Chapter Text
Will felt himself tumbling from one plane to the next, but when his hands hit a hard surface and his knees knocked against a painfully marbled floor, he had the wherewithal to instinctually understand he remained in the Fade. Only it was different now. The pre-constructed pedestals of the nightmarish Harrowing arena were obviously gone, and Will knew, even as he gasped on his hands and knees in this new location, that he was no longer completing a test, but had been relocated into the mainstream Fade.
The smooth marble beneath his palms was cold to the touch. He knew he should probably rouse himself. As a Dreamer, he could manipulate his consciousness into waking. But he hesitated. He didn’t want to wake up, sprawled on the floor of the Harrowing Chamber, a league of templars looking over him and the First Enchanter boring into him with her ice-blue eyes. Will wanted to sleep. He wanted to think, needed to think, required a serious assessment of what had just happened.
He lifted off his hands, pushing up on his knees, and when he tilted his head to observe the Fade-space of his dreaming, he was only moderately surprised to see a familiar figure. Black as a shadow, its spine dramatically curved in its crouch, eyes reflecting a reddish light. It smiled at Will when its presence was discovered, and the sharp, cutting angles of its teeth drew a shudder from the mage.
This creature, Will thought – knew, he knew – was a demon. Had to be. And it had followed him through the Fade to the place they both occupied currently, that being a sprawling extravagance of elegance, vines carved throughout pillars, down an endless hall. Torches lit warm, flickering spotlights on the floor. Will had never been there before, and he concluded that the demon must be the creator of this particular dream. Disconcerting, but Will was strangely calm.
When the creature unfurled from its slump and stepped on ebony boned legs to stand in front of him, Will indulged in only the briefest of pauses before accepting the hand offered him. Claws tapped at his wrists, and a laugh bubbled up from Will’s throat, made of equal parts pleasure and hysteria. And then he was pulled in, pulled close, the demon cradling Will’s head against its chest, smoothing his hair with the leathery palm of its hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” it told him, its voice deep and resonating and rumbling directly into Will’s ear.
“I’m not,” Will argued, his disagreeableness automatic.
“You’re trembling,” the demon said with a whisper of a laugh.
Will found that was true. He took a deep breath and exhaled against the gaunt chest of the demon on which his cheek was pressed. “Why did you help me?”
“Why did you trust me to help you?”
Will sighed as the demon’s spindly fingers coiled in the hair at the nape of his neck. He had trusted the demon implicitly to save his life in the face of the pride demon, and he trusted him now, an unexplainable trust considering the dagger-sharp claws caressing over the delicate skin of his throat. “Because you’re dangerous,” Will answered with a thickness of voice that nearly choked him. “But you’re not a danger to me.”
The demon’s fingers wound lightly around the base of Will’s neck, coaxing his head into a backward lean so it could peer at him from above. It lowered its strange, sculled head until its flat slits of nostril burrowed into Will’s curls. “Dear, precious boy.” It scented Will with a thorough drawl of inhalation. Will shivered in its careful grasp, little tremors racing over his scalp at the sensation. “You have no idea how powerful you are.”
Will’s eyelids fluttered until the demon lifted its pressing nose from his tangle of hair, and only then was he able to focus his eyes on the thing looming above him. Its antlers spiraled skyward, into the abyss of the Fade-ceiling above, and Will sucked his bottom lip between his teeth, staring and awestruck at his demon savior’s magnificence.
“I’m not so powerful,” Will sighed, turning his cheek into the palm of the demon as it cupped a hand upon his face. “You said so yourself that I wasn’t strong enough to take down a pride demon.”
“Sweet Will,” it soothed with a smile of glinting teeth. “You are young, untapped, full to bursting with potential.” A clawed finger traced down the curve of Will’s jaw. “Your Circle has stifled you, as it tries to stifle all mages. But you,” it said, lowering its mouth to Will’s forehead, “will not be contained.” Its lips were feather-soft against him.
“I’ll always be contained,” Will said. The demon had him leaned back in its arms, and Will’s hair spilled over the stretched, black skin on its hands. “I must be. I do not want to become an abomination.”
“Of course not,” the demon said, easing him slowly to the floor. “I speak not of possession, but of something much simpler.”
The marble was cool on Will’s back, but the demon above him was hot to the touch, and it splayed its body across Will’s. It wasn’t smothering, but comforting. With a suggestive nudge, Will even opened his legs so the demon could rest easier between them. Its pressure was satisfying, spread atop him, and Will responded to its words with a dreamy cast of speech. “Simpler?”
“There are few things more simple than the honest power of blood,” it said, nuzzling into Will’s neck.
Will’s eyes widened and he stirred to stiffness beneath the demon. “Are you talking about blood magic?” he asked, suddenly less comfortable and more suffocated by the demon’s weight. “That’s evil!”
