AN: Really quick before you read, make sure you also read chapter 3, which I put out here earlier today. Many thanks!
4. Don't Blink
"Damn it! You've got to be kidding me? What the hell is wrong with these people? And what the hell were those crazy people doing when they decided to booby trap this place with...What even are those?" Tasha ranted. Sparks were flying around her as she froze the suits of armor that had come to life and were attacking them. Jowan was barely helpful, he'd never been a particularly powerful mage, and Lily's combat skills were laughable at best. Which left her.
"Tasha, you're freezing the floor!" Jowan snapped, ducking under a swing from the sword. "Chill!"
"I think chilling is the last thing I should be doing, Jow-Jow!"
"Jow-Jow? What the hell?" Jowan stopped, staring at the other mage.
With a flourish, Tasha expanded a shield in the armor, causing it to break apart. She was panting but a broad grin spread across her face despite what they were doing; so exhilarated was she by her somewhat free use of magic. "I'm just hurt that you never considered me for your affections." She blinked innocently at him. Jowan stammered, eyes wide as sovereigns. Tasha burst out laughing. "You should see the look on your face! I'm just kidding."
"I'm sorry to interrupt but we should keep moving," Lily said quietly.
The mage looked at her, the happy buzz she'd been feeling from actually using her magic fading. "You don't need to worry about me. I was never interested in him in that way."
"I'm not sure whether I should be insulted or not."
"You're more like a brother and I'm not telling you what to feel one way or the other."
"No, you just know what I'm feeling."
Tasha turned on him, eyes accusatory. "Jowan!"
He stepped back, hands raised in apology. "Sorry. I forgot. You don't like people mentioning it."
"People don't know about it. That's why they don't mention it." She stared at him, searching his eyes when she didn't want to push past whatever wall he had up. "It's only been three months." The most important detail of her survival and he had forgotten about it.
"I hate to interrupt, but should we really be doing this right now?" Lily asked hesitantly.
That brought her back to where they were and what they were doing, what she was doing. Tasha pulled up short, restraining a sigh. "No." She gave Jowan a flat look that he couldn't possibly misinterpret. "We'll talk about this later."
"Fine." Guilt. Her face softened and when his eyes flicked to hers, so did he. The three of them continued on their way and while nervous energy still fueled them, they were all more subdued. She didn't want to enjoy being able to use her magic because when she got back up into the tower, she knew that she wouldn't be able to be as free.
They made their way through the basement of the tower, still fighting the suits of armor that were acting as sentinels and occasionally there were sentinel mages. Those caused some problems and Tasha found herself nearly sliced in half on several occasions trying to handle them. Then, finally, they made it to a storage room. Tasha stared around her, eyes wide.
"Talk about secret keeping," she said a little breathlessly. Then she was stroking her fingers along the dusty spines of books she had only heard of. "Andraste's Mana: A Mage Fighting Mages." She looked over at Jowan. "There's a book in the enchanter's library that has a sentence about the theory that Andraste was a mage. It's inside a really, really dull book about magical lineage in the Tevinter Imperium and actually lists genealogies. I skipped most of it," she shrugged apologetically when Jowan stared at her. "But most of the copies of this book were burned and I'm pretty sure that it's banned especially down here in the southern lands. What is it doing here?"
"How should I know?"
When Tasha reached to pull the book down from the shelf, Lily gasped behind her. "You're not seriously thinking about reading that, are you? That's blasphemy!"
Tasha turned, glaring. She opened her mouth to speak when faint tickling across her magic made her jerk her head around. "Do we have to fight now? We're so close and-" Tasha ignored Jowan, his voice fading to the back of her awareness, and followed the tickling. It grew stronger and then she was picking up emotions that were more ancient than anything she'd ever felt but she couldn't get a lock on any of them. "Are you even listening to me?" Jowan followed her. They stopped, looking up at a statue.
"This statue is old, probably one of the oldest things in here."
"There's something odd about it."
"I wonder who it is."
"Greetings." Both of them jumped. Behind them, she felt Lily freeze.
"Maker's breath! Did it just say something?" Jowan exclaimed.
As if ignoring his interruption, the statue continued. "I am the essence and spirit of Eleni Zinovia, once consort and advisor to Archon Valerius. Prophecy my crime, cursed to stone for foretelling the fall of my lord's house."
Tasha's eyes went wide. "Archon Valerius? As in THE Archon Valerius?" If the talking statue was telling the truth, then that made it, her, ancient and Tevinter. What was it doing speaking common?
Again, ignoring the interruption, the statue said, "'Forever shall you stand on the threshold of my proud fortress,' he said, 'and tell your lies to all who pass…' But my lord found death at the hands of his enemies and his once proud fortress crumbled to dust, as I foretold."
"A Tevinter statue! Don't listen to it! The Tevinter lords dabbled in many forbidden arts! This is a wicked thing!" Lily sounded slightly hysterical. And from a Chantry point of view, she had a point. But this was magic, this was Tasha's heritage and her birthright and she wanted to know what this statue knew. The initiate had no right to tell her of wickedness when she thought Tasha was cursed with her magic.
