A stair was hewn into the rock, curving up and around the foundations of Kinloch Hold. It was cut deliberately crude, as though to emphasise its infrequency of use; most of those who resided within would make only a single journey. The drizzle had promoted itself to established rain; it stung exposed flesh as only northern precipitation could. The limestone was slick and misshapen from centuries of footfall; tattered skeins of rope hung from iron rings driven into the wall. This formed a rudimentary handrail, though Alistair doubted that it would save a fall.

The last time that he had ascended these steps was with Duncan. The older man had climbed them with the swiftness and agility of one decades younger. If his body truly had been on the verge of submission to the taint, he had hidden it well. Alistair then recalled the apothecary's array of tinctures that Duncan carried with him, and realised that his commander had most likely preserved his flesh and mind through artificial means.

Until he met Flora.

Alistair glanced over his shoulder at his sister-warden, who was several steps below. Flora looked faintly nauseous: the last time she had ascended the curving stair was in the company of the Templars. He noticed that she had the bundle of parchment clutched in a fist like a weapon.

"Flora," he said, about to repeat his assurance from earlier.

Then, Alistair cut himself off and descended to her level, reaching to gently extract the sheaf of treaties. The allegiance accords had been enchanted for preservation: the vellum and ink looked freshly made. He leafed through - a dwarven sigil marked one, a stamp crafted from wood imprinted another - until he found Flora's Circle discharge.

"Here." He bound the accords back up, then handed Flora her release papers. "This is what you want. Just show them this if anyone asks any questions."

"Thank you."

Rudimentary manners had been the one skill that Flora had learnt in the Circle.

"More than welcome, Flo," he replied lightly, his gaze lingering on hers. "After all, it wouldn't be any good to have my sister-warden locked up, would it? I need her."

The corner of her mouth quirked and then her eyes moved past him: to the stairs that still lay between them and the door. Alistair marvelled at the serenity impassivity of her expression: he knew that she was still nervous and yet no brittle twist of fear betrayed the blank, beautiful canvas of her face. It was as inscrutable as an Orlesian mask; and he wondered idly what it would take to penetrate it.

Flora distracted herself by counting the granite stairs beneath her feet as she ascended them. She counted to twelve, then began again: timing each step to the apprehensive thud of her heart.

I wish that some other Warden had survived, and that they could have done this bit.

I don't feel like a real Warden. There wasn't any time to learn about them.

Your commander should have educated you, instead of waxing lyrical about Rivain and his youth.

I liked hearing about Rivain. And his youth.

Entirely irrelevant. And increasingly inappropriate.

A dark stripe of energy cut the air before Flora, accompanied by the static hiss and acrid scent of magic. Black feathers drifted like Antivan carnival candies thrown into a crowd. As the light fell back into order, Morrigan stood grinning three steps above them.

"Ha! For a pair of Grey Wardens, you both jump easily."

Flora let go of the tattered rope that had narrowly prevented another startled plunge into the lake. Just below her, Alistair swore under his breath: he had nearly fallen down the steps.

"Why can't you just - be like a normal person?" he complained, shooting the witch a dark look. "Walk up and say hello? Good morning?"

Morrigan curved a supercilious smile.

"You ought to thank me."

"Thank you! For what, exactly?"

"For improving your reflexes. You stayed upright, did you not? You didn't go tumbling down the stairs like an utter fool? Defying my expectations."

"I dislike you," replied Alistair, "a great deal for someone I've only known for a month. Usually dislike grows on me."

"Like a mould," the witch said, evilly. "Or a fungus."

Flora did not want to listen to Morrigan and Alistair arguing: she wanted to focus solely on arguing with her general about her dead commander. A seagull wheeled in the air overhead and let out a raucous cry; a white flick of ink against the grey. She remembered suddenly how the bird of prey had dived beyond the parapet at Ostagar, letting out a shriek far more predatory than any gull. Flora had startled in alarm; the cloak had slithered from her shoulders.

It's a falcon, Duncan had explained, lifting the cloak and replacing it with care. Young sister.

