9:30 Dragon, Redcliffe Castle
Blood and guts still spatter Surana's robes as she leaves her assigned chambers without washing. She has no patience for it with the walls enclosing her again. Truly, exhaustion creeps into her bones after the night and day of saving a village and infiltrating a castle, only to be sent via a blood magic sacrifice into the Fade to kill a demon. It would have been inconceivable to her when leaving Lothering, let alone when she was leaving the Circle. Never would she have imagined she would spend a day like this one, nor that sleep would evade her at the end of it.
So, she walks the halls of the castle, heading for the dungeons and making her best effort not to think about the thick stone walls surrounding her. Her breaths come sharply, her head light. A distraction. She needs a distraction. She reaches down and squeezes her thigh, digging her nails in as hard as she can. It's not ideal, but it does the trick temporarily, a grunt of effort leaving her. She feels more grounded; it's easier not to focus on the walls.
The heavy door to the dungeons swings open with effort. Inside, she is met with Jowan. Her former friend. He'd poisoned the Arl; an inconvenience, to be sure, but ultimately Surana has no love for him. Deep down, she felt something when she saw Alistair find out, but he's a templar, and she has no intentions of becoming friendly with one of the enemy.
"Are you only going to wallow, Jowan?" she begins. Her friend is leaning against the wall, sat with his head in his hands. He looks up at her with a tired expression.
"I will be executed, Tamsin," he starts, but the panic she expects, like the time he told her they were going to make him tranquil, is gone.
"Oh, right. I forgot."
"Is now really the time for jokes?" Jowan snaps.
"It's not your funeral." She pauses, stepping closer and dangling a key in front of her. "That is, if you're up for a bargain." She won't forget how he ran out on them. For all he knew, she could have been executed that day. Suspiciously, her childhood friend peers up at her, moving to get to his feet.
"What could you want from me?"
"Show me how," she demands, drawing her dagger. "You said you learned from a book. How does it work, Jowan?" She grows more insistent with each word. Jowan, now on his feet, looks pained.
"Why do you want to learn a thing like that?" He looks down at his hands. "I planned to never use it again. If not for that… Lily wouldn't hate me."
"So show me and leave. Become a farmer." Surana reaches out, pressing the blade into the palm of her hand. Slowly, she drags is down, slicing her skin with satisfaction. "Have you ever had your magic suppressed, Jowan?"
The mage shifts his weight from foot to foot and shakes his head. Surana clenches her fist, blood welling up and dripping onto the floor.
"Show me."
Silence fills the air for a time as Jowan rubs at his temples in frustration. With a sigh, he acquiesces.
"The most difficult part is learning to sense the energy in your blood." And that of others, is the unspoken implication. "From there, it can be used similarly to your regular magicka. It's difficult to teach your senses to feel something they didn't before, which is why it's so difficult to learn from a book and so easy to learn from a demon. But," he adds, "I can do the same thing easily enough, the same way the Enchanters did when we were learning as children. Likely, it'll be even easier."
"So this will be simple?" Surana avoids commenting on how he put so much effort into learning blood magic from a book, but still managed to be so mediocre with everything else.
"Very," he agrees. He reaches out, touching Surana's hand gently and uncurling her fingers. His mana wraps itself around hers, guiding her aura, and she moves with it. He pulls at her blood, guiding her aura to do the same, and as easily as that, the pathway is open. Pulling the blood from her veins, she pushes energy into a fireball, growing it until the heat becomes uncomfortable. With a gasp, she releases the stream of magic and slumps backwards onto the wall. Breathing hard, she looks down at her own hand, surprised at what she's done.
"So, the rest is practice," she sighs.
Jowan meets her eyes, though he glances quickly at the key hanging on her belt. She grimaces, irritated at what has become of her meek friend, and tosses the key on the floor in his cell. Gracelessly, he scrambles for it as though there are other prisoners to contend with. He comes to his feet triumphantly, but Surana is already moving for the door. Without a word of farewell, she shoves her way out of the dungeon, heading back for her own chambers.
Once there, it's safe for her to practice. Sometimes, the fireball flares to life, while others she doesn't manage so much as a spark. One more time, she pulls on the energy in her blood, attempting to shape it into some form, but the spark fizzles out. Frustrated, she leaps to her feet, only to give herself a head rush. She trips backwards, landing on the stone floor, far too reminiscent of another cold, stone floor - one upon which she had routinely tore her back to shreds.
