Prologue Part One: Packing For Armageddon

You'll have to hear the whole story.

Not long before dawn, Lothering slept to the sound of sirens. It was an expected noise, a distant wail coming from Ostagar, rising and falling in time with the pulsing light of warfare that glowed on the Southern horizon. Even a hundred miles away, the sound was just barely audible enough to fill the cool night air with a ceaseless, uneasy mourning drone. As long as the sirens closer to home did not sound, however, the remaining citizens of Lothering slept more or less easily.

There had been assurances for days from the clean-cut news announcers with their clipped, deliberate, practical voices that the distant sirens were merely a precautionary warning. There was no reason to panic. An evacuation would not be necessary. Tune to any news station, any radio feed, and the King's voice rang out with golden assurance that the forces currently stationed at Ostagar would quite definitively nuke the Darkspawn presence off the face of the planet. Without, of course - the King's recorded voice would let out an indulgent chuckle - the use of an actual nuclear weapon. The worst case scenario depended on reinforcements, not weapons of mass destruction. Lothering would be safe, and in the morning the displaced citizens that had been evacuated from the neighborhoods outside the ruins would be returned to their homes, with little more than lost sleep as the cost.

Most news channels were happy to run the footage of His Majesty waving genially as he donned his fatigues and armor. Even in this day and age Cailan was of a singular mind to honor tradition: Like the Kings of Old, he too would face the Darkspawn on the battlefield, alongside his men. If this was considered suicidally insane by any newscasters covering the story, they kept that opinion under lock. Meanwhile independent news blogs posted long, scathing rants about the King's flippant attitude towards what was easily one of the biggest disasters in contemporary history. There had been long centuries since the last Blight; it hadn't quite been lost to memory, but the sudden sting of having the band-aid removed to reveal the pulsing sore still very much alive under the surface had every media outlet on Thedas twitching with the anticipation of blood-soaked job security.

It would be another hour before the news feed would cut to the choppy aerial video from one last, brave news chopper that had fled from the slaughter, only to crash among the few surviving soldiers fleeing the field. The flickering video would skip and glitch between scenes of battle and the sudden vertigo spin of freefall. The audio would not make it to the air - someone prudently decided that the cameraman's screams - The King is dead! Oh, Fuck, oh Maker, he's fucking dead!! were not, at the moment, considered good television.

Jets streaked overhead, heading South in v-shaped formations, rattling windows as they flew across the dim greenish darkness above Lothering to the orange pallor of Ostagar. They passed over the small clutch of downtown skyscrapers, the long stretch of the freeway, sleeping neighborhoods of Lothering's suburban outskirts, dark streets and silent houses - most empty, as the occupants had thought it better to get out of town while the getting was good, some still filled with sleeping families now used to the distant, constant wail of the emergency sirens.

They passed over a young woman who liked people to call her Hawke, vigilant on the front porch of her parent's house, smoking a black-paper clove cigarette as she watched the jets leave vague vapor trails in their wake. She sat quiet as a Golem on the steps, guarding the front door as her mother and sister slept within.

A hundred miles away, her brother and a cousin she'd only met once were somewhere among the heaving crush of soldiers standing ready to face the Darkspawn oozing up from the Deep Roads. Here, she had arrived home only hours before, stepping over the threshold for the first time since not long after her brother had decided to go off to war. As soon as news had come that Lothering was in the path of the projected chaos, she had returned, hitching rides home from the few cars willing to head towards the warzone. It had been long days of exhausting travel, by foot and by car. The welcome had been warm, but dulled by the absence of her brother, and the looming worry of what might be.

What will be, was the thought that plagued Hawke. As much as she hated the cold assurance there was no denying that her gut had never steered her wrong; especially when prophesying certain doom. What will be. No matter what the news said. How long do we have to run?

Long enough, she hoped. With the haze of fatigue threatening to cut her vigil short, she hoped to every God she could remember the name of that they would have long enough. Enough time to wake her sister and her mother, enough time to run.

Her mother had retired early and Bethany had eventually passed out on the couch, but Hawke kept awake. Exhaustion and anxiety had mixed their curious alchemy sometime around dinner, providing a second wind that had carried her long past midnight and into the small hours of the morning. One day, she'd look back on those few extra hours with bitter gratitude.

She'd cleaned. First the dishes from dinner, then the rest of the kitchen. The dining room, the living room, bathroom, everything had gotten a once-over. Not that the house needed to be cleaned, between Bethany and Mother the place hardly ever saw a mess, but she'd needed something,anything to focus on that wasn't the shuddering feeling she got whenever she turned her back to the South. But there was only so much she could clean, and around the fourth time she'd hauled out the vacuum to tackle an imaginary spot on the carpet, Bethany had gently taken her aside and simply… held her. For just a few minutes, saying nothing.

