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Dearest Inquisitor,
It is with profound regret I must tell you that Magister Victoria Aurelius died last evening unrepentant and unabsolved of her crimes. As per your request, I have been investigating the infamous lady for several months; her motivates, lies, and crimes. You can be assured that the Magister was every bit intelligent and abject as reports had suggested. I often found myself bewildered by her dark wit, scope of her education, and the peculiars of her mind. Even now I find her influence hanging over me like a thick cloud. I feel as if I have been marked or marred after sitting so many hours reading the morose lady’s memoir.
As a former templar, I ponder the state of the Magister’s immortal soul. After reading the reports from the Chantry and Tevinter authorities, I wonder if she felt any sorrow for the dead ones, the harm she caused innocence families, her brother-in arms , and her own children. When faced with the Maker’s glorious face, will the snake still insist her banishment was politically engineered by the Magistrate and Southern Chantry; to claim her families lives and influence.
In front of Tevinter judges, she did nothing to accost the accusations thrown at her. Nothing to contradict the evidence of her husband’s dead mutilated body. Nor would she ask the silent Andrastate forgiveness for the sin of patricide. What of the women Victoria snatched from their sanctuary in the towers; their drained broken bodies found in the forest, unadorned. No, she hurried in like some predatory demon reaping the souls of the innocents, cackling as judgement was passed. Perhaps such a woman is incapable of repentance.
With this letter, I am sending ahead some papers found among the Magister’s things giving an account of her life. I read them last evening, hoping they might reveal something of her that I had not already discovered. They only serve as a record of her crimes, the depth of her depravity, and my deepest sympathies.
I noticed her memior becomes more difficult to read towards the end. The Magister’s handwriting begins to degenerate with an onset of illness and cruelty becomes more apparent as the years proceed. Her protestations of ruined innocence are absurd and blame she lays on the Chantry is nothing short of treason and blasphemy. Her crazed protests of Magistrate are contrite and unhinging. Finally, her accounts of fictitious creatures called ‘crones’ border paranoia. Perhaps they are manifestations of the mind that allowed her to cope with horrendous murders committed by her hands.
Yet how often did I find myself pitying the Magister, entrenched in her loneliness, disappointed hopes and shattered dreams. My heart nearly breaks for her! My resolve ruined, I’m torn about her accounts. My gut is unsteady, I feel as if she speaks the truth behind dark psychotic rhetorics. The accounts, murders, vivid details seem too real to be falsified. If it is true that darkness walks Thedas wearing most seductive of disguises, none is bested than Magister Victoria. I truly mourn for her and for the lives she has blackened.
I was not here when she drew her final breath, but Lady’s Nightgales people stated; the Magister spoke incoherently about the chill that claimed her limbs and in bouts of delirium asked for her children; hand clasped to her breast. They felt the Fade shift and the sound of clattering feet of demons dance happily right before she was caressed with the reaper’s kiss. I’m certain, this claim is nothing more than folklore meant to frighten me away by the way of superstition.
She was a cruel mistress, unhinging my mind with her memoirs. Her blacked path whispers to darkest part of my mind, bending my unwavering faith, ensuring my deepest doubts of her guilt. I know of the Chantry’s teachings, I know I should not doubt so, but my faith is hindered. I have faced trials of brimstone and fire in service to the Inquisition; but I must ask Andraste’s chosen release me of my duty. I will complete the Magister’s quest, and purge Thedas of these Crones. I have decided to send her accounts to you, under discretion. You will have better understanding of my decision once you have had a chance to read them.
Maxwell De Castellet