Newbie with Fic (Part 1)
I guess this community doesn't get a whole lot of traffic these days, but I have some old fic that I wanted to share, in case anyone was still checking the posts. :-)
Mulit-Chapter, a bit long.
Rating: PG at max
Some implied pairings, but only Anders/Karl stands out. A few OC Wardens, who don't conflict with each other and don't play much role.
The Six Escape Attempts (and Single Escape) of Anders
Ch. 1 - The Window Attempt
12 Solace, 9:14 Dragon.
“Concentrate, now, there’s a good lad,” Torrin’s voice floated, distorted through his shield. “Let the energy flow be steady and it won’t be draining. The mana is like air, take it in from the shield and let it out back into the shield and it will replenish itself. Now hold still and know that this will not hurt you.”
Anders braced himself at the lie. Of course it would hurt. Fire always hurt, and Senior Enchanter Torrin’s attack of choice was a fireball. No wonder they weren’t in the library today. The fireball hit his shield with enough force to make him take a step backwards. The air inside his shield, trapped as it was, became suddenly overwhelmingly hot.
“Good, good boy!” Torrin shouted, his voice much clearer than before. “Don’t drop your shield now. People don’t usually throw just one attack, do they? Keep it up, boy, keep it up!”
Anders was fully aware that Torrin couldn’t fire off another strong attack just yet, so he let his shield relax a little. The air cooled enough for him to breathe and he caught sight of the templar watching them in the corner shift uncomfortably. Served him right, imposing himself on their practice time. They were still in the tower! What trouble could a tutor and his apprentice possibly get up to in a practice room on the third floor?
“Pay attention now!” Torrin snapped, and Anders whipped back to face him just in time to see the arcane bolt that was already halfway across the room toward him. Anders pushed mana out into the shield, but too late. He felt the mana from the arcane bolt sear through his shield and into his arm. It burned very slightly, like too much lyrium on his skin, but the damage was worse to his shield than it was to his body. The air glistened and cracked around him as the structured shield collapsed. The air warmed up again from the released mana. The templar was shifting around again. His armor clanked loudly through the room and interrupted Anders’ concentration.
WHAM
The stonefist spell broke right through what little was left of the shield and hit Anders’ stomach painfully. He crumpled, winded, to the floor.
“You lasted a fair bit longer that time. But we still need to work on concentration. If you stop concentrating on a sustained spell, you don’t get that mana back. It’s lost, and you have to keep fighting despite any discomfort you feel. Now, let’s get a little entropy in here, shall we?”
Torrin raised his staff and his hands glowed a bright, white-blue for a second, then he yelped and pulled douwn his staff again quickly, the edges of his sleeves soaking from the Winter’s Grasp that the heat wouldn’t allow. The templar clanked over to the window and started fiddling with the latch.
“Yes, er, thank you, Ser Endrin. That will do for now. Why don’t we stop for the evening and come back tomorrow? I think, yes, I think the room will be more conducive to practice by then.”
“The smaller study room on the second floor is still available, enchanter,” Ser Endrin said. Anders always struggled not to laugh when the templars spoke while wearing their helmets. It made the older ones sound like metal golems, but Endrin, who had only taken his vows a few months before, had a high, youthful voice that made him sound like a fairy granting wishes from a tin can.
“Er, no, Endrin, I think... you see the books, and well… It’s probably best that we all turn in for the night. Let’s not worry about it. Right, after you.”
Anders left first with Endrin, both unsure which of them Torrin was talking to, and turned the hall to trudge back down the stairs.
Two hours and a not very good dinner later, Anders was sitting in the apprentice quarters in sweaty apprentice robes while the other apprentices practiced their spells in as small a scale as they could manage. Fire, unfortunately, while it can come in a very small scale, tends not to do so when six apprentices practice the same spell at once. It was probably lucky that no templars had decided to check in on them yet, given that smoke and heat were likely pouring out the doors. The windows in the apprentice quarters were too high for most of the apprentices to reach without standing on each other’s shoulders, and they seemed to be sealed shut anyway. Anders was sure there was a story behind that. Probably some other apprentices looking for fresh air long ago. He’d had quite enough of fire today. He looked over at the other apprentices. Flora was yelling and flailing about, trying to save a book whose edges were scorched. Eadric’s robes were smoking again.
