Chapter 13: The Circle Tower, Part 1
9:30 Dragon
The Circle Tower
I won't deny that that was the moment when I started to worry. I had put on an air of bravado when talking to Greagoir, and I did think that we could prevail, but that door slam made me realize: There's no way out of here except forward, no matter what lies ahead.
Compounding those worries, the first thing we saw was a group of corpses lying on the ground in front of us: one templar, two mages, all three covered in blood. It set the tone for the rest of our time in the tower quite well.
Just after the entrance was a doorway leading into some kind of living area. There must have been twenty or so bunk beds, so it unnerved me that it was deathly still. The only evidence I saw of anyone being there were three corpses scattered across the room.
"Why... why are there so many beds in here but so few bodies?" I asked the group. "It might be a good thing... but it's still really creepy."
Jowan looked around with a hollow expression. In a quiet voice, he said, "This was one of the apprentice quarters. I lived here. I guess..." He took a slow breath. "I guess it could be that most of them are possessed and somewhere else in the tower. Apprentices are supposed to be more vulnerable to demons."
I looked at him, feeling sympathy, if not pity.
"I am so sorry..."
"I... let's just move on. I'd prefer not to dwell."
Nodding, I proceeded to search the room quickly and move on. We continued down the hall, seeing even more bloody mage and templar corpses strewn across the floor. We searched another apprentice quarters, though Jowan chose to stay outside this time. I couldn't blame him.
At the end of the hallway was another door. I pushed it open apprehensively.
On the other side of a large room, a doorway was blocked by some sort of magical barrier. In the room stood a group of a few mages and several children. A monstrosity of lava and flame was hit by a blast of icy magic and collapsed, fading from existence. The caster of this magic, an old, white-haired woman, turned to me with fire in her eyes.
"You! Stay back. If I must, I will strike you down, Grey Warden or no."
I thought for a moment. She recognized me? Who... Then it clicked.
"You're Wynne, the mage I met at Ostagar, right?" I asked, trying to keep things calm. "Look, I'm not here to fight."
"If not to fight, then why are you here?" she questioned.
"I need the help of the mages, both in general and for something in particular. I was expecting their recruitment to have fewer strings attached, but I take what I can get."
"So... the templars let you in?" she wondered. "Why? Do they plan to attack the tower now?"
"Not now... They're waiting for reinforcements from Denerim."
"Reinforcements? Do they actually intend to-"
"They intend to use said reinforcements to slaughter you all."
"Then... they have the Right of Annulment?" she asked worriedly.
"Not yet, but it'll be coming along with the reinforcements."
"It is as I feared," she sighed. "Greagoir thinks the Circle is beyond hope. Even trapped here and left to our fate, we have survived, but we cannot win if they invoke the Right."
"What happened here to make it this bad in the first place?" I wondered.
"A mage named Uldred attempted to lead a revolt. He returned from Ostagar and tried to take over the Circle. As you can see, his attempts were less than successful. Nevertheless, I will not lose the Circle to the ambition and stupidity of one man!"
"Whoa. Calm down," I replied. "I'm on your side. I can't let the mages be killed. I need them to fight the Blight. What are you going to do?"
"I have created a barrier to protect the children. It will block you from entering the tower, but I will dispel it if if you join me to save the tower."
"Understood. I certainly won't turn down help, especially from a mage."
"Good. When we have made the tower safe, I believe Greagoir will stand down. He is not unreasonable."
"We need the first enchanter to convince him."
"Irving? Then our path is clear."
"Let's go, then."
Morrigan interrupted.
"You want us to assist this preachy schoolmistress in helping these pathetic excuses for mages? I say that if they have allowed themselves to be slaves, then we should follow the whims of their masters."
I gave her an epic eye-roll.
"So, Morrigan, where do you intend that we find several dozen or hundred mages to help us fight the Blight? Do you have an army tucked away somewhere you haven't told us about?" I asked hostilely.
"I... well..."
"I am sick and tired of you constantly talking shit about the things I do and then not offering an alternative. Give me another way to get the help of mages, and I'll go with your idea."
"...fine. Do what you wish. I care not."
