Chapter 9

One thing a Templar could always count on; the sky being blue, water being wet and the rather attractive quality of gravity for instance, was the Circle. Ah, the mage circle. Wherever a Templar found him (or her) self, it was pretty much the same. The faces behind the helms changed and sometimes – depending on the climate – so did the thickness of the armour, but fundamentally wherever he went; south, east, north, west…ish, the circle was the same.

Mages.

Templars.

Shouting.

It was as familiar as the sun rising. As predictable as sprouts always tasting like green cardboard. At times like these Knight Commander Cullen felt almost nostalgic. Almost. His ears were hurting too much to allow himself to go gooey eyed and wistful. Besides, his patience was beginning to run dangerously thin enough to seriously contemplate setting his mage on the group (as long as those voices stayed out of his head). Not that he would have needed to give Diana any encouragement. If she'd been here the room would have been emptied five minutes before his temper had even begun to fray.

Now – just in case anyone asked - his temper was not shorter than hers.

People found their pants on fire way before those lines between his eyes appeared.

Generally speaking.

He wasn't even listening anymore. As time had passed, Cullen had found himself travelling from 'oh this old chestnut again', past 'ouch my eardrums' and 'that brick over there looks a bit wonky, ooh wonder what we're having for dinner?' arriving finally at the rather uncomfortable destination of 'why is everyone looking at me?'

He'd been concentrating on not listening to the Templars shouting that he'd completely missed the sign informing him it would be his turn next.

One thing a Templar could count on was the impressive number of hours spent practising leaching all emotion from their features on demand. Cullen had had many years under his sash doing just this, perfecting that slight eyebrow dip engineered to show that not only was he serious damn it, but a professional. And by the way see this sword here? Sharpened it just this morning. Yup. Uh-huh. Biiiig sword. Sharp.

They were still waiting.

On second thought perhaps it was just as well Diana wasn't here. She would have choked on her spleen laughing at him by now.

"Knight Commander?" the Knight Commander, the other one, not him obviously because it would have been silly calling himself just because he wanted to make the awkwardness go away.

And anyway where was his mage? That part was worrying him more than the fact that Knight Commander Greagoir was waiting for some kind of response. He sighed. He'd become a Templar because he'd wanted to serve and protect, never mind what Diana said. Besides, wearing a cape or his underpants on the outside of his armour had never occurred to him.

Ever.

Where the heck did she come up with these ideas anyway?

"And what is the Chantry doing about the hole in the sky?" he asked, successfully suppressing a wince.

"We've already covered that, Commander Cullen," Greagoir reminded him.

"Yes, but what are they doing about it?" Cullen repeated in the hope paraphrasing might make him sound like he had been listening and not daydreaming as he had actually been. "What is the Order doing about it?" Besides blaming the mages, was the unvoiced addition. And anyway, why were they asking him? He was married to a Maker-forsaken mage. By their definition, his opinion counted as much as fly fart.

Knight Commander Greagoir's mouth curved upwards in a smile that had as little to do with humour as a hedgehog had to do with world peace.

"Are you volunteering, Knight Commander Cullen?"

Oh and another thing a Templar could count on was knowing when he'd just taken a mental shovel and dug himself a great, big, giant, gaping hole and was about to jump headfirst into it.

Cullen realised rather belatedly that was something about Templarhood he really needed to work on.

"Yeeeeeees?"

On the other hand, he probably didn't need to learn that one.

Diana was going to kill him first.

As soon as he found out what the Fade he'd just volunteered himself to do.

"Excellent, Knight Commander Cullen". Greagoirs's mouth continued its nasty curve upwards. "I suggest marching on the demon horde as soon as possible."

Ah…

All in all, Cullen reflected dourly, I think I'd rather have the voices in my head back, thanks.

-oo-

"You!"

"You!"

"You!"

Merran grinned at the red haired woman wiggling her eyebrows at her; a woman barely a head shorter smiling right back at her. "I didn't want to be left out," Dagna shrugged an explanation.

"Fair 'nuff," Merran's smile widened. She turned her look upwards, then upwards again. "I thought the two of you had been 'detained'," she air-quoted at Alyce Amell.

Half the tall mage's upper lip curled in disdain. The other half simply couldn't be bothered. "We escaped," was the simple response.

"We picked the lock," Dagna added with a cheeky eye-twinkle.

"You picked the lock," Alyce sniffed, failing to keep the admiration out of her voice, while managing to tint it with a daub of obligatory disapproval.

