Horror. That was the only word she had left. Everything inside her was gone, scraped raw, leaving an empty shell full of mind-numbing horror as she wandered silently through the place she once called home. Her bed, made with the neat corners just like she'd been taught, survived the carnage remarkably intact. She slept there in the apprentice quarters her entire life, just below the third window in the room, a tiny cot for a small girl.
Most of the other beds were overturned, but not hers. As if the demons, the blood mages, found no point in ruining an empty space. It was even untouched by the evidence of combat, of torture and agony. There were no bloodstains, no char marks, no slime or sulfur.
Yet, still, it was the most frightening thing in the room. Chantal stood like a ghost, staring at the cot and biting her nails down to the quick. The mages, the ones that hadn't been slaughtered brutally, were safe. No thanks to the templars that she'd been taught would protect her, if they needed to. They hadn't protected any of the children.
"Chantal?" Wynne asked mildly. Wynne, Wynne who had told her bedtime stories when she'd been frightened of the darkness. Wynne, the last friendly face she saw before her harrowing. Wynne, survivor of Ostagar. Wynne, the closest thing to a mother she could picture.
"I can't ever come home." Not now. Not after this. A part of her had believed, somehow, she'd finish her mission, stop the blight, and if she survived… well, she could be forgiven. She could return to the tower, to the only family she'd ever had.
"No." Wynne replied sadly, taking in the devastation around them. "No, I don't believe you can. But that isn't always a bad thing, child."
Even if they took her back, she'd seen the tower for what it was. A place to lock mages up as a sacrifice when the demons took one of them. She had been expendable, her entire life, and she hadn't known.
Outside, a bird flew past the window. Chantal remembered hours spent gazing out that window, watching the birds fly over the lake, the boats dotting its surface. She'd been outside now, as free as those birds flapping over the water.
The answer came to her like a strike of lightning.
She cornered Morrigan before they got into the boat, tugging her away from the dock. Morrigan's yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Help me." Chantal pleaded, the words jumbled in her mind, stuck on the tip of her tongue. "Morrigan, please."
"Be still, you are shaking." Morrigan frowned. "'Twas a shock, I know. Although how you can still desire…"
"Don't let them take me back." Chantal begged, closing her hand over Morrigan's. She could feel the pulse of magic under her skin, under Morrigan's. "Give me the key to slip the cage if I need to. Let me turn into a bird so I can fly far away. Please, Morrigan. Please."
Morrigan nearly refused, she could see the answer forming on her lips. Chantal shot a panicked look up at the tower looming over them. "They left them to die! My friends, Morrigan. Surana, Mollen, Bell… they're all dead and they left them there."
Morrigan's face turned to stone and she nodded, once. Chantal felt her knees go weak. "Thank you. Thank you." Chantal whispered.
"Do not thank me yet." Morrigan advised. "I have never taught another. I have no aptitude for instruction."
Regardless, Chantal threw her arms around the other woman's neck. Slowly, hesitantly, Morrigan laid a hand on Chantal's lower back. "Do calm down." She advised. "If you are emotionally compromised, I fear Alistair will steer us into the lake."
"You have been tense, my dear warden." Zevran remarked, sharpening his blade as the two of them kept watch. The tower still loomed, too close, on the horizon. "It must have been difficult to see your home in such a state."
"That's not my home." Chantal answered, pulling her knees closer to her chin. "Not anymore."
Zevran nodded, as if he understood perfectly what she had said. With a deft twist of his wrist, he stabbed the blade down into the log they shared. Trout looked up with a whine at the noise, cocking his head to the side. "Come, turn around and allow me."
"Allow you to what?" Chantal asked, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear.
"I am going to rub your shoulders." Zevran declared. "The least I could do, yes? You rescue me from a demon, I help ease your tension."
"Leliana told me if you offered a massage, I was supposed to tell you no. Immediately." Chantal eyed the elf, with his golden glinting eyes and his sinfully wicked smile, from the corner of her eye. Zevran sighed.
"Someday, lovely warden, I will offer you a massage. When I do, you shall be very tempted to take me up on it, I think! But, alas, not tonight. I will be as proper as a Chantry mother." Zevran promised seriously. "Turn around before I change my mind."
Slowly, still not entirely sure of herself, Chantal angled herself away. Zevran straddled the log, stretching and cracking his slender fingers before laying them over her shoulders. His touch was warm, reassuring. He waited, she suspected so that she had plenty of time to object, before he lightly pressed his thumbs into her shoulders through her robes.
"There, not so bad is it?" He asked, rubbing a light circle. "Tell me if you wish me to stop."
She made a small noise of agreement in the back of her throat, moving her hair so it spilled over the front of her shoulder instead. Without his intense gaze on her, she felt… more at ease. "Zev… can I ask… did they really hurt you? The Crows?"
"How else was I to learn to resist torture?" Zevran asked playfully. His fingers dug more firmly into her flesh. "And you were locked in a magic tower throughout your childhood?"
"Yes." She answered simply.
"Did you dance naked at the top in the moonlight? I have always heard rumors, and I admit to being curious."
"No!" Chantal protested with a snort of laughter. "Or if there were, I was not invited."
"A pity." Zevran sighed. "One more boyhood fantasy dashed upon the rocks."
His fingers, talented and dextrous, found a knot in her shoulders. Slowly, gently, he worked the muscles with a driven focus. Chantal sighed in contentment, relaxing by degrees under his hands. "I'm sorry they hurt you." She whispered, peering over her shoulder, through her thick dark hair.
His fingers stilled for only a moment, thoughtful. "And yet, you tried to save me."
"Of course I did. It was wrong, they shouldn't…" Chantal sputtered, indignant. Zevran chuckled from behind her and his fingers brushed the back of her neck as he lifted some more of her hair gently away. She felt his touch like electricity down her spine.
"And they should never have locked you away." He breathed gently against her ear. "But it is over, for both of us."
Yes, Chantal thought with a flash of iron determination. It was.