Dawn of the Magic Age (fanfic)
Title: Dawn of the Magic Age
Rating: M (violence and sex)
Characters: MaleRogueHawke/Anders, Carver/Merrill, Sebastian/???, the rest of Hawke's party later
Genre: Drama, Adventure, Romance
Status: Ongoing
Summary: The war in Kirkwall has set forth a drastic ripple effect across all of Thedas. The faith, politics and energies of the entire continent are changing, and Hawke's crew finds themselves yet again in the middle of a war they had no intention of causing, this time with a leader none of them ever expected.
Prologue: Unguided Choices
Chapter 1: The Threads
“No one wants to accept help when it means the truth lay somewhere grey and complicated.”
***The Planasene Forest***
Awkward silence was like a third companion during the walk through the Planasene Forest. Hawke always stayed a few steps behind Anders, and he told himself it was because he had no idea where they were going. He’d have given anything to hear Anders speak, but he wasn’t about to start cracking jokes or asking questions.
Exhaustion and lengthy stretches with no conversation gave Hawke’s mind too much room to wander. The beat of his footsteps hypnotized him into a walking daydream, bringing his mind back to the mundane moments with Anders that he had treasured most. The mage used to always get up first, so Hawke often awoke to find Anders at the desk, writing. His desperate hold on that memory blurred the trees around them until they reformed as his bedroom walls. He watched the back of Anders head and heard him proofreading and rewording his manifesto, pouring his focus into his writing and completely unaware that Hawke was behind him. As he got closer he raised his arm and considered spooking his lover, but when he reached out his hand he froze. He kept moving forward, but Anders constantly remained just out of his grasp.
“Hawke, how much food do w- Hawke?” Anders asked as he turned and found that the rogue was much closer than he’d thought.
Hawke blinked hard once and placed his feet shoulder length apart to help maintain balance. “I’m… sorry.” He laughed. “I think I was fantasizing about you.”
Anders almost laughed as well, but he realized the implications of Hawke’s statement immediately. “No, I’m sorry. I… don’t know what to tell you. I honestly didn’t expect you to come with me. I didn’t even expect you to- I didn’t expect to survive.”
“You really didn’t trust me, did you?” Hawke asked.
“No,” Anders corrected, “unfortunately, I did.”
“You’ve lost me.”
Anders closed the gap between them and rested the side of his face against the leathery belts on the shoulder of the rogue’s armor. Hawke raised his arms and wrapped them around Anders' shoulder, his face confused but his hands comforting. Anders’ hands remained heavy and hanging by his side.
“I… don’t think I wanted to live through the attack.
If Hawke reacted at all it was a result of his keen ability to lie to himself. In all honesty he knew Anders wanted to die that day, and for many reasons. To become a martyr to his cause. To stop himself from potentially hurting another mage. To let Justice return to the Fade. To stop the nightmares from the Joining. To apologize to everyone he’d ever wronged. To spare Hawke. Unfortunately Hawke was far too stubborn and selfish to let that happen.
When the sound of rapid hoof beats began building up in the distance, Hawke instinctively pulled Anders behind him and drew one of his daggers.
“Anyone ever tell you I’m a dangerous apostate?” Anders asked. “I swear you think I’m some damsel in distress.”
Hawke ignored the comment. “Do you want to hide or see who it is?”
“I’m getting rather tired of hiding.”
At this point the late afternoon sun was almost done setting and people would be making camp. Hawke and Anders would have been doing the same, but they had begun sleeping during the day and traveling at night (with magic lighting their way) to avoid detection.
This also meant, however, that they were avoiding any passing merchants they could have purchased supplies from. Before their conversation took a turn for the depressingly serious, Anders was about to point out how little food they had left. They could try to forage, but the light Anders would need to produce to make that possible would have been a glaring beacon announcing their location.
As the young man on horseback approached, Hawke raised one hand as a sign he wasn’t a threat. If the boy had some extra supplies they would have been glad to buy them off him. The rider pulled back on his reigns and squinted in the dusky light for a moment before his expression ignited with a brief spark of recognition. It only lasted for a moment as he tried unsuccessfully to hide it, but when he looked down at Hawke his eyes betrayed all his intentions.
Without a word the boy pulled the horse's reins to the right and gave a swift kick to the animal’s side, turning it in a tight circle and intending to head straight back to Kirkwall. There was no way he could fight the Champion and his abomination lover, and not just because of a distinct lack of physical skill. He had too much respect for his fellow Ferelden refugee. If it weren’t for the Champion, employers would have never started hiring his people and allowing them to work their way up from sleeping in sewers, deciding every day between firewood and food.
