Where was she? Aurora had searched Kirkwall up and down, visiting the markets, walking along Hightown, and even dipping into the less savory parts of the city, but Milly was nowhere to be found. At first it was nothing that Aurora worried about, but as time elapsed Aurora grew more and more anxious until she couldn't wait any longer. She'd scrubbed Kirkwall clean searching for her, and making a number of trips back to her home just in case she'd returned while Aurora was out-- but always she ended up disappointed and just that much more worried. Aurora stood at the mouth of Hightown, leading into Lowtown for the second time that she realized that no matter how many times she searched the streets, she wasn't just going to happen upon Milly.
It wasn't an easy revelation, and it planted a seed of fear into her mind. What happened to her? Was she okay? Where was she; all questions that ran through her mind. It took a forcible effort on her part to calm down and methodically run through her options. Holding her mouth tightly she leaned against the nearby building and began to think logically. Milly was either somewhere hidden within Kirkwall or somewhere along its perimeter-- there hadn't been enough time for her to get too far away. Wherever she was however, she was hidden from Aurora's sight. Kirkwall was a large city, with many nooks and crannies that a girl like her could slip through.
Aurora couldn't do this by herself, she realized. She would need help. The idea that she was simply overreacting graced her thoughts. Even if she was wrong and Milly was safe, Aurora didn't want to chance it on the bare possibilty that something might have happened. She could apologize for overreacting. It was decided then, she'd enlist help on finding Milly, and the closest person who would was Lucien. Shoving herself off of the wall she took a turn and made a beeline for the familiar housefront.
A series of sharp raps echoed in her ears, and the moments spent waiting for Lucien to answer his door felt like an eternity each as her hands nervously wrung each other in nonstop movement.
The person who answered the door was not, in fact, Lucien, but a middle-aged elven woman with dark chestnut hair. A fair bit shorter than their guest, she blinked up at Aurora with honey-colored eyes and smiled pleasantly. āYouād be here for Lucien, then,ā she guessed, and opened the door a little wider to admit the redheaded mage. Inside, the usual chairs had been pushed to the side of the room, to make space for what looked to be the assembling of a fishing line of some variety, if the smooth pole and gut-line were anything to go by. A teenaged boy sat with the pole balanced over knobby knees, pushing stray auburn hairs back out of his face. His sister, a girl of perhaps ten years with the same burnished hue to her long braids, glanced up briefly, but the boy was too absorbed in what he was doing.
Lucien poked his head out from the back room, then, the smile heād started to form faltering at the look on his friendās face. āAurora?ā he asked cautiously. āWhatās wrong?ā
Her hands were clasped and pressed against her lips, looking like it was taking physical action to keep her worry at bay. Aurora was putting forth a valiant effort to keep calm, and instead of bursting at the seams once Lucien asked the question she took a deep breath and chose her words carefully. A moment passed as she collected her thoughts and peeled her hands apart in order to speak without obstruction. "It's Milly," She began evenly, though the obvious worry played out clearly in her body language, "She's missing."
"I've searched the city top to bottom but I couldn't find a trace of her," She said. Her fingertips began to unconsciously drum against each other, an outlit for the anxiety. "I'm not sure what else to do Lucien. I need help," She said plainly, fearing the time wasted dancing around the question would put Milly that much more out of her reach.
Lucien grimaced sympathetically. That was not good news in the slightest, and he sighed through his nose, trying to consider all the angles they could really do anything about. āI thinkā¦ that we may wish to consult Sophia. She would at least be able to make an inquiry into whether or not the Templars took her to the Gallows, discreetly and without risk of raising any red flags.ā If Aurora were to inquire, it might be a little suspicious, and he didnāt have any authority to wield if someone refused to give answer. One might wonder why he was putting his nose where it didnāt seem to belong, and that might in turn bring suspicion upon his friends. But the Viscountās office? They could simply be making a routine check regarding the status of apostates in the city. It was something to ask Sophia about, anyway. Perhaps it worked differently here.