Sensing Will’s abrupt discomfort, the demon pulled thoughtfully away, settling into its macabre cower, perching like a shadowy nightmare above Will’s vulnerable sprawl on the floor. It did not immediately reply verbally to Will’s astonished exclamation of something he truly believed, at that time, to be fact. Instead, it only smiled politely down at him, its head tilting, its eyes blazing with the spark of curiosity.
“Do you propose,” the demon began with astute caution, wary of the woe-wrought beauty at its heels, “that good and evil is so easily determined?” Will began to sit up. He pulled his knees to his chest, the tips of his boots touching the tips of clawed feet. He huffed in consternation, but still did not try to get away from his bizarre new companion. “Tell me,” the demon continued, “when the circle accepted you into its fold as a young boy, did they take more from you than your freedom?”
Will did not need to ponder long the question asked of him; he knew well enough that to which the demon alluded. He answered thusly: “They collect a vial of blood from every new apprentice. It’s protocol.”
“What you call protocol, others might call a leash,” the demon said, a wryness beginning to creep into its silky drawl. “You know what they use this blood for, I suppose?”
He did know. The blood was placed within a phylactery. It remained in the tower until an apprentice became a full mage of the Circle, and then it was sent to Denerim, to be added to its Ferelden collection. “It’s a precautionary necessity,” Will said, repeating what had been drilled into him since he arrived to the tower. “If a mage becomes…bad, templars can use their blood samples to track them.”
The demon sat perfectly still in its intense appraisal of Will’s face, scrutinizing every scowl. “A precautionary necessity that sounds, to me, like blood magic.”
Will gaped at the demon. The existence of phylacteries, the idea that his blood was magically sealed in a vial somewhere, had always been an accepted fact of his life, just another consequence of being a mage, something he had to deal with, accept. To align it with the devilry of blood magic was unthinkable!
“So Will, my dear boy,” the demon said, its body yet unmoving, but its voice gliding over Will’s countenance like sheaths of silk, “are phylacteries evil?”
“They,” Will began, questing for his thoughts as he spoke, “can be indispensable.”
“And so,” the demon whispered, reaching out a clawed, bony hand to enclose around the cap of Will’s knee, “can blood magic.”
Will worked his lips open, closed, confused and oblivious as to what an appropriate response could possibly be in the wake of such a statement, but the demon’s finger pushed against his mouth in a suggestion of silence.
“Be wary of readily accepting what you’ve been taught is normal,” the demon told him. “Sometimes the most basic of things are the true catalysts of evil, and it is up to a questioning mind to determine for oneself what kinds of evil one is willing to accept.”
The demon leaned in, finally, to press its lips against Will’s temple. His eyes shut, his mouth parted on a full-hearted sigh, and then he felt the mists of the Fade sift and swirl around them.
“Think of me, Will,” the demon whispered against the flesh of his throat. “I’ll be thinking of you.” It was the last thing Will heard before the dream disintegrated around him, the demon’s sparkling eyes the last image to be seen before he jolted forward into the waking world.
--
He opened his eyes. It was daytime and Will was lying in his bed in the apprentice quarters with Peter leaning over him, an intense frown plastered across his face.
“O-oh, good!” Peter exclaimed in his usual broken rhythm. “Y-y-you’re awake.”
Will’s head ached, and he rolled to his side on the narrow mattress, settling a finger to his temple and massaging tiny circles there to soothe away the discomfort. Peter’s lingering and continuous stare was not helping in the road to his recovery, however, and Will had to forcibly stop his eyes from rolling at his friend. In a rather flat voice, he said, “Yes, I’m awake. Good morning, Peter.”
Peter’s eyes shot open, if possible, even wider than they previously were, and he bunched his hands into excited fists in front of his chest. “It isn’t m-morning, Will,” he stammered. “You’ve b-b-been asleep a-all d-d-day.”
“Have I?” Will asked, honestly taken aback by that enlightenment. His dream with the demon had felt so short, but then, he couldn’t really say how long his Harrowing had lasted.
“Y-y-yes!” Peter said. He practically bounced Will off the mattress with his nervous energy. “First Enchanter Bedelia has b-b-been asking for you all day. She s-s-sent me to check on you. She w-w-wants you to come see her as s-s-soon as you’re awake.”
Will’s heartbeat picked up at that news, his mind going to the absolute worst place before recalling the successful completion of his Harrowing and rationalizing that no, the First Enchanter probably wasn’t summoning him to his execution. “Well, seems I’m awake now,” Will said, finally sitting up and swinging his feet to the floor. “She didn’t happen to mention what this was about, did she, Peter?”
“No,” Peter answered, his head ducking low beneath his fringe of scruffy hair. “Official m-m-mage business.” The anxiety behind Peter’s words was tangible, and Will found himself cringing slightly from the uneasy feeling it left in his core. “You d-d-did it,” Peter continued shakily. “You’re a f-f-full mage of the Circle now.”
“Peter,” Will began softly, but Peter looked up at him with big, watery eyes and a sweet smile.
