This story will contain spoilers for Asunder. It will *not* make assumptions about Inquisition and it will *not* include characters who have been introduced in the Inquisition pre-release info.
CHAPTER 1: FOREST EDGE MANOR, LOTHERING
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Normally I don't see much point in telling my life's story. People have already decided who I am no matter what I say. Of course, it's not as if they have walked beside me during my dreams, and their nightmares are theirs, not mine, but none of this stops others from thinking how they know what is best for me.
I sometimes wonder why certain people commit themselves to misunderstanding me. Sure, my choices have been governed far more by convention than by idealism. At least, until now.
Almost nine years have passed since my Harrowing in Kirkwall's Circle. Three weeks ago, I left Kirkwall to travel north, away from the fighting, although soon we'll turn west for Andoral's Reach and when we arrive the war will certainly find us.
Just a few days ago we met up with mages who had left Ostwick. As our group traveled with theirs, I became friendly with a young women named Marta. She might have been harrowed the following year at Ostwick Circle if the circles still remained along with the now defunct Nevarran Accord.
Marta was working on mastering her elemental spells and, while she had a natural knack for this school of magic, her technique could benefit from better form. I decided to train her at noontime breaks and during evening camp, just as I would for any other apprentice. This decision was not born merely from benevolence or as a natural extension of my rank in the Circle. Our group had mapped a route through dangerous lands and we would need every trained spellcaster we had. In order to avoid the war in the Free Marches, we were about to trek through the dense Wildervale and then risk passage through the southern desert of the Silent Plains. No matter how irrational warring men might be, there is never any hope in reasoning with dangerous beasts.
One evening Marta asked me how I had mastered control over the element of fire, so I told her a story about me and my father and a lesson he gave me when I was thirteen. This happened just after I began to show an intuition for working with fire.
My father took me deep into the swamplands in the wilds, south of Lothering. We left our house in the morning and followed a rutted road that narrowed to a footpath after a few hours. When sunbeams filtered down through the canopy from straight above our heads, the footpath nearly disappeared. It became nothing more than an intermittent deer trail and even the Chasind signs that had previously marked the trial could no longer be found.
My father claimed we were going to large lake deep within the wilds but I didn't believe him. I figured that he was just scouting for a good spot to practice wound along the tops of mossy ridges and splashed our way through marsh. Just past noon, as I pushed between ferns with leaves that grew past my chest, I saw the lake my father had promised. The deer trail cut a path right down to the primeval lake's edge.
The bank was thick with rushes and sedges, but we found a clear spot on a flat boulder that jutted out into the lake like a dock constructed by the Maker's hand. My father unwrapped cheese and mustard greens sandwiches. I ate my fill while dangling my bare feet in the water. Then, for the rest of the afternoon, we worked elemental spells without a single concern of templars spotting us.
My father guided me as I focused on the purest of the elemental forces. Inside my mind I nurtured the tiniest sparks while imagining steel striking flint and sparks catching on linen char cloth. Slowly, I fed those smoking seeds of fire to nest of jute fiber, all imagined within the fade. Blowing gently, I waited for the spark to spread and then — POOF! — out came fire from the fade and the moment I saw that ball of fire burning in the palm of my hand, I threw it off into the lake and shouted. I even whooped and hollered while waving my hands high above me head. After my father picked me up and spun me around in the air, I went straight back to work, practicing over and over again, conjuring one ball of flame after another until I could create a fully formed fire in just a matter of seconds.
Marta's eyes grew wide as I told this tale. "Ferelden's Circle let apprentices out into the wilds? Why weren't templars there, watching over you?"
"I didn't grow up in the Circle," I said.
Oh, poor Marta. She gasped like a fish out of water until the air inside her burst out in fits of halting laughter. Her mouth contorted until settling into a broad, incredulous smile. "Enchanter Bethany! The tales you tell! You are such a sly joker. I wish you had been my mentor at Ostwick Circle. You tell the best stories."
"You don't believe me?"
