prologue
waking up
When I woke up it was very confusing.
My head was muddled and pounding. Small hands were clinging to me and I could hear crying and screams. There was a man on the ground in front of me.
He was sobbing, terrified and I couldn't understand why. I could smell burnt hair and urine coming off him as he shook on the ground. It took me a moment to realize his mouth was moving and he was talking, begging, "Maker no, save me, I'm sorry, don't kill me." words that didn't make sense but were said in a desperate screaming voice I'd never heard from another person.
I'd never seen someone so scared.
There were more screams from further away, they shouted words I didn't understand. The small hands tightened their grip on me and I turned to find a pointed face. Tanned skin, dirty face with tear streaks, dark chestnut hair, and a shock of gray eyes looking straight at me. The child couldn't be more than five, small boned and slender they looked almost as scared as the man. I was confused and more than a little scared myself but I reached forward to pet down their wild hair. The tangles caught on my small fingers.
Why are my hands so small?
"It's okay." I told them. But my voice came out wrong. Higher pitched with an accent I didn't recognize, in a language I knew and didn't. And young much, much too young.
The child's face crumbled at that and they threw their small arms around ducking their head under my chin and started to openly cry. I returned the hug awkward and unused to children. I kept petting their hair hoping it would calm them. My finger brushed past a point. I looked down, not very far either, and saw the ears. The pointed ears on each side of their head.
It's an elf. I realized, somehow not at all shocked by this discovery, but at the same time wondering how a mythical creature was in my arms.
They look about Revan's age. Just a year or two younger than me.
That confused me almost as much as the child's species. But I'm twenty-one not seen.
Then I blinked. That, that felt like a lie. My hands were tiny, I was short enough for the child to be at chin height, and my voice was a child's.
Because I was seven. The second youngest of the Amells. But I was an adult and an only child. Yet I remembered four others. Similarly dark haired and blue eyed. Two older and two younger, slowly disappearing as we moved from place to place.
I blinked again.
I was blonde, I mentally corrected myself, but that was another lie-truth.
Steps pounded towards me and I looked up in time to see a dark haired woman, another elf, run into the alley entrance I stood in. I didn't have time to process her appearance before the child was taken from my arms and two other figures ran to us. One was a large grey haired man with shining armor that made the fallen man flinch violently away. The other was middle aged, probably in his thirties with graying black hair, blue eyes and a look of devastation.
Strangers. I thought at first.
Father, I corrected myself. And a Templar.
The pounding in my head became a sharp shooting pain. I tried to shout but it strangled in my throat. My eyes blurred with tears and my knees hurt. I was on the ground. I was being held by the grey haired armored man.
No, no, they'll take me away like everyone else. My mind screamed making me weakly lean away in too much pain to move too much.
Away? What? Who will? Like who else? I demanded of myself.
Images, thoughts, and feelings flickered in my mind.
My mother crying running through the streets as my brother, my oldest brother, was taken. Mother dying. Leaving Kirkwall, my home, our home.
The Chantry coming for each one. In Kirkwall, in Ostwick, in the Free Marches. My brothers and sisters gone, father growing steadily greyer and more worn with each lose.
Then just me being left. Fleeing the Denerim. Hiding the feeling inside me scared of what it meant.
A little elf girl being pulled into the alley. She was so small, as small as my little brother Revan the last time I'd seen him as the Templars carried him away. The burning anger when I heard her cry out in pain. Abandoning my chore for Father to go after her. The feeling swelling in me sweet and vicious. Fire shooting from my hands making the man drop the girl and fall down in fear.
I was Solona Amell, the last of my father's children and a Templar knew I had magic.
But I was also Piper Gold, part-time journalist and entrepreneur, my father had been dead for years, and magic existed only in fantasy.
I did the only sensible thing and fainted from the pain that accompanied this realization.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So for anyone reading my other stories don't worry "A Different Sensei" is in the works and being lightly edited as we speak, coming up with a test and the sudden ability to play Dragon Age: Inquisition have been distracting me though.
Those who have no idea about the above welcome to my story! This is going to be an OC-insert, being reborn into Dragon Age rather than the traditional drop in the full grown adult version. As such it will be slightly different. Piper/Solona is going to have a difficult time adjusting to her new world, memories, and living quarters not to mention the disasters in her future.
Not sure when I'll get the next chapter out, I need to finish editing my other stories and at least get my next chapter started. I do have plenty ideas though. Thanks for reading!