1
"Did you see that?" the younger of the two Templars asked, his Orlesian accented voice tight. His hand twitched nervously toward the sword belted to his hip as panicked eyes darted to and fro.
"Louis, if you make me chase another bloody fennec into the brush, I swear to the Maker-"
"It wasn't a fennec! Just go look."
Louis's companion rolled his eyes, drew his sword, and advanced toward the wall of thorny bushes behind which Therese crouched, her back pressed into the sheer rock face of a hill. She clutched her staff closer to her chest with white knuckles, trying desperately to recall the spell of invisibility that her mother had taught her. "Damn Orlesians. Scared of their own shadows," the Templar grumbled. His eyes, despite his annoyance, were focused as he searched the foliage for signs of movement.
Therese fought the urge to shrink back beneath his scrutiny. Her fear of Templars had emerged somewhat recently, as she had spent the last eighteen months of her life hiding in the ruins of ancient fortresses, abandoned farmhouses, and once even the remains of what she thought must be an Elven temple. For the past couple of months, she's begun to believe that she might actually be able to build some kind of life for herself in the hills outside Redcliffe, but then the sky had torn open, and the Mage-Templar War had surged and spread, and she found herself fleeing once more.
Life had been easier in Orlais, before Grand Enchanter Fiona had called for the vote. Before her mother had been killed by Templars shortly after arriving home from said vote. Before she had been forced to escape under cover of night with nothing but her staff and the clothes on her back, and flee into Ferelden. And certainly before the sky had begun raining demons.
Therese and her mother had made their home on a tiny farm across the river from Sahrnia, in Emprise du Leon. There, they grew vegetables and herbs that they traded in the village, and her mother taught her magic in secret, lest they be discovered. As a child, Therese didn't know much about her mother's life before the farm, except that she had been a mage of the Spire, and she didn't trust the Circle. Later, Imogen had confided in her daughter. She'd had a Templar lover, and when it was discovered that she was pregnant, he had helped her escape. The Knight-Commander at the time had threatened her with Tranquility if she didn't name the father, and was told that the baby would be sent to Montsimard as soon as possible after birth. Of her father, Therese knew even less. She had inherited his dark hair and blue eyes, though the curl she'd gotten from her mother. She had also inherited her father's human appearance.
As a child, Therese had been envious of Imogen's graceful, pointed ears and large eyes. She would sit on her mother's lap, pouting, her tiny hands pinching the tips of her own ears as though doing so would change their shape. Imogen would chuckle warmly and take her daughter's hands in her own. "Be grateful," she would say, "that you have so many of his features, Da'len. Whenever you look in the mirror, you will see us. You will carry a piece of him, always."
They had never had to hide. Not until the day that Imogen received a letter inviting her to attend the vote for Mage independence. Templars had been camped nearby, and followed Imogen as she'd traveled home. The night after her return, they attacked the farmhouse. Therese had barely escaped. Since then, her life had been nothing but trying to outrun a war.
And now she sat, exhausted and hungry, between a cliff and an angry Templar, praying to the Maker that she would not be seen.