Author`s Note: So this is a super long chapter, I didn't even realize until I got to the end. I'm working my way towards the end of Act 2, from DA2, which is why this chapter is based on an important quest. Next chapter will introduce more of the plot, at least, that's the idea. Enjoy!
PRIME SUSPECT
Astrid stood outside her cousin's estate—her life at the circle had not properly trained her in introductions. So she stood there, hesitating, with her hand hovering at the door. She had waited a few days before attempting to meet Hawke at his new home, being careful that her mood was in the right place to greet Lady Leandra. But courage was not with her today. The mage's hand sank back to her side and she began backpedaling from the courtyard, only to be abruptly bumped into. She turned heel and found herself back in the presence of Fenris, who—despite their recent understanding—continued to stare at her very crossly.
He sighed and straightened his armor, "Will you be joining us today?"
Before Astrid could question what he meant, the door behind her opened and Hawke came walking out with Varric in toe. The mage's cousin met her with a smile, "Ah you're both here, good. Aveline has someone she would like us to have a chat with." Hawke didn't inquire about Astrid being at his doorstep and instead decided to include her in their outing.
They were heading for the Gallows, where they were to meet with a man they had aided in the disappearance of a woman a couple years earlier. Astrid curiously asked about the circumstances, and Varric was happy to oblige. In a storyteller's fashion, the dwarf told her of their search for one Ninette de Carrac, a minor noble woman married to an Orlesian man whose love of her had transformed into resentment since being wed. The woman apparently was having a lustrous affair with an elf at The Blooming Rose, shaming her husband. The other party to the investigation was a templar named Emeric, who compared the noble's sudden disappearance to that of one of his mages: Mharen. "Well, how did it end?" Astrid finally asked after Varric gave her one of his infamous pauses.
"Hawke entered a life or death battle, his staff broken to pieces, but he still single-handedly took down the desire demon and all her thralls—"
"I was there dwarf," Fenris interrupted, "that is not how it happened."
Quietly listening from ahead, Hawke finally started laughing, "I don't know Fenris, that's exactly how I remember it."
Varric chuckled and continued, "After all the demons were dead, we found a bloody sack, and can you guess what was inside? A hand." He exaggerated the moment be stretching his arm out and wiggling his fingers.
"So...you never found the killer?" Astrid piped in, unsettled.
"No, we did not, but our templar friend hasn't let it go ever since," Varric answered.
As they entered the Gallows, the templar presence was stronger than usual—but not expected. More and more conflict was upsetting the balance of power in Kirkwall. It made Astrid uneasy being surrounded by the amount of unfamiliar faces, of which any one of them could be in the pocket of the man who was looking for her. Hawke immediately noticed his cousin's stride was falling behind and made the effort to stay close to her side as they sought out their informant, noting Fenris too stood at her side and that his brooding brow was scanning the Gallows. Hawke was curious of course, but bit his tongue and decided he would pester the elf later.
The group found Ser Emeric standing by himself. He was an older fellow, probably very handsome in his youth, and openly expressed a sigh of relief upon their arrival. Emeric was a man conflicted by his duties to the Order and to the women he believed were being stalked by a serial killer. He immediately went into detail about his latest investigation, but was disappointed with the outcome. The Knight-Commander had finally forced him to step away from the case, but the old man was determined to have a second chance at his suspect: Gascard DuPuis. According to Aveline, the guardsmen had already stormed the DuPuis mansion and left empty handed. Emeric, however, remained defiant that this man had something to do with the murders.
Hawke readily agreed to Emeric's request, and with sundown not for a few hours still, the group waited at The Hanged Man. Isabela was surprisingly missing from her usual place in the tavern, which worried Astrid and even garnered a fret from her cousin. However, Sebastian was there and properly informed them that the pirate left town to visit the recently opened hat shop. Typical. Astrid thought to herself—her captain was rather fond of hats. While in Antiva, the mage had her own collection of jewels and hats, but grew more and more fond of the leather there. It disgusted her at first—the smell—as did most things she was not use to, but it gradually grew on her. She could still smell the boots she had commissioned from the tanner if she thought hard enough.
Another thing to have grown on her was the terrible ale, which she was happily drank at her cousin's side at the moment. It felt good to be stationary for once. When she had joined Isabela's crew, the mage didn't expect she would travel beyond her destination of Kirkwall, but she was wrong.
