Ch. 5 In Which Olivia Returns to the Circle Tower

The group, now composed of five humans and a dog, traveled as far as they could before sunset, everyone agreeing, for once, that there was simply no point staying in a town filled with refugees and that, besides, they really needed to get moving anyway. Once it began to get dark out, they set up camp in a clearing a little ways off the road.

Olivia started a campfire by piling a bunch of sticks together in a clear patch of dirt and shooting a flame spell at them. She looked pensively at her cheerfully burning handiwork. "I think it needs something else," she said, going over to her backpack and pulling out the ripped Circle robes that she never intended to wear again, especially now that she had some of Pandora's old hunting leathers to wear instead. Olivia rummaged through the pockets for anything she would want to keep, coming up with a set of lockpicks, some pretty rocks, and an amulet, all of which she transferred to the belt pouch of her current outfit. "Ha!" she announced loudly, giving the robes a final shake and throwing them triumphantly onto the fire. Everyone looked at her oddly. Alistair, Morrigan, Bethany, Leliana, and… two dwarves? "Enchantment!" shouted the younger one excitedly.

"Where did they come from?" asked Olivia, confused.

"They're the merchants we saved earlier," explained Alistair. "Apparently they want to travel with us for protection."

"Er, enchantment?"

Alistair shrugged. "Oh, that's Sandal. 'Enchantment' seems to be the only thing he says."

"Huh." Olivia shrugged and went back to watching the Circle robes burning on the fire. It was very satisfying.

That night, Olivia had strange dreams about a dragon and a host of darkspawn beneath a green sky. She woke up feeling both alarmed and slightly irritated at not getting to fight anything, her fists clenched. "Bad dreams?" Alistair asked.

"Depends on your definition of bad," muttered Olivia. "It was a lot more of a nebulous, impersonal sort of bad than my dreams usually are. So, the big dragon. Was that the archdemon?"

"Yeah. It's part of sensing the darkspawn."

"Great," muttered Olivia. "Any more surprises?"

"Besides the fact that we're also slowly dying from the Taint and it's probably impossible for us to ever have children?"

"Huh." Well, it wasn't like being in the Circle offered much in the way of a guaranteed long life or any possiblility at all of being allowed to have and raise one's own children. Still. "I kind of want to stab something right now," commented Olivia.

"As long as it isn't me, go ahead. Especially if it's Morrigan."

Both far sooner and later than Olivia would have liked, they arrived at the ferry crossing to reach the Circle Tower. "Remind me why I wanted to come here first?" muttered Olivia, feeling nervous and unsettled at the sight.

"To gloat, remember," Morrigan reminded her.

"Oh yeah," said Olivia, feeling slightly better. "That was it. Okay. As much as I would like to take you along to witness my gloating, Morrigan, I really think you and Bethany should stay here. If they figure out you're mages the Templars will try to lock you up at best, and we'll have to kill them. Which I wouldn't actually be opposed to, but it would completely defeat the purpose of coming here for help fighting the darkspawn."

"We'll…just go wait in the inn, then," said Bethany.

"Might as well get rooms," suggested Olivia. "I don't know how long this is going to take."

The group split up, with Morrigan and Bethany heading to The Spoiled Princess Inn and Olivia, Alistair, Leliana, and Dusty the mabari walking up to the dock and its single Templar guard.

"Hey, you!" shouted the guard. "You don't want to go to the tower, do you? Because I have strict orders not to let anyone through."

"Yeah, well, this is kind of important," said Olivia. "We're Grey Wardens and we need help combating the Blight."

"Yeah, right," said the Templar belligerently. "Prove it."

"Listen, pal," Olivia began.

"You're not getting across this lake, and that's final!"

"Fine." Olivia turned as if to walk away, then whirled around and delivered a swift uppercut to the Templar's jaw, stunning him and knocking him off the dock into the shallow water. "Man, that felt good. Quick." She jumped in the boat and grabbed the oars, motioning for the others to join her.

"We just knocked a Templar into Lake Calenhad and stole his boat," said Alistair dazedly while they were shoving off from the dock.

