-oo-

Chapter 3

The candle guttered; hot wax spraying across the top corner of the parchment. The flame flickered wildly then died, plunging Diana's workspace into frosty gloom. While the flambeaux attached to the towering arches still burned high above her, without the friendly, personal light of the candle, the shadows of the temple elongated, deepened, taking on a more menacing aspect. Not that she found anything particularly creepy about this place. How could she? She could take up permanent residence in the Temple and be quite sure to make a new discovery every day. Before breakfast. It would include how much those crazy mad Cultists had removed, destroyed or altered. The villagers of Haven had had generations to do what they wanted with the Temple, or so Brother Genitivi would tearfully remind her every time they found a vacated alcove or an emptied room.

Yup. Too busy being fascinated to be anywhere near fright. Being frightened was for sissies and Templars.

Speaking of…Hadn't there been a Knight Commander-shaped statue somewhere about? Right there. By the ancient bronze amphora she'd been using to store some of her longer scrolls. Genitivi had let her abuse the ancient relic because apart from there being dozens of the things in the temple, its design was bafflingly cartoonish. No other serious artifacts depicted winged, demonic toads as their decoration, leading the Chantry scholar to surmise it had been the ancient equivalent of a joke gift from one guardian to another.

Personally Diana was sceptical. Guardians had no detectable sense of humour. Clearly, an immortal life with no retirement plan or regular entertainment did that to a person.

Hunting around her storage box turned up no replacement candles. The ache in her lower back however, told her more hours than she'd realised had passed and perhaps it was time for a rest. Knitting her fingers together she stretched her arms, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension of being cooped up in a writing position for so long.

Now that she was up and about, Diana thought she might as well go looking for the old ball and chain. He'd sounded sulky the last time he was here. And bored. Not enough apostates to harass up in the Frostbacks, she supposed…

As she stretched, her stomach grumbled and then she spotted them; large footprints leading away from her work station towards the main staircase. She slapped her forehead. Maker, she hoped he wasn't off somewhere breaking rare and irreplaceable ancient relics. If whatever the Cultists had removed had Genitivi openly weeping, Cullen breaking things was going to have her banned from working here. For several lifetimes.

Strange though…While the footprints led up to the staircase, there did not appear to be any leading back.

Her curiosity piqued. If he'd stumbled into a new treasure trove, Diana would have surely picked up the sound of history being obliterated, the Knight Commander being a tad…disapproving of the way those cultists had been 'worshipping' Andraste. Plus if he had indeed found something she might be interested in, he'd bring it back like a good little Retriever. Unless it had eaten him.

Or turned him into something unnatural.

But that would be just silly.

Throwing her cloak around her shoulders, Diana retrieved her staff before setting off following the footprints. They were not deep, suggesting whatever the Knight Commander had been investigating had not been particularly urgent…except at the top of the stairs where it looked like he'd increased his pace…and after this, I can legitimately charge people to find their lost pets.

The footsteps were deeper here, wider. Had he been running? Not quite. Just a leisurely jog. Maybe he was cold and needed to warm up. Cullen had also taken a side-tunnel here; one of the many she'd been down before but had discounted as a dead end. The broken bookshelf was still present, but moved aside, revealing an opening that was more a break in the wall than an actual doorway. Her eyebrows drew downwards. Cullen knew better than to investigate a new area without telling her first. Especially an area that had been so carefully mapped previously.

So what was so interesting that he had to go on his own? And how did both herself and Genitivi missed this?

Diana bent down, peering into the darkness, eyes narrowed. There was light at the end of the tunnel; just a pinprick of green.

Green light?

Something arcane she'd bet and something she'd have to save her spouse from no doubt. The man courted danger like a soldier in a whorehouse on furlough.

Brushing the edges of her cloak aside, she gripped her staff more firmly and stepped inside, the top of her head brushing the stone. Loose grit showered her shoulders and she shook her head. The ground sloped down somewhat to…steps was it? How intriguing. Not many. Just enough to put a bit of head room between herself and a bout of stone-induced concussion.

