THE STRENGTH INSIDE ME

CHAPTER TWO
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9:20 Dragon – 15 Bloomingtide

I think I really did fall asleep sometime while I was being carried, because when I opened my eyes again I was lying in a bed. The mattress wasn't as comfortable as the one I had at home (how could it be?), but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was filled with straw and covered with warm fur.

There was a low light coming from somewhere to my right and when I turned my head towards it I saw a small fireplace with a gently burning fire inside. There was another thing I noticed.

I wasn't lying on the bed alone.

There was a girl, probably a few years younger than me, with the same black hair (though a bit shorter) as the man and I had. She was sleeping. I wondered what colour her eyes were. Were they amber like Bethany's?

I almost growled at myself. I shouldn't think that I was Marian Hawke. It would only make me feel depressed if I wasn't. I really shouldn't get my hopes up.

Carefully, I extracted myself from the bed and went over to the small bench underneath a somewhat large window. It wasn't a full moon, more like half of it was missing. I curled myself up on that bench and just stared out. I had to think this through. Now that I felt rested and not as confused as I was when I woke up in that barn, I could think straighter.

Somehow, somewhere, someone decided that I should be transported into a young girl's body. Then they decided that that body should be possessed by a Spirit of the Fade and that it should be a mage's body. So far, so good. Said Spirit would help me acclimate to this world and help me learn more magic. My father in this world was also a mage, which made him an apostate. Which made me an apostate as well. Which meant that Templars would be after us. Which meant that I should hide my magic as much as possible and use it even less.

Gah! This is really confusing!

Lucky for me, I wasn't prone to panic attacks or hyperventilation. I didn't feel a lot of stress when put under it. In fact, I was usually as cool as a cucumber. People often looked at me funny when that happened.

All right, first things first. I should decide on how to behave. Being mute had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages was that I wouldn't be able to tell people what was wrong if I felt sick or if I was in danger. One of the advantages was that I could silently accommodate to my new surroundings. I didn't really have to be mute forever, but just long enough for me to acclimate, I guess. I don't know how long that would take, but I hoped it wouldn't be too long. With all the information I had crammed inside my head, I already knew a lot about Thedas and its lore. I just hoped it would be enough.

Or perhaps I could only stay quiet for a while due to the shock I received when I was almost raped by that Templar and start talking bit by bit. I didn't really like the thought of being quiet for so long – but I would if that meant my survival.

My second concern was the date. What day of the month was it? The Spirit told me it was 9:20 Dragon. That means it was ten years before the Blight began and ten years before the Hawke family fled to Kirkwall. It would definitively take a while for me to get used to the new calendar. I knew the months of Thedas by heart, so that was one thing that I didn't have to worry about.

My third concern was what to do with the knowledge I had of the future. Should I try and change anything? Which Origin would become the Grey Warden? Would it be Elissa Cousland? Or Kallian Tabris? Perhaps Solona Amell, the relative of the Hawkes? Perhaps it would be a multi-origin world? My head started spinning with all the possibilities.

I knew one thing though – I should probably not change too much, because then the canon of the game would be ruined and I would have no idea what to expect next. Of course, I didn't know a lot about the next ten years, so I didn't have to worry quite yet. But I did need to plan.

My fourth concern was that I was a mage. I had to decide what magic to learn, and how to hide it. I never fought before so I didn't know how to be a battlemage – much less how to be a mage, seeing as I always thought that magic didn't exist. Oh, I hoped it would, but I knew that in reality… these things just didn't happen.

All I knew was that I didn't want to become too dependent on the magic inside me. I needed to learn how to fight, if I wanted to survive the Blight and Kirkwall. I definitively didn't want to be the damsel in distress that stood behind people and let them protect her. So, learning offensive magic was on, as well as learning how to fight with a weapon. I also definitively wanted to learn healing magic.

But first things first I had to learn how to control the magic and how to hide it. After I learnt how to do that, then I could start thinking about learning spells. I also had to become fit if I was to be fighting in the future – ugh, how I hated running… but when in Rome do as the Romans do, I think was the correct phrase.

I wondered if I could ask Leliana to teach me how to shoot with a bow once she arrived in Lothering. Perhaps I could even imbue the arrows with magic like Kagome did in the anime Inuyasha? That would be really cool.

And here I went again and planned things as if I was Marian Hawke.

Sigh.

The first thing I had to do, obviously, was to find out who I was in this world. Otherwise, all the planning and wool-gathering I just did would be for naught. Especially if I managed to get myself locked up in the Circle Tower.

A murmur from the bed made me flinch. All this thinking was bad for me, I decided, as I tried to slow my heartbeat down. I had to be more aware of my surroundings.

"No, don't run away from me bunny," the girl on the bed muttered in her sleep, making me grin just a little bit. If ever I found myself unable to sleep and if I had to share the bed with this girl, then I would be entertained for sure.

"Oh, you're so fast," murmured the girl again and started twitching, as if she was running after the rabbit. It reminded me of my dog – he would dream and twitch and let out these strange noises from time to time. My grin fell as I remembered that I left my world behind. I wondered if my parents already realized I was gone and if they didn't, when would they? What would they think about my disappearance? What would they do? Or was my body still there, in my bed, dead? Or was my whole world destroyed when I passed to this one? So many questions. I curled up even more and put my head on my knees at that. I missed my parents already, despite some of the differences in views we had during our time together. I could still remember me and my dad ganging up on my mum and making fun of her being scatter-brained, or us talking in unison sometimes because we were so very much alike. I could still remember my mum forgetting where she put things or ranting about my room. I have to admit, my room was a big mess. I was always collecting stuff and had a room full of carton boxes filled with all my collected items. Whether it was papers with my scribbles or toys from various cereal boxes, every moment of my short life was in those boxes. And I was going to miss my computer very much, and my music.

