I hate being knocked out. I've had my fair share of that already, and waking from unconsciousness to confusion is probably the most unpleasant experience I've ever had. And even after a few times you're still not used to it.
It's even worse to wake up with an aching head while two thugs drag your limp body through a corridor, the smooth stone barely illuminated by a couple of smoking braizers.
My escort hauls me through a door into a yet darker room, empty safe for a stone chair of familiar dwarven design. They dump me on it.
I raise a hand to feel my aching nose – well, my whole skull's throbbing with pain, but my nose is the worst. But I can't feel anything unusual, not even a swelling, and when I take the hand away the dark leather of the gauntlet isn't stained with blood.
Something moves in the shadows and I almost jump. Almost. You develop a thick skin when you live through what I did.
It's a woman, a human woman. Tall, lithe, clad in black armour with an eye in a sun emblazoned on the front. Short dark hair, a sharp face like a bird's, amber eyes to tanned skin.
She opened the book in her hands. From my low seat I couldn't see the pages, only the cover: ornate, decorated with the same eye-sun-symbol as her armour.
"I've had gentler invitations," I say. My voice is hoarse, my throat dry like parchment. How long had I been out?
"I am Cassandra Pentaghst, Seeker of the Chantry." She nods, and the thugs leave the room without a word.
I place the smallest of smiles on my lips and relax ever so slightly, now her guard-dogs are gone. "And just what is it you're seeking, Messere Pentaghast?"
"The Champion."
"Which one?" I ask, examining a rip in my left glove as if I had no care in the world.
She loses it that. Three quick, sudden steps and she's standing in front of me, throwing the book on the run. It hits me exactly on my poor sore nose. "You know exactly why I'm here!" The book falls open into my lap, and then her bare blade is at my throat. "Time to start talking, dwarf. They tell me you're good at it." The dagger flashes downwards and stabs the book.
Nevarran accent, I recognise it now. Apparently they don't teach children how to handle books there. She turns away and I examine the skewered page. Right through the crest.
"What do you want to know?" I ask, adding a nervous laugh for good measure. She likes intimidating people, that Cassandra Pentaghast.
"Everything," she says, facing me again. "Start at the beginning."
I touch the unscathed page of the book. Six faces – vague silhouettes only – arranged in a circle. Isabela's top, as always.
Garrett Hawke's dagger pierced a hurlock's heart. He wrenched the blade free as the creature fell, turning for the next enemy. He ran at a group of snarling darkspawn, and, faster than the dumb things could react, took two of them down. A third one's curved blade sliced dangerously near his neck through the air. Thankfully it missed, and the foe had no chance for a second try: It was swiped away by the fiery blast of Bethany's staff.
Garrett nodded a thank in his sister's general direction, then kept picking off the few stragglers left alive by the mage's spells. Soon enough, the siblings were standing next to each other, enjoying the air of battle.
"We can't keep this up forever," warned Bethany.
Her brother flashed her a smile. "Maybe we'll be lucky and they'll run out of darkspawn."
A new group of hurlocks approached the sandy hill. "Here they come," announced the mage unnecessarily. "Shall I deal with them?"
"Allow me." Garrett's blade made quick work of the creatures; three strikes and they had fallen with deep gashes in their bodies. More and more darkspawn came at the siblings, but the Hawkes dispatched of them with ease.
Suddenly, they felt a rhythmic tremble run through the ground and a huge horned creature with almost scaly flesh climbed the hillside. Small yellow eyes shone with malice over a mouth filled with sharp teeth. Spit flew through the air as the ogre roared a challenge.
Bethany answered it with a frost spell that froze the creature in place. Garrett rushed at it, ignoring the hurlocks approaching; their blows glanced off his armour without dealing damage. The rogue's blades sliced through the backs of the ogre's knees and, for good measure, its ankles.
Garrett jumped away from the crippled foe before it could move again and dealt with the hurlocks while Bethany finished off the ogre from a safe distance.
Soon enough though, they were encircled by scores of cheering darkspawn. "There's no end to them," Bethany said, despair in her voice.
Garrett blinked the blood from his eyes and studied the foes. They were not yet advancing, but he could see how bold their numbers –
A new shout tore through the air; similar to the ogre's but deeper, older, more animal. Garrett's head whipped around and he saw movement on a high rock nearby. Purple cloth seemed to flutter in the wind for a moment before it revealed its true form: two gigantic wings, joined to a massive scaled body. On a long neck sat a heavy head crowned with horns.
The very creature this age had gained its name for.
The dragon took flight with another scream, and in the hot winds its wings caused, dust rose from the ground and veiled the field of battle. White fire streamed from its mouth as it swooped -
"Bullshit. That's not what really happened!" Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast wipes away my fantasies of flame and glory mid-sentence with a swipe of her hand.
Apparently they don't teach children in Nevarra how to treat storytellers either. Besides, how would she know what happened there? "Does that not match the story you've heard, Seeker?" I ask with a sliver of confidence. I know how to deal with people, especially angry people.
"No, it does not. The Champion was a woman, and she had no sister but a brother. Carver. And this…battling a dragon? You must think me a fool, dwarf!"
"Sadly, Seeker, the dragon part is about the only truth in this tale."
She glares at me. "Do you have any idea what's at stake here?"
I have. Probably more than she, even. I was there when it happened, and I slowly start to think I'll be there when it ends. "Your precious chantry's fallen into pieces and put the entire world at the brink of war. And you need the one person who could put it back together. To tear mages and templars away from each other's throats. To restore order. You need Hawke."
"The Champion was at the heart of it all when it began," retorts Spitfire. Her pacing, turning, twirling is maybe supposed to intimidate me but is just annoying. Back, forth, now so close I think I'll permanently damage my head by looking up so straight. "If you can't point me to her, tell me everything you know."
"You aren't worried I'll just make it up as I go?"
She stares at me, unblinking, unwavering. "Not at all."
I wish I had such faith sometimes.
"There is no Hawke."
She takes it silently. I wait for the words to sink in, but Seeker Spitfire doesn't react.
"It's a sham. A lie. A convenient trick. There is a Carver out there, and a Bethany, and even a Gamlen Amell and a Leandra. Isabela, Varric, Merrill, Anders, Aveline, Fenris" I look at our faces on the page as I say our names "are real. Hawke's nothing more than an idea."
"What?" Hello again, dagger. Almost started to miss you. The Seeker snarls like a mabari, and for a moment I think she'll just kill me.
I gently push the blade away from my throat. She doesn't resist. "It was my idea. There was just something so incredibly stupid about the way it all fell into place. It was just chance, you know? Andraste's arse" – she winces at the curse – "we shouldn't have even met. It's easier to have someone to blame, to point to, to say, 'hey, it was Hawke, not me'."
Spitfire laughs. I wonder she can even do that. "The beacon of the rebellion, a lie?"
I raise my hands in defence. "We didn't know it would go that far. It was just…I guess you need the whole story to understand."