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At first, the word was used in a matter of praise.
“It’s refreshing and…ah…flattering to see someone so enthusiastic to study magic.” First Enchanter Irving smiled at Dagna from behind his rather large desk. “We will make sure that your thirst for knowledge is well-fed. Come. Let me show you a list of lessons that you might find suitable to interests.”
A few days later, Enchanter Karl Thekla led Dagna into a quiet portion of the library, and he echoed Irving’s words without even realizing it. “Usually I have to drag young apprentices into their classes by their ears,” he murmured to her in a rather conspiratorial way, coupled with a wry grin. “You brought me tea, you insisted on discussing the newest Tevinter research, and offered to carry my books on the way to class? Keep this up, I might have to give you high marks before you even give me your first essay. Your enthusiasm makes a bloke not feel like a muttering fool.”
At first, Dagna herself grinned at the attention given to her in return for such enthusiasm. The Enchanters seemed especially taken with her, and made an effort to answer her great myriad of questions without appearing annoyed in the slightest. The Tranquil seemed motivated to aid her even when not explicitly commanded to do so.
Then, as the rain that drummed upon the windows of Kinloch Hold turned to snow, she noticed that the casual curiosity from her peers that had first seemed to permeate every interaction had, indeed, crumpled and curled into piles of derision.
“You know, I don’t want to be here.” An elf boy of her age, one with very short blond hair and narrow green eyes, slammed shut the book he had been reading when Dagna approached him. “I want to go home. The Alienage was better than this. I’m sick and tired of you bouncing around like this is some kind of grand holiday. We’re forced to be here. We can’t leave. Do you understand that? Do you? We can’t leave.”
Dagna backed away, mumbling a quick apology before moving to another quiet corner to study the day’s lessons. The boy was homesick, obviously. There were days that Dagna felt the same way. Granted, he had a point – the mages were trapped there, in the tower, for their entire lives. Well, unless they were deemed trustworthy enough to take occasional sabbaticals to other places, just so long as their research remained feasible and timely.
But it was a grand privilege to be able to immerse yourself in such a wealth of scholarship and have the opportunity to see the mysteries of the very universe explained firsthand.
Right?
“You are so adorable.” Eloise, who had been Harrowed just a few weeks before, peered over her round spectacles as she looked down at Dagna. “Isn’t she a doll? A gem. Such en-thu-si-asm.” She was very careful to pronounce each syllable of the word, crafting it so that it dripped with what sounded to Dagna like a threat. “Oh yes. Tell us again how happy you are. We are all friends here. We love to hear about your happiness. Perhaps we should learn from a dwarf the ways that we mages can be so happy about studying magic.”
“I…uh…” Dagna blinked hard. Had she done something wrong? She was sure of it, but she couldn’t calculate what that might be. She looked between the other faces of the young, fully-Harrowed mages that say with Eloise.
Perhaps it was a human thing?
No. As time went on, she noticed that the other apprentices made a distinct effort to avoid conversation with her. They did not invite her to the secret gatherings in their quarters, which usually consisted of the sharing of any contraband that they could get their hands on – sweets, liquor, sometimes hallucinogenic plants stolen from the stockroom, or perhaps even oils similar to the bottle of Antivan lubrication that she found during her first year at Kinloch Hold. The sweets were saved for the youngest apprentices, while all of the latter went to the teenagers, who required the comfort that this contraband promised in one way or another.
Dagna was tempted to tell the Templars about these secret meetings. She hadn’t even known about them until she quite accidentally stumbled upon one in the middle of the night, at a time that sleep completely eluded her. She liked keeping the Templars in her good graces just as she liked making sure that the Enchanters appreciated her presence, and she did not seem to disrupt the soothing, methodical tasks given to the Tranquil.
But, after giving the idea some thought, she realized that there was no sense causing a great deal of trouble for the older apprentices and the younger Harrowed mages. There may have been a great chasm between herself and them, but it did not mean that she didn’t respect, perhaps even like, them as a whole.
