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[RoraM]

Many days have I struggled to account for the events that took place at the Ostwick Circle of Magi the evening Lady Elissandra Trevelyan underwent her Harrowing.  Nothing in the collected experience of enchanters or templars could have prepared us for the unprecedented chaos that ensued that night.  Indeed, subsequent examination of Circle annals across Thedas reveal no record of their like, nor have such events transpired since.

 

More than the usual complement of senior enchanters were present, given Lady Elissandra's noble standing.  Otherwise, the standard wards were constructed, the requisite amount of lyrium was used.  Templar procedures were strictly followed, as evidenced by their own records.  Our Knight-Commander recited the Chant.  By all measures, this was to have been a routine Harrowing.  Lady Elissandra entered the Fade without incident.

 

Then, the rabbit appeared.

 

(To be continued...)

[RoraM]

The appearance of woodland creatures during a ritual as closely guarded as the Harrowing is unexpected, but not entirely unheard of (c.f. The Harrowing of Apprentice Epp, 7:42 Storm).  Senior Enchanter Friedlander managed to catch the animal before it disturbed the wards or Lady Elissandra.  We thought all was well, until Senior Enchanter Beadle began to excitedly claim the rabbit had not, in fact, been caught and that he had felt something "nibble [his] bum".  It was unfortunate, but Senior Enchanter Beadle’s known decreased visual acuity due to advanced age and his growing reputation for senility conspired to keep us from heeding his prescient warnings.  Senior Enchanter Friedlander had held up the offending creature for all to see and we, satisfied, thought it inconceivable that there could be more than one.  And yet, there were.

 

There were hundreds.

 

(To be continued...)

[RoraM]

In retrospect, it is difficult to say whether the unique circumstances of the Ostwick Circle served to mitigate or exacerbate the havoc of that evening.  Unlike the Circles of Lake Calenhad and Val Royeaux, our sedate little Circle is housed, not in a tower, but within a collection  of interconnected buildings, each no higher than two floors.  As is standard practice, Harrowings are conducted on the uppermost floor to facilitate evacuation in the unlikely event that established failsafes are bypassed.  Below the Ostwick Harrowing chamber lie the kitchens.  The reasons for this are manifold:  kitchen staff may be evacuated during Harrowings with minimal disruption to their duties and, should the worst befall a candidate, the resultant abomination would pose no immediate threat to our other apprentices nor to the Circle’s irreplaceable artifacts and writings.

 

Upon examination, the cook admitted that after returning from market, he had not had time to kill and dress the animals for the next day’s meal and instead, had elected to leave them in their cage until morning.  The man, clearly conscience-stricken, confessed he had loudly expressed a wish earlier in the day that the Circle could afford more meat, given the steep increase in prices following the Blight in Ferelden.  When he noticed there had been one more small rabbit in addition to the four he had purchased, the simple man thought this merely an oversight of the seller, a sign that betokened good fortune.  Visibly agitated throughout his interview, he was reassured that he had not been the cause of the events that subsequently befell us.  However, it remains a mystery as to who had heard and answered his appeal. 

 

Surely, they could not have intended the massacre that was to follow.

 

(To be continued...)

[RoraM]

It had been a warm summer evening and, thus, no fire had been lit in the Harrowing chamber.  Had Lady Trevelyan’s Harrowing taken place in the dead of winter, perhaps this crisis might have been averted.  Alas, it had not.  We had little time to prepare; our only warning was the sound of scratching coming from the direction of the fireplace, from which immediately burst forth hundreds of soot-covered rabbits.

 

To their credit, the templars’ initial response to this explosion of leporidae was to attempt to corral them, rather than kill them outright.  However, with magical seals placed on all the windows and doors, their only way of egress was from whence they came, an impossibility, as the fireplace continued to teem with rabbits.

 

Why Senior Enchanter Beadle had chosen to keep salad in his pockets that evening, of all evenings, only the Maker will truly know.

 

(To be continued...)

[RoraM]

Senior Enchanter Beadle, himself, could not explain how the salad came to be there.  We suspected he had saved his midday allotment with the intent to consume it later, only to have forgotten.  It would have not been the first time.  Regardless, the rabbits were ravenous.  They came at Beadle, who, despite being their only target, began to scream to the rest of us, “Run away! Run away!” and in his haste, his foot disturbed the markings that constructed the spellwards of containment.

 

Lady Elissandra was a gifted apprentice.  She had successfully faced and defeated, in turn, both a sloth demon and a pride demon in the Fade.  The rage demon she battled was on its last legs when Beadle made his fatal error.  Seizing its chance, the demon leapt past the broken ward to possess the nearest living creature: a rabbit.

 

We humans were initially unaware of this possession, but its fellow rabbits were not.  May you who read this never know the horrific and terrifying din of hundreds of fearful rabbits screaming in unison.  That sound shall resonate in my ears until the day I meet the Maker.

 

At this, the templars sprung into action.  However, the demon was clever, and just as one templar cut down the rabbit it occupied, it would leap into another.  The mages fared no better.  One could barely see for the fur and blood flying through the air, nor hear for the screaming of the rabbits, several of which were running about on fire, which is why we did not notice when Lady Elissandra first returned from the Fade.  The templar assigned to her had been preoccupied with slaying rabbits and I thank the Maker she did not harm Lady Trevelyan amidst the chaos.

 

An intelligent lass, Lady Elissandra made her way to me immediately and once the Knight-Commander and I confirmed she was not possessed, we were able to wholly focus on the problem at hand.  A fire was lit in the fireplace to stem the tide and every rabbit remaining in the room was slaughtered.  Despite this, the rage demon was still nowhere to be found and after examination of all mages and templars present, it was believed to have leapt from rabbit to rabbit to the rooms below.

 

Taking down the magical seal of an upper window, we evacuated the Harrowing chamber.  Looking from the outside, we could see through the lower windows that the kitchens were near bursting with the poor creatures, many already dead from crushing or suffocation.  Finding the demon without risking its escape would have been impossible.  The Knight-Commander and I made the difficult decision to level the building, a building that heretofore had withstood three Blights and carried the history of countless Harrowings.  We erected a containment field, while Senior Enchanter Antioch, a master in such matters, cast the killing explosion.  I am told the smell of burnt bunny lingered in the air for weeks.

 

Examination of the kitchen’s charred remains revealed traces of an intricately constructed spell beneath the rabbit cage.  It was too damaged to determine authorship, but it was clear that the novice had miswritten the sigil that limited the multiplication spell by omitting the fourth flourish.  Our only clue was that the lines had been written in purple chalk, an unusual choice.

 

A number of measures were taken that day:  henceforth, magical seals would also be applied to fireplaces,  Senior Enchanter Beadle would no longer be permitted to wear robes containing pockets and was strongly discouraged from attending future Harrowings, and rabbits would never be served at the Ostwick Circle so long as I remained First Enchanter.  When the opportunity to embark on a lecture tour presented itself, I immediately accepted.

 

As for Lady Elissandra Trevelyan, she and I agreed to never discuss the events surrounding her Harrowing again.

 

-An entry in “A History of the Ostwick Circle”, by First Enchanter Wenselus, 9:31 Dragon

 

(To be continued...)

[RoraM]

Lady Evelyn Trevelyan had not expected a reply so soon from the Ostwick Circle.  Her sister was usually remiss in sending her thanks and the chalk would have only just arrived.

 

Evie,

 

Thank you for the lovely gift, but I am sending it back.  I’ll tell you why later.

 

Love,

‘Lissa