Anders stretched out on the bed and tried to concentrate on the window above him. Spells, he knew, didn’t just form from wishes. There was a specific pattern of thought, of entropy in taking energy from one place, channeling it through mana and setting it to work in another. Spells tended not to work on things like locks and mechanics, at least, not if you wanted the locked item to be recognizable once unlocked. Still, it felt good to try, to have the hope of a cool night breeze through an open window.
An open window? Another window, low enough to the ground that a templar could easily open it sprang to mind. Could it still be open? Endrin didn’t close it and Torrin shut the door behind them. Trying not to look too excited, Anders sat up, stretched and headed for the door. Flora was still shouting at Eadric enough to make the young elf look close to tears. Good. That could cause enough distraction to let him slip out unnoticed. Anders walked across the room, carefully looking only straight ahead and not at the arguing apprentices, opened the door as quietly as he could and slipped outside.
There was not really a curfew in the tower, at least not a strictly imposed one. Still, Anders had to fight the urge to look around shiftily and check for wandering templars before venturing toward the stairs. He wasn’t doing anything illegal, or even really out of the ordinary, going to a practice room after dark. Some spells worked better at night, in the cooler air and the darker conditions. Some apprentices even had regular meetings with their tutors after most templars had gone to bed for the night. But Anders wasn’t used to the halls being so quiet and it gave him some small thrill to know that he was really alone, as alone as he could ever remember being in his life. Yes, there were his fellow apprentices right on the other side of these doors, and yes, templars and mages were filling the corridors elsewhere, probably within a few feet of him, but for this moment, he was not being watched by anyone. It was surprising how much of a relief that was. It was almost like freedom. Freedom. The thought made Anders stop with his hand on the door handle leading to the stairs. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about being “free” before. He thought about it daily. Free from being watched, from being judged, from being with people all the time… from being a mage. This was the real curse of magic - not that it brought demons or that it made you vulnerable, nor that it came with such a history from Tevinter. No, the real curse was that everyone watched you all the time. Templars were the worst of course, but the chantry, too, and even other mages, all watching each other with horrified fascination. Waiting for you to blow yourself up or something. Why couldn’t a mage just use his powers in peace to cook without matches or cure insomnia or give his farmed crops the perfect growing season every year? Were demons really going to attack a simple farmer who only had enough training to heal himself when he threw out his back when carrying his surplus harvest to the local village? Would a peasant turn to blood magic just because he wasn’t being watched? Just because he could? Anders found the idea laughable, as did many of the other apprentices. The senior enchanters, they didn’t seem to think about these things anymore. Or if they did, the apprentices never heard about it. No, all the Senior Enchanters just wanted to keep the peace for what was left of their lifetime. That’s why they were senior enchanters, promoted by the chantry to be in charge and raise the young mages. Everyone who disagreed was just locked in the tower, branded a mage. Cursed to be watched forever.
The door in front of him opened and Anders suddenly realized he had no idea how long he’d been standing in front of it. The templar had his helmet off, so Anders could see his tired face and oddly shiny face.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“Third floor,” Anders replied, thinking it was probably best to tell the truth as long as there was nothing wrong with it. “Practice room. I wanted to get a little more done tonight before my instructor-“
“Oh! You’re Torrin’s boy, aren’t you?” The templar broke in, “Yes, I can see your hair’s been singed on one side and your robes are blackened at the sleeves. I was the templar for him before Endrin took his vows. Not sorry to be rid of that to be honest. Working for Wynne is a fair bit calmer, I must say. You’ll be looking for the practice room without books, then? The door’s been shut on it for a few hours, but I didn’t hear anyone inside. Go on then, but take one of the templars in with you when you get there. There are quite a few in the central hallway on the third floor. Endrin might even be with them. And remind the boy to keep his helmet on, would you. Learn from those who went before and all that. Why they want to practice fire spells in the summer…”
The templar brushed past Anders, who took that as his leave and scurried up the stairs before the templar could change his mind about letting him past. Anders didn’t stop to think for the rest of the way, nor did he bother grabbing a templar for accompaniment. He wasn’t planning to use magic. Why should he need supervision to sit? Or did taking a break require blood magic now?