A soft spell muttered just at the edge of hearing lit a flame on the end of her staff to illuminate what looked like a narrow passage. There were drawings here, on the wall. On closer inspection they were found to be more of those winged caricatures, so clearly whoever had decorated those amphorae had taken his comedy underground. Or that was what she told herself.

The alternative explanation made her head hurt too much.

Her boots echoing along the stone, it was a minute or two before she realised the sound was not from her boots but from something else. Up ahead.

Snuffing the flame, Diana paused, listening in the darkness. Voices.

Voices?

Some of that sounded like croaking.

No, that can't be right.

Had she hit her head without noticing?

No, that couldn't be right.

The words of a fireball rising to her lips, Diana shuffled silently forward, the circle of green expanding, closing in, turning into…

"Look, I'm sorry, but I can turn them into frogs, but I've never actually turned any froggage back."

"I thought all you mages had some kind of undo spell?"

"Well, that would be silly wouldn't it? Why would any mage want to 'undo' a spell? If I'm going to chuck a fireball at someone, I'm going to mean it, aren't I? I'm not going to go afterwards 'oh shouldn't have done that, can I take it back?' No can do."

"I agree. Besides," the first voice said. "The Warden Commander's a lot more manageable this way. I just have to keep him away from the laddie. I have already mentioned, haven't I that he likes to dissect these things."

"Laddie?" the third voice asked conversationally.

"My son," the first voice chirped. "Brogan. Eight, going on eighty. Though we think it might be a dwarven thing."

"Your husband is a dwarf?" the second voice asked.

"Well no. He's a frog," the first voice corrected. "At present. No, Brogan sort of adopted me. Like an unexpected boil."

"They're so cute when they do that."

What followed was argumentative croaking. Diana's frown deepened. Whoever was up ahead was either not human or had a very bad throat infection.

"Well, it's not my fault," the first voice stated. "You and Brogers have to sit down and work this out, father to son."

Crrrk crk rrrrgdit grrrddddddrr!

"At the risk of interrupting this touching marital conjugation," the third voice said, sounding amused, which meant, Diana thought, that either these were the same people with the terrible sense of humour and even worse artistic talent who made the ancient vases, or were incredibly bored demons, "I think there is someone outside. Listening."

"Oh! Let's invite them in! The more the merrier!"

"Or we could kill them."

"Without introducing ourselves first? I'm very, very sorry, but you're just not very well brought up are you?"

There was a sigh. And footsteps. And then a large figure suddenly looming in Diana's personal space and…fshtzzzzz! Magical blue flame illuminated a slender pale figure in the familiar garb of a Senior Enchanter. Sharp eyes bored into hers from quite a distance above Diana's own line of sight.

"Hah!" the mystery mage said. "It's another mage! Dagna, I think you might get your full set after all!" Turning back, the tall woman half-smiled. "Just as well you're here, really," she said. "Know any good 'unspells'?"

-oo-

Not the most auspicious or memorable of meetings was it?

Complaints, already? Be thankful they're in the same place, let alone anything else.

'Anything else'? Is there an 'anything else'?

No. It just sounded interesting to say.

And did you have to bring the two Templars along?

What? Mages aren't allowed to have hobbies? Spellwork can be rather dreary at times, you know.

Why these three? Why not three other mages? There's the First, for example. The Archmage…and that very nice Tevinter chappie having a bit of a sabbatical in Cumberland.

Hah! Why, you ask? If you must know: too distrustful, too whiny and too clever by half.

So what you're saying is you needed someone stupid, someone trusting and someone…cheerful? Hardly the stuff of legends.

I didn't say it had to be easy.

I did. Might save us a bit of leg work later.

See, this is why I don't work with amateurs.

Ooh, hark at you. All 'I know better because I'm an immortal higher being, blah, blah, blah' ooh er, I'm so impressed. Not.

You'll see.

