Chapter Four: Magic Sort Of Killed Malcolm

Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age.

Isabela had left the Hanged Man at 9 but Emma and company hadn't done the same until 11:50 though Isabela was hardly their first stop. Since they were in Lowtown already, they decided to hit the two appointments that they already had there before doing anything else.

They went over to the docks to find a young boy being chased by some thugs and quickly dispatched them.

"Th-thank you," the boy said.

"Are you one of Athenril's men?" Bethany asked him.

The boy nodded. "Yes, ser. All the others were killed but I ran. The Coterie would have gotten me, too, if you hadn't shown up."

"Aren't you a little young to be doing this?" Carver asked sharply. "How old are you?"

"Old enough," the boy said indignantly. "I need this job, you see. I have sisters, you see, and I'm the only one who can get a job. We'd starve if I didn't do this."

"Must be refugees," Varric realized.

"Surely there must be something we can do to help this poor boy," Bethany said, pointedly eyeing the crate of smuggled goods lying near them.

"Well, we did save his life," Emma reminded them. "That's certainly a good deed and will almost certainly improve his quality of life over what he would have had if the Coterie had killed him."

"Because then he'd be dead," Carver told her.

"I feel really selfless right about now," Emma said brightly. "Now run along and take the goods back to Athenril, okay? Tell her we'll stop by for payment tomorrow."

"Will do," the boy promised before running off.

"Emma!" Carver admonished.

"What? I saved his life! How am I in trouble?" Emma demanded.

"You should have given the boy the smuggled goods and told Athenril that they were already gone when you got here so he could start a new life with his family and not get himself killed smuggling and leaving his sisters destitute," Carver lectured.

"Was I?" Emma asked, surprised. "First of all, nobody suggested such a thing to me and I'm not a mind reader. Secondly, that would have required me to both steal and lie. I really wish I weren't the only person here with any concept of morality…"

"Well it certainly is a more rigid code than others'," Varric remarked.

"Thanks," Emma said, grinning. "Now come on, I think Anso's supposed to be this way."

They found a dwarf staring at the wall behind him.

"Are you Anso?" Bethany called out gently.

The dwarf jumped three feet. "Oh, sweet mother of pearl! Don't scare me like that!"

"We were walking pretty loudly," Varric pointed out. "If we scared you it's only because you weren't paying attention and there's not much we can reasonably expect to do about that."

"Are you the human Athenril told me about?" Anso asked cautiously. Well, they were assuming he was Anso even though he had yet to confirm it one way or another.

"Despite the fact that there are three of us, I'm just going to assume that you mean Emma and yes, she is," Carver replied.

"We'd be happy to help you smuggle any amount of lyrium," Emma informed him.

"I rarely see such…enthusiasm," Anso said uncertainly. "Listen, I'm not usually so jumpy. I just haven't been on the surface very long and I keep thinking that I'll fall up into the sky at any moment."

"Huh. Bartrand used to be scared of that," Varric remarked. "Of course, I just figured it was because he was Bartrand. I guess he has one less issue than I thought. Not that that's saying a lot, of course."

Bethany giggled. "What a bizarre thing to be scared of."

"Oh, I don't know," Emma was quick to defend him. She had always had a bizarre fascination with dwarves. "I think it's quite understandable considering that he must have spent his entire life underground and the surface must seem as strange to him as living underground our entire lives seems to us."

"But we don't think we'll fall into the planet's core," Carver pointed out.

"No but we do worry that the infrastructure will suddenly decide to fall and crush us," Emma countered.

"…Point," Carver admitted reluctantly.

"What do you need us to do?" Bethany asked.

"One of my products has been…misplaced. I know where it is but since my supplier chose not to deliver it I don't think going there by myself is the best plan. If you find it and bring it back, I'll pay you for your services," Anso offered.

"Do we have to do more to anger the templars?" Carver complained. "I mean, isn't that whole rescue mission we're going for Anders enough? Isn't our special circumstances enough? Will you not be satisfied until they have formed an angry mob?"

"You worry too much," Emma said dismissively. "I'm sure this will go absolutely swimmingly. Now where did you say your stash was?"

"You know, it was a really good idea not to go find Aveline just yet," Bethany opined.

"So…nothing here," Varric announced. "Either Anso won't be paying us or he's hiding something."

"He'd better be paying us," Carver growled. "It's not our fault it wasn't here."

They exited the empty Alienage house to find a bunch of mercenaries waiting for them.

"That's not the elf," one of them protested. "We were supposed to kill the elf."

"But we were also told to kill whoever exited the house," another one pointed out.

"I think that was done with the expectation that it would be the elf who did so," the first one argued.

