What a busy day! Vel had taken Elowyn on a surprise outing complete with a cruise to an island aboard a trireme, a picnic dinner, a bard and, for dessert, a tryst in an ancient ruin. It was the first and only date she’d ever been on, just like one of the romances she’d hidden inside her textbooks at the Circle, and she felt like she was floating. She felt like she’d been dead during her time in the Circle, condemned to a life of celibacy and childlessness and loneliness. As it turned out, the dissolution of the Circles had been the best thing that had ever happened in her life.
Vel told her that he had to go on a mission for the Master and couldn’t accompany her on the raid with Aminia and Red. She’d been looking forward to fighting alongside him. She still felt untested, despite training every day and learning whole new spell trees that had never been taught in Orlais. So she was only mildly disappointed when she arrived at the Hanged Man’s Tree to find a note from Aminia postponing the raid.
She saw Dio there, sitting with another man. She waved, and Dio beckoned her to come sit with them.
“I didn’t know you came to this pub!” Elowyn exclaimed.
“Of course! There are more of us than you think,” Dio replied. “This is my friend, Stefano.” Elowyn greeted Dio’s friend, who asked her if she was from Orlais.
“The accent gave me away, didn’t it?” she said.
“Your Tevene is very good! It sounds beautiful with an Orlesian accent,” said Stefano. “How do you like Minrathous?”
“I love it!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know why any mages would choose to stay in Southern Thedas if they could come here.”
“Elowyn is Magister Vaellanius’ newest apprentice,” explained Dio. “I hadn’t congratulated you yet, Elowyn. I envy you!”
“Did you hear that Caius just pulled off a major coup in the Senate?” asked Stefano. “You’re with a fortunate house, indeed.”
“Which Magister do you serve, Stefano? If you don’t mind my asking,” said Elowyn.
“House Duronia, though I am completing my training at the Circle.”
“Stefano will face his Harrowing soon,” added Dio.
“Did you undergo the Harrowing in Orlais?” Stefano asked Elowyn.
“Yes, I did, shortly before I came here.”
“Can you tell me about it?” asked Stefano. “Dio’s told me about his – I’ve heard each mage’s Harrowing is different, though the basic test is the same.”
“Which kind of demon did you face, Dio?” Elowyn asked.
“Ah, it was Fear,” he said sheepishly.
“That is unusual!” said Elowyn. “Though I think more mages in Orlais have to confront Fear than they do in Tevinter.”
“Well, you’ve seen my uncle. Growing up with Fuficius as the head of the family was good training in confronting Fear,” said Dio.
“I’d think it’d be an exercise in Annoyance, though I don’t think there’s a demon for that!” joked Elowyn. Dio and Stefano laughed. Elowyn went on, “I expected I would face Desire, but Pride came instead. I’d always been a star student. Being an elf, it led to a lot of bullying by the noble human mages. But there were some who were kind. The funny thing about fighting Pride is that one must humble one’s self – it’s too big to confront head-on, at least for a newly-trained mage. I had to make good use of the terrain available.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Stefano.
“I’m sure you’ll do fine!” said Elowyn. Stefano blushed. He was a charming young man. Elowyn noticed that Dio grasped Stefano’s hand under the table. ‘So that’s how it is!’ she thought to herself. ‘No wonder he fears his uncle and hates him for forcing him seduce women.’
Elowyn bought another round of drinks, and they passed around the latest gossip. Elowyn wasn’t surprised to learn that Caius had been pulling strings in the government, but she hadn’t yet heard that he’d been acting with noblesse oblige toward the poor. She wondered what he was up to. It couldn’t be out of the goodness of his heart, because she wasn’t sure he had one.
“Well, I’d better get Stefano back to the Circle before they come looking for him!” Dio joked, swigging the last of his Imperial Gose.
“Oh, it’s late!” Elowyn jumped up. “The time just flew by – they’ll be sending the guards after me.” Elowyn took her leave of the two young mages and headed back to Vaellanius Manor.
