Chapter 2
The Sweet Smell of Blood
9:30 Dragon – Ferelden's Circle of Magi
Screams echoed the halls of the Circle Tower as Aianna and a few apprentices followed her down the steps to the third floor. Sweat poured down her face and she frantically wiped it from her forehead as they continued to descend down the stairs. Aianna and the others only knew what was going on from what they could make out from the screaming Templars. The small group reached the bottom of the stairs and Aianna pushed against the large door with all her strength, and to her horror, it was locked.
"No, no, no, no, no…" Aianna frantically continued to slam her body against the massive door until she fell backwards. The screams from upstairs continued and the smell of sulfur began to sting in the air. One of the human apprentices screamed and Aianna spun around to find a rage demon descending the stairs. The human apprentice tripped and the rage demon reached out its lava hand and burned the apprentice straight through. An elven apprentice shrieked in terror and casted a lightning spell but was also cut down by one slash of the demon's hand.
Aianna stood firm and used the time the rage demon was concentrating on the apprentices to cast her own spell. A shot of frost enveloped the rage demon from the ground, trapping it in ice. Aianna could hear a hissing noise from the frozen creature as the ice was cooling down the rage demons body of lava. The ice bust and the demon melted away. The two apprentices who had followed her were now dead and Aianna was trapped.
"SOMEONE!" she screamed slamming her fist on the door. "Someone please HELP me!" Aianna broke out into tears in fear for her life. Her sobs would attract more demons and abominations, she knew that. But someone had to have locked the door and that someone had to be alive on the other side. "For the love of the Maker! Please!"
What seemed like hours passed and her voice became strained from the unheard calls for help. With hope thinning around her Aianna fell to the floor sobbing. She clenched herself tightly and leaned her body against the door as she continued to cry.
"Aianna? Is that you?" a familiar voice of the tower called from the other side of the door. She paused for a moment, afraid of whom it might be. "Aia? It's Cullen! Answer me."
"Cullen! Thank the Maker," Aianna sobbed rising to her feet. "Please, open the door! I don't want to die! PLEASE!" she pleaded with the only Templar she ever trusted. "The top floor is crawling with demons! I just killed one and I'm sure more are coming!"
"Step back from the door, Aianna," Cullen spoke firmly. "I have to break it down!" Aianna quickly stepped back tripping over the dead human apprentice. She continued to sob, shaking in fear as Cullen swung his large sword against the door. He pounded harder between the lock a second time, and then a third. With a fourth strike, Cullen broke the massive lock that clamped the door shut and kicked it in. Aianna screamed as he burst through and quickly took her hand and pulled her to her feet.
"Cullen," Aianna sighed in relief wiping the tears from her eyes. He smiled at her pushing her hair out from her face and behind her ears. He took a few moments to allow her to regain herself watching the stairs carefully.
"No time Aia, we have to move now." Cullen led Aianna through the hall quickly, screams coming from behind closed doors. Templars and mages alike falling prey to the demons that had been unleashed behind those doors. Cullen led Aianna down a few rooms away from the stairs. He slowly leaned his head inside the open door to see the bodies of three Templars and a blood mage; but no sign of any demons. Cullen waved her to follow him inside the room. He quickly closed the door behind them and took one of the dead Templar's swords and barred the door with it.
The room was a writing room, full of papers, desks, and inks scattered among the mutilated bodies on the floor. There was only a small window with bars in the corner. Cullen examined the bars and pushed on one of them slightly. Aianna looked around the room and noticed a staff grasped in the blood mage's hand. She saw the lyrium woven into the design of the staff and red gem stones embedded into the top. She pulled the staff from the dead mage's hand and placed it in her own sheath where hers had once been. Turning to Cullen, she found he had pushed both of the bars in the window outward.
"Come on Aianna," he gestured for her to come closer. "Out the window with you!" Hesitantly she walked to the window and looked out and saw Lake Calenhad below. The drop to the water was much further than Aianna wanted to jump. "You need to go…Now."
"What about you Cullen?" she whispered looking to him with concern. "I can't just leave you here!" Aianna's head hurt from the screaming and her own sobs. She hadn't been outside the tower in almost fifteen years.
"Even if I could fit through the window I'd just sink in this armor, now go…" Cullen smiled touching her face softly and pushed her forward and trying to help her to the window's ledge. "You run, and don't look back you hear me?" Cullen handed her a pouch from his belt that jingled with coins. "You go find your mother in Tevinter; you know that's where she'd take your sister."
