After he'd gotten past the first few days of shock and blind rage, Anders' largest problem in his cell -- and it was a cell, no matter how pointedly anyone else called it a "room" -- was the sheer tedious boredom of confinement.

Senior Enchanter Wynne had stopped by a few times to discuss spirit healing and actually treated him as a person, Maker bless her. And he had been given a few of the dullest and most intensely religious books about the Fade that could be found in the Tower library to study. (He was mainly using them as a sleep aid.) Then there was the intermittent excitement of a meal, to be swiftly followed by the disappointment of realizing Tower food might as well have been cardboard next to the delights of Fandom, as well as the occasional intense, suffocating grief that had gotten him into this situation to begin with.

These occupied his time. But the sad truth was, the best part of most of his days came with visits from the cats-- Lachlan, and the tower's mouser Mr. Wiggums. He found himself almost counting the minutes until they'd slip back into his cell each time they left.

Which was what he was doing now, with occasional failed attempts to read the book he thought of as Mother Somebody's 87th Treatise on Why Demons Are Bad.

Soon there'd be lunch, and then an attempt at an afternoon nap that hopefully wouldn't be interrupted by one of his terrifying Fade dreams. Then a disappointing supper and more sleep. And then 51 more weeks, give or take, of much the same.

To him, it might as well have been 51 years.

[OOC: NFB, NFI due to logistics.]

Anders hadn't realized how much fuss went into a Harrowing, even for a disgraced apprentice like himself. He'd been given a chance to bathe thoroughly the night before, and offered the first proper meal he'd had in days. And while the robes he'd been brought that morning weren't exactly new, they were clean, and of better quality than anything he'd had with him.

He would have been surprised by how fair they were being to him, but he knew the Circle. There was an agenda behind every kindness.

"It is time for your Harrowing to begin," the Tranquil woman who'd appeared silently in his cell door told him, and Anders's stomach acids rose bitterly into his mouth as he moved to follow her.

( Harrowing )

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[OOC: Harrowing ritual wording from Dragon Age: Origins. Anders’ encounter with the cat demon taken from this codex entry. Special guest appearances by spin_kick_snap and icecoldfrost. NFB, NFI, void where prohibited.]