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Chapter Text

"I do not know who my father is. Rumour has it he's a chevalier from Orlais... That'd be all right. Those guys ARE a little obnoxious I guess though." The tinny, obnoxious voice drowned out all the others and made even the students sitting at the other ends of the table listen in unintentionally.
A second, velvety voice laughed with affectation and said condescendingly: "You have no Orlaisian blood in you. Besides, how does the son of an Orlaisian nobleman get here of all places? Usually, a lowborn or prostitute mother explains that gap in logic. Weird story, not enough detail, Gilbert."
As spiteful as it might sound, Gilbert knew how the speaker meant the things he said, and only made an obscene gesture towards Francis. "So how did y o u get here, hmm?" he growled, grinning.
"Oh, I", Francis stretched the vowel out to its very limits "was a guest in this dump of a city, with my noble and rich family, when I noticed that I could light those candles without any fire at all..."

Katya and Natalya, both within earshot, sneered at that, while some other students raised their heads with interest.

For most of the mages who had been taken away from their families as children, the outside world was far away, distant, almost alien and exciting like any far away country at the ends of Thedas. They knew stories; perhaps even had memories of their own; visits from relatives were granted from time to time, and very few had dared to flee and visit their families, which usually ended with a relatively light punishmen. They were usually caught too quickly to get far. And even those who left, accompanied of course, and came back, the various quarters, the nobles, the workers at the port, the city guards, the city itself, bands of robbers, slave traders, the Qunari, the dwarves, the buccaneers on the seas were distant memories or even just empty cues; many a one nodded and remembered books they had read rather than real life impressions. Class consciousness and racial conceit were also stronger outside than here behind the thick castle walls; and the outside world only entered the circle in the form of stories, rumours and books. Accordingly, inquisitive eyes turned to the Orlaisian.

Those who had not discovered their talents for long enough or had been hidden by their families and therefore knew a little more, snorted, and Arthur said bitingly: "Sure. Just as I was found by Dalish elves and initiated into the secret magic of prehistoric times when I was ten."

"Oh, I wouldn't put it past you, strange as you are, Arthur..."

"Yeah, Arthur, you probably were!"

The following squabbling, which consisted of hissing and kicking under the table robbed Gilbert of the attention that had been paid to him until right now. He sulked a little and finally threw his spoon at Francis. The wooden cutlery rattled when it hit Francis' glass and the container of liquid toppled over. Five glances immediately rushed to Ser Cannee. Today Ser Canee was posted in the dining room, and Ser Canee came right after Ser Alrik. That was to say, if the room under Ser Alrik was dead quiet and full of poisonous glances, Ser Canee's room was filled with civilized murmuring, but the knowledge that for the slightest application of magic you wouldn't even see candlelight, let alone daylight, for twenty-four hours was enough to shut even Gilbert up from time to time. This happened, unless some of the nicer Templar colleagues noticed and shortened the time, of course. .

The Templar had just been distracted by a tall man in armour who had approached him and spoken softly to him. Cullen, the new commander of the Kirkwall branch of the Order of the Temple. Important enough to demand the attention of the other Templar.

A few at the table breathed out, audibly relieved.

"Gilbert, why! What's the matter, can't you throw a spoon straight?" Francis's knife slid straight towards Gilbert, who caught it hastily, firstly to avoid being hit and secondly to avoid rattling again.

"Sure I can aim! I can do almost anything, unlike you..."

"That doesn't suit you," said Lukas. His eyes, big and shining like the eyes of elves just did, looked indifferently into his plate as if nothing concerned him.

"What?"

Lukas shrugged his shoulders. "A Chevalier. It's not like you."

Gilbert blinked irritated, confused, then beamed. "You think?"

"I think so, too." Natalya's monotone voice interrupted her. She pointed at Gilbert. "Find something that suits him. An elite Orlaisian warrior. Don't make me laugh. More like a really annoying brand of dock person?"

Felicks, who hadn't been interested until now either, turned his head in Gilbert's direction. "Maybe his father was a Rivainian pirate..."

"Sure," Arthur said dryly. "I wonder what happened to that Rivaini's skin colour."

"It got scared on the way."
"Scared?"
"Of Gilbert's scowl."
Antonio, the only one in the circle who actually knew that his ancestors had probably once come from Rivain to Kirkwall with a slave caravan and the only one at the table who knew for sure how he had come about to be - "My parents are fishermen and live on the harbour, I can see the dock they work at when the sky is clear" - grinned and waved at Gilbert.

"All that because we can burn a candle in our dreams," someone said bitterly.
Arthur threw Ivan a questioning glance.
Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. "So what? Would you rather be a Templar and watch us all day long?"
"'Watching' is not the term I'd use," Francis piped up again.
"I'd like to be outside," Felicks said innocently.
"Oh, shh! How old ARE you, you child!"
"Come on, the Templars are clad in their ugly armour and are standing at attention around the castle all day. Surely it's not a pleasant job if you could walk around outside instead. Aren't there Templars who protect caravans and stuff?"
"Well, I find the armour very..."
"Nobody cares, frogface!"
"You do not know what I wanted to say!"
"I do and assure you that no one wants to hear any of it."
"So many people WANT this calling. It can't be all that bad here."
Their conversation drowned in the chatter of the dining room, and that was Roderich's good fortune. He quietly said, "The Lords Templars may be noble or they may be able to leave their past behind... but they can afford to commit way more sins than most people out there."
"Now be quiet..." Katyusha raised her arm to pat him on the shoulder, concern on her face.
Roderich raised his eyebrows. "I wonder if it is really necessary to allow people like Alrik to tranquil mages with joy, to banish something like Tevinter from the realm of the Chantry. Tevinter is like a demon that threatens to appear if we ever stray from what our teachers tell us. Do not be like Tevinter; do not even think of anything like it ... But that Tevinter has been long gone."
Gilbert was the first to speak again. "Tevinter still exists. And neither our situation nor that unhinged mage empire have anything to do with each other. Our lives are about duty. Tevinter is out there, and a hellish place, where mages know othing of limits and of what they should do for the world. Only what the world should do for them. Tevinter bled people dry right in this castle. You know the accounts, Roderich."
And Roderich answered, because he simply had to. "Tevinter is an example that no one wants to follow."
"Exactly my point."
"And it is long gone, as I pointed out. We don't dare do anything, change anything, if it so much as smells like Tevinter magic."
"What are you trying to say? You want to change something about the Circle system?"
"Actually, I just wanted to say that firstly, I think it's a pity to let knowledge get lost. There are scholars who worked on both essences and spirits and they trained blood mages, among other things. Why do we reject all their knowledge? As if one drop of blood magic thinking could have contamined everything? We don't treat the Holy Marches dissenter historians that way. We judge their conclusions, but respect their accounts. And secondly, I wanted to say that a Templar who is a bastard from the start becomes even more disgusting than he should be because of the lyrium he has to swallow and that is an obvious thing we never even talk about..."
The grip on Roderich's shoulder turned painful.
He had said too much. Roderich had spoken calmly and in a rather emotionless way, but Maker, he had broken at least three taboos with these two sentences.
He saw it the moment Katyusha's lower jaw dropped down in horror, and even Arthur, who was hard-boiled enough to insist that Dalish magic was fascinating and not primitive or even blasphemous, choked on the rest of his stew and coughed up in disgust.
"Ah!" Felick's thin arm shot forward and his hand pressed itself onto Roderich's mouth. "You naughty thing!" The exaggerated theatricality in his voice shook warningly.
"Say nothing against Alrik! Not as long as Cannee is here!" Natalya hissed worriedly.
They were silent again; some breathed hard. Roderich noticed that he did, too.
"The lyrium techniques... and tranquility... are the responsibility of the Tenplars. Both has its purpose and should really not be doubted...", Arthur finally said, sounding choked.
Gilbert leaned over the table, towards Roderich. His eyes sparkled in glare, and his voice sank an octave lower in disbelief. "Are you saying you question the Transfigurations?" This chain of words alone was so monstrous that an embarrassed silence fell upon everyone.
The Transfigurations, the ancient history of the continent, and the time of the prophetess Andraste, was what had created their world as it was today. And the texts of those days were among the most respected and sacred texts of the continent.

Everyone except Ivan, who slowly raised his eyes and his eyebrows.
"Maker beware, no!" Roderich raised his hands defensively. "No. But" Very well. To avoid that someone misunderstand him in the worst way, he'd better say what he thought... He leaned forward unconsciously, and his eyes narrowed a little as he stared back at Gilbert. "I want to know what it was like then. Nowhere in Thedas people deemed it necessary to end a cruel magical reign. Only in Tevinter."
"Tevinter made up half the continent then," Gilbert interrupted him harshly. "Tevinter IS the story of Thedas, before the oppressed countries could free themselves!"
"Exactly my point. Tevinter was everywhere only in rule, not in mentality. Tevinter preserved mage power and supremacy until today. No one else did. Why do you think the Free Marches, or Orlais, or Ferelden, would risk becoming a new Tevinter if we would allow, say, mages to enter the circle later? Or leave it once their harrowing is over?"
Katyusha started twitching and averting her eyes. Natalya also looked uncomfortable. Arthur and Luke listened intently.
"Wait, doesn't that undo your argument that Tevinter the slave empire is long gone? Do you think the basic principles of magic and the world went down with it? Do you think Andraste took the dangers of magic with her when she went to see the Maker?"
"What are YOU trying to say?"
"The surface of the world has changed. The dangers of magic and our responsibility hasn't."
"But it has!" Roderich grew impatient, and increasingly frustrated. "We do not wish to rule the world! None of us here does!" Some of their peers sniggered at that. Roderich remembered lowering his voice. "Do you think, if we were allowed to go out into the world and work for it's good there, we would flock together and try to enslave everyone?"
Gilbert hesitated, and glared. His eyes shone almost red in the dim dining hall lights. "Yes I do. Tevinter is gone? No. It was beaten, not erased. And the memories of what magic and power together have done to the world are right here. The statues in the courtyard date from the time of Tevinter. Do those guys look like they were having fun?"

The stooped figures with the tortured, crying faces in the courtyard of the castle were certainly the reason why some of the youngest students preferred to stay in the building and have skin like porcelain rather than expose themselves to some healthy sunlight and look at the larger-than-life statues outside every day.

"Will you let me finish? I'm not saying I adore Tevinter, by the Maker! I am not deying it was bad and I am not denying it exists today!" Roderich's thoughts raced back and forth between the need to defend himself and to come up with a plausible explanation that was not too aggressive against the Templars. "What I meant originally was that as good as our training is, we learn too little about what else there is in the world apart from the magic we know; what problems we could solve aside the ones the First Enchanter takes from the Templar Commander; and I mean the things beyond the veil and I mean the centuries before us."
"Listen, Serah." The nickname specially reserved for Roderich had never been hissed so aggressively before. "'Knowledge lost' for the flaming asses of all arch demons! If you're implying that you have a thing for maleficare, you'd best go over to Ser Cannee over there and let him tranquil you."
That wasn't harsh, that was brutal.
Roderich faltered.
Not even for the words that were outrageously hurtful.
He had never heard Gilbert speak with so much - hatred? - rage? - violence? - loathing -? before.
Arthur raised his eyebrows in disbelief. "Gilbert, to say that is really..."
Something behind the white-haired man's eyes hardened, "I'm absolutely serious. Really, Roderich, go down there and say you want to be tranquiled..."
"Down there?" Roderich asked, surprised, and Felicks gasped. "Seriously, Gilbert, apologize to him right now!"
Gilbert bit his tongue and slowly lowered his eyes after Felicks had barked at him. He gave no answer.
There was silence. Then Natalya said: "Gilbert. I have completed my harrowing. You too, haven't you?"
He looked over at her suspiciously. "Yes, and?" he hissed between clenched teeth.
"You know very well what and. Behave like a grown-up."
"Roderich hasn't passed it yet, has he?"
Roderich had the impression that there was a significant pause between sentences. One in which something resonated that only Natalya and Gilbert seemed to understand.
And Ivan, who looked at them silently and with an indefinable look.
"What, Gilbert has passed his harrowing and doesn't tell everyone up to the basement rats how great he did it?" Mathias was walking past them, laughing as he spoke. "Don't fuck with us!"
The meal over. The first students got up.
They hadn't even noticed.
But the departure to the main hall and ;athias, who was staying at their table, hands on his hips, both had only loosened up the tense situation to a limited extent.
"Then... we'd better get to class."
The Fereldan opened his eyes in surprise when nobody answered him.
One after the other, the students around the table left, faces red.
Gilbert marched away; Natalya and Katyusha exchanged glances, Arthur and Francis had already found something that might have justified their trying to push each other out of the way, and Roderich slowly stood up. With a leaden feeling like someone had dumped his body into tar, he followed the others. Luke walked his way out of the room as if the world around him was an uninteresting fly that did nothing but buzz past his nose every now and then.
Only Ivan, who had been preoccupied with himself all this time, missed the moment to get up, and received a strict wave from Ser Canee.
The afternoon classes began.

***

Roderich pulled his robe tightly around him.
Up here under the roofs it was always warmest; yet he was cold.
He was alone, and grateful for it. On his knees lay the book that Chief Enchanter Brenn had recommended to them. Roderich blinked tiredly and read the same passage, probably for the third time.
"Even without Lyrium, the ruthless can use their own life energy in magic, but every now and then, especially ambitious students overdo it..."
Roderich could not be more indifferent to the essay, no matter how deeply he got into the basics of magic.
His thoughts circled inexorably around two points.
The subject of lyrium was only dealt with more intensively once they had passed their final exam. And that was exactly what Roderich had yet to face.
The tranquils. And the anger with which Gilbert had hissed at him.
Roderich closed his eyes and laid his forehead on his knees.
No one knew when their harrowing would take place; and the students who had passed it were obliged to keep silent about the contents of the examination.
After the examination was finished, they were given time to think it over and the offer to be voluntarily tranquiled. Afterwards one was a full member of the circle. Either tranquil, or conscious.
If you failed, they said, they would tranquil you too.
Roderich huffed angrily. He did not understand why one should not be allowed to repeat the exam.
And voluntarily? How, he wondered, could one voluntarily let one's soul be taken away?
Because I am a mage?
The rebellious voice inside him laughed bitingly. Roderich himself was too tired and just sank a little more into himself.
Not to hear for too long from the enchanters who called for a final test was a bad sign. Here too, some stubbornly claimed that this automatically led to being tranquiled or even executed by the Templars.
No one had details on how this was supposed to happen, though.
The uncertainty and the many rumours would drive him mad soon.
And no matter how much Roderich listened away purely on principle when rumours and wild stories about their trials were circulating; the thought that so many others of his age had passed their harrowing and he had not yet done so, made him nervous.
He had expected to be presented with a really hard exam, probably about every single subject of their teachers. So he had been studying diligently and listening attentively all year until now, and had also improved his practical skills. He had a talent for using lyrium and his mana in a controlled way, and he practiced it. He had chosen spirit magic and, when they were informed that they would be in demand in case of war, he had signed up for Tactics of Reinforcement and for Basics of Elemental Magic without hesitation.
He would never forget the image of the lightning bolt that had once saved his life.
Roderich felt ready, and he knew that he was more intelligent and quicker on the uptake than many others. But nothing came of it.
Gilbert came back to his mind again. Gilbert was less good than Roderich in almost all subjects. Apart from his enthusiasm for man-to-man combat, perhaps. The only subject they did not sit in and which they were taught in the courtyard: fighting with magic, under the watchful eyes of the Templars and the Chief Enchanters. Gilbert was one of the few who did not wield his long staff with the thoroughly trained elegance and concentration of a mage, but rather swung it around and even struck with it like a warrior. Which almost always brought him a correction.
Lysette, a templar, had encouraged him, though. And he had long since had his harrowing, as Roderich knew since lunch!
Just like Natalya had passed.

