A persistent dripping sound from somewhere nearby woke him up. His ear was pressed to a cold stone floor and he could hear rodents' feet scurrying along and smell hay near his nose. Not the typical morning welcome, but his head was clearer than before. His heart was beating fast and his body was weak, but he felt considerably less like he was dying.

He opened his eyes slowly, briefly unaware of his predicament as he tried to blink away his blurry vision. His memory returned a moment later, when he realised his hands were tied tightly together. He sat up slowly and looked down at his dirty clothes, then around at the dank cell.

"You're awake." A tired-sounding templar sat outside the cell, just out of arm's reach from the bars, and obscured by shadows. The only visible light came from a few weak lanterns along the wall behind the man.

"Ah-" Noel coughed and cleared his voice, "And I'm still wearing pants. That's always a good sign." His tone sounded less joking than he had intended. Using his legs, he pushed his back up against the wall behind him and stared at the knight. He couldn't make out his face in the darkness.

The templar didn't laugh. An awkward silence fell, and Noel pulled his knees up to his chin to make himself look smaller and more childlike. Praying no one suspected his involvement in the attack on the Arl's estate, he stared ahead.

"Am I in trouble?" he asked softly, hoping to lead the man into believing he was innocent.

No answer.

He looked around slowly for any means of escape. With its heavy rust outlined by the meager torchlight, he lock on the cell door looked weak, and he imagined Alim would have easily been able to break it with his stone fist, but Noel had no such power or magical talent. He settled his eyes on the shadow-cast figure of the knight and pulled his knees in closer.

"I'm sorry," he said after another long moment of silence. The templar turned slightly, listening. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone…I was confused and..." he paused for effect, biting his lower lip a little harder than necessary, "…scared."

The templar leaned in a little closer, bringing his face into the light. He was middle-aged, with dark circles under his eyes and an inexpressive face. Noel placed a hand over his bad eye to better focus on the man, who watched the movement with a glint of curiosity.

He looked hardened and weary, but not particularly cruel. This, Noel figured, was a man he could possibly charm.

"Is the lady alright?" he asked quietly, his voice cracking conveniently, "The healer, I mean? I didn't hurt her did I?"

"She's fine. You aren't a very powerful apostate." The templar stared him down, seeming to be looking for something.

"Ah, well, I can't imagine I would be –I'm new at this."

"How new?" His voice was clipped and his tone clinical; Noel could almost imagine him in rectangular glasses, sitting behind a desk and jotting down notes in a small book.

"'Bout a week? Maybe closer to a week and a half, actually."

"And, how old are you?"

"Fourteen," he answered automatically.

"Late bloomer."

"Is that uncommon?" He paused, wondering if he should have lied and said he was younger.

"Not unheard of."

"…Are you going to kill me?"

The templar blinked and frowned, a look of shock briefly ruining his 'psychiatrist' appearance. "You will be escorted to the tower, where you will be kept safe and taught how to control yourself."

"Can I take that as a no?" Noel stared intently at the man's face, looking for a hint of ill will. Finding nothing, he could only assume that he wasn't under suspicion of any crimes other than being a mage.

"Assuming you cooperate."

"Goody."

Noel fell silent, staring absently at the hay-littered floor as he weighed his options and contemplated his future. Even if he weren't so sick, his chances of escaping the templars would be slim. He had no idea how to navigate the city of Denerim, or where to hide. He wasn't wearing his armour, and he didn't have any of his weapons or possessions.

The tower, he rationalised, wouldn't actually be such a terrible place to live, bloodmage rebellion aside. He wouldn't have to work or worry about where his next meal would come from, and he could learn magic and have access to the largest library in the country. In fact, if he could survive the rebellion, whether by hiding in a closet or being amongst Wynne's group of children, he could live an intellectually fulfilling life.

On the other hand, he would never have another moment of solitude. How long could he handle being constantly watched before he'd want to snap his own neck?

Despite his cool head, his heart pounded rapidly against his chest and he had to breathe faster to keep up with it. The templar leaned back into the shadows and made no attempt at further conversation, but his eyes were watching.


The healer showed up after some time. Noel was so lost in thought that he failed to hear her speaking or notice her entering his cell, and he jumped to the side when he suddenly saw her in his line of sight.

