The abominable child made no further attempt to harass the intruders within the great hall. Instead, it made its grievances known by ransacking the eastern tower; staggered crashes resonated through the castle's limestone bones. The great hall itself looked as though it had hosted a battle between mid-sized armies: strewn with broken furniture and scattered weaponry. A half-dozen corpses lay amidst the wreckage, each one clad in the Guerrin livery. Four of the six undead had met their end on Alistair's blade; a sword not yet returned to the sheath.
The cause of the blade's continued exposure was sitting on the low steps leading to the arl's toppled throne. Jowan's sunken and bruised frame seemed dwarfed by his robes: the bones of his emaciated shoulders jutted like knots on a tree branch. Only a few months separated this pitiful creature from a fleshy and confident young Circle apprentice; instead it seemed as though Jowan had endured two decades of hardship.
Alistair and the two Rainesfere men had brought the mage up from the dungeon. The former curtly asserted that he remembered enough from his years with the Templars to subdue a rebellious mage. At this comment Flora shot him a curious glance; he met her gaze for a moment, then looked swiftly away.
In the meantime Teagan swiftly abandoned further attempts to obtaining information from the arlessa. She had stared blankly at him when he tried to interrogate her about Eamon, then burst into tears when his frustration bit through his words. The bann gave up on extracting anything of use from his sister-in-law, and turned his attention to Flora instead. She was standing near the low fan of steps that led up to the arl's platform; her face turned towards his brother's toppled throne. There was a faint crease of bemusement across her forehead: it looked like a crack in a marble head.
"I don't normally make comments like this," the bann observed after a long moment, the words coloured by a half-laugh. "Especially in the current circumstances. But your face is absolutely extraordinary."
Flora looked at Teagan Guerrin as though he were something mildly horrifying that had washed up on the shore.
"You're a great advertisement for the Wardens," he continued, amused. " Almost enough for me to consider membership, except for - you know - the mandatory familial obligations that come with the name."
He smiled at her, eyes creasing at the corners.
Flora had no idea what he was talking about. She shot a hopeful glance at Sten, who turned away; there would be no distraction from the Qunari. Instead, she took a hesitant step towards the arlessa, who was still hunched near the empty throne. She had nothing to offer the lady Isolde apart from her mending - and the arlessa did not appear injured - but she felt a clench in her belly at the woman's abject despair.
"Is there anything I can bring you?" she offered, wondering if there was some respectful honorific she ought to be using. "I can try and find the kitchens."
The arlessa looked up at her, the skin sallow and swollen from an excess of tears. Her sandy eyelashes were stuck in clumps to her cheeks. The sight of Flora - as it had outside the castle - drew her breath sharply inwards; her fingers clenching in the wrinkled silk of her skirt. It was neither a pleased inhalation, nor one of relief; the arlessa dropped her gaze swiftly and flicked a wordless rejection with her hand.
Flora did not take offense to Isolde Guerrin's dismissive gesture. On the contrary, she appreciated the blunt candor. At that moment, Alistair and the Rainesfere soldiers escorted a limping and manacled Jowan through a side-door; the tip of her brother-warden's blade nudged at the base of the maleficar's spine.
Teagan Guerrin made a low sound in his throat, his fingers moving over the hilt of his blade. The conflict between family loyalty and familial duty writ itself stark on his face: for a moment, he wanted nothing more than to run his brother's tormentor through. The mantle of bann weighed heavier on his shoulders; when Jowan was prodded towards him, he inhaled and addressed him with brittle formality.
"Speak, mage, and hope that you finish before my patience wears thin. I've heard a glut of treachery in recent times."
The emaciated creature that answered to Jowan shot him a wary, weary look. He sagged between the two Rainesfere guards, manacles biting into the thin bones of his wrists. One of his eyes had been blacked between the dungeons and the great hall: the socket bruised a lurid purple. The words emerged reluctantly and veined with regret, though this went unnoticed by his antagonistic audience.
"It all began when Loghain Mac Tir's steward found me in a tavern- "
Flora was not listening to the hesitant explanation; the players involved in such a political drama were strangers to her, their motives inexplicable. She was still preoccupied with the frightening scale of the magic summoned by her hand; exponentially vaster than anything she had created before. The weight of such massive expenditure rested literally on her head: her hair had sprouted six further inches and was escaping its bindings.
Why didn't you give me any warning?
There followed a perplexed pause.
