Imagine: You are eight years old. Smaller than the other boys your age, perhaps, but stronger and quicker too; you've been training with a bow since your first birthday, claims Uncle Varric, and Aunt Isabela promises a knife for your tenth birthday, no matter how Da scowls and Mum argues with her when she says so. You've scuffled with children bigger than yourself and come out unscathed (at least until Mum found out), so you're sure you can handle the knife. Aunt Merrill's been teaching you to find your way in the wilderness, too, and you could make the trip to Sundermount all on your own if Da would allow it.
The problem is, this isn't the wilderness: it's an earthen tunnel deep beneath Kirkwall, and you're eight and alone without bow or knife or even a light. You're very lost, and if there were anyone there to see it, you'd be brave and take charge and not let the darkness get the best of you. But without an audience, when you stumble into the wall of earth where the tunnel suddenly reaches a dead end that you could scarcely even see coming up, you fall on your rear and burst into tears.
You can imagine, then, why we'll step back a day now and leave Malcolm Hawke, eight years old, lost and alone in the dark, a moment to compose himself before he must trudge on back through that tunnel.
It began earlier that day, when Mal and his little sister Mara accompanied their mother on errands through Darktown. Da and their grandfather were gone for the day, on business for Auntie Mae just outside of Kirkwall, which was sad, because Mal missed his Da and Papa Metis, but also it meant seeing parts of the city that Mum wouldn't ordinarily bring the children to. Darktown, with its intriguing shadows and infinite hiding spots, called to the explorer in Mal. He chased Mara around piles of crates and behind precarious lean-tos until Mum snapped at them to stay close, grabbing them each by the hand. Mal endured this parental chafing for a minute before leaning around his mother's back to stick his tongue out at Mara, making her giggle.
They stayed close nonetheless while Mum negotiated with an elven man Mal didn't recognize over business he didn't understand nor care to understand: close, defined by an eight-year-old as "within shouting distance". Feeling generous, Mal took care even to stay within sight when Mara tugged at his sleeve and pointed out a litter of kittens nursing in the remains of a broken crate across the narrow passageway from the elf's station.
There were four of them, mostly grey, one the color of the ripe peaches on Papa's favorite tree. The mother cat, white with grey patches, purring as her greedy brood kneaded at their dinner, cast a shrewd yellow eye at the children as they approached. Her tail twitched, but when they kept a fair distance, she seemed to relax, shifting to give the kittens more space in the crate.
"There you are," came Mum's voice as she caught up with them. "Oh!" She noticed the feline family holding their attention. "Hello again, Jasmine," she greeted the mother cat, bending to pat its head - a gesture which met with the cat's approval; she thrust her head to meet Mum's hand, purring louder.
"How do you know her name, Mum?" Mal asked, inching closer to run a finger down one tiny grey back while Mum had the mother cat's attention.
"Oh, Merrill named this one years ago," Mum answered, scratching behind the cat's ears. "I'm surprised she's still around. Cats in Darktown…"
"She likes you," Mara giggled, following Mal's lead and poking carefully at the orange kitten.
"She should!" Mum grinned. "Most of the cream Anders used to put out for her came from my kitchen, after all." And then Mum suddenly looked sadder than anyone so near to a purring cat ought to look, and stood, brushing her hands over her knees. "All right, we'd best be getting home now."
"But Mum!"
"Can't we -"
"Why don't we have a cat, Mum?"
"Oooh, can we have a cat, Mum?"
"Yes! Can we take a kitten home?"
"Can I take the orange one?"
"Let's name it Peach!"
Mum sighed, shaking her head as she caught the children's hands again and drew them a step back from the kittens, but she was smiling again. "They're too young to be leaving their mama," she said. "We wouldn't be able to take care of them as well as she can now." The cat, Jasmine, purred as if in approval of Mum's wisdom, shifting a protective paw over the bright orange-furred kitten after Mara prodded it with a finger one last time.
"Come on," Mum said, nudging the children back toward the stairs leading up to Lowtown. "Let's go see if your Da and Metis are back yet."