"How are you feeling?" She made no indication of being bothered by his sudden movement, and knelt to the floor in front of him. She was barely middle aged, but she moved slowly as though her joints were in great pain. The templar was standing by the cell door, which, he noticed, was left wide open.

Noel blinked, "Less feverish, I suppose," he said after a moment of thought. His body still felt ill, however.

He contemplated making a run for it; he could push the arthritic woman down, dive past the templar, and roll out of sword range, but… He looked around; the room was so dimly lit, he couldn't tell the direction of the exit. A half-assed escape attempt, if it failed, wouldn't be worth earning the disfavour of the woman who planned on healing him, or that of the man who could be his executioner.

The healer nodded to herself and reached out to touch his face with the back of her palm, "I gave you a potion for fever, but it'll come back if I can't treat the cause."

"You can't…magic away illness?"

Her lips quirked upwards, "It's a bit more complicated than that. I need to understand what's wrong before I can 'magic you better.'" She chuckled softly and placed her fingers on his neck, below his ears. He twitched at the unfamiliar touch.

"I've already ruled out influenza and pneumonia. Are there any symptoms, beyond fever?"

"Ah…" He thought for a moment, "Disorientation and dizziness, I suppose. I think I passed out once, but I was overtired and maybe a bit undernourished, so..."

"Are you nervous? Afraid?"

"Not…overly?"

"Your pulse is too quick."

"Oh."

'Cefaclor, Bactrim, and Amoxillin;' his old body's allergies, apparently still ingrained in his memory, popped up in his mind. He recalled his old family doctor complaining once that they left little wiggle room to cure pneumonia or any other…

"Infection?" He said suddenly, tilting his head in thought.

"Pardon?" The healer pulled her hands back slowly.

Noel brushed his fingers over his scarred eye, "Could it be an infection? Spread from a wound to the blood?"

Her eyes followed the path of his fingers and her eyebrows shot into her hairline. "Did you topically heal an infected wound?" Her pitch rose slightly. He recognized the tone; it generally meant he had done something unbelievably dumb.

"Ah…" he wilted under her stare, "maybe? I don't really remember. I…was kind of out of it."

That creepy collective healer must not have been very skilled if he missed the infection, not that Noel knew anything about magical healing. Though, he mused, it was possible that the man intentionally healed over an infection without properly tending to it, but to what gain he couldn't fathom. Maybe he wanted him to get sick? If so, there wasn't a solid motive that he could think of, unless…Perhaps, like a shady mechanic, the healer left something broken so that that he would go back? Regardless, Noel couldn't voice any of what he was thinking; it wouldn't do well to mention that he had been contact with the apostate underground.

The robed woman nodded to herself, "I can work with this." She stood quickly with a barely visible wince and turned to the templar.

"I'll need some time to prepare a remedy, but I refuse to work from this filthy cell!"

Noel looked around at the floor and bit his tongue to stop himself from saying that it wasn't quite as dirty as he imagined a cell would be. It was similar to a kennel in feel and smell, actually, and Fereldan's kept their kennels quite nice.

"For Andraste's sake, you can guard the child just as easily from a bed!"

The templar coughed, breaking his stoic air with an awkward shuffle of his feet. "We had to be sure he wasn't a danger."

"And is this dying boy a danger?"

"Dying?" Noel titled his head in surprise and looked quickly between the healer and the templar. Neither looked down at him; too busy staring each other down. He noticed something of a spark between the two, and filed the information away as 'interesting.'

"Not that I can see at the moment."

"Dying?" He repeated a little louder.

"Oh, not for long, quit fretting." She waved her hand dismissively in his direction and he raised his brows in disbelief but kept quiet, too weak and tired to really care.


He woke up in a bed, confused. His hands were laid uncomfortably above his heart, bound by a pair of heavy shackles which emitted a dull, almost electrical hum, and seemed to be faintly glowing blue. He blinked several times and took in his surroundings.

He wasn't in a cell anymore; and if the high, decorative ceiling was any indication, he was somewhere else in the chantry. There was a helmeted templar standing by the wall to his left, and the templar from before was standing his right, just out of reach, with his arms folded and his face blank. The healer was nowhere to be seen.