Because then you would have been crushed on the flagstones.
Flora ground her teeth.
I meant - why didn't you tell me earlier that I could do that? Summon a barrier that large? Have I always been able to do that?
The potential was there; but never before needed.
I don't understand.
The Veil is a sea wall. Most often a trickle of our magic is let through. But sometimes a tide is needed.
Flora grudgingly appreciated the reference.
Was that a tide? What I did just then?
There came a flutter of amusement.
No.
She took a deep breath.
Could I… could I have saved Duncan if I'd been in the valley at Ostagar? With that sort of shield?
A ripple of irritation flowed over her skull like a breeze across an open book.
Cease this infatuation with a dead man.
But-
His time is OVER.
Meanwhile, the bann was beginning to lose his temper. His hands were knotted into fists and a dark red flush had bloomed on his throat. He had heard how Loghain Mac Tir had instructed Jowan to keep Eamon comatose through any means necessary; and how the inexperienced mage's curse had sunk too deep into the arl's aging body. The reminder that Jowan had also been recruited to keep Connor Guerrin's magic hidden was the final straw.
"You've brought nothing but death and devastation to my family," snarled the bann, sounding more Mabari than man. "Foul creature! If I had Mac Tir standing before me now, I would slay him on the spot. Since I only have you-"
The bann's groping fingers closed around the hilt of his sword. He withdrew the blade several scraping inches and then was snared in an appraising grey stare; like the barb in the fleshy pink gullet of a salmon. Flora, who had briefly returned her attention to the corporeal world, was eyeing him over the cringing maleficar. The girl was dishevelled, grubby, and clad in a sack intended for turnips; and yet there was an imperiousness that ran through her body like a vein of gold. It sounded in the lift of her chin, the haughty arch of her brow; the cool, unwavering expectancy of her stare.
"You said the arl would decide his fate."
The common cadence of the north was a jarring foil. The bann hesitated, his mind jolted off track for a reason that he could not quite comprehend. He looked at Flora, who had resumed her vague staring into space; then shook his head in a quick back-forth.
"The arl will see proper justice for such treachery," he said at last, and his words were accompanied by a crash from the eastern tower that shook dust from the rafters. The boy's mother flinched, uttering something beneath her breath in her native tongue.
Alistair had started to pace the short distance between the slumped prisoner and the toppled throne. Adrenaline from the recent fight still coursed hot and raw in his veins; the crash reminded him that the battle for Redcliffe was far from won. The powerful mass of his body, augmented by mail-woven steel, was not made for abbreviated movements: he looked like a caged tiger.
The maleficar lifted his head just long enough to survey the weeping woman who had ordered his torture, the fuming bann and the swordsman stalking the tiles.
"I want to talk to Flora," Jowan said, so soft that the request was almost buried beneath Alistair's footsteps. "Alone."
Despite their quietness, the young Warden heard the words well enough.
"You must be joking," he retorted sharply, drawing in a swift breath of air. "No."
Learn what he knows.
Sitting on the nearby step, Flora looked across at the mage who had arrived at the Circle on the same day as herself. They had never been friends but they had shared many of the same classes: he, with his middling ability, had shown some sympathy when she failed to conjure even the most basic of spells. Eventually his attitude towards her had cooled; the sympathy at her incompetence veered into a more patronising form of pity.
Still, Flora only had time to begrudge one man at a time, and this place was reserved solely for Loghain Mac Tir. She pushed herself up with her palms; the movement caught Alistair's attention and he turned, one hand stretching out towards her.
"Flora," he said quietly, eyes searching her face. "He's dangerous."
"Mm," Flora agreed, patting the back of his hand gently as she avoided it. "I'll be careful."
My shield stopped his magic before, back in the Circle. And besides, he ain't got the blood to fuel anything. He's barely got enough to feed his innards. His body is a drought.
Alistair's face was the polar opposite of her own: clear and open, every nuanced emotion and thought was laid bare. Now his mouth twisted down with unhappiness, his brow scored as if with an ink pen. Still, he made no attempt to impede his sister-warden as she made her way over to the manacled prisoner. The bann made a reluctant retreat of several yards; Alistair did the same, but kept his blade candidly bare.
Jowan raised his eyes and once more Flora felt a swift nudge of shock at how gaunt he had become: the skin on his cheeks stretched thin enough to see the spiderweb of vessels beneath. There were patches of white on his skull where the hair had come away in clumps. The young man had lost his natural colour; faded like a painting left in the sun.
