His mother was very beautiful.

Koren possessed her golden, liquid eyes, though not her raven hair. His hair was the color of ripe cornfields, a comparison he had no idea to make until his sixth year after they left the Korcari Wilds, for the Chasind kept no fields.

The Wilds were uniformly muddy and brown, forests tangled underfoot with bramblethorns and laced overhead with creaking, moss-dripping branches. Often his mother took him out into the woods to teach him woodcraft and animal lore, and also, in the secret depths of shadowy copses, to show him her magic. He would watch her with delight as she pulled wisps of green light from the empty air, letting a tongue of fire dance in her palm, or surround herself in rocky armor. She even turned into a wolf, once. Always before she cast her spells she told him to pay close attention, which was easy. He could quite happily watch her summon frost and fire all day, laughing in the emerald glow of an ethereal wisp as his mother sent it spinning around his head. They were good days, when he was very young.

There were few children for him to play with among the Chasind, and his mother forbade it anyway. "You are not like them, Koren. You are special." He didn't feel special, but his mother told him this almost every day, so it must have been true.

The small tribe of Stalkers they lived among were a small and somber people, rarely smiling, dark of hair and eyes. They were like their forest, untamed and fierce. "Are we Chasind?" he asked his mother once in their wooden hut, chewing on a strip of salted fish.

Morrigan snorted. "Perish the thought, child! Of course not." She was crushing a handful of herbs into a fine powder with a stone pestle.

"Then why do we live with them?"

His mother looked sharply at him, as if annoyed by his question. Often she did this, like she always on the verge of telling him to be quiet, but then just sighed and answered him, though her voice was tight and clipped. "You are a curious child. 'Tis only right. There is much of this world that you need to know." She paused to add spindly black roots to her concoction. "I bore you in the Frostback Mountains. Which is where, child?" During Koren's daily lessons she showed him maps from time to time, teaching him geography and quizzing him mercilessly until he could point out Antiva without hesitation, or Ostwick, or Redcliffe. He found it terribly boring, but complained only once before his mother had dealt him a ringing slap and hissed furiously, " One day everything on this map will be yours. Why do I teach you if you cannot be bothered to listen?"

Now he touched his cheek, stinging still in his memory, seeing the line of inked mountain peaks and the spidery scrawl of his mother's writing in his mind. "That's...in Orlais?"

When she nodded in approval his narrow chest swelled with pride. "On the borderlands, 'tis indeed. You were still at my breast when I came across some very foolhardy chevaliers. After I had dealt with that vexation, I brought you here, not far from where I myself had been raised, where you would be safe." She carefully poured out a measure of herbs into a glowing liquid, and Koren watched her slide back into her deep concentration with a small, stifled sigh. She was too busy to speak to him for the rest of the night.

One day the Chasind brought him presents, heaping mounds and mounds of fine cloths and stolen jewelry at his feet. When he asked his mother why they did this, she told him, "Like all fools, they have a hope for a brighter future, child." She said this with a sneer, like it was a joke only she understood the punch line to.

The next week they moved, packing all their clothes, books, and Morrigan's impressive collection of staves into wooden boxes, leaving everything else in the cramped wooden hut Koren had been raised in. Special care was taken with Morrigan's enormous mirror, the one she kept covered with black cloth and never let Koren touch. They joined a dwarven caravan of traders heading north, and he enjoyed a happy month of easy travel, seeing new things and talking with interesting people. The merchants took a shine to him and told him stories of Orzammar and their Paragons, and the two elves hired on as stable hands called him "little shem" and let him feed the oxen dry oats from the palm of his hand.

Foothills spilled into grasslands at the northern top of the Frostbacks, just west of the gates of Orzammar. There Morrigan found an agreeable farmstead to call their home, neither too near the Waking Sea or to the Imperial Highway to be vulnerable to raiders or bandits - nor too far from them, that any avenue of escape along those routes would be infeasible.

Koren found it strange, this landscape of rolling plains and stands of green, straight-backed trees. The empty horizon made him uneasy for many weeks, so much vast openness that it might swallow him whole.

Their new house was bigger than their old hut. He helped clean out the cobwebs, beat mice out of the thatch, and pry up the lids of all the wooden boxes they had brought with them. The heaviest sack Morrigan had unpacked was absolutely full of shiny round coins, copper and silver and gold. "What are these?" he had asked her, holding up a golden piece on the flat of his palm.

She barely cast it a glance before going back to rummaging through her books. "That is a sovereign."

He considered her answer for a while. "But what is it for?"

Irritated, she sighed and turned towards him. "It's for buying things."

"Oh." He put it back into the sack with all its fellows. "Why do you have so many?"

To his surprise, she actually smiled, just a tiny bit, the edge of her lips curving up on one side. "I had a generous friend." When she looked at him again the smile had disappeared like frost at dawn. "Put it back."

He learned how to prepare food for his mother's cooking, how to exchange money for things instead of bartering as the Chasind did. A handful of goats had come with the farm, and his mother taught him to made cheese, which she sold in the town market every other week. When he asked why they bothered, why they couldn't just use the shiny sovereigns from the leather sack under the bed, she snorted. "A fine thing it would be, a lone mother and her young child, parading around this backwater with handfuls of gold." She looked down at him with a disappointed frown. "You know we have to blend in, child." This wasn't the first time they had that discussion. For the first few weeks after their move, he had clung to her side, burying his face in her skirts whenever a townsperson spoke to him. The people here were louder than the Chasind, their smiles very white and broad. He did this until his mother sat him down and explained, very firmly, that in order to appear normal, he had to act like the other children. He didn't know why they had to appear normal; they were normal, weren't they? But he always listened to his mother, so he tentatively started talking with the other kids at the marketplace, and was surprised how quickly he made friends. He fit in quite easily, which seemed to alternately please and discomfit his mother.

His mother always watched him, waiting for him to do something, like he was a dog that might any moment do a trick. Even as she still taught him secret things from her strange old books, she watched him. She still showed him her magic in the safety of their home, but now she also taught him about Circles, and Templars, and why everyone else in town went to the Chantry and listened to the songs, and why they did not. She taught him about the Fade, about demons and abominations and the myriad dangers beyond the Veil. She taught him about the magisters of Tevinter and the keepers of the Dalish, and everyday he learned more.

