Ferelden Circle of Magi

Salem

I knew that something was wrong. Something was more than wrong. Not moments ago, I and my companions were fighting for our lives. An elder mage was with us, healing the small wounds we acquired along the way. The tower was rife with abominations, but I could not…I could not let potential innocent lives be taken by the Right of Annulment. Not if I could stand in its way and see to the truth of the situation.

The air was choked with smoke, the stench of sulfur and seared lyrium. I knew I remembered that detail. I also remembered a wide-open room with a mess of strange, fleshy, ropey vines streaming across the floor, leading to a monstrous entity. I remembered them all falling…Alistair, Morrigan, Wynne, and, last before me, Leliana…she whimpered my name as my fell. Not my title. Not my last name, but my first.

I did not remember my eyes closing, but I knew I was in the wrong place. The wrong time. Trapped by…by something. Perhaps the demon with the gravelly voice…I remembered it now. A massive, burgundy face that looked like inverted flesh. The features were odd, a caricature of human features, filled with gold and silver piercings. Its voice had sound like ground gravel…it entreated us to sleep.

Where I am now…it is not where I was…not where I need to be. I must get back there. But how?

Before me lay a set of stairs, the spires of towers I did not recognize, and a man beyond whose face I knew all too well. The man who dragged me bodily away from Highever. The man who put a goblet of blood in my hand and bade me drink on pain of death. I walked up the stairs, looking around, seeing others standing there, complete strangers to me, dressed in the livery of the Grey Warden order.

Why am I here? Where is this place?

"Duncan," I address him. "What has happened?"

"The fight is done." He replies, a wide smile decorating his features, out of place. "The Archdemon defeated, the Blight finished. You stand with me here, victorious at Weisshaupt. You are due your rest, young warden."

"Perhaps I am." I said, feeling an eerie peace spread over me. A peace that did not belong. My job was not yet done. My work not yet finished. In fact, there were leagues to go before I could lay down my head in rest. "But that rest will not come for quite some time. You see, Duncan, you perished. I saw your corpse on the grasses of Ostagar."

"That must have been a dream, Lady Cousland." He called me by my noble title, and it chafed against my skin like rough leather. "We are both here, hale and hearty, ready to begin the next tasks of the Warden Order."

I looked up to the roof, then around the room, ignoring the people around me, listening to their footsteps as they drew closer. I lift my hands to the sky, more preparing to draw my swords than in supplication.

"Did you think this was what I wanted!?" I shouted to the darkness that had pinned me here, in this phantom place, this plane within and perhaps out of reality. "Did you think this the deepest of my heart's desire!? You know nothing of me!" I allowed the pain into my voice, the anger and the hatred and the grief in which my private heart indulged. "You know nothing whatsoever, so reveal the truth of this illusion or slay me now!"

I ducked under the swipe of the blade from the man who was not Duncan and spun away from the dagger nearly plunged into my side. I pulled my swords from their sheathes on my back and began the dance with death yet again. I did not know what had constructed this dream, but its knowledge of combat was not enough to make the three I fought against a true threat. They fell to my blades and their bodies evaporated.

The spires of Weisshaupt crumbled and the earth did not shake. They simply whispered out of existence…as the world faded when waking from a dream. I felt as though I fell with them, but I retained my wholeness, my personhood, my wits about me. I landed on a different ground, a labyrinth of muted colors and strange smells that were not smells and a wind that smelled of dank swamp water…it might not even have been a wind. Perhaps it was simply an undulation of air so thick it clung to the skin like water. I struggled to pull in air.

"How are you here?" I heard a genteel voice and looked to see a young man standing before me, wearing mage's robes. "How did you escape the sloth demon's illusion?"

"So, you know where we are then?" I asked, gripping my swords, preparing to attack lest he be another instrument of the demon for my demise.

"We're in the Fade, somehow." He told me. "I came looking for the Litany of Andralla, to help fight against…"


I must find her. I told myself, repeating the words as a mantra, to power me through the hellscape that was the fade. I must find her. I must get her free from this place.

I limped through the building, across the stone floor, my own blood squelching beneath my feet as it dripped from my arms, my legs, all the places I had been struck and pierced and slashed. I had learned to alter my form, to shift through the puzzling realms of the Fade and fight the monsters and shades and spirits and demons. I had been lucky to find Alistair, Morrigan, and Wynne, to free them from their illusions…well…two of them. Morrigan had known that the image of Flemeth before her was not her mother; though she'd not known how to get free of the demon's trap.

