I do not own anything that you may remember from playing Dragon Age: Origins. Anything you do not I gladly claim the blame for.
A/N: It's the second attempt at writing this fic from my end – got as far as the first chapter with the earlier one before realising it didn't come together in my mind as nicely as I like my fics to be. Made some sweeping changes, kept in the bits I'd liked and voila! Hope this thing's palatable.
Prologue
There was definitely something warm and comforting about the Fade, though she stood on unfamiliar ground; in what looked like a Fortress. It was a little like Ostagar, if anything. Neria yawned. She'd love to get some sleep. There must be a place to sleep in this huge pile. Collecting her senses, she scampered across the hall to where she could see Duncan and a couple of Grey Wardens chatting with each other.
Hold on a minute. Duncan? Wasn't there something wrong with that thought?
In a moment, her nimble elven feet had climbed the elevation where the striking Warden Commander of the Wardens of Ferelden stood waiting for her, a kind smile on his face.
But Duncan wasn't ever the smiling type, was he?
He spoke to her. Words of re-assurance, of comfort and indolence, of peace and rest. Such a change – a refreshing change, Neria told herself – from the first time she'd met him in Irving's room in the Circle Tower when he'd spoken of nothing but the Blight.
But she was still in the Circle Tower wasn't she? And she was fighting the Blight. She had come to the Tower for their aid to fight the darkspawn.
Something wasn't right.
She lashed out, a raw, primal energy emanating from her hands in the form of flame, reducing the man – the demon – before her to a charred corpse in a matter of seconds. The two other demons attacked her at that, one with an arrow and another with some flimsy spell that never made it past her arcane shield.
She panted when it was over, the muscles of her taut stomach contracting and relaxing as she breathed in gasps. They were demons of the fade, or wisps of her imagination – depending on how you looked at them, but the sensation that she had just slaughtered the man who had saved her from a fate worse than death (for what else was that Rite of Tranquility?) and her comrades, fellow Grey Wardens, refused to leave her. She closed her eyes and sank to the ground, curling into a ball.
All those promises, all the reassurances she and Alistair had given each other when words were the only things that seemed to keep them going. And now, the last two Grey Wardens in Ferelden were to end up the thralls of a demon?
From the Harrowing to – this. It was different now, but she had come full circle. Oh, she could remember it now. Every moment of it.