When Princess Lyria Aeducan was six, her elder brother Trian had found a rockworm and chased her with it, threatening to toss it into her thick red hair and telling her in detail how it would burrow into her skull and eat her brain. When the prince tired of the game he threw it down onto the tiles and left it there, where it writhed and twisted wildly. Rockworms were, as the name implied, little burrowing squiggly things that lived in the stone. When removed, they were helpless and were usually quickly consumed by predators, although in this case the thing met its end underneath her younger brother Bhelen's boot.
That was fifteen years ago, but as she trudged through the damp soil attempting to keep up with the longer legged humans the image of the little creature completely out of its element rose to her mind. She had been raised to believe that dwarves who lived on the surface were no longer dwarves, and here she was completely out of her own element and probably losing her stone sense with every passing moment. The neverending sky made her stomach churn and twist when she looked at it for too long, and the sun was so bright it stung her eyes. She had spent the first few days of walking staring intently at the back of Duncan's silverite boots and trying not to think of little worms slowly dying of exposure or waiting to get snapped up by some predator's jaws.
Trian was dead and they had blamed her. Perhaps the whole childhood incident had been a strange omen. Bhelen seemed so mild, and yet he had cackled and laughed as he killed the rockworm. Did he laugh when he killed Trian as well? Did he imagine her being similarly crushed as the guards he had bribed swore she had ordered them to kill her own brother? Lyria had always been more a warrior than a politician, and now she regretted not playing politics more. Perhaps she would have seen hints of her brother's manipulations and games if she had. Or at least had an extra tool to use as Bhelen made his play for her father's throne.
She didn't want to think of her father. He must think her dead. Did he also think she was guilty? Lord Harromont had said he believed her when she insisted that she was innocent. But that didn't stop him from doing his duty and seeing her sentence through. And poor Gorim, her second. He had been banished to the surface, forever exiled despite his family's generations of proud and dutiful service to the Aeducans all because he had defended her. His only true crime was that he had loved her, knowing that it would shame her house if anyone learned of it. They had managed one final embrace through the bars of her cell before she had been taken away for her sentence.
She had been cast out into the Deep Roads to fight Darkspawn until she died. But the Grey Wardens had been in the Deep Roads as well, and Duncan offered her a place within them. It was a flicker of a chance, but it was one she greedily snatched up, even if it meant accepting aid from humans. Anything to live and perhaps seek vengeance. The thought of ramming her sword through Bhelen's body was the only thing that kept her going those first few days. That and the hope of seeing Gorim again.
She had gone through the motions of being sociable when the other wardens spoke to her. She blamed her silence on being unused to things like trees and grass and sky. Duncan had masterfully deflected their prying questions, and even continued referring to her by her honorific title for those first few days, using it as a mechanism to make the other wardens see her with a measure of respect, and perhaps give her time to accept that she was 'Lady Aeducan' no longer.
"Hail! You must be the new recruit that Duncan brought." The words came from one of the guards, inspecting people going in and out of the central section of the massive camp at Ostagar.
She nodded wearily to the soldier and managed a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes. "I'm afraid I am," she murmured. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could find someone named Alistair, would you?" Duncan had asked her to seek him out once she had settled herself. Lyria wryly remember lamenting to Gorim how she wished she could have a normal conversation with someone after living in a world where everyone knew her as Lady Aeducan. And here she was, having to introduce herself again and again. She had even had to introduce herself to the human king who asked blithely how the dwarven king was fairing, although the look on his face when she told him that King Endrin was her father almost made up for it. Still, it seemed fate had stopped simply laughing at her and was now rolling on the floor in choking magenta colored fits at her expense.
The guard was respectful as he gestured off towards the old temple area. She said her thanks and slipped away quietly. That was one thing in her favor here at any rate, instead of being treated like some casteless brand or surface dwarf, the Grey Wardens seemed to command a measure of respect and awe around the camp. It wasn't quite the same as being treated as royalty, but it was familiar enough that she was starting to think that being a warden might not be so bad considering the alternatives. It wasn't as though she didn't have any experience with killing the Darkspawn; her and her kin had been fighting them since the very first blight. She had even been named commander and was set to lead a group of warriors into the Deep Roads to clear some of them away. That was until... until Trian had been murdered.
