Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lady of Perpetual Victory, your praises I sing!
Gladly do I accept the gift invaluable
Of your glory! Let me be the vessel
Which bears the Light of your promise
To the world expectant. — Exaltations 1:1

There’s enough meat in their packs to last another day, but no more.

It’s approximately three hours until sunset. At the rate they’ve traveled so far, they won’t make it to the docks at Lake Calenhad before nightfall. Crossing the lake in the dark is unsafe, and doubly so in plate armor.

For the fifth time in an hour, Beatrice attempts to calculate their speed of travel in relation to the angle of the descending sun. She studies the way the lengthening shadows pass over the trees and thinks (not for the first time) how much easier this would be in a more familiar forest. No matter how many times they make this journey, the terrain remains elusive and unwelcoming. Even the bird song feels foreign to her ear.

She will never feel fully at ease in Ferelden, though perhaps that makes it the ideal place to travel with someone like Lilith, who is equally impossible to relax around completely.

“Do you hear that?” Lilith asks, her head tracking sharply toward a sound to the east.

“There’s a river that way,” Beatrice answers without a glance, too focused on the trail ahead. “I prayed there this morning.”

What had begun as an exploratory venture, harvesting elfroot to make into a poultice, had ended with Beatrice on her knees in supplication, reciting several verses of the Chant to greet the dawning of a new day. The Maker and His divine creation are so visible here, in the very heart of nature; she couldn’t resist the opportunity such a beautiful vista afforded. It was a pleasant moment of reflection, though soured somewhat to think back on it now as the night is drawing in and they are so far from their destination.

Lilith had been unavailable. She was occupied with inspecting the snares she’d left in a nearby glade the last time they passed through together. Not a single rabbit or even a vole had fallen for the rudimentary wire rig, a fact that left her so fixated in her frustration that it wasted much of their morning. Now they are going to be late, but there is nothing Beatrice can do but push on. Repeated reprimands only ever serve to make Lilith more defensive, and she needs to be focused now. The darkspawn threat is meant to be vanquished, but myriad other dangers still lurk within the woods.

Not the least of which are the wolves whose howls echo along the mountain pass they journeyed down just the day before. Distant enough, for now, but too close to relax completely.

“We should make a fire.” Lilith’s voice cuts through her thoughts. “Cook our meals before the dark sets in.”

“We should be there by now,” Beatrice returns, more impatience showing in her voice than she would like. It’s a mistake, of course. She can sense the shift in Lilith’s posture into the defensive, even just out of the corner of her eye. They’ve known one another since they were teenagers and she could recite the way Lilith’s moods read even more readily than many verses of the Chant, no longer fully committed to her memory.

When Beatrice was quite young, even before she joined the Chantry, she prided herself on having memorized every line of the Chant, so much text it takes literally days to recite in one go. They were only words then, a party trick for her parents to command for large enough gatherings with the other nobility of Orlais. The words came to mean much more with time. Those first fervent years with the Chantry, throwing herself into the work of worship, she learned the weight and value behind every syllable. Every letter takes on a depth of meaning, as familiar as the curves of one you might love.

Isn’t every woman of the Chantry wed to the Maker, after all?

She still prays, of course, and not only at the sight of rivers and beautiful countryside. Every morning and night, Beatrice recites fragments from the Chant. There are verses that might hold more meaning, depending on the task at hand. The Light shall lead her safely through the paths of this world, and into the next, is one she calls to mind often, during long journeys, or though the darkness comes upon me, I shall embrace the Light. Words of courage and hope to pierce the darkness of a clouded mind.

But many lines have been replaced with new knowledge that requires a much faster recall and daily application. Beatrice has learned instead to harvest plants and tend to wounds. Even the dressing of animals when the snares are working as they should has occupied space previously held by a prayer.

With time, acts of worship and even the Chant itself have become more practical than ephemeral. She walks the path alongside her Sisters, standing against the strength of forces that wish to tear the world apart. They holding the Veil together through the strength of will alone.

The meaning within the lines becomes larger than the words themselves.

Surely the Maker can understand that she now recalls various ways to produce fire more readily than she remembers more obscure verses about the purifying power of flame and ash.

As if reading her mind, Lilith’s voice cuts in again, persistent. “I have kindling in my pack.” And perhaps she did detect something in the shift of Beatrice’s mood, an uncommon sloping in her posture, to suggest a weariness she isn’t keen to give voice to.

This too is another line of the Maker’s creation, though it doesn’t appear within the Verse so directly. It is the lived experience of those who guard the world, two Seekers traveling the path together. As you learn to walk with another person, side-by-side, you share in triumphs and failures alike.

“Let’s look for a clearing a little way off the path,” Beatrice agrees, and she grants Lilith a quick but hopefully reassuring smile.

The night passes much like any other. Beatrice prepares the meat carefully and consumes it even more so, giving thanks to the Maker with every bite. Thank you for the blessing of this world, for the rabbit whose strength we consume, and thank you especially for allowing Lilith to sometimes succeed even as she is humbled, else they would probably starve.

She does not say such prayers out loud, but they are there in every bite.

Perhaps Lilith offers her own prayers while she eats, her lips pursed as she stares into the fire. She might give thanks to the rabbits already caught or pray for more consistent successes in the future. She might hope for an easier journey on their next quest, less time spent away from warm beds.

Or perhaps she is thinking of the tale of Andraste herself, Bride of the Maker, martyred by flame.

Beatrice will not ask. There’s no need to delve so deeply into the minds of others, unless they come to her seeking spiritual guidance. In those instances, of course, she will intercede, but Lilith would sooner cut off her own hand than ask for help.

They’re probably alike in that way.

“Should we put the fire out and sleep?”

It’s the closest thing Beatrice will say to anything probing; but if there’s more on Lilith’s mind, she doesn’t offer it now. “As you like.” She kicks the flames out quickly, grinding the embers out under heel. “I’ll take first watch.” The far off look in her eyes suggests that there really is something else on Lilith’s mind, something she intends to stay up pondering for hours.

It’s unlike her to be so transparent, so close to vulnerable. It’s nearly enough to prompt Beatrice to ask, even knowing her help is unwanted. If she had become the priest she once dreamed of, perhaps she would do so. Perhaps she would have learned the ways. Some women are permitted to help others through their kind words and gentle healing. These are the kinds of women that people bare their souls to in confession. But that is not the sort of sister that Beatrice has become, and the steel of her armor creaks abrasively as she removes her gloves. “If you’re sure…”

Lilith does not even spare her a glance. “I am.”

She stalks off to start her patrol, quickly swallowed up in the darkness of the night. The stark white emblem — the all-seeing eye of the Seekers of Truth — on the back of Lilith’s cape is the only thing still visible once the rest of her has gone.

Come morning they share a handful of berries each to break their fast. They check again that the fire is completely out, and set off toward the lake before the birds are fully roused.

The Tower comes into view before anything else, morning sun haloing around the sharp edges of crisp white sandstone. From a distance, it could be mistaken for something truly beautiful. There is beauty in everything the Maker gives us, and the potential for it is always there in the work made by human hands as well, yet for every ray of light there is likewise a shadow cast.

The Tower is like that.

“I hate it here,” Lilith says, unnecessarily.

They both hate it here, and that innate dislike — true for any Seeker, Templar, or true follower of the Chant — is why this is such a useful test of faith. Magic is a gift from the Maker, meant to aid humanity rather than control it, but try telling any confident young mage that. They’ll recite the lines, of course, just as a man might promise a priest he never intends to drink or to gamble again. That is, before the temptation sets in. Humanity was created in the Light and love of the Maker, but the human heart itself is a weak and fragile thing, so easily twisted by the shadows of this world cast by the business of living in it.

The darkness in any human being is a product of existence among other humans — the trials of the day to day — and perhaps that’s why it remains so necessary that the mages are locked up in their tower. The temptations of demons are test enough without bringing the rest of mankind into it.

“The sooner we arrive, the sooner we can leave,” Beatrice eventually answers, offering comfort in the way she and Lilith both understand best: pure rationalism.

“If we just leave now, they might think a wolf ate us.”

There is a hopefulness in Lilith’s voice that nearly makes Beatrice smile. It reminds her of when they were children, still playing make believe. Dreaming of the day they would really carry a sword instead of training sticks, not yet conscious of the true weight of it at your back.

Beatrice knows better than to pretend now. “Mother Superion may notice if we appear to be less than mauled the next time she does see us.”

She can almost hear the many potential comebacks rattling through Lilith’s brain, held back because she is too loyal to the Chantry to dare speak any blasphemy or dereliction of duty, no matter how tired they both may feel as they descend the final hill.

“By the Maker, what’s she doing here?”

It’s just like Lilith to spot an annoyance even miles away, though looking now Beatrice recognizes the young Chantry initiate at a glance as well. Dark unkempt ringlets spill from the woman’s cowl as she stares too fixedly at the rising sun passing over the lake.

Unlike her companion, Beatrice has always enjoyed Camila’s company, enthusiastic though it may be. “I assume the same as us.” She points to the Tower rising up in the center of the lake, just to drive home the obvious answer to such a pointless — and slightly cruel — question.

For her own part, Lilith only rolls her eyes and walks faster, armor rattling as she goes.

“Careful not to fall!” Beatrice calls after her. “If you go tumbling into the lake, I’m not coming after you.”

By the time they reach the dock, the boat to transport them across has arrived and Sister Camila has taken note of their approach. Her hands are clasped before her, taking great care to convey composure despite the energy bouncing in the balls of her feet. By the base of the hill, she’s given in to the impulse to start waving, though there isn’t any shouting until they’re close enough for a more regulated volume.

It suggests Sister Camila is learning temperance.

“Bea! I didn’t know you’d be back so soon.”

The fact that Camila doesn’t bother greeting Lilith doesn’t go unnoticed, particularly by the surly woman in question. If anything, her armor rattles harder in annoyance, but she stays otherwise sullen and quiet.

It’s more effective than Beatrice would have guessed. Perhaps she should employ a similar strategy of ignoring the next time Lilith truly gets under her skin, but for now she is ready with a smile for her Sister in the Chantry. “Sister Camila. I didn’t expect to find you away from the Tower. All is well?”

“I was delivering the Maker’s good word, along with supplies, to a neighboring village.”

This time Lilith does cut in, a sneer overtaking her features. “What, on your own? With only a stick to guard you or—“

Camila doesn’t spare her so much of a glance, her eyes still on Beatrice as she answers Lilith’s question. “Mary was with me, but she stayed to help a farmer mend his fence.” It isn’t exactly a proper duty for a Templar to attend to, but it’s the sort of thing Mary would do, and gladly.

Beatrice smiles just to think of it. “And you made it back here on your own? Impressive.”

“Yes, my surprise is overwhelming.”

Beatrice is prepared to remind Lilith about a verse that urges patience when the small boat's captain calls out over the noise of conversation, “Boarding now for Kinloch Hold.”

Even the name has an awful feeling about it. The same way the verses of the Chant feel infused with the Light of the Maker, there is something foreboding in the sharp edges of the words, like the protruding parapets and stones of the Tower itself.

The Tower is home to the Circle of Magi, and their destination to speak with Mother Superion. There they will receive their next assignment, whatever it may be. Why they must step inside the home of every mage still in training — along with many who have already made it through the process — is beyond Beatrice’s understanding. But the path they are asked to walk is one of obedience to a higher guidance and it begins, now, by taking several steps down the long wooden dock and onto the unsteady boat.

Maker, guide my steps. Let the journey be short and let us arrive safely on the other side.

Once you have been trained to sense and suppress the powers of the Fade, all of the world around you changes subtly. When mages invoke the magic of the dream realm, trace amounts of energy linger in the air. Most who are not attuned to these signatures cannot detect it, but Templars and Seekers learn to know the influence a spell leaves behind.

As the boat draws closer to the looming Tower, Beatrice can taste the raw metallic tang of magic gathered in the air. It’s everywhere in Kinloch Hold, so pungent it almost tickles the nose. She doesn’t have to look to know that Lilith can sense it too or that Camila has begun to recite the Chant as they draw close.

The Fade is home to dreams, of course, but demons too. The power that gathers on the other side hungers for human bodies to possess, for souls to corrupt, and energy to consume. That’s why the taste is so familiar. It claws at the human and organic, sharp and metallic, like a sudden mouthful of blood from an unfortunate sparring match.

The boat creaks as it pushes against the rocky shallows close to shore. The splashing water stings their eyes as Beatrice breathes in deep. She takes a first steadying step back onto land.

The sweat at the back of her neck feels cool in the shade of the Tower, but she knows that will soon change. The halls of the Tower are often kept uncomfortably warm, because so many members of the Chantry and Circle go around in thin fabric robes.

The heavy plate she and Lilith must wear in contrast is more than ceremonial. The image of a Templar — and less commonly, a Seeker — armed and armored, is a warning to any wayward mage who might consider the lure of temptation.

Every journey out into the wilds, in search of apostates or maleficarum, is a journey into a darkness that extends beyond the physical. To understand what lies beyond the light, you must be willing to journey into the deepest parts of yourself. Shed all of your understanding — of yourself, your limits, the worst things you believe you are capable of — to bring all that you can carry back into the Light again.

Returning home after such a quest is a process of re-becoming. Every ragged edge and easy compromise made for the greater good is tucked away, smooth as the polished steel stretched firmly over her heart.

“Oh, Maker, hear my cry.” Camila’s voice is audible just a few short steps behind, reciting the Chant under her breath. “Guide me through the blackest nights.”

Lilith scowls, though this time not for Camila’s youth and eagerness — most abrasive for all the ways it must remind Lilith of the girl she no longer is — but more likely for the familiar feeling of the frayed edges of the Veil, how it scratches at the skin. “Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked,” her voice cuts in, joining with Camila’s, and that is the greatest kindness Lilith really knows how to give.

It’s the kind of affirmation that lights in Camila’s face, the shared sisterhood of their joined orders. They are a family, in their own way. Even the mages, troublesome as they are, manage to be something like dysfunctional cousins.

The wooden gate slowly parts at their approach. The gears grind and the metallic chain rattles, pulled by two young Templars whose considerable effort is still lacking enough that the three of them must stop to wait for the doors to part far enough to step through.

While Lilith takes several deep breaths to retain her calm, Camila appears to be considering the craftsmanship of the wood itself. “It looks heavy for maple.” Her family works in carpentry, if Beatrice recalls correctly. “It could be it’s a veneer over something stronger, but less pretty.” She waves her hand dismissively. “I think that kind of thing is very gaudy, but what do you expect with so many mages?”

“Some people might expect them to use magic to move it faster.” Beatrice had intended it only as a small joke, but the look Lilith shoots her makes it clear it is not received as such. She rectifies quickly, clearing her throat. “Of course, that person would not be aware of our tenets.”

Magic exists to serve man and never rule over him. There are those who believe this means only that magic is a temptation to power, to corruption, and beyond that the very real danger of demon influence. But many at the Chantry hold the view that to use magic for the simple things humanity can already do by our own nature and ability is to allow the magic to stand between us and the world our Maker has given us.

Our hands are made to serve, to toil, to pull the ropes faster, please, how is it possible for two able-bodied men to take quite so long?

Beatrice’s eyes travel to the sky and she tries counting back from ten. Her focus is so divided that she doesn’t notice Lilith easing into place at her side, not until she speaks. “You seem tired.” Most would assume this is an insult, just another cutting comment intended to undermine. Perhaps if the remark were directed at someone else it would be only that, a snide observation, but Beatrice recognizes Lilith’s best efforts at consideration for what they are.

“It’s challenging sleeping on the road.”

She sees no reason to disguise the difficulties shared between them. Lilith nods, lowering her voice even further, just a whisper close to her ear. “Make sure you get your rest tonight then. I don’t need you half dead while we search for our next apostate.” She intends it as a kindness, or at least something close to it, which is why she adds an almost inaudible, “Please,” just at the end before stepping away.

This way, they can both pretend not to have even heard it, a mere clattering of armor to disguise anything close to sincere affection between them.

There is a long line of petitioners waiting outside the door to the First Enchanter’s office. Mages with complaints or questions, no doubt. Their expressions are detached, clouded by unease and suspicion, as they watch the Seekers pass.

Beatrice is used to this distrust and distance, even here where she has spent so many days. The affairs of the Circle are their own to deal with as needed. When it comes time for a Seeker to be involved, the situation is never pleasant. Most of their interactions are civil at best. So she smiles as she passes, tight-lipped and polite, and she isn’t really disappointed to receive barely a nod in return.

Further down the hall, the makeshift office provided for Mother Superion on her occasional visits has no one else waiting outside. Still, they wait to be let in, only knocking once to announce themselves. Mother Superion is the Chantry’s representative at the Circle and spiritual leader for all those who live in the Tower. She is a busy woman, currently occupied with reams of paper scattered before her.

Eventually she looks up, and the muscles around her mouth contract as though pulling toward a smile, though none appears. “Girls, you’ve returned home.”

“As shepherds to the flock,” Beatrice responds as they step inside.

If Mother Superion’s face was neutral now, it does tilt into a genuine frown when her gaze moves across Beatrice and Lilith’s faces to land on Camila. “Sister Camila, I don’t believe I called for you.”

“Oh, well I wasn’t sure if—“

“That will be all.”

Camila nods hastily and does her best to pretend not to notice the way Lilith scoffs and smirks. “Yes, Mother Superion.”

“And close the door behind you, won’t you?” She clearly does not anticipate an answer as her focus redirects entirely to the two Seekers. “What news from Denerim?”

Beatrice is prepared to answer when Lilith steps forward, hands clasped behind her, and begins to recite as though barking out marching orders to new Templar recruits. “We retrieved the phylactery you requested, Mother Superion. Specimens #3489 and #2734.” Here she hesitates long enough to shoot Beatrice what is probably meant to be an urging look, accompanied by a jerk of her head.

“I assume you’ve kept them covered, as I asked.”

There’s a small part of Beatrice that wants to evade Lilith’s condescending prompting, but such a direct question from Mother Superion cannot be ignored completely. “Yes, of course.” She retrieves a bundle of carefully wrapped wool from her pack and places it on Mother Superion’s impressive desk.

Normally the phylactery of a rogue mage would be used to track their movements. When a mage proves too difficult for the Templars originally responsible for them, Beatrice and Lilith are sent to hunt them down, by any means necessary. If Mother Superion has reason to keep these two mages a secret for now, it isn’t their place to question. The temptation to look was there, of course. What is faith without temptation? But Beatrice has never been without resolve.

Mother Superion plucks loose the strips of leather binding the wool and examines the contents in a silence that stretches on. Beatrice thinks of her earliest days of training, standing to attention for what felt like hours, learning to exist in a space where her senses dulled and heightened in parallel, a kind of alertness without feeling.

Eventually, Mother Superion removes one of the vials to examine it, dangling by the golden chain it’s fastened to. The blood inside the glass chamber glints brightly in the flickering candlelight. “Lilith.”

They both tense, as the voice pulls them back into themselves. After a moment, Lilith remembers to answer. “Yes, Mother Superion?”

“Take this—“ Her eyes move to the vial, as if the instruction might somehow be unclear. “—and then wait for me in the hall. I will be with you in a moment.”

Beatrice resists the surprise she feels showing on her face, but Lilith isn’t quite so successful. “Pardon me?”

“Not until confession, my child.” For a brief moment, as quick as the shifting light of the candles, Mother Superion appears to smirk with pleased amusement. “Please, take it. And send in the girl waiting outside, won’t you?”

If outrage were a physical entity, Lilith would be so filled with it she might start to grow at this point. “What, you mean Camila?”

Mother Superion sighs, exasperation taking hold in her voice in a hard and heavy way that smooths out Lilith’s outrage, her shoulders slumping in a sort of contrition. “If I meant Sister Camila, I would have said so. There is a mage waiting in the hallway to speak with Sister Beatrice, not that it is any of your concern.”

This time the surprise takes hold on Beatrice’s face before she has the chance to stop it. “Mother—“ Even the words start to come out, against her will, but she clamps them down, shuts her mouth, and averts her eyes.

She simply waits. Waits while Lilith glowers and retrieves her phylactery.

Waits for the sound of her departing footsteps. Waits for the door to open, and—

There’s a very loud sound of laughter from the hallway, and despite her every clear impulse, Beatrice lifts her head to look.

The mage steps in through the doorway without waiting to be asked, offering Lilith a lazy little salute as she moves past. Beatrice catches a look of startled disgust register on Lilith’s face before the door shuts between them.

The mage seems young, though perhaps it's just her demeanor. Most mages of the Circle adopt an appearance of calm before they leave their apprenticeship, if not an outright stoicism. There is still such a lightness to her that perhaps she is still only an apprentice. It radiates from her smile, a light in her eyes, and it's only now Beatrice realizes she has begun to stare.

Beatrice looks away, averting her eyes to the floor.

But her resistance doesn’t last long. "You wanted something, Mom?" The newcomer says something so absurd, such startling impropriety, that Beatrice’s entire head swivels back in time to catch a grimace cross the woman's face. "Sorry. That was awful. I was trying something new and I regret it."

"That certainly makes two of us." Mother Superion speaks with the precise cadence of exhaustion that comes with having to repeat yourself several times with the same person. "Mother Superion remains the correct form of address, as I've said." The other woman opens her mouth as if to respond, which must be why Mother Superion charges ahead with hardly a breath. "Sister Beatrice, I would like you to meet..." She gestures, as if the impression of the woman as a whole is more important than her name, and that almost feels true.

Something about this woman is so striking it nearly supersedes naming.

The woman waves, cutting in to make her own introduction. "I'm Ava." She holds out her hand to shake. "And you're Beatrice, apparently?”

There's an instinctive impulse to flinch from a mage's hand thrust out so quickly. But like so many other impulse, Beatrice has learned to repress the sign of fear. It would only be a weakness.

Instead she grips the woman's hand, feeling the heat there and concentrating on the flow of magic around her, looking for any sign Ava might be reaching out for the magic of the Fade. She allows the touch to linger for this reason, holding on. “Yes," Beatrice answers rather pointlessly.

“It’s a pleasure,” the woman says, smiling and laughing in a way that makes so little sense, unless it’s intended to be sarcastic, mocking, but something in that smile makes it seem unlikely.

Truly an apprentice then, with so little understanding of the world or a Seeker’s role in it.

“Yes,” is all she says, because being agreeable seems the easiest answer in the face of such relentless positivity. “A pleasure. Of course.”

“If you two are quite finished.” Mother Superion clears her throat sharply and Beatrice immediately lets go of the hand she didn’t fully realize she was still shaking. For some reason her breath feels caught in her throat, but she simply nods, focusing in on the instructions. Tasks to complete are far easier to navigate than understanding new people, especially an irrational mage. “I will be sending you to retrieve a relic important to the Circle. I know it’s unusual to send a mage and a Seeker together for such a task, but it’s magically guarded and extremely dangerous. “

To say it’s unusual is an understatement, but Mother Superion is much more inclined toward subtlety than dramatics.

Not so, it seems, for Ava, who whistles very loudly, as if to demonstrate how impressed she is, even though none of the importance registers on her perpetually smiling face.

Mother Superion’s gaze shifts upward and her lips move in what Beatrice assumes is a plea to the Maker for patience.

“How many days travel?” Beatrice decides it best to interject herself, as direct questions are often Mother Superion’s favorite means of communication.

“Assuming you are efficient, it should little more than a week, perhaps nine days.”

If she were the sort of person inclined toward sensationalism, still foolish and naive as an initiate or apprentice, Beatrice might think that her heart feels like it’s sinking. Instead she feels empty, a long stretched out nothing. “Perhaps nine,” she repeats, her voice rasping. “I shall have to pack well.”

“I suspect you will.”

There is no rational reason for Beatrice to care how long she is away. The Tower isn't her home. She doesn't even like it here.

The very idea of a single place being "home" is something she gave up when she became a Seeker of Truth, dedicating her life to others in defense of the Maker's creation. Now home to her is a purpose. It isn't a single place, but an ever changing destination of a mission well done. Perhaps it is also the short rest and relief at the end, time spent with the friends who have become a sort of family.

Nine days away from them, in endless pursuit of a vague and evasive target, with an unfamiliar mage who still smiles and laughs as if this is a joke. It is not Beatrice's place to question the will of Mother Superion, but there remains a tightness in her chest when she thinks of it. Who is going to keep Lilith safe if a blood mage catches her unawares as she journeys on her own? Who is going to keep Beatrice from being driven mad so long in the company of a mage?

Especially one like this.

Even in a dining hall filled with other mages, Ava stands out. It’s not just her talking or chewing that is loud — though both those things are true — but her demeanor as well. Even the angle of her shoulders feels like an exclamation of purpose and intent, the way her head swivels rapidly on her shoulders, taking in every detail in the room while chewing so quickly that a few stray crumbs escape from her mouth. It’s the sort of thing that might be endearing in a child, but much less so in a grown woman.

Beatrice gestures at her own jaw. “You have something just…”

Ava blinks several times, owlishly, before scrubbing the edge of her robe across her face. “Did I get it?” Several higher ranking mages sniff their disapproval at the gesture, but Ava doesn’t seem to notice.

