Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age: Origins, or anything else associated with the Dragon Age franchise. BioWare owns it, more or less. And I am in no way affiliated with BioWare. So please don't sue me; trust me, you wouldn't get any real money out of it.


Chapter 5: The Dynamic Duo

After Talia was taken away, Alistair wasn't sure what he, Jowan, and Emilia could do, now. Their previous good mood was most definitely gone now. They all stared at each other awkwardly, unsure of how to breach the uneasy silence...but, thankfully they were rescued from the uncomfortable situation via the timely arrival of the other Apprentices, as they too returned from their morning lessons.

A few of the older girls ended up carting Emilia away, talking a mile a minute as they inquired about her day, and Jowan's bunkmate—one of Anders' friends, if Alistair remembered correctly...Niall, was it?—similarly whisked him away. Alistair himself wasn't left alone for long, however, as a beaming Anders entered the dorm and hurried over to him.

"Glad to see you survived your first lesson, Alistair! How was it? Did you have a decent Enchanter. Have you learned any spells yet?" Anders asked eagerly as he dragged Alistair back over to their bunk. The young boy blinked rapidly, caught off guard by the sudden barrage of questioning, but tried to answer all the same.

"Um, the lesson went well, I guess." He said, wondering for a moment if he should say anything about Talia...but then dismissed it. After all, what Talia was going through was...private business, right? She probably wouldn't like it if they all started gossiping about it, or stuff like that.

"Our Enchanter, a nice lady named Angelica, started on teaching us our letters, which is a bit harder than I thought it would be. She also taught us a, um...Frost spell, I think? We waved our hands over a cup and tried to freeze it solid." Alistair added.

Anders hummed and nodded, as he slung his satchel over his shoulders and tossing it up to his bunk. Moving over to open his trunk, he then inquired,

"Sounds like you have a good teacher, Alistair. So, then, what's her opinion about magic? She give you the usual Chantry rubbish about how magic is evil, our abilities are a curse, and all that nonsense?"

"N-No!" Alistair swiftly replied. Anders paused as he rummaged through his trunk, craning his head to look back at him. Alistair blushed slightly and quickly explained.

"Um, Angelica said our magic was an, um, gift. Not a...curse, or anything like that."

Anders raised an eyebrow. "Truly? Well, then it looks like you've got the good sort of Enchanter! She sounds better than Enchanter Torrin already!"

"Yeah. She's really...nice." Alistair readily agreed with a bright smile. Anders looked at him for a moment, before nodding and turning his attention back to his trunk. After looking through it one last time, he took a book out of it and closed the lid.

"So..." Anders ventured, "How are your classmates, then? They all right?"

"Oh, yeah. We've actually become, um, fast friends." Alistair replied, his cheerful smile growing. Anders grinned at him in return, nodding once more.

"Good to hear, Alistair! It's always good to make friends with your classmates. I, however, am unlucky enough to have Petra as one of my classmates. You met her last night, I believe, though I don't think you talked long. We've been at each others throats for ages now. A puppet of the Chantry, she is. Believes in all that bull the Chantry spoon-feeds us. But anyway, I'm glad you've made friends with your classmates! You'll be with them for awhile, so that makes things easier for you all."

Alistair stared at Anders, shocked at his flippant dismissal of the most powerful institute in all of Thedas. Anders raised his brow once more in return, a huge, cheeky grin spread across his face.

"What, surprised to hear someone badmouth the Chantry like that? Well, I'm certainly not afraid to mock them! They're a bunch of nitwits and dunderheads, they are. All that stuff they say about magic and about Mages is bull, and I'm more than proud to call them on those lies!" Anders grinned even wider, undaunted by his bunkmate's surprise.

Alistair blinked a few times, and in the end decided to go along with it. And why not, he thought? What Anders was saying wasn't much different from what Angelica claimed, now that he thought about it. Even if it was put in a more blunt manner.

"Um, if you s-say so, Anders. I...never really listened to a lot of Chantry sermons...but, yeah, I guess you're...right? Angelica also said that magic and Mages aren't evil and...stuff. So...um, yeah."

"You bet I'm right!" Anders agreed, and quickly moved over to Alistair.

The older boy slung his arm around Alistair's shoulders, and immediately led the boy away from their bed, and out of the dormitory entirely. An impassive and imposing Templar stood watch opposite the entrance, and Alistair shrank a little under the helmeted man's oppressive gaze, but Anders wasn't intimidated, and simply led them away from the armored man. To Alistair's relief, the Templar didn't stop them or question them or anything like that! Thank the Maker...

"Now, with all that said, I have a favor to ask of you, Alistair. We have some free time now before our afternoon lessons, and there's something I want to do before Enchanter Torrin takes me back and bores me to death with his dreary monologues. And I'm gonna need your help to do that!" He declared.

"...Um, ok." Alistair shrugged slightly, though it was hard to do that with Anders' arm pressing down on him. "I'm, ah, fine to help you. I...guess."

"Good! You're a wonderful friend, Alistair! Now, here's what we're going to do..."

Anders launched into a colorful and grandiose explanation of his plan, but Alistair barely listened to any of it. He stopped paying attention to Anders altogether when he said the word 'friend'. Anders...considered him a friend? That...that was wonderful!

"I have another friend now..." Alistair grinned long and wide, as that single thought repeated itself throughout his mind. "I have another friend now!"


"...Are you sure that this is a good idea, Anders?" Alistair inquired anxiously, as he glanced around nervously. Anders gave a scoff in reply, but seeing his friend's apprehension, finally smiled reassuringly at him a moment later.

