All characters and stories are the property of the original copyright holder of the Dragon age series, and are not mine. This is fan fiction for entertainment purposes only.
The dwarf named Varric swore as his arrow landed shy of the target, a faded tonic bottle tossed in the air by the Iron Bull. They'd been taking bets most of the day as Falon carried herbals back and forth from the stables to the apothecary.
She envied the group of adventurers as they'd traveled around Thedas correcting all that Corypheus the mad had done wrong. Falon envied them because they were not clanless as she was. She envied their good natured ribbing, the good company they kept. She envied their usefulness.
However, envy accomplished nothing, so more oft than not Falon simply wiped her thoughts of it, and focused on her studies in the mage tower. As a former elven apostate, Falon had asked for and received sanctuary among Skyhold's rebel mages.
"Andraste's ass!" Varric shouted, missing yet another target as Bull's booming laughter rang through the small courtyard. Falon smiled to herself as she hurried past. Perhaps if they abstained from the wares of the tavern, they'd have better luck at target practice.
Hurrying up the steps with the crate of elf root and blood lotus in her arms, she turned right on the battlements, but stopped abruptly at the sight before her. The Inquisition's Commander stood like stone himself, strong, but somewhat forlorn and worn away.
It would be so rude to rush by with no acknowledgment, but Falon did her best, her level best, to never attract the attention of the Templars, even the reformed ones here in Skyhold. "Good Afternoon, Commander," she said to his back as she moved past him.
He turned to smile at her. "Falon, good day to you." It was clear she'd interrupted his thoughts.
She apologized for doing so and prepared to hurry on her way. To which, he cleared his throat. "How are you settling into the tower?"
Falon found herself compelled to clear her own for it didn't want to work as she replied, "Very well, Commander. Well."
His thoughtful gaze returned. "Good," he said softly walking closer to her where she still held her burden, and taking it from her. "I would hope you would feel you could come to me. To any of us, should you need help of any kind. Above all else, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the chantry."
Sadness touched his eyes. "Oh, I know that. We all know that, Commander."
He shook his head with a small smile. "How many times must I say it? I do not command of you. You must call me Cullen."
Falon felt that once again like a warm blanket on a cold night, that invitation to the family. She knew it could not be meant as such, but it felt that way. Perhaps, it had been how they found her wandering, hiding out, starving, but she'd been welcomed here. Truly welcomed in a way the circles never had.
"I...I'm not sure I can, Ser." She glanced up, seeing honest warmth in his smile. "I mean... you are the inquisitor's right hand."
He clucked at her as he shifted the crate's weight in his arms. "Don't let Eliana hear you say that. She thinks it smacks too much of the Chantry."
Falon wrinkled her nose and pushed golden strands off her face blown there by the winds that touched the battlements constantly. "She knows it's already common practice amongst the servants, doesn't she? It's just what they call you. You her right, and Cassandra her left." They began the short trek along the high walkway toward the tower where she paused at the steps.
"Thank you, Ser," she whispered feeling several sets of Templar's eyes on her as she insisted on taking back the crate.
"Falon," he said firmly, demanding her gaze meet his own. She dared a glance, seeing a mixture of pity and perhaps anger in them. Stern eyes fell on his guard, as he snapped at them both. "Is there a reason your attention wanders from your duty, Hall?"
"No, Ser," returned the guard smartly.
Without lowering that voice, but only softening it, the commander looked down at her to repeat, "You have nothing to fear in these walls. You nor any mage. The past will be corrected, Falon. You have my word."
Heart stuttering, she ran for the large towering door behind which the mages of Skyhold worked and lived. She rushed through the inner hall where there were desks and books set aside for study, and into the apothecary's suite of rooms. Cool and dry, herbs hung from every conceivable space in the dim light of the room where a fire burned most days to aid the drying.
"Clemence, I have your cuttings."
He appeared on silent feet around the corner. "That is good, Falon. Will there be more tomorrow?"