The door to the practice room was unlocked, and as soon as Anders had slipped inside he could tell that the window was still open. This had to be the least stifling room in the entire tower. A few hours of circulation had made the room cool and open and free of the musty smell that usually pervaded the tower in the summer heat. The first thing Anders did once inside was close the door behind him. The second thing was to lay prostrate on the cold stone and let it cool the back of his robes. This was brilliant. This was freedom. No one was watching - he could even open his robes a little at the front and let the breeze invading the tower through the window wash over his skin. It was almost like being outside. Anders wasn’t exactly what one would call a “nature lover”, not like some of the other mages, anyway. But he relished the thought of being Not In The Tower, and if that meant being in nature, he would swathe himself in leaves and bathe in Lake Calenhad. There were worse things in life. Like being set on fire by your own tutor, purposefully. That pretty much topped Anders’ list for the moment.
He didn’t think he had lain on the floor very long when he began getting chilled and restless. He fought the chill, wanting to be cold as long as possible before the heat of the rest of the tower sunk into his blood again, but he got up and started pacing around the room looking for something to do. Nearly everyone considered this Torrin’s practice room, and therefore kept everything of the slightest value or interest far from it. Eventually he decided that the window was the most interesting thing in the room and walked over to it. The lake outside looked perfectly still in the moonlight and the hills of Redcliffe rolled black under the clouds. There was just so much world. How hard could it possibly be to escape notice of the few templars who knew what he looked like in a world this big? He could probably hide forever in Redcliffe alone. They had his phylactery, sure, but who was to say that those even worked? Anders had never heard of a mage actually being tracked down before - not that he had asked. The templars just scared everyone into not trying by saying that they could always hunt you down. Well, sure. Mages are pretty easy to hunt down when they’re all in one place, after all. He looked down from the window, trying to gauge how high up he was. The tower had seven floors, but each of them had an incredibly high ceiling and the first floor was hardly even with the ground outside. Even the idiots who had put a tower in the lake had known better than to build a basement underwater. The view of the ground was partly obscured by a battlement that connected to the tower at the window’s base, but it was easy enough to see that three floors was still quite a ways up the tower. Anders balked a little at the height, but not enough to make him look away. Such distance! The tower interior offered no concept of distance. Even windows looked as much like paintings as real mountains far across the land. Did he really climb all that way just to get up here? It didn’t seem that far by the stairs. How far could he fall and not hurt himself? Were there spells for flying? Magic enough to counteract gravity - surely that fell under entropy? Putting the attraction of gravity onto another object, say the base of the tower, which could hardly notice the extra weight of a teenage boy who was supposed to be inside its walls anyway. Anders felt a sudden urge to dig his feet into sand and rest his legs in water. Freedom took hold of his mind and he leaned longingly out the window.
A thud came from the closed door. A giggle followed close after.
“Shh! Some- Someone will hear us. Do you want to get - That tickles! - get caught?”
There was hushed muttering that Anders couldn’t make out and more giggles as the door handle rattled. He hadn’t locked it, and now doubted he could make it back across the room in time to correct that mistake. The battlement outside the window called to him. The door clicked open.
