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2. As Natural as Sleep

With passion'd breath does the darkness creep.
It is the whisper in the night, the lie upon your sleep.

-Transfigurations 1:5

As much as he would eventually decry the effects of the taint, he has to admit it's a lifeline for him now. This far into the Deep Roads, there could be no torches, no candles, no wisps – nothing that could end up blinding them if any of the darkspawn in the maze of warrens surrounding them decided to take notice and attack.

Although what the Warden-Commander expected him to do about the light coming off his spells, well… Caron was a hard enough man, Anders let himself have a little thrill at the "I-told-you-so" moment that would surely come the minute Caron called for a fireball.

One foot in front of the other.

Something else, something new about the darkness this time. Never had he had this much room to maneuver, but without being able to see the space for himself, every step he gained was as much a prison as the last.

Maker, I can't believe I signed up for this.

Enough time has passed since his last plunge into the dark that the humor – a stronger shield than any steel he could carry – had been holding up very well.

If I can't see me…

When they stop to camp, enough time has passed since he's last seen the light that his shield was beginning to crack.

"Out you get, come on."

At the end of his fourteenth summer, the boy saw light again. Taking in the words, the absence of the clove smell that had come in with brief snatches of light and left long after the lashes with the whip, he pushed to his feet. After his second exit from the Circle tower, the Knight-Commander had overridden the mages and ordered a month's solitary confinement to dissuade the young mage from any further escape attempts.

The solitary part had been easy – it wasn't as if he was in the habit of speaking to his fellow apprentices, and he would answer his instructors only when asked a direct question. Occasionally. He had yet to say a single word to a Templar.

Emaciated, stumbling, he stepped out into the hallway, instinctively moving away from the Templar who had opened the door to the cramped room that had made him nothing again, had cost him the little he'd gained that had mattered. On many days he hadn't been able to eat, though food had never been withheld.

He fixated for what felt like an eternity on the torch next to the door, as if he could store some of the blaze to keep him company the next time the dark found him. Thinking this, he remembered one of the first cantrips he'd mastered, the only one he hadn't had trouble casting. At once exhausted and exhilarated with his distance from the cell that had damped his magic, he reached for a bit of power and let memory take over.

If the Templar found it odd to be followed back to the Circle proper by a flickering, barely present wisp of light, he was kind enough to keep it to himself as he knocked smartly on the door of a Senior Enchanter's office. The door opened, and after a moment the Templar nudged the boy forward, perhaps a bit more gently than he might have otherwise. "In you go, boy."

The boy stayed silent for a moment longer, and before stepping in, answered the Templar.

"Anders."

"Anders!"

Startled out of his reverie by the boom behind his commander's voice, the mage realizes the camp has been largely packed up, the group ready to press further into the Deep Roads.

He hasn't slept.