Chapter Text
The birds of Kinloch Hold were drab and silent. The magic drove them away, the templars said. That was the way of the tower.
“First Enchanter,” she’d announced without preamble in the middle of apprentice training one day, many years ago. “I simply must know. Where are all the birds? Why don’t they sing?” The senior enchanter in charge of training that day reprimanded her with a steely glare but First Enchanter Irving spoke plainly.
“On account of the weather, my dear.” He smiled, but his smile faded. “This island is a desolate place for winged things.”
It had taken her many years to realize that it was of she whom the First Enchanter spoke. Winged things did not do well in cages, and she was doing no better as a woman of one and twenty than she had done as a child of tender years.
Careful not to smear the ink, she slipped another sheet of parchment under the loose floorboard beneath her bed and blew out her candle. Five months gone and her secret was safe. Five months and not a single blood mage had been stricken from the roll. She knew the minds of her classmates, like hers, roved far beyond the confines of the tower. The world was vast beyond knowing, especially to those who were only permitted to experience a few square feet of it. And where their physical bodies could not go, they longed to expand their minds.
Aelinor Surana was not a blood mage. She’d never messed with the stuff, though not out of any moral compunction except with respect to the sort of spells that tore open the Veil and allowed demons to more readily pass out of the Fade and into the waking world. Indeed, she had no doubt that blood magic was under many circumstances no more harmful than sanctioned entropy and spirit magic (though markedly more powerful under certain circumstances), an opinion she wisely never deigned to share, not even with friends. The walls of the Tower were not made of stone, she would tell her one and only friend Jowan, they were made of eyes, and he’d do well to remember that when mouthing off about his latest pet spell that sounded too good to be true without the power of blood.
Magic was her art and she made it every day and she did not know what she would do if she was at an impasse - if some limit of her mind or her arcane potential were to circumscribe the limits of her powers. Up to this point in her career as an adept, she had yet to encounter some obstacle for which she could not devise a workaround. Perhaps she would turn to blood magic if she thought she was on the verge of a discovery she sensed could change the world for the better. Never would she deal with a demon under any circumstances, however. Her empathy was with them - their desire to feel the world through a vessel of flesh and bone was at its core an innocent one, almost childlike. All things that had yet to experience the corporeal retained a certain kind of innocence, though it did not follow that they were also possessed of a moral sense. And this is why they could not be allowed into the material world, and why neither would she weaken the Veil were she not certain she could subsequently mend it and control whatever might leak out in the process - and even then, only if there was no other way. And there usually was, if one was willing to seek it out in earnest.
But her fellow mages were not so judicious or patient. She could not relate to their frustration because she’d always found a way to advance her understanding, no matter the arcane quandary she faced, though this was due in equal measure to her talent as it was to her diligence. There was a difference between confidence in one’s abilities and an overweening pride of place amongst one’s colleagues. “Pride,” the First Enchanter had always said, “is the death of self-knowledge. And without knowing oneself, one can never know anything.” There was too much to learn for Aelinor to be anything but humble and desirous of imparting what little she did know, that all would be reminded of the measure of their ignorance, including herself.
But above all, she had made it her duty to protect her classmates from the perils of blood magic so they might live another day in pursuit of the understanding they sought with as much fervor as she did - and to this end she had been teaching them workarounds - whether by anonymous suggestion or subtle mental manipulation, none of which was accomplished by magic. She watched them all carefully, with an eye for those who balked at simple spells or were given to fits of nerves as much as for those who were openly frustrated and dissatisfied with their magical education. For all such students were vulnerable to the threat of Tranquility, which in her experience was what drove many to blood magic at least half the time.
Beneath her bed, she kept a hidden cache of scholarly treatises penned in her weak left hand, so as to remain anonymous. She slipped these papers into books in the library, into desks and under pillows, in the hopes that those students she saw struggling and vulnerable would find their way back to the straight and narrow path of the unbloodied arcane they must needs walk by order of the Chantry, on pain of death. Aelinor never knew how much of a difference her efforts made, if, indeed, they made any difference at all. But she had to try. It had not been hard to develop her deductive skills upon arrival at the Tower - she had made a cold study of her classmates ever since her arrival, as the only elf in her age group and as a child who had always been more given to observation than interaction out of a belief that she learned more by removing herself from a given situation and examining it with a clinical eye. It was not so hard when she functioned on a different plane than her peers - not a higher plane, she reminded herself, just a different one from which deviation from the arcane standard was easily observed.
She was, after all, the best mage of her generation, or so the senior enchanters said. She had advanced at an astonishing pace, excelling in primal and spirit magicks in particular, with minor dabbling in creation magic. The templars had balked at her potentially destructive discoveries in spirit magic but had to reconcile themselves to the First Enchanter’s assurance that she had not, nor would she, make open use of them, notwithstanding the fact that in combat they could be invaluable. There were whispers of Blight, and darkspawn, and war, so her extracurricular activity was not subject to censure as a rule.
And today was her Harrowing, whatever that meant, and for all her arcane prowess, she might meet her Maker before the day was done. Death was a release, and Tranquility a prison. There was no choice; there was only survival or oblivion.