Marta roared in laughter and slapped her thighs. "Oh, Enchanter Bethany! My mentor made me read The New Treatise of Fire and Ice written by Enchanter Malcolm Hawke. All of the apprentices had read it. They tested us on it. Let's see what I remember. 'The spirit of the Wildfire strike the heart of the forest, burning bushes and brambles and dried logs. This is the spirit of the untamed fire. Such spirits are thoughtless. They are only capable of lashing out until they have consumed every stick of fuel on the forest floor. This is how Nature manifests the spirit of fire. Nature lacks our capacity to think and reason. Nature cannot shape fire nor can it constrain fire. When we pull the spirit of fire from the Fade, we must do what Nature cannot. We must maintain control from the moment the first flame sparks to the moment we put the flame out.'" Marta gleamed with pride for being able to quote a passage flawlessly. "I know that you've read The New Treatise," she said. "You made your students read it, didn't you? Everything that book describes about the school of element magic is exactly what you've taught me. The book even uses your cooking fire example."
"Page fifty-three," I replied as I nodded my head and gave her a practiced smile.
"I knew it!" Marta shouted. "Although you almost had me for a moment when describing the deer path through the woods. You're a very good teller of tales."
Nod and smile.
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Ten years earlier when I first arrived in Kirkwall, I learned that often it best to act agreeably. Always with the templars but even with mages too.
Nod and smile.
By the end of my first year in Kirkwall, this sequence of gestures had become so practiced I almost forgot how freely I had expressed my feelings when with Carver. Sometimes I wonder if a part of me died at the bottom of that cliff just south of Lothering.
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My childhood memories fit neatly within a few square miles centered on the town of Lothering. Carver and I had just turned seven when my family settled there. Before that, we moved from village to village throughout the Bannorn. Our family never stayed in one place long enough for prying questions that uncovered the truths we hid.
Father thought a larger trading and farming town like Lothering would be more welcoming to folk like us. The town marked the intersection of the West Road and the Imperial Highway so the town's people were used to seeing outsiders, even Chasind folk and surface dwarfs. That's why father thought we would blend in even though we mostly kept to ourselves, making our home on the town's eastern outskirts.
Father called our house the Forest Edge Manor, which always made my mother laugh. I was too young to understand that this was a joke. When we first moved in I thought our one room cabin was mighty grand. Far better than staying in small rented rooms, or sleeping in a tent or in hay lofts. During our second summer, my father had two more rooms built and all the walls daubed and chinked, ready for winter. The woods of the wildlands came right up to our Forest Edge Manor. A stream cut in front of our house, two dozen yards up the path from our front door. Father called that stream our castle mote and joked about how we should replace the wooden footbridge with a heavy iron drawbridge to protect the fine manor of Lord and Lady Hawke. My brothers and I pretended to be the children of the Forest Edge's Arl and Arlessa. We guarded the footbridge and climbed the great oak where our path met the road, while pretending that the tree was our watchtower.
For seven years my father worked his unique magic on Lothering, weaving kind words with genuine charm.
One evening after supper, he staggered a little as he stood up. He complained about how dizzy he felt. When my mother asked him what was wrong, he shrugged. Too much sun after a hard day of work, he said. He was tired and he sounded it, although it seemed odd to me that one side of his body had already fallen asleep. Father passed away sometime that night, going peacefully without warning. One day he was with us, the next day he was gone.
Overnight, our Forest Edge Manor shrunk to a three room cabin at the end of a dirt path on the outskirts of a southern Ferelden town. My brothers and I were immediately thrust into adulthood.
Emile took charge and Carver became angry and restless. As much as I adored my two brothers, sometimes I secretly blamed Emile for trying too hard to fill shoes that were far too large for his feet. Please don't think poorly of me for saying this. Emile wasn't intentionally doing wrong, but he was only twenty-one the year father died, and mother was inconsolable.
And I was a mage.
Things had been different when father was around. Oh, sure, I ran and hid whenever templars stopped by but whereas my father always handled them with a calm ease, Emile would take a deep breath and straighten his shoulders.
As far as I knew, either the templars in the Lothering Chantry had been oblivious to what my father and I were or they had reason to politely look the other way. No matter which it had been, once my father had passed away, the protective veil cloaking me disintegrated. I felt nakedly obvious when walking around Lothering. Maybe nothing had changed in Lothering and all the change had happened inside my brothers and myself.
