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It was at the monastery at Bournshire, of course. They didn't let him go anywhere in those days. They had taken a handful of his cohort to Kinloch Hold as a "fun outing,” but Alistair had not been invited since his attitude made him unpopular with the templars and the sisters. So the monastery had fewer figures of authority roaming around finding reasons to give him a hard time.
He had been in the monastery courtyard, perched on the fence of the training circle and re-reading the Canticle of Silence when he should have been practicing his stances. Ser Agnetha wasn't there though, and had been substituted with Sister Berenice who was more concerned with her large needlepoint treatment of Andraste-on-the-Pyre than with watching a middling templar novice go through the same three moves.
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And with a heavy heart / Returned to unassabile Minrathous / To prepare his people for the doom to come. Alistair closed the little chapbook and tossed it with the rest of his things. He stretched, bored, in the warmth of the courtyard. His time was much better spent doing things that actually interested him, rather than this busy work. He actually knew the stances very well. He just didn't like doing them. But all the templars saw was willful disobedience, so they kept him on stances until they decided he was disciplined enough for their liking. Alistair stood, balancing himself on the fence, and looked over at the sister. She was hunched over, holding her project close to her face.
At a split second's decision, he leapt off the fence, scooped up his belongings, and ran back into the monastery to do something, anything, else.
He was still only in his shirt and breeches, and it was chilly in the halls of the monastery, so he went back to his room to get his novice's robes. As he pulled them over his head and cinched the rope around his waist, he had an idea. This was an ideal time, while the monastery was quiet, to see if he couldn't get his hands on some of the restricted items in the library. He had been reading everything he could about the Fade and demons and magic that was available to him, but these tertiary sources kept referring to texts that weren't accessible to mere novices. He had asked about them once, particularly "Of Fires, Circles, and Templars: A History of Magic in the Chantry" by Sister Petrine, but he had been scolded and sent to practice without any answer. But if it was written by a sister, then the monastery must have it in its restricted stacks. And that was exactly where Alistair was headed.
He stood in front of the expensive glass doors of the bookcases, looking reverently at the titles. He tried at one of the handles, but it was locked. He stepped back, sighed, and walked around the little alcove, testing for a door that someone might have left unlocked by accident. At fifteen, he was already fairly tall, so he reached up to the tops of the bookcases to feel around for any spare keys that might be stashed there. No luck at all. He turned around to do a second pass, and this time, his fingers brushed against something new. Not a key, but it was cold and smooth. His heart raced with triumph and he plucked it from the bookcase to take a closer look.
It was a glass vial, swirling with blue smoke. It looked a little like lyrium, but it didn't sing to him the way lyrium did when he got too close to it. And the templars had never mentioned lyrium being cold. It wasn't a phylactery either, if he understood what those were correctly. Alistair grinned at this great new mystery in his hands. Much better than a book.
He sat down on the floor, put the vial before him, and examined it. There was a little cork stopper. The most direct way to figure out what it was would be to go for that first. But he had read enough to know that he needed to be cautious. He might accidentally summon a demon, or a revenant, or some other nasty thing he wouldn't be able to handle. Everyone else might think he was thick, but Alistair knew he wasn't.
Being only a novice, he didn't have any templar abilities that would allow him to neutralize the magic, and honestly he probably wouldn't want to do that anyway. And the likelihood of one of the remaining templars finding him back here and lending a hand was non-existent. So--
The vial shook. It was subtle, but Alistair had been staring at it so intensely that he saw it. He snatched it up again. "H-hello?" Okay, maybe he was thick.
He got the singular impression of someone tapping on glass. Alistair steeled himself. He couldn’t let himself be deceived by whatever demon or spirit was residing inside. Even if the thought of unleashing some Fade spirit upon the monastery was more exciting than anything the place had ever seen before.
The tapping stopped, and a voice entered Alistair's head. "Who's out there?"
"Oh..erm. A friend. Maybe?" He felt a little silly, so he tried thinking the words very loudly in his head. "Can you hear me?"
A pause. "Yes, I can. What's happening out there?" The voice was low, steady, and gruff.
"Wait, wait, what are you? Who are you?"
"Last I remember, I was called a Spirit of Travel. Someone...a mage called me here. What's that around you?"
Alistair’s stomach rolled with excitement. "Books. What are you doing in the vial?"
"A library then? But where?"
"The… a monastery. Ferelden."
“Thank you. Mm...I was summoned as part of a quick travel spell. Must have been...what year is it now?”
“9:25, Dragon.”
The spirit let out a soft mournful sigh. “Nearly forty years ago, then.”
“I suppose...I suppose you want me to let you out?” Alistair said quietly, but the spirit kept talking over him. He smarted a little at that.
“The mage who bound me made a deal with me, to bring me along on her travels so I could see more of the world than what I could see from the Fade. In return I would allow her to travel instantaneously from point to point. But I see that as soon as she reached this first destination, she cast me aside and went along her way. No longer in such a hurry.”
“Oh.” This wasn’t going to be as interesting as he thought if the spirit was only going to talk, but he did have to admit it was nice talking to someone not already prejudiced against him.