"Always wanted to do that," said Olivia dreamily. "Of course, when I imagined it, I was going away from the tower, not towards it."

When they arrived in the tower's antechamber, it was swarming with Templars. The huge metal panic doors were shut and there were Templars standing in front of them with swords ready. Gregoir was in the middle of the room giving orders. "Whatever you do, don't open those doors for anything, and keep them guarded at all times." The Templar he had been speaking to ran off and Gregoir looked grim. "Now we wait and pray."

"What happened here?" exclaimed Olivia, throwing up her hands. "I was only gone for, like, two months, and everything's gone insane!"

"Oh, it's you," said Gregoir unenthusiastically.

"What happened?"

"None of your business, Grey Warden."

"I think it is," snapped Olivia. "As a Grey Warden, I have a right to know what happened. Considering, you know, that there's a Blight going on and the Circle is required to help fight it, and all."

Gregoir sighed. "We've lost control of the tower. It's filled with abominations and demons. We were too complacent. First the Jowan incident, then this. And don't think that I've forgotten your role in Jowan's escape," he added.

Olivia rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever."

"Soon reinforcements will arrive from Denerim with the Right of Annulment," Gregoir continued, not paying attention to Olivia's interruption.

"They'll arrive with the what?" shrieked Olivia, furious.

"There is no choice. We have to destroy everything in the tower to make it safe again."

Olivia refrained from pointing out that the tower, being filled with terrified, desperate prisoners ready to snap and do something extreme, had never been safe. It wouldn't help her case. "Are you insane?" she yelled. "There are probably still innocent people trapped in there!"

"If there are any still alive, the Maker himself has shielded them. Nobody could have survived those… things."

"You mean you couldn't have," said Olivia coldly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go save everyone." She stomped over to the doors, followed by Alistair, Leliana, and Dusty. "Open that door and let me through!"

The Templars guarding the door looked at Olivia, then at Gregoir, then back at Olivia. They opened the doors. As she marched angrily through, Olivia heard Gregoir call after her. "Fine! But I'm not opening those doors for anyone short of First Enchanter Irving himself!"

The first couple of rooms they passed, the apprentice dormitories, were empty save for overturned furniture and one or two dead bodies which Olivia tried not to look to closely at but still recognized as people she'd grown up with. After they had passed the dorms, they arrived in the room containing the basement entrance, where they were greeted by the sight of one of the senior enchanters, Wynne, killing a rage demon in the opposite doorway while a cluster of older apprentices stood farther back with several children. Olivia recognized Petra, as well as Kelli, a woman she didn't know very well who spent all her time in the Chantry doing penances because she bought into the idea that mages were inherently evil.

"You! You came back!" exclaimed Wynne, staring at Olivia in surprise. "How did you get here? Did Gregoir let you through? Are they going to attack us?"

Olivia attempted to answer the deluge of questions as well as she could. "I yelled at people until they let me in, sort of, and not yet. The Right of Annulment hasn't gotten here yet. Actually," she added. "Considering how hard it is to travel during a Blight, it might not arrive at all. Not that I'd count on that."

"So Gregoir truly thinks we're beyond hope then," said Wynne sadly. "After leaving us to die they would kill the survivors themselves."

"I'm pretty sure the official Templar stance is that we're beyond hope from the moment of our births," pointed out Olivia. "Now they just have an excuse to kill us. Apparently, they're willing to hold off on that, though, if Irving says everything is safe."

"So we need to find the First Enchanter."

"And kill all the monsters. No biggie."

"Be careful of becoming overconfident."

"That was sarcasm. At the very least this is going to be incredibly strenuous and time consuming. Also, 'we'?"

"I'm coming with you."

"If you want to," said Olivia dubiously, taking in Wynne's determined expression. "Dusty, stay and guard the kids." The mabari barked and moved into a protective position in front of the group of children. "Let's go."

The next room was empty, but as they entered the library, they were set upon by three abominations. The formerly human monsters were quickly dispatched but had an annoying habit of exploding into balls of flame when killed. Luckily, Wynne's healing abilities were able to fix up their burns. After that, they were attacked just about every time they turned a corner.