Why not me?

Perhaps the inner attitude was also important to the circle. As much as Roderich normally held back, sometimes he could no longer control his bite on the stone cage in which they lived.

Maybe that's why. I hope so. I just have to keep learning, he said to himself. I should worry less, really, that won't help me anyway. They have to test me sometime!

The book page stared back.
Roderich sighed and ruffled his hair. It needed cutting.
Maybe the wind from the sea was so humid today... or he was just sick... or tired.
He closed the treatise on the wise use of mana and lyrium in combat magic.

"Do you need anything?"
Roderich was already smiling when he only saw the hem of the skirt appear at the edge of his field of vision. He stood up immediately. "Good day, Elizaveta."
She watched him. "Are you tired? Or haven't you found what you're looking for?"
"I am sad, Elizaveta." Roderick surprised himself there.
Was he sad?
She kept looking at him. She did not understand, but did her best to assess him and help him, he knew that, and smiled a little.
"But you cheered me up again, Elizaveta."
"That's nice. So I can't help you?"
"No, you can't. You can talk to me, if you like."
In her eyes lay intelligence, and knowledge, and attention. And no drive. No soul. "I must have some time left." And yet he imagined that she was unusually friendly; sometimes even smiling.
Roderich nodded and put his book aside. He wished he knew what she had been like years ago. And to be able to ask her what she thought was better - now or then. "Elizaveta, do you ever think about your family?"
Her eyelashes went down and up when she blinked. "Very rarely."
Roderich nodded understandingly. "Do you know anything about them?"
"Oh, yes. My parents are from Hightown."
"Can you tell me more?" It always relaxed him to talk to her. Even if he was well advised not to confide in her completely... As kindly as she gave him information, she would give it to anyone who ele asked her, for example "Is there a mage in the circle we need to worry about?
Elizaveta thought. "What do you want to know?"
"What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of your family?"
"We lived right next to the red light district. That was no advantage. It didn't do the family's reputation any good, and later the dog lords came with their heavy fighting dogs, until all the nobles of the upper town bought guards for the whole quarter and had them killed."
"That's interesting," he encouraged them, even though he faltered at the fighting dogs and the killed Fereldian gangs. "So that's where your good language and your good education come from."
She nodded.
"Were you not yet in the circle when the Blight broke out in Ferelden?"
She leaned against a shelf and folded her hands. Elizavet must be expecting a longer conversation. "I was visiting my family."
"Oh... in secret?"
"Yes. I was forbidden then."
The guessing game of who knew what about his background and how much had become their obsession in the last two days. A little idea, some conversation, and then it would be over nd Roderich's circle of friends would move to the next topic; but their families were always a source of questions, pain, and grief for them as children. They wondered where they were exactly, what they were doing; how they lived, what else they knew about them, whether they missed them, thought about them; and at some point each of them accepted that the circle was their family.
It was good to let someone speak so objectively and completely detached from any pain about what preoccupied them all as children: Who are my parents?
Roderich's gaze wandered briefly to the faintly protruding tattoo on her forehead, and he swallowed. "Is that why you were tranquiled? Has Ser Alrik caught you?"
"Oh no."
"May I ask you what happened?"
"I can't tell you yet." She smiled softly. "You can ask me again when you have passed your harrowing."
Roderich's heartbeat sped up.
Does that mean, he wanted to ask, that I will pass my harrowing soon? Or that you believe I will pass? Or that I cannot ask you in case I do not pass? Or will I no longer be interested?
Roderich did his best to think quickly, looking for the question that was the least incriminating...
"Why don't you go to bed a little early tonight, Roderich?" She stretched out her hands to him, as if she wanted to take him by the hand and lead him out of the library.
He better not ask. "Thank you, Elizaveta. I'll probably do that." He smiled at her, and she nodded her head, elegantly and at the right angle.
Roderich put his book back, left the warm room smelling of paper and animal skins, and walked away towards the main staircase.
He actually felt better.

***

Conversation II

I had to split the first chapter.

----

Roderich wandered slowly and thoughtlessly down the stairs, not sure where he wanted to go. Maybe he was really going to sleep now... The cool stone wall, along which his fingers slid, calmed him down.
Yes. Sleep. Just wait until the restlessness in him was over. That didn't always work, but it was still his number one strategy. Sleep on it first, then plan... then move on... and see...
Sometimes he remembered what else he could do; for example, break with tradition and ask directly why he hadn’t passed the harrowing yet... just sneak out of the castle and be alone and free... hit Gilbert and kiss Elizaveta.

In his dreams he sucked in the cold air that came up to him from the corridor in the depths. But he always stood there, in this very spot, and went no further. Just like he did in real life.

Roderich's fingers bumped against thick, rough material and he pulled his hand back.

He had arrived at the hall.

Roderich's eyes searched the high room, for the point that seemed most attractive. The stairway to the sleeping quarters or else...
He didn't really feel like it; but the single red light that came from behind the archway one floor below attracted him tonight after all.

Roderich walked through the hall, now empty except for two Templars, who had mumbled quietly, but were now watching him in silence. Roderich greeted them and walked on, past the tapestries that showed the coats of arms of those responsible for the life of this fortress. The sun symbol of the Chantry, the winged sword of the Templars, the simple circle design with the line interrupting it, symbolising the connection to the Void, for the circle of mages, and, finally, the ornament of the city of Kirkwall. It was the latter that the Roderich could do least with; they hardly ever saw anything of the city in their entire life from the time they joined the circle. But they were able to read up on its history, and the coat of arms was emblazoned on the wall. A golden sword, symbol of liberation by force, whose handle ended in two cool and symmetrically drawn vertical lines. They looked like tears.

Roderich overlooked the tapestry on the opposite side of the wall. He had never liked it, and Roderich was good at overlooking things he did not like. The Gallows, now hosting of the magical circle of the city of Kirkwall, had once been the symbol of deterrence and the place of execution for the disobedient slaves and any other bothersome subjects of the Tevinter Empire, and, fitting well in style and message, its symbol had an oppressive effect. It was probably intended to represent a powerful ruler in a wide cloak. For Roderich, the pictorial lines of the coat of arms merely showed a fat king, pressed into a box, with a posture as if he urgently needed to urinate. And wings, with which the good man certainly could not do anything. He found it ugly as hell.

Roderich hesitantly stepped through the archway, the great hall now at his back.

It was so dark in the corridor that the torches along the stone stairs were already burning. The smell of burning scented wood was stirred up by the cool air from the only window above.

There was no one there, and unreal silence. The sisters of the chantry were probably having dinner.

Roderich looked at the door of the chapel. Perhaps he would indeed find some peace... His fingers touched the heavy wood.

He turned away again.

"Hey, Serah."

The form of address, which Roderich now found childish, came out a little uncertain. Behind him.

Roderich drove around in horror.

Gilbert leaned against the cold stone wall with crossed arms. He stared straight at Roderich.

Roderich looked back silently. "Yes?", he finally asked when nothing came.

"Were you about to go into the chapel?"

"No."

Another pause, during which Gilbert made a decision and cleared his throat. "We haven't finished talking."

Roderich almost had to laugh. But only almost. All their conversations seemed to consist of never-ending debates. "Which conversation are you talking about?", he asked.

Gilbert ruffled his his hair absent-mindedly. "I have to show you something," he said abruptly.

Roderich pulled his eyebrows together. "Now? Like this?"

"Yes yes, come along!"

Roderich really felt like letting Gilbert go on alone, or asking right here and now what all this - everything today - was about. But when Gilbert was already standing on the landing, restless, he simply followed his classmate, albeit hesitantly, who was suddenly in a hurry to climb the stairs towards the dormitories.

He walked silently behind him until Gilbert looked over his shoulder and finally slowed down and waited for them to walk next to each other.

"What do you want?" Roderich decided that he would rather know now whether it was better to go to the dormitory and put the blanket over his head instead of whatever this was going to be.

Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. "Show you something."

Gilbert’s remark that noon had touched something that should not have been crossed; something had been destroyed today, and it hung in the air like a glass wall.Roderich felt uncomfortable and stayed silent. "You always insist that we as mages have no obligations," Gilberts began in conversation. His sandals made a scraping sound with every step on the stone.

"No moral obligations other than those that every conscient being has," Roderich corrected almost automatically, and thus joined in on the argument he was offered. Once again. He was suddenly wide awake.

"And to the fact that we do not need to be protected more than anyone else."

Actually, Roderich was simply supposed to tell Gilbert that he should come out with the language or leave, and he, Roderich, really didn't feel like seeing his face today. "Right." . Roderich noticed that they took a turn leading away from the dormitories, higher up to the herb and tea drying rooms, and then only under the roof... Gilbert just kept going. "And you insist that Andraste's words about magic were meant exactly as the circles interpret them today." Slowly the simultaneous ascent, talking and thinking made him pant. "Does our walk have anything to do with how much we need to be protected and locked up here?"

Gilbert didn't even react to the bite against the Circle. That worried Roderich a little. "I want to ask you something."

"Yes, please ask," Roderich growled, when once again nothing more came from his classmate; only the stairs became steeper and narrower, and finally Gilbert bent forward in an open window arch. "Hold on tight for now," he said, and even grinned very faintly. "Then there'll be answers."

As if he wanted to know anything except what this was all about... Roderich couldn't believe his eyes at first when Gilbert climbed into the window frame and then took a step outside. He stepped to the window and saw that they were apparently at the same level as the roof, and that here, embedded in the plastered wall of the building, a wrought-iron grille with darn big holes was waiting for him; nothing beside it, beneath it, a far too distant, hard flat roof, now shimmering reddish-white in the evening sun; and in front of him... "The tower?

"Yes! No more questions, come on!"

The mighty castle complex consisted of massive, advanced walls, the outer limit of their world, and a main building at least as massive, rising into the blue sky of the bay. The core of the fortress was the old tower, which rose up like a scrawny tree from a stone block at night .

Roderich had never been up there before. There was no reason to stay there at all, unless one wanted to catch sunstroke or be blown away by the wind and suffer either painful, paralysing fractures or even death.

"You want me to go over there?"

"Yeees, just come!"

Roderich growled to himself and looked doubtfully at the painfully hard roof far below him, hidden in the deepening shadows of the evening. He straightened, grabbed his robe, as ridiculous as it seemed to him, and carefully put one foot in front of the other on the bars. After a long, long, careful wiggle forward, he finally arrived at the redeeming opening - a second window. He propped himself against the mossy wall, glided into the room and took a deep breath. "Gilbert," he said softly, even though the name still tasted bitter "If this doesn't make sense soon, or at least ends, I'm going to leave and ask you never to come to me with such nonsense again. No matter what it's about or what..."

"All right! I understand!" Gilbert understood "to ask" very well as "to strangle you and curse while doing it" and looked quite worried. Then he pointed his chin straight ahead. "Just up there and out the door."

Roderich frowned, but followed him up a dark wooden staircase and through a door that Gilbert had to push through first. "There's no patrol here today," he murmured to himself.

What is here anyway?, Roderich wanted to ask, but at that moment he saw it for himself.

A battlement. At the wall of the tower.

He still realised that, and then Roderich had eyes for nothing else but the sight in front of them.

It was evening. The sun was already so far away that its ball had already disappeared and only its light was left over the coast off Kirkwall.

And yet Roderich saw it all.

Simply everything.

The peaks of the mountains that reached up into the sky here. The one mountain that was enthroned there in the shadow of itself and towered over her castle here on the cliffs like a personal guard.

The steeply sloping gorge cut into the rocks, which cut the sea water like a black ribbon through the rugged cliffs of the Wounded Coast. Roderich was amazed. "The city," he murmured. "There is Kirkwall." When you turned around, you saw it rise whitish, the upper town on the other side of the sea breakthrough. It shimmered faintly, probably lit by torches and candles; and the life there.

Roderich wished painfully as never before to be able to fly.

And he remembered again the cold, musty air from below.

"Do you see the Waking Sea?", Gilbert's voice tore him back to reality.

"...Yes." When he bent forward and twisted his neck, he could see the gate to the open sea. "Are the lights out there ships?", he asked, oblivious of himself, still busy looking at the mountains, the city, the sea far away...

"These are torches. There is fog on the sea. When it's daytime and you walk down the corridor to the back there, you can even see the statues in the water. They are very clearly visible."

Roderich was not so easily knocked down. As much as he had been away for a moment, as much as the white peak of the mountains captivated him; now he looked down; over steep cliffs into the black of the sea. "What were you going to ask me here?"

Gilbert needed a moment to answer. "What do you feel when you see this?"

Was that supposed to be a joke? "Why do you want to know?"

Gilbert puffed in frustration. "Because... it's nothing special! Just answer!"

"Longing", Roderich said immediately and waited.

"That's it," murmured Gilbert, and he sounded honestly amazed. "Not me."

"What?"

Gilbert also leaned against the balustrade, his gaze fixedly directed downwards. "We can't fly, I know that. So I'm staying here. I don’t feel longing."

And even if he didn't want to, Roderich's mouth closed in a small, amused smile. Even if it was a little joyless. "Is that your best argument? You show me a different - this - And you tell me that you are still standing securely, even if you can only see where you will never be? Unlike me?"

Gilbert made a sound that could not be defined. "Do you want to go up there? Up the mountain?"

Roderich laid his head back and shuddered with the utmost respect. "Up there? No. There must be reasons why no one goes up there. They say that so far up in the sky there is no air anymore..."

"Then why do you want to go down there?" Gilbert's eyes shone in the twilight as he pointed at the city. "Explain it to me."