It had been enough to get her to abandon the vacuum, at least. But as soon as Bethany had left her alone long enough to think, that ice-in-the-intestines feeling had returned and she knew that there would be blood in the streets soon, one way or the other, and that come what may there was not a snowball's chance in Andraste's scorching boudoir that she was going to let any of that blood be her family's. At least, the family she could defend; Carver and that cousin - Lukas? - were far from reach now, and whatever the news said, she knew that there was an even slimmer chance of either of those two getting out of that shithole alive than anything else. The thought sank its claws into the back of her throat andsqueezed.

So, with no cleaning to do, she began to pack.

Little things, first. She'd gone to her and Bethany's room, quietly yanking out drawers, arranging the bare necessities into small piles for each of them on the bed. Underwear, socks, functional bras. Two changes of clothes each. Sleeping bags, just in case. Hand sanitizer, tampons, minor medications, hair brushes, utility knives, rubber bands, twine, scissors, lighters. Hawke dug the spare packet of cigarettes she'd stuffed under her mattress - Bethany hated that she smoked, and would hate it more when she found out Hawke hadn't quit like she'd promised - and put it in with her little pile. With the cigarettes had been a wad of cash; that she split evenly between the piles as well. There were no electronics; the Hawke family had learned long ago that the key to their safety was to live as far off the grid as possible. None of them owned a cellular device, and the one computer the family shared had rarely ever been used.

In the closet the sisters had shared were the heavy-duty hiking backpacks that had seen much use - for good or ill - during their childhood. She checked the first aid kits were stocked with all the basics - bandages, antiseptic, sutures and stitching material, chocolate, painkillers, three vials of a restorative potion and one ampule each of a potent Lyrium potion. One each wouldn't cut it if they had to make a break from Darkspawn, however. She repacked the first aid kits and the rest of what she'd divided, then set the backpacks by the door.

That task completed, Hawke had crept across the hall to her parents' bedroom. Her mother was asleep in the gentle arms of Prince Valium, fallen on the bed in a diagonal stretch, one arm over her eyes, the other clutching a sweater that had belonged to her late husband. Leandra's quiet, drug-induced snore was the only sound in the room.

Hawke gently repositioned her and tucked her under the covers. She couldn't bring herself to remove the sweater, instead resting a hand on it only briefly before she twitched the blanket over it as well. Then, she turned to the closet, removing one of the backpacks that had been stored there, and began to pack her mother's things. Only the necessities now, best not to put in anything sentimental unless the worst really did come to pass, but the backpack would be ready. She belied this fact by taking another of her father's sweaters from the closet, and carefully putting it away with the clothes she'd already packed for her mother.

She had left her mother's room, then lingered in the hallway. Down further, just at the end, was Carver's room. The door was open a crack, but the room had been empty for months.

Carver hadn't waited for the Draft once word got out that another Blight - the first in something like four hundred years- was possibly working its horrible way up from the long-abandoned Deep Roads. He'd signed on with the King's Army Reserves as soon as he'd gotten wind of the action. The ensuing row when he'd revealed his plans to enlist had been nothing short of stupid, in retrospect. What had started as genuine concern for her only brother - who was barely even of age - going off to war had ended with a petty squabble that she couldn't even think about too long without feeling an embarrassed, angry flush creep up the back of her neck. In the end, Carver had enlisted, and Hawke had gone West to Redcliffe. Being a stubborn idiot was definitely a trait that ran strong between the two of them.

The hollow pull of his empty room had drawn her. She'd pushed open the door with a finger, glancing in sideways. The bed, dresser, and dumpster-recovery TV set were all in their right places. Over the few years they'd lived in the place Carver had plastered a good corner chunk of the wall by his bed thickly with flyers from clubs that still indulged the local youngsters with underage admission and free music. Hawke had often played chaperone, milling around by the bar while Carver and Bethany mingled with other kids their age, enjoying the freedom of being just another face in the crowd. He'd whined and complained about it, of course, and whined louder every time she had to keep him from getting into a fight, or out of one. But they'd all gotten home safe, and for each of those little victories there was a flyer plastered on his wall.

She'd hovered in the doorway, turning slightly to take in the rest of the small room. His desk had been left a scattered mess of left-behind pencils and stray pieces of paper, a book hung half-off the side to hold the place he'd left off reading. Hawke glanced at the cover. Hard in Hightown by V. Tethras; a favorite she'd loaned to Carver months back, after Bethany had snatched it from her as soon as she'd turned the last page. Between the three of them, the spine had been broken, the pages foxed. The cover curled back from the rest of the book as it perched lopsidedly on the edge of the desk.

