Based on the plot of the video game Dragon Age: Origins.

Dragon Age is owned by BioWare and EA.


Tayte was hardly a social person. When her father brought her to meet with guests, she would shyly hide in some corner unless someone came looking for her. When she was spoken to she would respond in whatever way would end the conversation the fastest. This was in direct contradiction of her brother Fergus, who was so outgoing that he eventually fell in love with an Antivan woman named Oriana. While her visit was intended to be brief, she decided to stay in Highever to court Fergus.

Being the daughter of Teryn Bryce Cousland, it was likely not surprising how sheltered Tayte was raised. But Tayte's growth went opposite from everything people knew of her family. While Fergus was outgoing, Tayte would spend hours on end studying in her room, eventually giving her skin an unhealthy paleness. Both Bryce Cousland and his wife Eleanor were noted warriors, but Tayte could barely hold a training staff.

Thus everyone was shocked that Tayte became fast friends with Roland Gilmore, a commoner who was squired to Bryce at the age of twelve. Tayte would leave her studying behind to watch Roland train in the barracks. Roland would then spend an hour or so each day studying Cousland history with Tayte. By the time they became adolescents, the two were considered best friends. Some even thought they were in love.

Even more jarring than Tayte's acceptance of Roland was her sudden desire to learn to fight. It had been five or six years since Roland had been squired to Bryce, and no one doubted that Tayte watched Roland's practice with interest, but few thought Tayte would seek to imitate Roland. Bryce was glad to allow his daughter to take up her family's art, but even he was surprised.

Tayte and Roland then took up the routine of fighting each other with training staves at least twice a week. Roland would gladly teach Tayte what he had learned from Bryce, and the two became closer. All of Highever expected the wedding bells to ring within the year, until one night…


Tayte forced open her tired eyes to see that she had fallen asleep on top of her book. She sighed and pushed herself up, rubbing the fatigue from her eyes. She looked out the window and cursed as she saw the moon had already risen. She quickly doused her candle and closed her book, pushing it to one side of her desk.

I'm hardly making any progress as it is. Tayte thought. I don't need to be missing practices.

The idea of training in the dark was her father's. When he decided to watch the sparring, he liked the glow of the fire as opposed to the blinding sun of midday. But training never started so late before.

Tayte scurried around her room to find her leather jerkin she wore during the sparring matches. She found it and pulled it on as she raced out of her room and into the dark castle. Few people were up so late, leaving the hallways open. Which meant Roland may already be asleep.

Why did you have to fall asleep while reading, of all things? Tayte stopped to catch her breath as she approached the barracks. She panted, realizing that she had been running the whole way. As she stood up, a glint of metal caught her eye.

Hanging on the wall was a ceremonial set of arms and armor that was once worn by her father during celebrations. Tayte had never been very interested in the specifics of battlefield equipment, but these pieces stood out. She admired the shape of the sword, suddenly noticing something that she should have thought of sooner.

She was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing his throat. Tayte turned to see Roland leaning on the door to the barracks, wearing his training leathers. He pretended to yawn.

"It's about time you came. I thought you fell asleep already." He joked, probably knowing full well that Tayte had been sleeping.

Tayte chuckled with embarrassment. "Well, I'm here now. Are you ready?"

Roland shrugged. "I can be in a moment. I just need to put a few things away."

Tayte nodded and followed Roland into the barracks. It was a large room filled with military equipment with a training field open to the sky. The moon shone through the open ceiling, casting a blue light on anything that the torch fire's glow didn't reach.

Roland moved into the barracks proper to put away a suit of armor that he no doubt sweated in all day, just to get used to the weight. Tayte knew she could never put up with those bulky and heavy pieces of metal, and hoped she never had to fight in a real battle.

Tayte remembered what she was thinking as she admired the sword outside the barracks and quietly snuck over to a weapons rack. Checking to make sure Roland didn't notice her, Tayte carefully pulled out two sharp-looking swords. She checked the edge on each sword, testing it against a stray bit of leather from her jerkin. Satisfied, she snuck back into the training area so she could surprise Roland.

After waiting a few more minutes, Roland walked back in from the armor racks, sweat already beading on his forehead. He brushed it aside with the back of his wrist before giving the swords Tayte was carrying a guarded look.

"What are those for?" He asked quietly. He seemed to be a bit nervous for someone who worked with real weapons most of the day.

Tayte tossed a sword over to Roland, and he bent over to take it from the ground where it landed. "We're going to spar with them," she said without any hint of sarcasm or playfulness.

Roland gave Tayte a questioning look. "Are you sure this is a good idea? I spent five years of training before I used real weapons during sparring."

Tayte sighed. She would have to explain after all. "Training with wooden staves isn't helping, Roland."

"How is fighting with sharpened swords going to improve your training?"

"It adds risk. You can keep on beating me with a wooden staff and I'll just get some bruises, but I don't learn anything." Tayte could never control the tone of her voice, now she was raising it without knowing. "I'm not going to become a fighter if all I know how to do is get beat down. I need to have a reason to evade your attacks, I need to feel that risk if I'm going to get better!"

Roland took a step back, trying to make sense of Tayte's outburst. Was she really this focused on improving her fighting skills, that she'd raise her voice to him?

There was a long, uncomfortable silence as Roland shifted from foot to foot. Tayte tried to calm herself down. She shouldn't be yelling at her friend.

"All right." Roland finally mumbled. He looked up at Tayte. "Let's try it with the swords, then."

Tayte smiled and held her sword in the ready position she had been taught. After Roland signaled that he was ready, they began.

Roland started out with a simple horizontal cut, mostly to keep Tayte at distance as she hadn't reached him yet. He followed through with a stab that Tayte easily backed away from. Tayte tried an uppercut, but Roland spun his sword into a blocking position and flung Tayte's sword away. Foiled, Tayte took a step back and began to take small steps to find a better striking position.

The two squared off, waiting for the other to take the first move. Roland eventually gave up waiting and began his signature attack: a series of heavy but predictable blows, meant to tire an opponent as opposed to tricking them into letting down their guard.

The two continued to fight for an hour, and into a second. Roland had built up his endurance during his training over the past seven years. While Tayte had become used to the bruises that she usually received, she couldn't match Roland's stamina. She began to tire, but stubbornly hid the signs to prolong the fight.

After two hours, both opponents were sweating heavily and were acting almost solely on training and instinct. If a movement required planning, it was done in an instant and the next blow would begin.

Tayte's reflexes began to slow from her fatigue. She would raise her sword into the correct position to block at the last moment, and the fight began to turn to a one-sided attack, with Tayte attempting to parry each powerful blow.

Tayte nearly slipped as Roland attempted the horizontal cut from earlier, but managed to back away in time. She prepared for the stab that she expected after the cut. Instead of pulling back, Roland raised his sword high. Tayte realized this and tried to raise her sword arm to block the strike.

There was a ringing noise when metal hit metal. Tayte looked up at her tired sword arm to see both swords still swinging toward her. Before she could fully understand what was happening, blinding pain shot out across her face.

Tayte dropped her sword, and she heard it clang against the stone ground as her hands shot up to her face. She dropped to her knees and used one hand to keep herself from slamming into the floor while she held her throbbing face with the other. She tried to open her eyes, and only one eye could see that her hands were dripping with blood.

She heard another sword clatter against the ground and felt a hand on her shoulder, along with some stuttering apology. Tayte didn't pay any attention to what was around her, she was still staring horrified as blood dripped off of her face. Roland's hand disappeared and Tayte could hear him running away. No one wants to be caught striking the Teryn's daughter, she thought.

Tayte knelt there for several minutes, trying to make sense of what just happened. She tried to stop the bleeding, but she only got more blood on her hands and on the floor.

Tayte suddenly heard hurried footsteps and heard her father's voice bark an order. Tayte looked up with her one good eye to see Mother Mallol, the Chantry priest, kneeling next to her.

"It will be all right, child." She cooed. She pulled out a poultice of some kind and dipped her hands in it. "Try to be still, this will sting."

Tayte tried to be swayed by Mallol's reassuring words, but the sting that followed her touch made Tayte shake. Her instincts told her to shield her face again, but she knew that Mallol was doing what needed to be done. Tayte's hand shook at her side, giving her conflict a representation for all to see.

The pain began to fade after a few more applications of the poultice, and Tayte looked up to see who had come to help her. Behind Mallol, Tayte's father stood with a concerned look on his face. While he would no doubt reprimand her for being so reckless, she knew that her father likely expected this to happen at some point.

Mallol whispered something that Tayte could barely make out, and the priest helped Tayte to her feet. Tayte tried not to slip on her blood that had pooled on the stone floor as she walked past her father. Tayte saw a shadow in a corner with her good eye, and held up her head to make it out.

Roland stood in the corner of the room, unable to look Tayte in the eye.

Tayte's heart fell as she began to realize what had happened. While she was never a gifted warrior, she was known for her intuition and reasoning. And everything that she knew told her that the rift that had just opened between her and Roland could never be healed.


Tayte saw little of Roland during the next few months, and whenever they met it was awkward. Worse was that Roland could never look at anything else but Tayte's twin scar. Her own blade had pressed against her nose horizontally, while his sword had cut a jagged line from her left forehead to her jaw. The Maker had the mercy to leave Tayte's left eye intact, but that didn't keep Roland from staring.

During the wedding of Fergus and Oriana, Tayte waited anxiously for Roland to arrive. She was happy for her brother, but she didn't want to lose her friend. However, Roland never came to the ceremony.

Tayte's lessons continued, but now with her father. They began again with wooden staves, but quickly moved on to dulled swords and later to sharpened swords, but only when Tayte was deemed ready.

As she knew the night of the accident, the rift between Tayte and Roland continued to grow. On the anniversary of the event, Tayte tracked Roland down to try to make amends. He didn't accept that the accident was Tayte's fault, taking full responsibility. He ended the conversation by telling Tayte to call him "Ser Gilmore," as his training as a knight was complete.

Tayte spent more and more time in her study, though some residents of Highever Castle have claimed to have seen her sneaking about the hallways or watching the moon rise from a balcony. The librarians of the castle became confounded when an entire section of books would disappear one night and be replaced another.

Tayte and Ser Gilmore eventually began to speak to one another again, but never with the camaraderie of before. They became friends again, but they were both haunted by the wall that had been built between them after that night in the barracks.