"Are you certain this is a good idea?" Sacha asked, their Orlesian accent thickened by nerves.
Vitalia rolled her eyes, and swallowed a sigh of impatience. "Yes, Sa, I've already told you." She turned to her friend, and their pointed ears twitched. "Jowan said he was going to the library to study his entropy spells. He never came back, so I am assuming he's still there. At this hour, he's bound to be alone."
Sacha shuffled their feet, and Vitalia saw them look down at the ground with uneasiness in their dark eyes. "I know, but what about the templars? Surely they will notice if something is amiss."
"They would not notice a fly if it were to get caught within their ghastly helmets. Now quit stalling." She double checked the bag, which contained a handful of vials containing her brother's favorite itching powder, made from the rashvine she collected from various mages too careless to return excess ingredients. When Vitalia was sure nothing was missing, she took Sacha's hand. "Let's go, we have everything we need. And try not to worry so much; this will be fun!"
Sacha smiled, their brow furrowed and their lips taut. They were clearly uneasy, but followed Vitalia when she tugged their arm nonetheless.
The two young mages crept from the alcove in their dormitory, and Vitalia felt Sacha's grip loosen and tighten every so often, and eventually they paused entirely. She ignored their hesitation, and instead pulled them along behind her as she made her way to the door. As the door creaked open, Vitalia checked over her shoulder to be sure no one noticed their departure—a few bodies shifted beneath their blankets, but no one spoke or rose from their slumber.
Once they were clear of the threshold, Vitalia gently closed the door behind them. The corridor was quiet, save for the occasional scrape and clang of templar armor, each of which caused Sacha to stop and tighten their grip on Vitalia's hand.
"Would you relax? We're hardly any distance from the dormitory. If they catch us, we will say we were returning from the library and got turned around."
Sacha nodded, but otherwise remained silent as they began to follow Vitalia once more. When the two elves approached the entrance to the main hall, however, both of them froze.
Voices were coming from the hall. Vitalia recognized the Knight Commander's voice immediately, his furious, rumbling baritone grim in the evening silence. But the woman who spoke in return to his queries was unfamiliar. Her voice quivered in a nervous tone. Steadily, the strange woman's pitch raised a full octave, and though still her words remained unintelligible at such a distance as Vitalia's, the trembling terror was more than clear.
Sacha began to pull Vitalia back toward the dormitory. "Tali, we should-"
Before Sacha could finish, a familiar voice yelled, "No! I won't let you touch her!"
Jowan. Vitalia was sure that was him. But what was he doing out of the library? There was an uncomfortable shift in the magical energy around and within her, and Vitalia felt vaguely nauseous, which she could see mirrored in the ashen undertone Sacha's dark skin had taken.
Another voice, vaguely familiar to Vitalia, shouted with frantic desperation, "Jowan, what are you doing? Stop!"
"This is your fault! If you had only kept your promise and stayed quiet…"
The energy shifted violently, and Vitalia fell to her knees and heaved.
Crash!
The sounds of armor slamming and scraping against the stone floor shocked Vitalia out of the haze she had been thrust into, and she pressed her hands to her ears. Sacha, back braced against the wall for support, scrambled away from the doorway, and fell to the floor once in their rush before they disappeared over the dormitory's threshold. The door slammed shut behind Sacha, and Vitalia struggled to her feet and leaned against the wall beside the doorway. She poked her head around the corner slowly when voices trailed through the main hall into the corridor.
The first enchanter lay awkwardly on his side, covered in blood spatter. The knight commander and a handful of templars sat against the wall, jaws visible where their helmets sat askew on their head. There armor was equally bloody, as were the enchanter's robes of the woman who lay unconscious by Irving. A dark mass of hair pooled around her head, and the brown skin of her face was just barely visible. It looked like Arais, a popular tutor among creation and primal mages. She must have been the one to whom Jowan was speaking before… this happened. Creators, what had happened in there?