"So generous..." I turned back to Wynne. "Let's go."
She turned to the other mages.
"Petra, Kinnon, look after the others. Keep them safe."
One of the mages, Petra, voiced her concern.
"You were so badly hurt earlier. Are you sure you're alright? Maybe someone should come with you."
"I will be fine. The others need your protection more."
"So... time to go?"
Wynne was in mid-nod when she stopped. She had been so focused that she hadn't looked past me. When her eyes fell on Jowan, she was able to get out, "Jow-?" in a bewildered voice before being interrupted.
"You'll have time to lecture me after we've saved the Circle," Jowan said, with a mixture of sadness and defiance in his voice.
Wynne gave Jowan, and me, a disapproving glance.
After that, we walked across the room toward the doorway. With a wave of the hand, she dispelled the shimmering blue barrier. She looked as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
"That was draining for you, wasn't it?" I asked.
"It... made me weary at times, but I knew I must persevere. Now, be careful! I do not know what monsters we might face further in."
Her words proved prophetic. Down a short hallway, less than a minute later, we entered a library (I assumed. It was a large room full of bookshelves) with several abominations milling about.
I assume you've faced abominations in your line of work? I hadn't. I'd fought undead, darkspawn, a few demons, and a revenant, but I wasn't prepared for abominations. (Well, they weren't as bad as revenants, but the point stands.)
They were terrifying: Almost normal looking on the lower half (though they were wearing robes on that part), but with a misshapen mass of flesh for a torso and head, just normal-looking enough to frighten.
When it saw me, one of them lumbered toward me and began slashing at me with its huge claws. The others followed and attacked the group. I was able to dodge a few slashes, but one of them cut deep. Screaming in pain and anger, I attacked with a devastating series of slashes. I was surprised, then, when the attack didn't do much. The thing's flesh was amorphous and relatively soft, so the cuts didn't hurt much. I ducked away for a moment to catch my breath, only for a warm glow to flow over me, healing the wound. It had come from Wynne. Whoa, I thought. Morrigan knew a bit about healing, but Wynne's was incredible. I returned to the fray. While I had been distracted, Alistair and Jowan had been able to seriously wound one and ultimately slay it. Another was hit by a fireball from Morrigan and, to my shock, was barely affected. It did burn, and it was hurt, but the relative ignorance of such powerful magic was enough to motivate me to jump at it with a long flurry of swings to finish it. The last one, which already had a dozen arrows sticking out of it, was finally killed by a bash-and-slash attack from Alistair.
That done, I took a few deep breaths and looked around the room. There were a lot of books, and a few corpses, but not much else. I saw a partially-destroyed book about some sort of summoning ritual, but wisely decided to leave it alone. We continued walking.
Somehow, before we even left the library, we were set upon by another group. How they hadn't heard us, I didn't and don't understand. This group was comprised of even more abominations (4) and a rage demon.
Let me just say, rage demons are terrifying. I had thought abominations, with their somewhat gelatinous form, were hard to kill. Rage demons are more like a liquid or a gas. Also, because they're basically living fire, you have to be careful not to melt your weapon or heat it so much it burns your hand. I didn't know that then, and it turned out that I didn't need to.
To begin the fight, the rage demon was dealt with almost immediately. Two blasts of elemental ice were shot at the demon, freezing it solid. Frozen fire... not sure how that worked, but it did... Anyway, after that, Wynne launched a large rock at it at very high speeds, and it shattered into small pieces, which then sort of melted and faded at the same time. Impressed, I ran into the fray. Alistair adopted a defensive stance, allowing the rest of us to attack with relative impunity. He was able to mostly block their claw attacks and keep them distracted, and the slashes that connected were quickly healed by Wynne. I ducked behind an abomination and began repeatedly stabbing. It took longer than would for a person, but the tactic still worked. The freeze-and-shatter technique was used to great effectiveness on another one, and a third learned why not to piss off an archer. It had more arrows in it than I could count, including one in each "eye". I'm not sure if that hurts abominations as much as it would people, but damn, it looked painful. The last one was savaged by Dane. I'm not sure abomination-flesh is entirely safe for dogs, but he wasn't hurt by it, so it's probably fine.
