A/N: So this came about from dialogue in the Dissent quest of DA2, where Anders mentions he's been helping out an underground resistance; it was intriguing...and very, very vague...so, cue attempt at writing! Also, apologies for the corny first sentence, I couldn't help myself
Spoilers...yes, probably some. Mostly going-ons at the Gallows throughout DA2 and Anders quest related stuff for Act I, II & III
As always, the world is Bioware's creation; I'm just playfully romping through
Her Harrowing had been…well, harrowing. Brineigh quickly wiped a salty tear from her eye while pulling her robes down over her knees with her free hand. She hunched forward and brought her raised wrist down, wrapping her arms tightly about her ankles, clasping her fingers together to stop the digits from shaking. The demon's offer had been tempting of course. The creature knew her innate desires, her weaknesses, her inner turmoil caused by the ghostly visage remembered in her dreams, remotely recognized as mother. The chance to know her history, to know her real name, it had been a tantalizing idea. But one she could and had, lived without.
A second tear coursed down Brineigh's cheek, hastily swept away by a swift dart of her tongue. The saline flavour revived the taste of copper in her mouth, the tang of her own blood. The memories of a sanguine spittle meshed with the still-damp touch of her collar, the physical sensations triggering a mental panic she wished she could will away. She squeezed her legs firm against her chest, the pressure helping to control her terror. The past hours of her ordeal had been a torment, a deluge of passionate wants tempered only by a remote discipline, a self-control at odds with her usual impetuous nature; but the worst of had come after she had woken, the desire demon abandoned in its nightmarish realm.
She had returned from the domain of dreams, the blurred ambiguity of the Fade, to the stark reality of the Harrowing Chamber, biting steel pressed tentatively against her throat, angry voices pounding at her ears. Her sharp intake of breath had provoked an immediate response; the bitter metal had nicked into her ebony skin, its razor edge easily piercing the delicate flesh below her chin. Panic had overtaken her through her muddled haze of waking, the pain had been overwhelming; she had vaguely sensed the blood stream from her throat, freely flowing into the collar of her robes, marring the amethyst fabric. Her breath had become a palpable gurgle; the cloying, thick smell of blood had been overpowering as her hands had clawed at her neck, an instinctive attempt to preserve life.
Through her dimming reality, Brineigh had registered a barking shout. The blade had been hastily retracted from her darkening vision, then he was at her side, blue tendrils of healing magic stemming the blood, closing the gouge, roaring at the woman above him, "Meredith, this time it goes to far!"
Brineigh squeezed her eyes shut, her body quaking with a muted shudder, remembering the sound of the clanking footsteps that had rounded her from behind, the rough, metallic grasp that had wrenched her off her knees the moment the wound at her throat had sealed. The memory of piercing, inquisitorial blue eyes meeting her own stormy grey irises was imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.
"She has survived Orsino."
Even hours later, the cool words of the Knight-Commander were remembered with a shiver.
The scrutinizing gaze had not held her in thrall for long; the Knight-Commander had quickly released her gauntleted hold, letting Brineigh slump deflated to the floor, addressing the elf still kneeling beside the injured mage with the same distant, icy tone, "I did not expect her to resist the demon's temptation. You were correct to press for her Harrowing."
Brineigh remembered the whirlwind of overwhelmed senses pushing her into shock, the blood unconsciously swallowed, coughed up in a foamy spittle on the stone floor. It had been her distressed state, she decided, hands still pulling at her ankles, that had made her so slow to become fully aware of her situation. But truly, what apprentice would ever believe that their helmeted guardians would turn on them in their moment of triumph and success?
The memory of a glacial, searching look, seeking out her gaze for a second time, intruded Brineigh's dark thoughts. The armoured woman's cold dialogue, directed towards the elf while searching Brineigh's face for some, any signs of physical corruption, had continued its measured cadence, attempting to regain control of the chaotic situation with a harsh, disinterested assessment.
"Ser Nickoll's action may have been hasty, but his instincts were good. We must always be vigilant for signs of blood magic and demons, especially in a newly Harrowed mage."
The elf had sighed, his wrath evident in his strained features, "We will talk of this later Knight-Commander. For now it is enough that she survived the overzealous fervour of your Templar." Warm eyes had turned to Brineigh, a hand extended to help her trembling form from the floor. "Congratulations, my dear. You have survived your Harrowing. You are now officially a mage, our newest sister in the Circle of Magi."
