Chapter Text
She woke, gasping for air amid a pool of her own sweat. She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing, getting her heart under control for fear of alerting the templars right outside the door to the apprentice quarters. She opened her eyes to ground her in reality, and to make sure she no longer wandered the Fade and all its tricks. Once calm, she began to analyze her dream.
A city of chains, red shards of a glass-like material shattering, green lights like fireworks lighting the sky, monsters rotting with poison, a gold glowing woman.
She was going to die.
Andrea Lavellan was to be no more.
Well, not as herself at least.
She smirked, thinking of her future. Sometimes the Sight was a bitch.
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Laura Goodwind was as unremarkable as they come. Plain brown hair that covered her eyes, plain jeans and t-shirt, plain personality. She worked a dull office job full time, paid her taxes, no criminal record. Completely forgettable. Amid the fog of her day to day, there was one bright distinction: when she got home, she could lose herself in books or her current muse, video games. She had been a soldier in space, an android of the future, a vengeful god, the smitten hero, a bank robber, gangster, wizard with a scar, she’s even wielded a dildo bat to defeat demons from hell. Those stories are everything she looked forward to in her day. To discover new frontiers and untold stories.
On this day, such as they ran together, she was finishing a particularly difficult mission as her Pathfinder. She sighed as she finally defeated the boss. Turning her console off, she went to scrap together some kind of dinner. She opened the fridge.
Nothing.
The cabinets, just as bare.
Loathing her trip to the corner store, she grabbed a grey hoodie and her apartment keys and walked out the door, locking it behind her. As she walked down the stairs of her apartment complex she contemplated how she let her fridge run out, again.
Well, it’s not like my mom swings by anymore with one of her coupon trips.
She quickly steered her mind away from her mother. She adjusted her thick glasses agitatedly. Since the untimely death of her family’s matriarch, she had not seen hide nor hair of her extensive family.
I guess that is what I get for not playing by the rules.
Absorbed in her thoughts as she was, she missed the light turning red as she crossed. Headlights and a car horn, and her last thought blared through her brain.
Oh shit.
An increasingly insistent migraine vibrated through my head. I groaned, thinking I had stayed up too long playing games and staring at the screen. I rubbed my face, realizing my glasses must have fallen off, since I didn’t remember taking them off. In fact, I didn’t remember anything from yesterday but coming home. I frowned, keeping my eyes shut just in case this insufferable throbbing was sensitive to light. The throbbing kept getting louder and-wait, what?
Someone was pounding on my door.
What the hell?
I called out to whoever the hell thought they could bang on my door this early.
“Go the fuck away!”
The pounding stopped, mercifully. I sat up carefully, keeping my head as steady as possible to not have vertigo. I cracked open first one eye, then the next, wary of the light. I stared at the floor, wondering when the fuck I decided to get a rug. I wiggled my toes, pressing them against the rough surface.
That is a really shitty rug.
It was a dark red, with swirling black patterns. I deciphered one into a dragon, another into what looked like an elven wizard or some other form of magic user. Huh, I thought, maybe I drank and went shopping?
As I was getting used to the rug that I possibly drunkenly bought, the wooden door I had yet to discover shattered as a man in fully plate armor busted through.
I shouted in surprise and fell off the bed I was sitting on, landing on my right shoulder and tweaking it. The knight or whatever he was started speaking in a foreign language and drew his sword, and I felt the very essence of my soul leave my body. I started gasping, feeling as if my limbs were iron fused to the floor.
“There was no need for all that, Ser Easly. I would have handled it.” The voice was old and feminine, but held such a sense of authority, almost like royalty. The owner of the voice stepped out from behind the suffocating knight, who filled the doorway with his massive frame.
Seriously, that dude has to be like 300 pounds or something.
“Lavellan, why did you deny us entry? Now I will have to fix the door to your new quarters before you even have a chance to move in. You know how testy these templars are nowadays.” She was old, maybe in her fifties, with graying hair and long wrinkles on her face. She wore a black robe, embroidered with gold and silver filigree.
“Uh….what?” I stuttered and probably had my mouth hanging open like a gaping fish. Who the hell are these people?
“Tch. The day after the Harrowing is confusing to some. Ser Easly, thank you for your assistance, but I have it from here.” The old woman waved away the knight. He sheathed his sword and turned back through the door, disappearing from sight. As he left, the suffocating feeling left with him, and I gasped feeling life return to my limbs and lungs. The woman approached the bed and sat, delicate and proper like a flower. She motioned for me to join her. I slowly gathered myself together and stood up, but I did not sit beside this stranger. I turned and noticed a desk against the wall, so I moved and leaned against the front facing the woman. I crossed my arms and waited for some kind of explanation.