Rarely did she tell him stories of herself, of her days crisscrossing Fereldan and fighting darkspawn with the Warden. She told him about the Ashes of Andraste, about vanquishing demons in the Fade, about dwarven Provings and elvhen werewolves. Mostly she spoke of it disparagingly, like every choice that was made would have been the opposite of what she would have done, but sometimes, he caught a tiny glimmer of a true smile.

"Do you miss it, Mother?" he asked her, tentatively, when she had fallen silent and toyed with a golden bracelet, the one she never took off.

She shook her head like a wolf shaking off the rain. "I learned an important lesson. That lesson is; friendship is a tool. You can use it." And years passed.

Somewhere around his tenth year, something strange and enormous happened in a city far away. His mother went to the tavern to listen avidly to the gossips, and Kirkwall was on everyone's lips. A couple that owned a modest dress shop in town had always been known as 'Anders folk', and they now carefully called themselves 'Anderfellian' instead. Koren overheard Coalan the blacksmith say, "Well, we don't have any mages or templars around here, thank the Maker. The Void take them both and leave decent folk like us alone."

Many of his lessons were on magic, theories and histories. She showed him spells as she had when he was but a small child, but now all sense of wonderment had been replaced by resentment. Now when she made a wreath of light encircle her hands, she insisted he do the same.

He tried. Every time. He tried so hard to please her, but nothing ever happened.

"You must pull the energy from deep within you," she told him for the hundredth time.

He tried; reached deep within himself, pulled, and...nothing.

Morrigan sighed. "Every night you will practice this, before bed." She turned away and muttered to herself. "It means nothing. He is still young enough. The talent may yet show." Koren's heart sank. He hated to disappoint his mother, and knew she couldn't abide tears. He swallowed them hard, and kept trying, every day.

After his twelfth Nameday, his mother became impatient. She took him into the woods at twilight, jumping suspiciously at every rustle of some small woodland creature. "Listen close, child. You have known yourself to be Koren, a name I chose because it is common, one that would not arouse suspicion. But is not your true name."

Koren blinked. "Suspicion?"

Morrigan ignored him. "Your true name is Urthemiel. Say it."

His lips formed the strange word with difficulty. "Urthemiel."

His mother looked pleased, almost relieved. "Good. That is good. You must never tell anyone, is that understood?"

It was not. He didn't understand why he had two names, or why anyone would even care. However he knew better than to question his mother; he had too often felt the quick sting of her hand. He nodded.

She watched him again, that expectant gaze she leveled at him like he was a bug in a jar. He tried not to squirm under her cold eyes. "Can we go back inside now, Mother?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Feel you no different, child?"

Uncomprehending, Koren slowly shook his head. "Why should I feel any different, Mother?"

Her eyes were cold and distant as the moon.

He lost his virginity to a farmgirl on a summer afternoon. He had been delivering some fresh goat's milk to her father's farmstead when she had beckoned him into her family's barn, and he ended up following her. She was plump and friendly, and cooed like a dove when he touched her a certain way.

Afterwards, they heard the barn door creak open, and she sat up, eyes wide. "That'll be my brother," she hissed, throwing him his clothes. "Oh, he'll kill you! Quick, you can sneak out the back!"

But in his haste, he tripped down the ladder and landed right in front of her brother in a pile of straw with a loud whump.

"Oi," said the man with a glower, "What are you doing here?" The girl's brother was a much older man, old enough to start his own family, and well known around town for his exceptional strength. Last winter he had killed a bear than had been stealing hens from the farms and menacing townsfolk. His arms were as big around as Koren's thigh.

"I just..." Koren crabbed backward.

The man looked up into the hayloft and spied his sister hastily lacing her chemise. "Roddy," she called down to her brother, "don't you hurt him now!"

His eyes narrowed menacingly on Koren. "You been touching my sister?"

He swallowed, considered lying, but couldn't think of anything clever enough. He went with the truth. "Yes. She asked me to."

Roddy stared at the boy for a long moment before bursting out into laughter. "You're an honest one, I'll give you that." He extended a big hand and helped Koren to his feet. "Usually, I beat the stuffing out of anyone who touches little Carly, but what can I say? I like you." Roddy gave him a big grin and ruffled Koren's straw-strewn hair.

Things were a little easier after that. People just...liked him. He didn't understand why, there was no reason for it; he wasn't any good with people. He didn't always understand their jokes, he got flustered when girls flirted with him, and he always seemed to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

To his amazement, none of this seemed to matter. No matter what he said, no matter how he stumbled over words, people thought he was charming. Townsfolk went out of their way to hail him good day. Shopkeepers gave him discounts at their stalls. All the girls and a few of the boys gave him heavy looks as he cut through the market.

He kept this to himself. He couldn't tell his mother. He wasn't even sure that it was real and not some strange imagining. After all, if everyone liked him then why didn't she?

As time passed his mother became especially sharp with him, very quick with the back of her hand, and he could not figure out why. She would spend hours staring into her mirror, snapping at him to leave. He'd go round the back of the house and use the rain barrel to clamber onto the thick thatch roof, where he would sit and watch the colors of sunset as they sank low like a banked flame, greeting the emerging stars like old friends.

He turned sixteen in autumn, dry leaves crunching underfoot and chimney fires filling the air with their sooty fragrance. Pressing the cheeses was work so familiar that Koren could let his mind drift, humming a song he'd once dreamed of as he stacked the fresh yellow wheels up on their shelves.

The door slammed. His mother stood in the doorway for a long moment, fingers raw and white on a gnarled ironbark staff. Wordlessly she strode towards him, her legs splattered with mud and her face set like a stone. Before he could shrink away Morrigan grabbed him by the chin and hissed, "What is your true name?"

Uselessly he tried to jerk his face away, but she held him firmly, her slender frame belying her strength. "Mother," he began, words cut off with a gasp as her nails dug into his skin.

"Your name," her silken voice now an ugly, angry rasp.

"Urthemiel!" he cried out, trying to squirm from her grasp. Yellow eyes stared searchingly into his own, and after a breathless pause she cast him away with a disgusted tsk.

Koren touched his face with a shaking hand, the tips coming away with smears of blood.

