Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or Doctor Strange any of their related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.

Rating: T

Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Origins DLC, Awakening, and Dragon Age II, Dragon Age II DLC, Dragon Age Inquisition as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling. May also contain spoilers for Doctor Strange movie and/or comics.

Prologue: A Cold Day in Hell...

It was an exhausting journey. He'd trudged many long miles, up and down the rugged Frostback mountains, with no destination in mind other than to get as far away from anywhere he knew there to be settlements or people as possible. He hadn't even seen an Avvar clan in several days of travel. Perhaps… perhaps he was nearing the place at last. He came to a snow-capped peak and stood on trembling legs and peered through the whipping snow all around himself. Visibility was low. There was a small hollow area just right to curl up in nearby. Yes, this looked to be a good place. No one would ever find him here, not soon enough for it to ever matter, at least.

He let out a long breath of relief and tamped his walking stick against the snow-covered rock. Not the end he'd ever envisioned for himself, but how many get to choose their deaths? It was better than the alternative. He sat down in the hollow spot and set to building a fire to cook his final meal. It was difficult to make the little chimney of tinder and long-toted wood catch fire in such high winds, but he was something of an expert at camping out. He'd lived in the wide open for most of his life, barring the thirty or so years he'd lived as an unhappy nobleman.

Soon the rabbit he'd killed was sizzling over a decent fire. He had little attention to spare for anything else, and what else would there be on the peak of a mountain out in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Korth the Mountain-Father? So the well-cultured voice came as something of a surprise.

"Mind if I share your fire? I'm rather ill-dressed for this sort of weather."

He was shocked, yes, but he suppressed his reaction and only looked up and sneered at the man in the blue tunic and leggings with the red-lined cloak thrown back over his shoulders. "Well, don't you look a little fey? What Orlesian dance party were you thrown out of?" he said.

The man merely smiled a thin smile that did not move his neat moustache and goatee combination in the slightest. "Stephen Strange, at your service. Doctor Stephen Strange."

"Strange you are. What the fuck are you doing up here?"

"I might ask of you the very same question. Surely this is no place for you."

"I go where I will."

"As do I," Strange said, with the sweep of a hand. He had scars on the back of that hand, bad ones, but very neat, like those made by a healer of great skill but no magic.

"Sit down before you freeze to death," he said, gesturing at his fire. "Damn straight you're not dressed for this weather. If you're going to go traipsing about the mountains you should do so prepared."

"I do not intend to stay long," Strange said, sitting down gracefully, sweeping his cloak aside with the other hand. His other hand bore the same sort of scars. "I come with a message for you."

He bit deeply into his rabbit and chewed while giving the strange Strange man the cold eye. "You have a message for me? You came all the way out here, dressed like that, looking for me? You don't even know who I am."

"Of course I do, Loghain."

He gave Strange a cold, hard look from beneath his still-forbidding black brows. "All right, faerie boy. Who sent you? What's the trick?"

"I came here by myself, on my own account, and there is no trick, though if you want I can pull an egg from your ear and make it turn into a chicken."

"Just tell me what the fuck it is you want."

"Temper temper. I'm here to recruit you. To offer to teach you. I've never gone outside my own dimension before, but this is a special case. Your own world does not have sorcerers like myself. It relies too heavily upon natural-born magic, emanating from the connected dimension you call the 'Fade.' Drawing magic from another dimension is very dangerous. Your dimension needs a system of sorcerers trained in the mystic arts who draw upon the energies of the natural world around themselves, not upon powers from another world entirely. I will teach you, and you will teach others. Agreeable?"

He gave the man a disgusted, gape-mouthed look. "You've got your feelers crossed, Strange," he said at last. "You're telling me you're some kind of mage. You're looking for another mage, right? I'm no mage. I'm a warrior. A useless, rotted-out hulk of a warrior. I can't learn magic. Go peddle your bullshit to someone who cares. Let me die in peace."

Strange leaned in over the fire. "Tell me, Loghain: why didn't you go to your Calling?" he asked, brown eyes glittering.

He drew back. "How did…? Grrr… I… I never got it. I just got weaker and weaker, little by little, until finally I couldn't hold my sword up anymore. It seemed to me then that my choices were go to the Deep Roads and die like a pussy to the first darkspawn to take a swing at me, or find a quiet, out of the way place to collapse somewhere that no one would ever find me. I chose the latter. I may die without dignity, but I'd prefer my peers never see it."

"You can find your strength again. Within magic. Magic exists within all minds. It is only a matter of harnessing the power of will. And will is something you have in spades."

"Go fuck yourself, Pollyanna."

Strange drew back, and clapped his hands on his knees. "Well, I didn't expect to get through to you right away. You have, after all, a well-deserved reputation for stubbornness. However, it will take you some time to freeze to death, given the amount of insulation in your furs, and it may get rather tedious, so perhaps I could leave you with something? A book." He held out a leather-bound volume that appeared in his hand quite suddenly from nowhere. "I believe you will find it interesting reading, and dabbling with its incantations might make for an eye-opening experience. At the very least, it will help you pass the time."

"Yeah, I'll pass a bowel movement and wipe my ass with the pages," he grumbled, as he grabbed the book with no graciousness at all.

Strange merely smiled all the broader. "Good day to you, Sir. Should you wish to find me, come to Haven. I have set up in a small house near the Inquisition Memorial at the edge of town."