From the beginning, Isabela had asked her only once where she truly wished to go, but Astrid couldn't bring herself to say it aloud—being an apostate was still a very unfamiliar lifestyle. She worked as the Siren's Call's cook and helped with the cleaning, chores she was accustomed to. Over time she earned the respect of the pirates and their captain, embracing her freedom for the first time. Eventually Isabela taught her the art of dueling—the captain's favorite past time—and Astrid was no longer just a mage. She could fight, knock a man out cold if she swung hard enough and had a knack for quick sword work. Even when her captain did discover the truth of her magic, she still retained the loyalty of the crew, and for that, Astrid owed Isabela her life.
She smiled absent-mindedly, remembering her adventures through Antiva, Rivain, Nevarra, Orlais—places she had only every read about back in the circle. Astrid always had Kirkwall on her mind, but could never bring herself to suggest the destination to Isabela. Even when the pirate asked her opinion, the mage would deflect the question with a wry smile, "Wherever you want to go." Her tanned companion would then wink and call orders to her men, standing where the wind blew through her dark hair and the sea splashed at her boots. Astrid at that moment knew she could be free as long as she had Isabela.
Soon the mage's reflecting was interrupted by a slight nudge from Fenris, lost in her thoughts, she had noticed it was well into dusk now. They left for Hightown as the moon rose into the sky, where the mansion was shrouded in shadows. Hawke asked Varric to use his "rogue magic" on the door, and after a moment they were inside. The vestibule was dark and unnaturally quiet, but there was magic at work in the DuPuis estate—Astrid could sense it on the air, almost choking, and crawling along her skin. "Do you feel that..." she whispered, seduced into stepping further into the mansion. Her cousin followed after her in an attempt to understand, but Hawke could not feel what she could. Astrid was very familiar with the magic in use, intimately familiar. The revelation however, was too late.
"Wait—" There was a wave of magic that burst into the room, followed by a sudden surge of demons. Astrid threw herself in front of her cousin, blocking a downward attack from a towering Shade. "Demons!" she hissed, shoving the shade away and giving herself room to swing her sword. The Shade shrieked as her blade cut through its middle, vanquishing it into black smoke. Hawke and everyone else jumped into the battle. Her cousin knocked the end of his staff into the ground, sending a wave of ice at the shades. Ferris charged in with his broad sword, cutting through the demons and Varric was making carefully aligned shots at a distance from his crossbow. Astrid attempted to swing again, but was becoming more unraveled the longer she surrounded herself in the estate's magic.
Finally she began to stumble, but was caught by Hawke before she could hit the floor. "Are you alright?" he looked at her in worry, brows together in a separate curiosity. The shades were dead, nothing left but a scattering of rugs and dissipating plumes of smoke.
Astrid pulled her arm away, "He's here."
"How can you be sure?" Hawke asked, curiosity waning into slight suspicion.
She ignored her cousin and was taking the stairs two at a time, "He has someone with him."
The group progressed through the estate, cutting down more demons, and fastly approaching the source of the magic. Astrid felt her fingers tingling as they took another staircase. She forced them into a fist and squeezed them tightly, trying to suppress the ache for magic. She had never craved the use for magic in so long. For mages, magic was as natural as breathing, and right now she was suffocating. Nonetheless, Astris steeled herself and continued through every doorway they came across. In one room she finally confirmed her suspicions when a stash of vials were found.
Blood magic.
Envy reiterated her thoughts, reveling in her struggle.
The mage ignored him to the best of her ability and led on into the final room, halted by a sudden plea for help. A man stood over a beaten and battered woman, her face streamed with tears and dress stained with blood. Conversation had begun between Hawke and the man, but it was all a distant echo to Astrid. She looked at the woman, recognized her fear and her pain. At last the frustration she had been harboring, boiled into anger. "You're a blood mage," she scowled, interrupting the exchange between her cousin and the now outed mage.
"Yes," Gascard DuPuis stuttered, "I've used blood and lyrium to augment my powers."
A terrified outburst came from the girl, "He's lying—he hurt me!"
Astrid flashed Gascard a poisonous look.
"I explained this," he sighed, "I need your blood to track you down if he took you. It was for your own protection—" The girl recoiled as he kneeled to comfort and reassure her, then she shoved him with what little strength she had and ran from the room. The blood mage looked disappointed, but carefully recomposed himself as he returned to his feet. "She'll go to the guard, she's going to ruin everything."
"Your plans of killing her?" Astrid snapped, "then good."
