Family Trip

Chapter 1

In hindsight, I was probably very lucky.

I don't remember how I arrived in the forest. It was like waking up mid-dream, only to find the dream manifest before me – a living, breathing world, and eerily familiar.

Maybe calling it a nightmare would be more accurate. It certainly felt that way. I was lying in a clearing at the foot of an enormous fallen tree. The light was dim but felt warm in the brisk air. Dawn. I couldn't see very far into the surrounding woods through the mist, but it was clear enough that this wasn't some ordinary forest from home.

The mossy trees were imposing and gnarled, stooping like a coven of witches surrounding the small clearing. The ground beneath me was boggy, indeed the air itself felt thick with moisture despite the cold temperature.

The first stroke of luck for me must've been that shock and confusion outweighed the panic. I was never a girl scout like my sister, Keira, so I've no doubt running off into the woods in a random direction would've gone badly. Instead, I curled into a ball against the bark of the fallen tree and tried to ignore the splitting headache I'd woken up with.

Was I hung over? I didn't remember the night before. Better mark that down as a 'maybe'.

I didn't recognise the clothing I was wearing – if you could even call it that. Just a single garment: a woollen dress as rough as burlap on my skin. It looked like it might once have had sleeves, but now my arms were left exposed. The fabric was ripped and torn in some places, charred and burnt in others. No underwear or bra.

I wasn't in any better condition. My arms were covered in blackened ash from shoulders to fingertips and the skin beneath was raw and sensitive. It looked as though I'd been digging through the remains of an enormous bonfire while the embers were still hot.

From the foetal position I'd awoken in, I partially uncurled to get a better look at the clearing. Despite the swampy surroundings, the air smelled of smoke, and the outer layer of lichen on the fallen tree beside me looked singed, leaving a thin web of black marks criss-crossing its surface, like veins recently emptied of liquid fire.

There were no other signs of fire, but I could smell it: smoke mingled with that of crushed leaves and morning dew. However, beneath the burnt and woodsy scents was something more. It was awful; something… rotten. It permeated the air to the extent that – once I'd noticed it – I couldn't help but gag.

"Fu – achk" I coughed and stumbled to my feet. Time to leave. Maybe wandering the woods wasn't the worst idea after all, I thought. If I've got no idea where I am, can I really get more lost?

The smell was making it hard to breathe. In a way, that was my second stroke of good luck. It's hard to scream when you can't breathe, and I definitely would have when I found the source of the smell.

There was a dead genlock on the outskirts of the clearing.

Yeah, a darkspawn. From Dragon Age.

Like I said, I could barely breathe. I made some pathetic squeaking noise and changed direction so suddenly my feet slipped out from under me on the leaflitter and I hit the ground.

I wouldn't exactly say the darkspawn looked uglier than in the game. It was about the same level of ugliness, only imagine it in 8K HD ultra-crispness… and in VR. Its glassy black eyes were open, but lifeless, and grotesque teeth were visible in its ape-like jaws.

Oddly enough, the thing I found most disturbing in the moment was its size. Genlocks were supposed to be the smallest variety of darkspawn – similar to dwarves for very unnerving reasons, if I remembered correctly. That much was true; the creature looked to be at least a foot shorter than me.

Despite that, it had the unsettling proportions of something that was significantly bigger than it ought to be, like if a baby grew up without changing shape, and the features that used to make it cute were suddenly horrific and unnatural. A head too large for its body, on shoulders too broad, and limbs that looked too muscled for how stubby and short they were.

I was throwing up by then if you hadn't guessed. Then running (after I'd picked myself up off the floor) in the opposite direction of the darkspawn as fast as my protesting legs could carry me. I've never been much of a runner – that's Mum's thing – so I probably wasn't moving very fast, but it helped that the opposite direction of the darkspawn happened to lead downhill.

I managed only a couple hundred metres when my lungs gave out. Before even reaching the bottom of the hill I had to stop beside a tree and prop myself up against it. Coherent thoughts came easier while I was catching my breath. Exhaustion does a good job of clearing the head, it turns out.

This wasn't Earth. Darkspawn didn't exist on Earth. They existed in Thedas. This had to be Thedas.

Was I dreaming? Unlikely; it seemed too vivid. I pinched myself just to be certain. Another undignified squeak. Yes, still painful. My blackened arms were really starting to sting.