Delirious, she rolls onto her side. Panic sets in, her breaths speeding up and pain gripping her chest. She clutches at her robes, tearing and ripping at the collar until her chest is exposed. She thinks she can't breathe; scrambling for the fresh air of the window, she knocks open the shutters, releasing the chill morning air. The sun was beginning to rise.
Hacking over the windowsill, she sees spots, darkness pulling at the corners of her vision.
When she wakes, she's still in the same position. No one has come to get her; it's only the break of dawn, and everyone must want to rest up while they can enjoy real beds. She feels likely more exhausted than she had when she lost consciousness; unconsciousness and sleep, it seems, don't have the same effects. Her muscles scream because of her precarious position on the table, halfway out the ajar window. It's a relief nobody saw her perched like this.
Her sore muscles oppose her attempts to move, but she succeeds in shifting herself to the bed. She checks her wrists, finding her left arm already scattered with sideways slashes from her knife. Not wanting to be found for a blood mage, she seeks out a healing potion in her packs and pours it over the cuts. She's no good at healing magic; she really can't even heal a scratch. The cuts don't close right away, so she wraps some bandages around her arm, hoping no one will think anything of it, considering the mobs of undead they'd fought through to get here. Truly, yesterday was an ordeal.
Surana slides into the chair in front of the vanity, splashing water from the washing bowl onto her face. Staring airily at the mirror, the face of the first man she'd ever killed - one of the bandits they group had encountered leaving Lothering - swims in her mind. His features are blurry, and she can't quite remember if he used a shield or a greatsword.
"What's wrong with me?" she whispered, barely recognizing her own reflection. In stories, the hero - her, the dashing Warden, left to face impossible odds, falsely wanted by the law, yet still trying to save the lives of the people - well, the hero is haunted at night by those he's had to kill. The hero mourns each loss. The hero makes the right decisions. The hero stops the enemy without lowering himself.
She looks at the bandages on her arm.
Is it the act of a hero? Perhaps a darker one. Saving the people by any means necessary. Ruthless, making the hard decisions. Sacrificing the one for the many.
I'm not the hero, she thinks.
It's the act of a coward.
She remembers the cell. The cold, damp room, the drip, drip, drip of the water when it rains. The loneliness.
She didn't dream in the cell.
It was closer to being Tranquil than she ever wanted to get, and this… this they couldn't take from her. With this, she could blow that cell door off its hinges.
Tamsin stands up rapidly, knocking the chair backwards onto the floor. The crash is loud enough to be uncomfortable. She can't think straight. They need to keep travelling but - no, no, she needs this blood off her. She shucks her robes - no longer Circle robes, but rather nondescript rags more akin to what Morrigan wears.
It hasn't even been a month since Ostagar. Her cheeks are thinner, her eyes hollowed out, but her muscles are more toned than ever before, even more than when she was in solitary confinement. Surana grabs the rag and begins rubbing down her naked body, dedicated to rubbing each piece of skin until its raw.
She tries to remember the face of the first man she killed. What colour was his hair?
Why doesn't it matter?
She imagines him as a father, with a family, and tries to picture his wife grieving, but it's no use. She can barely remember what a family looks like, let alone how one might grieve. So what if he had a wife?
I'm a monster. She scrubs harder, finally reaching her callused feet. Calluses she had gained in the past few weeks, blood soaking her boots from the walking and blisters painfully tearing open over and over.
"What if Anders could see me now?" she wonders aloud. She bursts out into laughter, toppling back onto the bed. Tears begin leaking from her eyes. There's an ache in her heart whenever she thinks of him. "Love?" she demands of no one. Is this what it feels like, she wonders, is it even real, with the state of the world, the state of her life? How can you love when your life is nothing but the feeling of tearing your back open against a stone floor and the fear of losing something that is integral to your being?
"'No, mister templar, I'm a Grey Warden, I swear!'" she mocks, hysteria creeping into her voice. "A lie would sound more believable."
So much for protection, when your order is decimated.
Surana glances out the window, noticing the sun creeping higher on the horizon. The others would likely be eating breakfast, and she worries someone may come to find her. In a desperate need to ground herself, she reaches under her bandages and digs her nails into the raw cuts on her forearm.
Pain flares up, but she breathes, focusing solely on the pain and allowing it to center her. She lets her mind fill with the feeling of hurt, forcing other thoughts out.