The mild monotone of the tranquil made her a little jumpy if she was honest, but she worked hard not to let Clemence know it. He might not feel anything at the slight, but she would feel the regret if she let that slight be known. Kindness was the one thing she had to give to those in the tower separated forever from their connection to the fade.
They were amputees of the most difficult limb to forget, magic. As poorly as her magic worked, she didn't know what she'd do without it. Having barely survived her harrowing, she had no desire to ever see the inside of the fade again.
She nodded in response to the tranquil's question.
"Harrit says there are caravans from the south due in any day, so if not tomorrow, then the next. I will check in the afternoon again." Falon started to walk away toward the hall and her supper, but she stopped a few steps shy of the door. "Clemence, what is your impression of Commander Rutherford?"
"The commander?" He looked puzzled. "He is a Templar like any other. Why do you ask?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. He seems kinder somehow."
Clemence met her eyes so matter-of-factly. "They all seem kind enough until a mage is possessed. It is their place."
A chill crept its way into her bones despite the heat of the tower room. Clemence stated that so badly that it struck Falon right in the chest with a meaty thump, much like an arrow quivered as it hit the mark, like one of Varric's missed shots, had found her heart.
Perhaps she was being too trusting, too naive. Perhaps, mages could never count on the kindness of Templars.
The next morning in the tower dawned crisp and cold, cold enough to don her vest and furs. Falon was part of a party that would ride partway down the mountain to a meadow where they could safely lob spells at dummies.
Running behind, she rounded the corner to the stable yard and found the party readying horses. Astride his own impressive warhorse, there was Cullen, commander of Skyhold. Why would he be here? she wondered.
He nodded her way once but continued his conversation with the guard captain.
The Templars referred to this duty as Mage Patrol because their primary job was to make sure Skyhold's rebel mages weren't about to bring the mountain down with their practice sessions. Falon's hand shook on the reins of her thankfully biddable horse. She was no great rider and a worse spell master. Though spirit energy was her favorite, she struggled to make a good barrier of healing, protective energy. She struggled with everything in fact.
They rode a very short way down a winding hilltop path, reaching the meadow and dismounting before the day had warmed much at all. It soon became very clear that the Templars would be involved in training today.
Enchanter Torin began by calling them to circle. "Today, you will learn some fighting skill beyond your magic, hopefully, to incorporate with your magic." '
One of the Templar soldiers she didn't really know brought forth a stack of staffs. She inhaled a deep, steadying breath. This was going to be brutal for her ego. Mainly, because she really cared what the commander thought of her. She wanted his respect, and she knew she would not win it with her fighting skill.
She ran a hand over the staff pile when it was her turn, sensing the natural energy of a spirit staff, and called it to her hand. She caught it and took her place again in the circle, swearing she could feel eyes on her back.
It was disconcerting to feel that much attention on her, especially if it was as she suspected from the guards. Elven magic was a little different from human magic, but the flavor never changed the outcome. "Commander Rutherford is here to see how much martial training each of you already has."
Cullen stepped forward and nodded to the enchanter. "Let's begin with something simple; How much time have each of you spent in training?"
They went around the circle with each mage answering until he got to her. Falon looked at her feet. "Falon?"
He wasn't going to like what he was about to hear. "I was a city elf for years, so I am largely self-taught. No fighting experience." Cullen's clear hawkish eyes fixed on her face as if he knew she held something back which she did. "I escaped the Kirkwall alienage before the uprising," she lied. Unreadable emotions flitted over his face.
"That was wiser than you know," he said simply. "All right. How many of you can use a barrier to protect a squad?"
None of them said yes.
"Well, then," he huffed into the warming air. "Falon, shall we?"
Her eyes shot to his face. He must be joking.
"What?"
"I want you to use a barrier spell while I try and spank your backside with a practice sword. Trust me, after the first few licks you should get good at dodging."
Falon stood frozen and a bit speechless. Cullen gestured for her to step forward into the circle of students. She wanted to please him, that much was certain, but she'd also begun to resent this attention. She glanced around at the curious faces of the mages. They were wondering, too.