"Cullen…"Aianna whispered turning her feet over the side of the ledge and looked back at him. Her elven eyes gazed back at him full of tears and sadness. "Thank you, for everything. Not just now but all these years…" Cullen smiled, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear and remembered the scared little elf girl who couldn't read. No one would read her the letters from her mother and how she cried every night. Aianna's tears brought back all those memories from the last fifteen years.
"May the Maker watch over you Aianna, and may He lead you to a brighter path than this." He knew pushing her out of the window was against his vow and against the Order's. But he remembered reading to her when she was child, stories, letters from her mother and even the Chant of Light. No one would know. No one.
Cullen pushed her out the window without a second thought.
Aianna felt like she was falling forever down the side of the Magi tower. Her small framed body hit the water like a brick and she screamed in pain coming to the surface. The water was almost toxic from the years of waste the mages had dumped into the lake. Aianna could see the shoreline in front of her and she swam towards it, coughing from the polluted water. She swam as fast as she could, fighting the water's sickness until she finally climbed up to the lake's shore. Aianna gasped for air and collapsed on the lake bed sobbing loudly from pain and exhaustion. She knew she couldn't stay long, that she needed to find her Mother. If there was a Maker, Aianna thought to herself, still lying motionless on the lake bed, then maybe this happened for the best. She lived while many of her brethren were dead, dying, or going to die soon at the hands of demons.
She forced herself to her feet and to the left she could see the inn called The Spoiled Princess that also had the boat dock that carried people to the Tower's front gate. Aianna closed her eyes and took a deep breath to collect her thoughts. She would need to travel West through Orlais and then Northeast through Nevarra. With no map but her memory Aianna set off for the Tevinter Imperium in hopes of finding her mother and the sister she had never known.
Aianna traveled through Ferelden unnoticed due to the recent events Ostagar, what with the former King of Ferelden falling in battle against the darkspawn. News seemed to travel faster than she could as she stuck to the northern side of the Imperial Highway only to cross through Heartlands to save time. On her travels she encountered many different kinds of people and places she could not at first understand. Once she made it safely through Orlais and into Nevarra, Aianna encountered a clan of Dalish elves that did not take kindly to her at first. Their Keeper asked her of her travels and she told them she was looking for her mother in Tevinter. Aianna traveled alongside the Dalish through the empty country side of Nevarra. While with the Dalish, she learned Vallaslin, or blood writing from the Dalish Keeper. Aianna began marking herself on nights they rested, covering most of her left cheek. With their guidance and company they avoided most human contact until reaching the outskirts of Tevinter.
Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Imperium, the city of Aianna's roots was littered with mages of all kinds. In the three months it took Aianna to travel here she had grown both in strength and magic. She had come to like the sound of the word "apostate" and the freedom she now had to use her gifts to the limit had hardened her once mute nature. The Keeper and his first had begun to teach Aianna battle stances for a mage not long before she had left them. Aianna remembered reading tomes on Force Magic written by the First Enchanters of Kirkwall's tower and was trying to teach herself the spells from memory alone. She no longer wore the long robes that she had grown up in.
Aianna was dressed in black leather stitched perfectly to fit her small frame by an elder Dalish woman. The front was cut low and the hem was short, just above her knees. A hunter had become infatuated with Aianna, and had once brought her back boots made of fine leather and offered them to her as a gift. She wore them with pride for they fit perfectly with alterations and the dark leather matched the dyed leather robes she wore. Aianna had collected red and black feathers from birds that hunters had brought back and fashioned them into the shoulders over her robes.
She fit quite well in the streets of Minrathous; here she was beautiful and respected for being a mage. Aianna took in the sights of magics being performed in the streets, fights breaking out between magisters and settling it in blood. Never in her life had she seen blood magic used before and it was everywhere in Minrathous; from the highest of magisters to the lowest of mage servants.
Aianna walked the streets looking for the elven alienage she remembered her mother mentioning in her letters over the years. What if she couldn't find her mother? What if they both had died in the massacre in Cousland castle? She shook her head trying to shake these thoughts from her mind. But she could not deter from her path now. She had to find the alienage first and, too scared to speak to anyone, Aianna continued to wonder aimlessly.