It was only once he was already outside and trying to ignore the voices of the two people as he eased his way along the stonework that Anders remembered that being in the practice room hadn’t been illegal. He’d even had a templar’s permission to be there! Well, practically, anyway. Now, however, now he had definitely broken a rule. For the moment, however, he was a lot less scared of templars and more scared of the sudden height that appeared to have come from nowhere beneath him. The tower had looked much shorter from the other side of the window. He considered just for a minute, the idea of waiting out the lovers, but that would mean having to listen to them for however long they decided to take. Anders would rather have jumped from the battlements and taken his chances with the lake. He also briefly entertained the notion of jumping back into the window and trying to get past them that way, but his chances of getting past unnoticed seemed not-good to say the least, and surprising them in any state could not go well. He wasn’t even sure if they were templars or mages (or maybe one of each?) but an apprentice climbing through the window probably wouldn’t get much praise from either side.
Anders scuttled along the stone until he was as far away from the main tower as he could get. The support for the battlement, a thin pillar of stone and mortar, dropped down beneath him. There was enough spiky decoration to provide a good handhold, and the mortar between the stones was worn enough to provide the occasional footrest. Anders didn’t give himself a chance to consider the probability of his falling rather than climbing gracefully down to the bottom. If he thought about his death, he’d be caught out here still trying to get down when the sun rose. Instead, he took off the collar and shoulders from his robes and draped them over his arm before lowering his foot down to the highest break in the stonework. It didn’t hold. Anders squeaked loudly and kicked wildly at the stone, but managed not to loose his grip. Panting heavily, he found another break. This one he tested gently before putting his weight on it.
“Ok, the first step is the hardest, right?” He muttered to himself. After taking a minute to catch his breath, he lowered his other foot down, much further than he was expecting. This break held, however, and Anders managed to keep enough balance to throw the collar of his robes around the pillar and catch it, one corner in each hand. And then he climbed.
It took more than a quarter hour, inexperienced and unfit as he was from living in the tower, but he managed to get most of the way to the ground with only minor cuts and bruises and just one tear in his robes. He fell the last ten feet or so, but a healing spell took away all the pain in his ankle. And then all he could see was the sky. It was everywhere. And so was the water, and it occurred to Anders that now was as good a time as any to learn to swim. It had never occurred to him how open the world was. He had somehow expected that even alone and outside that the world would feel like a series of pictures plastered around him as though on a wall, and that was why people called it scenery, but that wasn’t the case at all. If there were walls in the world they weren’t anywhere near him, and scenery stretched on forever rather than pressing around him. This was glorious. He scrambled down to drop his feet in the water and had only just put them in, shoes and all, when he heard the boots behind him.
“Forgot about one, mage.” A very young templar recruit was standing behind him, looking delighted. “Everyone always forgets about me. Gotta have someone to run the boats, don’t they, now? I expect you thought you were getting away free then?”
“Oh, no I just wanted-“ Anders began, not really knowing where he was going. Luckily, the Templar didn’t let him finish.
“Wanted to what? Dip your toes in the water? Get some ale from the Spoiled Princess at the docks? Trust me, the stuff you’ve got in there is better than anything at the pub. Come on then, back in you go.”
The templar took hold of Anders’ upper arm, and for the first time Anders felt a rush of adrenaline and had to beat down the urge to fight. He wanted suddenly to wrench his arm away, get in the boat and speed off. He never wanted to loose this feeling of openness, of light and life and water and air - real air! - and there would be grass on the other side, he thought he remembered grass. But they were already to the steps and soon after at the door to the tower. The templar opened it and pushed him inside.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not supposed to abandon my post, and I can see that you’re young, so just go on up to bed and don’t tell anyone and don’t try it again, you hear? There’s always someone watching the boat out here, so you won’t be able to get out this way. And don’t give me that look, I know this is the only way out. Just don’t say anything, all right? They don’t take kindly to apostates, even attempted ones.” And he shut the great doors in Anders’ face.
The walls were back. The silence didn’t even last as the clank of metal templar boots came down the stairs. But freedom didn’t let go of Anders just yet. The feel of it, the wrench of it stayed in his heart. He had never thought about apostates before. Not really. What was there for a mage outside the circle?