She donned her freshest set of robes, delighting in the way their gold trimmings reflected the dim, warm light of the apprentice quarters. She was noticing such little things for the last time, she thought distantly, and all at once. The sensory overload she was experiencing was psychosomatic. It could be overcome. Her breaths came slow and sure even as her hands shook. She ignored them. They didn’t need to be still; they needed only to grip the shaft of her stave. It was her mind that would do the work, channeling magic through its lyrium-infused timber and into being. She did not need her body - she needed only her will. If that will could bring into being fire and ice and living rock, it could calm the pounding of her heart and the quaking of her limbs just enough to act upon whatever horror she might face in the Harrowing Chamber.
Her reflection in the vanity mirror swam before her eyes. She was crying, she realized vaguely. It was to be expected for most, though not for her. She hadn’t cried since she had taken the Valaslin, the Blood-Writing scrawled in feathered shadows across her cheeks and eyes. Aelinor had been seven years of age when she had left Denerim for the Circle Tower and she had begged her parents to allow her the rite of passage. Her Dalish grandfather had administered it with tears in his own eyes, though she had shed almost none. Such was the nature of the rite - it was left uncompleted if the initiate cried out in pain when the needles pricked her skin - and she had not cried then or thereafter. Her grandfather had since died, and to this day, she counted her forbearance during the ritual as the proudest moment of her life. Nothing since had given her cause to cry, not even her grandfather’s passing, so she had not. He was with the gods and would not want her to weep for him. So she would not weep for herself now. Soon enough, she’d either be a Harrowed mage and well on her way to a new realm of magical understanding, or she too would be with the gods - with Falon’Din or Andraste or whosoever saw fit to take her into their company. She had not lived a bad life and had done all she could with her god-given gifts. There was no reason to weep, so she quickly stuffed her long red hair into her cowl and left the apprentice quarters for the last time.
The Harrowing Chamber was not at all what she’d expected. It was spacious and full of light filtered through beautiful panes of stained glass. It was unfortunate that there weren’t more such windows in the tower. She’d make it a point to complain about it, should she survive.
Knight-Commander Gregoir approached her, the crease between his brows more deeply furrowed than normal. Whether this was because he was frightened of her or genuinely worried for her, she could not say. It was strange, being unable to read the expressions of those in the room on the verge of whatever this ritual might entail. Without context, she was adrift.
“Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him.” It was a statement trite as it was false, and not because she thought magic ruled man. Magic was indifferent as the winds of winter and man merely its conduit should he ever fashion himself its vessel. The danger was not that magic would rule man, but that man would use magic to rule. Magic was neither good nor evil, but man was good and evil both and used magic to both ends. It was a force to be harnessed, not an evil to be purged. “Let us not name evil where no name is given lest we make it so,” her grandfather used to say. Magic was impersonal, it did not have a name - and man could no more name it evil than he could a thunderstorm or an avalanche.
“The demons of the dream realm, the Fade, are drawn to you, and seek to use you as a gateway into this world.” Yes, she knew that much. Being reminded of it daily did nothing to make it less familiar to her.
The First Enchanter approached her with his typical somber expression, leavened by the crinkling around his eyes that always accompanied the genuine smiles hidden beneath his beard. “Aelinor.” He put a gnarled hand on her shoulder. “This is why the Harrowing exists. The ritual sends you into the Fade, and there you will face a demon, armed with only your will.”
So this was how it was to be. “And if I cannot defeat it?”
“Know this, apprentice. If you fail, we Templars will perform our duty. You will die.” The Knight-Commander gestured toward a small font in the center of the room. “This is lyrium, the very essence of magic, and your gateway into the Fade.”
“The Harrowing is a secret out of necessity, child. Every mage must go through this trial by fire. As we succeeded, so shall you. Keep your wits about you, and remember, the Fade is a realm of dreams - the spirits may rule it, but your own will is real.” He clasped her shoulder and she placed a hand over his and squeezed it gently. The First Enchanter was rarely so familiar with his students, nor was she so familiar with anyone, but this man had guided many of her formative years and imparted much wisdom to her - if this was the last time she was to see him, she would not leave him without some parting sign of appreciation.
“The Apprentice must go through this test alone, First Enchanter." He fixed her with one of his customary looks of appraisal. "You are ready.” Her eyes glittered dangerously as she took in the Knight-Commander’s stern gaze for what might be the last time.
“Then I will face my doom willingly. Tranquility is not truly an option and you know this.” Gregoir said nothing and did not even frown. His indifference, whether real or apparent, was total. The Chantry had trained him well.
But not so her templar. She’d taken to calling him that almost since she’d first seen him on detail in the hall when she was fifteen and he was a newly knighted recruit in squeaky armor buffed to an almost blinding sheen despite the old gray iron it was made of. He didn’t yet know how to oil it properly but he certainly knew how to shine it, and when she’d smiled up at him, as she did at all the templars as both a courtesy and a show of bravery, he had been the first to smile back at her. Slowly and crookedly and not all at once, but definitely. She’d laughed aloud and he’d flushed deeply and looked to his superior who had shrugged disinterestedly. Aelinor knew better than to pursue him, but she could not deny that she was drawn to him, a man with a devotion to duty that possibly exceeded her own. A mutually exclusive devotion that would forever separate them both, but made it safe for her to love him without ever having to get close. And if she died today, she could bear that love away with her into the Beyond. She smiled at him as she approached the font and he could not meet her gaze but she could see that he was crying. She closed her eyes. It would be the last memory of the waking world she would take with her - his amber eyes, distant, unfocused, and crystalline with what she no longer had any doubt was love for her.
Aelinor plunged her hand into the viscous white liquid of the font and let herself be enveloped by the pulsing aura that emanated from its center. She knew no more.