āNot that I want to assume thatās what happened,ā he amended kindly, ābut it would make a good start to a search without any other leads. Perhapsā¦ you should seek out Amalia as well? She would know if Milly happened by the Alienage recently, which she might have done if she thought she needed to hide from someone.ā It wasnāt much, but at the very least it was something to start with. āI can make the visit to the Keep if you want to take care of the other one.ā She was a much more commonāand probably welcomeāsight in the Alienage than he was, anyway.
āIn the meantime, Desne,ā he said, addressing the other woman in the room, who was discreetly making herself as scarce as one could in such a small house, āIf a young elven lady comes by the house, please let her in and tell her it wonāt be long before I return, if you would be so kind.ā The woman nodded, glancing between the two before she went back to what she was doing.
"It's... A start," She said hesitantly. It was always a possibility that the Templars were involved, and something she never outright dismissed, but something she didn't wish to acknowledge either. If they were involved, then it wouldn't a simple task to retrieve her from their hands. It only meant that they needed to work faster. If they dallied too long, then Milly would be locked away in the Gallows before they had time to save her, and escaping from a Circle was difficult enough the first time.
"Let's hurry," She said, turning and heading for the door.
As it happened, the door was opened from the inside to reveal Rilien, his hand raised to knock. Blinking slowly, he lowered the arm he had been about to use and folded it into his sleeves with the other. He glanced back and forth between Ser Lucien and Aurora, but perhaps surprisingly, it was to the second that he spoke. The expression she wore was decipherable enough, and so he didnāt waste the breath asking if she was aware that her friend was missing. Instead, all he said was: "I know where she is. You will want allies.ā It would be best to explain more fully only when they had sufficient people to retrieve her, as he rather favored not repeating himself multiple times.
A breath hung up in her her throat as surprise at finding Rilien in the door way melted into the surprise that he knew where she was. Turning back to Lucien, a new look of determination filled her eyes. If Rilien felt she would need allies, then she would find allies. "You get Sophia, I'll find Amalia. We'll meet at the clinic and go from there," She said, slipping past Rilien and heading toward the Alienage.
Nostariel had been rather surprised when Rilien arrived, unannounced and unaccompanied, at the clinic. He was also apparently uninjured, and unencumbered, which meant that she had not simply forgotten that she was due for a delivery if potions today. Fortunately, he was as direct as ever, and the situation had soon been made clear to her. Finishing with her last patient, sheād put away all of her supplies and drawn a few things down from the shelves that she thought might be helpful, placing these into a neat stack on the table at the front of the room.
Aurora and Amalia were the first to arrive after that, as they had considerably less far to travel and fewer public obligations to get away from, she supposed. The Warden didnāt say much, but she did offer the other mage a hug upon seeing the obvious anxiety she was exuding. It was very understandableāshe couldnāt imagine what sheād be doing if her best friend had mysteriously disappeared in a city like this, and that Milly was a mage only made things worse. The only thing sheād had to offer was that the girl had finished her last shift at the clinic as usual, and nothing odd had been going on all day. It wasnāt much, but apparently Rilien knew more.
When Lucien and Sophia showed up, then, she made sure there were enough chairs for those who wished to sit and herself took up a stool behind her counter, her attention moving to the Tranquil as he began to speak. "She was taken by Templars, but not to the Circle,ā he said without preamble. "They were not dressed in the official regalia, either, which was unusual for what should have been a routine part of their business. I followed.ā What exactly had made him do that, he couldnāt say, save perhaps that he was a suspicious person, and that even for someone like him, it was impossible to not have some stake in such matters as these. He lived with a mage, after all. One rather likely to accidentally use magic in front of the wrong people, as sheād already proven on more than one occasion.
"They are being held on the Wounded Coast, inside some kind of cave or tunnel. There was more than one mage in it, and more than one Templar. How many, I could not say for certain.ā But the amount of magic heād sensed in the place had definitely not been the work of Milly alone, especially considering sheād been subdued by Templar arts when she realized she was being taken outside of Kirkwall rather than to the Gallows.
