Chapter Ten: Connor
Drunk on too much lyrium and cheap wine, Connor stared at the knife in his hand, preparing to cut his palm. Yaleen insisted he kneel before the fire for his blood magic initiation, and he started to sink into the soft ground, staining the front of his robe with a new layer of grime. Before he started, she corrected his posture and indicated that his knife arm was too slack; her instructions only served to rile his nerves. Concentrating on the blade, and imagining the pain it would inflict, he realized her guidance had abruptly come to an end. Her mind was no longer with them. His determination fell by the wayside as he watched her sitting cross-legged and swaying in a trance. The chant she uttered made no sense—a scattering of cries and vowels punctuated by humming mumbles. Revik sipped the wine, his eyes dancing between the two of them, glazed and distant. Focusing again, Connor raised the knife to make the first cut, and hesitated a second time. Gathering up his nerve, he tightened his grip on the handle, hoping to quit shaking. As soon as he worried about cutting off a finger, he dropped his pose and sat down on the back of his calves and sighed loudly.
"Happens to all the Chantry mages." Revik said, drinking deeply. Yaleen's shoulders twitched and she dropped her head, allowing her frizzy mane to flop in front of her. She held her arms out to her side, sidewinding them like two striking snakes.
Connor watched her, twirling his knife. "What's she doing?" He didn't think that blood magic involved this ridiculous catatonia. He wanted no part of it if it involved flopping around like a dying fish.
"She goes places. Faraway places. She don't tell me where or how. But, as you can see, there she goes." He held out the wineskin and offered it to Connor. "First time is always the toughest, boy. Just get over yourself. The cut only stings for a little bit."
For the past two nights they had hiked through the forest bordering the coastlands. The previous night, cool and moonlit, they hiked to the top of a high ridge. Revik had pointed across the valley toward a tower. It was so far away that Connor could barely make out a darkened flag.
"Highever. Castle Cousland. If we keep up our pace we should be to Denerim in two nights." Revik had told him. Hope had swelled in Connor. The relentless pace through the forest, through shadow and past strange noises had become habit. As one foot crunched the dried leaves, stepping in front of the other, he always anticipated the next stop, the next campfire and the moment he could set down the heavy pack and silence the unrelenting growling in his belly. The Circle tower had become a bad memory. He had forgotten about classes and schedules. Fat Markus and Minna meant nothing to him anymore. And unfortunately, he had forgotten how the sun felt on his cheeks. His belly forgot what it was like to feel full. He was a night child, a forest walker, a restless Wight.
As they had hiked, Yaleen tutored him on the art of blood magic. The more she informed him, the less he feared the implications. In the deep of the forest, it was survival, not the Chantry that mattered most. Even though he could heal and transform into a bird, he was determined to protect himself and outlast the hungry night creatures and templars. In the early dawn hours, she had used the tip of her staff to draw the conjuration runes into the dirt. They were simple enough, however, the chants were trickier. His tongue, thick and clumsy, tripped over the awkward syllables. As they marched, weaving through pine, oak and ash, he repeated them over and over again as Yaleen corrected him. She told him how their sounds tore the Veil and channeled the beings that lie just beyond. She never used the term demon. She had told Connor that Fade beings possessed great power and blood was the river they used to travel into this world. Blood connected all beings of this world to the Old Ones, the beings that existed before time.
Connor drank deeply, his tongue now accustomed to the sour wine. It warmed his throat, all the way down to his belly. His childhood fears, the memories of being trapped in the Fade, being under the control of the demon continued to haunt him. Although he had no specific memory, he knew that his possession unleashed a great army of undead onto Redcliffe. He would always harbour tremendous shame about that, even though, in all honesty he didn't know better at the time. How many deaths was he responsible for? No wonder his parents sent him to the Tower without complaint; they must have been ashamed as well. This prevented him from making the first cut.
"What if I meet a demon that is too powerful for me to control?" After he handed Revik back the wine, he scratched his arms, noticing how dirty and scabby he had become. He toyed with the dagger again, recalling the rage that filled him when he was possessed. He was thankful he didn't hurt his parents, and grateful that Nuraya was able to sever his connection and repair the Veil.
"Stop thinking about demons. You're too stuck on that. The Chantry has hold of your mind. Let that go first. If all you thinks abouts is demons, demons is whats you meet." Revik's greasy hair was shining as brightly as his eyes in front of the fire. Yaleen sighed and fell backwards, her hands recoiled and twitched. Revik used his foot to push her away from the fire. "Woman, you gots to be more careful."
"I don't get it. I thought blood magic was the only way to control demons in the Fade."
Revik looked to his side, then leaned over and picked a dandelion flower. "What have I gots here, laddie?"
