Chapter 1

The Beginning of the End of the Beginning

Things were trying to kill her. This was not a surprise, not that - in theory – she had a problem with surprises per (as they liked to say in parts of Tevinter) se. Up to certain points in her life Audria Trevelyan would have welcomed the odd surprise, rejoiced even. A well-timed surprise broke up the tedium of droning lectures delivered by senior mages who would clearly have loved to have been anywhere else but standing in front of a group of eager-eyed students with the potential for searing one's eyebrows off during a burst of unexpected adolescent hormones. Or, turn an otherwise plodding exercise hour into one requiring a hasty sprint from the epicentre of a sudden and (perhaps not) unforeseen explosion of a flaming ball of excitement caused by an unwary (and quite frequently, the same) apprentice. Surprises such as 'huzzah, we haven't forgotten your name day after all, we've baked you a cake' and naked Templars jumping out of said cake. Those were the kind of surprises she'd been familiar with. Except for the one about the naked Templars jumping out of the cake. Naked Templars in her experience were fairly rare and not particularly prone to wandering about naked or otherwise, much to her disappointment.

The rarity of the Naked Templar in fact, had given rise to a particularly stubborn hypothesis of hers that Templars were not trained, but materialised fully-clothed out of the Fade. Furthermore, Audria was convinced that the older the Templar, the more layered he (or she) became, much like the rings of bark laid on by trees. Somewhere out there were homes for very elderly Templars who had – over the course of their service – built up so many layers of sturdy purple cloth, chain mail and heavy plate that they could no longer move at all and resembled an elongated, immobile metal mountain. Like those stone obelisks people thought the ancients had erected to chart the seasons and lunar cycles.

Hmm. Was it any coincidence that many Chantries across Thedas were built near standing stones? That mightn't have been a tribute to the ingenuity of an Alamarri or clever Avvar folks! That'd be a fossilised Templar, circa 1:3 Divine.

If the prospect of potential naked Templars in her future (or, let's face it, lack thereof) were weighing heavily on Audria's mind right now, it was because she needed something to take her mind off the other prospect of being skewered on the end of what appeared to be some kind of glowing, electrified whip wielded by a pride demon. A vision that was giving rise to some fairly inappropriate and wholly unwanted thoughts about the shonky practices of Fade denizens in general.

Really, pride demon? Did you leave the leather thong and fluffy handcuffs back in the Fade?

"Watch out!"

She did and found herself flying several feet above the ground in a majestic arc that would have completed a full circle if the statue of Andraste hadn't spoiled her artistic trajectory. The wind knocked out of her lungs, Audria tumbled head over knees over Andraste's outstretched arm, bounced briefly in a thankfully empty flame bowl before succumbing again to gravity. At least, Audria reflected sourly, the ground was well-padded with…well, ground.

Rough hands hoisted her to her feet; a position she was not particularly happy in but remained nevertheless. The eyeroll from the armour-clad Battle Princess brought out the spine in Audria where the pride demon's B and D whip did not.

"I did say to watch out," Battle Princess Seeker grunted at her in acute disapproval before diving back into the fray. Perhaps Chantry types were like that; even more oppressed than sequestered mages, who knew?

Audria would have curled her lip, except she was pretty sure the statue of Andraste had broken it. It was all very well for someone with a flaming eye on their breast plate to say 'look out' and expect them to know exactly what it meant, wasn't it? Mages in general weren't taught to tuck, dive and roll in a way that one, actually took them out of harm's way; two, perform such a feat without rupturing all of one's internal organs and three, well there was no three, but given enough time and far less demons she was sure she could think of something.

All of this was very well. Blimey that's a bloody screaming terror demon! You don't see one of those every day!

There were three.

Tuck. Dive…"Ow, ow, bloody ow!"

"Might help if you ran in the right direction, Mage!"

