A/N: in which olivia just wants to be a good mage

so i'm sort of... diving back into dragon age head first. i'm not 100% certain where this is going, but i've got a couple more one shots done and i think i'll be keeping up with this as i do (yet another) playthrough with olivia. i'm calling this the prologue since it's a bit odd and choppy.

*jazz hands* enjoy, and feel free to let me know what you think. especially since i'm Rusty at this whole dragon age thing lmao

They came in the middle of the night.

Most of the apprentices were already asleep, and those that weren't pretended to be. Olivia, having tossed and turned for hours as Grey Wardens and wars and other anxiety-inducing tower gossip flashed through her mind, was one of those who kept her eyes squeezed shut and her thin blankets pulled up to her chin. If she kept quiet, and if the Maker were to actually hear her silent prayers, then perhaps the templars would pass her up and she would wake in the morning the same way she had ever since arriving at Kinloch Hold.

But the Maker either heard nothing, or chose to ignore the pleas of a mage, because Olivia was roused from her attempt at sleep and led, roughly, out of her bed and away from the dormitories. Her head spun and her vision flashed white as she was suddenly upright, scrambling and stumbling to keep up as her socks slid over the cool stone floors of the tower. There were two templars — one that held Olivia by the upper arm and one that followed closely behind — and a third waiting out in the hall; they explained that it was time for her Harrowing, that she had only the trip to the upper floors to prepare herself.

They met Irving and Greagoir and two more templars upstairs, and the prayers now fell from Olivia's lips in rushed, frantic whispers. She was given warnings and well wishes and empty apologies, but nothing helped — not when she had no idea what to expect, or how to prepare, or what to do.

Olivia's worries — however well-founded — were unnecessary. The Fade was as familiar as the Circle. Nervousness manifested as distrust. The ice at her fingertips formed as easily as the prayers in her mind had. She faced spirits and demons and creatures she had no names for, and as the final test drew to an end and her exhaustion and lack of mana left her with a familiar light, shaky sensation, Olivia found that the test wasn't over after all. Her hesitance and denial had perturbed her ally, the quiet and strangely helpful Mouse, and before she could stammer out another uncertain refusal — the templars would never allow it; rules are rules, after all, and I'm sorry — the apprentice's appearance had shifted into a demon more frightening and intimidating than the one she'd just faced.

Dread chilled her, but before she could even fully comprehended the fear, there was a tug as her mind was pulled from the Fade and she was left staring, wide eyed, up at Irving. Olivia had just enough time to let out a single, shaky breath before she felt consciousness slip from her again.

Do not speak of the Harrowing to those who have yet to experience it, they told her. But Olivia had no desire to, and flinched at the inevitable questioning from the other apprentices.

The continued mention of it made her uneasy, and she busied herself through the rest of the day by hiding out in the library — with the exception of responding to Irving's summons when he introduced her to a visiting Grey Warden — and occasionally watching the templars, studying and scrutinizing them in a way she hadn't before.

They protected the mages, she reminded herself. They watched over the Circle and had such an awful, gruesome duty and Olivia felt sorry for hadn't ever felt so threatened by them than she had during her Harrowing, and yet she could only imagine how much worse they would have felt.

It must be a truly terrible thing, she thought, to be so bound by duty.

In death, sacrifice.

That was all Olivia could recall from the rather dour Grey Warden motto. They were quite the fatalistic bunch, in her opinion, though she couldn't necessarily argue given that the Wardens pledged their lives to fighting darkspawn. The very thought of the creatures sent a chill slipping down her spine, and her knowledge on the subject was limited to what little she'd read in the library.

And the Circle didn't exactly have a vast collection of Warden literature.

Not that Olivia wanted to be an expert on Wardens; they were the heroes of old stories, their adventures regaled in ancient tales — they weren't exactly a modern group that she had any interest in joining. Irving had simply introduced her to a Warden, and no matter how much the senior enchanters gossiped, Olivia wasn't convinced that the Warden Commander had his eye on her.