Morrigan was pacing restlessly across the room, like the wolf she now rarely shifted into, and threw her staff down with a clatter. "I have done all I could for you, child. Read every ancient tome, procured every charm. I even travelled to the Fade itself and spoke with demons to unravel this mystery. All I have acquired are more questions."

He cast her a wary glance, afraid of drawing her ire but unable to be silent. "What questions? I don't understand, Mother."

Her lips curled in an ugly sneer. "No. You don't." She held out her hand, forming a ball of twisting fire in her palm. "Take it."

"…What?"

"Take the fire from my hand." Her tongue formed each word round and clear, the ball of fire painting her golden eyes an unearthly orange.

Koren shifted uneasily. "I…I can't use magic, Mother."

Her expression did not flicker. "Then you'd best learn quickly." She thrust the fire into his face, and he reeled back as the heat licked at him, feeling his eyebrows curl his yellow hair sizzle.

"Mother!" he cried, throwing up his hands, frantically trying to call up whatever power she insisted he possessed, drew deep within himself for that inner spark, that deep well of mana she had described time after time, pulled it up…

…and nothing. Pain seared through him as the fire burned his hands.

For a second he thought he saw regret flash over his mother's face, but when he blinked back his tears there was no trace of it. Instead, wordlessly, she took his blistered, shaking hands and held them still as she poured a vial of red liquid over them. Instantly the pain receded, and she stepped away. For a long moment all Koren could do was stare down at his hands, flexing them experimentally and catching his breath. A stifled noise brought him out of his shock, and he turned to his mother.

She stood head bowed, fists clenched at her sides. She shook, and Koren stepped towards her, concerned and amazed that his mother seemed to be crying. But no: her voice, when she spoke, trembled with fury, not tears. "Flemeth," she spat, like it was a curse or a profanity. She raised her head, and moved with a firm purpose to the chest of drawers. She began to gather up armfuls of clothing.

"What…what are you doing?"

"'Tis obvious that I am packing, child. I must go. Alone."

"But...Mother, I don't understand." Koren watched his mother in bewilderment as she crouched over a large satchel, packing. "Why must you go?"

Morrigan exhaled sharply, the sound almost like a hiss as the air rushed through her clenched teeth. "I seek answers which cannot be found here. You need not know more than that."

"Then let me come with you," he said in a pleading voice. "Perhaps I could help-"

"No," she interrupted coldly, her piercing yellow gaze now locked upon him. "I will go alone. Or did you not hear me the first time?"

"I'm sorry," Koren replied, shrinking away a little.

"I care not if you are 'sorry'." Morrigan said dismissively, turning her attention back to packing and shoving a few pieces of bread into her pack. "I have been lied to and I intend to find out why."

Koren opened his mouth, but an angry look silenced him. This was because of him. Because he failed her. Feeling defeated, hands still shaking, he sank against a wall and watched her finish packing in silence.

"But...what shall I do?" He asked in a forlorn whisper.

Her sharp yellow eyed turned on him and froze him in place. "Do what all the other lost little lambs of this pathetic village do. Find work. Marry. Live. Die. I care not."

She waved a hand at the looming mirror, and its surface rippled like water. And just like that she swept through it and left Koren behind.

For days, frantically, he read through her books, the ones he could understand, trying to force the mirror to give her up. The mirror only sat there, its surface cool and placid like any other piece of glass. Nothing in Morrigan's lessons had told him about the mirror or how to use it, and he had no more idea where she had gone then he had known how to tame fire.

For weeks he remained, unwilling to leave the house in case she one day came back. He dreamed that she would, in between his usual dreams of flying and golden cities, dreamed that she would burst in and fling her arms around him and say that she was so, so sorry.

She never did.

And winter slunk ever nearer.

The song in his dreams grew stronger, until he would wake up in the middle of the night, humming the tune until it disappeared from his mind like melting snow. The house was cold, and there was no food left in the pantry. He was hungry. Lonely. In mourning.

Here the histories become vague, writes Brother Genitivi, idly thumbing his greying beard while his quill scratches noisily across parchment in his shorthand scrawl. Some accounts put him north, some east, while others insist that he stayed several years in that little border village, and indeed among scholars there is some debate on whether he ventured forth to search for his mother or if he stayed put waiting for her return.

What is agreed is that stories of him began to emerge from wanderers and travelers, unimportant accounts appearing in journals and letters here and there. How fascinating that in all those years of acquaintance, in all that time not one person suspected what that lonely young man they met by chance on the road would one day become.

The mages stood in a tight ring, well-used to sudden attacks and prepared for anything. Fire trickled from their eyes and frost fell from their fingers as they faced down the intruder, the campfire at their backs making them loom menacingly out of the shadows.

Koren held up his hands. "I mean you no harm," he said softly, and a few of the mages seemed mollified, relaxing their stances. "I only saw your fire and wished to share its warmth." Slowly he reached down and held up the brace of rabbits he had hung from his belt. "I can offer some fresh game in exchange?"

From the front of the group a tiny red-haired woman narrowed her eyes at him. Koren kept his hands up and his smile calm. He'd been threatened at knife-point (also sword-point, staff-point, and once memorable time, herring-point) dozens of time, and always come out of it no worse for wear and with some new friends. He knew with certainty that he would be fine, no longer even questioning it.

"Do you swear it?" asked the fiery woman, apparently their leader.

"I do," he avowed. "I am no mage, but I bear no ill will to those who are. You need fear nothing from me."

Her keen eyes raked over him, taking his measure. Finally she nodded, once. "Watch your step, kid."

"It's Koren," he said with a smile, the special smile, the one that melted even the strongest of suspicions. He owed a lot to that smile, as he was pretty sure he wouldn't have survived the last two years without it.

She smiled back, almost begrudgingly. "I'm Adrian. Come on. It's getting dark."

Later, Koren warmed his hands by the flames as the mages spoke. "Most of us fled from Val Royeuex, though a few joined us from Cumberland."

"Are you trying to make it into Fereldan?" he asked curiously. "I hear King Alistair has declared every apostate to be safe within Fereldan's borders."

"Most of us, yes," said a mage, as she carefully carved sigils into her staff. "Though some of the elves among us are going into the Free Marches to join a clan there."