Brineigh recalled how her eyes had darted around, sweeping past the kindly persona of the First Enchanter, her shock abated sufficiently to register the figures surrounding her. Knight-Commander Meredith had stood beside the font of lyrium Brineigh had used to consciously enter the Fade, her arms folded rigidly across her chest, her closed, stoic expression unreadable, the golden circlet settled atop of her head, muted in the dim light. Three Templars had perched behind her; swords unsheathed, shields at the ready, bucket-shaped helmets preserving their anonymity. A fourth Templar had hovered beside Brineigh, helm secured over the eyes but military carriage off-kilter, balanced nervously, almost awkwardly, favouring a single foot.
Brineigh had instantly recognized the limped stance of Ser Nickoll, a lively man who looked only slightly older than herself, lately inducted into the Templar Order. She had regularly passed him in the hallways of the Gallows since his recruitment, his lilted conversation habitually engaged with the other Templar novices in comradely banter, a steady flow of talk that had not seemed to cease after he had taken his vows. She gripped her fingers tighter together, squeezing at the knuckles, wedging her digits between the bones. She remembered how her hand had flown to her throat, her first cognisant recognition of the past moments. Ser Nickoll's blade had dripped with her blood.
The First Enchanter had snatched her raised hand in his, forcing her to turn from the gruesome sight, obliging her to meet his eyes. "Go. Rest." His kindly eyes had turned hard as he eyed Ser Nickoll before turning back to Brineigh, "You will be tired after this ordeal. Come and see me tomorrow, after you've slept and recovered. We will have much to talk about, but that is for later. We will send your phylactery to the Kirkwall Chantry immediately."
A muttered 'thank you' was all that could be formed by her stiff lips; dazed shock had rapidly turned into frighten panic. With a final glance around the cold, stone room, Brineigh had fled.
Brineigh had run to the familiar, a small dark cell in the rooms beneath the main floors of the Gallows, part of the complex of deep cellars and dungeons used long ago to confine the slaves of the Tevinter Imperium. She came here often. Tumultuous events, incidents frequently created by her own emotional nature, usually found her seeking solitude either in the depths of the Circle Tower or a high window in a quiet room, overlooking the deep brine below the citadel. She rocked back and forth, drawing her knees closer to her chest, disengaging her hands from her ankles to clutch at the hem of her robes. Escape and isolation was a balm to her habitually passionate personality, the comfort of silence rivalled only by her love of the calming and hypnotic sounds of the sea.
She had found this room early in her youth. A harsh exchange with a fellow apprentice had made her instinctively dart into the unknown, an unremarkable event in itself, but her luck had led her to this cell. The small room would be considered commonplace by the casual observer; but through the walls, Brineigh could feel the roll of the ocean against the foundations of the Tower during a squall, she could inhale the smell of rotting seaweed and scent of the brackish water from the docks outside through a small grate near the ceiling. The far wall was always slightly damp, crusted white with saline deposits, the mineral leaching through the red sandstone of the room, located as it was below the grey stone floors of the Gallows. For Brineigh, this cell was close as she could get to the ocean - aquatic exercise for mages had been banned years ago after a report from Ferelden reached the Knight-Commander, detailing the failed escape attempt by an apprentice trying to swim from the Circle Tower there – and there were few things as meditative to her churning thoughts as the regularity of the swells of the sea, the sent of brackish air, or the play of light on the surface of the water.
Brineigh knew she should have returned to her dormitory to recover from her ordeal, but the familiar faces she was sure to find there would be unwelcome, unable to provide a salve for her rolling thoughts. Instead she had needed the solitude this chamber could provide, fleeing as far as she could from Ser Nickoll and his blade and the demons and reality of the cold, stone chamber far above her.
Tears continued to fall despite her best efforts to quell them. Her nose ran. She spared the thought that the emotive display was not a particularly distinguishing transition from apprentice to mage, from youth to adult. Not that anyone knew her true age, few mages did. The Harrowing simply made a convenient marker for many, their stories similar to her own - abandoned at the docks below the Gallows when she was little more than a small child, found by the Templars, small lightning bolts curling from her fingertips. It had taken her a long time to gather even this much information about her history from the helmeted guardians.
Her turbulent thoughts swelled, returning again to what had happened when she had left the Fade. The razor-sharp blade was still a ghost at her throat; the raised voices that had assaulted her ears were still unintelligible. The First Enchanter and Knight-Commander had obviously been clashing over her fate, the sword at her throat evidently placed there to end her life should she lose herself to a demon in the realm of dreams, her physical body turning into an abomination in the mortal world.
A stilted sigh broke her lips, accompanied by violent shiver. Her mind had involuntarily returned to the horror of Ser Nickoll and his bloody blade.