That was a dwarf. The dwarf. Author of Thedas' most well-read serial crime novel since Lady Boudoir's Collected Bedtime Stories for the Discerning Octagenarian. Not writing now clearly, because it turned out Varric Tethras wasn't just an author. He was a cross-bow wielding dwarven warrior thingie merchant prince – "Wrong way again, Mage!" – sarcastic bastard.

Is he laughing at me? He's laughing at me!

"Oh for the love of the Creators…"

She didn't know who that was. There had been introductions and hand grabbing and they'd only just been introduced and the baldy who was admittedly damned cute in a 'don't look at me human or I'll stab both your eyes out with your shemlen feet' way, but still…Salty. His name was Salty?

"Yaargh!"

She was getting the hang of this flying through the air thing. It was the landing on an already-bruised part of her body that Audria was really having trouble coming to terms with.

"Now! Close the Breach!"

Uhh…Her hand went up. She felt enormously silly doing it, but Audria did it anyway. It was expected of her and Maker help her if she willingly let another bloody demon through. What kind of a strategy was that anyway? Run to hole in the Fade. Throw mage at demons until all gone. Rinse, repeat, hi-five hole in sky. Yay, demons begone! Unlike the other ones this breach in the Fade closed with an almighty blast of energy that sent her tumbling backward – airborne yet again – feet over head over knees over dwarf over another statue into wall.

Dimly aware of a roaring sound in her ears, Audria lay curled up in a ball of bruised and bloodied flesh until the Battle Princess Seeker hauled her once more to her feet. This time however, the woman was smiling as wide as the eye on her breast plate.

"I did good?" Audria mumbled, head swimming, blinking blood out of her eyes. "Yay for me…" After which statement she welcomed a blissful state of unconsciousness that required very little effort on her part. And all of this, her slumbering consciousness reminded her, because she had been in the right place at the wrong time…

-oo-

Sometime previously in Thedas…

Someone with a very long title in a Circle far, far away had decided there would be no more Circles. Down with the oppressive Oppressors! Boo! Hiss! The first time Audria Trevelyan had heard anything about it, had been during bacon-time. She'd slept in – an act punishable by privy cleaning with a toothbrush and chalk stick – and had therefore arrived late to the dining hall well after the bulk of the apprentices and harrowed mages had left. Tamara had saved her a pile of greasy bacon because Tamara had a thing about bowels and digestion but as it was a hang-up that worked entirely in Audria's favour, she was quite happy to promote the all grains-and-herbs fad her best friend practised.

The bacon had been lovely and streaky with enough burnt, blackened bits to bring a tear to her eye and a crunch in her teeth resulting in an amount of toughened overcooked meat to lodge in her rear molars that would last her at least through morning prayers. She was busily wiping the last of the congealed dripping from her plate with the remains of a bread roll when Tamara bounced back into the meal hall with the news that the Circles no longer existed.

"What do you mean 'doesn't exist'?" Audria had demanded. "I'm sitting in one right now!"

"Don't be foolish," Tamara had corrected her, adding; "And obtuse on purpose. The Circles exist – as you know – on levels other than the physical."

What followed had been a lengthy and breathless account of the goings on in some city that had previously been described to Audria as a 'place populated by a lot of dead people'. To say it had come as a shock was an understatement. Audria had sat speechless on the wooden bench, her bread, dripping and bacon forgotten as the consequences of a vote she hadn't participated in penetrated the layers of hastily erected denial. At the end of Tamara's well-constructed and detailed explanations of the politics behind such a decision to disband the Circles of Magi across the length and breadth of Thedas that wasn't Tevinter, all she could manage was a whimpered: "What, no more bacon time?"

