A/N:

Welcome to Blood Sacrifices!

The Sins We Suffer is the first in a series that will follow through the Dragon Age games although with my usual left-of-canon interpretation of them. A few notes to start:

This first story will cover the events of Dragon Age: Origins and its various expansion and DLC packs including Witch Hunt and Awakening. It will be the story of the Warden and her journey to be the Hero of Ferelden. I will make some changes as I see fit of course, and this will not be just a point by point rehash of the game.

For my warden I have chosen the Cousland background. Also, this will be a Morrigan romance (with a female warden) so if that sort of thing bothers you I suggest not going on- but at the same time do not expect this romance will be like the Del/Liara romance. If you do you are going to be disappointed. If you take it on its own terms, however, I'm hoping you won't be.

I also do not go out of my way to over explain lore. I write with the expectation that the reader has played through the games at least once and has a general working knowledge of the world of Thedas and the settings we will be dealing with, and I do not apologize for any spoilers.

On we go…

The Sins We Suffer

Prologue

The light was low and pearled with gray and gold, the dew thick enough on the ferns to slowly bow each frond, lending to a soft but constant patter of drips sometimes lost in the occasional cool whisper of air through rattling leaves.

The sun was not quite up yet, but it was threatening. Eyes the color of copper roses turned upward toward the distant low ridges and rocky hills in the east and the line of light that was growing stronger at their uneven edge. The creatures that loved the night may not all be in their various burrows and holes quite yet, but they were doubtlessly heading that way.

Including the one that Nike hunted.

The horse that she sat upon shook his head and then turned it to the side, sampling a few leaves off a tiny sapling that nestled under the older trees. Nike let him have his head to do so as she turned her own to look back along the wooded path, her hand tightening slightly on the wych wood bow that rested against her thigh.

She made an impatient sound. A dozen yards back the bushes rattled almost merrily.

"Holly!" She said, her voice a quick, sharp note.

A sleepy blackbird burst out of the bushes and inches behind it, grinning widely, came the mouth of a young mabari. The dog, thick with muscle but still gangly in the legs and oversized in the ears, lunged upward after the bird. It was far too slow, and its jaws snapped together in an empty click a good few inches clear of the blackbird's tail. The bird disappeared into the trees with a few annoyed calls, and the mabari bounced down onto the path, then bounded back up again, leaping almost joyfully into the air as if to fly right after, letting out an eager and high pitched yap as it did so.

"Holly!" she said again, her tone impatient. She gripped the reins tighter and turned the horse's head away from the sapling and toward the dog.

Holly's body shifted toward her mistress, her head was still craning upward, mouth broken into a wide and tongue-lolling grin, trying to see where the bird had gone. At yet a third impatient sound, a sharp tut!, the dog finally looked around, hurrying up toward the horse with the tiny nub that was her tail wiggling in mad delight, even as her ears edged back in a beseeching and apologetic look.

Nike loosened a strip of tattered and bloodstained wool from the saddle and swung off her mount with an efficient motion. The mabari bitch, though only half grown and not yet out of her first year, knew better than to jump up on her mistress no matter how strong her desire or excitement. The force of that wanting made her big bearlike paws stamp repeatedly in the dirt as if she was dancing. Against the red brown of her hide, the gleaming brass of her collar buckle flashed and winked as it caught the rising light.

Chunks of nearly dried meat and skin were still clinging to the desiccated scrap of wool. Holding it in her right hand, the other still occupied with carrying the bow, Nike waved it under the mabari's nose.

"This is what we are here for," she said, reminding the dog for what had to be the sixth time tonight, as Holly snuffed the wool so hard it pulled tight against her nostrils. Her tail never stopped that frantic wiggle, but her forelegs did stop their mad dancing. "Go on now. Find!"

Refreshed of her purpose, the mabari started snuffing around the ground, snorting and chuffing until she sounded like a boar rooting through the mud. Her mistress, satisfied her charge was now at least looking for the proper trail and not for birds and squirrels, swung back up on her horse and tied the scrap back to the saddle.

It wasn't the dog's fault. Holly came from some of the finest Mabari lines in Ferelden, and she was as smart as a whip. Nike's father had given her the puppy as a birthday gift, when Holly had been a bundle of unending wiggle the size and weight of a four month old piglet.

Yet, big as she had gotten, she was still a puppy, and while she knew what she was meant to be doing, the rich smells and unending possibilities hiding in every copse, tuft of grass, and bush in the woods were still succumbed too now and again when their lure finally grew too strong to resist.