“I’m h-h-happy for you,” Peter told him, and it looked to Will as though his friend meant it, but there was something else, a deviance in the crooked bend of his smile that alerted Will to a barely contained issue. He patted his hand on Peter’s shoulder and sure enough, that was all it took for the smile to disappear from his paling face. “They’re going to m-m-make me T-t-tranquil,” he wheezed between dry sobs. “I know it.”
Will was automatic with his head shaking and the squeezing of his hand on Peter’s shoulder, but he couldn’t help but feel oddly expectant of this very conclusion, especially after going through his own Harrowing. He wasn’t sure he could picture Peter in the place he had been so recently. Would Peter have had the courage to confront Valor for his sword? The cleverness to earn passage past Sloth? But then…would Will have figured out on his own that Freddie the Cat was actually a pride demon and the main villain of his test if the antlered demon hadn’t intervened on his behalf? A sinking feeling in his stomach made him think he’d be dead on the Harrowing Chamber floor if not for the strange, skeletal creature’s intervention. He thought of Peter in the arms of the demon and a prickling, cold feeling rushed over him. He didn’t like thinking of them together. He focused his eyes anew on the whimpering young man at his side, tears streaming down his face.
“You don’t know that, Peter,” Will said, keeping his voice calm and light. “You could get called to your Harrowing any day now.”
Peter sniffled and shook his head, but when Will made to keep speaking, he stood up from the bed and crossed his arms, effectively embracing himself in a locking hug. “Y-y-you better go see the F-f-first Enchanter. She’s waiting.”
Will threw back his covers and stood with a little stretch. “I suppose I should.” He nudged Peter in a comforting, friendly sort of way before walking to the bathing alcove of the apprentices’ sleeping quarters, realizing it might be the last time he slept there. Now that he was a full mage, he’d be expected to move to the next floor of the tower. He’d be leaving Peter behind. It made him feel at a loss. Before he ducked behind the alcove, he glanced over his shoulder to steal a glimpse of his friend. Peter sat on Will’s bed with his head in his hands, his shoulders softly shaking. Will sighed. He felt for Peter, he really did, but he couldn’t worry about him just now.
--
Will took his time with his grooming, more time than was strictly required in the washing of his face, fruitless smoothing of his thick curls from his eyes, and straightening of his apprentice robes. The draping clothes felt too small for him today, the collar too tight around his frequently swallowing throat. He was busying his hands with the constant job of tugging at his sleeves when he swept from the apprentice quarters and began his long trek to the First Enchanter’s office. At some point on the journey, he became aware of the heavy, metal-clad footsteps behind him. A templar, no doubt, and he was willing to bet he knew which one.
Experimentally, Will trailed off the edge of the circular hallway, right before the passageway of stairs, and bent down to one knee. After a show of fiddling with his laces, he straightened, letting his eyes roam to his peripheral as he did so, and he met the eyes he’d expected to meet. The templar nodded his head at Will by way of subtle greeting, and Will was trapped within a seemingly endless moment of being torn between choices. To nod in return, smile, ignore? He ended up with a twisted, confused grin that might have more accurately resembled a smirk, and then he lowered his head and continued for the door to the stairs. To his great surprise, the templar walked quickly to gain the distance between them, stepped around Will, and opened the door. Will was so shocked it took the motioning of the templar’s gauntleted hand to encourage Will through the archway. He passed the chivalrous templar as speedily as possible with the heavy hems of his robe swishing about his ankles, and prayed to the Maker he didn’t entirely believe in that his blushing cheeks went unnoticed.
The young mage continued the rest of his walk with the templar diligently keeping step behind him, periodically easing politely in front of him to open each door. It was a bumbling journey, to say the least, and by the time Will knocked on the First Enchanter’s door, he was more than ready to leave the templar out in the hall, though Will caught a look at him before he stepped inside the office; he was standing against the stone wall, back ramrod-straight, hands crossed over his chest, eyes trained forward. At Will.
A huff of indignation left Will’s lips and he turned back to the First Enchanter, who was staring frostily in his direction, her touch gentle on the brass door handle.
“Hello, Will,” she said, swinging the door wider and stepping to the side. “Come on in.”
Will entered swiftly, robes swishing behind him. The door clicked closed, and he was conscious of a tremble infiltrating his solid nerves. When the First Enchanter stepped up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder, the spiraling, nervous sensation only multiplied. He turned to her, divining an absolute chill in the air between them.
But, much to his surprise, she had a smile on her face that was almost comforting, and in her other hand, she held a bundle of fabric.
“Congratulations,” she told him on the passing of the bundle, from her hand to his. “How are you feeling?”
He didn’t even consider answering that honestly, that his head ached and his stomach was twisted and his heart was heavy with worry. So he nodded and smiled and said, “Great, thank you.”