Through a door, we came to what seemed to be even more library, this time a circular room with a ring of shelves surrounding the center. There was another demon, and a few more abominations. We killed them. I could tell more, but it was basically just the last fight in a different room. That room also contained the stairs leading up to the second floor, which we ascended.
There were no demons or abominations in the first room of the second floor, which I was very glad for. It was just a large, bare room. In a sub-area, we found two men, standing with serene expressions on their faces, calmly discussing something about a stockroom. I immediately noticed small, glowing blue runes traced on their foreheads.
Jowan's reaction was quite emotional. When he looked at one of them, he briefly looked shocked and worried. When he looked at that one's forehead, however, he recoiled in horror and began breathing rapidly.
"No... no..." he whispered, sounding like he was on the verge of tears. "No... this can't... NO!" He practically screamed the last word. He ran toward the man.
The man, for his part, just turned and looked at Jowan calmly.
"Hello, Jowan," he said in a monotone voice. "If you have come to turn yourself in, I don't think that's possible right now."
"No... Daylen... How could they do this?"
Now it made sense. This was Jowan's friend, the one who'd helped him escape, and the templars had Tranquilized him.
"The templars decided to show mercy. I was resistant. I said, 'No, I would sooner choose death or Aeonar'. But they were insistent. I am glad. It is not such a bad existence."
"But... they can't make a Harrowed mage Tranquil! It's illegal!"
"An exception was made. I committed a horrible crime, willingly aiding a maleficar, but it seemed wasteful to kill me. I was a skilled mage. This way, I would able to aid the Circle in enchantment."
Jowan blinked back tears and tried to regain his composure.
"I am... so sorry."
"It was my fault as well as yours. What do you have to be sorry for?"
"The fact that you just asked me that question..." Jowan replied bitterly. "Daylen... can you tell me what happened to Lily?"
"I am sorry. The templars said that if I were to ever see you again, I was not allowed to answer that question."
"Of course they did..." Jowan turned away. "Let's go..." he said to the group.
"In a minute," I said gently. "Who are you?" I asked the other man.
"I am Owain. I manage the Circle's stockroom. Daylen was working with me temporarily until it could be decided what he should do."
"What are you two doing here? It isn't safe."
"We tried to leave, but encountered a barrier. So we returned to work."
"You should have said something!" Wynne told them with a mix of impatience and pity. "I would have let you through."
"This place is familiar." He briefly paused. "I would prefer not to die. I would prefer if the tower was returned to how it was. Perhaps Niall will succeed and save us all."
"Niall?" I asked.
"A mage. He came through with several others and took the Litany of Adralla."
"But... that protects from mind domination. Is blood magic at work?" Wynne asked, shocked.
"Of course it is," I responded. "Demon summoning, abominations... is any of that even possible without blood magic?"
Jowan was looking extremely uncomfortable, in addition to sad, throughout all of this.
"Hmm... I suppose not," Wynne answered. "We should find Niall. The Litany of Adralla will give us a better chance of fighting any blood mages we might find."
"Perhaps everything will return to normal." Owain's emotionless voice almost sounded hopeful. "Goodbye."
Nodding to the two, I continued.
9:39 Dragon
City of Amaranthine
"That was my first encounter with Tranquility," Mirevas said, a hard edge to his voice. "A man trying to help his best friend be free with the person he loves and being punished with a fate worse than fucking death! Things like that are why I support the mages and hate the Chantry. How could that ever be justified?"
Cassandra hesitated.
"No one has ever said that the Rite is a good thing, outside of a very few extremists. But you cannot say the alternative is better."
"What alternative? Death? Almost every mage that I've ever met would die rather than be made Tranquil. Even if you believed that it was ever necessary, is it really worth it? Do its positive effects outweigh things like Kirkwall?"
"Kirkwall... a lot of things happened in Kirkwall. We still don't know everything. There were abuses, but there was also a great deal of magical corruption."
Mirevas rubbed his forehead.
"I can't argue this anymore right now. My head'll explode. Where was I?"