The deep reverberation of his voice cut through her mind like a cleaver, splitting the argument dead in half. Flora lifted her chin and continued up the steps with renewed vigour: determined not to let the spectral echo of her commander down.

Meanwhile, five yards and ten steps further back, the snide exchange between Morrigan and Alistair had taken on a different tilt. She had peered at him slyly from the tail of her eye, the dark red mouth twisting upwards.

"What," Alistair retorted in response to the barbed glance, taking two steps at once in his efforts to catch up with Flora. "What?"

"So, have you two relieved yourself of the inconvenient burden of virginity yet?"

Whatever Alistair had expected from Morrigan's throat, it was not this.

"What the- no. Not that it's any of your business. No."

He hoped fervently that he was not going red. To his relief, Flora was some distance away: charging up the steps with inexplicable determination.

Morrigan was gazing at him with pitying bemusement, one eyebrow lodged in her hairline.

"But you had means, motive, opportunity -! What did you do all night?"

"Sleep," he retorted, wondering if he could persuade the Templars within the Circle to incarcerate Morrigan instead - not for ever, just perhaps for a week - or a month.

Her eyes rolled, the clever lip curled.

"You two need to get it over with. Then you'll be able to concentrate far better on our task, hm?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Alistair said tautly. "We're at the Circle, about to recruit the mages. That's our task. Our sworn duty."

"And yet you look at her like a starving man would a feast."

"I'm not having this conversation."

She laughed.

Grinding his teeth, Alistair ascended two steps at a time - which was easier than climbing them singly given the length of his leg - until he had caught up with Flora. She was hesitating on the top step: ahead lay a small plateau of granite, and then rose the vast and joyless edifice of Kinloch Hold. There were no windows at the lower heights and so the stone stretched upwards in a wall of unadorned blocks. A pair of double doors were set within an arch at the base. The guard post nearby was empty: the Tower stood as motionless as a chess piece.

Flora clenched her Circle discharge in her fist, rolled up in a bundle. She realised then that she had been so distracted by the obstinate ferryman that she had forgotten her staff. It lay tucked beneath her pack, strapped to the hindquarters of their stabled horse.

Ooh, she thought in dismay. They'll think that I've lost it.

Still, there was nothing that she could do about it. Flora reassured herself with the knowledge that her staff would not be required; that all they needed to do within the Circle was enlist the assistance of the mages. A blot of ink on a page; the scratch of a quill; the muffled collision of a stamp; and their business would be done.

Alistair came to a halt beside her, while Morrigan hung back; watchful and wary.

"Ready?" he asked, meaning: are you alright?

Flora was silent: she was not happy about their return to the Circle, but she trusted in Alistair's assurances and the slanted scrawl of her commander's signature.

"Mm," she said after a hesitation, then gave a more certain nod. "Yes. Let's - let's… just go."

This was easier said than done: the door was shut fast and bore no less than three keyholes. Within the vast arch of wood was set a smaller door: used for daily passage. Alistair rapped on it with his fist and there came no response, not even after he had repeated the knock with increasing fervour. Eventually, he stepped back with perplexion writ across his handsome face: the door vast and implacable before him. He was a man not used to being refused admittance.

"Is nobody home?"

A vein of frustration ran through the question: the morning was turning out as a series of obstacles.

Flora was unhelpful. She had no idea what the Circle protocols were for admitting visitors. In her four years spent within the curving walls, she had never had a guest. She reached out to wrap her fingers around the grizzled ring of iron, dropping it against the door three times. She heard a faint echo of her knock from within, but little else. The insides of her nostrils prickled and she thought that she could smell the acrid afterburn of magic: though she was unsure why such a scent would linger near the entrance.

"Maker's Breath," complained Alistair, taking several steps back and eyeing the looming doors. "Looks like everyone's having a lie in."

"Lying in what?"

Flora had never heard the phrase, nor had one.

"Reckon I should kick it down?" He had already judged the strength of the door, and predicted that his brawny bulk would come out the winner.

"Such a primitive mindset: resorting to violence," called Morrigan, who was still standing at a cautious distance. Then, with no shame at her hypocrisy: "I shall burn it."

