EXTENDED SUMMARY
Telin lands in Thedas - in Kirkwall, specifically - after an encounter with an abandoned Eluvian on her way home.
With the mark of the "Kirkwallers" on her forearm, and visions of past and future events, but no real memory of Thedas, she tries to piece everything together to find a purpose to her presence in Thedas.
One last question remains, though: why is everyone in Kirkwall either incredibly attractive or a blood mage?
THIS IS A REWRITE OF THE SAME WORK THAT WAS PREVIOSULY POSTED.
CHAPTERS 1-11 HAVE RECEIVED MAJOR CORRECTIONS AND TWEAKES, WITH NEW CONTENT ADDED;
THE REMAINING 10 CHAPTERS WILL BE POSTED AS I CORRECT THEM AS WELL.
The sun was starting to set by the time she reached the railway bridge, and she had barely made it halfway up to home; it was only five in the afternoon, but the turning of the season was now pretty evident. Even the temperatures had started to drop little by little, leaving a chilly wind in place of the warm late summer, as October melted into November.
The girl stopped by the roadside, turning her nose skywards as the music pumped in her ears; the sky was painted with the prettiest shades of pinks and oranges, providing a fantastic backdrop for the pines and villas that littered the way uphill.
Sometimes, even the dreary and basically forgotten suburbs where she lived, could look pretty under the right light. The area was the newest to be developed, but that meant basically nothing after almost seventy years, and now it lacked most of the commodities that the rest of town had: no supermarkets, no cafés, nothing…
The girl shrugged her thoughts off, adjusting the weight of her bag on her right shoulder. She was tired; after three years of comings and goings to and from the university, the journey had lost its appeal – if it ever had one to begin with. Two trains, one hour and a half each way, plus all the walking… of course she could have had it worse, but that didn't mean she would stop hating the morning crowds of students and commuters.
As one song slowly faded to its end, and another one begun, she shook her head a sighed, picking her pace back up; she still had a bit of ground to cover, and she wanted to get home before it got too dark to be comfortable.
She reached the top of the hill with a satisfied smile on her lips, singing along to the latest hit from her favorite band, Imagine Dragons, in her head. She waited on the edge of the sidewalk as a couple cars went by, tapping her foot to the music, then crossed the street; there were no zebra crossings nearby, but nobody really seemed to care anyway.
She was taking a shortcut through the back of the neighborhood, knowing that the gate on the other end of her apartments complex's courtyard was still broken open; there was no sense in walking the whole way around to the usual entrance.
She walked briskly down the road, her tiredness catching up to her now that she was almost home, but she enjoyed the cool air brushing her flushed cheeks after the long way up from the station.
It had been fifteen years already, since they had moved from one side of town to the other, but still she wasn't quite used to the amount of time and fatigue it took to go all the way up and down the hill.
She was almost halfway to the end of the road when a tall, looming object appeared in her peripheral vision, catching her attention; it wasn't unusual to find all kinds of junk laying on the side of the road – especially because that was right where the garbage collection point was, but as she reached it, she could tell that was no ordinary waste.
It was something she had seen before, but would never have expected to see in real life.
Standing proud and tall, discarded as if it were scrap, was a mirror she knew intimately.
She stopped in front of it, looking it up and down in its intricate design; she had played countless of hours of all three Dragon Age games, but the last thing she would have imagined to happen to her, was coming face to face with an Eluvian.
As she stared at her puzzled reflection in the glass, she dismissed the irrational part of her brain; it was a real mirror, so probably there was a really die-hard fan hiding somewhere that had either built their own exact replica, or had had enough money to custom order one at some point.
Because there was no way, despite the hundreds of fan-fictions that she had read – and tried to write, that the Eluvian was real in that sense.
The girl shrugged, but took her phone out of her jacket's pocket regardless, ready to at least snap a picture of the mirror before moving on; it would make for an interesting post on the net, if nothing else.
She took a couple steps back to fit the whole thing into frame, but as she went to tap in the icon, static started to run on the screen of her phone.
"What the- " she muttered under her breath, frowning at the device as it freaked out on her.
When her eyes left the screen, she caught sight of something that freaked her out in turn; the surface of the mirror was not reflecting anymore; instead the glass seemed to have turned liquid, shifting around like a pool of water.
For a second she entertained the idea that she was having a psychotic episode or something, even though she had no precedent of one whatsoever. Her eyes had always been faulty – she had been wearing glasses since elementary school, but that... that was no result of her poor vision.
The more she stood there watching, the more she felt the urge to reach out and touch the surface of the mirror, the same feeling some people get when watching lava… But that wasn't lava, it was just glass, there was no way it could hurt, right?
Shrugging, she took a step forward, raising her arm with her hand outstretched.
The moment she touched the liquid glass, her fingers went deadly cold; but the most shocking thing was that they passed through the surface, exactly as if she had just dipped her hand in water.
It was a weird feeling, yet not an unpleasant one.
She took another step forward, and her arm sank way further in the mirror up to her elbow. The second her right forearm passed through, though, a blinding pain shot through her whole body. A pained moan left her lips, as her forearm felt literally on fire; it seemed that the fire was propagating from one specific point on her arm, spreading outward.
Her first instinct was to remove her arm from the mirror to check on her burning tattoo, but she soon realized she was stuck.
Panic sized her, overriding her every other sense, as she tried – and failed – to pull away from the mirror.
"No no no no no no-" it couldn't be happening, whatever- was happening!
It was probably a dream, and she would wake up in a minute, frazzled but fine, and definitely not trapped in a freaking Eluvian!
Suddenly, the pain stopped, and the watery glass of the mirror turned to mist, clearing the surface to show a foggy image of white buildings and dusty, orange, roads.
Even in the frantic state she still was in, she recognized what she was seeing from the top, and it did not help her calm down.
As she was staring down at the eagle view of Kirkwall, with half her arm stuck inside a mirror, she felt herself at a total loss.
What was going to happen, now?
As the thought entered her head, with the most clichéd of follow ups, a terrible wind picked up, tunneling in the one way street and crushing right into her back. It was as if the forces of the universe, though which one was quite unclear to her, wanted her to step inside of her own volition, and at her refusal to do so, had given her a gentle shove.
She lost her balance, and before she even knew it, she was falling, like Alice, through the Mirror.
And then she was free falling, staring down at the streets of the City of Chain.
Her mind was blank, her lungs were burning, and her eyes were crying.
All that remained of her, were her phone and bag, abandoned on the side of road, to testify that her existence had been real, even though it was no more.