The only one I that remained for me to find was Leliana. All of the others were found enduring emotional turmoil, the tragedies and pains and frustrations of their lives. I did not know what horrors Leliana had faced, but her eyes, no matter how much light shone from them, no matter the joy in her smile and the hope with which she greeted the morning, I could see a deep and fathomless sorrow in the lightning blue.

Whatever horrors the other experienced here, I knew that hers would be great and terrible. My own injuries would not deter me. I did not know if they would follow me into the waking world, but I did not care. They had cast their lost with me, to help me fight this Blight and kill this archdemon. I owed it to them to find them, to save them, to bleed for them and take what blows I could so that they could continue to stand strong. I owed that debt most especially to Leliana, who joined us with no compulsion, no need, no purpose other than her belief in her vision.

I paused and leaned against a pillar, catching my breath, clutching the knife in my thigh, keeping it from falling out. I hissed as it moved within my flesh, but managed to breathe through it. I could face this, no matter what. And, ahead of me, I saw her.

She lay on a raised table in the room ahead of me. I moved closer and saw an elderly woman, clothed in the robes of a Revered Mother, removing bandages from her body. I watched as she washed Leliana's wounds…grievous injuries that held a tale so great and terrible that I knew I wished to know. To know how the light entered her eyes again. I could see the soles of Leliana's feet; they had been caned and were bruised black and purple. She must have been tended to by the most competent of healers. I had seen such wounds before, as a child, when the prisoners of war released from their Orlesian captors returned, maimed for eternity from the caning of their feet, the breaking of the delicate bones, and the improper resetting of the same.

What did you endure that led you to this place? I wondered as I drew close enough to hear the faint outlines of words spoken between them. For surely no Chantry sister could have found herself beneath torture. But, I was not always a Grey Warden. She might not always have been so devout…especially given the fact that she can fight like no other I've ever seen.

I leaned on the wall as I limped closer, wondering how I could understand what they were saying, for I could hear the lyrical strains of the Orlesian language.

"Cry your tears, child." I heard the watery, gravelly voice of the Revered Mother. "They are healing you as quickly, if not moreso, than the herbs and spells."

"I cannot cry." Leliana's voice sounded weak, damaged, as I had never heard it. "I cannot cry for that makes this real. It makes all of it real. Please, I do not want it to be so."

"But it is so, my child." The mother's voice sounded comforting, impossibly brave, and truly good. "Does not the pain of your body make it real? The blood on your bandages? Why do your tears give this more reality than all else that has been done to you?"

"Because tears are of grief, not of pain." Leliana whispered and my heart cracked.

This was a moment from her life, a terror of being able to feel…a terror I knew all too well. I did not weep for that which I had lost, for those tears, that grief, made it all more real than it was if left unmourned. It left the pain sacredly at a distance, where it did not need to be touched or lifted, lest you break beneath it. I knew this pain of hers and I wondered if she, having known it herself, could witness it in me. I did not miss the looks that she gave me, the looks she spared for me alone. Something beyond and deeper than the flighty Chantry sister who could speak ad nauseum about fashion and wigs and shoes.

A part of me I thought slaughtered in Highever had returned beneath that rare look. The curiosity that drove me. The acknowledgement of emotion. The realization that I wanted to see beyond the light in her eyes…and her eyes alone. No others interested me. No others drew me in. No others made me question and…and desire.

"You can grieve for what you have lost, Leliana." The Revered Mother told her. "You can grieve it and acknowledge it and allow it to mend your body faster than it will if you allow it to fester within you."

"No, please, I don't…" Leliana began to hyperventilate and I saw panic rising in her eyes as the Revered Mother's hands moved to the wounds along her hipbone. "I can't…"

"You must." The Revered Mother's voice harshens, and I know I do not need to look further for the demon entrapping Leliana. "You must return to those times. You must endure that hardship again. You must confront the memories. Even if it kills you."

"No, you do not." My voice broke into the memory and the Revered Mother turned her eyes to mine. They were not human. I limped into the room.

"Leliana." Her eyes turned to mine; she did not recognize me, but I would break through. I had to break through. "Leliana, you are free to keep your pain sacred. You never have to share it with another if you choose not to do so. You do not have to, I swear it. Not until you find someone who also knows, who also cares. You do not have to return to the source of your anguish alone. You do not…"

My words were arrested and I choked as the Revered Mother's hand slammed into my throat and pinned me against the wall. My arms fell to my side, limp as the strength of a demon lifted me until my feet were off of the floor.