The faint lights of Kirkwall, nestled against the coast as they knew from drawings and paintings of their childhood, waved.

"This is not a mountain. It's a city."

"It's dangerous there too."

"That's true," said Roderich, and Gilbert noticed the calm, affirmative tone in his voice very well, and looked surprised. "But..." He pondered, faltered, and then said almost defiantly: "That is what it is all about. I could live down there if I were a normal person! I would be there..."

Gilbert laughed at him. "I see. You could be there too if you weren't a mage, and that's why it doesn't suit you here, Serah?"

"I would have a family," Roderich said violently. "A life, you know?"

Gilbert shook his head. "Don't you live here? Don’t you have a family you are stuck with forever?"

Roderich pressed his lips together. "I just know what it can be like," he said. "Maybe you don’t, Gilbert."

"How old were you when you joined the Circle?"

Roderich, suddenly wishing himself far down into his bed, still unable to free himself from the sight of the vastness beneath them, moved only a little bit away from Gilbert. "Six years or so. "And eight when I crossed the north of Ferelden and vomited into the Waking Sea."

"Oh" Gilbert drew the air in. "Right. You came as a refugee from Ferelden." In his voice lay honest respect, and Roderich listened up.

A mage here was a mage first of all, and nothing else. At least for the Templars. Nevertheless: a whole group of new people who appeared, with a strange dialect and strange tastes, had not been welcomed by everyone at that time.

"Tell me."

"What?"

"You crossed the whole of northern Ferelden?"

"Yes. I came from Lothering“

"Where's that?

"In the south."

"So it's cold and rainy and smells like dog?"

"Probably."

Pause. "Can you talk more?"

"What do you care about places you'll never visit?"

"Have you ever been to the Void?" Gilbert asked, out of context.

"Never consciously." Roderich faltered at first. Going into the Void... that could only be done through complicated or powerful and hard to control magic. He knew that. And that was as far as they had gotten in class...

Gilbert was silent again, frowning.

Roderich wanted to stay here and wait for the sinking light on the horizon to take his sight; and he decided that this conversation was not the worst they had had so far. "Why," he said abruptly, returning to the one subject they would probably never agree on "should the Maker have given us the connection to the Void if it is a danger to us? And if He really wanted us to live differently from everyone else - why did He want that?"

"He certainly wanted to give us a special task," said Gilbert seriously. He almost looked sad. "But the Maker has already left us."

"Then we can't say we know what His will is!"

"Roderich... do you not believe his prophetess?"

Roderick was uneasily. "I believe that some words and the Song of Light are put into practice as befits the Templars. Snd not as responsible servants of the Chantry should." He waited, tense, and was a little afraid of a new thunderstorm on the part of Gilbert.

"The Templars and the sisters of the Chantry also serve Andraste only. They cannot ask the Maker." Gilbert closed his eyes and shook his head. "Why did He leave us alone anyway..."

"This means that He does not destroy this world if we behave wrongly, but leaves and lets us decide for ourselves," Roderich replied cautiously. "Is that not good?"

Gilbert's gaze looked for Roderich's, and he was serious, and sad and introspective as Roderich had never seen his classmate before. "He is leaving us," he said. "Leaves us only our own faults in the form of corruption, and then He leaves us. Is that not much worse?"

Roderich couldn't help but look straight ahead, challenging himself. "Gilbert, can I just tell you what I think, or do I have to take another stab at letting myself be tranquiled?"

Gilbert's eyes seemed to glow in the fading light. "Speak..."

"Why?"

"What why?"

"Why is it worse for a god to abandon his world than to destroy it?"

"Because... because we no longer know what it is good for." Gilbert's gaze wandered off into the distance. "Do you know what the Void is for? What we are for? And why?"

"No. And we'll never get the answer. But that also means that we, on our own, have to take care of ourselves, ! We doesn’t it! We have a new task."

"The Void", Gilbert said slowly, "is full of mystery. Sometimes I thought it was hiding the secrets of our world. And that we must find them. That we, as mages, must figure out how to reach the black city. Then again, maybe it threatens our world. Maybe it destroyed. Perhaps the remains of our past arrogance are hidden there, and will one day destroy us? Or is the Void just a reflection of us? Does it hold the world together? I do not know. But I don't like being there."

Roderich watched him. "Do you dream much?"

"Yes."

Roderich could see Gilbert's hands brushing restlessly across the stone balustrade, and he thought. "Do you know so little of the Song of Light?" he finally asked softly. "The Black City was once white. It is the forsaken city of the Maker."

Gilbert smiled. "And no matter how far you go, you'll never reach it. I guess we read the same book."

"Maybe He'll rebuild it."

"His city is lost."

"We don't know that. Except that it's abandoned. It's not the same thing“

"Then we don't know what's happening to us. We can’t know."

"I thought I could be blamed for not having enough faith in the Maker." Gilbert looked up in amazement. "But you ask too many questions, too, Gilbert."

And Gilbert laughed, his tinny laugh coming at the most inopportune moments. "There's not much more we can do."

Roderich did not contradict him, and so the silence between them was almost peaceful.

"I can only talk to you about such things."

Roderich stared at him in bewilderment. "What have I done to deserve this?"

"Oh, shut up..."

"Seriously, what do you want to tell me?"

"That you should get up your arse up and get the harrowing over with, so I can destroy your arguments."

"What--"

"You haven't passed yet, have you?"

"No," Roderich growled, "and I'm surprised you passed already."

Gilbert giggled. "I like that."

"I am surprised YOU already have."

Gilbert pushed himself off the parapet, and now they noticed how dark it was.

Night had fallen over Kirkwall Bay.

"I feel the same as you," Roderich said slowly. "With another place."

"Where...? What?"

Roderich shook his head. "I stand before it, but I know... if I keep walking, the dreams are over and reality begins. I am no longer protected. So I'm not leaving." He smiled joylessly. "I understand you more than you might think possible."

"You...?"

"Yes?" Roderich already regretted saying anything.

"What do you mean, you have a place?"

"It's not important. I'm just saying - you have a place that shows you the world beyond yours, but you will not move towards it. Because you're stubborn."

"Faithful", Gilbert interrupted Roderich, somewhat miffed, and Roderich waved it away. "And I have a place which means freedom for me. And I would not stay. I would leave. But I'm not doing it because I know what can happen."

"I see." Gilbert had crossed his arms, still not thrilled at being dismissed as stubborn so easily. "You live dangerously, Roderich."

Roderich did not let someone who did not have his tongue in check for a second of his life tell him that. "You live excessively."

"What does that mean?"

"It's almost curfew.

"Don't be evasive, Serah“.

"Shut up, slave“

Gilbert bumped into him hard. "I'm calling you Serah, not Magister, you unbelievable lame duck when it comes to history!"

Roderich punched him hard against the shoulder. "How do we get back?"

"What...? Oh, I see. Fire, I guess.“

"Oh, no!"

"Can't you handle fire?"

Roderich just growled and silently concentrated on the energy in his veins. The night had finally come.

Soon it was tingling warmly over the palm of his hand and the flames that formed glided calmly over his hand.

Gilbert behind him clicked his tongue pejoratively. "Oh, yes, the spirit mages."

Roderich cast a wry glance at the much brighter and more restlessly burning fireball in Gilbert's hand. "That looks explosive."

"It's just your imagination."

"You go first."

"Oh, you're not getting anywhere without me, are you?"

"I want you to fall first.“

***

The moment the familiar space around him took shape, Roderich knew he was dreaming.

The ceiling was high above him, much higher than the old study rooms in which they were taught were really, and disappeared into inscrutable nothingness.

As in dreams, he didn't ask what he was doing and why instead of a row of windows, metre-high columns to his right disappeared into the grey of the dream; he simply walked forward and noticed that two figures at the other end of the room were talking to each other without noticing him in any way.

And as their voices floated over to him, he recognised his two schoolmates.

"I can't believe it! That is simply not true!"

Many a scholar had written long books about dreams. Sometimes the Void was wide and clear, they said, and sometimes it was thick and oppressive like the mist on the river banks of the southern swamps.

Roderich's dreams were always dense, focused, and that was exactly how Alfred's voice sounded. Roderich caught up with the two figures in their robes, and he dreamt of standing next to a column and listening to the two of them, an uninvolved viewer ...

"This is all I could find. It must work. It sounds like it will work. Can you help me, Alfred?"

"Are you insane! This counts as blood magic!"

"Keep your voice down..."

"No one can hear us here!"

"Who knows. Alfred..."

"Oh, right. I can only say one thing about that: If you ever do that, I will personally beat you so badly that you won't get up again! You can't..."

The dream Ivan clenched both hands into fists. "I don't want to die. Is that so hard to understand?"

Alfred swallowed. He raised one hand hesitantly, slowly, not quite touching Ivan. "That - who says you're going to die!"

Ivan gnashed his teeth. "I see them every night," he said softly. "Since my harrowing. I can't get rid of her either..."

Alfred made an uncomprehending face, then threw his hands in the air. "You mean your fear demons! Ignore them and kick their asses, what's the big deal!"

"My heart has stopped twice last week. In just one week. Sometimes I can barely get up in the morning. What do I have left?"

Alfred roared something; it was a hoarse, inarticulate scream, desperate and out of his soul; Roderich thought when he got up that he must have hit his head on the wall where his bed was standing right at that moment. "Go to the sisters!"

"They can do nothing but give me drinks..."

"That helps! I know that their mixtures help! Ivan, do you want to use your body to repair your health? How can you do that? How does that even work? You have to cut open your arms and make a big mess! I'm going to be sick! You're crazy just thinking about it!"

"Are you thinking about helping me?" Ivan - and that was why this dream was so fucked up - smiled.

Alfred grabbed Ivan by the belt of his robe and shook him. "No way, you lunatic!"

Ivan turned away, turned one shoulder towards Alfred. "I told you before. Only small experiments. Whether I can control my own blood... That's all I want to do."

"Maker, don't start that again! Blood magic was learned from demons by the first to master it! There can be nothing good about that! Ivan, please..."

Ivan half-heartedly broke free and said quietly and angrily: "I trust you and you alone, Alfred. I shouldn’t have said anything..."

"Maker!" Alfred threw his hands in the air, and his voice echoed distortedly through Roderich's head as it increased in volume. "If it would help, I would give you some of my blood. Do not dare to do any nonsense on your own! I would do anything for you. I'll wake you up each time. Every morning. I'll fight them with you. No matter how often you dream. W- just wake up and tell me... Don't you understand that, everything, everything to keep you alive, but what YOU are planning on doing is not possible!"

Ivan bit his lips and his eyes flitted nervously away from Alfred, across the room...

Roderich automatically retreated into the shady edges of this scene...

Then it was already over.

When he woke up, Roderich wondered what would have happened if the two of them had seen him.

He shook his head.As if any of them were even jokingly considering becoming a maleficar.As if Alfred would ever say ‘please’ in real life.

Roderich smiled, and then he seriously wondered if the anxiety about his last exam was so deep that he was already dreaming up such nonsense.

At breakfast he had already forgotten the dream and his little bump on the head.

Chapter Text

"The present Age was not actually meant to be the Dragon Age. Rather, in the last months of the Blessed Age, the Chantry was preparing for the proclamation of the Age of the Sun, after the symbol of the Empire of Orlais. [...] But [...] something very rare happened: One of the dreaded High Dragons emerged and began its path of destruction."

- From "The Diligent Theologian" by Brother Genitivi, Scholar of the Chantry, 9:25 Age of the Dragon

------

That day, a week after the long-forgotten dream and the conversation on the old tower, in class, something which was to start many other things happened.

Alfred was particularly mealy-mouthed that morning, and he sat next to Roderich in Geometry. So Roderich concentrated silently on finding the lines of their model pentagrams in the drawings of flowers on the Wounded Coast and buildings in Kirkwall. He slid the little wooden sticks, bits of mathematical figures and measuring sticks, across the page, making notes for their joint essay, and every time Alfred grabbed a stick and scowled at the neatly drawn illustrations, Roderich pretended to be blind and deaf to everything that was not his - and Alfred's! - work. It got on his nerves all the same.

Head enchantress Neann, for whose icy gaze most people had enough respect in themselves to be quiet, paced up and down the rows on silent students. Her gaze rarely softened. At all, only when a fellow mage was able to show her a quick solution of his own or a particularly difficult shape. She had taken Roderich aside that morning.

"Roderich," she had said, and her look had actually been milder than usual. "I would like to recommend a reading to you. Surely you have already read one or two of Brother Genitivi's works? His quest for knowledge, perhaps? Good. Read through the first volume of his History of Kirkwall; the part about the last great slave revolt. I highly recommend you read the eighth chapter." Roderich had felt his teacher's hand on his shoulder, just very briefly, and then Neann had said gravely and quietly, "I'm very much looking forward to seeing you in my course on the control of mana after you've passed your purification."

Roderich's breath caught, and he didn't know how or if to thank her, but she had brusquely let go of him and had rushed to her seat in front of the benches for the students, robes billowing, which, given her small, round stature, looked funny enough to attract the attention of the front row. So Roderich had sat down, and since then had been able to concentrate little enough on his work in front of him anyway. Because if that hadn't been a clue.... His teacher wanted to help him. He was dying to go to the library and take out the history books and....

Roderich sighed deeply as Alfred continued to stare gloomily at the book page, grumbling "I can't stand this nonsense", and drew an equilateral triangle over his sketch of an elf root leaf. The door to her study, opened with force, startled him upwards so that the triangle became an angle and a spidery line.

A young Templar in full armour came in at a quick stride and stopped as suddenly as he had appeared when Neann stopped, turned to him and slowly raised his eyebrows. "Recruit Keran," she greeted him. "What brings you to my classes?"

Templar recruit Keran inclined his head. "Chief Enchantress. Starting today, every lesson will be overseen by a Templar."

Neann frowned. Her tone was guarded, but all her impassiveness came out in her posture as she inquired, "You will have a Templar assist us in every single lesson?"

"Signs of depravity have been found in the coven," the young recruit said carefully. "Those are the orders."
Alfred stopped pricking his paper.

"I'm surprised that we, the teachers, didn't find out about this. We should be the first to notice anything."

"With all due respect, Enchantress, I can only relay what I have been told."

Neann said curtly, "Very well. Enter, recruit."

There was silence as the young Templar, not particularly happy himself, posted himself at the back of the room and silently leaned on his shield.

"The regulations were more lax once, too," Roderich heard Arthur murmur softly behind him. He turned around to discover Vasilca still nodding and Alfred's eyes wandering around the room instead of on their shared paper. Roderich gasped and gave up on not having to write the essay alone.

That was it. The first students were already starting to rustle and mumble to each other again. Additional Templars in the nooks and crannies of the Galgenburg were not that special.

