Chapter 33: Potestas Trabea
There was a loud clamouring at the door as a trio of Templars pushed their way past the First Enchanter into the room, or at least, Samantha had thought they were Templars. But she soon determined they were not. They had the same bearing, but their faces bore something more, a certain knowing. Their armour was different from the plate that was standard issue among the Chantry's military branch, favouring more leather as opposed to metal. The last thing that set them apart was the dark tabards that bore the motif of a large white eye on a stylized Chantry sun.
The Tranquil could hear the First Enchanter loudly arguing with someone outside as the three strangers began combing the room, carefully inspecting apparatuses and paging through books and piles of notes. Eventually one of the men moved to speak with her.
"Pardon me," he paused, clearly struggling to find a form of address, "…my lady. May I inquire as to why you are in the First Enchanter's Laboratory?"
Samantha's eyes passed over him, taking stock of his appearance. He was still coated in dust, clearly just having arrived at the Circle after a long journey. It had been a while since she had seen a dust-stained traveller. He had collar-length dark brown hair that stuck up at odd, windswept angles where it was not clinging to his skin and was sporting week-old stubble. His eyes were a surprisingly clear brown-green considering how travel-worn the rest of him appeared.
"I fulfil the First Enchanter's administrative requirements. I have been assigned as his Formari aide in the research that he is performing and assist in the completion of menial tasks." Her tone was even as she recounted her assigned function. "I also oversee this Circle's Formari research into the properties of Lyrium and the Fade. There are currently five other Tranquil reporting their findings to me, as well as correspondents from the Circles in Starkhaven, Montsimmard and Ferelden. I-"
"Yes, yes, thank you. That's quite enough." The armoured man cut her off, rubbing his brow. "I get the picture." Seemingly done with his interrogation he turned to shout over his shoulder, "Oi, Neal! What do I do with the Tranquil?!"
"Leave her, you know how they are. There's nothing they would do to purposefully undermine the Circle."
"Yeah, but she said she was the First Enchanter's administrative aide…. She might know something."
"Fine, fine," the other man conceded, the exasperation in his tone evident. "But you'll have to take responsibility for her. I'm not babysitting one of those."
The man rolled his eyes at Neal's response. "Fine, whatever." He turned back to address Samantha, "Ma'am, please, if you'll follow me."
"I am not permitted to act on any authority that does not supersede the First Enchanter's own. If you do, sir, you have not yet identified yourself as such." The Tranquil's flat voice echoed strangely in the room, as she had spoken precisely then when the noise outside had died down, causing the other man, Neal, to stop rummaging through whatever crate he had found and look up, the earlier look of disinterest gone.
The man who had asked Samantha to follow him did a half-bow. "My apologies, that was rude of me. I am Martin Toole, of the Order of Seekers. Only the Divine herself has more authority than we do, so you have no need to fear breaching protocol by doing as we request."
"Very well, Seeker Martin. Although I wish to have confirmation of your claim made by either the First Enchanter or The Knight Commander should you require anything more of me."
The lack of inflection of her voice seemed not to bother Martin as it normally did with Templars and mages. He simply nodded, agreeing with her requirements.
As Samantha followed Martin out of the room, they passed by two Templars flanking another attired in the same fashion as the two Seekers; had she had the capacity to be surprised, she might have been to find that this one was a woman. She was looking away from her, so the Trevelyan could not distinguish anything but dark hair, tied back into a warrior's tail.
The woman was questioning the First Enchanter, her voice heavily accented. The dialect was unfamiliar to Samantha, but then her attention was drawn to the First Enchanter, whose face she could see. His eyes grew wide as they landed on her as she followed after the other Seeker.
~o~
Celestine woke up, eyes bleary. She looked around, unsure of where she was. Her eyes were met with darkness and she struggled to sit up, only to be quickly and none too gently pushed back down.
"Less haste, Amell. Or do you wish to tip back to the floor as soon as you stand up?"
The mage sighed in relief as she recognised Morrigan's scolding tone. She put her head back down on what she now realised must have been a pile of empty sacks; the hessian, despite its cilice-like nature, was unfamiliarly comfortable after several weeks in a bedroll. She waited as the feeling of lightheadedness, caused by her rushed rising, passed. Then she recalled what she had last been doing before she passed out.
"How is she?" The Grey Warden mage recalled putting her all into healing Elisa. It had never been a strength of hers, as she had never been able to properly practice the Creation school extensively. Her magic had always flooded out too powerfully, even with her strict rein on it, to work the delicate art that was healing a broken body. It did not help that none of the wounds anyone sustained at the Circle seemed to cater to her. Either they were too minor, or too major, for her to effectively practice on. Senior Enchanter Wynne had promised to give her some lessons after she had passed her Harrowing, but as events had played out that never happened; considering that Wynne had also been at Ostagar, even if she had survived the massacre, Celestine doubted that they would have the time to work together.
The young mage recalled how she had once tried healing a broken leg Jowan had sustained after slipping on some rocks while they were taking a break outside several years ago. Her lack of knowledge had healed the injury incorrectly, forcing the Circle's healers to break and reset it. Jowan himself had not complained much, as he had been on a strange high from Celestine's magic for the next week – as she had expended far too much energy on the spell.
The aftermath of the incident resulted in the young mage poring through all of the books the Circle had on the healing arts. From anatomy and practical surgical applications to the actual use of magic within healing, it had been alluring. The Circle had gathered extensive information on the topics, and learning the intricate workings of the human body combined with the the number of discoveries that had been made was fascinating. It was just sad to see how all of that knowledge was hoarded, kept hidden from almost all of the medical personnel outside of the mages. They had to stumble through, learn techniques for themselves and pass knowledge on using an ineffective apprenticing method, if at all - cases of where the barber and the surgeon were the same person were far too common. There was a monumental disjointing between the great discoverers and the mages and the medical knowledge of the rest of society.