Nike wasn't particularly bothered by it this morning. The prey they pursued now was not of import or concern to her. She was far more interested in expanding on Holly's tracking experience then actually catching the culprit that had torn up two sheep from Roster's flocks early the night before. Roster's herd numbered over three hundred mutton, and Nike was fairly sure he could spare the two without nearly as much fuss as he'd started making about it.

Nike also already knew what had done for those two sheep. In the Coastlands, the only predator with the size and need to pull down grown mutton was a wolf, and as she had surmised very quickly from the tracks Holly had managed to root out between eager pursuits after squirrels, it was alone.

Wolves were cautious, shy, and wary of both man and mabari. With the amount of barking and playful noise that Holly had been making since they'd entered the woods just after two in the morning, the wolf was likely in the Free Marches by now, but Nike figured that letting Holly root along its trail for a bit longer would do more good than harm to the pup's training.

Back on track, at least for the time being, Holly started off again at a trot, tongue still lolling and snout pasted with mud. Setting her heels lightly to the horse's side, Nike started after her, guiding her mount easily through the wide trees and thin underbrush of the old woods.

Nose bent diligently to the task now- a fact that would last only a few minutes, Nike was sure- Holly had fallen silent. Without the woods ringing with her booming, joyful barks, Nike could now hear the soft chuckle of water through the graying dawn, and tried to identify what it was and where she might be.

It was not a river, of that she was sure- she had gone in the wrong direction to reach a river of any size so quickly, but the coast of the Waking Sea was only ten miles or so north, and any number of small streams, brooks, creeks, tributaries, and even small springs peppered the Coastlands, growing thinner as the landscape turned into the soft wide grasslands of the Bannorn further south. None were so wide and grand as the Hafter to the east, or the Dane to the west, and so were more likely as not to have names that were at the whim of the locals and as changing as the seasons.

As it was, Nike was far closer to the Dane than the Hafter, having headed more or less steadily south-west since leaving home, but she would still have to ride another three days at a good trot to reach it. When one considered the delays wrought by her playful mabari pup and the fact that she hadn't had Caspi much over an amble all morning as a result, she doubted she was any further than six or seven miles from where they'd begun.

Which would mean the water she was hearing was the old Mill Rush, a respectable stream that had plenty of wide slow places and ran deceptively deep. She'd go as far as the eastern bank and then head back home. With luck, she'd be in time for breakfast and no one would know that she'd been out at all.

Holly seemed to suddenly gain interest in the trail, and picked up speed, flashing with a dart into the underbrush. Nike, simultaneously taken by surprise and more than pleased at the fact that Holly had done so silently and without her usual gleeful barking- a habit Nike had not yet managed to break-turned Caspi's head with a smart flip of her wrist and went after her.

The undergrowth here was not thick enough to thwart the horse but it did hide Nike's view of Holly. She saw a rattle of bushes just a short way off and moved that direction, only to halt Caspi with a sudden intake of breath when she heard the growling begin.

Caspi, ears forward and head lifted, nostrils wide, did not appear as if he liked what he was smelling. He was not a shy creature, broke well for hunting and used to the scents of both blood and predators, so his look of focus was enough to raise Nike's concern.

The growling was from Holly, not from whatever beast or man she had spotted, and it was soft and almost unsure. Silently, Nike dismounted the horse, dropping the reins to the ground to root Caspi to the spot. Unless he was under direct physical threat, Caspi would not budge until the reins were picked up again. Horses so trained, usually for combat or for the nobility, would even starve themselves to death rather than break a ground hitch.

Setting an arrow in her bow, Nike crept forward with care until she could see Holly's haunches. The pup's muscles were corded, as tense and stiff as if she had been carved of stone. The growl continued, a sound so deep and low it was almost sensation.

In a crouch, cautious, Nike edged forward some more. Her almost butter soft hunting boots conformed to the ground beneath her feet, allowing her to move with little to no sound. She felt a small twig tense underfoot as she started to shift her weight and eased off, shifting her foot just enough to avoid it.

Then, she was far enough forward that she could see through a break in the bushes.

About ten feet in front of where she now crouched, the ground sloped into broken rocks and gravel, and then into the slow moving waters of the stream. On the opposite shore, near enough to the trees to be under their cover in a flash, was a wolf.

She immediately knew the wolf was the one she had been tracking, and any surprise she had to see the animal so near when it should have been miles away was immediately snuffed out the instant she saw it clearly.

