Chapter Text
I've never known a world outside these walls
I've heard the stories, stories that call
And they keep me up, thoughts of living free
I'll stand up there on my own two feet
(Won't knock me down)
Knock Me Down – Youngblood Hawke
“Apostate!”
Fenris whipped his head around, searching for the mage that the nearby Templar spotted.
“There! The glowing one!”
Fenris pulled his hand out of a dead man’s chest and rounded on the Templar. “What? I am no mage.”
“That sure as hell looks like magic, elf!” He aimed a hand at Fenris.
His tattoos burned like lightning. Agony sizzled across them as if they were being torn from his flesh.
“I am no-” he gritted out as the Templar drew closer, heavy footfalls drowned out by the blood pulsing in his ears.
“Take him to the Circle.” The bored order lit Fenris with outrage. He lunged at the Templar, but he knocked Fenris the ground. His tattoos flared and excruciating pain came with them. He blacked out.
--
Fenris awoke in a cell, skin tender as if roasted by fire, but as soon as he rose his tattoos glowed, with none of the pain of last time. He grabbed the cell bars and scoped out the dimly lit room. Two more empty cells across from him. A Templar leaned against the wall near the only door, absentmindedly shining his sword.
“I am not a mage.” Fenris was down to his tunic and breeches. His armour stripped and sword stolen. Indignation filled him but beneath it was the steady thrum of paralyzing fear. He would not be trapped again, and certainly not in the Circle.
The Templar looked up, quirking a brow. “What’re those, lyrium tattoos?” He whistled. “That’s some fancy magic, mage.”
“You use lyrium. You perform magic. Are you a mage?”
The Templar straightened. “I work for the Maker. Quiet now. Rest for your Harrowing.”
What tools did Fenris have at his disposal? Reason? Truth? Useless. He had to escape.
His hands phased through the bars, followed by his head and shoulders.
“Whoa!” the Templar rushed over, sword in the hand that wasn’t aimed at Fenris.
Again came the agony of the lyrium in his tattoos reacting to the Templar’s magic-blocking powers. Fenris gritted his teeth to power through but the Templar came on stronger.
His tattoos dulled. The cell bars shattered around him as he solidified.
“Not a mage, my ass,” the Templar scoffed as the pommel of his sword came down on the base of Fenris’ skull.
--
In the end, Fenris agreed to the Harrowing over being made Tranquil. He did not know how the tranquil magic would affect him since he wasn’t a bloody mage, but he refused to find out. He’d been a slave moulded by the hands that owned him before. Never again.
He thought drinking lyrium might at least kill him. But it bonded with the tattoos and ripped him in the Fade.
It was hazy and nightmarish and the demon who faced him recognized instantly that he was not a mage. Of course it still tried to possess him. Of course he did not let it.
His was a quick Harrowing.
“Good job,” a Templar said dispassionately. Knight-Captain Cullen Rutherford. He’d been the one to force the lyrium down his throat five minutes ago. Blonde. Tall. Maybe that was just the angle.
He grabbed Fenris’ arm and hauled him off the floor. Fenris immediately swayed, still groggy and sick from the lyrium, and stumbled into Cullen’s chest.
“C’mon, enough mucking about.”
He meant to sneer sorry, that since he wasn’t a mage, force-feeding him lyrium was bound to have ill-effects.
Instead he vomited down Cullen’s armour.
He shoved him into a chair with a grunt of disgust.
“Here’s a towel, boss.”
Fenris pressed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets in an attempt to make the room stop spinning. Templars moved around him, talked as if he wasn’t there, as if he was a sick Mabari they were in charge of.
He heard somebody mention a phylactery.
“No,” he mumbled into his hands. He’d never be able to escape if they took his blood, to track and control him.
“Already done,” Cullen said. “Just get him in a robe and take him to his room.”
Shock rang truer than anger, even sharper than fear. The Ferelden Circles had always been a horror story for the magisters in Tevinter. Danarius would threaten to send those who did not obey him across the land, to be treated like common criminals, like animals.
Fenris had never feared Danarius’ speeches because he wasn’t a fucking mage.
But how was he supposed to prove his innocence now that he’d succeeded in the Harrowing? He’d apparently proved his magical willpower, when all he proved was that he had the common sense to turn down a demonic possession.
“Listen, listen,” he said, still out of it but at least able to walk. He’d been shoved into a beige mage robe and now was being led up a tight spiral staircase. To his room in the Circle. Where mages lived. “I am not a fucking mage.”
The Templar holding his elbow scoffed as he dragged Fenris down a narrow hall lined with doors. “Listen,” he said mockingly. “If you weren’t a mage before, you are now.” He came to a stop at a door that was identical to all the others and tossed Fenris inside. “Welcome to the Circle.”
The door fell closed and white-hot rage welled in Fenris. He tore at the robe that scratched his tattoos like thorns, marked him as something he was not, a being he had always hated.
“I. Am. Not. A. Mage,” he cried as he ripped the cloth from him skin. He stood naked, glowing, his breath a harsh pant leaving his throat.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the view-” A voice from behind him. He wheeled to find a woman—a mage—on a plain wooden bed with a book in her hands. Her hollowed out eyes made her inexplicable smile all the more unsettling. “But that might be a bit too tempting for the Templars.”
“Who the hell are you?” he snarled.
She spread her arms. “I’m your roommate, buddy.”
“They’d place me with a woman?”
She started laughing, head tilted against the wall behind her, shoulders shaking. “Woman, man, other. We’re all mages to them. We’re not human.”
“I am no mage,” he hissed again.
“And you’re not human either, so let me rephrase.” She closed the book and set it next to her on the lumpy mattress. “We are not human in the way that dragons are not human. We are terrifying beings that need to be controlled.” She said it with a sneer so disgusted that Fenris almost felt guilty for agreeing with the sentiment.
She reached over the end of her bed and flung something she grabbed off a table at him.
He leapt back. A robe, identical to the one he’d just torn off, slid off his chest to the floor.
The woman went back to her book.
Fenris glared at her for another minute, waiting for her to do something else.
She lifted an eyebrow over her book. “I mean it about covering up, elf. Templars have developed a taste for vulnerable dragons.”
He swiped the robe off the floor and grudgingly tugged it on. At least he put it on himself this time, instead of being dressed like an infant by the Templars.
He sank onto the bed opposite the mage, barely five feet away. Between them was one wooden night stand with an oil lamp, and a low table at the end of each bed for storage. That was it. Plus the splinter-ridden door and a thin window that he wouldn’t get more than an arm through. Unless he phased right through the wall. What floor was he on? Would he die or just injure himself?
“The name’s Hawke.”
Fenris didn’t respond, so she repeated her introduction louder.
To keep her from screaming her own name, Fenris said, “I heard you.”
“So you plan to be melodramatic, rude and mysterious? I hope that works for you, Big Dick.”
Fenris squawked. “Excuse me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s because you’re being a huge dick to me, your kind roommate who just bestowed upon you one of my most prized possessions.”
There was a pile of identical folded robes on her table, but he elected not to be drawn into a conversation. He sat rigidly on the bed, staring at the grey brick wall in front of him, and willed the throbbing at his temples to fade.
He hadn’t succeeded when the mage said, “Okay, well I’ll have to tell everyone who asks that my new roommate’s name is Big Dick. And let me tell you, that name will stick. For life.”
“I will not be here for life,” he vowed through gritted teeth.
He could feel her eyes on the side of his face.
“Well,” she admitted, lifting a shoulder. “You could always make it a short life.”