Characters: Cassandra Pentaghast, Vestalus Pentaghast, Seeker Byron

Pairings: None

AU Elements: None

9:16 Dragon

The Rooms of Vestalus Pentaghast, the Grand Necropolis, Nevarra

Everything felt cold and empty. A wooden block seemed to have taken up residence in Cassandra's throat, and she did not think she had been able to say three sentences since they had moved Anthony's body out of Uncle Vestalus's house and into his own house in the Grand Necropolis, where something else would start living in it. Anthony was gone. His spirit had gone back to the Maker. It had been stolen from her.

She sat in the lounge and stared at the wall. She couldn't feel her body. Her torso, legs, and arms had turned to stone. Or to ice. She was a statue of a girl. She wished her spirit had left, gone with Anthony's to the Maker's side. But the way was barred to her, just as it had been when Mother and Father died.

My Maker, know my heart:

Take from me a life of sorrow.

Lift from me a world of pain.

The door creaked open. "Oh, Cassandra," Uncle Vestalus sighed. "Have you slept or eaten at all?"

"I don't know. I don't care." Cassandra didn't look at Uncle Vestalus. She couldn't. He was a mage too, wasn't he? Just like the monsters that had killed Anthony. He was prelate of the Mortalitasi. She knew he had rivals. Enemies. What had he done, over the years, for power?

"Has anyone found them?" she asked.

"We arranged search parties to pursue the maleficarum in several directions. They have not been found."

Suddenly, Cassandra was furious. Her throat loosened, and she was on her feet, shouting. "They cut him down right in front of me, Uncle! Right in front of me! I can see them now! Can see his . . . he would not help them. He rebuffed them. Worked so both of us could escape. He was brave. He was good. He was sixteen years old. And they killed him. You knew within three hours what had happened. It has been five days, and they have not been found? They could be anywhere now. They could get away with it! They could kill someone else!"

She raked her fingers through her hair, tears streaming from her eyes. "If you will not find them, I will," she declared. "Send me to the Templars. I'll hunt these maleficarum and every one under the sun!"

Uncle Vestalus reached out to her, and Cassandra flinched away. "Don't put a hand on me!"

"Cassandra."

Cassandra turned away and sank back onto the sofa, weeping. "I have to do something," she sobbed. "I have to find them. You don't understand. He was all I had left! I have to catch them. I want to. I want to fight. Please!"

Uncle Vestalus sank down beside her. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "I grieve for Anthony too. I loved him too. The maleficarum who slew him were wicked and cruel, and I too wish them found, and punished. But before you could do it, as a Templar. You're upset, niece. You don't know what you're saying."

Cassandra rounded on him. "Don't say I don't know what I am saying! I'm not a child! I want to join the Templars. I want to stop maleficarum. I can do it! I'm as fast and as strong as Anthony ever was. You know I am! I can avenge him. I can protect people."

She stared into his dark eyes, fierce and defiant. He stared back at her. Then he shook his head. "Go to the kitchens and have the servants make you something to eat. A proper meal, with meat, vegetables, and wine. Eat it all. Then go to your room and try to sleep. In two months, if you still want to go to the Templars, we will discuss it again then."

"I will not change my mind."

But Uncle Vestalus would not listen. "In two months, perhaps I will believe you. You're angry, Cassandra. You're grieving, and you're exhausted. Our hunters will catch the maleficarum who slew Anthony, or they will not, but you will not catch them. If you truly wish to devote your life to the pursuit of others, the resolve will not cool given time to consider."

Cassandra swallowed. "I will not change my mind," she repeated. "But I will do as you ask."

TWO MONTHS LATER

The very evening that marked two months since her uncle had told her to wait, Cassandra went to see him in his library. The mage-lights above his desk made her run cold, but she held herself high, standing in the posture Anthony had taught her before him—that of the warrior at rest.

"I still wish to join the Templars, Uncle," she said. "Will you let me go?" If he did not, she thought, she would leave this place anyway and travel, away from Nevarra, and seek training in Orlais, or the Free Marches. But her uncle did not need to know that.

