Arcane Warrior

Chapter 9: Deep Breath Before the Plunge part 3

Bleary eyes opened to see the blue canvas the the Grey Warden tent, he felt his head rested on a very comfortable pillow while he stared at blurry green fabric. He sighed as memories of how he came to be unconscious hit him, and surprisingly absent were the aches and pains of battle and the exhaustion he had been expecting was gone as well. He shifted his body slightly to see if there was any lingering pain, and he felt nothing.

Alim rose to a sitting position, hearing a sigh of disappointment from behind him. He turned around and, blinking the blurriness from his eyes, he saw none other than Jena in blue trousers and a black sleeveless undershirt. He looked down and saw that he was wearing the same thing, meaning that somebody had removed his armor... he blushed at the thought that Jena had done it... and that his 'pillow' had indeed been her lap. His blushed increased at the thought of him asleep with his head in her lap, her running her fingers through his hair.

He blinked in surprise when, upon meeting her eyes, she turned her head away shyly. He blinked in confusion, he had expected her to say something lewd, that's what she normally did in situations like this or any other... right? Of course there was also the possibility that her flirtations were something he had dreamed up to stroke his ego... yes, that sounded probable. He was about to say something to her when he heard "hello again young Surana. Good to see you among the land of the living once again."

He turned his head to the direction the voice came from to see Senior Enchanter Wynne, and that the green fabric from earlier was her robe. She must have healed him in his sleep, it would explain why he didn't feel any lingering aches or pains... he was worried about that actually, he had always healed more quickly than most due to being a reaver, but not even he healed that quickly.

Wynne was one of the greatest mages Ferelden had ever seen, and most notable among her talents was healing. His pains and fatigue would have been a breeze for her to fix.

He thanked her with a bow, one which she returned and promptly left for the mages pavilion in the King's Camp on the hill above. Just how many times had it been that she had healed him from his various misadventures, scrapes and training accidents... he had long lost count, he even had a bed reserved for him in the healers ward.

He smiled slightly, amused at the thought of his antics as an apprentice.

He was interrupted from his silent musings however, when Jena jumped up from her cot and rushed out of the tent, and he stopped her by grabbing her arm. "Wait... I'd like to speak with you" he said hurriedly, wanting to get through to her before she ran away again. Things between them were already tense, and if they were to work together in the future, then they needed to work things out now... at least, that's what he told himself. She turned to look at him over her shoulder "please" he said, slower this time.

She took him by surprise again when she pirouetted on her heel and, putting one arm around his back and the other on his shoulder, pressed her body flush against his. She closed her eyes and immediately backed away "no... no, that's not me. I'm sorry." Jena bowed her head in apology, but didn't run away as his hand was still clutching her firm left bicep.

He gestured to his cot, and she nodded hesitantly, agreeing to sit and talk with him.

They talked for a while, and it quickly became obvious they had a lot in common. He talked about his time at the tower, and she told him about her home life with her adoptive parents. When he told her about Leorah, her eyes softened visibly and she laid her head on top of his. She told him about her joining, and how it was a nightmare for her far worse than most wardens ever had to endure.

The rare darkspawn raiding party occasionally wandered to the surface, even in times when there was no blight. Such was the case with her, her village was destroyed, her adoptive family was slaughtered. When the darkspawn were finished with their killing, they dragged her and three other women with them down into the cave they came from. She survived off of cave mushrooms and nugs for two weeks as she was forced to watch what their tainted captors did to the others.

They would drag the first woman, Ursula, away for hours on end. Every time she came back she was crying, bleeding and barely able to move. It was just after a few days when they left Ursula alone and started on the second woman, Diana. What they were doing to them was terrifyingly obvious as Ursula's body started to turn grey and expand. It was just when her turn came when Duncan came, killing the darkspawn in a whirlwind of cold steel and fiery eyes, and Ursula, Diana and Marsha fell that day as well, each of them begging to be struck down rather than be left to their cruel fates.

As the only one of the untainted women, Duncan took her with him when he left the deep roads. He was forced to tell her the truth of her captivity, and it was then, when she learned how they were born, that her hatred of darkspawn began.

