Very Important Disclaimer: This is a fanfiction. I do not own Dragon Age.
Ch1: In Which Olivia is Double-crossed
If Olivia Amell had one fault, it was that she had a bit too much faith in humanity. It was all fine and good to want to believe the best of people, but sometimes that backfired. Explosively. Well, that only happened twice, really- she was actually a pretty good judge of character- but when it did,well… Just look at exhibit A: the day after she passed her Harrowing and finally became a full mage.
Olivia woke up to a large, blurry shape hovering over her and incoherent sounds. With a surprised shriek, she automatically swung a fist upward and hit something. There was a loud thump, and a small voice muttered "Ow." She sat up, blinking, to realize that she had just punched her best friend on the nose.
"Oops. Sorry, Jowan," she said, embarrassed.
"No problem," he muttered, holding a hand to his face. "I should have remembered you responded that way to being woken up. I was just worried. They carried you in here late last night- all sorts of rumors have been flying around about your Harrowing."
"That's right!" Olivia sprung up, smirking. "I passed my Harrowing! Ha! Now it's technically illegal for the Templars to destroy my brain and the worst they can do is kill me."
"No need to rub it in," said Jowan sulkily.
"Oh cheer up. I'm sure yours will be any day now."
"Yeah, any day now," he said, looking a bit shifty. "Listen, I'm actually here to tell you that the First Enchanter wants to see you as soon as you wake up."
"Which would be now," Olivia finished for him. "All right, I'll go see what Irving wants. Talk to you later, okay?"
"Sure."
As it turned out, Irving wanted to congratulate her on not getting possessed during her Harrowing. Olivia politely avoided voicing any of the half-dozen snarky remarks that popped into her head during the conversation. After the social pleasantries were met, Irving introduced her to the visiting stranger who he had been speaking with when she arrived. He was a Grey Warden. Olivia barely restrained her excitement. It seemed to be successful, because no one appeared to notice her acting any different than usual. The Grey Warden, Duncan, explained that he was looking for mages to go fight darkspawn in the south. Olivia managed to stop herself from gleefully volunteering on the spot, though she did allow herself to briefly fantasize about it.
Irving had her show the Warden to his guest room, and she spent most of the short walk there asking him questions.
As soon as she finished showing the Warden to his room, Olivia ran into Jowan skulking in the hallway, obviously waiting for her.
"Can I talk to you?" he asked in a lowered voice. "It's really important."
"Yesss, what is it?" asked Olivia suspiciously.
"Not here, it isn't safe. Meet me in the Chantry."
"Wait, since when is the Chantry a good place to have surreptitious conversations?" Jowan scuttled off, looking nervous. "Well, that was strange," Olivia remarked to herself. Shrugging, she followed after him.
When they got to the Chantry, Jowan walked over to one of the initiates, a pretty young woman standing in the corner."
"All right," said Olivia. "What's up?"
"Do you remember me telling you that I'd met someone?" Jowan looked ridiculously happy for a moment. "This is Lilley."
That was a surprise. "This is your girlfriend? I'd started to think she was imaginary. You didn't drag me in here just to meet her, did you?"
"No, I need your help."
"With what, setting up dates?"
"No! They're going to make me Tranquil! Lilley saw the paperwork on Irving's desk."
"Oh, come on, what would they do that for?"
"There's a rumor going around that I'm a blood mage. It's not true, but…"
"But the Templars don't take chances." Olivia sighed. "What do you need me to do?"
Lilley spoke up. "If we want to escape, we have to destroy Jowan's phylactery. We need you to get a rod of fire for us so we can break down the door to the room where they're stored."
Olivia blinked. "Or I could just pick the lock," she said dryly.
Jowan looked surprised. "How'd you learn to pick locks?"
"Beat Petra at cards. The women in my dormitory play every Friday night."
"Wait, you mean the female apprentices have gambling nights? Why don't we ever have gambling nights?" Whined Jowan.
"Because you aren't imaginative enough to think of it. And we're getting off topic."
"I can't believe you gamble!"
"Let's just go."
"Good idea," said Lilley, grabbing Jowan's arm and steering him off.
"So," said Olivia when they arrived at the basement door. "I'm assuming that we do have a way to get down to the right floor?"
"Oh, this door just needs a password in conjunction with a spell being cast. No keys needed. Hold on." Lilley dramatically muttered a phrase. "Quick! Cast a spell!"
"Okay." Olivia sent a blast of ice at the door, which sprung open. "Nice," she said appreciatively.
They hurried down the corridor to the door of the phylactery chamber. Lilley started talking about the symbolic meaning of the door's construction. Olivia assumed that commenting on the architecture was her way of dealing with nerves, and ignored the monologue in favor of taking out her hairpins and jimmying open the lock.
"Done," she announced after about thirty seconds. "They really need to put a better lock on this thing. That was ridiculously easy, and I'm not exactly a master at lockpicking."
They walked through the door into a room filled with shelves holding vials of blood.
"Creepy," commented Olivia.
"Quick, we need to find Jowan's phylactery," said Lilley urgently.
"Right. These are in alphabetical order, so…" Olivia hurriedly found the J's. "It's not here! Where? Aha!" She pounced on a table in the corner, where the phylactery was, rather ominously, sitting out. "Here it is! Catch!" She picked up the neatly labeled, disturbingly large vial of blood and tossed it to Jowan, who automatically caught it. He gave a melodramatic and slightly creepy-sounding speech and smashed the phylactery on the ground.
"And I am free," he said, staring oddly at the puddle of blood at his feet.
"Okay, creepy clichéd monologues that sounds like something from a bad pulp novel aside, we should probably leave now."
"You love bad pulp novels," pointed out Jowan.
Olivia turned red. "Shut up."
The three of them hurried back out into the corridor and up the stairs… straight into a large group of Templars led by Irving and Knight-Commander Gregoir. "Well, damn," said Olivia. It seemed the only reasonable response.
There was a lot of yelling, but Olivia barely heard any of it beneath the buzzing panic in her ears. Then Jowan stabbed a knife into his hand and sent out a wave of concussive force that knocked everyone, including Olivia to the ground.
She struggled to her feet, seeing stars and bleeding from a gash on her head but no longer panicking. Calmly, if painfully, she staggered over to Irving and helped him up. Everyone was arguing again, but this time Olivia was focusing on thinking up a way of getting out of this with her mind (and if she was really lucky, life) intact.
"And you!" Gregoir rounded on her in the middle of his tirade. "Because of you we have a blood mage on the loose and no way to track him down! What do you have to say for yourself."
"He said he wasn't a blood mage!"
"And you believed him?"
"Er, yes?" said Olivia quietly. She was beginning to feel pretty angry at Jowan.
"We have no place for gullible mages. You…"
He was cut off by the sudden appearance of Duncan. "The Grey Wardens do, though."
Gregoir looked confused. "What?"
"Er, I mean, I need her as a recruit because she is extremely talented and loyal, and not at all because you would have to be desperate, suicidal, ridiculously naïve, or some combination thereof to agree to join the Grey Wardens in the first place."
"Are you joking? Her?" exclaimed Gregoir.
"No, you," Duncan said sarcastically. "Of course her! She's in a bad enough jam that being a Grey Warden would be preferable… Um I mean, she's powerful, intelligent, skilled, and as evidenced by this incident, loyal." He turned to Olivia. "What do you say?"
She looked between Duncan and the seething Gregoir. "Hell, yes!"
"Good, especially since I would have just conscripted you anyway if for some bizarre reason you hadn't agreed. Let's go, we're leaving."
Olivia gave a small, excited squeak. "Yes! Um, where are we going?"