Hawke had picked up the novel, carefully holding Carver's place with a finger. He'd stopped at a bad point; the hero's back was up against a wall, with no help in sight in the middle of a deadly conflict. Of course, this being a Tethras novel, the hero's wit and cleverness would win the day, at least until the next crisis loomed. She placed the novel back on the desk, just where it had been before. She hadn't cleaned in here. Carver had done well enough on his own, and now that he was gone it was just another unnecessary trespass to do anything other than opening a window to let in a little fresh air.

There would be no backpack in his closet; he'd taken it with him to war. There was nothing she could do for him here. Hawke quietly backed out of the room, and nudged the door back to where it had been.

She went downstairs.

The TV was on in the living room, turned to low volume while Bethany dozed on the sofa. Hawke stopped to drape a blanket over her before going to the kitchen.

The pantry was stocked with the usual junk, and thanks to Bethany's intense need for organization it was the work of just a few minutes to separate the road food from whatever would be too cumbersome to carry or too inconvenient to prepare on the run. Hawke piled boxes on the kitchen table: energy and cereal bars, pop tarts, trail mix, jerky of the beef, turkey, and tofurkey varieties. Sunflower seeds, mixed nuts, cookie and chip snack packs all went to the table as well. Stocked to her satisfaction, she set about separating everything into three even piles, unboxing bars and tarts, pouring economy-sized bags of seeds and nuts into smaller sandwich bags for travel. After the work of an hour, she packed each of the three piles into small bags of their own that could be snatched and stuffed into the backpacks at a moment's notice. Emptied bags and boxes she tossed into the recycling.

With those tasks done, there was one more that required her attention. Hawke went to the small door next to the pantry that opened down into the low-ceilinged basement. She ducked down the stairs, avoiding the ones that creaked, stretching out ahead of herself to pull the chain for the single light bulb that illuminated the little room.

There wasn't much down there but for a washer, a dryer, and storage. Holiday decorations, winter clothes, the leftovers of a family who had, through much struggle, managed to settle in the house for more than a few short months before having to flee again. Once Hawke and Bethany had grown into their powers - and gained the necessary control to continue living freely with said powers - there had been little need to flee into the night due to an accidental spell cast at the wrong time. There had also been enough time in this house to set aside a small space for a few clever Apostates to hone their talents, and store the requisite supplies for spellcasting. These things were stored behind the rickety staircase, in a small shelf hidden behind a larger one, built by Carver and their father on a sliding frame.

Hawke had pushed the false shelf out of the way, revealing the smaller storage space. There wasn't much there; it would have been extraordinarily stupid for any of them to try stockpiling any magical equipment. Lothering wasn't particularly heavy on Templar Enforcement, where Apostates were concerned, but Malcolm Hawke had always advised caution of his children, and practiced it himself. After the early years of constant moving to avoid Templar scrutiny, avoiding any more of that business was unanimously confirmed to be an excellent idea.

Still, there were necessities. Composition notebooks filled front to back, written mostly in Malcolm's neat, smooth handwriting. The newest volume was a mess shared between the two sisters. The handwriting varied from precise cursive on Bethany's pages to nearly illegible chicken scratch (though she argued she could read it just fine) on the pages Hawke had filled. Next to the notebooks were the Herbals - one a dictionary of all herbs and their properties for use by Mages, and its twin being the same for strictly non-magical medicinal uses. Bethany got more use out of those than Hawke ever had; healing was not the skill of the elder sister.

Next to the Herbals was an old, old spellbook. Leatherbound, Malcolm had claimed it was an heirloom. The pale cover had been stained dark with blood in one corner, and there were pages that wouldn't unstick no matter how many tricks the sisters had tried (Malcolm had forbade them from touching the book, when he was alive) and still sometimes reeked as though the blood had been spilled fresh. Hawke had her suspicions about the book's origin, and those stains, but had kept them to herself, and her father had never offered an explanation. She knew his opinions on blood magic, and could infer enough on her own without having to dig. Whatever reason her father had for keeping a book like that, it must have been a sound one.

The rest of the shelves were stocked with smaller things - a few scrying stones, crystals, little tools for magical workings. Dried herbs and compounding materials for small scale potions and spells. And then, there were the shot bottles.