"As if these woods weren't bad enough," sniffed the blond mage who was stirring the stew Koren had provided. "Trudging up to Sundermount to join up with some kind of freedom fighters."

"Keeper Merill was a friend of Kirkwall's Champion, Finn," retorted an elf with stormy eyes. "She knows how to fight! Maybe we can rebuild some of what was lost to our people."

The blond sighed, adding a bushy elfroot into the cookpot. "And I wish you the best of luck, I truly do. It's just...look, I know it's not a popular opinion, but I miss the Circle."

Several mages, the Orlesians, gasped in shock, while the rest just rolled their eyes as if used to this discussion and very bored with it. "You weren't at the White Spire," said a woman with a thick Orlesian accent, accusingly.

"No, but you weren't at Cumberland. It wasn't so bad there. It was warm, I didn't lose any boots in knee-deep mud, never bitten by these damned mosquitoes. The templars weren't much trouble, really." Finn shrugged. "Kinloch Hold was even better - aside from the whole 'nearly-everyone-turned-into-an-abomination' business."

"You were at the Fereldan Circle during that? My mother told me about that." Koren bit down on his tongue. He hadn't meant to mention his mother. Fortunately no one else seemed to notice.

Finn nodded. "Terrible times. But, hey, the Hero of Fereldan swept through and cleared that all up. I met the Hero, you know," he added in an aside.

The elf groaned. "Yes, we know. You've mentioned it. Once or twice. Or a dozen times."

"You met the Hero of Fereldan?" Koren asked, eyes wide.

"I traveled alongside the Warden for weeks! Secret mission, very hush-hush." Finn smirked, clearly very proud of the whole affair.

"Don't get him started," muttered a stocky mage copying out a book in the firelight.

"I can, uh," Finn's eyes darted quickly away from Koren. "I can tell you all about it. If you like."

Koren nodded enthusiastically. "I'd like that very much."

As Finn gave him a sly smile, the stocky mage rolled his eyes, muttering, "For Andraste's sake, Finn."

"What?" Finn shot back, affronted.

"He's practically a kid."

"So?"

"I'm eighteen," Koren piped up, annoyed even though he didn't know why the mages were arguing about his age. Did they think he was too young to hear a story about the Hero of Fereldan? It seemed silly.

Finn looked smug. The other mage only sighed, shaking his head and burying himself back in his work. "Well," said Finn, standing up. "It'll be more private in my tent. It's this way."

Koren tilted his head curiously, though he stood. "I thought you were going to tell me all about your adventures?"

Finn guided him with a light touch at the small of his back and smiled with all his straight white teeth. "Oh, I certainly intend to."

While the mage known as Florian Phineas Horatio Aldebrant (Esquire) kept records as detailed as his name - some of them embarrassingly so – many others who crossed paths with the wandering young man did not. Some imagination on part of this humble author has been employed to shed light on yet another shadowy period in the histories of Koren, as he was then known.

For a long time, Koren simply travelled. It was no longer about finding his mother, but about finding….something else. He found passage on ships and joined caravans and walked the roads until his boots molded themselves to the shape of his feet. He travelled, seeking something he could not even name.

And everywhere he went, he made friends.

Far to the north he met a lady elf with a shock of blood-red hair who taught him how to throw knives, and told him of the Qun and hunting wyverns.

Soon afterwards he saw his first kossith, among a band of mercenaries he walked with for a few days. The copper-skinned Tal-Vashoth told him of Qunadar, and the tall ivory spires of the city and its soft, tropical breezes.

A travelling Tranquil showed him how to use runes, and told him tonelessly about being branded, screaming, while men in gleaming iron held him down.

In the Anderfels he spent a long and brutal winter among a tribe of Dalish, and he was fascinated to hear about the Creators and Fen-Harel, Arlathan and the Dales, and the winter passed with him learning elven legends, and hunter friends teaching him how to wield a bow.

For a time he was content to drift, as weightless as dandelion fluff floating idly on a summer breeze. The wind carried him aloft and set him down, eventually, on the coasts of Alamar, which had only one good inn.

He stayed an extra night because the ale was good, and because a pretty girl smiled at him.

The woman was accompanied by two others, a well-dressed dwarf and a rakish sort of fellow with a broad stripe of a birthmark across the bridge of his nose like a swath of blood. They waved Koren over to their game of Wicked Grace, and he shuffled over to their table smile that was still shy even after so many years.

A dozen hands later – and several pints of good ale - the man with the beard and the birthmark slung his arm over Koren's shoulder. "I still can't believe you travel alone. I never go anywhere without my trusty companions. Or at least without my dog." He nodded at the patch of tavern floor completely taken up by mabari, who flicked an uninterested ear in their direction as passersby wisely gave the canine a wide berth - possibly because of the beast's massive bulk, but more likely because of the smell.

"I don't mind so much," Koren answered softly, "and I meet plenty of people on the road."

"Tell me about it," the man said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "Seems like I can't go ten paces without running into bandits or mercs or somesuch unsavory folk. Isn't that right, Warwick?" He said this slyly over the barroom table at his dwarven friend, like it was a joke that Koren wasn't in on.

The dwarf groaned. "I told you not to call me that, Garreth." He fanned his cards out with ink-stained fingers.

"Aw, but we're incognito!" the bearded man complained.

"I don't think fake names are going to make much of a difference, Haw…kins. As much as I mislead that Seeker from our trail, they are called Seekers, after all. Their title is also their job description."

'Garreth' snorted. "If they were any good at it they'd be called Finders. We've been all right so far."

"Due in no small part to me," added the dark, sultry woman over her glass of rum. "And if either of you start calling me by some ridiculous new name, I'm taking my ship and leaving the two of you behind." She shot an amused glance Koren's way. "Have you ever been on the open ocean during a storm? It's the best feeling in the world."

"I've been across the Waking Sea a few times," he told her, slightly awkwardly from under the weight of his new friend's burly arm.

She winked at him. "A man of the world. Oh, I like that. Can we have him, kitten?" She turned pleading, dancing eyes on the bearded fellow.

"He is pretty," mused Garreth, looking Koren over thoughtfully, who blushed furiously. "You go on ahead, 'Bela. I'm determined to show this uppity dwarf the error of his ways." He tapped the pile of cards in front of him and took his arm off of Koren.