"The big one," he offered faintly, the corner of his mouth flickering upwards. "Is he your lover? You said no to half the Circle."
Flora was astonished at the total irrelevancy of such a question. Ignoring it, she fixed him with her ambiguous stare: unfathomable as the cold grey depths of the Waking Sea.
"What is it that you know," she said, recalling the instruction from her spirits. "That you haven't told?"
He was quiet for a moment but Flora waited patiently. She knew that he had decided to tell her the moment that he requested to speak with her; this was just prevarication.
"When I was studying blood magic," Jowan said at last, barely above a whisper. "I stole the forbidden books from the Circle library. The ones they kept hidden."
The illiterate Flora had no good memories from the Circle library; the stacked shelves taunted her with their weight of inaccessible knowledge. She had a vague mistrust of books anyway: how could there be enough knowledge in the world to fill a whole room? Regardless she kept silent, fiddling with the fraying hem of her makeshift tunic. A thread clung to her finger and she drew it out slowly, watching the fabric deconstruct itself.
"The easiest way to reverse possession is by a willing sacrifice," the maleficar said softly, darting a swift glance at her. "The boy's mother loves him, doesn't she?"
Flora shot him the scowl of a Herring native: salt-laced and coarse.
"We ain't doing that," she said bluntly. "What's the not-easy way?"
The defeated arlessa, who looked near as sickly as the prisoner, made a weak sound of protest. Flora did not acknowledge it: her eyes set unblinking on the maleficar's face.
"There's a ritual," Jowan said quietly, his eyes on his feet. "It's complicated and only a skilled mage has any chance of success, but… if they are successful, the possession can be lifted with no harm done to the victim."
Flora heard Alistair - who was eavesdropping - draw in a sharp breath. As a past recruit of the Templars, he understood the implications of this far better than Flora.
"A skilled mage," she repeated; the compass of her mind already tilting towards the next port on their journey. "That ain't me. But Alistair and I need to go to the Circle anyway."
We could ask them to help the little boy before they join us against the Darkspawn.
There was a soft ripple of approval from her spirits and Flora pushed herself to her feet, not wanting to waste a moment more. Her northerner's mind rebelled at stagnation: like the constant advance and retreat of the tide, it prompted her to keep moving. She could see from the expression on Alistair's face that he had reached the same conclusion.
Before Flora went to him, she looked down at Jowan. She was not sure what to say - it was pointless to demand an explanation for his behaviour, and besides he did not owe one to her. She wondered if he would survive long enough to be sentenced by the arl, if he ever awoke.
Is it worth going to find the arl and trying to mend him?
A waste of time. A blood-curse cannot be mended: it must be expelled.
In the meantime, the bann and Alistair had been exchanging swift conversation: they had heard enough to discern the gist of the plan. The two men stood framed by shattered furniture; which lay strewn across the tiles like a shipwreck
"The Circle lies a hundred miles north, at the head of the lake," Teagan Guerrin said with a grimace, gesturing to an invisible map that hung before them. "It would take you a week to walk there and back. My mare broke free from its tether during the fighting last night - I wonder if there are any horses left in the stables here?"
He and Alistair looked reflexively towards the pair of entrance doors, beyond which lay the courtyard and - nestled at the foot of a tower - Arl Eamon's stables. Alistair had spent the first decade of his life beneath the angled thatch, dreaming of becoming some lesser noble's squire.
"I didn't see any when we were out there earlier," Alistair replied, the handsome face creasing in a grimace. "Shit. How many more nights can Redcliffe last?"
"How long is a stirrup rein?" replied the bann drily, and without humour. "If your friends can assist us again, perhaps a little longer."
Flora withdrew her gleaming palm from Jowan's arm. A slight hue had returned to his cheeks; the gauntness a little less pronounced. He stared at her, the pupils shrunken to pinpricks within the sallow sclera.
"Why?" he asked, bewildered.
"Don't waste it," Flora replied, meaning: don't spend my efforts on more blood magic.
He waited, but she offered no further explanation. Sten volunteered to escort the prisoner back to the cells; Jowan left the great hall limping, with the shadow of the Qunari draped over him like a shroud.
Flora turned her attention to Alistair, who was staring into the distance as though a convenient horse might canter in from the kitchens.
"There's a southerly wind today."