“… yes, I suppose so.”

The smile Ava gives her is so exuberant and grateful, it reminds her of when the orphans raised in the Chantry finally learn enough of their prayers to be praised for it. The thought occurs to Beatrice that perhaps it’s similar for young mages of the Circle. There are no parents in the Circle either, though many are left there by their parents willingly. It is, of course, for the good of the children.

The purpose of the Circle is to teach a child restraint and control over a power that threatens to consume. Perhaps magic is a test from the Maker, but there is no need to leave innocent children to face it alone. The confinement and closeness of the Circle is a barrier against the risks, keeping the mage and the world both safe from one another.

Even so, for a young enough child the realities of faith mean very little in the face of their homesickness. Beatrice finds herself wondering if it was like this for Ava. Was she ever lonely or afraid? It’s hard to picture this face without the brightness of a smile on it, but she ponders it now. If she stares long enough, she can imagine how the curl of her chin would drop and the arch of her brow would wrinkle.

Though why this young mage occupies her thoughts in this way, she couldn’t say. It’s probably just another idle thought to pass the time, or perhaps a desire to know her traveling companion better. Surely there is nothing in this worth considering too closely.

Beatrice’s thoughts are interrupted by the bench across from her dragging against the stones as Lilith sits down heavily, still in full armor. It isn’t necessary to dress this way inside the safety of the Tower, but Lilith does like to make an impression. “Mother Superion told me my next assignment.”

“I assumed as much.” Beatrice directs the statement just as much to her stew as she does to Lilith, who is shooting a look of indignant accusation at Ava. She clearly expected the mage to abandon her own seat and meal so that the Seekers can talk in private, but Ava doesn’t acknowledge the look, if she even notices it. “Do you want to tell me?”

“Not while a—“ Perhaps Lilith was going to use some vulgar term for mages before she thought better of it, or perhaps she could think of nothing insulting enough to suit her current mood. Instead she jerks her head in indication of Ava, who still appears oblivious as she shoves a biscuit into her mouth whole. “What’s she doing here?”

“M’eatin…”

Not so oblivious, it seems, though still lacking in manners.

“She needs her strength for the road,” Beatrice explains, as though it wasn’t obvious.

Though perhaps Lilith is only now realizing the full implication. “You and her?” She says the single word as though it leaves a trace of venom on her tongue. “What have you done to upset Mother Superion?” Even that is almost said as an accusation, though Beatrice suspects it is partially borne from kindness and concern. “I’m sent off to hunt down blood mages and you…” She scoffs, lowering her voice as she leans in closer across the table. “You’re a well dressed nurse maid for a mage with food stains on her robes.”

“Hey!”

“There are… well, there’s some stew on your front, Ava.” Beatrice says it kindly, even as Lilith sneers, as though she’s really won something by having the obvious acknowledged.

Ava looks down at herself, flustered, and starts rubbing the spot with a handkerchief quickly dipped in water. “… shit, shit.”

Beatrice’s eyes move back to Lilith, who is clearly enjoying herself now, smirking. “Actual nurse maids at least have better conversation partners.”

“Rude,” Ava mumbles, still not looking up from the stain.

It is rude, but that’s Lilith. She isn’t fond of many people, particularly strangers, and especially mages. Spend enough time hunting down apostates and maleficarum who attempt to set your hair on fire at a minimum and even the most forgiving Sister might grow to rethink their stance on magic.

The teachings of the Chant of Light are clear enough; but if the Mother Superion insists on Ava joining Beatrice, then there’s no need to make enemies.“Just let her eat.”

Ava’s eyebrows lift and her hand stills, even as her gaze remains focused downward. Beatrice could nearly swear the girl is even smiling down at the stain on her robes, which is certainly not going to come out with just dabs of water.

As pleased as Ava’s started to look, Lilith is equally annoyed, though she tries not to show it. Beatrice knows her face well enough to see the signs in the smaller muscle movements near the corner of her mouth, twitching as though about to speak. But of course, she doesn’t.

Sometimes silence is a more useful approach.

Though judging by Ava’s sudden loud exclamation and the way her hand slaps against the table between them, silence is not an option she often considers. “Oh, right! I forgot about magic.”

Energy lights the tips of Ava’s fingers and the stain slowly fades from a splotchy brown into the cream color of the original fabric. It appears she has called upon the forces of the Fade — the realm of dreams and source of all magic — in order to clean a splotch of food from her robes.

This time Lilith makes no effort to disguise her disgust. “Do keep an eye on this one, won’t you? My list is already long enough.”

Ava’s eyes shoot back up, the self-satisfied smile that had started to form on her lips completely gone now. “What list?”

Lilith means the blood mages, of course. No one has captured more maleficarum than Seeker Lilith. Her specialty is bringing them back alive to face trial and the Circle’s justice. There are few things the mages seem to despise more than one of their own gone rogue, and the threat that it poses to all of them. Surely even someone seemingly as oblivious as Ava must know of the risk of the Right of Annulment, when an entire Circle is sentenced to death.

But all Beatrice says is, “If you’re finished eating, we ought to go to bed. It’ll be an early morning for all of us.” Her eyes cut over to Lilith as well, a warning to let it drop for now. She needs the mage committed and sensible if they are to work together on the road. Lilith appears to understand, her hands raised in the same supplication which so often accompanies prayers.

“So you’re not going to answer my question.”

Beatrice carefully wipes down the table where she had been sitting before she stands, sparing Ava only a brief glance. “Obviously.”

“You’ve got a very mysterious thing going on.” Ava’s returning smile is slow but so bright. Like a sunrise, Beatrice thinks, and then immediately dismisses the ridiculous notion. “I think I like it.”

“Good night,” Beatrice says without so much as another departing glance.

Beatrice already knows the way to the Templar’s quarters. She’s been here often enough that she could walk this path in total darkness, so the setting of the sun poses no impediment. Soon the sconces will be lit by eager apprentices, fire summoned to their fingertips. Beatrice would prefer to already be alone in her room before it begins.

Even now, the sickly sweet taste of magic catches on her tongue when it strikes the air, pounding in her skull. Perhaps it’s a result of her own powers surging in response, a desire to clamp down against the unnatural forces that are drawn in from the Fade. Maybe it’s an impulse borne of instinct, to cut the power from the air and restore order.

The wooden doors to the Templar quarters are thick enough to block out some (though not all) of the magical energy that surges in the hallways as the mages go about their duties. Function is the primary concern here. Furniture is sparse, no more than a bookshelf, a bed, and a desk with parchment provided for note taking. There’s a candle as well, nearly burned down to a nub, with matches set aside to light it.

The setting sun casts long shadows over the room. When she was younger and more inclined to poetry, she thought that the bars on the windows made the shadows look like grasping hands. Now her mind is focused on the number of hours she will have to sleep before organizing her belongings to travel again. In truth, the road is her only home.

These distractions and frustrations are all a part of His test.

She kneels and begins to recite from the Chant. By the time she has finished with the verses she intends for the evening, the room is entirely dark. Still, it’s a simple enough thing to remove her leathers in the blackness. She knows how to rotate and shift to easily unclamp, carefully piling it with the rest of her armor at the foot of the bed.

The sheets are cool to the touch as Beatrice slips in underneath them. Her eyes are heavy when she closes them. The tension that builds up in her back, so familiar now that she doesn’t even notice, finally releases.

She dreams of walking alone in the forest.

In the dream, she is without her armor, dressed in the simple robes she wore as an initiate to the Chantry. The fabric is coarse but it moves easily. She feels the Maker’s gifts — the warmth of sunlight and the caress of the wind — against her skin. She walks slowly, aimlessly, with no purpose to guide her steps.

The birds sing overhead. The path is clear.

Until the light begins to thin, caught between the branches of the trees. The shadows cast across her face grow thick, harder to see through, until darkness overtakes her steps and suddenly she is dreaming of falling.

Beatrice awakes with a start, alone in her simple room. The sun has only begun to streak the sky pale blue, but there’s enough light for her to kneel and begin her recitations. She beseeches the Maker to hear her prayers, to guide her steps, to calm all questions that appear in her troubled heart.

Outside her window, there is quiet. The morning birdsong is too distant to be heard.

By the time Beatrice finishes her prayers and leaves for the dining hall, the sconces are lit and the mages have begun their day. Breakfast is a simple affair, sparse bread and watery soup with no meat. Perhaps the mages and templars of the Tower are having as much difficulty with the nearby wildlife as Lilith was.

But Beatrice is too preoccupied to care for portents and signs. She nibbles at her bread and carefully studies the map Mother Superion gave her yesterday, spread out on the table before her. Three X’s are marked in woodlands to the south, within the domain of the arling of Redcliffe, though still near Lake Calenhad.

Beatrice dips her bread in the soup and takes another slow bite, carefully brushing aside crumbs when they fall. It is strangely quiet this morning, and somehow the lack of noise unsettles her.

Perhaps it’s in part that Lilith, her demeanor and her mood always so apparent that it’s like a sound of its own, has already left at early dawn without so much as a goodbye. And strange though it is to note the lack of someone she’s only met, Beatrice can’t help but wonder where Ava is. Does the mage usually sleep in? That won’t be acceptable in the wilderness, if so. Not if they intend to make their nine day estimate.

Perhaps this uneasy feeling, so distracting, is one of annoyance, and rightfully so. Not for the first time, Beatrice glances around the hall, in search of the other woman, before her eyes return to the markings on the map. She needs to focus. She will not have the lighting nor the leisure to study the map this closely once they’re on their way.

Nine days. The thought comes to her suddenly, like a nagging at the back of her mind, but she tries not to dwell on things that cannot be changed. Most things in life are like that. We cannot alter the way of things entirely, and surely we’re not meant to. The Maker’s creation hews toward perfection, and it is only people who disrupt this course with their meddling. The corrections must happen on an individual level, bit by bit.

Such as now, when Ava appears so suddenly (so loudly) and deposits her soup bowl on the table with the momentum that carries her into the chair. “Not on the map, please,” Beatrice chides gently, as though speaking to an initiate who does not know better. “I don’t want to mistake a stain from a potato for an important geographic landmark.”

The correction doesn’t seem to impact Ava’s mood, who picks up the bowl instead, hissing from the heat. “Oh, hot! Hot.” But instead of putting it down, she merely rotates it in her hands, wincing repeatedly.

Beatrice’s eyes remain focused down on the map — as focused as she can be with such a persistent distraction — but she points to a spot further down the table, away from the map.

Ava places the bowl down with a sharp clattering, but she keeps her seat. Now it’s her elbows that are on the map. Her hair is in her face. She’s leaning in so close that Beatrice can almost feel her breath when she says, “Are all those X’s where we’re going?”

“They should be. We don’t quite know the location of the artifact, but the reports suggest looking here.” Beatrice’s fingers drag across the paper, tracing over mountainous trails and footpaths through forests. “If we head southward before cutting west, we should shorten the travel time by avoiding too much elevation.”

Beatrice’s eyes lift up from the map to catch on Ava’s. The sensation of it is truly sharp, like when a blade lodges into something substantial. The way it feels to peel bark from a tree to make tinder. Her eyes catch on Ava and there is a spark that lights up in the mage’s smile.

“You travel a lot, I’d guess.”

Beatrice realizes she has begun to stare and shifts her eyes back down to the rough paper, her hands flexing open and close. “Do you not?” It’s a foolish question, she realizes. Mages only leave the Circle with express permission or upon requests. A mage as young as Ava seems to be would have seen very little of the world. Still, it feels polite to ask in return.

“Not that I remember, no.” It’s a strange reply, as though hinting at some greater meaning, but Ava’s smile remains guileless. “It seems fun.” Her expression is gentle, but the way she lifts her eyebrows after this feels half like a challenge. “Exciting.”

“Ava, eat your breakfast, please.”

Beatrice folds the map to make more room at the table and Ava immediately shifts the bowl into the unoccupied space where the map had just been. “Well, since you asked so nicely.” The way Ava smiles at her, it’s as though she’s laughing at some joke that she refuses to share.

What should be infuriating is oddly charming, if mages can ever really be charming. Most of them are more insufferable than they are anything else, but Beatrice supposes that they might think the same thing of the Chantry.

“So…” Ava swirls her end of bread in the soup bowl. “Are you packed to go?”

“I never really unpack.”

Immediately, she realizes her tense gave away more than she would like. The implication that this lack of ease is habitual — not that she did not unpack this time, but that she never does — is true, but it’s also far too telling. She should have lied. The Maker can forgive all sorts of small concessions and lies made for the larger good, and the distance maintained between the mages and their keepers is one made of necessity.

There’s a look behind Ava’s eyes, curling like a flame. Its warmth is inviting, but dangerous. Beatrice thinks once more of Andraste, swallowed by fire. “That’s too bad,” is all Ava says, and it’s already too much.

“And you?” Beatrice watches the way Ava licks her fingers as she eats. She is ravenous, each bite savored as though it’s the first meal she’s ever had. It’s hard to know how well she’s listening, if at all. “Have you finished your preparations, Ava?”

Beatrice wishes for her jaw to seem less tense, her shoulders to release, to pretend a calm she does not currently feel. She wishes to evade the mage's probing, but Ava’s eyes are as hungry as the rest of her, taking in everything.

“Almost,” Ava answers. “I have to see a friend first.”

That seems wise enough. Mother Superion predicted nine days, but as Beatrice has studied the map it feels as though the journey may be even longer. “To say your goodbyes?”

“Not exactly.”

“I know it’s customary for mages, but I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles,” Beatrice says, and doesn’t bother to disguise the annoyance in her voice.

Ava uses the palm of her hand to wipe her mouth and licks traces of food from the very center of her palm, pink tongue flashing across pale skin. Beatrice realizes she’s staring again and occupies herself with carefully folding the map.

“I need lyrium.” Ava’s chair scrapes when she stands. “He’s the one who controls the stockroom.”

'Controls’ turns out to be an exaggeration.

Though Ava insisted she could finish her errand on her own, lyrium falls firmly under the purview of the Chantry. It would be a dereliction of sworn duty to not oversee and make note of the amount being handled, particularly when someone like Ava is on the receiving end. She does not strike Beatrice as the kind of person who is particularly strict with protocols or keeping records.

The stockroom itself is well maintained and brightly lit. The organization is meticulous. The blond man standing near the center of the room appears to be the one responsible. His appearance is precise, posture erect, and expression neutral. He turns his head as they approach, nodding in acknowledgement, but no emotion shows on his face. “Hello, Ava. And a Seeker as well. How nice.”

The even cadence of his voice confirms what Beatrice had already suspected at a glance. “Your friend is tranquil.” She only intends it to be an observation, just as neutral and unaffected as the tone of the man’s voice, but something of her discomfort must slip into her words.

Ava appears to bristle, shoulders shifting into a defensive posture. It’s a reaction her friend would be entirely unable to recreate himself, because of his condition. “He is, yes. This is Michael.”

“I do not mind the observation, Ava.” His words are less an attempt to sooth as they are an observation of facts, calculated yet calm. “We tranquil make many uncomfortable.”

Though she would hate to admit to anything but her carefully maintained composure, interactions with the tranquil of the Circle have always left Beatrice extremely uneasy. When she was still very young, new to this life, she thought perhaps it was a kind of envy. They live such perfectly calm and rational lives, free of the vagaries of emotion. She had thought it must provide such a sense of relief.

That was before her own Rite, a prolonged vigil so much like tranquility where she learned to empty herself of every emotion, kept like that for who knows how long, before she returned to the person she really is. It was a different kind of re-becoming, more violent and horrific, though memories of that precise time remain scattered and vague.

While the tranquil may appear at peace on the outside, the sensation of emotionless existence felt much closer to drowning. It reminded Beatrice of that horrible afternoon at fifteen, training in full armor at the lake near their Chantry, when she was knocked from her precarious position on the bridge and fell in. The air rushed out in an instant and the water filled up the gaps in her armor almost as quickly as it filled her lungs. If it wasn’t for Lilith’s stubborn determination — steady hands that pulled and pried off the armor before dragging Beatrice back to shore — she would have died.

But that was only a single moment, terrifying, but ended quickly. Actual tranquility is a permanent condition. An endless state of un-becoming. Beatrice knows it isn’t right or fair to think of it this way, but the process seems almost cruel. It’s not something worse than death, not exactly, as every one of the Maker’s creations is worthy of existence.

But perhaps it is close.

Ava must have finished her business while Beatrice was lost in her morbid contemplation, because she is watching Beatrice with a look of expectation, while Michael has resumed his inspection of various objects on the shelves.

“Well,” Beatrice starts. “How much are you bringing?”

Ava’s grin is sly, already relaxed and at ease again it seems. “Oh wow, falling asleep on the job already?”

“It’s clear that I’m not sleeping, Ava.”

“A sleepwalking Seeker. That sounds dangerous for a mage.” Of course, Ava is only joking. It would be clear even without the smile so big it lights up in her eyes. “Are we sure I should even be alone with you?”

The way Ava teases is so familiar and persistent, it leaves Beatrice on the wrong footing, unsure of how to respond except in earnest. “A mage is a greater threat to herself than a Seeker is.”

The words are habit, a rote recitation, but somehow Ava’s eager smile seems to dim, however slightly, even as her expression remains the same. The shift is in her eyes, subtle as a light going out in an upstairs window. It is there, but only notable to someone who was already observing closely.

The regret Beatrice feels strikes just as quickly, though there are fewer signs of it in her expression apart from the tightening of the corners of her mouth. “Though I am certain we wouldn’t have been sent on this mission together if we weren’t both going to be safe.”

This time, the lie comes instinctively, but the relief she feels when Ava smiles again is a question Beatrice pushes quickly from her mind. That can be a consideration for another time.

For now, they ride.

Chapter Text

And the Voice of the Maker shook the Fade
Saying: In My image I have wrought
My firstborn. You have been given dominion
Over all that exists. By your will
All things are done.
Yet you do nothing. — Threnodies 5:3

The Templars that pull the doors to the Tower open for them are strangers to Ava. She’s not sure if that means that she just doesn’t remember their faces or if they’re exclusively located on this end of the building, working door duty. While the rest of their order learn to live among the mages, always at the ready to use their special magic-reversing powers to help them put down a rebellious mage like some kind of rabid dog, maybe these other guys are here. Learning the ropes of chain-pulling, you could say.

It seems like a very different life, is the point. What do they even talk to each other about at dinner?

It’s wild to think about that, how there are a million little moments with choices that can send you down a completely different path, even if it still runs in parallel to the life you might have been leading. Ava’s pretty occupied with that, the enormity of it, when Beatrice’s voice cuts in, saying, “Do you know if it’s maple?”

Ava turns her head, trying to parse the question, backtracking through everything that’s going on that isn’t related to fate, destiny, what have you. Just now she was thinking about the Templars, who obviously can’t be made of maple. And then also—

“Oh, the door?”

“Yes, of course. Of course the door.” Beatrice’s eyes blink at her slowly. They’re incredibly wide, taking everything in, and really beautiful too. “What else could I mean?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I asked. I guess the answer is nothing else, though. You couldn’t — or didn’t, at least — mean anything else.” Ava looks back at the doors in question.

In some ways, these doors are the furthest reaches of the world she’s known since childhood. There was somewhere else before that, of course. There was probably a small village, definitely a family, but she can’t remember any of it. These doors have always been The End as far as Ava knows, and now they’re pulling apart, ripping open the limits of her life as she’s known it.

Here’s another path, running in parallel, but now with sunlight.

She feels energy coiling in her chest, tumbling down into her legs where it collects and shifts in the balls of her feet. She wants to run, to scream, and something else (maybe cartwheels, maybe swimming), but all of it is probably a bad idea in front of the Templars whose steady gaze is still on her. Something tells Ava that the first impulse for a lot of people she may encounter out in the world, when they see a mage in clearly identifiable robes of the Circle running around screaming, isn’t to assume the best or that there’s a lot of joy involved.

There’s all that in her head, but what she says is, “I don’t know anything about the doors here.”

What remains unspoken in that is that she doesn’t know a lot of what’s beyond the doors, inside the Tower, anything at all. The more she sees of the world, the less it feels like she knows about anything.

Beatrice’s lips purse together, which is most visible in the tension at the edge of her mouth. The lips themselves remain soft (extremely round), the kind of mouth that looks like it was designed for smiling. It’s a shame that’s not something she seems to do a lot of.

“A pity,” is all Beatrice says.

Maybe it’s some kind of Chantry code or significant religious importance given to different kinds of wood, and maple would really matter. They care a lot about Andraste and the pyre she was burned on, right? There’s eternal flames kept lit in any Chantry large enough, with some young initiate forced to tend the flames. Maybe the importance of maple wood lands somewhere in all of that.

“How come?” Ava asks directly. “What’s special about maple?”

“Nothing,” Beatrice says quickly, but then corrects herself. “As far as I know, nothing. But a friend of mine was curious.”

Ava tries to remember the name of the other Seeker who had scowled her way through most of the dinner, but she’s coming up blank. “I didn’t get the impression your Seeker friend would care about carpentry.”

“No,” Beatrice says, and there’s a hint of a laugh in just that one syllable that Ava finds herself exceedingly proud to be the cause of. “She wouldn’t. It’s another friend.”

“Wow, Miss Popular Seeker over here, I see.” Ava nods several times, while Beatrice just looks kind of baffled. “I’ve got my eye on you. I’ll be taking notes.”

The doors rattle once they’re finally open. The sound echoes in the hallways behind them, beckoning Ava to look back one last time, to hesitate and regret, but her eyes stay straight ahead.

She’s looking at Beatrice, mouth still open as if ready to say something. But it snaps shut again and she just turns, without a single look back. Like she expects (correctly) that Ava is already behind her.

Maybe it’s a part of that whole knowledgable seeking thing.

Riding on a horse is another one of many new things, or at least Ava thinks it is. So many things are new it’s harder and harder to even think of it that way. Instead of new, it’s becoming Now, and Now is also Everything. The beauty of Everything is almost overwhelming. She thinks she could cry if she didn’t prefer smiling instead. Smiling so much now, it’s like her cheeks ache.

It turns out sunlight is different when it’s not filtered through the windows of the Tower. It’s better. Everything is better.

Even Beatrice, who’s still quiet and detached, feels better when she’s leading the horse to drink with a peaceful smile on her face. The more Ava watches of the world, the more she notices Beatrice, and how she looks when she doesn’t feel like someone’s watching.

There’s that smile, the slow one that only grows with time, but also how her body moves and adjusts effortlessly. There’s so much muscle there, under the calm exterior.

Ava thinks she’s probably noticing because it’s a mage thing. To see the things that exist beneath, right, like how she can see through the layers of reality, through the Veil, into the Fade. The way she can pull it almost effortlessly, like tugging on a thread that unknots reality, and always has been able to since childhood, even if that is fuzzy too.

The past is a blotchy ink spot, but the future feels so bright, especially now. Ava’s hand slides down the muscular neck of the horse, feeling the way its breathing shifts underneath her hand. The muscles strain, ripples of brown and black, shadows and highlights and a whole symphony of color and sound. The crunch of the grass, the way Beatrice breathes out with a soft huff of appreciation when a bird flies low overhead.

It’s so subtle and brief, Ava wonders if Beatrice even knows she’s done it. She wants to ask, but there’s no easy way in, with this question or any other. Beatrice isn’t exactly open or eager to talk.

Still, Ava can try. “Do you and Lilith usually talk about something specific when you travel?”

As Beatrice thinks, her eyes move and her nose scrunches down just the slightest bit. The tip moves, and Ava notices. She smiles at the change, feeling a lightness and a warmth toward the other woman. “I suppose we discuss the path ahead and our plans for the journey. How many rations we will eat.”

“Wow, how fascinating.”

“It isn’t meant to be an academic exercise.”

There’s a defensiveness that feels like it’s baked into Beatrice’s nature, like it’s welded directly against her spine (possibly held there by magics), and it reappears whenever she’s feeling threatened by even the vaguest course of conversation. It would be off-putting, probably, if it didn’t feel more like a challenge. So of course Ava smiles, shrugging like it’s casual. “I know it’s good for your health, but I don’t really exercise.”

Beatrice shoots her a look that’s probing, evaluating closely. She’s probably wondering if anyone can really be this stupid, or if it’s some kind of special gift. But Ava’s smile doesn’t waver, and maybe that’s the real tip off because eventually Beatrice shakes her head and looks away. “How amusing.”

“Really? Because it doesn’t sound like you think so.”

“You are perceptive, Ava.”

The horse whinnies softly and Ava strokes its neck to try to calm its nerves. Horses are new to her, but she thinks they’re probably just like anything else. Most living things just want to be treated carefully, sure, but also like they’re alive and not some plaything made of glass. “Yes, actually,” she says, even though it wasn’t a question.

She’s looking closely at Beatrice again when her head turns and the light catches around the edge of her profile, lighting up the lines of her face in this way that makes Ava forget to breathe. She’s like one of those Chantry paintings hanging on the walls in the Tower, like some kind of ancient martyr.