"A flower?" Connor didn't understand the intent of Revik's question. Mindlessly, he carved the ground in front of him with his knife, creating scrolling designs and swiped his canvas clean to work a new pattern.
"I know it's a maker-forsaken flower, laddie. What kinds is it? Ain't you learned this in the Tower? Do they only fill your head with that Chant of Light garbage?" He twirled the yellow flower between his fingers.
"It's a dandelion. A common weed. Some use it to make wine from the blossoms. Healers can use it to treat boils," Connor said sharply.
"Aye. A weed. What's a weed laddie?"
"An invasive plant." Connor peered through his shaggy bangs, now insulted at this stupid line of questioning. What connection could there be between blood magic and basic gardening?
"A weed is only a weed when it grows where nobody wants it. Otherwise, it's just another pretty flower. See!" Revik pointed to a dandelion growing just out of his reach. "See! There is another. I don't sees it invading. There it grows, minding its own business. It only becomes a weed when it gets in the way eh, when someone don't gives it permission to grow. It's only a weed when the farmer says so."
Connor leaned back on his hands, stretching his toes to the fire. He looked upwards in thought, noticing dark clouds gathering overhead. He guessed he would learn the discomfort of trying to sleep in the pouring rain. Meanwhile, Yaleen had grown quiet. Revik poked her with his staff. She groaned and rolled away from him.
"If it's not demons? What are they?"
"They is what they is. You have to tell them how to appear to the world. That's blood magic laddie. To be honest, I could conjure a maiden with thick hair and plump tits, but that doesn't do much to put the fear in the templars. There ain't no fun in killing a horny templar. Feels too much pity for 'em…all that training…and the poor slobs can't experience the pleasure of having a tittie in each hand. I prefers to kills them when I sees them wets their pants. Once, I conjured a rage demon and got hard as a pike watching the young templar shit himself in his armour. Felt better than the kill to be honest." He cackled loudly and stood up, disappearing into the wood. When he returned, he poured a bladder of water over the fire. It hissed and cracked, releasing dark plumes of smoke that twisted through the branches and up into the early dawn light. Connor stood and helped him kick sand and dirt and carefully spread out the charred logs.
"Gets some rest, lad." He grimaced as he looked upward. "T'will be a couple rough days of travel. It tooks me three weeks to make the first cut. Trys not to think abouts it too much. Your first time is the best of all though. Don't be too afraid to let it happen." He pat Connor reassuringly on the back.
Connor nestled under a pine. The needles poked him through his robes, but the damp smell had become familiar and comforting. The boughs would keep him dry for a while. He wedged his boots into the branches in hopes of keeping them dry longer. Having dry feet for a while might be the only comfort he'd have after sunset. As he curled into his bower, he watched Revik sharpen his hunting knife, while Yaleen slept peacefully at his side.
Lyrium still coursed through his veins and made him more alert. He lay on his back and spun the knife between his hands, thinking about what Revik had said about blood magic. I can choose what I wish to bring through the Fade—it doesn't have to be a demon. Revik's explanation started to make sense. Why would the Chantry teach him differently? Why bother telling mages about the benefits of blood magic? It's just one more way to control us…tell us what spells are off limits. They fill our heads with lies that blood magic only conjures demons. They lie to us so they have an excuse to hunt us down. Connor held the knife over his palm, imagined the rune and started chanting under his breath. Nothing is off-limits anymore. With perfect articulation, he dug the blade deep into his palm. Before he could drop the knife, the spell effects were already being felt. Connor closed his eyes.
In the darkness, behind his eyelids, patterns swirled. At first, they were indistinct splotches of grey and white, emerging in and out of focus. The wound on his hand began to weep, a slow, warm trickling. He carefully followed Yaleen's directions and put his palms together and held his thumbs to his lips to speak the final invocation into his blood: Dooaip mad, zacare ca od zamran! Odo ciecle qaa! Zorge lap zirdo hoath iaida." From Yaleen, he had learned that it meant:"In the name of the Maker, move and therefore show yourself. Open the mysteries of your creation! Be friendly unto me, for I am the true worshipper of the highest." The incantation did not mention demons, in fact it called upon the Maker. That made what he was about to do, seem all right.
As the final syllable passed his lips, his vision intensified. Colours swirled, curled in upon themselves, until Connor was enveloped within a chrysanthemum of unfolding geometry. An explosion of colour he had never experienced, that he had no words to describe, uncoiled before him. Green tinted violet, crimson so intense that it glowed with gold, shining and reflective blue-silver and bronzed turquoise shimmered and swirled. His vision bloomed into the farthest, deepest edges of his consciousness, budding from the centre and moving continuously outward. The whole of the image was too much for his mind to process, and even as he focused on one petal, it transformed, grew larger and shifted.