She had that narrow-eyed look of suspicion about her, but was obviously content with concealing her doubts as long as Will concealed his own. Her fingers danced over the bundle in Will’s arms. “Now that you’re a full mage of the Circle, you must look like one. You can change right away and leave your apprentice robes with me.”
Will clutched the new robes to his chest and felt a tingle of genuine glee. He would be elated to toss his old robes to the side forever. It was a pride long desired to slip into the sleek robes of a full mage. He fingered the material between his fingers. It was black, a combination of soft and rough, with bands of animal hide across the chest and at the waist. Will wasn’t sure by touch alone what kind of animal leather it was, but it felt lovely against his skin and he made a mental note to find out later.
He looked up from the gift in his hands and the First Enchanter was already at the door. “I’ll just step outside while you change,” she said.
Will grinned, this time sincerely, and caught sight of the templar still waiting in the hallway. First Enchanter Bedelia was stepping toward him when the door shut at her back, and then Will was alone in her office. He was too excited to rummage any awkwardness at undressing in the First Enchanter’s room as his jittery hands flew to the laces of his apprentice robes. He couldn’t get out of them fast enough, and when the heavy robes fell to his feet, he sighed in relief, a weight lifted from his shoulders.
He stepped from one set of robes into the next. The black mage robes were slimming and felt grandly lush against his body. The ties at the collar were leather and he loosely fastened the cloth about his neck, raking his fingers through his hair afterward, freeing the trapped curls from the mouth of the robes. An experimental walk toward the First Enchanter’s desk left yet another smile on Will’s face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so many occasions to smile, but the stretch of his cheeks felt sublime, as did the whoosh of fabric over his hips and down his legs. He allowed himself a jubilant turn, and that’s when he caught sight of the looking glass propped up behind the First Enchanter’s desk. As he made to move toward it, his eyes fell upon a secondary point of interest: a half-unfurled scroll of parchment, lying beneath a bookmarked tome at the center of the desk. Not prone to snooping, it was something Will would have paid zero attention to normally, except for the fact that he saw, scrawled upon the top of the page, amongst what appeared to be a list, Peter’s name.
The smile abandoned him and he glanced with paranoia toward the door. If he strained his ears, he could make out low murmurs coming from the hallway, the First Enchanter chatting with the templar. He moved silently closer to the parchment, had to lift the edge of another paper with his trembling fingers to make out the header of the list of which Peter was number one. There was only a single word inked out in curling cursive, but it caused Will to stagger back upon reading it, nearly tripping over the long hem of his new robes.
‘Tranquil.’
He was wiping the fresh bout of sweat from his forehead when First Enchanter Bedelia tapped on the door, and then, without waiting for a response, re-entered the room. This time, she left the door gaping open. Will’s attention shifted in turns between her and the templar, who he could see, alert at his station in the hall.
“Will, are you unwell?” she asked him, and he did his best to rid the distress from his features.
He smoothed his damp palms over the fine folds of his new robe and quirked a half-grin at the First Enchanter. “A bit overwhelmed, I think,” Will answered when he was sure his voice wouldn’t break beneath the pressure squeezing his lungs.
Her eyes roamed over his body, not in a leering manner, but in assessment. Did he measure up to what a full mage should be in those cold, calculating eyes? Was she as surprised as he was that he’d passed his Harrowing, when she’d intoned all along, amongst many, that he, a Dreamer, would never pass, would become an abomination, would be made Tranquil. And now Will was standing before her, a full mage of the tower, and he was trying desperately not to let his eyes wander back to where they longed to wander, back to his friend’s name written on the list. A list of Tranquils, or soon to be Tranquils. Peter had been correct when he’d broken down in his room earlier. Will wondered if, before yesterday, his own name had been written on the same list.
“It’s normal to feel overwhelmed, Will,” the First Enchanter said, efficiently hurtling him from his reeling, spinning thoughts. “That will pass,” she continued, walking past him to a cabinet behind her desk. She didn’t mention the strangeness of Will’s location, how he stood behind her desk as though he had any right to be there. Perhaps she assumed he had been admiring his reflection in the mirror. Not such a stretch, as he’d been headed there before his sidetrack. When she’d stepped by him, he finally glanced at his reflection and was startled by his appearance. He looked more mature in his sleek black robes, and his face was ivory pale in contrast, save for the peachy pink flush of his cheeks. His hair spiraled wildly on his head, and his eyes shined fiercely. “One final item,” First Enchanter Bedelia said, her own reflection stepping in beside Will’s in the mirror. Will turned to her and accepted this last bit of ceremony, a staff.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and it was. Heavy in his hand, thick and smooth with enchanting swirls carved down its entirety. His fingers fitted perfectly at the grooved neck. It was a deep cherry wood, and he loved it immediately. It smoldered pleasantly beneath his touch, and he felt a physical ache to put it to use.
“You’re a full mage of the Circle of Ferelden now, Will Graham,” she said. She urged his gaze to her by sheer want of it. “Don’t make me regret it.”