There was the sky. There was the water. There was the air. There was everything.
One.
Mulit-Chapter, a bit long.
Rating: PG at max
Some implied pairings, but only Anders/Karl stands out. A few OC Wardens, who don't conflict with each other and don't play much role.
The Six Escape Attempts (and Single Escape) of Anders
Ch. 1 - The Window Attempt
12 Solace, 9:14 Dragon.
“Concentrate, now, there’s a good lad,” Torrin’s voice floated, distorted through his shield. “Let the energy flow be steady and it won’t be draining. The mana is like air, take it in from the shield and let it out back into the shield and it will replenish itself. Now hold still and know that this will not hurt you.”
Anders braced himself at the lie. Of course it would hurt. Fire always hurt, and Senior Enchanter Torrin’s attack of choice was a fireball. No wonder they weren’t in the library today. The fireball hit his shield with enough force to make him take a step backwards. The air inside his shield, trapped as it was, became suddenly overwhelmingly hot.
“Good, good boy!” Torrin shouted, his voice much clearer than before. “Don’t drop your shield now. People don’t usually throw just one attack, do they? Keep it up, boy, keep it up!”
Anders was fully aware that Torrin couldn’t fire off another strong attack just yet, so he let his shield relax a little. The air cooled enough for him to breathe and he caught sight of the templar watching them in the corner shift uncomfortably. Served him right, imposing himself on their practice time. They were still in the tower! What trouble could a tutor and his apprentice possibly get up to in a practice room on the third floor?
“Pay attention now!” Torrin snapped, and Anders whipped back to face him just in time to see the arcane bolt that was already halfway across the room toward him. Anders pushed mana out into the shield, but too late. He felt the mana from the arcane bolt sear through his shield and into his arm. It burned very slightly, like too much lyrium on his skin, but the damage was worse to his shield than it was to his body. The air glistened and cracked around him as the structured shield collapsed. The air warmed up again from the released mana. The templar was shifting around again. His armor clanked loudly through the room and interrupted Anders’ concentration.
WHAM
The stonefist spell broke right through what little was left of the shield and hit Anders’ stomach painfully. He crumpled, winded, to the floor.
“You lasted a fair bit longer that time. But we still need to work on concentration. If you stop concentrating on a sustained spell, you don’t get that mana back. It’s lost, and you have to keep fighting despite any discomfort you feel. Now, let’s get a little entropy in here, shall we?”
Torrin raised his staff and his hands glowed a bright, white-blue for a second, then he yelped and pulled douwn his staff again quickly, the edges of his sleeves soaking from the Winter’s Grasp that the heat wouldn’t allow. The templar clanked over to the window and started fiddling with the latch.
“Yes, er, thank you, Ser Endrin. That will do for now. Why don’t we stop for the evening and come back tomorrow? I think, yes, I think the room will be more conducive to practice by then.”
“The smaller study room on the second floor is still available, enchanter,” Ser Endrin said. Anders always struggled not to laugh when the templars spoke while wearing their helmets. It made the older ones sound like metal golems, but Endrin, who had only taken his vows a few months before, had a high, youthful voice that made him sound like a fairy granting wishes from a tin can.
“Er, no, Endrin, I think... you see the books, and well… It’s probably best that we all turn in for the night. Let’s not worry about it. Right, after you.”
Anders left first with Endrin, both unsure which of them Torrin was talking to, and turned the hall to trudge back down the stairs.
Two hours and a not very good dinner later, Anders was sitting in the apprentice quarters in sweaty apprentice robes while the other apprentices practiced their spells in as small a scale as they could manage. Fire, unfortunately, while it can come in a very small scale, tends not to do so when six apprentices practice the same spell at once. It was probably lucky that no templars had decided to check in on them yet, given that smoke and heat were likely pouring out the doors. The windows in the apprentice quarters were too high for most of the apprentices to reach without standing on each other’s shoulders, and they seemed to be sealed shut anyway. Anders was sure there was a story behind that. Probably some other apprentices looking for fresh air long ago. He’d had quite enough of fire today. He looked over at the other apprentices. Flora was yelling and flailing about, trying to save a book whose edges were scorched. Eadric’s robes were smoking again.
