Chapter Text
Cam breathed in deeply, the gentle creak of the chair under her the only noise in the room. The cell they’d put her in was small, cramped– just a chair and a table with barely a foot between the small table and the door. She pulled her robes tighter around herself, shivering against the chill that seeped through the ancient stones of the Ostwick Circle’s hold, The Gateway. Cold and pale light from the moon cut across the table through air slats carved into the wall, each no thicker than a man’s arm, the only light in the room.
“Marchers have the most original naming conventions, don’t they? The Gallows, The Gateway, The Graves, The Shitbuckets- Wait, no that’s not a place, those are the templars,” she said wryly to the door, knowing that on the other side stood one of the aforementioned ‘shitbuckets’.
They didn’t speak, whoever they were, so she turned her gaze up to the bare stone ceiling. It hadn’t been that terrible of a crime, in her opinion. Had she fled from the Gateway? Yes. Had she done it multiple times that year? Possibly. Had she been caught when her ticket out had gotten mad she wasn’t giving him enough ‘attention’? Unfortunately. Had her father’s templars found her in a sheer dress, half naked with a lord’s son, committing what was, in the eyes of the Maker, at least sixteen different sins?
The door slammed into the table, jolting her from her thoughts. Warm yellow light shone over four templars, the blood red sigil of the Knight Commander emblazoned on the leader of the pack, a lantern in his hand and a scowl on his grizzled face.
“Mikael.” Knight Commander Harren Trevelyan, eyes cold and tired, glared down at his first born child. Fate had stolen the potential such a title would often hold, though Cam had no delusions that her father would ever have enjoyed handing the house to her. Not as she was.
Her father was a wall of a man, even outside of his armor. A salt and pepper beard curled tightly to his face, broken only by a thick and leathery burn scar on the right of his jaw that traced up to a milky eye. As a babe, Cam had always wanted to know where he got the scar. He’d never told her. He didn’t need to anymore. Thick black hair was shorn in the fashion of the Ferelden king, though he’d never have admitted it, and tanned skin told of a man who spent innumerable days in the sun and salt of the Marches.
“Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be.” The words came out as a hiss, his lips barely moving. A node of confusion wormed into her thoughts. Normally he screamed, quoted the Chant, ordered her meals halved, anything to show his rage. This was not rage. She felt words in her throat, the desire to correct him, call the templars some foul thing, but she couldn’t find it, not with the quiet crushing her so thoroughly. “What is happening?” It came out as barely a whisper.
“Samwall, Ollander.” The two at his side moved into the room as best they could, grabbing Cam, one at each arm and dragging her out of the room. She didn’t fight back- She couldn’t against the armored shells of anti-magic that were the templars.
“Kirkham.” The famous power of the templars slammed into her mind like a migraine. Nausea overwhelmed her, depth failed to register, and the world fell flat and grey. Cam’s eyes, reeling from the magic, found Kirkham, once her only friend in the Gateway. Slate grey and imposing, the visage that swam before her held no trace of her friend.
“Move.” Cam took a step, and her legs gave out, the two templars at her side the only things that kept her from falling. Without seeming to notice, her father led them, with Kirkham at the back. Each step echoed through the halls, the emptiness of the Gateway threatening to swallow them all.
Cam was dragged along, head throbbing and stomach churning, panic burning in her like a wildfire. She wanted to move, to scream, to let fire burn from her fingertips, for lightning to shatter the walls and bake them in their armor. She wanted a lot of things though and this would be no exception. Doors and shadows passed, flitting memories of a childhood replaced, old pains aching between her shoulders and in her ribs. They were going deeper into the Gateway than she’d been in a long time.
They dragged her down spiraling stairs of cold stone, deeper and deeper until they hit the lowest point in the city-state. The soft rumble of the ocean above was the only clue as to how deep they truly were. There, in the deep and the dark, was another man– two in fact. The older one held a lantern, the yellow light bringing odd colors to his pink shirt and casting long shadows over his glowering face. Vandon Ornell was older than Cam’s father, greyer, and more willowy. Still, he was an intimidating figure. Dark cyclical tattoos marked his flesh with deep rings, while a thick brown mustache remained the only hair upon his head.
Behind him, head bowed in prayer, was his son, Garrett. Though his face was cast in shadow, Cam knew him. She knew the curve of his nose, so much more like his mother than his father. She knew his tussle of red hair that his father wanted shaved off. She knew the terrified grey eyes that refused to meet her own.
“This is him?” Vandon’s voice was smooth, the wind upon glass, when he spoke. He received no reply from Harren, but the silence seemed to satisfy him.
Kirkham threw a familiar bag, half emptied of its coins, at Vandon’s feet, getting a satisfied grunt from the marked man. “Lovely.”
“What. Is. Happening?” The words slipped out loosely, half slur and slush in her mouth. That was her bag. She knew that bag. It was her bag.