"Attack?" Emma whispered. Her companions nodded and while the mercenaries were still arguing, the five took them out.

Once they were dispatched of (something that was always easier to do with mages around), they turned to go and an armored man came into view. "I don't know who you are but you made a serious mistake in coming here!"

"…In the Alienage? Is there some reason we shouldn't be in the Alienage at night?" Emma demanded. "Besides, they attacked us. Defending ourselves isn't a 'mistake.'"

The armored man turned to go without answering when another armored man stumbled drunkenly into the clearing before collapsing.

"I'm afraid your men are a bit dead right now," an elf with an intricate tattoo pattern announced as he stepped out of the shadows. "But not to worry, you'll soon join them."

"How dare you, slave!" the man hissed, reaching for his weapon.

The elf punched literally through the man. "I am not a slave."

Emma blinked. "Mistaken identity?"

"Not exactly," the elf replied. "My name is Fenris. I assume you are the ones that Anso chose to act as a distraction? If so, I apologize for there were far more mercenaries than I had anticipated."

"Yes, we are," Emma replied. "I'm Emma Hawke. These are my siblings, Carver and Bethany. That's Varric and Loghain."

"You don't need to introduce the dog, Hawke," Varric told her.

"You do if you're Ferelden," Emma disagreed.

"So those men were after you?" Carver demanded.

"They were," Fenris confirmed. "They were seeking to recover a Tevinter Magister's lost property…namely me."

"Don't be silly," Emma told him. "People aren't property."

"They often are in Tevinter," Fenris countered.

"And people call Ferelden backwards," Bethany muttered.

"Why in the world would they chase you from Tevinter to Kirkwall? It's not a short journey," Varric pointed out.

"No, it isn't," Fenris agreed. "And it's not really me they're after. You see these markings on my skin? They give me some unusual abilities and they're made from lyrium. Danarius wants it back, you see."

"But even though lyrium is expensive it still can't be more than what this Danarius guy is paying to track you down," Emma pointed out.

"I would imagine he finds the fact that his prized possession ran away from him to be quite embarrassing," Fenris remarked. "More so the more time passes and the continued success I have."

"You didn't have to lie to us, you know," Emma said reprovingly.

"Oh no? What would you have done if you knew that an escaped slave with limited means needed help facing an unknown number of mercenaries?" Fenris demanded.

"Totally done this before dealing with the Coterie," Emma replied.

"She's right," Carver declared. "Emma would have probably rushed to find Anso the minute she got the letter. She doesn't like slavers."

"No one actually likes slavers," Bethany spoke up. "But Emma especially despises them."

"They remind me of templars gone mad," Emma confided.

Fenris cleared his throat uncomfortably. "So you have mage sympathies then? Unfortunate. Still, I have met so few in my travels who would aid for more than personal gain so I suppose your misplaced sympathies are worth something. If you don't mind me asking…what was in the chest there?"

"Absolutely nothing," Varric answered. "What was supposed to be there?"

"It doesn't matter," Fenris said vaguely as he reached down to examine what was on one of the dead men. "It's as I thought. My former master accompanied them to the city. I'd intend to go to the mansion he's using and tear out his heart."

"Can we come?" Emma asked eagerly.

"We do have other things to do, you know," Carver reminded her.

"At midnight?" Fenris asked skeptically.

"In the Chantry, no less," Carver answered.

"I see. Well, if you can spare the time then I think it would be a good idea for the five of you to join me. Danarius' mansion will be far better guarded than this trap was," Fenris prophesized.

"No one has left the mansion but I've heard nothing within," Fenris reported.

"Fenris, you do realize that we walked over here with you, right?" Emma asked. "And that we've only been standing out here for two minutes?"

"I do," Fenris confirmed. "Well, shall we?"

They entered the mansion and slowly began to explore it when shades materialized right in front of them.

"Ah! Demon!" Emma cried before shooting a fireball at it.

Fenris jerked and stared at her for a moment before shaking his head and moving on. "Let's hurry this up."

If Danarius hadn't known they were there before, he certainly did after that with the way Fenris started monologuing to Danarius about how they were going to kill him. Eventually, they had explored every room in the mansion (some multiple times) and Fenris was forced to concede defeat.

"Gone," Fenris said wearily. "Damn him. What's the point in coming all the way out here looking for me if he's just going to leave before even hearing that his ambush failed? I assume that he left valuables behind. You may take them if you wish. I'll be waiting outside when you're done."

"Will do," Carver said happily.

The other three took a moment to mildly freak out at the sight of a happy Carver before they began looting.