Oh, God! My music! How was I supposed to survive without my music? I could manage without my computer or perhaps even my parents (I don't mean to be cruel, but both my parents worked all days and we never spent that much time together during the week, so I was mostly left to my own devices…), but music? It was my life! I always listened to music whether I played games (I listened to the game music then), or if I was reading, or writing, or doing anything else even – music was my constant companion!

And now I lost everything…

Even though I gained a new family and a new chance to live a better life, a life with magic, I still wanted my music back.

I sighed against my knees, and then tried to think optimistic thoughts. I could always make music with whatever instruments existed in this world; I could hum and sing the music I knew to keep my memories alive. I wasn't good at notating the music, but I had an ear for it and could replicate any sounds I heard on my computer on the Piano and the Flute. I even started learning how to play the Violin.

I knew from my various readings that people had lutes, harps, fiddles and flutes in the medieval ages and in many games in that time era there were a lot of those musical instruments around. Even in Skyrim there were lutes and flutes. I could always learn to play the Lute and the Harp, and reacquaint myself with the Flute and the Fiddle.

But how was I supposed to hum and sing if I was to be a mute for some time? I don't know if I could make it through the day without singing or humming at least five songs.

I sighed again. I shouldn't over-think things. This was one of my least desirable character points. I always over-thought things. This made me seem a little slow on the uptake sometimes, or perhaps a little aloof when in company of friends. But that was the curse of the Asperger's Syndrome I was diagnosed with. It was why I had so little friends and why I never went out much. It was like my brain was calibrated on a whole different level than most of the people I met. I never really belonged in my old world, never really fit in anywhere. I was mostly alone with my music. Me, Myself and I... and though it sounded funny when I first heard the name of the movie, it now only made me feel even more alone than before.

On another optimistic note, at least I had a family here as well. I was lucky not to be an orphan out on the streets, or an elf in the Alienage. Not that I hated elves, I really liked them. In games and movies they were always so beautiful and handsome and lithe and…

Suddenly I stiffened in my seat. If I was in Thedas… that meant that Fenris was now real and not just a character in one of my favourite video games. It meant that he was flesh and blood. That all the dialogues that I watched in the game would now really happen if I didn't change the future. But it also meant that there would probably be new ones since there would be no time-skipping. This was the thought that finally made me realize that this wasn't a dream, but that I really skipped worlds and ended up in the Dragon Age universe. There would be no time-skipping here, I would have to live every day as it was and make the best of it.

And that meant that all the wool-gathering I was doing wasn't just wool-gathering but that I actually did have make plans. I looked out the window again, only noticing now that the house I was in was actually at the edge of a town. Was that Lothering? But no, the town was just that – a town – and not a village. And there was a castle next to the town. From what I could see of the area around the house, we were somewhere near the coast – so this meant that we were either in Amaranthine or Highever. However, I couldn't see the Brandel's Reach island anywhere in the distance so that meant that I was probably in Highever.

The home of the Couslands.

I shivered as I remembered that in ten years, Arl Rendon Howe would betray and slaughter them all. Yes, all. If I played as a City Elf then Elissa or Aedan would die with their parents when Howe attacked. And if I played as Elissa Cousland, then the City Elf would have died when Vaughan kidnapped her from his or her wedding.

But this wasn't a game anymore. This was real.

It made me weary of even thinking of changing the future because you never know what the future would bring if you tried to change it. I've read way too many fan fictions with that theme and there were always consequences.

But if I could just warn them to be wary of Howe? Would they even admit me into the castle proper to see them? And if I managed that, would they believe me? It was ten years before the Blight. That meant that the Cousland Warden (that's what I decided to call them in my mind, so that I wouldn't confuse myself by thinking of them as Elissa or Aedan – that would be way too confusing) was probably the same age as me. How old was I anyway? The first impression I had of my body was that I was very young, probably just starting puberty if my breasts were any indication. I remember starting my own puberty at eleven, so that was probably the age I was here – if not eleven, then a year older.

Taking a more detailed look at my body, I saw that it was lean and soft. There was still some baby fat clinging to some places, but that would go away with time and of course, puberty. My black hair reached to the middle of my back and was wavy. It looked well cared for and that meant that the girl whose body I was in possession of took pride in it.

It was a relief to find one similarity between the two of us.

I still had no idea what colour my eyes were, so I looked at the glass in the window and tried to see it in the dark with the fire casting some light from behind. It definitively wasn't amber or any sort of dark colour. It was very light in colour, but intense. It didn't look like it was green, so it was probably blue or grey. And I leaned more towards grey. Of course, I'd have to check myself in a mirror to be absolutely sure of it.

I also remembered the fact that IF I was Marian Hawke, the Hawke family would move to Lothering sometime this year – and if the Templar attacking me was any indication, it would be pretty soon. This made the decision I had to make about warning the Couslands all the more dire. I had to decide, and soon.

I wanted to warn them so much, but what if the future changed because I warned them and Duncan didn't recruit the Cousland Warden into the Wardens because of it? What if the Cousland Warden was the only Warden in this world?

In the end, all I managed to do with all this thinking was to get a headache. I brought my fingers to my temple and started to massage it. It was only then that I noticed that the girl in the bed was awake and was watching me.