Dragon Age Inquisition: Faith

Scars

Kirkwall, 9:37-9:40 Dragon

In the first days after the Kirkwall rebellion, Cullen thought his task was to maintain order as best as possible until the Chantry sent aid. So he spread the word that the Rite of Annulment was no longer in effect and promised safety and amnesty to any mage who wished to return to the Circle. Then he issued a clear order to his Templars: they could fight in self-defense, but otherwise they were to engage mages in combat if and only if civilians were in danger. The fighting had to stop before it tore Kirkwall apart.

A week after the rebellion, he still had not received word from the Order, and only a handful of mages remained in the Gallows—ten in all, six of them children, and one so elderly that he frequently mistook Cullen for his Knight-Commander of many years ago. Cullen did what he could to restore their shattered Circle to some semblance of order. He soon saw that this would not be possible. The Gallows had been destroyed too thoroughly, and Kirkwall was too angry, and the Chantry still had not intervened. So he made arrangements for some of his Templars to escort their mages to Ostwick, a Circle with a reputation for being quiet and relatively safe.

The remaining knights went to work repairing the city and supporting Guard-Captain Aveline’s efforts to keep Kirkwall from collapsing into chaos. Aveline regarded them with deep suspicion, but ever the pragmatist, she accepted their help so long as Cullen and the others did not get in her way. And there was plenty of work to go around. Opportunists looked at Kirkwall and saw a city in chaos with no one to protect it. Cullen did his best to prove the scavengers wrong, still waiting for word from the Chantry, for reinforcements, for new orders, for something.

It was six months before Cullen realized the truth. No one from the Chantry would be coming; no one from the Order would be contacting them. Kirkwall was on its own, and so were its Templars.

A year after the Circle rebellion, Cullen’s lip was sliced open by a slaver in Kirkwall’s alienage. Kirkwall’s defenders were spread thin that day and he’d gone alone to investigate rumors about disappearances among the elves. He soon found himself hopelessly outnumbered and trapped in an alleyway. He gripped his sword and prepared to die fighting—but then the alley filled with magic, primal and powerful as a thunderstorm. Hawke’s Dalish friend had heard the battle and had come to help.

Only after the fight did it seem to occur to her that he was still a Templar; she blinked at him warily, shifting her feet, saying nothing. So he bowed to her. “You have my thanks,” he said sincerely. Then he winced—the cut on his face was much deeper than he’d thought. Blood ran into his mouth; he could taste it on his tongue.

“You’re hurt,” she said. “Oh, but of course you know that. I’m not much good at healing, but I’ll give it a try, since it’s not so bad really. Unless you’d rather I didn’t.”

Cullen did not suppose that accepting healing from a Dalish apostate was entirely proper, but since he still had not heard anything from the Chantry or the Order, he did as he saw fit. “I would appreciate that,” he mumbled, wiping the blood gingerly from his lips, trying not to pull at the wound.

“You’ll probably still have a scar,” she warned him, raising her hand and reaching out with her magic. “Although I’m told shemlen women like them. Or was that shemlen men?”

She was right, there was a scar, but at least it healed neatly and quickly.

Then Prince Sebastian Vael regained his throne in Starkhaven and sent—well, he described it as “aid.” And the Starkhaven troops did help, in a way; the extra hands rebuilt homes and streets and Hightown stalls. But the Starkhaven contingent included Templars, who searched, constantly, and asked many questions about Hawke and especially about Anders. Nothing they said could seem to convince the Prince that they would have turned over Anders if they’d had him.