From this point on, there will be game dialogue.
Marian is shaken awake roughly in the middle of the night. It feels like she's just gone to sleep; her mouth tastes disgusting and her eyes are grainy and dry with what feels like the entire library's worth of dust.
She's going to kill Petra if this is another one of her emergencies.
When she opens her eyes, the faceless Templar mask is leaning over her, one armored finger to his lips. She knows the tales – apprentices taken in the middle of the night and never seen from again, or turned Tranquil, or laid up in the infirmary, silent and damaged.
She is so scared that she can't breathe.
"Get dressed, apprentice," the templar says, quiet in order not to wake the entire apprentice dorm. His voice is colorless, neutral. Maybe it's not as bad as it could be.
The templar retreats and turns his back while Marian dresses quickly, her fingers trembling. She taps him on the shoulder when she's done and he points at the door, gesturing for her to precede him. He's surprisingly quiet, even in his plate; it's like being followed by an angry ghost. He escorts her up to the fifth floor, higher than she's ever been before.
Irving and Greagoir are waiting for her, and Marian cannot help the quick flare of relief that comes when she sees Irving. She doesn't trust him – she doesn't trust anyone in this place, but at least it's not the worst that she feared. Cullen is here, too, and despite herself she relaxes a little bit more.
It's a large, open chamber, with magic etched into the floor and the pillars scattered around the room. There's a font in the center, glowing with the wavering blue light of processed lyrium.
Greagoir starts to speak, and she snaps her attention back to him. "'Magic exists to serve man and never to rule over him.' Thus spoke the prophet Andraste as she cast down the Tevinter Imperium, ruled by mages who had brought the world to the edge of ruin. Your magic is a gift, but it's also a curse, for demons of the dream realm - the Fade - are drawn to you and seek to use you as a gateway into this world."
The basic catechism of the Chantry is something she's heard every day since she came to live at the Circle. She believes, although she's not devout, but something in the mindless grind that is the templars' indoctrination of the evil mages makes her want to do the craziest things. Anders would be proud of her.
Marian prefers her father's litany: My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base. She remembers so little of her family, but that remains; that and the way his hand engulfed hers, how his whiskers scratched in the morning, and their faces, always their faces. It's been ten years, but she has managed to hold on to at least that.
Irving's voice startles her from her thoughts. "This is why the Harrowing exists," he says, moving between her and Greagoir. "The ritual sends you into the Fade, and there you will face a demon, armed with only your will."
The surge of relief leaves her a little breathless. It's the Harrowing. Of course it's the Harrowing. She feels foolishly paranoid to have thought otherwise, but something in the depths of her mind tells her that if she'd rather face a demon on its own turf with no weapons than... the other things she'd been worrying about, if that was an appropriate reaction to the situation, then the situation was far worse than she realized.
Marian puts that thought aside for another time. "I am ready," she tells Irving. Maker, please let me be ready.
Greagoir speaks before Irving can. "Know this, apprentice: if you fail, we templars will perform our duty. You will die."
Cullen flinches, which only draws attention to the fact that he's not wearing his helm. She doesn't know what either of those facts mean, so she puts them away to puzzle over later, because Greagoir is speaking again.
"This is lyrium," Greagoir says, "the very essence of magic and your gateway into the Fade."
Irving speaks from her other side; they're closing her in. Maybe they've had problems with apprentices attempting to flee in the past, Marian thinks with inappropriate levity. In any case, it forces her to keep turning between them. "The Harrowing is a secret out of necessity, child. Every mage must go through this trial by fire. As we succeeded, so shall you. Keep your wits about you and remember the Fade is a realm of dreams. The spirits may rule it, but your own will is real."
At least someone is confident in her abilities.
"The apprentice must go through this test alone, First Enchanter." Marian can practically hear the frown in his voice, though she doesn't turn around to see it; she's familiar with all his scowls.
The lyrium font is distractingly bright. Greagoir says something she's not interested in listening to; she hopes it's permission to proceed, because she's already reaching for the pool of light that sings to the magic in her blood...
There's a blinding flash of light; Marian instinctively blocks her eyes with her hand and everything goes dark.
When the light comes back and her eyes clear, she's in the Fade. There's only one path, framed by twisted approximations of trees, so she takes it. The first wisp unnerves her, but she destroys a few of them before she's stopped by a small mouse in her path.
Huh, she thinks. That's odd. And then it speaks to her.
"Someone else thrown to the wolves. As fresh and unprepared as ever. It isn't right that they do this, the templars. Not to you, me, anyone."
Marian frowns. "As touched as I am by your concern, I'm not sure I understand why the Templars would send a rat into the Fade." She makes a face. "A talking rat."