Will gulped, gripping his staff protectively, and then the First Enchanter was leading him out of her door and shutting it softly behind him. He hastened down the hallway with his mind on fire, the echo of the templar’s boots a constant beat at his back.
--
He meant to find Peter, but Peter found him first, grasping at his sleeve and yanking him into a secluded corner of the library. Will checked over his shoulder for the templar he knew was keeping special watch of him. He could see him, subtly studying Will from the opposite side of the room, but he was nowhere near being in earshot, so Will could ignore him for the time being, and he turned to his friend, who had still not relinquished his sleeve.
“Peter, unhand me, you look suspicious,” Will whispered, trying to look casual as Peter basically crumbled emotionally in front of him.
With his eyes full of tears and his body rocking anxiously on his heels, Peter reluctantly released the sleeve of Will’s robes. He crossed his arms tight over his chest to compensate. The look he next gave Will was one of the most pathetic things he’d ever seen, and he had to look away from it, choosing to align his attention with the straightening of his sleeve. But Peter would not look away from Will, he kept staring imploringly, until Will succumbed and looked back. A tear welled up in the corner of Peter’s eye and then, with a blink, rolled down his cheek.
“Will,” Peter pleaded, “y-you have to help me.”
Will wasn’t sure what to say, still in debate with himself over whether or not he should inform Peter of the list he’d seen in the First Enchanter’s office. For the time being, unsure of what Peter meant, he decided to nod. He leaned forward, tilting his head, encouraging Peter to continue.
“Y-you have to help me e-escape,” Peter continued shakily, speaking at so low a register Will could hardly hear him without stepping closer, which he did, his eyes huge.
“What are you talking about?” Will asked him, his voice just as low as Peter’s. He glanced over his shoulder again to spy on his templar shadow. He was still across the library, his hands skimming over a bookshelf with some interest. Will sighed and looked back to his friend with immense concern knitting his brows. “You know you can’t escape, Peter. Even if you did get out of the tower, they’d track you down.” A few escapes had been attempted over the years, of course, never ending favorably for the apprehended mage.
But Peter had a glow about him at this last concern, and his hands flew back up to grip at Will’s sleeve. “Not if m-m-my phylactery is d-d-destroyed.”
Once again, Will extricated his sleeve from Peter’s grasping fingers, unable to ignore the flash in his memory of another set of hands, bony and black, with long leathery fingers and daggered claws. When he looked into Peter’s eyes, he thought of the demon’s, how bottomless and sparkling they had been when it had whispered to Will of his own phylactery.
“If I can d-destroy my phylactery,” Peter was still speaking, “they w-w-won’t be able to t-track me. Will, p-please. It’s my o-o-only chance. I don’t want to be T-t-tranquil, please!”
Will imagined Peter, what he would be like after the templars had severed him from the Fade utterly. He would be dull-eyed and empty, unable to dream, unable to think for himself. He wouldn’t be Peter anymore. He would hardly be human.
“P-p-please, Will. You’re the only one who c-c-can h-h-help me,” Peter whimpered.
Will felt his jaw clench as he ground his teeth in frustration. Destroying a phylactery was punishable by death, but his friend, his only friend in the entire world, was standing in front of him, begging for his help. The demon flashed again before his eyes. Its words grated in his ears. What kind of evil would Will accept? What kind of evil was he willing to stand against?
He gripped the staff in his fist and it grew warm beneath his fingers. “Of course I’ll help you, Peter,” he whispered, and Peter sobbed into the palm of his hand.
--
Apprentice phylacteries were kept in the underground level of the tower, so rumors told, in the basement. Only full mages could gain entry into the several secret compartments located in that area, by way of their staffs. Thus, Peter required Will to open the doors in his way. Whether or not the under-passages were heavily guarded was unknown. Peter knew little useful information about the location. He didn’t even know for sure where, specifically, the phylacteries were kept. Bu first thing was first, and Will couldn’t open any secret passages with a templar breathing down his neck. They had to ditch him first. When Will approached him slowly, it was the only goal he had in mind.
In retrospect, a plan of some kind might have been useful.
Will was on the first floor, in the rounding corridor outside the apprentice quarters, and Hannibal was standing guard, funnily enough, beside a suit of armor propped up against the stone wall. They didn’t look dissimilar, and so Will had a small smile of amusement on his face as he passed the templar. He didn’t need to wait long until he heard the steps behind him, the templar quick to resume his watch on the new mage. As Will walked, he rapidly became aware of his lack of a solid plan, but he was not without his imagination. For most of Will’s life, he’d had nothing but his imagination to keep him company, so it was finely honed and sharp, and when he’d led the templar toward the end of the corridor, and they were quite isolated from other on-looking eyes, Will made his knees buckle and his balance tilt, and he “fainted.”