Was I crazy? Perhaps. I was in a world that I'd only ever known as a work of fiction. Perhaps the stress of young adult life had finally gotten the better of me. Maybe I'd snapped and ran off into those creepy woods behind my grandparents' old house, stripping myself half-naked in the process and then hallucinating a dead monster from an old video game.

Okay, so possibly insane, but did it matter? I mean, sure, insanity would be bad, but did it change anything? If I was crazy, my greatest risk would be from myself – likely running into traffic while escaping imaginary darkspawn. If, however, the impossible was true and I really had travelled to Thedas, then I'd have much bigger problems – with said darkspawn ranking pretty highly on that list. Maybe it'd be good idea to assume the worst-case scenario for now.

One thing was for certain: there was no way I was going back up the hill to double-check the genlock wasn't a figment of my imagination. My poor heart already felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.

I started running again. The thought of the darkspawn made me desperate to be further away. A slow jog this time, since unfortunately it seemed my journey to another world had not improved my fitness. As I ran, I took in more of the forest around me. The morning fog was finally beginning to lift, giving me a better view.

The sense of familiarity was back, only now I had a clue as to what it meant. A cold forest of enormous trees inhabited by darkspawn: my best guess was the Korcari Wilds. Did that mean Ostagar was nearby? If so, how could I find it?

Should I even find it? Ostagar was overrun in-game by the horde after the king's army was betrayed by Loghain. Maybe it'd already happened? For all I knew, it could've happened years ago. Finding one dead darkspawn didn't necessarily mean a Blight was underway.

There were too many questions, none of which I was equipped to answer at the moment. I slowed my jog down to a walk and re-evaluated my plan. Step one: get out of the wilds.

The sun was gradually climbing higher, but I didn't feel confident using it to orient myself. Did it rise in the east and set in the west like on Earth? I don't remember that ever being mentioned in-game.

I should've read more codex entries.

Without any good reason to change direction, I continued downhill on the path of least resistance, feeling sorry for myself.

I hadn't given my headache much thought since bolting from the clearing, but it was still bothering me: a dull ache behind my eyes that made me wish for a painkiller. My legs, obviously, hadn't appreciated my treatment of them since arriving, and my arms – definitely burnt, although it was hard to tell how badly – had that faint itchy sensation which told me the real pain was still to come once the nerve endings began to recover. The ash coating my skin was probably a good thing – I doubted I'd be finding any real antiseptic even if I did accidentally stumble upon civilisation before I starved to death.

I wondered how long it'd take people back home to realise I was gone. I share an apartment with my sister near the university, but she's used to finding me gone by the time she wakes up. By this evening, she'd probably check, only to find my phone still plugged in on the dresser. Hell, my pyjamas would probably be laid out under the covers where I'd been sleeping, since none of my own possessions seemed to have come along.

Keira would call home, where Mum, Dad, and Granny (she moved in with us last year after Grandpa died) would start freaking out. They'd call the police, who, naturally, would be stumped. Local news might even show up, which would scare Mum into hiding indoors and leave Dad and Keira to keep Granny away from the cameras (she likes advertising homemade soap to strangers – My old room became her "laboratory" when she moved in).

That train of thought was beginning to make me feel homesick, so the distraction was welcome when the scenery began to change.

The trees were thinning and as the incline flattened out the ground beneath my bare feet went from soft and sodden to downright waterlogged. The woods now looked more like a cross between forest and a swamp, with numerous ponds hugging the bases of the trees. There were more signs of wildlife here too –water birds, croaking toads, and the odd emaciated hare, not to mention the small cloud of mosquitoes that had been following me for the past few minutes.

I didn't waste any time in finding a stream running into one of the larger ponds; I was parched. I knew enough about wilderness survival, however, to know that drinking straight pondwater wasn't a good idea. The trickling stream probably wasn't ideal, but at least it wasn't stagnant.

In fact, it tasted fresh and deliciously cold, although that might simply have been because it cleansed the sensation of ash on my tongue.

After drinking my fill, I looked around and considered washing myself. There were no signs of other people around, nor darkspawn, but the last thing I wanted to do was be ambushed while butt-naked and half-frozen in the icy water. A quick scrubbing without getting undressed would have to suffice.

I tried to leave as much of the ash on my arms as possible. It was doing a relatively good job of keeping the burns sterile, and although I was willing to risk drinking the stream water, I wasn't about to go rubbing it in all my open wounds if I could help it. The burns themselves – from what I could see – looked to range from first to second degree, with the worst of it concentrated mostly on my forearms.

