairs. She was nearly to the room where the templars slept. She could burst into their quarters and go out in a blaze of glory. She would be a legend to future apprentices and mages. Or she could fling herself out a window before anyone could react- or summon a demon to take as many templars with her as possible, carnage beyond what a single mage apprentice could hope to accomplish. He would crack them open like toys and suck out their life. He would smear their pitiful struggles against the wall and pin the corpses open with their ownteeth.
'Wait. This isn't my usual fantasy.'
The demons quietened, Rage and Pride dripping away.
Right. Common sense felt like cold water in her hair, cupping over her hears and obscuring bad advice.
'Go away,' Neria thought fiercely. Her fingers tightened into fists at her side. 'I don't want glory or vengeance.'
No, but you do want.
'What?'
There was only silence. Or, at least, the normal sounds of a head.
"Are you alright?" Ser Cullen paused with his oversized mitt on the great door that led into the templar's quarters. The Harrowing chamber laid past, guarded by the entire insufferable host of religious warriors.
No.
"Yes." Neria managed.
Ser Cullen gave her a long, considering silence under his helmet. He might have been attempting to communicate something meaningful. She had no idea what.
Neria folded her hands and looked down at them. She considered cleaning out the spaces underneath her fingernails.
"Right." Ser Cullen coughed weakly. "Let's go." With that, he flipped a strange triangular mechanism and pushed the doors open.
'The templars don't live much nicer than we do,' Neria noted, surprised. They had their own beds instead of bunks- but only apprentice mages lived in bunks, so that wasn't so strange. She didn't have time to poke around, unfortunately.
First Enchanter Irving was waiting in the Harrowing chamber. Something in her chest loosened. The First Enchanter would look out for one of his own. Surely she would come to no harm with him here.
Knight-Commander Greagor was less encouraging a sight.
Their words washed over her. She'd heard variations all her life- magic was not to be used for personal gain or to achieve dominion. Mages had to fight their inherent evil. She had to prove that she was worthy of wielding her power.
The most interesting event was the white-glowing hand that First Enchanter Irving passed over her face. She didn't have time to postulate about the spell, because she was falling asleep.
And waking up. She was standing. That was a funny thing to do while sleeping, wasn't it?
It took a moment to shake off disorientation. Neria traveled to the fade nightly- but she didn't often remember what she did while she was there. And it was never so vivid. She was in the fade but fully conscious?
How odd.
The panic of just minutes ago was gone. Her heartbeat was so steady that- actually, she couldn't hear or feel her heartbeat at all. Neria couldn't work up the care to be bothered by that.
She took stock of her surroundings. They were bleak. The ground under her feet looked like stone, but gave as if she was walking on cheese.
'Actually, the whole place smells a bit like cheese. Damp and pungent.'
Neria immediately wished she had not made that association. It just wasn't dignified to know that the source of all power in the world smelled like bad cheese.
"Hello."
The voice came from below.
Neria wrinkled her nose and frowned. "I should have expected you," she told the mouse. "If this is a joke, it's a bad one."
It was hard to read the expression of a mouse, but it might have been confused. "You... What now?"
"Oh come on. Cheeses and mice." She waved it off. "Be gone, dream. I need to focus. This is a test, apparently. I need to prove myself."
To templars. The idea of doing what they wanted grated. She didn't want to prove anything to them. But the idea did provide some clues about what she needed to do to escape- the templars were terrified that mages would either escape the tower or become abominations. Her physical body was currently under templar guard: they weren't testing her ability to meekly enforce her own imprisonment.
"No- I'm not part of a dream!" the mouse protested. Its back stiffened. "I was once an apprentice like you."
Neria paused to consider that. "Then why are you a mouse?"
"You can call me Mouse," the mouse began.
"No thanks," Neria disagreed immediately, just because she could. That was evidence towards the 'the mouse is in my imagination' theory. Of course she would be so boring as to call a mouse by its species.