When Neann finally let them go, Roderich would have liked to rush straight to the library to bury himself in his book. But alas, he still had a few otherwise regulated hours ahead of him. Roderich quietly packed up his papers and slowly strolled towards the hall. He had exactly ten free minutes. The thought of the library was still driving him crazy. If he didn't get something to do immediately....

Roderich looked up as a swarm of fellow students approached him. Francis was in the middle. He grinned when he spotted Roderich and waved. "Roderich! Come here!" Roderich faltered, a little surprised, then hesitantly came closer. "Yes...?""Felicks says that the coat of arms of our beloved Gallows looks like a grizzled demon with wings. We wonder what this demon represents."
"Disorder," said Gilbert, leaning against the wall and giving Roderich a brief wry grin. When Roderich watched him suspiciously and finally settled for a half-smile, Gilbert rolled his eyes and grimaced.

"Disorder?" Felicks asked. "that's boring."

"The man looks like he can't find his way around his own capes with hundreds of pockets on them. A demon of disorder might have gotten to him."

"Hmm... Suppose you were commissioned to design the coat of arms. What would your name be for it, Serahs?" asked Antonio in a disguised professorial voice.

"I Can't Find My Clothes," Gilbert repeated.

"I Had Too Many Strings And They Got Tangled," Francis suggested.

"Poor Tortured Man Badly Needs To Go To The Bathroom", Roderich piped up. Francis turned his head, laughed and slapped him on the shoulder.

"What about the Chantry, guys? What does their coat of arms say?" Somehow the others had formed a full circle again, and Roderich was standing in the group.

"Uhh..."

"We Have So Much Gold Left, We Can Afford A Sun?"

Gilbert scowled at the student who made that remark.

"Ahh, and the Templars?" inquired Toris. Enthusiasm infected the whole little crowd.

"...Sword flies?"

"Naah, boring." "Got something better, huh?" "Falcon Is Pierced By Sword..."
"Nah. Mask With Sword?"

"All boring."

"Kirkwall?"

"I think it looks like 'Templar Commander's Privates Grows Wings ...'"

"Shut up, Francis"

"Shut up, Francis"

"Francis, really, shut up," both his friends and Toris said at the same time.

Silence.

"Francis! I hate you!"

The Orlaisian put his head to one side innocently. "Felicks, don't be so sensitive."

"Nah, honestly, let's change the subject..."

"We're out of crests anyway. Unless one of you has seen this book with the drawings of all the tribal crests from the Storm Age-"

"No one reads such things but you, Antonio!"

"But it's terribly interesting! People even discover new drawings now and then, like the one in the low town of Kirkwall... Alfred and Ivan found something yesterday which they couldn't decipher either, an old badge, when-"

"Yeah, ugh, thanks, that's soo lame -" Felicks started, but Roderick dared interrupt him. "What did they find?"

"They talked about it. And wouldn't show it to me." Antonio pouted.

"I see, we'll just have to find out then..."

"You sure? What can you find here but hundred year old stones..."
"Where did they find their mysterious thing?"
"I don't know, just - Ahh, here they come!"

Roderich thought it must be about time to go to class. Really. Now. Only...The two just mentioned actually came around the corner, and Roderich, though uneasily stepping from one foot to the other, remained standing tensely.

Alfred's brow furrowed in an unusual frown, but he immediately grinned and came towards them elatedly as he recognised the small throng of classmates. Iwan's card-playing face didn't change much, but he trotted after Alfred levelly. "You've dug up some old badge, I hear?""Ahhh, yes of course!" Alfred always managed to make a face that said, "I'm jumping at the ceiling with excitement right now!" and blathered right on. "Ivan found this. It's a rather old coat of arms, and guess what -" Alfred turned his head questioningly as Ivan grabbed him by the wrist. The tall Nevarran stood beside him, rigid, and had gone very pale. "I've figured out what it is," he said quietly and very calmly. "I think we'll give it to one of the chief enchanters right now. And I'll tell them where I found it."

This had somehow been addressed only to Alfred, and a few words and pauses in this sentence Ivan emphasised slowly and emphatically, as if he wanted to tell Alfred - - Now listen to me very carefully and do what I say.
Too bad for him. Francis leaned over Ivan's shoulder and asked, "What have you found, mm?"
"What, how, so you found something?"
"Yes, exactly, tell me!""What exactly is it about?" "Oh, I've never seen THAT before." Francis was the only one not put off by Iwan's icy expression and leaned forward a little more. "Is that an old coat of arms of the church?"

"With a wall over it?" inquired Antonio cautiously from the background.

Roderich moved closer as curiously as everyone else. He blinked. Yes, that had happened somewhere before....

Iwan's grip on Francis' wrist was as hard as a vice. "Don't the pre-purification classes start soon?"

"Yes, now," Roderich said cautiously.

At precisely this moment, the situation would have cleared up, they would have dispersed, they would have been spared so many loud and silent screams - but corruption was in the world, and it came around the corner in the corridor of the castle.

By the time the heavy footsteps of armoured boots behind them sent them scattering, it was too late.

"What do we have here?"

The small patrol, consisting of only three Templars, came upon the little group of students almost as if they were simply going to walk past. But the foremost man, the only one without a helmet, stopped and let his cold gaze sweep over them. Alrik's mouth twisted into a hard line, and his ice-blue eyes lit up as he strode measuredly towards them. The two others in armour, a man and a woman, followed him.

"I don't think there's a single reason to be loitering in the corridor. At this hour."

The entire small cluster of students immediately and readily dissolved into many individual mages, nodding and trying to scurry away as quickly as possible.

Matthew somehow disappeared, slipping away along the wall without even pretending to have been there. He could do that, however he did it....

Alrik's eyes roamed over them. Gilbert looked as if he wanted to say something, but Alrik spoke. "This meeting is dissolved." The corner of his left mouth dropped a little. "What is there to discuss in this corridor?" His gaze bored into each in turn.

"Well, we were just..." Francis tried a polite tone and a charming smile, which froze rather quickly when the Templar to Alrik's right simply waved him off.

"You've got something," the Templar murmured softly to Alrik. "Better check."

Felicks turned his head away, and Roderich - Roderich gritted his teeth and did his best to look back calmly, not to look away, not to turn, not to make a face. He recognised Alrik's tone.

In every institution of Thedas, and every coven of mages, no matter how small, there was probably at least one bastard like him in the book. Ser Cannee took care of that here. Alrik, on the other hand, was more, and beyond.
Roderich had felt it often enough in the presence of the hard stance, the cold yet troubled gaze, and one afternoon he had once again scurried from the library to the dormitories via a diversion to avoid the piercing looks of the guards, and the hypothermic questions about what he was still doing in the corridors an hour after the time.

A Templar, who hardly anyone knew well because he talked little and patrolled a lot, was standing in an alcove with someone, and it took Roderich a moment to realise that this was a student he had pinned by the arm and against the wall, and that the girl was struggling. "Let me go, I swear by Andraste's flaming gaze that I will not be silent, and you know full well that people will believe me, I'll get pregnant, I'll tell everyone I meet, let me go, I'll turn your insides to acid as soon as you're not careful-" Her head had hit the window with an ugly sound as the Templar cursed softly and called after her, "If you're tranquil, you'll do what I ask anyway!"

Alrik had once witnessed an adult student trying to flee. Hiis girlfriend and their child together were being sent to other circles, as per the regulations, and had taken him away without question, without questioning, without consulting his superiors, and as a tranquil person, had returned to his home.

When Meredith had summoned him, he had suggested a general tranquility of all mages, instead of the traditionally ingrained harrowing, according to the rumors in the circle. Since then, something nasty crawled down Roderich's spine whenever Alrik came too close. Like everyone else, Roderich unconsciously moved a little towards the wall and hunched his shoulders, watching as Ivan slowly slid the small, narrow metal work into the folds of his robe pocket in front of him and Alfred reached for Ivan's hand, as if to make sure it was really empty. >The Templar, whose eyes couldn't even be seen properly through his mask, nodded to Alfred and Ivan. They both backed away a few unconscious millimeters, and Alfred grabbed Ivan's wrist. "This-" he began, but Iwan shook his head uneasily. "That's nothing. I want to show the First Enchanter a - a project." Toris didn't manage to slip away before the unyielding gaze of the woman next to Alrik pinned him to the spot. "We want to know what this is about," she said tersely. "Why are you here?" "It was really just a conversation," Francis tried again. "About - the coats of arms - of this castle." "We're not interested in that," the Templar in the helmet said impatiently. "What did you just slip into your pocket? Show us now."

"I - can - explain." Ivan faltered. "That - that... I want to show it to the First Enchanter first. Only to the First Enchanter."

Ivan received a slap in the face with a leather glove.

Ser Alrik only grimaced a little whenever a Templar went too far, and never called anyone to account, especially not his Templars. He just crossed his arms and watched Ivan, who slumped over.

"What are you doing!" Alfred's voice rose unsteadily. "We - want to see the First Enchanter. Now."

"There's nothing he can see that we can't look at. So?" Alrik didn't even bat an eyelash. Not only did he not protect the mages entrusted to him, he did the opposite, thought Roderich, as the Templar stood in front of Ivan and Alfred faster than Roderich could take a startled breath.

"Speak," she repeated. When Ivan didn't respond, just stared at the ground and seemed to disappear even more between his shoulders, and Alfred grabbed his arm, opening his mouth, the Templar simply grabbed Ivan and tugged at his robes. Alfred made a defensive gesture, grabbed her arm - and Ivan jerked back, making a small noise.

The spirit blast caused Roderich to stagger as the wave of Ivan's magic engulfed him. The blast was not as powerful as that of a specialized spirit mage, but it was strong and unexpected enough to send the Templars reeling for a moment. Ser Alrik reached into his pocket, and Felicks gasped, "Lyrium!"

The means by which Templars could also go into the void and kill a mage.

This one time in the tower, Roderich had stood in the shadows, breathing heavily, not knowing what to do, what to do, what... And when the girl's hurried footsteps and her sobbing gasps and the Templar's heavy steps in the other direction had faded, he had scurried to his room, anger bubbling in his stomach, and emptiness in his head. He stood there, on his spot, just as uselessly now, watching as the Templar struck Ivan once more, turned his arm behind his back and pulled his hand out of his robe pocket; Ivan held the amulet he had just shown around clasped between his fingers.

"That's not... what it looks like," he groaned, and Roderich felt strangely suspended, beside himself, as if in a dream, as the stoic giant's voice rang out with choked - pleading? Desperation?

Well - well, well. Surely there was a reasonable explanation - -

None of the others moved. Alfred groaned, and said quickly, and fiercely, "Listen, Sers! We've just found this. In - in - in the castle. Between - stones.That is true. Don't be too quick to judge! He wanted to take the amulet to the First Enchanter. Like I just said. That-"

"...Is all true, of course." The templar behind Alrik snorted. "Where would you get such an amulet, other than by a few of you passing it on?" He cast a disgusted glance at the innocently shiny thing in his sister's hand. "What did he just attack us for if you're so innocent?"

Alfred reached for Iwan's hand, even if it meant moving uncomfortably close to Ser Alrik and tilting his head back to look the templar in the eye. "That - because he's afraid, aren't you seeing that? Let us... explain! We want to speak to the First Enchanter!"

"Orsino," the Templar said coolly, but with a certain yieldingness in her voice. "Isn't he in his chambers right now?"

Alrik made a fierce, dismissive gesture with his hand. "Do we need the First Enchanter if the situation is so unfortunate? Take him with you," Alrik continued, a strangely agitated tremor in his voice. "Since neither Meredith nor Cullen are here, I'll have to sort this out."

"What's not what it looks like?" the woman asked harshly, unclasping Ivan's fingers, who stopped resisting and hung his head again.

"I really just found it," he said, his voice rising again. "Just - found it...""What's - oh," Alrik's voice dropped a whole octave. "This," he took the amulet from the Templar's hand and looked at it. "THIS," he said, "is worse than anything I could have suspected." He pierced Ivan with his gaze, fire and cold and a perverse joy in it. "This student," he put a hand on Ivan's shoulder. "Carries an amulet of the Black Church. WHO else knows about this?" He looked at them all as if he would like to execute them one by one. "Talk now."

Roderich understood, but didn't want to accept it as real.

The thing in Iwan's hand showed the coat of arms of the Church of Tevinter, right.

About as bad as if Ivan had denied Andraste's existence, the prophet herself.

When had the situation gotten weird?
"What" Alfred sounded as if the ground was disintegrating beneath his feet.

"Wait, you can't..."

Ivan stood rigidly in one spot. "I didn't do anything," he said.

After a nod from Alrik, Iwan was immediately grabbed by the Templar's arm.

"I think," Francis' voice came hoarsely from the side, "That you MUST take the First Enchanter to hear a student, and I think that the Commander and the Captain..."

Alrik gave a short laugh, and looked at Francis from narrowed eyes. "We will," he said curtly. "And no, the commander and the captain are not necessary, but they will certainly agree to my decision - whatever it turns out to be."

The other Templar hesitated. Then he too reached for Ivan, and as they pulled him forward, Ivan raised his arm -

"No," he said hoarsely. "Let me... I want to talk to a teacher! You can't lock me up without witnesses, without -"

"Take me with you," Alfred said immediately, and harshly. "You must hear us out. You can't take this amulet and assume we own it, want to own it, YOU can't do that!"

"I have done nothing," Ivan repeated again quietly, and all the more emphatically.

"We'll question him," Alrik said curtly. "Take him with you."

Alfred shot forward, almost jumping into Alrik's arms to stop him.

"He really didn't do anything!" he shouted so loudly that Roderich flinched. His voice echoed as if lost in the long corridor. "Wait, before you do anything, what are you going to do, what do you want to do, you can't do anything.

"I'm coming too," someone whispered quietly; it was probably Vasilca...

"No, no, wait!" Alfred almost toppled over, he was leaning forward so hard. "Wait, wait, why don't you take me with you! I was there, I'm a witness, he didn't do anything! This is a misunderstanding, and you know it, you have to believe us!"

Everyone else was still staring as the three Templars hesitated once more and Alrik's gaze slid thoughtfully over Alfred. "We'll ask you all more questions, I think," he said. "Perhaps. For now, we'll question the owner of this amulet alone. And you all go. Immediately. To your classes."

The whole group hesitated.

Ivan still seemed to be in shock.

The three Templars, Ivan in the middle, got to the end of the corridor when Alfred moved and ran after them. Alfred yelled at the top of his lungs, "You can't do that, and you know it. Damn it, Alrik, everyone knows that not even Meredith listens to you, you can't enforce that, let him go! Into the void with you bastards, you can't do that! You, you can't get away with it, I won't let you, by Andraste's flaming-"

Ivan made a noise deep in his throat, and Gilbert jerked forward as Alrik grabbed Alfred by the throat, pinning him against the wall.