It was very old, this wolf. The mottled fur on its muzzle had become heavily gray, as if it had dipped its face into the ash pile left from a wood fire. Scars crisscrossed its hide, and made rags of its ears. It moved with the careful, deliberate motion of an animal that was in pain, and from the gnarled look of its wrist and elbow joints, she suspected it had a bad case of arthritis, perhaps as a result of some injury or other.

It would not be able to keep up with others, and had probably been chased out of whatever pack to which it had once belonged. She had assumed their prey was far ahead of them but the truth was they had probably been fairly close on its tail all morning. She thought briefly that it might be mad if Holly's barks hadn't alarmed it, but from its manner and appearance she could see madness wasn't the cause. A bit more watching, and she realized the creature was likely stone cold deaf- a truth that would lead soon to its death even if arthritis and age hadn't slowed it up.

The wolf was still hale and muscular if lean and tattered, but it would find hunting on its own hard to impossible, and being unable to hear any threat left it reliant entirely on its sense of smell and it's far less keen sense of sight. In desperation, it would have turned to raiding chicken coops or rabbit hutches when it found their wild brethren now too swift to catch.

Or sheep paddocks, Nike thought. She had edged her bow forward and silently had drawn the fletch back to her ear, the sharp narrow point fixed on the wolf's neck, right at the spot just above where it joined the shoulder.

The wolf, oblivious of the now silently glaring mabari and the arrow fixed on its life, picked its way carefully over the slippery rocks and down to the water, clearly meaning to drink. The last of its instincts, however, had not been quite dulled enough with age, and almost the moment it turned toward the stream, its head snapped up and its pale amber eyes fixed to Nike and the mabari crouched on the other bank.

She had a beautiful clear shot at the hollow of its throat now. It would die quickly, almost instantly, should she loose.

Instead, after a moment's pause, she relaxed her grip on the bow, lowering the arrow and letting the string go slack. The wolf stared at her a breath longer, then turned and vanished with a hasty but clumsy limp into the trees behind it.

There was no point to killing the thing, unless she had wanted to do so out of mercy. She'd only wanted to work on Holly's tracking and she'd done that. She hardly needed a gray, tattered old wolf's hide, and if the arthritic old deaf animal managed to make it all the way back to Roster's flock and picked off a couple of more mutton, that was something for Roster to fret over.

Maybe he'll get a halfway decent herd dog then, instead of that useless lump of drool he has now, she thought. Roster's dog was so stupid and fat that it would simply watch someone slaughter the entire flock before it could be bothered to get to its feet and give so much as a woof in warning.

He probably held the gate open for this old wolf to get into the paddock to begin with, she thought with some amusement, straightening out of her crouch and touching Holly on the back.

"Good girl," she said, and eyed the light in the sky. If she went to the market road not half a mile north of here and let Caspi stretch his legs properly, they'd be home before anyone knew they had even gone out. Her parents didn't approve of her sneaking out at the best of times, and certainly not with a half grown mabari in order to go hunting after wolves in the dark.

Nike was only thirteen after all, and such behavior was not seemly at any age- not for a daughter of a Teyrn. Hunting with a party decked out in full regalia was one thing, but the acceptance of that did not in any wise excuse going out after midnight by herself on a whim just to give an overgrown puppy more practice.

If any of the servants saw her stabling Caspi or heading back in, she could claim she just got up early and went on a morning ride around the grounds. That would get a bit of a lecture, but not nearly the scolding she'd get if the truth were known.

The girl and the dog turned and vanished back into the trees on the other side of the river. Unseen and unsensed by either, the black wolf watched them intently from behind the tree-line. Unlike the tattered old animal they had clearly tracked, this one was young and hale, not a glint or a fleck of gray or white in its thick fur.

It had stayed there, silently watching events as they unfolded, and as the girl vanished back into the trees where she had left her horse, the wolf's almost unnaturally bright yellow eyes gleamed.

Chapter One

Seven Years Later

The halls of Castle Cousland were never dull or empty, but the bustle of the last several days was markedly increased from the usual. Elves scrambled here and there as if the tips of their ears had caught fire, carrying stacks of linens and bedclothes, baskets packed high with cheeses, or with brooms and dusters in hand. They spouted 'Sorry!' so constantly it was like they had forgotten any other word existed.

Men and women wearing beaten armor under tabards bearing the Cousland Crest- a laurel wreath on a field of blue-walked the halls with intent purpose or clogged the yards and training fields. Livestock and wagons full of bread, cheese, casks of wine and barrels of beer, snarled up the forecourt, and both horses and dogs had spilled out of the livery and kennels, and seemed to be everywhere outside that had a spare foot of room.