She pulled her staff up to battle ready. It was an apprentice's staff, nothing of note. "Ser, I should warn you... elven magic is unlike the magic you have probably faced before."
Cullen gave her that charming smirk he seemed to reserve for the battlefield. She'd seen it as he drilled his men. So sure of himself, he was. "I've faced just about everything, recruit."
That did it. "I am not your recruit." She was not with the inquisition to be one of its soldiers. Falon was done with the life that sent her out to die on the sword of the latest deluded Chevalier or Magister. She would quietly mix potions and heal, but she would not kill for Eliana Lavellan, no matter how much she wanted to please her commander.
"That's touched a nerve," he said in that soft Ferelden accent.
"Indeed, commander." With that, Falon drew up a firm barrier glowing in energetic green light. Cullen smiled circling her.
"Very good," he said, then promptly began trying to batter her defenses. She concentrated. Her barriers could take on a bit of a bite if she tried, and she intended to try. He'd been manipulating her to some purpose. The very next strike against her shield wall had the desired result. She felt a fleeting sense of guilt as Cullen's body went rigid with the storm magic shock she'd laced into her barrier.
"You...," he sputtered, then laughed. It was the first time she'd heard it. "What a trickster."
She waited for the eruption of temper, but it never came. Instead, he seemed proud of her, asking, "Can all elf mages do that?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. I spent all my time hiding from Templars, remember?"
It was unworthy and she knew it, yet she said it anyway. Cullen stopped circling to meet her gaze. "Just so, Falon. Just so."
There was definite sadness and pity in his gaze as he stared at her a moment, then resumed facing off with her. Falon felt as though she stood on the Skyhold battlements looking down as if a stiff breeze would send her hurtling to the valley floor below. There was an expectation on the air, dancing between them like dust motes. He stepped close to her, whispering so low she doubted anyone could hear his words but her. "Punish me, then. Go on."
An ache grew in her chest. It felt like a thudding blow at first, then became ice cold and brittle. She'd been alone for what felt like centuries, though she'd only seen the change of twenty years behind her. "Have you seen the city alienages, Commander?"
He nodded stepping back, raising his sword between them both. "I have."
"Sad and dank little places, all of them. I crawled my way through most of them from the time I was thirteen. Once some elder started to suspect my magic, I would have to abandon all again and run for the next one. Because city elves live only because they bowed to the circles, correct?"
"That is correct." He didn't make excuses, and somehow that fed her growing rage. She threw more storm energy off as she circled with him in a dance as old as war. The others had moved away, she noted, clearing her line of fire. Cullen gestured, putting a hand out to one of the Templar soldiers. Wordlessly, the man brought the commander a shield.
She hated him in that moment, hated that softness and patience in his blue eyes that reminded her so of the skies the mountain held high. She shocked him again, not enough to incapacitate. It was as if she couldn't stop.
"You've lost everything, haven't you commander? During the blight?" Her words sang with cruelty.
He nodded. "When we fled for the Reach. Yes."
She struck again. This time with fire that bounced off his quickly used shield. "Imagine doing that again and again and again, commander. Imagine that it was necessary in order to even breathe."
"I can't," he said. That simple sympathy was her undoing. She threw strike after strike which he reflected. This wasn't normal for her. She normally could not bring up enough magic to make an offensive strike, yet here she was angrily lobbing fire and ice at the inquisition's second in command.
"How dare you." She sobbed the words and flung them at him. "How dare you decide? How dare they?"
Now, she spoke of the alienage, of the elders who would decide her fate among them. Her magic had always been something she must fear. It stole her life periodically. The job at the bookseller's that she'd adored and had to leave. The family she'd lost track of in the blight. Home after home. Gone.
She sent one last blast Cullen's way. He emerged from behind a heated, shining shield. "Are you quite finished?"
Appalled, Falon looked down at the staff in her hand. She stared at the hated thing.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I'm quite finished."