On the second floor, they found Owain, the Tranquil in charge of stockroom, standing in his usual place and looking just the same as ever. "Please refrain from going into the stockroom," he said in a monotone. "It is a mess and I have not been able to get it into a fit state to be seen."

Considering that the 'mess' probably consisted of horribly mutilated corpses, Olivia found this to be very disturbing. "I think my fear of Tranquility just got a lot worse," she said, staring in horror.

"I was trying to tidy up, but there was little I could do," said Owain, not seeming to understand the reason behind Olivia's alarmed reaction and just making it worse.

"Don't you want to leave this…" she gestured around at the gore-filled room.

"I tried to leave when things got quiet. That was when I encountered the barrier. Finding no other way out, I returned to work."

"Oh, Owain, you should have said something," said Wynne.

"It wouldn't have occurred to him," said Olivia darkly. "The Tranquil don't really have any creativity. Considering how incapable Tranquil are of individual thought, I'm surprised he even tried to leave at all."

"The stockroom is familiar," said Owain in his monotone. "I prefer to be here."

"Haven't you run into any abominations at all?" asked Alistair.

"No. Perhaps I was lucky."

"Perhaps abominations are just as disturbed by the Tranquil as sane people are," muttered Olivia.

"I would prefer not to die," said Owain. Olivia was surprised to hear that he actually cared one way or the other. "I would prefer it if the tower returned to the way it was. Perhaps Niall will succeed and save us all."

"Niall? What's he got to do with anything?" Olivia remembered a friendly man with reddish hair who liked to spend time in the second floor library. He hadn't seemed the heroic sort.

"He came here with several others and took the Litany of Adralla."

"The what?" asked Alistair.

"It protects from mind control," explained Wynne. "Is this blood magic?"

"I do not know," said Owain.

"Niall would," said Wynne. "He was at the meeting where Uldred started all this and everything went bad. I was afraid that there was blood magic involved."

"Isn't there always?" said Olivia.

"We should find this Niall fellow, then," said Leliana. "Then we can use the Litany of Adralla to protect ourselves from the blood magic."

"I wish you luck," said Owain. "Perhaps this will all be over soon and things will return to the way they were." Olivia shivered.

As soon as they left and went into the second floor library, they were attacked by blood mages. Two of them fell with stab wounds from Alistair and Leliana's weapons, but the third was knocked to the ground and didn't attack again when Olivia advanced on her.

"Please don't kill me!" she yelled.

"I'm pretty sure that the people you killed didn't want to die either," snapped Olivia, inwardly wondering what in the world she was supposed to do with an enemy who had surrendered- she couldn't kill her now, but what exactly was she supposed to do instead, lock her in a closet? They'd never had this problem before. "Why exactly should we let you live?"

"Please! We only want our freedom. Don't you remember what it was like to live here, trapped, Templars watching your every move, ready to kill you or make you Tranquil at any moment?"

"I never went crazy and started killing everyone in sight, though," Olivia pointed out.

"It was supposed to be a revolution! We thought…someone always has to take the first step, force a change…"

That much was true, really. Olivia knew that. But, still… She felt like crying. "Not today, though. Not like this. Doing this to resist the Templars… using Blood Magic, killing innocent people… you're letting them drag you down to their level. If you let them drive you to do something like this, then they win, because they'll have turned you into the thing they're so afraid of. Somebody has to choose to be the better person, or else what's the point?" She blinked rapidly, trying to stop treacherous tears from sliding out of her eyes. "Get out of here. Leave the tower, just…leave. Don't ever use blood magic again. It's not- it won't help anything. Just get out of here." Olivia's companions seemed rather surprised at her uncharacteristically serious monologue.

The woman just looked ridiculously relieved and grateful. "Thank you. I'll do what you say." She stood quickly and left.

"What was that about?" asked Alistair incredulously. "She was totally playing you!"

Olivia glared at him. "Well, I guess it worked, then."

He looked a bit concerned. "All right. If you ever want to talk about it…" he didn't finish.

Olivia shook herself. "Let's just focus on the monsters, shall we?" She was greatly regretting coming here, necessary as it was both to get allies and to save lives.