The mage of course ignored her. "How did a Tevinter statue get here?"
"Regardless, it must have been here for years. Look at the dust." Jowan went quiet for a moment before he spoke again. Regret. Pity. His emotions were still more muted than she was expecting but for the moment, she was okay with getting something from him. The ancient tremblings from the statue were pulling at her attention anyway so it could have been that distraction. "I feel a little sorry for it...her," he corrected.
"Weep not for me, child. Stone they made me and stone I am, eternal and unfeeling. And I shall endure til the Maker returns to light their fires again." The statue spoke with nearly the same steadiness as those made tranquil.
"What does that mean?" Tasha asked her.
"Ambiguous rubbish. It could mean anything," Jowan scoffed. "I can do it too: the sun grows dark but lo! Here comes the dawn!" Tasha turned her head to glare at him.
"Stop talking to it. Please, both of you." Lily was not happy. Tasha, however, was in her element. History and magic in one neat bundle. However, a nagging reminder of the task at hand itched in the back of her mind.
Regretfully, she turned his attention back to the statue. "We can't do much with it, anyway."
"Come on, Jowan. Let's go." Lily grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
Tasha stayed for a few moments, studying the stony face. There was something about her that seemed familiar but she couldn't place how she could recognize a woman who had died, per se, centuries before she was born.
"Tasha, over here!" With one last searching glance, Tasha joined them in front of a squat dog artifact.
"What do you think this does?" Jowan asked.
"Why does the Circle keep so many Tevinter artifacts in storage?" Lily demanded.
"It's history, Lily," Jowan saved Tasha from biting the foolish initiate's head off. "And it's fascinating." She didn't verbally agree but the twitching smile said what she didn't loud and clear.
"And...I think I've seen pictures of it. Or something similar. They were used to amplify one's spells." Tasha studied the artifact curiously.
Jowan's face lit up with excitement. "I bet we could use this to break into the phylactory chamber."
His excitement was catching. "The rod," she said, her eyes meeting his.
"The mortar's crumbling behind that bookshelf." The two mages approached it. "Should be pretty easy to move this."
Tasha's eyebrow lifted. The bookshelf looked solid. "It looks fairly heavy to me."
"If we work together, we can shift it. Come on." Lily didn't help.
Finally, the three of them made it into the chamber that they had been going for from the beginning and were immediately set upon by three suits of armor. Tasha jumped back a heartbeat too slow when one of the sentinels swung its sword toward her. Her magic pulsed, drawing from the coldness in the room and she froze it solid.
A yelp from Lily had her turning and she threw up a barrier around the initiate just in time to stop her from getting chopped in half. The blow to her shield dropped Tasha to her knees, the pressure on her mind flaring painfully and she wanted to curl up into a ball. She didn't notice what Jowan did because of the ringing in her ears but then the sentinel crumpled to the ground.
"Tash! You're bleeding!"
"What?" Pain suddenly registered, radiating from her arm and it was then that she realized that she had blood dripping from the wound closely followed by the sudden throbbing in her arm. She shook her head, trying to fight off the pain. "Don't worry about me. Let's just find your phylactory and get out of here." She would heal it later. Jowan watched her for a moment before walking away. Her jaw tightened when she realized that she was actually feeling low on magic and could feel the chill in the air. Not the time and she didn't particularly want heal herself while she was bleeding.
"Would you destroy yours too?"
"Of course. But mine's already in Denerim and I wouldn't leave. I am sans a phylactory after all."
Jowan paused, looking over his shoulder at his friend. "Why wouldn't you leave? That doesn't make any sense."
He watched the guarded flare in her eyes grow more obvious than it had been. "There are things here for me that I can't leave quite yet."
He opened his mouth to respond when Lily spoke up. "Jowan? Is-Is this it?"
Both mages ran up the stairs to where Lily was staring nervously at a small collection of vials. Tasha shouldered past her and grabbed the parchment tied around the neck. "Yeah. This is yours." She handed it to Jowan who studied the small vial.
"I can't believe this tiny vial stands between me and freedom." There was an odd tone to his voice and Tasha's eyebrows pinched together in worry. "So fragile, so easy just to be rid of it." He held the vial out in front of him. "So easy to end its hold over me." He stood there for a moment, just staring at the vial of his blood.
"Jowan, time. You can contemplate freedom later," she warned, beginning to shiver. Blood dripped down her injured arm but she didn't want to heal it. Not yet. Not with her stores so depleted.
Then he dropped it and the phylactory, his leash the Circle and Chantry held, shattered, splattering his blood over Tasha's. "And I am free."
"Let's go. The sooner we're out of here, the better," Tasha said. There was something off about her friend and it was concerning.
For once, she and Lily were on the same side. "I do not want to stay here a moment longer," the initiate agreed.
AN: There's your special chapter in honor of my parents' anniversary. Personally, I think that the Circle stores a lot of sensitive texts that technically would not be allowed by the Chantry and the Templars conveniently forget about it.