There was a certain tenseness in Sophia's body language, something that had been growing ever since Lucien had come to fetch her from the Keep. It had been fortunate timing; an hour earlier and Sophia would not have been able to leave, forced to continue seeing to her court duties, but he'd managed to catch her just as she left the throne room for her private quarters. She'd actually been in quite the good mood previously, as her father had seemed much brighter than usual for some reason. Saemus was still his usual sulking self, but Sophia was certain there was little she could do about that. He needed space, was all.
But now this business with Templars and apostates was rearing its ugly head, and Sophia was beginning to naturally question her lack of action. Aurora she felt more certain about, as she had perhaps the best tutor in the city, if it was a cool head she was seeking, but her friend Milly... did she have the same guidance? She spent time with Nostariel, which certainly couldn't hurt, but compared to Aurora, she lacked experience in maintaining a low profile, fresh from the Circle as she was. Perhaps she would be better off with the Circle mages... Sophia thought this, but dared not suggest it, with Aurora as distraught as Sophia could remember her since Ketojan.
"It certainly doesn't sound right," Sophia said, leaning against the armrest of the chair Nostariel had brought for her. "It's possible some Templars or civilians have tried to take matters into their own hands, as they did with the Qunari delegates. There would be no need for secrecy otherwise. Milly is an apostate, after all." Still, it was awful timing. Compared to the Qunari, the mages weren't causing so much as a whisper of trouble lately. Weren't there enough problems already?
"I'm willing to investigate this with you," she said to Aurora, "but if this turns out to be something officially sanctioned, I'm afraid I won't be able to help." That she knew of multiple apostates within the city and had not reported them to the Templars was bad enough. If she took up arms against them, she and her family would likely go the way of Viscount Threnhold. "It doesn't sound like that's the case, however."
Sometimes, Lucien really disliked that he seemed to be inherently suspicious of circumstances like this. Then again, that natural inclination not to trust people who wielded clerical authority had last made its presence known during the Ketojan incident, and it had turned out to be rather on-point in that case. Stillā¦ he wasnāt sure what had happened, but to hear Rilien tell it, it was highly irregular. He would have to wait until he really knew what was going on before he decided anything, but on the face of it, he was moved by his friendās distress. That Rilien had bothered to follow spoke to something odd about the situation as wellāthe Tranquil was very good at picking up on things that others might miss, and following them to the right conclusions, even if they happened to be rather uncomfortable ones. At the very least, Aurora had a right to know what had become of her friend, and he could do that much without even the faintest hint of reserve. What happened after would be a matter for deciding once he knew the facts.
Aurora's face was satin veil that billowed from within. Her expressions were even, but even so it was apparent she was barely holding on. It could found in the small things, the dullness in her eyes, the way she clenched her arms, the color that drained from her face as Rilien spoke. She put up a brave front, but she was shaken to her core. Why couldn't it have been her instead? Why had they have to go after Milly instead? Guilt poured into her soul. She knew it was irrational, to bear the entire fault on her shoulders. Milly had her choice, and she had made it by following Aurora into Kirkwall. Even so, it was a far off thought, hidden beneath layers of worry, anxiety, and fear.
Words were spoken to her and it was through no small effort on her part that she managed to hear them. Aurora could only manage a nod before she steeled herself. She had to be prepared for what was to come, she couldn't waver-- not when Milly's freedom was on the line. She reached deep inside and for the first time mentally repeated the name of her mother in order to draw stength from that word-- and not only that one, but Milly's name as well. She closed her eyes and inhaled, letting the cool air wash the unnecessary emotions away. It was not the time to feel, but to act.