What could have caused these? I thought to myself, baffled, sitting down in the stream and shivering. Is interdimensional travel a fire hazard?

I shrugged to myself. Agonising over it now wouldn't achieve much. I moved onto my face and hair, enjoying the feeling of cold water on my skin after feeling filthy all morning. It even helped soothe the headache, which was now down to something a little more tolerable than your average migraine.

I had no shampoo, of course, nor a hairbrush, but it wasn't a big deal. I'd kept my hair relatively short back on Earth, and it seemed like that at least had come with me to Ferelden. There were a few unfamiliar braids secured with leather cord that I didn't remember doing, but they came undone easily enough while I spent a few pleasant minutes cleaning and running my fingers through my hair. When I was satisfied, I habitually tucked my fringe behind my left ear.

That was how I discovered I was an elf.

If I'm honest, the shock was close to that of finding the dead darkspawn. I bit my own tongue trying not to cry out, grabbed each ear and double- then triple-checked. They were undeniably pointy. I even tried pulling one and twisting my head to get a look. It didn't work (they weren't that long).

I felt faint all of a sudden.

"I – I … what the fuck?" I stammered at no one in particular. My voice cracked slightly. I'd barely used it since waking up. "How is this possible?"

Dumb question, I know. Nothing about waking up in Ferelden made any sense, but this was somehow a lot more personal. I had been physically changed by whatever force brought me here.

I crawled over to the closest pond and peered into the murky water looking for my reflection. There they were: elves' ears. Nothing else had notably changed, thankfully. As far as I could tell, I was still me: Molly Gardner.

Okay, this isn't so bad. It's just like character creation, isn't it? My character, who happened to be me, also happened to be an elf. Obviously, I wasn't transported here exactly piece-for-piece. That might explain why my pyjamas didn't come too.

The next step was to figure out if anything else important had changed. My features were my own, and there were no facial tattoos (just like in real life, I should add; my teenage goth phase was never that hardcore), so I probably wasn't Dalish. What about other tattoos? On Earth, I'd had a small owl (I love owls) under my left arm since I was nineteen; Granny and Keira took me as a birthday present the year after I finished school.

I scanned the swamp suspiciously for a few moments. Since the genlock in the clearing, I'd seen zero evidence of any others, but the paranoia was still there. Somehow, I couldn't shake the notion that I'd be more vulnerable to attack without the itchy dress on than with it.

I couldn't see or hear any signs of danger, so I quickly pulled the dress over my head and tossed it onto the closest patch of dryish land, then furiously scrutinised my axilla.

No owl. It was actually quite disappointing; I liked my owl. I sighed, then edited my mental list of possibilities according to what I'd found and not found.

If not Dalish, then I was either a city elf… or from the Circle. Could I be a mage?

"Magic." I said firmly, raising my hand and pointing it dramatically at a tree. Nothing happened. "Uh… cone of cold?"

Again nothing. Did I need a staff or something? That would be inconvenient. There weren't any good sticks around. Would any random stick work as a staff? Probably not. Maybe I simply didn't know any ice spells. I stood up and struck a dramatic pose. "Flame grasp… no wait."

I was drawing a blank on spell names, and the headache wasn't helping. Testing myself for magic was turning out to be more complicated that I'd anticipated. Just because something worked one way mechanically while playing the game didn't mean it'd be the same here. I might not know any useful spells – I didn't exactly have a character sheet to pull up and check. Perhaps it only worked with a valid target?

"Okay," I gave it one final try. Pointing at the burns on my left arm and doing my best to summon the willpower required to break the laws of nature, I cried "Heal!"

I examined my arm and counted to three in my head "Right, not a mage."

It wasn't a perfect experiment, but I was starting to feel foolish, and there were too many variables anyway. Besides, magic looked dramatic enough in-game that I would've expected to see some incontrovertible evidence by now if I really was a mage.

I sat down again next to the pond, glad to be done waving my arms around like an idiot. By process of elimination, it looked like city elf was the only origin story that fit. The next question, of course, was where –

"Oi! You there! Elf! What the devil are you doing?"

I froze, narrowly stopping myself from screaming at the top of my lungs for the third time that day. A patrol of fully-armoured soldiers was approaching, bemused by the sight of me bathing naked in a darkspawn-infested swamp.