But as they rounded the corner, Mal craned his neck to peer back toward the kittens in the crate and caught the crestfallen look on Mara's face as she did the same.
Mal couldn't sit still at dinner. Not even Papa Metis' tale of the adventure Auntie Mae had sent him on that day could undistract the boy from the memory of kittens. Da and Mum exchanged a knowing look as Mal wriggled in his seat and finally blurted out, "Can I be excused?"
Da regarded him with an eloquent eyebrow raised. "You've not finished your dinner."
"I'm full."
"Too full for dessert?" Mum grinned.
Mal wavered. "Well…"
"I believe Orana's been experimenting with some sort of combination pie," Papa Metis said. "Peach and blueberry."
Ordinarily such a combination would have won his full attention, but at the moment the word peach only put him in mind of a tiny bundle of orange fur down in Darktown. Mara had liked that kitten so much. Papa would like it too, Mal was sure; it was as orange as Metis' favorite fruit and nearly as red as both Metis' and Mara's hair. Surely such a kitten was meant to be part of their family.
"Don't want pie," Mal muttered, too stricken by the unfairness of abandoning the kitten to the undercity to be distracted by mere sugar.
Mum's eyes narrowed. "Are you feeling all right, Malcolm?"
"Fine," he huffed, but Mum's eyes narrowed even further as Da and Papa turned to look at him too. "Just wanna go out and play," Mal wheedled, widening his eyes as winsomely as he knew how.
Da hid a smiile behind his hand and Mum sighed. "Two more bites of your turnips, then you can go."
Mal brightened. "Aw. Just one bite?"
"Three more bites of your turnips," Mum amended, fixing him with a stern glare befitting their family name. Mal groaned and gave up, forcing down the requisite three bites. Then, when Da nodded in approval, he slipped from his seat and scurried out the door.
Mal hadn't really noticed before how much daylight actually filtered down into Darktown. The sun was setting when he finally found his way back into the undercity, and the passageways that had been delightfully dappled with sunlight from cracks and crevices above now seemed narrower in the gloom, foreboding, as he retraced their steps in search of the kittens' crate.
He had tried to note landmarks as they departed Darktown hours ago. Landmarks, it turned out, looked very different in the dark. Tense with mounting panic, he wandered about looking for anything recognizable. He barely noticed when the wood and stone structures reinforcing the walls of the undercity in places gradually petered out, leaving bare earth. He pressed on, venturing down one crooked passage after another in dwindling hope, willing each turn to lead him back into familiar territory, even as the ceiling above sank lower and lower and the walls grew closer and closer together, as the light of lanterns faded along with the stench of Darktown itself. What light remained only showed earth on every side. Subterranean rot replaced the odor of the sewers. Mal shivered as the air chilled; he started when dripping water from somewhere above suddenly hit his cheek.
But before fear could wholly overcome him, a new scent mingled with the earthy odors of the tunnels. Yeasty and warm, it put him in mind of Orana's kitchen, of the dinner table and his half-emptied plate he'd left behind - not so long ago, though it felt like a whole day he'd been wandering by now - to sneak from the Hawke estate's yard out into the streets of Kirkwall. Somewhere not far off, someone had bread baking. This cheered him immensely: bread meant civilization; it meant people, which meant Darktown and eventually back to Hightown. Also, the smell made his belly rumble in anticipation, a reminder that he'd failed to adequately fill it before setting out on this adventure. He turned his steps toward the smell, keeping one hand on the tunnel wall as he crept through the darkness in search of the baker.
Progress was slow and dubious: one tunnel looked much like another in the gloom, and the smell was no strict road map but only a general sense of the direction he should explore. At one point the muddy floor sloped downward several yards into a clutter of pebbles through which he scrambled as nimbly as he could, stumbling once and halting his fall with a palm that the stones left scraped and bruised - and wet; he felt water trickling in a thin stream over the rocks. Then it was an equally muddy slope back up on the opposite side of that odd little valley. He wiped his hands off on his trousers, sparing only the briefest thought for the fit Mum would have when she saw the state of his clothes. It didn't do to think too much of Mum at all just now. It only reminded him that his parents weren't here and he had only his own wits (well advanced for his age, he was sure) to get him out of this mess.