For some reasons, Ava feels the need to think back to the story of Andraste, or what she can remember from the Chant. Married to the Maker, she was sacrificed for the good of mankind. And all that good working as intended apparently includes locking mages up against their will while the sick and the poor suffer needlessly, endlessly. If this was the plan all along, it feels flawed, at the very least. It’s the Greater kind of good, where nobody seems actually happy.

And Ava really prefers when people are happy. Like how she can’t help but notice the way Beatrice’s smile still lingers, longer than it had before.

That’s progress, right?

Because Ava actually is perceptive, even if the smile fools a lot of people. Knowing how to react to the things she sees, that’s the problem. But a trip out into the world, actually seeing things, that should be a good start.

The night is so different when you can see the whole sky.

The fire cracks and pops, rhythmic and persistent like a kind of music, but there is nothing like the endless infinity of the sky. Ava stares up and feels like her mind is expanding. What she thought she knew about time, space, the entire world around her, is being erased and rebuilt every hour of the day now that she’s out in the world.

It’s not as though she didn’t read. She knew things. She knew a lot, or at least she read it. But reading what honey tastes like isn’t the same as that first real taste and its slickness on her tongue. Knowing that the stars are there, viewing them from her window, didn’t prepare her for how it feels to sit beneath them with only the trees for cover.

She’s vaguely aware of Beatrice watching her, even as the Seeker tries to disguise it. Beatrice peels off strips of rabbit meat slowly, precisely, and as it passes to her mouth, her eyes move. They dart to Ava, who is openly staring back. It’s half a dare, or maybe a question.

“… you aren’t eating,” Beatrice observes, and takes another bite.

Ava realizes the meal in front of her is going to go cold. “Right, sorry.” Beatrice had spent the better part of the past hour preparing the food, so she ought to try some gratitude.

It’s still warm enough that it’s pleasant. Good, even.

She’s about to say as much when the question comes instead. “Do you like it?”

It surprises her. Beatrice doesn’t seem the type to seek out reassurance, so maybe this is intended as small talk. That much she can manage. “Yeah, it’s good. Great, even.” Ava takes another eager bite to demonstrate.

“Remember to chew, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Ava mumbles and grins, her mouth slightly too full. She swallows, then continues. “I don’t mind, I mean. Choking to death is not on my list of things to try.”

A log snaps in the fire and Ava jolts in mild surprise. The fires she’s more accustomed to don’t require tinder to burn.

“You have a list?”

Ava’s eyes divert away from the fire and back to Beatrice, who is watching her with what looks like genuine interest. It can only make her smile. “Not written down or anything, but yeah. I’ve come up with ideas.”

“What for?”

“Things to see outside the Tower. Things I want to do.”

It’s hard to be sure in the flickering twisting shadows of the firelight, but it looks like Beatrice has slowly started to smile. “What’s something on your list, Ava?”

“A campfire seems like a good start.” When Beatrice gestures with a single sweeping hand, Ava nods. “Exactly. Sleeping in the woods, but also sleeping in a tavern.”

“These all seem specifically easy for me to help you accomplish.”

“What can I say, I like realistic and attainable goals.”

The fire cracks again and Beatrice’s smile is more obvious now. “What about something else, Ava? Something bigger.”

The biggest thing that Ava wants, she doesn’t dare to say out loud, especially not to a Seeker.

But beyond that, there might be something. “I want to go swimming.” This time, there’s no response from Beatrice except for a slight inclination of her head, an encouragement to continue. “I just… never have. And I don’t think I know how, so I guess I might drown.”

There’s something else in that, larger. It feels almost like a metaphor for life, either life as a mage or just her life in particular. Hope for something until the day you finally get it and it kills you, slowly and suffocatingly.

Maybe it’s the fire that’s got her thinking this way, sinking into herself as another log snaps and the center gives way to ash that scatters on the pyre.

“After we find the relic,” Beatrice’s voice cuts through, careful and clear. “Perhaps there will be time for swimming then.”

“And if I drown, at least the mission’s fine.”

Beatrice’s smile twists into something more obviously amused. “Exactly.”

The first X marked on the map isn’t too far from the Tower.

The trees here grow thick, blocking many of the sight lines. It’s an advantageous spot for mages, who are more in tune with their other senses than most members of the Chantry. Maybe it’s all that talk of the guiding light of Andraste that keeps them focused on the visible, clearly tangible things. In Ava’s experience, the sisters at the Tower aren’t very good with the unseen.

Mages on the other hand, operate in the in-between, the spaces beyond touch and sight, focused on something internal. That’s why Tranquility works, after all. Dreams and the emotions they produce, hope itself, lies at the center of a mage’s true power. The Chantry warns against too much desire, preferring Andraste’s pyre to any fire burning within.

The intangibles inside the human heart are impossible to bend and must be torn away instead.

That’s where the true fear of mages comes from.

It’s why even Beatrice’s hand strays to her sword now that they are deeper into the forest. She strains to listen, taking in the sounds of nature. Perhaps she even notices the shifts in the wind.

But Ava knows she can’t sense it all, even with her heightened training. The traces of power still clinging in the air here, buzzing at a layer beyond touch or even taste, is something the Seeker would have been trained to resist. She’s so good at her edicts, she might not even feel them anymore.

Ava’s never been as good at self-denial. Her fingers flex into the seams of the world and the air ripples around them. She pretends not to care or even notice when Beatrice draws her blade in response to the spark of magic in the air.

At least the Seeker’s eyes are focused on their surroundings instead of Ava directly. Maybe this is something close to trust after all. “The mages were here at one time. They were right about that.”

“The apostates, you mean.”

Ava shrugs, even as she takes note of the hard edge in Beatrice’s voice. “There’s hardly a difference.” Off the look that Beatrice gives her, she adds, “I only mean that the magic feels the same, unless it’s a maleficar.” While the remains of magic in the air usually leave Ava feeling warmer, lighter, the traces of blood magic are different. The feeling is slick like oil, and just as hard to wash away.

The nod from Beatrice is reluctant, uncertain. She doesn’t seem to approve of the answer, but doesn’t look interested in an argument either way. “You don’t think it’s here,” is her eventual conclusion, barely stated like a question.

“Not if it’s as powerful as you say.”

Ava can provide an answer, even if unasked. She can be helpful, agreeable, the kind of person the Seeker can put a kind of faith in.

Even if the slow shift in Beatrice’s brow suggests her own reluctance.

Ava smiles wider in return, hoping for disarming. “So that’s one down, right?”

Beatrice doesn’t sheath her sword, not yet, although her eyes have returned to the trees around them, scanning the horizon. Maybe it’s not trust between them, but arrogance. She doesn’t believe in Ava so much as her own ability to overcome her. “It seems too easy.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of person who underachieves, I get that.” Ava’s grip on the magic has already loosened, hands limp at her side as she shrugs again, rocking onto her heels. “But you’re going to have to trust me and my readings.”

No words, only a look, and Beatrice begins to stalk the perimeter.

Arrogance and a dash of stubborn too. Ava sighs this time, very audibly, and sits down on a rock.

That at least prompts a verbal response. “What are you doing?”

“My part is done,” Ava says, distracted by a beetle crawling across a nearby log. “If you want to do extra work patrolling around an empty grove, I’m not going to stop you.” The bug stops at the edge of a patch of moss midway down the log and circles back to where it came from, going in one great big circle. “But you can’t force me to waste my time with you.”

Technically, the Seeker can try to compel her to do just about anything. Her role as a mage of the Circle assigned to assist the Chantry is one of an especially formal kind of servant.

But that doesn’t mean Ava has to make it easy for her.

When she looks up with a challenging tilt to her chin, Ava expects to find annoyance etched deep into those pretty features, but maybe she’s underestimated Beatrice’s ability to conceal. There’s something in the eyes there, sure. There’s always something burning beyond the windows of Beatrice’s eyes, but her face is carefully placid. Not for the first time, Ava thinks about the stillness of lakes, and the depths below that are invisible to the eye.

She tries not to grin too obviously when she thinks as well: I don’t know how to swim.

“… there might be other dangers here, Ava.” Beatrice’s voice is more gentle than her empty expression suggests, more patient than her sisters ever would be. “I’m not only concerned about mages.”

Her hand flexes on the hilt of her sword in much the same way that Ava’s fingers tangle themselves into the magic. Could the feeling be the same? Does she enjoy that adrenaline rush that comes alongside wielding such strength, or are Seekers denied even that? Ava looks for any sign of it inside those (pretty) eyes, but can’t discern one feeling from the next. Invisible depths. Ripples on water.

“Please,” Beatrice says at last, a word that sounds so unnatural, like she’s used to offering it only in the Chant. On the log, the beetle has turned again, marching back toward the thick wall of moss. “If you help me, we’ll return to the horse sooner.”

Ava’s fingers brace themselves against the rough fabric of her outer robe. She’s really bad at ignoring such direct requests for help, even if she’d like to try to make some (admittedly childish) point by pretending not to hear. “Sure,” she says, standing slowly. “If we split up, it’s even faster.”

“No,” Beatrice answers too quickly. “Not with dark setting in. It isn’t safe.” Ava’s eyes drift back to the hand on the hilt, still holding on so tightly that her knuckles are starting to whiten.

Ava might wonder which of their safety Beatrice is so concerned for, if it didn’t seem already obvious. “Right,” she says, the word dry and clipped as she creates an orb of illuminating light in her palm.

It’s the kind of thing the Seeker might normally object to, and a part of Ava hopes she will.

She even readies a smirk when she hears Beatrice clear her throat, but what the Seeker says is, “Perhaps tonight we’ll sleep in an inn.”

Ava’s so startled to receive a small peaceoffering instead of the expected reprimand that she fumbles her light. It sputters and Beatrice turns, looking mildly confused.

“From your list,” she adds, as if it’s a necessary clarification.

“Oh, yeah,” is all Ava says, because everything else that comes to mind feels impossibly stupid. Except, of course. “Thank you.”

Beatrice nods and resumes her search of the surrounding area. Ava tries to keep up, with equal effort, even if she’s not sure what they’re meant to find. Maybe the effort is what matters the most with these Chantry people anyway.

Ava spares one last glance at the log on her way past. She nearly misses the beetle this time, half hidden as it is in the density of the moss.

They stop in a tavern for the night after all.

The horse is restless, and honestly so is Ava. It’s hard to even know what Beatrice is feeling, but she hasn’t smiled in a few hours. Maybe that’s normal for her.

They push through the doorway and several heads turn at once. She thought that was the kind of thing that only happens in stories, though admittedly a lot of the narratives she knows are from canticles and hymns. Usually they’re a morality tale with a pretty clear lesson — and that lesson usually involves not standing out and being stared at. This feels different.

The looks are mostly brief, sizing them up as possible threats, and most of them seem to pay much more attention to Beatrice and her Seeker’s armor than they do to Ava. This is a small village, barely more than an outpost, and only a day’s ride from the Tower. They probably see a lot of mages pass through here, so Ava in her Circle robes are nothing special. But Beatrice? She stands out.

Apart from the cloak and the armor, there’s that way she holds herself at such a taut angle, the perfect chiseled line of that jaw. She takes in the room quickly with the kind of efficiency that’s almost scary in a Seeker, and starts walking to a table near the back corner. “Come along, Ava.” It doesn’t sound like a question, especially with her hand lingering on the sword hilt at her side.

Another thing worth knowing about Beatrice is how fast she walks, or maybe it’s better to call it a stride. She takes long confident steps, probably to scare other people away. Keeping up in robes isn’t easy, and Ava finds herself doing a silly little jog to keep pace.

In the process, she nearly trips over her own left foot, but catches herself, bracing one hand on Beatrice’s shoulder, who holds up abruptly. “What—“ The frown on her face stills too, and it’s then Ava realizes that her hand landed directly on the soft and extremely warm skin of Beatrice’s neck, just above the metal spaulders. “… are you alright?”

Beatrice’s voice is so soft, it’s like a whisper. It’s an especially stark contrast against the noise in the tavern.

“Yeah,” Ava says, uncertain why it feels so close to a lie. “I’m completely fine.” Her breathing is irregular and her cheeks feel flushed, but that’s probably the embarrassment of almost eating the floor on only their second night out on the road. That’d be it. All this time hoping for an adventure, and she immediately stumbles at the start. Literally, even.

“Ava…”

Both their eyes move to Ava’s hand on Beatrice, still there, still lingering, and she jerks it away like she’s been burnt by fire.

The overreaction feels silly in an instant.

Beatrice is warm, but definitely not that warm.

Ava would blush if her body wasn’t already overwhelmed with every other emotion she has yet to even catalogue. There are hopeful things there, like exuberance and anticipation. The kind that make Ava grin at Beatrice so much her face almost aches while she pointlessly wipes her offending hand off against her robe, like some kind of chastisement.

It’s definitely fixed now, everything is normal, even if Beatrice looks a little like she’s not sure how to proceed. “Well.” She blinks, just once, a precise open and close, and her body pivots away from Ava, pointing her feet toward the back of the tavern. “Shall we?”

Ava bounces on the balls of her feet. The first impulse is to slap Beatrice on the shoulder, a sign of camaraderie she’s definitely seen in the Templars. But since there’s very recent evidence Beatrice doesn’t like that kind of thing, she changes course at the last moment, waving her hand around in the air in an admittedly lame celebration. “We… shall!”

It’s the thought that counts. Even if Beatrice is looking at her like she suspects that Ava hasn’t got a single thought in her head.

There are worse looks to receive from a Seeker.

The tavern is loud in a way the lunch hall in the Tower never is, even with far fewer people and a lot less space. There’s an energy in that kind of closeness, Ava’s starting to realize. She saw it in the way the fish swam together in the lake when they crossed the day before. Maybe it was there in the coordinated teamwork of the Templars who had opened the door as well; she wishes she’d been paying more attention.

She’s working to rectify that now, using all the senses. Nothing else is going to escape her, if she can help it. Her fingers graze over the sticky wooden surface of their chosen table. Ava wonders idly if this might be maple this time, and what signs you look for in the grain to know the difference.

Or maybe it’s the sound the tankards make clattering on the wood, one after another. If it’s a certain kind of wood, maybe it’s more of a thunk than a thwap.

There are ways to test this theory, even if there’s no objective third party to consider the results. Ava grins, turning slowly in her seat to face Beatrice. “So which of us is buying?”

“Mother Superion gave me enough coin to pay for our meals.” Somehow Beatrice has found a way to unfurl the map between them even on a table half the size of the ones at the Tower. “You may order for both of us, though, if you like. Nothing too extravagant.”

Ava isn’t going to turn down a free meal, or the opportunity to further people watch that crossing the tavern will provide. There are so many new people to spy on up close. She accepts the offered purse, hefting the weight of it, and tries not to grin too much at the clanking coins. “Do you have a preference for ale?”

The map rattles in disapproval as Beatrice looks up abruptly. “I don’t drink. Alcohol, I mean.”

“On a mission, you mean?” Beatrice holds her gaze for several seconds too long for that to be all she intends. “Oh shit, never ever?” This might be the greatest thing that Ava’s ever learned. It’s definitely the most exciting thing she’s learned about Beatrice so far.

“Ava,” Beatrice says, and she manages to make the name sound so much like a sigh.

“No, I’m handling the order. You agreed, right?”

Beatrice’s mouth snaps shut, her gaze still unblinking. Eventually, she does sigh, relenting. “I did…”

“Enjoy your map!” Ava slams her hand down on the map, to make it clear which one she means, obviously. “I’ve got this.”

But when Ava makes her way to the tavern bar to order, she’s pretty sure — even without looking to check — that Beatrice’s eyes are not back on the map.

Food is part of the plan, obviously. But if Ava is fully honest, it’s only a small part.

She selects a portion of roasted pig that sounds like it’ll do just fine at absorbing some of the alcohol, which is the priority. How many chances will she ever get to make a member of the Chantry drunk enough to loosen up?

It’s not like she’s hoping for loose on a “let the mage go wild and run away from the Circle” level. More like “open up and occasionally smile.” Maybe Beatrice will even answer a direct question once she’s had at least one mug of something stronger than water.

“I come bearing food and drink, both more interesting than geography,” Ava declares once she returns to the table. The way Beatrice barely even glances up, she doesn’t seem convinced.

And she certainly doesn’t seem interested in sampling the food (or drink). “Bea, if you just enjoy some time with me now, I promise that tomorrow I’ll do a tracking spell of some kind.”

“I don’t want you to use magics when it’s not necessary, and please don’t call me that.” Her voice isn’t angry, not exactly, but meticulous and slightly put out. “We are not friends.”

“Temporary coworkers can still talk and enjoy each other’s company.”

The map rustles again, a sure sign that Beatrice must be thinking, even if she refuses to look up. “… alright.” Sharply, suddenly, she folds the map and returns it to her satchel. “Just the dinner and one drink.”

“One drink and only one.” Ava holds up her hands. “By Andraste, I swear it.”

Exactly two drinks later, Beatrice is definitely smiling more than normal, even if she tries to hide it against the edge of the tankard. Her lips drag along the rim as she hums, drawn out, accentuating the process of her thinking. “And do all mages hold their liquor so well?”

“There’s not a lot to do in the Tower.”

Wrinkles form on Beatrice’s brow, fingers drumming against the side of her own temple, a tap tap tap of imagination as she clearly tries to visualize. And maybe, judging by her frown, she comes up short. “… I suppose.” As some kind of reward for effort spent, she takes another (long) drink.

It’s long enough a drink, in fact, that Ava decides to cut in, to give Beatrice a reason to come up for air. “What about you and the other Seekers?” When Beatrice lowers the tankard to answer, Ava casually slides it down the table away from reach. “Do you get along well?”

“Mmm, well we don’t really have a home to return to, the way you do at the Tower.” There’s still a smile on Beatrice’s face, but it’s smaller now, receding and twisting until it’s closer to a frown. “I don’t know many others. Except Lilith, of course.”

A memory that apparently drives Beatrice to want to drink, since she reaches again. Ava pulls it further back. “You two seem to get along okay.”

Beatrice’s hand drops to the table with a slap. She probably wouldn’t agree with the description, but Ava’s first impulse would be to call the look on her face a pout. “As much as she gets along with anyone, yes.” The features rearrange after a moment, as though meant to correct the expression Beatrice never intended to let through.

But it’s still pretty close to a pout.

“So she’s the one who doesn’t like people.” Ava leans in closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “But not you. You love other people.”

Ava’s elbow brushes up against Beatrice, who shifts back in a small retreat. “I love all the Maker’s creations, which does include many people, yes.” The expression that’s definitely not — but absolutely is — a pout only grows larger.

“And now that also includes alcohol,” Ava offers, sliding the tankard back across the table.

Beatrice’s eyes shift over, but she waits before reaching. “… perhaps it does.” Ava thinks she might actually be counting, to keep from looking rushed before her hand darts back out and she takes another drink.

“Perhaps.”

There is a grace in Beatrice, even when she’s more at ease. Her spine is still perfectly straight, if held less rigid. Her movements still hint at the power underneath, but now they are more fluid. It makes Ava think of rivers in a storm, or at least what she’s read about them.

There is so little she really knows.

So she asks even more. “You said you’ve been to Orlais, yes?”

Beatrice shifts in closer, whether to be heard above the noise or because of some added importance. It’s hard to say which. “I’m from there. My parents…” Her mouth opens, then closes, before turning into a frown. “There are only so many things you can do at court, and I was not right for any of them.”

“Not a lot of murdering, I take it.”

The snort from Beatrice is followed by a sneer, more defensive than Ava intended. “That’s not all I do, Ava. Though I’m not surprised a mage would think so.”

“It was a joke.”

The rigidity is back in Beatrice’s posture, fighting against the impulse to sink, to relax and relent. “You can see how I’m laughing.”

It’s an awful change, and Ava feels a sudden need to rectify. To apologize. “I’m sorry,” she says, her hand on Beatrice’s elbow. Both women look down at the point of connection, then up again.

Beatrice’s face is an indecipherable combination of emotions smoothed over by restraint. Maybe there’s distrust in there, disgust, but also… something else. It’s unfamiliar, but it’s there in the way her jaw tenses. Her hands flex against the (possibly maple) wood and grow still again.

Ava pulls her own hand back, properly chastised, but only that much. She still (desperately) wants to know more. “I guess I hit on a sore spot.” She runs her fingers along the rim of her own mug, just to have something to busy her hands with now that they’re back on her side of the table. “And I am sorry. I was just curious about…” The world, Orlais, everything she’s never known. But also, maybe more urgently. “You.”

“There is no need for us to become so… familiar.”

The way Beatrice says the word (familiar) opens up a cavern inside of Ava’s chest that echoes with a feeling so unfamiliar, she can’t give it a name. Not without more questions. “So consider me a very nosey stranger who you have to humor.” Her hand is back on Beatrice’s arm. This time there isn’t any pushback. “Do you want to slow down and have some water?”

The question hangs in the air, much larger than it feels like it should. The look on Beatrice’s face says she’s considering more than hydration, but Ava still can’t work out what it could be. Every silence from her feels large, like words are there inside her eyes, but they’re in carvings that Ava has never learned to read.

It reminds her of how mages who aren’t already tranquil aren’t permitted the study of runic inscription. There’s so much that’s denied her.

But in this moment, not this. Not Beatrice.

“… what’s your question, Ava?”

It feels like a compromise or even a promise. It feels like relief, a great big smile growing on Ava’s face. “Why a Seeker? Being a mage isn’t something you choose, it just happens to you. I’m curious what it’s like. Choosing, I mean.”

Beatrice settles her weight onto her balled up fist, propped up by her elbow. Her fingers are working in her hair, stroking it slowly, and Ava finds her eyes distracted, if only a little bit.

“I chose the Chantry, actually.” The answer starts and Ava’s eyes are back on Beatrice’s face, instead of the slow (distracting) movements of her hands. “But a simple priesthood wasn’t enough for my parents.” There’s a quiet longing in her voice that makes it so easy to imagine. Ava doesn’t know a lot about the life Beatrice has — on the road with Lilith, hunting down rogue mages and possibly putting them to the sword — but the details of this other imagined life sketch themselves in so quickly.

She can picture her in a small village, giving comfort to the people there. Strangers who become something more, closer to family, turning to her in times of need. Love for all the Maker’s creations would actually fit into a life like that so easily. The path from there to here, from then to now, is harder to imagine. There’s so much of that version of Beatrice that had to be sanded down, stripped away, that the process can only feel violent.

Ava frowns, because it’s so sad. Because she doesn’t think anyone else is going to mourn that little girl with a dream, especially not the woman herself. “So your parents chose Seeker.”

“I am happy in my role,” Beatrice says firmly. Maybe she can see all that on Ava’s face, or maybe the topic is enough to make her grow cold.

“Of course.”

“Seeker is much better than Templar, at least.” But Beatrice stops short there. That’s not something you hear from outside the Chantry. Maybe they speak so freely amongst themselves, but for the rest of Thedas they are a united front.

To speak ill of the Templars in front of a mage is particularly uncommon. It sends a thrill shooting through Ava’s brain, even clouded by alcohol. She tries to temper her smile, to control it, but it’s already there, already eager.

She leans in closer. “You mean the Lyrium.” She doesn’t say it like a question, because it’s not one. They all know about the Templar children fed the dream dust from an early age. What fuels a mage’s magic is soured in the body of anyone without the same power. They say it’s necessary for the powers they wield, the ability to pull magic out of the air and force it back beyond the Veil.

They say that, but Seekers hold this power too. Beatrice should be able to silence a spell, to force power back, to drain the magical energy out of Ava without a second thought. And so far, at least, she hasn’t seen her reach for lyrium or even carry it with her on her belt.

“So it’s true, then,” Ava pushes further, much further than she ought to. She leans closer. “Seekers don’t need it. And that means—“

“Where did you hear this?”

It’s not a denial, and they both must realize it, but Beatrice doesn’t sound angry or accusatory. Perhaps instead she is scared. “Nowhere.”

“Ava—“

“I don’t know, okay, people just talk.” They do and it’s true, but she really can’t remember where this rumor came from. It feels like something she’s always known, the way she understands a sunrise.

Although the idea of always is a little bit subjective just now.

“Ava, if there’s something you’re not telling me…” The words trail off and Beatrice sits in silence. It’s another one of her silences that carry so much meaning well beyond the scope of Ava’s understanding.

The only thing she can do is smile. “Don’t worry, I can keep a secret.” She nudges Beatrice with her shoulder, arm to arm. She wants the feeling back from before, when the other woman was easy, shifting like water. Now she’s solid again, resolute as stone. “Nobody would believe a mage anyway, right?”

Ava’s eyebrows lift, like her hopes. Lifting, rising, hopeful.

Eventually, Beatrice relents, or at least she nods. There’s still a cloudy uncertainty there on her face, but this might be the best Ava can hope for.

“Besides,” Ava says, her hand back on Beatrice’s arm, this time without hesitation or acknowledgement from either woman. “After this is over, you could just lock me back in the Tower and throw away with the key. Metaphorically speaking. I don’t think there’s an actual key.” She gasps, alight with the sudden thought, and squeezes the arm in her grasp. “Unless there is a key. One of the really high turrets, there’s locked doors there. Do you get the keys or is that only the Mother Superion?” Her hands sweep wide open, to demonstrate the panoramic width. “I bet the view is amazing!”