For as long as Brineigh could remember she had looked upon her Templar guardians as stern, yet paternal custodians, their persistent sentry accepted as necessary to protect others from mages and mages from themselves. She was not ignorant to the dangers of magic gone awry; she had witnessed a fellow turn into an abomination when they were both little more than children. The senior mages had eventually decided the poor girl had probably been lured by a promise of home, a place she had repeatedly called for in her fitful dreams, often waking others in their shared dormitory.
Brineigh knew the necessity for Templars; she was cognisant of their mission, she had accepted it. She knew the men and women who served as such had had distinctive faces, names and personalities, but their place in the Order had erased their individuality to her; she saw them as an entity, a single being, infallible in their defining purpose to protect.
But Sir Nickoll's action had not been the collective, unerring will of a group, safeguarding the lives of others. It had been the hasty, unthinking deed of a single man. As much as she wished to, Brineigh could not begrudge him; his rash, automatic act had been preformed out of instinct, duty, not personal malice. Yet, his action had splintered her notions of Templar righteousness, her belief in the overarching justice of the institution which governed her life. He was a fallible, singular man; his grave mistake had opened her eyes. Brineigh could no longer regard the Templars as individual extensions of a singular conscious; they were only a collection of men and women, as mortal and flawed as any other.
Hushed voices interrupted her reverie, breaking her dark thoughts and reviving her to her immediate surroundings. She quickly dispelled the small, bright wisp she had enchanted into being to light the black room and clapped both hands over her mouth, attempting to muffle the hitched breaths that had accompanied her tearful outbreak.
"Hurry Peigen, they should be here any moment now. We're late." Armoured footsteps moved rapidly towards Brineigh in the corridor outside as she tucked herself tightly into a corner of the room.
A second voice, much rougher than the first, responded, "Quietly Elsney, the last thing we need is them to bugger off right now! Maker, my fingers have been trembling something fierce of late! Blighted Knight-Commander and her blighted dwarf-dust regulations."
The men swept past Brineigh, the light from their torch illuminating the doorway. Templars, Brineigh identified, breathing softly, not moving an inch from the corner where she had entrenched herself. She had no desire to be discovered outside of the workaday quarters of the Gallows and the desperation in the second man's voice, along with the deduction that they were in the depths of the Tower to secure lyrium, the mineral magic-users used to enter the Fade and Templars exploited to enhance their effectiveness in dispelling incantations, spoke to a nefarious purpose.
They're getting lyrium from outside the Tower, they're smuggling it in! The thought provoked a sudden exhilarated inquisitiveness in her. The upper echelons of the Chantry controlled the lyrium supply, not only in Kirkwall, but across most of Thedas. By controlling the lyrium trade, the Chantry effectively controlled the Templars, many of whom became addicted to the mineral after prolonged consumption.
She had seen addicted men before. Ser Samson, the man who had inadvertently given Brineigh her name after dragging his 'briny, salty lass' reluctantly from the sea outside the Gallows time and again in her childhood, had been such a man. His abrupt departure from the Templar order as she had become a teen had been a trial for her; she had missed his kind smiles, replaced as they were by stern, faceless and helmeted oppressors who had few words and less interest for a magically-gifted youth.
Ser Samson had returned to the Gallows shortly after his exodus. Brineigh had observed the man from her dormitory window overlooking the courtyard and had run to meet him, expecting him to return to the Templars. The man had not recognized her through his haze of trembling and had passed through the gated threshold without a second look. His hands had shook, his body had rocked; a sympathetic captain had led the man to the Templar barracks. It had taken Brineigh a long time to come to terms with what had become of the man, even longer to understand his addiction. In the end, he had not returned to the Gallows.
The muffled voices and clanging steps of the Templars receded and finally stopped. Brineigh's rampant curiosity pushed aside the thoughts of the past few hours and encouraged her silent shuffle towards the door, gingerly placing her feet as soundlessly as she could, the footfalls muffled by the thick soles of her silver-threaded boots. Exercising caution, she discretely poked her head out the doorway and observed a flickering light accompanying the sound of low voices emerging from a second entry, positioned further along the corridor. Hushed whispers followed a muted jangle of coins; heavy armoured footsteps began to retrace their progress through the corridor outside Brineigh's refuge.
Brineigh quickly withdrew from the doorframe and pressed herself hard into the wall beside the entry, the rough, gritty sandstone of the walls instantly biting through her thin robes. She ignored the coarse feel of the rock as she stilled her body, not allowing herself to move, to breathe, as the clanking footsteps retreated up a distant stairwell. She held her body static for long minutes after the footfalls faded, taking shallow breathes through her stuffy, running nose as quietly as she dared.