That unfamiliar woman spoke, fear in her voice as Jowan pleaded with her to listen. Vitalia pressed her back against the wall to remain out of sight, terrified that she might be hurt, though not entirely sure by whom anymore. She had forgotten that someone had caused the carnage she had just witnessed, and felt deeply within herself. Had Jowan done it, whatever it was?
She slunk even deeper into the wall, her energy still drained, and dropped the bag as she pressed her body against the corner—hurried footsteps came closer and closer to the corridor in which she hid. Jowan ran through the doorway, his arms soaked and what she could see of his face splattered with blood. Her eyes went wide, and she bit back a gasp. She wanted to call out to him, to see if he was okay or if he needed healing, but before she could muster the will to speak, two templars came barreling through through the double doors which led to the entrance hall.
The words died in her throat when she saw the dagger slice into Jowan's wrist, and heard the templar cry, "Blood magic!" before he was thrown against the wall like a ragdoll. His fellow soon met a similar fate, his shield scraping along the stone floor when the force of his body hitting the stone knocked it loose from his grip.
A hoarse, shrill sound forced itself from her throat almost entirely by its own accord. She wretched whatever was left in her stomach onto the floor as she landed on her knees, the warped power the blood magic had created sapping Vitalia of her remaining energy.
Jowan turned slowly, a mournful look on his face. "No. No, no, Vitalia, what are you doing out of the dormitory? Oh, Maker, no one was supposed to know..."
"Jowan?" she croaked, a tear streaming down her cheek as she stared up at him. Her arms struggled against the weight of her torso as she leaned over, the ground cold against her palms. "H-How could you? What have you done?"
His eyes met the floor, and his shoulders slumped as if the weight of the entirety of Kinloch Hold were bearing down upon him. "I didn't have a choice. I wish I could make you understand, but-" The scrape of metal from the main hall drew his attention, and his eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. "I'm sorry, Tali. I really am sorry. I have to go. I can't stay here any longer."
He turned and ran down the corridor, and disappeared through the double doors. There were more sounds of metal crashing against stone, but Tali was too numb to react to it. As the templars funneled through the doorway by which she hid, she went unnoticed, even as she sobbed. Her heart was breaking as she slowly, cautiously returned to the dormitory and stood against the door once it had closed. How could he do this? How could he jeopardize his life, all their lives, for a few possible moments of freedom?
"Tali?" She heard the questioning voice through a haze, as If she were in a dream, and for the briefest of moments she almost believed that everything she had just experienced was just that: a horrible nightmare from which she would awake at any moment, and laugh away before falling into more pleasant dreams a moment later. But as Sacha shook her, their terror digging painful little crescents into her skin through her robes, she knew she wasn't asleep.
"Tali, please say something. Anything. Please!"
"Jowan..." she whispered, hardly able to control her own voice as it shook with emotion.
Sacha forced her eyes to meet theirs. "What about Jowan? What happened? Is he all right?"
The elven girl bit back a sob as she choked on the words that would make her ill to say aloud. She took a deep, labored breath before she said, so quietly it was possible Sacha could not have heard, "Jowan is a blood mage. Even if he is okay, he won't be when they catch him." Her last words came out in a pitiful whine, and as the other apprentices shifted and sat up in their beds, she could feel their eyes burn into her.
"Maker's breath." Sacha held her in their arms, and slowly guided her to the alcove. Vitalia felt the coolness of a damp cloth against her heated skin as her friend wiped the last vestiges of the days meals from her cheeks and lips. They pulled the tie from her hair, and the black curls fell to frame her face. The strands that brushed her cheeks clung to the moisture she could not blink away, no matter her effort.
For a moment that stretched on for ages, Sacha disappeared into the main dormitory. Vitalia watched as tears dripped from her chin, or the tip of her nose, and onto the worn carpet beneath her feet. Vibrant red grew crimson, and she felt her stomach churn. Were it not for the fact that there was nothing left, she was sure she would have vomited again. When Sacha finally returned, a simple nightgown draped over their arm, Vitalia grimaced. If she had only listened to them, maybe she would have been spared becoming a witness to the awful things Jowan had done.