They all felt the invisible red veil creeping quietly under their skin, unpleasant, sticky as the air before a thunderstorm, cutting the connection to the void, drawing the magic from their veins...

Alfred rattled, twitched, and Roderich whimpered softly because his legs wouldn't obey him, because he wanted to start running, to do something, because his head made him stop in place but gave him nothing, and so he stood there paralyzed, just staring.

"And you're next," Alrik said hoarsely. "I swear to you. By Andraste's flaming clothes." He smiled, and slammed Alfred's head against the wall once, his armored hand still around his neck.

"Alfred, be silent now," Ivan said suddenly. He was pale as a sheet. His gaze somehow hung crookedly on Alrik's hand. "G-Geh. Leave it."

Alfred blinked, looked up at the ceiling, probably feeling the effect of the blow against the wall. His gaze found Ivan's, and he shook his head. "You're my friend," he whispered. "Do you think I'm just going to let you be so-"

"Touching," Alrik cut him off, and prepared to leave for good, with Ivan....

The veil lifted again. Alrik must have used the lyrium to prevent them from casting spells.
Roderich felt himself breathing again.

And Ivan put an arm on the Templar's shoulder, wanting to pull him along again. The gesture seemed grotesquely trusting.

The electrical energy crackled ominously, and before anyone reacted, the bright flash shot out of Ivan's hand, through the slits in the mask.

The lightning froze the man in his armor, screaming as the light hissed through his helmet and into his eyes, destructive and fueled by the mana in Ivan's body.

"Ivan, what are you doing," came from Felicks, hoarse and desperate.

He attacked his guards.

The ground beneath them crumbled, hissing upward, and a block of stone grazed the templar, crashing against Ser Alrik's chest.

As the knight attacked Ivan with the unsheathed dagger, Ivan shifted to a dark veil, the magic realm on the fine line between permitted and forbidden.

A nightmarish, leaden feeling... The templar shook it off and stabbed with precision.

Ivan threw himself to the ground, the blade passed over his head, and he screamed "Let - me - go!"

"But certainly not," Alrik had recovered, and this time they opened their unnaturally dense, warped connection to the void, intoxicated by years of taking Lyrium, closed and as a group, and this time Roderich felt nauseous as he felt all the mana being drained from his veins.

But three Templars couldn't control ten mage students, could they?

Chapter Text

Vasilca raised one hand, hesitantly. There was a bluish veil around his arm. He had obviously barely been caught by the Templar rampart.
"No!" Toris hissed, "Are you mad! This is your death sentence-"

Even if they fought along, Roderich thought, strangely detached from himself, that they could try, but even if they got through the armor and especially through the helmet slits, with the elements and curses and clutching at the Templar's mind, they would in turn respond with sword strikes and draining their mana - no one would kill anyone, right? And then, then they were condemned.

They all felt themselves being cut off from their own mana, from the void, as if in a cage; none of them could do anything in a fistfight against an armored Templar; all their power, energy was gone, leaving them reeling powerlessly; there was really only one substitute for mana, but none of them would even dream of using it -

Alrik yanked Ivan around roughly, and Ivan slammed his hand over Alrik's polished, angular arm armor.

A tiny bit of blood pooled on his forearm.

It quickly became a tiny bit more, and ran down Ivan's arm in a trickle.

He and Alrik looked into each other's eyes for a moment, judge and executioner and the rashly condemned man, and whatever Ivan saw in Alrik's eyes -

Felicks whimpered as Ivan raised his arm.
Everyone knew that Ivan was simply panicking, everyone.

Alrik had unleashed something -

Alrik drew his sword, but before he could reach Ivan and truly mortally wound the student, fire appeared, twisting through the air, strangely hot and dark, and grabbed Alrik's arms like two hands.

Ivan dragged his fingernails through the cut on his arm, and his eyes turned inward. He moved his hands slowly to his sides, gritting his teeth.

Roderich held his breath. Ivan's hand movement alone revealed what the hands of fire were meant to perform; and he wondered how that little bit of blood could be enough to tear someone apart...

It wasn't enough.

Alrik turned with the fire, not coming out, but Iwan's face contorted with strain as well, and then the Templar simply struck him in the head with the flat of her sword, as hard as she could.

She struck a second blow, deliberately with the blunt pommel of her sword and without leaving a bleeding wound, and as Ivan buckled and the fire dimmed, she brought her sword with all her strength against Ivan's skull, causing him to slump.

The fire went out.

Alrik was breathing heavily.

The students still remained rigid, and when Alfred moved towards Ivan, who was lying on the ground, Vasilca came to life again; he grabbed Alfred by the arm and held him tightly.

Alrik got safely to his feet again. He looked at them all, with a gaze so intense that it sent shivers down Roderich's spine. "You," he said quietly. "Go. Now."

And the students obeyed him.

Alfred was still standing there, alone.

***

Roderich sat dutifully in class; he couldn't concentrate for a minute.

The mood of the others was also sombre and restless; hardly anyone spoke to their teacher.

"Where is Alfred?" asked Head Enchanter Brannon at one point, after everyone had been reading silently again and no one had answered his question.

"Something's happened," Arthur said suddenly, before anyone else could respond. "He's been left alone. Do you want me to check on him?"

Brannon's eyebrows drew together. "Why does he think he can stay away from class for anything other than illness?"

Gilbert cleared his throat. Antonio spoke. "Ivan has been taken to the dungeons by Alr - by Ser Alrik, Ser Donnis, and Ser Nillan."

Brannon looked puzzled for a moment. "Without our knowledge?" he asked, anger creeping into his voice. "Without telling the chief enchanters?"

"It all happened a bit quickly," Francis began.

"Does First Enchanter Orsino know about this?"

Silence. "That's possible."

Brannon didn't hesitate. "I'll take care of it. Right away. Francis, you come with me and tell me what happened on the way. The rest of you stay here and Toris, you read this text" Brannon pulled something from the shelf "to the others. You listen to it carefully and discuss it. Arthur, will you go and check on Alfred?" Arthur stood up immediately. "He still can't just not be where we expect him to be. He should come to class." Brannon thought for a moment. "Someone should accompany you."

Roderich didn't know exactly why he stood up.

Maybe it was because he couldn't stand himself and his script any longer. "I can come with you," he said, wondering if it was only in his head that his voice sounded so strange.

Arthur looked at him in surprise for a moment, then nodded, and Brannon left them, Francis in tow.

Arthur half stormed out of the door, but then waited for Roderich, who hurried after him; he was obviously deep in thought. He looked at Roderich thoughtfully for a moment and said, "I think I'll talk to him. Thanks for coming along, though."

Roderich nodded silently and made to follow Arthur. "Do you know where he is?" he asked.

"Sometimes... sometimes he goes to that part of the basement where there's nothing, you know. Cool and dim. I think we'll start there."

Roderich faltered. He was sure he knew where Alfred was. Because - there they had discovered it, the three of them, he, Alfred and Ivan; the corridor that appeared in his dreams.

Roderich's thoughts turned back to Ivan. Blood magic... How could he have learned that, why had he done that - and now that he had seen it, he knew that this magic radiated something dark, but that it was also powerful, and not the nightmare he had suspected. Just... powerful, and destructive. But - wasn't that a lot of things?

And what would the Templars do? Possession of a forbidden amulet could perhaps be talked out of with "I found it", and get away with it if the Templars kept a close eye on you from then on, but blood magic... Roderich swallowed, and wondered where executioners of the Gallows Castle were buried.

Alfred was not where Roderich thought he was, but by the cellar exit, not far from the rooms where the kitchen stored their supplies for the winter. He sat huddled on the floor, his head resting on his arms folded across his knees.

Arthur walked slowly towards him, bending his knees in front of him.

Alfred raised his head. His nose was red and his eyes swollen shut. His gaze slid over Roderich, then lingered on Arthur. "I want to find Ivan," he said hoarsely.

Arthur reached out a hand carefully and then placed it on Alfred's shoulder. "What happened?" he asked. "Alrik took Ivan with him?"
Alfred nodded. He swallowed, and then it burst out of him. "He was just scared, you know? Just scared! He... he might not live much longer! And he was desperate to go on living, and he's been reading through medicine books, and he has a problem with his heart, so he tried blood magic, even though I told him not to. But - he definitely wouldn't have gone any further, you know? He - he, he attacked Alrik. With blood magic, because he wanted to do something to him, anyone could see that!"

"Just scared?" Arthur asked calmly. "No ghosts? Demons?"

Alfred looked at him angrily, then hissed out the air he had been holding. "Yes. I... I told him!"

"Well... what are you supposed to do about a demon of despair? Or fear?"

"Fight," said Alfred. "Fight, and that's what we would have done. ...We picked up an amulet in the cellars, really just found it, and thought about what it was, and then we realized it was an amulet of the Imperial Church, the one of Tevinter. We were shocked... We weren't going to do anything with it! We just wanted to see if it could do... anything... And Alrik wanted it - I don't know what he wanted. Alrik always wants the worst, doesn't he? That... that bastard is crazy. And Ivan had too much and attacked him. I think he knew... maybe he wanted to escape. We were thinking about breaking out of the castle, you know that? That's why we were in the corridors in the first place."

Roderich held his breath.

Alfred swallowed dryly again. "I was trying to sleep. Tried to find Ivan in my dreams. But the nurses won't give me anything, no sleeping pills, no hallucinogens... there must be something, isn't there, Arthur? You know all about that, herbs, potions, Dalish magic." Alfred's eyes fastened on Arthur. "Help me."

"What?" Arthur raised his eyebrows, shaking his head half reassuringly, half angrily. "You know that's not possible. You can't find anyone else in a dream. It's always ghosts that fool you."

Roderich understood what they were talking about; still, he didn't think he fully understood. Find someone in a dream? That was ridiculous...

"With a lot, with strong magic, it's possible!" Alfred shook his head, and scrambled up all at once, new energy from somewhere. "You have to help me. He must still be here. I need to talk to him, and if it's at night... Couldn't they have let him! They just wouldn't give him another chance to talk; they wouldn't even let me go with him to defend him, where did they put him, I want to go down there..."
Arthur put a hand on his arm. "Maybe you'd better really drink a sleeping pill. No one will let you down to the dungeons. I'll take you to the church sisters..."

"No!" Alfred hissed. "No, they won't help me either. I don't want anyone! I want to go to the dungeons..."

"Good," said Arthur quietly "Good, then calm down and then think... There's nothing more you can do, Alfred. You can only try to talk to the captain and the commander. But everything else - you know what blood magic means."

Alfred made a noise and shook his head violently.

Arthur stood stolidly beside him. "Tell Brennan that Alfred urgently needs a bed and I'll see him to it," he said to Roderich over the students. "I'll look after him."

And Roderich knew he didn't want to know anything in case the two of them wanted to discuss something that wasn't meant for him. He really didn't want to know anything more... "All right," he said, and made his way back to the classroom. In this empty corridor, his own footsteps echoed unusually loudly in his ears.

***

The candle provided far too little light, but Roderich had bent his head over the pages, blocking out the flickering light in the breeze, and was searching.

The part about the last slave uprising in Kirkwall, Neann had said.

The most famous, and the most important to Kirkwall's history, had been led by Radun; an unusual name for Tevinter and the times, Roderich thought.

It began with a slave from what was now Ferelden named Radun...

Roderich took a slow, deep breath and read on carefully. Ferelden? Should he feel addressed...?

...more likely that the magister in question was not looking for a new student. According to his mother's private records (Family Tree Chapter 5), he had only escaped death at the hands of his best pupil by poisoning him first. It is said in the stories about Radun's followers that Tarnan, apart from his identity as a Fereldan, did not have the right inner attitude and was too talkative, so that it must have seemed too risky for any magister to take him on as a pupil.

Roderich's hair stood on end.

Not the right attitude and too talkative a mind

He skimmed the rest of the chapter.

Was that really what Neann wanted to tell him?

a suitable inner attitude and a mind that is too talkative

the appropriate inner attitude
Roderich thought of Ivan and Alfred and he felt sick. He kept turning the pages until the lines danced before his eyes. The early uprisings in Kirkwall, the late ones... someone kept referring to Radun, to his follower, to the slow fall of Tevinter that had begun in his outposts.

Roderich thought he had his answer. My inner attitude, huh.

He stood up, returned his book, and slowly made his way down to the students' rooms.

Roderich didn't know what to do now. Neann wanted to help him, and yet he hadn't made him any wiser.

What am I supposed to do? Bow to Alrik?

For a moment, Roderich was once again afraid of what awaited him. His life would always be here, here, researching, writing, in the tower, perhaps with his own writing chamber, perhaps with conversations on the old tower and in the classroom; perhaps once, if there should be a flood and the city needed it, outside; if a war or a corruption should break out, then he would see the world that had been denied him, but only destroyed, in a state of war.

He could only be free in the void, and dangers lurked there, they were told over and over again; they would always be haunted by their personal nightmares and demons, more than any other mortals.
Maybe it wasn't a bad thing to be tranqil, Roderich thought, though he didn't want to think that way. They were the only mages who could leave the coven to work in noble houses where the fate of the world turned.

They had no fear.

They had no feelings at all.

Roderich almost didn't notice that someone was trying to pass him on the stairs to the writing rooms.

He gave the person a wide berth, mumbling an apology, until he almost fell down the steps in shock. "Ivan!" he gasped. "Ivan, by the Maker, you're here, what happened..." Then Roderich really had to brace himself against the wall as Ivan turned his head towards him.

Roderich noticed the tattoo before his eyes.

The sun symbol of the church was red and swollen at the edges, as if it had just been engraved.

Strands of Ivan's hair fell over his maltreated forehead. He pushed them to one side and furrowed his eyebrows thoughtfully. Then he somehow recognized Roderich and turned to him fully. "Can I help you?"

Roderich's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

The stone wall behind him reassured him, cool and solid.

Ivan's large eyes looked out into the world, silent and tranquil.

***
First Enchanter Orsino was a small, slender elf with slicked-back white hair and a crooked wand of magic in his hand that looked like something only the Dalish would use - and yet he had held his own as First Enchanter in Kirkwall. It was because of the quiet dignity with which he carried himself, and the intransigence beneath all the soft blue of his eyes, that the Templar Commander respected him enough not to interrupt him, which she usually liked to do.