There was something of a boom black market for Lyrium, among Apostates. While the stuff was readily available at specialized retailers for reasonable prices, only Mages registered with the local Circle had the clearance to purchase any. All of those retailers, of course, were Chantry controlled and often had at least one Templar on staff. Identification cards scanned at the register showed the Mage was an approved, Harrowed Mage of the Circle and the transaction would take. Unharrowed apprentices weren't even let out of the Circle Tower, and thus had no reason to be buying Lyrium at an outside retailer. Should anyone else attempt to make a purchase, the store would refuse the sale, and the Templar on Duty would then take their duty seriously. No intelligent Apostate would just walk in to the local Apothecary for a potion.

An intelligent Apostate would, however, would know that there were plenty of shops that sold energy drinks in tiny little plastic shot bottles, and would know that the right shops would have a shelf of those little bottles with expired labels behind the counter. Little bottles whose seals had already been broken, contents emptied, and then refilled with refined Lyrium potion of varying potencies. Ask for a Ginkgo energy shot and you'd get a bottle from the front counter. Ask for the blue-leaf Ginkgo energy shot, and the knowledgeable shopkeep would reach to that special shelf, and you'd be paying right out the nose for those tiny little shots.

There were ten arranged on the shelf; each had cost as much as two of the larger first aid ampules that she'd packed into the kits upstairs. Hawke had quietly sent up more than one prayer of thanks that Lyrium potions were nonperishable over the years, and this was again one of those times.

The potions went into two bags, one with seven, to go to Bethany, the other with three for herself. If they had to run, if they had to fight, Hawke could do so well enough without needing to rely on magic. Bethany was a firebrand, but also would need to heal for them, if things got rough. If she ran out of mana at a crucial moment… well, best to make sure that didn't happen.

The crystals and herbs would have to stay behind, along with most of the tools. The scrying stones and mirror could stay as well - Hawke could use a cracked compact just as well as the ornate, silver-backed piece that had been a birthday gift. Beautiful, cherished, but if she broke it while fleeing Darkspawn she'd feel worse than leaving it behind for some future urban spelunker to perhaps get use of.

She thought twice about the herbs, grabbing a fistful of dried elfroot and packing that in with the bottles. Then she turned her attention to the books.

The notebooks wouldn't be difficult to carry, so they would be packed up. The Herbals would stay - they were heavy hard-back textbooks, and had no real practical value. The leatherbound tome, however… that would have to come with as well. It would be a gamble carrying it; getting caught with a book that had one whiff of blood magic about it was a get into jail free card on the best terms, and a quick trip to Andraste's arms at worst. Still, taking it with was better than risking it falling into the hands of someone that would actually use it.

Hawke had then tucked the tome and notebooks under her arm, gave the shelves one more once-over, then slid the false shelf back into place. Gathering up the potions and elfroot, she then clicked off the light, and ascended the stairs again.

The books and potions were set with the provisions she'd organized on the kitchen table. She leaned back from the table to peer into the living room. Bethany was still fast asleep on the couch. The TV had switched to a commercial advertising special Mabari dental bones. The clock on the wall near the sofa ticked itself to just past three AM.

She again went over what she'd gathered. Food, clothes, medicine… anything that could easily be carried along in a hurry. She'd brought plenty of cash with her from Redcliffe; with the savings from under her mattress it would be enough to set them up somewhere for at least a month. Anything else would be tied up in her mother's bank account. Everything was more or less in readiness; all she had to do now was pack the backpacks with what she'd separated out. If it was necessary.

Maker. Please. Don't let it be necessary.

There was nothing left to do but wait. Hawke had drifted around the house anyway, sometimes lingering next to the sofa, watching the looping news reports of the army's march on Ostagar. They were confident that the campaign would be successful; Loghain's forces would soon be arriving to provide necessary backup to the main body of the army already stationed in the ruined parts of the ruined city. Air support from Redcliffe would suppress any movement from the Kokari Wilds National Forest. The protests that the land those jets would be firebombing were protected Dalish reservations had dried up weeks ago, with no Dalish to represent themselves and carry the protests further.

She'd gone back up to check on her mother, still sound asleep under the covers.

She'd grabbed the backpacks and stuffed them full of the provisions she'd gathered.

She'd climbed under her bed, and Bethany's, pulling out the long-handled tactical riot spears that they used as staves, checked the edges on the spearheads, and put them with the backpacks.

She'd pulled the gun from its lockbox in her father's desk, then packed it away in her mother's bag.

She'd paced the house again.

And again.

And then, finally, she'd fished the pack of cigarettes out of her backpack and gone to the front porch to watch the Southern sky.

She smoked in silence, listening. Waiting in the small hours before dawn.