She holds the pose for a moment, then two. Her smile is still there, but it slackens just a little. She wasn’t expecting enthusiasm, but at least some response.

When Ava turns her head, she finds Beatrice watching her, quiet but looking oddly content. “I’m sure it is,” she says at last, her voice softer than Ava’s ever heard.

Her hands withdraw back under the table and she shifts, feeling oddly shy but not ashamed. “Anyway, I’m sure you’re great at seeking, but you would have been an easy priest to talk to.”

“Even with so little murder?”

The words could be viewed as pointed, if it weren’t for the twist on Beatrice’s mouth, like the beginnings of a smirk. As if she intends it as a joke.

“See, I knew it,” Ava says, softly so as not to break the careful balance. “You’re laughing.”

“No.” Beatrice shakes her head, softly side to side. “I’m not.”

“Give it time.”

Another several drinks and another several questions asked. The topics turn less invasive, but no less interesting.

It turns out Beatrice enjoys reading histories (expected) but also the occasional novel about a torrid romance (more surprising). She can cook most game that would be found on the trail, of course, but she once aspired to learn to bake pastries.

“Perhaps when I have more time at home,” she says, wistfully, and Ava tries not to think again about the version of Beatrice who would have lived in a small village, how happy she would have been.

A constant stream of questions is how Ava keeps the sadness from showing on her face, “Fruit fillings, or something else?”

The act of answering seems to have a similar effect on Beatrice. She seems lighter now, openly smiling. “Fruit, of course.”

“Oh, of course.”

The constant questions and their answers — she prefers mornings to sunsets and enjoys walks along the mountainside even when she isn’t hunting down mages — might even keep Beatrice’s mind away from how little Ava offers of herself.

One thing Ava offers is her hand, slipped carefully down to brace against Beatrice’s lower back. “Come on, Bea.” She grunts and attempts to help the Seeker stand.

“Don’t call me that,” Beatrice mumbles and Ava’s smile cracks wider.

“See, I knew you were still pretty sober.”

She lets Beatrice rest some of her weight against one shoulder while grabbing for another tankard of water. “Come on then.”

The stairs are more crooked and winding than Ava had anticipated when she settled in for a long night of drinking. She’ll have to accept this is a side effect of a first inn experience.

Next time, she’ll be more prepared.

Ava wakes to the sound of Beatrice reciting lines of the Chant at the side of her bed, just barely audible as syllables under her breath. The exact meaning gets lost, but intent is clear. And judging by the way she winces when Ava calls out — just a quick “good morning” — Beatrice’s hangover is just as evident. Probably should have started pushing waters onto her much earlier.

“… good morning, Ava,” Beatrice answers, eventually, Chant obviously completed as she stands. “We must eat quickly before we set off.”

“Mmm,” is Ava’s best attempt at an answer.

And if she didn’t know better, she’d say that Beatrice actually smiles in return. “Yes, quite.” Her armor rattles as she tugs it into place, adjusting the straps.

Ava watches a moment before tossing the sheets back. “Here, let me help.” She doesn’t wait long enough for Beatrice to answer, because she’d probably try to argue or look put out about it.

But Ava’s positioned herself just at Beatrice’s back, so she can’t even see the pout, if it exists.

“I do this just fine on my own most mornings, you know.”

“I didn’t, but that checks out.” Honestly, Beatrice is probably faster and more efficient at it, but her hands have moved out of the way to allow Ava to work, and it’s too late to admit to ignorance now.

It’s not her fault that mage robes are a lot more straight forward.

Part of the metal shrieks as Ava drags and positions it wrong. She can practically see the grimace from the way Beatrice’s shoulders jerk, wincing.

“Shall I—“

She doesn’t even have to get through the rest of the question before Ava’s hurrying back out of the way. “Yeeahh, I’ll just go check about breakfast, okay?” She takes several more steps away. “Do you want pork with the biscuits?”

“Ava.” Beatrice stops her progress again, mid-tightening of one bracer. “I’d appreciate if you remember that we are on a budget and—“

“Okay, thank you, only half an order of pork it is.”

Ava shuts the door before Beatrice can get anything else out. It probably wouldn’t have been beneficial anyway.

Before Ava can even finish making the order, Beatrice stumbles into the front room with her armor still half-off.

“Eggs and biscuits will be just fine, thank you,” she says, sliding the necessary coin across the bar.

The man looks annoyed, but Ava thinks that might be his normal expression. “You want me to ignore what your friend just ordered?”

“Oh, we’re not friends,” Ava says, even as she shoots Beatrice a giant smile. “She kind of hates me. Especially in the mornings.”

The man scoffs and turns away, clearly not that interested, and Beatrice’s eyes slip closed. Ava imagines she’s probably praying to the Maker or counting back from ten. Both seem as likely.

The eggs are fine enough — a little runny, the way Ava likes them — but pork would have been much better.

She’s still dwelling on it as they ready the horse. She pulls the saddle into place and tries to imagine the exact flavor and smell of the cooked meat, trying not to salivate.

“Excuse me...”

Beatrice draws her sword faster than Ava can even turn to look at the approaching man who startles and raises his hands. “I’m sorry,” he says, wide eyes locked on the weapon. “I mean no harm, please… lower your sword.”

“Don’t approach a warrior from behind, boy.”

The use of ”boy” feels unnecessary to Ava — he looks roughly the same age as either of them — but the man appears too startled to take much offense. His hands remain raised as he takes a slow step back. “I was hoping I could ask for your help.”

After a careful look of appraisal, Beatrice sheathes her sword and turns away. “Ask at your local Chantry. We do not have the time.”

“The bandits who stole my cattle will surely be long gone by then,” the dark haired man persists. “Please,” he says again, and Ava gets the impression he is not someone who enjoys having to ask for help. There’s a strong, stubborn set to his jaw, a burning look in his eyes that he is trying to humble by lowering his gaze.

It’s that effort to contain something larger than himself that Ava recognizes as a kindred impulse. She smiles and turns to Beatrice, who looks horrified by a dawning realization. “Ava, no.”

Ava ducks her head, using the horse to block the man’s line of sight. Surely now he won’t hear her whisper (probably still too loud), “Come on, it’s just a few bandits.”

“Seekers do not kill petty bandits.”

“But a priest would help the poor local people, right? And this is just some random farm boy.” She’s pretty sure the guy clears his throat in indignation at that, but Ava just keeps pushing on (for his sake). “Look, it’s not a problem, my magic will help.”

“We don’t use magic for simple tasks.”

“You don’t use magic for anything,” Ava insists, straightening back up to her full (yet not that impressive) height and crossing her arms to help drive home how stubborn she’s feeling. “I do. And I say we’re helping.”

The look on Beatrice’s face is one of careful calculation. Ava’s seen it a few times. It’s the look when she’s weighing considering which path in the woods to take. It’s the look on her face at breakfast this morning when she was calculating how much of their money Ava overspent on liquor.

It’s the look of someone trying to preserve a quickly dwindling feeling of advantage. “And what if I don’t lend you the horse?”

But Ava was ready for that. “Then I don’t find your relic.” She probably shouldn’t feel so pleased, so smug, that she’s biting her lip. But she does feel that smug, so she does bite her lip, and she could honestly swear that Beatrice glances at it.

Once, twice.

“Alright,” Beatrice says, quickly hauling herself up into the saddle and then holding a hand down for Ava. “Which way to your bandits, farm boy?”

Yeah, he really doesn’t enjoy the nickname, but the guy still doesn’t object. “They rode off to the east.”

Ava can feel Beatrice tensing at her back. “Of course. The opposite direction of our destination.”

But Ava waves her hand in dismissal. “We’d have to head back this way after we free the cows. It’s fine.”

“Of course, Ava.”

It really is a special skill how Beatrice can evoke eyerolling in just her tone of voice alone.

The horse sets off at a fast gallop, speed only gathering.

Chasing bandits down on horseback was never going to lead to a calm conversation without any violence, and Ava can admit she never wanted to keep it that friendly either. She’s got all this magic; why not use at least a little bit for something real? After so much time spent in her studies, it’s time to apply the practical.

But these bandits really are such easy targets that she could almost feel bad about it if they weren’t obviously trying to kill them both. The first arrow shot in their direction misses (very wide), but there’s murderous intent in his eyes when he notches the next one back and shouts for the lead rider to go steady.

“Ava,” Beatrice says through gritted teeth. “Duck, now.”

This time the arrow is close enough to hear the whistle of it flying past.

Maybe they’re not as easy as Ava thought. Which means she doesn’t have to feel guilty when flames form on her fingertips as the lyrium burns its way down her throat. The fires surge and grow, gathering into a rotating ball of flame that singes a trail across the tall parts of the grass. It erupts inches away from the lead bandit’s horse, which startles and drops its rider. He shouts and rolls, trying to put out the flames alight on his tunic.

The violence itself isn’t as satisfying as Ava thought it would be. It turns out she hates the sound of screaming. Maybe she always has. She’s practiced with flames plenty of times, but this real world application isn’t the same. She didn’t take into account that the cattle might panic and run.

Or that the fire might start to spread.

Their own horse bucks, hooves striking the dirt in agitation, but Beatrice keeps a steady hand. They both dismount, though Ava takes a half-stumbling extra step after and dodges to avoid an extra kick from the horse.

“If you would like to return your farm boy something other than a barbecue, perhaps you should—“

“I’m way ahead of you!”

Jagged particles of frost ripple across Ava’s palm, a growing and clattering roar of noise as a wave of ice ripples out and envelops the surrounding area in a glistening sheen of cold air, pulling the heat from the flames. Goosebumps break out across Ava’s skin and she can see Beatrice’s breath in the air when she lets out a soft huff of appreciation.

Their eyes meet, and Ava thinks (irrationally) that it reminds her of the way the world feels when slowed by magic. Ava feels every beat of her heart, clear and precise, and she thinks (rationally) that Beatrice is beautiful like this, with soft flecks of snow gathering on her eyelashes and the faint outline of a smile on her lips.

Then Beatrice moves.

The grace and restraint are familiar, but suddenly amplified and more electric. Like everything else about how Beatrice carries herself through the world is a prelude to how she handles her blade. The smile on her face is just as sharp as the sword she uses to deflect the weapon of an onrushing bandit before striking him down with the backside of her gauntlet.

The smile twists on her mouth and Ava thinks she has her answer. Beatrice, who cares for all the Maker’s creations, also loves the feeling of competency and control wielded by her weapon. If she had been born with the right gifts — or curse, depending on perspective — she would make an incredibly powerful mage.

When the actual combat ends (just as suddenly as it began), they are both left breathing heavily, though Beatrice tries not show it in the subtle movements of her shoulders. It’s from the exertion, but also their shared thrill.

It’s only then, pulse beating in her ears, that Ava takes better stock of her surroundings.

The bandits are there, bruised and bleeding in various states of consciousness, but the cattle are gone. All of them.

“Shit. Poor farm boy.”

“No, Ava.” The edge of her name comes out sharper than anything Beatrice has said to her yet. “Poor us.”

She thrusts her hand broadly in the direction they rode in from, but it takes Ava longer than it ought to for the realization to sink in.

Their horse is gone too.

They walk for what feels like hours. Watching the way Beatrice checks the path of the sun, she probably knows exactly how long it takes, but she doesn’t answer Ava’s questions. They are far off course, without a horse and no rescued cattle.

Because both these things are arguably Ava’s fault, she decides it’s best not to mention her growing hunger. A part of her worries that Beatrice would say something snide about making a meal of burnt beef. Being a Seeker, she might even know something worse.

Eventually they come to a tavern just off the side of the road, with a lopsided stable protruding from the back of the building. It’s less populated than the inn they stayed at the night before, though perhaps it’s because the sun is still up.

Ava braces her elbows on the bar, leaning back. She waits, watching the barkeep and Beatrice talk, both speaking in low whispers.

The conversation looks tense. Whatever careful thing Beatrice is saying, it’s not going over well. The barkeep’s brow wrinkles and shifts, resentment and annoyance playing across his face quickly. Those are emotions Ava’s definitely familiar with seeing; she can read them at a glance. He slaps his hand on the counter, and Ava feels a sharp pull at her back, even apart from the obvious reverberations of the wood. Her tongue aches, as though bit.

She can see him glancing her way. Maybe it’s the blood spattered in her hair and the soot stains on her robes that’s making him so agitated. Beatrice doesn’t follow his gaze, her demeanor still calm and composed.

Now the barkeep’s voice is raising and Ava can hear his words (at last), saying, “So take it and leave, no room for you tonight. No room for mages here.”

He shoves a finger into Beatrice’s face, and there’s a flash of something in the Seeker’s eyes. Concern or annoyance, Ava’s not sure.

The vibration in her head is pounding now. An aching for the familiar tang inside her mouth, the taste so close to blood. Some kind of aching for the familiar. Her fingers curl and her eyes drift back into her skull, ready to recite the words. She’ll make him blind (temporarily) or make him believe his ears are filled with spiders.

It strikes Ava as a perfectly reasonable response to a guy throwing his weight around and hitting things just because he’s angry. Raising his voice for no good reason and making Beatrice feel something sharply enough to break that calm facade.

Ava thinks guys like that could do with just a little lesson.

The air twists, sparking with electric potential, when an armor clad hand grabs her (firmly) by the arm. “Ava, stop it.”

The power slips from the air, just as quickly as it began.

She expects to see Beatrice standing there, looking stern and annoyed, when she opens her eyes. That’s not a surprise. What’s a little less expected is the other emotion that’s there too, locked away in the sealed off corner of Beatrice’s eyes. Ava thinks it might actually be concern, maybe for the person she sees as mostly cargo, who nearly risked herself.

It’s not just that the magic left the air either. It’s stranger. Something else is there in its place now, solid and thicker, harder to press through.

It makes Ava’s head pound, bright lights against the back of her eyes. Beatrice and her pretty frowning smile feel far away now, half out of focus, when she says, “I was helping.”

“You were not, though I believe you thought so.”

“What’d you—“

Beatrice’s voice cuts in quick, but low. It’s basically just a whisper right up against Ava’s ear. “I reversed your magic.” Her breath is warm, so warm, and the smell of her skin makes Ava think of something sweet, like raspberries maybe. “Some of it went back into the Veil, but I’m afraid some of the power escaped directly into you. You’ll be fine soon, but you have to remember to breathe, alright?”

“Why are you being so nice?”

Ava’s vaguely aware that the bartender must be staring, perhaps with the big meaty hand he’d slammed onto the table now gripping some kind of weapon. That’s how they say most people are around mages.

But not Beatrice, not this time. Her hands are empty, except for Ava. She’s touching her face (gently, gingerly) and holding her steady. “I’m doing my job. There’s no need to do it horribly.”

There’s a bubbling bright impulse to laugh, and it bursts out of Ava like a burst of light. She feels Beatrice tense against her, but then the grip grows softer, more gentle.

“Whatever this is,” a harsh voice cuts in, right around the time that Ava’s bleary vision is coming back into focus with several more slow blinks. “I suggest you two take it outside.”

Ava feels Beatrice’s grip shift to the back of her robe, dragging her like a kitten held by its scruff. “Gladly.” She tosses a bag of coins onto the bar, and the people standing around make way for her sharp stride toward the door, with a mage still stumbling along in tow.

“Sorry,” Ava says, not really very sorry at all, though the feeling now might qualify as regret once she can sort it out from the dizziness. “What were we even doing here?”

Beatrice shoulders the door open and leans Ava up against the exterior wall. It’s a small gesture that Ava is embarrassingly grateful for in the moment, slumping in an instant.

“I was buying a new horse.”

Ava’s head pivots on her currently wobbly neck and is met with large eyes and an even bigger rest of the face. It’s definitely a horse. “… oh, hi.” Impulsively, she begins to reach out to pet the horse, but its lips ripple in a soft whiny that reveals massive teeth and she thinks better of it. “What’s her name? Or— His?”

Quickly and seemingly without much effort, Beatrice is on the horse’s back. “She doesn’t have one.”

Her hand reaches down to Ava, who accepts it without question, allowing herself to be hauled up into place astride the horse, with Beatrice at her back. “Doesn’t have a name yet, you mean.”

“I did not mean that.”

The horse begins to walk with a few sharp clicks from Beatrice’s tongue, and it feels like the world is shifting under Ava. “Oh, shit!” She grips her knees together tightly, realizes that maybe she’s hurting the animal, and releases again.

“Relax,” Beatrice’s voice comes to Ava from directly behind her ear, another soft whisper. “I’ve got you.”

The second X marked on the map is an empty field, the grass charred and yellowed as if scorched by sun with no water for years. There’s traces of something in the air, sharp and sticky on the tongue. Magic was spent here. If Ava were to reach out, fingers plucking the edges of the Veil like you can catch the edge of a rope (burn and all), she would be able to tell.

But she looks to Beatrice before reaching for the Veil this time. Lesson learned and all that. The Seeker is tense and alert at her side, her voice low. “You feel it too?”

“Of course.” Ava’s palms are nearly aching and her shoulders hum with a deep, endless wanting. Wanting to reach out, to feel it. “I was going to see if I could find any threads.”

Beatrice’s gaze is hard in a way Ava can’t read. It doesn’t feel suspicious, not exactly, but it’s still guarded. “Ava,” she says, like it’s a plea, or maybe it’s a warning.

Either way, the only answer is to smile. “If I push too hard, you can zap me again. Or I guess, you un-zap? Whatever that was.”

“I’d really rather not.”

“I’d rather you not too, funny enough.” It doesn’t actually feel funny, even if Ava’s first instinct (in most things) is to keep smiling.

It’s a smile that only grows when she drinks her lyrium — heavily diluted, processed, and still burning the whole way down —then pulls out into the Veil, peeling reality back like the slick shiny skin of a mandarin, revealing the throbbing mess underneath. The power here is insane, wave after wave of infinity splashing at her ankles, whipping through the air.

She feels Beatrice’s hand on her shoulder, sudden and sharp, but when Ava turns her head there isn’t any anger there. Beatrice’s brow is creased, but the expression looks like worry. “Ava?” she says again, but this time it’s not admonishment.

It’s a call in need of a response, and Ava nods. “I got this, Bea.”

“Please don’t call me—“

There was probably more to that sentence, but the sound rips away and Ava’s mind shatters, ground down into a fine powder and stretched thin across the edge of reality. She blinks and opens her eyes. The world is a misty red, a thin film of distortion over her eyes. Or maybe it’s closer to the truth?

This part is fuzzy, both literally and figuratively.

Distant, as if through a layer of thick fabric, she hears Beatrice’s voice calling out, saying, “If you don’t return quickly…”

There was definitely more to that sentence.

But the Fade is scattered out before her feet, red and raw. It pulsates and she takes a single step. The Veil here is so thin, the magic used must have been powerful. She barely reached and here she is, fully realized in the land of dreams.

The new voice here is much louder than Beatrice’s now. “Come at last, child.” It’s a whisper cut into the wind, curling in her ear. It snakes up her spine and she shivers, despite the thick heat in the air. “What do you seek?”

“Who was here before me?”

“Many others, but you as well.”

Giving away too much emotion to an entity that’s definitely a demon is obviously a bad idea, but even so, Ava can’t help her sigh. “Shit, I’m really bad at these riddles.” She rubs the back of her head, like that might build up thoughts in there, even though it’s not her actual physical body she’s touching.

That’s still back in the waking world, with Beatrice.

“There’s no riddle. There is no game.” The figure that stands before her is human enough, with a sort of regal look. Like a king, or an asshole prince. “I only intend to tell you the truth.”

Ava rolls her eyes and continues to inspect the area for signs of other mages who may have passed through after claiming the relic. The demon continues to watch her like he expects a response.

But Ava loves being a disappointment.

The annoyance is so clear in his voice when he says, “Don’t you want to know what I know about you?”

“Not really, no.” Ava doesn’t expect to find a mage hiding under a rock, but she still turns it over with her foot, just to be thorough. “I’m busy.”

“You seek power, do you not?”

It’s the kind of random that comes so far out of nowhere that Ava has to take a second to consider what about her behavior even prompted it. And then it hits her. “Ohhh, you’re a power demon, aren’t you? That makes sense, okay. I’m not really interested in power and control myself, but I understand the value.”

“I am… not—“

“You definitely aren’t human, if that’s what you were going for. It’s fine, you can drop the act.”

Ava waves her hand dismissively. She’s only giving half her attention to the conversation while the rest of her focuses on the ground, looking for traces of another mage’s spells, like footprints on sand. Demons can attack in the Fade, sure, but they’ll only target easy prey. And if he tries anything, Ava has tricks ready up her sleeve.

The tricks are literal but the sleeves are metaphorical, in this case, since she took off the robe and everything. The point is she’s actually surprised to see him still standing there — hands clasped, annoyed frown on his face — when she finally looks again. “Are you just going to stand there watching me like some kind of creep?”

“Ava.”

For a single sharp moment of sinking fear, Ava wonders if the demon actually does know something, to call out to her that way. That is, before she realizes that it’s not his voice.

It’s something distant, calling out.

Beatrice.

She turns her head to look back. The air ripples like water disrupted at the shoreline. It shifts and she can almost see Beatrice clearly, right there in the distance.

It’s a considerable great distance, but close somehow too, her voice right in Ava’s ear, calling her again. ”Ava, come back.”

The man — no, demon — moves to extend his hand. He reaches out, but Ava is already turning, already running. She focuses her thoughts across the distance, yes, but also closer, nearer something else inside. She finds the warmth huddled in her chest, the way she feels when Beatrice whispers close, and she cradles it, holds it, and comes gasping back into the light.

The dream fades around her, receding back into the Fade.

“Ava.”

She is on her back, blinking up into the rays of sun visible in silhouette around Beatrice’s concerned face. Her head is cradled in the Seeker’s lap, worried hands stroking her hair. It’s the only time she’s seen Beatrice shake. “What…”

“You’re alright.” Beatrice’s eyes move quickly, examining up and down, and the edges of her mouth grow tense. It would be a frown, Ava thinks, if she was allowing herself to show such naked emotion. “Aren’t you?” And then, as if she realizes this can be made into a more direct question. “How do you feel?”

“… a little confused.”

Beatrice nods, several times. The repetition seems to reassure her. “When you collapsed, I became… concerned.”

Ava tries not to think too long about Beatrice’s fingers still drifting through her hair, the slow sensation of fingers stroking, soothing. Because if she thinks about it too long, the act of acknowledgment, might draw Beatrice’s attention back and she might stop. “Well, I’m fine.” She’s not sure that’s true, but it feels better than silence.

“If you’re sure.”

Chapter Text

I have faced armies
With You as my shield,
And though I bear scars beyond counting,
Nothing can break me except Your absence. — Trials 1:6

If there were any other solution, Beatrice would take it.

She is loathe to return to the tavern they were already thrown out of, to be made to grovel for the amusement of the particularly rude barkeep — who took one long look at Ava’s state of dress and determined they would be a nuisance — but the choices are limited. They are too far from the next village and Ava is too weak from overextending her magic for a second time.

“We’re running late, aren’t we,” Ava’s voice is faintly audible from her current position slumped against their horse’s neck. Beatrice has tried repeatedly to arrange her more securely, but she surrenders after the fifth attempt when Ava flops forward once more.

Instead, she places a secure hand on the mage’s lower back, keeping her steady. “We will be fine.” Beatrice strokes along Ava’s spine, hoping to soothe. The shiver in response causes some concern — is she in pain? growing faint? — but Beatrice doesn’t press. If Ava needs something, she has certainly proven herself capable of asking. “Mother Superion only provided us an estimate. The artifact isn’t going to grow legs and walk away.”

“Are we sure about that? It’s magic, right?”

Of course Beatrice isn’t sure about that, but it had been intended to be so outrageous a response that Ava might find humor in it. Perhaps she’d even laugh.

Instead Beatrice is left wondering if such a thing is even possible. She frowns, despite herself. “I am fairly certain…”

The momentum Ava lifts herself with is sharp and sudden, sending her flopping back against Beatrice with a light, “humph.” She looks up at her and blinks slowly before a smile appears, fully formed and so very bright. “If you’re sure you won’t be in trouble.”

Her eyes are darker than Beatrice realized, or perhaps it’s the gradual setting of the sun that creates the illusion. She considers the exact flecks of them; they are closer to caramel than tanned leather, which is fitting. Ava herself has a sweetness that can be equal parts delightful and overpowering.

Gradually, Beatrice realizes that she has let the silence carry for too long. “I think it would be more trouble if I let you die, Ava.”

“I’m not going to die. Pass out in the middle of the wilderness with nothing to protect myself, sure, maybe— Okay, I guess I see what you mean.” Ava chuckles to herself, but the sound is faint, dying off in her throat.

It’s enough to make Beatrice worry, for the sake of her cargo if nothing else. “Ava?” She shifts her grip on the horse’s reins and slides Ava into the cradle of her other arm. “Ava, are you still there?”

“… m’fine. Just resting m’eyes.”