He looked miserable, and seemed to have gained more wrinkles overnight. "Yesterday, a student used blood magic in this castle and attacked three Templars." He paused. "It was triggered by the student feeling cornered." The beady eyes flew over them all. "That's usually the last straw needed to bring dark magic practiced in secret to light." He shook his head. "Never allow yourself to even think about practicing forbidden magic. We explain to you again and again why it is important to keep yourself under control, and the purification does the rest. As soon as we as magicians use our abilities to the full, we become more powerful and the world around us becomes more dangerous because a second one opens up - and this makes us dangerous. Be aware of that and be careful, always." Neann stood next to him with his hands clasped. Orsino sighed softly. "Normal mortals go into the void and wander in it in their dreams without changing it. But mages go into the void and are changed by it. Templars who consume lyrium do too, by the way. Always know that the void is in your head. You can also push it back again. You are responsible for your skills. You know that, but we need to say it more often. Commander Meredith will also have something to say about it."

Orsino had probably finished his speech.

Alfred had still not reappeared, Roderich noticed.

Neann put his hands at his sides. "That is a terrible and tragic story. Never repeat it. How do you feel about someone practicing blood magic among you - even if you may not know much about what is involved in this dark form of magic? Think about it carefully." Her gaze met Roderich's and quickly slid away; then she looked back at him. "What do you think?"

Roderich's fingers dug into the palms of his hands.

He thought of Tarnan, and slowly lifted his head to look at Neann. "We're always told how important it is that we control our emotions," he said. "I've come to understand that control is the most important thing I can do to make the most of my abilities and never harm the world."
Orsino looked at him in surprise, and thoughtfully. He greeted her with a nod on his way out and asked Neann something in a lowered voice.

She shook her head. Orsino's gaze swept over Roderich. Only very briefly. He said something.

Neann nodded, and her shoulders slumped. She looked relieved.

Roderich's heart beat faster.

Oh.

***

Roderich saw Alfred again outside the administration offices.

Alfred had wrapped his arms around Ivan's shoulders and was crying.

Roderich wanted to back away, really, except behind him were the squeaky stairs, which Alfred must have somehow missed when Roderich had gone up them, and in front of him was Chief Enchanter Brennan's writing room, and that was where he wanted to go.

Alfred's hands clenched into fists on Ivan's back, and he gave a stifled laugh. "No use punching you now, is there?"

Roderich changed his mind and carefully and slowly walked backwards. After all, he could climb the stairs again very loudly in a few minutes...

"You're a hero, you know that?" Alfred continued talking quietly, and Roderich wondered why he didn't care that someone might even be listening in. "You wanted to kill Alrik, didn't you?" Roderich faltered before he could take the first step onto the wooden staircase. "I should have done it. But I don't know anything about blood magic. None at all. You do. Hah..."

"Blood magic is problematic," Ivan said with a furrowed brow, placing a friendly hand on Alfred's arm. "If you don't know anything about it, that's just as well."

Roderich turned his head carefully, sweating and praying that they wouldn't notice him. He had no idea how to react if they did. And he didn't think he wanted to hear what they were talking about.

Alfred sank against the touch, and laughed again, somehow broken. "I couldn't reach you," he whispered. "I was looking for you, really. Arthur even bought some herbs off Solvitius. You know, the merchant who comes sometimes... remember him? - Nothing. I didn't find you."

Ivan stood patiently and listened without reacting very much. Roderich stepped slowly onto the first step, letting his foot roll slowly, and then onto the second. Alfred rested his forehead against Ivan's. "And it's my turn next, he said, yes? He can forget about that. You're gone... for you it's... v-gone... But I'll see it through; I promise you, I'll get through with it."

Ivan's look was polite, and irritated; he pushed Alfred a little away from him, the way you push a babbling child a little away from you so you can look him in the eye, and asked, "What are you going through with?"

Pause. Alfred stood there rigidly. "Right," he whispered. "Right, you can betray me, can't you?" He hugged Ivan again, who patiently let him do it. His fingers clawed tremblingly into the fabric on Ivan's back, Roderich managed three more steps and Alfred murmured, "I promised you something. I don't think I can keep it now. Because you didn't let me! But in return... I'll keep going. I promise you that."

Roderich slid silently along the wall, down one step after another, walking even more quietly than he had come.

Chapter Text

"Be that as it may, the High Dragon destroyed the Orlaisian side of the Frost Peak Mountains, forcing thousands to flee north and ultimately leading to the Ferelden rebels winning the Battle of the Dane. As a result, many believe that the Dragon Age will bring massive and violence-driven change to all of Thedas. But that remains to be seen."

- From The Diligent Theologian, by Brother Genitivi, Scholar of the Church, 9:25 Age of the Dragon.

The past

The quick footsteps of three boys echoed in the corridor.
They were actually too old to play hide-and-seek, Roderich thought, but he couldn't suppress his broad grin as he opened his eyes to go and find the other two.
Alfred usually picked some really inconvenient but actually pretty well concealed hiding place, so Roderich would probably look first at the crumbling rubble at the other end of the shady hall.
Ivan was the little genius who did things like pick up an old set of Templar armor, or once a stuffed animal head that one of the head enchanters wanted to throw away, and just stood up with it. You didn't think there'd be anyone in it other than, well, a Templar, or the box and the ugly old stuffed head on it. There were no such hiding places here, however, Roderich was sure of that. They had gone to the least frequented part of the whole castle to play hide-and-seek undisturbed and to increase the thrill of the seeker-can't-hear-me.
Roderich tiptoed quietly through the silent room.
They had agreed that they would play hide and seek in a new place each time. This time they had gone further than before - from the corridors of the Templar quarters, where they had either been acknowledged with a sigh, smiled at good-naturedly or shooed away angrily - to the storerooms, where they had gotten into a lot of trouble, to here; all that was stored here were potatoes, as it was damp and dark, and then, apart from a few empty halls, corridors and barred shafts, there was nothing. They had asked the appeaser Mellana, and she had told them that many many years ago slaves had carried messages and goods and metal through the shafts, and dug passages for all that and their own secret passages where they met to discuss their rebellion - deep under Kirkwall, where they had to dig the mines. But they had been destroyed in the last battle for the Gallows Castle, slaves against Tevinter officials and magisters, and they no longer existed. But the old mine shafts under Kirkwall still existed; so labyrinthine and so large that they formed an entire district beneath Kirkwall Lowtown.It was dangerous there, full of poison gas and during the day you only saw dull light from the plants that felt at home on the wet stones and the stuffy air there and from lonely lanterns that someone had set up there if they had survived long enough, and shady characters were killing themselves down there today. Roderich would have preferred to get Brother Genitivi's travel book from the library and continue reading about Kirkwall, even though he found Mellana's stories about the Deep City creepy. He found it a bit boring to still be playing hide and seek, and a bit embarrassing - after all, he was already 12. But if you wanted someone to play with, you had to make sacrifices, he had learned, and as soon as the search and the not being found started, he also felt the excited buzzing in his veins. And Roderich had finally made good friends with Alfred and Ivan since he had arrived in the gallows castle three years ago, so he played hide and seek.
Roderich thought he heard a suppressed snort somewhere, like someone swallowing their laughter. He immediately went in the direction from which the sound echoed off the rough walls. The fallen stone blocks, just as he had thought - only where exactly could Alfred be? Roderich looked searchingly into a corner, at eye level, a little above him; just square, and crumbled stone...
He scanned the wall and was beginning to feel stupid when he finally noticed a draught on his leg. He only noticed it because it was unpleasantly cold, so he looked down. Aha! Roderich narrowed his eyes. There was a tiny glimmer of light at knee height in front of him, and it wasn't obscured by anything angular or crumbly, but something that looked quite soft. Roderich pricked it and Alfred squeaked.
"Ooch Menno" Alfred groaned and wriggled and pushed and squeezed his way out of the dark gap between the stone rubble. "Maaann that was uncomfortable, why weren't you quicker!" He still sounded incredibly proud of his hiding place. Roderich, who had no idea where to look for Ivan, stopped in front of the stone wall and leaned down. "How did you find this?"
Alfred shrugged his shoulders. "There was just a small shaft between the stones."
"Isn't that dangerous?" Roderich looked worriedly up at the blocks piled up above their heads. They had played hide and seek near here before, and had been seriously warned about falling stone.
"No, why?" Alfred looked at their lone half-hall with satisfaction. "I'll give you a hint: Ivan came up with something similar!"

"That is NOT fair!" Ivan's head popped up; to Roderich's horror, so far up that you had to climb very quietly over some rocks to even crouch that far up. "He should have found me all by himself!"
"Up there?" asked Roderich in amazement. "I would never have looked there!"
"The round is over now anyway! Besides, it's really cold up there, I know that!" shouted Alfred, a little too loudly for the fact that they didn't want to give themselves away down here.
Ivan grumbled and slowly began to climb back down.
"What does it look like up there anyway?" Alfred wanted to know. "Have you spotted another gap or something?"
"No," Ivan held on to a ledge and felt with his foot for the next solid stone underneath him. "The wall starts again up there."
"From the building?" asked Roderich.
"Yes."
Roderich looked thoughtfully back at Alfred's hiding place. "There's light down there."
"Where?"
"In - somewhere behind your hiding place. The gap is brighter than the rest of the stones here."
"That's why I found it! - Oh. You mean there's something there?"
"Maybe a window?"
"Or an exit into the courtyard?" Ivan slid down the last bit and approached curiously.
They all put their heads together, but Roderich was the first to stick his head into the gap. There was a glimmer of light in a gap between the stone blocks, yes... He pushed carefully against a heavy boulder lying in the path of the glimmer of light. It did not move. Roderich pushed against it in frustration, and the stone simply fell, rolling off the ledge on which it lay and rolling downwards out of Roderich's sight with a rumbling sound. The gap through which the faint light glowed had grown a little wider. Roderich took a deep breath and pulled his head back again.
The other two bumped their heads together in an attempt to imitate Roderich at the same time and first, and Alfred complained while rubbing his head.
"Did you push a stone away? That sounded like it was rolling really slowly." Ivan managed to squeeze in first and take a look.
Nevertheless, after much deliberation and back and forth, Alfred was the first to finally dare to push himself all the way back into the gap. He wriggled, pushed, you could still hear something rumbling, and finally he shouted "Look, look!"
"We can't see anything," explained Ivan impatiently, because Alfred's legs were all they could see."Yes, but look!" Suddenly it was only Alfred's feet that they could see, and then Alfred squealed, first enthusiastically and then in horror, and then he was gone and they heard him plop down loudly and painfully. "Auuaaa! Ahh... wooow, look, look!"
Roderich and Iwan looked at each other before Iwan crawled back into the gap - or, by now, the little shaft - and checked on their mutual friend.
"Oh, Alfred, how are we going to get you out of there?" Ivan's voice sounded muffled.
Alfred's voice sounded even more muffled, but Roderich thought he understood "...but glow!".
Ivan scrambled back out again. "Down there, you fall into a big gap. Like a piece of corridor. And there's a plant growing there that glows."
"A - a" Mellana had used a difficult word. "Flech-te?"
Ivan's eyes widened. "Maybe!" He turned to Alfred's voice, which was shouting something again - "Where are you, where are you?" -then back to Roderich. "Either I climb down and we form a robber's ladder, or you hold my legs and I'll hold Alfred and we'll pull him out."
They tried it, with the result that Alfred scolded and grumbled and bumped his head somewhere, and Roderich's arms gave way. They were about to make a second attempt when Alfred down below - from what Ivan said as soon as he pulled his head out of the shaft - started dragging some rocks and building a sort of staircase back to their stone gap.
"We'd best help him," said Ivan, and simply climbed up after Alfred. He also cried out as he slid down the last section and landed on Alfred's new staircase.
Roderich climbed carefully after Iwan and first stuck his head forward into the gap to look at everything before he preferred to go down feet first. There was stone all around him, and Roderich squeezed forward quickly, narrowing his eyes. He smelled the cool, musty, damp air, and the moment he realized it was coming from below, he saw it too, for he could just barely hold on to a protruding chunk of stone with his hands as the stone all around him simply stopped.
They were stuck in a tiny, short shaft here - perhaps an old window, or a connecting shaft, he thought, remembering the slaves of old. Channels and conveyors, Mellana had said, even if the children hadn't quite understood what such things were good for. The shaft, which sloped downwards and wasn't even particularly dangerous, led into a passageway, that much Roderich could see. Just below him was the stone staircase that had been started - more of a heap - behind it was Alfred's grinning face, and then a strange, flat plant with long, thin arms that seemed to have stuck itself to the wall. Its thick knots actually glowed. In this faint light, you could see that there was heavy earth beneath him, hard-packed with endless weight, and rotten wood; the walls were made of solid stone, as in the whole castle. "Where are we?" whispered Roderich, fascinated, and only now did he remember that he wanted to climb forward with his legs. But that was difficult because then you couldn't see anything and had to bend terribly. He slowly and hesitantly pushed himself forward and grabbed the stone steps below him with one hand to support himself.
So that's how you fell out of a stone shaft into a pile of loosely stacked stones. Roderich's stomach hurt and he grimaced, but it wasn't quite so bad because, firstly, the height of the fall wasn't that high and, secondly, Alfred had rushed forward to grab his shoulders and catch the fall. He had half succeeded.
Roderich picked himself up and rubbed the sore spot where he had landed.
It smelled strange down here, and not good. But the plant was fascinating. The fact that no one would discover them here and they had their very own secret chamber was exciting. Roderich looked around. "How big is this place?" he asked.
"It's a passageway," Ivan came, a chunk of stone in his hand, which he placed neatly on their sad staircase. "I don't know how long it is."

"Shall we go and see?" Alfred asked excitedly.
"Maybe we should build a safe staircase first, so that we can get back safely, and only then..." Roderich began.
The other two pulled him along.
It was dark and smelled of old, discarded vegetables that the cooks didn't even want to put in the meat soup anymore, and something else. Sometimes they had to feel their way forward, and once they even had to crawl. The only thing that really worried Roderich was that it was always downhill. Sometimes it was so steep that they almost thought they were going straight ahead; and sometimes it was so steep that they had to slide a little. Even Alfred felt a little queasy, as Roderich could tell from his rapid breaths as they crawled one after the other under the heavy stone stuck above them. But somewhere along the way, a small luminous plant grew, as they had quickly christened it. The further they got, the stranger the air became, and the more often the rock was damp and slippery. When Ivan, who was crawling at the very front, finally turned around, his nose wrinkled and his face contorted because it now stank and he probably didn't want to keep crawling any more than they did, they heard it.
Water rushed below them. In front of them, the passage continued straight ahead, further into the darkness, but in the glow of an unusually widely branched luminous plant, they could see that the passage was getting wider, almost so that they could walk upright. And below them were small gaps in the floor; Roderich had almost hurt his wrist earlier when he had reached in on all fours and tipped forward in shock. They could hear water rushing through the narrow, deep slits, and there was something else in the cold, damp air, something they knew from the herbalist's lessons on the terrace behind the writing rooms: salt, seaweed, fish.
"The sea is below us!" Alfred whispered excitedly. "Where are we?"
"Are we... are we so deep in the cellar that there's only the sea below us?" asked Ivan, puzzled.
"No," Roderich rummaged hard in his memory. "No, when the ships sailed to Kirkwall, I saw the town and the castle! They both stand on the cliffs, and the cliffs don't float on the water! The water floats on the rock. It's like a mountain range under water."
The other two were silent. "How is that supposed to work?" Alfred finally asked, dissatisfied. "Then what are the cliffs standing on? They must be on the sea!"
"But that's what the man on the ship said," Roderich insisted.