She kept to herself, and followed orders, and did a considerable amount of reading. She wasn't a good fit for the Wardens.

Besides, they already had several senior enchanters that had left for… somewhere. Ostagar, perhaps? They'd left the tower for a time to assist the Wardens with the war effort to the south, and any one of the enchanters were more talented than Olivia could ever hope to be.

She hadn't even been a mage for a full day.

The thought sent both pride and uncertainty bubbling up within her, and Olivia nestled further down into the blankets of her new bed, enjoying the relative silence of her new quarters. As an apprentice, she'd shared a dormitory with two dozen other apprentices, each with only a small bed and chest for their belongings, with templars stationed around the room. Here, she shared her quarters with two other mages, but they each had their own bedroom and though it was far from private, the templars remained in the common room and were even out of sight at times.

Olivia had a bed — much larger than her previous one — and a wardrobe, and a small bookcase, and so much room that was now hers that she didn't know exactly what to do with it. Some of the other apprentices had asked her about it, and Jowan had even visited her shortly before she'd gone to bed. His initial excuse had been that he wanted to inspect her new quarters, but it had soon become clear he had more to say. Their evening trek to the Circle's small Chantry had left Olivia uneasy, and Jowan's talk of love and escape and tranquility replayed over and over in her mind as tried, in vain, to sleep.

He'd had a point. If Jowan's fears were true, he wouldn't have been the first mage to undergo the Rite of Tranquility in place of attempting a Harrowing; unsettling as the thought was, Olivia couldn't bring herself to agree with Jowan's conclusion that he had no choice but to flee from the Circle. Tranquility was just another of the templars' unenviable duties, meant to protect a mage from themselves as much as it was to protect the rest of the Circle — surely, abandoning that safety was the wrong decision?

The templars had a duty to keep the mages safe, Olivia thought, so she must also have some duty to assist them.

There was no easy way to have such a conversation. But when dawn came, Olivia was at Irving's door despite her uncertainty and the fact that her nerves made her so tense she was surprised she didn't snap when the door to the First Enchanter's office opened.

The stars were much more beautiful in the sky than they were in books.

So much had happened in the past few hours, but the overwhelming sense of doubt and regret and worry vanished — if only for a moment — as Olivia stepped out of the Circle with Duncan. She recognized some things from maps and books and tales told by those who'd been outside before; she recognized the calm waters of Lake Calenhad, the rolling landscape of the hinterlands, and there in the distance was a blotch on the dark horizon, a small shape that could only be Redcliffe castle.

There were new things, too — the chill of the evening breeze, the softness of grass and dirt beneath her thin shoes, the rather pungent smell of the water as she stood at the shoreline. It was the stars, though, that made Olivia stop in her tracks; she stared up at the night sky, transfixed by how enormous it was and how far it stretched and the impossible amount of twinkling specks that dotted it.

Duncan waited patiently as Olivia took everything in; it wasn't until she attempted to begin searching for constellations — where would she even start? There were so many stars it was almost disorienting — that she remembered the Circle and Jowan and the Wardens, and the events of the day came crashing back to her. She deflated a bit, wringing her hands in front of her as she continued following Duncan. She'd betrayed a friend, but his betrayal had been so much worse.

Hadn't it?

Jowan had put his trust in Olivia, yes, but she'd been trying to do the right thing, to protect the Circle and keep her friend safe; Jowan wanted only freedom and to put his life and the lives of countless others in danger. That had to be worse, didn't it? The Warden, at least, thought so, having immediately recruited — or conscripted, though Olivia still wasn't quite certain what that meant, beyond forcing Irving and Greagoir to agree — Olivia after Jowan fled. She didn't think it was a life she wanted, to serve as a Grey Warden, and yet it was clear that she no longer had a say in the matter, and the adventures and heroics that had been previously confined to stories were now to become hers.

Perhaps the Grey Wardens had need of a librarian, or arcanist, or scribe. Olivia would be better suited to that than to a position on the battlefield.