The Circle of Magi
Elaine stared in horror at the children in front of her. No, she thought, not again. I can't kill any more children.
She wanted so badly to believe the elderly mage who told her they were not possessed. But who could really tell? Connor hadn't looked like an abomination, either.
She had entered the Circle Tower with the intention of killing everything inside it, but this was too much. She simply couldn't kill these people. When Wynne proposed she help save the ones who could be saved, Elaine was paralyzed with indecision. She didn't want to be responsible for allowing abominations to escape, but if Wynne was right, she didn't want to kill innocent mages either. She had to find a way to delay.
Elaine had enough experience in noble circles to understand the value of "diplomacy." She knew how to tell people what they wanted to hear in order to get them to help her achieve her own goals, and yet be careful not to say anything untrue. At least, not technically untrue.
Her mother had reprimanded her several times after discovering she had manipulated the servants into going along with some self-serving scheme or other. Once, when Arl Wulff's daughter Izot had come for an extended stay in Highever, Elaine had convinced the cook that Izot loved her special heavy cream sauce (which she did, although Elaine may have exaggerated just a little)and had resolved to eat it at every opportunity. The cook had been duly flattered and had obliged Izot's "request." The poor girl had gained so much weight within a few weeks that her Fall Festival dress had burst a seam in the middle of the ballroom floor. Eleanor had somehow found out that her daughter was behind the incident (she always had a sixth sense about these things, much to Elaine's chagrin), and as punishment had forced her daughter to repair the dress herself: "Sewing is a useful skill," she had said when Elaine protested, "and you could use the practice repairing things rather than tearing them apart." Elaine's heart ached at the thought of her mother, and she felt a prick of conscience as she came to a decision that she knew her mother would censure.
This was not her mess to sort. She was a Grey Warden, after all, not a Templar, and her duty was to stop the Blight, not rescue mages from their own dangerous, misguided magical experiments. The best way to get past Wynne and her barrier seemed to be to cooperate with her, promise the mage she would do her best to save as many as she could, and stall for time until the Templar reinforcements arrived. If they chose to kill the children as part of their Right of Annulment, well, that was their burden, not hers.
At least that's what she was going to tell herself. Maker help them all.