The rat snorts. "You look like that because you think you do." It – he? – sighs. "It's always the same. But it's not your fault. You're in the same boat I was, aren't you?" With that, the rat stretches in a direction that doesn't exist. It grows upward, faster than her eye can follow, and suddenly there is a man shape where before there was nothing. The man's outline wobbles slightly and Marian swallows, suddenly nauseous, before his shape solidifies into a man only a little older than she is. "Allow me to welcome you to the Fade," he says, spreading his arms slightly to include his surroundings. "You can call me... well, Mouse."
Marian raises an eyebrow. "Not your real name, I take it?" she says, crossing her arms. Her mind is frantically taking notes in the hope of working out how to replicate it in the real world. Didn't Elgion's Magical Laws mention shapeshifting?
"No. I don't remember anything from... before. The templars kill you if you take too long, you see. They figure you failed, and they don't want something getting out." Marian feels another pang of terror. He smiles faintly, though there is no amusement in his voice. "That's what they did to me, I think. I have no body to reclaim. And you don't have much time before you end up the same."
"How long do I have?" she asks, urgency quickening her voice.
"I don't remember, exactly. I..." He looks away. "I ran away and I hid."
She's known apprentices like this, who are perfectly competent when someone is there to hold their hand but can't take even the least step on their own. Kendrick had been like that, before the Templars took him away. No one ever saw him again. Against her will, she can feel herself softening toward the rat. If he'd been an apprentice, just like her, just like Kendrick... well, it's hard to hold things against someone who's in the same situation she is. Or worse.
"What must I do?" she asks.
Mouse steps a little closer and speaks a little faster. "There's something here, contained, just for an apprentice like you. You have to face the creature, a demon, and resist it, if you can. That's your way out."
That's it, then. Resist a demon, in an unspecified time frame, or die.
She wonders if she'll even notice when her body ceases to exist.
Marian covers her face in her hands, hiding her thoughts from the rat as she takes several deep, quiet breaths to quiet her mind. When she feels calm again, she drops her hands and nods firmly. "All right. Whatever I have to do, I'll do it."
"There are others here, other spirits. They will tell you more, maybe help... if you can believe anything you see," Mouse says, a fevered sort of encouragement in his voice. "I'll follow, if that's all right. My chance was long ago, but you... you may have a way out." With that, he performs the same mind-bending twist as he did before and shrinks back into a rat.
I could do without the flashing lights, she thinks, swallowing hard against the nausea. "Is there anything I could do to stop you?" she asks the rat, eyes narrowed, then sighs. "Never mind, that was a rhetorical question." And terrible of me, she adds mentally with a wince. Mouse is just a poor, pathetic sod who's been trapped in the Fade for aeons. It isn't his fault that he puts her back up for no reason she can understand.
She starts down the path again, Mouse scurrying at her heels. The Fade is a strange, eerie place, made of colors that don't seem to exist in the real world... or maybe it's just that everything seems to be covered in a bile-yellow film. The ground is dry and cracked with short, scrubby grass in patches, desperate for a rain that will never come, and her feet slip a little when she walks. Everything here is abandoned or dead. The person whose dream this is desperately needs a little fun in their life.
Marian refuses to think about the possibility that it might be her own.
She rounds the corner and finds a sort of clearing to the right of the path, ringed with more of those not-trees and a ravine in the back. "That is where the test will take place," Mouse informs her. She supposes his new-found willingness to please is what she deserves for threatening to leave him, but she still doesn't like it. "The creature can be anywhere, but it manifests there."
"Thank you, Mouse," she says gently, but he does not answer. In her guilt she realizes that she's already half-determined to find a way to release him from his living hell, although she doesn't have any idea of how to go about it. A thought for another time, she tells herself as she gives the clearing a wide berth and continues down the path. The list of things she's promised herself to think about later is longer than she likes to let it get, but she has had no opportunity to pare it down. Maybe later.
Mouse has been up front with answers so far, she thinks. Hopefully he'll have a few more for her. "Mouse, how am I to defeat a demon? I've never even seen one."
Mouse is silent for so long that she thinks he's refusing to answer her, but eventually he speaks. "I don't remember, but... You fight it, I think. You kill it."
Helpful, she thinks, then sighs. "Is that it?"
Mouse's voice, when it comes, is thoughtful. "Well, think of it this way: Everything here is a matter of will, right? I'm not really a mouse, just like you're not really standing there in that body. You fight the creature, you're resisting it. If it wins, it defeats you and possesses you."
Marian frowns. "And if I win?"
Her only answer is a startled glance, one that changes even as she watches into wary recognition. He seems to be looking past her. "Another spirit that way. It never seemed equal to its name, to me."
She turns to look over her shoulder and sees something bright and shining that way. "It won't kill and eat me, will it?"
Mouse snorts. "Not unless you're very bad."
He looks like he's just as startled as she is at his first signs of humor, so she passes on calling him on it and walks up to the spirit.
Valor is as good as his name, and she quickly agrees to his duel; it is not so high a price to pay, after all, and it is all her own. When he is despatched he offers her a staff that she takes gladly. It is a fine staff and will serve her well, at least until she leaves the Fade.