"Magic ruins everything," Fenris complained the moment they exited the mansion. "And I can swear that it's stalking me."

"That seems a little far-fetched," Bethany replied. "There are mages virtually anywhere you choose to go."

"Yes, even aiding me in trying to track down my former master," Fenris said pointedly.

"Do you have some sort of a problem with Bethany or something?" Emma asked innocently.

"Not just her. I saw the pair of you tossing around spells earlier," Fenris said dangerously.

"Hey," Carver said authoritatively. "You have a problem with my sisters then you have a problem with me."

"You tell him, Carver," Bethany cheered.

Emma shrugged. "I guess that was a little sweet."

"I am no fool and I have seen mages with good intentions," Fenris said slowly. "Just the same, everyone faces temptation and some point in their life and a mage has both more temptation than most and more disastrous consequences for giving into that temptation. Tell me, mages: what exactly are you after?"

"I'm just trying to get by," Bethany answered. "And to preferably stay under the templar's radar."

"There are worse motives," Fenris grudgingly admitted. "But I have both seen and done some terrible things in the name of survival. And you?"

"Um…what do I want…Well, I guess I'd like to survive and not go to the Circle," Emma began. "I'd also like to hook up with Isabela again. And I want to get to know Anders some more because he is seriously hot. Then I want to get fifty sovereigns so we can go on that Deep Roads expedition and I want to get fabulously rich there so we can move out of my uncle's house. And I want people to stop treating me like I'm a refugee. And I want a pony. And I want-"

"Okay," Fenris cut her off. "I think we get the picture. Do you both acknowledge that your magic is a curse?"

"Of course not!" Emma scoffed.

"I…" Bethany hesitated. "What Emma said."

"Magic can twist even the most noble of intentions and it can kill people far easier than a sword," Fenris said solemnly.

Emma nodded. "Oh, we know. Magic killed our father, you know."

Carver rolled his eyes. "Oh it did not."

"You can't deny that without magic, it never would have happened," Emma insisted.

"But it was so indirect that blaming it on that is the height of ridiculousness," Carver protested.

"Am I to take it that one of you killed your father?" Fenris asked cautiously. "Albeit indirectly?"

"Oh, no," Bethany assured him. "Our father was a mage as well. He was Circle-trained, though, so he knew how to teach us."

"Then what happened?" Fenris pressed.

"One day there was a terrible snowstorm and we couldn't get out of our house. We were quite hungry so we decided to roast some chestnuts. Unfortunately, we had nothing to light the fire with and so our father used his magic to do so," Emma explained.

"And…he used too much power?" Varric guessed.

"What? Oh, no. He choked to death on one of the chestnuts," Emma clarified.

"How, exactly, can you blame magic for that?" Varric didn't get it.

"Well, if it hadn't been for the fact that my father was a mage and could start a fire then we probably would have had something else to eat," Emma replied.

"Even I would be a bit hesitant to blame magic for that," Fenris confessed. "Tell me, though: you have no magic and yet your sisters and father did. Weren't you ever threatened by this?"

"All the freaking time," Emma muttered.

Carver glared at her. "Not really. I trust my sisters not to get possessed and they wouldn't hurt me otherwise."

"For your sake, I do hope that your faith is not misplaced," Fenris said, though he sounded as though he very much doubted that.

Bethany's eye twitched. "You know, we're right here."

Fenris nodded. "I do. Listen, mages or not I still owe you a debt. Since I don't have much coin on me, I would like to offer my services in anything that I do not have a moral problem with…which pretty much translates to anything that would aid a mage."

"But since Sunshine and Hawke are both mages, wouldn't aiding them in any way give you some sort of a moral problem?" Varric asked logically.

"I meant mages as a whole or apostates," Fenris clarified. "Apostates other than these two, that is."

"Well, we are planning an expedition later. And we are going to get up to some hijinks in the Chantry. You might only be able to help with one of them, though, as the other involves other mages," Emma informed him.

"I suppose I can stand off to the side and ignore the situation," Fenris agreed. "Now, if that's all-"

"You know, I was trying to hold it in but I just can't do it anymore," Emma interrupted.

Carver groaned. "Oh, great."

"What is it?" Fenris asked curiously.

"You are really hot," Emma declared.

"You sound surprised," Fenris noted.

"I am, a little," Emma admitted. "I mean, I know that humans are all supposed to have raging elf fetishes but you're the first elf I've ever met that that looked even vaguely attractive so congratulations."

"Thanks…I think…" Fenris said awkwardly.

"What time is it, anyway?" Bethany wondered.

"1:45," Varric replied. "But they'll probably still be there. And if not…well, we tried."

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