Her uncle sighed and closed his book. "I shall," he said quietly. "But not to the Templars. As you have considered your path, so have I. Cassandra, the Templars would destroy you. Perhaps you do not know what they sacrifice to become what they are—"

"I would make any sacrifice!" Cassandra said hotly.

"But I would not have you make any sacrifice," Uncle Vestalus answered her, quietly. "The Templars are in nearly every Chantry in Thedas; you are familiar with them. But there are others who search out corruption and serve as the final authority over apostates. And over the Templars themselves, if you would believe it. They are a higher order, and an older one. I would send you to the Seekers of Truth, niece, and not to the Templars."

"Seekers of Truth?" Cassandra repeated, suspicious. "Who are they? What do they do?"

"The Seekers of Truth are an ancient order," her uncle told her. "Warriors and investigators. The first Templars came from their ranks, before the establishment of the Chantry itself—though not before Andraste's Chant had first been heard. As to what they do, I have told you. The Templars watch the Circles of Magic, and the Seekers of Truth watch the Templars. They travel widely, burning away corruption in the Circles and among the Templars alike."

"Then they don't deal directly with apostates?" Cassandra demanded. "I don't want to join them."

Uncle Vestalus regarded her across his desk. "A Seeker of Truth encounters plenty of maleficarum in the course of her duties. In fact, a Seeker is more likely than a Templar to deal with cabals of blood mages such as the one that killed Anthony; the destruction of such societies would be seen as within the purview of their Order, above the ability of the Templars, who concern themselves more with the tracking of individual apostates. But beyond that, training for the Seekers of Truth is more rigorous than that of the Tempars. Many say they are blessed by the Maker himself for their faith. What is certain is their abilities—considerable, I assure you—are not dependent upon the use of lyrium."

Cassandra brushed that aside as an irritating fly. So Templars needed lyrium to fuel their abilities against mages. What of it? Less of the stuff that maleficarum could use in their wicked spells. She was more interested in the other thing Uncle Vestalus had said. "The Seekers take down entire groups of maleficarum?"

Uncle Vestalus paused, frowning. "They have other responsibilities—"

But it was a yes. Cassandra saw that. "I'll go to them," she said. "When can I leave?"

Uncle Vestalus sat back in his chair. "I wrote to the Lord Seeker to inquire whether they might have a place for you three weeks ago," he said heavily. "I received his reply two days since. You may travel to Val Royeaux as soon as you wish. They will train you. Whether you succeed and become a Seeker or not, I'm afraid, will depend on you.

"I would escort you myself," Uncle Vestalus added. "But my duties to the Necropolis and to His Majesty keep me here. But I can arrange a contingent of male and female guards to accompany you within the week."

"Do it," Cassandra said. Purpose blazed in her like she had never felt before. She would become one of Uncle's Seekers of Truth. She would investigate entire groups of apostates, seek them out and destroy them as soon as they formed, before they could cause any grief like Anthony's killers had caused her. "Thank you, Uncle."

She bowed and started to go, but Uncle Vestalus stood from behind his desk, and something in his face made her wait. "You have not been happy here," he said. His voice was quiet. "The Grand Necropolis is no place for a child. And I know I have been a . . . difficult guardian. I regret what part I may have played in your suffering. I grieve what you have lost with your brother's death almost as much as I grieve my nephew himself. I suspect you will not miss me. But . . . I shall miss you, Cassandra."

Cassandra looked down at her feet, face burning. She wished he had just let her go. She wished she could lie to him. His love for her pulled at her, asked for a response that she could not give. "You have been good to me," she said carefully. He had always loved her father more than he had loved her, she thought, loved the Pentaghast name she carried and what he expected of a noble lady of their family. But if that was true, she thought, would he be saying all this now? Would he have agreed to send her to the Seekers, an even more difficult order of warriors than the Templars? He had never lied to her. He could have just kept her at home—or tried, anyway. He wasn't doing that.

But she would not miss him, and would miss the Grand Necropolis even less. She never had grown used to the smell here: heavy, funereal perfumes and embalmed flesh. The wisps in the corpses of the dead made her shiver. She had been isolated here, separated from everything truly human and alive, and she was glad that part of her life would be over now.

