Chapter 42: Kerr
The air inside the Circle Tower wasn’t just cold; it was a specific, stagnant chill that smelled of ozone, old parchment, and fear sweat. Kerr felt it the moment the great doors groaned shut behind him, sealing him in the tomb-quiet of the entrance hall. It was different than he remembered. The bones of the place were the same—the obsidian floors, the vaulted ceiling lost in shadow—but the feeling was wrong. Before, during the uprising, there had been a desperate, violent energy. Now there was just a deep, watchful tension, like a bowstring drawn too tight for too long.
A young templar in polished armor jumped slightly as Kerr emerged from the threshold shadow. The man’s hand went to his sword hilt, then fell away, his eyes widening in recognition. “Your Majesty. I… we weren’t informed.”
Kerr offered a small, disarming smile, the one he used on nervous banns. “Not here as a majesty. Just Kerr. Is First Enchanter Irving receiving?”
The templar blinked, then nodded, gesturing awkwardly up the grand staircase. “He’s in his study. I can escort—”
“I remember the way.” Kerr clapped a hand on the man’s pauldron, feeling the metal give slightly under his grip. “Stand easy. I’m just here to talk.”
He took the stairs two at a time, his soft-soled boots making no sound on the stone. As he moved through the tower, he felt eyes on him. From behind half-open library doors, from the shadowed arches of the apprentice quarters. Mages in plain robes paused their quiet conversations, their expressions a mix of curiosity and wariness. A pair of senior enchanters passing by gave him tight, respectful nods. One, a woman with fire-scarred hands, even offered a tentative smile.
But it was the templars that surprised him more. A knight-captain, standing guard at the entrance to the living quarters, saw him and instead of stiffening into formality, gave a slow, acknowledging dip of his chin. “Warden.” The title, not the royalty. It was a word weighted with shared history, with a night spent holding a staircase against abominations. Another guard, younger, whispered something to his partner as Kerr passed. He heard the word “Highever” and caught a glimpse of something like relief on the young man’s face.
The politics of it were clear. To the mages, he was the man who stopped their extermination. To the templars, he was the warrior who had fought beside them in the dark, who hadn’t flinched. He was a ghost, alright. A ghost they all remembered differently, but none with hatred.
First Enchanter Irving’s study was a cave of knowledge, every surface buried under teetering stacks of books and odd metallic components. The old man himself looked like one of his own artifacts—fragile, covered in a fine layer of dust, but with eyes that gleamed with sharp, unsentimental light.
“King-Consort,” Irving said, not looking up from a diagram of a glowing crystal. “Or do you prefer ‘Hero of Ferelden’ today? The title dictates the conversation, you see.”
Kerr leaned against the doorframe, blocking the light. “I prefer Kerr. And the conversation is about the conclave. I assume you received notice.”
Irving’s quill stopped moving. He finally looked up. “Ah. That kind of visit.” He sighed, the sound like dry leaves. “You prevented the Right of Annulment. You have my personal gratitude, always. But the Circle’s position is… delicate. We are neutral ground. The Divine’s Conclave seeks to mend a schism. My openly aiding a royal of Ferelden could be seen as taking a side.”
“We are on a side already, Irving. Tevinter believes Mages should rule over humanity. Orlais response is the strip them of any rights or dignity. Ferelden is somewhere in the middle and Kirkwall’s Chantry was blown up by a good friend of mine, putting all of us in the middle of this clusterfuck.” Kerr says.
“I would prefer to stay on the outside. We were terribly weakened during the blight. I cannot spare mages for your cause so soon into the rebuild.” Irving says matter of factly.
“I’m not asking for an army,” Kerr said, his voice low and even. He pushed off the doorframe and walked into the room, his presence making the cluttered space feel suddenly cramped. “I’m asking for a crafter. For Dagna. And for the resources to let her work.”
“Dagna is a precious asset. Her mind is a national treasure.”
“And Ferelden is my nation,” Kerr shot back, holding the old mage’s gaze. “You know what’s gathering at the conclave. Every nation under the maker at the behest of Divine Justinia. If that powder keg blows, Irving, your ‘neutral ground’ will be the first place the shrapnel hits. I’m not going there to pick a side. If this goes tits up, everybody loses.”
Irving studied him for a long, silent moment. He saw the young man’s height and breadth, the easy warrior’s grace, but also the new lines of care around his eyes, the hard set of a man protecting his own. He sighed again, this time with a note of surrender. “She’s in the undercroft. Third forge on the left. Try not to disrupt the entire enchantment schedule.”
The undercroft was a cavernous space of heat and ringing noise. The smell of sulphur, hot metal, and lyrium bit at Kerr’s nostrils. He found her at a cluttered workbench, a riot of red hair tied up in a messy bun, her face smudged with soot as she peered through magnifying lenses at a glowing runestone.
“Dagna.”
She yelped, fumbling the lens. It clattered on the table as she spun, her eyes widening behind her goggles. For a second, she just stared. Then a brilliant, uninhibited smile split her face. “You’re here!” She didn’t curtsy or bow. She launched herself across the space and wrapped her arms around his midsection in a tight, unexpected hug, her head barely reaching his chestplate. “I knew you’d come back! Well, I hoped!”
Kerr chuckled, patting her back awkwardly. “Good to see you too.”
