Before The Storm

by whitetiger62512

this is the origin of Asaaranda, Cassandra, and Sydney. how they came to be the people they are now, WARNING! this contains the torture and rape of Asaaranda from when she was turned into a qunari chained mage! DO NOT read if you can not handle the tags as they are not jokes here, this will be VERY dark. while there will be some fluff and comfort at the end of her section it is bad

1. Chapter 1

Ch.1 ponderings of the past.

*Skyhold just day before the group leaves for adamant. *

Asaaranda sat in the library reading talespinner's 'sword and shields' series trying to understand what the appeal was and she was failing, while she would admit that the sex scenes were ok she found the plot boring. She looked out a window and saw Ironbull training with Cassandra, in the months since they had met each other again the Ironbull had worked his way back into her heart.

Watching the pair train brought back memories of her younger years, back when it would have been her and bull training under the watchful eye of their trainers. She closed her book and sat back to watch the two while her mind wandered into the dark past, she looked back at her life and wondered how she came to be here.

At the same time across the map Sydney lay on her stomach with a spy glass held to her eye watching the wardens from the shadows, with Isabela and Fenris guarding her back she watched and marked the gaps in patrols and where the important points where. After her watch was done she crawled back out of sight and returned to camp, like Asaara she thought back to her beginnings and could not help but wonder how her life went so far off her chosen path?

*Nevarra dragon 9:14*

"Argh!" a ten-year-old Cassandra Pentaghast yelled as she punched a large tree, behind her she heard a chuckle and whirled.

"WHAT!?" She yelled at her brother glaring, she was dressed in a young lady's dress that had tears in it from her activities along with a small amount of blood where she had wiped her now bloody knuckles on it.
"Sorry, I had thought you still had hay fever." Her brother Anthony said holding up his hands.

"No! It is those stupid boys again, they were mocking my mark!" Cassandra growled, she had hated her mark from the moment she had learned it was in the language of the ox-men.

"I know that it bothers you Cassie, but you should not let them drive you to the point where you hurt yourself." Her brother said gently as he put an arm around her should, leading her inside her passed her his flask of water to clean her knuckles.

"Come on lets go get those cleaned up and then we will see if we can get any further in translating your mark." Anthony suggested and Cassandra meekly nodded ashamed that she had let her temper get the best of her again.

Months later when she had finally managed to translate the script she was confused on many points, the first being why would her mark be written in the short hand of the qunari instead of the proper language. Another point was why was her soulmate so mad at her, what had she done to upset them enough that the first words would be them swearing at her. But the biggest confusion was what was her job that her soulmate thought she was part of the chantry?

It was not until three years after she became a seeker in full that she realized that her mark might just be a hint at how sad her life was to be, the few times she had run into the qunari it had always ended in blood shed. This with the words lead Cassandra to believe that she was destined to kill her own soulmate in the heat of combat. It was this realization that lead her to train harder, so that should they met in battle Cassandra might be able to spare them.