The infirmary was unexpectedly cheerful. Tinted glass vials of varying sizes lined the shelves that stood against, but perpendicular to, the room's curved inner wall. Sunlight spilling across the shelves threw jewel-toned shadows along the floor, much like stained-glass Chantry windows. Three large windows in the outer wall looked out over the blue-green waters of the Lake Calenhad. Potted herbs, some brightly flowering and some merely sprays of green, sat on the sills of each window. Beneath, a row of low cots were each draped with a patchwork quilt, a pillow at the head.
The cots were empty save for one, occupied by a sullen-looking but apparently otherwise healthy apprentice who sat on top of the sheets. He glowered over his book at Cullen, who stood uncertain in the doorway.
"Templar infirmary is at the bottom of the tower," the apprentice said, a not-quite sneer of condescension in his voice.
"I'm, ah, looking for Lyanna, actually..." Cullen replied, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, attempting to peer around the shelves flanking the door. He hoped he wasn't too early, or too late. The Templar on the door cast a sidelong glance at the initiate, but said nothing. Lyanna must have followed through on her promise to tell Wynne he was coming.
"Lyanna!" the mage called, not taking his eyes off Cullen.
"What?" came the somewhat irritated reply, somewhere beyond the shelves.
"There's a Templar here for you," he said, a distinct note of disdain on the word templar.
There was a rustling and the scrape of a chair towards the back of the room. Lyanna appeared around a shelf; the wary furrow of her brow brightened immediately when she saw Cullen.
She wore a deep blue robe, lightweight and low of neckline for the summer warmth. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a long braid.
"Hello," he said, tapping his fingers nervously against his injured arm. "Is this a bad time?"
"Not at all. I've been expecting you," she said, smiling amicably. "Come, I've been working on something!"
She beckoned him forward, retreating back the way she had come. There was an excited bounce to her step as he followed her around the row of shelves. In the corner, against the stone wall, was a dark oak desk. Stoppered jars and bundled dry herbs were arranged across one side of it, as well as a basin of clean water and a mortar containing some sort of paste. The pestle lay nearby, bits of ground plant still clinging to it.
"Please, sit," Lyanna said, gesturing him to one of two chairs behind the desk. She seated herself in the other, pushing her sleeves past her elbow. Draping a clean cloth across her lap, she held out her hand. "Let's see the arm."
The other apprentice had followed, and now hovered behind Lyanna, watching intently as she used a tiny, sharp set of shears to cut away Cullen's bandages.
"Aren't you supposed to be in a lesson, Jowan?" she asked, not looking away from her work.
The apprentice, Jowan, whined out a sigh. "It's rudimentary elemental control," he huffed, shoulders slumping. "I hate it, I'm the oldest one there, it's embarrassing."
"Perhaps you'd move on to the advanced lessons if you actually attended these," Lyanna suggested, not unkindly. She had finished slicing through the bandage, and was now carefully peeling it away from the wound. Cullen looked away before the wound was revealed, his eyes falling on a thick tome sitting at the far corner of the desk. The spine read L'Anatomie Illustré, par Henri de Gris in gold leaf.
Jowan expelled a long, exasperated breath. "Thank you, mother," he said. "If I could just be the First Enchanter's favorite, like you..."
At that, Lyanna laughed. "I'm not his favorite," she said, dropping the used bandages into an empty bin under the desk. Briefly she let go of Cullen's wrist to grip the edges of her chair and scoot it forward a little, until their knees were nearly touching.
"You are!" the other apprentice exclaimed. "Who else is allowed in the libraries after curfew, or apparently to tend patients without Wynne?"
"Plenty of other apprentices have writs of permission," she said, sounding as though this were a conversation they'd had a hundred times. Dipping a cloth into the water basin, she set to carefully cleaning the previous days' salve away from the wound. "We work very hard for them. And the Senior Enchanter knows exactly what I'm doing, I went over all of it with her, and she'll be back any minute now."
Behind her, Jowan began to protest again. "But I don't-"
"Jowan," Lyanna interjected firmly, her hands stilling on Cullen's wrist as she looked over her shoulder. "Go to your lesson. If you need, I can help you later tonight. But go, now, before Wynne comes back and you're in actual trouble. Again."
"You'll help me?" he asked, shuffling a foot against the floor.
Lyanna's expression softened considerably. "Of course. I always do."
"Alright," Jowan mumbled. "Fine. Have fun with your Templar."
She rolled her eyes, but seemed faintly sad as she watched him walk away.
"I wish he would try harder," she said. "He'll never be a powerful mage but he could be decent. Good enough not to be made Tranquil."
Unsure how to respond, Cullen remained quiet.
"I mean, he's a complete shit," she continued, rinsing the cloth before returning to her work. "He's lazy and he whines constantly. But I've known him since I came to the tower. He was the first friend I made. I don't know what I'd do if he was gone."