She released him, buzzing with energy. “Is it the Conclave? It’s the Conclave, isn’t it? I’ve been running projections! So many variables, but the conflict-potential matrix is off the charts! You’ll need specialized countermeasures!” She was already dragging him by the arm toward a armor stand in the corner. “I started after I heard the announcement. A hunch! I’m good with hunches.”
On the stand was a suit of heavy, masterwork plate. It wasn’t ornate; it was brutal, functional lines of darkened steel. But crawling across its surface, etched with minute precision and inlaid with faintly pulsing silver, were runes.
“See, standard armor dissipates force,” Dagna said, her voice rapid-fire, tapping the chestplate. “But force is kinetic energy. A fireball is thermal and concussive. A lightning bolt is electrochemical. So I asked: what if armor could dissipate magical energy? Not resist. Dissipate. Redirect it into the runic lattice and bleed it off as harmless light or heat.” She pointed to interlocking patterns on the pauldrons, the greaves. “These create a dampening field. It won’t stop a spell completely—nothing can—but it will weaken it. A blast that should vaporize you might just… knock you down. With some bruising.”
Kerr ran his fingers over the runes on the vambrace. They were cool to the touch, but thrummed with a subtle power, like a sleeping heartbeat. “This is incredible.”
“That’s just the defense!” she chirped, skipping over to a separate bench where his old warhammer lay. It was the one he’d carried since Highever, its haft worn smooth from his grip. Now, new runes spiraled along its length, mirroring those on the pair of gauntlets beside it. “The gauntlets are synced to the hammer. The rune here,” she pointed to a complex knot of silver on the hammer’s grip, “and its twin on the palm plate create a telekinetic feedback loop. It lessens the weapon’s effective weight for you. Not the mass, the felt weight. Your swings will be faster. The recovery time between strikes decreases by approximately forty percent!”
He picked up a gauntlet. It was lighter than it looked. He slid it on, flexing his fingers. The rune on the palm glowed softly as he wrapped his hand around the hammer’s haft. He lifted it. Dagna was right. The familiar, solid heft was there, but it felt… responsive, eager, like an extension of his own arm.
“But this,” Dagna said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, her eyes shining with pure, gleeful invention. “This is my favorite.” She took his thumb and pressed it against a tiny, almost invisible rune etched into the inside of the gauntlet’s knuckle. “It’s linked. To the primary rune on the handle. Watch.”
She scampered back. Kerr held the hammer at his side, feeling a new, strange connection thrum through the metal into his bones.
“Now, think of the head flying forward. Like you’re throwing it, but you don’t let go.”
He focused. The runes on the hammer and his gauntlet flared with blue-white light. There was a sound like a cracking whip, a blur of motion, and the blunt, massive head of the warhammer shot forward like a ballista bolt, trailing arcs of telekinetic energy. It crossed the twenty-foot length of the forge in an instant and smashed into a stacked pile of scrap metal with a deafening, catastrophic CRUNCH. Shards of iron and steel screamed against the stone walls.
The head, now separated, lay embedded in the ruined pile. What remained in Kerr’s hand was no longer a hammer haft. From the top, a wicked, three-foot blade of shimmering, rune-etched steel had extended. It hummed with a deadly resonance.
“The spear-blade is mono-molecular at the edge,” Dagna said proudly, raising her voice over the ringing echo. “Dragonbone, regular bone, plate armor—it’ll cut it. And the returning function! Here, throw it! Really throw it!”
Still reeling, Kerr hefted the spear. It was perfectly balanced. He drew back and launched it at a thick wooden beam supporting a distant anvil. It flew true, thunking deep into the wood, vibrating with the impact.
“Now beckon it!” Dagna yelled.
He held out his gauntleted hand, focusing on the connection. The rune on his thumb burned. The spear dislodged itself with a sharp crack, reversed its trajectory in a blur, and slapped back into his palm, the handle settling against his grip as if it had never left. The heavy hammerhead, back in the pile of scrap, shuddered and then zipped through the air, reattaching itself to the base of the spearhead with a solid, metallic clank. He was holding his warhammer again.
Kerr stood in the settling dust and silence, his heart hammering against his ribs. The power in his hands was immense, terrifying. It was a dragon-slaying, army-breaking kind of power.
“Sandal helped with the enchanting stability,” Dagna added, beaming. “He’s good with the ‘boom’ parts. I’m better with the ‘zoom’ and ‘slice’ parts. Together… well.” She gestured at the weapon, at the demolished scrap pile. “You could take on an entire army by yourself with this.”
The sheer scale of the statement didn’t feel like an exaggeration. It felt like a fact. The creeping dread that had coiled in his gut since reading Leliana’s letter, the image of Anora vulnerable amidst a conclave of unstable power, loosened its grip. He wasn’t just a shield anymore. He was a decisive, overwhelming response.
He looked from the ruined metal, to the humming spear-blade, to the small, soot-smudged genius bouncing on her heels in front of him. The path to the Conclave was still shrouded in political mist, a labyrinth of words and tempers. But now, for the first time, facing it felt less like stepping into a storm unarmed. He had a way to change the weather.
He slid the other gauntlet on. The runes across the armor stand seemed to brighten in answer. “How soon can you have it all ready?” he asked, his voice quiet in the aftermath of the boom.
Dagna’s smile was all the answer he needed.