Characters: Cullen Rutherford, Knight-Commander Tavish, Mother Letitia, Unnamed Chantry Cleric, Mia Rutherford, OMC Reginald, Mia/OMC Reginald, Rosalie Rutherford, Various Others
Pairings: Mia Rutherford/OMC, Mentioned Branson Rutherford/OFC, Mentioned OMC/OFC
AU Elements: Cullen's entire story has been timeslid somewhat. He was born 9:05 Dragon instead of 9:11 Dragon. He is the third child and second son instead of the second child and first son, making his brother Branson his elder as well as Mia. He was twelve instead of eight when he decided to become a Templar (in "The Wolves of Honnleath" in Seek and Find), and he is seventeen not thirteen when he joined the Order (in "The Trainee" in Love and Loss). He is close to twenty-one years old in this chapter.
9:26 Dragon
Edgehall, the Arling of Edgehall, Ferelden
Cullen stood in a line with nine other men and three women in gleaming silverite plate. In addition to the armored kilt each wore in the Order's colors and Hessarian's flaming sword embossed upon the breastplate, today they were all draped in formal white silk capes also bearing the image of the sword in crimson threads. Each bore his or her sword, unbelted and held scabbarded in both hands. When the Knight-Commander announced them each in turn, they would draw it and kneel before the altar to make their oaths before the Revered Mother, who stood in her most formal capacity as a representative of the Chantry to receive them in the place of Her Holiness Divine Beatrix III. She was the Maker's eyes and hands today, and the oath they swore would be witnessed and entered into the records both of the Templar Order and the Chantry itself.
In the sanctuary, other members of the Order and other recruits sat assembled. Three or four mages from White Spire had come, along with the arl of Edgehall and various people from the town who happened to enjoy ceremonial occasions. And in the back, on bench near the windows on the right, sat Mia and her husband, Reginald, together with Cullen's youngest sister Rosie. Cullen's father had recently had a bad bout with a winter illness, and his mother hadn't wanted to leave him and the farm to make the journey. Branson and his wife, Briony, had stayed to look after things, but Mia and Rosie had brought gifts from everyone back in Honnleath and letters with their love. Cullen's eyes moved to his older sister's shining face now, and he could hardly manage to maintain the dignity of the occasion.
A choir of boys and girls from the village was singing a song adapted from the Canticle of Transformations now. The Arl of Edgehall and the Revered Mother had already given their opening addresses. Next would be an address from a cleric from Val Royeaux, and then an address from their own Knight-Commander Tavish. Then he would introduce each of the new inductees to the Templar Order, presenting them to the Revered Mother to make their vows. She would knight them, each in turn. They would be given jeweled chests with their first doses of lyrium and the apparatus for taking it—the substance that would give their abilities power against apostates and mages who stepped out of the prescribed rules for order in the Circles of Magi to which they would be assigned. They would all be presented to the people as a class, and they would be Knights Templar, members of an honored order spanning all Thedas, outside bounds of faction or nationality, owners of the sacred trust to protect the lands against the dangers of magic, whether that meant protecting mages from themselves or demons that threatened in the Fade or nonmagical people from rogue mages.
Cullen had come here four years ago, only halfway literate, possessed of only the rudimentary skills of self-defense, bearing only a decades-old worn and warped iron blade that had once belonged to his father. Knight-Commander Tavish had not thought he could make it. To tell the truth, Cullen wasn't certain the Knight-Commander had ever taken to him, and Cullen was still a year older than every other recruit with him in line. But here he stood, an arms instructor at the academy before he'd ever taken his vows, and taking them after only four years of study.
He hadn't been assigned to a Circle or as a stationed Templar at a village Chantry yet, but many Templars weren't for a few months after first taking their vows. For now, he would be staying on at Edgehall, learning to use the full force of his abilities under more mature knights in the Order and continuing to help recruits with their arms training. He was good at it. The recruits liked him, and they went on to perform better in their arms examinations once they'd trained with him. He'd been earning half again a senior recruit's stipend this past year as an assistant instructor. In twenty or twenty-five years, he wouldn't mind returning to that kind of work, taking up a position at a monastery or a training ground like the one at Edgehall to train new Templars, but first, he wanted to do something.
One of the Chantry sisters stepped forward from her place beside the children's choir, gesturing to the sanctuary. Cullen lifted up his voice in the chorus.
"May I ever walk where You have bid
May I ever stand where you have blessed
This is my prayer and this my song
From now till the day of my death
From now till the day of my death
Your words in my throat and Your flame in my heart
From now till the day of my death."
