Dragon Age:
Origins
(Book 1 of 7)
Chapter Four.
Neria had always hated the Circle's chapel, the list of reasons for why seemed to be never ending for her, it wasn't just the endless singing or the fact that every Sunday she was dragged into hear to here pointless Chantry propaganda, or the fact that the heavy incense made her feel nauseous or the fact that every single priest she spoke too made it sound like she should get down on her knees in gratitude for them gracing her with their presence.
No, it wasn't all that made her hate the chapel. She hated the chapel because of what it represented, it was were the chantry priests said their prayers and where most of the Templars spent all of their free time. it was everything she hated about the chantey in one room. The mages were forced to attend services wither they were human or elf, wither they believed in the Maker or not, were forced to attend services.
They were forced to listen to sermons about how to be good mages, about how to be raised up to the Maker's side they needed to be in almost constant state of self-flagellation. She hated it.
Jowan knew that she hated it so why he dragged her here she had no idea, they walked through the large room with their heads down, trying not to attract the attention of the Revered Mother or any of the Templars that were currently praying in the room. She hated the Revered Mother, the old bat always looked like she had something sour in her mouth and her eyes were always seemed to be narrowed in cruelty.
Neria remembered a time when she was a little girl during a service and they had been lead to recite the chant, she was four years old and she had only been at the chantry for about a month and while most of the people had been kind to her she was still scared girl that had been ripped away from everything and everyone she ever loved.
When they were reciting the chant it was Neria's first time and she was stuttering and uncertain, there hadn't been a chantry in Neria's village due to how small it was, and the Revered Mother suddenly grabbed her by her arm and dragged her out of her seat and threw her down to the floor.
She then had her Templar guards to beat her, she remembered how she begged and pleaded with them to stop. She didn't know what she had done wrong. The beating had stopped when she heard the voice of the First Enchanter ordering the Revered Mother to stop, demanding to know what she thought she was doing.
As Wynne knelt down next to Neria to heal her the Revered Mother spoke, the utter certainty in her voice. The sense of righteousness even thinking about chilled Neria to the bone.
"This knife ear could not speak the chant, the holy word of our Maker First Enchanter, it clearly pained her to even attempt to say it. There must be a demon inside of her, it must be driven out!" The woman spoke, hate colouring every word. "Elfs are far more susceptible to possession, after all."
"That is utterly ridiculous! She is a child!" Irving shouted and the tension in the room had seemed to raise. "Wynne! Please take Neria out of here."
The kindly old woman did as she was bid and scooped Neria into her arms and quickly carried her out of the chapel, at the time Neria had been too upset to really listen to what had happened but she found out later that Irving had told Gergoir what had happened and he had warned the Mother but that was it.
If a mage had done anything like that to a priest than they wouldn't live a moment longer and the Templars still had the nerve to say that they were protecting the mages just as much as they were protecting everyone else. It made her sick with rage, she hated them all.
"Not all of them" Her mind whispered to her, no there were some Templar who were good people. Cullen was a good person, the knight captain who been in charge with bringing her here was a good person, a stern faced woman with grey hair and kind eyes, she was a good person. The Templar under her command who had killed her father, she had punched him across the face had him stripped of his armour when they arrived at the circle.
But a few good individuals inside a broken thing did not fix it, every few weeks there was another incident. A Templar who got bored beating or raping a mage and the mage did not dare tell anyone unless they were accused of blood magic because after all a Templar would never break their scared vows willingly.
Neria sighed heavily and shook her head, that was another reason why she hated the chapel, it brought out terrible memories and that lead to bad thoughts. Jowan had better have a good reason for bringing her here.
He lead her to a dark corner, the only light in the corner came from a mere scattering of candles at the base of a statue of Andraste, the low light causing shadows to be cast over the stone visage of the Maker's holy bride. Neria sometimes wondered if Andraste was really that beautiful, all the tapestries and stain glass always showed as the most beautiful woman in the world but was she that beautiful in real life? She supposed she would never know.
The corner was dark but it was not empty, a plump woman with reddish-brown hair and dressed in the robes of a priest stood waiting and when she saw Jowan approaching she smiled happily. "There you are, I was starting to worry something had happened."
"I'm sorry Lily, it took me a while to find her." Jowan said with an affectionate smile towards the woman, he turned to look at his friend. "All right, we can talk here."
"Really?" Neria asked with a raised eyebrow. "This is the place where you want to talk to me about your dark and terrible secret? In the chapel which is currently filled with a half a dozen Templars and with a priest standing right there, this where you want to talk? Really?"