"Oh, you do spoil me," Isabela said fondly, dropping a kiss to bearded cheek. Her teeth flashed white against her dusky skin. "Well? How about it, sweet thing?"

She was certainly about a decade older than he, but it only showed in the faint crinkle at the corners of her eyes, where years of smiles had collected. She moved with the smooth limberness of a fighter. "Um," he said.

She gave a silvery laugh. "You're so cute! Come on," she grabbed his hand and before he could think, she had pulled him halfway toward the stairs. "Don't take all my man's money, Varric. How else can he buy me pretty things?"

"No worries, Rivaini. I would never let him lose everything; it would just wreck his self esteem. I couldn't live with myself."

"Ha ha, you two." Garreth muttered. "Have fun!" He called to Koren with a sly wave. "Don't let her talk you into that thing with the rope. Trust me."

"You're no fun," Isabela pouted, then pulled Koren up the stairs, into a room, and shoved him back to the bed.

She moved like a fighter, like a dancer, like the lapping waves of the ocean itself. Koren enjoyed himself immensely, buried in her fragrant warmth.

As they rested, panting, on the pillows, she told him of Rivain and the long history of seers, and of the open ocean and the splash of salt, the creak of a good ship in the night. They spoke until the door opened and Garreth Hawkins sidled in with a wolfish smile, and then the three of them didn't need to say anything beyond oh and Maker and yes for a while.

Spring brought with it a strange cast of travellers, families moving around to find better homes; Kirkwallers running to Orlais, Orlesians running to Tevinter, Fereldens running to Antiva, and Antivans happily praying on the purses of everyone else. At a small inn, Koren met a man and his daughter. Koren had seen enough templars in his life to recognize the hard set of the man's eyes, the way his hand drifted to his sword hilt absently; an old habit. He introduced himself as Sadet, and his daughter as Gleam. When Koren shook her hand it felt hot, as if she had been holding it to a fire, and he remembered the strange heat of his mother's hands, and knew this young lady was an apostate. He paid for their drinks and wished them well.

He met Wardens, briefly, but they were a grim people, not much given to conversation. Even in a tavern they kept to themselves, barely speaking, drinking with the determined resolve of those who wish to forget. One did tell him, in his cups, that there was ill business afoot, but wouldn't give him the smallest of details, even when Koren gave him his most winning smile from over the pillows the next morning.

He was in Val Royueux for less than a week before he was invited to a party by a marquessa. From behind his ornate borrowed mask he watched lords bow to ladies, dancers spinning and laughing in a swirl of elaborate finery. Their smiling masks belied their strained words; "It will pass. I'm sure the Empress will have it under control very soon," while outside their thick walls people looted and bled on their glittering streets.

Tevinter was everything he had been warned it was. Slavery displayed in the streets, magic cast freely and carelessly according to the whims of the rich and influential. He watched a group of skinny elves huddle fearfully on an auction block, his face very carefully wiped blank and impassive. This was no place for Fereldan ideals.

It took only a few days of wandering aimlessly, a bit of flotsam adrift on the crowded sea, for him to make enough friends to get invited into a magister's home. The party was a lively and sordid affair, lots of naked flesh for the eyes to feast on and for greedy hands to grasp. Koren kept to himself, hugging the wall, ate a few appetizers, and finally found the first thing he had actually searched for since giving up on ever finding Morrigan.

Feynriel was tall and pale, an unusual sight in hot Tevinter, with his long flaxen braid and fox-sharp face. Sidling up to him, Koren nodded in greeting, as was Tevinter custom. It felt odd not to grasp forearms, but that was a Fereldan thing, searching for hidden weapons in the sleeves. The Tevinters needed not concern themselves over petty things such as blades, not when the real danger came from words – both as spells and in double-dealings.

"You are Magister Feynriel?" he asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

Cheeks flushed, Feynriel protested, "No, just Feynriel, for now. I am still but a student. It will be many years before I can be called Magister." His long fingers gripped at his staff convulsively, tension coiling his expressive hands.

"You give too much away," Koren told him softly, voice tuned for Feynriel's ears alone. "These people are like snakes, waiting for the slightest movement to strike."

The party raged on around them. Feynriel's otherworldy eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"

Koren smiled disarmingly and introduced himself. "I had hoped to ask you some questions, if you had the time. I understand you are an expert on dreams."

Slowly, Koren's charm eroded away the mage's suspicion as sea wore away sand, and another hour saw them both sharing a bottle of Nevarran Red in Feynriel's home.

Feynriel sipped at his glass. "You say you've travelled the highway? Have you heard anything about the Lyrium Ghost, by chance?"

Koren cocked his head. "I've heard it mentioned by campfire, a time or two. Why?"

Feynriel shrugged. "I may live in Tevinter, but I'm still a Marcher at heart. I find a satisfying sense of poetic justice in the legend; a ghost wreathed in blue lyrium tearing out the hearts of slavers and leaving their corpses as warning to others. It's probably just a slave legend, but…" his lips curled in a wistful smile. "It's a good legend nonetheless."

Koren watched an elven girl fill up the pitcher, bowing low as she left the room. Feynriel followed his gaze. "On loan from my teacher," he said with a twist of disgust. "He says a slaveless apprentice is an embarrassment to his position."

"You don't find slaves…convenient?"

"I find the entire practice as damaging to the owners as it is to the enslaved. Power corrupts." The words escaped his mouth the way water slipped through clenched fingers, and Feynriel paused. "I…would appreciate it if you would not spread around my..."

"Controversial beliefs?" Koren shook his head ruefully. "I quite agree with them."

"I would give them their freedom if I thought it would do any good."

"A Marcher at heart," Koren smirked, lifting his glass in salute.

"And you, a Ferelden freeman. We have unpopular views here, we foreigners." Feynriel studied him openly as he sat down across the way. "Perhaps you should tell me why you are here."

"I…had been having strange dreams.

Pale, foxfire eyes studied him. "Did you come all this way seeking me? Because of some strange dreams?"

"No," Koren said, "I only heard rumors about you after I arrived in Tevinter. But I do think that you are the reason I am here." He looked up and met Feynriel's gaze, and the mage was startled by their intensity, the firmness of purpose he had never seen in anyone so young. "I've been searching a long time."