"They wouldn't kill him," Cullen offered, hoping it was comforting somehow. At the sharp look she gave him, he faltered. "...Would they?"
"It might be kinder," she said. "The Tranquil do the laundry and the dusting and the cooking, they manage the stores, they do enchantments, all by rote, and not much else."
"That's worse than death? Managing the stores?" he asked, earnestly wondering. He thought that, if the alternative what a knife in the heart, he might prefer doing the laundry.
She recoiled."Do you understand what the Tranquil are?"
"They're mages who've had their magic... bound?"
"Burned away," she corrected, harsh.
"You really had no idea?" Hawke demanded, incredulous. Her usual affability vanished as she straightened in her seat, her tone severe. "You were in the tower how long at this point, and you'd never spoken to a Tranquil?"
The commander could only shake his head, shoulders lifting in half a shrug. "The Order was careful to keep us away from them." he said, weary. "The Tranquil did all their work on the upper levels, where the mages lived. We did almost all of our training on the lower Templar floors, or in the shared middle floors- dining halls, libraries, that sort of thing. And we would not know if we saw one even in passing. Kinloch Hold did not brand their Tranquil like cattle, as was done in Kirkwall."
"Why all the secrecy?" Varric asked, matching Hawke's sudden dour expression.
"The Chantry went out of its way to ensure their Templar initiates were properly..." Cullen paused, searching for the right word. "Convinced, I suppose, that the Rite of Tranquility was a mercy on the weak, rather than a means of control."
"You mean brainwashed," Hawke amended for him.
Heaving a sigh, Cullen sat back in his chair. "I... can't argue that," he admitted. "The Templar Order wanted us to believe, firmly and without question, that the Tranquil were an ugly necessity in the Circles. By the time we were exposed to them with any regularity, we saw the Tranquil with disdain. They weren't strong enough to be Harrowed, but we could not suffer them to go on untested, a danger to everyone around them."
His eyes went to the sleek wooden box at the corner of his desk, a constant reminder of his past, an ever-present temptation. Part of him imagined he could feel the hum of the lyrium, hear it singing in his veins. "I wish I could say I was different, that speaking to a tranquil mage, looking into empty eyes, made my skin crawl. Made me question my choice to join the Order," he said, clenching his fist below the desk. "But I can't. Even after everything Lyanna eventually told me, the Chantry still kept me neatly pressed under its thumb."
Both dwarf and Champion were shocked into silence at the admission. Hawke tilted her head with something like pity, but Varric remained inscrutable as he tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his mouth.
"That," Cullen said quickly, "is neither here nor there. The point is, I hadn't the slightest clue what Tranquility truly meant, and I was about to get a lesson."
Lyanna's ministrations lacked the elegance Cullen remembered from the training field. Her previous gentleness had been replaced by quick, clipped motions; he had to fight not to jerk away as she scrubbed at the wound.
"There's nothing left of them," she spat. "No magic, no emotions, no dreams or desires... They're hollow. Shells of what they used to be."
"I... I did not know," he said, unsure what else to say. The rigid line of her posture suggested she would brook no argument.
Her eyes, still alight with fury, darted to meet his. "Well now you do," she said. "If it ever comes to it, I would rather meet the headsman's blade than live like that. Better to be dead than empty."
The unwavering certainty in her voice mad Cullen's blood run cold. He could do no more than stare at her, caught between shock and horror, unable to comprehend the desire for death in such a young girl.
His dismay must have been written clearly across his face, for her glare eased into something else. Sadness, perhaps, or pity. Some measure of understanding.
"They really don't tell you what it is, do they?" she asked, softly.
Instinctively Cullen looked towards the entrance where, though hidden by rows of shelves and the curve of the wall, he knew a Templar would be listening.
"He can't hear us back here," Lyanna said. "Trust me."
Briefly he wondered what conversations went on at the back of this room that it was so important to be out of Templar earshot, then decided it was best he did not know.
"They don't," he said simply. "Only that it is necessary, sometimes."
Her lips parted as though she was going to say something, but her breath caught when she thought better of it. He nearly asked, but figured it would do no good. Whatever tenuous bond they'd shared, it had been severed by the reality of their stations.
"All clean," she said instead.
Glancing down despite his better judgment, Cullen got a good look at his arm, in the full light of day, unobscured by ointment or bandage. All he made out was a gash of scabby red before his guts clenched, and he looked away again.
...Directly into the skirt of a crimson robe. Senior Enchater Wynne, straight as a rail on the opposite side of the desk, was looking appraisingly down her long nose at them.
"Hello, Senior Enchanter," Lyanna greeted her, leaning across the desk to hook a finger in the mortar and drag it closer. The older mage caught the vessel from beneath her apprentice's grasp, lifting it to squint at the paste within.
"I suppose this is what you were so gleefully mixing when I left for my lesson?" she said, without preamble. She sniffed the mixture.
