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9:38 Dragon, Autumn
The templars came through our tiny hamlet of Meeth like nothing I’d ever seen. I had always imagined that we were invisible, not even a dot on some nobleman’s map, and yet here they were, all crimson armor and steel.
I kept silent, but my brother Naemin was full of questions, as if he had nothing to fear, though perhaps he should’ve. He was my half-brother, after all. That made him a full-blooded elf.
“What are they doing here?” He asked, in awe of their glittering weapons.
“Nothing you need worry about da’len, get back to your chores, both of you,” Mamae admonished us, bowing her head as if to hide her marked face beneath her hair.
“You best get inside Misyl,” Papae said softly. The implication was clear. Without her in sight, we could almost pass for a normal Fereldan family. Human, that is. Out here, it was easy to forget that it mattered.
“Yes, yes, Rylan. I’ll see what I can pull together for supper,” she agreed, squashing her warrior’s spirit as she retired to our shack. “But you best believe my bow in be on them.”
She had been a hunter, in a previous life. Still was, really.
We stayed a moment longer before scattering toward the creek under Pa’s gaze. Our field’s needed watering no matter what else was happening in the world.
“Don’t worry Ulla, I’m sure they’re just passing through,” Naemin said, endeavoring to raise my spirits. It was getting late in the season, but we might just squeeze a few more meals out of the ground if we were vigilant.
By the time we returned to the fields, it was obvious this wasn’t the case.
“That’s very well, Rylan, but we’ll need to examine your family nonetheless,” the taller of the two templars said, his voice echoing within his large helm.
“Yes, backwaters like this are exactly where you can expect to find apostates lurking,” his companion said. “And we heard some whispers back in Honnleath…”
I nearly froze as they started toward us, and did my best to stop the ground beneath my feet from doing the same. Whatever they’d heard was worthless rumors - we never even went into town with Pa on deliveries.
Naemin put a hand on my shoulder, as if standing together could mean anything faced with such odds.
“Well, the lads, got courage, I’ll give him that,” the first templar said. “You hiding anything little knife?”
“No,” he said quietly, staring at the dirt.
“No? You certainly don’t look like someone who has nothing to hide. What’s your name, boy?”
“Na-Naemin,” he said dully, as if unsure he should be telling the truth.
“Naemin?” The templar shot back with a laugh. “Sounds like something out of a fairy story. Figures. Where’s your mother, Naemin? ”
“Gone away,” I said on instinct, my tongue betraying me.
“Is she now? So I suppose you’re just a good little Andrastian girl living out in the woods with her da’ and some knife eared urchin you picked up on the road, then?” The second, rougher templar cut in.
“I, what? No! He’s my brother.” I knew right away I shouldn’t have said that.
“Your brother? Then I suppose that makes you…”
“Elf-blooded,” the lead templar cut in, his hand snaking out to catch my chin. “Fascinating, you look completely normal.”
There was nothing sexual about his focus - I was a specimen, nothing more.
“Let go of me,” I spit out, an icy pulse of magic erupting from my lips as if by its own accord.
I stumbled back into the field, my eyes wide at what I had done.
“Fenhedis,” I whispered.
The lead templar looked down at his hand as if he had been bitten by a fly.
“You have one chance to submit to the Circle,” he said darkly.
My words died on my lips, and then an arrow came tearing through the air from the direction of our cabin. Mamae’s shot was true, but the arrowhead shattered uselessly against the lead templar’s plated armor.
When he turned to face her, she was standing in the doorway of our hut, the mark of Andruil shining on her face. Then all hell broke loose.
Naemin’s screaming mind blast tore through the templar’s heads and, not suspecting a second young apostate, they fell to the ground. The younger warrior was on his feet in a heartbeat, sword drawn and charging at me. I screamed, throwing my hands up as if to stop him, and fell to the ground like a rag doll, my chest and cheek slashed open.
As Pa ran toward him, a rusted scrap of a dagger in his hands, Mamae fired off another arrow. This one flew true, planting itself in my attacker’s shoulder. He grunted, distracted just long enough for me to roll away, hurling a feeble wave of frost in his direction before he could smite me. It did little, but an air of frost remained about his leader as the larger templar stumbled to his feet, drawing his sword and banging against his shield in my brother’s direction.
“Look here knife ear!”
Naemin answered his taunt with another blast of anger, knocking the bladed men off their feet once again.
“Run, get them out of here Misyl!” Papae shouted, narrowly avoiding the young templar’s sword as he got to his feet. He went at him with his sorry excuse for a blade, failing once more to pierce his armor.
Mamae didn’t protest. She didn’t say ‘but what about you?’ She was a survivor, she did what had to be done. They must have known this day would come.
Her last shot knocked the sword from the young templar’s hand as she dragged me to my feet. Dazed from blood loss and fear, I ran in the direction she pushed me. Into the woods.
Over my shoulder, I saw Pa turn from the unarmed man, slashing down into the face of my brother’s attacker. Blood erupted from the templar’s helm, and his sword flew from his hands. The templar’s ran after their weapons like mabaris after a bone.
A heartbeat later Naemin was on my heels, headed for the woods himself. Tears streamed down his face, and my own. The salt stung my open wound.
Arrows flew behind us - Mamae hadn’t come after all.
“We have to go back,” I gasped, sliding to a halt just as we reached the treeline.