"How they are born?" Asked a pale Alim, and Jena, eyes glazed over with memories better left forgotten answered him "you must remember that the first darkspawn were human magisters, and there were no female magisters till hundreds of years later."

The implications of her statement chilled his spine and curdled his blood.

Far too angry to be led like a damsel in distress out of the caves, she picked up a darkspawn blade and carved her way to freedom alongside Duncan. Impressed by her skill and resolve, Duncan recruited her. When the senior wardens sent her and several other recruits into the deep roads for vials of blood, she took the blood of a broodmother, the creature she would have become had it not been for Duncan.

It has been seven years since. "I... I don't know what to say." "Don't say anything then." Jena leaned into him and he put his arms around her tightly, trying to draw her away from her nightmares with compassion and warmth.

He told her of his own nightmares, of being brutalized at a mere seven years of age, of seeing the woman he thought of as a mother becoming tranquil and barely even recognizing him the next day... of nearly drowning in a vat of dragon blood.

That part seemed to get her attention. "You are a reaver?" she asked in shock. "Yes," he answered, showing her his eyes. She watched in silence as the pupils of his eyes changed from round to slits and back, "I ended up ingesting enough of the stuff that I began to mutate." He stopped to laugh sardonically, "I can even breath fire as Alistair can attest, but he doesn't know why."

Seeing her look at him in question, he continued. "I didn't ask for this you know, and the Knight Commander began to trust me less ever since because, well..." he lifted the right leg of his trousers to the knee, revealing patterns of silvery-grey scales "I do look a bit like an abomination like this."

She didn't know what to think of this turn of events, the man she loved admitting to being not only a warrior who grew stronger for every drop of blood spilled in battle, but actually possibly being an abomination in elven form? Such a thing didn't seem possible... The very idea was ridiculous, bet there it was.

"They even went so far as to summon a dragonologist to the tower to study me, seeing that the dragon blood came from a male dragon that was, by all accounts, older than the Tevinter Imperium..." Alim laughed sardonically again at Jena's dumbstruck face.

Who wouldn't be, after all, the Imperium was well over five thousand years old. She counted in her head, the aging cycle of a dragon started out as dragonlings, newly hatched, and after a few decades they became either dragons or drakes, depending on their gender, and high dragons after a millenia... five thousand years, that would mean the blood came from a great dragon, ancient dragons that were, according to legend, capable of speech, high intelligence, even magic...

The legends of King Calenhad, the ones that placed him as a reaver, told of him drinking blood from a bound and prostrate great dragon with the aid of a powerful witch. According to those legends, the great dragon blood was so powerful, it remained strong in Calenhad's bloodline even now, four hundred years later. Whether or not anyone believed those legends was up for debate, and normally they were only generally accepted with any historical accuracy among the qunari.

"In an attempt to placate the Knight Commander, and quell his calls for my death, I volunteered to undergo templar training... I drank my first phial of lyrium at thirteen." Alim continued in quiet tones. "But... mages already have too much magic in their blood, ingesting raw lyrium could've, no should've killed you!" yelled Jena astonishingly, displeasure evident in her voice at his recklessness mixed with wonderment at how he was alive at all.

"Yes, that baffled everyone at first, myself included, I admit." He started, looking at the ground and idly drawing nonsensical patterns in it with his big toe, "the theory was that the dragon blood in my veins acted as some sort of stabilizer that allowed the raw lyrium to mingle with the magic in my blood without killing me."

"Wow, so you're a mage, a reaver, a templar, and a grey warden?" Jena asked in incredulity, and at his solemn nod, she continued "you are seriously one fucked up elf."

Her blunt statement at who/what he was made him smile from ear to ear, it was just so unexpected and seemed to sum it all up in such a strange way that he couldn't help but laugh and nod.

"That didn't help though, when the raw lyrium didn't kill me he only saw that as proof that I was an abomination. He did tolerate my existence however, as despite his suspicions it was well known that the scales were a byproduct of my status as a reaver and not possession. I was always watched more closely than the other mages however."