"You do not respect her health or her healing!" The demon shrieked. "She belongs here, with me, in this place!"

"No." I managed to rasp out, looking beyond the demon, to Leliana's eyes. They were blinking rapidly, as though she were awakening from a dream. "She belongs…with me."

"Die." The demon's hands wrapped tighter around my throat and I gagged for air, struggling, suffering.

I forced my arm to move, to reach for the hilt of the knife stuck in my thigh. I could not cry out when I ripped it from my skin. It took all of my focus to lift my hand and drive it into the demon's neck. Horrific, blackened blood spurted from the wound as I withdrew the knife and thrust it back in, again and again until the crushing grip left my throat and allowed me to breathe.

I slumped to the ground, the knife falling from my weakened hand. Leliana rolled off of the table and ran to me. Her eyes were clear again; she was no longer trapped here by the demon, no longer in the prison of her pain. Her hand reached out and touched my face, her other clamped down on my thigh, putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding.

She is the only one…I thought, looking into the worry and concern in her gaze, …who ever touches me. She is not afraid to touch me…she seems to know how much…how much human connection is sorely missed. How much I need it, but cannot ask. Maker…her eyes are beautiful.

"Salem?" She spoke my name, harsh and anxious. "Salem, look at me. What is happening? Where was I?"

"We were…trapped." I managed to mumble. "By a sloth…demon. In the Circle…Tower."

"Maker's breath, your throat is already bruising." She murmured. "We have to bind your wounds and find a way to ease your breathing. Just…stay with me, Salem."

"We're…in the Fade." Speaking felt like swallowing glass; it hurt so badly. "I'll be…all right."

"This might be just a bad, bad dream, but that does not mean these injuries are illusions." Leliana took the knife and cut off a large swath of the dead demon's robes, using it to bind the worst of my wounds. "Do you think you can walk?"

I nodded, cursing under my breath as the inadvertent movement jarred the horrific bruising. Leliana helped me to my feet and I managed to stand beneath my own power. When I took my first step, I stumbled, and Leliana caught me, her arms grasping my own. I shuddered and stabilized myself, looking up and then falling again, this time into her eyes.

"Salem." She whispered, holy, hushed, and sacrosanct. "Salem, what you said to me…did you…what on…where…" Her grip on me faded as her body began to drift away as the others had. I did not know if she would remember this moment, if she would ever finish her question, if I would ever be able to answer.

However, the last of my companions had been freed. I was now free to find and fight the demon at the center of this maze. Bruises and bleeding be damned, I would be free of this Fade realm. I wanted to sleep for a thousand years, to run from the pain ravaging my body, to flee the tainted blood in my veins. I could do none of those things. I would fight, and I would not lose. I would be free of this Fade prison, and fight the cause of this.

The mages did not deserve to be punished by death for the actions of a few. Those who feared magic were fools. Mages were no less mortal. They were burdened with a great gift. They were blessed with the power to change the elements, to heal the wounded. They were closer to temptation than the rest of us, and they were punished for it. I felt for them, but could do so little. I had the chance to spare lives, and I would accept the risks in order to do so. I would face the blood, the pain, and the demon.

I moved forward, towards the center of the maze. I would bring down the demon. I would bring down the mage who began this devilry. I would save the lives I could…to repay the loss of those I could not.


"No!" I heard a defiant scream as I came out from darkness. "She cannot be lost still! I will not allow it." I felt a sharp, ringing slap across my cheek. "Salem! Salem, wake up!"

I peeled my eyes open to find myself looking into a worried, blue gaze. Leliana hovered over me, her lips parted and her cheeks flushed with the passion that defined her character. With my eyes open her hands moved, tracing over everywhere on my body that she had seen a wound. But there was no cloth wrapped around my leg; no bruise spreading across my throat. The wounds incurred in the Fade had been left there.

"Are you all right?" She asked, the tightness at the corners of her eyes, the thinness of her lips, bespoke her true caring. "Are you well? Can you stand?"

"Yes." I replied, finding my voice still hoarse. "And yes. And with help."

She extended her hand and once and aided me to my feet. I swayed a little and she supported me. I felt her strength as she took my weight until I balanced. I wondered how she regained her health and her strengths. The wounds I had seen on her body within the Fade were grievous. Her torture, whatever its source, had been severe. I wondered if she lived in a world away from it, if she still kept it behind the bars of her mind, or if she had ventured there, embraced that pain, and moved through it.