But the mage is worryingly pale. Her lips are flecked with red, most likely blood. She looks far worse than she did after their encounter with the bandits, and that was apparently concerning enough for the barkeep to send them away.

The amount of coin that Beatrice is going to have to provide him now will be enormous, and even that might not be enough.

“We’re nearly there,” Beatrice says through gritted teeth, trying to assure herself as much as Ava, who barely seems to be listening. The only response is a gentle groan, and Beatrice urges the horse into a faster gallop. She adjusts her weight and movement, cradling Ava gently to prevent excessive jostling.

Judging by the stable in the back, the inn is even less crowded than it was the last time they passed through. That might be a good sign. Fewer patrons means less coin and a potentially pliable barkeep.

Of course that also means there’s no way to blend Ava in with the larger crowd; not that Beatrice thinks the man won’t remember them.

There is very little chance of that after Ava tried to— Beatrice isn’t entirely sure what Ava had intended, but a mage’s sense of justice is seldom tempered.

Even Ava, who looks so peaceful with her eyes closed — face turned to press her cheek against the cool steel of Beatrice’s plate — is probably capable of a whole array of atrocities even if, just now, she looks completely harmless. Beatrice saw the way the world nearly caved in around her; the Veil rippling then cracking, like shattering glass. The way the energy began to crackle and spark underneath Ava’s skin, drawing the very life out of the mage without enough lyrium to fuel the whirlwind of magical destruction.

The fact that Ava didn’t even seem to realize how much of her own life force she was draining makes it all the more worrying.

But the priority, for now, is her health.

Beatrice guides the horse to the back, where she’ll at least have the time to compose herself into something more presentable. She slips down from the saddle with Ava lightly slung against her shoulder.

The woman groans and Beatrice winces. The blood must be rushing back to Ava’s head, and even a reassuring hand against her lower back does nothing to calm the miserable look on the mage’s face. When Ava coughs and curls in close on their way inside, Beatrice knows with certainty that flecks of blood will dry on her cape before she has the chance to clean it. She should have taken it off back at the horse, left in a saddle bag out of sight, but it felt like a necessary touch for this attempt at renewed civility.

The barkeep looks up as the door opens and a frown cuts across his face before Beatrice has even taken a full step inside. As she moves to shut the door behind her, he is already calling out, saying, “No, not you two again. Not here.”

She ignores his words, but not his presence, directing herself to the bar where she rests Ava gently upon an unoccupied stool. “Please. My friend is injured,” Beatrice explains, because ‘friend’ is an easier way to describe her relationship with Ava than anything closer to the truth. “We are in need of a room for the night. So that she can rest.”

The man spits. It doesn’t seem directed at anyone in particular, but perhaps he intends it for the concept of magic (and mages) as a whole. “Burnt herself through with her magic, didn’t she?”

Beatrice isn’t sure why he seems so sure. Maybe it’s something to do with the look on Ava’s face, or perhaps it’s something Beatrice has given away with the tremor in her voice she tries to hide. It could be it was just a lucky guess, but her hesitation does nothing to deny it. “… do you have the room or don’t you?”

“There’s a room for you. But not for her.”

“That’s absurd.”

“You might think so, if you’d never seen an apostate destroy an entire village with witch fire.” He spits again. “Have you seen babies when they’re burning?”

The question is so surprising, so visceral, that it must show on Beatrice’s face. The way she stands up straight and breathes in sharply. Her mouth flattens to a very still, very even line. “No,” she says simply. “I have not.”

“As you might guess, I have.”

Ava’s eyelids flutter, but she remains otherwise still. If Beatrice were honest with herself, she might acknowledge that Ava seems to be getting worse.

But Beatrice only has enough honesty for one thing at the moment, and that’s deliberate persuasion. “That’s terrible,” she says, because it’s true and because a man like this — carrying around his anger and his resentment like a wound that’s rotting away inside him — is deeply in need of confession, the help of a Sister or a priest, but unfortunately for him there is only Beatrice. “I am sorry for what happened to you. But my friend is not responsible. She and I are on a mission to recover a lost magical artifact.”

The man’s expression morphs into something both annoyed and incredulous. It’s only then that Beatrice realizes how much “lost magical artifact” must sound like a truly improbable thing to the common man, as if it’s just some excuse, though why he imagines she might be traveling with a mage instead is hard to imagine. Does he think a Seeker — fully cloaked and all — is here to rob money from a shabby inn along the road to Redcliffe?

The thought, Beatrice realizes in an instant, is overly unkind. A man who has suffered as he claims to is likely to see threats and danger in any stranger, particularly one carrying a large enough sword.

Beatrice holds her hands up to show that she means no harm, hoping she might put some of his worries at ease. “I do understand your concerns. When it comes to magic, I share them. That is why we must recover the potentially dangerous artifact and put it somewhere safe.” She gestures to Ava, now slumped so far down on the stool her face is against the bar. “But I need my friend in good health if I’m going to do that.”

The man’s expression is still hard, closed off in an all too familiar way that Beatrice knows so well in Lilith — in herself, even, when staring in a mirror — but there is something else in his eyes. He is considering, and so she waits.

For the moment, she is glad that Ava appears to have lost consciousness; with her added commentary, this might be going far worse.

“You can stay for one day.” He holds up a single finger to indicate it. “Keep her locked up in the room at all times.”

In spite of the fraying of her nerves, Beatrice draws from all the experience of her childhood spent in Val Royeux to offer him a radiant smile. “Consider it done.”

“I’m not dead, you know,” Ava grumbles from the bed.

“And thank the Maker for that. Now stop being difficult.”

After two vials of lyrium and as many hours resting in the comfort of a bed, Ava has decided she is perfectly healthy now, even though her first attempt to sit up immediately resulted in a dizziness that left her lying down again.

“I’m fine!”

“It’s getting late,” Beatrice answers, patience coming to her easier than she anticipates. “If you rest now, it’ll be morning before you know it.”

“And then you’re going to ask me to continue resting,” Ava grumbles, looking ever more worn through, like the edges of her robe. “When I could be more more useful on my feet.”

Beatrice's gentleness is tempered further by a growing sadness she does not entirely understand. "You are more than your uses, Ava." Nothing about Ava seems especially in need of her defense or protection — she is resolute and boisterous to an absurd and unearned degree — and yet she still says something like this, exposing previously unknown vulnerabilities, and Beatrice feels compelled to protect that spark she had so recently found only abrasive.

Perhaps this is what it would have been like to be a priest of the Chantry. Setting aside her own preferences and inclinations in favor of the preservation of others. Guarding Ava’s internal light like the eternal flames that burn bright at every Chantry in the land. The eternal flame is a symbol of Andraste’s sacrifice and isn’t this also sacrifice? A joining together, two disparate halves, to become something new entirely.

The mage is still silent. Perhaps she is pondering the weight of Beatrice’s words, or perhaps she heeded the advice to finally rest. From her place at the writing desk, Beatrice cranes her neck for a better look, studying the lines of Ava’s face. She looks so peaceful in her repose, so unlike what Beatrice has come to expect. Her eyelids flicker, but only just. Her lips part, two gentle slopes, evoking a quiet innocence along with some other unspoken thing.

Words escape her.

This, Beatrice thinks, is why the Chant exists. To provide order in the unknown. To remind us of place and purpose. To steady a trembling hand, just as Beatrice’s own shakes now with her quill. Her fingers flex before extending again slowly.

The candle burns low. How much time has she passed like this, watching Ava?

A problem remains. Beatrice’s mind has carefully evaded around it. She has not allowed herself to consider or even look for overly long, but the truth rests plainly in the bed Ava sleeps in, nestled up against the wall.

There is only one bed in this room.

The candle flickers. It has nearly burnt out. Ava continues to sleep. Her breathing sounds less strained to Beatrice’s ear. That must mean that the sleep, along with the lyrium, is working as intended. Perhaps Ava will be fully recuperated tomorrow after all, and there won’t be any need to make further arrangements with the barkeep.

Perhaps she will be so relieved by her own rejuvenation, she won’t think to question the Seeker slipping into her bed in the night.

These thoughts feel strangely like something Beatrice will need to admit at her next confession. Her armor is more difficult to remove than usual. The straps catch and her hands shake. She takes several breaths and thinks of the Chant.

Guide me through the blackest nights. Her pauldrons come loose and she unfastens the clasp of her cape. She begins to make a pile at the foot of the bed, carefully arranging the discarded items.

When Beatrice stands again, her eyes fall on Ava’s form on the bed. The way her hand curls against the sheets, as though reaching out for something unknown. The upturned angle of her chin, the petulance and the pride.

Steel my heart against the temptations of the wicked.

The room is warmer than it ought to be. Beatrice considers removing one of the many blankets from the bed, but Ava herself appears cold and deeply in need of the comfort.

Beatrice will simply suffer through it, as is her tendency.

She lifts the edge of the sheet and hesitates, considering the curve of Ava’s neck, the arch of her back and shoulder.

Make me to rest in the warmest places.

Beatrice slips into the bed, under the heavy warmth of the sheets, next to the much lighter warmth of Ava.

”She is like a summer breeze,” she thinks, before she can stop herself.

Her hands flex again, clutching at the sheets, steadying herself with something she knows well. The Maker provides us the resources we need to persevere through the tests of our life.

In many ways, this mage is a test. Of Beatrice’s resolve, her morals, her patience.

But when Ava’s breath catches, just for a moment, before it settles into a drawn out snore, Beatrice’s own heart beats out of rhythm too; just for that moment. Every creature made by the hand of the Maker is worthy of life and love.

And love presents itself in many ways.

“Goodnight, Ava,” Beatrice whispers to the air between them before she turns away to face the cold brick wall across the chamber instead.

Beatrice dreams.

In her dream, she walks alone. She steps up to the edge of an unusually calm stream and lets the water lap against her bare feet as she slowly steps inside. Without her armor, there is no fear of sinking.

Even in the haze of the dream, she remembers how it had felt — the day she nearly drowned, the days that came much later when she had been forced to empty herself of all emotions — and the feeling claws at her skull. If she would scream, no one would hear, she thinks. Or if they did, they would not care.

She is far from the home of her family. She has never had a home of her own. She turns back to the shore and the protection of the forest, but it is alight with the flame.

The terror is in her throat now, sharp and swelling, like a low pressure against her back, digging in sharply.

Beatrice wakes with a shuddering gasp, startled by some weight pressed up behind her. She pulls herself from the bed, jerking hastily to her feet, before she turns and remembers. Ava is there, hands still curled as though clutching at Beatrice.

It was only the mage.

Beatrice releases a breath she did not realize she was holding. She licks her lips and pushes loose strands of hair back from her face. Her braid has come undone.

Ava stirs, the smile on her face stretching wider. Her eyes flutter open, quick as the beating of wings. She doesn’t seem disoriented or anxious, as Beatrice had felt in those first moments. Perhaps Ava has spent so little time away from the Tower that any chance to wake up somewhere new is a moment of quiet relief.

She sits up, and Beatrice catches herself staring as the sheets fall away from Ava’s half-dressed form.

She turns away to keep from watching the way Ava slowly stretches her limbs in the sunlight, languid as the lazy cats they used to keep in the manor when Beatrice was young.

“… mooorning.” The word stretches out in Ava’s yawn, twisting just as her back twists and turns, popping out tension along several points. “Where to today?”

Beatrice turns back in time to pull the sheets firmly back into place on top of Ava just as she attempts to stand. “Today you will rest a little longer, and I will consider our maps.” And possibly look for an additional source of some small income helping the locals, but Beatrice isn’t going to tell Ava that.

Based on past experience, she would half-expect Ava to volunteer the two of them to repair a farmer’s roof or cook an understaffed Chantry’s meal for free when their gold supply is already running too low. Between the delays, the upcharge on the room from the angry barkeep, and Ava’s eagerness in spending gold on ale, they don’t have enough coin to make it much longer.

It would be somewhat of a relief if the pout on Ava’s face was a sign of some contrition or remorse, an awareness of her own fault in this predicament, but most likely she simply wants to leave the bed.

“I’m fine.”

“So you keep insisting. But you overtaxed your magic and began to drain your own life force.” Beatrice’s mouth thins to a stern line. “I hardly consider that fine.”

“… admittedly, that wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t intentional either.”

“That does not fill me with the reassurance you intend.” Beatrice adjusts and fluffs the bed sheets firmly, pulling them up to Ava’s chin. “I won’t be long. Just rest a little longer. We paid for the rest of the morning, and it wasn’t cheap.”

“Maker’s balls, what an asshole.”

Beatrice considers asking Ava not to use such a coarse expression, but thinks better of it. Knowing Ava, it would only encourage the behavior. “Please, Ava. Just rest. I will only be downstairs.”

Though she had begun to settle back into the bed, with a grin stretched on her face, Ava sits right back up again. She looks conflicted. Not angry or upset, but wounded somehow. Her eyebrows knit together. “You’re not going to do it here? At the desk.” She points, as if her meaning isn’t clear.

“I don’t want to be a distraction.”

And there are no people to offer her payment here in the bedroom, but Ava doesn’t need to hear that either. Just as Beatrice isn’t going to tell her that her pouting is nearly effective. It isn't enough to sway the Seeker off her set course, but potent enough that she draws back in close and strokes Ava’s hair away from her brow until the mage relents and settles back into her pillow. “You will be fine, as you said. Just a little while, alright? Get your rest so we can set off later.”

Despite no farmers waiting in the inn with roofs in need of repair, apparently the stable just outside could do with some attention, its hinges coming loose on more than one of the doors. This is not the kind of work that befits a Seeker, but the barkeep is more than happy to suggest it.

Perhaps humiliation is the intention.

If there were more people around — or if Beatrice were wearing her more recognizable attire — this might be slightly mortifying. But dressed simply as she is, with no one to take notice, the plainness of the task is comforting. She removes rotting nails and sands down the edges of the wood. She uses a hammer the barkeep provides and begins to enjoy the gradual ache in her lower back and across her shoulders as the work progresses.

Before Beatrice knows it, several hours have passed with her sweating in the sun. What began with only a few doors — accomplished with efficiency and care — led to the man suggesting other repairs, throughout the whole exterior. The pay is enough to carry them through the new delays, just as Beatrice had hoped, but there is a satisfaction too in finally having a goal she can achieve directly. Not just chasing a mystery through the woods, or babysitting a mage who never listens. The ache in her muscles is good because it means Success.

Beatrice breathes out heavily, wiping sweat from her brow with the edge of her tunic sleeve. She squints up at the sun, studying its position. There is still time to travel before night fall, even after a full lunch for both her and Ava.

“Nothing like the sweat of a hard day’s work, is there?” The boisterous barkeep has changed his mood considerably from where it began this morning. He is smiling now, clapping a firm hand to Beatrice’s shoulder. “And that mage has behaved herself too. You Chantry types really do work miracles for our Maker, don’t you?”

Beatrice sees no point in discussing the specifics of the Chantry hierarchies with this man or her exact role within them. His smile — and, admittedly, the food and gold — is enough. “Yes, thank you. It’s rewarding to do good work for good people.” Her smile is brief, but he reacts as though the praise were endless.

He laughs again, pulling her in the direction of the side entrance. She allows herself to be dragged, not wanting to offend.

Just before she disappears back inside the under-lit dimness of the inn, Beatrice catches a glimpse of a familiar face watching them from the window.

She told that mage to get her rest.

Beatrice lifts a pointed eyebrow in that final moment and Ava disappears from the window, looking appropriately chastised.

The barkeep is happy enough with the work Beatrice has done — at admittedly far below the usual price — that he actually smiles when Ava comes downstairs to join them. Beatrice doesn’t smile, because Ava is still meant to be resting. Ava is meant to stay up there until Beatrice comes to fetch her, but of course what Ava is meant to do and what is actually done increasingly misalign. She is so much a woman of her own word that it’s left her deaf to the requests of others.

“I was going to come get you,” Beatrice says, wanting to sound stern but aware of the fondness that comes out in the words instead.

Judging by Ava’s smile, the way it lights up on her face, that’s exactly how it sounds to her too. “No need.” She finishes off the last few steps of the stairwell at such a speed that she seems to miss some as she goes.

Rabbits, Beatrice thinks. Ava moves a bit like a rabbit, all anxious energy and wild limbs, but graceful in her own way, strangely beautiful to look at. Her strength looks like it’s returned to her. Her shoulders are straight and her smile is relaxed as she settles into a seat at Beatrice’s side.

No words pass between them — there isn’t any need — as Beatrice hands off the second bowl of soup and shifts the map to make room for Ava at her side. They have eliminated two of the X’s on their course already. There is only one possibility left.

“The woods look dense there.”

Beatrice nods carefully. The final spot isn’t far from the second, but it’s in a more heavily wooded area, where enemies might catch them unawares. If there is anyone else looking for the artifact, or if it draws something in from the Fade, having Ava at full strength would be a blessing.

“Perhaps we should wait until the morning.”

“No,” Ava answers too quickly, her mouth still full. She holds up a hand to obscure it, chewing quickly, and swallows. “No, why? I’m fine.”

Beatrice folds the map once, twice, three times carefully and sets it to the side, one hand still resting on the paper. “I would like you to be more than fine for the road ahead.”

“I don’t need more rest, Bea. I need us to get going.”

Beatrice thinks to correct the nickname, but she doesn’t. Not this time. That isn’t the argument she’s trying to win. “I can’t have you slowing us down anymore, Ava.” Her fingers run along the creased edges of the map, stopping at the sharpened corners.

“But that’s it, exactly. We travel the rest of today, and we stop at— Wait, hold on.” Ava shoves the bowl aside and holds out a hand. “Let me show you.”

Beatrice hesitates.

Because she is the Seeker. This is her mission and the mage has already proven herself unreliable. Chaotic. Unreasonable.

There is no clear cause for Beatrice to relent, yet she does.

She slides the map across the table, and Ava eagerly unfolds it to continue her explanation. Beatrice listens and it is a reasonable suggestion, well thought out and considered. They will make camp close enough to a river to keep the water at their back for added protection. They will start off again in the morning and arrive at their final destination — the only remaining place that the artifact could be — in the early afternoon tomorrow.

They will be on their way back to Ava’s home at the Tower before nightfall.

“It’s a fine idea, Ava.”

Ava smiles and starts to fold the map again, nowhere nearly as neat. The edges aren’t as crisp or as clean, but her handling is still careful and deliberate, particularly as she hands it back. Their fingers glance together, only briefly, and Beatrice feels the way her own pulse startles.

She thinks of blades clashing, steel on steel. She thinks of timber as it snaps in the fire.

Beatrice can just imagine how Lilith would sneer at such silly childish thoughts, but the image of such disdain is not half so impactful as the way that Ava smiles. That lingers, curling in her heart.

Curling like a flame.

For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, she shall see fire and go towards light.

It’s only now, watching Ava’s smile, that Beatrice realizes she forgot to say her morning recitation of the Chant.

The heat inside her chest sputters out and Ava’s smile falters. Perhaps Ava detects it, the startling shock of shame in Beatrice’s heart, like cold rain water, as she quickly places the map into her satchel and stands. “Finish up your meal, Ava. I will be…” She will be in their room, kneeling, reciting until her throat goes dry. She will be repenting to the Maker for forgetting to show gratitude for His blessings.

But what she says is, “—packing. I will pack our things.”

Even if they both must realize it’s a lie. Beatrice isn’t the kind of person to ever really unpack.

If Beatrice felt certain she would have the privacy and time, she would recite the Chant until her knees began to ache, all the better to make up for her dereliction of duty. As it is, she’s certain that Ava will return in due time and a standard recitation will have to suffice, even if it leaves a gnawing pit of guilt in her stomach.

Perhaps that is a penance of its own.

She unconsciously compensates for the distraction with an added level of alertness — muscles tensed and at the ready, ears straining — which must be why she jolts when Ava opens the door so abruptly. Without a second thought, Beatrice’s hand is on her sword, though she releases it just as quickly.

“Woah, just one day apart and you’re ready to behead me?” Ava holds her hands up as if in surrender, but her eager smirk is anything but compliant. “Here I thought you’d really missed me.”

Beatrice does not respond to the jab. She’s begun to realize that Ava’s jokes, while as common and punctuating as a heartbeat, somehow become even more constant once acknowledged. “Do you have all your things?”

She moves to stand, but not quickly enough. Because suddenly Ava is just at her side, gathering a satchel from under the bed. Their shoulders brush together as the mage ducks down to retrieve it and Beatrice braces herself against the bed, palms flat along the fabric. She reminds herself of the Chant and the blessings that await those who lead a blameless life.

Sometime today Ava must have found the time to use a wash basin. Her clothes are clean and she smells like fresh spring flowers, though Beatrice isn’t certain what kind. Carefully, the Seeker stands and places a hand against her own chest to feel her heart settling. Obviously she is anxious about the long road ahead, the journey they will face to make camp safely before nightfall.

If Ava notices anything, she doesn’t say so, slinging her bag across her shoulder. “After you.”

A member of the Chantry should never turn their back to a mage. They are the watchers, never the watched. It’s common sense, it’s duty, and it’s instinct. But in the moment, it also feels rude.

Beatrice tilts her head, wishing her smile was as easy as it had been only an hour ago. “No, it’s alright. I still have to fasten my armor on.”

“Do you need any help?” 

The offer ought to seem presumptuous, but Ava simply says these things, seemingly without any thought to decorum.

“I’m not the one who needed to rest all day, Ava.”

“Yeah, but that’s why I’m so limber now.” Her arms wiggle around, as if to demonstrate, though how that would help in fastening on pauldrons and chest plate is anyone’s guess. “You see?”

“Yes, I do,” Beatrice says, smile easing onto her face before she has time to really consider; that keeps happening when she spends enough time with Ava. “And I do appreciate it, but could you go see to the horse instead? I’ll be right down.”

Something about Ava’s expression shifts, drifting closer to skeptical. If she were any other person, Beatrice might feel caught out, held down under the intent focus in her gaze.

But even Ava’s eyes are smiling as she retreats backward out the door. “Sure, this time. But I’m going to insist on some limbering later.”



“Mm, yes,” Beatrice says, with no real idea what she’s just agreed to.

It’s only once Ava’s out the door that she really lets her breath release. Her heart beats fast, much faster than it ought to. She closes her eyes and recites the Chant in her mind.

Even once her eyes open again, the verses are still there, thrumming in her head, nearly ready at the tip of her tongue. Beatrice pulls on her gauntlets and thinks of the Maker. She fastens her cape and thinks of the purifying flame. As ever, she thinks of Andraste, her love for all creatures.

"Even mages," she thinks, before her rational mind can stop the impulse.

Beatrice knows she should take the time to consider the reason and meaning behind such impulsive thinking but the sound of Ava’s voice outside the window cuts through everything else.

She’s singing to the horse, some awful bar song about bedding down a maiden, and slightly out of tune.

"Even mages like that," she thinks again, and can’t help the way she smiles.

They travel later into the night than they have before, to make up the ground lost to convalescence.

It’s Ava’s idea, and Beatrice tries not to show her surprise too clearly on her face. It’s not as though she doubts the mage’s conviction, particularly when it comes to a hastened journey home. She uses her sword to leave small markings in the bark of trees, reminders of their path should they become turned around in the dark. With enough time and repetition it could begin to dull the edge of her blade, but this feels an easy use of the weapon, light and quick in her hands, and the intent isn’t to remain here overly long.

“Do you think it might be here?” Beatrice asks as they draw closer to the final X on their map. “In the trees somewhere?”

There's no answer from Ava and it isn't clear if she even heard the question when she turns her head abruptly toward the darkness that surrounds them. There are aspects of Ava’s mood and mannerisms that are still inscrutable to Beatrice, even now.

It’s strange, she realizes, to feel as though she ought to know Ava better, as if any great time has passed at all since their meeting. It’s a funny thing about traveling on the road with just one other person. There’s an ease that settles in, so that they start to feel like an extension of the self. Even Ava’s annoying little habits are becoming a part of the backdrop of Beatrice’s day, an expected part of her rhythm. Perhaps that is the reason the mysteries — the parts of Ava that she still cannot begin to comprehend — are beginning to stand out against the rest of the mage’s easygoing nature.

“Ava?” she asks, voice less patient than before. “Are you listening to me?”

Or is she hearing something else?

“… sorry.” Ava turns her head, finally, as though it’s the first time the words pierce through. “I was—“

“You hear something.” It’s not framed as a question, because there isn’t one. It’s obvious now. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure yet.” Her hand stretches out.

To an untrained eye, only Ava’s fingers would be gently wiggling, but Beatrice can see the vibrations of potential power start to ripple through the air. “Careful. It could be another Demon.”

“No, it’s not coming from beyond the Veil.”

Beatrice cannot hide her disapproval, and frankly doesn’t want to. It’s foolish for Ava to be so hardheaded and careless all in one; it’s a danger to the both of them. “You don’t know that,” she says, firm with increasingly less patience.

But Ava shakes her head. “No, I do. I’ve—“

But whatever she was about to say cuts off in her throat, sharp and clipped, like the sound is sucked out of her lips.