In the middle of one late winter’s night, Dagna awoke with a thought already smoldering within her mind: she was wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, and not in such a way that she could hide behind a shield of innocence any longer. She couldn’t even claim that she didn’t know any better due to her age. She had just turned seventeen, an age when she would have been given increasing levels of responsibility at the forge, were she still in Orzammar. She would have been treated like an adult and expected to act accordingly.
She would have been expected to think accordingly, as well.
She sat there, in the darkness, arms wrapped around her chest, aware of the breathing of all of the Tranquil asleep in the bunks around her. They occasionally sighed in their sleep, as a matter of the body’s reflexes, but they never, ever snored. It was an effect, in the darkness, that brought about its own peace and horror at her own realization.
She had been wrong.
Coming to Kinloch Hold had been the single most exciting series of events in her entire life, and the promise of study with the fulfillment of said promise proved to be no disappointment. But how would she have felt if she had been forced there? Dragged to the Circle? Giving up her caste and family had been a conscious choice, with the inability to ever see her parents again as a consequence of that choice. Some days, that consequence was easier to swallow than others.
In the end, however, it all came down to who had the choice and who didn’t, and she had been acting as though it would have been simply wonderful to be a mage, and therefore be robbed of that choice.
She hadn’t realized this before. Now, she was certain that the other apprentices and Harrowed mages hated her for what appeared to be an enormous amount of insensitivity.
The idea caused tears to sting in her eyes. She had to get out of there. She had to walk down to the kitchens and make herself a cup of tea, maybe have a good cry there, where she wouldn’t disturb the sleeping Tranquil. Then, she decided that she would formulate a plan. She would try to listen rather than to share. She would do something different. What would it be? She wasn’t certain, but she would think of something.
Sliding out of bed, her bare feet pattered against the cold stone floor as she slipped out of the dormitory, heading past the apprentices’ quarters as she wound her way toward the kitchen. The doors to the quarters were opened a crack, and though this crack she could see a light, and movement beyond.
“Ten coppers that Robert can do it by the end of the week.” Eloise’s voice caused Dagna to stop in mid-stride.
“I’m putting everything I have on Cole.” Mockery dripped in the voice of a young male apprentice whom Dagna could not immediately identify.
Pressing her back against the door, Dagna quieted her breathing, listening to the conversation occurring just beyond the thick, ancient wood.
“I thank you for your support.” Dagna knew Cole Mattigan. He was a tall farm boy from the southernmost parts of Ferelden, his muscles still thick from the amount of physical labor done before he was taken to the Circle. “I already know how I’m going to do it, too. Been planning it ever since she came here and opened her stupid, annoying gob.”
“Go on, then.” Eloise sounded slightly irritated. “Show us how clever you are.”
“I think I’ll just make it a surprise,” Cole replied. “Trust me. You’ll see. I’m gonna make that stupid dwarf cry in front of everyone. I’ll embarrass her good and proper, and it’ll look like an accident. She’ll be running back to her mummy and daddy before the week’s out. You’ll see.”
Dagna cried, but silently, with sobs that made sounds no louder than the quiet panting of her breathing. She ran, but almost noiselessly, back to the comfort of her warm bed in the darkness of her cavernous dorm room.
The moment of embarrassment never came, but perhaps this was only due to Dagna’s near-paranoid level of vigilance that came in the following months, and remained for nearly a year. She hardly spoke to anyone but the Enchanters, and then, only when she needed to do so. She ate alone, checked her bed for vermin before even getting inside, and was careful to monitor her own distillation experiments. Her footlocker remained locked. She washed her own clothes.
Karl noticed that Dagna’s mood had taken a sudden and very dramatic turn for the worst. He had intended on discussing it with Irving over lunch, but the lunch meeting never occurred. Karl instead spent those hours under questioning by the Templars.
They blamed him for the escape of a close friend and constant companion.
Dagna blamed herself for her ignorance.
The gilded study of magic lost its luster.