Circle Tower, Lake Calenhad, 9:11 Dragon Age
"First Enchanter! First Enchanter!" Wynne's voice intruded on First Enchanter Irving's wanderings through the Fade, bringing him back through the Veil and into the waking world of Thedas with a sense of foreboding. What he had seen there this night troubled him, as if a power dark and terrible and inexorable as the winter cold was headed directly toward him.
"Yes, Wynne?" he asked his old colleague. He combed his hand through his thick brown hair, down over his fair-skinned face and over his small but growing moustache and goatee. As his vision cleared itself of bleary-eyed sleep, he took in his friend. Wynne was, in a word, stunning. Her hair—which only he had seen cascading down from her head, let out of its severe ponytail—was golden, her grey eyes the color of Lake Calenhad in the sunset. Yet she appeared… distressed.
"First Enchanter. Irving," she said. "Gregoir would see you. It is… urgent."
Irving bolted up, fatigue forgotten, and set about going to his new office, being as recently a First Enchanter as Gregoir, his counterpart, was Knight Commander. Gregoir was not without his faults, but he was an honorable man, and despite his insufferable nature, Irving felt the seeds of respect for him taking root. Nevertheless, he still stormed through the Tower, annoyed at being awoken at that hour but nonetheless nervous as to what had Gregoir at such a state at two o'clock in the morning. Whatever he expected, however, was not what greeted his eyes when he entered his office.
Knight Commander Gregoir was a man of thirty, as Irving was. But you would not know it to see the premature age that had fleetingly set in as he cradled a bundle in his arms. As it wailed, Irving knew it was a baby.
"First Enchanter Irving," said Gregoir. "It seems some of Harkonnen's men"—he grimaced at the name—"went and, on his orders, came upon a Dalish camp in the middle of the night, passing through a few leagues north of here. They fell upon them as they were sleeping, though the elves managed to raise the alarm. The things that they did with the women and female children…" Gregoir trailed off, very obviously shaken.
"So what does that have to do with the child in your arms?" asked Irving. He was not surprised; most if not all templars were nothing more than sadistic bullies, in the Maker's service or no. Lieutenant Commander Harkonnen was one of the worst he had ever had the displeasure to know.
Gregoir took a deep breath. "I found the men at the camp, some torturing, others killing, and still others rutting with elf females both living and dead. Maker, you'd have thought them Chasind! My men and I subdued them, leaving two people still living—this child and its mother. The father had been… gutted. The mother succumbed to her wounds shortly after. This child… it is all that is left of the Surana clan. The only survivor."
Irving looked at him expectantly, though within his heart, great rage and greater sorrow built in equal measure.
"The child, though… it is mageborn."
That shocked Irving. "Are you certain?"
"Deathly."
"But it is an infant," protested Irving. "Magi do not show until at least three or four, and, based on its size, that child is scarcely more than a year at most!"
"Be that as it may, the babe already sleeps with its eyes open."
Irving was taken aback. Sleeping with the eyes open only manifested in the extremely talented when their powers quickened, and with others, only after years of training. For this child to…
"Give it to me," demanded Irving, a decision reached. "If the child must be raised here, I shall do it personally. A child with that much power will be dangerous should it be trained incorrectly."
Gregoir turned the softly squalling child over to Irving, bound in black cloth. It was a boy, large for an elf of its assured age, though what was most striking about the fair-skinned child were his eyes, gleaming a remarkable shade of blue-grey that looked as though it was some of the fabric of the Fade that laid in the baby's skull as opposed to the regular orbs that nested within the ruddy faces of the other, older children there in the Circle. He quieted quickly in the First Enchanter's arms, and Irving felt what seemed to be… tendrils of magic caressing his mind, his gateway through the Veil.
"The elf woman regained consciousness one last time as she died," Gregoir said. "She said the child's name was Eldred."
"Then, Eldred," said Irving ruefully. "Welcome to the Circle of Magi."