Flora had noticed it as soon as they had left the Chantry eaves that morning: the air swept up from the south, light and delicate, spun with frost from the mountains. It tasted different on the tongue from the northern wind she knew far better: the hoarse and salt-laced exhalation of the coast.
"One of the fishing boats might take us. It'd be quicker on the water."
She remembered how Alistair had bemoaned the poor condition of the roads: their recent deterioration a mirror to the arl's ailing health.
The bann straightened, his face brightening.
"That's not a bad idea at all. There's more than enough breeze to fill a sail."
The previous night,the two Warden-recruits, the bann and Leliana had planned out their defences against the impending attack. Now, they - minus the lay-sister, who was enlisting support from surrounding villages - plotted what their next step would be. The Qunari and the bard, who together had slaughtered more undead than the rest of the defenders combined, would stay and assist in the defence of Redcliffe. Alistair and Flora, with coin and an edict from the bann, would seek passage to the northern part of the lake on one of the larger fishing vessels. At the Circle, they would recruit the mages to their own cause, while also seeking a cure for the abominable child. Morrigan, naturally, would do as she pleased.
One of the Rainesfere men, after a pointed stare from the bann, had donated his Rainesfere tunic to replace Flora's Kerbrook Turnips sack. Flora, as she changed, was gratified at the hum of approval from her spirits. Aware that she was not the sharpest fish hook in the case, she was proud that her suggestion of travelling on the water had gone down well; she rarely came up with ideas that won praise.
The others duly turned their backs while their mender extracted herself from the remains of her tattered sackcloth. Teagan Guerrin watched Alistair for a long moment from the tail of his eye. The young warrior was staring fixedly at the far end of the hall; prohibiting his gaze fron wandering an inch.
"Alistair," the bann said, quietly.
Alistair stiffened, his jaw fixing itself as though cast in iron. He made no reply; eyes still set on the great wooden doors.
Despite the young man's discomfort, Teagan was not dissuaded.
"You know what Cailan's death means, don't you?"
Alistair's gaze flickered towards him like the darting of a firefly: the green flecks in the hazel standing out starkly. It took him a moment to reply, and the words emerged with hollow joviality.
"It means a royal funeral. Women weeping, priestesses chanting. That sort of thing."
Eamon's brother was suddenly reminded of himself almost two decades prior: drunken nights in Ostwick taverns, dice games with foreign women and racing horses for uncounted miles across the highgrass plains of the Marches. Then, one day, a letter had arrived with the Guerrin tower stamped in wax like a bloody thumbprint; a familial summons from across the Waking Sea.
Enough folly, my son. Your duty lies in Rainesfere, not in the alehouses of Ansburg.
"Alistair," Teagan said again, and this time there was a shadow of sympathy in the word. "You know what this means. Maric - "
Alistair turned around and strode to his sister-warden, who had half-wrangled herself into the tunic. The pale line of Flora's back was crossed by the loosened laces, and the wine-red tributaries of her hair. He could smell the salt soap on her body, rising from the heat of recent battle.
"I ain't never worn this stuff before," she observed with faint suspicion, sensing him standing at her back. "What is it?"
Alistair took the ends of the laces and fed them carefully through the final eyelets.
"Velvet, I think, " he replied, watching the berry-red folds tighten as he drew out the laces.
"Oh. I don't like it. I miss my sack."
Flora looked over her shoulder, angling her face up to his. There must have been some remnant of discomfort in Alistair's returning gaze; a faint line creased the curve of her brow. She opened her mouth and then closed it again: Teagan Guerrin was approaching.
"Right," Alistair said quickly, directing the conversation back to the matter at hand. "Let's find us a boat."
AN: Ok so we have our plan to go to the Circle! Finally! I decided to change the manner of their journey slightly because I thought it made logical sense to go at least part of the way by boat - Redcliffe is at the bottom of lake calenhad and kinloch is at the top! (Kin loch means head of the lake in Gaelic!). Also I just thought I would clarify something - when Flora's magic makes her hair grow, it's just the hair on her HEAD. IMAGINE the hair on her LEGS growing six inches spontaneously! Ahahhahaa! No, that doesn't happen. lol. Funny to think about though!
In other OOC news... very important news... WE HAVE MOVED! Finally! Back to Wales! I'm never ever moving out of my beloved country again. Things are super chaotic and busy now, we're renting a little Victorian terrace which is gorgeous and full of character but also full of DIY jobs... and I'm starting my new job in a week and a half! Hurray!
