Dragon Age: Bound in Blood
Authors Note: Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to yet another Dragon Age Origins Fanfic throwing around the tired old premise of Duncan managing to get 6 origins covered. This story will contain F!Cousland, F!Tabris, F!Mahariel, M!Amell, M!Brosca, and M!Aeducan. There will be romance. No slash, however. I'm not sure I could write slash seriously without offending anyone, to be honest. Sorry.
Anywhoodle, just wanted to comment on the fact that I will try to make this more than simply writing the script of the game with some love scenes. I'm going to try to make things better, but I garuntee nothing. However, if you have any suggestions for how I can improve my writing, please let me know. This is for relevant things, though, such as if I have too many paragraph breaks or frequently mis-spell a word, not an invitation for you to tell me to ship Brosca with Morrigan or have Mahariel side with the templars.
Dragon Age and all related intellectual property are not mine. They belong to Bioware and the other developers of the franchise. I receive no profit from the posting of this work, other than the satisfaction of good reviews...hopefully.
Prologue: Prophecies.
Deep within the Korcari wilds, a single shack sat amidst the quagmire. The light of a lone candle flickered from the window. From the shadows emerged a wolf, which, almost curiously, pauses right before the door. A cloud passes over the moon, darkening the night, and when it has moved on, a woman, not a dog, stands before the shack. She opens the door, and steps inside.
"Mother, what are you doing up this late?" she asks, annoyed if anything by the apparently unusual sight. Before the fire sits an old, wizened woman, legs crossed and fingers twined. She chants an ancient tongue in a low voice, and the younger woman remains silent, sitting upon the cottages single chair.
The old woman continues her chant, never seeming to pause for breath. She then slowly raises her hands up, and there is a flash of light between her palms. When the light dissapates, the old woman stands up, unusually limber for all of her age.
"To answer your question, girl, I have sown the seeds of the future." she says, her old voice raspy from her earlier exertion.
"Have you been scrying again? Mother, you know that scrying is innaccurate most of the time. The future is not something that you can pin down until it is too late to do anything about it." Morrigan, the young woman complained, although there was a small eagerness at the opportunity to lecture her mother.
"Patience, child...now come here. There are things that I must inform you about. We must prepare."
Life on the road is rarely easy at the best of times. Life on the road battling the forces of evil is even more difficult. But twas the life of the Grey Wardens, and a life that Duncan knew well. He had just finished his shift watching the camp, and settlled down on his bedroll. Alistair, the junior warden under him, had taken guard now. Trusting in his apprentices capabilities, Duncan drifted into a well deserved sleep.
In the dream, Duncan browsed the Marketplace of Denerim, ignoring the fact that the sky had turned a deep, bloody red color and that demonic creatures were intermingled with the usual shoppers and merchants. He was drawn to the booth of an older woman with straggly white hair, whose merchandise seemed to fit into no easy catagory. One might have thought her a gem cutter for the pair of gemstones that she on her booth. One of them was a ruby that was covered with a fine layer of dust, and another one a diamond with a large crack running through it's surface. However, the bloody wedding ring that sat next to those bore no jewel. Nore did the mirror that hung on a peg by on the booths side poles. Duncan glanced into it, and was curious to see how it refused to reflect his face.
The next two items were even less related to the others. One was a torn banner for the Cousland family, lords of his own hometown of Highever. The last one was a single tome, with the image of a tower stamped upon the front. When he reached out to touch the book, the cover flipped open on it's own, and the pages rapidly began turning.
The old woman, with a single wave of her hand, promptly whisked the merchandise away, and pulled out a map. A large map of all of Ferelden, yellowed with age. Tiny figures moved across it, and Duncan leaned over, entranced.
Alistair, his own junior warden, fell from the top of a tower and was impaled on top of an ornate gold crown. A dark haired young woman turned into a spider and spun a web connecting the various areas of the map to one another. A red headed chantry priestess played a silver flute and danced a jig, before using her instrument to stab a soldier. A giant of a man was imprisoned in a cage made entirely out of swords. A dwarf dug a hole in the ground desperately, only for the sides to repeatedly fall inwards and erase his hard work. A dark skinned elf cut his own throat with a sickly grin. An old woman transformed into a ball of radiant light, and winked out of existance. A statue like figure beat itself over the head with a hammer until it shattered.
Now these figures dissapeared, and new ones took their place. A band of Dalish hunters ran away from a pack of werewolves. Two dwarves sat upon an anvil, arguing, until another statue crushed them with a hammer. A mage and a templar sat on opposite sides of a glowing barrier, attempting desperately to break it down before some unseen force grabbed the mage and pulled her into the shadows with silent scream. Villagers ran in horror from rotting corpses that emerged from lake Calenhad. During all of this, a slow, bloody stain began to move from the bottom portion of the map, near Ostagar, slowly advancing until it completely covered the map.
Duncan jolted awake, and paused. He quickly reached into his pack and pulled out a small pad of paper, a bottle of ink, and a quill, and took down a few hurried notes while the dream was fresh in his mind. Alistair, hearing the commotion, turned and was puzzled to find his commander jotting down several unusual words. Werewolves, dalish, golems, corpses, bloody wedding ring, templars, mages...
"Alistair, something has come to my attention. I want you to continue southward to Ostagar and rendevous with the rest of the wardens there. I have some pressing matters to attend to. Tell King Cailan that we must wait for the Warden Reinforcements coming from Orlais." Duncan had stopped his writing and begun to pack up the camp. Alistair, knowing better than to question his superior, assisted. When they finished, Duncan put one hand on the shoulder of his young companion.
"Alistair, when you arrive at camp, please let Richu and the circle mages know that they are to prepare for a joining ritual. Have up to a dozen ready for the time I get back. I intend to bring new recruits in with me, just in case. Tread carefully, and Maker watch over you." Donning a traveling cape and shouldering his pack, Duncan headed west, leaving Alistair next to the remains of a campfire. The confused Jr. Warden felt an unusual hum about the air, and paused. THe feel of magic in the air was unmistakable, but just as he was about to pin it down, the energy dissapated, rushing into the earth, beyond the reach of his templar capabilities.
"...Maker watch over us all." he mumbled, and headed south, not realizing that it was far from the Maker that watched him now, from the cottage in the swamp.