Hawke began to run after the boy, but stopped when the horse began acting, for lack of a better word, drunk. The boy toppled to the ground as the beast stumbled in a way that Hawke began to recognize as one of Anders’ stun spells. When he turned around Anders was in a familiar stance; staff in one hand with his knees bent and his body giving off that strange, magical… presence that Hawke hadn’t realized he missed.
Anders looked guilty, and Hawke guessed it was due to worry over the horse. Animals always seemed so sacred to the mage, mainly because they didn’t have all the bigotry that poisoned the rest of Thedas’ “intelligent” creatures. Human, Elf, Qunari: they were all infected with it, but no animal ever once cared that Anders was mage, and he almost respected them more than he did people because of it.
“Who are you? Are you here for us?” Hawke finally asked.
The boy scrambled to his feet, but his attention was divided between avoiding his flailing horse and waiting to be attacked by Hawke. “My name is Cadby, messere. I’m a Ferelden, like you. Please, don’t kill me.”
“Why does everyone think being from Ferelden protects them from your wrath?” Anders asked. He lit a small fire in his hand so he could get a better look at the boy and noticed something very telling about his posture. 'What are you holding on to?”
The boy shook like a naughty apostate in an Orliasian romance novel, but he didn’t answer.
“Hand it over and we’ll consider letting you go,” Hawke bluffed. He wasn’t going to attack some destitute Ferelden teenager. Not over what looked like a letter.
“No, Sebastian said it was for the Divine’s eyes only. Even I have not read it. Please, Champion, I have to complete my mission. What if he finds out I didn’t? He’s a prince, ya know.”
“Sebastian?” Anders echoed. “Isn’t that lovely?”
“How about this?” Hawke suggested. “Let us read it, and then well give it back to you.”
“Really?” Cadby and Anders asked in unison.
Hawke stepped back and pulled Anders aside. “What is Sebastian going to write to the Divine that she isn’t already going to hear from the Templars who survived the attack? Do you think he’s going to tell her some secret weakness of yours that no one knows? Are you worried Her Grace might find out about the kittens?”
For a moment Anders just stared, his face falling flat at his lover’s predictably ill-timed humor. Eventually he shoved his way past the rogue and approached the messenger. “Alright, fine, we’ll give you back the letter. Now hand it over.” He allowed the firelight in his hands to grow a little out of control as he spoke.
“And you won’t hurt me?”
Anders rolled his eyes. “No, I won’t hurt you.”
Cadby handed over the letter and left for a moment to try and calm his horse.
“You’re right,” Anders said, “This is just a warning about me. Well, mostly. Remember how he vowed to go reclaim his throne and send the entire Starkhaven military after me? Well, his highness the royal Prince of Indecisiveness hasn’t changed a bit.” He passed the letter to Hawke, who skimmed it as well. “He’s now promising to kill me first, for the Chantry’s sake, of course, and then he requests an audience with Her Grace to discuss what he should do next. Maker, does this man make any of his own decisions?”
“Let’s not complain about things that work in our favor,” Hawke suggested.
They gave Cadby back the letter and vowed they’d never seen him before in their lives. Hawke’s stomach growled, but he wasn’t about to further traumatize the boy by bartering for supplies.
“We should head-” Anders began before his eyes shifted over to the brush at the edge of the trail. “Cadby?”
“Is someone there?” Hawke asked.
“We’re probably just paranoid. Come on, the sun's done setting. We should use the path while we can.”
Any other time Hawke would have been more cautious, but when Anders reached out and lightly touched the back of his wrist Hawke would have done anything asked of him. In the months leading up to the Chantry attack Hawke had to initiate every bit of physical contact in their relationship. It had been what felt like an eternity since Anders had engaged in anything resembling deliberate affection. It was an obvious attempt to distract him from the conversation they were having before Cadby showed up, but even with that in mind it worked on Hawke completely.
And so they continued their journey, Anders joking about his willingness to deliver the message himself, neither of them aware of the man clad in leather armor who was running back to his horse before racing toward the Wounded Coast.
***The Vimmark Mountains***
Carver had his lips in such a thin, nervous line that they all but disappeared as he hiked along the pass through the Vimmark Mountains. It was an incredibly awkward trip for many reasons, but the pace was by far the worst. He'd never actually been too far outside Kirkwall. Templars could be called to aid other cities, yes, but ever since his dear brother showed up in the Free Marches it was all hands on deck for every Holy Knight Kirkwall had to spare.