"Are we perhaps in a secret passage?" whispered Ivan. "The one that went from the castle to Kirkwall?" Alfred gasped, and hissed excitedly, "Like the slaves!" The three boys whispered louder and louder to each other until it got kind of stuffy, and Ivan said, "But then why is the sea below us?"
They looked into the holes in the ground but saw nothing. Then they crawled backwards and then forwards to get some fresh air, and then they immediately felt better when they saw that they really could walk upright and that there was a staircase leading further down. They followed it, all excited, and at some point they could no longer hear the sea.
It became brighter. Brighter and brighter. And finally the three of them stood there, with ancient, cobbled, well-preserved stone in front and behind them, and a shaft above them through which daylight fell.
They agreed on a robber's ladder, even though Roderich's stomach was growling and their hands were wet and dirty, and Alfred scrambled up from Ivan's shoulders into the bright shaft. There he cheered and shouted downwards: "Wow, there's nothing here, just stones and grass, but there's the sea! Wow, THERE is the SEA!" They didn't understand what was supposed to be so special about it - stone and moss and the sea were what you always saw when you looked out of the window in the classrooms - until they were finally able to replace Alfred.
They were standing by the sea. On the coast. It was only a few meters below them, as overwhelming and close as they had ever seen it before. They didn't have much room as they stood there on the cliff; but they stood by the sea, saw it lapping against the rock just a little way below them, felt the cold wind, and finally Alfred said devoutly, "There's the city."
If you turned your head and looked way up, you could see that there were houses up there. Lots and lots of houses. And when, in their fascination, they finally turned their heads in the other direction, they saw opposite, incredibly high and casting its shadow on the sea, their part of the cliff; they screamed and almost fell into the sea with excitement when they discovered the gallows castle, incredibly far away and far up, like a toy castle.
Ivan's voice sounded muffled and impatient from the shaft below them, telling them that it was his turn again, that they had better come back down or help him up.
"If we keep walking, will we get to Kirkwall?" Alfred asked excitedly when they had been sitting in the sun long enough and their stomachs were growling.
"But then we'll end up in the deep city...", Ivan pointed out. And Roderich said, "I'm hungry..."
They looked at each other. "Lunch!" Alfred whispered. "If we're late, we'll be in big trouble."
They picked themselves up and made their way back. The way back seemed incredibly long, and the air even nastier than before, and even if the excitement drove them forward at first, at some point Roderich complained "Are we still right?", and Alfred moaned "Maybe the passage is enchanted and won't stop!" and finally they came out starving, wet, dirty and miserable where they had come from, even if their stone staircase was darned hard to climb.
A kitchen maid discovered them, gave all three of them a slap, washed them roughly with cold water together with another woman and gave them a few leftover sandwiches to eat, which they hungrily stuffed into themselves. The Templar recruit's sermon, which they had to listen to afterwards, scared them enough not to play hide and seek anywhere for a whole week.
Nevertheless, they kept their secret passage to themselves and promised to go back to their secret place on the cliff.
But eventually there were more lessons, and the new Templar commander had all parts of the castle better guarded, and Roderich discovered Brother Genitivi's travelogue about the Free Marches in the library.
The three of them later sat in a circle on the floor of the library, their heads bent over the drawing of Kirkwall. They looked at the upper town with the church and the palace for the longest time; the lower town on the hill must have been the part they had seen, and they discovered the lower town. It was surely where they had to go if they continued their secret passage, on and on... The three boys read through Genitivi's description of the Deep City... the home of Kirkwall's criminals and damned, of corpses and hopelessness... and they shuddered at the thought of what a dangerous place they had almost been.
They all had to grow older to understand that there had to be a way from the deep city to the upper quarters - and from Kirkwall out to sea, or across the land to other lands far, far away. To home. But none of that was meant for them, and home was here in the castle, they gradually knew and understood that, and never talked about it again.
But as he grew older and his dreams became clearer and life in the gallows castle narrower, Roderich dreamed of the one hidden passage behind which the world waited.

Chapter Text

The Present

Roderich had been standing here again for a long, long time, in the place that drew him to it in his dreams.

He had gone out, even if he would have been better off using his free afternoon to go out in the sun again, or to go over the practical exercises for his lessons in enchantment in battle, which he liked to avoid so much, and Gilbert - what had he wanted again? - had shouted something at him right after dinner.

Either he came here now, or not at all. For how could he justify staying so deep in a useless, dangerous part of the castle, secured with makeshift wooden beams? He could hardly give meditation as a convincing reason...

Roderich went downstairs as unsuspiciously as possible, further and further, lost in thought, and only realised the second time he looked that he was actually standing in their old hall - and Alfred in front of him.

Alfred wheeled round. He was wearing a dark brown robe made of simple, weatherproof fabric; designed for travelling... underneath it he had a thick bundle wrapped around his body, and his staff was hanging on his back.

He looked so ludicrous and unusual that it took Roderich a moment to realise. Alfred was standing in front of him in travelling clothes, in front of the corridor that they both knew led out of the gallows, although not where exactly - without anyone knowing, in all probability.

Roderich backed away. The barely perceptible, musty breeze brushed around his feet. Cool air from below.

Further down there, and he would be standing in the place that called to him in his dream and where he knew he was not allowed to go any further. Just like everyone else wasn't allowed to.

He took a deep, careful breath. ‘Alfred,’ he whispered. ‘They'll find you. The Templars find everyone.’

Alfred's mouth twisted, faintly, and he slowly lifted something into the air.

Roderich frowned, not understanding.

A glass tube. Small. Unobtrusive, of good quality.

‘Is that blood?’ he asked, and at the same time he became afraid; afraid of the eerie gleam in Alfred's eyes.

‘Don't you know what this is?’ Alfred asked calmly. His other hand had wandered. His long staff was now in his left, and he held it very tightly, fixing Roderich very hard.

Alfred took a step towards him, just one, and held it out to him. Roderich had to lean forward and squint to see the dark ink on the glass.

"Alfred Jones" was written on it. Neat and tidy, and the blood in the tube looked old.
Roderich didn't understand.

‘A little hint,’ Alfred said. ‘As a thank you’ he nodded behind him, to the place they had both discovered years ago ’for the little secret behind us. You know what this is. You heard the name once. I'm sure you did. A phylactery. From the repository. What can you do with it? You come up with it.’ Alfred's teeth lit up in the half-light. ‘Maybe you'll need yours one day.’ Then he gripped his cloak tighter again. His staff was now pointing at Roderich's chest. ‘I'll kill you,’ he said calmly. ‘I'm sorry, but I'll kill you if you stop me.’

‘... Yes. Yes,’ Roderich said, because he couldn't think of anything better to say. ‘I won't tell anyone.’

Alfred looked surprised. He didn't move.

‘You wanted to go, didn't you?’ said Roderich. ‘...Go.’

He couldn't. He never could. Roderich only got this far, and no further. And he wanted to tell Alfred that this was madness, that the Templars had so far found everyone who had tried to break out... but something about the gleam in Alfred's eyes frightened him, and - if Alfred wanted to be the one of the three of them to go on, Roderich didn't dare stop him.

Roderich's gaze wandered along the wall. Right. Hardly anything had changed here...

‘Oh,’ he said suddenly. ‘You have to clear away the stones, right? The corridor was so narrow back then...’

Alfred shook his head. ‘We've - we've already taken care of that. I'm not bad at elemental magic.’ He watched Roderich. ‘You can come with me.’

Roderich laughed in panic. ‘I - I don't think that's...’

‘No, that's right. You can't. I'm going on my own.’ Alfred narrowed his eyes. ‘My problem is,’ he continued, ’that I can take my time, move slowly - but I can't close the shaft behind me.’

Roderich didn't understand.

‘If I move the stones here, they'll see. I can only try to move them back here. That will work. With a lot of noise.’

‘I understand.’ Roderich stepped indecisively from one foot to the other.

‘The repositories,’ Alfred repeated. ‘Are a very interesting thing.’

‘Sure.’ Silence. ‘I'll - I'll help you roll the stones aside so you can climb through, yeah? I'll put them back.’

Alfred bit his lips. ‘I'll have to throw my pack and staff down the shaft first, and then climb down myself. You'll have the chance to put something a spell through my back. I'll do my best to get back at you, of course.’
Roderich had no answer to that. ‘Why would I do that?’ he asked as calmly as possible, because staying calm was the most sensible thing his idling mind could come up with. ‘I won't have seen anything. Because we used to be friends, Alfred.’ He didn't know where that friendship, superficial as it had been, had gone. It had probably broken down along with the plan to flee the castle alone. If you wanted to leave the coven - then you were so alone. They looked at each other silently. And finally set about rolling a boulder slowly and carefully to the side together, panting, using as little magic as possible. Alfred loosened his pack, which he had under his robe, and let it slide down the shaft. The plop on the other side sounded final. Alfred's staff followed after the bag.

‘Watch out for the mine gas,’ Roderich said, just because he remembered. ‘That's supposed to be the most dangerous, down there - next to the people.’

Alfred waved him off. ‘Thanks for your help.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I've got to go. The quicker the better. The same goes for you.’ He glanced over Roderich's shoulder, his brow furrowed. ‘This is taking far too long already.’ He spoke more to himself than to Roderich, gave him one last look, and then Alfred squeezed through the resulting hole. Slowly, as if he expected to have to turn round and fight at any moment. Then he was simply gone.

Roderich paused where he was for a moment, and then he automatically placed his hands on the boulder. He pushed, breathing in the nothingness, pushing as carefully as he could, only supporting, not overdoing anything... The stone sat a little more in front of the gap in the pile of rubble than before. Roderich only now realised that his hands were shaking. He had to get away from here, Alfred had been right. As quickly as possible - Roderich turned round in a hurry.

Gilbert was standing behind him, his eyes wide and his face white as lime.

All that came out of Roderich's lungs was a strangled, useless squeak. They stared at each other, Roderich's mouth half open, Gilbert's lips pressed tightly together.

Gilbert didn't say a word. He just suddenly grabbed Roderich's arm and pulled him with him, away.

And Roderich became hissing, frantic.

He let Alfred go, because he knew you couldn't stop a madman, and because he himself had often enough dreamt, only dreamt, of leaving... He had given up when he had learnt what money was, and that you needed such a thing outside the Circle, and that he would never have such a thing. Because it was all just a dream.

But Gilbert - Gilbert would drag him to the Templars, Gilbert would hold him by the wrist and drag him somewhere, he had seen something, something he must have seen. Perhaps he had heard their entire conversation - Roderich was grateful that his mind was as razor-sharp as his rising panic.

He gripped Gilbert's hand tighter and stumbled after his classmate, rounding the corner that Gilbert hastily pulled him round.

While Gilbert hissed in exasperation and pulled him roughly onwards, Roderich scanned the veil, the invisible eternal boundary between them and nothingness... Gilbert must have sensed something, because he glanced over his shoulder at Roderich, who could see it under his eyelashes despite his lowered face.

Gilbert hadn't thought far enough, anyway, because when Roderich felt the familiar coolness of nothingness slide through him, against his temples, his fingers, and let go of the wave that seemed to be building up in his veins - quietly and ever more strongly, Gilbert cursed and stumbled, struck full on by Roderich's mind-magical jolt to consciousness.

The tickling, gentle wave had left Roderich and sent Gilbert crashing into the wall, but Roderich immediately breathed in again, taking the second attempt as he had so often practised, connecting to the void...

‘Are you mad?’ Something glowed faintly under Gilbert's fingers, but he did nothing but clench his fists and - more cautiously than before - grab Roderich's wrist.

‘What are you up to?’ hissed Roderich, and, immediately a little calmer, ’What did you see?’

Gilbert looked at him grimly and whispered back just as snarling, ‘There's a guard, around here. I'm sure you do NOT want to answer any awkward questions, so take a bloody diversions and come with me!’ Et marched off, muttering later, somewhere beneath his straight back and clenched fists boiling with rage ‘What was that! Do I even want to know what that was? Builder, be glad I really don't intend to tell anyone anything!’

Roderich winced and kept his mouth shut, and Gilbert tugged at his hand, just pulling him further and further, until finally they were standing on the old tower, far above everything, alone, and Gilbert climbed silently ahead of him, onto the lattice, onto the wooden balustrade. Roderich followed him slowly. The afternoon was unusually damp. But the cold air up here did Roderich's head good.

Gilbert stood at the railing, half turned away from him, staring at the yellowing sky, where the sun was already making its way towards the horizon. Roderich cleared his throat carefully. ‘What...’ do you think, what have you seen, what are we doing here, what are you doing and what are you planning... ’is there?’

Gilbert only moved now and pressed his lips together. ‘I've been standing there. Ever since you told him you were going to help him. I thought I was hallucinating.’ Only now did he really turn to Roderich, and his gaze was indefinable, definitely unsettled. ‘What was that? Why did you do that?’

Roderich faltered, turned his head away and stubbornly looked out to sea.

Gilbert crossed his arms and stared at him bitterly. ‘I - I still can't believe it. I've seen someone - like Alfred - go rogue and you help him.’ He moved his lips silently and gasped for breath, obviously unable to find the words. ‘I - I was too - too beside myself to do anything at all.’ His gaze met Roderich's and he narrowed his eyes. ‘I stood there, did nothing, and then pulled you away so the guard wouldn't ask any of us questions that would end badly.’ Roderich gasped as Gilbert suddenly shoved him in the chest, knocking him against the railing. ‘What have you done to me? What were you thinking when you just - let Alfred go? Do you know what you've done?’

Roderich roughly pushed Gilbert away again. ‘Leave me in peace!’

‘You've put us both in danger, you've betrayed every rule we've ever been told, you - you've helped a renegade! Why!’

‘He is - was - my friend! I know him and I couldn't stop him! And if he wants to go, then let him go! You know... you know, in the coven I come from, fugitive mages and apostates are not the same thing!’ Roderich thanked the Builder and his brain for this idea, and Gilbert's eyebrows furrowed in irritation. ‘Think about it. You must have read commentaries and essays by the Supreme Enchanters from the Age of Storms? Forbidden magic and magic outside the Circles are not the same thing. I - I wasn't thinking about rules at that moment. But of -’ someone doing what I can't do and maybe burning a hole through my chest if the situation gets out of hand, and that's so easy to do ’a friend needs protection and leaves and can't be stopped.’

