Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age or any of it's characters.

Note: This is an Avvar AU story, lol. I'm DA trash...and trying to work on writing romance, since I don't think I'm particularly great at it. So any feedback on how to improve that, will be much loved. This is a slow burn, and just a heads up, I don't really write smut, so if anything this should just end up adorable or something.

This is just the prologue, setting the stage for the story and all that. That's why it's so super short. The rest of the chapters will be much longer.

...-...

Thane Cullen Ar Eydis O Lionhold Magicsbane stood at the side of the lowlanders' road as he watched several of his men dragging a large tree across the way. He'd heard of their highways as a child, though he had to say he was disappointed with this one. The stories he'd been told had always included throngs of people, fancy clothes, carriages rushing past one another. This road looked like it hadn't been used in years.

Perhaps it was just all the snow that kept people at bay. If he came back in the summer, maybe he'd see those old stories come to life. Not that he'd want to. He'd always been glad that his clan didn't hold any territory adjacent to the lowlands. It meant that he only had to deal with other clans, which meant that they didn't have to spend hours arguing over whose laws were to be abided by and in what circumstances.

It meant he didn't have to listen to lost travelers barking 'barbarian' at him in their clumsy common tongue.

Yet here he was, in the fucking lowlands of all places, helping to set up for a 'raid'.

Cullen scratched at the stubble on his chin, his frown tugging on an old scar that ran from his upper lip up toward his eye. The air was cold, the wind tugging occasionally on his longish golden curls.

This whole thing felt…wrong. Either he wasn't being told the whole story, or there was far more at work than he or the other clan's thane knew.

The Red Lions were assisting the Shadow Wolf clan due to a recent accord that he already hated himself for having agreed upon. He'd been hoping that most of the work would be shirked off to his men so that he'd have an excuse to withdraw from the alliance—their clans had never gotten on well together, though recent circumstances had…changed things.

The Shadow Wolves' thane, Randolph Ar Sassa O Wolfkeep Blackwall, walked up next to him, tossing him an apple as he came to a stop. He inspected the work, nodding mostly to himself. He was a bear of a man, all dark hair and scars, with a meticulously kept beard that had most of Cullen's clan sneering lowlander behind his back. However, Cullen had warned them against any such provocations during their little endeavor.

The two clans were getting along quite well, all things considered. There'd been one fight early on, though the mood had changed when they'd shown up to find a bunch of lowlanders dressed in stolen Avvar gear, sitting in their poorly made lowlander tents, bitching about the weather and why they had to wear things that were so 'poorly designed for the cold'. Like it was the Avvar's fault that half of them had donned stolen summer wear in the middle of winter.

They couldn't even get their details right.

"You're certain this will end things?"

Thane Blackwall bit into his own apple, inspecting the frozen landscape, and then turned to point to the dozen bodies lying in the snow a few yards from the road. "They were setting up for whatever is supposed to happen. We stop it, we stop them." He took another bite of his apple and arched his thick eyebrows. "Where do you think they get these this time of year?"

Glancing down at his own, Cullen's frown stretched. "If the wrong carriage comes—"

"Let's have some faith in your sister, shall we?" Thane Blackwall murmured, letting his gaze wander across the snowy expanse between the tree lines to the north and south of the road. "She spoke with our guest, and they said that an 'Avvar raid' was scheduled for today. I, personally, would feel terrible if they didn't get what they came for."

"We help you with this—"

"And we'll respect the new borders." Thane Blackwall let out a bark of a laugh. "You have my word. Now then, let's make this a story to remember."