Anders stretched out on the bed and tried to concentrate on the window above him. Spells, he knew, didn’t just form from wishes. There was a specific pattern of thought, of entropy in taking energy from one place, channeling it through mana and setting it to work in another. Spells tended not to work on things like locks and mechanics, at least, not if you wanted the locked item to be recognizable once unlocked. Still, it felt good to try, to have the hope of a cool night breeze through an open window.
An open window? Another window, low enough to the ground that a templar could easily open it sprang to mind. Could it still be open? Endrin didn’t close it and Torrin shut the door behind them. Trying not to look too excited, Anders sat up, stretched and headed for the door. Flora was still shouting at Eadric enough to make the young elf look close to tears. Good. That could cause enough distraction to let him slip out unnoticed. Anders walked across the room, carefully looking only straight ahead and not at the arguing apprentices, opened the door as quietly as he could and slipped outside.
There was not really a curfew in the tower, at least not a strictly imposed one. Still, Anders had to fight the urge to look around shiftily and check for wandering templars before venturing toward the stairs. He wasn’t doing anything illegal, or even really out of the ordinary, going to a practice room after dark. Some spells worked better at night, in the cooler air and the darker conditions. Some apprentices even had regular meetings with their tutors after most templars had gone to bed for the night. But Anders wasn’t used to the halls being so quiet and it gave him some small thrill to know that he was really alone, as alone as he could ever remember being in his life. Yes, there were his fellow apprentices right on the other side of these doors, and yes, templars and mages were filling the corridors elsewhere, probably within a few feet of him, but for this moment, he was not being watched by anyone. It was surprising how much of a relief that was. It was almost like freedom. Freedom. The thought made Anders stop with his hand on the door handle leading to the stairs. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about being “free” before. He thought about it daily. Free from being watched, from being judged, from being with people all the time… from being a mage. This was the real curse of magic - not that it brought demons or that it made you vulnerable, nor that it came with such a history from Tevinter. No, the real curse was that everyone watched you all the time. Templars were the worst of course, but the chantry, too, and even other mages, all watching each other with horrified fascination. Waiting for you to blow yourself up or something. Why couldn’t a mage just use his powers in peace to cook without matches or cure insomnia or give his farmed crops the perfect growing season every year? Were demons really going to attack a simple farmer who only had enough training to heal himself when he threw out his back when carrying his surplus harvest to the local village? Would a peasant turn to blood magic just because he wasn’t being watched? Just because he could? Anders found the idea laughable, as did many of the other apprentices. The senior enchanters, they didn’t seem to think about these things anymore. Or if they did, the apprentices never heard about it. No, all the Senior Enchanters just wanted to keep the peace for what was left of their lifetime. That’s why they were senior enchanters, promoted by the chantry to be in charge and raise the young mages. Everyone who disagreed was just locked in the tower, branded a mage. Cursed to be watched forever.
The door in front of him opened and Anders suddenly realized he had no idea how long he’d been standing in front of it. The templar had his helmet off, so Anders could see his tired face and oddly shiny face.
“Going somewhere?” he asked.
“Third floor,” Anders replied, thinking it was probably best to tell the truth as long as there was nothing wrong with it. “Practice room. I wanted to get a little more done tonight before my instructor-“
“Oh! You’re Torrin’s boy, aren’t you?” The templar broke in, “Yes, I can see your hair’s been singed on one side and your robes are blackened at the sleeves. I was the templar for him before Endrin took his vows. Not sorry to be rid of that to be honest. Working for Wynne is a fair bit calmer, I must say. You’ll be looking for the practice room without books, then? The door’s been shut on it for a few hours, but I didn’t hear anyone inside. Go on then, but take one of the templars in with you when you get there. There are quite a few in the central hallway on the third floor. Endrin might even be with them. And remind the boy to keep his helmet on, would you. Learn from those who went before and all that. Why they want to practice fire spells in the summer…”
The templar brushed past Anders, who took that as his leave and scurried up the stairs before the templar could change his mind about letting him past. Anders didn’t stop to think for the rest of the way, nor did he bother grabbing a templar for accompaniment. He wasn’t planning to use magic. Why should he need supervision to sit? Or did taking a break require blood magic now?