I accepted, in that moment, that I would probably never know the answers to my questions. I would never know the meaning of the blue fire in her eyes. I would never understand what truly drove her to cast her lot in with the last Grey Wardens in Ferelden. I would never know her desires, or her wandering thoughts, or the pain she so obviously held sacred.

For now, that did not matter. There was still Uldred to handle. I now had the Litany of Andralla. We could fight him, no matter what matter of demon had taken him. The senior enchanter finished examining all of us, making certain that we were hale and whole. We were in body, but I did not know how the others would be, in mind. The sloth demon did not find enough of me to torment. He had presented me a world that held nothing but pain, and I had seen through the charade. The suffering of the others was more acute. He had time with them, to find their thoughts and their demons…he had time to find what would torture them.

And entering one's worst pain with no protection and no forethought and no preparedness, as Leliana was being forced to do…is the worst manner of torture that there is.

"It appears that your wounds remained in the Fade." Wynne spoke, relief evident in her tone. "I am glad of this, for you were…you were quite battered, Warden."

"Do not be so relieved yet." I replied, setting my eyes towards the stairwell that would lead us to the top of the tower, to Uldred and his madness. "There are wounds yet to earn."

"What manner of response is that?" Wynne questioned, arching an eyebrow.

"I believe it to be our warden's sense of humor." Leliana noted and I turned to her, in shock that she realized this. "It is cheerless and dark as midnight, but once one is accustomed to it, it bears a certain charm."


The air still stank of fire and scorched lyrium. I watched as Wynne knelt down and healed the massive laceration across Alistair's muscled bicep. He did not flinch as the blue light invaded the wound, mending the tissue and muscle back together, preventing further loss of blood. I bit my lip. I did not want healing magic to touch me, but it would come…the grateful mages surrounded us, grieving their wounded, hugging their living, whispering to one another of the horror and atrocity they survived.

The templars watched over all of us like hawks. I and my compatriots were not free from suspicion. Word had circled that we were locked in the Fade, and it was only Knight Commander Gregoir who had kept us from being locked away. There were others busy tending the man we found imprisoned by the spirits. A templar named Cullen, who had endured unknowable trials and pain and torture in the time the tower was taken by Uldred. Uldred, the man eclipsed by a demon of Pride.

Wynne finished healing Alistair and she folded from her knees, crumpling onto her hands and catching her breath. The others were healed, and the senior enchanter was exhausted and drained of magic, as were all the mages here. The templars had weakened them purposefully, in self-protection. I did not like it, but I understood it. I would not, however, let the kind woman who had saved her apprentice and the mage children from the demons, exhaust herself on my behalf.

I reached out for a roll of bandaging, wincing as the three slashes across my outer thigh protested my movement. The demon's claws had raked across my skin. The wounds were deep enough to require stitching. Wynne got to her feet with the aid of Petra, her apprentice, and moved over to me. She knelt down and I saw the kindness and fatigue in her eyes.

"Not so gravely injured as you were in the Fade." She smiled. "But you have bled for us, nonetheless. It is a rare being that would aid mages, especially in this situation. The Knight Commander had every right to initiate the Right of Annulment under the laws that bind us to the Circle. Were it not for your presence here, Grey Warden, we would all have perished. It would be my honor to mend your wounds."

"Thank you, but no." I shook my head. "You have already exhausted yourself aiding us, and I will heal in time." They cannot know, fear choked my thoughts. They cannot know that healing magic renders me weak and powerless. That it causes me pain so great and terrible that I often fall into a faint. "Please. Tend to your fellow mages."

"At least let me aid you in the natural way." Wynne insisted. "Allow me to stitch your wounds and bandage them. You should rest here for a while. It will give you time to speak with First Enchanter Irving about the warden contracts you carry."

"How did…"

"The young man told me." Wynne nodded in Alistair's direction. "It appears that the herbs he took to relieve his pain made his mouth very forthcoming."

"Something to remember in the future." I mused.

"Remain still, warden." Wynne cautioned me. "I must fetch my healer's kit."

The senior enchanter rose to her feet and swayed. Her eyelids fluttered and she slumped. I moved, trying to catch her, falling off of the low cot as my leg shrieked in disapproval. However, Wynne did not fall. Leliana caught her, held the elder woman as she began to regain her balance and consciousness.