Marian feels more powerful after that, with the staff in her hand and her first real fight behind her. She owes both of these things to Valor, whose nature does in fact reflects his name. Nothing in the Tower has prepared her for the idea that benevolent spirits roam the Fade alongside the demons. The Chant makes no mention of any such spirits; it's hard to say whether they don't know about it or whether it's been left out of the Tower's version.
Marian is willing to bet on the latter. The Tower chantry only seems interested in teaching mages the lessons it thinks they need to learn, in keeping mages in their rightful place, in helping the templars to keep their boots on mages' necks.
She presses on, looking for the boundaries of this little corner of the Fade, and Mouse warns her again before they run into another spirit.
"This one is not the one hunting you," he says, his voice unusually diffident. "But still... "
The spirit looks like a large bear. A large, sleeping bear, twisted and corrupted. Marian frowns.
"Should we come back later?" Marian asks, for lack of anything else. Well, she supposes she could walk up and poke it with her staff, but that seems... unwise, although she does unlimber her staff from its bindings on her back. Just in case.
The bear shifts a little in its sleep, then speaks, without ever opening its eyes. "So you're the mortal being hunted? I see you brought snacks. How polite."
She hears a faint squelching noise next to her and hastily averts her eyes. When he's more or less human, Mouse says, "I don't like this. I don't think he's in a helpful mood."
"I don't need helpful," Marian says, narrowing her eyes. "I just need some answers."
"Answers?" the bear murmurs, almost purring. "The demon will get you eventually. Perhaps it'll leave me a few scraps. What need of answers will you have then?"
Marian makes a snap decision that will almost certainly come back to haunt her. "No," she says, stowing her staff on her back. "I don't know what your game is, and I'm not going to play it." She turns her back on the bear and starts down the path to the demon clearing. She hears a slight rustling behind her and then Mouse is hurrying to keep up.
"Was that wise?" Mouse asks, breathless.
"Probably not," she says. "But I am in no mood – and I have no time – for prying answers from a demon."
Mouse lapses back into a sulky sort of silence, and Marian ignores him in turn. There is nothing else for it; it's time to seek out the demon.
My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base.
Don't die.
Mouse keeps quiet on the way back to the clearing – Valor salutes her as they go by, which gives her a startled moment – but when they approach the lip of the raised area around it, Mouse asks, "Are you ready?"
"Ready as I'll ever be," Marian answers, and she walks into the arena.
To her shock, the demon and its wisp minions are easy. The wisps hurt her very little, so she ignores them and concentrates all her damage on the demon, which goes down screaming when her cold spell finishes it off. The wisps disappear with the demon, and she hovers awkwardly with staff in hand while thinking, Was that it?
She can hear Mouse transforming behind her, the coward. "You did it. You actually did it! When you came, I hoped that maybe you might be able to... but I never really thought any of you were worthy."
"It's all a little too easy," Marian says, scanning the clearing warily.
"That is because you are a true mage, one of the few. The others, they never had a chance. The templars set them up to fail, like they tried with you. I regret my part in it, but you have shown me that there is hope. You can be so much more than you know," Mouse says, eager, his words coming faster until he's tripping over his own tongue.
Marian still feels like something's wrong. She just can't figure out what; she searches the area and her mind while she says something or other to Mouse. She's not really paying attention.
It takes her a ridiculously long time to understand what her mind is trying to tell her. If her test is completed, then why isn't she waking up?
"... maybe there's hope in that for someone as small and as... forgotten as me," Mouse is saying when she spins to question him. "If you want to help. There may be a way for me to leave here, to get a foothold outside." Marian listens, a growing horror keeping her from saying anything. "You just need to want to let me in."
"To let you in," she repeats dully. No matter where the emphasis lies in that sentence, it keeps getting worse: to let him in; to let him in; to let him in... in where? "That wasn't my test, was it."
Mouse frowns. "What? What are you... Of course it was!" He moves closer, trying to catch her eye. Marian steps well back and away from him, keeping her eyes averted; suddenly everything she knows about demons is terrifyingly small. Can he possess her through her eyes? Does she have to consent, or will even the slightest softening of her will suffice?
There is one way she can avoid possession, she knows, and her hand tightens on her staff. She will do what she has to do. She will live.
Mouse laughs suddenly, and she can't help but look at him. "You are a smart one," he says, a smirk on his face. It looks out of place for the man she had assumed him to be. So too does his voice, dropping whole octaves in seconds until it's something that could never come from a human's throat. "Simple killing is a warrior's job. The real dangers of the fade are preconceptions, careless trust... " Mouse's body begins to twist in the direction Marian has begun to become accustomed to, and she starts to look away, but when he twists up instead of in she pauses, her attention caught. He grows, and grows, and she backs away in horror as she sees exactly what she's been traveling with. "...pride."
And then she knows no more.