The mouse didn't stop talking, but it might have sped up a bit. "I don't know how long I've been here. Time is strange in the Fade. I was an apprentice. I must have failed my Harrowing."
That, at least, indicated that the mouse knew something she was interested in. "Oh?" Neria adjusted her stance.
The mouse perked up a bit, eager to share his misery. "Yes. It's cruel, is what it is. They sent you in here with a terrible demon. If you don't defeat it in time, then they cut you down." His tail curled. "I've been here so long. I don't... I don't remember what it's like in the real world."
That was nothing that she couldn't have come up with. Vague, useless, and confirmed the theory she'd already thought of.
"Where is the demon?"
The mouse didn't know.
"How do I defeat it?"
The mouse didn't know.
"How long do I have?"
The mouse couldn't tell time in the Fade. It could have been days since his Harrowing, or years.
"I see." Neria bit her lower lip and considered the information. 'Mouse sounds like even more of a loser than Jowan. He can't help me, even if he's not just part of my dream.'
She wished she had her staff. She wasn't the most magically talented apprentice, but if nothing else, she could hit things with it.
There. In the distance- the fade was changing colors. Neria tuned the mouse out, watching the skyline change. The droll mush underfoot was gone. Pinks and yellows were bursting and twisting into blue. It wasn't just any blue- it was noon blue of a hot, clear day, when the air was still and insects were making unearthly sounds. Grass sprang underneath her feet.
She felt like she was waking up.
Mouse was shouting. She could hear his words, but not his meaning.
Neria kept walking. Bees the size of spellbooks bubbled out of the thick grass, flying low and fat. She felt her face stretch in a smile- and the skin pulled oddly. It was just her sunburn. It had been silly of her, but she had been laying out all day and watching clouds pass.
But there weren't any clouds?
Now there were. That one looked like Ergamond's Bestiary of Toothy and Poisonous Fauna. The one above it was the engraved mirror from the servant's quarters that she'd lived in from ages 5 to 9. She could tell, because it was reflecting her own face back at her, and that of the keeper beside her.
"Are you ready to go?" Keeper Marethari was a constant, moving with the sun every day. Now, she stood still. She was even taller than she had been with Neria was a child- now, Neria could see past the grandmotherly kindness to the ironbark will and the writhing ball of power that allowed her to protect the tribe from anyone who might try to interfere with their movements.
The Dalish went where they pleased. Routing the humans from the great trade hubs of their ancestors had been fine, but they did not want to be confined to stone walls once they had them. Still the Dalish walked ever on, following the halla to tomorrow. The sun was going down. She was going to be initiated in the secrets of a keeper- she must, if she was to be the keeper's first. There was no other mage child in the group, so Neria was calm. She didn't have to fight to keep up or pursue power she didn't care about. But when comfortable leadership fell into her lap, who was she to say no? Perhaps one day, she would find something else that she wanted. Then, she would take it.
"Neria?"
Mayli waited by the fire. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her armor was made of captured stars, hammered and coaxed into shape with butterflies and the pads of her thumbs. It shone, reflecting Neria's face back. She looked tired. Why was she tired?
Neria blinked back to herself. She gave the desire demon another look-over for good measure. Mayli's face melted away, into a pout and a long neck over thin strings of golden beads that left nothing to the imagination.
"Are you the demon I'm meant to defeat, then?" Neria clenched sweaty fists.
"No." The desire demon sounded almost disappointed. "It's a shame. I thought that I had you this time."
This time?
Neria tried to wipe her thoughts from her face. She wasn't certain that she succeeded. "Unfortunately not," she agreed snidely, pushing back fear. She'd been snared so easily. "Try again tomorrow, I suppose."