Feynriel licked lips suddenly gone dry. "What for?"

The fire drained out of Koren's eyes, leaving him empty and human, looking lost as any refugee Feynriel had seen tossed up on Kirkwall's docks. "I…I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me."

The mage set down his cup and leaned back against the cushions. "I am still only learning the art of the Somniari. I'm no expert on the Fade and what dreams it may send."

"But you know something about dreams, surely."

Slowly Fenyriel nodded agreement. "I've seen many a man's dream, that is true. I may be able to help you, but then again I may not."

Koren looked down at his cup, the dark red depths of the wine. "I dream I'm flying. On wings. I'm looking down at the ground and all of Thedas is there under me.

"I dream that I am dying, and trapped under the earth with scratching all around me. I hear a song, a beautiful song I cannot make out the words to. I ache to hear it more clearly, and then realize that I'm the one singing it."

Feynriel sat still. "What else?"

"A tower. Fire and death all around. A blade, sinking into my skull." He turned his goblet over in his hands, swallowing heavily.

"I dream of a city, far off in the distance, black and gleaming. I want to go there, to let my wings carry me there, but no matter how long I travel it is always beyond my reach. It all feels so real. Not like a dream at all, but like…a memory, instead."

After a stretch of silence, Feynriel leaned forward. "How long have you been having these dreams?"

Koren looked up and his golden eyes burned, the color of flaming fields and besieged cities flickering in their depths. "All my life," he said quietly.

They struck up a friendship, Feynriel and Koren, the mage playing host to the Fereldan for a few weeks, introducing him to ladies and showing him the sights.

They passed by an unassuming little shelf in the street, littered with old stumps of candles, words deeply carven scrolling across and around the alcove like lintels on a window. There was a weather-blackened statue set in the middle of the alcove, its feet strewn with coins. It was a figure misshapen, not quite human but not obviously anything else either. Koren pulled at the sleeve of Feynriel's robes. "Feyn. What is that?" He pointed.

"What is what?" Feynriel turned. "Oh, that's an old shrine. To the Old Gods. Well, to one of the Old Gods, anyway." Feynriel lead him out of the street traffic and into the darkened corner that held the shrine.

"I have heard of the Old Gods," was all Koren could think to say. There was something about the jeweled eyes, how they followed him wherever he went. A shiver ran up his spine.

"They still worship them here. Not very adamantly, not like Andrastians follow the Chant. Most magisters make token sacrifices on feast days, that sort of thing. I think commoners throw coins on it to grant wishes."

Koren was barely listening. The words carved around the shrine almost seemed to move, until he looked directly at them, then they were simply old scratches in the stone. His throat was dry. "Can you read what it says?"

Feynriel nodded absently, tilting his head to the side. "Yes. It's an old dialect of Arcanum, but I can read it." He rattled off a long string of words, oblivious to how the words froze inside Koren blood and wriggled fitfully, filling him and filling him until they burst through his skin like maggots and he stood there, unchanged, as if nothing had happened.

Feynriel shrugged, then turned back to Koren. "It's just a chant of praises and appeals to-Koren, are you alright? You're white as a sheet!"

"I'm fine," his numb lips forced out. He knew those words. He didn't understand them, but her heard them in his sleep nearly every night - the song.

Brother Genitivi sighs, sets his quill down and rubs watery eyes. He stretches out the stiff tendons of his hand, and feels the first hints of an old cramp creep its way into his joints. He picks up the quill, blinks away his weariness, and bends low over the parchment. The records that remain become sketchy here, but we know that Koren left Tevinter having not received any answers from the young somniari. Perhaps he went home to Fereldan because he found some sort of purpose there, or because the land itself, so recently Bighted, called to something in his blood. Or perhaps, as is this author's unpopular opinion, simply because he was homesick.

It felt good to be with a caravan again, and the dwarven merchants in attendance brought a nostalgic smile to Koren's face. The way they haggled hadn't changed since he had traveled among them as a child.

Rumor had it that one of the dwarves was not a merchant, but instead a researcher from the Circle. This little tidbit was interesting enough for Koren to seek her out. He'd never heard of a dwarven mage, and his curiosity hadn't ever waned.

"I understand that mages are looking into a way of bolstering their mana without the use of lyrium?" he said, by way of introduction.

The dwarven woman, perhaps in her late twenties (thought it was hard to tell, with dwarves) bounced up and clapped her hands together. "I know! It's so exciting, isn't it?" Beaming smile brimming with enthusiasm, she looked up at Koren and bounced lightly on the balls of her feet. "I have a theory about it, actually."

She bounced all over, now that he noticed. "A theory? You aren't a mage, are you?"

"Welllll, no," she drew the word out regretfully. "But I did study at the Circle. I'm Dagna." She flung her hand out with such energetic candor that Koren couldn't help but take it. She pumped his hand, a bit more friendly than most people Koren usually met, even taking into account his unnatural charm. "Lyrium is such a fascinating subject. Did you know it's the only thing that co-exists in both in this world and the Fade?"

Koren scrambled for something to say, feeling a bit out of his depth. "No. I didn't think dwarves could go to the Fade."

"Oh, we can't," Dagna flapped her hand dismissively, "but it's such an interesting concept, you know, in theory."

"You can't use lyrium either, right? Like mages do?"

"Nope," she answered cheerfully.

"So…why do you study it, then?"

She gave him a slightly exasperated look. "Because it's fascinating. I've been studying for years, and I've only just scratched the surface." Then she shrugged, turning towards the wagon. "But for now, I'm studying the effects of the Blight on croplands."

"That sounds very useful."

"Yeah, an old friend asked me to look into it. Very important person now, my friend. Lots of good sense, too. There's still plenty of places in Ferelden where the darkspawn poisoned the land."

"Do you think you can fix it?" Koren asked, intrigued.

Dagna shook her head doubtfully. "People have been trying for centuries to cure Blight sickness. I mean, it's great in theory. Without woodland beasts turning into monsters, or acres of fields dying, or people turning into ghouls, the darkspawn are only - um…well, they're still pretty darn dangerous. But Blights wouldn't be as bad, maybe. And," here she dropped her voice, letting him in on a secret. "if people were immune, they couldn't be made broodmothers."