As a result of his ignorance in regards to the geography, Carver was forced to follow Merrill's lead and, by default, her pace as well. She was so short and frail that she took a lot of time to circumnavigate what Carver thought were simple obstacles. She also required frequent breaks. And she talked.
A lot.
Carver would ask for silence or begin ignoring her, and Merrill would apologize profusely before plunging them into long stretches of awkward fidgeting and sighing. He always regretted his actions soon afterward, but despite having had an entire day to think of something to say, Carver had come up with very little.
As they began taking a strange path, however, he found the opening he needed.
“Why are we going this way?”
“It's a bit longer of a route, but our other option is a very steep decline, and I'm afraid-” She interrupted herself and began laughing.
“I have never seen someone so amused by their own fears.”
“No,” Merrill tried to correct between giggles. “I just, your armor, it looks so heavy. So I was worried that if we went too fast, or down too steep of a decline, that you'd just pitch forward and tumble down the mountain.”
Carver narrowed his eyes at her. Powerful bloodmage, he kept reminding himself. “You really don't have to worry about me, Merrill. I live my life in this armor.”
“Oh, really? Every day?”
“Every day. So how do you know so much about the mountains?”
“I had to get here from Nevarra somehow. Ugh, it was such a long trip. When they decided at the Arlathvenn that I'd become the First under Keeper Marethari I was so proud but so scared. I knew... I feel like I knew even then I was going to fail, you know. Be no good at it.”
The silence that followed her answer worried Carver. Any time Merrill chose to be quiet he took it as a bad sign. “So... what's an Arthelaven?”
“Arlathvenn,” she corrected. “It's a gathering of all the Dalish clans. Magic, all of our old ways really, they're dying. In Nevarra I was only one of three People in my clan who were born with magic. The Sabrae clan, the clan in Sundermount, had none. They agreed I was needed there.”
“They agreed?” Carver echoed. “Didn't you have a choice?”
“I... never thought of it that way. All the Dalish are the People. I was needed in the Free Marches, so I went. I'd always wanted to revive our heritage. There were so many stories I read as a child, stories about huge clans and magic and, Creators, it sounded like a proud and noble Dalish Kingdom. All I ever wanted was to get even a sliver of that back, for them, but look what that got me. No one wanted my help.”
“Is that why you turned to blood magic?” Carver asked, his curiosity so genuine that it overrode his instinct to be even remotely tactful. “No, wait, you don't need to talk to me about that. I'm sorry I asked.”
“No,” Merrill said with such defiance that both her and Carver stopped walking. “If you're willing to listen then I will tell you.” In a move very unlike what the Templar had seen from her before, Merrill stood tall and looked straight into his eyes “Everyone thinks that blood magic is for the evil, but that is like saying a sword is only for murders. Everything is a tool and a tool's morals are not its own. People are the morals behind their methods. Demons are just as much a part of our world as spirits like Justice. Without good and evil what would we be? There’d be no balance.”
Carver broke eye contact to stare at the ground. “I didn't mean to imply I thought you were evil.”
“No, I know,” she said as she began to calm down. “Your brother was more than a little less understanding than you are. Are you sure you're a Templar?”
“In all honesty, not really. I joined in the hopes of being a more moderate force in the Order, but apparently that wasn't on my list of options.”
“Oh, they gave you a list?” Merrill asked.
“What? No, not literally. The Order, Meredith especially, insisted that all mages were born corrupt, like they were all dying to become slave-owning magister bastards. Or ticking abomination time bombs. Then my brother- no, I'm pretty sure it was Anders speaking through my brother, but either way my brother complained that I didn't understand the plight of mages. That with my father and sister gone I'd lost sight of how harmless magic could be. He never seemed to understand that without someone in the Order you and Anders would have been in the Circle long ago. Or worse.”
“Is that true?” she asked as she approached him, tilting her head up to more closely read his expression.
“Well, maybe not you personally,” he lied as he rubbed the back of his neck and stared off at the horizon. “But people like my father and my sister. I couldn't save them, but maybe I could save someone else who hadn't done anything wrong. My brother never stopped to consider that maybe I was helping in the best way I could.”
“No one wants to accept help when it means the truth lies somewhere grey and complicated.”
For a moment Carver was almost paralyzed with shock. Someone else got it. Someone else understood that the notion of an epic and perfect hero was absurd; that the truly heroic made the difficult decisions in the shadows without the luxury of fame and glory.