He trudged on, silent and small, sniffing for the scent of the bread and listening for any clue to add to what little he could see in this tunnel. It seemed to go on and on now in one winding passage without any new route branching off; the smell of bread grew faint after a while, but he had no choice but to go on or to turn back, so he kept marching. Until, in near total darkness now, he ran smack into the packed earth where the tunnel came to a dead end, and sat down hard and cried.
But the rumbling of his stomach wouldn't let him sit feeling sorry for himself long. The smell of the bread was faint but still present; he'd surely just missed a turn somewhere. He picked himself up, brushed himself off, and began to retrace his steps.
There was no knowing how much time had passed (enough for his feet to be chiding him near as loudly as his stomach) when suddenly he heard a faint splash of water ahead. Mal pulled up short, keeping his hand still on the tunnel wall as he inched closer on his knees, his other hand out ahead of him. And there, directly in his path, his fingers slapped at water, dark and cold, lapping at his hand - and then at his knees - the pool was even then rising.
He scurried backwards, getting to his feet again. This was the same tunnel he'd been walking through for much longer than it took him to get back to this point, he was sure of it, and yet here was an underground pool where none had blocked his path on the way in.
In his haste to retreat from the rising water, he scampered back - to the opposite wall from the one he had been following before. And then suddenly, on the tiniest breeze, the smell of bread reached his nose again, stronger than ever. Turning towards it, his fingers slipped from the tunnel wall into a sudden void: a crack, a niche, certainly not a proper tunnel, invisible in the darkness until he was right up next to it. It wasn't terribly large; Mum or Da would find it a tight fit; but for an eight-year-old boy, smaller than the other boys his age but far more nimble, it was a highway.
He slipped through the opening and found himself in a tunnel darker and smaller than any he'd followed yet - but he hadn't followed it yet, and that meant possibilities that sent a thrill of adventure through his limbs. Mal crept forward in a silence that would have amazed his family under ordinary circumstances. The smell of bread grew stronger, and with it, the gloom of the tunnel began to lift, as off in the distance, the flicker of firelight became visible.
Mal's tunnel finally opened into a chamber of some sort. Blinking as his eyes adjusted, to one side he could see a firepit from which the light cast shadows throughout the small cavern. Standing very still just inside the tunnel, he saw odds and ends scattered near the fire: crates, furs, sacks. But there was no sign of the bread he had been smelling, nor its baker.
Growing desperate, at last Mal ventured into the cavern, keeping to the wall as he crept around towards the firepit. More of the clutter became identifiable as he neared it: a bedroll, a basin of water. A flat slab of stone had been positioned over the firepit - and just off to the side, heaped on a frayed bit of cloth, a stack of the flatbread that must have been recently baked there, whose aroma had guided his steps. Suddenly ravenous, Mal crept towards the bread.
The air was suddenly charged with sparks. He jumped back from the pile of bread and looked up to see hundreds of tiny points of firelight swirling toward the tunnel entrance from which he had just come, coalescing in a fiery globe in the palm of the person who stood there now. Mal gasped and backed towards the wall, reaching for the bow he hadn't thought to bring or the knife he had yet to receive. But the mage at the tunnel only held the fire aloft until the light reached her face.
Her. He could see by her magelight that she was female. Her magical fire cast lively highlights on hair that seemed as dark as Mum's, skin darker than Da's, and the glint of a gold hoop in her pointed elven ear. At his first sight of her, her teeth were bared in a feral snarl, but as she looked him over, slowly she relaxed into a scowl.
"Who sent you?" she asked finally in a voice rough with disuse, its inflections reminding him of Aunt Isabela.
Mal sniffed and scowled back at her. "Wasn't sent."