Magic, Beatrice thinks, before she realizes that Ava’s lips are still moving, a faint whisper of sound still coming out, which means this isn’t anything magical. It’s just another distraction in a mage's rambling brain and it’s almost infuriating to realize that for a single stupid moment, Beatrice was worried. Pointlessly worried about Ava, who seems to have so little concern for herself, turning her head sharply in the direction of who knows what and charging in after it, flames bursting to light in her palms.

“Ava,” Beatrice shouts, much louder than she knows she should. Every time she thinks it’s impossible to sound more disapproving, Ava finds a new way to risk her life. “Slow down.”

If this were any other crisis with genuinely any other mage, Beatrice would use her powers to stifle the magic, to slow Ava down, but in this instance she feels certain that Ava would find a way to continue putting her life in danger, only now without any magical protection.

All Beatrice can do is chase after Ava, pushing through the trees and underbrush much faster than is advisable, working against her every instinct and rigid training. Her cloak catches on a long hanging branch, wrenching at Beatrice’s shoulder and choking her for a few panicked moments before she tears the clasp loose and leaves it fluttering behind her.

“Ava!” she calls out again, louder now, heedless of any danger she might be drawing down upon herself. There is never a good time go to rushing headlong into danger alone, but Ava is only just recovering. The fear that grips at Beatrice is perfectly reasonable, entirely rational. The light of the flames in Ava’s fingertips guide her through the darkness, a hot orange glow casting shadows across the ground once Ava stops to kneel on the forest floor. Even that is reckless; the nettles could easily catch and spread the flames even faster than a Seeker could drain their magic.

The list of reasons for Beatrice to scold Ava is growing too rapidly to maintain it. “What were you thinking?” she hisses, barely able to keep her voice in the more measured register that she knows is safest in the forest at night.

But Ava isn’t listening again. The flames in her hand dance as she twists her fingers in a long intricate pattern, drawing an invisible rune in the air that the fire clings to, lighting up the clearing around them.

“Sorry,” Ava mumbles distractedly. She sounds like someone so used to voicing apologies that regrets no longer sound sincere; she still doesn’t spare even a glance back at Beatrice, her eyes trained on the tree trunk just ahead of them. “There’s something…” She reaches out slowly, but her hand stops just short in midair. The line of her back tenses. It’s more than hesitation now. Something physical just passed through Ava, although whatever it is remains entirely invisible to Beatrice. This is a subtler magic than she’s ever seen before.

“Bea.” Ava’s voice is small and quiet, but more than that. There is a distance now that wasn’t there before, as though she is speaking from far away. “Can you use your sword to try prying it open?”

At first glance the suggestion might seem ridiculous, as though the markings left earlier gave Ava a mistaken impression of exactly what Beatrice’s blade is intended for. She isn’t a lumberjack. But upon a second look, it’s clear that the tree is more than it appears. The line of the bark splits and disrupts, scattering in a strange uneven pattern right where Ava’s pointing finger indicates. It only takes light pressure from Beatrice’s blade for the wood to groan and shift. It creaks more than it cracks, and a small concealed door in the tree trunk pries open.

Ava’s hand withdraws abruptly, as if struck by another force, but she reaches back quickly, before Beatrice can say otherwise.

”Ava, let’s think first.” The words are right there, forming in her mind, racing to her tongue, but the air is already split with a hot blue light, vivid as the center of a flame.

It rips through the forest in a series of intense waves of bright heat that shake the leaves, claw at Beatrice’s skin, and next a sound rips through the air, sharp and high and only getting higher. It takes several long moments of her heartbeat pounding ever louder in her ears for Beatrice to realize that Ava’s voice has joined with it.

“This is it,” she’s saying, shouting, her hand gripped firmly around a rippling unfurling horrible blue light that casts a color across her face as she draws it in closer to her chest, cradling it, protecting it.

The way it lights in Ava’s eyes is terrifying. For the first time in many days, Beatrice is reminded of the danger of a mage turned apostate. The horrors of blood magic. “I don’t think it’s safe for you to touch it. Ava.” She puts a gentle hand on Ava’s shoulder, light pressure growing firmer as the other woman doesn’t even seem to register the touch. “Ava,” she says again, voice only just managing to hide the growing panic that she feels.

“This is it,” Ava says again, and the light pulses harder. This time Beatrice can feel it herself, pulsing at the end of her fingertips and jolting up her arms, shoving her (violently) back.

There’s screaming in the air and it’s impossible for Beatrice to be certain it isn’t her own as she lands on her back in the dirt, stunned, vision shaking. The light is everywhere, blinding and turning and twisting, until it all feels like a sound, like a scream, like something that has always been, just there at the back of her eyes.

She tries calling out to Ava again, but there isn’t enough air in her throat to produce the words.

When Beatrice opens her eyes, the light has gone out.

The forest is still and far too quiet. It’s that stillness, that quiet, that reminds her. “Ava.” There’s a panic there in Beatrice’s voice, but even more so a tightening in her chest. She sits up and the world swims before her, unraveling then returning into focus. “Ava,” she calls again, much louder this time. She stands on unsteady legs and looks to her waist for her sword. But it isn’t there.

The panic grows into a pressure in her ears, building with every ragged breath. “Ava!”

It takes several clumsy steps forward for Beatrice to see her. Ava is there, half-curled around a small golden box gripped tightly in her hands. It must be the artifact, the center of the destruction. Spiraling out from Ava’s body, the trees are singed and twisted, bending under the force of the magic that used the mage’s body as a conduit. “Ava,” Beatrice says again, becoming a mantra of a kind, repeated under her breath as she draws closer. 

“Ava, are you—“ But the rest of her words die, never given voice.

There’s a wound on Ava’s forehead, bleeding faintly. There is dirt and filth and blood under her fingernails, where her hands scrambled through the dirt.

But this isn’t what stops Beatrice short.

There on Ava’s back, visible only now through the tatters of her robe, is an all too familiar branded circle. It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be possible, but Beatrice can’t doubt the evidence before her eyes: Ava bears a mark of a Tranquil.

Tranquility is a lack of dreams, a lack of feeling and emotion — everything that Ava isn’t — and once a mage is made tranquil that is meant to last forever. It doesn’t make sense, but the only thing Beatrice can know for sure is that this means Ava is dangerous, to herself and to others too.

It means that Ava is completely unlike the person she has shown herself to be, and so it is impossible, existing beyond any previous boundaries of Beatrice’s own faith or belief.

None of which seems to even matter when Ava’s eyes open suddenly and she begins to scream.

Passing out of the world, in that Void shall they wander;
O unrepentant, faithless, treacherous,
They who are judged and found wanting
Shall know forever the loss of the Maker's love.
Only Our Lady shall weep for them. — Threnodies 12:5

The beginning is emptiness.

No, that’s not quite right.

The beginning is possibility, blank like a canvas. When Ava comes back to herself, it’s like waking from a dream.

Her eyes open and her soul returns to herself only to discover she’s been asleep for several years. Entire stretches of her existence disappeared into a dream, and everything that came before is faint and far away, covered in a gauze of bright white light that hurts to look at for too long.

The concerned faces hovering over her bed when she first wakes up are like that too. Pale, drawn, and way too bright, like something from a nightmare. She tries to scream, but her mouth forgets how. There’s probably a lot of things she doesn’t know how to do, and in those first moments of reawakening she can't even begin to comprehend how much she doesn’t know.

“Where—?” Her throat feels raw, dry with disuse, and she coughs once before attempting it again. “Where am I?”

“Here in the Circle, of course, sister.” There’s a hand on her shoulder, probably attached to the far away voice, saying, “You’re home now.”

It turns out that home is the Circle Tower, where Ava has lived since she was first taken in by the Chantry as a small girl. The winding stairs and corridors do feel familiar, but not exactly comforting. Unyielding, never-ending stone can do that. It’s not oppressive, not exactly, but endlessly uniform, thoroughly restrictive. Kind of like so many of the other mages, all dressed much the same, in robes that complement the Chantry’s own. This, they remind her, is a means of forming harmony.

There’s a lot they have to remind her about right now.

She doesn’t remember any part of the Chant of Light, though the First Enchanter assures her she has always recited it, every morning and in the evenings. She doesn’t remember the names of all these new faces, even as she recognizes their disappointment every time when she asks, “I’m sorry, who are you?”

She starts taking notes in secret. The First Enchanter, Father Vincent, explains that he has known Ava since she was just a child. He tries reminding her of her Harrowing, the trial undertaken to make her a fully fledged member of the Circle.

“You cried when you were finished, because your friends wouldn’t be joining you in the dorms.” He studies her over his glasses, seated behind a large and impressive desk and wearing an even more impressive frown. “Don’t you remember?”

Ava doesn’t remember and she doesn’t think she wants to. Every memory these people want to call back to her mind sounds like it would be better off forgotten. She wipes her (sweaty) palms against the arms of the chair and shrugs. “Fresh start, am I right?”

“I suppose it is.”

Fresh.

She remembers the smell of flowers, though she can’t remember ever being outside to see them for herself.

She re-learns the smell of magic in the air, the way the Veil feels against her touch. She takes great care, just as they warn her to, tempering her powers and never asking for too much too fast.

“There is danger,” Father Vincent says, “in wanting more than one ought to, don’t you find?”

Ava can’t remember the things she has wanted. Strangely, all she wants now is those memories to return. She wants to want. Instead she says, “Sure, Father,” because it seems to be the thing that will make him leave so she can resume her experiments with the Fade.

But the worry lingers in his face, his eyes, the way he watches her hands and draws air in across his teeth. The sound is sharp, his gaze is sharper. “Take care, Ava. Won’t you?”

She doesn’t know what he could mean by that, doesn’t know what’s out there in the world to worry him so, but she nods again. What else can she do but try to take care of herself?

No one else is going to do it for her.

At night, she dreams. Or maybe they’re memories.

The sting of water up her nose when she trips along the shoreline, but still she’s laughing as she runs. Big familiar hands of someone who might be her family. She once had a family.

When she wakes in the morning, her jaw feels clenched, close to screaming, and she wishes she knew why. She wishes she knew what she’s so afraid of, or if it’s something else. Something or someone she’s still searching for.

Maybe that's just another thing it’s better to have stay forgotten.

The past was blinding light at first, but slowly it falls away into darkness. The outlines of memories recede further into the distance, like waves upon a shore erasing etchings in the sand. Ava can’t remember why she knows what a shoreline looks like.

Her questions are met with strained smiles and quick glances. “The path behind matters less than the road we intend to travel now.” Father Vincent speaks like a man very fond of his own voice and Ava has already learned that the only thing he likes more than that is easy agreement.

“Of course,” she says, smiling brightly. She remembers how to smile and finds that when she does it enough, she can almost pretend that the smiles she receives in return are sincere.

Maybe pretending is something she’s always been good at.

The only person in the Tower who doesn’t treat Ava with anxious concern is Michael. She meets him in her second week, barging into the stockroom with a confident stride. “Hello!” Michael hesitates when he looks at her, openly staring. Ava’s already getting used to that, though the consideration on his face is different from the others. It’s not judgement, not exactly, but evaluation.

“Hello,” he says eventually. “Can I help you?”

“Don’t I wish?” Ava smiles, enjoying the way the man’s face doesn’t strain to match. “But I’m here for lyrium, and that should help a lot.” She catches herself, remembering her manners, and extends a hand. “I’m Ava, by the way.”

“I know.” Michael pauses. “Or so I have heard.”

She’s not sure what to make of that pause, but over analyzing the words of a tranquil seems pointless. He’s not exactly the type to deal in subterfuge. “I’m the talk of the Tower, huh?”

“For now, yes.” Without further comment, he turns to lead her to the back.

Ava grits her teeth but keeps on smiling.

The past falls into a slick darkness, while the present starts to take on a weight she can feel pressing in from above. New memories form, thick and dense, the way the magic feels on her tongue when she draws too much and the power sparks with warm blood filling her mouth.

Ava spends much of her time in the library. The other mages warn her not to agitate her mind with exertion, but it’s too irresistible. She places her understanding of these new ideas like stones, foundations for a remade life. Maybe she’ll never know the woman she was, but she can draw a spectral blade from mid-air or slow an enemy’s movements to a crawl.

With enough time, she will even be able to slow and still their hearts. She wonders if she was always so inclined toward violence, or if this is a byproduct of her new helplessness. All of her edges feel exposed, vulnerable to the past she can’t reclaim. All that’s left to her is knowledge, curiosity and exploration.

After several months of careful study in warfare, Ava realizes that if so many ways exist to unmake people, there must be equal knowledge of the opposite. She scours the library for hours every day, in search of the most effective healing spells. Maybe she'll never learn to cure her own mind of the riddle of her misplaced memory, but if she learns to heal just as well as she can fight, she might join some Templar Knights on a journey through the countryside for a chance to see the world with these new eyes.

She suggests the idea to Michael one day in the midst of her studies. He’s a good person to talk to, since he’s more direct than most and never seems to mind the gaps in her understanding. It makes it easier to navigate social interactions with no preconceptions on behavior.

That’s why she can be so abrupt with him, turning suddenly and saying, “I think I want to see the world.”

“It’s possible that you already have.”

That’s not an answer she was expecting, but that’s one of the joys of talking with Michael. He really knows how to keep her on her toes. “I’m not sure I follow.” She is sure, and knows that she doesn’t.

And judging by his face, Michael would have benefited from a more direct answer. “Then you must not,” is all he says.

“Sorry, can you elaborate, please?”

“You don’t remember your life before here. It’s possible it was filled with traveling.”

“But … haven’t I always been here?” Ava blinks once, twice, and blue light swims before her eyes, a heavy fog. “Father Vincent says—”

“Perhaps I was mistaken.”

Once, twice, her eyelids flutter. She is on her back in the woods, gazing up at the night sky.

Three, four.

She is in the library, and Michael’s blank emptiness is like a wave rising higher and higher, ready to drown her.

The middle is heavy, dragging her under. She pushes back up, against the bright blue tide of the unknown, feeling the way it drags her back and down into the dark.

Blue glow lights up the forest, burning bright behind Ava’s eyes, against her chest, and everywhere. The ache is more like ice than fire, settling into the empty places at the edge of her, sending cracks across the darkness of the night, the darkness of her past. Piece by piece and crack, it starts to shatter.

Ava is coming apart, she is shattering, as she screams to be heard above the noise.

Beatrice is screaming too as she's shoved away, and Ava reaches out for her. She reaches and the Seeker’s fingers slip past, the past slips behind, the world shifts beneath.

Ava is laying prone in the grass, blood filling her mouth, and the ice gives way completely, dropping her down into a lifetime of memories that rush up to drown her in them.


Ava knew how to swim when she was young, but she has spent years drowning. That’s what the tranquility felt like. The gaps in her memory, her mind, are still so sharp and vast. She doesn’t know if they’re a byproduct of her impossible re-making or if somehow done deliberately.

She’s not sure there’s a difference.

The only thing she knows — as her mind reels and races, unstuck in time — is that even this is better than it had been to be tranquil.

The nothingness of it. The placid acceptance plastered on her face, forced to nod and obey every order of the Chantry while her heart burned inside her chest, longing for peace.

This clatter of thoughts is better than that.

She remembers small things. The feel of sand under her toes, the way grass tickles the nose. Catching fish with other mages, none of them dressed in Chantry robes.

She doesn’t remember their names, but can easily recall their easy smiles, the way they would say her name like a promise. She doesn’t remember what it felt like, to have such security in another person, but wants to know it now.

She wakes up with a feeling less like screaming, but it still aches inside her chest. She closes her eyes tight and tries to sink back into the dreams.

Her hand gripped by another. Their voice in her ear.

Tender pleas are in the air, saying, "Stay with me, Ava."

Her heart beats hard and fast, but her stride through the halls of the tower is easy, free from all worry. Maybe this was something like peace. Not chasing, but standing (finally) still.

“You don’t dream, right?”

Ava already knows the answer to this question. The Fade is the source of magic and the land of dreams. The Tranquil are cut off from both, along with all emotion. Never dreaming, never wanting.

Still, it only feels polite to let Michael answer for himself, even if that kind of formality doesn’t matter to someone already made tranquil.

“Not for a few years now,” he answers simply and direct. “I still sleep, of course, but it’s just silence.”

So it’s tranquil, Ava can’t help but think, and fights an uncharacteristic impulse to sneer. “So what’s that like?”

 Maybe she can’t know his feelings on it, since those aren’t even meant to exist, but he still might have some thoughts to share.

Michael considers her question in earnest, pausing his work sorting through a stack of scrolls. “I wake up with no other thoughts than my tasks for the day.” His hands resume their work, gaining speed and steady resolve. “If I were to dream, it might be a distraction.”

He’s not wrong. All Ava’s dreams do is distract her from the answers she can only find when she’s awake.

“You ask for a reason,” he says, but it isn’t quite a question, even as he inclines his head to consider her closely. “Do you dream now, Ava?”

“What?”

Does she — now?

The question is strange. It hangs, like a snag.

Like a flame caught on the edge of a rope; like ice before it cracks; like the tide just before it pulls back from the shore.

The shore. She sees herself running. She can imagine a woman smiling, with blonde hair like Michael's. 

A hand in her hair, a voice in her ear. Saying, “It’s all going to be alright,” with more emotion than Michael’s voice will ever hold again.

“Ava,” he says, emotionless and calm. “You seem strange.”

Everything is a white searing light, like a heat against her flesh, and the sudden sharp memory of screaming until her throat was raw.

Screaming and pleading, with no one to hear, no voice to speak.

Ava?

Beatrice’s hand in her hair, her voice close to her ear. “It’s going to be alright,” someone is saying. Someone is screaming.

And the blood.

The end is warm, like only Beatrice is. Ava feels the weight of her pressed at the small of her back as strong arms hold her steady on the horse. She feels the way it shifts beneath her, the shifting of its breathing. Her body sways, rocking to a rhythm she has no control over.

The feeling could be like swimming, but Ava never learned to swim.

Or it could be like drowning.

That feels closer to something she knows.

“Please,” a voice says, and Ava realizes it’s her own. “I’m not going to try it again.”

“Must you really beg?” The man’s voice is more like a sensation in her mind, cutting through her thoughts even as they slip away. “I expected more from you.”

The end is hot, like power searing through the center of her heart, chasing after something they might call a soul. Ava can’t be sure she has one, can’t be sure she knows what it feels like, can’t remember knowing anything at all.

Until she does.

She remembers summers near the water, with a family she loved who she thought loved her too. She remembers the empty stretch of nothing once they left her. She remembers the feeling of the brand searing into her skin just before her mind shattered into pieces, every emotion swept away like tiny grains of sand. She remembers the sticky sweet scent of blood, the way Beatrice’s hands tremble. She remembers tasting the salty sting of tears on her lips and laughing, feeling a sharp curl of pain in her chest.

“Please,” a voice says, and Ava realizes it isn’t her own. “You’re going to be alright.”

Her mind slips away from the now, sliding into the past. The past is bright, white, and beautiful. The sand is soft and her mother’s touch is warm, guiding her by the hand. They sit near the fire and talk into the night, faces alight with laughter and the flicker of the flame.

When fire springs to Ava’s fingertips, the laughter fades. Her mother stares with a darkness in her eyes.

The Templars and their armor glint in the morning sun. Ava feels drawn to stare, but her feet move before her thoughts. She runs without knowing why. The voices calling after are not kind, not even her mother’s. Especially not that.

The years ahead are nothing. Footprints left on sand.

She survives on scraps, begging for crusts of bread. Sometimes her hands are quicker than her words, and she takes without even asking. Towns have so many people, too many eyes, but it’s safer than in the woods where the animals roam at night. Easier to huddle in the shadow of a barrel with her hands ready to set a stranger alight if they get too close or act familiar.

The loneliness doesn’t last forever. She finds others. She finds friends and belonging and an entire past and place ripped away from her, the edges left jagged like the wounds of a knife cut through flesh. She tries to hold onto memories and thoughts, but her mind is still slick, like the blood burbling from her mouth.

She learns that magic isn't the problem. Mages under the control of the Circle, kept locked away in Towers and under constant surveillance, are allowed to practice magic. They can pass through a town and ply their trade, so long as they’re still watched.

For mages like her, it's about living away from as many eyes as she can. She hears some people call it hedge magic, when a mage is self-taught. Maybe it means she should be living in the woods, hiding in bushes, but that's just never been her way.

She's learned to keep out of sight in small cities and towns. She walks softer, moves quicker. She resists her own impulses and wants. Except when she finds children crying. Then the fire is there, in her eyes, in her palms. Before she can stop herself, she’s screaming, because a child is screaming.

What kind of parent keeps their child screaming?

Her new friends are impressed, she can tell, even as they’re busied with berating her as they escape from the town. “What were you thinking?” the beautiful blonde woman in charge says sharply.

“Being totally honest, I guess I wasn’t.”

One of the other girls laughs. Impressed, see, she knew it.

But then Ava’s mind sticks, caught on the memory. Because that’s what this is, the past, a memory, all of it washing over her, pulling like a ceaseless flood, swirling through her brain and clogging up her ears. She can’t hear the voices shouting, but she knows they were. Beyond this precise moment, she knows that there was shouting, there was panic, but the face looking back at her on the cart ride out of the burning village was perfectly calm.

Her memory of Michael smiles with emotion that feels so unfamiliar and unnatural on a face she knows so well. “Welcome to Salvius.”

“Ava,” Beatrice says, calloused fingers dragging over her skin. “I want to understand.”

And Ava wants to be understood by her in ways she doesn’t even know herself. She wants to explain, but her lips are cracked and her voice falters too. “Water,” she says, and it comes to her in waves of memory. She feels Beatrice’s tender touch on her forehead, brushing at her hair, and remembers the feeling of water on her skin. She remembers swimming at sunset with her mother.

She remembers the ocean of emptiness that was tranquility.

Beatrice places the waterskin against her lips and she drinks. It feels cool racing down her throat. She shudders with her next breath in, but even still Beatrice is there. Her hand is steady and her gaze is too.

They aren’t in the woods anymore. Fire casts shadows along the stone walls and the table underneath Ava creaks when she shifts in discomfort.

“That’s quite enough, Sister.”

The familiar voice of Father Vincent echoes against the stones and across the expanse of Ava’s mind. It feels like a memory that hasn’t returned, a tickle at the back of her brain or a nagging pain she wants to press at. She feels an urgent need to look at Beatrice, straining to turn her head. “Bea…”

The look she catches on the Beatrice’s face shouldn’t be so hard to read. Maybe it wouldn’t be if Ava’s own brain wasn’t a scrambled mess of lost memory and clouded emotion mixed with too much magic, but it really looks like the Seeker, the will of the Divine made flesh, does not know how she should react to being dismissed.

Her hand is still holding onto Ava’s, who clenches it even tighter.

“I can stay with you, Father. I’m sure I would be of assistance.”

Ava wants her to stay, wants to ask for it or even to beg, but what is the point? Shouldn’t she be above begging?

And if her mind can’t stay still, then really why should she expect it from—

The ocean that is tranquility swallows you up and pulls you under. It’s seductive and simple. It reminds Ava of childhood, when she felt sure in her own safety and belonging. No second guessing or anxiety, only absolute certainty in obedience.

But the calm is so much like water, still only on the surface. The depths are cold and her heart beats faster as she feels it all start to peel away, a slow and steady tug.

“No begging this time, I hope,” a familiar voice is saying in the shadows of the room and the recesses of her mind.

Ava’s hand is empty.

She doesn’t know when Beatrice left.

She doesn’t know many things now — her own mother’s name or the village she grew up in — and she isn’t sure why the smile of a Seeker she hardly knows is the last thing sticking in her brain. She can’t remember what the word for the feeling that lingers in her chest is, how it lights up the back of her mind in a fire that nothing should be able to put out.

And then the tug becomes a tear, pulling faster, feelings sloughing off one layer after the next and searing her mind back in half, pieces torn away.

“Scream all you like,” the voice says. “No one will hear you.”

And she does.

Chapter Text

As the moth see light and goes toward flame,
she should see fire and go towards light.
The veil holds no uncertainty for her,
and she will know no fear of death,
for the Maker shall be her beacon and her shield,
her foundation and her sword. — Transfigurations 10:1

The morning after Beatrice’s return to the tower, she wakes at dawn’s first light. She should feel well rested, she thinks, after a night spent in such a familiar bed after a mission well satisfied. But her eyes remain heavy, her movements stiff and unwieldy as she settles onto her knees and begins her recitations.

The sun is still low in the sky when she hears the sound of knuckles rapping at the wooden door. Whoever it is knocks only twice before stepping inside. It is enough of a deviation from protocol to startle Beatrice into reaching for her sword, only to discover that it isn't close to hand.

Nothing is as it should be this morning.

She fumbles and it clatters against stone, producing a scoff from Lilith in the doorway. The familiar annoyance in her voice is a small comfort against the bubbling feelings of chaos, saying, “Such a brief time away and you’re nothing but bad habits.”

Beatrice’s smile in return is small, but grateful. Seeing the way Lilith rolls her eyes, she feels ever more at home. Surely proper rest will come soon as well, and everything will be as it should be again.