"I know this looks bad, but I am not the killer. I'm looking for him, same as you," Gascard defended, but she was not swayed by the man's act and her fair share of words to cut him down came to mind. However, Astrid was beaten by her cousin to speak next.
Hawke asked the noble of his meaning and Gascard answered. He recanted his sister's murder, which was uncannily similar to the disappearances of both Ninette and Mharen. The victim is chosen when the killer sends the poor soul a bouquet of white lilies, something Astrid remembered from Varric's own story. If the victims are found, it is in pieces. "I intend to find him and bleed him out," Gascard finished, leering into the distance.
"That is no excuse to use blood magic on someone against their will."
Gascard turned to Astrid, matching her sharp look, hiding a smirk. "I intend to stay in Darktown, if you learn anything, you can find me there."
The blood mage began walking off and Astrid intended to intercept, she would not let let a man with such disregard for his actions walk away. However she was stopped. Hawke grabbed her arm and kept her in place. "We may need his help later," he answered her unspoken question, proving himself be a serious character when it was called for. Astrid slapped his hand away for the second time and remained firm in disagreeing with her cousin's decision. "Let's go inform Ser Emeric of our findings."
Unfortunately they would never speak to the templar again.
In their absence Ser Emeric had been fooled into what he believed was a meeting with Hawke, but was ultimately a blood mage cutting loose ends. They were too late in their coming to rescue him in Lowtown, and only after killing through the demons left behind did the group find the templar's lifeless body. Astrid's suspicions of the man they let go flared and she readied a quip at her cousin, but instead fell quiet. She had never seen him so defeated, face painted in guilt as he observed Emeric's bloodied remains. So she volunteered to go with Hawke to inform the templars instead, leaving Fenris and Varric to guard the body until it could be properly recovered.
The cousins returned to The Gallows for the third time that day, this time occupied by only a few man and women—a combination of both guardsmen and templars. Astrid naturally swept the area with a wary eye, eventually catching sight of someone she did not want to see, but appeared to be exactly whom Hawke was striding towards. Before she could say a word, they were in the presence of Cullen.
Hawke extended a hand to the templar, who had not noticed her just yet. "Ser Cullen, I'm afraid I have bad news," her cousin said politely. That's when he saw her and failed miserably to hide his recognition of her. Astrid's cousin passed a glance between the two. "This is my cousin, Astrid," he quickly introduced, completely oblivious to the fact that they knew each other.
Astrid saw Cullen's lips move, but intervened, "A pleasure ser." She noticed the hurt in his face, but did not understand why it was there.
It was a few seconds of Cullen struggling for a reply, before deciding to redirect his complete attention to her cousin. "You said something of bad news?"
"Yes, I am afraid Ser Emeric was been murdered in Lowtown. My friends right now are watching over the body until The Order can send someone to claim him."
The templar's demeanor was shaken and now he was truly focused on what Hawke had said. "Thank you, I must go inform the Knight-Commander immediately. Farewell."
She watched Cullen walk away and then she too tried to make a quick get away, but her cousin wasn't as ignorant as she had hoped. Hawke was grinning, suddenly remembering something from before. He waited until they were far away from The Gallows before he began the questioning. "Do you two know each other?"
Yes. "Of course not," Astrid plainly answered, attempting to mask that she was still bothered. Why did he look at her so hurt? Surely Cullen would understand that they could not admit their awareness of one another, especially not here.
"So those sad eyes were for my benefit?" Hawke bantered at her.
Astrid nearly tripped she stopped in her tracks so fast, looking to her cousin. "Was he really that hurt?"
Hawke reached to comfort his cousin, but instead hovered his hands awkwardly over her shoulders, recalling that the mage did not like to be touched. After a moment, he crossed his arms and played it off with a silly grin, "You know, before we met, he had mentioned you before." That got her attention, color rising to her cheeks as she tried to think what Cullen could have possibly said. "I of course forgot about it, but seeing you two just reminded me of it," he smirked, like the cat that swallowed the canary. "Would you like to know what he said?"
Yes. "It means nothing to me what that man has to say of me," she walked away ready to return to her piss poor camp at the coast, but her cousin ignored her.
"I knew an Amell once," he began quoting and again catching Astrid in her tracks. She wouldn't face him, but he knew she was listening. "She was a special woman, never met her like again." As he spoke, she could hear Cullen's voice replace Hawke's, and it pained her.
The mage touched her face and felt her fingers wet. She was crying. "G'night," she called back to her cousin in a shaky voice, escaping before he could recognize the state she was in.