Will I?

Oh yes. You'll see, and then we'll see who laughs last.

Huh. As long as it's not out of our arses, I'll be happy.

I wasn't aware you had one of those, but I suppose for this particular exercise, I'll let you run with that.

-oo-

Owain did not like The Outside. Inside was warm and quiet. Inside held his personal space, order. Outside was cold and wet and windy and had People besides; people who talked too loud or in pretend whispers about the emotionless man in unmarked mage robes who spoke in soft monotone. People who could not accept nor wished ever to accept that he had voluntarily chosen to have his connection to the Fade severed so that his mind would no longer be jumbled and vague. Without the burden of emotion, Owain felt free; unencumbered by anger, fear and resentment. There wasn't so much clarity of thought.

This was clarity of life.

For instance, take that thing in the sky. Had any other mage still attached to their magic been viewing what he was currently viewing, there would be screaming and panic and running for their emotion-filled lives. In place of abject terror was academic interest. Analysis. A serene mental construction of appropriate words to convey to the First Enchanter that the object in the sky was most probably a grim portent of the End Of The World As Everyone Knew It.

Interesting…Owain thought. Now there's a demon you don't see every day…Not that he considered himself any kind of expert in demonology or otherwise. Getting up close and far too personal with the beasties unleashed by Uldred's ripping of the Fade right open and lining the Tower of Magi's corridors with welcome banners for the denizens of the Otherworld did not make him an expert by any means.

He simply knew how to identify them is all. Few creatures of the mortal world had that many arms for instance. Twelve at last count. Or teeth that size, or swooped down on an entire inn full of panicked, screaming, pants-wetting people and ate it whole. Then spat out the indigestible bits through what appeared to be some kind of fascinating blow hole in its…back? Though Owain did wonder, fleetingly, what a demon's digestive system would actually be like if it didn't get enough roughage.

Regularity was important to a healthy lifestyle after all.

Well, what would the Senior Enchanter call it? This was no simple sundering of the Veil. Nor was it mere 'slicing to pieces'. Certainly, not accurate enough for the present scope of damage; carnage. 'Let's open the gate to hell lads because the demons need to go shopping for human souls'? 'A gaping, bottomless, cataclysmic chasm into certain Death'? Now he was getting somewhere. Though perhaps he should tone down the flowery descriptive for something a little bit more practical?

Dear First Enchanter. We are all going to die. Horribly. Quite possibly ripped from limb to limb because demons are rather like that as you in your extensive experience has probably surmised by now. No manners as one would expect from such creatures. One moment 'Pop!' The next, blood everywhere and intestines are being used to tie little parcels of demon dinners, got to give those monsters credit for creativity, eh?

There were times like these that he wished he was back in his storeroom. No doubt the First Enchanter – being a somewhat practical man himself – would have looked out of the window and drawn his own, more First Enchanterly conclusions. Word would have spread. And word spreading throughout the Tower, as Owain had found in previous occasions, meant an assault on his well-organised store of magical items for whatever mages felt would protect them from agonising death, demonic possession and/or abominahood.

Take the Litany of Adralla for instance. Anyone with a bit of nous and knowledge of the history of the famous Bard would have picked up a bottle of pickled scorpion bile along with the scroll. Not because it held any particular magical qualities, but because even demons had standards and hated the stuff with a passion.

With a sigh, Owain ducked the flying beastie and began his way back to Kester's boat ramp.

"Maker's breath, Ser!" Kester was to be found cowering under an upturned barrel in his own boat Lissie. "What's to become of all of us?"

"Death, most probably," Owain responded.

"Is there nothing we can do?" Kester whimpered.

Owain pondered the green haze and blackened horizon one thoughtful moment. "Yes, most certainly," he replied.

"What is it,Ser?" Kester asked eagerly

"Hope for a quick and painless death," Owain advised calmly, settling himself on the bench. One would have thought it obvious, really. But then, he reminded himself, not all were as lucky as he.

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