***
She was stopped on the way to her room by none other than her nemesis, Publius. She was prepared to face another insult, but instead, he grabbed her arm, a worried expression furrowing his brow.
“Have you seen Vel? Wasn’t he going out with you tonight?” he asked.
“No, he had some errand to run for the Master,” she replied. “He hasn’t returned?”
“The others came back hours ago! They don’t know what happened to him – something went wrong.”
Elowyn blanched at the news. “Hasn’t the Master sent out a search party?” she asked.
“They haven’t found him!” Publius bit his lip. Elowyn had never seen him this distressed. ‘He can’t be all bad,’ she thought, ‘if he cares this much for his friend.’
“We have to go look for him!” she exclaimed. “Where was he last seen?”
“They were going to a warehouse down by the docks – come on!”
She and Publius took two horses from the stables. It had been a long time since Elowyn had ridden – not since she’d arrived in Minrathous, but she was a natural. Publius was having a little trouble with his mount. “Go on ahead!” he shouted. She rose in her stirrups and urged her horse forward, praying it wouldn’t fall on the slippery cobblestones.
The palaces gave way to more modest laetan and soporati homes, and these in turn petered out into a series of dive bars and dubious noodle shops as she drew closer to the waterfront. She recalled the men who had whistled at her earlier in the day and shuddered. Then again, she could simply set anyone who bothered her on fire, and she’d probably face no repercussions, protected as she was by the Magister’s might.
She smelled smoke on the wind and arrived at the warehouse location only to find a blackened ruin. She dismounted and led her horse carefully toward the building. The charred wood was still hot. Her horse balked at the smell of burnt flesh. ‘Please, please, don’t let it be Vel,’ Elowyn pleaded with whatever gods were listening. She felt a surge of anger at the Master for sending Vel into this fiasco.
Letting emotions cloud her mind would not help her find Vel. She moved away from the building and inhaled the slightly cleaner air. She pushed away the thought that Vel could have gone into the harbor and drowned. ‘If he had run, which way would he have gone?’ she thought, looking around at the empty streets. She kindled veilfire – there, by those broken crates, some drops of blood.
Elowyn was examining the trail of blood when she heard the sound of boots approaching. “Publius?” she asked, looking up. Not Publius. A group of thugs out looking for trouble. ‘Not now!’ she grumbled. She would have to take acre of this problem quickly.
“What have we here? Out for a little stroll all by yourself, knife-ear?” The men spread out. Elowyn dropped the reins of her horse and slapped it on the rump. It charged toward one of the men, who jumped aside. Elowyn put her back to the wall of the building and cast one of her new spells, a glyph of paralysis. Let them try to close on her, and they’d be trapped. If they were mages, they were dressed poorly. It was likely they were just drunken ruffians.
“Oh, lookee! It’s a baby mage! Thought you’d get out of the Circle for a bit of fun, eh? Well, here it is!” the man grabbed his crotch and stuck his tongue lewdly between his teeth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the others edging closer on her left. He had drawn a blade and was twirling it, trying to frighten her. She cast a Misdirection Hex at him, then surrounded herself with a cloud of miasma. The attackers hesitated as they were hit. They shook their heads, trying to clear their vision. It was time to try out her best weapon: she sent them all to sleep.
She stepped into the Fade. The trail of blood called to her, but she turned away from it, seeking the skeins of her attackers’ dreams. There, like a ribbon swirling from the man with the knife. She picked it up and walked into his dream.
She found herself in a factory. Rows of benches and worktables stretched out in front of her, each staffed by children. They were painfully thin, and many coughed wretchedly. One of the boys whimpered. Elowyn saw a tall, black figure approaching. The feeble light glinted off his monocle as the overseer caught sight of the boy. “Slacking off?” it cackled, and brandished a switch. The boy cowered in fear.
‘Don’t feel sorry for the boy!’ Elowyn admonished herself. Everyone had nightmares, and the meanest people were the most full of fear. She pulled herself partway out of the dream and grabbed the dream skein of the second man, winding it up and shaping it into the overseer. She then thrust it back into the first man’s dream. “Wakey wakey!” she called, and snapped her fingers.