The door to the practice room was unlocked, and as soon as Anders had slipped inside he could tell that the window was still open. This had to be the least stifling room in the entire tower. A few hours of circulation had made the room cool and open and free of the musty smell that usually pervaded the tower in the summer heat. The first thing Anders did once inside was close the door behind him. The second thing was to lay prostrate on the cold stone and let it cool the back of his robes. This was brilliant. This was freedom. No one was watching - he could even open his robes a little at the front and let the breeze invading the tower through the window wash over his skin. It was almost like being outside. Anders wasn’t exactly what one would call a “nature lover”, not like some of the other mages, anyway. But he relished the thought of being Not In The Tower, and if that meant being in nature, he would swathe himself in leaves and bathe in Lake Calenhad. There were worse things in life. Like being set on fire by your own tutor, purposefully. That pretty much topped Anders’ list for the moment.
He didn’t think he had lain on the floor very long when he began getting chilled and restless. He fought the chill, wanting to be cold as long as possible before the heat of the rest of the tower sunk into his blood again, but he got up and started pacing around the room looking for something to do. Nearly everyone considered this Torrin’s practice room, and therefore kept everything of the slightest value or interest far from it. Eventually he decided that the window was the most interesting thing in the room and walked over to it. The lake outside looked perfectly still in the moonlight and the hills of Redcliffe rolled black under the clouds. There was just so much world. How hard could it possibly be to escape notice of the few templars who knew what he looked like in a world this big? He could probably hide forever in Redcliffe alone. They had his phylactery, sure, but who was to say that those even worked? Anders had never heard of a mage actually being tracked down before - not that he had asked. The templars just scared everyone into not trying by saying that they could always hunt you down. Well, sure. Mages are pretty easy to hunt down when they’re all in one place, after all. He looked down from the window, trying to gauge how high up he was. The tower had seven floors, but each of them had an incredibly high ceiling and the first floor was hardly even with the ground outside. Even the idiots who had put a tower in the lake had known better than to build a basement underwater. The view of the ground was partly obscured by a battlement that connected to the tower at the window’s base, but it was easy enough to see that three floors was still quite a ways up the tower. Anders balked a little at the height, but not enough to make him look away. Such distance! The tower interior offered no concept of distance. Even windows looked as much like paintings as real mountains far across the land. Did he really climb all that way just to get up here? It didn’t seem that far by the stairs. How far could he fall and not hurt himself? Were there spells for flying? Magic enough to counteract gravity - surely that fell under entropy? Putting the attraction of gravity onto another object, say the base of the tower, which could hardly notice the extra weight of a teenage boy who was supposed to be inside its walls anyway. Anders felt a sudden urge to dig his feet into sand and rest his legs in water. Freedom took hold of his mind and he leaned longingly out the window.
A thud came from the closed door. A giggle followed close after.
“Shh! Some- Someone will hear us. Do you want to get - That tickles! - get caught?”
There was hushed muttering that Anders couldn’t make out and more giggles as the door handle rattled. He hadn’t locked it, and now doubted he could make it back across the room in time to correct that mistake. The battlement outside the window called to him. The door clicked open.