"I am not actually a priest, simply an initiate." Lilly said with a comforting smile. "You must be Neria, Jowan had told me a great deal about you."
"Has he?" Neria asked as she turned her head to look at her friend, a question dancing in her eyes.
"A few weeks back I told you that I met a girl, this is her. Lilly." Jowan explained to his friend but he did not take his eyes off Lilly, warmth and affection shinning in eyes as he looked at the girl liked she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
Neria thought back and she remembered that Jowan did mention that he was seeing someone, at the time she had question his friend's existence just to tease him.
"Are you insane!?" She wanted to shout but then she remembered where she was so she caught herself so she simply hissed the words. "A chantry initiate? Do you know what the Templars will do if they find out? They'll kill you, they've killed mages for a lot less."
"I don't care! I love her!" Jowan whispered shouted. "And it doesn't matter, killing me would be a kindness. They've something far worse planned for me." He whispered and looked down at his feet, Lilly frowned and gently reached out and took Jowan's hand.
"What do you mean?" Neria asked but she knew that she didn't really have to ask, for mages there was only one thing that could be considered worse than death.
The rite of tranquillity.
"Are you sure? How can you know?" Neria asked in a disbelieving whisper, the idea of losing her best friend too much to bear.
"I saw the order on the Knight-Commander's desk." Lilly said. "It was signed, it will happen any day now if we don't do something."
"What do you suggest?" Neria asked, there weren't many options when the rite had been deemed necessary, the Templars might not have been perfect and the rite was the perfect example of their cruelty but even they knew, at least most of them did, to take the rite seriously and only use in the most serious of cases.
Gergoir was a lot of things but he wasn't a bad man, he wouldn't use the rite unless he thought that it was absolutely necessary which meant any chance of convincing him to revoke the rite was slim at best.
"Why do they even want to use the rite on you? They wouldn't do it unless they thought that they had to." Neria pointed out, Jowan wasn't stupid enough to do something dangerous in the circle.
"They..." Jowan sighed and ran his fingers through his unruly dark hair. "They think that I'm a blood mage."
Neria felt a bolt of ice shoot through her heart.
They thought Jowan was a blood mage.
They thought he was using blood magic
Blood magic.
It was over for Jowan.
There was no hope.
"Neria. Neria. Neria! Snap out of it!" Jowan shouted as he shook his friend by the arms, he glanced up to make sure that the Revered Mother or the Templars didn't notice, thankfully it seemed that they were lucky this time. "Focus! We've got a plan but we need your help, don't give up."
Neria took a deep breath to calm herself and nodded. "All right, what are we going to do? What's the plan?"
"First of all we need your vow, promise you will help us first?" Lilly said and Neria raised an eyebrow and looked confused, why would she have to give her word to help them?
"Lilly, that really isn't necessary." Jowan said while throwing an apologetic glance towards his friend. "I trust Neria completely, there's no way that she would let us down."
"I know that and I am sure that we can trust her but we can't take any chances." Lilly stressed before she turned to look at Neria. "Give us your word, swear to the Maker that you will help us and we will tell you the plan."
Neria felt the sudden urge to roll her eyes at the other woman, as if saying a few words and promising to the Maker that it was true would make certain that she wasn't lying. She had sworn things to the Maker plenty of times before that weren't true, like that time she had sworn to the Maker that she hadn't been the one to put that wild Fennec that had gotten into the tower in the Knight-Commander's office.
If the Maker was really listening and really cared then why wasn't Neria struck down with a lightning bolt?
But still it was clear that Lilly wouldn't tell her anything until she had given her word.
"All right fine, I swear to the Maker that I will not tell anyone about what your planning. If I am lying or will tell anyone then may a lightning bolt strike me down now and may my soul wander the void for eternity." Neria said with her head tilted to toward's the roof.
Lilly smiled and her bright blue eyes shinned with satisfaction, believing without a doubt that if someone swore something to her god than there was no way that they could go back on it. "Thank you, now, the plan is for use to go down to the Tower vaults and find Jowan's phylactery."
Neria narrowed her eyes as she thought what she just heard over, getting into the vaults would be the hardest part as only Irving and Gergoir were allowed in and only they together could grant permission for someone to go down to the vault and even then that person could only go down if either the First Enchanter or the Knight-Commander went with them.