My father always had an easy going sense to him. Emile clenched his jaw and told me not to stand out. After a month, I decided not to venture out of my family's house but, a week later, when Karina stopped by to sell us fresh butter and Emile answered the door, Karina said people were worried that I had become ill because they hadn't seen me next day, Emile told me to accompany mother to the village market, so I went. It felt good to get out of the house and make small talk with others. Weeding for Elder Miriam and running errands. Dropping into the Chantry and listening to the sisters telling stories. Visiting Katrine and playing with her baby. Life almost went back to normal. Almost. Except father was gone and nothing could fill the gaping hole he had left in our lives.
And then word of a blight spread. When soldiers from the king's army came to Lothering, my brothers signed up. Frankly, they didn't have much of a choice. Darkspawn raids had taken place to the south only a six day march from our town. If a larger horde formed and moved north, we would be directly in it's path.
Just a few days after my brothers left, Lothering changed. Chasind poured in and bartered for supplies. Wagons full of farm families from tiny villages piled up on the southern side of our town. The price of milk and bread tripled overnight and we sold our chicken's eggs so quickly that I hauled the empty crates back to our house before the morning dew could finish evaporating. Within two weeks, Lothering's population swelled twice over. Two weeks later, nearly everyone was gone.
Mother and I waited for my brothers to return.
Late in the morning a month after they had left, Ser Bryant walked up the path to my family's house. I ran from the window and hid beneath the bed. Ser Bryant's heavy gauntleted fist rapped on the door. My mother hesitated.
"Is something wrong?" mother said, her voice shaking as she inched the door open.
"The horde is advancing. We're evacuating the town today."
"But— but my sons haven't yet returned. Other soldiers from the king's army came through at sunrise. Surely my boys are almost here."
"Messere Hawke." Ser Bryant spoke softly, even gently, despite him being a templar."I and most of my men are escorting the Chantry priests and a group of merchants to Denerim. We're leaving at noon. The rest of my men are gathering the remaining villagers and taking them to Redcliffe. One of the wagons heading to Denerim still has room for a few more trunks, and for you and your daughter."
"I cannot leave until my sons return."
"The horde could be here as early as tomorrow morning. You can't stay."
I didn't dare look out from beneath the bed but I could hear the heels of my mother's shoes nervously shuffling in place.
"Are you packed yet?" Ser Bryant asked.
"Yes. Almost."
"Then I'll send the wagon here. Go fetch Bethany. We're leaving in less than an hour."
Ser Bryant's armor clanked in protest as he turned and began to walk away. If only he would walk out of our lives forever. Although, a part of me felt wrong thinking that. Ser Bryant was a very kind man. He always had been. But Ser Bryant commanded the templars of the Lothering Chantry. If forced to travel for weeks with him and his brethren, I'd almost rather chance the horde. Almost. Had Emile been here, he would have figured a way out of this mess.
"Wait." I heard my mother say.
"Yes?" Ser Bryant replied.
"When are the others leaving for Redcliffe?"
"Elder Miriam wants that wagon train across the bridge by early afternoon."
"I have friends in Redcliffe. I should go there instead."
"They hardly have room left on their wagons. You wouldn't be able to take more than a single, small packing trunk."
"That's fine. As I said, I have friends in Redcliffe."
I heard Ser Bryant sigh. "Fine. I'll send Ser Donall to help you. Be ready to leave when he arrives."
"Of course," my mother replied.
I heard my mother close and latch the door. I looked out from under the bed and saw my mother's slumped posture, her face hidden behind her hands. She let out one single sob before she exclaimed, "Where are Emile and Carver? Other soldiers have returned. They should be back by now."
"They're on their way," I said. "They should be here soon." This wasn't a lie. In the morning, my brother's friend Marten returned and he said that Emile and Carver had survived the onslaught at Ostagar. They were with another group of men and Marten was certain they weren't more than a half day behind.
"Let's go find them," Mother replied.
"But Ser Donall will come looking for us soon."
"I'm not leaving without Emile and Carver!"
"You don't plan for us to go to Redcliffe, do you?"
"Not after what happened the last time we lived there."
"Then were are we going to go?"
Mother looked away. She shook her head. "Maker… I don't know. Let's find your brothers first. We'll decide then."