Merrill's brows lowered into an expression that made it look like she was pleading for something with her gaze. After a few fumbled attempts to convey his gratitude, Carver settled for clearing his throat. “We should keep walking.”
“Right, yes, of course,” Merrill agreed.
They continued down the less-steep path, but quicker this time. They both felt a little lighter in that moment.
“Hey Merrill.”
“Yes?”
“What were you saying before about those halla things?”
Merrill smiled, and rocked excitedly on her heels. “Really? You don't mind.”
“Lecture on,” Carver invited. And as Merrill rambled, leaving topics and looping back like spoken knotwork, Carver smiled and nodded and listened and for a small moment didn't feel so alone.
***The Wounded Coast***
When the rising sunlight finally inched its ways toward Sebastian's face he awoke with a startled jerk. He'd made it back to his horse with the unconscious woman over his shoulder, but after searching the Wounded Coast for hours the task left him exhausted. At first he waited for her to regain consciousness, but the stress of the past few days pulled at his eyelids until he fell asleep sitting across from her.
“Did you sleep well?” a woman's voice asked. He turned to see the mage from the previous night awake and sitting on her heels. Her posture was extremely rigid and her eyes were fixed on a point just past him, like a soldier at attention.
Sebastian didn't answer, but he did get up and walk a full circle around her. The scraps were still holding her arms behind her back, which he attributed to her wounded shoulder until he realized she'd somehow healed herself while bound. With narrowed, incredulous eyes he continued to stare down at her face.
“May I ask what you intend to do with me?”
“I intend,” Sebastian began as he knelt down so they were at the same eye level, “to ask you where the maleficar is.”
“The? You think there is one maleficar in all of Thedas?”
“You know who I mean. Anders. Is he really heading for Orlais?”
A smile twitched at the edges of the woman's mouth, but something in her eyes betrayed that on the inside she was grinning. “He is.”
“What for? To kill the Divine? Does he really think he can get away with such a crime?”
In response, the woman only laughed. It was a low chuckle that came from behind teeth clenched in a smug and knowing smile. The sound infuriated Sebastian to the point that he dug his fingers into the woman's ragged sheet dress and pulled her shoulders forward until their noses were almost touching. He hadn't been this out of control in a long time. “Answer me!”
She returned his enraged stare without an ounce of fear, and Sebastian finally noticed the unique shape of her eyes. They were set back farther than most humans' and curved slightly downward at the inner edges. They were an extremely faint green and surrounded by thick lashes that rimmed them in black. Once he stepped back and took in the whole of her features it became obvious where she was from. Muscular build, naturally tan skin, strong jawline, eyes so light in color they look nearly faded…
“You are a long way from Tevinter, mage,” he whispered.
“And you are a long way from Starkhaven, your Highness.”
Sebastian got to his feet and tried not to react to her reply. “Answer my question.”
“Is Anders going to kill the Divine? No.” Sebastian relaxed for a moment until she added. “That is the destiny of another.”
“Do you really believe you are in a position to brag so openly about such a heinous plot?”
“And what exactly is it that you're threatening me with?” The woman's smug expression faltered when a cold dagger blade was pressed against the flesh of her throat. She swallowed carefully and lifted her chin in an attempt to distance herself from the weapon, but Sebastian corrected for all her movements with practiced precision.
In the back of his mind the prince repeatedly wondered why she wasn't fighting back. He had tied the knots around her wrists tight enough that her hands were probably numb by now, but if she could cast without a staff and heal herself while tied up he didn't see why she couldn't escape him. Even so, he couldn't afford to let her sense his uncertainty. “With this,” he told her as he pressed the dagger in bit harder: as hard as he could without drawing blood. “You have chosen a bad time to test my patience, maleficar.”
“Fine, what do you want?” she asked.
“Take me to Anders.”
“I do not know where he is, only where he is going. Also you are quite a few days behind him by now.”
“Then we shall go there together, and on the way you can tell me all about this plan to assassinate Her Grace. In return, I won't kill you. I believe that is a fair exchange.” Without waiting for her to agree, Sebastian grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. He was surprised to find she was still weak, and he actually had to hold her up as she regained her balance.
What in the Maker's name was going on with this woman?
Sebastian got on the horse first, and while it was an awkward task he eventually hoisted the woman on to the saddle behind him. He remembered back to his youth, when having women on the back of a horse with him meant good things for the evening ahead, but he was a different person now and this was a very, very different situation.