The song ended, and the cleric from Val Royeaux stepped up to the dais. Her Orlesian accent was heavy. A few people in the sanctuary twisted their lips upward or their eyebrows down. Some others shifted in their seats. The wounds from the war against Orlais had been slow to heal. Everyone would be polite. Chantry officials were supposed to be politically neutral. They never were. But everyone did remember they were meant to be. Just as the Templars themselves.
For a moment, Cullen wondered what would happen if he himself was assigned to a Circle outside Ferelden. It was more than possible. There was very little traffic between the Circles in Southern Thedas and Tevinter—members of the Southern Chantry decried all members of the Imperial one as heretics, and vice versa—but anywhere else was fair game. He could even be sent to the Anderfels, if word came a Templar was needed. He could be assigned to one of the Circles in the Free Cities, or a Circle in Antiva. There would be no returning to Honnleath on a week's leave then, to see his brother or sisters and their children or visit with his parents. It could take him weeks or months just to arrive at the Circle where he'd been assigned. Letters would take weeks or months to get back, if they ever arrived at all.
Cullen looked back at Mia and Rosie in the rear of the sanctuary. At Reginald. He hardly knew the man who had married his favorite sister. He might never get to know their children, or Branson and Briony's. Rosie might marry in her turn, or follow through on her threat to become a villainous single landlady farmer, overlord of all the valley, and he would never see it.
Cullen thought back to Father and Mother's mingled pain and pride the day that he had left his childhood home, to Mia's. They had known before he had really understood that they were saying goodbye for much longer than a few years in Templar training. He couldn't go back to Honnleath now. He never would go back for more than a few days' visit, and if and when he did, it wouldn't be like returning home, and he himself would be a stranger to people he had once known so well. That was the choice he had made when he had chosen to commit his life to the Templars.
My life, for theirs. To pursue the path of the Maker.
There was a sadness to it, a sacrifice he hadn't realized he was making along with all the others. But now that he did realize, he still did not regret it, and Cullen smiled at his sisters, at Reginald, and Mia lifted a handkerchief to him, smiling back, and if the candlelight and the light from the windows caught in her glistening eyes, her tears were just as much pride as pain, as they'd been the day he'd left.
Then Knight-Commander Tavish was calling the names of the recruits, swearing them into the Templar Order. Becan was taking his vows, then Larissa, and then Cullen was kneeling before Mother Letitia, clasping both his hands over the hilt of his naked sword. To his left, a clerk stood near the Orlesian cleric, writing down his name in crimson ink into a roster for the Templar records. To his right stood the Knight-Commander, standing at parade rest and looking on.
"Cullen Rutherford, you have fulfilled the obligations of your recruitment years and are judged this tenth day of Bloomingtide, Dragon Age Year Twenty-Six, worthy of acceptance into our order. Will you so swear, before the Maker and these witnesses, to . . ."
Cullen stumbled through the oaths of service—fealty to the Maker and to His Holy Chantry, to the tenets of the Templar Order. Fealty to his duty, courage in its enactment to ensure the righteous and worthy practice of magic throughout the lands, vigilance against all enemies of man—demon, maleficar, or apostate—who perverted the Maker's will and sought to harm or dominate others.
The earth seemed to tilt beneath him and the sky to open above, and Cullen swore he could feel the Maker's gaze, just for a moment.
Then Mother Letitia took up her own sword and laid it on both of his shoulders. "Then rise, Ser Cullen," she told him, "to honor your vows to man and Maker. Walk forth endowed with the Chantry's authority and the Maker's blessing."
A page in white came forward, bearing a small jeweled chest, worked gold inlaid with cut pieces of jet. He presented it to Cullen, who took it, half-bowing, and crossed behind the altar to stand behind the other new-made knights. And from the back of the sanctuary, Rosie tipped him a mock salute with one finger, and Reginald grinned. Mia was beaming, both hands clasped beneath her chin.
But Cullen closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer—a thank-you, a praise, another silent promise.
I shall embrace the Light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.
A/N: Not necessarily crazy about this one. It's important for contrast, because Cullen comes to the Templars with very different feelings than Alistair, who will be pretty darn close to this milestone by the end of this installment of Subjects and Singers. But at the same time, Cullen's very easiness about it, his lack of conflict and conviction of a call, makes this moment pretty boring from a storytelling perspective. Well, for contrast's sake—
LMS