For many, the Circle had been their only home. Not everyone had the kind of family the way old furniture had wood worm like the Trevelyans and few were willing to harbour children with magical abilities which meant…Maker, if the Circles don't exist that makes me an apostate. A. P. O. S. T. A. T. E. She hadn't just trained for ten years of her life to be an apostate, survived a harrowing Harrowing by the skin of her proverbials to end up an apostate. Apostasy happened to other people. Not her. She'd hunkered down and studied, been good. Mostly. Hardly ever thought about the Templars naked and running through the chapel during vespers and that one drawing on the back of the statue of Andraste in the little chapel had most definitely not been her. She'd only suggested that one. Who could have predicted some bright spark would actually do it?

The thing was. The thing was, where would they go? Where would any of them go? It would have been easier if the local villagers came by one day and deconstructed the college stone by stone until all the mages were left standing out in the open wondering where the stairs to the good library had gone. It was…how could anyone make a decision like that? And then expect mages who didn't want to leave to make do? Mages who had no money. All those little apprentices – children some of them – who'd look after them, especially the ones who'd been thrown out of their families, promised protection? As if the general public weren't already leery of mages outside, some Grand Enchanter makes it so all the mages everywhere got to be among normal, magic-fearing people. Outside.

Audria had summoned up enough energy to extend her arm. "Pinch me Tam."

"Why?"

"Because I'm hoping it'll wake me up from this horrible dream."

Except it wasn't a dream. It was real but it was alright Tamara had told her, because the Divine had called a meeting of the most senior mages, Templars and Chantry folk to presumably thrash out some kind of agreement.

As if one hadn't existed previously. A perfectly good one in her opinion that let her lead a quiet life in a tower somewhere with enough books and bacon to see her through until death.

Under this new not-quite-arrangement arrangement, she'd be lucky if she lived to see dinner.

Still, Audria's curiosity had been piqued. She'd travelled with the others to Ferelden, Home of the Fifth Blight, birthplace of the Champion of Kirkwall and allegedly the last resting place of the Prophet Andraste's ashes, amongst many other colourful and historically riveting tourist spots. Haven was one of them; a mountainous, bone-chillingly cold collection of new and the ruined with a disturbingly dark past. The mages' billet still had the blood stains in the mortar and for a place that was associated with The Prophet and her followers, it had had an even more disturbingly large number of 'altars' peppered about the place that did not look particularly…flower friendly.

The Temple where the meeting was to take place was located high up the side of the many mountains that grew here like mushrooms on a rotting corpse. She'd been told there was great beauty to be found here, but all Audria could find were swathes of icy, muddy slush that left her feet and ankles permanently frozen, jostling crowds, pick-pockets, glaring Templars, sneering senior enchanters and haughty clerics all overlaid by the pervasive smell of wet dog.

The meeting itself had consisted of a series of long-winded speeches by people with very large hats and by the time the umpteenth speaker had taken the podium, the bacon sandwich and tea Audria had bolted down so as not to miss the wonderfully enlightening lectures in the main hall was beginning to prove Tamara's theories about the indigestibility of meat products entirely wrong. Clutching at her spasming guts, she'd excused herself and gone looking for the privy.

Temples dedicated to Andraste, Audria found also, were not known for their stylishly appointed wet facilities and by the time she'd crossed one passage to another, gone down several dark and narrow openings in stone, stumbled over a pile of ancient skeletons and tripped down a set of broken stairs, she was so desperate to relieve herself of the bacon sandwich and cup of tea that the pile of skeletons several passageways ago was beginning to look like her best option. If she could find them again. Which she did not. More urgent wanderings later Audria found herself inexplicably waking up in a dungeon smelling of cat pee and wet dog with people shouting at her. Her hands were fastened tight, her ankles encased in metal trailing thick chains and her right palm felt as though it had been turned through a meat dicer, turned into sausage, fed to a family of starving wolves then regurgitated back into flesh. Days had passed without her noticing. Somehow.

More concerning than the accusations being levelled at her by the shouting people that she'd single-handedly killed the Divine, destroyed an ancient religiously-important old temple and thousands of people in it, Audria was pretty sure she hadn't found that privy. Would it be too late to suggest installing one, she wondered?

-oo-