Gilbert took a deep breath. He fell silent, flustered. Then he laughed, tinny and mirthless. ‘I don't even want to betray you. I can't, because the whole story would sound so ridiculous.’ He snorted. ‘I'm angrier at myself than I am at you.’

Roderich opened and closed his mouth like a fish without making a sound.

‘What were you thinking?’ asked Gilbert, somehow calmer now, his voice lower.

‘What do you mean?’ Roderich eyed him suspiciously. His feet slowly shuffled back a little and towards the return path again.

Gilbert threw his hands in the air. ‘You let him go! What... how long do you think he'll survive?’

Roderich looked at him in bewilderment. ‘You mean...’

‘I don't see how I could live out there at all. Without... without a place to sleep, without - without the books, without work, without knowing that a Templar and one of the Chief Enchanters will be there to talk to me as soon as I...’ Gilbert shook his head. ‘How could he possibly think he could do that? What's waiting for him out there?’

Roderich lifted his shoulders. ‘He has to go underground. Hide and find someone to take him in. Maybe he has distant relatives or friends the Templars don't know about?’

Gilbert stared at him. ‘You talk like he has a chance the Templars won't find him. And as if that's a good thing.’

‘If he can... why shouldn't he live outside the Circle?’

‘...You're insane. You can't do that. You can't think that.’

‘Maybe.’ Roderich was at his wit's end.

‘Are you living in some kind of dream, Roderich? Do you really think any of us will survive long enough outside the Circles and find a place for ourselves, really a place and friends and family, without everything falling apart at some point because we just can't live alone in this world?’ Gilbert banged his fist angrily against the railing, and a wafer-thin layer of ice formed on the old wood. ‘Who do you think will accept you? What do you think you can work as? As a healer? As a street artist? And where do you want to go where you don't know anyone? And most importantly, who do you think will stand by your side when you can no longer control your dreams? Nobody! Why don't you stop being so dreamy?’

Roderich exhaled slowly and angrily. ‘I don't know how much of the world you've seen - but I've survived in it for weeks without a single mage or templar by my side. I was on a ship full of refugees, and I was just one of them, a little boy that someone cared about - not a leper. That's possible, Gilbert. And why are we being pushed up against the wall here and controlled more and more, why don't they do anything about the fact that Cannee doesn't like us and bullies Alrik as much as he can? Ivan... Ivan might never have started blood magic if we'd had access to doctors from the city... he would never have had to fight back if Alrik wasn't always there to show us which ones.

‘You can get SICK! You can go crazy and destroy yourself and everyone around you, slowly and with much suffering or with one blow and much blood.’

‘That happens so rarely, Gilbert!’

‘It rarely happens because we have the Circles! It rarely happens because we are warned and prepared, and because there is always someone watching over us.’

‘We become possessed when we allow what ‘We become possessed when we allow what we see in the void to take over our minds - but Gilbert, the only thing that makes us weak against the void is despair, and fear, and the feeling of being backed into a corner. ALL that would exist outside these walls, where there is no Templar to take it all out, NOT!’

‘That's not true. There's so much in the void... Everything can be dangerous to you.’

Roderich laughed. ‘I haven't noticed any of that yet.’

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? You haven't noticed how your desires are slowly changing you, nor have you ever faced temptation in your dreams? Then why are YOU standing here talking about things you shouldn't even be thinking about?’

‘... Have you never asked yourself why you are allowed to be criticised here for everything that generations before you have forbidden, just because mages in Tevinter have taken it far too far, so that you are never allowed to know more than what books allow you to know - and why you are therefore kept in this spot forever, why you are not allowed to have a life with your family -’

‘Because we are not entitled to anything just because we exist! But we have obligations because we exist, and we have obligations because we are magicians!’

‘What obligation? Not to be a danger?’

‘You know that. You know the chant of light.’

‘Yes, by heart. My gift must serve man and must never dominate us. And cursed am I if I turn this gift of the builder against His children. And I can do that so much better here than in the outside world, where there are such things as guards and soldiers, and doctors? I can do that better here in this castle? That means you're happy here? Have you ever seen what it's like in the town we live next to? Have you ever talked to a person who wasn't a magician and still looked you in the eye as if you were someone completely normal? Did you never know your mum? Do you know what profession your father might have shown you that you could have lived with, planning a normal life like everyone else out there?’

‘I know,’ Gilbert interrupted him harshly, ’that I come from a little hole in the harbour of this town where it stinks of fish and tar. I know that smell still means home to me today, and I know that home was a brothel at the exit to the harbour area, where my mother locked me in a room in the backyard with a few other of us - us kids, or sent me a few streets away, and won't be back till morning. Because nobody needed us or wanted us, but they couldn't kill us either. I know that my father doesn't know me and my mother left me alone and that I was the only child to get out of that neighbourhood.’ Gilbert took a deep breath. ‘That I might be smuggling or, in a better case, have a job at the harbour or in a tavern. Always there. I understand it now that I'm older. And I know that this castle is bigger than the room... that there's more I can do here than in the dirty street, and that there are more people who talk to me here because I have questions and I am than anyone ever would have back there, where all that matters is what you use. So I can't look back or long for something that was never there - I'd only be lying to myself.’

Roderich remained silent. Gilbert's eyes shone suspiciously and he had half turned away. ‘I didn't know that,’ he finally said.

Gilbert shrugged his shoulders. Roderich wanted to keep arguing, but Gilbert had just confided more in him than ever before, so it was probably more tactful for Roderich to give them both a breather.

Gilbert stroked the banister obliviously. Restless, nervous flames played around his hands. Only after some time did he turn back to Roderich ‘You won't pass your test like this,’ he said quietly. ‘The purification. That's why - that's what I wanted to tell you,’ he continued when Roderich couldn't think of anything to say.

‘What?’

Now it was Gilbert's turn to remain stubbornly silent.

‘Right,’ muttered Roderich. ‘Why did you run after me in the first place?’

Gilbert's gaze was venomous, with a hint of good nature in it. ‘It's not normal for you to storm off so purposefully.’

‘...What did you want?’

‘I was afraid,’ Gilbert said curtly after a pause. ‘Because...’ He glanced at the horizon, as if expecting a pre-formulated answer. ‘I wanted to ask you to pass your purification. That's all.’

Roderich's frown was so deep that Gilbert grumbled in displeasure. ‘Ivan... and now Alfred... and other appeasers in the writing rooms keep showing us how quickly it can happen that one of us - loses control. I - don't want to lose anyone else. To his own control. I - am afraid because I am becoming insecure myself. I - can't tell you anything, and I certainly can't give you any tips, but - try not to - look around. Exactly. When you go to your purification, look around first and be careful.’

Roderich made an effort to follow the train of thought. ‘G-good,’ he stuttered, caught off guard.

‘If you are appeased, your connection to the void will be severed, and you - it will be ensured that only your mind and body can remain here.’ Gilbert shivered a little. ‘Don't let that happen. If you're already so unhappy with everything here, the part of you that complains must be the toughest...’

Roderich understood correctly and smiled. ‘That's fine. I just wonder sometimes - at what point can you make sure a part of us doesn't find its way back to its body? I didn't find anything about it in the library...’

‘Maker, just pass your test!’ hissed Gilbert, and the hairs on the back of Roderich's neck stood up.

‘Is it necessary to scare us so much? And not to say so much exactly? That... That's why sometimes I want to be somewhere else. To leave. That's why Alfred wanted to leave, you know?’

Gilbert rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘Maybe,’ he said quietly. ‘I understand a little. I also know that sometimes... that sometimes things happen here that aren't good. But - I know why we're here. Since my purification, I know.’

Roderich couldn't say much in response. ‘Do you think I'll know after that?’ he asked caustically. ‘And when you're appeased, will you know too?’

‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘Yes, then you'll know better than anyone else.’

The busybody... Roderich was just uncomfortable, as he realised that for once Gilbert wasn't telling wild stories to make younger magi nervous before their purification, as Mathias had done with wild enthusiasm, but again seemed far too serious.

‘I think -’ Roderich said slowly, and a little without meaning to, simply because this had been weighing on his mind for days, ’My purification is soon. Perhaps tomorrow. I'm quite sure...’

There was silence beside him. Gilbert did not move.

Roderich smiled shakily, now that the memory also brought back the nervousness before the test. ‘Let's see what I say then.’ Roderich gathered his robes thoughtfully, remembering that judging by the light up here, it must soon be time to leave and have dinner with everyone else, and then something moved beside him; a hand clasped his forearm. Firm. And warm.

Roderich gasped and tried to pull his arm away - ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed.

Gilbert's dark eyes shimmered almost grey in the pale light.

‘Roderich’ His name came out somehow unfamiliar, in the harsh way of speaking of the country folk of the Free Marches. ‘Your purification... pass it. Really.’

Roderich was too befuddled to free his arm. So he stood there blinking stupidly, saying ‘Yes, of course, I'll do my best,’ while a faint, somewhere-already icky feeling crept up in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't actually been nervous before. Well, he was; but, it was just an exam, and they really had other things to worry about, Alfred -

Not that it would somehow degenerate into anxiety. The purification was the point at which, as a magician, you proved whether or not you were up to the task that was your talent. And even if Roderich shuddered at the thought of what a purification must be like, what happened, what it felt like, what it was like to be purified... He wasn't afraid of the test.

He was a good student and knew his strengths and shortcomings.

But Gilbert's face openly reflected concern and a hint of fear.

And now that Gilbert, the boy Roderich didn't quite know where he stood with him, with whom there were sometimes ups and downs, sometimes friction and days when he could stand here and just talk to him, who sometimes grinned at him and sometimes insulted him, looked scared, holding his arm, now with both hands, Roderich was afraid. Afraid of what made this somehow surreal Gilbert possible.

‘I want to talk to you here again. Or no,’ he almost clung to Roderich's arm. ‘It doesn't matter if you pass or fail, yes? If you pass... and if you're appeased... no matter what... come here. I just want to... talk... again.’

‘Talk?’ echoed Roderich, simply because that was the only word that seemed reasonable enough to repeat. Say goodbye, was that perhaps what he meant?

Gilbert exhaled slowly and deeply. He must have been holding his breath. ‘Know how it went.’ He let go of Roderich's arm and pushed him away somewhat hastily, almost roughly. He took a more casual stance, turning his head away. ‘I need to know whether you could hold a candle to me or not.’

‘So.’

‘Of course.’

Roderich's instinctive reaction to the fact that the other's warm palm was still tingling irritatingly on his arm and that this tiny interlude was abstruse anyway - and frightened him - was to flee.
A hand slid onto his shoulder; fingers held the fabric of his robe carefully, uncertainly.

Gilbert took a deep breath. ‘If you pass, then - I'm embarrassed,’ he said, somehow dryly, and a little miserably. ‘Then you can make fun of me for the rest of my life...’ Gilbert simply hugged him, and lowered his head onto Roderich's shoulder. ‘But if you don't pass, at least I want you - to be able to take the piss for it. Here.’

Roderich knew when questions came at the wrong time, so he said nothing. Gilbert's hair tickled his neck. ‘I'm not going to my funeral, Gilbert.’ What should have sounded like a reproving joke sounded like an anxious question even to Roderich's own ears.

Gilbert bit his lip. ‘I... I almost didn't pass.’ Roderich could almost see how hard it had been for the other to say that out loud, and he the faint grin just spread across his face.

‘And if I had it that hard, you even more so won't make it!’

Roderich's lower jaw made its way towards the cellar. ‘Are you serious?’ Seriously... Was this Gilbert's way of worrying, or had it finally twisted something in the bloke!

To Roderich's surprise, Gilbert didn't say anything at all, just backed away again, red in the face, gritting his teeth. ‘You... just punch.’

‘- What?’

Gilbert grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him away so he could glare at him. ‘Hit... it. You all right? Fight, Sera.’ Ah. There was the nickname again... and Gilbert's voice had firmed up again, too. ‘Hit you with everything. Hit it. Don't think. Don't listen-’

Gilbert stopped, shaking his head. Roderich asked slowly, because that was the most obvious question ‘So this whole thing is a practical exam?’

Gilbert shook his head hastily, and said ‘That's enough. That's all I'm really allowed to say.’

Roderich nodded, once, again, to reassure them both. ‘What made you decide to pass after all?’ he asked.

Gilbert pressed his lips together, then said: ‘My faith.’

‘What?’

The bell calling for dinner sounded faintly from the courtyard away from them, but its call sounded definitive.

Gilbert bowed his head. ‘Let's go,’ he said. Roderich did not disagree.

***

That evening, Alfred was missing.

Templar commander Meredith's eyes flashed angrily, and a troop of Templars left the gallows castle.

The next morning, Templars were even posted at the privies, and so it was to remain. The Templar Commander marched into the dining hall, gave a long speech about magic and the void, about her responsibilities and the Laws of the Builder; the Chief Enchanter spoke to Captain Cullen and then to the Commander, and that was that.

The next morning, Templars were even posted at the privies, and so it would remain. The Templar Commander marched into the dining hall, gave a long speech about magic and the void, about her responsibilities and the Laws of the Builder; the Chief Enchanter spoke to Captain Cullen and then to the Commander, and that was that.

It was already quiet in the dormitory when Roderich lay down with the others.

His classmates fell asleep quickly. One snored, something rustling softly as another rolled over in the covers. It was a warm summer night.

Roderich thought of Gilbert and their conversation, and mistakenly, indignation stirred in him - hitting it, what was that supposed to mean? - He thought of Alfred and Kirkwall, of Ivan and the purification, his faith? How could...? Did the Templars end up asking for lessons in the teachings of the Church?

Roderich thought he couldn't sleep a wink, but when he had visited the lavatory once more and slipped back between his cool blankets - not without almost stepping on Luke's arm as he crept along - he slipped into sleep surprisingly quickly; he was restless and probably slipped over into nothingness a few times in his dream; he turned round a few times until sleep finally drew him completely to itself.

He finally woke up again when a hand shook him vigorously and a man's voice quietly but firmly asked him to get up.

‘Quietly,’ said Head Enchanter Brennan as Roderich opened his eyes sleepily. ‘Don't wake your classmates.’

Roderich jerked up and opened his eyes.

It was pitch black; no glimmer of light or breath entered through the cloth-covered window; only a warm flame glowed quietly and calmly on the head enchanter's hand in front of him. ‘Your test is beginning,’ he said muffled.

‘But it's the middle of the night!’

Chief Enchanter Brennan nodded.