"Don't worry, it's just a harmless prank, Alistair! Besides, if we get caught, I'll take the blame." Anders winked at him, and ushered him forward, as they continued through the winding hallways that made up the quarters of the Enchanters.

"So...what's your plan again?" Alistair asked, once he realized he didn't recall any of Anders' earlier explanations. His friend scoffed again, but gave a recap all the same.

"It's very simple, Alistair. Enchanter Torrin assigned us a new workload of essays, which I think is completely out of the line. Maker's Breath, we've been writing nonstop for weeks! We should have gone back to practical applications of Magic already! That Torrin is an utter coot. But I digress. Anyway, I plan to give Torrin some payback, so to speak. I might not be able to do anything about our insane workload, but at least I can give him a piece of my mind." Anders replied, an evil glint sparkling in his eyes.

Alistair nodded, even if he didn't entirely understand Anders' qualms with this Torrin fellow. Maybe once Angelica started assigning them essays to write, he'd understand better. Alistair quickly followed up his query by asking,

"And...how are you going to do that, exactly?"

"Glad you asked!" A wide and mischievous grin spread across Anders' face, as he rubbed his hands together.

"Well, I was fiddling around with the Rock Armor spell...oh, wait. You probably don't even know what that is yet. Well, the Rock Armor spell is a piece of magic that greatly hardens the skin of the caster, making it nearly impervious to sword wounds and such. Hence the name. Anyway, I was fiddling around with that spell, and I discovered that, alongside being able to cast it on other people...the object the caster bespells doesn't necessarily have to be a person."

Alistair stared blankly at him, so Anders swiftly amended,

"I mean, I can use the spell not just on myself, but on other people. Not only that, though, I can also use the spell to harden things other than people's skin. Like, a book, for example. I could cast the spell on a book, and it would harden the cover and the pages, and so it'd be as impervious to harm as you or I would be, under its effects."

Alistair nodded again and after a moment's thought, ventured, "So...you're going to use the spell on something of...Enchanter Torrin's?"

"Correct!" Anders beamed. He suddenly came to a stop in front of a doorway—which was actually missing the door itself, Alistair noted—and peered inside. After confirming that no one was there, Anders stepped in, motioning for Alistair to follow him.

"Here we are! Enchanter Torrin's personal quarters. As I thought, he isn't here! Perfect. Alright, let's do this!" Anders grinned yet again, and set about studying the room, his eyes zeroing in on the shelf of books to the side of the right wall.

Alistair looked around himself, and a question occurred to him. "Why does Enchanter Torrin have his own room?"

"Huh?" Anders looked distracted for a moment, before a dissatisfied look settled over his face. "Ah, well, when you pass your Harrowing...ask your Enchanter what that is, I don't have the time for that can of worms...well, when you pass your Harrowing, you're no longer an Apprentice Magi, and so you move out of the Apprentice dormitory. You're then settled into a free room upstairs, more or less. And since Enchanter Torrin obviously isn't an Apprentice anymore, he has his own room now.

"Though it's unfair, if you ask me." Anders grumbled, crossing his arms as he glared at the room in general. "Why does everyone else but us in this forsaken Tower get their own room? Us Apprentices could use that privacy, too! Sure, you don't get a door either way...ugh, I hate the Knight-Commander...anyway, even without a door, having your own personal room is still better than sharing a single dormitory with over two dozen kids and teenagers.

"It sure would make changing clothes a lot less awkward for us, too." Anders finished, mumbling that last part to himself, a faint tinge of red coloring his cheeks. Alistair himself blushed at that unpleasant reminder; that hadn't been a fun thing to go through this morning. But at least he had been too tired, then, to really care about it...

"Anyway, we're getting off topic, and we don't have a lot of time. Now, what should I petrify...the books, maybe, but I'm not sure if I have enough juice to sustain a Rock Armor spell over the entire bookshelf, and I have no idea which specific book he might read today, if he reads anything from his private collection this afternoon..."

Anders hummed in thought, and looked around the room once more. His gaze finally settled on the bed, and he smiled maliciously.

"It might wind me a little, but...it's better than nothing! Alright. Alistair, keep watch for me, will you? I don't want Torrin popping in on us unexpectedly."

"Um, sure!" Alistair replied, eager to please. He moved back over to the doorway and peered out, keeping an eye out for Enchanter Torrin—though now that he thought of it, he had no real idea what the man even looked like...

"Ok! Finished!" Anders declared triumphantly. Alistair turned back to him, and looked at the bed. It didn't look that different...

"Doesn't really look like it's hard as a rock, eh?" Anders acknowledged. "Well, that's the beauty of it! Torrin'll never know his bed has been tampered with until it's too late! Now, let us make our escape, before he shows up!"

Anders grabbed Alistair's hand, and rushed the two of them out, his devious grin never wavering in the slightest.

At least, until they ran into an older, dark-skinned man on the way out of the Enchanter quarters.

"Do I want to know why you're up here, Anders?" Enchanter Torrin inquired, casting a suspicious gaze at his pupil. Anders coughed and laughed nervously, shrinking slightly under Torrin's sight. A heavy and awkward silence hung in the air, as Torrin tapped his foot impatiently, and Anders looked everywhere but at his teacher.

"...Well. So much for our escape." Alistair said, in an effort to break the silence.

The look Anders shot him in response was priceless, Alistair would later recall.


I would like to give a special 'thank you' to my reviewer Agent S7. It was very kind of you to create a TvTropes page for Alistair the Mage. I sure do appreciate it! That was very generous of you. I only hope that you and other Tropers continue to add to the page!

For those who want to check the page out, I've left a link to it in my profile. Enjoy.

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