"Did she…?" His voice cracked and he coughed to clear it, "Put me to sleep?" He sat up slowly.

The templar tilted his head slightly to look down at him, and he could hear the other one in the room turning to look as well. "She believed it would be easier to treat you if you were unconscious."

"She could have asked. It's a little…" he stopped, feeling no desire to complain to someone who probably didn't care.

Instead, he rattled his shackles curiously. "Do these suppress magic?"

The man blinked. "How did you know?"

Noel shrugged, "Educated guess." He examined the glowing metal closely. "Really interesting…but why not put them on me from the start?"

The man cocked his head slightly and his lips twitched, but he didn't answer.

"Ah…" Noel blinked, tapping the metal together lightly and noting a slight intensification of the humming sound, "Did you…want to see if I would try to attack you?" he nodded to himself "One man with his head unprotected…sitting down…in a dark room, seemingly alone. I didn't think anything of it, but in retrospect…Pretty damn smart." It was very likely that there had been other templars just out of sight the whole time.

"Pretty smart, yourself," the faceless templar to his left said, and he was surprised to hear a woman's voice. She sounded a little suspicious.

"I'm a librarian." He stated as though it explained everything, lifting the corners of his lips in a childish, toothless smile.

"A…librarian?" Her tone was curious. He imagined her eyes wide and blinking.

"Yeah, I read books. I stack them too, when the boss is watching."

It seemed she was staring, but he couldn't tell with that helm. She looked like a thimble with a body.

Noel looked around again. Whatever section of the chantry he was in was closed off and private; he couldn't hear chanting or praying, or anything but the hum of his shackles and the occasional creaking of the templars' armour as they shifted. He blinked up at the rafters, and then blinked again, realising he could see clearly out of his right eye. He raised his right hand to his eye quickly in surprise which, as he momentarily forgot his hands were bound together, resulted in him slapping himself in the face with his left hand. Thankfully, neither templar laughed or even snorted, though he saw the man raise an amused brow.

"I'm all healed?" he asked, rubbing his sore cheek.

The man nodded, "Thoroughly."

"Huh," Noel held out his fingers and compared the vision in each eye; finding them nearly identical. He smiled. "Thank you."

"You will be leaving for Kinloch Hold shortly."

"Oh…um…'Kay," Noel answered with a frown, momentarily surprised by the sudden change of subject.

He looked down at his shackles quietly. Giving up and going to the tower became his fallback; he might still find time and opportunity along the road to escape.


Residents of alienages looked out for their own. When it came to the manifestation of magic, the only children sent to the tower were those who were unlucky, or stupid, enough to display their gift in front of a human. Even the small, close-knit elven community in Highever housed an apostate or three, but while that was common knowledge, the mages' identities were heavily guarded. Magical ability was kept secret between direct family; and any elf outside that inner circle that happened to discover the secret usually felt culturally obliged to keep it to themselves.

Nelaros ran his fingers through his blond hair in frustration as he and Soris stalked back to the alienage, having been ordered by templars to leave the chantry without Noel. He cursed his rash actions. Kallian and the other women had stressed so strongly that he not take his step-cousin to the chantry, but after two days without a break in the fever, he grew desperate and enlisted Soris' help in secretly carrying the boy out of the alienage.

Had he known Noel had magic, he would have understood the need for discretion. The girls must have seen it during the fight, he reasoned. He should have been told from the beginning, as the boy's only family in Denerim, if not as Kallian's fiancé. He gripped his fists in silent anger and Soris sent him a worried look.

A lot of things about the half-elf suddenly made sense, now that he knew his secret. The boy was a chronic loner, but it wasn't due to any shyness, nor did he seem ashamed of being an unknown Shem's bastard. He was constantly reading and writing, but he would snap his book shut the moment before someone got close enough to read over his shoulder. He was intelligent and mature beyond his years, and, now that Nelaros thought about it, he never, ever, mentioned his feelings or his dreams.

A mystery he hadn't even noticed had been sitting in front of his nose, and now it was solved. He felt no awe in the discovery; only guilt in being near solely responsible for getting the fragile boy sent to the tower. If only there were some way he could fix everything and free him.