Flora stared at the grain of the wood until the whorls and meandering contours melted into a blur. Alistair admired the spaces between the bones of her face: the hollows and defined valleys that could have been shaped with a chisel. He could imagine her nose on a Tevinter empress: one of the figures from the history books he had avoided as a youth. It was an imperious nose, fine-boned and very straight. There was no childish tilt to it, nor any softness. It was the sort of nose that presided over a mouth that issued commands. Alistair was not sure whether Flora had ever issued a command in her life. He wondered where she had inherited it.

The longer he looked at her, the more he felt as though he were sinking to the bottom of a deep well: the world shrinking to a single point of golden light. The descent was inevitable, irreversible and strangely calming: it urged him to surrender even as it stole the air from his lungs.

"We'll find a way inside," Alistair said, still distracted.

Flora stared at him: her stare blunt as the headsman's ax.

"Or we make one."

The world contracted around him once again.

Then, without warning the door-within-a-door opened: first, a fraction and then an expanding wedge of firelight. Both Warden-recruits turned towards it while Morrigan slid back, hackles rising. A Templar stood in the entrance: fully armoured and faceless. The notched blade of a Chantry soldier was carved into the silvered expense of his breastplate. He said nothing but his eyes caught the sunlight behind the helm, slitted with suspicion. A sword hung at his side: the metal oddly stained.

Flora's determination to stay calm slipped from her mind in an instant: a minnow escaping a salmon net. The sight of the carven blade and its tangible counterpart brought back a memory that was still far too fresh. In a panic she thrust her fist towards the Templar: brandishing the rolled parchment of her Circle release.

"I've been dis- "

"Another mage!"

The Templar gave a warning shout: the cry reverberating within the helm. Instead of raising the sword, he made a gesture with his free hand: evoking an ability that had been honed by the Chantry's militia over generations to counter the natural power of mages. It was not magic, but its antithesis: a calculated deadening of the air to suppress any Fade-energies.

The open-mouthed Flora dropped like a stone, her discharge fluttering unread to the ground.

It had all happened so quickly that Alistair needed a moment to comprehend what had happened. His sister-warden was sprawled on her back; the young Templar's gauntleted fingers were closing around the hilt of his blade. His eyes, barely visible through the slitted steel, were luminous with fear.

Then the Templar found himself shoved into the door and sworn at by a furious Alistair, who had used no weapon save for muscle.

"Maker damn you - what did you do that for, you fucking idiot?"

Alistair then went to crouch beside Flora, who looked as though she had been hit over the head with something large. Her lips had a bluish tinge: the result of all the air in her lungs being forcibly expelled by the Templar's silence.

"Flora," he said, stroking his thumb around the corner of her blinking, startled eye. "Just breathe, sweetheart - you'll be fine, you were silenced. By this fucking idiot son of a Mabari whoreson- "

"Articulate," contributed Morrigan, who had retreated to a safe distance: ready to transform herself in a heartbeat.

Flora could now empathise with the thousands of fish that she had plucked gasping from the water. The Templar's silence had felt like a fist closing around her head and upper body. She gulped in air to refill her empty lungs: as she did so, a lecture from within her skull slowly increased in volume.

-lish girl! Sh-dve…. shielded - …. not good enough. —- what if — lowly human, then no chance against -

Whaaaa….

Her general's voice clarified: taut and unamused.

You should be capable of defending against that. YOU SHOULD HAVE BRUSHED IT OFF LIKE A GNAT.

Flora knew about silences - they were part of the Templar's standard defence - but had never before seen one used; let alone had one used against her.

You can't shield against a silence, she thought, gazing at Alistair's handsome and concern-creased face as it hovered above her. It stops magic.

Is that what they've told you?

Flora sat up and rubbed her watering eyes with the hem of her shirt. Her lungs had been replenished, but her rapid severance from the Fade had been disconcerting. Alistair was still crouched before her, his gloved hands gripping her shoulders.

"Alright, my dear?" he asked softly, eyes searching her face. "Must have been a shock."