As he reached an ecstatic peak, his joy, pain and profound awe rushed from his body and into the vision. He was the source of its energy, he was feeding it. Just as he could hardly bare this feeling, he heard a ringing, a crackling in his ears, like a fire set on wet wood, the sound of a waterfall, the hiss of a snake. A pin point of darkness at the very centre of the vision sucked him inward. He was squeezed into the heart of the flower.
He heard a pop and emerged on the other side. He was elsewhere, beyond thought, outside of time, past life and beside death. He hovered in space, like a massive condor catching currents in a canyon. Soaring toward the sun, he raced away from the blue-green globe he now understood to be his corporeal home. Vast fuchsia and cerulean clouds floated over stars that outnumbered sugar from a spilled bowl. The pins of light passed by him at such a speed that he became wrapped inside a tangled tunnel of light and colour. In great waves he followed, with no frame of reference or sense of direction. Once his thoughts asked where the hurtling channel was taking him, he was somewhere else, somewhere outright strange, yet unmistakably familiar. They were here.
Orbs of light swirled around him. He held out his hand allowing one to hover in his palm. The softly illuminated light was sentient, old and had gathered wisdom from thousands of lifetimes. This he understood, with more certainty than he ever had experienced in the tower or on the run. As he stared and penetrated the light, the orbs pulsed in unison.
How wonderful that you are here! So delighted to see you!
Jumping in and out of his body, he sensed their vibrations from the tips of his toes to the back of his throat.
Welcome to the end of the beginning! You have arrived at the start of the finish!
The closer he inspected the beings the more rapidly they changed before him. They opened like little trinket boxes decorated in precious gems; each box unlatched to reveal new compartments. As they continuously transformed, they grew and multiplied, and spawned new jeweled enigmas. He heard them sing, not with a mouth, but somehow their metamorphosis created the music. As they sang, they revealed new forms and shapes and new hidden passageways.
He held out his hand, noticing that every surface of this space was whirling and unfolding, birthing and dying, closing and opening, spinning and collapsing. He felt a pulling, a sense of urging.
We come to you, you come to us. An ever-unfolding box, popped into his hand and Connor knew with the deepest of certainties that this was the invitation. A hand unfolded from the entity and reached into his. After that, he was falling, down, fast, feeling gravity pull him toward the earth, down into Ferelden, down into the base of the tree.
In the moment before his eyes popped open, he knew he had to call its form. They were always here with him, just beyond what he could see and hear. He must offer them shape and direct their purpose; this was their gift to him. In return, he offered them the privilege of experiencing time and simplicity once more. Just before his eyes opened he thought of a small creature, one that was soft, friendly and unthreatening.
He heard purring and felt softness nuzzle under his chin. His eyes blinked open, blinded by the intensity of the early dawn light and he wondered how long he had been gone. Revik was still sharpening his knife. A dark shadow, soft and warm, sat under the tree with him and licked a paw. Connor reached out to touch and test his senses, to reassure that the spell had not tricked him. Black fur flickered under his fingers and its purring intensified as he scratched a point between the shoulder blades. The cat looked at him with wide lyrium-blue eyes that blinked languidly. Connor smiled and gave it permission to leave. As quick as smoke, it was gone and Connor was exhausted. His palm stung. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
~0oOo0~
Connor awoke to the sound of voices. They weren't Yaleen and Revik's half-whispered mutterings; they were distinctly male. Connor peered through a pine bough and saw a flash of metal. He started to panic at the sight of armoured men. He cursed, fearing the templars had finally caught up with him. On his belly, he squirmed through the grass, over to Revik and tugged on his boot. Ducking his reflexive kick, he put his finger over his lips and pointed to the source of his concern. Revik grabbed his staff and roused Yaleen.
"Stay here, keep out of sight. We'll deal with this."
Connor nodded and returned under the pine. He coursed his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair, pulled out the stray pine needles and realized that he was wet. It had rained sometime during the day. He watched Revik and Yaleen creep behind the thick trunks, quietly watching. He had yet to see the armour's sigil. It could be a small muster of guard, even the Grey Wardens. Connor had no idea how a phylactery worked. Was it powerful enough to find him in the woods between Highever and Denerim?
He saw Revik nudge Yaleen and crept forward. She took a stance, and raised her arms above her head. A glint of silver flashed in her hand. Revik held his staff in front of him, and with a flourishing twirl, fired an eruption of flame. At the same time, Yaleen slashed her palm and called a Shade, much larger than the one she had conjured for Connor's amusement. It must be templars, he thought. The men started shouting and their armour clanged closer. He craned his neck to get a better look, to see how many Yaleen and Revik had to confront and heard the terrifying screams of a dying man. Connor ran ahead and ducked behind another tree. He trembled in fear and his stomach turned inside out.