Damsels did it in books, why couldn’t Will do it now? And what was a better way to snare the concern of a chivalrous templar than to need a heavy dose of rescuing? His cheek rested flat against the cold stone and he felt the vibrations of the templar's quickened footsteps as he rushed to Will’s side. Metal-cool hands swept the hair from his eyes, and Will felt himself being turned to his back, his head cradled in the templar’s lap. He let his eyes flicker open and groaned weakly. When he focused on the looming face above him, a pang of guilt twisted in his gut. The templar really looked worried. Alas, Will’s priorities were set and this was the opportunity he needed to save Peter.
“Oh,” he squeaked pathetically, his hands coming to rest on the templar’s heavily plated chest. “What happened? I felt dizzy and then -”
“You fainted.” It was the first time Will could remember hearing the templar speak to him, and it was a very strange thing, breaking that fourth wall between them. “Can I get you anything?” he asked, and Will could hardly believe his luck.
“Water, I think,” Will answered. The templar nodded briskly before sweeping his hands beneath Will’s back and lifting him enough to lean against the wall.
“I will return in a moment,” the templar said, and then, to Will’s utmost gratitude, he was sauntering down the corridor.
Will waited until he could no longer hear the clanging of his armor and then he jumped to his feet and ran down the hall in the opposite direction.
Peter was waiting, lingering outside the door to the lowest level, when Will ran up to him, breathless.
“We don’t have long,” Will panted, and Peter nodded, tight-mouthed, before motioning to the door. Will stepped up to it, staff brandished. “How do I do this?” he asked, because he hadn’t given this part much thought; there hadn’t been time for any serious thinking actually, and now he was standing stupidly in front of a door waving a big stick.
Peter – thank the Maker – had actually figured things out this far, and he muttered the instructions softly at Will’s ear. Will wondered just how long Peter had been planning this very occasion as he followed his direction and placed the tip of his staff to the key lock. They both watched, fascinated, as the lock glowed red-hot, followed by a metallic clicking noise as the door slowly creaked ajar. Will looked to Peter at his side, steeled his nerves for what was ahead, and pushed through the door.
They had to walk down a long, dim staircase first and foremost. Will could hear Peter’s careful steps close behind him. He held his staff out in front of him, half blind until they reached the bottom, where some torches were blessedly lit. Peter stood at his side and they looked in a dazed circle at the room surrounding them. It was empty except for the light of the torches, and there was yet another large door standing between them and the next room.
Will tried the handle and, as he’d expected, it didn’t budge. “I don’t suppose you know how to get through this one, do you?” Will asked his friend, but when Peter didn’t answer, Will glanced up at him and saw why. It was a sight that made his stomach drop.
Emerging from the shadowy corners of the room were two templars. By the time Will dashed to Peter’s side, their swords were unsheathed.
“No one’s supposed to be down here,” one of the guards said, and before Will could even consider a plausible response, he raised his sword over his head and sliced it down.
Will knocked Peter to the ground and stood above him, lifting his staff barely in time to block the templar’s blow. At the violent contact, his staff sparked and hissed, and Will spun it in his hands, slamming the blunt end of it into the stomach of one templar and then flourishing it toward the other as he commanded the ire of his spellwork. A blast of fire burst from the tip of his staff, and the templar jumped back, dropping his sword to pat at the flames engulfing his hair.
He heard the whoosh of air behind him and ducked low. The second templar’s blade swept over him in the formerly precise placement of his neck. Will swung out with his staff, taking the templar out at the knees. As he fell, Will stood, and he sent a fiery stream down upon the fallen guard. Peter was scampering out of the way, but the other templar, his hair still smoking slightly, was clamoring toward Will for a second round. His sword missed Will completely, but Will’s aim was steady, and this time, it was no small arch of fire sent in his direction. Will spun his staff and slammed it down to the floor, calling a storm of fire on both the templars. Then he stepped back and watched, by Peter’s side, as the men writhed in burning piles of melting metal and flesh.
When their bodies lay still, Will bent over and vomited. For a few blurry minutes, he lost track of Peter, only able to focus on the sickness in his heart at what he’d just done. But eventually, Peter lightly stroked Will’s back, and Will forced himself to stand up straight. He wiped the tears from his eyes and saw Peter standing before him with a key ring in his hand. While Will had been sick all over the floor, Peter had been rummaging through the dead bodies and found their keys. Another roll of nausea began to rise in Will’s throat but he swallowed it down with a shudder. He took the keys Peter held out for him and tried one in the lock for the big door before them. It slid in, easy as that, and the two friends entered the next room.
This one was filled with trinkets and treasures. Will looked around anxiously, his eyes judiciously sweeping over every corner. Only when he was positive there were no templars waiting to pounce at them from the darkness did Will breathe. He didn’t relax though. He felt as if he may never relax again. His staff felt heavy, and he almost expected its tip to be smoking when he pulled it closer to examine. But it was clean and smooth. Peter walked, untroubled, to the other side of the room. It seemed to Will as if he was the only one troubled by the events that had just taken place. A piece of worry vibrated in the back of his brain, but he had to ignore it. He had already made his decision to help Peter, and this was what had happened. There was no turning back now, no possible backward motion; there was no choice but to continue forward. He walked through the room of mystically sparkling items, goblets, chests of coin, until he was standing beside Peter at the far side of the room, another locked door in front of them.