9:30 Dragon
The Circle Tower
A little bit further, we paused before an entranceway. In the room ahead, we heard a small group of blood mages talking among themselves, discussing how they were helping Uldred. We were about to move in when Jowan raised an arm and whispered, "I'm going to try something."
"Shh! I think I heard something," one of the mages said.
Jowan quietly slid a knife out of its sheath and raised his other hand. With one smooth movement, he drew the knife across his palm. With an expression of great focus on his face, he channeled magic through his cut hand. The trickle of blood began to bubble and hiss.
"I definitely heard-" the mage was cut off by a huge blast of energy. From the middle of the group, a wave of blue light passed over them. All of the mages caught in it briefly burned in azure flame before extinguishing and collapsing.
The whole group stared at Jowan, with differing expressions. He, for his part, nearly collapsed with exhaustion. The spell had taken a lot from him.
Morrigan and I looked impressed, a first for her from my perspective. Leliana looked worried, but as though she was trying to hide impression. I could also see the wheels turning in her head. She was going to put this into a story or song somehow. Alistair looked scared and sort of revolted. Wynne...
Wynne looked pissed.
"I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, maleficar," she hissed walking up to him and pointing her staff at this slumped form. "I believed that maybe the stories about you were exaggerated, or that you had reformed. Now it seems-"
"Wynne!" I interrupted. "He's helping us. He's going to keep helping us. You can't touch him; I've recruited him into the Wardens."
"I had thought the Wardens had higher standards..." she commented contemptuously. "Fine. I will talk about this later. We still have a tower to save."
"Good... I think." I turned to Jowan, who was only now managing to rise to his feet. "What was that?" I asked. He took a swig from a bottle of glowing blue liquid and replied.
"That..." He took a deep breath. "That was an experimental technique I've been working on for a while. I call it a 'mana clash'. It's a type of energy that reacts with lyrium, such as that in the blood of mages... rather violently, as you can see. I still have a few kinks to work out. It's... quite tiring."
"Where did you find time to experiment with something like that?" I asked, bewildered.
"In my cell. When I wasn't being tortured or interrogated, they mostly forgot about me. Not the smartest move on their part, but it let me try out new things with magic... and blood... The studying and experimentation kept me sane. This actually wasn't the spell's intended purpose, but it worked quite well."
"Then what was its intended purpose?"
"It was supposed to be a nonlethal way to disable templars. They have a lot less lyrium in their blood than mages, so it wouldn't kill. It would cause an incredible amount of pain, though, and also purge the lyrium from their system, leading to weakened abilities and withdrawal. I was going to use it if I somehow escaped."
"Don't they keep the lyrium thing a secret?" I asked, glancing at Alistair.
"They try, but most people older than children know about it. You hear rumors about a black market for templars who want more than their rations, that sort of thing."
"All right, then. If none of us are going to murder each other, let's move on."
9:39 Dragon
City of Amaranthine
"Seriously? What now?"
"What?" Cassandra asked. "I didn't say anything."
"You seemed unnerved by the description of the mana clash. No? Whatever. See if I care..."
9:30 Dragon
The Circle Tower
Well, move on we did. On the second floor, there were few notable battles. We fought abominations, blood mages, undead, a demon or two, but once you've killed one demon-possessed monster, you've pretty much killed them all.
There were a few exceptions. Near a toppled statue (of Andraste, I think), we found an opaque black vial with a scrap of paper in it. The area seemed colder than it should have. I stooped down and tried to pick up the vial, but it shattered at my touch. A few feet away, a heavily armored warrior with glowing red eyes materialized.
A revenant.
"Shit!" I yelled, recoiling.
I made a gesture indicating that the ranged combatants should back away. Leliana made a combat roll away and drew her bow. Wynne ran faster than I thought would be possible for a woman that old, and Jowan was also able to escape. Morrigan, on the other hand, simply looked at the revenant with scorn and shapeshifted into a bear. Alistair began a sword-and-shield duel of sorts with the monster, though he would definitely not have been able to win on his own. He was able to stand his ground as his opponent was filled with arrows and energy blasts from Jowan's staff. I stayed to the side or back of it, waiting for openings to stab it in its vulnerable spots. Slowly but surely, the monster was worn down. Suddenly, it made a massive sweep with its sword—wielded in one hand but the size of a greatsword. The slash was blocked from Alistair by his shield, but cut deeply into my torso. I half-ducked, half-collapsed and began gasping in pain and lack of breath. Bleeding profusely, I fell unconscious.
