She had come to [i]help[/i] and they had shoved her face in the dirt and bound her in chains. In retrospect, she had been naïve. But the Tower had become a nightmare and she had been desperate for help. Twenty years she had lived in the Circle, and for twenty years she had believed the lie that the Templars were there to protect them. She had trusted their judgment when she helped drew blood for phylacteries. When her young apprentices expressed distaste for their watchers, she had urged understanding of their situation. [i]Magic exists to serve man and never to rule him,[/i] she had sung, using both the Chant and cleverness to teach the children she’d once thought so misguided.

Kneeling in the dirt, with the Knight Commander’s contempt ringing in her pointed ears, Senior Enchanter Zayra Melthene decided that her young wards had been in the right. They had kept arrows trained on her breast and drained her magic the instant she had slipped into the courtyard, ignored every plea that fell from her lips. There were children—[i]children[/i]—who could barely conjure sparks and breezes, in the broken tower. Children who were of no use to the First Enchanter but as beating hearts and veins to tap. She had believed, where no others had, that the Templars could not be so callous. She had known many of their number since she had been a child. The Knight Commander himself had once presided over her own Harrowing. He had nearly smiled at her, and praised her force of will. Now he kept her in chains, like a beast.

They had voted for neutrality, all of them except First Enchanter Dmitry Talonhand. Kirkwall had rebelled—so he had decreed that Ostwick would follow. Zayra had been among the first to call him on his madness. They were not so foolish, to declare war on the chantry. Ostwick mages were more careful and their tower was not the Gallows. They were treated well. Abuses were found and [i]punished[/i] here. Their Knight Commander, although stern, had been no fanatic. 

She had not expected Dmitry to slash his wrist and turn on them. He had been her mentor and she had loved him like a father. Yet he had turned on her when their council refused to submit. He had killed three of their number, three of her [i]family[/i], and enslaved another four. She and Senior Enchanter Uriah had turned and gathered those who loved their Circle, who loved their home, and barricaded themselves in the libraries. She had spent [i]five days[/i] subsisting on lyrium potions and stale bread to keep the traitors at bay. They had begged through the door to those who were supposed to shield them, only to find that the Templars had called for the Rite of Annulment.

So Zayra had found another way out of the tower. She was a master of force magic, after all, and there had been a window. Against Uriah’s protests, she had jumped four stories. Instead of finding support, she had been branded a traitor. Her only saving grace had been that the Rite of Annulment had not yet arrived. Saved by their obsessive need for ceremony; it was not mercy.

“We are not all lost,” she pleaded, trying to make the Knight Commander see sense. “Dmitry has gone mad, but we voted against him! We dinnae wan' this, there are children who have done nothin' wrong, [i]please[/i]—“

The Knight Commander deigned her words worthy of the back of his armored hand and left her on the ground. Zayra’s eyes swam, her mouth filling with coppery blood. She spat it out, swearing at the tightening of bows and blades. She was not so base as to surrender to the whispers in her head. Twenty [i]years[/i] of magic and nine as a girl in the Alienage had taught her to give not an inch to the purrs of demons. She was not a monster. She was not Dmitry, inspired by madness. Kirkwall had started something monstrous. Mages everywhere would die, and for what? What freedom was there in apostasy? Nothing good ever came from blood magic.

The reinforcements they’d spoken of were arriving, it seemed. Zayra tried not to hope. It would be too cruel to hope just before she died. She worked herself back to her knees from the cobbled ground, tossing cropped black hair out of her face. Her arms ached, pinned behind her, hands clamped out of casting position. As if she would ever have turned her magic on them—so many of them had been her [i]friends[/i]. Or so she had thought. She’d never spat at them, even as a terrified little girl, the soot covered elf who had every reason to hate the shem in armor. 

Zayra had once thought that the Templars had saved her. They had brought her home. No one had beaten her for dropping plates in the Circle. No one had caressed her ears and dragged her to their bed chambers. She'd been given shoes and robes and taught how to read. The boy who had called her knife-ear… Dmitry had once made him apologise and put him to cleaning the privies for a month. Over the years, that boy had become a man and Uriah had become one of her closest friends. Her eyes stung, but she would not weep. Not like this. Not when those she had trusted had turned on her and her family so completely.


The Knight Commander returned with strangers; she had banked on years of living together to make Ostwick’s Templars see reason. She couldn’t hope these reinforcements would show mercy. But she had to try—for the twenty eight children she and Uriah had sheltered in the lower library, she had to fight.

An explosion echoed through the courtyard, dust raining down on their number. A wail of shuddering agony ripped through her throat as her green eyes saw a flare of fire but a level above the library. [i]No[/i]. She had left them weakened and if Dmitry’s thralls touched even a single child, she would unleash every hell imaginable. 

“Knight Corporal,” she spoke in a desperate rush, recognizing the rank insignia of their guest, “Please, you have to listen to me, we haven' all turned. The First Enchanter has gone mad—he’s killed so many of us, he took the upper third of the tower, but we’ve resisted. We dinnae want to rebel, this is our [i]home[/i]. There are nearly thirty children in the library, but we couldnae keep them out on our own—please—those children only have six Enchanters to help keep them safe, and the First has blood magic and demons.”

Her voice had broken, but her eyes burned, shoulders trembling. If she could only touch her magic, slow their arrows and get back to the tower. She needed to be there, to be an immovable object when they came for the children. The First would not stop until he’d bled every one of them dry, and Zayra would sooner die than lose even one.