"Then what are you doing here? How did you find me?"
"I…" He blinked back tears; he'd had enough of a cry earlier; now was the time to be brave. "I followed the smell. Your bread. I got lost, but…"
Her face softened ever so slightly as she stepped closer, holding up her light to inspect him. "Lost, this deep under Kirkwall? Where were you trying to go, then?"
"Wanted a kitten," Mal muttered. "Mum said no, so I came to get one myself, only...I couldn't find the cat again."
The mage stared at him a moment before she barked out a laugh. "You find me instead. That is rich. Now, what am I to do with you, boyo?"
Mal started to shrink back again before remembering it was time to be brave. He clenched his fists and leaned in closer. "Well, you could offer me some of that bread."
She blinked and then burst out laughing so suddenly that they were both startled into taking a step back. The mage slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide and glittering in the firelight, chuckling still as she considered him.
"Or," said Mal reluctantly, "at least show me the way back."
"I suppose I'll have to," the mage said, "lest you eat me out of house and home. For what this home is worth," she went on, in a voice so low that Mal, guessing he wasn't meant to overhear, naturally perked up his ears in curiosity. "I suppose if a child can find me even just by accident, it's time I found a safer hole to hide in." She strode forward to the firepit and seized a wide, round lump of bread out of the stack on the cloth, holding it up to dangle from her fingers like a handkerchief. "Perhaps," she said, eyeing Mal once more, "you could at least offer a name in exchange for a meal?"
"Name?" Mal asked, glancing suspiciously at the flatbread.
"Yours. Who are you, child?"
Parental warnings about strangers warred with the rumbling in his stomach for half a minute. But, Mal finally decided, it was already too late for not talking to this stranger, and it would be both awkward to accompany her back to Darktown without knowing what to call each other, and excruciating to make that return trip on his now so empty stomach.
"Malcolm Hawke," he announced, not without pride and a slight bow to his new benefactor. "Everyone calls me Mal, though."
The mage tossed him the flatbread, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "Such manners. Hawke…" She pursed her lips, watching him eat. "I think I have heard this name. Who are your parents?"
"My Da is Fenris," said Mal around a mouthful of bread. Swallowing the lump, he continued, "And my Mum's Lisbet Hawke."
The mage's eyes lit up. "Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall?"
Mal nodded, intent upon his bread. "Used to be. She's just Mum now, I guess."
"Still, she might be able to...help me."
Mal smiled his charmingest at this. Mum was, he knew well, quite good at helping. In fact, the chance to help might even outweigh whatever maternal fury was due her son for his sudden disappearance. "What d'you need her help with?" he asked eagerly.
The mage frowned, and then bent to gather the rest of the flatbread, tying the cloth on which it lay up into a little pouch. "That's best explained when I see her," she said. "I'll take you home, and then...we'll see."
Leaving the rest of her meager possessions where they lay, she tucked the bread into a pocket and beckoned to him. "Ready to go?"
"Wait," Mal said, looking her over. "Do I have to give you somethin'?"
She looked at him, confused. "What for?"
"Your name," he said. "You gave me bread for mine."
"So literal," she smiled. "No need. You may call me Peri."
Peri led him quickly back through her narrow tunnel by the light of her globe of fire. In its glow, as they squeezed through the hidden crack into the larger tunnel, Mal could now clearly see the sudden pool that had flustered him into stumbling upon Peri's tunnel in the first place. The water lay still now, dark and much vaster than he would have guessed when his hand had found it in the dark.
"How do we get across?" Mal asked Peri, his voice subdued in the closeness of the tunnel. "Darktown's back that way, isn't it?"
"It certainly is," said the mage, beckoning him close. Mal approached her hesitantly. "Hold this a moment," she said.
He glanced at her hands in confusion, for they seemed empty. "Hold what?"
One hand - tiny, he noticed now; barely bigger than his own, certainly smaller than any of the adults he knew, even Aunt Merrill - caught his wrist in a firm grasp. Instinct made Mal struggle to yank his hand back. Peri seemed startled as she let go of him, and then held her empty hands up before her face.