I didn't make it.
...what? Am I not allowed the occasional joke? Whatever...
I was brought back from unconsciousness just in time to see Alistair cutting off the revenant's head, finally killing it.
I took a few quick breaths only to realize that it didn't hurt to breathe. I felt fine. Not amazing, but certainly not like I'd just been slashed in the chest by a greatsword.
"Wha... What was that?" I asked.
"You are all right!" Leliana said, sounding relieved.
"The girl was quite distraught when you fell. I believe she referred to you by name, in fact," Morrigan smirked.
"I... of course I was. I can't help save Ferelden without him, can I?"
"Yes... that was your motivation."
"Shut up," I told Morrigan annoyedly.
"That was what we call a 'revival', for obvious reasons," Wynne explained. "It is a spell that only those who specialize in healing can learn; it takes quite a bit of training. It is used to heal serious wounds and restore people to consciousness."
"Well... thanks."
"It is no trouble. Well... not that much trouble."
I went back to the statue and pulled out the piece of paper. It was covered in writing:
Let the dead no longer serve your whim.
Bound by your true name, no mortal hand shall reach you.
Cale Viazagat, revenant and perversion of an only son.
Death beyond death is no longer your stepping stone through the veil.
Andraste hold you, demon, and bind your rage for eternity.
At the bottom of the paper was a signature of sorts, six fingerprints stamped in blood.
"I think that people weren't able to kill this revenant, so they bound him here. When we disturbed the vial, we released him. So... now he's dead. I don't think this had anything to do with the trouble in the tower, but I think it was good we killed him."
We continued, a little worse for the wear. Further in, we entered a room flanked by bookshelves, with a large desk in the center.
"This is First Enchanter Irving's office. I had hoped we might find him here, but I suppose that was just wishful thinking," Wynne commented.
I began searching the room.
"...what are you doing?" Wynne asked.
"Looking around. There might be something important."
"You aren't planning on looting the first enchanter's office, are you?"
"Of course not," I lied.
I did find something mildly interesting that I shared. Apparently, Uldred had impressed Irving with his skill in misdirection and spotting the signs of blood magic and Irving had called a meeting of the senior enchancters so they could learn from him. That had turned out well...
I also found a small painted box. I didn't quite know why, but I wanted it. It was a box. Boxes are cool. So I took it. I got a few confused glances, but the group didn't much care. It was just a box.
The other thing I found was slightly less innocuous. It was a large black book covered with incomprehensible writing. I could guess that it was magic, and one of my less by-the-book (so to speak) mages could no doubt benefit from it. That I was able to surreptitiously stow in my pack.
"Let's move on."
Just past Irving's office were the stairs leading up. The third floor opened into a large empty room, a common room, I think, but it had an atmosphere of disquiet. I felt as though I was being watched. The corpses strewn about coming to life didn't help. We dispatched the undead quickly. The floor held little that threatened us. A few abominations, a few rage demons, a few possessed templars—they were unnerving—nothing that seemed too dangerous. When we approached the large door leading into the floor's central chamber, I wasn't expecting things to take a turn for the disturbing. It wasn't as bad as what would come later, but it would certainly set the tone for it.
AN: Thanks as always to Pintsizedpsycho and SharpRevan for the reviews.
AN 2: Sorry for the long delay. Hope the 4.4k word chapter makes up for it.
AN 3: You could probably get this from just reading, but I feel the need to say it: Seriously, poor Jowan.
AN 4 (I swear this is the last one): I posted the first chapter of this chapter a month ago yesterday, and it already has almost 2500 views. Out of all of my stories, it's #1 in everything but favorites (so if you want to favorite, that would be cool). Thank you so much to everyone who's followed, favorited, reviewed, or just read the story.