It was only once he was already outside and trying to ignore the voices of the two people as he eased his way along the stonework that Anders remembered that being in the practice room hadn’t been illegal. He’d even had a templar’s permission to be there! Well, practically, anyway. Now, however, now he had definitely broken a rule. For the moment, however, he was a lot less scared of templars and more scared of the sudden height that appeared to have come from nowhere beneath him. The tower had looked much shorter from the other side of the window. He considered just for a minute, the idea of waiting out the lovers, but that would mean having to listen to them for however long they decided to take. Anders would rather have jumped from the battlements and taken his chances with the lake. He also briefly entertained the notion of jumping back into the window and trying to get past them that way, but his chances of getting past unnoticed seemed not-good to say the least, and surprising them in any state could not go well. He wasn’t even sure if they were templars or mages (or maybe one of each?) but an apprentice climbing through the window probably wouldn’t get much praise from either side.
Anders scuttled along the stone until he was as far away from the main tower as he could get. The support for the battlement, a thin pillar of stone and mortar, dropped down beneath him. There was enough spiky decoration to provide a good handhold, and the mortar between the stones was worn enough to provide the occasional footrest. Anders didn’t give himself a chance to consider the probability of his falling rather than climbing gracefully down to the bottom. If he thought about his death, he’d be caught out here still trying to get down when the sun rose. Instead, he took off the collar and shoulders from his robes and draped them over his arm before lowering his foot down to the highest break in the stonework. It didn’t hold. Anders squeaked loudly and kicked wildly at the stone, but managed not to loose his grip. Panting heavily, he found another break. This one he tested gently before putting his weight on it.
“Ok, the first step is the hardest, right?” He muttered to himself. After taking a minute to catch his breath, he lowered his other foot down, much further than he was expecting. This break held, however, and Anders managed to keep enough balance to throw the collar of his robes around the pillar and catch it, one corner in each hand. And then he climbed.
It took more than a quarter hour, inexperienced and unfit as he was from living in the tower, but he managed to get most of the way to the ground with only minor cuts and bruises and just one tear in his robes. He fell the last ten feet or so, but a healing spell took away all the pain in his ankle. And then all he could see was the sky. It was everywhere. And so was the water, and it occurred to Anders that now was as good a time as any to learn to swim. It had never occurred to him how open the world was. He had somehow expected that even alone and outside that the world would feel like a series of pictures plastered around him as though on a wall, and that was why people called it scenery, but that wasn’t the case at all. If there were walls in the world they weren’t anywhere near him, and scenery stretched on forever rather than pressing around him. This was glorious. He scrambled down to drop his feet in the water and had only just put them in, shoes and all, when he heard the boots behind him.
“Forgot about one, mage.” A very young templar recruit was standing behind him, looking delighted. “Everyone always forgets about me. Gotta have someone to run the boats, don’t they, now? I expect you thought you were getting away free then?”
“Oh, no I just wanted-“ Anders began, not really knowing where he was going. Luckily, the Templar didn’t let him finish.
“Wanted to what? Dip your toes in the water? Get some ale from the Spoiled Princess at the docks? Trust me, the stuff you’ve got in there is better than anything at the pub. Come on then, back in you go.”
The templar took hold of Anders’ upper arm, and for the first time Anders felt a rush of adrenaline and had to beat down the urge to fight. He wanted suddenly to wrench his arm away, get in the boat and speed off. He never wanted to loose this feeling of openness, of light and life and water and air - real air! - and there would be grass on the other side, he thought he remembered grass. But they were already to the steps and soon after at the door to the tower. The templar opened it and pushed him inside.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not supposed to abandon my post, and I can see that you’re young, so just go on up to bed and don’t tell anyone and don’t try it again, you hear? There’s always someone watching the boat out here, so you won’t be able to get out this way. And don’t give me that look, I know this is the only way out. Just don’t say anything, all right? They don’t take kindly to apostates, even attempted ones.” And he shut the great doors in Anders’ face.
The walls were back. The silence didn’t even last as the clank of metal templar boots came down the stairs. But freedom didn’t let go of Anders just yet. The feel of it, the wrench of it stayed in his heart. He had never thought about apostates before. Not really. What was there for a mage outside the circle?
There was the sky. There was the water. There was the air. There was everything.
One.