Sliding her hand under the scarf at her neck, Aurora clutched at Ketojan's amulet and nodded, the satin veil turning to iron in front of everyone. She understood what Sophia had said, she had her choice to make, same as Aurora. However, if she had to fight Templars to ensure Milly's freedom stayed hers, she would without hesitation. She understood the risks and the consequences of that course, but to her it was the only choice. "I can't ask for anything more than that, from any of you," She said quietly. She took another breath, then looked up to Rilien and nodded.
"Where did they take her?"
It wasn't an easy revelation, and it planted a seed of fear into her mind. What happened to her? Was she okay? Where was she; all questions that ran through her mind. It took a forcible effort on her part to calm down and methodically run through her options. Holding her mouth tightly she leaned against the nearby building and began to think logically. Milly was either somewhere hidden within Kirkwall or somewhere along its perimeter-- there hadn't been enough time for her to get too far away. Wherever she was however, she was hidden from Aurora's sight. Kirkwall was a large city, with many nooks and crannies that a girl like her could slip through.
Aurora couldn't do this by herself, she realized. She would need help. The idea that she was simply overreacting graced her thoughts. Even if she was wrong and Milly was safe, Aurora didn't want to chance it on the bare possibilty that something might have happened. She could apologize for overreacting. It was decided then, she'd enlist help on finding Milly, and the closest person who would was Lucien. Shoving herself off of the wall she took a turn and made a beeline for the familiar housefront.
A series of sharp raps echoed in her ears, and the moments spent waiting for Lucien to answer his door felt like an eternity each as her hands nervously wrung each other in nonstop movement.
The person who answered the door was not, in fact, Lucien, but a middle-aged elven woman with dark chestnut hair. A fair bit shorter than their guest, she blinked up at Aurora with honey-colored eyes and smiled pleasantly. āYouād be here for Lucien, then,ā she guessed, and opened the door a little wider to admit the redheaded mage. Inside, the usual chairs had been pushed to the side of the room, to make space for what looked to be the assembling of a fishing line of some variety, if the smooth pole and gut-line were anything to go by. A teenaged boy sat with the pole balanced over knobby knees, pushing stray auburn hairs back out of his face. His sister, a girl of perhaps ten years with the same burnished hue to her long braids, glanced up briefly, but the boy was too absorbed in what he was doing.
Lucien poked his head out from the back room, then, the smile heād started to form faltering at the look on his friendās face. āAurora?ā he asked cautiously. āWhatās wrong?ā
Her hands were clasped and pressed against her lips, looking like it was taking physical action to keep her worry at bay. Aurora was putting forth a valiant effort to keep calm, and instead of bursting at the seams once Lucien asked the question she took a deep breath and chose her words carefully. A moment passed as she collected her thoughts and peeled her hands apart in order to speak without obstruction. "It's Milly," She began evenly, though the obvious worry played out clearly in her body language, "She's missing."
"I've searched the city top to bottom but I couldn't find a trace of her," She said. Her fingertips began to unconsciously drum against each other, an outlit for the anxiety. "I'm not sure what else to do Lucien. I need help," She said plainly, fearing the time wasted dancing around the question would put Milly that much more out of her reach.
Lucien grimaced sympathetically. That was not good news in the slightest, and he sighed through his nose, trying to consider all the angles they could really do anything about. āI thinkā¦ that we may wish to consult Sophia. She would at least be able to make an inquiry into whether or not the Templars took her to the Gallows, discreetly and without risk of raising any red flags.ā If Aurora were to inquire, it might be a little suspicious, and he didnāt have any authority to wield if someone refused to give answer. One might wonder why he was putting his nose where it didnāt seem to belong, and that might in turn bring suspicion upon his friends. But the Viscountās office? They could simply be making a routine check regarding the status of apostates in the city. It was something to ask Sophia about, anyway. Perhaps it worked differently here.
āNot that I want to assume thatās what happened,ā he amended kindly, ābut it would make a good start to a search without any other leads. Perhapsā¦ you should seek out Amalia as well? She would know if Milly happened by the Alienage recently, which she might have done if she thought she needed to hide from someone.ā It wasnāt much, but at the very least it was something to start with. āI can make the visit to the Keep if you want to take care of the other one.ā She was a much more commonāand probably welcomeāsight in the Alienage than he was, anyway.