A heated argument tore her mind from its morbid path of thought. Two humans, one in robes and by the way he was cursing the revered mother of the Chantry those weren't religious robes - which meant he was probably a mage. The other was dressed in splintmail with the familiar Grey Warden griffin emblazoned on his shield. A good guess that the latter was Alistair. From what she could gather, the mage was upset over some message Alistair had delivered and was giving the warden a piece of his mind. The fact that Alistair's smile never faded during the exchange only served to make the mage even more livid, and in the end he threw up his hands and stormed off, practically bowling Lyria over in the process.
"I wonder if this is how Andraste felt. Here I am spreading the word of the revered mother to her chosen people and this is the thanks I get," the warden looked past her as the mage vanished around a corner. "I bet he'll cast a spell on me. Maybe make the cheese I had for lunch curdle in my stomach. Oh wait, cheese is already curdled, isn't it?"
Lyria could only stare at first. The silence stretched on long enough that she realized he was waiting for her to respond. "I never really thought about how they make cheese," she finally stammered. This wasn't quite the conversation she was expecting.
Alistair grinned even wider. "You know, that's probably for the best. I thought about where eggs came from once and couldn't eat one for months after that." He raked a gauntleted hand through his cropped blonde hair. "Wait, are you Duncan's new recruit? Or should I be looking for another dwarven woman who looks really really confused?"
Her eyes narrowed. "My reputation proceeds me," Lyria's tone cooled a few degrees. "You must be Alistair."
The warden seemed to sense that he might have struck a nerve, perhaps Duncan had mentioned her exile. That ear-to-ear grin never faded, but his voice softened. "I must be. I'm sorry you had to see that little exchange with the mage over there. The revered mother insisted I deliver a message to him, probably because she knew I used to be a templar and felt like riling him up." He coughed softly. "I don't antagonize people who can turn me into a toad on a regular basis, honestly!"
She knew enough about surface life from her father's trade meetings to know that the Templars were an order of knights who watched over the mages of the Circle, and hunted down any apostate mages. They were probably viewed as guards to a prison by the Circle, and deadly hunters by any mage hiding from them. The dwarves mined and refined the Lyrium that the mages used to power many of their spells so they had steady dealings with the Templars. The ironic part was that dwarves themselves couldn't do magic at all and were largely unaffected by it, and yet they controlled their lifeblood.
"You can rile up as many mages as you like. Just don't hide behind me when the fireballs start flying." She extended a hand. "I'm Lyria. Lyria Aedu- um... I mean. Nice to meet you, Alistair."
"Lyria-I-Do," Alistair chuckled. "I'd ask you what kinds of things you do, but you'd probably go tell Ser Mage that I have this deep burning desire to be turned into a frog, or perhaps a slug. And I'd deserve it."
"Just Lyria." Alistair had shaken her hand firmly, a gesture that she appreciated more than he probably realized. He'd shaken hands with her the way one warrior would to another, instead of delicately wiggling her fingers as though she were some kind of fragile thing like so many other humans had. It seemed as though nobody quite knew how to deal with her. On one hand she was a dwarf, and dwarves were known for their fighting prowess. The war tattoos on her face that she'd gotten when she won her first proving made that point stand out even more. And on the other hand, she was a woman, and a good couple of feet shorter than everyone else around her. Even in chainmail and wearing daggers on her hips, some people still looked at her like she was a child playing dress-up. Duncan had treated her like a warrior, and it was refreshing to see Alistair do the same.
The human warden relaxed a little. "Well then, Lyria, I'm to accompany you and the other recruits as you prepare for your joining. I can't really answer much about the ritual itself, but if you have any other questions that don't involve how to turn me into a frog..."
And that was how she met Alistair. Duncan had said he was one of the newer wardens but didn't go into any more detail beyond that. Of course he didn't say much about the other two recruits either. She sensed that all of them probably had pasts they were trying to forget, or else ones that they knew they would have to leave behind very soon.