With that, she threw her staff down and ran. The crunch of snow beneath her slim leather boots was the only sound, that and the breaths she couldn't catch. She ran until she had to collapse on a stone beneath a gnarled old tree.
She could have killed him. She could have...
Falon sat, her face in her hands for endless moments waiting for the beat of her heart to settle. The slow plod of horses hooves muffled in snow sounded behind her. She rose to keep going, to continue down the mountain and start over again, as she so often had.
"You could run, Falon, but I'll simply follow."
She swallowed back a gasp. Cullen. A spark of that anger returned.
She turned to see him dismounting from his horse and patting its side casually. Though she noticed he watched her with the wary eye of a potential opponent still. She did have a question.
"Why?" She heard her own betrayal in her voice. "Why would you?"
"Because you can't use a weapon you fear." He walked toward her calmly. "Because Eliana and I agreed you were a danger to yourself if you didn't learn to control your magic."
"I won't be a weapon, Commander!" She turned from him shaking with fury and something else... something she had no name for. "But, I suppose I was deemed a threat to the inquisition. I will go."
He reached her side and turned her to look at him. "You will not go."
Falon looked up at him. "Why do you care?"
"I don't know," he said. "Is that what you want to hear? Do you think I feel no guilt for the life you've led? For the part that I played in circle life."
She backed away. "Don't. Don't lie to me, Cullen. You believe as they all do. Magic must be contained. I must be contained." Emotion choked that last word. The constant tiring struggle of it. How many times had she considered asking to become tranquil? "I should be contained."
In an uncharacteristic display of passion, Cullen grabbed her arm and shook her slightly. "Stop it! Just stop. That is exactly why we decided I had to do this. You needed to be provoked to see your own control. Eliana is like you. She came from your world, or something like it. When she first came to me... I laughed at her. Thought she was being dramatic, but I see it now. In your eyes. You would lock yourself away in the cage of your own mind, wouldn't you?"
Falon closed her eyes as he shouted at her. "I would end this."
Now he asked her question. "Why?" Yet his contained such sorrow for her that she broke.
"I still don't know how I survived my harrowing. It was horrific." She grimaced as the memories flew at her as they always did. "Fear demons. Crows' wings hitting me in the face. Perhaps we'd left it too long. I wasn't disciplined enough. I was too weak."
"Kirkwall." He breathed. She pulled away from him, unable to shake him loose.
"You were probably too high in command to notice a novice elf brought into the circle late in her life, imprisoned at first. I didn't escape the alienage."
"You escaped the circle in the fighting."
She nodded. Tears tracking down her face. "At first, I hid. The abominations frightened me as I've never been frightened, but eventually, I grabbed a staff and fought my way to the pier. The Champion had already been there."
"I stowed away, and as people began fleeing the city. The boats took off one by one." She clutched at his hands on her arm. "Let me go. You know now."
He didn't let her go. He instead pulled her into his arms. "Falon. Falon Name unknown. Discovered in the Kirkwall alienage and suspected of blood magic. Your name had crossed my desk." His hands ran over her, clutching her tightly. "Maker. You were to be questioned at Meredith's request."
Falon fought half-heartedly this time. "Let me go, Cullen." She pleaded with him to do more than remove his grip. "Let me go," she begged. It felt like he was her only tether to the world.
"Why do you have no name?" He pulled back to look at her tear soaked face brushing those tears away. He wasn't acting like a commander now. He was acting like a man.
"I had no parents to speak of. The people of the alienages cared for me, but barely. Everyone was too hungry to take on another mouth. Usually, an elder would give me work until I was old enough to become the chantry's problem. They called the Templars. Then, I stayed on the run. The name was never important. I don't even have a soul name, not really. It is only what I call myself."
"And what do you call yourself, then?"
"Falon means prayer."
"To whom do you pray, Falon?"
She stood there feeling weak and exhausted in Cullen's strong arms, knowing he would see her differently when he knew she was accused of blood magic. She'd known his gaze would change when it looked on her once he knew her secret. She had never expected to be held, kept safe, or to collapse in his arms after the revelation.