āIn the meantime, Desne,ā he said, addressing the other woman in the room, who was discreetly making herself as scarce as one could in such a small house, āIf a young elven lady comes by the house, please let her in and tell her it wonāt be long before I return, if you would be so kind.ā The woman nodded, glancing between the two before she went back to what she was doing.
"It's... A start," She said hesitantly. It was always a possibility that the Templars were involved, and something she never outright dismissed, but something she didn't wish to acknowledge either. If they were involved, then it wouldn't a simple task to retrieve her from their hands. It only meant that they needed to work faster. If they dallied too long, then Milly would be locked away in the Gallows before they had time to save her, and escaping from a Circle was difficult enough the first time.
"Let's hurry," She said, turning and heading for the door.
As it happened, the door was opened from the inside to reveal Rilien, his hand raised to knock. Blinking slowly, he lowered the arm he had been about to use and folded it into his sleeves with the other. He glanced back and forth between Ser Lucien and Aurora, but perhaps surprisingly, it was to the second that he spoke. The expression she wore was decipherable enough, and so he didnāt waste the breath asking if she was aware that her friend was missing. Instead, all he said was: "I know where she is. You will want allies.ā It would be best to explain more fully only when they had sufficient people to retrieve her, as he rather favored not repeating himself multiple times.
A breath hung up in her her throat as surprise at finding Rilien in the door way melted into the surprise that he knew where she was. Turning back to Lucien, a new look of determination filled her eyes. If Rilien felt she would need allies, then she would find allies. "You get Sophia, I'll find Amalia. We'll meet at the clinic and go from there," She said, slipping past Rilien and heading toward the Alienage.
Nostariel had been rather surprised when Rilien arrived, unannounced and unaccompanied, at the clinic. He was also apparently uninjured, and unencumbered, which meant that she had not simply forgotten that she was due for a delivery if potions today. Fortunately, he was as direct as ever, and the situation had soon been made clear to her. Finishing with her last patient, sheād put away all of her supplies and drawn a few things down from the shelves that she thought might be helpful, placing these into a neat stack on the table at the front of the room.
Aurora and Amalia were the first to arrive after that, as they had considerably less far to travel and fewer public obligations to get away from, she supposed. The Warden didnāt say much, but she did offer the other mage a hug upon seeing the obvious anxiety she was exuding. It was very understandableāshe couldnāt imagine what sheād be doing if her best friend had mysteriously disappeared in a city like this, and that Milly was a mage only made things worse. The only thing sheād had to offer was that the girl had finished her last shift at the clinic as usual, and nothing odd had been going on all day. It wasnāt much, but apparently Rilien knew more.
When Lucien and Sophia showed up, then, she made sure there were enough chairs for those who wished to sit and herself took up a stool behind her counter, her attention moving to the Tranquil as he began to speak. "She was taken by Templars, but not to the Circle,ā he said without preamble. "They were not dressed in the official regalia, either, which was unusual for what should have been a routine part of their business. I followed.ā What exactly had made him do that, he couldnāt say, save perhaps that he was a suspicious person, and that even for someone like him, it was impossible to not have some stake in such matters as these. He lived with a mage, after all. One rather likely to accidentally use magic in front of the wrong people, as sheād already proven on more than one occasion.
"They are being held on the Wounded Coast, inside some kind of cave or tunnel. There was more than one mage in it, and more than one Templar. How many, I could not say for certain.ā But the amount of magic heād sensed in the place had definitely not been the work of Milly alone, especially considering sheād been subdued by Templar arts when she realized she was being taken outside of Kirkwall rather than to the Gallows.