He hesitated with the key ring in his hand. The keys jingled with the trembling of his fingers. It was Peter, taking the keys back from Will, who finally opened the door. He pushed it open and it hit against the wall with a bang, and there, at the end of a long hallway, was a small league of templar guards.
Will took a step back, but Peter ran forward, ran straight for the group of guards. Will had no choice but to follow his friend, trying to take a headcount as the templars barreled suddenly toward them. He counted six, but that number swiftly decreased to five, four, as Peter, hands lifted before him, released a mighty bolt of lightning from his palms and downed two of the templars in front of the charge with one brutal spell.
Will gaped. Peter, who had just killed two men, turned briefly to look at Will, and…he was smiling. There was no time to think of it, because Will was being surrounded by the others, and their swords were bared and gleaming and pointed straight at him. Will worked his magic, the flames erupting from his staff, harnessing the power of his spell until it released in a conflagration around the crowding templars. The stench of burning flesh and hair permeated the air and Will gagged as he spun the staff in his hands. He brought a flaming templar to his knees and Peter approached the guard from behind. Will watched, stunned, as Peter clasped his hands on either side of the guard’s face and electrified him, sending killing shocks directly through the skull. Burned within and without, the guard collapsed to the ground. Dead. Will turned slowly to the others he had set ablaze. Their corpses smoked and smoldered at his feet. He looked again at Peter, who had just assisted him in murder, but Peter’s attention was already refocusing to the next door.
This one was heavier, more formidable in appearance than the others. Peter appeared to know right away which key opened it, finding the biggest, gaudiest key on the ring, and approaching the lock confidently. Will, still stunned, just watched as his friend opened the door, the door which would prove to be the last.
After Peter opened it, he called for Will over his shoulder. “Come on,” he beckoned, but he entered without waiting, and Will had to shake the dazzle from his eyes before following through the open door.
Phylacteries filled a shelf, the only furnishing in the room. There was a magically sealed vial of blood from every apprentice mage in the tower, ordered alphabetically, and it didn’t take long for Peter to find the phylactery with his name on it. He picked it up and held it, mesmerized, in the palm of his hand. And then, before Will even had time to process it, Peter threw it to the ground and crunched it beneath his boot. A crimson mist escaped the broken glass as Peter ground it to dust. It was destroyed. Will’s mouth was still open in shock when Peter looked at him, a regretful expression on his face.
“It looks like yours was already shipped to D-Denerim,” Peter told him. “It’s n-not here.”
Will could do nothing but nod blankly. His mind hadn’t even been on his own phylactery, though now he supposed it should have been. “That’s okay, Peter,” he said. His voice sounded foreign to his ears. “We did what needed to be done.” He felt himself smiling at Peter, but it was awkward and strained, unnatural. Peter apparently either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and Will couldn’t blame him. He imagined the immense relief his friend must have felt at the destruction of his phylactery, the binding of every mage to the authority of the templars. The thought gave his heart a miniscule surge of happiness, and he rode that surge back through the basement, as he and Peter made their way past smoking, dead bodies.
They didn’t speak on the journey, but their walk wasn’t an extensive one, and before long they were standing shoulder to shoulder at the top of the stairs. Only one more door stood between them and the rest of the tower. To Will, the air looked to sparkle with tension.
“Thank you, Will,” Peter spoke at last. He didn’t look at Will, but straight ahead at the door. But his words were full of feeling, and it made Will’s pulse pound in response. He had helped his friend as much as he could, but now it would be up to Peter to escape the tower. He hoped he would make it, but he wasn't delusional enough to believe it a certainty.
“You’re welcome, Peter,” Will said. “Good luck.”
Peter took one deep breath, and then he nodded at Will to open the door. Will held up his staff to the lock once again. It glowed red and clicked, and then he gently pushed it open.
Standing there, waiting for them, was the First Enchanter, joined by a flank of templars.
“Will,” she said, “what is this?”
The power of speech temporarily lost to him, he stood before her helplessly. His fingers gripped his staff automatically, and the many templars tightened their hold on the handles of their swords in response, even the templar Will had sent to fetch him water was there, a frown on his serious face and a tight fist around a threatening, leather-bound hilt.
First Enchanter Bedelia was in no mood for waiting, and in the wake of Will’s silence, she turned to Peter instead. “Peter. What have you done?”
“I had to do it,” Peter cried. Will turned his head to him, shocked, watching the tears spill from his friend’s eyes. He had expected a denial; an attempt at one at least. “I KNOW YOU WANT TO MAKE ME TRANQUIL!” he screamed.