Yaleen and Revik managed to take on three templars, their Shade still smouldering and attacking. Revik launched fire as Yaleen conjured ice. Connor remembered how Nuraya used to travel in the company of warriors and rogues and wished that they had some armed allies as well. Connor watched in horror as a templar struck Yaleen down and plunged his sword deep into her chest.
Stifling his urge to scream, his hands shook in fury, his knuckles white. Grabbing his knife, he opened the fresh wound on his palm and conjured the spell. The magnificent journey that he had just experienced swept by him as quick as the wind. He had no time to enjoy its mysteries. At the moment of invitation, he called upon a rage demon, taking it by its papery grey skin and obsidian claws and commanded it to join him. It complied.
In a blink, Connor sent the demon to kill. Sensing his connection to it, he ran through the forest in pursuit. When he caught up with his companions, a templar turned in surprise, but before he could calculate a move, the demon attacked him. With his crooked and gnarled claw, it swung at the templar's head, only managing to knock off his helmet.
Connor saw his face. It was Ser Guthrie. He had been stationed at the Circle and one of the guards that dragged him into the Quiet Room. As much as Connor despised him, he had known him since he was eight. Connor stopped in his tracks. The demon must have sensed his hesitation and circled, waiting to pounce. Ser Guthrie swung his blade but the demon was quick and agile. Connor's heart pounded and he dripped with sweat, but he managed to break free of his reservations. If he did not act now, he would be dragged back to the Circle and made Tranquil.
"Kill him!" Connor commanded.
The demon recoiled and then pounced, lashing out with fire and claw, knocking the templar to the ground. Before Ser Guthrie could recover, Revik was on him with his knife, slitting his throat. While Revik was occupied, Connor sent the demon to confront the surviving templar hoping he did not have to look into another familiar face again. He felt ill.
Revik used a paralysis spell. Connor didn't wait to witness this templar's death and bolted toward Yaleen. At the same time, he released the demon and sent it back from whence it came.
Yaleen's breathing was ragged and shallow. Connor tried the only magic he knew well. He held his hands over her wounds and inhaled, trying to draw in the injury and stop the bleeding. He looked down at her pale face, blood trickled from her nose and from the corner of her mouth.
"I can do this Yaleen, hang on." Connor said hopefully. Her bleeding could not be staunched. He placed his hand around the weapon and coursed his power through his hands. Her blood seeped between his fingers and over the tops of his hands. He tried desperately to pull her grave and mortal wounds into him. Her breathing slowed and she turned as pale as the moon. His efforts only managed to give him an intense headache but he continued to draw her injuries into his mind. He could not get her flesh to regenerate; he was not strong enough. His vision blurred and used his shoulder to wipe his tears, not moving his hands from around the embedded blade.
"Let me go." She rasped, pulling her mouth into a crooked smile.
Revik pushed Connor aside. "Save your energy. She is gone." He kneeled down and coursed his fingers through her hair. "Good-bye my love. I'll meet you across the Veil." He turned the blade and she took her last breath.
Revik's face was expressionless, but his eyes were full of tears. Connor knew they had been fighting for survival together since they were his age. Revik was left alone in this world, just like Connor.
"We've gots to get moving." He said as he searched the bodies and pocketing what coin they carried. Connor removed Ser Guthrie's one-handed sword and strapped the scabbard around his waist. He was not going to face another templar unarmed. He removed a ring from his hand, hoping he would be able to trade it when he arrived in the city.
Revik stripped each of the templars and eventually yanked a large medallion from one. He threw it to the ground and set it afire. Connor ran to his side.
"Your phylactery. The Tower will have more blood... but now they have less." He said coldly and Connor knew that it was his fault that Yaleen was done. He had brought them here.
With his forearm, he wiped his eyes and followed Revik deep into the wood, his hands still sticky with Yaleen's blood.
Bioware owns most of this. I just play in their sandbox. It still bugs me to admit this. But if I were ever to be dragged in front of a court of law, I'd stop digging in my heels. I had so much fun with this chapter. Who knew blood magic could be so FUN? Thank you to betas extraordinaire Kira Tamarion and DoorbellSpider. Also a wave to Oleander's One, Shakespira, Naomis8329 and nh09jrb for all your reviews. Much appreciated! And again, to you silent reader, thanks for stopping by or returning. Stay tuned for Chapter 11: Saunière. I wonder what the cranky professor is up to next?