Jena hummed in thought, while neither of their lives had been sunshine and roses, neither one necessarily had it easier than the other. But then again, people of caliber weren't built by happy lives, so maybe it evened out. She snorted and shook her head, unable to make sense of her own thoughts. She was thinking in circles again.

The both of them were distracted from their conversation by a rustling of fabric, and they looked to the opening of the tent to see Hawke ducking under the heavy fabric, the opening letting them see the orange light of the pre-evening sky shining down upon the cobblestones.

Clearly they had been talking longer than they had realized.

Marian was looking down at the dirt, her eyes clouded in thought, and her hand was gripping the red-wrapped hilt of the knife tucked into her belt a little too tightly, trying to relieve stress maybe, and he realized that she had been eavesdropping.

"How long have you been there?" he asked while Jena looked off to the side. Hawke winced "sorry, bad habit, years of trying to protect my family. Anyway, I saw the wardens carrying your body back to the pavilion and thought... I don't know."

She was nervous, that much was obvious from her straying eyes and somewhat hesitant tone. He didn't know what she could have possibly been nervous about, other than the fact that the two wardens were in somewhat revealing clothes, but that didn't really seem like something that would faze someone like Hawke.

He had to give her credit though, for despite having been caught eavesdropping on a private conversation on top of whatever she was nervous about, she was standing there and explaining herself instead of making excuses to get away.

"But I couldn't, I mean I had business to attend to, so I couldn't check up on you right away. As for how long I was out there... I didn't mean to eavesdrop on you, but the bit about dragon blood had me a bit frozen on my feet."

Alim sighed in relief, she didn't hear any of Jena's confession or any of his earlier stories. He heard/saw no lie in her voice/posture, so he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe her.

"Anyway, what did happen?" she asked, getting back to the main point. The question drew his mind away from his morose thoughts, and from the straightening of Jena's posture, did the same for hers. "It was nothing, I just exhausted myself in the Wilds fighting some darkspawn." He answered, his tone bright, downplaying the situation. "Yes, he was quite-" Jena paused to lick her lips sensuously "-impressive."

Alim turned his head away, blushing slightly, but he also had a small smile at Jena's playful antics returning now that the heavy atmosphere was gone. Though Hawke, not used to Jena's behavior, took it at face value and stepped over to say something, but whatever it was she would've said would remain a mystery as Jena took Hawke by surprise by grabbing a handful of Hawke's hair and pushing her face into her cleavage.

The reaction varied between the three, Hawke squealed and put her hands on Jena's shoulders and pushed herself back stuttering, he coughed into his hand to hide his heavy blush and moved his legs to hide a very noticeable twitch at what Hawke's reaction said about her, and Jena laughed uproariously at them.

But the happy times, it seems, were not to last. Just as it seemed that the unspoken animosity that existed between the three of them was dying down, and friendship or possibly more looked like it could have been blooming, Alim and Jena both felt a chill race down their spines as the blood rushed from their faces, pale with dread.

Alistair's vague assumption of there being maybe tens of thousands of darkspawn in the horde was wrong... oh so very wrong.

The darkspawn were here.

Alim is a mage, a templar, a reaver and a grey warden. This is not just fanboy wish fulfillment, I promise. Not completely at least. In Dragon Age lore it took entire legions of grey wardens backed up legions of regular soldiers to take down an archdemon, but the Warden does it almost singlehandedly. It's completely obvious that he overpowered, I'm just trying to justify that by giving him a diverse skill set.

Everyone in Origins is an expy of a character from Arthurian legend, and Wynne is an an expy of Merlin, so it would stand to reason that she is an incredibly powerful mage.

As for Alim having scales, this is in fact cannon. When Reavers drink enough dragon blood, their bodies begin to mutate and they begin to grow scales in places. When trying to design Alim's scales I thought of the Au Ra from Final Fantasy Heavensward, and so far he only has scales on his legs. By the end though he will have scales on his entire body from the neck down so he will always wear fully concealing clothing in public.

After all, I can't give my character so much power without introducing some negative side affects. He'd become a mary sue.