"It won't hurt," she said, "I promise you. But I cannot work with the fire and the water at the same time. Either you hold the light, or I clear our path in the dark."
She looked at him again, hopefully, and now he realized that her hands were not so empty as he had thought, for the sparks she had gathered into a ball of fire were still swirling near her right palm. Mal watched it slowly turn for a moment. Then, dazzled, he suddenly stretched a finger out to poke at the globe.
"Ouch!" he shouted as the heat caught up with him and, just as suddenly, Peri snatched her hands and her fiery globe away, the look of surprise on her face quickly fading to frustration. "It burns!" he wailed.
"Hush," Peri said. "Of course it burns. It is fire. I did not ask you to poke at it. I am going to give it to you. It will not burn you to hold it, then, so long as you do not provoke it again."
"But I'm not a mage," he pointed out, keeping a wary eye on the globe.
"Not necessary," she said, holding out her hand to him.
And it was true: Mal was no mage, but Mum was, and Papa Metis was, and Aunt Merrill and Aunt Varania and Auntie Mae and...he'd always wondered what it was like. Curiosity finally won out over caution. He placed his hand in Peri's, palm up. Her other hand lowered the globe near enough that he could feel its heat on his fingers, but this time he was not burned. She wove her hand in a quick pattern and stepped back, and the fire stayed with him.
The sensation of magical fire in his hand, moving with him (of course he tried moving his hand around to watch the fire dance with it. What would be the point of just standing still?), could well have kept Malcolm occupied for a time, but then with a rushing sound, Peri began her water spell. He looked up, eyes wide, to see the expanse of water blocking their path rolling away to either side in waves that, at least at this distance, seemed grander than any he had seen on the Waking Sea. Mal watched agape as the water thundered into crevices to either side, the pool vanishing in a minute as if it had never been. All that remained was the muddy slope on either side of the pebbly floor he had crossed on his own not so long ago.
"Wow," he breathed, still staring in awe at the empty basin even as Peri reached to take her fire back from him. "Can you do that again?"
"When it is needed," she said briskly. "Now we cross, before the water is restored."
They hurried down the slope, across the pebbles, and back up the other side. Peri seemed to know the tunnels intricately, taking him through twists and turns that he struggled to remember - he was leaving now, yes, but there might always be another day to explore beneath the city. When he stumbled, Peri reached for his hand and led him on just the slightest bit more slowly.
Mal noticed, this time, when wooden beams and scraps of metal began reinforcing the earthen tunnel shaft: they were nearing Darktown again. Peri's fire was still the only source of light, though - it must be the middle of the night, without even lantern light reaching them from the sewers somewhere ahead.
And then suddenly Peri's light winked out, and everything happened at once. A silvery blue glow replaced the fire's warmth; Peri made an odd choking sound and her hand in Mal's tightened; and a voice so familiar it made Mal nearly boneless with relief growled, "Unhand my son, mage!"
Mal twisted to look behind them; the voice had come from over his shoulder. "Da?"
Fenris stood there, directly behind Peri, glaring at her in fierce concentration. It was him glowing, Mal now realized: the lines of lyrium on his Da's skin had all lit up suddenly, brighter than Mal had ever seen them before, if that wasn't just from being in the tunnel. His sword was in his hand, but his other hand…
"Da!" Mal gasped, and looked back up at his companion. She had dropped Mal's hand as well as her fire to claw at her chest, her eyes bulging in panic as she stood as if frozen in place with Fenris' hand plunged into her back. "Peri!" Mal shouted, and slipped around Fenris to tug on his sword arm. "Da, she's all right! She didn't hurt me. I found her and I was lost and she's showing me the way out. She's just helping me, Da!"
Fenris glanced toward Mal and then back to the mage, hesitating. Finally, "Swear to raise no hand nor spell against us, mage. I will release you."
"I...swear," Peri choked out, head bobbing in an awkward nod. "Mean...no harm."