Vandon sneered and Harren clicked his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “You are getting more of a trial than anyone else in your position should have, Mikael.” There was his anger. In the cold and darkness, it was familiar and warm. Her head was fuzzy, but she managed to force out a laugh. “Fuc-”
Cold metal struck her skin with a slick crack and her head whipped back. Air heaved in and out of her mouth and nose for a moment as she tried to understand what had happened– tried to understand the blood pooling between her lips and her teeth. “You. Hit. Me?” The words were still slow, still confused, her mind still swimming.
Now it was Vandon’s turn to laugh, hearty and deep. “Is it always this stupid?”
“Yes. Kirkham.” The Knight Commander said no more as Kirkham dropped the suppression from around Cam, finally returning the world to her.
With it, came pain, sharp and biting from her mouth where her father had stuck her. Tears welled in her eyes as she spat out what she had helplessly allowed to pool, leaving a crimson smear on the ground. She looked between her father, Garrett, and Kirkham. “Is this it? You dragged me into the dark to hit me a few times?” Her words seethed with quiet hatred. She was in danger. Terrible, unimaginable danger. Of what, she did not know, but nonetheless... “I know you hate me, Knight Commander ,” she spat the words at her father, “but Leo-”
“Do not speak to me, mage.”
Wrath filled those words. Wrath she had not expected from Leo Kirkham. She closed her mouth and turned back to her father and Vendon, both of whom shared knowing looks. “He’ll be participating?” Vendon asked.
“Of course. Kirkham, go get the brand.”
The blood drained from her face, her body, her soul. The brand. The fucking brand. Cam started to struggle, to thrash against the templars holding her. “No! No, you can’t fucking do this to me! No!” The nullification crushed her into sedation, weakening her attempts and her mind until there was nothing but the quiet drip of the blood from her mouth.
When Cam was seven, a year before her magic came, her father brought her to the Gateway to show her an important lesson. The two of them, father and child, had walked deep into the stonework guts of the ancient structure, and there, Cam had been shown her father’s work.
A man, terrified and screaming through his gag, sickly thin and pallid, knelt in a circle of candles. Templars surrounded him, their eyes glowing cobalt blue with identical stains on their lips. Her father held a brand, the sunburst of Andraste glowing hot at its end. “One day, Mikael, this will be your sacred duty. Templars protect the people. Protecting the people protects the city. Protecting the city protects the world.”
The man did not stop screaming until his voice died in his throat.
She awoke in shackles, cold steel binding her hands behind her back and her legs to the floor. Around her, a ring of Chantry-crimson candles were lit, beyond them, templars. It took her a moment to register him– Kirkham. He was among them, among the blue stained Knights. He paid her no attention with his gaze, his sole focus feeding into his prayers. They all were praying.
Over the candles Cam’s father stepped, that same red-hot brand from all those years ago gripped in his hand. He too was blue, his brown eyes made teal with lyrium. “Mikael Trevelyan, by order of Knight Commander Trevelyan of the Circle of Magi in Ostwick, we sentence you to tranquility. Your upstart mind and abhorrent and flagrant disregard for our rules has dictated such. We permit– I permit– a moment for you to speak, only out of whatever dregs of compassion a father should possess for his son.”
She was there. Fully there, awake, unsuppressed. Sinking horror filled her with dread. This was it. She was going to die. She would cease to be, and Mikael the Tranquil would join his brothers and sisters in the stock room. She strained for a moment against the chains, her mouth working worthlessly in circles as she tried to speak. Finally, words came to her. Words she had saved for the night her purse had gotten her freedom to… somewhere. Anywhere but the Marches. Ferelden, Kirkwall, Antiva, anywhere that she would be free to exist as a mage, unbound by all of the madness.
“You know I’m not your son. You’ve always known. You might not have known what to call me, but you know that I am not your son.” She felt her chest starting to heave as tears welled up, stinging and hot behind her eyes. “But that hurt your feelings, didn’t it. Your child was twice the freak if you didn’t pretend ‘Mikael’ existed. Tell me you knew. Tell me you knew, dammit.” She felt her words begin to twist, more passion falling into them than she had wanted. She wanted to die in control, making her father feel miserable one last time. She didn’t want…
“I knew. I also knew it was irrelevant. You, Mikael, are my son. You are the first born of house Trevelyan and with that name comes duty, boy.” The last words came out in a hateful spat. “Your little tryst with the Ornell boy was foolish from the start. I do not care for your motives, nor do I care for whatever lies you infected his head with. What I do care for is justice. On multiple occasions you fled the circle, hid your identity, slept with the Ornell boy, and… You insist on your delusion.”
Her stomach twisted, memories of kneeling at the Order’s altar all those years ago flooding back to her. “I vowed those things as a child! I vowed it-”
“Were we able to choose when we do and do not follow our vows, we would not be very good templars, would we, Mikael.” It was not a question. “You have stalled for time enough. The sentence for your actions is tranquility.” His head snapped to those in the ring around him. “Begin.”
It smashed into her, grinding down what little was left of her after the argument. She was going to die. Panic, adrenaline, all of it flooded her muscles, urged them forward, urged them to fight, but she was motionless. The Maker would have his pound of flesh. Harren stepped forward and raised up the brand, his face containing a small smile. “Goodnight, Mikael.”
The brand fell.
Cam screamed.