I could be kinder if he were not a mage. She recognized that, and was ashamed of it. But every time she looked at Uncle Vestalus now, she saw the robes he wore and his white sorcerer's hands, and thought of the power those hands wielded.

Uncle Vestalus seemed to know too, and that just made it worse. Looking at her, he sighed. "As good as I knew to be," he said quietly. "Go well, child. Pack your things. I shall make the arrangements for your escort, and I'll see you before you leave."

Cassandra made a curtsey and fled.

Citadel of the Seekers of Truth, Val Royeaux, Orlais

FIVE WEEKS LATER

"Again," Seeker Byron instructed in that blasted calm, even tone of his. He wasn't even sweating! Sweat poured down Cassandra's face, stinging her eyes and filling her mouth with the taste of salt. The Maker could no doubt smell her all the way from the Fade, whether he was paying any attention or not.

Cassandra glared up at the Seeker who had been assigned to be her teacher. His long, once-dark hair, tied back at the base of his skull, was iron gray now. It was inching away from his forehead. As if to make up for it, his prodigious mustache thrust out from his lip. It reminded her of a boar-bristle hairbrush. Seeker Byron was old, but he had destroyed any illusions he was frail or weak in the first three days she had been here. He was as immovable as a gnarled old oak, burly and strong. He fought like no one she had ever seen, including Anthony, and could keep going long after she was exhausted, doubled over and vomiting in the corner of the practice yard. He did not spare her because she was a girl, because she was noble or pretty or even young. She already bore multiple bruises from combat training sessions with the Seeker, and she had been his student no more than ten days.

Combat training sessions. She was beginning to feel she had not known the meaning of the term. But she was determined to master all Seeker Byron had to teach. Let the mages fear her then! Cassandra rubbed her forehead on her tunic sleeve. It was almost as damp as her skin. She took up her stance. Seeker Byron saluted her and stood ready.

She charged.

It ended ignobly, as it always did, and painfully, as it usually did. Cassandra sprawled on the trampled grass of the yard and stared up at the clouds moving through the clear blue sky above Val Royeaux. The bells from the Grand Cathedral, so close she had hardly believed it and still found it hard to credit, rang out the hour. Cassandra closed her eyes, completely spent.

"Your difficulty is not that you are weak, Cassandra," Seeker Byron said, quietly. "You are unskilled, but your difficulty is that you are rash; headstrong; passionate and impatient. Your anger overcomes you, and so you are beaten. Skill can be taught to anyone, albeit at different paces. Patience can be taught as well—but only if you have the will to learn it."

"I just need to be sharper," Cassandra panted. "More alert and aware. I can drill the moves, perhaps."

"Here." Cassandra opened her eyes to see Seeker Byron had extended a calloused hand approximately the size and shape of a garden spade. She took it and let him help her to her feet. Her knees shook, and she knew she would be vomiting again if she did not rest or drink water soon. "Drill will make this way of moving more natural to you, yes. Instinctive. You should run the exercises I have shown you on your own, and we will continue to spar. Your form will be corrected, and your stamina will improve. But we must make time for your other lessons. They do not come as easily to you."

Cassandra laughed. "Easily!"

Seeker Byron smiled. "Yes, well. Learning is pain and trial, by and large. The arduous accumulation of experience." His Orlesian accent was soft and soothing. Here in Val Royeaux, a center of trade for all of Thedas, Cassandra had found that many people spoke the common tongue the dwarves had invented so long ago for their merchant highways, but familiar language patterns lingered. Cassandra's harsher consonants and deeper vowels, and Seeker Byron's rising intonation, nasal placement, and words that sounded like music.

"Go. Clean yourself up then meet me in the study. We will see what you can recite of the first cantos in the Canticle of Benedictions before prayers."

Cassandra almost exclaimed her distaste, then bit it back. Seeker Byron still caught her expression. "Spiritual training will, I think, be far more important to you than anything we do out here, Cassandra," he said. There was an edge of sternness to his voice. "You are a warrior, but your spirit should not be always battling. You must find peace and security in the Maker."

Cassandra thought of the mages who had killed Anthony. "I don't know how I can," she whispered. "But I will try."