“And so I’ve seen nothing but dust collecting on these monastery bookcases, and I am weak from the disappointment.”
“Can I do anything for you?” he asked, bracing for the answer.
“You...can let me see the world.”
“I don’t think I’m allowed to uncork you...so.” Maker, he sounded like a child. “Allowed” indeed.
“Peace. I don’t need freeing from this object. It has allowed me to see things as a part of this world. No, I only wish to be set with a being who will take me far and wide. Throughout Ferelden, throughout Thedas.”
“You mean, like putting this vial in someone’s pocket?”
“That would suffice. Although, I fear I wouldn’t see much from inside a pocket.” The voice laughed.
Alistair thought it sounded like the spirit was hinting at something more akin to possession. He still needed to be careful.
“You have...magical abilities?” ventured the voice.
“No! I mean, not yet. And they wouldn’t even count as magical. Since I’m a templar. Novice. So actually I’m probably better at banishing spirits than...helping them.” There he went babbling.
“Ah, but I do sense magic in you regardless. My entire being vibrates in kind.”
“What exactly are you asking? If not a pocket, then what?”
“Bind me to a bird, or to a horse. Something that sees!”
“Erm...I don’t think I can do that.” It would be fantastic if he could, though. Alistair would be lying if he didn’t envy mages’ magical abilities sometimes. Ignoring all the other sticky parts, of course. “What...what about a cart? Or a walking stick?”
The voice was silent for a moment. “Find what you can. I will grant you a boon.”
Alistair sighed. “Oh alright. Why don’t you come with me in the meantime so you can ‘see’ something else.”
“I would be much obliged.”
Alistair left the restricted stacks, dodging a pair of old sisters walking through, and the rest of the library, and went out to the courtyard again to think. He placed the vial in a place where the spirit could look at the sky and the grass if it wanted to, and then he threw off his robe, grabbed his training sword, and went back to the practice circle.
If the sister had noticed his absence, she didn’t care.
1, 2, and 3. 1, 2, and 3. There really weren’t any inanimate objects that Alistair could think of that would do what the spirit wanted besides a cart, but carts tended to stay on the same routes to and fro over the years. It wouldn’t really be any different from staying bound to the vial. And this was all working under the assumption that Alistair really did have magical abilities, and enough to bind a spirit at that!
He had always suspected he had some latent sensitivity to magic. He had heard the Revered Mother musing over whether he would need lyrium at all in the end. Others doubted it, given his infamous heritage.
When he was finally freed from practice, he still hadn’t thought up anything, so he picked up the vial again and tapped softly on it.
“Yes? Have you thought of something?”
“What if I just release you near some wild animals or something, and you swear you will go straight into the animal and stay there. I cannot do any more than that.”
The spirit was silent for a moment. “Fair enough. I am surprised you would let me go so freely.”
“Well, I’m asking you not to betray me. Really nicely.” The spirit thought some more, if that’s what was meant by these silences. “And if you do, well, in a few years, I’ll be a templar, and I’ll hunt you down and banish you back to the Fade. Probably very painfully.”
The spirit laughed. “Very well.”
Alistair sighed heavily and went to wipe himself down before getting started. He skulked through the halls of the monastery until he came to the main entrance. He wasn’t necessarily forbidden from leaving the monastery. But standing before the entrance like that, with the whole world laid out before him just on the other side, gave him pause. He breathed slowly, and went outside. He thought the spirit might prefer being bound to a bird, since they weren’t domesticated and could go wherever they wanted. But horses were bigger and probably lived longer if they were lucky. Then again, Alistair thought about a spirit-possessed horse driving a cart full of goods and a driver and what would happen if the spirit went bad.
It would have to be a bird, then.
He approached a flock of starlings gathered on the monastery grounds, picking at the packed dirt by the stables. He couldn’t get too close or they would fly off, but he didn’t want to be so far away that the spirit would get...distracted or something, instead of going straight into the birds. He turned around, walking slowly backwards toward the flock. Over by the door to the kitchens, he saw one of the serving men look up and watch him. He must look like such a fool. Young Alistair’s not right in the head, they’d say. And so what? Alistair shot back at this imagined slight, burning.
He looked over his shoulder and decided he was close enough. “Alright, are you ready, spirit? I’ve got some birds for you.”
“I thank you for your generosity,” said the spirit. “And because you have not betrayed me, I shall not betray you. And I owe you a boon, do I not?”
Alistair’s fingers loosened on the cork stopper. “Oh, like a wish?”
“A boon.”
“Well, I guess I wish that one day I’ll be able to see the world too.” And he uncorked the vial. He saw wisps of blue smoke empty out of the vial and dissipate toward the birds. He saw one perk up from its hunt suddenly, its eyes changing from an alarmed white to blue and cloudy. It looked like it had worked after all. The bird took off suddenly, disappearing into the vault of the sky almost immediately.
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Bemused, Morrigan stared back at him, his expression idiotic in its assumption of triumph. “Be that as it may, Alistair, I am not teaching you how to change into a bronto.”