Disclaimer: Not mine.


I ran as fast and as far as I could; I was only slightly athletic, in the way that I played sports with some friends and rode my bike around campus. I slowed to a jog when I couldn't hear the snorts or lumbering footsteps behind me any longer and then finally to a walk when I saw what appeared to be a tall, wooden-spiked fence. It hadn't been there before, that I knew of, but it could have been built without my knowing. I hadn't been camping in too long, especially not there. I wasn't sure why it was wood and not metal, not a chain-link, but it didn't matter. I was too worried about finding the gate. I couldn't see over it – it was probably twenty feet tall. Some of the logs were full, as if they were entire trees. Some of them were spliced, a trunk here and a heavy branch there. It seemed solid enough, but there was definitely no climbing it. Not for me, anyway.

I walked along it, looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make absolutely sure that whatever had been following me earlier wasn't on my heels. It took me quite a while to find anything that looked like a door, although I began to hear noises from the other side. Voices, clinking, barking. It boded well for me, or so I thought.

I tried the door, but it wouldn't budge. "Excuse me?" I called, frowning as I tugged and pushed. "Is there anyone over there?"

Half a moment later, the door opened a little. A man in some kind of ancient army get-up, complete with metal studs on his leather-covered torso, stood between me and what looked like some kind of war reenactment camp. "What in the name of the Maker are you doin' out there, girl?"

"...Uhm," I responded, raising an eyebrow as he pulled me in and closed the gate behind me. That's me, the quick-thinker.

"Don't just stand there, girl. Go find your master and get back to work, we don't have time for this."

And he pushed me.

Master?

I didn't know what he was talking about, not at all, but he didn't seem to want to explain in the least. I walked in the direction he pushed and stopped after only a few feet.

This certainly wasn't in the park the last time I'd been there. I was surrounded by ruins of some sort, columns toppled over one another and grand stone archways half crumpled to the ground. I wandered through the encampment, the smells and the sights becoming ever more disorienting as I made my way into the crowd of people, some of whom turned to look at me but none of whom stopped to speak to me.

I was rather proud of myself for not fainting until I saw the four people standing in a square, with something that looked like electricity shooting out of the hands.


"Dear? Are you all right?"

The voice was thick, or maybe it was my hearing. It sounded far away, faint. I blinked several times, my vision blurry and an ache starting in the back of my head. A woman with white hair knelt beside me, a hand gentle on my forehead.

"I...Yes. I think so. My head hurts a little, but I think I'm fine. What- what was going on? Those people-"

The woman's eyes narrowed a little in what I think was curiosity and concern and she sat back slightly. "Do you mean the mages over there?"

"M-mages?"

"You don't look like a dwarf," the woman murmured, watching me curiously, eyes scanning me as if I were a foreign object. "Have you never seen a mage before?"

"Uh...No," I responded, impressed by her dedication to the character she was playing. "I can't say I have."

"Did you come far?" she asked as she helped me to stand, surprisingly spry for her apparent age. She was kind, helping me dust off a little despite the fact that I knew there was dirt everywhere.

"I was camped in the woods," I started and her surprise took me again.

"By yourself?" Her face was kind but her eyes were curious, if not concerned.

"Well, yes."

She spoke to herself, something about "wilder" but I couldn't hear most of it. "What brings you to us, then?"

"There was a...man? Or a creature," I shook my head, frowning a little. I probably sounded crazy – but maybe they were a part of this reenactment. Maybe it was some sort of robot thing. Or a person.

And then I remembered that I had stabbed a person in the eye. "Oh. Oh my. You don't know of any men in the woods, do you?"

"There are a few scouting parties. Why?"

"The thing that attacked my tent...I stabbed it in the eye. And ran. I don't...don't know if I killed it or not."

"What did it look like, dear?"

"Gross," I responded, making a face. I could feel the blood draining from my face. Had I killed a man? "It didn't look quite like a man, but you could see similar qualities – two feet, two arms. Its facial features were very distorted, but you could tell they kind of looked like a man's."

"...Child, that is a darkspawn."

Darkspawn?

Okay. Well, she wasn't freaked out that I had stabbed it. So it couldn't be a person. I wasn't a murderer.

"What...what's that?"

No longer surprised by my questions, I think, the woman spun a tale of heaven and sinners, an angry god and curses. Which ended with commentary on mages – which, it appeared, that this woman was. She was, after all, in the same type of dress as those others I had seen before collapsing.