A/N: If you've been reading this series, welcome back to The Subject and the Singers of the Song—less of a story and more of a symphony, featuring many different instruments, each with their own melody. If this is the first story you've started reading, welcome. This is the third volume of the series, but you can start here as well as anywhere. I didn't group all of these together mostly because a single fic would have two hundred-plus chapters, but also because each volume of this series has its own sort of amorphous focus. The first volume, 9:01–9:10, introduces six of the characters and has the first experiences of childhood for the oldest of them. The second volume, 9:11–9:15, finishes introducing the other four and begins to get into childhoods proper. In this third volume, covering 9:16–9:20, things really start to happen. The oldest characters begin to become people you may be more familiar with, but you will see character and setting facets you recognize in even the youngest.

A word to those unfamiliar with how I'm working on these: I follow canon fairly closely—sometimes, as you can see, borrowing from expanded universe material like The Dawn of the Seeker—but sometimes canon interferes with the story I want to tell, and I abandon it. I'll list AU elements at the beginning of every chapter along with the character tags and pairings, but for this part of the series, this is what you need to know:

Cullen Rutherford was born in 9:05 Dragon instead of 9:11, making him some six years older than the wiki estimates. I made this decision because, in all three games, Cullen is animated to look much older than he is speculated to be, and in addition, I found it unbelievable that Meredith would make a twenty-year-old Templar of only two years' experience a captain, as would be the case in the first act of DA2 if Cullen were actually born in 9:11.

Cullen is the third-born child in his family instead of the second-born, making his brother Branson his elder as well as Mia. I changed this for better conformity with quasi-medieval or Renaissance family norms for someone in Cullen's social class; as the second-born son, he would have more freedom to choose his own career than he would as the eldest son.

As a result of my other decisions about Cullen's age and position, the rest of his timeline is shifted some four or five years ahead of the wiki summary. In this particular fic, that means that instead of deciding he wants to be a Templar at age eight, Cullen decides to be a Templar at age twelve, and doesn't actually join the Order for years afterward.

May not actually be AU due to Danarius's history of lying and generally being an awful person, but Fenris was not from Seheron. He picked up on Qunlat due to geographic proximity and in his training at the Carastes gymnasium, but in this story, Leto, the elf that later becomes Fenris, lived the first twelve years of his life in Ventus (or Qarinus), just south of Seheron and across the channel.

William Cousland is still teyrn of Highever well into young Cousland's childhood, with Bryce Cousland and Eleanor teyrn- and teyrna-in-waiting. I had to have a grandparent somewhere in here. For more on my history of the Couslands, see Chapter 9 in the first installment of the series.

Ilsa Tethras is not an alcoholic.

Another potential difference that may not necessarily be one: Alistair does not live in the stables at Castle Redcliffe until he is eight years old.

While potential-Warden Brosca's father did go to the surface to try to make his fortune, abandoning Kalah, for the purposes of this story, he was Mining Caste, not casteless like Kalah herself, and Kalah's relationship with him, like her relationship with Rica's father, was orchestrated in an attempt to raise herself up.

Finally, Alistair is not sent away from Castle Redcliffe in 9:20. This change was to solve what I see as the problem of Connor Guerrin. The most logical time for Alistair to have been sent away from Redcliffe was when Eamon's wife was feeling most insecure about his place in Eamon's house—when she had just conceived an heir or when he was newborn. And Alistair knows Connor's name and knows about him. But if Connor was born in or around 9:20 Dragon, that would make him ten years old in 9:30—and he just seems a bit younger than that. So like Cullen, Alistair's getting time-shifted. Just a little. A benefit of this is that he'll have spent the majority of his childhood with Arl Eamon, which makes sense on a number of levels.

Anyway, this story is weird. I don't anticipate a lot more response than the first two have had. There's no continuous plot and very little shipping yet, and the truth is that it's ONLY rated M for safety. And like the second installment, that's only for a couple of chapters. There will be some graphic street-fighting and some disturbing scenes of poverty, and one description of a trauma extreme enough to change one character into someone else entirely, but most of the story is a light T.

Best Always,

LMSharp