"Broodmothers?" Koren wrinkled his nose. "Is that as bad as it sounds?"

"Worse," Dagna said flatly. "Without broodmothers they couldn't make any new darkspawn." She dug in the back of her wagon and pulled out a twisted, sickly looking potted plant. "Anyway, that's waaaaay down the road. For now, I'm just trying to fix this plant. If I can, then we'll see about the rest." She set the pot on the lip of the wagon and eyed it thoughtfully. From the front of the wagon a gruff voice called her name, and she briefly wandered away from him to answer. Koren stayed, looking at the plant with morbid curiosity. He'd never seen something with Blight sickness, before.

The plant was a blackened, withered thing, a cruel echo of what it could have been. Absently, Koren reached out and touched a brittle thorn.

"Don't touch that!" Startled, his hand jerked, and he pricked his finger on the sharp thorn. A drop of blood welled up on his fingertip.

"Ow," he said.

Dagna snorted. "Are you daft? You don't touch something that's got the taint."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking."

"Well, no harm done. It's not like you can make the thing more sick than it—" Dagna abruptly broke off, gaping over Koren's shoulder.

"What is it?" He turned to look. Before their eyes the plant greened and filled, leaves swelling and unfurling like all of springtime was happening in one single minute.

"What did you do?" Dagna whispered in awe, unable to take her eyes off the new growing plant. Koren took a step back, every instinct telling him to run. The strange song roared in his head, took him between its teeth and shook him like a terrier shook a rat.

"I don't know," he rasped, then turned on his heel and ran.

Again he ran, darting wildly like an arrow with no target to seek, until road dust caked the tread of his boots and the nights brought with them only silence.

He found solace in his old practice of getting free meals in taverns, spending his nights with wandering swordswomen or innkeepers' sons. The road demanded nothing. It took nothing from him and offered nothing back, and eventually he breathed easier.

For a time he took up with a band of mercenaries; good enough people, not the usual thuggish lot you saw occasionally, but a collection of half-elves, apostates, and casteless dwarves, misfits and outcasts whose only talent was keeping their blades bloody. Koren joined on as a sort of mascot, not really a fighter even though he had been taught nearly every style of martial ability, and stayed out of their fights and didn't ask a share of their pay.

They were each of them an odd duck, and they didn't ask questions. Even when Koren awoke from his bedroll sobbing and breathless and babbling they didn't ask questions. So he traveled alongside them during the long harvest season.

A local bann offered a substantial amount of gold to search for a lost hunting party near the Drakon River, through a narrow valley of rocky cliffs where greenery only grew in sporadic bursts among the blackened boulders.

In a quiet lull, the apostate wandered over to one of the strangely colored boulders. He touched one, and looked at his hand where the black had rubbed off onto his scarred fingers. His forehead creased in worry. "This is soot," the mage announced. And before anyone could say anything else, there was an ominous scrape like metal dragging over stone, and a deep rolling thunder from a cloudless sky.

Scales flashed as the great, unending bulk rose up over the crest of jagged rocks, rising up and up until the narrow strip of sunlight that shone down through the canyon was nearly blocked out entirely, and the angry rumbling of a nascent roar thrummed up through their feet like an earthquake.

"Dragon!" shrieked a rogue in wild panic. "We stumbled into a damn dragon nest!"

"Get back!" cried a merc, a grizzled dwarf with a huge brand across his forehead, thrusting Koren behind an outcropping of rocks with a firm shove. Koren fell awkwardly, wind knocked from his lungs by a jutting lump of melted basalt.

When he regained his breath he peered out. The band of mercs had scattered into cover, and the dragon swung its massive head side to side, torn between several attractive targets among the rocks. It was an enormous creature, a full grown female of breeding age, scales as big across as a human palm. Small, cunning eyes glared shrewdly from an elegant equine head, and its toothy mouth gaped eagerly like a cat spotting a downed bird.

"Stay down!" called the apostate, and the air tingled with the weaving of a shield spell.

One of the warriors, a thick-armed man whose elvhen lineage showed only in the brilliant green of his eyes, sprang up from cover and waved his sword aloft. "Keep the beast confused!" When he had the dragon's attention, he rolled away, diving behind another boulder just in time to avoid the blast of fire the dragon spat at him. Even from across the rocky divide, Koren could feel the heat of it crinkle his hair.

A hysterical, disembodied laugh revealed the rogue's position under a rocky shelf. "Well, now we know what happened to the bann's hunting party," she called out with heavy irony.

The dragon heard her, its target chosen. With an eager hiss, it slithered down to the barren gulch and drew back its head, its sides inflating as it drew in a deep, massive breath. From that angle, it could aim a jet of flame right into the rogue's little shelter, with flame so hot it melted stone.

Unthinking and desperate, Koren jumped up from the scorched rocks with a shout. "No! Stop!"

The dragon jerked its head back, a slow trickle of fire dripping harmlessly from its jaws. It turned black glittering eyes on him, and he suddenly realized that he was completely exposed.

Time stopped.

And the dragon waited.

"Move back," he whispered through throat as dry as ashes, and he knew the dragon would obey even before it began its slow, reluctant creep backwards.

"Go away," he said, barely loud enough to be heard. "Leave this valley and never return."

Leathery wings unfurled forever, and after a brief dip of the dragon's head, she leapt into the sky and flew away.

One by one, the band came out from behind the rocks, moving jerkily with combined shock and unused adrenaline. Koren stood almost as still as a statue but for an errant breeze moving hair around his head in a corn-yellow halo. The mercenaries looked at him with awe, their voices reverent. "Who are you?"

Koren stared at them blankly, swallowing hard. "I have no idea," he whispered.

There was nowhere left to run.

Alone he went to the mountain, and walked to the top. In the thin air of the summit the rich resinous scent of pine wafted, and Koren found himself at the edge of a cliff, looking down over the tops of trees, remembering/wishing/dreading the way it would feel to fling himself over the side, letting the rush of wind catch him and carry him away.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you it's impolite to keep a lady waiting?" He turned toward the throaty grating voice without surprise, feeling like an performer merely acting out a script. A sharp smile flashed at him from an ageless face, a tall woman with white waves of hair pulled back into an elaborate crown of ribbons. She wore dragonhide and crackled with magic. "From what I know of her, I'd be surprised if she bothered." She walked like a panther. "I expected you to answer my call years ago, child."