"Mm." She let the hem of her shirt drop, brow creasing. "What did I do?"

"Nothing. That Templar is a fucking idiot."

Flora angled her gaze beneath Alistair's arm: peering at the metal-clad figure still framed by the doorway. She could feel the frantic pulse of the Templar's heart like an insect buzz against her skin: a sour sweat of fear emerging through the gaps in his armour. Even at a distance she could sense that the rhythm of his body was disrupted.

"Then why did he silence me?"

Alistair shrugged, while simultaneously shooting a scowl over his shoulder.

Why did he silence me? Flora asked her spirits, not expecting an answer.

When there indeed came none, she asked the question that had been hovering on the tip of her tongue since their unanswered knock.

Is there… something wrong in there?

Compassion gave a sigh like the whisper of wind through long grasses.

Flora inhaled an unsteady gulp of air. Her stomach felt as though it had been lined with lead: heavy and oppressive. She did not want to consider the possibility that there might be some crisis within Kinloch Hold. To her, it was impossible: the Circle was a place of order, neatness and routine; it had rules, regulations and unwritten expectations. The Templars ran it like an oiled Orlesian clock with a thousand interlocking parts. Everything from the hour of rising to the meal served at dinner had been set according to tradition. The senior residents of the Circle were erudite, articulate and scholarly. They valued brushed hair and clean nails. Even the apprentices soon found themselves speaking in a hush, as though they were living within a vast and multi-levelled library. She could not see how anything seriously wrong could occur in such an orderly place.

What about the maleficar? her general reminded her.

Oh. Jowan. But that was a one-off, surely?

Flora took another deep and steadying breath. She felt like her father must have done whenever he spotted a mass of cloud building on the horizon. Alistair's anxious face hovered in the tail of her eye.

Storm is coming.

Well, a storm was always coming. Don't southerners call our coast, the Storm Coast?

Flora thought on what her father would do amidst the brewing storm.

Weight the boat. Double knot the anchor. Tack the sail close to the mast. And then set out from the land as quickly as possible.

That's the mistake that the inexperienced make in a storm: they stick too close to the shore. That's where death and the Teeth lie. To survive the storm, you have to sail through it: to the deep waters beyond.

Flora drew in a slow and measured lungful of air, as though she were winding in a net. Then she clambered to her feet, accepting Alistair's hastily offered hand; her face already turning towards the doorway. Their purpose was set out in her mind like a fishing line strung between rods in the sand.

Find the First Enchanter.

Get his seal on the ally treaty.

Bring a powerful mage back to Redcliffe.

The Templar framed in the doorway flinched as Flora approached: his helm rotated from side to side. His fingers stretched towards the hilt of his blade.

"I'm a mender," Flora said: blunt and without hesitating. "Only thing I can do to you is fix your toothache."

The Chantry soldier's hand went to his iron-clad cheek, startled.

"How did you - "

"What's wrong in there?" she asked, peering beneath his extended arm. "Is it bad?"

Behind the helm, the man's eyes slitted with suspicion.

"How do you know?"

Flora heard Alistair curse under his breath as he came up behind her; in comparison to his solid bulk, the Templar suddenly looked a child, despite the armour. The leaden feeling in her belly congealed into a more sinister dread: she could smell blood in the air. The Templar hesitated, his eyes flickering so that he looked human - and young. He then deferred responsibility, calling over his shoulder.

"Knight-Captain- ser!"

There was a pause, and then a voice threaded with exhaustion lashed out a response.

"Carroll, you damned fool - I told you, the door stays shut!"

The young Templar grimaced behind the helm, and then the door was flung wide behind him. A man stood there: hollow-cheeked and ghastly in appearance. The creases on his face appeared to have been dug out with knives; he looked to be in desperate need of sleep. He bore the fletched sword of the Templar on his breastplate, but it boasted extra augmentation that indicated superior rank.