Vitalia said nothing. She took the nightgown from Sacha when they offered it, but she couldn't meet their eyes. Guilt twisted her insides as they disappeared around the wall of the alcove to give her privacy, and she wondered if the nausea she felt would ever pass. It hardly seemed so. She slowly slipped out of her sullied robes and into the slip of cotton all the female mages were given, focusing on every muscle that tensed and joint that bent, anything else but the roiling in her stomach.
She threw her robes atop the pile of laundry that would be collected, and hoped the smell wouldn't be too overwhelming come morning. Her mind wandered to memories of Jowan teasing her over an odd smell coming from her bunk, which he would later regret when the poultice she had been mixing was used against him, rather than the target for whom it had originally been intended.
In an instant, she was filled with panic, and she rushed out of the alcove toward the door—for all her worry over what she had witnessed, she couldn't remember if she had brought her bag back to the dormitory.
Something solid blocked her path, and Vitalia was knocked back a step. Before she could recover herself enough to focus on what had gotten in her way, Sacha asked, "Tali, what's wrong?"
"My bag. I can't remember what I did with my bag," she moaned. The fear that the templars might find her itching powder and think she had something to do with Jowan's escape froze the blood as it pounded through her veins.
Sacha brought their arms around her, and rubbed soothing circles over her back. "I found it by the door while I was getting your nightgown. I put it in the chest by your bunk, where you keep it." They held her at arm's length. "And if you had left it out there, I would have found a way to get it." An arm snaked across Vitalia's shoulders, and Sacha led her to her bed. "You really should get some rest now. I only got grazed by whatever power Jowan summoned with his blood magic. I can't imagine how you must be feeling. We will talk about it in the morning, I promise."
She nodded and kissed them on the cheek, and climbed into her bunk. Sacha's footsteps shuffled quietly across the dormitory until they quieted completely. The silence was further broken by the shouts of templars, muted by the thick wooden doors and granite walls. To her, however, it was as if they echoed in a cave. Like the ones in Antiva, where she and her brother once played. Vitalia shifted in her bunk, but no matter how she maneuvered, she couldn't seem to relax. Every barked order from the knight commander, no matter how unintelligible, reverberated in her skull.
Countless moments passed before she could take it no longer, her fingers itching to claw at her skin as she began to hear Jowan's final words to her over and over. She flung the covers carelessly from her body and climbed out of bed. The cool air chilled the sweat that soaked her body, and the soft cotton of her nightgown clung to her as she staggered her way over to Sacha's bunk.
Tears welling up in her eyes, Vitalia shook Sacha until their eyes fluttered open in the darkness, and stared up at her in hazy confusion. "Tali?"
"Yes, it's me." She sat on the edge of the bed. "I can't sleep."
"C'mere," they said, lifting the blankets for her to climb beneath. Their arms wrapped around her middle and hugged her close, and for the first time since everything happened, she allowed herself to weep freely. One of her best friends had resorted to forbidden magic for Creators only knew what reason, and at what cost? Death or Tranquility as soon as he was captured, surely, for maybe a few days of freedom? She should have stopped him, or at least attempted to convince him not to leave. Perhaps his punishment would have been less severe if he had turned himself in.
Oh, that was ridiculous, and she knew it. He had attacked the knight commander; his fate was sealed. Jowan was absolutely going to be killed when he was captured, or, if he was lucky, made Tranquil. But could Tranquility even be considered the fate of a lucky man?
It hardly mattered. Guilt ravaged her heart as it beat a weak rhythm in her chest. Jowan had sacrificed his mind and his body, and perhaps his life, for a fleeting taste of freedom. She stared across the dormitory to the empty bed where he should have been sleeping, and prayed exhaustion and the comfort of her friend's arms around her would allow her to sleep as everything she experience threatened to overwhelm her.
She could hardly imagine what could be worth the sacrifices Jowan had made, and she no longer knew if she could stand with him.