It took time for Brineigh to convince herself that it was safe to move. When she finally detached herself from the wall, her body slumped to the floor, utterly released of its latent tension, her boneless frame collapsing in a heap. A swift snoop, made from the ground around the corner of the door, confirmed what she instinctively knew, the passageway outside was now completely dark, the light from the second doorway had been removed with the Templars. She pulled her head back and waited.
It was over half an hour before Brineigh had the courage to recast her wisp spell, the white light projecting her flickering silhouette against the walls. She pulled her hands from her face slowly, letting the fingertips drag downwards to the bottom of her jaw. The past half hour had given her time to muse the best course of action, time for her to decide what to do. There was the correct choice of course, the option which involved huffing quickly up the stairs, stealthing through hallways and collapsing in her dormitory, forgetting about the Templars, the lyrium smuggling, the possible way out. She was tired enough to give the option a thought.
But, Brineigh was nothing if not impulsive. The self-control imposed when she practiced magic, the discipline she had maintained during her Harrowing hours before, had no place in her reality. The lures of the physical realm were not the dangerous temptations of the Fade. Her decision had been made the instant the Templars had ascended stairs. The lucky chance for possible freedom, to escape the Gallows and the recent, brutal memories, however briefly, was too much of a temptation. Brineigh rose quietly to her feet and cautiously tramped to the door.
Her time since the Templar's departure had been chiefly spent rationalizing whether her presence in the Gallows, at least for a short time, was likely to be overlooked. She had no intension of leaving for more than a brief excursion; she had no desire to be branded and hunted down as an apostate the very day she was accepted into the Circle of Magi. Brineigh's newly formed notions of the blurred borders of her world as a mage did not extend to the black and white lens with which she knew Templars viewed magic-users who escaped. The idea that she would be hunted, the thought that steel could once again sliced through her neck, terrified her.
But her Harrowing had excused her from tutorials for the day. Her former companions, other apprentices in the dormitories, would be told of her trial and simply assume she had moved to her new quarters with the other Harrowed mages when she failed to appear at curfew. The First Enchanter had asked her to see him the next day rather than immediately and her phylactery was in transit, unlikely to be located or used quickly should someone notice her absence. Most would assume that it was more likely that Brineigh would be found in a dark corner of the Gallows, much as she was doing at the current moment.
She firmed her resolve; it was a risk attempting this brief escape but a similar opportunity would be unlikely to present itself again. She needed this. She raised a hand to her throat, her thumb briefly brushing the lip of her collar, still damp with her own blood. Her cell in the Gallows had not given her the respite from her turbulent thoughts she had hoped it would, she needed to find peace and calm to settle her mind; the tranquility, she decided wryly, attempting to justify her curiosity, that could only brought on by a cool draught of a sea breeze against her skin.
But if she was honest with herself, the need stemmed from more than simple interest in the world beyond her limited borders. For the first time, her home seemed repressive, unfair, the memories of the past hours turning the Circle Tower into the prison others claimed it to be. She needed to get out.
The silent corridor loomed before her under the light of the spell wisp. Her passage to freedom was on her left; she approached the entry with caution, stealthily poking her head inside the door before moving her body. Much to her surprise, the room was empty, devoid of the doors or gaping holes in the floor she had expected to find, the only items within being smashed barrels and disintegrating crates. Had she made a mistake? No, this is the right entrance, she concluded as she retraced her steps from her cell with her eyes. Is there no way out after all? Brineigh waved her hand at the wisp beside her, the ball of light increased its flickering luminosity; if there was a way out, she was determined to find it.
It took Brineigh over an hour to find the trapdoor concealed within the far wall and several more minutes to find the hidden catch to open it. It took another half an hour of tense deliberation to disarm the trap behind the catch, a poisonous spike stinking of putrid venom. Finally the trap was disarmed, the catch was pulled and the door opened, revealing steep stone stairs illuminated by the dying light of a lantern, the flame sputtering to black as the breeze generated by the door reached it. Brineigh descended the steep stairs beyond, dimmed her spell wisp with a flick of the wrist, and strode rapidly into the unknown.
A/N: Thanks so much for reading and making it to the end of the chapter! I'm really, really new at at the whole 'creative writing' thing, I think the last time I wrote a story was early in grade school...far too long ago!...so I'd love your your comments, etc.! Anything to get better, right? :D