"You must rest." Leliana told the kind mage. "Please, do not worry over Salem. I am skilled in the cleaning and stitching of wounds. I will care for her, but you have been caring for us all. Please. Rest a while."

"I am afraid I must…acquiesce." Wynne murmured. "My bag is…on the table…over there."

Leliana escorted the elder woman to a cot and helped her sit down. Wynne drew a thin blanket over herself and, in but a moment, I saw her chest rise and fall in the easy rhythm of sleep. Leliana fetched her bag and knelt beside me, hissing as she saw the damage done.

"Would that sleep would be so easy for all of us this night." I whispered, knowing that I would rest very little. Dreams were dangerous, and I could not afford them. Not after all I had witnessed.

"It appears Alistair and Morrigan have already followed the mage into slumber." Leliana commented. "But I do not think I shall rest as easily. There was much…much that I saw and endured that…" Her voice quavered, "…troubles me."

I could see the pure pain in her eyes. The light was gone, faded by the horrors of the day, by the death and chaos witnessed. Her hands trembled as she threaded the needle with fine silk. Her lashes were wet with hidden tears as she cleansed my wounds. Her touch was gentle as she pulled my skin together with needle and thread.

"I do hope this does not become a regular occurrence." She looked up and smiled, but there was no joy in it.

I, however, smiled back at her, a rarity…the expression felt so unfamiliar on my face, for my grief had damaged me, broken me in a way I did not think could be repaired, but her smile struck my own heart and inspired reciprocation. It inspired something beyond my brokenness to emerge and, while it hurt, I did not suffer.

"Your smile is truly lovely." She lifted a hand to her lips after she spoke, as though ashamed. "I am sorry." She whispered an apology as her cheeks flushed. "I have no right to say such things."

"It's all right." I tried to sound reassuring; struggled to keep my voice from flinching as she pulled the stitches tighter. "Within the Fade I saw…I saw things that I had no right to see. I feel I should apologize for intruding on such a moment."

Leliana shook her head. "You have seen things that I desire no one to see, Salem." She lifted her eyes to mine. "But what you said to me in the Fade is still ringing within my mind. I begin to think that…that perhaps you might understand. There are…there are not many who understand the sacredness of great, deep pain. If they witness it or you shed your mask for one moment, they immediately believe that, because of a revelation, they have a place within your suffering. What you said to me…you do not believe that, do you?"

"No." I shook my head. "No, I do not believe that. And I will ask you nothing. I will demand no information."

Her brows creased and she stopped her work, looking up at me. "Why?"

"Because I have known you a mere month." I replied. "And because you chose to help us, and are the first to have done so. Look at us. Alistair and I are bound as Wardens. Morrigan's mother forced her to join us. Sten, who refused to join us in this place of magic, follows because he must, because he owes us for his freedom. Only you have come of your own volition, Leliana. I honor that. I honor you."

Her concentrated frown deepened. "You truly mean every word that comes from your mouth." She observed, a note of wonderment in her voice. "There is no deceit. You do not say these things to manipulate me into revealing the answers to your questions. You simply…are. I have never met another like you, Salem Cousland."

She continued her work, applying a poultice to keep down swelling and bandaging the wounds. She washed her hands and looked down at me. The light was back in her eyes, but it was a different sort of light. Not the blinding glare of the Chantry sister, nor the glimmer of the musician…it was mysterious and lovely, like the glow of the moon.

"Would you be averse if I…if I pulled my cot closer to yours this night?" She asked. "I feel…I feel safe near you."

"By all means." The words left my lips in a rasp.

It has been so long…so long since someone was willing to be near me. No. I bit down on my emotions. This is nothing but her request for safety and security. Do not let your mind wander, lest your heart awaken…this is not the time for my heart to feel. However, what I feel, what I know, what I need…I do not believe I can fight it.

"Do you need anything?" She asked. "Food? Water? Wine? A sleeping draft, or something to curb the pain?"

"I need nothing." I promised. "Nothing but rest."

"That, you shall have. I shall make it so." The ferocity of her voice ended when she giggled, the most darling, lilting sound that I had ever heard. "For I want no movement from you. You should not put weight on that leg for a while. If you need assistance with anything, I am more than willing to aid you." She glared down at me, making certain that we were eye to eye, with nothing in between us. I began to drown in the blue. "No. Moving. Salem."

I could not resist it. I smiled once again, and words passed my lips that would cross them a hundred-thousand times, always with one meaning, even if I did not realize it at the time.

"As you say."