The First Enchanter said coolly, “Did you destroy your phylactery, Peter? You know what the punishment for that is.” She made a discreet motion with her head, lifting her chin slightly. The templars beside her began to move toward Peter.
“NO!” Peter was yelling, backing up toward the door. “YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!” He pulled a concealed blade from his belt and Will wheeled back several paces, backing up until he felt a firm body behind him. A templar’s hand gripped his arm, holding him, and Will watched, disbelieving, as Peter cut into the flesh of his own hand, his blood splattering all over the floor.
“Peter, no!” yelled Will. The templar pulled him further back when Peter lifted his bloody palm into the air before him. The crimson droplets floated in the air and began to swirl.
Blood magic.
It happened swiftly. Peter muttered an incantation and began to change, his body stretching and expanding, like Freddie the Cat in Will’s Harrowing, and in the blink of an eye Will’s friend had become a hideous abomination.
It raged against the templars as they bombarded it with their swords. Only the templar holding Will’s arm refrained from the butchering of Peter. Will struggled against the iron grip until he met the concerned eyes of the familiar templar. He was looking at him when the others landed their killing blow. Will’s eyes watered as he heard the wail of the abomination - Peter - dying.
Silence hanged heavy and Will hanged his head.
“I’m disappointed beyond words, Will,” the First Enchanter said, shattering the quiet and replacing it with palpable dread. “Your first day of becoming a full mage and you do this.”
When Will responded, his voice was weak. He was all but broken. “He was sure you were planning on making him Tranquil,” Will said, not looking at her but at the splatters of Peter’s blood, still glistening wet on the floor. “I saw your list and knew it was true.”
“And that gave you the authority to break our law?” the First Enchanter asked.
He did look at her then, though her image was fuzzy through his well of unshed tears. “He was my friend.”
She sighed. “The punishment for destroying a phylactery is death.”
He shuddered and felt the templar’s hand tighten around his arm.
“But for you, I think I can make an exception.” She motioned once more to the templars. “Since you were acting with kind intensions and have no previous record of misconduct, I will spare your life. Instead of death, you will be made Tranquil.”
“No, no,” Will said, backing up automatically into the templar holding him. “Please, I’d rather die.”
Again, the First Enchanter sighed. “Then you should have died in that basement.”
The templar spun Will around in his arms and held both his arms. There was a peculiar look on his face. Will felt himself being pulled forward by him, and he was weak, too weak to fight against it, and unwilling to use any more magic for evil. For murder.
“FIRST ENCHANTER BEDELIA,” a new voice boomed from the archway of the library. There was a shuffle as everyone turned to see who it was, and when Will’s eyes fell upon him, a small bit of his hysteria was erased. Jack Crawford, the Grey Warden, was walking toward him. “Did I misunderstand something? Are you about to make this talented young mage Tranquil?” He kept walking until he stood between Will and the First Enchanter.
“He broke the law and must be punished,” she answered, but the grip of the templar’s hands on Will’s arms was already weakening.
“I think an impending Blight trumps your Circle of Magi law,” Jack replied. He was smiling, but his demeanor was solid in its threat.
“He’s dangerous,” the First Enchanter said. Will heard rather than saw the roll of her eyes.
“So am I,” Jack said. “And I’m invoking the Rite of Conscription.”
The other templars let out poorly hidden gasps, but the one next to Will remained silent and released Will completely from his hold. Will wasn’t absolutely sure what the Rite of Conscription was, but he was relatively sure it meant he wasn’t being made Tranquil. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and automatically leaned back against the templar.
“Foolish, Jack,” she told the Grey Warden. “I told you yesterday how lethal Dreamers can be, and now that he’s proven it, you’re practically drooling to take him on.”
Jack shrugged. “What can I say? I love a wild card. I’m recruiting him, Bedelia, and that’s the end of it.”
“If you insist on being naïve, I must insist on something, as well,” she countered with an arch of her finely shaped eyebrow. “Take one of the templars with you, to watch him.”
Jack chuckled, and the sound was boisterous and inappropriately jolly with a corpse in the room. “You don’t think an army of Grey Wardens can handle a mage?”
Another sigh left her white in the cheeks. “Take one of the templars, at least for the journey to Ostagar.”
Jack crossed his arms, unhappy, but not unmovable. He looked at Will with a grin. “Fine.”
The First Enchanter didn’t sound satisfied, but she could sense this was the best scenario she could hope for, and with a wave of her hand, she said, “Hannibal, go with Will.”
The templar at Will’s side stood straight with sudden alertness and Will realized he’d been leaning against him. He watched the templar bow slightly at the First Enchanter, then at the Grey Warden, then, to his surprise, at Will.
And so it happened that Will escaped death and Tranquility, and left the Circle Tower of Ferelden for the first time in years, in the company of a Grey Warden and the chivalrous templar. He held in his hand only his staff as he walked out of the tower’s front door. They would not even let him go back to his room to retrieve his things.
He breathed in the fresh air and followed his new companions down the path to the lake’s edge.