You see few, if any, Arcane Warriors in-game - all mages seem to use staves. It can't be easy to have people forcing you to use a staff when you're more comfortable wielding a sword.

Steel

Morgana

She remembers the look of disappointment in the Enchanter's eyes as she struggled with the staff. At the time, he himself had only been a mage for two years, but tutors were needed and he'd been selected to help the very young apprentices - mainly because he rarely lost his temper, and never, ever shouted. The children loved him, and it was returned in full. She thinks that it's because he sees himself in them.

Torrin tried to steady her. "Now, now, my dear, that is not how we hold a staff." He held one end of it, but the weight of it still nearly pulled the little girl off her feet.

"Follow me," he said, gently. She watched in amazement as he took his own staff, sweeping it in a semi-circular arc, and made it sing, icicles blooming out of the ground beneath them.

She tried to do the same, but bit her lip in frustration as she nearly plunged the staff into the ground, the few blue sparks of magic dying as it hit the floor.

Torrin shook his head, stooping to pick up the staff and hand it to her. She took it, small hands only just encircling it, and smiled at him gratefully. Despite her failure and his own exasperation, he couldn't help but offer her a smile in return.

Dragging her staff - which is larger than her - along the floor, she half-hobbled back to her dormitory, uttering the first curse she'd ever learned (even at nine, Anders was a bad influence) at her own lack of talent.

Entering the dormitory, which was empty - she was kept behind for extra practice, everyone else was at dinner - she leant her staff on the bedside table. She remembered the arc, the ice, and something stirred in her shoulder, cold growing and sliding down her arm. She moved her hands in the same semi-arc, and icicles appeared, the temperature in the room dropping and the sound of something she couldn't - still can't - quite name rising in the air.

Astonished at this new-found power, laughing with joy, she carried on the motion, again and again, watching as ice appeared and objects froze.

As the apprentices ate in the hall, oblivious, chattering about what they could do with their new staves, Morgana danced.

She remembers when Lily handed her the dagger, the one she is carrying now, after watching her struggle with a staff and taking pity.

She frowned at the initiate. "I thought those of the Chantry were meant to be forgiving and merciful."

There was the barest hint of a smile at the corner of Lily's mouth. "To a point, Morgana."

She weighed it in her hands, the steel sharp and cold in her hands after the soft, slightly rotting wood of a staff, and it felt... more comfortable, somehow. It was strange to wield such a small object after the unwieldiness of a staff, but once her fist clenched around the handle, something changed.

"Ana?" Jowan's panicked voice brought her back to the cellar, his nickname for her making her heart clench, as she remembered why they were there. He was leaving, and she would be alone.

As the sentinel approached, she blinded it with an arcane bolt, plunging the dagger into the plate, hearing the scrape and clang of metal against metal. The dagger sang the way her magic did. Her movements were clumsy, but they were enough - the three of them took it down, and they moved on. Towards freedom.

Snapping herself back to the present, denying to herself the sting behind her eyes and the ache in her chest, she looks to the templar at her side - as they have always been, throughout her life, she thinks, trying not to let her lip curl - with a mixture of curiosity and hatred for who, what, he is.

There is also disappointment, of course. She had warmed to him fast, his slightly skewed sense of humour - similar to her own, she thinks sadly - a ray of non-pompous light in a place and time full of misery. It caught her off-guard.

Of course, he won't be off-guard. Now he knows what she is, she will no longer be a person, an equal, but a danger. The friend she thought she might have found is lost to her. He is making light of it, trying to provoke conversation from her, but he is just one more prison guard, even if the prison itself has changed.

They pretend not to watch each other out of the corner of their eyes.