Moments

Moment of Study

Five candles sputtered in between the massive wall of papers I was not supposed to stack up like little siege towers. I stared at one candle, the top pitching to the left like it flared in bracing winds. If it just leaned a bit more an ember could dance free and spark up this ancient and mind rotting parchment, freeing me forever from this curse.

The door to my prison blew open, and instinctively I reached over to catch the candle - my honed dexterity dooming me for eternity. After blowing it out, I looked up to find a human filling the doorway. It was one of them, the important ones, but the foreign name rolled around in my brain, struggling to find purchase. Creators, I was going to have get better at this.

He twisted back, glancing down the quiet halls of the chantry, then to me. "Herald? I didn't expect anyone in the...what are you doing in here?"

I shoved aside the books with my hands, providing a clean path so I could stare up at him. "Paying my penance." His eyes narrowed at my whining and the name snapped into place. Cullen. Right. So far he was the only one who didn't try to lock me in place, though the chains were preferable to the ambassador's current machinations.

Cullen worked his jaw, as if terrified to walk into the room I was sentenced to die in. Instead, he maintained a vigil in the doorway. "Your penance?"

Working a crick out of my neck, I said, "Seems it's rather bad form for the Herald of Andraste to not know a damn thing about her flameableness, so I was banished to this dungeon with a stack of these," I slammed the books back into the table, rattling another half staff candle, "until I could come out reciting the Chant of Right."

"Light, it's the Chant of Light."

"Oh for..." my hands rolled over my face, burrowing it deep into my feeble notes. "I tried, I really have, but all I get through the thees, and thous, and begettings is Andraste got set on fire, there's a Mafarath - who I think was her dog - that let her down, she had a sword named Hessarian."

"That, um..." Cullen finally stepped into the room, his fingers breaking from his sword to rifle through the books coating the massive table running the length of the room.

"What?" I pleaded, sitting up off the bed. After an hour sitting primly in the desk chair, I needed to move and took to rolling across the third bed in the room. More books in a language I couldn't read swarmed around me, a few accidentally shoved to the floor. I only kept them around because they came with pictures - nearly all of them of a pretty lady bathed in flames. For being their god, they sure liked showing her in pain an awful lot.

Cullen shook his head, "Your understanding is...I'm afraid it's not right. Mafarath was Andraste's husband and Hessarian was the Magister that put her to the flame."

I jumped up on my knees, bouncing on the bed, my hands smacking against my thighs, "Why do they keep going on about his merciful sword? If he killed her, how is he a good guy?"

"That's a difficult one to..." Cullen glanced back, "Who put you in here? Cassandra?"

"No," I shook my head, then cast a long finger out the door and across the hall. The distance was enough she wasn't visible to me, but I knew she was watching. Always watching. "That demon you call an ambassador. Sweet as pie she calls out, 'Oh, Lady Lavellan, could I have a moment of your time?' Next thing I know, I'm chained to the desk with all of chantry history dropped on my head and told I needed to digest it all. 'It wouldn't look well for the Herald of Andraste to be shown up by the remaining clerics, now would it?'" My scowl ended on a growl as I recounted the story. "She's had me trapped in here ever since."

"But the door was unlocked," Cullen said, gesturing back to his breaking into my dungeon.

"Check the inside." He tried to lift the latch but found it stuck fast. "I could have picked it in two minutes, but she put me in here specifically to keep an eye from across the hall. My only hope was digging through the floor to drop into the dungeon, but I broke all the spoons."