There was a certain tenseness in Sophia's body language, something that had been growing ever since Lucien had come to fetch her from the Keep. It had been fortunate timing; an hour earlier and Sophia would not have been able to leave, forced to continue seeing to her court duties, but he'd managed to catch her just as she left the throne room for her private quarters. She'd actually been in quite the good mood previously, as her father had seemed much brighter than usual for some reason. Saemus was still his usual sulking self, but Sophia was certain there was little she could do about that. He needed space, was all.
But now this business with Templars and apostates was rearing its ugly head, and Sophia was beginning to naturally question her lack of action. Aurora she felt more certain about, as she had perhaps the best tutor in the city, if it was a cool head she was seeking, but her friend Milly... did she have the same guidance? She spent time with Nostariel, which certainly couldn't hurt, but compared to Aurora, she lacked experience in maintaining a low profile, fresh from the Circle as she was. Perhaps she would be better off with the Circle mages... Sophia thought this, but dared not suggest it, with Aurora as distraught as Sophia could remember her since Ketojan.
"It certainly doesn't sound right," Sophia said, leaning against the armrest of the chair Nostariel had brought for her. "It's possible some Templars or civilians have tried to take matters into their own hands, as they did with the Qunari delegates. There would be no need for secrecy otherwise. Milly is an apostate, after all." Still, it was awful timing. Compared to the Qunari, the mages weren't causing so much as a whisper of trouble lately. Weren't there enough problems already?
"I'm willing to investigate this with you," she said to Aurora, "but if this turns out to be something officially sanctioned, I'm afraid I won't be able to help." That she knew of multiple apostates within the city and had not reported them to the Templars was bad enough. If she took up arms against them, she and her family would likely go the way of Viscount Threnhold. "It doesn't sound like that's the case, however."
Sometimes, Lucien really disliked that he seemed to be inherently suspicious of circumstances like this. Then again, that natural inclination not to trust people who wielded clerical authority had last made its presence known during the Ketojan incident, and it had turned out to be rather on-point in that case. Stillā¦ he wasnāt sure what had happened, but to hear Rilien tell it, it was highly irregular. He would have to wait until he really knew what was going on before he decided anything, but on the face of it, he was moved by his friendās distress. That Rilien had bothered to follow spoke to something odd about the situation as wellāthe Tranquil was very good at picking up on things that others might miss, and following them to the right conclusions, even if they happened to be rather uncomfortable ones. At the very least, Aurora had a right to know what had become of her friend, and he could do that much without even the faintest hint of reserve. What happened after would be a matter for deciding once he knew the facts.
Aurora's face was satin veil that billowed from within. Her expressions were even, but even so it was apparent she was barely holding on. It could found in the small things, the dullness in her eyes, the way she clenched her arms, the color that drained from her face as Rilien spoke. She put up a brave front, but she was shaken to her core. Why couldn't it have been her instead? Why had they have to go after Milly instead? Guilt poured into her soul. She knew it was irrational, to bear the entire fault on her shoulders. Milly had her choice, and she had made it by following Aurora into Kirkwall. Even so, it was a far off thought, hidden beneath layers of worry, anxiety, and fear.
Words were spoken to her and it was through no small effort on her part that she managed to hear them. Aurora could only manage a nod before she steeled herself. She had to be prepared for what was to come, she couldn't waver-- not when Milly's freedom was on the line. She reached deep inside and for the first time mentally repeated the name of her mother in order to draw stength from that word-- and not only that one, but Milly's name as well. She closed her eyes and inhaled, letting the cool air wash the unnecessary emotions away. It was not the time to feel, but to act.
Sliding her hand under the scarf at her neck, Aurora clutched at Ketojan's amulet and nodded, the satin veil turning to iron in front of everyone. She understood what Sophia had said, she had her choice to make, same as Aurora. However, if she had to fight Templars to ensure Milly's freedom stayed hers, she would without hesitation. She understood the risks and the consequences of that course, but to her it was the only choice. "I can't ask for anything more than that, from any of you," She said quietly. She took another breath, then looked up to Rilien and nodded.
"Where did they take her?"