"My name is Wynne, what is yours?"

"Gwen. It's..." I hesitated only a little before offering her my hand to shake, "It's a pleasure, Wynne. Thank you for helping me."

"Of course, dear." She looked at me with a faint smile for a long moment before she asked, "Will you be going into battle?"

Battle? Me? But I imagined 'no' wasn't an option so I merely nodded, "And you?"

"Not too into the fray. My particular specialties are more defensive."

Mine too, I thought, Like running. Far, far away.

"I should be going. Like I said, it was nice to see you. I hope I have the chance to do so again."

I didn't have time to question my change of word use, the odd cadence to my speech. I turned away from Wynne and almost directly into a solid wall. Or, a mostly solid wall of soldier.

"Oh...Are you all right there, girl?" Hands steadied me at the shoulders as the low voice questioned me.

"Y...yes," I responded quietly, looking up into a scruff-covered face. He was handsome, there was no question about that; his hair was dark, a reddish color. And he was tall. I was a little taller than most women, a few inches taller than almost all of the girls I hung around with. But he was broad-shouldered and even taller than I was, body encased in metal armor with a shield and sword strapped to his back. It all looked so very heavy. I could only imagine the sheer amount of muscle underneath that armor.

More than all of that, though, his face looked sad. His eyes were dark, although the color was a blue-gray and his lips were drawn despite the charming smile he offered me. There were lines near his eyes, not necessarily denoting age so much as recent experience. I wasn't entirely unfamiliar with that sort of look.

"Are you a Grey Warden?" He asked curiously, removing his hands from my body as he started walking. By speaking to me, I assumed he was inviting me to join him. So I did.

"No, are you?"

"Not yet," he responded with a sideways smile. "Is that why you're here too?"

"No, I was camping in the woods. I was set upon by darkspawn and left everything behind in my tent, including my bow. I was hoping I could accompany the next party to leave so that I might retrieve it."

"Did you happen to run into any scouting parties?" he asked, hope lightly lacing his words, as he led me up a stone ramp. The building we were entering looked as though it could collapse any minute.

"Not humans," I responded and immediately wished I hadn't upon seeing the look that crossed his face. "But I wasn't really looking for anyone until I found the fence around the encampment. I was mostly focused on getting away."

"Was that your first, then? I hadn't fought any until Duncan and I came this way."

"I'd never even seen one. Didn't rightly know what it was."

"I can't say I was much better the first time I saw one, either. Didn't even kill it; Duncan had to. It was just...too much."

"Creep slashed open my tent and started trying to climb its way in."

"Didn't your guard save you?" He asked in earnest, looking over my stature.

"I was traveling alone. I prefer the quiet."

"But have you not heard of the army amassing here at Ostagar to defeat the horde?" His face held a curious, if slightly disbelieving, look at my revelation.

"...No, I had not heard. I have been...traveling for some time and haven't had the benefit of meeting anyone on the road lately. Although I would have liked the warning," I smiled a little, although I quieted when we approached two men on a broad stone landing.

One was tall, taller even than the man at my side and also covered in metal armor with a sword and shield across his back. His hair was light even in the shadows and his skin was tan, the kind of gold that came from being outside often. He was also quite handsome, a strong jaw and eyes blue enough to be seen from my position several feet away. The other man was short and looked as though he spent no time at all outside, both by his shape and his skin tone. He was wearing a similar outfit to Wynne, something that could only be described as "robes". The latter man, after a few heated comments, stormed off in our direction and narrowly missed running directly into me. The dark-haired man that had made me his walking companion pulled me out of the way just in time. I stumbled a little as we moved towards the blond man.

"You must be the new recruit that Duncan went to collect. Aedan, right? He wrote ahead about you. And you – who are you?" He sounded curious, not accusatory. His eyes did what everyone else's had done, although he seemed particularly interested in my clothing.

"My name is Gwen. What's yours?" People didn't seem to interested in last names here.

"Alistair," he responded with a lopsided grin. "Now that our introductions are out of the way – say, would you like some armor? Unless you're a mage. You aren't a mage, aren't you?"

"No...no, not that I know of. But I don't have any money for armor."

"Well, we can talk to Duncan about that I think." The look he gave me was a pleasant one, the kind of look that suggested he really did want to help me. Aedan and Alistair then spoke a little before we went off to find this Duncan fellow, waiting for me to fall in step between them before walking back across the camp.