Elisa's case had been a great test of everything Celestine knew. The black blade had penetrated her liver, but luckily missed the kidney by a narrow margin. The most challenging injury had been the damage to the spinal cord – it had been partially severed, with the sword passing between two vertebrae.
The task of not only saving Elisa's life, but maintaining her control over her lower limbs had been a tremendous challenge, as weaving the individual strands back to their original state required a finer and more precise control over her power than anything she had ever done. The liver had been relatively easy. A burst of energy and the cut was already knitting itself back together. Celestine had then made sure that the main artery and vein were intact before moving onto the spine; it would have been worthless to help knit the grey matter there if her friend bled out in the meantime.
The work on Elisa's spine would definitely count as one of the stranger experiences in her life, even considering everything she had already been through. Using her magic, she would sense what each path led to, mapping out the lower part of the rogue's body. With this knowledge, she would reconnect each cell of grey matter to where it had originally attached. The strangeness was not only due to her gaining an intimate knowledge of the rogue anywhere below the wound, but also because whenever one path reconnected, the electric jolt generated would give Celestine a glance at something from Elisa's mind. Some seemed to be images out of her past, others seemed to be fabrications - ideas and thoughts that her imagination or subconscious conjured up. It was almost like coming in contact with a part of the Fade, but more controlled, and entirely Elisa. Every single part of it was steeped in her essence.
The task had been an arduous one, trying to keep Elisa's systems functioning while knitting the most intricate one back together, then being blasted with images, scents and other sensations that tried to pull her away from reality. Towards the end, Celestine had felt herself slipping – getting lost in Elisa's mind and casting her magic almost on instinct as she reconnected the thousandth neuron. After the rest of the body had been healed, and only the spinal cord remained, Celestine's reserves had been depleted enough that she didn't have to worry about holding back too much to conduct the fine work she was doing. The day turned into evening and the evening into night, and finally even her consciousness blurred into darkness as she continued to work, carefully piecing together her friend.
"Our noble rogue looks to be in an ever improving condition, thanks to you. Mind you, I would warn you from exerting so much power again. We know not what we might need to face inside that castle."
"I'll give as much of myself as I have to, I… Elisa's life is far more valuable than mine. She has a brother, she's a noble; she probably has friends across the whole country."
"If that's what you wish to believe, I'll not hinder you. But I'll not suffer that whining boy of a man if he returns to moping as he did before."
Celestine was about to retort, only to see the Wilder Witch's back disappearing up a set of stairs. Her eyes had adjusted, allowing her to recognise the room she was in. It was the cellar they had been in just before entering the courtyard. Recalling only too well what had happened the last time someone disappeared up those stairs, she struggled to get up, untangling her robes from her legs before hastening after the abrasive woman.
The former Circle mage was greeted by a pre-dawn sky, the clouds in the east gradually getting set alight by the promised sun. Celestine could make out two shadowy forms standing sentinel, one near the portcullis, leading outside, another at the base of the stairs, heading towards the Castle's main hall. There were ashes of the previous night's fire at the base of the only tree in the courtyard – a magnificent old oak. Celestine could not see Morrigan anywhere, but Leliana was poking at the embers, trying to coax the orange tongues of flame back to life. Seeing the approaching Grey Warden, she smiled wanly.
"Our miracle worker returns to the land of the living." She teased, "At this rate you're not helping prove the Chantry Sister's theory that I may have been dropped on my head as a child."
Celestine rubbed the sleep from her eyes before responding. "Please Leliana, I am hardly involved in anything divine. But since getting to know you, I have rarely had cause to believe there's something at fault with your mental faculties."
"Rarely? So you're saying that I have given reason to occasionally doubt my sanity, no?"
"Well yes…those times you and Elisa raced to see who could reach the tops of those trees on our way here. Nobody has business swinging around boughs that thin that recklessly," the mage replied as she dropped to the grass next to Leliana.
"Ah…perhaps. I used to climb the trees in the orchard of the Lady my mother served when I was still a child. It was…a more innocent time." Her eyes seemed to grow distant as she said it.
"Where is your mother now?"
"She…she's passed on."
Celestine paused, the answer unexpectedly personal, she searched her mind for something to say. But what could she say? She was a mage who had never known her parents. She could console the red-head about as much as she could the twins. She knew nothing of their pain.
"But it's alright." Leliana broke the increasingly awkward silence after a deep shuddering breath. "It has been quite a large number of years; I don't actually remember her. Apart from the scent of Andraste's Grace on her clothing I have nothing to miss. I actually remember more of Cecille, the one my mother served. She raised me, in her own way, after my mother passed. Climbing the trees with Elisa, it reminded me of…happier times." Her voice sounded so distant, as if the archer was not sitting there in front of a struggling fire, outside a haunted castle, before an ever encroaching Blight.
Once more Celestine was at a loss for words, something she was currently struggling with. Normally she could feel them come to her without effort, her thoughts presented on a richly prepared platter of Circle-taught vocabulary. But perhaps that was why she could not find the words. All she had were emotions. Sympathy, loss, sadness, relief, hope, fear…how did one put them into words? How did one tell someone you wanted to help, but you did not even know where to begin? Instead, she simply reached an arm across the rogue's shoulder and hugged her to her, soon joined by Triss, who snuffed at Celestine's hand until the mage scratched her behind the ears a bit.
The pair was startled to their feet when they heard a familiar voice shouting from the tent behind them: "You bloody moron!"
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone