The Inquisition Marches, Inquisition Main Theme

Time for some Dragon Age fic! I've always had a soft spot in my heart for a certain sad child from Redcliffe, so here we go!

Apprentice Guerrin

Sad Muffin

His name was Connor Guerrin, Disgrace of Redcliffe.

Maybe the title was self-afflicted. In his early time at the Circle of Magi no one referred to him directly a such. The tower of Kinloch Hold was in too much shock to whisper about one new apprentice, no matter how blood-stained his hands had been upon arrival. The Circle had also been far too indebted to the Grey Wardens of Ferelden to question why the newly anointed Arl of Amaranthine would personally send word regarding Connor to the First Enchanter.

The tower stank. It reeked of an oily, brackish anger. Like sickness and metal, burnt hair waved under your nose in the middle of the night, bringing the nightmares. The same black, evil magic that had drenched Redcliffe in blood had announced itself here as well, saturated the stones, crawled through the masonry. He was not the only apprentice to suffer nightmares, but his were reinforced not just by Blight, not just by the loss of his family, but from what he himself had done…

The Templars were too preoccupied with rebuilding and cleansing the tower to mind him for those first few months. One of his first real encounters with one of them had been when he'd put his spell book down on the floor, knelt by the bucket of cold, soapy water, and taken up one of the rags tossed aside from the knight who was already hard at work scrubbing the stones.

"I want the smell to go away." He'd explained when the Templar had looked at him like he was truly mad. "It smells like death." The Templar understood, or at least he acted like he did, and he let the young apprentice mage kneel and scrub like the servants he had once ignored at Redcliffe.

"It didn't always." The Templar told him. "Andraste guide us, it won't anymore." So he scrubbed.

Apprentices at a certain age were taught communally, in groups of three or four. They slept in barracks, one over the other in pairs, boys in one massive room, girls in the other. The beds were thin but firm, but the room was never completely quiet. Someone sniffling, or crying, or rolling over. Connor's first bedmate always snored. Connor himself had nightmares.

He saw claws, and horns, and burning yellow eyes. The demon laughed at him, and he woke up screaming, blankets warm and wet.

From the barracks they went to a hot breakfast every morning, with a long and tedious prayer sung by one of the sisters who ministered to the mages. Breakfast was always hot, even in the first few years after the Blight when there might not be more than gruel and wrinkled old potatoes to eat for several days. Food was always hot. It was always smelled better than it tasted, and it tasted like nothing compared to life at Redcliffe: he didn't deserve any less.

From breakfast and prayers to lessons. Jylan the elven boy from Gwaren with his cheeky laugh and sloppy glyphs. Amara the ginger-haired girl who liked to snap sparks off her fingertips and once, foolishly, aimed her jolts at a Templar. She was gone for a week after that and came back with far fewer smiles. Connor thought she deserved it.

Every week the enchanter changed, as did their alcove in the grand library. There were very few enchanters left after the Blight. A woman named Wynne had left, a man named Nial had died along with many, many others. Connor enjoyed First Enchanter Irving's lessons most. He was calm, he was gentle, he let Connor read the letter sent to him by the Hero of Ferelden himself with Connor's name painted with even strokes in black ink on marbled white paper.

From lessons to lunch, lunch to chores. Weeding the meager garden hurt arms, wringing the hot laundry hurt his back, scrubbing the floor and windows hurt his knees, washing the dishes hurt his hands. The first month he cried more from the labour than from his nightmares, and Jylan terrorized him with laughter and spitting because Connor's soft hands were too weak to do normal chores.

From chores to dinner, and dinner into the twilight.

The calm hour, they called it. Free hours between the final meal and curfew. He could wander the library, or play in either of the tower's two high-walled courtyards. One was a garden of large bushy plants, several thin trees, and benches placed so you were always looking at the walls. The other was a court of packed dirt with balls and hoops and always a half-dozen poorly drawn glyphs kicked into the sand. Apprentices Connor's age and younger were always in the play yard, where some Templars would linger and stretch, maybe you'd even see one without her armour on and get her to demonstrate her thrust and block with a stick. Older apprentices and Enchanters would frequent the garden, often with books, or letters, or hidden together behind the large bushes.

A bell would ring, and all of the apprentices were expected to return to the barracks for the night. They could wash up, three boys to a tub of warm soapy water, or just go straight to bed the way Jylan usually did- but after a week or more of that you were likely to get dragged by an ear to the tub and washed by force. In Connor's second year- it wasn't Jylan's fault, but one of the boys woke up with little white flakes in his hair. By the end of the week all of the boys and most of the girls did too. The Templars shaved everyone's head and burnt their blankets. The older apprentices took it in stride, most of the younger ones thought it was funny, others cried and railed against it. Connor just felt cold.

His fourth year, his fifth year, his sixth year… By the seventh the Templars were already speaking far less to them, he thought it was just a part of getting older, of moving from those nearly black robes to the ever deeper blue of an older apprentice, but he noticed it with the children too. The Templars stopped smiling, Knight Commander Greagoir retired, First Enchanter Irving just looked tired…

The world 'Kirkwall' hung in the air like death.

Connor was not First Enchanter Irving's Apprentice, the honour went to Amara. But Connor did see the First Enchanter more often than he perhaps should have. He was, after all, the one responsible for the horrors Redcliffe had endured in addition to the Blight…

"A former apprentice of mine made a request of me." The First Enchanter said to him one evening during the calm hour. He had been in the garden where Connor had retreated to escape the melancholy that late winter always carried with it. There were two Templars hovering not far away from where the First Enchanter, wizen and grave, had seated himself in the chill. The First Enchanter bade him sit a while next to him, and Connor accepted. In his withered hands was a well-creased page of marbled white paper. "I had my reasons, but I denied him. It was one of the few times in our long, enduring friendship, that I have done that."

"You consider your apprentice to be your friend, First Enchanter?" Connor asked. Irving gave a husky laugh.

"Apprentices do not remain apprentices forever, young Guerrin." He said. "Students become Masters and Masters become Teachers in their own right. There are many things that he has seen and experienced that I cannot begin to compare my own life to. It is the way of things. If we had not become friends, we would have become nothing."

It was calm and it was quiet, Irving raised the gnarled white staff next to him on the bench and tapped the bottom end of it on the cold brazier in front of them.

"Light the fire, Guerrin, these old bones are cold."

Connor gulped, wiped his sweaty hands on his knees.

"Yes, First Enchanter." And he…

He did it.

This was not a surprise, he was more than capable of performing simple tasks with magic. It just a matter of… willingness. Great feats of magic attracted attention, and magic was based entirely off of the caster's own will. The desires and determination of a young child to save his dying father had nearly obliterated an entire town full of innocent people. The desire to light a set of coals in the winter chill was not as dramatic, but it was still desire…

When he looked back at the First Enchanter, Irving was nodding tiredly, pawing at his long, thick beard. What could such wise eyes read from a simple spell? Maybe everything Connor had ever felt or feared was wrapped up in the smallest gesture and spark from his hand.

"You will be Harrowed soon." Irving announced. "Perhaps in the spring. Perhaps next winter. But it will be soon. I did not make you my apprentice, Guerrin, but I was asked to consider you very closely for the position." This announcement left him cold.

"But… But First Enchanter, I'm not- I'm the reason why so many people-"

"That." First Enchanter Irving moved his eyes and his hand, nothing else. He lifted a finger at Connor and his eyes swivelled independently of his face to look at him. "Not the circumstances of what happened, young Guerrin, but your reaction to it, is why you were overlooked."

The confusion made his heart pound, palms weeping cold sweat into his lap.

"You were guided by an un-Harrowed blood mage, a failure of the Circle." Irving continued. "Your circumstances were manipulated by the machinations of powerful men in dangerous times, and you were undercut by a complete lack of instruction. What happened at Redcliffe was not your fault, Connor, you were merely the catalyst for what followed." He had heard this before, so many times in fact, even in his own mentor had given him this speech several times over the years. But it didn't matter, they were wrong.

"I don't believe that, Sir."

"And that is why I denied my friend." Irving answered, and finally his attention moved to the creased paper folded between his fingers. The page was so old and worn that it looked like soft vellum now, fibers dusting away from it. He unfolded it, the paper creased like his fingers and boasting deep, fragile ridges. Irving's heavy fingertip pressed down on a line of smooth script, one of the many that had begun to fade and flake away after years of constant caress, and he read: "'I say this all to you, in the genuine hope that you will be as kind and fatherly a teacher to him, as you were to me.' But it cannot be so."

"Did… did the Hero of Ferelden say that?" Was that the apprentice? It was common knowledge in the tower that Irving had mentored the mage, turned Grey Warden, who had struck Tyrne Loghain's head from his shoulders and then done the same to the Archdemon atop Fort Drakon. But Irving had mentored many apprentices in his time, and-

"He did. And though he is a master of many things, Guerrin, he is not yet a teacher."

It was all very much to take in. First Enchanter Irving ended their strange little talk by asking Connor to please not relay to his Mentor Senior Enchanter Leorah that Irving had almost been so swayed to take Connor instead of her. He wasn't sure why that would have offended Leorah anyways, but agreed just the same. Then he helped Irving rise from the bench and return inside the tower.

A week later, Senior Enchanter Irving passed gently in his sleep.

Lessons were suspended for a day, instead every apprentice, mage, enchanter, and Templar in the tower crowded into the Chantry hall for a service. The singing was beautiful, and for once Connor couldn't smell the dread of foul magic poisoning the stones. The tower was warm.

Irving's cremation was delayed. Connor wasn't supposed to know this, but Senior Enchanter Leorah let it slip- she let many things slip unless they were directly related to magic. For three days his body lay in a stasis in the Chantry, and for three days Connor's nightmares plagued him, the deathly fear that Irving's corpse would stir and rise up if anyone so much as thought of wishing he were still alive…

On the morning of the fourth day there was chatter in the Tower. There were soldiers in the tower, not many, maybe ten in total. They carried beautiful round shields made of silverite, the embossed image of a large, prowling bear glimmering in the middle. Their helmets and armour were well crafted, they carried themselves more cheerfully and easily than the Templars around them.

At lunch Connor stole away to the library and poured through the history section looking for a book of heraldry. He knew the crest, had seen it at a time before Redcliffe had been nothing but blood to him. He found the book and the herald: the great bear of Amaranthine.

The sweating started. It broke out from the crown of his head and moved between his shoulders, wetting the back of his knees, made his feet feel cold.

Amaranthine soldiers. Not many, not a royal party, but the Arling of Amaranthine belonged to the Grey Wardens now, and there was only one Grey Warden who could possibly want to…

He hid in the library. When he feared Leorah would find him, he went to the Formari storehouse and found Jylan standing idle with a clip board and blank expression. He requested, in his calmest voice, to have a set of simple herbs given to him for a task assigned by Leorah.

Jylan denied him his request. Whatever they did to someone to make them Tranquil, whatever "severing your connection to the fade" really meant, they hadn't done a very good job with Jylan. He wasn't compliant or meek, but now he was stubborn over protocol- something he'd never been before the ritual. The hateful elf even went so far, when Leorah caught them in the middle of their argument, to forward Connor's request to Leorah under the guise of confirming that she wanted him to remove those precise items from the store room. Connor was seventeen at the time but she dragged him away by his ear just the same.

The vigil was cold and it was quiet. The only sound for hours, at the top of the tower, under the dark sky and its faint stars, was the crackle and roar of the flames. The acrid smoke was enough to blot out the stars, the flames too bright for gazing out at the lake. He had to stand there in his apprentice robe next to his mentor and watch the First Enchanter return to the arms of the Maker.

Not all of the Amaranthine soldiers were there. Two stood vigil at the entrance back into the tower, the inner ring of the pyre's audience was made up of all the most important people: Knight Commander Lasser, the Senior Enchanters, their Apprentices, Irving's apprentice Amara, and…

He was an Archmage. The rank had been conferred on him after the end of the Fifth Blight. He was dressed like no mage Connor had seen before, ornate metal boots gilded with silver up to his knees, robes cut from a colour he couldn't make out between the black sky and red flames, but the front was peeled back to show his boots and a tunic of chain mail, all in silverite. There was a breastplate fixed under his robe, its emblem obscured by the gold hooks and buttons that sealed the jacket. Silverite pauldrons on his shoulders, gauntlets silently resting on the hilt of a sword sheathed at his belt, a heavy griffon buckle holding it at his waist. He held a winged Grey Warden helmet under his arm for hours, occasionally moving to hold it with both hands in front of him, head slightly bowed.

His hair was light, all his colours were fair: Connor had thought he was a ghost at first, skin sharply contrast with the blood that had stained the room where he'd woken up after the horrible dream. He was elven and it made his eyes, colourless in the fire, glow like lamps. The Hero of Ferelden was not handsome, there were white echoes of scars across his hollow cheeks, the tip of one ear ragged where it protruded out from the fall of his pale hair.

To the Hero's right stood a man with long straight black hair. His clothing was all black and his armour just as ornate, done in silverite with a mighty griffon on his breastplate. His eyes followed the flames and his lips sometimes moved with silent prayers. To the Hero's left was, strangely, a dwarf with fire red hair and an ornately braided beard. The dwarf fidgeted the most out of anyone atop the tower, spending much of the vigil leaning forward on a large shield that covered most of his body. The shield, like his ornate heavy armour, was silverite.

The three of them were distinct from the soldiers whose armour all adhered to a clear standard. The man and the dwarf who remained with the Hero of Ferelden from twilight until dawn were different. They, like him, were Grey Wardens.

Warden Commander Surana was gone the next day. His eyes met Connor's only once the entire night, the rest of it he spent gazing into the flames that devoured his mentor. His friend. The Hero of Ferelden held the vigil all night and then marched out with his soldiers that morning, leaving a polite yet blunt refusal to be present for the task of selecting a new First Enchanter.

Three months after that, two into the tenure of their First Enchanter Raynor, it all went to hell.

Amara died in her Harrowing. The Maker was kind about some things.

Irving had said Connor would be Harrowed in the spring, but it felt like the entire Circle went through it instead. He wasn't a full mage but he was old enough, close enough, that Leorah argued for him to have a vote to cast in the referendum. She needed him to vote against it, she said they needed every vote that could help them keep the chaos at bay.

The Circle disintegrated overnight.

The Hero didn't come riding back to his first home to save them, instead it was Connor, arm hooked under the screaming, shaken body of a young apprentice, clinging to the mane of a stolen horse, who fled the shadow and slaughter of Kinloch Hold.

Leorah had been run through with a sword, a Templar blade, maybe she'd deserved it after using a spell to compel the boatman to take Connor and several young apprentices away from the island, defying the Templars for her first and last time. She died on the shore, her spell hung on just long enough for Connor to shove the ferryman into the water, grab the ores, and row for his and the children's lives.

His entire body ached with anxiety, the full awareness that his phylactery would find him wherever he went. Templars fell upon them, not many, only three, at the mainland beach where travellers moved to and from the Tower. Connor escaped with one Apprentice, just one little girl, chased by the others' screams, but the young elf died a week later from a sickness he didn't have the herbs to cure. He arrived in Redcliffe alone. Redcliffe, of all places.

Months passed.

Nightmares, cold sweats, the guilt eating him alive from the inside. He could not be here he could not be in Redcliffe.

So many times, he wanted to leave, he tried to make himself go away. The people in the town didn't recognize him, not unless they spent too long watching him watch the castle with what they called a haunted, soulless gaze. Once he was recognized, he was avoided. Disgrace of Redcliffe. Irving and Leorah and Jylan had told him things were not his fault for years, but Redcliffe knew better, the people whose loved ones he had made macabre toys knew better. They hated him and he deserved that hate.

Tevinter came. A hole torn in the sky, ancient Magisters unleashing hellish magic the world was never meant to know. One day he saw Teagan. Uncle Teagan, Arl of Redcliffe, the man with funny faces, a soft beard, sparkling eyes. Connor was recognized but he resisted: he was not the Arl's nephew any longer, he'd lost that status years ago.

He resisted so hard his magic came out with a rain of violet sparks from his hands. Teagan rejected him, not so boldly, but he retreated from the place in the tent city where Connor had found himself staying and he did not come hunting again. The next he heard, Arl Teagan had been run out of Redcliffe by the Magister, and Connor hated this world the Maker had given them.

Then came the Inquisition. It was over in a day, in hours: an uproar in the chantry, a meeting in the keep, and it was done. The Inquisition gave the mages sanctuary in exchange for their power, they took them to the only sanctuary left in the world: Haven.

Connor did not believe Grand Enchanter Fiona when she said it would be a victorious day, he was shamed for his pessimism when the Breach in the sky, while perhaps not mended, was closed.

And then Haven burned…

Oh…

How he had never, ever, wanted to be so right…

He survived. He survived by carrying Grand Enchanter Fiona through the tunnel leading out under Haven. His magic cured wounds, his fire melted snow into water that became tea, or thin soup to combat the constant cold. His lightning chased off predators, and his dreams, while not listened to directly, echoed those of the other mages and warned them for those first three icy days away from rifts or great dangers.

They found the Herald of Andraste and sang into the same cold black night that had swallowed Irving's ashes, and two weeks later they arrived at Skyhold. Connor was assigned to the healer's tents. He was only an apprentice, but he was capable, he was willing.

"Harrowing is wrong." The other mage told him, a hallow sound in her voice as she used magic to purge toxins, to mend bone, to ease death. "You don't need it, at least not how the Circles did it. You're a mage like any other, you don't need no damned Harrowing!"

Connor didn't listen, he healed. Battles came, victories, defeats, stalemates. Chevaliers, and Antivans, Ferelden Ash warriors, Avvar hunters, and Dalish, and Dwarves, and… and Wardens.

He healed Wardens. He listened to them, after the Siege of Adamant Fortress, and one of them stayed in his care as she died. She was a dwarven woman, black hair, heavy lips, black tattoos, and the kindest eyes he'd ever seen…

"It was so beautiful… the song… so beautiful… but we were so, so wrong…"

She denied the deathroot, she asked instead for magical fire, pale blues and luscious reds, deep crimson brushed with gold. He made the fire dance and she died with a smile on her face. He lit her pyre and knew he should have done more.

More and more, the people he tended were the ones who died. He came to them and they smiled, and then-

"They don't give up, you don't fail."

He didn't… know who said it to him.

"They are hurting, hurting so- so badly. You make it end, gently, and the last thing they know is that they love you."

Someone said it to him, he didn't know when it was, or what prompted it. He slept better after that though, when he slept at all.

His ninth year, his tenth year…

The College of Enchanters.

A hundred other things for them to argue about, which meant the matter of Apprenticeship was sidelined, almost indefinitely. Tranquility had been forbidden, he had no fear of being dragged away to share the same fate as Jylan, passive and accepting of the sword when it tore him apart in the tower courtyard. He was just the same as he had been since the day his mother kissed him goodbye: an apprentice.

The College was to be established in Val Royeaux in the same building as the Orlesian Circle. Many Orlesian mages were directly against the decision to go back to the same place where their part in the war had started. Connor was just angry it was in Orlais at all. Even Leorah's bloodstains on the shore of Kinloch Hold would have suited him better.

He made the mistake of saying this within ear-shot of Grand Enchanter Fiona, who agreed with him.

"There is too much power concentrated in Val Royeaux." And so they set about another six months of arguing. Debates that Connor Guerrin, no one's apprentice, had no place in.

He bided his time as poorly as he could. What was he truly waiting for? He was an Apprentice with no Mentor. No knowledge of the Fraternities, no will to return to the Tower or move to the Spire and too far away to risk the journey to Cumberland. No family, no friends, just blood on his hands and too many hours of nothing after all the years of tight scheduling.

While the enchanters argued, Skyhold was the only place he felt reasonably safe loitering in. He had no means of leaving or anywhere worth going even if he did try to get out of the keep. He'd be lucky if he didn't just freeze to death in the mountains an hour outside the castle. He'd be lucky if they'd just go ahead and Harrow him, let him die like Amara in a secret ritual with no way out.

He had no purpose. They didn't even send him soldiers to heal, just called him to those who were already dying…

"New orders! Hustle up, people!" He didn't know why he even bothered, why the Maker had pulled him through crisis after crisis after crisis for no reason at all. "Oi! Mage! I'm talking to you too!"

The gauze he'd been rolling fell out of his hands. The brash voice pulled him around, then down, to see the Dwarven scout in green and gold gear standing with her hands on her stout hips. With that twisting yellow-gold hair, everyone knew Scout Harding, and now she was mad at Connor.

"What are you saying?" He fumbled blankly.

"I said I have orders, if you'd been listening!" He hadn't been, and slunk closer to her and the mish-mash group of chevaliers and Inquisition soldiers hovering in a loose circle near the healer's tents. Harding stopped targeting him directly and turned to the group, addressing all of them. "Darkspawn on the surface and on the move near Skyhold," she explained, and a murmur went through the fighters around her. "Keep it down! It's unusual and it's dangerous, our biggest concern is protecting the trade route north of Skyhold that connects both sides of the Frostbacks to the gates of Orzammar. Commander Cullen wants this stamped out immediately and the Inquisitor will be waiting for our report when it's done."

That… had nothing to do with him.

"Mage, get back here!" Harding was… kind of annoying. He turned back around and tried not to look too annoyed. "I said Darkspawn, or weren't you listening! Need someone who can huck a fireball or two and set wounds in a flash, that's your job isn't it?"

"I'm an apprentice."

"You're a healer, you see anyone else around? Get geared up. The rest of you, we're moving hard and fast, prep your mounts, see the quartermaster for your provisions, we ride at dawn." And that was…

That was, honestly, how it all got started...

This story currently has 11 chapters posted on Tumblr under the tag "Apprentice Guerrin", but there are a lot of typos and minor issues on that version, versus the chapters you guys will have here. Things like missing equipment details, fumbles with the timeline, etc.

To clarify since it's a bit touch-and-go in this chapter, the story takes place One Year after Inquisition (9:42), a year before Trespasser which starts in (9:43). Divine Victoria is still settling in and the College of Enchanters is figuring itself out still, meanwhile the Inquisition is riding high with no knowledge of what Solas or the Qunari are up to!

Connor, who was about 10 years old when the Blight happened in 9:30/1, is now 21-22 years old.

See you soon with the next chapter!