"Fair 'nuff," Merran repeated. She adjusted her gaze to take in the passage behind the newcomers. "What about Diana?" she asked. "And her pretty Templar?"

"You think he's pretty?" Dagna asked, bright-eyed. "That's three to me!"

"What about your Warden Commander?" Alyce interrupted with a roll of her grey eyes.

Merran's smile twitched barely a millimetre. "Alistair can take care of himself," she said; adding, "If he can handle hordes of darkspawn and an Archdemon, I think he should be mostly okay with a tower full of mages and Templars."

"True," Alyce conceded. "Personally, I've never been able to tell 'em apart."

"Well," Dagna began. "It's like this. Mages wear dresses, darkspawn are ugly and…oh wait. Templars wear dresses too…aaaaand so do the odd darkspawn. Not that that's bad because who am I to question the life choices of darkspawn and…alright, I can't tell them apart either. But," she glanced behind her, in the direction their escape had brought them. "What do we do now? Do we go looking for Diana? I kinda get the impression we should stay together."

This last comment caused Merran to give the young dwarf a sharp look. "How did you…?" she started but stopped, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. "No, of course not. Maybe." Her grin widened, but her smile had as yet to reach her eyes this time. "I guess…it doesn't matter. The sooner any of us get out of here, the better." The tiniest wrinkle appeared above the bridge of her nose while sadness underlay her next sentence. "We can't rely on the Circle –"

"Or the Chantry," Alyce interjected with a curl of her lip. She tossed a look first at Dagna, then towards Merran, her oddly dark brows drawing downwards. She didn't know why, but in the presence of the dwarf-sized, dark-haired human mage from that 'other' Ferelden across the weird Fade space connecting their same yet disparate worlds, she felt…jumpy. No, that wasn't quite right. Restless? It felt like…like…

Like being dipped into a vat of refined lyrium, a voice in the back of Alyce's head supplied.

Alyce hated, loathed lyrium. Not just because of the effect it had on her once-Templar husband, as well as her father-in-law, but because it made her feel like thousands of tiny spiders were crawling on the inside of her skin. The world turned slightly blue as if a haze of lyrium-coloured fog had swept across it…just before things started exploding, imploding, disintegrating and generally screaming. A lot.

And if it happened to demons…?

"Right, Warden Merran," Alyce reached out and poked the smaller mage in the shoulder. "You can turn into a griffon-"

"Gryphon," Dagna interrupted and was ignored.

"Do you think you can do that again?" Alyce asked in her best take-charge voice. "We might need some mythical muscle to bust the rest of our way out.""

"Hey," Dagna blinked at her former mentor. "I don't know if you've noticed, but the Templars here have sharp swords. Merran'll be a gryphon-on-a stick before we could clear the Apprentices' Quarters."

"Well…" Alyce threw her hands into the air. "It's not like we have swords either. I can try to magic our way out of here, but you know…Templars. A group of them draining our mana and it's all over Rover."

"My name is Dagna, I have no idea who this Rover is, but-"

"It's not a problem."

"-I'm sure if you introduce us we'll get on swimmingly…what?" Dagna broke off her half-hearted tirade when the ice in Merran Amell's voice smacked her sideways.

Their attention turned to the small, eerily still mage. Both noticed a glow starting in the once brown hazel of the Grey Warden's eyes spreading rapidly across and down the rest of her diminutive form. She was smiling still; a lazy, dreamy smile at odds with the hard voice she had spoken to them both in.

"Uh…"

"Ooh!"

Grabbing a handful of dwarf, Alyce hastily stepped backwards, taking Dagna with her. The Warden mage was…changing; elongating, growing. The glow about her body intensified, causing the other two to shade their faces as Merran transformed; a head into a sharp, beaked wedge, shoulders and arms extending forward, claws sprouting from each finger. Both Alyce and Dagna winced as the sound of cracking bone and popping joints resounded through the hallway…then even more as tendon and skin tore bloodlessly along what used to be Merran's spine. The transformation felt endless as much as it sounded horribly painful, yet the once tiny mage made little other noise besides the chorus of ripping flesh and breaking bone.

Forced further into the wall, Alyce hugged her dwarf to her even as Dagna attempted to rush forward, the gleam of magical research in those keen, blue eyes.

And then it was all over, though a corona of light still surrounded the morphed mage. A sound emerged from the end; the…creature attempting to talk?

"She's a…" Dagna began, blinking rapidly.

"Dragon." Alyce finished for her.

"And…" Dagna pulled away from her mentor, gleeful enthusiasm brimming from every pore.

"She's PINK!"

-oo-