The precautions were necessary however, the vaults held a great deal of magical artefacts and many of which were extremely dangerous. Some of them if used right could probably reduce this tower to rubble and while Neria was not always pleased with the circle or the Templars or the chantry supervision, she knew that the circle was something of a necessary evil.
The next problem was that if they somehow could get into the vaults there was any defences that they might have to get through, there had always been rumours about the vaults, which Neria supposed was quite natural considering that the vaults were a place that only a very few were allowed to go.
But the rumors that came out of the vaults were disturbing however, walking suits of armour and demons bound by ancient enchantments, curses that made mages go blind, most of it was most likely nonsense but it didn't change the fact that there was no way that the vault didn't have some protection beyond it being just difficult to get into.
"All right, how are we going to get into the vault? We can't exactly go to Irving or to Gregoir and ask them to let us in." Neria said as she tried to think of another way.
"The door to the vaults can only be opened with a password and surge of magic." Lilly pointed out, as Jowan and Neria turned their heads to look at her she continued. "I have the password, once I saw the order I waited until the Knight-Commander left and I..." Lilly looked down at her feet. "I went through his documents, Maker forgive me."
"Not bad." Neria said with a smirk, maybe the little priest had some hope after all. "So, what are we waiting for? Let's get going."
"There's another problem." Lilly said as she held up her hands. "I saw some of the old designs of the tower, the password only opens the vaults door, the door to the phylactery chamber is barred and I couldn't find the key and if I did then the Knight-Commander would notice it was gone."
"I think I might have the answer to that." Jowan said with a smile. "We need a rod of fire, it's an item mainly used in alchemical experiments but I've seen one melt steel without damaging anything around it, that could get us through the door easily."
"There'd be one in the circle stockrooms, I'll go and ask Owain for one." Neria said. "You two wait here and I'll be back before you know it."
Neria turned to leave but as she did a hand landed on her shoulder and she looked back to see Jowan standing behind her, a grateful smile on his tired face and she realised with a jolt that this was the first smile of his she had seen in a while that actually managed to reach his eyes.
"Ne, thank you. I can't begin to tell you what this means to me, to us." Jowan pulled Neria into a hug. "Thank you Sister." He whispered into her ear before he let her go.
Neria smiled and left the chapel, if she cried in front of him then Jowan would never let her live it down.
She eventually made her way to open space that made up the circle stockrooms and approached Owain, the man tilted his head up to look at her his brown eyes as empty as ever. "How may I help you?"
"Hello again Owain, I wonder if you could get me a rod of fire? I need it for..." Neria suddenly realised that she hadn't really thought of a good reason for why she needed the rod. "...into burning things, a very under researched subject. You wouldn't think so, but tis true."
"I am sorry but items can not be taken out of the stockrooms without the approval of a senior enchanter." Owain said before he turned and took a piece of parchment out of a chest that was near his feet and passed it over to Neria as he continued to explain. "This is a request form for a rod of fire, if you get it signed by a senior enchanter then I will be able to give you a rod of fire."
Neria frowned as she looked down at the piece of parchment in her hands, she had only been an official mage of the circle for the better part of an afternoon, how was she going to get an senior enchanter to sign it?
She nodded to Owain and left the room with the paper still clutched tightly in her hands, this was going to be near impossible to pull off, even if she could find a senior enchanter who would sign form for a rod of fire without question and even if she, Jowan and Lilly did mange to get into the phylactery chamber there was still the matter of escaping the tower itself.
It suddenly hit her that going through with this meant that she would have to leave the tower as well, while she might not be totally against that in theory there were some problems, the main one being that her phalctary would not be in the vaults, now that she was a fully harrowed mage her's would have been sent to Deneriem, Ferelden's capital.
The Templars would be able to use her phalctary to track her down, the obivous hypocrisy of the Templars using what was obviously Blood Magic to keep them in line angered her but that honestly didn't matter at the moment, as soon as they found her they would drag her back here and that would be the end.
Escaping the tower and helping another Mage to escape were crimes that she would not be let off for, she would either have a sword driven through her chest or she would be made tranquil and that possiblity scared her more than anything else in the world.
Jowan was her friend, he had been her friend ever since she had arrived in the tower as a little girl and he showed her around. But was her friendship with him worth everything else?
As she stared down at the paper in her hands, she knew that she knew the answer.
Irving was sitting at his desk and reading through reports, he looked up as he heard a knock on his door and saw his prized student standing there in the open doorway with a piece of paper clutched in her hands and a troubled expression on her face.
"First Enchanter, I need to tell you something."
End of Chapter Four
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