“Have you come only to mock me, or is there something more?”

“I come bearing pointlessly boring tasks.” Lilith’s eyes dart quickly around the room, taking in the relative clutter compared with how neatly arranged Beatrice usually keeps her meager possessions. When her gaze lands back on Beatrice, there is something less familiar there. Patience, perhaps, or — much worse — it could be pity. “Join me in breaking our fast once you’ve finished, and I’ll tell you.”

“Of course.”

Beatrice closes her eyes and resumes her prayers. She hears the door click shut and Lilith’s footsteps retreating down the hall. Occasionally there’s the sound of other mages moving about, beginning their routines. The Tower is waking again to a new day, just like any other.

Marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting.

Everything is as it should be except for the nagging tightness that coils in her stomach like a snake readying to strike.

You have brought Sin to Heaven and doom upon all the world.

Mother Superion has asked that Lilith and Beatrice assist in the organizing and removal of inappropriate books from the Tower’s central library. How such tomes came to be in the Circle’s possession is unclear, and the clipped way Lilith conveyed the instructions suggests that the topic is better left unexamined — for now.

Certainly, Beatrice wouldn’t dream of asking those questions with so many mages present at the tables during breakfast, or even later in the relative privacy of the stacks. While cataloguing a library is hardly work that requires a Seeker, the wary way the mages watch them as they work suggests that there might be more to it.

Perhaps the unease Beatrice has felt all morning is related to her keen sense for something amiss. These are not the kind of questions that are easily answered by throwing your weight around or pressing too hard. Often the complicated matters of running a Circle improperly are best analyzed with a delicate hand.

Beatrice flips the latest tome to roughly its middle and reads through several paragraphs. Analysise of Blüd Magicks appears to be a particularly old cautionary tale with no practical instruction, but she places it in the stack set aside for removal all the same. “Do you find it at all strange that Mother Superion set the task to you alone?” When Beatrice looks up again, Lilith hasn’t even glanced her way. “Why wasn’t I summoned?”

“You arrived late in the night, didn’t you?”

It had been so late when they reached the docks that Beatrice had screamed until her throat ached for someone to come ferry them across. The calm she had been working to maintain had completely ripped away after Ava stopped responding to instruction while dismounting the horse.

She had carried the mage in her arms, wading into the shallows of the water while fighting against the fear that clawed at her throat. “Please,” she had cried out, hauling Ava’s limp body into the nearest row boat. “You will be paid for your time, please.”

But no one came as Ava grew more pale.

There was only one option remaining.

Beatrice drew her sword and begin to hack at the rope attached to the post that anchored the small boat in place. Her own frustrations and fears melted away until all that remained was the sound of metal cutting through hemp and her accompanying grunts of exertion. The boat rocked gently and Ava groaned.

There was no pleading left, only the doing.

“Yes,” Beatrice says simply. “It was very late.”

Lilith nods and drops two more books into the To Be Removed pile. “You see? It was only concern.”

Concern is a virtue, not an indictment. It should reassure her to be held in such esteem. Isn’t this why she serves the Chantry? And if the gnawing pit in her stomach is more than hunger — if perhaps it even is concern of her own — then isn’t that an acceptable reaction?

Why shouldn’t she concern herself with the well being of the woman she spent so many days with?

It is no wonder that Ava’s face should spring to mind as Beatrice stares at the stark ink of the open page before her, distracting her from its words. She sees the easy smile and those eager hands always moving, much as Beatrice’s own fingers trace the spine of the book and brush lightly across the leather.

“Are you alright?” Lilith’s voice is unusually gentle again. Beatrice cannot imagine what look must have crossed her own face to cause such apprehension. “You look pale this morning,” the other Seeker continues, casually, taking care not to sound overly concerned.

“It was a full day’s ride and late arrival, as I said.” Which is the truth, but not all of it. There was also the restless sleep, the fitful turning over in bed, and the sounds of screaming still echoing in her mind. Beatrice’s smile is thin as she stamps the memory down. “I imagine a single night’s rest hasn’t made up for all of it yet.”

Lilith’s expression is guarded, much in the same way it is when she is speaking with a mage she wishes to keep a distance from. “No, I suppose not.” She sucks in air across her teeth and steps back, offering Beatrice an extended hand. “But here, we could do without the armor.”

“Pardon?”

“I doubt a mage intends to attack, and at least that will be a little less weight on your shoulders.” Her smirk in amusement is small, just a slight twist of her lips. “So to speak.”

As Lilith gently assists in removing Beatrice’s armor, first the bracers then the pauldrons, she is careful not to think of anything — or anyone — except the task at hand. “How many more of these tomes are we meant to inspect?” Once the armor is loosened, the relief is immediate, though Beatrice would never care to give voice to it. It feels like weakness, especially in the way that too must have been so visible to Lilith, who is now avoiding her gaze. “I only mean, do we think this will be the entire day?”

“Mother Superion imagines it might be.” Lilith carefully stacks the armor on a nearby table and her fingers linger briefly along the curve of one metallic piece. “She said a mage would be by within the hour to assist us.”

“Why?”

Lilith’s sneer is immediate and familiar. “My question precisely.”

It’s strange that Beatrice’s own feelings do not match the distrust she knows is expected. She is used to disliking the uneasy truce that rests between the Seekers and the mages, or at least preferring to avoid it on her days with easier work. Why would anyone actively look to be made uncomfortable?

But now, the feeling is different.

There is a pit in her stomach, and it reminds her of those early days at the Chantry when she was new and felt so unwelcome. She feared the faces she might run into, the people she barely knew who did not seem to want her here.

“The mage is tranquil,” Lilith continues, and there it is again. The pit in Beatrice’s stomach opens wider, sinking deeper. She keeps her gaze focused straight ahead on the books on the shelf, just to be sure that Lilith doesn’t see it in her eyes. “So at least they won’t be a nuisance.”

She doesn't seem to notice, thank the Maker, too focused on her own displeasure. You can so often rely on Lilith, whether it be a steady blade at your side or a fixation on her own frustration to allow you a private moment to re-center.

Standing still like this, Beatrice knows she should be fine. Tired, yes — or even exhausted, certainly — but not so unsteady on her feet. It should not feel like she is drowning now, even as her own traitorous mind reminds her that is what tranquility must feel like. “I wonder,” she swallows. “If I might need more sleep than I had realized.” She turns, ready to leave, but there is a man standing in her way, blond and well-kept, waiting perfectly at attention. “Oh!”

He gives the impression of politeness, even as his expression remains utterly blank. “My apologies. I did not mean to startle you.”

“Michael.”

That’s who this is. Michael, Ava’s friend, who is tranquil.

Ava, who is tranquil, or was. (Is again?)

Ava who is impossible and wonderful — and was still screaming on that slab when Beatrice left her behind, turned and walked away with her heart beating in her ears louder than the drumbeat of her own clawing fear on the day she’d once sunk so far beneath the waves.

Michael’s eyes are clear and his expression is still, but underneath it all Beatrice wonders if he might be screaming. She never usually lets herself think of these things, and yet.

“Yes, we’ve met.”

Lilith clears her throat pointedly. Even without turning to look, Beatrice knows her gaze will be just as sharp. “Right then. Shall we?”

“Of course,” Beatrice says, her eyes back on the stacks and the task ahead. “Do you have a list for us, Michael?”

He unrolls a scroll fastened to his waist and begins to recite the names of histories deemed too incendiary for the eyes of mages, too likely to lead to possible revolt and revolution.

Her eyes scan the sharp print along the spines, fingers drifting across one and then the next. It’s easy enough to settle into a task so simple. Michael’s words repeat in her mind, echoing again and again, and soon it’s all that she can think. This too is a little like prayer. Our everyday tasks and duties can bring us closer to Andraste, understanding the care she took in her own devotions.

Steel my heart, she thinks as she pulls loose a book titled Dreams for Demons.

That one, at least, they might have found on their own.

Make me to rest in the warmest places.

The steady rhythm of leather and parchment, an ever growing stack of forbidden knowledge lands thickly, one upon the next, in time with the careful precision of Michael’s voice. He never wavers, barely stops to breathe.

“A little slower, won’t you?”

Lilith’s protest actually makes Beatrice laugh. “Can’t keep up?” She tsks and offers a wink over her shoulder. “I expected more.”

Whatever worry was there in Lilith’s face before, she is equal parts fondness and frustration as she rolls her eyes again.

The exhaustion that had been hanging around Beatrice like a weight finally feels as though it’s lifting. Perhaps the past week, whatever it may have been, is another of life’s lessons. Every pathway is an opportunity to receive enlightenment, and every living being is capable of gifting us with that deeper understanding.

Even the most unruly mages have their uses.

What is the pursuit of the Maker’s path if not a perfecting of use? Beatrice herself has always found her highest purpose in her ability to focus ahead, one step leading to another as though ascending a long spiral staircase. That is her use. The way her hands move now, relentless and effective, she is reminded again of the praise from her earliest instructors. Even in Orlais, she had been exceptionally good at compartmentalizing between idle thoughts and focused intent.

So long as the distractions of her own wants are placed aside, the doing becomes second nature.

But just as suddenly as anything else, Beatrice’s hands have stopped. Her eyes are caught on something other than the words before her. Beyond the leather and text, she sees the curl of her naked hand, free from armor and leather.

Just there, under her nails and in the grooves of her knuckles, blood has dried.

Her fingers flex, and again she hears it.

She can’t hear anything but the sound of Ava’s pleading.

“Sister Beatrice.” Lilith’s voice on the other side of the door is gentle, unusually so, which only makes it feel all the worse; there has been so much of that today. “Are you alright?”

Of course she isn’t.

She grew dizzy at just the memory of a mage she has known for hardly more than a week, someone dangerous enough to be made Tranquil. This isn't who Beatrice is or has ever been. She is not impulsive, prone to erratic or fanciful thinking. It’s as if she can only glimpse her usual self from a distance, behind a thick layer of glass. It makes Beatrice think of standing outside of a ball her parents held when she was little, watching the adults in their masks and wishing she could be a part of everything.

She remembers the whispers shared with the gardener’s daughter as they watched together — each holding their breath as the beautiful women in their gowns danced — and how carefully they’d clasped hands.

Funny that she should think of her now.

“I’m fine,” she lies, and that at least has always been easy. She has had practice wearing this mask all her life. “I suppose it’s the lack of sleep.”

Lilith doesn’t wait for more than that before opening the door to Beatrice’s temporary bed chamber.

Such a reminder is useful, in its own way; what is the point in modesty or desire for privacy for someone who still has no set home?

Beatrice looks up from where she sits stiffly at the writing desk, thin smile upon her lips. “I am sorry to leave you to finish so much of the work on your own.”

“Not entirely alone.” Lilith closes the door behind her. Though she shifts some of her weight onto her heels to brace against the wood, her posture remains rigid in its own way. “I had two of the tranquil assisting me.”

Two tranquil.

Beatrice’s next breath in must be audible, because Lilith’s expression narrows just as suddenly, studying her with the same piercing gaze she uses for apostates. Seldom, if ever, is it used for her Sisters. “I recognized one of them.”

“Oh, yes?”

Lilith’s weight shifts against the door, pressing firmly back. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Beatrice?”

”Yes,” Beatrice thinks. ”There’s something wrong. I barely know her, but when I closed my eyes to pray this morning, at first all I could see was her face.”

It is just the two of them. Surely if there is anyone she can trust, it is her fellow Seeker, who she has spent so many hours traveling with.

But what she says is: “I didn’t know, when we journeyed together.”

“She didn’t seem tranquil when you left.”

Beatrice watches her own hands curl and uncurl, stretching her palms against the cool wood. “She wasn’t. I know she wasn’t. But I believe she was… before.”

“That’s—“

“I know.”

When their eyes meet, Lilith is unflinching. “No Circle has the authority to keep something like this from the Seekers.”

This is true. Beyond Beatrice’s confounding feelings — and with far greater importance — the behavior of Mother Superion and Father Vincent is suspicious, to say the very least. Why would they not tell Beatrice she was traveling with a mage who had previously been made Tranquil?

Why would a tranquil mage have the process reversed? How is such a thing even possible, and why would it be done? Surely any mage that is enough of a danger to herself or others to be made tranquil would have to remain so, even if reversal were possible.

Unless the danger Ava poses is something else entirely.

These thoughts feel frantic, the way her mind used to work before she studied with the Chantry. Like furtive stolen kisses in the garden as a child, and just as shameful. An impulse to be stomped back down, transformed into calculated resolve, her voice hardening. “We can’t even be sure what this is.”

Lilith scoffs. “You don’t believe that.”

Beatrice shakes her head, but doesn’t look up. Her eyes are on her hands again, on a fleck of blood dried on her knuckles.

Ava’s blood.

“Then she is tranquil again?” Beatrice swallows. “The mage?” She wants to say Ava’s name, to do her at least that courtesy, but saying it now — with this question — feels terribly wrong. For a few seconds more, at least, it is something apart from Ava. Still not real.

“She is,” Lilith drawls with exaggerated boredom. “Her attitude is at least somewhat improved.” When she wants to make a show of not caring, of not feeling anxious at all, Lilith always adds on additional disdain.

It is reassuring to not be the only one walking this path with such uncertainty.

“I will speak with her.”

Beatrice doesn’t know she’s going to make the suggestion until it’s already coming out of her mouth, but it instantly sounds like the only possible solution. The mage is Tranquil, so she will be honest in ways the others might not. She will be forthright and helpful, glad to be of use, as are all Tranquil.

“If you’re certain that’s a good idea.”

It’s the only possible solution. Facing Ava as she is now — as she will be forever more — will surely disabuse Beatrice of any lingering affections. It is impossible to maintain emotions for a being who will be forever devoid of them.

Beatrice smiles grimly, and for the first time since she awoke this morning, she feels confident in her next course of action. “Just try to give us time alone, alright? I don’t need the others asking any questions until we know more.”

Lilith shifts her weight forward and clasps a gloved hand onto Beatrice’s shoulder. “I’ve been waiting for just the right moment to inspect the Circle’s finances. Thank the Maker you’ve given me the excuse. Tomorrow then.”

That should keep everyone busy for the entire day, not the least of all Lilith. Nothing thrills her as much as numbers, except perhaps for capturing particularly dangerous apostates and turning them tranquil. That is, those that survive the encounter at all.

“Tomorrow,” Beatrice agrees.

That night Beatrice dreams of a stream running through the forest. She kneels to pray at the water’s edge. Beyond her clasped hands, she glimpses her own reflection distorted in the ripples of the water.

But she is too far from herself to glimpse her eyes clearly in the reflection. From this distance, they appear distorted and dark, clouded in the muddy silt that stirs at the bottom of the stream when the fishes dart past.

Without thought, she stretches out on the ground, the grass tickling her nose as she reaches for the water.

The other her, the distorted face that’s so familiar, isn’t a reflection at all. From this distance, Beatrice can see that she's moving. She is beneath the waves, and sinking lower.

Her reflection’s eyes aren’t clouded after all. In fact, she is crying.

When Beatrice awakes, the sun has just begun its ascent. The slow unfurling of its rays casts a faint blue glow upon her windowsill. It’s only enough light to draw a few shapes into focus.

She sees the sharp outline of her armor and the soft edges of her quill. When she shuts her eyes, she can picture the exact way the light would shift and change if it were filtered through the leaves of trees on a journey through the countryside instead. She would arise just as early, to make use of the day on the road. By evening, they would stop at an inn or a tavern.

The memory of life out there, where she truly lives it, is so vivid that she can almost hear the usual sounds. The bird song, the striking of hooves, the light snap of branches underfoot. The clatter of a mug, the chattering of strangers, a mage’s laughter so close she can nearly feel warm breath against her skin.

Beatrice kneels beside her bed and lowers her gaze to the cold stones instead. “Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter,” she recites aloud, wishing to blot out every other sound with the echoes of her prayer.

It does not work, not entirely; yet still she tries.

At breakfast, Beatrice focuses on her meal. She is going to need her wits about her if she’s going to interrogate Ava in whatever limited time Lilith is able to grant them alone together.

As Seeker, she is bound to uphold the will of the Divine, far above any directions that might come from Mother Superion or First Enchanter Vincent. If this Circle is keeping secrets from the Seekers, it is possible that they are acting directly against the Divine’s wishes in some way. Whatever else Beatrice might feel, however distracting the emotions may be, she needs to focus only on the facts. She cannot allow herself to reach a dangerous conclusion based purely on sentimentality.

Her heart has always been foolish, overeager, while a sharp mind is her strongest asset. With training, you can learn to separate the two, just as she knows how to pull magic out of the air. Emotion is so much like magic, so able to rule over mankind when its purpose should only be to serve. Caring for people, wanting what is best, these feelings can serve a Seeker well. Devotion and dedication to the Divine, resilience in the face of treachery, there are many fine traits worth cultivating.

But desire, selfishness, wanting something — or someone — for one’s own. There is a time and a place, and it is never in service to the Divine. The Maker’s will and the preservation of the people should always come before all else.

Anything less than that is unbecoming of a Seeker.

To attain such objectivity requires focus, for which Beatrice will require a surplus of energy. That begins with breakfast, where she forces the food down one miserable bite at a time. Even if she doesn’t feel a genuine hunger for it this morning, she must eat. Even an unpleasant meal is a blessing, she reminds herself. The bounty of nature, the food provided, is a gift from the Maker. Beatrice thinks of Andraste and the flame — the agony of death, the pain of hunger — and she is reminded of how many blessings she has been given.

But it takes considerable effort to ignore the rapid conversation happening at breakfast, and Beatrice falls short of that. The words still seep in, though she does her best not to linger on any one detail for long.

A Sister just to her right is talking about illness in a nearby village and the efforts to provide the necessary herbs and poultices; one mage complains to another of a headache brought on by too many late nights reading; and a Templar tries to conceal the way his hands are shaking, likely from lyrium withdrawal.

Each person is their own story, each one of them has meaning and value to the Maker, but it is not Beatrice’s duty to concern herself with these simple matters. She is meant for higher purpose, and so the words of others must melt away. So that when Ava’s face springs to her mind, the way she smiled so softly in the early mornings, Beatrice must force it back down with all the rest.

She takes another bite, and reminds herself to swallow. This too is a blessing.

She is so very, very blessed.

If anyone at the Circle is deliberately manipulating events against the Maker’s will, they would be on high alert, monitoring the actions of a Seeker, particularly one keeping to her quarters. Any effort made to send Ava alone to Beatrice’s bed chamber would likely draw suspicion.

But Lilith has maintained a reputation as someone ever interfering with the goings on of the Circle, unable to relax without a task already set for her by Val Royeaux. Strictly speaking, the First Enchanter should have direct control over his Circle and the mages within, fully aligning with the Knight-Commander of the Templars and the Chantry in all decisions. But in reality a Seeker’s word holds greater sway, because of their connection to the Divine.

It is easier, all have learned, to allow Lilith her little demonstrations of authority, often fleeting, rather than what may result from a rebuke. No one wishes to draw the negative attention and higher scrutiny that would result from landing on her bad side.

Beatrice has often found the behavior vulgar — certainly so in how obvious the emotional need driving it is — but for now she is grateful. When Lilith declares to a small assembly of mages that, “Seeker Beatrice and I require an expert on runes,” they are immediately afforded access to the stockroom, where the tranquil mages are so often kept out of sight.

No one even questions what they would need such knowledge for. Lilith only need raise her chin in a haughty fashion and gazes are averted.

Very few mages are quite so willing to look a Seeker defiantly in the eye as Ava is. Or was.

Before.

The stockroom is just as Beatrice remembers it from their visit before departing, though perhaps a few items have been rearranged. Usually she has such an eye for smaller details, but today her focus immediately moves to the center of the room where Michael is crouched near a desk. He straightens and turns to face the new arrivals. “Hello." His voice remains as calm and neutral as before, devoid of real emotion. “How may I assist you?”

There is no immediate answer. It’s possible that Lilith is looking to Beatrice to make the first response, but her eyes are focused beyond Michael, to the woman seated at the desk.

Ava is unmistakable, even with her posture so changed. Where before she was languid and loose, now her back is precisely angled, perfectly aligned as she leans over a book in front of her. She doesn't look up when the Seekers come in, remaining entirely focused on the task set before her. It is the kind of focus that Beatrice wishes for herself, at times — to be so removed from everything else — but it unsettles her to see the behavior in Ava.

“We require knowledge on runes and inscriptions.” Lilith’s voice breaks through the thoughts, causing Beatrice to at least turn her focus back to the conversation at hand.

Michael nods. “Such knowledge is forbidden to any mage who is not Tranquil.” The voice of a tranquil is something so terrible. Beatrice hates herself for thinking it, the way her skin crawls to hear a person so fully apart from themselves, but it’s true. “The power that might be granted is too great.”

Even Lilith reacts, a tension building in her jaw. “Yes, precisely.” She makes effort to keep her own voice neutral and calm, carefully flat, but emotion still creeps in.

No one else is able to maintain the separation between meaning and emotion that a Tranquil can.

“I will have to assist you directly,” Michael continues. “Ava is still learning.”

All the preparations Beatrice has made to steel herself completely fall away in the moment Ava lifts her head to meet her gaze.

There is none of the fire she is used to, or the joy. There is only empty placidity now. Ava looks like a lake made perfectly still, with all the life that had teemed beneath its waters dead and gone.

It is horrible, Beatrice cannot help but think, to destroy so much of the Maker’s creation so willingly.

Horrible, but surely necessary, she must remind herself. For the good of everyone, even Ava herself. It was this or demonic possession, surely.

“Hello, Beatrice,” Ava says, and the name sounds awful in the emptiness of her new voice. There is nothing of the teasing, knowing, smirking way that Ava had spoken to her, with such naked defiance. There is nothing of her left at all. “You’re safe, I see. I wasn’t sure.”

And now, she doesn't care.

Beatrice wonders if it’s different on the inside. She cannot help but question if, even now, Ava is fighting inside herself to be let out again. “And you as well.” Her voice cracks and she swallows, re-centers herself, and starts again. “I’m quite glad the healers were able to help you.”

Lilith is kind enough to pretend not to notice the way her fellow Seeker’s voice has faltered. “Beatrice, why don’t you stay behind here? We’ll cover more ground apart.”

Michael looks as though he might object, unable to find the logic in the suggestion, but Lilith is so unyielding and self-assured that any questions must seem pointless. Firm resolve sways a Tranquil more effectively than anyone else who might be ruled by their own emotions and vanity.

He nods, and she leads him out.

Beatrice turns to watch them go, pretending to care, but her mind is focused on the beating of her heart inside her throat. If she tried to speak, the words would come out wrong again.

Ava might even notice, though she wouldn’t care enough now to wonder why. With no immediate questions directed her way, she has resumed her studying, eyes fixed on the book in front of her. She looks almost peaceful this way, more content than Beatrice feels. Maybe there is something to that, the peace that comes with being emptied.

The chair scrapes sharply on the stones as Beatrice takes her seat, but still Ava doesn’t glance up — not until Beatrice clears her throat.

“You do need something.” Ava’s eyes flick up and Beatrice’s breath catches just as quickly. “I wasn’t certain, since you didn’t say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need.”

There isn’t, not anymore, and still Beatrice is sorry. She is so sorry, because she should have asked her questions then, when Ava was still calling — pleading — for her. She should have stayed; but she didn’t. Not then. “I hoped you could answer some of my questions, Ava.”

“I’ll try. It depends on the question.”

Ava is so matter-of-fact, it almost feels like the real her for a moment. Beatrice has to smile, however faintly. “Of course.” Her chair scrapes again, dragging closer so that she may lower her voice. “You were Tranquil before, Ava?”

Ava blinks. “Oh.” Her posture somehow seems to straighten even more. “The questions are about me; I didn’t realize.” She shuts the book and shifts it to the side, eyes focused intently on Beatrice. “I was, yeah. Yes. I didn’t remember, not before. I didn’t lie to you.”

“I didn’t think that you did.”

While it’s nearly impossible for a tranquil to deceive, not without a direct order, it honestly feels like it would have been even harder for Ava as her usual self to do so. She wore the wide range of her emotions so clear on her face, as clear as anything, and that is part of what makes her placid blankness now so very unnerving.

“I’m—“

Ava stops, faltering. It’s not emotion, it can’t be, so the uncertainty is surprising enough that Beatrice moves only on instinct. Her hand shifts, reaching for Ava’s hand — to comfort — before she stops herself. There is no need.

“There are things,” Ava finally continues; “that I’m not supposed to tell you. Or anyone, but you especially.”

“Did someone tell you that, Ava?”

The mage waits, carefully, and finally nods. Nodding isn’t the same as telling on some small technicality that, in that moment, feels so much like the Ava that Beatrice came to know.

The smile on Beatrice’s face aches and she blinks, once twice, pushing back the tears that strangely start to appear in the corners of her eyes. “It’s good that you’re doing as you are told, of course. The Maker rewards those who are diligent, but I’m…” There are so many sentimental things she could say, the sort of things that would have worked better on the Ava she knew before, but none of which matters to a Tranquil. “I’m a Seeker,” she says, because the simple facts are all that matter now. “I serve the will of the Divine. My word is as good as law, isn’t it?”