Just past the alienage gate, he caught sight of a familiar, homely elf talking quietly with Kallian. It was the young mage he had seen fighting Vaughan's guards, who had taken Noel into hiding; Kallian had told him his name, but he couldn't remember.

"Kalli!" Soris ran to his cousin's side, his voice edged with guilt and laced with an inkling of fear.

Nelaros pinched the bridge of his nose in disgrace as Soris rapidly explained what had happened at the chantry. His fiancée looked shocked and her pretty face flushed in anger, while the mage simply folded his arms and looked marginally displeased.

"I told you specifically not to bring him anywhere!" Kallian hissed, causing him to wince in shame.

"I know."

"I asked you to trust me!"

"…I know."

"And you!" She rounded on the mage, who looked up in shock and turned his head to see if she was perhaps talking to someone else. "This is just as much your fault!"

"How so?" He sounded legitimately confused and somewhat indignant.

Nelaros listened close, relieved to have someone else to share the blame.

"Negligence!" the redhead waved her arms in frustration. "You just left him with us, even though you would have been better equipped to take of him!"

"I am not a nurse."

"You didn't even come to check up on us! You went Maker knows where –not your apartment, I checked, and we had no way of contacting you when he got worse!"

"How is the half-breed my responsibility?"

Nelaros bristled, but he was in no place to say anything to the mage. Kallian, however, was.

"You made him your responsibility when you got involved and then dragged him off to live with your associates for three days." She had lowered her voice to barely above a whisper, but her tone was icy.

"Got involved?" he whispered now, glancing around, "Do you mean when I saved all your hides? Do pardon me. And I only took him to lead the trail elsewhere. Why do you care so much, anyway? He was brave to stand up for you, I'll admit, but you don't actually owe him anything."

"Oh? Alim, didn't you say you were there in the first place because you were stalking him?"

He opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut quickly. Nelaros furrowed his brow.

"G-guys!" Soris stepped nervously between his cousin and the mage, having been waiting for a pause in the argument to speak. "We really should be talking about this someplace else…"

"Agreed." Kallian stood down. "My place. We need to plan."

"Plan?" Nelaros asked, though he had an inkling of what she was implying. He grinned broadly.

"Plan." She spun on her heels and began walking towards their home. Nelaros and Soris followed quickly.

Alim stood his ground for a moment, then sighed loudly before followed as well.


Approx. January, 9:21 Dragon (day 87)

It's getting easier to write now; I'm getting used to these clumsy fingers and improving my motor skills. Unfortunately, it's getting harder to find a time and place to write. It's too dark under the bed at night and there are always people around during the day. Right now it's early morning, just before sunrise, and I'm hiding out in the kennels. The dogs are looking at me funny. They're cute…in a manly way, of course.

Someone nearly caught me writing yesterday and, in panic, I threw my pages into the fireplace. I had a lot of information there…

I started praying recently. 'Never did that before. I lay in bed and listed every deity I knew of, and tried to, I don't know; beg for my life to return to normal. I guess I'm pretty desperate. I offered to bake ma's double-chocolate cookies for Buddha; no response as of yet.

Still, it's better than living in denial like I have been these past three months. I've been acting like a very strange four-year-old indeed; refusing to play or eat in favour of waiting patiently to wake up.

I think I'm moving through the stages of grief. Isn't anger somewhere near the beginning? I think I skipped it and went directly from denial to bargaining. Depression, I believe, is coming next. Woo.

The calendar here is a little hard to grasp, but I'm learning.

There are only thirty days in every month, even; so, 360 days in a year. I don't know if that means Thedas literally has a shorter year compared to earth, or if everything is just perpetually behind (or is it ahead?).

I know it was mid-fall when I arrived here, on this body's fourth birthday. Last I recall of earth, it was early summer, about four months away from my nineteenth birthday. Does time pass differently? Or am I missing memories? Am I even older than I think I am?

Now I'm confusing myself even more by writing out my thoughts.

Last time I was this age…I spent all my time drawing pictures and playing ball with my bedroom wall...


A/N: We're moving on to the parts that I've been really excited to write!

My beta was a little put off that the Nelaros segment made him seem self-centered. My reasoning: the game makes him out to be good and noble, but he's also very beautiful and from an esteemed family, which would lead to vanity and pride.