Fenris nodded, extracting his hand from her chest nearly as quickly as it had pierced it. Peri fell to one knee, gasping, rubbing at her chest as if unable to believe it was still whole. Mal stood very still, watching his father swiftly wipe a trace of blood from his gauntlets in the faint and fading light of his markings. Peri's blood, Mal realized, and shrank back.
Fenris glanced down at him. "Malcolm."
"Da," the boy whispered. "What'd you do?"
Fenris breathed a sigh eight years in the making. "I had hoped you need never see that."
Mal looked at Peri, still kneeling, gasping for breath that began to slow to a normal pace. "Will she...be okay?"
"She is unharmed," Fenris assured him, glancing between the mage and his son.
"Is it magic, Da?" Mal crept closer, tentatively reaching a finger to trace one of the lyrium markings. Fenris tensed, but allowed it.
"It is...a tool," he said finally.
"And a weapon, it seems," Peri said with a bitter laugh. She stood and turned to face them, one arm clasped across her chest, keeping a wary eye on Fenris.
"Yes," said Fenris, bristling. "When it needs to be. My son disappeared shortly before sundown. We tracked him to Darktown, but from there the traces grew muddled and we split up to search. What was I to think, when I see him in a stranger's clutches?"
"Perhaps that she was leading him out of the maze?" Peri pointed out, stepping closer and rising on tiptoe to glare at him.
"Leading him with a clear display of magic," Fenris countered, arms crossed as Mal clung to his waist. "You might have enthralled him, for all I could tell. Forgive me if I find it best to be wary of mages."
"From what I hear," Peri said, tilting her head to the side, "you were wary enough to marry one."
Fenris glanced down at Mal, who shook his head quickly. "I didn't say nothin', Da! Didn't say Mum was -"
"He didn't," Peri verified, stepping back with a grin and a sudden relaxing of the tension in her posture. "I've heard of the Champion. And I don't mean to start a fight, either. Apologies." She thrust a hand out towards Fenris suddenly. "Shall we start again? My name's Perilla, and I gather you are the famed Fenris."
Fenris groaned. "Please don't tell me you know of us from Varric's book."
Her eyebrows lifted. "No, but do you mean to say there's a book about you? Does it perhaps involve more of your shockingly...hands-on means of introducing yourself? I shall have to track it down."
"No, you won't," countered Fenris, but he clasped her hand, finally. "It seems I owe you thanks for Malcolm's safety as well as apologies for my...hasty conclusions."
"Perhaps," Peri said, "you might thank me by taking me to meet the Champion. These tunnels under your city grow dull and lonely. There's something...someone I need to find, and hiding down here isn't getting me any closer. From what I've heard of Hawke, she might be the ally I require."
Mal perked up, bouncing at Fenris' side, looking up at his Da with a very loud silent Please? In his eyes. Fenris' lips twitched with a smile when he caught the look, and he reached to flick a glob of mud out of the boy's hair.
"Very well," he said at last. "If nothing else, Hawke will wish the chance to bombard you with questions about Malcolm's disappearance. Survive that, and you might find her eager to know your story as well. But no promises about our aid." He gave Malcolm's ear a gentle tug; the boy twitched and then elbowed his father's side with a fierce and equal affection. "Our adventuring is...curtailed, these days, mostly spent in chasing down our wayward offspring."
"I imagine so," murmured Peri, with a grin at the child wriggling while Fenris caught an arm around his shoulder and squeezed him too tight against his side for the elbowing to continue. "Lead the way, then, Serah Fenris. I am so very ready to leave this rat-warren behind."
And so they made their way back into Darktown. Mal, heartened by the talk of adventures no matter how limited, shot ever cheekier grins Peri's way as they walked. Encouraged by Fenris' apparent tolerance of the stray mage Mal had picked up in his own little adventure, and recalling the long-forgotten goal after which he had been questing, the boy finally sidled up to his father to whisper, "Da? On the way back...Can we pick up a kitten?"