In not too long, she's able to dress.
Throughout the day of travel, Tamsin wishes she'd slept more in the room. The few hours of unconsciousness she achieved weren't serving her well on the half day's walk towards The Brecillian Forest. It was even more uncomfortable, since she - and most of her companions - had selected gear from Redcliffe's armory. That was how she found herself trudging down the road in studded leather armour, which Morrigan, who is the best company of the group, finds absurd for a mage.
"Look, I'm definitely not planning on wading into the thick of battle," she says with finality. And she really isn't, not at all. In reality, she's grasping at anything she can use to stop herself from ever being caught again. The idea reminds her of something she's been meaning to ask the witch about for some time.
"So, shapeshifting. It is something you learned, yeah?" she asks. The subject of magic has her mind flicking back to the cuts on her arm, and she nervously glances at Alistair.
"Why do you ask?" Morrigan replies.
"I have heard of such magic in Dalish writings," Tamsin offers. Learning to read sparse Elvhen had been a strange endeavour at the Circle. There were three books written in the language, dust covered tomes which likely would have been removed from the library if someone else had found them. Surana had only been able to piece together certain sections of the book, between the one Dalish elf she pestered to teach her what Elvhen he knew and then learning the alphabet from nothing. Truly, she only knew that such magic existed, perhaps, if she had translated those words correctly, maybe.
"Truly, you have read elven writings? There are few Dalish works remaining in the world."
"Fortunately for me, it isn't as though the templars spend their time reading dusty old magic tomes - or, for that matter, that most mages do. Many read, but I made a ponit of selecting dust covered books which had not been touched in years, hoping to find things that others had forgotten. Among them were a couple of books in Elvhen, though my sparse knowledge of the language didn't enable me to actually read them in full. I suspected that one detailed magic such as yours, though I was not able to comprehend the tome."
"I wonder, if I were to speak with a Keeper about the origin of their magic, there would be any relation to what I was taught." The group is headed for the Brecillian Forest to find the Dalish before they journey to Denerim, so the opportunity to ask was imminent.
"The Dalish are loath to part with their secrets, unfortunately," Tamsin sighs.
A few moments pass before Morrigan switches the subject.
"So, have you an opinion on my abilities, then? Am I an unnatural abomination to be put to the torch?" An edge creeps into her voice.
"On the contrary, they sound very useful. I would be interested in learning, if you ever felt willing to teach," the Warden suggests.
Instead of answering directly, Morrigan says, "You are not what I expected from a Circle mage."
Once the sun has journeyed across the sky, the group settles in on the side of the road for the night. They've gained a packhorse since Redcliffe, so their supplies have been replenished, and on top of that it is easier to carry. Sten begins unloading the cooking supplies, while Alistair finishes propping up the men's tent. Leliana is seeing to the women's, while Morrigan has distanced herself a bit from camp, though she has begun to do so less.
Tamsin and Panelan are returning from fetching water. She sets the buckets down next to the fire.
"Tamsin," Alistair interrupts, having finished the tent. He gestures at the horse. "I can show you how to care for her?"
Disliking any attention from the former Templar in training, Tamsin glances around for an out, but doesn't find one. Resigning herself to a bit of time with him, she follows him to the horse.
"Now that we're back at the camp, I wanted to talk about what happened at Redcliffe," Alistair starts.
"All right," Tamsin agrees reluctantly. Abruptly, Alistair is enraged.
"You let Lady Isolde sacrifice herself! With blood magic! How could you do that?"
Irritation bubbling inside her, she snaps, "You think I should have killed the little boy instead?"
"We could have gone tothe Circle of Magi! We cou-"
"Sure, and what would have happened to Redcliffe, in our absence?" Tamsin interrupts. "The demon would have taken control, killed more people, raised more undead. Had we left the problem to fester, Isolde might be dead anyway, along with Teagan, the Arl, and everyone else."
"We should have tried something that didn't involve blood magic, at least!"
Tamsin's hand twitches, about to cover her bandaged and armoured forearms, but she stops the reaction.
"You refused to lead, Alistair, so if you want me to make the decisions, you're going to have to damn well live with them," she barked. She spins away from the horse, stalking back to the women's tent she had been refusing to sleep in for weeks. She storms inside, followed brusquely by Panelan, leaving the others to eat.