Flora recognised him in an instant - the commander of Kinloch Hold's garrison. She did not suppose that he knew who she was in turn: with her lack of offensive ability, she had held the same threat as a Tranquil. The Templars focused their eyes and attention on those with power, who could summon great gouts of flame with a click of neatly groomed fingers, or coat a man within a cage of shadow. Most of their encounters had taken place in corridors, and consisted of him striding past her while she rinsed out her mop and eyed his dusty footprints.

As it happened, Knight-Commander Greagoir did recognise Flora: she of the exquisite face and vacuous mind. He knew that she was vague, illiterate and capable of only mending minor cuts and bruises - a mage of such insignificant ability that she had warranted none of his attention during her few years of residence in his Circle. He had never learnt her name; only that he ought to avoid posting the more susceptible junior Templars to her floor. His younger recruits had not yet learnt that external beauty did not compensate for inherent blasphemy. The Knight-Commander's scheduling had become far easier once the girl had been conscripted into the Wardens.

"What are you doing back here?" he asked with a harried impatience. "I haven't got time for this. Take the ferry to the mainland."

Before Flora or Alistair could answer, the Knight-Commander had turned back to address someone unseen. Although he lowered his voice, fragments of urgent conversation slid free.

" — certain. Can't risk it — no one could've survived — Uldred — authorisation for the Annulment."

Alistair had not finished his studies at the monastery, but knew enough of Templar linguistics to guess at Greagoir's meaning. His first reaction was disbelief - surely not - and then dismay.

We need these mages, he thought, recalling a promise made to a man now two months dead. There's more power in this single tower than in twenty garrisons.

"We aren't leaving," he replied, startled by the flat authority that rang through the statement like the peal of sword against shield. Alistair was more used to dry sarcasm or self-depreciation infusing his words: this sonorous note of authority took him entirely by surprise. He had never expected to be capable of such tonality, but it had emerged thoughtless from his throat, far easier than any calculated joke.

Turning back, Greagoir looked at the young man who bore Maric's face atop ill-fitting Templar armour; a flicker of recognition igniting. The design on the breastplate was outdated - it was at least four decades old - and yet the lad appeared no more than two dozen years, if that. A moment later and the memory surfaced: this was the junior officer who had accompanied Duncan Rivaini.

"I don't know what you want," the Templar commander retorted, his voice brittle as old iron. "But you won't find it here."

Meanwhile Flora had become distracted. Pain was her lodestone; the raw and bloody sigh; the voiceless whimper; the choking cough all drew her in like a magnet. Much as any mother would turn to the cry of a newborn not their own, her head swung towards a muffled groan. Sounds of soft misery slid between the Knight-Commander's boots.

The old Templar took up much of the door-within-a-door, but Flora managed to angle her stare past him. She could see a portion of the stone bastion beyond: a pair of feet and ankles stuck out from behind a pillar. Someone was lying prone on the naked tile. Flora could smell the raw metallic odour of blood far stronger now; it curdled on her tongue like sour milk.

She looked at the Knight-Commander; to whom she had never before dared to speak.

"What happened?"

The Templar hesitated: but too late, her pale and expectant stare had sunk a barb into him. A response emerged from his throat before he could arrest it.

"The Circle has fallen."


AN: Haha oh no, poor Flora - she gets so freaked out on seeing the Templar that she waves her Circle discharge at him, he assumes that she's casting a spell and hits her with a silence! Of course it's understandable that he's on edge considering how gone to shit things are in the Circle at the moment. Alistair won't be getting the late breakfast he'd hoped for!

So one fantasy aspect (because there's not any biological basis for it hahaha) is the aura of command that both Flora and Alistair have. I headcanon that those descended from Ferelden's original clans - like the Theirins, the Mac Eanraigs (flora's maternal line) and the Couslands have this inherited authority that manifests itself without prompting - even though Alistair is actively trying to suppress his heritage, and Flora has no idea.

Anyway this was a fun chapter to write, even though I'm slightly ashamed that my whole 4K word chapter consisted of them walking up some stairs and towards a tower! Lol well you know I'm not concise XD

I did get a new commission of Flora in tarot style art, it's so gorgeous and underwater themed (her happy place!) it's on the Ao3 edition of this story, in a chapter called *artwork*