Even here, deep in the heart of the keep, the walls seemed to thrum with a low, rhythmic and growling beat- the sound of moving, striding, riding, marching, carrying, bustling, rushing, calling, all punctuated by the seemingly endless ring of metal from down in the smithy's hot iron forge.

Bad as it had been the last few days, today seemed even worse. Nike wove through the knots and snarls of people, ignoring the salutes the armored ones gave her, ignoring the endless wave of apologies the pointy-eared ones gasped out mid-stride. Like a slim but elegant sailing ship parting water, she parted the bodies in front of her simply by moving forward. She seemed all but unaware of the controlled chaos, but the tight little line of irritation between her brows betrayed her annoyance.

She cut through the kitchens on her way to the main hall, but what was intended to be a shortcut turned out to be nothing of the sort. Billows of steam and smoke made a fog of the air, and people seemed to be rushing even more here, the elves with looks of near terror on their faces as they sliced fruit, carved haunches of meat, tended baking bread. All the extra bodies clogging the castle had to be fed, and it was clear the cook was at the last frayed edges of her temper. Trying to weave through the kitchens was an even more impossible task than weaving through the hallways, especially since in the miasma no one noticed her coming while they could still get out of her way.

Cutting out of the kitchens as soon as she could manage it, that irritated line set even deeper on her brow, Nike was just turning into the final corridor when a boy appeared in her path with a lopsided grin.

"Pardon me miss, but would you know how to get to livery from here?" he asked.

The boy was almost not a boy at all, his narrow cheeks scuffed with a peach fuzz of shadow that would probably be a proper beard this time next year. He was a good foot taller than Nike and all she could see of his shape was bird-thin legs and elbows. The rest was covered by the huge stack of horse blankets he was carrying.

The smell that came from the blankets was thick and loamy.

"The livery?" she asked, her irritated indignation making him blink. "The livery? You are honestly here, within a stone's throw of the Hall, wondering where you might find the livery?"

He blinked at her, color starting to rise in his cheeks. "I-…it's just that I got turned 'round, and-"

She pointed firmly down the hall behind her. "Left," she said crisply. "Follow it to the end, then right. Set of stairs, go down them. Turn left again, and cross the garden. From there you should be able to follow the sound of the smithy and the horses but in case you cannot, what you will be trying to do is find the training yards…outside. Where animals and thus liveries are most often kept."

"Y-yes, Miss. Thank –" he began but she had already stepped around him, resuming her determined path. He had already taken up too much of her time looking inside for something that could only be found outside.

The Hall, as she stepped into it, was just as crowded as the corridors, but in the much larger space it was not nearly as bad. Her eyes flicking quickly, she caught sight of her father talking with three other men and headed in his direction. Two of the men she immediately recognized.

The shorter of the two, gray-haired and bearing elongated and yet somehow stubby features, was Arl Rendon Howe of Amaranthine. She had known the man since she was small. Her father had fought with Howe in the war, and the two families had been close friends ever since. She had all but grown up with Howe's children, Nathaniel, Thomas, and Delilah. On rare occasion, her parents made useless noises about Nike marrying Nathaniel or Thomas, but they seemed to know they were useless even as they made them. Were Nike to pursue any of the Howe children it would far more likely have been Delilah- something everyone seemed to just know but no one ever discussed.

Not that Nike had any sort of eye for Delilah- the girl was sweet but she was four years Nike's younger and her head seemed stuffed with nothing but strawberry jam.

Delilah was nowhere in evidence, which was unsurprising. However, neither were Nathaniel or Thomas, and that did give her a bit of confused pause. Figuring they were simply elsewhere in the castle- tending to horses or helping to settle the Arl's men- Nike dismissed it.

The taller man at Arl Howe's side was Felip Ostvar, the Arl's guard captain. He was a thick slab of a man, on which an oddly delicate nose and full lips seemed out of place. He seemed to be aware of this fact and obscured both as much as he could with a heavy, wiry beard that seemed to sprout from directly beneath his eyelids. Nike, as always, thought the man distastefully unkempt- his hair was long and greasy, ratting into thick long snarls that looked like a washer woman's mop. He made no effort to trim or shape his beard and it resembled a heavy patch of brambles in which, Nike had no doubt, parts of last week's supper still lay hidden.

Even the way he looked at her felt slimy and unkempt, his gaze full of just as much old food and bristled grease as his beard.