“Do you remember the Harrowing, my dear?” She spoke with an air of royalty, like she wasn’t used to being refused.
“The what?” I asked. For some reason, I got a strong sense of “don’t piss her off”, even though she looked as frail as an old twig.
“Your Harrowing, the test you went through to become a full member of our Circle?”
What is she talking about? Circles? Tests? I haven’t taken a test since high school…
“I don’t remember anything at all.” I figured my best bet for answers was to suffer from amnesia per se and have them explain it without explicitly asking.
“Hmm. Memory loss, though uncommon, does happen. And your Harrowing was an unusual one. You fought a demon and won my dear. You have shown that you can handle the temptations of the Fade and all it holds. You now have access to our full library and stockroom, and can do any research and experiments you wish, within the guidelines of course.” She chuckled lightly, and I got the feeling it was about as real as my Master’s In Bullshit.
“What do I have to do in return?” I asked, there was no way I got all this just for some silly test.
“You have already paid the price my dear, there is no more you must do. Aside from of course not tampering with demons and blood magic. And following the templars orders. But they are sedate for the most part.” She smiled a close-lipped smile, one full of promise of evils I couldn’t imagine.
“Uh, thanks?”
She stood with a grace my clumsy ass could only dream of, and headed to the open doorway.
“Your new robes are in your trunk over there,” she motioned to the far wall, where a large wooden chest sat. “Lunch is not until midday, so you have some time to get your quarters arranged how you like. I will have someone bring the rest of your things.” She left the room with a swish of her black robes, taking with her my composure.
I turned and placed my hands on the edge of the desk, leaning over it as my body violently shook. The panic slowly settled in like an old friend, bringing with it nausea and vertigo.
Where the hell am I? I closed my eyes and attempted to control my breathing in order to chase away the panic. As soon as it was manageable, I stood up, wobbly kneed as I was, and looked around the room. A roughly full-sized bed sat in the middle, with dark grey sheet and a dull blue comforter. The walls were a drab grey stone, each piece roughly the same shape. On the wall where the door once stood were two book shelves, framing the door way. They were full to the brim, and a step stool sat on the corner to the right. On the wall across from me was the trunk, wooden and looked heavy as hell. Next to it was what looked like an armoire, the same color of wood as the trunk, bookshelves, and desk. To the left of the armoire was a small vanity, complete with a mirror and what looked like perfumes laid out. A small nightstand sat on either side of the bed, and to my immediate left was another bookshelf, but this one was only half full. i looked down at my body, only now realizing the roughness of the fabric I wore. It was thin, but scratchy and not finely made, unlike the obvious glamour of the old lady. They were simple brown leggings and a long white shirt, almost a tunic. In studying the clothes, I noticed a very strange thing indeed.
I was skinny.
Like, I could see my ribs when I lifted my shirt and twisted.
I have never in my life been this skinny. In fact, all of my doctors told me I was mildly overweight every time I went, which in part affected the lack of doctor’s visits in recent years. I decided the mirror was priority one and rushed to the other side of the room. What I saw as my reflection almost caused me to faint. I gripped the edge of the vanity with my right hand and reached up to my face with the other. The high cheekbones were familiar, but the hollow, almost gaunt cheeks, the thin long nose, silky black tresses, and bright purple irises were completely foreign. A thinly pointed ear poked out of the black strands, and I started to hyperventilate. I had no idea what was happening, how I got here, who I was supposed to be, or why the hell a knight in glittering armor had wanted to kill me for not answering my door. Just as I was about to shut down and completely enter a panic attack, someone tapped the stone of the doorway.
“Andrea, I brought the rest of your things from the apprentice chambers! You really don’t hold onto much do you? Most mages become hoarders after the Harrowing though, so we shall see.”
I turned slowly to look at the intruder. It was a human woman, tall and lanky, with long auburn hair in a loose, messy bun. She wore robes of green and dark grey, and they swished to and fro as she walked into the room with a small crate of what I assumed were supposed to be my things. She set the crate down on the nightstand closest to her, and on the opposite side of the bed as I was standing. She turned and gave me a full smile, teeth and all. As I continued to stare, her smile turned into a frown, and then confusion.
“Uh, who are you?” I bluntly asked, wanting to know why this person was so familiar.
She giggled and put her hands on her hips.
“It’s Evelyn, silly.”