"Oh, believe me, I will." The demon was purring. "I know you. He doesn't have a chance, poor thing. You know your weaknesses and faults. It's not the classic mage downfall, is it?" Her form moved oddly, highlighting the delicate line of her waist. "No, you're a girl after my heart." She pulled at her chest illustratively, forcing a clawed finger past the barrier of smooth, dewy flesh to hint at what laid underneath. It sparkled, juicy and sharp. Neria's mouth watered. Desire let her skin close again, hiding the heart."If I told you that I could set you free if you had it, you'd open my skin with your teeth, wouldn't you?"
She kept her lips pressed shut. She ran her tongue along the inside of her upper teeth.
'I don't want to fight her. I'd need a staff to even have a chance. If I let her think that there's a chance she could get me at a later date, she might let me go. Better a host later than a corpse now. At least, from a desire demon's perspective.'
'It's not the worst idea," the demon critiqued. She shifted, arching her back. "But oh, do you want and want. You burn with it." She smiled. She had an extra row of teeth. "Here's some information for free, since we get on so well. The mouse is a demon."
Mouse roared with rage- and then roared with something else entirely. The sound filled his being to the brim and spilled over, pulling at his flesh. He folded up and up and up, until Neria's head was tilted back to stare up in faint horror.
That was a true demon. Desire was a demon too, but at least she put a pretty face on it. That thing-
"Pride," it purred. The thing undulated towards her. "Pride and preconception have been the downfall of many a mage." Sparks flew- but not at Neria. Desire lifted a hand almost lazily, trailing a thin mirror of ice. The globs of heat deflected and oh, that was satisfying to see in person. She wanted to be able to do that.
"You can have this one," Pride rumbled. It wasn't talking to her. "I've eaten well of late. There will be more tomorrow." It shifted again, and for a moment, Prim's voice echoed its' words. "Easy eating is better."
"Oh?" Desire raised her left eyebrow. She didn't look away from Pride. "I'm glad we could come to an agreement. Sweetling."
Neria took a step forward. She didn't know why.
"You deny me this time, then?"
"Ye- I deny you this time," Neria corrected hastily. It was never intelligent to tell a demon yes in any form.
Desire smiled. Her extra row of teeth had shifted into a forked tongue. "What a shame. Another time."
The stone was cold beneath her back. She was staring up at the Knight-Commander. His expression quickly shifted into impassivity. She'd thought he'd seemed sad, at first. "Mage Surana," he greeted. "I see you are awake."
From behind her, there was the sound of a sword moving in a sheath. She twisted, eyes wide with fear. But Ser Cullen was putting his blade away.
Wait.
Why had she been so sure he was about to cut her down? Few templars were that prone to violence. She knew that.
"Never mind that." First Enchanter Irving was stepping forward, offering a blanket.
She took it without thinking.
The old mage gave a sympathetic expression. "My old bones ache just seeing you down there, my child. Rise, as a member of the circle."
'I did it?"
Neria let herself be pulled up, heart working too fast. She didn't feel victorious. She didn't feel like she had done anything worth increasing the circle's trust in her person or faith in her skills. She hadn't fought any demons.
Did they think she had? Had she somehow passed their test wrongly?
'Better keep your mouth shut. These templars, they won't understand.'
"That was remarkably fast," the Knight-Commander remarked suspiciously.
It was as if he'd heard her thoughts. Sweat prickled up her neck despite the cold.
There was a soft clink when he moved."That Harrowing was far faster than a mageling of your ability should manage, in fact. A record."
"Greagor," the First Enchanter interceded. His voice was stiff with disapproval. "Perhaps Mage Surana has hidden depths." The look he turned on her was more calculating than she would have expected from such a kindly old man. Something in her knew that she needed to appease him, ensure he had no suspicions. He wasn't the harmless old man she'd long thought. He was something else, something dangerous.
'Hidden depths indeed,' came the purr. 'Clever girl.'
Neria smiled weakly, even as her heart dropped to her stomach.
That hadn't been her thought. It wasn't right, it wasn't her. Voices in her head were normal, but... That wasn't how demons usually sounded.
'What exactly was it I said? I deny you this time?'
Desire laughed.