"It is," Lyanna said. "Royal elfroot, white yarrow, and-"
"Dawn lotus? " Wynne guessed.
Lyanna's grin was pleased, proud. "Yes! We had a little left from the last blooming, so I-"
"Used the last of a rare and powerful herb on an old wound?"
"Not the last." Lyanna, undaunted by the hard look of her teacher, continued calmly, "Just a few leaves, there's still come left."
"Still, dawn lotus is strong, for a wound that's been healing for weeks," Wynne said. She set the mortar back on the desk, within her apprentice's reach.
"If you can call this Chantry butchery healing." Lyanna angled Cullen's arm so the Senior Enchater could get a better look at it. "Their method seems to be 'smear some deep mushroom on it once a day and hope for the best.' Look at it, two weeks healed and nearly fresh."
Wynne frowned, and moved around the desk to stand at Lyanna's side. She bent, gently taking Cullen's wrist and lifting it to get a good look at it. He was beginning to feel like some sort of healer's training dummy.
"The bone's knit underneath, mostly," Wynne said, carefully palpating the bones in Cullen's wrist and running wizened fingers along the uninjured top of his forearm. "We could just Heal the wound closed, and set the poor boy on his way."
Lyanna's expression was pensive. "We could, but..." she paused and glanced at Cullen, hesitating.
"Well, spit it out," Wynne prompted. "He can handle it, can't you, initiate?"
Cullen only nodded. He wasn't sure he could, but it didn't seem as though either mage would stop their frank discussion of his well-being.
"Corruption's starting to set in," Lyanna said. "I suspected when I saw it yesterday, but now I'm sure. The wound is warm to the touch, and getting tight at the edges. It's not weeping, yet, but we would close the wound around the infection and it could just bubble up later."
She glanced up at her teacher, who remained silent, as though waiting. "...So I'm using yarrow for the swelling," she said, tentatively, and when she received no response, continued, "The dawn lotus should draw out the corruption, and royal elfroot as a catch-all restorative."
Wynne straightened, smiled broadly. "Very good, apprentice," she said.
"A test?" Lyanna asked flatly.
"It is my job as your teacher to keep you on your feet," Wynne said. Carefully she shifted Cullen's wrist back into Lyanna's grasp. "It wouldn't do to let you become complacent, lest you become like the Chantry butchers, as you called them. Seems like there's no risk of that, here, though."
She turned her full attention on Cullen, then, something faintly wistful in her expression. "And you, initiate. Your name?"
"Cullen," he said.
"Right. Maker help me, but I've got a soft spot for dewy-eyed young Templars," she said. Cullen didn't protest the dewy-eyed, though he somewhat wished to. "So, you'll come back here in the mornings after breakfast and the evenings after dinner, and either Lyanna or myself will keep you from getting your arm hacked off."
"Y-yes, ma'am," he said, swallowing hard at the mere hint of losing his arm.
"I'm going to speak with the Knight-Commander about the apparently woeful state of his Chantry healers," the Senior Enchanter said. "Finish up quick, and send him on his way. You've still got jars to sort and label, apprentice."
"Yes, ma'am," Lyanna said, a wry smile pulling at her lips as she watched Wynne leave. With two fingers, she scooped out a thick portion of greenish paste and began applying it gingerly to the wound. The poultice had an earthy, not entirely unpleasant scent, and tingled a little on his skin.
"Is... is there really a chance you'll have to cut it off?" he asked, voice strangled.
"No," Lyanna snorted. "Even the lay sisters wouldn't have let it get to that point. I assume, anyway."
"Oh. Well, good, I guess," he replied.
It wasn't long before she was winding clean, white bandages around his arm again. The motions were quick and practiced, and he watched, fascinated. He wondered how many injuries she had tended within the relative safety of the tower to gain such deft hands.
"Alright," she said, tying off the bandage. "This should hold you until tonight, when we'll clean and dress it again."
She stood then, edging around the desk, and he followed suit.
"Thank you," he said, as they started for the exit. "It already feels... better, I guess, than after the sisters handled it."
"I'm glad I could help," she replied simply. When they reached the door, she suddenly put a hand on his arm. "Oh! I almost forgot. Is it terribly sore?"
"Mostly first thing in the morning," he shrugged.
"Wait here a moment," she said, and vanished back into the row of shelves. The faint clink and rattle of glass vials being moved around followed her, and soon she returned with a small folded paper packet.
"This is willowbark and a little spindleweed, dried," she said, pressing the packet into his hand. "Steep a little of it in hot water, like a tea. It should take some of the edge off any pain."
He tucked the herbs into his pocket. "Thank you," he repeated. "I'll see you... tonight, I suppose?"
"Probably not. I have other studies I must attend to. Wynne will be here in the evening," she replied.
Crestfallen and trying not to show it, he nodded. "Of course."
"I'll be around in the morning, though," she added, with a smile. "So I'll see you then."