The man screamed and drove his knife into the chest of the overseer, not realizing it was his buddy who simply wore the form of the man’s worst nightmare. The second man whipped out a truncheon and belted the knave across the face, crushing his nose. Blood spurted out. While they were fighting each other, Elowyn turned to the third man, the crotch-grabber.
This man was standing in a shop, surrounded by high shelves filled with bobbins and spools of threads in every color. Elowyn saw him slip a pack of needles into his pocket. He smirked, pleased he was getting away with stealing, even if was only in his dream. No secret how he’d ended up hanging around the docks. Elowyn pulled out a drawer, rooting around in his imagination for something she could use. The man startled – there it was, crawling away into a shadowy corner. He looked around fearfully. Ahhh, one of her favorites! This was going to be fun.
Elowyn pulled on the threads and wove them into spiders of every kind: elegant orbweavers, practical cobweb spiders, cute bouncy jumping spiders, ferocious wolf spiders, furry tarantulas and gleaming black widows. Tiny spiders and giant spiders, each with eight legs and eight eyes, miraculous spinnerets, spiky chelicerae and some with swollen pedipalps. Because if she was going to make something, attention to detail counted. The man saw the spiders swarming him and opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out – his throat had been blocked by a giant bird-eating spider, Theraphosa blondi. Luckily, it was only a dream-spider, so Elowyn didn’t feel bad about its sacrifice. Her work accomplished, she opened the shop door and stepped out of the Fade. The man was scratching and swatting at himself. The two other men were corpses.
She followed the trail of blood, hoping the stupid thugs hadn’t taken up too much time. She sensed a dream ahead of her. She was becoming attuned to dreams and felt them all around her. This one was a painful dream, a dream filled with anguish and regret. It became so strong that she could hear it through the Veil:
"I don´t want you here, if I am going to die I want Elowyn with me!"
It was Vel! She’d found him! She rushed into the alleyway. There, slumped against a pile of refuse.
“Vel! Vel!” she cried, “I’m here!” She crouched down and reached for him. He was still breathing, but had passed out. He was mumbling in his sleep, arguing with someone. His hands felt cold, and his pulse was slow. She kindled veilfire and gasped when it revealed the pool of blood he was lying in. His breath became labored. She had to do something. Where was Publius? He was better at healing than she was. She needed to be with Vel – if he was going to die, he had to know the comfort of her arms. She stepped into his terrible dream.
There was a demon standing over Vel, berating him over and over, telling him he was a failure, he’d never been good enough, a terrible disappointment to his family, that he should just die because no one would miss him. “Elowyn would miss me,” he mumbled feebly. Every word out of the demon’s mouth ate away at dream-Vel, sapping his will to live. He was losing strength, going transparent.
“Get away from him, demon!” she shouted angrily. The demon slowly twisted its head toward her. It reached into her mind and plucked out one of her worst fears, taking the form of a Templar.
“**** YOU!” she screamed, and shaped a great blade out of the Fade. She put into it all the love she felt for Vel, all of the happiness she felt when they were together, the strength that formed her bond with him. She swung it over her head with both arms and drove it straight through the demon’s throat, severing its head. She ran to Vel’s form and cradled his body, breathing her mana into him. His face took on a little color.
“Is it you? You came for me!” His big brown eyes met hers, and her tears dropped down onto his skin. The Veil shimmered around them.
“I’m here,” she said, coming back through the Veil into the dark alley, bringing his spirit with her. Vel reached up and touched her face. “I’ll always find you,” she said.
Just then, Publius strode up. “You found him!” he yelled, and rushed over.
“It’s about time,” said Vel weakly.
“Had a little trouble with my horse,” muttered Publius.
“Let’s get him back to the manor – give me a hand,” said Elowyn. Publius put Vel’s arm over his shoulder, and Elowyn supported him on the other side. In this awkward fashion, the three of them made their way back into the light to find transport home.
. I think you have nailed what Caius is all about from the outsider experience. Caius is a hard nut to crack, but he does have a soft interior. Kind of. 
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