Koren stared at her, at her familiar golden eyes. "You know my mother?"

"Pleasantries first, child," the woman admonished. "Young people these days. I am called Flemeth."

Koren didn't bother trying on his charming smile, somehow knowing it wouldn't work or even matter if it did. "I'm called Koren."

The ageless woman barked a short, gravelly laugh. "Yes, for the time being. Time changes many things, names not being the least of them."

"You said you know my mother."

Flemeth smiled bitterly. "Ah yes, Morrigan. The poor child never considered that perhaps your magic would be different from her own. It never ceases to amuse me when people believe themselves to be the authors of their own fate. Or is it chance? I can never decide."

"But…" He aborted an impulsive step forward. "Do you know where she is? I've…I've been searching for her for so long." Flemeth's eyes bored through him, rooted out the untruth and tore it out of him.

"Lies do not become us, little godling. You haven't sought out your mother in many a year." Koren closed his eyes, swaying a little as the song curled in his ears so loudly it blocked out everything else. When he opened them Flemeth stood tall and demanding before him. "You command the dragonkind. You can rid the world of Blights. You can call upon any person to follow you, and they will. Why have you not raised up an army?"

Koren looked away, rubbing clammy hands against his breeches. "I...have chosen not to."

The powerful mage gave a matronly tsk. "That is irresponsible. You could be a bringer of peace the likes of which the world has never known. Thedas is on the verge of breaking; mages against templars, magisters against the qunari, an Exalted March threatening the Free Marches. You could end all of this. You could go to war-"

"Go to war against whom?" Koren broke in angrily, a roar blazing hot behind his words. "The Chantry? The Qun? Should I send hordes of dragons throughout Thedas, burning their cities and fields, killing good people - elves and dwarves and humans and kossith - until there's nothing left but a sea of ashes?" He turned in a tight circle, hands flung wide. "Then there will be peace! When every man, woman and child is but a mound of bones, and when the buzzards grow fat on mage and templar alike. When there is nobody left to seek revenge or mourn the dead, then we will have peace."

Suddenly tired, he sat down heavily on a low shelf of lichen covered rock. "There will always be strife. Nothing I can do would change that one bit."

Cat-like eyes narrowed to slits, their potency in no way lessened. "But you could do so much..."

"All I could do is give people a way to die quicker."

For a long time, the only sound was the wind whispering through the pine needles, and some far off raptor crying its hunt.

"There is choice." The woman bent towards him, her expression cold. "And then there is need." Her eyes softened at the corners, and she went on less abrasively. "There is a path to walk, child, and you are the only one who can find it, let alone travel it."

Koren squeezed his eyes shut. "I know," he said. When he looked up he stared into the open sky, feeling as utterly lost and adrift as ever. "Do I have to walk that path by myself?" he asked, forlorn, "I've been all alone for so long."

Flemeth sighed. "I wish I could see the future entire, child, and tell you that the coming days will be all right. But I do not possess that skill. All I can tell you about the future is that it is coming." She strode over to the cliff's edge, paused to look over her shoulder. "For what it's worth, I know you'll make me proud." With that she sprang off the edge, turned into a dragon, and was gone.

Morning melted into afternoon, and Koren let his feet pick their way back down the mountain, heavy with thought. Near the base of the mountain suddenly broke out the sounds of fighting, and caught the unmistakable ozone tang of magic and rushed towards it.

When he reached the source of the sounds the battle was already over. A ring of fallen skeletons, bones still crackling and popping with heat and crude weapons scattered around them, and one young dwarf smiling vacantly in their midst. "Hallo," the dwarf said politely.

"Um," said Koren, looking around in dumb shock. "Did you do all this?"

The dwarf seemed to consider this, before giving Koren a simple beaming smile. "Enchantment?"

Koren's brow furrowed, and he searched for any hint of movement in the surrounding forest. He waded through the clattering bones and canted his head inquiringly. "Are you alone out here?"

Sadness passed over the dwarf's face, shadowing his strange blue eyes to the color of raw lyrium. "I like Bodhan," he said with a note of grief.

"Oh." Koren thought for a moment. "What's your name?"

"Sandal," the dwarf said shyly.

"Well, Sandal," Koren said. "I'm alone, too."

Sandal looked up, where the summit of the mountain could just barely be seen through the trees. "She has a scary laugh," he told Koren as if imparting a great secret.

Koren watched the dwarf contemplatively. "My name is Koren," he said softly, a decision forming within his brain. "Would you like to travel with me for a ways, Sandal?"

A small, callused hand found its way into his own. Surprised, Koren glanced down into a simple, open face, wide lyrium-colored eyes gazing trustingly into his own. "Yes, please."

This is where the early, murky accounts of Koren end, and the more uniform facts of the present begin. This boy, of witch-mother and uncertain sire, is now called by many names - the DragonKin, the King's Bane, the Bright Beacon, Darkness Reborn…

It is this humble author's intention to put down only the truth; that you, the reader, may decide what to believe in these troubled, tumultuous times. As for what may yet come to pass, what fate holds in store for all of Thedas, that is a tale to be told by authors yet to come.

-From Urthemiel Rising: Humble Beginnings, by Brother Genitivi, Chantry scholar

I drew from many sources of inspiration and included cameos from nearly all of the Dragon Age properties. There are characters from DA: Origins, the Witch Hunt DLC, Dragon Age II, the Mark of the Assassin DLC.

Adrian and her mage refugees are from the Dragon Age novel Asunder.

Sadet and Gleam are from the Dragon Age comic miniseries.

Coalan the blacksmith is a teeny, tiny homage to the excellent Dragon Age RPG by Green Ronin.

Thanks to all the creative talent that made the vibrant world of Thedas come alive. I know I look forward to how the story ends.

p.s. In case you never got this dialogue while clicking on Sandal at Hawke's manor, here's the transcript:

Sandal: One day the magic will come back. All of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part, and the skies will open wide.

Bodahn: Huh. What's this?

Sandal: When he rises, everyone will see.

Bodahn: By the ancestors, what's gotten into you, my boy?

Sandal: Enchantment?

Bodahn: Hmph. That's more like it.