"No one," she whispered. "I pray to no one."
After a time, snow began to fall on the mountain. Cullen bundled her before him in the saddle and pointed his horse back to Skyhold. It would appear she would not be running today, she thought as she fell asleep in his arms to the gentle sway of the animal's stride.
A week had passed since the Commander had brought her back to Skyhold. She and Clemence had fallen back into their peaceful routine. Falon would fetch his herbal shipments arriving almost daily from all over the territories of Thedas, and they would work together to study the mixture of different formulas. They had, between them, already made a vast improvement in the basic lyrium potion required by the Templars.
Her apron was now covered with the remnants of her last experiment with prophet's laurel and blood lotus. Noxious fumes dissipated in the mixing room as Falon raced for the window and tore open the shutters. They were high enough to see nothing but sky beyond the window. She was removing her apron as someone cleared a throat behind her.
Eliana Lavellan stood before her. She was dressed for the road, Falon noticed and covered in dust. She must have just arrived home. Falon had heard about the barefaced inquisitor, that she'd somehow given up her valleslin. It was an unusual sight to see an unmarked elf like herself, but Eliana wasn't unmarked, was she?
The story told around the fires in the halls was that she'd let her lover, Solas, take the mark of her people. Falon had never had people to give her a mark in the first place. She probably could have asked for one somewhere along the way, but the truth was that Falon felt a disconnection with those old Elven gods. They'd never meant much to her at all.
She bowed her head, "Inquisitor."
"None of that now," the Inquisitor said. "I think we both know you could scratch my eyes about now, and you'd have some reason. We meant the best. Don't blame Cullen."
"Don't blame Cullen?" This was the revelation the Inquisitor had come to share. Don't blame Cullen?
"Who should I blame then? He knew I had no control. He knew I could have killed him."
"That is not what I've heard." The Inquisitor joined her hands behind her back and paced away from Falon. "Cullen tells me you hit every mark you aimed at." She smiled over her shoulder. "I'd have paid to see that."
"Inquisitor, you are one of us. You know how vulnerable we are to darker thoughts. You know, as Cullen never could, how accuracy is not necessarily strength. If I were only a warrior, that would be true, but I'm a mage with a mage's weakness."
"Do you use blood magic?"
At the demand, Falon stood her ground. "No, nor have I ever. Not even in desperation."
"Why do you fear possession then?" She turned back to Falon. "More than the average mage, I mean. You are terrified of it. I can see you shaking from here."
"Did Cullen not tell you?"
"He told me you fear your harrowing." Stepping closer, the Inquisitor explained, "Falon, that isn't anything new. We all hated our harrowing. We all barely survived, and anyone who says differently is lying. What happened to you?"
"I was nearly out," she began. "I was nearly free. Something, some demon caught hold of me. It whispered things, told me what I could have."
"You listened," Lavellan said with certainty. "What did it offer you?"
Falon, for a moment, couldn't respond to the other woman, so lost in the horror of that memory she was. "Safety, home. He offered me family."
Lavellan huffed softly as she released a breath she'd been holding. "So, he offered you that, and you left him in the fade to fend for himself. Why? It's clear that's what you want... badly."
"I suppose because I don't believe in those things anymore, Inquisitor."
Smiling at her, Eliana replied, "I have a feeling that's about to change. Report to Commander Rutherford, please. The Exalted Council has been called, and you will be coming with us."
Shock flooded her veins. She nearly shouted. "But, why would you need me?"
"The Commander has delayed too long in choosing an assistant, and that assistant need not be military. In fact, there are some benefits to having a civilian mage in that position."
"I'm so confused," she whispered. "What will I have to do, Inquisitor?"
"My right hand protects the Inquisition. You will protect my right hand, Falon. Anything else is secondary."
With that, the Inquisitor was gone. Falon sat heavily in the chair at the table.
The Winter Palace. Dear, Sweet Andraste.