“What?” Naemin shouted, chest heaving with exertion, but I was already gone. “Ulla no!”
He faltered only a moment before following after me, and we both watched as the templars, crowded around Papae, struck him again and again with their swords as he struggled to hold them off with his useless dagger. Mamae, only a short distance off, fired arrows one after another into the largest one, who was looking weaker by the moment.
Catching our return in the corner of his eye, he turned to run from the templar’s, hoping to lead them away into the fields.
The moment I came within casting distance, I unleashing a blast of psychic energy into their skulls, shrieking with rage as they collapsed to the ground. The big one took it hardest, barely making it to his feet before Naemin skid to a halt beside me, adding the power of his voice to mine. They writhed on the ground like men possessed.
Papae descended on them like a mad man, dropping to his knees to pin the weakened leader to the ground.
The younger stood, taking several shaking steps toward me as Mamae fired an arrow straight through his chest plate.
“Leave us!” She shouted, readying another arrow as I unleashed the winds of winter upon him.
The larger templar, unable to stand, swung up at Pa from the ground, tearing through his chest with such force he was thrown into the dirt at our feet. I screamed, or Naemin screamed. Mamae didn’t scream.
The templars fell again, and Naemin enveloped them in cold, puncturing the leader’s armor with icicles as they stood against the wind.
“Enough!” The younger shouted, raising his sword as if to stab the sky. The very air around us seemed to evaporate into a piercing white light. For a single, excruciating moment, every part of me was fire, and then the world returned.
Mamae was on the ground, Pa at the templar’s feet, but Naemin and I were still standing. Our attacker’s eyes widened in horror.
“Demons. Demons! Andraste guide my hand!”
Before he could raise his sword again, father had dragged him to the ground. Taking a knee, Mamae fired an arrow clean through his throat as I sent another chill through him. His sword fell away and, sensing my pool of mana was at its end, I moved to crush his frozen bones with the first thing my fingers fell upon - a rock.
Suddenly, the world turned white for a second time. A searing eternity ebbed and then flowed around me. Then the world was real again.
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. My very skin screamed, consumed by a pulsing wave of agony. I watched, utterly immobile, as the winds of our false winter whipped around me.
The templars turned to ice and shattered into nothing.
Their powers came undone as they did, and I collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. We sat in stunned silence, in awe and horror of what we’d done.
We had been smited not once, but twice. And lived.
Mamae crouched to examine Papae’s wounds. We were all hovering on the edge, but he’d faced their swords with nothing but courage to shield him. His shirt was little more than rags, and he gripped his stomach as if holding himself together.
“Heal him, Naemin. And yourself,” she commanded, taking it for granted that I would tend to my own wounds with what little magic I had left. Our talents were nearly identical, seeing as we had only ourselves to train with.
We sat for a moment, allowing the radiant energy of the Fade and our own intervention to wash over the worst of our wounds, sealing them shut. I felt the wound on my face scar over, twisting the skin around itself as I directed the bulk of my energy toward the gash in my chest. You had to have priorities.
“We need to leave, now,” Mamae said once we had collected ourselves.
“What? But we won,” I protested. The dirt was awash in blood, but they were gone. There were no bodies to bury, no one to mourn. We could turn the dirt, fertilize our fields with their blood, and pretend nothing had happened at all.
“It’s not as if they’ll send more, the only people who know we’re out here are the-”
“The villagers, exactly,” she said, cutting off Naemin. “The same villagers who sent them here in the first place. When someone comes looking for these… men, where do you think they’ll come first?”
“To the knife ears and the elf lovers,” Naemin scoffed, kicking the ground. I looked away, reluctant to agree.
“Eh’, I don’t want to hear those words coming out of your mouth, Naemin,” Papae barked around the pain in his chest. His expression softened when he saw the defiance in my brother’s eyes. “Don’t let their words define you.”
Naemin sighed.
“Yes, Papae,” he acquiesced. He wasn’t his father, not in the way most people cared about, but he might as well have been. This was the only family either of us had ever known.
“Good,” Mamae said softly. “Go inside and pack. I’ll take care of this.”
We shuffled into the hut in silence, clearing out whatever we could carry. We rolled our blankets tight as we could managed. Lashed them to the bottom of our packs, along with a frying pan, a kettle and some tin cups. We distributed what little stores we could throughout the four packs, bread and cheese and dried meats, and tried not to think about all we would leave behind. Seasons of work, wasted. If anything, they would go on to feed the very villagers who had betrayed us.
Finally, Naemin and I found ourselves alone in the loft where we had slept together nearly every night since I was born. Every night of what was once our childhood, I realized.
The space was so low we could barely sit on our knees now without brushing the rafters. The wood was adorned with simple murals drawn in the blues, greens and yellows of nature. They depicted what you might expect: stories of our mother’s gods, the last thing she wanted us to see every night before we fell asleep.
“We’ll come back someday,” I offered. “Maybe not forever, but-”
And then he was sobbing, and I was too. We held each other as siblings do in times of hopelessness and muffled the sound of our cries in each others shoulders.
They were dead. We killed them.
Then the feeling was gone, and we wiped our faces clean.
We left that space without a word, a siblings do. And then we left our home, as grown ups do.
On a hill up in the forest, I looked back on our tiny hut and tried to imagine the kind of people who got to live there in peace.