Ava’s fingers drift along the spine of her book. It’s clear she wishes to return to her studies — that is, if she can wish for anything at all.

“That’s true.” Ava shifts, leaning in closer and lowering her voice. “As much as I can remember.”

“So… you’re missing memories.”

“You’re asking on behalf of the Divine?”

Of course she is. There is no other justifiable reason that Beatrice would have pursued the secrets of a rebel mage. This must be a part of some larger mission, to uncover the secrets of a Circle under suspicion.

“Of course.”

Ava rotates the book in a slow circle. Even as a tranquil, her hands are ever in motion. “I only remember fragments of my past. I think the process of making me tranquil and then undoing it was…” She freezes, as if the word escapes her. Finally, she settles on, “—It was a mess,” and looks dissatisfied with her impression of it.

“Father Vincent, I take it.” Another nod from Ava and Beatrice continues. “What was the reason?”

“The relic was in use by my own coven, outside the Circle. I wasn’t a part of the Circle before, only recently.”

“An apostate.”

The truth of the word washes across Beatrice like an unrelenting wave, cooling into a pit in her stomach.

“That’s what you call it. We used a different name, but it … doesn’t matter.” Ava spins the book back the other way. “They needed my magic to ignite it, the artifact, so I needed my connection to the Fade returned to me. Now there’s no need for me.”

The way Ava describes it, she is just an object worn through, with no further uses. But surely, as all of the Maker’s creations, there is still some use to be had.

If nothing else, she can bring clarity.

“And the demons,” Beatrice urges. “The ones I saw tempting you, when we were together.”

“…I don’t understand.”

“You were made tranquil because of your dangerous connection to the Fade.”

It is not a question, as this reality is unquestionable. No one is made tranquil unless they are a danger to themselves or others.

“I was made tranquil because I wouldn’t betray the location of my sisters.”

“You—“

Duty to sisterhood, a responsibility to others, is a quality lauded by the Chantry. It is virtuous, not a fault to be punished. These impulses are to be cultivated.

Ava must be lying, but she cannot be. To lie requires a wish to be concealed, a desire for deception.

To lie is to want.

“That’s one thing the device does,” Ava continues, her own chair scratching sharply over stone, and the sound is so much like screaming. “It finds the rest of us — them.” Another scratch and Beatrice hates herself for flinching slightly. “We were a circle outside of the Circle, away from the Chantry. We can’t be allowed to exist anymore.”

“… does that bother you?”

Even though Beatrice knows the answer already.

“It did, when I felt things.” Ava pauses, watching Beatrice. “Does it bother you? You … still feel.”

If there’s anything still like an emotion left in Ava’s voice, it’s curiosity. Perhaps that one thing, the desire to know, is the closest thing to a feeling the Tranquil are still permitted. A desire to know, to learn, is an impulse toward improvement. It allows them to further serve the Circle that houses, feeds, and controls them.

Service is still required of every living being, even those afforded only a faint half-life.

Revulsion churns slowly in Beatrice’s stomach and she starts to regret the meal she forced down earlier. “The things that bother me and the things that are necessary aren’t always in alignment.”

Ava’s brow pinches and for a single instant, it’s almost like time has turned back.

It’s almost her, the way she was, the person Beatrice came to care for in so little time. But it is only deep thought written there, not feeling. It is labor, not emotion. “You’re a Seeker, aren’t you? If something bothers the will of the divine, what does that make it?” Her hand darts out, pressing against the top of Beatrice’s, as if to impart a sense of urgency. “I really want to know. What does matter?”

What Beatrice wants isn’t what matters. She knows that; it never has.

So when Ava’s touch brings a calm warmth, a sense of relief, she knows just as easily that it must be false.

Unworthy.

Her hand jerks back, and Ava does not pursue. She does not look chastised. She offers nothing in return, which is all Beatrice deserves.

“All that matters, Ava, is the greater good.”

Ava nods, and the strained focus is gone from her face at once. Knowledge has been imparted, direction has been given. She is at peace. “Of course,” she says, so much like a whisper of prayer.

“Is that all you can tell me?”

Ava has already begun to open the book on runes again, to resume her work, but she stops with her fingers shoved deep between the pages. “… you mean about the device?”

“Yes, I— what else?”

This time when Ava’s eyes catch hers, Beatrice could swear there’s something close to feeling there, just for a moment, and then it’s gone. “There are things I felt, when I had feelings. I could tell you about that.”

Beatrice swallows. “… feelings for—“

“For you.” Ava nods, fingers twisting, then opens the book again. She looks away, eyes locked on the ink. “I don’t think you want to hear them. You still feel things.” But there it is again, like lightning, the curiosity is there on Ava’s face when she looks up again. “Do you feel them for me?”

“No, Ava,” Beatrice says, lying with an easy smile. “Not the kind of feelings I think you mean.”

On blacken'd wings does deceit take flight, her mind reminds her, and the smile grows desperately wider.

This should be it; it should be all she needs say.

But Beatrice’s mouth moves faster than her thoughts, adding the question, “What did you feel?”

Horribly, blasphemously, she wishes it was her own Ava who could answer.

She tries to remember the mage’s smile, the way it lit up in the eyes, so unlike the stoney emptiness — the cavernous nothing — when this version of Ava says, “I cared for you in ways I didn’t have words for. Maybe those would have been some of my lost memories, the kinds of words I want. But I felt it.” Ava turns a page, but she doesn’t break eye contact. “If I could still feel, I think I would want to feel it again.”

“Ava, I—“

Beatrice can’t be sure what she would say next, but she does not have to know.

The Maker’s gifts come in many forms, and now they arrive as Lilith’s loudly huffing frustration when she storms back into the stockroom pursued by the First Enchanter himself, raising his voice; “Two Seekers so occupied in my stockroom, I see!” Beatrice can’t help but notice the way Ava’s eyes move to him. The look on the mage’s face isn’t fear, it can’t be, but it is a focused attention that draws such an emotion immediately to mind. “To what do I owe the infinite pleasure? How may I help to serve the Divine?”

“You serve best in your silence as well as your absence.” Lilith’s words are clipped, strained in a way that suggests she has been repeating this general sentiment the entire length of their walk together. “If I may speak so freely.”

Beatrice stands with a smile already in place.

This is their routine, more or less. Lilith says things more directly than she ought to and here comes Beatrice, ready with a hand on her friend’s shoulder and a carefully open posture. “There are runic glyphs we’ve been asked to inspect in a cave system to the north, First Enchanter. I can say little more than that, but obviously we require the help of your Tranquil in learning more of what to look for.”

His head tilts and Beatrice notices the way his eyes shift past her to stare directly at Ava. “Is that what you were discussing?” There is no pretense here or even a feigned gentleness in his voice when he probes, asking, “Ava?”

Lilith’s head turns, ever so slightly, but Beatrice does not give even that much away. If anything, her posture relaxes. There are times when her childhood spent learning the courtly intrigues of Orlais is an asset.

“All is as a Seeker says, isn’t it?” Ava answers eventually. “They are the will of the—“

Father Vincent snorts and storms out of the room without waiting for the rest of the answer.

Lilith waits only long enough herself to be certain that he’s gone before mumbling, “If I didn’t believe he was up to something before…”

Which he is, it’s true, but a Circle mage who wishes to bring apostates to heel is hardly working against the doctrine of the Chantry. There should be no reason for Beatrice to feel disgust as she watches him leave. Dislike is a familiar enough feeling, certainly, but the pure heat from the anger growing in her chest is unusual. She doesn't enjoy the feeling.

“Have I done something wrong?” Ava’s voice is quiet behind her, quieter than she has ever heard the mage speak. “I thought that… since you’re Seekers…”

The anger inside of Beatrice doesn’t quite melt away, nothing so cathartic as that, but there is a new calm that rushes in to join it.

She sets her expression into a kind, if strained, smile and turns to face Ava again. “You haven’t done anything wrong.” For as far as Beatrice knows, that might even be true. It might be that Ava has never done anything wrong apart from the misfortune of her birth, the way it marks her, and isn’t that something Beatrice herself knows all too well? “We appreciate you helping to safeguard our work, Ava.”

Lilith rolls her eyes, but otherwise hides her distaste. Certainly she must think there is no reason to be so gentle with a mage who has been made tranquil. It isn’t as if Ava’s feelings can be hurt or even that she is truly afraid. The Tranquil only wish to know where errors lie, so that they can become more efficient.

The words of comfort are for Beatrice’s own sense of well being, as is the smile. It’s true, after all, that she’s the one who still feels things. What harm is there in a little tenderness?

“If you two are… entirely finished.”

Of course, it’s that: the harm is in being seen too clearly.

Beatrice’s eyes snap back to Lilith, who is watching her closely again. “Of course,” she answers, just as attentive in the containment of her true feelings once more. “We will speak again, Ava, if there are further questions.”

If there’s any reaction from the mage, Beatrice doesn't see it. Her eyes are focused straight ahead, locked on the doorway and the flicker of candlelight just beyond in the hall.

She hears Lilith’s voice behind her, saying, “you may resume your studies for now,” and speeds up her own steps.

The hallway is unusually empty, and Beatrice allows herself the brief moment of respite to recompose herself, bracing her shoulder against the cool brick. Her breath is quicker than she would like and her hands shake when she flexes them repeatedly.

She feels like a fool, only a child who pretends at being a defender of what is good and just.

"If I even know what justice is," she thinks briefly, irrationally, before pushing the thought back down deep below every other worry, muffled in the dark. There are too many concerns mounting for her to be able to focus on any one of them closely. It is better to divide herself again — feelings apart from reason — with every slow and steady breath she draws in.

By the time Lilith joins her in the hallway, Beatrice is certain all her irrational feelings are back under control.

She offers nothing more than a sharp nod before turning to walk away with the expectation that the other Seeker will follow.

They will debrief and discuss in her room. They will decide to keep watch, remain wary, and most likely do nothing at all about the Circle and its secrets unless the behavior intensifies. If Beatrice is honest with herself about her role as it’s meant to be, there is nothing that needs to be done, apart from research into the Tranquility’s reversal.

Even so, her muscles ache with the impulse to action, and one hand moves to her sword without a second thought. Her mind shifts to the image of the First Enchanter’s face, the way he’d looked at Ava, and how the mage had watched him in return.

If her sword’s grip weren’t made of fine well-oiled leather, marks might cut into Beatrice’s hand from how tightly she clutches it.

That night, Beatrice dreams of the stream in the forest, but this time she remains standing.

She follows the twisting water until it leads to a cabin door, nestled in the foothills of some unknown mountain. Elfroot grows in the garden. Through the cracks between the shuttered window, she can glimpse someone moving inside.

“Beatrice?” A voice calls out, familiar but far away. “Bea, is that you?”

The door opens and Ava is waiting just beyond the door. There is an easy smile on her face and one hand that reaches out to Beatrice.

The sight of that smile alone could take her breath way. “Ava…” Even for a dream, Beatrice’s voice sounds strange to her own ears. She is tentative, as if the feelings swelling up inside her chest may break her.

“Who else would it be?”

Who else.

It has never been anyone, just as it has never been anywhere. Beatrice is a woman without a home, with no place or purpose outside of her Order. She has been drawn to nothing else before, and now the only thing she wants is impossible. Improbable.

Only feasible in a dream, where she suddenly feels Ava’s hand in her own, their fingers linking together carefully, tenderly, as they have never truly touched each other before.

Ava’s hands are in her hair, gently loosening her braid. “It’s okay, Bea.” The voice is close, like a breath against her ear, even as she smiles from much greater distance. “You can tell me your secrets now. Or I’ll tell you mine.” The laughter against the curl of her ear reminds her of settling into a warm bath after trudging through a snow storm. “There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you.”

“This is...”

Impossible. Improbable.

Beautiful.

“It’s your dream,” Ava supplies, tilting her head. “Only yours, you know, since I can’t have them anymore.”

Just as quickly, the feeling turns sour, sinking down. Beatrice swallows and feels a solid weight inside her throat. “Ava, stop.” She feels arms gripping tight around her, or something larger, heavier. The weight of her own armor as it pulled her down into the water below.

“What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t brought me back?” The voice isn’t only in her ear now, but inside her, buried deep, behind Beatrice’s eyes and throbbing with ever growing heat. “Did you think I was going to kill people?” Beatrice struggles, but there is no relief. The grip doesn’t relent. “Were you afraid?”

Beatrice had been afraid, but not of Ava. She had been afraid of the blood that spread unnaturally fast, the way it stained her leather.

She had been afraid of what it might mean to have spent so much time with someone so dangerous and sense none of that inside them.

She had been afraid by her own impulses to remain behind, to resist the leadership of the Circle as Ava was placed back into tranquility. More than she has felt in years, Beatrice had felt fear.

“No,” she says instead, voice soft enough to sound unsure. “Ava, I—“

“You can’t lie to me, you know.” Ava’s eyebrows lift in dry amusement, her face as expressive now as it was blank in the daylight. “You are me. Or I guess I’m you. Just what’s in your head. Your guilt.” Her tongue darts out to wet her lips, and Beatrice chastises her own eyes for glancing down to see it. “Do you have a lot of guilt, Bea?”

The pressure of Ava’s grip only grows tighter, like a vice. “Stop calling me that…”

“Stop making me.”

Beatrice breathes in and she shakes her head. “I couldn’t make you do anything.”

“Technically true, I guess. You unmade me.”

If Beatrice didn’t already know that tranquility was about removing one’s connection to the Fade, she might suspect that this vision inside her dream was actually Ava. Only the mage herself could be so incredibly smug and self-satisfied, surely. Only Ava would desire to make her suffer so, and it would be righteous.

Suffering for this is something Beatrice deserves.

But it isn’t possible. This is all in Beatrice’s mind, some manifestation of her earlier frustrations, and as she becomes more conscious of that fact, the grip that both Ava and the dream state have on her begins to loosen. She feels, however briefly, a relief.

“I am sorry, Ava,” she says, perhaps in the only way she ever can or will. Because a Seeker ought to be faultless, ever effective. She should never want to admit to weakness or blame. “I didn’t want this.”

“And since you can still want, you know that.”

But Beatrice isn’t entirely sure that’s accurate. She has never learned to want, not deeply.

“Try,” Ava says, as if those doubts had been voiced aloud, further evidence that this Ava is only a manifestation of her own insecurities, able to sense every thought in her head.

“Ava…”

“You owe me.”

If it’s only Beatrice’s own guilt speaking to her through the subconscious — if this is some deep-seated need to purge away remorse — then perhaps it’s true. Perhaps this is what she owes herself. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the way her grip shifts and moves, if this is only a dream.

It’s easy for her hands to find purchase in Ava’s hair, fingers grazing over skin.

“Ava,” she breathes, the word soft as a recitation at prayer. The air is thick between them, heavy with all that was never done or said, but Ava’s lips are soft as they relent.

This isn’t real. It cannot matter.

It is nothing, and Beatrice is aware — keenly — that she might not even remember it in the morning. She might never have another chance to feel these things, to take these wants, even if they disappear at dawn.

Perhaps this is all it means to want, this feeling of Need, and a sound bursts from her throat, keening like a pained yelp of some dying creature as she grabs for the front of the mage’s robes. “Ava,” she moans into her mouth, pulling sharply. “Don’t stop.”

“I—“ The words are cut off with more kisses, but they resume again as Beatrice’s moves from mouth to jaw down to her throat. “I won’t.”

When Beatrice nips at the skin, the taste and the texture is so vivid. She feels flushed and warm, pooling in the pit of her stomach, and is dimly aware of her own body back in her bed chamber, twisting against the sheets, rubbing her thighs together and biting her own lip.

“Don’t—“

Beatrice thinks it’s her that would be objecting again — her who should put a stop to her own pleasure, her own desires — but no more. No more protests or concerns, no more propriety. If guilt is a selfishness that stands in the way of good deeds and forgiveness, then surely absolving herself is necessary.

She relents and so does Ava, sinking beneath her. She pictures exactly how Ava would tremble, the way her heartbeat would pulse quickly in her throat. “Don’t—“ she hears, “—don’t stop—“

And the dream is so vivid, so warm and wet, so much like sinking. “Don’t—“ Heat burns behind Beatrice’s eyes, red with tears that will never fall, as she begins to fall, to sink. She kisses Ava’s skin, tastes the salt of her, tastes the salt of her own tears.

“Don’t—“

She sinks.

“Don’t leave me.”

The heartbeat under her tongue surges and her stomach lurches.

The last thing Beatrice sees seared across her mind in angry bright blue light before she jolts awake is a memory: Ava’s terrified face, lips spattered with blood, as she called out for Beatrice to stay.

Michael wakes with the sun, but Ava is late to rise. It isn’t a preference; she doesn’t have those anymore.

Her body is just so unused to this new habit.

But when she feels a hand upon her shoulder, her eyes flit open quickly. In the past this would have been alarming, she knows, but there is no more fear or selfish concern for herself. Now she’s only uncertain until her mind completely awakens.

Her eyes focus and Michael is already fully dressed and ready for the day. “You’re going to have to work on this.”

“Of course.”

Ava knows it’s true, so there’s no need to discuss or argue. She should be waking earlier, allowing herself more time to recite the Chant and prepare for the day, but sleep is so different now.

She remembers that she used to dream. She can’t remember the sensation or the feelings that came with it, only that they happened. The idea is like an image etched in glass: a representation of a thing that’s known rather than anything real. You can look at the image of a horse, understand its purpose, and still not know the first thing about what it’s like to ride.

Dreaming is an idea, nothing more or less. She has no preference or desire to dream again. (How could she?) But life will be easier once her mind learns to wake up faster from the nothingness of her new sleep. There is a darkness there she isn't used to — an empty nothing — deeper than even a moonless night.

Perhaps that’s what her death will feel like.

She recites the Chant because the Sisters have told her she should, and there isn’t a reason not to comply. Her life is simple now, in a way she knows she would have hated before. Understanding that woman she was, the one who made everything harder for herself than it needed to be, is impossible now.

All Ava really needs to know now is who is in charge, so she can obey.

In most ways, the truest answer to that is the Maker, even if he has abandoned the world for its sins. Obedience to His law is the surest way to know she is doing as she ought to.

No preference exists anymore, but those have only ever interfered. If she could still feel at all, if she knew what happy really was, Ava wonders if this new simplicity might have qualified, even if her former self would have rebelled at the idea of it.

Knowledge.

Her purpose is to expand her mind as rapidly as possible, living her days as efficiently as she can, in order to be of better use for the Circle and the Maker’s will. The clearest path to that goal is through knowledge, and there is only so much of it she can gain in the stockroom.

The runes she’s been tasked with learning are mostly used for enchantments, inscribing items with lyrium to produce magical effects. Tranquil can handle lyrium in its less diluted forms without the risk of madness or illness that befalls anyone else — apart from dwarves, who are immune to all magic.

Michael has said that there are requests for runic enchantments that appear over and over. Those are what she’s spent her first weeks learning in the basic tomes kept in the stockroom. It makes sense that they’d be kept close at hand for easy reference, but it feels like time to expand her horizons.

Any Tranquil can be taught to perform a simple enchantment, to make strikes from an axe freezing to the touch or things like that, but if she is going to be of greater use (enough so to be of service to even a Seeker), she's going to have to expand beyond fire and lightning.

That’s how she finds herself digging through the restricted tomes the Seekers removed from the library. Michael keeps a selection of them locked in the back room, but Ava took the key without waking him. She’s sure he won’t mind.

Some of these books are banned for other kinds of forbidden knowledge, so Ava arranges them into two different stacks based on how useful they are for her purposes. Other kinds of magic still interest her, but the application would be pointless. There is so much more she can still learn about runes, and she feels the time since her return passing much too quickly.

If she is going to be of use, she needs to work harder.

She remembers now that it had been a tranquil mage that enchanted the artifact she and Beatrice were sent to find. The magic used there was so refined and rare, it had taken far more lyrium than a normal enchantment. Every member of Salvius had worked together for months to gather enough of the valuable blue stone and even transporting it had been a risk.

Ava remembers, as if from a great distance, how she had felt so afraid transporting raw lyrium. She kept it wrapped carefully in thick leather hides, stuffed deep inside her rucksack. The precautions should have reassured somewhat, but she was only relieved to hand it off so Yasmine could begin her enchantments.

She remembers watching with curiosity as several intricate runes were cut into the lid and sides of the small chest. She remembers how it glowed beautifully blue when the work was all done.

She remembers later than that, the blue searing her eyes, burning, until she had to force them shut against the light. Until Beatrice’s voice calling out to her was all she knew of the world.

“Hello, Ava.”

Just like that, Beatrice is standing there, dressed in her full armor. The cloak on her back looks brand new, without any wear. She stands alert and at the ready, hand resting on her sword. She looks so familiar like that.

The interruption is pleasant, and Ava takes note of that. She’s not sure if this sensation is exactly what pleasant used to mean to her, but it’s the closest thing she has to it now. She has found that research is more effective when she stops and resumes again, allowing her mind time to process the questions in the background. She remembers details more clearly that way, especially now that more of her brain function has returned along with her memories.

So when Beatrice stands there, starting to look uncharacteristically uncertain, it is pleasant. It will be good for Ava’s research.

It is good for Ava to see her, and she takes note of that too.

“Hello Seeker,” she says, aware that the neutrality in her voice unnerves the other woman. Perhaps she ought to try to feign an emotion, somehow; it might make their conversations more productive, at least. “Do you need something?” She tries to smile, but the look on Beatrice’s face suggests that this is worse.

The smile drops again. Beatrice looks away and clears her throat. “I don’t wish to interrupt you at your work, if you—“

“No, it’s good that you did.”

This is so like the woman that she was, Ava realizes; She can see it in Beatrice’s eyes. Her understanding of the feelings on the Seeker’s face is clearer than her own, and it’s the same look she saw there when they were reunited in the stockroom.

The feeling there is hope.

But Ava is not who she was, and she doesn’t cut in and interrupt because of overeager excitement as she once did. The pathetic and needy rush to gain approval that haunted her all of her life is gone. She only wants to be efficient, and so she adds, just as quickly, “It helps my studies if I take breaks, but there’s not a lot to do anywhere else.”

“Not for a tranquil you mean.”

Ava nods. “If I studied magic I could use, that’d be something else. But runes are dangerous and can’t be trusted around the rest of them.” She moves her hand to cover the outline of the rune on the open page of her book and moves her eyes back up to the Seeker’s face. “Most people can’t be trusted with their emotions.”

Beatrice opens her mouth, then closes it again. She works her jaw as though working something around in her mind.

She is pretty, Ava thinks, and feels nothing particular about it other than the dim memory of what that had meant to her before. She had longed for that beauty, and it had been a considerable distraction. Distracting enough to result in injury that led her here again, for better or for worse.

Ava has no particular opinion on which of those it was.

“Do you trust me, Ava?” Whatever Beatrice was pondering, she has landed on a question. “Do you trust my emotions?”

Ava pauses to really consider the question, tries to work out what it could mean. There is feeling behind the words, so she turns them over in her mind. It’s like looking at bright splashes of color, unsure if you even know what the other person sees when they call it “red.”

Feelings, Ava has realized repeatedly since being made Tranquil, only get in the way of understanding anything else more valuable. “You contain your emotions better than most, Seeker. That’s something to be commended.”

The warmth that usually burns in Beatrice’s eyes is clouded today. “You're too kind.”

That isn’t really what she means.

Ava must not have known what she meant by red.

“No,” Ava answers, shaking her head. “I don’t think I know how to be that anymore. But polite, sure. I try to do that.” Ava notices the flexing of Beatrice’s hand, gripping tighter on her sword’s pommel.

She doesn’t question why she notices so many details about Beatrice. Details are an important part of any study.

“I wanted to let you know I’ll be away from the Tower for some time.” The Seeker’s throat constricts and Ava watches. “If the First Enchanter bothers you, I want you to remind him you’re working for me just now.”

But that isn’t true. Beatrice had only wanted to question Ava about the artifact and the secrecy. She isn’t really going to help the Seekers translate glyphs and ancient runes. Even if that was the request, Ava isn’t at all equipped to do so. It would have been Michael who could help. She still has so much to learn first to be of real use.

“You want me to lie,” she says slowly, carefully. “For you?”

Beatrice’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Not for me, Ava, no. For—“ But she falters. Her mouth opens, then shuts again. The line of it only gets thinner. “I will tell you when I return, alright? I’ll have more questions for you then.”

Ava doesn’t understand what Beatrice is feeling. She tries to cast her mind back, to think if she ever did understand emotions like this. Is this protectiveness? Is it care and concern?

Those feelings, she remembers, were often warm, like resting in front of a fire after a long walk through a storm. “Then I’ll look forward to your return, Seeker.”

Somehow, strangely, that is true.

One feeling Ava realizes she still has is anticipation, particularly for new knowledge. And understanding Beatrice is almost as fascinating, and intricate, as her study of runes.

Perhaps this too can give her greater use.