The third man Nike didn't know. He was an older man, perhaps of an age with her father, and looked to be a man used to battle and the road. Even so he at least was groomed- his salt and pepper hair pulled neatly back from his shoulders in a small tail, his beard cleaned and properly trimmed. His eyes, gray as flint, were as keen as a hawk's, and seemed to land on her the moment she stepped into the hall. Unlike Felip's gaze, this one did not make her feel oily, but she did feel somehow targeted- as if just by looking at her he had marked her somehow and set her apart.

Howe was the first to speak as she approached, his eyes widening in an overly dramatic way that left her resisting the urge to roll her own.

"By the Maker, this cannot be Nike!" He said. "Girl, you look to have grown a foot and a half since I saw you last-you're the very image of your mother!"

Nike, who had seen Arl Howe the previous winter and who had been exactly the same height then as she was now (she had stopped growing entirely when she was sixteen), nevertheless gave him a gracious smile and inclined her head politely.

"And here I had thought it was Nathaniel speaking to my father," she said lightly. He laughed.

"Still such a charmer I see," he said. Nike's father gave her a warm and genuine smile, then gestured at her.

"This is my daughter, the Lady Nike Adela Cousland," he said, looking at the stranger, who gave a polite and solemn half-bow, his eyes never leaving her.

"I am honored," he said. His voice was low and rich. Nike supposed instantly that it was a voice used to giving commands, and them being obeyed without his need to raise it.

Her father then looked to her as she offered her hand toward the stranger politely. "Nike, this is Warden Commander Duncan," he said.

Instantly her brows lifted. "Of the Grey Wardens?" she asked in surprise as he took her hand. "Are the Grey Wardens here as well?"

She had seen no tabards or livery of the Wardens in the halls, but they may have just arrived.

"Just myself," Duncan said with a small smile. "There will be other Wardens at Ostagar but my purpose here is not to join your father on his ride south."

"Duncan is here recruiting," Howe said, almost joyfully.

Damned if he doesn't sound like he wished he could join them, she thought. For all that was going on, Howe seemed intractably upbeat. No doubt eager to relive his youth in battle.

"Recruiting? I was not aware the Wardens lacked numbers," she said aloud.

"We are always on the look-out for those suited to our order," he said. "In times like these more than any."

She suddenly burned with questions, but knowing her father would put a halt to them before she'd even begun, she instead said, "I am sure you will find many more than suited in the training yards. The finest young men and women of Highever are preparing to come to the call of the King- you could find no better pool from which to draw your selections."

Her father's even expression had not changed, but she could see in his eyes a hesitant sort of wariness.

He thinks I'm going to track Duncan down later and pester him with my questions, she thought. Of course, she might just do that. The Warden Commander himself under their roof recruiting as Highever and Amaranthine prepared to march at order of the King was deeply troubling. There had been rumors that this was more than just stirring darkspawn in the south- that this might well and truly be an actual Blight. The presence of this Duncan here and the Wardens down there lent a bit more solidity to those rumors than Nike would have previously entertained- and that made her fear.

Her father, her brother, and two young men as near and dear to her as brothers, would be making that march, and entering that fight. Rogue darkspawn were one thing, but a real Blight? Any or all of them may not come home again.

Her father would soften the news for her, she knew. He was eternally optimistic as a rule, and he had a rather irritating habit of shielding his daughter from things he thought she might find unpleasant. He would claim they were just taking precautions, that there was nothing to worry about. Duncan, at least, might tell her the truth of things- provided she could get a chance to talk to him away from her father or Arl Howe's interventions.

When she could manage it, she would have to slip away to the training yards. Hopefully, her father would be too busy with all the arrangements for the next morning's departure, and wouldn't accompany Duncan when he went to look over the men. Then, perhaps, Nike could have a chance to speak with him.

She didn't know the man, of course. He could refuse to say anything, be just as insufferably determined to shield the poor young Lady Cousland from the truth of matters, but somehow she didn't think so. Somehow, Duncan didn't seem the sort to coddle or cradle-nurse anyone.

She was also not so much a child that she believed all the wild stories about the Wardens and their powers and skills, but one of those stories made the claim that Wardens were always forthright, that in fact they could not speak any sort of lie or deception, even if they wanted too- which is why any word from a Warden's lips should always be considered as much the truth as if the Maker Himself had spoken it.

Nike didn't know if that was true or not- it sounded like hogwash to her to be honest herself- but she fervently hoped right now that with luck, it just might be.